Dark Age

These grandiose shaft graves and tholos tombs of the Bronze Age were not used in later periods. For the next several centuries, the inhumations and cremations that sent the dead to their destinies did not involve architecture, but various styles of burial and sculptural memorials. The only exception is the Heroon of Lefkandi on Euboia, discussed in chapter 4.

One reason for the apparent decline in tomb expenditure was a changeover from inhumation to cremation during the Dark Age. This is especially evident in the Heroon at Lefkandi, where the "hero" was cremated and his ashes placed within a bronze jar, but the "heroine" was inhumed covered with gold. This change in funerary custom may originally have been dictated by the unstable conditions at the end of the Bronze Age, when large-scale architecture of any kind was uncommon. But it quickly became an important aspect of the heroic ethos recorded in the Homeric epics, and thus cremation came to be seen as a hero's funeral. The most famous example of this is the funeral of Pa-trocles in Book 23 of the Iliad (ll. 163-177):

But those closest to Patrocles stayed and piled up the wood; they made a pyre 100 feet in both directions.

And at the pyre's peak they cast the corpse with heavy hearts.

And many fat sheep and rolling-gaited cows

They flayed and dressed before the pyre, and collecting the fat from them all

Great-hearted Achilles covered the corpse with it

From head to foot; he heaped the flayed bodies about him.

And there he set two-handled jars of honey and olive-oil, leaning them upon the bier; and four horses with arching necks he eagerly cast onto the fire, groaning mightily.

Nine table-fed dogs belonged to kingly Patrocles;

He cut the throats of two of these and cast them onto the fire.

And twelve fine sons of the great-hearted Trojans

He cut down with bronze—evil works plotted in his mind.

And the iron force of the fire he released to devour them.

The next day (ll. 161-177):

First they quenched the pyre with shining wine, as much as the flame had covered it; the ash feel deep.

Mourning, they gathered up the white bones of their gentle comrade in a gold urn with a double layer of fat,

And placing this in his tent they covered it over with a smooth cloth.

They rounded out the barrow and established its base around the pyre. Forthwith they heaped up a mound of earth and so doing they went home.