We are able to follow, at all events in outline, the gradual development of the belief in Hades among the Greeks. The voyage of Odysseus to Hades in the Odyssey, whatever may be its date (a somewhat doubtful point), shows us that belief at a very early and incomplete stage. The main interest of the author of the Odyssey is evidently to give a glimpse at the later fortunes of some of the principal personages of the Iliad; though with this he includes a curious vision of fair women, Tyro, Alcmena, and Leda and the like. He accomplishes his purpose by taking the widely wandering Odysseus to Hades under the pretext that he will there learn how best he may win back to his native Ithaca. To Homer Hades is not, as in later belief, situated beneath our feet. Odysseus has to reach it by sailing to the confines of the ocean, to the land of the Cimmerians, enveloped in mist and cloud, where the bright rays of the sun do not shine. When he reaches the groves of poplar and willow, amid which flow the rivers Acheron and Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, he digs a trench, and makes sacrifices to the dead, offering libations and barley-cakes, and slaying a ram in honour of Teiresias. No sooner is this done than the spirits of the dead begin to flock about him, and those whom he permits to drink of the blood of his sacrifice can answer his questions and inform him of their fate. The only class of persons whom Homer represents as punished in Hades are perjurers, perhaps because their punishment on earth was so problematic. But a few noted criminals of legend, such as Tityus and Tantalus, are also represented as undergoing a chronic punishment.
Hades, however, is by no means the only dwelling-place of souls known to the authors of the Homeric poems. Every scholar is familiar with the beautiful lines in which Proteus foretells the future destiny of Menelaus[32].
In Argos’ horse-abounding plain
To die is not thy fate,
O Menelaus, there for thee
No mortal chances wait.
Thee shall the immortals far away
To earth’s remotest end,
Where fair-haired Rhadamanthys dwells
In Plains Elysian, send.
There life flows on in easy course,
There never snow nor rain
Nor winter tempests vex the land;
But Ocean sends amain
Fresh Zephyr breezes breathing shrill
To cool the untroubled life.
There dwell, since thou art kin to Zeus,
And Helen is thy wife.
In dealing with the Homeric poems we can never escape the difficulties as to chronology and genuineness which at present envelop the whole Homeric question, on its literary side, like a thick mist. Dr. Rohde thinks that this passage is of later date than that which describes the voyage to Hades of Odysseus. The last line has a curious ring. Menelaus is to be rescued from the common fate, not for any virtue or merit of his own, but because he is the son-in-law of Zeus. We are reminded of the still more aristocratic belief of certain existing races of barbarians, who think that a happy state in the future life is reserved for the chiefs and those of high lineage.
According to the Cyclic Poets, the Islands of the Blessed were destined not for Menelaus only, but for others of the heroes who fought at Troy. In the Aethiopis, Eos (the Dawn) is allowed not merely to bear away her dead son Memnon, as Sarpedon had been borne away by Sleep and Death, but to awake him again to an immortal life. In the same poem, Thetis is represented as carrying off the body of Achilles from the funeral pyre, and transporting it over the sea to a new life in the island of Leuce, the white island, which popular fancy placed in the Euxine sea. In the Works and Days of Hesiod all the godlike heroes who fought at Troy are said to dwell still in the Islands of the Blessed. Odysseus after his death was said to have been translated to the island of Aeaea. And an Athenian drinking-song of about B.C. 500 tells how Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who slew the Tyrant and restored liberty to the Athenians, are not dead but dwell in the Happy Isles with Diomedes and swift-footed Achilles.
It may be doubted how far the Islands of the Blessed, the Elysian Fields, and the Realm of Hades are really distinct in Homeric geography. All seem to be reached by a voyage across the sea in the direction of the setting sun. Subsequent poets, however, gradually determine and map out the land of the dead. It is a conjecture, the truth of which is more than probable, that the great teacher of the lore of the future world was Orphism.
Orphism is one of the most important, but at the same time one of the most obscure phases of ancient religion. The original documents of the sect have perished, and forgeries have taken their place. It is only by putting together a number of occurrences, and collecting phenomena from all quarters, that we are able even to conjecture the tenets and observances of the Orphists; yet it seems certain that they exercised a deep and long-continued influence on the development of religion in Greece. We first clearly trace their activity in the sixth century B.C., when Onomacritus, a contemporary of Peisistratus at Athens, committed to writing much of their lore, and when Pythagoras attempted to found among the Greek cities of Southern Italy something like an Orphic church. Yet from what we learn as to Orphism, we see that it must contain elements handed down from a barbaric and primitive state of religion. It was essentially mystic and ecstatic in character. Zagreus, who was a form of Dionysus, was the principal object of Orphic worship,—the young god who was torn to pieces by the wicked hands of Titans, but restored to life by the favour of Zeus and Athena. By mystic communion with Zagreus, who was regarded as the ruler of the dead, the votary escaped from the trammels of the flesh, became pure and chaste, and fit for a nobler existence hereafter. Of course, in this religion, as in all, mere ritual tended to encroach on the religion of conduct; it was supposed by many that a mere partaking in mysterious rites would secure for them a favourable reception in the world of shades, and a verdict of acquittal from the stern judges of the dead.
It is certain, as I have already observed, that this ecstatic form of religion contains primitive elements. Anthropology has informed us that the wizard or medicine-man among savage tribes commonly acquires and retains his influence by means of trances or ecstasies, in which he professes to be inspired by the spirits of the dead. This is the original germ whence all ecstatic religion takes its rise; though, of course, it may reach a high moral level under some circumstances, and tend greatly to the help and elevation of mankind. What was the precise ethical level of the Orphic religion it is very hard to say.
However, we are at present concerned only with one aspect of Orphism—its lore as to the world of spirits. It is believed that this lore gradually works its way into current literature and art. After we leave the Homeric age, the next important landmark in the history of Hades is to be found in the great painting of Polygnotus in the Leschè or arcade of Delphi. Of this picture we possess so careful and detailed a description from the pen of Pausanias[33] that a skilled archaeologist, Professor Robert, has succeeded, with the help of certain vase-paintings of Polygnotan style, in restoring, figure for figure, the whole composition, with a sureness of hand which may well surprise those who do not realize the degree in which the scientific methods of archaeology have been developed in recent years.
In the upper part of the picture is a group which is almost a transcript from the Odyssey: Odysseus sword in hand over his trench, the unburied Elpenor behind him in sailor’s dress, and Teiresias and Anticleia approaching to hold converse with him. But this group seems somewhat apart from the rest of the scene, which is composed of elements mostly foreign to the Homeric circle of ideas. On the left is the river Acheron, full of reeds and peopled with shadowy fish; on which floats the bark of the ferryman Charon, who is taking to their last home the spirits of a man and a girl. Pausanias observes that Polygnotus has borrowed Charon from the epic poem called the Minyas, in which the voyage to Hades of Theseus and Peirithous was narrated. Whencesoever Charon may have originally come, he certainly held a great place in the beliefs of the later Greeks. The obol, his fee, was sometimes placed in the mouth of the dead. In later writers, such as Virgil and Lucian, he is very prominent. Some of the sepulchral lekythi, of which I have spoken already, furnish us with a representation of the River of Death and the boat of Charon. One here