`Reading'' Greek Death : To the End of the Classical Period

This work examines aspects of the beliefs, attitudes, and rituals surrounding death in ancient Greece from the Minoan and Mycenean period to the end of the classical age. It draws on different types of evidence including literary texts, burial customs, inscriptions, and images in art.

This book offers a series of in-depth studies of some aspects of the beliefs, attitudes, and rituals surrounding death in ancient Greece from the Minoan and Mycenean period to the end of the classical age. Drawing on every kind of available evidence - from literary texts to burial customs, inscriptions, and images in art - the author sheds new light on many key, still essentially problematic, aspects of Greek life, myth, and literature, including the world of the dead in Homer; the perceptions associated with grave monuments and articulated in their images and epigrams; the myths of Charon, Hermes, and the journey of death; and the shifting attitudes towards death in a changing society. The book is also a sophisticated critique of the methodologies appropriate for interpreting the various kinds of evidence for ancient beliefs, and there is discussion of these in the light of insights from antropology and other disciplines that can help us recontruct the ancient Greek discourse of death, while minimizing the intrusion of our own culturally determined assumptions which reflect modern thinking rather that ancient realities.