[26] Cicero, De legibus, ii. 26. See also Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 105 sq.
[27] Digesta, xlvii. 12, ‘De sepulchro violato.’
[28] Wilda, Das Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 975 sqq.
Like living men the dead are sensitive to insults and fond of praise; hence respect must be shown for their honour and self-regarding pride. De mortuis nil nisi bonum; οὐ γὰρ ἐσθλὰ κατθανοῦσι κερτομεῖν ἐπ’ ἀνδράσιν.[29] In Greece custom required that at the funeral meal the virtues of the deceased should be enumerated and extolled,[30] and calumny against a dead person was punished by law.[31] The same was the case in ancient Egypt.[32] In Greenland, after the interment, the nearest male relative of the dead commemorated in a loud plaintive voice all the excellent qualities of the departed.[33] Among the Iroquois the near relatives and friends approached the body in turn and addressed it in a laudatory speech.[34]
[29] Archilochus, Reliquiæ, 40.
[30] Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 122 sq.
[31] Rohde, Psyche, p. 224.
[32] Diodorus Siculus, i. 92. 5. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 322.
[33] Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 218.
[34] Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 175, n. 2.