Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals

by J. C. Lawson

They kiss her very stones, they clasp her dust in fond caresses.’

The incident in this ballad with which we are concerned is the exhumation and burning of the remains of those dead warriors who had valiantly maintained the liberty of their native town; and there need be little doubt that the incident is actually historical, for the story is confirmed by a second ballad in the same collection[1282]; but in any case all that concerns us here is the fact that the motive for such an act was known and appreciated by the authors of the two ballads.

Now in order to understand this motive, it must be remembered that the general custom of the Church in Greece is to exhume the bones of the dead at the expiration of three years from the time of burial, when dissolution is expected to be complete. Hence the kinsfolk for whose remains the men of Parga were concerned were those who had been recently buried and could not yet have attained complete dissolution. They feared that the Turks would disturb and desecrate the graves and thus obstruct the proper course of natural decay; and they therefore decided to adopt the alternative method of disintegration, and by cremation to effect speedily and surely that end which, without friends at hand to guard the graves from the molestation of foes and infidels, could not be secured by leaving the dead to the slow action of the earth. This decision then reveals a clear recognition of the superiority of cremation over inhumation as a means of compassing the final dissolution of the dead; and equally clear is the motive for seeking that end; it was not fear on their own account—to that feeling indeed the men of Parga had proved themselves strangers—but simply love and respect for the brave men who had fought, and perhaps had fallen, in the defence of freedom.

Since then the exhumation and cremation of the dead constituted in this case an act of love towards them, the same action in the case of suspected vrykolakes can never have been an act of hostility. It was rather a measure beneficial alike to the living and to the dead. To the living it gave immunity from the assaults of vrykolakes, and this without doubt was commonly the uppermost or indeed the only thought in the minds of those who had recourse to it; but to the dead too it gave repose. And indeed I cannot but suppose that this is the reason why the Greeks, when first confronted with the horror of vrykolakes, chose to burn them rather than to follow the Slavonic custom of impaling them. To impale them might have given security to the living, but it appeared as an act of cruelty and hostility against the dead. Cremation, by effecting immediate dissolution and the consequent severance of the dead from this world, was bound to give equal security to the living, and at the same time was an act of mercy and kindness to the dead. In effect, the new motive of dread which came along with Slavonic influence never excluded the old motive of love which inspired the sons of warriors at Parga no less than the chief of Homeric warriors at his comrade’s funeral, and perhaps will, if occasion arise, prove itself not yet extinct. Cremation, though often in recent times employed primarily as a safeguard for the living, has all along been felt to confer also a benefit on the dead, an even surer and speedier benefit than inhumation secured.

Now if this feeling existed, and if there existed also from early times, as I have shown to be probable, a system of combining cremation of a ceremonial kind with actual inhumation, it might reasonably be expected that many who recognised the superior merit of cremation, but had not the means to carry out so costly a rite in full, would have availed themselves of the inexpensive ceremonial practice. This, I believe, is what occurred, and in this I shall seek the explanation of a custom which, like the practice of real cremation, has been bequeathed by Ancient to Modern Greece.

In the funerals of Ancient Greece the procession, which escorted the dead body from the room where it had lain in state to the pyre or the grave, carried torches. Where cremation was to be employed, these were doubtless used for kindling the pyre; the fire brought from the dead man’s home in this world was used to speed him on his way to the next. But when inhumation was practised, what became of these torches? Was the fire brought from the dead man’s home put to no purpose? Or were the torches thrown into the grave along with him? That we cannot tell, for the torches were quickly perishable. But there is one object commonly found in tombs which is suggestive of the association of fire with the buried body. That common object is a lamp. Here again we cannot tell whether that lamp was lighted when it was put in the grave. Some that have been dug up have certainly been in use, for they bear marks of the flame; but of course they may have been in every-day use before they were devoted to the service of the dead. Yet the few facts known would at least fit the theory that the procession which carried out the dead man carried also fire from his home to the grave, and that either the torches themselves or a lamp lighted from them was put in the grave beside the body. If that view were correct, it would further be note-worthy that most of the lamps found are of little intrinsic value and of late date[1283]. Now the fact that they are mostly worthless implies that they were often given by poor persons, or, if the other contents of the grave be of value, that the lamp was not brought as a gift for its intrinsic worth or beauty, but for some practical purpose; while the fact that they are mainly of late date means that the practice of putting them in the graves increased in frequency during the period which begins with the fifth century B.C.—that is to say, during that period in which we have already noted an increasing preference for cremation. Further the increase in the frequency of lamps makes it improbable that they are to be reckoned as part and parcel of the ordinary furniture of a grave; for the lekythi and other vases which were the ordinary gifts to the dead had already in the fifth century assumed a conventional character. Any fresh departure therefore after that century, or any increase in the frequency of one particular object among the contents of graves, must be a sign of some new or more strongly marked feeling towards the dead. Now all these facts and inferences are intelligible on one hypothesis; and that hypothesis is that the lamps found in the graves were put there lighted and burning, as the ceremonial minimum of the rite of cremation for which a growing preference is evident during some four centuries before the Christian era.

When we pass on to the early days of Christianity, a similar series of facts meets our view. The Church officially rejected and reprobated the practice of cremation. Converts therefore were bound to use inhumation; and this obligation probably excited the less repugnance, in that interment was no new thing to them, but had always been alternative, if slightly inferior, to cremation. But while even cheerfully obeying the law of the Church thus far, they clung to many of the details of their old funeral-custom, some of which were allowed by the Church, others disallowed. The practice of laying out the dead in rich and choice robes continued and called down strong rebuke from St Jerome[1284]; the excessive lamentation and the use of hired mourners at the lying-in-state provoked St Chrysostom to threats of excommunication[1285]; yet both these customs still obtain. But the custom of carrying torches in the funeral-procession was continued without even a protest on the part of the Church. Perhaps it was felt to be a harmless concession to ancient custom; perhaps then as now ecclesiastical taste even favoured the consumption of many candles in religious ceremonies. At any rate the fact is clear that the pagan custom of carrying torches in the procession held a place also in Christian ritual. What was the reason for which the common people held to their old custom? The torches were not needed any longer to kindle pyres; for actual cremation was abolished by the Church. Nor were they needed to give light to the procession; for Christian funerals, except in times of persecution, took place in open daylight. The reason was, I believe, that by means of these torches fire was carried along with the dead from his home to his grave, and that there a ceremonial act, a semblance of cremation, was combined with the rite of inhumation. And there are some indications that the fire brought to the grave-side was actually associated in some way with the dead body. In a disquisition ‘about them that sleep,’ which passed for a work of St Athanasius[1286], there is a recommendation to burn a mixture of oil and wax at the grave of the dead; and though the practice inculcated is disguised as ‘a sacrifice of burnt-offering to God,’ it is possible to attribute it to a less Jewish and more Greek motive, a desire to keep up the old custom of cremation, be it only in a ceremonial form. Again we have evidence that the custom of burning lights at the graves of the dead was commonly followed for some non-Christian purpose; for the Council of Eliberis saw fit to forbid it under pain of excommunication[1287]. This non-Christian purpose will explain itself in the light of some modern customs.

There is a custom well known in Modern Greece which consists in the maintenance of what is called ‘the unsleeping lamp’ (τὸ ἀκοίμητο καντῆλι). A fair general idea of it may be given by saying that after a funeral a light is kept continuously burning either in the room where death took place or at the grave for a period of either forty days or three years. This variation in time and place requires examination. In customs, as in other things, there is a right way and a wrong way; variety in observance is not original; there is a proper time and a proper place.

First then, which is the proper place for this particular custom, the chamber of death or the grave-side?

The localities, in which that form of the custom which I shall show to be correct in this particular has come most conspicuously under my own observation, are Aráchova, a village near Delphi; Leonídi on the east coast of Laconia; a cemetery in the Thriasian plain belonging, I think, to the village of Kalývia; and the island of Aegina. In the last-mentioned it is an ordinary lantern which is used; it is placed at the head of the grave, and for forty days after the funeral is so trimmed and tended that the flame is not once extinguished. At Aráchova and in the Thriasian plain each grave is provided with an erection capable of sheltering a naked light. Some of the erections are like doll’s-houses with door and windows complete; others are mere boxes; others again are no more than a few tiles or flat stones set on edge to form a square and covered over with a roof of the same material. At Aráchova the lamps contained in these erections are tended both evening and morning, and the obligation to keep them burning uninterruptedly for three years, until the exhumation of the body, is strongly felt and scrupulously discharged. In the Thriasian plain the light is kept burning with equal care, but I am uncertain for what period. At Leonídi some shelters of the same kind as those described are in use; but there are also more elaborate tombs at the head of which is built a small recess below the level of the ground or at any rate under the slab of stone or marble which covers the grave, and in this recess, which is closed with a small door allowing the passage of air through its chinks, is placed ‘the unsleeping lamp.’ Here again the lights are kept burning until the exhumation takes place, and the lamps are fed and trimmed every evening. At Gytheion a device not dissimilar, though ruder, was formerly employed; among some old graves, now neglected, from which, it appeared, the bones of the dead had never been exhumed, I noticed several plastered over with a rough concrete in which was sunk at the head of the grave an iron vessel, like a sauce-pan docked of its handle; this vessel had presumably served the purpose of sheltering a light.