Pagan Ideas of Immortality During the Early Roman Empire

by Clifford Herschel Moore

By
Clifford Herschel Moore, Ph.D., Litt.D.
Professor of Latin in Harvard University

Cambridge
Harvard University Press
London: Humphrey Milford
Oxford University Press
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP

[I ], [II ], [III ], [IV]. [NOTES]

Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, who died in Keene, County of Cheshire, New Hampshire, Jan. 26, 1893

First. In carrying out the wishes of my late beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as declared by him in his last will and testament, I give and bequeath to Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., where my late father was graduated, and which he always held in love and honor, the sum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund for the establishment of a Lectureship on a plan somewhat similar to that of the Dudleian lecture, that is—one lecture to be delivered each year, on any convenient day between the last day of May and the first day of December, on this subject, “the Immortality of Man,” said lecture not to form a part of the usual college course, nor to be delivered by any Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruction, though any such Professor or Tutor may be appointed to such service. The choice of said lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious denomination, nor to any one profession, but may be that of either clergyman or layman, the appointment to take place at least six months before the delivery of said lecture. The above sum to be safely invested and three fourths of the annual interest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for his services and the remaining fourth to be expended in the publishment and gratuitous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which is always to be furnished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same lecture to be named and known as “the Ingersoll lecture on the Immortality of Man.”

PAGAN IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY DURING THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE

I

THE invitation of the committee charged with the administration of the Ingersoll lectureship and my own inclination have agreed in indicating that aspect of the general subject of immortality, which I shall try to present tonight. I shall not venture on this occasion to advance arguments for or against belief in a life after death; my present task is a humbler one: I propose to ask you to review with me some of the more significant ideas concerning an existence beyond the grave, which were current in the Greco-Roman world in the time of Jesus and during the earlier Christian centuries, and to consider briefly the relation of these pagan beliefs to Christian ideas on the same subject. In dealing with a topic so vast as this in a single hour, we must select those elements which historically showed themselves to be fundamental and vital; but even then we cannot examine much detail. It may prove, however, that a rapid survey of those concepts of the future life, whose influence lasted long during the Christian centuries, and indeed has continued to the present day, may not be without profit.