The Early Greek Concept of the Soul by Bremmer Jan;

Author:Bremmer, Jan; [Bremmer, Jan;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691219356
Publisher: PrincetonUP
Published: 2020-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Relation Between the Soul and the Body of the Dead

Hultkrantz observes, “At death, the person emerges in a new form of existence, no soul-idea is needed to mediate this transition, for it is the person himself who goes on living in the new existence.”28 Hultkrantz is only partially right, at least regarding the Greek material. It is certainly true that there is a corollary of this idea in the Nekuia where Heracles (11.601-627) and Orion (11.572-575) are depicted as continuing their earthly activities, but there are also other representations that are not so easy to understand if we follow Hultkrantz. The dead, for example, in Homer cannot speak in a normal manner, neither do they move in the normal way. How can these features be reconciled with Hultkrantz’s definition of the deceased as a memory image of an earlier existing person? Here, Hultkrantz’s analysis is somewhat deficient, in so far as he has failed to identify the factors constituting the memory image of the deceased and to take into account the difference between the memories of a living person and a dead one. Memories of the dead are not only influenced by, for example, the way they spoke, moved, or laughed when still alive but also by the way they were at the moment of death when they did not speak, move, or laugh. In fact, both memories seem to have created the memory image of the deceased for the early Greeks.

The great importance of the moment of death is very much apparent in the description of the appearance of the dead with wounds exactly as they received them just before they died. Homer describes the warriors at the entrance to Hades still dressed in their bloody armor (11.41). Similar descriptions can also be found after Homeric times; Aeschylus has the eidolon of Clytemnestra display her death wounds (Eumenides 103), and Plato elaborately explains this idea, but refines it in a way by adding that the soul also retains the scars of its former existence.29 The same theme is found on vases, where the dead are regularly shown with their wounds, sometimes still bandaged.30 Among the Romans descriptions of the souls of the dead with their wounds became a very popular topos.31

The great importance of the soma, or “dead body,” for the representation of the soul of the dead is also apparent in other descriptions.32 The souls of the dead lacked the psychological attributes of the souls of the living. Since the thymos left the individual at the moment of death it is understandable that we never hear of any soul of the dead with a thymos. Neither do the dead possess a noos (10.494-495) or a menos—the dead are called “menos-less heads” (10.493-495, 521, 536).33 The only exception is Teiresias (10.493-496). As a seer he fell outside the normal community of the living, as has recently been convincingly argued; for that reason he also stands outside the community of the dead.34

Not only do the souls of the dead

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