Aspects of Death and the Afterlife in Greek Literature

216 Pages·2021·1.815 MB·English

by  Anthony Hooper (editor)

Aspects of Death
and the Afterlife
in Greek Literature

Aspects of Death
and the Afterlife
in Greek Literature
edited by
George Alexander Gazis
and Anthony Hooper
Aspects of Death and the Afterlife in Greek Literature
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
First published 2021 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZU
Copyright © 2021 Liverpool University Press
George Alexander Gazis and Anthony Hooper have asserted the right to be
identified as the editors of this book in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A British Library CIP record is available
ISBN 978-1-78962-149-5
epdf ISBN 978-178962-735-0
Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster
Contents
Contents
Introduction 1
George Alexander Gazis and Anthony Hooper
1 A Path Neither Simple Nor Single: The Afterlife as Good
to Think With 11
Radcliffe G. Edmonds III
2 The Somatics of the Greek Dead 33
Vayos Liapis
3 Life and Death of the Greek Heroine in Odyssey 11 and the
Hesiodic Catalogue of Women 49
Ioannis Ziogas
4 What is your Lot? Lyric Pessimism and Pindar’s Afterlife 69
George Alexander Gazis
5 In Quest for Authority: Parmenides and the Tradition of
Katabasis Narratives 89
Nicolò Benzi
6 Death as Dehumanisation in Sophocles’ Philoctetes 105
Chiara Blanco
7 Socrates’ Conception of the Underworld 123
Rick Benitez
8 Judges in Hades from Homer to Plato 135
Alberto Bernabé
vi Aspects of Death and the Afterlife in Greek Literature
9 Renovating the House of Hades: Cult Extensions and
Socratic Reconstructions 153
Anthony Hooper
10 Stoic Agnosticisms about Death 171
Alex Long
Bibliography 189
Index Locorum 203
General Index 207
Introduction
George Alexander Gazis and Anthony Hooper
Introduction
In Plato’s Phaedo, one of the final lessons that Socrates relates to his assembled
companions concerns the path he will take upon drinking the hemlock: the
path to the Underworld. As is to be expected of a figure who is both described
by others and self-described as “atopos,” “out of place” in the society in which
he resides – and even out of place in the world of the living – here too he
advances an unconventional, daring claim. “The journey,” he states,
is evidently not as Aeschylus’ hero Telephus describes it: he says there’s a
simple road to Hades, but actually it appears to me to be neither simple
nor a single one. If that were so, there would be no need for guides; I
don’t suppose anyone would miss the path at any point, if there were
only one.
1
The quoted passage is a perennial favourite in both scholarly and conversa-
tional discussions of Greek conceptions of death and the afterlife. However,
we argue that it can be used without an apology; a claim so tantalising
in import, so dripping in insight, and so full of significance need never
require indulgence. But we include it here specifically because Socrates’ claim
encompasses a number of important ideas relevant to the themes of this
volume.
First, the ancient Greek conception of death and the afterlife is itself neither
single nor simple. There was no monolithic view concerning these matters
In what follows, Socrates offers his famous Myth of the True Earth as a correction of
1
the poetic view, which details the dizzying systems of undulating rivers and cavernous
horrors that the disembodied souls of the deceased tread in the Underworld, and the
different paths they take depending on their character in life.
1
2 George Alexander Gazis and Anthony Hooper
propagated by a central religious, poetic, or philosophical authority; instead,
the Greeks produced and held a dizzying array of positions concerning the
nature of post-mortem existence (if any), the value of this existence (whether
it was to be feared, embraced, or met with an indifferent shrug), and the abode
that the dead occupy. Greek thinking concerning these matters was constantly
evolving, through subtle shifts and radical revolutions, from its pre-literate
articulation through to the Christian era. And the imaginings, represen-
tations, and arguments concerning these matters were of subtlety, beauty,
and complexity in terms of both their content and the form of their delivery.
So powerful were these representations that their influence is still felt keenly
today. There is, then, much to discuss in considering Greek conceptions of
death and the afterlife.
Second, the Greeks were in constant discussion with each other concerning
death and the afterlife, and there was considerable cross-pollination, influence,
and critique between thinkers we now separate into different intellectual
traditions. In the quoted passage, Socrates, a consummate critic of the poet
in this and other dialogues, frames his own account of the Underworld as
a response to that of Aeschylus. But even here Socrates’ account represents
more a conversation about than a rejection of poetic representations of death
and the afterlife, as even his radically different vision incorporates a consid-
erable amount of material from these and other sources. Any examination of
Greek conceptions of death and the afterlife, then, must include a huge array
of material.
Third, this quote also raises the issue of the attitude of Greeks towards the
matters of death and the afterlife, particularly concerning whether it should
be conceived as primarily imaginings, dogmatic beliefs, or something even
more intellectually rigorous. Socrates himself doubts that his myth is true in
all of its details, and thus opens the question of how committed anyone can be
concerning matters post-mortem. This is a problem that reoccurs for all Greek
texts that treat death and the afterlife.
Fourth, the passage reminds us that discussions of death and the afterlife
always have an eye to life, and specifically the issues of how we ought to live,
the significance of life, and what life itself should be taken to be. Socrates, after
all, presents his Myth to his companions in the hope that they will live better;
the extent to which he is presenting an account that aims genuinely to capture
the Underworld at all is far from being easily resolved.
Fifth and finally, given the polyphony of voices that speak on the subject
of death and the afterlife, the variety of genres in which these topics are
treated, and the disparities of opinions concerning them, Socrates is prescient
in identifying the requirements for guidance through these matters. Since
Introduction 3
classical studies came into existence in the eighteenth century scholars have
attempted to offer such guidance and aid beginners and seasoned veterans
alike in navigating the difficult, winding, splintering paths of Greek eschato-
logical thought. Such investigations have attained various levels of success, but
such perennial interest is deserved, as the indissoluble interest and complexity
of the subject matter ensures that there is always more of significance to say on
these topics. However, some more definite statement to justify the existence of
this volume is required, as well as to situate it in the contemporary literature.
Two recent publications have brought Greek conceptions of death and
the afterlife into the spotlight of classical studies. Harrisson’s (ed.) Imagining
the Afterlife in the Ancient World and Ekroth-Nilsson’s (eds) Round Trip to
Hades in the Eastern Mediterranean Tradition offer collections of papers that
ask, and attempt to answer, new and interesting questions about the ways in
which the Greeks (and other ancient Mediterranean cultures) thought about
the afterlife. The former attempts to move away from the question of what
2
the ancients believed about the Underworld and towards the question of how
they imagined it. The visualisation of the Greco-Roman Underworld has been
a thorny issue for scholars and readers alike, as any reconstruction of the
topography involved is doomed to result in arbitrary speculation owing to the
perhaps intentional ambiguity and vagueness of our sources. Both Harrisson
and Ekroth-Nilsson rephrase the investigation of Greek conceptions of death
and the afterlife by focusing on popular imaginings and tracking their changes
and evolutions throughout antiquity. Ekroth-Nilsson’s volume is much more
ambitious in this respect, covering a very large period beginning with Archaic
Greece and spanning all the way up to the late medieval era.
These publications effectively highlight the need for new approaches to
the old problems presented by the Underworld, the ancient conceptions of
the afterlife, and their continuous evolutions as a means by which people
contemplate not only their post-mortem fate but also their approach to life.
By moving away from the search for a dogmatic and consistent topography
of the realm of the dead, these studies allow for a more liberal examination
of ancient metaphysical discourse that in turn allows us to move away from
the model of a well-structured set of beliefs, the reconstruction of which
was the central goal of scholars particularly in the nineteenth and early to
mid-twentieth centuries.
3
Harrisson 2018 and Ekroth-Nilsson 2018.
2
Starting with Rohde 1925, the bibliography is immense; for some of the most
3
important works see Burkert 1969; 1987; Vermeule 1979; Bremmer 1983; West 1984;
Johnston 1999; Clarke 1999; Katona 2002; Radcliffe 2004; 2013; Graf 2007; Long 2019.
4 George Alexander Gazis and Anthony Hooper
This volume aims to build on this interest by offering a novel and unique
approach to the study of death and the afterlife in Greek literature. We
begin from the observation that, although scholars from various disciplines
(including classics, philosophy, archaeology, literary studies, history, and
theology) have provided examinations of the conception, evolution, and
distribution of beliefs concerning death and the afterlife in the Greek
world, these examinations are too often constrained by modern disciplinary
boundaries – boundaries that are, if not absent, far more porous in the ancient
world. Even within the space of one discipline, dialogue between specialists
on different genres is scarce and even discouraged. For example, within the
field of classics, Homerists and other scholars of early antiquity will present a
picture of afterlife beliefs relevant to their period or text of expertise; scholars
of ancient philosophy will focus on the epistemological, ethical, and/or
metaphysical implications of ancient works concerning death; and archaeol-
ogists will explore mostly the material evidence associated with burials and
other death rites in each scholars’ period of expertise. The reasons behind
this segregation are in some ways easy to understand. The complex methodo-
logical problems of intergeneric study, let alone interdisciplinary discussion,
create significant difficulties for scholars who want to examine evidence of
different kinds, genres, and periods. Although this is indeed a concern, we
argue that, with sensitivity to the methodological concerns involved, there
is much to be gained for our understanding of the nature and development
of conceptions of death and the afterlife by collapsing the distance and the
boundaries between genres and disciplines. And, while certain methodo-
logical issues persist, there is more to be lost than gained by allowing such
concerns to lead us make no such attempt at all. If we take the concept of
the afterlife as part of the evolution of ideas, early Greek hexameter poetry
becomes as relevant as the philosophical concept of metempsychosis or the
reinterpretations of the nature of the soul put forth by the Neoplatonists.
Similarly, tracing the development of those very ideas within Greek culture
as a whole can help shed light on the internal mechanisms by which popular
beliefs regarding the afterlife were finally transformed to the well-known
organised religious systems of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods.
This volume is the first to examine the influences, intersections, and
developments of understandings of death and the afterlife between poetic,
religious, and philosophical traditions in ancient Greece in one resource.
Greek thinking on death and the afterlife was neither uniform, simple, nor
static, and by offering an examination of these matters in a properly interdis-
ciplinary context we aim to demonstrate the full richness, complexity,
and flexibility of these ideas in the ancient Greek world and to illuminate