ABSTRACT
The quotation opening this chapter is from one of sixteen lamellae (tiny rectangular gold sheets placed along with other grave goods in cinerary urns) dating from the fourth century BCE to (the only Roman example) the third century CE. On them are to be found a kind of guidance for the soul as it seeks to locate itself in its new environment, the underworld, with new companions-and new dangers. The guidance varies in poetic style, but the lines ‘I am the son of Earth/ and of star-filled Heaven, /But from Heaven alone is my house’ and the reference to thirst are clearly formulaic, rather like the standard exculpatory spells to be found in the Egyptian Books of the Dead. On the lamellae the soul is instructed to avoid the oblivion that would arise from over-indulgence in the spring by the cypress, for that spring is Lethe, the waters of forgetfulness, and to turn instead to the lake
of Mnemosyne (Memory), whose waters, the waters of life, will elicit a favourable reception from the lords of the underworld. There are two paths in the underworld, one leading to oblivion, one to ‘life’. The arriving ‘person’ has to make choices: the uncertainty of life, that is, continues after death. A version of the story is told in Plato’s Republic when the soldier Er, dead in battle, returns from the Plain of Oblivion to this world. His return persuades Socrates and Glaucon that there is hope for, but no guarantee of immortality (Plato 1959:387401). If the formulae on the lamellae are correct, then hope lies in the acceptance by Mnemosyne of the dual nature of humanity, ‘Son of Earth and the star-filled Heaven’.
