Pliny[96] quotes an interesting account, from Hermotimus of Clazomenae, of a man whose soul was in the habit of leaving his body and wandering abroad, as was proved by the fact that he would often describe events which had happened at a distance, and could only be known to an actual eyewitness.  His body meanwhile lay like that of a man in a trance or half dead.  One day, however, some enemies of his took the body while in this state and burnt it, thus, to use Pliny’s phrase, leaving the soul no sheath[97] to which it could return.

No one can help being struck by the bald and meagre character of these stories as a whole.  They possess few of the qualities we expect to find in a good modern ghost story.  None of them can equal in pathetic beauty many of those to be found in Myers’s Human Personality.  Take, for example, the story of the lady[98] who was waked in the night by the sound of moaning and sobbing, as of someone in great distress of mind.  Finding nothing in her room, she went and looked out of the landing window, “and there, on the grass, was a very beautiful young girl in a kneeling posture before a soldier, in a General’s uniform, clasping her hands together and entreating for pardon; but, alas! he only waived her away from him.”

The story proved to be true.  The youngest daughter of the old and distinguished family to which the house had belonged had had an illegitimate child.  Her parents and relations refused to have anything more to do with her, and she died broken-hearted.  The lady who relates the story saw the features so clearly on this occasion that she afterwards recognized the soldier’s portrait some six months later, when calling at a friend’s house, and exclaimed:  “Why, look!  There is the General!” as soon as she noticed it.

One really beautiful ghost story has, however, come down to us.[99] Phlegon of Tralles was a freedman of the Emperor Hadrian.  His work is not of great merit.  The following is a favourable specimen of his stories.  A monstrous child was born in AEtolia, after the death of its father, Polycrates.  At a public meeting, where it was proposed to do away with it, the father suddenly appeared, and begged that the child might be given him.  An attempt was made to seize the father, but he snatched up the child, tore it to pieces, and devoured all but the head.  When it was proposed to consult the Delphic oracle on the matter, the head prophesied to the crowd from where it lay on the ground.

Then comes the following story.  The early part is missing, but Erwin Rohde, in an interesting article,[100] has cleared up all the essential details.  Proclus’s treatises on Plato’s Republic are complete only in the Vatican manuscripts.  Of these Mai only published fragments,[101] but an English theologian, Alexander Morus, took notes from the manuscript when it was in Florence, and quoted from it in a commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews.[102] One of the treatises