Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/517

 objected to cremation, laid their dead to rest on a bed of leaves gathered from myrtle, poplar, and olive. An Attic law forbade the felling of certain olive-trees under penalty of a fine of a hundred drachmae per tree, but contained a saving-clause exempting cases in which olive-wood was wanted for funerals. This permission points to a special use of olive-wood as fuel for the pyre, for, if a few branches or sprays only had been needed for decking out the bier, there would have been no question of felling whole trees. It was probably then this custom which Sophocles also had in mind, when the messenger, who brought the news of Polynices' tardy funeral, was made by him to specify 'fresh-plucked olive-shoots' as the material of the pyre. Again, in a number of sarcophagi found by Fauvel outside the gates of Athens on the road to Acharnae the skeleton was observed to lie 'on a thick bed of olive-leaves .' In the second century of our era the custom of placing olive-branches on the bier still prevailed ; and at the present day the olive is often conspicuous at the funerals of peasants, either in the garland about the dead man's head or in the decoration of the bier.

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 thence-*forward 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 thatwere not fuel: in view of the Attic law above cited I am inclined to dissent. He also takes [Greek: klêmata] in Ar. Eccles. 1031 to mean 'olive twigs' and not, as more usual, 'vine-shoots.' I pass by the passage as doubtful evidence.]