Berkeley Undergraduate Journal of Classics

The possibility of life after death has captured the imagination of different cultures and religions around the world, resulting in a wide variety of afterlife myths. Modern Western cultures tend to believe that an individual’s experience in the afterlife relies heavily upon the ethical behavior of an individual during their lifetime. This morality-based eschatology has roots in early Judeo-Christian thought – although Classical authors also placed an emphasis on ethical behavior in their understandings of the afterlife. This paper examines how the writings of Homer, Hesiod, Plato, and Virgil blended together with Biblical teachings from the Old and New Testament over the centuries. Thanks in part to later authors, such as Dante Alighieri, these differing worldviews came together to create the widespread modern belief that the virtuous go to heaven, and the wicked go to hell.