Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Private Life 183
was a simple marble column known as a kioniskos, some two to three
feet in height above the ground and a foot or so in diameter. The great
age of honoring the dead with sumptuous monuments was over.
Looking After the Dead
Bereaved relatives continued to maintain a close attachment to
the deceased long after death had occurred, because their welfare
in Hades was thought to depend on the attention they received
from the living. Women were expected to pay regular visits to the
grave, particularly on the anniversary of the day of death but also
at other intervals throughout the year. We gain an insight into the
importance of such rituals from the speaker of a forensic oration by
Isaios (On the Estate of Menekles 46), who declares plaintively that, if
his opponent prevails, “There will be no-one to perform the sacred
ancestral rites on behalf of the deceased nor to offer the annual sacrifice
to him either but he will be deprived of the honors due to him.”
Evidently, the speaker counted on the jury being outraged by such
a prospect.
Because the dead were believed either to dwell in the proximity
of their grave or at least to be capable of visiting it periodically, a
variety of gifts judged necessary for their physical welfare were buried
with the dead and deposited periodically afterward beside the
tomb. The commonest grave gift in fifth-century Athens was the oil
flask or lêkythos, which was decorated with images relating to the
care of the dead set against a white background. Common objects
that were deposited at the tomb include branches of myrtle, wreaths,
cakes, and drink. It was also customary to anoint gravestones with
olive oil and wind colored sashes around their shafts, almost as if
gravestones in some sense embodied or ensouled the dead.
Funerary Art
Images of death and the dead serve many different purposes, and
understanding how these images function helps us to elucidate a society’s
attitude toward death. The Assyrians, for instance, adorned the
walls of their palaces with skull pyramids to magnify their achievements
and intimidate their enemies. The Greeks, however, were
extremely reserved in their depictions of death. By and large, emotions
such as sentimentality, fear, horror, disgust, and guilt played
little part in the visual imagery they employed. In fact, Greek funerary
art virtually excludes overt demonstrations of emotion altogether,
preferring instead to situate grief in a timeless world where death
becomes a subject for detached, philosophical contemplation.