Sparta Flash Card #1:
Sparta Flash Card #37: Funerary Customs | |
|Historian |Evidence |Relationship to other |
| | |Syllabus dot points |
| | | |
|Herodotus |Ancient History Sourcebook: | |
| |Herodotus: | |
| |On the Kings of Sparta, c. 430 BCE | |
| |[pic] | |
| |From The History of the Persian Wars, Book VI, ''56-60 | |
| |These are the royal rights which have been given by the Spartans to their kings, namely, two priesthood---of Zeos | |
| |Sparta and Zeos Uranios---and the right of making war against whatsoever land they please, and that no man of the | |
| |Spartans shall hinder this right, or if he do, he shall be subject to the curse; and that when they go on | |
| |expeditions the kings shall go out first and return last; that a hundred picked men shall be their guard upon | |
| |expeditions; and that they shall use in their goings forth to war as many cattle as they desire, and take both the | |
| |hides and the backs of all that are sacrificed. These are their privileges in war, and in peace moreover things have| |
| |been assigned to them as follows: if any sacrifice is performed at the public charge, it is the privilege of the | |
| |kings to sit down to the feast before all other, and that the attendants shall begin with them first, and serve to | |
| |each of them a portion of everything double of that which is given to the other guests, and that they shall have the| |
| |first pouring of libations and the hides of the animals slain in sacrifice; that on every new moon and seventh day | |
| |of the month there shall be delivered at the public charge to each one of these a full-grown victim in the temple of| |
| |Apollo, and a measure of barley-groats and a Spartan "quarter" of wine; and at all the games they shall have seats | |
| |of honor specially set apart for them.... | |
| |The kings alone give decision on the following cases only, that is to say, about the maiden who inherits her | |
| |father's property, namely who ought to have her, if her father have not betrothed her to anyone, and about public | |
| |ways; also if any man desires to adopt a son, he must do it in presence of the kings: and it is ordained that they | |
| |shall sit in council with the elders, who are in number twenty-eight, and if they do not come, those of the elders | |
| |who are most closely related to them shall have the privileges of the kings and give two votes besides their own, | |
| |making three in all. | |
| |These rights have been assigned to the kings for their lifetime by the Spartan state; and after they are dead | |
| |horsemen go round and announce that which has happened throughout the whole of the Spartan land, and in the city | |
| |women go about and strike upon a copper kettle. Whenever this happens so, two free persons of each household must go| |
| |into mourning, a man and a woman, and for those who fail to do this great penalties are prescribed.... a certain | |
| |number of the perioiki are compelled to go to the funeral ceremony: and when there have been gathered together of | |
| |these and of the helots and of the Spartans themselves many thousands in the same place, with their women | |
| |intermingled, they beat their foreheads with a good will and make lamentation without stint, saying that this one | |
| |who had died last of their kings has been killed in war, they prepare an image to represent him, laid upon a couch | |
| |with fair coverings, and carry it out to be buried. Then after they have buried him, no assembly is held among them | |
| |for ten days, nor is there any meeting for choice of magistrates, but they have mourning during these days. | |
| |When the king is dead and another is appointed king, this king who is newly coming in sets free any man of the | |
| |Spartans who was a debtor to the king or to the state; while among the Persians the king who comes to the throne | |
| |remits to all the cities the arrears of tribute which are due... | |
| |[pic] | |
| |Source: | |
| |From: Fred Fling, ed., A Source Book of Greek History, (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1907), pp. 63-66. | |
| |Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal | |
| | | |
| | | |
|HSC Online |Death of a Spartan king | |
| |It is Herodotus who gives us details of the events that took place following the death of a Spartan king. When a | |
| |Spartan king died, horsemen travelled all over Lakonia, informing the inhabitants. In the city of Sparta itself, | |
| |women went around beating a cauldron. After this, two people from each house, a man and a woman, were expected to | |
| |join in the mourning. Failure to do so resulted in heavy penalties. | |
| |All residents of Sparta joined in the mourning, striking their foreheads as a sign of their grief. | |
| |For a period of ten days following the burial of the king, meetings were not permitted for markets or to ordain or | |
| |to select magistrates | |
| | | |
| |6. The cultural life: | |
| |Significant myths & legends-Result of story-telling & exaggeration; single lawgiver who made the Spartan system, | |
| |this resulted in sudden revolutionary social transformation (luxury), full citizens lived side by side equally, | |
| |kings were descendants of the sons of Heracles, adopted heroes of Trojan war. Myths about the excellence of the | |
| |Spartan army & rigorous training boys underwent. | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |Funerary Customs & Rituals | |
| | | |
|BOS 1 |Buried their dead, apart from kings, within the city | |
| |Only those who died in battle or childbirth had marked graves | |
| |Kings buried outside city | |
| |Mourned publicly for 10 days | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |Funerary customs | |
|BOS 2 | | |
| |Kings | |
| |Plutarch describes the funeral practices for Spartan kings | |
| |When Spartan kings die horsemen proclaim their death throughout all Laconia | |
| |Women go through the city beating a cauldron | |
| |Two free people from each house are required to put on the signs of defilement, failure to comply incurs heavy | |
| |penalties | |
| |A certain number of perioici is expected to attend the funeral | |
| |Everyone zealously smites their forehead and produce an immense lamentation, called the king who has just died the | |
| |best of all their kings | |
| | | |
| |Burial | |
| |Tombstones were rare in Sparta | |
| |The burial ground of the Agiad Kings was in the village of Pitana | |
| |The burial ground of the Eurypontid Kings was in the village of Limnai | |
| |A statue of the King was carried to the burial on a richly draped bier if the King was killed in war | |
| | | |
| |Helots were expected to mourn their master’s death | |
| |The dead may have been cremated and probably buried in the cemetery that has been found roughly in the middle of the| |
| |encircling villages | |
| |Those who died at Thermopylae were honoured as semi-divine, as were those who died at Plataea | |
| | | |
| |Sources on burial | |
| |According to Plutarch, Lycurgus made some laws to do with burial. He allowed the dead to be buried within the city | |
| |and around the temples. He commanded them to put nothing into the ground with them except a few olive leaves and the| |
| |scarlet cloth that they were wrapped in. Only men who died in war and women who died in child birth were allowed to | |
| |have their names on the tomb stone | |
| | | |
| |Burial Rituals | |
| |and the Afterlife of Ancient Greece | |
| |by Kristina Bagwell | |
| |[pic] | |
| |As seen in the literature of ancient Greece, tombs and rituals of the wealthy were extravagant. Gold and jewels | |
| |were essential grave offerings of respectable and honored tombs, perhaps used as a way to display wealth and | |
| |status. It seems the wealthier you were the more elaborate your final resting place. The ancient Greeks had | |
| |distinct methods of burial, and it was often believed if you were not provided a proper burial along with the | |
| |appropriate rituals, you were destined to suffer between worlds until your rites of passage into the underworld were| |
| |completed. In this essay we will see how exactly a tomb of Greece looked, the rituals followed at the time of death| |
| |and also what was believed to happen if these elements were not fulfilled. Examining the tombs and rituals from the | |
| |archaic period through classical Greece shows the continuity of the traditions throughout the years. | |
| |While early aristocratic Greeks built pit-like single graves in the ground or out of rock, the archaic period | |
| |(600-479 BC) marks the time when tombs became more sophisticated. Now we see multiple graves in underground | |
| |chambers, raised mounds, or masonry-built tombs. Archaeologists have found tombs such as these at Sindos adorned in | |
| |riches of gold and jewelry (Burnstein et al. 372). The findings at the archaic cemetery are also linked to the | |
| |Hellenistic period, during which the novels were written. While the sizes of the tombs of this period are larger, | |
| |decorations of gold are still found throughout the tombs of the wealthy (museum.upenn.edu). Evidence of this | |
| |extravagance is seen in a passage from Chareas and Callirhoe, “Callirhoe, as she lay there dressed in her bridal | |
| |clothes, on a bier decorated with gold…” (Chariton 28). | |
| |The possessions and grave goods placed with the body did not change much; but the amounts of treasures did. The | |
| |tombs of early Mycenaeans from about 1600 to 1400 BC held bronze weapons such as swords, daggers, and knives and | |
| |also pottery made locally and small amounts of gold and jewelry (Burnstein et al. 21). As the years went by the | |
| |grave gifts became more beautiful and plentiful. A later Mycenaean cemetery held an arsenal of weapons, and gold, | |
| |silver, bronze, ivory, and alabaster gifts imported from places like Crete, Cyprus, Egypt and Syria, just among a | |
| |few. This shows how much wealthier the ruling class of Greece had become (Burnstein et al. 22). In Sparta, this | |
| |wealth became evident around the 9th and 8th centuries BC. Before, one could hardly see a difference between the | |
| |social classes (Burnstein et al. 51). Now the wealthy Greeks chose to conduct heroic-style burials in order to | |
| |connect with their ancestry. Their funerals closely resemble the funeral of heroes such as Patroclus in the Iliad. | |
| |The corpse was cremated and placed in a bronze urn inside a tomb that held weapons and sometimes the remains of | |
| |sacrificed horses. Vases depicting heroic events reveal how the wealthy claimed descent from the heroes (Burnstein | |
| |et al. 80). | |
| |While tomb designs and grave gifts may have evolved and changed over the years, the Greeks firmly believed in a set | |
| |of burial rituals. The death of Anthia in An Ephesian Tale provides evidence for these customs. “He laid her out | |
| |in all her finery and surrounded her with a great quantity of gold…And there he laid her in a vault, after | |
| |slaughtering a great number of victims and burning a great deal of clothing and other finery.” The family then | |
| |carried out the accustomed rites (Xenophon 151). In Classical Greece the burial rituals actually consisted of three| |
| |parts. First there is a prothesis, or laying out of the body. The women wash, anoint, dress, crown, cover the body| |
| |and adorn it with flowers. The mouth and eyes are shut to prevent the psyche (phantom or soul) from leaving the | |
| |body and the corpse is dressed in a long-ankle length garment. The body is presented so it can be viewed for two | |
| |days. At the viewings, the mourners dress in black in honor of the deceased and the women stand at the head of the | |
| |couch to grieve and sing while the men would stand with their palms out to the gods. When it came time for the | |
| |burial, before the dawn of the third day, the body was taken to the tomb by cart. The men would lead the procession| |
| |and the women would follow. At the internment the corpse or ashes would be placed in the tomb along with the grave | |
| |goods of pottery, jewels, vases, or other personal property (perseus.tufts.edu). | |
| |[pic] | |
| |White-ground lekythoi were used for funeral rites and as a gift to the deceased between 470 and 400 BC. These vases| |
| |were covered with a white slip after being fired. Figures on the vase were outlined in red or black matte. The | |
| |clothing of the figures pictured was colored in purple, brown, red yellow, rose, vermilion, and sky blue | |
| |(museum.upenn.edu). Along with these gifts, offerings of fruit were made and the mourners would sing and dance.| |
| |The women would leave the site first to prepare for the perideiprion or funeral party that would follow | |
| |(perseus.tufts.edu). | |
| | | |
| |Homeric belief shows that the Greeks saw death as a time when the psyche left the body to enter Hades. This psyche | |
| |could be seen, but was untouchable. Beginning in Classical times there came to be the concepts of punishment after | |
| |death or a state of blessedness. The soul responsible for a person’s personality and moral decisions received the | |
| |eternal punishment or bliss for the choices of the human form. The burial rituals perhaps spawned from this belief | |
| |that the soul must be guided into the afterlife. If the body was not given a proper burial according to Greek | |
| |ritual, the soul would remain trapped between the worlds of the living and the underworld (museum.upenn.edu). | |
| |Demanding proper burial was one of the major reasons why ghosts would show themselves to the people of ancient | |
| |Greece. Erwin Rohde, the author of Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks, states, | |
| |“The first duty that the survivors owe to their dead is to bury the body in the customary manner…Religious | |
| |requirements, however, go beyond the law” (Felton 10). While most Greeks were skeptical of the belief in ghosts, | |
| |there were a few who believed these suffering beings existed. Few accounts of haunting are found in Greek | |
| |literature, although stories by Plautus, Pliny, and Lucian have been recovered indicating an interest in the | |
| |afterlife (Felton xii). | |
| |Apuleius also provides an example of haunting by a dead spirit through dreams. In The Golden Ass, a baker is | |
| |murdered, ironically, by a ghost that his wife summoned to kill him in retaliation for his request for divorce. The| |
| |man is given a proper burial, yet his spirit visits his daughter through a dream to tell her what brought upon his | |
| |death. “The pitiable form of her father had obtruded upon her sleep with his neck still haltered; and the dead man | |
| |had disclosed to her the wicked work of her stepmother… and told her how he himself had been haunted by a spirit off| |
| |the earth” (Apuleius 203). Desecrating the tombs themselves could also lead to being tormented by a spirit. | |
| |Theophrastus, a 4th century author describes in “Characters” the belief that a superstitious man, “will not tread | |
| |upon tombstone, for fear that association with the dead will pollute him.” One would not enter a house where a | |
| |corpse laid awaiting burial either (Felton 5). | |
| |These beliefs in spirits led to great yearly festivals in Greece and Rome. The feast of Anthesteria occurred | |
| |sometime in February and March in Athens. The society believed the ghosts would not leave until they were chased | |
| |out. On these days everything stopped; the businesses were closed along with the temples. The doors of their | |
| |houses were covered with pitch and hawthorn leaves and each family member made an offering to the dead. A meal of | |
| |cooked grain was also offered to Hermes. At sunset of the last day, the master of the house would say, “Away, | |
| |Spirits; Anthesteria is over” (Felton 12). | |
| |All of these rituals and beliefs of ancient Greece certainly point to the fact that Greeks were fascinated by the | |
| |thought of the afterlife. What they wanted most for the dead was for their spirits to survive and be comfortable in| |
| |their eternity, as seen in the grave gifts of jewels and personal property. Death was also a time for the family to| |
| |show off their wealth; however, if the rituals were not followed to exactness the family might suffer the haunting | |
| |of their loved one. | |
| |Works Cited | |
| |Apuleius. The Golden Ass. Trans. Jack Lindsey. Indiana UP: Bloomington, 1960. | |
| |Burnstein, et al. Ancient Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. Oxford UP: New York, 1999. | |
| |Chariton, Chareas and Callirhoe. Trans B.P. Reardon. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. U of California Press: | |
| |Berkeley, 1989. | |
| |Felton, D. Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity. U of Austin Press: Austin, 1999. | |
| |Shopkorn, Jana. “’Til Death Do Us Part: Marriage and Funeral Rites in Classical Athens.” Online. | |
| |perseus.tufts.edu 04/09/01. | |
| |University of Pennsylvania Museum. “Ancient Greek World.” Online. museum.upenn.edu 04/09/01. | |
| | | |
| |From The History of the Persian Wars, Book VI, 56-60 430 BCE | |
| |These are the royal rights which have been given by the Spartans to their kings, namely, two priesthood---of Zeos | |
| |Sparta and Zeos Uranios---and the right of making war against whatsoever land they please, and that no man of the | |
| |Spartans shall hinder this right, or if he do, he shall be subject to the curse; and that when they go on | |
| |expeditions the kings shall go out first and return last; that a hundred picked men shall be their guard upon | |
| |expeditions; and that they shall use in their goings forth to war as many cattle as they desire, and take both the | |
| |hides and the backs of all that are sacrificed. These are their privileges in war, and in peace moreover things have| |
| |been assigned to them as follows: if any sacrifice is performed at the public charge, it is the privilege of the | |
| |kings to sit down to the feast before all other, and that the attendants shall begin with them first, and serve to | |
| |each of them a portion of everything double of that which is given to the other guests, and that they shall have the| |
| |first pouring of libations and the hides of the animals slain in sacrifice; that on every new moon and seventh day | |
| |of the month there shall be delivered at the public charge to each one of these a full-grown victim in the temple of| |
| |Apollo, and a measure of barley-groats and a Spartan "quarter" of wine; and at all the games they shall have seats | |
| |of honor specially set apart for them.... | |
| |The kings alone give decision on the following cases only, that is to say, about the maiden who inherits her | |
| |father's property, namely who ought to have her, if her father have not betrothed her to anyone, and about public | |
| |ways; also if any man desires to adopt a son, he must do it in presence of the kings: and it is ordained that they | |
| |shall sit in council with the elders, who are in number twenty-eight, and if they do not come, those of the elders | |
| |who are most closely related to them shall have the privileges of the kings and give two votes besides their own, | |
| |making three in all. | |
| |These rights have been assigned to the kings for their lifetime by the Spartan state; and after they are dead | |
| |horsemen go round and announce that which has happened throughout the whole of the Spartan land, and in the city | |
| |women go about and strike upon a copper kettle. Whenever this happens so, two free persons of each household must go| |
| |into mourning, a man and a woman, and for those who fail to do this great penalties are prescribed.... a certain | |
| |number of the perioiki are compelled to go to the funeral ceremony: and when there have been gathered together of | |
| |these and of the helots and of the Spartans themselves many thousands in the same place, with their women | |
| |intermingled, they beat their foreheads with a good will and make lamentation without stint, saying that this one | |
| |who had died last of their kings has been killed in war, they prepare an image to represent him, laid upon a couch | |
| |with fair coverings, and carry it out to be buried. Then after they have buried him, no assembly is held among them | |
| |for ten days, nor is there any meeting for choice of magistrates, but they have mourning during these days. | |
| |When the king is dead and another is appointed king, this king who is newly coming in sets free any man of the | |
| |Spartans who was a debtor to the king or to the state; while among the Persians the king who comes to the throne | |
| |remits to all the cities the arrears of tribute which are due... | |
| |Source: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook | |
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