The principle ceremony performed at the prothesis was the singing of laments by female relatives and, in some cases, hired mourners. The importance of the lament may have equaled that of burial. Surviving dirges suggest that they were primarily an opportunity for mourners to indulge in self pity without shame. These laments bemoaned the effects which the death of a loved one has on their own lives. The most personal form of lament was known as the goos and it mourned the memory of the life which lamenters shared with the deceased, and the bitterness of the loss. The goos was improvised and was only sung by relatives or close friends of the dead. This very personal lament differed in style and content form the threnos, a formal dirge sung by professional mourners called threnon exarchoi (leaders of the dirge). Solon attempted to abolish these hired singers by banning the singing of prepared laments. The singing of the laments also involved movement around the bier where the corpse was laid.
Lamentations were viewed as strictly feminine and it was considered inappropriate for a man to lament. Plato, in The Republic, states, "We surely say that a decent man will believe that... being dead is not a terrible thing...There is no further need for wailings and lamentations... They are useless to women who want to be decent, let alone men." In this quote, laments are found to be indecent and self-pitying, understandable for a woman but completely unacceptable for a man. In his Letter to Apollonius, Plutarch states, "Mourning is something feminine, weak, ignoble." Still, despite these negative views of laments, they were an integral part of the prothesis and funerary ritual.