As for the banquets, they were precisely those which occurred at the
ancient festivals and funeral feasts practiced by all countries and
nations, sacred and profane. [99]

The observance of silence seems to be what not only the profane
writers meant by summoning mortals to the shades and darkness, mute
and silent; but what the sacred writers intended in calling death
and dead men mute.

In the sacred tongue they called the sepulchre itself "silence," [100]
or "the place of silence"--on account both of the dumbness of the
deceased, who was no longer able to have intercourse with the living,
and of the silence and wonder in which the living remained, their
grief for the dead, and the solitude in which they sat, depriving
them of voice and speech; even more effectual for this was the
consideration of the wretchedness, insignificance, and transientness
of their own species, which they saw in their neighbor, friend or
relative, when in so evil a plight, a threat and warning to them of
a like fate. [101] In short, since all these usages arose, partly
from some confused perception or conjecture of the natural reason,
partly (and more probably) from the blindness and madness into which
the devil plunged them, those islanders practiced rites and customs
similar to those of former times and nations, for they too were men,
subject to the same deception. Truly in this, as in a thousand other
things, is verified that grave saying and query of the Wise Man:
"What is it that is now happening?" and he answers himself, saying,
"That which happened in the past." Again he asks himself: "What were
the customs of our ancestors?" and again he replies, "Those which
will be, and which those who are yet unborn will practice." [102]
The same I would say of the following.