Funerary Rites and Mourning

They mourn and bury the dead like this: whenever a man of note is lost to his house by death, all the women of the house daub their faces or heads with mud; then they leave the corpse in the house and

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Then, having laid the body on a couch in the tomb, they plant spears on each side of the body and lay wooden planks across them, which they then roof over with braided osiers; in the open space which

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This is the way they bury their kings. All other Scythians, when they die, are laid in wagons and carried about among their friends by their nearest of kin; each receives them and entertains the retin

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The wealthy have the following funeral practices. First they lay out the dead for three days, and after killing all kinds of victims and making lamentation, they feast. After that they do away with th

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When these and the helots and the Spartans themselves have assembled in one place to the number of many thousands, together with the women, they zealously beat their foreheads and make long and loud l

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Why do sons cover their heads when they escort their parents to the grave, while daughters go with uncovered heads and hair unbound? Is it because fathers should be honoured as gods by their male offs

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This is how he conveys him: he first molds an egg of myrrh as heavy as he can carry, then tries lifting it, and when he has tried it, he then hollows out the egg and puts his father into it, and plast

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Anyone, Egyptian or foreigner, known to have been carried off by a crocodile or drowned by the river itself, must by all means be embalmed and wrapped as attractively as possible and buried in a sacre

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Now it is by no means their custom to give the dead to beasts; and this is why they embalm the corpse, that it may not lie and feed worms. Thus what Cambyses commanded was contrary to the custom of bo

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The dead are buried by the nomads in Greek fashion, except by the Nasamones. They bury their dead sitting, being careful to make the dying man sit when he releases his spirit, and not die lying supine

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It is said to be the custom of the Issedones that, whenever a man's father dies, all the nearest of kin bring beasts of the flock and, having killed these and cut up the flesh, they also cut up the de

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The burial-places of the kings are in the land of the Gerrhi, which is the end of the navigation of the +Dnepr (river), Europe Borysthenes. Whenever their king has died, the Scythians dig a great four

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Then those who receive the dead man on his arrival do the same as do the Royal Scythians: that is, they cut off a part of their ears, shave their heads, make cuts around their arms, tear their forehea

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Then they take each one of the fifty strangled young men and mount him on the horse; their way of doing it is to drive an upright stake through each body passing up alongside the spine to the neck lea

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Those who dwell above the Crestonaeans have yet other practices. Each man has many wives, and at his death there is both great rivalry among his wives and eager contention on their friends' part to pr

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The kings are granted these rights from the Spartan commonwealth while they live; when they die, their rights are as follows: Horsemen proclaim their death in all parts of +Laconia [22.583,37] (depart

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But the Greeks, when they had divided the spoils at Plataea [23.2667,38.2] (Perseus) Plataea, buried each contingent of their dead in a separate place. The Lacedaemonians made three tombs; there they

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In one of the tombs, then, were the “irens,” in the second the rest of the Spartans, and in the third the helots. This, then is how the Lacedaemonians buried their dead. The Tegeans, however, buried a

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When you have come from the Corinthian to the Sicyonian territory you see the tomb of Lycus the Messenian, whoever this Lycus may be; for I can discover no Messenian Lycus who practised the pentathlon

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Why do women in mourning wear white robes and white head-dresses? Do they do this, as men say the Magi do, arraying themselves against Hades and the powers of darkness, and making themselves like unto

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