M. Benndorf regards, also, as a ritualistic gesture, the open hand extended toward the pillar, with the palm turned downwards. He supports this opinion by a citation from Euripides[298], where the slave of Admetus extends his hand after that manner. Another verse[299] of the same poet, evidently alludes to this custom. All these attitudes appear on the paintings of the white lecyths, and confirm the opinion that they express religious homage rendered by the living to the dead, and were part of the funeral ceremony. Another peculiar observance is seen where the mourners extend their hands toward the tomb, with a motion which seems to indicate that they talk to the dead. These are the pictures of familiar conversation, bearing the formula of adieu, _chaire_, or a little dialogue between the deceased and a passer-by. There appears, also, to have been a custom of making music at the foot of the tomb, for the purpose of cheering the deceased in his solitude. The instrument used is the lyre. On one of the paintings, it is a young man, probably the deceased, sitting, who holds the lyre while the assistants appear to listen. Such were the practices of the Greeks while the bereavement was recent, but it was always the duty of the survivors, as long as their lives might last, to tend their ancestors’ graves. Socrates, to rebuke his son, who has been angered with his mother, and to impress upon him how necessary it is properly to respect one’s parents in their lifetime, reminds him that it is the custom for the state, in its examination of candidates for the archonship, to inquire if they have kept in good condition the graves of their ancestors[300]. Leocrates, who, in violation of the law, had left Athens during the critical period following the battle of Chaeronea, is arraigned by Lycurgus for having abandoned his native land, having neglected the religion of his country, and having deserted the tombs of his forefathers[301]. To the Athenian mind, Isocrates made a most touching appeal, when he represented the Plataeans as being in such a decimated condition that not enough of them were left to tend the graves of those who had defended Greece against the Persians. After this master-stroke, nothing was left for the Athenians to do but to make war on the impious Thebans, who had so mercilessly reduced their allies[302]. Finally, listen to the exhortation which Aeschylus, in “The Persians,” attributes to the herald before the battle of Salamis: “Advance! O, sons of Greece! preserve the freedom of your native land; keep from foeman’s grasp your children, your wives, the temples of your ancestral gods, and the sepulchres of your progenitors. Now the struggle is for all[303].” XII. FURTHER CEREMONIES.