Plutarch's Romane Questions · Plutarch
5.
_Why are they who have beene falsly reported dead in a strange countrey, although they returne home alive, not received nor suffred to enter directly at the dores, but forced to climbe up to the tiles of the house, and so to get downe from the roufe into the house?_ _Varro_ rendreth a reason heereof, which I take to be altogether fabulous: for hee writeth, that during the Silician warre, there was a great battell fought upon the sea, and immediately upon it, there ranne a rumour of many that they were dead in this fight; who notwithstanding, they returned home safe, died all within a little while after: howbeit, one there was among the rest, who when he would have entred into his owne house, found the dore of the owne accord fast shut up against him; and for all the forcible meanes that was made to open the same, yet it would not prevaile: whereupon this man taking up his lodging without, just before his dore, as he slept in the night, had a vision which advertised and taught him how he should from the roofe of the house let himselfe downe by a rope, and so get in: now when he had so done, he became fortunate ever after, all the rest of his life; and hee lived to be a very aged man: and heereof arose the foresaid custome, which alwaies afterwards was kept and observed.
But haply this fashion may seeme in some sort to have beene derived from the Greeks: for in _Greece_ they thought not those pure and cleane who had beene caried foorth for dead to be enterred; or whose sepulchre and funerals were solemnized or prepared: neither were such allowed to frequent the company of others, nor suffred to come neere unto their sacrifices. And there goeth a report of a certaine man named _Aristinus_, one of those who had beene possessed with this superstition, how he sent unto the oracle of _Apollo_ at _Delphos_, for to make supplication and praier unto the god, for to bee delivered out of this perplexed anxietie that troubled him by occasion of the said custome or law then in force: and that the prophetesse _Pythia_ returned this answer: _Looke whatsoever women doe in childbed newly laid, Unto their babes, which they brought foorth, the verie same I say See that be done to thee againe: and after that be sure, Unto the blessed gods with hands to sacrifice, most pure._
Which oracle thus delivered, _Aristinus_ having well pondered and considered, committed himselfe as an infant new borne unto women for to be washed, to be wrapped in swadling clothes, and to be suckled with the brest-head: after which, all such others, whom we call _Hysteropotmous_, that is to say, those whose graves were made, as if they had beene dead, did the semblable. Howbeit, some doe say, that before _Aristinus_ was borne, these ceremonies were observed about those _Histropotmi_, and that this was a right auncient custome kept in the semblable case: and therefore no marvell it is, that the Romans also thought, that such as were supposed to have beene once buried, and raunged with the dead in another world, ought not to enter in at the same porch, out of which they goe, when they purpose to sacrifice unto the gods, or at which they reenter when they returne from sacrifice: but would have them from above to descend through the tiles of the roufe into the close house, with the aire open over their heads: for all their purifications ordinarily they performed without the house abroad in the aire.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.