This caused
her to be greatly envied by the other women.
XXVI.--Moreover, he made excellent regulations about funerals. In the
first place, he abolished all silly superstition, and raised no
objections to burial in the city, and to placing tombs near the temples,
in order to accustom the young to such sights from their infancy, so
that they might not feel any horror of death, or have any notion about
being defiled by touching a dead body, or walking among tombs. Next, he
permitted nothing to be buried with the dead, but they placed the body
in the grave, wrapped in a purple cloth and covered with olive-leaves.
It was not permitted to inscribe the name of the deceased upon his tomb,
except in the case of men who had fallen in war, or of women who had
been priestesses. A short time was fixed for mourning, eleven days; on
the twelfth they were to sacrifice to Demeter (Ceres) and cease from
their grief. For, in Sparta, nothing was left without regulation, but,
with all the necessary acts of life, Lykurgus mingled some ceremony
which might enkindle virtue or discourage vice; indeed he filled his
city with examples of this kind, by which the citizens were insensibly
moulded and impelled towards honourable pursuits. For this reason he
would not allow citizens to leave the country at pleasure, and to wander
in foreign lands, where they would contract outlandish habits, and
learn to imitate the untrained lives and ill-regulated institutions to
be found abroad.
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