But, excepting the relics of this traditional ceremony of occasionally sacrificing at the grave, almost everything connected with the interment of the dead seems essentially modern. To be sure, this had not always been the case. The authors who wrote in the classical and later periods, afford much evidence of the long strides that this progressive people had made away from their old rude customs. Plato[38] relates that, formerly, it was the fashion for the relatives of the deceased to send for women whose business it was to collect the bones of the dead in jars; while still earlier, as he informs us, the Greeks buried their dead at home. At Athens, Solon[39] made great improvements. He it was that forbade men to speak ill of the dead, on the ground that piety required them to consider the dead as sacred. Such a doctrine against the perpetuation of hatred is not many removes from the dispensation of the nineteenth century. Sparta also had a reformer in Lycurgus, but his measures, as we should expect of one who was trying to rear a race of warriors and law-abiding citizens, looked more to the intellectual and social advancement than to religious progress. His aim was to do away with all foolish superstitions and femininities of sentiment[40]. He even allowed the monuments to be erected near the temples that the youths might become accustomed to seeing them. The best connected account of the ceremonies under discussion is to be found in Lucian’s “_de Luctu_.” In spite of the cynical view and the satirical comment indulged in by that author, there seems, if we may judge by other writers, to be nothing exaggerated in his descriptions; and the customs depicted therein were probably little changed throughout the whole course of Greek history. As soon as death had laid hands upon the victim, the relatives or friends, after gently closing the eyes of their loved one, inserted, in the dead man’s mouth, the _obol_, a coin valued at about three half pence, or about three cents of our money, which was to serve as passage money over the Styx. They were very careful not to overlook this duty, since it was believed that, if old Charon could not collect his ferriage, the unlucky shade would be sent back to life[41]. They also examined the coin closely, to see whether it would pass current among the inhabitants of the lower world[42]. An admirable verification of this custom was, in this century, excavated in the town of Samos in Cephallenia. A tile coffin dug up at that place was found to contain the bones of an initiate of the Bacchic mysteries and between the back teeth of the skull, the _danake_, a coin, somewhat more in value than an _obol_, was still firmly lodged. The late excavations in Italy, Greece and Asia have revealed numerous coins in the tombs[43]. The painting on a vase, which is described by Pottier, shows a small coin held between the thumb and fore finger of the figure which represents the deceased[44].