reat her forgiveness.
She appeared accordingly, and informed him that, on his return to Sparta,
he would be delivered from all his sorrows--meaning, by death. This was
five hundred years before Christ. The story resembles that of the
apparition of Samuel before Saul: "To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be
with me."[34] The appearance of Samuel was regarded as a real transaction
by the writer of Ecclesiasticus, for he says: "By his faithfulness he was
found a true prophet, and by his word he was known to be faithful in
vision; for after his death he showed the king his end, and lift up his
voice from the earth in prophecy."[35] The rabbins say that the woman was
the mother of Abner; she is said to have had the spirit of _Ob_, which Dean
Milman has remarked is singularly similar in sound to the name of the
_Obeah_ women in Africa and the West Indies. Herodotus also mentions
_Thesprotia_, in Epirus, as the place where Periander evoked the spirit of
his wife Melissa, whom he had murdered.[36]

{37}

It was a very general opinion, in later days, that demons had power over
the souls of the dead, until Christ descended into Hades and delivered them
from the thrall of the "Prince of Darkness." The dead were sometimes raised
by those who did not possess a familiar spirit. These consulters repaired
to the grave at night, and there lying down, repeated certain words in a
low, muttering tone, and the spirit thus summoned appeared. "And thou shalt
be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be
low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar
spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the
dust."[37]

Euripides also refers to necromancy.[38]

ADMETUS.
[Greek: hora ge me ti phasma nerteron tod e]?
HERCULES.
[Greek: ou psuchagogon tond' epoieso xenon].

ADM. See! is not this some spectre from the dead?

HER. No dead-invoker for thy guest hast thou.

Seneca describes the spirits of the dead as being evoked by the Psychagogus
in a cave rendered gloomy and as dark as night by the cypress, laurel, and
other like trees.[39] Claudian refers to the same superstition.[40] And
Lucan,[41] where Erictho recalls a spirit to animate {38} the body it had
left, by horrid ceremonies. So Tibullus:[42]--

"Haec cantu finditque solum, manesque sepulchris,
Elicit, et tepido devocat ossa toro."

The celebrated Heeren, in his "Politic