Pagan Ideas of Immortality During the Early Roman Empire' is an interesting look at the evolution of philosophical thought through the age of antiquity into the early christian era through the various mystery sects, cults, and philosophical schools of the time. Speaking of the Stoics, Skeptics, Platonists and more, of Mithra, Osiris, and various tales of the underworld and afterlife, this text is an invaluable occult and academic reference, delivered in the form of a lecture.
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Excerpt from Pagan Ideas of Immortality During the Early Roman Empire In dealing with a topic so vast as this in a single hour, we must select those elements which historically showed themselves to be fundamental and vital; but even then we cannot examine much detail. It may prove, however, that a rapid survey of those concepts of the future life, whose influence lasted long during the Christian centuries, and indeed has continued to the present day, may not be without profit. The most important single religious document from the Augustan Age is the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid; for although the Aeneid was written primarily to glorify Roman imperial aims, the sixth book gives full expression to many philosophic and popular ideas of the other world and of the future life, which were current among both Greeks and Romans. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Contents: pagan piety in the Graeco-Roman world; greater mysteries at Eleusis; Dionysian excesses; Orphic reform; regenerative rites of the great mother; death & rebirth in Mithraism; Isiac initiation; new birth experience in Hermeticism; mysticism of Philo; social significance of mystery initiation.
