LACRYMATORY, a modern word employed to describe a class of small vessels of terra-cotta, or, more frequently, of glass, found in Roman and late Greek tombs, and fancifully supposed to have been bottles into which mourners dropped their tears. They were used to contain unguents, and it is to the need of unguents at funeral ceremonies that the finding of so many of these vessels in tombs is due. They are shaped like a spindle, or a flask with a long small neck and a body in the form of a bulb.