given
in marriage to carry with her any personal ornaments and appurtenances,
except to the extent of three robes and certain matters of furniture not
very valuable. Solon further imposed upon women several restraints in
regard to proceeding at the obsequies of deceased relatives. He forbade
profuse demonstrations of sorrow, singing of composed dirges, and
costly sacrifices and contributions. He limited strictly the quantity of
meat and drink admissible for the funeral banquet, and prohibited
nocturnal exit, except in a car and with a light. It appears that both
in Greece and Rome, the feelings of duty and affection on the part of
surviving relatives prompted them to ruinous expense in a funeral, as
well as to unmeasured effusions both of grief and conviviality; and the
general necessity experienced for legal restriction is attested by the
remark of Plutarch, that similar prohibitions to those enacted by Solon
were likewise in force at his native town of Chaeronea.

Other penal enactments of Solon are yet to be mentioned. He forbade
absolutely evil speaking with respect to the dead. He forbade it
likewise with respect to the living, either in a temple or before judges
or archons, or at any public festival--on pain of a forfeit of three
drachmas to the person aggrieved, and two more to the public treasury.
How mild the general character of his punishments was, may be judged by
this law against foul language, not less than by the law before
mentioned against rape. Both the one and the other of these offences
were much more severely dealt with under the subsequent law of
democratical Athens. The peremptory edict against speaking ill of a
deceased person, though doubtless springing in a great degree from
disinterested repugnance, is traceable also in part to that fear of the
wrath of the departed which strongly possessed the early Greek mind.

It seems generally that Solon determined by law the outlay for the
public sacrifices, though we do not know what were his particular
directions. We are told that he reckoned a sheep and a medimnus (of
wheat or barley?) as equivalent, either of them, to a drachma, and that
he also prescribed the prices to be paid for first-rate oxen intended
for solemn occasions. But it astonishes us to see the large recompense
which he awarded out of the public treasury to a victor at the Olympic
or Isthmian games: to the former, five hundred drachmas, equal to one
year's income of the highest of the