ABSTRACT
In the extant literature of the classic period in Greece the only writer who has discussed at length the question of immortality is Plato. No one asked about immortality, how long they survived. No one asked, so far as we know, what it was that survived. Men saw crops grow, they saw the sun rise, they felt the wasting power of disease, death was a fact of experience, and similarly they recognized the survival of the soul as a part of experience. In connection with the epic it should be noted that the idea of immortality first appears in a definite form, not as applied to souls of the dead but as an attribute of the gods. It is a fixed principle that the nature of the gods is immortal; consequently the soul which experiences a sharing of the divine nature has the experience of its own immortality.
