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| Achilles Slaying Hector |
Homer's
The Illiad is the sacred Ancient Greece equivalent to the Bible in many respects. Both deal with the emotions of their respective Gods/God. And both consist of great epic battles. However, the Greeks valued and placed emphasis on the individual which is shown by Homer's emphasis on Achilles. In addition, there was no happy or bad afterlife for the Greeks as they believed that when you died your soul would be lingering in Hades in a sort of purgatory. This had Greeks place more emphasis on the lives they lived and attempted to control their own destinies rather then be excited to spend eternity with their 'creator' similar to many modern day religions.
The Illiad also places a special emphasis on the viewings of knowledge. In Judeo-Christian religions, Eve and Adam were kicked out of Eden because of the cunning serpent which was the Devil. Meanwhile, in the Ancient Greece religion the most intelligent and cunning warrior was that of Odysseus, whose with and cunning were what allowed the Greeks to use the ever infamous "Trojan Horse" battle strategy, a ploy which won the Greeks the war, caused the fall of Troy, and cemented Odysseus in fame and heroism forever. You can clearly see the distinction between the value of knowledge between these two religious groups.
During the period of the Iliad, they believed the condition in which you left Earth was the way you would spend eternity in the after-life. The Greeks and the Trojans violently fought over their own corpses to bath them, cloth them and placed 2 gold coins on each eye. The coins acted as a toll payment, to cross the Styx river and enter into the underworld. The warriors promoted fair treatment; the Iliad is an example of the consequences they faced upon the defilement of the dead.
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