restless dead

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Preferred Citation: Johnston, Sarah Iles. Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4z09n981/

Restless Dead

Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece

Sarah Iles Johnston

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley Los Angeles Oxford

1999 The Regents of the University of California

For Carole E. Newlands,in friendship and admiration

Preferred Citation: Johnston, Sarah Iles. Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4z09n981/

For Carole E. Newlands,in friendship and admiration

vii

PROLOGUE

The Corinthian tyrant Periander sent his henchmen to the oracle of the dead to ask where he had lost something. Theghost of Periander's dead wife, Melissa, was conjured up but she refused to tell them where the object was because shewas cold and nakedshe said that the clothes buried with her were useless because they had not been burnt properly.To prove who she was, she told the men to tell Periander that he had put his bread into a cold oven. This convincedPeriander, who knew that he had made love to Melissa's corpse after she died.

Periander immediately ordered every woman in Corinth to assemble at the temple of Hera. They all came wearing their best clothes, assuming there was going to be a festival. Periander then told his guards to strip the women naked andburn their clothes in a pit while he prayed to Melissa. Then Melissa's ghost told him where the missing object was.

So goes one of our oldest ghost stories.[1] The Greek historian Herodotus tells it to illustrate the moralflaws of a tyrant: to serve his own purposes, Periander was willing to rob and humiliate all the women


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in Corinth, to say nothing of indulging in necrophilia. But at the same time, Herodotus provides atextbook example of how relations between the living and the dead were supposed to work. We learn from the story that the dead demand proper funerals, which ought to include gifts that they can use inthe afterlife. This afterlife must be similar to life itself, considering that clothing is de rigeur. The living,for their part, can expect the dead's cooperation, so long as they keep the dead happy. Transactionsbetween the living and the dead can take place on home territory (Periander burns the clothing inCorinth), but special deals may be negotiated at a place such as the oracle of the dead, under the guidance of experts. Even then,

[1] Hdt. 5.92h , slightly adapted.

viii one can't be too careful: to be sure that the ghost who appears is really the right ghost, one ought to have some sort of proof. Melissa's proof not only reveals Periander's personal proclivities but showsthat she knows what has been happening in the upper world since she died, as does her knowledge ofwhere Periander's lost object can be found. Finally, the story shows that dealing with the dead maybecome a civic concern even if their anger is caused by the act of a single citizen. It was Periander'sfailure to send Melissa to Hades with the proper wardrobe that made her mad, but it requirescontributions from the whole female population to bring her around.

We find each of these ideas in other ancient Greek sources as well, but it is their assemblage thatmakes Herodotus's story fascinating, for it presents a paradox: it acknowledges that a person whoonce ate and drank and laughed with the rest of us is gone, but it also reflects the vigor with whichshe continues to inhabit the world of those who knew her. Because the dead remain part of our mentaland emotional lives long after they cease to dwell beside us physically, it is easy to assume that theyare simply carrying on their existence elsewhere and might occasionally come back to visit us. Fromthis assumption arise a variety of hopes and fears. Hopes that the dead may aid the living, byrevealing hidden information, by bringing illness to enemies, and by a variety of other favorseven bysimply visiting those whom they have left behind: "by wandering into my dreams you may bring mejoy," Admetus says to his wife, Alcestis, as she lies dying, expressing hope that their love will survivedeath.[2] Fears that the dead may somehow punish the living for the injuries or neglect they suffered, by bringing illness, by causing nightmares, or simply by refusing to cooperate when needed, as Melissadid.

The dead are very much like us, driven by the same desires, fears, and angers, seeking the same sorts of rewards and requiring the same sort of care that we do. For this reason, the world of the deadis not only a source of both possible danger and possible help, but a mirror that reflects our own. Thereflection is frequently a distorted one, to be sure: the dead are often credited with remarkablepowers, and thus manifest their desires, fears, and angers in ways that go beyond any available to us.But the distortion is not random: through their excesses, the dead reveal, like fingerprint powder shaken over a table, where desires, fears, and angers are most acute among the living.

[2] E. Alc . 354-55.

ix Every detail in which a culture cloaks its ideas about the dead has the potential to reveal somethingabout the living. The types of misfortune that a culture traces to the anger of the dead often revealwhat that culture fears losingand correspondingly valuesthe most, for blaming the dead can be away of avoiding other explanations that would challenge the culture's social coherence or theodicy. Ifone were to blame the death of one's child on the witchcraft of one's neighbor, for instance, therelationship between one's own family and the family of the neighbor might be irreparably damaged. Ifone were to blame it on divine wrath, one would be forced to acknowledge either that one deserved tolose the child or that divinity was morally fickle. Tracing the child's death to the angry dead avoids allof these problems: the dead serve as convenient scapegoats, shouldering burdens of blame too heavyfor other agents to carry. To take another example, many cultures believe that death under certaincircumstances or before certain milestones of life have been passed will condemn the soul to become arestless ghost. Studying the conditions that produce these ghosts offers insight into what the cultureconsiders, conversely, to constitute a full life and a good death.

The models that I have just sketched will be familiar to many readers because they are taken fromwell-known studies published earlier in this century. Anthropologists who did fieldwork with tribalcultures at that time recognized the contribution that analysis of mortuary rituals and eschatological


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beliefs could make toward constructing a picture of the way that those cultures worked; scholars ofother cultures eventually began to apply these models to their own materials as well.[3] There have been few attempts to apply them to materials from ancient Greece, however. This is all the more unfortunate because Greek literature abounds with incidents in which the living and the dead interact.Already in the Iliad and the Odyssey , ghosts appear to complain of poor treatment and demand that the living help them; tragedy, that most Greek of literary genres, frequently focuses on the dead, theirproblems, and the obligations that the living bear toward them. Students of Greek culture andliterature have much to learn from the dead and yet have virtually ignored them.

I suspect that this neglect is due to a deep-rooted reluctance to accept the idea that the Greeks believed in the possibility of anything so "irra-

[3] For a review of some of the most prominent works, see Metcalf and Huntington, esp. theintroduction and ch. 1.

x tional" as interaction between the living and the dead. This reluctance may seem remarkable, given that substantial advances have been made toward acknowledging and understanding othermanifestations of supposed irrafionality among the Greeks: the study of Greek magic, most notably,has attracted considerable interest in recent years. But, if one so chooses, magic can be presented asa technology, as something approaching our own concept of an "applied science," pace James Frazer. After all, it works by certain rules that our ancient sources claim have been "tested" and can be passedfrom teacher to student. Indeed, the very fact that there are teachers and students lends magic thelook of a serious discipline. Moreover, magic is intensely concerned with power: the power of themagician over those whom he enchants and his power to persuade or compel deities and daimones towork his spells. And power in all of its incarnations and from all angleswho wields it, who submits toit, and whyis a topic that has always found a respectable place in classical studies.

The possibility that the Greeks believed that the dead and .the living might interact, in contrast, has seldom even been entertained. A. D. Nock, an eminent historian of Greek religion of thegeneration previous to our own, confidently declared that "The Greeks were not dominated by any fearof ghosts" and described their religion as one of "joyous festivals."[4] Similarly, although Martin P.Nilssonprobably the single most influential scholar of Greek religion everconceded that the Greeksbelieved in such things as the return of the dead, he did so only with regret:

The general opinion is that the Greeks of the classical age were happily free from superstition. I am sorry that I amobliged to refute this opinion. There was a great deal of superstition in Greece, even when Greek culture was at its heightand even in the center of that culture, Athens. Superstition is very seldom mentioned in the literature of the periodsimply because great writers found such base things not worth mentioning.[5]

We note how carefully Nilsson has distanced such beliefs from great (one suspects he really means"intelligent") minds.

[4] From A. D. Nock, "The Cult of Heroes. II," originally published in HThR 37 (1944); rpt. in Nock, 575-602; quotation from p. 582. Nock does concede, in a footnote to the portion quoted, that theGreeks were not completely free of the fear of ghosts, either, but the dominant tone of the discussion is that of the 'joyous festival."

[5] Nilsson 1940, 111.

xi One wonders whether Nock's dismissal and Nilsson's regret in part reflect the fact that to most European and American ears, the word "ghost" smacks of childish fears at bedtime and the kind ofgullibility on which spiritualists prey. E. R. Dodds, another scholar of their generation, had his heart inthe right place when he undertook to study ancient ideas about ghosts and related phenomena, but hemay have hurt his cause as much as he helped it when he compared ancient testimonies for them tocontemporary reports of the same (1936; revised in 1971). By using what happens at modern sancesto clarify what happened during attempts to raise ghosts in antiquity, Dodds implicitly cast upon anyGreeks who participated in such activities the same taint of blind credulity that many of us cast uponmodern participants.[6]

Scholars of our own generation, apparently sharing either Nock's reluctance or Nilsson's regret, have paid the topic little attention. A four-and-a-half page section on afterlife beliefs in Walter


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Burkert's masterly Greek Religion briefly acknowledges the possibility that the dead might return and that their anger was feared, but concentrates on what the soul experiences once it is firmly ensconcedin the Underworld itself. Jan Bremmer's The Early Greek Concept of the Soul offers an excellent analysis of funerary rites and the transition of the soul to Hades, but says relatively little about thereturn of the dead to the upper world or how the living might affect them; most of what he does say focuses on a single festival during which the dead were invited back, the Anthesteria. In the thirdedition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (1996), Robert Garland's article on Greek attitudes to death only briefly refers to the possibility that the dead might return, and "Soul," by Christopher Rowe,merely mentions that by the fifth century, the concept that the soul might survive death was wellestablished.[7] There are no articles entitled "Eschatology" or "Ghosts."

The single voice that breaks this silence is the exception that proves the rule. Erwin Rohde, who in1894 published Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen , was anything but a traditional classicist. A friend of Nietzsche's and adversary of Wilamowitz's, Rohde

[6] Dodds 1971, ch. 10. He occasionally discusses the return of the dead in The Greeks and the Irrational as well, but always in the service of other topics.

[7] The article appears under the title "Death, Attitudes to." It is co-written by Robert Garland andJohn Scheid, the latter of whom deals with the Roman evidence. Robert Garland's 1985 book The Greek Way of Death only briefly discusses the possibility of interaction between the living and the dead.

xii rebelled in this work and many others against mainstream views of the ancient Greeks.[8] Rohde's contribution to our understanding of Greek ideas and practices concerning the dead was immense, but the century since Psyche's publication has brought not only much new evidence new inscriptions,new material remains, and even new papyri with new fragments of literaturebut also the newanthropological models that I mentioned above and an enhanced understanding of the ways in whichthe Greeks interacted with their Mediterranean neighbors, trading ideas and ritual techniques. It ishigh time to look anew at Greek ideas about encounters between the living and the dead.

This book does so. By making use of new materials and, adapting models developed by culturalanthropology, I seek to show how eloquently the Greek dead can speak to us about the Greek living. Ibegin, in the three first chapters, with a historical overview of how Greek ideas about the relationshipbetween the living and the dead evolved in response to changing social and cultural conditions duringthe archaic and classical agesmost notably changes that are associated with the development of thepolis (city-state), such as funerary legislation, and changes due to increased contacts between theGreeks and cultures of the ancient Near East, such as Mesopotamia and Egypt. The first of thesechapters focuses on narrative sources, which can be dated with relative ease and thereby provide arough picture of chronological development. The second chapter deals with non-narrative sources,which help to confirm the picture sketched in chapter 1. I conclude this. overview, in chapter 3, bytaking a close look at the goes , the Greek practitioner who made interaction with the world of the dead his specialty, and show that his duties were both complex and integral to other aspects of Greekreligious life.

Then I show, in four more closely focused chapters, how stories about the restless, unhappy dead and rituals designed to control them reiterated Greek social values and simultaneously expressed thedanger that the dead posed to individuals and cities alike. As our anthropological models would lead usto expect, the Greek dead frequently served as scapegoats, and even more often served as mirrors,now taking the blame for disasters and now again reflecting the fears and 'desires of the

[8] Several revised editions and translations followed Psyche's original publication, including an English translation in 1925 (Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Ancient Greeks ).

xiii living. The multi-talented goes , being a sort of combination magician/undertaker/shaman, was essential to the polis because he possessed skills that helped to protect it against the chaos these deadmight bring. The polis also developed institutional methods of controlling the dead, including civicrituals in which they were prevented from attacking those who were most at risk, such as girls on thebrink of marriage. Divinities such as Hecate and the Semnai Theai, who gradually metamorphosed during the archaic and classical periods into mediators between the living and the dead, also helped to


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ease the tension between the two worlds. The book concludes with my reading of one of Greekliterature's most famous literary texts about interaction between the living and the dead, Aeschylus'sEumenides . Athena, the goddess who emblematizes the well-run polis, takes on a goetic role in this play, employing magical means of controlling the dead in order to establish new rules for theirinteraction with the living and thus ensure her city's welfare. In doing this, she replicates the actions ofthe legendary figure Epimenides, who once saved Athens from the wrath of the dead and who thuswas one of the earliest Greek versions of the goes himself.

A few practical notes. There are several topics that I have chosen not to discuss in any depth because they have been thoroughly investigated by others: hero cult, oracles of the dead, andmystery religions, for example. Although these phenomena are important to the subjects considered inthis book, my own views do not differ significantly from the most widely accepted recent opinions and,thus, extensive analyses seem unnecessary. Footnotes guide the reader to fuller treatments. I have transliterated most single Greek words and short phrases; longer phrases that scholars may findimportant for evaluating my arguments are given in both Greek and English. I use a Latinate system oftransliteration for most proper names (e.g., "Cronus," not "Kronos") but a system of transliterationthat produces a spelling closer to the original Greek for other words (e.g., "katagrapho, " not "catagrapho "). Each of these guidelines is sometimes rejected, however, in favor of retaining commonly used spellings (e.g., "psyche, " not "psuche, " and "Knossos," not "Cnossus"). A list of frequently used Greek terms that may be unfamiliar to nonspecialists is offered on page (xvii).

xv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Good colleagues are a scholar's greatest resource, and I am fortunate in having had many who were willing to discuss ideas with me at various stages of this book's completion. First of all, I thank PhilippeBorgeaud and David Frankfurter, both of whom critiqued early versions of my theories during a sharedsemester of fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1995, and who later, in their capacity asreferees for the completed manuscript, made suggestions that greatly improved the book's final form.I also thank Richard Beal, Kevin Clinton, Chris Faraone, Fritz Graf, David Jordan, David Leitao, Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Timothy McNiven, Kathryn Morgan, Carole Newlands, Richard Seaford, JoAnn Scurlock,Michael Swartz, Wendy Watkins, and Victoria Wohl for their help during the period in which themanuscript was being finished. I am grateful to my editor, Mary Lamprech; to her assistant, Kate Toll;to the University of California Press's internal referee, John Lynch; to the production editor, CindyFulton, for suggestions that improved the presentation of my material; to LeRoy Johnston III, for encouragement and practical advice; and to my students Douglas Freeble and Jack Emmert, whoproofread the manuscript.

The support of several institutions facilitated my work: the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; the Fondation Hardt, Geneva; and (within The Ohio State University) the Department ofGreek and Latin, the Division of Comparative Studies, the Center for Medieval and Re-

xvi naissance Studies, the Melton Center for Jewish Studies, and the College of Humanities.

I thank HarperCollins Publishers, the University of California Press, and the Associated Press for permission to reprint portions of works to which they hold the copyrights and the Museum of Fine Arts,Boston, for permission to depict a red-figure vase from their collection (inv. 34.79) on the dust jacket.The vase, which shows Odysseus conversing with the ghost of Elpenor at the entrance to theUnderworld while Hermes looks on, is attributed to the Lycaon Painter and dated to the mid fifthcentury B.C.E .

xvii

FREQUENTLY USED TERMS


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I use many transliterated Greek words in this book, translating the term when it first is used but not thereafter. For convenience, here are definitions of the most important terms. Plurals follow inparentheses.

agalma (agalmata ) anything that delights a god, including a statue of the god or a tree or animal sacred to the god

aition (aitia ) a myth explaining the origin of something

alastor (alastores ) and elasteros (elasteroi ) a vengeful ghost or an agent who works on the ghost's behalf

aoros, aore (aoroi, aorai ) a man or woman who dies too young

ataphos (ataphoi ) a dead person whose body has not received funeral rites

biaiothanatos (biaiothanatoi ) a person who died violently

choe (choai ) a libation poured out to the dead

eidolon (eidola ) a ghost (literally "image")

epoide/epaoide (epoidai/epaoidai ) a chanted or sung spell

erinys (erinyes ) a deity who works to avenge the dead, among other things

xviii gello (gelloudes ) a female ghost who attacks women and children (no plural of this word exists in ancient Greek; I had to adopt the plural form used in some Byzantine Greek sources)

genos (gene ) kin (often with political implications)

goes (goetes ) and goeteia an expert in dealing with disembodied souls and the art that he practices; hence, also "goetic"

gos (gooi ) a highly emotional funeral lament

katharos (katharoi ) and katharsis an adjective meaning "pure" and noun meaning "purification"

katabasis (katabaseis ) a journey to the Underworld

katadesmos (katadesmoi ) a curse tablet

ker (keres ) a supernatural agent who brings death or other misfortune

kleos glory, renown

kourotropbos (kourotrophoi ) one who nurtures children

lamia (lamiai ) a female ghost who attacks women and children

lex sacra (leges sacrae ) LATIN : law concerning religious practices

lithica a work describing magical stones and their properties

maschalisrnos the ritualized act of severing a corpse's extremities

miaros (miaroi ) and miasma (miasmata ) an adjective meaning polluted and noun meaningpollution

mormo (mormones ) a female ghost who attacks women and children

mormolukeion/mormoluke (mormolukeia/mormolukai ) a female ghost who attacks women and children


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nekuia (nekuiai ) an encounter between living and dead individuals, usually initiated through ritual

nekuomanteion (nekuomanteia ) an oracle in which the dead prophesy

oikos (oikoi ) a household or family

palarnnaios (palarnnaioi ) either a murderer or a spirit who avenges murder

parthenos (parthenoi ) a woman who has never been married

pharmakon (pharmaka ) and pharmakeutrides magical material, especially drugs, and the female specialists who gather and use them

xix phasrna (phasmata ) and phantasma (phantasmata ) ghosts

progonoi progenitors

prostropaios (prostropaioi ) either a person (or god) who should be averted or a person (or god) orfunctions as an averter

psychagogos (psychagogoi ) and psychagogia one who invokes souls and the art by which he doesso

psyche (psychai ) soul

psychopornpos (psychopompoi ) a leader of souls

strix (striges ) a female ghost who attacks women and children

telete (teletai ) rites, especially those associated with mysteries

theos (theoi ) a god, either male or female; but cf. thea (theai ), goddess

theoxenia a meal to which a god is invited

threnos (threnoi ) a formal funeral lament, often professionally composed

xenos (xenoi ) and xenia a guest with whom one has a formal friendship and the friendship itself

xxi

ABBREVIATIONS

For the abbreviations of Greek and Roman authors and their works, journals, and lexica, I follow the lists in Liddell, Scott, and Jones's A Greek-English Lexicon; The Oxford Latin Dictionary , edited by Peter Glare; The Oxford Classical Dictionary , 3d ed., edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth; and L'Anne Philologique . In addition, note the following special abbreviations:

Cyr . Cyranides as in D. Kaimaikis, Die Kyraniden (Meisenheim am Glan, 1976)

DT A. Audollent, Defixionum Tabellae (Paris, 1904)

DTA IG III.3 Appendix: "Defixionum Tabellae" (Berlin, 1897)


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Lith . Lithica as collected by Halleux and Schamp in Les lapidaires grecs (Paris, 1985)

Lith . Dam.-Ev. The lithica of Damigron-Evax

Orph. lith . Orphic lithica

Orph. lith. keryg . The kerygma of the Orphic lithica

1

PART 1A SHORT HISTORY OF THE DEAD IN ANCIENT GREECE

3

Chapter 1Elpenor and OthersNarrative Descriptions of the Dead

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959 )

So begins one of the most effective ghost stories of the twentieth century. It is an appropriate overture for a tale that explores how human beings cope not only with incursions by the restless deadbut also with the uncertainty of whether what they are experiencing is really the work of ghosts oronly the creation of their own imaginations. When the main character, Eleanor, is challenged by theother members of a group investigating a haunted house as to whether she has really seen a ghost,she responds, "I could say 'all three of you are in my imagination; none of this is real'." Eleanor is half joking when she says this, but Dr. Montague, the professor of anthropology who has organized theinvestigation, gravely replies that if he thought she were serious, he would send her homeimmediately, for she would be 'venturing too close to the state of mind which would welcome theperils of Hill House with a kind of sisterly embrace."

Dr. Montaguea well-trained academicwishes to keep what he considers real and what heconsiders imaginary firmly separated. By the end of the story, however, we have learned that forEleanor (and for many other people as well, Shirley Jackson implies), belief in a world beyond theimmediately visible one, however unpleasant that other worldThe quotations from The Haunting of Hill House used here are taken from the 1984 Penguin edition, pp. 3, 140.

4 may be, is absolutely necessary for the expression of otherwise inexpressible fears and desires. Retaining one's sanity, as Jackson's first sentence insists, depends upon occasional vacations fromreality.

Conversely, as Jackson also knew very well, a ghost story succeeds only when the narrator has managed to persuade her audience to suspend their disbelief, at least temporarily. Of course, this is


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one variation on a rule that applies to all fiction: the world constructed by the narrator must makeenough sense to the audience for them to be able to enter into it without being constantly distractedby internal contradictions. Even if there is little expectation that a story's occurrences could take placein the real world, therefore, a properly constructed story will provide glimpses into the real world's system of beliefs because it will adhere to rules that resemble those of the real world. For example,although the vast majority of contemporary Americans who watch a vampire film do not believe thatvampires really exist, they are able to suspend their disbelief long enough to enjoy watching the storyunfold, both because the screenwriter has been careful to construct a fictional universe that follows itsown rules and because those rules bear some similarity to rules of the real world. Thus, if a vampire isaverted by a crucifix early in the story, then the crucifix must serve as a reliable means of averting vampires throughout the rest of the story, unless some good explanation that nullifies the rule issubsequently offered. Why a crucifix, and not, for instance, a piece of coral, such as some Polynesiancultures use to avert demons? Because the crucifix is a symbol of beneficent power that can beunderstood by any audience member who has grown up within the predominantly Christian Americanculture.

Even more interesting are the existential rules of many fictional worlds. As viewers of a vampire movie, we have agreed to believe that there are some corpses that return to life, but not that allcorpses do. Vampires may arise from those who die under tragic or abnormal circumstances. Thisincludes suicides, those who are unburied or who are buried improperly, and those who die cursing God. This rule makes a certain kind of sense because the early truncation of a life or the marring of asoul's passage from life to death disrupts what we like to believe is the normal progression from birthto death. People who would laugh at the idea that vampires really exist might still believe that deathunder such circumstances brings unhappiness to the soul or prevents its postmortem reunion withGod. Witness for example the Orthodox Jewish belief that the entire body, including any severed limbs, must be buried properly if the deceased is to enjoy the eventual resurrection promised

5 to the faithful. Even when they cannot articulate precise reasons that proper burial is necessary,survivors usually feel compelled to provide it; the importance placed on the recovery of bodies frombattlefields or accident sitessometimes at great expense and risk to those undertaking therecoveryattests to this. At least one of the rules governing vampire stories, then, indirectly reflectsthe values of those who listen to them. What would be impossible to accept, even within the artificiallyconstructed confines of a vampire story, is that a pious person who died of natural causes at anadvanced age, and whose funeral was conducted properly, could become a vampire.

Effective ghost stories, like effective vampire stories, reflect the values of the culture in which theydeveloped. There are further problems to be considered before we use them as evidence for realbeliefs, however, particularly when we are studying a culture like that of ancient Greece, where fewpeople would have understood, much less accepted, Dr. Montague's assumption that a clear line canbe drawn between what we call the natural and the supernatural worlds. Although a good narrator willnot incorporate into a story elements that his audience will reject as "illogical" or "anachronistic," agood narrator may incorporate elements that mislead ushis distant audiencebecause they provideonly part of a bigger picture. Part of our interpretive task, therefore, whenever we use narrativesources as evidence for real belief, is to recreate, as best we can, the situation in which the narrativewas originally presented. When we are dealing with narrative presentations of the dead and theafterlife, with ghosts, the journey to the Underworld, its geography, and the rules by which it works,this can become complicated, for the factor that constrains narrative treatments of civic rites such asthe Panathenaiarealization that the audience can compare the narrative construction to what theysee and hear in real lifeis no longer fully operative. We can probably assume that no one wholistened to the story of Odysseus's journey to the Underworld believed that they themselves had alsotraveled to Hades. Few people who watched the Erinyes pursue their victim in Aeschylus's Eumenidesthought that they had ever seen one of these monstrous creatures themselves. The "reality" againstwhich Homer's or Aeschylus's presentations of these phenomena were evaluated by an ancientaudience, therefore, consisted of other things that they had heardof other constructions of a worldbeyond the normal sensory perceptions provided over the course of their lives by their friends, theirparents, by other narrators of stories, and by the visual artists who created vase paintings, wallpaintings, and temple decor.

6 The situation is made even more difficult by the fact that beliefs existing under no official societal


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sanction or control, which includes most of those concerning the afterlife, tend to be fluid, changingeasily from time to time, from locale to locale, from neighbor to neighbor, and even from onestatement to the next during a single conversation with a given individual. This is particularly so forbeliefs about the dead because they arise in response to death itself, a phenomenon that, althoughinevitable and ubiquitous, is unpredictable, poorly understood, and cloaked in conflicting emotions. As the feeling of grief or guilt about another's death shifts to resignation or relief, as fear concerningone's own inevitable end shifts to hope for postmortem bliss or back again, the ways in which theafterlife and the passage into death are pictured shift as well. A contemporary American man orwoman may take flowers to the grave of a loved one, perhaps in the assumption that the departedsoul somehow needs or appreciates the gifts of survivors and can receive them at the location where his corpse was deposited. And yet that survivor might simultaneously believe that the departed souldwells in a Heaven cut off from the physical world, where all needs are met and neither flowers noranything else of a material nature has any relevance.

Even if the beliefs of an individual are fluid and sometimes contradictory, however, each of them has its place within a range of culturally acceptable beliefs. The example I just gave reflects the factthat contemporary American views of the dead admit both the idea that the soul lingers near the graveand the idea that the soul completely escapes the earthly realm. The Greeks held similarly contradictory views about the disembodied soul, imagining it now in Hades and again at the tomb.Similarly, beliefs about such things as the way the dead look can shift from one extreme to another:the Greeks tended to describe ghosts as being either sooty black or transparently pale. Thesedescriptions reflect, on the one hand, the grim and threatening nature of many ghosts and, on the other, the washed-out, lifeless appearance of a corpse. Independently, either representation workswell, even if they do not work well together.[1] Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood has discussed a similar phenomenon, namely, the way that new beliefs concerning death and the

[1] See Winkler, 159-65, on ghosts, and compare the eloquent statement made by Bot-tro at the endof his discussion of Mesopotamian ideas about death and the afterlife (p. 286): "The typical aspect ofall mythological thought, in contrast to logical thought, is that it provides different answers to thesame question, even opposing answers, because the answers are imaginary, exact, and calculated,toties quoties , without concern for coherence."

7 afterlife can enter into a culture without completely displacing the old ones. As the needs of a situationdemand, now the new beliefs and now the old ones are called upon to serve.[2]

These methodological problems do not imply that we should ignore narrative sources when westudy ancient beliefs concerning the dead as noted, narrative texts can in fact be excellent sourcesof information when handled sensitively. With due caution, let us now proceed on our survey,examining narrative sources grouped chronologically and by genre. At the end of each section, I shallpause to consider what general conclusions might be derived from the evidence. I shall not, however,offer detailed analyses of most of the material; that is the job of later chapters.

Homer

The Homeric poems[3] are about the spectacular exploits of vigorous heroes. And yet, they leave us with no doubt that death is the inevitable end to life, except for a few extraordinary individuals such asMenelaus, who escape by virtue of their special relationship to the gods.

What came after this end? Homeric descriptions of funerary cult and mourning imply that the recently dead were able at least to hear the living and receive their offerings. The nekuia of Odyssey11, however, suggests that in the long run, the dead were capable of very little interaction with the living. Although they looked just as they did while alive, and could be held at bay by Odysseus'ssword, they were unable to converse

[2] Sourvinou-Inwood 1995 uses this model passim, applying it to different issues as they arise, butstating it most explicitly in the methodological appendix (e.g., 416-17).

[3] I should note that I am in general agreement with most current scholars in assuming that theHomeric poems reached more or less their present form in the mid to late eighth century, after severalcenturies of development, but that changes continued to be made until the late seventh or early sixthcentury; see, e.g., Nagy 1992, 52; 1990, 17-18 (but cf. Kirk 1-10; M. L. West 1995). For a goodtreatment of the relationship between vase paintings and the problem of dating the poems, see


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Loweustam, who also provides an extensive bibliography of earlier scholarship. For a discussion of theimplications of this dating for interpreting the poems and the societal forms that they reflect, seeSeaford 1994, 1-10, 14.4-54. I should also note here, however, that it is my view that the absencefrom the poems of phenomena that are well attested in later sources must be understood to reflect an absence of those phenomena in the societies in which the poems developed, unless other cogentexplanations for their absence can be found within the thematic concerns of the poet, for example;this view governs my analysis of Homeric ideas and practices regarding the dead. I shall discuss thisapproach in some depth at the end of this chapter but for now will proceed on the assumption that ifthe poems do not mention ideas about the dead that are amply attested in later sources, this is because the ideas were not available at the time that poems underwent their main development.

8 with him in any meaningful way until they had drunk the blood that he provided. Teiresias does speak briefly to Odysseus before drinking the blood, in order to demand access to it, but he does not speak"knowledgeably" or "clearly" (nemertea ) until afterwards. He later tells Odysseus that the same istrue for all of the soulsOdysseus can learn nothing profitable from them until they drink. The souls ofAgamemnon and Odysseus's mother, Anticleia, do not even recognize him until after consuming theblood.[4]

It seems, therefore, that although the dead are not completely senseless in their naturalstateafter all, they swarm up to the blood as soon as it is poured, like instinct-driven animalstheyexist in a sort of twilight state, incapable of any meaningful interaction with the living. They are, in aword, aphradeis , lacking all those qualities expressed by that complex notion phrade and its cognates that make converse between intelligent creatures possible: wit, reflection, and complexity of expression.[5] It is only by means of the blooda striking emblem of the vigorous life they have leftbehind foreverthat they temporarily become capable of normal human converse. Even after theyhave drunk the blood, the souls of the dead remain physically insubstantial, unable to embrace, muchless affect, those who are still alive, as Odysseus's futile attempt to hug his mother illustrates; hisarms close upon the air. This insubstantialness is also reflected in Homeric descriptions of the dead as"flitting like shadows" and being "smokelike" or "dreamlike."[6]

The Homeric Underworld, then, is filled with ghosts who must be specially nourished before they can interact with even those members of the living world who arrive at their own doorstep. There is noindication that these ghosts can return to the land of the living. Indeed, Anticleia expressly claims thatthe opposite is true: she tells her son that terrible rivers form an uncrossable barrier between the twoworlds. Odysseus has traveled to the bitter edge of the upper world in order to make his sacrifice andspeak with the dead.[7] It is only at this special

[4] Sword holds dead at bay: Od . 11.48-50 (cf. the interesting twist on this scene at B. 5.68-84). Teiresias speaks clearly: 11.96. Teiresias explains the system: 11.146-49 (but cf. 10.492-95, where itis said Teiresias can speak clearly because Persephone granted him the special boon of a clear mindeven after death). Odysseus's mother: 11.140-44, 152-54. Agamemnon: 11.385-90.

[5] Aphradeis : e.g., Od . 11.476. This idea is expressed as well by Circe's description of all of the dead except for Teiresias as being without intelligence at 10.492-95.

[6] Odysseus attempts to hug his mother: Od . 11.206-24. Shadows, smoke, and dreams: e.g., Od . 10.495; Od . 11.207; Il . 23.100-101.

[7] Od . 11.155-59.

9 place, carefully designated by the goddess Circe, that any interaction between those who inhabit the upper and lower worlds is possible.[8]

Homer knows of some members of the dead, however, who are able to interact with the living precisely because they have not yet crossed the river that Anticleia mentions. The dead Patroclusreappears to Achilles and complains that he cannot cross the river and find peace because he has notyet received burial rites. Similarly, the ghost of Odysseus's companion Elpenor, who is among the firstto arrive at the pit, and who is able to recognize and speak with Odysseus even without drinking theblood, has not yet been admitted into the Underworld because his body has not yet received funerary rites.[9] The myth of Sisyphus, to which Homer alludes, and for which Alcaeus, Theognis, and Pherecydes already offer full details.[10] plays with this idea, for it was by instructing his wife not to


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give his body funeral rites that Sisyphus ensured he would not really "die." His soul, excluded from theUnderworld because his body was unburied, was given permission by the gods to return to the upperworld long enough to ask for funeral rites, and once there it took advantage of the situation by repossessing his body. Sisyphus, the ultimate trickster, made what most people feared work to hisown advantage.

This idea, that the dead are not admitted to the Underworld until their physical remains are ceremonially honored and disposed of in the upper world, is extremely common throughout the world.Many cultures believe that until the body is properly removed from the presence of the living, the soulof a dead person must wander restlessly betwixt and between the two worlds, no longer allowed toshare in the society of the living and yet not admitted amongst the dead either.[11] This belief

[8] On Circe's significance in this role, see Marinatos.

[9] Il . 23.65-74; Od . 11.71-78. In other passages, however, Homer describes the unburied dead as making a "squeaking" or "hissing" noise (trizo ): Il . 23.101; Od . 24.5, 9. This seems to align with an alternative belief that the dead in general, rather than being completely voiceless, made inarticulatesounds: see Soph. fr. 8.79; D.L. 8.21; Bremmer 1983, 85. It is uncertain whether the phrase"uncanny cry," thespesiei iachei , used of the dead at Od . 11.43, refers to an articulate or inarticulate sound; in Homer, it is used both of divine voices (e.g., Il . 2.600; Od . 12.158) and of the noises madeby inanimate things, such as the wind blowing through the trees (Il . 16.769). In some cases, it seemssimply to mean "deafening" or "overpowering" (e.g., Il . 8.159), which is probably the meaning intended here.

[10] Od . 11.593-600; Alc. fr. 38; Thgn. 702-12; Pherecyd. 3 F 119. Cf. Gantz, 173-76.

[11] The classical treatments are van Gennep, 146-65, and Hertz, esp. 46; see now also Metcalf andHuntington, passim, but esp. pt. 2. Van Gennep 146 notes that the transitional state, during which theindividual is neither fully alive or dead, is the most ceremonially elaborated in many cultures. Thedangers inherent in this transitional stage, when the individual is "betwixt and between" normal roles,have been most fatuously explored by Victor Turner in his various works, including 1967, ch. 4.

10 that the unburied dead are restless gives rise to another very common-idea, which we also find expressed in the Odyssey . Elpenor tells Odysseus that if his funeral rites are not carried out as soon as the men return to Circe's island, he will become "a cause for the gods' wrath" (theon menima ) upon Odysseus. Similarly, in the Iliad , the dying Hector tries to use this threat to persuade Achilles to return his body to the Trojans for burial.[12] In ancient Greece, as in many other cultures, souls notyet admitted to the Underworld have the abilityand apparently the desireto compel the gods tobring harm upon the living who have done them wrong. This is an idea that continues throughoutGreek history.[13]

Elpenor's is not the only soul that Odysseus encounters at the border of the Underworld: the souls of brides, unmarried men, virginal girls, men killed in battle who still wear their bloody armor, and"elders who have suffered many things" also wander up out of Erebus en masse as soon as Odysseuspours blood into the pit, "giving forth an uncanny cry."[14] The warriors still wearing bloody armor areprobably unburied, like Elpenor; no good Greek would allow the corpse of a friend to go to its graveuncleansed and without the proper shroud. It has often been noted that the brides, virgins, andunmarried men match the types of souls that later sources describe as having died"untimely"without having married and had children.[15] Although it is not explicitly stated, information from later sources suggests that it is their abnormal status that keeps them from enteringthe Underworld. This is a topic that I take up in depth in another chapter; here I would note only that,by making these dead the first to rise up to meet Odysseus and by describing him as being afraid of them (in contrast to his fearless conversation with the other, fully dead souls), the poet impliesfamiliarity with the ideas that

[12] Od . 11.72-73; Il . 22.358.

[13] Review of evidence for the Greek belief and analysis at Garland 1985, 101-3; Bremmer 1983,89-94. For other cultures, see the treatments cited in n. 11.

[14] Od . 11.42-43; cf. n. 9 above.

[15] Johnston 1994; Bremmer 1983, 103; Lattimore 187; Merkelbach 1969, 189; Meuli 1975, 1: 316.


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Later in book 11, Odysseus meets several souls who should qualify as aoroi and biaiotbanatoi by normal standards, and who thus should be stranded at the border rather than in Hades itself, most notably Epicaste (271-80), Phaedra, Procris, and Ariadne (321-25), Eriphyle (326), Agamemnon(387-464), and Ajax (55o-67). Narrative convenience may have prompted the poet to break the"rules" he had already implicitly laid down by putting some restless dead at the entrance; this showsthe ease with which conflicting eschatological models can coexist. And of course some of these individuals appear in passages that some scholars judge to be interpolations.

11 the abnormal dead lingered between the two worlds and that they were a source of potential trouble for the living. Another hint of this idea occurs at Odyssey 20.61-82, where the daughters of Pandareusare snatched away on the eve of their weddings to wander eternally with the Erinyes, frightfulcreatures of the Underworld who sometimes harm the living.[16] In later sources, we shall hear a lot more about how these unhappy souls returned to the upper world of their own volition, like theunburied. We shall also hear about them being invoked by the living and forced, by means of curse tablets or other special techniques, to accomplish tasks. There is no trace of this latter idea here,however.

There is one more possible trace of the idea that the dead might affect the living to be found in the Homeric poems. We get a glimpse of what looks like hero cult at Iliad 2.547-51, where it is saidthat the Athenians worship their deceased king Erechtheus alongside Athena in her rich temple,offering yearly sacrifices of bulls and lambs. It is generally agreed among current scholars, on thebasis of archaeological evidence, that hero cult began in the eighth century or sojust before or atapproximately the same time as most scholars think that the bulk of the Homeric poems wereassuming their final forms. If a hero was essentially a dead person who had retained more of his"vitality" after death, or indeed had even become more powerful than he was while alive, then herocult represents the belief that some very special dead were capable of more than we see them doing inthe nekuia of Odyssey 11.[17] Granted that they are the exceptions, this passage nonetheless suggests that the notion that some dead might directly affect the living was developing at this time.

Before leaving Homer, we must pause at the issue of how souls were treated in the afterlife. Although this has little direct bearing on the question of whether the dead can interact with the living,there is some connection between the two topics, as discussed in chapter 3; thus it is important to beaware of how such ideas changed. In the nekuia of Odyssey 11, we hear about how Tantalus, Tityus, and Sisyphus suffer great punishments after death. In Odyssey 4, we learn that at least oneindividualMenelauswill escape death altogether and be allowed to

[16] See further chapters 6 and 7.

[17] For more detailed discussions of the nature of heroes, and discussions of the origin of their cult,see Seaford 1994, passim; Boedeker; Henrichs 1991, 192-93; Antonaccio; de Polignac; Kearns; I.Morris 1988; Snodgrass 1988; Whitley and Fontenrose 1968. Rohde 1925, ch. 4, and Farnell 1921 arestill very good collections of information from the ancient sources; see also Nock, 574-602.

12 dwell forever in the Elysian Fields, an idyllic paradise. Other Homeric passages, such as Iliad20.232-35, where Zeus's abduction of Ganymede is narrated, similarly describe individuals being carried off alive to enjoy eternal bliss in lovely places.[18] The epic Aethiopis tells of Achilles' conveyance to Leuke, the marvelous "White Island," where he is to spend a very pleasurable eternity.[19]

Some scholars have argued that these passages prove that at the time they were composed, people already believed that a broad span of possible afterlives were available and that one's behavioror station while alive affected one's postmortem treatment.[20] This is incorrect for a number ofreasons, however. First, these passages concern extraordinary individuals. The crimes of the greatsinners were against the gods, and like others who had offended the godsNiobe, for exampletheyhad to be punished to an extraordinary degree; most especially, they had to be punished for eternityand in unusual ways. It is notable that their punishments take place in the Underworld, but this maybe nothing more than a way of making the punishment more odious by situating it in the mostunpleasant realm imaginable. Additionally, situating the punishments in the Underworld may be a wayof moving them outside of the normal world into the marginal sort of location where fantastic thingsoccur. Niobe's punishment similarly takes place on Mt. Sipylus in Asia Minor, "somewhere among the


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rocks, in the lonely mountains, near the resting place of the goddess-nymphs," and Prometheus's inthe distant Caucasus mountains.[21] Those who won paradisical existences were extraordinary as well.Menelaus was rewarded because he was Zeus's son-in-law; Ganymede because he was Zeus'sbeloved.[22] Neither of these groups of peoplethe sinners or the favoredare anything like ordinarypeople, and neither group, therefore, are meant to serve as models for what might happen to thoselistening to the poems. It is not until the fifth century, in Pindar, that we find clear evidence forpunishment after death, and not until the fourth century, in the context of the gold tablets fromsouthern Italy, that we find ordinary mortals claiming to become anything like a god after death.[23]

[18] Sufferers: Od . 11.576-600. Menelaus: 4.561-69. Cf. Nagy, 167-71.

[19] See Proclus's summary, lines 26-28; and cf. A. Edwards.

[20] A. Edwards; I. Morris 1989, 309-13; Richardson 1985.

[21] Il . 24.614-17; A. Pr . 2 (called here Scythia).

[22] Od . 4.561-69; Il . 20.232-35.

[23] Pi. O. 2.57-58, frs. 129, 133; h. Cer . 481-82 may hint at punishments as well, although it says only that the uninitiated will have no share in the good things the mysteries provide. Generally on thistopic, see Graf 1974a, 90-126. Gold tablets A1.8, A4.4, A5.4; cf. Graf 1993; 1991a. See also theconclusions of Sourvinou-Inwood 1981 and 1995, 10-107, which are similar to mine here.

13 We also have to wonder whether these extraordinary people were really imagined to be dead , at least in the same sense as ordinary people would be one day. To be snatched away by the gods before life was over is not at all the same thing as dying. Proteus explicitly tells Menelaus that he will be carriedaway by the immortals instead of dying .[24] That is part of the boon that these individuals were granted: they avoid the pain and distress that accompany the passage from life into death. The greatsinners probably were not imagined as having died in any traditional sense either. Tityus was the sonof Gaia, and Tantalus was the son of Zeus and a minor Titan; neither of them, in other words, were necessarily mortal in the normal sense to begin with.[25] Each of these stories makes a point (do notoffend the gods; the gods' favor is valuable), but none of them can be used to delineate beliefs aboutwhat would happen to real people in the afterlife. The most we can say is that the stories would havehelped to pave the way for later beliefs in a system of universal postmortem rewards andpunishments, although it must be noted that the punishments expected by ordinary mortals even inthose later timesan eternity in muck or dung, for examplebear no resemblance to the spectacularones suffered by the Homeric sinners.[26]

Achilles' afterlife requires a bit more comment before we leave this topic. Anthony Edwards has shown that the end described for Achilles in the Aethiopis miraculous translation to the paradisicalisland of Leukewas the standard version of what happened to Achilles after death at the time thatthe Odyssey was reaching its final form. What we hear about in the Odyssey Achilles' glum existencein a gloomy Hadesis the poet's innovation, a contradiction of the established

[24] Od . 4.561-64.

[25] Tityus's parentage varies according to source (in Pherecyd. 3FS and Simon. fr. 234, for example,he is the son of Zeus and a minor goddess named Elara), but at Od . 11.576, he is called the son of Gaia alone, and this seems to be the most persistent tradition, with variations throughout antiquity.No parentage for Tantalus is given by Homer, but later tradition usually makes him the son of Zeus. Sisyphus, in contrast, was wholly mortal according to Il . 6.153-54, which makes him the son of the founder-hero Aeolus. Of course, this is absolutely necessary if the myth of his tricking death is to workat all.

[26] The punishment later ascribed to the Danaids, however, is echoed by that threatened for somereal people in the Underworld; see Graf 1974a, 107-20. The idyllic afterlife described in some latersources, such as Pi. O. 2.61-77 and fr. 129, does sound something like the paradise promised toMenelausbalmy ocean breezes, warm weatherbut these are such common elements of the goodlife (see Hes. Op . 111-21, 169-73; Nagy, 167-73; Lincoln, 21-31) that it is hard to argue direct influence.


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14 story. Edwards suggests that the Odyssean fate, which also is intimated in the Iliad , moves Achilles out of the class of heroes and into the class of mortals; this serves certain thematic purposes in thetwo poems. This is surely correct, but I would emphasize that for the twist to work, the glum existencein Hades must have been understood by the audience as being normal for mortals; this is the dominant paradigm from which the extraordinary, heroic Achilles escapes in the standard version of his story that we find in the Aethiopis . Indeed, if we were to assume, with Anthony Edwards, Ian Morris, and others, that the average listener had some hope of achieving an idyllic afterlife, thenAchilles' fate in the Odyssey would have to be read as an exceptionally harsh end for the son of Thetis and a favorite of the all of the gods.[27] Surely this could not have been the poet's intention.[28]

Odyssey 24

Because I agree with many scholars that the final book of the Odyssey was composed later than the rest of the two poems,[29] I shall discuss it separately. It presents one significant contrast with what I have just described. Although their bodies still lie unburied, the souls of the suitors are able to meetwith and talk to the souls of Achilles, Ajax, Agamemnon, and others who have received properburial.[30] This should be impossible, given the rule that the unburied could not enter Hades. It is not enough just to say that the poet ignored the rule because he wanted to introduce the great heroes ofthe Trojan War into his scene. In order to get away with this, he needed an audience that would notbe bothered by the contradiction. In other words, we must assume that the rule that lack of burial ledto exclusion from the Underworld was no longer hard and fast by the time that book 24 wascomposed. This does not mean that it could not still be invoked as a reason for a soul's anger andsubsequent persecution of the living, as we shall see from later evidence, but rather that the causalconnection between lack of burial and exclusion had slackened. This is a good example of howseemingly contradictory

[27] A. Edwards, esp. 218-19; I. Morris 1989, 310.

[28] See the analysis of Sourvinou-Inwood 1981 and 1983, which together reach similar conclusions,although by a different route (which I did not know when I composed this section). She summarizesthese arguments in 1995, 423-29.

[29] For a recent summary of the arguments regarding the relative date of Odyssey 24, see Sourvinou-Inwood 1995, 94-103 and 94 n. 239, with further bibliography.

[30] Od . 24.98-204.

15 eschatological beliefs can coexist; the individual or society calls now on one belief, now on the other, as a situation requires.

It is also notable that book 24 is our earliest portrayal of Hermes as a psychopompos (lines 1-10). This is our first indication that the gods have any control over the movement of souls between the twoworlds. Although it would be risky to conclude from the absence of Hermes as psychopompos in other parts of the poems that the role developed only after their composition, the absence is nonetheless striking. Other Homeric descriptions of passages to the Underworld portray souls as simply flying awayfrom their bodies, suggesting that in the view of this poet, transition to death was swift and simple,requiring no divine aid.[31] As we shall see, the need for psychopompoi not only persisted but apparently grew as time went on: by the time of the epic Minyas , Charon had joined Hermes in this role.[32]

The geography of the passage to the Underworld is given in some detail in book 24. The poet mentions dank pathways, the Oceans stream, the White Rock, the Gates of Helios, the Country ofDreams, and a Meadow of Asphodel where the souls congregate.[33] Sourvinou-Inwood has hypothesized that this geographical detail, as well as the introduction of Hermes as a psychompompicgod, reflects a growing concern at the time of book 24's composition with the physical boundaries between life and death.[34] The passage from book 24, however, is not the only place in which Underworld geography is given in detail. The Oceans stream and the Meadow of Asphodel arementioned in books 10 and 11 during descriptions of the Underworld, as is a rock that lies at theentrance to the Underworld (although it is not specifically called a white rock).[35] When Circe tells Odysseus how to get to the border between the upper and lower worlds, she also mentions woods,


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groves of Persephone, tall black poplars, sterile willows, and four separate, named rivers of theUnderworld. We hear about the Cimmerians, a race of people who live close to the border, in eternaldarkness, too.[36] Such geographic and ethnographic details would be at home in tales of heroic descents to the Underworld, which predate the Odyssey as we know it and which do

[31] E.g., Il . 16.856, 22.362; Od . 11.222. Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood 1995, 56-59.

[32] Minyas fr. 1 Davies (= Paus. 10.28.1). Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood 1995, 94-106, 303-61.

[33] Od . 11.13-22.

[34] Sourvinou-Inwood 1995, 103-7.

[35] Stream of Ocean: Od . 10.508, 511; 11.21, 639; 12.1, 20. Meadow of Asphodel: 11.538-39. Rock: 10.515.

[36] Cimmerians: Od . 11.13-19.

16 not, I would add, necessarily have any connection with beliefs concerning the average person's travelsback and forth.[37] The interest is analogous to that shown in the details of the Phaeacians' island or Aeolus's palace: descriptions of exotic, distant lands are always fascinating. The interest in Underworldgeography persists even as other eschatological beliefs change, as we shall see. Alone, therefore, it isnot a good barometer by which to measure those changes.

Other Material From the Epic Cycle; Hesiod; the Hymns

Fragments of the epic cycle[38] have little to say about our topic. The only substantial mention of interaction between the dead and the living comes from the Nostoi , where the ghost (eidolon ) of Achilles appears to the Greeks leaving Troy and tries to prevent their departure by foretelling the doom that awaits them.[39] This might be taken to indicate that even the ghosts of the properlyburied could return to the upper world, although as a hero, Achilles could also be understood as anexception to the rules that govern the ordinary deadwe have already seen that different epictraditions had different ideas about the fate of Achilles' soul. The passage is also our first indicationthat the dead might give advice to the living, a role they continue to play throughout antiquity eitherof their own volition or, later, when asked to do so through rituals.[40]

Hesiod,[41] in lines 121-23 and 126 of his Works and Days , tells about how the privileged dead ofthe Golden Race return to earth to protect the living and bestow wealth upon them. Some scholarshave interpreted

[37] Heracles' descent is referred to already at Od . 11.622-26.

[38] I should note that I find it difficult to accept any attempts to date other poems in the epic cyclerelative to the Odyssey and Iliad there seems no secure means of resolving this issue. For mypurposes, however, relative dating of the poems is unimportant, because the other cyclical poems donot offer information that contradicts that of the Iliad and Odyssey indeed, they scarcely offerinformation about the dead at all.

[39] Proclus's summary, lines 15-17.

[40] I do not consider Teiresias's prophecies to Odysseus to be an earlier instance of the deadprophesying, as Teiresias was able to foretell the future even before he died. It may seem that in theIliad , the dying warrior twice is able to predict the death of the one killing him: Patroclus tells Hectorhe will be killed by Achilles at 16.852-54, and Hector tells Achilles that he will be killed by Paris andApollo at 22.358-60. The former instance, however, seems like nothing more than a threati.e.,Patroclus is sure that his friend will avenge his death and wishes to frighten Hector with thatcertaintyand the latter reflects a well-known and apparently long-standing prediction about Achilles'death, which we already have heard about at 21.275-78 (and cf. 18.96, 19.416-17).

[41] I agree with most current scholars (as expressed. e.g., in M. L. West's "Hesiod" in the OCD , 3d ed.) in placing Hesiod's floruit around 700 B.C.E ., i.e., after the Homeric poems had undergone most of their development (see n. 3 above).


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17 a later passage (252-55) as indicating that these souls of the Golden Race also play a role in punishingthe misbehavior of the living. It describes the 30,000 deathless guardians of mortals who "keep awatch over lawsuits and wicked acts, wandering over all the earth, clothed in mist." The latter twolines of this passage are also inserted by some manuscripts after line 123, in the middle of Hesiod'sdescription of the Golden Race, which would serve to equate the souls of the Golden Race with the30,000 deathless guardians.[42] Martin West objects to including these lines in the earlier passage because in his view it is inappropriate for those who bestow gifts on mortals to serve as a "secretpolice" as well, but the objection does not hold water: the preservation of justice is just as great aboon as wealth or any other benefit that the Golden Race souls might bring.[43] Indeed, the importance of justice for preserving any other good that might befall mortals is one of the pervasive themes of the Works and Days .

But however that issue might be settled, we must take note of the fact that the souls of the Golden Race are an extraordinary type of dead, elevated by Zeus to something very near the status ofgods. Like the Phaeacians of the Odyssey , they are described as "dear to the gods" and as daimones , a term that in Hesiod's day still served primarily as a synonym for theoi . Neither the honored dead ofthe Silver Racesecond only to the Golden in perfectionnor those of the Heroic Race are said tointeract with the living. The former are blessed after death but dwell under the ground; the latter dwellin bliss at the ends of the Earth, as Proteus says that Menelaus will, and as Achilles is said to do in theAethiopis .[44] Nothing at all is said about what happens to souls of our own age. Hesiod, then, makes no reference to the possibility that the ordinary dead might return to interact with the living. Thissilence is particularly striking given that the poem ends with a list of warnings about unlucky acts anddangerous situations that the listener must avoid. Surely, if fear of the returning dead were rampant,we would find it reflected here.[45]

[42] Discussion of the problem at M. L. West 1978, 183, and cf. 219-20. Plutarch accepts the equationof the souls of the Golden Race with the Watchers (De def. or . 431b-e); Proclus does not (p. 87, 15 Pertusi).

[43] Cf. the remarks of the heroic dead in Ar. fr. 322, who promise to punish thieves and robbers bysending various illnesses against them (quoted on pp. 153-54 below).

[44] Menelaus: Od . 4.561-69; Achilles: Proclus's summary of the Aethiopis , lines 26-28.

[45] The closest Hesiod comes is to advise against conceiving children after a funeral (Op . 735) and against allowing boys to sit on "unmoveable objects," which may refer to tombstones (akinetoisi , 750, see M. L. West 1978 ad loc.). The first may reflect any number of ideas, including the general impuritythat participants in a funeral incur or the idea that a fetus is affected by its mother's state of mind. Thelatter similarly may reflect the pollution generally associated with death.

18 One other work composed at about this time must be considered: the Homeric Hymn to Demeter .[46]

It makes no mention of the dead returning to interact with the living, but it does demonstrate that the boundary between the upper world and the Underworld was permeable; if Persephone could pass backand forth, perhaps others could as well. Hecate's role as her propolos and opaon , her companion and guide, during this journey is especially interesting in this respect because it seems to reflect Hecate'srole as the mistress of the dead and the goddess who could lead them forth into the upper world or restrain them in the Underworld as she wished. As we shall see in chapter 6, Hecate's association withPersephone, a paradigmatic virgin, seems also to articulate the reason that Hecate took on the role ofmistress of ghosts in the first place.[47] Thus in this, one of Hecate's earliest appearances in Greek literature, we find her already fulfilling the duties for which she was most highly valued in later times.

The Hymn is also important because it introduces the idea that all individuals will be punished or rewarded after death for their behavior during life. We also find this idea in Pindar, for example, and itbecomes quite common during the classical period. According to some ancient texts, including themyth that concluded Plato's Republic , the choice between reward and punishment depended on the individual's conduct during life; other texts, including the Hymn and a fragment of Pindar, promisedthat by undertaking special rites while alive, anyone might win postmortem rewardsperhaps even anafterlife that included sunlight, feasting, and beautiful surroundings, similar to the paradisical existencepromised to heroes in earlier works.[48] Thus were introduced not only the possibility of a better afterlife but the necessity of worrying about one's afterlife while still alive and of wondering about the


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condi-

[46] For date, see Richardson 1974, 5-11, who suggests that we can date its composition no moreprecisely than to say between 675 and 550thus, surely no earlier than Hesiod and probably later.(Some of Richardson's arguments, depending as they do on the assumption that the poet was Attic orat least intimately familiar with Attica, have been called into question by Clinton 1986 and 1992,28-37, but this will not affect Richard-sons main lines of argumentation.)

[47] Cf. the analysis of Clay, 202-62. Hecate as propolos and opaon : lines 438-40.

[48] Pl. R. 614b2-621d2; h. Cer . 480-82; Pi. fr. 137. Cf. Graf 1974a, 98-103; Lloyd-Jones 1984.

19 tion of other people who had died. Death and the dead became objects of greater concern precisely because variation had been introduced.

One more important idea introduced during the later archaic age was that of metempsychosis. Ourearliest extant references to it are from the first half of the fifth century, in Pindar and Empedocles,but ancient sources insist on crediting it to Pherecydes and Pythagoras, who lived about a centuryearlier, as well.[49] Pindar's mention of it is particularly important because his poetry circulated widely throughout Greece during the fifth century. By the turn of that century, the idea of metempsychosiswas familiar enough to well-educated Athenians to be used in Plato's dialogues without furtherexplanation. Judging from comments made by Plato and Aristotle, metempsychosis was taught inassociation with the Orphic mysteries, which might imply that an even wider segment of the population knew the concept (although we cannot be sure that all rituals or beliefs called "Orphic" byancient authors were necessarily part of all "Orphic" initiations).[50] Metempsychosis, like belief in a system of postmortem rewards and punishments, assumes an expectation that souls will be treated asindividuals after death, and it therefore also indicates, again, that we have moved quite a bit away from the Homeric picture of an afterlife in which all are treated equally. Of similar import is the beliefthat the souls of the living can temporarily separate themselves from their bodies to wander abroadfor periods of time, which also shows up first in the late archaic age.[51]

One more important idea can be found in Empedocles' poetry. In fragment 101, he boasts that he will teach his students to lead souls back out of Hades. This claim is confirmed by comments made byhis pupil Gorgias and by the remarks of later authors such as Diogenes Laertius.[52] This art, properly called either psycbagogia or goeteia , is analyzed in depth in chapter 3, but I should note here that Empedocles' poem is one

[49] Pi O. 2.68-77 and fr. 133; Emp. frs. 107, 108 Wr. = 31 D 117, 115 D-K, and see discussion atWright 63-76, 270-76. Pherecydes: evidence is collected and analyzed in M. L. West 1971, 25.Pythagoras: evidence is collected and discussed at Burkert 1972, 120-65.

[50] Pl. Lg . 870d4-e2; cf. Cra . 400c and Arist. de An . 410b29 = Orph. fr . 27. Discussion at Burkett 1985, 297-301.

[51] Bremmer 1983, 25-38; Meuli 1975, 2: 817-79; Burkett 1967, 147-49; Bolton; Dodds 1951,135-78.

[52]

20 of the earliest mentions we have of the very important idea that the dead not only were capable of returning on their own but could be made to return by actions performed by the living.

Lyric Poetry, Epinician Poetry

It is not surprising that we derive little information about the status and activity of the dead from thisbody of literature, for most of it is concerned with the immediacies of lifelove, war, athletic glory,and the pleasures of the symposium. When death is mentioned, it usually is by way of contrast. Thus,for example, Stesichorus, fragment 244:

... for it is futile and pointless to weep for the dead.


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and Sappho, fragment 55:

[After death you will be] forgotten,and there will never be any longing for you, because you have no share of the rosesof Pieria. Unseen in the house of Hades,flown from our midst, you will wander amongst the shadowy dead [phoitases ped' amauron nekuon ].

The poets choose to emphasize the permanence and irreversibility of death, rather than any possibility of contact between the living and the dead. Death is an emptiness, an absence of life.[53]

Nonetheless, the poets occasionally reveal familiarity with the possibility of something else. Simonides' ninth epigram seeks to emphasize the idealistic notion (very useful to the emergingcity-state) that one's military valor (arete ) survives death:

These men adorned their dear country in imperishable famewhen they cloaked themselves in the dark cloud of death.They died but they are not dead: their valor bestows glory upon them here aboveand leads them up from the house of Hades.

The verb anago , found here in the phrase "leads up from the House of Hades" (anagei domatos ex Aideo ), is frequently used of the invocation of souls in the classical period. Although Simonides uses the idea of invoking the dead only symbolically, to give expression to the common-

[53] Cf. also Sol. fr. 21; Simon., epigrams 84 and 85 = AP 7.516 and 7.77.

21 place idea that glory survives death, the phrase suggests that his audience was familiar with the sort of ritualized psychagogia that we see acted out a few years later in Aeschylus's Persians , for example.If so, this would, with Empedocles' poem, be one of our earliest literary attestations of the idea that the dead could be made to rise up from the Underworld (the epigram is thought to refer to theSpartans who fell at Plataea, and thus can be dated to shortly after 479).

In Pythian 4.159-64, Pindar tells of how Pelias persuaded Jason to travel to Colchis by describing adream in which Phrixus, their shared ancestor, said that his wrath could be assuaged if his soul(psyche ) were brought home to Thessaly. The way in which this could be done, according to the ghost, was to retrieve the Golden Fleece.[54] In many ways, this scene echoes the much earlier encounter between Achilles and Patroclus's ghost in Iliad 23, for in both cases, the dead appear to the living in order to ask them to perform rituals that will allow them to rest more easily in death. And yetthere is a significant difference. Patroclus wants only the rites that will admit him to Hades; behindPhrixus's plea lies the assumption that a soul can be transferred by means of ritual from one place to another here in the upper world. This is the very essence of the sort of ritual that is described instories, discussed in chapter 3, in which expert practitioners lead ghosts away from one spot toanother. Although detailed accounts come only from later sources such as Plutarch, an allusion to sucha process is made by Thucydides, and Euripides mentions the psychagogos , the professional "leader of souls,"[55] which suggests that techniques for transferring ghosts from one place to another were available at Pindar's time. Phrixus's plea also confirms that the soul of a dead person, however much itmay be imagined to dwell in Hades, has some attachment to a physical place in the upper world aswell. A few decades later, Herodotus's story of Periander and Melissa's ghost rests on the sameassumption, as do a number of scenes from tragedy.

Pindar's story adds one more detail that provides an important insight: Pelias claims that the Oracle at Delphi had confirmed and approved of his dream and its message. This not only reminds usthat appearances of the dead in dreams were not automatically assumed to

[54] Cf. pp. 154-55 below.

[55] Th. 1.134.4-35.1; E. Alc . 1127-28. Cf. pp. 61-62 below on the ritual to which Thucydides alludes.

22 be valid (a double check might be necessary) but also indicates that the Oracle, one of Greece's mostesteemed religious institutions, both upheld the possibility that the dead might convey information in


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dreams and advocated the use of rituals through which the living could interact with the dead. Theritual to which Thucydides referred similarly was commanded by Delphi, and we shall hear more aboutthis Oracle, as well as the Oracle of Zeus at Dodona, giving instructions for such rituals later inchapters 2 and 3. This indicates that interaction with the dead and the experts who specialized in itwere not anathema to mainstream Greek culture and religion. Indeed, Pindar's story suggests thateven an old Greek hero like Jason could be imagined as engaging in psychagogic activities. Another oldGreek hero, Odysseus, also interacted with the dead, of course. The Merlinesque figure of themagiciandark and mysterious, dwelling in the woods at the fringe of civilization does not work wellhere. However frightening and potentially dangerous the dead themselves might be, the individual whocould control and use them was welcome and sometimes even esteemed.

We find intimations of a darker form of postmortem activity in Sappho. Fragment 178 mentions Gello, who is "fond of children." This refers to a demonic creature whom we know well from latersources, the soul of a dead virgin who wandered around in the world of the living, enviously killingbabies and pregnant women. Already in Homer, there are allusions to the belief that the unmarrieddead were excluded from the Underworld and might harm the living, but it is in this fragment of Sappho that we first find reference to one by name, or any intimation of the specific form that thisharm might take.

From lyric, elegiac, and epinician poetry, then, we have been able to glean several useful pieces ofinformation. We find our earliest hints that the dead might be called out of Hades by the living(Simonides, cf. Empedocles) and the idea that the living could affect the circumstances of the deadthrough rituals (Pindar). We also get another glimpse of an unhappy soul returning to attack the living(Sappho). Finally, in Pindar, as in Empedocles and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter , we meet the idea that each individual soul survives and experiences an afterlife that is exclusively tailored to it, whetherit take the form of punishment, reward, or metempsychosis.[56]

[56] In the following section, I occasionally refer to evidence from Herodotus, comic drama, andPlato's dialogues in the text or notes. None of these sources has enough to say about popular beliefs inthe dead to merit a sections of its own, but all of them offer informarion that confirms the picturefound in tragedy, with a few interesting additions.

23

Tragedy and Contempoary Literature

Heraclitus said that Dionysus and Hades were really one and the same.[57] Students of tragedy shouldfind this easy to believe, for nowhere do we meet the dead more often than in the plays of Aeschylus,Sophocles, and Euripides; the boundary that separates them from the living seems less secure than ever before. Quite a few of the dead transgress it, moving out of Hades either in flesh or in spirit;[58]

two tragedies are introduced by a ghost; in one of them, a ghost speaks alone on stage for 58 Frees before anyone living appears. In at least two tragedies, the dead rise in response to rituals performedby the living, which confirms that psychagogic techniques such as those alluded to by Empedocles,Simonides, and Pindar were becoming well known by this tune. In the Alcestis , Heracles refers to professionals who made a living from such rituals: one of the names they use is. "psychagogos ," literally, a "leader of the soul."[59] In still other cases, where the dead themselves cannot rise in flesh or spirit, they send forth their agents, the Erinyes, to do their bidding.[60]

A number of other tragic characters, falsely believed to be dead, miraculously "return" from Hadesto make their presence felt among the living in various ways.[61] Pretended death is central to the plots of several plays, either as a treacherous overture to real death (it is the "dead" Orestes who killshis own mother in Aeschylus's and Sophocles' versions of the story) or as a stratagem to escape fromdeath (Helen rescues Menelaus by pretending to perform his funeral rites in Euripides' Helen ). Even when not central to the plot, scenes in which survivors mistakenly mourn those who are still living make good dramatic fodder. Particularly interesting, because particularly perverse, are those in whicha purportedly deceased person, like Tom Sawyer, watches his survivors

[57] Fr. 22 B 15 D-K.

[58] Clytemnestra in the Eumenides , Alcestis in the Alcestis , Heracles and Theseus in the Heracles . The ghost of Polydorus speaks the prologue of Euripides' Hecuba , and the ghost of Achilles apparentlyspoke the prologue of Sophocles' Polyxena (fr. 523). As North, 51-52, points out, the development of a device known as "Charon's steps" in the middle of the orchestra of many Greek theaters suggests


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how frequently ghosts must have appeared in plays.

[59] In the Persians , Darius rises in response to rituals performed by the Persian elders (623-842). Aeschylus's lost Psychagogoi dealt with Odysseus's invocation of ghosts and thus must have presentedthem on stage. E. Alc . 1127-28.

[60] E.g., A. Eu . 94; S. El . 112. See further chapters 4 and 7 below.

[61] Heracles in the Heracles , Ion in the Ion , Iphigenia in the Iphigenia in Tauris . Cf. Heracles' statement at Tr . 1160-63 that Nessus has returned from the dead to kill him.

24 mourn.[62] Death seems rather weak in tragedy, no longer able to hold on to those it has snatched. It is punctuated by a question mark rather than a period.

Nor do the living stay in their proper place. Great heroes such as Heracles, Theseus, and Orpheus are said to have actually visited the land of the dead,[63] and many other tragic characters move into it symbolically. For example, the condemned Antigone is described as a corpse lingering among theliving. The Erinyes promise to make the living Orestes a "bloodless shadow" (anaimatos skia ), and Philoctetes says that he is already dead from his illness, nothing more than a vaporous shadow or ghost (kapnou skia, eidolon ). Electra cries out that in murdering Clytemnestra, her children have become like the dead themselves (isonekues ) When Heracles returns alive and victorious from Hades,he finds his family macabrely dressed in their funeral garments, awaiting death and praying that hisghost might aid them. Of course, it will be Heracles himself, this amazingly resurrected ghost, whokills them in the end, proving their costumes all too appropriate.[64]

The living and the dead, then, constantly exchange places in fifth-century drama. Their worlds aredreadfully close; they move between them with a disarming ease. Unspoken questions about thenature of life and deathand challenges to their assumed dichotomylinger over the tragic stage,seeming to reflect the arguments made by Empedocles and others of the time, who said that theywere but two sides to the same coin: as we die we enter into a new sort of life that eventually bringsus to birth again; as we are born, we begin a sort of death. We see more fully developed forms ofwhat we only glimpsed before: a belief that death is not the end of everything at all, but only thebeginning of a new sort of existence, for better or for worse.

We might be tempted to dismiss tragedy's fascination with death and the dead as something that came naturally to the genre. Tragedy loves both paradoxes and sudden reversals of plot, which arereadily provided by situations in which, for example, those still living join the world of the dead(Antigone walking into her own tomb), or the dead turn out to be living (Orestes "rising" from Hadesto rescue Iphigenia). Tragedy,

[62] E. IT 144-77; S. El . 1098-1229. Cf. Alc . 1037-1126, where the "dead" Alcestis listens to Admetus extol her virtues to Heracles.

[63] E.g., E. HF 516-18, 610-21; Heracl . 218-19; Alc . 357-62. Cf. Pl. Phd . 68a2-7 and Ar. Ra . throughout the first half of the play.

[64] S. Ant . 850-52; cf. 559-60, 810-12, 1070-71; A. Eu . 302; S. Ph . 946-47; E. Or . 194-207; E. HF 442-43.

25 moreover, is by its very nature a genre that challenges the boundary between reality and illusion, bothin its performative aspects and by bringing mythic figures onto the stage. The ghostthe eidolon , the skia , the phasma , the thing that is here in front of our eyes and yet not really hereemblematizesquite nicely the slippage between reality and illusion that tragedy loved.

And yet, these observations alone cannot account for tragedy's fascination with the dead and theirworld, for there were other subjects that could lend themselves to paradox and reversal and othersubjects through which the issue of illusion and reality could be explored. Tragedy's subject matter,however nicely it may generate plot twists and provocative paradoxes, always grapples

restless dead

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