Ghosts in Ancient Greece and Rome
Although ancient civilizations believed in magic and ghosts, the emerging Christian tradition differentiated ghosts as demons that disguised themselves as the dead.
Ghosts in the ancient world were an accepted part of the cosmos. Ancient literature, including the Bible, gives varying accounts of ghosts and their interactions with the living. Ghosts were associated with magic and often intertwined with demonology, such as the celebrated case in Mark’s Gospel. The strong identification of ghosts with the demonic is tied to the formation of early Christian theology that, unlike the cosmologies of ancient societies, made no provision for spectral existence.
Ghosts in Ancient Greece and Rome
The ancients strongly believed that those who died without proper burial could not cross the River Styx for at least one hundred years. According to Virgil, they were doomed to wander the banks until the years had elapsed. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus, in the course of practicing a rite to safely enter Hades, spoke briefly with a ghostly warrior to whom he promised a fitting burial on his way home.
Ghosts were tied to murders and violent deaths. Suetonius, in The Twelve Caesars (34) describes how Nero arranged to have his mother killed, yet “often admitted that he was hounded by his mother’s ghost…” Suetonius also records that Nero “set Persian magicians at work to conjure up the ghost and entreat its forgiveness.”
Persians and Egyptians had long reputations for magic, divination, and the ability to deal with the supernatural.
Magic and even the assistance of gods and goddess as in the case of Odysseus were often vital. As Daniel Ogden writes, “contact with ghosts…could often be fatal to the living.” In Jean-Claude Schmitt’s detailed Ghosts in the Middle Ages, a group of ghosts carousing around a church altar suddenly attack and kill a priest who had come late at night to witness the phenomena.
Ghosts and Demons Differentiated by the Early Church
In the Gospel of Mark (5.1-20) Jesus arrived at Gerasenes and was confronted by a “man from the tombs with an unclean spirit.” In the ancient world, it was a common belief that ghosts inhabited tombs. Many of these ancient tombs lay outside the communities of the living, necropoleis containing the sarcophagi of the deceased. The man confronting Jesus was said to have “had his dwelling among the tombs” and was infected with many demons. For many reasons, ghosts could be viewed as “unclean” spirits. The differentiation with the notion of “demon” as a separate evil spirit associated with the legions of Satan is a Christian one.
The transition occurred when early Christian thinkers advanced the idea that ghosts were really demons disguised as the dead. Tertullian advances this view by pointing to the Old Testament story of the famous witch of Endor who conjures the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel on orders from Saul. Christian views held that the dead must await the final judgment in another realm. The thief on the cross had asked Jesus to remember him when he came into his “world” and was told by Jesus that he would be in paradise.
The problem with Tertullian’s interpretation is that a close reading of that text indicates sincere surprise on the part of the witch when Samuel appeared. The ghost she described was a “divine being coming up out of the earth.” That the dead lived below the earth was a universal ancient belief. Both Homer and Virgil placed the abode of the dead below the earth.
In the New Testament, death is described as “to give up the ghost” which literally means “to breathe out.” It is also translated in several passages as “giving up the spirit.” St. Paul’s “great cloud of witnesses,” i.e., those that passed on in this manner, cannot possibly be ghosts in the sense the ancient civilizations interpreted the concept of “ghost.”
Other Ghostly Haunts
Ghosts were associated with battlefields, temples, and houses where people had been murdered or committed suicide. Some have said that even today, standing in the old Roman Forum in the blanket of night, one can hear the ghosts of the past lamenting their condition and the fall of their civilization.
Sources:
Daniel Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2002).
Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (Penguin Books, 1984).
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
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