2. COVERED
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Greek View of Death
Ghosts
Geography
Denizens
Famous Inmates
Orpheus and Eurydice
Orphism
Christ as Orpheus
Aeneas’ Descent
NOT COVERED
• Perspective 12.1
• Odysseus’ Journey to
Death’s Realm
• Plato’s “Myth of Er”
• Perspective 12.2
3. THE GREEK VIEW OF DEATH
• Caused by a hostile force
• Natural world
• Human being
• Invisible, intelligible, divine forces
• Bodies either inhumed or cremated
• Soul survives as an eidolon (“image”)
in a separate realm
• Associated with “breath” in many
cultures: anima, anemos, psyche,
spiritus, atma, ruach
• Either dwell in Hades, or, if not
properly put to rest, haunt the
living world
4. GHOSTS
• Considered stupid, able to get lost
easily, interrupt lives of the living
• Must be brought to Hades by a
psychopomp
• Post mortem rituals to ward off angry
ghosts
• Burning most valuable possessions
• Wearing dark clothes to show sadness
• Women loosening hair, scratching face and
breasts to show suffering
• Tombs, “houses” for the dead
• Copying Egyptians, put statues on graves
5. GHOSTS (CONT’D)
• Some hostile for other reasons
• Erinyes, or Furies: Born of Uranus’ blood
mixed with Gaia’s earth, seek vengeance
for crimes (intra-family homicide, breaking
oaths)
• Alecto ("unnameable"), Megaera
("grudging"), and Tisophone ("vengeful
destruction")
• Easily scared
• Wails = flattering, but also drove ghosts
away
• Flocked at weddings
• “FOMO”
• Allowed to “mingle with the living” (p.
306) a few days out of the year
• Halloween!
The Remorse of Orestes by William-Adolphe
Bouguereau, 1862
6. GEOGRAPHY
• Tartarus → “dungeon” beneath
Hades
• 5 rivers
• Plain of Judgment → eternal
1. Styx → hatred
punishment for the damned
2. Acheron → pain
• Elysian Fields → no labors for the
distinguished, ruled by Rhadamanthys 3. Lethe → oblivion,
forgetfulness
• Isles of the Blessed → within
4. Phlegethon → fire
Elysium, eternal paradise for heroes
5. Cocytus → wailing
• Fields of Asphodel → everyone else
9. Rape of
Persephone
c. 1600
HADES: THE UNSEEN ONE
• AKA: Pluto (“enricher”), Polydegmon
(“receiver of many”), Polyxenos (“host
to many”), Dis or Dives (“rich”)
• Brother to Zeus and Poseidon
• Married to Persephone
• Not evil!
• Rules over the Underworld
• Patron of wealth and mineral riches
Archaeological
Museum of
Crete
Hades, Apulian krater
C4th B.C.,
Antikensammlungen,
Munich
• Also associated with: Cerberus, keys,
drinking horn, Narcissus and Cyprus
plants
15. ORPHEUS & EURYDICE
• “son of a Thracian named Oeagrus and a Muse”
(p. 318)
• Talented musician
• Tries to bring his fiancée, Eurydice, back from the
dead
• H & P tell him he can’t look at her as he leads
her up
• He looks, and she shrivels away
• Wanders around, moping
• Wants nothing to do with women → invents
homosexuality
• Returns to Thrace → gets torn to shreds by
Bacchae
16. ORPHISM
• 6th century CE: Orpheus proclaimed a “prophet” of sorts
• “offered ordinary Greeks hope for salvation, a means of ensuring a more
comfortable life after death” (p. 321)
• Texts somewhat preserved
• Orpheus gained knowledge in the underworld and promulgated it on land
• Believed in metempsychosis, or reincarnation
• Cycle can be broken if purity is attained (list on p. 323)
• Parallels with Pythagoras and Plato
• Soul doctrine, asceticism
17. ORPHISM (CONT’D)
• Unique cosmogony
•
•
•
•
•
Time → Aether → Darkness
Chronos (time) → Phanes (creator of all) → Night → Gaea and Uranus
Titan v. Olympian debacle ensues
Zeus swallows Phanes
Dionysus is replaced by Zagreus (???)
• Has a coming of age rite associated with him
• Zeus creates humans from ashes of Titans
• Reason for evil
• Also reason for divine spark, because the Titans ate Dionysus
20. AENEAS’ DESCENT
• Sibyl takes Aeneas through the underworld
• Passes by Dido, fallen comrades, Anchises
• Vergil’s perspective: somewhat moral
• Major crime: impiety
• Displays rewards and punishments of great figures and ordinary humans
• Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno: heavier moral undertones
• Also political
• Future great Roman peoples, namely Augustus
• FUN FACT on p. 334
• Based on Vergil’s idea of the cyclical nature of things, also described by
Anchises
