When, however, the conception of survival in the tomb was superseded or overshadowed by that of survival in the nether world, the repast of the dead was also transferred thither. Henceforth it was in the Elysian Fields that pious souls could take their place at the table of the Blessed. The Orphics were the first to introduce into Greece this new idea, which was, however, no more than the development of a pre-Hellenic belief, and it spread through the mysteries of Dionysos[[506]] to every part of the ancient world: the ritualistic repasts in which the initiate took part, the drunkenness which exalted their whole being, were for the adepts of this cult at once a foretaste and a warrant of the happiness reserved for them in that eternal feast of the subterranean world in which a sweet intoxication would rejoice their soul. That forgetfulness of all cares which the divine liquor gave was connected with Lethe, the water of which, according to mythology, souls drank that they might lose all memory of their former life.
An immense number of reliefs, scattered throughout the whole extent of the Roman Empire, bear witness to the popularity of the belief in this form of immortality. The dead man who has been made a hero and whose family comes to make sacrifices to him is stretched on a couch and lifts the rhyton which holds the heady drink of Bacchus, while before him, on a little table, dishes are placed. These banquets took place, as we have said, in the Elysian Fields, and the idea of the repast thus met and combined with the idea of rest. The Blessed were imagined as lying on a soft bed of flowered grass, taking part in a perpetual feast, to the accompaniment of music and songs. Lucian in his “True Histories”[[507]] describes, with ironical exaggeration, the joys of these guests who are stretched comfortably among the flowers of a fragrant meadow in the shade of leafy trees, and who gather, instead of fruit, crystal goblets, which fill with wine as soon as they are placed on the table.
In spite of the mockery of sceptics these beliefs still had some faithful partisans even at the end of paganism. A picture discovered in the catacomb of Praetextatus shows us a priest of the Thraco-Phrygian god Sabazios celebrating a mystic banquet with six of his fellows, and another fresco represents the introduction of a veiled woman into the garden of delights, where she has been judged worthy of being received at the table of virtuous souls.[[508]]
Sometimes in the reliefs of the “funeral banquet” the dead are seen wearing on their head the bushel (modius) of Serapis, with whom, after a virtuous life, they have been identified. This indicates a confusion, to which much other testimony bears witness, between the Bacchic mysteries and the cult of the Alexandrian god.[[509]] Serapis is the great master of the feast (συμποσιάρχης),[[510]] the host who must in the nether world entertain those faithful to him. Thus the eschatological beliefs of the Nile Valley mingled with those of Greece. In the country of burning sun, where a straying traveller runs the risk of dying of thirst on the arid stretches of sand, the hope expressed above all others for him who accomplishes the great pilgrimage to the abode of the infernal divinities, is that he may find wherewith to quench his consuming thirst. “May Osiris give thee fresh water” is a wish which the votaries of the Egyptian god often inscribed on their tombs. Thus the repast in the other world was to be above all a refreshment (refrigerium). The word passed into Christian language to denote both earthly “agape” or sacred meal and the bliss of the other world, and even today the Roman Church prays for the spiritual “refreshment” of the dead.[[511]]
We touch here on a question which is not yet completely elucidated, that of the relation established between the funeral banquet and the salvation of those who took part in it.
In Rome from the end of the Republic onwards this banquet, amid the general decline of faith in immortality, was increasingly detached from the tomb and became a guild or domestic ceremony. The tendency was to reduce it to the repast of a family or confraternity, to the perpetuation among men of the memory of him whose features were preserved by a statue or picture. But the funeral cult acquired new meaning with the spread of Oriental religions. It did not cease to be useful to the dead who were its object, to whose subsistence in the beyond and safe arrival in the Elysian Fields it was still thought to be necessary. The offerings of the living sustained them on their dangerous and hard journey thither; the food and drink restored them on the long road they had to travel before they reached the place of everlasting refreshment.
But the funeral repast was also salutary to those who offered it, and not only because it ensured to them the good will of a spirit or demon capable of protecting them. This banquet, at which wine flowed profusely, was like the “orgies” of the Bacchic and Oriental mysteries, and the resemblance is partly explained by an identity of kind.
The ritual of the gods whose death and resurrection were commemorated—Bacchus, Osiris, Attis, Adonis—was probably a development of the funeral ritual, and the banquet of initiation was thus related to the banquet at the grave. On the one hand, it was believed that by a mystic union with the god, men could share his blessed lot after the transient trial of a death like his.[[512]] On the other hand, it was with a dead man that a repast was taken, but with one who also, in some sort, had become a god, who had preceded the diners into the other world and awaited them there. “Live happy and pour out wine to our Manes,” says a Latin epitaph of Syria, engraved beneath a scene of libation, “recollecting that one day you will be with us.”[[513]]
According to an opinion which often found expression, the shades themselves rejected whoever did not deserve to enter the abode of the Blessed, but willingly received the pious soul which had always fulfilled its duty towards them.[[514]] For admission to this club of posthumous diners a members vote was necessary. Thus the funeral banquet took on the character of a mystic banquet; that is, it came to be conceived as a prelibation of the banquet at which the elect feasted in the other world. The wish which the guests made to each other—“Drink and live!”—became an allusion, no more to this earthly life, but to that other existence in which they would participate in the felicity of him who had gone before them and who would help them to rejoin him therein. The following advice, repeated elsewhere in various forms, is found on the tomb of a priest of Sabazios: “Drink, eat, jest and come to me ... that is what you will carry away with you” (hoc tecum feres).[[515]] This is not to be understood here as an Epicurean invitation to enjoy life because all else is vain,[[516]] but a veiled expression of faith in the efficacy for the salvation of the initiate attributed to the joyous banquets which gathered men about a tomb.
The connection between the beliefs of the mysteries and the hopes attached to the funeral cult became more intimate as immortality brought the spirits of the dead nearer the celestial divinities. The idea that some few privileged mortals win admission to the banquet of the gods is very ancient. An inscription of Sendjerli in Syria, which goes back to the eighth century before our era, orders sacrifices to be made in order that the soul of King Panamu “may eat and drink with the god Hadad,”[[517]] and Greek mythology told that certain heroes, such as Heracles, who had been carried off to heaven, had there become the table companions of the gods. Horace states that Augustus, borne to the ethereal summits, will there rest between Hercules and Pollux, “drinking nectar with his rosy lips.”[[518]] But we have seen elsewhere that apotheosis, or deification, which was at first the privilege of an aristocracy, became the common lot of all pious souls,[[519]] and that the Elysian Fields were transferred from the depths of the infernal realm to the upper spheres of the world. The repast of the Blessed was thus transported to heaven.[[520]] This removal to the region of the stars seems to have been first made in the astral religion of Syria, but it was commonly accepted in western paganism. This is why in funeral reliefs of the Roman period, in which the dead are shown banqueting, such representations are placed in the upper part of the stele, above the scenes of earthly life which fill the lower portion of the stone. The emperor Julian is giving us a mocking picture of this repast of the heroes, when in one of his satires he shows us the shades of the Caesars at table immediately beneath the moon, in the highest zone of the atmospheres—in accordance with the ideas of the Stoics.[[521]] Men readily fashioned the heroes who tasted the joys of Olympus on the pattern of the celestial divinities—resplendent with light, clothed in garments of dazzling whiteness, their heads crowned with rays or surrounded by a luminous nimbus, singing, as in a Greek symposium, melodious hymns.