"Reading" Greek Death

This book offers a series of in-depth studies of some aspects of the beliefs, attitudes, and rituals surrounding death in ancient Greece from the Minoan and Mycenean period to the end of the classical age. Drawing on every kind of available evidence - from literary texts to burial customs, inscriptions, and images in art - the author sheds new light on many key, still essentially problematic, aspects of Greek life, myth, and literature: including the world of the dead in Homer; the perceptions associated with grave monuments and articulated in their images and epigrams; the myths of Charon, Hermes, and the journey of death; and the shifting attitudes towards death in a changing society.