Crafting Heroic Blessedness through Underworld Scenes

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 4 examines the use of Underworld scenes to promote the increasingly dominant vision of a sentient afterlife with persistent identity and status across the life–death barrier. Early fifth-century bce poetry begins to privilege Underworld scenes with a tripartite hierarchy based on the idea of “blessedness.” In this view, a “negative” afterlife no longer meant one lacking awareness but rather one of punishment, while a “positive” afterlife held promises of reward with a special section reserved for heroes. This chapter explores how epinician poetry and mystery cults use Underworld scenes and different terms for “blessed” (e.g., olbios/makar) to heroize patrons and initiates, respectively. By using initiation and excellence in aristocratic competition or patronage as the criteria for access to a blessed afterlife, Underworld scenes in Pindar, Bacchylides, and the Orphic Gold Tablets reject the egalitarian afterlife of Homer’s Nekuia and begin to make heroic kleos and afterlife rewards accessible to regular individuals.