Development Of The Human Soul

Appendix 15. (1580).

When the Egyptians mourned Adonis, they shaved their heads and slashed their bodies. They did the same in other instances of mourning (Herod., 2, c. 85). We know of similar practices among the Moabites (Is 15; Jer 48), the Babylonians (Is 7), the Assyrians (Strab. 16), the Persians (Herod., 9, c. 24) and the Scythians (Herod., 4, c. 71). On the death of Hephaestion, Alexander had all the manes and tails of the horses and mules docked (Plut., in Alex). On the death of Dido, Anna slashes herself: 'Her sister tears at her mouth with her nails, and beats her breasts with her fists' (Bk. 4, 673). Similar customs are found among barbarian nations in whom natural instinct is so active and dominant. Such acts, precisely because they are natural, instinctive effects of sorrowing love, are thought pleasing to the dead and therefore placatory. Pisastratus, the son of Nestor (Homer, Odyssey, 4) tells Menelaus that nothing better can be done to honour the dead than to shave his head and shed tears. Plutarch narrates how the cutting off of ears or nose, or the mutilation of oneself in some other way seemed to some barbarian peoples very pleasing to the dead (De Consol. ad Apoll.). Servius writes: 'Varro says that at burials and in mourning it was a custom to mutilate one's mouth so that satisfaction could be made to the dead by the flow of blood' (4 Aeneid.). In this last concept however another secret of human nature is concealed: why is the need to placate the dead presupposed? Why the presupposition that the dead long for blood?