The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

To make sure that no one disturbed the bones, directions were sometimes left in wills that the grave of the testator be watched by slaves[233].

These inscriptions, if they contained imprecations so elaborate as that presented above, must have been rather extended. In some states of Greece, the inscription was very short. The Sicyonians, on the columns which they raised to the dead, usually placed the name of the departed, without stating his ancestry, but exhorting the passer-by to wish well to his remains[234]. Lycurgus would not permit the Spartans to inscribe the name of the deceased on the tomb, unless he had fallen in battle; or if the deceased were a woman, unless she had died in some sacred office[235].

At Athens, there are found monuments inscribed to deceased children and it would seem that this honor was bestowed without reference to the age of the dead. A tomb has been discovered with an inscription to a child of seven that was lost on a mountain[236]. Two other epitaphs are dedicated to children who were but two years old ere “disease had stopped their life[237].”

If we still possessed the book of Diodorus, or according to some, Heliodorus, entitled “About Monuments,” it would undoubtedly prove a mine of information. Plutarch has referred to him, to determine the places of sepulture both of Themistocles[238] and Hyperides[239].

In the tomb, with the dead body, were placed various vessels and trinkets. In the coffin found at Same, were two small lacrimatories of unbaked clay; a wine beaker; the kylix, a kind of libation vessel; the prochoos, a pitcher usually having two handles and used for holding pure wine or water; an alabaster box for jewels, called the kylichne; and a bacchic mirror cover[240]. The child’s coffin, previously mentioned[241], disclosed eleven different vessels and four clay images of Gaea Olympia in a sitting posture. The vessels were three lecyths, two large cotyli, one small cotylus, used for catching the blood of the victim which was sacrificed, a lamp, a diota, and a sort of child’s plaything[242].

Besides these vessels, tombs have been found in which all sorts of jewelry figured as parts of the contents, such as golden finger rings set with garnets, gold ear-rings wrought in fantastic shapes, and cornelian ear-rings. Some of the tombs contain wreaths of laurel, oak, olive, or myrtle, sometimes interwoven with gold; while a brass buckle with an allegorical representation of Cupid in the palestra, a golden girdle, female statues, figures of Persephone and Hecate, a statue of a priestess of Dodona with a dove on her shoulder, and mirrors with brazen handles and backs have all been found[243].

This custom of interring valuables with the deceased was very old. When the so-called grave of Alcmene was opened by Agesilaus, there were discovered within, a small brazen armlet and two jars, containing earth which had become petrified. This grave must have been dug in very ancient times, for tablets of brass were found within written in unintelligible characters[244].

This practice of burying various articles with the dead must have continued during the best period of art in Greece. That fact is attested by the workmanship of the vases that have been exhumed. They are many of them of the finest quality and artistic excellence. The custom however, had died out before the Christian era, for the colonists whom Caesar had sent out to restore Corinth, in moving the ruins and digging open the sepulchres, came across works of pottery and brass, the workmanship of which was greatly admired and the vessels sold readily at fabulous prices as curiosities[245].

There seems to have been no one place at Athens selected for the situation of all the tombs except for those who died in poverty. Those Athenians who left no land or money behind them were entombed in a public cemetery. This place was situated just outside the city[246] on one of the roads to the Peiraeus[247]. The Itonic gate, through which the bodies of these paupers were carried, was, on this account, called the “gravegate[248].” The people of the richer classes, when they possessed a bit of land, often directed that they should be interred therein; so it happened that there was no large assemblage of graves at any one place. In one of Demosthenes’s orations, the stone-cutter comes to the house that he may complete the tomb in the neighboring field[249]. More frequently the graves were constructed by the side of some much traveled road where the passer-by might observe the monument. From an inscription on a child’s tomb, we learn that “her parents sorrowfully buried her at the junction of three roads[250].” The square cut tombs of Isocrates and his relations, which have been described, were situated near the Cynosarges, the great exercising ground[251], while Thucydides was buried in the family burying ground of Cimon[252], near the Melitic gate[253].