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The legend which forms the ground-plan of the Vision of Adamnán and of the Commedia of Dante, can claim a pedigree of great antiquity that may be traced back along several widely divergent lines. The principal of these may be grouped roughly under the heads of the Classical Tradition, the Eastern Tradition, the Ecclesiastical Tradition, resulting from the fusion in the early Christian Church of Hellenic and Oriental schools of thought; and the Irish Tradition, which last does not so much represent an entirely independent growth of the legend, as a new departure, whereby the Ecclesiastical Tradition, transplanted to Ireland, and there coming into contact with certain cognate ideas which were prominent in the native mythology and romantic literature, acquired a fresh development, and reappeared in several forms which became the most popular exponents of the mediæval theories of the Otherworld, until the revival of classical learning, in the twelfth and following centuries, enabled Dante to carry the leading idea, common to all forms alike, to its culmination.

The Classical Tradition was preserved in the Middle Ages chiefly through the sixth book of Virgil’s Æneid, which relates the visit of Æneas to Hades; but this episode was itself suggested by the similar adventure of Odysseus, told in the eleventh book of the Odyssey. The fundamental conception, a visit paid to the Otherworld by a living man, appears in many of the Greek myths: e.g. in the journey to Hades of Demeter, in the course of her search after her daughter Persephone, stolen away by Pluto; of Orpheus in quest of Eurydice; of Theseus and Peirithoos in their attempt to abduct Persephone; of Herakles, Castor and Pollux, and others. Like most of the myths that have contrived to ‘make their fortune’ by virtue of their strong appeal to the human imagination, these legends, when the myth-making age had long departed from the Hellenic peoples, and the age of creative imagination had given place to one of literary culture, passed into the domain of literature pure and simple. As such they entered upon a new life in the writings of the Latin authors; for even in Virgil the literary aspect of the legend predominates, though not to the exclusion of its more serious elements. This merely literary character is yet more apparent in the treatment of the legend by the tragic poets, and by Lucan and Claudian, while Apuleius, the Perrault of antiquity, found in it a theme for the play of his graceful fancy.

The early descriptions of the Otherworld, being originally myths of spontaneous growth, and not composed to be the vehicles of instruction or edification, contain little of eschatological or ethical significance,[38] the few stock examples which they give of the penalties attached to guilt being rather instances of the private vengeance of Zeus upon those who had rebelled against him, or had outraged the dignity of some member of the divine family of which he was the head. In these accounts the abode of the departed appears as a dreary region, wherein they lead a shadowy and undesirable existence;[39] and although, side by side with this conception, another theory subsisted, assigning to the happy dead a serene existence in the Elysian plain, or in the enchanted isle of Leuke, this belief did not go beyond the notion, vaguely, however beautifully, expressed, of a bright and happy region of perpetual calm, where death or decay or care was unknown, and the departed spirits dwelt in flowery and fragrant meadows, beneath blossoming trees, beside calm seas or smoothly flowing streams, while soft breezes were perpetually blowing. The Greek poets, from Homer downwards, contain innumerable references to this Elysium,[40] but although we sometimes find a hint, as in Pindar and some of the tragic poets, that these joys are reserved for those who have deserved them by a righteous life on earth, the later instances show scarcely any advance upon the earlier in the direction of a systematic eschatology, and consequently brought the Vision legend little, if any, further on its way.[41]

Our legend, however, received fuller development in another school of Hellenic thought. Simultaneously with the mythology of the Greeks, and on one side distinct from it, though on the other side closely connected with it, existed a tradition of a more essentially religious character; religion being distinguished from philosophical speculation on the one hand, and myth and legend on the other. Hence, apparently, proceeded the Neo-platonising tendency in Greek philosophy—to adopt the familiar and convenient name, though the thing is older than the Neo-Platonists, or than Plato himself—the tendency to regard the old myths as a repository of the ‘Wisdom of the Ancients,’ and to disengage from the husk of fable the moral and scientific truths which it was supposed to contain. In so doing, the philosophic schools were not merely attempting to read their own notions into the traditions of antiquity, but were also, to some extent, endeavouring to develop germs which already existed in the best and most serious thought of their own and earlier times. This side of the Hellenic religion would appear to have existed in its purest and most highly developed form in the Mysteries, especially those practised at Eleusis, and at other places in which the Eleusinian rites prevailed.

Most questions relating to the Greek mysteries, their place of origin, the date of their introduction, the relation of one school to another, the rites practised therein, and the nature of the instruction imparted to the neophytes, have given rise to many debates, and some of them can hardly yet be regarded as entirely settled. Happily, our subject does not call for discussion of these contested points, all that we are concerned with being the significance of the mysteries to the spiritual life of Greece at the time of their highest development. The general result of investigation would seem to make it probable that the Greeks, from a very early period, practised certain rites in honour of Demeter, and that these rites were connected with agriculture, and with the means whereby the unseen powers presiding over it might be rendered propitious. These rites, as in many barbarous nations, were held to confer certain privileges upon the participants, who could only obtain access thereto by a secret initiation; and when the ideas of death and renovation, which arose naturally out of the subject, proceeded by an easy transition—partly by an inherent principle of growth, and partly through the introduction of foreign elements[42]—to questionings concerning man’s fate after death, the same rites were regarded as efficacious in ameliorating his condition in the unseen world. At the same time, as the doctrine of the effect of conduct upon the future life gained ground, this side of the question likewise came within the purview of the mystical schools, and an ethical as well as a theurgic efficacy was ascribed to the initiation rite. This important step in advance would appear to have been taken in the sixth century B.C. at latest, when the theories of the Orphic-Pythagorean school became widely diffused. M. Foucart, as we have seen in the last note, holds that this movement was due to the Egyptian researches carried on by the early Greek philosophers in the course of their travels; Rohde, on the other hand, regards it as a strictly national movement, and denies the late adoption of any alien faith of a highly developed character. In any case, it is certain that the theories of which Pythagoras was the most famous exponent assumed great prominence at this time. The leading principle of these was the doctrine of the soul’s rebirth on earth, in another body, after undergoing a process of purification in the Otherworld. It was one of the primary objects of the mysteries to ensure that the soul’s progress through the intermediate state should be as easy, and the conditions of its rebirth as favourable, as could be effected by the due performance of the mystical rites; and while the great progress of ethics, which with the early philosophers went hand and hand with philosophical speculation, effected a fuller recognition of moral conduct in this life as one of the means most conducive to the desired end, preference was still given, even among the righteous, to those who had undergone the initiation ceremony.[43]

Professor Gardner even traces the Hades theory from the mystic rites (loc. cit.); probably this derivation would only apply to that theory in its more fully developed form. He holds that the Orphic cult ‘occupies the background of religious life’ in Greece; that it was an enthusiastic type of religion, and capable of ready association with the ideals of such moral and political revivalists as Pythagoras and Empedocles. According to this authority, there were two foci of the Orphic cult: at Eleusis, and in the rites of Dionysos. M. Foucart, it will be remembered, denies any connection between Eleusis and the Orphic mysteries; in which contention he would appear to be supported by Plato, who speaks slightingly of the latter, while several passages in his writings testify to his respect for the mysteries of Eleusis. Certainly the two were respectively connected, originally, with the worship of two separate and widely different divinities, although, both having to do with the earth as the source and the renewer of life, they soon tended towards certain common developments. Perhaps we may not greatly err if we assume that the Orphic mysteries, in their most perfected form, were more especially concerned with the orgiastic ritual and with the doctrine of reincarnation, now reduced to a philosophical system, while in the Eleusinian school ritual became more closely connected with personal morality, thus assuming an aspect more strictly ‘religious,’ in the modern sense of the word.

M. Foucart, indeed, holds that the instruction imparted in the Eleusinian mysteries was essentiellement pratique; elle avait pour objet de mettre l’homme en état de se tirer d’affaire lorsqu’il arrivait dans la demeure d’Hades (op. cit., p. 63). By ‘practical’ M. Foucart would appear to refer exclusively to those automatic or quasi-mechanical effects which are supposed, all the world over, to result from the due performance of certain rites. However, the testimony of the Greeks themselves, as appears from the examples about to be cited in connection with our own subject, and from other evidences that have come down to us, appears to be conclusive as to the value attributed to the Eleusinian mysteries, at any rate, as an agent of moral reformation. Sir W. M. Ramsay[44] distinguishes between the mysteries which had in view the proficiency and advancement of morals, and the mysteries which were of an exclusively ritual and orgiastic nature, associating the former kind with Eleusis, and places where kindred rites were celebrated. In support of this contention, he cites a number of passages occurring in Greek writers from the fourth century B.C. onwards, whence it plainly appears that the Greeks regarded a moral regeneration as a natural concomitant of initiation into the mysteries, and even as a condition of happiness in the future life.[45]

It is in connection with the mysteries, as representing the moral and spiritual side of the Greek religion, whencesoever derived, that the Vision legend becomes impressed with an epideictic character and develops those elements which had barely existed in germ in the popular mythology.

In the Dialogues of Plato, the legend already appears as a vehicle of religious instruction. Plato, indeed, merely gives literary form to theories which had existed for at least two centuries before his time, but as he is the first to employ the Vision legend in this connection, and as it is in his hands that it first assumes its final type, essentially identical with that of its successors in the Christian Church, it is convenient to make him a point of departure.

In the tenth book of his Republic (pp. 614 sqq.) Plato records the narrative of one Er, an Armenian, concerning his experiences in the world of spirits. This Er had been killed in battle, and brought away with the rest of the slain, but was restored to life. His soul, upon issuing from the body, had been conveyed to a certain spiritual (δαιμόνιον) place, where there were two openings leading down below the earth, and two others leading up into heaven, over against one another. Between these openings judges were stationed, who dismissed the souls of the righteous to heaven by the upper and right-hand way, having first impressed upon their foreheads the decree of absolution, and despatched the wicked downward by the left-hand path, branded behind with the record of their misdeeds. The judges commanded Er to see and hear all that passed, that he might become the messenger of it all to mankind. The souls of the departed, after a progress lasting a thousand years, returned by the second openings from the celestial and subterranean regions respectively. The return of the one company was marked by joy and gladness, by reason of the delights which they had enjoyed, and the spectacles of inconceivable beauty through which they had passed, in the course of their heavenly journey; they then entered for a while into a smiling meadow, there to hold converse with others of the just, both those whom they had known while in the body, and others whom they then met for the first time. The other company appeared all parched and dusty from their journey, weeping and dismayed at the remembrance of all they had seen and suffered during their passage beneath the earth, for there each sinner was requited tenfold for all the crimes that he had committed. Among these guilty ones, special mention is made of homicides: of those who had betrayed cities or armies, and brought them into captivity; of those who had committed impiety towards the gods, or inflicted violence upon their parents; all of whom were singled out for eximious penalties. Some indeed, such as bloody tyrants, and certain private persons who were stained with enormous crimes, lost their return entirely; these were dragged back by wild-looking, fire-scathed men, fettered hand and foot, beaten down and flayed, carded with carding-combs, and finally cast down into Tartarus. With the exception, however, of this last and worst class of criminals, the punishments allotted to all were but of temporary duration, and the ‘souls of a day’ entered upon ‘another period of mortal, death-fraught existence’ under conditions imposed by ‘the Destinies, daughters of Necessity.’

This account agrees in principle, though not in detail, with Phædo, p. 14. In the Phædrus, Plato speaks of the Eleusinian mysteries as a means of salvation, and that, apparently, by means of the reformation effected through a conscientious adherence to the instructions there imparted to the initiate, rather than by any thaumaturgic virtues inherent in the rites themselves; the true mystics, in his eyes, being those whom he terms, in the passage of the Phædo cited above, οἱ φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθηράμενοι.

In the Axiochos, a dialogue once ascribed to Plato, but written since his time, Socrates is made to describe the abode of the righteous as a country of flowery meadows beside clear streams, and full of fruit-bearing trees. The light is full and radiant, the air soft and pleasant, free from extremes of heat and cold. Fit places are provided for philosophical discourse, and there are theatres where poets may recite their verses. The most honourable place is allotted to the initiated, who celebrate the sacred mysteries. This description, which exhibits a naïve adaptation of the most primitive Elysium to the intellectual requirements of a highly civilised society, is interesting merely as affording additional evidence as to the Athenian belief concerning the rewards of the righteous in a future life, and the intimate connection between initiation into the mysteries, righteousness of life, and bliss in the life to come.

In this connection, perhaps, we ought not to pass over the Hades journey of Dionysos, as portrayed in the Frogs of Aristophanes, for, burlesque as it is, it repeatedly expresses views concerning the Otherworld coinciding closely, in substance, with the description contained in Plato’s Vision of Er. The Frogs being prior in date to the Republic, this coincidence affords an independent testimony to the representative character of Plato’s eschatological theories, the more so as Aristophanes, in his comedy, would naturally treat his subject in a form that he knew to be familiar to the audience. In this play, reference is made to a true Inferno for punishment of the graver sins. In ll. 145–151, Herakles affirms that they who had violated the laws of hospitality, beaten their mother, smitten their father on the cheek, perjured themselves, etc. etc., are condemned to wallow in a morass of mud and ordure, like the wrathful, the gloomy-minded, and the flatterers, whom Dante consigns to a similar doom in Cantos 7 and 18 of the Inferno.[46] On the other hand, ‘happy bands of men and women’ inhabit myrtle groves, ‘in the midst of fairest light’ (ll. 155–7), in the dingles of well-flowering meadows (347–8), and fields blooming with roses (448–9), in the enjoyment of dance and song and feast (369 sqq.). These are they who have been initiated into the mysteries (l. 158); nor does this imply a merely ritual initiation, as may not only be inferred from a comparison with the passages from Plato, quoted above, and with the testimonies to the like effect cited by Sir W. M. Ramsay, but, further, appears from the words of the beatified mystics themselves: ‘For us alone the sun shines, and the light is cheerful; for us, who are initiate, and have followed the way of righteousness in all our dealings, alike with strangers and with our own folk’ (ll. 454–9).

Four centuries later, Plutarch takes up the tale. His treatise ‘On the tardy vengeance of God’ describes the vision of one Soleus, similar in character to that of Plato’s Er, but, in many of its circumstances, approximating far more closely to the Christian visions. This Soleus had led a life of extreme wickedness, stained with all manner of vice and debauchery; he had been violent, unjust, and fraudulent in his dealings, and had squandered his patrimony by his extravagance. Beginning, it would seem, to realise his condition, he sent to the oracle of Amphilochus to inquire whether the remainder of his life should be better than the earlier part: the oracle replied that it should be better with him after his death. Sometime after this he fell down a precipice, and was taken up for dead; but three days later, having been carried out for burial, he came to himself just as he was being lowered into the grave, and sat up. Thenceforth he became a reformed character, and the remainder of his life was as exemplary for virtue as the earlier part had been for wickedness. He explained the reason of this conversion to his friends, by the story of his experiences during his temporary demise. His first sensation was as of a steersman swept into the sea by a sudden squall. Upon emerging, he could discern, at first, nothing but stars of great magnitude, and very far apart, emitting radiant beams, upon which the soul rode as though in a chariot. Looking downward, he descried little fiery bubbles rising through the yielding air, which, bursting, released aerial forms of men and women, some of which mounted straight upward, with great velocity, while others whirled and span rapidly about in all directions. Among these latter he recognised several of his acquaintance, and tried to accost them, but they all avoided him. He was more successful with those spirits who mounted upright, among whom he recognised a kinsman who had died young. This spirit saluted him by the name of Thespesios, or Divine, saying that he must have come thither by order of the gods, seeing that he was manifestly alive, for the spirits of the dead neither cast shadows nor open and shut their eyelids.[47] Under his kinsman’s guidance, Thespesios noted the various kinds of souls, and observed that while all were of transparent substance, some emitted a pure untroubled light, ‘like the full moon in her greatest resplendence,’ others being marked with long streaks, and others, again, repulsive with black splotches, like those on the skins of vipers. His guide accounted for this diversity by expounding the laws which regulate the condition of departed spirits. Adrasteia, daughter of Zeus and Necessity, was charged with a general superintendence over the punishments awarded to the guilty, and none of any rank or kind might escape her vengeance; but guilt is of various degrees, so Adrasteia deputed the chastisement of offences, after their several kinds, to three Furies, or avenging spirits. The first of these, Poine, is the minister of temporal penalties, whereby minor sinners are purged of their guilt by their sufferings in this life. Those whose guilt is not to be purged so easily are delivered over, after death, to Dike, or avenging Justice, to be chastened in manner after described; while the absolutely incurable are abandoned to Erinnys, who, after pursuing them in their unavailing flight through countless torments, plunges them, at last, into an abyss of unspeakable horror. The souls which Dike takes in hand she first exposes naked to the gaze of their kin, in order, if these were virtuous, that the guilty soul may be stricken with the greater shame, or, if they too had been wicked, that their mutual remorse may be augmented by the sight of one another’s disgrace and sufferings. She then afflicts them with sufferings ‘as far surpassing in sharpness and severity all torments of the body, as reality surpasses an empty dream.’ These punishments leave upon the soul stripes and scars which correspond to the gravity of the offences, and gradually disappear as the soul recovers its proper temperament; though certain souls, incapable of thorough reformation, are compelled to complete their expiation by inhabiting the bodies of brutes for a term. After this, the spirit conveyed Thespesios across a vast expanse over which he was borne upon a ray of light, as easily and swiftly as though upborne by an eagle, until he came to a yawning, unfathomable chasm. Here the force which had hitherto sustained him failed; his further course was stayed, and he, and several others in like case, were left hovering about the mouth of the cavern, like birds that desired to enter in, but dared not. The interior of the chasm was all green with trees and grass, and adorned with flowers of every hue, which emitted a fragrance sweeter than is the fragrance of wine to them that love it, and amid all these dwelt the souls of the blest in the utmost mirth and good fellowship. Ere long, Thespesios was carried hence and brought to the place of punishment, and among the guilty he recognised certain of his own kin. Here his kindly spirit guide quitted him, and he was taken in charge by several grisly sprites, who thrust him forward and made him observe the torments that were inflicted on the wicked. In the enumeration of these, a quite Dantesque intention ‘to make the punishment fit the crime’ is apparent. For instance, certain who had cloaked a vicious life with fine professions were turned inside out, and compelled to wriggle onward in this guise; hypocrites were flayed and gashed, so as to reveal their inner nature; deadly enemies were twined together, and gnawed one another, as Ugolino gnawed the Archbishop of Pisa in the Inferno. Furthermore, there were three lakes—one of molten gold, one of lead, exceeding cold, and one of iron; demons armed with tongs, like smiths, plunged the souls of the avaricious into the lake of molten gold until they were heated through and through; then into the leaden lake until they were congealed like hail; and, finally, into the iron lake, where they were broken to pieces; after which they were reintegrated, for a repetition of their punishment. But most wretched was the case of them whose crimes had communicated a taint to their posterity; for when they deemed that the Divine justice had wrought its utmost upon them, they were met by the scarred and distorted souls of their descendants, who, when their parents in grief and shame tried to shirk away from them, would seize and cling to them, sometimes, even in clusters like bees or bats, and would hale them back to renewed torments. Finally, the souls who were destined to return to earth in other bodies were wrought and forged like iron to fit them for their new state.

Plutarch’s eschatology displays more system than is to be found in his predecessors, or even in many of the Christian visions; however, neither by Plutarch nor by Plato is the doctrine of the metempsychosis made to fit in quite perfectly with that of a state of eternal rewards and punishments which co-exists with it. Moreover, the purgatorial scheme, though highly elaborated, is conceived entirely with reference to the preparation of the soul for a renewed existence upon earth.

In following up the Greek development of the Vision legend to its completest exposition in Plutarch, we have passed by the Latin contributions to the subject, earlier than the Vision of Thespesios in point of date, though not in manner of treatment. A generation before the birth of Virgil, Cicero, in his Somnium Scipionis, had utilised the Vision as a vehicle of instruction; he, however, took natural philosophy for his theme, not eschatology.

Virgil, indeed, alone of Roman writers, made any contribution of real importance to the development of the Vision legend in literature, though that contribution is the flower and consummation of the legend as it appears in the purely classical tradition. For Virgil, saturated with the Hellenic culture, while remaining intensely Roman in his political views and national sentiment, remains free from any tincture of Oriental ideas. Earlier than Plutarch by more than a century, his treatment of the subject is more modern in style and spirit, although, in his pictures of the other world, he repeats and combines the ideas which the ancients had held concerning it. His topography of the other world and of the approaches thereto agrees so closely with the humorous account in the Frogs of Aristophanes, which, evidently, he has no intention of copying, as to make it clear that both poets followed, in the main, a generally accepted tradition. So, too, in his descriptions of the Elysian Fields and of Tartarus, Virgil simply reproduces in substance the many similar descriptions which occur in the Greek poets and philosophers; and although he perfects these with many exquisite touches of his own, such original contributions of his belong rather to the domain of art than of eschatology. To take one instance, his enumeration of those righteous ones who are admitted to the seats of the blest, including, as it does,