Volume 1

The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin.

  • Thomas Browne
Date:
1890-1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of Sir Thomas Browne / edited by Simon Wilkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    Eomans than most opmion, or Pliny seems to allow: for (beside the old table laws of burning or burying within the city,* of making the funeral fire with planed wood, or quenching the fire with wine), Manlius the consul burnt the body of his son: Numa, by special clause of his will, was not burnt but buried; and Bemus was solemnly burned, according to the description of Ovid.f Cornelius Sylla was not the first whose body was burned in Eome, but the first of the Cornelian family; which, being indifferently, not frequently used before; from that time spread, and became the prevalent practice. Not totally pursued in the highest run of cremation ; for when even crows were funerally burnt, Poppfea the wife of Nero found a peculiar grave interment. Now as all customs were founded upon some bottom of reason, so there wanted not grounds for this ; according to several apprehensions of the most rational dissolution. Some being of the opinion of Thales, that water was the original of all things, thought it most equaP to submit unto the principle of putrefaction, and conclude in a moist relentment.^ Others conceived it most natural to end in fire, as due unto the master principle in the composition, according to the doctrine of Heraclitus; and therefore heaped up large piles, more actively to waft them toward that element, whereby they also declined a visi- ble degeneration into worms, and left a lasting parcel of their composition. Some apprehended a purifying virtue in fire, refining the grosser commixture, and firing out the aethereal particles so deeply immersed in it. And such as by tradition or rational conjecture held any hint of the final pyre of all things ; or that this element at last must be too hard for all the rest; might conceive most naturally of the fiery dissolution. Others pretending no natural grounds, politickly declined * 12 Tabul. part i. dejuresacro. Hominem, mortuum in urbe nesepe- lito, nm;e unto, torn. 2. Rogum ascid ne polilo, torn. 4. Item Vigeneri Annotat. in lAvium, et Alex, cum Tiraquello. Roscinm cum, Dempstero. t Ultijno pi-olata suhdila flamma rogo. De Fast. lib. iv. cum Car. Neapol. Anaptyxi. ' most equal.] Most equitable. ' relmtment.] Dissolution : not in Johnson.
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