Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend

lchres of the righteous.# Ulysses, in Hecuba, cared not how meanly he lived, so he might find a noble tomb after death.$ Great princes affecte

sio, and others, though all found in Italy; while many have handles, ears, and long necks, but most imitate a circular figure, in a spherical and round composure; whether from any mystery, best duration or capacity, were but a conjecture. But the common form with nec

. # St Matt. xxiii. $ Eu

pieces, but the open magnificence of antiquity, ran much in the artifice of clay. Hereof the house of Mausolus was built, thus old Jupiter stood in the Capitol, and the statua of Hercules, made in the reign of Tar- quinius Priscus, was extant in Pliny's days. And such as declined burning or funeral urns, affected coffins of clay, according to the mode of Pythagoras, a way pre- ferred by V

flints, some, in other parts, with tiles; those at Yarmouth Caster were closed with Roman bricks, and some have proper earthen covers adapted and fitted to them. But in the

mitted]- <

n we found the bones and ashes half mortared unto the sand and sides of the

part of their inscriptions.* Some find sepulchral vessels containing liquors, which time hath incrassated into jellies. For, besides these lacry- matories, notable lamps, with vessels of oils, and aro- matical liquors, attended noble ossuaries; and some yet retaining a vinosity and spirit in them,

o gold to attend the corpse, but only that which served to fasten their teeth. Whether the Opaline stone in this were burnt upon the finger of the dead, or cast into the fire by some

acrymis

ive hundr

um annorum centu

In their hardness and yellow colour they most resembled box, which, in old expressions, fou

rs. The wood of the ark, and olive-rod of Aaron, were older at the captivity; but the cypress of the ark of Noah was the greatest vegetable of antiquity, if Josephus were not deceived by some fragments of it in his days: to omit t

ound amongst them; a way to make wood perpetual, and a fit associate for metal, whereon was laid the foundation of the great Ephesian temple, and which were made the lasting tests of old boundaries and l

appear, or to have entered their graves without the old habit of flowers. The urn of Philopoemen was so laden with flowers and ribbons, that it afforded no sight of itself. The rigid Lycurgus allowed olive and myrtle. The Athenians might fairly except against the practice of Democritus, to be buried up in honey, as fearing to embezzle a great commodity of their country, and the best of that kind in Europe. But Plato seemed too frugally politick, who allowed no larger monument than would contain four heroick verses, and designed the most barren ground for sepulture: though we can- not commend the goodness of that sepulchral ground which was set at no higher rate than the mean salary of Judas.

ngle ashes; without confused burnings they affectionately com- pounded their bones; passionately endeavouring to continue their living unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn by urn, and touch b

natomies,+ and jugglers showed tricks with skeletons. When fiddlers made not so pleasant mirth as fencers

o semiustulandum.

b.

cti, ... ergo dum

A barbarous pasti

ling globe, with the

nds, ready to cut i

s of libation upon old sepulchral monuments. In the Jewish hypogaeum and subter- ranean cell at Rome, was little observable beside the variety of lamps and frequent draughts of Anthony and Jerome we meet with thigh-bones and death's-heads; but the cemeterial cells of ancient Christians and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories; not decl

ords of memorable persons. There is scarce any philosopher but dies twice or thrice in Laertius; nor almost any life without two or three deaths in Plutarch;

ies, rolled away, wherein, if they failed, they lo

s man

heir real tombs, many have found honorary and empty sepulchres. The variety of Homer's monuments made him of various countries. Euripi

Where profit hath prompted, no age hath wanted such miners. For which the most barbarous expilators found the most civil rhetorick. Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the ground, is reasonably resumed

rannuate such expectations; bones, hairs, nails, and teeth of the dead, were the treasures of old sorcerers. In vain we revive such practices; present supers

to make a distinct col- lection and overlooked not Pyrrhus his toe. Some pro- vision they might make by fictile vessels, coverings, tiles, or flat stones, upon and about the body (and in the same field, not far from these urns, many stones were found underground), as also by careful separation of extraneous matter composing and raking up the burnt bones with forks, observable in that notable lamp of Galvanus Mar

Even bones themselves, reduced into ashes, do abate a notable proportion. And consisting much of a volatile salt, when that is fired out, make a light kind of cinders. Although their bulk be dis- proportionable to their weig

in Plutarch. But in the plague of Athens, one private pyre served two or three intruders; and the Saracens burnt in large heaps, by the king of Castile, showed how little fuel sufficeth. Th

wherein fire finds flame even from bones, and some fuel almost from all parts; though the metropolis of humidity+ seems least disposed unto it, which might render the skulls of these urns less

ath the ashes of his friend, hath an everlasting treasure; where fire taketh leave, corruption slowly enters. In bones well burnt, fire makes a wall against i

eek o

>Hippocrates

a of her husb

ereof all things are but a colony; and which, if time permits

sessions; and also agreeable unto Roman practice to bury by highways, whereby their monu- ments were under eye:-memorials of themselves, and mementoes of mortality unto living passengers; whom the epitaphs of great ones were fain to beg to stay and look upon them,-a language though sometimes used, not so proper in church inscriptions.* The

erial and narrower burying-places, to avoid confusion and cross-position, a certain posture were to be admitted: which even Pagan civility observed. The Persians lay north and sout

te, v

but we applaud not the hand of the painter, in exalting his cross so high above those on either side: since hereof we find no

-bowls, and our bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport ou

. Teeth, bones, and hair, give the most lasting defiance to corruption. In an hydropical body, ten years buried in the churchyard, we met with a fat con- cretion, where the nitre of the earth, and the salt and lixivious liquor of the body, had coagulated large lumps of fat into the consistence of the hardest Castile soap, whereof part remaineth with us.<4> After a battle with

n 1530, and dug up

ereof urnal fragments afford but a bad conjecture, and have this disadvantage of grave inter- ments, that they leave us ignorant of most personal dis- coveries. For since bones afford not only rectitude and stability but figure unto the body, it is no impossible physiognomy to conjecture at fleshy appendencies, and after what shape the muscles and carnous parts might hang in their full consistencies. A full-spread cariola shows a well-shaped horse behind; handsome formed skulls give some analogy of fleshy resemblance. A critic

may think them good monuments of persons past, little

at. xx

d monuments about the holy city. Some think the ancient patriarchs so earnestly desired to lay their bones in Canaan, as hoping to make a part of that resurrection; and, though thirty miles from Mount Calvary, at least to lie in that region which should produce the first-fruits of the dead. And if, according to l