Becker adds a more serious objection. He argues from a passage in which Plato explains that the laying-out, the procession and the burial of a deceased priest are different from those observed for other citizens; and then mentions, among these differences, that the whole of his funeral robe must be white[61]. Pausanias also remarks[62] that, when Aristodemus dreams that his murdered daughter came to him and gave him a golden crown and a white vestment, he believes the vision to portend his death, since “it is the custom among the Messenians to bury the most illustrious persons crowned and wrapped in a white garment.” If we take those statements as correct readings, the only way to explain the apparent exception to the general rule, is to note that the white robe is, in each case, a mere incident among the peculiarities awarded the mighty who have died, and the color, of itself, is not necessarily extraordinary. But it is almost certain, in the case of Becker’s citation, that he has taken an old reading, that has now been replaced by a more satisfactory text. By the addition of another word, the discrepancy disappears and the obviously correct rendering is, “and let every one [of those who attended the funeral] wear a robe entirely white[63].”
On the other hand, even if we should disregard the fact that black seems usually to have been the color of the mourner’s dress, and the necessary consequence that the shroud of the deceased could hardly have been of the same color, we certainly still have other good authority for supposing the dead person to have been robed in white.
Archilochus points one of his verses with a beautiful metaphor by indirectly likening the whiteness of the ashes to which the corpse has been reduced to the “pure robe” of death[64].
Artemidorus states clearly in his work on the interpretation of dreams that the appearance to a sick man of “white garments indicates death, because the dead are wont to be buried in white; while the black dress prophesies safety, since not those who have died, but those who are in mourning use the latter dress[65].” Finally, in the scene where the Greeks prepare the body of Patroclus for burial, after drawing on some underwear of fine linen, over all they cover the hero’s body with a snowy funeral robe[66]. The Cean inscription directs that the dead be wrapped in three white cloths[67]. Aeschines arraigns Demosthenes because he appeared in a white garment when he should have been in mourning for his only daughter[68].