Greek-+death

The Greek view of death is complex and has many components. They felt that everyone had a right to a proper burial, so much so that father's begged for there son's body after they were killed in battle. We see the story of Theseus that the Greeks viewed death as the ultimate sacrifice or the ultimate display of grief. Disrupting a funeral was seen as a sin.
 * The Greek View on Death ** by: Matt, Emily and Trevor

The Greek's believed everyone had a right to a proper burial and funeral, and to disrupt them was a major sin. In the play "Antigone," the main character, Antigone, defied a law directly from the king and buried her dead brother. She was distraught when the King refused burial only because her brother Polyneices fought on the other side of a` civil war between princes.

Hercules, in one of the many stories about him, interrupted a friends funeral and got drunk during the funeral. This is a major sin to the Greeks because funerals are seen as the way the dead reach the Underworld. Hercules was so distraught over what he did that he thought "he had been a fool, a drunken fool, when the man he cared for crushed with grief."

The Greek people felt that to deny a loved one the body of a dead relative was one of the most horrid things a person could do because it was believed if they didn't get the proper burial, their spirit would roam the world forever. During the seige of Troy, Achilles and Hector fought eachother over the accidental death of Achilles' friend Patriclus. Achilles defeated and killed Hector, but refused to give him burial. He tied the body to his chariot and dragged it back to the Greek camp. During the night, the Trojan king, Priam (Hector's father), snuck into the enemies camp to beg Achilles to give him the body. Achilles finally relented because he finally saw the terrible thing he did to the royal family.

Lastly, the Greeks veiwed death as the ultimate sacrifice or the ultimate display of grief. In the story of "Theseus and the Minotaur," the young prince, Theseus, promised his father that one the return to his homeland, he would raise a white sail if his survived and killed the minotaur, or a black sail if he was killed. Theseus succeeded, but he forgot to raise the white sail, and "the black sail was seen by his father...It was to him the sign of his son's death and he threw himself down from a rocky height into the sea.

Death was complex and respected by the Greek people. They felt burial, funerals, and giving the body back to the family was of the utmost importance. It was also used to show the pinacle of grief or as an ultimate sacrifice.