Note 1320 — Chapter VI · THE BENEFIT OF DISSOLUTION.

Rohde (Psyche I. cap. 1) contends that the discovery of an altar, of the type used in the worship of Chthonian deities, superimposed upon one Mycenaean grave, proves both that offerings to the dead were continued after the interment and also that the offerings were of a propitiatory character. On this slight foundation he rears the edifice of his theory that a vigorous soul-cult flourished in Mycenaean and earlier ages. Accordingly he views all gifts to the dead, including those made at the time of the funeral, as offerings intended to propitiate departed souls, although he is forced to admit that from the Homeric age onwards there is no evidence that fear of the dead was a feature of Greek religion; the offerings made, on his view, to the soul of Patroclus were merely, he holds, a ‘survival,’ a custom no longer possessed of any meaning. The accident of an altar belonging to some Chthonian deity having been found above the grave of some man seems to me insufficient basis for any theory.