Funeral Rites in Homer
How people treat their
dead is a cultural marker and one of the ways that scholars and researchers use
to distinguish between civilizations. Death rites can be as simple as the
historical Mongolian sky burial, where the body of the deceased was left
wherever it bounced off a wagon in the wilderness and the elements and the
wolves were left to do the rest. Parsi death rituals in India involved placing
a body in a Tower of Silence and allowing it to be consumed by vultures. The
ancient Egyptians practised elaborate mummification rites and interred the
deceased in magnificent tombs like the Great Pyramids. Funeral rites are
powerful cultural indicators that reflect the core beliefs that a particular
civilization has about life, death, the afterlife and the structure of their
society. Such practices helped the members of the community manage grief,
assert social bonds and reaffirm their shared values. The treatment of the dead
was a vital part of living and continues to be so today.
The Iliad and the
Odyssey were composed or compiled in the late 8th or early 7th
centuries BCE. The events of the two epics were set in the Late Bronze Age,
around the 12th or the 13th centuries BCE. King Agamemnon
of Mycenae was the leader of the Achaean forces that invaded Greece and
precipitated the 10 year Trojan War. A visit to the remains of Agamemnon’s
citadel of Mycenae today will provide clear evidence of the funerary practices
that were in vogue during the time frame that is supposedly covered by Homer’s
works. But the funeral rites that were actually taking place in Late Bronze Age
Mycenaean Greece are fundamentally different from what Homer relates in his
epics, and that difference has come to be known by scholars as Homer’s great anachronism.
One enters the citadel
of Mycenae by walking up a ramp that is protected on both sides by Cyclopean
walls. In front of you is the magnificent Lion Gate and when you pass through
it and turn to your right, you will come upon Grave Circle A, a 16th
century BCE royal cemetery. It was originally situated outside the walls of the
citadel and then enclosed within them when the acropolis was extended in the 13th
century BCE. Nearby Grave Circle B was found outside the walls. Grave Circle A
contains six shaft graves and the famous Heinrich Schliemann found a treasure
trove buried within them during his excavations in the late 1870’s. At the base
of the citadel are found nine beehive tombs or tholoi, circular burial chambers covered with corbelled roofs. The
most famous of these is known as The Treasury of Atreus, or The Tomb of
Agamemnon. Whether the deceased was placed in a shaft grave or in a tholos beehive tomb, the fact remains
that it was common practice in Mycenaean Greece in the Late Bronze Age for the
dead to be buried. Homer’s great
anachronism is centered on the fact that the bard does not mention
inhumation at all, and the funeral rites that he described were quite the
opposite of what was the general practice of the day. The dead in the Iliad and
the Odyssey were cremated, a practice that was common in Homer’s time, but not
at the time of the Trojan War, as evidenced by the graves and tombs found at
Mycenae.
The practice of
cremation only became widespread in the Aegean at a later date and was common
at the time that the Homeric poems were composed and written down. The
elaborate descriptions that Homer gives of funeral rites, funeral games and
sacrificial offerings would have been familiar and meaningful to his audience
and reflective of the cultural norms of his time. There was a specific process
involved in preparing the body in an honourable fashion before the cremation
and in handling the remains afterwards. Homer provides us with great insight
into all the steps that were taken.
Both sides of a
conflict were adamant that their dead be treated well and to this end, a short
truce or ceasefire was declared so that the corpses of the dead could be
gathered from the field of battle. The armour of a deceased warrior would often
have been stripped from his body by his victor, but otherwise the corpse would
have been left in place for subsequent recovery. It was right and just and part
of an unwritten code of honour, that a fallen warrior, whether friend or foe,
should be afforded the privilege of respectful treatment and a hero’s funeral.
Achilles’ desecration of Hector’s body, dragging his naked corpse around the
walls of Troy for days, and leaving his body exposed to the dogs and carrion
birds would have been considered a highly unthinkable act. His actions served
to highlight the exceptional grief that he experienced at the death of his
friend Patroclus. Achilles seemed to make a habit of denying fallen warriors
their right to a hero’s funeral. Remember how he treated Lycaon, the son of
Priam.
Then Achilles grabbed his body by
the feet and threw it into the river to float away. He gloated heartily over
him and spoke with feathered words. “Float there among the fishes and let them
lick the blood from your wounds, for your weeping mother will not be placing
your body on a funeral couch. Instead, the eddying Scamander will be bearing
you to your rest in the salty sea.”
Achilles must have had
a reputation for dealing with the dead unfairly and with disrespect, a trait
hardly worthy of a noble hero. Queen Hecuba attempted to warn her son Hector of
the ignoble danger he faced in dealing with the man and indeed, when Achilles
had struck him down and was standing over him, he begged his victor to allow
his body to be returned to his people for a proper burial. We know that
Achilles refused.
“Hector
my child, have pity on me and show me respect if ever I nursed you and banished
your cares. Be mindful my dear child and ward off that enemy from the wall and
do not make a stand against him, cruel man that he is, for he will slay you and
I will not have a chance to lay you on a funeral bed and lament you, born of my
own body, and neither will your dear wife be able to as well, for far away,
near the ships of the Argives, their swift dogs shall devour your body.”
After a hero’s body had
been removed from the battlefield, it was washed and anointed and dressed in
what Homer described as fine and fair
woven garments. The body was then placed on a funeral couch and displayed
for the gathered mourners for some period of time, in the case of Achilles, as
we are told in the Odyssey, for 17 days. We learned from Priam, as he described
how the Trojans would conduct Hector’s funeral rites, that the event would take
a total of ten days, with the actual cremation taking place on the 10th.
For nine days we will mourn for him
within the city and on the tenth day we will honour him with funeral rites and
hold a banquet for the people and on the eleventh day we will erect his funeral
mound.
For the cremation, the
body was placed on a funeral pyre constructed with logs. Jars of honey and oil
were placed around the corpse to add to the intensity of the flames. The pyre
was built in a place where the winds could blow freely so that the fire could
be adequately fanned. Libations of wine were poured on the ground around the
pyre and sacrificial animal offerings were made and added to the bier. In the
case of Patroclus, Achilles had the throats of 12 young Trojans slit in front
of his beloved’s pyre. Patroclus had visited his friend Achilles after his
demise and had begged him for the honour of a funeral so that his soul would be
able to pass more easily through the gates of Hades. But surely Patroclus had
no indication that the wrath of Achilles would result in the slaughter of the 12
Trojan youths. Such an action would have been seen as extraordinary, even for
the Homeric world.
The funeral rites that
Homer described were a reflection of how the gods wanted the dead to be treated
and we know this from the command that Zeus gave to Apollo at the death of
Sarpedon.
“Get up now my beloved bright one
and having taken Sarpedon far away out of missile range, cleanse him of the
black blood and wash him in the waters of the stream and anoint him with
ambrosia and clothe him with immortal garments and give him to the swift
guardians, the twins Sleep and Death, who will bear him quickly to the rich
land of broad Lycia and there his brothers and kinsmen will give him a solemn
burial and raise over him a memorial of stone, as is the duty owed to the deceased.”
After the flames had
consumed the body, the fire was quenched with wine and the bones were gathered
and placed in a sacred container.
First of all they quenched the
flames of the pyre with burning wine wherever the fire had touched and the ashes
had fallen deep. With much weeping they gathered the whitened bones of their
dear comrade and placed them in a golden bowl and encased them in a double
layer of fat and put the bowl in the tent and covered it with a soft cloth made
of linen. Then they marked off with signs the foundation of a barrow around the
pyre and at once piled up the earth there.
A barrow was erected at
the site and a gravestone or marker was put in place. A funeral barrow and a
marker were considered essential for preserving the memory of the deceased. It
was also usual practice to erect a common mound near a battle site to honour
all the fallen, presumably at the site of a common grave. A visit to the war
cemeteries of northern France and Belgium or Arlington Virginia will show you
that this practice is still common today. As Telemachus was preparing to visit
Pylos and Sparta to seek news of his missing father, he was told what to do is
he discovered that Odysseus was dead.
But if you hear that he
is dead and gone, then return to your dear fatherland and erect a funeral
barrow for him, give him the funeral rites that are due to him.
After the
hero’s bones had been interred and his barrow erected, a funeral banquet was
held for the mourners. In ancient Greece, the deceased was considered to be the
host of the banquet and it was given in his honour as a way of providing thanks
to all those who had participated in the funeral. The communal banquet also
marked the end of the initial mourning period and featured libations, eulogies
and songs sung in honour of the dead.
In special
cases, funeral games were held in honour of a fallen hero. These were a series
of athletic competitions and the two most famous in ancient literature were the
games put on by Achilles to honour his fallen friend Patroclus, and the games
hosted by Aeneas in honour of his father Anchises, as told by Vergil in his
Aeneid. The host of the games provided rich treasures as prizes for the
competitors. The purpose of such games was twofold. First of all they were held
to honour the dead, and secondly, they were meant to propitiate the spirit of
the fallen warrior. Many scholars believe that these funeral games, common in
the Greek Archaic and Classical periods were precursors to the modern Olympic
Games.
To summarize the full
treatment of how a hero was cared for in death and the funeral rites conducted
at his passing, we must turn to the Odyssey. In that story, the spirit of
Agamemnon described for Achilles how he was honoured when he died at Troy.
…but after we had taken you out of the fighting and to the ships and
stretched you out on a bed, we cleansed your fair skin with warm water and
anointing oil and many hot tears were shed by the Danaans as they sheared their
hair. Your mother came out of the sea with the immortal nymphs when she heard
the news and a divine sounding cry resonated over the deep and trembling took
hold of all the Achaeans…
…then for seventeen days and nights we mourned you in like fashion,
immortal gods and mortal men alike and on the eighteenth day we delivered you
to the fires and we sacrificed many fatted sheep and curved-horn cattle around
you. So the fire consumed you in the clothing of the gods and in an abundance
of fine oil and sweet wine… in the morning we gathered up your white bones and
placed them in unmixed wine and oil. Your mother had given a two-handled golden
urn, saying that it was a gift from Dionysus and a work of the renowned
Hephaestus. In the urn are your white bones, glorious Achilles and mixed with
them are the bones of the dead Patroclus, the son of Menoetius, and separate
from them are the bones of Antilochus whom you did honor above all your other
companions after the dead Patroclus. Over them we built up a huge and goodly
burial mound, we who are the mighty throng of Argive spearmen. We built it on a
tall promontory of the broad Hellespont so that it was conspicuous and could be
seen over the sea by men living now and those to be born in the future. Your
mother asked the gods for beautiful contest prizes and she placed them in the
middle of the assembly for those Achaeans who excelled in valor. You have been
present for the funeral games of many men who were war heroes, when at the
death of a king the young men gird themselves and get ready to compete, but if
you had seen that sight, your heart would have been amazed, for the
silver-footed goddess Thetis had set out so many beautiful prizes in your
honor, for you were very dear to the gods. Not even in death was your name
forgotten, but you will always have a great reputation among men, Achilles.
Throughout the Iliad
and the Odyssey, Homer provides us with a very complete picture and elaborate
descriptions of the funeral rites afforded to fallen warriors. The trouble is
that Homer got it all wrong and what he described in his narratives were common
practices in his own time and not the usual funerary customs in the age of the
Mycenaean Greeks of the Trojan War period. He tells us about cremation and yet
burial was the common method, as indicated by the archaeological evidence of
shaft graves and beehive tombs at Mycenae. Homer described the human sacrifice
of the twelve Trojan captives at the funeral of Patroclus. This was not
something that was common in either the Bronze Age or the Classical period and
would have been seen as a barbaric act and forbidden by the laws of Solon. Funeral
games would not have been common in Mycenaean Greece but became popular with
the advent of historical athletic competitions, such as those that took place
at Olympia. The first Olympic Games were said to have taken place in 776 BCE,
right at the time that the Iliad was being composed and written down.
The discrepancies and
anachronisms in Homer’s accounts tend to provide a blending of idealized customs
from a past heroic age with contemporary customs that would have been well
known and familiar to the bard’s audiences. So rather than being historically
accurate, Homer created a composite picture of funerary practices from the
Mycenaean period and his own Archaic Age. He blended traditional stories from
the past with social and ritual customs that his audience could identify with,
no doubt in an attempt to make his poetic offering more appealing to the public
and as a consequence, more entertaining. This was an unusual move on Homer’s
part, because for the most part, he tended to strive for historical accuracy
throughout his epics. Why he would choose to stray from that direction with
this topic is anyone’s guess.
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