www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Death.htm

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Attitudes toward death and afterlife
The nature of the soul
The nature of the underworld
Communication between the living and the dead
Ideas about the afterlife: punishment and reward

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Ideas evolved and changed over time:
Archaic view of death is grim (Homer, Archaic
Greek poets)
Soul ( psyche; eidolon existence
) possesses a shadowy
Underworld = warehouse for the dead (reward and punishment absent)
Concept of the soul grows more elaborate between archaic and later classical periods
Concept of the afterlife evolves over time – emergence of idea of reward and punishment after death

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“You will die and be silent. No memory will be left you, no regret when you are gone. You have never touched the Muses’ flowers. Shadowy forever in Death’s realm, you will be wafted on a ghost’s fluttering wings, one of the black dead.” (Sappho, fr.58, )
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“ Sweet Youth no more will tarry, My friend a while ago;
Now white's the head I carry,
And grey my temples grow,
My teeth - a ragged row.
To taste the joy of living
But little space have I,
And torn with sick misgiving
I can but sob and sigh,
So deep the dead men lie.
So deep their place and dismal, All means, be sure, they lack Down in the murk abysmal To scale the upward track And win their journey back .” (Anacreon, 570-485 BC) www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Death.htm

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Where the soul continues to live an incorporeal and pointless existence
The dead long to be among the light and the living
Death is an equalizer - everyone shares the same fate at death since the dead are senseless they must be led to the underworld ( usually by Hermes
)

Homer
The Dead
Odyssey 11.466-76
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“So we stood there exchanging our sad words, grieving both together and shedding the big tears. After this thre came to us the soul of Peleus’ son, Achilleus, and the soul of Patroklos and the soul of stately Antilochos, and the soul of Aias, who for beauty and stature was greatest of all the Danaans, next to the stately son of
Peleus. The soul of swift-footed Achilleus, ..knew me, and full of lamentation he spoke to me in winged words:
“Son of Laertes and seed of Zeus, resourceful Odysseus, hard man, what made you think of this bigger endeavour, how could you endure to come down here to
Hades’ place, where the senseless dead men dwell, mere imitations of perished mortals?” (trs. R. Lattimore)

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Enkidu dreams of the Underworld
Epic of Gilgamesh ( 3 rd millennium BCE)
“There is a house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness. I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth, their crowns put away forever; rulers and princes, all those who once wore kingly crowns and ruled the world in the days of old. They who stood in the place of gods like Anu and Enlil, stood now like servants to fetch baked meats in the house of dust, to carry cooked meat and cold water from the water-skin. In the house of dust which I entered were high priests and acolytes, priests of incantation and of ecstasy; there were servers of the temple, and there was Etana, that king of Kish whom the eagle had carried to heaven in the days of old. I saw also
Samuqan, god of cattle, and there was Ereshkigal the Queen of the
Underworld; and Belit-Sheri squatted in front of her, she who is the recorded of the gods and keeps the book of death. She held a tablet from which she read. She raised her head, she saw me and spoke:
‘Who has brought this one here?’ Then I awoke like a man drained of blood who wanders alone in a waste of rushes.” (N.K. Sandars,
1960)

Metamorphoses
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“And there they wander the bloodless boneless disembodied spirits, crowding the forum or the royal palace or going through the motions they made while living.”

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Located under the Earth
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Earthly entrance is located at the edges of the
(inhabited world)
 bordered by four rivers: 1. Styx
(Abhorrent), 2. Acheron (Distress), 3.
Cocytus (Lament), 4. Phelgethon
(Flaming)

Odyssey
The Entrance to the Underworld
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“Then, when we had got down to the sea shore we drew our ship into the water and got her mast and sails into her; we also put the sheep on board and took our places, weeping and in great distress of mind. Circe, that great and cunning goddess, sent us a fair wind that blew dead aft and stayed steadily with us keeping our sails all the time well filled; so we did whatever wanted doing to the ship's gear and let her go as the wind and helmsman headed her. All day long her sails were full as she held her course over the sea, but when the sun went down and darkness was over all the earth, we got into the deep waters of the river Oceanus, where lie the land and city of the Cimmerians who live enshrouded in mist and darkness which the rays of the sun never pierce neither at his rising nor as he goes down again out of the heavens, but the poor wretches live in one long melancholy night. When we got there we beached the ship, took the sheep out of her, and went along by the waters of Oceanus till we came to the place of which Circe had told us.” http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/homer/ody/ody10.htm

Metamorphoses
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“Picture a path which is overcast by funeral yew trees, sloping down to the realms below through a deathly silence. Along this path, as the mist curls up from the motionless Styx, the incoming shades are descending, the ghosts of the recently buried – a rugged region, pervaded by pallor and cold, where the alien spirits can find no sign to the road which leads to the Stygian city and to the dreadful palace of gloomy Dis. The city has room for all, with its hundred approaches and gates that are everywhere open. As all the rivers on earth flow into the sea, so Hades admits every soul that arrives; it is never too small for its new population and never begins to feel crowded.”

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Greeks believed that the soul survived as a shade or image ( eidolon )
The soul associated with breath (i.e. psyche , anima, spiritus = all derivatives of “breath”)
At death the breath/soul leaves the body
The dead envy the living and were thought to cause harm at times
More typically, they were though to descend to the underworld

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“O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying. I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead”
(Homer, The Odyssey 11,488-493).

Odysseus meets his Mother
Homer, Odyssey, 11. 205 ff.
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“So she spoke, but I, pondering it in my heart, yet wished to take the soul of my dead mother in my arms.
Three times I started toward her, and my heart was urgent to hold her, and three times she fluttered out of my hands like a shadow or a dream, and the sorrow sharpened at the heart within me, and so I spoke to her and addressed here in winged words, saying: “Mother, why will you not wait for me, when I am trying to hold you, so that even in Hades with our arms embracing we can both take the satisfaction of dismal mourning? Or are you nothing but an image that proud Persephone sent my w ay, to make me grieve all the more for sorrow?” ..my queenly mother answered quickly: “Oh my child, ill-fated beyond all other mortals, this is not

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Persephone, daughter of Zeus, beguiling you but it is only what happens,when they die, to all mortals, the sinews no longer hold the flesh and the bones together,and once the spirit has left the white bones, all the rest of the body is made subject to the fire’s strong fury, but the soul flitters out like a dream and flies away.
Therefore you must strive back toward the light again with all speed; but remember these things for your wife, so you may tell her hereafter.”
(translated by Richmond Lattimore)

Katabasis
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Only heroes are able to go to underworld and return (Sumerian Enkidu ‘dreamed’ of the underworld)
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Odysseus
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Heracles
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Orpheus
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Aeneas

Katabasis
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“As a twelfth labor Heracles was ordered to bring
Cerberus from Hades. This creature had three dog heads, the tale of a serpent, and heads of different kinds of snakes down its back. Before starting after it.
Heracles went to Eumolpus at Eleusis, wishing to be initiated into the mysteries….When the souls saw him they all fled, except Meleager and the Gorgon Medusa.
Heracles drew his sword at the Gorgon thinking that she was alive, but then learned from Hermes that she was a harmless wraith….Wishing to offer blood to the souls, he slaughtered one of the cattle of Hades….When he asked
Pluto for Cerberus, the god invited him to lead the creature away if he could subdue him without using the weapons he was carrying.” (Apollodorus, library 5.12,)

Katabasis
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“Making his way through the shadowy tribes and the ghosts of the burried, he came to Proserpina, throned beside the Lord of the
Shadows who rules that dismal domain; and plucking on the strings of his lyre, he bagan:’You powers divine of the subterranean kingdom, where all of mortal creation must one day sink to our doom, if you will give me permission to tell you the truth unvarnished by shifty pretenses….I have come here to search for my wife, cut off in the years of her youth when a viper she trampled discharged venom inside her ankle….As Orpheus pleaded his cause…he moved the bloodless spirits to tears….Orpheus was told he could lead her away on one condition: to walk in front and never look back until he had left the vale of Avernus….Not far to go now; the exit to Earth and the light was ahead! But Orpheus was frightened his love was falling behind; he was desperate to see her.
He turned and at once she shrank back into the dark. She stretched out her arms to him, struggled to feel his hands on her own, but all she was able to catch, poor soul, was the yielding air.” (Ovid,
Metamorphoses , 10.13-58. Trans. D. Braeburn, 2004)

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No punishment for the sins of mortals.
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Only some famous mythical figures were punished for sins after death (i.e.
Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityos, Ixion).
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Later writers connect the behavior of the living with punishment after death.

Odyssey
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“Then I saw Minos son of Jove with his golden sceptre in his hand sitting in judgement on the dead, and the ghosts were gathered sitting and standing round him in the spacious house of Hades, to learn his sentences upon them…. And I saw Tityus son of Gaia stretched upon the plain and covering some nine acres of ground.
Two vultures on either side of him were digging their beaks into his liver, and he kept on trying to beat them off with his hands, but could not; for he had violated
Jove's mistress Leto as she was going through Panopeus on her way to Pytho…. I saw also the dreadful fate of
Tantalus, who stood in a lake that reached his chin; he was dying to quench his thirst, but could never reach the water, for whenever the poor creature stooped to drink, it dried up and vanished, so that there was nothing but dry ground- parched by the spite of heaven.

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There were tall trees, moreover, that shed their fruit over his head- pears, pomegranates, apples, sweet figs and juicy olives, but whenever the poor creature stretched out his hand to take some, the wind tossed the branches back again to the clouds…. And I saw
Sisyphus at his endless task raising his prodigious stone with both his hands. With hands and feet he' tried to roll it up to the top of the hill, but always, just before he could roll it over on to the other side, its weight would be too much for him, and the pitiless stone would come thundering down again on to the plain. Then he would begin trying to push it up hill again, and the sweat ran off him and the steam rose after him.”

http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical/gallery/tantalus.jpg
Tantalus
Willi Glasauer
Pencil drawing, 1864

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“The punishment suffered by Tantalos in Hades is to have a stone suspended over him, and remain perpetually in a lake, seeing at either side of his shoulders fruit-laden trees growing by its banks; the water grazes his chin, but when he wants to drink from it, the water dries up, and when he wants to feed from the fruit, the trees and their frits are raised by the winds as high as the clouds. It is said by some tht he suffers this punishment because he divulged the secrets of the gods to men and tried to share ambrosia with his friends.” (Apollodorus, the
Library 12.2)

www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/CGPrograms/Dict/ASP/Open...
Athenian black-figure clay vase, about 510 BC. Leiden, National Museum of Antiquities PC 49 © National Museum of Antiquities

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“Sisyphus undergoes the punishment in Hades of rolling a rock with his hands and head in an attempt to roll it over the top of a hill; but however hard he pushes it, it forces its way back down again. He suffers this punishment because of Aegina, daughter of Asopos; for
Zeus had carried her off in secret, and Sisyphos is said to have revealed this to Asopos, who went in search of her.” (R. Hard)
Apollodorus was a Greek mythographer who lived in the
2 nd century BCE
Important: note how he connects his punishment to his crime.

Titian, 1549 www.latein-pagina.de/ovid/ovid_m4.htm

Apollodorus, 1.4.1
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“Now when Leto came to Pytho, she was seen by Tityos, who was overcome by desire and seized her in his arms; but she called her children to her aid, and they shot him down with their arrows.Tityos suffers punishment even after his death, for vultures feed on his heart in Hades.”
(trsl. R. Hard)

www.zikaden.de/ungedruckt/Ixion%20der%20Mensc...

Apollodorus, 3.16.20
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“Ixion conceived a passion for Hera and tried to take her by force. Hera reported the matter to Zeus, and Zeus, wanting to know whether it was really the case, fashioned a cloud in Hera’s likeness and laid it down beside Ixion. When Ixion boasted that he had slept with Hera, Zeus fastened him to a wheel on which, as a punishment, he is whirled through the air by the force of the winds.”

Metamorphoses
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“She had come to the House of the Damned: here was the giant Tityos, sprawling across nine acres, guts exposed to the vultures. There was
Tantalus, failing to drink any water or seize the elusive fruit-tree above him; Sisyphus, pushing or chasing the rock which keeps rolling downwards; Ixion, pursuing and running away from himself on his wheel; and Danaus’ daughters, who dared to murder their cousin husbands, always refilling their jars with water, but only to lose it.” (Trans. D. Raeburn, 2004)

Virgil,
6.57-253
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“Here voices and loud lamentations echo: the souls of infants weeping at the very first threshold – torn away by the black day, deprived of their sweet life, ripped from the breast, plunged into bitter death. And next to them are those condemned to die upon false charges.
These places have not been assigned, indeed, without a lot, without a judge; for here Minos is magistrate. He shakes the urn and calls on the assembly to be silent, to learn the lives of men and their misdeeds. The land that lies beyond belongs to those who, although innocent, took death by their own hands; hating the light, they threw away their lives. But now they long for the upper air, and even to bear want and trials there…..For here the road divides in two directions: on the right it runs beneath the ramparts of Great Dis, this is our highway to
Elysium; the wicked are punished on the left – that path leads to godless Tartarus.

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….Aeneas suddenly looks back: beneath a rock upon his left he sees a broad fortress encircled by a triple wall and girdled by a rapid flood of flames that rage:
Tartarean Phlegethon whirling resounding rocks….there sits Tisiphone, who wears a bloody mantle. She guards the entrance, sleepless night and day. Both groans and savage scourgings echo there, and then the clang of iron and dragging chains….The king of these harsh realms is
Rhadamanthus the Gnosian: he hears men’s crimes and then chastises and compels confession for those guilts that anyone, rejoicing, hid – but uselessly – within the world above, delaying his atonement until too late, beyond the time of death. Tisiphone is at once the avenger, armed with whips; she leaps upon the guilty, lashing them; in her left hand she grips her gruesome vipers and calls her savage company of sisters.”

Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy
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“I’m here to ship you to the other side, to burning, freezing, to eternal darkness….Then all those poor exhausted naked souls turned pale and shook with trembling chattering teeth, hearing the bitter words that told their fate.
They cursed their god, the parents who begat them, their race, the time and place of their conception; they cursed the day on which they saw the light. And now together, crowded in one mass, they drew with screams of pain to the cursed shore that waits for every man that fears not God.” ( Inferno
Powell, 1995)
3. 87-117, Adapted from B.

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Tartarus located under the earth
Place of eternal darkness
Souls of the dead exist as shades
Punishment and despair
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Hell located under the earth
Place of eternal darkness
Souls exist as shades
Punishment and despair

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The dead communicate with the living:
1. by Dreams
2. Through appropriate ritual,
3. When visited directly (i.e. Katabasis)

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“Here Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, while I drew my sword and dug the trench a cubit each way. I made a drink-offering to all the dead, first with honey and milk, then with wine, and thirdly with water, and I sprinkled white barley meal over the whole, praying earnestly to the poor feckless ghosts, and promising them that when I got back to Ithaca I would sacrifice a barren heifer for them, the best I had, and would load the pyre with good things. I also particularly promised that Teiresias should have a black sheep to himself, the best in all my flocks. When I had prayed sufficiently to the dead, I cut the throats of the two sheep and let the blood run into the trench, whereon the ghosts came trooping up from Erebus- brides, young bachelors, old men worn out with toil, maids who had been crossed in love, and brave men who had been killed in battle, with fear.

 their armour still smirched with blood; they came from every quarter and flitted round the trench with a strange kind of screaming sound that made me turn pale with When I saw them coming I told the men to be quick and flay the carcasses of the two dead sheep and make burnt offerings of them, and at the same time to repeat prayers to Hades and to Proserpine; but I sat where I was with my sword drawn and would not let the poor feckless ghosts come near the blood till Teiresias should have answered my questions.”
(Homer, Odyssey 11. 23ff

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Concept evolves gradually.
No reward for “good” mortals exists after death in the Homeric world.
Elysium was only for children of gods and goddesses.
Only Later mythographers describe rewards for a good life

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“But for you, Menalaos, O fostered of Zeus, it is not the gods’ will that you shall die and go to your end in horse-pasturing Argos, but the immortals will convoy you to the Elysian Field, and the limits of the earth, where fair-haired
Rhadamanthys is, where there is made the easiest life for mortals, for there is no snow, nor much winter there, but always the stream of
Ocean sends up breezes of the West Wind blowing briskly for the refreshment of mortals.
This, because Helen is yours and you are son-inlaw therefore to Zeus.”
(Homer, Odyssey . 4.561-570.