CREMATION AND INHUMATION.
The discussion of those abnormal cases of after-death existence, to
which the last chapter has been devoted, has disclosed to us the fact
that in all ages of Greece the condition most to be dreaded by the
dead has been incorruptibility and the boon most to be desired a sure
and quick dissolution; and that of the two methods by which the living
might promote the disintegration of the dead, cremation and inhumation,
the former alone has been accounted infallible. What benefit in the
future existence was in old time thought to accrue to those whose
bodies had been duly dissolved, and to be withheld from _revenants_,
is a question which may conveniently be adjourned for a while. First
we must verify the results obtained from the study of the abnormal
by consideration of the normal; we must see whether ordinary funeral
usage has had for its sole object the dissolution of the dead in the
interests of the dead; and what, if any, distinction has been made
between inhumation and cremation as a means of securing that object.
Now diverse methods of disposing of the dead, especially among a
primitive folk, would naturally suggest diverse religious purposes to
be served thereby, diverse conceptions of the future estate of the
dead, or of their future abode, or of their future relations with
the living; and for my part I do not doubt that, if our eyes could
pierce the darkness of a long distant past which neither history nor
even archaeology has illumined, we should see that the peoples who
first used cremation and inhumation side by side in Greece were in so
doing animated by diverse religious sentiments. But I hold also that
in no period of which we have any cognisance have the Greeks regarded
inhumation and cremation as means to different religious ends; but
that, whichever funeral-method has been employed, one and the same
immediate object has always been kept in view, the dissolution of the
dead body, and one and the same motive (save in the quite exceptional
circumstances where a scare of _vrykolakes_ has temporarily arisen) has
always prompted the mourners thereto, the motive of benefiting the dead.
But, while the object in view was single and constant, there would
have been no inconsistency in making a certain distinction between
the two methods available. On the contrary, if the sole object was
the disintegration of the dead body, the surer and quicker means of
attaining it should logically have been preferred. Cremation therefore
might legitimately have been reckoned a superior rite to inhumation;
for it cannot but have been recognised that the disintegration of the
body is more rapidly and unfailingly effected by the action of fire
than by the action of the soil.
It is true indeed that the solvent action of the earth upon the buried
body--even with all due allowance for the absence of any coffin in many
cases--is popularly regarded as far more rapid than it can actually
be. The period usually reckoned by the common-folk as the limit of
time requisite for complete dissolution is forty days. This is stated
clearly enough in a few lines of a song of lamentation heard in
Zacynthos:
καὶ μέσ’ ’στὸ σαραντοήμερο ἀρμοὺς ἀρμοὺς χωρίζουν,
πέφτουνε τὰ ξανθὰ μαλλιὰ, βγαίνουν τὰ μαύρα μάτια,
καὶ χώρια πάει τὸ κορμὶ καὶ χώρια τὸ κεφάλι[1226].
‘And within the forty days, they (the dead) are severed joint from
joint, their bright hair falls away, their dark eyes fall out, and
asunder go trunk and head.’
The Zacynthian muse is horribly explicit; its utterances need no
interpreter; itself rather gives the true interpretation of certain
customs which are wide-spread in modern Greece and appear to date from
pre-Christian days.
The fortieth day after death is almost universally observed in Greece
as one on which the relations of the deceased should provide a memorial
feast. There are indeed other fixed days for the like commemoration
and ‘forgiveness[1227]’ of the dead, but these all fall at periods
of three, or a multiple of three, days, weeks, months, or years, from
the date of death. These, I think, have been selected in deference to
the mysterious virtue of the number three[1228], and not improbably
multiplied by the importunities of a penurious priesthood, to whom some
half-dozen hearty meals in the course of the year do not appear an
inappropriate remuneration for their services at death-bed and burial.
But the fortieth day was originally devoted to this purpose, it may
reasonably be supposed, because it was the last opportunity of setting
before the dead man’s neighbours and acquaintances savoury meat such
as their soul loved, that they might eat thereof and ‘loose’ the dead
man from any curse wherewith in his lifetime they had bound him; if
dissolution was not to be retarded, the fortieth day was in popular
reckoning the last opportunity for absolution.
From this it should follow that any memorial feasts held later[1229]
than the fortieth day are of purely ecclesiastical contrivance; and
the correctness of this inference is attested by a curious local usage
which clearly distinguishes the popular and the ecclesiastical feasts.
At Sinasos in Asia Minor two classes of commemorations are recognised.
The one is called κανίσκια, ‘little baskets,’ from the method in which
food is distributed to the poor; this is held on the fortieth day. The
other has usurped the name μνημόσυνα, which commonly belongs to all
memorial-feasts, and is held on the three anniversaries of the death
(for, after the third, exhumation generally takes place, and no further
memorial-feasts are needed) and consists in the presentation of an
ornamental dish of boiled wheat (κόλλυβα) at the church and the reading
of a service[1230]. In other words, the fortieth day is the popular
festival, and the observances of later dates are ecclesiastical.
Clearly the reason for this distinction must lie in the fact that the
common-folk believe, as the song from Zacynthos shows, that dissolution
is normally complete by the fortieth day, while the Church has
prudently fixed the date, after which exhumation is permissible, at the
end of the third year. Presumably then a period of forty days was the
old pagan period, for which the Church has tried, with partial success,
to substitute three years.
Several other small pieces of evidence point to the wide distribution
of this popular notion. In Sinasos[1231], once more, and also in
Patmos[1232], the fees paid to the priests for memorial services derive
their name from the word ‘forty’ (σαράντα), as if the fortieth day were
the limit; after that date, apparently, though my authorities are not
explicit on the point, the priests have for their remuneration only the
dish of boiled wheat or other presents in kind. In Crete, if a dead
man is suspected of turning _vrykolakas_ soon after his death, the
people are anxious to deal with him before he enters upon his second
period of forty days[1233]; for then all hope of natural dissolution
is past, and he becomes as it were a confirmed vampire. In Scyros, the
old custom of burning such corpses as were found on exhumation at the
end of three years (or, in case of a panic, earlier) to be still whole,
and were therefore suspected of vampire-like proclivities, has been
replaced by the milder expedient of carrying the body round to forty
churches in turn and then re-interring it, in the hope, as it seems,
that each of the forty saints, whose sanctuaries have been honoured
with a visit and a certain consumption of candles, will in return take
a proportionate share in ‘loosing’ the suppliant dead--or, it may be,
in the more mathematical expectation that the work effected in cases of
ordinary burial by one funeral-service in forty days, will be achieved
by forty funeral-services in one day. Whichever be the calculation on
which the practice has been based, the number of churches to be visited
is clearly governed by the number of days requisite, in popular belief,
for ordinary dissolution.
But with all this reputed rapidity of the earth in ‘loosing’ the dead
bodies committed to her care, the action of fire is incontrovertibly
more rapid. In hours, not in days, may be counted the period of
disintegration on the pyre. And as it is quicker, so also is it far
surer. No body that has been burned can wander as a _revenant_ over
the earth, while for the buried there is no perfect assurance of
dissolution. Some curse, some crime, the violence of their death, or
the deficiency of their funeral rites, each and all of these may keep
their bodies ‘bound’ and indissoluble. Cremation then is indisputably
in theory the preferable means of securing to the dead that boon which
they most desire; and I hold that in the practice of the Greek people
there are signs that this preference was felt.
There are then two propositions to be established by reference to the
actual funeral methods of Ancient and Modern Greece; first, that from
the earliest ages of which we have cognisance cremation and inhumation
have been identical in their religious purpose; second, that a
preference for cremation, considered as a means to the single religious
end, has been manifested.
The first thing needful in this twofold investigation is to understand
the terms, which are to be used, in the sense in which the Greek
understood them. Cremation means to us the consumption of the corpse by
fire; inhumation the laying of the corpse out of sight in the earth;
and unless one or other of those acts had been really performed, we
should not consider that a funeral had taken place. But the Greeks
judged rather by the intention than by the act. In certain cases, in
which the actual digging of a grave was impossible, ancient usage
prescribed a ceremonial substitute. The sprinkling of a handful of
dust over a dead body was held to constitute burial. Such was all the
funeral that Antigone could give to Polynices[1234]; such the minimum
of burial enjoined by Attic Law on any who chanced upon a dead body
lying unburied[1235]; such, according to Aelian, ‘the fulfilment of
some mysterious law of piety imposed by Nature’ not only upon man but
even on some of the brute creation, in such sort that the elephant, if
he find one of his own kind dead, gathers up some earth in his trunk
and sprinkles it over the prostrate carcase[1236]. ‘The fulfilment of
some mysterious law of piety’--Aelian’s phrase accurately summarises
the Greek view of burial. To us it is a necessary and decent method of
disposing of the dead. To the Greeks it was something more--a provision
for their dimly discerned welfare; and the intention of the living
mattered so much more than the performance, that, in cases where real
burial could not be given, a mere ceremony suggestive of burial was
considered competent to ensure the same end.
Again in the case of a man drowned at sea or having met his death
in any way which precluded the possibility of his body being brought
home for burial, a means has always been found for fulfilling ‘the
mysterious law of piety.’ Still, as in old time, the cenotaph serves
the same end as the real sepulchre. A lay-figure, dressed if possible
in some clothes of the dead man, receives on his behalf the full rite
of burial[1237]; and if enquiry be made, to what purpose this empty
ceremony, the answer is not slow in coming, γιὰ νὰ λυωθῇ ὁ πεθαμένος,
‘to the end that the dead man may be dissolved’; nor can I doubt that
the same formal rite in old time served the same end.
And let no practical-minded critic here interpose the objection that
a dead body lying unburied, exposed to sun and rain, must decompose
at least as rapidly as one that has been buried; I have myself tried
the effect of that criticism on the Greek peasants with instructive
results. Once my suggestion was promptly met with a flat and honest
denial--the most simple and final of answers, for, be it remembered, it
is with the honest beliefs of the peasant, and not with physical facts,
that we are dealing. Another time there was a pause, and then came the
deliberate answer, βρωμάει τὸ κορμὶ, δὲν λυώνεται, ‘the corpse becomes
putrid, but is not “loosed”.’ There was a distinction in the peasant’s
mind between natural decomposition and the dissolution effected by a
religious rite. But more often it has been pointed out to me that my
apparently reasonable suggestion was really unpractical; a dead body
left unburied would never suffer natural decay, but would be a prey to
the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air; the vultures circling
yonder overhead convicted me of unreason. And the answer could not
but recall the threats of Achilles against Hector, or the fears of
Antigone for Polynices, that dogs and carrion-birds should feast upon
the corpse. So then it is perhaps a logical as well as an honest belief
which the Greeks have always held, that dissolution of the body is
afforded by one of two rites and by no third means.
Now one of these rites, inhumation, might on occasion be reduced to
a mere ceremonial observance, the scattering of a handful of dust
over the body, or the interment of an effigy in its stead. Was the
other rite, cremation, ever so reduced? Could the roar and crackle of
the blazing pyre be ceremonially replaced by a small flame lighted
in proximity to the dead body? Did the kindling of a fire, however
incapable of consuming the dead body, constitute cremation in the
same sense that a handful of earth, incapable of concealing the dead
body, constituted interment? _Prima facie_ there is nothing wild in
the supposition; it is consistent with the Greek conception of the
funeral-rite, which looked rather to the intention than to the act;
the proven fact of ceremonial inhumation guarantees the likelihood of
ceremonial cremation. I take it therefore as a working hypothesis, and
base its subsequent claim to be accepted as a fact on its ability to
explain consistently a long series of phenomena in Greek funeral usage.
My first proposition, that from the earliest ages of which we have
cognisance cremation and inhumation have served the same religious
end, would have had an initial obstacle to surmount but for Professor
Ridgeway’s work on the ethnology of early Greece. Diverse methods of
disposing of the dead would at first sight, as I have said, suggest
diverse conceptions of after-death existence. But Professor Ridgeway
has shown conclusively, to my mind, that inhumation was the rite of
the autochthonous Pelasgian people of Greece, and that cremation was
introduced by the Achaean immigrants[1238]. Now it is improbable of
course that these two peoples, when they first came into contact, held
similar views concerning the hereafter. But the entry of the Achaean
element was, according to all evidence, a long process of infiltration
rather than a sudden invasion. The beginnings of it are conjecturally
placed well back in the third millennium before Christ[1239]. There was
ample time therefore, even before the later Mycenaean or the Homeric
age, for differences of religious sentiment as between the two races to
dwindle or to vanish, while the two rites of cremation and inhumation,
with the inveteracy of all custom, still survived.
Thus there is no initial objection to the view that in any period
known to us those who used cremation and those who used inhumation
were animated by the same religious ideas; and at the same time I
am relieved of the necessity of combating both the old theory that
cremation was adopted by the Greeks as a convenient substitute for
inhumation during some period of migration or nomadic life, and Rohde’s
more recent theory[1240] that fear of the spirits of the dead, which
were believed to hover about graves where their bodies lay buried, led
men to adopt cremation as a means of annihilating the body and thereby
ridding themselves of the unwelcome spirit. Both those theories fail,
apart from certain intrinsic defects, because they are attempts to
explain a thing which never took place--a supposed substitution of
cremation for inhumation between the Mycenaean and the Homeric ages.
Professor Ridgeway has shown that the Mycenaean rite was that of the
Pelasgians; the Homeric rite that of the Achaeans. It is an accident
only that our earliest information respecting the two rites happens to
be drawn from different periods of time; the real distinction between
the two was a racial distinction; from the age when the Achaeans first
entered Greece down to the Christian era cremation and inhumation were
both continuously practised.
The positive evidence for my view that these two rites were mere racial
survivals, which had already, in the earliest ages known to us, ceased
to differ in religious import, is to be found not only in the fact
that in historical times, or even earlier, the two rites were used
side by side by the people of a single city in the same cemetery, but
in an early tendency to fuse the two rites into one and to give to the
same body the double treatment of cremation and inhumation combined;
for clearly the only condition under which two such rites could be
amalgamated must have been that there had ceased to be any conflict of
religious significance between them.
How early this fusion began it is difficult to determine; but it is at
least worth while to note a point which is apt to be overlooked, that
the Homeric funeral-rite comprised inhumation. Cremation certainly
was the main part of the rite, the actual means by which the corpse
was disintegrated; but the funeral was not complete until the ashes
had been collected and inhumed[1241]. This is an act of ceremonial
inhumation just as much as the burial of an effigy dressed in a dead
man’s clothes.
Moreover it is possible that the Mycenaean funeral-rite sometimes
comprised an act of ceremonial cremation. To review here the
archaeological evidence for some use of fire in Mycenaean graves
is unnecessary; it will suffice to quote from the summary given
by Rohde[1242] as the basis of his theory--to which I by no means
assent--that a vigorous ‘soul-cult,’ involving propitiatory offerings
to the dead, was a religious feature of that age. ‘Traces of smoke,
remnants of ash and charcoal, point to the fact that the dead bodies
were laid on the spot where were burnt those offerings to the dead
which had previously been made in the tomb.... On the ground, or
sometimes on a specially prepared bed of flints, the offerings were
burnt, and then, when the fire had gone out, the bodies were laid on
top and covered over with sand, lime, and stones.’
Now the fact that in Mycenaean graves gifts were actually consumed
by fire while the corpse was left to the process of natural decay is
indisputable; but, if the fire employed had no further purpose, the
practice of the Mycenaean age would be unique. The custom of all later
ages was to treat the corpse and the gifts alike, to burn both or to
bury both. This is implied in ancient literature[1243], and confirmed
by modern excavations; for funeral-urns seldom contain any remnants of
gifts; which means that the gifts had been consumed on the pyre with
the body, but that only the bones were collected and stored in the urn;
whereas in graves the gifts are constantly found buried with the body
and intact. Further the custom of burning both body and gifts is the
old Achaean custom, as described by Homer in the funeral of Patroclus;
and it would seem probable that the custom of interring both body and
gifts intact was the original Pelasgian custom. Was then the use of
fire in these Mycenaean graves the first step in the fusion of the
Achaean and Pelasgian rites?
Again, the body was observed to lie on top of the burnt gifts. What is
the meaning of this superimposition? According to Rohde the fire which
consumed the gifts was allowed to go out, and the bodies were then laid
on the cold ashes. But manifestly this cannot be proved. All that we
know is that the fire did not consume the bodies. No one can assert
that they were untouched by flame or ember and that the smell of fire
did not pass over them. Was then the act of laying the body on top of
the burnt or burning gifts an act of ceremonial cremation?
These questions I cannot answer; but one thing is clear. Either the
fusion of the Achaean and Pelasgian rites had already begun, or else,
in their original forms, they both comprised usages which greatly
facilitated their subsequent fusion.
When we pass on to the Dipylon-period, there is no longer any doubt.
Cremation and inhumation were practised both severally side by side and
also conjointly as a single rite. The evidence on which I mainly rely
is derived from two series of excavations, those of Philios[1244] at
Eleusis and those of Brückner and Pernice[1245] in the Dipylon cemetery
at Athens.
The autochthonous population of Attica naturally adhered in the
main to the old Pelasgian rite of inhumation. Yet at Eleusis, even
according to Philios who strangely belittles the importance of his
own discoveries[1246], there was one certain case of cremation; and
in the Dipylon cemetery also was found one urn which could be dated
with equal certainty. One or two other probable cases have also been
recorded by others[1247]. Clearly then as early as the eighth century
B.C. cremation was sometimes used, side by side with inhumation, as the
effective means of disintegrating the dead body.
And there is equally sure proof that the two rites were also employed
conjointly, in the sense that a ceremonial act of inhumation followed
actual cremation, or a ceremonial act of cremation accompanied actual
inhumation. A conspicuous instance of the former is the one certain
case of actual cremation recorded by Brückner and Pernice[1248]. A
bronze urn containing the calcined bones of a boy or girl had been
deposited not in a mere hole dug to fit it, but in a grave fully
prepared as if for the reception of a corpse. The measurements of the
grave were of normal size; in it had been laid, along with the urn,
gifts of the usual nature--an amphora, two boxes, a bowl, and a jug;
and above the grave, in a prepared space considerably wider than the
actual grave, stood one of the large Dipylon-vases. In every respect
the interment had been carried out as if it were the interment of an
unburnt body. An attempt had been made so to combine the two rites of
cremation and inhumation that neither should seem subordinate to the
other.
Instances of the other sort, in which ceremonial cremation accompanied
actual inhumation, are furnished by Philios’ excavations at Eleusis.
Speaking of the large earthenware jars which often served as coffins
for children, he says, ‘Whereas the bones contained in these vessels
were unburnt, all round the vessels in the soil traces of burning were
abundant and varied[1249].’ Now these traces of fire cannot have been
due to the burning of gifts brought subsequently to the interment;
for that custom naturally resulted in a stratum of burnt soil above
the grave. But here the traces were ‘all round the vessels, in the
soil.’ Apparently then we have here a practice parallel to that
of Mycenaean times. The body was interred and obtained its actual
dissolution by natural decay; but before the interment a fire was
kindled in the grave, and among the flames or on the embers the body
in its coffin-jar was laid and covered over with the soil. Whether at
Eleusis, as at Mycenae, the funeral-gifts were consumed in that fire,
we do not know for certain; but since it is undoubtedly rare to find
any gift along with the child’s body in these vessels, it is reasonable
to suppose that the few gifts--few, because all the circumstances of
these funerals seem humble--were burnt[1250] just as were the grander
offerings at Mycenae. At any rate these cases reveal an intention
of associating fire with the buried body, of adding to the rite of
interment a ceremonial act of cremation.
The tendency towards fusion of the two funeral rites has now been
traced through the pre-historic era; it is in the historic period
that the fusion appears most general and most complete. I will take as
typical instances a number of graves, ranging in date from the sixth
to the fourth century, opened by the two German excavators on whose
narrative I have largely relied for the Dipylon-period[1251]. These
graves numbered somewhat under two hundred. In the classification of
them there appears the important item--forty-five graves in which the
body had been actually burned. In other words, in approximately a
quarter of the cases observed the rites of cremation and inhumation
had been combined, and that too in such a way that both elements,
fire and earth, might well have seemed to share together the work
of dissolution. Neither method is here exalted to sole efficacy,
neither is degraded into mere ceremony. The balance of importance is
adjusted, and the two acts which form the composite funeral-rite are
recognised as equal. Indeed there are no longer two distinct acts;
they have coalesced; the moment and the act of laying the body in the
earth are also the moment and the act of laying the body on the pyre.
Amalgamation is complete.
Having traced the history of Greek funeral-usage down to this point, I
may now fairly claim, first, that my working hypothesis--the practice
of ceremonial cremation as the counterpart of ceremonial inhumation--is
justified by the single and consistent explanation which it affords of
the phenomena which I have noticed (and I may add that I shall have
occasion to explain other phenomena in the latter half of this chapter
in the same way); secondly, if that explanation be accepted, I may
claim that the only condition under which the two rites could have been
employed both severally as alternatives and conjointly as one composite
rite was that the religious purpose underlying them both was one and
the same. And this purpose, if there is any meaning in the stories of
Patroclus, Elpenor, Polynices, and Polydorus, was to give to the dead
that which they most craved, a speedy dissolution.
The evidence for this unity of purpose is, I hope, already sufficient;
but confirmation may be found, if required, in the smaller details
of funeral-custom. It is, I believe, a received principle of textual
criticism that, in estimating the relation of two manuscripts of a
given author, coincidence in _minutiae_ is the true criterion of their
common origin or other close kinship, and its testimony is not to
be outweighed by a few conspicuous divergences. So too, I think, in
estimating the mutual relation of two rites, the coincidence of all
the minor circumstances connected with them is of more significance
than one large and evident contrast between them. Such a contrast, let
it be granted, exists between cremation and inhumation when employed
separately. Yet it would be a rash and faulty judgement, I hold,
which should at once infer thence that the two rites were informed by
different religious ideas. The minute coincidences claim examination.
If all that preceded and accompanied and followed the actual disposal
of the corpse, whether by burning or by burial, exhibited uniformity in
scheme and in scope; if the washing and the anointing, the arraying and
the crowning, were performed with the same tender care whether the body
was destined for the cold, slow earth or for the rapid flame; if from
the death-chamber, where the body had lain in state and the kinsfolk,
grouped in order of dearness about it, had paid in turn their debt of
lamentation, the same sad pomp escorted the dead whether to the pyre
or to the grave; if the same gifts--the same provision as it seems for
bodily comfort--were mingled as ashes with the ashes of the dead or
were consigned intact with the body yet intact to the will and keeping
of the earth; then, whichever means the mourners chose for effecting
the actual dissolution of the fleshly remains, their religious attitude
towards death and their conception of the hereafter must have been
single and constant.
Space forbids me to enter into the evidence for the uniformity of all
this detail in all periods of Greek life. I will confine myself to two
illustrations. The first shall be the _prothesis_ or lying-in-state
of the body with the solemn lamentation of the kinsfolk, for the most
part women, grouped about it. I have elsewhere[1252] described the
scene; I have only to illustrate here the universality of it as the
prelude alike to cremation and to inhumation, alike in Ancient and in
Modern Greece, alike amid pagan and amid Christian surroundings. In the
Mycenaean age the bodies of the dead were sumptuously arrayed--probably
with a view to the lying-in-state; more than that cannot be actually
asserted of the earliest epoch. But in the Homeric age, as at the
funeral of Hector[1253], the custom is seen already fully developed.
In the Dipylon-age the scene described by Homer is found depicted
on the great vases that served as monuments over the graves[1254]. A
little later, the legislation of Solon is directed against the excesses
to which the rite of solemn lamentation led[1255]. Next, an orator of
Athens is found declaiming against the wrongs done to him by the thirty
tyrants, who, not content with having put his brother to death, had
actually refused the use of any of the three houses belonging to the
family and had forced them to lay out the body in a hired hut[1256].
Again we have the ridicule of Lucian directed against the discordant
scene of useless misery[1257]. In strange company with him appears
St Chrysostom upbraiding Christians for their extravagances of grief
and threatening them with excommunication if they continue to call in
heathen women to act as professional mourners[1258]. Centuries passed
without diminution of the custom, and the Venetians during their
occupation of the Ionian islands enacted laws[1259] in the spirit of
those formulated by Solon more than two thousand years before. Of this
custom it might well be said, ‘_et vetabitur semper et retinebitur_,’
for it still maintains its old vogue and vitality, and is the necessary
prelude of every peasant’s funeral to-day.
My second illustration is a far more trivial circumstance, but not on
that account less significant--the use of the foliage of the olive as
a couch for the dead, whether on the bier which conveyed him to the
grave or on the funeral-pyre. The reason for choosing olive-leaves
does not concern us; there may have been, as Rohde suggests[1260],
some idea of purification connected with it; but it is only the
wide-spread use of it which I have to illustrate. Among the ashes of
those small pyres, on which the dead were laid in Mycenaean sepulchres,
were recognised charred olive-leaves[1261]. Lycurgus in curtailing
the funeral-rites of Sparta bade his countrymen wrap their dead for
burial in the red military cloak (as became a race of warriors) and in
olive-leaves[1262]. The Pythagoreans, who objected to cremation[1263],
laid their dead to rest on a bed of leaves gathered from myrtle,
poplar, and olive[1264]. An Attic law forbade the felling of certain
olive-trees under penalty of a fine of a hundred drachmae per tree,
but contained a saving-clause exempting cases in which olive-wood was
wanted for funerals[1265]. This permission points to a special use of
olive-wood as fuel for the pyre, for, if a few branches or sprays only
had been needed for decking out the bier, there would have been no
question of felling whole trees. It was probably then this custom which
Sophocles also had in mind, when the messenger, who brought the news
of Polynices’ tardy funeral, was made by him to specify ‘fresh-plucked
olive-shoots’ as the material of the pyre[1266]. Again, in a number
of sarcophagi found by Fauvel outside the gates of Athens on the
road to Acharnae the skeleton was observed to lie ‘on a thick bed of
olive-leaves[1267].’ In the second century of our era the custom of
placing olive-branches on the bier still prevailed[1268]; and at the
present day the olive is often conspicuous at the funerals of peasants,
either in the garland about the dead man’s head or in the decoration of
the bier.
Thus the uniformity of detail in funerals, whether the main rite was
cremation or inhumation, no less than the tendency to amalgamate these
two into a single rite, proves that, from the earliest ages known to
us, their religious purpose had been identical--to give to the dead
that speedy bodily dissolution which they desired.
But in spite of this unity of purpose, one or other rite doubtless
continued long through force of custom to hold predominance in
particular districts. In Attica it was perhaps not until the sixth or
even the fifth century that the Pelasgian rite had entirely lost the
support of ancestral tradition. But then and thenceforward the two
methods appear to have been judged simply as methods, and the estimate
of their respective merits was little affected by the old racial
differences. But this does not mean that the methods were judged
wholly on their religious merits--on their adaptability to the single
religious purpose. Cost and convenience were necessarily factors in
determining the choice between them. Thus the question of cost must
often have decided the poorer classes to choose inhumation; and in
that portion of the Dipylon cemetery to which I have already referred,
it was actually found that, out of the graves in which no evidence of
cremation was found, more than a hundred were of a poor character,
mere shafts in the earth, or at the best walled with rough brick-built
sides, while only thirteen were of a costly style--sepulchres built
with slabs of stone, or regular sarcophagi. And similarly other
practical considerations must often have turned the scale in favour
of the one or the other rite. The soldiers who fell at Marathon were
simply interred, presumably because to dig a trench and to raise a
mound in the middle of the plain was a more feasible task than to
collect masses of fuel from the surrounding hill-sides; but the victims
of the plague at Athens were with good reason cremated.
Nevertheless, where none of these external causes operated, there
are signs that cremation was held in somewhat higher esteem than
inhumation. The story went that Solon’s body was burnt, by way of
honour seemingly, and his ashes scattered over that island which he
had won back for Athens. And we hear of cremation being accorded,
apparently again as the more honourable rite, to other great men
such as Dionysius, the famous tyrant of Syracuse, and Timoleon, her
deliverer. But more conclusive is the evidence of literature, where not
only the act itself is named, but a clear indication of the feeling
of the actors is given. According to Aeschylus, the dead body of
Agamemnon, king though he was, was merely hidden away in the ground
by his blood-guilty wife; even in death she would show him no pity,
do him no honour. But in Sophocles the dying Heracles is laid on a
funeral-pyre, and the dead Polynices, to whom Antigone was perforce
content to give the most meagre form of interment, obtains from
Creon, when at last too late he repents, the full rite of cremation.
And the tone too in which Herodotus once speaks of the two rites is
significant: ‘the funeral-rites of well-to-do Thracians,’ he says, ‘are
as follows: the body lies in state for three days, and they slaughter
all manner of victims and make good cheer, when once the preliminary
lamentation is done; and then they dispose of the body by cremation
or merely by interment’--ἔπειτα δὲ θάπτουσι κατακαύσαντες, ἢ ἄλλως γῇ
κρύψαντες[1269]. The ‘merely’ plainly betrays Herodotus’ own feeling
that well-to-do persons might be expected to have the advantage of
cremation.
In the following centuries the preference for cremation would seem
to have become even more pronounced; for though both rites still
continued in use, separately as well as conjointly, Lucian was able to
call cremation the distinctively Hellenic rite[1270]. But more marked
still was the feeling in favour of cremation among those who upheld
the old Greek religion when first they had to face the invasion of
Christianity. ‘The heathen for the most part,’ says Bingham[1271],
‘burned the bodies of the dead in funeral piles, and then gathered
up the bones and ashes, and put them in an urn above ground: but the
Christians abhorred this way of burying; and therefore never used
it, but put the body whole into the ground.’ The conflict over this
matter was bitter. The pagans taunted the Christians with fearing
that, if their bodies were reduced to ashes by cremation, they would
be incapacitated for the vaunted resurrection[1272], and as a final
injury to Christian martyrs sometimes burnt their bodies and scattered
the ashes to the winds[1273]. The Christians in retaliation condemned
the rite of cremation as in appearance an act of cruelty to the dead
body[1274], and ridiculed the pagans for first ‘burning up their
dead in a most savage manner and then feasting them in a manner most
gluttonous, using the flames alike for their service and for their
injury[1275]’--for their service in cooking them a funeral-meal, for
their injury in consuming them to ashes. The two now conflicting
rites continued in use until the end of the fourth century of our
era; for reference is made to them in the laws of Theodosius[1276].
But cremation must have been on the decrease; for Macrobius early in
the fifth century says that in his time the practice had fallen into
entire desuetude, and all he knew of it was from reading[1277]. ‘It
is most probable,’ says Bingham, ‘that the heathen custom altered by
degrees from the time of Commodus the Emperor; for Commodus himself
and many of his friends were buried by inhumation and not by burning
... and from that time the custom of burning might decrease till at
last under the Christian emperors, though without any law to forbid it,
the contrary custom entirely prevailed, and this quite dwindled into
nothing.’ If this view be correct, it will mean that the old preference
for cremation exhibited by the adherents of paganism was only excited
to temporary intensity by a spirit of antagonism towards Christianity,
and that they soon returned to the old way of thinking and recognised
inhumation as a method alternative, if slightly inferior, to cremation.
When the bitterness of religious strife was over, and pagans and
Christians lived more at peace together, the former may readily have
resumed the practice of interment, which after all was their own
heritage from dim ages long before the dawn of Christianity.
But though Macrobius in the fifth century speaks of cremation as then
in disuse, the memory of it cannot have passed away so soon. Only a few
generations were to lapse before the infusion of a Slavonic population
into Greece. Among the superstitions which these intruders disseminated
was one which concerned the resuscitated dead. The Greeks, as we have
seen, themselves held a superstition on which the horrid imaginings
of the Slavs were soon grafted; the common-folk became haunted by the
dread of _vrykolakes_. How then did they deal with the bodies of such
dead persons as were suspected? Not by adopting the Slavonic custom of
impaling them, but by a revival of cremation. The advantage which that
rite possessed over burial was remembered; by its aid the dissolution
of the dead could be rendered quick and sure. Thus cremation came
once more into use as a means to the same end as in old time--the
quick dissolution of the dead body; but the motive for promoting that
dissolution was, under the altered conditions, itself altered. Instead
of love it was fear; instead of solicitude for the welfare of the dead,
it was anxiety for the protection of the living.
Yet even so, the act of burning the _vrykolakas_ was a purely
defensive, not an offensive, measure. It was not an act of hostility
or reprisal, but merely a necessary act of self-preservation, which
inflicted no hurt on the _revenant_ but simply interposed an impassable
barrier between the living and the dead. The motive was fear; there was
little or nothing of hatred mixed with it. This is made clear by the
fact that cremation has been used even in recent times in a case which
had nothing whatsoever to do with the belief in _vrykolakes_, and where
the sole motive was the old desire to serve the interests of the dead.
The occasion was the evacuation of Parga in 1819. The inhabitants of
that town had long defied the Turks, but the end was at hand, and it
was only by the intervention of the English that they were saved from
the tender mercies of Ali Pasha. The English offered them asylum in
the Ionian Islands and obtained from the Porte on their behalf a sum
of money which fully indemnified them for the houses and lands which
they abandoned. But in spite of the terms obtained, the emigrants never
forgave the English for treacherously selling to the Turks, as they
said, the home which they had defended so stoutly and so long[1278].
This evacuation of Parga forms the theme of some ballads which have
been preserved[1279]. One of them runs as follows:
‘Bird of black tidings, that art come from yon confronting coastland,
Tell me what mean those sobs of woe, those dismal lamentations,
That rise aloud from Parga’s walls and shake the very mountains.
Hath the Turk overwhelmèd her, do fire and sword consume her?’
‘The Turk hath not o’erwhelmèd her, nor fire and sword consume her;
The men of Parga have been sold, as ye sell goats and oxen,
And all must hie them thence to dwell in miserable exile.
They must leave all, the homes they love, the tombs of their own fathers,
The shrine whereat they bowed the knee, for infidels to trample.
Women in anguish rend their hair and beat their bare white bosoms,
Old men lift up their quavering voice in dismal lamentation,
Priests amid flowing tears strip bare the churches where they worshipped.
Dost see the glare of yonder fire? the pall of smoke above it?
There are they burning dead men’s bones, the bones of valiant warriors,
Who made the hosts of Turkey quail and fired their captain’s palace[1280].
Yonder, I tell thee, many a son his father’s bones is burning,
Lest the Liápid[1281] light on them, lest Turk upon them trample.
Dost hear the wailing manifold wherewith the woodlands echo?
Dost hear the beating of the breast, the dismal lamentation?
’Tis that the parting hour has come, to part them from their country;
They kiss her very stones, they clasp her dust in fond caresses.’
The incident in this ballad with which we are concerned is the
exhumation and burning of the remains of those dead warriors who had
valiantly maintained the liberty of their native town; and there need
be little doubt that the incident is actually historical, for the story
is confirmed by a second ballad in the same collection[1282]; but in
any case all that concerns us here is the fact that the motive for such
an act was known and appreciated by the authors of the two ballads.
Now in order to understand this motive, it must be remembered that
the general custom of the Church in Greece is to exhume the bones of
the dead at the expiration of three years from the time of burial,
when dissolution is expected to be complete. Hence the kinsfolk for
whose remains the men of Parga were concerned were those who had been
recently buried and could not yet have attained complete dissolution.
They feared that the Turks would disturb and desecrate the graves and
thus obstruct the proper course of natural decay; and they therefore
decided to adopt the alternative method of disintegration, and by
cremation to effect speedily and surely that end which, without
friends at hand to guard the graves from the molestation of foes and
infidels, could not be secured by leaving the dead to the slow action
of the earth. This decision then reveals a clear recognition of the
superiority of cremation over inhumation as a means of compassing the
final dissolution of the dead; and equally clear is the motive for
seeking that end; it was not fear on their own account--to that feeling
indeed the men of Parga had proved themselves strangers--but simply
love and respect for the brave men who had fought, and perhaps had
fallen, in the defence of freedom.
Since then the exhumation and cremation of the dead constituted in
this case an act of love towards them, the same action in the case of
suspected _vrykolakes_ can never have been an act of hostility. It was
rather a measure beneficial alike to the living and to the dead. To the
living it gave immunity from the assaults of _vrykolakes_, and this
without doubt was commonly the uppermost or indeed the only thought
in the minds of those who had recourse to it; but to the dead too it
gave repose. And indeed I cannot but suppose that this is the reason
why the Greeks, when first confronted with the horror of _vrykolakes_,
chose to burn them rather than to follow the Slavonic custom of
impaling them. To impale them might have given security to the living,
but it appeared as an act of cruelty and hostility against the dead.
Cremation, by effecting immediate dissolution and the consequent
severance of the dead from this world, was bound to give equal security
to the living, and at the same time was an act of mercy and kindness
to the dead. In effect, the new motive of dread which came along with
Slavonic influence never excluded the old motive of love which inspired
the sons of warriors at Parga no less than the chief of Homeric
warriors at his comrade’s funeral, and perhaps will, if occasion arise,
prove itself not yet extinct. Cremation, though often in recent times
employed primarily as a safeguard for the living, has all along been
felt to confer also a benefit on the dead, an even surer and speedier
benefit than inhumation secured.
Now if this feeling existed, and if there existed also from early
times, as I have shown to be probable, a system of combining cremation
of a ceremonial kind with actual inhumation, it might reasonably be
expected that many who recognised the superior merit of cremation, but
had not the means to carry out so costly a rite in full, would have
availed themselves of the inexpensive ceremonial practice. This, I
believe, is what occurred, and in this I shall seek the explanation
of a custom which, like the practice of real cremation, has been
bequeathed by Ancient to Modern Greece.
In the funerals of Ancient Greece the procession, which escorted the
dead body from the room where it had lain in state to the pyre or the
grave, carried torches. Where cremation was to be employed, these
were doubtless used for kindling the pyre; the fire brought from the
dead man’s home in this world was used to speed him on his way to the
next. But when inhumation was practised, what became of these torches?
Was the fire brought from the dead man’s home put to no purpose? Or
were the torches thrown into the grave along with him? That we cannot
tell, for the torches were quickly perishable. But there is one object
commonly found in tombs which is suggestive of the association of
fire with the buried body. That common object is a lamp. Here again
we cannot tell whether that lamp was lighted when it was put in the
grave. Some that have been dug up have certainly been in use, for they
bear marks of the flame; but of course they may have been in every-day
use before they were devoted to the service of the dead. Yet the few
facts known would at least fit the theory that the procession which
carried out the dead man carried also fire from his home to the grave,
and that either the torches themselves or a lamp lighted from them was
put in the grave beside the body. If that view were correct, it would
further be note-worthy that most of the lamps found are of little
intrinsic value and of late date[1283]. Now the fact that they are
mostly worthless implies that they were often given by poor persons,
or, if the other contents of the grave be of value, that the lamp
was not brought as a gift for its intrinsic worth or beauty, but for
some practical purpose; while the fact that they are mainly of late
date means that the practice of putting them in the graves increased
in frequency during the period which begins with the fifth century
B.C.--that is to say, during that period in which we have already noted
an increasing preference for cremation. Further the increase in the
frequency of lamps makes it improbable that they are to be reckoned
as part and parcel of the ordinary furniture of a grave; for the
_lekythi_ and other vases which were the ordinary gifts to the dead
had already in the fifth century assumed a conventional character. Any
fresh departure therefore after that century, or any increase in the
frequency of one particular object among the contents of graves, must
be a sign of some new or more strongly marked feeling towards the dead.
Now all these facts and inferences are intelligible on one hypothesis;
and that hypothesis is that the lamps found in the graves were put
there lighted and burning, as the ceremonial minimum of the rite of
cremation for which a growing preference is evident during some four
centuries before the Christian era.
When we pass on to the early days of Christianity, a similar series of
facts meets our view. The Church officially rejected and reprobated
the practice of cremation. Converts therefore were bound to use
inhumation; and this obligation probably excited the less repugnance,
in that interment was no new thing to them, but had always been
alternative, if slightly inferior, to cremation. But while even
cheerfully obeying the law of the Church thus far, they clung to many
of the details of their old funeral-custom, some of which were allowed
by the Church, others disallowed. The practice of laying out the dead
in rich and choice robes continued and called down strong rebuke
from St Jerome[1284]; the excessive lamentation and the use of hired
mourners at the lying-in-state provoked St Chrysostom to threats of
excommunication[1285]; yet both these customs still obtain. But the
custom of carrying torches in the funeral-procession was continued
without even a protest on the part of the Church. Perhaps it was felt
to be a harmless concession to ancient custom; perhaps then as now
ecclesiastical taste even favoured the consumption of many candles in
religious ceremonies. At any rate the fact is clear that the pagan
custom of carrying torches in the procession held a place also in
Christian ritual. What was the reason for which the common people
held to their old custom? The torches were not needed any longer
to kindle pyres; for actual cremation was abolished by the Church.
Nor were they needed to give light to the procession; for Christian
funerals, except in times of persecution, took place in open daylight.
The reason was, I believe, that by means of these torches fire was
carried along with the dead from his home to his grave, and that there
a ceremonial act, a semblance of cremation, was combined with the rite
of inhumation. And there are some indications that the fire brought to
the grave-side was actually associated in some way with the dead body.
In a disquisition ‘about them that sleep,’ which passed for a work of
St Athanasius[1286], there is a recommendation to burn a mixture of oil
and wax at the grave of the dead; and though the practice inculcated
is disguised as ‘a sacrifice of burnt-offering to God,’ it is possible
to attribute it to a less Jewish and more Greek motive, a desire
to keep up the old custom of cremation, be it only in a ceremonial
form. Again we have evidence that the custom of burning lights at
the graves of the dead was commonly followed for some non-Christian
purpose; for the Council of Eliberis saw fit to forbid it under pain of
excommunication[1287]. This non-Christian purpose will explain itself
in the light of some modern customs.
There is a custom well known in Modern Greece which consists in the
maintenance of what is called ‘the unsleeping lamp’ (τὸ ἀκοίμητο
καντῆλι). A fair general idea of it may be given by saying that after a
funeral a light is kept continuously burning either in the room where
death took place or at the grave for a period of either forty days or
three years. This variation in time and place requires examination.
In customs, as in other things, there is a right way and a wrong way;
variety in observance is not original; there is a proper time and a
proper place.
First then, which is the proper place for this particular custom, the
chamber of death or the grave-side?
The localities, in which that form of the custom which I shall show
to be correct in this particular has come most conspicuously under my
own observation, are Aráchova, a village near Delphi; Leonídi on the
east coast of Laconia; a cemetery in the Thriasian plain belonging,
I think, to the village of Kalývia; and the island of Aegina. In the
last-mentioned it is an ordinary lantern which is used; it is placed
at the head of the grave, and for forty days after the funeral is so
trimmed and tended that the flame is not once extinguished. At Aráchova
and in the Thriasian plain each grave is provided with an erection
capable of sheltering a naked light. Some of the erections are like
doll’s-houses with door and windows complete; others are mere boxes;
others again are no more than a few tiles or flat stones set on edge
to form a square and covered over with a roof of the same material. At
Aráchova the lamps contained in these erections are tended both evening
and morning, and the obligation to keep them burning uninterruptedly
for three years, until the exhumation of the body, is strongly felt
and scrupulously discharged. In the Thriasian plain the light is
kept burning with equal care, but I am uncertain for what period. At
Leonídi some shelters of the same kind as those described are in use;
but there are also more elaborate tombs at the head of which is built
a small recess below the level of the ground or at any rate under the
slab of stone or marble which covers the grave, and in this recess,
which is closed with a small door allowing the passage of air through
its chinks, is placed ‘the unsleeping lamp.’ Here again the lights are
kept burning until the exhumation takes place, and the lamps are fed
and trimmed every evening. At Gytheion a device not dissimilar, though
ruder, was formerly employed; among some old graves, now neglected,
from which, it appeared, the bones of the dead had never been exhumed,
I noticed several plastered over with a rough concrete in which was
sunk at the head of the grave an iron vessel, like a sauce-pan docked
of its handle; this vessel had presumably served the purpose of
sheltering a light.
Such then is the main aspect of this custom; but the preliminary
details also require notice. The fire with which to light the
‘unsleeping lamp’ must not be kindled on the spot beside the grave,
but is conveyed from the house of the deceased. There, in general,
the moment that death takes place or at any rate so soon as the body
is laid out in state, candles or lamps are lighted and are placed at
the head and at the foot of the couch on which the body reposes. These
are kept burning until the funeral-procession is ready to start, and
along with the procession either the same lights or other tapers and
candles lighted from them are carried to the grave; and here the same
fire which was burning in the house of the dead is transmitted to the
‘unsleeping lamp’ at the grave.
This I believe to be the correct form of the custom, but I must
notice other varieties and give my reasons for regarding them as
less authentic. It is stated in a reliable treatise on the island
of Chios[1288], that there the people keep a lamp burning for forty
nights in the room where a death has taken place, thinking that the
soul wanders for forty nights before it goes down to Hades. The
interpretation given evidently implies that the lamp is intended to
give light to the spirit of the dead if in the course of its nightly
wanderings it visits its former home.
Now so far as the Chian form of the custom is concerned, some such
meaning might reasonably be assigned to it. But what of the more
usual form of the custom by which the lamp is kept burning both night
and day? A disembodied spirit, if it resemble an ordinary man, may
reasonably be supposed to need a candle to see its way at night,
but surely it needs none in the day-time; yet it is only the custom
of burning the light all day long as well as at night that can have
gained for it the name of ‘the unsleeping lamp,’ the lamp that is never
extinguished. Here then is a visible defect in the Chian manner of
observing the custom and likewise in the Chian manner of interpreting
it; and a custom defective and misinterpreted in one important detail
is open to suspicion in others. So far therefore as Chios is concerned,
no great importance attaches to the fact that there the chamber of
death is the place where the remnants of the custom are observed.
But there are other parts of Greece in which the death-chamber is the
place for the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ and where the lamp still deserves that
designation inasmuch as it is kept burning both day and night until the
fortieth day after the funeral, and is not, as in Chios, lighted afresh
each night. In such districts, I believe, the custom has long ceased to
bear any meaning, and being on the wane has for convenience undergone
a change. It is still felt to be obligatory to keep the flame that is
lighted as soon as death has occurred burning constantly for forty
days, but the work of tending it has been found to be more conveniently
performed at home than in the grave-yard. The necessity to transmit
the flame to the grave, to keep it continuously in close proximity
to the dead, is no longer felt. This form of the custom can then be
accounted for as a relaxation of that which I have put forward as the
old and correct form; whereas on the other hand if the room where
death occurred had originally been the proper place for maintaining
the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ it would be impossible to account for the
transference of the custom to the grave-side, where special shelters
or receptacles must be made for the protection of the flame and where
more trouble is needed to feed and to trim the lamps day by day.
Aráchova and Leonídi where most pains are taken in the observance of
the custom--and that not for forty days only but for three years--have
the best claim to be regarded as the true exponents of the old custom.
The proper place for the ‘unsleeping lamp’ is the grave-side.
But there is a variation also, as I have said, in the period of time
during which this custom is kept up in different districts. In some it
is a period of forty days, in others a period of three years; and in
this respect there is a divergence between the usages even of those
places which in other details have been shown to adhere faithfully
to the old custom; for at Aráchova and Leonídi the longer period is
customary, in Aegina the shorter. It is in this very variation that we
find a clue to the meaning and purpose of the custom. In the earlier
part of this chapter I showed, by quotation from a popular dirge and by
the consideration of various customs connected with death, that in the
belief of the common-folk the dissolution of a dead body is effected
by the fortieth day after burial. On the other hand the Church has
more prudently fixed three years as the time required for dissolution,
the period which must elapse before the body may be exhumed. Thus
there are two periods, fixed respectively by popular opinion and by
ecclesiastical authority, between which there is a choice; the _vox
populi_ and the _vox Dei_ are here in disagreement; and according as
preference is locally given to the one or to the other mandate, so is
a period of forty days or a period of three years locally believed to
be that required for the dissolution of the body. But these two periods
are also those between which there is a local variation in the custom
of maintaining the ‘unsleeping lamp.’ Hence it is reasonably to be
inferred that the ‘unsleeping lamp’ is in some way closely connected
with the dissolution of the body.
Moreover this connexion is actually recognised by the common-folk
themselves, as witness the following two couplets from a funeral-dirge.
The words are put, as so often in the dirges, in the mouth of the dead
man, who in this instance is supposed to be young and to be addressing
his forlorn lady-love.
‘And when the priests with solemn song march toward the grave with me,
Steal thou out from thy mother’s side and light me torches three;
And when the priests shall quench again those lights for me,--ah then,
Then, like the breath of roses, sweet, thou passest from my ken[1289].’
These lines are based on a belief which is fairly general among the
Greek peasants, that consciousness of, and concern for, the things
of this world are not broken off finally at the moment of death, but
continue in some degree until the body of the dead is completely
dissolved. Here the memories of love are spoken of as lasting until
the priests quench the burning lights, which can be none other in the
context than the ‘unsleeping lamp’--for three, the number mentioned,
is merely a number of peculiar virtue and has no special force. It
follows then that the quenching of the lights is understood in the
passage to denote the accomplishment of that process of dissolution,
which, though it mean the cessation of all intercourse with this
upper world, is yet earnestly desired. Here in fact are plain words
of popular poetry which recognise the connexion of the ‘unsleeping
lamp’ with the dissolution of the body, and make the quenching of the
one signify the completion of the other. It is going but a short step
further to suppose that the presence of the lamp’s flame at the grave
was originally intended to advance the process of dissolution--or, in
other words, that the maintenance of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ at the grave
until the body is finally dissolved is an act of ceremonial cremation.
This supposition gains yet more in probability when we compare with
the custom of the ‘unsleeping lamp’ another not dissimilar custom
which obtains in Zacynthos. There, as elsewhere, candles or lamps are
lighted about the dead body while it is lying in state, and fire from
them is carried to the grave. But, arrived there, instead of lighting
an ‘unsleeping lamp,’ the bearers of the candles drop them into the
grave beside the corpse. In this we have a close parallel to the
ancient custom of putting a lamp, probably enough, as I have suggested,
a lighted lamp, into the grave; and at the same time it cannot but be
intimately connected with the custom of the ‘unsleeping lamp,’ the
purpose of which is now known to concern the dissolution of the dead
body. I claim then that the series of customs which we have reviewed,
exhibiting as they do an intention to associate fire in some close
way with the buried body and, as in the modern form of the custom, to
associate it therewith until the process of dissolution is complete,
find a common explanation in the continuance of a practice already
exemplified in earlier ages, the practice of ceremonial cremation in
conjunction with the full burial rite.
Nor is this explanation open to attack on the ground that a mere
lamp lighted near the dead body bears so little outward resemblance
to real cremation. To the outside observer the ceremonial act may
seem a mere travesty of that for which it is substituted; but to the
persons concerned the presence of fire, in however small a volume, may
have seemed sufficient; for in all ritual it is not the act, but the
intention, which has value. I have already pointed out how interment
was occasionally reduced to an equally ineffective minimum; but I may
perhaps cite a still closer parallel--another case in which a lamp
is thought to have done duty for a real fire. There was in old time a
custom, to which several ancient writers refer[1290], of keeping a lamp
burning both day and night in the Prytaneum or in the chief temple of
a Greek city; and both Athens and Tarentum are said to have had these
lamps so constructed that they could hold a supply of oil sufficient to
last a whole year. Such lamps, it has been suggested[1291], represented
the fire on the city’s hearth which was not allowed to go out. The
purpose of the lamp was clearly not to give light--for then it need
not have been kept burning by day as well as by night--but it was a
labour-saving appliance for keeping the sacred fire ever burning.
The small flame was in fact a rudimentary fire. Thus all that I am
supposing is that a lamp could represent a real fire just as well at
the tomb as in the Prytaneum.
If then my explanation of the modern custom is right, the fact that the
common-folk, though they have for many centuries employed inhumation
as the ordinary Christian rite, have clung at the same time to a
ceremonial form of cremation which they still connect in some way with
the dissolution of the buried corpse, is additional proof of the favour
with which the quicker and surer rite was formerly, and perhaps here
and there still is, regarded.
Thus then the study of ordinary funeral-usage has confirmed the
conclusions drawn in preceding chapters from the study of a certain
abnormal state of after-death existence. As incorruptibility was the
greatest bane to the dead, so dissolution was the greatest boon that
the living could give them. This dissolution was to be effected by
one of two methods, cremation and inhumation, which in theory were
alternative but in practice were frequently combined. The combination
of them was due in the first instance to the amalgamation of two
races to which they respectively appertained; but in later times the
racial difference between the two rites was obliterated, and they
were judged on their own merits, with the result that a preference
for cremation manifested itself in funeral-usage. This preference was
due to a recognition that cremation was a quicker and surer method of
dissolution, and is itself strong testimony to the desire to effect
dissolution. The end to which both rites were directed was the same,
but since one led to that end more quickly and surely than the other,
it was rightly preferred.
Further the motive which prompted the living to effect the dissolution
of the dead was not in general selfish; for dissolution, as we have
seen, was a boon to the dead. That complete severance from this world,
which came with the dissolution of the body, was in some way for the
benefit of the dead. Patroclus sought for it, and Achilles granted his
petition through love; and some three thousand years later the men
of Parga are found effecting the rapid dissolution of their kinsfolk
with the same motive. Only in one set of circumstances was the selfish
motive of fear in operation, namely, where, the resuscitated dead
were, by the influence of Slavonic superstition, invested with the
character of malignant blood-thirsty monsters against whom self-defence
was imperative, and whose complete severance from this world was
desirable as a safeguard for the living. But such circumstances were
the exception. The rule was that cremation and inhumation alike were
means to the dissolution of the dead and their complete severance from
this world, and the motive which prompted living men to seek that end
was love of the dead who would in some way benefit thereby.
FOOTNOTES:
[1226] Bern. Schmidt, _Lieder, Märchen, Sagen etc._, Folk-song no. 33.
[1227] Cf. above, p. 389.
[1228] See above, p. 307, note 1, and p. 313.
[1229] The feasts at earlier dates, as on the third and ninth days,
will be shown later to be popular in origin. See below, pp. 530 ff.
[1230] Ἰ. Σ. Ἀρχέλαος, ἡ Σινασός, p. 82.
[1231] _Op. cit._ p. 81. The form here is σαρανταρίκια.
[1232] Δελτίον τῆς ἱστορ. καὶ ἐθνολ. ἑταιρ. τῆς Ἑλλάδος, III. p. 337.
The form is σαραντάρια.
[1233] See above, p. 373.
[1234] Soph. _Antig._ 256. Cf. Jebb’s note _ad loc._, from which I take
the further references.
[1235] Aelian, _Var. Hist._ V. 14.
[1236] Aelian, _Hist. Anim._ V. 49.
[1237] Cf. Fauriel, _Chants de la Grèce Moderne, Discours
Préliminaire_, p. 40; Μιχαὴλ Σ. Γρηγορόπουλος, ἡ νῆσος Σύμη, p. 46.
[1238] _Early Age of Greece_, Vol. I. cap. 7.
[1239] Bury, _History of Greece_, p. 41.
[1240] Rohde, _Psyche_, cap. I.
[1241] Hom. _Il._ VI. 417 ff., XXIII. 252 ff., XXIV. 791 ff.; _Od._ XI.
72 ff. and XII. 11 ff.
[1242] _Psyche_ I. pp. 31-32.
[1243] Cf. Lucian, _De Luctu_ 14, ἐσθῆτα καὶ τὸν ἄλλον κόσμον
συγκατέφλεξεν ἣ συγκατώρυξεν.
[1244] Described in Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολ. 1889, pp. 171 ff.
[1245] Described in _Athen. Mittheilungen_, 1893, pp. 73-191.
[1246] The perusal of Philios’ narrative leaves the impression that
several cases of cremation were discovered. Yet in his concluding
summary he says: “Burial, not burning, of the dead was in those times
the more prevalent custom, since in one case and one only can we admit
that the corpse was not buried but burnt.” I note that Brückner and
Pernice (_op. cit._ p. 149) in referring to Philios’ results tacitly
soften his rigid ‘one and one only’ into the more supple ‘one or two.’
For justification of this see Philios, _op. cit._ pp. 178, 179, 180,
185.
[1247] Hirschfeld, in _Annali_, 1872, pp. 135, 167, cited by Brückner
and Pernice _op. cit._ p. 148. Κουμανούδης, in Πρακτικὰ, 1873-4, p. 17.
[1248] _Op. cit._ pp. 91 ff.
[1249] _Op. cit._ p. 178.
[1250] Brückner and Pernice take this view of the fact, though the
words which they use are coloured by their acceptance of Rohde’s theory
of propitiatory offerings to the dead. ‘Vor der Beerdigung, so scheint
es nach den Funden des Herrn Philios, sind an der Grabstätte des
öfteren Brandopfer dargebracht worden.’ _Op. cit._ p. 151.
[1251] See _op. cit._ pp. 78-9.
[1252] See above, p. 347.
[1253] _Il._ XXIV. 719 ff.
[1254] Cf. _Athen. Mittheil._ 1893, p. 103.
[1255] Plutarch, _Solon_ 20.
[1256] Lysias, _Or._ XII. 18, 19.
[1257] Lucian, _de Luctu_, 12 and 13.
[1258] _Hom._ 32 _in Mat._ p. 306.
[1259] Preserved among the archives of Zante, which the kindness of Mr
Leonidas Zoës enabled me to inspect.
[1260] _Psyche_, I. pp. 209 and 360. From this source I draw several of
the following references.
[1261] Tsountas in Ἐφημερὶς Ἀρχαιολ. 1888, p. 136.
[1262] Plut. _Lycurg._ 27.
[1263] Iambl. _Vit. Pythag._ 154.
[1264] Pliny, _N. H._ XXXV. 160.
[1265] Dem. _Orat._ 43 § 71.
[1266] _Antig._ 1201. Prof. Jebb in his note on this passage expresses
the opinion that the θάλλοι νεοσπάδες were not fuel: in view of the
Attic law above cited I am inclined to dissent. He also takes κλήματα
in Ar. _Eccles._ 1031 to mean ‘olive twigs’ and not, as more usual,
‘vine-shoots.’ I pass by the passage as doubtful evidence.
[1267] Ross, _Arch. Aufs._ I. 31.
[1268] Artemid. _Oneirocr._ IV. 57.
[1269] Herod. V. 8.
[1270] Lucian, _de Luctu_, 21.
[1271] _Antiquities of the Christian Church_, Bk XXIII. cap. 2, whence
I take the following references.
[1272] Minucius, p. 32.
[1273] _Acta Tharaci_ ap. Baron. an. 299, n. XXI., Ammian. Marcell.
lib. XXII. p. 241, Euseb. lib. VIII. cap. 6.
[1274] Tertull. _De Anima_, cap. 51.
[1275] Tertull. _de Resur._ cap. 1.
[1276] _Cod. Th._ lib. IX. tit. 17 _de Sepulcris violatis_, leg. 6.
[1277] _Saturnal._ lib. VII. cap. 7.
[1278] See Finlay, _History of Greece_, vol. V. pp. 274-6.
[1279] Passow, _Popularia Carm. Graeciae recentioris_, nos. 222-224. I
translate here no. 222.
[1280] So I interpret, but without certainty, the words καὶ τὸ βεζύρη
κάψαν, literally ‘and they burnt the Vizir.’
[1281] The Liápides were an Albanian tribe employed by the Turks.
[1282] No. 223.
[1283] Actual data on this point are difficult to obtain; but
archaeologists whom I consulted in Greece were all agreed, that
lamps are more frequent in graves of late date, most frequent in the
Greco-Roman period.
[1284] Hieron. _Vita Pauli_ 4, cap. 66.
[1285] Chrysostom, _Hom._ 32 _in Mat._ p. 306.
[1286] Cited by Durant, _de Ritibus_, lib. I. cap. XXIII. n. 14 (p.
235). I have been unable to discover the original passage. Cf. Bingham,
_op. cit._ XXIII. 3.
[1287] See Bingham, _Antiquities of the Christian Church_, Bk XXIII.
cap. 3 _ad fin._
[1288] Κωνστ. Ν. Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλεκτα, p. 341.
[1289] These lines, or others in the same tenor, are well known among
the professional μυρολογίστριαις (women hired to mourn at funerals).
The version which I here follow is given by Passow, _Popul. Carm._ no.
377 A.
Κι’ ὄντες νά με περάσουνε ψάλλοντες οἱ παπᾶδες,
Ἔβγα κρυφὰ ’π’ τὴ μάνα σου κι’ ἄναψε τρεῖς λαμπάδες·
Κι’ ὄντες νά μου τὰ σβέσουνε παπᾶδες τὰ κηριά μου,
Τότες τρανταφυλλένια μου βγαίνεις ἀπ’ τὴν καρδιά μου.
[1290] Theocritus XXI. 36 f.; Athenaeus 700 D; Pausan. I. 26. 7.
[1291] Frazer, in _Journ. of Philol._ XIV. 145 ff.