Note 68 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

In Sparta and Tarentum: see Becker, Char.2 iii, 105 (E.T.3 p. 393). Acc. to Klearch. ap. Ath. 522 F certain men of Tarentum were struck by lightning and killed; they were then buried πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν of their houses and στῆλαι were put up in their honour. If they had really been the criminals that legend made them it would have been impossible, even in Tarentum, for them to have been buried within the walls of the city, still less before the doors of their houses—an honour given only to Heroes; cf. above, chap. iv, n. 136. The violent alteration of πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν into πρὸ τῶν πυλῶν in order to avoid this difficulty, is obviously rendered untenable by the previous ἑκάστη τῶν οἰκιῶν ὅσους κτλ. The legend is evidently a fiction and these διόβλητοι (to whom it appears, as Heroes, neither the funeral dirge nor the usual χοαί were offered) must have belonged to the class of those whom death by the flash of lightning raised to a higher and honoured rank (see Append. 1). Thus, too, the graves in the market at Megara mentioned by Becker must have been Hero-graves: see above, chap. iv, n. 83. These cases where the graves of Heroes are found in the middle of the city, in the market place, etc., show very plainly the essential difference that was held to exist between the Heroes and the ordinary dead.