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Music is an art that, as research has proved, played a very important role in many events of public and private life of ancient Greeks. However, even though this sounds reasonable for joyful occasions, such as wedding ceremonies or manifestations of victory, it seems that music played a fundamental role in doleful events, as well. Such an event was the burial ceremony that took place after the death of a member of the community, in which a vocal musical piece was performed by the relatives of the dead or by other professional mourners. This musical form is called by the ancient authors threnos or goos and the main sources for these terms are Homer and also the Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In the writings of these authors there are many references to threnos and particularly to some details about the identity of the performer or the exact stage of the ceremony in which this musical form was performed. Unfortunately, the music of threnos today is lost, but there is a lot of other information that we can gather both from ancient authors and iconography, as well. More specifically, there are many burial scenes that decorate a great number of vases, especially from Attica. These scenes picture figures, that have their hands on their heads or simply outspread ahead. According to scholars, these figures mourn and are surrounded by other figures who are the listeners who seem to pay attention to the song that is performed by the mourners. So, thanks to iconography, we can imagine in every detail the scene, in which threnos was performed, even though the music of this form of music is nowadays totally lost.

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Antigoni Ntousiopoulou 391
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