Excerpt from Sculptured Tombs of Hellas<br><br>The monuments erected to the dead belong in every country, like funeral customs generally, to a deeper stratum of the national consciousness than do openly expressed beliefs. This is, in fact, a phase of the general law that in the history of religion cultus is more venerable and more conservative than doctrine. And as, further, the beliefs which find an expression in literature are those of the most enlightened and the least conservative spirits, it is misleading if one attempts to learn from the higher literature of a people how the masses really think and feel in regard to death and the life which lies beyond death.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.