SPARTAN DEATH AND FUNERARY CUSTOMS
The Spartans were one of, if the only Greek city-state that did not bury their dead apart from the living. Particularly in Athens, the Greeks thought of death as an unsettling step into the unknown, though they did treat their dead with respect. Spartans, whilst respectful and even reverent of the dead, had much more simplistic funerals than Athens or other city-states.
They wrapped the body in a red or scarlet cape, in the case of the men it tended to be the ceremonial cape they wore to war. The majority of Spartan graves were unmarked and without any headstones to symbolize where the person was buried, providing modern historians with very little evidence to devise theories from. Only Spartan women who had died in childbirth and men who had died in battle were given a headstone or marked grave.
Fallen Spartan soldiers were often buried on the battlefield despite the symbolic tradition of carrying their corpses home, due to the difficulty transporting what was often large numbers of bodies long distances. Small, simple headstones were used in the case of the fallen in battle, with the inscription "in war" chiseled into the surface.