Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/523

 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