Classical Mythology, 7th Edition - obinfonet: dia logou

VIEWS OF THE AFTERLIFE: THE REALM OF HADES 351
The Furies very definitely represent the old moral order of justice within
the framework of primitive society, where the code of "an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth" is meted out by the personal vendetta of the family or the
clan. This is Aeschylus' conception of them in his dramatic trilogy, the Oresteia.
The Furies persecute Orestes after he murders his mother (who has murdered
his father), but eventually their role is taken over by a new regime of right: the
Areopagus, the court of Athens, decides Orestes' case through the due process
of law; and it is significant that Apollo and Athena (the new generation of progressive
deities) join forces with the justice of advanced civilization. The last
play in the trilogy is called the Eumenides, which means the "kindly ones"; this
is the name for the Furies as they were worshiped in Athens, after having finally
been appeased and put to rest once and for all. 25
The Christian concept of Satan should not be confused with the ancient portrayal
of Hades, who is not fighting with his brother Zeus for our immortal souls.
We all end up in his realm, where we may or may not find our heaven or our
hell. The only exceptions are those who (like Heracles) are specifically made divinities
and therefore allowed to join the gods in heaven or on Olympus. Hades,
to be sure, is terrible and inexorable in his severity, but he is not in himself evil
or our tormentor; we may fear him as we fear death and its possible consequences,
which we cannot avoid. But he does have assistants, such as the
Furies, who persecute with devilish and fiendish torments. 26 Hades' wife and
queen of his realm, Persephone, is considered in the previous chapter.
It would be misleading, however, to conclude our survey of the Underworld
with the impression that all Greek and Roman literature treats the realm of Hades
and the afterlife so seriously. One thinks immediately of Aristophanes' play the
Frogs, in which the god Dionysus rows across the Styx to the accompaniment of
a chorus croaking brekekekex koax koax; his tour of the Underworld is quite different
from Aeneas' and is at times hilarious. 27
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bernstein, Alan E. The Formation of Hell, Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early
Christian Worlds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Bremmer, Jan. The Early Greek Concept of the Soul. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1983.
Garland, Robert. The Greek Way of Death. London: Duckworth, 1985.
Russell, Jeffrey Burton. The History of Heaven. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
Vermeule, Emily. Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979. Death as depicted in literature, vase-painting, myth, and artifacts
found in graves.
Wright, J. Edward. The Early History of Heaven. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
A study of the origin of concepts of heaven from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece,
and Rome in the context of Hebrew biblical texts and developments in Jewish and
Christian belief.