In the case of an ordinary death, there was a regular order of ceremonies, which are detailed in Lucian’s _De Luctu_. To the women of the house belonged the melancholy duty of washing and anointing the corpse, and preparing it for burial. In the mouth was sometimes placed an obolus, the fee of Charon. The body was dressed as if for a wedding rather than a funeral, in rich and clean clothes; the face was painted, and wreaths were placed on head and breast. Then took place what was called the πρόθεσις, or exhibition of the corpse, in order that friends and relatives might take a last farewell of it. Vase-paintings give us many representations of the scene. Father and mother, or brothers and sisters, or children, thronged round the bier with expressions of love and sorrow, while the dirge of the hired wailing-women resounded through the house. A terra-cotta tablet of the sixth century, engraved in the text[2] (Fig. I), gives us a quaint and vivid picture of the room of death. The dead man, whose face appears, while the rest of the painting is broken away, is evidently a youth in the bloom of his days, who lies on the bier, clad in an embroidered garment. Close by his head stands his mother, ΜΕΤΕΡ, at whose feet is his little sister, ΑΔΕΛΦΕ; a somewhat older sister stands at the foot of the bier. To the left is a group of men, the father, ΠΑΤΕΡ, a grown-up brother, ΑΔΕΛΦΟΣ, and two other men. To the extreme right appears the name, though not the figure, of the grandmother, ΘΕΘΕ, between whom and the group of men are two other matrons, carefully distinguished as the aunt and the aunt on the father’s side, ΘΕΘΙΣ and ΘΕΘΙΣ ΠΡΟΣ ΠΑΤΡ[ΟΣ]. A little child also appears by a stool quite at the foot of the couch. The letters ΟΙΜΟΙ in the field represent the wailings of the women. [Illustration: FIG. 1. LYING IN STATE.]