more important than the body. The Thracians believed that the souls of the dead either returned to the world of the living or instead attained a greater form of happiness than they did during their mortal lives. Healing Ancient Thracian healers were renowned in the ancient world. The Thracian healers believed that everything good or bad for the body was derived from the soul, and therefore the soul had to be healed first for the body to then be cured, which was itself based on the Thracian conceptualisation of the soul as more important than the body. The healing was done with the help of chanting which consisted of good talk that brought wisdom to the soul, and therefore the soul's acquisition of wisdom made being healthy easy. Death Due to their belief that death was the threshold to a blissful afterlife, ancient Thracians would calmly and willingly accept death. Suicide All the Thracians held the act of killing oneself in respect because of the belief in the soul's immortality and in death as a transition to this state of immortality. Funerary customs Tombs in Thrace were carved out of the rock as an imitation of the cave, which was an important chthonic symbol connected to the "Dionysian" aspect of in Thracian religion and was connected to 's abode in a cave, as well as the Thracian-derived Greek myths according to which Oeagrus and Calliope conceived the Greek Orpheus in a cave, and Rhesus went to a cave in the silver-rich mountain after his death. Since Thracian society was highly patriarchal and Thracian men were polygamous, whenever a Thracian man died, his wives would compete to decide which one among them was most beloved by their husband, and the deceased's friends pleaded on each wife's behalf. Once a conclusion had been reached concerning which wife was the most beloved one, she was slain over the grave of her husband by her kinsmen and buried with him, while being one of the survivors of this funerary competition was considered to be a disgrace. This tradition was analogous to the ritual immortalisation of the cult of and was based on the Thracian belief in immortality, according to which the only way for a woman's soul to acquire immortality, which was otherwise considered a privilege reserved to men in the highly patriarchal Thracian society, was to be killed over her husband's grave and