Use the following persistent identifier: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_AlexiouM.Ritual_Lament_in_Greek_Tradition.2002.
1. Tradition and change in antiquity
νοσφισθείς, μή τοί τι θεῶν μήνιμα γένωμαι.
lest I become a visitation upon you from the gods.
Wake, funeral procession and burial
Sokrates sent his wife away before he drank the hemlock so that he could die quietly, and when his closest friends could not control their grief at the moment of death he rebuked them, saying that the dying should pass away in peace. [4]
Offerings at the tomb
ἔτερχε κἡ μήτηρ καὶ ἵστατο ἥ γε τυπητόν.
and began the beating of the breast. {8|9}
There was also an underlying sense of fear of the harm the dead might inflict on the living if not fully satisfied. Tendance was the same as appeasement. That is why even Clytemnestra sent mourners with offerings and libations to the tomb of Agamemnon. [50]
This idea, implicit in many of the laments from tragedy, is expressed in formulaic form from the fifth century on, as in another Attic inscription (fourth to third centuries B.C.): [51]
Since the earth was so closely associated with the dead, it was natural that the mourner should appeal first to her to receive the offerings and convey them to the dead. [52] In the later inscriptions and in the more literary epigrams of the Palatine Anthology, the earth may even be requested to remember past services, and to treat the dead kindly in return: [53]
πολλῶν μνησαμένη τῶν ἐπὶ σοὶ καμάτων.
καὶ γὰρ ἀεὶ πρέμνον σοι ἀνεστήριξεω ἐλαίης …
ἀνθ᾽ ὧν σὺ πρηεῖα κατὰ κροτάφου πολιοῖο
κεῖσο καὶ εἰαρινὰς ἀνθοκόμει βοτάνας.
and remember his many toils for your sake.
In you he always firmly set the stem of the olive-tree …
so in return, lie gently round his aged head,
and dress yourself in flowers of spring.
An old idea, rooted in fertility magic of great antiquity, has been given new life and vigour with new poetic forms.
Kinswomen and strangers
οἴκτρ’ όλοφυρόμεναι, περὶ δ ἄμβροτα εἵματα ἕσσαν.
Μοῦσαι δ ἐννέα πᾶσαι άμειβόμεναι ὀπὶ καλῇ
θρήνεον· ἔνθα κεν οὔ τιν’ ἀδάκρυτόν γ’ ἐνόησας
Ἀργείων· τοῖον γὰρ ὑπώρορε Μοῦσα λιγεῖα.
weeping bitterly, and laid upon you the immortal garments.
Then the nine Muses sang laments, each responding in sweet
tones. None of the Argives could restrain his tears, stirred forth
so strongly by the Muse’s shrill-voiced song.
In the Iliad the distinction emerges even more clearly in the account of Hector’s próthesis between the thrênos of the professional mourners, which was a proper song, and the góos of the kinswomen, which was merely wailed:
θρήνων έξάρχους, οἵ τε στονόεσσαν άοιδήν
οἱ μὲν δή θρήνεον, έπὶ δέ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες.
τῇσιν δ᾽ Ανδρομάχη λευκώλενος ἦρχε γόοιο.
leaders of the dirges, who sang laments
in mournful tune, while the women wailed in chorus.
White-armed Andromache led their keening.
Only the laments of the kinswomen—Andromache, Hekabe and Helen—are given in full, and it is these we are interested in from a literary point of view. Yet the mourning for Hector clearly involved more than a string of solos followed by a refrain of keening: there are two groups of mourners, professional singers and kinswomen. The singers begin with a musical thrênos, answered by a refrain of cries, and then the lament is taken up by the next of kin, each singing a verse in turn and followed by another refrain of cries. Their verses are an answer to the lamentation of the professional singers.
The legislation on funeral rites and lamentation
Footnotes