Death

Abstract

Life and death is a vast subject, potentially taking in a massive chunk of the published output of Greco-Roman scholarship since the time of Homer and his contemporaries. So, some serious restriction of extent is required: this article will focus on life and death and how the two interrelate throughout the Greek and Roman periods. “Death” will cover eschatology, funeral and burial rites, funerary epigraphy, as well as different forms of death such as suicide, death in war and in the arena, death through disease, and murder. Poisonings, toxicology, osteoarchaeology, and forensics are also covered. “Life” will take in life where death impinges on it in whatever form. As with any culture and civilization, life and death were inextricably linked in ancient Greece and Rome: how one led one’s life was dictated to a large degree by belief in and expectations of a further life in the afterworld; similarly, the kind of afterlife one might expect was thought to be predicated on how one conducted oneself during life. The Greek tragedies underscore the absolute necessity for proper burial rites in Greek society while the Romans too had strict rules relating to funerary protocol and ritual. Epigraphy takes in military inscriptions and the formulaic praise, particularly of wives, husbands, children and mothers. We will see much on necromancy, communion with the dead, the underworld journey, underworld topography, and denizens of Hades and Tartarus such as Charon. The section on Postmortem Studies takes in works on memories of the departed, mourning, commemoration of the dead, the Parentalia, dining with the deceased, death pollution, corpse abuse, and cremations that went badly wrong. War death covers military and civilian death in battle and siege, disasters, and atrocities while suicide gives us Lucretia, euthanasia, and depictions of suicide in art. Finally, from murder, toxicology, and forensics we find studies on the effects of lead poisoning, the patricide of Verginia, three infamous women poisoners, and amateur toxicologists—Mithridates and Cleopatra. The citations range from Homer to late Roman, from the Greek polis to the Roman Empire at its widest extent and to its fall; they take in all available types of evidence as found in journal articles, books, visual arts, epigraphy, archaeology, architecture, science, and online sources.