[84\5: That this was the object of the Novemdialia festival at Rome is shown clearly enough by the evidence; that the same was true of Greece is at least highly probable; cf. K. O. Müller, _Aesch. Eum._, p. 143 [120 E.T.]. Leist, _Graecoitalische Rechts._, p. 34.--Nine is evidently a round number, esp. in Homer; i.e. the division of periods of time into groups of nine was in antiquity a very common and familiar practice. Cf. now, Kaegi, _Die Neunzahl bei den Ostariern_, Phil. Abh. f. Schweitzer-Sidler, 50 ff. Mourning customs were really intended to ward off maleficent action on the part of the dead. They lasted as a rule as long as the return of the soul of the dead was to be feared (esp. so in India: see Oldenberg, _Rel. d. Veda_, p. 589), and acc. to ancient belief the soul can return once more on the ninth day after death. See below, chap. xiv, ii, n. 154.] [85\5: A ~chro/nos pe/nthous~ of eleven days, the mourning concluded with a sacrifice to Demeter: Plu., _Lyc._ 27; cf. Hdt. vi, 58 fin. The Labyadai at Delphi celebrate the _tenth_ day after the funeral as a feast of the dead; see above, n. 81 of this chapter. This mourning period is not otherwise demonstrable for Greece (_SIG._ 633, 5, is different), but it is met with again among the Indians and Persians (cf. Kaegi, p. 5, 11), and may be primitive.] [86\5: Lex. Rh., in _AB._ 268, 19 ff.; Phot. a little differently: ~kathe/dra; tê=| triakostê=| (prô/tê|~ Phot.: ~A~ instead of ~L~) ~hême/ra| tou= apothano/ntos hoi prosê/kontes suneltho/ntes koinê=| edeipnou=n epi\ tô=| apothano/nti--kai\ tou=to kathe/dra ekalei=to~ (Phot. adds: ~ho/ti kathezo/menoi edei/pnoun kai\ ta\ nomizo/mena eplê/roun;) ê=san de\ kathe/drai te/ssares~ (the last clause is absent from Phot.) It was a meal shared by the relatives of the dead in honour of the dead and held "on the thirtieth day"; possibly nothing more nor less than the oft-mentioned ~triaka/des~. The guests eat their food _sitting_ after the old custom prevailing in Homeric times and always observed by women; as applied to men it survived in Crete only, see Müller, _Dorians_, ii, 284. Perhaps this primitive attitude preserved in cultus is what we see in the Spartan sculptured reliefs representing "feasts of the dead" where the figures are _seated_. There were four such ~kathe/drai~, i.e. the period of mourning extended over four months: thus it was the law in Gambreion (_SIG._ 879, 11 ff.) that {196} mourning might last at the most three months, or in the case of women four. We often hear of monthly repetitions of the feasts of the dead: monthly celebration of the ~eika/des~ for Epicurus in acc. with his will, D.L. x, 18; cf. Cic., _Fin._ ii, 101; Plin. 35, 5; ~kata\ mê=na~ sacrifice to the deified Ptolemies, _CIG._ 4697, 48. (In India, too, the sacrifices to the dead on the thirtieth of the month were several times repeated: Kaegi, 7; 11.)]