Note 87 — Chapter XIV · PART II POPULAR BELIEF

The Φιλοψευδής is a genuine treasure-house of typical narratives of apparitions and sorceries of every kind. δαίμονας ἀνάγειν καὶ νεκροὺς ἑώλους ἀνακαλεῖν is a mere bagatelle, according to these sage doctors, to the magician: c. 13. An example is given of this conjuration of the dead (the seven-months dead father of Glaukias): 14. Appearance of the dead wife of Eukrates whose golden sandals they had forgotten to burn with her: 27 (see above, chap. i, n. 51). As a rule the only haunting ghosts are αἱ τῶν βιαίως ἀποθανόντων ψυχαί not those of the κατὰ μοῖραν ἀποθανόντων as the learned Pythagorean instructs us, c. 29. Then follows the story of the ghost of Corinth (30–1), which must be taken from a widely known ghost-story, as it agrees completely in its circumstances with the story told with such simple candour by Pliny (Ep. vii, 27). δαίμονάς τινας εἶναι καὶ φάσματα καὶ νεκρῶν ψυχὰς περιπολεῖν ὑπὲρ γῆς καὶ φαίνεσθαι οἷς ἂν ἐθέλωσιν (29) is the fixed conviction of these philosophers. The living too can sometimes catch a glimpse of the underworld: 22–4. A man’s soul can be detached from his body and go down to Hades, and afterwards, again reunited to his body, relate its adventures. Thus the soul of Kleodemos, while his body lay in fever, is taken down to the lower world by a messenger but then sent back again since he had been taken by mistake for his neighbour, the smith Demylos: 25. This edifying narrative is certainly intended as a parody of the similar story told in good faith by Plu. de An. fr. 1, preserved ap. Eus., PE. 11, 36, p. 563. It is certain that Plu. did not simply invent such a story; he may perhaps have found it in some older collection of miraculous ἀναβιώσεις such as, for example, Chrysippos did not disdain to make. The probability that Plu. got this story of mistaken identity from a collection of folk-tales is made all the likelier since the same story occurs again in a popular guise. Of a similar character is what Augustine has to say on the authority of Corn. Labeo: Civ. Dei 22, 28 (p. 622, 1–5 Domb.). Augustine himself, Cur. pro Mort. 15, tells a story exactly like that of Plu. (about Curma the curialis and Curma the faber ferrarius), which, of course, is supposed to happen a little before his time in Africa; and once more at the end of the sixth century Gregory the Great introduces a vision of Hell by the same formula: Dial. 4, 36, p. 384 AB Migne. The inventive powers of ghoststory-tellers is very limited: they keep on repeating the same few old and tried motifs.