a reply that hinted at his impending death (Cimon6.4–6). Pausanias was soon after
starved to death by the Spartans for allegedly stirring up a helot revolt, and so his
spirit, too, was restless and seems to have brought down a curse upon the Spartans,
who had to appease him with the offering of two bronze statues (Fontenrose
1978:129–30; Faraone 1991b:184–7).
But from the earliest Greek literature down through Roman times lack of burial
was the main motivation in antiquity for the disembodied dead to haunt the living.
An unburied body was no longer among the living but had also not yet crossed into
Hades, and was caught in a liminal state of unrest. A proper burial usually solved the
problem. For example, the ghost of Patroclus, appearing to Achilles in a dream, states
that once Achilles holds a funeral for him, he will no longer return from the dead:
‘‘For I will not come again out of Hades, when you have granted me the right of
funeral fire’’ (Iliad23.75–6). AtOdyssey11.52 the ghost of Odysseus’ shipmate
Elpenor, who has died unnoticed in a drunken fall from Circe’s roof, meets Odysseus
just outside of Hades and complains that he cannot enter until his body is buried;
when Odysseus returns to Circe’s island, one of the first things he does is give
Elpenor a proper burial.
Moreover, it was not enough simply to be buried: the burial must have been
performed according to certain rituals desired by the deceased or his soul could not
rest. For example, after Achilles was shot by Paris, he was cremated and his ashes
mixed in an urn with those of Patroclus. Achilles’ spirit was still not at rest, however,
and when the victorious Greeks were preparing to sail home from Troy his ghost
appeared to them and would not let them leave, because they were departing without
leaving any offering on his tomb. His ghost then demanded the sacrifice of King
Priam’s daughter Polyxena, and when the Greeks cut her throat over Achilles’ tomb,
saturating it with her blood, his ghost was appeased (Euripides,Troades622–33;
Hecabe35–582; see also Hughes 1991:60–5).
A story about a haunted house at Athens was circulating in the time of the Roman
author Pliny the Younger, who wrote it down in a letter to his friend Sura in AD 102.
This is probably the most famous ghost story from antiquity. Its opening is quite
effective and, if it were not set in Athens, could easily be set in any town in any era:
In Athens there was a large and roomy house, but it had a bad reputation and an
unhealthy air. Through the silence of the night you could hear the sound of metal
clashing and, if you listened more closely, you could make out the clanking of chains,
first from far off, then from close by. Soon there appeared a phantom, an old man,
emaciated and filthy, with a long beard and unkempt hair. He wore shackles on his legs
and chains on his wrists, shaking them as he walked. And so the inhabitants of this house
spent many dreadful nights lying awake in fear. Illness and eventually death overtook
them through lack of sleep and their increasing dread. For even when the ghost was
absent, the memory of that horrible apparition preyed on their minds, and their fear itself
lasted longer than the initial cause of that fear. Eventually the house was deserted and
condemned to solitude, left entirely to the ghost. But the house was advertised, in case
someone unaware of the evil should wish to buy or rent it. (Pliny the Younger,Letters
7.27.5–6)Finally, a philosopher named Athenodorus rents the house and bravely faces the
ghost. The ghost beckons to him and he follows it into the courtyard, where
The Dead 97