The monuments erected to the dead belong in every country, like funeral customs generally, to a deeper stratum of the national consciousness than do openly expressed beliefs. This is, in fact, a phase of the general law that in the history of religion cultus is more venerable and more conservative than doctrine. And as, further, the beliefs which find an expression in literature are those of the most enlightened and the least conservative spirits, it is misleading if one attempts to learn from the higher literature of a people how the masses really think and feel in regard to death and the life which lies beyond death.
These considerations are certainly applicable in the case of Greece. The two great literatures of Greece, the Epic and the Attic, belong each to a class, to an aristocracy whether of birth or of talent, and stand high above the beliefs of the common people. If we wish to ascertain what the ordinary Greek citizen, l’homme sensuel moyen, thought and felt in the presence of death, whether his own or that of friends, we must supplement the study of the poets, the orators, and the philosophers by an investigation of ritual, of burial customs, and of the lines of tombs which stretched from the gates of many Greek cities on both sides of the main roads.
The purpose of the present book may best be accomplished if we proceed to consider in succession, first the burial customs of the Greeks, next the ideas as to the future life which prevailed among them, and finally the monuments of the dead.
It is the last-mentioned memorials which are the principal concern of this book. For a long while English-speaking scholars, and even tourists, have felt a special interest in the sepulchral monuments which form so marked a feature of the great museum at Athens, and in the Dipylon cemetery, part of which still survives. I have tried to set forth, for scholars and for lovers of art, a concise account of these monuments, their periods and classes, their inscriptions and their reliefs. And as an introduction and supplement to an account of the tombs of Athens, I have added a still slighter account of the tombs of the pre-historic age in Greece, of the monuments of Asia Minor, of the tombs of Sparta, Boeotia, and other districts, and of the magnificent Greek sarcophagi recently discovered at Sidon.
It would occupy much space if I tried here to detail all my obligations to previous scholars. The whole success of this work must depend on its due illustration; and though the nucleus of my illustrations consists of photographs taken for me during a visit to Athens, I have been obliged also to borrow from a variety of learned and valuable works. In every case in which I asked permission to copy a published engraving that permission was courteously granted. If by mischance I have in any case copied without permission, I trust that I may be pardoned. References to the sources of engravings will be found at the foot of my pages.
Special thanks are due to Dr. Conze and the German Archaeological Institute for allowing me to use the plates of their magnificent work, Die Attischen Grabreliefs, which furnishes representations by photography or drawing of almost all important Attic tombs. Where the photographs of this work were better than my own, I have in some cases used them in preference.
To M. Cavvadias and the Greek Government I am indebted for permission to photograph freely in the Athenian Museums; and to the Trustees of the British Museum for leave to reproduce two interesting monuments (Figs. [28] & [35]) which are hitherto unpublished.
When I have had occasion to quote from Homer and the poets of the Anthology, I have usually attempted a rendering in English verse. For Greek elegiacs I have used rhymed heroic verse, and for Greek hexameters English ballad metre. I have also to thank my colleague, Dr. James Williams, of Lincoln College, for allowing me to use several of his excellent versions of poems of the Anthology.
After careful consideration, I have decided that in a work of this kind, which does not attempt completeness, but is methodical in arrangement, the best form of Index is a detailed table of contents and list of engravings. By the aid of these, anything included in the book can be very readily found.
Percy Gardner.