Did Greeks believe in the immortality of the soul?

Although Plato certainly held to the immortality of the soul (as opposed to the body), it seems noteworthy that the two main Greek philosophical schools of the time of Paul - the Epicureans and the Stoics (whom Paul had addressed in Athens) – both believed in the mortality of the soul. 

The Epicureans appear to have believed, following Epicurus himself, that the soul was extinguished with the death of the body.  This is because the soul itself was corporeal, being intermixed with the bodily parts in such a way that post-mortal survival was impossible.  On the corporeality of the soul, Epicurus writes:

So those who say that the soul [psuchēn] is incorporeal [asōmaton] are speaking vainly.[1]

Lucretius, writing in Rome in the first century BCE, similarly argues:

Therefore the soul [animi] is necessarily of a corporeal [corpoream] nature, as it labours under the impact of corporeal spears.[2]

Intermixed with our members and entire body is the power of the soul and of the spirit.[3]

Epicurus consequently reasons about death:

Therefore death [thanatos], the most fearsome of evils, is nothing to us, seeing as when we exist, death is not present; and when death is present, we do not exist.  So death is nothing to those who are living or to those who have died, seeing as for the one, it is nothing, and for the other, they are nothing.[4]

And again, Lucretius concurs:

Death, therefore, is nothing to us – of no concern at all, if we understand that the soul [animi] has a mortal nature.[5]

Stoicism similarly appears to have held to the non-eternality of the soul, although this did not necessarily mean immediate extinguishment upon the death of the body.  Like the Epicureans, they held that the soul could not be usefully thought of as independently incorporeal, given that it was inextricably linked to sensation and activity – characteristics of the corporeal.  Sextus Empiricus reports:

For according to them [the Stoics] the incorporeal [asōmaton] is not such that it can either act or suffer.[6]

Plutarch reports:

And the proof he [the Stoic Chrysippus] uses that the soul [psuchēn] is generated [gegonenai] – and generated after the body – is mainly that the manner and character of the children bears a resemblance to their parents.[7]

Eusebius elucidates a Stoic conception of the afterlife:

They [Stoics] say that the soul [psuchēn] is both generated [genētēn] and mortal [phthartēn].  But it is not immediately destroyed upon being separated from the body.  Rather it remains for some time by itself – that of the diligent remains until the dissolution of all things by fire; and that of the foolish remains only for a limited time.  About the endurance of the soul they say this: That we ourselves remain as souls which have been separated from the body and have been changed into the lesser substance of the soul; whereas the souls of irrational beings are destroyed along with their bodies.[8]

It would certainly be too simplistic, then, to claim that a “Greek” notion of the afterlife in the first century generally involved the liberation of the incorporeal soul into utopian immortality.  It is consequentially unhelpful to say that the resurrection-denial in Corinth simply involved a clash of “Jewish” and “Greek” views about the afterlife – particularly when you throw in the fact that Corinth was a Roman colony.

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[1] Letter to Herodotus, 67

[2] 3.175-6

[3] 3.275

[4] Letter to Menoeceus, 125

[5] 3.830

[6] Against the Professors, 8.263

[7] On Stoic Self-Contradictions 1053d

[8] Evangelical Preparation, 15.20.6