Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/366

 and paid mourners; for dirges premeditated by the relatives would have been less objectionable, one may suppose, than their hysterical improvisations. What success his legislation obtained in Athens cannot now be ascertained; but the custom was undoubtedly universal in Greece, and with the exception of the Ionian islands, where the Venetians imitated Solon in sternly repressing what they regarded as a scandal and a grave offence against public decency, all parts of Greece still to some extent retain it; and it is likely long to survive for the simple reason that lamentation has always been held by the Greeks to be as essential to the repose of the dead as burial. There is more than hazard in the repeated collocation of [Greek: aklautos, ataphos], 'unwept, unburied,' in the tragedians ; there is the religious idea that the dead need a twofold rite, both mourning and interment.

The third point in the funeral customs to which Solon demurred was that mourners attending the ceremony of lamentation misused the occasion by wailing again for their own dead and neglecting him whose death had brought them together. This practice was known to the Homeric age; for while Briseïs 'tore with her hands her breast and smooth neck and fair face' and with shrill wailing and tears made lament over Patroclus, 'the women joined their groans to hers, for Patroclus in form, but each really for their own losses .' There is no intention of satire here; it is simply a naïve touch in the picture of a familiar and pathetic scene. Patroclus' death furnished the excuse and the occasion for tears, but most of those tears—pent up till they might flow freely and without shame—were shed for nearer sorrows, dearer losses. To-day the manner is the same. In some districts, as in Chios, a woman's desire to lament again over her own dead is recognised as so legitimate that etiquette merely prescribes that she first must make mention of the present dead and afterwards she is free to mourn for whom she will; and indeed throughout Greece the opportunity for rehearsing former sorrows is rarely neglected.) of Zante was shown and interpreted to me by Mons. [Greek: Leônidas Ch. Zôês], whose courtesy I wish here to acknowledge. The record-office contains much valuable material for the study of the period of Venetian supremacy in the Heptanesos.], and Philoct. 360.], [Greek: Chiaka Analekta], pp. 335-6.]