The Afterlife in the Classical and Italian Traditi

Last year in Ancient Tragedy we read the whole of the Aeschylus trilogy the Orestia. In the last of these plays the Eumenides, the Furies are conquered by the wills of Athena and Apollo. They are denied Orestes, but in return are given the honor and respect of all Athenians. They are turned from gods of justice through revenge into gods of justice who prosecute those who break the law. (They are also connected with sustaining the productivity of the fields and harvest.) However, this does not mean the Furies have been tamed, far from it. They are revered and honored with sacrifices but mostly this respect verges on fear. When sacrificing to the Eumenides one made a sacrifice and then quickly leaves their sacred precinct, this area was to remain as undisturbed as possible. There was still the potential of wrath of the Furies to strike down those who enter their grounds.

Similarly in the Divine Comedy, the Furies have been placed into a hierarchy of justice; specifically they carry out the punishment of divine justice. However, as witnessed by Dante’s encounter with them, the Furies are still very protective of their sacred areas. In the Inferno the Furies have been given rule over Dis and like the classical tradition attack those who disturb this area, which they consider their own. Once again we can see that while the Furies are in a way conquered, they are far from powerless.

I found it interesting that Dante took after Vergil’s concrete measurement of time in the “lower levels” of the journey, but when he enters paradiso, time becomes nebulous and immeasurable, just like the afterlife is with Homer. Dante is embracing both the Greek and Roman literary tradition by allowing time the two possiblities to express time in the afterlife (according to the greeks and romans) to exist in his epic katabatic poem. It is almost a compromise– but, moreso, he is acknowledging those that came before him who also wrote epic poetry about the katabatic experience. Although these elements of time progression are embraced, the time progression of the souls has been altered due to the christian culture that was very much established before Dante lived. Progression is dependent on good works and prayer, and it’s all relative and unique for each soul– as opposed to the souls in antiquity which all had a fixed set of years on the banks of the river, or a fixed set of years until they could enter a new set of bodies. Ultimately, Dante, by acknowledging both vergil and homer’s sense of time in the afterlife, and also including his christian values to the progression of the soul, he embraces the past and his present.

The discussion today was really interesting, and I was thinking about it again just now and came up with an interesting similarity between all three authors - none of the characters are really in control of what they’re doing or where they’re going. Dante and Vergil use time to sort of control their characters (to force them to move forward), but Homer seems to use the lack of time to show that there is no control whatsoever. In Homer, the souls are all “stuck” in a sense and unmoving (besides mindless flitting) in separate, timeless areas of the underword. This makes his underworld very finite and also very eternal and very changeless. The ability to really go anywhere, or even to think consciously and clearly is removed from the souls and in the process their own personal will is also removed, which causes them to be forced to stay wherever it is they happen to be, which causes and is caused by the lack of definite time.

In vergil, on the other hand, time very definite, to the point that Aeneas has but a day to make his way throughout the underworld. This forces him to move forward at different points even though he isn’t done speaking to someone. The souls in the Aeneid are also found (at least in part) to have their personal wills, to move from one level to another, and to be able to think and speak consciously and clearly. This aftelife is presented as more infinite and perhaps as less eternal. It seems less like an ending and more like a second journey after one has finished the Earthly journey. In Homer, the souls were pretty much resigned to wherever level they were, but in Vergil’s Aeneid, Anchises shows Aeneas a bunch of souls that are waiting in line to be born again. This is a much different kind of existence, but at the same these souls do not have control over whether they go back, or where they go to, or in what level they end up. These things are all determined for them, though they do have the ability to think and speak clearly (at least in part).

Now, Dante’s Divine Comedy shows just about everyone with a mostly conscious and clear mind, seeking to find a way to move forward in their existence. Time, here, is used as a tool - the souls must undergo punishment for so many years (or even for eternity) - that allows the souls to actually move to a new level of the afterlife. In this case, the souls are all very conscious, have their own wills, and do their best to move from level to another, while time is still used as a way to control them in where they go and when they get there. Also, with the idea of prayers happening BEFORE a soul can be elevated, time again forces these events to happen in a certain order and thus controls the requests of the souls Dante meets (many ask for prayers).

In all three examples, though time is used differently (or nonexistent), it is still used to control not only the living as they forray into the underworld, but the souls themselves, to keep them where they should be, or to allow them to move onward under very specific circumstances. I also found it interesting that in the finite, eternal underworld described by Homer, time does not exist, but in the infinite, not-so-eternal underworld described by Vergil and Dante, time exists rather clearly. It would seem that although one might think time itself is infinite, the nature of time is to create finity, i.e. time only exists when there are beginnings and endings, finite elements, and thus time could not really exist in an infinite realm such as the underworld as a rule to which that world is bound.