Death

For the ancient Greeks, death occurred when breath left the body. At this point, the psyche emerged. Unlike with modern Judeo-Christian theology, in which it is believed that the soul is always present in the body, being released upon death, the Greeks believed that the psyche only existed upon an individual's death. Thus, we might consider the Greek concept of the psyche to be more like a ghost than a soul. Like a ghost, the psyche retained the individual's personality but was noncorporeal, and it could not touch or be touched.

If all went well, this psyche was brought to Hades, the underworld, the domain of dread Persephone. In some instances, as at the end of the Odyssey, the Greeks thought Hermes Psychopompos led the dead to their final home. In other cases, it was the personification of death itself who did this: Thanatos. This deity gets his fullest description in Euripides's Alkestis, the story of a wife who willingly dies in her husband's stead. Here, Thanatos appears in dark robes, winged, carrying a sword with which he cuts off a tress of the soon-to-be-departed, consecrating him or her to the underworld gods.

The Greeks found death rather depressing. This is not to say, however, that death was avoided at all costs. From the earliest Greek times, a heroic death was the ideal for which all great soldiers strove. Even in later centuries, a glorious death was far more important than a cowardly life, and Spartan mothers especially were known for the pride they took in sons who died for the polis (and the shame they felt for sons who did not).

Nevertheless, although a heroic death might ensure a certain amount of glory among the living left behind, the afterlife that the dead endured was tedious and wearisome at best. Already from the time of Homer, the merits of a short but glorious vs. long but toilsome life were debated by none other than Achilles, the one character in Greek literature allowed to make this choice for himself. In the Odyssey (11.488-491), when Odysseus commends him for his legacy on Earth, Achilles confesses that the misery of the afterlife negates for him all his glory among the living:

"Do not console me for dying, Shining Odysseus.

I should wish to be a serf toiling for another man, along side one without land, one with no great livelihood, than be king of all the perished dead."

The dead had no knowledge of what occurred among the living, and nothing happened to the dead in Hades. But they could still worry about loved ones or fume over past injustices. A ghost with a bad reputation could be tormented or ridiculed for eternity with little redress. In contrast to the common fear of ghosts, the dead had virtually no power to harm the living: If revenge were desired, it had to be enacted by divine powers at the behest of the dead. In many instances, the deities responsible for this were the Furies, also called the Erinyes, who, on the part of the dead, punished crimes committed against blood kin. Their most famous appearance in Greek literature is their attack on Orestes for having murdered his mother Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra, now dead and therefore unable to seek revenge on her own, must goad on the dread goddesses to their work (Eumenides, ll. 93-115).

However, as early as Homer, an alternative to the dreary, powerless afterlife was known: the Elysian Fields. These are mentioned in the Odyssey, Book 11, when the Old Man of the Sea tells Menelaus of his fate (ll. 561-570):

"For you it is not ordained, O Menelaus, fostered by Zeus, to die in horse-pasturing Argos and to follow death, but to the Elysian Field and the ends of the earth the immortals will lead you. There is blond Rhadamanthus, where the easiest life exists for humans,

Never is there snow, nor great winter storms nor shadows ever, but always Ocean sends forth gentle breezes of the blowing West Wind to refresh humans.

This because you have Helen and are son-in-law to Zeus."

At this early date, acceptance into the Elysian Fields was dependent on having some connection with the gods. Menelaus is husband to Helen, who is daughter of Zeus and a semidivinity in her own right. As son-in-law of the king of the gods, Menelaus gets a joyous afterlife. And yet, as we have seen, such a fate is not available for Achilles, the greatest of the Homeric heroes and son of the sea goddess Thetis. It is probable that the shift in ideology from one universally dreary afterlife to various types of afterlife occurred in the final years the Homeric epics were being recorded, with both ideologies preserved in the texts.

By the sixth century b. c.e., new ideas about the nature of death and the afterlife had come into play, ideas clearly influenced by Eastern ideologies. Of these, the most important in view of later religions was metempsychosis. Metempsychosis is the belief that the soul is immortal and travels from body to body over several generations of reincarnation. As in Hindu tradition, the ancient Greeks who followed this ideology believed that one's character in this life affected the nature and quality of one's next life. If you were good and noble in this life, you could wind up a king, or even a dolphin, in the next. If you were evil in this life, you might come back as a beggar or a pig. The ultimate end was to live enough good lives in a row to gain access to "heaven," some manifestation of the Elysian Fields. According to Pindar's Second Olympian Ode, one had to live three good lives in a row to achieve bliss. Otherwise, punishment awaited the evildoer (ll. 56-74):

... if someone having this knows the future,

That there immediately the helpless minds of the dead

Pay the penalty—sinful acts in this realm of Zeus

Someone judges beneath the earth, giving sentences with harsh necessity.

Always in equal nights, equal days

They have sunlight, a life without toil

The Good receive, not working earth with force of hand,

Nor the water of the sea for a shallow livelihood. But along side the honored ones of the deities, those who respected good oaths dwell tearless forever. But others endure pains unbeholdable.

Those who have endured three times

Remaining in either place, keeping the soul from all unrighteousness, travel the path of Zeus unto the tower of Kronos.

There Ocean breezes blow about the isle of the blessed, flowers of gold blaze,

Some on the shore of glorious trees, some the water nourishes.

With chaplets and garlands of these they enwreath their hands according to the straight judgments of Rhadamanthus.

An interesting paradox was present in the Greek ideology of death. On the one hand, the Greeks recognized several deities whose domain was death: Hades, Persephone, Hermes Psychopompos, and Thanatos. On the other hand, the gods were understood to despise not only the concept of death, but also anything reminiscent of the mortal condition, including death, birth, and, in some instances, even sex (which leads to conception, birth, and death). All of these acts were prohibited in sanctuaries, and a certain period of purification was required before anyone who had had contact or involvement with these events could enter sacred space.

After a family member's death, for example, worshippers had to wait twenty days after purification to approach a temple (Garland 1985, 44-45). Multiple purifications were applied to the island of Delos, sacred to Apollo and Artemis. Starting in 543 b. c.e., the Athenian tyrant Peisistratos had all graves removed not only from the island, but also from within sight of the island. On the nearby island of Rheneia, a tiny hospital unit was set up where those about to die or give birth could be rushed before sullying Delos's purity (Garland 1985, 44-45). At the end of Euripides's Hippolytos, the goddess Artemis claims she must leave the scene before her favorite human dies, for "it is not lawful for me to look upon the dead or to defile my sight with the last breath of the dying." The ever-living gods clearly loathed the mere thought of human death (although this certainly did not stop them from watching human wars).

In almost all cases, death was inevitable. The gods did bestow immortality on a few of their favorites: Heracles (the greatest mortal hero and son of Zeus), Ganymedes (Zeus's lover), and Psyche (wife of Eros), for example. Some mortals, although having to die, received divine honors after their deaths, as discussed above in the section on hero and heroine cults. But, for the most part, the Greeks had to face the prospect of death. For many, the fear of death was palliated through induction into mystery cults.