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].

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 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, 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:

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].

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].