resting-places.[25] No bitterer pang can be added to death than for
the white bones of the dead to lie far away, washed by chill rains, or
mouldering on a strange beach with the screaming seagulls above
them.[26]

This last aspect of death was the one upon which the art of the
epigrammatist lavished its utmost resources. From first to last the
Greeks were a seafaring people, and death at sea was always present to
them as a common occurrence. The Mediterranean was the great highway
of the world's journeying and traffic. All winter through, travel
almost ceased on it except for those who could not avoid it, and whom
desire or gain or urgence of business drove forth across stormy and
perilous waters; with spring there came, year by year, a sort of
breaking-up of the frost, and the seas were all at once covered with a
swarm of shipping. From Egypt and Syria fleets bore the produce of the
East westward; from the pillars of Hercules galleys came laden with
the precious ores of Spain and Britain; through the Propontis streamed
the long convoys of corn-ships from the Euxine with their loads of
wheat. Across the Aegean from island to island, along its shores from
port to port, ran continually the tide of local commerce, the crowds
of tourists and emigrants, the masses of people and merchandise drawn
hither and thither in the track of armies, or bound to and from shows
and festivals and markets. The fishing industry, at least in the later
Greek period, employed the whole population of small islands and
seaside towns. Among those thousands of vessels many must, every year,
have come to harm in those difficult channels and treacherous seas.
And death at sea had a great horror and anguish attached to it; the
engulfing in darkness, the vain struggles for life, the loss of burial
rites and all the last offices that can be paid to death, made it none
the less terrible that it was so common. From the Odyssey downward