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Title: The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks

Author: Frank Pierrepont Graves

Release Date: July 12, 2015 [EBook #49431]

Language: English

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THE
BURIAL CUSTOMS
OF THE
ANCIENT GREEKS.

A DISSERTATION

BY

FRANK PIERREPONT GRAVES,

COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

BROOKLYN.

May 1891.

[3]

PREFACE.

The author of this thesis does not lay claim to profound scholarship or extended research. It may contain errors that are perceptible to a careful student of Greek archaeology, even without subjecting the paper to a minute scrutiny. The material has been found scattered through the writings of ancient and modern authors and in the records of many excavations and the treasures of many museums. In the process of gathering from so extended a field, it is but natural that mistakes should have crept into the work. The effort has been made to exclude as many errors as possible and to weed out those that could be discovered with as great diligence as the inexperience of the author permitted. The labor of compilation has been undergone in the hope that a connected account of these ancient burial customs might breed an interest in the subject and prove an incentive to a more extended examination by some whose curiosity might not be strong enough or whose leisure time might not be sufficient to gather what was so widely separated.

[5]

AUTHORITIES.

Besides the writers of ancient Greece, the following authorities have been consulted in the preparation of this dissertation:

[7]

CONTENTS.

[9]

The Burial Customs among the Ancient Greeks.

I.
DUTY OF BURIAL.

The task of investigation in this field of Grecian antiquities is akin to that of a blind man, patching together the fragments of a shattered vase with no guidance but the rough outline of innumerable pieces. Every nook and corner of Greek literature must be explored, every exhumed inscription, monument, statue and vase must be carefully scanned, to find a hint here and there to illustrate and illuminate the subject. Using the word monument in a broad sense, it is from monuments, rather than literature, that we get the most trustworthy information on Greek burial customs. Ancient literature reveals the thought of the superior minds. The common people speak through the memorials that have been left in sculptures, inscriptions, and vases, of their attachment to life and their despondency and gloom in view of death.

In nothing, is the refinement of the Greek more clearly shown than in his reverence for the dead and in the ceremonies which surrounded the burial. He[10] spoke of burial as “the customary,” “the fitting,” or “the right.” Even those persons were remembered who were stricken by sudden death at the wayside. The law of Athens required any one who chanced upon a corpse at least to cover it with earth[1]. Although one had entertained the bitterest enmity toward the deceased while he lived, all remembrance of the feud must be thrown aside when death intervened and due attention must be shown the dead. That is the motive of the magnanimity of Theseus toward the dead Argives who had been slain at Thebes. They had been dragged away by the Thebans, whom they had injured, to be left unburied. The king of Athens was contemplating their interment, when a herald was sent out from Thebes, to rebuke him for interfering on behalf of those whose arrogance had been the sole cause of their misfortunes. Then it is that the poet[2] makes Theseus blaze forth with a sentiment to which all Greece responded; “Not,” says the hero, “in order to injure the city or bring upon it a bloody strife, do I deem it right to bury these dead bodies, but rather to preserve the law of all the Greeks.” Rather than abate, in the least, his high ideal of duty, the heroic king incurs a war with Thebes and the impious Thebans suffer well-merited disaster.

The general opinion of Greece strongly condemned an animosity so lasting as to extend to neglect of the dead. Isocrates made a telling point when, appealing in behalf of the Plataeans to the Athenians against the Thebans, he exclaimed[3]: “It is not an equal misfortune,[11] for the dead to be denied burial and for the living to be deprived of their country, since the former is yet more disgraceful to those that forbid the funeral rites than to those who suffer the inhumanity.”

Under any circumstances, there was a stigma on him who left any dead body without a proper final resting-place; but he who neglected to bury a parent, a relative or near friend, was deemed an outcast and unfit to live with the rest of the community. Isaeus urges that misconduct as a reason why Chariades should not receive the property, intended for him by the will of Nicostratus. The testator had given everything to Chariades, but the orator declares him unworthy the inheritance and incapable of taking under the will, since he had neither cremated nor even collected the bones of his deceased benefactor[4]. In another case of a disputed inheritance, the same advocate introduces witnesses, to show that the proposed heir was disqualified from receiving the property, on the ground that, when he discovered where the property of the deceased was secreted, he ran off immediately to secure the goods, and neglected the burial[5].

Disregard of the dead was urged even as a disqualification for office. A certain Philon, having been chosen senator by lot, is challenged at the dokimasia as not worthy the dignity. The strongest objection against him was that his mother, when she was dying, fearing that he would not attend to her funeral, left money and directions for her burial to a perfect stranger. “If then,” queries the orator, “a mother, who naturally[12] is always indulgent toward the faults of her children, and is guided by her heart alone, feared that the avarice of her son would control him, what must we think of such a son[6]?”

According to the law of Solon, a father might by his bad conduct become unworthy of filial affection and the son of such a father might be freed from the obligations due an honorable parent. But, even in so extreme a case as that, where a son had been relieved of all duties during the life of the parent, the obligation revived at death and there remained the same legal duty to attend to the burial of the father. On that ground, Aeschines declares that “It is not compulsory for a youth to support or furnish a home for a father who has let out prostitutes, but, if the parent die, let the son bury him, and perform the customary duties[7].”

[13]

II.
BURIALS EXTRAORDINARY.

So stringent was the law concerning the duty of burial among the ancient Greeks. Yet there were extreme cases where burial was forbidden. It was the severest aggravation of the penalty of execution for a crime that the body of the criminal was denied interment. Such corpses, both at Athens and Sparta, were cast with the halter and their garments into a pit in an allotted quarter of the city, where the flesh might decay or be eaten by carrion birds. At Athens this barathrum[8], as it was usually called, was situated in the quarter called Melita, very near the house of Themistocles, and the temple which he had erected to Artemis Aristobule[9]. Sparta also had a pit or underground cavern, called Caeadas[10], to which were consigned the corpses of malefactors. After the Lacedemonians had kept Pausanias confined till he was starved to death, they first meditated throwing his remains into this disgraceful place, but afterwards, changing their minds, they buried him in the ground somewhere thereabouts[11].

[14]

Those who destroyed their own lives became felons, but were not so hardly dealt with as those who had been executed for crime. Interment was allowed the suicide, but the hand which committed the deed was chopped off and buried apart from the body[12]. A modern scholar[13] attributes this treatment to the fear which the Greeks had that the corpse might become a vampire; but the sentimental reason of Josephus, that the felonious hand was considered alien to the body, appears much more like the ancient manner of thought. As an additional degradation to the corpses of suicides, Plato recommends that they be buried without honor apart from the other dead in an uncultivated and nameless region, and that their place of interment be unmarked by any pillar or name[14]. From this suggestion and the fact that burials sometimes did take place after dark, as when Cassandra prophesied to Agamemnon that “being a base fellow, basely shall you be buried at night, and not in the day[15],” Becker has concluded that “the witching time of night” might have furnished the occasion for the entombment of self-destroyers[16]. That is certainly reasonable.

From the fate of many traitors, the conclusion is warranted that those who were guilty of the heinous crime of treason were refused burial in their native land. For this reason, the heroes Polynices, Palamedes and Telamonian Ajax, on the conclusion of their mythical career, were each prevented from burial at[15] home[17]. Even the bones of Themistocles, according to some, were interred secretly at Athens, without the knowledge of the Greeks, “for,” says Thucydides, “it was against the law to bury him there, as he had been outlawed for treason[18].”

Lastly, burial was denied, or at least entombment with others was refused, to those who had been killed by lightning. This, from the modern point of view, seems more extraordinary than the other cases of forbidden sepulture that have been mentioned, but the ancients considered any one who was killed in that manner as struck by a god, who knew of some crime that had been hidden from mortal eye. Theseus, who was renowned for his piety, in speaking of those slain at Thebes, declared that he would burn the corpse of Capaneus apart, because he was struck by the flame hurled from Zeus’s own hand, but that he would burn all the others on a single funeral pyre[19]. Plutarch declares that the bodies of those who have been killed by that means never putrefy, and that “many people never burn nor bury such bodies, but let them lie above ground with a fence about them, so that every one may see that they remain uncorrupted[20].” In some cases, on the other hand, the remains of these wretched beings were cremated and then interred[21]. We must bear in mind, however, that the prohibition of burial or a separate entombment in the case of a man struck by lightning, did not necessarily signify disgrace, but was,[16] in a certain sense, indicative of distinction. His corpse was considered “sacred” or appropriated to the gods, and, as such, could not be dealt with in the conventional way[22].

In opposition to the circumstances under which burial was denied, were the cases and conditions which called for extraordinary funeral ceremonies. Special pomp was displayed in honoring those who had suffered a violent death at the hand of a murderer. As the funeral procession moved slowly and solemnly along to the grave, an upright spear was carried in advance, to typify the manner of the unfortunate one’s death[23]. On arriving at the place of entombment, this spear was set up in the grave. That was done even when, for lack of means, no procession had been conducted[24]. After that, proclamation was made at the tomb, to discover, if possible, whether the deceased had any relatives who might avenge the murder. Afterward the grave was watched for three days[23].

A peculiar ceremony was also observed when a person was drowned, or where, through any other mischance, it happened that the body could not be recovered. Under those circumstances, the ancient law of the Greeks bade them erect a cenotaph[25]. The following bit, a portion of a most pleasing little epigram, written in memory of a youth lost at sea, and admirably illustrating this law, we owe to Callimachus:

[17]

In one of Euripides’s plays, by means of this custom and various other ceremonies, which Helen declares to be part of the Grecian religion, Theoclymenes is outwitted and the triumphant husband and wife, once more reconciled, succeed in returning to their native land[27].

If Chariton, who was a very late writer, is to be trusted, it would seem also to have been the custom, when the body could not be found, to carry along in the procession, upon a bier, an image in lieu of the actual corpse[28]. Reiske, in his commentary, does not appear to consider this evidence as conclusive, but thinks that Chariton is, in this case, confounding Grecian with Roman ceremonies. The commentator alludes to the custom at Rome, in the apotheosis of the emperor, and even in other funerals, of bearing along an effigy[29].

Were Chariton the only authority on the subject, his statement might be disregarded as of little value, but Herodotus[30] mentions this same custom of the effigy as having been observed on the death of a Spartan king, who had died abroad. Yet that fact establishes nothing more than a mere possibility. It is a well-attested fact, however, that the Athenians were wont to carry one sumptuous empty bier as representative of those who had been slain in battle, but whose bodies had not been recovered[31].

[18]

The sentiment of honoring those whose mortal remains eluded search was, in itself, very beautiful, but woe betide the man who came back after his friends had supposed him dead and had performed his funeral rites. His superstitious brethren would not allow him to take part in their sacrifices, nor even to approach those solemnities. They avoided his company as carefully as if he had been a spectre from the nether world[32].

[19]

III.
PREPARATION FOR BURIAL.

With the exception, possibly, of one or two features, survivals of their ancient religion, a description of the burial customs of the representative Greeks during the historic period, would, to-day, in no way, seem barbarous nor even extraordinary.

In the Homeric times, the blood of men and animals was regarded as the nourishment most agreeable to the dead. Achilles, on the tomb of Patroclus, slew twelve young Trojans, four horses, two dogs and a herd of cattle and of sheep[33]. Ulysses, sacrificing the sheep on the side of the pit he had dug, called on the shades of the dead heroes, and the shades, gathering about him in swarms, drank eagerly this bloody libation[34]. Human sacrifices are referred to as occurring in the prehistoric period. But these barbarous customs no longer existed when veritable history commenced. The law of Solon forbade the sacrifice of an ox in the funeral ceremonies[35].

In the sixth century, B. C., the law of Ceos still permitted the sacrifice of victims according to the ancient[20] rite[36], but, in the fifth century, those sacrifices appear to have become the privilege of the gods and of the dead heroes[37].

But, excepting the relics of this traditional ceremony of occasionally sacrificing at the grave, almost everything connected with the interment of the dead seems essentially modern. To be sure, this had not always been the case. The authors who wrote in the classical and later periods, afford much evidence of the long strides that this progressive people had made away from their old rude customs. Plato[38] relates that, formerly, it was the fashion for the relatives of the deceased to send for women whose business it was to collect the bones of the dead in jars; while still earlier, as he informs us, the Greeks buried their dead at home.

At Athens, Solon[39] made great improvements. He it was that forbade men to speak ill of the dead, on the ground that piety required them to consider the dead as sacred. Such a doctrine against the perpetuation of hatred is not many removes from the dispensation of the nineteenth century. Sparta also had a reformer in Lycurgus, but his measures, as we should expect of one who was trying to rear a race of warriors and law-abiding citizens, looked more to the intellectual and social advancement than to religious progress. His aim was to do away with all foolish superstitions and femininities of sentiment[40]. He even allowed the monuments to be erected near the temples that the youths might become accustomed to seeing them.

[21]

The best connected account of the ceremonies under discussion is to be found in Lucian’s “de Luctu.” In spite of the cynical view and the satirical comment indulged in by that author, there seems, if we may judge by other writers, to be nothing exaggerated in his descriptions; and the customs depicted therein were probably little changed throughout the whole course of Greek history.

As soon as death had laid hands upon the victim, the relatives or friends, after gently closing the eyes of their loved one, inserted, in the dead man’s mouth, the obol, a coin valued at about three half pence, or about three cents of our money, which was to serve as passage money over the Styx. They were very careful not to overlook this duty, since it was believed that, if old Charon could not collect his ferriage, the unlucky shade would be sent back to life[41].

They also examined the coin closely, to see whether it would pass current among the inhabitants of the lower world[42].

An admirable verification of this custom was, in this century, excavated in the town of Samos in Cephallenia. A tile coffin dug up at that place was found to contain the bones of an initiate of the Bacchic mysteries and between the back teeth of the skull, the danake, a coin, somewhat more in value than an obol, was still firmly lodged. The late excavations in Italy, Greece and Asia have revealed numerous coins in the tombs[43]. The[22] painting on a vase, which is described by Pottier, shows a small coin held between the thumb and fore finger of the figure which represents the deceased[44].

In the “Frogs” of Aristophanes, Dionysus is told by Heracles, who has returned from the lower regions, that he will be obliged to pay two obols as ferriage, since his servant, Xanthias, is with him[45].

It seems to have been believed that the sooner this money was provided the corpse, the earlier would his voyage over the Styx take place. In a dialogue of Lucian, a shade who has been left behind, because Charon finds his craft already too full, declares that he will prosecute the boatman, since, by leaving a corpse who was provided with the obol and now a day old, he was acting contrary to the laws of his superior, Rhadamanthus[46]. With the hope, then, of hastening the voyage, the fare was inserted as soon as possible.

The next stage of the ceremonies was the preparation of the deceased for his journey. Fearing that there was insufficiency of water in the lower world, the corpse was thoroughly bathed. Then it was anointed with sweet smelling unguents and crowned with flowers in their season. Finally the friends dressed it in magnificent garments that it might not take cold on the road or appear naked before Cerberus[47].

At Rome, the dressing of the corpse was performed by a hired undertaker called the pollinctor, but, among the Greeks, this delicate task was looked after by the nearest female relatives and was considered a very[23] sacred duty[48]. The paintings that have been found on the funeral vases, exhibit a remarkable superiority, in numbers, of the women at the ceremonies preparatory to interment. Only a single lecyth has been found on which a man is depicted as taking part in the preliminary stages of the preparation. It is to the women that was given the care of making the toilet of the dead body, of washing it, perfuming it and wrapping it in the shroud. This custom is referred to by Homer when Diomede is lightly wounded by Paris and cries out that he “knows how to strike an enemy more forcibly, that a man touched by his spear is a dead man and that around him the vultures are more numerous than the women[49].” At the funeral ceremonies of Hector, the chief part is assigned to the women[50].

When the tyrannical Creon forbade the burial of Polynices, Antigone, his sister, demanded the privilege of bathing the corpse, and, in spite of the king’s opposition, she endeavored to bury her brother with her own hands[51].

It appears to have been an established custom to furnish wreaths for the dead[52]. We have already learned from Lucian that these wreaths were made of flowers, if the death occurred during the right season, and we have other good authority for believing that the parsley plant was often employed as a substitute at a time unfavorable[24] for flowers[53]. As in modern burials, these wreaths were sent by the relatives and friends of the deceased[54], and were especially numerous at the funerals of young people. This latter fact is established by the complaint of a woman of ill-repute, who exclaims: “I have a mourner, not a lover; he sends me wreaths and roses, just as he would for an untimely death[55].”

A honey cake was also given to the deceased[56]. Whether this cake was intended as a sop to the three-headed guardian of the lower regions, the dog, Cerberus, is not certainly known; although a scholiast of Aristophanes informs us that “the honey-cake was given to the corpses for Cerberus, as the obol was for the ferryman, and the crown as for those who had won a prize in life[57].”

Lucian thinks it was the intention of the Greeks[58], by the flowers and their perfume, to overcome the repulsiveness of death. By too critical an inquiry into the motive of offering flowers to the dead, there is danger of losing the sense of the poetic charm of the ceremony.

As to the dress worn by the corpse, there has been some little discussion in respect to its color, whether it was white or black. If we are to be guided solely by the ancient authors, there is very little difficulty in[25] accepting the former color. A scholiast has concluded, from an episode in Lucian[59], where some young fellows try to give Democritus a scare by dressing “in a black garment in a death-like way,” that the ancient Greeks dressed their corpses in black robes. The passage hardly warrants the assumption, and is no valid proof against the conclusion that the deceased was dressed in white, since the frolickers may have been trying to impersonate Death himself, “the black-robed king of the departed,” who is sometimes depicted in “a garb of sable hue[60].”

Becker adds a more serious objection. He argues from a passage in which Plato explains that the laying-out, the procession and the burial of a deceased priest are different from those observed for other citizens; and then mentions, among these differences, that the whole of his funeral robe must be white[61]. Pausanias also remarks[62] that, when Aristodemus dreams that his murdered daughter came to him and gave him a golden crown and a white vestment, he believes the vision to portend his death, since “it is the custom among the Messenians to bury the most illustrious persons crowned and wrapped in a white garment.” If we take those statements as correct readings, the only way to explain the apparent exception to the general rule, is to note that the white robe is, in each case, a mere incident among the peculiarities awarded the mighty who have died, and the color, of itself, is not necessarily[26] extraordinary. But it is almost certain, in the case of Becker’s citation, that he has taken an old reading, that has now been replaced by a more satisfactory text. By the addition of another word, the discrepancy disappears and the obviously correct rendering is, “and let every one [of those who attended the funeral] wear a robe entirely white[63].”

On the other hand, even if we should disregard the fact that black seems usually to have been the color of the mourner’s dress, and the necessary consequence that the shroud of the deceased could hardly have been of the same color, we certainly still have other good authority for supposing the dead person to have been robed in white.

Archilochus points one of his verses with a beautiful metaphor by indirectly likening the whiteness of the ashes to which the corpse has been reduced to the “pure robe” of death[64].

Artemidorus states clearly in his work on the interpretation of dreams that the appearance to a sick man of “white garments indicates death, because the dead are wont to be buried in white; while the black dress prophesies safety, since not those who have died, but those who are in mourning use the latter dress[65].” Finally, in the scene where the Greeks prepare the body of Patroclus for burial, after drawing on some underwear of fine linen, over all they cover the hero’s body with a snowy funeral robe[66]. The Cean inscription[27] directs that the dead be wrapped in three white cloths[67]. Aeschines arraigns Demosthenes because he appeared in a white garment when he should have been in mourning for his only daughter[68].

Yet it might be a hasty inference to conclude that the dress of the mourners was absolutely and unqualifiedly black. In some of the paintings, on the vases, which have been discovered, the colors are remarkably well preserved. On the lecyths, only one woman has been found wearing a dead black robe[69]. It will be noticed that the expression employed by the ancient authors, does not apply strictly to the color black, as we generally understand it. In this connection, a black robe need not imply anything more than a dark shade of garment in contrast with the whiteness of the material in which the dead body is robed. Homer says “black wine,” “black sea,” and “black blood[70].” The color black is very rare in the vase paintings, and particularly in funeral scenes. On one lecyth, the ornamental bands which lie over and hang down from the funeral bed, and the covering of the bed, are painted in violet[71], on another lecyth, the shroud is dark green; the undergarment of one of the women is dark green, and her outer garment is brown; on another lecyth, a man is represented wearing an outer garment of dark lilac, and a woman has a mantle of brown[72].

[28]

These white lecyths, by the way, were small vases, the body of which is generally of a white or gray color. They varied in height from four inches to twenty inches and more[73]. They were simply filled with perfumes and placed near the funeral bed, that they might envelop it in their fragrant emanations[74]. They held the myrrh, of which Plutarch also speaks, in his description of the funeral rites in honor of those who died at Plataea, and which filled the urns borne by the young people in the processions[75]. Some beautiful specimens of the white lecyths are to be found in the museums at Athens, in the Louvre, at Vienna, London, Berlin, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and in some private collections. On the body of the vase, are painted scenes connected with the funeral ceremonies. Their authority is final as to the burial customs which they portray, and, on many of them, the colors are brilliant, clear and unaffected by time.

[29]

IV.
THE LYING IN STATE.

After the body had been made ready for burial, it was laid out in state. This was called the prothesis, and probably took place on the day after the death, in order that the corpse might have an early burial. From the statement of Pollux[76] concerning the order of the ceremonies, it must be inferred that this was the proper time. That author states that the prothesis came first, and was followed successively by the ekphora or procession and the tertial sacrifices. Those sacrifices came on the fourth day, that is, the third after the day of the demise[77], and the procession came on the day following the prothesis[78]. Therefore, it is necessary to conclude that the prothesis, procession and sacrifices came respectively on the first, second and third day after the decease. The basis for that calculation is found in Antiphon’s oration on the death of the chorus singer[79]. Probably that order of events was established by the law of Solon, which is reported somewhat imperfectly in Demosthenes[80]. In the case of those Athenians,[30] however, who had fallen in battle, the lying-in-state took place three days before the procession[81].

This desire which the Greeks had for an early burial, was due to the same solicitude that caused them to be in haste to provide the passage-money for crossing the Styx.

Socrates is made to say that, when the soul has departed, men carry away the bodies of their near friends and bury them as soon as they can[82]. The spirit of Patroclus, weary of the long delay, while the struggle continued over his mortal remains, and angered by the criminal apathy of his friend, beseeches Achilles to bury him as speedily as possible, that he may the sooner pass the gates of Hades[83].

Most truly it has been said that in the eyes of the Greeks, “a quick burial is a propitiation of the deceased[84].”

Since the lying-in-state took place a day and a half in advance of burial, and since it was necessary that this ceremony should be performed on the next day after the person had died, it was set down as a great stigma on a man’s character that preparations for the prothesis of his relative were not made in due time[85].

A law of Ceos, enacted probably in the latter part of the sixth century, and resembling the law of Solon very closely, regulates the matter of burials with considerable particularity. This law aims to restrain the[31] excessive cost of funeral ceremonies. It limits the wrappings of the dead to three white cloths, of which the total price shall not exceed one hundred drachmas, about twenty dollars of our money; the body must be laid on a bed with slender legs, and must not be entirely concealed by the draping, a precaution against violent deaths[86]. In the paintings, the face and the upper part of the breast are uncovered. The color of the wrappings or shroud on the lecyths are not uniformly white, for some of violet and some even of green, are seen on these white vases, which belong to the fourth and fifth centuries before our era, and which are found almost exclusively in the tombs of the Athenians[87].

It has already been stated that the women who took part in the funeral rites were required to be near relatives of the deceased. This legal requirement is illustrated by a painted terra-cotta plaque, published by Benndorf, on which are inscriptions near the figures. By these inscriptions, it appears that the persons about the bed of the deceased are the grandmother, the mother, and the sisters, the father and the brothers[88].

The relatives who, in the pictures, stand about the funeral bed or bier, display gestures of some violence, indicating that time has not yet softened the keenness of their sorrow. They hold various objects in their hands, which are intended as offerings at the tomb. A[32] sort of narrow scarf is very frequent[89]. It is composed of a flat band of cloth, terminating in a fringe at each end, and the color is by no means uniform; red, black and violet appearing in different instances. This long, narrow scarf was employed in all religious ceremonies, sacrifices, thanksgivings and consecrations. Its significance is difficult to determine. The purpose of the fan, however, in the hands of a mourner of the period of the white lecyths, was undoubtedly to guard the body from the attacks of flies during its exposure[90].

Another singular object which is present at various scenes of mourning and burial is a bird. Its use is a matter of surmise, and the fact that the bird is of no one species, but sometimes a dove and, at times, a duck or some other bird, makes the interpretation of its presence none the less puzzling. The most satisfactory suggestion is, that it is simply intended as a pleasant reminder to the deceased of an object familiar to him in the life just closed[91]. As companions and sources of amusement and pleasure, the dog and the bird played a prominent part in the in-door life of the Greeks. On that account, probably, the young man with his dog and the young girl with her bird are very often seen in funeral bas-reliefs.

A scholiast remarks on this custom of prothesis, or lying-in-state, that “the ancients laid their corpses before the doors and beat their breasts[92].” Becker finds considerable difficulty in reconciling this with Solon’s[33] law ordering “the dead man to be laid out within the house according as he left orders.” If we were to interpret the expression, “before the doors,” as indicating that the ceremony took place outside the house, it would indeed be difficult to harmonize the two authorities; but modern scholars generally have seen that it is not a strained construction to interpret the phrase as meaning the vestibule or fore part of the house[93].

In the entrance-hall of the house, then, the body was laid out with the feet turned toward the door, to indicate, perhaps, that he was about to go forth on his last journey, never again to return to the habitations of the living[94]. From the fact that the head was placed on a rest[95] of some sort, it has been inferred[96] that the corpse was laid out on a kline or bed. There is no passage in any author to substantiate this, but the paintings on the white lecyths present the fact very clearly[97]. There is also an account of a prothesis in which they strew sweet marjoram and broken vine branches underneath the body[98].

Near the body[99], were placed the lecyths or cruses which have been already in part described. These were afterwards to be burned or buried with the corpse. According to a scholiast, these lecyths were used by the Athenians as vessels for holding the unguents with which the dead were to be anointed, but their use for containing perfumes is now conceded[100]. There was a class of men at Athens whose occupation consisted in[34] the manufacture and decoration of white lecyths[101]. These vases were not baked as hard as most other earthen vessels but were fashioned with great delicacy of manipulation. They were soft and fragile and rested on a circular broad base, they narrowed abruptly as they rose, then expanded suddenly into a cylindrical body of about the same diameter as the base, then contracted into a short neck on which was supported a cup-shaped mouth piece from the side of which started the small round handle that was attached at its lower end to the body of the vase. The upper and lower part were covered with a black coating or enamel[102].

The centre or body was painted white and, on that background, were drawn and painted the funeral scenes with considerable artistic skill and more or less accuracy of drawing and detail according to the grade of article that the artificer desired to make. The ultimate design of the workman was not to produce a work of art but an article of commerce, although, incidentally, figure-painting of a high order of merit was often attained[103]. They were not manufactured later than the second century before the Christian era[104], and represent the customs of the Athenians for a period extending through the fifth and fourth centuries.

When the lecyths were once buried with the corpse, it was considered a very serious offence to disturb them. On a lecyth that was unearthed in a grave at Cumae, there is a curse of blindness invoked on any one who might venture to steal it[105]. The custom of leaving objects[35] of value at the tombs made them liable to depredations and many funeral inscriptions conveyed threats of punishment against those who should take or disturb whatever was thus offered to the dead[106].

Just outside the door of the house within which the body was laid out, stood an earthen vessel of lustral water, so that the visitors who went to look on the features of their friend for the last time, could purify themselves from any pollution which they might have incurred by entering a home defiled by death. Since everything appertaining to the stricken house was held to be contaminated, the purifying water had to be obtained from another house[107]. This vessel which contained the water was variously styled an ostrakon[108], an ardanion[107] or a pegaion[109].

This exposure of the body to the view of the friends was not merely for display but served often as a police regulation, and, at the same time, it prevented the lamentable mistake of burial where unconsciousness had simulated death. To some extent, it took the place of our coroner’s inquest, for we learn from Pollux[107] that “the laying out was for this reason, too, that the corpse might be seen not to have suffered violence.” The utility of this measure was promoted by the law which ordered the prothesis not to be for a longer or shorter time than to show whether the person was in a trance or really dead[110].

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V.
OUTWARD GRIEF.

The outward manifestations of grief were very marked. At this point, it is necessary to notice only the lamentation and exaggerated grief which took place at the laying-out and in the procession. A consideration of the signs of mourning exhibited in the dress, should properly be made after a discussion of the other features of the burial.

This lamentation was rendered, to a large extent, by the women[111]. It must be regarded rather as a necessary form than as a genuine expression of woe. There were, of course, cases where real sorrow and affection called forth the tears and lamentations of thousands. Such a tribute to Timoleon’s character was paid by his countrymen, the Syracusans[112]. In the great majority of cases, however, this excessive grief was but a species of empty pageantry. Plato would have had wailing altogether forbidden, as being too common place, at the death of a priest[113]. In the earlier days, this fashionable excess grew to such an alarming extent that Solon was obliged to interfere by a law, to cut down these demonstrations. He forbade the survivors to tear themselves[37] and ordered them to dispense with the hired mourners, whose lamentable notes were intended to excite sorrow[114]. He also commanded that no woman under sixty who was not at least a second cousin to the deceased should enter the house before the interment[115].

Charondas, the celebrated law-giver of Catana and Magna Graecia, made a law, which so far surpassed Solon’s in rigor as to forbid all lamentation. He thought it better that respect for the dead should be shown by decking their graves and otherwise keeping their memory green[116]. It is very unlikely, however that these laws had any permanent effect on the habits of the people. For a time, they may have checked excesses, but there certainly are many late proofs that this custom of violent and loud lamentation was long continued. We find all through the tragedies that the women still tear their hair[117], whenever any of their relations have left this life, and, wound their breasts[118], rip open their cheeks[117], and cry with sorrowful voices[119]. It is possible that the poets intended, in these passages, merely to portray the former customs, or, it might be, that the action is exaggerated to heighten the stage-effect; but, since there are many other proofs that these old barbarities remained in vogue outside the mimic life of the stage, it is unnecessary to speculate on the purpose of the dramatists. Lucian declares that the beating of the breasts, lacerating of the cheeks, pouring of ashes on the head and knocking the head upon the ground always occurred, so that the living[38] were more to be pitied than the dead[120]. Again, we have in Plutarch’s consolatory letter to his wife, on the loss of their little girl, a severe invective against this practice in his time. His philosophy is worthy of the Christian era. “But since,” says he, “our little daughter afforded all our senses the sweetest and most charming pleasure, so we ought to cherish her memory, which will conduce in many ways, or rather manifold, more to our joy than to our grief.” Then, after praising his wife for not disfiguring herself or her maids, or indulging in any other dramatic expression of grief, he goes on to say: “For a virtuous woman ought not only to preserve her purity in riotous feasts but also to reason thus with herself that, in violent grief, the tempest of the mind, must be calmed by patience, and this does not intrench on the natural love of parents toward their children, as many think, but only struggles against the disorderly and irregular passions of the mind[121].”

Morever, many of the works of art which have descended to us also prove that this excess of lamentation was not altogether abolished by the law of Solon. On the lecyths which represent the prothesis, it will be observed that the women have their hands on their heads as if tearing their hair[122] although this gesture may be only a conventional sign of mourning[123] adopted to indicate grief in the funeral monuments and vases just as an interior may be symbolized by a door or a pillar that supports the roof, a temple by an altar and the fact that the scene was out of doors was indicated by foliage in some form or by the branch of a tree[124].

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VI.
THE PROCESSION.

By the third day[125], it was thought that time enough had elapsed to show whether life was really extinct[126]. A procession was then formed to accompany the body to the tomb. After a time, this delay of three days may have been less rigidly observed for the interment was permitted on the day immediately following the decease. Callimachus sings of a youth “whose friends saw him alive one day, and the next day they wept at his grave[127].” Again, Pherecydes, the philosopher, eaten up by disease, invites his physicians to attend his funeral on the morrow[128]. But, when a distinguished and worthy man, such as Timoleon, died, and it was necessary to make extensive preparations for the funeral, and to send notice to the neighboring inhabitants and strangers, the time intervening between the death and the burial was probably extended[129].

The hour set for the ekphora, or funeral procession, was in the early morning, before sunrise[130]. Bos[131] cites[40] the cases of Patroclus[132] and Achilles[133] as proof that it was only those who died in the flower of youth that were buried before sunrise. Yet there are other passages[134] sufficient to convince us that the time for all funerals was usually the hour before dawn.

We know that the body was carried to the grave on a kline or bier[135], presumably that on which the prothesis had been accomplished, but who conveyed it thither is in doubt. It would naturally be expected that it was borne by relatives or friends of the deceased, yet no authority has been found to support the surmise. There is, on the contrary, a passage in Pollux[136] which might be construed to indicate that there was a class of men who were called, professionally, “corpse-bearers” or “buriers,” and whose sole business was pall-bearing. Pollux is rather late authority, but, on turning back to the tragedies, Electra appears, telling her brother to let the crows and dogs act as “buriers” of Ægisthus[137]. Furthermore, it is a number of trained slaves that carry Alcestis to the tomb[138].

When a man of prominence died, he was borne to the grave by youths chosen by the people[139]. There is a reported instance of the burial of a priest, where one hundred youths[140], trained in the gymnasium, were[41] selected by the relatives of the deceased. It was the custom for members of a fraternity to act as pall-bearers for one of their fellows. Demonax[141], when he died, was borne along by his brother philosophers. That custom survives to our time in the funeral processions of the free-masons and odd-fellows.

In the van of the procession, just before the corpse[142], or immediately behind, came the hired dirge-singers, pouring forth their doleful lays[143]. Plato, perhaps through carelessness, speaks of these hired singers in the masculine gender[144]; but Hesychius is undoubtedly correct in stating that women[145] habitually took that part. They were first brought over from Caria[145], and hence the significance of the allusion to a dirge as a “Carian melody[144].”

The late authors, Pollux[146] and Sextius Empiricus[147], confounded the dirge-singers with the Roman praeficae and thought that they were flute-players. The flutes of ivory which have been discovered in some of the Grecian graves, would seem to support that view[148]. Schreiber has a picture of a funeral procession, in which a flute-player is seen behind the rude wagon that bears the body of the deceased[149].

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Any man might join in the dismal march to the grave, but every woman was debarred the melancholy privilege, unless she had passed her sixtieth year[150], or was connected with the deceased by blood and was over sixteen years of age. There are two instances mentioned in literature when this law was violated. Lysias[151] refers to a daughter who followed her stepmother to the grave; while Terence, whose plays are adaptations and almost translations of the Greek comedies, makes poor Glycerium attend the funeral of her adopted sister, the beautiful Andrian[152]. Even in those cases, the exception is rather apparent than real; for, in each instance, affection has transmuted a nominal into an actual kinship.

There are some intimations of military funerals on the monuments, amphoras and vases that have been found in Grecian soil, as well as references to such pageants in the Greek authors. On a stamped plaque of terra cotta, in the collection of M. Rayet[153], appears a procession with two young men in military dress, possibly sons of the deceased, who march behind the women that surround the funeral car. The black figures on an amphora[154], represent the cortege as composed of women and some armed men mounted on chariots. A beautiful amphora from Cape Colias[155], is painted with some red figures. There, beside the scene of prothesis, are[43] some knights preparing to follow the funeral convoy. They have lowered the points of their lances, in sign of mourning. It is not improbable that these soldiers escort a companion-in-arms to his last resting place. A passage from Plato[156], prescribing the order of the cortege for the interment of the first citizens of the state, directs that there shall march, at the head of the procession, young unmarried men, clothed in military costume, then that the boys go before the bier and sing the national hymn, with the girls following behind, and such of the women as happen to be beyond the age of child-bearing. Plutarch[157] writes, that armed soldiers escorted the urn which contained the ashes of Philopoemen.

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VII.
BURNING OR INHUMATION?

Did the Greeks burn their dead like many nations of the ancient world, or did they bury them immediately like the majority of people since the Christian era? The question has been vigorously debated. Lucian, in a general way, declares that the fashion of the Greeks as contrasted with the various customs practiced respectively among the Persians, the Indians, the Scythians, and the Egyptians, was to cremate their dead[158]. Some have accepted this statement in a literal sense; on the other hand, a German scholar[159] of no little repute insists that “in the historic period, interment was universal.” The truth, as usual, lies between these extremes. Burial and cremation existed together at every period.

The ancient authors mention many cases outside of the Homeric period where the dead were burned. Let us take up the instances in chronological order and see whether they will not cover every era. Plutarch preserves a couplet of Archilochus, in which the writer bewails the drowning of his brother-in-law and declares that he would not so mourn, if his bones had been[45] properly cremated[160]. Again, although Plutarch has properly stamped as incredible and legendary the story that the ashes of Solon were strewed about Salamis, still the fact that the tale received any credence shows that such a disposition of his remains was possible and probable[161]. Two centuries later, Isaeus gives as proof of the utter invalidity of Chariades’s claim to the property of Nicostratus, the fact that he had not cremated the body of the deceased nor even collected his bones[162]. The case of Timoleon is historical. His remains were not immediately laid away but were first incinerated[163]. When Philopoemen died, almost fifty years afterward, a similar fate befell his body[164]. Probably, following such precedents, Lycon, the philosopher, whose period of activity is unknown, left directions in his will, that his heir of the same name, together with two others, should attend to the expenses of his cremation and to the other customary solemnities[165]. It is safe, then, to conclude that the funeral pyre was used through all periods of Grecian history.

If, in a similar manner, a review is made of the cases of inhumation that are recorded, it will be found, in spite of those who accept Lucian so literally[166], and notwithstanding others who believe that inhumation was employed only in the mythical period[167], that the custom of immediate burial existed during every century and[46] was always contemporaneous with cremation. In the first place, the graves that have been opened in modern times reveal the fact that burial without burning existed at a very early period[168].

The Athenians being ordered by an oracle to take up the bones of Theseus and lay them in an honorable place at Athens, were directed to the supposed grave by an eagle and there they found the coffin of a man of extraordinary size, with a sword and lance lying by it[169].

Again the pretty myth of Alcestis would be completely spoiled, if we venture to assume that her body was burned. Even Lucian seems to admit exceptions to his rule that the Greeks always burned, when he speaks of an old man as “having one foot in the grave, if not the other[170].” That the Athenians of Solon’s time did sometimes, at least, employ burial is shown by the clever argument put forward by Solon, and the brilliant reply by Hereas in the dispute between Athens and Megara for the possession of Salamis. Solon contended that the island belonged rather to the Athenians on the ground that “the manner of burying in Salamis is in accordance with the custom of Athens and not that of Megara, for the Megarians inter the dead with their faces to the east, and the Athenians turn theirs to the west.” Hereas of Megara begs leave to differ, asserting that the Megarians likewise turn the faces of the dead toward the west; and, what is more, like the people of Salamis, they put three or four corpses in[47] the same tomb, whereas the Athenians have a separate tomb for each[171]. Further reading shows that there was a law among the Athenians which compelled any man coming upon an unburied corpse, to bury it so that it may look toward the west[172].

At Sparta, inhumation was probably the prevailing custom, since we know that Lycurgus ordered the corpses to be buried in the city, that the people might become habituated to the sight of death[173].

We also know, to take a specific case, that the Spartan general Pausanias was buried in the area before the temple of Artemis[174]. To the same purport, is the description given by a Greek traveler of the simple custom among the Sicyonians of burying without inscribing the name of the deceased person’s father and we may assume that burial without cremation was resorted to in other states than Athens and Sparta[175].

This examination leads to the conclusion that burial and cremation existed throughout the entire history of Greece side by side. A certain old miser, choosing between the two methods, prefers to be simply buried, in order that his money, which he has hidden in his grave-garment, may go with him to the next world[176]. Plato makes Socrates in one of his dialogues speak as if he were quite uncertain whether his body would be burned or immediately interred[177]. Finally, apart from[48] the evidence of manuscripts, we have an undeniable verification in the fact that tombs have been excavated both in Magna Graecia and in Greece itself in which the skeletons are flanked on either side by funeral urns, thus exhibiting both customs as taking place in the same family[178].

Probably burial and cremation stood with the Greeks somewhat in the relation which they seem about to attain with us. Although both methods may exist, the one may hold the supremacy and be, by far, the more frequently employed. Neither custom was ever entirely abandoned by the Hellenes, until the influence of the early Christian church was felt favoring interment after the Jewish practice. At present, there is a shrinking from cremation on the part of the great body of the civilized world, but who can tell what may be brought about when we have had such advocates of burning as Sir Thomas Browne, Dr. Lord, and Sir Henry Thompson? Our great countryman, Hawthorne, too, has given evidence of a predisposition, on his part, toward incineration although there is a touch of humor in his final suggestion. In his “English sketches,” he, characteristically, says “Among the classic marbles, I peeped into an urn that once contained the ashes of dead people, and the bottom still had an ashy hue. I like this mode of disposing of dead bodies, but it would be still better to burn them and scatter the ashes, instead of hoarding them up—to scatter them over wheat-fields or flower-beds.”

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Most of the accounts which we have of the details of cremation are found in Homer. That great bard gives some idea of the minor customs which found place about the funeral pyre. From the account given to Achilles by Agamemnon, as being a later arrival in the land of shades, the Greeks were wont, it would seem, to sacrifice “fat sheep and crooked-horned oxen” about the pyre and cover the deceased with unguents and honey[179]. Costly garments were also burned together with the corpse. In a play of Euripides, Hector tries to console the Muse-mother of Rhesus, by promising to burn with that departed warrior, “the splendor of ten thousand robes[180].”

This custom of burning with the deceased the garments most esteemed in life is mentioned by Lucian as one of the weaknesses that “mortal flesh is heir to[181].” With a great soldier, such as Eetion or Elpenor, the armor was also burned[182]. If the deceased were a distinguished general, like Patroclus or Achilles, all present marched thrice around the blazing body[183].

As long as the pile continued to throw out fitful gleams and to consume the corpse, even if it lasted all night, the friends of the deceased never ceased pouring out libations[184] and calling upon his manes[185]. Just before the flames had entirely vanished, wine was poured on to extinguish the pyre, and whatever bones were left[50] unconsumed were collected with the rest of the ashes into a vessel and buried. In the burials both of Patroclus and of Hector, this vessel is made of pure gold and the remains of the Greek are covered with a double layer of fat, while soft purple robes perform the same office for the Trojan[186].

There has been some little doubt expressed as to whether the body was entombed at the place where it was burned. In Terence’s Andria, where the Greek burial is depicted, both ceremonies are conducted in one spot[187]. On the other hand, in the Electra of Sophocles, Orestes, to deceive his perfidious mother, has an urn brought to her that is said to contain his ashes after he had been incinerated in Phocis[188]. Again, as a matter of history, we know that after Philopoemen had been cremated, his remains were carried back to the city in a triumphal procession[189]. So, on the whole, it is quite likely that the Roman poet mixed the habits of the Romans with the customs of the Greeks. Perhaps he was inaccurately informed on the subject. The entombment probably took place in quite a different section from that in which the body was burned.

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VIII.
THE COFFINS.

Numerous excavations and the close scrutiny which modern scholars have given to Grecian graves have made it possible to state with considerable accuracy the materials employed for coffins, and the various styles of coffins, tombs and monuments used in ancient Hellas.

The earlier coffins were usually made of baked clay[190], but the authors inform us that, in the case of those Athenians who fell in battle, and whose bodies were not found, chests of cypress-wood were buried as cenotaphs[191]. Stone coffins, also, were probably used among the Greeks. There are preserved traces of a letter to Plato, from two of his friends, in which they speak of this burying stone, as found at Assos, in Lydia[192]. The elder Pliny mentions this stone of Assos, called the sarcophagus, or flesh-eating. He assigns, as the reason for its name, the fact that “within forty days, it is known certainly to consume the bodies which are placed in it, skin, flesh, bones, and all else save the teeth[193].”

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The coffins of baked clay were rudely fashioned, as might be expected from such coarse material. One of the oldest kind of coffins was that in which Dionysus, according to the fable, laid away whatever was mortal of the beautiful Ariadne. That rude contrivance was composed of three flat plates of clay, forming a kind of triangular prism[194], so that this casket of the wine god’s wife must have been as picturesque and shapely as a piece of sewer-pipe. Sometimes, however, these pottery coffins were very highly decorated. They were painted in brilliant colors[195], with representations of lily-leaves and palms, the flowering acanthus and the lotus, and with wreaths and arabesques and intricate tracery.

At a later period, the sides of the triangle assumed a curved shape. A section of the coffin was a spherical triangle, and the coffin became more complicated and durable. Stackelberg gives a very careful description of the construction of this style, together with an illustration[196]. On the under layer of curved tiling, rest the bones of the deceased, at the sides are double layers of tiling, with one at the top. Two upright tiles close the ends. Another specimen of great interest is the coffin of a child, unearthed at Athens by Stackelberg, in the beginning of the present century. It has an elliptical form, and looks like a movable bath-tub. Many utensils were found in this coffin, packed away with the skeleton. They will be described hereafter[197].

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IX.
THE TOMBS.

Of the tombs themselves, the recent excavations have also made us acquainted with the construction and the varieties. Cumanudis[198], a Greek archæologist, now living at Athens, enumerates eight distinct types of tombs. His classification is rather too minute in some respects. For all practical purposes, there were four kinds of tombs, differing from each other in general form. They were variously known as (a) the stelae or shafts, (b) the kiones or columns, (c) the trapezae or square-cut tombs, and (d) the naidia [heroia] or temple-like structures. There were also tombs which were merely heaps of earth. These mounds were not, however, unimportant; for it was possible to display there a lavish expenditure. The tomb of Alyattes, the father of Crœsus, according to Herodotus[199], was six stadia in circumference, that is, about two-thirds of a mile. It was made entirely of earth, except a base formed of great stones, and was declared by Herodotus to be a monument of art, second to none but those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians. This mass was raised by merchants, laborers and young women who obtained their money[54] in a questionable manner. On many of the white lecyths, the mound can be seen to exceed the height of the persons depicted[200]. In a dialogue of Lucian[201], Hermes and Charon, from the top of Parnassus and Oeta, piled one on the other, contemplate the world and that which attracts their attention in the cemeteries of the large cities are the heaps of earth, the pillars and the funeral pyramids.

The stelae proper were slabs of stone, standing upright in the ground. They were often made of marble[202]. The shape was frequently that of a little chapel, and they were usually of one piece, the upper part being designated the epithema[203]. This epithema was sometimes rounded like a coping tile, and sometimes fashioned like a gable. The latter form of the triangular arch was suggestive of a religious purpose and the attributing of divine honors to the dead, for this pediment belonged to the house of a deity. It was usually adorned with acanthus leaves, worked into arabesques, closely resembling those on the coffins[204]. The stele of a warrior, found in the Attic deme of Icaria during the excavations by the American School in February, 1888, has been an object of considerable interest to archæologists[205]. The slab of stone had been broken into three parts, but when compared with the well-known stele of Aristion, (found in 1838) the Icarian relief was found to correspond very closely with the older monument.[55] The Icarian stele, when complete, must have been about eight feet high, and about a foot and a half wide at the base, tapering slightly as it rose. The figure is of a warrior in armor, holding an upright spear. There is unmistakable evidence that the details of the relief had been painted. The Lyseas stele (found in 1839) had a uniform surface, on which had been painted Lyseas, draped in a long himation, and engaged in pouring out a libation.

The stelae and the tombs were frequently adorned with reliefs in which the details were probably finished by painting. The chapel-like form was convenient for the artist in carving the relief, since this afforded a retreating background, and gave the figures the appearance of being within the chapel or temple.

A favorite subject was an idealistic representation of the dying scene[206]. The occupation of the deceased is also indicated, and a mounted horseman is cut in relief on the tomb of a knight who fell at Leuctra[207]; on the tomb of an athlete is seen his figure, with his strigil and dog[208]; one who had taken prizes for declamation, music, ball-throwing and ring-tossing is represented with a scroll, a lyre, the ball and the ring[209]. Many similar carvings and paintings have been recently discovered. Pausanias refers to this custom of decorating the tombs, and mentions the picture at Sicyon, on the monument of Xenodice, who died in child-birth, as particularly worthy of examination[210].

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Many tomb-stones were evidently intended for general application, since the inscription sometimes fails to correspond in every respect with the relief, but other scenes were wrought out for the particular occasions on which they were erected. To this latter class must have belonged the monument at Athens[211], where the figures are of heroic size, representing a youth in the full vigor of early manhood, accompanied by an old man, leaning on a cane. In the hand of the young man is a stout club, an attendant is sleeping at his feet, while his dog is watchfully alert. There is no inscription to inform us who is commemorated by this monument, nor what artist has left this wonderful evidence of his genius and skill, but the subject is treated with marvellous vigor and grace.

The siren was a familiar figure on the tombstone either singly or in couples, signifying that, by their song, the dead were constantly lamented and the living consoled. A small tombstone in the Berlin Museum contains a lady engaged in her toilet with the assistance of an attendant maid and, above them, two sirens are engaged in playing, the one on the lyre and the other on the flute.

Very frequently the scene represented typifies the separation of the deceased from the relatives who stand sorrowfully about. To the Greek, there was a solemn dignity in death and that sentiment finds expression in these reliefs by the representation of the deceased as seated and rather larger than the other persons of the group. The nearest relative bids farewell to the seated[57] figure by clasping hands. In the particulars that have been mentioned, the scene, in every instance, is nearly the same but, in other details great variety is introduced. Now, it is a husband who holds the hand of his departing wife while her sister stands by her side and the long sleeved servant is behind the chair resting her hand upon the back of it, as if ready to render instant service. Again a mother is going away from her little daughter and, at the moment of departure, has placed her arm tenderly about the child and bends sadly over her. The servant stands as usual behind the deceased. In another scene, the infant in the arms of one of the group would suggest that distressing incident in family history, the death of the young mother in, or near child-birth. In this group too, there remains the hand and long sleeve of the servant. In all these pictures, if it is a lady who is commemorated, she is represented as holding her veil in a peculiarly graceful manner, which occurs so frequently as to suggest a symbol of departure.

Some of the monuments present scenes of every day domestic life or of a lady engaged about her toilet. In a relief, found at Athens, some kind of a repast or feast is shown. A bearded man reclines upon a couch and holds a plate or saucer in his hand, his wife is seated at his feet and a naked cup-bearer is near at hand. A friend stands at the head of the couch and the dog lies under it.

The lecyth was not an uncommon form of the funeral monument. The sculptor, in that case, made the vase of colossal size and decorated it with scenes of curious interest. On one of them Hermes Psychopompe is[58] leading away a beautiful figure to the land of shades. The form of some of the monuments and the inscriptions on them indicate that they had a double purpose to serve and that, in addition to being memorials of the dead, they were votive offerings to the departed, who had become objects of worship.

In this connection, it may be instructive to refer to the vigorous contest which has been waged between different archaeologists over the interpretation of the representations of feasts on the sepulchral monuments, reliefs and pictures. The most probable explanation seems to be that the central figures are not deities[212] but the deceased receiving that nourishment which he required, as well after death as while living, that the patera or the wine cup is extended to receive the libation or the food, that the horse and dog were the images of those faithful domestic animals whose usefulness would be as great in the Elysian fields as during life. The pomegranate in the hand of the feaster confirms the opinion that he is a deceased mortal, that fruit being appropriate to the dead after the analogy of Persephone who was subtly induced by the god of the lower world to taste the pomegranate and thereafter could never return entirely to the upper light. The presence of the serpent is more difficult to explain, although the incident of the large snake that twined about the body of Cleomenes in Egypt and drove away the birds of prey may assist in clearing up the mystery. Plutarch says that some of the Alexandrians being terrified at the sight of the serpent clinging to the body[59] of Cleomenes, it was pointed out that as bulls develop bees after death, and horses produce wasps, so the human body, as it decayed, turned into snakes. The wife of the deceased is seated because the reclining posture at the table was peculiar to the men and was never assumed by a modest woman.

The second species of tomb, the Kion or column was very shapely, having a double base and an Ionic fluting at the top. In the representations on some of the lecyths, are the figures of the friends of the deceased who have come to the Kion to offer services in various ways. The objects that are seen in their hands are varied, being mostly offerings for the dead, although some are articles necessary for the performance of the funeral rites, while others are articles of the toilet.

The third division of the tombs is the so-called trapezae. It was a tomb of this species that was used to mark the resting-place of the orator Isocrates and his immediate[213] relatives. It was probably this style of tomb that Cicero called the mensa, the expense of which Demetrius Phalereus limited[214].

The heroum or fourth division of the tombs, possessed many of the features of the Greek temple, with which every student of art or literature is familiar. The imposing façade was always present, even when other parts were wanting, in consequence of the situation’s forbidding elaborate development of the rest of the exterior. The structure which the moderns have united in designating as a “chapel” bears the closest resemblance[60] to the heroum. Indeed, the heroum differed from many small temples only in that its opening faced toward the west, while the entrance to the temple looked in the opposite direction[215].

There is a marked difference in this latter respect, between the Egyptian and the Grecian Tombs. In the great necropolis of the ancient Egyptians at Memphis and Thebes, the door, the external inscriptions and the entablatures of the tombs, almost without exception look toward the east; while, at Abydos the tombs often face the south; but, in neither place do they open to the west[216]. So general is this disposition of the opening that Champollion and other writers on the subject have made the fact the basis of an elaborate “assimilation” between the life of man and the career of the sun, declaring that the dead yearns toward the rays that shall illumine his night and draw him from his long sleep[217]. Accordingly he is placed so that he shall catch the first beams of the morning, or at noon behold the full vigor of the god of day.

The heroa must have been very numerous in Greece. That fact is indicated by a chapter from the history of the Peloponnesian war[218]. From the earliest times, the Athenians had been accustomed to live in the country and, before the time of Theseus, Attica was occupied by independent towns, each of which had its own king. So that in the Peloponnesian war, when Archidamus,[61] the Spartan king, approached Athens, about the year 430, B. C., Pericles advised the Athenians who lived outside the walls to bring their families and their effects into the city. They followed the advice of Pericles but the city was crowded and, since they were without shelter they were obliged, with very few exceptions, to take up their abode in the temples and the heroa.

The Greeks were very proud of these elaborate monuments, which were reminders to the world of the virtues of their ancestors and relations, and these sepulchres passed down from generation to generation as an inheritance which the heir expected to transmit when he had been received therein[219].

These heroa as a rule, however, were erected in memory of some great man at that period when death had brought about an indefiniteness and haziness of view which exaggerated his achievements into heroic proportions. The Theseum was a notable instance of such a monument. Here, it was believed, were deposited the bones of Theseus after they had been brought back to Athens, and here was a general asylum for criminals[220] who fled from the penalty of their misdeeds. One of[62] these tombs was erected over the remains of Lycus[221]; and a certain Germanicus, a didaskalos or school master, apparently obtained so great a reputation that a heroum was built in his honor[222].

A whole family was often buried in the same heroum. There is reported an instance of a man’s buying one of these temple-tombs for himself, his wife and child[223]; and, in the third century, a rich woman, probably of Thera, left by her will three thousand drachmas, almost six hundred dollars for the erection of a heroum (which she terms a museum), in honor of herself, her husband and her two sons. She directed that sacrifices shall be offered to them as heroes for three days in each year[224]. In the early period, when Athens was under Cecrops, the burials were simple and inexpensive, but, shortly after Solon’s time, it became so common to spend vast sums on the tombs that a law was passed to check the outlay. Cicero says that the elaborateness of the grave was limited to what ten men could accomplish in three days[225]; but Plato, in prescribing the limit which should be observed, states, as has been before mentioned, that it should only be as high as five men could build in five days[226]. Plato would add the further restriction that no stone monument should be built larger than to receive four hexameters in praise of the deceased[226]. From many indications in literature, however,[63] there is reason to believe that Plato’s suggestion was not adopted. Diogiton, who was doing his best to defraud his wards of their money by spending as little as possible for their needs, purchased a memorial for their father at twenty-four minae (about five hundred dollars). This seems to have been considered a niggardly sum for the purpose[227]. On the other hand, the tomb which Phormio erected in honor of his wife cost him over two talents, which is over two thousand five hundred dollars[228]. In memory of Isocrates, there was erected a monument forty-five feet high, on which was a siren ten feet and a half in height, emblematic of his eloquence[229].

It was such expenditures as these that led Demetrius Phalereus, about the beginning of the fourth century before Christ, to make another attempt to check funeral extravagance. He tried to set a limit to the new tombs by forbidding any tomb but the kion to be more than four and a half feet high and by putting a special officer in charge of the matter, but all his efforts proved vain[230].

The inscription that was carved on the tomb contained, as is still the custom, the name and a few notices about the life of the departed. In addition to those details, the Greeks, at a later period, sometimes set forth a curse on any one who should presume to desecrate the grave in any way. Although this peculiar protection of the last resting-place is not at present resorted[64] to among us, yet it is but a few centuries since the custom was not uncommon in England. It will be instructive to compare one of the older imprecations of the Hellenes with the famous inscription on the tomb of Shakespeare, composed possibly by the bard himself. The Englishman wrote:

That is somewhat more concise, if not quite as pointed as some Greek inscriptions, one of which reads as follows:

“I summon to the guardianship of this tomb the lower gods, Pluto, Demeter, Persephone and all the others. If any one despoils it, opens it, or in any way disturbs it, by himself or an agent, may his journey on land be obstructed, on the sea, may he be tempest-tossed and thoroughly baffled and driven about in every way. May he suffer every ill, chills and fevers, remittent and intermittent, and the most repulsive skin diseases. Whatever is injurious and destructive in life may it fall on him that dares remove anything from this tomb[231].”

On the other hand, some of the Grecian tombs, like that of the English poet, contain also all manner of blessings and wishes for the absence of evil for him and his posterity who may guard the tomb and perform the sacrifices and other customary rites[232].

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To make sure that no one disturbed the bones, directions were sometimes left in wills that the grave of the testator be watched by slaves[233].

These inscriptions, if they contained imprecations so elaborate as that presented above, must have been rather extended. In some states of Greece, the inscription was very short. The Sicyonians, on the columns which they raised to the dead, usually placed the name of the departed, without stating his ancestry, but exhorting the passer-by to wish well to his remains[234]. Lycurgus would not permit the Spartans to inscribe the name of the deceased on the tomb, unless he had fallen in battle; or if the deceased were a woman, unless she had died in some sacred office[235].

At Athens, there are found monuments inscribed to deceased children and it would seem that this honor was bestowed without reference to the age of the dead. A tomb has been discovered with an inscription to a child of seven that was lost on a mountain[236]. Two other epitaphs are dedicated to children who were but two years old ere “disease had stopped their life[237].”

If we still possessed the book of Diodorus, or according to some, Heliodorus, entitled “About Monuments,” it would undoubtedly prove a mine of information. Plutarch has referred to him, to determine the places of sepulture both of Themistocles[238] and Hyperides[239].

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In the tomb, with the dead body, were placed various vessels and trinkets. In the coffin found at Same, were two small lacrimatories of unbaked clay; a wine beaker; the kylix, a kind of libation vessel; the prochoos, a pitcher usually having two handles and used for holding pure wine or water; an alabaster box for jewels, called the kylichne; and a bacchic mirror cover[240]. The child’s coffin, previously mentioned[241], disclosed eleven different vessels and four clay images of Gaea Olympia in a sitting posture. The vessels were three lecyths, two large cotyli, one small cotylus, used for catching the blood of the victim which was sacrificed, a lamp, a diota, and a sort of child’s plaything[242].

Besides these vessels, tombs have been found in which all sorts of jewelry figured as parts of the contents, such as golden finger rings set with garnets, gold ear-rings wrought in fantastic shapes, and cornelian ear-rings. Some of the tombs contain wreaths of laurel, oak, olive, or myrtle, sometimes interwoven with gold; while a brass buckle with an allegorical representation of Cupid in the palestra, a golden girdle, female statues, figures of Persephone and Hecate, a statue of a priestess of Dodona with a dove on her shoulder, and mirrors with brazen handles and backs have all been found[243].

This custom of interring valuables with the deceased was very old. When the so-called grave of[67] Alcmene was opened by Agesilaus, there were discovered within, a small brazen armlet and two jars, containing earth which had become petrified. This grave must have been dug in very ancient times, for tablets of brass were found within written in unintelligible characters[244].

This practice of burying various articles with the dead must have continued during the best period of art in Greece. That fact is attested by the workmanship of the vases that have been exhumed. They are many of them of the finest quality and artistic excellence. The custom however, had died out before the Christian era, for the colonists whom Caesar had sent out to restore Corinth, in moving the ruins and digging open the sepulchres, came across works of pottery and brass, the workmanship of which was greatly admired and the vessels sold readily at fabulous prices as curiosities[245].

There seems to have been no one place at Athens selected for the situation of all the tombs except for those who died in poverty. Those Athenians who left no land or money behind them were entombed in a public cemetery. This place was situated just outside the city[246] on one of the roads to the Peiraeus[247]. The Itonic gate, through which the bodies of these paupers were carried, was, on this account, called the “gravegate[248].” The people of the richer classes, when they possessed a bit of land, often directed that they should be interred[68] therein; so it happened that there was no large assemblage of graves at any one place. In one of Demosthenes’s orations, the stone-cutter comes to the house that he may complete the tomb in the neighboring field[249]. More frequently the graves were constructed by the side of some much traveled road where the passer-by might observe the monument. From an inscription on a child’s tomb, we learn that “her parents sorrowfully buried her at the junction of three roads[250].” The square cut tombs of Isocrates and his relations, which have been described, were situated near the Cynosarges, the great exercising ground[251], while Thucydides was buried in the family burying ground of Cimon[252], near the Melitic gate[253].

The place of interment, as one might suppose, belonged exclusively to the family, and strangers were forbidden burial there by some well accepted law of the Athenians[254]. This law, together with that making it a crime to destroy a tomb, is attributed by Cicero to Solon[255]. Accordingly, from the fact of a person being buried in the tomb of a certain family, the orators sometimes argued his relationship with that family, for the purpose of establishing the connection of some direct descendant. By that method, Demosthenes sought to prove the descent of Eubulides from Buselus[256], and, in the same manner, demonstrated to the court the citizenship of Euxitheus[254].

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In the earliest times, the reason for selecting the former residence of the deceased as a place of burial was that the departed might be near his family[257]. Later, however, in many of the states, there were enactments passed which prohibited interments within the city limits. At Delos, after 425 B. C., the Athenians cleared the whole island of those already interred there, and commanded that, thereafter, all corpses should be carried to the adjoining small island of Rhene[257]. Among the Sicyonians, there was an ancient law against burials within the city walls, and it had been so religiously observed that even when the great Aratus died, the people hesitated about entombing him in the city until re-assured by a special dispensation from the Delphic oracle[258]. The Athenians were so particular about preserving the very letter of a similar law that even the cenotaphs of those who had been slain in battle were erected in a beautiful suburb of the city[259] on the way which led to the Academy[260].

The motive of these states in requiring burial outside the walls, was without doubt, to avoid the ceremonial contamination supposed to arise from the proximity of corpses.

Possibly, as was the case in ancient Rome, the effect on the sanitary condition of the city made it desirable to remove the burying ground[261]. The very existence of such laws indicates that the citizens must, at some time, have experienced the ill effects of burials within the city.

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There were states, however, which, for various reasons, preferred that the interments should be within the walls. That was the case at Sparta, where we should naturally expect to find laws directly the contrary. Lycurgus even permitted the Spartans to raise tombs near the temples. This he did that he might insure the graves against the violence of the enemy[262], and that, at the same time, he might accustom the youths to the sight from infancy, so that they might have no horror of death[263]. Again, the Tarentines, in compliance with an oracle, buried all their dead within the walls in a part of the city toward the east[264]. The Megareans also had within their city, the sepulchres of those who had fallen in the war against the Medes, and likewise a heroic monument called the Aesymnium. The origin of this custom was as follows: Aesymnus, having been sent to Delphi to ask the oracle what the Megareans should do to be happy, returned with the response that this might be if a number of them were “congregated together.” This they interpreted to mean the burial of their dead in one place, and accordingly, they instituted a new cemetery in the city[265].

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X.
THE FUNERAL FEAST.

During the days of preparation for burial and that on which the departed was entombed, his relatives either overcome by sorrow or bound down by the usages of the time, had been fasting. This abstinence had the usual effect, and, by the time the remains of the dear one had been laid under ground, his immediate family were almost ready to faint with hunger. That they might no longer thus afflict themselves and that their friends might offer them suitable comfort, the Greeks instituted the perideipnon, or funeral feast[266]. At this feast, the dead man was considered the host and it was regarded as his expression of thanks to his comrades for their courtesy in burying him[267]. Since it was the duty of the nearest surviving relative to provide for all the customary obsequies[268], properly this entertainment was provided at his house[269]. When the question of a funeral feast in honor of Patroclus was considered, Achilles, being his nearest friend then present, prepares for it in his own tent. The perideipnon for all those who had lost their lives in behalf of[72] Greece at the disastrous battle of Chaeronea was held at the house of the orator Demosthenes. That was for the reason, as he himself states, that although each was nearer to his own kin than the orator, yet no other man was so near to them collectively[270].

The perideipnon was the beginning of a series of feasts or ministrations having for their object the nourishment of the dead in their new state of existence[271]. It was a belief common to some other earlier nations as well as the Greeks that those who had experienced the change of death were still in need of food and drink and it was conceived to be the duty of the living to satisfy the desire for sustenance of that nature. The ancient Hindus believed that, at the feasts, the manes of their ancestors seated themselves at the table near the living and enjoyed the viands set before them. The Greeks seem to have entertained the same belief and to have followed the same custom. Those rites long outlasted the beliefs which gave rise to the observances. The provision of material food for the dead was not only regarded as a duty but was viewed as a means of propitiating their good will.

If the funeral repasts were not continued at frequent intervals, it was believed that the spirits became malevolent and came out from the tombs, that the wandering shades could be heard in the silent night, reproaching the survivors with impious negligence and that they sought to punish their recreant relatives with sickness and unfruitfulness of the soil, until the neglected office was resumed.

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It was the habit of the Greeks at these festivals, to recount whatever virtues the deceased may have possessed, but, quite contrary to the modern notion of the obituary and the epitaph, no exaggeration or embellishment was allowed, for it was reckoned impious to lie on such occasions[272]. It was from this usage of presenting the best view of the dead, that there arose the sarcasm applied to bad characters, “you would not be praised even at your funeral entertainment[273].” At this supper, whatever fragments might chance to fall from the table were always consecrated to the manes of the departed[274]. Pythagoras, having in mind, perhaps, the belief that all which fell to the floor belonged to the dead, strictly forbade his disciples to pick up the particles they may have dropped in any of their feastings[275].

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XI.
SACRIFICES AT THE GRAVE.

The last step, or rather steps, in the obsequies, were the succession of sacrifices which were performed in honor of the deceased at his grave. No one but a relative was allowed to offer these sacrifices since a person visiting a strange tomb was suspected of a design to steal the bones for superstitious purposes[276]. This oblation to the dead was discriminated among the Hellenes from the ordinary sacrifices to the gods by a word peculiarly appropriated. The word which indicated this species of offering was enagisma and the idea implied in it may best be rendered into English by the word “purification[277].” The enagisma seems to have been divided, according to its character, into two kinds of sacrifice; namely, the choe, or “libation,” and the haimacouria or “blood-propitiation.” The choe or milder form, consisted merely of a libation of water, milk or wine, together with an offering of olives, honey and wreaths of flowers, “the offspring of all-producing earth[277].” At the haimacouria, on the other hand, before the wine was poured, it was the custom to slay a black[75] ram[278] or a black bull[279]. This blood sacrifice, however, was probably used only when they were sacrificing in honor of a number of men. For instance, the warriors who were slain in Boeotia, while defending Greece from Mardonius, had that ceremony, on the anniversary day of each year, performed at their graves by the archon and the inhabitants of Plataea[279]. By the law of Solon, heifers, as victims, were proscribed in these solemnities[280].

The offerings, however, were gradually made more and more expensive until, on some occasions, a regular feast was laid out and consumed by fire. In a Greek dialogue that has come down to us, the old ferryman, Charon, who had come to the upper world to view the customs of men, expresses his surprise at these sepulchral propitiations. “Why then,” says he, “do they crown these stones and perfume them with unguents? Why do they heap up funeral pyres before the graves and burn these expensive feasts and pour wine and a mixture of honey and water into this trench[281]?”

The sacrifices at the sepulchre took place on stated days. At the first of these ceremonies, called the trita, from the fact of its falling on the third day[282] after the interment, a lunch was brought out for the corpse[283]. Following that tertial offering, came another, the ennata,[76] on the ninth day. This ninth day sacrifice, since Aeschines speaks of it as if it were the only one to be considered[284], and since Isaeus mentions the great expense connected with it[285], was very probably of more importance than the others. It is uncertain of what it consisted, since it is not specified in any of the Grecian authorities; but, if any reliance can be placed on the description of a Roman author, it was a regular banquet prepared for the deceased[286]. The ennata among the Athenians, inasmuch as we find no mention of anything farther in our ancient writers, probably concluded the customary ceremonies. The Argives, varied these rites by omitting the trita and ennata, and substituted a sacrifice on the first and on the thirtieth day. It was their custom upon losing one of their kindred or friends to sacrifice immediately to Apollo and thirty days after to Hermes[287]. The Spartans, on the other hand, always moderate in all their passions, limited their sacrifices to one on the twelfth day to Ceres, after which they ceased to mourn outwardly[288]. But, with the Athenians, the completion of the obsequies by no means ended all the customary observances of a mourner. The thirtieth day, however, seems to have been the limit set at Athens for the public manifestation[289]. Any semblance of happiness on the part of the mourner before that time was strongly disapproved. Aeschines makes a serious accusation against Demosthenes when he denounces him[77] for having offered sacrifices of thanksgiving for the death of Philip when his daughter had been dead only seven days[290]. Euphiletus, an every-day citizen of Athens, has his suspicions of his wife’s infidelity intensified and corroborated, because one day, before her brother had been dead thirty days, he discovered her with her cheeks painted[291].

Of the objects that were employed in the sacrifices and services at the tomb, the basket that serves to carry the offerings to the column is always in the hands of a woman. It is always the same in appearance, long, without a cover and shallow. This basket is often mentioned in the descriptions of religious ceremonies[292], where it is called kanoun, kanes and kaniskion. It appears on the bas-reliefs as well as on the vases. The young girls who carry the offerings at the Panathenaia are called canephorae[293] from the name of this basket.

The casket, which the women hold in the paintings, is usually a quadrangular box with a flat cover, and sometimes has little projecting feet to support it. This casket sometimes contains a precious offering, such as a golden statuette or a lyre of ivory[294].

The vases, of all the accessories of the funeral, are the most varied in form and usefulness. The hydria was used to mix the liquids for funeral libation, the oenochoe and the prochoos contained the pure wine or water, the phiale was a kind of shallow plate employed[78] for making the libation, the phlemochoe was a vase having the form of a top (a rim placed inside this vase retained the solid part of the contents and permitted only the purest part of the liquid to be poured out), the alabastron and the aryballa held the oil which was poured on the stone column for anointing it and perfuming it, as if it were the dead person himself[295].

The repast prepared for the dead was presented in two forms: (a) fruits or cakes placed in a basket, (b) a libation poured out on the steps of the pillar. It is difficult to determine the nature of these fruits or this food. Our only knowledge is obtained, for the most part, from the paintings on the vases and the resemblance of an egg to a pomegranate is so close that the object in the picture may be mistaken for either. The delineation of the cake is not altogether clear, although without doubt the honey-cake, the melittouta, is intended. This cake is mentioned by Aristophanes[296], and was composed of meal and honey. For the libation, they used water or pure wine or milk, and sometimes a liquid made from honey[297]. The pictures that have been mentioned have no representation of the libations of blood nor holocausts of victims that occur in the authors.

With rare exceptions, the basket containing the offering is borne by women, and it is women who bind the bands around the pillar and place the crowns on the[79] base. Their gestures are, in general, calmer and more measured in the ceremonies at the grave than in the prothesis. Some of them, however, are yet seen carrying their hands to their heads, as if to tear out their hair, but their usual attitude is tranquil. There is less of the expression of grief than of religious respect and melancholy resignation. Yet one of the gestures appears to signify something more than vague regret and reverence. In a certain number of the paintings, the characters depicted extending their hands toward the tomb, or raising them to their faces bring together the thumb and forefinger, in a manner specially noticeable. In the museum of Dresden, there is an ancient monument representing the seizure of the tripod of Delphi by Hercules; a priestess is attaching some bandalettes to it; she raises her right hand, pressing together the thumb and forefinger. The vases, also, offer other examples of this gesture, which is plainly ritualistic.

M. Benndorf regards, also, as a ritualistic gesture, the open hand extended toward the pillar, with the palm turned downwards. He supports this opinion by a citation from Euripides[298], where the slave of Admetus extends his hand after that manner. Another verse[299] of the same poet, evidently alludes to this custom. All these attitudes appear on the paintings of the white lecyths, and confirm the opinion that they express religious homage rendered by the living to the dead, and were part of the funeral ceremony.

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Another peculiar observance is seen where the mourners extend their hands toward the tomb, with a motion which seems to indicate that they talk to the dead. These are the pictures of familiar conversation, bearing the formula of adieu, chaire, or a little dialogue between the deceased and a passer-by.

There appears, also, to have been a custom of making music at the foot of the tomb, for the purpose of cheering the deceased in his solitude. The instrument used is the lyre. On one of the paintings, it is a young man, probably the deceased, sitting, who holds the lyre while the assistants appear to listen.

Such were the practices of the Greeks while the bereavement was recent, but it was always the duty of the survivors, as long as their lives might last, to tend their ancestors’ graves. Socrates, to rebuke his son, who has been angered with his mother, and to impress upon him how necessary it is properly to respect one’s parents in their lifetime, reminds him that it is the custom for the state, in its examination of candidates for the archonship, to inquire if they have kept in good condition the graves of their ancestors[300].

Leocrates, who, in violation of the law, had left Athens during the critical period following the battle of Chaeronea, is arraigned by Lycurgus for having abandoned his native land, having neglected the religion of his country, and having deserted the tombs of his forefathers[301]. To the Athenian mind, Isocrates made a most touching appeal, when he represented the[81] Plataeans as being in such a decimated condition that not enough of them were left to tend the graves of those who had defended Greece against the Persians. After this master-stroke, nothing was left for the Athenians to do but to make war on the impious Thebans, who had so mercilessly reduced their allies[302]. Finally, listen to the exhortation which Aeschylus, in “The Persians,” attributes to the herald before the battle of Salamis:

“Advance! O, sons of Greece! preserve the freedom of your native land; keep from foeman’s grasp your children, your wives, the temples of your ancestral gods, and the sepulchres of your progenitors. Now the struggle is for all[303].”

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XII.
FURTHER CEREMONIES.

In addition to the appointed sacrifices, there were apparently other celebrations held at stated times beside the tomb. These seasons Plato euphemistically called “days not to be mentioned,” and he did not, think it right at that time to hear sorrows of any kind[304]. These latter celebrations seem to have consisted for the most part of libations to the dead, and to have been celebrated by a cessation from the ordinary duties[305]. One of these mourning holidays was that called genesia[306]. From its apparent derivation, it may be assumed to have been the celebration of the birthday of the deceased. This conjecture is strengthened by the will of Epicurus, found in Diogenes Laertius[307], in which he directs his heirs to arrange offerings to the manes of his father, mother, brothers and himself, and to celebrate his birthday each year on the tenth of the month Gamelion. Herodotus also mentions the fact that the Greeks, like the Issedones, had annual sacrifices for the dead. Whether he refers to the genesia or to another yearly offering known as the nekysia or to both is uncertain[308].

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This nekysia was a general holiday for all Athens and was dedicated to all the dead. It consisted of the same sort of sacrificing as that which took place on the anniversary of the birthday[309]. Besides these ceremonies, it was customary, in the very early times, to institute funeral games in honor of the deceased shortly after the burial. On the death of Azan, according to the myth, son of Arcas, the king from whom Arcadia received its name, these games were first established in Greece. In his case, probably, the only contest was horse-racing[310]. But in the Homeric times, although the chariot race was the most important, there were also a boxing match, wrestling, a foot race, an armed combat, competition in weight-casting, a trial at archery and a contest of javelin throwing[311]. There were suitable prizes in each event for every one of the contestants. If the games which the Greek chieftains arranged in memory of Achilles, when he died, were any more elaborate than these, as Agamemnon maintains they were, they must have occupied considerable time[312].

These celebrations occasionally occurred in the historic period. Plutarch tells us that, after Timoleon’s death, the people of Syracuse determined to honor him with funeral games forever, to be celebrated with performances in music, horse-racing and wrestling[313].

It was the duty of every good citizen to visit the graves of his dead not only on the days established for[84] special services, but to come there much oftener since the Greeks believed that the deceased was always pleased by the presence of his friends of the former life. On the same principle the dead were supposed to be tormented by the visits of those formerly inimical. The claimant to the estate of Astyphilus is made by Isaeus to declare that it was generally accepted that the presence of his father would be pleasing to the deceased, and so the parent was carried out to the grave although in feeble health[314]. Further along in his speech the same man asserts that the father of Astyphilus had strictly forbidden the father of the defendant or any one connected with him to come near his tomb[315]. The same belief causes Teucer to restrain Odysseus from touching the grave of Ajax lest he offend the deceased hero[316].

It is proper now to consider the conduct and dress during the period of mourning. As with us, the predominant manifestation of sorrow was abstinence from every pleasure[317]. Admetus weepingly declares to his wife that, when she is gone, he will put an end to all the feasts and meetings in his house, at which they had been wont mutually to enjoy wine, garlands, and song[318].

The other tokens of bereavement were the cutting of the hair and the wearing of black garments. These customs seem to have been practiced at a very early period and to have lasted well down through Grecian history. The tragic poets bear witness to their prevalence.[85] Orestes shears his hair, and his sister is dressed in black[319]; Helen mourns her husband with both these signs of grief[320]; the chorus consider the advisibility of employing the badges of sorrow while Alcestis is still hovering between life and death[321]; and Iphigenia begs her mother not to mourn her by severing her locks and donning robes of sable hue[322]. Even for a long time after Grecian independence had been lost, the same customs existed. Plutarch praised his wife for not defiling herself or her maids nor putting on a black garment[323]. Artemidorus, in his work on the interpretation of dreams, says that a black dress is used for mourning[324]. Athenaeus is authority for the fact that in his time the mourner still polled his head[325]. Plutarch seems to differ about this clipping of the hair. He says: “In the case of mourning among the Greeks, the women have their hair cut close, but the men wear it long since it is customary for the men when not afflicted by grief to have it cut short and for the woman to let it grow long[326].” In another place he declares that you may take away a man’s signs of mourning by cutting his hair and drying his tears, and still bring him no comfort[327]. Undoubtedly, in Plutarch’s time, the fashion had changed and the later Greeks were wont to let their hair grow long to indicate their sorrow.

The underlying thought in this matter of mourning was that one manifested his sympathy with the dead by making himself appear as hideous as possible[325]. In[86] the early times, when the Greeks wore beards and long hair, the desired effect might be gained by polling but, when the Roman fashion of close-cutting had been adopted, it must have looked as odd to see the hair streaming down the neck of a bereaved man, as one of the enormous ruffs worn by Raleigh would appear in New York to-day. Whatever may have been the custom in the Romanized era of Plutarch, it is very certain that black robes and shorn hair betokened bereavement during the largest portion of the history of Greece.

It was, perhaps, in imitation of the Persians, that the Greeks, on the death of a general, clipped even the manes and tails of their horses. When, on the expedition of Mardonius, his trusted commander, Masistius, was slain, the Persians mutilated their horses after that fashion[328]. At the death of the gluttonous young Hephaestion, in consequence of disobedience to his physician’s orders, Alexander, thoroughly orientalized, ordered all the mules and horses to be clipped[329]. Not satisfied with this, he must needs tear down all the battlements of the neighboring cities, so that they, too, might have the appearance of being shorn[330]. Aelian, very suitably, terms this latter extravagance, “grieving according to the custom of the barbarians[331].”

The other distinguishing feature of the mourning, the adoption of black robes, although it usually indicates actual bereavement, was sometimes employed before the loss had really come, but when it was impending. Thus, when the sister-in-law of Lysias was summoned to[87] the prison where her husband awaited death, she came clad, as was befitting, in a black garment[332]. It was this fashion at Athens, of wearing black to show the death of a relative that gave point to Pericles’s dying assertion: “None of my fellow citizens have, through me, been obliged to assume a sable garb[333].”

White was worn sometimes on the death of a great general or other high official. Timoleon was borne to the grave accompanied by a procession of Syracusans, crowned with garlands and clothed in white. Pure white[334] is also the color which Plato directs to be worn on the death of a priest[335].

It may not have been the rule in all the states of Greece, as it was at Athens, to make black the mourning color. Sparta, perhaps out of a feeling of antagonism to Athens, appears to have employed white mourning, referred to by Socrates as “robes rinsed in water[336].”

It was the custom among the Greeks, when a good character like Alcestis, had departed, to pray that the earth might rest lightly upon the mortal frame[337], but where a man had done nothing except evil, they wished that mother earth, like a huge night-mare, might pin him down[338]. The ancient Greeks have departed, and, except when the prying hand of the archaeologist has torn away their surroundings, they have lain undisturbed for many centuries in the bosom of the earth. Let it be our wish that she still continue to rest lightly on good and bad alike.

NOTES

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