If these theories allow of different solutions of the problem of immortality, they agree on one point—the impossibility that the soul, if it is to last longer than we, should go down into the depths of the earth; for the soul was, as we have said, conceived as an ardent breath; that is to say, as formed of the two elements, air and fire, which have the property of rising to the heights. Its very nature prevented its descent: “it is impossible to conceive that it is borne downwards.”[37] Thus all the vulgar notions as to Hades were in contradiction with Stoic psychology, a point to which we will return in treating of the nether world.[38] These philosophers do indeed speak of Hades but, faithful to their habits, while they use traditional terms they give them a new meaning. “The descent into Hades” is for them simply the departing from life, the transference of the soul to new surroundings. Thus Epictetus, who uses this expression (κάθοδος εἰς Ἄιδου), clearly states in another passage, “There is no Hades, no Acheron, no Cocytus, no Pyriphlegethon, but all is filled with gods and demons.”[39] These gods and demons were, however, no more than personifications of the forces of nature.[40] The true Stoic doctrine is, then, that souls, when they leave the corpse, subsist in the atmosphere and especially in its highest part which touches the circle of the moon.[41] But after a longer or less interval of time they, like the flesh and the bones, are decomposed and dissolve into the elements which formed them. This thought, like Epicurean nihilism, often appears in epitaphs, and shows how Stoic ideas had spread among the people. Thus on a tombstone found in Moesia we read first the mournful statement that there is neither love nor friendship among the dead and that the corpse lies like a stone sunk into the ground. Then the dead man adds:[42] “I was once composed of earth, water and airy breath (πνεῦμα), but I perished, and here I rest, having rendered all to the All. Such is each man’s lot. What of it? There, whence my body came, did it return, when it was dissolved.” Sometimes there is more insistence on the notion that this cosmic breath, in which ours is gathered up, is the godhead who fills and rules the world. So in this epitaph: “The holy spirit which thou didst bear has escaped from thy body. That body remains here and is like the earth; the spirit pursues the revolving heavens; the spirit moves all; the spirit is nought else than God.”[43] Elsewhere we find the following brief formula, which sums up the same idea: “The ashes have my body; the sacred air has borne away my soul.”[44] Very characteristic is an inscription inspired by verses of a Greek poet, on the tomb of a Roman woman: “Here I lie dead and I am ashes; these ashes are earth. If the earth be a goddess, I too am a goddess and am not dead.”[45]