[182] Wissowa, _R.K._ p. 191; J. B. Carter in Hastings' _Dict. of Religion and Ethics_, i. 462 foll.; Dieterich, _Mutter Erde_, p. 77. The whole question of the so-called cult of the dead at Rome calls for fresh investigation in the light of ethnological and archaeological research. The recent work of Mr. J. C. Lawson, _Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion_, seems to throw grave doubt on some of the most important conclusions of Rohde's _Psyche_, the work which most writers on the ideas of the Greeks and Romans have been content to follow. Mr. Lawson seems to me to have proved that the object of both burial and cremation (which in both peninsulas are found together) was to secure dissolution for the substance of the body, so that the soul might not be able to inhabit the body again, and the two together return to annoy the living (see especially chapters v. and vi.). But his answer to the inevitable question, why in that case sustenance should be offered to the dead at the grave, is less satisfactory (see pp. 531, 538), and I do not at present see how to co-ordinate it with Roman usage. But I find hardly a trace of the belief that the dead had to be placated like the gods by sacrifice and prayer, except in _Aen._ iii. 63 foll. and v. 73 foll. In the first of these passages Polydorus had not been properly buried, as Servius observes _ad loc._ to explain the nature of the offerings; the second presents far more difficulties than have as yet been fairly faced. [183] For recent researches about beans as tabooed by the Pythagoreans and believed to be the food of ghosts, see Gruppe, _Mythologische Literatur_, p. 370 (Samter and Wuensch). Cp. _R.F._, p. 110. [184] Ov. _Fasti_, v. 421 foll.; _R.F._ p. 107. LECTURE V THE CALENDAR OF NUMA