With rich flames, and hired tears, they solemnized their obsequies.

This line comes from Sir Thomas Browne’s antiquarian meditation on ancient burial customs in "Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial" (1658), prompted by the discovery of Roman-era funerary urns in Norfolk. In surveying how different civilizations treated the dead, Browne contrasts elaborate, status-conscious funerals—marked by costly pyres (“rich flames”) and professional mourners (“hired tears”)—with the stark fact that time levels all memorials. The phrase occurs amid his description of classical obsequies and the theatrical, public character of elite funerary display, which he uses as a springboard for broader reflections on vanity, remembrance, and the limits of human commemoration.

Browne compresses a critique of funerary ostentation into a single, vivid antithesis: genuine grief is replaced by spectacle. “Rich flames” suggests expensive cremation rites and the consumption of wealth in the service of reputation; “hired tears” points to purchased emotion—mourning as performance rather than feeling. The sentence’s ceremonial cadence mimics the very pomp it questions, underscoring Browne’s theme that human beings try to outface mortality with pageantry. In "Urn-Burial," such details become evidence for a larger moral: however grand the rites, death reduces worldly distinctions, and the desire to secure lasting fame through ritual is finally fragile and self-deceiving.