The partial nature of the burning requires a more detailed consideration. In the Homeric burials, burning is universal. It must be regarded, according to the Poems, as the established Achaian custom of the day, wherever inhumation was normally conducted. And for burial there was a distinct reason, namely, that without it the Shade of the departed was not allowed to join the company of the other Shades, so that the unburied Elpenor is the first to meet Odysseus (Od. XI. 51) on his entrance into the Underworld; and the shade of Patroclos entreats Achilles to bury him as rapidly as may be, that he may pass the gates of Aïdes (Il. XXIII. 71). I think the proof of the universal use of fire in regular burials at this period is conclusive.
Not only do we find it in the great burials of the Seventh Book (429-32), and in the funerals of Patroclos (XXIII. 177) and Hector (XXIV. 785-800), but we have it in the case of Elpenor (Od. XII. 11-13), whom at first his companions had left uninterred, and for whom therefore we must suppose they only did what was needful under established custom. Perhaps a yet clearer proof is to be found in a simile. Achilles, we are told, wept while the funeral pile he had erected was burning, all night long, the bones of Patroclos, "as a father weeps when he burns the bones of his youthful son" (XXIII. 222-5). This testifies to a general practice.
In the case of notable persons, the combustion was not complete. For not the ashes only, but the bones, were carefully gathered. In the case of Patroclos, they are wrapped in fat, and put in an open cup or bowl (phialè) for temporary custody (XXIII. 239-44) until the funeral of Achilles, when with those of Achilles himself, similarly wrapped, and soaked in wine, they are deposited in a golden urn (Od. XXIV. 73-7). In the case of Hector, the bones are in like manner gathered and lodged in a golden box, which is then placed in a trench and built over with a mass of stones (Il. XXIV. 793-8). Incomplete combustion, then, is common to the Homeric and the Mycenean instances. But in the case of the first tomb at Mycenæ, not only was there no collection of the bones for deposit in an urn, but they had not been touched; except in the instance of the middle body, where they had simply been disturbed, and the valuables perhaps removed, as hardly anything of the kind was found with it. In the case of the body on the north side, the flesh of the face remained unconsumed.
But though the use of fire was universal in honourable burial, burial itself was not allowed to all. Enemies, as a rule, were not buried. Hence the opening passage of the Iliad tells us that many heroes became a prey to dogs and birds (Il. I. 4). Such says Priam, before the conflict with Hector, he would make Achilles if he could (XXII. 42); and he anticipates a like distressing fate (66 seqq.) for himself. In the Odyssey, the bodies of the Suitors are left to be removed by their friends (XXII. 448; XXIV. 417). Achilles, indeed, buried Eëtion, king of Asiatic Thebes, with his arms, in the regular manner. "He did not simply spoil him, for he had a scruple in his mind" (Il. VI. 417); and no wonder; for Eëtion, king of the Kilikes, was not an enemy: that people does not appear among the allies of Troy in the Catalogue. Thus there was a variance of use; and there may have been cases of irregular intermediate treatment between the two extremes of honourable burial and casting out to the dogs.
5. With regard to the use of masks of gold for the dead, I hope that the Mycenean discoveries will lead to a full collection of the evidence upon this rare and curious practice. For the present, I limit myself to the following observations:
(1.) If not less than seven of these golden masks have been discovered at Mycenæ by Dr. Schliemann, then the use of them, on the occasion of these entombments, was not limited to royal persons, of whom it is impossible to make out so large a number.
(2.) I am not aware of any proof at present before us that the use of such masks for the dead of any rank or class was a custom prevalent, or even known, in Greece. There is much information, from Homer downwards, supplied to us by the literature of that country concerning burials; and yet, in a course of more than 1200 years, there is not a single allusion to the custom of using masks for the dead. It seems to be agreed that the passage in the works of Lucian, who is reckoned to have flourished in the second half of the second century, does not refer to the use of such masks. This might lead us to the conjecture that, where the practice has appeared, it was a remainder of foreign usage, a survival from immigration.
(3.) Masks have been found in tombs, not in Greece, but in the Crimea, Campania, and Mesopotamia. Our latest information on the subject is, I believe, the account mentioned in Dr. Schliemann's last report from Athens (pp xlvii, xlviii), of a gold mask found on the Phœnician coast over against Aradus, which is of the size suited for an infant only. It is to be remembered that heroic Greece is full of the marks of what I may term Phœnicianism, most of which passed into the usages of the country, and contributed to form the base of Hellenic life. Nor does it seem improbable, that this use of the metallic mask may have been a Phœnician adaptation from the Egyptian custom of printing the likeness of the dead on the mummy case. And, again, we are to bear in mind that Mycenæ had been the seat of repeated foreign immigrations.
(4.) We have not to deal in this case only with masks, but with the case of a breastplate in gold, which, however, could not have been intended for use in war; together with other leaves or plates of gold, found on, or apparently intended for, other portions of the person.
6. Lastly, with regard to the deposit of objects which, besides being characteristic, have unchangeable value, the only point on which I have here to remark is, their extraordinary amount. It is such, I conceive, as to give to these objects, and particularly to those of the First Tomb, an exceptional place among the sepulchral deposits of antiquity. I understand that their weight is about one hundred pounds troy, or nearly that of five thousand British sovereigns. It is difficult to suppose that this deposit could have been usual, even with the remains of a King; and it is at this point that I, for one, am compelled to break finally and altogether with the supposition, that this great entombment, in the condition in which Dr. Schliemann found it, was simply an entombment of Agamemnon and his company effected by Ægisthus and Clytemnestra, their murderers.
So far, with little argument, I have endeavoured fairly to set out the facts. Let me now endeavour to draw to a point the several threads of the subject, in order to deal with the main question, namely, whether these half-wasted, half-burned remains are the ashes of Agamemnon and his company? And truly this is a case, where it may be said to the inquirer, in figure as well as in fact,
"et incedis per ignes