§ 5
All the various modes of conceiving the life enjoyed by the soul after the death of the body, as they had been explored, modified, and developed in the course of centuries, were admitted on an equal footing to the consciousness of the Greeks in this late period of their maturity. No formulated body of religious doctrine had by a process of exclusion and definition given the victory to any one conception at the expense of the others. But where so much was permitted and so little proscribed it is still possible to ask how these various formulations of belief, expectation, and hope stood in relation to each other. Were any more popular and more readily received than others? To answer this question it is natural to suppose that we have only to turn to the numerous inscriptions from the gravestones of the people. Here, especially in these later times, individuals give unhampered expression to their own feelings and thus reveal the extent and character of popular belief. But information derived from this source must be carefully scrutinized if it is not to lead to misconception.
If we pass in imagination through the long rows of streets in which the Greeks placed the memorials of their dead, and read the inscriptions on the tombstones—they now form part of the accumulated treasures of Greek Epigraphy—the first thing that must arrest our attention is the complete silence maintained by the enormous majority of these inscriptions with regard to any hope—however formulated—or any expectation of a life of the soul after death. They content themselves with recording the name of the dead, adding only the name of the father and (in the case of a foreigner) the country of the deceased. At the most, the custom of some localities may add a “Farewell”. Such stubborn silence cannot be satisfactorily explained simply on the grounds of an economy practised by the surviving relatives [540] of the deceased (though in some cases a municipal regulation against wordy inscriptions may have given countenance to such economies).[118] The very silence of this people that was never at a loss for words to express its meaning whether in verse or in prose, is in itself expressive. Where so little need was felt to give utterance to hopes of comfort, such hopes cannot have been of very vital consequence or matters of much assurance. Men rescued from forgetfulness only what had been the exclusive property of the individual—his name; the appellation which had distinguished him from all others in his lifetime and has now become the barest and emptiest envelope of the once living personality. Inscriptions in which precise hopes of a future life are expressed form a very small proportion of the great mass of epitaphic records. And of these very few again are in prose. Not as simple records of plain and authentic fact do such provisions and announcements of a blessed and hoped-for futurity present themselves. They need the artistic pomp and circumstance with which poetic fancy and extravagant affection clothe their inspired voyagings beyond the region of cold and matter of fact reality. This is certainly significant. Even among the poetic epitaphs the majority allude only to the life which the deceased has now done with, looking back upon the circumstances of his life—his fortunes and activities and character; giving expression, often with the most convincing sincerity, to the regret and dependence of the survivors; fixing attention exclusively upon things of this world. Wherever, at last, allusion is made to a future life, the tendency is rather to let fancy roam far beyond the limits of experience and sober reflexion to a vague and visionary land of promise. Such lofty aspirations needed more than any others the elevated language of verse. But we should run the risk of falling into grave error if we concluded from the preponderance of such aspirations among the metrical epitaphs that these were the normal views of the city folk who were their contemporaries.
The simple and archaic conception which perpetuates the old Homeric attitude and views without a complaint or a regret the disappearance of the soul of the departed into Erebos, is of the rarest occurrence among these sepulchral verses.[119] More commonly we have the prayer that the departed may “rest in peace”, expressed in the traditional formula[120]—a formula that really refers to the dead man lying in his grave but also contains a further allusion to the “soul” that has departed to Hades.[121] The idea is not yet dead [541] that there is a realm of the souls which receives the departed—Hades, the world ruled over by the Underworld deities, the “Chamber” of Persephone, the seat of primeval Night.[122] Here a state of semi-conscious existence is conceived to prevail, under the empire of “Forgetfulness”, drinking of which[123] the consciousness of the soul is darkened. Here “the majority”[124] are assembled, and the dead man is visited by the reassuring thought that he may greet once more the souls of those who have gone before him.[125]
But sterner conceptions also occur. There is occasional reference to a judgment[126] that separates the souls in the world below, dividing them into two and sometimes three[127] classes in accordance with the deserts which they have earned on earth. There is no lingering over the pains of the damned,[128] in the description of which the theological imagination had indulged so frequently. A more simple-minded fancy did not need such pharisaical satisfaction in the misfortunes of sinners in order to heighten its own assurance of superiority. There is no trace of a sentiment of penitence and terror indulged in for its own sake. The soul hopes to come by its rights;[129] to reach the “Blessed”, to arrive at the Isles or the Island of the Blest—to Elysium, the abode of Heroes and demi-gods.[130] Such hopes are very commonly expressed, but as a rule only in a brief phrase of confidence and hope. We rarely meet with any elaborate or alluring picture of the abode of the blessed.[131] That abode is generally placed within the limits of the underworld kingdom of the souls,[132] and such anticipations, when particularized, refer commonly to a “Place of the Good”, which in various forms is represented as the hoped-for dwelling-place of future life.[133]
But we also meet with the view that the company of the good is entirely removed from the region of underworld darkness.[134] For many individuals the hope is expressed or the certainty announced that after death they will have their dwelling in the sky—in the shining Aether, among the stars. This belief in the elevation of the disembodied soul to the regions above the earth is so frequently repeated in various forms in this late period that we must suppose that among those who entertained precise conceptions of the things of the next world this was the most popular and widely held conviction.[135] This belief that the soul rises to the neighbourhood and even the community of the heavenly deities[136] has its origin both in religious aspiration and in philosophy. Its roots, indeed, stretch back to a much [542] earlier period[137] and we may suppose that even in these later days it was derived from and very largely supported by the popular conception, disseminated by Stoic writers, of a living “breath”, which composes the human soul, and its effort upwards to the heavenly regions.[138]
But such language is in many cases plainly nothing more than a conventional formula which has already lost all vital significance; it rarely goes further than the expression of a hope that the soul will mount upwards to the heavenly heights. Very occasionally, in the adjective “immortal”[139] applied to the soul (which only sleeps in death),[140] we may detect the influence of mixed philosophical and theological ideas. We soon come to an end of the inscriptions which give expression to the doctrines of theology and of theologically minded philosophy as to the divine nature of the soul, its brief pilgrimage through earthly life and destined return to its true home in a divine incorporeal existence.[141] There is no certain mention of a belief in the transmigration of souls.[142] Of the specifically Platonic doctrine or its influence there is scarcely a trace.[143]
Another type of belief derives its strength not from the teachings of philosophers but from the usage and popular practice of religion. This is the belief of those who hope to be conducted after death to a blessed life by the special care of a god, presumably the god to which in their life-time they have offered particular devotion. Such a god will lead them by the hand, they hope, and conduct them into the land of bliss and purity. One who has thus “obtained a god as his leader”[144] may face the future with equanimity. Together with Hermes the “messenger of Persephoneia”,[145] Persephone herself is most frequently mentioned among these conducting deities.[146] Perhaps in this we may see a reminiscence of the hopes awakened and cherished in the Eleusinian and other related mysteries[147]—hopes otherwise expressed on these tombstones with striking rarity. On the epitaph—certainly a late composition—of a Hierophant of Eleusis who “goes to the Immortals”, the dead man is made to commend, as a mystery revealed by the gods, the ancient opinion illustrated by stories like that of Kleobis and Biton[148] “that death not only brings no evil to mortals, but is rather a blessing”.[149] A gloomy philosophy has in these latter days of the old religion and worship of the gods taken hold of the mysteries themselves and given them an attitude of hostility to human life that was not originally theirs.[150] We are reminded of the mysteries again when we find prayers [543] or promises that the dead shall not drink of the water of forgetfulness in the realm of the souls, but shall be given the “cold water” to drink by the God of the lower world; that he shall be refreshed at the spring of Mnemosyne, the bath of immortality, and so preserve intact his memory and consciousness, the necessary conditions of full and blessed life.[151] Here there appears to be a reference to the promises made by particular secret cults in which the departed has specially recommended himself to the powers of life and death. This must plainly be the case when, instead of the Greek Aidoneus, there is mention of Osiris, the Egyptian Lord of Souls. “May Osiris give you the cold water” is a common prayer expressed in a formula that is of frequent and significant occurrence in late epitaphs.[152] Of the numerous secret cults of these later times that promised a blessed immortality to their adherents, there is but infrequent mention in the grave-inscriptions: occasionally at the most there is an allusion to the special favour, reaching even beyond the grave, which belongs to the initiated in the mysteries of Mithras.[153]
No doubtful promises, but real and practical experience forms the basis of the belief of those to whom the dead has appeared visibly in a dream to assure them that his “soul” has not been annihilated by death.[154] The oldest proof of the continued existence of the soul remains in force the longest. The pupil hopes for something higher from the master whom death has taken away from his sight: he prays to him that, as he had once in life, so he will now continue to stand by his side, assisting him in the pursuance of his profession as a physician—“Thou canst, for now thou hast a more divine part in life.”[155]
Expectations of an energetic after-life of the departed soul, expressing themselves in many forms, are widely current; but such expectations never achieve a unified, dogmatic form. Nor was anyone forbidden to cherish for himself and inscribe upon his grave-stone, unorthodox opinions of every kind—even though they should point to the very opposite of such expectations.[156]
A dubious “If” precedes on many epitaphs the anticipation of a conscious life of the dead in full possession of the senses, or a reward of the dead in accordance with their deserts: “if anything yet remains below”. Such phrases are of very frequent occurrence.[157] Indeed the doubt itself is set aside when it is distinctly asserted that after death nothing of the man remains alive. All that men say of Hades and its terrors or its consolations is the fabled invention of poets; darkness [544] and nothingness is all that awaits us below.[158] The dead turns to ashes or to earth;[159] the elements out of which he was created take back what is their own.[160] Life is only lent to man and in death he restores the loan again.[161] In death he pays tribute to nature.[162] The bitter outcry of the survivors against death, the savage beast of prey, loveless and pitiless, that has snatched away their dearest from their side, shows small hope of the preservation of the vanished life.[163] Grief and complaint, say others, are vain both for the dead and for the living; no man returns; the parting effected by death is for ever.[164] Only submission is left.[165] “Take comfort, child, no man is immortal”—so runs the conventional phrase current among the populace and inscribed by many upon the graves of their vanished dead.[166] “Once I was not, then I was, and now I am no more: what more is there to be said?”—so speaks the dead from more than one gravestone, addressing the living who is soon to suffer the same fate.[167] “Live,” he cries to the living, “for there is nothing sweeter granted to us mortals than this life in the daylight.”[168] A last thought reverts once more to the life that has been left behind on earth. The body dies, personality vanishes, nothing is left alive on earth but the memory of the deeds and virtue of the departed.[169] But there is a continuance in the life of others, more vital than in the empty sound of fame, achieved by him who leaves behind him on earth children and children’s children. There are many who, in these later ages too, are content, in the true spirit of antiquity, with this blessing and desire no other consolation for their own annihilation.[170]