Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

176 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
or drink for several days. This kind of behavior was prompted in part
by a desire to honor the deceased, who were believed to take pleasure
in witnessing the exaggerated displays of grief that their death occasioned.
In The Iliad Book 23, Homer states that, when the Greeks were
cremating the body of Patroklos, not everyone was grieving for the
deceased. Some were using his death as a pretext to bewail their own
private losses and griefs. To a Greek, there was nothing hypocritical
or insincere in such transference. The loss of a loved one is common
to all human experience, and Greek mourners brought to the funeral
their own personal sense of life’s pain.
Exeunt the Gods
Among persons of most faiths, the death of a loved one is an
occasion to seek the consolation of religion, irrespective of the
extent of their commitment to it at other times. The Greeks, by contrast,
knew better than to approach their gods in the hope that they
could either offer them some consolation or assist the deceased in
their passage to the next world. At the graveside, as in the home,
Prothesis or laying out of the body. Courtesy akg-images,
London: Peter Connolly.