C, there was a definite belief that death is a journey. The person who dies is thought as someone who leaves for a trip. The significance of the idea that the dead go to another world follows the idea that death is neither an end nor the destruction of human existence. Later on in the Homeric times around 700 B.C, this theory provided a path to the concept of a shadowy afterlife peopled by bodiless soul, however the deceased identity still existing. The identity of the dead survives even after death, but is located somewhere far away from the actual world. For the epic poet Homer, in the Odyssey, Homer describes the Underworld, deep beneath the ground, where Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, and his wife, Persephone, reigned over countless drifting crowds of shadowy figures, the “shades” of all those who had died. According to the Homer, "Sleep" was considered the brother of "Death" and dreams were like death, they were part of one's life and were considered as gift from the gods. The Greek word associated with the soul was the psyche, which was a word linked with the word psychein, meaning to blow or breath. The Psyche was breathed into the body at birth and is breathed out at death. The Greeks psyche of Homers era was believed to travel directly to Hades where it exists as a shade. In Homer's epics he states, the dead are "pathetic in their helplessness, inhabiting drafty, echoing halls, deprived of their wits, and …show more content…
According to them, the dying persons and their families used to react to death with mourning and wails, with an intensity that depended on their education, their faith in gods, their cultural background, and the way the lived their life, as well as their personal courage. Grief does not describe the way the dead or the person on their deathbed is when alive, but instead, describes the way things are after the departure of the deceased and the difference that the deceased absence makes. Death by itself is a living experience of people left behind, and the person who died survived in the loved ones mind through the deceased absence. Mourning, or terminologically marked as “lamenting”, is an expression of sadness through melodic contact with the decrease and the world of the deceased. Bereavement and mourning manifestations were especially clear in the women through lamentation in the Greek culture. Lamentation is the ritual mourning of the dead through a group rather than individual voicing and physical display of grief, usually over the corpse, prior to burying or cremation (Bryant & Peck, 2009). Lamenting implies the moment of departure of the deceased from the living members of the community and is understand as mediation process through which constant contact between the two worlds can be created (Ogden, 2007). In ancient Greece, the ritual displays of grief were both private and public