neighbourhood, its rage afflicts the land in which it is detained against its will; and the withholding of burial "is worse for the **withholder than for him to whom burial is refused".[31\5] Condemned criminals, indeed, are thrown by the state, unburied, into a pit;[32\5] the sacrilegious and traitors to their country are denied burial in the ground of that country.[33\5] This is a formidable punishment, for even though the outlaw is buried in a foreign country,[34\5] his soul cannot be permanently tended there. Only the family of the dead in their own home can give their departed kinsman the honour due to him in the cult of the souls, and only they at the spot where his remains lie buried.[35\5] What we know of the details of the funeral ceremonies, differs very little in essence from what had survived into the Homeric age as customs no longer fully explained by contemporary belief. The new features that we meet with may also, for the most part, be very primitive usage restored to currency. Some of the particular details make the solemnity of the act more apparent. After the eyes and mouth have been closed by the next of kin the body is washed and anointed by women of the family, and clothed in clean garments. It is then laid out upon a bier in the interior of the house for the ceremonial lying-in-state. In Athens marjoram was strewn under the body, for superstitious reasons,[36\5] and also four broken-off vine branches; in the grave, also, the corpse lay on vine branches.[37\5] Underneath the bier were placed ointment vessels of the peculiar slim shape that the graves have restored to us again in such numbers. At the door of the room, for the benefit of those leaving the house who had incurred religious defilement by coming in contact {164} with the corpse, was placed a bowl full of pure water brought in from another house.[38\5] Cypress branches fixed upon the house door outside warned the scrupulous that a corpse was in the house.[39\5] The head of the dead person was generally decked with garlands and fillets, in a manner unknown to the Homeric age, as a sign, it appears, of respect for the higher sanctity of the departed.[40\5]