Death
The "that" of death (for instance), the fact that men die, cannot be treated as an unproblematic cultural universal.[10] We have only to reflect on beliefs in various modes of symbolic death to see that here, as so often elsewhere, there may be wide cultural divergences and substan-
[7] Cf. further below, Chap. 2, on the appeal to tradition as such as justification for a belief or practice.
[8] For some comments on this theme, see Horton 1982, pp. 239ff.; Sperber 1985, pp. 59f.
[10] See, for example, V. W. Turner 1964, p. 231.
tial difficulties in matching actor and observer categories.[11]A fortiori what counts as disease or illness and what as mental illness or madness vary strikingly between cultures. Yet so far as ancient Greek views of death go (the subject of another distinguished contribution to the Sather lectures),[12] a resolute acceptance that men die is strongly marked in Homer,[13] even if there is afterwards a shadowy existence in Hades, and even if some exceptional individuals escape that fate and achieve semi-divine status as heroes.[14] But acceptance of the brute fact of death gives no consolation for, indeed may even heighten, personal bereavement. That acceptance does not qualify, rather it lends resonance to, Achilles' anguished cry that he would rather be a bondsman on earth than rule among the dead.[15]
[11] Furthermore, the point that death may be viewed very differently as it affects the young and old is emphasised, for example, by Cassin 1981, p. 321.
[12] Vermeule 1979. Two recent collections of essays contain important discussions of Greek and Roman attitudes along with comparative studies of other cultures: Humphreys and King 1981, and Gnoli and Vernant 1982. Sourvinou-Inwood 1983 explores, in particular, changes in attitudes that take place at different periods in antiquity: cf. also Garzón Díaz 1981, Wankel 1983.
[13] See, for example, Iliad (Il.) 12.322ff., 18.115ff., 21.106ff., 24.525ff., and from a god's perspective, 21.462ff. The point has often been brought out forcefully, as by Rohde 1925, chap. 4; Guthrie 1950, pp. 305f; Sourvinou-Inwood 1983, pp. 34f. The centrality of the topic of death in the Homeric poems has recently also been stressed by Segal 1978.
[14] See, for example, Odyssey (Od.) 4.561ff. (Menelaus), 11.300ff. (Castor and Polydeuces), 11.601ff. (Heracles). Some individuals are, of course, subject to exemplary punishment: see especially Od. 11.576–600 (Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus).
[15] Od. 11.488ff. How far, on this or any other of the issues germane to our discussion, Homer should be taken to represent common attitudes is, to be sure, highly problematic, but the influence and prestige of the Homeric poems in the fifth and fourth centuries insure at least their relevance to our understanding of the background to natural philosophical speculation. Aspects of the themes of the transience of human life, human helplessness, and the preponderance of evil, expressed, for example, at Il. 6.145ff., 21.464ff., 24.527ff., Od. 18.130ff., and in Hesiod, e.g., Works and Days (Opera, Op.) 101ff., are reiterated in early lyric and in tragedy, e.g., Solon 1.35ff. (Diehl), Mimnermus 1 and 2 (Diehl): the theme that it is better not to have been born at all, found, for example, in Theognis 425ff., Bacchylides 5.160ff. (Snell-Maehler) and Sophocles Oedipus Coloneus 1224ff., reappears in a particularly emphatic statement in Aristotle's lost dialogue the Eudemus fr. 6 (Ross).
On the how of death, Greek physics eventually had, as usual, a multitude of theories to offer. Yet they provided little understanding and no reassurance. There was Aristotle's suggestion, for example, that death is the extinction of the vital heat, which may take place, he believes, either from cold or from an excess of heat.[16] That theories that appeal just to the hot, the cold, and the like are quite inadequate had already been argued in the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine . There the writer criticises those who use such newfangled "hypotheses" in part on the grounds that to do so is to narrow down the causal principles of death and disease.[17] What is needed, he believes, is a more complex account, taking into consideration all the manifold powers in the body and their combinations.[18] Again even Plato had a suggestion to make on the subject in the Timaeus , namely, that the material cause of death is a deterioration in the structure of the atomic triangles that constitute the physical elements of which the body (and everything else) is made.[19]
To be sure, each of those, and many other, hardheaded naturalistic explanations entailed the denial of the literal truth of Hesiod's mythology of death as presented in the myth of the metals in the Works and Days , with its complex counterpoint on the way each race meets its end.[20] Those of the Golden Age are as if overcome by sleep; those of the Age of Silver, who remain children for a hundred years, are "hidden" by Zeus and become the blessed ones of the underworld; the Bronze Age race destroy themselves; some from the Age of Heroes go
[16] See, for example, De juventute (Juv.) 469b18ff., 21ff., De respiratione (Resp.) 478b22ff., 479a32ff. Contrast Ethica Nicomachea (EN) 1115a26, where Aristotle recognises that death is the most fearful thing there is.
[18] See, for example, VM 14, CMG 1.1.45.26ff., 15. CMG 1.1.46.27ff., 22, CMG 1.1.53.1ff.
[19] Timaeus (Ti.) 81b–e.
[20] Op. 109ff., on which see, for example, Kirk 1970, pp. 233ff., J.-P. Vernant 1983, pp. 3ff., 33ff.
to the Islands of the Blest; and Zeus will destroy the last Age of Iron when men are born grey-haired.[21] Again, theories of the physics of death were not compatible with a literal reading of Plato's own myth, in the Politicus , of the age of Cronos—the anti-cosmos when time flows in reverse[22] —while they had no comment to make on the values implicit in the ideology of the "beautiful death"—the death while young, in battle, securing lasting fame.[23] No prosaic naturalistic account of the how of death had, of course, anything to offer on the why, nor on how we as mortals should live with our mortality. They offered nothing to replace the lesson obliquely taught by Hesiod's myth: we must realise that, since we are born in the Age of Iron, there is an imperative upon us to accept death, along with toil and pain.
Such comfort as was on offer from the philosophers in the classical period, at least,[24] came principally from a very different quarter, from the essentially religious belief in the immortality of the soul found first in the Pythagorean tradition, then in Plato and others.[25] Yet that was certainly not science replacing earlier attitudes or patterns of belief.
[21] See Op. 116, 137ff., 152ff., 170ff., 180f.
[22] Politicus (Plt.) 268e ff., especially 270c–e referring to periodic destructions of the human race and the reversal of aging, with the old becoming young. Compare the discussions in Herter 1958, Rosen 1979–80, and especially Vidal-Naquet 1975/1986.
[23] See especially Loraux 1981/1986, pp. 98ff., 1982, pp. 27ff.; J.-P. Vernant 1982, pp. 45ff.; cf. Dover 1974, p. 229; Sourvinou-Inwood 1983, p. 43.
[25] Of course it was not just from among the philosophical writers that comfort of this kind was on offer, but also, as early or earlier, from within the growing and altering religious traditions, notably with the development of mystery religions: see Burkert 1977/1985, chap. 6, pp. 276ff., cf. Nilsson 1957, for Hellenistic continuations.
On the contrary, in Plato at any rate, it was often what was now self-consciously recognised as myth doing so. The substance of the eschatological accounts in the Gorgias, Phaedo, Republic , and Phaedrus is accepted by the character Socrates, and no doubt by Plato, as true or at least as like the truth:[26] there would presumably be no wavering on the underlying principle of rewards and punishments, the ultimate justice of the regulation of the universe. Yet on each occasion the account is expressly said to be myth, or its status is otherwise undercut.[27] In the Phaedrus , for instance, Socrates begins by offering a "demonstration,"
ments on the immortality of the soul, he turns to describe its character
