Greek afterlife was not all about wailing and lamenting. Some dead (at first some heroes, then some ‘just men’) had the luck of arriving to the ‘Isles of the Blessed’, a sort of terrestrial paradise where there is an eternal spring. Today’s inscription (Smyrne, imperial age) conveys the hopes of a dead man who pictures himself being transported after death in the abodes of the gods, where he acts as cup-bearer at their feast.

Details of the inscription: GVI 1765 = SGO 05/01/64.

The passages quoted are Homer, “Odyssey” 4.562 ff. (transl. Murray revised), Hesiod, “Works and Days”, ll. 170 ff. (transl. Most), Pindar, “Olympics” 2.62 ff. (transl. Race), Aristophanes, “Frogs”, ll. 448 ff. (transl. Henderson). The translation of the inscription is by R. Hunter (‘The measure of Homer’, Cambridge 2018, p. 49).

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