Most opposed to these were those honourable citizens[[2688]] who fell for their country in defence of its liberty and laws, whom their fellow-citizens followed to the tomb with every conceivable mark of public gratitude and honour, and whose names future generations were taught to reverence like those of gods. In some sense, indeed, they were actually deified. Rites and ceremonies and sacrifices were performed annually in their honour, and by their great and heroic spirits future generations swore as by the most ancient inhabitant of Olympos. Sometimes, as on the plain of Marathon, the remains of the warriors were collected together, and with holy rites enclosed in one common barrow, calculated by its dimensions to be co-lasting with the world. On other occasions their remains were brought to the city and buried there. Thus, at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, the first citizens who fell received the distinguished honours of a public funeral. Their remains were enclosed in coffins of cedar, and laid in open hearses, drawn by horses carefully caparisoned, and covered with garlands, were conveyed to the Cerameicos, the whole population of the state attending. When they had been there committed to the earth, Pericles, the greatest statesman and orator of those times, ascended a bema, and, in words which must thrill through the hearts of all posterity, pronounced on them an encomium to merit which most brave men would cheerfully have bartered life.

The modes of sepulture prevalent in different ages among the Hellenes were various in like manner as the monuments erected in honour of the dead. Originally, when public security was weak, men buried their dead within the walls of their own dwellings, where alone, perhaps, they could hope to preserve their resting-place inviolable. In accordance with this pious feeling a law was anciently enacted at Thebes in Bœotia, that whoever built himself a house should construct within or adjoining it a repository for the dead. But when states grew up and acquired strength, and the shadow of their protection fell around far and wide, it was found practicable to consult the public health without infringement of the reverence due to the divinities of Hades, and the habitations of the departed were erected, like a sacred circle, round the city walls.

Afterwards, in the period of Grecian decrepitude, the cities once more opened their gates to their ancestors, and permitted that they should share with themselves the imperfect security which was the lot of all in those degenerate times.

Much has been said on the custom which obtained among both Greeks and Romans, of extending their cemeteries along the high roads leading countrywards from the city gates.[[2689]] Their object appears to have been twofold: first, by erecting the monuments of deceased friends in sight of all persons entering or quitting the city to render their memory more enduring; secondly, that by witnessing the honours paid to the brave and good of past times, those who came after them might be incited to imitate their example.

But no place was deemed too sacred to admit the remains of good or great men, which were occasionally enshrined within the precincts of temples or sacred groves.[[2690]] Thus the children of Medea were buried in the temple of Hera, Œdipos found a tomb in the grove of the Eumenides at Colonos,[[2691]] and Hesiod, whose body comes floating to the shore while the Samians are engaged in the performance of sacred rites, is honoured with a funeral in the grove of the Nemean Zeus.[[2692]] Euchides, likewise, who died in consequence of the extraordinary celerity with which he performed the journey to and from Delphi in quest of the sacred fire, was interred by the Platæans in the temple of Artemis Euclea. Among the Spartans the practice commonly prevailed of burying around sacred edifices; nor did they, even in later times, banish their dead to the suburbs; the design of this departure from the fashion elsewhere established being to eradicate from the mind of youth all apprehensions of spectres, and reluctance to move, whether by night or by day, among tombs and graves. In all parts of Greece, families, at least when above the humblest in rank, possessed each their burial grounds, whether standing wholly apart in orchards or gardens,[[2693]] or forming so many separate portions of the general cemetery.[[2694]] But nowhere does so great stress appear to have been laid on this distinction of families in death as at Sparta, as may be inferred from the account of that battle in which, animated by the songs of Tyrtæos, the youth bound about their right arms tablets inscribed with their own names and those of their fathers, that so, should they all perish, their friends might be able to select from among the heaps of slaughter the bodies of their relatives, and inter them with scarlet mantles and olive-leaves in the cemeteries of their clans.[[2695]]

Frequently the remains of distinguished persons were consigned to the dust in picturesque situations, remote from towns and the habitations of men, where chapels were in many instances erected to their memory. Thus we find the heroon of Androcrates[[2696]] shrouded in thick copses and trees amid the spurs of Mount Cithæron, on the western extremity of the field of battle of Platæa. In a situation very similar stood the tomb and temple of Amphiaraos, and the heroon of Drimacos in the island of Chios. Among the Cretans, likewise, the sepulchre of Zeus occupied the lofty summit of a mountain, where its ruins are still pointed out to the traveller. A poetical sentiment, moreover, has, in modern times, given rise to the persuasion that the ruins of Themistocles’ tomb are still to be seen amid that line of ancient sepulchres which run along the surf-beaten rocks near the point of Cape Halimos. On this supposition is based the well-known passage of Byron:

“No[“No] breath of air to break the wave

That rolls below the Athenian’s grave;

That tomb which, gleaming o’er the cliff,

Just greets the homeward-veering skiff,