Ancient Greeks and reincarnation?

[David19]

I was just wondering, did some ancient Greeks believe in reincarnation, as i've read different things about the afterlife, some believed you went to Hades, and i think others believed there was no afterlife, while some held that you reincarnated.

But i'd like to know a bit more about the ancient Greek belief of reincarnation but i can't find that much.

Any help would be great.

Thanks :).

[seekerofknwoledge]

At the moment I'm in a time crunch so I won't be able to give you all the resources just yet...But I have read up on the Greek's belief in reincarnation. There were different places for souls to go after they died. According to one school of thought, only really great souls went to the Elysian Fields (like great warriors and whatnot), with all the other either going to Tartarus if they were bad enough, or a third place where they just were. Another school however says that the Elysian Fields is more like heaven in the Christian conception, and all of the nice people went there. It's possible that if you went to the Fields that you'd be reborn into another body/life. After three lives where you were reborn and each time made it to the Fields, you were given a much greater reward. You might want to research the River Lethe in relation to reincarnation (drink from this river to forget your past life before being reborn). After work I'll stop by and try and post some sources for you.

[David19]

Thanks for the post, i'll be sure to research that river (probably not till January 26th, as i have too much essays to do before then :().

And, i'm looking forward to those resources :).

[seekerofknwoledge]

Here's one resource that give a good overview of reincarnaiton according to the Greeks:

http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Underworld.html

You can scroll down through the page or just search for the word "reincarnation."

I can't seem to find the book that I first read all of this from, but I'll keep looking and maybe it will pop up.

This one is about the River Lethe (even though the first one talks about it too):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethe

[David19]

Thanks for the links :).

[Tim]

I was just wondering, did some ancient Greeks believe in reincarnation
Pythagoras : http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/