day to find themselves gathered together in the dwelling-place of the
heroes. This conception made the future life a reward for eminent
service rendered to the state or humanity. Its origin certainly went
very far back: it is found among primitive peoples, in reference to the
famous warriors of the tribes, and it never ceased to be accepted in
ancient Greece. But towards the end of the Roman Republic it was more
generally admitted than ever before. It was in harmony with the
constitution of an aristocratic society in which it seemed that even
posthumous honours should be reserved for the elect. Some modern
thinkers and poets have shared the ancient feeling which inspired it.
Carducci, who disliked the critics of Milan, thought that they might
well perish wholly, but that the great spirits like Dante, whom he
interpreted,—and doubtless also this interpreter himself,—were
saved.[271] Matthew Arnold also in an admirable sonnet strongly defends
the faith in a limited immortality. Let me recall to you the last
verses:
“And will not then the immortal armies scorn
The world’s poor routed leavings? or will they
Who fail’d under the heat of this life’s day
Support the fervours of the heavenly morn?
No! The energy of life may be
Kept on after the grave, but not begun,
And he who flagg’d not in earthly strife,
From strength to strength advancing—only he,
His soul well-knit and all his battles won,
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life.”
* * * * *
But this proud doctrine vowed to final destruction the mass of humble
men, the multitude of the miserable, that is to say, those who, because
they endured most in this world, must most aspire to seek in another the
happiness which was here denied them and the retribution which should
repair the injustice of their earthly lot. This doctrine of the
immortality of the few made low station in life a misfortune which was
prolonged beyond the grave. To the immense company of the wretched, who
suffered without consolation, the religions of the East brought a
“better hope,” the assurance that by certain secret rites the mystic,
whatever his rank, whether senator or slave, might obtain salvation. The
virtue of the liturgical ceremonies made him equal to the immortals
(ἀπαθανατίζειν). This was the secret of the rapid spread of these exotic
cults in the Latin world.
Every day the stars disappear beneath the horizon to reappear in the
east on the morrow; every month a new moon succeeds the moon whose light
has waned; every year the sun is reborn to new strength after his fires
have died away; every winter vegetation withers to bloom again in the
spring. The gods of nature—Attis, Osiris, Adonis—also rose again after
they had been slain; the gods of the stars resumed their glowing ardour
after darkness had overwhelmed them. Their essential quality was to be
for ever “living” or “unconquered” (_invicti_). Their career was a
perpetual triumph over death. The struggle implied was, under the
influence of dualism, recognised to be an unceasing battle between two
powers disputing possession of the world. Thus the mystic who had become
god, who had part in the divine energy, also acquired the power to
conquer death. Oriental religions looked upon earthly existence as a
fight from which the just man issued victorious. Immortality was a
triumph won over the powers of evil, of which the most implacable was
death. The souls of the elect were crowned like athletes and soldiers;
their wreath was the “crown of life,” often represented on funeral
monuments.[272] The Greeks sometimes, and the Etruscans frequently, had
personified death as a horrible monster who frightened those whom he
approached. But the idea of making death into the adversary of mankind,
from whose empire pious and strong souls might escape, spread only with
the reception of the Oriental beliefs.
This mythological conception of salvation was combined in the mysteries
with another, which was more scientific, that of fatalism, which was the
chief dogma imposed by astrology on the Roman world. Death is for man
the most inevitable and the hardest necessity. _Fatum_ often denotes the
unalterable term of life; and this end, which diviners could foresee but
could not delay, ought, according to the law of our kind, to overtake
the soul as well as the body. But the Oriental cults never ceased to
claim that the celestial powers who escaped the rule of Destiny, which
extends only to the sublunary world, were also able to withdraw thence
their faithful followers. As the emperor was not subject to Fate because
he was god, so he who had been initiated and had acquired the same
quality was, as a funeral inscription expressed it, “exempt from the lot
of death.”[273] Those who had taken part in the occult ceremonies of the
sect and were instructed in its esoteric doctrines were alone able to
prolong their existence beyond the term fixed by the stars at their
birth. By the virtue of these rites pious souls were withdrawn from this
fate-ridden earth and were led, enfranchised from their servitude, to a
divine world.
Thus those who had acceded to a religious initiation obtained eternal
life, like the great men whose celestial origin had predestined them
thereto. By what rites was wrought this “deification” (ἀποθέωσις), or
rather this “immortalisation” (ἀπαθανατισμός)?
The soul, enclosed in the body, was by its very contact with matter
exposed to pollution, “as pure and clear water poured into the bottom of
a muddy well is troubled.”[274] The mysteries never conceived the soul
as absolutely immaterial: it was a subtle and light essence, but one
coarsened and weighed down by sin, which thus altered its divine nature
and caused its decomposition and loss.[275] In order therefore that
immortality might be ensured to the soul, it must be cleansed of its
stains. The pagan religions employed a whole set of ablutions and
purifications for restoring his first integrity to the mystic. He could
wash in consecrated water in accordance with certain prescribed forms.
This was in reality a magic rite: the cleanliness of the body wrought by
sympathy a veritable disinfection of the inner spirit, the water
clearing off its taints or expelling the evil demons which caused
pollution. Or else the initiate sprinkled himself with or drank the
blood either of a slaughtered victim or of the priests themselves. These
rites arose from the belief that the fluid which flows in our veins is a
vivifying principle, able to communicate new existence.[276] The man who
had received baptism by blood in the _taurobolium_ was reborn for
eternity (_in aeternum renatus_),[277] and when, foul and repulsive, he
left the sacred ditch, he was adored as a god by those present.
Elsewhere purifications by air and fire were found united to that by
water, so that the different elements all had part in the
purgation.[278] All these cathartic ceremonies had the effect of
regenerating him who submitted to them, delivering him from the
domination of the body, making him a pure spirit, and rendering him fit
to live an immaculate and incorruptible life.
A similar belief in a transference to the soul of bodily effects
partially explains why unctions were still employed in the liturgy of
the mysteries. By rubbing himself with perfumed oil the wrestler in the
palaestra and the bather after the perspiration of the sweating-room
strengthened their limbs and rendered them supple. Ancient medical
science deals at great length with the propitious action of numerous
ointments, and by their means magic worked not only sudden cures but
also prodigious metamorphoses. The aromatic unguents, which had
marvellous antiseptic qualities, served to ensure the conservation of an
embalmed corpse. Similarly, in the cult of the mysteries, unctions gave
the soul an increase of spiritual force and made it capable of
prolonging its existence for ever. As rubbing with unctuous substances
was a practice of the thermae, so it was of the temples after the
liturgical bath. In the anointing of kings and the ordination of priests
they communicated to man a divine character and higher faculties, and
this idea has been preserved down to modern times. But, above all, as
ointments preserved mortal remains from putrefaction, so the consecrated
oil and honey became a means by which the soul was rendered
incorruptible and immortality was bestowed upon it.
The most efficacious means of communicating with the godhead which the
mysteries offered was, however, that of participation in the ritual
banquets. These banquets are found in various forms in all these
religious communities. We have seen that among the votaries of Dionysos
his feasts, in which the consecrated wine was drunk, gave a foretaste of
the joys reserved for the initiate in the Elysian Fields.[279]
Drunkenness, which frees from care, which awakens unsuspected forces in
man, was looked upon as divine possession, as the indwelling of a god in
the heart of the Bacchantes. Wine thus became _par excellence_ the drink
of immortality, which flowed for the sacred guests in the meals of the
secret conventicles. The heady liquid not only gave vigour of body and
wisdom of mind, but also strength to fight the evil spirits and to
triumph over death.
Sometimes honey, which was according to the ancients the food of the
blessed, was offered to the neophyte and made him the equal of the
Olympians. Elsewhere bread consecrated by appropriate formulae was held
to produce the same effects.
But still another conception is discernible in the feasts of the
mysteries and mingles with the first: it is thought that the god himself
is eaten when some sacred animal is consumed. This idea goes back to the
most primitive savagery, as is seen in the rite of “omophagy” in which
certain votaries of Bacchus fiercely tore the raw flesh of a bull with
their teeth and devoured it. Undoubtedly there was originally a belief
that the strength of the sacrificed animal was thus acquired, like the
superstition of the native African hunters who eat a slain lion’s heart
in order to gain his courage. Similarly, if a victim be regarded as
divine, to consume it is to participate in its divinity. “Those,” says
Porphyry,[280] “who wish to receive into themselves the soul of
prophetic animals absorb their principal vital organs, such as the
hearts of crows, moles or hawks, and thus they become able to speak
oracles, like a god.” Similarly, the Syrians ate the fish of Atargatis,
a forbidden food which was, however, provided for the initiate after a
sacrifice; and those who partook of these mystic repasts were not, like
the rest of men, vowed to death, but were saved by the goddess.[281]
All means of attaining to godliness were not so crude as these. An
important part of the mysteries was the instruction which gave the
sacred lore, the “gnosis.” This “gnosis” included the whole of religious
learning, that is to say, it was the knowledge of rites as well as of
theological and moral truths. It taught above all the origin and the end
of man, but it covered all the works of God, and, inasmuch as it
explained creation, it formed a system of the world and a theory of
nature. In fact the world, being wholly penetrated by a divine energy,
was itself a part of God. The close alliance which exists between
philosophy and the mysteries, and which is revealed to us especially in
the Pythagorean and Hermetic literature,[282] is shown in the value thus
given to science. This science, which in the East had always been
sacerdotal, was not looked upon as a conquest of reason but as the
revelation of a god. Illumined by this god, the initiate entered into
communication with him, and consequently himself became divine and was
withdrawn from the power of Fate. “They who possess the knowledge
(γνῶσις) have deification as their happy end,” said Hermes
Trismegistus.[283]
The highest degree of this “gnosis” is the sight of the godhead himself,
or to use the Greek word, “epoptism.” By artifice or illusion
apparitions were evoked and “epiphanies” produced.[284] A whole system
of fastings and macerations placed the mystic in a fit state to attain
to ecstasy. In the temple of Isis the faithful devotee merged himself
“with inexpressible delight”[285] in the silent adoration of the sacred
images, and when the rites had been accomplished and he felt himself
transported beyond the confines of the world, he contemplated the gods
of heaven and hell face to face. He who had had the vision of this
ineffable beauty was himself transfigured for ever. His soul, filled
with the divine splendour, must when its earthly captivity had ended
live eternally in contemplation of the radiant beings who had admitted
it to their company.[286]
* * * * *
The mysteries have thus a number of processes, some material and some
spiritual, for producing the union with god which is the source of
immortality. This union is first conceived as effected with the
particular god honoured by a sect. As this god has died and has risen
again, so the mystic dies to be reborn, and the liturgy even marks by
its ceremonies the death of the former man and his return to a glorious
life.
The fervent disciple to whom the god has united himself suffers a
metamorphosis and takes on divine qualities. In magic this process is
sometimes very grossly indicated: “Come into me, Hermes,” says a
papyrus,[287] “as children do into women’s wombs, ... I know thee,
Hermes, and thou knowest me; I am thou and thou art I.” The old Egyptian
doctrine of the identification with Osiris, which goes back to the age
of the Pharaohs, was never given up in the Alexandrian mysteries, and
the whole doctrine of immortality rested on it. As on the earth the
initiate who piously observed sacred precepts received in his bosom the
godhead, so after death the faithful became a Serapis if a man, an Isis
if a woman. This beatification seems to have been conceived sometimes as
an absorption into the heart of the divinity, sometimes as a
multiplication of the divinity, who left to the deceased his own
personality.
It was above all from Egypt that apotheosis in the form of a particular
divinity spread first in the Hellenistic and then in the Roman world. As
the Pharaohs became Osiris on the earth and after their death, so among
the Ptolemies such names as Isis-Arsinoë and others similar are found,
and the emperors were adored even in their lifetime as epiphanies of
Apollo, Zeus or Helios.[288] Their subjects could obtain a lot as happy
as that of the sovereigns. The mystics of Dionysos were early made
divine, in imitation of those of Serapis, and became as many emanations
of Bacchus; and finally under the empire a cult was rendered to the dead
under such titles as Mars, Hercules, Venus, Diana and other Olympians.
Conceptions less in conflict with reason were taught by the astral cults
of the Semitic East. The celestial powers here were higher, more
distant, less anthropomorphic, and it was not imagined that a man could
assume their form. Here the action of the god on the mystic recalled
that of the stars in nature: it was regarded as an effluence, fallen
from the ether, which penetrated the initiate, as an energy which filled
him, as a luminous ray which lit his mind. Virtue from on high entered
into the neophyte and transformed him into a being like the divinities
of heaven.[289] He was glorified (δοξασθείς) as a conqueror who had
triumphed over demons and smitten down death; he was illuminated
(φωτισθείς) and penetrated by a supernatural light which disclosed to
him all truth; he was sanctified (ἁγιασθείς) and acquired unfailing
virtue; he was exalted (ὑψοῦται), that is to say his soul rose in
rapture to the stars. Glory, splendour, light, purity, knowledge: all
these ideas were confounded until they became almost synonymous and
together denoted the transfiguration which was undergone by the soul
called to rise to ethereal regions, even on this earth and while it was
still joined to the body.
But this divine action, which tended to become purely spiritual, was
originally much more material. A very coarse substratum to the
theological ideas is still apparent in the texts which mention them.
Magic, which was addressed to the credulity of simple men, did not
conceal it at all. Here the ascension of the spirit appeared as a
journey to heaven. By appropriate formulae and processes the sorcerers
pretended to secure immortality for their adepts, making them fly, body
and soul, through the higher spheres to reach the dwelling of the
gods.[290]
* * * * *
In short, the initiate of the mysteries believed that they found in them
a warrant of immortality. By the virtue of the rites their souls were
united to their god; thus they became themselves divine, and were
ensured an everlasting life. Inevitably, every Oriental religion
affirmed that it held the only sacred tradition leading surely to
eternal felicity. Outside the sect there was no certain salvation. But
philosophy always opposed these claims. Philosophy, too, thought itself
able to lead through wisdom to happiness in this world and in the next,
and there was rivalry between it and the positive cults, as soon as it
took on a religious character and set up religious claims. The
Neo-Pythagoreans who formed esoteric communities opposed their
purifications and initiations to those of the mysteries. But the
eschatological doctrine, of which Posidonius was, if not the author, at
least the powerful promoter, and which was to be taken up again and
transformed by the Neo-Platonists, exempted the wise man from any
obligation to religious observances as ensuring his immortality. He was
no longer in need of sacraments and sacrifices, but could by his own
unaided force become a pure intelligence, win the complete mastery of
himself by reason, and thereafter be certain of raising himself to the
godhead.
At the most, certain thinkers granted a “propaedeutic” or preparatory
value to ritual observances, and saw in them a means of predisposing the
soul to ecstasy, but the mystic philosophers, of whom Plotinus
represents the purest type, discarded for themselves all religious
practices. Their proud doctrine places man alone face to face with
God.[291] Or else, like Porphyry, they admit that sacred ceremonies can
purify the spiritual or pneumatic soul but not its highest part, the
intellectual soul; that they can raise it to the region of the stars but
not bring it back to the Supreme Being. The late pagan philosophy
asserts constantly and forcibly that the wise man’s reason is able by
itself, or rather through a celestial grace, without the intervention of
any liturgy, to ensure its own return to its divine source. “As,” says
Porphyry, “he who is the priest of a particular god knows how to
consecrate his statues, celebrate orgies, perform initiations and
lustrations, so the true philosopher, who is the priest of the universal
God, knows how to make His sacred images and to carry out His
purifications and all the processes which will unite him to this
God.”[292]
Philosophers were therefore the priests of the world. Their functions
were parallel to those of the actual priests but higher. They tended
more and more to form a sacerdotal order which was separated from the
rest of human society by its customs and its way of life. Like the
mysteries they taught that piety, temperance and continence were the
indispensable conditions of obtaining true knowledge. This “gnosis” was
no longer a traditional theology revealed in the shadow of the
sanctuary, but a scientific truth perceived by a grace-illumined reason.
The philosopher took no part in the ceremonies of a complicated ritual,
but his prayer was the silent supplication of his intelligence seeking
to understand creation. He did not become absorbed in the contemplation
of idols but in the sight of the divine world and in particular of the
starry heavens. The end which this lonely cult strove to attain was
analogous to that sought by others in the conventicles of the initiate—a
divine revelation which would give to the perfect wise man superhuman
power, which would make him a prophet, sometimes a wonder-worker; and
after death, already a god on earth, he went to live in the company of
the gods on high.
The lifting of the reason to heaven, source of all intelligence, was
thus the pledge of astral immortality, as the liturgical banquet was of
the celestial feast. As physical drunkenness, being divine possession,
was a prelude to the joy of the eternal repast, so spiritual ecstasy was
the sign of future deification.[293]
The ancients found impassioned words to depict this communion of man
with the starry heavens, and to express the divine love which
transported the soul into radiant space.[294] In the splendour of night
the spirit was intoxicated with the glow shed on it by the fires above.
Like the possessed and the Corybantes in the delirium of their orgies,
it abandoned itself to ecstasy, which set it free from its fleshly
wrappings and lifted it up to the region of the everlasting stars. Borne
on the wings of enthusiasm it sprang to the midst of this sacred chorus
and followed its harmonious movements. Reason, illumined by the divine
fires which surrounded it, understood the laws of nature and the secrets
of destiny. It then partook of the life of the light-flashing beings
which from the earth it saw glittering in the radiance of the ether;
before the fated term of death it had part in their wisdom and received
their revelations in a stream of light which dazzled even the eye of
reason. This sublime rapture was an ephemeral foretaste of the endless
felicity reserved for the sage when, after his death, rising to the
celestial spheres, he penetrated all their mysteries.[295]
V
UNTIMELY DEATH
In the last lecture we endeavoured to show that in the ancient world
immortality was at first conceived as being precarious and conditional,
and that only the heroes, the exceptional men, who were in truth gods on
earth, obtained apotheosis after their death. We afterwards saw that the
mysteries extended the promise of eternal salvation to all the initiate,
who by virtue of the rites were made equal to the gods, and finally that
the philosophers contested the necessity of sacred ceremonies and
affirmed that human reason by its own unaided power could win union with
God.
We will now consider in more detail what lot was reserved for a special
class of the dead, those whose life had been interrupted by an untimely
end, and how in their case philosophy modified the old traditional
beliefs.
If we turn over collections of ancient inscriptions we find, as when we
go through our own cemeteries, a number of epitaphs in which the grief
caused by the early death of a friend or relative is expressed. But in
antiquity this sorrow was called forth not alone by regret for a loved
being, too soon lost to sight, and by painful disappointment because of
the irreparable ruin of the hopes to which his youth had given rise.
Along with these human feelings, which are of all time and all
societies, there were mingled in antiquity ideas which caused the loss
of those who died before their time to seem more fearful and bitter.
Virgil’s celebrated lines, in which he describes the descent of Aeneas
to Hades, will be remembered:[296]
“Continuo auditae voces, vagitus et ingens,
Infantumque animae flentes in limine primo,
Quos dulcis vitae exsortes et ab ubere raptos
Abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo.”
“Ever were heard, on the outermost threshold, voices, a great wailing,
the weeping souls of infants bereft of sweet life and torn from the
breast, whom the ill-omened day swept off and whelmed in bitter death.”
In an eschatological myth of Plutarch,[297] the traveller beyond the
grave also sees a deep abyss, in which moan the plaintive voices of a
multitude of children who had died at the moment of their birth and were
unable to rise to heaven. It has been shown that the Latin poet and the
Greek philosopher are here interpreters of an old Pythagorean belief, to
which Plato alludes:[298] children who died young, like persons who met
with violent deaths, the ἄωροι καὶ βιαιοθάνατοι, found no rest in the
other life, but their souls wandered on the earth for the number of
years for which their life would normally have lasted. The souls of the
shipwrecked who perished at sea roamed the surface of the waters and
sailors believed that they were incarnated in the seagulls.[299]