Killed by lightning

"The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks"

Frank Pierrepont Graves


1891

"....  burial was denied, or at least entombment with others was refused, to those who had been killed by lightning. This, from the modern point of view, seems more extraordinary than the other cases of forbidden sepulture that have been mentioned, but the ancients considered any one who was killed in that manner as struck by a god, who knew of some crime that had been hidden from mortal eye. Theseus, who was renowned for his piety, in speaking of those slain at Thebes, declared that he would burn the corpse of Capaneus apart, because he was struck by the flame hurled from Zeus’s own hand, but that he would burn all the others on a single funeral pyre. Plutarch declares that the bodies of those who have been killed by that means never putrefy, and that “many people never burn nor bury such bodies, but let them lie above ground with a fence about them, so that every one may see that they remain uncorrupted.” In some cases, on the other hand, the remains of these wretched beings were cremated and then interred. We must bear in mind, however, that the prohibition of burial or a separate entombment in the case of a man struck by lightning, did not necessarily signify disgrace, but was,[16] in a certain sense, indicative of distinction. His corpse was considered “sacred” or appropriated to the gods, and, as such, could not be dealt with in the conventional way."

Suicides

"The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks"

Frank Pierrepont Graves


1891
 

Project Gutenburg

"Those who destroyed their own lives became felons, but were not so hardly dealt with as those who had been executed for crime. Interment was allowed the suicide, but the hand which committed the deed was chopped off and buried apart from the body. A modern scholar attributes this treatment to the fear which the Greeks had that the corpse might become a vampire; but the sentimental reason of Josephus, that the felonious hand was considered alien to the body, appears much more like the ancient manner of thought. As an additional degradation to the corpses of suicides, Plato recommends that they be buried without honor apart from the other dead in an uncultivated and nameless region, and that their place of interment be unmarked by any pillar or name, From this suggestion and the fact that burials sometimes did take place after dark, as when Cassandra prophesied to Agamemnon that “being a base fellow, basely shall you be buried at night, and not in the day,” Becker has concluded that “the witching time of night” might have furnished the occasion for the entombment of self-destroyers. That is certainly reasonable".

"The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks"

"The Burial Customs of the Ancient Greeks"

Frank Pierrepont Graves

1891

Project Gutenburg

"So stringent was the law concerning the duty of burial among the ancient Greeks. Yet there were extreme cases where burial was forbidden. It was the severest aggravation of the penalty of execution for a crime that the body of the criminal was denied interment. Such corpses, both at Athens and Sparta, were cast with the halter and their garments into a pit in an allotted quarter of the city, where the flesh might decay or be eaten by carrion birds. At Athens this barathrum, as it was usually called, was situated in the quarter called Melita, very near the house of Themistocles, and the temple which he had erected to Artemis Aristobule. Sparta also had a pit or underground cavern, called Caeadas, to which were consigned the corpses of malefactors. After the Lacedemonians had kept Pausanias confined till he was starved to death, they first meditated throwing his remains into this disgraceful place, but afterwards, changing their minds, they buried him in the ground somewhere thereabouts."

Aldborough - St Andrew, Boroughbridge. Anglican dissolution

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

© Godric Godricson

Familial and Common Graves

From : Omertaa.org

"Familial and Common Graves When a person dies in Malta they end up either in a family or a communal grave. Family graves are seen as more respectable. Common graves (qabar komuni) are for people of a lower socio-economy class (it costs 200 euro/1000 Maltese pounds for a family grave), or for those who are not religious (Galea 2011). A family grave will normally have compartments for four or five coffins, but it can hold up to six bodies. There is space below for bones, which are put into plastic bags during “cleaning” by cemetery workers (Sean 2011). In the past flour bags were used instead. Each set of bones is then put into a box which is stored in the family grave. The boxes used to be wooden or tin, but now they use plastic (Victor 2011; and Vincent 2011). From the Hypogeum to the catacombs, communal graves have been a part of Maltese history. Graves of this nature seem to make the most sense in urbanized areas where space creates an issue. Although this is the case in cities such as Valetta, it does not apply to all of Malta, and is even less relevant in Gozo. It must therefore hold importance in the collective conscious of the people. One explanation is that a burial of this nature delivers the dead from “the isolation in which he was plunged since his death, and reunites his body with those of his ancestors” (Hertz 1960:54). Hertz is referring to a body’s transition from a temporary to a final burial place, but I believe that this is also relevant when discussing communal, at least familial, burials. Common graves may not be as respected as family graves because they contain the bodies of the poor and secular, but it may also be a result of the subconscious idea that the dead buried there are alone. This may be why, after two years, the bones from common graves may be removed and stored in crypts, or thrown down wells located on the cemetery grounds, while the bones from family graves cannot. "