The doctrines of paganism, like the soil of our planet, are formed of superimposed strata. When we dig into them we discover successive layers under the upper deposits of recent alluvia. Nothing was suddenly destroyed in ancient religions; their transformations were never revolutionary. Faith in the past was not entirely abolished when new ways of believing were formed. Contradictory opinions could exist side by side for a long time without any shock being caused by their disagreement; and it was only little by little and slowly that argument excluded one way of thinking to give place to the other, while there were always hardy survivals left, both in thought and in customs. Thus the beliefs as to the future life which were current under the Roman Empire present a singular mixture, coarse ideas going back to the prehistoric period mingling with theories imported into Italy at a late date.
We will today examine the oldest of all the ways of considering survival in the Beyond: life in the tomb.
Ethnology has proved that among all peoples the belief that the dead continue to live in the tomb has reigned, and sometimes still reigns. The primitive man, disconcerted by death, cannot persuade himself that the being who moved, felt, willed, as he does, can be suddenly deprived of all his faculties. The most ancient and the crudest idea is that the corpse itself keeps some obscure sensitiveness which it cannot manifest. It is imagined to be in a state like sleep. The vital energy which animated the body is still attached to it and cannot exist without it. This belief was so powerful in Egypt that it inspired a whole section of the funeral ritual and called forth the infinite care that was taken to preserve mummies. Even in the West it survived vaguely, and traces of it might still be discovered today. Lucretius combats this invincible illusion of men who, even while they affirm that death extinguishes all feeling, keep a secret uneasiness as to the suffering which their mortal remains may undergo and are frightened by the idea that their bodies may be eaten by worms or carnivorous animals. They cannot separate themselves from this prone body, which they believe is still their self. Why, continues the poet, would it be more painful to be the prey of wild beasts than to be burnt by the flame of the pyre, to freeze lying on the icy slab of the grave or to be crushed by the weight of heaped-up earth?[[102]] This very fear that the earth may weigh heavily on those who are deposited in the grave shows itself among many peoples who inter their dead, and was expressed in Rome by a formula so very usual that it was recalled in epitaphs by initials only: “S(it) t(ibi) t(erra) l(evis),” “May earth be light for thee.” Until the Empire Stoic philosophers could be found who upheld that the soul endures only for the time for which the body is preserved.[[103]]
But experience proved that the corpse decomposed rapidly in the soil, all that remained of it being a skeleton bereft of the organs of sensation. When the custom of incineration, followed in Italy from the prehistoric period, became practically general in Rome, the destruction of the body took place regularly before the eyes of those present. Thus men reached the belief that those near and dear to them, whom they sometimes saw again in their dreams or seemed to feel beside them, who were kept alive at least in memory, differed from the beings of flesh and bones whom they had known. From those material individuals subtle elements detached themselves, filled with a mysterious force which subsisted when the human organism had crumbled to dust or been reduced to ashes. It was this same principle which temporarily departed from persons who lost consciousness in a faint or a lethargy. If this light essence did not leave a dying man at the moment of his death—whether or not it could escape from his body immediately was indeed uncertain—it was set free by the funeral fire,[[104]] but it still inhabited the tomb in which his remains rested. The idea that it was somehow attached to his remains had taken root in men’s minds, and even literature bears witness to the persistence of this deeply implanted popular belief. Propertius,[[105]] when cursing a woman, desires that “her Manes may not be able to settle near her ashes.” And at Liternum in Campania, where Scipio Africanus caused himself to be buried because, as he said, he did not wish to leave even his bones to his ungrateful country, the grotto was shown where he rested and where, so men believed,[[106]] “a serpent kept guard over his Manes.”
This primitive conception of the persistence of a latent life in the cold and rigid corpse or of its passage to a vaporous being like the body, is connected with the belief that the dead retain all the needs and feelings which were previously theirs. The funeral cult, celebrated at the tomb, is born of this belief. It proceeds from fear as much as from piety, for the dead are prone to resentment and quick in vengeance. The unknown force which inhabits them, the mysterious power which causes them to act, inspired great awe. If the natural course of their existence had been interrupted, especially if they had died before their time, they were suspected of being victims of some mischievous enchantment; their sickness was looked upon as an invasion of maleficent spirits provoked by spells. The wrath of those who had thus been torn from their homes and their wonted way of life was to be dreaded. Loud outbursts of grief followed by prolonged manifestations of mourning must prove to them, in the first place, that they were truly lamented and that no attempt had been made to get rid of them. Then, in their new abode to which they were conveyed, they must be ensured a bearable existence, in order that they might remain therein quietly and not trouble their families nor punish, by some intrusion, those who neglected them. Solicitude for the beloved, the desire to prevent their suffering, the hope of obtaining their protection, partly account for the origin and maintenance of these practices, but they were above all inspired by the terror which spirits called forth, as is proved by the fact that they were the same for all the departed without distinction, for those who had been loved and those who had been hated.
The tomb is the house of the dead. This is an idea common to the whole ancient world, going back in Italy beyond the foundation of Rome. The prehistoric cemeteries of the first iron age have yielded a number of cinerary urns exactly reproducing the various types of huts which sheltered the tribes who then peopled the peninsula. The burial places of the Etruscans are often on the plan of their dwellings, and Roman epitaphs leave no doubt as to the persistence of the conviction that the dead inhabit the tomb. The diffusion of Oriental cults revived archaic beliefs on this point as on many others. The name “eternal house” (domus aeterna), borrowed from the Egyptians and the Semites, often occurs in funeral inscriptions of the imperial period.[[107]] One text even specifies that this is “the eternal house in which future life must be passed.”[[108]] The tomb is thus no mere passage through which the soul goes on its way to another region of the world; it is a lasting residence. “This,” says an inscription, “is our certain dwelling, the one which we must inhabit.”[[109]] In the Aeneid, a cenotaph is raised to Polydorus, whose body had been lost, and his “soul” is installed there by a funeral ceremony,[[110]] for the shade which has no sepulchre wanders, as we shall see, about the earth. But when a fine monument is given to a dead man, he is happy to be able to offer hospitality there to passers-by and invites them to stay on their way. Sometimes he is imagined as in a bedchamber, where he sleeps an endless sleep,[[111]] but this is not the primitive nor the dominant idea. This idea, on the contrary, was that his rest was at least not unbroken, since he had many requirements. It was necessary not only to ensure him a roof but also to provide for his support, for he had the same needs and tastes beneath the ground as he had upon it. Therefore the clothes which covered him, the jewels which adorned him, the earthen or bronze vessels which decked his table, the lamps which afforded him light, would be placed beside him. If he were a warrior he would be given the arms he bore, if a craftsman the tools he used; a woman would have the articles necessary to her toilet, a child the toys which amused him; and the amulets, by the help of which all that was maleficent would be kept away, were not forgotten. “It is against common sense,” says Trimalchio in Petronius’ romance,[[112]] “to deck the house of the living and not to give the same care to the house which we must inhabit for a longer time.” In fact, the larger number of the articles of furniture and household use preserved in our museums come from tombs, which, in the climate of Egypt, have sometimes been able to yield up to us, intact, some precious volume intended for a mummy’s bedside book.
But the tombs have kept for us only a small part of the offerings made to those who were leaving this world, for often their wardrobe and implements were delivered with them to the flame of the pyre in the belief that somehow they would find them again in the Beyond. Lucian relates that a husband loved his wife so dearly that at her death he caused all the ornaments and the clothes which she liked to wear to be buried with her. But seven days after her death, as, stretched on a couch, he was silently reading Plato’s Phaedo, seeking therein solace for his grief, his wife appeared, seated herself beside him, and reproached him for not having added to his offering one of her gilt slippers which had been left behind a chest. The husband found it there, and hastened to burn it in order that the poor woman might no longer remain half barefooted.[[113]]
Above all, the dead must be offered food, for the shade, like the human body which it replaces, needs nourishment for its subsistence. Its feeble and precarious life is quickened and prolonged only if it be constantly sustained. The dead are hungry; above all they are thirsty. Those whose humours have dried, whose mouths have withered, are tortured by the need to refresh their parched lips. It therefore is not enough to place in the tombs the drinks and dishes, the remains of which have often been found beside skeletons; by periodic sacrifices the Manes must be supplied with fresh food also. If they are left without nourishment they languish, weak as a fasting man, almost unconscious, and in the end they would actually die of starvation. This is why the flesh of victims was, in funeral sacrifices, wholly destroyed by fire, none of it being reserved for those present. People always retained the conviction that the offerings burnt on the altar or the libations poured into the grave were consumed by him for whom they were intended. Often there is in the tombstone a circular cavity, the bottom of which is pierced with holes; the liquid poured into it went through the perforated slab and was led by a tube to the urn which held the calcinated bones. It is comprehensible that an unbeliever protested against this practice in his epitaph. “By wetting my ashes with wine thou wilt make mud,” he says, “and I shall not drink, when I am dead.”[[114]] But how many other texts there are which show the persistence of the ancient ideas! “Passer-by,” says a Roman inscription, “the bones of a man pray thee not to soil the monument which covers them; but if thou be benevolent pour wine into the cup, drink and give me thereof.”[[115]]
If the dead ask for fresh water, with which to quench their insatiable thirst, they are above all eager for the warm blood of victims. This sacrifice to the dead was at first often a human sacrifice of slaves or prisoners, and barbarous immolations of this kind had not entirely disappeared even in the historic period. When, after the taking of Perugia, Octavius, on the Ides of March (that is, on the anniversary of the slaying of Julius Caesar), caused three hundred notables of the town to be slaughtered on Caesar’s altar,[[116]] this collective murder, inspired by political hatred, perpetuated an old religious tradition. Fights of gladiators, whose blood drenched the soil, originally formed part of the funeral ceremonies by which the last duty was paid to the remains of an illustrious personage. It is said that these sacrifices were intended to provide him who had gone to the other world with servants and companions, as the offering of a horse gave him a steed, or else that, in case of violent death, they were meant to appease the shade of a victim who claimed vengeance. And doubtless these ideas, which correspond to conceptions already evolved, contributed to keeping this cruel custom in force. But originally the object of this sacrifice, as of the sacrifice of animals, was essentially to ensure the duration of the undefinable something which still inhabited the tomb.