III. Skepticism, Pantheism, Emanation, Refusion—All Intermingled
Two classes sought to free themselves from the terrors invested in the prospect of death and the nether world—first the Materialists, who sought to prove that death was to man the absolute end of all; and the later Platonists, who maintained that this world is the Hades, that Heaven is our home, and that death is but an ascent to a better life.CFF1 625.2
1. CATULLUS AND HORACE: DEATH, SLEEP OF ETERNAL NIGHT
We pass briefly over Gaius Valerius CATULLUS (c. 8454 B.C.), celebrated Roman poet and versatile genius, who enjoyed the society of the noted—such as Cicero and Caesar—who declared that he knew of nothing to follow the short day of life but the sleep of eternal night. And the same is to be said of HORACE (65-8 B.C.), famous Latin lyric and satirical poet, from the point of common sense, who likewise saw nothing after death but weary night and endless exile, that makes it wise to snatch the present hours for pleasure. He left the future to the gods.CFF1 625.3
Picture 3: Cicero, Vergil, Seneca:
Masterful Roman Cicero Publicly Contended for the Continued Existence of the Soul After Death.
To Vergil, Another Roman Poet, the Spark of World-Soul Fire Must Return to Its Source.
Uncertainty and Contradiction Marked the Witness of the Stoic Seneca.
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2. VERGIL: SPARK OF WORLD-SOUL FIRE RETURNS TO SOURCE
VERGIL (70-19 B.C.), famous Roman epic, dramatic, and idyllic poet, philosopher, and intimate friend of Horace, wrote that there is a world-soul filling and moving the universe, interpenetrating Heaven, earth, sea, sun, moon, beast, and man. “It is divine fire [the Pythagorean concept], bestowing and sustaining universal life.” The particles of world-soul, constituting man, descend to the lower world for judgment. Then, it is alleged, a new body is assigned for it to animate. And if, after many migrations, at long last its stains are wiped away, it returns again, like purified ether, to its fount. He held to an inexorable destiny.CFF1 626.1
3. OVID: DIVINE SPARK GAVE BEING TO MAN
OVID, or Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C.-A.D. 18), Roman poet and leading writer of the Augustan Age, who was exiled from Rome in A.D. 9, likewise held to this ether-god, or Pythagorean doctrine of souls-that nature herself formed the world out of chaos. And the holy fire, or ether, the power of Heaven, has the heights of Olympus as a dwelling place. Ovid held that a spark of this divine ether descending to earth, gave being to man. CFF1 626.2
4. SENECA: UNCERTAINTY AND CONTRADICTION MARK WITNESS
Stoicism had by now assumed the role of a religion. But with the later Roman Stoics—Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius—there was a strong reaction against certain of its logical subtleties. SENECA (4 B.C.-A.D. 65), celebrated Stoic philosopher, known for his brilliance of language, held that the soul, with kinship to God, would continue on after death, until the next periodic conflagration, after which all things start anew. Thus the blessed spirits will attain to the eternal. But his concept of the state after death was full of conflict and uncertainty.CFF1 627.1
On another occasion he declared, “There is nothing after death.” At times he spoke of the last day of this present life as a birthday to the eternal. He talks of deliverance from the bondage of life, and of a happier state after being “received into the region of the departed.” But at still other times he consoles himself with the concept of the “loss of all consciousness,” and therefore the impossibility of any future torment. “Death ... preceded our present existence,” and there was nothing disagreeable about it—nor will there be after death. CFF1 627.2
5. PLINY: PANTHEISTIC UNIVERSE; MAN PART OF GOD
PLINY THE ELDER, or Gaius Plinius Secundus (A.D. 23-79), celebrated Roman naturalist, author, lawyer, soldier, and proconsul, in his Natural History explains the universe pantheistically as a divine being—the sun being the supreme deity in nature and the spirit of the whole. Man is possessed of a portion of that spirit. So there is deification of parts of nature and apotheosis of men. The deity is, he says, nothing but the power of nature—in the sense held by the Stoics. Yet in another place he says that existence after death is the invention of folly. CFF1 627.3
In his Natural History Pliny plainly affirms that death is an everlasting sleep. And the whole school of Epicureans supported such a position, invoking the combined forces of ridicule and argument in its advocacy. As already seen, their views are ably defended by Lucretius in his The Nature of the Universe. And Horace, Juvenal, and Persius concur.CFF1 628.1
6. EPICTETUS: REFUSION OF SOUL IMMEDIATE AT DEATH
EPICTETUS Of Hieropolis (c. A.D. 60-120), another celebrated Stoic moralist and philosopher, taught at Rome until A.D. 94, when all philosophers were banished from the city by edict of Domitian. Epictetus seemingly believed that the refusion of the human soul back into the World-Soul takes place immediately upon its separation from the body-man being an emanation from God anyway. Death, he held, is a return, or reunion, of the soul to its kindred elements, specifically reverting to the element of fire. To him there is no Hades.CFF1 628.2
7. PLUTARCH: IDEA OF ANNIHILATION IS INTOLERABLE
PLUTARCH (c. A.D. 46-120), however, Greek biographer and highranking moralist, and foe of Stoicism, expressly defended the immortality of the soul and a divine providence. As a philosopher he is to be classed among the Platonists, with a heavy leaning toward the prevailing Orientalism. He was also a Dualist, recognizing an eternal principle of evil confronting God from all eternity. Souls were not made, he said, to bloom but for a day and then be annihilated forever.CFF1 628.3
He leaned openly on the Dionysiac beliefs, though admitting them to be founded on myths. Plutarch disparaged rewards and punishments in an afterlife. And he adds that “the idea of annihilation was intolerable to the Greek mind. If the only choice they had was between entire extinction and an eternity of torment in Hades, they would have chosen the latter.” Such was the wide diversity of views afloat at the time. And this was contemporary with Christ and the apostles.CFF1 628.4
Picture 4: Plutarch:
To Historian Plutarch, Likewise a Platonist, the Idea of Annihilation Was Intolerable.
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8. MARCUS AURELIUS: SOUL REABSORBED INTO WORLD-SOUL
MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONIUS (A.D. 121-180), noted Roman emperor-philosopher of the Stoic persuasion, betrayed a like hesitation as to whether the dissolution and refusion of the soul are immediately upon death or at the final conflagration of the world. He leaned toward the former. However, he was clear on the soul’s ultimate disappearance upon its dissolution, with reabsorption in the World-Soul and re-entry into another portion of the universe, this process of dissolution and beginning anew going on to all eternity. The Stoic philosophers end with the emperor, and confusion becomes more pronounced.CFF1 629.1
And it should be added just here that LUCIAN, or Lucius Apuleius (c. A.D. 126-200), satirical writer and Platonic philosopher, pressed the point that much of Greek philosophy was originally brought in from the East. Such testimony is significant.CFF1 629.2
9. TACITUS: BELIEVER IN FATALISTIC PRINCIPLE
The confessions of Publius Cornelius TACITUS (c. A.D. 55-117), greatest of Roman historians and noted legal orator, praetor, consul, and friend of Pliny the Younger, are less explicit. He denies the conduct of events by divine providence and any appearance of retributive justice in human affairs. He was not sure whether human events are controlled by destiny, immutable necessity, or mere hazard. He was evidently a believer in fatalistic principle. CFF1 629.3
That is the list. We may therefore rightly say that uncertainty, doubt, confusion, and contradiction prevailed and neutralized one another among the intellectuals, with the greatest influence still exerted by the Stoics. They taught that souls were comprised of ethereal fire, derived from the World-Soul, and continued to exist in a separate state of being for a time after death. But no souls last longer than the general conflagration, when they are reabsorbed, and return to the primal fire.CFF1 630.1
10. CONCLUSION: BOTH VIEWS LEAD TO EXTINCTION OF PERSONALITY
These variant views led to two alternatives: (1) holding to the extinction of the soul along with the body; or (2) explaining it is a portion and emanation of the divine World-Soul, to be reabsorbed. If the latter, they expatiated on the heavenly origin of the soul, its descent from the bosom of the Deity to this life, and its return after death to its home. This return was simply a refusion of the part into the whole, from which it had been temporarily separated, and would be accompanied by the extinction of individual consciousness. Pantheism, reincarnation, and reabsorption are common—and loss of all personality.CFF1 630.2
Those who refuse to accept the mythical speculations had to choose between two theories as to the origin of the human race: (1) Either the soul had no more a beginning than the world, both existing from all eternity, through an infinite series of successive generations; or (2) there was an admitted beginning of the race, but not an act of creation. Man emerged, springing forth from the slime of earth, either impregnated by the sun or spontaneously.CFF1 630.3
But both theories led to the ultimate loss of all individuality. The first had a cycle of perpetual births and deaths; the second left all to blind destiny. Both presented a dreary prospect. Such was the situation in Roman thought when Christianity was getting under way.CFF1 630.4
