Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/523

466 Primitive Grkkce: Mycenian Art. this civilization flourished — now only known to us by its plastic art — and that when Epic poetry acquired its most perfect form among the Asiatic Hellenes, it would be hard to say. This much is certain, that in the space intervening between the two points there is room for many successive generations. Some facts, from among many more, may be adduced to prove that the interval in question, though not admitting of accurate measurement, was certainly a very long one. The tribes of the Mycenian age bury their dead ; but the only mode of sepulture known to the contemporaries of Homer is in- cineration. The passage from the earlier to the later rite implies a notable change in the beliefs relating to a life beyond the grave. So long as this posthumous life is conceived as the prolongation, more or less imperfect and uncertain, of that which man leads in the light of day, the survivors' first duty is to protect the corpse against the chances of destruction that threaten it. The notion of consigning the body to the flames did not originate in the mind of man until another conception came, if not to replace, at any rate to superimpose itself to the older one, whose hold on the masses was almost as deeply rooted as ever. At first the new superstition was shadowy and ill-defined ; envisaged as an image, a something which the body exhaled with its last breath. This image or f?8a)Xov, as Homer has it, was supposed to pursue somewhere, in a gloomy and distant region, a colourless and joyless life. Greek thought will devote its highest energy in trying to expand and develop this conception to the utmost ; its supreme effort will culminate in devising punishments in another world for the evil- doer and rewards for the good, so as to satisfy justice and sanction moral law. Intelligence had not matured so far when the eleventh chant of the older Epic, which contains the account of Odysseus' visit to the nether world, was composed ; in it allusions to the future consequences, promulgated by the new belief, are both rare and obscure ; the creed, though in a rudimentary form, has become the prevailing system of the later Epic, and by itself proves that rational reflection had made enormous strides since the infantile days when another superstition had been the rule. Changes in matters pertaining to religious dogmas are among the slowest to be effected in any community. Centuries must have elapsed, there- fore, ere men could be persuaded to relinquish the earlier rite, and accept the later version of the eternal mystery which surrounds the