The idea of this spiritual counterpart pervades the ancient world. It appears in Persia as the _fravashi_.[52] It is in the Syrian Gnostic's Hymn of the Soul, as a robe in the form and likeness of a man.-- It was myself that I saw before me as in a mirror; Two in number we stood, but only one in appearance.[53] It is also probable that the "Angel" of Peter and the "Angels of the little children" in the New Testament represent the same idea. The reader of Horace hardly needs to be reminded of the birthday feast in honour of the _genius_,--_indulge genio_. December, as the month of Larentalia and Saturnalia, is the month welcome to every _genius_, Ovid says.[54] The worship of all or most of these spirits of the country and of the home was joyful, an affair of meat and drink. The primitive sacrifice brought man and god near one another in the blood and flesh of the victim, which was of one race with them both.[55] It was on some such ground that the Jews would not "eat with blood," lest the soul of the beast should pass into the {16} man. There were feasts in honour of the dead, too, which the church found so dear to the people that it only got rid of them by turning them into festivals of the Martyrs. It was not idly that St Paul spoke of "meat offered to idols" and said that the Kingdom of God was not eating or drinking. In addition to all these spirits of living beings, of actions and of places, we have to reckon the dead. There were _Manes_--a name supposed to mean "the kindly ones," a caressing name given with a purpose and betraying a real fear. There were also ghosts, _larvae_ and _lemures_.[56] It was the thought of these that made burial so serious a thing, and all the ritual for averting the displeasure of the dead. The Parentalia were celebrated on the 13th of February in their honour,[57] and in May the _Lemuria_. It is, we are told, for this reason that none will marry in May.[58] Closely connected with this fear of ghosts and of the dead is that terror of death which Lucretius spends so much labour in trying to dissipate. "I see no race of men," wrote Cicero, "however polished and educated, however brutal and barbarous, which does not believe that warnings of future events are given and may be understood and announced by certain persons,"[59] and he goes on to remark that Xenophanes and Epicurus were alone among philosophers in believing in no kind of Divination.[60] "Are we to wait till beasts speak? Are we not content with the unanimous authority of mankind?"[61] The Stoics, he says, summed up the matter as follows:--