Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/554

 be supposed to have formed the chief dish; and beans are at the present day an important part of the funeral-meats in Sardinia. It is not unlikely therefore that the use of boiled beans or grain in the service of the dead is an old custom common to the coasts of the Mediterranean. The honey-cake on the day of the funeral is of ancient prescription; the boiled wheat on later occasions may equally well be so. At any rate the principle of supplying the dead with meals both at the funeral and on certain fixed days thereafter remains absolutely unchanged, and the custom is still understood to be a means of ministering to the bodily needs of the dead.

And as with the gifts of food, the ancient [Greek: enagismata], so also with the gifts of drink, the ancient [Greek: choai]. It is on record that among the Greeks of Macedonia, Cappadocia, and other outlying districts, the custom of pouring out red wine on the graves of the dead at the so-called memorial-feasts is still sedulously observed; and though I have nowhere witnessed the practice, I have been told on good authority that in Aegina also and in some parts of Crete it is in vogue. For the use of water I can myself answer; and it is not a little interesting to observe that while the dates on which food is set before the dead man have been somewhat conventionally limited in number, water, the prime necessary of life, is often taken to the grave daily up to the fortieth day.

Again, in the matter of providing clothing for the dead, ancient practice is well known. A store of raiment was buried with the dead, and so great a store that it was necessary for Solon to impose a legal limit by which three outer garments ([Greek: himatia]) were named as the maximum. But this restriction applied only to the actual funeral, and did not prohibit renewed gifts of clothing at subsequent dates. To judge from a passage of Thucydides, this was an annual duty. The Plataeans, in their appeal to the Lacedaemonians for protection, are made to plead their performance of this kindness as a claim upon Spartan gratitude. 'Turn your eyes,' they say, 'to the tombs of your fathers, who fell in the Persian wars and were buried in our land. Year by, p. 17. [Greek: I. S. Archelaos, hê Sinasos], p. 92.]