The partial nature of the burning requires a more detailed consideration. In the Homeric burials, burning is universal. It must be regarded, according to the Poems, as the established Achaian custom of the day, wherever inhumation was normally conducted. And for burial there was a distinct reason, namely, that without it the Shade of the departed was not allowed to join the company of the other Shades, so that the unburied Elpenor is the first to meet Odysseus (_Od._ XI. 51) on his entrance into the Underworld; and the shade of Patroclos entreats Achilles to bury him as rapidly as may be, that he may pass the gates of Aïdes (_Il._ XXIII. 71). I think the proof of the universal use of fire in regular burials at this period is conclusive. Not only do we find it in the great burials of the Seventh Book (429-32), and in the funerals of Patroclos (XXIII. 177) and Hector (XXIV. 785-800), but we have it in the case of Elpenor (_Od._ XII. 11-13), whom at first his companions had left uninterred, and for whom therefore we must suppose they only did what was needful under established custom. Perhaps a yet clearer proof is to be found in a simile. Achilles, we are told, wept while the funeral pile he had erected was burning, all night long, the bones of Patroclos, "as a father weeps when he burns the bones of his youthful son" (XXIII. 222-5). This testifies to a general practice. In the case of notable persons, the combustion was not complete. For not the ashes only, but the bones, were carefully gathered. In the case of Patroclos, they are wrapped in fat, and put in an open cup or bowl (_phialè_) for temporary custody (XXIII. 239-44) until the funeral of Achilles, when with those of Achilles himself, similarly wrapped, and soaked in wine, they are deposited in a golden urn (_Od._ XXIV. 73-7). In the case of Hector, the bones are in like manner gathered and lodged in a golden box, which is then placed in a trench and built over with a mass of stones (_Il._ XXIV. 793-8). Incomplete combustion, then, is common to the Homeric and the Mycenean instances. But in the case of the first tomb at Mycenæ, not only was there no collection of the bones for deposit in an urn, but they had not been touched; except in the instance of the middle body, where they had simply been disturbed, and the valuables perhaps removed, as hardly anything of the kind was found with it. In the case of the body on the north side, the flesh of the face remained unconsumed.