The Green Room, Spectator USA’s Life & Arts podcast: The Greek way of death

As the old year dies, our thoughts turn to what happens next. What better time, then, to cast a seasonally morbid, deeply philosophical, and curiously uplifting pod with David Saunders of the J. Paul Getty Museum in California? The Getty Villa’s new exhibition, Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife is all about ideas of what happened next if you died as an Ancient Greek.

The Greeks thought of the Underworld, or ‘House of Hades’, as a bleak and somber location, defined by the absence of life’s pleasures. Not surprisingly, this Hotel California of the soul was a rare subject in Greek art. And, not surprisingly, the prospect of a one-way ticket on Charon’s ferry encouraged many Greeks to plan ahead, in the hope that they might improve conditions. The whole subject, like most topics when it comes to the ancient Greeks, seems confused. Most Greeks believed that their souls would leave their bodies after death, and would continue to exist in some form.