692 GENERAL REMARKS 



interments ; and if we figure to ourselves bow the mingled and 

 allied feelings of reverence and of terror would act upon the otherwise 

 excitable nature of uncivilised men engaged in such a work, we 

 shall have little difficulty in interpreting the phenomena presented 

 to us by the bony remains without having recourse to the hypo- 

 thesis of human sacrifices, a hypothesis incompatible at once with 

 the care bestowed upon some and the injuries received by others 

 of these remains. The question however here naturally arises, how 

 is it that in the very large number of interments recorded in this 

 book we have never come upon any bony remains bearing their 

 evidence to the existence of a practice which is spoken of by such 

 a very large number of literary witnesses? In answer to this 

 I have to say that the literary evidence when duly considered 

 proves simply that slaves and captives were slaughtered at the 

 funeral of their lords without proving that they were allowed to 

 lie beside them afterwards. The only passage I have met with 

 which might be held to speak of a contiguity in the graves as 

 well as a contemporaneity in the deaths of the masters and of the 

 slaves is the passage in which Caesar writes, as follows, of the 

 funeral ceremonies of the Gauls, B. G. vi. 19 : ' Funera sunt pro 

 cultu Gallorum magnifica et sumptuosa ; omniaque quae vivis cordi 

 fuisse arbitrantur in ignem inferunt, etiam animalia, ac, paullo 

 supra banc memoriam, servi et clienteSj quos ab iis dilectos esse con- 

 stabat, justis funerlbus confectis, tina cremabantur.'' These two last 

 words might seem to justify us in holding that of the burnt bones 

 packed together in a cremation long barrow with no detectable 

 differentiation indicative of distinctions of rank or position, some 

 nevertheless may have belonged to conquerors, others to captives, 

 or some to masters, others to slaves. If we compare however the 

 words of Homer used in the account of the funeral of Patroclus 

 we shall see that the words of Caesar must not be interpreted too 

 strictly. Achilles, II. xxiii. 182, says distinctly that the twelve 

 noble Trojan youths were burnt together with Patroclus-a^ 



A&j8e/ca ix\v Tpcoooy fxeyadviKov fte'as ^aOXovs 

 Tom djjLa (Tol Travras Trvp kaOUi — 



using words as precise at first sight as Caesar's 7ma cremahantnr ; 

 but a little further on, 1. 239-243, we find him telling the other 

 Greeks that they would have no difficulty in distinguishing the 

 bones of Patroclus, for that they were in the middle of the funeral 



