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

by J. C. Lawson

It appears then that the ancient custom of providing for the bodily wants of the departed is still alive, still significant; and surely it is incredible that a people who for more than two thousand years have continued to resort to the graves in which the dead bodies of their friends are laid, and there to set out meat and drink and clothing and other things suited to their erstwhile needs and pursuits, could all along have believed that these gifts were vanity, that the food could not strengthen, the wine could not cheer, the clothing could not warm the departed, but that they lay henceforth cold, tasteless, insentient. For if men had so believed, then a custom, not merely lacking the alliance of religious belief, but standing in perpetual antagonism to it, could not have held its ground, as this custom has done, century after century with vigour unabated. Rather the continuity of the custom might alone prove, even if other considerations had not guided us to the same conclusion, that the departed were held to possess a nature no less corporeal, an existence no less material, than that which belonged both to living men and to the gods whom they hoped to resemble even more closely hereafter. The same food as men ate was offered to the gods in sacrifice that they too might eat; why bring it to the dead, if they had no power to eat? The wine that men drank was poured out for the gods in libation, that they too might drink; why waste it upon the soil of the grave, if the dead had no power to drink? A robe such as Athenian women wore was presented to Athene year by year, that she might wear it; why furnish the dead with gifts of raiment, if it must rot unworn? It is impossible to evade the conclusion that the same bodily needs and propensities were ascribed by the Greek folk to the departed as to living men and to deathless gods.

Thus then the people of Greece are shown to have pursued constantly two aims in their treatment of the dead—to ensure the dissolution of the body, and also to provide the body with the necessaries of existence. Unless therefore anyone is prepared to suppose that the Greek people have been constantly actuated by two conflicting motives, the desire to annihilate and the desire to keep alive, dissolution cannot have meant to them annihilation, but rather a modification of the conditions of bodily existence; and that modification can only have meant that the existence of the body in this world indeed ended—for the substance laid in the grave vanished—but continued in another world. But if bodily existence continued in that other world whither the soul too sped, the body and the soul having reached the same place would surely not be imagined to remain separate, but to be re-united. The eagerness for dissolution meant therefore eagerness for the re-union of body and soul.

And there is a good means of testing the popular belief even as regards this last step. If the body and soul were really believed to be re-united as soon as dissolution was complete, the dead man in the lower world would assuredly be as well able to take care of himself as he had been while dwelling in this world, and the obligation of his relatives to provide him with food would cease, although of course they might, voluntarily and without any compulsion of duty, continue their gifts[1355]. But it would be at any rate permissible, on this theory, to discontinue all care for the dead when once his body was no longer helpless but restored to its activity by re-union with the soul; and it is to be expected that the Greek people should sometimes avail themselves of the exemption from the task of feeding and otherwise tending the dead. Such action would be the natural outcome of the belief that dissolution meant the re-union of body and soul; and if I can show that such action has been or is commonly taken, the existence of the belief will have borne the best test, the demonstration of a custom arising from it.

The period required for dissolution, according to common belief, is either forty days or three years—the former being the really popular period, while the latter was fixed indeed by the Church but in many districts has been popularly accepted. Hence, if my views are correct, the meals provided for the dead and all other marks of care ought to cease sometimes at the fortieth day and sometimes at the third anniversary.

As regards the present time, I do not know of any place, though it would not surprise me to hear of one, in which the so-called memorial feasts are discontinued after the fortieth day; but I have already cited evidence to show that the memorial-feasts of later date are definitely ecclesiastical in origin, and even retain to this day in one district a distinctly ecclesiastical tone[1356]. Therefore before a necessitous priesthood had succeeded in extending the custom, the ministration to the bodily wants of the dead clearly did cease when dissolution was popularly supposed to be complete. This conclusion is fortified by a most striking piece of evidence. The priests’ interest has naturally been limited to the food and wine supplied to the dead; for a supply of water they have not been dependent upon the perquisites of their office. Hence it comes that the water, which, as I noted above, is often supplied to the dead day by day, without any accompanying provision of food, ceases to be brought after the fortieth day. The wants of the dead man have been assiduously satisfied until, in popular reckoning, his dissolution is complete, and ecclesiastical influence has had no motive for encouraging a longer continuance of the custom so far as water is concerned. The fortieth day then was without doubt the old popular limit of the time during which the supply of all kinds of provision was obligatory.

Nowadays, on the contrary, the presents of food to the dead are generally continued up to the third anniversary, when exhumation takes place. Then, if the evidence of men’s eyes assures them that dissolution has been duly effected—that the body is gone and only the white bones remain—there is no further thought or provision for the dead; but in the rare cases in which the disintegration of the corpse is not yet complete, the relatives are not freed from their obligations. I witnessed a remarkable case of this kind at Leonídi on the east coast of Laconia. Two graves had just been opened when I arrived, and the utmost anxiety prevailed because in both cases there was only partial decomposition—in one case so little that the general outline of the features could be made out—and it was feared that one or both of the dead persons had become vrykolakes. The remains, when I saw them, had been removed to the chapel attached to the burial-ground. Meanwhile the question was debated as to what should be done with them. Dissolution must be effected both in the interests of the dead themselves and in those of the whole community. Extraordinary measures were required. The best measure—I am reporting what I actually heard—the best measure next to prayer (which had been tried without effect) was to burn the remains, and the bolder spirits of the village counselled this plan; but this would have been a breach of law and order, and the authorities of the place would have none of it. The priest proposed re-interment; but here the relatives objected. They had had trouble enough and expense enough; they had kept ‘the unsleeping lamp’ burning at the grave, and had provided all the memorial feasts; they would not consent to re-inter the body and to be at the same charge for an indefinite time, without knowing when the corpse might be properly ‘loosed’ and their tendance of it over. They would find some way of dissolving it, and that speedily.

And so indeed they did; and I, for a short time, was a spectator of the scene. On the floor of the chapel there were two large baskets containing the remains; there were men seated beside them busy with knives; and there were women kneeling at wash-tubs and scouring the bones that were handed to them with soap and soda. The work continued for two days. At the end of that time the bones were shown white and clean. All else had disappeared—had probably been burnt in secret, but the secret was kept close. It was therefore claimed and allowed that dissolution was complete.

The attitude adopted by the relatives on this occasion makes it perfectly clear that all the care expended on the dead is obligatory up to the time of dissolution, but no longer. So long as the fleshly substance remains in this world, provision of food must be made for it; when it has disappeared and only the bones are left, the departed cease to be dependent upon their surviving relatives, and no further anxiety is felt for their welfare.

Nor must it be supposed that the cleaning and whitening of the bones in the case which I have described had anything to do with a desire to preserve the bones as relics of the dead. Such a custom is indeed well known in Greek monasteries; at Megaspélaeon, for instance, the wealthiest and most famous monastery of Greece proper, there is an ossuary in which the monks take great pride. On one side, ranged against the wall, stands a large triangular heap of skulls; the opposite wall is decorated with cleverly-designed geometrical figures carried out in other bones; while in a corner perhaps may be seen a basket or two full of material awaiting the decorator’s convenience. My guide, I remember, pointed out to me the skulls of many of the distinguished monks of past time, and indicated with great satisfaction the spot which he had bespoken for his own. But the usage of monastic bodies has in truth little bearing upon the popular semi-pagan beliefs and customs; the practice of storing up the bones of members of a religious order in an ossuary is more closely akin to the old custom of preserving relics of saints and martyrs; it is to the usage of the common-folk in such matters that we must look. And what do they do with the white or whitened bones? They throw them away and expend no more care upon them. At Leonídi itself, close beside the fenced-in burial-ground, but unprotected from the intrusion of man or beast, there is a square open pit into which the bones of many generations have been tipped like rubbish, lying at random in confusion as they fell. Nor is this a solitary case. In far-away Sciathos I recall the same scene as at Leonídi—a chapel set on a wooded hill, the churchyard about it neatly kept and the graves of the recently buried well-tended, but just beyond its precincts a rough hole in the ground open to sun and rain, and ‘some two fathoms of bones,’ as a peasant said jestingly, lying in neglect and disarray. These pits, which are to be seen throughout Greece, are indeed dignified by the Church with the name of cemeteries (κοιμητήρια[1357]); but they command no respect on the part of the peasant. He will cross himself as he passes chapel or enters churchyard, but he will jest over the depository of outcast bones. In a word, when it is seen that every trace of the dead body save only the white bones has disappeared, the common-folk exchange their extraordinary devotion to the duties of tending the dead for a total unconcern. And the reason for this can only be that the dead body no longer lies helpless and dependent for its existence upon the sustenance which they from time to time provide, but has vanished to a land where, re-united with the soul, it regains its activity and independence.

Such, I believe, is the trend of religious thought which, almost insensibly, has guided the actions of the Greek people from the Pelasgian age until now in their treatment of the dead; the benefit which they have sought to confer upon the dead by the dissolution of their bodies has been the re-union of body with soul and the resumption of that active bodily life which death had for a time suspended.