I took the sheep and cut their throats over the pit,
and let the dark blood flow.
Then there gathered the spirits of the dead,
brides and unwed youths, old men worn
out by labour, and tender maidens with hearts
still new to sorrow.
homer odyssey 11.20ff
The counsel of the dead might be of limited use, for the wits of the shades were as attenuated as the rest of them, but at least their memories were often clear. Those who had lived most intensely, such as Achilles, suffered most in the pale, tasteless world of Hades. ‘I would rather be the slave of the poorest bonded servant on earth than king of the underworld’, the hero famously lamented.
One’s time in the underworld was variable – some philosophers considered a thousand years a reasonable period to cleanse the soul of the accretion of human passions and earthly cravings it had acquired while in the body. Much depended on the quality of the life the person had lived.
A depraved individual needed a very long time for the contaminants of life to leach from his soul, while an ascetic required only the spiritual equivalent of a quick wash and brush-up. But for all, the period spent in the underworld was far longer than the time spent in the flesh, so the kingdom of Hades, rather than the earth above should be considered as mankind’s true home.
Orpheus in the underworld
The son of Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, Orpheus learned from Apollo and was said to play the lyre so divinely that even the rocks and trees would listen to him. He passionately loved his wife Eurydice, and was so devastated by her death that he eventually decided to go to the underworld and bring her back. By his music he charmed his way past Cerberus and Charon, and presented his petition in song to Hades and Persephone.
The dread rulers of the underworld agreed to let Eurydice follow Orpheus out of the underworld, but only if Orpheus did not look back, even for a moment. But when Orpheus was about to leave the underworld, it occurred to him that this might be a trick to make him leave quietly. So he glanced to see if his Eurydice was indeed following him. She was, but at that glance the deal was broken and jealous Hades snatched her back into his power. Orpheus never saw her again.
Orpheus charming the savage Cerberus.
Orpheus became the basis of the cult called Orphism in later centuries. The cult’s followers have left a series of moving hymns dedicated to the gods:
Hear, O Goddess, the voice of your supplicant
who prays to you by night and day,
And in this hour, give to me peace and health,
well-omened times, and such wealth as I require,
But above all, be but here for your worshippers,
you guardian of the arts, the maiden with blue eyes.
orphic hymn 31 to athena
* * *
later art and culture:
orpheus
A drama involving a fellow musician – how could Offenbach resist? Produced in the 1850s, Orpheus in the Underworld is a light-hearted take on the story with a thoroughly Gallic slant that first acquainted Parisians with the high-kicking cancan. The 1607 opera, Monteverdi’s Legend of Orpheus, is truer to the original tale both in narrative and spirit.
In sculpture, Eurydice and Orpheus are remembered by, for example, Antonio Canova’s work of 1775, and the Renaissance Orpheus by Baccio Bandinelli in Florence.
In painting we find Nicolas Poussin’s classic Orpheus and Eurydice (1650–53), while Albert Cuyp created a version of the popular theme of Orpheus charming the animals with his music, c. 1640.
Eurydice follows behind Orpheus in Poussin’s masterpiece.
* * *
Going back
When you come to that spring to the left of the
house of Hades … you shall tell them,
‘I am a child of earth and the starry heavens,
but my generation is of the sky. Quick,
let me drink of that cold-running water …’
inscription found in a tomb in petelia, italy
Eventually, each shade found itself drawn towards the far side of the underworld, where the waters of the little River Lethe trickled over the stones, and where Nyx herself had her home.
Here, Plato envisaged a sort of staging area, presided over by a Sphinx, where the spirits received their future role in life. There was an element of chance in this, and the lottery element is why we refer to our ‘lot’ in life. Not all lots were suitable for all. Some undemanding roles were needed for souls which had recently ascended from the animals (we have all met at least one of these), while others, after trying human life, might be keen to settle for some bucolic down time – for example, as a cow grazing peacefully in a meadow.
Those new to the business fancied they might find joy as kings or tyrants, whilst others chose short lives, packed with joy and pain and spiritual fulfilment. Plato tells us that Odysseus, having had his fill of worldly endeavour, searched for a lot that gave him the uneventful life of an ordinary man.
All now drank from the stream of Lethe. They immediately lost their memory of their previous life. They were again pure spirit, with the passions and misdeeds of their former lives purged, with the past erased, but with characters developed by previous experience. The spirits now lay down to sleep. They would awaken in the infant bodies they had chosen, and the adventure would begin anew.
Some Greek cults taught that by avoiding Lethe and drinking from the nearby stream of Mnemosyne (memory), one could emerge from the underworld with the recollection of a previous life intact.
* * *
lethe
Lethe was personified as a daughter of Eris and was the goddess of oblivion. The idea of forgetting it all has made Lethe a powerful image in many modern poems, and when the chemical compound ether was used as an anaesthetic, it was originally called ‘Letheron’.
application of the waters of lethe cocktail
step 1
Take 2 oz (approx. 30 ml) gin
1 oz (approx. 30 ml) strawberry liqueur
½ oz (approx. 15 ml) orange juice
½ oz (approx. 15 ml) pineapple juice
1 tsp superfine sugar
step 2
Shake vigorously with ice, strain into a cocktail glass and drink.
step 3
Repeat until you either don’t remember your name,
or you have forgotten how to lift the glass.
Note that excessive imbibers risk going on
to taste the real thing.
* * *
3
The Great Gods: The First Generation
Before we approach the great gods of antiquity as individuals, it is necessary to discuss what these gods were, for we cannot understand the nature of myth if we think of the gods merely as spiteful super-beings with poor impulse control. For the gods should not be seen as humans with exceptional powers, but as forces of nature which the ancients believed had a human aspect. Each god controlled or embodied one or more of these forces and it is this concept which we need to examine in some detail before going on to meet the first generation of the Olympian gods.