Such are the relics of ancient soul-worship to be found within the limits of the Homeric world. Further attention to the spirits of the dead beyond the time of the funeral was prevented by the deeply ingrained conviction that after the burning of the body the psyche was received into the inaccessible world of the Unseen, from which no traveller returns. But, in order to secure this complete departure of the soul, it is necessary for the body to be burnt. Though we do occasionally read in the Iliad or the Odyssey that immediately after death and before the burning of the body "the psyche departed to Hades",[32\1] the words must not be taken too literally; the soul certainly flies off at once towards Hades, but it hovers now between the realms of the living and {19} the dead until it is received into the final safekeeping of the latter after the burning of the body. The psyche of Patroklos appearing by night to Achilles declares this; it prays for immediate burial in order that it may pass through the door of Hades. Until then the other shadow-creatures prevent its entrance and bar its passage across the river, so that it has to wander restlessly round the house of Aïs of the wide gate (_Il._ xxiii, 71 ff.). This hastening off towards the house of Hades is again all that is meant when it is said elsewhere of Patroklos himself (_Il._ xvi, 856) that the psyche departed out of his limbs to the house of Hades. In exactly the same way it is said of Elpenor, the companion of Odysseus, that "his soul descended to Hades" (_Od._ x, 560). This soul meets his friend, nevertheless, later on, at the entrance of the Shadow-world, not yet deprived of its senses like the rest of the dwellers in that House of Darkness; not until the destruction of its physical counterpart is complete can it enter into the rest of Hades. Only through fire are the souls of the dead "appeased" (_Il._ vii, 410). So long, then, as the psyche retains any vestige of "earthliness" it possesses some feeling still, some awareness of what is going on among the living.[33\1] But once the body is destroyed by fire, then is the psyche relegated to Hades; no return to this earth is permitted to it, and not a breath of this world can penetrate to it there. It cannot even return in thought. Indeed, it no longer thinks at all, and knows nothing more of the world beyond. The living also forget one so completely cut off from themselves (_Il._ xxii, 389). What, then, should tempt them, during the rest of their lives here, to try to hold communication with the dead by means of a _cult_? § 7