116 APPENDIX. 



Maralhon, and on that of the Lacedasmonians who died at Thermopylae, and bore 

 the names of the slain. The stete were continued when the barrows were no 

 longer erected ; and the idea of their sanctity is still retained in the monumental 

 stones which plead for safety, by professing to be sacred to the memory of the 

 person above whose grave they are erected. 



Sometimes the arms or implements of the dead w ere suspended around the stela. 

 or crowned the barrow of the dead. A spear was fixed on the tomb of the Trojan 

 Hector ; and Misenus, the trumpeter of Hector, and pilot of the Trojan fleet of 

 ^Eneas, had reared upon his tomb the symbols of his deeds. 



" On it iEiieas piously heaped 

 A mighty mound sepulchral. The oar, the trumpet, 

 Arms of the man, the airy summit crowned, 

 From him Misenus named. It still retains 

 That name, and holds it through the lapse of time."* 



Mneid, IV., 232. 



Even in the later periods of Grecian history, mounds are occasionally raised 

 over the illustrious dead. Plutarch says that Alexander, on the death of Demaratus, 

 " made a most magnificent funeral for him, his whole ai'my raising him a monument 

 of earth eighty cubits high and of vast circumference." Semiramis endeavored 

 to eternize the memory of Ninus her husband, by raising a high mound for his 

 tomb. The Scythians, whose tumuli are scattered in great abundance over the 

 plains of Russia, southern Siberia, and Tartary, labored, says Herodotus, " to 

 raise as high a monument of earth for their dead as possible." This author has 

 left us a remarkable description of their mode of interment, which is amply con- 

 firmed by the exploration of their tombs. " The body of the king, having been 

 transported through the various provinces of the kingdom, was brought at last to 

 the Gerri, who live in the remotest parts of Scythia, where the sepulchres are. 

 Here the corpse was placed upon a couch, encompassed on all sides by spears 

 fixed in the ground : upon the whole were placed pieces of wood, covered with 

 branches of willow. They strangled one of the deceased's concubines, his groom, 

 cook, and most confidential servant, whose bodies they placed around the dead ; 

 they slew horses also, and deposited with him the first fruits of all things, and the 

 choicest of his efl'ects, and finally some golden goblets, for they possessed neither 

 silver nor brass. This done, they heaped the earth above with great care, and 



* The practice here indicated was one of general prevalence, not only in ancient but in more modern times, 

 and alike amongst savage and polished nations. The Indians around the Upper Mississippi, to this day, 

 place a pole above the graves of then- dead, from which his arms and ornaments are suspended ; so, too, 

 do the Indians of Oregon ; who, however, distrusting the veneration of their fellows, break holes in the 

 kettles, and bend the barrels of the guns which they place on the tombs. The arms and crest of the 

 titled dead are still graven on their monuments, and the unstrung lyre and broken sword indicate the graves 

 of the poet and the warrior. The stelas are still to be seen on the barrows of the ancient Scythians and 

 Scanduiavians, though none are found crowning the sepulchral mounds of Ameiica. 



