[41] It lies at the root of the stories of Demeter and Demophoon (or Triptolemos), and also that of Thetis and Achilles, when the goddess, laying the mortal child in the fire, περιῄρει τὰς θνητὰς σάρκας, ἔφθειρεν ὃ ἦν αὐτῷ θνητόν, in order to make it immortal (cf. Preller, Dem. u. Perseph., 112); cf. also the custom observed at certain festivals (? of Hecate, cf. Bergk, PLG. iii, 682) of lighting fires in the streets and leaping through the flames carrying children, see Grimm (E.T.), p. 625; cf. also Cic., Div. i, 47: o praeclarum discessum cum ut Herculi contigit mortali corpore cremato in lucem animus excessit! Ov., M., ix, 250: Luc., Herm., 7; Q.S. v, 640 ff. (For more about the “purifying” effects of fire, see below, chap. ix, [n. 127].)
[42] Nothing else than this is implied by the words of Η 409–10, οὐ γὰρ τις φειδὼ νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων γίγνετ’, ἐπεί κε θάνωσι πυρὸς μειλισσέμεν ὦκα. The souls of the dead must be quickly “assuaged with fire” (their longing gratified) and so their bodies are burnt. Purification from what is mortal and unclean, which Dieterich (Nekyia, 197, 3) thinks is referred to in this passage, is certainly not suggested as such by the words of the poet.
[43] Light may be incidentally thrown on the question of the transition from burial to cremation by such a story as that which an Icelandic Saga tells of a man who is buried by his own wish before the door of his house; “but as he returned and did much mischief his body was exhumed and burnt and the ashes scattered over the sea” (Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, 499). We often read in old stories how the body of a dead man who goes about as a vampire is burnt. His soul is then exorcized and cannot come back again.
[44] It is natural to think of Asiatic influence. Cremation hearths have recently (1893) been discovered in Babylonia.
[45] See Helbig, D. Hom. Epos aus d. Denkm. erl., 42 f.
[46] That the men of the “Mycenaean” culture, though much affected by foreign influences, were Greeks—the Greeks of the Heroic age of whom Homer speaks—may now be regarded as certain (see esp. E. Reisch, Verh. Wien. Philol., 99 ff.).
[47] See Schliemann, Mycenae, E.T., 155, 165, 213–14.
[48] Helbig. Hom. Epos2, p. 52.
[49] Cf. K. Weinhold, Sitzb. Wien. Ak., 1858 (Phil. hist. Cl.), xxix, pp. 121, 125, 141. The remarkable coincidences between the Mycenaean and these North European burial customs do not seem as yet to have been noticed. (The object of this elaborate foundation and covering may have been to preserve the corpse from decay longer, and especially from the effects of damp.)
[50] Also in the domed grave of Dimini: Ath. Mitth., xii, 138.