Читать книгу Dealings with the Dead (Vol. 1&2) - Lucius M. Sargent - Страница 9

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The Greeks, when interment was preferred to burning, placed the body in the coffin, as is done at present, deeming it safer for the defunct to look upwards. To ridicule this superstition, Diogenes requested, that his body might be placed face downward, “for the world, erelong,” said he, “will be turned upside down, and then I shall come right.” The feet were placed towards the East. Those, who were closely allied, were buried together. The epitaph of Agathias, on the twin brothers, is still preserved—

“Two brothers lie interred within this urn,

They died together, as together born.”

“They were lovely and pleasant in their lives,” said David, of Saul and Jonathan, “and, in death, they were not divided.”

Plato says, that the early Greeks buried their dead, in their own houses. There was a law in Thebes, that no person should build a house, without providing a repository for the dead therein. An inconvenient fashion this. In after-times they buried out of the city, and generally by the way-side. Hence, doubtless, arose the very common appeal, on their tablets—Siste Viator! On the road from Cape Ann Harbor to Sandy Bay, now Rockport, are a solitary grave and a monument—the grave of one, who chanced there to die. Our graveyards are usually on the roadside. Sometimes a common cart-path is laid out, through an ancient burying-ground. Such is the case in Uxbridge, in this Commonwealth. This is Vandalism. Sextons, who have had long experience, are of opinion, that the rights of the living and the decencies of life are less apt to be maintained, wherever the ashes of the dead are treated with disrespect. Burying, by the road-side, has been said to have been adopted, for the purpose of inspiring travellers with thoughts of mortality—travellers in railway cars, perhaps! The first time I visited St. Peter’s, in Philadelphia, I was much impressed with the tablets and their inscriptions, lying level with the floor of the church, and vertical, I supposed, to the relics below—but I soon became familiar, and forgetful.

Every family, among the Greeks, who could afford it, had its own proper burying-ground—as is the case, at the present day, in our own country, among the planters and others, living far apart from any common point. This might be well enough, where the feudal system prevailed, and estates, by the law of descent, continued long in families. If the old usage were now in vogue, in New York, for instance, what a carting about of family urns there would be, on May day! Estates will pass from man to man, and strangers become the custodiers of the dead friends and relatives of the alienors. It is not unusual to find, on such occasions, a special clause, in the conveyance, for their protection, and for the perpetual tabooing of the place of sepulture. The first graves of the Greeks were mere caverns or holes; but, in later times, they were capacious rooms, vaulted and paved—so large, indeed, that in some instances, the mourners assembled and remained in them, for days and nights together. Monuments of some sort were of very early date; so were inscriptions, containing the names, ages, virtues, and actions of the deceased, and the emblems of their calling. Diogenes had the figure of a snarling cur engraved upon his tablet. Lycurgus put an end to what he called “talkative gravestones.” He even forbade the inscription of the names, unless of men who died in battle, or women in childbed.

Extravagance was, at one time, so notorious, in these matters, that Leon forbade the erection of any mausoleum, which could not be erected by ten men, in three days.

In Greece and Rome, panegyrics were often pronounced at the grave. Games were sometimes instituted in honor of the eminent dead. Homer tells us that Agamemnon’s ghost and the ghost of Achilles had a long talk upon this subject, telling over the number they had attended. After the funeral was over, the company met at the house of some near relative, to divert their sorrow; and, notwithstanding the abstemiousness of the Lacedemonians, they had, I am compelled to believe, what is commonly called a good time. The word, used to designate this kind of gathering, perideipnon, indicates a very social meeting—Cicero translates this word circumpotatio.

Embalming was most in use with the Egyptians, and the process is described by Herodotus and Diodorus. The brain was drawn through the nostrils with an iron scoop, and the void filled with spices. The entrails were removed, and the abdomen filled with myrrh and cassia. The body was next pickled in nitre, for seventy days, and then enveloped in bandages of fine linen and gums. Among the repositories of the curious, are bodies embalmed some thousands of years ago. According to Herodotus, the place for the first incision having been indicated, by the priest, the operator was looked upon, with as much disgust, as we exhibit towards the common hangman—for, no sooner had he hastily made the incision, than he fled from the house, and was immediately attacked with stones, by the bystanders, as one, who had violated the dead. Rather an undesirable office. After being embalmed, the body was placed in a box of sycamore wood, carved to resemble the human form.

The story of Diogenes, who desired to be buried face downward, reminds me of one, related by old Grossman, as we were coming, many years ago, from the funeral of an old lady, who had been a terrible termagant. She resembled, old Grossman said, a perfect fury of a woman, whose husband insisted upon burying her, face downward; and, being asked the reason, for this strange procedure, replied—“the more she scratches the deeper she goes.”