Near the body[99], were placed the _lecyths_ or cruses which have been already in part described. These were afterwards to be burned or buried with the corpse. According to a scholiast, these lecyths were used by the Athenians as vessels for holding the unguents with which the dead were to be anointed, but their use for containing perfumes is now conceded[100]. There was a class of men at Athens whose occupation consisted in the manufacture and decoration of white lecyths[101]. These vases were not baked as hard as most other earthen vessels but were fashioned with great delicacy of manipulation. They were soft and fragile and rested on a circular broad base, they narrowed abruptly as they rose, then expanded suddenly into a cylindrical body of about the same diameter as the base, then contracted into a short neck on which was supported a cup-shaped mouth piece from the side of which started the small round handle that was attached at its lower end to the body of the vase. The upper and lower part were covered with a black coating or enamel[102].
The centre or body was painted white and, on that background, were drawn and painted the funeral scenes with considerable artistic skill and more or less accuracy of drawing and detail according to the grade of article that the artificer desired to make. The ultimate design of the workman was not to produce a work of art but an article of commerce, although, incidentally, figure-painting of a high order of merit was often attained[103]. They were not manufactured later than the second century before the Christian era[104], and represent the customs of the Athenians for a period extending through the fifth and fourth centuries.
When the _lecyths_ were once buried with the corpse, it was considered a very serious offence to disturb them. On a lecyth that was unearthed in a grave at Cumae, there is a curse of blindness invoked on any one who might venture to steal it[105]. The custom of leaving objects of value at the tombs made them liable to depredations and many funeral inscriptions conveyed threats of punishment against those who should take or disturb whatever was thus offered to the dead[106].
Just outside the door of the house within which the body was laid out, stood an earthen vessel of lustral water, so that the visitors who went to look on the features of their friend for the last time, could purify themselves from any pollution which they might have incurred by entering a home defiled by death. Since everything appertaining to the stricken house was held to be contaminated, the purifying water had to be obtained from another house[107]. This vessel which contained the water was variously styled an _ostrakon_[108], an _ardanion_[107] or a _pegaion_[109].
