The coffins of baked clay were rudely fashioned, as might be expected from such coarse material. One of the oldest kind of coffins was that in which Dionysus, according to the fable, laid away whatever was mortal of the beautiful Ariadne. That rude contrivance was composed of three flat plates of clay, forming a kind of triangular prism[194], so that this casket of the wine god’s wife must have been as picturesque and shapely as a piece of sewer-pipe. Sometimes, however, these pottery coffins were very highly decorated. They were painted in brilliant colors[195], with representations of lily-leaves and palms, the flowering acanthus and the lotus, and with wreaths and arabesques and intricate tracery.
At a later period, the sides of the triangle assumed a curved shape. A section of the coffin was a spherical triangle, and the coffin became more complicated and durable. Stackelberg gives a very careful description of the construction of this style, together with an illustration[196]. On the under layer of curved tiling, rest the bones of the deceased, at the sides are double layers of tiling, with one at the top. Two upright tiles close the ends. Another specimen of great interest is the coffin of a child, unearthed at Athens by Stackelberg, in the beginning of the present century. It has an elliptical form, and looks like a movable bath-tub. Many utensils were found in this coffin, packed away with the skeleton. They will be described hereafter[197].
Of the tombs themselves, the recent excavations have also made us acquainted with the construction and the varieties. Cumanudis[198], a Greek archæologist, now living at Athens, enumerates eight distinct types of tombs. His classification is rather too minute in some respects. For all practical purposes, there were four kinds of tombs, differing from each other in general form. They were variously known as (a) the _stelae_ or shafts, (b) the _kiones_ or columns, (c) the _trapezae_ or square-cut tombs, and (d) the _naidia_ [heroia] or temple-like structures. There were also tombs which were merely heaps of earth. These mounds were not, however, unimportant; for it was possible to display there a lavish expenditure. The tomb of Alyattes, the father of Crœsus, according to Herodotus[199], was six stadia in circumference, that is, about two-thirds of a mile. It was made entirely of earth, except a base formed of great stones, and was declared by Herodotus to be a monument of art, second to none but those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians. This mass was raised by merchants, laborers and young women who obtained their money in a questionable manner. On many of the white lecyths, the mound can be seen to exceed the height of the persons depicted[200]. In a dialogue of Lucian[201], Hermes and Charon, from the top of Parnassus and Oeta, piled one on the other, contemplate the world and that which attracts their attention in the cemeteries of the large cities are the heaps of earth, the pillars and the funeral pyramids.