#Grim reaper meme tom full#

The 2nd-century Christian writer Tertullian claimed that during his triumphal procession, a victorious general would have someone (in later versions, a slave) standing behind him, holding a crown over his head and whispering 'Respice post te. The expression memento mori developed with the growth of Christianity, which emphasized Heaven, Hell, and salvation of the soul in the afterlife. In Isaiah, the lifespan of human beings is compared to the short lifespan of grass: 'The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it surely the people are grass' ( Is. In Ecclesiastes, the Preacher insists that 'It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart' ( Eccl. In Psalm 90, Moses prays that God would teach his people 'to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom' ( Ps.

Several passages in the Old Testament urge a remembrance of death. A version of this warning is often rendered into English as 'Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal', for example in Fahrenheit 451. In some accounts of the Roman triumph, a companion or public slave would stand behind or near the triumphant general during the procession and remind him from time to time of his own mortality or prompt him to 'look behind'. The Stoic Marcus Aurelius invited the reader (himself) to 'consider how ephemeral and mean all mortal things are' in his Meditations. The Stoic Epictetus told his students that when kissing their child, brother, or friend, they should remind themselves that they are mortal, curbing their pleasure, as do 'those who stand behind men in their triumphs and remind them that they are mortal'.

#Grim reaper meme tom full#

The Stoics of classical antiquity were particularly prominent in their use of this discipline, and Seneca's letters are full of injunctions to meditate on death.

Plato's Phaedo, where the death of Socrates is recounted, introduces the idea that the proper practice of philosophy is 'about nothing else but dying and being dead'. The philosopher Democritus trained himself by going into solitude and frequenting tombs. History of the concept In classical antiquity In other words, 'remember death' or 'remember that you die'. Memento is the 2nd person singular active imperative of meminī, 'to remember, to bear in mind', usually serving as a warning: 'remember!' Morī is the present infinitive of the deponent verb morior 'to die'. It is reconstructed as ideally pronounced as something like if spoken by an ancient Roman around the beginning of the AD era. In English, the phrase is typically pronounced / m ə ˈ m ɛ n t oʊ ˈ m ɔːr i/, mə- MEN-toh MOR-ee. The Danse Macabre and Death personified with a scythe as the Grim Reaper are even more direct evocations of the trope. Often these function within a work whose main subject is something else, such as a portrait, but the vanitas is an artistic genre where the theme of death is the main subject. Often this alone is enough to evoke the trope, but other motifs such as a coffin, hourglass and wilting flowers signify the impermanence of human life.

The most common motif is a skull, often accompanied by one or more bones. The concept has its roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity, and appeared in funerary art and architecture from the medieval period onwards. Memento mori ( Latin for 'remember that you die' ) is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death.