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The "Beautiful Death" from Homer to Democratic Athens Nicole Loraux Translated by David M. Pritchard 1. INTRODUCTION From Homer's Iliad to the Athenian funeral oration and beyond, the "beautiful death" was the name that the Greeks used to describe a combatant's death.1 From the world of Achilles to democratic Athens, in the fifth and fourth centuries bc, the warrior's death was a model that concentrated the representations and the values that served as [masculine] norms.2 This should not be a surprise: the Iliad depicts a society at war and, in the [End Page 73] Achaean camp at least, a society of men without children and legitimate wives. Certainly the Athenian polis reversed the traditional combatant-citizen relationship by claiming that one must be, first, a citizen before being a soldier.3 Nevertheless, this polis distinguished itself from others by the splendour of the public funeral for its citizens who had died in war and, especially, by repatriating their mortal remains (Thuc. 2.34). In a society that believed in autochthony, this repatriation was, undoubtedly, significant. Since the beautiful death crystallised the aretē ("courage") of Achilles and Athenians alike, it was, from the outset, linked to speech. Indeed, heroic death and the civic beautiful death were the subject matter of elaborate speech-making. Such a celebratory discourse gave the warrior's death an eternal existence in memory. This discourse gave his death its reality, but, conversely, also took for itself all that was valued in his exploit and claimed to be its truthful expression. In short, the beautiful death was a paradigm. 2. THE LANGUAGE OF THE FUNERAL: THE LIVING'S TREATMENT OF THE DEAD In order to bury their dead, two communities came together: the army of the Achaeans and the Athenian city. The former used two markedly different procedures, depending on whether it was burying the ordinary dead or the elite of the heroes. For the non-elite anonymous dead who had not fallen in the front rank, the army of the Achaeans acted quickly: they washed the dead bodies, removing blood and dust, and built a funeral pyre. Once the cremation was finished, they departed, without, apparently, saying a word (e.g., Il. 7.424-32); for it is certain that the Achaeans, just like the Trojans, abstained from any lamentation before piling the bodies on the pyre (Schnapp-Gourbeillon 1982.79).4 To the living's silence corresponds the silence surrounding the dead, who, as an indistinct cohort, will go and rejoin, in Hades, the nōnumnoi ("the nameless"), that is, the masses who are deprived of glory.5 [End Page 74] In order to bury the heroes, by contrast, whether it be Sarpedon, Hector, or, especially, Patrocles, a ritual was required to which significant time had to be allocated. This funeral accommodated lamentations, a display of the body (prothesis), a banquet, and/or games.6 Next it fell to the poet to celebrate the klea andrōn, namely, the glorious deeds of the heroes. In brief, one did not bury Thersites, if he were to die, as one would Achilles or as one did bury his "other," Patrocles. There was, clearly, one lot for ordinary men and another lot for the heroes. Democratic practice, in contrast to the epic funeral, granted everyone the same honour; for, at Athens, the funeral was collective, as were the tomb and the eulogy. But each citizen still had an individual right to his share of glory and to the eternal memory of his name that was inscribed on the funeral monument. A name, it is true, that was both "abstract" and political: without a patronymic and a demotic, the citizen's name was stripped naked, as it were, and detached from all relationships, such as those in a family or any other group. His name was placed on a list, next to the names of the year's other dead, who were enumerated within the civic framework of the ten Cleisthenic tribes. In this way, democratic egalitarianism was able to integrate the aristocratic value of glory. Some anonymity, certainly, governed this funeral, but it was moderate; for if the remains of the dead, which were...
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