There are some intimations of military funerals on the monuments, amphoras and vases that have been found in Grecian soil, as well as references to such pageants in the Greek authors. On a stamped plaque of _terra cotta_, in the collection of M. Rayet[153], appears a procession with two young men in military dress, possibly sons of the deceased, who march behind the women that surround the funeral car. The black figures on an amphora[154], represent the cortege as composed of women and some armed men mounted on chariots. A beautiful amphora from Cape Colias[155], is painted with some red figures. There, beside the scene of _prothesis_, are some knights preparing to follow the funeral convoy. They have lowered the points of their lances, in sign of mourning. It is not improbable that these soldiers escort a companion-in-arms to his last resting place. A passage from Plato[156], prescribing the order of the cortege for the interment of the first citizens of the state, directs that there shall march, at the head of the procession, young unmarried men, clothed in military costume, then that the boys go before the bier and sing the national hymn, with the girls following behind, and such of the women as happen to be beyond the age of child-bearing. Plutarch[157] writes, that armed soldiers escorted the urn which contained the ashes of Philopoemen. VII. BURNING OR INHUMATION? Did the Greeks burn their dead like many nations of the ancient world, or did they bury them immediately like the majority of people since the Christian era? The question has been vigorously debated. Lucian, in a general way, declares that the fashion of the Greeks as contrasted with the various customs practiced respectively among the Persians, the Indians, the Scythians, and the Egyptians, was to cremate their dead[158]. Some have accepted this statement in a literal sense; on the other hand, a German scholar[159] of no little repute insists that “in the historic period, interment was universal.” The truth, as usual, lies between these extremes. Burial and cremation existed together at every period.