#athanatos

Just some good ol guys doing the Jacko Challenge meme

Immortal, of Immortal Fame. Perpetual. Everlasting. Literally, Without Death. Deathless

Beginning and end are you, and you alone rule all. For all things are from you, and in you do all things, Eternal One, come to their end. - Betz, lines 2836-2839 of PGM IV 2785-2890.

Much of what I can say of the perpetuity of the Gods has already been covered in the entry on Aionos. Indeed, functionally, aionos (eternal), apaustos (never-ending), and athanatos (perpetual) are of the same connotative meaning.

By their very nature are the Gods deathless. It is, from a Hellenic frame of mind, the quintessential difference between the divine and the mortal worlds. All Gods are Athanatoi. As such we can refer to every deity, and all the Titans, by this epithet.

Socrates spoke at length about the concept of immortality as it pertains to the soul, with the assumption that it is immortal in nature. Indeed, his description of the soul as told to us by Plato, ‘soul is most similar to what is divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, unvarying, and constant in relation to itself; whereas body, in its turn, is most similar to what is human, mortal, multiform, non-intelligible, dissoluble, and never constant in relation to itself.’ (Plato, Phaedo, p.31). He later adds, ‘given that the immortal is also indestructible, wouldn’t soul, if it proves to be immortal, be imperishable as well?’… ‘Then when death attacks a person, the mortal part, it seems, dies; whereas the immortal part gets out of the way of death, departs, and goes away intact and undestroyed.’ The Phaedo establishes a dichotomy of body and soul that heavily contributed to the denigration of the physical realm and the body, which influenced much of the later philosophies and ideas of asceticism in both the Pagan and Christian worlds.

A grave in Phrygia mentions a priest who bore the name Athanatos, whose son also grew up to be a priest honoring Zeus, Hekate and Apollon.

Hekate Athanatos,  Your grace spans all realms,  You are the Source,  And the Soul of All.  From you we descend,  And unto you we return.  And our gratitude is poured upon the wide Earth. 

 Sources:

Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri in translation, including the Demotic Spells, Chicago, 1996. Dmitriev, Sviatoslav. City Government in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, Oxford, 2005. Plato. Phaedo, Oxford, 1996. Ramsay, Sir William Mitchell. The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia: Being an Essay of the Local History of Phrygia from the Earliest Times ot the Turkish Conquest, Vol. 2, Clarendon, 1897. Sherman, Daniel. Soul, World, and Idea: An Interpretation of Plato’s ‘Republic’ and ‘Phaedo’, Lexington, 2013.

Images:

ATHANATOS “Full Moon Rites of Sabbat” (Album: Unholy Union, 2014)