The ancient authors mention many cases outside of the Homeric period where the dead were burned. Let us take up the instances in chronological order and see whether they will not cover every era. Plutarch preserves a couplet of Archilochus, in which the writer bewails the drowning of his brother-in-law and declares that he would not so mourn, if his bones had been properly cremated[160]. Again, although Plutarch has properly stamped as incredible and legendary the story that the ashes of Solon were strewed about Salamis, still the fact that the tale received any credence shows that such a disposition of his remains was possible and probable[161]. Two centuries later, Isaeus gives as proof of the utter invalidity of Chariades’s claim to the property of Nicostratus, the fact that he had not cremated the body of the deceased nor even collected his bones[162]. The case of Timoleon is historical. His remains were not immediately laid away but were first incinerated[163]. When Philopoemen died, almost fifty years afterward, a similar fate befell his body[164]. Probably, following such precedents, Lycon, the philosopher, whose period of activity is unknown, left directions in his will, that his heir of the same name, together with two others, should attend to the expenses of his cremation and to the other customary solemnities[165]. It is safe, then, to conclude that the funeral pyre was used through all periods of Grecian history. If, in a similar manner, a review is made of the cases of inhumation that are recorded, it will be found, in spite of those who accept Lucian so literally[166], and notwithstanding others who believe that inhumation was employed only in the mythical period[167], that the custom of immediate burial existed during every century and was always contemporaneous with cremation. In the first place, the graves that have been opened in modern times reveal the fact that burial without burning existed at a very early period[168]. The Athenians being ordered by an oracle to take up the bones of Theseus and lay them in an honorable place at Athens, were directed to the supposed grave by an eagle and there they found the coffin of a man of extraordinary size, with a sword and lance lying by it[169].