These lines are based on a belief which is fairly general among the Greek peasants, that consciousness of, and concern for, the things of this world are not broken off finally at the moment of death, but continue in some degree until the body of the dead is completely dissolved. Here the memories of love are spoken of as lasting until the priests quench the burning lights, which can be none other in the context than the ‘unsleeping lamp’—for three, the number mentioned, is merely a number of peculiar virtue and has no special force. It follows then that the quenching of the lights is understood in the passage to denote the accomplishment of that process of dissolution, which, though it mean the cessation of all intercourse with this upper world, is yet earnestly desired. Here in fact are plain words of popular poetry which recognise the connexion of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ with the dissolution of the body, and make the quenching of the one signify the completion of the other. It is going but a short step further to suppose that the presence of the lamp’s flame at the grave was originally intended to advance the process of dissolution—or, in other words, that the maintenance of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ at the grave until the body is finally dissolved is an act of ceremonial cremation.
This supposition gains yet more in probability when we compare with the custom of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ another not dissimilar custom which obtains in Zacynthos. There, as elsewhere, candles or lamps are lighted about the dead body while it is lying in state, and fire from them is carried to the grave. But, arrived there, instead of lighting an ‘unsleeping lamp,’ the bearers of the candles drop them into the grave beside the corpse. In this we have a close parallel to the ancient custom of putting a lamp, probably enough, as I have suggested, a lighted lamp, into the grave; and at the same time it cannot but be intimately connected with the custom of the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ the purpose of which is now known to concern the dissolution of the dead body. I claim then that the series of customs which we have reviewed, exhibiting as they do an intention to associate fire in some close way with the buried body and, as in the modern form of the custom, to associate it therewith until the process of dissolution is complete, find a common explanation in the continuance of a practice already exemplified in earlier ages, the practice of ceremonial cremation in conjunction with the full burial rite.
Nor is this explanation open to attack on the ground that a mere lamp lighted near the dead body bears so little outward resemblance to real cremation. To the outside observer the ceremonial act may seem a mere travesty of that for which it is substituted; but to the persons concerned the presence of fire, in however small a volume, may have seemed sufficient; for in all ritual it is not the act, but the intention, which has value. I have already pointed out how interment was occasionally reduced to an equally ineffective minimum; but I may perhaps cite a still closer parallel—another case in which a lamp is thought to have done duty for a real fire. There was in old time a custom, to which several ancient writers refer[1290], of keeping a lamp burning both day and night in the Prytaneum or in the chief temple of a Greek city; and both Athens and Tarentum are said to have had these lamps so constructed that they could hold a supply of oil sufficient to last a whole year. Such lamps, it has been suggested[1291], represented the fire on the city’s hearth which was not allowed to go out. The purpose of the lamp was clearly not to give light—for then it need not have been kept burning by day as well as by night—but it was a labour-saving appliance for keeping the sacred fire ever burning. The small flame was in fact a rudimentary fire. Thus all that I am supposing is that a lamp could represent a real fire just as well at the tomb as in the Prytaneum.
If then my explanation of the modern custom is right, the fact that the common-folk, though they have for many centuries employed inhumation as the ordinary Christian rite, have clung at the same time to a ceremonial form of cremation which they still connect in some way with the dissolution of the buried corpse, is additional proof of the favour with which the quicker and surer rite was formerly, and perhaps here and there still is, regarded.
Thus then the study of ordinary funeral-usage has confirmed the conclusions drawn in preceding chapters from the study of a certain abnormal state of after-death existence. As incorruptibility was the greatest bane to the dead, so dissolution was the greatest boon that the living could give them. This dissolution was to be effected by one of two methods, cremation and inhumation, which in theory were alternative but in practice were frequently combined. The combination of them was due in the first instance to the amalgamation of two races to which they respectively appertained; but in later times the racial difference between the two rites was obliterated, and they were judged on their own merits, with the result that a preference for cremation manifested itself in funeral-usage. This preference was due to a recognition that cremation was a quicker and surer method of dissolution, and is itself strong testimony to the desire to effect dissolution. The end to which both rites were directed was the same, but since one led to that end more quickly and surely than the other, it was rightly preferred.
Further the motive which prompted the living to effect the dissolution of the dead was not in general selfish; for dissolution, as we have seen, was a boon to the dead. That complete severance from this world, which came with the dissolution of the body, was in some way for the benefit of the dead. Patroclus sought for it, and Achilles granted his petition through love; and some three thousand years later the men of Parga are found effecting the rapid dissolution of their kinsfolk with the same motive. Only in one set of circumstances was the selfish motive of fear in operation, namely, where, the resuscitated dead were, by the influence of Slavonic superstition, invested with the character of malignant blood-thirsty monsters against whom self-defence was imperative, and whose complete severance from this world was desirable as a safeguard for the living. But such circumstances were the exception. The rule was that cremation and inhumation alike were means to the dissolution of the dead and their complete severance from this world, and the motive which prompted living men to seek that end was love of the dead who would in some way benefit thereby.
CHAPTER VI.
THE BENEFIT OF DISSOLUTION.
Thus far the investigation of customs and beliefs in ancient and modern times relating to the treatment of the dead has established the fact that the dissolution of the body was a thing eagerly to be desired in the interests of the dead. With complete disintegration the summum bonum of the dead, so far as it was in the power of their surviving friends to win it for them, was secured. It remains to consider in what way the dead profited thereby.
Now I have hitherto spoken designedly of dissolution as a benefit, not to the souls of the dead nor to their bodies, but simply ‘to the dead’ without further specification. It will now limit the range of discussion as to the nature of the summum bonum to which dissolution gave access, if we can first answer the old question, cui bono? Is it the body alone or the soul alone or both conjointly on which the benefit is conferred? This question once answered, we shall have eliminated a certain number of possible conceptions of future happiness.
That the body alone might have been the recipient of the whole benefit is an idea which no one will entertain. Was it then the soul alone to which the dissolution of the body brought gain? Death, as we have learnt, was not a complete and final severance of soul from body; the soul might re-enter and re-animate the corpse. Was dissolution then believed to complete the severance?