Ian Morris Attitudes Toward Death in Archaic Greece 1989 PDF

IAN MORRIS
Attitudes
Toward Death
in Archaic Greece
ASTHERE
A SIGNIFICANT
SHIFTinattitudes towarddeath inArchaic Greece?
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
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:
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
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:
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
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
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.
CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY
306
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:
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
308
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:
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
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:
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
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:
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
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:
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
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:
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:
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
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.

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IAN MORRIS

I argue both yes and no, according

isdefined. My thesis is a reply to two important articles by Christiane Sourvinou

Dr. Sourvinou-Inwood suggests that therewas a large-scalechange in individ

two are not

I begin by considering the methodological problems involved in this ques

its links with Aries's

causalmodel is inadequate. Finally, Iwill offer alternative interpretationsof the

to carry out a study at this level than is often

tural and intellectualist interpretations of rituals are complementary ways of

there has been

death? There are two general problems to consider.

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

this theme more

Structure inClassical Antiquity (Cambridge, inpress) chap. 1.On the structural/intellectualistdistinc

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

capture a "spiritof the age," which isnecessarily a very high-level generalization,

sweeping generalizations about "collective representations" on the basis of this

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

lies, and then to examine

it in the light of the

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

Past? (New Haven, 1983).

not tell us very much about ancient

question. His simple answer-yes-does

and it is from this that her argument derives its interest. We

is not to say that Aries's

Only the first two stages of Aries's

FRANCE AND ARCHAIC

history of death concern us here. He calls

death that remained almost unchanged

idea of the Good

a fate met with

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

there is one dominant model of attitudes towards death, firmly

which are also reflected in eighth-century archaeological evidence, are

and the French

detect a (partial) shift away from familiar acceptance, towards a more

The similarities, especially that in the basic mentality, the "elementary

that the complexity

beginnings of changes, but as part of a general pattern of attitudes that remained

mental horizons, and dislocated or destroyed many of the structures on which

Did population growth transform attitudes toward death? Most historians

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

26. Sourvinou-Inwood, "Trauma" (supra n. 1) 34.

and the Rise of

Volume 8/No. 2/October 1989

structure of the cemeteries fluctuates: in Sub-Mycenaean (ca. 1125-1050 B.C.)

in the first week

five to ten thousand

in 450 B.C., and most

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

ments to theDead (forthcoming, Cambridge).

centuryAthenian citizens upwards to 60,000 ("Three Studies inAthenian Demography," Kongelike

undermining theTame Death.37

and later poets,

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

intellectual background inArchaic Greece cannot be said to be sufficiently like

that there might

first and fullest

get killed.41 But

is the Iliad, the poem of death: 318 heroes, 243 of

Journal of Sociology 44 (1938) 1-24.