Death and the cult of the dead in ancient Greece

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This article describes the concept of death, burial and the rituals used to honor the deceased in ancient Greece .

The idea of ​​death

The people of ancient Greece valued little more than the beauty and strength of youth - illness, old age and death aroused disgust in many. Nevertheless it was the duty of the younger generation to treat old relatives with due respect and to support them until their death. The views in this regard differed in the Greek city-states, however: while in Athens there was little reverence for old age and this was often the target of ridicule as the “time of decline”, the Spartans paid great respect to the elderly.

The widespread youth cult led to the fact that the deceased were always shown healthy, young and beautiful in pictorial representations. After their death, the dead were counted as heroes and thus among the immortals, who received eternal youth through their death. This heroization, which can be found from the archaic period to the Hellenistic epoch, can be explained by the widespread fear of death.

For the first time in Western cultural history, the Greeks found the concept of the soul ( psyche ) to be clearly defined. At the moment of death, it is believed, the soul detached itself from the body in order to fly into the realm of the dead, Hades. The soul was seen as an image ( eidolon ) of the deceased, body and weightless, but still able to suffer and long to return to life. So that these likenesses of the dead could reach Hades , the realm of the dead, over which the god of the same name and his wife Persephone (Kore) ruled, they had to be given their final honors through funeral rituals.

The realm of the dead was generally regarded as a joyless, gloomy resting place, so that the thought of death filled the Greeks with horror. During the transition into Hades, the dead drank from the river of oblivion ( Lethe ) and afterwards knew neither future nor past, but only the eternal present of the underworld. In the Odyssey, Odysseus descends to Hades in search of his fate, where he gives the souls the blood of sacrificial animals to drink so that they can get their memories back for a short time. Among them is Achilles , who angrily exclaims: "I would rather be a day laborer on earth with someone else, a poor man who has little to live, as ruler over all the vanished dead." (11, 489 ff.)

Over time, more and more concrete ideas of the realm of the dead developed: it was surrounded by a river that could only be crossed with the help of the ferryman Charon , accompanied by the three-headed hellhound Kerberos - a return was not possible. This also resulted in the custom of giving the dead an obolus as payment for Charon (see below).

This idea of ​​the afterlife gave special value to the short life and moved people to strive to live on in people's memories.

Perhaps to make this joyless existence easier for the dead and to give them consolation, perhaps also because they were afraid that after their death the deceased would have the power to harm the living, there was a cult of the dead in ancient Greece with potions and other sacrifices ( such as Enagisma ) and festivities in honor of the dead. Evidence of this can be found in the preserved necropolises : In ancient Attic cemeteries one can find the ashes of sacrificial animals near the graves and large vessels for libations on the graves.

The design of the tombs

The Greek cemeteries of antiquity were mostly outside the city, so that necropolises developed outside the cities. Apart from the state-funded communal graves ( polyandrion ) for soldiers killed in action, the graves were family-owned.

From the large stone placed as a mark on or next to the grave, grave steles were developed, which initially only bore the name of the dead person, almost uncut, in Attica from the 7th century BC. However, they became tall, tapered, narrow steles. The first grave stelae with figurative representations (e.g. women with spindles, armed warriors) were made on Crete around the middle of the century. In the following years, such representations became more common. From the 6th century BC In Athens, for example, extremely splendid graves are preserved, which were decorated with bas-reliefs of the dead portrayed as ideal.

With the introduction of democracy in the fifth century BC Such splendor was forbidden. A rule said that a maximum of ten men were allowed to work at a burial site for a maximum of three days, so that the grave monuments were forcibly simpler. In addition, a grave could not be adorned with upright stones or painted panels - the Athenians had to be content with putting up vases depicting the monument they would have liked to have erected.

From the second half of the fifth century BC onwards, due to political and social developments, more elaborate graves, which were now made considerably more personal, prevailed. One preserved grave site, for example, shows a woman next to a wet nurse who looks after her child, another shows a soldier saying goodbye to his wife and children.

In the fourth century BC The low stone walls that had surrounded the tombs in the last century developed into monumental enclosures that often contained three or four graves, sometimes even more, each of which could accommodate several family members and their slaves. The resting places of slaves were only adorned with simple truncated columns bearing their names.

Burial rituals and honoring the dead

The burial of a deceased was the highest duty of the relatives, neglect would have been an offense against the deceased and the gods.

The body of the deceased was washed with fragrant essences and water, which was kept in vases specially made for the cult of the dead, and dressed in white robes. Then he was wrapped in cloth bandages, wrapped in a shroud, and placed on a death bed with his head, crowned with flowers, resting on a pillow. Usually this happened in a personal circle in front of one's own house, only in Athens it was moved to a public house of mourning.

At the deathbed, the family gathered in mourning clothes to mourn the deceased. In order to honor the deceased, the relatives cut their hair and laid it in wreaths on the house altar, on which there were often pictures of the relatives who had already died. Around them, paid mourners began to lament their deaths. This was however in the course of the opposition to pomp (see graves) in the fifth century BC. Banned in the meantime. The number of people attending the funeral was also limited.

The body was buried in the early hours of the morning before sunrise so that the sight of it would not offend the gods. In later times a coin was placed in his mouth as payment for the ferryman who was supposed to take him across the river that separates the underworld from the living, and a piece of honey cake was given as a gift for the gods of the underworld. In a funeral procession, the body of the deceased was carried to the cemetery in the vicinity of the city or driven in a sometimes magnificent hearse. There his life and deeds were praised in speeches and he was either buried or burned at a stake with grave goods. In the latter case, his ashes were kept in an urn. The relatives gathered for the funeral feast after the funeral.

On the third day after the burial, the relatives of the deceased returned to the grave to offer food and drink offerings. Wine and milk, salt, cakes, nuts and fruits were placed in bowls provided with holes in the bottom so that the food could seep into the earth. This was followed by a feast for the family. This was followed by celebrations on the 9th and 30th day, which marked the end of the mourning period with another feast and sacrifice. This ceremony was then repeated every year on the anniversary of the death of the deceased (possibly relative).

Athens also had a kind of “national day of mourning” on which soldiers who died in the war were honored. The merits of the citizens “who fell for the fatherland” were highlighted, but without going into the individual or the present, and they were compared with the great heroes of the past. Since death was inevitably imminent for everyone in any case, the soldiers saw it as a better choice to die knowing that they had defended their homeland and that the whole city would praise and mourn them.

Alternative drafts to the Hades belief: mystery cults

As a continuation of older images of the world and death, mystery cults developed which , if moral guidelines were followed, promised a blissful life after death. Not much is known about these cults due to the lack of written records. They included, for example, the Orphics , the Mysteries of Eleusis with their Demeter cult and the Pythagoreans .

Orphic is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice . After he lost his wife for the second time, Orpheus is said to have called for an ascetic way of life with the renunciation of the consumption of meat and bloody sacrifices. According to the ideas of the Orphics, the “sinner” awaited harsh punishments after death, while the “righteous” could enjoy a life full of bliss on the “islands of the blessed” (also called Elysian fields ).

Isocrates wrote about the mysteries of Demeter in his work "Panegyrikos" (Isocr. Or. 4, 28):

" As Demeter after the rape of Kore wandering and came to us, she brought contrary to our ancestors who had proved her some services that may experience only the initiated, great benevolence. She gave them two of the most precious gifts imaginable: the agriculture that has allowed us to live differently from the wild animals, and the mysteries that the believers have about what they will end up with at the end of their lives and in the Eternity of the centuries awaits, gives comfort and hope. "

Since the Demeter mysteries were a secret cult , nothing more is known about the concept of the hereafter.

The school of the philosopher Pythagoras , which had its heyday in the fifth century BC. B.C., advocates - like the Orphics - the renunciation of meat (and broad beans). The Pythagoreans believed in the rebirth of the soul ( metempsychosis ). It is reported that Pythagoras was able to remember his previous lives (including fighting in the Trojan War ). This teaching, too, was passed on exclusively orally , in the form of doctrines that his students put together.

However, these cults only formed marginalized groups and were often the target of derision and malice from fellow men. The majority of Greeks clung to the Hades belief. But a dualistic model was also adopted within the idea of ​​Hades : The terrible abyss of Tartarus for the enemies of the gods and the Elysium for their darlings. Here the individual actions of people and their responsibility were not yet decisive, but this idea is already evident in the dichotomy.

literature

See also