Death is usually an essential reality of life that occurs in multiple ways and is used for numerous reasons in both Greek and Roman epics. There is a complex use of its application and significance in each epic, which is a reflection of the socio-historical and literary contexts. In this essay, I will explore the various which roman and Greek epics approach the concept of death and use the various forms of death for their structural, thematic, and narrative purposes. Death in Greek and Roman epic is crucial to the distinction between heroes and other mortals due to the supernatural powers it attributed to heroes stemming from the mystery of their deaths.
Heroism and Death
There has been the tendency of modern minds to serve heroism with death. The modern hero in roman and greek epics are defined by their self-sacrifice, altruism, and disregard for danger both in death and in life. In some instances, the definition of heroes is based on the fact of their survival, such as the return of war heroes home after the endurance of the trauma of captivity, battle, or torture, however, regardless of individual circumstances that make an individual a modern hero, the main characteristics such as courage and selflessness to risk one’s life for a more significant cause in modern (Arrington, 2010).
However, Greek and Roman epics have a close relationship between death and heroism for different reasons. In contrast to modern heroes, death is a crucial element in the definition of heroes in ancient Greece and Rome. Roman and Greek heroes are not defined by what they did during their lifetimes or who they were in their lifetime but rather by their ability to continue existing beyond death. Some people were revered as objects of devotion and receivers of animal sacrifice after they died, beginning in the Archaic period. Typically, the worshiper-hero relationship was built through ritual, and the hero-worshiper bond was seen as mutual, facilitated by a cult. Sacrifices and offerings were used to establish a reciprocal relationship between the dead and the living. Hero cult was, therefore, a highly ritualized type of honoring the dead in the Classical and Archaic periods, viewed as strong individuals who could exercise their influence in the world for varying reasons.
The Romans’ and Greeks’ understanding of death and heroism was based on the ritualized component of the link between the dead and the living in a heroic cult. For all their differences—their acts and rank, their decisions, and their manner of death—all ancient heroes and heroines have one thing in common: they all defy death and become immortal. Heroic myths and rites not only served vital religious roles, but their deaths also offered a sense of visual beauty through the literary and pictorial depictions to which they eventually led (Aartsma, 2018). In the ancient Roman and Greek conception, poetry, death, and heroism were thus closely linked, and being a hero or heroine meant remaining “alive” in historical consciousness. Cultic gestures and artistic representations preserved the hero’s memory, such as statues and vase paintings, poetry and inscriptions, sacrifice, and libations. As a result, heroes had access to an afterlife that regular mortals did not. The distinction was based on personality and uniqueness.
Heroic Death in Epic
War, suicide, murder, illness, accidents, poisons, fire, and old age are all examples of heroic death. Taking up specific situations is a particularly fruitful technique to establishing the notion of heroin antiquity. One of the best examples is the greatest and most ancient of heroes, Achilles, “the best of the Achaeans,” and the hero of the Iliad. The Iliad describes the hero’s fury after Agamemnon, the Greek army’s commander, kidnaps Briseis from Achilles. It spans about forty days of the ten-year warfare, in which Achilles pulls back from battle to anger Agamemnon but reappears to revenge the killing of Patroklos, his best friend, who was slain by the Trojan prince Hektor (Genovese, 1975). Achilles murders Hektor and, astonishingly, mutilates his body in his grief and wrath. The Iliad comes to a close with Achilles and Hektor’s father, Priam, agreeing to return Hektor’s body to his father. The poem’s final lines are about Patroklos’ killer, Hektor, who is known as the “breaker of horses.”
The sack of Troy and Achilles’ death is left untold at the end of the Iliad. Yet, in a genuine sense, the Iliad is about Achilles’ death: the audience, the poet, and the characters in the poem are all aware that Achilles is “short-lived” and that his death is approaching. The poem’s absent center is Achilles’ death, which is implied in nearly every scene displaying the hero and even in a few sections that explicitly do not depict the fair-haired, swift-footed Achilles (Nagy, 2013). Rather than being repulsed by war’s devastation, Homer seemed to enjoy it; his poetry is a poetry of violence. His portrayals of pain and death are unrivaled in their vivid, even ecstatic imagery. Yet, he is always cautious to stress the freshness and beauty of the bodies he wants us to envision being wounded by arrows, swords, or spears.
On the other hand, the death roman epic is a fascinating and varied subject. In ancient Rome, there were no established or enforced beliefs regarding life after death. The widespread belief was that the souls of the dead continued to exist in the hereafter. Throughout Roman poetry, such as Virgil’s The Aeneid, Greek influences and adaptations may be seen (Solmsen, 1968). In this epic poem, the hero Aeneas travels to the underworld, which is modeled after Hades in Greek mythology. Aeneas comes face to face with the dreamlike Fields of Elysium, which house the souls of the blessed, and dismal Tartarus, which houses the souls of the condemned. On the banks of the River Styx, the unburied wait restlessly. Their souls were said to torment the living.
Virgil’s famed inclination to dwell on the victims of Aeneas’ forward narrative drive has lyrical force. These victim narratives are divided into micro and macro units. The death of one of Aeneas’ friends, such as his nurse Caieta at the start of Book 7, is a tiny example. More extended accounts concerning people left behind may be found in Palinurus and Creusa. Their deaths elicit sympathy and are purposefully meant to do so, yet they are clearly portrayed as sacrifices required for the story to progress. We, like Aeneas, experience these losses as readers, but we must accept them in order to continue voyaging/reading.
On the most significant scale, sacrifice narratives take up whole books and sections of epics. The Dido story dominates the first half of the epic, beginning with the arrival of the Trojans in Carthage in Book 1 and concluding with Dido’s reluctance to converse with Aeneas in the underworld in Book 6. Dido is one of the poem’s most notable victims. Her death is directly caused by Aeneas’ need to continue on his predestined path to Italy. Dido is associated with delayed temptresses like Circe and Calypso in Homeric mythology. Her curse on Aeneas is an origin tale for Rome’s tragic and nearly disastrous battle with Carthage in Roman history. In many ways, Dido represents an adversary of Roman development and civilization.
On the other hand, Virgil generates a tremendous deal of sympathy for her, examining her feelings in exquisite detail in some of his most memorable poems. She is, without a doubt, the poem’s most complicated character. Ovid would later say that only the Dido story of the Aeneid is actually read, and St. Augustine would admit that he grieved over Dido. Modern readers have tended to agree with these assessments of Dido’s importance. However, if we want the story to continue and Roman culture to emerge, we must abandon Dido.
In a similar vein, the second part of the Aeneid centers on the figure of Turnus. His prior connection with Lavinia is the catalyst for the war, and he is the central protagonist in the fight with the Trojans that occupies the second part of the epic. His death brings the battle story and the poetry to a close. He’s not a completely unlikable character. Until Allecto takes control of his thinking, he is not prone to be wildly aggressive and confrontational. He is courageous and follows the hero’s code of honor. Of course, Virgil takes great care to provide a solid reason for his death. In contrast to Aeneas’ respectful handling of the murdered Lausus, he killed Pallas without remorse and arrogantly robbed him of his sword belt. However, the ferocity of combat has tested even Aeneas’ sense of moderation at times.
Throughout, the question is not whether or not to use violence but how violence and morality interact. The most troubling problem occurs towards the conclusion of Virgil’s passage, which has sparked heated disagreement among scholars. Aeneas murders Turnus in rage, spurred by “fury”—often an immoral act in the Aeneid’s moral framework (Curtis, 2017). Even more unsettling, the poem ends with no ameliorative or justifying framing. Turnus’ soul goes to the underworld, and the epic ends there. We don’t see any signs of the formation of a peaceful social order, social unification rites, or the beginnings of less contentious interactions between Trojans and Latins, or anything like that. Although readers are allowed to infer such aspects, they must make the decision to do so.
Unlike the remainder of the epic, where the mere fact of a forward plot drive justified by the requirement of divine tended to keep us from persisting too long on any specific selflessness or victimhood, the ending Aeneid lacks such a system: we are left with the raw essence of Aeneas’ violence as a conceptual decree (Genovese, 1975). Not coincidentally, the murder recalls and foreshadows Romulus’ foundational slaying of Remus. We have had ample opportunity to consider, and perhaps embrace, the inextricable link between violence and civilization, warfare, and the creation of the Roman state by the end of the poem. We have the option of refusing or resisting the justifying, teleological impulse that makes Turnus a required victim for the foundation of Lavinium and the merging of the two races; yet, such resistance comes at the cost of negating Roman civilization.
References
Aartsma, M. L. L. (2018). Between Mortals and Immortals.
Arrington, N. T. (2010). Between victory and defeat: framing the fallen warrior in fifth-century Athenian art (Doctoral dissertation, UC Berkeley).
Curtis, L. (2017). War Music: Soundscape and Song in Vergil, Aeneid 9. Vergilius (1959-), 63, 37-62.
Genovese, E. N. (1975). Deaths in the” Aeneid”. Pacific Coast Philology, 22-28.
Nagy, G. (2013). The ancient Greek hero in 24 hours. Harvard University Press.
Solmsen, F. (1968). Greek Ideas of the Hereafter in Virgil’s Roman Epic. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 112(1), 8-14.
