Death. The theme of death within ancient Greek art has continued from the Early Bronze Age all the way through to the Hellenistic period.
The Greeks used architecture, pottery, and funerary objects as different mediums through which to portray death. These depictions include mythical deaths, deaths of historical figures, and commemorations of those who died in war.
This page includes various examples of the different types of mediums in which death is presented in Greek art. Greek heroa were tombs dedicated to both mythological and actual heroes of the Ancient Greek world.
These tombs contained the remains of the hero and acted as a place where citizens of the polis where the tomb was located could hold feasts as a hero cult in order to honor the hero. They were built in a variety of different styles, were located in many different polis across Greece, and their legacy was continued by the Romans.
The heroon at Nemea is an example of a hero shrine, the resting place of the late Opheltes and a place for Greeks to worship. The heroon was a way to memorialize the infant and transform his legacy from that of a mere mortal to that of a hero. Opheltes' death elevated him above the status of other humans and made him more divine, and thus his final resting place became a sacred space to Greeks. The ancient Greeks would use this space and the surrounding land to host the Nemean Games in Ophel