There is also an interesting story of Pindar, told by Pausanias.[78] In his old age the great poet dreamt that Persephone appeared to him and told him that she alone of all the goddesses had not been celebrated in song by him, but that he should pay the debt when he came to her.  Shortly after this he died.  There was, however, a relation of his, a woman then far advanced in years, who had practised the singing of most of his hymns.  To her Pindar appeared in a dream and sang the hymn to Proserpine, which she wrote down from memory when she awoke.

I have included one or two stories of apparitions in dreams among those in the next section, as they seemed to be more in place there.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 74:  Malae tractationis.]

[Footnote 75:  Met., viii. 4.]

[Footnote 76:  Plutarch, Cimon, Chap.  VI.]

[Footnote 77:  “Parve culex, pecudum custos tibi tale merenti
                 Funeris officium vitae pro munere reddit.”]

[Footnote 78:  9. 21. 3.]

VI

APPARITIONS OF THE DEAD

Among the tall stories in Lucian’s Philopseudus[79] is an amusing account of a man whose wife, whom he loved dearly, appeared to him after she had been dead for twenty days.  He had given her a splendid funeral, and had burnt everything she possessed with her.  One day, as he was sitting quietly reading the Phaedo, she suddenly appeared to him, to the terror of his son.  As soon as he saw her he embraced her tearfully, a fact which seems to show that she was of a more substantial build than the large majority of ghosts of the ancient world; but she strictly forbade him to make any sound whatever.  She then explained that she had come to upbraid the unfortunate man for having neglected to burn one of her golden slippers with her at the funeral.  It had fallen behind the chest, she explained, and had been forgotten and not placed upon the pyre with the other.  While they were talking, a confounded little Maltese puppy suddenly began to bark from under the bed, when she vanished.  But the slipper was found exactly where she had described, and was duly burnt on the following day.  The story is refreshingly human.

This question of dress seems to have been a not infrequent source of anxiety to deceased ladies in the ancient world.  Periander,[80] the tyrant of Corinth, on one occasion wished to consult his wife’s spirit upon a very important matter; but she replied, as she had doubtless often done when alive, that she would not answer his questions till she had some decent clothes to wear.  Periander waited for a great festival, when he knew that all the women of Corinth would be assembled in their best, and then gave orders that they should one and all strip themselves.  He burnt the clothes on a huge pyre in his wife’s honour; and one can imagine his satisfaction at feeling that he had at last settled the question for ever.  He applied to his wife once more with a clear conscience, when she gave him an unmistakable sign that she was speaking the truth, and answered his questions as he desired.