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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 as this in a single hour, we must select
those elements which historically showed themselves to be fundamental
and vital; but even then we cannot examine much detail. It may prove,
however, that a rapid survey of those concepts of the future life, whose
influence lasted long during the Christian centuries, and indeed has
continued to the present day, may not be without profit.

The most important single religious document from the Augustan Age is
the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid; for although the Aeneid was written
primarily to glorify Roman imperial aims, the sixth book gives full
expression to many philosophic and popular ideas of the other world and
of the future life, which were current among both Greeks and Romans.[1]
It therefore makes a fitting point of departure for our considerations.
In this book, as you will remember, the poet’s hero, having reached
Italian soil at last, is led down to the lower world by the Cumaean
Sybil. This descent to Hades belongs historically to that long series of
apocalyptic writings which begins with the eleventh book of the Odyssey
and closes with Dante’s Divine Comedy. Warde Fowler deserves credit for
clearly pointing out that this visit of Aeneas to the world below is the
final ordeal for him, a mystic initiation, in which he receives
“enlightenment for the toil, peril, and triumph that await him in the
accomplishment of his divine mission.” When the Trojan hero has learned
from his father’s shade the mysteries of life and death, and has been
taught the magnitude of the work which lies before him, and the great
things that are to be, he casts off the timidity which he has hitherto
shown and, strengthened by his experiences, advances to the perfect
accomplishment of his task.[2]

But we are not concerned so much with Virgil’s purpose in writing this
apocalyptic book, as with its contents and with the evidence it gives as
to the current ideas of the other world and the fate of the human soul.
What then does the poet tell us of these great matters? We can hardly do
better than to follow Aeneas and his guide on their journey. This side
of Acheron they meet the souls of those whose bodies are unburied, and
who therefore must tarry a hundred years--the maximum of human
life--before they may be ferried over the river which bounds Hades. When
Charon has set the earthly visitors across that stream, they find
themselves in a place where are gathered spirits of many kinds, who have
not yet been admitted to Tartarus or Elysium: first the souls of infants
and those who met their end by violence--men condemned to death though
innocent, suicides, those who died for love, and warriors--all of whom
must here wait until the span of life allotted them has been completed.
These spirits passed, the mortal visitors come to the walls of Tartarus,
on whose torments Aeneas is not allowed to look, for

    “The feet of innocence may never pass
    Into this house of sin.”

But the Sybil, herself taught by Hecate, reveals to him the eternal
punishments there inflicted for monstrous crimes. Then the visitors pass
to Elysium, where dwell the souls of those whose deserts on earth have
won for them a happy lot. Nearby in a green valley, Aeneas finds the
shade of his own father, Anchises, looking eagerly at the souls
which are waiting to be born into the upper world. In answer to
his son’s questions, the heroic shade discloses the doctrine of
rebirths--metempsychosis--with its tenets of penance and of
purification.[3] Finally, to fulfill the poet’s purpose, Anchises’
spirit points out the souls of the heroes who are to come on earth in
due season; the spirits of future Romans pass before Aeneas in long
array; and at the climax he sees the soul of Augustus, that prince who
was destined in the fullness of time to bring back the Golden Age and to
impose peace on the wide world. This prophetic revelation ended, Aeneas
enlightened and strengthened for his task, returns to the upper world.

This book seems at first a strange compound indeed of popular belief,
philosophy, and theology, which is not without its contradictions. On
these, however, we need not pause; but for our present interest we must
ask what are the main ideas on which this apocalypse is based. First of
all, a future life is taken for granted by the poet; otherwise the book
could never have been written. Secondly, we notice that, according to
ancient popular belief, the souls of those who had not received the
proper burial rites, were doomed to wander on this side of Acheron until
a hundred years were completed, and also that souls which were
disembodied by violence or by early death, were destined to live out
their allotted span of earthly existence before they could enter the
inner precincts of Hades. Again the poet represents some few as
suffering eternal torments for their monstrous sins or enjoying immortal
bliss because of their great deserts. And finally, he shows that the
majority of souls must pass through successive lives and deaths, until,
purified from the sin and dross of the body by millennial sojourns in
the world below, and by virtuous lives on earth, they at last find
repose and satisfaction. The popular beliefs which concern details of
