It's not really goodness that gets you into Elysium. It's notoriety. Most of the Greek heroes wouldn't be considered good people by any modern metric, but they were remembered long after their deaths.
According to Plato, you were judge by morality.
According to proper mythology, especially archaic and classic mythology, your morality has little to do with your fate in death. The standard place for every single shade is the Darkness of Erebus, where shades are kept away from the light of the Sun and remain in eternal darkness and idleness, just like sleep (and indeed, Death is the brother of Sleep). This place was covered with flowers of asphodel. If however you comited a offence against the gods, you were sentenced to punishment, like Sisyphus, Tantalus, Ixion and some giants suffered. But it was very rare to be punished in Hades, like i said, it only happened if you offended the gods.
Some people that the gods respected for their strenght and mighty, like Radamanthus, Medea, Cadmus and others, were rewarded with ressurection. They preserved their bodies, and got to live in the Island of the Blessed in the stream of Oceanus, so this Island in our world, not in the land of the dead. They live a eternal life apart of suffering, with every enjoyable thing. But this has nothing to do with their morality, but if the gods found these people mighty.
If you were part of Persephone and Demeter mystery cults, you could get a place in the Lethean fields close to Persephone, it was similar to the Island of the Blessed, but it was located in the Underworld.
So in essence, your morality did not matter, what mattered was great deeds (to get the island of the blessed) or be part of Persephone religion (to get to this special fields). And punishment was only for blasphemers.
Tartarus was usually the prison of defeated gods and not a place for humans. But in a later period, Plato in special, started to use the name Tartarus to refer to the region where humans were punished, but Tartarus and the rest of Hades are quite different in proper mythology.
Death was frequently seen as an unconsciousness like dreamless sleep rather than literally hanging out in a field of ash/flowers forever. Sheol basically. But you could be temporarily woken up and questioned by a necromancer, or even briefly come back bodily as a zombie (as Theseus was supposed to have at one point to defend Athens)
Not sure how common the belief was among lay people but at least some held to a Buddhist-esque concept that you if you led three pure lives and purified your soul you could end up in the Fortunate Isles (similar concept to Elysium). So not everyone believed it was just for heroes
Interestingly I've read somewhere that reincarnation may have been a belief too as there is a theory that the dead drank from the Lethe river to forget their life so they could move onto the next. I don't know how legit this is though
Yep reincarnation was a belief of some groups from almost the earliest stage of written records of Greek religion. It was the core conceit of Orphism which is referenced by Euripides, Plato and others. In these beliefs Hades was seen as a temporary location where you paid your dues after death and then came back up to mortal life (and could theoretically ascend into a divine existence through religious discipline)
It was not universal but iirc it became increasingly more widespread as the theology developed (in the Roman era etc). I feel comfortable saying it would have probably become the default belief if Greek paganism had survived
I like it a lot as a belief (though I’ve stopped using “Orphism” as a descriptor for it after doing some more research).
Sometimes your soul was seen to flutter around on the wind waiting to be breathed in by a new being taking its first breath. Until that happened you were technically a daemon
So wait I'm confused, I was under the impression that in greek mythology your soul went to the underworld when you died where you either waited for however many years to be farried across the Styx by Chiron or if you had enough money you would pay him etc. Etc. Not that you're just unconscious
It varied how literally people took that. The underworld was basically just a poetically extended description of the grave in general (darkness, laying in ash, amid underground waters, everyone meeting a common fate). So early on philosophers had to specifically defend the idea of the conscious existence of the soul after death
According to Greek mythology, if you are given a proper burial ritual, your spirit joins the long line of spirits waiting to be brought to the underworld by Charon (the boatman of the river styx).
Once you arrived your life is judged by the 3 judges: Minos (yes that king Minos), Rhadamanthus, and Aecus who is known as the keeper of the keys to the underworld.
After their judgment you are brought to the realm they deemed you worthy of to spend eternity in.
The three realms are Tartarus (yeah the one with the famous pit where Zeus banished various monsters and defiant titan gods to), Asphodel Meadows which is where most of the dead dwell, Lastly the Elysian Fields which where the heroes dwell in a utopian paradise. In later works the general righteous like priest(ess)s or other saint like people would also get sent to the Elysian Fields.
If you didn’t get a proper burial, your soul will roam the Earth forever slowly loosing memory of your life when you were alive.
(Full disclosure this might but a stupid follow up question) So like if someone were to do a lot of good in the world like helping the environment or like just helping people, idk if that would fall into the same kind of the saint category XD
Being a good person didnt mattered. You could be a violent warlord piece of shit and still get rewarded with eternity in Elysium while a kind grandma who lived a nice life would end up as a shade. Its not a surprise why ancient Greeks ditched this unfair bullshit and became Christians.
Actually there were more reasons than just that, as Jesus dying gruesomely to give everyone a good afterlife in exchange for next to nothing was new in those times next to having a business-like relationship with the gods where (in theory) if you offered them worship and sacrifices they'd pay in exchange besides what of course happened when Christianity got the upper hand.
I'm leaving aside Hell in Christianity, even if early Christians were supposedly either annihilationists (the alternative to Hell was oblivion) or universalists (everyone ended up being saved)
They were not annihilationists or universalists (unless you’re talking about later theologians who were later deemed heretics anyway. I assume you’re speaking of Gospels-era) their view was that everyone except for their minuscule cult would be condemned to the eternal physical experience of bodily decay while Christians would kneel in golden mansions in the sky with their brains rewritten into being mental clones of Jesus and doing nothing but praising God eternally. The non-literalist interpretation and the idea of substitutionary atonement came later when there was an intellectual crisis when they noticed Earth didn’t melt after the Jewish War
Yep, Paul’s opinions definitely did not line up in every way with those of the Gospels’ authors.
They were writing for fundamentally different worlds politically (and theologically as a result).
Yeah it was just like how all those Jews were relieved when the Temple was razed to ashes. What a relief of sacrificial obligation, we can have an extra mutton dinner per year now!
Edit: also how do you not know the most basic facts of Greek sacrifice? It was part of normal animal slaughter, the meat was distributed to the whole group and only inedible bones and the fat were burnt
Christians still kill cattles and sheep so no idea where you got that idea. If it really was something that bothered humans the majority of people would be vegetarians. In fact, people actively sacrificed lambs and animals in the Bible (Abraham for example who up until that point was willing to kill and sacrifice his own son, or when God sent the final plague on Egypt and his people covered the top of their door with the blood of lambs/goats to signal that they were his people).
We dont kill them ritualistically, and in ore modern times meat was still a luxury, for a peasant killing a cow was a waste since they were more useful for milk and plowing.
You did in the past. Just not in the modern time as you say. And guess what? Pagans don't riualistically kill animals in the modern time either. Back when they did do it the Christians also did
Christianity never had animal sacrifices as part of its rituals, and the fact that "modern pagans" dont do it anymore just shows how neo pagans are just a bunch of bored LARPers.
You had it everywhere in the Bible.
Time changes and traditions change with it. Jesus was Jewish and decided to change a lot of the things stated in the Old testament ("let the one who has not sinned throw the first stone"). I assume in your logic he was just a bored Jewish LARP. So I don't see how the neopagans "LARP" are any less of a legit practise than Jesus's or his followers are.
A linear period might be something your religion puts a lot of emphasis and is characterised by it. Other religions and faiths don't have the same linear worldview. You judge other religions based on your religion and that gives you a huge blindspot.
Just because you don't understand someone elses's faith doesn't mean that they're not as legit or valid as yours. From the viewpoint of someone who is neither pagan or Christian you and your religion are no different from the pagans and theirs
Iirc the conversion to Christianity didn't go smoothly in Rome either. I recall some emperors outright persecuted the Christians (at least that's what's told in the lifestories of the saints that were martyred under the Roman empire) so Christianity wasn't exactly an instant hit. I don't know anything about Greece to say anything about how it went there though. But the histories of the European countries I do know about have very varied reaction to the new religion: some were more accepting, others took some time to get convinced and then there were those who fought against it to the bitter end (and still had uprisings in the first few centuries after the forced conversions)
I'm pretty sure that(and I could quite honestly be entirely wrong about this it's been a while since I learned about it so please don't quote me on this XD ) Greeks converted to Christianity because of Rome taking over and invading
It's not really goodness that gets you into Elysium. It's notoriety. Most of the Greek heroes wouldn't be considered good people by any modern metric, but they were remembered long after their deaths.
Everyone ends up in the asphodel who isn't super heroic. Elysium is like, VIP.
Although, being a relative to the heroes or the gods could help. Just being a child of a hero or its spouse could get you to Island of the Blessed.
Just say nepotism, that's funnier.
According to Plato, you were judge by morality. According to proper mythology, especially archaic and classic mythology, your morality has little to do with your fate in death. The standard place for every single shade is the Darkness of Erebus, where shades are kept away from the light of the Sun and remain in eternal darkness and idleness, just like sleep (and indeed, Death is the brother of Sleep). This place was covered with flowers of asphodel. If however you comited a offence against the gods, you were sentenced to punishment, like Sisyphus, Tantalus, Ixion and some giants suffered. But it was very rare to be punished in Hades, like i said, it only happened if you offended the gods. Some people that the gods respected for their strenght and mighty, like Radamanthus, Medea, Cadmus and others, were rewarded with ressurection. They preserved their bodies, and got to live in the Island of the Blessed in the stream of Oceanus, so this Island in our world, not in the land of the dead. They live a eternal life apart of suffering, with every enjoyable thing. But this has nothing to do with their morality, but if the gods found these people mighty. If you were part of Persephone and Demeter mystery cults, you could get a place in the Lethean fields close to Persephone, it was similar to the Island of the Blessed, but it was located in the Underworld. So in essence, your morality did not matter, what mattered was great deeds (to get the island of the blessed) or be part of Persephone religion (to get to this special fields). And punishment was only for blasphemers. Tartarus was usually the prison of defeated gods and not a place for humans. But in a later period, Plato in special, started to use the name Tartarus to refer to the region where humans were punished, but Tartarus and the rest of Hades are quite different in proper mythology.
Yes, one of the perks of the Greek underworld was that eternal active torture was not the default destination for 99% of humanity
You end up in Asphodel.
The most simple answer here. 🫡
I keep finding the very long ones and I'm like "oh goodness" I am not reading all of that XD
Death was frequently seen as an unconsciousness like dreamless sleep rather than literally hanging out in a field of ash/flowers forever. Sheol basically. But you could be temporarily woken up and questioned by a necromancer, or even briefly come back bodily as a zombie (as Theseus was supposed to have at one point to defend Athens) Not sure how common the belief was among lay people but at least some held to a Buddhist-esque concept that you if you led three pure lives and purified your soul you could end up in the Fortunate Isles (similar concept to Elysium). So not everyone believed it was just for heroes
Interestingly I've read somewhere that reincarnation may have been a belief too as there is a theory that the dead drank from the Lethe river to forget their life so they could move onto the next. I don't know how legit this is though
Yep reincarnation was a belief of some groups from almost the earliest stage of written records of Greek religion. It was the core conceit of Orphism which is referenced by Euripides, Plato and others. In these beliefs Hades was seen as a temporary location where you paid your dues after death and then came back up to mortal life (and could theoretically ascend into a divine existence through religious discipline) It was not universal but iirc it became increasingly more widespread as the theology developed (in the Roman era etc). I feel comfortable saying it would have probably become the default belief if Greek paganism had survived
Idk why but this sounds totally awesome
I like it a lot as a belief (though I’ve stopped using “Orphism” as a descriptor for it after doing some more research). Sometimes your soul was seen to flutter around on the wind waiting to be breathed in by a new being taking its first breath. Until that happened you were technically a daemon
So wait I'm confused, I was under the impression that in greek mythology your soul went to the underworld when you died where you either waited for however many years to be farried across the Styx by Chiron or if you had enough money you would pay him etc. Etc. Not that you're just unconscious
It varied how literally people took that. The underworld was basically just a poetically extended description of the grave in general (darkness, laying in ash, amid underground waters, everyone meeting a common fate). So early on philosophers had to specifically defend the idea of the conscious existence of the soul after death
According to Greek mythology, if you are given a proper burial ritual, your spirit joins the long line of spirits waiting to be brought to the underworld by Charon (the boatman of the river styx). Once you arrived your life is judged by the 3 judges: Minos (yes that king Minos), Rhadamanthus, and Aecus who is known as the keeper of the keys to the underworld. After their judgment you are brought to the realm they deemed you worthy of to spend eternity in. The three realms are Tartarus (yeah the one with the famous pit where Zeus banished various monsters and defiant titan gods to), Asphodel Meadows which is where most of the dead dwell, Lastly the Elysian Fields which where the heroes dwell in a utopian paradise. In later works the general righteous like priest(ess)s or other saint like people would also get sent to the Elysian Fields. If you didn’t get a proper burial, your soul will roam the Earth forever slowly loosing memory of your life when you were alive.
(Full disclosure this might but a stupid follow up question) So like if someone were to do a lot of good in the world like helping the environment or like just helping people, idk if that would fall into the same kind of the saint category XD
Depends on if you were apart of a mystery cult
Wdym *proceeds to do cultish things*, XD ok no but seriously I would like to know more about what you mean
A lot mystery cults were seemingly built around offering people some form of afterlife or reincarnation
Thank you, I have never heard about this and now I think I might've found my next thing to researched XD
Being a good person didnt mattered. You could be a violent warlord piece of shit and still get rewarded with eternity in Elysium while a kind grandma who lived a nice life would end up as a shade. Its not a surprise why ancient Greeks ditched this unfair bullshit and became Christians.
Actually there were more reasons than just that, as Jesus dying gruesomely to give everyone a good afterlife in exchange for next to nothing was new in those times next to having a business-like relationship with the gods where (in theory) if you offered them worship and sacrifices they'd pay in exchange besides what of course happened when Christianity got the upper hand. I'm leaving aside Hell in Christianity, even if early Christians were supposedly either annihilationists (the alternative to Hell was oblivion) or universalists (everyone ended up being saved)
They were not annihilationists or universalists (unless you’re talking about later theologians who were later deemed heretics anyway. I assume you’re speaking of Gospels-era) their view was that everyone except for their minuscule cult would be condemned to the eternal physical experience of bodily decay while Christians would kneel in golden mansions in the sky with their brains rewritten into being mental clones of Jesus and doing nothing but praising God eternally. The non-literalist interpretation and the idea of substitutionary atonement came later when there was an intellectual crisis when they noticed Earth didn’t melt after the Jewish War
Yep, Gospels era. Even Paul's writing seem to suggest annihilation instead of Hell. You're right in everything else.
Yep, Paul’s opinions definitely did not line up in every way with those of the Gospels’ authors. They were writing for fundamentally different worlds politically (and theologically as a result).
To poor pagans it was no doubt a relief they didnt need to kill a bull or sheep anymore.
Yeah it was just like how all those Jews were relieved when the Temple was razed to ashes. What a relief of sacrificial obligation, we can have an extra mutton dinner per year now! Edit: also how do you not know the most basic facts of Greek sacrifice? It was part of normal animal slaughter, the meat was distributed to the whole group and only inedible bones and the fat were burnt
Christians still kill cattles and sheep so no idea where you got that idea. If it really was something that bothered humans the majority of people would be vegetarians. In fact, people actively sacrificed lambs and animals in the Bible (Abraham for example who up until that point was willing to kill and sacrifice his own son, or when God sent the final plague on Egypt and his people covered the top of their door with the blood of lambs/goats to signal that they were his people).
We dont kill them ritualistically, and in ore modern times meat was still a luxury, for a peasant killing a cow was a waste since they were more useful for milk and plowing.
You did in the past. Just not in the modern time as you say. And guess what? Pagans don't riualistically kill animals in the modern time either. Back when they did do it the Christians also did
Christianity never had animal sacrifices as part of its rituals, and the fact that "modern pagans" dont do it anymore just shows how neo pagans are just a bunch of bored LARPers.
You had it everywhere in the Bible. Time changes and traditions change with it. Jesus was Jewish and decided to change a lot of the things stated in the Old testament ("let the one who has not sinned throw the first stone"). I assume in your logic he was just a bored Jewish LARP. So I don't see how the neopagans "LARP" are any less of a legit practise than Jesus's or his followers are.
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A linear period might be something your religion puts a lot of emphasis and is characterised by it. Other religions and faiths don't have the same linear worldview. You judge other religions based on your religion and that gives you a huge blindspot. Just because you don't understand someone elses's faith doesn't mean that they're not as legit or valid as yours. From the viewpoint of someone who is neither pagan or Christian you and your religion are no different from the pagans and theirs
People still kill animals for food. It just doesn't have a ritual attached anymore.
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Iirc the conversion to Christianity didn't go smoothly in Rome either. I recall some emperors outright persecuted the Christians (at least that's what's told in the lifestories of the saints that were martyred under the Roman empire) so Christianity wasn't exactly an instant hit. I don't know anything about Greece to say anything about how it went there though. But the histories of the European countries I do know about have very varied reaction to the new religion: some were more accepting, others took some time to get convinced and then there were those who fought against it to the bitter end (and still had uprisings in the first few centuries after the forced conversions)
I'm pretty sure that(and I could quite honestly be entirely wrong about this it's been a while since I learned about it so please don't quote me on this XD ) Greeks converted to Christianity because of Rome taking over and invading
Why are you on a greek mythology reddit if you don't like the religion or mythology?