The last step, or rather steps, in the obsequies, were the succession of sacrifices which were performed in honor of the deceased at his grave. No one but a relative was allowed to offer these sacrifices since a person visiting a strange tomb was suspected of a design to steal the bones for superstitious purposes[276]. This oblation to the dead was discriminated among the Hellenes from the ordinary sacrifices to the gods by a word peculiarly appropriated. The word which indicated this species of offering was _enagisma_ and the idea implied in it may best be rendered into English by the word “purification[277].” The _enagisma_ seems to have been divided, according to its character, into two kinds of sacrifice; namely, the _choe_, or “libation,” and the _haimacouria_ or “blood-propitiation.” The _choe_ or milder form, consisted merely of a libation of water, milk or wine, together with an offering of olives, honey and wreaths of flowers, “the offspring of all-producing earth[277].” At the _haimacouria_, on the other hand, before the wine was poured, it was the custom to slay a black ram[278] or a black bull[279]. This blood sacrifice, however, was probably used only when they were sacrificing in honor of a number of men. For instance, the warriors who were slain in Boeotia, while defending Greece from Mardonius, had that ceremony, on the anniversary day of each year, performed at their graves by the archon and the inhabitants of Plataea[279]. By the law of Solon, heifers, as victims, were proscribed in these solemnities[280]. The offerings, however, were gradually made more and more expensive until, on some occasions, a regular feast was laid out and consumed by fire. In a Greek dialogue that has come down to us, the old ferryman, Charon, who had come to the upper world to view the customs of men, expresses his surprise at these sepulchral propitiations. “Why then,” says he, “do they crown these stones and perfume them with unguents? Why do they heap up funeral pyres before the graves and burn these expensive feasts and pour wine and a mixture of honey and water into this trench[281]?”