Union Benefits

Here's a poem from a great book, Greek Lyric Poetry trans. Sherod Santos. Norton (2005 NY)

The Tomb of Theris

Here lies a man who made his living off well-
marked traps, who rode the breakers like a gull --

marauder of fishes, hauler of seines, prober
in the crannies of rock and cliff -- who never

once sailed the crowded lanes in an open-
rigged, long-beaked quinquereme, who scorned

the gods by dying not in the bloodbath
of a battle, nor shipwrecked in the aftermath

of a hurricane, nor in any way fishermen
normally end. He died, instead, of his own

accord, dimming out like the evening light
on a cot in his wood-plank hut. No wife,

no children arranged for his burial,
but the members of the local fishermen's guild.

Leonidas of Tarentum


PS Having proper burial arrangements was extremely important to the ancient Greeks, in fact it was one of the main benefits of having children. In Argonautika Jason's mother begs him to stay with her because, "I'd forgotten my troubles/so that you with your own hands might have interred me,/my child; that alone was what I had left to hope for/ from you; with all other returns for nurture I'm surfeited."