The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

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.