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Myths of Death and the Underworld

assembled by Robin Mitchell-Boyask, Temple University

Homer's Iliad

Sleep and Death bear off« the corpse of Sarpedon, overseen by Hermes (Click on a section of the painting to zoom in)

Homer's Odyssey

• The warning of Tiresias in Hades to Odysseus
  
• Odysseus meets his dead mother
  
• The reply of Agamemon to Odysseus
  
• The reply of Achilles
  

Contrast the picture of Achilles here with two other ancient sources:

• Pindar's vision of Achilles on the Isles of Blessed
  
• The similar speech of Thetis in Euripides' Andromache

Consider also the image of Odysseus after death, as imagined by Plato

Vergil's Aeneid

• The Sibyl's description of the golden bough
  
• Aeneas' discovery of the golden bough
  
• Charon and company
  
• Aeneas meets the shade of Dido. Compare that epsisode to this one from the Odyssey
  
• The reaction of Aeneas to the vision of the afterlife
  
• Anchises' vision of the future
  
• The depature of Aeneas from the Underworld: a vision true or false?

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