[68] In Sparta and Tarentum: see Becker, Char.2 iii, 105 (E.T.3 p. 393). Acc. to Klearch. ap. Ath. 522 F certain men of Tarentum were struck by lightning and killed; they were then buried πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν of their houses and στῆλαι were put up in their honour. If they had really been the criminals that legend made them it would have been impossible, even in Tarentum, for them to have been buried within the walls of the city, still less before the doors of their houses—an honour given only to Heroes; cf. above, chap. iv, [n. 136]. The violent alteration of πρὸ τῶν θυρῶν into πρὸ τῶν πυλῶν in order to avoid this difficulty, is obviously rendered untenable by the previous ἑκάστη τῶν οἰκιῶν ὅσους κτλ. The legend is evidently a fiction and these διόβλητοι (to whom it appears, as Heroes, neither the funeral dirge nor the usual χοαί were offered) must have belonged to the class of those whom death by the flash of lightning raised to a higher and honoured rank (see [Append. 1]). Thus, too, the graves in the market at Megara mentioned by Becker must have been Hero-graves: see above, chap. iv, [n. 83]. These cases where the graves of Heroes are found in the middle of the city, in the market place, etc., show very plainly the essential difference that was held to exist between the Heroes and the ordinary dead.
[69] The μνῆμα κοινὸν πᾶσι τοῖς ἀπὸ Βουσέλου γενομένοις was a πολὺς τόπος περιβεβλημένος, ὥσπερ οἱ ἀρχαῖοι ἐνόμιζον: D. 43, 79. The Bouselidai composed not a γένος, but a group of five οἶκοι bound together by definitely traceable ties of kinship. The members of a γένος in its political sense no longer held graves in common possession: see Meier, de gentil. Att. 33; Dittenb., Hermes, 20, 4. The Κιμώνεια [194] μνήματα were also family-graves: Plu., Cim. 4, Marcellin. V. Th. 17, Plu., X Or., p. 838 B. It was always insisted on, for obvious reasons, that no stranger to the family should be laid in the family grave. But just as the penal clauses so often inscribed on graves of a later period were necessary to prevent the burial of strangers in those graves, so too Solon had to make a law in respect of graves ne quis alienum inferat: Cic., Lg. ii, 64.
[70] The speaker in Dem. 55, 13 ff., mentions the παλαιὰ μνήματα of the πρόγονοι of the earlier possessors of his χωρίον (country-estate). This custom of burying the family dead in the private ground of the family καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις χωρίοις συμβέβηκε. Timarchos is asked by his mother τὸ Ἀλωπέκῃσι χωρίον (which lay 11 or 12 stades away from the city walls) ἐνταφῆναι ὑπολιπεῖν αὐτῇ (in spite of which he sold it): Aeschin., Tim. 99. Examples in East Attica of walled-in family cemeteries with room for many graves: Belger, Localsage von den Gräbern Agamem., etc. (Progr. Berl. 1893), pp. 40–2. It was thus the very general custom to keep the family graves on their own ground and soil; and this corresponds closely enough with the oldest custom of all, that of burying the master of the house in his own home.—In Plu., Arist. 1, Demetr. Phal. mentions an Ἀριστείδου χωρίον ἐν ᾧ τέθαπται in Phaleron.
[71] Restriction of the growing magnificence of grave columns in Athens made by Demetr. Phal., Cic., Lg. ii, 66. (Penal clauses εἴ τίς κα θά[πτῃ ἢ ἐπί]σταμα ἐφιστᾷ κτλ. in a law from Nisyros [Berl. Phil. Woch. 1896, pp. 190, 420]: they probably do not refer to a general prohibition of tombstones altogether.)
[72] Cf. Curtius, Z. Ges. Wegebaus Gr., p. 262.
[73] Nemora aptabant sepulcris ut in amoenitate animae forent post vitam: Serv., A. v, 760. In lucis habitabant manes piorum: iii, 302; cf. ad i, 441; vi, 673. “My grave is in a grove, the pleasant haunt of birds,” says a dead man ὄφρα καὶ εἰν Ἄϊδι τερπνὸν ἔχοιμι τόπον, Epigr. Gr. 546, 5–14.
[74] Cf. the ins. from Keos, SIG. 877, 8–9. Eur. IT. 633 ff.: ξανθῷ τ’ ἐλαίῳ σῶμα σὸν κατασβέσω, καὶ . . . γάνος ξουθῆς μελίσσης ἐς πυρὰν βαλῶ.
[75] ἐναγίζειν δὲ βοῦν οὐκ εἴασεν, Plu., Sol. 21.
[76] προσφαγίῳ (at the funeral) χρῆσθαι κατὰ τὰ πάτρια, SIG. 877, 13. In general, however, the sacrifice of animals at the graves of private individuals gradually became rarer and rarer: see Stengel, Chthon. u. Todt. 430 f.
[77] Cf. esp. the ins. from Keos, l. 15 ff., 30. The ἐγχυτρίστριαι employed in old Athenian usage, [Pl.] Min. 315 C, seem to have been women who caught the blood of the sacrificed animals in bowls and purified the μιαινόμενοι with it. The name itself suggests it; to this effect is one among several other, clearly mistaken, explanations given by the Schol. to Min., loc. cit. (differently Sch. Ar., Vesp. 289).