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
calendar, 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.”[243]
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,[244] that when souls leave the earth, they are
still surrounded by a subtle fluid which retains the appearance of the
persons whom they formerly animated. The pagan theologians thus admitted
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 (νοῦς), ascended to the
sun, the source of all intelligence. According to others the formation
of the soul’s integument was begun and its reabsorption was completed in
the planetary spheres, and this is why the Neo-Platonist Jamblichus[245]
placed the Hades of mythology between 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
mysteries of Mithras, the Chaldaic oracles, and above all Manicheism
shared the belief in a lunar-solar immortality 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
(ἡγεμονικόν), 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 Domitian, hesitatingly ask if these
emperors will ride in the flaming chariot of Phoebus or if they will
assume Jupiter’s sceptre in the highest heaven.[246] The
Neo-Pythagoreans admitted that souls could rise to the Most High (εἰς
τὸν Ὕψιστον), that is to say, to the supreme God who was enthroned at
the summit of the world.[247] It was, moreover, 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
transported 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 Pythagoreans, 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 metamorphosis. 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
Ovid[248] 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 of Antinous, let himself be
persuaded that a star had just appeared which was the deified soul of
his favourite.[249] 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 mankind.”[250] In an inscription of Amorgos[251] a young
man, carried 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 Miletus[252]
a child of eight years old, whom Hermes has led to Olympus, contemplates
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 following 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, 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,
Jupiter’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.”[253]
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 wrappings the inclinations or faculties which were bound with
them, when after death it went back again to the place of its
origin.[254]
The conception of the triple ascension of souls rested fundamentally on
a rudimentary astronomy, for it confused 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 superimposed spheres,
enveloped by an eighth sphere which was the limit of the universe, had
imposed itself not only on 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.[255] 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 tendencies. 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.[256]
But in opposition to this pantheism which, while identifying 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 the supreme Power beyond the limits of the world and
made of him a Being no longer immanent, but transcendent 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,[257] had his seat, it was thought, in the infinite light
which extended beyond the starry spheres. Religion called him
sometimes the Most High (Ὕψιστος), sometimes Jupiter, but gave him at
the same time the epithets “Uppermost,” “Insuperable” (_summus_,
_exsuperantissimus_).[258] 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 successive 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.[259]
* * * * *
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 astronomical 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. According to him,
souls, after they have sojourned in Paradise, which he imagined as a
remote place of earth where they learn terrestrial truths, rise to the
zone of the air 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 dwellings 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 admitted 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 beatitude. Dante’s Paradise, with its choirs of angels and its
classes of the blessed, distributed among the superimposed spheres of
the heavens, is a magnificent testimony to the strength of the tradition
which antiquity bequeathed 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 Roman 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;[260] according to the Epicureans, being
composed of atoms, it was dissolved at the moment of death.[261] But
between these extreme opinions 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 primitive 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 (δεύτερος θάνατος) completed the work of the first which
gave the corpse over to corruption. The spiritual 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 (πνεῦμα) 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 (συγγένεια) which alone made it possible for him to
acquire a knowledge of divinity,[262] 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_).[263] It communicated to him a lucidity and power
lacking to the common run of mortals. He penetrated the secrets of
nature and commanded the elements; he received revelations and was
capable of prophetic divination. Inversely, every exceptional quality
was regarded 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.[264] 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 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 (ἐπιφανὴς
θεός, _praesens numen_), a saviour (σωτήρ). Sometimes the god incarnate
in him was specified; and he was looked upon as a manifestation of Zeus,
Apollo, or another. 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 foreseeing and
foretelling the future. According to Manilius,[265] 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.[266] 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 equals (_sideribus recepti_). It was thought that
an eagle or the chariot of the sun bore them away.[267] 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 himself, 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 magnates
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;[268] and elsewhere he states more explicitly:[269] “To
all who have saved, succoured or aggrandized their country, a fixed
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 reascend.” The ex-consul Cicero claimed apotheosis
for the great men of the state: this was the republican transformation
of the doctrine of the divinity of kings.
Pagan theology was to give much wider extension to this doctrine. In a
curious passage Hermes Trismegistus[270] 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 communication
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 inseparable 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. _Philosophus_ 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
reason returned after death to the source of all intelligence.
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 frequently 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.