Death in the Greek World: From Homer to the Classical Age (Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture Series)

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Description

In our recent Western society, death has develop into taboo. Despite its inevitability, we focus on maintaining youthfulness and well-being, whilst fearing death’s intrusion in our day-to-day activities. In contrast, observes Maria Serena Mirto, the ancient Greeks embraced death more openly and effectively, developing a number of rituals to help them grieve the dead and, in the process, alleviate anxiety and suffering. In this fascinating book, Mirto examines conceptions of death and the afterlife in the ancient Greek world, revealing few similarities—and many differences—between ancient and modern ways of approaching death.

Exploring the cultural and religious foundations underlying Greek burial rites and customs, Mirto traces the evolution of these practices throughout the archaic and classical periods. She explains the relationship between the living and the dead as reflected in grave markers, epitaphs, and burial offerings and discusses the social and political dimensions of burial and lamentation. She also describes shifting beliefs about life after death, showing how concepts of immortality, depicted so memorably in Homer’s epics, began to change throughout the classical period.

Death in the Greek World straddles the boundary between literary and religious imagination and synthesizes observations from archaeology, visual art, philosophy, politics, and law. The writer places particular emphasis on Homer’s epics, the first
literary testimony of an understanding of death in ancient Greece. And because these stories are still so central to Western culture, her discussion casts new light on elements we thought we had already understood.

Originally written and published in Italian, this English-language translation of Death in the Greek World includes the most up to date scholarship on newly discovered texts and objects, and engages the recent theoretical perspectives on the gendered roles of women and men as agents of mourning. The volume also features a new section dealing with hero cults and a new appendix outlining fundamental developments in modern studies of death in the ancient Greek world.

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