1129:2P
Notes on Afterlife Myth (DON’T MISS HEADING FIVE!)
I. The first nekuia in the Odyssey
A. Nekuia (literally, “story of a corpse”) means “story of a trip to the land
of the dead
1. There are two in the Odyssey, so the one in the apologue is called
the First Nekuia
B. The place Odysseus goes is definitely called the “underworld,” but he
sails (i.e., travels horizontally) to get there
1. That paradox points out something very interesting and
important about myths of the afterlife, both in ancient Greece and in
many other cultures
II. Afterlife myth and eschatology
A. Eschatology means “the study of furthest things”—that is, limits
B. Much of the mythic geography of the underworld has to do with limits
1. Especially rivers, e.g. the river Styx
C. Compare the way the Christian tradition views the afterlife, and its
relation to the end of time
1. the Kingdom of God will come, according to the medieval
requiem mass, in the chant called the Dies Irae, at the end of time, the
last day
2. Just as in the ancient Greek tradition it comes at the end both of
horizontal and of vertical space
III. The question of judgment and punishment
A. We’re in great danger of importing our own, Western monotheistic,
notions about the afterlife into the Ancient Greek context where they don’t
belong
1. The problem is made mor difficult by the fact that one of the
first thinkers to introduce the idea of judgment after death was Plato
2. But he was most definitely doing something new, and there had
never been that idea previously in mainstream Greek religion
B. The judges of the underworld, Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aeacus, are
originally there not to decide who gets punished for what they did in life, but to
settle disputes among the dead
C. The “famous sinners” whom Odysseus sees in the underworld are very
notable EXCEPTIONS to what happens to regular people, and they’re where
they are because the gods put them there for very particular bad things they did
IV. The Greek soul
A. The Greek word for soul, psyche, is connected to words for cold
1. For ancient Greeks, a dead soul is less than a live human being,
not more
B. The words describing the underworld in the Odyssey have to do with rot
and decay
1. Dead people are in the underworld because that’s where we put
their bodies—the land of the dead is not a wonderful place, but a
rotting one
V. Burial and hero-cult
A. Greek burial ritual involved precise steps
1. prothesis: laying out the body for a day
2. ekphora: carrying the body out in procession, with laments
3. offerings to the dead of food substances
a) Why? To feed the dead—very different from sacrifices to the
Olympians
B. On the basis of burial ritual, in exactly the time we’re most interested in,
when our most important myths come into being in the epic tradition, HERO-
CULT arises
1. People see the remnants of Mycenaean palaces and suppose them
to be the tombs of heroes, especially the ones they hear about from the
bards
2. They offer to these heroes the same sacrifices they offer to their
own dead
3. This cult becomes a new way of creating a community, and the
polis (city-state), perhaps the most important cultural development in
the history of Western Civilization, is born
C. A heros is not a superhero
1. This is incredibly important for this course
2. The Greek word heros does not refer to a character, whether a
member of the League of Justice or a first-responder, who is necessarily
strong, or good, or even does admirable things
3. The definition of “hero” for the course is “a dead human being
worshipped in the earth”
4. Hero-cult is a defining part of Greek culture, and it makes Greek
culture special that it had, really, two religions:
a) Olympian—the gods
b) Chthonic (from Gr. khthon “earth”)—the heroes
5. I’ll introduce the concept of “mythic guy” later in the course—
he’s the one you think of as “the hero”