Afterlife, the sedation of the rebel

Primitive societies were truly anarchic; chaos prevailed everywhere. There was no distinction between right and wrong, good or evil: "take what you want, do whatever you like .. but get prepared to expose your physical health in exchange".

Since early men started to evolve and grow in number, mankind had to find new suitable ways to organize themselves: the "pater familas" once guiding small families had now turned into rulers that had to deal with vast extents of territory and great quantities of people. Primordial methods of controlling crowds had become anachronic with the existence of this new reality: punishment by the only means of force & strength was doomed long since.

The famous Greek city-states  (known as "polis") were the first true intents to organize crowds as proper societies: each men had an assigned role in the state, and the act of the inhabitants were supposed to seek the "common wealth". Laws were soon formulated as an instrument to structure and frame the behaviour of citizens: everybody now knew what was commonly believed to be "right" and "wrong", and what punishment you had to face if you chose to commit an act against this established code of conduct and responsibilities.

Anyhow ... how is it possible to enforce these well-installed-laws if the people that are somehow chosen to guide the city are far outnumbered by common citizens ? How is it possible to restrain people from murdering, stealing, raping or cheating if the controlling force will never be able to match in number the size of the populace ? How is it possible to limit people's freedom if their proper nature moves them to do more or less what they desire, no matter outside restriction that can exist ?

The answer is straightforward: it's not possible; no form of temporal organization can achieve this quest. It was not until the common belief of the existence of an eternal afterlife that people started to "cool down"; it was not until they feared of an endless punishment in the afterlife that they really started to behave.

The evolution of moral and ethical behaviour goes side by side with the evolution of religion. When caciques, lords, commanders, kings and emperors realized the power that eternal punishment and reward had on people, they started to organize the primitive and private magic mysteries into well systematized cults. 

If you behave in your mortal stay, you'll be rewarded with eternal happiness, otherwise you'll suffer endless punishment from the moment your immortal soul leaves your body. Simple as it sounds, this was the best-found equation to supervise the mass. There's no better way to control a society rather than by self-member-control.

In the following lines we will go through the main written-ambassadors that relate the evolution of afterlife beliefs in society; we'll do our best in trying to stress how the conception of soul-immortality developed in a continuous way to make people behave.

Homer's Odyssey (750 BC)

Homer pictures the first setting known to us of the Underworld, a place in the map that could be reached by boat if you just knew the correct path to it. In his journey back home, Odysseus travels to the Underworld to seek advice from the seer Tiresias on how to reach his beloved Ithaca. Once there, he finds a dull and dark place where souls moan in an eternal pain; everyone is walking heavy footed, with their heads aimlessly facing the floor. There's no distinction between kings, commanders and ordinary people among the spirits, no contrast between sinners and good people: everything is equaled for the worse.

In his search for Tiresias he meets Achilles:

(...)

Odysseus: "How do you like being in the Afterworld after having been so great in your living days ?"

Achilles: “O shining Odysseus, never try to console me for dying. I would rather follow the plough as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead."
(...)

Homer's afterlife is truly pessimistic, there's a single living death for all of us no matter what we've done in mortal times; we find no incentive in life to live in grace, no compulsion to live a moral life, for we all end up in hell. Life is nasty, but when we die it gets even worse !

Plato's Myth of Er (350 BC)

Taking Homer's Underworld as a starting point, the last book of his "Republic" concludes with the tale of a soldier named "Er" who died in war, and after ten days his body came back to life in order to tell the story of his stay in the Land of the Dead.

Let's sum up Plato's myth: when the body dies, the soul accomplishes a hundred years grace (in the Heavens) or punishment (in Hell). The soul then reincarnates in a new body, after having drunk from the river of forgetfulness (Lethe).

Once again, just as in Homer's book, we find a finite body that perishes and frees an infinite soul. What is perfectly observed in the tale is the introduction of a reward for moral people and a punishment for immoral ones: there's a sky for the good and a hell for those who misbehaved in earthly times. 

[ Any similarity with judeo-christian belief is mere coincidence ].

Plato's Republic tried to bring up a formula for constructing the "Ideal State", and as we mentioned in the beginning of this article, society can only be controlled by self-citizen-control. Hence, the need of the afterlife dicotomy "reward / punishment" was needed to be present.

Virgil's Aeneid (20 BC)

If Virgil lived nowadays, we would accuse him of copycat authoring; his Aeneid bears more than a resemblance to Homer's Odyssey: the same Greek story now verbally rendered for Romans and by a Roman.

Aeneas' descent to the Underworld is much like Odysseus', nevertheless we can pinpoint special differences in the setting of his Underworld: Virgil is more than seven hundreds years younger than Virgil, and he breaths in a time and place where living is more optimistic. Life has a real purpose, and if you do good in your temporal stay, you'll find endless happiness in your afterlife. Unlike Plato, we find no Sky in the Underworld, but instead a special place for kings, queens, heroes and virtuous people called "Elysium" (also known as Elysian Fields) where they have a joyful visit. For sinners, there's a special place of torment waiting for them following the judgement day: Tartarus.

"This is the place where the road divides and leads in two directions: our way is to the right, and extends under the ramparts of Dis to Elysium, but the left path leads to the evil realms of Tartarus, where penalties for sin are exacted"

It is important to notice the ethical standards he applies, not found in Homer.

Dante's Divine Comedy (1300 AD)

As regards for the evolution of afterlife-salvation and its connection with moral behaviour, The Divine Comedy makes a perfect match between the Christian and Pagan beliefs; Dante smoothly combines the classical myths with medieval doctrines in a story that starts with the descent to the Underworld (Hell), and the subsequent ascent to the celestial Paradise after having climbed the Mountain of Purgatory. [keep on reading]

Dante takes the myths of Homer, Plato and Virgil together and updates them into a new allegory made for Christians, were salvation is found in the belief of a single God who rules the Afterworld of the right and the good.

Once again the moral search of a moral life is found: if you've done good and believed in God while on Earth, you'll be able to reach your reward when your eternal soul leaves your body.

The scientific approach of mythology

The proper nature of a human being pushes him to try to understand everything he can see, touch or even feel. May it be the heat produced by the rising Sun, the circular movements of the Earth, the continuous flow of Rivers, the water that falls from the Sky, or yet the origin of the Seasons ... since the beginning of time primitive cultures have been trying to explain things in a way they could possibly comprehend. These early civilizations had great knowledge-barriers that were gradually eroded with the passing centuries, early barriers which left them with no choice but to strongly rely on religion as a source for giving explanations to their surroundings: stories involving spirits, magic, gods and goddesses appear as true statements for natural phenomena.

Explanations could not be found or discovered, but nevertheless explanations had to be given:

Why is their a moving light during daytime ? What about the moon ? A god named "Helios" wakes up very early, jumps into his magic-horse-powered-chariot and drives it across the sky carrying the Sun itself to the opposite point bringing light and heat to the Earth below. In that final moment, the goddess Selene starts a similar journey, but this time her passenger is the Moon. (read more)

Why can a whirlpool suddenly appear in the middle of the Ocean ? A huge and ugly monster residing down the water moves his head towards the sky and swallows all the fluid he can get pass through his gigantic mouth. (read more)

How does the Earth stand still ? The Titan god Atlas is carrying the Globe on his shoulders, a punishment made by Zeus after having defeated him in the Titanomachy. (read more)

Why do mountains erupt ? The Olympian Hephaestus (r. Vulcan), god of Fire and Blacksmith of heroes and deities, is working hard inside the volcanic mountain forging new metal armour.

Why are there four seasons ? The goddess Persephone (r. Proserpine) was abducted by Hades (r. Pluto), god of the Underworld, and forced to live in his gloomy kingdom. Her mother Demeter (r. Ceres), goddess of the harvest, became depressed causing life on earth to come to a standstill. Seeing the Earth nearly devastated, Zeus commands that Persephone would live half of the year with her mother and the other half below the surface. While mother and daughter are together, Demeter is happy and grains grow (spring + summer). During the six months of separation plants fade (autumn + winter).

Scientific knowledge has been developing since the first man came into being, and with it the enrichment of every possible explanation to a phenomenon. The more the science advances, the less need for religion to appear and explain what can now be rationally understood. Stories of god and goddesses have changed shape, but nevertheless they are still there: science hasn't caused the extinction of mythology, but forced it to morph. What was first written as science-myths (true beliefs) later turned into fantasy stories that gained a new and totally different purpose: entertain. What was first the source of science, had now become the starting point of fantasy and ecstasy.

It's impossible to place that point in time when these men morphed from true-believers to true-entertainers, but what we know for certain is that when society started to leave their animistic conception of the world (the belief that spirits reside in phenomenon such as "The Sun") to an anthropomorphic one, their new journey had just begun. The animistic Sun can't be treated by men, it just stays on top of the Sky and gives heat and light to the World as is. But the anthropomorphic Helios is much like humans, and if we pay him high tributes, maybe we can influence the way he behaves and get extra hours of light for our own plants. The latter approach is more optimistic, fun and absurd ... and they will probably catch your attention with their peculiar and queer way of describing phenomena.

Give it a try: start reading Hesiod's Creation Myth (Theogony - 8th century BC) and then pass on to Ovid's Metamorphoses (1st century AD). Guess you will be able to clearly identify these two really different approaches to the same topic: while Hesiod was a true believer of his words, Ovid takes all that Hesiod had previously written down and turns it into an entertaining masterpiece.

Open minded or twisted sexual behaviour ?

What comes to your mind when you close your eyes and try to render the ample concept of SEX in classical times? What characters and settings do appear in that first shower of images? Let me make the opening guess ... drunken warriors raising their filled cups and joyfully partying together? Or maybe the so called "lovers of wisdom" (philosophers) walking bare-footed and pairing with young mates? What about body-oiled athletes competing at open-aired facilities carefully glancing at each other?

It is highly probable that these three situations appear somewhere in your mental silhouettes. There's a universal belief that Greeks and Romans of ancient times had promiscuous and homosexual tendencies, and in fact there's no credulity in this assumption. Classical society praised each and every kind of homosexuality, covering them under manly and picturesque explanations, such as the one Plato gives us in his "Symposium":

"(..) All who are a section halved from the men pursue males; and all the while they are young (...) they love men and take delight in lying by their side and embracing them; these are the best of boys and youths because they are the most manly in nature. (...) Only men of this sort proceed to politics when they grow up. Once they love men they love boys and do not turn their thoughts to marriage and procreation naturally.(...) a man like this is a lover of men as a boy and a lover of boys as a man (...)".

Transposed to present times, we can argument that classical society was sexually "open minded". But if we keep on investigating and happen to come across certain ancient myths, we can infer that more than permissible to non-orthodox ways of sex, Greek and Roman societies were a little more twisted.

As we mentioned in the posting entitled "The Power of Allegories", myths tend to be actual mirrors of real events which happened in past times, only with a touch of hyperbolic and embellished fantasy. Classical mythology is filled of histories which involve different kinds of sex relations; sex could take an enormous variety of forms such as lesbianism, orgies, incests, rapes ... and even bestiality (sex between a man and an animal). Let me retell some of the most famous myths that come to my mind and let you draw your own conclusions about the absolute zoo behaviour of classical society on sex matters:

Patroculs and Achilles: men homosexuality

Behind Homer's Iliad, a story of romantic and sexual relationship between these 2 heroes become evident. Achilles is arrogant and cutting towards every living soul but to his Myrmidon mate, who he jealously defends. Homer tells us that Peleus' son dreams of being left alone with Patroclus to share victory, and that he laments his death in a tender ceremony, a decease that becomes the prime motivation of his return to battle, and the subsequent quest for revenge against Hector, Patroclus' life-taker.

Hyacinth, Zephyrus and Apollo: men homosexuality

Hyacinth was a young and beautiful Spartan prince courted by Apollo and Zephyrus, gods of the hunt and of the West Wind respectively. According to a myth, the two immortals competed for the boy's love, who finally chose Apollo as his mate, driving Zephyrus madly jealous. Once, Apollo was training with the assistance of Hyacinth the athlete contest known as "throwing the discus": the god threw the plate far away and the youngster would go running after it in order to get it back to the hands of his beloved. In one of this attempts, when the discus was airborne, Zephyrus order his winds to blow in a new and violent direction, causing the plate-shaped structure to change direction and hit exactly at Hyacinth's forehead. He immediately died.

The Amazons: lesbianism

Known to be descended from Ares, god of war, the Amazons developed a savage society were men were excluded. Haters of the male gender, they sought for them in order to kill their sons and raise their daughters as Amazons. With no men on sight, and a death-sentence to the one that related with any of them, imagine how they managed to fulfil their sexual instinct and desire.

Artemis and the Nymphs: lesbianism

Artemis, goddess of the hunt and chastity, was always surrounded by 60 beautiful nymphs, daughters of Oceanus and devoting followers of her. In myths where these female characters pop up, they always appear in the woods, bathing together totally naked, playing with water and touching each other with joyful and virginal softness. In this pure and celibate atmosphere, they are too close mates where everything seems to get confused.

Actaeon and Artemis: chastity

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Actaeon is a skilled deer-hunter which happens to lose his path in the woods and unwantingly appears in front of Artemis' beautiful naked body. Now he had to pay for having seen the goddess of sexual-purity uncovered. Artemis wrath turns him into a deer, who soon becomes torn apart by his personal hounds.

Aphrodite: polygamy and infidelity

Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, is also the queen of uncontrolled sexual desire. With the help of his son Cupid, she inflicts blind desire among men and woman, root cause of the polygamous behaviour in every society. Every male and female, except for the 2 goddesses of chastity (Artemis and Athena), are puppets of her disposals: you can't escape infidelity.

Jocasta and Oedipus: incest

In Oedipus King, one of  Euripides' most famous tragedies, Oedipus mistakenly kills his father and marries his own mother. After laying in bed, mother and son give birth to four children. Oedipus had formerly run from Corinth to escape his faith, but instead, he was unwillingly following his doomed path.

Pygmalion: inanimated fixation

Another tale in Ovid's Metamorphoses tells us of a sculptor called "Pygmalion" who fell in love with a woman-figured statue of ivory, the outcome of his own artistic hands.

Next come fragments of passages extracted of their strange relationship: "(...) It looked like a real maiden (...) flames of passion burst inside him (...) He kissed her and sexually touched her (...) feeling her parts and breasts with his hands (...) waiting for responses that never came. (...) He placed her on his bed (...)"

Apollo and Daphne: rape and stalking

As a consequence to a minor quarrel between Apollo and Cupid, in which the first laughed at Aphrodite's son for the funny quiver and arrows he carried, the winged god created the biggest of love rejections known to the day: Apollo was struck with the arrow of love-attraction, while Daphne respectively received the arrow of love-repulsion. The story goes on with endless attempts coming from Apollo in order to gain the love of the sea nymph, while the only thing she had in her mind was running away from her stalker. As days, weeks and months went on, the love endeavor turned into rape tryouts. Daphne could no longer stand this obsessive and cruel infatuation, so she asked her father, the river god, for help. Suddenly her lower limbs started to turn into roots, her arms into branches and her body into a trunk: she was becoming a laurel tree. Once the morph was finished, Apollo carefully unplanted the wood-plant and took it to his house. Now he could please his desire whenever he wanted.

Uranus´ genitals

According to the myth of creation found in Hesiod's "Theogony" Aphrodite, queen of love and sexual desire, was born from the genitals of Uranus, father of the mighty Titans.

Keep on reading "The beginning of all times" for a complete description of this tale.

The minotaur and Pasiphae: brutality

As a punish to his husband Minos (king of Crete), Poseidon caused Pasiphae to fall madly in love with a bull. With unbearable desire in her veins, the queen asked Daedalus, the famous architect and inventor, to make a wooden cow where she could fit inside. Pasipahe climbed into the inert cow and approached the bull, with whom she had sex. The offspring of their coupling was a monster half-man and half-bull called "the Minotaur", which only fed on human flesh.

Now what do you think about sex in classical times: shall we call it "open-minded" or twisted ?

Greek civilization: the lost utopia

Is the Greek civilization in the middle of an interrupted state of evolution bound to carry on, or were they definitely devastated by the Romans supremacy more than two thousand years ago ?

It's a fact: Greece is the cradle of the civilized world, most predominantly of what is known as the 'western world'. Everything we are inside and outside ourselves, from our conception of freedom and the self, to the format of the state institutions that organize our social lives, or to the way we appreciate beauty and differentiate between right and wrong ... everything we owe it to our ancient Greek comrades.

Now take a glance to Greece today.

Where have those enlightened "lovers of wisdom" such as Socrates, Plato or Aristotle gone ? Where are those worshipped kings, battle strategists and popular leaders such as Agamemnon, Menelaus or Pericles ? Where are the artists such as Phidias, the famous Parthenon sculpture, today ? Have you ever wondered what has happened to them; where has all that ancient magnificence which we all talk and read about gone ?

To the day, there seems no ash remaining from that big "humanist" conflagration that worshipped intelligence and rationality. It seems as if the Macedonians first (338 BC) and then the Romans (146 BC) erased the Greeks from the map, which we certainly know they didn't: the Roman Empire took many different pieces of a great puzzle called "the Greek culture", rearranged it, and then spread those ideals to the world. Latins prevailed, but the Greek culture caused a real outbreak that spanned along lands and seas.

And what about mythology ? Mythology, the core of our interest, doesn't stand aside. There's nothing been more inventive, imaginative and at the same time historical as Classical Mythology writings. Unfortunately, we no longer find the artistic brilliance of a Hesiod, a Homer, a Sophocles or an Euripides; not in Greece, not anywhere in the whole world. Every tale we are told nowadays has something of a story previously generated in the Hellenistic world, but no longer contemporary outstanding artists.

What has happened ? I have no answer. The roots seem to be rotten; it is still a mystery that no evidence to the day foresees a nice ending. I wonder whether they will wake up one day from their lethargy and enlighten this whole world once again.

Are we puppets of the gods, or real puppeteers of our own lives ?

As you may know, determinism and free will are two opposed philosophical positions. When mentioning "free will", we think of the power that we human beings have to guide our own lives, with every act opening a path never described before. Every single moment in our lives is a consequence of the micro-decisions we've been doing through all our existence. We govern our acts on Earth, and become responsible of them.

On the contrary, determinism suggests that every move we make (and even those we don't make) are not a consequence of our desire, but determined by other agents. We may think we chose, but the choice itself was previously made somewhere else by someone or something different from ourselves. In this world, self-defined actions do not exist cause everything is ruled by natural laws and fate.

In the Homeric world, fate, divine intervention and independent human action seem to work together in a strange and confusing coexistence.

The Fates
They are the three deities who preside over the destiny of mankind. Every time a man is born, Clotho prepares the thread of life (spans it from her distaff onto her spindle), Lachesis assigns it a length, and Atropos cuts it. The thread is woven on the loom, which means a new human being will start to exists and that his life will span to the point where the thread was cut, which will become his death.

The Divine Intervention
Gods are said to govern the actions of men; they favour humans according to their desire and can apparently intervene in their destiny.

It is said that only Zeus, the King of the Olympian gods, can weigh the lives of men and that it is he who informs the three sisters of his decisions. In that case, the Fates are viewed only as the instrument of Zeus. Still others claim that not even Zeus is beyond the power of the Fates and that he is subject to their whim. That would make the Fates the most powerful of all the deities.

- Was the decision to invade Troy due to the abduction of Helen (Sparta's queen) from Menelaus' hands, or the consequence of "The Judgement of Paris" and Hera's rage ? (The Iliad)

Note: The Judgement of Paris was a beauty contest that had Hera, Athena and Aphrodite as contestants. Paris was named judge, and chose Aphrodite as the most beautiful of the three. Hera and Athena swore vengeance.

- Athena guided the arrow of Pandarus to wound Menelaus, sabotaging a truce that could potentially lead to the peaceful return of Helen from Troy (The Iliad)

- In his sea-journey Aeneas went shipwrecked and met Dido, queen of Carthage. After losing her husband Sychaeus, Dido had promised him ever-lasting love, and that she was never to fell for any man on earth. Cupid (Eros / son of Aphrodite) threw one of his arrows to Dido and she could do nothing against the god's shot of love: she became infatuated with Aeneas. When he had to set sails to Italy and continue with his trip - for he had a transcendent mission to accomplish - Dido couldn't stand the pain and committed suicide. (The Aeneid)

- Oedipus tried to escape his fate by all means, but the more he tried, the less he achieved it. Against his will, he killed his father Laius and mistakenly married his mother Jocasta, bringing disaster on his city and family. (Oedipus King)

As I mentioned in the opening paragraphs, free will, fate and determinism coexist in Greek and Roman Mythology. The idea of destiny, of what is fixed, is flexible to every author, to every story, or even to every character. Everything is guided for the entertaining and allegorical purposes of the author; there's no engineering need or even desire to follow a single philosophical movement.