Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Private Life 175
Although we occasionally hear of undertakers, known as klimakophoroi
or “ladder bearers,” nekrophoroi or “corpse-bearers,” and
tapheis or “buriers,” the duty of these hired hands consisted merely
in transporting the corpse from the house to the grave and preparing
the ground for burial. They were not, for the most part, specialists
but merely odd-job men. Nor did they attend to the corpse’s
needs prior to its departure from the house, as modern undertakers
do. Everything suggests that the Greeks would have regarded the
idea of handing over the corpse of a dead relative to strangers as
offensive and incomprehensible.
Helping the Dead to Reach Hades
This attitude had much to do with the belief that in the period
between death and burial the deceased are in need of the solicitous
attention of their relatives. Until inhumation or cremation has
taken place, the dead were thought to be in what anthropologists
describe as a liminal stage—a word that derives from the Latin word
limen for “threshold.” They were between two worlds, having not
yet fully disengaged from this one while awaiting incorporation
into the next. Entry to Hades, the world of the dead, did not occur
automatically but was the consequence of strenuous activity on the
part of the living. This betwixt and between status was regarded
as extremely perilous, for which reason the unburied dead were
believed to be at considerable risk. The primary obligation upon
the living was thus to perform the burial as expeditiously and efficiently
as possible. To fail in this sacred duty was to condemn the
dead to wander up and down the banks of the River Styx, which
surrounded Hades, for thousands of years. Thus, when Achilles
delays burying Patroklos’s corpse because of his overwhelming
grief, his ghost appears to Achilles and urgently requests that
he bury him “as soon as possible, so that I can enter the gates of
Hades” (The Iliad 23.71f.).
Displays of Grief
Unlike many modern cultures, which encourage the presentation of
a stiff upper lip in the face of loss, Greek culture not only tolerated but
also expected highly demonstrative manifestations of grief. There are
frequent references in literature to men and women tearing out their
hair, rending their garments, beating and lacerating their breasts, rolling
on the ground and wallowing in the dust, and going without food