ghosts hailed the
dusky limits of futurity:

"Umbra Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi Pallida regna
petunt."

First, then, from a study of the Greek mythology we find all the
dead a dull populace of ghosts fluttering through the neutral
melancholy of Hades without discrimination. And finally we discern
in the world of the dead a sad middle region, with a Paradise on
the right and a Hell on the left, the whole presided over by three
incorruptible judges, who appoint the new corners their places in
accordance with their deserts.

The question now arises, What did the Greeks think in relation to
the ascent of human souls into heaven among the gods? Did they
except none from the remediless doom of Hades? Was there no path
for the wisest and best souls to climb starry Olympus? To dispose
of this inquiry fairly, four distinct considerations must be
examined. First, Ulysses sees in the infernal regions the image of
Herakles shooting the shadows of the Stymphalian birds, while his
soul is said to be rejoicing with fair legged Hebe at the banquets
of the immortal gods in the skies. To explain this, we must
remember that Herakles was the son of Alcmene, a mortal woman, and
of Zeus, the king of the gods. Accordingly, in the flames on Mount
Oeta, the surviving ghost which he derived from his mother
descends to Hades, but the purified soul inherited from his father
has the proper nature and rank of a deity, and is received into
the Olympian synod.5 Of course no blessed life in heaven for the
generality of men is here implied. Herakles, being a son and
favorite of Zeus, has a corresponding destiny exceptional from
that of other men.

Secondly, another double representation, somewhat similar, but
having an entirely different interpretation, occurs in the case of
Orion, the handsome Hyrian hunter whom Artemis loved. At one time
he is described, like the spectre of the North American Indian,
chasing over the Stygian plain the disembodied animals he had in
his lifetime killed on the mountains:

"Swift through the gloom a giant hunter flies: A ponderous brazen
mace, with direful sway, Aloft he whirls to crush the savage prey;

5 Ovid, Met. lib. ix. II. 245-272.

Grim beasts in trains, that by his truncheon fell, Now, phantom
forms, shoot o'er the lawn of hell."

In the common belief this, without doubt, was received as actual
fact. But at another time Orion is deified and shown as one of the
grandest constellation