Note 66 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

[Pl.] Min. 315 D. To raise doubts on this point is mere perversity. It is of no avail to advance the argument (which is commonly used also against the similar statements about Rome in Serv., A. v, 64; vi, 152) that this story only intends to explain the origin of the worship of the household Lares. The Greeks did not have this particular worship, or else it was so completely forgotten that no explanatory account of its origin was ever offered.—Beside the hearth and the altar of Hestia the most ancient resting place of the head of the house must have been placed too. When the wife of Phokion had had the body of her husband burnt abroad ἐνθεμένη τῷ κόλπῳ τὰ ὀστᾶ καὶ κομίσασα νύκτωρ εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν κατώρυξε παρὰ τὴν ἑστίαν, Plu., Phoc. 37.—It was wrongly believed that in the remarkable rock-graves in the neighbourhood of the Pnyx at Athens examples of such graves situated inside the house had been discovered. See Milchhöfer in Baumeister’s Denkm. 153b.