We know that the body was carried to the grave on a _kline_ or bier[135], presumably that on which the _prothesis_ had been accomplished, but who conveyed it thither is in doubt. It would naturally be expected that it was borne by relatives or friends of the deceased, yet no authority has been found to support the surmise. There is, on the contrary, a passage in Pollux[136] which might be construed to indicate that there was a class of men who were called, professionally, “corpse-bearers” or “buriers,” and whose sole business was pall-bearing. Pollux is rather late authority, but, on turning back to the tragedies, Electra appears, telling her brother to let the crows and dogs act as “buriers” of Ægisthus[137]. Furthermore, it is a number of trained slaves that carry Alcestis to the tomb[138]. When a man of prominence died, he was borne to the grave by youths chosen by the people[139]. There is a reported instance of the burial of a priest, where one hundred youths[140], trained in the gymnasium, were selected by the relatives of the deceased. It was the custom for members of a fraternity to act as pall-bearers for one of their fellows. Demonax[141], when he died, was borne along by his brother philosophers. That custom survives to our time in the funeral processions of the _free-masons and odd-fellows_. In the van of the procession, just before the corpse[142], or immediately behind, came the hired dirge-singers, pouring forth their doleful lays[143]. Plato, perhaps through carelessness, speaks of these hired singers in the masculine gender[144]; but Hesychius is undoubtedly correct in stating that women[145] habitually took that part. They were first brought over from Caria[145], and hence the significance of the allusion to a dirge as a “Carian melody[144].” The late authors, Pollux[146] and Sextius Empiricus[147], confounded the dirge-singers with the Roman _praeficae_ and thought that they were flute-players. The flutes of ivory which have been discovered in some of the Grecian graves, would seem to support that view[148]. Schreiber has a picture of a funeral procession, in which a flute-player is seen behind the rude wagon that bears the body of the deceased[149]. Any _man_ might join in the dismal march to the grave, but every _woman_ was debarred the melancholy privilege, unless she had passed her sixtieth year[150], or was connected with the deceased by blood and was over sixteen years of age. There are two instances mentioned in literature when this law was violated. Lysias[151] refers to a daughter who followed her stepmother to the grave; while Terence, whose plays are adaptations and almost translations of the Greek comedies, makes poor Glycerium attend the funeral of her adopted sister, the beautiful Andrian[152]. Even in those cases, the exception is rather apparent than real; for, in each instance, affection has transmuted a nominal into an actual kinship.