FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   >>  
Via Flaminia entered the city, in order to lay his restless shade. Caligula also appeared shortly after his death, and frequently disturbed the keepers of the Lamian Gardens, for his body had been hastily buried there without due ceremony. Not till his sisters, who really loved him, in spite of his many faults, had returned from exile were the funeral rites properly performed, after which his ghost gave no more trouble.[83] On the night of the day of Galba's murder, the Emperor Otho was heard groaning in his room by his attendants. They rushed in, and found him lying in front of his bed, endeavouring to propitiate Galba's ghost, by whom he declared that he saw himself being driven out and expelled.[84] Otho was a strange mixture of superstition and scepticism, for when he started on his last fatal expedition he treated the unfavourable omens with contempt. By this time, however, he may have become desperate. Moreover, irreligious people are notoriously superstitious, and at this period it would be very difficult to say just where religion ended and superstition began. We have one or two ghost stories connected with early Greek mythology. Cillas, the charioteer of Pelops, though Troezenius gives his name as Sphaerus, died on the way to Pisa, and appeared to Pelops by night, begging that he might be duly buried. Pelops took pity on him and burnt[85] his body with all ceremony, raised a huge mound in his honour, and built a chapel to the Cillean Apollo near it. He also named a town after him. Strabo even says that there was a mound in Cillas' honour at Crisa in the Troad. This dutiful attention did not go unrewarded. Cillas appeared to Pelops again, and thanked him for all he had done, and to Cillas also he is said to have owed the information by which he was able to overthrow OEnomaus in the famous chariot race which won him the hand of Hippodamia. Pelops' shameless ingratitude to OEnomaus's charioteer, Myrtilus, who had removed the pin of his master's chariot, and thus caused his defeat and death in order to help Pelops, on the promise of the half of the kingdom, is hardly in accordance with his treatment of Cillas, though it is thoroughly Greek. However, on the theory that a man who betrays one master will probably betray another, especially if he is to be rewarded for his treachery with as much as half a kingdom, Pelops was right in considering that Myrtilus was best out of the way; and he can hardly have fores
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   >>  



Top keywords:

Pelops

 
Cillas
 

appeared

 
charioteer
 

chariot

 

honour

 
Myrtilus
 

OEnomaus

 

master

 

kingdom


ceremony

 
buried
 

superstition

 

Strabo

 

Apollo

 

chapel

 

connected

 
Cillean
 

rewarded

 

Sphaerus


mythology

 

treachery

 

Troezenius

 

begging

 

raised

 
defeat
 
caused
 

promise

 
Hippodamia
 

shameless


ingratitude
 

removed

 

accordance

 

treatment

 
betray
 

betrays

 

However

 

theory

 
attention
 

unrewarded


dutiful

 
thanked
 

stories

 

overthrow

 

famous

 
information
 

irreligious

 
properly
 

performed

 

funeral