Scaife ATLAS

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Of Mourning (21-24)

urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0062.tlg036.perseus-eng4:21-24
Refs {'start': {'reference': '21', 'human_reference': 'Section 21'}, 'end': {'reference': '24', 'human_reference': 'Section 24'}}
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So far, all men are fools alike: but at this point national peculiarities make their appearance. The Greeks burn their dead, the Persians bury them; the Indian glazes the body, the Scythian eats it, the Egyptian embalms it. In Egypt, indeed, the corpse, duly dried, is actually placed at table,— I have seen it done; and it is quite a common thing for an Egyptian to relieve himself from pecuniary embarrassment by a timely visit to the pawnbroker, with his brother or father deceased.

The childish futility of pyramids and mounds and columns, with their short-lived inscriptions, is obvious.

But

v.3.p.218
some people go further, and attempt to plead the cause of the deceased with his infernal judges, or testify to his merits, by means of funeral games and laudatory epitaphs.

The final absurdity is the funeral feast, at which the assembled relatives strive to console the parents, and to prevail upon them to take food; and, Heaven knows, they are willing enough to be persuaded, being almost prostrated by a three days’ fast. ‘How long is this to go on?’ some one expostulates. ‘Suffer the spirit of your departed saint to rest in peace. Or if mourn you will, then for that very reason you must eat, that your strength may be proportioned to your grief.’ At this point, a couple of lines of Homer go the round of the company:

Ev’n fair-haired Niobe forgat not food,
and
Not fasting mourn th’ Achaeans for their dead.

The parents are persuaded, though they go to work at first in a somewhat shamefaced manner; they do not want it to be thought that after their bereavement they are still subject to the infirmities of the flesh.

Such are some of the absurdities that may be observed in mourners; for I have by no means exhausted the list. And all springs from the vulgar error, that Death is the worst thing that can befall a man.

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