It does not appear that among the Greeks there were any regular ceremonies as an accompaniment of burial, any ritual of prayer or dedication. When a public funeral took place it is true that an oration was delivered at the grave; we have record of orations pronounced by Pericles and Demosthenes over those who had fallen in battle on various occasions. Sometimes also there was a funeral feast at the tomb. But in ordinary cases the mourners seem to have returned immediately after the burial to partake of the funeral feast at the house of a near relative or heir of the deceased, who was himself regarded as the host on the occasion. By thus eating and drinking with the dead, the survivors entered into a kind of sacred communion with him; speeches were made in his honour, and libations poured from the cups of which in ghostly fashion he might partake.
CHAPTER II
THE WORSHIP OF THE DEAD
No Greek custom constituted a larger part of religious cultus than did the offerings to the dead. And no custom is more frequently portrayed on ancient vases. Such offerings did not begin merely with the funeral, but even earlier.
According to the beliefs of most barbarous or semi-barbarous races, the dead have needs and desires as imperious as those of the living. Indeed, the life of the next world is regarded as in the main a ghostly continuation of previous existence, a life marked by the same habits and requirements as that which men live on earth. But, as the dead man is less materialist in his needs, his wants may be supplied at smaller cost and in less completeness.
In many primitive countries we find the dead man living in his tomb as he had lived in his house, the tomb being often a copy of the house. There he treasures the goods which were buried with him, and there he receives the constant homage and frequent gifts of his descendants.
In Greece, as far back as we can trace burial customs, it was usual to deal liberally with chiefs and warriors when they went to their last resting-place. Indeed, the further back we go, the greater seems to have been the liberality. The richest graves yet discovered in Greece are those of the pre-historic rulers of Mycenae, spoiled by Dr. Schliemann in 1877. In these sepulchres were found treasures sufficient to stock a great museum—armour and ornaments of gold, swords and arrows, drinking-cups and sceptres, every kind of object in which the wealth of semi-barbarous chiefs is commonly displayed. In the historic age the profusion is less marked, but we yet find abundant proofs of the survival of the custom of fully equipping the dead for their existence in the world of shades. Mingled with human bones are sometimes those of horses and dogs, slain to accompany their master, sometimes those of flesh and fowl brought to him for food. Vessels for holding food and wine and oil are among the ordinary equipment of the tomb, lamps are very common, and jewelry and coins in which the thickness of the gold is reduced to that of paper shows the gradual growth of the belief that it is safe to cheat the dead. Ladies take with them to their graves their mirrors and the vessels which contained rouge and other necessaries of the toilet.
In later Greek graves terra-cotta plays a large part. Not only are vessels of this cheap material substituted for the golden or bronze vases and cups of early graves, but also loaves and animals of terra-cotta take the place of more genuine food. And terra-cotta images, sometimes of deities but more often apparently of mere human beings, are laid up in store by the corpse, each being broken, perhaps to render it unfit for the possession of the living. An engraving of a child’s coffin with its contents, which I reproduce from Stackelberg[12] ([Fig. 7]), will give some idea of the abundant contents of the richer Greek tombs. The symmetrical arrangement of the various vases and of the terra-cotta images is noteworthy; and as parts only of a human skeleton are present, it seems that in this case the body was not placed complete in the coffin, but only the skull, the shin-bones, and other parts of a corpse which had been for the most part disposed of in some other way.
I have been present at excavations at Terranova in Sicily, on which site the resting-places of the dead are formed of several slabs of terra-cotta. Around the skeletons are heaped vases, most commonly of the lekythos form, with occasional coins and other antiquities. But it would be a long task to give anything like a satisfactory account of the contents of tombs in various parts of the Greek world. Every district or city follows its own customs in the matter.
FIG. 7. CHILD’S COFFIN.