APPARITIONS OF THE DEAD


Among the tall stories in Lucian's _Philopseudus_[79] is an amusing
account of a man whose wife, whom he loved dearly, appeared to him after
she had been dead for twenty days. He had given her a splendid funeral,
and had burnt everything she possessed with her. One day, as he was
sitting quietly reading the Phædo, she suddenly appeared to him, to the
terror of his son. As soon as he saw her he embraced her tearfully, a
fact which seems to show that she was of a more substantial build than
the large majority of ghosts of the ancient world; but she strictly
forbade him to make any sound whatever. She then explained that she had
come to upbraid the unfortunate man for having neglected to burn one of
her golden slippers with her at the funeral. It had fallen behind the
chest, she explained, and had been forgotten and not placed upon the
pyre with the other. While they were talking, a confounded little
Maltese puppy suddenly began to bark from under the bed, when she
vanished. But the slipper was found exactly where she had described, and
was duly burnt on the following day. The story is refreshingly human.

This question of dress seems to have been a not infrequent source of
anxiety to deceased ladies in the ancient world. Periander,[80] the
tyrant of Corinth, on one occasion wished to consult his wife's spirit
upon a very important matter; but she replied, as she had doubtless
often done when alive, that she would not answer his questions till she
had some decent clothes to wear. Periander waited for a great festival,
when he knew that all the women of Corinth would be assembled in their
best, and then gave orders that they should one and all strip
themselves. He burnt the clothes on a huge pyre in his wife's honour;