The book of the specialist in the Byzantine studies and classic culture is on the religious ideas of Ancient Greeks on the death, afterlife, and posthumous atonement. The author describes mythological plots about death and immortality (from Homer and Hesiod to Aristophanes); he analyzes the concepts of soul and afterlife at the various stages of classic Greek history, including the analysis of such sources as speeches of Greek orators of the fifth century BCE. He puts a special attention to the cult of ancestors, and gives characteristic of various types of funeral rituals. A large part of the book is on the mysteries and connected concepts on possible atonement and retribution (Dionysian and Eleusinian mysteries, Orphic cults). Besides, he describes ideas of some Classic Greek philosophers (Pythagorean ones, Socrates, Plato) on the immortality of soul, metempsychosis, and eschatology.

He used contemporary data of archaeological excavations which had been conducted by that time, as well as European works in classic religion written in the second half of the nineteenth century.