Note 58 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

In the list of quotations from individual authors from the fifth century on, given in Becker Char.2 iii, 98 ff. [= E.T.3 pp. 390–1], only the foll. speak for burial as the prevailing custom: Plu., Sol. 21. οὐκ εἴασεν (Solon) συντιθέναι πλέον ἱματίων τριῶν, and Plu., Lyc. 27, συνθάπτειν οὔδεν εἰασεν (Lycurg.) ἀλλὰ ἐν φοινικίδι καὶ φύλλοις ἐλαίας θέντες τὸ σῶμα περιέστελλον: cf. Th. i, 134, 4. Cremation, on the other hand, is implied as the more common in Athens (fourth century) by Is. 4, 19: οὔτ’ ἔκαυσεν οὐτ’ ὠστολόγησεν; so, too, the will (third century) of the Peripatetic Lykon (D.L. v, 70): περὶ δὲ τῆς ἐκφορᾶς καὶ καύσεως ἐπιμεληθήτωσαν κτλ. Cf. Also Teles ap. Stob. 40, 8, i, p. 747, 5 H.; τί διαφέρει ὑπὸ πυρὸς κατακαυθῆναι—which is here regarded as Greek funeral usage.—In the graves recently discovered before the Dipylon gate in Athens those belonging to the earliest period almost without exertion have their dead buried (without coffin); the following period (into the sixth century) generally burnt their dead; later, burial seems to have been more usual—see the account by Brückner and Pernice of the excavations before the Dipylon gate, Ath. Mitt. 1893, pp. 73–191. Thus it appears that in the later period burial was the prevailing practice in Attica (L. Ross, Archaeol. Aufs. i, 23), as also, being essentially cheaper than cremation, in other parts of Greece as well (a few references given in BCH. ’95, p. 144, 2).