Note 121 — Chapter III

Texts to this effect abound. Fustel brought the more remarkable of them together in his Cité antique (p. 14). We shall be content with quoting three: "Son of Peleus," said Neoptolemus, "take this drink which is grateful to the dead; come and drink this blood" (Hecuba, 536). Electra says when she pours a libation: "This drink has penetrated the earth; my father has received it" (Choephorœ, 162). And listen to the prayer of Orestes to his dead father: "Oh my father, if I live thou shalt have rich banquets; if I die thou wilt have no portion of those smoking feasts which nourish the dead" (Choephorœ, 482-484). Upon the strange persistence of this belief, traces of which are still found in Eastern Europe, in Albania, in Thessaly, and Epirus, the works of Heuzey (Mission archéologique de Macédoine, p. 156), and Albert Dumont (le Balkan et l'Adriatique, pp. 354-356), may be consulted. Some curious details relating to the funeral feasts of the Chinese are to be found in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions, 1877, p. 325. There are some striking points of resemblance between the religion of China and that of ancient Egypt; in both one and the other the same want of power to develop may be found. Taking them as a whole, both the Chinese and the Egyptians failed to emerge from the condition of fetichism.