GREEK WOMEN AND DEATH, ANCIENT

1
AND MODERN: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

EVY JOHANNE HÅLAND

Abstract
The central theme of this article is women’s role in connection with the
cult of the dead in ancient and modern Greece. The research will be based
on studies in ancient history combined with my own fieldwork and
anthropological analysis of today’s Mediterranean societies. Assuming
that death-rituals have a focal and lasting importance, and reflect the
gender relations within a society, the institutions surrounding death may
function as a critical vantage point from which to view society. I base my
comparison on certain religious festivals, which are dedicated to deceased
persons and on other death-rituals. Using laments, burials and the ensuing
memorial rituals, I will analyse the relationship between the death cult2
dedicated to deceased mediators in both ancient and modern society. I
assume the official ideological rituals are influenced by the domestic
rituals people perform for their own dead, and vice versa, that the modern
domestic rituals simultaneously reflect the public performances. As this
cult has many parallels with the ancient official cult, the question will be:
Can an analysis of the modern public and domestic rituals in combination
with ancient sources tell us more about the ancient death cult as a whole?
What can such an analysis tell us about the relationship between the
domestic death cult and the official? Since the practical performance of the
domestic rituals is and was in the hands of women, it is of focal
importance to discover what their influence is and was and hence, to
illuminate the real power relations between women and men. Thus, this
research makes a new contribution to earlier presentations of the Greek
“reality”, but mainly from the female perspective, which is significant
since men produced most of the ancient sources.

1
This article is part of a larger research project.
2
The term death cult is discussed infra.
 Evy Johanne Håland 35

This means that the principal objective for the endeavour is to question
the ways in which history has been written through the ages, to
supplement a male with a female perspective, perhaps complementing an
Olympian Zeus with a Chthonic Mother Earth. The research aims to bring
ancient and modern worlds into mutual illumination, and has thus
relevance beyond the Greek context both in time and space.

Festivals and Rituals connected with Death

In my doctoral thesis in Greek history, Greek Festivals, Modern and
Ancient: A Comparison of Female and Male Values, from 2004, the main
focus was on fertility cult. This new research draws on the same
methodology, i.e. using modern in conjunction with ancient sources,
however, here I focus on the death cult.

Figure 2. The “9th day’s ritual of the Panagia (the Virgin Mary)” starts on the eve
of 23rd August, Tinos island, 1995. Photo: Evy Johanne Håland.

Among the modern festivals I analyse in my doctoral thesis, we find the

two most important Pan-Hellenic death-festivals. As the important ritual
celebrated on 15th August, is called Ē Koimēsis tēs Theotokou (i.e. the
Dormition of the Mother of God), the Greek name of the festival already
36 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

suggests the death perspective. The Virgin’s death or “Dormition” is

followed by her burial or the “9th day’s ritual of the Panagia” on 23rd
August, thus, reflecting ordinary death-rituals and the following memorial
service (Fig. 2).
We encounter the same phenomenon in the Orthodox Easter festival,
dedicated to the “Death and Resurrection of Christ”. Also, among the
ancient festivals, we encounter two festivals that are particularly connected
with death cult, the Adōnia, dedicated to the vegetation god Adonis, and
the Dionysian Anthesteria which was also the festival of the ancestors,
when the spirits of dead returned temporarily.
Death-rituals are first and foremost “rites de passage”, and the Greek
death-rituals very often seem quite foreign, bizarre and “exotic” to people
from the North of Europe and the U.S. The difference between a familiar
“us” and an exotic “them” is a central barrier to achieving a meaningful
understanding of the world of the Other. The actual obstacle, however, can
be overcome if we are willing to participate in the world of the Other.3
This can be done through fieldwork.

Bridging a Cultural Divide to Situate the Context

How is it possible to make a comparison between religious rituals in
modern and ancient Greece, despite a gap of two millennia between the
two cultures? Ancient and modern rural Greece represent two peasant
societies, inhabiting the same landscape, with the same climate and almost
the same technological level. The two societies demonstrate strong
similarities in culture, social organisation and folk religion which relate to
the economic base of the community—agriculture.4 These are important
factors in the recent debates about Mediterranean Studies as a discipline.5
The analogy between the ancient and modern Greek farmers is not far-
fetched.6 Several scholars have also argued for the value of using
“Mediterranean anthropology” comparatively to try to present a more
accurate picture of ancient society based on a broader understanding of the

3
Cf. Danforth 1982: 5.
4
Håland 2005, cf. 2007.
5
Cf. Horden and Purcell 2000; Harris 2005.
6
The survival of values and beliefs, even though new normative religions have
been introduced and the close relationship between the official Orthodox religion
and popular religion, particularly in the rural parts of Greece, is further discussed
in Håland 2005, 2007: ch. 3.
 Evy Johanne Håland 37

context where the ancient sources were formulated.7 The main reasons for
using anthropological results comparatively in reading ancient sources are
the similarities of certain cultural patterns and social values found in the
same geographical area. There are, of course, numerous local differences
within the Mediterranean area, but the point is that certain cultural
patterns, such as honour and shame,8 recur across the many nationalities,
languages and religious groupings from Portugal in the west to Iraq in the
east.9 Several of the same patterns may also be found in Africa, but
particularly in the Mediterranean regions. The variations that occur are
variations on a theme. One of the actual themes is the death cult. The
differentiated spheres and roles of men and women are other important
cultural themes. We find the prevalence of “honour” as a social value, and
the ways people in the actual area solve their conflicts are very similar in
Homer and in the vendetta cultures in the contemporary Balkans as well as
in other specific regions of the Mediterranean, where people still practise
blood feuds. Certain deep premises about social life, widely shared in the
area, can be used to frame and illuminate ancient texts, bringing out their
unspoken assumptions. This way of interpreting the material does not
necessarily presuppose an organic continuity between ancient and modern
Greece, and recognition of historical discontinuity in many areas
(including changes both in the institutional and economic contexts) should
not exclude comparative and genealogical analysis.10
In addition to the application of results from Mediterranean
anthropology generally, it is important to conduct fieldwork among
women in contemporary Greece and compare the results with ancient
material, as I did in my doctoral thesis.11 There, I argue for the importance
of changing our approach when working with ancient culture. Taking

7
The problems and fruitfulness of working with anthropological comparative
approaches (such as using material from modern Mediterranean and particularly
Greek civilization as models) to ancient society are examined further in my
doctoral thesis, see Håland forthcoming, for a shorter version, cf. also Winkler
1990; Holst-Warhaft 1992; Esler 1994 versus Pomeroy 1998.
8
Cf. Peristiany 1966; Gilmore 1987.
9
See however several publications, particularly by Herzfeld, such as 1980, 1984,
1992. These and others are discussed in Håland 2007: ch. 2.
10
Cf. Seremetakis 1991: 11.
11
Generally, scholars who use modern material comparatively with ancient
sources, do not carry out fieldwork, but rely on anthropological reports of
traditional Mediterranean societies, for example, Cohen 1991; Walcot 1999, cf.
also n.7 supra. Conversely, and with few exceptions (such as Papamichael 1975),
Greek scholars who carry out fieldwork, do not use ancient sources, but rely on
secondary literature, cf. Håland 2007: ch. 2-4 for discussion.
38 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

account of the female sphere in Greece provides us with a basis for

considering the female part of society as a whole. In order to do so,
however, the official male perspective, which is similar to the Western
male perspective generally applied within Greek studies, has to be
deconstructed.

Situating the Gendered Values: From the Honour

of Masculinity toward a Poetics of Womanhood
What did ancient Greek people think about women and death? Many
studies have been occupied with the role of women in ancient Greece. It
should be stated that when we talk about ancient Greek culture’s
appreciation of women, we must unfortunately rely mainly on the opinion
we find in the male-produced sources of the culture, written as well as
visual, since most of our sources are created by men. Almost all of the
female individuals are presented through what others, i.e. the male authors
of our sources say about them. This means that we possess only half of the
story. Is it possible to amend this drawback and if so, how? Is it possible to
learn something about women through men’s descriptions?
The way ancient male authors of sources, such as Hesiod, Aristotle,
Plutarch and late-antique Christian writers, consider women and their
behaviour is strikingly similar to the modern Greek and Mediterranean
ideology connected with “honour and shame”, which reflects conventional
male values.12 According to these values, gender relations in society are
spatially divided, and the most characteristic aspect of the code seems to
be the association of these concepts with gender roles, power and
sexuality. Representing the ideal of a patriarchal ideology, these values are
reproduced by fieldworkers who are introduced to them by their own
informants, most often males. The works of these male and often female
ethnographers have been used by several scholars working with ancient
women, such as Peter Walcot who compares the modern and ancient
material.13 These male values are also strikingly similar to the values
found in the works written by most of the Western scholars who describe
ancient Greek women, and who take a more cautious view of comparisons
with the modern Mediterranean material, such as Sarah B. Pomeroy.14 The
ancient sources Pomeroy uses, are all written by men, and they have the
same principal view: They are males who subscribe to the same

12
Cf. Gilmore 1987.
13
Walcot 1970, 1999.
14
Pomeroy 1998: 9 f.
 Evy Johanne Håland 39

androcentric ideology connected with “honour and shame”. Although

Pomeroy is cautious about using modern material comparatively, one may
argue that her presentation suggests that the entire culture can be reduced
to these two values.15 Thus, by taking the statements of ancient male
authors of sources about women literally, as she does, I do not think it is
possible to find out about “flesh-and-blood women in the ancient world”,
as she attempts to do. She is in fact, and probably unconsciously, adopting
the male Western ethnographic researcher’s reading of the Mediterranean
sources by her one-sided presentation of the ancient male-produced
sources and their values. These sources should be compared with modern
Mediterranean reality from a female perspective, to see if the extremely
negative bias could be nuanced or changed. Even if Greek women may
subscribe to the male ideological model of “honour and shame”, they have
their own values in addition to, or running contrary to the male view,
depending on how the male view suits their own thinking. Ancient sources
written by men often criticise women’s “female knowledge”. Male
authored texts describe women as having roles different than those of men,
as reacting to war and family crises differently than men; ancient medical
texts grant women a very different biology and recognize that women have
medical problems that men do not have. What is obviously difficult to
discern from ancient texts is women’s understanding of those roles
attributed to them by men simply because women experience the world
differently from men. Based on the values of modern Greek women, this
understanding may be called a poetics of womanhood,16 the point of which
is to show how to be good at being a woman, for example when
performing fertility-rituals in agricultural or procreation contexts, using
magic in healing contexts, or nursing children. Modern and ancient women
have the same symbolic categories, and they may draw on a range of
cultural materials when performing their womanhood, such as the
meanings related to the female body, motherhood, sexuality and to
women’s general activities in the religious sphere. Among important ways
of manifesting “a poetics of womanhood” are through “emotion and
suffering”, “female ways”, “the power of woman in the maintenance of
society”. In reality, these performances are difficult to manifest in the
context of “honour and shame”, since this code claims that women’s roles
generally are domestic, “private” and unofficial; their identity is less

15
Apart from one comment (Pomeroy 1998: 10), she does not discuss the modern
values, but the way she presents the ancient sources written by men, is very similar
to, for example, Walcot 1999. There are however, other non-related cultural values
that have also endured, cf. supra, see also infra.
16
Cf. Dubisch 1995: ch. 10.
40 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

problematic and not earned or actively demonstrated and they are not
engaged in the sort of public struggles their men-folk are. The very idea of
a public “performance” of women seems antithetical to the cultural male
rules for appropriate female behaviour. The reality, however, is far from
the male wishful thinking, since women “perform” womanhood,
sometimes in very public ways, for example during festivals and funerals.
I have located two contradictory views in ancient and modern male-
produced sources. By comparing them with the few sources we possess
from ancient women and the values found in present-day society’s female
sphere, I have realized that the actual contradictory views present one
value-system connected with the female sphere and another connected
with the male sphere.

Women
Greek religious festivals are most commonly dedicated to one or
another dead person, or, in the case of the ancient festivals, to a dead
person together with a god (dess), often a vegetation god (dess).
Accordingly, these festivals illustrate the importance of popular beliefs
connected with fertility cult, death cult and healing for the preservation of
the official ideology, in ancient and modern society.17 The three cults are
connected with the female sphere.
I have realized the importance of conducting further research into the
relationship between the cults which are fundamental in the festivals and
the persons who are the practical performers of the rituals connected with
the different cults: women.
The cyclical perspective is central in connection with the festivals,
since they follow a ritual calendar where celebrations are performed in
connection with important phases of the agricultural year. The fertility
perspective shows how peoples’ values are manifested through religious
festivals, and how the fertility-festivals are the foundation on which the
official male value-system is based. Belief in fertility-rituals is common to
ancient and modern society, and these rituals are connected with women.
They are the most competent performers of the rituals connected with the
promotion of fertility in society, and their knowledge of fertility magic
means that they also have the power to prevent fertility. The female rituals
were of great importance in promoting the fertility of the ancient polis
(city-state), and they are still of focal importance in Greek society. Male-
dominated rituals are connected with the official male sphere and in

17
Cf. Håland 2007: ch. 6, forthcoming.
 Evy Johanne Håland 41

ancient Athens the relationship between the two was demonstrated with
the Thesmophoria, a gathering of women to ensure fertility: If an
Assembly was to be held, during the days this female festival was
celebrated, it was held not on the Pnyx, its normal setting, but in the
theatre.18 So, the women’s higher duties to Demeter and her grain
displaced the men’s political business. The celebrations of the Demetrian
festivals were an important way of demonstrating how to “be good at
being a woman”, since their collective performance of the rituals ensured
fertility for the community. We find the same picture with other festivals
as well. The Panathenaia was the most important ideological festival in
classical Athens. In the same way as this festival of All the Athenians was
celebrated through the protecting city goddess on the Acropolis, the
Panagia protects present-day’s Greeks: their national celebration, the
“Day of Military Strength”, coincides with the Dormition of the Virgin on
the Aegean island of Tinos. In both festivals, fertility-rituals performed by
women are of focal importance. In rituals connected with the life-cycle
passages, such as birth and marriage, we find the same relationship in
ancient and modern Greek society. Men are the performers of the public
rituals, but the point is that these rituals cannot take place before the
“women-dominated” rituals have finished: The official rituals where men
are agents cannot be performed before women have done the preliminary
work, and thus manifested their “poetics of womanhood”. How does this
relate to Greek women and death?
Throughout ancient Greek history customs related to women’s rituals
in the sphere of the death cult were condemned. Therefore, it is important
to continue research into the relationship between official male ideological
values demonstrated in the statements of archaic legislators, the writings
of the tragedians, followed by those of Plato, Plutarch and later accounts
of the Church Fathers such as John Chrysostom and the accounts of
popular customs often condemned by the same authors, by examining the
meaning of death-rituals to the very people conducting them: women. In
this way, I continue the questioning I started in my doctoral thesis, trying
to offer a new contribution to earlier presentations of ancient society,
which was populated by both men and women. It is necessary to examine
the sources from new perspectives, “non-traditional” or “non-male” values
included, and thus avoid a continual “serial production” of one-sided
presentations of the Greek “reality”. It is important to analyse ancient
society in its specific historical, cultural and thereby geographical context,

18
See Winkler 1990: 194 for IG II² 1006.50-51, cf. Xen. Hell. 5.2,29; Håland
2007: ch. 5-6.
42 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

i.e. its Mediterranean environment. Further, in relation to gender,

behaviour, emotions, gestures and rituals are important, and these all-
important Mediterranean ways of expression—illustrated by, for example
death-rituals—are usually unknown to persons from the North of Europe
and the U.S. Nevertheless, in the Mediterranean environment this “body
language”, i.e. ritual or performative mode of communication is as
important as the verbal communication. From a male perspective it has
been termed a “non-verbal” or “inarticulate” mode of communication, and
often connected with women. If an important condition for the
development of the Athenian Democracy and later of the Byzantine
Empire was the “appropriation” or “the fascination” of the female, while
simultaneously attempting to subjugate women, as female researchers
have claimed,19 it is important to continue questioning how this came
about, whether it did indeed happen, or whether we can point to further
examples of important “women-dominated” rituals. In short, what is the
nature of Greek “reality” when approached from a new angle, where an
appreciation of the “poetics of womanhood” is central?
What is necessary then, is to make an investigation into the other main
cult derived from the festivals as well, death cult and its connection to the
female and male spheres, as it “can be read” from a comparison between
ancient statements and present-day’s reality.

Death Cult
In the Greek cultural environment, the death cult combines the cult of
dead family-members and “great persons” through dedications of offerings
and the performance of prayers at their tombs. Both the cult of newly
deceased persons and formerly dead heroes or heroines bear witness to a
death cult.20

19
Loraux 1981, 1989, cf. Holst-Warhaft 1992, 2000.
20
Accordingly, I do not follow Ekroth 1999, who, in her study of sacrificial rituals
questions the view that the rituals of hero-cults are to be considered as originating
in the cult of the dead. Also discussed in Håland 2004: 566. Cf. for example,
Alexiou 1990; Psychogiou 1991. The term “death cult”, is translated from the
Norwegian “dødekult”, cf. Håland 2004, and implies that I am not only dealing
with the usual rituals surrounding death and burial but with a cult of the dead (cult
being the sum of the rituals and beliefs). In my terminology the death cult is
dedicated to dead mediators (to ensure magical intervention, for example in
connection with the crop, i.e. fertility or health), and is broader than the term
ancestor-worship, since the actual cult is not only dedicated to one’s own
forebears. For the cult of the dead, see also Burkert 1985: 190-194.
 Evy Johanne Håland 43

We meet this phenomenon both in ancient and modern Greek society.

The death cult for holy men and women, is apparent in the ancient cult of
heroes, the modern practice of sainthood in Christian areas, the Turkish
Mevlāna, and the marabouts (holy men) in North-Africa, which suggests
that it is related to fundamental beliefs, or long lasting mentalities in the
Mediterranean.21 Ancestor-worship is the worship or propitiation of the
ancestors. Hero or heroine-worship, and the later cult of the saints is the
worship, cult or propitiation of a deceased important man or woman. The
phenomenon called death cult is an important key to most of the religious
festivals in Greece. The reason is that the festivals are often annual
memorials and celebrations dedicated to a deceased guardian of society.
This guardian is a mediator between human beings and the supernatural
within the hierarchical structure that constitute the polytheistic-
polydaimonistic society, in the same way as he or she often functioned
when still alive, within the human society.
The ancient Greeks believed that the various agonistic festivals derived
from commemorations dedicated to great men or women. To mention one
example, the Parparonia festival in Sparta was dedicated to the god, Zeus,
but the festival also needed a hero. We meet the same pattern at the
Panathenaia dedicated to Athena, because death cults both in the Agora
(market place) and on the Acropolis were of major importance in
connection with the cult of the goddess. Traditional scholarship has
focused principally on the cult dedicated to the earth-born
Erichthonios/Erechtheus.22 Nevertheless, several heroines were also
important in connection with the festival, such as Pandrosos and Aglauros.
All the agonistic festivals in ancient Greece had their own hero, because
they were traced back to some mythical death and burial, i.e. festival
games originated as funeral games for heroes. The rituals re-enacted the
ceremonies conducted at the burials and memorial celebrations for a
deceased hero. The same picture emerges when we consider the Pan-
Hellenic festivals and lesser local festivals, although the connections are
more obscure. A putative tomb was a prerequisite for the festival site, and
blood-offerings were made in honour of the heroes at the altar that was of
central importance in the cult of the hero, a person who lived long ago and
was still honoured.23 This dead person was the wielder of a magical

21
For a different position, see Brown 1982: ch. 1. Eickelman 1981: 10-13
discusses the marabout vs. official Islam.
22
Mikalson 1976; Robertson 1992: ch. 8.
23
Cf. Robertson 1992, but his emphasis on the (male) ideological use of the death
cult in ancient society should, in my opinion, be reconsidered. This can be done by
44 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

influence. Like the dead heroines,24 he was also a mediator between even
stronger powers in the underworld, who were responsible for the fruits of
the earth. It was of great importance to manipulate these powers for the
benefit of the living world.
Since this pattern can also be found in the modern religious festivals
dedicated to dead persons, such festivals are connected with a cult of the
dead, and may be referred to as death-festivals. Today, for example,
blood-offerings are still made to the earth via the dead saints, Agios (Saint)
Kōnstantinos and Agia (Saint) Elenē, just before the grain harvest (Fig. 3):

Figure 3. The lamb sacrifice during the Anastenaria festival, in the village of Agia
Elenē (Greek Macedonia), 21st May 1992. Photo: Evy Johanne Håland.

I assume that the official ideological rituals are influenced by the

domestic rituals people perform for their own dead, and vice versa, that the
modern domestic rituals at the same time reflect public performances. As
this cult has many parallels with the official cult of ancient Greece, the
question is: Can an analysis of the rituals, i.e.: the modern public and

a new investigation into the role of women and a consideration of the real
importance of folk beliefs.
24
Paus. 9.17,4-6.
 Evy Johanne Håland 45

domestic rituals in combination with the few scattered sources we have

from ancient Greece tell us more about the ancient death cult as a whole?
The second question derives from the first: What can such an analysis tell
us about the relationship between the domestic death cult and the official?
Since the practical performance of the domestic death-rituals is and was in
the hands of women, it is of crucial importance to figure out how great
their influence is and was and hence their real power within the society as
a whole.25

From Fieldwork in Modern Greece

to Ancient Death-Rituals
With this in mind, it is necessary to conduct a deeper investigation into
the phenomenon called death cult. It is of prime importance to participate
in the rituals myself, i.e. to conduct broader fieldwork into the death-
rituals of modern Greece.26 Since I need to participate in rituals of a very
emotional nature, I need to be accepted into the society. Accordingly, I
will focus my research on Tinos, with which I am already familiar. Death-
rituals, i.e. funerals and the special rites, which are performed in
connection with special commemorative celebrations, are the most
difficult to cope with of the “crises of life”. An ethical problem related to
the research on death-rituals is, of course, the study of people in grief. As
indicated, I will try to bridge this problem by carrying out fieldwork in a
local environment where I am already accepted. I will not attempt to
disguise the location of my field research, although I will use pseudonyms
to protect the identities of the individuals concerned. To do otherwise
would, I think, be a weak attempt to thwart a dialogue between myself,
and by extension the society of which I am a member, and the islanders.
This dialogue is a condition of fieldwork.
The local environment in rural areas of modern Greece represents
living sources. Several modern religious festivals might also be regarded
as valuable sources from a comparative perspective, particularly festivals
dedicated to Christian saints, i.e. holy dead persons or the “very special
dead”. These festivals present ritual similarities to ancient festivals which

25
In other words, I do not agree with the statement of Pomeroy 1998: 16, cf.
1995a.
26
Since 1985, I have had several periods of fieldwork in the Mediterranean,
mainly in Greece and Italy, where I was thought anthropological fieldwork by the
Norwegian social anthropologist Mia Finrud Di Tota.
46 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

were held in the same geographical area, and which were especially
concerned with the death cult.
I focus my research on modern religious festivals on three celebrations,
which I assume can be compared with similar ancient festivals. My
research into modern Greek values connected with death-rituals, begins
with the festival dedicated to the “Day of the Annunciation of the Virgin
Mary” (25th March), as celebrated on the sacred island of Tinos. In the 19th
century this festival was more important than 15th August, the Dormition
of the Virgin Mary, which I have been working on since 1990. The
importance of the “Annunciation-festival” is summed up by two facts: The
dominant symbol of the island, “The miraculous icon of the Annunciation
of the Virgin”, is said to have been made by St Luke, and therefore painted
during Mary’s lifetime, tying it to the very origins of Christianity and to
Mary herself. The icon belongs as much to the March as to the August
festival. Furthermore, this day has both a religious and a national
ideological significance, since 25th March is celebrated as Independence
Day, marking Greece’s liberation from Turkish rule. The Greek name of
the Virgin is Παναγία (Panagia), i.e. the “All-Holy one”, and reminds us
that she is considered the most important intercessor and saint in the Greek
tradition which emphasizes her maternal role as the Mother of God, rather
than her Virginity. As several researchers have demonstrated, there are
further theological differences in the way in which Mary is viewed in the
Orthodox and Catholic churches. According to Jill Dubisch: “In the
Orthodox church, Mary is not seen as immaculately conceived and bodily
assumed into heaven.”27 Accordingly, the Orthodox Church celebrates her
Dormition, rather than her Assumption, and she “does not become a semi-
deified human as in Catholicism”.28
The second festival also takes place on Tinos. This local festival is
celebrated in July and is dedicated to one of the most recent Orthodox
saints, Agia Pelagia, a nun who was sanctified in 1971. After the great
Greek War of Liberation (1821) broke out, the pious nun Pelagia had
several mystical visions which lead to the finding of the miraculous icon
of the Annunciation. According to the tradition, Pelagia repeatedly saw, in
her visions, the Panagia, who ordered her to start digging to find her icon.
In 1823, the icon was unearthed in the field where it had remained for
about 850 years. “Pelagia’s Vision” is celebrated on 23rd July. During the
festival the church housing her skull next to her cell in the monastery of
Kekhrovouno, is particularly important.

27
Dubisch 1995: 236.
28
Dubisch 1995: 236, cf. also Economides 1986.
 Evy Johanne Håland 47

During the last festival, the healing saint Agios Nectarios, is celebrated
on the island of Aegina on 9th November. This festival is considered an
important healing festival dedicated to one of the most recently deceased
saints. It is situated in a geographical area where we can trace a similar
cult back to antiquity. An important ritual during the festival is connected
with a chapel reserved for women only. The chapel is part of the
monastery dedicated to the saint and housing his skull.
All these festivals are dedicated to saints who have the same mystical
powers as the ancient mediators, the heroes29 and heroines. Pausanias, for
example, describes the importance of taking earth from a particular grave
before the grain harvest and laying it on the tumulus of Antiope to ensure
the crop.30 In modern Greece the holy earth from Panagia’s sanctuary on
Tinos is seen as a powerful fertility and healing remedy. The church is also
built on the ruins of a pagan temple of Dionysos.
Assuming that there are some important characteristic aspects
connected with the death cult in Greece, ancient and modern, in spite of
the many historical changes that have occurred, my hypothesis is that
modern rituals as observed in rural Greece today can throw new light
upon, and thereby give a clearer picture of the way ancient people
perceived death and the afterlife. From official modern Pan-Hellenic and
local festivals and private burials combined with ancient sources, mainly
from Attic tragedies (and comedies), funeral orations, poems, inscriptions,
various Hellenistic and late-antique writers, as well as grave stelai,
gravestones and vases,31 the main focus will be on the following aspects:

29
Hdt. 1.67 f.; Plut. Thes. 35 f., cf. also Paus. 3.3,7.
30
Paus. 9.17, 4-6.
31
The term, “Ancient Greece” means that this research is not centred on a
particular time and place, since the central theme is Greek women’s role in
connection with the death cult in pre-Christian Greek society. Because of the
similarity with later rituals, I have reason to believe the time periods within the
pre-Christian epoch can be merged. Nevertheless, the sources are mainly from 5th
century Athens (i.e. “the height of the classical period”). The importance of death
cult is found in several written sources, and there is not space to present all the
material that is of relevance to this research here. Generally, inscriptions describe
cult practice, but literature can give a better feeling for the human atmosphere of
the cult. When necessary, the scholastic sources will also be employed. The most
important literary sources include: the death of Patroclus and Hektor in the Iliad
(Il. 19 and 23 f.) and Odysseus’ visit to the underworld (Od. 11); the classical
tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (for example the representation of
women’s rituals performed at the tomb in Aesch. Cho.); Christian sources, such as
St. Augustine’s Confessions (6.2) in late-antiquity. Among important passages in
other sources are Hes. Op. 654 f.; Hdt. 1.67 f.; Thuc. 2.34-46. The epitaphs and
48 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

To be a deceased mediator, a person must die, be lamented32 and buried.

Afterwards certain memorial rituals must be performed at the tomb,
combined with the offering of more material gifts, in order to obtain
reciprocal benefits. After a certain period the bones have to be exhumed,
and depending on the colour of the bones (their unusual size and sweet
smell also being important evidence of sanctity), as well as on the dead
person’s status or power while still alive, the deceased person may be a
mediator in the literal sense of the word, through this second burial in the
ossuary (where the bones are placed after the exhumation), or in a
mausoleum or church. Both in earlier times and now the living are
dependent on the mediator’s successful communication with other powers
in the subterranean world, to assure the continuity of their own lives
through the fruits of the earth. All death-rituals are twofold: women, who
dominate the domestic sphere, are the performers of the laments;33 men,
the representatives of the official sphere, carry out the burial.34 How
exactly are these tasks and the other rituals related?
Since the death cult is connected with the domestic sphere, where
women are the dominant power, presenting the “female sphere”, from a
female perspective will help us to deconstruct the ancient male sources,
which present persistent male views about women and death.

Women and the Female Sphere

In “patriarchal” Mediterranean society, women are associated with
practical religion. Fertility cult, healing and death cult are deeply
connected with the domestic sphere, where women dominate. The “female
sphere” is essential when studying such personal phenomena as ideologies
and mentalities, represented by religion, behaviour, values, customs, faith,
worship, and popular beliefs. We also discover that what we usually call
“macro-” and “micro-society”, i.e. the “public” and “domestic spheres”,

epigrams collected in the Greek Anthology are especially important, because some
(cf. AP. 7.712, 710) are women’s writings. Several of the poems of Sappho (cf. Fr.
103, 136, 25) are particularly important. Pausanias and Plutarch also have
important passages (as Paus. 1.43,4 f., 8.35,8, 1.36,3) and texts (cf. Plut. Mor.
101f-122a, 608b-612b). The vases, such as the funerary loutrophoroi and lekythoi,
as well as several of the gravestones, grave stelai, funerary plaques and reliefs, also
provide information about rituals, gestures, etc.
32
On laments see Alexiou 1974; Motsios 1995; Psychogiou 2008, cf. Holst-
Warhaft 1992, 2000, see also Caraveli 1986; Foley 1993.
33
Il. 24.710-776, 19.282-302, cf. Eur. Hec. 609-619; Soph. El. 1137 f.
34
Il. 24.785-799; see also Pl. Leg. 947b-e, 958-960; cf. Thuc. 2.34; ABL. 229,59.
 Evy Johanne Håland 49

may, in fact, have different meanings than those generally assumed.35 In

Greece we do not find the “little” society or “only the family” at home;
rather, this is where we meet the “great” society. Hence, it is important to
search out to what extent the official ideology is dependent on these cults,
and so on the female sphere to manifest itself.
The “male sphere” is usually connected with the official world, and the
female with the domestic world, but as stated, this does not imply that the
female sphere is marginal and the male not, as some researchers have
claimed.36 Marginalisation is a spatial metaphor and depends on where
you are standing. This means that the centre in a Greek village can be both
the central village square, “the man’s world”,37 and the kitchen hearth or
courtyard, important spaces that women control. When studying Greek
village life, anthropologists have considered the two spheres of male and
female importance in terms of “public” and “private”, home and outside
home, i.e. equivalents to the ancient polis (“male club”) and oikos
(household). There are however, public spaces where women dominate.
One of these is the cemetery (Fig. 4).38 When working with this material,
one realizes that the division between female and male spheres in Greek
society may, under certain circumstances, be blurred. The world of the
domestic and familial or the world of women, the female sphere, covers a
more extended area and has greater power than has generally been
assumed.
Generally, Greek women and their lives have been analysed from a
Western male perspective. Based on this approach, both ancient and

35
For example by Pomeroy 1995b: ch. 5, 1998: ch. 1; Osborne 1994: 81-96. Also
Bourdieu 1980: ch. 3, defines women as “private” (and powerless) and men as
“public” (and powerful). Cf. Håland 2007: ch. 1 and 6 for discussion of these and
other references.
36
For example Danforth 1982: 136 f., also cited by Pomeroy 1998. The main
problem with Danforth’s analysis is that he sees the Greek world from the male
sphere, i.e. a modern counterpart of ancient male writers? Yet, the ancient male
writers and Danforth’s informants were reared in the female sphere and have
childhood experiences (even if these often are distorted in an adult male context,
where social identity among men is important, cf. Gilmore 1987: 14 f.;
McAuslan/Walcot 1996) that Danforth does not have. According to Seremetakis
1991: 13, the problems with Danforth’s analysis, derives from his reading of Greek
death-rites, a reading, which relies on Greek Orthodox liturgy. I agree, but I think
the problem with his reading is also that he, as a male ethnographer, has no
possibility of carrying out fieldwork in the female sphere.
37
Cf. Ar. Eccl. 154 f. for a parallel.
38
Cf. Holst-Warhaft 1992: 52 f., see also for example Dubisch 1986: for a revision
of the traditional anthropological examinations of the female sphere.
50 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

modern Greek women have been categorized as lacking freedom,

dependent, secluded and not living a full life. Accounts of women written
by men, and by many academic women, portray them as passive or
subservient.39 But, if the goal is to conduct research from the female
sphere in Greece, the picture may be different, since Greek women may
have other values.40 In this way, we may gain new perspectives on our
ancient texts as well.

Figure 4. A “female sphere” in a public space: the cemetery, a space controlled by

women, Tinos, a Saturday morning, August 1994. Photo: Evy Johanne Håland.

Since the death cult is first and foremost associated with the female
sphere and this researcher is a woman who continues her “wanderings”

39
See for example, Machin 1983: 107-126; Walcot 1999: 163-183. These and
other references are discussed at length in Håland 2007, particularly pp. 28-30,
332-356, 401-469.
40
Even if several female researchers (as Seremetakis 1991) have carried out
fieldwork in the female sphere (cf. n.36 supra), one may claim that they do not
focus adequately on women’s values, as they are still influenced by Western male
ideological values, and read their material from a male perspective (this also
relates to Seremetakis 1993: 22 f.n.17, cf. 24n.22 discussed in Håland 2007: 462),
cf. therefore Dubisch 1995, who unfortunately only work with modern Greek
society.
 Evy Johanne Håland 51

both in the “female” and “male” sphere in modern Greece, while

conducting parallel research on ancient sources, mainly written by men,
hence making a comparative analysis between the modern and ancient
material, I hope my researches may be a contribution to a female
perspective on ancient texts.
In Greece, women are connected with birth, nurturance and the care of
the dead; they are nurturing mothers, and by their activities as care-takers
they manage and control the fundamental course of life. Many symbols
and rituals in the festivals illustrate this and are regarded as belonging to
the female domain. By analysing the death cult then, it is possible to gain
further insight into the meaning and importance of the customs and values
related to fundamental principles within the “ideological entirety” that
constitutes a festival, and into male texts, since their interest and theme is
the male ideology. They must therefore be deconstructed and considered
from a gyno-inclusive perspective by examining them in conjunction with
information from the female sphere.
Women in Greece have a double consciousness about their own
existence and about men’s representations of it. Therefore, it is of vital
importance to conduct fieldwork among women and men when working
with ancient sources, since they with very few exceptions are written by
men, and the goal is to represent a complete and not a lame and partial
society. Thus, it is important to compare the male- and very few female-
produced ancient sources41 with information collected from the modern
female and male spheres: Is the information found in the few sources
produced by women consistent with the information given by ancient and
modern men, or are these sources more in accordance with the information
given by modern women, for example in relation to rituals performed at
the cemetery? How should we, for instance, understand relevant passages
from the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer;42 the Libation-Bearers of
Aeschylus; a funeral law from the late 5th century BCE, which is a copy of
an earlier Athenian law, and passages from Plutarch’s Life of Solon,43 if
these passages are compared with for example the epitaph from the mother
of Thersis;44 fragments from Sappho and the modern reality? To give three
ancient examples: Sappho says: “The delicate Adonis is dying, Cythera;
what can we do? Beat your breasts, maidens, and rend your garments.”45
According to Plutarch, on the other hand: “Mourning is verily womanish,

41
Cf. n.31 supra.
42
Such as Il. 24.93 f.
43
Plut. Sol. 12.4 f., 21.4 f.; SIG³1218; Aesch. Cho. 22-31, 324-339, 456–461.
44
AP. 7.649.
45
Sappho. Fr. 103.
52 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

and weak, and ignoble, since women are more given to it than men, and
barbarians more than Greeks, and inferior men more than better
men;….”46 Finally, an epigram from Anyte (3rd century BCE) tells us that:
“On this her daughter’s tomb, Cleina could not stop crying bitterly for her
short-lived child, calling to the soul of Philaenis, who crossed Death’s pale
joyless river before her wedding day.”47 How will male-produced texts’
often critical and simultaneously paradoxical information about women
carrying out rituals in connection with death48 be understood from a
female perspective?

Figure 5. Written moirologia and pictures of recently deceased are attached to the
Epitaphios (Christ’s funeral). A woman crawls under the Epitaphios to ensure her
health in the coming year. Good Friday in the church of Olympos, Karpathos
island, 1992. Photo: Evy Johanne Håland.

Because of women’s communication with the deceased, they are

regarded as mediators between the world of the dead and that of the living,
in several places in Europe and the Middle East.49 Women’s mourning
rituals, particularly their laments, were and are an essential part of Greek
death-rituals, and the public performance of lament is regarded as essential

46
Plut. Mor. 113a.
47
AP. 7.486, translated by Sally Purcell.
48
Cf. also Plut. Mor. 608b-612b.
49
See, for example, Abu-Lughod 1993.
 Evy Johanne Håland 53

in modern Greece: Without it, death is silent and unmarked for the
deceased. The modern Greek word for lament, moiroloi, appears first in
the Life of Alexander attributed to Pseudo-Kallisthenes (c. 300 BCE).50 In
the modern village of Olympos on the island of Karpathos, a woman
would explain the written letters attached to the Epitaphios, on Good
Friday as moirologia, laments written in memory of the dead (Fig. 5). The
written laments are accompanied with pictures of the actual recently
deceased. When the men leave the church after the official service, the
women start their own ritual lament in front of the Epitaphios, while
tearing their loosened hair.51 But, they are not lamenting Christ; they are
lamenting their own dead family-members, particularly those who died
most recently, and who are represented in the pictures. In the village of
Olympos, in 1992, the priest’s wife in particular, was intensely lamenting
in front of the picture of her brother (Fig. 6) who had been found lifeless
on the beach some days before Easter.52

Figure 6. Lamenting women in front of the Epitaphios, Good Friday in the church
of Olympos, Karpathos island, 1992. Photo: Evy Johanne Håland.

50
Holst-Warhaft 1992: 40, see also 35-37 for lament and memory.
51
Toledo 1991: Fig.
52
Håland 2007: ch. 4.
54 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

In October 1992, 34 women were sitting around the coffin of the dead high
school teacher Kōnstantinos Nik. Poilantzas in his home of childhood in
the village of Pyrgos Dirou, Mani (Peloponnese). The lamenting women
were lead by the widow of the deceased, who sang about his life from
childhood to his death. The laments lasted the whole night until 3 o’clock
the following afternoon. The women were supposed to finish their ritual
when the priests arrived, but they continued their lamentation, as if
nothing happened, and the priests had to wait in the yard, until they
finished their ritual. Later, during the official service in the church, the
priest’s ritual sermon was followed by a number of men performing
orations over the dead person, talking about his public life, and
particularly about all the donations he had given to the church.53
The lament is a female response to death, but it also embodies the
relationship of the society to death, and is, by consequence, fundamental to
life.54 Lamenters are responsible for keeping the memory of the deceased
alive. It is also by way of laments that heroic ancestors are kept alive. For
example, Alexander the Great, one of the alleged glorious ancestors of the
Greeks as well as of the other Europeans, is kept alive through laments.
As I have indicated, the condemnation of the practice of female
lamentation in modern, Byzantine and ancient Greek literary sources has
been well documented.55 Nevertheless, these condemnations by male
authors of ancient sources, the Orthodox Church, and the modern nation-
state need to be re-evaluated, from a critical historical and alternative
female perspective. Since women’s laments and other rituals were
repeatedly banned from the burials in the ancient Greek world,56 the
persistently banning suggests that women were still carrying out their
rituals at the “male-dominated” burials. Although the modern church is
critical of women’s laments, my own experiences from Mani, demonstrate
that the women are still able to obstruct the priest’s service with their own
laments. I have also observed lamenting women in the burial procession
headed by a priest at the 1st Cemetery in modern Athens. By comparing
the modern cases with ancient sources written by men, we learn that
women’s laments were not necessarily eliminated by the bans imposed on
them in written texts, either in the ancient or in the Byzantine periods.
Ancient laws also placed a ban on women’s memorial services for the
dead, including offerings of food and other gifts to the dead.57 Other

53
Håland 2004: 571-575.
54
Holst-Warhaft 1992: 10.
55
Alexiou 1974; Loraux 1990; Holst-Warhaft 1992; 2000.
56
Plut. Sol. 21.4 f., cf. 12.5; SIG³ 1218; Pl. Leg. 947b, 960a.
57
SIG³ 1218.
 Evy Johanne Håland 55

written texts, as well as vases58 and similar modern memorial rituals,

demonstrate another reality. Therefore, attention also has to be paid to
these aspects of the Greek death cult which also are important, such as the
meals on the tombs, their ingredients, or the memorial rituals following the
burial, with gifts, days dedicated to the dead and to various symbols such
as statues, pictures/photographs or the bones of the deceased.
The female body provides a significant source for social symbolism: It
plays an important role in the “poetics of womanhood”, because bodies
have social meanings that may be used in public performances. In Greece,
the female body both creates and represents the family and social relations
in a variety of contexts. By wearing black mourning clothes when a family
member dies, women become highly visible symbols of mourning, thus of
the kinship relations between the deceased and the living. This importance
of the women’s black mourning clothes is stated in ancient traditional
sources from Homer, but is criticized by Plutarch.59 Complaints about
suffering are especially expressed by women lamenting their dead, both
during and after the washing, anointing and dressing of the corpse in clean
robes. Women also suffer in pilgrimage. But we encounter the same
complaints in relation to problems of everyday life, since they call
attention to what women must endure in order to carry out their roles as
wives and mothers. All these examples are part of the available “cultural
material” upon which women may draw for the creation of the “poetics of
womanhood”. Suffering as expressed through verbal complaint, the body,
ritual actions, is an expression of social identity among women. Sappho
illustrates this.60
The idiom of suffering is particularly important in the context of
women’s roles. For many women, the points of both tension and fulfilment
centre around motherhood and familial responsibilities. Particularly for
women, the body plays an important role in these expressions of suffering,
whether it is through the wearing of black mourning clothes, or the many
expressions of the ways women suffer in the process of bodily
reproduction.61 In modern Greece we find the verb ponō, meaning to
suffer or feeling pain. Suffering or feeling pain is one of the important
ways of expressing the “poetics of womanhood”. In ancient society, ponos
described motherly suffering generally.62 The same word signifies a
woman in labour. In contemporary Greece, a woman makes a public

58
ARV 746,4, 748,1, 845,168; for texts, see for example Aesch. Cho. 129 f.
59
Plut. Mor. 608f4. See however, Il. 24.93.
60
See supra for Sappho. Fr. 103.
61
Dubisch 1995: ch. 10.
62
Plut. Mor. 496de, cf. 771b; Sappho. Fr. 42, cf. 28, 118B.
56 Greek Women and Death, Ancient and Modern

performance when crawling on her knees to the church with a sick child
on her back in the hope of healing it, but the action takes validity through
the sacrifice and suffering of the self on behalf of others. Through her
maternal role, the mother’s own body is repeatedly offered as a sacrifice,
and this sacrifice may be dramatized in women’s pilgrimage to the shrine
dedicated to the Annunciation of the Panagia at Tinos.
In Greece, a suffering mother may give public performances of “being
good at being a woman”. Her “public” audience are usually other women,
who share her “public” space, interests and value-system, and therefore are
interested in competing with her performance of “being good at being a
woman”. This is true in other respects, when women display their skills, at
home or publicly on “their tombs” at the memorials at the cemetery, when
washing the tombs and displaying their cooking abilities through the
sumptuous cakes offered. These women may be compared with the
women who visited their memorials on ancient vase-paintings.63 In fact,
many aspects of a woman’s housewifely abilities may be publicly
displayed. Their cleaning-abilities are for example displayed when
washing their tombs at the cemetery every Saturday morning.64 Women
seek to outdo each other in “being good at being a woman”. Their “public”
audience, competitors and most critical commentators are other women
who share the same value-system and interests. We find the same picture
in ancient society when women dedicated offerings on tombs, displaying
their clothes and other objects competitively and publicly.65 Their desired
audience were not men, but other women who shared their values. Ancient
women going on pilgrimage, celebrating the Thesmophoria and other
female festivals, such as the Adōnia66 were parallels to the modern women
going to Tinos during the Dormition of the Panagia, or lamenting their
dead in front of the Epitaphios.
Greek women are still lamenting their dead, and the importance of the
rituals at the cemeteries are also illustrated by all the shops in front of the
1st Cemetery in Athens as well as by the pastry shops all over Greece,
visited by women every Saturday morning, on their way to the weekly
cleaning of “their” graves, although they generally make the food
themselves. It is also illustrated in Olympos when women rush to the
cemetery carrying with them sweets and cakes to honour the dead on
“New” or “White” Tuesday in the “White Week” after the Resurrection of
Christ. In return, they expect rain and a plentiful harvest. An epigram from

63
ARV 746,4, 845,168, 748,1.
64
As illustrated on Fig. 4, supra.
65
Plut. Sol. 21.4 f., cf. Mor. 142c30.
66
Theoc. Id. 15. Thesmophoria: Plut. Mor. 378e69; pilgrimage: Mor. 253f, 953cd.
 Evy Johanne Håland 57

the Hellenistic period tells about the dead Cleitagoras: being in the world
of mother Earth and Persephone, he asks for flowers, milk and the playing
of pipes. In return he will also give gifts.67 Thus, he is one of the many
examples in an unbroken chain of communication between the dead and
the living, and in this communication the women and their rituals are
central.68
To try to gain a better understanding of ancient society through a
comparison with modern Greek rituals, it is necessary to conduct analysis
on different levels. Modern society must itself be “read” in order to
illuminate ancient society. In addition, ancient society must be analysed
from the relevant sources we possess. Thirdly, a diachronic analysis must
be conducted. The necessity of conducting comparative analysis on all
levels simultaneously is self-evident. In this way modern society can
enlighten ancient society and vice versa.

Acknowledgment
My paper was the final presentation at the seminar, and provoked a
lively discussion. I would like to thank the participants for their valuable
questions and comments. I would particularly like to thank Alexandra
Cuffel and Gail Holst-Warhaft, who also read former versions of this
article, for their useful comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors
are of course my own.

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