Then the dead
were believed to rise from their graves and go about the streets,
vainly endeavouring to enter the temples and dwellings, which were
barred against these perturbed spirits with ropes, buckthorn, and
pitch. The name of the festival, according to the most obvious and
natural interpretation, means the Festival of Flowers, and the title
would fit well with the substance of the ceremonies if at that
season the poor ghosts were indeed thought to creep from the narrow
house with the opening flowers. There may therefore be a measure of
truth in the theory of Renan, who saw in the Adonis worship a dreamy
voluptuous cult of death, conceived not as the King of Terrors, but
as an insidious enchanter who lures his victims to himself and lulls
them into an eternal sleep. The infinite charm of nature in the
Lebanon, he thought, lends itself to religious emotions of this
sensuous, visionary sort, hovering vaguely between pain and
pleasure, between slumber and tears. It would doubtless be a mistake
to attribute to Syrian peasants the worship of a conception so
purely abstract as that of death in general.
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