Death is very common in Homeric epics and therefore, so are funerals. Homer spends a lot of time describing these funerals – he goes to great lengths to give a very detailed description of how the deceased are mourned and taken care of, especially for his heroes. Though similarities are easily located in texts and archaeological evidence, there is no clearly defined vantage point for the rise of hero cults as a consequence of the spread of Homeric poems in Greece and adjacent areas. Hero cults, across the Mediterranean and Europe tend to be conditioned by complex sociological, political, and religious reasons, although similarities are easily located in texts and archaeological evidence. However, one must not neglect the transmission of the heroic epic through its oral tradition: doubtless, they had spread and transmitted orally from generation to generation – some were written down but a majority of them were lost.
