Necyomantia

Leaving these, we entered the Acherusian plain, and there found the demi-gods, men and women both, and the common dead, dwelling in their nations and tribes, some of them ancient and mouldering, ‘strengthless heads,’ as Homer has it, others fresh, with substance yet in them, Egyptians chiefly, these— so long last their embalming drugs. But to know one from another was no easy task; all are so like when the bones are bared; yet with pains and long scrutiny we could make them out. They lay pell-mell in undistinguished heaps, with none of their earthly beauties left. With all those anatomies piled together as like as could be, eyes glaring ghastly and vacant, teeth gleaming bare, I knew not how to tell Thersites from Nireus the beauty, beggar Irus from the Phaeacian king, or cook

Pyrrhias from Agamemnon’s self. Their ancient marks were gone, and their bones alike—uncertain, unlabelled, indistinguishable.