The Meaning of Death in the Ancient World | Gilgamesh, Homer & the Stoics

What do you say to someone who has understood, suddenly and completely, that they are going to die? Tonight we listen to three ancient answers, and they are not the same answer: the Mesopotamian poems of Gilgamesh, the Greek epics attributed to Homer, and three Stoic philosophers of the Roman world: Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. We begin with a broken clay tablet, more than 3,700 years old, on which a grieving man speaks to a tavern-keeper at the edge of the world. A quiet, long-form episode for late-night listening. Follow it closely, or let it carry you toward sleep. CHAPTERS 00:00 A broken tablet 02:20 Gilgamesh: the hero who could not keep his friend 12:25 Homer: the house of Hades 20:59 The Stoics: practising mortality 29:26 What can be compared? 33:20 Quiet conclusion A NOTE ON SOURCES AND METHOD These are three different worlds, separated by many centuries. The comparisons in this episode are ours, not theirs. Quotations from Gilgamesh are short excerpts from Andrew George's translation, cited by tablet and line. Translations from Greek and Latin are our own, made from the editions below. Where scholars disagree, or where a reading is our own, the narration says so. The museum objects shown come from the periods discussed; captions say when an object is similar to, not the same as, the one described. PRIMARY TEXTS • The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans. Andrew George (Penguin Classics): standard version Tablets I and VII–XI; the Old Babylonian tablet reportedly from Sippar. • Homer, Odyssey 4, 10, 11 and Iliad 9, 18, 23. Greek texts: Monro & Allen (Oxford); A. T. Murray (Loeb), via the Perseus Digital Library. • Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 1, 24, 61, 93, 102. Latin text ed. R. M. Gummere (Loeb), via Perseus. • Epictetus, Handbook 1, 3, 5, 21; Discourses 3.24. Greek text ed. H. Schenkl (Teubner), via Perseus. • Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.14, 4.32, 4.48, 6.24, 12.36. Greek text ed. J. H. Leopold (Teubner), via Perseus. • Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.5, 7.157. FURTHER READING • Andrew George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford University Press, 2003) • Michael Clarke, Achilles beside Gilgamesh: Mortality and Wisdom in Early Epic Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 2019) • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Stoicism", "Seneca", "Epictetus", "Marcus Aurelius" CREDITS Script, research and editing: Diogenes’ Lamp Narration: AI-generated voice (ElevenLabs) Images: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (public domain), including works by Arnold Böcklin, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Jacques-Louis David, Vincent van Gogh, Hubert Robert, John Flaxman, Johann Tobias Sergel, William Theed the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Francis Frith, Gustave Le Gray, James Robertson and William Henry Fox Talbot. Background: Arnold Böcklin, Island of the Dead (1880). Full captioned list in the pinned comment. Maps: Natural Earth data (public domain). Timeline, maps and diagrams: Diogenes’ Lamp. Corrections are welcome in the comments; confirmed corrections will be noted here. #philosophy #ancienthistory #stoicism