well-authenticated stories of such occurrences would seem to show that
genuine ghosts, or whatever one likes to call them, have the power of
paralyzing fear.

In the _Mostellaria_,[33] Plautus uses a ghost as a recognized piece of
supernatural machinery. The regulation father of Roman comedy has gone
away on a journey, and in the meantime the son has, as usual, almost
reached the end of his father's fortune. The father comes back
unexpectedly, and the son turns in despair to his faithful slave,
Tranio, for help. Tranio is equal to the occasion, and undertakes to
frighten the inconvenient parent away again. He gives an account of an
apparition that has been seen, and has announced that it is the ghost of
a stranger from over-seas, who has been dead for six years.

"Here must I dwell," it had declared, "for the gods of the lower world
will not receive me, seeing that I died before my time. My host murdered
me, his guest, villain that he was, for the gold that I carried, and
secretly buried me, without funeral rites, in this house. Be gone hence,
therefore, for it is accursed and unholy ground." This story is enough
for the father. He takes the advice, and does not return till Tranio and
his dutiful son are quite ready for him.

Great battlefields are everywhere believed to be haunted. Tacitus[34]
relates how, when Titus was besieging Jerusalem, armies were seen
fighting in the sky; and at a much later date, after a great battle
against Attila and the Huns, under the walls of Rome, the ghosts of the
dead fought for three days and three nights, and the clash of their arms
was distinctly heard.[35] Marathon is no exception to the rule.
Pausanias[36] says that any night you may hear horses neighing and men
fighting there. To go on purpose to see the sight never brought good to