42. Disposition of the Dead.[1]In the Mycenaean age the dead were buried. This custom rested upon the primitive cultus of the dead. In Homer, on the other hand, the dead were burned on a funeral pile, and a mound erected in their honor, an insignificant mark of respect (γέρας θανόντων) compared with the Mycenaean method of burial. Traces of the divine regard in which the dead were held in Mycenaean times are surely manifest in the magnificent funeral celebration which Achilles prepared for Patroclus. The slaying of the twelve noble youths by Achilles at the funeral of his friend is based on the soul cultus of the past time. It seems likely that the bodies buried in the shaft-graves at Mycenae were embalmed in a sort of crude way. To this custom, apparently, points the expression ταρχύειν ("bury"), occurring three times in the Iliad, and probably, like ταριχεύειν, originally having reference to the preservation of the body.[2]
43. The Homeric Troy.In consequence of the clear connection between the earlier parts of the
- ↑ Heinrich, Troja bei Homer und in der Wirklichkeit, pp. 27–29. Cf. Tsountas and Manatt, The Mycenaean Age, pp. 95–96, 136–139, 364–365; Ridgeway, Early Age in Greece, Vol. I, pp. 338–339.
- ↑ Professor Ridgeway (Early Age of Greece, Vol. I, pp. 337 ff.) has advanced the hypothesis that the Homeric Achaeans came from the north, and possessed a civilization to which the term Hallstatt has been applied, from that Alpine region where traces of this culture are still found; that these "fair-haired" people of the north pressed into the Peloponnesus and mingled with the Mycenaean race. In this way Professor Ridgeway endeavors to explain the blending of the two civilizations—the Mycenaean and the Achaean—which he believes appear in the Homeric poems.
