The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

Again the pretty myth of Alcestis would be completely spoiled, if we venture to assume that her body was burned. Even Lucian seems to admit exceptions to his rule that the Greeks always burned, when he speaks of an old man as “having one foot in the grave, if not the other[170].” That the Athenians of Solon’s time did sometimes, at least, employ burial is shown by the clever argument put forward by Solon, and the brilliant reply by Hereas in the dispute between Athens and Megara for the possession of Salamis. Solon contended that the island belonged rather to the Athenians on the ground that “the manner of burying in Salamis is in accordance with the custom of Athens and not that of Megara, for the Megarians inter the dead with their faces to the east, and the Athenians turn theirs to the west.” Hereas of Megara begs leave to differ, asserting that the Megarians likewise turn the faces of the dead toward the west; and, what is more, like the people of Salamis, they put three or four corpses in the same tomb, whereas the Athenians have a separate tomb for each[171]. Further reading shows that there was a law among the Athenians which compelled any man coming upon an unburied corpse, to bury it so that it may look toward the west[172].

At Sparta, inhumation was probably the prevailing custom, since we know that Lycurgus ordered the corpses to be buried in the city, that the people might become habituated to the sight of death[173].

We also know, to take a specific case, that the Spartan general Pausanias was buried in the area before the temple of Artemis[174]. To the same purport, is the description given by a Greek traveler of the simple custom among the Sicyonians of burying without inscribing the name of the deceased person’s father and we may assume that burial without cremation was resorted to in other states than Athens and Sparta[175].

This examination leads to the conclusion that burial and cremation existed throughout the entire history of Greece side by side. A certain old miser, choosing between the two methods, prefers to be simply buried, in order that his money, which he has hidden in his grave-garment, may go with him to the next world[176]. Plato makes Socrates in one of his dialogues speak as if he were quite uncertain whether his body would be burned or immediately interred[177]. Finally, apart from the evidence of manuscripts, we have an undeniable verification in the fact that tombs have been excavated both in Magna Graecia and in Greece itself in which the skeletons are flanked on either side by funeral urns, thus exhibiting both customs as taking place in the same family[178].

Probably burial and cremation stood with the Greeks somewhat in the relation which they seem about to attain with us. Although both methods may exist, the one may hold the supremacy and be, by far, the more frequently employed. Neither custom was ever entirely abandoned by the Hellenes, until the influence of the early Christian church was felt favoring interment after the Jewish practice. At present, there is a shrinking from cremation on the part of the great body of the civilized world, but who can tell what may be brought about when we have had such advocates of burning as Sir Thomas Browne, Dr. Lord, and Sir Henry Thompson? Our great countryman, Hawthorne, too, has given evidence of a predisposition, on his part, toward incineration although there is a touch of humor in his final suggestion. In his “English sketches,” he, characteristically, says “Among the classic marbles, I peeped into an urn that once contained the ashes of dead people, and the bottom still had an ashy hue. I like this mode of disposing of dead bodies, but it would be still better to burn them and scatter the ashes, instead of hoarding them up—to scatter them over wheat-fields or flower-beds.”

Most of the accounts which we have of the details of cremation are found in Homer. That great bard gives some idea of the minor customs which found place about the funeral pyre. From the account given to Achilles by Agamemnon, as being a later arrival in the land of shades, the Greeks were wont, it would seem, to sacrifice “fat sheep and crooked-horned oxen” about the pyre and cover the deceased with unguents and honey[179]. Costly garments were also burned together with the corpse. In a play of Euripides, Hector tries to console the Muse-mother of Rhesus, by promising to burn with that departed warrior, “the splendor of ten thousand robes[180].”

This custom of burning with the deceased the garments most esteemed in life is mentioned by Lucian as one of the weaknesses that “mortal flesh is heir to[181].” With a great soldier, such as Eetion or Elpenor, the armor was also burned[182]. If the deceased were a distinguished general, like Patroclus or Achilles, all present marched thrice around the blazing body[183].

As long as the pile continued to throw out fitful gleams and to consume the corpse, even if it lasted all night, the friends of the deceased never ceased pouring out libations[184] and calling upon his manes[185]. Just before the flames had entirely vanished, wine was poured on to extinguish the pyre, and whatever bones were left unconsumed were collected with the rest of the ashes into a vessel and buried. In the burials both of Patroclus and of Hector, this vessel is made of pure gold and the remains of the Greek are covered with a double layer of fat, while soft purple robes perform the same office for the Trojan[186].

There has been some little doubt expressed as to whether the body was entombed at the place where it was burned. In Terence’s Andria, where the Greek burial is depicted, both ceremonies are conducted in one spot[187]. On the other hand, in the Electra of Sophocles, Orestes, to deceive his perfidious mother, has an urn brought to her that is said to contain his ashes after he had been incinerated in Phocis[188]. Again, as a matter of history, we know that after Philopoemen had been cremated, his remains were carried back to the city in a triumphal procession[189]. So, on the whole, it is quite likely that the Roman poet mixed the habits of the Romans with the customs of the Greeks. Perhaps he was inaccurately informed on the subject. The entombment probably took place in quite a different section from that in which the body was burned.