Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [149]
Several mysteries are revealed to Thespesius, including the ultimate destination of souls and the well-deserved punishment of Nero. Whatever else the author may relate, the tale functions as a theodicy, precisely because it parallels the journey of the soul after death. The heavenly journey itself is the basis of a personal, religious conversion, a new phenomenon of late antiquity but certainly not the only example of it.53
A complete ascent-descent myth can be found already in Vergil’s Fourth Ecologue. Apollo’s descent and return was not the self-conscious theme of the writer; rather, the birth of Augustus is viewed as the redemptive act in the cycle:
The last age of Sibyl’s poem is now come…. Now a new offspring is sent down from high heaven. Do thou, chaste Lucina, favour the birth of the child under whom the iron breed will first cease and a golden race arise throughout the world. Now shall thine own Apollo bear sway.54
In the cult of the Emperor the ascension of the dead ruler was viewed in very literal terms. A quick look through the descriptions of the cult and the collections of iconography will verify that. The emperor could ascend in a chariot or on the back of an eagle. A shooting star signaled his demise.55 The eagle was especially linked to the imperial cult. The practice arose of releasing a caged eagle from the top of the funeral pyre of the emperor.56 Dio notes that centurions lit the pyre from below as an eagle was released, encouraging the belief that the soul was carried to heaven.57 Beginning with Nero, coinage represents the motion of ascension with an eagle flying upwards.58
A remarkable diptych in the British museum depicts various symbols of apotheosis, deification, which had become part of the cult.59 There are several intricate scenes. But the most relevant is the funeral scene with a pyre in the center from which a quadriga (the conveyance of Apollo or Helios), a chariot with four horses, is about to take off for heaven. The chariot is driven by a youth (probably Helios) whose pose and garment suggest great speed. To the right of the funeral pyre are two soaring eagles, probably symbolizing the divinized Emperor and Empress together. The divus is represented at the top, being born aloft by two winged beings. Looking down are the previously divinized ancestors and the signs of the Zodiac.
The figure of the charioteer in his quadriga had already achieved a stable and conventional form in the depictions of the zodiac. The sun is in the center, depicted by Helios in his quadriga. That the charioteer and psychopomp is Helios is supported by other archeological evidence-this time a pyre recovered at Rome, which even bears the inscription: Sol me rapuit, “The Sun has seized me”.60
On his death-bed the emperor Vespasian quipped that he was becoming a god.61 In the literary sources, the concept of the journey normally involved the soul of the deceased, while bodily ascension was limited to heroes, great men, and demigods like Romulus. Indeed, while Plato himself only suggested that souls come to live among the stars, the physics of the Romans insisted that the stars and souls were the same substance.62 Pliny attributed this discovery to Hipparchus:
Hipparchus will never receive all the praise he deserves since no one has better established the relation between man and the stars, or shown more clearly that our souls are particles of divine fire. (Nat. 2.26.95)
The use (and abuse) of divinization in the imperial cult is well known. A century after the Imperial system took hold, Hadrian decreed that the soul of his deceased