It was, perhaps, in imitation of the Persians, that the Greeks, on the death of a general, clipped even the manes and tails of their horses. When, on the expedition of Mardonius, his trusted commander, Masistius, was slain, the Persians mutilated their horses after that fashion[328]. At the death of the gluttonous young Hephaestion, in consequence of disobedience to his physician’s orders, Alexander, thoroughly orientalized, ordered all the mules and horses to be clipped[329]. Not satisfied with this, he must needs tear down all the battlements of the neighboring cities, so that they, too, might have the appearance of being shorn[330]. Aelian, very suitably, terms this latter extravagance, “grieving according to the custom of the barbarians[331].”
The other distinguishing feature of the mourning, the adoption of black robes, although it usually indicates actual bereavement, was sometimes employed before the loss had really come, but when it was impending. Thus, when the sister-in-law of Lysias was summoned to the prison where her husband awaited death, she came clad, as was befitting, in a black garment[332]. It was this fashion at Athens, of wearing black to show the death of a relative that gave point to Pericles’s dying assertion: “None of my fellow citizens have, through me, been obliged to assume a sable garb[333].”
White was worn sometimes on the death of a great general or other high official. Timoleon was borne to the grave accompanied by a procession of Syracusans, crowned with garlands and clothed in white. Pure white[334] is also the color which Plato directs to be worn on the death of a priest[335].
It may not have been the rule in all the states of Greece, as it was at Athens, to make black the mourning color. Sparta, perhaps out of a feeling of antagonism to Athens, appears to have employed white mourning, referred to by Socrates as “robes rinsed in water[336].”
It was the custom among the Greeks, when a good character like Alcestis, had departed, to pray that the earth might rest lightly upon the mortal frame[337], but where a man had done nothing except evil, they wished that mother earth, like a huge night-mare, might pin him down[338]. The ancient Greeks have departed, and, except when the prying hand of the archaeologist has torn away their surroundings, they have lain undisturbed for many centuries in the bosom of the earth. Let it be _our_ wish that she still continue to rest lightly on good and bad alike.