Part 1

AFTER LIFE IN ROMAN PAGANISM

YALE UNIVERSITY MRS. HEPSA ELY SILLIMAN MEMORIAL LECTURES

SILLIMAN MEMORIAL LECTURES

PUBLISHED BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

ELECTRICITY AND MATTER. _By_ JOSEPH JOHN THOMSON, D.SC., LL.D., PH.D., F.R.S., _Fellow of Trinity College and Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics, Cambridge University_. (_Fourth printing._)

THE INTEGRATIVE ACTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. _By_ CHARLES S. SHERRINGTON, D.SC., M.D., HON. LL.D. TOR., F.R.S., _Holt Professor of Physiology, University of Liverpool_. (_Sixth printing._)

RADIOACTIVE TRANSFORMATIONS. _By_ ERNEST RUTHERFORD, D.SC., LL.D., F.R.S., _Macdonald Professor of Physics, McGill University_. (_Second printing._)

EXPERIMENTAL AND THEORETICAL APPLICATIONS OF THERMODYNAMICS TO CHEMISTRY. _By_ DR. WALTER NERNST, _Professor and Director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry in the University of Berlin_.

PROBLEMS OF GENETICS. _By_ WILLIAM BATESON, M.A., F.R.S., _Director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution, Merton Park, Surrey, England_. (_Second printing._)

STELLAR MOTIONS. With Special Reference to Motions Determined by Means of the Spectrograph. _By_ WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL, SC.D., LL.D., _Director of the Lick Observatory, University of California_. (_Second printing._)

THEORIES OF SOLUTIONS. _By_ SVANTE ARRHENIUS, PH.D., SC.D., M.D., _Director of the Physico-Chemical Department of the Nobel Institute, Stockholm, Sweden_. (_Third printing._)

IRRITABILITY. A Physiological Analysis of the General Effect of Stimuli in Living Substances. _By_ MAX VERWORN, M.D., PH.D., _Professor at Bonn Physiological Institute_. (_Second printing._)

PROBLEMS OF AMERICAN GEOLOGY. _By_ WILLIAM NORTH RICE, FRANK D. ADAMS, ARTHUR P. COLEMAN, CHARLES D. WALCOTT, WALDEMAR 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 PHYSIOLOGY OF BREATHING. _By_ JOHN SCOTT HALDANE, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., _Fellow of New College, Oxford University_. (_Second printing._)

A CENTURY OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. With Special Reference to the American Journal of Science 1818–1918. _By_ EDWARD SALISBURY DANA, CHARLES SCHUCHERT, HERBERT E. GREGORY, JOSEPH BARRELL, GEORGE OTIS SMITH, RICHARD SWANN LULL, LOUIS V. PIRSSON, WILLIAM E. FORD, R. B. SOSMAN, HORACE L. WELLS, HARRY W. FOOTE, LEIGH PAGE, WESLEY R. COE, AND GEORGE L. GOODALE.

THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN MEDICINE. _By_ SIR WILLIAM OSLER, BART., M.D., F.R.S. (_Second printing._)

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

COPYRIGHT, 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 designed to illustrate the presence and providence, the wisdom 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 foundation 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 constitutes the sixteenth of the series of memorial lectures.

PREFACE

At the invitation of the President of Yale University and of Professor Russell H. Chittenden, chairman of the committee in charge of the Silliman 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 Roman 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 interpretation, 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 regarding 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 intelligible 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 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 Peripatetic 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 introduced 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.

IV. THE WINNING OF IMMORTALITY. Ancient conception of immortality, 110—Eminent men gods on earth, 111—Immortality of the few, 114—Mysteries claim to procure “deification,” 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 attraction, 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 METEMPSYCHOSIS. Origin in Homer, 170—Orphic theology, 171—Resemblance 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—Reincarnation 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 remains 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 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 unbelieving, 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 extinguished when their limbs grew cold, that the spirit which impelled 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. Pericles[1] 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_ because 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.

We can here trace only the outlines of this vast subject. I am aware that it is always imprudent to hazard moral generalisations: 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 respectable tradition. You will therefore make the necessary reservations to such of my statements as are too absolute. I shall be able to point out here only the great spiritual currents which successively 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 religious 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. Thenceforth 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 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 underwent 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 Empire, 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 groping, 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 provided for him and would not seek to avenge himself on those whose neglect had caused him suffering. Funeral rites were originally 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 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 reasoners, all antiquity admitted the reality of these phantoms. Century-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 conception 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 Hebrews 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 dwelling 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 features. 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. 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 Plautus[6] 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 destructive 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 keeping 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, enlightened persons, like his friends the Scipios, could see in them nothing but the stratagems of a prudent policy. But the scepticism of a narrow circle of aristocrats could not be confined to it for long when Greek ideas were more widely propagated.