Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the GreeksRohde, Erwin
Religion
Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks
Rohde, Erwin
Greece -- Religion
A final example of the tenacity with which custom may outlive the
belief on which it is founded is afforded by the story told of
Odysseus, that in fleeing from the Kikonian land, he did not leave
it until he had called thrice upon those of his companions who had
fallen in the battle with the Kikones (_Od._ ix, 65-6). References
to similar callings upon the dead in later literature make the
meaning of such behaviour clear. The souls of the dead who have
fallen in foreign lands must be "called";[87\1] they will then, if
this is properly done, follow the caller to their distant home,
where an "empty grave" awaits them.[88\1] This duty is regularly
performed in Homer for the benefit of those whose bodies it is
impossible to recover and bury in the proper way. But a summons of
the dead and the erection of such empty receptacles--intended for
whom if not for the souls who must then be accessible to the
devotion of their relations?--was natural enough for those who
believed in the possibility of the soul's sojourn in the
neighbourhood of its living friends; it was not admissible for
supporters of the Homeric belief. Here we have once more a
remarkable vestige of an ancient belief, surviving in a custom that
has not been entirely given up even in altered times. Here, too, the
belief which had given rise to the custom, was extinct. {43} If we
ask the Homeric poet for what purpose a mound was heaped up over the
grave of the dead and a gravestone set upon it, he will answer us:
in order that his fame may remain imperishable among men, and that
future generations may not be ignorant of his story.[89\1] That
sounds truly Homeric. When a man dies his soul departs into a region
of twilit dream-life; his body, the visible man, perishes. Only his
glorious name, in fact, lives on. His praises speak to after ages
from the monument to his honour on his grave-mound--and in the song
of the bard. A _poet_ would naturally be inclined to think such
things.
NOTES TO CHAPTER I
I
[1\1: E. Kammer, _Einheit d. Odyssee_, 510 ff.]
[2\1: E.g. _Il._ ~A~ 3, ~polla\s d' iphthi/mous _psucha\s_
(kephala/s~ Apol. Rhod., as in ~L~ 55: mistakenly) ~A/ïdi proï/apsen
hêrô/ôn, _autou\s_ de\ helô/ria teu=che ku/nessin.~ ~Ps~ 105,
~pannuchi/ê ga\r moi Patroklê=os deiloi=o _psuchê\_ ephestê/kei . .
. e/ïkto de\ the/skelon _autô=|_~ (cf. 66).]
[3\1: E.g. ~L~ 262, ~e/nth' Antê/noros hui=es hup' Atrei/dê|
basilê=i po/tmon anaplê/santes e/dun do/mon A/ïdos ei/sô~. The
~_psuchê/_~ of Elpenor and afterwards that of Teiresias, of his
mother, of Agamemnon, etc., is addressed by Odysseus in the Nekyia
of the Od. simply as: ~Elpê=nor, Teiresi/ê, mê=ter emê/~, etc. And
cf. such expressions as: ~Ps~ 244, ~eis ho/ ken _auto\s_ egô\ A/ïdi
keu/thômai~, or ~O~ 251, ~kai\ dê\ e/gôg' epha/mên, ne/kuas kai\
dô=m' Ai/dao ê/mati tô=|d' hi/xesthai . . .~ or ~X~ 456 f., etc.]
[4\1: The first view is Nägelsbach's, the second that of
Grotemeyer.]
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