Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/544

 536 Recent Greek Ai^chceology and Folk-lore.

In case this has not been previously suggested, I would offer it to mythologists as a possible explanation of the curious elements in the Glaukos legend.^

In Homer, incineration seems to be the usual process, and there is no definite mention of inhumation. This, however, cannot be taken as true of the Mycenjean period, for upon these sites we have certainly evidence of skeletons : it has been suggested that possibly the more important people were burned and the less important ones buried. However this may be, in the immediately post- Homeric times the process of burning seems to have found little favour in Greece proper, where the usual method was in- humation. The decline of the Mycenaean power is marked by the rise of a powerful people who use a geometric system of ornament and have weapons of iron. Whatever be the date of their first appearance, they certainly continue down to the end of the eighth century B.C., and show a direct con- nection with the beginnings of historic Greece. On their painted vases we have the ceremonies depicted which formed the basis of all subsequent Greek funeral rites ; and in this connection it is interesting to note that we have lately obtained a clue to the relations existing between dead and living among these people. Recent excavations in front of the Dipylon Gate at Athens^ have laid bare in some cases as many as three strata of superimposed tombs; the lowest (of about 700 B.C.) are evidently of this " geo- metric" people. Here burning is almost unknown ; the dead body is laid in the grave itself, which is then covered with wood, and the shaft filled nearly to the top ; a small space at the top is left unfilled, and into this the tomb- monument, usually a large painted vase, is set : the space around the vase thus served as a sort of trench, communi- cating by means of the shaft direct with the dead body In the Odyssey it will be remembered that Odysseus, for

^ The story furnished the Greeks with an adage ; " Glaukos drank honey and rose again" was said of those who, having been given up for dead, recovered. - Arch. Anzeiger, 1892, p. 19.