Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

186 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
charming woman moribund who is adjusting her coiffure in the
presence of Hermes Psychopompos (literally “leader of psychai or
souls”), the messenger and escort of the dead. Hermes is evidently
waiting to escort the woman to Hades, while she dallies over the
preparations for her final journey. We are struck by the unearthly
patience of Hermes, which is reminiscent of the patience of a
devoted, if long-suffering, husband. Is the scene intended to mock
a woman’s concern for her appearance at a time when she might be
expected to have more pressing concerns? Or is the artist conveying
a message about how to confront our own exit from life—with
equanimity, poise, and, above all, a sense of style?
AFTERLIFE
It is extremely difficult to determine with any accuracy the kind
of life that people expect to encounter in the world to come, because
beliefs about the hereafter constitute a highly private and personal
area of human reflection. They also tend to be self-contradictory,
even where a strongly centralized religious authority like, say, the
Roman Catholic Church provides certain guidelines. A fortiori in
ancient Greece, where no centralized religious authority existed
even within the same community, differences in belief are likely to
have been extreme. It has been claimed, and with good reason, that
no two Greeks shared exactly the same idea about the afterlife. If
we knew more about Greek eschatology, the picture would doubtless
be more baffling than it is.
Almost all our information derives from highly wrought literary
descriptions supplemented by sepulchral inscriptions. These
descriptions may or may not have been representative of popular
belief, though they were almost certainly influential in giving it a
basic outline. This is particularly true in the case of Homer, who,
in addition to bequeathing to the Greeks their image of the gods,
may well have bequeathed their prevailing image of Hades as well.
After Homer, no detailed description of Hades has survived before
the one provided by Aristophanes in his play Frogs, performed in
405 b.c.e. What modifications popular belief underwent in the intervening
three hundred years is virtually impossible to determine.
The Topography of Hades
Hades could be approached by both land and sea. Homer places
it “at the bounds of Okeanos (our word ocean ),” the river that was