Verse 14. "And laid him in the bed" - It is very likely that the body of Asa was burnt; that the bed spoken of here was a funeral pyre, on which much spices and odouriferous woods had been placed; and then they set fire to the whole and consumed the body with the aromatics. Some think the body was not burned, but the aromatics only, in honour of the king.
How the ancients treated the bodies of the illustrious dead we learn from Virgil, in the funeral rites paid to Misenus.
Nec minus interea Misenum in littore Teucri Flebant, et cineri ingrato suprema ferebant.
Principio pinguem taedis et robore secto Ingentem struxere pyram: cui frondibus atris Intexunt latera, et ferales ante cupressas Constituunt, decorantque super fulgentibus armis, &c. AEN. vi. 214.
"Meanwhile the Trojan troops, with weeping eyes, To dead Misenus pay their obsequies.
First from the ground a lofty pile they rear Of pitch trees, oaks, and pines, and unctuous fir.
The fabric's front with cypress twigs they strew, And stick the sides with boughs of baleful yew.
The topmost part his glittering arms adorn: Warm waters, then, in brazen caldrons borne Are poured to wash his body joint by joint, And fragrant oils the stiffen'd limbs anoint.
With groans and cries Misenus they deplore: Then on a bier, with purple cover'd o'er, The breathless body thus bewail'd they lay, And fire the pile (their faces turn'd away.) Such reverend rites their fathers used to pay.
Pure oil and incense on the fire they throw, And fat of victims which their friends bestow.
These gifts the greedy flames to dust devour, Then on the living coals red wine they pour.
And last the relics by themselves dispose, Which in a brazen urn the priests enclose.
Old Corineus compass'd thrice the crew, And dipp'd an olive branch in holy dew; Which thrice he sprinkled round, and thrice aloud Invoked the dead, and then dismiss'd the crowd." DRYDEN.
All these rites are of Asiatic extraction. Virgil borrows almost every circumstance from Homer; (see Iliad, xxiii., ver. 164, &c.;) and we well know that Homer ever describes Asiatic manners. Sometimes, especially in war, several captives were sacrificed to the manes of the departed hero. So, in the place above, the mean-souled, ferocious demon, ACHILLES, is represented sacrificing twelve Trojan captives to the ghost of his friend Patroclus. Urns containing the ashes and half-calcined bones of the dead occur frequently in barrows or tumuli in this country; most of them, no doubt, the work of the Romans. But all ancient nations, in funeral matters, have nearly the same rites.
