Psyche

A classic examination of the soul and its relation to life before and after death, from Homeric poetry to Plutarch.

In Psyche, Erwin Rohde (1845–1898) seeks to establish the sources of the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul. In Volume 2 he argues that the origin of this belief is to be found in the cult of Dionysos.In this work, first published in two volumes in 1890 and 1894, Erwin Rohde (1845–1898), the German classical scholar and friend of Nietzsche, describes the ancient Greek cult of souls and establishes the sources of the belief in the immortality of the soul, exploring its relation to life both before and after death. This belief in the survival of the soul already existed in the earliest Greek writings, but when and from where did it originate? Volume 2 examines the question in the context of the worship of Dionysos, arguing that there were originally many sides to the cult of the wine-god, and that one of these may have been the source of this belief. Psyche, reissued here in the 1898 edition, remains a standard reference work on this topic.