AUG 2 1961 ^%.„„ ..^^ .1)^4- 'DEAL BOOKSTORE II25 Opp. New Amsterdam Colu York Ave. Univ. FORERUNNERS OF DANTE FORERUN OF DANTE AN ACCOUNT OF SOME OF THE MORE IMPORTANT VISIONS OF THE UNSEEN WORLD, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES BY / MARCUS DODS M.A. (EdIxN.), B.A. (Cantab.) EDINBURGH T. & T. CLARK, 33 GEORGE STREET 1903 PTmied hy Morrison & Gibb Ltmitkd, FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. LONDON : SIMFKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LLMlTEl). NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNEK's SONS. " And /s it likely that the sou/, which is invisible, in passing to (he place of the true Hades, which like her is invisible, and pure, and noble, and on her way to the good and wise God, whither, if God will, my soul is also soon to go, — that the soul, I repeat, if this be her nature and origin, ivill be bloiun azvay and destroyed immediately on quitting the body, as the many say ? That can never be . But then, my friends, he said, if the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity ! And the danger of neglecting her from this point of vieiv does indeed appear to be awful. If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together 7vith their souls. But noio, inasmuch as the soul is manifestly inunortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom. For the soul when on her progress to the world below takes nothing with her but nurture and education ; and these are said greatly to benefit or greatly to injure the departed, at the very beginning of his journey thither.^'' Socrates, in the Phccdo (Jowett). CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction ....... i CHAPTER I. Babylonian and Egyptian Literature. Gilgamesh : Ea-bani — Ishtar — Minor Legends — Selme CHAPTER IL Greek and Roman Literature of the Classical Period. Odysseus — Pythagoras — Er — Scipio Africanus the Younger — /Eneas — Minor References (The " Culex ") — Thespesius — Timarchus — Parodies: The " Frogs,*' The " Menippus '* . 2S CHAPTER in. The "Descensus Christi." I Peter iii. 18-20; iv. 6 — Ephesians iv. 19 — The Elhiopic Book of Enoch — The Ascension of Isaiah — 1 he Gospel of Peter — The Gospel of Nicodemus — The Anaphora Pilati — Caedmon — The Harrowing of IK'll (a Miracle- play) S3 vill CONTENTS CHAPTER IV. ArocKYi'HAL Literature. PAGE Hebrew Visions : The Revelation of Moses— The Revela- tion of R. Joshua ben Levi — Minor Visions — The Books of Enoch — Additional Notes (Ascension of Isaiah, Baruch, Zephaniah). Christian Visions: The Apocalypse of Peter — Barlaam and Josaphat — The Passion of St. Perpetua — The Acts of Thomas — The Apocalypse of Paul — Minor Visions . loi CHAPTER V. Early Christian Legends. St. Carpus — St. Macarius — St. Brandan . . -157 CHAPTER VL Medi.^val Legends. The Soldier of Gregory the Great — St. Salvius — St. Furseus — St. Barontus — Drihthelm — A Letter of St. Boniface— Wettin — A certain English Presbyter — St. Anschar — Bernold — The Emperor Charles ill. — Walkelin — The Icelandic "Song of the Sun" — Alberic — The Child William — Tundal — Owain in St. Patrick's Purgatory— A Cistercian Novice — Bruno, a Chaplain of Magdeburg A Monk of Evesham— Thurcill— St. Christina . • iji CHAPTER VII. Conclusion. God fried ••..... 260 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE. INTRODUCTION. It is just a hundred years since Dante enjoyed unchallenged the credit of having not only com- posed but invented the various pictures of his Divine Comedy. The first serious assailant of his originality was a countryman of his own, one Francesco Cancellieri/ who in 1814 accused the poet of copying his details of Purgatory and Hell from a certain manuscript which his learned critic then published for the first time. This manuscript tells a story from the beginning of the twelfth century of a vision, chiefly of Purgatory, revealed to a boy named Alberic in his tenth year, and revised by him for publication later in life, after he had taken the monastic vow. Four years after the appearance of his work, ridicule was poured upon this theory of Cancellieri in no measured terms by the author, Ugo Foscolo, of an article in ^ Osservazioni sopra rOriginalitadellaDivina Conunediadi Dante, Rome, 1814. The MS. was discovered in i8oi, and canvassed in the continental journals before its publication. 2 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE the Edinburgh Revieiv} Of the Osservazioni the reviewer there says : "... all that its readers can make out with certainty is, that the learned author had selected this curious subject chiefly to astonish the world by his multifarious erudition, in a book which might have been not inaptly entitled ' De rebus omnibus, et de quibusdam aliis.' " But how- ever wrongly directed Cancellieri's attack may have been, and however ridiculous his conclusions, it would be equally absurd to suppose that there is no truth underlying his contention. There were not long wanting other works upon saner lines to show whence Dante derived, or may have derived, much of the skeleton of his plot. Ozanam and Labitte are two of the greatest names in this line of research, and copious reference will later be made to their works. It is hardly necessary to state that Dante, like every other writer before or since, drew upon the sum-total of human knowledge as it existed in the period at which he wrote. " II trouvait cette tradition " says the former of the writers just mentioned " dans un cycle entier des legendes, de songes, d'apparitions, de voyages au monde invisible, ou revenaient toutes les scenes de la damnation et de la beatitude. Sans doute il devait mettre I'ordre et la lumiere dans ce chaos, mais il fallait q'avant lui le chaos existat." The object of this essay, then, is to make some attempt at constructing, from visions only, the idea of Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell which was current at the beginning of the fourteenth century ; not, be it ^ Vol. XXX. September i8i8. Article "Dante." INTRODUCTION 3 distinctly understood, the idea which was actually present to the mind of the Florentine. For this latter task the will and, which is even more im- portant, the capacity are alike disclaimed. The purpose of these pages is merely to trace from their earliest beginnings the general notions of a future life, to follow their main line of development, and roughly to present the full-grown conception as it most commonly occurred at the time of its greatest and immortal exponent. References to the Divine Comedy will of course be made, but they must be taken as quite gratuitous, merely incidental illus- trations. The present research is not conducted from Dante backwards, but from the infancy of the idea forwards to the master interpreter as a convenient stopping-place and climax. Mention should also be made of certain further limitations of the scope of the essay. The course here taken starts with the legends of Babylonia and Egypt, comes down through those of the Greeks, the Romans, and the Jews, and finishes in the literature of the Romance languages. It has not escaped notice that there are other countries and other tongues. India and China have their own hells, and stories of men who have visited them. The Sacred Books of the East attest the fact. But it has been felt that these are far enough away from the mediaeval conception, both in themselves and in the effect of their influence, to be safely left out of account in a study of such dimensions as the present research. Again, even after deliberately choosing a line of investigation. 4 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE it Is found that the side-tracks are numerous and alluring. One of these leads into the fascinating realm of antique cartography. The old map- drawers never hesitated to insert a Paradise in their charts, or an entrance to Purgatory or Hell. The Island of the Dead figures largely in these, a conception which has lasted long, and in the sphere of fancy and art has outlived the rebuffs of science ; witness Bocklin's beautiful picture which bears its name. Even apart from maps, the geography of the other world raises many interesting questions. Another excursus might have been made in the direction of Parody. The Norman Fabliaux ^ yield plentiful material, and the land of Cocaigne ^ would be interesting to explore. Again, a history of our subject might be written from the point of view of pictorial art, or of sculpture, or of architecture. Scenes from a future life have been popular amongst artists and sculptors from the time of the Egyptian vignettes, and of the sculptures described by Pau- sanias. In none of these directions, however, has anything been attempted, with the solitary excep- tion of a slight dip into Greek parody, whither Aristophanes beckoned too enticingly. The avowed principle which has governed our selection of material is ethical ; and it is obvious that it is not in these side-issues that the eschatology of the history of visions chiefly lies. We have spoken of the earliest beginnings of the ideas of a future life, which suggests one or 1 See Thomas Wright, SL Patrick's Purgatory^ p. 47 seq. 2 Ibid., p. 53 scq. INTRODUCTION 5 two observations upon the genesis of such literature. The literature of visions of the dead is a necessary- outcome of the universality of Religion. We may take Professor Tylor's ^ word for it that " the asser- tion that rude non-religious tribes have been known in actual existence, though in theory possible, and perhaps in fact true, does not at present rest on that sufficient proof which, for an exceptional state of things, we are entitled to demand." Let us borrow the same writer's " minimum definition of religion." All that he demands is a belief in spiritual beings, which he divides, in the natural and obvious manner, into two classes, the human spirit or soul, and those other spirits, of birds or trees, of stocks or stones (or of nothing material at all, indeed), which have from time immemorial peopled the demonology, theocracy, and fairyland of the human race. Now, even when religious belief meant so much and no more, the phenomena of sleep and death demanded to be explained in a manner that would fit into this animistic theory. When the spirit left the body, as it was believed to do, lying motionless in sleep or unconsciousness or death, whither did it go? When the dead warrior's wraith appeared at his son's bedside and gave him counsel or warning, whence did it come ? In short, where did the spirits reside when they were not visibly and sensibly animating the bodies to which they properly, for a time at least, belonged, and where did they reside after they had finally- discarded their fleshly prison, if they did not im- ^ Primitive Culture, vol. i. chap. xi. p. 378. 6 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE mediately take to themselves another ? That the primitive belief allowed some existence somewhere to these spirits is quite certain. It is not necessary to instance how savage peoples, and peoples not very savage too, have buried food and weapons with their dead, or entombed a man's wives with his corpse, or shown anxiety for the departed spirit's welfare in a hundred other ways. It would also be superfluous to take the witness of custom in support of the doctrine of exterior spirits, angels and demons, fairies and elves, and the like. Where, then, is this spirit-land ? beneath the earth ? beyond the sunset ? or perhaps above the sky ? Again, questions even more urgent, what is the nature of the land ? and what the conditions of the life which the spirits, and especially the shades of the de- parted, do therein lead ? Another point which inevitably arose was the duration of the soul's life after the death of the body. Was the spirit immortal, imperishable ? Did it, too, after a time die and become extinct ? Or did it after a while return to this world in another form, the animating principle and essence of another body, be it human or otherwise ? There were not long wanting answers to these and similar inquiries from imaginative minds who had been carried in fancy to behold the manner of life of their dead in the unseen world. The idea of punishment and reward in a future life for deeds done in the body appeared very early. The most savage peoples have probably always had at least some rudimentary standard of INTRODUCTION 7 right and wrong. There were certain acts which might be done with impunity, others which might not, and which were followed in this life by revenge if not by punishment. If there is retribution here, why not there, in that shadow-world, which very soon came to reflect all the various phases of this mortal life ? Possibly at a later stage of development this reason- ing was backed by argument suggested by a sense of fairness. The wicked might flourish as the green bay-tree, but his time was coming ! One of the earliest forms of punishment after death was anni- hilation. The wicked soul was judged unworthy to continue its existence, and was cut off for ever. This is a primitive belief, though it was shared by a highly civilised people, the Egyptians; indeed, the general doctrine of extinction occupies a con- siderable place in eschatological history. Such being, in briefest outline, the beginnings of the literature with which we have to deal, it is manifest that it is practically coextensive with the known history of mankind ; for sacred writings are amongst the earliest and most carefully preserved. Of its bulk in the Middle Ages some hint will be given at the proper place. It only remains, then, to reassert the plan of this essay, which is to present such a series of visions of the future state of the dead as may give some adequate representa- tion of the ideas of punishment and reward as they developed through the ages, and so to lead the reader up to the conception which, roughly speaking, prevailed over Europe at the time when Dante wrote his Divine Comedy. CHAPTER I. BABYLONIAN AND EGYPTIAN LITERATURE. Gilganiesh : Ea-bani. The earliest legend of which we have any account is found on the tablets from Ashur-bani-pal's library at Nineveh, which date from the seventh century before Christ. This date, however, by no means represents the real antiquity of the legend, which is Babylonian, not Assyrian. According to Mr. King,i of the British Museum, (who has recently made this story and others very accessible in his handbook on Babylonian Religion and Mythology), the story goes back at least to the twentieth century, and probably a great deal further, to the Sumerian or pre-Semitic period of Babylonian myth. The legend is in the form of a poem in twelve tablets, concerning the deeds and prowess of the hero Gilgamesh, " the most prominent heroic figure in Babylonian mythology." Of this long poem only the last four tablets concern us, and even those not ^ Mr, King's account is quoted here. Since this chapter was written, has appeared Dr. Jeremias' The Babylonian Co7iception of Heaven and Hell, ("The Ancient East" series, No. IV., translated by Miss Hutchison), which gives most instructive versions of this and the two following stories. 8 BABYLONIAN LITERATURE 9 very immediately. But it has been thought worth while to insert the story, both because it is the oldest extant of its kind, and for other reasons which will presently appear. Briefly, the events w^hich lead up to the ninth tablet are these : Ea-bani, a gigantic man with the legs of a beast, is miraculously created as a rival to Gilgamesh, under whose tyranny the city of Erech is groaning. Persuaded to leave his haunts in the woods amongst the beasts of the field, he goes to Erech, desiring first to fight Gilgamesh and then to become his friend. Both heroes, however, are warned by the gods in dreams not to fight, and accordingly they become fast friends. Thus the third tablet. In the sixth, Gilgamesh incurs the wrath of the goddess Ishtar, by scorning her proffered love. The offended deity persuades her father to create an enormous bull to destroy the hero, but in the combat which follows Ea-bani holds the bull by the tail while Gilgamesh kills it. Ishtar's anger is next turned upon Ea-bani, who threatens her with a fate somewhat similar to the bull's. At the end of the eighth tablet Ea-bani dies of a wound ; and though the text is not sound, Mr. King says, " We may reasonably conjecture that his death was brought about by Ishtar, whose anger he had aroused." Gilgamesh we find "smitten with a sore sickness, which no doubt was also due to the anger of the great goddess whose love he had scorned." In the ninth tablet, then, Gilgamesh laments his friend, and sets out to seek his ancestor, Tsit- naphishtim, (the Babylonish counterpart, or rather lo FORERUNNERS OF DANTE original, of Noah), to inquire how he himself may escape the fate of death. First he came by night to a mountain gorge, full of lions, where he prayed to the Moon-god, who showed him in a dream the pass over the mountains. Next he reaches the still greater " Mountain of the Sunset," guarded by monsters and " Scorpion-men." To one of the latter, who looks friendly, Gilgamesh describes his purpose. Warned of dangers ahead, but not discouraged, he is admitted into the mountain, and begins his twenty- four hours' journey through its thick darkness. Emerging at the other side again into the light of the sun, he sees wonder- ful trees laden with gems, and beyond them the sea which he has to cross. So far the ninth tablet. An interview with Sabitu, the princess of the shore, results in his being referred to an ancient mariner, Arad-ea by name, who consents to make the passage. Gilgamesh, at his order, cuts down a tree and makes a rudder for the ship. A journey of one month and five days is then performed with miraculous speed, so that in less than three days the heroes reach the " Waters of Death." The dangerous passage of these is successfully negotiated by their combined efforts, and, approaching the further shore, Gil- gamesh pours his story into the ears of his ancestor. Tsit-naphishtim, however, regrets that he can be of no use to Gilgamesh. "The Anunnaki, the great gods, decree fate, And with them Mammetum, the maker of destiny. And they determine death and life, But the days of death are not known." BABYLONIAN LITERATURE ii The eleventh tablet is quite detachable from its context, and, from the present point of view, irrelevant. (In answer to Gilgamesh's question how Tsit-naphishtim himself had escaped death, the latter recounts the story of the deluge, in which he had played the part of the Hebrew Noah, and tells how the god Bel had immortalised him and his wife when he took them out of the ark.) Gilgamesh is next cured of his disease by this immortal pair. The husband bids him sleep, which he does, still in the boat, for six days and six nights ; during this time the wife prepares and administers to him magic food, and the cure is completed, on his awaking, by washing his sores in a healing fountain. Tsit-naphishtim had already denied, as we saw, that he can help Gilgamesh in his quest ; but now, at his wife's instigation, he tells the hero where to find a magic plant which will prolong life. For some reason not stated, Gilgamesh did not at once eat the plant, and by this want of foresight, or of appetite, he lost the plant and his chance of immortality. While he was drinking at a stream, a demon in the form of a serpent snatched away the charm. Without further memorable ad- venture the hero regains his city of Erech. Even the bare bones of such a story take some time and space in the telling, and so far are not very directly relevant to our subject. Gilgamesh did not properly penetrate to the realms of the dead, though he crossed the Waters of Death ; he did not see on the other shore any souls of the departed, his object being accomplished when he 12 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE had reached the secluded abode of his immortal ancestor. But it seems advisable to take some cognisance of his story, both for its own sake and as it explains the identity of Ea-bani, who, in the twelfth tablet, actually does return from the dead, and holds converse with Gilgamesh. This meeting was the answer to the latter's prayers to Nergal, the god of the dead, who " caused the spirit of Ea-bani to come forth from the earth like a wind." The land of the dead was a most dismal place, according to Ea-bani's account, " where was the worm which devoured, and where all was cloaked in dust." Unfortunately the text of the passage is imperfect, but Mr. King quotes the concluding passage of the poem, w^here we have the contrast, afterwards to become familiar in Greek literature, be- tween the state of the buried and unburied warrior : " On a couch he lieth And drinketh pure water, The man who was slain in battle — thou And I have oft seen such an one. His father and his mother (support) his head And his wife (kneeleth) at his side. But the man whose corpse is cast upon the field — Thou and I have oft seen such an one. His spirit resteth not in the earth The man whose spirit has none to care for it — Thou and I have oft seen such an one. The dregs of the vessel, the leavings of the feast. And that which is cast out upon the street are his food." There are obviously no sufficient data for the construction of an Inferno here. It should, how- ever, perhaps be noticed, before leaving these two BABYLONIAN LITERATURE 13 visits, that Ea-bani's spirit comes out of the earth, and that Gilgamesh penetrated the Mountain of the Sunset, which probably also signifies a subterranean situation. If it does not, if it is preferred to sup- pose that Gilgamesh merely travelled to the extreme west, and did not descend into the depths of the earth, it is enough to say that it is a commonplace of primitive animism to locate the abode of the shades beyond the setting sun. It is hardly neces- sary to call attention to the absolute materialism of Ea-bani's report : indeed, his facts are so meagre that they barely justify comment Ishtar. To Ashur-bani-pal we are likewise indebted for the preservation of the " Lay of the Descent of Ishtar." This goddess, whose acquaintance we have already made, is described as decending to the realms infernal to recover her dead lord Tammuz : "To the land whence none return, the place of darkness, Ishtar the daughter of Sin incHned her ear. The daughter of Sin incHned her ear To the house of darkness, the seat of the god Irkalla, To the house from which none who enter come forth again, To the road whose course returns not. To the house wherein he who enters is excluded from the light, To the place where dust is their bread, and mud their food They behold not the light, they dwell in darkness. And are clothed like birds in a garment of feathers ; And over door and bolt the dust is scattered." ^ ^ See King, op. cit., p. 178^-6'^.; Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, 1887, Lect. IV. ; and Salmond's Christian Doctrine of Immortality (4lh ed. ), p. 65 seq. 14 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE Space forbids continuous quotation. The porter announces Ishtar's presence at the gates to Allatu, queen of the under world, and after a Httle delay he is sent back to admit her, with orders to " strip her also according to the ancient rules." "The First Gate he made her enter and shut (it) and he took the great crown from off her head." To her very natural inquiry as to the reason of this proceeding, the porter's only answer is, " ' Enter, O Lady, for thus are the laws of Allatu.' " And so Ishtar fares at the six other gates, losing her earrings, her necklace, the ornaments of her breast, the gemmed girdle of her waist, the brace- lets of her hands and her feet, and finally the cincture of her body. Next she pours forth her request to Allatu " with oaths," but the latter is " haughty before her," and orders the demon of the plague to strike her sixty times with disease.^ Ishtar, however, was the goddess of love, and her presence on earth could not be dispensed with. Man and beast alike neglected the function of re- production in her absence, and accordingly the god Ea created a special messenger whom he sent to Allatu to demand Ishtar's release. The messenger asks for the Waters of Life to pour over Ishtar, and obtains them, though Allatu wreaks her vengeance, in the shape of a terrible curse, upon him, the un- fortunate messenger. The queen then despatches ^ Indicating thereby, as Dr. Jeremias points out, {op. cit. , p. 9), ' ' that death is the destruction of all the senses, and that all that is of the body must fall to corruption." BABYLONIAN LITERATURE 15 Namtar, her own messenger, to pour the Waters of Life over Ishtar and release her once more into the upper air. At each of the seven gates of the under world the goddess receives back the part of her ap- parel which had there been taken from her, so that she re-emerges gorgeously attired, as when she first knocked at the portal of Hades. It should be noticed also that Namtar's instructions include this line : " Bid the spirits of earth come forth, and seat them on a throne of gold." These are the spirits who guard earth's golden treasure in the realms below, (as the Nibelungen, centuries later, guarded their stolen hoard), and the Waters of Life are amongst their treasures. The last three lines of the poem contain a reference to Tammuz. It is perfectly clear that we have here the parent of the large family of legends which have from the earliest times dressed in their poetry the natural facts of the return of the seasons. But it is also clear that this, the earliest of the family, is, as we have it, a very old and a composite myth. If the story is that Ishtar, the goddess of love, seeks her dead bridegroom in Hades, then why is she herself stripped of her ornaments and gay dress as she descends, and why is she detained in Hades and smitten with sickness ? Professor Sayce, in the lecture above quoted, concludes from this and from other evidence that Ishtar was once herself the goddess of the earth before she became the god- dess of love, a conclusion which makes the whole i6 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE story simple and obvious. Earth descends to Hades for the winter, losing all her flowers and crops, and returns gaily decked in spring. Later, then, the Tammuz legend was incorporated, prob- ably from Egypt, by an identification of Ishtar and Isis, and, once married to the original legend, gave birth to a numerous offspring of myths and cere- monies which have lasted up to the present day. Ceremonies can still be seen which are the direct lineal descendants of the fable of the death of Osiris. References in classical literature are fre- quent, and in the Bible perhaps the most remark- able is that of Jer. xxii. i 8 : "Ah me, my brother, and Ah me, my sister I Ah me, Adonis, and Ah me, his lady ! " Compare this with the cry of the goddess Tillili in our poem : " O my brother, the only one, do not destroy me," and with the mourning for the " only son " in Amos viii. lo. But further reference to Professor Sayce's fascin- ating lecture is impossible here, as all we are vitally concerned with is the matter of the " Lay." When we turn to this we find that there is not a great deal to add to Ea-bani's Hell. We have again the darkness, the gloom, and the dust. Ishtar's case is, of course, a special one, and therefore, if we argue from it alone, we must not press our points too far, but there are one or two features of her experience that call for remark. She had to appear naked before Allatu, queen of BABYLONIAN LITERATURE 17 the under world, and in this there may be some moral significance. In later visions the idea is common and important. Considerable use is made of it, for instance, in the story of Thespesius, from Plutarch, to which further reference will be made. Retribution, again, is perhaps foreshadowed in Ishtar's punishment by the plague-demon,^ notwith- standing the fact that there were special reasons for Allatu's annoyance. Here Hell is, for the first time, called the Land of No-Return, a name which constantly recurs in later accounts. The materials, however, from the sources discussed, are still too meagre for anything like a considerable construc- tion of the realms of the dead. The annual sojourn of Tammuz with the dead, as distinct from Ishtar's descent, calls for no special comment. It is not a " visit " in our sense of the term. Tammuz indeed returns from the dead, but not in order to give an account of what he has seen, nor do we anywhere find such an account. For the same reason no more will be said of Osiris, nor of Adonis, nor of any other of the many names under which the hero of this myth figures in various countries and different ages. Minor Legends. The story of Etana's ascent to heaven on the back of his friend the Eagle - might contain some ^ But the primary significance of this appears to be the corruption of death, see above, p. 14, note. 2 King, op. cit., p. 184. 2 i8 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE information if it were complete ; but, unfortunately, both the hero's neck and the tablet are broken before anything has been given which amounts to a description of the place which he visited. There is one more story in Mr. King's book ^ which should perhaps be briefly summarised. Adapa, the son of Ea, is fishing when his boat is overturned by Shutu, the south wind. In re- venge he seizes her and breaks her wings, so that she can no longer blow. Anu, the god of heaven, summons him to heaven to explain his behaviour. His father bids him dress in mourning to propitiate Tammuz and Gishyida, the gods who stood at heaven's gate, and warns him not to touch the " Meat of Death " and " Water of Death " which would be offered to him. The proffered garment he might wear, and with the oil they would give him he might anoint himself. Adapa, primed with these instructions, is admitted by the heavenly porters to Anu's presence, and on their intercession is pardoned. Anu then decides that, as he has seen the inside of heaven, Adapa must join the ranks of the gods, and accordingly orders the " Meat of Life " and the " Water of Life " to be put before him. These, however, he naturally supposes to be the fare against which his father had speci- ally warned him, and as naturally he will have none of them. Thus he loses his chance of im- mortality. This heaven is obviously nothing more than an Olympus, an abode of the blessed gods. As a 1 p. 1 88. EGYPTIAN LITERATURE 19 human being, Adapa could not stay there. We further gather that the gods had " power to add to their number," but the importance of the story to our subject is extremely slight. Setme. By far the most complete and, so to speak, Dantesque visit to the dead in Egyptian literature is one which has been recently found on the verso of a couple of Greek official documents of the first century of our era. If any defence is needed for its insertion at this point, it is that the story is saddled upon the son of Rameses II., and therefore in a sense goes back to his date, 1300 B.C. The following account of the story and quotations from it are taken from Mr. F. LI. Griffith's Stories of tJie High Priests of Memphis} and in the main from chapter iii. of that work. The two Greek manu- scripts contain a register of land, and bear the date of the seventh year of the Emperor Claudius, i^. 46-47 A.D. : these have been joined together to receive the demotic narrative on the back, and it is safe to attribute this latter to the second half of the first century. The manuscript is not perfect, but fortunately most of what is gone concerned the beginning of the story and is irrelevant to our immediate subject. It appears, then, that the wife of Setme Khamuas, son of Pharaoh Usermara (the throne 1 Clarendon Press, 1900. Mr. Griffith indicates by his brackets uncertain renderings of corrupt words, and conjectural restorations. 20 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE name of Rameses li.), after being for some time childless, bore to her husband a very precocious son, who was called Si-Osiri. The boy was a prodigy from his earliest years ; for — ■" It came to pass that when the child [Si-Osiri was in his first year, one] would have said ' he is two years old,' and when he was in his second [year], one would have said, ' he is three years old.' . . . The child grew big, he grew strong, he was sent to the school (?)... He rivalled the scribe that had been appointed to teach him." This youthful pro- digy was accustomed to be taken before Pharaoh and his nobles, whom he greatly delighted. One day while Setme and his son were attending the iopTT] at Pharaoh's court, they saw two bodies being carried past the place for burial. One corpse was evidently that of a rich man, and was followed by the customary wailing crowds ; the other was wrapped in a mat, and no one went after it to the grave. Setme's comment was this : " By [Ptah, how much better it shall be in Amenti for great men (?)] for whom [they made glory (?) with] the voice of [wailing] than for poor men whom they take to the desert-necropolis [without glory of funeral] ! " His son, however, rebuked him in these rather curious words : " [There shall be done unto thee in Amenti] like [that which] shall be done to this poor man in Amenti ; [there shall not be done unto thee that which shall be done to this rich man in Amenti]. Thou shalt [go (?)] into Amenti [and thou shalt see . . ." and here for thirteen lines the text is bad. It appears, however, that Setme was EGYPTIAN LITERATURE 21 troubled by his son's prediction, and that the pair set out for the Necropolis. Arrived there they penetrated to the under world by the mystic entrance of the Te. They pass through three halls of the lower regions, and the text is good again by the time they reach the fourth. " [They entered the fourth hall] . . . [and Setme saw some men that were scattered and apart, they being also ravenous (?)] ; there being also others whose food, water, and bread were hung over them, and they were hastening to take it down, but others dug pits at their feet to prevent their reaching it. " They entered the fifth hall, and behold ! Setme saw the noble spirits standing in their places, and those who had charges of violence standing at the entrance praying ; [and] one man in whose right eye the bolt of the door of the fifth hall was fixed, he praying, he uttered great lamentation. " They entered the sixth hall, and behold ! Setme saw the gods of the [council (?)] of the dwellers in Amenti standing in their places, the attendants (?) of Amenti standing and making proclamation. " They entered the seventh hall, and behold ! Setme saw the figure of Osiris, the great god, seated upon his throne of fine gold, and crowned with the atef Crown, Anubis, the great god, being on his left, and the great god Thoth on his right ; and the gods of the council of the dwellers in Amenti were standing to left and right of him. The balance was set in the midst before them, and they were weighing the evil deeds against the good deeds, 22 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE the great god Thoth recording, and Anubis giving the words to his colleague. For he of whom it shall be found that his evil deeds are more numer- ous than his good deeds is delivered (?) to Ama of the lord of Amenti ; his soul and his body are de- stroyed, and she (?) does not permit him to live again for ever. But as for him of whom it shall be found that his good deeds are more numerous than his evil deeds, he is taken among the gods of the council of the lord of Amenti, his soul going to heaven with the noble spirits, and he of whom it shall be found that his good deeds are equal to his evil deeds, he is taken amongst the excellent (?) spirits that serve Sokari-Osiris. " And Setme saw (there) a great man clothed in raiment of byssus, near to the place in which Osiris was, he being of exceeding high position (?). '' Setme marvelled at those things which he saw in Amenti. And Si-Osiri walked out in front of(?) him ; and he said to him, ' My father Setme, . . .' " but the precocious child is somewhat prolix, and it is unfortunately necessary to condense his ex- planatory comments upon what had been seen. The " great man," then, was explained to be the poor man whom they had seen being carried out for burial, and it had been commanded " before Osiris " that he should be endowed with the rich man's burial outfit, whereas the rich man w^as he whom the visitors had seen and heard praying and lamenting with the pivot of the gate of the fifth hall of Amenti fixed in his right eye. These " dooms " were awarded upon the issue of EGYPTIAN LITERATURE 23 the weighing of the good deeds of the two dead men against their evil deeds, the process which Setme and his son saw being performed by Anubis and recorded by Thoth in the seventh hall of Amenti. Thus was Si-Osiri's prediction as to his father's treatment in the under world like to be justified. His youthful guide next explains to Setme who are the inhabitants of the fourth hall. " It is just, my father Setme, these men that thou sawest scattered (?) and apart (?) they being also raven- ous (?), they are the kind of men on earth who are under the curse of God, and do work night and day for their living, while moreover their women rob them and they find not bread to eat. They came to Amenti : their evil deeds were found to be more numerous than their good deeds : and they found that that which happened to them on earth happened to them in Amenti — both to them and to those other men whom thou sawest, whose food, water, and bread is hung over them, they running to take it down while others dig a pit at their feet to prevent them reaching it : they are the kind of men on earth whose life is before them, but God diggeth a pit at their feet to prevent them find- mg it. No apology is needed for quoting this passage at length. The simple beauty of its style, and the terrible pathos of its hopeless fatalism, combine to produce a most striking effect. It comes like a dull moan of pain across the centuries. Was there ever so deplorable a doctrine of God, so sad a 24 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE doctrine of man's future ? God " diggeth a pit at their feet " in this Hfe, and the life to come is nothing but an endless mimicry of their innocent and inevitable failure. They are denied even the comparative blessing of annihilation which is the doom of those who sinned on their own initiative. And the child-guide says " It is just." There are several curious points in the classifica- tion of the dead in the account of Si-Osiri. To begin with, in addition to the two ordinary classes, good and bad, there is a third which is certainly uncommon apart from any mention of a purgatory. The tongue of Anubis' balance sometimes hangs straight ; hence the indifferent, the Laodiceans, so to speak, who are by no means treated with the unsparing severity which they meet at the hands of St. John the Divine. Here they are but a little lower than the noble spirits who go to heaven among the gods of the council of the lord of Amenti. This threefold scheme would apparently cover all conditions of men ; it has been shown, however, that the outcasts, who were from the beginning of their life predestined to endless tortures of Tantalus, form a fourth class. But the Egyptian Dives, groaning with the pivot of the gate turning in his right eye, — how is he to be classified ? The treatment of Lazarus is logical and consistent : he is taken " among the noble spirits as a man of God that follows Sokari-Osiris, his place being near to the person of Osiris." That is to say, Anubis found his good deeds heavier than his evil deeds, and he became a god EGYPTIAN LITERATURE 25 of the council ; his fate agrees with what the travellers saw in the seventh hall of Amenti. But according to what they saw there, Dives should have been handed over for annihilation to Ama (or Am-met), the mistress of Amenti, the monster of the Judgment Scene,^ which stands behind Thoth near the scale, and devours the unjustified. It seems impossible, then, to place Dives in a satisfactory way : he must be compared to Tityos and his brethren of the Odyssey^ exceptionally situated as a type of penal suffering. For the seven halls of Amenti it is perhaps worth while comparing the seven Arits or gates in chapter cxliv. of the Book of the Dead, and the seven gates at which Ishtar gradually lost all her ornaments in the Babylonian legend already treated. It is perhaps significant that Si-Osiri answers " never a word " to his father's question, " Is the place by which we descended different from the place whence we came up ? " The mystery of the approaches to Hades appears to have been too sacred for divulgence, and in the same spirit the scribe writes of Setme concerning the whole vision, " these things weighed upon him, and to none on earth could he reveal them." The moral tone of the legend is undoubtedly high, so much so as to make Mr. Griffith talk of Christian influence. The most conspicuous marks of advance from the Book of the Dead ?ixe. the difference in the task of Anubis the weigher, and the absence of reference to the negative confession made to ^ Frontispiece of Budge's Book of I he Dead. 26 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE the assessors of Osiris in the older Egyptian system. In the Book of the Dead there are two different accounts of the weighing process, which may be very briefly summarised as follows. In one ^ the body of the deceased is weighed against his heart, probably to ascertain if the former has obeyed the directions of the latter. The other,^ the more important. Dr. Budge describes as the weighing of the heart, representing the conscience of the deceased, against a feather, the emblem of Right and Truth. Mr. Griffith, however, sees in this an idea akin to the negative confession,^ a weighing against no weight only giving a negative justifica- tion. It is hardly necessary to point out how far ahead of this ethically is the weighing of good deeds against bad. It is the first appearance of a truly moral standard of judgment. Again, it has been observed that in our present text the negative confession is omitted. True, the forty-two assessors of Osiris are there, but Egyptian morality has advanced beyond the formalism of the correct denial of forty-two sins, by which the deceased was ceremonially justified, and the priest, doubtless, financially aggrandised. " Find it at thy heart," says Si-Osiri in con- clusion, " my father Setme, that he who is good upon the earth they are good to him in Amenti, while he that is evil they are evil to him. These ^ Frontispiece of Budge's Book of the Dead, p. 79. ^ Op. cit., frontispiece and p. 193. See, too, p. xciii. seq. ^ Op. cit., chap. cxxv. EGYPTIAN LITERATURE 27 things are established (?), [they shall not be changed] for ever. The things that thou sawest in the Te at Memphis, they happen in the forty-two nomes in which [are the assessors (?)] of Osiris the Great God, [whose seat is in] Abydos, the place of Oracle (?), the dwellings of princes, .... Philae." The essence of Setme's visit, then, is this. He found a Hell peopled by men who had never had a chance of escaping it, and a Heaven inhabited by the deified good. He saw, besides, that annihilation awaited the bad and glorification the not-bad, but not-good, the indifferent ; the only principle of judgment being justification by works. The almost certain inference from the story is that all these states were eternal and irrevocable. CHAPTER II. GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD. Odysseus. The Eleventh Book of the Odyssey bears unmis- takable signs — only to speak of internal evidence — of being earlier than the vision just recorded. The most obvious of these is that there are no divisions in the Homeric Hades : good, bad, and indifferent alike are herded together in the bowels of the earth.i The heaven and hell of the demotic text are necessarily a later development. But, on the other hand, how infinitely more human is the Odyssey, Here, for the first time, does a living man hold converse with his dead : he weeps with his mother, and appeals to his sulky rival to forget his fancied wrong. The Homeric poem is essenti- ally and in the first place human, and herein lies a large part of its greatness. What is ta be said of the pageantry of the book ? Of the gorgeous procession of heroes and heroines who drink the blood in turn, and acquaint Odysseus with their deeds, or ask him of their living friends ? What ^ UTTO Ke66eaL yalrjs. 28 GREEK AND ROMAN LITERATURE 29 of the arrangement and sequence of the drama that is enacted on the further shore of Okeanos ? What must one think of the conception of the whole, the growth of centuries, perhaps, but already so perfect, or of the imagination which has already so vividly realised the unseen ? To weld the work as a link in the chain we are attempting to forge, a short examination of Odysseus' story will be necessary. When Circe sends off the traveller of many devices from her island, she bids him seek the spirit of Teiresias in Hades and hear from him of his home-coming. " To him," she says,^ " Persephone hath given judg- ment, even in his death, that he alone should have understanding ; but the other souls sweep shadow- like around ! " And so, indeed, does Odysseus find them. These i/rf^at, which we translate by " souls," are in Hades mere etScoka, or images, of their quondam human selves. The word yjrv')(7] itself means the vital principle, — " something more than breath, but less than mind or spirit," - and it is essential to the proper understanding of the Homeric Hades to remember that the Greek distinction was not between body and spirit, matter and mind, but, as it were, between body and shadow-body, between the living, breathing body, and the ghostly habitat of that living body's vital principle, that is, the same body debilitated and emptied to a mere effete image of its former glow- ^ This and the following quotations are from Butcher and Lang's Odyssey. ^Salmond, o/>. «'/., p. 99. 30 FORERUNNERS OF DANTE ing, throbbing, lively self. For what was a living human being ? It was a "^f^r; or vital principle, manifesting itself to human perception by means of flesh, blood, bones, and, we must add, wits. What occurred, then, at the coming of the dread enemy Death ? According to Odysseus' account, a separa- tion occurred, — a separation of the vital principle from the materials through which it was able to manifest itself. The vital principle lived on, the materials decayed or were burned. This vital principle was, then, very naturally supposed to survive in Hades in the likeness of the human body it had inspired, a silhouette of its former self, fleshless, bloodless, boneless, and witless, — in fact, just the life, or living shadow, of a human indi- vidual. Hear what his mother says to Odysseus of the fate of mortals when they die : " . . . the sinews no more bind together the flesh and the bones, but the force of burning fire abolishes these (on the funeral pyre) so soon as the life hath left the white bones, and the spirit like a dream flies forth and hovers near." ^ This is Achilles' estimate of his condition : ^ " Rather would I live upon the soil as the hireling of another, with a landless man who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead that are no more." " How durst thou," he has greeted Odysseus, " come down to the house of Hades, where dwell the senseless dead, the phantoms of men outworn ? " €vda re v€