§ 3
The picturing of the future life, however seriously it might be carried on by adherents of certain mystical sects, remained for the poets and the public at Athens in the fifth century little more than an amusement of idle fancy in which a man might indulge his own whim with perfect freedom. The comic poets from Pherekrates onwards regarded a Descent into the Unknown country as a suitable framework for a burlesque play.[17] According to their fancy a Paradise, like that of the golden age on earth when Kronos still ruled, awaited the “Blessed” in the world below;[18] a “City of Delight”[19] such as men hoped to meet with at the ends of the world, or even somewhere upon the real world. It is from a comedy, the Frogs of Aristophanes, in connexion with the Descent to Hades of a typical commonplace Athenian citizen, who for the time being plays the part of Dionysos, that we get a clearer outline of the geography of the lower regions. Beyond [241] the Acherousian Sea with its cross-grained ferryman dwell snakes and monsters of all kinds. Having passed by the darkness and putrescence of the slough in which wallow perjurers and those who have committed crimes against father or stranger, the way leads to the palace of Plouton, near which lives the chorus of those who have been initiated into the mysteries. For them even in Hades the sun dispenses a brilliant light; they dance in myrtle groves and sing to the sound of the flute hymns of praise to the gods of the underworld.[20] A separation of the inhabitants of the lower regions into two classes as taught by the mysteries, is here also carried through: at least clear consciousness is implied in the case of the Mystai which in itself marks clearly the change which has taken place since the Nekyia of the Odyssey. Then there are other regions in Hades besides the places where the initiated and the impious dwell. There is a reference to the plain of Lethe,[21] and to the place where Oknos is plaiting the rope which his she-ass gnaws to pieces as fast as he plaits it. This is a parody, half humorous, half pathetic, of the Homeric figures of Sisyphos and Tantalos; a sort of bourgeois counterpart of that Homeric aristocracy of the enemies of heaven, whose punishment, as Goethe remarked, is a type of ever-unrewarded labour. But, we may ask, what had honest Oknos done to deserve this fate of eternally fruitless toil? He is only a man like other men, but he “typifies all human endeavour.” That anyone could have introduced such quaint inventions of innocent humour into the realm of Hades shows how far all this was from theological seriousness.