A strict observance of the rites was considered essential in the pagan religion: when Circe, the Sorceress, persuades Ulysses to descend into Hades, she describes him in every detail the sacrifices he should make to gain the infernal Gods' favours.

The spirit of the dead could not rest in peace if the burial rites were not strictly observed. Herodotus tells in his History (5, 92) that, at the end of the 7-th century b.C., Periander, the Corynth tyrant, sends legates to Ephyra's Nekromanteion to question his wife's spirit, Melissa, about where she had hidden a treasure a friend of theirs had entrusted them with. When the ambassadors reach the oracle, Melissa's spirit appears to them naked and suffering from cold as, when cremated, her funeral clothes had not been burnt with her. She, therefore, while denying the legates the information they request, tells them the following message to be reported to Periander:
 

When the message reaches its destination, Periander does not question its genuineness as he well recalls last time he had slept with his wife.
In order to remedy his rite unobservance, he calls all Corynth women to a festival by Hera's temple and as they reach the place wearing their best clothes, he orders them to undress; then he makes all their clothes piled up and burnt in a fire. Melissa's appeased spirit, can now reveal the secret of the treasure to the legates Periander has sent back to Nekromanteion.