Note 27 — Chapter VII · IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE

The third century vase-paintings from Southern Italy also as a rule keep within the limits of the epic Nekyia. In addition to the few special types of the sinners undergoing punishment in Hades (Sisyphos, Tantalos, the Danaids) we have allusions to the journeys to Hades of Theseus, Peirithoos, Herakles, and Orpheus. All attempts to read mystical or edifying intentions into these (as in Baumeister’s Denkm. 1926–30) are now regarded as completely mistaken. (Orpheus appears there not as founder and prophet of his mysteries but simply as the mythical singer who goes down to the underworld to rescue Eurydike with his singing. This is rightly maintained by Milchhöfer, Philol. 53, 385 ff., 54, 750 f., against Kuhnert, Arch. Jahrb. viii, 104 ff.; Philol. 54, 193.) Nothing at all is suggested as to the fate of mankind in general. On a vase from Canosa a father and mother with a boy stand on the left of Orpheus: this, too, must belong to the region of mythology. (They cannot, however, be Dionysos and Ariadne as Winkler suggests, Darst. d. Unterw. auf unterit. Vasen, 49. But it is difficult to imagine that they can be a family of Mystai as Milchhöfer supposes.)