Note 15 — Chapter XVI

Each of these customs (as practised by the Greeks) had well-founded claims to great antiquity; for interment appears to have been in use in the time of Cecrops, and burning must at any rate be allowed to have been practised by the Grecians, as far back as the Trojan war, if we rely upon the testimony of Homer. The custom of burning was perhaps the most peculiar to the Greeks, of the two modes in question; for Lucian, in enumerating the various methods resorted to by different nations in the disposal of their dead, expressly assigns burning to the Greeks, and interment to the Persians—διελομενοι κατα εθνη τας ταφας, ὁ μεν Ἕλλην εκαυσεν, ὁ δε Περσης εθαψεν . . . (περι πενθους, § 21.) Some, however, considered the former as an inhuman custom, and philosophers were divided in their opinions on the subject: each sect esteeming that method the most reasonable by which bodies would, according to their tenets, be soonest reduced to their first principles.—See Potter’s Archæologia, vol. ii. p. 207-8, &c.