"The stranger Machates, who was visited by the ghost, has committed
suicide in despair.

"Now, if you think it right that I should give the King an account of
all this, let me know, and I will send some of those who gave me the
various details."

The story is particularly interesting, as the source of Goethe's _Braut
von Korinth_. In Goethe's poem the girl is a Christian, while her lover
is a pagan. Their parents are friends, and they have been betrothed in
their youth. He comes to stay with her parents, knowing nothing of her
death, when she appears to him. As in the Greek story, her body is
material, though cold and bloodless, and he thinks her still alive. He
takes her in his arms and kisses her back to life and love, breathing
his own passion into her. Then the mother surprises them, and the
daughter upbraids her for her cruelty, but begs that she and her lover
may be buried together, as he must pay for the life he has given her
with his own.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 79: _Philops._, 27.]

[Footnote 80: Herod., v. 92.]

[Footnote 81: _Human Personality_, ii. 348.]

[Footnote 82: _Ep._, v. 5.]