Note how this procession is organized.  The Athenian war dead were burned on the field of battle and their bones returned to Athens for this funeral. The cypress coffins, the carriages on which they are carried, the entire organization of the event reveal considerable expense.  But the expense is carried, not by the family that normally organizes and benefits from such displays, but by the polis.  Even the "tribes" mentioned at 2.34.2 are not family groups but geographical-political formations established by Cleisthenes at the foundation of Athenian democracy (in the years following 508 BCE) and distributed around Attica in "thirds":  as if Philadelphia were divided into ten political blocks, one third of each of which came from Chestnut Hill and the other two thirds from two other areas of the city.  These three groups would have to decide on policy that worked for all of them and vote accordingly.

In short, this seemingly innocuous paragraph is politically weighty, reflecting the displacement of family power and of structures of obligation by that of the polis.