Of all the problems on which we expect light to be thrown by religion
none, to us, is more pressing than that of death. A fundamental, and as
many believe, the most essential part of Christianity, is its doctrine
of reward and punishment in the world beyond; and a religion which had
nothing at all to say about this great enigma we should hardly feel to
be a religion at all. And certainly on this head the Greeks, more than
any people that ever lived, must have required a consolation and a hope.
Just in proportion as their life was fuller and richer than that which
has been lived by any other race, just in proportion as their capacity
for enjoyment, in body and soul, was keener, as their senses were finer,
their intellect broader, their passions more intense, must they have
felt, with peculiar emphasis, the horror of decay and death. And such,
in fact, is the characteristic note of their utterances on this theme.
"Rather," says the ghost of Achilles to Odysseus in the world of shades,
"rather would I live upon the soil as the hireling of another, with a
landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the
dead that are no more." [Footnote: Od. xi 489.--Translated by Butcher
and Lang.] Better, as Shakespeare has it,
"The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature,"
better that, on earth at least and in the sun, than the phantom kingdoms
of the dead. The fear of age and death is the shadow of the love of
life; and on no people has it fallen with more horror than on the
Greeks. The tenderest of their songs of love close with a sob; and it is
an autumn wind that rustles in their bowers of spring. Here, for
example, is a poem by Mimnermus characteristic of this mood of the
Greeks:
"O golden Love, what life, what joy but thine?
Come death, when thou art gone, and make an end!
When gifts and tokens are no longer mine,
Nor the sweet intimacies of a friend.
These are the flowers of youth. But painful age
The bane of beauty, following swiftly on,
Wearies the heart of man with sad presage
And takes away his pleasure in the sun.
Hateful is he to maiden and to boy
And fashioned by the gods for our annoy."
[Footnote: Mimnermus, El. I.]
Such being the general view of the Greeks on the subject of death, what
has their religion to say by way of consolation? It taught, to begin
with, that the spirit does survive after death. But this survival, as it
is described in the Homeric poems, is merely that of a phantom and a
shade, a bloodless and colourless duplicate of the man as he lived on
earth. Listen to the account Odysseus gives of his meeting with his
mother's ghost.
"So spake she, and I mused in my heart and would fain have embraced the
spirit of my mother dead. Thrice I sprang towards her, and was minded to
embrace her; thrice she flitted from my hands as a shadow or even as a
dream, and sharper ever waxed the grief within me. And uttering my voice
I spake to her winged words:
"'Mother mine, wherefore dost thou not tarry for me who am eager to
seize thee, that even in Hades we twain may cast our arms each about the
other, and satisfy us with chill lament? Is it but a phantom that the
high goddess Persephone hath sent me, to the end that I may groan for
more exceeding sorrow?'
"So spake I, and my lady mother answered me anon:
"'Ah me, my child, luckless above all men, nought doth Persephone, the
daughter of Zeus, deceive thee, but even in this wise it is with mortals
when they die. For the sinews no more bind together the flesh and the
bones, but the force of burning fire abolishes them, so soon as the life
hath left the white bones, and the spirit like a dream flies forth and
hovers near.'"
From such a conception of the life after death little comfort could be
drawn; nor does it appear that any was sought. So far as we can trace
the habitual attitude of the Greek he seems to have occupied himself
little with speculation, either for good or evil, as to what might await
him on the other side of the tomb. He was told indeed in his legends of
a happy place for the souls of heroes, and of torments reserved for
great criminals; but these ideas do not seem to have haunted his
imagination. He was never obsessed by that close and imminent vision of
heaven and hell which overshadowed and dwarfed, for the mediaeval mind,
the brief space of pilgrimage on earth. Rather he turned, by preference,
from the thought of death back to life, and in the memory of honourable
deeds in the past and the hope of fame for the future sought his
compensation for the loss of youth and love. In the great funeral speech
upon those who have fallen in war which Thucydides puts into the mouth
of Pericles we have, we must suppose, a reflection, more accurate than
is to be found elsewhere, of the position naturally adopted by the
average Greek. And how simple are the topics, how broad and human, how
rigorously confined to the limits of experience! There is no suggestion
anywhere of a personal existence continued after death; the dead live
only in their deeds; and only by memory are the survivors to be
consoled.
"I do not now commiserate the parents of the dead who stand here; I
would rather comfort them. You know that your life has been passed amid
manifold vicissitudes; and that they may be deemed fortunate who have
gained most honour, whether an honourable death like theirs, or an
honourable sorrow like yours, and whose days have been so ordered that
the term of their happiness is likewise the term of their life... Some
of you are at an age at which they may hope to have other children, and
they ought to bear their sorrow better; not only will the children who
may hereafter be born make them forget their now lost ones, but the city
will be doubly a gainer. She will not be left desolate, and she will be
safer. For a man's counsels cannot be of equal weight or worth, when he
alone has no children to risk in the general danger. To those of you who
have passed their prime, I say: 'Congratulate yourselves that you have
been happy during the greater part of your days; remember that your life
of sorrow will not last long, and be comforted by the glory of those who
are gone. For the love of honour alone is ever young, and not riches, as
some say, but honour is the delight of men when they are old and
useless.'" [Footnote: Thuc. II. 44.--Jowett's translation.]
The passage perhaps represents what we may call the typical attitude of
the Greek. To seek consolation for death, if anywhere, then in life, and
in life not as it might be imagined beyond the grave, but as it had been
and would be lived on earth, appears to be consonant with all that we
know of the clear and objective temper of the race. It is the spirit
which was noted long ago by Goethe as inspiring the sepulchral monuments
of Athens.
"The wind," he says, "which blows from the tombs of the ancients comes
with gentle breath as over a mound of roses. The reliefs are touching
and pathetic, and always represent life. There stand father and mother,
their son between them, gazing at one another with unspeakable truth to
nature. Here a pair clasp hands. Here a father seems to rest on his
couch and wait to be entertained by his family. To me the presence of
these scenes was very touching. Their art is of a late period, yet are
they simple, natural, and of universal interest. Here there is no knight
in harness on his knees awaiting a joyful resurrection. The artist has
with more or less skill presented to us only the persons themselves, and
so made their existence lasting and perpetual. They fold not their
hands, gaze not into heaven; they are on earth, what they were and what
they are. They stand side by side, take interest in one another; and
that is what is in the stone, even though somewhat unskilfully, yet most
pleasingly depicted." [Footnote: From Goethe's "Italienische Reise." I
take this translation (by permission) from Percy Gardner's "New Chapters
in Greek History", p. 319.]
As a further illustration of the same point an epitaph may be quoted
equally striking for its simple human feeling and for its absence of any
suggestion of a continuance of the life of the dead. "Farewell" is the
first and last word; no hint of a "joyful resurrection."
"Farewell, tomb of Melite; the best of women lies here, who loved her
loving husband, Onesimus; thou wert most excellent, wherefore he longs
for thee after thy death, for thou wert the best of wives.--Farewell,
thou too, dearest husband, only love my children."
But however characteristic this attitude of the Greeks may appear to be,
especially by contrast with the Christian view, it would be a mistake to
suppose that it was the only one with which they were acquainted, or
that they had put aside altogether, as indifferent or insoluble, the
whole problem of a future world. As we have seen, they did believe in
the survival of the spirit, and in a world of shades ruled by Pluto and
Persephone. They had legends of a place of bliss for the good and a
place of torment for the wicked; and if this conception did not haunt
their mind, as it haunted that of the mediaeval Christian, yet at times
it was certainly present to them, with terror or with hope. That the
Greek was not unacquainted with the fear of hell we know from the
passage of Plato, part of which we have already quoted, where in
speaking of the mendicant prophets who professed to make atonement for
sin he says that their ministrations "are equally at the service of the
living and the dead; the latter sort they call mysteries, and they
redeem us from the pains of hell, but if we neglect them no one knows
what awaits us." And on the other hand we hear, as early as the date of
the Odyssey, of the Elysian fields reserved for the souls of the
favourites of the gods.
The Greeks, then, were not without hope and fear concerning the world to
come, however little these feelings may have coloured their daily life;
and there was one phase of their religion, which appears to have been
specially occupied with this theme. In almost every Greek city we hear
of "mysteries", the most celebrated being, of course, those of Eleusis
in Attica. What exactly these "mysteries" were we are very imperfectly
informed; but so much, at least, is clear that by means of a scenic
symbolism, representing the myth of Demeter and Kore or of Dionysus
Zagreus, hopes were held out to the initiated not only of a happy life
on earth, but of a happy immortality beyond. "Blessed," says Pindar,
"blessed is he who has seen these things before he goes under the hollow
earth. He knows the end of life, and he knows its god-given origin." And
it is presumably to the initiated that the same poet promises the joys
of his thoroughly Greek heaven. "For them," he says, "shineth below the
strength of the sun while in our world it is night, and the space of
crimson-flowered meadows before their city is full of the shade of
frankincense trees, and of fruits of gold. And some in horses, and in
bodily feats, and some in dice, and some in harp-playing have delight;
and among them thriveth all fair-flowering bliss; and fragrance
streameth ever through the lovely land, as they mingle incense of every
kind upon the altars of the gods." [Footnote: Pindar, Thren. I.--
Translation by E. Myers.]
The Greeks, then, were not unfamiliar with the conception of heaven and
hell: only, and that is the point to which we must return and on which
we must insist, the conception did not dominate and obsess their mind.
They may have had their spasms of terror, but these they could easily
relieve by the performance of some atoning ceremony; they may have had
their thrills of hope, but these they would only indulge at the crisis
of some imposing ritual.
The general tenor of their life does not seem to have been affected by
speculations about the world beyond. Of age indeed and of death they had
a horror proportional to their acute and sensitive enjoyment of life;
but their natural impulse was to turn for consolation to the interests
and achievements of the world they knew, and to endeavour to soothe, by
memories and hopes of deeds future and past, the inevitable pains of
failure and decay.