High o’er the land he saved in vain:—
When shall such hero live again?”
But the learning of Colonel Leake has clearly shown, that the monument of this illustrious statesman stood within the horns of the great port of Aphrodisium. In the city of Magnesia, where he died, his tomb stood in the agora, which was customary when extraordinary honour was designed the dead.[[2697]] Thus the monument of Timoleon,[[2698]] surrounded by porticoes and other public buildings, was erected in the agora of Syracuse; and that of Harmodios and Aristogeiton occupied the same place in the city of Athens, where, in more ancient times, the tombs of distinguished personages were hewn out in the face of the cliffs, lined with marble, and otherwise sumptuously adorned. Solon, however, sought to repress the luxury of cemeteries[[2699]] by ordaining that no tomb should have an arched roof, or require more labour than could be performed by ten men in three days. But this law, in all probability, was never strictly observed; for the Cimonian sepulchres, still seen high amid the rocks overlooking the hollow valley which divides the Areopagos from the Pnyx, seem to have been of dimensions too spacious to have been hewn out within the legal term.[[2700]] Afterwards, moreover, mortuary monuments of extraordinary magnificence were erected at Athens, as that, for example, of the hetaira Pythonicè. But it was in barbarous countries that funereal structures exhibited the greatest splendour, which reached possibly its acmè in the tomb of Mausolos, king of Caria, an edifice consisting of a pyramid erected on a square basis, adorned on all sides with sculptured figures in relief, and surmounted by a chariot drawn by four horses. The tomb of the mistress of Gyges, though for materials inferior, probably exceeded in dimensions this seventh wonder of the world. It was erected, too, as a memorial of affection; for, when the woman who, during her life, had ruled both him and his kingdom, had been removed from earth, that shepherd king collected together, we are told, the whole of his subjects, and threw up so vast a barrow over her remains, that, in whatever part of his realm he might be, within Mount Tmolos, he might enjoy the melancholy pleasure of beholding her grave.
In the structure of their tombs, as well as their mode of interment, the various nations of antiquity observed each a different style. Thus, in the purification of Delos, the monuments of the Carians were easily distinguished from those of the Greeks by the manner in which their remains were deposited in the grave. Certain sepulchral mounds, found in Peloponnesos, were distinguished by some characteristic features from those of the natives, and denominated the Tombs of the Phrygians; and the burying places of certain foreigners on whom the Greeks bestowed the name of Amazons, exhibited as long as they endured some distinctive marks[[2701]] by which they were known to cover the ashes of some barbarous people. Over the tomb of Hippolyta, indeed, a pillar was erected in the Grecian manner; but at Chalcis, where there was an Amazonium, the structure would appear to have exhibited some peculiar features, as well as the tomb of these warlike ladies, which was shown in the Megaris, between the agora and a spot named Rhus, in the form of a lozenge,[[2702]] resembling their shields. Similar in shape, likewise, were probably the Amazonian monuments found near Scotussa in Thessaly, as well as those on the banks of the rivulet Hermodon, in the neighbourhood of Cheronæa.[[2703]] On the plains of Troy the Amazon Myrinna reposed under a vast barrow.[[2704]]
The structures thus erected in honour of the dead might have proved more durable but for the practice common among the ancients, of interring jewels, gold, precious vases,[[2705]] and other treasures with the corpse, which afterwards roused the cupidity of profligate men, and tempted them to rifle the last houses of their forefathers; for it is one of the most odious and debasing features of civilisation, at certain stages of it, that death is habitually desecrated, and the grave ceases to be a refuge. Thus the tombs of the Macedonian kings were plundered by the Gauls[[2706]] in the alliance of Pyrrhos. Again, the colony of Roman freedmen sent to raise Corinth from its ashes, discovering by chance that the catacombs contained bronze and fictile vases of great beauty, rifled the whole cemetery, and filled Rome with the spoils, which were denominated Necrocorinthia. Even the obolos[[2707]] placed beneath the tongue, and the simple ornaments of the humbler dead, proved sufficient to excite the avarice of a certain class of robbers, denominated from their practices tomb-spoilers.[[2708]] When, however, the dust of the departed has reposed in its cerements for many ages, to disturb and plunder it becomes the pursuit of learned men, and is regarded as a branch of the science of antiquities. Thus the sepulchres of the Egyptian kings have been spoiled and polluted by travellers, who have burned by thousands the wooden gods of the Pharaohs in their kitchens, sawed off the faces of pillars, dragged forth bodies and coffins from their last hiding-place in order to pilfer the golden ornaments suspended around the necks of the dead. In Etruria, too, the same scientific havoc has been carried on, and the museums of Europe have been enriched by what was once a capital offence. Even in our own country, barrows have been habitually opened, and the bones of our ancestors dislodged from their homes. Very curious relics of antiquity, however, have thus been brought to light. Similar tumuli in the East, denominated topes, have been examined in Affghanistân. Beneath the centre is usually a well, in which the ancient remains, consisting of metallic vases, small cylinders of gold, rings, jewels, and gold pins, appear to be found.[[2709]]
It was customary among the Greeks, not only while their grief was yet new, but habitually for many years, to visit the graves of the dead, to suspend garlands and crowns and fillets of wool upon their head-stones, or possibly, as is still the custom in Burgundy, to place wreaths or other ornaments of pure wool upon the grave itself,[[2710]] and to protect them by a trellis-work of willow boughs. Hither, too, were brought baskets full of all fair and fragrant flowers, more particularly roses, myrtles, amaranths,[[2711]] and lilies, to be strewed upon the beloved spot. Sometimes graves were covered by a netting of wild thyme,[[2712]] which, like those characters that are ennobled by affliction, yielded forth a delicious perfume beneath the foot of the mourner. In cool and shady spots, graves were sometimes adorned with the small everlasting,[[2713]] and the white flower called pothos.[[2714]] Public cemeteries were likewise, in many places, beautified by trees, selected in some cases for their thick foliage and spreading form, as the elm; in others, for their graceful shape and evergreen leaf, as the poplar and the cypress. Other trees, also, whether planted by the hand of man or springing up spontaneously, covered the walks or spots of green sward found in the cemeteries of Greece, supplying in abundance that sombre shade into which grief loves to retire, and where the sepulchral plants chiefly delight to grow.
Such spots so shaded, so verdant, and full of fragrance, so consecrated to silence and repose, probably first suggested the idea of the Elysian Fields or Islands of the Blessed, which the poets of Greece assigned to be the abode of happy souls. At first perhaps the ghosts were believed to dwell in the cemeteries, retiring by day to the depths of the tombs and issuing forth during the dark and tranquil hours of night to enjoy, by the light of the moon or the stars, the sight of the world they had partially quitted. From this notion flowed all the modifications observable in the internal structure of tombs. First, care was taken that the earth should not press heavily on the corpse, somewhere within the dimensions of which the ghost was supposed[[2715]] habitually to reside. Sentiments not greatly dissimilar still survive among ourselves. I once remember to have read on the gravestone of a little girl standing near the stile by which you enter the shady churchyard of Newport, in Monmouthshire, the following epitaph, in which this idea is clearly embodied:
Here a pretty baby lies,
Sung asleep with lullabies;
Pray be silent, and not stir