Death in Ancient Greece PDF

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Time = material honour Kalos thanatos = the beautiful death Arete = excellence Kleos = undying fame Ker = goddess of death Aristea = killing spree Aoroi: untimely demise Eudaimonia: good fortune Oraios penthos: timely grief Amphidromia: naming ceremony for child Psyche: Greek version of a soul Aisa: fate Prothesis: the lying down of the body for the family to mourn around Polyandreia: communal graves Ekphora: the funeral procession Dioblêtoi: death by lightning Deuteropotmoi: people who died and then rose again Spage Miasma: To bring guilt/pollution Thalamos: inner room (where women tended to die) Threnos: song of mourning for the dead Aiorema Thanatos: death Biaiothanatoi - Those who die by violence

Deuteropotmoi - 'person with two fates' Agathoi andres - 'the war dead' Demosion Sema - state cemetary Barathron - pit in Athens were the unwanted dead were thrown dike phonou - prosecution Nekuodaimones - 'dead souls' Diomosia - oaths autocheires, biaiothanatoi - suicides Aidos - submissive/modest

Death, Dying and Disposal in Ancient Greece Wednesday, 18 November 2015 2:05 PM

The sources  Texts - epic, tragedy etc. Historical texts, medical texts. Philosophy, religion.  Art - pottery, sculpture, grave epitaphs  Archaeology - cemeteries and burials, osteoarchaeology (study of the bones of the dead). Creates a problem with learning about children - bones tend not to survive. A search for consistency among opinions on death is difficult, they are as varying as they are today Death in Epic  The Iliad (c. 670-640BC). Unusual in it's approach to death and dying, Homer's approach to death and dying  The Odyssey (c. 670-640BC) o Both about the hero Odysseus and the Trojan War  The Epic Cycle (late 7th Century BC)

Heroism in the Iliad  Mortal doom, and the struggle to escape from it. Death is inevitable, and it is permanent  Fighting in the Iliad, 'all men must die'. Recurrent motif in the Iliad  The way a man achieves immortality is through making his name immortal  Arete (virtue, or excellence, your skill, the ease with which you can kill other people), kleos (undying fame, achieved ), timē (material honour, measured through material possessions)  Kalos thanatos (the ideal death)  Achilles, Hektor, Patroklos, Sarpedon. The Iliad is most concerned with the deaths of these heroes, but Achilles does not die in the Iliad. He is the only hero in the Iliad who knows he will die, he knows he will die young with great glory, with a name who will be remembered.  The Iliad is interested in death and dying, and how you deal with death when you are faced with it. Heroic status  How does Homer show us heroic status of his various characters? Primarily through the aristeia, which is the chance for the hero to show off his excellence. A killing spree - the length of your aristeia shows how great of a hero you are. Patroclus lasts through book 16, Achilles starts at book 20, ends at the end of book 22.  Arming scenes: Achilles' ash spear, Paris' bow. The more attention paid to the arming scene, the greater the hero. The fatal omission, when Patroclus doesn’t take Achilles' spear, he can't use the weapon.  Fighting techniques  Fear  Death and dying: ker, gruesome deaths, cameos. Ker is the horrible side of death. It is inescapable, like fate, the idea of the 'spirits of death' waiting for you. Cameos, a small description of them at the moment of their death - for example Priam's youngest son Polydorus.  Motifs of short life, parents should not outlive their children 'The godlike hero'  Gods and their characteristics. Gods support humans in some cases, but more often than not, the distance between god and humans is recurrent. This is particularly shown in Apollo, who always laughs at the humans and puts them down. The gods are most fascinated by the great heroes who are doomed to die.  Relationships with the humans  'Beloved of the gods' - the heroes who are doomed to die, Zeus' fascination with them becomes more as they are closer to death. The fact that humans risk death is what is interesting to the Gods. This is something that the gods cannot do, which is why it is fascinating.  Sarpedon, Patroklos, Hektor, Achilles  Gods and fate  A good example of this is in the Siphnian Treasury, which Achilles fights Memnos, and the gods argue about the result. Some support Troy, some support Greece. Hermes held the scales with the souls of the two great warriors Achilles  Given the choice between a short life with glory, or a long, boring life  Arete, time  Agamemnon's gifts refused  Grief for Patroklos

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The death of Hektor, horrific treatment of his body after his death Conversation with Priam Achilles chose this fate, but he is now trapped in it, and is beginning to question it. This allows us to feel sympathy for him throughout the Iliad despite his questionable actions and treatments of others, particularly after their deaths. Even though we may like Hektor better today, Achilles is the much more preferred hero, and not only because he is Greek. His language is exquisite and markedly different from the other characters, and the Greek view is that Achilles is much better.

Scene with Achilles and Priam  Disenchantment with glory  "…I am not even looking after my father as he grows old, since I have been sitting here by Troy, far from home, causing grief to you and your children.' Imaginative compassion Lack of burial  There is a significance of proper burial  Unburied dead  Consequences: o Tomb as focus for kleos o Entry to Hades (Patroklos' eidolon). Hades is exceedingly boring, but it is better to be there than be stuck in between death and life, wanting to get in Hades  You go to Hades, assuming you get buried  Where is it? The Odyssey says that it is at the edge of the world The soul in Hades  The dead in Hades do maintain some connection with their dead selves  The dead hold on to the relationships and grudges that they had when they were alive. An example is the relationship between Ajax and Odysseus Achilles in Hades  "I would rather follow the plough as thrall to another man, than be a king over all the perished dead' - Odyssey  Another reason for burying your dead is that the gods will be displeased if you don’t  Odysseus sees his mother in Hades when he is there, much to his dismay Topography of Hades  Under the world  Odysseus' katabasis: Okeanos, Kimmerians  Suitors' katabasis (katabasis meaning descent to the underworld). The layout of their descent is very different to that of Odysseus You must not expect too much consistency around anything to do with death!! Time = material honour Kalos thanatos = the beautiful death Arete = excellence Kleos = undying fame Ker = goddess of death Aristea = killing spree

Tragedy  Athenian in origin, 5th century onwards  In honour of Dionysos Eleuthereus  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (youngest of the three) (famous writers of tragedy)  Usually involves three actors and a chorus. The three actors take a number of roles, and are strongly bound by convention.  Plots are almost always mythical  Aristotle said that tragedy should elicit pity for others, and fear for oneself that you don’t want this to happen to you  We have 32 surviving tragedies  Greek tragedy was masked Death in tragedy  Almost none of it happens in sight of the audience, the vast majority take place off stage, and you generally don’t get to see the body. The way you learn about it is another character gives a messenger speech, describing it in great detail.  Three examples where this didn’t happen was Hippolytos, Alcestis, and Ajax. We do not know how the death of Ajax was managed, because he committed suicide early on, and the body was alluded to for the rest of the play.  This could be because of the three actor rule, purely for practical reasons.  It could be because of public delicacy, some Roman sources argue that (Horus) it was unattractive and the audience didn’t like it. This is most unlikely, as it is a tragic genre, and there is no lack of gory scenes at other times!  Religious restraint is another possibility, as the theatre is a sacred space for Dionysus, the question is whether the spilling of blood extended to the spilling of fake blood. The argument is that you cannot show the actual killing on stage.  For dramatic reasons, it could be more effective to have violence happen offstage. Miraculous events would be hard to depict with the limited resources that the Greeks had;  or the perception of messenger speeches. Tragic ways to kill a man  Murder, suicide by the sword or the spear, blood  Men die by being struck in the side, ribcage or liver. For example, they don’t get beheaded or poisoned  Men usually die outside  Death by the side, focus on stabbing in the side etc. Tragic ways to kill a woman  Women mostly die by suicide. They get killed by hanging (aiorema), or leap to their deaths  Women tend to die inside, they die on the lechos (bed) in the bedroom (thalamos)  They die for and because of men  The corpse is often shown later, much later than men  Death and the neck (the neck an expression of femininity) Ambiguous deaths  Antigone - hangs herself, but gets the bloody male death when Haemon kills himself on top of her with a sword in his side Aueschylus Agamemnon

Background tensions:  Military  Political  Domestic Agamemnon is driven by pride, which Clytemnestra uses against him to kill him. Clytemnestra:  Iphigeneia, Cassandra, Aegisthus  'Male strength of heart in its high confidence' Just retribution vs. curse The murder scene  Almost like a sacrifice to the Gods, defilement of the act of sacrifice, it is a very corrupted and problematic idiom that we have here.  Shocking speech from Clytemnestra How do we feel about the characters? Who do we sympathise with? Is any action justified?  Clytemnestra is meant to be awful and unwomanly, she breaks all the conventions of what makes a good wife. Her actions are almost unthinkable.  Although we don’t feel any sympathy for Agamemnon, his actions are driven by pride and not spite Death of Agamemnon krater Sophocles' Ajax Character of Ajax: motive for suicide  Heroic virtue vs. arrogant intractability. Everyone else is saying Ajax is so stubborn, and he is  Slaughtering of sheep, when he thinks is the Greeks  First part of the play is about Ajax returning to sanity after killing the sheep, and his family trying to convince him not to kill himself  Middle of the play is him convincing them that he is okay, but then he commits suicide  Exekias amphora Suicide  The sword (a gift from Hector)  The burial Virgin sacrifice  Abhorrence and admiration. It is only found for serious crises, for example victory in war.  Unmarried virgin; 'pure' blood  Iphigeneia 'like a goat over the altar', 'like a mountain heifer coming down virgin from the rocky caves'  Polyxena, one of the daughters of Priam demanded by Achilles as a sacrifice on his grave.  Makaria Willing and unwilling victoms  Iphigeneia in Aeschulus - an unwilling victim  Iphigeneia in Euripides - a willing victim. This shift to willingness is new in this myth, previously she never went willingly.  In Euripides plays, the virgins are initially shocked and reluctant, but then they realise that is is a willing and noble death. For example, Makaria, realizes that there is a no greater thing that she can do than this Marriage to Hades (an idea that pops up with virgin sacrifice, the bride of death)  A girl of marriageable age  Iphigeneia - marriage to Achilles

Sophocles' Antigone  Kingslaying and burial, Eidapus' daughter  The play is about loyalty. Should you be loyal to the state? The Gods? Or your family?  Her brothers fight over who is going to be the next king of Thebes  Antigone's death  Marriage to death  Sacrifice/suicide  Haemon and blood...