Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study...

Thus the uniformity of detail in funerals, whether the main rite was cremation or inhumation, no less than the tendency to amalgamate these two into a single rite, proves that, from the earliest ages known to us, their religious purpose had been identical—to give to the dead that speedy bodily dissolution which they desired.

But in spite of this unity of purpose, one or other rite doubtless continued long through force of custom to hold predominance in particular districts. In Attica it was perhaps not until the sixth or even the fifth century that the Pelasgian rite had entirely lost the support of ancestral tradition. But then and thenceforward the two methods appear to have been judged simply as methods, and the estimate of their respective merits was little affected by the old racial differences. But this does not mean that the methods were judged wholly on their religious merits—on their adaptability to the single religious purpose. Cost and convenience were necessarily factors in determining the choice between them. Thus the question of cost must often have decided the poorer classes to choose inhumation; and in that portion of the Dipylon cemetery to which I have already referred, it was actually found that, out of the graves in which no evidence of cremation was found, more than a hundred were of a poor character, mere shafts in the earth, or at the best walled with rough brick-built sides, while only thirteen were of a costly style—sepulchres built with slabs of stone, or regular sarcophagi. And similarly other practical considerations must often have turned the scale in favour of the one or the other rite.

The soldiers who fell at Marathon were simply interred, presumably because to dig a trench and to raise a mound in the middle of the plain was a more feasible task than to collect masses of fuel from the surrounding hill-sides; but the victims of the plague at Athens were with good reason cremated.

Nevertheless, where none of these external causes operated, there are signs that cremation was held in somewhat higher esteem than inhumation. The story went that Solon’s body was burnt, by way of honour seemingly, and his ashes scattered over that island which he had won back for Athens. And we hear of cremation being accorded, apparently again as the more honourable rite, to other great men such as Dionysius, the famous tyrant of Syracuse, and Timoleon, her deliverer. But more conclusive is the evidence of literature, where not only the act itself is named, but a clear indication of the feeling of the actors is given. According to Aeschylus, the dead body of Agamemnon, king though he was, was merely hidden away in the ground by his blood-guilty wife; even in death she would show him no pity, do him no honour. But in Sophocles the dying Heracles is laid on a funeral-pyre, and the dead Polynices, to whom Antigone was perforce content to give the most meagre form of interment, obtains from Creon, when at last too late he repents, the full rite of cremation. And the tone too in which Herodotus once speaks of the two rites is significant: ‘the funeral-rites of well-to-do Thracians,’ he says, ‘are as follows: the body lies in state for three days, and they slaughter all manner of victims and make good cheer, when once the preliminary lamentation is done; and then they dispose of the body by cremation or merely by interment’—ἔπειτα δὲ θάπτουσι κατακαύσαντες, ἢ ἄλλως γῇ κρύψαντες[1269].

In the following centuries the preference for cremation would seem to have become even more pronounced; for though both rites still continued in use, separately as well as conjointly, Lucian was able to call cremation the distinctively Hellenic rite[1270]. But more marked still was the feeling in favour of cremation among those who upheld the old Greek religion when first they had to face the invasion of Christianity. ‘The heathen for the most part,’ says Bingham[1271], ‘burned the bodies of the dead in funeral piles, and then gathered up the bones and ashes, and put them in an urn above ground: but the Christians abhorred this way of burying; and therefore never used it, but put the body whole into the ground.’ The conflict over this matter was bitter. The pagans taunted the Christians with fearing that, if their bodies were reduced to ashes by cremation, they would be incapacitated for the vaunted resurrection[1272], and as a final injury to Christian martyrs sometimes burnt their bodies and scattered the ashes to the winds[1273]. The Christians in retaliation condemned the rite of cremation as in appearance an act of cruelty to the dead body[1274], and ridiculed the pagans for first ‘burning up their dead in a most savage manner and then feasting them in a manner most gluttonous, using the flames alike for their service and for their injury[1275]’—for their service in cooking them a funeral-meal, for their injury in consuming them to ashes.

The two now conflicting rites continued in use until the end of the fourth century of our era; for reference is made to them in the laws of Theodosius[1276]. But cremation must have been on the decrease; for Macrobius early in the fifth century says that in his time the practice had fallen into entire desuetude, and all he knew of it was from reading[1277]. ‘It is most probable,’ says Bingham, ‘that the heathen custom altered by degrees from the time of Commodus the Emperor; for Commodus himself and many of his friends were buried by inhumation and not by burning ... and from that time the custom of burning might decrease till at last under the Christian emperors, though without any law to forbid it, the contrary custom entirely prevailed, and this quite dwindled into nothing.’ If this view be correct, it will mean that the old preference for cremation exhibited by the adherents of paganism was only excited to temporary intensity by a spirit of antagonism towards Christianity, and that they soon returned to the old way of thinking and recognised inhumation as a method alternative, if slightly inferior, to cremation. When the bitterness of religious strife was over, and pagans and Christians lived more at peace together, the former may readily have resumed the practice of interment, which after all was their own heritage from dim ages long before the dawn of Christianity.

But though Macrobius in the fifth century speaks of cremation as then in disuse, the memory of it cannot have passed away so soon. Only a few generations were to lapse before the infusion of a Slavonic population into Greece. Among the superstitions which these intruders disseminated was one which concerned the resuscitated dead. The Greeks, as we have seen, themselves held a superstition on which the horrid imaginings of the Slavs were soon grafted; the common-folk became haunted by the dread of vrykolakes. How then did they deal with the bodies of such dead persons as were suspected? Not by adopting the Slavonic custom of impaling them, but by a revival of cremation. The advantage which that rite possessed over burial was remembered; by its aid the dissolution of the dead could be rendered quick and sure. Thus cremation came once more into use as a means to the same end as in old time—the quick dissolution of the dead body; but the motive for promoting that dissolution was, under the altered conditions, itself altered. Instead of love it was fear; instead of solicitude for the welfare of the dead, it was anxiety for the protection of the living.

Yet even so, the act of burning the vrykolakas was a purely defensive, not an offensive, measure. It was not an act of hostility or reprisal, but merely a necessary act of self-preservation, which inflicted no hurt on the revenant but simply interposed an impassable barrier between the living and the dead. The motive was fear; there was little or nothing of hatred mixed with it. This is made clear by the fact that cremation has been used even in recent times in a case which had nothing whatsoever to do with the belief in vrykolakes, and where the sole motive was the old desire to serve the interests of the dead.

The occasion was the evacuation of Parga in 1819. The inhabitants of that town had long defied the Turks, but the end was at hand, and it was only by the intervention of the English that they were saved from the tender mercies of Ali Pasha. The English offered them asylum in the Ionian Islands and obtained from the Porte on their behalf a sum of money which fully indemnified them for the houses and lands which they abandoned. But in spite of the terms obtained, the emigrants never forgave the English for treacherously selling to the Turks, as they said, the home which they had defended so stoutly and so long[1278]. This evacuation of Parga forms the theme of some ballads which have been preserved[1279]. One of them runs as follows:

The incident in this ballad with which we are concerned is the exhumation and burning of the remains of those dead warriors who had valiantly maintained the liberty of their native town; and there need be little doubt that the incident is actually historical, for the story is confirmed by a second ballad in the same collection[1282]; but in any case all that concerns us here is the fact that the motive for such an act was known and appreciated by the authors of the two ballads.

Now in order to understand this motive, it must be remembered that the general custom of the Church in Greece is to exhume the bones of the dead at the expiration of three years from the time of burial, when dissolution is expected to be complete. Hence the kinsfolk for whose remains the men of Parga were concerned were those who had been recently buried and could not yet have attained complete dissolution. They feared that the Turks would disturb and desecrate the graves and thus obstruct the proper course of natural decay; and they therefore decided to adopt the alternative method of disintegration, and by cremation to effect speedily and surely that end which, without friends at hand to guard the graves from the molestation of foes and infidels, could not be secured by leaving the dead to the slow action of the earth. This decision then reveals a clear recognition of the superiority of cremation over inhumation as a means of compassing the final dissolution of the dead; and equally clear is the motive for seeking that end; it was not fear on their own account—to that feeling indeed the men of Parga had proved themselves strangers—but simply love and respect for the brave men who had fought, and perhaps had fallen, in the defence of freedom.

Since then the exhumation and cremation of the dead constituted in this case an act of love towards them, the same action in the case of suspected vrykolakes can never have been an act of hostility. It was rather a measure beneficial alike to the living and to the dead. To the living it gave immunity from the assaults of vrykolakes, and this without doubt was commonly the uppermost or indeed the only thought in the minds of those who had recourse to it; but to the dead too it gave repose. And indeed I cannot but suppose that this is the reason why the Greeks, when first confronted with the horror of vrykolakes, chose to burn them rather than to follow the Slavonic custom of impaling them. To impale them might have given security to the living, but it appeared as an act of cruelty and hostility against the dead. Cremation, by effecting immediate dissolution and the consequent severance of the dead from this world, was bound to give equal security to the living, and at the same time was an act of mercy and kindness to the dead. In effect, the new motive of dread which came along with Slavonic influence never excluded the old motive of love which inspired the sons of warriors at Parga no less than the chief of Homeric warriors at his comrade’s funeral, and perhaps will, if occasion arise, prove itself not yet extinct. Cremation, though often in recent times employed primarily as a safeguard for the living, has all along been felt to confer also a benefit on the dead, an even surer and speedier benefit than inhumation secured.

Now if this feeling existed, and if there existed also from early times, as I have shown to be probable, a system of combining cremation of a ceremonial kind with actual inhumation, it might reasonably be expected that many who recognised the superior merit of cremation, but had not the means to carry out so costly a rite in full, would have availed themselves of the inexpensive ceremonial practice. This, I believe, is what occurred, and in this I shall seek the explanation of a custom which, like the practice of real cremation, has been bequeathed by Ancient to Modern Greece.

In the funerals of Ancient Greece the procession, which escorted the dead body from the room where it had lain in state to the pyre or the grave, carried torches. Where cremation was to be employed, these were doubtless used for kindling the pyre; the fire brought from the dead man’s home in this world was used to speed him on his way to the next. But when inhumation was practised, what became of these torches? Was the fire brought from the dead man’s home put to no purpose? Or were the torches thrown into the grave along with him? That we cannot tell, for the torches were quickly perishable. But there is one object commonly found in tombs which is suggestive of the association of fire with the buried body. That common object is a lamp. Here again we cannot tell whether that lamp was lighted when it was put in the grave. Some that have been dug up have certainly been in use, for they bear marks of the flame; but of course they may have been in every-day use before they were devoted to the service of the dead. Yet the few facts known would at least fit the theory that the procession which carried out the dead man carried also fire from his home to the grave, and that either the torches themselves or a lamp lighted from them was put in the grave beside the body. If that view were correct, it would further be note-worthy that most of the lamps found are of little intrinsic value and of late date[1283].

Now the fact that they are mostly worthless implies that they were often given by poor persons, or, if the other contents of the grave be of value, that the lamp was not brought as a gift for its intrinsic worth or beauty, but for some practical purpose; while the fact that they are mainly of late date means that the practice of putting them in the graves increased in frequency during the period which begins with the fifth century B.C.—that is to say, during that period in which we have already noted an increasing preference for cremation. Further the increase in the frequency of lamps makes it improbable that they are to be reckoned as part and parcel of the ordinary furniture of a grave; for the lekythi and other vases which were the ordinary gifts to the dead had already in the fifth century assumed a conventional character. Any fresh departure therefore after that century, or any increase in the frequency of one particular object among the contents of graves, must be a sign of some new or more strongly marked feeling towards the dead. Now all these facts and inferences are intelligible on one hypothesis; and that hypothesis is that the lamps found in the graves were put there lighted and burning, as the ceremonial minimum of the rite of cremation for which a growing preference is evident during some four centuries before the Christian era.

When we pass on to the early days of Christianity, a similar series of facts meets our view. The Church officially rejected and reprobated the practice of cremation. Converts therefore were bound to use inhumation; and this obligation probably excited the less repugnance, in that interment was no new thing to them, but had always been alternative, if slightly inferior, to cremation. But while even cheerfully obeying the law of the Church thus far, they clung to many of the details of their old funeral-custom, some of which were allowed by the Church, others disallowed. The practice of laying out the dead in rich and choice robes continued and called down strong rebuke from St Jerome[1284]; the excessive lamentation and the use of hired mourners at the lying-in-state provoked St Chrysostom to threats of excommunication[1285]; yet both these customs still obtain. But the custom of carrying torches in the funeral-procession was continued without even a protest on the part of the Church. Perhaps it was felt to be a harmless concession to ancient custom; perhaps then as now ecclesiastical taste even favoured the consumption of many candles in religious ceremonies. At any rate the fact is clear that the pagan custom of carrying torches in the procession held a place also in Christian ritual. What was the reason for which the common people held to their old custom? The torches were not needed any longer to kindle pyres; for actual cremation was abolished by the Church.

Nor were they needed to give light to the procession; for Christian funerals, except in times of persecution, took place in open daylight. The reason was, I believe, that by means of these torches fire was carried along with the dead from his home to his grave, and that there a ceremonial act, a semblance of cremation, was combined with the rite of inhumation. And there are some indications that the fire brought to the grave-side was actually associated in some way with the dead body. In a disquisition ‘about them that sleep,’ which passed for a work of St Athanasius[1286], there is a recommendation to burn a mixture of oil and wax at the grave of the dead; and though the practice inculcated is disguised as ‘a sacrifice of burnt-offering to God,’ it is possible to attribute it to a less Jewish and more Greek motive, a desire to keep up the old custom of cremation, be it only in a ceremonial form. Again we have evidence that the custom of burning lights at the graves of the dead was commonly followed for some non-Christian purpose; for the Council of Eliberis saw fit to forbid it under pain of excommunication[1287]. This non-Christian purpose will explain itself in the light of some modern customs.

There is a custom well known in Modern Greece which consists in the maintenance of what is called ‘the unsleeping lamp’ (τὸ ἀκοίμητο καντῆλι). A fair general idea of it may be given by saying that after a funeral a light is kept continuously burning either in the room where death took place or at the grave for a period of either forty days or three years. This variation in time and place requires examination. In customs, as in other things, there is a right way and a wrong way; variety in observance is not original; there is a proper time and a proper place.