These chapters deserve careful study, as evidence of H.'s accuracy and of his wide interest. They are admirable illustrations of the belief that the future life is a continuation of the present, in which the dead needs all he needed here (cf. Tylor, P. C. i. 459 seq.). Moreover, they illustrate the belief that inanimate objects also have spirits, which survive in another world. These beliefs, which are the cause why so many of the treasures of our museums are derived from ancient burial-places, prevailed both in Mycenaean and in Homeric Greece; cf. Il. xxii. 510 “ἀτάρ τοι εἵματ̓ ἐνὶ μεγάροισι κέονται . . .
ἀλλ̓ ἤτοι τάδε πάντα καταφλέξω πυρὶ κηλέῳ.
”
The tradition of them survived the Christian era; cf. Lucian de Luctu, c. 14 (928) πόσοι ἵππους καὶ παλλακίδας, οἱ δὲ καὶ οἰνοχόους ἐπικατέσφαξαν καὶ ἐσθῆτα καὶ τὸν ἄλλον κόσμον συγκατέφλεξαν . . . ὡς χρησομένοις ἐκεῖ καὶ ἀπολαύσουσιν αὐτῶν κάτω. For a curious instance in H. cf. v. 92. η 2, 3—the story of Melissa; cf. also v. 8. Caesar (B. G. vi. 19, § 4) describes the usage in a modified form in the Gaul of his day.
For the description of the tomb of Kouloba near Kertch (opened 1831) cf. Rawlinson or (his source) Dubois de Montéreux, Voyage autour du Caucase (1838-43), v. 194 seq., and plates, fourth series, 18-25; almost all Rawlinson's illustrations for H. iv. 1-144 come from this splendid work. The tomb in question probably belongs to the fourth century B. C., and is that of one of the Leuconidae, who ruled in Panticapaeum from 437 B. C.
For the tumuli generally of South Russia cf. S. Reinach, Introduction, Antiq. du Bosph. Cimmér. (1892). The wealth they have yielded is in the Hermitage at St. Petersburg, where the two rooms (vii and x) of ‘Kertch’ and ‘Scythic and Siberian Antiquities’ have over 20,000 gold objects, ‘a collection unique at once for intrinsic value and for historic interest.’
The following points may be specially noted in c. 71. (1) It was belief in H.'s veracity that led to the examination of the tumulus. (2) As a rule the details minutely correspond, but (a) other metals beside gold were found in the tomb. This discrepancy may be due to exaggeration on his part (or his informant's) or to the fact that the tombs explored are later than his time; (b) the number of victims is two (not six). (3) The vault is of stone; of this H. says nothing, though it perhaps implied the χῶμα μέγα of § 5. The sarcophagus itself was of wood (as in § 4). (4) Naturally no parallel has been found to the fifty dead mounted slaves (c. 72); these were outside the tomb. But a similar custom of impaling sacrificed animals on wooden beams is found among the tribes of the Altai Mountains (Reinach, A. R. M. p. 181).
