As a matter of fact, the encounter of Death and the maiden may have served as an excuse to show a naked woman.
( ... tālāk ... )

Atļaušos bezkaunīgu sava biužu blodziņa pašreklāmu. Spied uz kapa

Nāves atainojums agrīnajās datorspēlēs [youtube, 2'25"]

The first and fullest source is the Iliad, the poem of death: 318 heroes, 243 of them named, get killed.

But the very abundance of heroic corpses is a problem. The warrior's death was special in Greek literature, and we have to distinguish between the death of the hero and the deaths of ordinary folk. Looking at the Song of Roland, Aries saw a contradiction: death in bed in peaceful old age and violent death in battle were both Good Deaths. He suggested a functional explanation - "in a society founded on chivalric and military ideals, the stigma attached to sudden death was not extended to the noble victims of war." We find a similar "double good death" in Homer, but its structure is more complex. I will try to bring this out with a few examples.

In Iliad Book 22, Hector is waiting outside the walls of Troy. Priam calls down to him to come back inside, for Achilles will surely kill him. In this moment of crisis, Hector should think not of his own death, but of his father's:

For a young man all things are seemly,
if he falls in battle, lying dead, pierced by the sharp bronze;
yes, all things are beautiful for the dead man, whatever happens;
but when the dogs defile the grey hair, grey beard,
and genitals of an old man who has been killed,
this is the most miserable thing for wretched mortals.

The contrast is strong. Violent death makes Hector beautiful, but it degrades and defiles Priam. Death fixes the hero in his youthful bloom, and fixes his glory (κλέος). His αριστεία will be remembered for generations to come, when they sing of the fames of men. The hero killed in battle lives on through epic and his well-marked tomb. Hades is a dismal place far worse than any life, but death is inevitable, and it is this rather than earthly honors that drives the hero to em brace his doom. Here is the essential tension of the heroic condition-the very awfulness of Hades drives him to death in battle as the only way to survive. Through the Good Death in battle, the hero beats fate and becomes almost immortal by doing just what the immortals never do - dying. Homer calls the doomed or dead hero "godlike," at once heightening the audience's awareness of the hero's victory in death, the frailty of humanity, and the gulf that finally separates us from the gods.

(c) Ian Morris, "Attitudes Toward Death in Archaic Greece", Classical Antiquity, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Oct., 1989), pp. 296-320

Ahilejs vazā pa zemi nogalinātā Hektora ķermeni

Godlike Hector is mutilated and dragged round the walls behind Achilles' char iot. Thus he wins his κλέος (glory): "If the hero were really god-like, if he were exempt, as the gods are, from age and death, then he would not be a hero at all."

(c) Ian Morris, "Attitudes Toward Death in Archaic Greece", Classical Antiquity, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Oct., 1989), pp. 296-320