In the Iliad ferocity runs high, in these particulars; the historic hatred of such doings is growing but slowly. "The spirit that hated cruelty" has left the facts where it found them; there is no expurgation of them. As to the Hellenic historic spirit and its hatred of "uncleanness"--_autres temps, autres moeurs_! Homer has no allusions to the survival of savage vices detested by "the Northern spirit." But, granting that the waxing spirit of Hellenism expurgated atrocities committed on the dead (though they stand staring upon us in the _Iliad_), "the Northern or Achaean spirit" is credited by Mr. Murray with "pruning away or ignoring" the characteristic rites, beliefs, and usages of the conquered races. The earlier the period, the more drastic would be the purification. Achaeans, not yet leavened with "Pelasgian" blood and beliefs, could not celebrate what they confessedly did not practise. In their work no later expurgation could cleanse away that which their work could not contain. Hero-worship; propitiation of the dead; purification of homicides by blood; initiatory ceremonies, mysteries, witchcraft, and so forth, these are practices with which we are familiar in savagery, in barbarism, and, by way of survival, in the rites and customs of the most highly civilised races. They exist in various degrees in different races and societies. In Northern society, as we know it in the sagas, most of these superstitions are comparatively rare. Ghosts were believed in by Gunnar and Grettir; very able-bodied ghosts they were, a kind of vampires. But they were not propitiated, they were met with the steel axe and short sword, or with muscular force in the wrestling match. Their bodies were mutilated and then burned, as in the case of the vampire Glam in the Grettir saga. There are few, if any, traces of hero-worship in early Teutonic and Scandinavian literature. Of purification from homicide in baths or by aspersions of swine's blood I can remember no Northern example. The original purpose of this nasty practice is, apparently, to throw the pursuing ghost of the slain man off the trail of the slayer; but the heroes of the Icelandic sagas recked not a fig for the feud of the ghost. "Soul and body, on the whole, are odds against a disembodied soul," in their opinion, hence the absence of the Greek rite of purification by blood. The Northerners had, doubtless, their various rustic rites and revels, originally intended to promote the fertility of nature. But if they once had initiatory ceremonies and mysteries like savages, these appear to have been forgotten by the time of the heroes of the Icelandic sagas. Witchcraft was an article of belief, but was held in great disesteem. There are legends of sacrifices of kings, but these are somewhat shadowy and remote.