had endured a sufficient quantity of retributive and purifying
pain, it was loosed, and sent on earth in a new body. It was
likewise a Hindu belief that the souls of deceased parents might
be assisted out of this purgatorial woe by the prayers and
offerings of their surviving children.7 The same doctrine was held
by the Persians. They believed souls could be released from
purgatory by the prayers, sacrifices, and good deeds of righteous
surviving descendants and friends. "Zoroaster said he could, by
prayer, send any one he chose to heaven or to hell." 8 Such
representations are found obscurely in the Vendidad and more fully
in the Bundehesh. The Persian doctrine that the living had power
to affect the condition of the dead is further indicated in the
fact that, from a belief that married persons were peculiarly
happy in the future state, they often hired persons to be espoused
to such of their relatives as had died in celibacy.9 The doctrine
of purgatory was known and accepted among the Jews too. In the
Second Book of Maccabees we read the following account: "Judas
sent two thousand pieces of silver to Jerusalem to defray the
expense of a sin offering to be offered for the sins of those who
were slain, doing therein very well and honestly, in that he was
mindful of the resurrection. For if he had not hoped that they who
were slain should rise again, it had been superfluous and vain to
pray for the dead. Whereupon he made an atonement for the dead,
that they might be delivered from sin."10 The Rabbins taught that
children by sin offerings could help their parents out of their
misery in the infernal world.11 They taught, furthermore, that all
souls except holy ones, like those of Rabbi Akiba and his
disciples, must lave themselves in the fire river of Gehenna; that
therein they shall be like salamanders; that the just shall soon
be cleansed in the fire river, but the wicked shall be lastingly
burned.12 Again, we find this doctrine prevailing among the
Romans. In the great Forum was a stone called "Lapis Manalis,"
described by Festus, which was supposed to cover the entrance to
hell. This was solemnly lifted three times a year, in order to let
those souls flow up whose sins had been purged away by their
tortures or had been remitted in consideration of the offerings
and services paid for them by the living. Virgil describes how
souls are purified by the action of wind, water, and fire.13 The
feast day of purgatory observ