ANCIENT GRECIAN SEPULCHRE
A beautiful illustration of an ancient Grecian sepulchre or funeral chamber, heads the second chapter of Mr. Britton's "Union of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting," from which work we have copied the annexed engraved view. The interior of the chamber exhibits a skeleton and the urns containing the ashes of the dead. The combat leads us to the conclusion, that the tomb contains the remains of a chief; for it was the barbarous custom of the Greeks to sacrifice captives at the tombs of their heroes.
Of the funeral rites and ceremonies of the Greeks and other nations, we subjoin the following:—
The most simple and natural kind of funeral monuments, and therefore the most ancient and universal, consist in a mound of earth, or a heap of stones, raised over the ashes of the departed: of such monuments mention is made in the Book of Joshua, and in Homer and Virgil. Many of them still occur in various parts of this kingdom, especially in those elevated and sequestered situations where they have neither been defaced by agriculture nor inundation.
The ancients are said to have buried their dead in their own houses, whence, according to some, the original of that species of idolatry consisting in the worship of household gods.
The place of burial amongst the Jews was never particularly determined. We find that they had burial-places upon the highways, in gardens, and upon mountains. We read, that Abraham was buried with Sarah, his wife, in the cave of Macphelah, in the field of Ephron, and Uzziah, King of Judah, slept with his fathers in the field of the burial which pertained to the kings.
The primitive Greeks were buried in places prepared for that purpose in their own houses; but in after ages they adopted the judicious practice of establishing the burial grounds in desert islands, and outside the walls of towns, by that means securing them from profanation, and themselves from the liability of catching infection from those who had died of contagious disorders.
The Romans prohibited burning or burying in the city, both from a sacred and civil consideration, that the priests might not be contaminated by touching a dead body, and that houses might not be endangered by the frequency of funeral fires.
The custom of burning the dead had its foundation laid deep in nature: an anxious fondness to preserve the great and good, the dear friend and the near relative, was the sole motive that prevailed in the institution of this solemnity. "That seems to me," says Cicero, "to have been the most ancient kind of burial, which, according to Xenophon, was used by Cyrus. For the body is returned to the earth, and so placed as to be covered with the veil of its mother." Pliny also agrees with Cicero upon this point, and says the custom of burial preceded that of burning among the Romans. According to Monfauçon, the custom of burning entirely ceased at Rome about the time of Theodorius the younger. When cremation ceased on the introduction of Christianity, the believing Romans, together with the Romanized and converted Britons, would necessarily, as it is observed by Mr. Grough, "betake themselves to the use of sarcophagi (or coffins,) and probably of various kinds, stone, marble, lead," &c. They would likewise now first place the body in a position due east and west, and thus bestow an unequivocal mark of distinction between the funeral deposit of the earliest Roman inhabitants of this island, and their Christian successors. The usual places of interment were in fields or gardens,[4] near the highway, to be conspicuous, and to remind the passengers how transient everything is, that wears the garb of mortality. By this means, also, they saved the best part of their land: