(January 28, 2023 at 10:58 pm)GrandizerII Wrote: Hades, in general, was quite a bleak place so wasn't a good place to be. However, Tartarus (the deepest realm in Hades in Greek Mythology) would have been the closest in terms of harshness to the mainstream Christian hell (though there was no eternal fire in Tartarus, if I remember correctly). This is where the infamous Sisyphus was sent to for punishment.
It's always been sort of astonishing to me that the Greeks imagined the afterlife -- for everybody -- as being so horrible. The scene where Odysseus does his katabasis is like a horror movie.
If we assume that most of religion, especially life-after-death scenarios, is based on wishful thinking, it's a very strange thing.
