Chapter XIV: Funeral Ceremonies (1)

Having now gone through the whole circle of private life among the Hellenes, we shall consider them in the hour of death, and during the ceremonies with which dust was committed to dust. From a great variety of causes, the dissolution of the body was regarded by the pagans of antiquity with less terror and apprehension than modern nations experience. Their belief in the continuance of existence was not perhaps more unshaken than that of pious men in Christian countries, but the life to come was contemplated as more nearly resembling the present; and they imagined that, by the performance of certain rites and ceremonies, and through the favour of the gods in various ways obtained, they might easily secure to themselves a blissful immortality, which, according to their creed, was denied to none but the incorrigibly flagitious. In earlier times, moreover, before the birth of the sceptical systems of philosophy, no chilling doubts had been thrown on the doctrine of immortality. Ignorant they might be of the Divine nature, of the relations of man to his Creator, of the true duties, obligations, and rules of life; but they were so fully convinced of the existence of a race of superior beings, that they might almost be said to feel its truth as they did that of their own existence. These beings they believed to be everlastingly occupied with human, or rather with Hellenic, concerns; for it seems evident that most of the gods were looked upon more as the parents and guardians of the Grecian race than as remote and general watchers over the whole universe. To pass out of life, therefore, was but to pass out of the domains of one god into those of another; to exchange the protection of the celestial for that of the infernal Zeus. Everywhere and on all occasions Gods were supposed to attend their footsteps, but more especially at the moment of their decease, when a cloud of heavenly messengers hovered around them, some to accomplish the separation between soul and body, others to lead and protect the spirit in its descent to the subterranean world, and others again to watch over its happiness while there, sharing along with it the same dwelling-place, and bearing the same relation to it as a monarch does to his subjects.

Possessed firmly by persuasions of this kind, it is little to be wondered at that the ancient Greek experienced less reluctance to enter upon the domains of the dead than is now too commonly felt.[2658] He had, besides, another motive to cheer his departure. It was his firm expectation to be welcomed on his entrance to the Elysian fields by his parents or friends or companions, by all, in short, whom he had loved in life, and who had preceded him to that sacred and serene abode. Thinking and feeling thus, death seemed scarcely death, but a mere shifting of the scene or change of locality. It was but falling asleep in one place to wake in another where their happiness could know no change; where God would wipe away tears from all eyes, and where there should be no more trouble or sorrow or suffering for ever.

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Footnote 2658:

Plat. Tim. t. vii. p. 121, sqq.

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These, nevertheless, must be regarded as the habitual convictions of the mind, which, however they might influence the actions and resolutions of men, could by no means stifle their feelings, or prevent that sorrow and regret which must always be experienced by persons about to be separated from those they love. Hence the death-bed of the Greeks presented not a scene of stoical indifference. All the tenderness and sympathy of which the human heart is capable was usually awakened. The friends, and more especially the women of the family, crowded about the couch to press the dying hand, and catch the last breath as it fluttered in broken murmurs from the lips.[2659] Most persons, when about to bid an eternal adieu to the world, desired to lay some command on their sorrowing friends, not as an imperious task but as a labour of love, by performing which they might be reminded of the departed. Such commands as these the Grecian women were most anxious to receive, that they might treasure them up in their souls, and by pondering on them incessantly, day and night, keep vividly alive in their memory the idea of those who had once been all in all to them. Nor when the spirit had departed did they forsake the corpse, nor abandon it to the care of menials. With their own hands they closed the beloved eyes,[2660] and tied up the mouth from which words of kindness or comfort were never more to sound. Putting a severe restraint upon their feelings, they straightened,[2661] laved, anointed, and laid out the corpse,[2662] covered it with costly garments,[2663] and placed crowns of flowers upon its head: it was then borne to the vestibule of the mansion and laid with the feet towards the door,[2664] to intimate that it was about to proceed on its last journey, and take up its abode in the house prepared for all living. Vessels of lustral water[2665] were then placed beside it; that, being accounted unclean, all those who passed in or out and might be supposed to be reached by the effluvia which exhaled from the dead, might sprinkle and purify themselves. Branches of laurel and acanthus, with locks of hair, were suspended over the doorway, each being a symbol speaking to the imagination of that lively people. While thus exposed the corpse was watched day and night by its natural guardians, until the moment arrived for bearing it forth to the funeral pile or the grave. It was then laid in a coffin, generally of cedar or cypress-wood,[2666] which, being placed upon a bier,[2667] was borne away, the mourning friends and family attending.

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Footnote 2659:

Il. ω. 743. Kirchman. de Funer. Romanor. p. 34.

Footnote 2660:

Odyss. λ. 425. Eurip. Phœn. 1465. Virg. Æn. ix. 486.

Footnote 2661:

Eurip. Alcest. 160. Gal. de Method. Medend. xiii. 13. Plat. Phæd. t.
v. p. 123.

Footnote 2662:

Eurip. Hyppol. 786, seq. Il. ο. 350.

Footnote 2663:

Ælian. Var. Hist. i. 16. Eurip. Troad. 1134.

Footnote 2664:

Il. τ. 211, sqq. Τοὺς νεκροὺς οἱ ἀρχαῖοι προετίθισαν πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν καὶ
ἐκόπτοντο. Sch. Aristoph. Lysist. 611.

Footnote 2665:

Eurip. Alcest. 99.

Footnote 2666:

Plin. Nat. Hist. xxiv. 5. Thucyd. ii. 34. Horat. Od. ii. 14. 23. Epod.
v. 18. Meyer, p. 12. Cf. Dem. adv. Bœot. § 11. Euripid. Orest. 1052.

Footnote 2667:

Cf. Hesych. v. κλιματηφόρος.

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At Athens[2668] this ceremony took place immediately before day-break,[2669] numerous individuals bearing the mortuary torches, preceding the bier,[2670] and lighting up its melancholy way. The men next of kin marched silently in the rear of the coffin to intimate that they should shortly follow in the same track, and the women who kept together in a body,[2671] closed the procession, weeping and lamenting as they went. Stationed here and there in the crowd, were certain funeral musicians playing airs solemn and sad, but with an intermixture of enthusiastic notes, upon Lydian or Phrygian flutes. Sometimes the company was mounted in chariots or upon horses, but when especial honour was intended to the dead, everybody accompanied the hearse on foot. And surely a group like this, moving along by night through the narrow winding streets of Athens skirting the rocks of the Acropolis, flitting across the agora, between its silent booths and stately plane-trees, and issuing forth through the city gates into the sepulchral suburbs of the Cerameicos, where a forest of tombs stretched a considerable distance along the said way, to deposit, as if by stealth, the dust of a human being in the bosom of the earth, must have exhibited a striking and a solemn spectacle; more particularly if we suppose that, roused by the mournful music, thousands of neighbours and fellow-citizens hurried to their casements to behold their countryman carried to his long home. Having reached the destined spot, the body, if to be interred, was laid in the grave with its face looking towards the west.[2672] The earth was then thrown upon the coffin, and a monument, in most cases, speedily erected over it. If by special desire of the deceased, or for any other reason, cremation[2673] was preferred, they constructed a funeral pile of unctuous and odoriferous woods upon which oil and sweet unguents were commonly poured.

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Footnote 2668:

Demosth. adv. Macart. § 15.

Footnote 2669:

Cf. Theocrit. xv. 132.

Footnote 2670:

The same practice still prevails in modern times. Chandler, ii. 153.

Footnote 2671:

Terent. Andria. i. l. 90, seq. Lys. de Cæd. Eratosth. § 2.

Footnote 2672:

They likewise sacrificed to the ghosts of the dead with their faces
towards the west, to the Uranian gods, with their faces eastward.
Scol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 589.

Footnote 2673:

Cf. Plut. Themist. § 8. Schol. Thucyd. ii. 34.

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On the summit of this the corpse was then placed, and a torch having been applied to the pyre by some near relation of the dead, the whole was reduced to ashes. Before, however, the flames were quite extinguished, custom required that a little wine should be cast upon them, after which if any bones of the dead remained unconsumed they were carefully collected together with the ashes, and deposited in an urn, which in Greece was usually committed to the earth.[2674] All the surviving relations now returned mourning to their dwelling, where, towards evening, a funeral feast was celebrated in honour of the dead.[2675] Twice during the same month were sacred rites performed at the tomb, and afterwards for ever on the anniversary of the deceased’s birth, as well as on a certain day of the festival of Anthesteria, when unfading flowers were strewed around, and heaps of crowns and garlands suspended on the monument. The outward tokens of the grief felt inwardly consisted of black garments,[2676] heads partially shorn and a sad and neglected countenance.

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Footnote 2674:

Numerous bassi-relievi representing these funeral banquets have been
preserved both at Athens and in the island of Chios, where the custom
has prevailed in modern times of fixing such pieces of antiquities in
the walls, over doors and gateways. Chandler, ii. 39.

Footnote 2675:

Kirchman. p. 502, sqq.

Footnote 2676:

Quintil. Declam. x.

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In nearly all parts of the world, the moment death sets the impress of his seal on the human clay it appears to acquire an awful and mysterious sanctity, which none but the hardened and base will consent to violate. Belonging to the grave, its everlasting calm and silence seem already to brood over it. It presents itself to our eyes like the inhabitant of another world, and therefore though voiceless it reveals to us, as it were, some particulars respecting a state of being of which we know nothing, but feel necessarily the most devouring curiosity. Besides, when the deceased has been dear to us in life, we regard his corpse as the deserted mansion of a friend, as the tabernacle of a soul scarcely different, though divided from our own. On this account the ancient Greeks, a people beyond most others pious, imaginative, and affectionate, cultivated with peculiar care the duties which we owe the dead. Ancient writers abound with illustrations of this truth. When the Thebans, after the defeat of Adrastos and Polyneices refused burial to the fallen Argives, it was considered by the Athenians a sufficient cause for declaring war against Bœotia. It was not pretended that the invaders had been engaged in an honourable war; but having expiated their transgression by death, their remains had passed under the protection of the infernal deities, and to refuse them the rites of sepulture was not so much to insult them as Pluto, and the other gods of Hades, whose subjects they were now become. The unburied corpse was, moreover, a polluting object which defiled the temples of the celestial divinities, and therefore they also were interested in watching over the rights of the dead; for dogs and beasts of prey might carry their flesh or bones into the fanes, and thus render them unclean. And this sentiment, which constituted one of the most amiable parts of the Greek character, tended likewise to confer imperishable beauty and interest on the Hellenic land. For, the numerous tombs, public and private,[2677] which clustered over and hallowed its surface, addressed themselves still more powerfully to the heart than to the eye. Everywhere the devotion of the people clung around them. They were at once the creations and the monuments of human love, of public gratitude, of holy reverence for intellect and virtue.

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Footnote 2677:

Cf. Demosth. adv. Call. § 4.

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The same observation, indeed, applies universally. The pyramid, the solitary barrow, rising like a hillock on the plains of Asia, the crowded cemetery, the vast suites of sepulchres excavated beneath the surface of the earth, each and all of these must ever be regarded by men of sensibility and unsophisticated understanding as so many unequivocal tokens of the ineradicable goodness of human nature. Examples without number might be adduced in illustration. When a North American chief was urged to cede to the European invaders the hunting-ground of his tribe, he stated his objection in these words: “How can we abandon the country in which all our ancestors lie interred? Shall we say to the bones of our forefathers, ‘Arise, and go along with us into a strange land’?” In many countries a more absorbing interest attaches to the abodes of the dead than to the habitations of the living. Who, for example, can traverse, without the most profound emotion, those suites of subterraneous palaces at Thebes denominated the Tombs of the Kings? You seem, in these vast painted halls and dusky passages, to hold actual converse with death. The grave unfolds its mysteries on all sides around. The imagination is kindled and takes a colour from the unearthly creations presented to it, and you return with something like reluctance to the glare and turmoil and busy passions of the world. Among the Greeks, as we have observed, the dead were invested with a sanctity which all good men esteemed inviolable, and this persuasion acquired additional force from the belief, that, though separated, the spirit and the body were not yet wholly independent of each other. For, upon the treatment experienced by its remains the state of the soul was in some measure regulated in the realms below. If these received the rites of interment, the spirit was allowed freely to traverse that stream, dusky and inviolable, which surrounded the realm of Hades. If not, the ghost, cold and desolate, wandered along its hither shore during the space of a hundred years; after which, the laws of Orcus relented, and permitted it to taste of happiness amid the groves of Asphodel,[2678] and those blissful bowers where poets and sages devoted the circle of eternity to the culture and pure delights of wisdom. From this persuasion, the ghosts of persons denied the rites of sepulture[2679] are represented by the poets hovering around their corses and presenting themselves in visions to their surviving friends, requesting them to sever, by the performance of their obsequies, the sad links which still bound them to their dwellings of clay. Thus Homer introduces Elpenor[2680] conjuring Odysseus to perform this last sad office for his remains. Often when, by shipwreck or murder, the body was cast on some solitary shore, or abandoned in the recesses of some forest or mountain, inhumation was solely dependent on chance. But if fortune conducted any stranger to the spot, it was considered incumbent on him to discharge, in one way or another, the ties of humanity to the dead. But, because he might not be able to dig a grave or consume the body on a funeral pile, it was reckoned sufficient to cast three handfuls of dust upon the corpse, of which one, at least, was to be sprinkled on the head. Thus we find, in Horace,[2681] the manes of the Pythagorean philosopher, Archytas, intreating the mariners, who had found his body on the beach, to honour it with this rite:

Quamquam festinas, non est mora longa, licebit
Injecto ter pulvere curras.

Though great thy haste, this will not much delay;
Cast thrice the dust, then hasten hence away.

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Footnote 2678:

Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 169, sqq. Pind. Olymp. ii. 70, sqq.

Footnote 2679:

Cf. Lys. Epitaph. § 4.

Footnote 2680:

Odyss. ξ. 66, sqq.

Footnote 2681:

Od. i. 28. 36. Quintil. Declam. v. 6. Cœlius Rhodiginus, xvii. 20.
Potter. ii. 166.

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In order the more certainly to secure this act of humanity from the passer-by[2682] persons about to perish by shipwreck were accustomed to tie around their body gold, or jewels, or whatever else they possessed of value, that it might defray the expenses of their interment, and reward him who undertook it.

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Footnote 2682:

Meurs. in Lycoph. Cassand. 367.

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There were, however, certain classes of men who, by their open or secret wickedness, were supposed to be placed beyond the expansive circle of human sympathy, on whom it would have been criminal to lavish sepulchral rites. These were, in the first place, individuals struck by lightning, whom the gods were believed thus to have destroyed,[2683] from a knowledge of their guilt, though hidden from all other eyes. Corpses of this kind were usually covered with earth where they lay without the slightest ceremony, unless they happened to have fallen in some public temple, or agora, or highway, under which circumstances a hook was fastened to the body, by which it was dragged and cast into some pit. On other occasions the carcase was hedged round and so left. Men guilty of suicide were likewise denied the honours of burial, but more especially those of the funeral pile. Their carcases were simply thrown into a pit and covered over, to prevent their becoming a nuisance to the living. Villains who committed sacrilege, and traitors to their country were not suffered to enjoy in death the protection of those divinities whom they had outraged, or the refuge of a grave in a country which they had basely betrayed to the enemy.[2684] Their dishonoured bones were cast beyond the borders, nor was it permitted any citizen to celebrate for them the rites of burial. Thus King Pausanias, who sought to enslave his country to the Persians, was treated by the Lacedæmonians, Aristocrates by the Arcadians, and Phocion by the people of Athens,[2685] though in this last case, perhaps, through error and misapprehension. The last and worst class were tyrants[2686] equally objects of hatred to gods and men, who usually when overcome by their subjects expiated their guilt by the most unheard-of torments, while, in the nether world, the worst pangs of Tartarus were reserved for them. To deposit in the bosom of the earth the carcases of malefactors so heinous would of itself have been esteemed a crime of a very deep dye. The remains were, therefore, trodden under foot, subjected to every other species of indignity, and then cast forth to be devoured by the dogs and vultures. Nay, if we may interpret the expression of Plato literally, the punishment of men who even aimed at tyranny in a free state and failed in the attempt was tremendous: they were tortured and mutilated, had their eyes burned out, suffered every imaginable insult and injury, and at last crucified, or covered with pitch and burned alive: their wives and children suffered the same punishment—the innocent being confounded with the guilty. To protect their ashes from insults such as the above, the kings of Egypt who erected the pyramids and were in character fierce and tyrannical, are supposed by Herodotus not to have entrusted their bones to the keeping of those structures. A wild story is also related of Periander of Corinth,[2687] who, conscious of having ruled his countrymen with a rod of iron, dreaded the effects of their resentment on his corpse. Effectually to conceal the place of his interment he is said to have directed two of his satellites to go forth at night on a certain road and kill and bury clandestinely the first man they should meet. Four others were despatched to execute the same vengeance upon them, and another crowd of assassins received orders to exterminate and bury these four. Periander, then old and infirm, presented himself to the first murderers, was slain and buried, and the place, from the sudden death of all who might have known it, thus remained undiscovered for ever.

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Footnote 2683:

Artemidor. ii. 8. Eurip. Suppl. 945. Persius, ii. 27.

Footnote 2684:

Diod. Sicul. xvi. 6.

Footnote 2685:

Plut. Phoc. § 37.

Footnote 2686:

Odyss. γ. 256.

Footnote 2687:

Diog. Laert. i. 96.

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Most opposed to these were those honourable citizens[2688] who fell for their country in defence of its liberty and laws, whom their fellow-citizens followed to the tomb with every conceivable mark of public gratitude and honour, and whose names future generations were taught to reverence like those of gods. In some sense, indeed, they were actually deified. Rites and ceremonies and sacrifices were performed annually in their honour, and by their great and heroic spirits future generations swore as by the most ancient inhabitant of Olympos. Sometimes, as on the plain of Marathon, the remains of the warriors were collected together, and with holy rites enclosed in one common barrow, calculated by its dimensions to be co-lasting with the world. On other occasions their remains were brought to the city and buried there. Thus, at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, the first citizens who fell received the distinguished honours of a public funeral. Their remains were enclosed in coffins of cedar, and laid in open hearses, drawn by horses carefully caparisoned, and covered with garlands, were conveyed to the Cerameicos, the whole population of the state attending. When they had been there committed to the earth, Pericles, the greatest statesman and orator of those times, ascended a bema, and, in words which must thrill through the hearts of all posterity, pronounced on them an encomium to merit which most brave men would cheerfully have bartered life.

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Footnote 2688:

Thucyd. ii. 34. Cf. J. D. H. Meyer. Pericl. ap. Thuc. Orat. p. 10,
sqq. On some occasions the bodies of the dead were followed with great
pomp to the grave, accompanied by the sound of many instruments and
voices. Athen. xiii. 67. The bodies of the dead were at other times,
apparently in the field of battle, stretched out on beds of leaves or
rushes, and a festive banquet with drinking cups was placed before
them, and crowns upon their heads. § 2.

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The modes of sepulture prevalent in different ages among the Hellenes were various in like manner as the monuments erected in honour of the dead. Originally, when public security was weak, men buried their dead within the walls of their own dwellings, where alone, perhaps, they could hope to preserve their resting-place inviolable. In accordance with this pious feeling a law was anciently enacted at Thebes in Bœotia, that whoever built himself a house should construct within or adjoining it a repository for the dead. But when states grew up and acquired strength, and the shadow of their protection fell around far and wide, it was found practicable to consult the public health without infringement of the reverence due to the divinities of Hades, and the habitations of the departed were erected, like a sacred circle, round the city walls.

Afterwards, in the period of Grecian decrepitude, the cities once more opened their gates to their ancestors, and permitted that they should share with themselves the imperfect security which was the lot of all in those degenerate times.

Much has been said on the custom which obtained among both Greeks and Romans, of extending their cemeteries along the high roads leading countrywards from the city gates.[2689] Their object appears to have been twofold: first, by erecting the monuments of deceased friends in sight of all persons entering or quitting the city to render their memory more enduring; secondly, that by witnessing the honours paid to the brave and good of past times, those who came after them might be incited to imitate their example.

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Footnote 2689:

Cf. Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 2. 14.

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But no place was deemed too sacred to admit the remains of good or great men, which were occasionally enshrined within the precincts of temples or sacred groves.[2690] Thus the children of Medea were buried in the temple of Hera, Œdipos found a tomb in the grove of the Eumenides at Colonos,[2691] and Hesiod, whose body comes floating to the shore while the Samians are engaged in the performance of sacred rites, is honoured with a funeral in the grove of the Nemean Zeus.[2692] Euchides, likewise, who died in consequence of the extraordinary celerity with which he performed the journey to and from Delphi in quest of the sacred fire, was interred by the Platæans in the temple of Artemis Euclea. Among the Spartans the practice commonly prevailed of burying around sacred edifices; nor did they, even in later times, banish their dead to the suburbs; the design of this departure from the fashion elsewhere established being to eradicate from the mind of youth all apprehensions of spectres, and reluctance to move, whether by night or by day, among tombs and graves. In all parts of Greece, families, at least when above the humblest in rank, possessed each their burial grounds, whether standing wholly apart in orchards or gardens,[2693] or forming so many separate portions of the general cemetery.[2694] But nowhere does so great stress appear to have been laid on this distinction of families in death as at Sparta, as may be inferred from the account of that battle in which, animated by the songs of Tyrtæos, the youth bound about their right arms tablets inscribed with their own names and those of their fathers, that so, should they all perish, their friends might be able to select from among the heaps of slaughter the bodies of their relatives, and inter them with scarlet mantles and olive-leaves in the cemeteries of their clans.[2695]

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Footnote 2690:

Eurip. Med. 1378.

Footnote 2691:

Soph. Œdip. Col. 1584, sqq.

Footnote 2692:

Plut. Sept. Sap. Conv. 19, and see Lobeck, Aglaopham. p. 281.
Goëttling. Pref. Hesiod. ix.

Footnote 2693:

Dem. adv. Call. § 4.

Footnote 2694:

The tombs in these burial-grounds were often so many flat slabs with
inscriptions. Chandler, ii. 123.

Footnote 2695:

Ælian. Var. Hist. vi. 6. Plut. Lycurg. § 27.

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Frequently the remains of distinguished persons were consigned to the dust in picturesque situations, remote from towns and the habitations of men, where chapels were in many instances erected to their memory. Thus we find the heroon of Androcrates[2696] shrouded in thick copses and trees amid the spurs of Mount Cithæron, on the western extremity of the field of battle of Platæa. In a situation very similar stood the tomb and temple of Amphiaraos, and the heroon of Drimacos in the island of Chios. Among the Cretans, likewise, the sepulchre of Zeus occupied the lofty summit of a mountain, where its ruins are still pointed out to the traveller. A poetical sentiment, moreover, has, in modern times, given rise to the persuasion that the ruins of Themistocles’ tomb are still to be seen amid that line of ancient sepulchres which run along the surf-beaten rocks near the point of Cape Halimos. On this supposition is based the well-known passage of Byron:

“No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian’s grave;
That tomb which, gleaming o’er the cliff,
Just greets the homeward-veering skiff,
High o’er the land he saved in vain:—
When shall such hero live again?”

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Footnote 2696:

Plut. Aristid. § 11.

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But the learning of Colonel Leake has clearly shown, that the monument of this illustrious statesman stood within the horns of the great port of Aphrodisium. In the city of Magnesia, where he died, his tomb stood in the agora, which was customary when extraordinary honour was designed the dead.[2697] Thus the monument of Timoleon,[2698] surrounded by porticoes and other public buildings, was erected in the agora of Syracuse; and that of Harmodios and Aristogeiton occupied the same place in the city of Athens, where, in more ancient times, the tombs of distinguished personages were hewn out in the face of the cliffs, lined with marble, and otherwise sumptuously adorned. Solon, however, sought to repress the luxury of cemeteries[2699] by ordaining that no tomb should have an arched roof, or require more labour than could be performed by ten men in three days. But this law, in all probability, was never strictly observed; for the Cimonian sepulchres, still seen high amid the rocks overlooking the hollow valley which divides the Areopagos from the Pnyx, seem to have been of dimensions too spacious to have been hewn out within the legal term.[2700] Afterwards, moreover, mortuary monuments of extraordinary magnificence were erected at Athens, as that, for example, of the hetaira Pythonicè. But it was in barbarous countries that funereal structures exhibited the greatest splendour, which reached possibly its acmè in the tomb of Mausolos, king of Caria, an edifice consisting of a pyramid erected on a square basis, adorned on all sides with sculptured figures in relief, and surmounted by a chariot drawn by four horses. The tomb of the mistress of Gyges, though for materials inferior, probably exceeded in dimensions this seventh wonder of the world. It was erected, too, as a memorial of affection; for, when the woman who, during her life, had ruled both him and his kingdom, had been removed from earth, that shepherd king collected together, we are told, the whole of his subjects, and threw up so vast a barrow over her remains, that, in whatever part of his realm he might be, within Mount Tmolos, he might enjoy the melancholy pleasure of beholding her grave.

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Footnote 2697:

Chandler, vol. i. p. 143.

Footnote 2698:

Plut. Timol. § 39.

Footnote 2699:

Cf. Cicero, de Leg. ii. 64.

Footnote 2700:

Chandler, vol. ii. p. 99.

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In the structure of their tombs, as well as their mode of interment, the various nations of antiquity observed each a different style. Thus, in the purification of Delos, the monuments of the Carians were easily distinguished from those of the Greeks by the manner in which their remains were deposited in the grave. Certain sepulchral mounds, found in Peloponnesos, were distinguished by some characteristic features from those of the natives, and denominated the Tombs of the Phrygians; and the burying places of certain foreigners on whom the Greeks bestowed the name of Amazons, exhibited as long as they endured some distinctive marks[2701] by which they were known to cover the ashes of some barbarous people. Over the tomb of Hippolyta, indeed, a pillar was erected in the Grecian manner; but at Chalcis, where there was an Amazonium, the structure would appear to have exhibited some peculiar features, as well as the tomb of these warlike ladies, which was shown in the Megaris, between the agora and a spot named Rhus, in the form of a lozenge,[2702] resembling their shields. Similar in shape, likewise, were probably the Amazonian monuments found near Scotussa in Thessaly, as well as those on the banks of the rivulet Hermodon, in the neighbourhood of Cheronæa.[2703] On the plains of Troy the Amazon Myrinna reposed under a vast barrow.[2704]

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Footnote 2701:

Plut. Thes. § 27. Paus. i. 41. 7. Petit, de Amazon, p. 185.

Footnote 2702:

Plut. Thes. § 27.

Footnote 2703:

Petit, de Amazon. p. 313. 184.

Footnote 2704:

Hom. Il. β. 814.

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The structures thus erected in honour of the dead might have proved more durable but for the practice common among the ancients, of interring jewels, gold, precious vases,[2705] and other treasures with the corpse, which afterwards roused the cupidity of profligate men, and tempted them to rifle the last houses of their forefathers; for it is one of the most odious and debasing features of civilisation, at certain stages of it, that death is habitually desecrated, and the grave ceases to be a refuge. Thus the tombs of the Macedonian kings were plundered by the Gauls[2706] in the alliance of Pyrrhos. Again, the colony of Roman freedmen sent to raise Corinth from its ashes, discovering by chance that the catacombs contained bronze and fictile vases of great beauty, rifled the whole cemetery, and filled Rome with the spoils, which were denominated Necrocorinthia. Even the obolos[2707] placed beneath the tongue, and the simple ornaments of the humbler dead, proved sufficient to excite the avarice of a certain class of robbers, denominated from their practices tomb-spoilers.[2708] When, however, the dust of the departed has reposed in its cerements for many ages, to disturb and plunder it becomes the pursuit of learned men, and is regarded as a branch of the science of antiquities. Thus the sepulchres of the Egyptian kings have been spoiled and polluted by travellers, who have burned by thousands the wooden gods of the Pharaohs in their kitchens, sawed off the faces of pillars, dragged forth bodies and coffins from their last hiding-place in order to pilfer the golden ornaments suspended around the necks of the dead. In Etruria, too, the same scientific havoc has been carried on, and the museums of Europe have been enriched by what was once a capital offence. Even in our own country, barrows have been habitually opened, and the bones of our ancestors dislodged from their homes. Very curious relics of antiquity, however, have thus been brought to light. Similar tumuli in the East, denominated topes, have been examined in Affghanistân. Beneath the centre is usually a well, in which the ancient remains, consisting of metallic vases, small cylinders of gold, rings, jewels, and gold pins, appear to be found.[2709]

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Footnote 2705:

Hence the idea of the vast riches of Charon subsisting in the legends
of the East. Vigne, Trav. in Affghanistân, p. 206.

Footnote 2706:

Plut. Pyrrh. § 26.

Footnote 2707:

Suid. v. καρκάδοντα. t. ii. p. 1374. e. Hesych. v. δανάη. Etym. Mag.
v. δάνα. Aristoph. Ran. 141. Besides the piece of money, a honey cake
is said to have been put into the mouth for Cerberus. Suid. v.
μελιτοῦττα. t. ii. p. 126. a. Aristoph. Lysist. 601. Virg. Æneid. vi.
417.

Footnote 2708:

Arg. ii. in Dem. Mid. Growing bold by degrees, sacrilege at length
broke into the temples, and shore the golden tresses from the very
statues of Zeus himself. Luc. Jup. Trag. § 25. Cf. § 10.

Footnote 2709:

Vigne, Ghuzni, Cabul, &c., p. 141.

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It was customary among the Greeks, not only while their grief was yet new, but habitually for many years, to visit the graves of the dead, to suspend garlands and crowns and fillets of wool upon their head-stones, or possibly, as is still the custom in Burgundy, to place wreaths or other ornaments of pure wool upon the grave itself,[2710] and to protect them by a trellis-work of willow boughs. Hither, too, were brought baskets full of all fair and fragrant flowers, more particularly roses, myrtles, amaranths,[2711] and lilies, to be strewed upon the beloved spot. Sometimes graves were covered by a netting of wild thyme,[2712] which, like those characters that are ennobled by affliction, yielded forth a delicious perfume beneath the foot of the mourner. In cool and shady spots, graves were sometimes adorned with the small everlasting,[2713] and the white flower called pothos.[2714] Public cemeteries were likewise, in many places, beautified by trees, selected in some cases for their thick foliage and spreading form, as the elm; in others, for their graceful shape and evergreen leaf, as the poplar and the cypress. Other trees, also, whether planted by the hand of man or springing up spontaneously, covered the walks or spots of green sward found in the cemeteries of Greece, supplying in abundance that sombre shade into which grief loves to retire, and where the sepulchral plants chiefly delight to grow.

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Footnote 2710:

Varro, Ling, Lat. l. vi. ap. Kirckman. de Funer. Rom. p. 500.

Footnote 2711:

Philost. Heroic. xix. 14. p. 741. Eurip. Electr. 324. Vict. Var. Lect.
xvi. 2. Mag. Miscell. ii. 17.

Footnote 2712:

Schol. Aristoph. Pac. 168.

Footnote 2713:

Dioscor. iv. 90, if we read τάφοις for τάφροις.

Footnote 2714:

Theoph. Hist. Plant. vi. 8. 3.

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Such spots so shaded, so verdant, and full of fragrance, so consecrated to silence and repose, probably first suggested the idea of the Elysian Fields or Islands of the Blessed, which the poets of Greece assigned to be the abode of happy souls. At first perhaps the ghosts were believed to dwell in the cemeteries, retiring by day to the depths of the tombs and issuing forth during the dark and tranquil hours of night to enjoy, by the light of the moon or the stars, the sight of the world they had partially quitted. From this notion flowed all the modifications observable in the internal structure of tombs. First, care was taken that the earth should not press heavily on the corpse, somewhere within the dimensions of which the ghost was supposed[2715] habitually to reside. Sentiments not greatly dissimilar still survive among ourselves. I once remember to have read on the gravestone of a little girl standing near the stile by which you enter the shady churchyard of Newport, in Monmouthshire, the following epitaph, in which this idea is clearly embodied:

Here a pretty baby lies,
Sung asleep with lullabies;
Pray be silent, and not stir
The easy earth that covers her.

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Footnote 2715:

Among the Mohammedans of Persia like notions are found to exist. “I
often saw groups of people uttering the most doleful lamentations and
bedewing with their tears the dry sod which they surrounded. They
imagine the dead to be capable of _hearing_ but not of answering their
plaints.” Fowler, Three Years in Persia, i. p. 31.

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Secondly spacious and elegant chambers were frequently constructed for the spirit’s use, where food was likewise placed, and lamps were kindled which, furnished with wicks of amianthos[2716] and supplied with inexhaustible fountains of oil, were believed to burn on everlastingly. A similar notion leads many Mohammedan nations to turn a small arch in the stone basement of their tombs to accommodate the ghost with free ingress and egress. Connected also with this article in the creed of the ancients[2717] was the opinion, that spirits might often be seen gliding in shadowy shapes among the tombs, which may be regarded as a notion almost co-extensive with humanity itself.

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Footnote 2716:

Kirchman. de Funer. Rom. l. iv. 4.

Footnote 2717:

Cf. Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 122, sqq.

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In their modes of sepulture the barbarous nations[2718] of the ancient world differed widely from each other and from the Greeks. The Syrians, Egyptians, and even Persians, wholly eschewing the funeral pile, buried their dead, having first embalmed them with various conservative and aromatic substances, as myrrh and aloes, and cedar-gum,[2719] and honey, and salt, and wax, and asphaltus, and resin, mingled with perfumes and precious unguents. Among the Pythagoreans, who adopted foreign rites in preference to those of their country, it was customary to wrap the dead in leaves of myrtle, poplar, and aloes, and thus to commit them to the earth. The Albani put money into the coffins with the corpse; the Taxilli, the Brahmins, and the Thracians, like the modern Parsees, exposed the bodies of their relations to be devoured by vultures; the Barchæi, a people inhabiting the borders of the Black Sea, followed the customs of these nations in the case of such of their countrymen as fell in war; but when they happened to be so effeminate as to die peaceably in their beds, they were condemned to the flames. Dogs and carnivorous birds constituted the sepulchres of the Parthians, Magians, Hyrcanians, and other savage nations, who, however, were careful to inter the bones which were left undevoured. Among these philosophical people no thought was more habitual than that of death, since men walked daily beside their graves; for persons of condition, who could afford to be luxurious in matters of this kind, fed and pampered huge dogs for the express purpose of being devoured by them after death, such mode of interment being among them esteemed the most honourable. The Essedones, the Calantii, the Massagetæ, the Derbices, and the Hybernians, on this point very strongly resembled in taste and habits the Battas of Sumatra, the custom among them having been to honour their parents and friends with a far superior sepulchre to that of the foregoing people, since they ate them themselves. It is remarked, however, in the case of the Essedones, that the skulls were carefully cleansed, gilded, and laid by, to be produced on their solemn annual festivals. The Derbices somewhat improved upon the method of their neighbours; for, when their old people were found to live too long, they hastened the approach of death in the case of the men, by slaughtering them like victims, and in that of the old women, by strangling them.

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Footnote 2718:

Alex. ab Alex. iii. 2. p. 114. a. sqq. Kirchman. de Fun. Rom. append.
2. p. 590.

Footnote 2719:

Plin. Nat. Hist. xxxi. 19. xxiv. 5. xxii. 24. Herod. ii. 86, sqq. i.
140. Xenoph. Hellen. v. 3. 19. Dioscor. i. 105. Kirchman. de Funer.
Rom. l. i. 8.

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Among the Hyperboreans the practice was, when old people lived so long as to be thought troublesome, to give them a farewell feast, and then, having crowned their brows with chaplets, to pitch them over steep cliffs into the sea. The Caspians adopted a different method of bringing down the population to a level with the means of subsistence; for, when their parents and friends exceeded the age of seventy, they either exposed them in remote and desolate places, as infants in many countries were, or shut them up in huts to perish of hunger and thirst. The mode of disposing of the dead adopted by one of the Scythian nations was, to bind their corpses to the trunks of trees, where they remained a long time, congealed in the midst of ice and snow: to have interred them in the earth they would have regarded as a crime. Not greatly dissimilar was the Phrygian mode, according to which the dead were placed upright on ranges of stones fifteen feet high. A large cemetery of this kind, having many ranges of rude columns, each with its corpse or skeleton, viewed by the dubious light of the moon, with flights of ravens or vultures preying upon the bodies recently set up, must have presented a terrific spectacle. The Nasamones, a people of northern Africa, buried their dead in a sitting posture, which, as I am informed by General Miller, is still the custom among the Araucanian Indians, who, binding the corpse in the necessary posture with cords, excavate for it a grave beneath their own beds. In some parts of the world, as in Thrace, for example, and India, persons greatly advanced in years, more especially such as were distinguished for the cultivation of wisdom frequently ascended voluntarily the funeral pile, like the Yoghee Calanos, and Perigrinos who affected the airs of a philosopher, terminated their existence with composure, or even an appearance of gaiety in the flames. A certain tribe said to have inhabited the coast of the Red Sea, beyond the Æthiopians and the Arabs, interred their friends in the sand, within high-water mark, so that their graves should constantly be overflowed by the surge. The Æthiopians either cast the bodies of the deceased into the Nile, or enclosed them in glass coffins, through which the mouldering form might ever be contemplated. In some parts of Upper Nubia a similar practice still prevails; for the corpse being laid on the sand, a wall of loose rocks is built up around it, and secured with a slab atop. Through numerous apertures in the sides, of dimensions to admit light but exclude the jackals, the skeleton may easily be seen.

According to a tradition preserved by Ælian,[2720] Belos was interred in a glass coffin, which, when Xerxes caused his tomb to be opened, was found nearly filled with oil, wherein the body lay floating. Beside it stood a small column, on which was this inscription, “Woe to him who having broken into this sepulchre shall fail to fill my coffin.” At this Xerxes was troubled, and immediately gave orders that oil should be poured into the sarcophagus, but to no purpose; for, though they made the attempt once and again, it rose no nearer to the brim than before. Conceiving that some grievous calamity was impending over him, the king at length desisted, and quitted the monument in the deepest dejection. He shortly afterwards, adds the historian, undertook his unhappy expedition into Greece, at the conclusion of which, flying back to his own country, he was there assassinated, as believed, by his own son.

The Pœonians cast their dead into marshy pools; the Ichthyophagi into the sea. Very different was the custom of the Troglodytæ, who, tying their corpses neck and heels with the twigs of some flexible shrub, in this manner carried them forth, and raising over them heaps of stones, as the Phoceans did over Laïos and his servants, fixed, with laughter and merriment, the horns of goats upon the tumulus. Similar tombs exist at this day in Affghanistân, in which are stuck sticks bearing wreaths and shreds of cloth, together with tusks of the moufflon, the ibex, and markhur.[2721] In China, at the annual festival in honour of the dead, the sepulchres are decorated with streamers of red and white paper. Dead bodies, in the Balearic isles, were jointed, cut up, and stowed in urns on which huge piles of rock were thrown. The Panebi, a people of Libya, had a custom resembling in part that of the Essedones: on burying the bodies of their kings they gilded their skulls, and suspended them in their temples as ornaments. The Sindi, a people of Scythia, doubtless a branch of the Ichthyophagi, used to bury in the graves of their warriors a small fish for every enemy he had slain in battle, which must, doubtless, if they were a brave people, have rendered their cemeteries anything but odoriferous.[2722]

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Footnote 2720:

Var. Hist. xiii. 3.

Footnote 2721:

Vigne, pp. 88, 89.

Footnote 2722:

The remains of shell-fish are at this day found in great abundance in
the barrows of Guernsey. See Duncan’s History of that island.

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From the enumeration of these fantastic and barbarous rites we may perceive how striking was the contrast between the manners of the Hellenes and those of most other ancient nations. At one time, however, a practice, little inferior in atrocity to those above described, is said to have prevailed in the island of Ceos,[2723] where men on reaching sixty years of age were constrained to drink hemlock or opium, in order to economise the means of subsistence. But this law, if it ever existed, must be thrown back to very remote times, it being wholly inconsistent with even the smallest advances of civilisation.

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Footnote 2723:

Strab. x. 5. t. ii. p. 387. Val. Max. ii. 6. 8.

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The ceremonies and symbols by which among the Hellenes sorrow was expressed for the loss of friends were numerous and significant. In the first place, all tokens of pleasure and enjoyment were suppressed, that affliction might seem to have extinguished every spark that might thereafter have kindled joy. From wine and sumptuous viands and whatever else brings gratification to the mind at ease, they abstained as though wholly unworthy to be honoured with even the semblance of a capacity to mitigate their sorrow for the departed. They banished all instruments of music which happened to be in the house, to intimate that they thenceforward renounced the delights derivable from sweet sounds.[2724] The same practice precisely prevailed among the Arabs under the Kalifat. Thus “Haroon-er-Raschid, wept, we are told, over Shemselnihar, and, before he left the room, ordered all the musical instruments to be broken.” They excluded the light from their chambers, and retired to sob and lament in gloomy recesses, as different as possible from the spots which in the company of the beloved and lost object they were accustomed to frequent. They neglected the care of their persons, suffered in some places the hair and beard to grow, or disfigured themselves by cutting off a portion of their locks, casting ashes on their heads, and wrapping themselves in coarse and black apparel.[2725] In consequence we find, that the very manes[2726] of their mules and horses were shorn. Alexander, during the paroxysm of his grief for the loss of Hephæstion,[2727] even demolished the battlements of cities, and, exaggerating the cruelty and barbarism of remoter ages, crucified the physician who had attended the youth, prohibited all music in his camp, and undertaking an expedition against certain tribes hitherto unsubdued, offered up whole hecatombs to the manes of his minion.[2728] The mourning of the Lacedæmonians on the death of their kings partook largely of the spirit of barbarism. As soon as the event occurred, horsemen were despatched to make it known throughout the Lacedæmonian territories, while crowds of women paraded up and down the city, beating or sounding kettle-drums. From every family two persons, one of either sex, were then selected, who were compelled under grievous penalties to smear and disfigure themselves.[2729] In fact, assembling in great numbers, Spartans, Laconians, and Helots, together with their wives, they beat their foreheads and uttered strange howlings, ever and anon affirming, amid their well-acted grief, that the last king was the best. When the prince happened to fall in battle, his effigy was borne home on a bier sumptuously adorned, and to this the same honour was paid as to the real corpse. During the ten days immediately succeeding the funeral no public business was transacted. For private individuals, the Lacedæmonians scarcely mourned at all, their system of ethics requiring them to suppress every more tender feeling of the heart.

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Footnote 2724:

Eurip. Alcest. 354.

Footnote 2725:

Il. ψ. 135. Eurip. Orest. 128, 451.

Footnote 2726:

Plut. Aristid. § 14.

Footnote 2727:

Plut. Alex. § 72.

Footnote 2728:

Cf. Luc. Calum. non Tem. Cred. § 17. Xenoph. iii. 3. 1.

Footnote 2729:

This was forbidden at Athens. Cf. Plut. Solon. § 21. Eurip. Orest.
691. Androm. 826. Hom. Il. τ. 288. Eurip. Hec. 655. Klausen, Comm. in
Æschyl. Choeph. p. 86.

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