As long as the pile continued to throw out fitful gleams and to consume the corpse, even if it lasted all night, the friends of the deceased never ceased pouring out libations[184] and calling upon his _manes_[185]. Just before the flames had entirely vanished, wine was poured on to extinguish the pyre, and whatever bones were left unconsumed were collected with the rest of the ashes into a vessel and buried. In the burials both of Patroclus and of Hector, this vessel is made of pure gold and the remains of the Greek are covered with a double layer of fat, while soft purple robes perform the same office for the Trojan[186].
There has been some little doubt expressed as to whether the body was entombed at the place where it was burned. In Terence’s Andria, where the Greek burial is depicted, both ceremonies are conducted in one spot[187]. On the other hand, in the Electra of Sophocles, Orestes, to deceive his perfidious mother, has an urn brought to her that is said to contain his ashes after he had been incinerated in Phocis[188]. Again, as a matter of history, we know that after Philopoemen had been cremated, his remains were carried back to the city in a triumphal procession[189]. So, on the whole, it is quite likely that the Roman poet mixed the habits of the Romans with the customs of the Greeks. Perhaps he was inaccurately informed on the subject. The entombment probably took place in quite a different section from that in which the body was burned.
Numerous excavations and the close scrutiny which modern scholars have given to Grecian graves have made it possible to state with considerable accuracy the materials employed for coffins, and the various styles of coffins, tombs and monuments used in ancient Hellas.
The earlier coffins were usually made of baked clay[190], but the authors inform us that, in the case of those Athenians who fell in battle, and whose bodies were not found, chests of cypress-wood were buried as cenotaphs[191]. Stone coffins, also, were probably used among the Greeks. There are preserved traces of a letter to Plato, from two of his friends, in which they speak of this burying stone, as found at Assos, in Lydia[192]. The elder Pliny mentions this stone of Assos, called the _sarcophagus_, or flesh-eating. He assigns, as the reason for its name, the fact that “within forty days, it is known certainly to consume the bodies which are placed in it, skin, flesh, bones, and all else save the teeth[193].”