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Funerals too impinged on the community, especially in the eighth and seventh centuries, when it seems to have been a matter of prestige for the most prominent families to convey their dead to the pyre in ostentatious style, with the largest possible number of mourners following the bier, wailing and tearing their hair and garments. Before setting out on this last journey, the deceased had been washed, anointed, dressed in clean clothes, and laid out for a day or longer in his house or sometimes outside it. Here his relatives, particularly the women, bewailed him, and in certain cases, it seems, laments were sung by trained threnodists brought in from outside.42 There is little literary evidence for singing (as distinct from wailing) during the funeral procession, but a black-figure cup of the late seventh century and a somewhat later terracotta plaque show it accompanied by a piper, and in the fourth century Plato mentions a practice of hiring foreign singers who escort the dead with music of a Carian character. For the funeral procession of the courtesan Pythionice her lover Harpalus engaged a large professional choir and band.43 Another black-figure cup shows the procession approaching the tomb, where a praying woman and a piper are waiting.44 Prepared dirges might be sung at the tomb, if not at the time of burial, on subsequent days of commemoration when offerings were made to the dead, or when another member of the family was brought to a nearby resting-place. From Solon's time onwards we hear of laws passed in various cities to curb the extravagance and demonstrativeness of funerals. At Ioulis in the island of Ceos and at Delphi they included a stipulation that the funeral procession should be silent. Lamentation at the tomb was restricted, and at Athens 'composed dirges' were forbidden, in other words, one might give vent to spontaneous expressions of grief for one's own kin but not |
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42Il. 24. 719-76, Od. 24. 43-64, Aesch. Pers. 935-40, Sept. [861 ff.], Pl. Leg. 947 bc; E. Reiner, Die rituelle Totenklage der Griechen (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1938), 61-70; M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge, 1974), 5f., 11-14, 27-9, 39-42; E. Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Berkeley and LA, 1979), 14-17; R. Garland, The Greek Way of Death (London, 1985), 23-31. On a Corinthian hydria of c. 560 (Louvre E 643; Wegner, Bilder, 41) one of the Nereids mourning Achilles as he lies on his bier holds a lyre in one hand. |
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43 Paris 355, CVA France 10 (Bibl. Nat. 2) pl. 71, 73; Pl. Leg. 800 e with schol., cf. Hsch. k 824: Posidonius, FGrH 87 F 14 = fr. 168 Theiler. In Aesch. Sept 915-21 the funeral procession for Oedipus' sons is characterized by crying or lamenting, and likewise in the spurious ending (1058-67); threnos in 1064 does not necessarily signify a song by Antigone. |
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44 Paris 353, CVA loc. cit. pl. 71-2. |
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