After Life in Roman Paganism

by Franz Cumont

s/t: Lectures Delivered at Yale University on the Silliman Foundation
Preface
Historical Introduction
After Life in the Tomb
The Nether World
Celestial Immortality
The Winning of Immortality
Untimely Death
Journey to the Beyond
Sufferings of Hell & Metempsychosis
Felicity of the Blessed
Index

Genres: Religion, History, Paganism

242 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Franz-Valéry-Marie Cumont (Aalst, Belgium, 3 January 1868 – Brussels, 25 August 1947) was a Belgian archaeologist and historian, a philologist and student of epigraphy, who brought these often isolated specialties to bear on the syncretic mystery religions of Late Antiquity, notably Mithraism. Cumont was a graduate of the University of Ghent (PhD, 1887). After receiving royal travelling fellowships, he undertook archaeology in Pontus and Armenia (published in 1906) and in Syria, but he is best known for his studies on the impact of Eastern mystery religions, particularly Mithraism, on the Roman Empire. Cumont's international credentials were brilliant, but his public circumspection was not enough. In 1910, Baron Edouard Descamps, the Catholic Minister of Sciences and Arts at the University of Ghent, refused to approve the faculty's unanimous recommendation of Cumont for the chair in Roman History, Cumont having been a professor there since 1906. There was a vigorous press campaign and student agitation in Cumont's favor, because the refusal was seen as blatant religious interference in the University's life. When another candidate was named, in 1912, Cumont resigned his positions at the University and at the Royal Museum in Brussels, left Belgium and henceforth divided his time between Paris and Rome.

He contributed to many standard encyclopedias, published voluminously and in 1922, under stressful political conditions, conducted digs on the shore of the Euphrates at the previously unknown site of Dura-Europos; he published his research there in 1926. He was a member of most of the European academies. In 1936 Franz Cumont was awarded the Francqui Prize on Human Sciences. In 1947, Franz Cumont donated his library and papers to the Academia Belgica in Rome, where they are accessible to researchers.

Reviews

[Mateusz · Rating 3 out of 5]

For public purposes these are very well served lectures that guide through a general outline of several clusters of historical beliefs among the Romans, Greeks and some other cultures, retracing their mutations and changes. Seldom they are accentuating which ones were absorbed into the Christian worldview. It is a cleverly composed work, which at its foundation is secular, yet of high necromantic value for intentful researchers. One may rely on the visions of sages, speculation of the poets, to the contrary - the crowd and the atheist Epicurean uncrowns their vista, yet to the detriment of the link between the world of the living and Thanathos in Veils that sustained bears poisoned fruits that heal both worlds, if understood properly.

[B. Rule · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the details are no doubt outdated, but I found this to be a wonderful survey of Classical attitudes towards the afterlife. Cumont goes beyond the cult of the Manes to show how conceptions of the netherworld changed over time, including at various times and in various admixtures ideas of a subterranean or an aerial abode, shadowy existence or eternal rewards or punishments, and different fates for the illustrious or for all. He also notes that belief in life after death was not universal, and that many people (not just philosophers) believed in the finality of death for all aspects of the human person. Probably not best as your only source, but this is a pretty good intro for any study of ancient religion and philosophy.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delivered to a lay audience at Yale, these lectures still serve as a good general introduction to the variety of beliefs about death and the origins and the destiny of the human personality in the Roman era.