Note 86 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

Lex. Rh., in AB. 268, 19 ff.; Phot. a little differently: καθέδρα· τῇ τριακοστῇ (πρώτῃ Phot.: Α instead of Λ) ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ ἀποθανόντος οἱ προσήκοντες συνελθόντες κοινῇ ἐδειπνοῦν ἐπὶ τῷ ἀποθανόντι—καὶ τοῦτο καθέδρα ἐκαλεῖτο (Phot. adds: ὅτι καθεζόμενοι ἐδείπνουν καὶ τὰ νομιζόμενα ἐπλήρουν·) ἦσαν δὲ καθέδραι τέσσαρες (the last clause is absent from Phot.) It was a meal shared by the relatives of the dead in honour of the dead and held “on the thirtieth day”; possibly nothing more nor less than the oft-mentioned τριακάδες. The guests eat their food sitting after the old custom prevailing in Homeric times and always observed by women; as applied to men it survived in Crete only, see Müller, Dorians, ii, 284. Perhaps this primitive attitude preserved in cultus is what we see in the Spartan sculptured reliefs representing “feasts of the dead” where the figures are seated. There were four such καθέδραι, i.e. the period of mourning extended over four months: thus it was the law in Gambreion (SIG. 879, 11 ff.) that mourning might last at the most three months, or in the case of women four. We often hear of monthly repetitions of the feasts of the dead: monthly celebration of the εἰκάδες for Epicurus in acc. with his will, D.L. x, 18; cf. Cic., Fin. ii, 101; Plin. 35, 5; κατὰ μῆνα sacrifice to the deified Ptolemies, CIG. 4697, 48. (In India, too, the sacrifices to the dead on the thirtieth of the month were several times repeated: Kaegi, 7; 11.)