We can best solve the questions we have raised by drawing clearly a line of distinction between the origin of the Attic sepulchral groups and their meaning. They undoubtedly derive much both from the ancestor-worship of early Hellas, and from the monuments in which that worship found expression. But it is very unlikely that to the Attic mind of the fifth and fourth centuries they usually conveyed much of religious meaning. The bright genius of Attic art had little sympathy with the mystic side of man’s nature. Its tendency was not towards ethical religion, but towards beauty and enjoyment and social life. Thus, in the memorials of the dead, the Athenians and those who took their tone from Attic art sought to produce a pleasing and not too vivid memorial of the dead, rather than a record of hope in the future life. They did not disbelieve in the future world, nor did they practically neglect the simple and pleasing ritual of the cultus of the dead. But their minds turned more naturally to thoughts less severe and gloomy, thoughts of the present, of the beauteous land they dwelt in and the charm of their social surroundings. But on the other hand it must be allowed that in the case of the cultus-reliefs of the oblong class (Chapter VII), the reference is to the future and not to the past. The worship of the dead could not begin until they were canonized, so to speak; and to this canonization all the details of the reliefs refer. If the question be asked whether the scene in which the august hero sits on his throne or leads his horse is Hades or the tomb itself, the answer is not easy. There seems to have existed in this matter a confusion of mind. The earliest beliefs of the human race seem to regard the dead as continuing in the grave an existence which is a ghostly echo of the past life, and there receiving the constantly presented offerings of their descendants. But the Greeks, as we know them in history, had risen to a higher level of thought. They thought that the soul travelled away from the resting-place of the body until it reached the shadowy realm of Hades and Persephone, there to receive from divine justice the reward or the punishment which it had earned in its earthly life[232]. Such was the view of the priest and the poet, and of educated people generally. But it is a familiar fact in the history of religion that custom and cultus move far more slowly than doctrine; and that to this body of usage is attached a survival of the earlier or more primitive belief. So it came to pass in Greece, in spite of the philosopher who spoke of the soul as mounting to its native aether, and of the poet who sang of the realm of Hades and dread Persephone. Still through the centuries offerings were brought to the tomb, and the dead were supposed there to enjoy them. Still the stele remained a sort of shrine of the family cultus, and ancestors were regarded as there present in the same supernatural fashion in which