Then they bathe them (as if the lake down below
were not big enough for the people there to bathe
in); and after anointing with the finest of perfume
that body which is already hasting to corruption,
and crowning ‘it with pretty flowers, they lay them
in state, clothed in splendid raiment, which, very
likely, is intended to keep them from being cold
on the way and from being seen undressed by
Cerberus.
 
Next come cries of distress, wailing of women,
tears on all sides, beaten breasts, torn hair, and
bloody cheeks. Perhaps, too, clothing is rent and
dust sprinkled on the head, and the living are in a
plight more pitiable than the dead ; for they roll on
the ground repeatedly and dash their heads against
the floor, while he, all serene and handsome and

 

elaborately decked with wreaths, lies in lofty, exalted
state, bedizened as for a pageant.
 
Then his mother, or indeed his father comes
forward from among the family and throws himself
upon him; for let us imagine a handsome young
man upon the bier, so that the show that is acted
over him may be the more moving. The father
utters strange, foolish outcries to which the dead
man himself would make answer if he could speak.
In a plaintive tone, protracting every word, he will
say: “Dearest child, you are gone from me, dead,
reft away before your time, leaving me behind all
alone, woe is me, before marrying, before having
children, before serving in the army, before working
on the farm, before coming to old age; never again
will you roam the streets at night, or fall in love,
my child, or drink deep at wine-parties with your
young friends.”
 
He will say all that, and more in the same tenor,
thinking that his son still needs and wants this sort
of thing even after death, but cannot get it. But
that is nothing. Have not many sacrificed horses,
concubines, sometimes even cup-bearers, over their
dead, and burned or buried with them clothing and
other articles of personal adornment, as if they would
use them there and get some good of them down
below?
 
But as to the old man who mourns after this
fashion, it is not, in all probability, on account of
his son that he does all this melodramatic ranting
that I have mentioned, and more than I have mentioned ; for he knows that his son will not hear him
even if he shouts louder than Stentor. Nor yet is it
on his own account ; for it would have been enough

 

to think this and have it in mind, without his
shouting—nobody needs to shout at himself. Consequently it is on account of the others present that
he talks this nonsense, when he does not know what
has happened to his son nor where he has gone; in
fact he has not even considered what life itself is,
or else he would not take on so about the leaving of
it, as if that were something dreadful.