Although the Greeks did not have a strong Death figure in their religion or mythology, stories of mortal heroes who journeyed to Hades to face death in person appear frequently in ancient Greek literature. When heroes such as Heracles, Theseus, Orpheus, and Odysseus descended to Hades and returned successfully, they achieved a sort of rebirth: they metaphorically died and returned from the dead. This journey to the underworld is known as a katabasis - a ‘‘descent’’ by the living into the realm of the dead. A katabasis generally entails the hero having to face his own mortal nature, overcome his fear of death, and realize that the best way for a mortal to attain immortality is to achieve a heroic reputation through brave and memorable deeds. As with the criminals in Hades, although the characters in these stories are mythological, their situations serve as models for human behavior - in this case, the attitudes we must take to make our lives, and inevitable deaths, more meaningful. Such an interpretation of these stories does not necessarily contradict a Greek belief in life after death, or in the rewards and punishments that might await us in the afterlife. In some instances, heroes of myth travel to Hades specifically to consult the dead, who have access to information hidden from the living. And the idea that the dead have occult knowledge was exploited by the practice of necromancy, a method of communication with the dead, often for the purpose of divination Although necromancy, like katabasis, appears in myths and legends, there is sufficient evidence that it was actually practiced, though not necessarily approved of, in Greek society (Ogden 2001:esp. xviii-xx and 263-8).
Although the hero Heracles wrestles with Thanatos in Euripides’ Alcestis, his main confrontation with death comes in his twelfth labor, a katabasis to capture Cerberus and bring the creature back from Hades. Significantly, before embarking on this quest Heracles went to Eleusis to be initiated into the Mysteries of Demeter; that is, he was assured of some sort of rebirth after death (Clark 1979:79-94). Then he went to the entrance to Hades at Taenarum and headed down. He asked the god for Cerberus and was given permission to take the dog so long as he could capture it without using weapons. Heracles caught the creature with his bare hands, brought it to the upper world, showed it to Eurystheus (who had sent him on his labors) and then returned the dog to Hades (Apollodorus, Library 2.5.12), thus metaphorically dying and being reborn not once but twice, an excess typical of Heracles, that most excessive of Greek heroes.
Theseus, unlike his Dorian counterpart Heracles, went to Hades for a less than admirable reason: to help his friend Peirithous kidnap Persephone. Greek tradition consistently views this adventure as ‘‘an outrageous act of impiety’’ (Clark 1979:125), and so although the journey is indeed a katabasis it hardly serves the typical function of a journey to Hades, that of a hero facing his own mortality and emerging as a wiser, more mature individual. Entering at Taenarum, Theseus and Perithous made their way to Hades’ palace, whereupon he invited them to eat. Hades was no fool, and when the friends sat down on the stone chairs, they found that they couldn’t get up again: they were bound fast. Theseus escaped only because Heracles, on his quest for Cerberus, pulled Theseus from the chair. Heracles was unable to free Peirithous, however (Apollodorus, Library 3.16.24). Theseus, despite his transgression, was thus given a second chance at life - and a chance to redeem his reputation.
Orpheus, a renowned musician, went to Hades in an attempt to recover his wife, Eurydice, who had died from a snakebite on their wedding day. Once in the underworld, Orpheus charmed Cerberus with music, and the dog let him pass. The music swayed Hades and Persephone as well, and the two permitted him to take Eurydice back to the land of the living, but only on the condition that he not look back at her on the return to the upper world. Of course he turned to look, to make sure she was safe, and she faded back down to Hades. But because he had faced death and returned to tell about it, Orpheus was believed to have all sorts of arcane knowledge about the nature of death and the afterlife. A series of poems comprising a cosmology and various beliefs about the nature of death and the soul was ascribed (falsely) to Orpheus and has become known as Orphic literature. Orpheus’ legendary descent to Hades thus resulted in the actual cult of Orphism, a religion that began as early as the archaic period, and one of the only Greek religions to have a written doctrine.
The heroic journey to Hades that resonates most even today, though, must be that of Odysseus, whose dread at being told by Circe that he must journey to the land of Hades and Persephone is quite palpable, as is that of his crew (Odyssey 10.490-502, 566-70). Odysseus must travel to Hades to consult the shade of the seer Teresias, who will tell him how to sail home to Ithaca (and who will also predict the manner of Odysseus’ death). This episode, which constitutes Book 11 of the Odyssey, is not, technically, a katabasis, in the sense that Odysseus’ voyage to Hades is not literally a descent, but in all other respects it resembles the traditional katabasis of myth (Clark 1979:74-8). Book 11 of the Odyssey is generally referred to as the Nekuia, a ritual by which ghosts are summoned and interrogated; that is, Odysseus performs what is essentially the earliest Greek necromantic ceremony on record, as he fills a pit with milk, honey, wine, water, and barley, and then slits the throats of a ram and a ewe, offering their blood up to the dead in exchange for answers to his questions. The ceremony ‘‘is performed with great dignity and compassion; there seems to be no stigma attached to it’’ (Luck 1985:167).
Such was not the case in historical times, when necromancy was sometimes frowned upon both as possibly fraudulent but also as potentially harmful to the dead, who wished to rest undisturbed (Luck 1985:167). The living might call up the dead for relatively trivial purposes, as seems to have been the case with Periander, tyrant of Corinth, who sent messengers to the oracle of the dead on the Acheron river in Thesprotia to summon the ghost of Melissa, his wife, in order to ask her the location of some money he could not find. Melissa appeared and said that she would not give up the information, because she was cold and naked, as her clothes had not been burned with her. Periander then forced all the women of Corinth to strip, and burned their clothes in a pit. Melissa’s ghost was evidently appeased as, when consulted a second time, she told the messengers where the money was hidden (Herodotus 5.92). The banality of Periander’s reason for the necromantic ceremony, and his compensation for Melissa’s improper burial, help Herodotus characterize him as an oppressive ruler.
The oracle of the dead at Acheron in Thesprotia was actually one of four main oracles of the dead in antiquity, the other three being Avernus in Campania in Italy, Heracleia Pontica on the south coast of the Black Sea, and Tainaron (Taenarum) in southern Greece. The existence of such oracles and other, lesser, locations for summoning the dead suggests that necromancy was practiced regularly, if not frequently (Ogden 2001:265-6). Along with such sites there existed professional practitioners of necromancy - evocators and so-called sorcerers who would ‘‘call forth’’ the dead; sometimes they were overtly fraudulent, using ventriloquism. Evidently such specialists could be called on by anyone wishing to communicate with the dead, so long as they could afford it (Ogden 2001:95-115).
As Ogden points out, overall ‘‘antiquity’s moral evaluation of necromancy is particularly difficult to pin down,’’ and may have been considered as good or as bad as the person practicing it. Those who consulted the dead via necromancy were ‘‘bold, desperate, or strange to turn to it,’’ as any type of contact with the dead was inherently dangerous and undesirable (2001:263-4). Thus, quite unlike the heroic stories of katabasis, which carried with them the hope of spiritual rebirth and attainment of immortality through reputation, necromancy carried with it no glory for those facing the dead. It was one thing to travel yourself to the land of the dead - whether literally or metaphorically - and face your mortality, but quite another to force the dead to come to you.
World History
