Rites of passage

Obviously there is a lot of religious behavior that is not part of some recurrent festival, but which celebrates a unique occurrence. These unique occurrences we might describe as “transitions from the one state to the other,” such as birth, coming of age, marriage, death,

Admission to some community, and other crises in the life of an individual or of society, such as illness and recovery, pregnancy and birth, going abroad and returning home for the purposes of trade, pilgrimage or war, and so on. Such transitions called for some sort of ritual marking, what anthropologists have called “rites of passage.”

The ultimate “passage” is death. Despite the efforts of physicians, “medicine men,” local healers, and the staff of healing sanctuaries, many diseases obviously were incurable. Some sections of society were especially vulnerable, above all women in labor or new mothers, the newborn, and young children in general. The death of near relatives must have been a very common occurrence. The dead body was either interred or cremated. In 5th - and 4th-century Greece, both practices were common. Everybody would certainly try to ensure that their bodies would be properly taken care of and laid to rest near their place of birth in the company of their ancestors. The graves of the ancestors were a potent symbol of the unity and continuity of the community. Although there was no orthodoxy about life after death, it seems to have been a common conviction that someone who was not buried or cremated with the requisite rituals, and whose grave was not tended, could find no rest.

Death may have been a frequent visitor, but that did not imply any indifference. Rather, it was the other way round: death was fraught with danger and with fear. It was of great concern, as the dead body was seen as a source of ritual pollution. Burial of the body or interment of the ashes took place outside the city walls or outside the built-up area of villages on burial sites or in family tombs situated on estates. If a family could afford it, a grave was marked with a headstone or an even more substantial monument, with an inscription of the dead person’s name, and possibly recalling his or her qualities. To live on in the memory of coming generations was something to strive for: fame was important while alive, but not less important after death.

As was stated above, the Greeks had never developed a clear and generally shared idea about life after death. Important in this respect are the mysteries. A mystery cult is a cult in which the individual believer could be initiated, for example, the Mysteries of Eleusis. Eleusis was a sanctuary not too far from Athens, dedicated to Demeter and Kore (or Persephone), two goddesses who originally were closely related to the agricultural cycle. The attraction of an initiation—about which we do not know any details as the secrets of the mysteries were well kept—seems to have depended on the expectations of the next world as it was revealed to the initiates. Outside the mysteries, we encounter the idea that the dead “live on” in their graves, or images of a somber underworld inhabited by shades, or of the Elysian Fields or the Isles of the Blessed at the end of the world. In due course, there arose the idea of an afterlife providing blessings for the good and punishment for the evil. But never did the Greek world develop an image of life after death that was both clearly delineated and commonly accepted.