Pagan Ideas of Immortality During the Early Roman Empire

by Clifford Herschel Moore

[1.] Eduard Norden, Aeneis, Buch VI, Leipzig, 1903, is most useful for its commentary, especially on religious and philosophic matters.

[2.] W. Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People, Macmillan Co., 1911, pp. 419 ff.

So Dante’s journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise secured his conversion and salvation, bringing him finally to freedom and to knowledge. Paradiso, XXXI, 85-87 and XXXIII entire.

[3.] Metempsychosis was the subject of the Ingersoll lecture by Professor George Foot Moore in 1914. Therefore that theme is not discussed here.

[4.] Cf. Friedländer, Roman Life and Manners, Routledge, London, 1910, iii, chap. II.

[5.] On the pre-Hellenic periods, see Schuchhardt, Schliemann’s Excavations, New York, 1891, passim; Lagrange, La Crète Ancienne, Paris, 1908, chap. II; Baikie, The Sea-Kings of Crete, London, 1910, chap. XI.

[6.] Cf. Fairbanks, Greek Religion, New York, 1910, pp. 168-188; Stengel, Griechische Kultusaltertümer, 2d ed., Munich, 1898, § 80; Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, 2d ed., Munich, 1912, § 36; W. Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People, London, 1911, passim; and especially Lecture XVII, “Mysticism—Ideas of the Future Life;” C. Pascal, Le Credenze d’Oltretomba, 2 vols., 1912.

[7.] B. I. Wheeler, Dionysos and Immortality, Ingersoll Lecture for 1898-99. The classic work on Orphism is Rohde, Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, 3d ed., Tübingen, 1903, vol. ii.