Thus, when the Roman world was in its decline, men came back to the old threefold distinction of the Orphics and the Pythagoreans. The very guilty, who cannot be corrected, are hurled into Tartarus, where they suffer for ever the punishment of their incurable wickedness. Souls less corrupt are subjected to purification, either by passing through the elements or by undergoing successive reincarnations, and thus they regain their original nature before they are readmitted to their first dwelling. Finally, the most perfect souls, those of the wise who have freed themselves from the domination of the body and have not let themselves be contaminated by matter, and those of the pious faithful, to whom religious lustrations have given back their purity or whom initiations to the mysteries have made equal to the gods, at once rise again to the celestial spheres.
In the next lecture we shall speak of the rewards reserved for them in the dwelling of the blessed.
VIII
THE FELICITY OF THE BLESSED
We have seen how the evolution of religious faith caused the dwelling-place of the dead to move from the tomb to the nether world and from the nether world to the heavens. When the abode of souls was changed, all the ideas attached to the future life had to be transposed. In this lecture we shall endeavour to make clear how the opinions which were held as to the felicity of the blessed were thus transformed. We shall take up again matter which we have already touched upon in another connection and try to show the successive changes undergone by three manners of conceiving happiness in after life: the repose of the dead, the repast of the dead, and the sight of God.
The most ancient and originally the simplest of these conceptions was that of the repose of the dead. We know[[464]] that the dead who had not been buried in accordance with the rites were believed to find no rest in the tomb. A corpse had to be committed to the earth with traditional ceremonies in order that the spirit which animated it might have quiet. If this spirit were not subsequently nourished by offerings and sacrifices, it left its burial place and roamed the earth’s surface like an animal driven by hunger. The shades inhabiting the tombs could also be evoked by necromancers and such disturbance broke in upon their rest most unpleasantly.
These archaic ideas were so deeply implanted in the popular mind that other beliefs never expelled them, but supervened and existed side by side with them without causing their disappearance.
On tombs of the imperial period formulas like the following are often read: “Hic requiescit,” “Here rests,” “Quieti aeternae,” “For eternal rest”—inscriptions which could be interpreted figuratively; but other wishes can only be taken to have a material sense, such as: “Ossa quiescant,” “May his bones rest,” and “Molliter ossa cubent,” “May the bones lie softly.” Poetry has preserved a number of similar phrases. Tibullus expresses the following wish for a loved woman: “May thy slender form rest well beneath the soft earth.”[[465]]
The rest which the exact accomplishment of the rites gave to the dead was not physical only but moral also. The dead were securi—the word is properly applied to them—that is, they were exempt from care. Doubtless the care from which they were delivered by the cult of the grave, was first that of suffering from hunger and thirst,[[466]] but the “eternal security” (securitas aeterna)[[467]] they enjoyed was also the absence of all the fears and anxieties which haunt humanity.
When philosophy claimed to free souls from the superstitions of the past, it did not destroy the old conception of rest in the tomb but cleansed it from all material alloy. If it be doubtful whether anything of man survives, it is at least certain that death marks the abolition of the pains of this world and the end of its troubles. Mors laborum et miseriarum quies, is Cicero’s definition.[[468]] Death restores us to that state of tranquillity in which we were before our birth.[[469]] The “eternal home” which shelters the remains of man is the silent temple in which he no longer has anything to fear from nature or from his fellows.
The Epicureans who made ataraxia their ideal of life, the Stoics who found theirs in impassivity (ἀπάθεια), could see in the anaesthesia of death the supreme realisation of such absence of emotion and passion. The corpse lies as softly on its last bed as a man plunged in a deep and quiet sleep. The burial place is indeed often consecrated to Somno aeterno.[[470]] This idea is expressed in a thousand forms in literature and in epitaphs. A poor grammarian of Como, who doubtless had had little reason to congratulate himself on life, caused two lines of verse to be engraved on his tomb:[[471]] “I fled the miseries of sickness and the great ills of life; I am now delivered from all its pains and enjoy a peaceful calm.” On an African grave there are the following words: “After bearing a heavy burden and after manifold toils, he speaks no more, content with the silent dwelling in which he rests.”[[472]] We read elsewhere, “Life was a pain, death prepared me rest.”[[473]] The sentiment expressed by these inscriptions and many more like them is no mere reflection of the teaching of philosophers who denied the future life: it is profoundly human. The melodious but melancholy apostrophe of Leconte de Lisle is well known: