2 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

The religion of the household had two main characteristics. First, it
was a perfectly natural and organic growth, the result of the Roman
farmer's effective desire to put himself and his in right relations with
the spiritual powers at work for good or ill around him. His conception
of these powers I shall deal with more fully in the next lecture; but I
have said enough to prove that it was not a degrading one. The spirits
of his house and his land and his own Genius were friendly powers, all
of them of the greatest importance for his life and his work, and their
claims were attended to with regularity and devotion. From Vesta and