all periods of the history of Roman burial are unified by the belief in the continued existence of the dead, and in his ghostly participation in the life of the family and the community, and by the consequent scrupulous care about proper burial, and the maintenance of right relations with the spirits of dead ancestors. The quick and the dead of ancient Rome were in a more than usually intimate communion[370]. The sacred dance, as a mark of honour to the deceased, is therefore not likely to have been neglected among the poor any more than among the rich. V We come now to consider some examples of dancing as a mourning or burial rite among some of the savage and semi-civilized peoples. What will strike us here as strange are the contradictory ideas regarding the purpose of the rite; but it is just these opposing ideas that will be found to be so instructive. Various customs in existence at the present day among civilized peoples are explained in the light of the ideas and practices now to be considered. There is no doubt that the object of this rite among uncivilized races which is most common now is the honouring of the departed; but it is probably true to say that this represents the latest development regarding its purpose, and that the other reasons for which it was performed take us back to earlier stages of the growth of savage thought regarding the departed. We will begin by offering examples of this most developed idea and purpose of the rite. In writing of the Kol tribes of Chota Nagpur who are remarkable for their pathetic reverence for their dead, Tylor says: When a Ho or Munda has been burned on the funeral pile, collected morsels of his bones are carried in procession with a solemn, ghostly, sliding step, keeping time to the deep-sounding drum, and when the old woman who carries the bones in her bamboo tray lowers it from time to time, then girls who carry pitchers and brass vessels mournfully reverse them to show that they are empty; thus the remains are taken to visit every house in the village, and every dwelling of a friend or a relative for miles, and the inmates come out to mourn and praise the goodness of the departed. The bones are carried to all the dead man’s favourite haunts, to the fields he cultivated, to the grove he planted, to the threshing-floor where he worked, to the village dance-room where he made merry. At last they are taken to the grave, and buried in an earthen vase upon a store of food...[371].