Any man might join in the dismal march to the grave, but every woman was debarred the melancholy privilege, unless she had passed her sixtieth year[150], or was connected with the deceased by blood and was over sixteen years of age. There are two instances mentioned in literature when this law was violated. Lysias[151] refers to a daughter who followed her stepmother to the grave; while Terence, whose plays are adaptations and almost translations of the Greek comedies, makes poor Glycerium attend the funeral of her adopted sister, the beautiful Andrian[152]. Even in those cases, the exception is rather apparent than real; for, in each instance, affection has transmuted a nominal into an actual kinship.
There are some intimations of military funerals on the monuments, amphoras and vases that have been found in Grecian soil, as well as references to such pageants in the Greek authors. On a stamped plaque of terra cotta, in the collection of M. Rayet[153], appears a procession with two young men in military dress, possibly sons of the deceased, who march behind the women that surround the funeral car. The black figures on an amphora[154], represent the cortege as composed of women and some armed men mounted on chariots. A beautiful amphora from Cape Colias[155], is painted with some red figures. There, beside the scene of prothesis, are some knights preparing to follow the funeral convoy. They have lowered the points of their lances, in sign of mourning. It is not improbable that these soldiers escort a companion-in-arms to his last resting place. A passage from Plato[156], prescribing the order of the cortege for the interment of the first citizens of the state, directs that there shall march, at the head of the procession, young unmarried men, clothed in military costume, then that the boys go before the bier and sing the national hymn, with the girls following behind, and such of the women as happen to be beyond the age of child-bearing. Plutarch[157] writes, that armed soldiers escorted the urn which contained the ashes of Philopoemen.
VII.
BURNING OR INHUMATION?
Did the Greeks burn their dead like many nations of the ancient world, or did they bury them immediately like the majority of people since the Christian era? The question has been vigorously debated. Lucian, in a general way, declares that the fashion of the Greeks as contrasted with the various customs practiced respectively among the Persians, the Indians, the Scythians, and the Egyptians, was to cremate their dead[158]. Some have accepted this statement in a literal sense; on the other hand, a German scholar[159] of no little repute insists that “in the historic period, interment was universal.” The truth, as usual, lies between these extremes. Burial and cremation existed together at every period.
The ancient authors mention many cases outside of the Homeric period where the dead were burned. Let us take up the instances in chronological order and see whether they will not cover every era. Plutarch preserves a couplet of Archilochus, in which the writer bewails the drowning of his brother-in-law and declares that he would not so mourn, if his bones had been properly cremated[160]. Again, although Plutarch has properly stamped as incredible and legendary the story that the ashes of Solon were strewed about Salamis, still the fact that the tale received any credence shows that such a disposition of his remains was possible and probable[161]. Two centuries later, Isaeus gives as proof of the utter invalidity of Chariades’s claim to the property of Nicostratus, the fact that he had not cremated the body of the deceased nor even collected his bones[162]. The case of Timoleon is historical. His remains were not immediately laid away but were first incinerated[163]. When Philopoemen died, almost fifty years afterward, a similar fate befell his body[164]. Probably, following such precedents, Lycon, the philosopher, whose period of activity is unknown, left directions in his will, that his heir of the same name, together with two others, should attend to the expenses of his cremation and to the other customary solemnities[165]. It is safe, then, to conclude that the funeral pyre was used through all periods of Grecian history.
If, in a similar manner, a review is made of the cases of inhumation that are recorded, it will be found, in spite of those who accept Lucian so literally[166], and notwithstanding others who believe that inhumation was employed only in the mythical period[167], that the custom of immediate burial existed during every century and was always contemporaneous with cremation. In the first place, the graves that have been opened in modern times reveal the fact that burial without burning existed at a very early period[168].
The Athenians being ordered by an oracle to take up the bones of Theseus and lay them in an honorable place at Athens, were directed to the supposed grave by an eagle and there they found the coffin of a man of extraordinary size, with a sword and lance lying by it[169].