The Funerals.
69. An Athenian’s Will.—All Menon’s patient’s are to-day set out upon
the road to recovery. Hipponax, his rival, has been less fortunate. A
wealthy and elderly patient, Lycophron, died the day before yesterday.
As the latter felt his end approaching, he did what most Athenians may
put off until close to the inevitable hour—he made his will, and called
in his friends to witness it; and one must hope there can be no doubt
about the validity, the signets attached, etc., for otherwise the heirs
may find themselves in a pretty lawsuit.
The will begins in this fashion: “The Testament of Lyophron the
Marathonian.[*] May all be well:—but if I do not recover from this
sickness, thus do I bestow my estate.” Then in perfectly cold-blooded
fashion he proceeds to give his young wife and the guardianship of his
infant daughter to Stobiades, a bachelor friend who will probably marry
the widow within two months or less of the funeral. Lycophron gives
also specific directions about his tomb; he gives legacies of money or
jewelry to various old associates; he mentions certain favorite slaves
to receive freedom, and as specifically orders certain others (victims
of his displeasure) to be kept in bondage. Lastly three reliable
friends are names as executors.
[*] In all Athenian legal documents, it was necessary to give the deme
of the interested party or parties.
70. The Preliminaries of a Funeral.—An elaborate funeral is the last
perquisite of every Athenian. Even if Lycophron had been a poor man he
would now receive obsequies seemingly far out of proportion to his
estate and income. It is even usual in Greek states to have laws
restraining the amount which may be spent upon funerals,—otherwise
great sums may be literally “burned up” upon the funeral pyres. When
now the tidings go out that Lycophron’s nearest relative has “closed
his mouth,” after he has breathed his last, all his male kinsfolk and
all other persons who _hope_ to be remembered in the will promptly
appear in the Agora in black himatia[*] and hasten to the barber shops
to have their heads shaved. The widow might shave her hair likewise,
with all her slave maids, did not her husband, just ere his death,
positively forbid such disfigurements. The women of the family take the
body in charge the minute the physician has declared that all is over.
The customary obol is put in the mouth of the corpse,[+] and the body
is carefully washed in perfumed water, clothed in festal white; then
woolen fillets are wound around the head, and over these a crown of
vine leaves. So arrayed, the body is ready to be laid out on a couch
in the front courtyard of the house, with the face turned toward the
door so as to seem to greet everybody who enters. In front of the
house there stands a tall earthen vase of water, wherewith the visitors
may give themselves a purifying sprinkling, after quitting the
polluting presence of a dead body.
[*] In the important city of Argos, however, _white_ was the proper
funeral color.
[+] This was not originally (as later asserted) a fee to Charon the
ferryman to Hades, but simply a “minimum precautionary sum, for the
dead man’s use” (Dr. Jane Harrison), placed in the mouth, where a Greek
usually kept his small change.
71. Lamenting of the Dead.—Around this funeral bed the relatives and
friends keep a gloomy vigil. The Athenians after all are southern
born, and when excited seem highly emotional people. There are stern
laws dating from Solon’s day against the worst excesses, but what now
occurs seems violent enough. The widow is beating her breast, tearing
her hair, gashing her cheeks with her finger nails. Lycophron’s
elderly sister has ashes sprinkled upon her gray head and ever and anon
utters piteous wails. The slave women in the background keep up a
hideous moaning. The men present do not think it undignified to utter
loud lamentation and to shed frequent tears. Least commendable of all
(from a modern standpoint) are the hired dirge singers, who maintain a
most melancholy chant, all the time beating their breasts, and giving a
perfect imitation of frantic grief. This has probably continued day
and night, the mourners perhaps taking turns by relays.
All in all it is well that Greek custom enjoins the actual funeral, at
least, on the second day following the death.[*] The “shade” of the
deceased is not supposed to find rest in the nether world until after
the proper obsequies.[+] To let a corpse lie several days without
final disposition will bring down on any family severe reproach. In
fact, on few points are the Greeks more sensitive than on this subject
of prompt burial or cremation. After a land battle the victors are
bound never to push their vengeance so far as to refuse a “burial
truce” to the vanquished; and it is a doubly unlucky admiral who lets
his crews get drowned in a sea fight, without due effort to recover the
corpses afterward and to give them proper disposition on land.
[*] It must be remembered that the Greeks had no skilled embalmers at
their service, and that they lived in a decidedly warm climate.
[+] See the well-known case of the wandering shade of Patroclus
demanding the proper obsequies from Achilles (_Iliad_, XXIII. 71).
72. The Funeral Procession.—The day after the “laying-out” comes the
actual funeral. Normally it is held as early as possible in the
morning, before the rising of the sun. Perhaps while on the way to the
Agora we have passed, well outside the city, such a mournful
procession. The youngest and stoutest of the male relatives carry the
litter: although if Lycophron’s relatives had desired a really
extravagant display they might have employed a mule car. Ahead of the
bier march the screaming flute players, earning their fees by no
melodious din. Then comes the litter itself with the corpse arrayed
magnificently for the finalities, a honey cake set in the hands,[*] a
flask of oil placed under the head. After this come streaming the
relatives in irregular procession: the widow and the chief heir (her
prospective second husband!) walking closest, and trying to appear as
demonstrative as possible: nor (merely because the company is noisy
and not stoical in its manner) need we deny that there is abundant
genuine grief. All sorts of male acquaintances of the deceased bring
up the rear, since it is good form to proclaim to wide Athens that
Lycophon had hosts of friends.[+]
[*] The original idea of the honey cake was simply that it was a
friendly present to the infernal gods; later came the conceit that it
was a sop to fling to the dog Cerberus, who guarded the entrance to
Hades.
[+] Women, unless they were over sixty years of age, were not allowed
to join in funeral processions unless they were first cousins, or
closer kin, of the deceased.
73. The Funeral Pyre.—So the procession moves through the still gloomy
streets of the city,—doubtless needing torch bearers as well as flute
players,—and out through some gate, until the line halts in an open
field, or better, in a quiet and convenient garden. Here the great
funeral pyre of choice dry fagots, intermixed with aromatic cedar, has
been heaped. The bier is laid thereon. There are no strictly
religious ceremonies. The company stands in a respectful circle, while
the nearest male kinsman tosses a pine link upon the oil-soaked wood.
A mighty blaze leaps up to heaven, sending its ruddy brightness against
the sky now palely flushed with the bursting dawn. The flutists play
in softer measures. As the fire rages a few of the relatives toss upon
it pots of rare unguents; and while the flames die down, thrice the
company shout their farewells, calling their departed friend by
name—“Lycophron! Lycophron! Lycophron!”
So fierce is the flame it soon sinks into ashes. As soon as these are
cool enough for safety (a process hastened by pouring on water or wine)
the charred bones of the deceased are tenderly gathered up to be placed
in a stately urn. The company, less formally now, returns to Athens,
and that night there will probably be a great funeral feast at the
house of the nearest relative, everybody eating and drinking to
capacity “to do Lycophron full honor”; for it is he who is imagined as
being now for the last time the host.
74. Honors to the memory of the Dead.—Religion seems to have very
little place in the Athenian funeral: there are no priests present, no
prayers, no religious hymns. But the dead man is now conceived as
being, in a very humble and intangible way, a deity himself: his good
will is worth propitiating; his memory is not to be forgotten. On the
third, ninth, and thirtieth days after the funeral there are simple
religious ceremonies with offerings of garlands, fruits, libations and
the like, at the new tomb; and later at certain times in the year these
will be repeated. The more enlightened will of course consider these
merely graceful remembrances of a former friend; but there is a good
deal of primitive ancestor worship even in civilized Athens.
_Burning_ is the usual method for the Greeks to dispose of their dead,
but the burial of unburned bodies is not unknown to them. Probably,
however, the rocky soil and the limited land space around Athens make
regular cemeteries less convenient than elsewhere: still it would have
been nothing exceptional if Lycophron had ordered in his will that he
be put in a handsome pottery coffin to be placed in a burial ground
pertaining to his family.
[Illustration: ATHENIAN FUNERAL MONUMENT
A lady is gazing upon her casket of jewels before bidding them eternal
farewell. Note the admirable restraint yet pathos of the scene.]
75. The Beautiful Funeral Monuments.—If the noisy funeral customs
permitted to the Athenians may repel a later day observer, there can be
only praise for the Athenian tombs, or rather the funeral monuments
(_stëlæ_) which might be set over the urns or ashes or the actual
coffins. Nearly every Athenian family has a private field which it
uses for sepulchral purposes: but running outside of the city, near
the Itonian Gate along the road to the Peiræus, the space to either
side of the highway has been especially appropriated for this purpose.
Walking hither along this “Street of the Tombs” we can make a careful
survey of some of the most touching memorials of Athenian life.
The period of hot, violent grief seems now over; the mourners have
settled down in their dumb sense of loss. This spirit of calm, noble
resignation is what is expressed upon these monuments. All is chaste,
dignified, simple. There are no labored eulogies of the deceased; no
frantic expressions of sorrow; no hint (let it be also said) of any
hope of reunions in the Hereafter. Sometimes there is simply a plain
marble slab or pillar marked with the name of the deceased; and with
even the more elaborate monuments the effort often is to concentrate,
into one simple scene, the best and worthiest that was connected with
the dear departed. Here is the noble mother seated in quiet dignity
extending her hand in farewell to her sad but steadfast husband, while
her children linger wonderingly by; here is the athlete, the young man
in his pride, depicted not in the moment of weakness and death, but
scraping his glorious form with his strigil, after some victorious
contest in the games; here is the mounted warrior, slain before Corinth
whilst battling for his country, represented in the moment of
overthrowing beneath his flying charger some despairing foe. We are
made to feel that these Athenians were fair and beautiful in their
lives, and that in their deaths they were not unworthy. And we marvel,
and admire these monuments the more when we realize that they are not
the work of master sculptors but of ordinary paid craftsmen. We turn
away praising the city that could produce such noble sculpture and call
it mere handicraft, and praising also the calm poise of soul,
uncomforted by revealed religion, which could make these monuments
common expressions of the bitterest, deepest, most vital emotions which
can ever come to men.[*]
[*] As Von Falke (_Greece and Rome_, p. 141) well says of these
monuments, “No skeleton, no scythe, no hour-glass is in them to bring a
shudder to the beholder. As they [the departed] were in life, mother
and daughter, husband and wife, parents and children, here they are
represented together, sitting or standing, clasping each other’s hands
and looking at one another with love and sympathy as if it were their
customary affectionate intercourse. What the stone perpetuates is the
love and happiness they enjoyed together, while yet they rejoiced in
life and the light of day.”