Note 33 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

Athenian law, Xen., HG. 1, 7, 22; common Greek institution at least as against temple-robbers, D.S. 16, 25. Examples of the enforcement of this law in the fifth and fourth centuries discussed by W. Vischer, Rh. Mus. 20, 446 ff.—Suicides in some places were refused burial honours (in Thebes and Cyprus); even in Athens it was customary to cut off the hand of the suicide and bury it separately (Aeschin., Ctes. 244). This is the punishment of αὐτόχειρες. Self-starvation was considered less shocking and that is perhaps why it occurs so frequently as a method of suicide. Cf. Thalheim, Gr. Rechtsalt. p. 44 f. Perhaps also the religious objection of the Pythagoreans (and Platonists) to taking this means of escape from an existence that has become unbearable rests upon popular feeling and belief—it was not shared at all by the enlightened of later ages. (There is, however, nothing in ancient beliefs that points to the idea that the body of the suicide should be allowed only burial, not burning. Acc. to the Ἰλιὰς μικρά Aias after taking his own life was buried, not burnt, διὰ τὴν ὀργὴν τοῦ βασιλέως—fr. 3: [Apollod.] Epit. v, 7. There is no ground for supposing that the fable of Philostr., H. 721, p. 188 K., acc. to which Kalchas declared the burning of the bodies of suicides to be not ὅσιον, is taken out of an ancient poem; as Welcker does Kl. Schr. ii, 291.)