Attitudes Toward Death in Archaic Greece

IAN MORRIS

Attitudes

Toward Death

in Archaic Greece

ASTHERE A SIGNIFICANT SHIFTinattitudes towarddeath inArchaic Greece?

W

In this paper,

I argue both yes and no, according

to how "attitudes

toward death"

isdefined. My thesis is a reply to two important articles by Christiane Sourvinou Inwood. Dr. Sourvinou-Inwood claims that the rise of the polis affectedmentali tieswithin the intellectual elite, and that death began to be fearedmore after 700 B.C.She further suggests that the changes identifiedby Philippe Aries in eleventh to twelfth-century-A.D.France provide a useful analogy forArchaic Greece.' Her case has far-reaching consequences: if theGreeks had to any extent anticipated Western developments by twomillennia, much thinkingabout thehistory of death would be challenged, and the theoretical basis for the archaeology of burials would crumble. The argument also raises serious questions about the possibility of "intellectualist" interpretations of archaeological evidence.2 The question, then, isof interest even beyond the field of Greek religious history. I am grateful

to a number

of

readers

in Cambridge

and

and Oxford,

to seminar

audiences

in

Cambridge and Chicago, for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Iwould particularly like to thankAnthony Snodgrass, Paul Cartledge, and Tony Long for their help, without wishing to implicate them in the results. 1. C. Sourvinou-Inwood,

"A Trauma

in Flux:

Death

in the Eighth

Century

and After,"

in R.

Hagg, ed., The Greek Renaissance of theEighth Century B.C. (Stockholm, 1983) 33-49; Sourvinou Inwood,

"To Die

and Enter

the House

of Hades:

Homer,

Before

and After,"

in J. Whaley,

ed.,

Mirrors of Mortality (London, 1981) 15-39. P. Aries (The Hour of Our Death [New York, 19811) himself believes that there was no change in antiquity; he speaks of a single attitude, which "is the unchronicled death throughout the long ages of most ancient history, and perhaps of prehistory" (p. 5). The Rise of the Greek 2. I. Morris, Burial and Ancient Society: cf. I. Hodder, the Past (Cambridge, 1986) 5. I was 32-36; Reading to lack of space. Inwood's theories there, owing

(0 1989 BY THE

REGENTS

OF THE

UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

1987) (Cambridge, City-State unable to discuss Sourvinou

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece

297

Dr. Sourvinou-Inwood suggests that therewas a large-scalechange in individ ual psychologies around 700 B.C. I dispute this view, arguing that there was fundamental continuity inpersonal attitudes towarddeath from the earliest times to the Classical period and beyond. There were some eschatological changes, such as the arrival of Eastern ideas about the soul around 500, but I believe that these had very limited impact.What did change, though, was the communal use made of the dead, in rituals evoking and creating the structureof society. For simplicity's sake, I refer to the ritual uses of death to "create" the polis community as "ideologies of death," and to individuals' concepts about the fear of death

and

the afterlife

as "individual

to death."

attitudes

The

two are not

completely separable, and to some extent they overlap;3 but for the analysis this rather crude distinction

here,

is a useful

tool.

I begin by considering the methodological problems involved in this ques tion, focusing on the role of generalization. I then outline Dr. Sourvinou Inwood's

case and

its links with Aries's

in more

model

detail,

that her

arguing

causalmodel is inadequate. Finally, Iwill offer alternative interpretationsof the literaryand archaeological evidence, emphasizing social rather than psychologi cal factors. I am certainly not claiming that personal belief-religious or otherwise-has no place in the analysis of death and burial; rather, I suggest that it is much

harder

to carry out a study at this level than is often

assumed.

Struc

tural and intellectualist interpretations of rituals are complementary ways of viewing the same data, not competing alternatives; but in this particular case, there is insufficient evidence for an individualist approach, and Dr. Sourvinou Inwood's theory lacks an empirical basis.4 ANCIENT How

do we know when

MENTALITIES

there has been

a significant

shift in attitudes

toward

death? There are two general problems to consider. Evidence. Most people's ideas about death change frequently.5 Archaic Greek poetry probably represents only elite attitudes, but even so we will expect to findmany viewpoints within it.6To talk about the history of death is to try to 3. See M.

Bloch,

"Death,

Women

and Power,"

inM.

Bloch

and J. Parry,

eds.,

Death

and

the

Regeneration of Life (Cambridge, 1982) 223-30. 4.

I explore

this theme more

fully

in By Their Dead

Shall

You Know

Them:

Burial

and Social

Structure inClassical Antiquity (Cambridge, inpress) chap. 1.On the structural/intellectualistdistinc tion, see E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford, 1965); M. Bloch, From Blessing toViolence (Cambridge, 1986) 3-9. A psychohistory of death may be possible, but note that David Stannard, one of the leading historians of death, is also a stern critic of psychohistory; see his The PuritanWay of Death (Oxford, 1977) and ShrinkingHistory: Freud and theFailure of Psychohis tory (Oxford, 1980). 5. See R. Hinton, Dying (Harmondsworth, 1967) 21-49. 6. Compare

the arguments

of R.

Favre,

La mort

dans

la literature

et la pensee

francaise

au

siecle des lumieres (Lyon, 1978). R. G. Osborne ("Death Revisited, Death Revised: The Death of

298

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

capture a "spiritof the age," which isnecessarily a very high-level generalization, in a distant and complex relationship to any single datum. Such abstraction affects theways we may use the sources.The riskof error in picking out just a fewwitnesses isobvious. People do not think all alike; we can only understand a "mentality" by ironing out human diversity, taking a huge sample of the thought of an age and standing so far back that its internal differ ences disappear from view.7 Some historians respond statistically. Studying links between "total" Christianity and attitudes toward death, Vovelle drew on over two thousand wills; while Chaunu, arguing for demography as a prime mover behind attitudes toward death, used some eight thousandwills and a huge mass of population statistics.8 Quantification has its own drawbacks,9but it throws theHellenist's problems into sharp relief. Our evidence is fragmentary, has been pre-selected by transmis sion processes we can rarely observe, and is unevenly distributed in time and space; itwas written by people of whom we know little or nothing, for purposes now generally unrecoverable, and in several very different literary genres. We cannot

even

claim

Greek

poet

at any time

of a single in his (or in a few cases her) career. When we make

to be able

to describe

the attitude

toward death

sweeping generalizations about "collective representations" on the basis of this patchwork of snippets, we should remember Alan Macfarlane's warning that in order to discover the "every poem and every line has to be carefully weighed stylistic and traditional constraints on the expression of thought and emotion.""' This is not a counsel of despair, but a plea for an appropriate methodology.

Our sources cannot support Aries's type of wide-ranging eclecticism, and still less Vovelle's rigorous serial analyses. But simply ignoring the problems and as it seems to me that Sourvinou letting the sources speak for themselves, If we wish to study ancient mentalities, Inwood has tried to do, is unacceptable.

we are forced to build a simplifyingmodel from prior probabilities, establishing which

way

the burden

of proof

lies, and then to examine

it in the light of the

evidence, modifying, adjusting, or discarding the original hypothesis as neces

theArtist inArchaic and Classical Greece," Art History 11 [1988] 1-16) illustrates the variety of responses available to the ancient Greeks using artistic evidence. I am not persuaded by his empathetic methods, but he does raise very interesting possibilities. 7.

See

J. Le Goff,

"Mentalities:

A History

of Ambiguities,"

in J. Le Goff

and P. Nora,

eds.,

Constructing thePast (Cambridge, 1985) 166-80; P. and C. Stearns, "Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards,"AHR 90 (1985) 813-36. 8. M. Vovelle, Piete baroque et dechristianisation en Provence auXVI1Ie siecle abr. ed. (Paris, 1978); P. Chaunu, La mort a Paris, 16e, 17e, 18e sicles (Paris, 1978) and more briefly inAnnales (ESC) 31 (1976) 29-50. 9. The

literature

is large;

for an introduction,

see R.

Fogel

and G.

Elton,

Which

Road

to the

Past? (New Haven, 1983). 10.A. Macfarlane, "Death and theDemographic Transition: A Note on the English Evidence on Death, 1500-1700," in S. C. Humphreys andH. King, eds., Mortality and Immortality(NewYork and London, 1981) 252.

MORRIS: Toward DeathinArchaic Greece Attitudes

299

sary." The texts are so difficult that themost we can hope for is compatibility with a theory. Analysis of the logic and structure of the models used and the sophistication of the questions asked is every bit as important as discussion of the sources that support them. Concepts. Discussions of historical change are only meaningful within some explicit framework. Golden's recent study, "Did theAncients Care When Their Children

Died?,"

is a case

in point;

the issue

is reduced

to a black-and-white

not tell us very much about ancient

question. His simple answer-yes-does

toward death in asking "Was there a change in attitudes society.12 Similarly, Archaic Greece?" is pointless. The pool of ideas about death current in 500 B.C. must have been different from those views that existed in Homer's time, simply

because different people were alive. Even when consciously trying to reproduce rules and ideas, people inevitably transform their structures of thought."3The is not whether Greek attitudes were the same in 500 as they had been question ten generations whether we see the earlier-they simply cannot have been-but

changes as historically significant; and the facts can only be called important or unimportant relative to a specific theory. Sourvinou-Inwood linked her studies to those by Aries, see changes

can

Classical

writers

Tame Death.

This

and it is from this that her argument derives its interest. We in our sources, but all Archaic attitudes and can be encompassed within the category that Aries calls the in individuals'

is not to say that Aries's

system

is too broad

to have analytical

value; rather, itmeans that in historical terms the continuities and similarities in attitudes found in eighth- to sixth-century literaturevastly outweigh the elements of change. FEAR OF DEATH:

MEDIEVAL

Only the first two stages of Aries's these the Tame Death and the Death

FRANCE AND ARCHAIC

GREECE

history of death concern us here. He calls of the Self. He describes the first as "an

death that remained almost unchanged for thousands of years, a naive and spontaneous that expressed of destiny and acceptance It is familiar, "the recognition of an evil inseparable from man."15 nature."'4 or the not welcomes but it is loathed shunned. Above all, death,'6 mystic Only death was a shared transition: "Death was always public."'7 The Tame Death attitude

toward

an attitude

produced

a characteristic

idea of the Good

Death,

a fate met with

composure.

11. Generally, seeM. I. Finley, Ancient History: Evidence andModels (London, 1985). 12. M.

Golden,

"Did

the Ancients

Care When

Their

Children

Died?"

152-63. 13. See A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Oxford, 1984). 14. Aries (supra n. 1) 29. 15. Ibid. 605. 16. Ibid. 13-14. 17. Ibid. 19.

G&R,

n.s.,

35 (1988)

300

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

The dying person was forewarned, and had time tomake farewells, quitting life with dignity.Whether death was in bed or in battle, the same pattern of accept ance, goodbyes, andmourning was called for.'8 Aries sees a second model, theDeath of the Self, appearing among intellec tuals around A.D. 1100. New weight was put on individuality, and on death as a lonely fate: "Death ceased to be a weighing, a final reckoning, judgement or repose, and became carrion and corruption; it ceased to be the end of life, the last breath, and became physical death, suffering and decomposition."'" Aries explains the psychological change through greater chances for the educated to achieve upward socialmobility, coupled with frequent failure to do so. This led to a widespread sense of personal failure, which, given the facts of medieval demography, was blamed on death. Death began to be a hateful individual doom, cutting off a rewarding life.'2 The Tame Death was still important inEurope in the eighteenth century and even later, but, Aries adds, "the fact thatwe keep meeting instances of the same general

from Homer

attitude

to Tolstoi

does

not mean

we

should

assign

it a

structural permanence."2' The Death of the Self displaced the Tame Death "among the rich, thewell educated, and the powerful,"22while theTame Death lingered on among the peasantry. Aries has been attacked for his impressionism, but his distinctions between theTame Death and later forms and between elite and commoner attitudes are widely accepted.23 Sourvinou-Inwood uses his great achievement as an analogy for her model

of Greek

attitudes:24

In Homer

there is one dominant model of attitudes towards death, firmly in the epic, and then signs of a tentative beginning of a partial is the "familiar" or "tradi movement away from it. The dominant model tional" type of attitude toward death, a version of the "Tamed Death" The new stirrings, by contrast, some of attitude analysed by Aries.... rooted

which are also reflected in eighth-century archaeological evidence, are the first beginnings of a series of developments which will gain momen tum in the succeeding, archaic period (c. 700-c. 480) duringwhich we can 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Ibid. 603. Ibid. 138. Ibid. 137-39. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 138.

23. Aries "Les

attitudes

(ibid., devant

and subjective." as "intuitive his methods xiii) describes et lectures de methode, la mort: Problemes approches

See

also M. Vovelle,

differentes,"

Annales

(ESC) 31 (1976) 120-32; D. Ilmer,Zeitschrift fur Historische Forschung 6 (1979) 213-15; J.Whaley, "Introduction," 1-14,

106-30;

and J. McManners, A.

J. Gurevic,

"Death

and the French

"Au moyen

age:

Conscience

Historians," individuelle

inWhaley, ed. (supra, n. 1) et image de l'au-dela,"

Annales (ESC) 37 (1982) 255-75. Lawrence Stone (The Past and the Present Revisited [London. 19871 310-27) has suggested thatmoves away from the Tame Death only began in the sixteenth century. 24.

Sourvinou-Inwood,

"To Die"

(supra

n.

1) 16-17.

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece

301

detect a (partial) shift away from familiar acceptance, towards a more individual, and anxious approach towardone's own death-broadly com parable to the change which occurred in the late [sic]Middle Ages in Europe. The changing demographic, socio-economic, political and intel lectual realities of eighth-century Greece, in interactionwith each other, affected the existing system of funerary behaviour, attitudes towards death, and afterlife beliefs; they initiated a process of change, feedback, and interactionwith the interlocking parts of the funerary system (multi plier effect), and continued to fuel it during the following period. Comparing Aries' translationwith what she saw inGreece, Sourvinou-Inwood added:25

The similarities, especially that in the basic mentality, the "elementary syntax" of the model, suggest that certain (general) types of attitude towarddeath depend on a certain nexus of demographic, socio-economic, political and "intellectual" conditions, and so characterize certain general types of society. Iwill argue

that the complexity

of Homeric

is best explained

attitudes

not as the

beginnings of changes, but as part of a general pattern of attitudes that remained little changed from 800 to 500 B.C. First, though, I will consider Sourvinou Inwood's causalmodel, which asserts that "the [eighth-century]population explo sion and the resulting

. . . expanded

urbanization

drastically

Greek

physical

and

mental horizons, and dislocated or destroyed many of the structures on which the 'familiar'death attitudes had depended."26 THE INDIVIDUAL,

DEMOGRAPHY,

AND DEATH

Did population growth transform attitudes toward death? Most historians agree that it could,27 and there was population growth in eighth-century to Snodgrass, at a rate of up to 4 percent per annum at Greece-according Athens.28 This would surely have had a profound impact, but it strains demo and a I am not persuaded has weak evidential base. that the graphic plausibility

known burials represent a constant proportion of the ancient populations.29But even

if we

25.

do use

as a yardstick,

the graves

major

problems

remain.

The

age

Ibid. 39.

26. Sourvinou-Inwood, "Trauma" (supra n. 1) 34. 27. The demographic argument ismade by Chaunu (supra n. 8), although F. Lebrun docu mented similar changes in attitudes inAnjou without population growth inLes hommes devant la a Anjou au XVIle and the mental.

mort

et XVIIIe

siecles

(Paris,

1971).

Vovelle

(supra

n. 8)

tried

to balance

the

material

28. Archaic

A. M. Greece

Snodgrass, (London,

Archaeology 18-25;

1980)

71. 29. Morris (supra n. 2) 57-155.

and the Rise of "Two Demographic

the Greek Notes,"

State

1977) 10-18; (Cambridge, in Hagg, ed. (supra n. 1) 167

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

302

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

structure of the cemeteries fluctuates: in Sub-Mycenaean (ca. 1125-1050 B.C.) and Late Geometric II (735-700), the adult-child ratio iswhat we would expect in an agrarian society; but in Protogeometric to Late Geometric I (1050-735), the young are underrepresented, probably being buried in an archaeologically less visible way.30 This sharply reduces the proposed population growth. The Late Geometric increasewas also temporary: as Camp points out, if graves show population growth in the eighth century, theymust also show amassive decline in the seventh, which Sourvinou-Inwood's model does not accommodate.31 Settlement evidence does indicate eighth-century growth,32but this did not necessarily have amajor influence on attitudes towarddeath.Most historians see the "demographic transition," a sudden decline in birth rates and infantmortal ity, as the decisive factor in changing attitudes.33There is no evidence for such a transition in antiquity. The fifth-centuryKerameikos cemetery atAthens and the fourth-century cemetery at Olynthus have typical pre-transition age structures, with child:adult ratios of 9:10 and 8:10, respectively;34and Aristotle remarked that most

occurred

deaths

in the first week

after birth,

a typical

again

pre

transition pattern.35 Sourvinou-Inwood suggests that population growth led to urbanization, which influenced people's attitudes toward death. But "urbanization" is an inap propriate concept forArchaic Greece. Few would put the population of Athens in 700 B.C., or forty thousand

five to ten thousand

above

in 450 B.C., and most

poleis were very much smaller.36This level of growth and absolute population 30. Ibid. 57-62. 31. J.McK. Camp, "A Drought in theLate Eighth Century B.C.,"Hesperia 48 (1979) 397-411. Sourvinou-Inwood ("Trauma" [supra n. 1] 34 n. 5) rejects his interpretation. Iwould like to thank Professor Camp for corresponding with me about his theory. I would now modify my critique in Morris (supra n. 2) 155-67, which oversimplifies the problem, but I am still not persuaded by his arguments. However, ifwe see an eighth-century increase in graves as an increase in population, his logic cannot be faulted. 32. Morris (supra n. 2) 156-59. 33. Of

the many

accounts

of the demographic

transition,

I have

found

the following

the most

useful: E. A. Wrigley, Population and History (London, 1969);C. M. Cipolla, The Economic History ofWorld Population, 7th ed. (Harmondsworth, 1978); and the comparative evidence of J.C. Caldwell, P. H. Reddy, and P. Caldwell, The Causes of Demographic Change (Madison,Wisc., 1988). 34. J. L. Angel's findings at Olynthus and elsewhere are conveniently summarized inM. D. Grmek, Diseases in theAncient Greek World (Baltimore, 1989) 99-103. No equivalent study of the Kerameikos uncertain

is available. cases.

The

The main

numbers

actual

reports

are

inAM

involved 81 (1966)

are 445 4-135;

children

K. Kiibler,

and

510

Kerameikos

adults, VII.1

with

54

(Berlin,

1976); U. Knigge, Kerameikos IX (Berlin, 1976). I discuss some of thismaterial in "Monumental Burial:

The

Family

and

the State

in Classical

Athens,"

in D.

Charles

and J. Thomas,

eds.. Monu

ments to theDead (forthcoming, Cambridge). 35. Ar. HA 7.588a. See M. H.. Hansen, Demography and Democracy (Copenhagen, 1986) 7 13; P. Garnsey, ed., "Food, Health and Culture in Classical Antiquity," Cambridge Faculty of ClassicsWorking Papers, no. 1 (1989). 36. Morris

(supra

n. 2) 99-101,

with

references.

M. H. Hansen's

revision

of the number

of fifth

centuryAthenian citizens upwards to 60,000 ("Three Studies inAthenian Demography," Kongelike Dansk Videnskabernes Selskab, Historisk-filosofiske Meddelelser 56 [1988] 14-28) does not affect this

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece

303

size cannot meaningfully be compared with even the medieval situation, and could

in no way

an "urban anomie"

have created

or Wirth's

in T6nnies's

sense,

undermining theTame Death.37 Neither the demographic and socioeconomic parts of Sourvinou-Inwood's "nexus" of conditions nor what she calls the "intellectual realities" provide con vincing motors for change. The idea of a "rise of the individual" loosening the bonds of kinship and changing attitudes toward death around 700 depends very heavily

on the contrast

in genres

between

Homer

and later poets,

and compares

poorly with the rich medieval evidence with which Sourvinou-Inwood draws analogy.38 The chain of cause and effect is left unclear and, more important, even in the fourth century the obligations

another

in her argument, of the ayXLOTEia

inAthenian funeralswere very like those of the near kin inHomer.39There is no that a rise of

evidence

the

individual

disembedded

death

from

its communal

context.40 causal model

Sourvinou-Inwood's

is not persuasive:

the demographic

and

intellectual background inArchaic Greece cannot be said to be sufficiently like that in high medieval

for us to expect

France

a priori

that there might

have been

comparable changes in attitudes toward death. Iwill therefore proceed with the hypothesis that individual attitudes remained essentially constant. In the next section, I review the textual evidence. This is consistent with my argument for changes in ideologies of death but continuity in individual attitudes. THE POETICS OF DYING The

first and fullest

them named,

source

get killed.41 But

is the Iliad, the poem of death: 318 heroes, 243 of the very abundance of heroic corpses is a problem.

figure. E. Ruschenbusch ("Die Zahl der griechischen Staaten und Arealgrosse und Burgerzahl der 'Normalpolis,' "ZPE 59 [1985] 253-63) puts the "Normalzahl"of citizens at just 133 to 800. 37.

See

I. Morris,

"The Early

Polis

as City

and State,"

in J. Rich

and A. Wallace-Hadrill,

eds.,

City and Country in theAncient World (London, forthcoming). On medieval urbanism, see P. M. Hohenberg and L. H. Lees, TheMaking of Urban Europe, 1000-1950 (Cambridge,Mass., 1985) 22 105.The classic (although now ratherold-fashioned) studies of the "urbanmentality" are F. Tonnies, Community

and Association

(London,

1955);

and L. Wirth,

"Urbanism

as aWay

of Life,"

American

Journal of Sociology 44 (1938) 1-24. 38. Sourvinou-Inwood, "Trauma" (supra n. 1) 48 n. 89. On medieval individualism, see G. Duby and P. Braunstein, "The Emergence of the Individual," inG. Duby, ed., A History of Private Life II, Revelations of theMedieval World (Cambridge,Mass., 1988) 507-630. 39. Compare the accounts of Homeric funerals by R. Garland, "Geras Thanonton," BICS 29 (1982)

69-80,

and by M.

Edwards,

"The Conventions

of a Homeric

Funeral,"

in J. H. Betts,

J. T.

Hooker, and J. R. Green, eds., Studies inHonour of T. B. L. Webster (Bristol, 1986) 84-92, with those of Classical Athens byW. K. Lacey, The Family inClassical Greece (London, 1968) 147-50, and the remarks throughout S. C. Humphreys' The Family, Women and Death (London, 1983). Generally, see R. Garland, The Greek Way of Death (London, 1985). 40. The distinctive notion of individual judgment of the dead known in the late sixth century probably began with Pherecydes of Syros: see M. L. West, Early Greek Philosophy and theOrient (Oxford, 1971) 255. I dicuss it later in this paper. 41. Counted by S. E. Bassett, The Poetry of Homer (London, 1938) 256 n. 37.

304

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

The warrior's between

death was

literature, and we have to distinguish special in Greek of the hero and the deaths of ordinary folk. Looking at the

the death

saw a contradiction:

Aries

Song of Roland,

death

in bed in peaceful

old age and

violent death in battle were both Good Deaths. He suggested a functional explanation-"in a society founded on chivalric and military ideals, the stigma to sudden

attached

not extended

death was

to the noble

victims

of war."42 We

find a similar "double good death" inHomer, but its structure ismore complex. I will try to bring this out with a few examples. In Iliad Book down

to him

the walls of Troy. Priam calls is waiting outside will surely kill him. In this inside, for Achilles should think not of his own death, but of his father's:43

22, Hector

to come

back

of crisis, Hector

moment

For a young man

if he falls in battle,

all things are seemly,

lying dead,

pierced by the sharp bronze; yes, all things are beautiful for the dead man, whatever happens; but when the dogs defile the grey hair, grey and genitals

beard,

of an old man who

has been

killed,

this is the most

miserable thing forwretched mortals. The contrast is strong. Violent death makes Hector beautiful, but it degrades and defiles

Priam. Death

in his youthful

fixes the hero

bloom,

and fixes his glory

(xXeos). His &aQoxliawill be remembered for generations to come, when they sing of the fames of men. The hero killed in battle lives on through epic and his is a dismal place far worse than any life,44 but death is well-marked tomb. Hades and

inevitable,

it is this rather

honors

than earthly

that drives

to em

the hero

brace his doom.45Here is the essential tension of the heroic condition-the very awfulness

of Hades

drives

Through immortal

the Good

Death

by doing

just what

42.

Aries

(supra

n.

in battle

as the only way to survive.4 beats fate and becomes almost

in battle, the hero the immortals never

1) 12. His

"The Song of Roland" (Ithaca. N.Y., 43.

to death

him

approach

to the poem

do-dying.

is criticized

Homer

in R. F. Cook,

calls

the

The Sense

of

1987) 141.

11. 22.71-76: VO, 6E TE aTUVT'EtCEOLXEV, 6e6iy?1EVW O6i; XOXtkx dQrli'xctiaEVa. 6O xXk6t 0av6OVTl JTEQ,6OTt XElCOO(6vTaVT 4)atvt] (&X' OTE 6ti JTnot6v TV xdctt JtOOt6v TE y?VEtov T' aXioxiV(ool XlVEC XT(LI 01VO0O yEOOVTOCg. TO JTk?ETctL6ELXkOOi pOQ OtlOV. OiXTILOOV 6h toU (tl6(

44.

Od.

45.

See

46. On

Life

and

Humphreys et le cadavre anciennes Proceedings (Budapest,

11.487-91.

esp. II. 12.310-28. J. M. Redfield, Nature Death

and Culture

95-102; (Oxford, and and H. King, eds., Mortality outrage,"

(Cambridge, of the Vllth 1984)

167-73.

1980)

in G.

Gnoli

and

in the Iliad J.-P.

1975) 30-35; (Chicago, "Death with Two Vernant,

Immortality J.-P. Vernant,

xakx: "nHvta 1982) 45-76; Congress of the International

J. Griffin, Faces,"

Homer in S. C.

"La belle mort (New York, 1981) 285-91; les morts, dans les societies La mort,

eds.,

D'Homere

a Simonide,"

Federation

of the Societies

in J. Harmatta, of Classical

ed.,

Studies

I

MORRIS: DeathinArchaic Greece Attitudes Toward

305

doomed or dead hero "godlike," at once heightening the audience's awareness of the hero's victory in death, the frailty of humanity, and the gulf that finally separates us from the gods. Let us return toHector's fightwith Achilles. The Trojan is speared through the throat,

and his soul speeds

away,

its loss of life. Looking

bewailing

to the

Achaeans, Achilles tells them to sing the triumph:47 "We have won

great glory; we have killed godlike Hector,

to whom

the

Trojans in the city pray like a god." And then he did disgraceful things to godlike Hector. Godlike Hector ismutilated and dragged round thewalls behind Achilles' char iot. Thus he wins his xXkog: "If the hero were really god-like, if he were exempt, as the gods are, from age and death, then he would not be a hero at all."48 This violent and often humiliating Good Death is no poetic whim. The Tame

Death attitudes of the eighth century are used to create an ideology of the permanence

and power

of the nobility.

Vernant

argues

that heroic

tombs and

poems provided early Greeks with a collective past throughwhich they defined the links between themselves,49 and Bloch develops and his permanence as cremated bones:5'

the hero's

beauty

in death

ideal is . . . for the body to be immediately cremated so that disfigu and decay do not occur. The image of the uncorrupted youth life of the ideal society. The continues and maintains the undiminished of the second side perfect body is in itself the source of the timelessness

The

ration

of the funeral, in that it represents an unchangingly vigorous martial order of society composed forever of incorruptibleheroes. But what utterly Death.

of Priam?

and his

line will

In this case,

will not be a good one. He will vanish an old man, is no Good a violent death it in the sack of a city, not on a battlefield;

His

death

end.

For

it comes

creates no timeless past; it is simply degrading. Women and old men should die peacefully in bed, resigned to fate, well mourned. Children should not die at all. Only

47.

immortal

xXeog gives

the hero

cause

to die young.

Griffin

echoes

II. 22.393-95: ej:e4voEav aneya xvbog"rdl.Etc-a "EXTooCx 6Fov. ,XTQCoEC xaTa aoTv 6eTOC5 EUXEToO)VTO." i1ea,

xci

"ExToQa 6rov

&etLXa

jI6ltTo

Eiya.

On &etxea, see Griffin (supra n. 46) 85 n. 9. 48. Griffin (supra n. 46) 92-93. 49. Vernant (supra n. 46). 50. Bloch (supra n. 3) 228. Vernant also links this process with the sacrifice of animals-see particularly "Sacrificial and Alimentary Codes inHesiod's Myth of Prometheus," inR. L. Gordon, ed., Myth, Religion and Society (Cambridge, 1981) 77; andW. Burkert, Homo Necans (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983) 48-58.

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Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

Sassoon: without the heroic ethos, "why should Achilles not toddle safely home

and die in bed?"51

Homer's heroes were perhaps not very "real" figures, but in the eighth century the hero was being created as an aristocratic ideal. The acceptance of death did not end anxiety about it. Epic and the well-marked tomb could save and well-born warriors. Heroic the xPeog of a few, chosen from the wealthy death created a man who was an aristocrat first, head of an oixog second, and

the bulwark of the community only third.52 After 700, the attitudes towarddeath we

see

in Homer

but

survive,

the uses of death

are transformed;

the hero

is

displaced by the citizen, creating a perfect polis through his death in battle. The constant

reuse of Homer

issue,53 but

as a moral

the different

and political guide in later times confuses the rates of change at the levels of individual attitudes

toward and ideologies of death can be separated. The development from hero to citizen against a Tame Death background is clear in the seventh century. Callinus (fr. 1West) praises death inbattle, because death

is inevitable;

death

in war

brings

fame and admiration

from

the whole

people. Death at home, in peace, is less rewarding. Tyrtaeus (fr. 10West) it is foul for an old man to fall in battle, but fine for a young like Homer; and his fame never dies (fr. The whole polis bewails the young warrior,

sounds man.

12.23-24). He who fights and survives into old age will die happily, but he will not have the same glory (fr. 12.35-42). Sourvinou-Inwood sees the similarity of these poets' comments toHomer's as "a consistently held and propagated intel lectual position."54

As will become

clear,

the similarities

form part of a general

continuity in attitudes from the eighth to the fourth century. Two ideas appear inMimnermus, both consistent with earlier poets. The main theme of his surviving work, that youthful beauty is ephemeral, recalls Homer's

in the beauty of the hero; and in fr. 2 (West) Mimnermus image of leaves55 to express the inevitability of the loss of youth. hover around, ready to cut off youth with old age or death; and of

interest

reuses Homer's The

xfleg

these, death is preferable.56 These lines differ from Homer, Tyrtaeus, and Callinus, but Mimnermus's 51. Griffin (supra n. 46) 99. I findRedfield's account of the embassymore persuasive (see also T. O. Beidelman, "Agnostic Exchange: Homeric Reciprocity and the Heritage of Simmel and Mauss," Cultural Anthropology 8 [1989] 227-254), but in this passage Griffin makes the hero's position starkly clear. See alsoM. Gagarin, Early Greek Law (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986) 102 3, on Achilles' situation. 52. See I.Morris, "TheUse and Abuse of Homer," ClAnt 5 (1986) 115-26. 53. The survival of an essentially Homeric ideology among elites in theClassical polis, in spite of the strength of the demos, is shown by G. Herman, Ritualised Friendship and the Greek City (Cambridge, 1987). 54.

Sourvinou-Inwood

(supra

55. Il. 6.146-49. 56. See frr. 1.2, 2.7, 4West.

n. 1), "To Die"

37, "Trauma"

45.

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece

307

extant poems had different aims,57 stressing youthful sympotic pleasures. He the loss of youth.

but he hates

does not fear death,

In fr. 6, he wishes

to live to

the ripe old age of sixty, avoiding diseases and painful cares. It is not age itself but its ugliness, senility, and sickness that disgust him, those things thatmake a man despised even by his own children (fr. 3). In frr. 20 and 21 (West),

and to be well

to live to be eighty,

Solon wishes

mourned; both ideas are traditional.58Fr. 24.9-10 clarifies theway Mimnermus presents only half a picture: "nor by offering a price might aman escape death, nor grievous diseases, nor the coming of evil old age." Death and pain are parts of life. Some prefer one, some the other; but outside the context of war it isbest to live to a good age without sickness, to die quietly, and to be well honored.59 The Archaic

poets

drew heavily

on the past,

such a small corpus

and with

it

is impossible to separate literary devices from contemporary attitudes. This is clearest with Stesichorus, whom [Longinus] called "mostHomeric."60 In fr. 55 (Page) Stesichorus says thatmourning is fitting at the grave; but in fr. 67 he says it is futile

to weep

and in fr. 68 that when

for the dead,

a man

all his XQLgS

dies,

dies with him. Frr. 55 and 67 imply thatweeping andmourning were normal; fr. 68 couldmean almost anything. On the other hand, his long epic theGeryoneis is indeedmost Homeric. FirstMenoites and thenCallirhoe try to dissuade Geryon like Priam's

in speeches

from facing Heracles,

to Hector

and Hecabe's

in the

Iliad.6"Page compared part of the Geryon-Menoites speech with Homer's Sarpedon-Glaucus debate.62Geryon differs fromHomer's heroes, who fight for xXeog because death is inevitable; forGeryon, grandson of Poseidon, perhaps it is a lacuna at the crucial point, but it is at least clear that and die rather says that if he is not immortal, then he must fight Heracles Geryon and heroic; but was it consciously than live on in shame. The attitude isHomeric is not inevitable.

There

fr. 14 describes

57. Only

war,

and

this seems

as Callinus's

to be just as "heroic"

and Tyrtaeus's

writings. 58.

See

fr. 27.17-18.

also own

My

seventy.

feeling

Herodotus

is that this has most

tell Croesus has Solon (1.32.3) to do with fifth-century values,

that men

should

die

at

but see K. H. Waters,

Herodotos theHistorian (London, 1985) 99. 59.

Even

the most

acceptance-e.g., 20,

1013-15,

1070a-b.

1021-22,

by G. Nagy,

gested

"individual"

of

the poets

seem

to have

Tame

typical

Death

attitudes

of

Archilochus frr. 9.10-11, 13West; Theognis lines 423-28, 567-70, 765-68, 819 "Theognis

of the Theognidean The complexities and Megara: A Poet's Vision of His City,"

verses

about

are sug and G. Nagy,

death

in T. Figueira

eds., Theognis of Megara (Baltimore, 1985) 71-81. Other (generally less informative) fragments are gathered by D. A. Campbell, The Golden Lyre: The Themes of theGreek Lyric Poets (London, 1983) chap. 7. 60. [Longinus], On the Sublime 13.3. See also Simonides fr. 59 Page; Anth. Pal. 7.75; Quint. 10.1.62;Suda s.v. OBEug. 61.

The

fragments

are collected

and discussed

by D. L. Page,

"Stesichorus:

The FEPYONEIS,"

JHS 93 (1973) 138-54. M. Davies ("Stesichorus'Geryoneis and ItsFolk-Tale Origins," CQ, n.s., 38 [1988]277-90) makes very important observations about the themes of death and the underworld. Menoites:

frr. E, D,

?C (POxy.

2617,

frr. 13, 25, ?42). Callirhoe:

62. Fr. E (POxy. 2617, fr. 13a) and I/. 12.322-38.

frr. F, G

(POxy.

2617,

frr. 19, 11).

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

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Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

so?Was Stesichorus deliberately archaizing?We cannot tell.What we find in the text is consistent with the continuity of Tame Death ideas;we can say no more. The same problem surroundsmany sixth-centurypoets whose attitudes paral lel Homer's. Anacreon (fr. 50 Page) stresses that death is unavoidable and inescapable. He pities his friendAristocleides, who fell in battle (fr. 74), but in Timocritus's epitaph he comments thatAres spares the base and not the noble (fr. 101D).63Vernant's study of the relationship between Homer and Simonides suggests an understanding of these passages. Looking at Simonides' complex fr. 37 (Page), to Scopas of Thessaly, Vernant suggests that the poet echoes Priam, but eulogizes his patron as a new sort of hero. Simonides fits into a new tradition beginningwith Tyrtaeus, using theGood Death (or fixingxXeogduring the life of a patron) to the advantage of the polis.64An epitaph thatmight be by Simonides, and that Bergk

thought was

for the Spartans

killed

at Plataea

in 479,

is a good

expression of this:65 These men set endless glory about their dear fatherland, throwing around dead,

themselves since Arete

the dark mantle of death; nor having died are they them above and brings them up from the glorifies

House of Hades. died for the polis to live on. The poem so re many Greek explicit funerary monuments:66 member me, call me back from oblivion, let me live again in the minds of men. but attitudes toward uses of death are different from Homer's, The ideological and Arete

Kleos

makes

allow

the heroes

the attitude

individual

are much

death

are like Homer's-the

who

behind

the same. Even

souls

in Hades

around 450, Bacchylides' are "like the leaves"; the Good

comments Death

is to

reach old age without grief; xXeogwon through games is&aOvaxov, deathless, and through itman transcends death.67As Vermeule says:68 tradition of the godlike man in mortal casing who learns to accept death both as a proper part of the natural cycle, and as a proper expres to Greek poetry in the sion of his relation to the gods, is fundamental

The

seventh and sixth centuries, following Homer. 63.

The

attribution

64. Vernant,

"n6vra

to Anacreon of this couplet xaUa" (supra n. 46) 173.

is not certain.

65. Fr. 121D: 6aoEOTov

JxTELiJt(XcT9il 0vTESg oi'0bE.l) v(tog (havdxoUv dq4)E(3kovT( oVi6 TOvaotL OBav6ove, njTEi o(4' 'ACET/i xactOJrQOev e 'Aibew. xvctbavovo' vdryer 6dtaClog x0.o;

xuQveov

See the comments of D. L. Page, FurtherGreek Epigrams (Cambridge, 1981) 199-200. 66. Including, perhaps, Elpenor's oar (Od. 11.71-78, 12.14-15). See R. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Roman Epitaphs (Urbana, Ill., 1962) 227-47. 67. Bacchylides 5.65-67, 13.63-66, fr. 25. 68. E. Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Literature (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979) 120.

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece

309

Although fifth-centuryAthenian literature lies beyond the strict chronologi cal limits of this paper,

it isworth

a very quick

look ahead

to observe

the further

elaboration of ideologies of death against a fairly consistent Tame Death back ground. Death was a central theme in tragedy. The poets' explorations were complex,69but they fitwell into the Tame Death attitude. InOedipus theKing, death is inevitable, unavoidable, and accepted; so too inOedipus at Colonus.7" Garland draws interesting parallels between Sophocles' Oedipus, Euripides' Al cestis,

and Plato's

in the face of death.7' All

Socrates

and can

are forewarned,

make plans for their descendants, settle their affairs, pray to Hestia for safe passage Athens

to Hades, is strikingly

and bid

and

similar

Tame Death

family to Aries's

friends

farewell.

The Good

ideals. Garland's

Death

in

conclusion

is

worth quoting: "Fear, combined with a healthy fatalism, seems to be theworst that the moribund Aristotle

Greek

had to cope with."72 Death was the core of a eulogy,

said that the Good

and it is promi

nent in the funeral orations. Dionysius of Halicarnassus thought that the orations were exhortations to die, but as Loraux shows, the hoplite ideal does not wel come

death.

jiQoatiQoLg,

The

hero

is transformed

in the polis, and the vital act remains death "is not a private opinion, but rather the

active choice-facing

combatant's personal acceptance of a social imperative."73The &aQETx fixed by death

is that of Athens;

is that there is no life but that of the polis.

the message

Moving from fear of death to hopes for the afterlife, Sourvinou-Inwood has identified three changes after Homer: more heroes win immortality; salvation throughmystery cults spreads; and an increasingly complex personnel inHades reflects growing anxiety about death.74 Heroic immortality. Homer's afterworld is obscure. The Homeric psyche in the world of the living, existing only to leave the body. At to exist in a shadowy form, with little entered Hades, continuing sense or power. The soul did not vanish, but there was little life after death.75

had no real function death

it usually

69. N. Loraux, Tragic Ways to Kill a Woman (Cambridge, Mass., 1987); on the modern interpretations of some of these themes, see G. Steiner, Antigones (Oxford, 1984). S. Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1986) discusses the tragic re-reading of Homer. 70. OT961-63, 1529-30; OC 607-9, 2111-28, 1472-73. 71. Soph. OC 1586-1666; Eur. Alc. 152-95; Plato, Phaedo, passim; Garland (supra n. 39) 14 16. Plato's Cephalus (Rep. 1.330D-31B) presents an even more interesting comparison of the effects of wealth on attitudes toward death. 72. Garland (supra n. 39) 17. 73. Ar. Rhet. 1.1359a5;Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.17.5-6; N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens (Cambridge,Mass., 1986) 98-106 (quotation from p. 102). Hdt. 9.71, the story of Aristodemos the Spartan, illustrates the role of the widespread Tame Death attitude, in spite of the very different ideologies

of death

in Sparta

and Athens

(see Loraux,

Invention

45-47;

"La belle mort

spartiate,"

Ktema 2 (1977) 105-20; "Mourir devant Troie, tomber pour Athenes: De la gloire du heros a l'idde de la cited" inGnoli and Vernant, eds. (supra n. 46), 27-43. 74. Sourvinou-Inwood (supra n.. 1) "To die" 37, "Trauma"45-46. 75. Generally, see E. Rohde, Psyche (New York, 1966; orig. pub. Berlin, 1890) chap. 1,with caution;

S. M. Darcus,

"A Person's

Relation

to

pvX1 in Homer,

Hesiod

and the Greek

Lyric

Poets,"

Glotta 7 (1979) 30-39; J. Bremmer, The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, N.J., 1983).

310

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

But not all Homer's dead had this fate. Odysseus sawMinos judging the dead, and the punishments of Tityos, Tantalus, and Sisyphus. Some psychai were conscious.76On the other hand, Menelaos was promised that he would escape death, joining Rhadamanthys, a son of Zeus, in the Elysian Plains. Ganymede was carried off to Olympus; other survivors include Tithonus, Ino Leukothea, Cleitus, and potentially even Odysseus.77 In the Cypria, Artemis takes Iphigenia to Tauris, making her immortal, and in theAithiopis Eos picks upMemnon, waking him to new life in the East, while Thetis takesAchilles to theWhite Island to live forever like the gods, in contrast to his fate in the Iliad and theOdyssey. We could reduce this eschatology to a simple consistency, "explaining" it by making an Ur-Hades of gibbering shades and dismissing problematic passages as interpolations. Some lines and whole passages doubtless were added after 700, but we are nonetheless dealing with a pattern of exceptions, not an isolated case or two. We

do not have

to explain

every difference

between

poems

as an evolu

tion through time; Edwards shows thatAchilles' fates in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aithiopis are tied to the poems' dramatic structures, and that "the conception of amore fortunate existence was widespread before Homer."78Hesiod already has theGold and Silver Races becoming spirits, the former thirty thousand strong, and the survivors

of Thebes

and Troy

go to Paradise.79

The Works

is

and Days

probably later than the Odyssey,80 but the complex poetic persona of "Hesiod" makes

more

sense

traditional

as rationalizing

than as moving

views

into a radi

cally new eschatology.81 Mystery

cults. The

evidence

for personal

salvation

is very poor. The earliest

reference is probably from the seventh century, in theHymn toDemeter. The 76. Od. 11.568-600. Rohde (supra n. 75, 40-41) suggested that consciousness was only granted as part of a punishment for crimes against the gods. 77. Menelaos, Od. 4.561-69; Ganymede, II. 20.232-35; Tithonus, I1. 11.1-2; Ino Leukothea, Od. 5.333-35; Cleitus, Od. 15.250-51; Circe's offer toOdysseus, Od. 5.135-36, 209-10; 23.335-36. Rohde (supra n. 75, 60-61) suggested that close kinship to a god was what gave these mortals a chance to survive. 78. A. T. Edwards,

"Achilles

in the Underworld,"

26 (1985)

GRBS

215-27,

at p. 218. At p. 219

n. 9 he criticizes Sourvinou-Inwood for assuming that all passages that do not fit her case are later interpolations.

See

"Aristos

also Edwards'

Achaion:

Heroic

Death

and Dramatic

in the

Structure

Iliad,"QUCC, n.s., 17 (1984) 61-80; Achilles in theOdyssey, Beitrage zur klassischen Philologie 171 (Konigstein, 1985); R. Renehan, "TheHeldentod inHomer: One Heroic Ideal," CP 82 (1987) 99 116;G. Nagy, The Best of theAchaeans (Baltimore, 1979) 165-210. 79. WD

122-26,

141-42,

166-73,

252-55.

Line

169 may

be an interpolation,

but

it was

cer

tainly in the text by the early fifth century (Pindar,01. 2.70). 80. M. L. West (Hesiod's Theogony [Oxford, 1966] 40-48) puts Hesiod earlier thanHomer. I follow the dating of R. Janko, Homer, Hesiod and theHymns (Cambridge, 1982). 81. See R. Lamberton, Hesiod (New Haven, 1988); I.Morris, "Tomb Cult and the 'Greek Renaissance,'

" Antiquity

62 (1988)

750-61.

On Hesiod's

peasant

ideals,

see P. C. Millett,

"Hesiod

andHis World," PCPS 210 (1984) 84-115. Rohde (supra n. 75, 72-79) andWest (supra n. 40, 205) have argued thatHesiod's views were very old-fashioned; andM. Nilsson (TheMinoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survivals inGreek Religion, 2nd ed. [Lund, 1950], 584-633) derived Hesiod's ideas from an Egyptian/Minoan background, although this is controversial.

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece

311

notion may go back to the eighth century, or earlier;82opinion isdivided, but, as Richardson

the idea was not an innovation

argues,

on anything

like the scale of

those in the late sixth century.83Most Archaic poets express notions about the soul similar to Homer's.84 The first big change comes with the shadowy sixth century Pherecydes of Syros. Late sources say he was the firstman to preach the immortality of the soul and metempsychosis.85 These ideas are also linked to Orpheus and Pythagoras. The firstOrphic poems perhaps date around 500, and Ion of Chios thought some had actually been written by Pythagoras.86 We get an idea of the Orphic beliefs from the early theogonies and from in other authors. The soul could live in animals or humans; references in the

Derveni text, the psyche was judged after each human incarnation, with the wicked sent to Tartarus for three hundred years, then being allowed to return to the land of the living.87Orphism spread quite widely in Classical times, but a very

remained

probably

loose set of ideas until at least ca. 300 B.C.88

These notions were part of a largerphilosophical system based on Eastern ideas. West

has shown

that in the period

B.C. Iranian

550-480

influences

were

strong on someGreek thinkers.What we know of Pythagoras,Anaximander, and makes

Pherecydes

most

sense

as a mixture

82. N.

J. Richardson,

"Early Greek

of traditional Greek

ideas with

"im

religious custom, barbarian cosmology and

ported"Median concepts-"Greek

Views

about

Life

after Death,"

in P. E. Easterling

and J.

V. Muir, eds., Greek Religion and Society (Cambridge, 1985) 58. 83. Richardson (supra n. 82) 64-65. W. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Religions (Princeton, N.J., 1987), stresses thatmystery cults are not to be seen as exotic and "late" accretions toGreek beliefs, but puts theirmain development in the sixth century as an alternative to state religions. P. Darcques ("Les vestiges myceniens d6couverts sous leTelesterion d'Eleusis," BCH 105 [1981]593-605) dispels ideas of direct material continuity fromMycenaean times at Eleusis, but the origins of the cult there are still obscure. 84.

Rohde

(supra

n. 75)

chaps.

7, 12, with

references.

I share Rohde's

view

that early

fifth

century attitudes were "hardly at all altered from Homer" (p. 242), but his use of Pausanias's description of Polygnotus's painting in theCnidian lesche at Delphi as a direct representation of fifth century ideas, to be contrasted with Homer, isquestionable. Pausanias (10.24.7, 28.2, 31.12) makes it clear that Polygnotus drew on the Iliad, theMinyas, and perhaps Archilochus as sources. 85.

Cic.

TD

1.38;

Lact.

Inst. Div.

7.7.12,

Aug.

Ep.

137.12;

Suda

s.v.

@eoxv6brlg. See West

(supra n. 40) 1-75; also G. S. Kirk, J. Raven, andM. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1983) 50-71 (cited hereafter asKRS). 86.

Ion,

fr. 36 B 2 D-K;

see also Hdt.

2.81,

4.94-96,

on

the belief

that the Thracian

cult of

Salmoxis was influenced by Pythagoreanism. It is probably futile to try to disentangle Orphic and Pythagorean ideas; seeW. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy I (Cambridge, 1962) 198; W. Burkert, "Craft versus Sect: The Problem of Orphics and Pythagoreans," inB. E. Mayer and E. P. Sanders, eds., Jewish and Christian Self-Definition III (London, 1982) 1-22; KRS (supra n. 85) 219-22. The origins of Orphism are discussed by M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford, 1983) chap.

1.

87. West, Early Greek Philosophy (supra n. 40) 25-26, Orphic Poems (supra n. 86) 98-101. 88. See I.M. Linforth, The Arts of Orpheus (Berkeley, 1941). Orphic-type ideas appear in Aeschylus, Pindar, and especially Plato (Crat. 398B, Rep. 468E-69B). See also Theophr. Char. 16.12; Xenophanes, fr. 7 D-K; Empedocles, fr. 129D-K; Hdt. 2.123. Orphic inscriptions in graves become

much

more

common

around

300 B.c.-see

K. Tsantsanoglou

and G. M.

Gold Lamellae from Thessaly," Ellenika 38 (1987) 3-16, with references.

Parassoglou,

"Two

312

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

eschatology."'9West explains the Iranian influence as an exodus of Magi from Media afterCyrus's conquest. This isnot a sufficientexplanation, but the combina tion of rapid political change in lonia and greater contact with the East may provide the necessary context for the rise of Iranian-influencedcosmologies; and the important

fact is of course not simply that the new ideas had an Eastern

origin,

but that this Iranian influencewas probably very restricted.9" At about the same time that Pythagoras was active, Heraclitus advanced an equally novel eschatology. The fragments of his work referring to thepsyche are highly cryptic. He did not preach reincarnation, and was indeed critical of Pythagoras,9' but it is harder to say what he did think.Martha Nussbaum has argued that the psyche was destroyed at death; others see good souls returning to a primal fire, and bad souls dying by turning into water.92Nussbaum does not explain all the fragments, but she shows the close link that even such an unusual thinker as Heraclitus slain in battle"93

His

had with Homer.

still presents

heroic

death

remark as a way

"Gods and men

honor

those

to defeat mortality-xXeloc

brings undying fame;whatever happens to the soul, this ensures immortalityas it did for Homer

and the other poets.94

The best men value one thing above all, ever-flowing xXcog among mortals; but themasses fill their bellies like cattle. These new ideas affected only part of the eschatology of a very limited group. Sourvinou-Inwood

is careful

to describe

her theory of changes

in attitudes

as "a

partial shift," but the speculations of the sixth-century thinkers probably had almost no impact outside their own tiny circle,95and even within philosophical writings, the attitudes are predominantly traditional,Tame Death ones: death is accepted,

by a glorious

but can be defeated

death, without

the need

to invoke

metempsychosis. 89. West (supra n. 40) 217. 90. J.-P. Vernant, Myth and Thought Among theGreeks (London, 1983) chap. 15;G. E. R. Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience (Cambridge, 1979) chap. 4.West's analysis is controversial, but his critics also seem to accept the idiosyncracyof and probable Eastern influenceson Pherecydes andHeraclitus--e.g., the review by G. S. Kirk, CR, n.s., 24 (1974) 85. 91. Heraclitus, frr. 40, 129D-K. 92. M. Nussbaum, "WvX~ inHeraclitus, II," Phronesis 17 (1972) 153-70. See also G. S. Kirk, "Heraclitus

on Death

in Battle

(fr. 24 D),"

AJP

70 (1949)

384-93;

Guthrie

(supra

n. 86) 403-92;

M.

Markovich, Heraclitus (Merida, Venezuela, 1967); C. M. Kahn, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (Cambridge, 1979); KRS (supra n. 85) 203-8. West (supra n. 40, 150) argues thatHeraclitus saw the as air, not

psyche

fire. The

relevant

fragments

are 24-27,

29, 36, 62, 63, 96,

117,

118 D-K.

93. Fr. 24 D-K: &cqt(LdXTovSg 0eoi TLtLOXt xcaiavOocQrot. 94.

Fr. 29 D-K:

aiCettQvTa

y?&Qev

vxTLdCdc6vr v o &otaLcro xkEog

evacov0OvxTiv-

o1 6E jzoXXoi

xExolVcttal O6xwonEQ xTilvEa.As Nussbaum notes (supra n. 92, 163), "Each generation reinterprets fame is immortal only insofar as it is ever-flowing, tradition and builds upon it (cf fr. 74), and a man's . . .The gods, being statically and changing in the minds of mortal men. immortal, always growing the The one sort of immortality the same, have no share in this sort of kinetic precludes immortality. other."

95. See Snodgrass, Archaic Greece (supra n. 28) 164--66.

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece

313

Hades. There is even less evidence for the claim that the personnel and topography of Hades grew more complex to assuage greater anxiety. We have most details in later sources, but as Rohde pointed out, Homer mentions Cerberus, the Styx, and Hermes Psychopompos.96The claim therefore rests on an argument from Homer's silence, and the assumption that changes in genre after 700 did not affect

the way Hades

was

described;

and the causal

link be

tween underworld complexity and anxiety is left implicit. The literature is consistent with the hypothesis that therewas no analytically significant change in individual attitudes toward death between the eighth and the fifth century. Those elements that Sourvinou-Inwood calls "new"were al ready strongly present inHomer, and those that she calls "Homeric" continued to be very prominent throughout theArchaic and Classical periods. There is no reason to identify a chronological development within these attitudes. As Aries pointedly observed, we must never forget "the great forces of inertia which reduce the real impact of innovations."97Attitudes change slowly; looking at too short a period-by which Aries means anythingmuch less than amillennium the historian "runs the risk of attributing originality to phenomena which are reallymuch older."98This iswhat has happened with theGreek evidence. Analy sis can only begin

ca. 750, and the time scale

is therefore

too short, particularly

when we also have to deal with such profound contrasts of genre. THE ARCHAEOLOGY

OF DEATH

By formulating explicit theories of the relationship between burial and soci ety, Sourvinou-Inwood has gone beyond the traditional limitations of Classical record to her case for a shift in attitudes toward linking the material archaeology, death. She argues that a trend away from the Tame Death diminished communal

interest in funerals in the eighth century, and the role of the close kin became correspondingly greater. She identifies three archaeologically visible conse quences of this. (1) Family grave plots appeared in the cemeteries. (2) In the Dark Age, adults had been considered fullmembers of the community, whereas childrenwere discounted by non-kin and their death was only importantwithin the nuclear family. In the eighth century this distinction ended, and children began to be buried with adults; formerly they had been buried within the living space.

(3) A

new

fear and

revulsion

led to the abandonment

of

intramural

cemeteries for adults. This record,

is an ambitious but

it is not

attempt convincing.

to reach There

the mentalities is an

initial

96. Rohde (supra n. 75) 237, Garland (supra n. 39) 51-60. 97. Aries, Western Attitudes Toward Death (Baltimore, 1974) 2. 98. Aries (supra n. 1) xii-xiii.

behind logical

the material

problem,

since

314

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

Sourvinou-Inwood stresses that the shift in attitudes was a partial one within a group at the top of Greek society, while changes in burial customs must be related tomajor shifts inpopular culture." Iwill discuss each of her arguments in turn, concentrating for simplicity's sake on the same evidence that Sourvinou Inwood uses, that fromAttica, drawing on other regions only for comparisons. Family grave plots. It is extremely difficult to identify such groupings with out the aid of inscriptions.Angel claimed to be able to show consanguinity in a late eighth-century plot inAthens, but even this is highly questionable. The only evidence that Sourvinou-Inwood can draw on is the grouping and marking of small plots, on the perfectly reasonable assumption that these would be orga nized on kinship lines.l0'However, such plots existed throughout theDark Age. The rows of eleventh-century graves at Salamis and theKeramaeikos Pompeion cemetery were probably descent groups,'10 and Krause and Cavanaugh identi fied "family plots" in the Kerameikos Ag. Triada cemetery from ca. 1050 on wards.'02There is a tenth-century plot at Nea Ionia,'03and probably more at ninth-centuryMarathon.04 At Anavyssos, there are clear groupings of ninth century graves around stone constructions in the area of theAg. Pandeleimon cemetery excavated by Mastrokostas in 1970.105Cretan chamber tombs were probably always for families, and small family plots appear at Corinth from ca. 925. 1"Spatially distinct grave plots existed across thewhole IronAge. Evidence formembership is poor, but kinship is themost likelyprinciple, both before and after the eighth century.107 Family consciousness raisesmany problems. The late eighth-century plots at 99. Morris,

Burial

1(X). J. L. Angel,

1. (supra n. 4) chap. By Their Dead (supra n. 2) 29-43, in R. S. Young, "Geometric ed., Late Geometric Athenians,"

Graves

and a

Seventh-CenturyWell, Hesperia supplement 2 (Athens, 1939) 236-46; with Morris (supra n. 4) chap. 2. On kinship as the principle behind spatial organization, see infra n. 107. 101. W. Kraiker and K. Kiibler, Kerameikos I (Berlin, 1939) 6. 102. G. Krause, Untersuchungen zu den altestenNekropolen am Eridanos inAthen (Hamburg, 1975) 73-74;

W.

G. Cavanagh,

"Attic

Burial

Customs,

20(0)-700

B.C." (diss. London,

1977) 289-96,

340-41,372. 103.

E. L. Smithson,

"The Protogeometric

Cemetery

at Nea

Ionia,

1949," Hesperia

30 (1961)

147-78.

104. Praktika 1934, 29-38; 1938, 27-39; AA 1935, 181-82; 1940, 178-83; Kraiker and Kiibler (supra n. 101), 7. 105. Mastrokostas's part of this excavation (begun by Verdelis and Davaras) was never prop erly published, but the graves aremarked by Themelis inAD 29:2 (1973/74) plan F;Morris (supra n. 2) fig. 24. 106. For Knossos, see J. K. Brock, Fortesta, BSA supplement 2 (Cambridge, 1957); H. W. Catling,

"Knossos,

1978," AR

1978-79,

43-58;

J. N. Coldstream

et al., BSA

76 (1981)

141-65.

For

Corinth, C. K. Williams et al., Hesperia 42 (1973) 2-4; J. Salmon, Wealthy Corinth (Oxford, 1984) 39-45. Williams accuses Sourvinou-Inwood of Athenocentrism (inHagg, ed. [supran. 1], 49). Her treatment of Corinth perhaps merits this charge; in the firstessay ("ToDie" [supra n. 1]34 n. 77) the Corinthian evidence ismistakenly used as support for her position, but in the second ("Trauma' [supra n. 1144 n. 66) it is rejected as unimportant. 107. S. C. Humphreys, JHS 100 (1980) 96-126, points out the paucity of epigraphic evidence even

in the fifth and

fourth

centuries;

generally,

see Morris

(supra

n. 2) 87-93.

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece

315

Athens tend to be much larger than a single family: the contributing group is usually

five to fifteen

trend at this time

adults.'08 The

is in fact away

the

from

spatial expression of the family. The commonly cited multiple burials in cist graves

at Argos

actually

begin

early

in the ninth century,

and at Tiryns

in the

tenth century;'9 and the practice ends abruptly just around 700. The emphasis on family and lineage plots was declining as such groups were subsumedwithin larger units in the cemeteries. Athenian practices are complex, but there was relatively little emphasis on the family in the seventh century.""At Corinth, the first plot in the North Cemetery (ca. 775-750 B.c.) was marked by a wall, but later family plots were probably distinguished only by alignment."' Interest ingly, few if any chamber The old tombs continued

tombs were in use until

12 dug after 700 at either Knossos or Thera. ca. 630 at the cemeteries were abandoned

Knossos; at Thera single cremation took over. Inmost places, small family plots were swallowed up and redefined around 700. This evidence fails to support Sourvinou-Inwood's

argument

that death

and burial were

becoming

the domain

of the family rather than the community.13 Child burial. The relationship between adult and child burial changed several times

in Dark

Age Athens.

Down

to 900, most

adult graves

come

from formal

cemeteries outside the settlement, while children are found in smallplots separate from the adults, often within the living area. Around 900, small adult plots begin within the settlement, while child burials almost vanish from the archaeological record.We must assume that childrenwere buried in archaeologically less visible ways."' Sourvinou-Inwood is right to say that childrenwere buried casually, but not

the settlement that child graves outnumber adults within in age structure comes ca. 725, when The main change

area until 760. large numbers

15

of

child graves appear. The process is complex. In theKerameikos, child and infant graves

become

common

in Late Geometric

II, often

cut into adult graves,

but

stop after 700;16 at Thorikos, adults and children are buried together in Late 108. The smallest group is theAgora Tholos plot (Young, supra n. 100); larger groups are at Anavyssos (AD 21:2 [1966] 97-98; 29:2 [1973/74] 108-10), theKerameikos Plattenbau (K. Kiibler, Kerameikos V.1 [Berlin, 1954]), and on Peiraios St. (CVA Louvre 11 [Paris, 1954];AM 18 (1893) 73 91;AD 17:2 [1961/62] 22-23). 109. R. Hagg, AAA 13 (1980) 119-22; "BurialCustoms and Social Differentiation inEighth Century Argos," inHagg, ed. (supra n. 1), 29-30. 110. Morris (supra n. 2) 85-155, 205-10. 111. R. S. Young, inCorinth XIII, TheNorth Cemetery (Princeton,N.J., 1964) 13-49. 112. Knossos: AR 1978-79, 49. Thera: AM 28 (1903) 1-290; H. Dragendorff, Thera II (Berlin, 1903); annual reports inErgon and Praktika since 1965. 113. F. Jacoby ("FENEXIA: A Forgotten Festival of the Dead," CQ 38 [1944] 67-75) also argued that the trendwas from private to public, with theAthenian community taking over family festivals around 600 B.C. 114. Morris (supra n. 2) 61-62. Ethnographers have documented many such cases: e.g., J. R. Goody, Death, Property and theAncestors (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1962) 148-51. 115. Sourvinou-Inwood, "ToDie" (supra n. 1) 34. 116. See K. Kiibler, Kerameikos V.1 (Berlin, 1954), VI.1 (Berlin, 1959). Two cases of child burials cut into seventh-century cremations have been found under Bau Z (AA 1983, 221; 1984, 32

316

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

Geometric lib, but after 700 they sometimes have separate cemeteries and some times have separate plots within the same cemetery.'17 In some cemeteries where child graves appear inLate Geometric IIa, adult graves are driven out altogether in lib, with the cemetery going over entirely to children."8 In the seventh cen tury children generally had separate cemeteries away from adults. This contin ued until ca. 500.19

The spatial integration of adults and children inLate Geometric IIAthens was short-lived, and there was no decline at all in distinctions of grave type. In Late Geometric times, most infantswere inhumed in vases (or cremated, as at the Academy, Anavyssos, and perhaps Trachones), while older children were buried in pit graves. Most adults were inhumed in pit or shaft graves, and some men

were

and

cremated

their ashes

urns. After

in bronze

placed

700,

vase

inhumations continued for infants,while adults were cremated within the grave itself, and youths were inhumed inpit or shaft graves. These extreme differences declined after 550, with inhumation returning for adults, but age was still an 12 In the fifth century most children were important dimension in distinction. in vases or clay tubs, while

buried

adults were

in pit or shaft graves,

inhumed

or

occasionally cremated.'12 In seventh-century Corinth, on the other hand, child the same plots;'22 while at but the large extramural cemeteries, used

and often

like adult graves, graves were more child graves are not known Argos,

from

continued within the town.'23There is great regional variety, but distinctions between adults and children were not declining, nor was burial increasingly a family affair after 750. Extramural cemeteries. Sourvinou-Inwood stresses the abandonment of cemeteries within settlements around 700, and rightly rejects simplistic explana in the Ag.

33), but

Sacred Way,

Triada,

and Pompeion

Rundbau,

areas

all Archaic

child graves

are

inperipheral positions. 117. Thorikos VIII, 1972-1976 (Brussels, 1984) 72-150; for the child cemetery, Thorikos I, 1963 (Brussels, 1965) 16-17. 118. E.g., the Nymphaeum, AD 28:1 (1973) 1-63; Sapphous St., AD 23:2 (1968) 89-92; 32:2 (1977) 27-28. The same may have happened at Phaleron (AE 1911, 169-84; AD 2 [19161 13-64), Eleusis

1889,

(EA

1898, 29-122;

169-84;

AE

1912,

1-39; G. E. Mylonas,

To AiUrtx6v

NEXgoTQaPCov

Tr; 'Ekevotvog, 3 vols. [Athens. 1975]), and perhaps Trachones (AM 88 [19731 1-54; Cavanagh [supra n. 102] 380-82). 119. Morris (supra n. 2) 82-86. 120. On

in Archaic

of age distinctions

the significance

Greece,

see P. Vidal-Naquet,

PCPS

194

(1968) 49-64; 212 (1986) 127-44. 121.

For

a summary

of

the material,

see D.

Kurtz

and

J. Boardman,

Greek

Burial

Customs

(London, 1971). 122. H. Palmer, inCorinth XIII (supra n. 111) 50-327. 123. For the adult graves, see AD 19:2 (1964) 122-27; 21:2 (1966) 121-32; E. Protonotariou Deilaki,

Ot

TvLuPol

To6

"AQyovu

(diss. Athens,

1980).

For

child

graves

within

the settlement,

see

BCH 77 (1953) 258-63; 79 (1955) 312-14; 80 (1956) 366, 376; 81 (1957) 647-60, 665-80; 83 (1959) 762; 94 (1970) 826; 95 (1971) 740; 96 (1972) 155-79; AD 27:2 (1972) 192; 28:2 (1973) 113, 132;P. Courbin,

Tombes

geometriques

d'Argos

I (Paris,

1974) grs.

131, 174/2. The material

is discussed

Foley, TheArgolid 800-600 B.C.: An Archaeological Survey, SIMA vol. 80 (Goteborg, 1988).

inA.

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece tions.'24 She

that a new

suggests

fear of death

317 led to unease

about

tombs,

rationalized as pollution.'25 Certainly this could account for the movement of cemeteries, but the archaeological record can only illustrate the theory of a change in attitudes, not test it. I argued above that there is no other evidence, which leaves Sourvinou-Inwood's account of the movement unsupported. But this is not the same

thing as falsifying

her case,

as could be done with

the other

two classes of archaeological evidence; if I dispute her model, I must find a more cogent explanation for the relocations. Death and burial cannot be slotted into a separate subsystem and studied apart from the rest of life.126 New ideas of pollution may have been behind the change, but what was behind the new ideas? To answer this would be to write a

history of Archaic Greek society,127but a simplemodel integrating burialswith other data can be sketched here. - Pollution is a good starting point. Around 700, Athenian cemeteries were moved outside the living space; and even before this, some were being enclosed in walls.128 The

boundaries

between

the spaces

reserved

for the living and the

dead were hardening. At the same time, evidence begins for the walling-off of settlement sites,'29emphasizing spatial separation. But themain change in space was the rise of a discrete area for religious activity-the emergence of theGreek sanctuary.'30In theDark Age, cult activitywas typifiedby its "spatial indetermi nacy."'3' There is evidence for a few tenth- and ninth-century shrines,'32but these are still rare, and generally theywere divorced from settlements. Within 124. Not all Dark Age sites had intramuralcemeteries, of course. Most Cretan and Cycladic sites had extramural burial grounds, even at Knossos (J. N. Coldstream, "Dorian Knossos and Aristotle's Villages," inAux origines de l'hellenisme [Paris, 1984] 311-22), but the significance of the mainland change that Sourvinou-Inwood draws attention to is very great. For details on Athens, see Morris (supra n. 2) 62-69; Argos, R. Hagg, "Zur Stadtwerdung des dorischen Argos," inPalast und Hutte

(Mainz,

1982)

297-307;

Corinth,

C. K. Williams,

"The Early Urbanization

of Corinth,"

ASAA

60 (1982) 9-21. 125. See R. Parker,Miasma (Oxford, 1983) 71. 126. See especially I.Hodder, Symbols inAction (Cambridge, 1982) 212-14. 127. For amore detailed analysis, seeMorris (supra n. 2) 183-205. 128. E.g., Young, ed. (supra n. 100) 6; AD 29:2 (1973/74) 108-10. On the role of physical boundaries in defining purity, A. van Gennep's classic account The Rites of Passage (Chicago, 1960; orig. pub. Paris, 1909) is still valuable. 129. A. M. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece (Edinburgh, 1971) 298. Several Cycladic sites were walled from their foundation, ca. 900 (AAA 4 [1971] 210-26), as well as having extramural cemeteries. Whether this is part of a different concept of space on the part of the tenth-century colonists is a topic deserving research. It should not be forgotten that the walls were also fortifica tions; it is not my intention to gloss over theirmilitary functionswhile bringing out their symbolism. 130. See J.N. Coldstream, Geometric Greece (London, 1977) 317-40. 131. F. de Polignac, La naissance de la cite grecque (Paris, 1984) 27. 132. See Snodgrass (supra n. 129) for sites such as Samos, Thermon, andDelos. For Kommos, see recent editions of Hesperia for annual or biennial reports; forKalapodi, AA 1980, 38-123; 1987, 1-99; forAegira, JOAI 50 (1972/75) 9-31; 51 (1976/77) 30-34; 53 (1981/82) 8-15; 54 (1983) 35-40; AAA

6 (1973)

193-200;

7 (1974)

157-62;

11 (1978)

147-56;

C. A. Morgan,

"Settlement

and Exploita

tion in the Region of the Corinthian Gulf, c. 1000-700 B.C." (diss. Cambridge, 1986) 20-22, 198.

Volume 8/No.2/October 1989

318 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

settlements, cult was mainly domestic.l33 Even the celebrated eleventh-century "temple" at Karphi is not above suspicion as an independent sanctuary. Spindle whorls, stone tools, and a typical domestic assemblage were found here.134This does

not

rule

as a temple, but the artifacts taken as diagnostic-clay turned up in rooms 16, 70, 72, 111, and 116, and "cult ob fourteen rooms. It is not safe to identify religious sites from a

it out

"goddesses"-also jects" in a further

single class of object, especially when its distribution is relatively wide.'35 But 750 and 650 B.C., over a hundred definitely sacred areas enclosed by a wave of temples. appear, and comparable In Archaic Greek thought, the gods and the dead were each in their own way

between

temenos walls

sacred, and the boundaries between men and both these groups were protected by sanctions of pollution. Mary Douglas has argued that pollution beliefs are a major way people define norms, and that the strength of such beliefs indicates the strength boundedness

of

concern

of the spaces

with

the definition

in the Changes and the dead around 700

to the gods, men,

allotted

36

of behavior.

suggest that a new system of classificationwas growing up, with greater emphasis on the place of men

in the cosmos

relative

to these other

two groups.137

The hardening of the boundaries coincides with changes in ideas of pollu tion. There is certainly a metaphysical side toHomeric and Hesiodic impurity, and we

should

purification

not

exaggerate

are more

positivist

the changes,138 but their concepts of dirt and and simpler than those of later authors. The

133. A. Mazarakis-Ainian ("Contribution a l'dtudede architecture religieuse grecque dans les ages obscurs," AC 54 [1985] 5-48) discusses the structural remains. For tenth/ninth-century Nichoria, W. A. MacDonald et al., Excavations at Nichoria in Southwest Greece III (Minneapolis, 1983) 33, 40; ninth-century Koukounaries, Praktika 1978, 204. An eighth-century sanctuary of Athena with probable cult activity inLH IIIC times and again from the late tenth century beneath its temenos has now been found atKoukounaries (Ergon 1984, 70-71; 1985, 53-56; 1986, 111-13; 1987, 109-113; 1988, 133-7). Similar early activity has been identifiedbeneath the sanctuary at Isthmia (E. R. Gebhard, "The Early Sanctuary of Poseidon at Isthmia,"AJA 91 [1987] 475-76). While cult was obviously not purely domestic in the Dark Age, just as it had not been inMycenaean times (espe cially LH

IIIC),

it remains

true to say that there was

a total revolution

in the spatial

organization

of

religion in the eighth century, with a decisive shift toward bounded public areas. 134. J. D. S. Pendlebury, "Excavations in the Plain of Lasithi, III:Karphi," BSA 37 (1937/38) 76. B. Rutkowski, "The Temple at Karphi," SMEA 26 (1987) 257-79, has recently reexamined the evidence, but has not done anything to improve the case. 135. On the problems involved, see A. C. Renfrew, TheArchaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi, BSA Supplement 18 (London, 1985), chap. 1. 136. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger (London, 1966); Natural Symbols (London, 1970); Im plicitMeanings (London, 1973); followed by Redfield (supra n .46) 160-223; Parker (supra n. 125) 61-64. 137.

On Hesiod's

in the universe,

use of the myths of the Five Races "Le mythe hesiodique

see J. Rudhardt,

as models

and Prometheus des

races

et celui

for man's

de Promethee,"

place Cahiers

Vilfredo Pareto: Revue Europeene des Sciences Sociales 19 (1981) 245-81; J.-P. Vernant, Myth and Society inAncient Greece (Brighton, 1980) 130-85; Myth and Thought (supra n. 90) chaps. 1, 2. 138. Vernant, Myth and Society (supra n. 137) 115-17; Parker (supra n. 125) 294; D. R. Blickman,

193-208.

"The Myth

of

Ixion

and Pollution

for Homicide

in Ancient

Greece,"

CJ

81

(1985/86)

MORRIS: Attitudes Toward Death inArchaic Greece

319

boundaries between the gods, men, and the dead were starting to be reinforced bymore sophisticated sanctions. The walling

and movement

of

the cemeteries

must

be seen

in this wider

framework. The living space was more sharply set off from the sacred spaces of the gods and the dead, and dangerous boundaries were stressed throughphysical and conceptual barriers. De Polignac has suggested that theworld of the plain, the polis territory, began to be defined against theworld of nature by the place ment of major rural sanctuaries in liminal positions, at themeeting point of the tilled land and the mountains.139The same nature/culture division is already visible inHomer; the sharpest line in the civic landscape is drawn between the plain and the ayQov bin' to%(XaTv,thewild world of nature.'40 The association of opposites was a strong theme inArchaic Greek philoso phy. The world was divided into opposed pairs of concepts, and each side of each binary opposition was associated with the corresponding side of all other pairs. Thus male was

to female

as right was to left, east was to west, good to bad, life to add the polarities of men and gods, culture and nature.

death;'14 and we might The association of opposites is clear in Homer to its most formal state in a Pythagorean "Table

and Hesiod

and was brought I am not

of Oppositions."'42

suggesting that the association of opposites began in late eighth-centuryGreece; religious polarity is a very common structure of thought, and may even be a universal system of classification.'43No doubt Greeks had long thought in terms of such polarities, but in the late eighth and seventh centuries the rigidity of the divisions increased enormously. The question

of why cemeteries

were

relocated,

then,

is but a part of a larger

question: what lay behind this new conceptual chopping-up of the cosmos, ex to suggest that a shift from tending into every area of human life? It is reasonable the Tame Death toward the Death of the Self-whether partial and limited or a period so poorly to answer. In not be the and strong going widespread-is

known as theArchaic, the solution inevitably depends largely on the historian's and a long discussion would be out of place here. The changes perspective, ca. 750 and 650 might be explained as a result of the collapse between thought

in of

139. De Polignac (supra n. 131) 41-87; also P. Ellinger, AA 1987, 88-99. 140. See Redfield's important discussion (supra n. 46, 189-92), and S. Scully, "The Polis in Homer," Ramus 10 (1981) 1-34. Redfield (p. 161) also emphasizes Homer's plays on the word xgEbL&evov, meaning at once a city wall and awoman's veil, defining the purity of the space within. 141. On the importance of polarity inArchaic Greek thought, see themasterly studies byG. E. R. Lloyd, "Right and Left inGreek Philosophy," JHS 82 (1962) 56-66; "Hot andCold, Wet andDry inGreek Philosophy," JHS 84 (1964) 92-106; Polarity andAnalogy (Cambridge, 1966) 42-48; Early Greek Science: Thales toAristotle (London, 1970). 142. Ar. Metaph. 1.986a22-b2. 143. See R. Hertz, Death and theRight Hand (Chicago, 1960); E. R. Leach, Social Anthropol ogy (London, 1982) 113-21; Lloyd, Polarity (supra n. 141) 31-42. The point may not need support, but it is interesting to note that in the twelfth-century shrine at Phylakopi on Melos, male figurines were found in association with the right-hand bench, and females with the left (Renfrew [supra n. 1351371).

320

CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

theDark Age aristocracy and the ideological transformations that accompanied the rise of the polis;'44 and Iwould suggest that themore rigid classification of space and man's place were among the consequences of the more formalized idea of the place of the citizen But that is another story.

in the new social order.'14 I have tried to show that the movement

of the

cemeteries was part of a very complex set of structural changes in late eighth century

Greece,

which

must

be understood

as a whole

or not at all. A

new

attitude to dying cannot account for these changes, nor is there any evidence for such a change

in the textual

and archaeological

records. The

theory of a histori

cally significant shift in individual attitudes toward dying, anticipatingwhat came about

in western

Europe

some

two millennia

later, must

be rejected.

University of Chicago 144. B. Qviller, "TheDynamics of theHomeric Society,' SO 56 (1981) 109-55;Morris, "Use" (supra n. 52), Burial (supra n. 2) chap. 10; P. Garnsey and I.Morris, "Risk and the polis," in P. Halstead and J.O'Shea, eds., Bad Year Economics (Cambridge, 1989) 98-105. 145. On the effects of the polis on spatial categories, see J.-P. Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1982);Myth and Thought (supra n. 90) chaps. 7, 8; J. Svenbro, "AMegara Hyblaea: Le corps geometre," Annales (ESC) 37 (1982) 953-64.