The lying-in-state of the dead, lasting the whole of one day, was certainly not intended originally to serve the purpose of a public "notification of death", such as later writers attribute to it.[41\5] The funeral dirge was sung at the bier of the dead man, and to give opportunity for this ceremony was its real purpose. The habit of the old Attic government of the Eupatridai had increased the pomp of funeral ceremonies in every direction, and had encouraged an extravagant cult of the souls of the departed. Solon's legislation had to restrain and limit such exaggeration in many ways, and in particular, the tendency to increase unduly the lamentation sung over the dead body required to be kept within bounds. Only the women of the immediate family of the dead might take part in it, for to them alone the cult of the departed belonged as a duty.[42\5] The violent expression of grief, the tearing of the cheeks, beating the breast and head, was forbidden,[43\5] as also was the singing of "poems",[44\5] i.e. in all probability regular funeral dirges specially written for the purpose such as Homer made the women sing round Hektor's bier. To extend the subject of the funeral dirge to apply to others beside the person then being buried had to be made absolutely illegal.[45\5] This prohibition must also have been applied already to the gathering at the graveside. But to sacrifice animals before the procession to the grave was a very ancient custom, and it seems as if Solon **forbade this too.[46\5] In other states, also, legislation was necessary to put a curb on the tendency to overdo the violence of the expressions of grief for the dead[47\5] which were common in the antiquity of the Greeks as among many of the "uncivilized" tribes who carry them to the point of exhaustion. It was not simple piety or natural human grief (never particularly given to violent or excessive demonstration) that caused these things. It was rather the ancient belief that the soul of the dead was still invisibly present, and would be pleased at the most violent expressions of grief for its loss.[48\5] The dirge, carried to this extreme, belongs in fact to the _cult_ of the departed spirit. The restraints placed upon the traditional lamentation may in their turn--in so far as they were effective-- have been derived not from considerations of good {165} sense (which rarely have much influence in such matters) but from religious or superstitious reasons.[49\5]