Ghosts of the Ancient Past - Northeastern Mediterranean
Greece
The term shade was translated from the Greek σκιά and Latin umbra, both meaning shadow. This is likely alluding to the shadow of death as it was a commonly held belief in the ancient Near East that the dead resided in either the "shadowy underworld" or the divine sphere, a realm saved for the most celebrated of heroes (Plutarch 2nd century AD). The former even appears in Biblical Hebrew in which it was called tsalmaveth (צַלמָוֶת: lit. "death-shadow", "shadow of death") as an alternate term for Sheol (Ra’anan et al. 2005). But, like in Homer's The Iliad, The Odyssey, and its Roman successor, The Aeneid by Virgil, shades are typically encountered when the heroes travel to the underworld, not the other way around. They are not known to have much interaction with the living being described as vanishing form of vapor or smoke, however, could also be described as substantial beings, as they looked at time of death, complete with the wounds that killed them. (Finucane 1996: 4, 16). Ghosts in the 'classical' world were periodically called upon to provide advice or prophecy. One notable example is by the Witch of Endor in the First Book of Samuel wherein she conjures the ghost (owb) of Samuel. In any case they do not appear to be particularly feared, just respected. (Finucane 1996).
Likely the oldest extant (still existing) play from Ancient Greece called Persian. Written by Aeschylus, as the 2nd part of the Dionysia trilogy, also contains one of the oldest written ghost stories, dated to 472 BCE (Britannica 2021).
It tells the story of Xerxes' defeat at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE from the perspective of the Persians back at the palace at Susa (GreekMythology 2021). In the story, Xerxes' mother gets a premonition back at home and it's proven right when a messanger brings the news that that the Greeks won. The queen summons the ghost of her late husband Darius and he tells her that Xerxes' decision to build a bridge over the Hellespont brought his downfall as he challenged both nature and the gods. While Xerxes didn't actually die, he returns broken and humilated, as a 'shadow of his former self'. This ruining of the Persian leader fulfills Greece's victory in the long term. (Aeschylus 1921, Britannica 2021).
The play takes its plot from the actual historical event, the Battle of Salamis, only eight years before Persians was put on stage (in 472).
A great comedic and factual podcast: You're Dead to Me (on this particular battle)
It wasn’t even the first tragic play to deal with the subject; Phrynichus’ lost play, Phoenician Women, was written in c. 476 BCE. Greeks prided themselves on their famous victories against the Persian Empire. This is evident throughout the play, which is a tragedy told from the Persians' p.o.v., but contains biases and implicit venerations of Athens and the Greek culture. (GreekMythology 2021). The Persians refer to themselves as Barbarians at least eight times. The ghost was just there to provide knowledge about an event that was currently happening, just in a different place. Seems like in some of the oldest writings ghosts were just around, not doing anything incredibly special, just around to watch, just around watching around the living (though generally only after being specifically summoned).
By the 5th century BC, classical Greek ghosts had been adjusted to being haunting, frightening creatures who could work for either good or evil purposes. The spirit of the dead was believed to hover near the resting place of the corpse, and thus cemeteries were places to be avoided. The dead were to be ritually mourned through public ceremony, sacrifice, and libations, or else they might return to haunt their families. The ancient Greeks held annual feasts to honor and placate the spirits of the dead, to which the family ghosts were invited, and after which they were "firmly invited to leave until the same time next year." (Finucane 1996: 8–11).
*The Keres (Ancient Greek: Κῆρες) were female 'death fates', not ghosts. They were daughters of Nyx and goddesses who personified violent death and were said to be drawn to bloody deaths on battlefields and were present during death and dying. (Hesiod, Theogony 211ff (trans. Evelyn-White) Greek epic C8th or C7th BCE.; Homer, Iliad (trans. Lattimore) Greek epic C8th BCE).*
These ritual beliefs and their traditions are encompassed within the 5th-century BC play Oresteia includes the appearance of the ghost of Clytemnestra, one of the first ghosts to appear in a work of fiction from this region. (Trousdell 2008: 5-38).
The etymology of the English words haunt and haunted can be traced through words in Old English, Old French, Old Norse, and Proto-Germanic, which mean to house, to inhabit, to be familiar with, or to visit a place frequently (Tague 2012; Harper n.d). It wasn't until the 18th century that the word "haunted" was tied to ghostly activities (Tague 2012).
Rome
Hauntings and the ghost tie to their burial location have already come into play in the classical world. One of the first Roman ghost stories that we have written records of is from Plutarch, in the 1st century CE. He described the haunting of the baths at Chaeronea by the ghost of a murdered man. The ghost's groans were so loud and frightful that the people of the town sealed the doors of the building (Finucan 1996: 13).
Another example is part of a letter sent by Pliny the Younger, sometime later in his life between 61-113 CE. It is called Letter 27 within Book 7 and was addressed to the Roman Senator Lucius Licinius Sura. Within this letter, Pliny recounted 3 stories after asking what the Senator thought about ghosts and the supernatural, like if they have forms and some form of divinity, and if they are even real or are "false impressions of a terrified imagination" (translated via VRoma Project).
"There was at Athens a large and spacious, but ill-reputed and pestilential house" (Pliny the Younger. "LXXXIII. To Sura" translated by VRoma Project).
In the dead of night, it is common to hear a noise like the tinkling of iron; at first, it seems far away, but gradually it got closer and soon a ghost appeared in the form of an extremely thin and shabby old man, with a long beard and bristly hair. He shook the shackles on his ankles and wrists. Even during the day, though the phantom did not appear, the memory of it made such a strong impression on their imagination that it still appeared before their eyes, and their terror remained when they saw it. Because of this, the house was eventually abandoned. It was judged by everyone to be completely uninhabitable; so now it was completely left to the ghost. Eventually Athenodorus the philosopher went to Athens and bought the house on the cheap. He was curious about why the price was so low and when he asked for the whole story he got inspired and devoted himself to writing the best he could. The first part of the night passed in the usual silence, then there was the tinkling of iron chains. He didn't look up, nor put down the brush, but he did cover his ears to focus his attention. Once the ghost made it to the room Athenodorus gestured with his hand that he should wait a moment, and bent down to write again, but the ghost rattled the chains over his own head as he wrote, and Athenodorus looked around and saw the ghost beckoning Athenodorus to follow, which he did after getting his lamp. The specter moved slowly as if it were encumbered by its chains, into the courtyard of the house and suddenly disappeared. So Athenodorus was abandoned and marked the spot with a handful of grass and leaves. The next day they dug a hole and found bones mixed and intertwined with chains. because the body was moldy from lying in the ground for so long, leaving them bare and corroded by the iron. The bone fragments were collected and buried at the state's expense, and once the ghost was laid to rest the house is no longer haunted. (VRoma Project).
Two Roman men who wrote about hauntings in their comedic plays were Titus Maccius Plautus and Lucian of Samosata. And Lucian was one of the first writers to express disbelief in ghosts in the 2nd century CE. In his satirical novel The Lover of Lies (c. 150 CE), Lucian relates how Democritus "the learned man from Abdera in Thrace" lived in a tomb outside the city gates to prove that cemeteries were not haunted by the spirits of the departed. Lucian relates how he persisted in his disbelief despite practical jokes perpetrated by "some young men of Abdera" who dressed up in black robes with skull masks to frighten him. (Green 1970: 14–21, Finucane 1996: 26). This account by Lucian notes the popular classical expectation of how a ghost should look, which has also persisted in Charles Dicken's Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and even until the present day.
Much later, in the 5th century CE, the Christian priest Constantius of Lyon also recorded an instance of the recurring theme of the improperly buried dead who come back to haunt the living. And the haunting was only stopped when their bones have been discovered and properly reburied. (Hoare 1954: 294–5).
The lemures were shades or spirits of the restless or malignant dead in Roman religion and may represent the wandering and vengeful spirits of those not afforded proper burials and funeral rites by the living. Therefore they are not affected by tomb or votive inscriptions. Ovid interprets them as vagrant, unsatiated, and potentially vengeful di manes (chthonic deities thought to represent loved ones) or di parentes, (the collective ancestral gods or spirits) of the underworld. According to Ovid, the rites of their familial/domestic cults suggest an incomprehensibly archaic, quasi-magical, and probably very ancient rural tradition. (Ovid 8 CE: 306, 309; Cirlot 1971: 181; Beard, North, & Price 1998; Fowler 2004).
But of course, as Ovid's writings suggest, at least some of these stories had already been passed around orally for decades if not centuries. Acting the same as gossip and the tales we tell around the fireside at night. As we are already seeing examples of the repetitive nature of the themes in these stories [and that's not a bad thing]. And as we've seen in the previous cultural sections, ghosts have already been documented for over a thousand years, just in different mediums. These stories are important to keep sharing because even if they aren't the oldest versions of them. It can show back-and-forth connections and cultural ties because as stories get transferred and altered over the centuries they develop in the ways most important to the people telling them. For another example of that, just look at the flood myth from The Epic of Gilgamesh and its development into the story of Noah's Ark.