CC 303/352: Lecture Outline, October 9, 2001

Death and the Underworld

I. Homer's Odyssey (8th century BC)

• Odysseus on way home: told he must go to see Tiresias
• Goes to far west
• Odysseus and funerary practices

1. sacrifice
2. libation (honey, milk, wine, water, barley)
3. Elpenor and the importance of burial: avoid vengeance, provide remembrance

• Odysseus meets and sees

1. Tiresias
2. Anticleia
3. Agamemnon
4. Ajax
5. Achilles
6. Minos
7. Orion

• gloomy, purposeless existence of dead, continuing interests and passions of life
• No punishments except:

1. Tityus
2. Tantalus
3. Sisyphus

• No real life after death except:

1. Heracles, made a god
2. Menelaus, sent to Elysium because he married Helen

• Advantages of the Homeric view of death

1. dead removed: we need not fear them
2. no punishments except for very, very bad

• Disadvantages of the Homeric view of death

1. no pleasant existence after death
2. no punishment after death for most who were evil in life

II. Popular additions to Homer's view of Death

• dead in underworld
• additional features and figures

1. dead cross river Styx or Acheron
2. Charon
3. coin in mouth of dead to pay Charon
4. Cerberus
5. Hermes psychopompos

• additional folks punished

1. Ixion
2. Danaids

III. Reactions to Homer's view of Death

A. Mysteries

• Eleusinian Mysteries
• Some cults of Dionysus
• Imports (e.g., Isis, Serapis, Mithras, Christianity; most of these enter Greco-Roman world 1st century BC and later)

B. Orphism

• the myth of Orpheus
• the cult/philosophy of Orphism (starts 6th century BC)

1. metempsychosis
2. purification

C. Philosophy

• Pythagoras (6th century BC)
• Plato (c. 429-347 BC), Republic, Book 10: The Myth of Er

1. 3 parts of soul: appetitive, spirited, rational
2. Justice means rational part is in charge
3. Republic, Books 1-9 prove justice is better than injustice in life
4. Book 10: Plato uses myth to show justice is also better after life

• The just do better after death

1. spend 1000 years happy instead of tortured
2. drink less of river Lethe, so they remember previous life
3. choose new life wisely

• Epicurus (341-270 BC): no existence after death

IV. Vergil's Aeneid (19 BC)

• mixture of Homeric, popular, Orphic, Pythagorean, and Platonic elements with Vergil's own additions
• elaborate geography of underworld
• more sinners in Tartarus
• many folks in Elysium, preparing to be Romans

V. Discussion of Exam I

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