We return to our occasional series on Terry Pratchett’s work, but with a difference. The fourth Discworld book, Mort, focuses on a personification of death. We therefore use it as a jumping off point to discuss personifications, and the personification of death in particular through history. We probably end up spending more time on the Iliad and the Aeneid than on Mort.

The Greeks did not have a personification of the moment of death itself - you’ve got Ares, god of slaughter, Persephone, the psychopomp, you’ve got a king of the underworld, but no Death. The Romans came closer to a Terry Pratchett-esque Death personification, appearing in Virgil when Dido kills herself. Juno sends down Iris (the female counterpart of Hermes), who cuts the link between the queen’s body and her spirit. But this is not Iris’s primary duty, she’s a mor ...