Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/573

 accepted was this idea. For in point after point which Artemidorus does not mention in his brief enumeration—and without reckoning, as he does, such purely business matters as the inventory of goods—we shall find that the ceremonies incidental to a funeral have now, and had in old time, a curiously close resemblance to the ceremonies incidental to marriage; and, so finding, we may be confident that they were informed by a general and wide-spread belief that to die was but to marry into Hades' house. Let us review them briefly and in order.

The first ceremony in both functions alike was, and is, a solemn ablution. Before a Greek wedding both bride and bridegroom have always been required to bathe themselves, usually in water specially fetched from some holy spring. At Athens in old time, according to Thucydides, the spring frequented for this purpose was Callirrhoë ; and similarly the Thebans had resort to the Ismenus, the maidens of the Troad to the Scamander , and the inhabitants of other districts to some spring or river of local repute. And at the present day in Athens it is still from Callirrhoë (when there is any water there) that the poorer classes fill the bridal bath; while many a village has its own sacred well or fountain ([Greek: hag[i(]asma]) to which recourse is regularly had for this same purpose. And this wedding-ablution, common, as it would thus appear, to the Greeks of all ages, has its counterpart in the funeral-ablution, a ceremony likewise observed in all ages. Thus Sophocles makes Antigone speak of having washed with her own hands the dead bodies of father, mother, and brother ; and Lucian in a mocking tone refers to the same practice as general in his day . At the present day the same rite is practically universal in Greece. In some places, and most notably in Crete, special magnificence is given to the ceremony by the use of warm wine instead of water; in others, as Macedonia, the custom has dwindled away, and all that remains of it is a perfunctory moistening of the dead man's face with a piece of cotton-wool soaked in wine. But in general the old custom remains unchanged. Thus