in Antiquity, a vessel in which were collected the tears of a deceased person's friends, and preserved along with the ashes and the urn. Lachrymatories were small glass or earthen bottles, chiefly in the form of phials. At the Roman funerals, the friends of the deceased, or the proffecer, women hired for that purpose, used to fill them with their tears, and deposit them carefully with the ashes, in testimony of their sorrow, imagining that the manes of the deceased were thereby comforted and consoled.