To the ordinary reader this does not seem, in the circumstances, a strong mark of different ages and different burial customs. Priam did not bring any linen sheet—or whatever {Greek: heanos lis} may be—in the waggon as part of Hector's ransom; and it neither became Achilles to give nor Priam to receive any of Achilles's stuff as death-garb for Hector. The squires, therefore, gave back to Priam, to clothe his dead son, part of what he had brought; nothing can be more natural, and there, we may say, is an end on't. They did what they could in the circumstances. But Helbig has observed that, in a Cean inscription of the fifth century B.C., there is a sumptuary law, forbidding a corpse to wear more than three white garments, a sheet under him, a chiton, and a mantle cast over him. {Footnote: op. laud., p. 209.} He supposes that Hector wore the chiton, and had one {Greek: pharos} over him and the other under him, though Homer does not say that. The Laws of Solon also confined the dead man to three articles of dress. {Footnote: Plutarch, Solon, 21.} In doing so Solon sanctioned an old custom, and that Ionian custom, described by the author of Book XXIV., bewrays him, says Helbig, for a late Ionian bearbeiter, deserting true epic usages and inserting those of his own day. But in some Attic Dipylon vases, in the pictures of funerals, we see no garments or sheets over the corpses.
Penelope also wove a {Greek: charos} against the burial of old Laertes, but surely she ought to have woven for him; on Helbig's showing Hector had two, Patroclus had only one; Patroclus is in the old epic, Hector and Laertes are in the Ionian epics; therefore, Laertes should have had two {Greek: charea} but we only hear of one. Penelope had to finish the {Greek: charos} and show it; {Footnote: Odyssey, XXIV. 147.} now if she wanted to delay her marriage, she should have begun the second {Greek: charos} just as necessary as the first, if Hector, with a pair of {Greek: charea} represents Ionian usage. But Penelope never thought of what, had she read Helbig, she would have seen to be so obvious. She thought of no funeral garments for the old man but one shroud {Greek: speiron} (Odyssey, II. 102; XIX. 147); yet, being, by the theory, a character of late Ionian, not of genuine old AEolic epic, she should have known better. It is manifest that if even the acuteness and vast erudition of Helbig can only find such invisible differences as these between the manners of the genuine old epic and the late Ionian innovations, there is really no difference, beyond such trifles as diversify custom in any age.
Hector, when burned and when his ashes have been placed in the casket, is laid in a {Greek: kapetos}, a ditch or trench ( Iliad, XV. 356; XVIII. 564); but here (XXIV. 797) {Greek: kapetos} is a chamber covered with great stones, within the howe, the casket being swathed with purple robes, and this was the end. The ghost of Hector would not revisit the sun, as ghosts do freely in the Cyclic poems, a proof that the Cyclics are later than the Homeric poems. {Footnote: Helbig, op. laud., pp. 240, 241.}
If the burning of the weapons of Eetion and Elpenor are traces of another than the oldAEolic epic faith, {Footnote: Ibid., p. 253.} they are also traces of another than the late Ionicepic faith, for no weapons are burned with Hector. In the Odysseythe weapons of Achilles are not burned; in the Iliadthe armour of Patroclus is not burned. No victims of any kind are burned with Hector: possibly the poet was not anxious to repeat what he had just described (his last book is already a very long book); possibly the Trojans did not slay victims at the burning.
The howes or barrows built over the Homeric dead were hillocks high enough to be good points of outlook for scouts, as in the case of the barrow of AEsyetes ( Iliad, II. 793) and "the steep mound," the howe of lithe Myrine (II. 814). We do not know that women were usually buried in howe, but Myrine was a warrior maiden of the Amazons. We know, then, minutely what the Homeric mode of burial was, with such variations as have been noted. We have burning and howe even in the case of an obscure oarsman like Elpenor. It is not probable, however, that every peaceful mechanic had a howe all to himself; he may have had a small family cairn; he may not have had an expensive cremation.
The interesting fact is that no barrow burial precisely of the Homeric kind has ever been discovered in Greek sites. The old Mycenaeans buried either in shaft graves or in a stately tholos; and in rock chambers, later, in the town cemetery: they did not burn the bodies. The people of the Dipylon period sometimes cremated, sometimes inhumed, but they built no barrow over the dead. {Footnote: Annal. de l'Inst.,1872, pp. 135, 147, 167. Plausen, ut supra.} The Dipylon was a period of early iron swords, made on the lines of not the best type of bronze sword. Now, in Mr. Leaf's opinion, our Homeric accounts of burial "are all late; the oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing." {Footnote: Iliad, vol. ii. p. 619. Note 2. While Mr. Leaf says that "the oldest parts of the poems tell us nothing" of burial, he accepts XXII. 342, 343 as of the oldest part. These lines describe cremation, and Mr. Leaf does not think them borrowed from the "later" VII. 79, 80, but that VII. 79, 80 are "perhaps borrowed" from XXII. 342, 343. It follows that "the oldest parts of the poems" do tell us of cremation.} We shall show, however, that Mr. Leaf's "kernel" alludes to cremation. What is "late"? In this case it is not the Dipylon period, say 900-750 B.C. It is not any later period; one or two late barrow burials do not answer to the Homeric descriptions. The "late" parts of the poems, therefore, dealing with burials, in Books VI., VII., XIX., XXIII., XXIV., and the Odyssey, are of an age not in "the Mycenaean prime," not in the Dipylon period, not in any later period, say the seventh or sixth centuries B.C., and, necessarily, not of any subsequent period. Yet nobody dreams of saying that the poets describe a purely fanciful form of interment. They speak of what they know in daily life. If it be argued that the late poets preserve, by sheer force of epic tradition, a form of burial unknown in their own age, we ask, "Why did epic tradition not preserve the burial methods of the Mycenaean prime, the shaft grave, or the tholos, without cremation?"
Mr. Leaf's own conclusion is that the people of Mycenae were "spirit worshippers, practising inhumation, and partial mummification;" the second fact is dubious. "In the post-Mycenaean 'Dipylon' period, we find cremation and sepulture practised side by side. In the interval, therefore, two beliefs have come into conflict. {Footnote: All conceivable beliefs, we have said, about the dead are apt to coexist. For every conceivable and some rather inconceivable contemporary Australian modes of dealing with the dead, see Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia; Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia.} It seems that the Homeric poems mark this intermediate point...." {Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. ii. p. 622.} In that case the Homeric poems are of one age, or, at least, all of them save "the original kernel" are of one age, namely, a period subsequent to the Mycenaean prime, but considerably prior to the Dipylon period, which exhibits a mixture of custom; cremation and inhumation coexisting, without barrows or howes.