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THE CLOTHED BODY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
17-19 January 2002

Eleni Kornarou

Appearance of Mourners in Ancient Greece

In ancient Greek society lamentation for the dead was an indispensable part of the funerary rites. The 'prothesis', i.e. the laying out of the dead, is the dominant funerary theme on the Attic vases. The deceased is depicted on a bier surrounded by mourners, whose attitude towards him differs according to their sex. Women stand closest to the corpse, performing the ritual gestures of scratching the cheeks, beating the head and tearing the hair. By contrast, men are more restrained in the expression of their grief, usually raising the arm with the palm displayed as a farewell to the deceased. Although iconographic evidence suggests that women mourn more extravagantly than men, in Homer and tragedy there is a blurring of gender distinction. Both men and women mourn violently performing gestures of self-infliction: apart from those depicted on vases, they also tear their robes or the women loosen them, abandoning their womanly modesty, fall on the ground and pour dust on the head or disfigure their appearance in another way. According to some scholars, such manifestations of grief were addressed to the soul of the deceased that would be pleased at the most violent expressions of grief for its loss or, according to others, they show the mourners' desire to be identified with the condition of the deceased (self-defilement is a symbolic image of the pollution attached to death). As we learn from literary evidence, the mourners were dressed in black, with their hair cut short, and abstained from their normal everyday occupations. The period of mourning terminated at a specific time after death and the mourners were reincorporated into the everyday social life.