Note 6 — OF REAL AND APPARENT DEATH.

Horrible as it may appear, it was a custom in Persia, at the time that Herodotus wrote, of burying alive; and this historian was informed that Amestris, the wife of Xerxes, when she was far advanced in age, commanded fourteen Persian children of illustrious birth to be interred alive, in honour of the Deity whom they supposed to exist under the earth.—Polyhymnia, c. xiv.