The Ancient Greek Concept Of The Soul Metempsychosis (The 8-4^th Century BC)

From the 8th to the 4th century BC, the Greeks made a bigger progress in the souls of human beings and paid much attention to people's postmortem world and the reincarnate world. This article proceeds with the concept of the ancient Greeks soul,and gives a detailed record of the human souls, the role of the funeral in the soul metempsychosis, and the way of souls metempsychosis in the religion and philosophy.The paper can be divided into introduction, text and conclusion, and the text has four chapters.The first chapter is divided into three aspects to discuss the Greek concept of soul. The first section is given priority to Plato and Aristotle's theories to demonstrate what is soul about; The second section expounds the Greek's understanding of the living souls, and the types of person living souls as well as the concept of the living and dead souls reflected in Homer's epic; The third section describes the forms and the activities of the postmortem souls. The second chapter analyzes the role of funeral in the soul metempsychosis, it first analyzes the influences of different kinds of funeral ceremonies to the soul metempsychosis, at the same time, it also introduces the influences of the different kinds of funeral relationship to the soul rebirth. The third chapter introduces the Greek's understanding of the world after death-Hades.Firstly, it analyzed the location of the Hades from the Hades' structure and the terrain;Secondly, it introduced the main gods, such as the soul guide Hermes, the ferryman Charon and the ruler of Hades and so on; Finally it expounds the judge and the rewards and punishment of the ghosts when they reach to the hades. The fourth chapter is from two aspects of religion and philosophy to analyze the the way of souls transmigration, The first section is about Eleusinian Mysteries and Orphic cult how to do in souls metempsychosis; The second section are about the Pythagoras and Empedocles implementation way of metempsychosis of souls.The epilogue part is to make a summary on the development of the Greek's concept of the soul metempsychosis during this period, and the impact of these thoughts to Greek social life and western philosophy.