ce, and
one who loved learning. Simplicius of Silicia, Eulamius the Phrygian,
Protanus the Lydian, Hermenes and Philogenes of Phoenicia, and
Isidorus of Gaza, repaired then to the court of Chosroes, and were
well received there; but they soon perceived that that country was
much more corrupt than Greece, and they resolved to return to
Constantinople, where Justinian then reigned.

As they were on their way, they found an unburied corpse, took pity on
it, and had it put in the ground by their own servants. The following
night this man appeared to one of them, and told him not to inter him,
who was not worthy of receiving sepulture; for the earth abhorred one
who had defiled his own mother. The next day they found the same
corpse cast out of the ground, and they comprehended that it was
defiled by incest, which rendered it unworthy of the honor of
receiving burial, although such crimes were known in Persia, and did
not excite the same horror there as in other countries.

The Greeks and Latins believed that the souls of the dead came and
tasted what was presented on their tombs, especially honey and wine;
that the demons loved the smoke and odor of sacrifices, melody, the
blood of victims, commerce with women; that they were attached for a
time to certain spots or to certain edifices, which they haunted, and
where they appeared; that souls separated from their terrestrial body,
retained after death a subtile one, flexible, aerial, which preserved
the form of that they once had animated during their life; that they
haunted those who had done them wrong and whom they hated. Thus Virgil
describes Dido, in a rage, threatening to haunt the perfidious
AEneas.[388]

When the spirit of Patroclus appeared to Achilles,[389] it had his
voice, his shape, his eyes, his garments, but not his palpable body.
When Ulysses went down to the infernal regions, he saw there the
divine Hercules,[390] that is to say, says Homer, his likeness; for he
himself is with the immortal gods, seated at their feast. AEneas
recognized his wife Creuesa, who appeared to him in her usual form,
only taller and more majestic.[391]

We might cite a quantity of passages from the ancient poets, even from
the fathers of the church, who believed that spirits often appeared to
the living. Tertullian[392] believes that the soul is corporeal, and
that it has a certain figure. He appeals to the experience of those to
whom the ghosts of dead persons have appeared, an