Terry Pratchett 4: Mort (On Death and Personification)

Terry Pratchett 4: Mort (On Death and Personification)

From Echoes Underground by Echoes Underground

June 29, 2025 · 1h 1m · Season 1 · Episode 36

About this episode

The episode explores the personification of death through Terry Pratchett's 'Mort' and its historical context.

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 more general psychopomp. Pratchett’s Death is medieval - in appearance this is the Death that emerges in Europe during the Black Death, and reaches its final form as a skeleton with a cloak and a scythe in nineteenth century England. In most of Europe, actually, Death was a woman, and in many ways that feels more fitting. One intuitively feels that a…

People in this episode

Host: Echoes Underground

Topics covered

  • Terry Pratchett
  • personification of death
  • Greek mythology
  • Roman mythology
  • cultural history
  • folklore

Keywords

  • Terry Pratchett
  • Mort
  • personification
  • death
  • Iliad
  • Aeneid
  • Greek mythology
  • Roman mythology
  • folklore

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Mort, Iliad, Aeneid

Places: Europe, England

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