(M72) Similar honours have been paid to the spirits of the departed by many other peoples both ancient and modern. Thus in antiquity the Thracians burned or buried their dead, and having raised mounds over their remains they held games of all kinds on the spot, assigning the principal prizes to victory in single combat.(296) At Rome funeral games were celebrated and gladiators fought in honour of distinguished men who had just died. The games were sometimes held in the forum. Thus in the year 216 B.C., when Marcus Aemilius Lepidus died, who had been twice consul, his three sons celebrated funeral games in the forum for three days, and two-and-twenty pairs of gladiators fought on the occasion.(297) Again, in the year 200 B.C. funeral games were held for four days in the forum, and five-and-twenty pairs of gladiators fought in honour of the deceased M. Valerius Laevinus, the expense of the ceremonies being defrayed by the two sons of the dead man.(298) Once more, when the Pontifex Maximus, Publicius Licinius Crassus, died at the beginning of the year 183 B.C., funeral games were celebrated in his honour for three days, a hundred and twenty gladiators fought, and the ceremonies concluded with a banquet, for which the tables were spread in the forum.(299) These games and combats were doubtless intended to please and soothe the ghost of the recently departed, just as we saw that Roman women lacerated their faces for a similar purpose. Similarly, when the Southern Nicobarese dig up the bones of their dead, clean them, and bury them again, they hold a feast at which sham-fights with quarter-staves take place “to gratify the departed spirit.”(300) In Futuna, an island of the South Pacific, when a death has taken place friends express their grief by cutting their faces, breast, and arms with shells, and at the funeral festival which follows pairs of boxers commonly engage in combats by way of honouring the deceased.(301) In Laos, a province of Siam, boxers are similarly engaged to bruise each other at the festival which takes place when the remains of a chief or other important person are cremated. The festival lasts three days, but it is while the pyre is actually blazing that the combatants are expected to batter each other’s heads with the utmost vigour.(302) Among the Kirghiz the anniversary of the death of a rich man is celebrated with a great feast and with horse-races, shooting-matches, and wrestling-matches. It is said that thousands of sheep and hundreds of horses, besides slaves, coats of mail, and a great many other objects, are sometimes distributed as prizes among the winners.(303) The Bashkirs, a Tartar people of mixed extraction, bury their dead, and always end the obsequies with horse-races.(304) Among some of the North American Indians contests in running, shooting, and so forth formed part of the funeral celebration.(305)