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                   Ingersoll Lectures on Immortality


     IMMORTALITY AND THE NEW THEODICY. By George A. Gordon. 1896.

     HUMAN IMMORTALITY. Two supposed Objections to the Doctrine. By
     William James. 1897.

     DIONYSOS AND IMMORTALITY: The Greek Faith in Immortality as
     affected by the rise of Individualism. By Benjamin Ide Wheeler.
     1898.

     THE CONCEPTION OF IMMORTALITY. By Josiah Royce. 1899.

     LIFE EVERLASTING. By John Fiske. 1900.

     SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY. By William Osler. 1904.

     THE ENDLESS LIFE. By Samuel M. Crothers. 1905.

     INDIVIDUALITY AND IMMORTALITY. By Wilhelm Ostwald. 1906.

     THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. By Charles F. Dole. 1907.

     BUDDHISM AND IMMORTALITY. By William S. Bigelow. 1908.

     IS IMMORTALITY DESIRABLE? By G. Lowes Dickinson. 1909.

     EGYPTIAN CONCEPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY. By George A. Reisner. 1911.

     INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY IN THE SONNETS OF SHAKESPEARE. By George
     H. Palmer. 1912.

     METEMPSYCHOSIS. By George Foot Moore. 1914.

     PAGAN IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY DURING THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE. By
     Clifford Herschel Moore. 1918.




                            PAGAN IDEAS OF

                        IMMORTALITY DURING THE

                          EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE




                      The Ingersoll Lecture, 1918

                            Pagan Ideas of

                        Immortality During the

                          Early Roman Empire

                                  By

                Clifford Herschel Moore, Ph.D., Litt.D.

              _Professor of Latin in Harvard University_

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                               Cambridge
                       Harvard University Press
                       London: Humphrey Milford
                        Oxford University Press

                                 1918

                            COPYRIGHT, 1918
                       HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS




                       THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP

_Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, who died in
       Keene, County of Cheshire, New Hampshire, Jan. 26, 1893_


_First._ In carrying out the wishes of my late beloved father, George
Goldthwait Ingersoll, as declared by him in his last will and testament,
I give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where my
late father was graduated, and which he always held in love and honor,
the sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for the
establishment of a Lectureship on a plan somewhat similar to that of the
Dudleian lecture, that is--one lecture to be delivered each year, on any
convenient day between the last day of May and the first day of
December, on this subject, “the Immortality of Man,” said lecture not to
form a part of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by any
Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruction, though
any such Professor or Tutor may be appointed to such service. The choice
of said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious denomination,
nor to any one profession, but may be that of either clergyman or
layman, the appointment to take place at least six months before the
delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be safely invested and three
fourths of the annual interest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for
his services and the remaining fourth to be expended in the publishment
and gratuitous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which is always to
be furnished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same lecture to be
named and known as “the Ingersoll lecture on the Immortality of Man.”




PAGAN IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY DURING THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE




I


The invitation of the committee charged with the administration of the
Ingersoll lectureship and my own inclination have agreed in indicating
that aspect of the general subject of immortality, which I shall try to
present tonight. I shall not venture on this occasion to advance
arguments for or against belief in a life after death; my present task
is a humbler one: I propose to ask you to review with me some of the
more significant ideas concerning an existence beyond the grave, which
were current in the Greco-Roman world in the time of Jesus and during
the earlier Christian centuries, and to consider briefly the relation
of these pagan beliefs to Christian ideas on the same subject. In
dealing with a topic so vast