BY
HUGO ERICHSEN, M.D.
Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Kingston, Canada; Member of the Committee of Organization of the First International Cremation Congress; Corresponding Member of the Cremation Societies of New York and Berlin; Foreign Associate Member of the Hygienic Society of France; Honorary Member of the Cremation Society of Milan, Italy; etc.
With an Introductory Note
“Why should we seek to clothe death with unnecessary terror, and spread horror round the tomb of those we love? The grave should be surrounded with everything that might ensure tenderness and veneration.”
—Washington Irving.
“Die Leichenverbrennung verdient die Achtung, welche ihr um ihres hohen Werthes willen im klassischen Alterthum gezollt wurde, auch heute noch, da sie die einzige Art der Todtenbestattung ist, die vor den schrecklichen Folgen der Verwesungsduenste sichert und das bei der Leichenbeerdigung so oft vorgekommene Wiedererwachen im Grabe verhuetet.”
—J. P. Trusen.
“Si nous sommes une statue
Sculptée à l’image de Dieu;
Quand cette image est abattue,
Jetons-en les débris au feu!
Toi, forme immortelle, remonte
Dans la flamme, aux sources du Beau,
Sans que ton argile ait la honte
Et les miséres du tombeau!”
—Théophile Gautier.
1887,
TO
WILLIAM EASSIE, C.E., F.L.S.,
Honorary Secretary of the Cremation Society of England,
and
DR. PROSPER DE PIETRA-SANTA,
of Paris,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
as a mark of high esteem, and in recognition of their untiring labor in behalf of that greatest of all sanitary reforms, cremation, by their sincere admirer,
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
It is hardly necessary to explain the purpose of this work. It is an appeal to the general public; a plea for the burning of the dead. The period of fierce and fanatic opposition to cremation has passed, and made way for a calm consideration of the subject. In 1874 a Persian gentleman, then a resident of one of the Eastern States of our own free and great republic, who wanted to have his wife cremated, was compelled by an ignorant mob to resort to interment. Happily we are over that now.
It is astonishing that the cremation question has not been taken hold of by the literarians of our country; there is hardly a subject that rewards its student so well as cremation, and future writers on incineration, not hampered by the literary inexperience under which I have labored, will reap a rich harvest indeed when they devote their talent and time to the reform.
I would counsel those who are in favor of cremation to immediately put in writing their desire to have their body committed to the flames after death instead of having it consigned to “dirt and darkness.” Such written requests should be preserved in places where they can be easily found after decease; for instance, in the writing-desk. If every individual promotor of the reform, male or female, considering the uncertainty of life, would follow this advice, cremation would speedily prevail.
I am sensible of the many defects of this book, but I trust that it will be found to furnish some useful information which cannot well be obtained elsewhere, besides proving an assistance to those who are desirous of studying the question more fully.
I desire to express my indebtedness to crematists in all parts of the world for the valuable assistance I received from them in the preparation of this volume.
For all who like cleanliness, for all who love true sentiment, for all friends of economy, for all who venerate their dead, and for all who are not afraid of reform the following pages were written.
It only remains to express the thanks due the following gentlemen for permission to use illustrations without which this book would have been decidedly incomplete: Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co., Cyrus K. Remington, Augustus Cobb, Albert Meininger, and Dr. M. L. Davis.
H. E.
Detroit, Feb. 28, 1887.
CONTENTS.
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CHAPTER I. |
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The History of Cremation |
1 |
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CHAPTER II. |
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The Evils of Burial; the Sanitary Aspect of Incineration |
66 |
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CHAPTER III. |
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Cremation in Times of War |
129 |
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CHAPTER IV. |
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The Processes of Modern Cremation |
140 |
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CHAPTER V. |
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The Medico-legal Aspect of Incineration.—The Objections to Cremation |
157 |
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CHAPTER VI. |
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Burial Alive.—Cremation from an Æsthetic and Religious Point of View |
180 |
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CHAPTER VII. |
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The Economy of Cremating the Dead.—The Present State of the Cremation Question |
224 |
INTRODUCTION.
Dr. H. Erichsen:
Dear Sir,—In reply to your request that I should write an introduction to a work which you are about to compose on cremation, I am placed in the great difficulty of knowing nothing of your book, not even having seen its title-page or table of contents. It is quite impossible, therefore, for me to say how far your views and my own may accord. But, as I suppose your object is to bring before the people of America proof of the evil effects to the living inseparable from the present mode of disposal of the dead by burying them in the earth, as well as to show how these evils may be avoided by burning dead bodies,—in a word, by the substitution of cremation for burial, of purification for putrefaction,—I have great pleasure in doing the little that is in my power to assist in bringing a very important question of sanitary reform before a thoughtful, intelligent, and advancing nation.
I do not know how far I am right in supposing that with you in the West, as with us in the East, a knowledge of sanitary science, of the conditions which are necessary for the health of mankind, is still confined to the comparatively few who may be called the well educated class. Nor do I know how far this knowledge has been diffused among the classes of your population who have received but little education. But I do know with us it is the highest classes, in the sense of the best educated classes, who are the most earnest in their efforts to disseminate that branch of knowledge or science which, in the words of Parkes, aims at rendering “youth most perfect, decay less rapid, life more vigorous, and death more remote.” Parkes is dead, but he still speaks to us by his book, and he says:—
“The disposal of the dead is always a question of difficulty. If the dead are buried, so great at last is the accumulation of bodies that the whole country round a great city becomes gradually a vast cemetery. After death, the buried body returns to its elements. If, instead of being buried, the body is burned, the same process occurs more rapidly. A community must always dispose of its dead, either by burial in land or water, or by burning, or chemical destruction equivalent to burning, or by embalming or preserving. The eventual dispersion of our frame is the same in all cases. Neither affection nor religion can be outraged by any manner of disposal of the dead which is done with proper solemnity and respect to the earthly dwelling-places of our friends. The question should be entirely placed on sanitary grounds. Burying in the ground appears certainly to be the most insanitary plan.”
Parkes died before we had learned how perfectly and cheaply, how rapidly and inoffensively cremation could be carried on; and he favored burying in the sea rather than in the earth, whenever the distance was not too great for transport. He knew well how impossible it is to prevent graveyards within towns, or suburban cemeteries, from becoming sooner or later a source of danger or nuisance to the living, how difficult it is to find a suitable site and soil, sufficient space, and to secure proper regulations and management. These difficulties may not be so great amid your unlimited space as with us; but they must be an increasing evil in and around your large cities. I trust, therefore, that your work may assist in the more rapid progress of cremation as a substitute for burial.
With us the legal objection has ceased. It is now acknowledged by the government, and has been decided by three judges that if cremation is so performed as to create no nuisance, and incite to no breach of the peace, it is not illegal.
The religious objection has been answered by the Bishop of Manchester, by Canon Liddon, and by the Earl of Shaftesbury. The bishop said: “No intelligent faith can suppose that any Christian doctrine is affected by the manner in which this mortal body of ours crumbles into dust and sees corruption.”
Canon Liddon said, in a sermon at St. Paul’s Cathedral:—
“The resurrection of a body from its ashes is not a greater miracle than the resurrection of an unburnt body; each must be purely miraculous.”
Lord Shaftesbury said to me that any doubt as to the resurrection of a body because it had been burnt was an “audacious limitation of the Almighty”; and he asked, “What, then, has become of the blessed martyrs who were burned at the stake in ancient and modern persecution?”
The medico-legal objection that murdered or poisoned persons if burned could not be exhumed, as is sometimes done if suspicion of foul play arise after burial, is answered by the strict observance of proper regulations before cremation. Much more complete medical certificates as to the cause of death are required by the cremation society of England than by any cemetery company; and in some cases, a post-mortem examination is insisted on. In this way, cremation becomes a security to the public against secret poisoning or any form of murder.
The sentimental objection is that which can only be overcome by time and education. When the people know how great are the evils dependent on burial in the earth, even when this is done under the most favorable conditions, how seldom these conditions can be secured, and, when the knowledge becomes general that when a human body which would require five, ten, or twenty years to slowly putrefy in any soil can in one hour be cheaply and inoffensively converted into a white ash, public sentiment must favor cremation in place of corruption, and for putrefaction substitute purification. The same religious ceremonial might accompany either mode of disposal of the dead. The ashes might be dispersed to the winds, harmlessly buried, or preserved in urns near monuments or memorial tablets in our cemeteries, or beneath or around any place of worship, or in any family mausoleum, or in some park, public garden, or any ornamental open space near a great city, as the wishes of the dead or of the surviving relations and friends may prefer.
Here, we hope the city of London will be the first municipal body in the Kingdom to set the example in this sanitary reform. But, perhaps, the impetus may be given by our American cousins and brothers.
I am, dear sir, faithfully yours,
T. SPENCER WELLS.
Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world—a world how lovely then
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
Before the bed of death
No ghastly spectre stood—but from the porch
Of life, the lip—one kiss inhaled the breath,
And the mute, graceful genius lowered a torch!
Schiller: The Gods of Greece.
Primeval man most likely disposed of his dead by carrying them into the woods or leaving them anywhere above ground, a prey to animals of all kinds. But soon the organs of sight and smell took offense at the mutilated and decayed corpses, and they were buried. With the increase of population it became necessary to render the dead innocuous to the living, and then, perhaps, cremation was originally resorted to as a means of protecting the living from the effects of corruption.
In the early stages of the world’s history, when there was plenty of available land, interment was of course a very cheap process, and therefore often resorted to by the poorer classes, but persons of intelligence and education always preferred incineration as the better method of disposing of dead bodies.
A ROMAN COLUMBARIUM.
In the gradual growth among scientists of the belief that cremation is preferable to the present system of inhumation, is seen another instance of modern civilization borrowing the ideas of the far-distant past.
The pendulum by which the world’s age is measured swings in an immense arc. Now, after thousands of years, the views of the leaders of human thought are swinging back to that expressed by some of the earliest peoples.
Incineration is a most ancient practice. It has always been a matter of difficulty to ascertain the origin of ancient customs. In the case of cremation the historians have not been able to discover the date when it was first practiced. The history of ancient cremation, however, can be traced to nearly 2000 years before Christ. Incineration is regarded by some authors as the outcome of the sun-worship of the Phœnicians. Their solar god (Helios)—the Melikertes of the Greeks—was represented by them as burning himself, whereby they wanted to indicate the ever-returning solar year. Among the ancient nations, the sun was especially revered and worshipped by the Persians, Egyptians, and the Sabian Arabs. At Heliopolis, Phœnicia, and Palmyra, Syria, there were celebrated temples consecrated to the sun. In some of the countries mentioned, horses which were, on account of their celerity, regarded as symbols of the sun were sacrificed to this celestial body.
Some authors ascribe the origin of cremation to the self-immolation of Hercules. Dr. Le Moyne, the founder of the first crematorium erected in the United States, asserted that the first authenticated case of burning the dead was the proposed incineration of Isaac, and that, although it was not consummated, it was fully authorized by the Deity. In consequence he argues that cremationists stand in the shadow of the Lord, and that any one who opposes them commits a sacrilege.
I do not believe that incineration, as some of its antagonists have imputed, had its origin in a heathen religion, but I am quite certain, from existing evidence, that it was originally resorted to upon sanitary grounds, and as a means to protect the living against corruption.
It may be possible that incineration owes its origin to the ancient nomadic tribes that burnt their dead and carried the ashes with them. Among agricultural peoples, those who died in war, and while hunting, were sometimes consigned to the flames, either because the grave would not protect them from wild animals, or because it was desired to return the ashes to the relatives, who would keep them sacred.
The origin of incineration, as appears from what I have said, is surrounded with a great deal of obscurity. It is, however, an established fact that the Orient was the birthplace of cremation.
The Egyptians first buried their dead, then embalmed them, and, according to Walker, at a period not stated, abolished embalming and substituted burning. They performed incineration by placing the corpse in an amianthus receptacle, which, remaining intact, kept the bones apart from the fuel.
The tombs of the Assyrians, discovered on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, furnish us with unmistakable evidence of the fact that the burning of the dead was not unknown to them. The same applies to the Babylonians. The tombs of both peoples when explored were found to contain urns holding human bones and ashes; these urns were often very large, being sometimes of sufficient size to admit the body of an adult. The Persians either burned their dead or dissolved them in aqua fortis. Yet they also practiced burial in deep sepulchres that had niches in which the bodies were deposited upon slabs.
The Hebrews commonly interred their deceased, but incineration was likewise practiced. The Mosaic code prescribed that those who transgressed the laws of wedlock and chastity should be put to death by fire. In I. Moses xxxviii. 24, we find the first evidence of this. The third book of Moses, xx. 14 and xxi. 9, also bears testimony to this fact. Thus we see that cineration was looked upon by this people of antiquity in the early period of its history as a punishment for offenders against the married state and chastity. It is barely possible (deductions one may draw from certain passages in the books of Moses) that the ancient Jews first stoned these disobedients, then burned their bodies publicly, and finally erected a so-called mound of infamy over their remains.
But as we follow Hebrew history, we soon find that cremation was transformed from a humiliating act of punition to the highest honor, to a distinction that was only accorded to royalty. The first king of Israel was cremated after the battle with the Philistines in Mount Gilboa, where he and his three sons fell. The Holy Bible relates how, when the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead heard of that which the Philistines had done to Saul (I. Samuel xxxi. 12): “All the valiant men arose, and went all night, and took the bodies of Saul and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan, and came to Jabesh and burnt them there.”
And verse 13 of the same chapter informs us: “And they took their bones (ossilegio) and buried them under a tree at Jabesh and fasted seven days.”
Asa, king of Judah, was also consigned to the funeral pyre, as we glean from II. Chronicles xvi. 14: “And they buried him in his own sepulchres, which he had made for himself in the city of David, and laid him in the bed which was filled with sweet odors and divers kinds of spices prepared by the apothecaries’ art; and they made a very great burning of him.” Of Asa’s grandson, King Jehoram, it is said that his people cremated him not like his fathers, because he had furthered idolatry.
On the other hand, Isaiah xxx. 33 refers to a large pyre that was kept alight to consume the bodies of the deceased: “For Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord like a stream of brimstone doth kindle it.”
Jeremiah (xxxiv. 5) prophesied of Zedekiah, another king of Judah, that he would be burned with the same honors that attended the cremation of his predecessors. And in Amos vi. 10, we find the following, which also points to incineration: “And a man’s uncle shall take him up, and he that burneth him, to bring out the bones out of the house,” etc.
The last passage cited and the one mentioning the Vale of Tophet, are construed by some writers as meaning that the ancient Jews had recourse to cremation in great plagues; id est, for hygienic reasons.
Now, although these quotations plainly show that the Israelites of old did execute incineration, we also learn from them that the practice was never general; at first confined to criminals, at last to kings.
It is impossible to determine when the custom of burning the dead originated among the Hindoos. It was always connected with religious observances, and known to the people of India since the earliest times. It was restricted to certain classes or castes: mainly to Brahmins and warriors. The merchants, mechanics, and the tillers of the soil were interred. Children under two years of age were barred from cremation, and had to be buried in the earth. Some religious sects, however, were an exception from this rule and executed cineration indiscriminately—for instance the believers in Vishnu. When a Hindoo died away from home, or when his body was lost and could not be found, his relatives instituted a symbolical ceremony. They gathered 360 leaves of a certain shrub and as many woolen threads. They were under the impression that the human body consisted of 360 parts. Of the threads and leaves they formed a figure, somewhat resembling the human form, which was wound round with a strip of the hide of a black antelope, which had also been previously wrapped closely round with woolen thread. This figure was then besmeared with barley-meal and water and burnt as an effigy of the missing body.
From India cremation extended to Europe, and was adopted by all Indo-Germanic peoples. This was proven by Prof. Jacob Grimm in an oration on the burning of the dead, delivered before the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, in 1849, in which the famous scholar highly commended the ancient custom.
In old tombs on the island of Malta, urns of a kind of clay containing ashes, lachrymatories, several mortuary lamps (some of excellent workmanship), and the model of a mummy, formed of a green semi-transparent substance, were found. This discovery demonstrates that the orientals who inhabited this isle of the Mediterranean in the earliest times were in the habit of cremating their deceased.
The Thracians were the next to embrace burial by fire. Of them Herodotus relates that they exhibited the corpse publicly for three days, brought many offerings, and bewailed the deceased. At the termination of the period stated, they cremated the body and then buried the ashes and bones. After they had erected a mound over the remains, they played gymnic games.
From Asia, by way of Thrace, cremation reached Greece. Among the Greeks burial was originally exceedingly primitive, as we learn from a law that compelled passers-by to place a handful of earth upon the breast of every unburied corpse. Interment undoubtedly preceded cremation in Greece. Heraclitus advanced the theory that everything in existence was created from fire. Therefore he argued that all corpses must be burned to free the soul from all material matter, and to return it to its primitive elements. According to Eustachius Hercules burned the body of Argius, the son of Likymnios, 1500 years before Christ. He had promised the father to return the youth, but when the latter fell in mortal combat, nothing remained for him but to cremate Argius and to bring home with him the ashes to the sorrowful parent. Hercules was unquestionably the first to cremate himself. When he was tormented by the pangs of approaching death, he built a pyre and ordered his servant to ignite it. When the servant failed to set the wood afire, Hercules descended from the pyre, kindled it himself and again mounted it to await his fate.
Pliny was disposed to attribute the origin of incineration among the Greeks to their custom of burning the dead on the field of battle, to render them secure from the revenge of the enemy.
Be that as it may, certain it is that incineration never became the only mode by which the inhabitants of Hellas disposed of their deceased; except in Athens, where it was practiced exclusively for some time. Suicides, those who had been struck by lightning, and unteethed children were not cremated, for it was the prevailing opinion that the pure flames would have been defiled by them.
GREEK FUNERAL URN.
Homer, that incomparable Hellenic poet (There is, I know, a dispute whether the name Homer stands for one person or for a number of bards. As far as I am concerned, I believe that Homer was an individual, a poor mendicant perhaps, wandering all over Greece, singing or reciting his heroic epics, and living on the grace of an admiring public. No collection of bards could have possibly written the Odyssey and Iliad, which are so uniform in character throughout.), has preserved for us, in immortal verse, the records of the Trojan war, in which we find many instances of cremation chronicled. The recent explorations of Dr. Heinrich Schliemann on the site of Troy have demonstrated beyond a doubt that the poems of Homer rest on a basis of actual fact.
During the war that was fought for Helen the beautiful, it was customary among the Greeks and Trojans to reduce to ashes the bodies of those who had been slain in battle. Line 69 of the first book of the Iliad proves that the Greeks burned their dead for sanitary reasons.
The bodies of cowards, criminals, and slaves were not incinerated, but left unburied, a prey for the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Agamemnon, the king, addressing his warriors warns them (vide Pope’s translation of the Iliad, B. II, L. 466) that, during battle:—
“Who dares, inglorious, in his ships to stay,
Who dares to tremble on this signal day,
That wretch, too mean to fall by martial power,
The birds shall mangle, and the dogs devour.”
Incineration was denied Ajax, one of the greatest Grecian heroes, because he had slain himself in a fit of indignation. Hector’s defiance of the Greek princes (Iliad, B. VII, L. 85) shows that it was also the custom among the Trojans to burn the dead. There is further evidence of this in the truce, between Priam and Agamemnon (vide Iliad, B. VII, L. 898 and 450), for the purpose of burning the dead of both armies. Homer’s narration of the burning of Patroclus, Achilles’ friend, gives such an accurate description of the method then in use, that I will be pardoned for quoting it here. The passage to which I refer occurs in the twenty-third book of the Iliad, and is as follows:—
“They who had the dead in charge
Remained, and heaped the wood and built a pyre
A hundred feet each way from side to side.
With sorrowful hearts they raised and laid the corpse
Upon the summit. Then they flayed and dressed
Before it many fatlings of the flock,
And oxen with curved feet and crooked horns.
From these magnanimous Achilles took
The fat, and covered with it carefully
The dead from head to foot. Beside the bier
And leaning toward it, jars of honey and oil
He placed, and flung, with many a deep-drawn sigh,
Twelve high-necked steeds upon the pile.
Nine hounds there were, which from the tables of the prince
Were daily fed; of these Achilles struck
The heads from two, and laid them on the wood,
And after these, and last, twelve gallant sons
Of the brave Trojans, butchered by the sword;
For he was bent on evil. To the pile
He put the iron violence of fire,
And, wailing, called by name the friend he loved.
* * * * *
...They quenched with dark red wine
The pyre, where’er the flames had spread, and where
Lay the deep ashes: then, with many tears,
Gathered the white bones of their gentle friend,
And laid them in a golden vase, wrapped round
With caul, a double fold. Within the tents
They placed them softly, wrapped in delicate lawn;
Then drew a circle for the sepulchre,
And, laying its foundations to enclose
The pyre, they heaped the earth, and, having reared
A mound, withdrew.”
These lines are from William Cullen Bryant’s translation of the Iliad, and give one a very good idea of the cineration of a warrior. In times of peace the favorite animals of the deceased were placed with him on the funeral pile, and he was covered with costly robes and rugs. Not infrequently the pyre was decorated with an abundance of flowers, and rich folks had their trinkets and jewels thrown into the fire. The weapons of warriors were consumed with them. The extravagance at funerals finally became so great among the Greeks that special laws had to be enacted to put a stop to it. Solon ordained, for instance, that no more than three robes and one bull should be placed upon the cremation pyre. After the bones were placed in an urn, the Greeks covered it with the fat of the animals that had been slaughtered at the funeral ceremonies, to protect it from the influence of the atmosphere. Many of the celebrated men of Greece were cremated: Solon, Alcibiades, Timoleon, Philopoemen, Plutarch, Pyrrhus, and many others.
According to Pindar (Ol. 6, 23, Nem. 9, 54), during the combat of the Seven against Thebes, funeral pyres were burning at each of the seven gates of the city, to consume those slain in battle. The heathens, as they are called, were not to be charged with any lack of respect to their departed dead. On the contrary, the most tender sentiments conceivable were attached to the practice of cremation. There was a Theban regulation that no one should build a house without a specific repository for the dead.
Æneas and the other Trojans, who escaped with him from the burning city of the hundred gates (as Priam’s capital was sometimes called), introduced cremation (Virgil’s Æneid, B. IV, 7) into Carthage, if it did not exist there previous to their arrival. It is possible that the inhabitants of Carthage, which was one of the Phœnician cities in Africa, derived the practice from the mother-country. At all events, the tragedy of love, in which Æneas was involved, ended with the suicide of Dido, who cremated herself.
The eleventh book of the Æneas gives a description of an incineration among the ancient inhabitants of Latium.
Self-cremation seems to have been one of the favorite means of disposing of one’s self in ancient times, especially among the royalty and aristocracy. Both tradition and history report of many women, friends, and servants who, of their own free will, mounted the funeral pyre with the departed head of the family. Besides Hercules and Dido, already mentioned, Sardanapalus, the last king of the Assyrians, burned himself in the year 600 before Christ, because the Tigris had destroyed the fortifications of besieged Nineveh, and the following also mounted the pyre for the same purpose: Marpessa, Polydora, and Cleopatra (Vide Pausanias, 4, 2), three noble women of Messenia, and Euadne, the wife of Capaneus, who threw herself into the flames which consumed her husband. The pyre of Sardanapalus, we are told, was very large and contained many rooms, which were elegantly furnished, and in which the royal treasures were heaped up, before the king entered them with his women, while his servants set the pile on fire. It is well known that the widows of India, until very recently, perished of their own free will in the flames that consumed their husbands.
Herodotus states that the women of the Thracians, in Eastern Europe, who were probably of Germanic origin, frequently disputed among themselves as to which of them should be allowed to ascend the pyre together with the deceased husband. Œnone, the lawful wife of Paris, whom he had forsaken to live with Helen the beautiful, forgot all her grievances at the sight of his misfortune. When the man, whom she had formerly loved so ardently, wounded by the arrow of Philoctetes, fled to her into the Ida, she refused to cure him; but when the greedy flames, after death, devoured his form, she voluntarily ascended the pyre to intermix her ashes with his. Thus are the ways of the world; the noble deed of the faithlessly deserted wife is hardly ever mentioned, but frivolous Helena was made the subject of many works of art, and leads an immortal life in the songs and poems of man.
CREMATION IN CALCUTTA.
The ancient Etruscans practiced cremation, both before and after Etruria became a Roman province; they, no doubt, adopted it from the Greeks, who were first their rulers and afterward their close neighbors. The tombs of Etruria were rich in art; the urns in which the ashes of the dead were kept were either of alabaster or baked clay, the latter often being decorated with tasty paintings.
The ancient Latins, in turn, borrowed the practice of incineration from the Etruscans. According to Mazois, some cinerary urns, found in the neighborhood of Alba Longa, prove that the custom of burning the dead was current among the original population of Latium long before any recorded epoch of Italian history, for the place in which those urns were detected was covered entirely over with dense layers of lava, which apparently came from the mountain Albanus, a volcano, the eruptions of which have long been buried in oblivion. The urns mentioned are especially noteworthy, because many of them bear pictures of the habitations of the earliest residents of Latium, which shows that cremation was known to them at that time. Such a hut of the aborigines of Latium was preserved for a long time in the capitol at Rome and was regarded with great reverence. It is but natural that the Latins, on becoming the founders of Rome, should have introduced incineration into their new home. Pliny asserts that the burning of the dead was not customary among the Romans of old, but Virgil describes it as a usage that existed long before the foundation of Rome, and Ovid affirms that the body of Remus was committed to the flames.
Cremation was not in general favor among the Romans until towards the termination of the republic. Pliny relates that Sylla (78 B.C.) was the first of the patrician Cornelians who wanted his body to be burned; most likely because he feared that his remains would be dealt with as those of Marius had been treated, whose body was exhumed by the order of Sylla, and thrown into a glutted general grave. During the decline of the republic and the period of the empire, till the accession of the Christian emperors, incineration was very popular in Rome; it was not only general in the capital, but also in the provinces. Julius Caesar, Antonius, Brutus, Pompejus, Octavius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Plinius were cremated. The ashes of Tacitus, the model of historians, who was likewise consigned to the flames, were cast to the winds in the middle ages by Pope Pius the Fifth, in order to punish the heretic. Just think of it! a pontiff outraging a scholar’s remains to punish him! Caligula and Tiberius were only partially burnt, because they had been tyrants.
At Nero’s obsequies it was but with difficulty that the train achieved complete cremation. The Roman aristocracy looked upon partial cineration as a great disgrace, which adhered to the respective family a long time. Yet this infamy was often meted out to the poor and unfortunate, as we shall see later on.
During plagues cremation was compulsory in the city of Rome.
It is not my intention to describe in detail the funeral rites of the ancient Romans, because a description of cremation as practiced by them may be met with in every encyclopædia. Moreover, a very good account of incineration, as customary among the Romans of old, may be found in Lord Bulwer Lytton’s “The Last Days of Pompeii.”
It was the fashion at Rome to pour fragrant oils and balsams over the corpse before the pyre was ignited, and to cover it with Cyprus boughs. Previous to cremation, the corpse was enveloped in asbestos, to keep the ashes of the body separate from those of the funeral pile. At times locks of hair were sacrificed to the deceased. At last one finger of the defunct was amputated, to make certain that death had taken place. Everything being ready, the nearest relative present unclosed the eyes of the deceased, and then lit the pyre with averted face. While the flames rose to heaven, the favorite animals of him who was now being consumed—dogs, doves, and even horses—were flung into the fire. Costly robes and arms of the dead were consigned to the same fate. During the early period of Roman history, prisoners of war were also committed to the flames.
The amount of spices, oils, and balsams destroyed at incinerations was enormous. Pliny reports that Nero used up more myrrh, incense, and other aromatics at the cremation of Poppsæa than could be produced by entire Arabia in one year.
While cremation was practiced in Rome, at the time of the empire, the mourning garments were white; but when incineration was displaced by interment, the raiment of the bereaved assumed a black hue, sombre as death itself.
The deceased poor of Rome (especially the women and slaves) were treated shamefully after death. Martial avers that invariably one pile had to serve for a large number. In times of pestilence, thousands were so disposed of. A cremation-ground was provided for the indigent in a wretched suburb upon the Esquiline Hill, which was inhabited by the outcasts of society, the lowest prostitutes, executioners, necromancers, and so forth. These localities were called culinæ by the people, the literal translation of which is “roast-places.” The attendants were police-slaves, whose hair had been shaved off, and who wore a brand on the bare pate. These, hurrying to and fro, placed the emaciated dead poor upon one of the many funeral piles; hardly singed by the fire, they were taken from it and thrown into a universal ditch. To every ten male corpses one female body was added, which facilitated the cineration by means of the great quantity of adipose tissue which it contained. The funerals of the poor were generally held at night.
The urns of the rich were of marble, bronze, and sometimes of gold or silver; those of the poor were of baked clay or glass. Glass urns, enclosed in others of lead, were discovered at Pompeii. The urns were generally deposited in a tomb at the roadside or placed in the pigeon-hole of a columbarium.
These columbaria, surrounded by beautiful gardens, were situated on the Via Appia, Aurelia, Flaminia, and Lavicana. The Appian Way was a favorite resort of the fashionable Roman world; here, daily, ever-changing life was seen; here the traveller took leave from the remains of his ancestors; here, too, lovers met and unfortunates took refuge.
These columbaria were subterranean chambers which served (as I have already explained) to hold the ashes of the deceased, the urns being deposited in arched recesses, hewn out in the rock for the purpose. These niches resembled pigeon-holes; hence the name, columbarium. The rare beauty of these columbaria, which may yet be seen in the Eternal City, led Nathaniel Hawthorne, our great romancer, to exclaim that he would not object to being decently pigeon-holed in a Roman tomb.
CREMATION IN SIAM.
The late queen and her little daughter on the pyre.
Campana discovered columbaria between the Porta Latina and the Porta San Sebastiana, which are memorials of the time of Augustus. They contain not less than 400 inscriptions on marble, commemorative of the dead, and many urns of marble and terra cotta.
In the city of the Caesars the ashes were placed in upright urns, while in Greece the urns lay horizontally on the ground, and were covered with rugs. In Greece the ashes were preserved in beautiful mortuary chambers in the houses, a custom that also obtained at Rome to a certain extent.
The great contrast between the cremation of the opulent and the poor finally led to the re-introduction of earth-burial, which, however, strangely enough, was coincident with the decline and fall of the once mighty empire.