Book of the Dead by Homer

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Tall and leafy trees dangled fruit above his head: pears, pomegranates, apples, sweet figs, and olives, growing in luxuriant profusion. But whenever he reached out to grasp them in his hands, the wind snatched them away to thk shadowy clouds. And also I saw Sisyphus enduring hard sufferings as he pushed a huge stone; exerting all his weight with both his hands and feet he kept shoving it up to the top of the hill. But just when he was about to thrust it over the crest then its own weight forced it back and once again the pitiless stone rolled down to the plain. Yet again he put forth his strength and pushed it up; sweat poured from his limbs and dust rose up high about his head. Odysseus next sees the phantom of Heracles-the real Heracles is with his wife, Hebe, among the immortal gods. Heracles tells how he too was ill-fated while he lived, performing labors for an inferior master. Homer's Book of the Dead ends with the following description by Odysseus (628-40): After the departure of Heracles I remained steadfast in my place in case any other heroes who had previously died might still come; now I should have seen men whom I wanted to see, of earlier times, Theseus and Pirithous, renowned sons of the gods, but countless hordes of the dead swarmed together with frightening shrieks; pallid fear took hold of me that dread Persephone might send from Hades a Gorgon head of terrible portent. Immediately, then, I went to my ship and ordered my comrades to board and release the mooring cables. They obeyed at once and took their places at the oars. As they started to row a fair breeze sprang up. Countless difficulties beset any interpretation of the Homeric view of the afterlife, many of which are linked to the nature of the composition of the Odyssey as a whole and this book in particular. Discrepancies are apparent, and explanations must finally hinge upon one's views on the much wider problems of the Homeric question. Does the Book of the Dead reflect different attitudes and concepts put together by one man or several, at one time or over a period of years and even centuries? Basic to the account perhaps is a cult of the dead seen in the sacrificial ceremonies performed at the trench and in the serious note of moral compulsion to provide burial for one who has died. But as the description proceeds there is much that is puzzling.

Odysseus apparently should remain at his post while the souls come up; if so, does he witness the torments of the sinners and the activities of the heroes described with them as a vision from the pit of blood, or is this episode an awkward addition from a different treatment that had Odysseus actually tour the realm of Hades? Certainly the section listing the women who come up in a group conveys strongly the feelings of an insertion, written in the style of the Boeotian epic of Hesiod. As the book begins, the stream of Oceanus seems to be the only barrier, but later Anticlea speaks of other rivers to be crossed. Thus the geography of the Homeric underworld is vague and similarly the classification of those who inhabit it obscurely defined, particularly in terms of the precision that is evident in subsequent literature. Elpenor, among those who first swarm up, may belong to a special group in a special area, but we cannot be sure. Heroes like Agamemnon and Achilles are together, but they do not clearly occupy a separate paradise; the meadow of asphodel that they inhabit seems to refer to the whole realm and not an Elysium such as we shall have described by Vergil. One senses, rather, that all mortals end up together pretty much in the same place, without distinction. Since Odysseus thinks that Achilles has as great power among the shades as he had among the living, perhaps some prerogatives are assigned or taken for granted. A special hell for sinners may be implied (at least they are listed in a group), but it is noteworthy that these sinners are extraordinary indeed, great figures of mythological antiquity who dared great crimes against the gods. Apparently ordinary mortals do not suffer so for their sins.

Homer does not seem to present an afterlife of judgment and reward and punishment, and Minos presumably acts as a judge among the dead, settling their disputes there very much as he did in real life. The tone and mood of the Homeric afterlife is generally more consistent. Vague and fluttering spirits with pursuits, passions, and prejudices they had while alive drift aimlessly and joylessly in the gloom; the light and hope and vigor of the upper world are gone. Philosophical and religious thought, shot through with moral earnestness and righteous indignation, will soon bring about sublime and terrifying variations in this picture. Plato concludes the last book of his great dialogue, the Republic, with the myth of Er. This vision of the afterlife is steeped in religious and philosophical concepts and, although figures from mythology are incorporated, the symbolic and spiritual world depicted is far removed from that of Homer. Socrates, addressing Glaucon, makes this clear as he begins (614B): I shall not tell a tale like that of Odysseus to Alcinous but instead my story is of a brave man, Er, the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian, who at one time died in war; after ten days, when the bodies by now decayed were taken up, his alone was uncorrupted. He was brought home and on the twelfth day after his death placed on a funeral pyre in preparation for burial. But he came back to life and told what he had seen in the other world. He said that after his soul had departed it traveled with many and came to a divine place, in which there were two openings in the earth next to each other, and opposite were two others in the upper region of the sky. In the space between these four openings sat judges who passed sentence: the just they ordered to go to the right through one of the openings upward in the sky after they had affixed their judgments in front of them; the unjust they sent to the left through one of the downward openings, bearing on their backs indications of all that they had done; to Er when he approached they said that he must be a messenger to men about the afterlife and commanded him to listen and watch everything in this place. To be sure he saw there the souls after they had been judged going away through the opening either in the heaven or in the earth, but from the remaining two openings he saw some souls coming up out of the earth, covered with dust and dirt, and others descending from the second opening in the sky, pure and shining. And they kept arriving and appeared as if they were happy indeed to return after a long journey to the plain that lay between.

Here they encamped as though for a festival, and mutual acquaintances exchanged greetings; those who had come from the earth and those from the sky questioned one another. The first group recounted their experiences, weeping and wailing as they recalled all the various things they had suffered and seen in their journey under the earth, which had lasted one thousand years; the others from the sky told in turn of the happiness they had felt and sights of indescribable beauty. 0 Glaucon, it would take a long time to relate everything. But he did say that the essential significance was this: everyone had to suffer an appropriate penalty for each and every sin ten times over, in retribution for the number of times and the number of persons he had wronged; that is, he must make one full payment once every hundred years (since this is considered the span of human life) so that he might pay in full for all his wrongs, tenfold in one thousand years. For example, if any were responsible for the deaths of many or betrayed and enslaved cities or armies or were guilty of any other crime, they would suffer torments ten times over for all these sins individually, but on the other hand, if they had done good deeds and were just and holy, in the same proportion they were given a worthy reward. About those who died immediately after birth and those who had lived a short time he said other things not worth mentioning. He described still greater retribution for honor or dishonor toward gods and parents and for murder. He told how he was near one spirit who asked another where Ardiaeus the Great was. This Ardiaeus had been tyrant in a city of Pamphylia a thousand years before this time and he was said to have killed his aged parents and older brother and to have committed many other unholy deeds. The reply was that he had not and would not come back to the pldin. For to be sure this was one of the terrifying sights that we witnessed. When we were near the mouth and about to come up, after experiencing everything else, we suddenly saw Ardiaeus and others, most of whom were tyrants, but there were also some ordinary persons who had committed great wrongs. They all thought that they would at last ascend upward but the mouth would not let them; instead it gave forth a roar, whenever any who were so incurable in their wickedness or had not paid sufficient penalty attempted to come up.

Then indeed wild men, fiery of aspect, who stood by and understood the roar, seized some of them and led them away, but they bound Ardiaeus and the others, head, hand, and foot, threw them down, and flayed them; they dragged them along the road outside the mouth combing their flesh like wool with thorns, making clear to others as they passed the reason for the punishment and that they were being led away to be hurled down to Tartarus. Of all the many and varied terrors that happened to them there, by far the greatest for each was that he might hear the roar as he came up, and when there was silence each ascended with the utmost joy. The judgments then were such as these: punishments for some and again rewards for others in due proportion. The next section of the myth is extremely difficult. It presents a cosmological explanation of the universe; problems arise from the astronomical terminology and metaphorical imagery in terms of a spindle with its fly or whorl, a commonplace item in the ancient world but relatively unfamiliar today. A paraphrase and with it inevitably an interpretation follow for the sake of brevity and clarity. We have taken the liberty of adding the metaphor of an open umbrella, held upside down, to that of the spindle with its shaft and at one end a fly or whorl. The souls who have completed their cycle of one thousand years spend seven days on the plain and then proceed on another journey accompanied by Er. Four days later they arrive at a place from which they behold a beam of light that extends like a pillar through all of heaven and earth. After another day's journey they can see that this light provides as it were a bond or chain to hold the ' universe together; from this chain of light extends the spindle (or umbrella) of Necessity (Ananke) made for the most part of adamantine steel, by which all the revolving spheres are turned.

The fly or whorl of the spindle (open end of an inverted umbrella) is hollow and filled with eight concentric circular rings which fit into one another like a set of bowls; the shaft pierces the middle of the central eighth ring. The lips or rims of these circular rings (which vary in width) revolve and carry with them the fixed stars and all the planets; the order, beginning from the outside of the circle, is: fixed stars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Venus, the sun, the moon. The whole spindle (or umbrella) revolves in one direction while the seven inner circles turn individually at various speeds in the opposite direction. Thus is explained the apparent daily revolution of the stars and planets; earth is at the center. Let us return directly to Plato's account of Er as Socrates relates it. The spindle turned on the knees of Necessity. A Siren was perched aloft each of the circles and borne along with it, uttering a single sound on one musical note; from all eight came a unified harmony. Round about at equal distances sat three others, each on a throne, the Fates (Moirae), daughters of Necessity, in white robes with garlands on their heads, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, singing to the music of the Sirens: Lachesis of the past, Clotho of the present, and Atropos of the future. Clotho touches with her right hand the outside circle of the spindle and helps turn it; with her left Atropos moves the inner circles in the same way, and Lachesis touches and moves both, alternating with each hand. Immediately after the souls arrived they had to approach Lachesis. First of all a prophet arranged them in order and then, after taking from the knees of Lachesis lots and examples of lives, he mounted a lofty platform and spoke: "Hear the word of Lachesis, maiden daughter of Necessity. Ephemeral souls, this is the beginning of another cycle of mortal life fraught with death. A divinity will not allot himself to you, but you will choose your divinity. Let one who has drawn the first lot choose a life, which will be his by necessity. Virtue is without master; each man has a greater or lesser share, insofar as he honors or dishonors her. The blame belongs to him who makes the choice; god is blameless." With these words he cast the lots among them all, and each picked up the one that fell near him. Only Er was not allowed to participate. It was clear to each when he had picked up his lot what number he had drawn.

Next he placed the examples of lives on the ground in front of them, many more than those present and of every kind; lives of all living creatures and all mankind. Among them lives of tyrants, some complete, others cut short and ending in poverty, exile, and destitution. There were lives of illustrious men, renowned for form and beauty or strength and physical achievement, others for family and the virtues of their ancestors; in the same way were lives of unknown or disreputable men; and so it was for women. But the disposition of the soul was not included, because with its choice of another life it too of necessity became different, but the other qualities were mixed with one another, wealth and poverty, sickness and health, and intermediate states. Herein to be sure, as it seems, my dear Glaucon, lies all the risk; therefore each one of us must seek to find and understand this crucial knowledge; he must search if he can hear of and discover one who will make him capable of knowing; he must distinguish the good life from the wicked and choose always in every situation from the possibilities the better course, taking into account all that has now been said. He must know how these qualities individually or combined affect virtue in a life, what beauty mixed with poverty or wealth achieves in terms of good and evil along with the kind of state of soul that it inspires, and what high and low birth, private status, public office, strength, weakness, intelligence, stupidity, and all such qualities, inherent or acquired, achieve in combination with one another, so that after deliberation he may be able to choose from all of these between the worse and better life, looking only to the effect upon the nature of his soul. By the worse life I mean that leading the soul to become more unjust, by the better, that leading it to become more just. All other considerations he will ignore.