Part 18

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.[509] Serapis is the great master of the feast (συμποσιάρχης),[510] 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 wherewith 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 refreshment (_refrigerium_). The word passed into Christian language 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.[511]

We touch here on a question which is not yet completely 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 reduce 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 a mystic union with the god, men could share his blessed lot after the transient trial of a death like his.[512] 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 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 with us.”[513]

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.[514] 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_).[515] This is not to be understood here as an Epicurean invitation to enjoy life because all else is vain,[516] but a veiled expression of faith in the efficacy for the salvation of the initiate attributed to the joyous banquets which gathered men about a tomb.

The connection between the beliefs of the mysteries and the hopes attached to the funeral cult became more intimate 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 Panamu “may eat and drink with the god Hadad,”[517] 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.”[518] 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,[519] 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.[520] 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.[521] 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 interpretation of the intoxication of the souls which took part in the feast, explaining it as the ravishing of reason penetrated 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 pleasant 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.”[522]

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.[523]

* * * * *

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 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 lecture[524] that the “sight of the god” who was adored was the highest degree of initiation. 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.[525] Their character and their effects have moreover been analysed in detail in the treatise of Jamblichus, _On the Mysteries_. The impression most immediately produced 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 intelligence.[526] 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 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 initiate 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.[527] Thus by an illumination of the intelligence the astral powers unveiled their will and the secrets of their movements to their attentive servants. Here below this knowledge 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 divisions 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:[528]

“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 veritably and really initiate, pure reason taking part in the only wisdom, he will spend the rest of his time in contemplation 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 faithful, the truth communicated to them and the immortality which completed their initiation. The doctrine of an intellectual 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 particular 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.[529] 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 mirror 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 veneration. Their complicated movements, ruled by an immovable 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; 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.[530] 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 underfoot all fear and inexorable fate and vain rumours as to greedy Acheron.”[531] There is, in spite of a reminiscence of Lucretius, nothing Epicurean in the idea here expressed. 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 perfect understanding thereof. They will not weary of following the rhythmic evolutions of the chorus of stars of which they form part, of noting the causes and the rules 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 (βιὸς θεωρητικός) 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 spectroscope their chemical composition. But the ancients felt otherwise: they describe with singular eloquence the “cosmic emotion” which seized them as they contemplated 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 intoxication; an “abstemious drunkenness”[532] 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 foretaste 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.[533]

“I know,” says an epigram of Ptolemy himself,[534] “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 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 instant 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 immortality, 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,[535] the happiness 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 _élite_ 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 majority lived among the stars and, divine like them, helped them to govern the earth—we already know their blessed lot; others who were more perfect entered the intelligible cosmos[536] 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 contemplation 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 individuality, they could embrace in a single glance all the separate intelligences which together formed the divine _Nous_, and thus had a simultaneous intuition of everything, the direct comprehension of the ultimate reason of things.

Beatific vision of the splendour of God, immediate perception of all truth, mystic love for an ineffable Beauty—these were sublime speculations which were to be unendingly reproduced and developed after the fall of paganism. 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 gradually broken away from somewhat coarse beliefs which had little by little been purified. The rapture which transported Plotinus to those summits where reason, bewildered 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 philosopher, conversed “alone with the lone god,”[537] whom the priest had evoked, and believed that in this vision he found a guarantee of eternal happiness.

INDEX

Ablutions, 118; _cf._ “Lustration”

Absorption in God, 36 s., 42, 122

Acheron, 5, 8, 15, 27, 78, 80 s., 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; purifies, 119, 143, 186; _cf._ Winds; Aerial bodies, 103, 168; _cf._ “Εἴδωλον”

Alexander of Abonotichos, 9, 23, 180

Alexander of Aphrodisias, 6

Alexander the Great, 62

Alexandria, 17, 20, 79, 96; cults, 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, 80 s.

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._ “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._ “Chaldeans”

Bacchus, 52, 120, 138 s., 202, 211; Bacchantes, 62; _cf._ “Dionysos”

Banquet; funeral, 53 ss., 200 ss.; ritual, 120 ss., 203 s.; eternal, 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