As each successor fails not his foregoer, so form the lives
of these,
O great Ordainer- Live your full lives and fi nd old age delightful, all of
you striving one behind the other.
May Tvashtar, maker of fair things, be gracious,
and lengthen out the days of your existence. - Let these unwidowed dames with noble husbands
adorn themselves with fragrant faint and unguent.
Decked with fair jewels, tearless, free from sorrow,
fi rst let the wives ascend unto the place. - Rise, come unto the world of life, O woman: come
he is lifeless by whose side thou liest.
Wifehood with this thy husband was thy portion,
who took thy hand and wooed thee as a lover. - From his dead hand I take the bow he carried , that
it may be our power and might and glory
Th ere art thou, there; and here with noble heroes
may we o’ercome all hosts that fi ght against us. - Betake thee to the lap of the earth the mother,
of earth far-spreading, very kind and gracious.
Young dame, wool-soft unto the guerdon-giver,
may she preserve thee from Destruction’s bosom.- Heave thyself, Earth, nor press thee downward
heavily: aff ord him easy access, gently tending him.
Earth, as a mother wraps her shirt about her child,
so cover him. - Now let the heaving earth be free from motion: yea,
let a thousand clods remain above him.
Be they to him a home distilling fatness, here let
them ever be his place of refuge. - I stay the earth from thee, while over thee I place
this piece of earth. May I be free from injury.
Here let the Fathers keep this pillar fi rm for thee,
and there let Yama make thee an abiding place - Even as an arrow’s feathers, they have laid me down
at day’s decline.
My parting speech have I drawn back as ‘twere a
courser with the rein.
From: Th e Hymns of the Rigveda, vol. 4,
trans. Ralph T. H. Griffi th (Benares,
India: E. J. Lazarus and Co., 1892),
pp. 137–139.(cont inues)Odysseus speaks:“Th ither we came and beached our ship, and took out
the sheep, and ourselves went beside the stream of
Oceanus until we came to the place of which Circe had
told us.“Here Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, while
I drew my sharp sword from beside my thigh, and dug
a pit of a cubit’s length this way and that, and around
it poured a libation to all the dead, fi rst with milk and
honey, thereafter with sweet wine, and in the third
place with water, and I sprinkled thereon white barley
meal. And I earnestly entreated the powerless heads of
the dead, vowing that when I came to Ithaca I would
sacrifi ce in my halls a barren heifer, the best I had, and
pile the altar with goodly gifts, and to Teiresias alone
would sacrifi ce separately a ram, wholly black, the
goodliest of my fl ocks. But when with vows and prayers
I had made supplication to the tribes of the dead, I tookthe sheep and cut their throats over the pit, and the
dark blood ran forth. Th en there gathered from out of
Erebus the spirits of those that are dead, brides, and
unwedded youths, and toil-worn old men, and tender
maidens with hearts yet new to sorrow, and many, too,
that had been wounded with bronze-tipped spears, men
slain in fi ght, wearing their blood-stained armor. Th ese
came thronging in crowds about the pit from every side,
with a wondrous cry, and pale fear seized me. Th en I
called to my comrades and bade them fl ay and burn the
sheep that lay there slain with the pitiless bronze, and
to make prayers to the gods, to mighty Hades and dread
Persephone. And I myself drew my sharp sword from
beside my thigh and sat there, and would not suff er the
powerless heads of the dead to draw near to the blood
until I had enquired of Teiresias.”From: Homer, Th e Odyssey, trans. A. T.
Murray (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1919), pp. 387–389.Homer: Th e Odyssey, Book XI: 18–50
Rome326 death and burial practices: primary source documents