The purpose of this paper is
to prove a maximal ergodic theorem for Abel means of a strongly measurable
semi-group Γ = {Tt;t ≧ 0} of linear contractions on a complex L1-space satisfying
|Ttf|≦ c a.e. for any t ≧ 0 and any integrable f with |f|≦ c a.e. Applying the
obtained maximal ergodic theorem, individual and dominated ergodic theorems for
Abel means are also proved. These results extend results obtained by D. A. Edwards
for sub-Markovian semi-groups.