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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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].
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.
