I see only bones and bare skulls: Skeletons in Lucian's Afterlife

In Lucian's Dialogues of the Dead, the dead in the underworld are (generally, despite some clues to the contrary) represented as skeletons, as if after death their corpses had been sent straight down to Hades fully embodied, decaying over the centuries, until one cannot tell the difference between Nireus and Thersites. The image of the dead as skeletons is used to make satirical points about the fleeting nature of life's pleasures, especially beauty, youth, and strength. It is a notable departure from conventional Greek and Roman literary depictions of the dead in Hades (see Bernstein, Johnston, Garland, Segal) as bodiless shades.

Lucian's skeletal dead illustrate an afterlife cosmology in which the souls of the dead do not have an existence independent of their bodies. This idea is reinforced in several other Lucianic works, especially On Funerals, in which Lucian rejects the conventional mythology of Hades and asserts instead that the afterlife is predominantly characterized by what it lacks— principally, a lack of needs. A dead body does not need food, water, warmth, or other necessities of life, and the narrator represents this as a blessing, the freedom from deprivation and suffering. The Dialogues of the Dead, Menippus, and the Downward Journey also stress what the afterlife lacks, but with a more pessimistic perspective: they stress its lack of good things, such as beauty, youth, wealth, and power. The skeletal aspect of the dead hammers this home. While many of the dead mourn losing the things they enjoyed in life, Lucian’s viewpoint characters tend to be penniless itinerant philosophers who had no good things to lose and relish the fact that all the dead have been reduced to equal poverty.

Lucian’s choice to represent the dead as skeletons was driven by many factors. First, it is a satirical work and delivers more punch through its use of unexpected ideas. The representation of the dead as skeletons is an innovation over the conventionalized shades of Homer or Plato, and more viscerally shocking. Moreover, Lucian lived during a period when the use of inhumation greatly expanded, as did participation in mystery religions that promised corporeal afterlife. Lucian’s skeletons were a timely novelty, since a person who died in Lucian’s lifetime might expect to be reduced to a skeleton.

One should not expect consistency in the representation of the dead across Lucian’s works (Nesselrath). His works on the afterlife generally are created to mock well-known people, and a funny joke is prioritized over cosmological consistency. His depictions of the afterlife need not reflect his literal beliefs. Nevertheless, when read together they reveal an overarching bleak outlook. By tearing down those who try to cling to the benefits of the world of the living, and giving the last laugh to cynic philosophers who had nothing to lose, Lucian sends an implicit message that the most prominent quality of the afterlife will be its lack of everything, both good and bad. His novel skeletons underline this idea in their lack of needs and loss of beauty.