The future state in which the Greeks believed was to some extent
one of rewards and punishments. The souls of most of the dead,
however, were supposed to descend to the realms of Ha'des, where
they remained, joyless phantoms, the mere shadows of their former
selves, destitute of mental vigor, and, like the spectres of the
North American Indians, pursuing, with dreamlike vacancy, the
empty images of their past occupations and enjoyments. So cheerless
is the twilight of the nether world that the ghost of Achilles
informs Ulysses that it would rather live the meanest hireling
on earth than be doomed to continue in the shades below, even
though as sovereign ruler there. Thus Achilles asks him--

"How hast thou dared descend into the gloom
Of Hades, where the shadows of the dead,
Forms without intellect, alone reside?"

And when Ulysses tries to console him by reminding him that he
was even there supreme over all his fellow-shades, he receives
this reply:

"Renowned Ulysses! think not death a theme
Of consolation: I would rather live
The servile hind for hire, and eat the bread
Of some man scantily himself sustained,
Than sovereign empire hold o'er all the shades."
--Odyssey, by COWPER, B. XI.

But even in Hades a distinction is made between the good and the
bad, for there Ulysses finds Mi'nos, the early law-giver of Crete,