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Teaching of Pagan Philosophers

The most famous of the pagan philosophers did not hesitate to teach that there exists in the other
life a Heaven and a Hell. Xenophon and Socrates, for instance, remarked that, "Rewards are in store
for those who please God, and punishments for those who displease Him." The same sentiments are
expressed by Plato, Plutarch and others. While I refrain from quoting passages from these
philosophers, I cannot pass over in silence two beautiful passages of the great orator, Cicero. In
the first, he exclaims: "I wish to have no part with those who have recently begun to teach that
souls die along with bodies, and that all is destroyed by death. Of far more weight with me is
the authority of the ancient philosophers and of our own ancestors. They paid religious homage to
the dead, and considered that their entrance into Heaven should be made easy for every good
and just man." The second passage is even more to the point: "Those souls, which have been soiled
by the vices of this life, will take the false road which separates them from the company of the
gods; on the other hand, those who have preserved
themselves pure and chaste, will find easy admittance to the divinity, the source of their
existence."

Belief of Pagans

Among the fables of pagan peoples, there are numerous tales which, though they are fictitious,
nevertheless attest to the belief of these people in