Cremation, with cairn burial of the ashes, is, then, the only form of burial mentioned by Homer, and, as far as the poet tells us, the period was not one in which iron was used for swords and spears. At Assarlik (Asia Minor) and in Thera early graves, prove the use of cremation, but also, unlike Homer, of iron weapons. {Footnote: Paton, Journal of Hellenic Studies,viii. 64 ff. For other references, cf. Poulsen, Die Dipylongrдben, p. 2, Notes. Leipzig 1905.} In these graves the ashes are inurned. There are examples of the same usage in Salamis, without iron. In Crete, in graves of the period of geometrical ornament ("Dipylon"), burning is more common than inhumation. Cremation is attested in a tholosor beehive-shaped grave in Argos, where the vases were late Mycenaean. Below this stratum was an older shaft grave, as is usual in tholosinterments; it had been plundered? {Footnote: Poulsen, p.2.}
The cause of the marked change from Mycenaean inhumation to Homeric cremation is matter of conjecture. It has been suggested that burning was introduced during the migrations after the Dorian invasion. Men could carry the ashes of their friends to the place where they finally settled. {Footnote: Helbig, Homerische Epos,p.83} The question may, perhaps, be elucidated by excavation, especially in Asia Minor, on the sites of the earliest Greek colonies. At Colophon are many cairns unexplored by science. Mr. Ridgeway, as is well known, attributes the introduction of cremation to a conquering northern people, the Achaeans, his "Celts." It is certain that cremation and urn burial of the ashes prevailed in Britain during the Age of Bronze, and co-existed with inhumation in the great cemetery of Hallstatt, surviving into the Age of Iron. {Footnote: Cf. Guide to Antiquities of Early Iron Age,British Museum, 1905, by Mr. Reginald A. Smith, under direction of Mr. Charles H. Read, for a brief account of Hallstatt culture.} Others suppose a change in Achaean ideas about the soul; it was no longer believed to haunt the grave and grave goods and be capable of haunting the living, but to be wholly set free by burning, and to depart for ever to the House of Hades, powerless and incapable of hauntings.
It is never easy to decide as to whether a given mode of burial is the result of a definite opinion about the condition of the dead, or whether the explanation offered by those who practise the method is an afterthought. In Tasmania among the lowest savages, now extinct, were found monuments over cremated human remains, accompanied with "characters crudely marked, similar to those which the aborigines tattooed on their forearms." In one such grave was a spear, "for the dead man to fight with when he is asleep," as a native explained. Some Tasmanian tribes burned the dead and carried the ashes about in amulets; others buried in hollow trees; others simply inhumed. Some placed the dead in a hollow tree, and cremated the body after lapse of time. Some tied the dead up tightly (a common practice with inhumation), and then burned him. Some buried the dead in an erect 'posture. The common explanation of burning was that it prevented the dead from returning, thus it has always been usual to burn the bodies of vampires. Did a race so backward hit on an idea unknown to the Mycenaean Greeks? {Footnote: Ling Roth., The Tasmanians, pp. 128-134. Reports of Early Discoverers.} If the usual explanation be correct—burning prevents the return of the dead—how did the Homeric Greeks come to substitute burning for the worship and feeding of the dead, which had certainly prevailed? How did the ancient method return, overlapping and blent with the method of cremation, as in the early Dipylon interments? We can only say that the Homeric custom is definite and isolated, and that but slight variations occur in the methods of Homeric burial.
(1)In Iliad, VI, 4 I 6 ff, Andromache SAYSthat Achilles slew her father, "yet he despoiled him not, for his soul had shame of that; but he burnt him in his inlaid armour, and raised a barrow over him." We are not told that the armour was interred with the ashes of Eetion. This is a peculiar case. We always hear in the that the dead are burned, and the ashes of princes are placed in a vessel of gold within an artificial hillock; but we do not hear, except in this passage, that they are burned in their armour, or that it is burned, or that it is buried with the ashes of the dead. The invariable practice is for the victor, if he can, to despoil the body of the fallen foe; but Achilles for some reason spared that indignity in the case of Eetion. {Footnote: German examples of burning the amis of the cremated dead and then burying them are given by Mr. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece,vol. i. pp. 498, 499.}
(2) ILIAD,VII. 85. Hector, in his challenge to a single combat, makes the conditions that the victor shall keep the arms and armour of the vanquished, but shall restore his body to his friends. The Trojans will burn him, if he falls; if the Achaean falls, the others will do something expressed by the word {Greek: tarchuchosi} probably a word surviving from an age of embalment. {Footnote: Helbig, Homerische Epos,pp. 55, 56.} It has come to mean, generally, to do the funeral rites. The hero is to have a barrow or artificial howe or hillock built over him, "beside wide Hellespont," a memorial of him, and of Hector's valour.
On the River Helmsdale, near Kildonan, on the left bank, there is such a hillock which has never, it is believed, been excavated. It preserves the memory of its occupant, an early Celtic saint; whether he was cremated or not it is impossible to say. But his memory is not lost, and the howe, cairn, or hillock, in Homer is desired by the heroes as a MEMORIAL.
On the terms proposed by Hector the arms of the dead could not be either burned or buried with him.
(3) Iliad, IX. 546. Phoenix says that the Calydonian boar "brought many to the mournful pyre." All were cremated.
(4) Iliad, XXII 50-55. Andromache in her dirge (the regretof the French mediaeval epics) says that Hector lies unburied by the ships and naked, but she will burn raiment of his, "delicate and fair, the work of women ... to thee no profit, since thou wilt never lie therein, yet this shall be honour to thee from the men and women of Troy." Her meaning is not very clear, but she seems to imply that if Hector's body were in Troy it would be clad in garments before cremation.
Helbig appears to think that to clothe the dead in garmentswas an Ionian, not an ancient epic custom. But in Homer the dead always wear at least one garment, the {Greek: pharos}, a large mantle, either white or purple, such as Agamemnon wears in peace (Iliad, II 43), except when, like Eetion and Elpenor in the Odyssey, they are burned in their armour. In Iliad,XXIII. 69 ff., the shadow of the dead unburned Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep asking for "his dues of fire." The whole passage, with the account of the funeral of Patroclus, must be read carefully, and compared with the funeral rites of Hector at the end of Book XXIV. Helbig, in an essay of great erudition, though perhaps rather fantastic in its generalisations, has contrasted the burials of the two heroes. Patroclus is buried, he says, in a true portion of the old Aeolic epic (Sir Richard Jebb thought the whole passage "Ionic"), though even into this the late Ionian bearbeiter(a spectral figure), has introduced his Ionian notions. But the Twenty-fourth Book itself is late and Ionian, Helbig says, not genuine early Aeolian epic poetry. {Footnote: Helbig, Zu den Homerischen Bestattungsgebraьchen. Aus den Sitzungsberichten der philos. philol. und histor. Classe der Kgl. bayer. Academie der Wissenschaften. 1900. Heft. ii. pp. 199-299.} The burial of Patroclus, then, save for Ionian late interpolations, easily detected by Helbig, is, he assures us, genuine "kernel," {Footnote: 2 Op. laud., p. 208.} while Hector's burial "is partly Ionian, and describes the destiny of the dead heroes otherwise than as in the old Aeolic epos."