These passages ask whether the soul survives the body and what becomes of it. Plato’s Er, Cicero’s Cato, Ovid’s Pythagoras and the Pharisees in Josephus hold it immortal, and Er and Pythagoras have it enter new lives. Lucretius and the Sadducees say it dies with the body, and Marcus Aurelius, granting survival, has souls dissolved in time into the whole. St Luke, Bede and Dante describe reward and punishment soon after death, and Dante explains how the separated soul takes a body of air.
Chosen by hand, not counted: a passage is here when it is plainly about the topic, and the list is not every mention. Each is shown in the order the books were written, and each links to the section it is in.
Er, killed in battle, revives on his pyre and tells of judgement, reward and the choice of new lives.
… Well, I said, I will tell you a tale; not one of the tales which Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinous, yet this too is a tale of a hero, Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth. He was slain in battle, and ten days afterwards, when the bodies of the dead were taken up already in a state of corruption, his body was found unaffected by decay, and carried away home to be buried. … Book 10 →Lucretius argues that the mind and soul are mortal, so death is nothing to us.
… Now come: that thou mayst able be to know That minds and the light souls of all that live Have mortal birth and death, I will go on Verses to build meet for thy rule of life, Sought after long, discovered with sweet toil. But under one name I'd have thee yoke them both; … Book 3 →Cato says the soul is of heavenly origin and immortal, and that dead friends still truly live.
… I believe, Scipio and Laelius, that your fathers--those illustrious men and my dearest friends--are still alive, and that too with a life which alone deserves the name. For as long as we are imprisoned in this framework of the body, we perform a certain function and laborious work assigned us by fate. … Part 2 →Pythagoras teaches that souls never perish but pass from body to body, from men to beasts.
… Souls are not subject to death; and having left their former abode, they ever inhabit new dwellings, and, there received, live on. “I, myself, for I remember it, in the days of the Trojan war, was Euphorbus, the son of Panthoüs, in whose opposing breast once was planted the heavy spear of the younger son of Atreus. … Book 15 →Lazarus is carried to Abraham’s bosom; the rich man, in torment, asks in vain for relief.
And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell. Luke 16 →Pharisees hold souls immortal and judged under the earth; Sadducees hold that souls die with bodies.
… They also believe that souls have an immortal rigor in them, and that under the earth there will be rewards or punishments, according as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and live again; on account of which doctrines they are able greatly to persuade the body of the people; … Book 18 →Marcus suggests that souls, if they survive, are in time dispersed into the reason of the universe.
If souls continue to exist, how does the air contain them from eternity?--But how does the earth contain the bodies of those who have been buried from time so remote? For as here the mutation of these bodies after a certain continuance, whatever it may be, and their dissolution, make room for other dead bodies, so the souls which are removed into the air after subsisting for some time are transmuted and diffused, … Book 4 →A Northumbrian dies, revives at dawn, and describes the places of the dead he was shown.
At this time a memorable miracle, and like to those of former days, was wrought in Britain; for, to the end that the living might be roused from the death of the soul, a certain man, who had been some time dead, rose again to the life of the body, and related many memorable things that he had seen; some of which I have thought fit here briefly to describe. … Book 5 →Statius explains that the soul, leaving the body, shapes an airy body for itself called a shade.
… Whenever Lachesis has no more thread, It separates from the flesh, and virtually Bears with itself the human and divine; The other faculties are voiceless all; The memory, the intelligence, and the will In action far more vigorous than before. Without a pause it falleth of itself In marvellous way on one shore or the other; There of its roads it first is cognizant. … Purgatorio 25 →