Katabasis in Myth and Film

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter I noticed that the actions of Demeter where similar to the actions of Odysseus and Athene. After Persephone was taken by Hades to the underworld Demeter, who was in pure distress, disguised herself as an elderly woman. When she met the young girls and later their mother she lied and told them a story of her being a Cretan who had been brought there by pirates. This was very similar to the disguise and story that Odysseus told when he needed to sneak into his household. It was interesting that it was Persephone who was taken into the underworld by Hades, yet the story does not put emphasis on her decent or journey. Instead, the sorrow and days of Demeter are focused on. Demeter creates her own type of hell for the humans and immortals because she deprives the earth of life. It is not until she sees her daughter that Demeter revives the earth saving the people from death and allowing the Gods to receive their gifts and sacrifices. Unlike the Katabasis of other men such as Odysseus, Persephone did not willingly plan or decide that she must take the journey. Instead, she was physically forced and held there by Hades. Also, Persephone did not comeback from her journey through her own methods. Hades, under the order of Zeus allowed her to go back and see Demeter, but not until he made sure she would have to come back. After Hades secretly had her eat a sweet pomegranate seed, Persephone was then in a way chained to the underworld and would have to reenter and remain there for one third of the year. Neither of the women was able to completely control the outcome of their situation. They did not come out of their journeys totally victorious since Persephone would have to go back. Demeter did not actively bring her daughter back from the underworld and Persephone did not fight to come back. Demeter had an influence because her sadness threatened the humans and in turn the Gods causing Zeus to take action and command her daughter’s return. Persephone seemed powerless and vulnerable.

Upon descending into the Underworld, one of the first spirits that Odysseus sees is that of his mother, Antikleia. More than anything else, we know that the love that Odysseus’s mother has for him is extremely strong and pure – the entire reason they meet in the underworld is that she died pining away for him. She, in many ways, represents one of the ideal women in the epic. She is kind, loving to a fault, and does all she can to tell Odysseus of home. There is a bit of resentment as well – she has given up everything, even life, for him, and so when she first sees him in the underworld, it’s something of a slap in the face for her. She chides him by telling him the story of how she suffered and eventually faded away for his sake – it’s only when he explains his reason for being there that she forgives him. As she then tells Odysseus of how it is that she died, she describes him, saying, “your cleverness and gentle ways”  – the word gentle not being something usually used to describe Odysseus.
After she tells him of how she arrived in the underworld, she becomes something of a messenger. He wants news of Ithaca, and she tells him of his father’s current predicament (he has gone crazy missing his son, and now only sleeps in the woods), and the state of affairs back home with his wife and child. Odysseus is also told that his son holds his lands, but that it is a precarious hold – his house is overrun by guests, and feasts and other such things are being held in his absence. The fact that Odysseus is given this information is very important – it allows him to make plans and suppress his desires so that he can achieve his goal of getting home.
The mother also tells him a little bit about what it is like in the underworld. She describes it as a dream-like place, saying, “the body is made subject to the fire’s strong fury” and that “the soul flitters out like a dream and flies away”. (p174, 221-222) It is the most description Homer gives us of what the Underworld is like for a soul that lives there.
More than anything else, meeting his mother in the underworld is a reminder that things have changed back home, and not always for the better.

Homer mentions the haze that builds in the sky which indicates to me that Odysseus has not found a place in his own world where the underworld exists but has instead passed into another spiritual world”.(lpage)

When Homer wrote of Odysseus arriving in the Underworld he explained how the ship came to the “deep-running Ocean” and described how it was “hidden in fog and cloud.” This haze acted like a barrier separating the Underworld. Other descriptions that Homer used to add to the description of this spiritual world included line 15 “nor does Helios, the radiant sun, ever break through the dark, to illuminate them with his shining.” The Underworld, therefore, is portrayed as a spirit world surrounded by rivers, always in darkness or shadow due to the haze, with a diverse landscape. Homer elaborated on the atmosphere by saying in line 19 that “always a glum night is spread over wretched mortals,” but he never fully described the landscape. We are given the impression that the land apparently had a type of soil because Odysseus dug a pit. He, however, was near the shore and therefore we only get glimpses of the rest of the Underworld. The spirits seem to come out of the darkness and following their retreat Odysseus sees Orion in the meadow of asphodel rounding up animals he had killed, Tityos lying in a plain, Tantalos standing in lake water with trees bearing fruit over his head, and Sisyphos on the hill. These features make the Underworld appear like the land where those that are still living reside, but again these are only glimpses Odysseus gets from the outer edge. The inhabitants of the Underworld are not like the living. Those that had passed on needed to drink blood to respond to Odysseus. This ritual of drinking blood was termed by Teiresias to allow them to speak the truth to Odysseus. The spirits were not as they had used to be, but as mentioned in line 219 “the sinews no longer hold the flesh and the bones together, and once the spirit has left the white bones, all the rest of the body is made subject to the fire’s strong fury, but the soul flitters out like a dream and flies away.” So the Underworld is characterized first by the haze and rivers that surround it in darkness. This atmosphere is furthered by Odysseus remaining unknowing about the majority of the world. He saw areas with similar trees and lands, but everything else is kept in mystery. The spirits seem to appear and disappear from and in the darkness and Odysseus is also often fearful of this unknown. The Underworld only resembles his world but is a different spiritual world with unseen unique lands and inhabitants.

In the odyssey, the underworld is depicted as a place set apart from the known world, and beyond its boundaries.  Therefore, along with this depiction comes the idea that the underworld is a place of continuous space.  This idea comes mostly from the description of the underworld.  Most importantly is the fact that Odysseus must sail across the river that encircles the known world of the living and cross into a vast ocean to reach the land of the dead.  The ocean can convey the idea that the body of water has no beginning and no end, meaning that no body of land would either as it is sitting in a realm full of empty space.

Also, once Odysseus reaches the underworld, the only real sense of a landmark we get is that there is a shore.  However, we do not know what lies beyond this shore or for how long the underworld stretches.  It is known that their are certain areas for different kinds of people who arrive in the underworld, but there is no set knowledge of how large or small these places actually are.  After all, the underworld must house all the souls of the day, there is no sense of the christianized heaven or hell, so all souls end up eternally in the underworld.

The underworld is also described as being envelopped in a darkness and a mist all the time.  The image of mist gives the idea that the underworld doesnt seem to have a ceiling or a floor, it just floats in the middle of endless space, and since none know its borders, it may not have any.

Within this mist, there are the ghosts, who also contribute in a sense to the idea that the underworld is a place of no beginning and no end for they seem to have a lifeless existance.  They do not have their memories, unless they drink blood, and therefore they cannot remember the past, or see into the future,  (the only exeption being Teiresias who was allowed to keep his memory).  Further, since the ghosts are there eternally, there is no longer a sense of time felt in the underworld, as most (minus Odysseus) stay there once they arrive.  Eternally invokes the feeling that there was no beginning to time and there will be no end.

The idea of the Underworld is a complex one - in Greek mythology, it seems to have an almost bittersweet feeling. When one thinks of Hades and the Underworld he rules, one generally thinks of barren rock, dripping caves, and black gondolas steered by skeletons wrapped in black cloth. Disney doesn’t help with this impression – anyone who has seen the movie Hercules (a horrible butchering of the tale, yes, but awesome when you’re six or seven) will surely remember the dank, dismal portrayal of the Grecian underworld. (If you have not seen Disney’s version of the Underworld, or want to relive childhood memories, go here and start watching at about 0:57.)

While it is certainly true that the Underworld Homer presents is not exactly the most cheerful of places, it’s not quite as bad as most modern stories seem set on describing as the ‘traditional’ Greek underworld. The place is misty – fog seems to envelope everything – and powerful rivers flow. Circe describes it as the “moldering home of Hades”. However, not all is bad in the Underworld – souls, like “flittering shadows”, roam, some in endless misery, but others wander in rolling pastures of bliss. The Underworld also seems to go forever. It is not part of the physical world, and so there is no sense of containment. The Spirits that reside there seem resigned to their fate, but all of the ones that Odysseus talk to seem to miss being alive. Death is not always a horrible thing, but it is clear that it is not preferable to the joys of life.

The Underworld, unsurprisingly, is not a place that mortals are meant to be, and so humans have a difficult time getting there. Odysseus is sent there by Circe herself, and must perform a great sacrifice of honey and milk, sweet wine, water, barley, and the blood of black rams, with promises of further sacrifices on his return home, before he can talk to the souls of the underworld with any sense of safety. He sees the soul of one of his men and his mother, and hears a prophesy of the seer Teiresias of Theban. Agamemnon tells of the betrayal of his wife, and urges Odysseus not to be too trustful of his own on his return. Then he meets, briefly, the souls of various queens, wives, and mothers of heroes, the ghost of Aias, and sees various mythological figures – Minos, Orion, Tityos, Herkules, and others. The souls of the dead seem to have a weird connection to the living realm – while many that he talks to can tell Odysseus of some of the goings on around the world, they cannot seem to see anything relating to those that they love.

After much talk and the shedding of many tears, it is clear that Odysseus has obtained the knowledge that he journeyed to the Underworld to gain. And so he departs, completing his katabasis, to attempt, yet again, to make his way home.