when the friends sat down on the stone chairs, they found that they couldn’t get up
again: they were bound fast. Theseus escaped only because Heracles, on his quest for
Cerberus, pulled Theseus from the chair. Heracles was unable to free Peirithou ̈s,
however (Apollodorus,Library3.16.24). Theseus, despite his transgression, was thus
given a second chance at life – and a chance to redeem his reputation.
Orpheus, a renowned musician, went to Hades in an attempt to recover his wife,
Eurydice, who had died from a snakebite on their wedding day. Once in the under-
world, Orpheus charmed Cerberus with music, and the dog let him pass. The music
swayed Hades and Persephone as well, and the two permitted him to take Eurydice
back to the land of the living, but only on the condition that he not look back at her
on the return to the upper world. Of course he turned to look, to make sure she was
safe, and she faded back down to Hades. But because he had faced death and returned
to tell about it, Orpheus was believed to have all sorts of arcane knowledge about the
nature of death and the afterlife. A series of poems comprising a cosmology and
various beliefs about the nature of death and the soul was ascribed (falsely) to
Orpheus and has become known as Orphic literature. Orpheus’ legendary descent
to Hades thus resulted in the actual cult of Orphism, a religion that began as early as
the archaic period, and one of the only Greek religions to have a written doctrine.
The heroic journey to Hades that resonates most even today, though, must be that
of Odysseus, whose dread at being told by Circe that he must journey to the land of
Hades and Persephone is quite palpable, as is that of his crew (Odyssey10.490–502,
566–70). Odysseus must travel to Hades to consult the shade of the seer Teresias,
who will tell him how to sail home to Ithaca (and who will also predict the manner of
Odysseus’ death). This episode, which constitutes Book 11 of theOdyssey, is not,
technically, akatabasis, in the sense that Odysseus’ voyage to Hades is not literally a
descent, but in all other respects it resembles the traditionalkatabasisof myth (Clark
1979:74–8). Book 11 of theOdysseyis generally referred to as theNekuia, a ritual by
which ghosts are summoned and interrogated; that is, Odysseus performs what is
essentially the earliest Greek necromantic ceremony on record, as he fills a pit with
milk, honey, wine, water, and barley, and then slits the throats of a ram and a ewe,
offering their blood up to the dead in exchange for answers to his questions. The
ceremony ‘‘is performed with great dignity and compassion; there seems to be no
stigma attached to it’’ (Luck 1985:167).
Such was not the case in historical times, when necromancy was sometimes
frowned upon both as possibly fraudulent but also as potentially harmful to the
dead, who wished to rest undisturbed (Luck 1985:167). The living might call up
the dead for relatively trivial purposes, as seems to have been the case with Periander,
tyrant of Corinth, who sent messengers to the oracle of the dead on the Acheron river
in Thesprotia to summon the ghost of Melissa, his wife, in order to ask her the
location of some money he could not find. Melissa appeared and said that she would
not give up the information, because she was cold and naked, as her clothes had not
been burned with her. Periander then forced all the women of Corinth to strip,
and burned their clothes in a pit. Melissa’s ghost was evidently appeased as, when
consulted a second time, she told the messengers where the money was hidden
(Herodotus 5.92). The banality of Periander’s reason for the necromantic ceremony,
and his compensation for Melissa’s improper burial, help Herodotus characterize him
as an oppressive ruler.
The Dead 95