Some days before the wedding, the intended bride and bridegroom, with their friends, met together at the lady’s residence, and the parent or guardian of each (as I imagine) asked each other, _Spondes? Do you betroth her or him?_ Then the other party answered, _Spondeo, I do betroth, &c._ Then the deeds were signed, the dowry agreed on, and the day appointed for the marriage. NOTE 77. _Among the women who were there I saw one young girl._ Women were frequently hired on these occasions, to appear in the funeral procession as mourners, of whom Horace says, “Ut quæ conductæ plorant in funere, dicunt Et faciunt propè plura dolentibus ex animoque.” Like those, who, hired to weep at funerals, Exceed, in noisy grief, a faithful friend. NOTE 78. _She appeared more afflicted than the others who were there, and so pre-eminently beautiful, and of so noble a carriage, I approach._ To understand the full force of Simo’s remark, when he says how much he was struck with the contrast between Glycera and the rest of the mourners, it is necessary that the reader should be informed, that, in Athens, no woman under sixty years of age was allowed to appear at a funeral; except the relations of the deceased. Solon imposed this law upon the Athenians. NOTE 79. _I approach the women who were following the body._ Literally, the women who were _walking_ after the body. Though those women who were hired to follow a corpse, _walked_ in procession, it was very usual in Greece, to attend funerals in carriages, and on horseback: but Chrysis, not being represented as a citizen, the ceremonies, in respect to the procession, must be supposed to be different. The interment of the dead was considered of such extreme importance throughout the whole of Greece, that to want the rites of sepulture, was deemed by the natives of that country, a much greater misfortune than even death itself. The Greeks (and many other nations) believed that the spirit of a person whose corpse was unburied, could never obtain admittance to the Elysian fields: their imaginary place of reward for virtuous men after death. Two different methods of disposing of the dead prevailed in Greece. The most ancient of the two (as is generally allowed,) was much the same as the modern practice, the corpse was interred in a coffin, and deposited in the earth. The other mode was to burn the body, and to preserve the ashes. The Athenians seem to have used both methods indiscriminately: their funerals were usually conducted by torch-light. On the third or fourth day after death, (though the time was varied according to circumstances,) the corpse was placed on a bier, with the feet towards the door; and an obolus put into its mouth, to defray the passage across the Styx: a