Death is the boundary that separates all possibilities from one another and outlines their opposite. Death is a metamorphosis not only for the abandoned world, but also for the living, seeing it as a fact, and in this sense death is always part of life. Ugly or humble, lacking or memory, it is the final answer to every individual being in which the dead participates as an illustration of the experience, and the living judge him and himself, by the side-view of an irrevocable final. Death is the reflection and idea of the living. Life makes death, giving it the face it wants. Death, as well as life, is categorized by the experience with no abstraction, and hence with generally obligatory functions. Death is complete only in ritual respect, and otherwise inhabited by "secular", human or social leaders. Life is flowing to death, but in its bosom it is against death. The border is overcome with wisdom, according to which life never loses meaning, and so life judges and values death, not the opposite.

Jacques-Louis David's, "Andromache Mourning Hector"

The death in Ancient Greece

In Ancient Greece - the time of warriors and heroes, death has had a great significance for anyone who opposes wrongs, gods, etc. Entering into battle is a prestige, a symbol of masculinity and courage. Symbol of true power. Death in battle brings the warrior a prestige, recognition, glory, as long as he could not get back to life despite his exploits. Dying in battle, he becomes valuable to all. Beautiful death, of course, is the glorious death. For all the time, thanks to it, the killed warrior will have access to the glamor of glory; and the brilliance of this prominence, which is attached from that moment to his name and to his personality, presents as the ultimate model of honor, its highest peak, the completed virtue. With the beautiful death of the dead warrior, he acquires that perfection that he can’t live through. Achilles - a demigod, half-human in his divine nature is permeated by the aura of the posthumous glory, to which he is forever promised. This prosperity guarantees him the beautiful death. He is not capable of negotiation or reconciliation. For every insult, he reacts sharply, and accepts this insult as unforgivable. Like a crime against a ruler, the offense committed against Achilles can’t be compensated in his eyes other than with complete and extreme humiliation of the guilty. At first glance, this condemns Achilles as a haughty striker. Distinguished to the higher, malicious, undefiled, primary. Because of these qualities, Achilles ignores the rank of King Agamemnon, who takes away his gift of battle. And this is degrading to the glorious warrior Achilles, because the gift is a symbol of power, bears honor.

There is no intermediate step between the immortal glory for which he is destined, and the last degree of disgrace, where Achilles would find his place. Therefore, Achilles prefers battle and risk as a life bet than forgiveness and reconciliation. For him, this identification of cowardly and brave takes him out of the status of an "absolute criterion" for heroism. And when Achilles has to choose between the gratitude of the people he has always sought and the immortal glory, he chooses the latter. Even if a young man perishes, as he is written, he knows: The instantaneous death, when it is suffered, brings as compensation an immortal glory that conveys the heroic gesture. He is convinced that no material privilege is able to awaken the person who is betting his life and soul into deadly battles, but battles that carry fame and recognition. The heroic feat is rooted in the desire to escape from aging and death. Better to die young, but glorious, as he responds to a son of God, than to later observe his own infirmity. This may be an aspiration, a motive, a conscious striving for death, but a beautiful death. It is better for him to die with glory than for aging in oblivion. To overcome death also means escaping from old age. Death and old age go hand in hand for the Greeks. The vitality of the spirit must be manifested in the youth, because this vitality fits most to youth. The color of age when it is in the full maturity of the life force is that springtime, from the cocoon to the winter of life, even before to be placed in the grave, the old man still feels robbed.) Only the battle or the defeat in it fights the warrior from this inevitable decline of all the values, powers and aspirations that still determine masculinity and male honor. In ancient Greece, death was thought to have two varieties - the beautiful, glorious death and that of the corrupted corpse. Death of King Priam is exactly the second kind. The destruction of his corpse takes away not only the whole beauty of power, masculinity, but also the death of one king. Killed and torn by his own dogs afterwards, makes the death of the old man not beautiful and glorious, but in a terrible monster. The dignity of the old man has become a joke in the ugliness and the wickedness, all that is in the body is most inherent to man is destroyed. This death afflicts the king to the ordinary man. The tearing of the dogs makes the body unknowable, so the person loses his unique image, color traits, thus losing his human face.

The defamation of the corpse has several forms and meanings even. When dismantling and eating in a raw state, as happens with Priam, the hero, except that he is deprived of his human condition but so does not reach the gates of Hades. He has no grave. Who associates it with those who are close to their native land and offspring. He is rejected by death, not even a dead man. Eaten by the beasts of it, there is no memory of being a human being. Cast in chaos, it is nothing. Similar is the death of epic hector hector. Achilles takes Hector with the chariot on the ground to deform him to unrecognizance. By dirtying and disfiguring the corpse, instead of cleaning it and scouring it with oil, the scorn desires to destroy the individuality of a body that radiates the charm of youth and life. The last way of defilement is by leaving the body of the forces of the body to which the body naturally is subjected. Achilles is afraid of the friendless body of his friend, Patrocles, that they will not seduce him, eat and spit out worms and flies and fail to bury him as well as a hero. On the one hand, there is the beautiful death that perpetuates the character in the memory of friends and enemies, and on the other is death not only with oblivion, but also the terrible - delusions: the horror of the inexpressible, the complete indifference that excludes you from the living, from the dead, from myself. The role of the epic and the topic of defiling the body helps to express the status of beautiful death and, along with it, the honor and glory of the warrior. They are not like other honor, glory, death. They rise above them because only by opposing one another can one prove its value and meaning: Nothing can befall the beautiful death: its glory continues and is fixed in the brilliance of the poetic word which, by saying fame, makes it forever true.