antiquity, a vessel wherein were collected the tears of a deceased person's friends, and preserved along with the ashes and urn. They were small glass or earthen bottles, chiefly in the form of phials. At the Roman funerals, the friends LAC

Lachrymae of the deceased, or the preséce; women hired for that purpose, used to fill them with their tears, and deposit them very carefully with the ashes, in testimony of their sorrow, imagining the manes of the deceased were thereby greatly comforted. Many specimens of them are preserved in the cabinets of the curious, particularly in the British Museum.