After life in Roman paganism; lectures delivered at Yale University on the Silliman foundation

BL 815

.F8

C9

Cumont

, Franz

Valery

Marie,

1868-

1947

After

life

in

Roman

paganism

AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

YALE UNIVERSITY

MRS. HEPSA ELY SILLIMAN

MEMORIAL LECTURES

SILLIMAN MEMORIAL LECTURES

PUBLISHED BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

ELECTEICITY AND MATTER. By Joseph John Thomson, D.Sc, LL.D.,
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THE INTEGRATIVE ACTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. By
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RADIOACTIVE TRANSFORMATIONS. By Ernest Rutherford, D.Sc,
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PROBLEMS OF GENETICS. By William Bateson, M.A., F.R.S., Director
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STELLAR MOTIONS. With Special Reference to Motions Determined by
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THEORIES OF SOLUTIONS. By Svante Arrhenius, Ph.D., Sc.D., M.D.,
Director of the Physico-Chemical Department of the Nobel Institute,
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IRRITABILITY. A Physiological Analysis of the General Effect of Stimuli
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PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN GEOLOGY. By William North Rice,
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mar Lindgren, Frederick Leslie Ransome, and William D. Matthew.
(Second printing.)

THE PROBLEM OF VOLCANISM. By Joseph Paxson Iddings, Ph.B.,
Sc.D. (Second printing.)

ORGANISM AND ENVIRONMENT AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE
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LL.D., F.R.S., Fellow of New College, Oxford University. (Second print-
ing.)

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RESPIRATION. By J. S. Haldane, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., Fellow of New
College, Oxford, Honorary Professor, Birmingham University.

AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM. By Franz Cumont.

AFTER LIFE IN
ROMAN PAGANISM

LECTURES DELIVERED AT YALE UNIVERSITY
ON THE SILLIMAN FOUNDATION

BY
FRANZ CUMONT

NEW HAVEN

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

MDCCCCXXII

COPYEIGHT, 1922, BY
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

TO MY FRIEND
GEORGE LINCOLN HENDRICKSON

1888-1922

THE SILLIMAN FOUNDATION

In the year 1883 a legacy of eighty thousand dollars
was left to the President and Fellows of Yale College in
the city of New Haven, to be held in trust, as a gift from
her children, in memory of their beloved and honored
mother, Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman.

On this foundation Yale College was requested and
directed to establish an annual course of lectures de-
signed to illustrate the presence and providence, the wis-
dom and goodness of God, as manifested in the natural
and moral world. These were to be designated as the Mrs.
Hepsa Ely Silliman Memorial Lectures. It was the belief
of the testator that any orderly presentation of the facts
of nature or history contributed to the end of this foun-
dation more effectively than any attempt to emphasize
the elements of doctrine or of creed; and he therefore
provided that lectures on dogmatic or polemical theology
should be excluded from the scope of this foundation, and
that the subjects should be selected, rather, from the
domains of natural science and history, giving special
prominence to astronomy, chemistry, geology, and
anatomy.

It was further directed that each annual course should
be made the basis of a volume to form part of a series
constituting a memorial to Mrs. Silliman. The memorial
fund came into the possession of the Corporation of Yale
University in the year 1901 ; and the present volume con-
stitutes the sixteenth of the series of memorial lectures.

PREFACE

AT the invitation of the President of Yale Univer-
/\ sity and of Professor Eussell H. Chittenden,
,/~m, chairman of the committee in charge of the Silli-
man Foundation, the lectures which are here presented
to a wider public were delivered in New Haven during
the month of March of the year 1921. It was the wish
of the committee that I should speak upon some subject
from the history of religion. I chose therefore as my
theme a matter which had occupied my attention for
many years, viz., the ideas current in Eoman paganism
concerning the lot of the soul after death. The argument
has been treated more than once by distinguished scholars
and notably — to mention only an English book — by Mrs.
Arthur Strong in her recent work " Apotheosis and
After Life, ' ' a study characterised by penetrating inter-
pretation, especially of archaeological monuments. But
we do not yet possess for the Roman imperial epoch a
counterpart to Rohde's classical volume, "Psyche," for
the earlier Greek period, that is, a work in which the
whole evolution of Roman belief and speculation regard-
ing a future life is set forth. These lectures cannot claim
to fill this gap. They may however be looked upon as a
sketch of the desired investigation, in which, though
without the detailed citation of supporting evidence, an
attempt at least has been made to trace the broad outlines
of the subject in all its magnitude.

The lectures are printed in the form in which they
were delivered. The necessity of making each one intel-
ligible to an audience which was not always the same, has
made inevitable some repetitions. Cross references have
been added, where the same topics are treated in different

xii PREFACE

connections. However, in a book intended primarily for
the general reader, the scholarly apparatus has been
reduced to a minimum and as a rule indicates only the
source of passages quoted in the text.

My acknowledgment is due to Miss Helen Douglas
Irvine, who with skill and intelligent understanding of the
subject translated into English the French text of these
lectures. I wish also to express my gratitude to my
friends, Professor George Lincoln Hendrickson, who took
upon himself the tedious task of reading the manuscript
and the proofs of this book and to whom I am indebted
for many valuable suggestions both in matter and in
form, and Professor Grant Showerman, who obligingly
consented to revise the last chapters before they were
printed.

Rome, September, 1922.

CONTENTS

PREFACE. P. xi.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. General view of the subject,
1 — The ancient beliefs : after life in the tomb, 3 — in the nether
world, 4 — Philosophical criticism, 5 — Academic and Peripa-
tetic schools, 6 — Epicureans, 7 — Stoics, 12 — Scepticism at the
end of the Republic, 16 — Earthly immortality, 19 — Rebirth
of Pythagorism, 20— Its teaching, 24— Posidonius, 27— Cicero,
31 — Diffusion of the mysteries, 33 — Hermetic writings and
Chaldean oracles, 38— Plutarch, 39— The second and third
centuries, 39 — Neo-Platonism, 40 — Conclusion, 43.

I. AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB. Survival of primitive beliefs,
44— After life of the body, 45— The tomb "eternal house," 48
— Food for the dead, 50 — Sacrifices, 51 — Funeral meals, 52 —
Gardens, 56 — Connection of the dead with the living, 57 — The
aerial souls, 59 — Beneficent, 60 — or Malevolent, 63 — Souls of
the unburied, 64 — Become ghosts, 67.

II. THE NETHER WORLD. Belief in the nether world, 70—
After life prolongation of earthly life, 72 — Greek doctrines in-
troduced into Italy, 73 — Philosophical criticism, 76 — Hades
transported to this life, 78 — Distinction of "soul" and shade,
79 — Hades is the lower hemisphere, 79 — Hades in the air, 81 —
Scepticism, 83 — Persistence of old tradition in literature and
art, 84 — Ancient beliefs maintained in the people, 86 — Neo-
Platonists, 87 — Persian dualism, 89.

III. CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY. Widespread beliefs that
souls rise to the stars, 91 — Unknown in ancient Greece, 94 —
Pythagorism, 95 — Lunar immortality, 96 — Solar immortality,
100— Combination of both, 102— Stellar immortality, 103—
Combined with the other doctrines : three stages, 106 — Passage
through the planetary spheres, 107 — Souls rise above the stars,
108.

xiv CONTENTS

IV. THE "WINNING OF IMMORTALITY. Ancient conception
of immortality, 110 — Eminent men gods on earth, 111 — Im-
mortality of the few, 114 — Mysteries claim to procure ' ' deifica-
tion," 116— Lustrations, 118— Unctions, 119— Ritual banquets,
120— The gnosis, 121 — Identification with a particular god,
122 — Illumination by the astral divinities, 123 — Philosophy
also leads to union with God, 124.

V. UNTIMELY DEATH. Children not admitted to the Elysian
Fields, 128 — Those who die violent deaths, 129 — Influence of
astrology, 131 — Pythagorism, 132 — Magic, 134 — Philosophical
reaction, 136 — Children initiated, 138 — Their souls rise to
heaven, 139 — Different categories of biothanati, 141 — Soldiers
slain in battle, 142 — Suicides, 143 — Executed criminals, 145 —
Persistence of ancient beliefs, 146.

VI. THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND. Journey to the
nether world, 148 — The Pythagorean Y, 150 — The two roads,
152 — How the dead reach heaven, 153 — On foot, by means of a
ladder, 153 — In a boat, 154 — On horseback, 155 — In a chariot,
156 — As a bird, 157 — Carried by an eagle, 158 — Solar attrac-
tion, 160 — Physical theory, 161 — The air peopled with demons,
162 — The gates of the planetary spheres, 162 — Guide of the
souls, 163 — Physical character of the dead, 164 — The shade
and the soul, 167 — Distinction of soul and reason, 168 — Neo-
Platonic "vehicle," 169.

VII. THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL AND METEMPSYCHO-
SIS. Origin in Homer, 170 — Orphic theology, 171 — Resem-
blance to penal law, 172 — Apocryphal gospel of Peter, 173 —
Oriental influence, 174 — Fire of hell, 175 — Metempsychosis,
its animistic basis, 177 — Origin in Greece, 177 — Souls passing
continuously through different kinds of beings, 179 — Reincar-
nation a punishment, 180 — "Palingenesis" or uncontinuous
reincarnation, 182 — Transmigration from man to man, 183 —
Purification of the soul in the air, 184 — by water and fire, 185
— Purgatory in the atmosphere, 186 — The purified spirit re-
mains in heaven, 187.

VIII. THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED. Rest in the tomb,
190 — in the nether world, 193 — in the light of heaven, 193 —
Persistence of these ideas among the Christians, 196 — Repast
of the dead, 199 — Repast in the nether world, 201 — The funeral

CONTENTS xv

banquet and the sacred meal of the mysteries, 203 — Banquet
in heaven, 205 — Persistence in Christianity, 206 — The sight of
the god, 207 — In the astral cults, 208 — Communion of man with
the stars, 209 — Immortality a contemplation of the astral gods,
210 — Astral mysticism, 211 — Ecstasy of the Neo-Platonists, 212
— Last conception of eternal bliss, 213.

INDEX. P. 215.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

THE idea of death has perhaps never been more present to
humanity than during the years through which we have
just passed. It has been the daily companion of millions
of men engaged in a murderous conflict ; it has haunted the even
larger number who have trembled for the lives of their nearest and
dearest; it is still constantly in the thoughts of the many who
nurse regret for those they loved. And doubtless also, the faith
or the hope has never more imposed itself, even on the unbeliev-
ing, that these countless multitudes, filled with moral force and
generous passion, who have entered eternity, have not wholly
perished, that the ardour which animated them was not extin-
guished when their limbs grew cold, that the spirit which im-
pelled them to self-sacrifice was not dissipated with the atoms
which formed their bodies.

These feelings were known to the ancients also, who gave to this
very conviction the form suggested by their religion. Pericles1
in his funeral eulogy of the warriors who fell at the siege of
Samos declared that they who die for their country become like
the immortal gods, and that, invisible like them, they still scatter
their benefits on us. The ideas on immortality held in antiquity
are often thus at once far from and near to our own — near be-
cause they correspond to aspirations which are not antique or
modern, but human, far because the Olympians now have fallen
into the deep gulf where lie dethroned deities. These ideas become
more and more like the conceptions familiar to us as gradually
their time grows later, and those generally admitted at the end of
paganism are analogous to the doctrines accepted throughout
the Middle Ages.

I flatter myself, therefore, that when I speak to you of the
beliefs in a future life held in Roman times I have chosen a
subject which is not very remote from us nor such as has no
relation to our present thought or is capable of interesting only
the learned.

i Plut., Pericl, 8.

2 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

We can here trace only the outlines of this vast subject. I am
aware that it is always imprudent to hazard moral generalisa-
tions : they are always wrong somewhere. Above all, it is perilous
to attempt to determine with a few words the infinite variety
of individual creeds, for nothing escapes historical observation
more easily than the intimate convictions of men, which they
often hide even from those near them. In periods of scepticism
pious souls cling to old beliefs ; the conservative crowd remains
faithful to ancestral traditions. When religion is resuming its
empire, rationalistic minds resist the contagion of faith. It is
especially difficult to ascertain up to what point ideas adopted
by intellectual circles succeeded in penetrating the deep masses
of the people. The epitaphs which have been preserved give us
too scanty and too sparse evidence in this particular. Besides, in
paganism a dogma does not necessarily exclude its opposite
dogma: the two sometimes persist side by side in one mind as
different possibilities, each of which is authorised by a respect-
able tradition. You will therefore make the necessary reserva-
tions to such of my statements as are too absolute. I shall be able
to point out here only the great spiritual currents which succes-
sively brought to Rome new ideas as to the Beyond, and to
sketch the evolution undergone by the doctrines as to the lot and
the abode of souls. You will not expect me to be precise as to the
number of the partisans of each of these doctrines in the various
periods.

At least we can distinguish the principal phases of the reli-
gious movement which caused imperial society to pass from
incredulity to certain forms of belief in immortality, forms at
first somewhat crude but afterwards loftier, and we can see
where this movement led. The change was a capital one and
transformed for the ancients the whole conception of life. The
axis about which morality revolved had to be shifted when ethics
no longer sought, as in earlier Greek philosophy, to realise the
sovereign good on this earth but looked for it after death. Thence-
forth the activity of man aimed less at tangible realities, ensuring
well-being to the family or the city or the state, and more at
attaining to the fulfilment of ideal hopes in a supernatural world.
Our sojourn here below was conceived as a preparation for
another existence, as a transitory trial which was to result in
infinite felicity or suffering. Thus the table of ethical values was
turned upside down.

"All our actions and all our thoughts," says Pascal, "must

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 3

follow so different a course if there are eternal possessions for
which we may hope than if there are not, that it is impossible
to take any directed and well-judged step except by regulating
it in view of this point which ought to be our ultimate goal. ' '2

We will attempt first to sketch in a general introduction the
historical transformation which belief in the future life under-
went between the Republican period and the fall of paganism.
Then, in three lectures, we will examine more closely the various
conceptions of the abode of the dead held under the Roman Em-
pire, study in three others the conditions or the means which
enable men to attain to immortality and in the last two set forth
the lot of souls in the Beyond.

The cinerary vases of the prehistoric period are often modelled
in the shape of huts : throughout, funeral sculpture follows the
tradition that the tomb should reproduce the dwelling, and until
the end of antiquity it was designated, in the West as in the East,
as the ' ' eternal house ' ' of him who rested in it.

Thus a conception of the tomb which goes back to the remotest
ages and persists through the centuries regards it as ''the last
dwelling ' ' of those who have left us ; and this expression has not
yet gone out of use. It was believed that a dead man continued
to live, in the narrow space granted him, a life which was grop-
ing, obscure, precarious, yet like that he led on earth. Subject to
the same needs, obliged to eat and to drink, he expected those
who had been nearest to him to appease his hunger and thirst.
The utensils he had used, the things he had cared for, were often
deposited beside him so that he might pursue the occupations and
enjoy the amusements which he had forsaken in the world. If he
were satisfied he would stay quietly in the furnished house pro-
vided for him and would not seek to avenge himself on those
whose neglect had caused him suffering. Funeral rites were origi-
nally inspired rather by fear than by love. They were precautions
taken against the spirit of the dead rather than pious care
bestowed in their interest.3

For the dead were powerful; their action was still felt; they
were not immured in the tomb or confined beneath the ground.
Men saw them reappear in dreams, wearing their former aspect.
They were descried during shadowy vigils; their voices were

zPensies, III, 194 (t. II, p. 103, ed. Brunschvigg).
s See Lecture I, ' ' Lif a in the Tomb. ' '

4 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

heard and their movements noted. Imagination conceived them
such as they had once been; recollection of them filled the
memory and to think of such apparitions as idle or unreal seemed
impossible. The dead subsisted, then, as nebulous, impalpable
beings, perceived by the senses only exceptionally. Here the belief
that their remains had not quite lost all feeling mingled with
the equally primitive and universal belief that the soul is a
breath, exhaled with the last sigh. The vaporous shade, sometimes
a dangerous but sometimes a succouring power, wandered by
night in the atmosphere and haunted the places which the living
man had been used to frequent. Except for some sceptical reason-
ers, all antiquity admitted the reality of these phantoms. Cen-
tury-old beliefs, maintained by traditional rites, thus persisted,
more or less definitely, in the popular mind, even after new
forms of the future life were imagined. Many vestiges of these
beliefs have survived until today.

The first transformation undergone by the primitive concep-
tion was to entertain the opinion that the dead who are deposited
in the ground gather together in a great cavity inside the bowels
of the earth.4 This belief in the nether world is found among most
of the peoples of the Mediterranean basin : the Sheol of the He-
brews differs little from the Homeric Hades and the Italic Inferi.

It has been conjectured that the substitution of incineration
for inhumation contributed to spreading this new manner of
conceiving life beyond the tomb: the shade could not remain
attached to a handful of ashes enclosed in a puny urn. It went,
then, to join its fellows who had gone down into the dark dwell-
ing where reigned the gods of a subterranean kingdom. But as
ghosts could leave their graves in order to trouble or to help
men, so the swarms of the infernal spirits rose to the upper world
through the natural openings of the earth, or through ditches dug
for the purpose of maintaining communication with them and
conciliating them with offerings.

The Romans do not seem to have imagined survival in the
infernal regions very differently from the survival of the vague
monotonous shades in their tombs. Their Manes or Lemures had
no marked personality or clearly characterised individual fea-
tures. The Inferi were not, as in Greece, a stage for the enactment
of a tragic drama ; their inhabitants had no original life, and in
the lot dealt to them no idea of retribution can be discerned.

4 See Lecture II, ' * The Nether World. ' '

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 5

In this matter it was the Hellenes who imposed their conceptions
of Hades on the Italic peoples and gave them those half mythical
and half theological beliefs which Orphism had introduced in
their own religion. Hellenic influence was felt directly through
the colonies of Greater Greece, indirectly through the Etruscans,
whose funeral sculpture shows us that they had adopted all the
familiar figures of the Greek Hades — Charon, Cerberus, the
Furies, Hermes Psychopompos and the others.5

From the time when Latin literature had its beginnings and
the Latin theatre was born, we find writers taking pleasure in
reproducing the Hellenic fables of Tartarus and the Elysian
Fields ; and Plautus6 can already make one of his characters say
that he has seen "many paintings representing the pains of
Acheron." This infernal mythology became an inexhaustible
theme which gave matter to poetry and art until the end of
antiquity and beyond it. We shall see, in later lectures, how the
religious traditions of the Greeks were subjected to various
transformations and interpretations.

But Greece did not introduce poetic beliefs only into Rome:
she also caused her philosophy to be adopted there from the
second century onwards, and this philosophy tended to be de-
structive both of those beliefs and of the old native faith in the
Manes and in the Orcus. Polybius,7 when speaking appreciatively
of the religion of the Romans, praises them for having inculcated
in the people a faith in numerous superstitious practices and
tragic fictions. He considers this to be an excellent way of keep-
ing them to their duty by the fear of infernal punishment.
Hence we gather that if the historian thought it well for the
people to believe in these inventions, then, in his opinion, en-
lightened persons, like his friends the Scipios, could see in them
nothing but the stratagems of a prudent policy. But the scepti-
cism of a narrow circle of aristocrats could not be confined to it
for long when Greek ideas were more widely propagated.

Greek philosophy made an early attack on the ideas held as to
a future life. Even Democritus, the forerunner of Epicurus,
spoke of "some people who ignore the dissolution of our mortal
nature and, aware of the perversity of their life, pass their time

s See Lecture II, p. 73.

6 Plautus, Capt., V, 4, 1.

7 Polyb., VI, 56, 12.

6 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

in unrest and in fear and forge for themselves deceitful fables
as to the time when follows their end."8 It is true that in the
fourth century Plato's idealism had supplied, if not a strict
proof of immortality, yet reasons for it sufficient to procure its
acceptance by such as desired to be convinced. But in the Alex-
andrian age, which was the surpassingly scientific period of
Greek thought, there was a tendency to remove all metaphysical
and mythical conceptions of the soul's destiny from the field of
contemplation. This was the period in which the Academy,
Plato's own school, unfaithful to its founder's doctrines, was
led by men who, like Carneades, raised scepticism to a system and
stated that man can reach no certainty. "We know that when
Carneades was sent to Rome as ambassador in 156 B. C. he made
a great impression by maintaining that justice is a matter of
convention, and that he was consequently banished by the senate
as a danger to the state. But we need only read Cicero's works
to learn what a lasting influence his powerfully destructive
dialectics had.

The dogmatism of other sects was at this time hardly at all
more favourable to the traditional beliefs in another life.

Aristotle had thought that human reason alone persisted, and
that the emotional and nutritive soul was destroyed with the
body, but he left no personality to this pure intelligence, de-
prived of all sensibility. He definitely denied that the " blessed"
could be happy. With him begins a long period during which
Greek philosophy nearly ceased to speculate on destiny beyond
the grave. It was repugnant to Peripatetic philosophy to concern
itself with the existence of a soul which could be neither con-
ceived nor defined by reason. Some of Aristotle's immediate
disciples, like Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus, or Straton of Lamp-
sacus, the pupil of Theophrastus, agreed in denying immortality
altogether; and later, in the time of the Severi, Alexander of
Aphrodisias, the great commentator of The Stagirite, undertook
to prove that the entire soul, that is the higher and the lower
soul, had need of the body in order to be active and perished
with it, and that such was the veritable thought of the master.
But profoundly as Peripateticism affected Greek thought,
directly and indirectly, in practically discarding the future life,
this was not the philosophy which dominated minds towards the
end of the Roman Republic. Other schools then had a much wider

sDiels, Fragm. VorsoTcratiker*, II, p. 121, fr. 297.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 7

influence and made this influence felt much more deeply on
eschatological beliefs. These schools were Epicureanism and
Stoicism.

Epicurus took up again the doctrine of Democritus, and
taught that the soul, which was composed of atoms, was disinte-
grated at the moment of death, when it was no longer held
together by its fleshly wrapping, and that its transitory unity was
then destroyed for ever. The vital breath, after being expelled,
was, he said, buffeted by the winds and dissolved in the air like
mist or smoke, even before the body was decomposed. This was
so ancient a conception that Homer had made use of a like com-
parison, and the idea that the violence of the wind can act on
souls as a destructive force was familiar to Athenian children
in Plato 's time.9 But if the soul thus resolves itself, after death,
into its elementary principles, how can phantoms come to
frighten us in the watches of the night or beloved beings visit
us in our dreams? These simulacra (€t8<oAa) are for Epicurus no
more than emanations of particles of an extreme tenuity, con-
stantly issuing from bodies and keeping for some time their form
and appearance. They act on our senses as do colour and scent
and awake in us the image of a vanished being.

Thus we are vowed to annihilation, but this lot is not one to
be dreaded. Death, which is held to be the most horrible of ills,
is in reality nothing of the sort, since the destruction of our
organism abolishes all its sensibility. The time when we no
longer exist is no more painful for us than that when we had
not yet our being. As Plato deduced the persistence of the soul
after death from its supposed previous existence, so Epicurus
drew an opposite conclusion from our ignorance of our earlier
life ; and, according to him, the conviction that we perish wholly
can alone ensure our tranquillity of spirit by delivering us
from the fear of eternal torment.

There is no one of the master's doctrines on which his disciples
insist with more complacent assurance. They praise him for hav-
ing freed men from the terrors of the Beyond ; they thank him
for having taught them not to fear death ; his philosophy appears
to them as a liberator of souls. Lucretius in his third book, of
which eighteenth-century philosophers delighted to celebrate the
merits, claims, with a sort of exaltation, to drive from men's

9 Homer, II., *, 100; Plato, Phaed., 77 D; cf. Eohde, Psyche, II*, p. 264,
n. 2.

8 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

hearts "that dread of Acheron which troubles human life to its
inmost depths. ' '10 The sage sees all the cruel fictions, with which
fable had peopled the kingdom of terrors, scattered abroad, and,
when he has rid himself of the dismay which haunts the common
man, which casts a mournful veil over things and leaves no joy
unmixed, he finds a blessed calm, the perfect quietude or
"ataraxia."

This doctrine, which Lucretius preached with the enthusiasm
of a neophyte won to the true faith, had a profound reaction in
Rome. Its adepts in Cicero's circle were numerous, including
Cassius, the murderer of Caesar. Sallust goes so far as to make
Caesar himself affirm, in full senate, that death, the rest from
torment, dispels the ills which afflict mankind, that beyond it
there is neither joy nor sorrow.11 Men of science, in particular,
were attracted by these theories. In a celebrated passage Pliny
the Naturalist, after categorically declaring that neither the soul
nor the body has any more sensation after death than before the
day of birth, ends with a vehement apostrophe : ' ' Unhappy one,
what folly is thine who in death renewest life ! "Where will crea-
tures ever find rest if souls in heaven, if shades in the infernal
regions, still have feeling? Through this complacent credulity
we lose death, the greatest boon which belongs to our nature,
and the sufferings of our last hour are doubled by the fear of
what will follow after. If it be indeed sweet to live, for whom
can it be so to have lived? How much easier and more certain
is the belief which each man can draw from his own experience,
when he pictures his future tranquillity on the pattern of that
which preceded his birth!"12

Even Seneca in one of his tragedies, an early work, makes the
chorus of Trojan women declaim a long profession of faith which
is the purest Epicureanism.13

The invasion of the Roman world by the Oriental mysteries
and superstitions in the second century caused the unbelievers to
exalt Epicurus yet higher. The satirist Lucian, using almost the
same expressions as Lucretius, proclaims the truly sacred and

10 HI, 38:

"Et metus ille foras praeceps Aeheruntis agendus
Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo. ' '
ii Sail., Cat., 51, 20.
12 Pliny, H. N., VII, 55, § 190.
is Seneca, Troades, 382 ss.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 9

divine character of him who alone knew the good with the true,
and who transmitted it to his disciples, to whom he gave moral
liberty.14 Believers everywhere looked upon him as a terrible blas-
phemer. The prophet Alexander of Abonotichos enjoined all
who would obtain divine graces to drive away with stones ' ' athe-
ists, Epicureans and Christians," and exclude them from his
mysteries.15 He ordered by an oracle that the writings of him
whom he called "the blind old man" should be burnt. When
mysticism and Platonism triumphed in the Roman world, Epi-
cureanism ceased to exist. It had disappeared in the middle of
the fourth century, yet Julian the Apostate thought it advisable
to include the writings of Epicurus among the books which were
forbidden to the priests of his revived paganism.16

Thus during several centuries this philosophy had won a
multitude of followers. The inscriptions bear eloquent wit-
ness to this fact. The most remarkable of them is a long text
which was set out on the wall of a portico in the little town of
Oenoanda in Lycia. A worthy citizen, Diogenes by name, who
seems to have lived under the Antonines, was a convinced par-
tisan of the doctrine of Epicurus ; and feeling his end draw near,
he wished to engrave an exposition thereof on marble for the
present and future edification of his countrymen and of stran-
gers. He does not fail to evince his contempt for death, at which,
he says, he has learnt to mock. ' ' I do not let myself be frightened
by the Tityi and the Tantali whom some represent in Hades;
horror does not seize me when I think of the putrefaction of my
body . . . when the links which bind our organism are loosened,
nothing further touches us."17 These are ideas which we find
reproduced everywhere, in various forms, for Epicureanism did
not only win convinced partisans in the most cultivated circles,
but also spread in the lowest strata of the population, as is
proved by epitaphs expressing unbelief in an after life. Some do
not go beyond a short profession of faith, "We are mortal; we
are not immortal."18 One maxim is repeated so often that it is
sometimes expressed only by initials, "I was not; I was; I am

i*Lucian, Alex., c. 61; c. 47.
isLucian, ibid., c. 38; e. 44; c. 47.
is Julian, Epist., 89 (p. 747, 23, ed. Bidez-Cumont).

it Cousin, Bull. corr. hell, XVI, 1897; cf. Usener, Ehein. Mus., N. F.,
XLVII, p. 428.

isCIL, XI, 856=Biicheler, Carm. epigraphica, 191.

10 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

not ; I do not care. ' '19 So man goes back to nothingness whence
he went forth. It has been remarked that this epigraphic formula
was engraved especially on the tombs of slaves, who had slight
reason for attachment to life. Gladiators also adopted the sen-
tence : these wretched men, who were to prove their indifference
to death in the arena, were taught that it marked the destruction
of feeling and the term of their suffering.

The same thought is sometimes expressed less brutally, almost
touchingly. Thus a comedian, who has spouted many verses and
tramped many roads, voices in his epitaph the conviction that
life is a loan, like a part in a play: "My mouth no longer gives
out any sound; the noise of applause no longer reaches me;
I paid my debt to nature and have departed. All this is but
dust."20 Another actor, who recited Homer's verses in the festi-
vals, tells us that he "laughs at illusions and slumbers softly,"
returning to the Epicurean comparison of death with an uncon-
scious sleep which has no awakening.21

Some wordier unbelievers felt the need of enlarging on their
negations.22 "There is no boat of Hades, no ferryman Charon,
no Aeacus as doorkeeper, no dog Cerberus. All we, whom death
sends down to the earth, become bones and ashes and no more. . . .
Offer not perfumes and garlands to my stele : it is but a stone ;
burn no fire : the expenditure is vain. If thou have a gift, give
it me while I live. If thou givest to my ashes to drink, thou wilt
make mud : and the dead will not drink. . . . When thou scatterest
earth on my remains, say that I have again become as I was
when I was not. ' ' This last thought occurs frequently. Thus on a
Roman tomb we read : "We are and we were nothing. See, reader,
how swiftly we mortals go back from nothingness to nothing-
ness."23

Sometimes these dead adopt a joking tone which is almost
macabre. Thus a freedman, merry to the grave, boasts of the
amenities of his new state: "What remains of man, my bones,
rests sweetly here. I no longer have the fear of sudden starva-

19 Dessau, Inscript. selectae, 8162 ss.; cf. Eecueil des inscriptions du
Font, 110: "Non fui, fui, non sum, non euro."

20 Eecueil, 143.

21 Cf. Lecture VIII, p. 192.

22 Kaibel, Epigr. Graeca, 646.

23 Bucheler, Carm. epigr., 1495=CIL, VI, 26003 :

"Nil sumus et fuimus. Mortales respice, lector,
In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus."

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 11

tion; I am exempt from attacks of gout; my body is no longer
pledged for my rent; and I enjoy free and perpetual hospi-
tality."24

Often a grosser Epicureanism recommends that we make profit
of our earthly passage since the fatal term deprives us for ever
of the pleasures which are the sovereign good. "Es bibe lude
veni" — "Eat, drink, play, come hither" — is advice which is
several times repeated.25 Not uncommonly, variations occur, in-
spired by the famous epitaph which was on the alleged tomb
of Sardanapalus and is resumed in the admonition: "Indulge
in voluptuousness, for only this pleasure wilt thou carry away
with thee"; or as it is expressed in the Epistle to the Corin-
thians, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."26 So we
read on a stone found near Beneventum: "What I have eaten
and what I have drunk; that is all that belongs to me."27 A
well-known distich states that "Baths, wine, and love impair
our bodies, but baths, wine, and love make life";28 and a
veteran of the army had advice based on his own example
engraved on his tomb, "While I lived, I drank willingly; drink,
ye who live."29 The exhortation to enjoy a life soon to be inter-
rupted by death is a traditional theme which has lent itself to
many developments in ancient and modern poetry. It is the
formula which resumes the wisdom of the popular Epicureanism.
Some silver goblets, found in Boscoreale near Pompeii,30 show us
philosophers and poets among skeletons, and inscriptions urging
them to rejoice while they live, since no man is certain of the

24 Biicheler, Carm. epigr., 1247=CIL, VI, 7193:

"Quod superest homini requiescunt dulciter ossa,
Nee sum sollicitus ne subito esuriam.
Et podagram careo, nee sum pensionibus arra
Et gratis aeterno perf ruor hospitio. ' '

25 Biicheler, op. cit., 1500.

26 I Cor. 15. 32.

27 Biicheler, op. cit., 187: "Quod comedi et ebibi tantum meum est." Cf.
ibid., 244 : ' ' Quod edi, bibi, mecum habeo, quod reliqui, perdidi. ' '

28 Biicheler, op. cit., 1499; Dessau, Inscr. sel., 8157:

' ' Balnea, vina, venus corrumpunt corpora nostra,
Sed vitam f aciunt balnea, vina, venus. ' '

29 Biicheler, op. cit., 243: "Dum vixi, bibi libenter; bibite vos qui
vivitis. ' '

30 Heron de Villefosse, Le tresor de Boscoreale, in Monuments Piot, V,
Paris, 1899.

12 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

morrow. Epicurus appears in person, his hand stretching towards
a cake on a table ; and between his legs is a little pig lifting his
feet and snout to the cake to take his share of it. Above the cake
are the Greek words, TO TEA02 HAONH, "The supreme end is
pleasure." Horace, when he advises us to live from day to day
without poisoning the passing hour with hopes or fears for the
future, speaks of himself, jestingly, as a fat "hog of Epicurus'
herd. ' '31 It was thus that the vulgar interpreted the precepts of
him who had in reality preached moderation and renunciation
as the means of reaching true happiness.

If Epicureanism chose its ground as the passionate adversary
of religious beliefs, the other great system which shared its
dominance of minds in Rome, Stoicism, sought, on the contrary,
to reconcile these beliefs with its theories. But the allegorical
interpretations which Stoicism suggested, led, indirectly, to
nearly the same result as a complete negation, for when it
changed the meaning of the ancient myths it really destroyed
the traditions which it sought to preserve. This is true in par-
ticular of its ideas as to the future life.

It will be remembered that man is for the Stoics a microcosm,
who reproduces in his person the constitution of the universe.
The entire mass of the world is conceived by them as animated
by a divine Fire, a first principle which evokes the succession of
natural phenomena. An uninterrupted chain of causes, ordered
by this supreme reason, necessarily determines the course of
events and irresistibly governs the existence of the great All.
This cosmic life is conceived as formed of an infinite series of
exactly similar cycles: the four elements are periodically reab-
sorbed into the purest of their number, which is the Fire of
intelligence, and then, after the general conflagration, are once
more dissociated.

In the same way our organism lives, moves and thinks because
it is animated by a detached particle of this fiery principle which
penetrates everything. As this principle reaches to the limits
of the universe, so our soul occupies the whole body in which it
lodges. The pantheism of the Porch conceives as material both
God and the reason which rules us, the reason which is, in the
emphatic words of Epictetus,32 "a fragment of God." It is defined

31 Epist., I, 4, 16.

32 Epict., Diss., I, 14, 6; II, 8, 11 ( airb^iraana tou deov).

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 13

as a hot breath (Trvevfxa irvp&Sesj anima inflammata) ; it is like the
purest part of the air which maintains life by respiration, or the
ardent ether which feeds the stars. This individual soul main-
tains and preserves man, as the soul of the world, by connecting
its various parts, saves it from disintegration. But on both sides
this action is only temporary; souls cannot escape the fatal lot
imposed on the whole of which they are but a tiny portion. At
the end of each cosmic period the universal conflagration
(eKTrv/Dwo-is) will cause them to return to the divine home whence
all of them came forth.33 But if the new cycle, making its new
beginning, is to reproduce exactly that which preceded it, a
1 ' palingenesis ' ' will one day give to the same souls, endowed with
the same qualities, the same existence in the same bodies formed
of the same elements.

This is the maximum limit of the immortality which the
materialistic pantheism of the Stoic philosophy could concede.
Nor did all the doctors agree in granting it. The variations of
the school on a point which seems to us of capital importance
are most remarkable. While Cleanthes did indeed admit that all
souls thus subsisted after their brief passage on earth for thou-
sands of years and until the final ekpyrosis, for Chrysippus only
the souls of the sages had part in this restricted immortality.
In order to win it they must temper their strength by resisting
the passions. The weak, who had let themselves be conquered in
the struggle of this life, fell in the Beyond also.34 At the most
they obtained a short period of after life. The brevity or the
absence of this other existence was the chastisement of their
weakness.

Thus, almost the same moral consequences and incitements to
good could be drawn from a conditional and diminished immor-
tality, as from the general eternity of pains and rewards which
other thinkers taught. But the Stoics were not unanimous in
adopting these doctrines. We do not clearly perceive how far
they agreed in admitting that the soul, deprived of corporeal
organs, was endowed with feeling and, in particular, kept an
individual conscience connected with that possessed on earth.
It is certain that a definitely negative tendency showed itself in
Rome among the sectaries of Zeno. Panaetius, the friend of the
Scipios, and one of the writers who did most to win the Romans
over to the ideas of the Porch, here dissociated himself from his

33 Cf., e.g., Sen., Consol. Marc, end.

s^ See Lecture IV, p. 115 s.

14 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

masters and absolutely denied personal survival.35 This attitude
was subsequently that of many Roman Stoics of those who repre-
sented the school 's tradition most purely. The master of the poet
Persius, Cornutus, of whom a short work remains to us, declared
that the soul died with the body, immediately.36 Similarly, at a
later date, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, although they some-
times seem to admit the possibility of survival, certainly incline
rather to believe that souls are disintegrated and return to the
elemental mass whence they were formed. Even Seneca, who is
more swayed by other tendencies and whose wavering thought
does not always remain consistent nor perspicuous, is not con-
vinced of the truth of immortality. It is no more to him than a
beautiful hope.

How is it that Stoicism thus hesitated at a point on which
the whole conception of human life seems to us to depend? It
was that eschatological theories had in reality only a secondary
value in this system, of which the essential part was not affected
by their variability. True Stoicism placed the realisation of its
ideal in this world. For it the aim of our existence here below was
not preparation for death but the conquest of perfect virtue,
which freed him who had attained to it from the passions and
thus conferred on him independence and felicity. Man could, of
himself, reach a complete beatitude which was not impaired by
the limits placed to his duration. The sage, a blissful being, was a
god on earth: heaven could give him nothing more. Therefore
for these philosophers the answer to the question, "What be-
comes of us after death?" did not depend on moral considera-
tions as it generally does for us. For them it rather followed on
physical theories.

If these theories allow of different solutions of the problem of
immortality, they agree on one point — the impossibility that the
soul, if it is to last longer than we, should go down into the
depths of the earth ; for the soul was, as we have said, conceived
as an ardent breath ; that is to say, as formed of the two elements,
air and fire, which have the property of rising to the heights.
Its very nature prevented its descent : "it is impossible to con-
ceive that it is borne downwards. ' '37 Thus all the vulgar notions
as to Hades were in contradiction with Stoic psychology, a point

35 Cic, Tusc, I, 79.

36 Stob., Eel, I, 384, Wachsmuth.

37 Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math., IX, 71 : Ou5£ ras \f/vxas Zvevnv v-rroporjaai
Kdrta 0e/)o^i/as. Cf. Cic, Tusc, I, 16, 37; 17, 40.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 15

to which we will return in treating of the nether world.38 These
philosophers do indeed speak of Hades but, faithful to their
habits, while they use traditional terms they give them a new
meaning. ''The descent into Hades" is for them simply the de-
parting from life, the transference of the soul to new surround-
ings. Thus Epictetus, who uses this expression (/<a<9o8o9 eU *Ai8ov),
clearly states in another passage, " There is no Hades, no
Acheron, no Cocytus, no Pyriphlegethon, but all is filled with
gods and demons."39 These gods and demons were, however, no
more than personifications of the forces of nature.40

The true Stoic doctrine is, then, that souls, when they leave
the corpse, subsist in the atmosphere and especially in its highest
part which touches the circle of the moon.41 But after a longer
or less interval of time they, like the flesh and the bones, are
decomposed and dissolve into the elements which formed them.
This thought, like Epicurean nihilism, often appears in epi-
taphs, and shows how Stoic ideas had spread among the people.
| Thus on a tombstone found in Moesia we read first the mournful
i statement that there is neither love nor friendship among the
I dead and that the corpse lies like a stone sunk into the ground.
j Then the dead man adds :42 ' ' I was once composed of earth, water
j and airy breath (ttvcv/xo), but I perished, and here I rest, having
! rendered all to the All. Such is each man 's lot. What of it ?
| There, whence my body came, did it return, when it was dis-
i solved. ' ' Sometimes there is more insistence on the notion that
j this cosmic breath, in which ours is gathered up, is the godhead
who fills and rules the world. So in this epitaph: "The holy
1 spirit which thou didst bear has escaped from thy body. That
I body remains here and is like the earth ; the spirit pursues the
revolving heavens ; the spirit moves all ; the spirit is nought else
than God."43 Elsewhere we find the following brief formula,
which sums up the same idea: "The ashes have my body; the
sacred air has borne away my soul. ' '44 Very characteristic is an
inscription inspired by verses of a Greek poet, on the tomb of a
| Roman woman : ' ' Here I lie dead and I am ashes ; these ashes are

38 Cf. Lecture II, p. 77.

39 Epictetus, III, 13, 15; cf. II, 6, 18.

40 Bonhofer, Epictet. und die Stoa, 1890, p. 65.
« Cf. Lecture III, p. 98.

42 Arch. Epigr. Mitt, aus Oesterreich, VI, 1882, p. 60; cf. Epictetus, I. c.

43 CIL, XIII, 8371, at Cologne.

44CIL, III, 6384: "Corpus habent cineres, animam sacer abstulit aer."

16 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

earth. If the earth be a goddess, I too am a goddess and am not
dead."45

These verses express the same great thought in various forms :
death is disappearance into the depths of divine nature. It is not
for the preservation of an ephemeral personality that we must
hope. Our soul, a fleeting energy detached from the All, must
enter again into the All as must our body : both are absorbed by
God,

''When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home. ' M6

The fiery breath of our intelligence is gathered, as are the matter
and the humours of our organism, into the inexhaustible reser-
voir which produced them, as one day the earth and the heavens
will be gathered thither also. All must be engulfed in one whole,
must lose itself in one forgetfulness. "When man has reached the
term of his fate, he faints into the one power which forms and
leads the universe, just as the tired stars will be extinguished in
it, when their days shall be accomplished. Resistance to the
supreme law is vain and painful; rebellion against the irresist-
ible order of things is impious. The great virtue taught by
Stoicism is that of submission to the fatality which guides the
world, of joyous acceptance of the inevitable. Philosophic litera-
ture and the epitaphs present to us, repeatedly and in a thousand
forms, the idea that we cannot strive against omnipotent neces-
sity, that the rule of this rigid master must be borne without
tears or recriminations. The wise man, who destroys within him-
self desire of any happenings, enjoys even during this existence
divine calm in the midst of tribulations, but those whom the
vicissitudes of life drive or attract, who let illusions seduce or
grieve them, will at last obtain remission of their troubles when
they reach the tranquil haven of death. This thought is ex-
pressed by a distich which often recurs on tombs, in Greek and in
Latin. ' ' I have fled, escaped. Farewell, Hope and Fortune. I have
nothing more to do with you. Make others your sport. ' '47

45 Dessau, Inscr. set, 8168; Biicheler, Carm. epigr., 1532; cf. 974:

"Mortua heie ego sum et sum cinis, is cinis terrast,
Sein est terra dea, ego sum dea, mortua non sum."

46 Tennyson, Crossing the Bar.

47 Biicheler, Carm. epigr., 1498 :

' ' Evasi effugi ; Spes et Fortuna valete ;
Nil mihi vobiscum. Ludificate alios. ' '
Cf. Biicheler, 409, 9; 434; Anthol. Pal, IX, 49; 172; Vettius Valens, V, 9
(p. 219, 26, Kroll).

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 17

Stoic determinism found support in the astrology which
originated in Babylonia and was transplanted to Egypt, and
which spread in the Graeco-Latin world from the second century
B. C. onwards, propagating its mechanical and fatalistic concep-
tion of the universe. According to this pseudo-science, all physical
phenomena depended absolutely, like the character and acts of
men, on the revolutions of the celestial bodies. Thus all the forces
of nature and the very energy of intelligence acted in accordance
with an inflexible necessity. Hence worship had no object and
prayer no effect. In this way the sidereal divination, which had
grown up in the temples of the East, ended in Greece, among
certain of its adepts, in a negation of the very basis of religion.48
It is noteworthy that in the writings left to us there is hardly
an allusion to the immortality of the soul. When they speak of
what comes after death there is question only of funerals and
posthumous glory. We never find in them a promise to the unfor-
tunate, weighed down by misadventure and infirmities, of con-
solation or compensation in the Beyond. The systematic astrology
of the Greeks limits its horizon to this world, although traces of
the belief in Hades subsist in its vocabulary and its predictions
and although this same astral divination inspired in the mys-
teries certain eschatological theories, as we shall see later.49

The rationalistic and scientific period of Hellenic thought
which began, as we have said, with Aristotle, filled the Hel-
lenistic period and continued until the century of Augustus.
Towards the end of the Roman Republic faith in the future life
was reduced to a minimum and the scepticism or indifference of
the Alexandrians was carried into Italy. The mocking verses of
an epigram of Callimachus, a man of learning as well as a poet,
is well known.50 "Charidas, what is there down below? Deep
darkness. But what of the journeys upwards? All lies. And
Pluto ? A fable. Then we are lost. ' ' Catullus was to say as much,
less lightly, with a deeper feeling. "Suns can set and rise again,
but we, when our brief light is extinguished, must sleep for an

48 See my Oriental religions, p. 180; 276, n. 51 s.

49 See Lecture III, pp. 96, 107; VII, p. 176.
so Callim., Epigr., 15, 3 :

'ft Xapida tI ra vtpde; — IIoXi) (Xk6tos — Al 5'S.vodoi rt;
<&ev5os — '0 5£ UXovtwv; — Mvdos — ' Airw\6/x€6a

18 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

eternal night."51 The religions belief in retribution in the Be-
yond was shaken, as all the others were, not only in literary and
philosophic circles but among a large section of the population.
The old tales of the Elysian Fields and Tartarus no longer found
credence, as convincing testimony will show us.52 Those who
sought to preserve them could do so only by using a daring
symbol which altered their character. But the idea of conscious
survival after death was itself no longer looked upon as sure.
Many who did not go so far as to deny it brutally were firmly
agnostic. When we turn over the pages of the thick volumes of
the Corpus inscriptionum, we are struck by the small number
of the epitaphs which express the hope of immortality. The im-
pression received is quite the contrary of that given by going
through our own graveyards or surveying the collections of
Christian epitaphs of antiquity. On by far the larger number
of the tombs the survival of the soul was neither affirmed nor
denied; it was not mentioned otherwise than by the banal for-
mula Dis M anions — so bereft of meaning that even some Chris-
tians made use of it. Or else the authors of funereal inscriptions,
like the contemporary writers, used careful phrases which showed
their mental hesitations : "If the Manes still perceive anything.
... If any feeling subsist after death. ... If there be reward for
the righteous beneath the ground."53 Such doubting propositions
are most frequent. The same indecision made people return to an
alternative presented by Plato in the Apology,54 before his ideas
had evolved, and repeat that death is ' ' an end or a passage, ' ' — •
mors aut finis ant transit us, — and no choice is made between the
two possibilities: the question is left open. The future life was
generally regarded as a consoling metaphysical conception, a
mere hypothesis supported by some thinkers, a religious hope
but not an article of faith. The lofty conclusion which ends
Agricola's eulogy will be remembered. "If," says Tacitus,
"there be an abode of the spirits of virtuous men, if, as sages
have taught, great souls be not extinguished with the body, rest
in peace." But side by side with the supposition thus hazarded,

si Cat., V, 4 :

1 ' Soles occidere et redire possunt ;
Nobis quum semel oceidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda. ' '

52 Cf. Lecture II, p. 83, and VII, p. 181.

53 Biicheler, Carm. epigr., 180, 1147, 1190, 1339, etc.

54 Plato, Apol., 40c-41c.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 19

the historian expresses the assurance that Agrieola will receive
another reward for his merits. All that his contemporaries have
loved and admired in his character will canse the fame of his
deeds to live in men's memory through the eternity of ages.

We here see how the perplexity in which men struggled, when
they thought of psychic survival, gave earthly immortality a
greater value in the eyes of the ancients. It was for many of them
the essential point because it alone was certain. Not to fall into
the abyss of forgetfulness seemed a sufficient reward for virtue.
"Death is to be feared by those for whom everything is extin-
guished with their life, not by those whose renown cannot
perish."55 That the commemoration of our merits may not cease
when the short time of our passage here below has ended, but
may be prolonged for as long as the sequence of future genera-
tions lasts — this is the deep desire which stimulates virtue and
excites to effort. Cicero, when celebrating in the Pro Archia™
the benefits wrought by the love of glory, — from which he was by
no means exempt himself, — remarks shrewdly that even philos-
ophers, who claim to show its vanity, are careful to place their
names at the beginning of their books, thus showing the worth
they attach to that which they exhort others to despise. Even
more than today, the hope of a durable renown, the anxiety that
their fellows should be busy about them even after their depar-
ture, the preoccupation lest their life should not be favourably
judged by public opinion, haunted many men, secretly or avow-
edly dominated their thought and directed their actions. Even
those who had played only a modest part in the world and had
made themselves known only to a narrow circle, sought to render
their memory unforgettable by building strong tombs for them-
selves along the great roads. Epitaphs often begin with the
formula Memoriae aeternae, "To the eternal memory," which
we have inherited, although the idea it represents no longer has
for most of us any but a very relative value.

In antiquity it was first connected with the old belief in a
communion of sentiments and an exchange of services between
the deceased and their descendants who celebrated the funeral
cult. When the firm belief in the power of the shades to feel and
act ceased to exist, offerings were made with another intention :

55 Cic, Parad. Stoic, II, 18: "Mors est terribilis iis quorum cum vita
omnia exstinguntur, non iis quorum laus emori non potest. ' '
se Cic, Pro Archia, 11, 26; cf. Tusc, I, 15, 34.

20 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

survivors liked to think that he who had gone had not entirely
perished as long as his remembrance subsisted in the hearts of
those who had cherished him and the minds of those who had
learnt his praises. In some way, he rose from the grave in the
image made of him by the successors of those who had known
him. Epicurus himself stipulated in his will that the day of his
birth should be commemorated every month,57 and under the
Roman Empire his disciples were still piously celebrating this
recurring feast. Thus this deep instinct of preservation, which
impels human beings to desire survival, showed itself even in him
who contributed most of all to destroy faith in immortality.

It is always with difficulty that men resign themselves to
dying wholly. Even when reason admits, nay when it desires,
annihilation, the subconscious self protests against it; our per-
sonality is impelled by its very essence to crave the persistence of
its self. Besides, the feelings of survivors rebel against the pain of
an unending separation, the definite loss of all affections. In the
troubled times which marked the end of the Roman Republic, at
a moment when changing fortune periodically turned all the
conditions of existence upside down, there grew up a stronger
aspiration to a better future, a search, to use the words of the
ancients, for a sure haven, in which man, tossed by the storms of
life, might find quiet. Thus in the first century B. C. the birth was
seen, or rather the rebirth, of a mystic movement which claimed
to give by direct communication with God the certainties which
reason could not supply. The chief preoccupation of philosophers
began to be those capital questions as to the origin and end of
man which the schools of the earlier period had neglected as
unanswerable. It was above all the Neo-Pythagoreans who gave
up pure rationalism, and thus brought Roman thought to admit
new forms of immortality.

When the scientific school of the old Pythagorism came to an
end in Italy in the fourth century, the sect perpetuated itself
obscurely in mysterious conventicles, a sort of freemasonry of
which the influence in the Hellenistic period is difficult to meas-
ure or circumscribe. It again took on new power in Alexandria
under the Ptolemies. In this metropolis, in which all the currents
of Europe and Asia were mingled, Pythagorism admitted at this

57 Diog. Laert., X, 16=fragm. 217 Usener; cf. Plin., H. N., XXXV, 5.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 21

time many ideas foreign to the teaching of the old master of
Samos. This teaching seems not to have set forth a rigid,
logically constructed theology, and the points of contact with
the beliefs of the East, which its ideas supplied, favoured an
accommodating syncretism. Pythagoras was said to have had
Plato as a disciple, and Plato was venerated almost as much as
the teacher he followed. The powerful structure of Stoic panthe-
ism did not fail to exercise an ascendency over the theorists of
the school. This school had been, from its origin, in touch with
the Orphic mysteries and those of Dionysos and it remained so,
but it was also subject to the more remote influence of Baby-
lonian and Egyptian religions, and particularly of those Chal-
dean doctrines which the Greeks had learnt to know after
Alexander's conquest.

This vast eclecticism, open to all novelties, did not bring
about a break with the past. Theology succeeded in effecting a
reconciliation with all, even the rudest and most absurd tradi-
tions of fable, by an ingenious system of moral allegories.
"Divine" Homer thus became a master of piety and wisdom,
and mythology a collection of edifying stories. Demonology made
it possible to justify all the traditional practices of the cult, as
well as magic and divination: everything which seemed incom-
patible with the new idea of the divinity was ascribed to lower
powers. Thus the Pythagoreans could take up the position not of
adversaries or reformers but of interpreters of the ancestral reli-
gion. They claimed that they remained faithful to the wisdom
of the sages who, at the dawn of civilisation, had received a
divine revelation, which had been transmitted first to Pythago-
ras and then to Plato. They felt so sure that they were express-
ing the thought of these masters, whose authority made law, that
they did not hesitate to subscribe the venerated names, by a
pious fraud, to their own writings. Nowhere did apocryphal
literature have a more luxuriant efflorescence than in these
circles.

When the sect was introduced into Rome it sought, according
to its wont, to connect itself with old local traditions, and with-
out much difficulty it succeeded. The national pride of the con-
querors of Greece could, with some complacency, regard it as
Italic. Pythagoras passed for the teacher of King Numa, the
religious legislator of the city. Ennius had expressed this philos-
opher's doctrine in his poems, and altogether, from the time of

22 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

the ancient republic onwards, the half mythical moralist of
Greater Greece enjoyed singular consideration in Rome.58

But the first to give new life to the Pythagorean school, which
had died in Italy centuries before, was, according to Cicero, his
friend, the senator Nigidius Figulus, a curious representative
of the scientific religiosity which characterised the sect. This
Roman magistrate, a man of singular erudition, was bitten with
all the occult sciences. A grammarian, a naturalist and a theolo-
gian, he was also an astrologer and magician and, on occasion, a
wonder worker. He did not confine himself to theory but
gathered about him a club of the initiate, of whom we cannot say
whether they were most attracted by scientific curiosity, by
austere morals or by mystic practices. Vatinius, the relative and
friend of Caesar, and, probably, the spiritualist Appius Claudius
Pulcher were the most prominent of this circle of converts.

It is significant that at much the same time the historian
Castor of Rhodes claimed to interpret Roman usages by Pythag-
orism,59 and the stories establishing a connection between the
Roman state and the reformers of Greater Greece were multi-
plied. In the Augustan age a worldly poet like Ovid60 thought it
permissible to introduce into his Metamorphoses, where no digres-
sion of the sort was to be looked for, a long speech of Pythagoras
explaining vegetarianism and transmigration. A little later
Antonius Diogenes, the romancer, found in the same philosophy
inspiration for his fantastic pictures of the lot of souls.61 All this
goes to show how powerfully seductive the new sect proved to be
as soon as it was revived in Rome.

But it did not lack enemies. Public malignity did not spare
these mysterious theosophists who met in subterranean crypts.
They were blamed for neglecting the national cult, which had
ensured the greatness of the city, in order to indulge in con-
demned practices or even to commit abominable crimes. It was
a more serious matter that their secret gatherings also excited
the suspicion of the authorities, and that the partakers were
prosecuted as persons who dealt in magic, which was punishable
by law. The little Pythagorean church seems not to have been
able to maintain itself in the capital for long. In Seneca's time
it was dead.62

58 Furtwangler, Die antiken Gemmen, III, 1900, 257 ss.

59 See Lecture III, p. 97. eo Ovid, Metam., XV, 60 ss.
ei Eohde, Der Gricch. Bomanz, p. 270 s.

62 Sen., Quaest. not., VII, 32, 2.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 23

But Pythagorism continued to find adepts in the empire and
soon returned to Rome. Under Domitian, Apollonius of Tyana
made the East resound with his preaching and miracles, and
although thrown into prison by this emperor he was in favour
with his successors. Under the Antonines, the false prophet Alex-
ander of Abonotichos, unmasked by Lucian, claimed to be a new
incarnation of the sage of Samos, whose wisdom he pretended to
reveal in his mysteries. The literary tradition of the sect main-
tained itself until the third century, when it was absorbed by
Neo-Platonism. In a period of syncretism, the originality of this
philosophy resided less in its doctrine than in its observances,
and when its conventicles were dissolved, it easily merged itself
in the school which professed to continue it. During its long life
Pythagorism had indeed had a powerful influence, not only on
the system of Plato and Plotinus, but also on the Oriental cults
which spread under the empire. It had supplied the first type of
the learned mysteries in which knowledge (yvwo-is) is at once the
condition and the end of sanctification.63 Possibly it even pene-
trated into Gaul at an early date, by way of Marseilles, and was
thus known to the Druids.

It would certainly be a mistake to look upon Pythagorism as a
pure philosophy, like Epicureanism and Stoicism. Its sectaries
formed a church rather than a school, a religious order, not an
academy of sciences. Prom a recent discovery in Rome, if my
interpretation of the monument is right,64 we have learnt that
the Pythagoreans met in underground basilicas, constructed on
the model of Plato's cavern, in which, according to the great
idealist, the chained men see only the shades of the higher
realities.65 A foundation sacrifice, that of a dog and a young pig,
was made before this basilica was constructed. Its stucco decora-
tion is borrowed almost entirely from Greek mythology or the
ceremonies of the mysteries. Secret rites and varied purifications
had to be accomplished in it; hymns accompanied by sacred
music were sung; and from a chair within the apse the doctors
gave esoteric teaching to the faithful. They taught them the
symbols in which the truths of faith and the precepts of conduct,
formerly revealed by Pythagoras and the other sages, were
handed down in enigmatic form. These remote disciples inter-
preted all the myths of the past, and especially the Homeric

es See Lecture IV, p. 121.

e* Revue archeologique, 1918, VIII, p. 52 ss.

65 Plato, Eepubl, VII, p. 514.

24 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

poems, by psychological or eschatological allegories. They laid
down, as definite commandments, a rule of strict observance
which included all the acts of daily life. At dawn, after he had
offered a sacrifice to the rising Sun, the pious man must decide
on the way in which his day was to be employed. Every evening
he must make a threefold examination of conscience, and, if he
had been guilty of any sin of omission or commission, must
make an act of contrition. He was obliged to follow a purely
vegetarian diet and to practise many abstinences, to make
repeated prayers, to meditate lengthily. This austere and cir-
cumstantial system of morals would ensure happiness and wis-
dom on earth and salvation in the Beyond.

All the Neo-Pythagoreans agree in stating that the human
soul is related to God and therefore immortal. Many, like the
Stoics, look upon it as a parcel of the ether, an effluvium of burn-
ing and luminous fluid which fills the celestial spaces and shines
in the divine stars. Others, who are nearer to Plato, believe it to
be immaterial and define it as a number in movement. Always,
generation is regarded as a fall and a danger for the soul. En-
closed in the body as in a tomb, it runs the risk of corruption,
even of perishing. Earthly existence is a hard voyage on the
stormy waters of matter, which are perpetually rolling and
surging. Thus a fundamental pessimism looked upon life here
below as a trial and a chastisement ; a radical dualism placed the
body in opposition to the divine essence residing in it. The con-
stant care of the sage was to keep his soul from pollution by its
contact with the flesh. He abstained from meat and other foods
which might corrupt it ; a series of tabus protected it against all
contagion. Ritual purifications restored to it its purity (ayj/eta)
which was continually threatened. The unwearying exercise of
virtue, the scrupulous practice of piety preserved its original
nature. Music, which caused it to vibrate in harmony with the
universe, and science, which lifted it towards divine things,
prepared its ascension to heaven. Meditation was a silent prayer,
which placed reason in communication with the powers on high.
Seized by love for the eternal beauties, it rose in its transports
even in this life to God, identified itself with Him and so rendered
itself worthy of a blessed immortality.66

When the death determined by destiny occurred, the soul
escaped from the body in which it was captive but kept its bodily
form and appearance, and this simulacrum (ei'SwAov) appeared to

ee See below, Lecture VIII, p. 209 ss.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 25

men in dreams and after evocations. According to some Pythag-
oreans, this subtle form was distinct from the soul ( \\jvxn ) , which
ascended immediately to the higher spheres. Others believed that,
like a light garment, it wrapped the soul, which was for some
time constrained to dwell here below.67 After this shade had
remained beside the body or somewhere near the tomb for a
certain number of days, it rose in the atmosphere in which con-
tended winds, water and fire, and was purified by the elements.
This zone, the lowest circle of the world, was what fable had
called hell (Inferi), and it was of this passage from one circle
to that next it that poets spoke when they told of the Styx and
Charon's boat.68 When the soul had been purified it was borne,
uplifted by the winds, to the sphere of the moon. Here lay the
boundary of life and death, the limit which divided the residence
of the immortals, where all was harmony and purity, from the
corrupt and troubled empire of generation. Thus the luminary
of the night was the first dwelling of the Blessed, and there lay
the Elysian Fields of the poets, Proserpina's kingdom where rest
the shades. And the Fortunate Islands, of which the ancients
sung, were no other than the sun and the moon, celestial lands
bathed by the waters of the ether.69

The shade remained in the moon or was dissolved there, and
pure reason rose to the sun whence it came forth, or even reached
the summit of the heavens where reigned the Most High. A help-
ful escort, called by mythology Hermes the Soul-Guide, or
psychopompos, led the elect to these Olympian peaks. There they
regained their true country, and as birth had been to them a
death, so their death was their rebirth. They enjoyed the con-
templation of the luminous gods. They were rapt by the ravish-
ing tune of the harmony of the spheres, that divine melody of
which earthly music is but a feeble echo.70

Some souls were kept on the banks of the Styx and could not
cross it : in other words, they were constrained to remain on the
earth. The dead who had not had religious burial must linger
beside their neglected bodies for a hundred years, the normal
span of a human life, before they were admitted to the place of
purgation, where they would sojourn for ten times that period.71

67 See Lecture VI, p. 167; cf. Ill, p. 103.

es See Lecture II, p. 81.

69 See, for all this, Lecture III, p. 96 s. ; cf. VIII, p. 195.

to See Lecture VIII, p. 212.

7i See Lecture I, p. 66.

26 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

In the same way those who had died young or whose days had
been cut short by violence would not enter the purgatory before
the due term of their life.72 But especially the souls of the crimi-
nal and the impious were thus condemned to wander, restless
and in pain, through the lower air, which they filled with their
multitude. It was these demoniac spirits who returned as dismal
phantoms to frighten the living, who were evoked by wizards and
who revealed the future in oracles. Demonology accounted for
all the aberrations of magic and divination. These spirits rose to
the aerial purgatory after they had for long years tormented and
been tormented, but they could not reach the moon, which re-
pelled them; they were condemned to reincarnation in new
bodies, either of men or of beasts, and were once again delivered
to the fury of the passions. These passions are the Erinyes, of
whom poets sung, that in Tartarus they burnt criminals with
their torches and scourged them with their whips. For there was
no subterranean hell : Hades was in the air or on our earth, and
the infernal sufferings described by mythology were the various
tortures inflicted on the souls condemned to transmigration.73

This religious philosophy, which, by a symbolism transforming
the meaning of the traditional beliefs, reconciled these with
men's intelligence, did more than any other to revive faith in
immortality. Many enlightened men, like Cicero and Cato, had
sought consolation for the misfortunes of this world and a hope
for the Beyond in reading Plato, but Plato's proof of immor-
tality could convince only those already convinced.74 Pythagorism,
on the other hand, offered to restless souls a certainty founded
on a revelation made to ancient sages, and it satisfied at once
the Roman love for order and rule, and the human love for
the marvellous and the mysterious. The evidence of the effect of
this philosophy is still recognisable, although it often has not
been recognised, in the compositions decorating many sepulchral
monuments and in the wording of several epitaphs. A tombstone
found at Philadelphia in Lydia is particularly curious.75 It bears
a representation of the Y symbol, that is, of the diverging roads
between which man must choose when he leaves childhood behind
him. On the one side earthly travail leads the virtuous man to
eternal rest; on the other softness and debauchery bring the

72 See Lecture V, p. 133.

73 See Lecture III, pp. 73, 81; VII, p. 181 s.

74 Cf. Cic, Tusc, I, 11, 24.

75 See Lecture VI, p. 151.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 27

vicious man to a gulf into which he falls. A metrical epitaph,
found at Pisaurum (Pesaro), hints covertly at the ideas of the
school. This commemorates a child who, in spite of his youth,
had learnt the dogmas of Pythagoras and read ' ' the pious verses
of Homer" as well as the philosophers, and had studied in Euclid
the sacred science of numbers. His soul, runs the inscription,76
"goes forward through the gloomy stars of deep Tartarus
towards the waters of Acheron, ' ' a sentence which can be under-
stood only on the supposition that Tartarus and Acheron had for
the author a figurative meaning and lay in the depths not of the
earth but of the sky.

The belief in a celestial immortality which was thus propa-
gated by the half philosophical, half religious sect of the Pythag-
oreans was to find a powerful interpreter in a thinker who had
a predominant influence over his contemporaries and the suc-
ceeding generation — in Posidonius. We know little of his life.
Born at Apamea in Syria, about the year 135, he early left his
native country, of which he seems to have kept a poor opinion,
and as a young student in Athens he attended the lectures of
the older Stoic Panaetius. The universal curiosity which was to
make him a scholar of encyclopaedic knowledge soon impelled
him to take long journeys, in which he even reached the shores
of the Atlantic and studied the tides of the ocean. Upon his
return he opened a school in the free city of Rhodes and there
numbered Cicero among his hearers. When he died at the age
of eighty- four the prestige he enjoyed both in the Roman world
and among the Greeks was immense. He owed his intellectual
ascendancy as much to the marvellous variety of the knowledge
which he displayed, as philosopher, astronomer, historian, geog-
rapher and naturalist, as to his copious, harmonious and highly
coloured style.

A theologian rather than a logician, a scholar rather than a
critic, he did not construct an original metaphysical system com-
parable to those of the great founders of schools. But Posidonius
was the most prominent representative of that syncretism which,
as we have seen, showed itself in the Pythagoreans before his
day and which reigned in the world about him, because men were
weary of the sterile discussions of opposing thinkers. He gave the
support of his authority and his eloquence to the eclecticism

76 Bucheler, Carm. epigr., 434.

28 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

which reconciled the principles of the ancient Greek schools.
Moreover, his Syrian origin led him to combine these doctrines
with the religious ideas of the East, which had with astrology
given the Hellenes a new conception of man and of the gods.77

It is exactly here that Posidonius is important from the point
of view of our subject : his tendencies represent a direct reaction
against the scepticism of his master Panaetius, who denied both
the survival of the soul78 and the possibility of divination. Posi-
donius introduced into Stoicism momentous ideas derived at once
from Pythagorism and from Eastern cults, and sought to estab-
lish them firmly by connecting them with a system of the world,
which his vast intelligence had sought to understand in all its
aspects. His faith in immortality is strictly related to his cosmog-
raphy and receives support from his physics.

It was this system of the world which was, thanks to Ptolemy's
authority, to perpetuate itself on the whole until the time of
Copernicus. We will here give a broad outline of its essential
features, because the eschatological doctrines were to remain for
centuries connected with it. The terrestrial globe was held to
be suspended, motionless, in the centre of the universe, sur-
rounded by an atmosphere formed of the three other elements
and reaching to the moon. That part of the atmosphere which
was near the earth was thickened and darkened by heavy vapours
rising from the soil and the waters. Above, there moved a purer
and lighter air which, as it neared the sky, was warmed by con-
tact with the higher fires. Still higher were ranged the con-
centric spheres of the seven planets, wrapped in ether, a subtle
and ardent fluid — first the moon, which still received and
gave back the exhalations of the earth,79 then Mercury and
Venus, the two companions of the sun in his daily course. The
fourth place, that is, the middle point of the superimposed
heavens, was occupied by the luminary of the day, — here Posi-
donius forsakes Plato and follows the Chaldeans, — the burning
heart of the world, the intelligent light which is the source of
our minds.80 Above the sun moved the three higher planets —
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. And these seven wandering stars
were surrounded by the sphere of the fixed stars, which were
animated by constant and uniform movement. That sphere

77 Cf. my Astrology and Beligion, 1912, p. 83 ss.

78 See above, p. 13.

79 See Lecture III, p. 98.

so See below, Lecture III, p. 100 ss.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 29

marked the world's boundary: beyond it there was only void or
the ether.

The universe, as this philosophy imagined it, had therefore
well-defined limits : when men raised their eyes to the constella-
tions of the firmament, they thought they perceived its end. The
depths of the sky were not then unfathomable ; he who sank his
gaze in them was not seized with giddiness at the abysses nor
bewildered by inconceivable magnitudes, and was not tempted to
cry with Pascal :81 ' ' The eternal silence of these boundless spaces
affrights me." Nor was the universe then a multiplicity of
heavenly bodies moving to an unknown goal and perpetually
transformed, transitory manifestations of an energy developed
for undiscoverable ends. The conception formed of the world
was static, not dynamic. It was a machine of which the wheels
turned according to immutable laws, an organism of which all
the parts were united by reciprocal sympathy as they acted and
reacted on each other.

This organism was alive, penetrated throughout by the same
essence as the soul which maintains our life and thought. This
soul was an igneous breath of which the moral corruption was
conceived quite materially. When it gave itself up to the desires of
the senses, to corporeal passions, its substance thickened and was
troubled, and the mud of this pollution adhered to it like a crust.
When the soul left the body at the time of death, it became a
spirit like the multitude of demons who peopled the atmosphere.
But its lot varied in accordance with its condition. If it were
laden with matter, its weight condemned it to float in the densest
air, the damp-charged gas which immediately surrounded the
earth, and its very composition then caused it to reincarnate
itself in new bodies.82 But if it had remained free from all alloy
its lightness caused it to pass immediately through this heavier
layer of air and bore it to the higher spaces. It stopped in this
ascension when, within the ether which was about the moon, it
found itself in surroundings like its own substance. Some elect
beings, the divine spirits of the sages, kept such purity that they
rose through the ether as far as the highest astral spheres. In this
system the doctrine of immortality is seen to be closely knit up
with cosmography.

si Pascal, Tensees, III, 206 (t. II, p. 127, Brimschvigg) : "Le silence
eternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie."

82 See Lecture III, p. 98; VI, p. 161s.; VII, p. 184.

30 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

If Posidonius has largely borrowed these ideas from the pla-
tonising Pythagorism of his period, he forsook this philosophy
on an essential point. As a Stoic he did not admit the transcend-
ency of God. For him, God was immanent in the universe; the
seat of the directing reason of the world ( ^ye^oviKoV ) was the
sphere of the fixed stars, which embraced all other spheres and
determined their revolutions. There too, at the summit of the
world but not outside it, the spirits of the blessed gathered ; from
these high peaks they delighted to observe earthly happenings;
and when a pious soul tried to rise to them, these succouring
heroes, like our saints, could lend their aid and protection.

This philosophy did not draw its power of persuasion only
from its logical consistency, which satisfied reason, but it also
made *. strong appeal to feeling. Posidonius caused a broad
stream of mystical ideas, undoubtedly derived from the beliefs
developed by the astral religions of the East, to flow into the arid
bed of a Stoicism which had become scholastic. For him, reason
was not enclosed in the body, even when it sojourned here below;
it escaped from it to pass with marvellous swiftness from the
depths of the sea to the ends of the earth and the top of the
heavens; it flew through all nature, learning to know physical
laws and to admire the divine order ever more and more. Above
all it could never weary of the sight of the glowing constellations
and their harmonious movements. It felt with emotion, as it gave
itself up to contemplating them, its kinship with the celestial
fires; it entered into communion with the higher gods. In
enthusiastic terms, echoed by his imitators, Posidonius described
the ecstasy which seized him who left the earth, who felt himself
transported to the midst of the sacred chorus of the stars and
who followed their rhythmic evolutions. In these transports, the
soul did not only win to infinite power, but also received from
heaven the revelation of the nature and cause of the celestial
revolutions. Thus even in this life it had a foretaste of the
beatitude which would belong to it after death when reason, rid
of the weak organs of the senses, would directly perceive all the
splendours of the divine world and would know its mysteries
completely.83

This theology attributed to man a power such as to satisfy his
proudest feelings. It did not regard him as a tiny animalcule
who had appeared on a small planet lost in immensity, nor did

83 See Lecture IV, p. 127; VIII, p. 210.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 31

it, when he scrutinised the heavens, crush him with a sense of
his own pettiness as compared with bodies whose greatness sur-
passed the limits of his imagination. It made man king of crea-
tion, placed him in the centre of a still limited world of which the
proportions were not so vast that he could not travel all over his
domain. If he could tear himself from the domination of his body,
he became capable of communicating with the visible gods who
were almost within his reach and whom he might hope to equal
after his passage here below. He knew himself to be united to
them by an identity of nature which alone explained how he
understood them.

"Quis caelum possit, nisi caeli munere, nosse
Et reperire deum, nisi qui pars ipse Dei est ? ' '84

"Who could know heaven save by heavenly grace, or find God
if he were not himself a part of God?" — words of the Roman
poet who echoes Posidonius' teaching.

It is easy to understand that such ideas were readily adopted
at a time when human minds, tired of inconclusive disputes,
despaired of ever reaching truth by their own strength. The
astral mysticism eloquently preached by Posidonius was to influ-
ence all the later Stoicism. Seneca in particular, in the numerous
passages in which he speaks of the misery and baseness of life
in the body and celebrates the felicity of the pure souls who live
among the stars, shows the imprint of the philosopher of Apamea.
And this philosopher also exerted a far-reaching action beyond
the narrow circle of the school. The erudition of the antiquarian
Varro, the poems of Virgil and Manilius and the biblical exegesis
of Philo the Jew, all drew on him for inspiration. But the author
in whom we can best discern his influence is his pupil Cicero,
the abundance of whose writings allows us to follow the evolu-
tion of his thought, which is characteristic of the whole society
of his time.

It is beyond doubt that Cicero was an agnostic for the greater
part of his life. His mind found satisfaction in the scepticism
of the New Academy, or rather he adopted towards the future life
the received attitude of the world in which he lived, where the
problem of the soul 's origin and destiny was regarded as not only
insoluble but also idle, as unworthy to absorb the minds of men

84 Manilius, II, 115.

32 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

who should devote their energies to the service of the state. The
question of the cult to be rendered to the Manes had been settled
once for all by the ancient pontifical law. Old Rome distrusted
speculations as to the Beyond because they dangerously diverted
thought from actual realities. But Cicero, by his study of the
writings of his master Posidonius and by his intercourse with
the senator Nigidius Figulus, a fervent adept of Pythagorism,85
had been brought into contact with the stream of mystical ideas
which was beginning to flow through the West. Gradually, as he
grew older and life brought him disappointments, his thought
was more attracted to religious ideas.86 In 54, when he had
given up political life, he composed the Republic, an imitation
of Plato's work on the same subject. As Plato had introduced
the myth of Er the Armenian at the end of his work, so his
Roman imitator concludes with the puzzling picture of ' ' Scipio 's
Dream," where the destroyer of Carthage receives the revela-
tions of the conqueror of Zama. The hero, from the height of the
celestial spheres, expounds that doctrine of astral immortality
which was common to the Pythagoreans and to Posidonius. It is
given as yet only as a dream, a vision the truth of which is in no
way guaranteed. But in 45 B. C. Cicero suffered a cruel loss in
the death of his only daughter Tullia. His grief persuaded him
that this beloved being still lived among the gods. Even while
he accused himself of unreasonable weakness, he ordered that not
a tomb but a chapel (fanum) , consecrating her apotheosis, should
be raised to this young woman. The letters he wrote at this time
to Atticus, from the shores of the Pomptine Marshes, in the soli-
tude of Astura, apprise us of his most intimate feelings. He gave
vent to his sorrow in writing a Consolatio, and in its preserved
fragments we see him strangely impressed by the Pythagorean
doctrines: he speaks of the soul, exempt from all matter, as
celestial and divine and therefore eternal, of the soul's life here
below as a penalty inflicted on it because it is born to expiate
anterior crimes (scelerum luendorum causa).

Cicero's sensitive spirit, troubled by the perplexing problem
of our destiny, did not turn to the old discredited beliefs but to
the new conceptions which a mystical philosophy had brought
from the East. Hortensius and the Tusculans, written in this

ss See above, p. 22.

seLehrs, Populdre Aufs'dtze aus dem Altertum, 1875, p. 349 ss.; Fowler,
Religious Experience of the Roman People, p. 382 ss.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 33

period of his life, show us the empire which the Neo-Stoicism of
his master and the Neo-Pythagorism of his fellow-senator then
exercised over his mind, saddened and disillusioned as he was,
and show us too how he sought consolation for the private and
public ills which were overwhelming him in the luminous doc-
trine of a blissful survival.

This spiritual evolution is an image of the great change which
was about to take place in the Roman world.

Stoic philosophy, although its maxims had been popularised
by education and literature, was almost as incapable of exercis-
ing a wide influence on the deep masses of the people as the
esoteric theosophy revealed in the aristocratic conventicles of the
Pythagoreans. The urban "plebs," to which slavery and trade
had given a strong admixture of Eastern blood, and the peasants
of the rural districts, where the gaps caused by depopulation
were filled up by a foreign labour supply, were beginning at the
end of the Republican period to hear new dogmas preached,
dogmas which were winning an ever increasing number of be-
lievers. The ancient national cults of Greece and Rome aimed
above all at ensuring civic order and earthly welfare, and paid
small regard to the spiritual perfection of individuals and their
eternal future. But now exotic cults claimed to reveal the secret
of immortality to their adepts.87 The Oriental mysteries, propa-
gated in the West, united in the promise of securing holiness
in this life and felicity in the next, while they imparted to their
initiates the knowledge of certain rites and required submission
to certain precepts. Instead of the fluctuating and disputable
beliefs of philosophers as to destiny in the Beyond, these reli-
gions gave certainty founded on divine revelation and on the
faith of countless generations attached to them. The truth, which
the mysticism of the thinkers looked to find in direct communi-
cation with heaven, was here warranted by a venerable tradition
and by the daily manifestations of the gods adored. The belief
in life beyond the grave, which had in ancient paganism been
so vague and melancholy, was transformed into confident hope in
a definite beatitude. Participation in the occult ceremonies of the
sect was an infallible means of finding salvation. A society that
was weary of doubt received these promises eagerly, and the old

87C/. my Oriental religions in Eoman paganism, Chicago, 1911, p. 39 ss.

34 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

beliefs of the East combined with an eclectic philosophy to give
a new eschatology to the Roman Empire.

The salvation ensured by the mysteries was conceived as iden-
tification with the god venerated in them. By virtue of this
union the initiate was reborn, like this god, to new life after he
had perished, or, like him, escaped from the fatal law of death
which weighs on humanity. He was "deified" or "immor-
talised, ' ' after he had taken part, as actor, in a liturgical drama
reproducing the myth of the god whose lot was thus assimilated
to his own. Purifications, lustrations and unctions, participation
in a sacred banquet, revelations, apparitions and ecstasies — a
complicated series of ceremonies and instructions helped to bring
about this metamorphosis of the faithful whom a higher power
absorbed or penetrated with its energy. We shall return to this
sacramental operation which made pious souls equal to the
divinity.88

There is another point on which, in the course of this historical
introduction, we must dwell a little longer, namely, the evolu-
tion undergone by the conception of the Beyond taught in the
different mysteries and the share of philosophy in the transfor-
mation. For if in the various sects the liturgy was usually pre-
served with scrupulous fidelity, its theological interpretation
varied considerably as time passed. In paganism much doctrinal
liberty was always combined with respect for rites.

Some of the mysteries often gave in their beginnings a rather
coarse idea of the future life, and the pleasures which might
be enjoyed therein were very material. The ancient Greek con-
ception, going back to Orphism, was, as we have seen, that of a
subterranean kingdom divided into two contrasted parts — Tar-
tarus where the wicked, plunged in a dark slough or subjected to
other pains, suffering the chastisement of their faults, on the one
side; on the other, the Elysian Fields, those flowered, luminous
meadows, gay with song and dance, in which the blessed pursued
their favourite occupations, whether they were allowed to dwell
there for ever, or whether they awaited there the hour fixed for
their rebirth on earth.89 This eschatology, which had become the
common possession of the Hellenes, was certainly that of the
mysteries of Greece and in particular of the mysteries of Eleusis.
But these mysteries were never more than local religions : how-

ss See Lecture IV, p. 118 ss.

so See Lecture II, p. 76; VII, p. 171.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 35

ever numerous were the initiates attracted by their renown, they
were bound to the soil where they were born. Thus their influence
was very limited in the Roman period and cannot be compared
with that of the universal cults which were propagated through-
out the Mediterranean world. As for Orphism, which was never
connected with any one temple, it is doubtful whether it still
constituted an actual sect, and if it did, it certainly spread over
a very narrow field. Its influence was perpetuated chiefly because
it was absorbed by Pythagorism.

Among the mysteries propagated in the West, the most ancient
were those of the Thraco-Phrygian gods, Dionysos and Saba-
zios, who were indeed looked upon as identical. We know that
in 186 B. C. a senatus consultum forbade the celebration of the
Bacchanalia in Italy, and in 139 some sectaries of Jupiter Saba-
zius, who identified this god with the Jahve-Sabaoth of the
Jews, were expelled from Rome by the praetor at the same time
as the " Chaldeans. ' ' The cult practised by the votaries of Bac-
chus or Liber Pater, whose confraternities were maintained until
the end of paganism, differed profoundly from the Dionysos wor-
ship of ancient Greece : a number of Oriental elements had been
introduced into it ; in particular, the relations between Dionysos
and Osiris, which go back to a very remote period, had become
singularly close in Egypt. However, many reliefs on tombstones
and the celebrated paintings found in the catacombs of Praetexta-
tus prove that the cults of the Thraco-Phrygian gods remained
faithful to the old idea of a future life. The shade went down
into the bowels of the earth, never again to leave them. If judged
worthy, it took part in an eternal banquet, of which the initiate
received a foretaste on earth, in the feasts of the mysteries.
Sacred drunkenness, a divine exaltation, was the pledge of the
joyous intoxication which the god of wine would grant in Hades
to the faithful who had united themselves to him.90

In 205, towards the end of the second Punic war, the cult of
Cybele, the Great Mother of the Gods, and of Attis, her associate,
was transported from Pessinus in Phrygia and officially adopted
by the Roman people. The great feasts of this religion were cele-
brated in March about the equinox and commemorated the death
and resurrection of Attis, the emblem of vegetation, which,
after it has withered, flowers again in the spring. The faithful
associated their own destiny with the lot of their god : like him

90 See Lecture IV, p. 120; VIII, p. 204.

36 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

they would be reborn to a new life after they had died. Their
doctrines on this point were certainly transformed as time
passed, for no Oriental cult which spread in the "West underwent
more evolution, since none was more fundamentally barbarous
when it came from Asia. Originally, Cybele was the goddess of
the dead, because Mother Earth receives them into her bosom.
Every Phrygian tomb is a sanctuary and its epitaph a dedica-
tion: often the graves are consecrated to the goddess and bear
her image or that of the lion, her substitute. Often too the tomb-
stone has the shape of a door, the door of the subterranean world
whither the dead descend. The belief seems to have been held
that the deceased were absorbed in the Great Mother who had
given them birth, and that they thus participated in her divinity.
She brought forth corn and grapes for men and thus sustained
them day by day, and the bread and wine, taken in the meal
which was the essential act of the initiation, would ensure im-
mortality to those who were of the mystery. ' ' Thou givest us the
food of life with unfailing constancy, ' ' says a prayer, ' ' and when
our soul departs we will take refuge in thee. Thus all that thou
givest, always falls to thee again. ' '91

Towards the end of the Republic the mysteries of Isis and
Serapis, which had come from Alexandria and had already
spread through the south of Italy, established themselves in Rome
and maintained themselves there in spite of opposition from the
senate. Under the Empire, the Egyptian religion displayed all
the pomp of its liturgy in magnificent temples and had a number
of votaries in every province. The cult of Osiris, of which that
of Serapis was a form, was originally a cult of the fields, like
that of Attis, and the great feast which its adherents celebrated
in autumn recalls the Phrygian spring feasts. The death of
Osiris, whose body had been torn to pieces by Seth, was
mourned; and when Isis had found the scattered fragments of
the corpse, joined them together and reanimated it, noisy rejoic-
ing followed the lamentation. Like the initiates of Cybele and
Attis, those of Isis and Serapis were associated with the passion
and resurrection of their god. And, in the same way, the oldest
conception of immortality in these mysteries was that the de-

91 < < Alimenta vitae tribuis perpetua fide,

Et cum recesserit anima in te refugiemus,
Ita, quicquid tribuis, in te cuneta recidunt. "

(Anthol. Lat., ed. Riese, I, p. 27.)

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 37

parted went down into the infernal regions, where a man became
another Serapis, a woman another Isis, which is to say that they
were assimilated to the gods who had granted them salvation.92
This is why on numerous funeral reliefs the dead man, who
has become a hero and is shown lying on a couch, bears on his
head the bushel (modius) which is the attribute of Serapis.
In consequence, however, of the identification of this god with
Dionysos, the joys beyond the grave are also represented as a
feast in the Elysian Fields at which the great master of banquets
presides.93

All these mysteries conceive immortality as a descent of the
dead into Hades. For them, the kingdom of the dead lies in the
bosom of the earth. Those who have been initiated will there
enjoy a felicity made up of purely material pleasures, or they
will be identified with the powers who reign over the nether world
and will have part in their divine life. It will be noticed how
closely this last conception approached to that of ancient
Stoicism, according to which the various parts of the human
organism, dissociated by death, were to regain their integrity
in the divine elements of the universe.

Quite another doctrine was propagated by the Syrian cults
and the Persian mysteries of Mithras, which spread in the West
in the first century of our era. These religions taught that the
soul of the just man does not go below the ground but rises to
the sky, there to enjoy divine bliss in the midst of the stars in
the eternal light. Only the wicked were condemned to roam the
earth's surface, or were dragged by the demons into the dusky
depths in which the spirit of evil reigned. Opinions differed as
to the region of heaven in which the souls of the elect dwelt. The
"Chaldeans," who looked upon the sun as the master and the
intelligence of the universe, made him the author of human
reason, which returned to him after it had left the body, while
for the priests of Mithras the spirit rose, by way of the planetary
spheres, to the summit of the heavens. We will have to examine
later the different forms of astral immortality.94 But you will
already have noticed how nearly this immortality, as formulated
by the Iranian and Semitic sects, approximated to the doctrine
taught by Pythagorism and adopted by Neo-Stoicism.

92 See Lecture IV, p. 122.

93 See Lecture VIII, p. 202.

94 See Lecture III, p. 96 ss.

38 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

This meeting of the two doctrines was not an effect of chance.
The idea that souls are related to the celestial fires, whence they
descend at birth and whither they reascend at death, had prob-
ably been borrowed by the ancient Pythagoreans from the astral
religions of the East. Recent research seems to have established
the fact of its Chaldeo-Persian origin. But the Greek philoso-
phers, according to their wont, defined and developed this idea
in an original way. In the Hellenistic period, when they adopted
astrology, they were subject for the second time to the ascend-
ancy of the scientific religion of the "Chaldeans"; and, in their
turn, they reacted on the Oriental cults when these spread in the
Graeco-Roman world. We have sure evidence that the mysteries
of Mithras were, in particular, strongly affected by the influence
of the Pythagorean sect, which was itself organised like a kind
of mystery. In a more general way, philosophy introduced into
the mysteries ethical ideas and, instead of the purely ritualistic
or rather magical means of salvation, some moral requirements
became necessary to earn immortality.

There is here a mass of actions and reactions of which the
details escape us; but we can form some idea of such a syncre-
tism from the remains of the theological writings attributed to
Hermes Trismegistus, from the writings, that is, which are
supposed to contain the revelations of the Egyptian god Thot.
This professedly Egyptian wisdom includes a number of ideas
and definitions which are characteristic of Posidonius and Neo-
Pythagorism. The Greek and the Egyptian elements are so
closely associated in it that it is very difficult to separate the one
from the other. We find another example of the same mixture in
the " Chaldaic Oracles, " which were probably composed about the
year 200 of our era and which became one of the sacred books of
Neo-Platonism. Unlike the Hermetic writings, this collection of
verses does indeed seem to have belonged to a sect practising an
actual cult : its greater part is taken up with mythology, and the
fantastic mysticism of the East is more prominent here than in
the Hermetic lore, but the mind of the compiler of these revela-
tions was also penetrated by the ideas which the Greek masters
had widely circulated.

The tenet of astral immortality, which philosophy shared with
the cults emanating from Syria and Persia, imposed itself on the
ancient world. It is curious to notice how it was introduced into
the theology of the very mysteries to which it was at first for-

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 39

eign: Attis ended by becoming a solar god, and thenceforward
it was in the heights of heaven that Cybele was united to the
souls she had prevented from wandering in darkness and had
saved from hell. The priests of the Alexandrian divinities were
similarly to explain that the dead had not their dwelling in the
interior of our globe, but that the "subterranean" (woyetos) king-
dom of Serapis was situated beneath the earth, that is, in the
lower hemisphere of heaven, bounded by the line of the horizon.95

According as the Oriental religions were more largely propa-
gated, faith in a new eschatology spread gradually among the
people; and although memories and survivals of the old belief
in the life of the dead in the grave and the shade's descent into
the infernal depths may have lingered, the doctrine which pre-
dominated henceforward was that of celestial immortality.

The distance separating the age of Augustus from that of the
Flavians on this point can be measured by reading Plutarch's
moral works (about 120 A. D.). A constant preoccupation with
religious matters, and in particular a learned curiosity as to the
cults of the East, shows itself in this Greek of Chaeronea, living
in a country which, in its pride in its own past, had more than
any other resisted the invasion of exoticism. Further, the eclectic
philosopher likes to insert in his dissertations myths in which,
after the fashion of Plato, he expounds the lot of souls in the
Beyond and their struggle to rise heavenwards. An attempt has
been made to prove — wrongly, I think — that he is here inspired
by Posidonius. These apocalytic visions, which claim to reveal
truths previously ignored, are not taken from that well-known
writer; they have a religious imprint which betrays sacerdotal
influence, and the philosophic ideas they contain are those which
were part of the common wisdom of the Pythagoreans and the
mysteries.

There doubtless still were in the second century Stoics, like
the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, for whom the future life was a
mere hypothesis, or at most a hope (p. 14), as well as sceptics,
like Lucian of Samosata, whose irony mocked all beliefs. But
gradually their number diminished and the echo of their voices
grew feebler. Faith in survival deepened as present life came to
seem a burden harder and harder to bear. The pessimistic idea
that birth is a chastisement and that the true life is not that
passed on earth, imposed itself in proportion to the growth of

95 See Lecture II, p. 79.

40 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

public and private ills and to the aggravation of the empire's
social and moral decline. In the period of violence and devasta-
tion which occurred in the third century, there was so much
undeserved suffering, there were so many unjust failures and
unpunished crimes, that men took refuge in the expectation of a
better life in which all the iniquity of this world would be
retrieved. No earthly hope then brightened life. The tyranny of a
corrupt bureaucracy stifled every attempt at political progress.
Science seemed exhausted and no longer discovered unknown
truths ; art was struck with sterility of invention and reproduced
heavily the creations of the past. An increasing impoverish-
ment and a general insecurity constantly discouraged the spirit
of enterprise. The idea spread that humanity was smitten by
incurable decay, that society was on the road to dissolution and
the end of the world was impending. All these causes of dis-
couragement and pessimism must be remembered in order to
understand the dominance of the old idea, then so often repeated,
that a bitter necessity constrains the spirit of man to enclose
itself in matter, and that death is a liberation which delivers
it from its carnal prison. In the heavy atmosphere of a period
of oppression and powerlessness, the despondent souls of men
aspired with ineffable ardour to the radiant spaces of heaven.

The mental evolution of Roman society was complete when
Neo-Platonism took upon itself the office of directing minds.
The powerful mysticism of Plotinus (205-262 A. D.) opened up
the path which Greek philosophy was to follow until the world
of antiquity reached its end. We shall not undertake to notice
in this place the discrepancies of the latest teachers who theorised
about the destiny of souls. In the course of these lectures we shall
have occasion to quote some of the opinions of Porphyry, the
chief disciple of Plotinus, and of his successor Jamblichus, who
was, like himself, a Syrian. "We will here do no more than indicate
broadly what distinguished the theories of this school from those
which had hitherto been dominant.

The system generally accepted, by the mysteries as by philoso-
phy, was a pantheism according to which divine energy was
immanent in the universe and had its home in the celestial
spheres. The souls, conceived as material, could in consequence
rise to the stars but did not leave the world. The Neo-Pythag-
oreans themselves had not had a very firmly established doctrine

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 41

on this point : while some of them stated that reason was incor-
poreal, others, as we have seen (p. 24), admitted with the Stoics
that it was an igneous substance. It is true that even in paganism
the appearance can be discerned of the belief in a Most High
ptytcrros) or an unknown god (vAyvwo-Tos) , whom some people
supposed to dwell above the starry heavens, beyond the limits
of the world, and towards whom pious spirits could rise. The
revivers of Platonic idealism asserted the transcendence of God
and the spirituality of the soul more strongly and clearly. A
whole chapter of the Enneades of Plotinus is taken up with refut-
ing those who held the soul to be material.96 As a principle of life
and movement, it is stated to be immortal by its very essence,
so that if it kept its purity perfect, it would find after its passage
here below eternal felicity in the intelligible world.

The Neo-Platonists preserved the idea, which had previously
been admitted, that this intellectual essence comes down to
earth through the planetary spheres and the atmosphere, and
that as it sinks in the luminous ether and the damp air, it be-
comes laden with particles of the elements through which it
passes. It surrounds itself with a garment or, as it is sometimes
called, with a vehicle (oxnfjia) which thickens as it gradually
draws near us.97 This subtle body, the seat of the passions and
of feeling, is intermediary between the spiritual principle which
has issued from God and the flesh in which it is to enclose itself,
and for certain philosophers it survives death and accompanies
the soul to the Beyond, at least if the soul, not being free from
earthly admixture, cannot wholly leave the world of sense, and
therefore rises only to the planetary circle or to that of the fixed
stars.

When the soul has suffered even more from the taint to which
its contact with matter, the source of evil, exposes it, it is doomed
to reincarnate itself in a new body and again to undergo the trial
of this life. When it has become incurably corrupt and burdened
with evil, it goes down into the depths of Hades.

Following Plato, Plotinus and his successors have adopted the
Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis. They have even de-
veloped it, as we shall see,98 together with the whole pessimistic
and ascetic conception of life, the conception which looks at

96 Enn., IV, 7.

97 See Lecture III, p. 106; VI, p. 169.

98 See Lecture VII, p. 184 ss.

42 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

birth as a pain and a fall, a temporary subjection to a body from
which emancipation must be sought. It is only after this libera-
tion that the soul can reach perfect wisdom ; it must no longer be
troubled by the senses if it is to attain to the end of existence,
to union with God.

This union can be realised even during this life in moments of
ecstasy, in which the soul rises above thought and gives itself
up entirely to love for the ineffable Unity in which it is absorbed.
Like many other mystics, Plotinus disdains the ceremonies of
positive cults : they were superfluous to the sage who could of
himself enter into communion with the supreme Being. But
even his disciple Porphyry conceded a greater value to rites and
initiations. If they were powerless to lead the partakers of
mysteries to the highest degree of perfection, their effect yet
was to render men worthy to live among the visible gods who
people heaven." But only philosophical wisdom could rise to the
intelligible world and the Unknowable.

The principle of a mystical relation between man and the
divinity was to lead Neo-Platonism to more and more reverence
for religious traditions. For it was held that in the past the
revelation of truth had been granted by Heaven not only to
divine Plato and the sages of Greece, but to all the founders of
barbarous cults and authors of sacred writings. They all com-
municated profound teaching, which they sometimes hid beneath
the veil of allegory. Inspired by the symbolism of the Pythag-
oreans, the last representatives of Greek philosophy claimed to
rediscover the whole of Platonic metaphysics and the Platonic
doctrine of immortality in the myths and rites of paganism.
The speeches of Julian the Apostate on the Sun-King and the
Mother of the Gods are characteristic examples of this bold
exegesis, destitute of all critical and even all common sense, which
was adopted by the last champions of the old beliefs.

These aberrations of Neo-Platonic thought must not hide the
school's historical importance from us, any more than the ex-
cesses of the superstitious theurgy which invaded it. When it
revived Plato's idealism, it produced a lasting change in the
eschatological ideas which prevailed in paganism, and it deeply
influenced even the Christian doctrines of immortality held since

09 See Lecture IV, p. 108; VIII, p. 212.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 43

the fourth century. This will be better seen, we hope, in the
course of these lectures.100 It may be said that the conception of
the lot of souls which reigned at the end of antiquity persisted on
the whole through the Middle Ages — the immaterial spirits of the
just rising through the planetary spheres to the Supreme Being
enthroned above the zone of the fixed stars; the posthumous
purification of those whom life has sullied in a purgatory inter-
mediary between heaven and hell; the descent of the wicked
into the depths of the earth where they suffered eternal chastise-
ment. This threefold division of the universe and of souls was
largely accepted at the time of the Empire's decline by pagans
and by Christians, and after long centuries it was again to find
magnificent expression in Dante's "Divine Comedy." Before it
could be destroyed astronomy had to destroy the whole cosmog-
raphy of Posidonius and Ptolemy on which it was based. When
the earth ceased to be the centre of the universe, the one fixed
point in the midst of the moving circles of the skies, and became
a tiny planet turning round another heavenly body, which itself
moved in the immensity of space, among an infinity of similar
stars, the naive conception formed by the ancients of the journey
of souls in a well-enclosed world could no longer be maintained.
The progress of science discredited the convenient solution be-
queathed to scholasticism by antiquity, and left us in the presence
of a mystery of which the pagan mysteries never had even a
suspicion.

100 See Lecture II, p. 90; IV, p. 109; VIII, p. 196 ss., 206.

I

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB

WHEN Cicero in his Tusculans1 first touches on
the question of the immortality of the soul, he
begins by citing in its support the fact that
belief in it has existed since earliest antiquity. He states
that unless the first Eomans were convinced that man was
not reduced to nought, when he left this life, and that all
feeling was not extinguished in death, there could be no
explanation of the rules of the old pontifical law as to
funerals and burials, rules the violation of which was
regarded as an inexpiable crime. This remark is that of a
very judicious observer. There subsist in the funeral rites
of all peoples, in the ceremony of mourning established by
the religious law or by tradition, customs which derive
from archaic conceptions of life beyond the tomb and
which are still followed although their original meaning
is no longer understood. Modern learning has sometimes
successfully sought to elucidate them, borrowing light
from the practices of savage peoples and from European
folk-lore. We will not enter the domain of these re-
searches, for since our special purpose here is to expound
the ideas as to immortality held in later times, we have
to consider only the beliefs which were still alive in that
period. A false interpretation supplied by a philosopher
may have more historical value for us than the true ex-
planation of an institution which had lost its meaning.

But even among the ideas which were neither obliter-
ated nor discredited, conceptions which originated at
very different dates have to be distinguished.

iCic, Tusc, I, 12, §27.

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 45

The doctrines of paganism, like the soil of our planet,
are formed of superimposed strata. When we dig into
them we discover successive layers under the upper de-
posits of recent alluvia. Nothing was suddenly destroyed
in ancient religions; their transformations were never
revolutionary. Faith in the past was not entirely abolished
when new ways of believing were formed. Contradictory
opinions could exist side by side for a long time without
any shock being caused by their disagreement ; and it was
only little by little and slowly that argument excluded
one way of thinking to give place to the other, while there
were always hardy survivals left, both in thought and in
customs. Thus the beliefs as to the future life which were
current under the Eoman Empire present a singular mix-
ture, coarse ideas going back to the prehistoric period
mingling with theories imported into Italy at a late date.

We will today examine the oldest of all the ways of
considering survival in the Beyond : life in the tomb.

Ethnology has proved that among all peoples the be-
lief that the dead continue to live in the tomb has reigned,
and sometimes still reigns. The primitive man, discon-
certed by death, cannot persuade himself that the being
who moved, felt, willed, as he does, can be suddenly de-
prived of all his faculties. The most ancient and the crud-
est idea is that the corpse itself keeps some obscure sensi-
tiveness which it cannot manifest. It is imagined to be in a
state like sleep. The vital energy which animated the body
is still attached to it and cannot exist without it. This
belief was so powerful in Egypt that it inspired a whole
section of the funeral ritual and called forth the infinite
care that was taken to preserve mummies. Even in the
West it survived vaguely, and traces of it might still be
discovered today. Lucretius combats this invincible illu-
sion of men who, even while they affirm that death extin-
guishes all feeling, keep a secret uneasiness as to the suf-
fering which their mortal remains may undergo and are

46 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

frightened by the idea that their bodies may be eaten by
worms or carnivorous animals. They cannot separate
themselves from this prone body, which they believe is
still their self. Why, continues the poet, would it be more
painful to be the prey of wild beasts than to be burnt by
the flame of the pyre, to freeze lying on the icy slab of the
grave or to be crushed by the weight of heaped-up earth?2
This very fear that the earth may weigh heavily on those
who are deposited in the grave shows itself among many
peoples who inter their dead, and was expressed in Rome
by a formula so very usual that it was recalled in epitaphs
by initials only: "S(it) t(ibi) t(erra) l(evis)," "May
earth be light for thee." Until the Empire Stoic philoso-
phers could be found who upheld that the soul endures
only for the time for which the body is preserved.3

But experience proved that the corpse decomposed
rapidly in the soil, all that remained of it being a skeleton
bereft of the organs of sensation. When the custom of in-
cineration, followed in Italy from the prehistoric period,
became practically general in Rome, the destruction of the
body took place regularly before the eyes of those pres-
ent. Thus men reached the belief that those near and dear
to them, whom they sometimes saw again in their dreams
or seemed to feel beside them, who were kept alive at
least in memory, differed from the beings of flesh and
bones whom they had known. From those material indi-
viduals subtle elements detached themselves, filled with
a mysterious force which subsisted when the human
organism had crumbled to dust or been reduced to ashes.
It was this same principle which temporarily departed
from persons who lost consciousness in a faint or a
lethargy. If this light essence did not leave a dying man
at the moment of his death — whether or not it could
escape from his body immediately was indeed uncertain
— it was set free by the funeral fire,4 but it still inhabited

2 Lucretius, III, 890 ss.

3 Servius, Aen., Ill, 68.

4 Servius, ibid.

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 47

the tomb in which his remains rested. The idea that
it was somehow attached to his remains had taken root
in men's minds, and even literature bears witness to
the persistence of this deeply implanted popular belief.
Propertius,5 when cursing a woman, desires that "her
Manes may not be able to settle near her ashes.' ' And at
Liternum in Campania, where Scipio Africanus caused
himself to be buried because, as he said, he did not wish
to leave even his bones to his ungrateful country, the
grotto was shown where he rested and where, so men
believed,6 ' ' a serpent kept guard over his Manes. ' '

This primitive conception of the persistence of a latent
life in the cold and rigid corpse or of its passage to a
vaporous being like the body, is connected with the belief
that the dead retain all the needs and feelings which were
previously theirs. The funeral cult, celebrated at the
tomb, is born of this belief. It proceeds from fear as much
as from piety, for the dead are prone to resentment and
quick in vengeance. The unknown force which inhabits
them, the mysterious power which causes them to act,
inspired great awe. If the natural course of their exist-
ence had been interrupted, especially if they had died
before their time, they were suspected of being victims
of some mischievous enchantment; their sickness was
looked upon as an invasion of maleficent spirits pro-
voked by spells. The wrath of those who had thus been
torn from their homes and their wonted way of life was
to be dreaded. Loud outbursts of grief followed by pro-
longed manifestations of mourning must prove to them,
in the first place, that they were truly lamented and that
no attempt had been made to get rid of them. Then, in
their new abode to which they were conveyed, they must
be ensured a bearable existence, in order that they might
remain therein quietly and not trouble their families nor
punish, by some intrusion, those who neglected them. So-
licitude for the beloved, the desire to prevent their suffer-

e Propertius, IV, 5,3: " Nee sedeant cineri Manes. ' ' Cf. Lucan, IX, 2.
6 Pliny, H. N., XVI, 44, $234; cf. Livy, XXXVIII, 53.

48 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

ing, the hope of obtaining their protection, partly account
for the origin and maintenance of these practices, bnt they
were above all inspired by the terror which spirits called
forth, as is proved by the fact that they were the same for
all the departed without distinction, for those who had
been loved and those who had been hated.

The tomb is the house of the dead. This is an idea
common to the whole ancient world, going back in Italy
beyond the foundation of Rome. The prehistoric ceme-
teries of the first iron age have yielded a number of
cinerary urns exactly reproducing the various types of
huts which sheltered the tribes who then peopled the
peninsula. The burial places of the Etruscans are often
on the plan of their dwellings, and Roman epitaphs leave
no doubt as to the persistence of the conviction that the
dead inhabit the tomb. The diffusion of Oriental cults
revived archaic beliefs on this point as on many others.
The name "eternal house" {domus aetema), borrowed
from the Egyptians and the Semites, often occurs in fu-
neral inscriptions of the imperial period.7 One text even
specifies that this is "the eternal house in which future
life must be passed."8 The tomb is thus no mere passage
through which the soul goes on its way to another region
of the world; it is a lasting residence. "This," says an
inscription, "is our certain dwelling, the one which we
must inhabit."9 In the Aeneid, & cenotaph is raised to
Polydorus, whose body had been lost, and his "soul" is
installed there by a funeral ceremony,10 for the shade
which has no sepulchre wanders, as we shall see, about the
earth. But when a fine monument is given to a dead man,
he is happy to be able to offer hospitality there to passers-
by and invites them to stay on their way. Sometimes he is

7 Cf. my Oriental religions, p. 240.

8 OIL, I, 1108: "Domum aeternam ubi aevum degerent. "

9 Biicheler, Carm. epigr., 1555: "Haee certa est domus, haec est colenda
nobis. ' '

loVirg., Aen., Ill, 67: "Animam sepulcro condimus. ' ' Cf. Pliny, Epist.,
Ill, 27, 12: "Kite conditis Manibus."

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 49

imagined as in a bedchamber, where he sleeps an endless
sleep,11 but this is not the primitive nor the dominant idea.
This idea, on the contrary, was that his rest was at least
not unbroken, since he had many requirements. It was
necessary not only to ensure him a roof but also to pro-
vide for his support, for he had the same needs and tastes
beneath the ground as he had upon it. Therefore the
clothes which covered him, the jewels which adorned him,
the earthen or bronze vessels which decked his table, the
lamps which afforded him light, would be placed beside
him. If he were a warrior he would be given the arms he
bore, if a craftsman the tools he used; a woman would
have the articles necessary to her toilet, a child the toys
which amused him ; and the amulets, by the help of which
all that was maleficent would be kept away, were not for-
gotten. "It is against common sense," says Trimalchio
in Petronius' romance,12 "to deck the house of the living
and not to give the same care to the house which we must
inhabit for a longer time. ' ' In fact, the larger number of
the articles of furniture and household use preserved in
our museums come from tombs, which, in the climate of
Egypt, have sometimes been able to yield up to us, intact,
some precious volume intended for a mummy's bedside
book.

But the tombs have kept for us only a small part of the
offerings made to those who were leaving this world, for
often their wardrobe and implements were delivered with
them to the flame of the pyre in the belief that somehow
they would find them again in the Beyond. Lucian relates
that a husband loved his wife so dearly that at her death
he caused all the ornaments and the clothes which she
liked to wear to be buried with her. But seven days after
her death, as, stretched on a couch, he was silently read-
ing Plato's Phaedo, seeking therein solace for his grief,
his wife appeared, seated herself beside him, and re-

11 See above, Introd., p. 10; Lecture VIII, p. 192.

12 Petronius, 71 : " Valde enim f alsum vivo quidem domos cultas esse, non
curari earn ubi diutius nobis habitandum est. ' '

50 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

proached Mm for not having added to his offering one of
her gilt slippers which had been left behind a chest.
The husband found it there, and hastened to burn it in
order that the poor woman might no longer remain half
barefooted.13

Above all, the dead must be offered food, for the shade,
like the human body which it replaces, needs nourishment
for its subsistence. Its feeble and precarious life is quick-
ened and prolonged only if it be constantly sustained. The
dead are hungry; above all they are thirsty. Those whose
humours have dried, whose mouths have withered, are
tortured by the need to refresh their parched lips. It
therefore is not enough to place in the tombs the drinks
and dishes, the remains of which have often been found
beside skeletons ; by periodic sacrifices the Manes must be
supplied with fresh food also. If they are left without
nourishment they languish, weak as a fasting man, almost
unconscious, and in the end they would actually die of
starvation. This is why the flesh of victims was, in funeral
sacrifices, wholly destroyed by fire, none of it being
reserved for those present. People always retained the
conviction that the offerings burnt on the altar or the
libations poured into the grave were consumed by him
for whom they were intended. Often there is in the tomb-
stone a circular cavity, the bottom of which is pierced
with holes ; the liquid poured into it went through the per-
forated slab and was led by a tube to the urn which held
the calcinated bones. It is comprehensible that an unbe-
liever protested against this practice in his epitaph. "By
wetting my ashes with wine thou wilt make mud," he
says, ' ' and I shall not drink, when I am dead. ' n4 But how
many other texts there are which show the persistence of
the ancient ideas! " Passer-by,' ' says a Roman inscrip-
tion, "the bones of a man pray thee not to soil the monu-

isLucian, Philopseudes, 27; cf. Dessau, Inscr. set, 8379, 1. 50 ss.
14 Kaibel, Epigr. Graeca, 646z=Dessau, Inscr. sel., 8156 ; cf. Lueian,
Be luctu, 19.

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 51

ment which covers them ; but if thou be benevolent pour
wine into the cup, drink and give me thereof. ' ,15

If the dead ask for fresh water, with which to quench
their insatiable thirst, they are above all eager for the
warm blood of victims. This sacrifice to the dead was at
first often a human sacrifice of slaves or prisoners, and
barbarous immolations of this kind had not entirely
disappeared even in the historic period. "When, after
the taking of Perugia, Octavius, on the Ides of March
(that is, on the anniversary of the slaying of Julius
Caesar), caused three hundred notables of the town to be
slaughtered on Caesar's altar,16 this collective murder,
inspired by political hatred, perpetuated an old religious
tradition. Fights of gladiators, whose blood drenched the
soil, originally formed part of the funeral ceremonies by
which the last duty was paid to the remains of an illus-
trious personage. It is said that these sacrifices were
intended to provide him who had gone to the other world
with servants and companions, as the offering of a horse
gave him a steed, or else that, in case of violent death,
they were meant to appease the shade of a victim who
claimed vengeance. And doubtless these ideas, which
correspond to conceptions already evolved, contributed
to keeping this cruel custom in force. But originally the
object of this sacrifice, as of the sacrifice of animals, was
essentially to ensure the duration of the undefinable some-
thing which still inhabited the tomb.

Among all the peoples of antiquity the blood was
looked upon as the seat of life ;17 the vapour which rose
from the warm red liquid, flowing from a wound, was the
soul escaping therewith from the body; and therefore
when blood was sprinkled on the soil which covered the
remains of a relative or a friend, a new vitality was given
to his shade. With the same motive women were wont to
scratch their faces with their nails in sign of mourning.18

is Biicheler, Carm. epigr., 838=Dessau, op. cit., 8204.

is Sueton., Aug., 15. " Cf. p. 52, n. 20, and Lecture IV, p. 118.

is Servius, Aen., Ill, 67.

52 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

This ancient conviction that fresh blood was indispen-
sable to the dead, was maintained in some countries with
surprising tenacity. In Syria, as late as the seventh cen-
tury of our era, Christians insisted, in spite of episcopal
objurgations, on immolating bulls and sheep on tombs, and
in Armenia, where these practices were sanctioned by the
national clergy, the faithful remained persuaded that the
dead found no happiness in the other life unless the blood
of victims had been made to flow for them on the days
fixed by tradition.19

Other libations performed in the funeral rites of the
Greeks, as of the Romans, were intended to produce the
same effect, the libations, namely, of wine, milk and
honey. The use of wine has been explained as that of a
substitute for blood, as wine is red. Servius even inter-
prets the purple flowers which Aeneas threw on the tomb
of his father Anchises by the same association of ideas,
as an u imitation of blood in which is the seat of life. ' ,20
Many proofs could be cited of the fact that wine has often
taken the place of the liquid which flows in our veins, but
its use in connection with the dead can be explained also
by its own virtue. It is the marvellous liquid which gives
divine drunkenness and which in the mysteries ensures
immortality to such as are, thanks to this sacred draught,
possessed by Bacchus.21 In the same way it vivifies the
Manes to whom it is poured out. Similarly melikraton, a
mixture of milk and honey, is the food of the gods, and
when the dead absorb it, they too become immortal.

Such is the first meaning of these offerings, one which
was never quite forgotten. Their object is the infusion of
new vigour into the enfeebled shades who slumber in the
tomb. This intention can also be discerned in the fact that
the same offerings are used in magic, which often pre-
served ideas abolished or superseded in religion. In order

19 Cf. Comptes-rendus Acad, des Inscr., 1918, p. 284 s.

20 Servius, Aen., V, 79: "Ad sanguinis imitationem, in quo est sedes
animae." Cf. II, 532.

2i See above, Introd., p. 35, and Lecture VIII, p. 204.

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 53

to evoke the phantoms, the necromancers dug a ditch and
poured blood, wine, milk and honey into it. These liquids
had an exciting effect on the spirits of the dead, arousing
them from their torpor, and the wizard took advantage of
it to question them.

Precautions lest the dead should ever suffer from lack
of nourishment were multiplied. In order that they might
be fed on other days than those of sacrifices, all over the
ancient world it was customary to place food on their
tombs— eggs, bread, beans, lentils, salt, flour, with wine.
Hungry vagrants did not always respect their offerings
but would help themselves to the proffered viands.

The institution which is most characterised by the per-
sistence of the ancient ideas of life in the tomb is how-
ever that of the funeral banquets. These family repasts,
which had previously been celebrated among the Etrus-
cans, took place in Rome on the grave immediately after
the funeral (silicernium) and were repeated on the ninth
day following (cena novemdialis). In Greece and in the
East the ceremony took place thrice, on the third, ninth
and thirtieth or on the third, seventh and fortieth day.
Everywhere it was subsequently renewed every year on
the anniversary of the death and on several other fixed
dates, as on that of the Rosalia in May, on which it was
customary to decorate the tombs with roses. Memorial
monuments of some importance are often found to in-
clude, beside the burial chamber, a dining-room (triclin-
ium) and even a kitchen (culina). The importance
attached to these meals is proved by several wills which
have been preserved, and which make considerable endow-
ments to ensure their perpetuity. For instance, at Ra-
venna a son bequeaths a sum of money to a college on
condition that its members annually scatter roses on his
father's grave and feast there on the Ides of July.22
When Aurelius Vitalio had built at Praeneste a family

22 CIL, XI, 132=Dessau, 7235.

54 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

tomb, surmounted by a room with a terrace, lie wrote a
letter in incorrect Latin to the brothers of the society to
which he belonged : "I ask you, my companions, to refresh
yourselves here without quarrelling. ' ,23 An African set-
tled in Rome similarly writes to his relatives and friends,
< ' Come here in good health for the feast, and rejoice
together."24 And in Gaul a will commands that the burial
vault be furnished and receive a bed with coverings and
cushions for the guests who have to meet on the memorial
days.25

These funeral repasts go back to a prehistoric antiq-
uity. They are found in India and in Persia as well as
among the European peoples. They are doubtless as
ancient as wedding and festal banquets. Among the Egyp-
tians and the Etruscans it was even customary to place the
representation of a perpetual feast on the walls of a tomb
in order to secure to the dead person the relief it gave.
The shade of a guest might well be pleased with the like-
ness of dishes.

It was believed that at funeral feasts the Manes of
ancestors came to sit among the guests and enjoyed with
them the abundance of the food and wines. Lucian tells of
repasts of this kind, which he witnessed in Egypt, at which
the dried mummy was invited to eat and drink at the table
of his kin.26 In Greece, even in the Roman period, those
present at the feast used to summon the dead to it by
name. An epitaph of Narbonne jokingly expresses the
vulgar idea as to the participation of the deceased in the
banquet: "I drink and drink again, in this monument,,,
says the dead man, "the more eagerly because I am
obliged to sleep and to dwell here. ' m

23CIL, XIV, 3323=Dessau, 8090: "Hoc peto aego a bobis unibersis
sodalibus ut sene bile ref rigeretis. ' '

24 CIL, VI, 26554=zDessau, 8139.

25 Dessau, 8379.

26 Lucian, Be luctu, 37.

27 Dessau, 8154=CIL, XII, 5102=Bucheler, Carm. epigr., 788:

' ' [Eo] cupidius perpoto in monumento meo,
Quod dormiendum et permanendum heic est mihi. ' '

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 55

Nothing is further from our spiritual ideas as to the
holiness of graveyards than the conviviality occasioned
by the cult of the departed; among the guests crowned
with flowers, the drinks went round (circumpotatio) and
soon produced a noisy intoxication. Do not think this was
an abuse due to a relaxation of morals and which came
into being in later times. The character of these funeral
banquets was such from the beginning, and such it has
remained down to modern times in many countries. You
all know the practice of the Irish "wake" which has been
preserved even in the United States.

For it was long believed that the dead had their part
in the merriness and inebriation of the companions at
table and were thus consoled for the sadness of their lot.
"Thou callest," says Tertullian,28 "the dead careless
(securos) when thou goest to the tombs with food and
delicacies, but thy real purpose is to make offerings to
thyself, and thou returnest home tipsy. ' ' And indeed, as
we shall see,29 these feasts were no longer of profit to the
dead only but to the living also, because there came to be
a confusion between them and the Bacchic communions in
which wine was a drink of immortality.

No religious ceremony was more universally per-
formed in the most diverse regions of the Empire than
this cult of the grave. At every hour of every day families
met in some tomb to celebrate there an anniversary by
eating the funeral meal. Peoples remained strongly at-
tached to practices the omission of which would have
seemed to them dangerous as well as impious, for the
spirits of the dead were powerful and vindictive.

It is therefore not surprising that these practices per-
sisted in the Christian era in spite of the efforts of the
clergy to suppress them. St. Augustine reprimands those
who, like pagans, "drink intemperately above the dead"
— these are his words — "and who, while serving meals to

28 J)e testim. animae, 4.

29 See below, Lecture VIII, p. 203 s.

56 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

corpses, bury themselves with these buried bodies, mak-
ing a religion of their greed and their drunkenness.,,3

In the East, however, ecclesiastical authority tolerated
a custom which it could not uproot, contenting itself with
forbidding the abuse of wine and recommending a mod-
eration the absence of which might often be deplored.
Ecclesiastical authority also insisted that a part of the
feast should be given to the poor, thus giving a charitable
character to the old pagan practice.31 Therefore in many
countries, and especially in Greece and in the Balkans, the
habit has survived to this day, not only of placing food on
tombs, but also of eating there on certain anniversaries,
with the idea that the dead in some mysterious way share
and enjoy the meal.

*****

In Rome, in historical times, the funeral repast might
be taken not at the tomb but in the house. Among the
feasts celebrated by the confraternities in honour of some
dead benefactor, on the dates fixed by his last will, many
were held in the meeting-place of the guild. But the be-
lief continued in the real presence of him whose ' ' spirit
was honoured,"32 and whose statue or picture often
adorned the banqueting hall.

From the earliest period, the spirit of the dead was in-
deed not regarded as inseparable from his remains or as
a recluse cloistered in the tomb. He dwelt there but could
issue thence, although for long it was believed that he
could not go far away but remained in the neighbourhood
of the burial place. He was brought back to it by the
necessity of taking food, which was no less indispensable
to him than to men. He returned, therefore, to it, as a
dweller returns to his home, to repair his energies and
to rest. This idea that the soul wandered around its "eter-

30 Augustine, Be mor. eccles., 34 : " Qui luxuriosissime super mortuos
bibant et epulas cadaveribus exhibentes super sepultos se ipsos sepeliant et
voracitates ebrietatesque suas deputent religioni. "

3i Constitutiones Apostol., VIII, 42.

32 Dessau, 8375: "Colant spiritum meum."

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 57

nal house" often caused pains to be taken to surround
this house with a garden. Sometimes such a garden was
planted with a practical object: it was a vineyard, an
orchard or a rose-garden which supplied the wine, fruit
or flowers necessary for the offerings to the dead.33 But
elsewhere a mere pleasure-garden, with shady groves,
bowers, pavilions and sparkling fountains, surrounded
the burial place. The care which the living took to fix,
by their will, its extent and its planting is a measure of
the intensity of their conviction that their shade would
take pleasure in refreshing itself in this quiet haunt.
There, about the tomb, it would enjoy the delights which
would afterwards be transported to the Elysian Fields,
as we shall see later.

The cult of the grave has not ceased in these days ; the
ancient rites have not been discontinued. Tombstones are
still surrounded with flowers; they are decked with
wreaths ; in Italy lamps are kept burning over them. But
the reasons which established these customs have disap-
peared ; for us they are no more than a way of betokening
our care for the beloved, of piously showing our intimate
feelings by outward signs and marking the duration of
our regrets and our memories. They are survivals which
have lost all the concrete and real meaning which they
had in the far-off days when men believed that a being
like themselves sojourned in the place in which bones or
ashes were deposited.

The dead were not then cut off from the society of the
living ; the connection between them and their surround-
ings was not broken; the continuity between the hour
which preceded and that which followed their decease
was not interrupted. It has often been remarked that in
this respect ancient ideas were profoundly different from
ours. Those lost to sight did not then cease to partake
of the life of their families; they remained in com-
munication with their friends and their kin, who met

33 Cf. Petronius, 71: "Omne genus poma volo sint circa cineres meos et
vinearum largiter"; Dessau, 8342 ss. ; below, Lecture VIII, p. 200.

58 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

together in their new dwelling, and an effort was made to
render their isolation less hard to bear by bringing them
into touch with many people. Our dead rest in peaceful
and remote graveyards where no noise or din may trouble
the tranquil mood of afflicted visitors. The Romans placed
their dead along the great roads, near the gates of towns,
where there was press of passers-by and the rolling of
chariot-wheels. Their wish was not, when they buried
them beside the most frequented highways, to recall their
destiny to mortals, although philosophers have thus ex-
plained the custom.34 On the contrary, they wanted to
cause those who were no more to forget their own destiny.
"I see," says an epitaph,35 "and I gaze upon all who go
and come from and to the city." "Lollius has been
placed," we read elsewhere,36 "by the side of the road in
order that all passers-by may say to him, 'Good day,
Lollius.' "

The inscriptions in which the dead speak, addressing
those who stop before their monuments, are innumerable.
They console such as continue to love them, thank those
who are still busy on their behalf and express wishes for
their happiness, or else they impart to their successors
the wisdom acquired by experience of life. Often they take
part with them in a dialogue, answering their greetings
and wishes: "May the earth be light on thee!" — "Fare
thou well in the upper world";37 or else: "Hail Fabia-
nus." — "May the gods grant you their benefits, my
friends, and may the gods be propitious to you, travellers,
and to you who stop by Fabianus ! Go and come safe and
sound ! May you who crown me with garlands or throw me
flowers, live for many years ! ' ,38

*****

Thus throughout antiquity, in spite of the evolution of

34Varro, Lingu. Lat., VI, 49 (45).

35 Arch, epigr. Mitt, aus Oesterreich, X, 1886, p. 64.

36 Dessau, 6746.

37 Ibid., 8130.
ss/Znd., 1967; cf. 8139.

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 59

ideas as to the future life, the persuasion always re-
mained invincible that the spirits of the dead moved
about among men. These disincarnate intelligences,
which were, however, provided with light and swift bodies,
did not let themselves be imprisoned in the tomb. They
fluttered unceasingly around living beings, causing them
to feel the effects of their presence. There is here, mingled
with the primitive idea that a mysterious being, like it in
appearance, has its place in the ground beside the buried
corpse, the other and equally ancient idea that the soul
is a breath exhaled by the dead at the moment when they
expire. To breathe is the first act which marks the life of
a newly born infant and to cease to breathe is the first
sign which betokens the extinction of life. Primitive peo-
ple therefore naturally thought that the principle which
animated the body was a breath, which entered it at birth
and left it at death. The very name which denotes the
vivifying essence is in most languages witness to the
general predominance of this conception. Vvxv in Greek
is connected with ^w, "to blow"; the Latin animus or
anima corresponds to avefxos, "wind," and in the Semitic
languages nefes and ruah have a similar meaning. At the
moment in which man expired, his soul escaped through
his mouth and floated in the ambient air. The Pythago-
reans, when they taught that "the air is full of souls,"39
were conforming to an old belief which is not Greek only
but universal. When Virgil40 shows us Dido's sister, at
the time of the queen's suicide, receiving the last breath
which floats on her dying lips, he is lending a Boman
custom to the Carthaginians, the custom of the last kiss
which, according to a widely held belief, could catch on
its way the soul which was escaping into the atmosphere.
This soul was often imagined as a bird in flight and we
will see elsewhere the conclusions drawn from this naive
conception.41 Here we wish merely to indicate how the

39 Diog. Laert., VIII, 32 ; cf. Servius, Aen., Ill, 63 ; Lecture VI, p. 160.

40 Virg., Aen., IV, 685.

4i See Lecture VI, p. 157.

60 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

idea of the aerial soul was combined with that of the
spirit inhabiting the tomb. This shade or simulacrum of
those who were no longer of this world, but who still
existed, since they showed themselves to the living in
their previous guise, was a body like the wind — intangi-
ble, invisible, save when it thickened like clouds or smoke.
A multitude of these vaporous beings, innumerable as
past generations, moved unceasingly on the earth's sur-
face, and, above all, roamed around the tombs, where they
were retained by their attachment to their bodies.
Whether, like the Greeks, men identified them with the
" demons, " or, like the Romans, called them " Manes
gods," "genii" or " lemur es," or by other names, the
unanimous opinion was that their power was superior to
that of mankind and that they caused it to be felt by a
constant intervention in the affairs of human society.

It was generally held that if the required cult were not
rendered them, they would punish this neglect with wrath,
but that they showed their benevolence to those who de-
served it by zeal in serving them.42 The dead were capa-
ble, like the living, of gratitude as well as of resent-
ment. The greater had been their power in this world, the
more considerable it remained in the other, and the more
advantage there was in securing their protection or even
their co-operation.

Servius reports the existence of the singular belief that
souls had to swear to Pluto never to help those they had
left behind them on earth to escape from their destiny.43
Such was, then, the extent of their supposed power. But
all the dead were not, like some of the heroes who had be-
come the equals of the gods, capable of performing prodi-
gious deeds. Many, gifted with less force, were concerned
with lesser interests ; they did no more than protect their
family, the domestic hearth and the neighbouring field,
and render small daily services. "Farewell, Donata, thou

42 Cf. Porph., Be dbstin., II, 37.

« Servius, Georg., I, 277; cf. Dessau, 8006.

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 61

who wast pious and just," says an epitaph, " guard all
thy kin.' m

The idea that the ancestors become the tutelary spirits
of their descendants who were faithful to their duty to
them, goes back to the remotest antiquity and probably
lies at the foundation of the cult of the Lares.45 But the
field of action of these genii was multiple, since they were
a multitude, and their functions underwent a further de-
velopment when they were considered to be the equiva-
lents of the demons of the Greeks. "The souls of the
dead," Maximus of Tyre46 tells us, "mingle with all kinds
of men, with every destiny, thought and pursuit of man ;
they support the good, succour the oppressed and punish
the criminal." Plotinus, recalling the universal custom
of paying cult to those who have gone, adds : "Many souls
which belonged to men do not cease to do good to men
when they have left the body. They come to their aid
especially in granting them revelations."47

The wish is therefore entertained to see in dreams
those who have left an empty place in the family dwelling
or the marriage couch. A woman whom a murder has
separated from her young husband prays the most holy
Manes to be indulgent to him and to allow her to see him
again during the hours of the night.48 But it was not only
in dreams that men hoped to descry again those who were
lost to sight. "If tears are of any avail," says another
epitaph, "show thyself by apparitions (w)."49 Is it a
question here also of nocturnal apparitions? Perhaps;
but the belief that the spirits of the dead returned to the
earth and made themselves visible to people who were
wide awake met with very little incredulity among the

44 CIL, VIII, 2803a : i ' Donata, pia, iusta, vale, serva tuos omnes. ' '

45 Margaret Waites, American journ. of archaeol., 1920, 242 ss.

46 Maxim. Tyr., Diss., IX (XV), 6.

47 Plotinus, Enn., IV, 7, 20.

48 Dessau, Inscr. sel., 8006. "Manus mala" means probably a murder
produced by witchcraft; cf. ibid., 8522; Lecture V, p. 135.

49 CIL, II, 4427: "Lacrimae si prosunt, visis te ostende video.' '

62 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

ancients. It was not only the common man who accepted
it ; most thinkers upheld this opinion. Lncian50 shows us
a meeting of philosophers in which no one doubts "that
there are demons and phantoms and that the souls of the
dead do wander on earth and show themselves to whom
they please." A single fact will suffice to prove how
general was this conviction. The sober historian Dio Cas-
sius51 relates that in his time, more precisely in the year
220 A. D., a demon (who was evidently a flesh and blood
impostor) appeared in the Danubian countries in the form
of Alexander the Great. He was followed by four hundred
Bacchantes carrying the thyrsus and the nebris. This
troop went through all Thracia without doing any harm
to the inhabitants, who hastened to give them shelter and
food, and not a single official dared oppose their passage.
Arrived near Chalcedon, the pseudo-Alexander made a
strange sacrifice one night, burying a wooden horse, and
thereupon immediately disappeared.

Like modern spiritualists, the ancients saw in these
apparitions an irrefutable proof of the after life. * ' Thou
who doubtest the existence of the Manes/ ' we read on
the tomb of two young girls, "invoke us after making a
vow and thou wilt understand. ' ,52 Revelations were in-
deed to be expected of the wisdom of the disincarnate
souls. In spite, therefore, of the laws forbidding magic,
necromancy never ceased to be practised. By a nocturnal
sacrifice, analogous to that offered on tombs (p. 52) and
by the virtue of their incantations, the wizards obliged
the dead to appear before them and answer their ques-
tions. The poets and romancers liked to introduce in their
works descriptions of the atrocious ceremonies which
were intended to give momentary life even to a corpse
and cause it to pronounce oracles.

The dead in these scenes often appear as restive and

so Lucian, Philopseudes, 29.
si Dio Cassius, LXXIX, 18.

52 Dessau, Inscr. sel., 8201a: "Tu qui legis et dubitas Manes esse, spon-
sione facta invoca nos et intelleges. ' '

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 63

even hostile beings who were forced to such actions by the
power of witchcraft. The dominant feeling among all peo-
ples is indeed that the dead are unhappy and therefore
malevolent. They were believed to be excessively sensi-
tive: great care must be taken to do nothing to offend
them. If their rights were overlooked, if they were for-
gotten, they showed their wrath by sending illnesses and
scourges to the guilty. This unpleasant and sometimes
cruel, even ferocious character of the Manes is very
marked in Rome, perhaps in consequence of the influence
of the Etruscans or the beliefs concerning after life. A
legend had it that the ceremonies of the Parentalia hav-
ing on one occasion been omitted, the plaintive ghosts
scattered about the town and the fields and caused
many deaths.53 What we know of the rites performed at
the Lemuria and at funerals shows that they tended to
protect the house against the spirits haunting it and to
rid it of them. ' ' The dead are welcome neither to the gods
nor to men," says an old Latin inscription.54 To the
family Lares who protected a household, the larvae were
opposed, the wandering phantoms who spread terror and
evil. ' * Spare thy mother, thy father and thy sister, ' ' we
read on a tomb, "in order that after me they may cele-
brate the traditional rites for thee."55 This hostile charac-
ter attributed to inhabitants of the tombs explains the
custom of placing in them leaden tablets on which curses
were written calling down the most frightful ills on
enemies. A large number of these tabellae defixionum in
Greek and Latin have been found and they prove the fre-
quency of this practice, which has perhaps an Oriental
origin.56 But the devotio to the Manes gods is an old
Roman ceremony, which proceeds from the idea that they

53 Ovid, Fast., II, 546.

5-tCIL, I, 818=VI, 10407e=Dessau, 8749: "Mortuus nee ad deos nee ad
homines aeceptus est." Cf. CIL, X, 8249.

55 CIL, VI, 12072: "Parce matrem tuam et patrem et sororem tuam
Marinam, ut possint tibi facere post me sollemnia. "

56 Audollent, Defixionum tabellae, 1904.

64 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

endeavour to tear the living from the earth and draw
them to themselves.

There is one class of the dead which is peculiarly
noxious, those namely who have not been buried. The
ideas connected with them are so characteristic of the
oldest conception of immortality that these arafyoi or in-
sepulti deserve to detain us for a few moments.

From the most ancient times the beliefs reigned
among all the peoples of antiquity that the souls of those
who are deprived of burial find no rest in the other life.
If they have no "eternal house " they are like homeless
vagabonds. But the fact that the dead had been buried did
not suffice; their burial must also have been performed
according to the traditional rites. Perhaps the liturgical
formulas were supposed to have power to keep the
shade in the tomb, as other incantations could summon it
thence. Above all, however, it was believed, as we have
already stated, that when the dead had not obtained the
offerings to which they had the right, they suffered and
that their unquiet spirits fluttered near the corpse and
wandered upon the surface of the earth and the waters,
taking vengeance on men for the ills men had inflicted on
them.

The denial of interment was thought to be the source
of infinite torment for the dead as for the living, and to
throw earth on abandoned corpses was a pious duty. The
pontiffs, who believed the sight of a corpse made them
unclean, might not for all that leave it unburied if they
happened to find one on their way. To bury the dead has
remained a work of mercy in the Church, and in Rome a
confraternity still exists which brings in from far away
the dead found lying in the desert Campagna. The pain
represented by lack of burial was the worst chastisement
called down by imprecations on enemies on whom venge-
ance was desired. Among believers it gave rise to an
anxiety comparable with that which the refusal of the

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 65

last sacrament now causes to Roman Catholics. In the
Greek cities, as in Rome, the law often condemned to it
those who had committed suicide or had been executed,
hoping thus to divert desperate and outrageous men from
their fatal design by the apprehension of a wretched lot
in the Beyond.57 Sometimes the law merely laid down that
the guilty must not be interred in the soil of their country,
an almost equally terrible penalty, since it cut them off
from the family cult, by which their descendants could
give satisfaction to their Manes. When, therefore, through
some accident, a traveller or soldier died abroad or was
shipwrecked at sea, his body was, when possible, brought
back to his country, or, if this could not be done, a ceno-
taph was raised to him, and his soul was summoned aloud
to come and inhabit the dwelling prepared for it. When
cremation became general in Rome, the old pontifical law
invented another subterfuge which allowed the ancient
rites to be accomplished : a finger was cut from the body
before it was carried to the pyre, and earth was thrown
three times on this "resected bone" (os resectum).

Against these ancient beliefs, which were the source of
so much anguish and so many superstitions, the philoso-
phers fought energetically. First the Cynics and then the
Epicureans and the Stoics endeavoured to show their
absurdity. They are fond of quoting the answer of Theo-
dore the Atheist to Lysimachus who was threatening him
with death without burial — "What matters it whether I
rot on the earth or under it?" Since the corpse was un-
conscious and without any sensibility, it was indeed of no
consequence whether it were burnt or buried, eaten by
worms or by crows. Why should it be a misfortune to die
abroad? Only the living had a country; the whole earth
was the dwelling of the dead. If such cares troubled men
they were the victims of the invincible illusion that the
body retained capacity to feel even beyond the grave.

The very frequency with which these commonplaces of

57 See below, Lecture V, pp. 143, 145.

66 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

the school are repeated shows how tenacious were the
prejudices which they attempted to eradicate. Here, as
in other connections, the renewal of Pythagorism super-
vened at the end of the Republic to favour the persistence
of the old beliefs. A doctrine, to which Plato alludes,58
taught that souls which had not been appeased by funeral
rites, had to wander for a hundred years, the normal term
of a human life. Confined in the air near the earth, they
remained subject to the power of magicians. Especially if
the wizards had been able to obtain possession of some
portion of the corpse, whence the soul could not entirely
detach itself, they gained influence over it and could
constrain its obedience. "When this century of suffering
had elapsed, these souls were admitted to a place of puri-
fication, where they sojourned ten times longer, and when
these thousand years had passed they returned to rein-
carnate themselves in new bodies. We will see in another
lecture59 that the Pythagoreans enunciated analogous
theories as to the lot of children swept off before their
time and of men who died a violent death.

Virgil describing the descent of Aeneas into the infer-
nal regions recalls these Pythagorean speculations when
he shows us the miserable crowd of the unburied shades
fluttering for a hundred years on the bank of the Styx
before they obtained from Charon their passage to its
other shore.60

Favoured by these new tendencies of philosophy, the
unreasoning apprehension inspired by omission of burial
subsisted under the Empire, not only among the ignorant
many, but also in the most enlightened classes. This fear
explains why everyone took extreme care to have a tomb
built for himself and to ensure, if he could, that funeral
ceremonies were celebrated in it, why many epitaphs
threaten with judicial penalties and divine punishments

58 Plato, Eepubl., X, 615 A B; cf. Norden, Aeneis Buck VI, p. 10.

so See Lecture V, p. 134.

eoVirg., Aen., VI, 325 ss: "Inops inhumataque turba. . . . Centum
errant annos volitantque haec litora circum."

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 67

the sacrilegious offenders who should violate the grave,
and why such a number of popular colleges were founded,
of which the principal object was to secure decent obse-
quies to their members. The rules of the cultores of Diana
and Antinoiis at Lanuvium stipulate that when a slave
dies and his master maliciously refuses to deliver his
body for burial, a "funus imaginariurn" be made for him,
that is, that the ceremony be celebrated over a figure
representing the dead man and wearing his mask.61 From
this "imaginary' ' burial effects were expected as benefi-
cent as those results are maleficent which a wizard antici-
pated when he fettered and pierced a waxen doll to work
a charm.

From the stories of the gravest writers we perceive
what lot was believed to threaten the unfortunate who
were burnt or interred without the rites being observed.
After Caligula's murder his corpse was hastily shovelled
into the ground in a garden on the Esquiline (horti
Lamiani), but then the keepers of this park were terrified
by apparitions until the imperial victim's sisters caused
his body to be exhumed, and buried it in accordance with
the sacred rules.62 Pliny the Younger in one of his letters
seriously relates a story which seems to have been often
repeated, for we find it, little changed, in Lucian.63 There
was in Athens a haunted house which remained empty, no
one daring to live in it because several of its tenants had
died of fright. In the silence of the night a noise was
heard as of clanking iron ; then a horrible spectre moved
forward in the shape of an emaciated old man, bearded
and hairy, rattling the chains which were about his feet
and legs. A philosopher dared to take this house, and he
settled himself there one evening, resolved to keep him-
self awake by working. The ghost appeared to him, came
towards him with its usual clatter, signed to him to follow
and disappeared in the courtyard. When daylight came,

6i Dessau, Inscr. sel., 7213=CIL, XIV, 2112, II, 4.

62 Sueton., Calig., 59 ; cf. Plautus, MostelL, III, 2.

63 Pliny, Epist., VII, 27; Lucian, Philopseudes, 31.

68 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

a hole was dug in the place where the phantom had van-
ished, and a skeleton in fetters was found. The bones were
taken up and burned according to the rites, and there-
after nothing troubled the quiet of the house. Lucian, in
his version of this ghost story, specifies the philosopher
as a Pythagorean and shows him repelling the apparition
by the virtue of his spells. The Pythagoreans were indeed
often necromancers, convinced defenders of spiritualism,
in which, as we have said (p. 62), they sought an imme-
diate proof of the immortality of the soul, and by their
doctrines they contributed to keeping alive the super-
stitious fear attached to omission of burial.

But they were no more than theorists as to a belief
which was widespread and which the invasion of Oriental
magic was to revive. The curse-tablets often evoke,
together with other demons, " those who are deprived of
a sacred tomb" (aVo/)ot 7779 tepas rcu^s).64 They associate
them with those who have died before their time or by a
violent death.65 Heliodorus66 the romancer, a priest of
Emesa in Syria, who probably lived in the third century,
pictures for us a very characteristic scene: a child has
been killed ; a wizard takes its body, places it between two
fires, and performs a complicated operation over it, in
order to restore it to life by his incantations and to obtain
a prediction of the future. "Thou forcest me to rise again
and to speak/ ' the child complains, " taking no thought
for my funeral and thus preventing me from mingling
with the other dead. ' ' For the shades of the nether world
rejected one who had been left unburied.67

These ancient beliefs, which the East shared with the
West, were, more or less modified, to survive the down-
fall of paganism. If the Christians of the first centuries
no longer feared that they would go to join the shades
who wandered on the bank of the Styx, they were still

64 Audollent, Defixionum tabellae, 27, 1. 18; cf. 22 ss.

65 See Lecture V, p. 135.

66 Heliodorus, Aeth., VI, 15.

67 See Lecture VIII, p. 193.

AFTER LIFE IN THE TOMB 69

pursued by the superstitious dread that they would have
no part in the resurrection of the flesh if their bodies did
not rest in the grave.68 Nay, the terrors of former ages
still haunt the Greeks of today. The people remain per-
suaded that those who have not had a religious funeral
return to wander on the earth, and that, changed to
bloody vampires, they punish men, and in particular
their kin, for their neglect.69 A nomocanon of the Byzan-
tine Church orders that if the body of a ghost be found
intact, when disinterred, its maleficent power thus being
proved, it be burnt and a funeral service with an offering
of meats be afterwards celebrated for its soul. This is
exactly what was done in antiquity in order to appease
the dead who had not been buried according to the rite,
rite conditi.

68 Leblant, Epigraphie cJiretienne de la Gaule, 1890, 52 ss.

69 Lawson, Modem Greek folklore, 1910, p. 403.

II

THE NETHER WORLD

A MONG most peoples the primitive idea of an after
/\ life in the grave was enlarged into the conception
^~m of a common existence of the dead in the depths
of the earth. The dead man does not stay confined in the
narrow dwelling in which he rests; he goes down into
vast caverns which extend beneath the crust of the soil we
tread. These immense hollows are peopled by a multitude
of shades who have left the tomb. Thus the tomb becomes
the antechamber of the true dwelling of the spirits who
have departed; its door is the gate of Hades itself.
Through the tomb, the great company of the beings who
have been plunged in the darkness of the infernal regions
remains in communication with those who still sojourn
in our upper world. The libations and offerings made by
the survivors on the grave descend to this gloomy hypo-
geum and there feed and rejoice those for whom they are
intended. Until the time of the Roman Empire, nay, to the
end of antiquity, the common man believed in this won-
der.1 To attempt to define the means by which it was
brought about would be vain. These were beliefs which
went back so far and were so deeply rooted in the mind
of the people that men accepted them without seeking to
explain them.

In Rome, the idea that the spirits of the dead inhabit a
common dwelling in the nether world existed from the
time when the city had its beginnings. It kept in religion
a coarsely naive form which proves how archaic it was.

1 Lucian, Be luctu, 9.

THE NETHER WORLD 71

According to a rite borrowed by the Romans from the
Etruscans, a pit was dug in the centre of the city, when
the latter 's foundations were laid, in order to make the
Inferi communicate with the upper world. First fruits and
other gifts were thrown into the pit, as well as a clod of
the earth of the settlers' native country. Thus they re-
stored their broken contact with the Manes of their ances-
tors. In all probability this hole was formed of a vertical
pit ending in a chamber with an arched roof curved like
the heaven — hence the name mundus given to it. The key
of the vault of this lower cellar was formed of a stone, the
lapis Manalis, which could be raised in order to let the
spirits pass. Three times a year, on the twenty-fourth of
August, the fifth of October and the eighth of November,
this ceremony took place : the door of hell was opened and
the dead had free access to the atmosphere. These days
were therefore sacred, religiosi, and all business was
suspended on them.

Recently the mundus of the ancient Roma Quadrata
was believed to have been discovered during excavations
of the Palatine, but the underground space in question is
probably only a silo or a cistern. Other pits used for the
cult of the dead existed elsewhere in the city. It has re-
cently been suggested that the altar of the god Consus,
which was hidden in a ditch in the middle of the Circus
Maximus and uncovered during the races, was one of
these mouths of hell and like that shown in representa-
tions of the funeral games of the Etruscans.2

But on certain days the souls of the dead rose to the
earth's surface of themselves, although nothing had been
done to make their coming thither easier, and they then
had to be appeased by sacrifices. This was what happened
from the thirteenth to the twenty-first of February, dur-
ing the Parentalia, when the souls of ancestors were
honoured, and on the ninth, the eleventh and the thir-
teenth of May, the dates of the Lemuria, on which, at mid-

sPiganiol, Bevue d'histoire et de litt. religieuses, VI, 1920, p. 335 ss.

72 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

night, according to a prescribed ceremonial, the father of
the family nine times threw black beans to the Lemur es to
keep them away from the honse.

Lemur es and Manes are nsed only in the plural : these
words stand for the vague conceptions formed of the
shades of the dead who dwelt beneath the ground. These
were a nameless crowd, hardly individualised, not dis-
tinguishable from the fleeting phantoms who fluttered
about the tombs. The Romans were a people of little
imagination, and their infernal mythology remained rudi-
mentary until the time when they borrowed from the
Greeks the picturesque stories about the adventures of
travellers to Hades and the blessings and misfortunes
which there awaited them.

Originally no idea of retribution was attached to this
descent of the dead into the infernal regions; it was
neither their merits nor their demerits which determined
their condition. On the contrary, the inequalities of
human society were perpetuated: a nobleman kept a
higher rank than that of his servants ; each man in some
sort continued his occupations, even preserved his tastes
and his passions. Existence in the Beyond was conceived
as a mere prolongation of earthly life. It is to this idea,
which was generally entertained, that the old custom
corresponds of placing in the grave the implements and
other objects which a dead man was in the habit of using.
We have already touched on this point in speaking of life
in the tomb (p. 49), but the things deposited beside the
corpse were not only those which could be used by the
dweller of the "eternal house." If he were a powerful lord
his chariot, his horses and his arms would be buried with
him ;3 a hunter would be supplied in the other world with
his spears and his nets ;4 a craftsman with the tools of his
trade; a woman with the objects which enabled her to
spin and to weave. These funeral customs were more than
a tradition, followed without reference to the reasons

3 Cf. Lucian, De luctu, 14.

4 Cf. Dessau, 8379.

THE NETHER WORLD 73

inspiring it. Among the Greeks, as among the Romans, the
idea survives persistently, in poetic descriptions of the
Elysian Fields, that each man will there keep the character
and retain the habits which distinguished him before his
death. Virgil, taking his inspiration from Pindar, shows
us the blessed occupied by the contests of the palestra, by
song and poetry and by chariot races ; for, he tells us, the
passion which the dead had in life for arms and for horses
still pursues them when they have been buried in the
earth.5 Ovid6 sketches with rapid touches an analogous
picture. "The shades,' ' he says, "wander bloodless, bodi-
less, boneless; some gather in the forum, others follow
their trades, imitating their former way of life. ' ' And
this is no fancy due to the poet's imagination. An awk-
ward epitaph of a young, probably Syrian, slave7 tells us
that he is glad still to be able to discharge his service
zealously in the retired place where dwells the god of the
infernal abode. In these instances we find, in spite of the
transformation undergone by eschatological ideas as a
whole, a survival of the old conception of the destiny of
the dead.

We have not to seek far to discover how this transfor-
mation took place. It was provoked by the desire to sub-
ject souls to different treatment according to their
deserts, and to distribute them in distinct compartments
in which they would be rewarded or punished in accord-
ance with their past works. It was much prior to the
Roman period, going back to the distant age at which
Orphic theology, with its sanctions beyond the grave,
modified Homeric tradition and popular religion in
Greece. In the West the doctrine which imposed itself
with the Hellenic civilisation on peoples of foreign race
was ready-made. It spread through the south of Italy by

s Aen., VI, 653 ss.

6 Ovid, Metam., IV, 443 ss.

7 Bucheler, Carm. epigr., 1186:

' ' Sed in secessum numinis inf ernae domus
Oficiosus tandem ministerio laetatur suo."

74 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

way of the colonies of Greater Greece in which Pythag-
orism came to its full power. It is in this country that
some of the Orphic tablets intended as guides to the dead
in their journey through the infernal realm have been
discovered in the tombs;8 and the great amphorae of a
later date, bearing representations of scenes of Hades,
which were also found in southern Italy, show the impor-
tance which continued to be attached there to the idea of
the future life. In Campania, Lake Avernus was even
regarded as one of the entrances to the nether world,
through which Ulysses and Aeneas had descended.

The Greek doctrines were also introduced among the
Etruscans and combined with the beliefs of this people
as to an underworld in which the Manes of the dead were
threatened by horrible demons and protected by beneficent
genii. This Greek influence and its alliance with the
native traditions appear in Etruria in a great number of
funeral monuments on which we find represented many
figures which, according to mythology, peopled the king-
dom of Pluto. One of the most significant is the fine sar-
cophagus, discovered a few years ago at Torre San Severo
near Bolsena, which seems to date from the third century
B. C.9 The two long sides hold corresponding reliefs, the
one showing Achilles' sacrifice of the Trojan prisoners
on the grave of Patroclus, the other the sacrifice of Polyx-
ena, last of Priam's daughters, on the tomb of Achilles.
These scenes, borrowed from the Greek epic poetry, are
placed between two Etruscan demons, winged figures
which bear serpents and are male on one side and female
on the other. The small sides are decorated by two scenes
from the Odyssey, the myth of Circe changing the com-
panions of Ulysses into animals — perhaps an allusion to
metempsychosis — and Tiresias' evocation of the shades
of the dead, the Elysian Fields being curiously indicated.
This instance — and many others might be cited — shows

8 See below, Lecture VI, p. 148.
*Monumenti Antichi, XXIV, 1917, pp. 5-116.

THE NETHER WORLD 75

how closely the Hellenic legends of Hades had been inter-
mingled with Etruscan demonology.

This Greek conception of the infernal regions, which
literature and art were to popularise and perpetuate even
after credence had ceased to be given to it, remains
familiar to us. Taken altogether and in the large, it is that
of a kingdom imagined as an imitation of the cities of our
world, in which, however, there reigns such a rigorous
justice as is on our poor earth no more than a dream of
minds morally disposed. This underground state, of
which the frontier is defended by an unbridged river, the
Styx, is governed by powerful rulers, Pluto and Proser-
pina. It has its judges, Minos, Aeacus and Rhada-
manthus ; its executioners, the Erinyes or Furies ; and its
prison, Tartarus, surrounded by high walls. This jail, in
which the guilty, laden with chains, suffer the torments
enacted in Greece by the penal laws or others more
atrocious,10 is distinctly contrasted with the abode of the
good citizens who freely enjoy in delightful gardens all
the pleasures which make the joy of human beings.

Books treating of the "Descent into Hades,' ' of which
a considerable number were in circulation, and the poets '
descriptions embroidered various patterns around this
central design. There was a whole mythological and theo-
logical efflorescence which peopled with more and more
numerous figures the fantastic kingdom occupying the
great cavern of the earth. Infinite variations were im-
agined on a traditional theme, of which, however, even
certain details were preserved from age to age with a
surprising fidelity. Lucian in his satirical description of
Charon and his boat reproduces types fixed in the sixth
century before our era, for, as has been observed, his
picture is in exact agreement with the recently discovered
fragment of a black-figured vase.11

Although in our sources infernal topography is occa-
sionally somewhat confused, certain essential features,

10 See below, Lecture VII, p. 172 s.

ii Furtwangler, Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft, VIII, 1905, p. 191 ss.

76 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

which we will here merely indicate, can be recognised in
it. We will return to them one after the other, and speak
of them in greater detail, in later lectures. When the
souls, or rather the shades, descend to the depths of the
earth, they reach first a provisional abode where they
await a decision as to their lot, an intermediate region
through which all of them pass but in which some are kept
for a considerable time.12 They then cross the Styx, and a
road which is also common to all of them leads them to
the court which determines their lot.13 This judging of
the dead is foreign to Homeric poetry : the idea of it was
perhaps borrowed by Greece from Egypt, but from
ancient Orphism onwards it was an essential element of
infernal eschatology. Infallible judges, from whom no
fault is hid, divide into two companies the multitude of
the souls appearing before them. The guilty are con-
strained to take the road to the left which leads to dark
Tartarus, crossing its surrounding river of fire, the
Pyriphlegethon. There those who have committed inex-
piable crimes are condemned to eternal chastisement.14
But the road to the right leads the pious souls to the
Elysian Fields where, among flowered meadows and
wrapped in soft light, they obtain the reward of their
virtues, whether, having attained to perfection, they are
able to dwell for ever with the heroes, or whether, being
less pure, they are obliged to return later to the earth in
order to reincarnate themselves in new bodies after they
have drunk the water of Lethe and lost the memory of
their previous existence.

The philosophical criticism of the Greeks had early
attacked these traditional beliefs, but such negative atti-
tude became more definite among the thinkers of the sur-
passingly rationalistic period which came after Aris-

12 See Lecture I, p. 66.

is See Lecture VI, p. 151.

14 See below, Lecture VII, p. 172 ss.

THE NETHER WORLD 77

totle.15 The Peripatetics, who admitted at most the sur-
vival of reason, rejected in consequence all the myths
dealing with the descent of the shades into the kingdom
of Pluto. The Epicureans were even more radical, for,
as we have seen (p. 7), they condemned the soul to dis-
solution at the moment of death, thus destroying the very
foundation of the belief in Hades. Their campaign against
stories in which they saw only the lugubrious inventions
of priests and poets, was one of the capital points of their
polemics against popular religion, and they flattered
themselves that by destroying faith in the pains of Tar-
tarus they freed mankind from vain terrors which ob-
sessed its minds and poisoned its joys. The Stoics, we
know (p. 13), taught that the soul is a burning breath of
the same nature as the ether and as the stars which shine
in the sky. As to whether this ardent fluid was lost after
death in the universal fire, or kept its individuality until
the final conflagration of the world, the doctrine of the
Porch varied. But one thing was certain : the fiery nature
of the soul must prevent it from going down into the
underground and impel it to rise to higher spheres. If it
were weighed down by its contact with the body and laden
with matter, it might float for some time in the dense air
surrounding the earth but could never descend into its
depths.16 The impossibility of admitting literally the
truth of the stories as to the infernal realm was thus
proved.

The same psychological doctrine as to the soul's kin-
ship with the fire of the heavenly bodies was admitted in
the Alexandrian age by the sect which paid one and the
same veneration to Pythagoras and to Plato and was thus
more attached than any other to belief in immortality.
It gave in, to some extent, to contemporary rationalism
and was brought to modify its ideas as to life beyond the
grave. Ancient Pythagorism, the heir of Orphism, made
much of the sufferings reserved for sinners in the infer-

15 See Introd., p. 6.
i« See Introd., p. 29.

78 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

nal abysses. A book attributed to Periktione still shows
the daughter who has despised her parents as condemned
to suffer, beneath the earth and in the company of the
impious, the eternal evil inflicted by "Dike and the gods
of down below.,m But in the first century before our era
the pseudo-Timaeus of Locri declares that such tales are
fictions — salutary, it is true — imagined by Homer in
order to divert from evil those to whom truth alone was
not a sufficient guide.18 The only penalty which can over-
take the sinning soul is, according to these Neo-Pythago-
reans, metempsychosis, which forces it to reincarnate
itself in a fleshly prison.19

This doctrine of transmigration claims to transport
hell to earth and to explain, as moral allegories, all the
fables which the poets had invented.20 The Inferi are noth-
ing else than the dwellings of our globe, which is the
lowest of the nine circles of the world. The true Hades is
the wicked man's life in which he is tortured by his vices.
The rivers of hell — Cocytus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon
and Styx — are anger, remorse, sadness and hate, which
cause man to suffer. The Furies are the passions, scourg-
ing him with whips and burning him with torches ; and
similarly an ingenious interpretation is given to each of
the pains suffered by Tantalus, Sisyphus, the Danaides
and the others.21

This exegesis led finally to an absolute denial of the
existence of hell, but such radical scepticism was in too
flagrant contradiction to the old beliefs to be willingly
accepted by the minds which remained attached to them.
Hence arose attempts to bring these beliefs into harmony
with the psychology generally admitted.

A first theory, to which we will have to return when

17 Mullach, Fragm. phil. Graec, II, p. 33.

is Tim. Locr., Be anim. mundi, 17, p. 104 D; cf. Schmekel, Mittlere Stoa,
1892, p. 435.

19 Cf. Lecture VII, p. 178 ss.

20 Cf. on this doctrine Bevue de philologie, XLIV, 1920, p. 230 ss.
2i Cf. Lecture VII, p. 181.

THE NETHER WORLD 79

speaking of the nature of the surviving souls,22 seems to
have been invented in Alexandria and to have been in-
spired by Egyptian religion.23 The authors who first
allude to it, one Greek and one Roman, are contem-
poraries who wrote about the year 200 B. C, the critic
Aristarchus and the poet Ennius, but the transmission of
the doctrine can be traced through literary traditions
down to the end of antiquity. It divides the human com-
posite not into two but into three parts — the body, the
soul and the shade. The body is destroyed beneath the
earth; the soul, which is a particle of the divine ether,
rises after death towards its place of origin ; but a form
(etScoXov) of subtle matter detaches itself from the corpse,
and it is this semblance (simulacrum) or shade (umbra)
which goes down to the infernal regions. The existence
of these regions could thus be maintained, but they were
no longer held to receive the celestial principle which
gave intelligence.

Others allowed that it was impossible that the earth
should contain subterranean caverns large enough to
hold Tartarus, the Elysian Fields and the infinite multi-
tude of the dead. But they explained that the word sub-
terranean (vTToyeios) had been misunderstood, that it de-
noted not the bowels of the earth but the lower half of the
terrestrial globe, the southern hemisphere, which was
unknown to the ancients, or even the whole celestial
hemisphere, curved below this globe which hung motion-
less in the centre of the universe.24 This hemisphere is
always invisible, — so the ancients might say, — which is
exactly the sense of the word Hades (=0161877$). The
Axiochos, an apocryphal work attributed to Plato, was
first to reveal this doctrine, claiming that it had been com-
municated to Socrates by the Mage Gobryes. It was in
reality borrowed by the Greeks of the Alexandrian age
from the astral theology of the Semitic peoples. Accord-

22 See Lecture VI, p. 167.

23 Cf. Bev. philol., I. c, p. 237 ss.

24 On this doctrine see Comptes rendus Acad. Inscriptions, 1920, p. 272 ss.

80 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

ing to this theology the world is divided into two halves
by the line of the horizon ; the upper hemisphere is the
domain of the living and the higher gods, the lower that
of the dead and the infernal gods. Descent to it and ascent
from it are by way of two gates, situated west and east,
where the sun appears and disappears. The marshes of
the Acheron, the river Styx, and Charon and his boat are
constellations which the souls cross when they have
passed through the "gate of Hades."

The ancient Greeks had placed the Islands of the
Blessed, whither the heroes were borne by the favour of
the gods, somewhere far away in the ocean. These islands
were now supposed to lie in the Antipodes, in the un-
known half of the earth. All the poets ' stories of the fra-
grant and melodious gardens of this abode of delights
were applied to these marvellous countries which no
sailor had ever reached.25 On the other hand, Tartarus
was placed at the bottom of the celestial abysses, near the
lowest point of the lower hemisphere, that is, diametri-
cally opposite to Olympus, the dwelling of the gods, who
were throned on the summit of the starry vault. It was
into this sombre gulf that the wicked were flung; there
yawned the bottomless pit in which the demons of the
dusky world inflicted eternal torture on the guilty.

This theory claimed to bring the ancient Hellenic
beliefs into agreement with the cosmography of astrono-
mers, but this cosmography itself undermined the foun-
dations of the system, in so far as it refuted the hypoth-
esis of a physical opposition between the two halves of
the universe. It was observed that a single sky revolved
about our earth; that the same atmosphere, composed of
the same elements, enveloped it entirely ; that every part
of it was, in turn, equally in the light and in the shade.
Therefore physical phenomena must be identical over the
whole surface of our globe ; the climate of the Antipodes
must be like that of our lands; if the Antipodes were

25 Cf. Lecture VI, p. 155.

THE NETHER WORLD 81

peopled, it was by races like those of men and the beasts.
Their inhabitants therefore were not the dead bnt living
beings. The marvels of the Fortunate Isles did not exist
and there was no reason for regarding the lower rather
than the upper part of the heavens as the vast reservoir
of souls.

The doctrine which placed the subterranean kingdom
of Pluto and Proserpina on the other side of the earth
and in the other celestial hemisphere, made a poor resist-
ance to this criticism of the Alexandrian geographers.
If it did not entirely disappear, if its transmission can be
followed down to the end of antiquity and even to the
Middle Ages, it never was so widespread nor so active as
another doctrine claiming to reconcile the beliefs of the
past with accepted science.

This bold doctrine transported the whole subterranean
world above the earth's surface. We shall see, in the next
lecture, on celestial immortality (p. 96), that the Pythago-
reans conceived the idea of placing the Elysian Fields in
the moon, and that the Fortunate Isles were similarly ex-
plained by them as being the sun and the moon bathed by
the fluid of the ether. The Inferi were thus the lower space,
that is, the space extending between the sphere of the
moon, which was the limit of the world of the gods, and our
globe, which was the centre of the cosmic system. In the
Inferi the souls which had to suffer the chastisement of
their faults were kept prisoners ; they could not win to the
stars but wandered plaintively on the earth's surface and
especially about their own tombs, and then rose through
the atmosphere in which, little by little, they were puri-
fied by the elements. Allegorical interpretations found a
place for the infernal rivers in this new topography of
the Beyond : Acheron was explained as being the air, the
Pyriphlegethon as the zone of hail and fire, and the mean-
derings of the Styx became the circles of the universe.
We shall have occasion to return to the passage of the

82 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

soul through this aerial purgatory and its ascension to
the Elysian Fields of the sky.26

This cosmological interpretation of the tales referring
to Hades had a more powerful influence than the moral
allegory which did too much violence to tradition in
claiming to make our earthly life the mythological hell.
The doctrine that the Inferi were in the atmosphere was
adopted by Stoicism at least from the time of Posidonius
and was therefore widely believed from the end of the
Roman Republic onwards. Even the mysteries, which first
kept alive the belief in a subterranean kingdom of the
infernal gods, did not escape the influence of these new
ideas and were brought to adapt their esoteric teaching
to them.27

The transformation of ancestral beliefs by this the-
ology cannot today be better apprehended than from the
sixth book of the Aeneid. Virgil, when he relates the
descent of Aeneas into the abode of the shades, is inspired
by the NeJcyia of the Odyssey and other poetic tales. He
remains apparently faithful to mythological and literary
tradition, retaining the conventional decoration, the un-
varying geography of the infernal kingdom ; but he does
not admit the literal truth of these beliefs of an earlier
time; he is aware of the figurative sense given by the
philosophers to the old fables of Hades. At the risk of
seeming to contradict himself, he recalls this learned
eschatology — the purification, the ascension and the
transmigration of souls — in connection with what might
have been no more than the story of a marvellous journey
to the country of the dead. The unity of the conception
and the composition is the less seriously compromised
because it was believed that the ancient poets themselves
had wished to indicate these truths in their verses under
the veil of allegory. The descent to the nether world has
therefore a much loftier bearing in Virgil than a mere

26 See Lecture VII, p. 185; cf. VI, p. 161 s.

27 See Introd., p. 38 s.

THE NETHER WORLD 83

embellishment. It is the expression of a conviction or at
least a hope, not only a brilliant fiction based on an old
poetic theme.

However, the symbolical interpretations of the pagan
theologians who respected tradition and the purely nega-
tive criticism of the sceptics led finally to a common
result, to the destruction, namely, of the ancient beliefs,
even when it was claimed that they were being saved.
Whether the souls were held captive in the other hemi-
sphere or in the atmosphere, or whether they were con-
demned to reincarnation in a body, Hades was trans-
formed either to the lower sky, the air or the earth, and
the early conception of a subterranean world, whither the
dead who had been laid in the grave descended, was
abolished. There are abundant texts to prove that from
the end of the Roman Republic this belief had lost its
grip on many minds. Cicero28 claims that there was not an
old woman left foolish enough to fear the deep dwellings
of Orcus and the gloomy regions peopled by the livid
dead. "No one is childish enough,' ' Seneca repeats,29 "to
fear Cerberus and the phantoms which appear in the
form of skeletons.' ' "That there are Manes," says Juve-
nal,30 * ' a subterranean kingdom, a ferryman armed with
a pole, and black frogs in the gulfs of the Styx, that so
many thousands of men can cross the dark water in a
single boat," these are things in which everyone had
ceased to believe except very young children. Pliny31
brings forward a paradoxical argument, that, had there
been infernal regions, the zeal of the miners who had dug
deep galleries in the ground would have pierced their
boundaries ; and even the devout Plutarch, when he comes
to speak of the punishments reserved by mythology for

28Cic, Tusc, I, 21, 48; cf. I, 6, 10; Nat. deor., II, 2, 5.

29 Sen., Epist., 24, 18.

30 Juvenal, Sat., II, 149 ss.
3i Pliny, E. N., II, 63, §158.

84 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

the wicked, sees in them only nurses' tales to frighten
babies.32

The multiplicity of this testimony and its precision
allow no doubt that not only the educated classes but a
large portion of the population rejected the fables as to
the nether world. These fables were in any case a foreign
importation in the Latin world. Moralists, while they
ceased to believe in them for themselves, sometimes pre-
tended to retain them in order to inspire the people with
salutary fear, but Tartarus had lost much of its terror
for those it should have kept from ill-doing.

Is this to say that these ideas no longer found credence
anywhere ? A faith which has long dominated minds dis-
appears hardly and leaves persistent traces behind it in
customs and feeling. Thus we find that, more or less
everywhere, the practice was perpetuated of placing in
the mouth of the corpse a piece of money which served,
it was said, to pay Charon for the crossing of the Styx.33
Excavators have found these coins in many Roman
tombs. But they are doubtless evidence of no more than
a traditional rite which men performed without attaching
a definite meaning to it.

Moreover, the metrical epitaphs continue to speak of
the Elysian Fields and of Tartarus, of Styx and of
Acheron ; they complain of the cruelty of Pluto who bears
away mortals before their time, or of the Parcae or Fates
who cut the thread of their days ; they mention the aveng-
ing Furies, the sufferings of Tantalus, Sisyphus and
Ixion. But these are no more than ready-made formulas
of poetical language, literary reminiscenses or traditional
metaphors. Yet sometimes this infernal mythology is
curiously developed. Thus a long inscription on a Roman
tomb describes a young man descending from the ether
in order to announce to those near and dear to him that
he has become a celestial hero and has not to go to Pluto's
kingdom. "I shall not wend mournfully to the floods of

32 Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi sec. Epic, 27, p. 1105.

33 Cf. Lucian, Be luctu, 10.

THE NETHER WORLD 85

Tartarus; I shall not cross the waters of Acheron as a
shade, nor shall I propel the dusky boat with my oar; I
shall not fear Charon with his face of terror, nor shall
old Minos pass sentence on me ; I shall not wander in the
abode of gloom nor be held prisoner on the bank of the
fatal waters."34 This epitaph dates from the century of
Augustus, but did its author, any more than the writers
of that time, believe in the reality of the beings with
which he peoples Hades? He decorates his language with
a literary ornament which Christian poetry was later to
inherit. This poetry did not hesitate to employ these
pagan commonplaces, which had passed from hand to
hand until they were so worn out that their first meaning
had been effaced. The Renaissance and the age of modern
classicism were again to use and to abuse them.

The sculpture of tombs continued in the same way
often to reproduce the ancient models. Sarcophagi some-
times show us the dead man led by Hermes, guide of
souls, and coming into the presence of Pluto and Proser-
pina.35 We also see on funeral monuments Charon in his
boat, the typical sufferings of Tantalus, whose eager lips
cannot reach the flowing water, Ixion turning on his wheel,
Sisyphus labouring under the weight of his rock and,
above all, the Danaicles eternally pouring water into a
perforated vase.36 But it is probable that these traditional
figures were repeated without any very strong faith being
held as to the real existence of the personages which they

34Biicheler, 1109, v. 19-24:

"Non ego Tartareas penetrabo tristis ad undas,
Non Acheronteis transvehar umbra vadis,
Non ego caeruleam remo pulsabo carinam,
Nee te terribilem fronte timebo Charon,
Nee Minos mihi iura dabit grandaevus et atris
Non errabo locis nee cohibebor aquis. "

35 See, for instance, Jahresh. Instit. Wien, XVII, 1914, p. 133 ss.; or
Hermes, XXXVII, 1902, p. 121 ss.

36 Cf. Jahn, Darstellungen der Unterwelt auf Sarlcophagen, in Ber. Gesell-
scliaft Wiss. Leipsig, 1856, p. 267 ss.; Eeinaeh, Bepertoire des reliefs, III,
391 ; Berger, Bevue archeol., 3e serie, XXVI, 1895, p. 71 ss.

86 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

represented ; indeed it was proposed only to show them as
symbols which had to be interpreted allegorically.

If we had no other evidence than funeral poetry and
art of the persistence of the beliefs of the past, the testi-
mony would have to be accepted very cautiously. But
other more convincing proofs assure us that popular
faith clung, with characteristic tenacity, to the ancient
conception of the Inferi. Without believing precisely in
the strange tortures inflicted on the wicked heroes of
mythology, the man in the street was still vaguely per-
suaded that the souls went down from the tomb to some
deep places where they received rewards and punish-
ments. Suetonius37 relates that when the death of Tiberius
became known in Rome the people "prayed Mother Earth
and the Manes gods to give the dead man no other dwell-
ing than that of the impious." The Oriental slaves
brought the same convictions from their countries like
many other old beliefs which had faded away in the West.
The romancer Heliodorus, a Syrian priest, shows us in
his novel his heroine invoking "the demons who on the
earth and under the earth watch over and punish un-
righteous men, ' ,38 her prayer being that, after the iniqui-
tous death which threatened her, they might receive her.
The same conviction appears in the funeral inscriptions
of the East. Thus an epitaph of Elaiousa in Cilicia39
adjures "the heavenly god, the Sun, the Moon and the
subterranean gods who receive us." The common idea
was that a dead man can be excluded from the dwelling
of the shades and condemned to wander miserably on the
earth. In the same way the thought is often expressed in
the magic papyri of Egypt that the deceased were
plunged into the dark gulfs underground and there be-
came demons whom the wizard called up, when he sum-
moned them by his incantations. Even in Greece, where

37 Sueton., Tiberius, 75, 1 : " Terram matrem deosque Manes orarent, ne
mortuo sedem ullam nisi inter impios darent. "

38 Heliodorus, Aeth., VIII, 9, p. 231, 10, Bekker.

39 Jahresh. Instit. Wien, XVIII, 1915, Beiblatt., p. 45.

THE NETHER WORLD 87

rationalistic criticism had penetrated far deeper among
the people, Plutarch, while he reports that few people
were still really afraid of Cerberus, the lot of the Dan-
aides and other bugbears of Hades, adds, however, that
for fear of such pains recourse was had to purifications
and initiations.40

This belief in the existence of Hades, maintained in
the lower strata of the population in spite of the inroads
made on it and of its partial supersession by other doc-
trines, was to acquire new strength from the rebirth of
Platonism, which looked upon the writings of the "divine"
master as inspired. In several passages Plato spoke with
so much precision of the dwelling of the souls in the
bowels of the earth that even the subtlety of his later
interpreters found difficulty in giving another meaning to
his text, although the attempt was made by some of them.
Therefore effort was directed to defending the doctrine
of the infallible sage by refuting the objections raised
against it by his adversaries. The Stoics had held, as we
have seen (p. 77), that the soul, being a "fiery breath,"
had a natural tendency to rise in the air and could not
sink into the ground. But Porphyry41 objected that in
lowering itself from heaven towards our world it had be-
come impregnate with the atmospheric damp and thus
had grown heavier, and that if during its passage in the
body it became laden with the clay of a sensual life, if it
wrapped itself in a material cloak, its density came to be
such that it was dragged down into the dusky abysses of
the earth. "It is true," says Proclus,42 "that the soul by
force of its nature aspires to rise to the place which is its
natural abode, but when passions have invaded it they
weigh it down and the savage instincts which develop in
it attract it to the place to which they properly belong,
that is, the earth. ' ' According to Proclus,43 who claims to

40 Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi sec. Epic., 27, p. 1105.
iiPorph., Sent., 29 (p. 13, Mommert).

42 Proclus, In Bemp. Plat., II, p. 126, 10 as., Kroll.

43 Proclus, ibid., II, p. 131, 20 ss.

88 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

interpret Plato faithfully, the soul after death is judged
somewhere between the sky and our globe; if it be de-
clared worthy it enjoys a life of blessedness in the celes-
tial spheres ; if, on the other hand, it deserve penalties,
it is sent to a place beneath the ground. Elsewhere, de-
fining his thought,44 he affirms that the various parts of
Hades and the subterranean courts and the rivers of
whose existence Homer and Plato appraise us, should not
be regarded as vain imaginations or fabulous marvels. As
the souls which go to heaven are distributed among
several and different resting-places, so we must believe
that for souls still in need of chastisement and purifica-
tion underground dwellings, whither penetrate numerous
effluvia of the super-terrestrial elements, are thrown
open. It is these effluvia that are called " rivers' ' or " cur-
rents.' ' Here too various classes of demons hold empire,
some of them avengers, some chastisers, some purifiers
and some executioners. Into this abode, the farthest from
that of the gods, the sun's rays do not penetrate. It is
filled with all the disorder of matter. Therein is the
prison, guarded by demons who ensure justice, of the
guilty souls hidden beneath the earth.

It is not by their faithfulness to Plato 's doctrine, which
in truth they alter, but by the mere logic of their system
that the last Greek philosophers are led to admit what
their predecessors rejected. Sometimes, more or less un-
consciously, they were under a religious influence. The
Platonist Celsus believed in the eternal pains of hell but
invoked only the authority of "mystagogues and theo-
logians" in support of this article of faith.45 The opposi-
tion between the obscure retreats of the Manes and the
bright dwellings of Olympus is old, and naturally became
prominent as the belief spread, first that heroes, and
afterwards that all virtuous spirits, rose to the eternal
spaces.46 But the religion which formulated the strictly

44 Proclus, In Kemp. Plat., I, 121, 23 ss., Kroll.

45 Orig., Contra Celsum, VIII, 48 s.
4c See Lecture IV, p. 113 ss.

THE NETHER WORLD 89

consequent doctrine of an absolute antithesis between the
luminous kingdom where the divinities and the beneficent
genii were seated, and the dark domain of the Spirit of
Evil and his perverse demons, was Persian Mazdeism.
The resplendent heights where the gods had their thrones
were to be after death the abode of those who had served
piously. On the other hand, those who had contributed
to increase evil on the earth, were to be flung into the
murky abysses in which Ahriman reigned. Iranian dual-
ism imposed this eschatological conception on a section of
Alexandrian Judaism ; it was admitted by many Pythag-
oreans, then by the gnostic sects and later by Maniche-
ism. But above all it was widely propagated under the
Roman Empire by the mysteries of Mithras. We find
then put forth the doctrine that the demons are divided
into two armies, incessantly at war with each other, one
good and one evil. The good army is subject to celestial
powers and comes down to earth to give succour and
support to the faithful. The evil army obeys an anti-god
(avTiOeos) and issues from the bowels of the earth in order
to scatter misery, sin and death among men.47 The souls
of the dead become like one or the other of these two
opposing classes of demons. When they are virtuous and
pure they rise to the luminous ether where dwell the
divine spirits. If, on the contrary, they are vicious and
defiled they go down into the underground depths where
the Prince of Darkness commands; like the maleficent
demons who people this hell they surfer and cause to
surfer.

It was at this compromise that paganism stopped when
it reached the term of its evolution. Oriental dualism im-
posed on it its final formula. It no longer admitted, like
the ancients, that all the dead must go down from the
grave into immense hollows dug in the bowels of the
earth, and it no longer made the Elysian Fields and Tar-

•*7 Porph., Be abstin., 38 ss. ; cf. Bousset, Archiv fur Religionswiss.,
XVIII, 1915, p. 134 ss., and Andres in Bealencycl., Supplementband, III,
315.

90 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

tarus two contiguous domains of the kingdom of Pluto.
Nor did it transport them both, side by side, as the pagan
theologians of the beginning of our era would have done,
to the atmosphere and the starry spheres. It separated
them radically, cutting the abode of the souls into two
halves, of which it placed one in the luminous sky and the
other in subterranean darkness. This was also the con-
ception which, after some hesitation, became generally
accepted by the Church, and which for long centuries was
to remain the common faith of all Christendom.

Ill

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY

THE astral religion which became predominant in
the Roman Empire may be considered as an inter-
mediary, a connecting link, between the old anthro-
pomorphic paganism and the Christian faith. Instead of
moral — or, if you prefer, immoral — beings, stronger than
man but subject to all the passions of man, it taught the
adoration of the heavenly powers who act on nature,
and so led mankind to the worship of the Power who is
beyond the heavens. This influence of the astral cults of
the East can be clearly perceived in the evolution of the
ideas as to future life, and this above all constitutes the
historical importance of the subject which I venture to
treat in this lecture.

Beliefs which are spread among many peoples of the
world relate the immortality of the soul to the heavenly
bodies. It was for long naively imagined that a new sun
was created every evening, or at least every winter, and
a new moon born each month, and traces of this primitive
idea survived in the religion of antiquity and persist even
in our modern speech. But when it was realised that the
same celestial luminaries reappeared and resumed their
ardour after their fires had died and they had ceased to
shine, that the stars which were lit at sunset were those
which had been extinguished at dawn, their lot was
related to that of man, destined like them to be reborn,
after death, to a new life. Various savage tribes thus
associate the heavenly bodies, and especially the moon,
with the resurrection of the dead. The wan circle which
sheds its vague light in the darkness of night causes
phantoms to appear to haunt vigils and dreams, and is

92 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

therefore the power which presides over life beyond the
tomb. Among the Greeks of the most ancient period
Hecate was at one and the same time the goddess of the
moon, the summoner of ghosts and the qneen of the infer-
nal realm. In the East astrological ideas mingled with
this mythology. It was taught that the moon's cold and
damp rays corrupted the flesh of the dead and thus de-
tached from it the soul which finally abandoned the
corpse. The Syrians, at the critical times in which the
moonbeams exercised a more active influence on this
separation, offered sacrifices on tombs, and the threefold
commemoration of the dead on the third, the seventh and
the fortieth day in a part of the Eastern Church had its
earliest origin in these offerings of the sidereal cults.1

There was also a very widely held belief, which has
survived in European folk-lore, that each man has his
star in the sky. This star is dazzling if his lot be brilliant,
pale if his state of life be humble. It is lit at his birth and
falls when he dies. The fall of a shooting star therefore
denotes a person's death. This popular idea existed in
antiquity. Pliny the Naturalist reports it, although he
denies its truth,2 and it was again combated in the fifth
century by Eusebius of Alexandria. "Were there then
only two stars in the time of Adam and Eve," asks the
bishop, "and only eight after the Flood when Noah and
seven other persons alone were saved in the Ark?"3 The
formulas of epitaphs and the very usages of language
show how current was the belief that each man was, as we
still say, born under a good or an evil star. Astrosus was
the Latin equivalent of our unlucky. This doctrine of a
rudimentary astrology was incorporated in the general
system of learned genethlialogy. Although this latter
attributed a predominant influence to the planets and the
signs of the zodiac, it also taught, in accordance with
popular opinion, that each of the most brilliant stars

i Cf. Comptes rendus Acad. Inscriptions, 1918, p. 278 ss.

2 Pliny, H. N., II, 8, § 28.

s Eusebius Alex., in Pair. Graeca, LXXXVI, 1, p. 453.

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY 93

(\afjL7Tpol ao-repe?) ensures riches, power and glory to the
newly born child, if it be in a favourable position at his
birth.4

But side by side with this general conception of a rela-
tion between the life of the stars and that of men, a much
more precise idea is met with from the first. The soul was,
as we shall see,5 often conceived by the ancients as a bird
preparing for flight. Where would it alight when it had
passed through the air except on the heavenly bodies
which were still imagined as quite near the earth? The
paintings on an Egyptian tomb of a late period, found at
Athribis, show us the soul of the dead man fluttering
with those others like him in the midst of the constella-
tions.6

The belief was widely spread that the spirits of the
dead went to inhabit the moon. In the East this faith
retained a very crude form which certainly went back to
a most primitive paganism. We find it in India as well as
in Manicheism, which arose in Mesopotamia in the third
century, but which admitted many ancient traditions into
its doctrine. "All who leave the earth," says an Upani-
shad, "go to the moon, which is swollen by their breath
during the first half of the month.' ' The Manicheans simi-
larly affirmed that when the moon was in the crescent its
circumference was swelled by souls, conceived as lumi-
nous, which it drew up from the earth, and that when it was
waning it transferred these souls to the sun. Using an
idea much earlier than his time,7 Mani also stated that the
boat of the moon, which plied in the sky, received a load
of souls which every month it transferred to the sun's
larger vessel. The association established in Syro-Punic
religions between the moon and the idea of immortality
is marked by the abundance in Africa of funeral monu-
ments bearing the symbol of the crescent, either alone or

4 Cat. codd. astrol. Graec, V, pars. 1, p. 196 ss.

5 See below, Lecture VI, p. 157.

6 Flinders Petrie, Athribis, London, 1908 (52 A. B.).
» Cf. below, Lecture VI, p. 154.

94 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

associated with the circle of the sun and the star of
Venus.8 These astral symbols are identical with those
already used by the Babylonians. But it is not only among
the Semitic peoples that we find the crescent on tombs,
either alone or accompanied by other figures : it is of fre-
quent occurrence, notably in Celtic countries. Possibly
the Druids placed in the moon the other world where men
pursued an existence uninterrupted by death.

As for the sun, the idea most commonly accepted was
that the dead accompanied him on his course and went
down with him in the west to an underground world.
There, during the night, this enfeebled heavenly body
recovered his strength, and there the dead too were
revived. The power of this faith in ancient Egypt is
known: the souls embarked on the boat of Ra, and with
him, after they had accomplished the circle of the
heavens, went down through a crevice of the earth or be-
yond the ocean. This was the first origin of the role of
"psychopomp" which we shall find attributed to the solar
god.

Finally many peoples believed that souls, after plying
through air and space, inhabited the sky in the form of
brilliant stars. The multitude of the stars scintillating in
the firmament was that of the innumerable spirits who
had left the world. They pressed in a dense crowd, espe-
cially in the long luminous track of the Milky Way, which
was, par excellence, the dwelling of the dead. Other tradi-
tions saw in this band across the sky the highroad which
the dead travelled to gain the summit of the world.9 A
vestige of this ingenuous conception is retained in the
very name, i i Milky Way. ' '

These ideas as to the lot of the soul after death, which
were spread among a number of different peoples, may

s Toutain, Bevue des etudes anciennes, XIII, 1911, p. 166 ss. ; cf. ibid.,
p. 379 s.

9 See below, p. 104, and Lecture VI, p. 153.

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY 95

also have existed in primitive Greece but we have no
proof that they were current there. As the Hellenes
granted to the stars only a restricted and secondary place
in their anthropomorphic religion, so in early times they
had no belief, or scarcely any, in the ascent of souls to the
starry sky. This doctrine was entirely strange even to the
earliest Ionian thinkers. Recent research has made it
more and more probable that these conceptions were in-
troduced into Greece from the East, where astrolatry was
predominant.10 Pausanias11 claimed to know that the Chal-
deans and the Magi of India were the first to assert that
the human soul is immortal, and that they convinced the
Hellenes, and in particular Plato, of this doctrine. Such
an affirmation, in this form, is certainly false, but it con-
tains an element of truth. The tenet of astral immortality
is ancient in the East: it probably took form in Baby-
lon about the sixth century, when Persian Mazdeism,
which believed that the righteous were lifted up to the
luminous dwelling of the gods, came into contact with the
sidereal religion of the Chaldeans. It was propagated in
Greece especially by the Pythagoreans, for whom the soul
had a celestial origin, being, as we have seen (p. 24), a
fiery principle, a particle of the ether which lights the
divine fires of heaven. This spark, which descended at
birth in the body, which it heated and animated,
reascended after death to the upper regions, whence it
had come forth. Aristophanes in his Peace12 greets the
apparition of a new star, that of the Pythagorean poet,
Ion of Chios, who had recently died, asking ironically if
it be not true that "when someone dies he becomes like
the stars in the air." This is the most ancient precisely
dated mention of stellar immortality (421 B. C), and it
cannot be doubted that the doctrine was that of Ion him-
self. Plato received it from the Pythagoreans and makes
very clear allusions to it.

io E. Pfeiffer, Studien zum antiken Sternglauben, 1916, p. 113 ss.

ii Pausanias, IV, 32, 4.

12 Aristophanes, Peace, 832 ss.

96 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

The fundamental idea on which it rests, the idea that
the psychic essence is the same as the fire of the heavenly-
bodies, is at the root of all oriental astrology, which
claims to explain by astral influence the formation of
character. This idea of a relationship (avyyeveia) between
the soul and the stars does not in Greece belong to the
old basic popular beliefs. It was introduced thither by the
philosophers, who, as we shall see, drew from it very im-
portant theological conclusions. According to them, it
was owing to this identity of nature that the soul was
capable of knowing the gods and of aspiring to join
them.13 This doctrine took on new power when astrology
succeeded in imposing itself on the Alexandrian world,
and it is significant that we find it clearly formulated by
an adept of this pseudo science, the famous Hipparchus,
in the second century before our era. " Hipparchus, ' ' says
Pliny,14 "will never receive all the praise he deserves,
since no one has better established the relation between
man and the stars, or shown more clearly that our souls
are particles of the heavenly fire." Pythagorism and
Stoicism, and after them the Syrian and Persian mys-
teries, were to popularise this conception throughout the
ancient world. In certain regions, as in Gaul, it undoubt-
edly found pre-existing native beliefs with which it com-
bined, and in religion and among theologians it assumed
multiple forms. We shall try to distinguish its chief
aspects, dealing successively with lunar, solar and stellar
immortality.

The Pythagoreans, perhaps transforming a belief of
the Greek people as to Selene's role, but more probably
inspired by Oriental speculations, held that souls, when
they had been purified by air, went to dwell in the moon.
To the question, "What are the Isles of the Blessed ?"
the orthodox doctrine of the sect answered, "The sun

13 See below, Lecture IV, p. Ill ; cf. Introd., p. 24.

14 Pliny, H. N., II, 26, § 95.

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY 97

and the moon. ' n5 For them the heavenly bodies were mov-
ing islands washed by a lnminons fluid, which their swift
motion caused to sonnd about them. These thinkers, who
debated all the scientific hypotheses, accepted the plu-
rality of worlds. The heavenly bodies were other earths
surrounded by air and rolling in the boundless ether. The
moon in particular was designated as the "ethereal" or
< ' Olympic earth, ' ' and in the moon lay the Elysian Fields,
the meadows of Hades, in which the shades of the heroes
rested. Pythagoras himself, promoted to the rank of an
immortal spirit, rejoiced there among the sages. Per-
sephone, assimilated to Artemis, reigned over this king-
dom. Did not the moon, like her, transfer itself alternately
above and below the earth? The planets were this hunt-
ress's hounds which, ever in chase, were scouring the
fields of space around her in every direction.

The authors of Pythagorean apocalypses peopled the
mountains and valleys of the moon with fantastic animals,
stronger than ours, and with strange plants, more vigor-
ous than those of our globe. The inhabitants of the moon,
fed on the vapours of the atmosphere, were not liable to
human needs. In his "True Histories," Lucian16 parodied
these mad imaginings with comic exaggeration and
ludicrous obscenity.

A curious fragment of Castor of Ehodes gives an in-
stance of an unexpected application of these beliefs.17
This historian, who lived at the end of the Eepublic, had
the idea of interpreting Eoman customs by the Pythago-
rean doctrines which Nigidius Figulus and his circle of
theosophists had brought back into fashion (p. 22). In
particular he explained by this method the ivory lunulae
(crescents) which decorated the senators' shoes. They
recalled, he says, that noble souls inhabited the moon
after death and trod on its soil.

is Jamblich., Vit. Pyth., XVIII, 82=Diels, VorsoTcratiker, Is, p. 358, 18 ;
of. Plut, Be genio Socr., 22, p. 590 C ; Hierocles, In Aur. carm., end.
is Lucian, Verae hist., I, 10 ss.
it Castor, f ragm. 24 and 25, Muller.

98 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

The eclectic Stoics of the same period, and especially
Posidonius of Apamea, gave this lunar eschatology a
place in their system, and undertook to justify it by the
physical doctrines of the Porch. According to them,
souls, which are a burning breath, rose through the air
towards the fires of the sky, in virtue of their lightness.18
When they reached the upper zone, they found in the
ether about the moon surroundings like their own essence
and remained there in equilibrium. Conceived as material
and as circular in form, they were, like the heavenly
bodies, nourished by the exhalations which arose from
the soil and the waters. These innumerable globes of a
fire endowed with intelligence formed an animated chorus
about the divine luminary of night. The Elysian Fields
did not, in this theory, lie in the moon itself, which was no
longer an earth inhabited by fantastic beings, but in the
pure air about the moon whither penetrated only souls no
less pure. This idea was to last until the end of paganism,
although other eschatological doctrines then met with
more favour. The emperor Julian in the beginning of his
satire on the Caesars describes them as invited to a ban-
quet held, as was proper, on a lower level than the feast
of the gods, who met at the summit of heaven. "It seemed
fitting/ ' he says,19 "that the emperors should dine in the
upper air just below the moon. The lightness of the bodies
with which they had been invested and also the revolu-
tions of the moon sustained them. ' '

The zone of the moon, the lowest of the seven planetary
spheres, in which the serene ether touches our own foggy
atmosphere, is the frontier between the world of the gods
and that of men, the border between immortality and
the generated, the line of demarcation between the life of
blessedness and the death which our earthly existence
really is. Aristotle had already noted the distinction be-
tween the two halves of the universe, the one active and
the other passive, the heavens formed of unalterable

is See Introd., p. 29, and Lecture VI, p. 162.
is Julian, Caes., p. 307 c.

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY 99

ether and subject neither to progress nor to corruption,
and our sublunary world composed of four elements, our
world in which all is born, is transformed and dies. Neo-
Pythagoreans and Neo-Stoics liked, in insisting on this
opposition, to show the contrast between the splendour
and the darkness, the serenity and the trouble, the con-
stancy and the mutability, the truth and the error, the
happiness and the misery, the peace and the war, which
reigned respectively in the dwelling of the gods and in
the abode of men, whither souls descending to earth pene-
trated so soon as they had crossed the circle of the
moon. In imitation of Plato20 this sublunary world is
shown as a dark cave in which the captive souls, plunged
in obscurity, aspire to see again the light from on high.

The funeral monuments of the imperial period have
retained numerous traces of these beliefs. As we have
already said (p. 94), the crescent often appears on them,
either alone or together with other symbols. Other tomb-
stones are still more expressive. A Roman relief, pre-
served in Copenhagen, is particularly characteristic : the
bust of a little girl appears on it placed on a large cres-
cent and surrounded by seven stars.21 On this an inscrip-
tion recently found at Didyma might serve as a com-
mentary: "Standing before this tomb, look at young
Choro, virgin daughter of Diognetos. Hades has placed
her in the seventh circle,"22 that is, in the circle of the
moon, which is the lowest of the seven planets.

We see that philosophy and physics had united to
transform the old belief in the ascent of souls to the
moon. The intervention of theories claiming to explain
the systems of the world is still more marked in the other
doctrines of astral immortality. It was this blending

20 Plato, Sep., VII, p. 514.

2i Reproduced in my Etudes syriennes, 1917, p. 87; cf. below, p. 139.

22Wiegand, in AbMndl. Akad. Berlin, 1908, Bericht, VI, p. 46:
Eras irpocrde TVfx/3ov 54pK€ tt\v &vvp.<pov
Kbpr)v AioyvrjToio vtjirirjv Xopovv,
f)v drJKev "AtSTjs ev kvkKokjiv e(386p.ois. . . .

100 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

which made them strong enough to impose themselves on
the minds of men. By their agreement with contemporary
science, they satisfied reason and faith at the same time.
But as all this theology really rested on a wrong cos-
mography, its lot was bound up with that of a false con-
ception of the universe, and the two fell together.
*****

The first of these doctrines appears to us the most
reasonable because it is founded on the primordial role
of the sun in our world. It was born in the East when the
Chaldean priests deprived the moon of the pre-eminence
originally ascribed to it, and recognised the unequalled
importance of the sun in the cosmic system.23 These
astronomical theologians deduced from this recognition
a theory which includes something like an anticipation of
universal gravitation, and which was to prove seductive
both by its greatness and by its logic. It spread through
the ancient world in the second and first centuries B. C.
There are some signs that the Pythagoreans, who were
much addicted to the study of the heavenly bodies, were
the first to adopt it, and with the propagation of Oriental
astrology it obtained a wide diffusion in the West.

The sun, placed in the fourth rank or the middle of the
planetary spheres,24 like a king surrounded by his guards,
was believed alternately to attract and repel the other
celestial bodies by the force of his heat, and to regulate
their harmonious movements as the coryphaeus directed
the evolutions of a chorus. But since the stars were
looked upon as the authors of all the physical and moral
phenomena of the earth, he who determined the com-
plicated play of their revolutions was the arbiter of des-
tinies, the master of all nature. Placed at the centre of
the great cosmic organism, he animated it to its utmost
limits, and was often called the " heart of the world' '
whither its heat radiated.

23 See La theologie solaire du paganisme romain in Mem. sav. Strangers
Acad. Inscr., XII, 1909, p. 449 ss.

24 Cf. Introd., p. 28.

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY 101

But this well-ordered universe could not be directed
by a blind force, and therefore the sun was an "intelli-
gent light" ((/»w5 voepov). The pagan theologians looked
upon him as the directive reason of the world {mens
mundi et temper atio). The Pythagoreans saw in him
Apollo Musagetes, the leader of the chorus of the Muses,
who were placed in the nine circles of the world and
whose accord produced the harmony of the spheres. Thus
he became the creator of individual reason and director
of the human microcosm. The author of generation, he
presided over the birth of souls, while bodies developed
under the influence of the moon. The radiant sun con-
stantly sent down sparkles from his flaming circle to the
beings he animated. The vital principle which nourished
men's material envelope and caused its growth was lunar,
but the sun produced reason.

Inversely, when death had dissolved the elements which
formed the human composite, when the soul had left the
carnal prison which enclosed it, the sun once more drew
it to himself. As his ardent heat caused vapours and
clouds to rise from the earth and the seas, so he brought
back to himself the invisible essence which animated the
body. He exercised on the earth both a physical and a
psychical attraction. Human reason reascended to its
original source and returned to its divine home. The rays
of the god were the vehicles of souls when they rose aloft
to the higher regions.25 He was the anagogue (avayoy
yevs) who withdrew spirits from matter which soiled
them.

Just as he sent the planets away from him and brought
them back by a series of emissions and absorptions, so he
caused his burning effluvia to descend to the beings whom
he called to life, and so he gathered them after their death
that they might rise to him once more. Thus a cycle of
migrations caused souls to circulate between the sky and
the earth, as the stars alternately drew away from and
returned to the radiant focus, heart and spirit of the

25 See below, Lecture VI, p. 160.

102 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

Great All, which called forth and directed their eternal
revolutions. It is easy to understand how this coherent
and, it may be said, magnificent theology, founded on the
discoveries of ancient astronomy at its zenith, imposed
on Roman paganism the cult of the invincible Sun, the
master of all nature, the creator and saviour of man.

A mass of literary evidence and a number of figured
monuments prove how powerful became, under the
Roman Empire, the belief that the sun was the god of the
dead. Old mythological traditions combined with Chal-
dean theology and were propagated with the Eastern reli-
gions. It was imagined that the deceased, and in particular
the emperors, were borne to heaven on the chariot of
Helios, or that the eagle, the king of the birds and the
servant of the sovereign sun, carried off their souls to
bear them to his master. Elsewhere it was the griffin of
Apollo or the solar phoenix who was the bearer of the
dead or the symbol of immortality. A funeral altar of
Rome even bears the characteristic inscription, "Sol me
rapuit," "the Sun has seized me up."26

You will probably ask how men succeeded in reconcil-
ing this solar immortality with the doctrine which made
the moon the abode of the dead. The Greeks, following
the Orientals, had been able to make a lunar-solar calen-
dar, and they also constructed an eschatology in which
the two great heavenly bodies both played part. They
were the two divinities whose help the priests promised
to "those who were about to die."27 This eschatology is
founded on the astrological idea that the moon presides
over physical life, over the formation and decomposition
of bodies, but that the sun is the author of intellectual life
and the master of reason. The doctrine also includes the
belief we have already explained elsewhere,28 that when
souls leave the earth, they are still surrounded by a subtle

26 CIL, VI, 29954; see below, Lecture VI, p. 157 ss.

27 Commodian, VIII, 10 : ' ' Sacerdotes . . . numina qui dieunt aliquid
morituro prodesse. "

28 See Introd., p. 24 s.; cf. below, Lecture VI, p. 167.

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY 103

fluid which retains the appearance of the persons whom
they formerly animated. The pagan theologians thus ad-
mitted that the souls which came down to earth assumed
in the sphere of the moon and in the atmosphere these
aerial bodies which were regarded as the seat of the vital
principle. Inversely, when they rose again to heaven, the
function of the moon was to dissolve and to receive these
light envelopes, as on earth its damp rays provoked the
corruption of the corpse. The soul, thus becoming pure
reason (vovs), ascended to the sun, the source of all intel-
ligence. According to others the formation of the soul's
integument was begun and its reabsorption was com-
pleted in the planetary spheres, and this is why the Neo-
Platonist Jamblichus29 placed the Hades of mythology be-
tween the sun and the moon. These theories are not the
product of pure philosophical speculations, but have their
roots in the old astral religion of the Semites. The mys-
teries of Mithras, the Chaldaic oracles, and above all
Manicheism shared the belief in a lunar-solar immor-
tality of which the source certainly goes back to the tenets
of the "Chaldean" priests.

Solar immortality is a learned doctrine, the fruit of the
astronomical theories which made the king-star the centre
and the master of the universe. It was such as to find
acceptance with theologians and philosophers and to be
spread by the Oriental mysteries. But it never succeeded
in eliminating or overshadowing the old popular idea
that the souls of the dead dwell in the midst of the
glittering constellations. A trace of the double conception
is found in the Stoic school. For certain of the masters
of this school the directing reason of the world, the
rjyefjLoviKov, has its principal seat in the sun, for others
in the sphere of the fixed stars. In the same way the poets,
Lucan addressing Nero, and Statius addressing Domi-
tian, hesitatingly ask if these emperors will ride in the

ssLydus, Be mensib., IV, 149 (p. 167, 25, Wiinsch.).

104 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

flaming chariot of Phoebus or if they will assume Jupi-
ter's sceptre in the highest heaven.30 The Neo-Pythago-
reans admitted that souls could rise to the Most High
(cts tov "Txjjkttov), that is to say, to the supreme God who
was enthroned at the summit of the world.31 It was, more-
over, very anciently held among the Greeks that Olympus
was in the outer circle enveloping the world, and until the
end of antiquity we find the Elysian Fields were trans-
ported to the zone of the constellations and in particular
to the Milky Way. This is, for instance, the doctrine of
Cicero as shown in the dream of Scipio.

So the old popular idea that the soul became a star,
which in Greece was accepted by the ancient Pythag-
oreans, still subsisted. According to mythology this was
the happy lot reserved for heroes. We have whole books
which tell us how these heroes at the end of their career
were transformed to brilliant stars in reward for their
exploits. "Catasterism" draws a moral conclusion from
ancient tales. Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Perseus and
Andromeda and many others had deserved such meta-
morphosis. It did not therefore seem bold to assign to
the eminent men of the present the same destiny as to the
great figures of the past, and no one was shocked by the
supposition that their divine spirits might be added to
the number of the "visible gods." This was, in particular,
a lot worthy of the princes who had deserved apotheosis.
At the death of Caesar a comet appeared. It was thought
to be the dictator's soul which had been received among
the Immortals, and Ovid32 does not hesitate to show us
Venus descending, invisible, into the senate, snatching
this soul from the pierced body and bearing it aloft to the
sky. There Venus feels the soul become inflamed and sees
it escape from her breast to fly beyond the moon and turn
into a trailing comet. Hadrian, in his grief for the death

soLucan, Phars., I, 45; Statius, Theb., I, 27; cf. my Mudes syriennes,
1917, p. 97 s.

3i Diog. Laert., VIII, 31.

32 Ovid, Metam., XV, 840 ss. ; cf. 749.

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY 105

of Antinous, let himself be persuaded that a star had just
appeared which was the deified soul of his favourite.33 But
as in Greece "heroification" was finally awarded by the
will of families to every one of their members whose loss
they mourned, so "catasterism" was in the end accorded
to deceased persons of very moderate deserts. " Nearly
the whole heaven/ ' says Cicero, "is filled with man-
kind."34 In an inscription of Amorgos35 a young man, car-
ried off by the Fates at the age of twenty, thus addresses
his mother: "Weep not; for of what use is weeping?
Rather venerate me, for I am now a divine star which
shows itself at sunset. ' ' And at Miletus36 a child of eight
years old, whom Hermes has led to Olympus, contem-
plates the ether and shines in the midst of the stars,
"rising every evening to the horn of the Goat. By the
favour of the gods he protects the young boys who were
his playfellows in the rude palaestrae."

Epitaphs so precise in expression are exceptional. On
the other hand, numerous epigraphic and literary texts
declare that the soul of some dead person has risen to
the stars to live there with the Immortals, but leave the
position of this soul undetermined. It is stated to have
flown towards the vast sky, to have been received by the
ether, to be living at the summit of the world and follow-
ing the revolutions of the celestial armies. But the place
where the blessed thus come together, that one of the
upper spheres in which their meeting takes place, is left
uncertain. Their dwelling was known to be somewhere
very high above us, but men did not willingly venture to
fix its exact situation.

The heathen theologians wished however to bring order
and precision into this astral eschatology. As they had
combined the doctrines of lunar and solar immortality,

33 Cassius, Dio, LXIX, 11, 4.

34 Cic, Tusc, I, 12, 28: "Totum prope caelum nonne humano generi
completum est?"

35 Bevue de philologie, XXXIII, 1909, p. 6 = IG, XII, 7, 123.

36 Bevue de phil., Hid.; cf. Lecture V, p. 139.

106 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

so they attempted to bring both into agreement with
stellar immortality. When Lucian in the beginning of his
"Icaromenippus" shows us his hero passing over three
thousand stadia from the earth to the moon, where he
makes a first halt, rising thence five hundred parasangs to
the sun, and then ascending from the sun to heaven, Jupi-
ter 's citadel, through the space travelled in a full day by
an eagle in rapid flight, he is giving us a humorous parody
of the journey which some men ascribed to souls. This
idea that the soul thus rises to Paradise by three stages
was widely entertained in the East, and it was notably
held by Mazdeism. A trace of this belief seems to linger
in the passage of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians
in which Saint Paul tells that he has been lifted "to the
third heaven. ' m

The Platonists sometimes adopted the same conception
and combined it with psychological ideas, a development
of those we recalled in connection with solar immortality
(p. 103). It was held that when the soul came down to earth
it first received an ethereal garment of almost immaterial
purity; then, imagination being added to reason, a solar
fluid surrounded it; then a lunar integument made it
subject to the passions; and finally a carnal body was
the cause of its ignorance of divine truths and of its
blind foolishness. It successively lost with these wrap-
pings the inclinations or faculties which were bound with
them, when after death it went back again to the place of
its origin.38

The conception of the triple ascension of souls rested
fundamentally on a rudimentary astronomy, for it con-
fused the five planets with the fixed stars, discriminating
from both only the sun and the moon. But for long the
system which divided the heavens into seven superim-
posed spheres, enveloped by an eighth sphere which was
the limit of the universe, had imposed itself not only on

37 II Cor. 12, 2.

38 Porph., Sent, 292 (p. 14, Mommert) ; Proclus, In Remp., I, p. 152,
17, Kroll; In Tim., Ill, p. 234, 25, Diehl.

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY 107

the learned but also on the authors of pagan apocalypses.
The eschatological doctrine which triumphed at the end
of paganism is in agreement with this theory, generally
admitted by the science of the period. This doctrine is
certainly of Chaldeo-Persian origin, and was spread in
the first century especially by the mysteries of Mithras.39
Then, in the second century, the Pythagorean Numenius
introduced it into philosophic speculation. Man's soul
was held to descend from the height of heaven to this
sublunary world, passing through the planetary spheres,
and thus at its birth it acquired the dispositions and the
qualities peculiar to each of these stars. After death it
went back to its celestial home by the same path. Then as
it traversed the zones of the sky, it divested itself of the
passions and faculties which it had acquired during its
descent to earth, as it were of garments. To the moon it
surrendered its vital and alimentary energy, to Mercury
its cupidity, to Venus its amorous desires, to the sun its
intellectual capacities, to Mars its warlike ardour, to
Jupiter its ambitious dreams, to Saturn its slothful tend-
encies. It was naked, disencumbered of all sensibility,
when it reached the eighth heaven, there to enjoy, as a
sublime essence, in the eternal light where lived the gods,
bliss without end.

In the mysteries of Mithras a ladder composed of
seven different metals served as a symbol of this passage
of souls through the spheres, astrology placing each of
the planets in relation with one of these metals, lead with
Saturn, gold with the sun, silver with the moon and
so on.40

But in opposition to this pantheism which, while iden-
tifying God with the universe, placed the chief home of
divine energy in the celestial spheres and particularly
in the highest of them, the sectaries of Plato transported

39 Cf. my Mysteries of Mithras, Chicago, 1903, p. 145; below, Lecture
VI, p. 169; VII, p. 187.

40 Origen, Contra Celsum, VI, 21 ; cf. Monum. mysteres de Mithra, I, p.
118.

108 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

the supreme Power beyond the limits of the world and
made of him a Being no longer immanent, but tran-
scendent and distinct from all matter. This conception
became more and more predominant in pagan theology
as Stoicism lost influence in favour of Neo-Platonism.
This God, "ultramundane and incorporeal, father and
architect" of creation,41 had his seat, it was thought, in
the infinite light which extended beyond the starry
spheres. Religion called him sometimes the Most High
("Ttyioros), sometimes Jupiter, but gave him at the same
time the epithets ' ' Uppermost, " " Insuperable ' ' ( summus,
exsuperantissimus).*2 It was this celestial Father whom
the elect souls aspired to join, but only those who had
attained to perfection succeeded in doing so, as we shall
see in our last lecture. The others stayed, in accordance
with their degree of purity, in a lower zone of the succes-
sive stages formed by the atmosphere, by the planetary
circles, and by the heaven of the fixed stars, which were
the "visible gods," opposed to the spiritual world.43

This was the last conception of paganism and on the
whole it was to impose itself on men for many centuries.
Judaism had already made concessions to the astronomi-
cal theories of the "Chaldeans," and had borrowed from
them the idea of seven stories of heavens, an idea which
we find developed in particular in the apocryphal Book
of Enoch. It also belonged to Christianity almost from
the beginning, and the gnostics gave it a large place in
their speculations. But especially Origen, who borrowed
it directly from the Greek philosophers, lent the authority
of his name to the doctrines of astral eschatology. Ac-
cording to him, souls, after they have sojourned in Para-
dise, which he imagined as a remote place of earth where
they learn terrestrial truths, rise to the zone of the air

41 Apuleius, De dogm. Plat., I, 11.

42 Archiv fur Eeligionsw., IX, 1906, p. 323 ss.

43 See, e.g., Plotin., Ill, 4, 6; cf.

CELESTIAL IMMORTALITY 109

and there understand the nature of the beings who people
this element. But if they are free from all material weight,
they cross the atmosphere rapidly and reach "the dwell-
ings of the heavens," that is, the celestial spheres. There
they grasp the nature of the stars and the causes of their
movements. Finally, when they have made such progress
that they have become pure intelligences, they are ad-
mitted to contemplate the reasonable essences face to
face and see invisible things, enjoying their perfection.
Although Origen was condemned by the Church, his ideas
were not abolished. Since the Christian lore adopted the
ancient conception of the world's structure, as formulated
by Ptolemy, it had necessarily to admit that souls
traversed the planetary circles in order to reach that
"supermundane light" in which they found perfect beati-
tude. Dante's Paradise, with its choirs of angels and its
classes of the blessed, distributed among the superim-
posed spheres of the heavens, is a magnificent testimony
to the strength of the tradition which antiquity be-
queathed to the Middle Ages. Before this tradition could
be destroyed, Galileo and Copernicus had to ruin
Ptolemy's system and open up to the imagination the
infinite spaces of a limitless universe.

IV
THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY

A FUNDAMENTAL difference distinguishes the
conception of immortality as it appears in the
religion of the Eoman Empire from our modern
ideas. Immortality, as we conceive of it, follows on the
very nature which we ascribe to the human soul. It is
affirmed by some, denied by others, in accordance with the
character which each one attributes to the principle of
conscious thought, but whenever credence is given to it,
it is generally supposed to be absolute, eternal, universal.
For the ancients, on the other hand, immortality was no
more than conditional : it might not be perpetual and it
might not belong to all men. According to the Platonists
the soul, an incorruptible essence, a principle of life and
movement, survived necessarily;1 according to the Epi-
cureans, being composed of atoms, it was dissolved at
the moment of death.2 But between these extreme opin-
ions of the philosophers, the religion of the people
remained faithful to the old belief that the shade must
be nourished with offerings and sacrifices, that if it
lacked sustenance it was condemned to waste away
miserably. This conception, like not a few others which
were fading away in the West, was revived when the
Orientals imposed on the Roman world their more primi-
tive and sometimes very crude beliefs. The normal
destiny of the soul was therefore to survive the body for
a certain time, then in its turn to disappear. A second
death ( Sevrepos 6dvaro<; ) completed the work of the first
which gave the corpse over to corruption. The spiritual

1 See above, Introd., pp. 6, 41.

2 Ibid., p. 7.

THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY 111

essence which had abandoned the body was annihilated
after it. Such was the inevitable necessity imposed on
mankind. Immortality was a privilege of divinity. The
man who was exempted from the common lot of his kind
was therefore the equal of the gods ; he had risen above
his perishable condition to acquire the everlasting youth
of the Olympians, the unlimited duration of the stars
which travel the heavens, the eternity of the Supreme
Being.

If he became a god after his death it was sometimes
because he had been one ever since his birth. For men
were not all born equal: if each of them possessed the
psyche which nourished and animated the body, yet all
men did not equally receive the divine effluence (Trvev^o)
which gave reason. This reason, which distinguished man
from the beasts, was akin to the fires of the stars; it
established between man and heaven a community of
nature {avyyivtia) which alone made it possible for him
to acquire a knowledge of divinity,3 the " gnosis' ' of God
and of the world which He animated. This special grace
also exempted him who obtained it from the passions and
weaknesses to which the inclinations of the flesh exposed
him. It made him pious, temperate and chaste: he was
holy (sanctus).* It communicated to him a lucidity and
power lacking to the common run of mortals. He pene-
trated the secrets of nature and commanded the elements ;
he received revelations and was capable of prophetic
divination. Inversely, every exceptional quality was re-
garded as superhuman; every extraordinary act seemed
a miracle. The most enlightened spoke merely of celestial
inspiration. "Nemo magnus vir sine quodam adflatu
divino," said Cicero.5 The many saw in these privileged
beings earthly incarnations of all the Olympians. From
the moment of their appearance on the earth these men
were really gods ; their soul kept its higher nature in all

3 See above, Lecture III, p. 96.

4 Link, Be vocis " Sanctus" usu pagano, Konigsberg, 1910.
e Cic, De natura deor., II, 66, § 167.

112 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

its purity; it would indubitably return after death to its
place of origin. Such are the leading ideas which explain
the belief in the immortality of the heroes.

Among those who escaped the common law of death
because they were divine, first of all, were the kings. In
all times kings have been looked upon as of superior
essence to the rest of mankind, and the ancient East
approximated them or made them equal to the heavenly
powers. The Hellenistic realms, in Egypt, Syria, Asia
Minor, raised the cult of the monarch to the rank of a
state institution ; and the Caesars inherited this homage,
which was rendered to them by their subjects even in
their lifetime, first in the East and then throughout the
Empire. The powerful chief who delivered his state
from the scourge of invasion and ensured it peace and
welfare, accomplished a work which seemed to be beyond
the ability of man, and he was adored as a present god
(im^avr)^ #eo5, praesens numen), a saviour (acorijp). Some-
times the god incarnate in him was specified ; and he was
looked upon as a manifestation of Zeus, Apollo, or an-
other. Very ancient but still active beliefs gave him the
power to command nature as well as men. If the fields
were fertile, if the flocks and herds had increased, these
were benefits received from the godlike sovereign. No
miracle was beyond his accomplishment. He was the
providence of his people, having indeed the power of fore-
seeing and foretelling the future. According to Manilius,6
it was to kings, whose lofty thoughts reached the heights
of the sky, that nature first revealed her mysteries. The
pagan theologians affirmed, indeed, that the souls of kings
came from a higher place than those of other men, and
that these august personages borrowed more from heaven
than the common crowd of mortals.7 And thus, death had
no sooner carried them off from the earth than their souls
once again rose to the stars, who welcomed them as their

6 Manilius, I, 41 ; cf. Boll, Aus der Offenbarung Iohannis, 1914, p. 136 ss.

7 Pseudo-Ecphant. ap Stob., Anth., IV, 7, 64 (IV, p. 272 ss., Wachsmuth) ;
Hermes Trism. ap. Stob., Eel., I, 49, 45 (I, p. 407, W).

THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY 113

equals (sideribus recepti). It was thought that an eagle
or the chariot of the sun bore them away.8 It may seem
strange that the senate should deliberate as to whether or
not a deceased emperor deserved apotheosis, and should
refuse or accord him official canonisation. But this act is
in conformity with all the ideas we have described, since
the monarch's benefits and victories were the proof of his
divine origin, and since, if he had committed crimes and
caused misfortunes, he was thus shown to be in no respect
a god.

In the remote ages of ancient Egypt, the Pharaohs
were the first whom Osiris consented to identify with him-
self, or whom their father Ra bore away in the solar boat,
but little by little the rites practised in order to ensure
eternity to the sovereign were extended to the mag-
nates surrounding him. Thus immortality was a kind of
posthumous nobility bestowed on the great servants of
the state, or usurped by them, long before the rest of the
people obtained it. In Greece, also, kings were the first
to be the objects of a cult as protecting heroes, but after
them other classes of eminent men received the same title
and the same adoration, in particular the founder of a
city, its lawmaker who had given it a constitution and the
warrior who had victoriously defended it. In the same
way as fabulous demigods, Castor and Pollux or Hercules,
had in heaven become brilliant stars as a reward for their
earthly deeds, they also were public benefactors who by
their works and their virtues had shown themselves
worthy of the same "catasterism." These ideas passed
to Rome with the Stoic philosophy. After having given
a list of those who had triumphed in the wars of the
Republic, Cicero lays down as a fact that not one of them
could have attained so far without the help of God ;9 and
elsewhere he states more explicitly:10 "To all who have
saved, succoured or aggrandized their country, a fixed

s See below, Lecture VI, p. 156 ss.

9 Cic, Nat. deorum, II, 66, § 165.

io Somn. Scipionis, 3 ; cf. Pro Sestio, 68, $ 143.

114 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

place in which they shall enjoy everlasting bliss is
assigned in heaven, for it is from heaven that they who
guide and guard cities have descended, thither to reas-
cend." The ex-consul Cicero claimed apotheosis for the
great men of the state : this was the republican transfor-
mation of the doctrine of the divinity of kings.

Pagan theology was to give much wider extension to
this doctrine. In a curious passage Hermes Trismegistus11
explains that there are royal, that is to say divine, souls
of different kinds, for there is a royalty of the spirit, a
royalty of art, a royalty of science, and even a royalty of
bodily strength. All exceptional men were godly, and it
was not to be admitted that the sacred energy which
animated them was extinguished with them.

Pious priests, like kings, were judged, or rather judged
themselves, to be worthy of immortality. Who could more
justly deserve a share in the felicity of the gods than
those who on the earth had lived in their company and
known their designs ? He who had thus been in communi-
cation with the godhead and learnt his secrets was raised
above the condition of humanity. This sacred knowledge,
this gift of prophecy, this " gnosis,'' which was insepa-
rable from piety, transformed him who had obtained it,
set him free even in life from the condemnation of fate ;
and after death he went to the immortals whose confidant
he had been here below.

The philosophers and theologians who treated of the
nature of the Divine Being shared the blessed lot of the
priests and soothsayers who interpreted His will. Their
doctrine came to them by inspiration from on high, or at
least so they readily believed. Their intelligence, which
was lit by a divine ray, penetrated the world's mysteries
and subjected it to their will. Philosophies became a
synonym for thaumaturge. Even in this life the superior
mind of the philosophers allowed them to escape the
necessities by which other men were oppressed, and this

11 Hermes Trismeg. ap. Stob., Eel, I, 49, 69 (I, p. 466, Wachsmuth).

THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY 115

reason returned after death to the source of all intelli-
gence.

But all knowledge came from God. It was He who gave
light to the wise man, absorbed in austere research, and
caused him to discover truth. It was He too who inspired
the poet, who worked in him when enthusiasm carried
him away ; He likewise who gave to the artist the faculty
of apprehending and expressing beauty, to the musician
the power to recall by his chords the sublime harmony
of the celestial spheres. All who gave themselves up to
works of the intellect had a part in the godhead. They
were purified by the high pursuit of spiritual joy and
freed thereby from the passions of the body and the
oppression of matter. For this reason the Muses are fre-
quently represented on tombs; beautiful sarcophagi are
decorated with the figures of the nine sisters. Thanks to
these goddesses, mortals were delivered from earthly
misery and led back towards the sacred light of the
heavens.

Thus the spirits of all men distinguished above their
fellows were one day to find themselves gathered together
in the dwelling-place of the heroes. This conception made
the future life a reward for eminent service rendered to
the state or humanity. Its origin certainly went very far
back: it is found among primitive peoples, in reference
to the famous warriors of the tribes, and it never ceased
to be accepted in ancient Greece. But towards the end of
the Roman Republic it was more generally admitted than
ever before. It was in harmony with the constitution of an
aristocratic society in which it seemed that even posthu-
mous honours should be reserved for the elect. Some
modern thinkers and poets have shared the ancient feel-
ing which inspired it. Carducci, who disliked the critics
of Milan, thought that they might well perish wholly, but
that the great spirits like Dante, whom he interpreted, —
and doubtless also this interpreter himself, — were saved.12

12 Maurice Muret, Les contemporains Strangers, Paris, I, p. 30.

116 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

Matthew Arnold also in an admirable sonnet strongly
defends the faith in a limited immortality. Let me recall
to you the last verses :

"And will not then the immortal armies scorn
The world's poor routed leavings! or will they
Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day
Support the fervours of the heavenly morn!
No ! The energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun,
And he who flagg'd not in earthly strife,
From strength to strength advancing — only he,
His soul well-knit and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. ' '
*****

But this proud doctrine vowed to final destruction the
mass of humble men, the multitude of the miserable, that
is to say, those who, because they endured most in this
world, must most aspire to seek in another the happiness
which was here denied them and the retribution which
should repair the injustice of their earthly lot. This
doctrine of the immortality of the few made low station
in life a misfortune which was prolonged beyond the
grave. To the immense company of the wretched, who
suffered without consolation, the religions of the East
brought a "better hope," the assurance that by certain
secret rites the mystic, whatever his rank, whether sena-
tor or slave, might obtain salvation. The virtue of the
liturgical ceremonies made him equal to the immortals
{aTraOavaTileiv). This was the secret of the rapid spread
of these exotic cults in the Latin world.

Every day the stars disappear beneath the horizon to
reappear in the east on the morrow ; every month a new
moon succeeds the moon whose light has waned; every
year the sun is reborn to new strength after his fires have
died away; every winter vegetation withers to bloom
again in the spring. The gods of nature — Attis, Osiris,
Adonis — also rose again after they had been slain; the

THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY 117

gods of the stars resumed their glowing ardour after
darkness had overwhelmed them. Their essential quality
was to be for ever "living' ' or ' ' unconquered ' ' (invicti).
Their career was a perpetual triumph over death. The
struggle implied was, under the influence of dualism,
recognised to be an unceasing battle between two powers
disputing possession of the world. Thus the mystic who
had become god, who had part in the divine energy,
also acquired the power to conquer death. Oriental reli-
gions looked upon earthly existence as a fight from which
the just man issued victorious. Immortality was a
triumph won over the powers of evil, of which the most
implacable was death. The souls of the elect were crowned
like athletes and soldiers; their wreath was the "crown
of life, ' ' often represented on funeral monuments.13 The
Greeks sometimes, and the Etruscans frequently, had
personified death as a horrible monster who frightened
those whom he approached. But the idea of making death
into the adversary of mankind, from whose empire pious
and strong souls might escape, spread only with the
reception of the Oriental beliefs.

This mythological conception of salvation was com-
bined in the mysteries with another, which was more
scientific, that of fatalism, which was the chief dogma
imposed by astrology on the Roman world. Death is for
man the most inevitable and the hardest necessity. Fatum
often denotes the unalterable term of life ; and this end,
which diviners could foresee but could not delay, ought,
according to the law of our kind, to overtake the soul as
well as the body. But the Oriental cults never ceased to
claim that the celestial powers who escaped the rule of
Destiny, which extends only to the sublunary world, were
also able to withdraw thence their faithful followers. As
the emperor was not subject to Fate because he was
god, so he who had been initiated and had acquired the
same quality was, as a funeral inscription expressed it,

13 See my Etudes syriennes, p. 63 ss.

118 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

"exempt from the lot of death."14 Those who had taken
part in the occult ceremonies of the sect and were in-
structed in its esoteric doctrines were alone able to pro-
long their existence beyond the term fixed by the stars
at their birth. By the virtue of these rites pious souls were
withdrawn from this fate-ridden earth and were led,
enfranchised from their servitude, to a divine world. ^

Thus those who had acceded to a religious initiation
obtained eternal life, like the great men whose celestial
origin had predestined them thereto. By what rites was
wrought this "deification" ((wroflcWis), or rather this
* ' immortalisation ' ' ( airaOavaTMrixo*;) f

The soul, enclosed in the body, was by its very contact
with matter exposed to pollution, "as pure and clear water
poured into the bottom of a muddy well is troubled."15
The mysteries never conceived the soul as absolutely im-
material: it was a subtle and light essence, but one
coarsened and weighed down by sin, which thus altered
its divine nature and caused its decomposition and loss.16
In order therefore that immortality might be ensured to
the soul, it must be cleansed of its stains. The pagan
religions employed a whole set of ablutions and purifica-
tions for restoring his first integrity to the mystic. He
could wash in consecrated water in accordance with cer-
tain prescribed forms. This was in reality a magic rite :
the cleanliness of the body wrought by sympathy a veri-
table disinfection of the inner spirit, the water clearing
off its taints or expelling the evil demons which caused
pollution. Or else the initiate sprinkled himself with or
drank the blood either of a slaughtered victim or of the
priests themselves. These rites arose from the belief that
the fluid which flows in our veins is a vivifying principle,
able to communicate new existence.17 The man who had

i*CIL, VI, 1779=Bticheler, Carm. epigr., Ill, 23: "(Me) sorte mortis
eximens in templa ducis. ..."

is Pseudo-Lysis ap. Jamblich., Vit. Pyth., 17, § 77.
i« See Introd., p. 29 ; Lecture VII, p. 184 s.
17 Cf. Lecture I, p. 51.

THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY 119

received baptism by blood in the taurobolitim was reborn
for eternity (in aetemum renatus),1* and when, fonl and
repulsive, he left the sacred ditch, he was adored as a
god by those present. Elsewhere purifications by air and
fire were found united to that by water, so that the differ-
ent elements all had part in the purgation.19 All these
cathartic ceremonies had the effect of regenerating him
who submitted to them, delivering him from the domina-
tion of the body, making him a pure spirit, and rendering
him fit to live an immaculate and incorruptible life.

A similar belief in a transference to the soul of bodily
effects partially explains why unctions were still employed
in the liturgy of the mysteries. By rubbing himself with
perfumed oil the wrestler in the palaestra and the bather
after the perspiration of the sweating-room strength-
ened their limbs and rendered them supple. Ancient
medical science deals at great length with the propitious
action of numerous ointments, and by their means magic
worked not only sudden cures but also prodigious meta-
morphoses. The aromatic unguents, which had marvel-
lous antiseptic qualities, served to ensure the conserva-
tion of an embalmed corpse. Similarly, in the cult of the
mysteries, unctions gave the soul an increase of spiritual
force and made it capable of prolonging its existence for
ever. As rubbing with unctuous substances was a practice
of the thermae, so it was of the temples after the liturgical
bath. In the anointing of kings and the ordination of
priests they communicated to man a divine character and
higher faculties, and this idea has been preserved down
to modern times. But, above all, as ointments preserved
mortal remains from putrefaction, so the consecrated oil
and honey became a means by which the soul was
rendered incorruptible and immortality was bestowed
upon it.

The most efficacious means of communicating with the
godhead which the mysteries offered was, however, that

is CIL, VI, 510=Dessau, 4152.
19 Servius, Aen., VI, 741.

120 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

of participation in the ritual banquets. These banquets
are found in various forms in all these religious com-
munities. We have seen that among the votaries of
Dionysos his feasts, in which the consecrated wine was
drunk, gave a foretaste of the joys reserved for the ini-
tiate in the Elysian Fields.20 Drunkenness, which frees
from care, which awakens unsuspected forces in man,
was looked upon as divine possession, as the indwelling
of a god in the heart of the Bacchantes. Wine thus became
par excellence the drink of immortality, which flowed for
the sacred guests in the meals of the secret conventicles.
The heady liquid not only gave vigour of body and wis-
dom of mind, but also strength to fight the evil spirits
and to triumph over death.

Sometimes honey, which was according to the ancients
the food of the blessed, was offered to the neophyte and
made him the equal of the Olympians. Elsewhere bread
consecrated by appropriate formulae was held to pro-
duce the same effects.

But still another conception is discernible in the feasts
of the mysteries and mingles with the first : it is thought
that the god himself is eaten when some sacred animal is
consumed. This idea goes back to the most primitive
savagery, as is seen in the rite of "omophagy" in which
certain votaries of Bacchus fiercely tore the raw flesh of
a bull with their teeth and devoured it. Undoubtedly there
was originally a belief that the strength of the sacrificed
animal was thus acquired, like the superstition of the
native African hunters who eat a slain lion's heart in
order to gain his courage. Similarly, if a victim be
regarded as divine, to consume it is to participate in
its divinity. "Those," says Porphyry,21 "who wish to
receive into themselves the soul of prophetic animals
absorb their principal vital organs, such as the hearts of
crows, moles or hawks, and thus they become able to
speak oracles, like a god." Similarly, the Syrians ate the

20 See Introd., p. 35 ; cf. Lecture VIII, p. 204.
2i Porph., Be abstin., II, 48.

THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY 121

fish of Atargatis, a forbidden food which was, however,
provided for the initiate after a sacrifice ; and those who
partook of these mystic repasts were not, like the rest of
men, vowed to death, but were saved by the goddess.22

All means of attaining to godliness were not so crude
as these. An important part of the mysteries was the
instruction which gave the sacred lore, the " gnosis.' ' This
"gnosis" included the whole of religious learning, that is
to say, it was the knowledge of rites as well as of theologi-
cal and moral truths. It taught above all the origin and
the end of man, but it covered all the works of God, and,
inasmuch as it explained creation, it formed a system
of the world and a theory of nature. In fact the world,
being wholly penetrated by a divine energy, was itself a
part of God. The close alliance which exists between
philosophy and the mysteries, and which is revealed to
us especially in the Pythagorean and Hermetic litera-
ture,23 is shown in the value thus given to science. This
science, which in the East had always been sacerdotal,
was not looked upon as a conquest of reason but as the
revelation of a god. Illumined by this god, the initiate
entered into communication with him, and consequently
himself became divine and was withdrawn from the power
of Fate. "They who possess the knowledge (yvcocns) have
deification as their happy end," said Hermes Trisme-
gistus.24

The highest degree of this "gnosis" is the sight of the
godhead himself, or to use the Greek word, "epoptism."
By artifice or illusion apparitions were evoked and
"epiphanies" produced.25 A whole system of fastings and
macerations placed the mystic in a fit state to attain to
ecstasy. In the temple of Isis the faithful devotee merged

22 Cf. Comptes rendus Acad. Inscriptions, 1917, p. 281 ss.

23 See above, Introd., p. 37.

24 Hermes Trismeg., Poimandres, I, 26 : Tovto icm t6 d-yadbv tAos roh
yvuxriv iaxVKOcri. decodijmt..

25 See below, Lecture VIII, 207.

122 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

himself "with inexpressible delight"26 in the silent adora-
tion of the sacred images, and when the rites had been
accomplished and he felt himself transported beyond the
confines of the world, he contemplated the gods of heaven
and hell face to face. He who had had the vision of this
ineffable beanty was himself transfigured for ever. His
sonl, filled with the divine splendour, must when its
earthly captivity had ended live eternally in contempla-
tion of the radiant beings who had admitted it to their
company.27

The mysteries have thus a number of processes, some
material and some spiritual, for producing the union with
god which is the source of immortality. This union is first
conceived as effected with the particular god honoured
by a sect. As this god has died and has risen again, so the
mystic dies to be reborn, and the liturgy even marks by
its ceremonies the death of the former man and his return
to a glorious life.

The fervent disciple to whom the god has united him-
self suffers a metamorphosis and takes on divine quali-
ties. In magic this process is sometimes very grossly indi-
cated: "Come into me, Hermes,' ' says a papyrus,28 "as
children do into women's wombs, ... I know thee, Hermes,
and thou knowest me ; I am thou and thou art I." The old
Egyptian doctrine of the identification with Osiris, which
goes back to the age of the Pharaohs, was never given up
in the Alexandrian mysteries, and the whole doctrine of
immortality rested on it. As on the earth the initiate who
piously observed sacred precepts received in his bosom
the godhead, so after death the faithful became a Serapis
if a man, an Isis if a woman. This beatification seems to
have been conceived sometimes as an absorption into the

26Apuleius, Metam., XI, 24: ' ' Inexplieabili voluptate divini simulaeri
perf ruebar. ' '

2? See Oriental religions, p. 100, and below, Lecture VIII, p. 210 ss.

28 Papyr. of London, CXXII, 1 ss. ; cf. Eeitzenstein, Poimandres, p. 20.

THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY 123

heart of the divinity, sometimes as a multiplication of the
divinity, who left to the deceased his own personality.

It was above all from Egypt that apotheosis in the
form of a particular divinity spread first in the Hellenis-
tic and then in the Roman world. As the Pharaohs became
Osiris on the earth and after their death, so among the
Ptolemies such names as Isis-Arsinoe and others similar
are found, and the emperors were adored even in their
lifetime as epiphanies of Apollo, Zeus or Helios.29 Their
subjects could obtain a lot as happy as that of the sover-
eigns. The mystics of Dionysos were early made divine,
in imitation of those of Serapis, and became as many
emanations of Bacchus; and finally under the empire a
cult was rendered to the dead under such titles as Mars,
Hercules, Venus, Diana and other Olympians.

Conceptions less in conflict with reason were taught by
the astral cults of the Semitic East. The celestial powers
here were higher, more distant, less anthropomorphic,
and it was not imagined that a man could assume their
form. Here the action of the god on the mystic recalled
that of the stars in nature : it was regarded as an efflu-
ence, fallen from the ether, which penetrated the initiate,
as an energy which filled him, as a luminous ray which
lit his mind. Virtue from on high entered into the neo-
phyte and transformed him into a being like the divini-
ties of heaven.30 He was glorified (Sofacrtfet?) as a con-
queror who had triumphed over demons and smitten
down death; he was illuminated (cframcrOeLs) and pene-
trated by a supernatural light which disclosed to him all
truth; he was sanctified {ayiacrOeU) and acquired unfail-
ing virtue ; he was exalted ( mpovrai ) , that is to say his
soul rose in rapture to the stars. Glory, splendour, light,
purity, knowledge : all these ideas were confounded until
they became almost synonymous and together denoted

29 Eiewald, Be imperatorum Romanorum cum certis dis aequatione, Halle,
1912.

30 Cf. Gillis Wetter, Die "Verherrlichwig," in Beitrdge zur Belig.-
Wissenschaft, II, 1914.

124 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

the transfiguration which was undergone by the soul
called to rise to ethereal regions, even on this earth and
while it was still joined to the body.

But this divine action, which tended to become purely
spiritual, was originally much more material. A very
coarse substratum to the theological ideas is still appar-
ent in the texts which mention them. Magic, which was
addressed to the credulity of simple men, did not conceal
it at all. Here the ascension of the spirit appeared as a
journey to heaven. By appropriate formulae and pro-
cesses the sorcerers pretended to secure immortality for
their adepts, making them fly, body and soul, through the
higher spheres to reach the dwelling of the gods.31

In short, the initiate of the mysteries believed that they
found in them a warrant of immortality. By the virtue of
the rites their souls were united to their god; thus they
became themselves divine, and were ensured an everlast-
ing life. Inevitably, every Oriental religion affirmed that
it held the only sacred tradition leading surely to eternal
felicity. Outside the sect there was no certain salvation.
But philosophy always opposed these claims. Philosophy,
too, thought itself able to lead through wisdom to happi-
ness in this world and in the next, and there was rivalry
between it and the positive cults, as soon as it took on a
religious character and set up religious claims. The Neo-
Pythagoreans who formed esoteric communities opposed
their purifications and initiations to those of the mys-
teries. But the eschatological doctrine, of which Posi-
donius was, if not the author, at least the powerful
promoter, and which was to be taken up again and
transformed by the Neo-Platonists, exempted the wise
man from any obligation to religious observances as
ensuring his immortality. He was no longer in need of
sacraments and sacrifices, but could by his own unaided

3i See below, Lecture VI, p. 158.

THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY 125

force become a pure intelligence, win the complete mas-
tery of himself by reason, and thereafter be certain of
raising himself to the godhead.

At the most, certain thinkers granted a "propaedeutic"
or preparatory value to ritual observances, and saw in
them a means of predisposing the soul to ecstasy, but the
mystic philosophers, of whom Plotinus represents the
purest type, discarded for themselves all religious prac-
tices. Their proud doctrine places man alone face to face
with God.32 Or else, like Porphyry, they admit that sacred
ceremonies can purify the spiritual or pneumatic soul
but not its highest part, the intellectual soul; that they
can raise it to the region of the stars but not bring it back
to the Supreme Being. The late pagan philosophy asserts
constantly and forcibly that the wise man's reason is able
by itself, or rather through a celestial grace, without the
intervention of any liturgy, to ensure its own return to
its divine source. "As," says Porphyry, "he who is the
priest of a particular god knows how to consecrate his
statues, celebrate orgies, perform initiations and lustra-
tions, so the true philosopher, who is the priest of the
universal God, knows how to make His sacred images and
to carry out His purifications and all the processes which
will unite him to this God. ' ,33

Philosophers were therefore the priests of the world.
Their functions were parallel to those of the actual priests
but higher. They tended more and more to form a sacer-
dotal order which was separated from the rest of human
society by its customs and its way of life. Like the mys-
teries they taught that piety, temperance and continence
were the indispensable conditions of obtaining true
knowledge. This "gnosis" was no longer a traditional
theology revealed in the shadow of the sanctuary, but a
scientific truth perceived by a grace-illumined reason.
The philosopher took no part in the ceremonies of a

32 See below, Lecture VIII, p. 212.

33 Porph., De Abstin., II, 49.

126 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

complicated ritual, but his prayer was the silent supplica-
tion of his intelligence seeking to understand creation. He
did not become absorbed in the contemplation of idols
but in the sight of the divine world and in particular of
the starry heavens. The end which this lonely cult strove
to attain was analogous to that sought by others in the
conventicles of the initiate — a divine revelation which
would give to the perfect wise man superhuman power,
which would make him a prophet, sometimes a wonder-
worker ; and after death, already a god on earth, he went
to live in the company of the gods on high.

The lifting of the reason to heaven, source of all intelli-
gence, was thus the pledge of astral immortality, as the
liturgical banquet was of the celestial feast. As physical
drunkenness, being divine possession, was a prelude to
the joy of the eternal repast, so spiritual ecstasy was the
sign of future deification.34

The ancients found impassioned words to depict this
communion of man with the starry heavens, and to ex-
press the divine love which transported the soul into
radiant space.35 In the splendour of night the spirit was
intoxicated with the glow shed on it by the fires above.
Like the possessed and the Corybantes in the delirium
of their orgies, it abandoned itself to ecstasy, which set
it free from its fleshly wrappings and lifted it up to the
region of the everlasting stars. Borne on the wings of
enthusiasm it sprang to the midst of this sacred cho-
rus and followed its harmonious movements. Reason,
illumined by the divine fires which surrounded it, under-
stood the laws of nature and the secrets of destiny. It
then partook of the life of the light-flashing beings which
from the earth it saw glittering in the radiance of the
ether ; before the fated term of death it had part in their
wisdom and received their revelations in a stream of

34 See below, Lecture VIII, pp. 201, 207, 211.

35 See my Mysticisme astral dans I'antiquite in Bulletins de I 'Acad, de
Belgique, 1909, p. 264 ss.

THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY 127

light which dazzled even the eye of reason. This sublime
rapture was an ephemeral foretaste of the endless felic-
ity reserved for the sage when, after his death, rising to
the celestial spheres, he penetrated all their mysteries.36

36 See Lecture VIII, p. 210 ss.

V
UNTIMELY DEATH

IN the last lecture we endeavoured to show that in the
ancient world immortality was at first conceived as
being precarious and conditional, and that only the
heroes, the exceptional men, who were in truth gods on
earth, obtained apotheosis after their death. We after-
wards saw that the mysteries extended the promise of
eternal salvation to all the initiate, who by virtue of the
rites were made equal to the gods, and finally that the
philosophers contested the necessity of sacred ceremonies
and affirmed that human reason by its own unaided power
could win union with God.

We will now consider in more detail what lot was
reserved for a special class of the dead, those whose life
had been interrupted by an untimely end, and how in
their case philosophy modified the old traditional beliefs.

If we turn over collections of ancient inscriptions we
find, as when we go through our own cemeteries, a num-
ber of epitaphs in which the grief caused by the early
death of a friend or relative is expressed. But in antiquity
this sorrow was called forth not alone by regret for a
loved being, too soon lost to sight, and by painful disap-
pointment because of the irreparable ruin of the hopes
to which his youth had given rise. Along with these human
feelings, which are of all time and all societies, there were
mingled in antiquity ideas which caused the loss of those
who died before their time to seem more fearful and
bitter.

Virgil's celebrated lines, in which he describes the
descent of Aeneas to Hades, will be remembered -,1

i Virg., Aen., VI, 426 ss.

UNTIMELY DEATH 129

1 1 Continue* auditae voces, vagitus et ingens,
Infantnmque animae flentes in limine primo,
Quos dulcis vitae exsortes et ab ubere raptos
Abstulit atra dies et f unere mersit acerbo. ' '

"Ever were heard, on the outermost threshold, voices, a
great wailing, the weeping souls of infants bereft of
sweet life and torn from the breast, whom the ill-omened
day swept off and whelmed in bitter death. ' '

In an eschatological myth of Plutarch,2 the traveller
beyond the grave also sees a deep abyss, in which moan
the plaintive voices of a multitude of children who had
died at the moment of their birth and were unable to
rise to heaven. It has been shown that the Latin poet
and the Greek philosopher are here interpreters of an old
Pythagorean belief, to which Plato alludes:3 children
who died young, like persons who met with violent deaths,
the dcopoi Kal fiiaLoOdvaTOL, found no rest in the other life,
but their souls wandered on the earth for the number of
years for which their life would normally have lasted.
The souls of the shipwrecked who perished at sea roamed
the surface of the waters and sailors believed that they
were incarnated in the seagulls.4

How did this belief in the miserable lot of innocent
children arise? Its origin should probably be sought in
that fear of death which haunts all primitive peoples, and
it developed owing to the frequency in antiquity of infan-
ticide by abandoning or " exposing' ' newly born infants.
Remorse provoked terror. This conclusion is especially
suggested because the fate of those who died prematurely
was approximated to the lot of those who died violent
deaths. Beings who had been prevented from completing
the natural span of life were feared; their shades were
conceived as being unquiet and in pain, because it was
believed that they could return to disquiet and pain the

2 Plut., Be genio Socratis, 22, p. 590 F.

3 Plato, Bepubl, p. 615 C; cf. Norden, Aeneis Buck VI, 1903, pp. 11, 27.

4 Achill. Tat., V, 16.

130 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

living. The idea was entertained that a spirit brutally
separated from the body came to hold it in horror and did
not consent to inhabit the tomb until a reconciliation had
been disobtained by expiatory ceremonies. Being griev-
ously disincarnated, the soul became harmful. Souls, said
the ancients, whom a cruel and untimely end has violently
or unjustly torn from their bodies, themselves tend to be
violent and unjust in order that they may avenge the
wrong they have suffered.5 It is no rare thing to find evi-
dence in the inscriptions of a suspicion that a person cut
off in the flower of his years has been the victim of some
foul play ; the curse of Heaven is called down on the head
of his assumed murderer. The Sun, who discovers hidden
crimes, is often invoked in Roman epitaphs against this
unknown offender:6 " Towards the Most High god, who
watches over everything, and Helios and Nemesis,
Arsinoe, dead before her time, lifts up her hands ; if any-
one prepared poison for her or rejoices in her end, pursue
him," says an inscription of Alexandria. But the victim
was himself believed to be capable of vengeance. It
seemed incredible that one still full of strength and life
should be entirely blotted out and that the energy which
had animated him should also have disappeared sud-
denly, and the reprisals of this mysterious power were
apprehended. This spirit pursued above all the mur-
derer and, more generally, those who had given it cause
for complaint. It showed itself to them in the form of
terrifying monsters which tormented them. "As soon as I
shall have expired, doomed to death by you," says the
child in Horace whom the witches sacrificed, "I will
haunt your nights like a Fury, I will tear your faces
with my hooked nails, as the Manes gods can, and weigh-
ing on your unquiet hearts I will take sleep from your
affrighted eyes."7 Suetonius8 relates that after the death

5 Tertull., Be anima, 57.

6 Dessau, Inscr. sel., 8497 ss. ; cf. Becueil des inscriptions du Pont, 9, 258.

7 Horace, Epod., 5, 92; cf. Livy, III, 58, 11.
s Sueton., Nero, 34, 4.

UNTIMELY DEATH 131

of Agrippina, Nero was, on his own confession, often
troubled by the vision of her spectre and attempted to
calm her spirit by a sacrifice and an evocation which he
caused his magicians to make. The same historian
gravely recounts that the house in which Caligula was
murdered was every night haunted by dreadful appari-
tions until the time when it was destroyed by fire.9 A
scholiast defines the lemur es as "the wandering shades
of men who died before their normal time and are hence
redoubtable."10 Even today popular belief in many coun-
tries attributes a maleficent power to the spirits of those
who have died a violent death.

These disquieting superstitions acquired new force
through the teachings of astrology, which by incorporat-
ing them in its system gave them a doctrinal foundation.
Astrology spread the belief, which was and is common to
all ancient and modern peoples of the East, that each
soul has a predetermined number of years to spend on
earth. The mathematici multiplied calculations and
methods in order to be able to predict the instant of death
predetermined by the horoscope. "This is the great work
of astrology, held by its adepts to be its most difficult and
by its enemies to be its most dangerous and blameworthy
operation."11 But by an internal contradiction this
pseudo-science admitted that the natural end could be
hastened by the intervention of a murderous star (avai-
penjs) : Saturn and Mars can in certain positions call
forth sudden death by accident, killing, execution. A frag-
ment attributed to Aristotle asserts that a Syrian mage
predicted to Socrates that he would meet such a fate.12
Sometimes the maleficent planets tear a nursing child

9 Sueton., Calig., 59.

ioPorph., Epist., II, 2, 209: "Nocturnas Lemures: umbras vagantes
hominum ante diem mortuorum et ideo metuendas. "

11 Bouche-Leclercq, Astrologie grecque, p. 404.

i2Diog. Laert., II, 5, §45; cf. Lamprid., Heliog., 33, 2: "Praedictum
eidem erat a sacerdotibus Syris biothanatum se futurum."

132 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

from its mother's breast before a single revolution of the
sun has been accomplished. All astrological treatises
devote chapters to these "unfed" children (arpo^oi) and
also to the biothanati whose life has been interrupted by
misfortunes of any kind. Petosiris was even concerned
to discover— Ptolemy declared such preoccupation to be
ridiculous13— what the stars reserved until the end of
their life for those who had gone through only a portion
of it. The texts which have been preserved— and often
expurgated — by the Byzantines give no more than a bare
indication of astral influences on the lot of men. In an-
tiquity other more religious and more mystical works
doubtless existed in which the inauspicious action of the
murderous star, still affecting after death the souls torn
from their mortal wrappings, was shown.

Pythagorism, which was closely connected with astrol-
ogy, took possession of these ideas and adapted them to
its speculations. According to this philosophy one and
the same harmony presided over all physical phenomena
and was, like music, subject to laws of number. These laws
therefore were at work during pregnancy, and a compli-
cated arithmetic was employed to show by a multiplica-
tion of days that a child might be born after seven or
nine months with power to live, but not after eight, for
such was the strange doctrine of the sect. Thus gestation
became a melody in which abortion was a false note.
Nature was said to be like an artist who sometimes
breaks an instrument of which he overstretches the
chords, and sometimes leaves them too slack and can pro-
duce no tune. Now, these harmonic laws necessarily deter-
mined not only the formation but also the end of man :
"There is a fixed relation of determined numbers which
unites souls to bodies,' ' says a philosopher, "and while it
subsists, the body continues to be animate, but so soon as
it fails, the hidden energy which maintained this union is
dissolved, and this is what we call destiny and the fatal

isPtolem., Tetrabibl., Ill, 10 (p. 127, ed. 1553).

UNTIMELY DEATH 133

time of life. ' ,14 When the term fixed by nature is reached,
the soul departs without effort from the body in which it
can no longer exercise its office. But when the soul is
violently ejected from the body and the link connecting
them is broken by an external force, it is troubled and is
afflicted by an ill which will cause it pain in the Beyond.
These ideas had sunk deep into the popular mind. The
distinction between an end in conformity with nature and
one unexpectedly provoked by extraneous intervention is
often expressed in literature as well as in inscriptions.
Thus the epitaph of a young woman of twenty-eight, who
was believed to have been the victim of witchcraft, states
that "her spirit was torn from her by violence rather
than returned to nature, ' ,15 which had lent it to her ; the
Manes or the celestial gods will be the avengers of this
crime. Still more frequently an opposition is found be-
tween an early death and Fatum. The hour of death is
determined at the moment of birth :

' ' Nascentes morimur ; finisque ab origine pendet. ' ,16

"At the moment we are born, we die ; and our end is fixed
from our beginning. ' ' He who reaches this term fixed for
his life ends "on his day" (suo die) ; otherwise he dies
"before his day" (ante diem).17 The vulgar belief was
that the intervention of a human or divine will could
oppose the fated course of things and abridge the normal
duration of existence. Often the expression occurs of a
belief that a demon or, what is more remarkable, an evil
god has carried off innocent children or young men whose
life has thus been shortened.18 But pagan theology under-
took the task of re-establishing the order of nature thus

i±Macrob., Somn. Scip., I, 13, 1, probably after Numenius (Bevue des
etudes grecques, XXXII, 1921, p. 119 s.).

is CIL, VIII, 2756=Bucheler, Carm. epigr., 1604.

is Manilius, IV, 16.

17 Cf. Schulze, Sitzungsb. ATcad. Berlin, 1912, p. 691 ss.

is Demon: Kaibel, Epigr. Gr., 566, 4; 569, 3, etc.— Evil god: Dessau,
8498; cf. 9093: "Cui (sic) dii nefandi parvulo contra votum genitorum vita
privaverunt. ' '

134 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

disturbed by fortuitous accidents and by individual and
unregulated interferences. The breaking of the laws of
the universe was only apparent: a soul might by mis-
chance or by a malevolent act be suddenly severed from
its body, but, remaining obedient to Fate, it had there-
after to linger on earth until its appointed time was
accomplished.

Its lot was supposed to be analogous to that of the
unfortunate who had been deprived of burial (ara^ot,
insepulti) of whom we spoke in our first lecture.19 It
circled about the corpse, which it could not abandon, or
fluttered here and there near the place of burial or on the
spot where the body which it had occupied had been
assailed. Excluded from the abode of the shades these
wandering souls flitted near the earth or on the surface
of the waters, miserable and plaintive. The fear of never
being able to penetrate into the kingdom of blessed shades
seems to have inspired the following prayer, which occurs
in a metrical epitaph of Capri :20

"You who dwell in the country of Styx, beneficent
demons, receive me too into Hades, me the unfortunate
who was not borne away in accordance with the judg-
ment of the Fates, but by a hasty and violent death
provoked by unjust anger. ' '

These brutally disincarnated souls became like the
swift and harmful spirits with which the air was filled :
like them they belonged to the train of Hecate, the god-
dess of enchantment, and like them were subject to the
power of magicians. At Lesbos, Gello, a young virgin
carried off before her time, became a phantom which
killed children and caused premature deaths.21 The leaden
tablets, which were slipped into tombs in order to injure
an enemy, and the magic papyri of Egypt bear a large
number of incantations in which these mischievous

is See Lecture I, p. 66 ss.
20 Kaibel, Epigr. Graeca, 624.

2i Kohde, Psyche, II*, p. 411; cf. Perdrizet, Negotium perambulans, 1922,
p. 19 ss.

UNTIMELY DEATH 135

demons are invoked. In the same way a series of conjura-
tions, dating from the third century and found in the
island of Cyprus, appeal to the spirits of the dead thrown
in the common ditch, "who have met their death by vio-
lence, or before their time, or who have been deprived
of burial."22 In general the sacrifice of newly born chil-
dren, and the use of their vital organs and bones, was,
and not without reason, a most frequent charge against
sorcerers. Formulas preserved on papyrus recommend
as powerful means to work a charm "a baby's heart, the
blood of a dead maiden, and the carrion of a dog."23
Witches were believed to steal children in order to use
the entrails in their occult operations, a ritualistic murder
analogous to that attributed by popular belief, in some
countries, to the Jews. Cicero, Horace in an epode,
Petronius in his romance,24 and other authors bear wit-
ness to the extent to which this opinion was entertained.
The epitaph of a young slave of Livia, wife of Drusus,
relates his misfortune. Before he was four years old he
was cut off by the cruel hand, the "black hand" of a
witch, who practised her noxious art everywhere. ' ' Guard
well your children, ye parents, ' ' adds the epitaph.25

Likewise the murder of adults and the use made of
objects which had belonged to executed or murdered per-
sons is frequently mentioned. The wonder-workers be-
lieved that by practising with the bodies of this class of
the dead, or with objects they had used, they became
masters of their wandering souls and made them serve
their designs. The nails of a crucified criminal, the blood-

22 Audollent, Defixionum tdbellae, 1904, p. 40, nr, 22 ss. ; see above, Lec-
ture I, p. 68.

23 Wessely, Griech. Zauberpap. aus Paris in DenJcschr. AJcad. Wien,
XXXVI, 1888, p. 85, 1. 2577 ss., p. 86, 1. 2645 ss.

24Cie., In Vatin., 6, 14; Horace, Ep., 5; Petronius, 63, 8.
25 Biicheler, Carm. epigr., 987 :

1 ' Eripuit me saga manus crudelis ubique,
Cum manet in terris et nocet arte sua.
Vos vestros natos concustodite, parentes. ' '
Cf. Petronius, I. c, and Lecture II, p. 61, n. 48.

136 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

soaked linen of a gladiator, were efficacious amulets.26
Faith is still kept nowadays in the rope which has hanged
a man.27 The books which circulated under the name of
Hostanes the Persian, Nectabis the Egyptian and other
illustrious wizards dealt with evocations of dwpot and
fiiaioOdvaTOL.28

Thus a logical series of beliefs was pushed to its ex-
treme consequence. At the moment of birth Fate fixed for
each man the length of his career; if this were inter-
rupted, the soul had to complete it in suffering, near the
earth, and became a demon which lent its aid to diviners
and sorcerers. This doctrine, supported by astrology and
Oriental magic, imposed itself on many minds. Plato, who
had found it among the Pythagoreans, alludes to it, and
Posidonius seems to have dealt with it more at length in
his treatise "On Divination" (wepl fiavTiKr}*;),29 although
we cannot tell in how far he supported it. But it encoun-
tered the objections of other Greek philosophers. The
reproach made to this theory was that it left out of
account morality and merited retribution, and brought
together, as subject to the same misfortune, criminals
condemned to capital punishment and children whose age
had kept them from all sin. Feeling and reason at the
same time protested against the cruel doctrine which
vowed indifferently the innocent and the guilty to long
torture. When accident or illness caused the death of a
beloved son, could his parents make up their mind to
believe that he would suffer undeserved chastisement? A
distinction had to be made between categories of persons,
and to this task the pagan theologians applied themselves.
Let us follow them in their undertaking.

*****

The acopoi are those who die "out of season,' ' that is to
say, in the wide sense of the word, those whose existence

26 Alex. Trail., I, 15, pp. 565, 567, Pusehman.

27 Cf. Pliny, XXVIII, 12, § 49.

28 Tertull., Be anima, 57.

29 Norden, Aeneis Buck VI, p. 41.

UNTIMELY DEATH 137

ends abnormally, but more particularly those who die
young, who die prematurely. They include the dvcow^oi,
those who have received no name, who have not, that is,
reached the ninth or tenth day of life, the arpofyoi, non
nutriti, or babes who are still being fed at the breast
or, according to the astrologers, are not yet a year
old, and the dyafxoi, the innupti, who have died before the
age of marriage and have therefore left no posterity to
render them funeral rites.

None of these children and adolescents deserved, in the
opinion of the sages, any chastisement. The Pythagoreans
placed the age of reason, at which man is capable of
choosing between good and evil and may be made respon-
sible for his faults, as late as sixteen, that is, the age of
puberty. Until that age the " naked " soul, without virtue
as without vice, was exempt from all merit and demerit
which would later attach to it. We know the unhappy lot
to which, according to these philosophers, they were
doomed. But other theologians considered that these
souls, which had not been weighted by a long contact with
matter, should fly more easily to celestial heights. Un-
sullied by earthly pollution, their purity allowed them to
rise without difficulty to a better life in a happier abiding-
place.30

It is hard to determine to what degree these moral ideas
had penetrated the popular mind. The reaction against
a superstitious belief often led to pure negation. Those
who held that death put an end to all sensibility, were
content to affirm that the child they wept had gone down
into everlasting night, and that nothing was left of him
but dust and ashes. Certain epitaphs hope that, if his
Manes still have some feeling, his bones may rest quietly
in the tomb. But mother's love was not to be satisfied
with this negative assurance or to resign itself to anxious
doubting. The people kept an unreasoning fear of the
evils which awaited the dcopot and of those which might be

30 Sen., Dial., VI, 23, 1; Plut., Cons, ad uxorem, 11 ; cf. Dessau, 8481 ss.

138 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

expected from them. Some also believed that an ancestral
fault — such as was, according to the Orphic doctrine, the
murder of Zagreus, by the Titans — made all humanity
guilty from birth, and that this hereditary sin had to be
effaced by purifications.31 Religion offered a remedy for
the ill to which, to speak with Lucretius, it had itself lent
persuasion. The custom of initiating children to the mys-
teries which was, at least at Eleusis, originally connected
with the family or gentile cult, became a means of pre-
serving them from the fatal lot which threatened them
and of ensuring their happiness in the other life. Thus
pueri and puellae are found admitted at the most tender
age among the adepts of the secret cults, both Greek and
Oriental, perhaps even consecrated from birth to the god-
head. They are imagined as partaking in the Beyond of
the joys which these cults promised to those whose salva-
tion they ensured. A child who has taken part in a cere-
mony of Bacchus lives endowed with eternal youth in the
Elysian Fields in the midst of Satyrs.32 Others continue
the games proper to their years in another life, or if they
have reached the age of first love they still sport with
young Eros. Above all, however, the influence of the astral
cults, added to that of philosophy, brought about an
admission that innocent creatures ascended to the starry
heavens. An epitaph of Thasos33 speaks of a virgin,
flower-bearer (dv0o(f)6po<;) probably of Demeter and Kora,
who was carried off at the age of thirteen by the inex-
orable Fates, but who, " living among the stars, by the
will of the immortals, has taken her place in the sacred
abode of the blessed.' ' At Amorgos, a child of eight was,
we are assured, led by Hermes to Olympus, shone in the
ether, and would henceforth protect the young wrestlers
who emulated him in the palaestra. Even the precise spot
in which he twinkled was fixed, the horn of the constella-

3i See below, Lecture VII, p. 178.
szBucheler, Carm. epigr., 1233.
33 Kaibel, Epigr. Graeca, 324.

UNTIMELY DEATH 139

tion of the Goat — an appropriate place for this little
fighter.34 Curiously, an epitaph of Africa, which repeats
Virgil 's very expression (p. 129), states, in contradiction
to the poet, that a baby, ' ' cut off on the threshold of life, ' '
has not gone to the Manes but to the stars of heaven,35 and
a relief of Copenhagen shows the bust of a little girl
within a large crescent surrounded by seven stars, thus
indicating that she has risen towards the moon, the abode
of blessed souls.36

Examples of these premature apotheoses might be
multiplied. I shall merely show, by a characteristic case,
how it was possible for old popular beliefs to be com-
bined with the new astral doctrine. The ancients attrib-
uted to the rustic nymphs the strange powers which the
Greek peasant today recognises in beings which he still
designates as the Nereids.37 Sometimes these fantastical
goddesses possess themselves of the spirit of men and
change them into seers or maniacs {vviifyokrjTTToi) ; some-
times their fancy is caught by handsome youths whom
they carry off and oblige to live with them. But above all
they love pretty children and steal them from their
parents, not to harm them but in order that they may
take part in their own divine pastimes. Doubtless it was
at first to mountain caverns, near limpid springs, in the
depths of tufted woods, that they bore him whom they
made their little playfellow. Such were the archaic beliefs
of the country folk. But the mysteries of Bacchus taught
that an innocent child, thus rapt from the earth, mingled
in the train of the Naiads in the flowery meadows of the
Elysian Fields ;38 and when Paradise was transferred to

34 Haussoullier, Eevue de philologie, XXIII, 1909, p. 6; see above, Lec-
ture III, p. 105.

35 Bucheler, Carm. epigr., 569: "Vitaeque e limine raptus . . . Non
tamen ad Manes sed eaeli ad sidera pergis. " Cf. ibid., 569, 611.

ss See Lecture III, p. 99.

37Kohde, Psyche, II*, p. 374, n. 2; Lawson, Modern Greek folklore, 1910
p. 140 ss. ; cf. Dessau, 8748.

ss Bucheler, Carm. epigr., 1233; cf. Statius, Silv., II, 6, 100.

140 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

the sky it was in the "immortal dwelling-place of the
ether" that the nymphs, we are told, placed a little girl
whose charm had seduced them.39

Transported thus to heaven, these loved beings were
transformed by the tenderness of their relatives into pro-
tectors of the family in which their memory survived, or
of the friends who shared regret for them. Whether they
were called " heroes' ' in Greek, or as elsewhere "gods,"40
they were always conceived as guardian powers who
acknowledged by benefits the worship rendered them.
Thus in the middle of the second century the familia of a
proconsul of Asia, C. Julius Quadratus, honoured a child
of eight years as a hero, at the prayer of his father and
mother;41 and at Smyrna the parents of a dearly loved
child of four, raised to this baby as their tutelary god, a
tomb on which an epitaph described in detail all his
illnesses.42

These sentimental illusions are eternal. Nothing is
more frequently seen on tombstones in our own Catholic
cemeteries than such invocations as "Dear angel in
heaven, pray for us," or even a figure of a winged baby
flying away among winged cherubs. This faith is perhaps
touching, but its orthodoxy is doubtful. For the doctors of
the Church, except Origen, have, I think, never adopted
the doctrine of Philo the Jew that human souls can be
transformed into angelic spirits. But in the oldest Chris-
tian epitaphs the conviction is already expressed that,
since children are without sin, they will be transported
by angels to the dwelling of the saints and there intercede
for their parents. "Thou hast been received, my daugh-
ter, among the pious souls, because thy life was pure
from all fault, for thy youth ever sought only innocent

aoKaibel, Epigr. Graeca, 570, 571; cf. CIL, VI, 29195=Dessau, 8482:
' l Ulpius Firmus, anima bona superis reddita, raptus a Nymphis. ' '

40(7/. Anderson, Journ, hell, stud., XIX, 1899, p. 127, n*, 142, and below,
note 42.

4i Cagnat, Inscr. Gr. ad res Bom. pertin., IV, 1377.

42 Kaibel, Epigr. Graeca, 314.

UNTIMELY DEATH 141

play,"43 says a metrical epitaph, once under the portico
of St. Peter's. And another and older epitaph is as fol-
lows, "Eusebius, a child without sin because of his age,
admitted to the abode of the saints, rests there in
peace. ' m Still others end with the words ' ' Pray for us, ' '
"Pete pro nobis."

Thus little by little in antiquity the conviction gained
strength and became predominant that, as Menander said
with another meaning, whom the gods love die young.45
As to individuals whose days were cut short by a violent
blow, they were not uniformly in the same case. The theo-
rists here distinguished among different categories of the
biothanati.46 The classification seems to have originated
with the astrologists who claimed to enumerate, in accord-
ance with the position of Mars and Saturn, all the kinds
of death reserved for victims of these murderous planets,
and to foretell whether these unfortunates were to be
drowned, burnt, poisoned, hanged, beheaded, crucified,
impaled, crushed to death, thrown to the beasts, or given
over to yet more atrocious tortures. But the moralists
here also made a point of separating the innocent from
the guilty. Only the guilty were to suffer after death and
only their souls were to become demons. For, side by side
with those who had deserved capital punishment for their
crimes, or who administered death to themselves, were
others cut off by a fatal accident, perhaps even killed
while performing a sacred duty.

43Biicheler, Carm. epigr., 1439; cf. 1400:

"Vos equidem nati caelestia regna videtis
Quos rapuit parvos praecipitata dies."
*4 Cabrol et Leclercq, Reliquiae liturgicae vetustissimae, I, 1912, nr, 2917;
cf. 2974; 3153.

45 Menander 's verse, ' l "Ov ol deol <pi\ov<rip dirodv^Kei vios, ' ' is indeed trans-
lated into Latin in a Roman epitaph (Dessau, 8481).

46 In Greek, pioddvaros is a popular form for fiiaiodavaTos. In Latin
biaeothanatus is found only in Tertull., Be Anima, 57, biothanatus every-
where else.

142 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

Such was the case of soldiers slain in battle. Logic
ordered the theologians to place them among the bio-
thanati, and so they are, for instance, in Virgil 's sixth
book of the Aeneid.47 But death on the field of honour
could not be a source of infinite ills for them, and it was
generally admitted that, on the contrary, their courage
opened for them the gates of heaven.

"Virtus recludens immeritis mori
Caelum, ' '

as Horace says.48 The Greek theory of the divinity of the
heroes here comes to temper the severity of an unreason-
able and dangerous doctrine. According to Josephus,49
Titus, when haranguing his soldiers, promised immor-
tality to such as fell bravely, and condemned the others
to destruction. "Who does not know," he asked, "that
valiant souls, delivered from the flesh by the sword in
battle, will inhabit the purest of ethereal elements, and,
fixed in the midst of the stars, will make themselves
manifest to their descendants as good genii and benevo-
lent heroes? On the other hand, souls which are extin-
guished when their body is sick, vanish, even if they are
free from all stain and defilement, into subterranean
darkness and are buried in deep oblivion." In the mili-
tary monarchies of the Hellenistic East, as in the Roman
Empire, eternal life was certainly promised to those who
had perished arms in hand, faithful to their military duty.
We know that the same belief was transmitted to Islam :
a Mussulman who dies in battle "in the way of Allah"
is a martyr (sfoahid) to whom the joys of Paradise are
assured. The Jews, who had been reluctant to admit such
ideas before, from the time of the Maccabees onwards
associated with warriors those who sacrificed themselves
in order to be faithful to their persecuted religion, and to
these especially they promised a glorious immortality.

47 Aen., VI, 477 ss.

48 Horace, Od., Ill, 2, 21; cf. Introd., p. 13; Lecture IV, p. 113.

49 Joseph., Bell. Iud,, VI, 5, $ 47.

UNTIMELY DEATH 143

Faith in this celestial reward was later to cause the Chris-
tians, who won the martyr's crown, to face all sufferings.

The treatment which the gods reserved for another
class of biothanati was more uncertain. In the Greek
cities, as in Rome, moral reproof and posthumous penal-
ties were anciently attached to suicide. The old pontifical
law refused ritualistic burial to persons who had hanged
themselves; and instead of funeral sacrifices it pre-
scribed for these dead merely the hanging up of small
images (oscilla) consecrated to their Manes,50 — probably
a magical, " sympathetic' ' rite, which was intended to
purify their wandering souls by air, as other souls were
purified by water and fire. The horrible appearance of
men who died by strangulation had given rise to the belief
that the breath of life had vainly sought to issue from
their tightly closed throats.51 A rich inhabitant of Sarsina
in Umbria granted land for a graveyard to his fellow citi-
zens, but excluded from the benefit of his gift those who
had hired themselves as gladiators, had died by the rope
by their own hand, or had followed an infamous calling.52
This association shows how loathsome this kind of death
was. Funeral colleges founded under the Empire intro-
duced into their rules a clause stipulating that if anybody
had for any motive whatsoever put himself to death, he
should lose his right to burial.53 This provision seems to
have been inspired less by the fear that fraud would be
practised on this society of mutual insurance against
supreme abandonment, than by the conviction that fu-
neral honours cannot deflect the curse which weighs on
the suicide and renders his company undesirable for
other dead.

50 Servius, Aen., XII, 603.
5i Pliny, N. H., II, 63, $ 156.

52 Dessau, Inscr. sel., 7846: "Extra auctorateis et quei sibei [la]queo
marm attulissent et quei quaestum spurcum professi essent. "

53 lUd., 7212, II, 5.

144 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

But there was against popular opinion and religion,
which attached an idea of infamy to self-murder, a
philosophical reaction which, among the Stoics, led to an
entirely contrary moral judgment. The powerful sect of
the Porch caused the doctrine to prevail that suicide was
in certain cases commendable. It saw in this end the
supreme guarantee of the wise man's freedom, and
praised those who by voluntary death had withdrawn
from an intolerable life. Cato of Utica, who killed himself
lest he should survive liberty, was held to be the wise
man's ideal, and as worthy of apotheosis as Hercules. He
himself, who is shown to us by the historians as reading
and rereading Plato's Phaedo before he pierced himself
with his sword,54 certainly hoped for the immortality of
heroic souls. Here, as on other points, the Neo-Pythago-
reans, and the Neo-Platonists after them, brought the
minds of men back to the old religious beliefs. Plotinus,
yielding to the opinion which still prevailed in his time,
still authorises suicide in certain cases, but we know that
his exhortations dissuaded his pupil Porphyry from put-
ting an end to his days, when he was seized with a disgust
for life. This latter philosopher afterwards resolutely
opposed the Stoic doctrine. Although the soul, said the
Pythagoreans and Platonists, is enclosed in the body as
in a prison, in order to suffer chastisement, it is forbidden
by God to escape therefrom by its own act. If it do so
escape, it incurs from the masters of its fate infinitely
harder penalties. It must await the hour willed by these
masters, and then it can rejoice in the deliverance which
it obtains at the term of old age. If it itself break the link
which joins it to the body, far from ridding itself of servi-
tude, it remains chained to the corpse, for necessarily it
is subject to passion at the moment of death and thus
contracts impure desires. The only liberation worthy
of the wise man is that of the soul which still dwells in the
body but succeeds in freeing itself from all fleshly lean-

54 Plut., Cato, 68.

UNTIMELY DEATH 145

ings and in thus rising, by the force of reason, from earth
to heaven.55

The prohibition of voluntary death anticipating the
hour fixed by Providence for each man, was strengthened
and enforced everywhere by the Christian Church.

With yet more cause did those who had been condemned
to capital punishment seem to deserve posthumous tor-
ment and the pains reserved for the impious. These ma-
leficent spirits, transformed to demons, continued to work
harm to the human race. The odium which attached to
the word biothanati ended by concentrating itself on
these two classes — those who had committed suicide and
those who had been executed. The horror which both
inspired was marked by the withholding of honourable
burial. Even in pagan times, sacred or civil law in
many places denied funeral honours to children who
died young, and to suicides — in order, says a text,56 that
those who had not feared death might fear something
after death — and, above all, to criminals, whose corpses
were not deposited in a tomb but were thrown without
any ceremony into a common ditch (irokvavhpiov). In
Eome persons executed in prison were dragged with a
hook through the streets to the Tiber, where they were
flung into the water. There was in the fact that they were
deprived of funeral rites a second reason, besides their
guilt, for their suffering in the Beyond.57 Families and
friends of the condemned endeavoured therefore to spare
them this fearful penalty, and could obtain from the
magistrates the surrender of their bodies to them. But
the authorities often refused this supreme consolation to
Christians who wished to pay this last duty to their
martyred brothers. By scattering abroad the ashes of
martyrs the pagans hoped to prevent their graves from
becoming the sites of cults.

The denial of a religious funeral was also from the

55 Cf. Revue des etudes grecques, XXXII, 1921, p. 113ss.

56 Sen., Controv., VIII, 4, end.

57 See above, Lecture I, p. 64 ss.

146 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

earliest time onwards ordered by Church discipline and
sanctioned by the Councils in the case of suicides, and
was similarly extended, in virtue of the law in force, to
malefactors. In the Middle Ages the corpses of criminals
were still to be seen carried to a shameful charnel-place
in Byzantium. For instance, the chronologist Theoph-
anes58 relates indignantly that in 764 the iconoclastic
Emperor Constantine Copronymus caused the arrest of
a hermit of Bithynia, who supported the cult of the
images. The emperor's guards tied a cord round the
monk's foot and dragged him from the praetorium to
the cemetery, where, after cutting him to pieces, they
flung his remains into the ditch of the biothanati. Curi-
ously this word, biothanati, was derisively applied to the
Christians themselves, either because they adored a
crucified Saviour, or in mockery of the martyrs, who be-
lieved that through death by execution they earned a
glorious immortality. The poet Commodianus returns
this insult by applying the term to the pagans, whose way
of life condemned them to everlasting flames.59 The oppro-
brious word remained in use until the Middle Ages, when
it denoted all whose crimes deserved capital punishment,
so that the final meaning of biothanatus was gallows-bird,
gallows-food.60

If the meaning of the word biothanati was thus re-
stricted in the Latin world, the old ideas which it called
forth have had a singular vitality in folk-lore, especially
among the Greeks. The Greeks believe even today that
such as perish by a sudden and violent death became
vrykolakes.61 Their bodies can again be reanimated, can
leave the grave, and can travel through space with
extreme rapidity as vampires and become so maleficent
that mere contact with them causes loss of life. Suicides
and victims of unavenged murders are particularly fear-

58 Theophanes, Chronicon, p. 437, 3 ss., De Boor.

59 Commodianus, I, 14, 8.

so Du Cange, Glossarium, s. v.

6i Lawson, Modem Greek folklore, 1910, p. 408 ss.

UNTIMELY DEATH 147

fill. It was the custom as late as the eighteenth century
to open the grave of a dead man suspected of being a
vryJcolakas, and if his body had escaped corruption, thus
proving his supposed character, it was cut into pieces or
burnt in order to prevent it from doing further harm. So
lively did the belief remain that the biothanatus could not
detach himself from his body, and that his existence,
which had been too soon interrupted, was prolonged in
the tomb.

VI

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND

AS soon as belief took shape in an underground king-
f\ dom where gathered the shades which were sepa-
^Z7jL_rated from the body and from the grave, the idea
also arose of a perilous journey which the soul must make
in order to win to this distant abode. Such an idea is
common to many peoples of the world. In California, the
Mojave Indians are said to believe that the departed have
to find their way through a complicated maze in search of
the happy hunting grounds, which only the good souls
can reach, while the wicked wander painfully and end-
lessly. We know what minutely detailed rules are con-
tained in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, rules to which
the deceased had to conform in order that they might
travel safely to the Fields of the Blessed. The Orphic
tablets, discovered in tombs in Italy,1 have preserved
fragments of another guide to the Beyond. For instance,
the tablet of Petelia, which goes back to the second or
perhaps the third century B. C, begins thus : "Thou shalt
find to the left of the house of Hades a well-spring, and
by the side thereof standing a white cypress. To this
well-spring approach not near. But thou shalt find an-
other by the lake of Memory, cold water flowing forth,
and there are Guardians before it. Say 'I am a child of
Earth and of Starry Heaven. But my race is of Heaven
(alone). This ye know yourselves. And so I am parched
with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly the cold water
flowing from the lake of Memory. ' And of themselves
they will give thee to drink from the holy well-spring;

i See above, Lecture IT, p. 74.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 149

and thereafter among the other heroes thou shalt have
lordship. . . . ' '2

These instructions, which accompanied the member of
the sect to his grave, — he bore them about his neck like an
amulet, — were supposed to enable him to keep from
straying in his posthumous wanderings and help him to
accomplish exactly all the acts necessary for his salva-
tion. They were a sort of liturgy of the other side of the
grave which would ensure eternal happiness to the faith-
ful. "Courage ( e£t/w'xet ) > be valiant ( Bdppet ) ; no man is
immortal on earth," such is the exhortation frequently
expressed in epitaphs. It probably reproduces a ritual-
istic formula intended to sustain the shade which had to
blaze its path in the Beyond.

The Etruscans also had libri Acheruntici, books of
Acheron which were attributed to the sage Tages and
which treated of the fate of the dead. These made known,
in particular, what were the rites by which souls could
be transformed into gods {di animates). Their very title
betrays a Greek teaching, and there are reasons for be-
lieving that the teaching of the Pythagoreans was not
without influence on their composition.3 It is hardly
doubtful that they were concerned with the path which
the Manes of human beings must follow in order to go
down into the infernal regions. The Etruscan stelae and
cinerary urns often show this journey to Hades : some-
times the dead are placed, like heroes, in a war chariot ;
sometimes in a cart protected by a canopy and exactly
copied from the peasants' carts ; and often nothing would
indicate that these travellers are but shades, were not the
significance of the scene defined by the presence of some
deity of the nether world, like Charon. The great sar-
cophagus of Vulci in the Boston Museum bears a fine
representation of this type, where the character of the

2 Transl. Harrison, Prolegomena to the study of Greek religion, 1903,
p. 660.

s Timlin, Etruslcische Disciplin, III, 1909, p. 58 ss.

150 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

travellers is shown by a winged Fury standing behind
their carriage.

Thus the idea that the dead have to tramp a long road
descending into the depths of the earth before they reach
their last abode, was accepted in Italy as in Greece from
a very ancient period. How did men imagine this road?
Their conception of it is connected with a whole group of
Pythagorean doctrines which go back to a remote age.

The old poetry of Hesiod already speaks of two roads
of life, a short and easy road which is that of vice, and
the path of virtue, which is at first steep and rugged but
becomes less hard as soon as the top of the slope is
reached. Everyone knows the use which the sophist
Prodicus makes of this ancient comparison in the famous
myth of Hercules at the crossroads.4 In it, two women
appear to the youthful hero, and one seeks to draw him
to the path of deceitful pleasures while the other succeeds
in conducting him to the path of austere labours which
leads to true happiness. This same conception, which is
transmitted through the whole of antiquity, inspired the
Pythagoreans with the symbol of the letter Y, formed of
a vertical spike topped by two divergent branches. The
spike is the road common to all men until they have
reached the age of reason and responsibility. Subse-
quently they must choose between the right and the left
branches. The former, say these moralists, is steep and
rough and at first requires strenuous effort, but when
those who climb it have gained its summit they obtain a
well-deserved rest. The other road is at first level and
pleasant, but it leads to harsh rocks and ends in a preci-
pice over which the wretched man who has followed it is
hurled. This symbol was popular in antiquity as well as
in the Middle Ages, a fact of which a curious proof, addi-
tional to those in the texts, has lately been found. This is
a relief, accompanied by an inscription, dating from the
first century of our era, which has been discovered at

4 Xenoph., Memorab., II, 1, 21; cf. Hesiod, Op. et dies, 287 ss.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 151

Philadelphia in Lydia.5 It decorated, as the epitaph
shows, the tomb of a Pythagorean, and it is divided into
compartments by mouldings in the form of the letter Y.
Below, to the right, a child is seen, in the care of a woman
who is designated as Virtue ('Aperij) ; above, a plough-
man, driving his plough, stands for the hard and per-
severing labour of the good man, who, still higher, lies
on a couch before a table like the guest at a "funeral
banquet " because he has obtained the reward of his toil.
On the left side there is also, below, a woman with a child,
but she stands for wantonness ('Ao-arreia) ; above her a
figure is indolently lying on a bed ; and still further above,
the same figure is seen falling into a gulf, head down-
wards, in chastisement of his vices.

These naive scenes decorated, as we have said, a burial
place. Many other tombs are not so elaborate, but express
the same symbolism by opposing the hard labour of man,
represented on the lower part of the stele, to the rest
which this same man enjoys on the upper part of the
stone, that is, in heaven.6 The symbol of the Y was early
applied to the future life by the Pythagoreans, who trans-
ferred the roads representing the courses of the moral
and the immoral life to Hades. Their stories of the
descent to the nether world depicted the journey of the
dead in the same way, and it is still thus described in the
sixth book of the Aeneid. The dead first follow a common
road; and those whose lot is still undetermined wait in
this first abode, just as on earth children are not yet sepa-
rate at the uncertain age at which they have not yet made
their decision for virtue or for vice. At the crossroads of
earthly existence the choice must be made ; at the cross-
road of the infernal regions (17)10809) the judges of souls
are seated,7 and send to the right those who have by their
merits made themselves worthy to enter the Elysian
Fields, while they drive to the left the wicked who are to

s Brinkmann, Bheinisches Museum, LXVI, 1911, p. 622 ss.
6 See below, Lecture VIII, p. 205.
? See Lecture II, p. 76.

152 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

be hurled into Tartarus. For in both worlds " right' ' is
to the Pythagorean, as to the soothsayers, synonymous
with "good," and "left" synonymous with "evil."

The original conception was necessarily transformed
and explained symbolically when the abode of virtuous
souls was transported to heaven. The stories of the
ancients were no longer taken in their literal sense,
but an allegorical meaning, allowing them to be brought
into harmony with the new beliefs, was given to them.
Henceforward one of the two roads leads to the higher
regions, the road, namely, of the Blessed (6805 fxaKapcov)
or of the gods. The other, the path of men, is that which
after long windings brings back to earth the impure souls
who accomplish the cycle of their migrations and must be
reincarnated in new bodies.

A passage of Cicero's Tusculans,8 which is directly
inspired by the Phaedo of Plato, is instructive as to the
transformation which ideas underwent. "There are," it
says, "two roads and two courses for souls which issue
from the body. The souls which are sullied with human
vice and have abandoned themselves to passions . . .
follow a crooked path which leads them away from the
dwelling of the gods ; but for the souls which have kept
their innocence and purity and have, while in human
bodies, imitated the life of the gods, there is an easy
return to the beings from whose abode they descended to
the earth." In the same way Virgil, as we have said else-
where,9 is apparently faithful to the traditional topogra-
phy of Hades, but does not regard it as really situated in
the underground. There were even attempts to fix pre-
cisely the itinerary which souls had to follow in the upper
spheres. Seneca pleasantly ridicules these beliefs in his
satire on the apotheosis of Claudius, affirming that em-
perors went to heaven by the Appian Way. The Milky
Way, originally regarded as the path of the sun,

s Cic, Tusc, I, 30, 72.

9 See above, Lecture III, p. 82.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 153

remained, according to an opinion which persisted nntil
the end of antiquity, the road by which gods and heroes
rose to the zenith.10 It was said to cut the zodiac in the
tropical signs of Cancer and Capricorn, and it was there
that those gates opened by which souls went down from
heaven to earth and rose from earth to heaven.11 The
former of these gates was called the Gate of Men, the
other the Gate of Gods.

We will return later (p. 162) to the theories which assign
different dwellings in the starry spheres to pure spirits
and tell of their passing through the celestial gates. We
would merely note that the allegory of the two roads, of
which one is the road of God and heaven and eternal life
and the other that of Satan, hell and death, is found in
the most ancient Christian literature, and is justifiably
likened by Lactantius12 to the Pythagorean Y, which is at
the origin of all the later symbolism.

But when the idea of a journey to the underworld had
been transformed into that of a journey to heaven, how
was the power of the dead to reach the upper spheres
explained? What force or what vehicle raised them
thither? Originally they made use of all the means of
locomotion. They went on foot, in a ship, in a carriage, on
horseback, and even had recourse to aviation.

Among the ancient Egyptians the firmament was con-
ceived as being so close to the mountains of the earth that
it was possible to get up to it with the aid of a ladder.
The early texts of the Pyramids describe the gods help-
ing the king to climb the last rungs of the ladder, when he
ascended to their high dwelling. Such ideas are found
elsewhere, among the Chinese as well as in Europe. We
are told that a priest-king of a people of Thrace joined
tall wooden ladders together in order that he might go to

10 See above, Lecture III, p. 94.

ii Cf. Comptes rendus Acad. Inscr., 1920, p. 277.

12 Lactantius, Inst., VI, 3 s.

154 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

Hera to complain of his unruly subjects.13 Although the
stars had been relegated to an infinite distance in space,
the ladder still survived in Roman paganism as an amulet
and as a symbol. Many people continued to place in tombs
a small bronze ladder, which recalled the naive beliefs of
distant ages. This means of attaining to the upper world
has been given to the dead man in several graves of the
Rhine border. In the mysteries of Mithras a ladder of
seven steps, made of seven different metals, still symbol-
ised the passage of the soul across the planetary spheres.14
Philo, and after him Origen,15 interpreted Jacob 's ladder
as the air through which the disincarnate souls ascended
and descended; and the patriarch's dream in the symbol-
ism of the Middle Ages was still considered as a pledge
of the ladder of salvation leading the elect to heaven. A
naive miniature of the illustrated manuscripts of St. John
Climacus — one of them is preserved in the Freer collec-
tion— shows monks climbing the heavenly ladder of virtues
and welcomed at the top by Christ or by an angel, while
winged demons try to pull them down and make them fall
into the jaws of a dragon below, which represents hell.16
On the other hand, even in antiquity the emblem of the
ladder had been adopted by magic,17 which retained it
throughout the centuries, and to this day little ladders are
sold in Naples as charms against the jettatura or evil eye.
In Egypt the souls also travelled to the dwelling of the
gods in the boat of Ra, the solar deity. This idea does not
seem to have passed into the mysteries of Isis in the West
but in the East it was retained by the Manicheans. The
moon and the sun were the ships which plied through the

13 Polyaen., VII, 22.

14 See Lecture III, p. 107; Monum. mysteres de Mithra, I, p. 118 s. ;
II, p. 525.

is Philo, De somniis, I, 22; Origen, Contra Celsum, VI, 21.

is Charles R. Morey, East christian paintings in the Freer collection, New
York, 1914, p. 17 ss.

17 Ladder among other magical emblems on terra cotta discs found at
Taranto; cf. Bevue archeologique, V, 1917, p. 102.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 155

heavenly spaces carrying the luminous spirits.18 For the
Greeks it was to the Islands of the Blest, situated some-
where in the distant ocean, that ships transported the
dead. This crossing of the sea, peopled by monsters of
the deep, was one of the favourite subjects of the decora-
tors of Roman sarcophagi. But under the Empire the
Fortunate Islands, we know,19 were often explained as
being the moon and the sun, washed by the ether, and it
was therefore to the moon that the bark of salvation had
to bear souls across the stormy waters of matter. The
Styx had become a celestial or aerial river ; Charon, with
the help of the winds, caused pious souls to pass not to the
subterranean world but to the heavenly dwelling of
heroes.20 The bark which should bear the Blessed to the
abode of delight, where they would live together, is often
represented in funeral sculpture,21 and continued to be in
Christian art, the symbol of a happy passage to the shores
of Paradise. Epitaphs sometimes cause the passer-by to
wish the dead ' l Ev7r\o?, ' ' " A happy voyage ! ' m

The Etruscan tombs often show the dead man on horse-
back on the road of the underworld, and in early Greek
tombs terra cotta shoes and horses have been discovered
which were intended to make easier the long and danger-
ous journey to the country whence there is no return. But
in order that a rider may win to heaven his horse must be
provided with strong wings. Primitively these wings were
probably intended to indicate only the swiftness of this
mythical steed.23 But in Roman times they undoubtedly
meant that it could fly up to the sky. The great Paris

is See above, Lecture III, p. 93.

19 Ibid., p. 96.

20 Cf. Bevue de philologie, XLIV, 1920, p. 75.

si Cf. Joseph Keil, Jahresh. Institute Wien, XVII, 1914, pp. 138, 142, n.
13; Bormann, Bericht des Vereins Carnuntum, 1908-1911, p. 330, where Itala
felix applies not to the ship but to the dead woman.

22 For instance, Dessau, Inscr. sel., 8031.

23 Cf. my JEtudes syriennes, 1917, p. 99, n. 1. So on the beautiful chariot
of Monteleone in the Metropolitan Museum of New York (sixth century
B. C).

156 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

cameo, said to represent the apotheosis of Augustus,
shows a prince of his house, Germanicus or perhaps Mar-
cellus, thus borne away by a winged courser.24 There is a
similar representation on a coin which commemorates the
apotheosis of an empress, probably Faustina. The same
Pegasus, who probably has nothing in common with
Bellerophon's steed, appears again on a fragment of a
relief recently discovered in England at Corstopitum
(Corbridge-on-Tyne).25 He is carrying off a personage,
probably an emperor, who wears the paludamentum or
military cloak and has his head bound with a radiate
crown, on either side of whom are the Dioscuri, the sym-
bols of the two celestial hemispheres. The dead are
mounted on Pegasus because he was brought into relation
with the Sun, who is the creator and saviour of souls.

For the same reason, because he was the sacred animal
of Apollo, the gryphon served this purpose. Thus in the
medallion which decorates the stucco vault of a tomb on
the Latin Way this winged monster carries on his strong
back a veiled figure, covered with a long garment, who
can be no other than the shade of the dead man wrapped
in the shroud.26

Throughout antiquity, however, the departed travelled
most frequently in a chariot, which had in the Roman
period become the chariot of the Sun-god.27 The idea that
the divine charioteer drives a team across the heavenly
field existed in very early times in Babylon and Syria, as
well as in Persia and in Greece. "The horses of fire and
the chariot of fire" which carried up the prophet Elijah
in a whirlwind28 are very probably the horses and the
chariot of the Sun. In the same way when Mithras ' mis-
sion on earth was fulfilled, he was conveyed in the chariot
of Helios to the celestial spheres over the ocean, as we see

24 Cf. my Etudes syriennes, p. 91 s.

25 Ibid., p. 92, fig. 41.

^lUd., p. 94, fig. 42; cf. below, p. 165.

27 Cf. ibid., p. 95 s.

28 II Beg., 2, 11.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 157

on the reliefs found in his temples, and the happy lot
which the hero had won for himself he granted also to his
followers. The emperors in particular were commonly
reputed to become companions of the Sun-god after death,
as they had been under his protection in life, and to drive
with him up to the summit of the eternal vaults. Accord-
ing to a papyrus recently found in Egypt,29 Phoebus,
when informing the people of the death of Trajan and
the accession of Hadrian, stated in set terms, "I have just
risen with Trajan on a car drawn by white horses, and I
come to you, 0 people, to announce that a new prince,
Hadrian, has made all things subject to him, by his virtue
and by the fortune of his divine father. ' ' The writers and
the figured monuments show us other deified rulers win-
ning to heaven in a similar way. At the very end of
paganism an oracle, addressing Julian the Apostate, pre-
dicted that he would be " conducted to Olympus in a
flaming chariot shaken by stormy whirlwinds, and would
reach the paternal palace of ethereal light."30 It was not
only princes who were privileged to be drawn by the
swift team of the royal star. The chariot appears on
tombs of very humble persons to suggest their lot in after
life.31

Yet more rapid was another method of mounting up to
the stars. Among all the peoples of the eastern Mediter-
ranean basin the idea was anciently spread that the
essence or the spirit which animates man escapes from
the body in the shape of a bird, especially a bird of prey,
for in order not to perish this soul must feed on blood,
the principle of life. The gravestones and funeral vases
of Greece give us a large number of representations of
the bird-soul.32 In the Roman period vestiges of this con-
ception persisted. In Syria an eagle with spread wings

29 Kornemann, Klio, VII, p. 278; cf. Mudes syriennes, p. 98, n. 3.
soEunap., Hist., fr. 26 (F. H. G. IV, 25; cf. Etudes syriennes, p. 104).
si See above, Lecture III, p. 102.

32 Weichert, Der Seelenvogel in der alien Literatur und Eunst, Leipzig,
1902; see above, Lecture III, p. 93.

158 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

occupies on tombs the place filled elsewhere by the por-
trait of the dead man.33 Magic had retained this ancient
belief with not a few others, for superstition picks up
many ideas that have dropped out with the progress of
religion. Sorcerers asserted that they could cause wings
to grow from the backs of their dupes, so as to enable
them to soar up to heaven. One of the marvels which
miracle-mongers most frequently boasted of working was
that of ascending into the air. The phenomena of levita-
tion are said to be produced at all periods. When writers
tell us that the pure soul " flies away" to the sky on swift
wings, the expression, which since Plato34 has been often
repeated, and is still in use nowadays, is no mere meta-
phor but rather a traditional expression, first taken in
its material sense and preserved in language, ultimately
acquiring a figurative meaning. A late epigram composed
on Plato's burial place35 says: " Eagle, why art thou
perched above this tomb and why dost thou look at the
gods' starry dwelling? — I am the image of Plato's soul
who has flown away to Olympus. The earth of Attica
holds his earth-born body. ' ' Lucian in his Icaromenippus
ridiculed the claims of the philosophers, showing Menfp-
pus attaching wings to his shoulders in order that he
might take his flight to the stars and thus learn the secrets
of the world.

The original idea of the bird-soul was transformed into
that of the soul lifted aloft by a bird. It was in Syria that
this change took place.36 A widely held belief in the
Roman period was that the soul was carried away by an
eagle, which in Syria was the bird of the sun. The sun
being conceived as a winged disk which flew through the

33 Etudes syriennes, p. 38 ss.

34 Phaedr., p. 246 C.

ss Anth. Pal., VII, 62=Diog. Laert., Ill, 44; cf. Etudes syriennes, p. 88:

Aleri tItttc ptfiynas virtp T&<pov; f) tLvos, eiir4t

darepoivTa deCov oIkov airo<TKOTr£et.s; —
tyvxv* dfti nXdrwi'os dTroTTTafi^vvs els"0\v/xirov
e'lKfhv <ru>fxa 5£ yrj yriyev&s 'Arflis ?%6t.
36 Cf. Etudes syriennes, p. 57 ss.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 159

celestial spaces could easily be connected with an eagle.
The king of birds was the servant or the incarnation of
the star-king, to whom he bore his precious burden. This
is why an eagle, preparing for flight and holding the
crown of victory, is a usual motif of sepulchral decoration
at Hierapolis and throughout northern Syria. The power-
ful bird of prey lifted not with his claws, as he did
Ganymede, but on his back, mortals who rose to heaven.
This soul-bearing eagle passed to Italy with the cere-
monial of the apotheosis. At the funeral rites of em-
perors at Rome there was always fastened to the top of
the pyre, on which the corpse was to be consumed, an eagle
which was supposed to bear aloft the monarch's soul, and
art frequently represents the busts of the Caesars resting
on an eagle in the act of taking flight, by way of suggest-
ing their apotheosis. The eagle, which is the bird of the
Baals, solar gods, carries to his master those who have
been his servants and representatives in the world below.
This kind of aviation was not peculiar to monarchs. The
eagle often has this meaning in funeral art. I will instance
a stele, found in Rome and preserved in the museum of
Copenhagen.37 On this a young man, draped in a toga, is
comfortably seated on an eagle, which is rising to the sky ;
to his right a winged child, bearing a torch, seems to point
out the way to him. It is Phosphorus, the morning star,
whom Roman art often represented in this form, before
the chariot of the Sun. An altar recalls the cult of which
the dead man will henceforth be the object on earth, and
a wreath on the pediment stands for the victory which he
has won over death.

All these supposed methods of reaching heaven are
most primitive: they start from the supposition that a
load has to be lifted up ; they hardly imply a separation
of body and soul ; and they are antecedent to the distinc-
tions which philosophers established between different
parts of man's being. They are religious survivals of very

37 Ittudes syriennes, 1917, p. 87, fig. 39.

160 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

ancient conceptions which only vulgar minds still inter-
preted literally. These mechanical means of raising one-
self to the starry vault carry us back to an extremely low
stage of beliefs. Hence theologians no longer accepted
them save as symbols. Other doctrines of a more ad-
vanced character were developed and these constituted
the true teaching of the great Oriental mysteries, just as
they had secured the adhesion of thinking men. They
connected the ascent of the soul after death with physical
and ethical theories and thus caused sidereal immortality
to enter into the order of the universe.38

The first of these theories was that of solar attraction.
We have already described the doctrine, certainly of
eastern origin, that the sun by a series of emissions and
absorptions projected souls onto the earth and drew them
back to itself.39 This unceasing action of the resplendent
luminary of day was exercised through the force of its
rays,40 and very old Greek ideas here mingled with the
"Chaldean" theory. The Pythagoreans already believed
that the glittering particles of dust which danced cease-
lessly in a sunbeam (gvcr juara) were souls descending
from the ether borne on the wings of light. The air, they
said, was "full of souls,' ' we might say "of germs' ' or
"microbes."41 They added that this sunbeam, passing
through the air and through water down to the depths
of the sea, gave life to all things below.42 This idea per-
sisted under the Roman Empire in the theology of the
mysteries. Souls descended upon the earth and reas-
cended after death towards the sky, thanks to the slanting
rays of the sun which served as the means of transport.
The sun is the avaycoyevs, "he who brings up from
below. ' ' On Mithraic reliefs one of the seven rays which
surround the head of Sol Invictus (0ebs e^ra/ms) is seen

38 See Introd., p. 28.

39 See Lecture III, p. 100.

40 Etudes syriennes, p. 106 s.; cf. Lecture III, p. 101.
4i See Lecture I, p. 59.

42 Diog. Laert,, VIII, 1, 27.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 161

disproportionately prolonged towards the dying Bull, in
order to awake the new life that is to spring from the
death of the cosmogonic animal. "The Sun," says the
Emperor Julian, "by the invisible, immaterial, divine and
pure essence which dwells in its rays, attracts and raises
the blessed souls."43

In this theory it is to the power of the Sun, the great
cosmic divinity, that the ascension of the soul is due. Ac-
cording to another doctrine the cause of this ascension
is the physical nature of the soul.

This latter doctrine is set forth with great precision by
Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations, and by Sextus Em-
piricus, doubtless after Posidonius.44 The soul is a fiery
breath, that is to say, its substance is the lightest of the
four elements which compose our universe. It necessarily
therefore has a tendency to rise, for it is warmer and
more subtle than the gross and dense air which encircles
the earth. It will the more easily cleave this heavy atmos-
phere since nothing moves more rapidly than a spirit. It
must therefore in its continuous ascent pass through that
zone of sky where gather the clouds and the rain and
where blow the winds,45 and which by reason of exhala-
tions from the earth is moist and misty. When finally it
reaches the spaces filled by an air which is rarefied and
warmed by the sun, it finds elements similar to its own
substance and, ceasing to ascend, is maintained in equilib-
rium.46 Henceforth it dwells in these regions which are its
natural home, continually vivified by the same principles
as those that feed the everlasting fires of the stars.

We shall presently see how the Platonists modified
this Stoic doctrine, and substituted that of the "vehicle"
(o'x^a) of souls.

These theories made it easier than the first one had

43 Jul., Or., V, p. 172 C.

44Cic, Tusc, I, 42 as.; Sextus Empir., Adv. Math., IX, 71, 4; cf. above,
Introd., p. 29.

45 Winds and souls, see below, Lecture VII, p. 185.

46 See below, Lecture VII, p. 186; cf. Lecture II, p. 81.

162 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

done to establish a firm connection between ethical be-
liefs concerning future destiny and physical theories
about the constitution of the universe and the nature of
man. The soul is never conceived by these theologians as
purely spiritual or immaterial, but when it abandons
itself to the passions it becomes gross; its substance
grows more corporeal ; and then it is too heavy to rise to
the stars and gain the spheres of light.47 Its mere density
will compel it to float in our mephitic atmosphere until
it has been purified and consequently lightened. Thus the
door is opened to all doctrines concerning punishment
beyond the grave. We shall show in another lecture48 how
the soul was to be purified by passing through the ele-
ments which moved in sublunary space — air, water and
fire.

But, side by side with physical ideas, mythological be-
liefs always retained their sway. According to the com-
mon creed, the air was peopled with troops of perverse
and subtle demons. They were, it was thought, the guilty
souls whose faults condemned them to wander perpetu-
ally near the surface of the earth. They took pleasure in
inflicting a thousand tortures on their fellow souls, when
these, by their impiety, were left defenceless against
them. But succouring powers protected the good against
these perverse spirits. Thus the atmosphere became the
scene of an unceasing struggle between demons of every
kind, a struggle in which the salvation of the soul was at
stake.

The dangers to which the soul was exposed did not
always end when, after having crossed the most danger-
ous zone of the air, it reached the moon.49 Those who be-
lieved that souls must pass through the planetary spheres
conceived these as pierced by a gate guarded by a
commander (dpxcov) or, as they were also called, by toll

47 See Introd., p. 29; cf. Lecture VII, p. 185.

48 See below, Lecture VII, p. 185.

49 See above, Lecture III, p. 93, and p. 96 s.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 163

gatherers (rekaivia). The mystics claimed to supply their
initiates with the passwords which caused the incorrupti-
ble keepers to yield. They taught prayers or incanta-
tions which rendered hostile powers propitious; by
1 ' seals ' ' and unctions they made their followers immune
against the blows of such enemies. These instructions,
which were previously given to the dead in order to facili-
tate their descent to the nether world (p. 148), now served
to make the ascent to heaven easy. In this matter the
magicians emulated the priests, even claiming to show to
their clients the way leading to heaven during life. The
papyrus of Paris, wrongly called the "Mithraic Lit-
urgy,"50 affords the most characteristic example of this
superstitious literature.

But, above all, the secret cults claimed to supply the
soul with a guide to lead it during its risky journey
through the whirlwinds of air, water and fire and the
moving spheres of heaven. Plato in the Phaedo had
already spoken of this demon leader (riye/xcov) of the
dead,51 and the same word is applied to the "psycho-
pompos, ' ' whether demon, angel or god, not only by Neo-
Platonist philosophers but also in epitaphs. Thus the
funeral inscription of a sailor, who died at Marseilles,52
says: " Among the dead there are two companies; one
moves upon the earth, the other in the ether among the
choruses of stars. I belong to the latter, for I have ob-
tained a god for my guide." This divine escort of souls
frequently retains the name of Hermes in conformity
with the old mythology, for Hermes is the Psychopompos
who leads the shades to their subterranean abode and
moreover summons them and brings them back, in another
migration, to the earth. An epigram belonging to the first
century of our era apostrophises the deceased with these
words: "Hermes of the winged feet, taking thee by the
hand, has conducted thee to Olympus and made thee to

so Dieterieh, Eine Mithrasliturgie 2, 1910.

51 Plato, Phaedo, p. 107 D, 108 B.

52Kaibel, Epigr. Graeca, 650=Inscr. Sic. Ital, 2461.

164 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

shine among the stars."53 But often the role of escort
devolved on the Sun himself. We have seen (p. 157) that
at the end of paganism the star-king is figured as carry-
ing mortals in his flying chariot ; and the emperor Julian,
at the end of his satire on the Caesars, represents himself
as addressed by Hermes, who states that in causing him to
know Mithras he rendered propitious to him this leader-
god (rjyefxova 6e6v), who will enable him to leave the
earth with the hope of a better lot.

In these beliefs we see persisting to the end of pagan-
ism the old conception that heroes could be carried off to
heaven, body and soul.54 It was never entirely given up
by popular faith, and appears notably in ideas as to the
apotheosis of the emperors, although learned theology
rose in arms against it and affirmed that nothing terres-
trial could be admitted into the ethereal spheres. An-
tinous and Apollonius of Tyana are thus said to have
been borne away and to have continued without interrup-
tion the life they had begun on earth.55

# # * # #

We are thus brought to ask ourselves how, at the very
time when the conception of the journey of the dead was
being transformed, the idea entertained as to the physical
character of the dead also underwent a change. Let us,
in conclusion, seek briefly to trace the course of this
evolution.

Originally, as we said at the beginning of these lec-
tures, two beliefs as to life beyond the grave existed
together. On the one hand, the illusion was kept that the
corpse which lay in the grave continued in some obscure
way to live, feel and nourish itself there. Side by side with
this simple faith the idea was maintained that the soul
is a breath, emitted by the dying man, which floats in
the atmosphere and which reproduces, when it makes

53 Haussoullier, Revue de philologie, XXIII, 1909, p. 6; cf. Lecture III,
p. 105.

54 See above, Lecture IV, p. 112.

55 Cf. Bolide, Psyche, II*, p. 376 s.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 165

itself visible in dreams and apparitions or in remem-
brance, the outward appearance of the person from whom
it issued.56

These two conceptions of life beyond the grave are
combined in the nature with which the inhabitants of the
infernal regions are credited, and give these fantastic
beings a character full of contradictions. Cicero justly
remarks that acts are attributed to them which would be
conceivable only if they had bodies. Thus they are sup-
posed to speak, although they have neither tongue, palate,
throats nor lungs.57 The common belief was indeed that
the shades fed, even in their deep abode, on the offerings
made on their burial places ; and the pains which might
be inflicted on them presupposed that they had retained
the sensibility and needs of men; while the pleasures
accorded to them in the Elysian Fields were in part very
material — to participate in a banquet was an essential
part of them.58

Hence, when the dead showed themselves, they were
sometimes given the appearance not of the living being
but of the corpse : it was the body, as it was when buried,
which issued from the entrails of the earth. Ennius, when
he showed Homer appearing to him in a dream, said that
the shades were "of prodigious paleness,"59 and the idea
is often expressed that ghosts are bloodless in colour.
Not only are their faces wan : their mouths are mute ; they
are the taciti, the silent Manes. Much more, it is some-
times in the form of skeletons that they return to terrify
men. The most usual way of figuring the soul in funeral
sculpture is to show a person completely wrapped, save
for his face, in a long garment, the shroud in which his
body was buried.60

But on the other hand, side by side with this more or

56 See above, Lecture I, p. 45 ss., 59 ss.

57 Cf. Cic, Tusc, I, 16, 37.

ss See below, Lecture VIII, p. 199 ss.

59 Lucretius, I, 124: "Simulacra modis pallentia miris."

so See, for instance, above, p. 156.

166 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

less unconscious belief as to a survival of the body, the
soul continued to be regarded as a light breath. The
beings who peopled the infernal regions were imagined
as almost immaterial forms. They were called " shades' '
(ovacu, umbrae) or " images' ' (eiScuXa, simulacra). The
former term implies, besides the idea of a subtle essence,
the notion that the inhabitants of the dusky spaces under-
ground were black, and this is in fact the colour often
given to them. It is also the colour of the victims offered
them and of the mourning garments worn in their honour.
These sombre phantoms, which passed unnoticed in the
darkness of night, returned after the sunset to haunt the
houses of men, and this is why the Inferi or beings of
the nether world are above all appeased by nocturnal
sacrifices.

The words etSwXoz/, simulacrum, imago, especially ex-
press the complete resemblance of the dead to the living.
Are not the beings who return to talk with us in dreams
exactly like the persons we have known? This tenuous
image was compared to the reflection seen on limpid
waters or on the polished surface of metal.61 Both alike
reproduced the features and colour and imitated the
movements of those whom they faithfully expressed. This
is why magicians often made use of mirrors in order to
evoke the spirits of the departed.62 As to the nature of
these simulacra, the ancients agree in declaring them to
be material, for how otherwise could they convey sensual
impressions? But their substance is of an extreme sub-
tlety. They are forms which are corporeal but empty,
flimsy, impalpable, often of such rarity that they remain
invisible. They are compared to the wind, for the wind
is the air in motion, to a vapour, to a smoke which escapes
so soon as its restraint is attempted.

This shade, formed of a light fluid, has a form which is
necessarily malleable and yielding. The fact is thus ex-

ei Cf. Proclus, In BempuU., I, p. 290, 10 ss., Kroll.

62 On this Tcatoptromanteia, cf. Bevue archeologique, V, 1917, p. 105 ss.;
Ganschinietz in Bealencycl., s. v.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 167

plained that souls can take on various appearances and
sometimes let themselves be seen as terrible monsters,
especially if they are the souls of criminals who have
become maleficent spirits.63 Heroes, on the contrary,
whose virtue has enabled them to be borne to heaven,
appear to be of more than natural stature when they
descend from the ether; they are surrounded by a radiant
nimbus, and their resplendent beauty strikes with admira-
tion those who perceive them.

But here the ancients were faced with the question as
to whether that part of the human composition which won
to heaven was the same as that which descended to the
infernal regions.

As to this puzzling question there arose in the Alexan-
drian period a theory unknown to ancient Greece, — we
have already touched on this point64 — the theory that man
is formed not of two elements but of three, namely, the soul
(xpvxVy anima), the shade (o-/aa, etScoXov, umbra, simula-
crum) and the body (crw^a, corpus). This doctrine
claimed to be justified by a passage in Homer, in fact an
interpolation, as to the apotheosis of Hercules, but it was
manifestly borrowed from Egyptian religion by the
Pythagoreans of Alexandria. For Egyptian religion is
"polypsychic" and distinguishes different kinds of souls.
So the ka or "Double" has been explained as a living and
coloured projection of the individual whom it reproduced
feature by feature, which inhabited the tomb, but could
leave it and return to it as freely as a man to his
house. The ba'i, on the other hand, is thought to be a more
refined matter which enclosed a portion of the celestial
fire and which departed to another world. Certain Alex-
andrian Pythagoreans therefore admitted that when the
soul was not entirely purified, it remained joined to its
idolon in the infernal regions, which were for them situ-
ated in the atmosphere, but they held that when it had

es See above, Lecture V, p. 130.
e* See above, Lecture II, p. 79.

168 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

entirely freed itself from matter it rose towards the
ether, and left only the idolon in the neighbourhood of the
earth.65

This theory was to be variously transformed, but it is
at the foundation of all the subsequent development of
the doctrines as to the return of the soul to heaven. The
triple division most usually adopted is not the one I have
just cited but the division into reason (vovs or TrvevjAa),
soul (\jjvxy) and body. What becomes in this case of the
image ( ei&cokov ) ? The theologians assimilated it to the ir-
rational soul or xjjvxv, as opposed to the higher understand-
ing. This image thus became the seat not only of vegeta-
tive and unconscious life — a theory which would be in
conformity with the Homeric sense of the word — but also
of sensitive and emotional life. This soul or shade at first
remained united to the nous, which it surrounded with its
vaporous envelope. Even after it had left the earthly
body, reason was still imprisoned in an aerial body: the
two dwelt in the infernal regions, that is, in sublunary
space, until they had been purified by the elements. They
then, as we have seen elsewhere,66 left the atmospheric
Hades in order to be admitted into the Elysian Fields,
that is to say, into the moon. There the thin veils in which
reason was still wrapped were dissolved. Reason, a sub-
lime essence, rose again towards the sun and the higher
spheres.

So the shades of the old mythology had become a gar-
ment of which reason rid itself, when it left this lower
world to attain to its celestial home. But the theologians
disputed at length on the origin of this psychic integu-
ment. When it was admitted that the passions and emo-
tions were due to the action of the planets, the eiSwW,
being conceived, as we have said, to be the seat of sensi-
tive life, had necessarily to be formed in the seven
spheres, through which the soul passed as it descended

65 Cf. Bevue de philologie, XLIV, 1920, p. 237 ss.
ee See Lecture III, p. 103.

THE JOURNEY TO THE BEYOND 169

to earth, and to be decomposed when it passed through
them again in its ascension.67 This is the doctrine sup-
ported by the Neo-Platonists. They merely apply a new
name to this cloak of reason, that of vehicle (ox^a), which
is at first synonymous with eiScokov as this word was last
accepted. Plato in his myths had several times spoken of
the chariot (o'x^a) in which souls ascended, especially in
the famous passage of the Phaedrus, where he depicted
them as trying to follow the course of the gods towards
the summit of heaven,68 and above all in the Timaeus,
where he says that God, having made men equal in num-
ber to the stars, caused them to mount on these stars as
on a chariot.69 This vehicle was, according to the philoso-
pher's late interpreters, an ethereal envelope, analogous
to the "astral body" of modern theosophists, which grew
thicker and thicker by the accession of new elements, as
the soul was gradually lowered to the earth ;70 and it was
by the composition of these elements that the tempera-
ment of the newly born child was determined. This lumi-
nous body was attracted after death by stars of the same
nature as those whence it derived its origin, and in par-
ticular by the sun, and it thus acquired a force of ascen-
sion which once again bore divine reason to the highest
point of the heavens. We will not lay stress on the specu-
lation of the last masters of the school, such as Jamblichus
or Proclus, who imagined, on the subject of this subtle
matter, yet more subtle distinctions and transformed the
former conception of the "vehicle." It is enough that we
have shown how the old belief in the shades who peopled
Hades was modified, when it came to be thought that
souls travelled in the air and among the constellations,
until at last the Platonist theory of the psychic vehicle
was reached.

67 Cf. Lecture III, p. 107.

es Plato, Pha-edr., 247 B; cf. Phaedo, p. 113 D.

69 Timaeus, p. 41 D E.

to See above, Lecture III, p. 106 s., and Introd., p. 41 ; cf. p. 24.

VII

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL AND
METEMPSYCHOSIS

HOW did belief in the sufferings of hell develop?
of what elements was it formed! through what
vicissitudes has it passed? — these are questions
which it is difficult to answer precisely, for the reason
that the pains reserved for the impious in the Beyond
were in the Greco-Latin world taught especially by
mystic sects, who placed them in contrast to the bliss
granted to the initiate. It is possible, however, to note the
genesis and general evolution of the opinions on this
point which reigned in the Eoman Empire.

Already in the Odyssey three who are surpassingly
guilty detach themselves from the grey crowd of the
shades who lead an uncertain life in Hades— Tityus, Tan-
talus and Sisyphus.1 All three committed grave assaults
on the gods, who in revenge condemned them to eternal
torture: the gigantic body of Tityus is unceasingly
gnawed by vultures ; Tantalus is plunged in a pond the
water of which flees from his eager lips, while above him
is a tree of which the fruit escapes from his hand as he
wishes to seize it ; Sisyphus unendingly rolls to the top of
a hill a rock which always tumbles back down the slope.
These souls, in order that their suffering may be more
cruelly felt, have in Hades a vitality beyond that of the
common run of the dead, who are pale, flimsy, half
animate phantoms.2

To this Homeric triad of sufferers especially chastised

i Odyssey, XI, 576 s.

2 Cf. Kohde, Psyche, I*, p. 61 ss.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 171

by the divinity, further unhappy souls, whom an inex-
piable crime had vowed to everlasting pains, were after-
wards added : Ixion turning on the wheel to which he was
fixed, Theseus and Pirithous enchained, the Danaides
carrying water in a leaking vessel, and others. Thus was
formed a group of legendary personalities whose crimes
and punishments came to be the traditional themes of
every description and representation of Tartarus in
poetry and art until the downfall of paganism.

But these convicted souls were no longer conceived, as
they were by Homer, to be exceptional offenders on whom
the gods avenged a personal insult. They had come to be
the prototypes of men who, for like faults, would be simi-
larly chastised, the terrible examples of the lot which
divine wrath reserved for all who provoked it. They were
explained as the incarnations of the different passions
and vices, the representatives of the various classes of
sinners on each of which a determined punishment was
inflicted.

The first authors of this new conception seem to have
been the Orphic and Pythagorean theologians. Homer
names only one class of criminals whom the Erinyes tor-
ture beneath the ground, the perjurers. But here again
the motive of the punishment is a direct provocation of
the gods ; by the formula of execration which ended their
oath, the perjurers had surrendered themselves to divine
vengeance, if they broke their faith; and this is why a
place apart among the sufferers of the underworld was
always kept for them.

The Orphics, who were the first to separate in the un-
derworld the region of Tartarus from the Elysian Fields,
were also innovators as regarded the character of these
contrasting dwelling-places. Notably, there was among
their books a Descent into Hades (Kara/3acri9 ets "AiSou),
which described its joys and pains. If the blessed were
admitted to the flowery meadows where they enjoyed the
delight of a perpetual feast, the profane, those who had
not been purified by the rites of the sect, were plunged in

172 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

darkness and mire, which was either intended to recall
the moral nncleanness of all who had not taken part in the
cathartic ceremonies, or else implied that these shades
were figured like the penitents who, seated in the mud of
the road, proclaimed their sins to passers-by.3

Orphism conceived the suffering undergone beyond the
tomb as an expiation. The soul which had not been able on
earth to keep itself from the pollution of matter and to
escape from the passions, thus found again the qualities
which it had lost. After a fixed term, it returned to
another life wherein it had another chance to render itself
worthy of the lot of the Blessed— we shall speak presently
of this transmigration. Moreover, the intercession of the
living in favour of the dead, the sacrifices offered up on
their behalf, could, according to the Orphics, deliver them
from their pains.

But the Orphics taught also that side by side with those
who thus purified themselves in infernal regions before
returning to earth, there were others, more guilty, who
were vowed to eternal punishment. The old Homeric
belief was thus taken up and developed. The evil souls,
whose ways nothing could mend, were immured for ever
in the underground prison, where they became the com-
panions of the great criminals whom mythology plunged
in Tartarus. This capital distinction between the two
classes of the inhabitants of hell, those condemned for a
time and those condemned in perpetuity, was transmitted
down to Virgil and appears distinctly in the Aeneid.

Infernal justice is a court of appeal from earthly jus-
tice. Like the City,4 Hades has its tribunal, but the judges
who sit there are infallible; it has its laws which are
unremittingly applied to whoever has broken those of his
country; it has its executioners, responsible for carrying
out its sentences — the Furies, and later the demons.
Similarly, the pains of Hades are always conceived as an

3 Cf. Plut., Be superst, 7, p. 168 D.

4 Cf. above, Lecture II, p. 75.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 173

imitation of those which were every day inflicted on crimi-
nals. The guilty were bound in unbreakable chains, as in
the prisons ; the Erinyes struck them with their whips, as
they were flogged at the order of the magistrates ; fierce
monsters bit them, as their bodies were thrown to the
beasts or devoured by them in an infamous charnel-place.
The old custom of retaliation continued to be followed in
the other world, where the dead were treated as in life
they had treated their victims.5 Elsewhere we can recog-
nise an imitation of the torments inflicted on the accused,
who were subjected to torture to make them confess their
fault.

Penal law enacted a determined punishment for every
kind of offence ; the law which ruled in Hades had simi-
larly to inflict particular pains for each kind of fault.
This logical deduction led to a new development of penal-
ties beyond the grave. As gradually the moralists and
criminalists detailed and classified the breaches of divine
and human law, so the authors of apocalypses multiplied
the categories of those who suffered in the nether world.
They imagined the most fearful tortures, in order to
frighten sinners and drive them to seek in some religious
purification a means of escape from so terrible a lot. In
a myth which Plutarch has introduced into his book on
the belated vengeance of the gods,6 he shows us hypo-
crites, who have hidden their wretchedness under the
appearance of virtue, obliged to reverse their entrails so
that the inner side of them may be seen, haters who
devour each other, and misers plunged into and plucked
out from lakes of burning gold, icy lead and jagged iron.

The text which describes these sufferings of the other
world in greatest detail is the fragment of the apocryphal
apocalypse of Peter, which was found in Egypt some
thirty years ago and dates at least from the second cen-
tury of our era. The vision of hell here opposed to that of
heaven is like a first sketch for the tragic picture of the

s Cf. Dieterich, Nelcyia, p. 206 ss.

6 Plut., De sera num. vind., p. 567 B.

174 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

dwelling of the damned which Dante was to draw in his
Inferno. The fragment enumerates a long series of crim-
inals who are punished by black-robed angels and receive
the treatment appropriate to the nature of their faults.
Blasphemers are hanged by the tongue; the mouths of
false witnesses are filled with fire ; the rich who have been
merciless to the poor roll, clothed in rags, on sharp and
burning pebbles. Other tortures are like the sports of
macabre fancy: thus adulterers are hanged by the feet,
their heads plunged in burning mud ; murderers are flung
into a cave filled with serpents that bite them, the shades
of their victims watching their anguish.

A learned philologist7 has undertaken to prove that
this repulsive picture of the dwelling of the damned had
its origin in the Orphic books. If, however, he refers to
ancient, genuine Orphism, he is certainly mistaken. The
light fantasy of the ancient Greeks never laid heavy
stress on the horrors of Tartarus ; their luminous genius
took no pleasure in describing these dark atrocities.8
There is no evidence that they ever formulated, point by
point, a penal code which applied in the kingdom of Pluto.
The Romans, whose legal mind might have led them to do
so, were kept from such aberrations by their lack of
imagination. Their infernal mythology remained rudi-
mentary: even Virgil, who is the interpreter of the Hel-
lenic tradition, never alluded except in passing to the
infinitely diverse forms of crimes and their punishments.9
The Etruscans peopled the infernal regions with awful
monsters: they gave Charon and the Erinyes a wild
semblance which recalls the devils of the Middle Ages,
but we never find them drawing up an inventory of the
breaches of the moral law in order that a punishment
might be applied to each of these.

Everything points to the conclusion that this infernal

7Dieterich, Nekyia, 1893 (2d ed. 1913).

s Even the devout Plutarch rejects them as superstitious imaginations;
cf. Be super st., 167 A.
e Aen., VI, 625-628.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 175

theology developed in the East. The Egyptians described
at length in the "Book of the Dead" the pains of those
who despised the precepts of Osiris, and illustrated these
sufferings with pictures. The only pagan writing in which
we find a classification of sinners and of their torments,
analogous to that contained in the revelation of the
apocryphal gospel of Peter, is the Mazdean "Book of
ArtaViraf," which, although of late date, has antecedents
which certainly go back very far. The Persian religion,
which more than any other brings the Spirit of Evil and
his hordes of demons into relief, was certainly not uncon-
nected with the development of infernal eschatology,
even in the West, as is indicated by the fact that these
demons succeeded the Furies as executors of the divine
sentences. It was under the influence of these exotic reli-
gions that the descriptions were propagated of refined
tortures, terrifying to the adepts of the conventicles in
which they were revealed. The mysteries which spread
under the Koman Empire accentuated the contrast be-
tween the delights of heaven and the sufferings of hell.
These esoteric sects gave birth to the literature which
was to be perpetuated through the Middle Ages, and
inspire numbers of visionaries, poets and artists. Certain
authors of treatises on demonology in antiquity must
have revelled in inventing unheard-of atrocities, as later
the hagiographers took pleasure in describing the incon-
ceivable torments inflicted on martyrs.

Among all the forms of punishment that by fire pre-
dominates. The idea that the Erinyes burnt the damned
with their torches is ancient, and the Pyriphlegethon is an
igneous river surrounding Tartarus. Certain authors
went beyond this. Lucian in his "True Histories" de-
scribes the island of the impious as an immense brazier
whence rise sulphurous and pitchy flames. Thus was born
into the world in the Greco-Roman period a doctrine
which was to survive its fall and last to modern times. The
ancients certainly connected this infernal fire with the
treatment inflicted on those condemned to be burnt alive ;

176 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

but this exceptional punishment could not inspire an
eschatological conception which included all the dead. The
opinion has been advanced that the choice of fire was due
to the belief that this element purifies.10 Fire would have
been at first the means of destroying, in the Beyond as in
this world, the uncleanliness of souls, before it became the
instrument of their eternal torture. But a scientific theory
seems here to have influenced religious faith. The physi-
cians admitted the existence of an incandescent mass in
the interior of the earth, which produced volcanic erup-
tions and hot springs. As Tartarus was situated in the
uttermost depths of the underworld, it was conceived
as a vast brazier in which the sulphur and bitumen
vomited by the volcanoes were boiling for the punishment
of sinners.11

But this adaptation of the pains of Tartarus to con-
temporary physics could not save them from philosophi-
cal criticism. While the pagan priests, to the terror of
credulous minds, imagined more and more inhuman pun-
ishments for the guilty souls, the reaction of reason
against these cruel inventions necessarily gathered
strength. We have seen elsewhere how the polemics of
philosophers forcibly attacked these life-poisoning beliefs
and succeeded in a great measure in destroying them.12
Even those who did not deny the future life rejected these
fables of hell. There was an attempt to save the principle
of posthumous retribution by replacing the doctrine of
chastisement in Hades by that of the metempsychosis.
We now will try, while considering this theory of trans-
migration in its various aspects, to show how such sub-
stitution was effected.

10 Dieterich, op. cit., p. 197 ss.

n Punishment by fire is mentioned for the first time in Philodemos,
Hepl deG>i>, XIX, 16 ss. Philodemos being a Syrian, it is not unlikely that this
tenet is of Oriental origin. Cf. Diels, Abhandl. Alcad. Berlin, 1916, p. 80,
n. 3.

12 See above, Introd., pp. 8, 17 s., and Lecture II, p. 83.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 177

The mind of savages does not, like our science, dis-
tinguish between three kingdoms of nature. It supposes
the same energy to animate all the beings who surround
us, all of whom are taken to be like ourselves. The primi-
tives often attribute human or even divine intelligence to
beasts ; and the belief is found throughout the two hemi-
spheres that the spirits of the dead can incarnate them-
selves in animals and even lodge in plants. Men refrain
from the slaughter or gathering of certain species, from
eating their flesh or fruit, for fear of hurting a chief or
relative who has gone to inhabit them. This animistic
basis is common to a number of different peoples and is
at the foundation of the system of metempsychosis.

But that which makes the grandeur of this theory,
which won countless adepts throughout the centuries and
the world, is that it transformed this naive idea, which
had no moral bearing, into a doctrine of retribution and
liberation. To come back to the earth, to imprison itself
in a body which soiled and tortured it, became a punish-
ment inflicted on the guilty soul. The soul could not attain
to supreme felicity until it had purified itself by long
suffering and had gradually, through a cycle of rebirths,
freed itself from carnal passions.

It is infinitely probable that this doctrine of reincarna-
tion in the bodies of animals was in Greece a foreign
importation. Herodotus thought that it came from
Egypt,13 but it does not seem to have existed in that coun-
try in ancient times in the form of a regular succession
of transmigrations. On the other hand, Greek metempsy-
chosis shows a resemblance, striking even in details, to
one of the fundamental conceptions of the religious
thought of India, that of samsara, which was accepted as
a dogma there long before the birth of Buddhism. The
most probable opinion is that this idea made its way
across the Persian Empire and thus reached the Orphics
and Pythagoreans. It is, however, not unlikely that, like

is Herodotus, II, 123.

178 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

Babylonian astrology, Hindu eschatology was propagated
as far as Egypt at a comparatively recent date, that is,
about the sixth century B. C, and that the information
given by the father of history may be at least partly
correct, Egypt having served as an intermediary between
India and Greece.

We have not, however, to discuss here this problem of
the origins of metempsychosis, nor to follow the develop-
ment of the doctrine in ancient Greek philosophy. In the
period with which we are concerned, it had already long
been traditional in the Pythagorean and Platonic schools,
it was not only a philosophical theory but also a tenet
admitted by several religions. We can leave unanswered
the questions of whether, as the ancients affirm, the
Druids believed in it, being in this particular disciples of
Pythagoras, and of whether the Etruscans were per-
suaded to it by the teaching of the philosopher of Croton.
It is, however, certain that transmigration was in the
East an article of widely held belief. We find it accepted
by the mysteries of Mithras and by Manicheism, and it
survives to our own day in Syria among the sects of the
Druses,14 the Yezidis and the Nosairis.15

What was its form in the Roman period, and how was it
brought into harmony with traditional or acquired ideas
as to the future life?

The descent of the soul from heaven to earth is a fall;
the body is a grave in which this soul is buried, a prison
in which it is captive. These old Pythagorean doctrines
were unceasingly renewed and repeated down to the end
of antiquity. But the Orphic idea that this degradation
was the chastisement for an original sin, the consequence
of a crime committed by the Titans, who were the authors
of our race, and that this hereditary taint of guilt had to
be atoned for by their descendants, was either entirely

i* The Druses have even preserved the ancient doctrine that the number of
souls is always the same in the world. Cf. Silvestre de Sacy, Beligion- des
Druses, 1838, II, p. 459.

is Dussaud, Les Nosairis, Paris, 1900, p. 120 ss.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 179

forgotten or else, at the least, hardly regarded. The
equally ancient conception that a bitter and cruel neces-
sity constrained souls to incarnate themselves, was, on
the contrary, emphasised in consequence of the spread of
astrological fatalism. Their alternate descent and ascent
was conceived as governed by a cosmic law, like the prog-
ress and regress of the planets.16 The cycle of eternal
generation (kvkXos ye^ecrew?), which is eternal, like the
revolutions of the heavenly bodies, causes mind to circu-
late through matter which it animates.

This transmigration could be conceived in various
ways. A first theory, in which the influence of Stoic pan-
theism can be recognised, lays stress on the identity of
individual souls with the universal soul, of which they are
particles. One single divine principle awakens life in all
nature. It passes from being to being, quickening their
various forms, and that which is said to be death is no
more than a migration. The number of the souls that peo-
ple the earth is determined from the beginning; they
change their dwellings but not their essence. Hardly has
the human soul left one body before it enters another.
This continuous travelling causes it to go through all the
degrees of the animal hierarchy. It will pass, successively,
into a bird, a quadruped, a fish, a reptile, and then return
to man. This is why it is impious to devour the flesh of
our " lower brothers' ' and why the sage must practise
vegetarianism. Some thinkers, however, drawing logical
conclusions from the admitted premises, asserted that the
life of the vegetable kingdom derived from the same
migration as that of the animal kingdom and that the soul
of man could enclose itself in plants. It was to this teach-
ing that Seneca alluded when he gave the name of
Apocolocyntosis, "Transformation to a Pumpkin," to
his satire on the apotheosis of the emperor Claudius.

This eschatological doctrine had in reality nothing in
common with morality. If an uninterrupted chain unites

I6 See above, Lecture III, p. 101.

180 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

the existence of all species, if life propagates itself fatally
from man to the lower beings, this necessity seems to
exclude all hope of posthumous reward. In order to bring
the need of a retribution in after life into agreement with
the belief in the fatal circle of migrations, it was stated
that the good entered the souls of peaceful and tame
animals, the wicked those of wild beasts. This is why
Alexander of Abonotichos predicted to a devotee that he
would be in after life first a camel, then a horse, and end
by being a great prophet like himself .17 Hermes Trismegis-
tus even claimed to know that the just became eagles
among birds, lions among quadrupeds, dragons among
reptiles, dolphins among fish.18 But the lot even of these
privileged souls might not seem very enviable. The moral-
ists, therefore, relaxed the rigour of the system and
exempted noble spirits from bestial degradation. All souls
were no longer condemned to dwell in the bodies of
animals, but only those whose low inclinations had
assimilated them to brutes. They inhabited the species
which best conformed to their instincts. Thus debauchees
became hogs in another life ; cowards and sluggards, fish ;
the light-minded and frivolous, birds.19 The pagan theolo-
gians ingeniously and laboriously interpreted the story of
Circe's changing the companions of Ulysses into beasts
as an allegory of metempsychosis. Circe became the circle
of the reincarnations which were undergone by those who
emptied the magic cup of pleasure, and whence the wise
Ulysses escaped, thanks to Hermes, that is, to reason
which instructed him.20

Transmigration thus became less an inevitable law of
nature than a punishment of the guilty. But this punish-
ment did not overtake only those who were reborn in
animal shape. All physical defects and moral taints,

it Cf. Lucian, Alex., 43.

is Hermes Trismeg. ap. Stob., Ed., I, 49, p. 398, 16 ss., Wachsmuth.

19 Tim. Locr., p. 104 E.

20 Ps.-Plut., Vita Eomeri, 126 ; Porph. ap. Stob., Eel, I, 49, 60, p. 445,
Wachsmuth.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 181

which afflict man from his entry into the world, were the
consequence of his crimes in an earlier life. The old
Pythagoreans combined the doctrine of the metempsy-
chosis with that of the pains reserved for the wicked in a
hell beneath the earth. But we have seen how the belief in
the tortures of Hades was combated until it yielded and
was discredited.21 Metempsychosis dared to do without
these incredible subterranean tortures and thereby
acquired a new importance. It supplied the means of
maintaining the dogma of posthumous retribution with-
out imposing a blind faith in the foolish fables of the
poets : souls were held to pass immediately from one body
to another without leaving the earth, rising or sinking
in the scale of beings in accordance with their merits or
demerits. Thus Hades becomes our corporeal life in
which we expiate the faults of a previous life. The Furies
are the passions which strike us with their whips and
burn us with their torches.22 The ingeniousness of the
theologians found an explanation for each of the tortures
described by the old mythology. Tantalus threatened by
the rock is the man obsessed by the fear of heavenly
wrath; Tityus, whose entrails are devoured by vultures,
is the lover whose heart is gnawed by care; Sisyphus
rolling his rock becomes the ambitious man who exhausts
himself with vain efforts; the Danaides carrying water
in a leaking vessel, which empties as it is filled, are the
insatiable souls who give themselves up to pleasure and
never have enough of enjoyment. Even the old precepts
of the Pythagorean school were twisted from their ordi-
nary meaning and became symbols of this eschatology.
A popular tabu, admitted by the sect, was formulated in
the sentence, ' ' If thou leave thy dwelling, turn not round
lest the Erinyes pursue thee." The first meaning of this
prohibition, which is known to the folk-lore of many
places, is that to turn round as one leaves one's house is

21 See above, p. 176.

22 See above, Lecture II, p. 78.

182 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

to run the risk of being assailed by the spirits who haunt
the threshold. But the doctors of Neo-Pythagorism did
not thus understand the saying. For them, the dwelling
was the body, the Erinyes the passions : when souls left
the body they must not return thither or the passions
would attach themselves to them and make them their
victims.23

Here, however, we touch on another form of metempsy-
chosis. The ancients make a distinction between the doc-
trine of reincarnation or "reincorporation" (translating
exactly the Greek word /xeTe^crwjLtarwcrL?), and rebirth or
palingenesis (Trakiyyeveaia). This latter word is not
here taken in the Stoic sense of the eternal return of
things, a series of cosmic cycles in which the same
phenomena are exactly reproduced.24 It is used to desig-
nate a transmigration separated by intervals, a process
which is not continuous. In the first kind of metempsycho-
sis there is, properly speaking, no rebirth, for the soul
does not leave the earth, but there unceasingly accom-
plishes its circular journey through the living world. On
the contrary, according to the second theory, it does not
immediately resume possession of a body. It remains dis-
incarnate for a long period of years — for Virgil as for
Plato the number is one thousand — and thus leads a
double existence of which its passages to this world take
up only the lesser part. It is not even fatally constrained
to redescend to the earth : if it has kept itself free from
all corporeal defilement, it will soar to heaven and dwell
there for ever.

But if, during his sojourn on the earth, man has given
himself up to the pleasures of the senses, his soul becomes
attached to his body. At first it cannot separate itself
from the corpse, around which it circles, plaintively
regretting the joys it has lost. It desires again to enter

23 Cf. Bevue de philologie, XLIV, 1921, p. 232 ss.
* 24 Above, Introd., p. 13.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 183

the flesh which was the instrument of its voluptuous-
ness ; it seeks a dwelling which will allow it to continue
the sensual habits which have become its second nature.
And so, when the time is accomplished, it is seized with
an irresistible love for the body in which it is to enclose
itself again; a fascination, like a magic charm, draws
it to this object of its desires, which is to cause its misery.
The fatality driving it to incarnation and suffering is not
here an inevitable law of the universe but an inner neces-
sity, a destiny which it has made for itself. The cosmic
Ananke has become psychic.

Thus every vicious tendency contracted by the soul
during its abode in this world has for this soul conse-
quences which their long duration makes more momen-
tous. If virtue enables it to rise upward at each new birth
and to acquire, as the ages revolve, an ever increasing
perfection, perversion of character produces effects which
are calamitous not only in this life but also in several
other lives through the centuries. Moral laws are no less
infallible than physical laws. Right or wrong, every act
has to be paid for with harm or benefit in the long chain
of incarnations. By his acquired disposition, man deter-
mines his future throughout a sequence of generations;
the evil he suffers is to be imputed not to the creator but
to himself. A bust of Plato found at Tivoli and now pre-
served in San Francisco25 has graven on it the following
sentence of the Master as to the lot of immortal souls :
' 'The fault is the chooser's; God is without fault' ' —
Alria eXo/xeVw, 6 #eo? avairios.

The very fact of birth was a pain for the soul, since
it tore it from its celestial home and plunged it into
a soiled and troubled world; consequently it was not
necessary for the soul's chastisement that it should
descend into the body of animals. Indeed, certain thinkers
rejected this kind of metempsychosis : a reasonable spirit

25 Museum of the University of California; Kaibel, Inscr. Sicil. et Ital.,
12, 1196. The sentence is taken from Bepull, X, 617 C.

184 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

could not, they held, dwell in a being deprived of reason.
Transmigration occurred therefore exclusively from man
to man and from beast to beast. Such was the opinion de-
fended by Porphyry and Jamblichus, who, in order to
dispose of the texts of Plato which were contrary to this
theory, upheld that he spoke figuratively, and that his
"asses," his "wolves" and his "lions" signified persons
who resembled these beasts in ignorance or ferocity.26

It is seen that this metempsychosis was getting far
away from that which had its origin in the primitive be-
liefs. The "cycle of generation" was no longer conceived
as a flux of life circulating throughout the variety of the
animate beings peopling the earth, but as the descent and
the ascent of a psychic essence, passing alternately from
heaven to earth and from earth to heaven.

It is to these doctrines that Virgil alludes when in the
Aeneid he shows us, gathered in a remote place of the
Elysian Fields, the shades whom after a thousand years
a god calls to come in a great troop to the river Lethe,
there to drink the forgetfulness of the past, whereby
"they begin again to wish to return to the body."27

But the poet also gives us precious hints as to the lot
reserved for the soul in the interval between its incarna-
tions. For palingenesis, unlike the doctrine of perpetual
reincorporation, left a place for chastisement in the infer-
nal regions. These were however situated, as we have
seen, for the Pythagoreans and Posidonius, whom Virgil
interpreted, not on earth but in the air. It was there that
the soul had to purify itself from the stains acquired while

26 Porph., De regressu anim., f r. 11, Bidez=Aug., Civ. Dei, X, 30 ; Jam-
blich. ap. Nemes., Be nat. horn., 2; cf. Zeller, Philos. Gr., V*, p. 713.

27 "Has omnes, ubi mille rotam volvere per annos,

Lethaeum ad fluvium deus evocat agmine magno,
Scilicet immemores super ut convexa revisant,
Rursus et incipiant in corpore velle reverti. "

Aen., VI, 749-753.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 185

it was in touch with the flesh. This pollution, we know,28
was conceived in a very material form. The texts speak
of a thickening of the subtle substance of which the soul
is formed, of concretions encrusting it, of indelible marks
with which the vices stain it. When the soul left the
corpse, of which it kept the form, it first, as we have seen,
floated in the ambient air. When it was not weighed down
by the matter with which it had become impregnated, the
breath of the atmosphere raised it gently and, gradually
warming it, bore it to the heavens, and this is why the
Winds are often represented on tombstones.29 But these
Winds, fierce divinities, could also cause the soul to expiate
its faults bitterly. If it had lost its purity and lightness,
the whirlwinds drew it into their vortex, the storms
rolled and buffeted it, thus violently tearing away the
crust which had become attached to it. The souls were
thus freed from defilements contracted during life just as
linen hung in the air is bleached and loses all odour.

Their passage through the air did not complete their
purification. In the East the idea was old that above the
firmament was found the great reservoir of the waters
which fell to the ground as rain. Beyond, a burning zone
must extend, where the heavenly bodies were lit, and a
river of fire, identified with the Pyriphlegethon of the
Greeks, was imagined. These old mythological ideas were
brought into relation with Stoic physics : above the region
of the winds stretched that of the clouds, in which the rain,
the snow and the hail were formed, and higher still there
was the burning air, in which the lightning flashed and
which touched the starry spheres. The souls must blaze a
path through these obstacles. After being tossed and
blown about by the winds, they were drenched by rain and
plunged into the gulf of the upper waters. They reached
at last the fires of heaven, of which the heat scorched
them. Not till they had undergone this threefold trial,

28 See above, Lecture VI, p. 162, and Introd., p. 29.

29 Mudes syriennes, p. 70.

186 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

in the course of which they had passed through countless
years of expiation, did they at length find peace in the
serenity of the luminous ether.30

Virgil,31 in the passage already quoted, alludes to this
doctrine when, in speaking of the souls, he says :

" . . . Aliae panduntur inanes
Suspensae ad ventos, aliis sub gurgite vasto
Inf ectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni. ' '

"Some are exposed, hung lightly to the winds; as to
others, the crime infecting them is washed away in a deep
gulf or burnt by fire. ' '

In an eschatological myth, which Plutarch32 borrows
from Demetrius of Tarsus, he shows us guilty souls who
seek to reach the moon and who do not arrive thither,
but are hunted and buffeted as by swelling billows, and
others who have reached the goal, but are rejected and
plunged from on high into the abyss. Similarly, Hermes
Trismegistus depicts souls flung from the height of
heaven into the depths of the atmosphere and delivered
to the storms and whirlwinds of warring air, water and
fire. Their eternal punishment is to be tossed and car-
ried in different directions by the cosmic waves which
roll unceasingly between earth and heaven.33

The passage of souls through the elements is repre-
sented symbolically on a funeral monument almost
contemporary with the verses of Virgil, which was dis-
covered near Scarbantia in Pannonia.34 Above the por-
traits of the deceased, there appear first in the spandrels
of this cippus two busts of the winds facing each other.
Higher up, on the architrave, are two Tritons, and on
each side of a trident two dolphins, which evidently repre-
sent the idea of the watery element. Finally, at the top

30 See Lecture VI, p. 161 ; cf. below, Lecture VIII, p. 196.
3i Virg., Aen., VI, 740 ss.

32 Plut., Be facie lunae, p. 943 B.

33 Ps. Apul., Asclep., 28.

34 Jahresh. Institut Wien, XII, 1910, p. 213.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 187

of the stone, in the pediment, we see two lions. The lion,
for physical and astrological reasons, was considered as
the symbol of fire, the igneous principle.

"We have seen35 that for the doctrine which placed the
limit of the dwelling of the gods and the elect in the zone
of the moon, another was substituted according to which
the souls, in order to regain the purity of their original
nature, had to traverse the spheres of the planets to reach
the heaven of fixed stars. The trials of purgatory had to
be prolonged up to the entry into the dwelling of the
blessed. The idea was, therefore, conceived of attributing
each of the planets to one of the elements. The moon was
the ethereal earth, Mercury the water, Venus the air, the
sun the fire : and inversely, Mars was the fire, Jupiter the
air, Saturn the water, and the sphere of the stars the
celestial earth, in which lay the Elysian Fields. Thus the
soul, in order to be saved, had to be reborn three times in
virtue of a triple passage through the four elements.36

This last doctrine, which is connected with astrological
speculations, seems to have had only a limited vogue and
to have been of ephemeral duration. On the other hand,
the idea of a purgatory situated in the atmosphere be-
tween our earth and the moon, a place in which souls were
purified not only by fire but also by air and water, was
long to survive the fall of paganism and to be propa-
gated through the Middle Ages in the West as in the East.
For Dante, purgatory still occupied a fiery zone stretched
between the terrestrial and the celestial circles.

Was the soul which, after a long expiation, had reached
the Elysian Fields and the sphere of the stars, always to
descend thence, seized with a blind love for the body, and
to pass again through the trials of another earthly life?
No, the ancient Orphics already flattered themselves

35 See above, Lecture III, p. 107.

seMacrob., Comm. Somn Scip., I, 11, 8; Proclus, In Tim., II, 48, 15 ss.,
Diehl.

188 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

that by their cathartic rites they obtained for the soul an
escape from the fatal cycle of generation and regaining
of heaven for ever. The Pythagoreans inherited this doc-
trine, which they kept nntil the Roman period. In spite of
the contrary opinion of certain thinkers, pagan philoso-
phers and priests generally taught that after pilgrim-
ages, more or less long, after a succession of deaths and
rebirths, the purified spirits returned to dwell for ever in
their celestial country. It was to this goal that the mys-
teries promised to lead their initiate; this was the end
which the sages flattered themselves that they attained
by their virtue.

It will be understood that such a hope, combined with
the suppression of eternal damnation in Hades, led neces-
sarily to the doctrine of the eventual salvation of all
souls. We know this system especially through Origen,
but he merely reproduced a theory to which the evolution
of pagan ideas had led.

We have seen that metempsychosis helped the philos-
ophers to shake, if not to ruin, the belief in infernal pun-
ishment. But this belief again had power towards the end
of antiquity, when the dualist sects which were the out-
come of Persian Mazdeism were propagated and when
Plato became the supreme authority in philosophy. We
touched on this point, in another lecture,37 when we
showed how the idea of a demons' prison in the bosom of
the earth triumphed.

Thus, when the Roman world was in its decline, men
came back to the old threefold distinction of the Orphics
and the Pythagoreans. The very guilty, who cannot be
corrected, are hurled into Tartarus, where they suffer for
ever the punishment of their incurable wickedness. Souls
less corrupt are subjected to purification, either by pass-
ing through the elements or by undergoing successive
reincarnations, and thus they regain their original nature
before they are readmitted to their first dwelling.

37 Lecture II, p. 87 ss.

THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL 189

Finally, the most perfect souls, those of the wise who
have freed themselves from the domination of the body
and have not let themselves be contaminated by matter,
and those of the pious faithful, to whom religious lustra-
tions have given back their purity or whom initiations to
the mysteries have made equal to the gods, at once rise
again to the celestial spheres.

In the next lecture we shall speak of the rewards
reserved for them in the dwelling of the blessed.

VIII
THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED

WE have seen how the evolution of religions faith
caused the dwelling-place of the dead to move
from the tomb to the nether world and from the
nether world to the heavens. When the abode of souls was
changed, all the ideas attached to the future life had to be
transposed. In this lecture we shall endeavour to make
clear how the opinions which were held as to the felicity
of the blessed were thus transformed. We shall take up
again matter which we have already touched upon in
another connection and try to show the successive changes
undergone by three manners of conceiving happiness in
after life : the repose of the dead, the repast of the dead,
and the sight of God.

The most ancient and originally the simplest of these
conceptions was that of the repose of the dead. We know1
that the dead who had not been buried in accordance with
the rites were believed to find no rest in the tomb. A
corpse had to be committed to the earth with traditional
ceremonies in order that the spirit which animated it
might have quiet. If this spirit were not subsequently
nourished by offerings and sacrifices, it left its burial
place and roamed the earth's surface like an animal
driven by hunger. The shades inhabiting the tombs could
also be evoked by necromancers and such disturbance
broke in upon their rest most unpleasantly.

These archaic ideas were so deeply implanted in the
popular mind that other beliefs never expelled them,
but supervened and existed side by side with them with-
out causing their disappearance.

i See Lecture I, p. 64 ss.

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 191

On tombs of the imperial period formulas like the fol-
lowing are often read: "Hie requiescit," "Here rests, "
"Quieti aeternae," "For eternal rest" — inscriptions
which could be interpreted figuratively ; but other wishes
can only be taken to have a material sense, such as:
"Ossa quiescant," "May his bones rest," and "Molliter
ossa cubent," "May the bones lie softly." Poetry has
preserved a number of similar phrases. Tibullus ex-
presses the following wish for a loved woman : "May thy
slender form rest well beneath the soft earth."2

The rest which the exact accomplishment of the rites
gave to the dead was not physical only but moral also.
The dead were securi — the word is properly applied to
them — that is, they were exempt from care. Doubtless the
care from which they were delivered by the cult of the
grave, was first that of suffering from hunger and thirst,3
but the "eternal security" (securitas aeternaY they
enjoyed was also the absence of all the fears and anxieties
which haunt humanity.

When philosophy claimed to free souls from the super-
stitions of the past, it did not destroy the old conception
of rest in the tomb but cleansed it from all material alloy.
If it be doubtful whether anything of man survives, it is
at least certain that death marks the abolition of the
pains of this world and the end of its troubles. Mors
laborum et miseriarum quies, is Cicero's definition.5
Death restores us to that state of tranquillity in which we
were before our birth.6 The "eternal home" which shel-
ters the remains of man is the silent temple in which he
no longer has anything to fear from nature or from his
fellows.

The Epicureans who made ataraxia their ideal of life,
the Stoics who found theirs in impassivity (a7ra#eia),

2 Tibullus, II, 6, 30 : " Sic bene sub tenera parva quiescat humo. ' '

3 Tertull., Be testimonio animae, 4.

* Securitati aeternae; cf. Dessau, Inscr. seh, 8025 ss., 8149.
5Cic, Catil., IV, 7; cf. Tusc., I, 11, 25; 49, 118.
6 Sen., Dial, VI, 19, 5.

192 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

could see in the anaesthesia of death the supreme realisa-
tion of such absence of emotion and passion. The corpse
lies as softly on its last bed as a man plunged in a deep
and quiet sleep. The burial place is indeed often conse-
crated to Somno aeterno.7 This idea is expressed in a
thousand forms in literature and in epitaphs. A poor
grammarian of Como, who doubtless had had little reason
to congratulate himself on life, caused two lines of verse
to be engraved on his tomb:* "I fled the miseries of sick-
ness and the great ills of life ; I am now delivered from all
its pains and enjoy a peaceful calm.,, On an African
grave there are the following words: "After bearing a
heavy burden and after manifold toils, he speaks no
more, content with the silent dwelling in which he rests."9
We read elsewhere, "Life was a pain, death prepared me
rest."10 The sentiment expressed by these inscriptions
and many more like them is no mere reflection of the
teaching of philosophers who denied the future life : it is
profoundly human. The melodious but melancholy apos-
trophe of Leconte de Lisle is well known :

"Et toi, divine mort, ou tout rentre et s 'efface,
Accueille tes enf ants dans ton sein etoile ;
AfTranchis nous du temps, du nombre et de l'espace
Et rends nous le repos que la vie a trouble."

' ' 0 Death divine, at whose recall,
Returneth all

To fade in thy embrace,
Gather thy children to thy bosom starred,

7 Dessau, Inscr. sel., 8024 and note; cf. Cic, Tusc, I, 41, 97; and Introd.,
p. 10.

s Bucheler, Carm. epigr., 1274:

"Morborum vitia et vitae mala maxima fugi.
Nunc careo poenis, pace f ruor placida. ' '
9 Bucheler, Hid., 573 :

' ' Qui post tantum onus, multos crebrosque labores
Nunc silet et tacito contentus sede quiescit. "
io Bucheler, Hid., 507: ''Poena fuit vita, requies mihi morte parata est.,,

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 193

Free us from time, from number and from space,
And give us back the rest that life has marred."11

In the midst of all the tribulation of our tormented
existence, to how many minds, even those which have the
strongest religious conviction, have not the immobility
and insensibility of those who are no more sometimes
seemed like a deliverance 1 In antiquity also, this aspira-
tion towards the moment when man will obtain remission
of all his travail does not necessarily imply the belief
that there is no hope beyond the cold sleep of the grave.
This yearning mingles with faith in immortality and is
transformed with it.

When it was believed that the dead went down into the
depths of the earth where lay the infernal kingdom,
another meaning was given to their rest. The funeral
eulogy of a noble woman who towards the end of the
Eepublican period saved the life of her husband, who had
been proscribed, ends with the naive words : "I pray that
the gods thy Manes may grant thee rest and thus protect
thee."12 The shades of the kinsmen of the dead must
receive their souls in the subterranean world13 and thus
ensure their welfare. The road which must be travelled
before the abode of the elect was reached was long and
beset with dangers. The Book of the Dead in Egypt, the
Orphic tablets in Greece, were guides to the Beyond which
taught the dead not to stray from the right path and to
avoid the various dangers threatening them.14 Many of
them, the impious who had to expiate their misdeeds and
the unfortunate to whom funeral duties had not been
rendered, wandered wretchedly on the banks of the Styx,
vainly longing to enter the "peaceful abode" of the Ely-
sian Fields.15 There, lying in the cool shade, the blessed

11 Transl. by J. C. Anderson (in my Astrology and Religion, p. 171).

12 Dessau, Inscr. sel., 8393, 79 : " Te di Manes tui ut quietam patiantur
atque ita tueantur opto. "

13 See above, Lecture I, p. 68; II, p. 86, n. 39; V, p. 134.

14 See above, Lecture VI, p. 143.

i5Virg., Aen., VI, 705: "Domos placidas. n

194 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

enjoyed a felicity exempt from all care. Serene quiet in a
sweet idleness cheered by joyous relaxation and wise con-
versation—such was the ideal which some mysteries16
opposed to the weary agitations of earthly life and to the
long sufferings of the sinful and vagabond soul. For the
adepts of these doctrines the secura quies applied to the
repose of the nether world, and this conception of beati-
tude beyond the grave is found to persist until the end
of paganism.17

But we have seen that another doctrine triumphed in
the Roman period, the doctrine that souls rise to the skies
to live there eternally among the stars. In this great
metamorphosis of eschatological beliefs what became of
the idea of the repose of the dead! The question deserves
to be more closely investigated, for the transformation
had lasting consequences of which the ultimate effects can
be felt even today.

The Pythagoreans were, as we have seen,18 the first to
promulgate the doctrine of celestial immortality in
Greece and Italy. One of the allegories familiar to the
teaching of the sect connected human destiny with the
old myth of Hercules at the crossroads. The Greek letter
Y, of which the stem divides midway into two, was in the
school the symbol of this comparison — we have already
alluded to it elsewhere.19 When man reaches the age of
reason two paths are open to him. One is smooth and easy
but ends in an abyss: this is the way of pleasure. The
other is at first rough and jagged — it is the hard road of
virtue — but he who climbs to the summit of its slope can
there rest deliciously from his weariness. Funeral reliefs
represent this contrast naively : at the bottom of the stele
the dead man is often seen accomplishing the labours of
his career; at the top of the stone he is shown stretched
at his ease on a couch.

16 See Introd., p. 34 ss.

17 Comptes rendus Acad. Inscr., 1912, p. 151 ss. ; cf. Biicheler, Carm.
epigr., 513.

is Lecture III, p. 95. i» Lecture VI, p. 150.

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 195

The meaning of the allegory is immediately apparent :
the quieta sedes in which deserving souls are received,
has become the sky. How was this idea developed?

Homer20 had already described Olympus as "the im-
movable seat of the gods which is neither shaken by the
winds, nor wet by the rains, nor touched by the snow, but
is bright with a cloudless light.' ' The Epicureans applied
these lines of the poet to the serene dwelling where noth-
ing occurred to modify the perpetual peace enjoyed by
the gods.21 And the founder of Stoicism had already
taught that the pious souls, separated from the guilty,
inhabited "tranquil and delectable' ' regions.22 Both
called this dwelling of the gods or the elect by the same
name — sedes quietae.

We must here remember the distinction, established
by the philosophers and often repeated, between the sub-
lunary circle and the celestial spheres.23 Above, the world
of the eternal gods; below, the world of generation and
corruption. There the pure ether always kept the same
serenity; here the struggle of the elements called forth
unceasing agitation and transformation. On one side
reigned peace and harmony, on the other war and discord.
The zone of the moon was the boundary between the two
contrasted parts of the world, and "the limit between
life and death."24 It was when they had crossed it, that
the souls entered the quietae sedes of the Blessed.

The very ancient idea of a fearful journey which the
dead had to make in order to reach Pluto 's subterranean
kingdom was transferred to the space lying between the
earth and the moon, for this was the region of the uni-
verse to which the name of nether world (Inferi)25 was

20 Odyssey, VI, 42 ss.

21 Lucretius, III, 18 ss.

22Zeno, fr. 147 (von Arnim, Fragm. Stoicorum, I, p. 40) : "Zeno docuit
sedes piorum ab impiis esse discretas et illos quidem quietas ac delectabiles
habitare regiones. "

23 See Introd., p. 25 ; Lecture III, p. 96.

24Macrob., Somn. Scip., I, 11, 6: "Vitae mortisque connnium.,,

25 See above, Lecture II, p. 81 s.

196 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

henceforth applied. As we have seen in the previous lec-
ture,26 when the soul, escaping from the body, was laden
with material dross, it was tossed about for many cen-
turies before it could again win to the ether. Shaken by
the winds, swept to and fro by the opposing elements of
air, water and fire, it had to endure a long torture before
it was cleansed of the sin which weighed it down. When at
length it was freed of every fleshly taint, it escaped from
inward trouble also, from the pains and the passions
provoked by its union with the body. "Then," says
Seneca, "it tends to return to the place whence it has
been sent down; there eternal quiet awaits it when it
passes from the confused and gross to the clear and
pure."27 In the same way certain Neo-Platonists taught
that souls which had lived well, rose to the celestial
heights and rested there amid the stars. Even in this life
the ecstasy, which gave them anticipated enjoyment of
the future bliss, is described by them as a transport in
which reason attains to absolute stability or equipoise,
escapes from all movement and rests in the Supreme
Being.28 Peace in the celestial light : such is the highest
form which the repose of the dead assumed in paganism.29
The various ideas which we have just analysed — those
of the repose in the grave, the repose in the infernal
regions and the repose in heaven — followed parallel
courses during the centuries and in part passed from
antiquity to the Middle Ages. But the distinction between
them is not always clear. Even in paganism they were
intermingled and in the course of time they were grad-
ually confused. In no class of beliefs is the force of tradi-

26 See Lecture VII, p. 185 s.

27 Sen., Consol. Marc, 24, 5: "(Animus) nititur illo unde demissus est;
ibi ilium aeterna requies manet e confusis crassisque pura et liquida visen-
tem. ' »

28 Plotin., IX, 8, 9, p. 768 A; IX, 8, 11, p. 770 C.

29 Cf. Aug., Serm., CCLX (P.L. XXXVIII, 1132, 38) : "Dixerunt Plato-
nici . . . animas, ire ad superna caelorum et requiescere ibi in stellis et
luminibus istis conspicuis. ' '

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 197

tion greater than in those which centre in death, and the
Christian peoples clung tenaciously to articles of faith
which Jews and pagans had shared before them.

We have seen30 that the masses did not easily give up
their belief that the dead continued, in or about the
tomb, a vegetating and uncertain life. Extreme impor-
tance was still attached to burial because the more or
less unconscious conviction persisted that the soul's rest
depended on that of the body. The dread of ghosts was
still the inspiration for some ceremonies performed over
the remains of the dead. Nay, a new apprehension was
added to this, namely, the fear lest the dead whose bodies
were torn from the tomb should have no part in the
resurrection of the flesh.31 The formula, "Hie requiescit,"
"Here rests — ," was transferred from pagan to Chris-
tian epigraphy, and the rest men wished to the departed
was first the rest of the corpse, which was peacefully to
await the Day of Judgment in its last dwelling.

These were doubtless vulgar prejudices rather than
dogmas recognised by orthodoxy, yet they did not remain
without influence on the teaching of the doctors of the
Church. For instance, Saint Ambrose32 enlarges on the
thought, probably borrowed from some philosopher, that
death is good because in it the body, source of our uneasi-
ness, our troubles and our vices, rests, calmed for ever,
while the virtuous soul rises to heaven. After the travail
of existence the dead rest as man rests on the Sabbath
day, and this was, it was explained, the reason why the
seventh day was the day of the commemoration of the
departed.

The idea of rest in the infernal regions has left no deep
traces on the Christian faith, for which the subterranean
world became the abode of the wicked. It was, however,
somewhere in the bowels of the earth that the dwelling
of the righteous who lived before the Redemption was

30 Lecture I, p. 45 ss.

si Ibid., p. 69.

32 St. Ambrose, Be bono mortis, 9; cf. Kaibel, Inscr. Sic. It., 2117.

198 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

commonly placed, sometimes also that of children who
died unbaptised. They found there according to the Pela-
gians a " place of repose and salvation" outside the
kingdom of heaven.33

But in Roman times the idea of peace in the celestial
light was dominant among the Jews and Christians as
among the pagans. Thus the Book of Enoch shows us the
prophet carried off in a whirlwind to the heights whence
he perceived "the beds where the just rest" amid the
saints.34 We can here point out exactly the most important
of the literary intermediaries through whom this concep-
tion was transmitted from paganism to Judaism and
from Judaism to Christianity. Towards the end of the
first century A. D., amid the desolation which followed
on the destruction of the Temple, a pious Jew, somewhere
in the East, composed and ascribed to the venerable
authorship of Esdras an apocalypse which enjoyed sin-
gular popularity until the time of its rejection by the
Church as apocryphal. The visionary who set it down
combines a number of pagan reminiscences with biblical
ideas. He promises eternal felicity to the just, and asks
himself what will be the lot of souls between the time of
their death and the end of the world. Will they be at rest
or will they be tortured ? And the angel who inspires him
answers that when the vital breath has left the body to go
again to adore the glory of the Most High, the soul which
has violated the divine law will not enter the celestial
dwellings but will "wander amidst torments, for ever
suffering and saddened on seven paths." But the soul
which has walked in the way of God "will rest in seven
orders of rewards."35 The sixth of these is the order in
which its face begins to shine like the sun and in which it
becomes incorruptible, like the stars ; the seventh is that
in which it wins to the sight of God.

33 Aug., De anima, II, 12.

34 Boole of Enoch, 39.

ss IV Esdr., VII, 91: " Eequiescent per septem ordines"; cf. VII, 95

(p. 131 ss., Violet).

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 199

These are conceptions and even expressions which be-
long to astral immortality, and the Jewish anthor, like the
pagans before him, everywhere contrasts the state of
agitation filled with anguish reserved for the guilty with
the blessed tranquillity which is the reward of a pious
life.36 The description of the celestial dwelling which Saint
Ambrose borrowed from the pseudo-Esdras is singularly
like that given by the philosophers of the earlier period :
a place in which there is no cloud, no thunder, no light-
ning, no violence of winds, neither darkness nor sunset,
neither summer nor winter to vary the seasons, where no
cold is met with, nor hail, nor rain. But the Christian
doctor, like the Jewish visionary, adds a new feature:
there will be no more sun nor moon nor stars ; the light of
God will shine alone.87

The idea of repose in the eternal light was, thanks to
the apocalypse of the supposed Esdras, to become one of
those most frequently expressed by epitaphs and ritual.
It was from this apocryphal work that the Roman liturgy
borrowed the form of a prayer introduced into the office
of the dead at least as early as the seventh century and
still sung in the funeral service — Requiem aeternam dona
eis Domine et lux perpetua luceat eis. "Lord, give them
eternal rest and may perpetual light shine upon them."

The idea of the repast of the dead evolved, like that of
their repose, as the conception of life beyond the tomb
was gradually transformed, and it finally assumed a far
higher significance than that originally attributed to it.

According to a belief found everywhere, the dead, as
we know,38 needed nourishment if they were not to suffer
from hunger. Hence the obligation to make libations and
sacrifices on the tomb and to deposit food and drink there.

36 IV Esdr., VII, 36, 38 (p. 146, Violet).

3T Ambrose, Be bono mortis, 12, $ 53 (P.L., XIV, 154) ; of. IV Esdr., VII,
39.

38 See Lecture I, p. 50.

200 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

The neglect of these sacred duties entailed consequences
fearful to him who failed to fulfil them, just as their exact
observance ensured him the good will of the spirits of the
dead.

The custom of holding banquets which united the mem-
bers of a family beside a grave at a funeral or on certain
consecrated days, was connected with this belief. This
custom was no mere rendering of an honour to one who
had gone, no unmixed manifestation of piety or affec-
tion. The motive for these ceremonies was much more
concrete. As we have stated elsewhere,39 men were per-
suaded that the spirit of him who lay beneath the ground
was present at the meal, took its place beside its kin and
rejoiced with them. Therefore its share was set aside for
it, and by consecrated formulas it was invited to drink
and eat. Moreover the guests themselves ate copiously
and drank deeply, convinced that the noisy conviviality of
the feast was a source of joy and refreshment to the shade
in the gloom of its sepulchral existence. Sometimes the
dinner took place in a room within the tomb, specially set
aside for such meetings, sometimes in one of the gardens
which men delighted to make around the "eternal house' '
of the dead40 and to which inscriptions sometimes give the
name of " paradise' ' (irapdSeLcros) .41

These are customs and ideas which are found every-
where from the time when history had its origin, practices
and ideas to which under the Roman Empire the people
still clung, and which even partially survived the conver-
sion of the masses to Christianity, although the Church
condemned them as pagan. Until the end of antiquity and
even in the Middle Ages, banquets, at which wine flowed
abundantly, were still held on anniversaries by kinsfolk
and friends near the remains of those they loved.42

When, however, the conception of survival in the tomb

39 See Lecture I, p. 54.

40 IUd., p. 57.

4i Calder, Journal of 'Roman Studies, 1912, p. 254.
42 See above, Lecture I, p. 55 ss.

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 201

was superseded or overshadowed by that of survival in
the nether world, the repast of the dead was also trans-
ferred thither. Henceforth it was in the Elysian Fields
that pious souls could take their place at the table of the
Blessed. The Orphics were the first to introduce into
Greece this new idea, which was, however, no more than
the development of a pre-Hellenic belief, and it spread
through the mysteries of Dionysos43 to every part of the
ancient world : the ritualistic repasts in which the initiate
took part, the drunkenness which exalted their whole
being, were for the adepts of this cult at once a foretaste
and a warrant of the happiness reserved for them in that
eternal feast of the subterranean world in which a sweet
intoxication would rejoice their soul. That forgetfulness
of all cares which the divine liquor gave was connected
with Lethe, the water of which, according to mythology,
souls drank that they might lose all memory of their
former life.

An immense number of reliefs, scattered throughout
the whole extent of the Eoman Empire, bear witness to
the popularity of the belief in this form of immortality.
The dead man who has been made a hero and whose
family comes to make sacrifices to him is stretched on a
couch and lifts the rhyton which holds the heady drink
of Bacchus, while before him, on a little table, dishes are
placed. These banquets took place, as we have said, in the
Elysian Fields, and the idea of the repast thus met and
combined with the idea of rest. The Blessed were imag-
ined as lying on a soft bed of flowered grass, taking part
in a perpetual feast, to the accompaniment of music and
songs. Lucian in his "True Histories"44 describes, with
ironical exaggeration, the joys of these guests who are
stretched comfortably among the flowers of a fragrant
meadow in the shade of leafy trees, and who gather, in-
stead of fruit, crystal goblets, which fill with wine as soon
as they are placed on the table.

43 See Introd., p. 35; Lecture IV, p. 126.

44 Lueian, Verae hist., II, 14.

202 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

In spite of the mockery of sceptics these beliefs still
had some faithful partisans even at the end of paganism.
A picture discovered in the catacomb of Praetextatus
shows us a priest of the Thraco-Phrygian god Sabazios
celebrating a mystic banquet with six of his fellows, and
another fresco represents the introduction of a veiled
woman into the garden of delights, where she has been
judged worthy of being received at the table of virtuous
souls.45

Sometimes in the reliefs of the " funeral banquet" the
dead are seen wearing on their head the bushel (modius)
of Serapis, with whom, after a virtuous life, they have been
identified. This indicates a confusion, to which much other
testimony bears witness, between the Bacchic mysteries
and the cult of the Alexandrian god.46 Serapis is the great
master of the feast (o-vfXTroo-iapxqs)?1 the host who must
in the nether world entertain those faithful to him. Thus
the eschatological beliefs of the Nile Valley mingled with
those of Greece. In the country of burning sun, where a
straying traveller runs the risk of dying of thirst on the
arid stretches of sand, the hope expressed above all others
for him who accomplishes the great pilgrimage to the
abode of the infernal divinities, is that he may find where-
with to quench his consuming thirst. "May Osiris give
thee fresh water" is a wish which the votaries of the
Egyptian god often inscribed on their tombs. Thus the
repast in the other world was to be above all a refresh-
ment (refrigerium). The word passed into Christian lan-
guage to denote both earthly "agape" or sacred meal and
the bliss of the other world, and even today the Roman
Church prays for the spiritual " refreshment" of the
dead.48

We touch here on a question which is not yet completely

45 Best reproduction, Wilpert, Pitture delle Catacombe Bomane, II, 132-
133.

46 See above, Introd., pp. 35, 37.

47 Aelius Arist., XLV (VIII), 27 (p. 360, Keil).

48 See my Oriental Beligions, Chap. IV, end.

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 203

elucidated, that of the relation established between the
funeral banquet and the salvation of those who took part
in it.

In Rome from the end of the Republic onwards this
banquet, amid the general decline of faith in immortality,
was increasingly detached from the tomb and became
a guild or domestic ceremony. The tendency was to re-
duce it to the repast of a family or confraternity, to the
perpetuation among men of the memory of him whose
features were preserved by a statue or picture. But the
funeral cult acquired new meaning with the spread of
Oriental religions. It did not cease to be useful to the dead
who were its object, to whose subsistence in the beyond
and safe arrival in the Elysian Fields it was still thought
to be necessary. The offerings of the living sustained
them on their dangerous and hard journey thither; the
food and drink restored them on the long road they had
to travel before they reached the place of everlasting
refreshment.

But the funeral repast was also salutary to those who
offered it, and not only because it ensured to them the
good will of a spirit or demon capable of protecting them.
This banquet, at which wine flowed profusely, was like
the "orgies" of the Bacchic and Oriental mysteries, and
the resemblance is partly explained by an identity of
kind.

The ritual of the gods whose death and resurrection
were commemorated — Bacchus, Osiris, Attis, Adonis —
was probably a development of the funeral ritual, and the
banquet of initiation was thus related to the banquet at
the grave. On the one hand, it was believed that by amystic
union with the god, men could share his blessed lot after
the transient trial of a death like his.49 On the other hand,
it was with a dead man that a repast was taken, but with
one who also, in some sort, had become a god, who had
preceded the diners into the other world and awaited

49 See Lecture IV, p. 122; Introd., p. 34.

204 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

them there. "Live happy and pour out wine to our
Manes,' ' says a Latin epitaph of Syria, engraved beneath
a scene of libation, " recollecting that one day you will be
withus.,,5°

According to an opinion which often found expression,
the shades themselves rejected whoever did not deserve
to enter the abode of the Blessed, but willingly received
the pious soul which had always fulfilled its duty towards
them.51 For admission to this club of posthumous diners
a members ' vote was necessary. Thus the funeral banquet
took on the character of a mystic banquet ; that is, it came
to be conceived as a prelibation of the banquet at which
the elect feasted in the other world. The wish which the
guests made to each other — " Drink and live!" — became
an allusion, no more to this earthly life, but to that other
existence in which they would participate in the felicity
of him who had gone before them and who would help
them to rejoin him therein. The following advice,
repeated elsewhere in various forms, is found on the tomb
of a priest of Sabazios : "Drink, eat, jest and come to me
. . . that is what you will carry away with you" (hoc
tecum feres).52 This is not to be understood here as an
Epicurean invitation to enjoy life because all else is
vain,53 but a veiled expression of faith in the efficacy for
the salvation of the initiate attributed to the joyous ban-
quets which gathered men about a tomb.

The connection between the beliefs of the mysteries and
the hopes attached to the funeral cult became more inti-
mate as immortality brought the spirits of the dead
nearer the celestial divinities. The idea that some few
privileged mortals win admission to the banquet of the
gods is very ancient. An inscription of Sendjerli in Syria,
which goes back to the eighth century before our era,
orders sacrifices to be made in order that the soul of King

so CIL, III, 14165.

5i See Lecture I, p. 68 ; II, p. 86 ; V, p. 134.

52Bucheler, Carm. epigr., 1317=CIL, VI, 142; cf. Plato, Phaedo, p. 107 D.

53 As it is elsewhere; cf. Introd., p. 11.

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 205

Panamu "may eat and drink with the god Hadad,"54
and Greek mythology told that certain heroes, such as
Heracles, who had been carried off to heaven, had there
become the table companions of the gods. Horace states
that Augustus, borne to the ethereal summits, will there
rest between Hercules and Pollux, "drinking nectar
with his rosy lips."55 But we have seen elsewhere that
apotheosis, or deification, which was at first the privilege
of an aristocracy, became the common lot of all pious
souls,56 and that the Elysian Fields were transferred from
the depths of the infernal realm to the upper spheres of
the world. The repast of the Blessed was thus transported
to heaven.57 This removal to the region of the stars seems
to have been first made in the astral religion of Syria, but
it was commonly accepted in western paganism. This is
why in funeral reliefs of the Roman period, in which the
dead are shown banqueting, such representations are
placed in the upper part of the stele, above the scenes of
earthly life which fill the lower portion of the stone. The
emperor Julian is giving us a mocking picture of this
repast of the heroes, when in one of his satires he shows
us the shades of the Caesars at table immediately beneath
the moon, in the highest zone of the atmospheres — in
accordance with the ideas of the Stoics.58 Men readily
fashioned the heroes who tasted the joys of Olympus on
the pattern of the celestial divinities — resplendent with
light, clothed in garments of dazzling whiteness, their
heads crowned with rays or surrounded by a luminous
nimbus, singing, as in a Greek symposium, melodious
hymns.

The philosophers of course gave a symbolical interpre-
tation of the intoxication of the souls which took part in
the feast, explaining it as the ravishing of reason pene-

64 Lagrange, Religions semitiquest, 1905, p. 493.

55 Horace, Od., Ill, 3, 12.

56 Lecture IV, p. 113 s., 116 ss.

67 See, for instance, Kaibel, Epigr. Graeca, 312, 13.

58 Julian, Caesares, p. 307 C; cf. IntrocL, p. 29; Lecture III, p. 98.

206 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

trated by divine intelligence. We will return to their
doctrines presently.

The Jews of the Alexandrian period shared the belief
in the celestial banquet with the Syrian paganism and
transmitted it to the Christians. The Paradise of the
elect was often conceived as a shady garden where tables
were set out at which immortal guests passed their time
in endless joy. Thus, not to mention better-known texts,
Aphraates, a Syriac author of the first half of the fourth
century, depicts the felicity of the Blessed, clothed in
light, who are admitted to the divine table and are there
fed with food which never fails. * ' There the air is pleas-
ant and serene, a brilliant light shines, trees grow of
which the fruit ripens perpetually, of which the leaves
never fall, and beneath these shades, which give out a
sweet fragrance, the souls eat this fruit and are never
satiated."59

The representation of this feast of Paradise recurs
several times in the paintings of the catacombs, but in
them the wine is poured out by Peace (Eirene) and
Charity (Agape). An allegorical explanation gave a
spiritual meaning to the food and drink consumed by the
elect. But the old idea which was at the root of all the
later development, the idea of a material repast in which
the dead participated, did not disappear from popular
faith when the conception that souls rose to the sky was
adopted, and in many countries it has not been obliterated
even today.60

Even in the pagan period, as we have said, enlightened
minds accepted the old descriptions of joyous feasts in
fresh meadows only in a figurative sense. A less coarse
conception of immortality suffered them to be looked
upon only as symbols or metaphors. This conception of
celestial beatitude originated not in the cult of the dead

59 Patrologia Orientalis, I, p. 1014.

60 See above, Lecture I, p. 55 s.

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 207

but in the cult of the gods. It was at first as material as
preceding conceptions, but it became purified as the idea
of psychic survival was spiritualised.

We have seen in another lecture61 that the * ' sight of the
god" who was adored was the highest degree of initia-
tion. Theurgy flattered itself that it could evoke divine
apparitions at will. These visions have been described to
us by those who claimed to have been favoured with
them.62 Their character and their effects have moreover
been analysed in detail in the treatise of Jamblichus, On
the Mysteries. The impression most immediately pro-
duced by these epiphanies was a boundless admiration for
their splendour. The incomparable beauty with which the
gods were radiant, the supernatural light in which they
were wrapped, had such an effect on men that they could
hardly bear the effulgence and nearly lost consciousness,
but their souls were flooded with unspeakable joy and
purified for ever.

To this ineffable delight of a heart possessed of divine
love there was added the highest revelation for the intel-
ligence.63 Must not the infallible " gnosis" be that which
was the result of instruction received directly from the
mouth of a celestial power which had come down to earth?

The devotees who had obtained the signal favour of
this resplendent vision, were thenceforth united to the
deity who had manifested himself to them, and were
certain to share his immortal life. The fugitive pleasure
which they had felt on earth would become a bliss without
end in the kingdom of the dead. There they would see face
to face the god who protected them and learn from him
all that had remained hidden from them in this life.

These ideas, half religious, half magical, are very
ancient, especially in Egypt, but they were transformed
by astrolatry. Here the celestial powers had not to be

6i Lecture IV, p. 121.

62 For instance, by the physician Thessalus (under Nero); cf. Cat. codd.
astrol., VIII, 3, p. 137; VIII, 4, p. 257.

63 Cf. Lecture IV, pp. 121, 125 s.

208 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

summoned by prayer or invoked by incantations in order
that they might come and converse with the faithful, but
were perpetually visible and offered themselves, day and
night, to the veneration of humanity.

Henceforth the knowledge of divine things was no
longer to be communicated by the words which the ini-
tiate believed that he heard in the silence of the sanctuary.
It was revealed by a mysterious inspiration to him who
had deserved it by a fervent observation of the heavens.64
Thus by an illumination of the intelligence the astral
powers unveiled their will and the secrets of their move-
ments to their attentive servants. Here below this knowl-
edge was always imperfect and fragmentary, but it would
be completed in another world, when reason once more
would rise aloft to the starry spaces whence it had
descended.

This eschatological doctrine, which made astronomy
the source of virtue and of immortality, could only be
developed by a clergy devoted to the study of that science.
Its first authors were doubtless the " Chaldeans/ ' who
transmitted it to Greece with their theories as to the divi-
sions of the sky and the heavenly bodies. The most
ancient writing in which this Oriental influence asserts
itself clearly is the Epinomis, probably a work of the
astronomer Philip of Opus, a disciple of Plato. Let us
listen to his own words :65

"When man perceives the harmony of the sky and the
immovable order of its revolutions, he is first filled with
joy and struck with admiration. Then the passion is born
in him to learn about them all that it is possible for his
mortal nature to know, for he is persuaded that he will
thus lead the best and happiest existence and will go after
his death to the places suited to virtue. Then being veri-
tably and really initiate, pure reason taking part in the
only wisdom, he will spend the rest of his time in con-

e* See above, Lecture IV, p. 126.
ss P. 896 C; cf. p. 992 B.

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 209

templation of what is most beautiful among all visible
things. ' '

This passage shows clearly the manner in which
astrolatry modified ancient ideas as to the sight of a god,
the reverential wonder felt in his presence by the faith-
ful, the truth communicated to them and the immortality
which completed their initiation. The doctrine of an intel-
lectual reward for the Blessed was to attract scholars who
in this world gave themselves up to study. Spiritual
activity, which emancipates from material care and gives
man nobility and virtue, seemed to them to be the only
occupation worthy of the elect. If the theory that the
Blessed would after death find this activity in the midst
of the divine stars, is probably of "Chaldean" origin, it
was developed by the Greek philosophers and in particu-
lar by Posidonius. It was also admitted into the Roman
mysteries, which, being penetrated by the spirit of
Oriental theologies, claimed to supply their adepts with a
complete explanation of the universe.

We have already alluded to this system in speaking of
astral mysticism.66 Nature herself has destined man to
gaze upon the skies. Other animals are bent to the earth ;
he proudly lifts his head to the stars. His eye, a tiny mir-
ror in which immensity is reflected, the soul's door, open
to the infinite, follows the evolutions of the heavenly
bodies from here below. By their splendour they make
men marvel and by their majesty compel them to venera-
tion. Their complicated movements, ruled by an immova-
ble rhythm, are inconceivable unless they are endowed
with infallible reason.

The observation of the sky is not only an inexhaustible
source of aesthetic emotion. It also causes the soul, a
detached parcel of the fires of the ether, to enter into
communion with the gods which shine in the firmament.
Possessed with the desire to know them, this soul receives
their revelations. They instruct it as to their nature;

go See above, Lecture IV, p. ] 26.

210 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

thanks to them, it understands the phenomena produced
in the cosmic organism. Thus scientific curiosity is also
conceived as a yearning for God. The love of truth leads
to holiness more surely than initiations and priests.

Of the numerous passages in which these ideas are
expressed I will recall one which is well known but is not
always well understood.67 Virgil in his Georgics tells us
what he looks to receive from the sweet Muses whom he
serves, being "struck with a great love for them." Not,
as one would expect, poetic inspiration but physical
science. The Muses are to point out to him the paths of
the stars in the sky, to explain to him the reasons for
eclipses, tides and earthquakes and the variations in the
length of the day. "Happy is he," the poet concludes,
"who can know the causes of things, who treads under-
foot all fear and inexorable fate and vain rumours as to
greedy Acheron."68 There is, in spite of a reminiscence
of Lucretius, nothing Epicurean in the idea here ex-
pressed. The man who has won knowledge of Nature,
which is divine, escapes the common lot and does not fear
death because a glorious immortality is reserved for him.

For these joys which the acquisition of wisdom gives
here below, partially and intermittently, are in the other
life bestowed with absolute fulness and prolonged for
ever. Reason, set free from corporeal organs, attains to
an infinite perceptive power and can satisfy the insatiable
desire of knowledge which is innate within reason itself.
The Blessed souls will thus be able at once to delight in
the marvellous spectacle of the world and to obtain per-
fect understanding thereof. They will not weary of fol-
lowing the rhythmic evolutions of the chorus of stars of
which they form part, of noting the causes and the rules

67 The true interpretation has been given by Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics,
1913, p. 112 s.

es Georg., II, 489 ss. :

" Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnis et inexorabile Fatum
Subiecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. "

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 211

which determine their movements. From the height of
their celestial observatory they will also perceive the
phenomena of our globe and the actions of men. Nothing
which happens in nature or in human society will be
hidden from them. This speculative life (£105 Oecop-qriKo^)
is the only one on earth or in heaven which is worthy of
the sage.

To observe the course of the stars throughout eternity
may appear to us a desperately monotonous occupation,
a rather unenviable beatitude. For the stars, shorn of
their divinity, are for us no more than gaseous or solid
bodies circulating in space, and we analyse with the spec-
troscope their chemical composition. But the ancients
felt otherwise : they describe with singular eloquence the
" cosmic emotion'' which seized them as they contem-
plated their southern skies — their soul was ravished,
borne on the wings of enthusiasm into the midst of the
dazzling gods which from the earth had been descried
throbbing in the radiance of the ether. These mystic
transports were compared by them to Dionysiac intoxica-
tion; an "abstemious drunkenness"69 raised man to the
stars and kindled in him an impassioned ardour for
divine knowledge. And as the exaltation produced by the
vapours of wine gave to the mystics of Bacchus a fore-
taste of the joyous inebriation promised to them in the
Elysian banquet, so the ecstasy which uplifted him who
contemplated the celestial gods caused him to feel the
happiness of another life while he was yet here below.70

"I know," says an epigram of Ptolemy himself,71 "I
know that I am mortal, born for a day, but when I follow
the serried crowd of the stars in their circular course my

69N?70dXto5 n^dy, Philo., probably after Posidonius.
™ Cf. Lecture IV, p. 126.
71 Anthol. Palatina, IX, 577 :

015' 8ti dvarbs iy<b teal 4<pdp.epos, d\\' 8rav Aarpuv

/xaarevo} wvKivas ap.<pi8p6p.ovs ZXikcls
oi>K€T iirirpavu} yairjs iroclv, dXXd irap"1 avrip

Zavl deoTpecpios Trlpir\apai ap.fi poal-qs.

212 AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

feet touch the earth no longer : I go to Zeus himself and
sate myself with ambrosia, the food of the gods. ' '

In the same way the intoxication produced by music,
the divine possession which purified man by detaching
him from material cares, caused him to taste for an in-
stant the felicity which would fill his whole being when he
should harken to the sweet harmony produced by the
rotation of the spheres, the celestial concert which the
ears of mortals are incapable of hearing, as their eyes
cannot bear the brilliance of the sun. Men's instruments
could cause the perception of only a weak echo of these
delightful chords, but they awoke in the soul a passionate
desire for heaven, where the unspeakable joy produced by
the cosmic symphony would be felt.

The beatitude of the elect, as conceived by astral im-
mortality, was a magnified projection to heaven of the
joys which a religion of the erudite held to be most worthy
of virtuous spirits. When pagan theology transported the
abode of the most favoured souls outside the boundaries
of the universe to a world beyond the senses,72 the happi-
ness of these souls could no longer consist solely in the
sight and the hearing of the motion of the spheres. This
entirely material conception of felicity in the Beyond had
to be spiritualised. The ecstasy of Plotinus does not stop
short at the visible gods of the firmament ; in it the soul
is transported beyond even the world of ideas and
reaches, in an upward rush of love, the divine unity in
which it merges, ridding itself of all consciousness and all
form. This is the supreme goal which none can attain
after death save him who has conquered perfect purity.
But the aristocratic intellectualism of this philosophy
reserved this union with the first Principle for an elite
of sages. Paganism in its decline believed in a hierarchy
of souls ascending to the divinity, in a scale of merit
corresponding to various degrees of rewards: the ma-
jority lived among the stars and, divine like them, helped

72 See Introd., p. 4.

THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED 213

them to govern the earth— we already know their blessed
lot; others who were more perfect entered the intelli-
gible cosmos73 and their happiness, as it was imagined, is
but a more exalted counterpart of the joys attributed to
the former class. They were plunged in immovable con-
templation of pure Ideas ; forgetting earthly things, they
were wholly absorbed by this intense activity of thought
which was to them an inexpressible joy. Moreover, being
set free from the bonds of their flesh and of their indi-
viduality, they could embrace in a single glance all the
separate intelligences which together formed the divine
Nous, and thus had a simultaneous intuition of every-
thing, the direct comprehension of the ultimate reason of
things.

Beatific vision of the splendour of God, immediate per-
ception of all truth, mystic love for an ineffable Beauty —
these were sublime speculations which were to be unend-
ingly reproduced and developed after the fall of pagan-
ism. Unavailing efforts to represent a state inconceivable
to any human imagination, they expressed the ardent
yearning of religious souls towards an ideal of perfection
and felicity. But this high religious spirituality had grad-
ually broken away from somewhat coarse beliefs which
had little by little been purified. The rapture which trans-
ported Plotinus to those summits where reason, bewil-
dered as in a swoon, forsakes even thought in order to
lose itself within a principle which is above all definition,
is directly connected with the ecstasy which in the temples
of Egypt came upon the devotee who, like the philoso-
pher, conversed " alone with the lone god,"74 whom the
priest had evoked, and believed that in this vision he
found a guarantee of eternal happiness.

73 See Lecture III, p. 108.

74 MSvos irpbs fiSvif). The expression had been used by religion before being
taken over by philosophy. Cf. Le culte egyptien et le mystidsme de Violin,
in Monuments Piot, XXV, 1922, p. 78 ss.

INDEX

Ablutions, 118; cf. " Lustration ' '

Absorption in God, 36 s., 42, 122

Acheron, 5, 8, 15, 27, 78, 80s.,
84 s., 149, 210

Achilles, 74

Adonis, 116, 203

Aeacus, 10, 75

Aeneid, 48, 82 s., 151 ; Aeneas, 74,
128; cf. "Virgil"

Africa, 93, 120, 139, 192

Age of reason, 137

Agricola, 18

Agrippina, 131

Ahriman, 89; cf. "Spirit of Evil"

Air full of souls, 26, 59, 160— pu-
rifies, 119, 143, 186; cf. Winds
—Aerial bodies, 103, 168; cf.

Alexander of Abonotichos, 9, 23,

180
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 6
Alexander the Great, 62
Alexandria, 17, 20, 79, 96— «ults,

36, 39; cf. "Isis," "Serapis"
Allegorical interpretations, 12, 21,

24, 42, 78 ss., 82, 86, 152, 180,

195, 206
Amorgos, 105
Andromeda, 104
Angels, 140

Anima, 59, 167; cf. "Soul"
Ante diem (death), 133
Antinous, 105, 164
Antipodes, 80s.
Antonius Diogenes, 22
Aphraates, 206
Apocalypse of Peter, 173
Apocolocyntosis, 179

Apollo, 112, 123, 156— Musagetes,

101
Apollonius of Tyana, 23, 164
Apotheosis of heroes, 32, 205 — of

emperors, 102, 112 s., 156, 164—

of Claudius, 179 — of great men,

114 s. — in mysteries, 118 ss. — of

children, 138 ss.
Appius Claudius Pulcher, 22
Apuleius, 108, n. 41
Aristarchus, 79
Aristophanes, 95
Aristotle, 6, 17, 77, 98, 131; cf.

1 ' Peripatetic ' '
Armenia, 52
Arnold (Matthew), 116
Asia Minor, 112; cf. "Cybele"
Astral body, 169

Astrolatry, 123, 207; cf. "Stars"
Astrology, 17, 28, 92 s., 96, 100,

102, 117, 187
Ataraxia, 8, 191
Atargatis, 121
Athribis, 93
Atmosphere, 25, 81, 162, 168; cf.

"Hades"
Attis, 35 ss., 39, 116, 203
Augustus, 156
Avernus, 74
Axiochos, 79

Babylonia, 94, 156; cf. "Chal-
deans ' '

Bacchus, 52, 120, 138 s., 202, 211
—Bacchantes, 62— cf. "Diony-
sos"

Banquet; funeral, 53 ss., 200 ss —
ritual, 120 ss., 203 s.— eternal,

216

INDEX

35, 151, 201 ss. — of the gods,

204
Biothanati, 26, 129 ss., 141 ss.
Bird (soul), 59, 157 s.
Black hand, 135
Black souls, 166
Blood poured on tombs, 51 — seat

of life, 51, 118 — in mysteries,

113, 201 ss.
Boats (sun and moon), 92, 113,

154 s. — carry souls, 155; cf.

"Charon"
Body carried to heaven, 159, 164;

cf. 165, 167 — soul attached to

body, 182 s.; cf. 44 ss.; cf.

"Corpse"
Book of the Dead, 148, 175, 193—

of Enoch, 108, 198— of Arta

Viraf, 175
Boscoreale (goblets), 11
Bread, 120
Buddhism, 177

Burial necessary, 64 ss., 197 — re-
fused, 65, 143, 145 s.; cf. " In-

sepulti"
Byzantines, 132, 146

Caesar (Julius), 8, 51, 104

Calendar, 102

California, 148

Caligula, 67, 131

Callimachus, 17

Cameo of Paris, 156

Cancer and Capricorn, 153

Carducci, 115

Carneades, 6

Castor and Pollux, 104, 113, 205;

cf. ' ' Dioscuri ' '
Castor of Ehodes, 22, 97
Catacombs, 202, 206
Catasterism, 104, 113; cf. "Stars"
Cato of Utica, 26, 144
Catullus, 17
Celsus, 88

Celts, see "Druids," "Gaul"
Cena novemdialis, 53

Cenotaph, 65; cf. 48
Cerberus, 10, 83, 87
Chaldaic oracles, 38, 103
Chaldeans, 28, 35, 37 s., 95, 100 ss.,
107 s., 160, 208 s.j cf. "Baby-
lonia ' '

Chariot of the sun, 102, 113, 156 s.

Charon, 85, 149, 174— Charon's
boat, 10, 25, 66, 75, 80, 155

Children sacrificed, 135 — games in
other life, 138 s. — unbaptised,
198; cf. "Untimely death,"
' ' Apotheosis ' '

Christians, pagan customs of, 52,
55 s., 119, 145 s., 200— beliefs,
68 s., 90, 92, 108, 140 s., 143,
153, 187, 196 ss. — biothanati,
146

Chrysippus, 13

Church, see "Christians"

Cicero, 19, 26 s., 31 ss., 44, 83,
104 s., Ill, 113, 135, 152, 161,
165

Circe, 74, 180

Circumpotatio, 55

Claudius, 152, 179

Clean thes, 13

Cocytus, 78

Colleges (funeral), 67, 143

Comet, 104; cf. "Star"

Commodianus, 146

Como, 192

Conflagration of the world, 12 ss.

Consus, 71

Contemplation of stars, 209; cf.
1 < Sight of God ' '

Copernicus, 28, 109

Corinthians (Epistle to), 11, 106

Cornutus, 14

Corpse (life of), 45, 164; cf.
"Body"

Corstopitum, 156

Crescent (symbol), 93, 97, 99

Crown of life, 117

Curse tablets, see "Defixiones"

Cybele, 35 ss., 39

INDEX

217

Cynics, 65
Cyprus, 135

Danaides, 85, 87, 171, 181

Dante, 43, 109, 174, 187

Dead; food of, 50 — partake of ban-
quets, 54 s. — communicate with
living, 58 s. — feared, 47 — malev-
olent, 63 s. — tutelary spirits,
60 s. — keep character of living,
73 — received by shades or not,
68, 86, 193 — physical character
of, 165 ss.; cf. "Ghosts,"
"Soul," "Spirits"

Death, sleep, 10, 45, 192— not to
be feared, 7 ss., 19 — second d.,
110 — untimely d., 128 ss. — rep-
resented as a monster, 117

Defixiones, 63, 68, 134

Deification, 34, Ills.; cf. "Apo-
theosis ' '

Demetrius of Tarsus, 186

Democritus, 5, 7

Demons, 26, 29, 60, 62, 80, 86 s.,
88 s., 133, 136, 145, 154, 162,
172, 175

Destiny, see "Fatalism"

Devotio, 63

Di animates, 149

Dido, 59

Didyma, 99

Dio Cassius, 62

Dionysos (mysteries), 35, 120, 123,
201s., 211; cf. "Macchus"

Dioscuri, 156; cf. "Castor"

Dolphins, 180

Domitian, 103

Druids, 23, 94, 178

Druses, 178

Dualism, 24, 89, 117, 188

Eagle carries souls, 102, 113, 157

ss.
Earth (Mother), 36, 86; cf.

"Cybele," "Moon"
Eclecticism, 21, 27

Ecstasy, 42, 121, 126, 196
Egypt, 48 s., 54, 86, 112, 134,
157, 173, 177 s— Egyptian reli-
gion, 45, 76, 79, 94, 113, 122 s.,
148, 153, 167, 175, 202, 207, 213
— in Eome, 36 ss.
Elements purify the soul, 25, 81,

119, 185 ss., 196, 201
Eleusis, 34, 138; cf. "Mysteries"
Elijah, 156

Elysian fields, 34, 73, 76, 79, 84,

120, 138 s., 151, 165, 171 ss.,
184, 193 s. — in the moon, 25,
81 s., 97 — about the moon, 98 —
among the stars, 104, 187 — rep-
resented, 74; cf. "Hades"

Emperors, divinity of, 112 s., cf.
' ' Apotheosis ' ' — not subject to
fate, 117; cf. "Kings"

Ennius, 21, 79, 165

Enoch, 108, 198

Epictetus, 12, 14

Epicurus, 7 ss., 20 — Epicureans,
65, 77, 110, 195, 204, 210

Epinomis, 208

Epiphanies of gods, 121, 123

Epoptism, 121; cf. "Sight of
god"

Erinyes, 26, 75, 78, 173 ss., 181 s.;
cf. ' ' Furies ' '

Eros, 138

Esdras, 198

Eternal house (tomb), 3, 48 — eter-
nal rest, 196, 199 — eternal pains,
76, 88, 172 — eternal banquet,
see ' ' Banquet ' '

Etruscans, 5, 53 s., 63, 71, 74 s.,
117, 149 s., 155, 174, 178.

Eusebius of Alexandria, 92

Evil eye, 154

Evil, Spirit of, see "Spirit"

Executed criminals, 145; cf. " Bio-
thanati"

Fatalism, 117, 133 s., 136, 179,
183

218

INDEX

Fates, 84, 134, 138

Fatum, 133

Faustina, 156

Fire, stoic, 12 ss. — heavenly, 28,
185; cf. " Stars ''—of hell, 175
s — purifies, 119, 176, 185 ss.;
cf. l l Pyriphlegeton "

Fish, sacred, 121

Food of the dead, 50 s., 56

Fortunate islands, see "Islands"

Freer collection, 154

Funeral cult, 47 ss. — funeral ban-
quet, see "Banquet," "Sculp-
ture"

Galileo, 109

Ganymede, 159

Garden of tombs, 57, 200

Gates, of Hades, 70, 80— of heaven,
153, 162 s.

Gaul, 23; cf. "Druids"

Gello, 134

Genii, 60, 142

Germanicus, 156

Ghosts, 4, 7, 62 s., 67 s., 83, 91,
130 s., 134, 165, 197

Gladiators, 51, 136

Gnosis (sacred lore), 23, 111, 114,
121 ss., 125, 207 ss.

Goat Star, 105

Gobryes, 79

God immanent, 30; cf. "World"
— transcendent, 41, — identifica-
tion with g., 34, 107 s.; cf.
"Soul"— sight of God, 121,
207 — visible gods (stars), 31,
104, 108; cf. "Epiphanies"—
sage, god on earth, 14, 111 s. —
evil god, 133 — god eaten in mys-
teries, 120

Greek beliefs, 5, 61, 69, 72 ss., 79,
87, 95, 102, 105, 113, 115, 117,
146 s., 155, 157, 174, 177— mys-
teries, 34 s. ; cf. " Dionysos, ' '
' ' Eleusis ' ' — funeral cult, 53 s.,
56

Guide of souls, see "Psycho-
pomp ' '

Hadad, 205

Hades, Greek, 4 s., 72, 134, 148,
170 — stoic, 14 — Pythagorean, 26,
78, 81, 181— Neo-Platonic, 41,
88 — mysteries, 37 — descent into
H., 148 ss., 171— on earth, 78,
181s.— in the air, 168; cf. "At-
mosphere ' ' — between sun and
moon, 103; cf. "Gate," "In-
feri, " " Tartarus, " " Nether
world ' '

Hadrian, 104, 157

Hanged, 143 — rope amulet, 136

Harmony of spheres, 25, 101, 115,
212

Heavens, three, 106 — eight, 106 s.;
cf. "Immortality," "Planets"

Hecate, 92, 134

Heliodorus of Emesa, 68, 86

Helios, 123, 130; cf. "Sun"

Hell dragon, 154; cf. "Hades"

Hemispheres opposed, 80 s.

Hercules, 104, 113, 123, 144, 167,
205 — at cross-roads, 150, 194

Hermes, 180 — soul-guide, 25, 85,
105, 138, 163— (Thot), 122

Hermes Trismegistus, 38, 114, 121,
180, 186

Herodotus, 177

Heroes, 113 ss., 140, 142, 149, 167,
204 s.

Hesiod, 350

Hie requiescit, 191, 197

Hierapolis, 159

Hipparchus, 96

Honey, 52, 119 s.

Horace, 12, 130, 142, 205

Horse carries souls, 155 s.

Hostanes, 136

Hypsistos (Most High), 41, 104,
108, 130

Icaromenippus, 106

INDEX

219

Imago, 166

Immortality, earthly, 19 s. — celes-
tial, 25 ss., 29, 32, 37, 91 ss.,
138— lunar, 96 ss.; cf. "Moon"
— solar, 100 ss.; cf. "Sun" —
stellar, 103 ss.; cf. "Stars"—
conception of i., 110 — privilege
of divinity, 111 — i. of the few,
see "Heroes"

Incineration, 46

India, 54, 93, 95, 177

Infants (death of), 128 ss.

Inferi, 4, 25, 71, 78, 81, 86, 166,
195; cf. "Hades," "Nether
world ' '

Innupti, 137

Insepulti, 25, 64 ss., 145 — rejected
by shades, 68, 86, 193

Intoxication, 126, 205, 211s.; cf.
"Wine"

Invicti (stars), 117

Ion of Chios, 95

Irish wake, 55

Isis, 36 s., 121, 123, 154

Islands of the Blessed, 25, 80 s.,
96, 155 — of impious, 175

Ixion, 84 s., 171

Jacob's ladder, 154

Jamblichus, 40, 103, 169, 184, 207

Jews, 35, 89, 108, 135, 142, 197 ss.,

206; cf. "Philo"
John Climacus, 154
Josephus, 142
Journey to Hades, 148 ss. — to

heaven, 152 ss.
Judaism, see "Jews"
Judgment of the dead, 76, 88, 151,

172 s.
Julian the Apostate, 9, 42, 98, 157,

161, 164, 205
Julius Caesar, see "Caesar"
Jupiter, 106 — summits exsuperan-

tissimus, 108 — star, 107, 187

Katoptromanteia, 166, n. 62

Kings immortal, 112 — anointing

of k., 119; cf. "Emperors"
Kiss (last), 59

Lactantius, 153

Ladder, 153 ss.

Larvae, 63

Lemur es, 4, 60, 72, 131— Lemuria,

63, 71
Lesbos, 134
Lethe, 76, 184, 201
Libations on tombs, 50 ss., 204
Libri Acheruntici, 149
Lion, 187
Liternum, 47

Livia, wife of Drusus, 135
Lucan, 103
Lucian of Samosata, 8, 23, 39, 49,

54, 62, 67, 75, 97, 106, 175, 201
Lucretius, 7, 45 s., 138, 210
Lunula, 97
Lustrations, 118
Lysimachus, 65

Maccabees, 142

Macrobius, 132 s.

Magi, 79, 95

Magic, 22, 26, 52, 67, 118, 119,
124, 130 s., 133 ss., 143, 154,
158, 163, 166— magic papyri, 86,
134 ss.; cf. "Necromancy"

Manalis lapis, 71

Manes, 4, 18, 32, 47, 54, 60 ss., 72,
86, 93, passim

Manicheans, 93, 103, 154, 178

Manilius, 31, 112, 133

Marcellus, 156

Marcus Aurelius, 14, 39

Mars, 123— star, 107, 131, 141,
187

Marseilles, 163

Martyrs, 143, 145

Maximus of Tyre, 61

Mazdeans, 89, 95, 175, 188; cf.
1 ' Persia ' '

Meals, see ' ' Banquets ' '

220

INDEX

Melihraton, 52

Memoriae aeternae, 19

Memory, Lake of, 148

Menander, 141

Mercury (star), 107, 187; of.
1 1 Hermes ' '

Metempsychosis, 26, 41 s., 74, 78,
82 s., 172, 177 ss. — in beasts,
179 s., 183 — in plants, 179 —
punishment, 180

Miletus, 105

Milk, 52

Milky Way, 94, 104, 152 s.

Minos, 75, 85

Mirrors in magic, 166

Mithras, 37 s., 89, 103, 106, 154,
156, 164, 178; cf. 163

Mojave Indians, 148

Money (in mouth of dead), 84

Monsters, see " Death,' ' " Souls' »

Monteleone (chariot), 155, n. 23

Moon, 28, 29, 86 — new moon, 91 —
m. and resurrection, 91 s. —
abode of souls, 25 s., 93 s., 96 s.,
186, 195 — dissolves souls, 168 —
limit of heaven, 25, 98 s. —
Olympic earth, 97; cf. 187—
rules physical life, 102, 107; cf.
< ' Boat ' '

Mother of gods, 35 ss.

Mourning, 47, 51

Muses, 101, 115, 210

Music, 24, 132; cf. "Harmony of
spheres ' '

Mussulman, 142

Mysteries, Greek, 34 s., 138; cf.
1 ' Dionysos, " ' ' Eleusis ' ' — orien-
tal, 33 ss., 96, 116 ss., 138, 160—
m. and philosophy, 38, 124 ss. —
transformed, 38 s., 82 — children
initiated, 138

Mysticism, astral, 30, 126, 208 ss.
— Neo -Platonic, 42, 125

Naiads, 139

Necromancy, 53, 62, 66, 68, 190

Nectabis, 136

NeTcyia, 82

Nemesis, 130

Neo-Platonists, 40, 87 s., 106, 110,
124, 144, 163, 169, 196

Neo -Pythagoreans, see "Pythago-
reans ' '

Nereids, 139

Nero, 103, 131

Nether world, 70 ss. — imitation of
city, 75, 172 s. — lower hemis-
phere, 79 — in the air, 81 ; cf.
1 ' Atmosphere " — scepticism
about n.w., 18, 83 s. — faith in
n.w. preserved, 36 s. ; cf.
"Hades," "Inferi"

New York (Museum), 155, n. 23

Nigidius Figulus, 22, 32, 97

Non nutriti, 137

Nosai'ris, 178

Nous, 103, 168, 213

Numa, 21

Number (Pythagorean), 132

Numenius, 107

Nymphs, 140

Octavius, 51

Oenoanda, 9

Oil, 119

Olympus, 80, 88, 104 s., 157, 163,

195— Olympic earth, 97; cf. 187
Omophagy, 120
Orcus, 83; cf. "Hades"
Oriental mysteries, 33 ss. ; cf.

1 ' Mysteries ' ' — Or. religions, 117,

203, 209
Origen, 108 s., 140, 154, 188
Orphism, 5, 21, 34 s., 73 s., 77, 138,

148 s., 171 s., 174, 177 ss., 187 s.,

193, 201
Oscilla, 143
Osiris, 35, 113, 116, 122 s., 202 s.;

cf. l ' Serapis ' '
Os resectum, 65 — ossa quiescantf

191
Ovid, 22, 73, 104

INDEX

221

Pains of hell, 170 ss.; cf. "Fire,"
1 < Eternal ' '

Paintings, 93; cf. catacombs, 202,
206

Palingenesis, 13, 182 ss.

Panaetius, 13, 27 s.

Panamu (king), 205

Pannonia, 186

Papyri, 157; cf. " Magic' '

Paradise, 200, 205

Parcae, 84

Parentalia, 63, 71

Pascal, 2, 30

Pausanias, 95

Pegasus, 156

Pericles, 1

Periktione, 78

Peripatetic school, 6, 77; cf.
" Aristotle"

Persia, 54, 89, 95 s., 107, 156, 175,
177; cf. ' ' Mazdeans, ' ' "Mith-
ras"

Pessimism, 24, 39, 41

Petelia tablet, 148

Peter, apocalypse of, 173

Petosiris, 132

Petronius, 49, 135

Phantoms, see "Ghosts"

Pharaohs, 113, 123; cf. "Egypt"

Philadelphia, 151

Philip of Opus, 208

Philo the Jew, 31, 140, 154

Philosophy, 5 ss. — and mysteries,
38, 121 — philosophers immortal,
114, 124 — priests of the world,
125 — wonderworkers, 114; cf.
1 ' Epicureans, " "Neo- Plato -
nists," "Pythagoreans," "Sto-
ics"

Phoebus, 157; cf. "Sun"

Phosphorus, 159

Phrygian cult, 35 s. ; cf. " Saba-
zios"

Pindar, 73

Pirithous, 171

Planets, 28, 168, 179, 209— planet-

ary spheres, 103, 106 ss., 154,

187
Plato, 6, 7, 18, 23, 26, 28, 32, 39,

42, 66, 77, 87 ss., 95, 99, 107,

129, 136, 158, 169, 178, 182 ss.,

188— Plato's cavern, 23, 99—

Phaedo, 49, 79, 144, 152, 163;

cf. ' < Axiochos, " " Neo-Plato-

nists ' '
Plautus, 5
Pliny the Elder, 8, 83, 92, 96— the

Younger, 67
Plotinus, 23, 40 ss., 61, 125, 144,

212 s.
Plutarch, 39, 83, 87, 129, 173, 186
Pluto, 75, 84s.; cf. "Hades"
Pneuma, see ' 'HveOfia"
Polybius, 5
Pontiffs, 65; cf. 44
Porch, see "Stoics"
Porphyry, 40, 42, 87, 120, 125, 144,

184
Posidonius of Apamea, 27 ss., 32,

39, 43, 82, 98, 124, 136, 161, 184
Praesens numen, 112
Praetextatus (catacombs), 202
Prayer (silent), 24, 122, 126
Priests immortal, 114 — anointed,

119; cf. "Philosophers"
Proclus, 87 s., 169
Prodicus, 150
Propertius, 47
Proserpina, 25, 75, 95, 97
Psyche, 25, 59

Psychopomp, 94, 163; cf. "Her-
mes," "Sun"
Ptolemies, 123; cf. "Alexandria"
Ptolemy's system, 28, 43, 109—

astrology, 132 — epigram, 211
Punic cults, 93; cf. 59; cf.

"Africa"
Purgatory, 26, 82, 161 s., 185 ss.
Purification of the soul, 118; cf.

"Purgatory," "Lustrations"
Pyre, 49, 159

222

INDEX

Pyriphlegethon, 15, 76, 78, 81, 175,
185

Pythagoras, 20 ss., 97

Pythagoreans, 20 ss., 27, 32, 35,
38 ss., 59, 66, 68, 74, 77 s., 81,
95 s., 99 s., 104, 107, 121, 124,
129, 132 ss., 136 s., 144, 149 ss.,
160, 167, 171, 177 ss., 181, 188,
194.

Quies aeterna, 191
Quietae sedes, 195

Ea, 94, 113, 154

Eays of the sun, 160 ; cf. ' ' Sun ' '

Reason rises to the sun, 103, 168;
cf. "Nous"

Befrigerium, 202

Eeinearnation, 26, 29; cf. "Me-
tempsychosis ' '

Eepast, see ' ' Banquet ' '

Eepose of the dead, 190 ss. — in the
Elysian Fields, 193 s. — in heaven,
195 ss.

Eest, see ' ' Eepose, ' ' ' ' Quies ' '

Eesurrection of the flesh, 197

Eetaliation, 173

Eetribution, 72, 172 ss., 177 ss.;
cf. "Judgment"

Eevelation, 207; cf. "Gnosis"

Ehadamanthus, 75

Ehine, 154

Eight and left, 152

Eites not needed, 125 ss.

Eoads (two), 150 ss.; cf. "Milky
Way"

Bosalia, 53; cf. 57

Eoyal souls, 114; cf. "Kings"

Sabazios, 35, 202, 204

Sacrifices for the dead, 50 ss.

Sage, god on earth, 14, 111 ss.

Sallust, 8

Salvation in mysteries, 34 ss.

Samos, 1

Sanctus, 111

San Francisco (museum), 183

Sarcophagi, 74, 85, 115, 149, 155;
cf. "Sculpture"

Saturn, 107, 131, 141, 187

Satyrs, 138

Scarbantia, 186

Scepticism, 17 ss., 28, 31

Science deifies, 208 ss. ; cf. " Gno-
sis"

Scipio's tomb, 47 — Scipio's dream,
32, 104

Sculpture (funeral), 85, 86, 117,
149, 151, 155 ss., 159, 165, 185 s.,
194, 201, 205; cf. "Paintings,"
' ' Sarcophagi ' '

Sea (death at), 129

Seals, 163

Securi (dead), 55, 191 — secura
quies, 194

Selene, 96s.; cf. "Moon"

Semites, 48, 79, 93 s., 103, 123;
cf. l ' Syrians ' '

Sendjerli, 204

Seneca, 8, 14, 22, 31, 83, 152, 179,
196

Serapis, 36 s., 39, 122 s., 202; cf.
1 1 Osiris ' '

Servius, 60, passim

Sextus Empiricus, 161

Shade, 165 ss. — and soul, 79 —
shades receive or reject dead, 68,
86, n. 39, 134, 193, 204; of.
"E?5wW," "Umbra"

Shahid, 142

Sheol, 4

Ship, see "Boat"

Sideribus recepti, 113

Sight of god, 121, 207; c/. "Gno-
sis"

Silicernium, 53

Simulacrum, 166 s.; cf. "EtScSKov"

Sisiphus, 78, 84, 170, 181

Sit tibi terra levis, 46

Sleep of death, 10, 45, 49, 192

Smyrna, 140

Socrates, 131

INDEX

223

Solar attraction, 160; cf. "Rays,"

"Sun"
Soldiers slain in battle, 142
Somno aeterno, 192
Soul a breath, 4, 7, 59, 164— burn-
ing breath, 13 s., 24, 29, 87, 98,
161 — number, 24 — circular, 98 —
a bird, 59, 93, 157 s. — not im-
material, 118, 162 — physical na-
ture, 164 ss. — principle of move-
ment, 110 — soul and shade, 79;
cf. "E««Xov" — pollution, 29, 118,
162, 185— division, 168— related
to God, 12, 111 — union with
God, 42, 122 s. — becomes star,
92 s. — journey, 148 ss. — triple
ascension, 106 — passage through
planets, 107 — garments of s.,
106 ss.; — hierarchy of souls,
108 s., 213 — how represented,
165, 167; cf. '/Ghost,' »
"Shade," "Spirit," "Stars"
Spirit of Evil, 89, 175; cf. "Ahri-

man"
Spirits of the dead, 46 s., 56 s. —

of murdered, 130; cf. "Soul"
Stars and souls, 92 s., 94, 103 ss. —
shooting s., 92 — invicti, 117; cf.
"Comet"
Statius, 103
Stele, see ' ' Sculpture ' '
Stoics, 12 ss., 21, 30 s., 33, 39, 46,
65, 77, 82, 87, 96, 98 s., 103, 113,
144, 179, 182, 195
Styx, 25, 75 s., 78, 80 s., 83 s., 134,

155, 193
Sublunary world, see "World"
Suetonius, 86, 130
Suicide, 143 ss.

Sun-god, 24, 86, 130; cf. "Helios,"
' ' Phoebus, " " Ra ' ' — and em-
perors, 157 — and eagle, 158 —
psychopomp, 164 — star, 28, 100
S- — new sun, 91 — heart of the
world, 100 — reason of the world,

101, 107 — sun and souls, 94,
156 ss; cf. "Boat," "Chariot"
Suo die, 133

Syncretism, see "Eclecticism"
Syria, 28, 40, 52, 73, 86, 92, 112,
131, 156 ss., 176, n. 11, 204 ss.—
Syrian cults, 37, 93, 96, 120 s.

Taciti (Manes), 165

Tacitus, 18

Tages, 149

Tantalus, 9, 78, 84 s., 170, 181

Tartarus, 26, 27, 34, 75 s., 77, 79 s.,
84 s., 171 ss., 175 s., 188; cf.
"Hades"

Taurobolium, 119

Tertullian, 55

Theodore the Atheist, 65

Theophanes, 146

Theseus, 171

Tiberius, 86

Tibullus, 191

Timaeus of Locri, 78

Tiresias, 74

Titans, 178

Titus, 142

Tityus, 9, 170, 181

Tivoli, 183

Tomb, a dwelling, 3, 46 ss., 56 —
furniture, 49 s., 72— garden, 57,
200 — placed on roads, 58 — ante-
chamber of nether world, 70 —
tombstone, see ' ' Sculpture, ' '
1 ' Sarcophagi ' '

Torre San Severo (sarcophagus),
74

Trajan, 157

Transmigration, see "Metempsy-
chosis ' '

Tritons, 186

Ulysses, 74, 180

Vmhra, 79, 166 s.

Unburied, 64; cf. "Inscpulti"

Unctions, 119, 163

Untimely death, 128 ss., 136 ss.

224

INDEX

Varro, 31

Vatinius, 22

Vegetarianism, 179

Vehicle of souls, 61, 169

Venus — star, 94, 107 — goddess,

104, 123, 187
Violation of tombs, 67 s.
Virgil, 31, 59, 66, 73, 82 s., 128 s.,

139, 142, 152, 172, 174, 182, 184,

186, 210

Warriors, see ' ' Soldiers ' '
Washing, see ' ' Ablutions ' '
Water, heavenly, 185 — libation of
w., 51; cf. 202 — purification by

w., see ' ' Elements, " " Lustra-
tion ' >

Winds, 25, 60, 155, 161, 166, 185

Wine, 35, 52, 120, 203 ss., 211

Wizards, see "Magic"

World— system of, 28, 99 s., 121
—divine, 12, 29 s., 126— sublu-
nary world, 99, 107, 117, 168,
195; cf. "Moon"

Y symbol, 26, 150 s., 194
Yezidis, 178

Zagreus, 138

Zeno, 195

Zeus, 112, 123; cf. "Jupiter"

GREEK WORDS

"Ayafioi, 137

'Aycdfa, 123

'Ayvela, 24

''AyvuxrTos 0e6s, 41

'AeiS^s, (= Hades), 79

Atria £\o/a{pu}, 183

'A»/a7w7eiJs, 101, 160

'Avouptr-ns, 131

'Aj'a/rios 6 0e6s, 183

yAp€fio$, 59

'Avdo<t>6pos, 138

'Avrldeos, 89

'Av&wftoij 137

'AiratfaMtTJfw, 116, 118

'ATrd^ta, 191

'Airo06wr«, 118; c/. "Apotheosis"

''A7TO/30t T?7S TCMpTJS, 68

'Aper^, 151

''Apxorres, 162

'AcajTe/a, 151

1 Arapa^ia, 8

''Atck/xu, 64; c/. "Iwepulti"

"AtPo<Pol, 132, 137

"Awpot, 129, 136 s.

Biato^dj/arot, 129, 141 ss.
Bids 6eu}pr]Tu<6s, 211

IVSc-is (roC 0eoO), 23, 121 ss., 125,
207 ss.

Ao|<£feti», 123

ErSwXoj/, 7, 24, 79, 166 s.
'JZnTrvpcocris, 13 S.
'Eri^ai^s 0e6s, 112
'ETTTdKTts 0e6s, 160
Eu7r\o?, 155
Etytfx«> 149

'H7e/uovt/c6»', 30, 103
"Ryep.d}v debs, 163 S.

9e£flo«, 149

Kard/focris ers"At5ou, 171; cf. "Hades'
KikXos 7e^<rews, 179

MeTej/<ra>/udTw<ris, 182

Nous, 168; cf. 103, 213
Nvp.<p6\r)iTToi, 139

Sw^ara, 160

'056s p.aKdpu)v, 152
"Oxww, 41, 161, 169

IIaXi77ej/eo-fa, 182
Uapd8€i<ros, 200
n»/eO/*a, 111, 168
Uo\vdv8piov, 145

S«<£, 166 s.
2vyy4veia, 96, 111
'Zvinrocnapx'')*, 202
Sw/xa, 167

SWT77P, 112

TeXdwa, 163
TpfoSos, 151

T, 26, 150 8., 194

"Xi/ao-Tos, 41; c/. "Hypsistos"

"Tfovffdcu, 123

*wWfw, 123

^uxt7, 25, 59, 167; cf. "Psyche"

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