Sample Essays from Students

Paper 8 -- History/Classics: Research report, using the CM or CMS (Chicago Manual of Style) endnotes with bibliography

The funeral was an important and highly structured religious event in the lives of the ancient Greeks. It was an occasion to give symbolic recognition to a selection of the social identities of the deceased. The funeral was a consistent element of Greek religion; the tradition of the lament scarcely changed between the Bronze Age and the Hellenistic period.¹ The Greek funeral was a four-act process including the wake (prothesis), the funeral procession (ekphora), the actual burial, and the ritual meal following the burial. From the earliest times, the responsibility for funeral ritual and lamentation rested with the women of the community, specifically the next of kin. Elaborate mourning rites were carried out by women to honor the dead, satisfy family duties, and appease the soul of the departed. The importance of this ritualized lament rivaled that of burial itself; thus, the two were combined.² This paper describes the mourning rites of women in the context of the Greek funeral, relates these rites to visual and literary evidence, and discusses various legislative measures taken to limit expense and activity of the funeral and to control female rites of mourning.

Death was a momentous event in the social and religious lives of the Greeks. A proper burial, or other acceptable disposal of the dead, such as cremation, was necessary to ensure that the psyche, or soul, could leave the body freely and enter the Underworld. The spirit was believed to be guided by Hermes to the banks of the River Styx where it had to pay the boatman Charon to ferry it across to the entrance of the Underworld. Burial in one's native land was preferred by the Greeks; however, heroes dying on a foreign battlefield were often honored at the place of death by their fellow soldiers. In all cases, it was essential that the dead receive customary rites of burial, and it was equally important that he receive them from proper hands. The worst thing that could happen to a Greek citizen was to be denied burial.³ In Sophocles', Antigone, the decree forbidding burial of Polynices is meant as revenge and insult to the city enemy:

. . . -- a proclamation has forbidden the city
to dignify him with burial, mourn him at all.
No, he must be left unburied, his corpse
carrion for the birds and dogs to tear,
an obscenity for the citizens to behold!⁴

Further, Polynices' non-burial is a total denial of his status and honor, and since divine law prescribes burial for all dead men, it is an act against the gods. The decree also takes away women's rights to bury family members. Antigone steps outside the boundaries of woman, daughter, and citizen, and goes to great lengths to see that her brother receives a proper burial. Although the burial she gives him is only symbolic, a handful of dust on the corpse and liquid offerings, she fulfills the duty she owes to her brother and to the family relationship. It is clear from this play that the ultimate responsibility for the burial of a loved one rested with the women of the family, and that this privilege was being challenged by the state.

S.C. Humphreys states that women were assigned roles which involved the closest contact with the dead and marked a detachment from the rhythms of everyday life, while men dealt directly with the more public aspects of the funeral.⁵ Contact with the corpse was seen as polluting, and the mourners were required to segregate themselves from normal social interactions. Female participants moved out of their original social roles into altered, liminal states.⁶ The less intense participation of women in Greek public life functionally justifies their prominent role in death rituals.⁷ Since men traditionally were more active in the social sphere, it follows that they would not be forced to retreat from the social realm in the event of a death in the family. Clearly the structure of society as enacted in ritual is not the same as the organization of society in practical, everyday social interaction. This allowed women to have nearly complete control over the funeral proceedings and stress their social status through lavish rites.⁸ Perhaps something of the ideal social structure is captured in the funerary process.

The proper Greek funeral involved four distinct stages, each a structured, formal affair. The first was the prothesis, or wake, during which the formal lamentation began. Its purpose was to provide an opportunity for performance of the traditional ritual lament and for family and friends to pay their last respects. The prothesis was a carefully orchestrated proceeding which took place the day after death in the home of the deceased.⁹ The house was hung with wreaths and sprays of leaves, and a vessel was placed outside the door of the house as a notification and warning of death.¹⁰ The duration of this phase varied, but it normally lasted one day. Plato proclaimed that it lasted only long enough to confirm death.¹¹

The dead were thought of as helpless and in need of comfort and mothering from wives or mothers.¹² Hence, women were responsible for preparing the corpse for its appearance before the mourners. The body was first washed; washing was necessary to remove stains of blood and sickness and to prevent corruption and contagion.¹³ The corpse was then anointed with oil and wrapped from head to foot in cloth. He was next placed on a thick, carpet-like material which was laid on a structure with high legs, such as a bed or bier, with his feet pointing toward the door, facing his journey.¹⁴ The eyes of the dead were closed, his limbs straightened, his jaw fixed shut, and often a coin was placed in or on the mouth of the deceased as a payment to Charon for a safe journey across the Styx. During the prothesis, the kinswoman and professional mourners stood around the bier. Representations of the prothesis on vases and painted plaques show remarkable uniformity (Figures 1 & 2). The majority of the figures depicted are women, and these women stand, kneel, or sit. Some gesture with their arms, some touch the corpse. Special importance seems to have been attached to the head of the deceased. The chief mourner, the mother or wife, stands at the front near the head. Others arrange pillows, grasp shoulders, and occasionally hold something in front of the deceased.¹⁵ The wife or mother is thought to have cradled the head of the corpse with her hands, while the other women touched the hands and body of the dead.¹⁶ The concept of a female mourner supporting the head of the corpse dates back to Homeric funerals: Andromache is described cupping her husband Hector's head in her hands during his funeral.¹⁷

Archaeological and literary evidence indicate that ritual lamentation involved movement, wailing, and singing by the women.¹⁸ The principal ceremony performed at the prothesis was the singing of ritualized lament. Scholars speculate that the Greeks believed that the dead were capable of hearing the funeral lament, and thus performed extravagant dirges to satisfy the soul of the deceased.¹⁹ Margaret Alexiou has identified two distinct types of ancient lament: the threnos and the goos. Both words mean a shrill cry, but there are tentative distinctions.²⁰ The threnos was a set dirge composed and performed by professional mourners, while the goos was the spontaneous weeping and wailing of kinswomen.²¹ Alexiou believes the threnos was the more ordered and polished of the two, often accompanied by a musical instrument.²² The goos is identified from Homer onward as a less restrained and more passionate form of expression.²³ The early gooi do not seem artificial or metaphorical; yet, the later songs developed predictable formal themes influenced by professional mourners. The theme of the goos was the memory of the lives shared by the deceased and the mourners as well as the bitterness of loss. Each lamentation began with a preliminary address to the dead which was followed by a narrative remembering the past or imagining the future and a concluding renewal of the opening lament.²⁴ The specific combination and duration of these different rites of mourning most likely occurred on a traditional basis, varying from family to family and city to city.

Physical activities and expressions accompanied the women's stories and voices. The living became ritually unclean by contact with the dead, and it is thought that female mourners made themselves physically unclean to express outwardly their inner grief.²⁵ They did this in various ways, including rubbing dirt on themselves, tearing out their hair, and scratching their faces until blood ran. Further, they struck their heads and beat their breasts. As stated before, the Greeks thought the dead were capable of hearing the funeral lament. Perhaps they were also capable of noticing ceremonial funeral gestures such as these. Geometric vases and lekythoi depict this wild behavior of women. Figure 3 shows women in varying attitudes and postures. The most frequently depicted gesture is that of both hands raised above head (Figure 4), a display of mourning that can be traced back to the Mycenaean period.²⁶ In addition, women kneeling in prayer with one arm outstretched or standing with one arm outstretched and the other tearing out hair are common motifs. Despite the ecstatic nature of these displays of grief, such acts of mourning were not performances of uncontrolled grief; rather, they were an indispensable part of ritual lamentation throughout antiquity.²⁷

The second stage in the Greek funeral was the ekphora, the procession through the city to the grave site. It is difficult to determine exactly how the body was transported to the grave. As compared with fifty-two representations of prothesis on Geometric vases, only three examples of the ekphora have survived.²⁸ Hence, scholars have less information about the ekphora than they have for the prothesis. In each depiction of the ekphora, the deceased is transported to the grave by a horse-drawn hearse. This is best seen in a clay model from Attica (Figure 5). In Homer, however, the corpse is carried to the place of interment by pall-bearers.²⁹ In either case, the procession was led by men, while women brought up the rear. Woman were primarily responsible for carrying the appropriate offerings to the gravesite. Moreover, women continued their pious obligation to the dead by singing throughout the procession, which stopped at street corners for increased outbursts of wailing and lamentation.³⁰ This procession was an opportunity for the female mourners to indulge in self-pity by bemoaning the effects upon their own lives caused by the loss of their beloved.³¹ It was also an opportunity to display the wealth and status of the deceased and his surviving family.

Less is known about the third stage of the Greek funeral, the burial and its surrounding ceremonies. This stage was the climax of the funeral, yet it was more private and restricted than the prior prothesis. Mourners probably lined up along the open grave while a last series of rites were performed. According to Cicero it was customary, from the time of Cecrops, to perform a simple ceremony and sacrifice over the filled grave shaft: "to sow the earth with the fruits of its bounty, assuring the dead a quiet repose."³² There is frequent mention in Greek literature of drink offerings made at the grave, and cups and pouring vessels found outside graves may be testimony to this final libation.³³ A sentry describes Antigone's offerings:

. . . And she scoops up dry dust,
handfuls, quickly, and lifting a fine bronze urn,
lifting it high and pouring, she crowns the dead
with three full libations.³⁴

In addition, offering places and ditches were found in association with some graves of the Archaic and Classical periods. Perhaps these were once used in some sort of graveside ceremony. Alexiou suggests that female mourners dedicated locks of their hair with a libation of perfume, oil, and wine.³⁵ These and other offerings would not have been made in silence; if offerings were to be successful, a more passionate invocation with ritual gestures was necessary. In early times, women known as enchytristriai probably officiated in some capacity over the burial; however, during later periods men spoke at the gravesite in a calm and controlled manners while the women continued to wail.³⁶ The Kean law code states that after the burial service was completed, men and women left the cemetery separately, although difficulties in textual evidence make it hard to determine who left first.³⁷

A large banquet in honor of the dead was the finale of the Greek funeral. Prior to this, however, a series of purification rites took place.³⁸ Death was considered unclean; therefore, the cleansing of the home, all possessions, and the women themselves who were close to the dead was necessary. The vessel positioned outside the front door was filled with water for purposes of purification. After the appropriate amount of cleansing was performed, women supervised the preparation of an elaborate banquet at which the deceased was thought to be present.³⁹ Literary sources generally do not describe this meal; however, scholars can assume it was an occasion for relatives to gather, wreathe themselves, and speak praises of the dead.⁴⁰

Mourning did not cease with the end of the funeral; it continued for a specific amount of time. Periods of mourning were different throughout Greece. The duration was most likely based on kinship ties and one's position within the family, with women's mourning periods being longer than men's.⁴¹ The funerary ritual by nature reintegrates female mourners with society after a liminal period.⁴² Donna Kurtz states that the end of mourning was marked by an additional ceremony: "According to contemporary literature the family resumed normal life in the community after they had done the customary things."⁴³ It is unclear, however, what these "customary things" were. The end of mourning did not, however, mark the end of the family's responsibility to its departed. The annual commemorative rites were just as important as those surrounding the original burial. The first-born son was responsible for this set of rites. Other members of the immediately family were responsible for taking care of the tomb. On vases, those who visit the tombs are predominantly female. Representations of a tomb visit on lekythoi (Figure 6) depict women bringing offerings, displaying themselves in various attitudes of grief, extending their arms in greeting, and performing other pious acts of devotion.⁴⁴ Women 0 were responsible for bringing floral tributes and decorating the tomb with ribbons and other materials. Grave stelae were oiled, perfumed, decorated, and fed in honor of the deceased.⁴⁵

With the rise of the polis in the eighth century B.C. came increasing legislation regulating the expense, luxury and amount of mourning at Greek funerals. Restrictions originated primarily in advanced city-states of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. where new democratic societies were establishing themselves.⁴⁶ During this time, Greek society was completely dominated by men" thus women and slaves never had any standing in the democratic city-state. Apparently there was some danger felt by the ruling body of the polis that an ordinary Greek funeral might degenerate into a display of money and noise: wailing at the bier, a richly dressed body, splendid offerings, and a tomb monument to honor deceased and survivors.⁴⁷ Legislation was designed to turn the public ceremony into a more private affair, attracting as little attention as possible. The state felt the scale of funerary rites was an indication of the status and power of the family. The polis was threatened by such lavish funerary expenditure because the scale of rites as understood by the community was an overt statement on social order and the relative significance of its members. Thus, funerary legislation was enacted in order to maintain public order, reduce superstition, weaken the power of kin groups, and curb needless expenditure.⁴⁸

Orators of the fourth century B.C. quote a large number of Athenian laws dating to approximately 594 B.C. which they attribute to Solon. The greatest number of these ordinances were concerned with family law. Funeral legislation fell under this category. While several of the laws regulated the funeral process in general, most targeted Greek women and their dramatic lamentations. Solon's laws forbade anything disorderly and excessive in women's processions, festivals, and rites of mourning. Even funeral dress was prescribed by law. In practical terms, such laws also effectively restricted women's opportunities for gather and self-expression.⁴⁹ The most severe ordinances were directed toward female behavior during the ekphora. The procession was restricted by law to the early morning hours. Solon proclaimed that the men head the procession and the women follow behind. The women could not travel to the tomb at night unless they rode in an enclosed cart.⁵⁰ Women could not carry offerings that amounted to one obol's worth of food and drink or a basket exceeding one cubit in length.⁵¹ At the cemetery, women were not permitted to visit other tombs of those to whom they were not related. Making rounds of other graves and praising the occupants was seen as one way in which the living flaunted their prestige in a provocative and factitious manner, rather than as a pious obligation to the dead.⁵² Solon also forbade the sacrifice of oxen at the grave.

Women in Athens were considered to be psychologically unfree and incapable of controlling themselves.⁵³ Prior to the rise of the polis, men maintained self-control in mourning while women were encouraged to display wild grief. Solon declared that the uninhibited release of emotion during funerals was dangerous and disturbing. By wailing, holding ceremonies in public, and lacerating themselves, women attracted attention to themselves. This was thought to be a social menance, indecent and dangerous.⁵⁴ Solon restricted female participation to kin and women over the age of 60. Professional mourners were banned from both the ekphora and prothesis in order to cut down on noise. Such limitations demonstrate a definite moral trend in Solon's laws as they were designed to control the unruly element of women as a medium of display in society.⁵⁵

Athens was not the only city to enact strict funeral legislation. The following is an excerpt from a funeral law of loulis on Keos dating to the late fifth century B.C. It is based on an earlier Athenian law and speaks to the funerary restrictions placed on women:

The primary function of the Greek funeral was to affirm order in the face of disorder.⁵⁷ Religious ceremonies of mourning and farewell to the dead are probably the oldest and least changing art form in the history of Greece. The strong conventions mentioned in this paper which surround the departure of the psyche were necessary comforts to the living. Visual and literary evidence shows that female family members were responsible for the majority of the duties surrounding the four stages of the Greek funeral. Clearly they were also the targets for the most extensive funerary legislation. Exactly how far the restrictions enacted by Solon and other men on lamentation affected the composition and performance of dirges is not wholly clear. It is thought that despite the extensive amount of legislation to control female rites of mourning, the character of the Greek funeral and the role of women within it was not substantially changed.

1. Emily Vermule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 15.

2. Robert Garland, The Greek Way of Death (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 30.

3. Ian Morris, Burial and Ancient Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 47.

4. Sophocles, Antigone, In The Three Theban Plays, translated by Robert Fagles (New York, Penguin Books, 1984), lines 226?230.

5. S.C. Humphreys, The Family, Women, and Death (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 150.

6. Morris, 30.

7. Humphreys, 150.

8. Morris, 39.

9. Donna C. Kurtz and John Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), 144.

10. Ibid., 146.

11. Ibid.

12. Vermule, 14.

13. Ibid., 13.

14. Ibid.

15. Garland, 28.

16. Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974, 6.

17. Garland, 28.

18. Alexiou, 6.

19. Vermule, 14.

20. Alexiou, 102.

21. Ibid., 103.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Kurtz and Boardman, 150.

26. Alexiou, 6.

27. Ibid.

28. Garland, 31.

29. Ibid., 32.

30. Humphrys, 86.

31. Garland, 30.

32. Kurtz and Boardman, 145.

33. Ibid.

34. Sophocles, lines 476?479.

35. Alexiou, 7.

36. Garland, 36.

37. Ibid., 37.

38. Alexiou, 10.

39. Garland, 39.

40. Kurtz and Boardman, 146.

41. Garland, 40.

42. Morris, 31.

43. Kurtz and Boardman, 147.

44. Garland, 108.

45. Ibid., 119.

46. Alexiou, 16?17.

47. Morris, 51.

48. Garland, 21.

49. Mary R. Lefkowitz and Maureen B. Fant, Women's Life in Greece and Rome (Baltimore., The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), 35.

50. Kurtz and Boardman, 145.

51. Ibid.

52. Humphrys, 153.

53. Ibid., 86.

54. Alexiou, 21.

55. Victor Ehrenberg, From Solon to Socrates (London: Methuen and Co., 1967), 70.

56. Lefkowitz and Fant, 35.

57. Morris, 39.

Alexiou, Margaret. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974.

Berard, Claude, et. al. A City of Images, trans. Deborah Lyons. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Ehrenberg, Victor. From Solon to Socrates. London: Methuen and Co., 1967.

Garland, Robert. The Greek Way of Death. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.

Humphrys, S.C. The Family, Women and Death. Boston, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983.

Kurtz, Donna C., and John Boardman. Greek Burial Customs. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971.

Lefkowitz, Mary R., and Maureen B. Fant. Women's Life in Greece and Rome. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

Morris, Ian. Burial and Ancient Society. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Sophocles. Antigone. In The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.

Vermeule, Emily. Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979.