Life / Afterlife: Revolution and Reflection in the Ancient Greek Underworld from Homer to Lucian

Life / Afterlife traces the development, evolution, and uses of underworld scenes in ancient Greek literature and society. Underworld scenes are a unique form of embedded storytelling, appearing across time and genres. These scenes employ a special register of language that acts as a narrative space outside of chronological time and everyday reality. Suzanne Lye shows how writers such as Homer, Hesiod, Aristophanes, Plato, and Lucian, among others, used afterlife depictions as commentaries to communicate a call to action for their audiences in response to cultural, religious, and political changes to their worlds. Using networks of underworld scenes which often featured mythic and historical figures, authors could reinforce or challenge traditional religious and cultural beliefs and practices by presenting the long-term, cosmic effects of actions in life on an individual's post-death experience. From ancient to modern times, underworld scenes have helped authors and audiences define the essential qualities of a "good life" for different social, political, and religious groups and their societies. This book offers an approach to reading underworld scenes that explains how they function and why they have persisted in various forms, both literary and artistic, from the eighth-century B.C.E. to the present day. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The Synoptic Underworld: Overview of a Narrative Construct I. Achilles’ Dream II. Approaches to Underworld Scenes III. Defining the Underworld IV. Purpose, Function, and Persistence of Underworld Scenes V. Conclusions: The Implications and Influence of Underworld Scenes 2 Afterlife Poetics and Homer’s Heroic Underworlds I. Introduction: The Heroic Underworld II. Homer’s Interlocking Underworlds III. Building the Heroic Underworld: Circe’s Nekuia and the Nekuia IV. Building the Chronotope in the Nekuia V. Building Narrative Networks through the Underworld VI. Framing Odysseus as a Special Hero with the Nekuia VII. Conclusions 3 Becoming Blessed and Underworlds of Judgment II. Categories of Blessedness in Homer III. The Judgment of Heroes: Making Mortals Blessed in Hesiod’s Underworlds IV. Lifestyles of the Blessed in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter IV. Conclusions: Underworld Scenes as Inflected Language 4 Crafting Heroic Blessedness through Underworld Scenes II. Shifting to the Positive: Awareness and Identity in a Tripartite Underworld III. Crafting Heroic Blessedness in Pindar’s Underworlds IV. Epinician Expansion of Blessedness in Bacchylides V. The Orphic Gold Tablets: Passports to a Blessed Afterlife 5 World and Underworld: Democratizing the Afterlife through Underworld Scenes II. Democratizing the Afterlife III. Making Space for the Dead: Underworld Scenes in Everyday Life IV. The Politics of the Afterlife: The Underworld in Civic Space and Propaganda V. Fraternizing with the Dead: The Underworld on Stage VI. Conclusions 6 Plato’s Underworlds: Revising the Afterlife II. Plato’s Underworlds as Argument in the Apology and the Gorgias III. Mapping Morality into the Phaedo’s Underworld Chronotope IV. Rewriting the Afterlife in the Republic V. Conclusions I. Introduction 7 Epilogue: The Afterlife of the Afterlife II. The Afterlife of the Greek Underworld Scene III. Conclusions Bibliography Index Locorum Subject Index