Illustrated Companion to the Latin Dictionary/Umbrae

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. 

UMBRAE. The shades or spirits of departed beings in the nether world. The ancients believed that the spirit of the human body descended into subterranean regions after life was extinct, and there retained the same figure and appearance it had possessed during life, so as to be recognizable to the relatives and friends who followed it, but without any real corporeal substance; or, in other words, that it was visible but impalpable. Those who had passed a life of virtue were removed to Elysium, where they continued in the enjoyment of perpetual youth, partaking the intercourse of such friends and relatives as had obtained the same lot; those, on the contrary, who had lived in vice were removed to Tartarus, where they wore out an existence of perpetual punishment. (Serv. ad Virg. Aen. iv. 654. Tibull. iii. 2. 9. Lucret. i. 120. Hor. Od. iv. 7. 14.) Hence the poets and artists always invest the shades with a corporeal form, and with the same appearances which the body presented during life, as shown by the illustration (Umbrae/1.1), which represents the shade of Deiphobus, in the Vatican Virgil, mutilated as he was by the Greeks at the taking of Troy.

• 
  Umbrae/1.1