Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Private Life 191
The realm of Hades also housed the three Furies—Alekto, Megaira,
and Tisiphone—who sprang from the drops of blood from the
severed genitals of Ouranos after his son Kronos had castrated him.
The Furies were avengers of crimes, especially those committed
within the family. They were, for instance, invoked by Klytaimnestra,
after she had been murdered by her son Orestes. They pursued
their victims with torches, snakes, or whips. They seem to have
directed their enmity wholly against the living; we never hear of
them taking vengeance against the dead.
By and large, those who ran Hades were inoffensive, if not
wholly innocuous. It was the sheer boredom and dreariness of
Hades that made it so awful. To be there for the duration must be
hell indeed.
Toward the Hope of Something Better
Although the Homeric image of Hades probably continued to
exert a powerful hold over the imagination throughout antiquity,
as time passed, the Greeks became increasingly uncomfortable with
the idea of equal misery for all. Accordingly, from the sixth century
b.c.e. onward, they came to believe that those who had been exceptionally
virtuous and/or had undergone initiation into certain rites
pertaining to the afterlife could expect a more cheerful existence in
the hereafter. Certain closed sects also held out the promise of a better
afterlife than that available to the majority. Notable among them
were the Pythagoreans and Orphics. Pythagoreanism was allegedly
founded by the astronomer and mathematician Pythagoras of
Samos, and Orphism by the mythic poet and musician Orpheus.
Both sects advocated the belief that the soul (the Greek word is psychê
) did not perish along with the body. Exactly what Pythagoreans
and Orphics had in mind by the notion of soul is unclear, however.
It was certainly a more distinctive and conscious entity than a disembodied
Homeric shade, though it is anachronistic to equate it
with the Christian soul. Both sects also maintained a belief in an
underworld judgment involving rewards and punishments. Abstinence
from eating meat and self-discipline were important requirements.
Regrettably, we have no means of knowing how widespread
such beliefs were, though they are likely to have been confined to
a small minority.
Pythagoreanism also promoted belief in the transmigration of the
soul at the moment of death. Securing a blessed lot in the hereafter
could take several incarnations to achieve. Pythagoreans claimed