De luctu

Truly, it is well worth while to observe what most people do and say at funerals, and on the other hand what their would-be comforters say ; to observe also how unbearable the mourners consider what is happening, not only for themselves but for those whom they mourn. Yet, I swear by Pluto and Persephone, they have not one whit of definite knowledge as to whether this experience is unpleasant and worth grieving about, or on the contrary delightful and better for those who undergo it. No, they simply commit their grief into the charge of custom and habit. When someone dies, then, this is what they do—but stay! First I wish to tell you what beliefs they hold about death itself, for then it will become clear why they engage in these superfluous practices.

The general herd, whom philosophers call the laity, trust Homer and Hesiod and the other mythmakers in these matters, and take their poetry for a law unto themselves. So they suppose that there is a place deep under the earth called Hades, which is large and roomy and murky and sunless; I don’t know how they imagine it to be lighted up so that everything in it can be seen. The king of the

His country is surrounded by great rivers, fearful even in name; for they are called “Wailing,” “Burning Fire,’ and the like. But the principal feature is Lake Acheron, which lies in front and first receives visitors; it cannot be crossed or passed without the ferryman, for it is too deep to ford afoot and too broad to swim across—indeed, even dead birds cannot fly across it

Hard by the descent and the portal, which is of adamant, stands the king’s nephew, Aeacus, who is commander of the guard; and beside him is a three-headed dog, very long-fanged, who gives a friendly, peaceable glance to those who come in, but howls at those who try to run away and frightens them with his great mouth.

After passing the lake on going in, one comes next to a

Well, Pluto and Persephone, as these people said, are the rulers and have the general over-lordship, with a great throng of understrappers and assistants in administration—Furies, Tormentors, Terrors, and also Hermes, who, however, is not always with them.[*](Hermes had to serve two masters, Zeus and Pluto. See Downward Journey, 1-2 (ii, 5). )

As prefects, moreover, and satraps and judges, there are two that hold court, Minos and Rhadamanthus of Crete, who are sons of Zeus. These receive the good, just men who have lived virtuously, and when many have been collected, send them off, as if to a colony, to the Elysian Fields to take part in the best life.

But if they come upon any rascals, turning them over to the Furies, they send them to the Place of the Wicked, to be punished in proportion to their wickedness. There—ah! what punishment do they not undergo? They are racked, burned, devoured by vultures, turned upon a wheel; they roll stones uphill; and as for Tantalus, he stands on the very brink of the lake with a parched throat, like to die, poor fellow, for thirst!

But those of the middle way in life, and they are many, wander about in the meadow without their bodies, in the form of shadows that vanish like smoke in your

So thoroughly are people taken in by all this that when one of the family dies, immediately they bring an obol and put it into his mouth, to pay the ferryman for setting him over. They do not stop to consider what sort of coinage is customary and current in the lower world, and whether it is the Athenian or the Macedonian or the Aeginetan obol that is legal tender there; nor, indeed, that it would be far better not to be able to pay the fare, since in that case the ferryman would not take them and they would be escorted back to life again.

Then they bathe them (as if the lake down below were not big enough for the people there to bathe in); and after anointing with the finest of perfume that body which is already hasting to corruption, and crowning ‘it with pretty flowers, they lay them in state, clothed in splendid raiment, which, very likely, is intended to keep them from being cold on the way and from being seen undressed by Cerberus.

Next come cries of distress, wailing of women, tears on all sides, beaten breasts, torn hair, and bloody cheeks. Perhaps, too, clothing is rent and dust sprinkled on the head, and the living are in a plight more pitiable than the dead ; for they roll on the ground repeatedly and dash their heads against the floor, while he, all serene and handsome and

Then his mother, or indeed his father comes forward from among the family and throws himself upon him; for let us imagine a handsome young man upon the bier, so that the show that is acted over him may be the more moving. The father utters strange, foolish outcries to which the dead man himself would make answer if he could speak. In a plaintive tone, protracting every word, he will say: “Dearest child, you are gone from me, dead, reft away before your time, leaving me behind all alone, woe is me, before marrying, before having children, before serving in the army, before working on the farm, before coming to old age; never again will you roam the streets at night, or fall in love, my child, or drink deep at wine-parties with your young friends.”

He will say all that, and more in the same tenor, thinking that his son still needs and wants this sort of thing even after death, but cannot get it. But that is nothing. Have not many sacrificed horses, concubines, sometimes even cup-bearers, over their dead, and burned or buried with them clothing and other articles of personal adornment, as if they would use them there and get some good of them down below?

But as to the old man who mourns after this fashion, it is not, in all probability, on account of his son that he does all this melodramatic ranting that I have mentioned, and more than I have mentioned ; for he knows that his son will not hear him even if he shouts louder than Stentor. Nor yet is it on his own account ; for it would have been enough

If his son should receive permission from Aeacus and Aidoneus to put his head out of the mouth of the pit for a moment and stop his father’s silliness, he would say: “Unfortunate man, why do you shriek ? Why do you trouble me? Stop tearing your hair and marring the skin of your face!- Why do you call me names and speak of me as wretched and ill-starred when I have become far better off and happier than you? What dreadful misfortune do you think I am undergoing? Is it that I did not get to be an old man like you, with your head bald, your face wrinkled, your back bent, and your knees trembling,—like you, who in short are rotten with age after filling out so many months and so many Olympiads, and who now, at the last, go out of your mind in the presence of so many witnesses? Foolish man, what advantage do you think there is in life that we shall never again partake of? You will say drinking, no doubt, and dinners, and dress, and love, and you are afraid that for the want of all this I shall die! But are you unaware that not to thirst is far better than drinking, not to hunger than eating, and not to be cold than to have quantities of clothing?

“Come now, since you apparently do not know how to mourn, I will teach you to do it more truth-

If you say this, father, don't you think it will be far more true and more manly than what you said before ? “But perhaps it is something else that worries you. You are thinking of the gloom where we are, and the profound darkness, and so you fear that I may be stifled in the close custody of the tomb. On that point you should reflect that as my eyes will very soon be corrupted or even burned, if you have decided to burn me, I shall have no need either for darkness or for light as far as seeing is concerned.

“That fear, however, is perhaps reasonable enough; but what good do you think I get from your wailing, and this beating of breasts to the music of the flute, and the extravagant conduct of the women in lamenting? Or from the wreathed stone above my grave? Or what, pray, is the use of your pouring out the pure wine? You don't think, do you, that it will drip down to where we are and get all the way through to Hades? As to the burnt offerings, you yourselves see, I think, that the most nourishing part of your provender is carried off up to Heaven by the smoke without doing us in the lower world the least bit of good, and that what is left, the ashes, is useless, unless

1. These words spoken, at once the doom of death overwhelmed him.[*](Iliad, 16, 502. )