Impiety Toward the Dead
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 3 anchored passages
impious · impiety · slandering the memory of the dead
in the texts
On the Estate of Astyphilus
The idea that certain acts, such as associating with a father's killer's family or slandering a dead man's memory for profit, constitute impiety toward the dead and their kin.
for you are robbing me, the son of Theophrastus and your own nephew, of property which the laws awarded to me, and you are slandering the memory of the dead Astyphilus and doing your best to put his bitterest enemies in possession of his property.
Astyphilus, then, hearing of this in childhood from his uncle and his other relatives, as soon as he reached the age of reason, would never speak to Cleon, and maintained this attitude up to his death, holding the opinion that it was impious to speak to the son of Thudippus, when the latter was charged with so grave a crime against his father.
On the Estate of Nicostratus
The charge that a claimant who fails to perform the customary funeral rites for the deceased shows impiety, undermining his moral claim to the estate.
Whereas he neither took up the body of his adopted father nor committed it to the flames nor collected the bones, but left all these duties to be done by complete strangers, should he not be regarded as most impious in claiming to inherit the property of the deceased, though he never performed any of the customary rites over him?