the interment of a deceased person. In almost all countries the rites of sepulture have been looked upon as a debt so sacred, that those who neglected to discharge them were thought infamous. Hence the Romans called them justæ, and the Greeks ῥητορική, ἐκκαίνια, ἐκκαίνια, words implying the inviolable obligation which nature has laid upon the living to perform the obsequies of the dead. The Romans in the most ancient times appear to have buried their dead; but the practice of burning the body was early adopted, and both burning and burying continued to be practised more or less until the introduction of Christianity. It is not surprising that the ancient Greeks and Romans were extremely solicitous about the interment of their deceased friends, since they believed that their souls could not be admitted into the Elysian fields till their obsequies had been performed; and that if they did not obtain the rites of burial they were excluded from the happy mansions for the term of a hundred years. For this reason it was considered as a duty incumbent upon all travellers who happened to meet with a dead body in their way, to cast dust or mould upon it three times; and of these, one portion at least was cast upon the head. (Horace, Ode 28, Book I.) The ancients likewise considered it as a great misfortune if they were not laid in the sepulchres of their fathers; for which reason the ashes of those who died in foreign countries were usually brought home and interred with those of their ancestors. But notwithstanding the great care in the burial of the dead, there were some persons whom they thought unworthy of the last office, and to whom therefore they refused it; namely, public or private enemies; such as betrayed or conspired against their country; tyrants, who were always looked upon as enemies to their country; villains guilty of sacrilege; such as died in debt, whose bodies belonged to their creditors; and offenders who had suffered capital punishment.

Of those who were allowed the rites of burial, some were distinguished by particular circumstances attending their interment. Thus persons killed by lightning were buried on the spot where they fell, which was ever after considered sacred. (See BIDESTAL.) Those who wasted their patrimony forfeited the right of being buried in the sepulchres of their fathers; and those who were guilty of self-murder were privately consigned to the earth without the accustomed solemnities.

Among the Jews the privilege of burial was denied only to self-murderers, who were thrown out to rot upon the ground. In the Christian church, though good men always desired the privilege of interment, yet they were not, like the heathens, so concerned for their bodies as to think it any detriment to them if either the barbarity of an enemy or some other accident deprived them of this privilege. The primitive Christian church denied the more solemn rites of burial only to the unbaptized, to self-murderers, and to excommunicated persons who continued obstinate and impenitent in contempt of the censures of the church. See Burying-Place; Funeral Rites.