Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 26 July 2008

Peter Jones outlines ancient attitudes towards death

issue 26 July 2008

The recent return of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers in exchange for five living Hezbollah prisoners exemplifies one of the most deep-rooted human feelings: that the dead must come home. At one level, it seems irrational. What do the dead care? But as the ancients knew, it is not the dead who count in this matter, but the living.

In some respects, ancient Greeks were fairly relaxed about death. Corpses were not regarded as objects of horror. The prospect of death did not seem to fill them with terror. But while Greeks often expressed doubts about whether the dead possessed any faculties of perception, they equally often spoke as if they valued the goodwill of the dead and feared their disapproval.

But whatever their beliefs on that score, there was no question that the treatment of the physical body after death was a matter of the highest importance.

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