Do not misunderstand me here. Of course I am not making the elementary blunder of saying that because certain beliefs of the Christians and the Pagans were similar, they therefore were identical, or that they were derived from one another, or that the many factors of which they were composed were the same. No one with any knowledge of the history of religious thought could maintain that. But the point which I do wish to emphasize is this, viz.: that the eschatological ideas widely current in the Mediterranean world were such that Christianity found a favorable environment when it began its proselyting work. This seems to me one of the most significant facts in the relation of early Christianity to paganism. The Christian teachings as to the means by which the assurance of a happy immortality was to be secured could hardly seem very strange at first hearing to any one who was familiar with mystery religions or with much of the religious philosophy current in the pagan world during the early Christian centuries. Closer examination would reveal fundamental differences between Christian belief and the pagan hope. But it is not insignificant that Christianity spread most rapidly at first in Syria and Asia Minor, countries long familiar with those mystic religions, which had promised what the nobler faith supplied. IV Although we now have examined the conditions which, to my mind, are the most significant in the relation of pagan ideas of immortality to those of early Christianity, there yet remain matters which, if less important, are still of more than merely curious interest. We shall now look at some of these questions. What notions of heaven and of hell did the Greeks and Romans have? This inquiry is often made. The reply is easily given. Man has always painted hell and paradise after his own conception of suffering and of happiness, just as truly as he has made God after his own image. Consequently the ancient’s ideas of the future life ranged all the way from the grossest materialistic concepts to highly spiritualized beliefs. Plato in the Republic makes Adeimantus say that some seem to think that an immortality of drunkenness is virtue’s highest meed.[35] But Socrates conceived the future state to be something very different; a place in which he could hold high discourse with the great ones of the past.[36] In general, however, punishment and rewards were of a material sort, for such are most easily imagined and understood. Has it been otherwise with Christians? The answer is to be found in Christian apocalypses, medieval monuments, renaissance art, and in our own minds. Of course there developed in Greek thought what we might call an orthodox geography and scheme for the other world, of which Virgil gives us a just picture. Interesting as it might prove to examine the details of this picture, we will rather turn to other matters.