Underworld and Afterlife; Hymn to Demeter
Homeric conception of the afterlife:
No real afterlife: when a person dies his psyche flies out of his mouth and goes down to the underworld. There are no exceptions: no one goes off to heaven (except for Herakles). For a soul to gain entrance into the underworld he needs to gain a burial – or at least a symbolic burial. Without that burial or token burial, he isn’t allowed to enter the underworld but remains outside the underworld proper. This is seen by the souls of the dead as a terrible fate (Patroklos, Elpinor). But on gaining admission the soul resides there without consciousness. In the Odyssey, Odysseus has to go into the underworld to consult the prophet Tiresias. He digs a pit, sacrifices animals and lets their blood run into the pit. The souls are attracted to the blood in a zombie-like fashion and, he was told, if they drink blood, they regain their consciousness for a limited time and can converse and reminisce. This allows Odysseus to converse not only with Tiresias but also with his mother & his companions at Troy: Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax.
But Homer is aware of alternative conceptions of the underworld & afterlife. In Odyssey 4, Menelaus is told that when he dies, he won’t share the usual human fate but he will go to the Elysian Fields/Islands of the Blessed. Hard to say specifically how life there will be different since Homer (and Hesiod), but what we have here is the germ of the idea of a heaven-like afterlife. Hesiod in his Ages of Mankind says that the race of demi-gods (i.e. the heroes) went there, but no one holds it out as a place that the usual rung of mankind will attain.
More disturbingly, at the end of Odyssey 11, Odysseus sees several souls that are being tortured: Tityos, Tantalus, & Sisyphos. It’s hard to square this with the idea that the underworld is a land of the unconscious dead – after all, what pain can you inflict on a person without consciousness? Authors after Homer expand the list of canonical sinners to include the likes of the Daughters of Danaus & Ixion. And the numbers of heroes who make it into the Islands of the Blessed expands a little. But in both cases, reward and punishment don’t seem to have much to do with morality. As I mentioned last time – the gods don’t take much interest in moral injustices among humanity unless it involves a personal slight against them. This plays out in the Homeric underworld too – the canonical sinners are punished for their transgressions against the gods. And the heroes who make it into the Islands of the Blessed do so not because of any moral superiority but because they have divine connections.
After Homer, the underworld gets increasingly elaborated. How? The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, composed around the year 600 BCE claims that initiates into the Eleusinian mysteries will have a better afterlife than those who are not. By the 6th century we find ideas of reincarnation and transmigration (Pythagoras), and with it, in Plato, the idea that we’re in this nearly endless cycle of death and rebirth until we reach a state of purification that will finally get us off that treadmill.
Also, Orphism. There’s a story that Orpheus, the greatest musician in mythic history, married Eurydice but that on the day of their wedding she went out for a walk and was bitten on the foot by a poisonous snake and died. Orpheus went to the underworld to try to win her back, but was unsuccessful. But where he was successful was that he was taught the secrets of the underworld and afterlife and brought these teachings back with him when he returned to the upper world.
Several of Plato’s dialogues end with his Socrates telling a story about what the underworld and afterlife might be like. In some ways they relate to each other very well, but with a change of emphasis from one to the next. But in every case, Plato weaves a lot of traditional elements into his narrative.
Virgil’s Aeneid paints a complex picture of the underworld that relies heavily on Plato & other Greek sources and adds a few modifications of his own. Aeneas has to go into the underworld because he needs some encouragement to continue his mission – to found the Roman empire. In this process of souls reincarnated, he (and we) get to see great Roman statesmen and others who are going to be born – but only if Aeneas completes his mission.
Ultimately, often when we turn to the Christian conception of the underworld & afterlife, what we see is a world heavily infused with the underworld created by the Greeks and Romans. (e.g. Dante’s Inferno; Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel)
Demeter/Persephone/Hades
It’s generally true that the Olympian gods are involved exclusively in activities in the upper world. The don’t travel to the underworld; they are not involved in activities associated with death or even permit themselves to look upon death. The Greeks generally tend of keep separate the gods of the upper world (i.e. Ouranic gods) and the gods of the underworld (i.e. Chthonic gods). Here’s one of those differences between religion and myth. In religion, there are a handful of gods who have chthonic cults: Zeus, Demeter. In myth, the break is stronger:
There are two exceptions: the god Hermes, who is associated with the crossing transgression of boundaries, is one of those exceptions. Most importantly in this regard, he is the god that leads the souls of the dead to the underworld. The other exception is the goddess Persephone (and, sometimes, her mother Demeter).
Demeter has two important aspects of her mythology. First and foremost, she is a goddess of agriculture, esp. the production of wheat and barley (the staples of the ancient Greek diet). As the goddess of grain, she can either cause the crops to grow or cause them to fail (cp., e.g. Apollo as the god of plagues and health). This aspect of Demeter is attested throughout the Greek world, and is already established at the time when the events of the hymn take place. There are fertility rites sacred to Demeter performed by women in all cities throughout the Greek world to promote crop fertility (e.g. The Thesmophoria at Athens/Eleusis). The other important aspect of Demeter is her role in the
welfare of the dead in the afterlife and is found in conjunction with her cult at Eleusis (14 miles west of Athens). The Eleusinian Mysteries promised a better afterlife than the dismal one we looked at last class.
The most important document for Demeter is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. It was composed around the year 600 BCE, though guesstimates range from as early as 675 to as late as 550). Eleusis was assimilated by the Athenians around the time of its composition, and the Hymn is our earliest source of information about the goddess.
As the goddess of the production of grain and as the goddess presiding over the Eleusinian rites, both of these aspects of Demeter are attested in the hymn. When the events of the hymn take place, her role as the goddess of grain is already firmly established. There are festivals/rituals throughout Greece to foster the growth of crops – Thesmophoria. But the Hymn to Demeter is concerned with the foundation myth for the Eleusinian Mysteries, which are celebrated, not surprisingly, in the city of Eleusis at the far western end of Athens territory. The Eleusinian Mysteries was among the most important and probably the most popular, in ancient Greece. Its origins are prehistoric – maybe reaching back to the 15th century BCE and continue uninterrupted till about 400 AD. The Eleusinian Mysteries are both local and pan-Hellenic. That is to say, it begins as a local cult but its prestige grew to such an extent that people came from all over Greece to become initiates. In some ways the Homeric Hymn reflects this movement from local to pan-Hellenic in the names of the gods Persephone and Hades. In Eleusis they were known as Kore and Plouton, but in the hymn they have their more familiar names Persephone and Hades.
Initiation into the Mysteries was open to virtually anyone within the Greek world (male or female; slave or free). What are the requirements to become an initiate? Pretty simple: you have to speak Greek and you have to not be a murderer. In reality, things were more complicated. It involves a time commitment that must have made it a non-starter for small farm owners and other poor people. And the initiates had to buy a piglet to sacrifice to the goddesses, so there was some expense.
Just what the ceremony entailed is somewhat of a mystery in the modern sense. The Greek word mystery just means secret; and the initiates swear an oath never to reveal the secret rites. So, there are things we’ll just never know. But there was also an open/ public aspect to the ritual. The Homeric Hymn presents the foundation myth for the Eleusinian Mysteries and seems to present, without divulging any of the sacred mysteries, ritual elements associated with the cult. If we knew more about the hidden aspects of the mysteries, we might see find references to it as well, but mostly we have to go on our knowledge of the public aspects. Of course, the myth provides an aetiology of the agricultural cycle: the festival takes place in autumn. Seeds are planted, they begin to sprout and then in the change of season they lie dormant through the winter. The spring-time reunion of Kore and Demeter initiates the growth of flowers and plants.
Outline of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter
Persephone out with friends picking flowers and frolicking is very much a type scene in mythic literature, reminiscent of the groups of young women belonging to the Artemis cult – along with the threat of unwanted male attention. One might also compare, e.g. The Nausicaa scene in the Odyssey, and also reflected in the lie Demeter tells to Celeus’s daughters.
Demeter in disguise at the well is encountered by the four daughters of Celeus. Celeus’ wife Metaneira has recently given birth to a son Demophoon (note the importance of gaining a son) and someone who is skilled in the raising of children as Demeter claims to be, would be of great help. They hire her as a nanny, and lead her to their house.
Demeter begins a process to make Demophoon immortal by anointing him with ambrosia and placing him in the fire at night. The process is interrupted and therefore ruined. Demophoon dies young (maybe). And Demeter gives instructions for the building of a temple.
This myth is susceptible to a variety of theoretical approaches to myth:
- Psychological: Whether it’s Jungian archetypes (e.g. the maiden, mother, crone, Rhea as the archetype of the wise old woman) or Freudian wish fulfilment (a mother regaining her once married daughter, or the daughter returning to her childhood, or the idea of an escape from death)
- Structuralist: exploring the binary tensions that exist in the culture and how they are mediated through myth (e.g. life/death; the transition from childhood to marriage)
- Ritual theory (a movement begun around 1880 and still being elaborated – what is the relationship between myth and ritual? connections. The biggest question still unanswered: Does ritual precede myth with the idea that the tory is somehow meant to explain the ritual? Or does ritual grow out of myth? Do they come into existence together with each affecting the other? Hard to say because we rarely find clear indisputable instances of ritual and myth combined. But the Hymn to Demeter is one of the clearest instances we have of an intersection between myth and ritual.
- It raises questions about what we even mean by myth – if there are so many variants to the story, as there are in this case, what is the significance of myth?
The myth also reflects important issues in the Greek world or at least the Athenian world:
- Rape of Persephone initiated by an agreement between Zeus and Hades in the way that a marriage is arranged between the father of the girl and the prospective husband. The mother of the girl might not even be consulted (as Demeter isn’t)
- Marriage to an uncle (epiklaros) if there is no son to inherit the ancestral land.
- Patrilocal: the bride joins the husband’s family (vestigial remains of this in our culture?)
- Post marriage, mothers and daughters might never see each other or very rarely.
- The loss of a daughter isn’t just because she would rarely return to her father’s house; we often think of the high infant mortality rate, but also high is the death rate of women giving birth. In the hymn, Demeter reacts to the news of Persephone’s abduction with classic signs of mourning for the dead.
Why does Demeter take on the nurturing of Demophoon and attempt to make him immortal?
- Persephone is lost and he serves as a substitute child – male is probably important since he won’t be taken away.
- She hopes to raise an immortal son to help her gain revenge on Zeus – in this case she’s like Gaia & Rhea.
- To get even with Hades: he has taken an immortal so in making Demophoon immortal, she will be robbing him of a mortal.