A funeral oration or epitaphios logos is a formal speech delivered on the ceremonial occasion of a funeral. Funerary customs comprise the practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from the funeral itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. In ancient Greece and, in particular, in ancient Athens, the funeral oration was deemed an indispensable component of the funeral ritual. The epitaphios logos is regarded as an almost exclusive Athenian creation, although some early elements of such speeches exist in the epos of Homer and in the lyric poems of Pindar. Pericles' Funeral Oration is the earlier extant of the genre. The Athenians are those who set the standard and, therefore, Demosthenes praises them, saying that "you alone of all mankind publicly pronounce over your dead funeral orations, in which you extol the deeds of the brave". Ancient writers name Solon as the man who introduced the funeral oration as an official ritual, "for he said, that it was absurd to give such great honours to those men as ought to be reserved for those only who died in the wars; and their sons he ordered to be educated and bred up at the public expense".