It was the duty of every good citizen to visit the graves of his dead not only on the days established for special services, but to come there much oftener since the Greeks believed that the deceased was always pleased by the presence of his friends of the former life. On the same principle the dead were supposed to be tormented by the visits of those formerly inimical. The claimant to the estate of Astyphilus is made by Isaeus to declare that it was generally accepted that the presence of his father would be pleasing to the deceased, and so the parent was carried out to the grave although in feeble health[314]. Further along in his speech the same man asserts that the father of Astyphilus had strictly forbidden the father of the defendant or any one connected with him to come near his tomb[315]. The same belief causes Teucer to restrain Odysseus from touching the grave of Ajax lest he offend the deceased hero[316].
It is proper now to consider the conduct and dress during the period of mourning. As with us, the predominant manifestation of sorrow was abstinence from every pleasure[317]. Admetus weepingly declares to his wife that, when she is gone, he will put an end to all the feasts and meetings in his house, at which they had been wont mutually to enjoy wine, garlands, and song[318].
The other tokens of bereavement were the cutting of the hair and the wearing of black garments. These customs seem to have been practiced at a very early period and to have lasted well down through Grecian history. The tragic poets bear witness to their prevalence. Orestes shears his hair, and his sister is dressed in black[319]; Helen mourns her husband with both these signs of grief[320]; the chorus consider the advisibility of employing the badges of sorrow while Alcestis is still hovering between life and death[321]; and Iphigenia begs her mother not to mourn her by severing her locks and donning robes of sable hue[322]. Even for a long time after Grecian independence had been lost, the same customs existed. Plutarch praised his wife for not defiling herself or her maids nor putting on a black garment[323]. Artemidorus, in his work on the interpretation of dreams, says that a black dress is used for mourning[324]. Athenaeus is authority for the fact that in his time the mourner still polled his head[325]. Plutarch seems to differ about this clipping of the hair. He says: “In the case of mourning among the Greeks, the women have their hair cut close, but the men wear it long since it is customary for the men when not afflicted by grief to have it cut short and for the woman to let it grow long[326].” In another place he declares that you may take away a man’s signs of mourning by cutting his hair and drying his tears, and still bring him no comfort[327]. Undoubtedly, in Plutarch’s time, the fashion had changed and the later Greeks were wont to let their hair grow long to indicate their sorrow.
The underlying thought in this matter of mourning was that one manifested his sympathy with the dead by making himself appear as hideous as possible[325]. In the early times, when the Greeks wore beards and long hair, the desired effect might be gained by polling but, when the Roman fashion of close-cutting had been adopted, it must have looked as odd to see the hair streaming down the neck of a bereaved man, as one of the enormous ruffs worn by Raleigh would appear in New York to-day. Whatever may have been the custom in the Romanized era of Plutarch, it is very certain that black robes and shorn hair betokened bereavement during the largest portion of the history of Greece.
It was, perhaps, in imitation of the Persians, that the Greeks, on the death of a general, clipped even the manes and tails of their horses. When, on the expedition of Mardonius, his trusted commander, Masistius, was slain, the Persians mutilated their horses after that fashion[328]. At the death of the gluttonous young Hephaestion, in consequence of disobedience to his physician’s orders, Alexander, thoroughly orientalized, ordered all the mules and horses to be clipped[329]. Not satisfied with this, he must needs tear down all the battlements of the neighboring cities, so that they, too, might have the appearance of being shorn[330]. Aelian, very suitably, terms this latter extravagance, “grieving according to the custom of the barbarians[331].”
The other distinguishing feature of the mourning, the adoption of black robes, although it usually indicates actual bereavement, was sometimes employed before the loss had really come, but when it was impending. Thus, when the sister-in-law of Lysias was summoned to the prison where her husband awaited death, she came clad, as was befitting, in a black garment[332]. It was this fashion at Athens, of wearing black to show the death of a relative that gave point to Pericles’s dying assertion: “None of my fellow citizens have, through me, been obliged to assume a sable garb[333].”
White was worn sometimes on the death of a great general or other high official. Timoleon was borne to the grave accompanied by a procession of Syracusans, crowned with garlands and clothed in white. Pure white[334] is also the color which Plato directs to be worn on the death of a priest[335].
It may not have been the rule in all the states of Greece, as it was at Athens, to make black the mourning color. Sparta, perhaps out of a feeling of antagonism to Athens, appears to have employed white mourning, referred to by Socrates as “robes rinsed in water[336].”
It was the custom among the Greeks, when a good character like Alcestis, had departed, to pray that the earth might rest lightly upon the mortal frame[337], but where a man had done nothing except evil, they wished that mother earth, like a huge night-mare, might pin him down[338]. The ancient Greeks have departed, and, except when the prying hand of the archaeologist has torn away their surroundings, they have lain undisturbed for many centuries in the bosom of the earth. Let it be our wish that she still continue to rest lightly on good and bad alike.