Note 237 — Chapter XI · SOLONIAN LAWS AND CONSTITUTION.

Plutarch, l. c. The Solonian restrictions on the subject of funerals were to a great degree copied in the twelve tables at Rome: see Cicero, De Legg. ii, 23, 24. He esteems it a right thing to put the rich and the poor on a level in respect to funeral ceremonies. Plato follows an opposite idea, and limits the expense of funerals upon a graduated scale, according to the census of the deceased (Legg. xii, p. 959).

Dêmosthenês (cont. Makartat. p 1071) gives what he calls the Solonian law on funerals, different from Plutarch on several points.

Ungovernable excesses of grief among the female sex are sometimes mentioned in Grecian towns: see the μανικὸν πένθος among the Milesian women (Polyæn. viii, 63): the Milesian women, however, had a tinge of Karian feeling.

Compare an instructive inscription, recording a law of the Greek city of Gambreion in Æolic Asia Minor, wherein the dress, the proceedings, and the time of allowed mourning, for men, women, and children who had lost their relatives, are strictly prescribed under severe penalties (Franz, Fünf Inschriften und fünf Städte in Kleinasien, Berlin, 1840, p. 17). Expensive ceremonies in the celebration of marriage are forbidden by some of the old Scandinavian laws (Wilda, Das Gildenwesen im Mittelalter, p. 18).