a chariot, which had in the Roman period become the chariot of the
Sun-god.[383] The idea that the divine charioteer drives a team across
the heavenly field existed in very early times in Babylon and Syria, as
well as in Persia and in Greece. “The horses of fire and the chariot of
fire” which carried up the prophet Elijah in a whirlwind[384] are very
probably the horses and the chariot of the Sun. In the same way when
Mithras’ mission on earth was fulfilled, he was conveyed in the chariot
of Helios to the celestial spheres over the ocean, as we see on the
reliefs found in his temples, and the happy lot which the hero had won
for himself he granted also to his followers. The emperors in particular
were commonly reputed to become companions of the Sun-god after death,
as they had been under his protection in life, and to drive with him up
to the summit of the eternal vaults. According to a papyrus recently
found in Egypt,[385] Phoebus, when informing the people of the death of
Trajan and the accession of Hadrian, stated in set terms, “I have just
risen with Trajan on a car drawn by white horses, and I come to you, O
people, to announce that a new prince, Hadrian, has made all things
subject to him, by his virtue and by the fortune of his divine father.”
The writers and the figured monuments show us other deified rulers
winning to heaven in a similar way. At the very end of paganism an
oracle, addressing Julian the Apostate, predicted that he would be
“conducted to Olympus in a flaming chariot shaken by stormy whirlwinds,
and would reach the paternal palace of ethereal light.”[386] It was not
only princes who were privileged to be drawn by the swift team of the
royal star. The chariot appears on tombs of very humble persons to
suggest their lot in after life.[387]
Yet more rapid was another method of mounting up to the stars. Among all
the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean basin the idea was anciently
spread that the essence or the spirit which animates man escapes from
the body in the shape of a bird, especially a bird of prey, for in order
not to perish this soul must feed on blood, the principle of life. The
gravestones and funeral vases of Greece give us a large number of
representations of the bird-soul.[388] In the Roman period vestiges of
this conception persisted. In Syria an eagle with spread wings occupies
on tombs the place filled elsewhere by the portrait of the dead
man.[389] Magic had retained this ancient belief with not a few others,
for superstition picks up many ideas that have dropped out with the
progress of religion. Sorcerers asserted that they could cause wings to
grow from the backs of their dupes, so as to enable them to soar up to
heaven. One of the marvels which miracle-mongers most frequently boasted
of working was that of ascending into the air. The phenomena of
levitation are said to be produced at all periods. When writers tell us
that the pure soul “flies away” to the sky on swift wings, the
expression, which since Plato[390] has been often repeated, and is still
in use nowadays, is no mere metaphor but rather a traditional
expression, first taken in its material sense and preserved in language,
ultimately acquiring a figurative meaning. A late epigram composed on
Plato’s burial place[391] says: “Eagle, why art thou perched above this
tomb and why dost thou look at the gods’ starry dwelling?—I am the image
of Plato’s soul who has flown away to Olympus. The earth of Attica holds
his earth-born body.” Lucian in his Icaromenippus ridiculed the claims
of the philosophers, showing Menippus attaching wings to his shoulders
in order that he might take his flight to the stars and thus learn the
secrets of the world.
The original idea of the bird-soul was transformed into that of the soul
lifted aloft by a bird. It was in Syria that this change took
place.[392] A widely held belief in the Roman period was that the soul
was carried away by an eagle, which in Syria was the bird of the sun.
The sun being conceived as a winged disk which flew through the
celestial spaces could easily be connected with an eagle. The king of
birds was the servant or the incarnation of the star-king, to whom he
bore his precious burden. This is why an eagle, preparing for flight and
holding the crown of victory, is a usual motif of sepulchral decoration
at Hierapolis and throughout northern Syria. The powerful bird of prey
lifted not with his claws, as he did Ganymede, but on his back, mortals
who rose to heaven. This soul-bearing eagle passed to Italy with the
ceremonial of the apotheosis. At the funeral rites of emperors at Rome
there was always fastened to the top of the pyre, on which the corpse
was to be consumed, an eagle which was supposed to bear aloft the
monarch’s soul, and art frequently represents the busts of the Caesars
resting on an eagle in the act of taking flight, by way of suggesting
their apotheosis. The eagle, which is the bird of the Baals, solar gods,
carries to his master those who have been his servants and
representatives in the world below. This kind of aviation was not
peculiar to monarchs. The eagle often has this meaning in funeral art. I
will instance a stele, found in Rome and preserved in the museum of
Copenhagen.[393] On this a young man, draped in a toga, is comfortably
seated on an eagle, which is rising to the sky; to his right a winged
child, bearing a torch, seems to point out the way to him. It is
Phosphorus, the morning star, whom Roman art often represented in this
form, before the chariot of the Sun. An altar recalls the cult of which
the dead man will henceforth be the object on earth, and a wreath on the
pediment stands for the victory which he has won over death.
All these supposed methods of reaching heaven are most primitive: they
start from the supposition that a _load_ has to be lifted up; they
hardly imply a separation of body and soul; and they are antecedent to
the distinctions which philosophers established between different parts
of man’s being. They are religious survivals of very ancient conceptions
which only vulgar minds still interpreted literally. These mechanical
means of raising oneself to the starry vault carry us back to an
extremely low stage of beliefs. Hence theologians no longer accepted
them save as symbols. Other doctrines of a more advanced character were
developed and these constituted the true teaching of the great Oriental
mysteries, just as they had secured the adhesion of thinking men. They
connected the ascent of the soul after death with physical and ethical
theories and thus caused sidereal immortality to enter into the order of
the universe.[394]
The first of these theories was that of _solar attraction_. We have
already described the doctrine, certainly of eastern origin, that the
sun by a series of emissions and absorptions projected souls onto the
earth and drew them back to itself.[395] This unceasing action of the
resplendent luminary of day was exercised through the force of its
rays,[396] and very old Greek ideas here mingled with the “Chaldean”
theory. The Pythagoreans already believed that the glittering particles
of dust which danced ceaselessly in a sunbeam (ξύσματα) were souls
descending from the ether borne on the wings of light. The air, they
said, was “full of souls,” we might say “of germs” or “microbes.”[397]
They added that this sunbeam, passing through the air and through water
down to the depths of the sea, gave life to all things below.[398] This
idea persisted under the Roman Empire in the theology of the mysteries.
Souls descended upon the earth and reascended after death towards the
sky, thanks to the slanting rays of the sun which served as the means of
transport. The sun is the ἀναγωγεύς, “he who brings up from below.” On
Mithraic reliefs one of the seven rays which surround the head of Sol
Invictus (θεὸς ἑπτάκτις) is seen disproportionately prolonged towards
the dying Bull, in order to awake the new life that is to spring from
the death of the cosmogonic animal. “The Sun,” says the Emperor Julian,
“by the invisible, immaterial, divine and pure essence which dwells in
its rays, attracts and raises the blessed souls.”[399]
In this theory it is to the power of the Sun, the great cosmic divinity,
that the ascension of the soul is due. According to another doctrine the
cause of this ascension is the physical nature of the soul.
This latter doctrine is set forth with great precision by Cicero in the
Tusculan Disputations, and by Sextus Empiricus, doubtless after
Posidonius.[400] The soul is a fiery breath, that is to say, its
substance is the lightest of the four elements which compose our
universe. It necessarily therefore has a tendency to rise, for it is
warmer and more subtle than the gross and dense air which encircles the
earth. It will the more easily cleave this heavy atmosphere since
nothing moves more rapidly than a spirit. It must therefore in its
continuous ascent pass through that zone of sky where gather the clouds
and the rain and where blow the winds,[401] and which by reason of
exhalations from the earth is moist and misty. When finally it reaches
the spaces filled by an air which is rarefied and warmed by the sun, it
finds elements similar to its own substance and, ceasing to ascend, is
maintained in equilibrium.[402] Henceforth it dwells in these regions
which are its natural home, continually vivified by the same principles
as those that feed the everlasting fires of the stars.
We shall presently see how the Platonists modified this Stoic doctrine,
and substituted that of the “vehicle” (ὄχημα) of souls.
These theories made it easier than the first one had done to establish a
firm connection between ethical beliefs concerning future destiny and
physical theories about the constitution of the universe and the nature
of man. The soul is never conceived by these theologians as purely
spiritual or immaterial, but when it abandons itself to the passions it
becomes gross; its substance grows more corporeal; and then it is too
heavy to rise to the stars and gain the spheres of light.[403] Its mere
density will compel it to float in our mephitic atmosphere until it has
been purified and consequently lightened. Thus the door is opened to all
doctrines concerning punishment beyond the grave. We shall show in
another lecture[404] how the soul was to be purified by passing through
the elements which moved in sublunary space—air, water and fire.
But, side by side with physical ideas, mythological beliefs always
retained their sway. According to the common creed, the air was peopled
with troops of perverse and subtle demons. They were, it was thought,
the guilty souls whose faults condemned them to wander perpetually near
the surface of the earth. They took pleasure in inflicting a thousand
tortures on their fellow souls, when these, by their impiety, were left
defenceless against them. But succouring powers protected the good
against these perverse spirits. Thus the atmosphere became the scene of
an unceasing struggle between demons of every kind, a struggle in which
the salvation of the soul was at stake.
The dangers to which the soul was exposed did not always end when, after
having crossed the most dangerous zone of the air, it reached the
moon.[405] Those who believed that souls must pass through the planetary
spheres conceived these as pierced by a gate guarded by a commander
(ἄρχων) or, as they were also called, by toll gatherers (τελώνια). The
mystics claimed to supply their initiates with the passwords which
caused the incorruptible keepers to yield. They taught prayers or
incantations which rendered hostile powers propitious; by “seals” and
unctions they made their followers immune against the blows of such
enemies. These instructions, which were previously given to the dead in
order to facilitate their descent to the nether world (p. 148), now
served to make the ascent to heaven easy. In this matter the magicians
emulated the priests, even claiming to show to their clients the way
leading to heaven during life. The papyrus of Paris, wrongly called the
“Mithraic Liturgy,”[406] affords the most characteristic example of this
superstitious literature.
But, above all, the secret cults claimed to supply the soul with a guide
to lead it during its risky journey through the whirlwinds of air, water
and fire and the moving spheres of heaven. Plato in the _Phaedo_ had
already spoken of this demon leader (ἡγεμών) of the dead,[407] and the
same word is applied to the “psychopompos,” whether demon, angel or god,
not only by Neo-Platonist philosophers but also in epitaphs. Thus the
funeral inscription of a sailor, who died at Marseilles,[408] says:
“Among the dead there are two companies; one moves upon the earth, the
other in the ether among the choruses of stars. I belong to the latter,
for I have obtained a god for my guide.” This divine escort of souls
frequently retains the name of Hermes in conformity with the old
mythology, for Hermes is the Psychopompos who leads the shades to their
subterranean abode and moreover summons them and brings them back, in
another migration, to the earth. An epigram belonging to the first
century of our era apostrophises the deceased with these words: “Hermes
of the winged feet, taking thee by the hand, has conducted thee to
Olympus and made thee to shine among the stars.”[409] But often the rôle
of escort devolved on the Sun himself. We have seen (p. 157) that at the
end of paganism the star-king is figured as carrying mortals in his
flying chariot; and the emperor Julian, at the end of his satire on the
Caesars, represents himself as addressed by Hermes, who states that in
causing him to know Mithras he rendered propitious to him this
leader-god (ἡγεμόνα θεόν), who will enable him to leave the earth with
the hope of a better lot.
In these beliefs we see persisting to the end of paganism the old
conception that heroes could be carried off to heaven, body and
soul.[410] It was never entirely given up by popular faith, and appears
notably in ideas as to the apotheosis of the emperors, although learned
theology rose in arms against it and affirmed that nothing terrestrial
could be admitted into the ethereal spheres. Antinous and Apollonius of
Tyana are thus said to have been borne away and to have continued
without interruption the life they had begun on earth.[411]
* * * * *
We are thus brought to ask ourselves how, at the very time when the
conception of the journey of the dead was being transformed, the idea
entertained as to the physical character of the dead also underwent a
change. Let us, in conclusion, seek briefly to trace the course of this
evolution.
Originally, as we said at the beginning of these lectures, two beliefs
as to life beyond the grave existed together. On the one hand, the
illusion was kept that the corpse which lay in the grave continued in
some obscure way to live, feel and nourish itself there. Side by side
with this simple faith the idea was maintained that the soul is a
breath, emitted by the dying man, which floats in the atmosphere and
which reproduces, when it makes itself visible in dreams and apparitions
or in remembrance, the outward appearance of the person from whom it
issued.[412]
These two conceptions of life beyond the grave are combined in the
nature with which the inhabitants of the infernal regions are credited,
and give these fantastic beings a character full of contradictions.
Cicero justly remarks that acts are attributed to them which would be
conceivable only if they had bodies. Thus they are supposed to speak,
although they have neither tongue, palate, throats nor lungs.[413] The
common belief was indeed that the shades fed, even in their deep abode,
on the offerings made on their burial places; and the pains which might
be inflicted on them presupposed that they had retained the sensibility
and needs of men; while the pleasures accorded to them in the Elysian
Fields were in part very material—to participate in a banquet was an
essential part of them.[414]
Hence, when the dead showed themselves, they were sometimes given the
appearance not of the living being but of the corpse: it was the body,
as it was when buried, which issued from the entrails of the earth.
Ennius, when he showed Homer appearing to him in a dream, said that the
shades were “of prodigious paleness,”[415] and the idea is often
expressed that ghosts are bloodless in colour. Not only are their faces
wan: their mouths are mute; they are the _taciti_, the silent Manes.
Much more, it is sometimes in the form of skeletons that they return to
terrify men. The most usual way of figuring the soul in funeral
sculpture is to show a person completely wrapped, save for his face, in
a long garment, the shroud in which his body was buried.[416]
But on the other hand, side by side with this more or less unconscious
belief as to a survival of the body, the soul continued to be regarded
as a light breath. The beings who peopled the infernal regions were
imagined as almost immaterial forms. They were called “shades” (σκιαί,
_umbrae_) or “images” (εἴδωλα, _simulacra_). The former term implies,
besides the idea of a subtle essence, the notion that the inhabitants of
the dusky spaces underground were black, and this is in fact the colour
often given to them. It is also the colour of the victims offered them
and of the mourning garments worn in their honour. These sombre
phantoms, which passed unnoticed in the darkness of night, returned
after the sunset to haunt the houses of men, and this is why the
_Inferi_ or beings of the nether world are above all appeased by
nocturnal sacrifices.
The words εἴδωλον, _simulacrum_, _imago_, especially express the
complete resemblance of the dead to the living. Are not the beings who
return to talk with us in dreams exactly like the persons we have known?
This tenuous image was compared to the reflection seen on limpid waters
or on the polished surface of metal.[417] Both alike reproduced the
features and colour and imitated the movements of those whom they
faithfully expressed. This is why magicians often made use of mirrors in
order to evoke the spirits of the departed.[418] As to the nature of
these _simulacra_, the ancients agree in declaring them to be material,
for how otherwise could they convey sensual impressions? But their
substance is of an extreme subtlety. They are forms which are corporeal
but empty, flimsy, impalpable, often of such rarity that they remain
invisible. They are compared to the wind, for the wind is the air in
motion, to a vapour, to a smoke which escapes so soon as its restraint
is attempted.
This shade, formed of a light fluid, has a form which is necessarily
malleable and yielding. The fact is thus explained that souls can take
on various appearances and sometimes let themselves be seen as terrible
monsters, especially if they are the souls of criminals who have become
maleficent spirits.[419] Heroes, on the contrary, whose virtue has
enabled them to be borne to heaven, appear to be of more than natural
stature when they descend from the ether; they are surrounded by a
radiant nimbus, and their resplendent beauty strikes with admiration
those who perceive them.
But here the ancients were faced with the question as to whether that
part of the human composition which won to heaven was the same as that
which descended to the infernal regions.
As to this puzzling question there arose in the Alexandrian period a
theory unknown to ancient Greece,—we have already touched on this
point[420]—the theory that man is formed not of two elements but of
three, namely, the soul (ψυχή, _anima_), the shade (σκιά, εἴδωλον,
_umbra_, _simulacrum_) and the body (σῶμα, _corpus_). This doctrine
claimed to be justified by a passage in Homer, in fact an interpolation,
as to the apotheosis of Hercules, but it was manifestly borrowed from
Egyptian religion by the Pythagoreans of Alexandria. For Egyptian
religion is “polypsychic” and distinguishes different kinds of souls. So
the _ka_ or “Double” has been explained as a living and coloured
projection of the individual whom it reproduced feature by feature,
which inhabited the tomb, but could leave it and return to it as freely
as a man to his house. The _baï_, on the other hand, is thought to be a
more refined matter which enclosed a portion of the celestial fire and
which departed to another world. Certain Alexandrian Pythagoreans
therefore admitted that when the soul was not entirely purified, it
remained joined to its idolon in the infernal regions, which were for
them situated in the atmosphere, but they held that when it had entirely
freed itself from matter it rose towards the ether, and left only the
_idolon_ in the neighbourhood of the earth.[421]
This theory was to be variously transformed, but it is at the foundation
of all the subsequent development of the doctrines as to the return of
the soul to heaven. The triple division most usually adopted is not the
one I have just cited but the division into reason (νοῦς or πνεῦμα),
soul (ψυχή) and body. What becomes in this case of the image (εἴδωλον)?
The theologians assimilated it to the irrational soul or ψυχή, as
opposed to the higher understanding. This image thus became the seat not
only of vegetative and unconscious life—a theory which would be in
conformity with the Homeric sense of the word—but also of sensitive and
emotional life. This soul or shade at first remained united to the
_nous_, which it surrounded with its vaporous envelope. Even after it
had left the earthly body, reason was still imprisoned in an aerial
body: the two dwelt in the infernal regions, that is, in sublunary
space, until they had been purified by the elements. They then, as we
have seen elsewhere,[422] left the atmospheric Hades in order to be
admitted into the Elysian Fields, that is to say, into the moon. There
the thin veils in which reason was still wrapped were dissolved. Reason,
a sublime essence, rose again towards the sun and the higher spheres.
So the shades of the old mythology had become a garment of which reason
rid itself, when it left this lower world to attain to its celestial
home. But the theologians disputed at length on the origin of this
psychic integument. When it was admitted that the passions and emotions
were due to the action of the planets, the εἴδωλον, being conceived, as
we have said, to be the seat of sensitive life, had necessarily to be
formed in the seven spheres, through which the soul passed as it
descended to earth, and to be decomposed when it passed through them
again in its ascension.[423] This is the doctrine supported by the
Neo-Platonists. They merely apply a new name to this cloak of reason,
that of vehicle (ὄχημα), which is at first synonymous with εἴδωλον as
this word was last accepted. Plato in his myths had several times spoken
of the chariot (ὄχημα) in which souls ascended, especially in the famous
passage of the Phaedrus, where he depicted them as trying to follow the
course of the gods towards the summit of heaven,[424] and above all in
the Timaeus, where he says that God, having made men equal in number to
the stars, caused them to mount on these stars as on a chariot.[425]
This vehicle was, according to the philosopher’s late interpreters, an
ethereal envelope, analogous to the “astral body” of modern
theosophists, which grew thicker and thicker by the accession of new
elements, as the soul was gradually lowered to the earth;[426] and it
was by the composition of these elements that the temperament of the
newly born child was determined. This luminous body was attracted after
death by stars of the same nature as those whence it derived its origin,
and in particular by the sun, and it thus acquired a force of ascension
which once again bore divine reason to the highest point of the heavens.
We will not lay stress on the speculation of the last masters of the
school, such as Jamblichus or Proclus, who imagined, on the subject of
this subtle matter, yet more subtle distinctions and transformed the
former conception of the “vehicle.” It is enough that we have shown how
the old belief in the shades who peopled Hades was modified, when it
came to be thought that souls travelled in the air and among the
constellations, until at last the Platonist theory of the psychic
vehicle was reached.
VII
THE SUFFERINGS OF HELL AND METEMPSYCHOSIS
How did belief in the sufferings of hell develop? of what elements was
it formed? through what vicissitudes has it passed?—these are questions
which it is difficult to answer precisely, for the reason that the pains
reserved for the impious in the Beyond were in the Greco-Latin world
taught especially by mystic sects, who placed them in contrast to the
bliss granted to the initiate. It is possible, however, to note the
genesis and general evolution of the opinions on this point which
reigned in the Roman Empire.
Already in the Odyssey three who are surpassingly guilty detach
themselves from the grey crowd of the shades who lead an uncertain life
in Hades—Tityus, Tantalus and Sisyphus.[427] All three committed grave
assaults on the gods, who in revenge condemned them to eternal torture:
the gigantic body of Tityus is unceasingly gnawed by vultures; Tantalus
is plunged in a pond the water of which flees from his eager lips, while
above him is a tree of which the fruit escapes from his hand as he
wishes to seize it; Sisyphus unendingly rolls to the top of a hill a
rock which always tumbles back down the slope. These souls, in order
that their suffering may be more cruelly felt, have in Hades a vitality
beyond that of the common run of the dead, who are pale, flimsy, half
animate phantoms.[428]