Shade

What it is

A shade is the dim after-image of someone who has died, a shadow-like presence said to go on below the world of the living. The English word serves poets as a rendering of the Greek skia and the Latin umbra. In the older scheme of things, nearly everyone after death takes up this shadowy existence in the underworld; the shade is what the dead person becomes. A chosen few escape it, rising to a divine sphere and winning honour as heroes. Poets give the being its lasting shape: Homer, Virgil and Dante all fill their underworlds with shades, and grave inscriptions still address the departed as one.

Where it comes from

The picture of a shadow-filled realm below was shared across the ancient Near East. Hebrew scripture knows the underworld as Sheol, and gives it a second name, tsalmavet, which means 'death shadow'. Greek and Roman verse fixed the shade in the literary mind: Homer stages a meeting between Odysseus and the dead in the eleventh book of the Odyssey, while Virgil brings Aeneas among them in the sixth book of the Aeneid. Plutarch preserves a Greek story in which Alexander the Great, grieving for Hephaistion, accepts his friend's hero status only after an oracle of Ammon confirms it. Dante carried the Latin word into Italian as ombra, and English epitaphs took up the farewell 'peace to thy gentle shade'.

How it is done

Two routes lead to the shades in the old accounts. One is descent: a living visitor travels down to the underworld and meets the dead there, as Odysseus does in Homer and Aeneas in Virgil. The other is summoning: the First Book of Samuel tells of the Witch of Endor, who calls up the ghost of the prophet Samuel, and Hebrew gives such a brought-back ghost the name ōv. A third outcome bypasses both, since a select few never enter the shadow realm at all but rise to the divine sphere, a standing confirmed for Hephaistion by the oracle of Ammon.

What it is for

Belief in shades answers what becomes of people after death: for most, a shadowy dwelling below, going on as a dim remnant. The idea also orders rank among the dead. A select few rise to the divine sphere instead, and the living venerate them as heroes; Plutarch tells how Alexander the Great mourned Hephaistion until an oracle of Ammon confirmed the dead man's divine standing. The dead could also be approached in person, as scripture records at Endor with Samuel's ghost. Finally the word serves mourning, giving epitaphs their farewell, 'peace to thy gentle shade', the line Alexander Pope used for Nicholas Rowe.

Peoples and places

The belief belongs first to the ancient Near East, where a shadowy underworld was widely held. Israelite scripture gives that realm its Hebrew names, Sheol and tsalmavet, and preserves the story of Samuel's ghost raised at Endor. Greek practice adds the honouring of heroes, spared the shadow fate, and the underworld of Homer's Odyssey. Rome lends the Latin umbra and Virgil's poem of Aeneas among the dead. Dante, writing in Italian, calls many of the dead in his Divine Comedy shades. In English, the word lives in verse and on tombstones, as in Pope's epitaph for Nicholas Rowe.

What people believe

Behind the shade lies a settled map of death. The dead continue below in a realm so dark that Hebrew could name it 'death shadow'; the shade is what a person becomes there. Nearly everyone shares this lot, which is why the exceptions stand out: a select few are believed to rise past the underworld to the divine sphere, and are honoured as heroes. The border can be crossed the other way too, for a ghost may be brought back up, as Samuel's is at Endor, and an oracle can settle a dead man's standing, as Ammon's did for Hephaistion.

Compare and confuse

The shade goes by other names in each tongue: skia in Greek, umbra in Latin, ombra in the Italian of Dante's poem, and plainly the ghost in everyday English; Hebrew has ōv for a ghost called back from below. Related ideas commonly grouped with it include the doppelgänger, the shadow person, the Manes of Roman belief, the Rephaite and the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Today

The shade survives mainly in letters and in memorial. Poetry and literature keep the word for the dead, from Dante's Divine Comedy onward, where even his guide Virgil counts as a shade. Grave inscriptions sometimes carry the wish 'peace to thy gentle shade', the formula Alexander Pope chose for Nicholas Rowe. As a belief held in its own right, the shadow-dwelling dead belong to the ancient world; as a literary figure, the shade remains in circulation.

Questions people ask about Shade

Good reading and sources

• Shade (mythology) on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data