Then the making of the grave and the erection of a tombstone was a dedication to the Deity ; and the epitaph on the grave was expressed often in the form of a prayer (and, of course, a vow accom- panying it) to the Deity with whom the dead pein was identified. Even when a person, during
is lifetime, prepared his own grave, he expressed the epitaph in the form of a prayer and dedication to the Deity.t It was a duty which one owed to God to make a grave.
Thus every Phrygian grave was also a shrine or temple. Accordingly, there is no force in the argu- ment, which many writers have employed, that such a monument as the famous sculptured rock which bears the dedication ‘to king Midas’ (MIAAT FANAKTEI) was a cult-shrine, and therefore can- not have been a sepulchral monument. In truth it was both. Similarly, some of the tumuli in the Phrygian land have probably a utilitarian purpose, being intended to serve as watch-towers and road- marks. But they were, in all probability, also sepulchral. It was desired to give them permanent sanctity, and this end was attained by the grave inside, with the religion attached to it. Probably it is not too bold to lay down the general principle that the sanctity of a locality was generally, in the primitive Anatolian system, confirmed by the awe attaching to the grave-temple. That principle remains to a large extent in force still. Sacred places are numerous all over the country ; and in almost every one the sacredness is confirmed by, or founded on, the awe attaching to the supposed grave of some saint or hero. The fact that the grave is often demonstrably fictitious (as when the hero is a mere myth, or has several graves in different places) shows how strongly the need for a grave in every holy place is still felt by the Anatolian mind. The primitive custom in Greece of burying in the house, consecrated and guarded the family home. +
The essential parts of the grave-monument were an altar and a door; and the two typical forms of gravestone in later Phrygia were developments of the altar and of the door. The former at least retained the name, and is called ‘the altar’ in numberless inscriptions. On this altar-tombstone there is sometimes engraved, apart from the epi- taph (and even on a different side from it), the word ‘door’ (@Jpa); and this custom obviously
* Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, i. pp. 99 f., 348 (n. 24).
+ These statements, made at first in explanation of the identity in form, appearance, and general character between grave-monuments and stones recording a prayer and vow or dedication, were controverted by Prof. A. Korte; but he has since published a stone whose inscription is purely a dedication to the god, except that at the end the dedicator adds the sepul- chral form zai éavra@ Gav, proving beyond question that the dedicatory stone was at the same time the gravestone over his intended tomb. We are now agreed that this custom was char- acteristically Phrygian ; but the present writer sees far more examples of it than Prof. Korte admits.
t See above, § IV (2); also Ramsay, ‘Permanent Attachment of Religious Veneration to Special Sites in Asia Minor,’ pub- lished in Transactions of the Oriental Congress at London, 1892, p. 881.
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RELIGION OF GREECE
arises from the feeling that a door was essential and must be indicated, even if only by a word. We have already seen that, in later grave-monu- ments, members which originally had a meaning were indicated by some part of their original form, and became mere conventional ornament. We may suppose that the door was simply an essential part of the house or temple in which the dead god dwelt, while the altar was necessary for the living worshippers to lay their offerings on.*
It was probably on the worship of the dead that the worship of Divine personal beings was_ built up. The dead parent links the family with the Divine nature. Any inexplicable misfortune or mischance was often attributed by the Greeks to some neglect of this cult, and expiated by special attention to the dead. Among the Greeks the special sacrifice to the dead hero took place on his birthday, and was called yevéo.w or yevéOdua quite as often as vexvo.w. Among Christians, on the contrary, the day of death of a martyr was cele- brated as his dies natalis, birth into his true life.
The cult of the dead was therefore of prime im- portance, and this applies as much to Greece as to Anatolia. Here, too, the gods had set the ex- ample, which was to be followed in the case of men. The grave of Zeus, the grave of Achilles, and so on, formed an integral part of the equip- ment of their worship. The worship of the heroes, i.e. the Divine dead, bulked far more largely in Greek life and religion than would appear from a superficial survey of the literature. This is partly due to the fact that the cult of the dead was part of the half-submerged archaic religion, believed in by all, but not made prominent in public life. But even in the literature it is often evident, and must always be understood as the substratum on which all social life rests.