HKB
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Often appears with: funeral rites and burial · the fear of death · slavery and bondage · plague, famine, and mass death · justice as a virtue · custom and the manners of a people · mourning and grief · ghosts and the returning dead · equity, mercy, and pardon · young women and family grief · warlike diplomacy and peace talks · war mourning and lamentation
Usually: narrative (7) · confronting death (7) · detachment (6) · grief and loss (4) · lament (4) · argument (3) · commentary or gloss (3) · reverence (3) · description (2) · curiosity (2)
“Thus the first philosophy of man, which is at the basis of the ancestor-cult, is completed by a philosophy of the world.” Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life · insight
“For that no mortal may escape; but on every side a wide snare encompasses us.” Apollonius Rhodius, The Argonautica · insight
“Totus hic locus est contemnendus in nobis, non negligendus in nostris;”--[“The place of our sepulture is to be contemned by us, but not to be neglected by our friends.”--Cicero, Tusc. i. 45.]--” Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Volume 02 · precept
“Curatio funeris, conditio sepultura: pompa exequiarum, magis sunt vivorum solatia, quam subsidia mortuorum.” Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Volume 02 · observation
“How you will,” said he. “If I were to concern myself beyond the present about this affair, I should be most tempted... to imitate those who in their lifetime entertain themselves with the ceremony and honours of their own obsequies beforehand, and are pleased with beholding their own dead countenance in marble. Happy are they who can gratify their senses by insensibility, and live by their death!” Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Volume 02 · insight
The Sibyl explains that only a few are permitted to return from hell, instructs Aeneas to pluck a golden bough for Proserpina, warns him about Misenus’ unburied ghost, and orders funeral rites before his journey to the underworld.
than theirs from Jove my lineage came; My mother greater, my descent the same.” So pray’d the Trojan prince, and, while he pray’d, His hand upon the holy altar laid. Then thus replied the prophetess divine: “O goddess-born of great Anchises’ line, The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the ta…
The Latins prepare funeral pyres for their dead, mourn at court and in homes, debate blame and alliances after the embassy’s failure, and hear King Latinus propose land, ships, and a peace commission.
And part are to the neighb’ring fields convey’d. The corps of kings, and captains of renown, Borne off in state, are buried in the town; The rest, unhonour’d, and without a name, Are cast a common heap to feed the flame. Trojans and Latians vie with like desires To make the field of battle shine with fires, And the promiscuous blaze to heav’n aspires. Now had the morning thr…
He develops the animist account by arguing the soul becomes a spirit through death, forming ancestral spirits that can cause health, illness, and events, and prompting sacrifices, prayers, and funeral rites.
the same. Therefore we can unite these two doctrines in the exposition which follows, if we mark, at the proper moment, the place where the two diverge from one another. In order to find the elementary form of the religious life in these animistic beliefs and practices, three *desiderata* must be satisfied: first, since according to this hypothesis, the idea of the soul is the cardinal idea of religion, it must be s…
Durkheim extends the critique by introducing Spencer, who claims primitives can distinguish animate from inanimate and therefore should not move from ancestor worship to nature worship from lack of discernment.
to humanity was addressed. Thus the first rites were funeral rites; the first sacrifices were food offerings destined to satisfy the needs of the departed; the first altars were tombs.[102] But since these spirits were of human origin, they interested themselves only in the life of men and were thought to act only upon human events. It is still to be explained how other spirits were imagined to account for the other…
After Hector and Ajax part, Agamemnon honors Ajax with a sacrifice and equal-feast, Nestor urges funeral rites and fortifying the ships, and Trojans hold a council disputing Helen’s fate.
Ajax. They led him, therefore, to the city as one that had been saved beyond their hopes. On the other side the Achaeans brought Ajax elated with victory to Agamemnon. When they reached the quarters of the son of Atreus, Agamemnon sacrificed for them a five-year-old bull in honour of Jove the son of Saturn. They flayed the carcass, made it ready, and divided it into joints; these they cut carefully…
After Patroclus’ death, Achilles orders the Myrmidons to mourn and drag Hector’s body aside, then organizes a funeral feast and plans dawn rites involving wood, cremation, and burial customs.
The funeral of Patroclus, and the funeral games. Thus did they make their moan throughout the city, while the Achaeans when they reached the Hellespont went back every man to his own ship. But Achilles would not let the Myrmidons go, and spoke to his brave comrades saying, “Myrmidons, famed horsemen and my own trusted friends, not yet, forsooth, let us unyoke, but with horse and chariot…
Montaigne criticizes vanity and obsession over funerals, mocking stingy or elaborate schemes (including Marcus Aemilius Lepidus), then endorses leaving burial arrangements to custom, citing Cicero, Augustine, and Socrates to say the dead need less ceremony.
his condition; and seemed to die content, having obtained this promise, and appointed the method and order of his funeral parade. I have seldom heard of so persistent a vanity. Another, though contrary curiosity (of which singularity, also, I do not want domestic example), seems to be somewhat akin to this, that a man shall cudgel his brains at the last moments of his life to contrive his obsequies to so particular …
At a queen’s hearse, a blue-green miracle bird sings, falls from a window, dies, and is revived by another bird using a healing herb whose seeds are then administered by an abbess.
wholesome air, — Befell a wondrous case* and strange *chance, event Among the people, and gan change Soon the word, and ev’ry woe Unto a joy, and some to two. A bird, all feather’d blue and green, With brighte rays like gold between, As small thread over ev’ry joint, All full of colour strange and coint,* *quaint Uncouth* and wonderful to sight, *unfamiliar Upon …
Hecuba mourns Astyanax as an innocent victim, recalls his childish promises, wraps him in garments and Hector’s shield, and condemns the Greek fear that led to his execution.
HECUBA. Set the great orb of Hector's shield to lie Here on the ground. 'Tis bitter that mine eye Should see it.... O ye Argives, was your spear Keen, and your hearts so low and cold, to fear This babe? 'Twas a strange murder for brave men! For fear this babe some day might raise again His fallen land! Had ye so little pride? While Hector fought, and thousands at his side, Ye smote us, and we perished; and now, no…
Idmon is fatally gored by a hidden boar in a reed-lined muddy river, and the heroes mourn and bury him with honors; later Tiphys also dies of a sickness, and Hera urges Ancaeus to steer anew.
ship in haste; and with them went Lycus himself, when he had given them countless gifts to bear away; and with them he sent forth his son from his home. And here his destined fate smote Idmon, son of Abas, skilled in soothsaying; but not at all did his soothsaying save him, for necessity drew him on to death. For in the mead of the reedy river there lay, cooling his flanks and huge belly in the mud, a white-tusked b…
Returning at night, the Argonauts are mistaken for Macrians and attacked by the Doliones, leading Jason’s side to kill Cyzicus and others, and afterward Cyzicus’s tomb rites and Cleite’s suicide are described as lasting local customs.
land; others again were resting their heads on the sand of the shore and their feet in the deep water, both alike a prey to birds and fishes at once. But the heroes, when the contest was ended without fear, loosed the ship's hawsers to the breath of the wind and pressed on through the sea-swell. And the ship sped on under sail all day; but when night came the rushing wind did not hold steadfast, but contrary blasts …
Idmon, a soothsayer, is killed by a wild boar in a reedy river meadow, and the Argonauts mourn for three days then bury him with honours; later Tiphys also dies, and barrows and cultic directions explain commemorations.
ship in haste; and with them went Lycus himself, when he had given them countless gifts to bear away; and with them he sent forth his son from his home. And here his destined fate smote Idmon, son of Abas, skilled in soothsaying; but not at all did his soothsaying save him, for necessity drew him on to death. For in the mead of the reedy river there lay, cooling his flanks and huge belly in the mud, a white-tusked b…
Tacitus explains German slavery and household roles, rejecting severe slave punishment, limiting usury, rotating land cultivation annually, and describing plain funeral practices for men and women.
younger he be, however stronger, he tamely suffers himself to be bound and sold by the winner. Such is their perseverance in an evil course: they themselves call it honour. Slaves of this class, they exchange in commerce, to free themselves too from the shame of such a victory. Of their other slaves they make not such use as we do of ours, by distributing amongst them the several offices and employments of the famil…
The passage describes Egyptian mourning and a feast after sacrifices, then explains burial rules for sacred oxen: females are thrown into the river, males are buried in each town with a horn marker, and bones are later retrieved from Prosopitis/Atarbechis.
are being burnt, they all beat themselves for mourning, and when they have finished beating themselves they set forth as a feast that which they left unburnt of the sacrifice. 41. The clean males then of the ox kind, both full-grown animals and calves, are sacrificed by all the Egyptians; the females however they may not sacrifice, but these are sacred to Isis; for the figure of Isis is in the form of a woman with c…
He gives Egyptian religious and cultural practices: burial and mourning rituals, the embalming process in three grades over seventy days, and restrictions on who may touch certain bodies.
are drinking together, saying: "When thou lookest upon this, drink and be merry, for thou shalt be such as this when thou art dead." Thus they do at their carousals. 79. The customs which they practise are derived from their fathers and they do not acquire others in addition; but besides other customary things among them which are worthy of mention, they have one song, 6801 that of Linos, the same who is sung of bot…
At Saïs, Herodotus describes the Egyptian burial cults around a lake and obelisks of Athena’s temple, and outlines how the thesmophoria rite was brought from Egypt by Danaids.
out by the Dorians, the rite was lost, and only those who were left behind of the Peloponnesians and not driven out, that is to say the Arcadians, preserved it. 172. Apries having thus been overthrown, Amasis became king, being of the district of Saïs, and the name of the city whence he was is Siuph. Now at the first the Egyptians despised Amasis and held him in no great regard, because he had been a man of the peop…
Pliny laments the death of Fundanus’s fourteen-year-old daughter, praises her virtues and bravery during illness, recounts her father redirecting wedding spending to funeral rites, and urges sympathetic consolation.
LV -- To SPURINNA KNOWING, as I do, how much you admire the polite arts, and what satisfaction you take in seeing young men of quality pursue the steps of their ancestors, I seize this earliest opportunity of informing you that I went to-day to hear Calpurnius Piso read a beautiful and scholarly production of his, entitled the Sports of Love. His numbers, which were elegiac, were tender, sweet, and flowing, at the s…