And laid them in a golden vase, wrapped round
With caul, a double fold. Within the tents
They placed them softly, wrapped in delicate lawn;
Then drew a circle for the sepulchre,
And, laying its foundations to enclose
The pyre, they heaped the earth, and, having reared
A mound, withdrew.”
These lines are from William Cullen Bryant’s translation of the Iliad, and give one a very good idea of the cineration of a warrior. In times of peace the favorite animals of the deceased were placed with him on the funeral pile, and he was covered with costly robes and rugs. Not infrequently the pyre was decorated with an abundance of flowers, and rich folks had their trinkets and jewels thrown into the fire. The weapons of warriors were consumed with them. The extravagance at funerals finally became so great among the Greeks that special laws had to be enacted to put a stop to it. Solon ordained, for instance, that no more than three robes and one bull should be placed upon the cremation pyre. After the bones were placed in an urn, the Greeks covered it with the fat of the animals that had been slaughtered at the funeral ceremonies, to protect it from the influence of the atmosphere. Many of the celebrated men of Greece were cremated: Solon, Alcibiades, Timoleon, Philopoemen, Plutarch, Pyrrhus, and many others.
According to Pindar (Ol. 6, 23, Nem. 9, 54), during the combat of the Seven against Thebes, funeral pyres were burning at each of the seven gates of the city, to consume those slain in battle. The heathens, as they are called, were not to be charged with any lack of respect to their departed dead. On the contrary, the most tender sentiments conceivable were attached to the practice of cremation. There was a Theban regulation that no one should build a house without a specific repository for the dead.
Æneas and the other Trojans, who escaped with him from the burning city of the hundred gates (as Priam’s capital was sometimes called), introduced cremation (Virgil’s Æneid, B. IV, 7) into Carthage, if it did not exist there previous to their arrival. It is possible that the inhabitants of Carthage, which was one of the Phœnician cities in Africa, derived the practice from the mother-country. At all events, the tragedy of love, in which Æneas was involved, ended with the suicide of Dido, who cremated herself.