Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Manes

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rich, Anthony (1849). The illustrated companion to the Latin dictionary, and Greek lexicon. p. vi. OCLC 894670115. https://archive.org/details/illustratedcompa00rich. 

MANES. The shades of the departed. The ancients themselves seem to have attached a vague and indefinite notion to this term, so that it is not easy to arrive at its real and distinct meaning. The following, however, appears to afford the most satisfactory result. It was believed that the souls of men, upon the dissolution of the body, were converted into spirits, which still continued to exercise an influence over their descendants; some into good spirits, who were termed lares, others into bad ones, who were called larvae. But as the survivors could not know which of these two conditions had been allotted to the souls of their deceased relatives, they made use of the word manes as an indeterminate expression, which did not define either condition, while it would include both; though their superstitious dislike to any thing of evil sound and omen led them generally to attach the most favourable idea to the term. Hence, in the great majority of cases, it is used in reference to good spirits, who were supposed to reside in the lower world, and allowed to return three times a year upon earth to visit their descendants in the forms they bore whilst alive. Thus the spirit of Anchises, when he meets Aeneas in the lower regions, is represented in the Vatican Virgil as draped in the costume of his country; and Hector, in the same work, when he appears to Aeneas on earth, is attired in the same way; with the words Hectoris manes written over the figure. In this case, as well as others, the name is given to the spirit of an individual person; it is also used to designate the regions below, where the manes resided, who were likewise regarded in the light of inferior deities; whence they are commonly styled on sepulchral inscriptions DII MANES. Apul. Deo Socrat. p. 689. Augustin. C. D. ix. 11. Compare Serv. ad Virg. Aen. iii. 63. Festus, s. v. and Isidor. Orig. viii. 11. 100. Virg. Aen. iv. 427. Georg. 1. 243.