“ ... Thus oxen, mules, in waggons straight they put, Went forth, and an unmeasur’d pile of sylvan matter cut; Nine days employ’d in carriage, but when the tenth morn shin’d On wretched mortals, then they brought the bravest of his kind Forth to be burned. Troy swam in tears. Upon the pile’s most height They laid the body, and gave fire. All day it burn’d, all night. But when th’ eleventh morn let on earth her rosy fingers shine, The people flock’d about the pile, and first with gleaming wine Quench’d all the flames. His brothers then, and friends, the snowy bones, Gather’d into an urn of gold, still pouring out their moans. Then wrapt they in soft purple veils the rich urn, digg’d a pit, Grav’d it, built up the grave with stones, and quickly piled on it A barrow.... ... The barrow heap’d once, all the town In Jove-nurs’d Priam’s Court partook a sumptuous fun’ral feast, And so horse-taming Hector’s rites gave up his soul to rest.” There remains also an old English saga, _Beowulf_, made long before the English had crossed from Germany into England, which winds up with a similar burial. The preparation of a pyre is first described. It is hung round with shields and coats of mail. The body is brought and the pyre fired, and then for ten days the warriors built a mighty mound to be seen afar by the traveller on sea or land. _Beowulf_, which is at least a thousand years later than the _Iliad_, is also interesting because one of the main adventures in it is the looting of the treasures of a barrow already ancient in those days. § 3 The Greek epics reveal the early Greeks with no knowledge of iron, without writing, and before any Greek-founded cities existed in the land into which they had evidently come quite recently as conquerors. They were spreading southward from the Aryan region of origin. They seem to have been a fair people, newcomers in Greece, newcomers to a land that had been held hitherto by a darker people, people who are now supposed to have belonged to a dark white “aboriginal” race, a “Mediterranean” people allied to those Iberians whom the Kelts pressed westward, and to the Hamitic white people of North Africa. [Illustration: Combat between Menelaus & Hector (in the Iliad) From a platter ascribed to the end of the seventh century in the British Museum. This is probably the earliest known vase bearing a Greek inscription. Greek writing was just beginning. Note the Swastika.]