Gardner, Percy: Sculptured tombs of Hellas (London, 1896)

PREFACE

The monuments erected to the dead belong in every
country, like funeral customs generally, to a deeper
stratum of the national consciousness than do openly
expressed beliefs. This is, in fact, a phase of the general
law that in the history of religion cultus is more venerable
and more conservative than doctrine. And as, further, the
beliefs which find an expression in literature are those of
the most enlightened and the least conservative spirits,
it is misleading if one attempts to learn from the higher
literature of a people how the masses really think and
feel in regard to death and the life which lies beyond
death.

These considerations are certainty applicable in the
case of Greece. The two great literatures of Greece,
the Epic and the Attic, belong each to a class, to an
aristocracy whether of birth or of talent, and stand high
above the beliefs of the common people. Ii we wish to
ascertain what the ordinary Greek citizen, Vhomme
sensuel moyen, thought and felt in the presence of death,
whether his own or that of friends, we must supplement
the study of the poets, the orators, and the philosophers