RELG244

(Death and the Afterlife in the Ancient World) This course is designed to explore the philosophical and mythological traditions surrounding dying and rising in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. Looking at various philosophical traditions (the Platonists, Stoics, and Epicureans), creative fictions (the Odyssey and the Aeneid), and ritual/mystical preparations (particularly in Mystery Cults, ancient Judaism, and early Christianity), we will explore not only the ways in which these ancient peoples imagined the next world, but how they prepared for it, at times so comprehensively that they offered literal passwords and road maps to the land of the dead! The course will focus on the complex interplay between the religious and philosophical traditions of antiquity, the ancient roots of two of the major religions of today (Judaism and Christianity), and the ways in which imagining life after death evolves and adapts over time. No prerequisites.