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The Burial Customs among the Ancient Greeks.

I.
DUTY OF BURIAL.

Table of Contents

The task of investigation in this field of Grecian antiquities is akin to that of a blind man, patching together the fragments of a shattered vase with no guidance but the rough outline of innumerable pieces. Every nook and corner of Greek literature must be explored, every exhumed inscription, monument, statue and vase must be carefully scanned, to find a hint here and there to illustrate and illuminate the subject. Using the word monument in a broad sense, it is from monuments, rather than literature, that we get the most trustworthy information on Greek burial customs. Ancient literature reveals the thought of the superior minds. The common people speak through the memorials that have been left in sculptures, inscriptions, and vases, of their attachment to life and their despondency and gloom in view of death.

In nothing, is the refinement of the Greek more clearly shown than in his reverence for the dead and in the ceremonies which surrounded the burial. He spoke of burial as “the customary,” “the fitting,” or “the right.” Even those persons were remembered who were stricken by sudden death at the wayside. The law of Athens required any one who chanced upon a corpse at least to cover it with earth[1]. Although one had entertained the bitterest enmity toward the deceased while he lived, all remembrance of the feud must be thrown aside when death intervened and due attention must be shown the dead. That is the motive of the magnanimity of Theseus toward the dead Argives who had been slain at Thebes. They had been dragged away by the Thebans, whom they had injured, to be left unburied. The king of Athens was contemplating their interment, when a herald was sent out from Thebes, to rebuke him for interfering on behalf of those whose arrogance had been the sole cause of their misfortunes. Then it is that the poet[2] makes Theseus blaze forth with a sentiment to which all Greece responded; “Not,” says the hero, “in order to injure the city or bring upon it a bloody strife, do I deem it right to bury these dead bodies, but rather to preserve the law of all the Greeks.” Rather than abate, in the least, his high ideal of duty, the heroic king incurs a war with Thebes and the impious Thebans suffer well-merited disaster.

The general opinion of Greece strongly condemned an animosity so lasting as to extend to neglect of the dead. Isocrates made a telling point when, appealing in behalf of the Plataeans to the Athenians against the Thebans, he exclaimed[3]: “It is not an equal misfortune, for the dead to be denied burial and for the living to be deprived of their country, since the former is yet more disgraceful to those that forbid the funeral rites than to those who suffer the inhumanity.”

Under any circumstances, there was a stigma on him who left any dead body without a proper final resting-place; but he who neglected to bury a parent, a relative or near friend, was deemed an outcast and unfit to live with the rest of the community. Isaeus urges that misconduct as a reason why Chariades should not receive the property, intended for him by the will of Nicostratus. The testator had given everything to Chariades, but the orator declares him unworthy the inheritance and incapable of taking under the will, since he had neither cremated nor even collected the bones of his deceased benefactor[4]. In another case of a disputed inheritance, the same advocate introduces witnesses, to show that the proposed heir was disqualified from receiving the property, on the ground that, when he discovered where the property of the deceased was secreted, he ran off immediately to secure the goods, and neglected the burial[5].

Disregard of the dead was urged even as a disqualification for office. A certain Philon, having been chosen senator by lot, is challenged at the dokimasia as not worthy the dignity. The strongest objection against him was that his mother, when she was dying, fearing that he would not attend to her funeral, left money and directions for her burial to a perfect stranger. “If then,” queries the orator, “a mother, who naturally is always indulgent toward the faults of her children, and is guided by her heart alone, feared that the avarice of her son would control him, what must we think of such a son[6]?”

According to the law of Solon, a father might by his bad conduct become unworthy of filial affection and the son of such a father might be freed from the obligations due an honorable parent. But, even in so extreme a case as that, where a son had been relieved of all duties during the life of the parent, the obligation revived at death and there remained the same legal duty to attend to the burial of the father. On that ground, Aeschines declares that “It is not compulsory for a youth to support or furnish a home for a father who has let out prostitutes, but, if the parent die, let the son bury him, and perform the customary duties[7].”