Cremation then is indisputably in theory the preferable means of securing to the dead that boon which they most desire; and I hold that in the practice of the Greek people there are signs that this preference was felt.
There are then two propositions to be established by reference to the actual funeral methods of Ancient and Modern Greece; first, that from the earliest ages of which we have cognisance cremation and inhumation have been identical in their religious purpose; second, that a preference for cremation, considered as a means to the single religious end, has been manifested.
The first thing needful in this twofold investigation is to understand the terms, which are to be used, in the sense in which the Greek understood them. Cremation means to us the consumption of the corpse by fire; inhumation the laying of the corpse out of sight in the earth; and unless one or other of those acts had been really performed, we should not consider that a funeral had taken place. But the Greeks judged rather by the intention than by the act. In certain cases, in which the actual digging of a grave was impossible, ancient usage prescribed a ceremonial substitute. The sprinkling of a handful of dust over a dead body was held to constitute burial. Such was all the funeral that Antigone could give to Polynices[1]; such the minimum of burial enjoined by Attic Law on any who chanced upon a dead body lying unburied[2]; such, according to Aelian, 'the fulfilment of some mysterious law of piety imposed by Nature' not only upon man but even on some of the brute creation, in such sort that the elephant, if he find one of his own kind dead, gathers up some earth in his trunk and sprinkles it over the prostrate carcase[3]. 'The fulfilment of some mysterious law of piety'—Aelian's phrase accurately summarises the Greek view of burial. To us it is a necessary and decent method of disposing of the dead. To the Greeks it was something more—a provision for their dimly discerned welfare; and the intention of the living mattered so much more than the performance, that, in cases where real burial could not be given, a mere ceremony suggestive of burial was considered competent to ensure the same end.
