MENTION OF TUMULI IN ANCIENT HISTOKY. 121 



Patroclus. The mound supposed by Xenophon to contain 

 the remains of Alyattes, father of Croesus, king of Lydia, 

 was of stone and earth, and more than a quarter of a league 

 in circumference. In later times, Alexander the Great 

 caused a tumulus to be heaped over his friend Hephaestion, at 

 the cost of 1200 talents, no mean sum even for a conqueror 

 like Alexander, it being 232,500 sterling."* Virgil tells us 

 that Dercennus, king of Latium, was buried under an earthen 

 mound ; and, according to the earliest historians, whose state- 

 ments are confirmed by the researches of archaeologists, mound- 

 burial was practised in ancient times by the Scythians, Greeks, 

 Etruscans, Germans, and many other nations. 



By far the greater number of the tumuli in Western Europe 

 are entirely pre-historic, but there are some few of which the 

 date and origin are known to us, such as the tumuli of Queen 

 Thyra and King Gorm, who died about 950, at Jellinge, in 

 Denmark. 



There are, moreover, other cases in which tumuli are men- 

 tioned, though not in a manner which enables us to identify 

 them with any of those now existing. Thus Gregory of 

 Tours -p has a quaint story to the effect that Macliav, flying 

 from his brother Chanaon, took refuge with Chonomor, Count 

 of the Bretons. Chanaon sent messengers to demand that 

 Macliav should be given up to him, but Chonomor concealed 

 him in a tomb, "rearing over him a tumulus in the usual man- 

 ner, but leaving a small opening for the entrance of air" (com- 

 ponens desuper ex more tumulum, parvumque ei spiraculum 

 reservans, unde halitum resumere posset). He then showed 

 this tumulus to the messengers, and assured them that Macliav 

 was buried in it. 



The Codex Diplomaticus contains references to more than 

 sixty barrows or lows, bearing the names of particular persons ; 



* Ten Years' Diggings in the f Historia Francomin, iv. 4. 

 Celtic and Saxon Grave-hills, p. v. 



