568 MONUMENTAL REMAINS. 



two tiers of coffins. It is probable, (hat on the death of any one 

 of the family, the tumulus was opened, and the body interred 

 near its kindred bones. 



Ancient Greece and Latium concurred in the same practice with 

 the natives of this island. Patroclus among the Greeks, and Hec. 

 tor among the Trojans, received but the same funeral honours with 

 our Caledonian heroes ; and the ashes of Derccnnus the Lauren, 

 tine monarch had the same simple protection. The urn and pall 

 of the Trojan warrior might perhaps be more superb than those of 

 a British leader: the rising monument of each had the common 

 materials from our mother earth. 



The snowy bones his friends and brothers place, 

 \Vith tears collected, in a golden vase. 

 The golden vase in purple palls they roll'd 

 Of softest texture and unwrought with gold. 

 Last o'er the urn the sacred earth they spread, 

 And rais'd a tomb, memorial of the dead. 



Pope's Homer' Iliad, xxiv. 100S. 



Or, as it is more strongly expressed by the same elegant transla- 

 tor, in the account of the funeral of Patroclus; 



High in the midst they heap the swelling bed 



Of rising earth, memorial of the dead. Ibid, xxiii. 319. 



The Grecian barrows, however, do not seem to hare been all 

 equally simple. The barrow of Alyattes, father of Croesus king 

 of Lydia, is described by Herodotus as a most superb monument, 

 inferior only to the works of the Egyptians and Babylonians. It 

 was a vast mound of earth heaped on a basement of large stones 

 by three classes of the people; one of which was composed of girls 

 who were prostitutes. Alyattes died, after a long reign, in the 

 year 562 before the Christian era. Above a century intervened, 

 but the historian relates, that to this time five stones (a&oi, termini, 

 or ttelce) on which letters were engraved, hacj remained on the 

 top, recording what each class had performed ; and from the mea- 

 surement it had appeared, that the greater portion was done by the 

 girls. Strabo has likewise mentioned it as a huge mound rai-rd 

 on a lofty basement by the multitude of the city. The circutn. 

 ference was six stadia or three quarters of a mile ; the height two 

 ptethra or two hundred feet ; and the width thirteen plethra. It 

 was customary among the Greeks to place on barrows either the 

 image of some animal, or ttclxy commonly rc-uud pillars with in. 



