Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.
Date: 2020-08-05T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ethics -- Early works to 1800

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Title: Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II.

Author: Plutarch

Translator: A. O. Prickard

Release date: August 5, 2020 [eBook #62858]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED ESSAYS OF PLUTARCH, VOL. II. ***

Selected Essays of Plutarch

SELECTED ESSAYS OF PLUTARCH
VOL. II
TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTION
BY
A. O. PRICKARD

‘But the Author in whom he delighted most was Plutarch, of
whose works he was lucky enough to possess the worthier half;
if the other had perished Plutarch would not have been a popular
writer, but he would have held a higher place in the estimation of
the judicious.’—Southey, The Doctor, chapter vi, p. 1.

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1918

PREFACE

This volume covers about one-eighth part of the miscellaneous works of Plutarch known as the Moralia, much the same quantity as is contained in Professor Tucker’s volume of this series which appeared in 1913. All the pieces now offered are in the form of dialogue, except the short treatise On Superstition, which seemed to justify its inclusion by a certain affinity of thought.

The text followed is that of Wyttenbach, issued by the Clarendon Press in 1795-1800, or rather a text compounded of the Greek text there printed, his own critical notes and revision of the old Latin version, his commentary, where one exists, and his posthumous Index of Greek words used by Plutarch (1830). A few corrections by C. F. Hermann, Emperius, Madvig, and other scholars, have been introduced, for many of which I am indebted, in the first place, as I have acknowledged more particularly, to M. G. N. Bernardakis, the accomplished editor of the Moralia in the Teubner series (1888-96). A very few fresh corrections, mostly on obvious points, have been admitted.

The notes at the foot of the page are intended to show all deviations from Wyttenbach’s text, so constituted, or to give references to the authors of passages quoted by Plutarch; there may be a few exceptions, where an illustrative reference or an obvious explanation is given. For the plays and fragments of the Tragic Poets reference is made to Dindorf’s Poetae Scenici; for Pindar and other lyric poets, to Bergk’s Poetae Lyrici Graeci (ed. 1900); for the fragments of Heraclitus, to Bywater’s Heracliti Ephesii reliquiae (Oxford, 1877); those of other early philosophers will be found in their places in Diels’ Vorsokratiker (1903) or other collections.

To four of the dialogues I have with some reluctance prefixed a short running analysis. It is always a pity to anticipate what the author puts clearly before us;[1] but there is here a real practical difficulty, even for a careful reader, in being sure who is the speaker for the time being; and as he is often introduced by the pronouns ‘I’ or ‘he’, no typographical device quite serves. The other dialogues seem to explain themselves sufficiently. There is no attempt to supply a commentary; but it is hoped that the full index of proper names (which are very numerous) will enable a reader to distinguish those as to whom it is worth his while to inquire further from those who are only of passing interest. I have given here a good many references to other works of Plutarch, but more may usefully be sought, for instance in such an index as is appended to Clough’s edition of the Lives.

I may perhaps be allowed to mention that the dialogue On the Face which appears on the Orb of the Moon was translated by me, and tentatively published in 1911, with the hope of obtaining some helpful criticism. Having received several kind notices, and in particular a very full one in Hermathena by Dr. L. G. Purser, to which I am deeply indebted, I have now ventured to reproduce this dialogue in somewhat fuller form than the others, and to retain some of my original notes. I should add that I have no competence to deal with any scientific matters as such. I have added two longer notes on special points of interest.

Sir Thomas Browne, writing in 1681-2 to his son Edward who was by way of translating the Lives of Plutarch, and in fact accomplished two of them, assumes that he will in the main follow Amyot’s version, which North had followed absolutely, and suggests that, with some corrections and the removal of obsolete words, North’s work might still serve ‘especially with gentlemen, who if the expression bee playne looke not into criticisme’. ‘If you have the Greek Plutarke,’ he writes, ‘have also the Latin adjoyned unto it, so you may consult either upon occasion, though you apply yourself to translate out of French, and the English translation may be sometimes helpful.’ Very likely an acceptable version of the Moralia might now be produced out of Amyot and Philemon Holland, a racy and scholarly translator from the Greek, with the original and the old Latin at hand for reference. But Dr. Edward Browne was a physician, of little leisure and of delicate health, and it might hardly be respectful to Plutarch to adopt this procedure now; indeed it seems to recall that of ‘the dog’ in the proverb, who ‘drinks from the Nile’, running as he drinks, always with an eye on the crocodiles. However this may be, some indulgence may fairly be claimed by a translator of an author, who, however straight-forward himself, abounds in allusion and latent quotation, and also in difficulties of text not of his own making, and upon whom no commentary exists. I will mention, for the sake of clearness, two instances as to which I have troubled myself and, I fear, others a good deal:

In the dialogue On the Genius of Socrates, chap. iii, end (577 A), the speaker says that his brother Epaminondas is keeping out of the patriotic enterprise in hand, on the ground that the more hot-headed members of the party will not stop short of a general massacre and the murder of many of the leading citizens.

I have followed the Latin version in so rendering the words καὶ διαφθεῖραι πολλοὺς τῶν διαφερόντων. But I have felt some doubt—needlessly, I think—whether the Greek participle would bear this meaning, and also whether the sense so given is strong and suitable. Wyttenbach felt doubts too, for in his posthumous Index, s.v. διαφέρω, the rendering given is ‘hostes vel amici’, i.e. ‘friends or foes’. The sense is excellent, but seems hardly to be in the Greek; probably it was a mere query or jotting. The Teubner editor prints τῶν ἰδίᾳ διαφόρων ὄντων, i.e. ‘those with whom they had private differences’, giving Cobet’s name for the last two words. I have not been able to trace the reference in Cobet, but in Novae Lectiones, p. 565, he examines instances where he thinks that ἰδίᾳ should be supplied or suppressed, as the case may be, before compounds of διά. The sense seems good, but too special to be introduced into a text without cogent evidence, since, once given currency, it is difficult for a future critic to go back upon it. Meanwhile, in Wyttenbach’s note on ii, 75 A, he collects many instances where οἱ διάφοροι is used by Plutarch for ‘the enemy’, ‘the other party’, and τῶν διαφερόντων may have grown out of τῶν διαφόρων with τῶν repeated. I have thought it the more peaceable course to preserve the old rendering. I only quote this instance, which is of no great importance but is of some, as one where a Variorum editor would have stated at length and evaluated the possible alternatives. That a translator should do so is perhaps a case of ‘putting the cart before the horse’.

The other instance is one of real interest, where the problem is perhaps insoluble upon our present knowledge. In the long dialogue On the Cessation of the Oracles, c. 20 (420 c.), where Cleombrotus has been pressing a view that there may be daemons with a long, but yet a limited, term of existence, against the Epicureans, whose own strange theory of Eidola he derides, Ammonius replies in words which appear thus in the Latin:

‘Recte, inquit, mihi pronunciare videtur Theophrastus, quid enim obstat quin sententiam gravissimam et philosophiae convenientissimam recipiamus dicentis: opinionem de Daemonibus, si reiciatur, multa eorum simul abolere quae fieri possunt demonstratione autem carent; sin admittatur multa secum trahere impossibilia et quae non exstiterint.’

Amyot and others write ‘Cleombrotus’ for ‘Theophrastus’, a change which, in view of Plutarch’s carelessness as to personal names, seems not unlikely, and helps a little. No doubt Theophrastus is quoted, but his name need not have been mentioned, and may have been brought into the text in the wrong place. The absurdity of the words which I have given in italics seems evident, and I have returned to a suggestion of Xylander,[2] by introducing a negative before πολλά, assuming that Theophrastus is quoted, not for any opinion about daemons, but for a canon of what is logically ‘probable’. More subtle solutions are suggested, which could not be discussed here properly: the question seems too intricate to be settled by a translator as he goes on his way. We really want to know what Theophrastus said.

The remarks on the absence of a commentary do not apply to the dialogue on Instances of Delay in Divine Punishment, fully annotated by Wyttenbach in 1772, nor to the essay On Superstition and the greater part of The E at Delphi, which are dealt with in his continuous commentary. Nor should I omit to mention the great help afforded by Kepler’s notes on the Face in the Moon and his scholarly translation.

The large number of poetical quotations in Plutarch often stop a translator’s hand. Wherever it is possible, I have turned to standard versions: for Homer to that of Worsley completed by Conington, for Pindar’s extant Odes to that of Bishop George Moberly, which it has been an especial pleasure to use; for some lines of the Cyclops of Euripides I have been fortunate enough to draw upon Shelley. There remain a good many fragments, some of them of real poetical quality, and some jingling oracles and the like; for the latter doggerel is the proper vehicle, for the former the best attainable doggerel must serve. The range of Plutarch’s poetical quotations seems strangely limited considering their number. All are Greek, and most from the older poets; indeed, with the exception of a few from the New Comedy, nearly all might have been used by Plato. Those from the Tragedians are always to the point, but he does not appear to care from which of the three he is borrowing.[3] Homer and Hesiod always bring a welcome flavour of an older world. Perhaps Pindar is the poet whom he quotes with most hearty appreciation. Though he has given us many new poetical fragments, he introduces us to few, if any, new poets. Of Bacchylides there are only two slight quotations in all Plutarch’s works. A single reference to a passage of Horace is all that shows a knowledge of the existence of Roman poetry.

Southey’s comparison between the Moralia and the Lives need not be pressed; it is the scholar’s preference for the rare, which is his by privilege, over the popular. But it is well to realize, as it is easy to do with the help of indices, that the author’s hand is one in both. It is agreed that the Lives belong to Plutarch’s later years, and were written at Chaeroneia, under the limitations of his own library; the several books appeared at intervals, of what length we cannot say.[4] The few indications of date mentioned in the introductions to the dialogues now before us suggest the later part of Vespasian’s reign or the years nearly following it, say from A.D. 80 on. The dialogue on the Instances of Delay in Divine Punishment from its simpler psychology and demonology, and perhaps from some crudity in style, suggests a date earlier than that of some of the others. Dr. Max Adler, in his lucid and learned dissertation, has established the close connexion between the Face in the Moon and the Cessation of the Oracles, and thinks the former to have been the earlier, and to have been utilized for the latter piece.[5]

Montaigne, who knew his Plutarch up and down, has said that he is one of the authors whom he likes to take after the manner of the Danaids,[6] which may be described as a method of ‘dip and waste’. You may dip anywhere, as you may into the pages of The Doctor, and be sure of finding something which you would wish to remember; but you may also find, on re-reading the same passage, that you have not remembered it at all, so that the waste is continual. The freshness need not be impaired by a little more system; indeed it would be enhanced, at least for the dialogues, for this reason, that they all represent real conversations between real persons, and it is worth our while to put together our impressions about each. The fullest materials for such an attempt will be found in the Symposiacs or dialogues over wine.[7]

The Symposiacs are arranged in nine books, each of which contains ten conversations of unequal length, but all short, except the last which has fifteen. On the other hand nine, viz. four of the fourth book and five of the last, are missing, only the titles being preserved. All the books are dedicated to Sossius Senecio, who was consul first in A.D. 99; and as there is no reference to the dignity, we may perhaps infer that all were written before that year.[8] There is not a single reference in all the nine books to any public or personal event which might help us to a date. We hear of the ‘year’ of officials of the Greek games, of Plutarch’s return from a visit to Alexandria, and of a marriage in his family, which Sossius Senecio attended, but we cannot follow these clues.[9] Many of the discussions are about wine and wine-parties; in others the range of subject is very wide, from ‘What Plato meant by saying, if he did say, that God geometrizes’ to ‘Whether the table should be cleared after dinner’, or ‘Why truffles grow after thunder’. A good many are on medical subjects; in one of them the promising problem, ‘Whether new diseases can arise, and from what causes’, is well argued. The physicians present show a full knowledge of the Natural History found in the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, and the laymen seem to argue with them on equal terms. There is little or no pleasantry about professional habits, the fees or the pedantry, except that in one party a physician is host, and sets on the table an inordinately good dinner, while certain young men of severe habits put him to a great deal of trouble to produce some cheese to eat with their dry bread.[10]

In the first dialogue of the First Book the question is raised, ‘Whether philosophy may be discussed over wine’. The answer appears to be ‘Why not?’ but probably none of the following dialogues would be called ‘philosophical’ by philosophers. Plutarch loved a vigorous set-to, with no quarter given, ‘nothing for hate, but all for honour’, as much as did Montaigne.[11] But he felt deeply about the matters at issue between Stoics and Epicureans, the two schools which mattered. Believing himself in a Providence, kindly and particular, associated by him with the Apollo of Delphi, he disliked equally the Epicurean who flouted a Providence, and the Stoic who lowered it by his pedantry and contradictions. He would not have a scene over the wine. Even in the daylight dialogues now before us, the cynic ‘Planetiades’ is skilfully bowed out before there is trouble, and ‘Epicurus’ takes himself off before the reported discussion begins, leaving the company surprised rather than angry.

The titles of the five lost dialogues of the last book (the others of that book being all on literary subjects) are curious. Three are connected with music; and I should have the permission of those who have kindly helped me here to say that there is about Greek music a considerable region of dim penumbra. Another raises a question discussed in the De Facie and answered there out of Aristotle and Posidonius, as to the eclipses of sun and moon. Another is on the problem ‘Whether the total number of the stars is more probably even than odd’. The speakers (for a fragment is preserved) are quite aware that a game of odd-and-even on such a scale might seem childish. It need not be so, if the treatment were like that of the Arenarius of Archimedes (all the better if in his Doric); it would then have contained some long numbers and some stiff reasoning. Of one thing we may be sure, that if Lamprias, who is much to the fore in the Ninth Book, took a part, he was ready with a received view, framed on the spot.

M. Bernardakis[12] (who quotes a letter from M. Wessely) tells us that in the Paris E there is a blank space here of 2-¼ leaves, but that in the old Vienna MS., no. 148 (which contains the Symposiacs only), three whole pages have been cut out, leaving a gap between what remains of the sixth dialogue and the fragment of the twelfth. Former editions had printed continuously, and our gratitude is due to M. Bernardakis for his restitution of the fragment to its proper place. The inference appears to be that the Vienna MS. is here the parent, though why the fragment stops short where it does is not clear. Probably the scribe was daunted by the technical language, and either left a blank space to be filled up by some one of greater experience, or so spoilt his sheets by errors and erasures that it was better to cut them out. Some such cause has been conjectured for the many gaps left in E, occurring where the subject-matter is difficult.

Some ninety different persons are mentioned by name as taking part in the Symposiac Dialogues, and if we allow for the lost pieces, there must have been at least a hundred. These may be arranged in groups: Plutarch and his family—his grandfather, father, brothers, sons, sons-in-law—the doctors (8), the grammarians (5), and so on. Many of these reappear in the dialogues now before us, and much may be gained in distinctness of personality by following out the references given.[13] Ammonius, Plutarch’s teacher in the Platonic philosophy, comes out as a masterful person, and a past-master in the art of tactful arrangement of a debate. Theon (‘Our Comrade’, an appellation given to some half-dozen others), to be distinguished from ‘Theon the Grammarian’, is a close and much trusted family friend. Very few Roman names appear, but Sossius Senecio, Mestrius Florus, and one or two others, must have been intimates.

None of the conversations in the Symposiacs turn upon points which were Plutarch’s interest when he wrote the Lives; the study of character in stirring times, of the reaction of circumstances upon character and of character upon circumstances, of the insoluble problem which is always solving itself, as to ‘Virtue’ on the one hand and ‘Fortune’ on the other, determining success. The elaborate introduction to the Genius of Socrates, put side by side with that to the Life of Pericles, shows that the author wished to turn from subjects which made good talk over wine in hours of leisure, to others of a more virile stamp. The most convenient hypothesis would be that the success of the Symposiacs suggested to the author to try his hand on more elaborate dialogue, and that, still later on, he settled to the Lives in the spirit, not of an historian, but of an artist, filling his canvas with themes inspired by that great art, Virtue. The lost Life of Epaminondas, his favourite hero, would have told us a great deal about the artist himself. It was not Plutarch’s habit to sum up in such brilliant character sketches as stand out in other historians: this has been done for Epaminondas, on broad and generous lines, by Sir Walter Raleigh, and before him, not less generously, by Montaigne; and much material will be found scattered among Plutarch’s other Lives.

Such an hypothesis can only be ventured in the broadest outline, for no one date covers all the Lives or all the Dialogues, and some of the facts are perplexing. In the Second Pythian Dialogue Diogenianus appears as a very young man, and is introduced as the son of a father known to the company; and Diogenianus of Pergamum takes part in several of the Symposiacs, but there is no mention of a son old enough to be brought with him. On the other hand, Boethus in the same dialogue is ‘on his way to the camp of the Epicureans’; in one of the Symposiacs he is ‘an Epicurean’ simply. In the last book of the Symposiacs Theon’s sons come in, but we do not hear of him elsewhere as a father of grown-up sons.

The dialogue On the Face which appears on the Orb of the Moon is unique as showing the interest taken by men of good general education in scientific subjects in the first century of our era, and as evidence of the point to which the natural sciences had then attained. Professional science may be said to have been almost limited to the province of the mathematician and his congeners. Natural History was part of the general outfit of the ‘Philosophers’, and there was no idea of the ‘Conquest of Nature’ for the relief of man’s estate, unless by the engineer or the physician. With these limitations, the progress made may strike some modern readers as surprisingly great, and a good example may be found in the very precise knowledge of Hipparchus and Ptolemy of the delicate phenomena of the moon’s movements. We are tempted to ask whether, if Greeks had not settled these problems, which men of no other ancient race attacked scientifically, they would have been settled to this day. To come down to a humbler matter: if the properties of the conic sections had not been discovered by Apollonius and his predecessors, would they stand in their place, probably a modest one, on a modern syllabus, and, meanwhile, could the mechanical arts have progressed without them? And the conic sections are simple things compared with the lines, surfaces, and solids determined once for all by Archimedes. Archimedes was a mathematician by the grace of Nature, and an engineer by the order of a prince; and the conic sections themselves were examined, not from any practical interest in the cone, but because they were found to furnish instances of the curves which might facilitate the line of inquiry, suggested by Plato with such amazing foresight, as a half-way house towards a solution of Apollo’s problem.[14] Of course this can only be stated as a question—not a rhetorical question—and must be left on the knees of the gods. The general subject is discussed in D. Ruhnken’s admirable De Graecia artium ac doctrinarum inventrice, an inaugural lecture delivered at Leyden in 1757 (just thirty years after Newton’s death).

A few lines about the scholar to whose prolonged labours upon Plutarch we owe so much are only his due. Daniel Wyttenbach was born at Bern, where his father was a divine of good Swiss family, in 1746. He studied at Marburg and Göttingen, and passed to Holland, filling professorial chairs at Amsterdam, and, from 1798, at Leyden. In Holland he was the colleague and intimate friend of Valckenaer (1715-85) and David Ruhnken (1723-98), himself by birth a German. By their advice, he turned from a meditated edition of the Emperor Julian’s works to Plutarch. The two advisers were not quite at one, and Wyttenbach seemed to crouch between two burdens—Valckenaer wished him to produce a final edition of some one work, Ruhnken (who would gladly have faced the task himself if he had been a younger man) preferred that he should not stop short of all Plutarch. In 1772 he produced his learned and complete commentary on the De sera numinum Vindicta. About this time the Delegates of the Oxford Press were anxious to produce a worthy edition of a great classic; and in 1788 Thomas Burgess, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, afterwards Bishop of St. Davids and of Salisbury, visited Holland and sought an introduction to Wyttenbach, with whom an arrangement was concluded in the autumn of that year. The issue of the volumes of text, with critical notes and revised Latin version, began in 1795 and went on steadily till 1797; but there was much delay and many searchings of heart over the last volume, containing the fragments, the dispatch of which was hindered by the state of war and the occupation of Holland by foreign troops. It was at last discovered in 1800 in the port of Hamburg, and appears to have reached Oxford in that year. The first two volumes of the commentary, to page 242 C, had preceded it in 1798, and were also published in 1800. The last volume must have proceeded slowly, for it had only reached 392 D, near the end of the E at Delphi, when, on January 12, 1807, it was interrupted by an explosion due to the careless use of fire on a barge loaded with gunpowder. The effects of the conflagration which followed are visible in Leyden to this day. The disaster was ill-timed for us, for the commentary stops just short of a passage of great interest (see p. 75). Wyttenbach bore this trouble, which he has graphically described in several letters, and also those caused by ill health and narrowed means, with much fortitude. He died in 1820, and the last volume of the commentary was sent to Oxford and published in 1821, followed by the two volumes of the Index Graecitatis in 1830. He was a most amiable man, and the letters which passed between him and Ruhnken have much charm of feeling and expression. Both wrote in admirable Latin; Wyttenbach’s style is always fluent and picturesque, but has certain idiosyncrasies, which may delay an English reader.[15]

Of older scholars who had dealt with Plutarch, by far the most important was Turnebus[16] (1512-65). Of Xylander (W. Holzmann, 1532-76), who produced the Latin translation, the basis of his own commentary, and a Greek text, Wyttenbach writes with much respect and sympathy, as he does also of Reiske (1716-74), his own contemporary, who, however, was not quite adequately equipped, in point of material or of critical judgement.

I should like to express my deep sense of the loss caused to classical scholarship by the lamented death of Herbert Richards. I have more than once referred to his critical notes on the Moralia, which have been appearing lately in the Classical Review: many of the finer points of Greek idiom do not concern a translator, but there are several most valuable suggestions and criticisms which I have felt confidence in adopting.

A still more personal loss, which intimately concerns this volume, is that of Ingram Bywater. He had promised a revision of it in its passage through the press; and his vigilance as a Curator as well as his jealousy for the severer traditions of scholarship, apart from his personal kindness, would, I know, have made it a searching one. He did not specially care for English translation, and his own masterly version of the Poetics of Aristotle is prefaced by something like a protest. Nor did he feel much sympathy with what he would call the ‘Realien’. On the realities of life no one had a saner or better informed judgement. For natural science and its representatives he cherished a genuine respect; and perhaps none of the tributes to his memory would have touched him more than one which was paid in the pages of Nature by an old colleague and friend of the Exeter College days. But he had a certain shyness of the intrusion of arguments based, say, upon geometry or music, into problems of language already sufficiently perplexed. How generously his noble library and his own stores of wisdom were thrown open to those who sought them is known to many, as it is to myself.

Yet another great loss to me has been that of the Rev. David Thomas, Rector of Garsington, in Oxfordshire, a veteran mathematician, my near neighbour and most kindly and helpful referee during many years.

I cannot send out even so small a volume without a word of gratitude for affectionate and lifelong help received from John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury 1885-1911. His own enduring contribution to secular scholarship was made in 1874, and holds its place in the judgement of Latin scholars. He was always shouldering new burdens, the last being the mastering, for a definite purpose of friendship and public duty, of the language and history of Sweden. But his great stores of books and of knowledge were always in order, and always made available to others. He would often preface any opinion of his own by ‘My father used to think highly’ of such a book or such a person; and it was always well to be reminded of that true scholar and most courteous gentleman of an older day.

I owe much, for help and advice, to living friends whom I should like to thank, but may not. But I must be allowed to acknowledge, in no conventional spirit, the great care bestowed on these pages by the Reader for the Delegates of the Press, who has entered into difficulties of matter as well as of language as few scholars can be expected to have the patience to do.[17]

The style of Plutarch has not received much favour with scholars. He uses too many words, and writes in cumbrous sentences, and the words often seem ill-shapen. But it has merits which are acknowledged by all those who have dwelt much upon him. His style is a very honest one; at the end of the longest sentence it is always found that he has said something worth saying, and that no word can be retrenched as mere verbiage. And he is so much in earnest that he often reaches an eloquence, which burns, perhaps, with a dull glow, but which cannot be quite lost in any translation. Indeed the modern languages have sometimes an advantage in the fact that they do not possess counterparts, as long and as elaborate, of the terms used in the original. Of the first, and the best, of Plutarch’s translators, Montaigne[18] has written an opinion, to which it should be added that, in the judgement of very capable persons, Amyot[19] was a scholar of real knowledge and penetration, though he is sometimes content to paraphrase:

‘Ie donne avecque raison, ce me semble, la palme à Iacques Amyot sur touts nos escrivains françois, non seulement pour la naïfveté et pureté du langage, en quoy il surpasse touts aultres, ny pour la constance d’un si long travail, ny pour la profondeur de son sçavoir, ayant peu developper si heureusement un aucteur si espineux et ferré (car on m’en dira ce qu’on vouldra, ie n’entends rien au grec, mais ie veois un sens si bien ioinct et entretenu partout en sa traduction, que, ou il a certainement entendu l’imagination vraye de l’aucteur, ou ayant, par longue conversation, planté vifvement dans son ame une generale idee de celle de Plutarque, il ne luy a au moins rien presté qui le desmente ou qui le desdie); mais, sur tout, ie luy sçais bon gré d’avoir seu trier et choisir un livre si digne et si à propos pour en faire present à son pais.’

Since this Preface was written, early in 1916, a study of Plutarch, which should be of great value to his readers, has appeared in the De Plutarcho scriptore et philosopho, by Professor J. J. Hartman of Leyden. Professor Hartman is an enthusiast, and his book covers all the works of Plutarch, the Moralia and the Lives, their relations to one another and to the author’s career. He is of opinion that the Lives were taken in hand after all, or nearly all, the writings included in the Moralia were completed, and then appeared in rapid succession of books. He observes that many of the pieces of the Moralia suggest the date A.D. 107; the Symposiacs he places somewhat later. Two conclusions, of much importance as coming from so serious a student, may be stated: the Christian teaching had never come into Plutarch’s hearing (p. 114, &c.), and there is no suggestion of any tendency to Oriental or Neoplatonic thought; Plutarch was the best living authority on Plato and his works, and aimed at being the Plato of his own day (pp. 389, 680, &c.).

A large list of critical comments is appended to the general notice of each work. Professor Hartman takes as his basis the Teubner edition, and pays a well-merited tribute to the care and skill of M. Bernardakis (p. 237, &c.). His usual complaint is that the editor has lacked the boldness to incorporate in the text ingenious emendations which he mentions in notes. I had myself felt somewhat differently as to all unsupported emendations, though I am glad to repeat my sense of the great usefulness of the edition, my debt to which goes much beyond what I have expressly acknowledged.

CONTENTS

On the Genius of Socrates | 1
Three Pythian Dialogues | 52
I. On the ‘E’ at Delphi | 57
II. Why the Pythia does not now give Oracles in Verse | 79
III. On the Cessation of the Oracles | 112
On the Instances of Delay in Divine Punishment | 171
From the Dialogue ‘On the Soul’ | 214
On Superstition | 219
Appendix: A Short Discourse of Superstition. By John Smith | 236
On the Face which appears on the Orb of the Moon | 246
Notes | 309
Note on the Myths in Plutarch | 313
Note on the Plurality of Worlds and the Five Regular Solids | 318
Index | 321

ON THE GENIUS OF SOCRATES

INTRODUCTION

The Dialogue on The Genius of Socrates, to follow the familiar Latin title, is in the main a detailed and spirited account of a gallant exploit, the recovery of the Cadmeia, or citadel of Thebes, treacherously taken by the Spartans, with the aid of the Theban oligarchs, two years before. The recovery was effected in the winter of 379-378 B.C. by a party of Theban patriots, returning from exile in Athens, led by Pelopidas. The discussions as to the real meaning of the ‘daemonic Sign’ of Socrates form interludes which fill in the hours of waiting, and serve to relieve the tension of the narrative. It is as though Ulysses were heard discoursing to Menelaus within the Wooden Horse on the personality of Pallas Athene, with Helen prowling around outside. There is nothing strained or dramatic, in any disparaging sense, in speculation thus rubbing shoulders with action. The simplicity and good faith of the speakers, and the attractive personality of Epaminondas, forbid any suspicion of affectation. Thus the Dialogue serves a double purpose: it redeems the character of the leading Thebans, and of Pelopidas in particular, from the habitual disparagement of Xenophon and others; and it redeems the intellectual character of the Boeotians from the reproach against which the most brilliant of Greek poets, himself a son of Thebes, protests, ‘Swine of Boeotia’. For the chief speaker on the Socratic question is Simmias, and Cebes is present, Thebans whose names are for ever associated with the last hours of the Athenian Master; and the story is brightened by glimpses into the home of Epaminondas, and by hallowed memories of the Pythagorean brotherhood.

Early in 382 B.C. the Spartans had dispatched a force against Olynthus, the first division under Eudamidas, the second under his brother Phoebidas. The latter lingered under the walls of Thebes; and, whether led by personal ambition, or receiving secret orders from home, allowed himself to intrigue with the oligarchical leaders, who, though their party was not in power, were strong enough to be represented on the board of Polemarchs by Leontides, another, or the other, being Ismenias. Guided by Leontides, the Spartans, one hot summer day, seized the Cadmeia; Leontides arrested his colleague Ismenias, and caused Archias to be made Polemarch in his place. The popular leaders, some four hundred in number, took refuge in Athens. The Spartans disclaimed the action of Phoebidas, who was fined and superseded; and appropriated its results, strengthening the garrison of the Cadmeia. A commission of judges from the confederate states was appointed by Sparta to try Ismenias on a vague charge of Medizing; he was condemned and executed. Of the two Polemarchs, Archias was a man of pleasure, Leontides one of severe private life, but an unscrupulous party leader. He caused the lives of the refugees in Athens to be attempted, successfully in at least one case, that of Androcleidas. Of the patriots, Pelopidas, who had been formally exiled, was the leading spirit; Epaminondas, who remained at home, held back for good reasons which are stated in the course of the Dialogue (p. 9). One of the most useful confederates was Phyllidas; he had himself, when on a visit to Athens, suggested the enterprise, but he managed to retain the confidence of the party now in possession of Thebes, and held the office of Secretary to the Polemarchs.

These facts are assumed to be familiar to his hearers by Capheisias, brother of Epaminondas, who had himself joined the liberators without any scruples, and later on had been sent to Athens on an embassy. His story of the sequel is told to a mixed company of Athenians and Thebans. It is a perfectly clear one, and needs no comment.

The facts are again told by Plutarch in his Life of Pelopidas. The Lives were the work of his later years; and the present Dialogue, with its fuller detail and more varied colouring, is an earlier attempt to draw an historical picture, a work of art which will bear the close inspection of those who love to hear of virtue, or valour, in action.

The events are also narrated by Xenophon, who, from his usual Lacedaemonian and anti-Theban bias, omits all mention of Pelopidas. Thirlwall has preferred to base his account upon Plutarch; Grote follows Xenophon, but with a strong protest against his narrowness.

The conduct of Sparta justifies the allegation made by the Athenians in 416 B.C., ‘that in her political transactions she measured honour by inclination and justice by expediency’ (Thuc. 5, 105). The most scathing verdict upon it is delivered by Xenophon himself, who pauses in his narrative to point the moral, that the fall and degradation of Sparta began from this turning-point:

‘It would be possible to mention many other instances, from Greek and foreign history, proving that the Gods do not fail to notice the authors of impious and wicked deeds; at present I shall only mention the case before us. The Lacedaemonians, who had sworn that they would leave the cities independent, and then seized the Acropolis of Thebes, were punished entirely by those whom they had wronged, having previously been beaten by no man then living. The Theban citizens who had introduced them into the citadel, and who wished the city to be subject to the Lacedaemonians that they themselves might enjoy absolute power, lost their supremacy, which seven exiles were enough to overthrow.’

These remarks are in the spirit of the Greek Tragedians, who love to bring into strong light an act or situation of pride and insolence as the turning-point from prosperity to ruin. Thucydides, as is pointed out by Grote in the masterly pages which end his fifty-sixth chapter, has brought the cynical injustice of the Athenians towards Melos into glaring prominence in order to prepare his readers for the disastrous sequel.

The problem of the true nature of the ‘Divine Sign’ of Socrates is one of great interest and some mystery. The Latin word ‘Genius’, the attendant spirit who makes each of us what he is, in fact, his self, is familiar to us from Horace:

The Genius, guardian of each child of earth,

Born when we’re born and dying when we die.

(Epist. 2, 2, 187.)

The conception is thoroughly Greek, and may be paralleled abundantly from Plato as well as from Plutarch himself and contemporary writers. But it is really misapplied here, and is in fact a mistranslation, since the word used by Plato and Xenophon as well as by Plutarch is invariably not the daemon, but the neuter adjective, ‘the daemonic sc. Sign’. The passages of Plato and Xenophon are collected in the late James Riddell’s edition of the Apology of Plato.[20] It is to be observed that in all the genuine works of Plato the operation of the Sign is negative and deterrent, in Xenophon it is sometimes positive and hortatory. The reader should consult the articles on Socrates by Professor Henry Jackson in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Professor Jackson is inclined to think that the evidence points to some abnormal condition of the sense of hearing, and there are expressions in this Dialogue of Plutarch which seem to bear out such a view. Apuleius’ treatise On the God of Socrates (which St. Augustine tells us that he would have entitled On the daemon of Socrates if he had dared) tells us much which is of interest about the daemons, but not very much about Socrates. He contributes, however, the pertinent remark that the Sign, according to Socrates himself, was not ‘a voice’, but ‘a sort of voice’.

There is no indication of the date of composition of this Dialogue.

Not many points of topography arise. The Cadmeia stood on a low hill or plateau rising from north to south on the eastern side of the Dirce stream and reaching a height of some 200 feet, now occupied by the modern town. The market-place was north-east of this, near the river Ismenus. Of the seven famous gates the returning exiles may probably have entered by the Electran, the one assailed by Capaneus in Aeschylus’ story (Seven against Thebes, 423).

A DIALOGUE HELD AT ATHENS

|573| Containing an Account of the Return of the Theban Exiles, 379 B.C.

SPEAKERS

Capheisias, a Theban (brother of Epaminondas), who tells the story of the return.

Timotheus., Athenian
Archidamus., Athenian
The Sons of Archinus., Athenian
Lysitheides., Athenian
Other Friends.

I. Archidamus. I once heard a painter, Capheisias, say a |B| striking thing about the different people who come to view pictures, which he put as a simile. Spectators with no technical knowledge, he said, are like those who greet a large company in the mass; others, who possess fine taste and a love of art, resemble those who have a personal word for all comers. The former get only a general view of the works before them, which is never accurate; the latter discuss each piece critically and in detail, and no point of execution, good or bad, escapes inspection and remark. Now I think that it is just the same with the |C| actions of real life. Duller minds are satisfied if they learn from history the summary account of what occurred and its outcome; lovers of what is honourable and beautiful take keener delight in hearing all particulars of the performances inspired by that great Art Virtue. To the actual result, Fortune has much to say; but he who dwells on causes and particulars sees Virtue at odds with circumstance, acts of rational daring done in the face of danger, and calculation meeting opportunity and passion. Take it that we belong to the second class. Begin at the beginning of the enterprise, and give us all the incidents and |D| all the speeches which were no doubt delivered in your presence; and believe that I would not have hesitated to go to Thebes on purpose to hear the story, but that the Athenians are already beginning to think me too much of a Boeotian.

Capheisias. Indeed, Archidamus, since you are so kind as to press for the whole story, it would be my duty to make it, as Pindar[21] says, ‘a call before all business’ to come here to tell it; but as we are brought here on an embassy, and have nothing to do until we receive the answers of the people, I feel that any reluctance or embarrassment on my part towards so kind and good a friend might well wake up the old reproach against the Boeotians that they hate discussion. It was already fading |E| away, thanks to your Socrates; but our own care for Lysis,[22] of blessed memory, showed us true enthusiasts. But see whom we have present: is it convenient to them to listen to so long a story and to so many speeches? The narrative is not a short one, since you yourself bid me include the speeches.

Archidamus. You do not know these friends, Capheisias? No, but you should; sons of good fathers who were good friends to your people. This is Lysitheides, nephew of Thrasybulus; |F| this is Timotheus, Conon’s son; these are the sons of Archinus; the others are all of our brotherhood; so your story finds a friendly and congenial audience.

Capheisias. That is well. But what should you think a good point for me to start from, in view of what you know already?

Archidamus. We know fairly well, Capheisias, how things were at Thebes before the return of the exiles. We had heard at Athens how Archias and Leontides persuaded Phoebidas to |576| seize the Cadmeia during a truce; how they expelled some of the citizens and terrorized others, and seized office for themselves in defiance of law. We were the personal hosts here of Melon and Pelopidas, and constantly in their company so long as they were in exile. Again, we had heard how the Lacedaemonians fined Phoebidas for seizing the Cadmeia, removed him from the command against Olynthus, and then replaced him at Thebes by Lysanoridas and two others, and kept a stronger garrison than before in the Citadel. We were aware, too, how Ismenias met an unworthy death, since, immediately after his trial, Gorgidas wrote the whole account in a letter to the |B| exiles here. Thus it remains for you to tell us about the actual return of our friends and the capture of the tyrants.

II. Capheisias. Well then, Archidamus, during those days, all of us who were concerned in the movement were accustomed to meet for conference when necessary in the house of Simmias, who was recovering from a wound in the leg; ostensibly passing the time in philosophical talk, into which, as a blind, we often drew Archias and Leontides, men not altogether strangers to |C| such discussion. For Simmias had spent much time abroad, and wandered among men of other lands, and had shortly before this returned to Thebes full of all sorts of stories and outlandish accounts. These stories Archias used to enjoy when he chanced to have leisure, taking his seat with the young men, and liking us to pass the time in talk rather than attend to their proceedings. On the day upon which the exiles were to reach the walls at dusk, a man came in from here, sent by Pherenicus, known to none of our party except Charon; he proceeded to explain that the younger exiles, twelve in number, had taken hounds to hunt the Cithaeron country, intending to reach Thebes towards evening. He had been sent, he said, in advance |D| to tell us this, and to find out who was to provide the house for their concealment on arrival, so that they might have notice and go straight to it. While we were puzzling it over, Charon agreed to provide his own house. So the man settled to return to the exiles as fast as he could.

III. Here the prophet Theocritus pressed my hand hard, and looking at Charon, who was walking in front, said: ‘This man is no philosopher, Capheisias; he has received no extraordinary training, as Epaminondas your brother has; yet you see how he is naturally drawn by the laws towards the nobler |E| course, volunteering to encounter the greatest danger for our country’s sake. Whereas Epaminondas, who claims to have been trained to virtue above all Boeotians, is dull and spiritless;[23] what better opportunity than this will he ever have to bring into play his fine gifts and training?’ I said: ‘Not so fast, |F| Theocritus the eager! We are carrying out what we ourselves resolved; but Epaminondas, failing to persuade us to drop the plan, as he thinks would be best, naturally resists when invited to a course of action which he dislikes and disapproves. Suppose a physician undertook to cure a disease without the use of knife or fire: you would not be using him fairly, to my thinking, if you compelled him to cut or burn.[24] Very well; my brother, as you know, will not have any citizen die without a trial, yet is eager to work with those who wish to free the city from internal bloodshed and slaughter. As, however, he fails to convince the majority, and as we have embarked on this course, he bids you let him stand out, clear and guiltless of murder, and free to watch opportunities; when justice and expediency |577| meet, he will strike in. He feels that, work once begun, there will be no limitations; perhaps Pherenicus and Pelopidas will turn their attack against the greatest criminals, but Eumolpidas and Samidas, men of fire and passion, when night puts power in their hands, will not sheathe their swords before they have filled the city with murder from end to end, and dispatched many of our leading men.

IV. While I was thus conversing with Theocritus, Galaxidorus kept trying to check us;[25] Archias was near, and Lysanoridas the Spartan, both walking quickly from the Cadmeia, |B| apparently towards the same point as ourselves. So we broke off; Archias called Theocritus, and drew him towards Lysanoridas; then he talked a long time with them apart, having changed his direction a little towards the Amphion. Thus we were in an agony: had some hint or information reached them, upon which they were questioning Theocritus? In the meanwhile Phyllidas, whom you know, Archidamus, and who was at that time acting as clerk to Archias and the Polemarchs, and knew of the expected arrival of the exiles,[26] being privy to our scheme, pressed my hand as it was his way to do, and went on with bantering talk for every one’s benefit, about the gymnasia and the wrestling; then, having drawn me some distance from the others, he began to ask me about the exiles, and whether |C| they were keeping to their day. When I said that they were, he continued: ‘Then I have done right in preparing for to-day the party at which I mean to entertain Archias, and to deliver him into their hand in his cups.’ ‘Better than right, Phyllidas!’ I said; ‘and do you try to collect all or as many as you can of our enemies to the same place.’ ‘That is not easy;’ said he, ‘indeed, it is impossible; for Archias, expecting that a certain lady of high rank will come there to meet him, does not wish Leontides to be present. We must therefore mark |D| them down to separate houses. If Archias and Leontides are once captured, I think that the others will take themselves off, or else will remain quiet, glad to close with any offer of safety.’ ‘We will do so,’ I said, ‘but what can Theocritus have to talk about with these people?’ ‘I cannot answer clearly or from knowledge,’ said Phyllidas, ‘but I heard portents mentioned and prophecies disastrous to Sparta.’ [27][Meanwhile Theocritus rejoined us, and] Pheidolaus of Haliartus came up and said, ‘Simmias wants you to wait hereabouts a little. He is closeted with Leontides, interceding for Amphitheus to get his sentence of death commuted, if possible, to exile.’

V. ‘The very man!’ said Theocritus. ‘You might |E| have come on purpose, for I was longing to hear what the discoveries were, and about the general appearance of the tomb of Alcmena in your country when it was opened, if you were really present yourself when Agesilaus sent and removed the remains to Sparta.’ Pheidolaus answered: ‘I was not present; and vexed and indignant I was with my citizens for leaving me out. However, no vestige of a body was found, only a bracelet of brass, not a large one, and two earthenware jars containing |F| earth which had become solid as stone. Above the tomb lay a brass plate, with many letters wonderful for their great antiquity; they afforded no intelligible sense, though they came out clear to the eye when the brass was washed. The characters were of a peculiar and barbaric type, most closely resembling the Egyptian; and Agesilaus accordingly, as they said, sent copies to the king of Egypt, asking him to show them to the priests, on the chance of their understanding them. However, Simmias may, perhaps, have something to tell you about all this, as he was at that time in Egypt, and philosophy |578| brought him much into the society of the priests. But the people of Haliartus believe that the great scarcity of crops and the advance of the lake were not accidental, but were an angry visitation because they allowed the tomb to be dug open.’ After a short pause Theocritus went on: ‘Nor yet are the Lacedaemonians themselves clear of the wrath of heaven, as is shown by the portents about which Lysanoridas was lately conferring with us. He is now off to Haliartus to fill in the |B| tomb again and to offer libations to Alcmena and Aleus, of course in accordance with some oracle, not knowing who Aleus was. When he comes back from there he intends to investigate the tomb of Dirce, which is unknown to the Thebans, except those who have acted as Hipparchs. The outgoing magistrate takes his successor in office, with no one else present, and shows it him at night; they perform certain fireless rites over the tomb, carefully obliterate all traces, and go off under cover of darkness by separate ways. And much chance, I think, they will have of finding it, Pheidolaus! For most of those who have served legally as Hipparchs are now in exile; I might say all, except |C| Gorgidas and Plato, whom they fear too much to examine. But the present magistrates receive the spear and the seal in the Cadmeia, and know absolutely nothing.’

VI. While Theocritus was saying this, Leontides was going out with his friends. We entered, and began to pay our compliments to Simmias, who was sitting on the couch, having been unsuccessful in his petition, I think, for he seemed wrapped in thought and much annoyed. Looking hard at us all, ‘Hercules!’ |D| he said, ‘what savage barbarous manners! How right, and more than right, old Thales was, when he came home from a long absence abroad, and his friends asked what was his rarest discovery, “An aged tyrant”, he said! For every one, even if he have not been personally wronged, is disgusted at mere oppression, and harshness, and so is an enemy to lawless irresponsible dynasties. Well, the God will see to this, perhaps; now, Capheisias, about your newcomer, do you know who he is?’ ‘I do not know’, said I, ‘whom you mean.’ ‘Yet Leontides tells us’, he said, ‘that a man has been seen by the tomb of Lysis, rising to go when night was done. His retinue and |E| equipment were stately. He had bivouacked there on a rough bed, for piles of agnus castus and tamarisk were visible, and also remains of burnt sacrifices and libations of milk. At dawn he asked those who met him whether he should find the sons of Polymnis in the country.’ ‘But who can the stranger be?’ I said; ‘from what you tell us it must be some uncommon person, one in no private station.’

VII. ‘Certainly not’, said Pheidolaus. ‘However, when he comes we will see to his reception. Now, as to those characters, Simmias, about which we were puzzling just now. If you know more than we do, tell us; for it is said that the Egyptian priests have made out the letters on the plate which Agesilaus |F| took from us when he opened the tomb of Alcmena.’ Simmias remembered at once. ‘I know nothing of that plate, Pheidolaus;’ he said, ‘but Agenoridas the Spartan brought a number of characters from Agesilaus to Memphis, to Chonuphis the prophet, with whom Plato and I and Hellopion of Peparethus were staying to enjoy Philosophy together. He had been sent by the king, who desired Chonuphis, if he could make anything out of the inscription, to interpret and return it quickly. After spending three days in retirement, reading up characters from all countries in ancient books, he wrote his answer to the king. |579| He explained to us that this inscription directs the holding of a competition in honour of the Muses. The characters belonged to the system of the reign of Proteus, the one learnt by Hercules the son of Amphitryon. The God therein directs and charges the Greeks to observe a time of peace and leisure, spending it in continuous philosophical debate, with the help of the Muses and of Reason, for the decision of points relating to Justice, all arms being laid aside. We thought at the time that what Chonuphis said was good, and we thought so still more when, in our journey from Egypt round Caria, we met certain Delians |B| who begged Plato, as a geometrician, to solve the problem propounded in a mysterious oracle of the God. The oracle was this: “The Delians and the other Greeks shall have respite from their present ills when they have doubled the altar at Delos.” The Delians were unable to guess the meaning, and, moreover, had brought themselves into a ludicrous difficulty about the construction of the altar. They had doubled each of the four sides,[28] and so unconsciously produced a solid figure eight times greater than the original, in ignorance of the factor which must be applied to the side, in order to double the solid. |C| So they appealed to Plato for help in the difficulty. Plato, remembering the Egyptian, said that the God was rallying the Greeks on their neglect of liberal studies, mocking our ignorance, and commanding us to take up geometry in real earnest; that it required no slight or dim-sighted intellect, but a first-rate training in linear geometry, to find two mean proportionals, the only method by which a solid in the form of a cube can be doubled, if all its dimensions are to be increased uniformly. Eudoxus of Cnidos, he said, or Helicon of Cyzicus, would work this out for them.[29] However, in his opinion, the God did not desire this; he was enjoining all the Greeks to cease from war |D| and trouble and devote themselves to the Muses, to soften their passions by discussions and Mathematics, and to associate profitably with one another.’

VIII. While Simmias was speaking, our father Polymnis came in upon us. He sat down by Simmias and said: ‘Epaminondas invites you and all present, if you have no more pressing engagement, to wait hereabouts; he wants to introduce to you the stranger, a man noble himself, and brought here by a noble and generous errand. He comes from the Pythagoreans of |E| Italy, to pour offerings on the tomb of old Lysis, in accordance, as he says, with certain dreams and clear visions. He brings a large sum in gold, thinking that Epaminondas ought to be reimbursed for the care of Lysis in his old age, and on this he insists most keenly, though we neither ask nor wish assistance for our poverty.’ Simmias was pleased: ‘A really wonderful man,’ he said, ‘and worthy of Philosophy; but what is the reason that he has not come straight to us?’ ‘He passed the night, I think,’ said he, ‘near the tomb of Lysis; Epaminondas |F| was to take him on to the Ismenus to bathe, and then they will come on to us here. Before he met us, he had made his night’s lodging near the tomb, intending to take up the remains and convey them to Italy, unless prevented by some divine warning in the night.’ Having said this, my father was silent.

IX. Then Galaxidorus spoke: ‘Hercules! how hard it is to find a man quite free from vanity and superstition! Some are caught by these weaknesses against their will, owing to want of experience or of strength. Others, in order to appear singular and to be taken for friends of the Gods, bring the divine into all they do, making dreams and portents and such stuff a pretext for anything that enters their head. Now, to men in public |580| stations, who are compelled to adapt their lives to a self-willed and petulant multitude, this may have its advantage; superstition is a bit wherewith to check a populace, and direct it to what is expedient. But to Philosophy such posturing is unbecoming in itself, and, moreover, it contradicts her professions; she undertakes to teach all that is good and expedient by the reason, and then, as though in despite of reason, goes back upon the Gods and away from the first principles of action; and, dishonouring demonstration, in which her own excellence is supposed to lie, turns to prophecies and visions seen in dreams, |B| things in which the weakest often have as great success as the strongest. This, I think, Simmias, is why your Socrates embraced a system of intellectual training which bore a more philosophical stamp, choosing that simple artless type as being liberal and most friendly to truth; and casting to the winds for the sophists, as a mere smoke from Philosophy, all pretentious nonsense.’ Theocritus broke in: ‘What, Galaxidorus, and has Meletus persuaded even you too that Socrates despised |C| what was divine, for that was the charge which he actually brought before the Athenians?’ ‘What was divine—no;’ he said, ‘but he received Philosophy from Pythagoras and Empedocles full of visions and myths and superstitions, and deeply dipped in mysteries; and trained her to look at facts, and be sensible, and pursue truth in soberness of reason.’

X. ‘Granted;’ said Theocritus, ‘but as to the Divine Sign of Socrates, good friend, are we to call it a falsity or what? To me, nothing recorded about Pythagoras seems to go so far towards the prophetic and divine. For, in plain words, as Homer has drawn Athena to Odysseus

In all his toils a presence and a stay,[30]

even so, apparently, did the spirit attach to Socrates, from the first, a sort of vision to go before and guide his steps in life, which alone

Passing before him shed a light around[31]

|D| in matters of uncertainty, too hard for the wit of man to solve; upon these the spirit used often to converse with him, adding a divine touch to his own resolutions. For more, and more important, instances you must ask Simmias and the other companions of Socrates. But I was myself present, having come to stay with Euthyphron the prophet, when Socrates, as you remember, Simmias, was going up to the Symbolum and the house of Andocides, asking some question as he walked and playfully cross-examining Euthyphron. Suddenly he stopped and closed his lips tightly[32] and was wrapt in thought for some time. Then he turned back and took the way through the |E| Trunkmakers’ Street, and tried to recall those of our friends who were already in advance, saying that the Sign was upon him. Most of them turned in a body, amongst whom was I, keeping close to Euthyphron. But some young members of the party, no doubt to put the Sign of Socrates to the test, held on, and drew into their number Charillus the flute-player, who had come to Athens with myself, staying with Cebes. Now as they were going through the street of the Statuaries near the Law Courts, they were met by a whole herd of swine loaded with mud and hustling one another by press of numbers. There was no |F| getting out of the way; on they charged, upsetting some, bespattering others. At any rate, Charillus came home with his clothes full of mud and his legs too, so that we always laugh when we remember Socrates and his Sign, and wonder that this divine presence of his should never fail him or forget.’

XI. Then Galaxidorus said: ‘Do you think then, Theocritus, that the Sign of Socrates possessed a special and extraordinary power, not that some fragment of the ready wit which we all share determined him by an empiric process, turning the scale of his reasoning in cases which were uncertain and incalculable? For as a single weight does not by itself incline the balance, but, if added to one scale when the weights are even, sinks the whole of that one on its own side, so |581| a cry, or any such feather-weight sign, will fit[33] a mind already weighted, and draw it into action; and when two trains of thought are in conflict, it reinforces one, and solves the difficulty by removing the equality, so that there is a movement and an inclination.’ My father broke in: ‘Well, but I have myself heard, Galaxidorus, from a certain Megarian, who had it from Terpsion, that the Sign of Socrates was a sneeze, proceeding either from himself or from other persons; if some one else sneezed on his |B| right, whether behind or in front, it encouraged him to the action; if on the left, it warned him off it. Of his own sneezings there was one kind which confirmed his purpose when he was still intending to act; another stopped him when he was already acting and checked his impulse. The wonder to me is that if he made use of a sneeze he did not so call it to his companions, but was in the habit of saying that what checked or commanded him was a Divine Sign. For that would be like vanity and idle boasting, not like truth and simplicity, in which lay, as we suppose, his greatness and his superiority to men in general, to be disturbed by a sound from outside or a casual sneeze, and so be diverted from acting, and give up what he had resolved. |C| Now the impulses of Socrates, on the other hand, show firmness and intensity in every direction, as though issuing from a right and powerful judgement and principle. Thus for a man to remain in voluntary poverty all his life, when he might have had plenty, and the givers would have been pleased and thankful, and never to swerve from Philosophy in the face of all those hindrances; and at last, when the zeal and ingenuity of his friends had made his way easy to safety and retreat, not to be bent by their entreaties, nor yield to the near approach of |D| death—all this is not like a man whose judgement might be changed by random voices or sneezings; it is like one led to what is noble by some greater and more sovereign authority. I hear also that he foretold to some of his friends the disaster which befell the power of Athens in Sicily. At a still earlier time, Pyrilampes, the son of Antiphon, when taken prisoner in the pursuit near Delium, after having received from us a javelin wound, as soon as he had heard from those who had arrived from Athens to arrange the truce that Socrates had returned home in safety by The Gullies[34] with Alcibiades and Laches, often called upon him by name, and often on friends and comrades of |E| his own who had fled with him by way of Parnes, and been slain by our cavalry; they had disobeyed the Sign of Socrates, he said, in turning from the battle by a different way instead of following his lead. This, I think, Simmias too must have heard.’ ‘Often,’ said Simmias, ‘and from many persons. For there was no little noise at Athens about the Sign of Socrates in consequence.’

XII. ‘Well, then, Simmias,’ said Pheidolaus, ‘are we to allow Galaxidorus in his jesting way to bring down this great fact of divination to sneezings and cries, which plenty of common |F| ignorant persons apply to trifles in mere sport, whereas, when grave dangers overtake them, or more serious business, we may quote Euripides:[35]

These follies have a truce when steel is near‘?

Galaxidorus said: ‘I am quite ready to listen to Simmias on this subject, Pheidolaus, if he has himself heard Socrates speak about it, and to join you in believing; but as for all that you and Polymnis have mentioned, it is not hard to refute it. For as in medicine a throb or a pimple is a small matter, but is the indication of what is not small; and as to a pilot the cry of a bird from the open sea, or the scudding of a thin film of cloud, |582| signifies wind and rougher seas, so to a prophetic soul a sneeze or a voice is nothing great in itself, but is the sign of a great conjuncture. There is no art in which it is thought contemptible to forecast great things by small, many things through few. Suppose a man ignorant of the meaning of letters were to see a few insignificant-looking characters, and to refuse to believe that one who knew grammar could, by their help, repeat the story of great wars between old-world peoples, and foundings of cities, and what kings did or suffered, and then were to say |B| that a voice, or something like a voice, revealed and repeated each of these things to that historian, a pleasant laugh would come over your face, my friend, at the ignorance of that man. Now, consider, may it not be so with us? In our ignorance of the meaning of different things by which the prophetic art hits the coming event, are we simple enough to rebel if a man of intellect uses them to reveal something not yet evident, and says, moreover, that a Divine Sign, not a sneeze or a voice, directs him to the facts? For now I turn to you, Polymnis, who wonder that Socrates, a man who did so very much to make Philosophy human by simplicity and absence of cant, should |C| have named his Sign, not a sneeze or a voice, but, in full tragic phrase, his Divine Sign. I, on the contrary, should be surprised if a man so excellent in Dialectic and mastery of terms had said that the sneeze and not the Divine Sign gave him the intimation. As if a man were to say that he had been wounded “by the javelin”, not “by the thrower with his javelin”, or, again, that the weight had been measured “by the balance”, not “by the weigher with his balance”. For the work is not the work of the tool but of the owner of the tool which he uses for the work; and the Sign is a kind of tool used by the signifying power. But, as I said, if Simmias should have anything to tell us we must listen, for his knowledge is more exact.’

XIII. Then Theocritus said: ‘Yes, but first let us see |D| who these persons are who are coming in; or, rather, it is surely Epaminondas bringing the stranger to us.’ We looked towards the doors, and saw Epaminondas leading the way, then Ismenidorus, Bacchylidas, and Melissus the flute-player, all of them our friends and confederates; then the stranger followed, a man of much nobility of mien, but with a gentle and kindly character apparent beneath it, and dressed in a grave fashion. He took his seat by Simmias, my brother next to me, and the rest as they found places. Then, when there was silence, Simmias called on my brother: ‘Well, Epaminondas, how are we to address our friend? Who and what is he, and |E| whence? That is the usual formula for beginning an introduction and an acquaintance.’[36] Epaminondas replied: ‘Theanor is his name, Simmias, and his family is of Crotona, where he belongs to the local school of Philosophy and does no discredit to the great fame of Pythagoras; he has just taken the long journey from Italy here, to confirm noble doctrines by noble acts.’ The stranger broke in: ‘Indeed, Epaminondas, you are now hindering the noblest of all actions. For if to confer a benefit on friends be noble, it is no shame to receive |F| one from them. A favour needs one to receive, no less than one to bestow it; both must join to ensure a noble result. It is like a ball well delivered; to allow it to drop idle to the ground is to shame it. Now what mark is there for a ball, so agreeable for the thrower to hit and so distressing to miss, as a man at whom one aims a favour when he well deserves it? But in the one case the mark stands still, and he who misses has himself to thank; in the other, he who excuses himself and swerves aside does a wrong to the favour which never reaches its goal. You have yourself heard fully from me the reasons of my voyage here; but I should like to go through the story |583| as fully to those now present, and let them be judges between us.

‘When the Pythagoreans had been overpowered by faction in the different cities, and their brotherhoods expelled, and when the party of Cylon had piled up a fire round a house in Metapontum in which those still settled there were holding a meeting, and had dispatched all those in the place except Philolaus and Lysis, who were still young, and were strong enough and active enough to push through the fire, Philolaus escaped thence to Lucania and joined in safety the rest of our friends, who were by this time rallying and holding their own against the Cylonians. Where Lysis was, no one knew for a long time; however, Gorgias of Leontini, sailing back from |B| Greece to Sicily, brought certain news to Arcesus and his friends that he had met Lysis, who was staying near Thebes. Arcesus longed to see the man, and was eager to sail straight off himself; but being quite disabled by age and infirmity, gave orders to bring Lysis alive to Italy if possible, or his remains if he should have died. Then came wars, revolutions, and periods of tyranny which made it impossible for the friends to perform the task in his lifetime. But when the spirit of Lysis, now dead, had shown us clearly of his end, and well informed persons told us of all the care and entertainment which he had |C| received from your family, Polymnis; how richly his age had been cared for in a poor house, and how he had been adopted as father to your sons before his blessed end came, I was sent out, a young man and alone, to represent many of my elders who have money and wish to offer it to those who have not, in return for favour and friendship richly bestowed. Lysis lies where you have honourably laid him; yet the honour of that tomb is greater when recompense is made for it to friends by friends dear and close.’

XIV. While the stranger was speaking thus, my father wept a long while over the memory of Lysis, but my brother |D| with his usual gentle smile said to me: ‘What is it to be, Capheisias? Are we to surrender poverty to riches, and to say nothing?’ ‘No! no!’ said I, ‘the dear “good nurse of young manhood”[37]—to her rescue! it is your turn to speak.’ ‘See, father;’ he said, ‘that was the only side on which I used to fear that our house might be captured by money. I mean through Capheisias and his person, which needs beautiful clothes that he may make a brave show before all his admiring friends, and needs food of the best, and plenty of it, that he may have strength for the gymnasia and wrestling matches. Now that he does not betray poverty, or throw off our ancestral poverty like a coat of paint, but, boy though he is, goes proudly |E| in thrift, and is content with what we have, to what possible use could we put money? Shall we plate our armour, say, with gold, and make the shield gay with purple and gold together, as Nicias of Athens did?[38] Shall we buy you, father, a Milesian cloak, or a dress with a purple border for mother? You know, we are not likely to spend the present on our table, or to feast ourselves more sumptuously, as having admitted a guest of such importance as wealth.’ ‘Away with it, boy!’ said my father, ‘never may I see our life new-modelled like that!’ |F| ‘No,’ my brother went on, ‘nor will we sit idle at home and guard our wealth; that would be a “boonless boon”[39] indeed, and a getting with no honour to it.’ ‘Of course’, said our father. ‘You know,’ Epaminondas went on, ‘when Jason, the Thessalian Tagus, lately sent a large sum of money here to us and begged us to take it, he thought me something of a boor when I answered that he was making the first move in wrong and robbery, when a lover of monarchy like himself tempted with money a private citizen of a free self-governed state. From you, Sir, I accept your generous intention, and admire it |584| more than I can say; it is beautiful and philosophical too; but you are bringing medicines to friends who are not sick! Suppose that you had heard that we were attacked in war, and had sailed with arms and ammunition to help us, and on arrival had found that all was friendliness and peace; you would not think it necessary to hand over the stores and leave them where they were not needed. Even so, you have come to be our ally against poverty, thinking that we were pinched by her, but there is none so easy to be endured as she, our dear fellow-lodger. |B| So no need for money or arms against her who vexes us not. Take back this message to your brotherhood: that they themselves use their wealth most nobly, but that there are friends here who make noble use of poverty: and that, as to the entertainment of Lysis and his burial, Lysis has paid the score in full for himself, not least by teaching us not to fret at poverty.’

XV. Theanor broke in: ‘Then, if it is ignoble to fret at poverty, is it not eccentric to fear and shun wealth?’ ‘Eccentric it is if it is rejected on no rational grounds, but in order to pose or because of insipid taste or affectation of some kind.’ ‘But what rational grounds’, he said, ‘could bar the getting of wealth by good and honest means, Epaminondas? Or rather—and surrender more gently than you did to the Thessalian in |C| answering our questions about these matters—tell me whether you think that the giving of money may sometimes be right, but the receiving never; or that givers and receivers alike are in all cases wrong?’ ‘No, no!’ said Epaminondas, ‘I hold that, as with everything else, so with wealth; there is a giving and a getting which are ugly, and a giving and a getting which are fine.’ ‘Then,’ said Theanor, ‘when a man gives readily and heartily what he owes, is not that beautiful?’ He assented. ‘But when one receives what another beautifully gives, is not the taking beautiful? Or could there be a fairer taking of |D| money than when it comes from one who gives fairly?’ ‘There could not’, he said. ‘Then of two friends, Epaminondas,’ said he, ‘if one is to give, it looks as if the other must take. For in battles one must swerve away from a marksman in the enemy’s ranks; in the conflict of benefits it is not fair to avoid or thrust aside the friend who nobly gives. For, if poverty is no affliction, yet wealth, on its side, is not a thing to be flouted and refused like that.’ ‘It is not,’ said Epaminondas, ‘but there is a case where the gift which may be nobly offered remains more honoured and more noble if it is refused. Look at it with us in this way: you will allow that there are many desires, and desires of many things; some inborn, as we call them, which grow up about the body and are directed towards its necessary pleasures; others adventitious, grounded on mere fancies, but |E| gaining strength and power by time and use, where there is vicious education, and often dragging down the soul more forcibly than do those which are necessary. Now, by habits and training, men have before now succeeded in drawing off and subjecting to reason, in great measure, the innate affections. But the whole force of discipline, my friend, must be brought to bear against those which are adventitious and extraordinary; we must work them out, and hack them off, and use restraints and checks to school them to reason. For if thirst and hunger are forced out by rational resistance in the matter of food and |F| drink, far easier surely is it to stunt, and in the end to annihilate, love of wealth and love of glory by refusing and prohibiting the things at which they aim. Do you not agree?’ The stranger assented. ‘Then, do you see a distinction’, Epaminondas went on, ‘between training and the intended result of the training? Thus the result of athletic exercise would be the contest against a competitor for the crown; training would be the preparation of the body for this contest of the gymnasia. So with virtue, do you allow that there are two things, the result and the training?’ The stranger assented. ‘Now then,’ Epaminondas resumed, ‘tell me first with respect to temperance; do you take abstinence from base and lawless pleasures |585| to be a training, or rather a result and a proof of training?’ ‘A result and a proof’, he said. ‘But it is a training or study in temperance—is it not?—which still draws all of you on when you go to the gymnasia and have stirred up your desires for food, as though they were wild beasts, and then stand for a long time over bright tables with a variety of dishes, and at last pass the good cheer for your servants to enjoy, offering to your own now chastened appetites only what is plain and simple, since abstinence from pleasures in things allowed is a training for the soul against pleasures which are forbidden?’ ‘No doubt’, he said. ‘Then there is, friend, a way of training ourselves for |B| justice against the love of wealth and money; I do not mean never to enter our neighbour’s premises by night and steal his goods, and never to take his clothes at the bath; nor yet if a man does not betray country and friends for money is he training himself against covetousness (since here, perhaps, the law comes in and fear, to hinder greediness from doing acts of wrong). No, the man who often and voluntarily sets himself aloof from gains which are just and are allowed by law is training and habituating himself in advance to keep his distance from every gain which is unrighteous and forbidden. For as, when it encounters great pleasures which are also strange and hurtful, the mind cannot avoid a flutter unless it has often despised |C| permitted enjoyments, so to pass by vicious gains and great advancement when they come within reach is not easy, unless from a great way off the love of gain has been fettered and chastened; whereas, if it has been brought up to gain, and there has been no check on its license, it makes a riotous growth towards all iniquity, and only with the greatest effort is it withheld from grasping an advantage. But if a man does not surrender himself to the favours of friends or to the bounties of kings, but has said no even to an inheritance which Fortune offers, and has put far off that love of wealth which springs up to meet a treasure as it comes into sight, he finds that covetousness rises up against him no longer, nor tempts him to what is wrong, nor disturbs his understanding. He is gentle, and possesses himself for noble uses; he has great thoughts and |D| shares with his soul the noblest secrets. We, Capheisias and I, are lovers of such men, dear Simmias, and we entreat the stranger to allow us so to train ourselves in poverty that we may reach virtue such as that.’

XVI. My brother finished his argument, and then Simmias nodded his head two or three times. ‘A great man,’ he said, ‘a great man is Epaminondas, and thanks to Polymnis here for that, who procured for his sons from the first the best training in Philosophy. However, with regard to this question, Sir, do you and they settle it between you. Now about Lysis, if we |E| may be allowed to hear. Do you mean to move him from his tomb and to transfer him to Italy; or will you allow him to remain here with us, where he shall find kind and friendly fellow-lodgers when our time comes?’ Theanor smiled on him: ‘Lysis appears, Simmias, to love this country, in which by the good offices of Epaminondas he has wanted nothing that is honourable. For there is a certain holy rite connected with our Pythagorean burials, which if we lack we do not seem to attain our full and blessed consummation. So when we knew from dreams of the death of Lysis (we distinguish by a certain sign which is revealed in sleep whether an appearance belongs |F| to a dead person or a living), this thought came over many of us: so Lysis has been buried in another land with strange rites; he must be moved here to us, that he may share in all that is customary. Coming with such an intention, and guided straight to the tomb by people of the place, I was pouring libations just at evening time, and calling on the soul of Lysis to return and declare solemnly how we ought to act. The night went on and I saw nothing, but thought I heard a voice: “Stir not what is best unstirred; the body of Lysis has been buried with holy rites by friends; his soul has already been parted from it and dismissed to another birth, with another spirit for its partner.” Accordingly, when I met Epaminondas at dawn |586| and heard the manner in which he buried Lysis, I recognized that he had been well trained by that great teacher, even to the rules which must not be spoken, and had enjoyed the guidance in life from the same spirit as he, unless I fail to guess the pilot aright from the course steered. For “wide are the tracks”[40] of our lives, and few there are of them by which the spirits lead men.’ When Theanor had said this, he looked closely at Epaminondas, as though scrutinizing him afresh without and within.

|B| XVII. In the meantime the surgeon came up and loosened Simmias’ bandage, intending to dress the limb. But Phyllidas came in upon us with Hippostheneidas, and bidding me, and also Charon and Theocritus, rise and follow him, led us to a corner of the colonnade, his face showing great agitation. To my question, ‘Any news, Phyllidas?’ he answered, ‘No news to me; I knew and told you all the time how weak Hippostheneidas was, and implored you not to admit him as an associate of our enterprise.’ We were dismayed at this, and Hippostheneidas said: ‘In Heaven’s name, Phyllidas, do not say that; do not take rashness to be courage, and thereby ruin us and the city too; |C| but allow the men to make their own return in safety if it is so appointed.’ Phyllidas was nettled: ‘Tell me, Hippostheneidas,’ he said, ‘how many do you think share the inner secrets of our plan?’ ‘Not less than thirty, to my knowledge’, he said. ‘Very well,’ said Phyllidas, ‘there is all that number, and you have taken on your single self to annul and check the plan on which all had resolved, you sent a mounted messenger to the men when already on their road, bidding them turn back and not press on to-day, when most of the arrangements for their return have settled themselves without us.’ When Phyllidas had said this we were all much disturbed, but Charon fastened |D| his eyes very severely on Hippostheneidas: ‘Villain!’ he said, ‘what have you done to us?’ ‘Nothing terrible,’ answered Hippostheneidas, ‘if you will drop your harsh tone and listen to the calculations of a man of your own age, with grey hairs like yourself. If we have resolved to give our countrymen an exhibition of a courage which loves danger, and a spirit which makes little of life, then there is much of the day still before us, Phyllidas; let us not wait for the evening, but march at once against the tyrants, our swords in our hands—let us slay, let us die, let us never spare ourselves! But say we find no difficulty in this, whether of action or of endurance, yet to rescue Thebes |E| from an armed force, when encompassed by so many enemies, and to expel the Spartan garrison at a cost of two or three lives, is not easy; for Phyllidas has never prepared so much strong liquor for his parties and receptions that all the fifteen hundred men of Archias’ bodyguard will be made drunk; yet, even if we get rid of him, Herippidas is on for night duty and sober, and Arcesus too. This being so, why hurry to bring home friends and relatives to manifest destruction, and that when the very fact of their return is not unknown to the enemy? Or why have |F| the Thespians been ordered to be under arms for these two days past, and ready whenever the Spartan officers call? Again, I hear that Amphitheus is to be examined and put to death to-day, whenever Archias returns. Are not these strong signs that our action is not unmarked? Is it not best to pause, not for a long time, but long enough to make the auspices right? For the prophets declare, that in sacrificing the ox to Demeter, they found that the entrails prognosticated much commotion and public danger. Again, and this needs the greatest caution on your part, Charon, yesterday Hypatodorus son of Erianthes walked back with me from the farm, quite a good and friendly |587| person, but certainly not in our secrets. “Charon is your friend, Hippostheneidas,” he said, “but I do not know him well; tell him, if you think good, to be on his guard against a certain danger revealed in a very strange and disagreeable dream. Last night I thought that his house was in pangs as of labour, and that he and the friends who shared his anxiety prayed and stood around it, while it moaned and uttered inarticulate sounds. At last the fire flared out strong and terrible from within, so that most of the city was caught by the blaze, but the Cadmeia was only wrapped in smoke, the fire not spreading |B| up to it.” The vision which the man described was something like this, Charon; I was alarmed at the time, and much more so when I heard to-day that the exiles are to be put up at your house; I am now in an agony lest we may be bringing a load of troubles upon ourselves, yet not doing any harm worth mentioning to the enemies, but simply stirring them up. For I reckon the city to be on our side, the Cadmeia with them, as it certainly is.’

XVIII. Theocritus broke in, stopping Charon who wanted to say something to Hippostheneidas: ‘Well, Hippostheneidas, |C| nothing has ever struck me as so encouraging for action (although I have myself always found my sacrifices favourable for the exiles), as this vision; strong, clear light over the city, rising, you tell us, out of a friendly house; the head-quarters of our enemies wrapped in black smoke, which always imports, at the best, tears and confusion; then inarticulate utterances proceeding from our side, so that, even if any one were to attempt to inform against us, only an indistinct rumour and blind suspicion can attach to our enterprise, which will have succeeded by the time it is evident. That the priests should find sacrifices unfavourable is natural; officials and victim belong to those in power, not to the people.’ While Theocritus was still speaking, I turned to Hippostheneidas: ‘What messenger did you send |D| out to them? Unless you have allowed a very long start we will give chase.’ ‘I do not know,’ he said, ‘for I must tell you the truth, Capheisias, whether you could possibly overtake the man; he has the best horse in Thebes. The man is known to you; he is head groom in Melon’s chariot stables, and through Melon knows our enterprise from its beginning.’ Meanwhile I had espied the man, and said, ‘Hippostheneidas, do you not mean Chlidon, who won the single-horse race in last year’s Heraea?’ ‘That is the man’, he said. ‘And who is that,’ I said, ‘standing this long time at the outer gates, and looking in at us?’ Then Hippostheneidas turned: ‘Chlidon,’ he |E| said, ‘yes, by Hercules, I fear something has gone very wrong.’ Meanwhile, the man saw that we were observing him, and drew up quietly from the door. Hippostheneidas gave him a nod and bade him speak out to all present. ‘I know these gentlemen, Hippostheneidas, perfectly well; and finding you neither at home nor in the market-place, I guessed that you had come to them, so I took the shortest way here, that you may all know |F| everything which has happened. When you ordered me to use all speed and meet the party in the hill country, I went home to get my horse; but when I asked for the bridle, my wife could not give it me, but stayed a long time in the store room. She searched and turned out everything inside, and after fooling me to her heart’s content, at last confessed that she had lent the bridle to our neighbour the evening before, his wife having come in to ask for one. I was angry and used strong words to her, upon which she took to horrible imprecations—“A bad journey |588| and a bad return to you all!” May Heaven throw it all back upon herself, by Zeus, yes! At last, in my anger, I got as far as blows; then a crowd of neighbours and women ran up; I have behaved shamefully and have been treated no better, and have just managed to make my way to you, that you may send some one else to the exiles, for I am fairly off my head by this time and feel badly upset.’

XIX. We now experienced a strange revulsion of feeling. A little before we were chafing at the check we had received; now that the crisis was upon us short and sharp, and no delay possible, we found ourselves passing into an anguish of alarm. However, I said a word of greeting and encouragement to Hippostheneidas, to the effect that the very Gods were calling us |B| on to action. After this Phyllidas went out to arrange for his party, and to get Archias plunged straight into his drink, Charon to see to his house, while Theocritus and I returned to Simmias on the chance of getting a word with Epaminondas.

XX. However, they were far on in an inquiry of no mean import, Heaven knows, but one which Galaxidorus and Pheidolaus had started a little earlier, the problem of the real nature |C| and potency of the Divine Sign of Socrates, so called. What Simmias said in reply to the argument of Galaxidorus we did not hear; but he went on to say that he had himself once asked Socrates on the subject, and failed to get an answer, and so had never asked again; but that he had often been with him when he gave his opinion that those who claim intercourse with the divine by way of vision are impostors, whereas he attended to those who professed to hear a voice, and put serious questions to them. Hence it began to occur to us, as we were discussing the matter among ourselves, to suspect that the Divine Sign of Socrates might possibly be no vision but a special sense for |D| sounds or words, with which he had contact in some strange manner; just as in sleep there is no voice heard, but fancies and notions as to particular words reach the sleepers, who then think that they hear people talking. Only sleepers receive such conceptions in a real dream because of the tranquillity and calm of the body in sleep, whereas in waking moments the soul can hardly attend to greater powers, being so choked by thronging emotions and distracting needs that they are unable to listen and to give their attention to clear revelations. But the mind of Socrates, pure and passionless, and intermingling itself but |E| little with the body for necessary purposes, was fine and light of touch, and quickly changed under any impression. The impression we may conjecture to have been no voice, but the utterance of a spirit, which without vocal sound reached the perceiving mind by the revelation itself. For voice is like a blow upon the soul, which perforce admits its utterance by way of the ears, whenever we converse with one another. But the mind of a stronger being leads the gifted soul, touching it with the thing thought, and no blow is needed. To such a being soul yields as it relaxes or tightens the impulses, which are never |F| violent, as when there are passions to resist, but supple and pliant like reins which give. There is nothing wonderful in this; as we see great cargo-vessels turned about by little helms, and, again, potters’ wheels whirling round in even revolution at the light touch of a hand. These are things without a soul no doubt, yet so constructed as to run swiftly and smoothly, and therefore to yield to a motive force when a touch is given. But the soul of a man, being strained by countless impulses, as by cords, is far the easiest of all machines to turn, if it be touched rationally; it accepts the touch of thought, and moves as thought directs. For here the passions and impulses are stretched towards the |589| thinking principle and end in it; if that principle be stirred they receive a pull, and in turn draw and strain the man. And thus we are allowed to learn how great is the power of a thought. For bones, which have no sensation, and nerves and fleshy parts charged with humours, and the whole resultant mass in its ponderous quiescence, do yet, as soon as the soul sets something a going in thought and directs its impulse towards it, rise up, alert and tense, a whole which moves to action in all its members, as though it had wings. But it is hard, nay, perhaps, altogether beyond our powers, to take in at one glance the |B| system of excitation, complex strain, and divine prompting, whereby the soul, after conceiving a thought, draws on the mass of the body by the impulses which it gives.[41] Yet whereas a word thus intellectually apprehended excites the soul, while no sort of voice is heard and no action takes place, even so we need not, I think, find it hard to believe that mind may be led by a stronger mind and a more divine soul external to itself, having contact with it after its kind, as word with word or light with reflection. For in actual fact we recognize the thoughts of one another by groping as it were in darkness with the assistance of voice; whereas the thoughts of spirits have light, they shine upon men capable of receiving them, they need not verbs |C| or nouns, those symbols whereby men in their intercourse with men see resemblances and images of the things thought, yet never apprehend the things themselves, save only those upon whom, as we have said, there shines from within a peculiar and spiritual light. And yet what we see happen in the case of the voice may partly reassure the incredulous. The air is impressed with articulate sounds, it becomes all word and voice, and brings the meaning home to the soul of the hearer. Therefore we need not wonder if, in regard to this special mode of thought also, the air is sensitive to the touch of higher beings, and is so modified as to convey to the mind of godlike and extraordinary men the thought of him who thought it. For as the strokes of miners[42] are caught on brazen shields because of the reverberation, |D| when they rise from below ground and fall upon them, whereas falling on any other surface they are indistinct and pass to nothing, even so the words of spirits pass through all Nature, but only sound for those who possess the soul in untroubled calm, holy and spiritual men as we emphatically call them. The view of most people is that spiritual visitations come to men in sleep; that they should be similarly stirred when awake and in their full faculties they think marvellous and beyond belief. As though a musician were thought to use his lyre when the strings are let down, and not to touch or use it when it is strung up and tuned! They do not see the cause, their |E| own inner tunelessness and discord, from which Socrates our friend had been set free, as the oracle given to his father when he was yet a boy declared. For it bade him allow his son to do whatever came into his mind; not to force nor direct his goings, but to let his impulse have free play, only to pray for him to Zeus Agoraios and to the Muses, but for all else not to meddle with Socrates; meaning no doubt that he had within him a guide for |F| his life who was better than ten thousand teachers and directors.

XXI. This, Pheidolaus, is what has occurred to me to think about the Divine Sign of Socrates, in his lifetime and since his death, dismissing with contempt those who have suggested voices or sneezings or anything of that sort. But what I have heard Timarchus of Chaeroneia relate on this head it may perhaps be better to pass over in silence, as more like myth than history. ‘Not at all;’ said Theocritus, ‘let us have it all. Even myth touches truth, not too closely, perhaps, but it does touch it at points. But first, who was this Timarchus? Explain, for I do not know him.’ ‘Naturally, Theocritus,’ |590| said Simmias, ‘for he died quite young, having begged that he might be buried near Lamprocles, the son of Socrates, who had died a few days before, his own friend and contemporary. He then greatly wished to know what was really meant by the Divine Sign of Socrates, and so, like a generous youth fresh to the taste of Philosophy, having taken no one but Cebes and myself into his plan, went down into the cave of Trophonius, after performing the usual rites of the oracle. Two nights and one day he remained below; and when most people had given him up, and his family was mourning for |B| him, at early dawn he came up very radiant. He knelt to the God, then made his way at once through the crowd, and related to us many wonderful things which he had seen and heard.

XXII. ‘He said that, when he descended into the oracular chamber, he first found himself in a great darkness; then, after a prayer, lay a long while not very clearly conscious whether he was awake or dreaming; only he fancied that his head received a blow, while a dull noise fell on his ears, and then the sutures parted and allowed his soul to issue forth. As it passed upwards, rejoicing to mingle with the pure transparent air, it appeared |C| first to draw a long deep breath, after its narrow compression, and to become larger than before, like a sail as it is filled out. Then he heard dimly a whirring noise overhead out of which came a sweet voice. He looked up and saw land nowhere, only islands shining with lambent fire, from time to time changing colour with one another, as though it were a coat of dye, while the light became spangled in the transition. They appeared to be countless in number and in size enormous, not all equal but all alike circular. He thought that as these moved around there was an answering hum of the air, for the gentleness of |D| that voice which was harmonized out of all corresponded to the smoothness of the motion. Through the midst of the islands a sea or lake was interfused, all shining with the colours as they were commingled over its grey surface. Some few islands floated in a straight course and were conveyed across the current; many others were drawn on by the flood, being almost submerged. The sea was of great depth in some parts towards the south, but [northwards[43]] there were very shallow reaches, and it often swept over places and then left them dry, having no strong |E| ebb. The colour was in places pure as that of the open sea, in others turbid and marsh-like. As the islands passed through the surf they never came round to their starting-point again or described a circle, but slightly varied the points of impact, thus describing a continuous spiral as they went round. The sea was inclined to the approximate middle and highest part of the encompassing firmament by a little less than eight-ninths of the whole, as it appeared to him. It had two openings which |F| received rivers of fire pouring in from opposite sides, so that it was lashed into foam, and its grey surface was turned to white. This he saw, delighted at the spectacle; but as he turned his eyes downwards, there appeared a chasm, vast and round as though hewn out of a sphere; it was strangely terrible and deep and full of utter darkness, not in repose but often agitated and surging up; from which were heard roarings innumerable and groanings of beasts, and wailings of innumerable infants, and with these mingled cries of men and women, dim sounds of all sorts, and turmoils sent up indistinctly from the distant depth, |591| to his no small consternation. Time passed, and an unseen person said to him, “Timarchus, what do you wish to learn?” “Everything,” he replied, “for all is wonderful.” “We”, the voice said, “have little to do with the regions above, they belong to other Gods; but the province of Persephone which we administer, being one of the four which Styx bounds, you may survey if you will.” To his question, “What is Styx?” “A way to Hades,” was the reply, “and it passes right opposite, parting the light at its very vertex, but reaching up, as you see, from Hades below; where it touches the light in its revolution |B| it marks off the remotest region of all. Now, there are four first principles of all things, the first of life, the second of motion, the third of birth, the fourth of death. The first is linked to the second by Unity, in the Unseen: the second to the third by Mind, in the sun: the third to the fourth by Nature, in the moon. Over each of these combinations a Fate, daughter of Necessity, presides, and holds the keys; of the first Atropus, of the second, Clotho, of the one belonging to the moon Lachesis, and the turning-point of birth is there. For the other islands contain Gods, but the moon, which belongs to |C| earthly spirits, only avoids Styx by a slight elevation, and is caught once in one hundred and seventy-seven secondary measures[44]. As Styx moves upon her, the souls cry aloud in terror; for many slip from off her and are caught by Hades. Others the moon bears upwards from below, as they turn towards her; and for these death coincides with the moment of birth, those excepted which are guilty and impure, and which are not allowed to approach her while she lightens and bellows fearfully; mourning for their own fate they slip away and are borne downwards for another birth, as you see.” “But I see |D| nothing,” said Timarchus, “save many stars quivering around the gulf, others sinking into it, others, again, darting up from below.” “Then you see the spirits themselves,” the voice said, “though you do not know it. It is thus: every soul partakes of mind, there is none irrational or mindless; but so much of soul as is mingled with flesh and with affections is altered and turned towards the irrational by its sense of pleasures and pains. But the mode of mingling is not the same for every soul. Some are merged entirely into body, and are disturbed by passions throughout their whole being during life. Others |E| are in part mixed up with it, but leave outside their purest part, which is not drawn in, but is like a life-buoy which floats on the surface, and touches the head of one who has sunk into the depth, the soul clinging around it and being kept upright, while so much of it is supported as obeys and is not overmastered by the affections. The part which is borne below the surface within the body is called soul. That which is left free from dissolution most persons call mind, taking it to be something inside themselves, resembling the reflected images in mirrors; but those who are rightly informed know that it is outside themselves and address it as spirit. The stars, Timarchus,” the voice went on, “which you see extinguished, you are to |F| think of as souls entirely merged in bodies; those which give light again and shine from below upwards, shaking off, as though it were mud, a sort of gloom and dimness, are those which sail up again out of their bodies after death; those which are parted upwards are spirits, and belong to men who are said to have understanding. Try to see clearly in each the bond by which it coheres with soul.” Hearing this, he paid closer attention himself, and saw the stars tossing about, some less, some more, as we see the corks which mark out nets in the sea move over its surface; but some, like the shuttles used in |592| weaving, in entangled and irregular figures, not able to settle the motion into a straight line. The voice said that those who kept a straight and orderly movement were men whose souls had been well broken in by fair nurture and training, and did not allow their irrational part to be too harsh and rough. Those which often inclined upwards and downwards in an irregular and confused manner, like horses plunging off from a halter, were |B| fighting against the yoke with tempers disobedient and ill-trained for want of education; sometimes getting the mastery and swerving round to the right; again bent by passions and drawn on to share in sins, then again resisting and putting force upon them. The coupling bond, like a curb set on the irrational part of the soul whenever it resists, brings on repentance, as we call it, for sins, and shame for all lawless and intemperate pleasures, being really a pain and a stroke inflicted by it on the soul when it is bitted by that which masters and rules it, until at length, being thus punished, it becomes obedient to the rein |C| and familiar with it, and then, like a tame creature, without blow or pain, understands the spirit quickly by signs and hints. These then are led, late in the day and by slow degrees, to their duty. Out of those who are docile and obedient to their spirit from the first birth, is formed the prophetic and inspired class, to which belonged the soul of Hermodorus[45] of Clazomenae, of which you have surely heard; how it would leave the body entirely and wander over a wide range by night and by day, and |D| then come back again, having been present where many things were said and done far off, until the enemy found the body, which his wife had betrayed, left at home deserted by its soul, and burnt it. Now this part is not true; the soul used not to go out from the body; but by always yielding to the spirit, and slackening the coupling-band, he gave it constant liberty to range around, so that it saw and heard and reported many things from the world outside. But those who destroyed the body while he was asleep are paying the penalty in Tartarus unto |E| this day. All this, young man, you shall know more clearly in the third month from this; now begone!” When the voice ceased, Timarchus wished to turn round, he said, and see who the speaker was; but his head again ached violently, as though forcibly compressed, and he could no longer hear or perceive anything passing about him; afterwards, however, he came to |F| by degrees, and saw that he was lying in the cave of Trophonius, near the entrance where he had originally sunk down.

XXIII. ‘Such was the tale of Timarchus. When he died, having returned to Athens in the third month after hearing the voice, and when, in our wonder, we told Socrates of the story, he blamed us for not reporting it while Timarchus was still alive, since he would gladly have heard it more clearly from himself, and have questioned him further. There, Theocritus, you have all, tale and theory both. But perhaps we ought to invite the stranger to join our inquiry; the subject comes nearly home to inspired men.’ ‘Well, but’, the stranger answered, ‘Epaminondas, who puts out from the same port, is not contributing his opinion.’ Our father smiled: ‘That is just his character, Sir. Silent and cautious in speaking, but a glutton for learning and listening. That is why Spintharus of Tarentum, after spending no little time with him here, is always saying, as you know, that he never met |593| any man of his own standing who knew more or who spoke less. So pray let us have all your own thoughts on the subject.’

XXIV. ‘Then, for my part,’ said Theanor, ‘I think that the story of Timarchus ought to be dedicated to the God, as holy and inviolable. But it will be strange to me if any shall be found to discredit what Simmias tells us about the matter; thus, while they designate swans, serpents, dogs and horses as sacred, refusing to believe that men may be godlike and friends of God, yet holding that God is not a friend of birds but a friend of man. As, then, a man who loves horses does not care equally for all individuals which make the class, but always picks out and separates |B| some excellent member of the class, and trains him by himself and feeds him and loves him beyond others; so it is with ourselves; the higher powers extract, if the word may pass, the best out of the herd, and deem them worthy of a very special training, directing their course, not by reins nor by halters, but by reason, through signs utterly incomprehensible to the general herd. Why, most dogs do not understand the signals used in hunting, nor most horses those used in the manège; but those who have learned know at once from a whistle or a chirrup what they are required to do, and easily take the right position. Homer clearly knows the distinction |C| to which I refer. Some of his prophets he calls “readers of dreams” and “priests”, others understand the conversation of the Gods themselves, he thinks, by sympathy, and signify the future to us. For instance:

Thus they conferred: but Helenus, Priam’s son,

That scheme, which pleased them, in his heart divined.[46]

And again:

So the everlasting voice I have heard and known.[47]

The mind of kings and generals is made known to outsiders through the senses, by special beacons or proclamation, or calls on the trumpet; and so the divine message reaches few of us in and |D| through itself, and that rarely; for ordinary men signals are employed and these are the groundwork of what we call divination. The Gods, then, regulate life only for a few, for those whom they wish to make blessed in a single degree, and truly divine; but souls released from coming to the birth, and now for ever at rest from a body, and dismissed into freedom, are spirits who care for men, in Hesiod’s sense. For as athletes, when age has brought them an end of training, do not wholly lose the spirit of competition or of care for the body, but delight to see others in practice, and cheer them on and run beside them, so |E| those who have ceased from the struggles of life, made spirits because of the excellence of their soul, do not utterly despise our earthly affairs, our discussions and our interests: they have a kindly feeling for those training with the same end before them, they share their eagerness for virtue, encourage them, and join them in their bursts, whenever they see them running with hope near at hand and already within touch. For the spirit does not help |F| all men as they come. It is as with swimmers upon the sea; spectators on the shore merely gaze in silence on those who are out in the open, drifting far from land; whereas they run along the beach towards those who are already nearing it, they dash in to meet them, and with hand, and voice, and endeavour, hasten to the rescue. Such, Simmias, is the way of a spirit; while we are dipped beneath the tides of life, changing body for body, like relays on a road, he allows us to struggle out for ourselves, to be brave and patient, to try by our own virtue to reach the harbour in safety. But when any soul through a myriad of births has striven once and again a long-drawn strife well and stoutly, and when, with the cycle now wellnigh complete, it |594| takes the risks, and sets its hope high, as it nears the landing-place, and presses upwards with sweat and endeavour, the God thinks it no wrong that its own spirit should go to the help of such a soul, but lets zeal go free, and the Gods are zealous to encourage and to save, one this soul and one that. The soul hearkens because it is so near, and it is saved; but if it does not hearken the spirit leaves it, and its happy chance is gone.’

XXV. As he finished, Epaminondas looked at me. ‘It is nearly your time, Capheisias, to go to the gymnasium and not fail your comrades; we will take care of Theanor, and break up |B| our conference whenever he likes.’ ‘Let us do so,’ I said, ‘but I think Theocritus here wants a few words with you while Galaxidorus and I are present.’ ‘By all means’, said he; he rose and led the way to the angle of the portico. We stood round and tried to encourage him to join the scheme. He answered that he perfectly well knew the day of the return of the exiles, and had arranged with Gorgidas as to all that was necessary for our friends, but that he refused to take the life of any citizen without trial, unless there were an urgent necessity; also, looking to the body of the Thebans, it was specially convenient that there should be some person with hands clean |C| and beyond suspicion, when the time should come to advise the people for the best. We agreed, and he returned at once to Simmias and his party. We went down to the gymnasium and met our friends, and, pairing off for wrestling matches, exchanged information and plans for action. We saw also Archias and Philippus, anointed and starting for the supper. For Phyllidas, |D| fearing that they might put Amphitheus to death first, called on Archias immediately after he had escorted Lysanoridas, and by suggesting hopes that the lady he desired to meet would come to the place, persuaded him to turn his mind to having a good time with the usual companions of his revels.

XXVI. It was now getting late, and the cold was intense, as the wind had got up. Most people had therefore made for their homes more quickly than usual. We had fallen in with Damocleidas, Pelopidas, and Theopompus, and were taking them with us, as others took others of the exiles. For the party had broken up immediately after crossing Cithaeron; and the bitter |E| weather allowed them to muffle up their faces and pass through the city in security. Some of them were met by a lightning flash on the right without thunder, as they entered through the gates; and the sign seemed favourable for safety and glory, with a bright issue to follow and no danger.

XXVII. So when we were all inside, two short of fifty, while Theocritus was sacrificing by himself in an outbuilding, there was a loud knocking at the door; and presently some one came in to say that two servants of Archias, sent on an urgent message to Charon, were knocking at the courtyard gate and calling for it to |F| be opened, and were angry at the slowness of the response. Charon was much disturbed, and gave orders to open to them at once, while he himself went to meet them, the crown on his head showing that he had sacrificed and was at his wine, and asked the messengers what they wanted. One of them replied: ‘Archias and Philippus sent us, you are to come to them as quickly as you can.’ When Charon asked, ‘What is the reason of this hasty summons, and is there anything new?’ ‘We know nothing further,’ answered the messenger, ‘but what shall we tell them?’ ‘This, by Zeus,’ said Charon, ‘that as soon as I have put off this crown and got my cloak, I will follow you. For, if I go straight off with you, there will be an alarm; people will think that I am in |595| custody.’ ‘Do so,’ they said, ‘for we too have orders to convey from the magistrates to the guard of the lower city.’ So they went off. When Charon came in and told us this, we were all aghast, thinking we had been betrayed. Most of us were inclined to suspect Hippostheneidas; he had tried to hinder the return by sending Chlidon, and when that failed and the dread moment was upon us, he had used his plausible tongue to betray the scheme, out of fear; for he did not come with the rest into the house, but the whole impression he gave us was of a coward and turncoat. However, we all thought that Charon ought to go, and obey the |B| summons of the magistrates. He ordered his son to come in, the handsomest boy in Thebes, Archidamus, and the most painstaking in his gymnastics; barely fifteen, but in strength and size far above others of his age. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘he is my only one, and, as you know, I love him dearly; I place him in your hands, and charge you in the name of the Gods, and in the name of the spirits, if I should appear a traitor to your cause, slay him, and spare us not. For the rest, my gallant friends, set yourselves to meet the event; do not give in like shabby cowards, or allow this scum to slay your bodies; defend yourselves, keep your souls |C| above defeat, they are our country’s!’ As Charon said this, we were wondering at his spirit and noble heart, though indignant at his idea of suspicion on our part, and bade him take the boy away. ‘More than that, Charon,’ said Pelopidas, ‘we think that you have not been well advised in that you have not already removed your son to another house. What need for him to run our risks if taken with us? You must send him away even now, so that, if anything happen to us, one noble nursling may be left to be our avenger on the tyrants.’ ‘Not so;’ said Charon, ‘here he shall stay and share your risks; for, even in his interest, it is not |D| good that he should fall into the enemy’s hands. But you, my boy, be daring beyond your years, taste the struggles which must come, take risks with our many brave countrymen in the cause of freedom and valour; much hope still is left, and I think that a God is surely watching over us in our contest for the right.’

XXVIII. Tears came to many of us, Archidamus, at the words of Charon. Dry-eyed himself and unmoved, he placed his son in the hands of Pelopidas, and made his way through the doors with a word of greeting and encouragement for each of us. Even more would you have admired the bright and fearless bearing of the boy himself in the peril. Like Neoptolemus,[48] he showed no |E| paleness or alarm, but drew the sword of Pelopidas and seemed to study it. In the meantime, Diotonus, a friend of Cephisodorus, came in to us, sword in hand, and wearing a steel breastplate under his clothes; and when we told him of Charon being sent for by Archias, blamed us for losing time, and implored us to go straight to the houses, where we should be upon them before they were ready; failing that, it would be better, he said, to go out into the open and form our parties there out of the scattered and uncombined units, rather than shut ourselves up in a chamber |F| and wait like a swarm of bees to be cut out by the enemy. The prophet Theocritus added his urgent appeal; his victims showed a clear and good result, and assured him of safety.

XXIX. While we were arming and making arrangements, Charon reappeared, his face radiant. Smiling as he looked at us, he bade us take heart; there was no danger and the business was moving on. ‘Archias’, he said, ‘and Philippus, when they heard |596| that I had obeyed their summons, were already heavy with drink, sodden alike in body and mind; it was all they could do to stand upon their feet and move out towards the door. When Archias said: “Charon, we hear that exiles have passed into the city and are being concealed”, I was not a little troubled. “Where are they said to be?” I asked, “and who are they?” “We do not know,” replied Archias, “and therefore ordered you to come, on the chance that you might have heard something more certain.” I took a moment to recover my senses, as if after a blow, and began to put things together. The information given could be no substantial story; the plot had not been betrayed by any of those privy to it; for the tyrants could not be in ignorance as to |B| the house if their information came from any person with real knowledge; it must be merely a suspicion or some indefinite rumour circulating in the city which had reached them. So I answered: “I remember that in the lifetime of Androcleidas there were often reports of the kind floating idly about and causing us annoyance. But at the present time, Archias,” I went on, “I have heard nothing of the sort; however, I will inquire into the story, if you so desire, and, if I hear anything worth attention, you shall not fail to know.” “By all means,” said Phyllidas, “look well into this matter and leave no stone unturned. What is to prevent us? We must think nothing beneath our notice, but must take all precautions and pay attention. Forethought is good; safety is good!” As he said |C| this, he took Archias by the arm and led him off into the house where they are drinking. ‘Now, friends,’ he went on, ‘no delay for us, a prayer to the Gods, and forth we go!’ When Charon had said this, we spent a while in prayer and mutual encouragement.

XXX. It was now the hour at which people are mostly at supper; the wind was still rising and drove beneath it snow with drizzle, so that the narrow streets were quite empty as we made our way through them. The party told off against Leontides and Hypates, who lived near one another, went out cloaked and carrying no arms but a sword apiece (among |D| these were Pelopidas, Damocleidas, and Cephisodorus). Charon, Melon, and the rest who were to attack Archias, wore half-cuirasses, and thick wreaths, some of firwood, some of pine. Some were in women’s tunics, which gave the effect of a drinking procession with women. But our ill-fortune, Archidamus, which set all the weakness and ignorance of the enemy on a level with all our daring and preparation, and chequered our action from the outset with perilous episodes like a stage play, met us at |E| the moment of action, and sharp and terrible was the crisis with its dramatic surprise. Charon, having satisfied Archias and Philippus, had returned home and was putting us through our parts, when there came a letter from this city; it was from Archias the priest to Archias of Thebes, an old friend and guest, it would seem, with full news of the return and plot of the exiles, of the house |F| to which they had repaired, and of those who were acting with them. Archias was by this time drenched with wine, and excited about the expected arrival of the ladies; he took the letter, but when the bearer said that it was addressed to him about certain urgent business: “Then urgent business to-morrow!” he said, and thrust the letter under his head cushion; then he asked for a cup, kept calling for wine, the whole time ordering Phyllidas to go out to the door and see whether the women were near.

XXXI. As they had beguiled their drinking with this hope, we joined the company, and pushing our way through the servants to the banqueting hall stood a short time at the door looking |597| at each of the party. Our crowns and dress and make-up, while apologizing for our presence, caused a silence: but as soon as Melon rushed first up the hall, his hand upon his sword-hilt, Cabirichus, the appointed president, plucked him by the arm as he passed, and shouted out, ‘Phyllidas, is not this Melon?’ Melon shook off his grasp, drawing his sword as he did so, then, rushing upon Archias as with difficulty he found his feet, struck and struck till he had killed him. Philippus received a neck wound from Charon; he tried to defend himself with the drinking-cups |B| which were near his hand, but Lysitheus threw him off the couch to the ground and slew him. We tried to pacify Cabirichus, imploring him not to assist the tyrants, but to join in our country’s deliverance, remembering that he was a holy person and consecrated to the Gods for her sake. As, however, from the wine he had taken, it was not easy to carry his thoughts to the proper course, while he stood excited and confused, and kept presenting the point of his spear (customarily worn by our magistrates at all times), I myself seized it at the middle and swung it over his head, crying to him to let go and save himself, or he would be wounded. But Theopompus, standing near him |C| on the right, struck him with his sword, and said: ‘Lie there with those whom thou hast been flattering; never mayest thou wear a crown in a free Thebes, nor sacrifice any longer to the Gods, in whose names thou hast often called down curses on our country, and prayers for her enemies!’ When Cabirichus was down, Theocritus, who was with us, snatched the sacred spear out of the wound; and we slew a few of the servants who ventured on resistance, while we shut up in the hall those who behaved quietly, not wishing them to slip away and spread news of what had happened, before we knew whether things had gone |D| well with our comrades also.

XXXII. Their history was this. Pelopidas and his party quietly approached the courtyard door of Leontides, and told the servant who answered their knock that they had come from Athens with letters for Leontides from Callistratus. When he had given the message and received orders to open, and had removed the bar and set the door a little ajar, they burst in in a body, upset the man, and charged on through the court to the bedroom of Leontides. His suspicions carrying him at once to the truth he drew his dagger and rushed to defend himself; an unjust and tyrannical man he was, but of sturdy courage and a |E| powerful fighter. However, he did not make up his mind to throw down the torch and close with the attacking party in the dark; but in the light, and in their full view, as soon as they began to open the door, he smote Cephisodorus on the groin, and closed with Pelopidas next, shouting loudly all the time to call the attendants. These were held in check by Samidas’ party, not venturing to come to blows with some of the best known and bravest men in Thebes. Pelopidas and Leontides had to fight it |F| out; it was a sword duel in the doorway of the chamber, a narrow one, in the middle of which lay Cephisodorus, fallen and dying, so that the others could not come in to the rescue. At last our man, having received a slight wound in the head and having given many, and thrown Leontides down, ran him through over the still warm body of Cephisodorus. The latter saw the enemy falling, and placed his hand in that of Pelopidas, saluted the others, and cheerfully breathed his last. Leaving them, they turned against Hypates, and the door having been opened to them there, in the same way, they cut him down while trying to escape over a roof to the neighbours.

|598| XXXIII. Thence they hastened towards us, joining us outside, near the Polystyle. After mutual greetings and talk, we proceeded to the prison. Phyllidas called the head jailer out and said: ‘Archias and Philippus order you to bring Amphitheus to them at once.’ He, remarking the strangeness of the hour, and that Phyllidas did not seem composed as he spoke to him, but hot from the struggle and excited, saw through our artifice: ‘When did the Polemarchs send for a prisoner at such an hour, |B| Phyllidas,’ he asked, ‘and when by you? What password do you bring?’ As he was speaking, Phyllidas, who carried a cavalry lance, drove it through his ribs and brought the scoundrel to the ground, where he was trampled and spat upon the next day by a number of women. We burst open the doors of the prison, and called on the prisoners by name; first Amphitheus, then our acquaintances among the others. As they recognized the voices they leapt up from their pallet beds, dragging their chains, while those whose feet were fast in the stocks stretched out their hands, shouting and imploring us not to leave them behind. As these were being released, many of those who lived near came up, perceiving |C| what was going on and delighting in it. The women, as soon as each heard about her own relation, dropped Boeotian habits, and ran out to one another, asking questions from the men who met them. Those who found their own fathers or husbands followed, and no one tried to hinder them, for all who met them were deeply affected by pity for the men, and by the tears and prayers of modest women.

XXXIV. While things were thus, learning that Epaminondas |D| and Gorgidas were already forgathering with our friends near the temple of Athena, I took my way to join them. Many loyal citizens had already arrived, and more kept pouring in. When I had told them in detail the story of what had happened, and while I was imploring them to rally to the market-place, all agreed to summon the citizens at once ‘For Liberty!’ The crowds now forming up found arms to their hand in the warehouses full of spoils from all lands and in the factories of the swordmakers living near. Hippostheneidas had also arrived with friends and servants, bringing the trumpeters, who had, as it happened, been quartered in the town for the feast of Hercules. All at once they began to sound calls, some in the market-place, |E| others elsewhere, from every direction, to cause a panic among the other side, and make them think that the rising was general. Some lighted smoky fires[49] and so escaped to the Cadmeia, drawing with them also the aristocrats, so called, who were accustomed to pass the night on the low ground near the fortress. Those who were above, seeing this disorderly and confused stream of incomers, and ourselves about the market-place, no quiet anywhere, but indistinct noise and bustle rising up to them from all quarters, never made up their minds to come down, though there were some five thousand of them. They |F| thoroughly lost their heads in the danger, and Lysanoridas was a mere excuse: they professed to wait for his return, which was due that day. In consequence, he was afterwards sentenced to a heavy fine by the Lacedaemonian senate. Herippidas and Arcesus were arrested at Corinth later on and put to death. The Cadmeia was evacuated by them and surrendered to us under treaty, and the garrison withdrawn.

THREE PYTHIAN DIALOGUES

INTRODUCTION

The three Dialogues of Plutarch entitled:

I. On the E at Delphi,

II. Why the Pythia does not now give her Oracles in Verse,

III. On the cessation of the Oracles,
may be conveniently treated as a group, and assumed to be a collection of those ‘Pythian Dialogues’ which the author sent to his friend Serapion. I and II certainly are so, III has a separate dedication. Other Dialogues, e. g. that on Delays in Divine Punishment, are also records of conversations which took place at Delphi; but these three are concerned with questions suggested by the temple and prophetic office of Apollo, as to which they give much curious information. If they leave us unsatisfied as to matters of still deeper interest, and tell us nothing about the policy of Delphi in the Persian wars, the counsel given to Orestes, which is fiercely controversial matter, or the popular feeling towards the oracle represented in the Ion of Euripides, this is only what we learn to put up with in reading Greek books. Indeed it is of a piece with the purposes imputed to Apollo himself, who sets us problems but does not supply their solution. ‘The king whose oracle is in Delphi neither tells nor conceals, but signifies.’

We have few indications of date, or of mutual relations between the three Dialogues. I is based upon the author’s recollection of a conversation which took place ‘a long time ago’, about A. D. 66, the date of Nero’s visit to Greece. A principal speaker is Ammonius the Peripatetic philosopher of Lamprae, Plutarch’s instructor, who also speaks, with the same authority, in III. In II, Serapion, the Athenian poet, to whom the collection is dedicated in I, takes a leading part. Theon, a literary friend, who appears frequently in the Symposiacs and in the Face in the Moon comes into I and II. An interesting person is Demetrius of Tarsus, another literary friend, who, in III, has just returned from Britain, and who has been probably identified with ‘Demetrius the Scribe’, named on two bronze tablets found at York, and now in the York Museum (see Hermes, vol. 46, p. 156). The year of Callistratus at Delphi, which marks the date of III, is conjecturally fixed as A. D. 83-4 (see Pontow in Philologus for 1895, and cp. Sympos. vii. 5). As Agricola’s term of office ended in A. D. 84 or 85, Demetrius may have served under him. The general tranquillity of the world depicted in III hardly gives us much to build upon.

In I Plutarch and his brother Lamprias are both speakers. Lamprias appears in his usual character, a good companion, light-hearted and reckless; Plutarch speaks gravely and at length, and the debate is closed by Ammonius. In III Lamprias, Plutarch not being named, speaks gravely throughout, and, on the suggestion of Ammonius, closes the debate. In II, neither brother is named, and the last speaker is Theon.

In the Symposiac Dialogues one or other brother is usually present, sometimes both. In the Face in the Moon Lamprias alone takes part, and he acts as moderator.

It is not easy to interpret these facts. M. Gréard concludes that Lamprias died early. If so, was the name, which was borne by the grandfather and by one of the sons, transferred, for literary purposes, to Plutarch himself? M. Chenevière, in his pleasant essay on Plutarch’s friends (a Latin prize dissertation) suggests that, under whatever name, the leading speaker always conveys Plutarch’s own views.

Certain topics recur in this series of Dialogues. Thus the problem as to the meaning of the E at Delphi, which is the main subject of I, is glanced at, with some impatience, by Philippus the historian in III.

The identification of Apollo with the sun, dismissed at the end of I as a mere beautiful fancy, is questioned again in III and allowed to stand over as unsettled. It is touched upon in II, c. 12.

The hypothesis of a plurality of worlds, brought forward by Plutarch in I. c. 11, with special reference to the views of Plato in the Timaeus, reappears, again in connexion with the five regular solids, in III.

It may be noticed that Plutarch was not, at the date of the conversation narrated in I, a priest of the temple (see c. 16).

Much of the matter of III reappears, with little variety of substance, in the Face in the Moon, the attack on Aristotle’s theory of the distribution of matter in the one corresponding to that upon the Stoics in the other, and the accounts of the imprisonment of Cronus by his son (or Briareus) being almost identical. It is probable that in both Plutarch has drawn immediately upon Posidonius, and through him from Xenocrates and others. The question is discussed with great thoroughness by Dr. Max Adler (Dissertationes Vindobonenses, 1910).

The situation of Delphi is one of extraordinary beauty, as well as interest:

Some few miles north-east of the ancient site of Cirrha the mountainous range of Parnassus shoots out two little spurs towards the sea, thus locking on three sides an inclined valley, as the tiers of an ancient circus embrace the arena below. Upon the fourth side a small river runs, by name the Pleistus, which has forced its way between the eastern spur and Mount Cirphius, directly south and opposite; crosses laterally at the foot of the glen; then, sweeping round in a shining curve, before many leagues unites its waters to the bay. The descending slope that forms the amphitheatre is broken by ridges into three terraces, such as the traveller is wont to see in hilly countries. On the highest rose the sanctuary; below was the town and the cultivated hollow which poets called the Vale of Delphi; above all towered the ridges of Parnassus itself,[50] sheer walls of rock, rising inland towards the summit of the chain, desolate, grand, and picturesque. Those who stood above the level of the temple, and turned their gaze toward the south-west, might perhaps have looked far over to the smiling gulf of Corinth, an unbroken prospect of well-watered fields. Upon their left was the famous plane-tree, and the spring of Castalia, whose stream, leaping down between two rocks, out of a huge cleft that divided them, lost itself in a dell below, till it fell finally into the Pleistus; and mounting the rough ascent, just beyond the little torrent, might be seen the sacred way, which, issuing from the same gorge as the Pleistus, rounded the flank of the promontory of rock and climbed up its warm side. Few are the shadows that pass over the valley; through the long day the southern sun beats down on it, and the brilliancy of the sky is immortalized in the name which the inhabitants conferred upon the hills about, of Phaedriades, or shining cliffs.

But the property of the temple was not bounded by the extent of the view. Above, on the heights, as far as Ligorea and Tithorea, both Doric villages—towards the west, beyond the Stadium, and the hill on which it nestled, to Amphissa and the pasturages along its stream—all was part of the Ager Apollinis, sacred to the god and to his priests for ever.

From the Arnold Prize Essay for 1859, by Charles (afterwards Lord) Bowen.

The topographical and archaeological facts to be gathered from authorities prior to modern excavations are collected by Dr. J. H. Middleton in the Journal of Hellenic Studies for 1888. The results of the subsequent work of the French excavators, directed by M. Homolle, may conveniently be studied in Dr. J. G. Frazer’s Commentary on Pausanias, Book 10, where the history of the successive temples is followed out. The dimensions of the temple itself, which stood on a rocky plateau or terrace, were about 197 feet by 72 feet. The Sacred Way ran round the temple, and close to it on its northern and western sides, and was followed by the party described by Plutarch in the second of the three Dialogues (c. 17) in order to reach the southern steps.

I
ON THE ‘E’ AT DELPHI

(In the Pronaos of the temple at Delphi the visitor was confronted by certain inscriptions (γράμματα): ‘Know thyself’—‘Nothing too much’—‘Go bail and woe is at hand’—all exhortations to wisdom or prudence (Plato, Charmides, 163-4). To these is to be added, on the sole authority of Plutarch’s Dialogue, the letter E, pronounced EI.)

THE SPEAKERS

Ammonius, the Platonist philosopher, Plutarch’s teacher.

Lamprias, Plutarch’s brother.

Plutarch.

Theon, a literary friend.

Eustrophus, an Athenian.

Nicander, a priest of the temple.

Chap. 1. Dedication to Serapion at Athens. I am sending you, as an instalment, some of my Pythian Dialogues. What is the problem put before us by Apollo under the form of the letter E? I had always avoided the question, but here is a report of a conversation with some visitors, of whom Ammonius was one, in, or soon after, the year A. D. 66, when Nero came to Greece.

2. Ammonius was arguing that Apollo propounds subjects for philosophical inquiry in the ordinances and emblems of his temple, not least in this letter E.

3. Lamprias quoted the traditional account, that the Wise Men, who were properly five, not seven, met here, and, after discussion, set up the letter E, as a numeral, for a protest against the intrusion of a sixth and seventh into their company. The ancient wooden E is still called that of the Wise Men.

4. Ammonius smiled, knowing Lamprias to be capable of improvising a ‘traditional view’. One of the company mentioned a Chaldaean visitor, who had lately talked much nonsense about the number seven. The officials of the temple know no view except that the letter is significant as a word (‘if’ or ‘whether’).

5. Nicander confirmed this. ‘If’ is used with us in the formula of questions put to the god, or, as ‘if only’, in prayers.

6. Theon puts in a plea for ‘Dialectic’, i.e. Logic. ‘If’ is the conjunction which holds together the conjunctive proposition or syllogism, the special prerogative of human intellect. Hercules, in his early days, mocked at Logic and the E, and then removed the tripod by force.

7. Eustrophus: ‘Bravo, Theon, a Hercules, all but the lion’s skin!’ He appeals to the devotees of Mathematics to say a word for the arithmetical virtues of the number five (a thrust at Plutarch himself, who had yet to learn Academic moderation in his zeal for Mathematics).

8-16. Plutarch loq.:

8. Yes, five has virtues: 5 = 2 + 3, the first even added to the first odd. It is called ‘Marriage’. After multiplication it reproduces itself, and so symbolizes the ‘Conflagration’ and ‘Renovation’ of Heraclitus (and the Stoics),

9. Which relate to the legends of Apollo and also of Dionysus.

10. Five, when multiplied, gives alternately five itself and the perfect ten. It is also essential in harmonies.

11. Plato holds that, if there are more worlds than one, there may be five, and no more. Aristotle that there is one world composed of five elements, the five regular solids.

12. The five senses are related to the five elements and the five solids.

13. We must not forget Homer, and his five-fold division of the universe. But, going back: Four dimensions (point, line, plane, solid) are all very well. But animate being requires a fifth.

14. The true derivation is not 2 + 3 = 5 but 1 + 4 i.e., unity (which is itself really a square) plus the first square.

15. There are five modes of being (see the Sophist, and Philebus of Plato). Some early inquirer saw this, and set up two E’s.

16. I ask the initiated whether five has not a special virtue in their mysteries. (‘Yes,’ from Nicander, ‘but it is a secret.’) Well I must wait till I become a priest myself.

17. Ammonius, though in sympathy with Mathematics, deprecates too much exactness. There is much to be said for the number seven. But the ‘E’ is really something different from all the suggestions. The God greets his visitors with ‘Know Thyself.’ They answer, Thou Art.

18. We ‘are’ not at all, but always change from state to state, and so (says Heraclitus) does all Nature.

19. In true being is no past, present, or future; our common speech confesses to our not being.

20. But God IS, and is rightly addressed as ‘Thou Art’ or ‘Thou Art One’.

21. The identification of Apollo with the sun is a beautiful attempt to grasp the spiritual through the sensible. Not so the stories of his change into fire, and the like, which are better ascribed to some daemon than to the God. ‘Know Thyself’ calls us back from these lofty speculations: ‘Man, know thy nature and its limitations!’

ON THE ‘E’ AT DELPHI

I. A day or two ago, dear Serapion, I met with some |384 D| rather good lines, addressed, Dicaearchus thinks, to Archelaus by Euripides:[51]

No gifts, my wealthy friend, from humble me;

You’ll think me fool, or think I did but beg.

He who out of his narrow store offers trifles to men of great possessions, confers no favour; no one believes that he gives something for nothing, and he gets credit for a jealous and ungenerous temper. Now surely as money presents fall far |E| below those of literature and learning, so there is beauty in giving these, and beauty in claiming a return in kind. At any rate, I am sending to you, and so to my friends down there, some of our Pythian Dialogues, as a sort of first-fruits; and, in doing so, confess that I expect others from you, and more and better ones, since you enjoy a great city and abundant leisure, with many books and discussions of every sort. Well then, our kind Apollo, in the oracles which he gives his consultants, seems to |F| solve the problems of life and to find a remedy, while problems of the intellect he actually suggests and propounds to the born love of wisdom in the soul, thus implanting an appetite which leads to truth. Among many other instances, this is made clear as to the consecration of the letter ‘E’. We may well guess that it was not by chance, or by lot, that, alone among |385| the letters, it received pre-eminence in the God’s house, and took rank as a sacred offering and a show object. No, the officials of the God in early times, when they came to speculate, either saw in it a special and extraordinary virtue, or found it a symbol for something else of serious importance, and so adopted it. I had often myself avoided the question and quietly declined it when raised in the school. However, I was lately surprised by my sons in earnest discussion with certain strangers, who were just starting from Delphi; it was not decent to put them off with excuses, they were so anxious to receive some |B| account. We sat down near the temple, and I began to raise questions with myself, and to put others to them; and the place, and what they said, reminded me of a discussion which we heard a long time ago from Ammonius and others, at the time of Nero’s visit, when the same problem had been started here in the same way.

II. That the God is no less philosopher than he is prophet appeared to all to come out directly from the exposition which Ammonius gave us of each of his names. He is ‘Pythian’ (The Inquirer) to those who are beginning to learn and to inquire; ‘Delian’ (The Clear One) and ‘Phanaean’ to those who are already getting something clear and a glimmering of |C| the truth; ‘Ismenian’ (The Knowing) to those who possess the knowledge; ‘Leschenorian’ (God of Discourse) when they are in active enjoyment of dialectical and philosophic intercourse. ‘Now since’, he continued, ‘Philosophy embraces inquiry, wonder, and doubt, it seems natural that most of the things relating to the God should have been hidden away in riddles, and should require some account of their purpose, and an explanation of cause. For instance, in the case of the undying fire, why the only woods used here are pine for burning and laurel for fumigation; again, why two Fates are here installed, whereas their number is everywhere else taken as three; why no woman is allowed to approach the place of the oracles; questions about the tripod, and the rest. These problems, |D| when suggested to persons not altogether wanting in reason and soul, lure them on, and challenge them to inquire, to listen, and to discuss. Look again at those inscriptions, KNOW THYSELF and NOTHING TOO MUCH; how many philosophic inquiries have they provoked! What a multitude of arguments has sprung up out of each, as from a seed! Not one of them I think is more fruitful in this way than the subject of our present inquiry.’

III. When Ammonius had said this, my brother Lamprias spoke: ‘After all, the account which we have heard of the matter is simple enough and quite short. They say that the famous Wise Men, also called by some “Sophists”, were |E| properly only five, Chilon, Thales, Solon, Bias, and Pittacus. But Cleobulus, tyrant of Lindos, and, later on, Periander of Corinth, men with no wisdom or virtue in them, but forcing public opinion by influence, friends, and favours, thrust themselves into the list of the wise, and disseminated through Greece maxims and sayings resembling the utterances of the five. Then the five were vexed, but did not choose to expose the imposture, or to have an open quarrel on the matter of title, and to fight it out with such powerful persons. They met here |F| by themselves; and after discussing the matter, dedicated the letter which is fifth in the alphabet, and also as a numeral signifies five, thus making their own protest before the God, that they were five, discarding and rejecting the seventh and the sixth, as having no part or lot with themselves. That this account is not beside the mark may be recognized by any one who has heard the officials of the temple naming the golden “E” as that of Livia the wife of Caesar, the brazen one as that |386| of the Athenians, whereas the original and oldest letter, which is of wood, is to this day called that “Of the Wise Men”, as having been the offering of all in common, not of anyone of them.’

IV. Ammonius gave a quiet smile; he had a suspicion that Lamprias had been giving us a view of his own, making up history and legend at discretion. Some one else said that it was like the nonsense which they had heard from the Chaldaean stranger a day or so before; that there were seven letters which were vowels, seven stars that have an independent motion and |B| are unattached to the heavens; moreover that ‘E’ is the second vowel from the beginning, and the sun the second planet, after the moon, and that all Greeks, or nearly all, identify Apollo with the sun.

‘But all that’, he said, ‘is pernicious nonsense. Lamprias, however, has, probably without knowing it, made a move[52] which stirs up all who have to do with the temple against his view. What he told us was unknown to any of the Delphians; they used to give the regular guides’ account, that neither the appearance nor the sound of the letter has any significance, but only the name.’

|C| V. ‘No, the Delphic Officials’, said Nicander the priest, speaking for them, ‘believe that it is a vehicle, a form assumed by the petition addressed to the God; it has a leading place in the questions of those who consult him, and inquire, If they shall conquer; If they shall marry; If it is advisable to sail; If to farm; If to travel. The God in his wisdom would bow out the dialecticians when they think that nothing practical comes of the “If” part with its clause attached; he admits as practical, in his sense of the word, all questions so attached. Then, since it is our personal concern to question him as prophet, but |D| a general concern to pray to him as God, they hold that the letter embraces the virtue of prayer no less than that of inquiry; “O, If I might!” says every one who prays, as Archilochus,[53]

If it might be mine, prevailing, Neobule’s hand to touch!

When If-so-be is used, the latter part is dragged in (compare Sophron’s “Bereaved of children, I trow”, or Homer’s “As I will break thy might, I trow”[54]). But If gives the sense of prayer sufficiently.’

VI. When Nicander had finished, our friend Theon, whom I am sure you know, asked Ammonius whether Dialectic might |E| speak freely, after the insulting remarks to which she had been treated. Ammonius told him to speak out on her behalf. ‘That the God is a master of Dialectic,’ Theon said, ‘is shown clearly by most of his oracles; for you will grant that the solution of puzzles belongs to the same person as their invention. Again, as Plato used to say, when a response was given that the altar at Delos should be doubled,[55] a matter requiring the most advanced geometry, the God was not merely enjoining this, but was also putting his strong command upon the Greeks to practise geometry. Just so, when the God puts out ambiguous |F| oracles, he is exalting and establishing Dialectic, as essential to the right understanding of himself. You will grant again, that in Dialectic this conjunctive particle has great force, because it formulates the most logical of all sentences. This is certainly the “conjunctive”, seeing that the other animals know the existence of things, but man alone has been gifted by nature with the power of observing and discerning their sequence. That “it is day” and “it is light” we may take it that wolves and dogs and birds perceive. But “if it is day it is light”, is |387| intelligible only to man; he alone can apprehend antecedent and consequent, the enunciation of each and their connexion, their mutual relation and difference, and it is in these that all demonstration has its first and governing principle. Since then Philosophy is concerned with truth, and the light of truth is demonstration, and the principle of demonstration is the conjunctive proposition, the faculty which includes and produces this was rightly consecrated by the wise men to that |B| God who is above all things a lover of truth. Also, the God is a prophet, and prophetic art deals with that future which is to come out of things present or things past. Nothing comes into being without a cause, nothing is known beforehand without a reason. Things which come into being follow things which have been, things which are to be follow things which now are coming into being, all bound in one continuous chain of evolution. Therefore he who knows how to link causes together into one, and combine them into a natural process, can also declare beforehand things

Which are, which shall be, and which were of old.[56]

Homer did well in putting the present first, the future next, and the past last. Inference starts with the present, and works |C| by the force of the conjunction: “If this is, that was its antecedent”, “If this is, that will be.” As we have said, the technical and logical requirement is knowledge of consequence; sense supplies the minor premiss. Hence, though it may perhaps seem a petty thing to say, I will not shrink from it; the real tripod of truth is the logical process which assumes the relation of consequent to antecedent, then introduces the fact, and so establishes the conclusion. If the Pythian God really finds pleasure in music, and in the voices of swans, and the |D| tones of the lyre, what wonder is it that as a friend to Dialectic, he should welcome and love that part of speech which he sees philosophers use more, and more often, than any other. So Hercules, when he had not yet loosed Prometheus, nor yet conversed with the sophists Chiron and Atlas, but was young and just a Boeotian, first abolished Dialectic, made a mock at the “If the first then the second”[57], and bethought him to remove the tripod by force, and to try conclusions with the God for his art. At any rate, as time went on, he also appears to |E| have become a great prophet and a great dialectician.’

VII. When Theon had done, I think it was Eustrophus of Athens who addressed us: ‘Do you see with what a will Theon backs Dialectic? He has only to put on the lion’s skin! Now then for you who put down under number all things in one mass, all natures and principles divine as well as human, and take it to be leader and lord in all that is beautiful and honourable! It is no time for you to keep quiet; offer to the God a first-fruits of your dear Mathematics, if you think that “E” rises above |F| the other letters, not in its own right by power or shape, or by its meaning as a word, but as the honoured symbol of an absolutely great and sovereign number, the “Pempad”, from which the Wise Men took their verb “to count”.’ Eustrophus was not jesting when he said this to us; he said it because I was at the time passionately devoted to Mathematics, though soon to find the value of the maxim, ‘NOTHING TOO MUCH‘, having joined the Academy.

VIII. So I said that Eustrophus’ solution of the problem by number was excellent. ‘For since,’ I continued, ‘when all number is divided into even and odd, unity alone is in its effect |388| common to both, and therefore, if added to an odd number makes it even, and vice versa; and since even numbers start with two, odd numbers with three, and five is produced by combination of these, it has rightly received honour as the product of first principles, and it has further been called “Marriage”, because even resembles the female, odd the male. For when we divide the several numbers into equal segments, the even parts asunder perfectly, and leaves inside a sort of recipient principle or space; if the odd is treated in the same way, a middle part is always left |B| over, which is generative. Hence the odd is the more generative, and when brought into combination invariably prevails; in no combination does it give an even result, but in all cases an odd. Moreover, when each is applied to itself and added, the difference is shown. Even with even never gives odd, or passes out of its proper nature; it wants the strength to produce anything different. Odd numbers with odd yield even numbers in |C| plenty because of their unfailing fertility. The other powers of numbers and their distinctions cannot be now pursued in detail. However, the Pythagoreans called five “Marriage”, as produced by the union of the first male number and the first female. From another point of view it has been called “Nature”, because when multiplied into itself it ends at last in itself. For as Nature takes a grain of wheat, and in the intermediate stages of growth gives forms and shapes in abundance, through which she brings her work to perfection, and, after them all, shows us again a grain of wheat, thus restoring the beginning in the end of the whole process, so it is with numbers. When other numbers are multiplied into themselves, they end in different numbers after being squared; only those formed |D| of five or of six recover and preserve themselves every time. Thus six times six gives thirty-six, five times five twenty-five. And again, a number formed of six does this only once, in the single case of being squared. Five has the same property in multiplication, and also a special property of its own when added to itself; it produces alternately itself or ten, and that to infinity. For this number mimics the principle which orders all things. As Heraclitus[58] tells us that Nature successively produces the universe out of herself and herself out of the universe, bartering “fire for things and things for fire, as goods for gold |E| and gold for goods”, even so it is with the Pempad. In union with itself, it does not by its nature produce anything imperfect or foreign. All its changes are defined; it either produces itself or the Decad, either the homogeneous or the perfect.

IX. ‘Then if any one ask “What is all this to Apollo?”[59] Much, we will answer, not to Apollo only but also to Dionysus, who has no less to do with Delphi than has Apollo. Now we |F| hear theologians saying or singing, in poems or in plain prose, that the God subsists indestructible and eternal, and that, by force of some appointed plan and method, he passes through changes of his person; at one time he sets fire to Nature and so makes all like unto all, at another passes through all phases of difference—shapes, sufferings, powers—at the present time, for instance, he becomes “Cosmos”, and that is his most familiar name. The wiser people disguise from the vulgar the change |389| into fire, and call him “Apollo[60]” from his isolation, “Phoebus[61]” from his undefiled purity. As for his passage and distribution into waves and water, and earth, and stars, and nascent plants and animals, they hint at the actual change undergone as a rending and dismemberment, but name the God himself Dionysus or Zagreus or Nyctelius or Isodaites. Deaths too and vanishings do they construct, passages out of life and new births, all riddles and tales to match the changes mentioned. So they sing to Dionysus dithyrambic strains, charged with sufferings and a change wherein are wanderings and dismemberment. |B|

In mingled cries (says Aeschylus)[62] the dithyramb should ring,

With Dionysus revelling, its King.

‘But Apollo has the Paean, a set and sober music. Apollo is ever ageless and young; Dionysus has many forms and many shapes as represented in paintings and sculpture, which attribute to Apollo smoothness and order and a gravity with no admixture, to Dionysus a blend of sport and sauciness with seriousness and frenzy:

God that sett’st maiden’s blood

Dancing in frenzied mood,

Blooming with pageantry!

Evoe! we cry.

‘So do they summon him, rightly catching the character of either change. But since the periods of change are not equal, that |C| called “satiety” being longer, that of “stint” shorter, they here preserve a proportion, and use the Paean with their sacrifice for the rest of the year, but at the beginning of winter awake the dithyramb, and stop the Paean, and invoke this God instead of the other, supposing that this ratio of three to one is that of the “Arrangement” to the “Conflagration”.[63]

X. ‘But perhaps this has been drawn out at too great length for the present opportunity. This much is clear, that they do associate the Pempad with the God, as it now produces its own |D| self like fire, and again produces the Decad out of itself like the universe. Now take music, which the God favours so highly, are we not to suppose that this number has its share here?

‘Most of the science of harmonies, to put it in a word, is concerned with consonances. That these are five and no more is proved by reason, as against the man who is all for strings and holes, and wants to explore these points irrationally by the senses; they all have their origin in numerical ratios. The ratio of the fourth is four to three, of the fifth three to two, of the octave two to one, of the octave and fifth three to one, of the double octave four to one. The additional consonance which writers of |E| harmony introduce under the name of octave and fourth, does not merit admission, being extra-metrical; to admit it would be to indulge the irrational side of our sense of hearing, and to violate reason, or law. Passing by then five arrangements of tetrachords, and the first five “tones”, or “tropes”, or “harmonies”, whichever name is right, by variations of which, made higher or lower, the remaining scales, high and low, are produced, is it not true that, though intervals are many, indeed infinite, the principles of melody are five only, quarter tone, |F| half tone, tone, tone and a half, double tone? In sounds no other interval of high and low, be it smaller or greater, can be used for melody.

XI. ‘Passing over many similar points, I will’, I said, ‘produce Plato,[64] who, in discussing the question of a single universe, says that if there are others besides ours, and it is not alone, then the whole number of them is five and no more; not but that, if ours is the only universe in being, as Aristotle[65] also thinks, even this one is in a fashion composite and formed out of five; one of earth, one of water, a third of fire, and a fourth of air, |390| while the fifth is called heaven or light or air, or by others “fifth substance”, to which alone of all bodies circular motion is natural, not due to force or other accidental cause. Therefore it is that Plato, observing the five perfect figures of Nature—Pyramid, Cube, Octahedron, Eicosahedron, and Dodecahedron—assigned them to the elements, each to each.

XII. ‘There are some who appropriate to the same elements our own senses, also five in number. Touch, as they see, is |B| resistent and earthy. Taste takes in properties by moisture in the things tasted. Air when struck becomes audible voice or sound. There remain two: smell, the object of our olfactory sense, is an exhalation engendered by heat, and so resembles fire; sight is akin to air and light, which give it a luminous passage, so there is a commixture of both which is sympathetic. Besides these, the animal has no other sense, and the universe no other substance, which is simple and not blended. A marvellous |C| apportionment of the five to the five!’

XIII. Here, I think, I paused, and after an interval I went on: ‘What has happened to us, Eustrophus? We have almost forgotten Homer,[66] as if he had not been the first to divide the universe into five parts, assigning the three in the middle to the three Gods, while he left common and unapportioned the two extremes, Olympus and earth, one the limit of what is below, the other of what is above. “We must cry back”, as Euripides says.[67] Now those who exalt the number four as the basis of the |D| genesis of every body, make out a fairly good case. For every solid body possesses length, breadth, and depth; but length presupposes a point as an unit; the line is called length without breadth, and is length; the movement of a line in breadth produces a plane surface, and that is three; add depth, and we get to a solid with four factors. Any one can see that the number four carries Nature up to this point, that is, to the formation of a complete body, which may be touched, weighed, or struck; there it has left her, wanting in what is greatest. |E| For that which has no soul is, in plain terms, orphaned and incomplete and fit for nothing, unless it be employed by soul. But the movement or disposition which sets soul therein—a change introducing a fifth factor—restores to Nature her completeness, its rational basis is as much more commanding than that of the Tetrad as the animal is above the inanimate. Further, the symmetry and potency of the whole five prevails, so as not to allow the animate to form classes without limit, but gives five types for all living things. There are Gods, we know, and |F| daemons, and heroes, and after these, fourth in all, the race of men: fifth, and last, the irrational order of brutes. Again, if you make a natural division of the soul itself, the first and least distinct principle is that of growth; second is that of sense, then comes appetite, then the spirited part; when it has reached the power of reasoning and perfected its nature, it stays at rest in the fifth stage as its upper limit.

XIV. ‘Now as this number five has powers so many and so great, its origin is also noble: not the process already described, out of the numbers two and three, but that given by the combination of the first principle of number with the first square. The first principle is unity, the first square is four; from these |391| as from idea and limited substance, comes five. Or, if it be really correct, as some hold, to reckon unity as a square, being a power of itself and working out to itself, then the Pempad is formed out of the first two squares, and so has not missed noble birth and that the highest.

XV. ‘My most important point’, I went on, ‘may, I fear, bear hardly on Plato, just as he said that Anaxagoras “was hardly used by the name Selene”, when he had wished to appropriate the theory of her illumination, really a very old one. Are not |B| these Plato’s words, in the Cratylus?‘[68] ‘They certainly are,’ said Eustrophus, ‘but I fail to see the resemblance.’ ‘Very well then; you know, I suppose, that in the “Sophist”[69] he proves that the supreme principles are five: being, identity, difference, and after these, as fourth and fifth, movement and position. But in the Philebus[70] he divides on a different plan. He distinguishes the unlimited and the limited, from whose combination comes the origin of all being. The cause of combination he takes to be a fourth. The fifth, whereby things so mingled are again parted and distinguished, he has left to us to guess. I |C| conjecture that those on the one list are figures of those on the other; to being corresponds that which becomes, to motion the unlimited; to position the limited, to identity the combining principle, to difference that which distinguishes. But if the two sets are different, yet, on one view as on the other, there would be five classes, and five modes of difference. Some early inquirer, it will surely be said, saw into this before Plato, and consecrated two “E’s” to the God, as a manifestation and symbol of the number of all things. But further, having perceived that the good also takes shape under five heads, firstly |D| moderation, secondly symmetry, thirdly mind, fourthly the sciences and arts and true opinions which relate to soul, fifthly every pleasure which is pure and unmingled with what causes pain, he there leaves off, merely suggesting the Orphic verse,

In the sixth order let the strain be stayed!

XVI. ‘Having said so much’, I went on, ‘to you all, I will sing one short stave to Nicander and “his cunning men”.[71]

‘On the sixth day of the new moon, when the Pythia is introduced into the Prytaneum by one person, the first of your three castings of lot is a single one, namely the five: the three |E| against the two.’ ‘It is so,’ said Nicander, ‘but the reason may not be disclosed to others.’ ‘Then,’ I answered with a smile, ‘until such time as we become priests, and the God allows us to know the truth, this much and no more shall be added to what we have to say about the Pempad.’ Such, so far as I remember, was the end of our account of the arithmetical or mathematical reasons for extolling the letter ‘E’.

XVII. Ammonius, as one who himself gave Mathematics no mean place in Philosophy, was pleased at the course the conversation was taking, and said: ‘It is not worth our while to answer our young friends with too absolute accuracy on these points; I will only observe that any one of the numbers will provide not a few points for those who choose to sing its praises. |F| Why speak about the others? Apollo’s holy “Seven” will take up all one day before we have exhausted its powers. Are we then to show the Seven Wise Men at odds with common usage, and “the time which runs”[72], and to suppose that they ousted the “Seven” from its pre-eminence before the God, and consecrated the “Five” as perhaps more appropriate?

‘My own view is that the letter signifies neither number, nor |392| order, nor conjunction, nor any other omitted part of speech; it is a complete and self-operating mode of addressing the God; the word once spoken brings the speaker into apprehension of his power. The God, as it were, addresses each of us, as he enters, with his “Know Thyself”, which is at least as good as “Hail”. We answer the God back with “EI” (Thou Art), rendering to him the designation which is true and has no lie in it, and alone belongs to him, and to no other, that of BEING.

XVIII. ‘For we have, really, no part in real being; all mortal nature is in a middle state between becoming and perishing, and presents but an appearance, a faint unstable image, of itself. If you strain the intellect, and wish to grasp this, it |B| is as with water; compress it too much and force it violently into one space as it tries to flow through, and you destroy the enveloping substance; even so when the reason tries to follow out too closely the clear truth about each particular thing in a world of phase and change, it is foiled, and rests either on the becoming of that thing or on its perishing; it cannot apprehend anything which abides or really is. “It is impossible to go into the same river twice”, said Heraclitus;[73] no more can you grasp mortal being twice, so as to hold it. So sharp and so swift is change; it scatters and brings together again, nay not again, no nor afterwards; even while it is being formed it fails, |C| it approaches, and it is gone. Hence becoming never ends in being, for the process never leaves off, or is stayed. From seed it produces, in its constant changes, an embryo, then an infant, then a child; in due order a boy, a young man; then a man, an elderly man, an old man; it undoes the former becomings and the age which has been, to make those which come after. Yet we fear (how absurdly!) a single death, we who have died so many deaths, and yet are dying. For it is not only that, as Heraclitus[74] would say, “death of fire is birth of air”, and “death of air is birth of water”; the thing is much clearer in |D| our own selves. The man in his strength is destroyed when the old man comes into being, the young man was destroyed for the man in his strength to be, so the boy for the young man, the babe for the boy. He of yesterday has died into him of to-day; he of to-day is dying into him of to-morrow. No one abides, no one is; we that come into being are many, while matter is driven around, and then glides away, about some one appearance and a common mould. Else how is it, if we remain the same, that the things in which we find pleasure now are different from those of a former time; that we love, hate, admire, and censure |E| different things; that our words are different and our feelings; that our look, our bodily form, our intellect are not the same now as then? If a man does not change, these various conditions are unnatural; if he does change, he is not the same man. But if he is not the same man, he is not at all; his so-called being is simply change and new birth of man out of man. In our ignorance of what being is, sense falsely tells us that what appears is.

XIX. ‘What then really is? That which is eternal, was never brought into being, is never destroyed, to which no time ever brings change. Time is a thing which moves and takes the fashion of moving matter, which ever flows or is a sort of leaky vessel which holds destruction and becoming. Of time we use the words “afterwards”, “before”, “shall be”, and |F| “has been”, each on its face an avowal of not being. For, in this question of being, to say of a thing which has not yet come into being, or which has already ceased from being, that “it is”, is silly and absurd. When we strain to the uttermost our apprehension of time, and say “it is at hand”, “it is here”, or “now”, a rational development of the argument brings it all to nothing. “Now” is squeezed out into the future or into the past, as though we should try to see a point, which of necessity passes away to right or left. But if the case be the |393| same with Nature, which is measured, as with time which measures, nothing in it abides or really is. All things are coming into being, or being destroyed, even while we measure them by time. Hence it is not permissible, even in speaking of that which is, to say that “it was”, or “it shall be”; these all are inclinations, transitions, passages, for of permanent being there is none in Nature.

XX. ‘But the God IS, we are bound to assert; he is, with reference to no time but to that age wherein is no movement, or time, or duration; to which nothing is prior or subsequent; no future, no past, no elder, no younger, which by one long “now” has made the “always” perfect. Only with reference to this that which really is, is; it has not come into being, it is |B| not yet to be, it did not begin, it will not cease. Thus then we ought to hail him in worship, and thus to address him as “Thou Art”, aye, or in the very words of some of the old people, “Ei Hen”, “Thou art one thing”.[75] For the Divine is not many things, in the sense in which each one of us is made up of ten thousand different and successive states, a scrap-heap of units, a mob of individuals. No, that which is must be one, as that which is one is. Variety, any difference in being, passes to one side to produce that which is not. Therefore the first |C| of the names of the God is right, and the second, and the third. “Apollo” (Not-many) denies plurality and excludes multitude. Ieïus means one and one only; Phoebus, we know, is a word by which the ancients expressed that which is clean and pure, even as to this day the Thessalians, when their priests pass their solemn days in strict seclusion outside the temple, apply to them a verb formed from Phoebus. Now The One is transparent and pure, pollution comes by commixture of this with that, just as Homer,[76] you remember, says of ivory dyed red that it is stained, and dyers say of mingled pigments that they are |D| destroyed, and call the process “destruction”. Therefore it is the property of that which is indestructible and pure to be one and without admixture.

XXI. ‘There are those who think that Apollo and the sun are the same; we hail them and love them for the fair name they give, and it is fitting to do so; for they associate their idea of the God with that which they honour and desire more than all other things which they know. But now that we see them dreaming of the God in the fairest of nightly visions, let us rise and encourage them to mount yet higher, to contemplate him in a dream of the day, and to see his own being. Let them pay honour also to the image of him and worship the principle of increase which is about it; so far as what is of sense can lead to what is of mind, a moving body to that which abides, it allows presentments and appearances of his kind and blessed |E| self to shine through after a fashion. But as to transitions and changes in himself, that he now discharges fire, and so is drawn up, as they put it, or again presses down and strains himself into earth and sea, winds and animals, and all the strange passages into animals and also plants, piety forbids us so much as to hear them. Otherwise the God will be a greater trifler than the boy in Homer,[77] for ever playing with the universe the game which the boy plays with a pile of sand, which is heaped together and sucked away under his hand; moulding the universe when there is none, and again destroying it when it has come into being. The opposite principle which we find in the |F| universe, whatever its origin, is that which binds being together and prevails over the corporeal weakness tending to destruction. To my thinking the word “EI” is confronted with this false view, and testifies to the God that THOU ART, meaning that no shift or change has place in him, but that such things belong |394| to some other God, or rather to some Spirit set over Nature in its perishing and becoming, whether to effect either process or to undergo it. This appears from the names, in themselves opposite and contradictory. He is called Apollo, another is called Pluto; he is Delius, the other Aidoneus; he is Phoebus, the other “Skotios”; by his side are the Muses, and Memory, with the other are Oblivion and Silence; he is Theorius and Phanaeus, the other is “King of dim Night and ineffectual Sleep”.[78] The other is |B|

Of all the Gods to men the direst foe.[79]

Whereas of him Pindar[80] has pleasantly said:

Well tried and mildest found, to men who live and die.

so Euripides[81] was right:

Draughts to the dead out-poured,
Songs which our bright-haired lord
Apollo hath abhorred.

And still earlier Stesichorus:[82]

Jest and song Apollo owns,

Let Hades keep his woes and groans.

Sophocles again,[83] in his actual assignment of instruments to each, is quite clear, thus:

Nor harp nor lyre to wailing strains is dear,

for it was quite late, indeed only the other day, that the flute |C| ventured to let itself speak “on themes of joy”; in early times it trailed along in mourning, nor was its service therein much esteemed or very cheerful; then there came a general confusion. It was specially by mingling things which were of Gods with those which were of daemons that the distinction of the instruments was lost. Anyhow, the phrase “KNOW THYSELF” seems to stand in a sort of antithesis to the letter “E”, and yet, again, to accord with it. The letter is an appeal, a cry raised in awe and worship to the God, as being throughout all eternity; the phrase is a reminder to mortal man of his own nature and of his weakness.’

II
WHY THE PYTHIA DOES NOT NOW GIVE ORACLES IN VERSE

THE SPEAKERS

A. Introductory

Basilocles, a citizen of Delphi.

Philinus, a friend (perhaps also of Delphi).

B. Philinus narrates a Conversation between

Philinus.

Diogenianus, a young visitor from Pergamum, son of a friend of the same name.

Theon, a literary friend.

Serapion, the Athenian poet.

Boethus, a geometrician, almost a convinced Epicurean.

Two Guides of the temple of Delphi.

1. Philinus, coming out of the temple, explains to Basilocles why his party has been so long in making the round of the sights. It included an intelligent and inquisitive visitor, the younger Diogenianus, of Pergamum. He continues:—

2. Diogenianus raised a point about the tint of the Corinthian bronze. Theon interposed with a story:

3. And discussed the properties of olive oil, which produces a crust on metals. He refers to Aristotle’s view (which cannot be traced in his extant works).

4. He suggested special properties in the air of Delphi—density and rarity—and quotes Homer for the combination of such opposites.

5. A verse inscription catching the eye of Diogenianus caused him to ask why the verses of oracles are so poor. Serapion suggested that perhaps our standard ought to be revised by that of the God. Boethus told a story about Pauson the painter. He added that there is no excuse in the subject-matter, witness Serapion, who wrote excellent poetry on dry science!

6. Serapion agreed that our standards are wrong—they lack severity. Pleasure was cast out, once for all, from the seat of the Sibyl.

7. Theon disclaimed the false theory of inspiration. The verses are not the God’s, he only gives the impulse. But there is no pleasing the Epicureans, whether the prophetess uses verse or prose. Diogenianus protested against levity on a subject of profound interest to all Greeks. Theon asked that the question might be reserved, and the round continued.

8. Instances from Hiero’s statue, and others, of the jealous care of Providence for human affairs. Boethus thought Chance, or Spontaneity, sufficient to account for all, and was answered by Philinus, who continued,

9. And referred to the history of the first Sibyl. Boethus mocked, and was met by Diogenianus with instances of prophecies verified,

10. Which Boethus would explain as successful guesses.

11. Serapion called for a distinction to be made between prophecies made in general terms, and those which go into details.

12. Diogenianus asked the emblematic import of the frogs on the Corinthian brazen bowl. Serapion suggested a reference to the Sun rising out of water. Philinus here detected an intrusion of the Stoic ‘Conflagration’ into the discussion. A casual remark raised the question of the identity of the sun with Phoebus. ‘They are as different’, said Diogenianus, ‘as the sun and the moon, only the sun has permanently eclipsed the God, the sensible, the spiritual.’

13. Serapion asked a question which the guides had already answered: ‘No wonder if they are bewildered by our high-flown talk.’

14. The statue of Rhodope, the courtesan, called forth a stern protest from Diogenianus.

15. Theon, on an appeal from Serapion, pointed out the greater scandal of offerings made by Greeks for victories over Greeks.

16. One of the Guides reminded the company of the story of Croesus and the baker-woman.

17. Diogenianus begged that, instead of more anecdotes, the original question might be discussed: ‘Why has the use of verse in oracular answers been discontinued?’ The company seated itself in a new position, and Boethus genially remarked on its appropriateness, the place of origin of the heroic metre.

18. Serapion congratulated him on his improved tone, and Philinus agreed. Philosophers have dropped verse, yet we do not infer that Philosophy has died out. Philinus agreed.

19-end. Theon spoke to the original question.

19. He mentioned ancient oracles delivered in prose,

20. And modern oracles given in verse.

21. To sum up: Soul is the instrument of the God, body of soul; the result must partake in the infirmity of body. The cases of reflecting mirrors, and of the moon. Thus there are two separate emotions in the prophetess—inspiration and Nature.

22. Homeric instances of the choice of human instruments—Story of Battus.

23. Of the ancient oracles (1) many were delivered in prose, (2) the fashion of the times was for verse (cp. c. 18).

24. It is better that oracles should be given in current coin, not in the depreciated coin of verse. History of poetical usage.

25. In old times obscurity was thought dignified, now it provokes impatience; and it has become vulgarized through charlatans.

26. When cities and statesmen used to consult the oracle on questions of high policy, circumlocution was necessary.

27. Again, verse was a great help to memory, when intricate advice was given, as to Battus.

28. In these days of general rest, only homely questions are asked, and are best answered in homely prose.

29. Yet we fear lest the credit acquired in three thousand years by the straight concise answers of the oracle should be lost! We gush out with wealth, as the mythical Galaesus with milk. I am proud to have had some hand in this.

30. People who regret the old obscurity and bombast are like children who admire a rainbow more than the sun which makes it.

In Theon’s long concluding speech (c. 19, p. 403 A to the end) he is no doubt expressing Plutarch’s own views. But the literary references and the touch of levity are quite in Theon’s style; ‘my young friend’, in c. 20, recalls the same phrase in c. 3. Later on, Plutarch is, as Wyttenbach has observed, indicated by τὸν καθηγεμόνα ταύτης τῆς πολιτείας. Professor Hartman (see Preface, p. xx) states his conviction that Theon was an older friend of Plutarch and his predecessor in the priesthood (pp. 166 and 617). In a Dialogue in which the Epicureans are attacked (Non posse suaviter, p. 1088 D) a long speech clearly belonging to Theon is introduced by the words ‘I (Plutarch) said’. This slip is probably due to the author. (See, on the general subject, Mr. John Oakesmith’s note on p. 149 of The Religion of Plutarch.)

WHY THE PYTHIA DOES NOT NOW GIVE ORACLES IN VERSE

|394 D| Basilocles. The shades of evening, Philinus, while you are conducting the stranger round the votive gifts! Here am I, |E| fairly tired out in waiting for you.

Philinus. Yes, Basilocles, we made slow progress, sowing arguments as we went and reaping them too; battle and war were beneath them, as they sprang and sprouted in our faces, like the ‘sown men’ of old.

Basilocles. Then shall I have to call in some one else of your |F| company, or will you oblige us with the whole story? What were the arguments, and who were the speakers?

Philinus. I shall have to do that myself, Basilocles, it seems, for you will not easily meet with any of the others in the town; I saw most of them going back to the Corycium and the Lycuria with the stranger.

Basilocles. A good sight-seer this stranger, and a mighty good listener!

Philinus. Say rather a good scholar and a good learner. Not that these are his most admirable points; there is a gentleness |395| which is full of charm; and then his readiness to do battle and to raise sensible points: nothing captious or hard in his way of taking the answers. After a very short time in his company you would have to say ‘good father, good child’, for you know that Diogenianus was one of the very best.

Basilocles. I never saw him myself, but I have met many who spoke with warm approval of his talk and his character, and in just the same terms about this young man. But how did the argument begin, and what started it?

II. Philinus. The guides were going through their lectures, as prepared, showing no regard for our entreaties that they would cut short their periods and skip most of the inscriptions. The stranger was but moderately interested in the form and workmanship of the different statues; it appears that he has |B| seen many beautiful objects of art. What he did admire was the lustre on the bronze, unlike rust or deposit, but rather resembling a coat of deep shining blue, so much so, that it rather well became the sea-captains, with whom the round had begun, standing up out of the deep so naively with the true sea tint. ‘Now was there’, he asked, ‘some receipt of pharmacy known to the old artists in brass like that method of tempering swords of which we read? It was forgotten in time, and then bronze had a truce from works of war. As to the Corinthian bronze, that came by its beautiful colour accidentally, not through art. A fire spread over a house in which were stored some gold and silver and a large quantity of bronze. The whole was fused into one stream of metal, which took its name |C| from the bronze, as the largest ingredient.’ Theon broke in: ‘We have heard a different story, with a spice of mischief in it. A Corinthian bronze-worker found a chest containing much gold. Fearing discovery, he chipped it off little by little, and quietly mixed the bits with the bronze; the result was a marvellous blend, which he sold at a high price, as people were delighted with the beauty of the colour. However, the one story is as mythical as the other; what we may suppose is that some method was known of mixing and preparing, much as now they mix gold with silver, and get a peculiar and rare effect, |D| which to me appears a sickly pallor and a loss of colour with no beauty in it.’

III. ‘What has been the cause, then,’ said Diogenianus, ‘do you think, of the colour of the bronze here?’ ‘Here is a case’, said Theon, ‘in which, of the first and most natural elements which are or ever will be, fire, earth, air, water, none approaches or touches the bronze, save air only: clearly then, air is the agent; from its constant presence and contact the bronze gets its exceptional quality, or perhaps

Thus much you knew before Theognis was,[84]

as the comic poet has it; but what you want to learn is the |E| nature of air, and the property in virtue of which its repeated contact has coloured the bronze.’ Diogenianus said that it was. ‘And I too,’ Theon continued, ‘my young friend, let us follow the quest together; and first, if you will agree, ask why olive oil produces a more copious rust on the metal than other liquids; it does not, of course, actually make the deposit, being pure and uncontaminated when it is applied.’ ‘Certainly not;’ said the young man, ‘the real cause appears to me to be something different; the oil is fine, pure, and transparent, so the rust when it meets it is specially evident, whereas with other liquids it becomes invisible.’ ‘Excellent,’ said Theon, ‘my |F| young friend, that is prettily put. But consider also, if you please, the cause given by Aristotle.’ ‘I do please’, he said. ‘Aristotle says that the rust, when it comes over other liquids, passes invisibly through and is dispersed, because the particles are irregular and fine, whereas in the density of oil it is held up and permanently condensed. If, then, we can frame some such hypothesis for ourselves, we shall not be wholly at a loss for a spell to charm away this difficulty.’

IV. We encouraged him and agreed, so he (Theon) went |396| on to say that the air of Delphi is thick and close of texture, with a tenseness caused by reflection from the hills and their resistance, but is also fine and biting, as seems to be proved by the facts of digestion of food. The tenuity allows it to enter the bronze, and to scrape up from it much solid rust, which rust again is held up and compressed, because the density of the air does not allow it a passage through; but the deposit breaks out, because it is so copious, and takes on a rich bright colour on the surface. We applauded this, but the stranger remarked that either hypothesis alone was sufficient for the argument. ‘The fineness’, |B| he went on, ‘will be found to be in contradiction to the density of which you speak, but there is no necessity to assume it. The bronze, as it ages, exhales or throws off the rust by its own inherent action; the density holds together and solidifies the rust, and makes it apparent because of its quantity.’ Theon broke in: ‘What is to prevent, Sir, the same thing being both fine and dense, as silks or fine linen stuffs, of which Homer says

And from the close-spun weft the trickling oil will fall,[85]

where he indicates the minute and delicate workmanship of the fabric by the fact that the oil would not remain, but trickled |C| or glided off, the fineness at once and the density refusing it a passage. And, again, the scraping up of the rust is not the only purpose served by the tenuity of the air; it also makes the colour itself pleasanter to the eye and brighter, it mingles light and lustre with the blue.’

V. Here there was an interval of silence; the guides were again getting their speeches in hand. A certain oracle given in verse was mentioned—I think it was one about the reign of Aegon the Argive—when Diogenianus observed that he had often been surprised at the badness and common quality of the verses in which the oracles are delivered. Yet the God is Choirmaster of the Muses, and eloquent language is no less |D| his function than beauty of ode or tune, and he should have a voice far above that of Homer and Hesiod in verse. Here we have most of the oracles saturated with bad taste and poverty of metre and diction. Then Serapion, the poet, who was with us from Athens, said: ‘Then do we really believe that these verses are the God’s, yet venture to say that they fall behind Homer and Hesiod in beauty? Shall we not rather take them for all that is best and most beautiful in poetry, and revise our judgement of them prejudiced by familiarity with a bad standard?’ Boethus, the geometer—you know the man, |E| already on his way to the camp of Epicurus—broke in: ‘Have you ever heard the story of Pauson the painter?’ ‘Not I’, said Serapion. ‘Well, it is worth hearing. It appears that he had contracted to paint a horse rolling, and painted him galloping. The owner was indignant; so Pauson laughed and turned the canvas upside down, with the result that the lower parts became the upper, and there was the horse rolling, not galloping. So |F| it is, Bion tells us, with certain syllogisms when converted. Thus some will tell us not that the oracles are quite beautiful because they are the God’s, but that they are not the God’s because they are bad! That point may be left unsettled. But that the verses used in the oracles are bad poetry,’ he went on, ‘is made clear also in your judgement, my dear Serapion, is it not so? For you write poems which are philosophical and severe as to matter, but in force and grace and diction more like the work of Homer and Hesiod than the utterances of the Pythia.’

VI. Then Serapion: ‘Yes, we are sick, Boethus, sick in ears and in eyes; luxury and softness have accustomed us to think things beautiful as they are more sweet, and to call them so. Soon we shall actually be finding fault with the Pythia because |397| she does not speak with a more thrilling voice than Glauce the singing-girl, or use costly ointments, or put on purple robes to go down into the sanctuary, or burn on her censer cassia, mastic, and frankincense, but only bay leaves and barley meal. Do you not see’, he went on, ‘what grace the songs of Sappho have, how they charm and soothe the hearers, while the Sibyl “with raving mouth”, as Heraclitus says, “utters words with no laughter, no adornment, no spices”,[86] yet makes her voice carry to ten thousand years, because of the God. And Pindar[87] tells us that Cadmus heard from the God “right music”, not |B| sweet music, or delicate music, or twittering music. What is passionless and pure gives no admission to pleasure; she was cast out in this very place, together with pain,[88] and the most of her has dribbled away, it seems, into the ears of men.’

VII. When Serapion had done, Theon smiled. ‘Serapion’, he said, ‘has paid his usual tribute to his own proclivities, making capital out of the turn which the conversation had taken about pain and pleasure! But for us, Boethus, even if these verses are inferior to Homer, let us never suppose that the God has composed them; he only gives the initial impulse according to the capacity of each prophetess. Why, suppose the answers had |C| to be written, not spoken. I do not think we should suppose that the letters were made by the God, and find fault with the calligraphy as below royal standard. The strain is not the God’s, but the woman’s, and so with the voice and the phrasing and the metre; he only provides the fantasies, and puts light into her soul to illuminate the future; for that is what inspiration is. To put it plainly, there is no escaping you prophets of Epicurus—yes, you too, Boethus, are drifting that way—you blame those old prophetesses because they used bad poetry, and you also blame those of to-day because they speak their answers in |D| prose, and use the first words which come, that they may not be overhauled by you for headless, hollow, crop-tailed lines.’ Then Diogenianus: ‘Do not jest, in Heaven’s name, no! but help us to solve the problem which is common to us all. There is not a Greek[89] living who is not in search of a rational account of the fact that the oracle has ceased to use verse, epic or other.’ Theon interrupted: ‘At the present moment, my young friend, we seem to be doing a shabby turn by the guides, taking the bread out of their mouths. Suffer them first to do |E| their office, afterwards you shall discuss in peace whatever you wish.’

VIII. Our round had now brought us in front of the statue of Hiero, the tyrant. Most of the stories the stranger knew well, but he good-naturedly lent his ear to them. At last, when he heard that a certain bronze pillar given by Hiero, which had been standing upright, fell of its own accord on the very day when Hiero died at Syracuse, he showed surprise. I set myself to remember similar instances, such as the notable one of Hiero the Spartan, how before his death at Leuctra the eyes fell out |F| of his statue, and the gold stars disappeared which Lysander had dedicated after the naval battle of Aegospotami. Then the stone statue of Lysander himself broke out into such a growth of weeds and grass that the face was hidden. At the time of the Athenian disaster at Syracuse, the golden berries kept dropping off from the palm trees, and crows chipped the shield on the figure of Pallas. Again, the crown of the Cnidians, which Philomelus, tyrant of Phocis, had given to Pharsalia the dancing |398| girl, caused her death, as she was playing near the temple of Apollo in Metapontum, after she had removed from Greece into Italy. The young men made a rush at the crown, and in their struggle to get it from one another, tore the woman to pieces. Now Aristotle used to say that no one but Homer made ‘words which stir, because of their energy’.[90] But I would say that there have been votive offerings sent here which have movement in a high degree, and help the God’s foreknowledge to signify things; that none of them is void or without feeling, but all are full of Divinity. ‘Very good!’ said Boethus; ‘so it is not enough to shut the God into a mortal body once every month. We will also knead him into every morsel of stone and brass, to |B| show that we do not choose to hold Fortune, or Spontaneity, a sufficient author of such occurrences.’ ‘Then in your opinion’, I said, ‘each of the occurrences looks like Fortune or Spontaneity; and it seems probable to you that the atoms glided forth, and were dispersed, and swerved, not sooner and not later, but at the precise moment when each of the dedicators was to fare worse or better. Epicurus helps you now by what he said or wrote three hundred years ago; but the God, unless |C| he take and shut himself up in all things, and be mingled with all, could not, you think, initiate movement, or cause change of condition in anything which is!’

IX. Such was my answer to Boethus, and to the same effect about the Sibyl and her utterances. For when we stood near the rock by the Council Chamber, on which the first Sibyl is said to have been seated on her arrival from Helicon, where she had been brought up by the Muses (though others say that she came from the Maleans, and was the daughter of Lamia the daughter of Poseidon), Serapion remembered the verses in which she hymned herself; how she will never cease from |D| prophesying, even after death, but will herself go round in the moon, being turned into what we call the ‘bright face’, while her breath is mingled with the air and borne about in rumours and voices for ever and ever; and her body within the earth suffers change, so that from it spring grass and weeds, the pasture of sacred cattle, which have all colour, shapes, and qualities in their inward parts whereby men obtain forecasts of future things. Here Boethus made his derision still more evident. |E| The stranger observed that, although these things have a mythical appearance, yet the prophecies are attested by many overturnings and removals of Greek cities, inroads of barbarian hordes, and upsettings of dynasties. ‘These still recent troubles at Cumae and Dicaearchia[91], were they not chanted long ago in the songs of the Sibyl, so that Time was only discharging his debts in the fires which have burst out of the mountain, the boiling seas, the masses of burning rocks[92] tossed aloft by the winds, the ruin of cities many and great, so that if you visit them in broad daylight you cannot get a clear idea of the site, the ground being covered with confused ruins? It is |F| hard to believe that such things have happened, much harder to predict them without divine power.’

X. ‘My good Sir,’ said Boethus, ‘what does happen in Nature which is not Time paying his debts? Of all the strange unexpected things, by land or sea, among cities and men, is there any which some one might not foretell, and then, after it has happened, find himself right? Yet this is hardly foretelling at all; it is telling, rather it is tossing or scattering words into the infinite, with no principle in them. They wander about, often Fortune meets them and throws in with them, but it is all spontaneous. It is one thing, I think, when what has been foretold happens, quite another when what will happen is foretold. Any statement made about things then non-existent contains intrinsic error, it has no right to await the confirmation |399| which comes from spontaneous happening; nor is it any true proof of having foretold with knowledge that the thing happened after it was foretold, for Infinity brings all things. No, the “good guesser”, whom the proverb[93] has announced to be the best prophet, is like a man who hunts on the trail of the future, by the help of the plausible. These Sibyls and Bacises threw into the sea, that is, into time, without having any real clue, nouns and verbs about troubles and occurrences of every description. Some of these prophecies came about, but they were lies; and what is now pronounced is a lie like them, even if, later on, it should happen to turn out true.’ |B|

XI. When Boethus had finished, Serapion spoke: ‘The case is quite fairly put by Boethus against prophecies so indefinitely worded as those he mentions, with no basis of circumstance: “If victory has been foretold to a general, he has conquered. If the destruction of a city, it is lost.” But where not only the thing which is to happen is stated, but also the how, the when, after what event, with whose help, then it is not a guess at things which will perhaps be, but a clear prediction of things which will certainly be. Here are the lines[94] with reference to the lameness of Agesilaus: |C|

Sure though thy feet, proud Sparta, have a care,

A lame king’s reign may see thee trip—Beware!

Troubles unlooked for long shall vex thy shore,

And rolling Time his tide of carnage pour.

And then those about the island[95] which the sea cast up off Thera and Therasia, and also about Philip and his war with the Romans:

When Trojan race the victory shall win
From Punic foe, lo! wonders shall begin;
Unearthly fires from out the sea shall flash,

Whirlwinds toss stones aloft, and thunders crash,

An isle unnamed, unknown, shall stand upright,

The worse shall beat the stronger in the fight.

What happened within a short time—that the Romans mastered the Carthaginians, and brought the war with Philip to a finish, |D| that Philip met the Aetolians and Romans in battle and was defeated, and, lastly, that an island rose out of the depths of the sea, with much fire and boiling waves—could not all be set down to chance and spontaneous occurrence. Why, the order emphasizes the foreknowledge, and so does the time predicted to the Romans, some five hundred years before the event, as that in which they were to be at war with all the races at once, which meant the war with the slaves after their revolt. In all this nothing is unascertainable, the story is not left in dim light to |E| be groped out with reference to Fortune “in Infinity”, it gives many securities, and is open to trial, it points the road which the destined event is to tread. For I do not think that any one will say that the agreement with the details as foretold was accidental. Otherwise, what prevents some one else from saying that Epicurus did not write his Leading Principles for our use, Boethus, but that the letters fell together by chance and just spontaneously, and so the book was finished off?’

XII. While we were talking thus, we were moving forward. |F| In the store-house of the Corinthians we were looking at the golden palm tree, the only remnant of their offerings, when the frogs and water-snakes embossed round the roots caused much surprise to Diogenianus, and, for the matter of that, to us. For the palm tree is not, like many others, a marshy or water-loving plant, nor have frogs anything specially to do with the Corinthians. Thus they must be a symbolical or canting device of that city, just as the men of Selinus are said to have dedicated a golden plant of parsley (selinon), and those of Tenedos the axe, because of the crabs found round the place which they |400| call Asterium, the only ones, it appears, with the brand of an axe on the shell. Yet the God himself is supposed to have a partiality for crows and swans and wolves and hawks, for anything rather than beasts like crabs. Serapion observed that the artist intended a veiled hint at the sun drawing his aliment and origin from exhalations out of moist places, whether he had it from Homer,

Leaving the beauteous lake, the great sun scaled

The brazen sky,[96]

or whether he had seen the sun painted by the Egyptians as a newly-born child seated on a lotus. I laughed: ‘Where have you got to again, my good Sir,’ I said, ‘thrusting the |B| Porch in here, and quietly slipping into our discussion their “Conflagrations” and “Exhalations”? Thessalian women fetch the sun and the moon down to us, but you are assuming that they are first born and then watered out of earth and its waters. Plato[97] dubbed man “a heavenly plant”, rearing himself up from a root on high, namely, his head; but you laugh down Empedocles when he tells us how the sun, having been brought into being by reflection of heavenly light around the earth

Beams back upon Olympus undismayed!

Yet, on your own showing, the sun is a creature or plant of the marshes, naturalized by you in the country of frogs or |C| water-snakes. However, all this may be reserved for the Stoics and their tragedies; here we have the incidental works of the artists, and let us examine them incidentally. In many respects they are clever people, but they have not in all cases avoided coldness and elaboration. Just as the man who designed Apollo with the cock in his hand meant to suggest the early morning hour when dawn is coming, so here the frogs may be taken for a symbol of the spring season when the sun begins to have power over the air and to break up winter; always supposing |D| that, with you, we are to reckon Apollo and the sun one God, not two.’ ‘What?’ said Serapion, ‘do you not agree? Do you hold the sun to be different from Apollo?’ ‘As different as the moon from the sun;’ I replied, ‘only she does not hide the sun often or from all the world,[98] whereas the sun has made, we may almost say, all the world ignorant of Apollo, diverting thought by sensation, to the apparent from the real.’

XIII. Next Serapion asked the guides the real reason why they call the chamber not after Cypselus, the Dedicator, but |E| after the Corinthians. When they were silent, being, as I privately believe, at a loss for a reason, I laughed, and said: ‘What can these men possibly know or remember, utterly dazed as they must be by our high celestial talk? Why, it was only just now that we heard them saying that, after the tyranny was overthrown, the Corinthians wished to inscribe the golden statue at Pisa, and also this treasure-house, with the name of the city. So the Delphians granted it as a right, and agreed; but the Corinthians passed a vote to exclude the Eleians, who had shown jealousy of them, from the Isthmian meetings, and from that time to |F| this there has been no competitor from Elis. The murder of the Molionidae by Hercules near Cleonae has nothing to do with the exclusion of the Eleians, though some think that it has. On the contrary, it would have been for them to exclude the Corinthians if that had been the cause of collision.’ Such were my remarks.

XIV. When we passed the chamber of the Acanthians and Brasidas, the guide showed us a place where iron obelisks to Rhodopis the courtesan once used to stand. Diogenianus showed annoyance: ‘So it was left for the same state’, he said, |401| ‘to find a place for Rhodopis to deposit the tithes of her earnings, and to put Aesop, her fellow servant, to death!’ ‘Bless you, friend,’ said Serapion, ‘why so vexed at that? Carry your eyes upwards, and behold among the generals and kings the golden Mnesarete, which Crates called a standing trophy of the lewdness of the Greeks.’ The young man looked: ‘Was it then about Phryne that Crates said that?’ ‘Yes, it was,’ said Serapion, ‘her name was Mnesarete, but she took on that of Phryne (toad) as a nickname because of her yellow skin. Many names, it would seem, are concealed by these nicknames. There was Polyxena, mother of Alexander, afterwards said to have been called Myrtale and Olympias and Stratonice. Then Eumetis |B| of Rhodes is to this day called by most people Cleobuline, after her father; and Herophile of Erythrae, when she showed a prophetic gift, was addressed as Sibylla. You will hear the grammarians telling us that Leda has been named Mnesinoe, and Orestes Achaeus. But how do you propose’, he went on, looking hard at Theon, ‘to get rid of the charge as to Phryne?’

XV. Theon smiled quietly: ‘In this way:’ he said, ‘by a cross charge against you for raking up the pettiest of the |C| Greek misdoings. For as Socrates,[99] when entertained in the house of Callias, makes war upon the ointment only, but looks on at all the dancing and tumbling and kisses and buffoonery, and holds his tongue, so you, it seems to me, want to exclude from the temple a poor woman who made an unworthy use of her charms; but when you see the God encompassed by first-fruits and tithes of murders, wars, and raids, and his temple loaded with Greek spoils and booty, you show no disgust; you have no pity for the Greeks when you read on the beautiful offerings such deeply disgraceful inscriptions as “Brasidas and the Acanthians from the Athenians”, “Athenians from |D| Corinthians”, “Phocians from Thessalians”, “Orneatans from Sicyonians”, “Amphictyones from Phocians”. So Praxiteles, it seems, was the one person who offended Crates by finding[100] room for his mistress to stand here, whereas Crates ought to have commended him for placing beside those golden kings a golden courtesan, a strong rebuke to wealth as having nothing wonderful or worshipful about it. It would be good if kings |E| and rulers were to set up in the God’s house offerings to Justice Temperance, Magnanimity, not to golden and delicate Abundance, in which the very foulest lives have their share.’

XVI. ‘You are forgetting to mention’, said one or other of the guides, ‘how Croesus had a golden figure of the baker-woman made, and dedicated it here.’ ‘Yes,’ said Theon, ‘but that was not to flout the temple with his luxury of wealth, but for a good and righteous cause. The story is[101] that Alyattes, father of Croesus, married a second wife, and brought up a fresh family. This woman made a plot against Croesus; she gave poison to the baker and told her to knead a loaf with it and serve |F| to Croesus. The baker told Croesus secretly, and set the loaf before the wife’s children. And so, when Croesus became king, he requited the baker-woman’s service in a way which made the God a witness, and moreover did a good turn to him. Hence’, he said, ‘it is quite proper to honour and love any such offering from cities as that of the Opuntians. When the Phocian tyrants had melted up many of the gold and silver offerings and struck coined money, which they distributed among the cities, the Opuntians collected all the silver they could find, and sent a large jar to be consecrated here to the God. I commend the |402| Myrinaeans also, and the Apollonians, who sent hither sheaves of gold, and even more highly the Eretrians and Magnesians, who endowed the God with firstfruits of men, as being the giver of crops and also ancestral, racial, humane. Whereas I blame the Megarians, because they were almost alone in setting up the God holding a lance; this was after the battle in which they defeated and expelled the Athenians when holding their city, after the Persian wars. Later on, however, they offered to him a golden harp-quill, attaching it, as it appears, to Scythinus, |B| who says of the lyre:

which the son of Zeus

Wears, the comely God Apollo, gathering first and last in one,

And he holds a golden harp-quill flashing as the very sun.’

XVII. Serapion wanted to put In some further remark on this, when the stranger said: ‘It is delightful to listen to such speeches as we have heard, but I feel myself obliged to claim fulfilment of the original promise, that we should hear the cause which has made the Pythia cease to prophesy in epic or other verse. So, if it be your pleasure, let us leave to another time the remainder of the sights, sit down where we are, and hear about that. For it is this more than anything else which militates against the credibility of the oracle; it must be one of two things, either the Pythia does not get near the spot where the Divinity is, or the current is altogether exhausted, and |C| the power has failed.’ Accordingly, we went round and seated ourselves on the southern plinth of the temple, in view of the temple of Earth and the fountain, which made Boethus at once observe that the very place where the problem was raised lent itself to the stranger’s case. For here was a temple of the Muses where the exhalation rises from the fountain; from which they drew the water used for the lustrations, as Simonides[102] has it:

Whence is drawn for holy washings

Water of the Muses bright.

And again, in a rather more elaborate strain, the same poet |D| addressing Clio:

Holy patron of our washings, Goddess sought with many a vow,

By no golden robe encumbered, hear thy servants drawing now

Water, fragrant and delightful, from ambrosial depths below.

So Eudoxus was wrong in believing those who have made out that this was called ‘Water of Styx’. But they installed the Muses as assessors in prophecy and guardians of the place, by the fountain and the temple of Earth where the oracle used to be, because the responses were given in metre and in lyric strains. And some say further that the heroic metre was heard for the |E| first time here:

Bring in your feathers, ye birds, ye bees, bring wax at his bidding.

The God was in need, and dignity was waived![103]

XVIII. ‘More reasonable, that, Boethus,’ said Serapion, ‘and more in tune with the Muses. For we ought not to fight against the God, nor to remove, along with his prophecy, his Providence and Godhead also, but rather to seek fresh solutions for apparent contradictions, and never to surrender the reverent belief of our fathers.’ ‘Excellent Serapion!’ I said, ‘you are right. We were not abandoning Philosophy, as cleared out of the way and done for, because once upon a time philosophers |F| put out their dogmas and theories in verse, as Orpheus, Hesiod, Parmenides, Empedocles, Thales, whereas later on they gave it up, and have now all given it up—except you! In your hands Poetry is returning home to Philosophy, and clear and noble is the strain in which she rallies our young people. Astronomy again: she was not lowered in the hands of Aristarchus, Timocharis, Aristyllus, Hipparchus, all writing in prose, whereas Eudoxus, |403| Hesiod, and Thales used metre, if we assume that Thales really wrote the Astronomy attributed to him. Pindar actually expresses surprise at the neglect, in his own day, of a mode of melody....[104] There is nothing out of the way or absurd in seeking out the causes of such changes; but to remove arts and faculties altogether, whenever there is disturbance or variation in their details, is not fair.’

XIX. ‘And yet’, interposed Theon, ‘those instances have involved really great variations and novelties, whereas of the |B| oracles given here we know of many in prose even in old days, and those on no trifling matters. When the Lacedaemonians, as Thucydides[105] has told us in his history, consulted the God about their war with the Athenians, he promised them victory and mastery, and that “he himself will help them, invited or uninvited.” And again, that, if they did not restore Pleistoanax[106], they shall plough with a silver share.[107] When the Athenians consulted him about their expedition in Sicily, he directed them to bring the priestess of Erythrae to Athens; now the woman’s name was Peace. When Deinomenes the Siceliot inquired about his sons, the answer was that all three should |C| reign as tyrants. “And the worse for them, O Master Apollo”, rejoined Deinomenes. “That too”, added the God, “to form part of the answer.” You know that Gelo had the dropsy and Hiero the stone, while they reigned; Thrasybulus, the third, was involved in revolutions and wars and soon lost his throne. Then Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus, after putting many others to death in cruel and unlawful ways, at last killed Timarchus, who had come to him from Athens with money, after receiving him with hospitality and kindness; he thrust his body into a crate and flung it out to sea. This he did by the hands of Cleander of Aegina, no one else knew. Afterwards, when |D| himself in trouble, he sent his brother Cleotimus, to consult the oracle secretly about his own exile and retirement. The God answered that he granted exile to Procles, and retirement either to the place where he had ordered his Aeginetan friend to lodge the crate, or where the stag sheds his horn. The tyrant understood the God to bid him fling himself into the sea, or bury himself underground (for the stag buries his horn deep out of sight, when it falls off). He waited a short time, then, when his affairs became desperate, went into exile. But the friends of Timarchus caught and slew him, and cast out the corpse into the sea. |E| Now comes the strongest instance: the statutes by which Lycurgus regulated the Lacedaemonian constitution were given to him in prose. So Alyrius, Herodotus, Philochorus, and Ister, the men who most zealously set about collecting metrical prophecies, have written down oracular responses which were not in metre, and Theopompus, who was exceptionally interested |F| about the oracle, has administered a vigorous rebuke to those who do not hold that the Pythia prophesied in metre in those days; yet, when he wanted to prove the point, he has found an exceedingly small number of such answers, which shows that the others, even at that early time, were put forth in prose.

XX. ‘Some oracles, however, still run into metres, one of which has made “necessary business”[108] a household word. There is in Phocis a temple of “Hercules Woman-Hater”, where the practice is for the consecrated priest not to associate with a woman during his year. So they appoint comparatively old men to the priesthood. However, not very long ago, a young man of good character, but ambitious, who was in love with |404| a girl, accepted the office. At first he put constraint on himself and avoided her; but one day, when he was resting after wine and dancing, she burst in, and he yielded. Then, in his fear and confusion, he fled to the oracle, and proceeded to ask the God about his offence, and whether it admitted of excuse or expiation. He received this reply:

All needful business doth the God allow.

All the same, if it be granted that nothing is prophesied in our own day, otherwise than in metre, the difficulty will be so much greater about the ancients, who sometimes employed metre for the responses, sometimes not. There is nothing strange, my |B| young friend, in either one or the other, so long as we hold sound, pure views about the God, and do not suppose that it is himself who formerly used to compose the verses, or who now suggests the answers to the Pythia, speaking as it were from under a mask.

XXI. ‘However, it is worth our while to pursue this inquiry at greater length another time. For the present, let us remember our results, which are briefly these: Body uses many instruments, soul uses body and its parts, soul has been brought into being as the instrument of God. The excellence of an instrument is to imitate most closely the power which uses it, with all its |C| own natural power, and to reproduce the effect of his essential thought, but to exhibit it, not pure and passionless and free from error, as it was in the creative artist, but with a large admixture of foreign element. For in itself it is invisible to us, but appearing “other” and through another medium it is saturated with the nature of that medium. I pass over wax and gold and silver and copper, and all other varieties of moulded substance, which take on one common form of impressed likeness, but add to the copy, each its own distinct speciality. I pass over the myriad distortions of images and reflections from a single form in |D| mirrors, plane, hollow, or convex. For nothing seems better to reproduce the type, no instrument more obediently to use its own nature, than the moon. Yet taking from the sun his bright and fiery rays, she does not transmit them so to us; mingled with herself they change colour and also take on a different power; the heat has wholly disappeared, and the light fails from weakness before it reaches us. I think you know the saying found in Heraclitus, that “The King whose seat is at |E| Delphi, speaks not, nor conceals, but signifies.”[109] Take and add then to what is here so well said, the conception that the God of this place employs the Pythia for the hearing as the sun employs the moon for the seeing. He shows and reveals his own thoughts, but shows them mingled in their passage through a mortal body, and a soul which cannot remain at rest or present itself to the exciting power unexcited and inwardly composed, but which boils and surges and is involved in the stirrings and troublesome passions from within. As whirlpools do not keep |F| a steady hold on bodies borne round and round and also downwards, since an outer force carries them round, but they sink down of their own nature, so that there is a compound spiral movement, of a confused and distorted kind, even so what we call inspiration seems to be a mixture of two impulses, and the soul is stirred by two forces, one of which it is a passive recipient, one from its own nature. We see that inanimate and stationary bodies cannot be used or forced contrary to their own nature, that a cylinder cannot be moved as if it were a sphere or a cube, that a lyre cannot be played like a flute or a trumpet like a harp, but that the artistic use of a thing is no other than the natural use. Is it possible then that the animate and self-moving, which has both impulse and reason, can be treated in any other way than is agreeable to the habit, force, or natural condition which |405| is already existent within it? Can an unmusical mind be excited like a musical, an unlettered mind by literature, a mind untrained in reasoning, whether speculative or disciplinary, by logic? It is not to be spoken of.

XXII. ‘Again, Homer is my witness: he assumes[110] that nothing, so to speak, is brought about without a God; he does not, however, describe the God as using all things for all ends, but according to the art or faculty which each possesses. For do you not see, dear Diogenianus, that Athena, when she wants to persuade the Achaeans, calls in Odysseus;[111] when to wreck the truce, she looks for Pandarus;[112] when to rout the Trojans, she |B| approaches Diomede?[113] Why? because Diomede is a sturdy man and a fighter, Pandarus an archer and a fool, Odysseus a clever speaker and a sensible man. For Homer was not of the same mind as Pindar[114], if Pindar it was who wrote

Sail on a crate, if God so choose ‘twill swim.

He knew that different faculties and natural gifts are appointed for different ends; each is moved in its own way, even if the moving force be one for all. As then the force cannot move that which walks so as to make it fly, nor that which lisps to speak clearly, nor the thin voice to be melodious—why, Battus himself was sent as colonist of Libya to get his voice, because he was a lisper, with a thin voice, but withal a kingly, statesman-like, |C| prudent man—, even so it is impossible for one who has no letters and knows no verse to talk like a poet. And so she who now serves the God has been born as respectably as any man here, and has lived as good and orderly a life; but having been reared in the house of small farmer folk, she brings nothing with her from art or from any practice or faculty whatsoever, as she goes down into the sanctuary. As Xenophon[115] thinks that the bride should step into her husband’s home having seen as little as may be, and heard as little, so she, ignorant and untried in almost all things, and a true virgin in soul, is associated with |D| the God. Yet we, who think that the God, when he “signifies”, uses the cries of herons and wrens and ravens, and never ask that they, as the messengers and heralds of the God, should put things into clear rational phrases, do nevertheless ask that the Pythia should use a voice and style as though from the Thymele, not unembellished and plain, but with metre and elevation, and trills, and verbal metaphors, and a flute accompaniment!

XXIII. ‘What shall we say then about her older predecessors? Not one thing, I think, but several. In the first place, |E| as has been already said, they, too, for the most part, used to give the responses in prose. In the second place, those times produced temperaments and natural conditions which offered an easy and convenient channel for the stream of poetry, to which were at once superadded, in one and another, an eagerness, an impulse, a preparation of soul, all resulting in a readiness which needed but a slight initial movement from without to give the imagination a turn. So it was that not only were astronomers and philosophers drawn, as Philinus says, in their several directions, but also, when men were mellow with wine and sentiment, some undercurrent of pity or joy would come, and they would |F| glide into a song-like voice; drinking parties were filled with amorous strains and songs, books with poems in writing. When Euripides wrote:[116]

Love can teach, he makes

A poet of a stranger to the Muse,

he did not mean that Love implants a faculty for poetry or music; the faculty is there already, but Love stirs and warms what was latent and idle. Or are we to say, Sir Stranger, that no one now loves, that Love has gone by the heels, because there is none who, to quote Pindar,[117]

Scatters with easy grace

The vocal shafts of love and joy.

|406| That is absurd. Loves there are and many of them, and they master men; but when they associate with souls which have no natural turn for music, they drop the flute and the lyre, yet are vocal still and fiery through and through, as much as of old. It is an unhallowed thing to say, and an unfair, that the Academy was loveless, or the choir of Socrates and Plato; yet, while we have their love dialogues to read, they have left no poems. Why not declare at once that Sappho was the only woman who |B| ever loved, if you are to say that Sibylla alone had the gift of prophecy, or Aristonica, and the others who delivered themselves in verse? Wine, as Chaeremon[118] used to say,

Is mingled with the moods of them that drink,

and the prophetic inspiration, like that of love, uses the faculty which is subjected to it, and stirs its recipients according to the nature of each.

XXIV. ‘Not but that, if we look also into the subject of the God and his foreknowledge, we shall see that the change has taken place for the better. For the use of language is like exchange in coined money. Here also it is familiarity which gives currency, the purchasing power varies with the times. There was a day when metres, tunes, odes were the coins of language in use; all History and Philosophy, in a word, every |C| feeling and action which called for a more solemn utterance, were drawn to poetry and music. It is not only that now but few understand, and they with effort, whereas then all the world were listeners, and all felt pleasure in what was sung,

who fats his flock,

Who ploughs the soil, who snares the wingèd game,

as Pindar[119] has it. More than that, there was an aptitude for poetry, most men used the lyre and the ode to rebuke, to encourage, to frame myths and proverbs; also hymns to the Gods, prayers, thanksgivings, were composed in metre and song, as genius or practice enabled them to do. And so it was with prophecy; the God did not grudge it ornament and grace, or drive from hence into disgrace the honoured Muse of the tripod; |D| he rather led her on, awakening and welcoming poetic natures; he gave them visions from himself, he lent his aid to draw out pomp and eloquence as being fitting and admirable things. Then there was a change in human life, affecting men both in fortune and in genius. Expediency banished what was superfluous, top-knots of gold were dropped, rich robes discarded; probably too clustering curls were shorn off, and the buskin discontinued. It was not a bad training, to set the beauty of |E| frugality against that of profusion, to account what was plain and simple a better ornament than the pompous and elaborate. So it was with language, it changed with the times, and shared the general break-up. History got down from its coach, and dropped metre. Truth was best sifted out from Myth in prose; Philosophy welcomed clearness, and found it better to instruct than to astonish, so she pursued her inquiry in plain language. The God made the Pythia leave off calling her own fellow townsmen “fire-burners”, the Spartans “serpent-eaters”, |F| men “mountaineers”, rivers “mountain-drainers”. He cleared the oracles of epic verses, unusual words, circumlocutions, and vagueness, and so prepared the way to converse with his consultants just as laws converse with states, as kings address subjects, as disciples hear their masters speak, so framing language as to be intelligible and convincing.

XXV. ‘For it should be clearly understood that the God is, in the words of Sophocles,[120]

Unto the wise a riddling prophet aye,

To silly souls a teacher plain and brief.

|407| The same turn of things which brought clearness brought also a new standard of belief; it shared the general change. Whereas of old that which was not familiar or common, but, in plain words, contorted and over-phrased, was ascribed by the many to an implied Divinity, and received with awe and reverence; in later times men were content to learn things clearly and easily with no pomp or artifice; they began to find fault with the poetical setting of the oracles, not only as a hindrance to the perception of truth, because it mingled indistinctness and |B| shadow with the meaning, but also because by this time they were getting to mistrust metaphors, riddles, and ambiguities, as so many holes or hiding-places provided for him who should trip in his prophecy, that he might step into them and secure his retreat. You might have heard it told by many, how certain persons with a turn for poetry still sit about the place of oracles, waiting to catch the utterances, and then weaving verses, metres, rhythms, according to occasion, as a sort of vehicle. As to your Onomacrituses, and Herodotuses, and Cinaethons,[121] and the censures which they brought upon the oracles, by importing tragedy and pomp where they were out of place, I let the charge pass, and do not admit it. Most, |C| however, of the discredit which attached so copiously to poetry came from the gang of soothsayers and scamps who strolled around the ceremonies of the Great Mother and of Serapis, with their mummeries and tricks, turning verses out of their own heads, or taking them at random from handbooks, for servant boys and silly girls, such as are best attracted by metre and a poetic cast of words; from all which causes poetry seemed to put herself at the service of cheats, and jugglers, and lying prophets, and was lost to truth and to the tripod.

XXVI. ‘Thus I should not be surprised to find that the old people sometimes required a certain ambiguity, circumlocution, |D| indistinctness. For it was not then a case of “A” approaching the oracle with a question, if you please, about the purchase of a slave, or “B” about business; powerful states, haughty kings and tyrants, would consult the God on public affairs, men whom it did not answer the officials of his temple to vex and provoke by letting them hear what they did not wish to hear. For the God does not obey Euripides,[122] who sets up as a lawgiver with

Phoebus, none but he,

May give men prophecies.

|E| He uses mortal men as ministers and prophets, whom it is his duty to make his care, and to protect, lest they perish at the hands of the bad while serving him. He does not then choose to conceal the truth; what he used to do was to give a twist to its manifestation, which, like a beam of light, is refracted more than once in its passage, and is parted into many rays as it becomes poetry, and so to remove whatever in it was harsh and hard. Tyrants might thus be left in ignorance, and enemies not be forewarned. For them he threw a veil in the innuendoes |F| and ambiguities which hid the meaning from others, but did not elude the intelligence of the actual consultants who gave their whole mind to the answers. Hence, now that things have changed, it is sheer folly to criticize and find fault with the God, because he thinks right to give his aid no longer in the same manner but in another.

XXVII. ‘Another thing is this: Language receives no greater advantage from a poetical form than this, that a meaning which is wrapped and bound in metre is more easily remembered and grasped. Now in those days much memory was required. Many things used to be explained orally; local indications, the times when things were to be done, rites of Gods across the seas, secret burying-places of heroes, hard to be discovered by those setting off for lands far from Greece. You know about Chius |408| and Cretinus, and Nesichus, and Phalanthus, and many other leaders of expeditions, how many clues they needed to find the proper place appointed to each for settlement, while some of them missed the way, as did Battus.[123] He thought that he would be turned out, not understanding what the place was to which he had been sent; then he came a second time loudly complaining. Then the God answered:

Thou that hast never been there, if thou know’st Libya the sheepland

Better than I that have been, then wonderful wise is thy wisdom.

So he sent him out again. Then Lysander entirely failed to make out the hill Orchalides,[124] otherwise called Alopecus, and the river Hoplites,

Also the dragon, earthborn, in craftiness coming behind thee,

and was defeated in battle and slain in those very spots by |B| Neochorus, a man of Haliartus, who bore a shield with the device of a serpent. There are many such answers given to the old people, all hard to grasp and remember, which I need not give you at length, since you know them.

XXVIII. ‘Our present settled condition, out of which the questions now put to the God arise, I welcome and accept. There is great peace and tranquillity, war has been made to cease, there are no wanderings in exile, no revolutions, no tyrannies, no other plagues or ills in Greece asking for potent and extraordinary remedies. But when there is nothing complicated or mysterious, or dangerous, only questions on petty |C| popular matters, like school themes, “whether I should marry”, “whether I should sail”, “whether I should lend”, and the most serious responses given to states are concerning harvests and cattle-breeding and public health, to clothe these in metre, to devise circumlocutions, to introduce strange words on questions calling for a plain, concise answer, is what an ambitious sophist might do, bedizening the oracle for his own glory. But the Pythia is a lady in herself, and when she descends thither and is in the presence of the God, she cares for truth rather than for |D| glory, or for the praise or blame of men.

XXIX. ‘So perhaps ought we too to feel. As it is, in a sort of agony of fear, lest the place should lose its reputation of three thousand years, and a few persons should think lightly of it and cease to visit the oracle, for all the world as if it were a sophist’s school, we apologize, and make up reasons and theories about things which we neither know nor ought to know. We smooth the critic down, and try to persuade him, whereas we ought to bid him be gone—

He shall first suffer in a loss not light—[125]

|E| if that is the view which he takes of the God. Thus, while you welcome and admire what the Wise Men of old have written up: “Know thyself”, and “Nothing too much”, not least because of the brevity which includes in a small compass a close hammer-beaten sense, you blame the oracles because they mostly use concise, plain, direct phrases. It is with sayings like those of the Wise Men as with streams compressed into a narrow channel; there is no distinctness or transparency to the eye of the mind, but if you look into what has been written or said about them by those who have wished to learn the full meaning of each, you |F| will not easily find longer treatises elsewhere. The language of the Pythia illustrates what mathematicians mean by calling a straight line the shortest between the same points; it makes no bending, or curve, or doubling or ambiguity; it lies straight towards truth, it takes risks,[126] its good faith is open to examination, and it has never yet been found wrong; it has filled the shrine |409| with offerings from Barbarians and Greeks, and has beautified it with noble buildings and Amphictyonic fittings. Why, you see for yourselves many buildings added which were not here formerly, many restored which were ruinous or destroyed. As new trees spring up by the side of those in vigorous bearing, so the Pylaea flourishes together with Delphi and is fed upon the same meat; the plenty of the one causes the other to take on shapeliness and figure and a beauty of temples, and halls of meeting and fountains of water, such as it never had in the thousand years before. Now those who dwell about Galaxius |B| in Boeotia felt the manifest presence of the God in the abundance and more than abundance of milk:

From all the kine and every flock,
Plenteous as water from the rock,
Came welling, gurgling on its way
The milk that day.
Hot foot they hied them to the task,
To fill the pail, to fill the cask;
No beechen bowl or crock of clay,
No pot or pan had holiday;
Wine-skin or flagon, none might stay
Within, that day.[127]

But to us he gives tokens brighter and stronger and more evident than these, in having, after the days of drought, of desertion and poverty, brought us plenty, splendour, and reputation. True, I am well pleased with myself for anything which my own |C| zeal or service may have contributed to this result in support of Polycrates and Petraeus, well pleased too with him who has been our leader in this policy, to whose thought and planning most of the improvements are due; but it is wholly impossible that so great, so vast a change could have been effected in this short time by merely human care, with no God present here or lending his Divinity to the place of the oracle.

XXX. ‘But as in those days there were some who found fault with the responses for obliquity and want of clearness, so now there are those who criticize them as too simple, which is childishness indeed and rank stupidity! For as children show more glee and satisfaction at the sight of rainbows or haloes or comets than in that of the sun or of the moon, so do these |D| people regret the riddles, allegories, and metaphors which are so many modes of refraction of prophetic art in a mortal and fanciful medium. And if they do not fully inquire into the cause of the change, they go away having passed judgement against the God, rather than against ourselves or themselves, for having a power of thought which is too feeble to attain to his counsels.’

III
ON THE CESSATION OF THE ORACLES

A DIALOGUE INSCRIBED TO TERENTIUS PRISCUS

THE SPEAKERS

Lamprias, Plutarch’s brother.

Cleombrotus, of Lacedaemon, a scientific traveller, and a theologian, who had been up the Red Sea, and, lately, to Ammon.

Didymus, a Cynic philosopher.

Philippus, an historian.

Demetrius, a ‘grammarian’ of Tarsus, now returning from Britain.

Ammonius, the philosopher.

Heracleon, of Megara, a young man.

Time: A little before the Pythian games of Callistratus’ year, perhaps A. D. 83-4.

1 and 2. Cleombrotus mentions the undying lamp flame at Ammon, said to require less oil each year, a proof that the years are growing shorter.

3. Demetrius thinks the cause inadequate and Cleombrotus mentions other instances of important phenomena due to insignificant causes.

4. Ammonius points out that all the heavenly bodies are involved in the hypothesis, and suggests other causes, as changes in temperature or in the quality of the oil.

5. Lamprias invites Cleombrotus to tell the company about the oracle of Ammon. Demetrius suggests, as a subject nearer home, the failure of the oracles in Boeotia (except those in the neighbourhood of Lebadeia).

6. We were passing out of the temple, and were near the Hall of the Cnidians, where Heracleon and our other friends were waiting for us, in silence. On a request from Demetrius they agree to join in our discussion.

7. Didymus the Cynic (‘Planetiades’) makes an angry protest: the wonder being that Providence itself had not deserted this bad world long ago. Heracleon and Lamprias humour him, and he leaves the place quietly.

8. Ammonius addresses Lamprias: ‘I too deprecate the tone of Didymus. Still we may recognize other causes, besides providential action, for the cessation of the oracles, e.g. the depopulation of Greece and specially of Boeotia.’

9. Lamprias: ‘We may believe in Gods, yet hold that their works may be interrupted by specific causes. It is not necessary that the God should personally operate in his oracles.’

10. Cleombrotus agreed, but observed that the hypothesis was much relieved by assuming the existence of daemons, a middle order between Gods and men, and not immortal,

11. But long-lived—say 9,720 years (as Hesiod)—‘What?’ interrupted Demetrius; ‘Hesiod was leading up to the Stoic “Conflagration”!’

12. Cleombrotus refuses to split straws as to the duration of a daemon’s life; the point is that there are such things as daemons.

13. The daemons have been compared (by Xenocrates) to an isosceles triangle (Gods to an equilateral, men to a scalene). Or again to the moon, which is half earth, half star.

14. Instances of daemonic rites,

15. And daemonic stories, wrongly attributed to Gods, as that of Delphi (Philippus shows surprise) and the flight of Apollo.

16. Heracleon (first addressing Philippus) allows that daemons, not Gods, may be concerned with oracles, but then they must be sinless beings—Cleombrotus: “Sinless daemons—if so, they would no longer be daemons”:

17. And quotes stories to prove that daemons may be faulty, and one as to the death of Pan to prove that they may be mortal.

18. Demetrius confirms this from his experiences in and about Britain.

19. Cleombrotus compares the Stoic view of Gods who are perishable with the Epicurean ‘Infinity’.

20. Ammonius defends Empedocles’ view of faulty daemons against the Epicureans, who held that, if faulty, they must be short-lived. As the Epicureans are not represented, he calls on Cleombrotus to continue his argument for the migration of daemons.

21. Cleombrotus, first referring to Plato, has a story of an oriental recluse, whom he had met about the Red Sea. He knew all the Delphi legend, and referred it to the struggles of daemons, who took on the names of the Gods to whom they were severally attached.

22. ‘But how does Plato come in?’ asked Heracleon. ‘Because’, replied Cleombrotus, ‘Plato allowed a possibility of more worlds than one, up to five; the recluse asserted (giving no proof) that there were exactly one hundred and eighty-three worlds.’

23. ‘The impostor!’ says Lamprias; ‘that view is purely Greek, and was put into a book by one Petron of Himera long ago.’ Heracleon and Demetrius exchange remarks about Plato’s views on a plurality of worlds, and agree to refer the matter to Lamprias, who offers to give a cursory account, the discussion then to revert to the original question.

[24-end. Lamprias is the speaker, with an interposition by Ammonius in c. 33 and again in c. 46, and by Demetrius, who answers a question in c. 45, and some shorter ones.]

24. Lamprias loq.: It is a priori likely that this world is not a sole creation.

25. There need be no fear of interference from outside, of world with world. Aristotle’s view of the arrangement of matter stated,

26. And considered.

27. The idea of a middle point is applicable to each world severally, not to the confederation of worlds.

28. The case of the ‘stone outside the world’ (the moon?), which some regard as no part of our earth, and therefore not bound to move towards it. The paradoxical views of Chrysippus.

29. The Stoic difficulty as to Zeus or Providence in the plural met. Why not a choir of such powers, free to range from part to part of the universe?

30. Such a view of deities sociable and free to communicate with each other is the grander one.

31. (Philippus asks to have the bearing of the number five and the five solid figures on Plato’s scheme explained.)

32. Lamprias: The matter is thus explained by Theodorus of Soli:[128] There are five and no more solid figures having all the faces and all the solid angles in each equal. These are—

(a) The Pyramid (Tetrahedron) with four faces, each an equilateral triangle, and four solid angles,

(b) The Cube, six faces, each a square, and eight solid angles,

(c) The Octahedron, eight faces, each an equilateral triangle, and six solid angles,

(d) The Dodecahedron, twelve faces, each a regular pentagon, and twenty solid angles,

(e) The Eicosahedron, twenty faces, each an equilateral triangle, and twelve solid angles.

[It follows that (d) having more, and blunter, solid angles than any, most nearly approximates to the Sphere. (And, in fact, if the content of the Sphere be 100, that of (d) is 66·5, that of (e) only 60·5, that of (c) 36·75, and so on). Plato (Timaeus, pp. 53-5, where see Archer-Hind) shows that each equilateral triangle may easily be broken into six ‘primary scalenes’, i. e. triangles with angles 90°, 60°, 30°, which again will reproduce themselves ad infinitum (Euclid, 6, 8). Hence, if a universe be constructed out of (a) or (c) or (e) or their plane faces, or of all of these, it can, in case of dissolution, be reconstructed. This does not apply to the Cube, the faces of which, however, yield isosceles right-angled triangles, also available as ‘constituents’ in infinite number, nor yet to (d) which is therefore reserved for another purpose, as to which see Burnet (Early Greek Philosophers, c. 7, sect. 148).]

The solid figures may be used to construct five different worlds, or omitting (d) for the four ‘elements’ (fire, &c.).

33. Ammonius criticizes; he points out that the difficulty about the figure (d) has been ignored.

34. Lamprias drops the subject for the present, and turns to the five categories of being in the Sophistes and Philebus. It is reasonable to assume that the physical universe may correspond.

35. Consider the Pythagorean first principles of number and the origin of the number five out of the first odd and the first even.

36. Five senses, five fingers, five planets (the sun with the two inner planets taken as one).

37. The relation of the five solid figures to Plato’s theory of creation further considered. But we are on slippery ground here.

38. Lamprias is invited to return to the original question, as to the oracles and the migration of daemons.

39. Lamprias resumes:

Why should the prophetic gift be associated with daemons, i.e. souls which have left the body, rather than with those still in the flesh, though it may be more energetic after death? Compare the processes of Memory.

40. Divination touches on the future through bodily conditions assisted by emanations and the like.

41. The special virtues of certain vapours or streams, as the Cydnus at Tarsus.

42. The story of the first discovery of the Adytum of Delphi by the shepherd Coretas. There must be sympathy of soul with prophecy, as of the eye with light. The identification of Apollo with the sun.

43. The local prophetic currents may shift their place about, as rivers and lakes are known to do.

44. Physical commotions, especially earthquakes, may be expected to cause such shiftings.

45. Demetrius has been too long away from home to answer as to the Cydnus, but he tells a story about the oracle of Mopsus, which had convinced a sceptical magistrate.

46. Ammonius and Philippus have points to raise. That of the latter is as to the identity of the sun with Apollo, and is allowed to stand over. Ammonius protests against the ascription of all prophecy to material causes, but wishes to hear the view of Lamprias.

47. Lamprias observes that Plato had made a similar protest against Anaxagoras. Both sets of causes must be recognized.

48. And so in the case of prophetic utterances.

49. The actual procedure of Delphi, and the tests applied to the victim, justified.

50. The influences to which the prophetess is subject.

51. Story of a prophetess who was wrongly pressed when the conditions were adverse. The force of the exhalation affects different persons differently. It is essentially daemonic, but not exempt from change or decay.

52. The subject is difficult, and must remain open to discussion, as also the question raised by Philippus about Apollo and the sun.

ON THE CESSATION OF THE ORACLES

I. There is a story, Terentius Priscus, that certain eagles |409| or swans, in flight from the extremities of earth to its middle |F| point, met at Delphi near the Navel, as we call it; that later on Epimenides of Phaestus came to examine into the story in the God’s house, and, receiving an indistinct and ambiguous response, wrote

No central boss there is of land or sea,

The Gods may know one, but from man ’tis hid.

As for the inquirer, he was properly punished by the God for putting an old story to the proof as though fingering a picture. |410|

II. However, shortly before the Pythian games of Callistratus’ year, it happened that two holy men, travelling from opposite ends of the inhabited globe, met at Delphi; Demetrius the grammarian, on his homeward voyage from Britain to Tarsus, and Cleombrotus the Lacedaemonian, who had wandered much in Egypt and about the land of the Troglodytes, and had sailed far up the Red Sea, not for commerce, but because he loved sights and information. Possessing a competence, and being indifferent to having more, he would use his leisure |B| in such ways, putting together facts as material for a Philosophy which was to end in what he himself called Theology. Having lately been at the temple of Ammon, he made it clear that he was far from admiring its general arrangements, but he told us a story worthy of serious interest as related by the priests, about the lamp which is never extinguished. They say that it consumes less oil each successive year, and claim this as a proof of an inequality in the years which makes each less in duration |C| than its predecessor. Of course, the shorter the period the less the consumption.

III. All present found this wonderful, and Demetrius observed that it was quite absurd to hunt out such great results from trifles; not, as Alcaeus puts it, to take the claw and paint the lion from it, but with a wick and a lamp to shift the whole order of the heavens, and make a clean sweep of Mathematics. ‘Nothing of that sort will disturb those gentlemen;’ said Cleombrotus, ‘they will never give in to the mathematicians on the point of accuracy; they would think it easier for them to be wrong in their time about movements and periods so |D| very remote, than for themselves to be wrong in measuring the oil, when they had their attention jealously fixed all the time on so strange a phenomenon. Besides, Demetrius, not to allow small things as indications of great ones would be to stop the way against many arts; many proofs will be put out of account, and many predictions. Yet you grammarians prove a fact of no less importance than that the heroes of old shaved with the razor, because you meet with the word “razor” in Homer,[129] and again, that they lent money at interest, because he has

Since of a debt there owing I have need,

Long-standing and not small,[130]

where the word for “to owe” imports increase! Again, when |E| he calls night “swift”,[131] you fasten lovingly on the word, and actually say that it implies that the shadow is conical, as thrown by a spherical body. Then Medicine tells us that an abundance of spiders prognosticates a summer of pestilence, and so does a crow’s-foot on the fig leaves in spring. Who is going to allow this, unless he grants that small things may be indications of great ones? Who will endure that the magnitude of the sun should be measured by “half-gallon or half-pint”, or that the acute angle made on the sundial here by the gnomon with the surface should be a measure of the elevation of the |F| visible poles above the horizon? Such, at any rate, were the accounts to be heard from the prophets down there, so that we must have some other answer to give if we wish to keep for the sun his constitutional order without deviation.’

IV. ‘Not for the sun only,’ cried Ammonius the philosopher, who was present, ‘but for the whole heavens! For his passage from solstice to solstice must of necessity be curtailed and not |411| cover so large a portion of the firmament as mathematicians say, its southern parts constantly shrinking towards the more northerly. Our summer, too, must become shorter, and its temperature colder, as his course curves inwards, and he covers wider parallels among the tropical constellations. Again, the gnomons at Syene must cease to throw no shadow at the summer solstice; many fixed stars would be found to have closed in, some of them touching others and being mingled with them as the interval disappeared. If, on the other hand, they shall |B| assert that the other bodies remain as they are, the sun alone being irregular in his movements, they will be unable to state the cause which accelerates him alone out of so many bodies, and will throw most of the phenomena into confusion, those of the moon entirely, so that there will be no need of measures of oil to prove the difference; eclipses will prove it, when the sun comes into contact with the moon more frequently, and the moon with the earth’s shadow. The rest is clear, and there is no need to unravel any further the imposture of the theory.’ ‘For all that,’ said Cleombrotus, ‘I saw the measures with my own eyes, for they showed me several; that of the current year |C| fell considerably short of the oldest.’ Ammonius rejoined: ‘Then it has escaped all the others who keep up unextinguished fires, and preserve them for a number of years which we may call infinite. Assume, however, that what is said is true; is it not better to take the cause to be atmospheric chills or moisture, which might probably weaken the fire so that it would not consume or need so much fuel; on the other hand, times of dryness or heat? Before now I have heard it said of fire that it burns better and with more strength in winter, being |D| contracted and condensed by the cold, whereas in hot times it loses power, and becomes attenuated and feeble; again, that in sunlight it is less efficient, attacking the fuel sluggishly and consuming it more slowly. Most likely of all, the true cause may be in the oil. There is no improbability in thinking that it was in old days unsubstantial and watery, being produced from a young plant, but afterwards, when well matured and condensed, it had more force and better nutritive power in an equal quantity. I am supposing that we are bound to save this hypothesis for the servants of Ammon, absurd and unnatural as it is.’

|E| V. When Ammonius had done, ‘Rather’, said I, ‘tell us all about the oracle, Cleombrotus; for the old reputation of the divine power there was great, nowadays it seems to be somewhat dwindling.’ As Cleombrotus was silent, and cast his eyes downwards, Demetrius said: ‘There is no need to raise questions about what is happening there, when we see the growing enfeeblement of the oracles nearer home, I might rather say the cessation of all save one or two; the question is from what cause has their power thus passed away? Why mention others, when Boeotia, in old times full of voices with her oracles, has now been quite deserted, as though by sources of |F| water, and a great drought of prophecy has possessed the land? Nowhere, except round Lebadeia, has Boeotia anything to give to those who wish to draw water from prophetic art; for the rest, silence or utter desertion is the order. Yet in the times of the Persian wars it was in no less repute than that of |412| Amphiaraus, and Mys, as it would seem, tried both.[132] So the prophet of the Ptoan Oracle, in former times accustomed to use Aeolian, uttered a response in the tongue of the Barbarians, which none of the local persons present understood, but Mys alone; however, the Barbarian caught the inspiration, and the injunction did not need to be translated into Greek. As to the slave sent to the shrine of Amphiaraus, he seemed to see in his sleep a minister of the God, who first spoke to turn him out telling him that the God was not present, then used his hands to push him, and, when he persisted, took a great stone and smote him on the head. This was all a |B| prediction in act of what was to come about; for Mardonius was defeated by the Greeks under no king but a regent and a lieutenant of a king, and he fell struck by a stone,[133] just as the Lydian appeared in his sleep to be struck. At that time the oracle at Tegyrae was flourishing; there they say that the God was born, and of the streams which flow past it one, as some tell, is called the “Palm”, the other the “Olive” to this day. Again, in the Persian wars, when Echecrates was prophet, the God promised victory and might in war to |C| the Greeks. Then in the Peloponnesian war, when the Delians had been turned out of their island, it is said that an oracle was brought from Delphi, ordering them to discover the place where Apollo was born, and to perform certain sacrifices there. When they were in wonder and perplexity at the idea that the God had not been born among them but elsewhere, the Pythia added that a crow should reveal to them the spot. They went away and reached Chaeroneia, where they heard the landlord of the inn conversing with certain strangers on their way to Tegyrae about the oracle. These strangers, on leaving, addressed the woman in saying farewell as Corone (Crow). Then they |D| understood the oracle, and having sacrificed at Tegyrae, managed shortly to effect their return. There have been more recent manifestations at these prophetic shrines, but now they have failed; so that it may well be worth while here, in the home of the Pythian, to discuss the cause of the change.’

VI. By this time we were away from the temple, and had reached the doors of the Hall of the Cnidians. Passing inside, we saw the friends for whom we were making, seated and waiting for us. There was a general stillness because of the hour; people were anointing themselves or watching the athletes. Then Demetrius, with a quiet smile, said: ‘Shall |E| I tell a story, or shall I speak the truth? My belief is that you have no problem in hand worth a thought; I see you seated much at your ease, with relaxation on your faces.‘ ‘Oh yes;’ broke in the Megarian Heracleon, ‘we are not inquiring whether the verb “to throw” loses a lambda in the future, nor as to the positive forms of “worse”, “better”, “worst”, |F| “best”. Those are the questions, those and others like them, which bring frowns and wrinkles! All others we may examine like philosophers, with brows steady, and quietly, not looking death and daggers at the company.’ ‘Then take us as we are,’ said Demetrius, ‘and with us the subject upon which we have actually fallen, one which is proper to the place, and concerns us all for the God’s sake. And mind! no wrinkled eyebrows when you attack it!’

VII. We mingled our companies and sate down in and out |413| of each other, and Demetrius had propounded the subject, when up sprang the Cynic Didymus, by nickname Planetiades, struck the ground two or three times and shouted out: ‘Oho! Oho! a mighty difficult subject, which needs much inquiry, you have brought us! A wonder indeed that, with so much wickedness poured over the earth, not only “Modesty and Sense of Justice”, to quote Hesiod,[134] have deserted human life, but Divine Providence, too, has packed up its oracles and is gone from everywhere. I throw out the opposite problem for you to discuss. Why have they not ceased long ago? Why has not Hercules or some other God withdrawn the tripod, |B| filled every day with foul ungodly questions, propounded to the God by some as if he were a sophist whom they were to catch out, by others to ask about treasures or inheritances or marriages which law forbids. The result is that Pythagoras is proved mighty wrong when he said that men are always at their best when they approach the Gods.[135] Accordingly, things which it were decent to cloak and deny in the presence of an older man, diseases and affections of the soul, these they lay bare and open before the God!’ He wanted to go on, but Heracleon plucked at his cloak, and I, almost his greatest |C| intimate present, said: ‘Dear Planetiades, leave off provoking the God. He is easy to be entreated and gentle:

Mildest to mortal men pronounced to be,

as Pindar[136] says. And whether he be sun, or lord and father of the sun, lord and father beyond all that is visible, it is not likely that he should deem us modern men unworthy of a voice from himself, being to them the cause of birth and nurture and being and thinking. It is not seemly, either, that Providence, our thoughtful kindly mother, who produces and maintains all things for us, should remember our misdeeds in one matter only—prophecy, and should take away what she |D| originally gave. As if in those old days there were not more bad men because men were more, when oracles were set up in so many parts of the inhabited world! Come here, and sit down again! Swear a Pythian truce with wickedness, whom you are chastising in word every day; join us in seeking some other cause for the alleged failure of the oracles.’ My words had some effect; Planetiades went away by the doors and in silence.

VIII. There was a short interval of quiet, then Ammonius |E| addressed me. ‘Lamprias,’ he said, ‘take care what we are doing, and give your mind to the discussion, lest we find ourselves making out that the God is no true cause. He who thinks that the cessation of the oracles is due to something other than the will of a God, suggests the thought that they come into being and exist, not because of the God, but in some other way. For if prophecy be the work of a God, there is no greater or stronger power to remove and abolish it. Now the argument of Planetiades displeased me in many points, especially as to the inconsistency which he makes out in the God, at one time |F| turning away from vice and disowning it, at another admitting it; as though a king or tyrant were to shut out bad men at one door, and admit them to interviews by another. Start with the operation most proper to the Gods, which is great, yet never excessive, always sufficient in itself; and tell me that |414| Hellas has had the largest share in the general depopulation caused by former revolutions and wars over the whole perhaps of the inhabited globe, and could now scarcely provide all round three thousand hoplites, the number which the single state of Megara sent out to Plataea.[137] Why, for the God to have left many places of his oracle would be merely to expose the desolation of Greece. Then I will put myself in your hands for ingenuity. For who would get the good if there were an oracle at Tegyrae as there formerly was, or near Ptoum, where it is a day’s work to meet one man minding his flocks. This very spot, most venerable of all and most renowned “for time and fame”, was for a long time made desert and unapproachable by a savage beast, a female dragon as the story goes; but this is to invert the facts of its lying idle; the |B| wilderness invited the beast, the beast did not make the wilderness. But when, in the good pleasure of the God, Hellas revived in her cities, and the place had men in plenty, two prophetesses were employed, who were lowered in turn, and a third was appointed to relieve. Now there is only one, and we do not complain, for she is enough for those who need her. So we have no cause to blame the God; the prophetic establishment now subsisting suffices for all, and sends away all with what they want. Agamemnon used to employ seven heralds, yet |C| scarcely could control the numerous assembly, whereas in a few days you will see in the theatre here that a single voice reaches all present, and even so it is with prophecy; then it used more voices to reach more persons, now we should fairly wonder at the God if he allowed his prophecy to flow to waste like water, or like the rocks to find an echo for the voices of shepherds and their flocks.’

IX. When Ammonius had said this, and I remained silent, Cleombrotus addressed me: ‘Have you now granted’, he said, |D| ‘that the God makes and also destroys the oracles?’ ‘By no means’, I said. ‘I maintain that no prophetic shrine or oracle is destroyed by the God’s agency. It is as with many other things which he makes or provides; Nature brings in destruction and negation; or rather Matter, which is negation, unweaves and breaks up that which is brought into being by the more powerful cause. Even so I think there are times of obscuration and withdrawal of prophetic forces. The God gives many fair things to men, but gives nothing immortal, so that, in the words of Sophocles:[138]

The works of Gods may die, but not the Gods.

I say that their essence and their power must be sought in |E| Nature and in Matter, the origin being rightly reserved to the God. It would be simple and childish to suppose that the God himself creeps into the bodies of the prophets and speaks from there, using as instruments their mouths and voices, like those ventriloquists once called “Eurycleis”, now “Pythones”. He who mixes up the God with mortal needs does not spare |F| his majesty nor preserve the dignity and the greatness of his excellence.’

X. Then Cleombrotus: ‘You are right. Yet it is hard to grasp and to define how, and up to what point, we may make use of Providence; and therefore those who make the God the cause of nothing at all, and also those who make him the common cause of all, go wide of moderation and decency. It is well said, on the one hand, that Plato, in discovering the element which underlies created qualities, now called “Matter” or “Nature”, relieved philosophers from perplexities |415| many and great. It seems to me, on the other, that those who have inserted the class of daemons between Gods and men, to draw and knit together the fellowship of the two orders after a fashion, have cleared away more perplexities and greater; whether the view belongs to Zoroaster and the Magi, or comes from Thrace and Orpheus, or from Egypt, or from Phrygia, as we conjecture from seeing in both those countries many elements of death and mourning in the rites celebrated there, mingled with those of initiation. Among the Greeks, Homer appears still to use both names indifferently, and sometimes |B| to call the Gods daemons. Hesiod first clearly and distinctly laid down four classes of reasonable beings, Gods, then daemons, then heroes, last of all men; and here he appears to admit transition, the golden race of men passing into daemons many and great, the demigods at last into heroes.[139] Others make out a change for bodies and souls alike. As water is seen to be produced out of earth, air from water, and fire from air, and the substance is borne upwards, even so the better souls receive their change from men into heroes, from heroes into daemons. From the daemons again, a few in a long course of time, upborne |C| through virtue, become full partakers of divine nature. To some it happens not to have control of themselves; so they subside and again enter mortal bodies, and endure a life as dim and unillumined as an exhalation.

XI. ‘Hesiod thinks that in certain periods of time the daemons die. Speaking in the person of the Naïd he darkly indicates the time:

Full ages nine of men that live their prime

Lives the hoarse crow, four crows the stag outlives,

Three stags the ancient raven, ravens nine

The phoenix, but the phoenix, ten times told,

We fair-haired nymphs, daughters of Zeus most dread.[140]

|D| Those who take the word “age” wrong bring this to a very large total; it means a year, so that the sum comes out nine thousand seven hundred and twenty for the years of life of the daemons. Most mathematicians think it to be less; not even Pindar[141] has called it greater, when he tells us that the nymphs live

Their term appointed even as the trees,

and therefore names them Hamadryads.’ He was still |E| speaking when Demetrius broke in: ‘What was that, Cleombrotus? The year called an “age of man”? Human life, whether “at its prime” or, as some[142] read “in its old age” is not of that length. Those who read “at its prime”, follow Heraclitus[143] in taking “an age” to be thirty years, the time in which the parent sees his offspring a parent. Those who read “in its old age” instead of “at its prime” give a hundred and eight years to the “age”, taking the middle term of human life to be fifty-four, the number made up of unity, the two first surfaces, the two first squares and the two |F| first cubes,[144] the number taken by Plato[145] in his “Generation of the Soul”. Hesiod’s whole story seems to have been framed with a veiled reference to the “Conflagration”, when all things moist will probably disappear and with them the Nymphs,

Who in fair glades their habitation have

By river sources and in grassy meads.‘[146]

XII. Then Cleombrotus: ‘I hear of this from many, and now I see the Stoic “Conflagration”, which already spreads over the verses of Heraclitus and Orpheus, catching those of Hesiod |416| too! I have no patience with this “World-Conflagration”, and then the impossibility of the thing! When one can remember the periods, as it is easiest to do with the crow and the hind, one sees how exaggeration passes in. The year has within itself the beginning and the end

Of all things which the circling seasons bear,

And parent earth,[147]

so there is nothing against usage in calling it an “age of man”. You allow yourselves, I believe, that Hesiod means human life by “the age”. Is it not so?’ Demetrius agreed. ‘Well, |B| but this is also clear,’ said Cleombrotus, ‘that the same words are often used for the measure and the things measured, as pint, quart, gallon, bushel. As then we call unity a number, being the smallest measure of number and its origin, so he has called our first measure of human life by the same word as the thing measured—“an age”. The numbers which the others invent have none of the clarity or distinctness usual in numbers. As to the nine thousand seven hundred and twenty, it has come about by taking the sum of the first four numbers, starting with |C| unity, and multiplying it by four, or four by ten.[148] Thus we get forty in either way, which, when five times multiplied [triangle-wise][149] by three, gave the number proposed. But about these matters there need be no difference between us and Demetrius. Whether the time be longer or shorter, determinate or not, in which the soul of a daemon shifts and the life of a demigod, the point will have been proved, before any judge he chooses, on the evidence of wise and ancient witnesses, that there are certain natures on the borderland between Gods and men, subject to mortal affections and enforced changes, who may rightly receive our worship according to the custom of our fathers, and be thought of as daemons and called so.

XIII. ‘Xenocrates, the companion of Plato, used triangles |D| in illustration of the doctrine; he compared the equilateral to a divine nature, the scalene to a mortal, and the isosceles to a daemonic; the first equal in all relations, the second unequal in all, the third equal in some, unequal in others, like the daemonic nature with its mortal passions and divine power. Nature has put forward images, which our sense can perceive, visible likenesses; the sun and the stars standing for Gods, flashes and comets and meteors for mortal men, an image which Euripides[150] drew in the lines: |E|

In all his bloom, like to a falling star

His light was quenched, his spirit passed, to air.

But there is a being which is mixed, and really an imitation of the daemons, the moon. Men, seeing her circumference so much in accord with that order of beings, the manifest wanings and waxings and phases which she undergoes, have called her, some an earthlike star, others an Olympian earth, others “the portion of Hecate”, who belongs at once to heaven and earth. As, then, if one were to remove the lower air, withdrawing all |F| between earth and moon, an empty unconnected space would be left, and the unity and continuity of the whole dissolved, even so those who refuse to leave us the daemons break off all intercourse and mutual dealing between Gods and men, by removing that order in Nature which could “interpret”, in Plato’s[151] words, and “minister”, or else they compel us to mingle all things into one mass, forcing the God into human passions and business, and drawing him down to our needs, |417| as Thessalian witches are said to draw the moon. Only their imposture found credit with women, when Aglaonice the daughter of Hegetor, who knew her astronomy, chose an eclipse of the moon, and then pretended to do magic and draw her down. But as for us, let us never listen when we are told that there are prophecies with no divine agency, or rites and orgiastic services which the Gods do not heed; nor on the other hand suppose that the God is in and out and present there, taking part in the business. Let us leave all this to those |B| rightful ministers of the Gods, their ushers or clerks. Let us hold that there are daemons who watch the performance of rites, and inspire the mysteries, while others go about to avenge crimes of insolence and pride, and to others Hesiod[152] has given a venerable name,

of wealth

The saintly givers; such their kingly trust.

Observe that to do so is kingly. For there are, as among men, so among daemons, degrees of excellence, and in some subsists still some slight, faint, almost excremental remnant of passion and absence of reason; in others this is strong and hard to do away, its traces and symbols being in many places preserved and sporadically found in sacrifices and rites and tales of wonder. |C|

XIV. ‘Now as to the mystic rites, in which the most evident and transparent indication may be had of the truth about daemons, “peace be upon my lips”, as Herodotus[153] says. Feasts and sacrifices, days sinister and gloomy, so to call them, when are meals of raw flesh, and rendings and fastings and beaten breasts, and in many places unholy spells over the sacrifices:

Whoopings wild, and cries of frenzy, necks together tossed in air,[154]

all these, I would say, belong to no God, but are modes of appeasement and soothing to avert bad daemons. The human sacrifices which used to be performed were neither asked for nor accepted by Gods, we cannot believe it; yet kings and |D| captains would not have endured to give up their own children by way of initiating the rites, or to cut their throats, without a purpose; it was to soothe and satisfy the heavy displeasure of beings cruel and hard to be moved, or in some cases their frantic low passions, worthy of tyrants, when bodily approach was impossible or not desired. As Hercules besieged the town of Oechalia for the sake of a maiden, so strong and violent daemons, requiring in vain a human soul still enveloped in the body, bring pestilences to cities and sterility of land, and stir up wars and seditions, until they succeed in getting that on which their affection is set. Some have fared otherwise; |E| thus in a long stay in Crete I came to know of an absurd festival observed there: the headless form of a man is shown, and you are told that this was Molus, father of Meriones, who assaulted a maiden and was found without a head.

XV. ‘Now all the crimes of violence, all the wanderings of Gods, all tales of hiding, banishment, servitude, which are |F| said or sung in myth or hymn, are adventures which happened not to Gods but to daemons, and are recorded to show their excellence or power; Aeschylus[155] was wrong when he wrote

Apollo pure, the God exil’d from heav’n,

and so was the Admetus in Sophocles[156] wrong:

Mine was the cock who called him to the mill.

Widest of the truth of all are the theologians of Delphi, who, thinking that a battle once took place here between the God and a serpent for the possession of the oracle, allow poets and speech-writers contending in the theatres to tell these stories, |418| expressly belying their own most sacred rites.’ Philippus, the historian, who chanced to be present, here expressed surprise, and asked: ‘What rites such competitors belied?’ ‘Those relating to the oracle,’ was the reply, ‘whereby the city, admitting to initiation those from here to Tempe has now banished all Greeks dwelling beyond Thermopylae.[157] For the booth set up afresh every nine years near the court of the temple is not like any den or serpent’s haunt, but is an imitation of the dwelling of a tyrant or king. And the assault made upon it in silence through what they call “Dolon’s Way”, by |B| which the Aeolidae bring the boy, both of whose parents are living, with lighted torches, put fire to the booth, overturn the table, and then flee through the gates of the temple without turning back; and lastly the wanderings of the boy and his servile offices, and the purification rites at Tempe, all convey a suspicion of some great crime of shocking audacity. For it is quite absurd, my friend, that Apollo, after killing a beast, should flee to the extremities of Greece in quest of purification, and then should pour libations there and do all which men do to |C| appease and soften the wrath of daemons (fiends and avengers as they are called, because they pursue the memories of old unforgotten stains). The story which I once heard about that flight and removal is strangely absurd and surprising; but if there be any truth in it, let us never believe that what passed about the oracle in these old times was any trifling or ordinary matter. However, fearing to seem to do what Empedocles describes:

Stringing sundry myths, nor ever keeping to a single path,

I will ask you to allow me to affix the proper conclusion to my first tale, for we have just reached it. Many have said it before |D| us; let us dare to say it now. When the daemons who have to do with oracles and prophecies fail, all such things fail too, and lose their force if the daemons flee or shift their place; then, if they return after an interval, the things speak aloud, like instruments of music when those who can play them are present to play.’

XVI. When Cleombrotus had finished, Heracleon spoke: ‘There is no profane or uninitiated person present, no one who holds views about the Gods discordant with our own; but let us keep jealous watch on ourselves, Philippus, lest without our own knowledge we assume strange and even monstrous |E| hypotheses.’ ‘Well said,’ answered Philippus, ‘but what shocks you specially in what Cleombrotus is advancing?’ ‘That the oracles should be administered,’ said Heracleon, ‘not by Gods, who may well be quit of earthly concerns, but by daemons, assistants of the God, seems to me a not unfair assumption; but then to pluck, I had almost said by the handful, out of the verses of Empedocles, sins, infatuations, and God-inflicted wanderings, and to fasten them upon these daemons, and to suppose that in the end they die like men, this I do think a somewhat bold and barbarian view.’ Here Cleombrotus |F| asked Philippus who and whence the young man was, and, after learning his name and city, said: ‘No, Heracleon, it is by no means “without our own knowledge” that we have reached strange propositions; but in discussing great matters it is not possible to attain what is probable in opinion without starting from great premisses. But you, though you do not know it yourself, are taking back what you grant. You allow that there are daemons; but when you require that they should not be faulty |419| nor yet mortal, it is no longer daemons that you retain. For in what do they differ from Gods if as to their being they are immortal, and as to virtue are passionless and impeccable?’

XVII. As Heracleon remained silent and in deep thought, he went on: ‘Faulty daemons come to us not from Empedocles only, but from Plato and Xenocrates and Chrysippus; yes, and Democritus,[158] when he prays to meet “fair-falling phantoms”, shows that he knew of others which were disagreeable, with definitely vicious intentions and impulses. As to death in such beings, I have heard a story from a man who was no fool or |B| romancer. Some of you have heard Aemilianus the orator; Epitherses was his father, my fellow-townsman and teacher in grammar. He said that he was once on a voyage to Italy, and embarked on board a ship carrying cargo and many passengers. It was already evening when the breeze died down off the Echinades Islands; and the ship drifted till it was near Paxi. Most on board were awake, and many still drinking after supper. Suddenly a voice was heard from the island of Paxi; some one was calling Thamus in a loud voice, so that they all wondered. |C| Thamus was an Egyptian pilot, not even known by name to many of the passengers. Twice he was called, and remained silent; the third time he paid attention to the caller, who raised his voice and said: “When you reach the Palodes, tell them that Great Pan is dead.” Hearing this, Epitherses said, all were in consternation, and began discussing with one another whether “it were better to do as was ordered, or to refuse to meddle and to let it be. They decided in the end that, if there were a breeze, Thamus should sail past quietly, but if there should be calm about the place, he should hail, and report. When he was off the Palodes, as there was neither wind nor wave, |D| Thamus at the helm looked to land and repeated the words he had heard: “Great Pan is dead.” He had no sooner done this than a great groaning was heard, proceeding not from one but from many, mingled with cries of wonder. As there were many present, the story was soon spread in Rome, and Thamus was sent for by Tiberius Caesar, who so entirely credited the story, that he caused inquiry to be made about Pan. The scholars, of whom there were many round him, conjectured that he was the son born of Hermes and Penelope.’[159] (Philippus |E| was able to produce several witnesses from the company who had heard the old Aemilianus.)

XVIII. Demetrius told us that, among the islands near Britain, many were deserted and lay scattered (Sporades), some of them bearing the names of daemons and demigods. He himself, by the Emperor’s command, made a voyage of inquiry and observation to the nearest of the deserted islands, which had a few inhabitants, all sacred persons and never molested by the Britons. Just after his arrival, there was a great confusion in the atmosphere, many portents from the sky with gusts of wind and fiery blasts. When these calmed |F| down, the islanders said that ‘one of the mightier ones has ceased to be.’ For as a lamp when lighted, so they explained, has no unpleasant effect, but when extinguished is disagreeable to many people, so it is with great souls: their kindling into life is easy and free from pain; their extinction and death often breed winds and tempests, ‘such as you see now’, and infect the air with pestilence and sickness. They added that there is one island in particular where Cronus is a prisoner, being guarded in his sleep by Briareus; for sleep has been devised to be a chain to bind him, and there are many daemons about him as satellites and attendants.[160]

XIX. Cleombrotus spoke next: ‘I have stories of the same |420| kind which I might tell; but it is enough for our hypothesis that there is nothing which actually contradicts it or makes such things impossible. Yet we know’, he continued, ‘that the Stoics not only hold the view which I am advancing with |B| reference to daemons, but also recognize one out of the great multitude of Gods who is eternal and immortal; the others, they think, have come into being, and will perish. From the flouts and laughter of the Epicureans, which they venture to employ against Providence also, calling it a mere myth, we have nothing to fear. We maintain that their “Infinity” is a myth; so many worlds, not one of which is governed by divine reason, all produced spontaneously, and so subsisting. If it be permissible to laugh in speaking of Philosophy, we may laugh at the dumb, blind, soulless images which they shepherd during countless cycles of years, to reappear and anon return in all directions, some issuing from bodies still living, some |C| from those long ago burned or rotted. Thus they drag into physiology cyphers and shadows; yet if one asserts that daemons exist not in physical nature only, but as matter of theory, able to remain in being for long periods of time, they show irritation.’

XX. When these views had been stated, Ammonius spoke: ‘I think’, he said, ‘the dictum of Theophrastus was right. For what prevents our accepting a view which is dignified and highly philosophical? To disallow it is to reject many things possible but incapable of positive proof; to allow it is not[161] necessarily to import many which are impossible and |D| baseless. However, the only argument which I have heard the Epicureans employ against the daemons as introduced by Empedocles, that, if they are faulty and liable to sins, they cannot be blessed beings and long-lived, because vice implies much blindness and a liability to destructive accidents, is a foolish one. For, on this showing, Epicurus will be a worse man than Gorgias the sophist, and Metrodorus than Alexis the writer of comedies. For Alexis lived twice as long as Metrodorus, and Gorgias more than a third as long again as Epicurus. It is in another sense that we call virtue strong and |E| vice weak, not with regard to the duration or dissolution of body. Look at the lower animals: many which are sluggish in limb and dull in spirit, loose or disorderly in habits, live longer terms than the sensible and ingenious. Hence the Epicureans do wrong in ascribing the immortality of God to the caution and resistance which he opposes to destructive forces. No, the immunity from suffering and death should be laid in the nature of the blessed being, and should imply no trouble on his part. Perhaps, however, it is inconsiderate to argue against persons not present. It is now for Cleombrotus to resume his |F| argument lately interrupted, about the migration and exile of the daemons.’

XXI. Then Cleombrotus: ‘Very well; I shall be surprised, however, if it does not appear to you much stranger than what we have already said. Yet its basis lies in Nature, and Plato struck the note, not stating his view in plain terms, but as an obscure theory, cautiously throwing out a hint in enigmatical form; for all which even he has been met with a great outcry |421| from the other philosophers. Now since we are here with a bowl in our midst of mingled myths and theories—and where should a man meet with kinder listeners before whom to try theories as foreign coins are tried?—I do not hesitate to give you the benefit of the story of a certain outlandish man. It was after many wanderings and after paying heavy search fees, that I found him at last with difficulty, and enjoyed his conversation and kindly welcome. It was near the Red Sea, where once every year he associated with men, spending the rest of his time, as he used to say, with nomad nymphs and deities. He was the handsomest man I ever saw, and kept free from sickness |B| of any sort, treating himself once a month with the medicinal and bitter fruit of a grass. He was practised in the use of many tongues; to me he would mostly use a Doric, which was very nearly a song. While he was speaking, there was a fragrance in all the place from the sweet breath passing out of his mouth. His general learning and information were with him all the time; but one day in every year he was inspired with prophecy, and would then go down to the sea and foretell the future; potentates and secretaries of kings would come to visit him and then go away. He used to refer prophecy to daemons; |C| he paid the greatest attention to Delphi, and there were none of the stories told of Dionysus, or of the rites performed here, of which he had not heard. But he would say that all those stories belonged to mighty sufferings of daemons, and among them this of the Python; only that his slayer was not exiled for nine years nor to Tempe, but was turned out into another universe, returning thence after nine revolutions of the Great Year, purified and “Phoebus” indeed, to resume possession of the oracle, which had been guarded in the meanwhile by Themis. That the stories of the Typhons and Titans were |D| similar; there had been battles of daemons against daemons, followed by banishment of the defeated or expiation of offenders by a God, for instance, Typhon is said to have sinned against Osiris, and Cronus against Uranus; deities whose honours have become dim or been altogether forgotten since they were removed to another universe. Thus I hear that the Solymi, who dwell near the Lycians, hold Cronus in special honour; but when he had slain their princes, Arsalus, Dryus, and Trosobius, he was banished and removed (whither they cannot say). So he passed out of account, but Arsalus and his fellows are called “stern Gods”, and the Lycians publicly |E| and in private make execrations in their names. Many stories like these may be had out of theological collections.’ ‘But if we call certain daemons by the recognized names of Gods,’ the stranger said, ‘it should be no wonder, for to whatever God each has been assigned, to share his power and honour, after him he likes to be called; even as among ourselves one is “of Zeus”, one “of Athena”, one “of Apollo,” one “of Dionysus”, one “of Hermes”; only some have by accident been rightly called, most have received names quite inappropriate, |F| misapplied names of Gods.’

XXII. Here Cleombrotus paused. All present found his story a marvellous one, but Heracleon asked how it bore upon Plato, and in what sense he had given the note. ‘You perfectly remember’, said Cleombrotus, ‘that he rejected, on the face of it, an infinity of worlds, but felt a difficulty as to |422| a limited number, and was ready to go up to five,[162] thus conceding probability to those who assume one world for each element, but himself keeping to one. This appears to be peculiar to Plato, the other philosophers[163] regarding with horror any plurality, because, if you do not limit matter to one world, when you pass outside unity you arrive at once at an unlimited and perplexing infinity.’ ‘But did your stranger’, I asked, ‘limit the number of worlds as Plato does, or did you neglect to find this out when you were with him?’ ‘Was it |B| likely,’ said Cleombrotus, ‘when he graciously put himself at my disposal? On these points, if on nothing else, I was, of course, an attentive and eager listener. What he said was that there is not an infinite number of worlds, nor yet one, nor yet five, but one hundred and eighty-three, arranged in a triangle with sixty worlds in each side. Of the three left over, each is placed at one angle. Each world keeps a light touch on its neighbours while they revolve as in a dance. The area inside the triangle is the common hearth of all, and is called the “Plain of Truth”, and within it the formulae, and ideas, and patterns, |C| of things which have been and things which are, lie undisturbed. Eternity is around them, and from it, like a stream drawn off from it, Time passes to the worlds. Once in ten thousand years human souls, if they have lived good lives, are allowed to see and inspect this sight; and the best of the initiations performed here are a dream of that review and that initiation. In our philosophical discourses we are working on the memory of the fair things which are seen there, or else our discourse is vain. This’, he said, ‘is the tale I heard from him; he spoke as a man does in the mystery of an initiation, and offered no demonstration or evidence.’

XXIII. I turned to Demetrius: ‘How’, I said, ‘do the |D| lines about the Suitors run, where they wondered to see Ulysses handling the bow?’ When he had remembered them, ‘Just’, I said, ‘what it comes into my head to say about your stranger:

Surely the rogue some pilfering expert is[164]

in doctrines and theories from everywhere. He had travelled widely in letters, and he was no Barbarian, but a Greek steeped deeply in Greek learning. The number of his worlds proves it against him, for it is not Egyptian nor yet Indian, but Dorian of Sicily, and comes from a man of Himera named Petron. |E| His own pamphlet I never read and I do not know whether it is extant; but Hippys of Rhegium, mentioned by Phanias of Eresus, records it as his view or theory that there are one hundred and eighty-three worlds all in touch with one another “by elements”, whatever that may mean; he gives no further explanation or proof of any sort.’ ‘What proof could there be’, broke in Demetrius, ‘in matters of that sort, where Plato, without a word to make it reasonable or likely, simply laid down his theory?’ ‘And yet’, said Heracleon, |F| ‘we hear you grammarians referring the view to Homer,[165] on the ground that he distributes the whole into five worlds, Heaven, Water, Air, Earth, Olympus. Two of these he leaves “common”, namely, Earth with all the lower portion of the whole, Olympus with all the upper. The three in the middle have been allotted to the three Gods. So also Plato,[166] apparently assigning to the different aspects of the whole the bodily forms |423| and figures which are the most beautiful and the first, spoke of five worlds, one each for earth, water, air, fire, but kept for last that which includes the others, the world of the Dodecahedron, an expansible and versatile body, and assigned to it the figure which suits the psychical periods and movements.’ Demetrius said: ‘Why not let sleeping Homers lie for the present? We have had enough of myths. But as to Plato, he is very far from calling the five different aspects of the world five worlds; and, where he is combating those who assume an infinite number, states his own opinion that this is the only one, and is the sole creation of God and beloved by him, brought into being |B| out of the corporeal whole, entire, complete, and self-sufficing. Hence it may appear strange that he should himself state the truth, yet supply to others the fundamental principle of a view which is improbable and irrational. To give up the defence of a single world was in a sort to grant the assumption of the infinity of the whole. To make the definite number of worlds five, neither more nor less, was quite against reason and removed from all probability. Unless’, he added, turning to me, ‘you have anything to say?’ ‘It seems to me’, I said, ‘to come to this, that you have now dropped our discussion about oracles, as concluded, and are taking up a fresh one of equal |C| importance.’ ‘We have not dropped the old one,’ said Demetrius, ‘only we do not decline the new when it fastens on us. For we do not mean to linger upon it, only to touch on it sufficiently to ask how far it is probable; then we will return to the original subject.’

XXIV. ‘In the first place then,’ I said, ‘the reasons which prevent the making of an infinite number of worlds do not prevent the making of more worlds than one. It is possible that both prophecy and a Providence may find place in several worlds, and that the intrusion of Chance may be very small, while most things, and those the greatest, observe order in |D| their origin and their transition, none of which suppositions is consistent with Infinity. In the next place, it is most consonant with reason that God should not have made the world a sole creation and left it to itself. For, being perfectly good, he is lacking in no virtue, least of all in the virtues of Justice and Friendliness, for these are most beautiful and becoming Gods. Now it is the nature of God to have nothing which is idle or without use. Therefore there are other Gods and worlds outside, towards which he exercises the social virtues; for Justice, or Gratitude, or Benevolence, cannot be exercised towards himself or any part of himself, it must be towards |E| others. So it is not likely that this world should toss about in the infinite void without friends, without neighbours, without communication; since we see Nature herself wrapping up individuals in classes and species, as though in jars or seed-vessels. There is nothing in the whole list of things which has not some common formula, nor can anything be called by a distinctive name which does not possess, generically or individually, certain qualities.[167] But the world is not spoken of as possessing generic qualities; it has qualities then as an individual, which distinguish it from others akin to and resembling itself. For |F| if there is not in the world such a thing as one man, one horse, one star, one God, one daemon, what is to prevent there being in Nature not one world, but several? If any one says that Nature has one earth and one sea, he fails to see the obvious fact of similar parts. For we divide earth into parts, all with one common name, and sea likewise. But a part of the world is no longer a world; it is composed of parts naturally different.

XXV. ‘Again, the chief fear which has led some to use |424| up the whole of matter on our world, that nothing may be left outside to disturb its coherence by resistance or thrusts, is a needless one. For suppose several worlds, to each of which is apportioned its own being, and matter definitely measured and limited, then nothing will be left outside without place or formation, like an extruded remnant, to put pressure from without. For the law which has control of the matter allotted to each world will not allow anything to be thrust out and wander to strike upon another world, or anything from another to strike its own, because Nature admits neither quantity without limit, nor movement without law and arrangement. |B| Or, even if any stream be drawn off and pass from worlds to other worlds, it must needs be homogeneous and kindly, mingling itself mildly with all, as the stars when they blend their rays. And the worlds themselves must have delight, as they gaze on one another in friendliness, and must also provide for the Gods in each, who are many and good, times of intercourse and common cheerfulness. There is nothing impossible in all this, no fairy tale and no paradox; unless, mark me, the views of Aristotle[168] are to bring it into suspicion on physical grounds. For if each body has its own place, as he says it has, earth must necessarily move towards the centre |C| from every side, and the water rest upon it, underlying the lighter elements because of its weight. If, then, there are many worlds, the result will be that earth is in many places above fire and air, and in many below them; and the same with air and water too, which will be here in natural places, there in unnatural. Which being impossible, as he thinks, there must neither be two worlds nor more than two, but this one only, composed of all matter, and established according to Nature and to the several qualities of matter.

XXVI. ‘However, all this is more plausible than true. Look at it in this way,’ I went on, ‘dear Demetrius: when |D| he says that some bodies move downward towards the middle, others upwards from the middle, others around the middle, with reference to what does he take the middle? Not to the void surely, for on his view there is none. But in the view of those who allow a void, it has no middle, just as it has no first or last, for these are limits, but the infinite has no limits. Or if a man were to force himself, by sheer thinking, to conceive any middle point in an infinite void, what is the resulting difference in the movements of the different bodies towards it? Bodies have no force in the void, nor yet have bodies any choice or impulse to make them aim at the middle and tend towards it from all sides. Besides, where there are bodies with |E| no soul, and a place which is incorporeal and without difference of parts, it is as impossible to conceive of any movement towards it arising out of themselves, as of any attraction upon them arising out of it. It remains that the middle is spoken of not in a local sense but in a corporeal. For granted that this world has unity of structure with many dissimilar elements, the different parts have necessarily different movements towards different objects. This is clear from the consideration |F| that different elements, where their substance is transferred, change their places at the same time; rarefaction distributes in a circular movement the matter raised upwards from the middle; consolidation and condensation press matter downward towards the middle and force it together.

XXVII. ‘On this subject more words are needless here. Whatever you assume to be the effective cause of these vicissitudes and changes, it will hold each world together within itself. Each world has earth and sea, each has a middle point |425| of its own, its own vicissitudes and changes of the bodies upon it, and a nature and a force which preserve everything and keep it in its place. As for what is outside, whether it be nothing or an infinite void, it presents no middle point, as we have said; while, if there be many worlds, each has a middle point of its own, and therefore a special movement of bodies to or from or about that middle (to follow the distinction made by these thinkers). To insist that, where there are many middle points, weights press from all sides to one, is as though we should insist that, whereas there are many men, the blood from all should flow together into a single vein, and the brains of all be enveloped in a single pia mater; and to make it a grievance |B| that all hard bodies in nature should not be together in one place, and all rarefied bodies in another. That would be preposterous, and equally so to complain that wholes should have their parts disposed in their natural order within each of them. It might be absurd to call that a world which has a moon low down[169] within it, like a man with his brain lodged in his ankles or his heart in his temples. But to make several independent worlds, and then to differentiate the parts in sets to follow their wholes, and so divide them, is not absurd. Earth, |C| sea, and heaven will be in their natural and proper arrangement within each. Above, below, around, middle have no relation to another world or to the outside, each world has them all in and for itself.

XXVIII. ‘As to the “stone” which some assume to be outside the world, it is not easy to form a conception of it, either as at rest or in motion. For how is it either to remain at rest, being weighty, or to move towards the world, like other heavy bodies, being no part of it nor reckoned in with its substance? Earth embraced in another world, and attached to it, need cause |D| no difficulty, when it does not part from the whole because of its weight, and shift hitherwards, since we see the natural strain by which each of the parts is held in its place. For if we look, not to the world but outside it, to get our conception of “below” and “above”, we shall find ourselves in the same difficulties as Epicurus, who made all his atoms move to places under our feet, as though either the void had feet, or infinite space permitted us to conceive of “above” or “below” within itself! Hence, again, we must feel surprise at Chrysippus, or indeed be quite at a loss as to what possessed him to say that the world has been settled “in the middle”, and that its substance, having occupied this middle place from all eternity, |E| works therewith for permanence and in fact for indestructibility. These are his words in the Fourth Book of his work on “Things Possible”, where he falsely dreams of a middle of the infinite, and assigns, still more preposterously, to that non-existent middle the cause of the stability of the world; and yet he had often said in other works, that substance is controlled and maintained by the movements towards and away from its own middle point.

XXIX. ‘Then as to the other arguments of the Stoics, who can find them alarming? They ask how we are to keep one Destiny and one Providence if there are many worlds, and whether we shall not have many “Diès” and many “Zenès”. |F| In the first place, if it is absurd that we should have Zeus in the plural number, surely their scheme will be far more absurd; for they make, in the revolutions of infinite worlds, sun, moon, Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon, all multiplied to infinity. Then, what makes it necessary that there should be many “Diès”, if there are more worlds than one, rather than one principal God the emperor of the whole, possessing intelligence and reason, sovereign in each world, such a one as he who is called with us lord and father of all? Or what is to prevent all worlds |426| from being subject to the Destiny and Providence of Zeus, and that he should overlook and control each in turn, supplying to each the principles, the seeds, the formulae of all which is brought about? It cannot be that here we often have a single body composed of diverse bodies, as an assembly, an army, a choir, each of whose component bodies has life, thought, apprehension (and this is the view of Chrysippus), and yet that it should be impossible that in the Whole there should be ten worlds or fifty, or a hundred, all based on a common |B| formula, and ranged under a single principle. Nay, such a disposition is altogether worthy of Gods. We have not to make them sovereigns of a hive out of which they never pass; to guard, nor to enclose or imprison them in matter, which is what the Stoics do when they make the Gods atmospheric phases, or powers of the waters or the fire, infused therein, brought into being with their world and again burnt up with it, not leaving them unattached or free, as charioteers or steersmen might be; but rather, as statues are nailed or soldered to their bases, shut into the corporeal and clamped thereto, to share with it till there come destruction and general dissolution and change.

XXX. ‘Yet the other theory is loftier and more magnificent, |C| that the Gods are masterless and self-controlled, as the Tyndaridae when they help sailors in storm.

They visit them, the waves they bind

By soothing pow’r, and tame the wind,

not going on board themselves to share the peril, but appearing from above and delivering men; even so the Gods visit the worlds, now one and now another; drawn on by joy as they contemplate, and steering each in its natural course. |D| For the Zeus of Homer[170] had not very far to carry his eye from Troy to the parts of Thrace, and the wandering tribes about the Ister; but the real Zeus has beautiful passages and becoming to himself among worlds more than one, not looking out upon an infinite void, nor having his mind intent upon himself and nothing else (as was the view of some), but surveying many works of Gods and men, and movements and periodic orbits of stars. The divine nature is no foe to changes, but takes much delight in them, if we may judge from the bodies which |E| appear in the heavens, their changes and periods. Now Infinity is altogether without feeling or reason; it has no room to admit a God, all goes by chance and spontaneously. But the Providence which cares for worlds defined and limited in number appears to me to involve nothing less dignified or more laborious than that which has entered a single body, and attached itself thereto, to refashion or shape it anew in infinite particulars.’

XXXI. Having said so much, I paused. Philippus, after a short interval, went on: ‘Whether the truth about these |F| things be so, or not, I could not, for my own part, assert with confidence. But if we are to force the God outside one world, why make him the artificer of five worlds and no more; and what is the bearing of that number on the plurality of worlds? I would rather be informed on this point than as to the inner meaning of the consecration of the letter “E” in this place. That letter is neither triangle, nor square, nor “perfect”, nor cubic, nor has it any other apparent elegance for those who love and admire such things. The process out of the elements, at which the Master obscurely hinted, is hard to grasp |427| in every respect, and shows none of that probability which must have drawn him on to say that it is likely that out of five solid bodies having equal angles and equal faces and enclosed by figures of equal area, when set into matter, the same number of perfect worlds was at once produced.’

XXXII. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘yet Theodorus of Soli seems to treat the argument very fairly, in expounding the Mathematics of Plato. This is his method: the Pyramid, the Octahedron, the Eicosahedron and the Dodecahedron, the solid figures which Plato ranks first, are all beautiful because of the symmetry and equality of their formulae; nothing better than these or equal to them has been left over for Nature to compose |B| or to frame. They have not, however, all been constructed on a single plan, nor have all a similar origin. The Pyramid is the finest and smallest, the largest and the one of most parts is the Dodecahedron; of the remaining two the Eicosahedron is more than double the Octahedron in number of triangles.[171] It follows that it is impossible for all to take their origin at once from one and the same matter. For those which are fine and small, and more simple in their structures, must be the first to obey him who stirs and fashions the mass; they must sooner cohere and be completed than those whose parts are abundant, and the figures complex, and their construction more laborious, |C| as the Dodecahedron. It follows that the Pyramid is the only primal body, and that none of the others is so; they are left behind by Nature in the becoming. For this strange result there is, however, a remedy, the division and distribution of matter into five worlds. Here the Pyramid (for it first formed substance), there the Octahedron, in a third world the Eicosahedron. But from the figure which first took substance in each the rest will take their origin, all change arising by concretion or dissolution of parts, as Plato himself shows.[172] He goes thoroughly into nearly all the cases, but for us a brief survey will suffice. Since air is formed when fire is extinguished, and when rarefied |D| again yields fire out of itself, we must observe what happens to the seeds of either element, and the changes. The seeds of fire[173] are the Pyramid with its twenty-four primary triangles; the seeds of air are the Octahedron with its forty-eight. Therefore one element of air is formed by the commixture and coherence of two of fire; and one of air is exchanged into two of |E| fire, or by close pressure into itself passes away into the form of water. Thus, universally, that which is first formed readily allows the others to come into being by transmutation. It is not the case that one is first; different elements in different structures give the initial and prerogative movement into being, yet the common name is kept throughout.’

XXXIII. ‘Bravo, Theodorus!’ said Ammonius; ‘he has worked out his task with spirit. Yet I shall be surprised if he is not found to be using assumptions which are mutually destructive. He wants to have it that all five solids do not attain their structure together, the finest and easiest of |F| composition always breaking first into being. Then, as though following upon this, and not conflicting with it, he lays it down that it is not all matter which admits the finest and simplest element first, but that sometimes the heavy and complex objects are the first to emerge out of matter. But to pass over this, whereas it is assumed that there are five primal bodies, and therefore an equal number of worlds, he makes out probability for four only; he has discarded the Cube as if playing at |428| counters, since Nature does not adapt it to pass into the others or them into itself, because the triangles are not of the same kind. In the other cases the basis of formation is the semi-(equilateral) triangle; to the Cube the right-angled isosceles is peculiar, which is incapable of converging towards the others or joining with them to form one solid angle. If then, there are five bodies and five worlds, and in each the primary belongs to some one, then where the Cube has been the first to come into being, the rest will be nowhere, for it is unable to change into any of them. I pass by the fact that they make the element of the Dodecahedron also a different thing from that scalene |B| out of which Plato constructs the Pyramid, the Octahedron, and the Eicosahedron. And so’, added Ammonius, with a laugh, ‘you must either resolve these difficulties, or give us something of your own about the common problem.’

XXXIV. ‘I have nothing more probable to offer, at least at the moment;’ I said, ‘yet perhaps it is better to show cause for one’s own view than for that of others. I say then, going back to the beginning, that if we assume two natures, one sensible, liable to changes of becoming and perishing, and to various movements at different times, the other essential, intellectual, always behaving alike under the same conditions, it is strange, friend, that the intellectual should admit of distinction and division within itself, while with regard to that which is bodily, and subject to affections, there should be trouble and |C| dissatisfaction if we refuse to leave it one, self-coherent and self-convergent, but separate and part it. Surely it is rather the permanent and divine which should hold together and shrink, as far as may be, from all dissection and analysis. Yet the force of “the Other” has gripped them, and has worked greater divergences than those of place in things intellectual, I mean those made by Reason and Idea. Hence Plato,[174] opposing those who make out the Whole to be one, tells us of Being, and the |D| Same, and the Different, and, besides all these, of Movement and Rest. Given then these five, it would not be wonderful if these five corporeal elements have been made by Nature copies and images of them severally, none free from admixture or transparent, but each element so far as it could best participate in each principle. Thus the Cube is clearly a body congenial to Rest, because of the stability and firmness of its surfaces. No one can fail to detect the fire-like, active character of the Pyramid in the fineness of its sides and the sharpness of its angles. The nature of the Dodecahedron, which embraces |E| the other figures, might well be taken for an image of Being in relation to all that is corporeal. Of the remaining two, the Eicosahedron is found most to partake of the idea of the Different, the Octahedron of that of the Same. Therefore the latter represented air, which holds all being in one constant form, the former water, which when mixed assumes new qualities the most numerous. If then Nature requires throughout equality before the law, it is probable that worlds have been created neither more nor less in number than the patterns, in order that each pattern in each world may hold that primacy and power which it has had in the composition of the elementary bodies.

|F| XXXV. ‘So much for that! May it reassure any one who is surprised at our dividing the natural processes of becoming and mutation into so many classes! Now comes another point, which I will ask you all to consider with me. Of the ultimate first principles, by which I mean unity and the undelimited two, the latter, as the element of all shapelessness and disorder, has been called Infinity; but unity by its nature limits and arrests what is void and irrational and undetermined in |429| Infinity, and imparts shape, and fits it to receive and endure that definition of things apprehended by the senses which is implied in counting. These principles appear first in connexion with number; but I would rather say, universally, that plurality is not number until unity supervenes, as form upon matter, and cuts off from undetermined Infinity, more on this side, less on that. For plurality in each case only becomes number when it is determined by unity. Again, if unity be struck off, the undetermined two throws all into a confusion without balance or limit or measure. Now since form is not a withdrawal |B| of underlying matter but is shape and order thereof, both principles must necessarily be found in number, and hence arises the first and greatest difference or dissimilarity. The undetermined principle is the constructive cause of the even, the better one of the odd. Two is the first of the even numbers, three of the odd; out of them comes five, in its composition common to both lists, in its effect, odd. For when the sensible and corporeal was to be divided into several parts, in virtue of the inherent cogency of the Other, their number must not be the first even nor yet the first odd, but the third, that formed out of these, so that it may take its origin from both |C| principles, that which constructs the even and that which constructs the odd; for neither could possibly be separated from the other; each possesses the nature and power of a principle. Both principles then being paired, the better one checked the indeterminate when it was dividing up the corporeal; and prevailed; when matter was being distributed between the two it set unity in the middle, and did not allow an equal division of the whole. So a plurality of worlds has been brought into being by the “Other” quality in the undetermined, and by difference; but that plurality is odd, made so by the operation of “the Same” and “the Determinate”, and odd in such a sense that Nature was not allowed to advance beyond what was best. For if the unity had been without admixture |D| and pure, matter would have been exempt from any breaking up whatever; but as it has been mingled with the discriminative power of the two, separation and division were so far accepted; but there it stopped, the even overcome by the odd.

XXXVI. ‘Hence again the ancients were accustomed to use the words “to take fives” for to count. I think, too, that the word for “all” (panta) has been logically formed as though from “five” (pente) because the number five is composed of the first numbers. For the others when multiplied by other numbers come out to a product different from themselves; but five if taken an even number of times gives a perfect ten, if an odd, it reproduces itself. I pass over the facts |E| that five is composed of the first two squares, one and four, and that its own square is equal to the sum of the two before it, forming with them the most beautiful of right-angled triangles, and that it is the first number to give sesquiplicate ratio. For perhaps they are not germane to the subject before us. This, however, is more germane, that the number five has a divisory virtue, and Nature divides most things by five. In |F| ourselves are five senses, and there are five parts of the soul, those of growth, sense, appetite, passion, reason. We have five fingers on each hand; seed is most fertile when it parts into five (no instance has been recorded of a woman bearing more than five at a birth); Rhea is said in Egyptian mythology to have given birth to five Gods,[175] a veiled reference to the production of the five worlds out of one matter. Turning to the universe, the surface of earth is divided into five zones, and the Heavens are divided by five circles, two Arctic, two |430| Tropic, one in the middle, the Equinoctial. Five are the orbits of the planets, if we take those of the sun and Venus and Mercury as one. Lastly, the universe has been composed in the Enharmonic Scale, just as our melody is made up of the arrangement of five Tetrachords, lowest, middle, conjunct, disjunct, highest. And the intervals are five: diesis, semitone, tone, tone and a half, double tone. Thus it seems that Nature loves to make all things on the principle of five, rather than, as Aristotle[176] used to say, of the Sphere.

XXXVII. ‘What is the real reason, some one will ask, why Plato[177] referred the number of five for his worlds to the five solid figures, saying that “God used the fifth formation on the universe to mark it out”? In the sequel, when he raises the |B| problem of plurality of worlds, whether we should properly speak of one or of five as naturally existing, he shows clearly that the suggestion came from the solids. If, then, we are to adjust what is actually probable to his conception, let us consider that difference in movement must in each case follow difference in the solids and their shapes, as Plato[178] himself teaches, when he |C| shows that what is rarefied or condensed suffers a change of place simultaneously with alteration of substance. If from air fire be formed, the Octahedron being resolved and broken up into Pyramids, or again if air from fire, when compressed and thrust into an Octahedron, it is impossible that either should remain where it was before; they fly off rapidly to another place, forcing a way out and battling with whatever resists and presses upon them. The result is shown still more clearly by an illustration from grain “tossed and winnowed by the fans and implements used for cleaning corn”; Plato[179] says that |D| in like manner the elements toss matter about and are tossed by it; like approaches like, different objects take different places, before the whole comes out finally marshalled. Thus then, matter being what any universe must be from which God is absent, the first five properties, each with its own tendency, at once began to move apart, not being entirely or purely separated, because, when all things were mixed up together, the vanquished particles always followed their conquerors, in despite of Nature. Hence they produced in the kinds of bodies, as they were borne in different directions, parts and divisions as many as themselves: one not of pure fire but |E| resembling fire, one not of unmixed air but resembling air, one not of earth simple and absolute but resembling earth. Most general was the association of air with water, because they passed out saturated with the many other classes. For God did not separate nor disperse being; but taking it up dispersed by its own operation and borne about in so many streams of disorder, he ordered and disposed it in symmetry and proportion. |F| Then he set reason in each to be a governor and guardian, and created as many worlds as there were kinds of primal bodies. Let so much then be inscribed to Plato for Ammonius’ sake. For myself, I could never speak with confidence as to the number of worlds and affirm that there are so many: but I think the view that there are more than one, yet not an indefinite but a limited number, as reasonable as either of the other views, when I see how scattered and divided matter naturally is, that it does not abide in one place, nor yet |431| is suffered by reason to pass into Infinity. Here, if anywhere, let us remember the Academy rule, and clear ourselves of excessive credulity, and treading on this slippery ground when reasoning about Infinity, only make sure that we keep our footing.’

XXXVIII. When I had finished, ‘Lamprias gives us sound advice’, said Demetrius. ‘The Gods by many forms—not “of sophistries”, as it is in Euripides,[180] but of things—deceive us, when we dare to pronounce opinions about these |B| great matters as if we knew. But “we must cry back”, to quote the same authority,[181] to the assumption from which our argument started. The statement that the oracles, when the daemons move off and desert them, lie idle and speechless, like musical instruments with none to play on them, raises another and a greater question as to the cause and power whereby they make the prophets and prophetesses subject to fits of inspiration and fancy. For it is impossible to allege the desertion as a cause of the silence unless we are first satisfied in what sense they preside and by their presence make the oracle active and vocal.’ ‘What?’ rejoined Ammonius, ‘do you suppose that the daemons are anything but souls which move around, as Hesiod[182] says “garmented in mist”? In my view, as man differs from man when he plays tragedy or |C| plays comedy, so soul differs from soul after it has fashioned for itself a body convenient to its present life. It is not then irrational or even wonderful that souls meeting souls should create within them fancies of that which is to be, just as we convey to one another, not only through voice, but often by written signs, by a touch, a glance, many intimations of things past, and forewarnings of things future. Or perhaps you have something different to tell us, Lamprias? For a rumour reached us lately that you had held a long discussion on these subjects with strangers at Lebadeia; but our informant |D| did not clearly remember any of it.’ ‘Do not be surprised at that,’ I said, ‘for there were many interruptions and much was going on, because it was a day of consultation and sacrifice, which made our conversation fragmentary and intermittent.’ ‘But now’, said Ammonius, ‘you have listeners with full leisure, and eager to inquire and to be told. There is no question of rivalry or faction, and you see what a frank full hearing has been accorded to every view.’

XXXIX. The others joined in encouraging me, and after a few minutes of silence I went on: ‘I must begin by saying |E| that it so happens that you, Ammonius, have given me a sort of opening for bringing forward now what I then said. For if the souls which have been separated from the body or have never had commerce with one at all, are daemons as you say, and God-like Hesiod[183] also:

Holy visitants of Earth and guardians sure of mortal men,

on what principle do we deprive souls while in their bodies of that faculty whereby the daemons know and declare beforehand things to be? It is not likely that any power or new part accrues to souls when they leave the body, which they did not possess before. Rather, they always have it, but in a weak degree while they are intermingled with the body; it is sometimes quite invisible and veiled, sometimes weak and dim, and, as with those who see through a mist or who try to move in a marshy place, inoperative and dull, demanding much attention to the virtue that is in them, and much pains to raise and remove and purify the obstructing veil. The sun when he chases the clouds away does not then become bright; he is bright always, |432| but to us through the mist his light appears dim and struggling. Even so the soul does not assume the prophetic power when it passes out of the body as out of a cloud; it has it even now, but is blinded by its close admixture with the mortal state. We should not be surprised or incredulous, if only because we see the great energy which Memory, as we call the faculty in the soul which answers to prophecy, exhibits, in preserving and protecting things that are past, or rather things that now are,[184] since of things past none is or has substance; all things |B| come into being and at the same time perish, all actions, words, and feelings, as time like a river bears each along. But this faculty of the soul, I know not how, gets a grasp of them, and invests with appearance and being that which is not present. The oracle given to the Thessalians about Arne[185] bade them attend to

That which a deaf man hears, a blind man sees.

But Memory is the hearing of things to which the ear is deaf, the seeing of things to which the eye is blind. Wherefore, as I said, it is no marvel that, as it grasps things which no longer are, so it should anticipate things which have not yet come into being. For these touch it more nearly, and with these it has sympathy; it confronts the future and attaches itself |C| thereto, whereas it is quit of things past and finished, saving only to remember them.

XL. ‘Having then this inborn power yet dimmed and hardly appearing, souls nevertheless break out and are uplifted, in dreams some of them or when nearing initiation, as the body becomes pure, and takes on a temperature, so to speak, which is suitable, or whether it be that the rational and intellectual part is relaxed and discharged from the present things, and so with the irrational and imaginative they reach towards futurity. That line of Euripides[186] is not true:

The best of prophets he who guesses well.

No, the prophet is the sensible man, he who follows the rational part of his soul in the road where it leads him with probability. Divination, like a scroll with no writing or method, in itself |D| indeterminate, but capable of receiving fancies and presentiments by the feelings, gets touch with the future, yet not by inference, when it passes most completely outside the present. It passes out through such a temperament and disposition of the body as produce a change called by us inspiration. Often the body attains this disposition of itself; but the earth sends up many streams of many potencies, some which bring trances, diseases, or death, others beneficial, mild, and serviceable, as is proved on those who chance upon them. Of all the currents the stream, or breath, of prophecy is most divine and holy, |E| whether it be drawn from the air direct, or come mingled with the moisture of a spring; for when absorbed into the body it produces in souls a temperament unfamiliar and strange, the special quality of which it is hard to state in clear words, though reason suggests many conjectures. Probably, by heat and dispersion, it opens certain passages to admit imaginings of the future, just as the fumes of wine bring many other stirrings, and unveil words and thoughts which were stored away and unheeded, |F|

For in the wine-god’s votary’s mood,

As in the madman’s, lies much prophecy,

says Euripides;[187] when the soul, warmed and set on fire, rejects the caution which human prudence brings, to avert inspiration, as it so often does, and to quench it.

XLI. ‘After all, it might be not unreasonably asserted that a dryness introduced with the heat subtilizes the current and makes it ethereal and pure. “Best a dry soul”, says Heraclitus;[188] moisture not only dulls sight and hearing, but if it |433| touch a mirror or raises[189] a mist upon it, takes away brightness and lustre. As the opposite to this, it is not impossible that, by a sort of chilling and condensation of the breath of air, the organ of prognostication is made tense and keen, like steel out of the bath. Or again, as tin when melted in with copper, itself rarefied and full of apertures, welds it together and condenses it, and yet in the result makes it brighter to the eye and purer, so there is nothing to prevent the prophetic exhalation, |B| wherein is something congenial and akin to souls, from filling up their rarefied places, and inserting itself, and pressing all together. For certain things are congenial and proper to certain other things; thus an infusion of the bean into the dyer’s bath seems to assist its efficacy for purple, of nitre for saffron.

Scarlet is mingled for the pearly weft,

says Empedocles. But about Cydnus, and the sacred sword of Apollo at Tarsus, we used to hear the story from you, dear Demetrius, how Cydnus cleans that steel best, and no other water suits the sword. And again, at Olympia, water from |C| Alpheus is poured on the ashes to make them adhere to the altar in a mass, and the water of no other river which has been found has the power of cementing the ash.

XLII. ‘It is not to be wondered at, then, that of the many streams which the earth sends up, these alone affect souls with inspiration and give them imagination of the future. Certainly legend agrees with reason as to this. In this very place it is related that the prophetic virtue was first made manifest by the accidental falling into it of a shepherd, who thereupon uttered sounds as of one inspired. These passed at first unheeded by those present; but afterwards, when the things which the man foretold had happened, there was astonishment. The most learned of the Delphians even mention |D| the man’s name, which was Coretas. I am, however, myself strongly of opinion that a soul acquires a temperature congruous with the prophetic current, such as the eye has with light sympathetic to it. Though the eye possesses the power of seeing, this cannot act without light; and the prophetic organ of the soul needs, as the eye does, a congenial medium to help in kindling its flame, or whetting its edge. Hence most of the older generations used to think that Apollo and the sun were one and the same God, while those who knew and honoured that beautiful and wise proportion, “as body to soul, so sight |E| to intellect, so light to truth”, would add the conjecture “so the power of the sun to the nature of Apollo”, declaring the sun to be his offspring and scion, the ever becoming of the ever subsisting. For the sun kindles and enhances and helps to excite the visual power of the sense, as the God that of prophecy in the soul.

XLIII. ‘It was natural, however, that those who take the view that they are one and the same God should have dedicated this oracle to Apollo and Earth in common, thinking that the sun produces in the earth the disposition and temperament from which come the prophetic exhalations out of her. We |F| then, like Hesiod,[190] who understood the matter better than some philosophers, when he called her

Unshaken base of all,

consider her to be eternal and imperishable. But of the powers which are about her it is to be expected that some should fail here, and others come into being there, and that there should be shiftings from place to place, and cross-currents, and that such cycles should often revolve within her if we take time as a whole; and the phenomena point to such an inference. For in the case of lakes and rivers, and still more frequently in that of hot springs, there have been failure and entire disappearance in some places, in others a retreat so to call it, and an absorption; |434| then they reappear at intervals of time in the same places, or bubble up in their neighbourhood. Again, we hear of mines where the ore has been exhausted and then renewed, as in the silver mines of Attica, and the copper lodes of Euboea, out of which the chilled sword-blades used to be manufactured, as Aeschylus[191] has said

Th’ Euboean blade, self-tempered, in his hand.

Then there is the rock at Carystus where it is only lately that the yield of delicate thread-like filaments of mineral has ceased. I think some of you will remember having seen towels, and nets, and caps made of these, which were non-inflammable. |B| Any which were soiled by use were placed in a flame out of which they came bright and clear. Now there has been an entire disappearance of these, and scarcely a few fibres or thin filaments run in streaks about the mines.

XLIV. ‘Yet Aristotle[192] holds that exhalation is the operative cause within the earth of all these things, that is, of the natural effects which necessarily fail, shift place, and break out concomitantly. The same view must be taken of prophetic currents; the power which they have is not perennial nor ageless, it is liable to changes. Probably they are extinguished by excessive storms of rain, and dispersed by thunderbolts |C| falling upon them; above all, when the earth is shaken, and subsidence or conglomeration takes place in her depths, the exhalations are shifted or wholly lost to view; thus the effects of the great earthquake which actually overturned the town are said to be permanent here. In Orchomenus they say that there was a pestilence in which many men perished, and that the oracle of Teiresias then wholly failed, and remains to this day idle and voiceless. If the like happened also to those in Cilicia, as we hear it did, there is no one, Demetrius, who could tell us about it more clearly than you.’

XLV. Demetrius said: ‘I cannot say how things are now, for it is a long time since I left home, as you know; the |D| oracle of Mopsus was in full force when I was there, and also that of Amphilochus. I can tell you of a very remarkable thing which happened to that of Mopsus, in my presence. The propraetor of Cilicia was himself still of two minds about religious questions; from the weakness of his scepticism, I imagine, for his general character was violent and bad; but he had about him certain Epicureans, professed mockers at all such things on the strength of their fine physiology. He sent in a freedman, equipping him like a spy going into an enemy’s land, with sealed tablets inside which was written the question, but no one knew what it was. The man spent a night in the |E| sanctuary, as the custom was, and went to sleep. The following day he reported a dream, which was this. He thought that a handsome man stood over him, and said the one word “Black”, nothing more, and went straight away. This appeared to us strange, and caused much perplexity. However, that propraetor was struck with consternation, and worshipped; then he opened the tablets and showed us this question written inside: “Shall I sacrifice a white bull or a black?” Even the Epicureans |F| were confounded at this, and he himself completed his sacrifice, and ever afterwards held Mopsus in reverence.’

XLVI. After saying this, Demetrius was silent. As I wished to bring the discussion to a head, I glanced again at Philippus and Ammonius, who were sitting together. They appeared to me to wish to exchange some remarks, and again paused. Then Ammonius spoke: ‘Philippus has also something to say on our past discussion; his own view, as that of most people, is that Apollo is not a different God from the sun, but the same. |435| My own difficulty is a greater one, and turns on greater matters. Just now we managed to let the argument take its own way with due solemnity, to transfer prophetic art simply from Gods to daemons. But now it seems to me that we are thrusting the latter out in their turn, chasing them hence from oracle and tripod, and resolving the origin—I would rather say the existence and power—of prophecy into winds, and vapours, and exhalations. What we have heard about temperatures, and |B| heatings and sharpenings, withdraws no doubt the credit from the Gods, but thereby suggests the inference as to cause which the Cyclops in Euripides[193] draws:

The earth by force, whether it will or no,

Bringing forth grass, fattens my flocks and hinds.

Only he says that he does not sacrifice to Gods,

but to myself,

And this great belly first of deities,

whereas we sacrifice and pray to get our oracles; and why do we do it, if souls carry within themselves a power of prophecy, which power is stirred up by temperature of some sort in air or breeze? And then the condition of the priestesses, what does |C| that mean, and the refusal to respond unless the whole victim from the hoof-joint up be set quivering when it is sprinkled? For it is not enough, as in other sacrifices, for it to shake the head, the shivering must be in all the parts, and with a tremulous sound; otherwise they tell you that the oracle is not giving responses, and do not bring in the Pythia. Now, if they ascribe the cause mainly to a God or daemon, it is reasonable to do and think thus, but on your view it is not reasonable. For the exhalation, if it be there, will produce the transport whether the sacrifice quiver or not, and will affect the soul, |D| not only of the Pythia, but equally of any chance comer who has physical contact with it. Thus it is mere folly to employ one woman only for the oracles, and to take trouble to keep her chaste and holy all her life. For that Coretas who fell in, as the Delphians tell you, and was the first to make evident the virtue of the place, was in no respect different, as I think, from the other goatherds and shepherds, always supposing that this is not a story and an idle fiction, which I think it is. Then, when I reckon up the great benefits of which this oracle has been the cause to the Greeks, in wars, in the founding of cities, in |E| times of pestilence and of failure of crops, I think it dreadful to ascribe its discovery and origin, not to God and Providence, but to Chance and automatic causes. It is this point’, he added, ‘that I want Lamprias to argue; will you not wait?’ ‘Indeed I will,’ said Philippus, ‘and so will the others, the discussion has stirred us all.’

XLVII. I turned to him. ‘Stirred us, Philippus? It has confounded me, to think that before so large and so grave a company I should seem so to forget my years as with a show of plausible rhetoric to upset and disturb any view about religion which is established in truth and holiness. I will |F| defend myself by producing Plato, as witness and advocate in one. Plato[194] found fault with old Anaxagoras because he attached himself too much to physical causes, and because, in his constant pursuit of the working of necessary law in all which affects bodies, he dismissed the better causes or principles, the Final and the Efficient. He himself, first of the philosophers or more than any of them, went into both sets, attributing to God the origin of all things which are according to reason, but |436| refusing to deprive matter of the causes necessary for their production; he recognized that in some such way the whole sensible universe is organized, yet is not pure nor free from admixture, but has its origin in matter involved with reason. Now look at this first in the case of the artists. Take, for instance, the famous base or stand, called by Herodotus[195] “cup-stand”, of the bowl here; it had its physical causes, iron, steel, fire to soften and water to temper it, without all which the object could not possibly be produced; but the more potent principle |B| which stirred the others and was working through them, was furnished to it by Art and Reason. Now the name of the maker or artificer has been inscribed on these several figures or works of imitation:

Here Polygnotus, son of Aglaophon,

The Thasian, painted towering Ilion’s sack.

You may see it for yourself. But without pigments crushed and compounded it would be impossible to present such a composition to the eye. Does then the man who seeks to grasp the physical principle, investigating and laying down the effects and |C| the changes of a mixture of Sinopic red earth with yellow, or Melian gray with black, rob the painter of his glory? Or he who follows out the processes of tempering or softening steel, how it is weakened by fire and submits itself to be drawn and hammered, then, plunged into fresh water and compressed and densified by the cold, because of the softness and rarefication induced by the fire, acquires temper and consistence—“the iron’s might” Homer[196] calls it—does he any the less preserve for the artist his part in the causation? I think not! There |D| are those who criticize the properties of medical appliances; they do not overthrow the art of Medicine. As, for the matter of that, Plato[197] in proving that we see by means of the flash of our eyes mingling with that of the sun, and hear by the pulsations of the air, did not rule out the fact that we have received our sight and our hearing in accordance with Reason and Providence.

XLVIII. ‘The whole matter, as I maintain, stands thus. All becoming has two causes, of which the most ancient theologians and poets chose to turn their attention to the stronger only, pronouncing over all things the universal refrain:

Zeus first, Zeus middle, all things are of Zeus,[198]

while they never approached the necessary or physical causes. Their successors, called physicists, did the very reverse; they |E| strayed away from that beautiful and divine principle, and refer everything to bodies, and pulsations, and changes, and temperaments. Hence the systems of both are deficient; they have ignored or neglected, the latter the person through whom and the agent by whom, the former the things from which and the means through which. He who first distinctly grasped both, and attached by necessary law the subject affected to the rational Maker and Mover, relieves us as well as himself from any charge of contempt or detraction. We do not make |F| prophecy a godless or irrational thing, when we assign to it for its matter the soul of man, and for its instrument, or harp-quill, the inspiring current and the exhalation. For, in the first place, the earth which breeds the exhalations, and the sun who gives to earth all power of temperature or of change, are reckoned Gods in the traditions of our fathers. Further, in leaving daemons to preside over and guard this temperature, as though it were a melody, to relax the strings in due course |437| or to tighten, to clear away that excess of ecstasy and agitation which it causes in the worshippers, and to leave excitement a painless and harmless compound, we shall not be thought to do what is irrational or impossible.

XLIX. ‘Nor can we allow that in offering the previous sacrifice, or crowning the victim, or pouring on it lustral draughts, we do anything repugnant to this view. For when the priests and holy men sacrifice the victim, and sprinkle it, and watch its movement and its trembling, they do not profess to get from it an intimation of anything but the one fact that the God is giving answers. For the thing offered in sacrifice must be pure both in body and in soul, and free from any injury or taint. As to body, it is not very difficult to make |B| out visible proof; the test of soul is to offer corn to the bulls, pease to the he-goats; an animal which refuses is reckoned out of health. For the she-goat it is cold water; a soul in a normal state cannot be apathetic and motionless under the sprinkling. For my own part, even if it be certain that trembling is a sign that the God is ready to give responses, the contrary that he |C| is not, I see no disastrous consequence. As I said before, every natural force produces its result better or worse according to season; if the right season is escaping us, it is to be expected that the God should signify the fact.

L. ‘I think, further, that the exhalation is not always the same, it has times of relaxation and of intensity. In proof, I can bring forward witnesses, many of them strangers, and all the members of the temple staff. For the room in which they place consultants of the God, is, at intervals, which are not frequent or fixed, but come as it may happen, filled with fragrance and a sweet gale, such as the most costly spices might emit, which are thrown up, as out of a well, from the sanctuary. |D| We may suppose that they burst out by the action of heat or of some other force within. Or, if this does not seem to you convincing, you will at least grant that the Pythia herself appears to show at different times different states and moods of that part of the soul which is in contact with the current, and does not present throughout one temperament, like a melody which never changes. Many conscious troubles and excitements, more which are unnoticed, seize her body and stream on into the soul; and when she is charged with these, it is better for her not to go in, not to present herself to the God when she is not perfectly pure, like an instrument well strung and tuneful, but is passionate and disordered. Wine does not always affect |E| the hard drinker in the same way, nor the flute one susceptible to its music; the same men are stirred to tipsy revelling, now less now more, according to difference of temperament. The imaginative part of the soul seems, more than any other, to be controlled by variations in the body, and to change with it. This is clearly shown by dreams; sometimes we find ourselves among many visions of every sort in our sleep, at others again there is a perfect calm and relief from such illusions. We know |F| ourselves Cleon here of Daulia, who says that in the many years which he has lived he has never once seen a dream-vision. In an older generation the same is recorded of Thrasymedes of Heraea. The cause is bodily temperament, just as, on the other side, there is that of melancholic persons, all dreams and phantoms; although these are supposed to have the gift of dreaming right, for their imagination turns them this way or that, |438| just as those who shoot often, often hit.

LI. ‘When then the imaginative and prophetic faculty of the soul is attempered to the current as to a drug, the inspiration must be brought about in the persons who are to prophesy, when not, not; otherwise the result will be a distortion by no means free from trouble and disturbance, as we know was the case with the Pythia who lately died. A deputation came from abroad to consult the God; the victim remained motionless and impassive under the first sprinkling, then the priests in |B| excess of zeal persisted, and at last it did give in when drenched with their shower-bath. What happened to the Pythia? Unwillingly and with no alacrity, they say, she went down into the vault. In her very first answers she made it clear by the hoarseness of her voice that she could not bear up; she was like a ship driven by the wind, filled with a dumb bad spirit. At last she became all agitation; with a terrible cry she made towards the door of exit, and dashed against it, so that not only the members of the deputation fled, but also the prophet Nicander and the holy persons present. However, after a short |C| time, they went in and recovered her. She was then in her senses, and lived on for a few days. For these reasons, they keep the person of the Pythia free from intercourse, and from any sort of communication or contact with strangers; and they take the signs before proceeding to the oracle, thinking that it is quite clear to the God when she has the temperament and condition which will allow her to undergo the inspiration with impunity. For the force of the exhaled air does not affect all persons, nor the same persons always in the same way; it only provides fuel, a foundation, as has been explained, for |D| those who are fit to be subjected to the change. It is essentially divine and daemonic, not however exempt from failure, or destruction, or age, nor is it capable of enduring through that infinite space of time in which all things between moon and earth are exhausted, according to our theory. Some go on to say that the things also which are above the moon do not endure, but fail in presence of the eternal infinite, and suffer abrupt changes and new births.

LII. ‘These things’, I continued, ‘I commend to your repeated consideration, and my own, as offering many openings for objection and many suggestions of an opposite view, which the present opportunity does not allow us to follow out in their |E| entirety. Let them stand over then, and also the problem raised by Philippus about the sun and Apollo.’

ON THE INSTANCES OF DELAY
IN DIVINE PUNISHMENT

INTRODUCTION

The Dialogue on Delay in Divine Punishment stands somewhat apart from the others. It deals gravely with grave matters, the ways of Providence with man, and the ‘last things’. The method is ingenious and satisfactory. An Epicurean, after scoffing at Providence in a manner which deeply offends the company, leaves them abruptly. We are reminded of the departure of the Cynic Didymus at Delphi (p. 124), and of the immortal episode of Thrasymachus in the First Book of the Republic of Plato. The small family party which remains, Plutarch, his brother Timon, his son-in-law Patrocleas, and an intimate friend Olympicus, take up the points suggested by the attack, not contentiously, or in the language of the Schools, but with a view to ascertain whether there is anything in them which concerns reasonable men. The friends successively raise these points: the slowness of the Gods in punishing, and their purposes in the delay; the justice of visiting the sins of parents upon children, or of a city upon a new generation of citizens; the persistence of the soul after physical death here. In all cases it is Plutarch who supplies the answer, whereas, in the other long Dialogues, there is some distribution of parts and an interplay of character. In the tone of the dissertations, which is sustained, and little relieved by humour, the piece most nearly resembles the essay On Superstition. Plutarch’s argument is marked by truly academic caution, and an admission of man’s ignorance and limitations, which might have come from the pen of Bishop Butler.

When Plutarch has sufficiently established ‘to demonstration’ the ‘probability’ of his position, he adds, at the urgent desire of the company, a myth, which he had already offered to produce. The ‘myth’ is a device of which Plato has many examples, intended to give symmetry to the Dialogue, ‘that it may not go about without a head’. But it is more than a literary device; it is a satisfaction of the desire for something poetical and constructive which mere Dialectic can never feed. The myth about Thespesius here must be compared with that of Timarchus in the Genius of Socrates and with the traveller’s tale of the Island of Cronus in the Face in the Moon.[199] Of Platonic myths, we are first reminded of that of Er, which closes the Republic, and raises to a higher plane the question whether the just man or the unjust has the best of it. There are necessarily strong points of resemblance to the magnificent judgement myth of the Gorgias, and much of the imagery recalls the Phaedo. The Timaeus is not perhaps so conspicuously before Plutarch’s mind here as it is in other works. While there is so much which can be referred to Plato, there is nothing to suggest that Plutarch set himself to make a patchwork out of the stores of his retentive memory, still less that he sought to imitate the master from whose genius his industrious and curious mind lay poles apart. His honesty and his common-sense forbade any such attempt.

It is fortunate that we possess a fragment (redeemed for Plutarch by Wyttenbach) of a Dialogue with the same speakers, and perhaps intended to follow immediately, in which, as though in ‘calculated contrast’, writes M. Gréard (p. 292), to the grim details contained in the Dialogue before us, we have a delightful picture of what awaits the just beyond the grave, the truly ‘initiate’. As all the questions discussed in the main Dialogue are raised in old Greek writers, Homer, Pindar, the Tragedians, supplemented by the philosophers, and the myth, in its stern imagery, is on all fours, for instance, with the Eumenides of Aeschylus, so the comfortable vision of the initiate in the fragment is anticipated by Greeks who wrote four hundred or five hundred years before. Thus we have the lines of the Frogs of Aristophanes (154 foll., tr. G. Murray):

Then you will find a breath about your ears
Of Music, and a light about your eyes
Most beautiful—like this—and myrtle groves,
And joyous throngs of women and of men,
And clapping of glad hands.

And the still more famous picture of Pindar (Ol. 2, 68-74, tr. G. Moberly):

But who in Godlike strife

Have dared to keep their secret souls from sin,

Thrice tried in either life,

E’en to old Saturn’s tower their bright way win.

There with melodious din
Light breezes, East and West,
Fan with soft breath the Islets of the Blest;
And golden flowerets breathe,
Some from the Island-trees,
Some floating on the ambient seas,

With which their twinèd arms and brows they wreathe.

Perhaps it would hardly be untrue to say that the whole of Plutarch’s daring speculation owes its origin to the words of Heraclitus, with which the fragment closes, as to the surprises which await man after death.

There is one distinct note of date, in the Sibylline prophecy quoted in c. 22, that the emperor of that day should die in his bed. Vespasian, who was doubtless meant, died in June, A.D. 79, and the great eruption of Vesuvius (by which, however, Puteoli does not appear to have suffered specially) took place in August of the same year. The Dialogue must have been written later than these events. On the whole, if we may venture a conjecture where all is uncertain, we may perhaps suppose it to have followed the Symposiacs at a comparatively short interval, and to have been an early attempt to apply the method of dialogue to elaborate discussion of great themes. It has characteristics of its own which enable us to understand how Erasmus (Adagia)[200] felt doubts as to its genuineness, though we have the confident assurance of Wyttenbach that there is Plutarch’s seal upon it.

Readers should consult Mr. Oakesmith’s pages on this work (The Religion of Plutarch, pp. 103 foll.), and, on the myth, Bishop Westcott’s Essay on The Myths of Plato (reprinted in History of Religious Thought in the West), or Professor J. A. Stewart on The Myths of Plato.

ON THE INSTANCES OF DELAY IN DIVINE PUNISHMENT

A DIALOGUE

THE SPEAKERS

Patrocleas, Plutarch’s son-in-law.

Plutarch.

Timon, Plutarch’s brother.

Olympicus, a friend (see Sympos. 3, 6).

I. Having spoken to this effect, Quintus, before any one |548 B| replied—we had just reached the far end of the colonnade—Epicurus took himself off. We stopped our walk for a while, in silent surprise at the oddness of the man, then glanced at one another, turned back, and resumed it. Patrocleas was the first to speak: ‘Which is it to be,’ he said, ‘are you for dropping the inquiry, or shall we answer the argument as though the speaker of it were present, though he is not present?’ Timon interposed: ‘Well, suppose he had thrown a spear and gone away, it would not do quietly to let it lie. Brasidas,[201] we are |C| given to believe, drew the spear out of his wound, and with it struck and slew the thrower. Now perhaps it is no business of ours to punish those who have discharged a monstrous or a false argument at us; enough if we eject it from ourselves before it has taken hold.’ ‘Then what is it’, I asked, ‘which has moved you most, in what he said? for there were a number of things, a disorderly mass, which the man drew from all quarters, to let them off against Divine Providence in his rage and fury.’

II. Then Patrocleas: ‘The slowness and procrastination of Divine Justice in the punishment of wicked men appears to |D| me especially terrible. At the present moment, after what we have just heard, I seem to come “all fresh and new” to this (Epicurean) view; but long ago I used to feel indignant when I heard Euripides[202] telling how

The Gods delay, the Gods are ever slow.

Yet it does not become the God to be slack in anything, least of all in dealing with wicked men; they are never slack or procrastinating in evil-doing, but are borne on by the passions at racing speed into their iniquities. Again, “Vengeance, when |E| it follows most closely upon the wrongs,” to use the words of Thucydides,[203] at once blocks the road against those who are in the fullest enjoyment of successful vice. No debt so surely as the debt of justice, if left unpaid till the morrow, at once depresses the person wronged by enfeebling his hopes, and enhances the boldness and self-trust of the miscreant; whereas the punishments which meet audacious acts promptly are checks against future offences, and have a sovereign virtue to encourage the sufferers. Thus I often feel distressed when I recall the saying |F| of Bias. It appears that he told a certain wicked man that he had no fear of his escaping retribution, he did fear that he himself might not be there to see. What did the Messenians gain by the punishment of Aristocrates, when they had been already slain? He had lost the battle at the Trench[204] by treachery, reigned over the Arcadians for more than twenty years undiscovered, and was at last found out and punished, but the Messenians were no more. What consolation to the Orchomenians, who had lost children, friends, and kinsmen through the treason of Lyciscus, was the disease which fastened upon him long years afterwards, and devoured his body? He had once and again dipped both feet into the river, with prayers and imprecations |549| as he wetted them, that they might rot away if he had done any wrong or treachery. At Athens, when the corpses of the “Accursed” were thrown out, and set beyond the frontier, it was not possible even for the children’s children of the victims to see it done. Hence it is strange that Euripides[205] should have used such thoughts as these to deter men from wickedness:

Justice shall never strike thee to the heart—

Fear not her footfall—no, nor any man

That does the wrong; with silent foot and slow,

When the day comes, she’ll stalk the sinners down.

|B| The very phrases—are they not?—which bad men might use to give themselves encouragement and assurance to set hand to lawless acts, since they show injustice yielding her harvest ripe and ready, and punishment lagging late and far behind the enjoyment.’

III. When Patrocleas had done, Olympicus spoke next: ‘Take another point, Patrocleas; what a grave absurdity these delays and hesitations on the part of Heaven involve! The slowness takes away all assurance of a Providence; and when misfortune comes to bad men, not on the heels of each wicked |C| deed, but later on, they set it down to mischance, and call it a calamity, not a punishment; they do not profit by it, they are annoyed at the things which befall them, but do not repent of the things which they have done. It is so with a horse; the touch of whip or spur which follows immediately on a stumble or blunder sets him up and brings him to his duty; whereas tugs and checks and ratings later on, after an interval, seem to him to have some purpose which is not education, they irritate, but do not school him. And so with vice; if punishment |D| from switch or rein follow every trip and tumble, vice will have the best chance of becoming thoughtful and lowly, and getting the fear of God, as of a Judge who stands over men in their acts and their passions, and does not wait till the day after to-morrow. Whereas, the Justice which moves calmly, “with a slow foot”, as Euripides put it, and falls upon the wicked “when the day comes”, resembles an automaton rather than a Providence, in her vague, procrastinating, unmethodical procedure. Thus I do not see what use there is in those “mills of the Gods” which |E| “grind slowly”, we are told,[206] for they make the form of Justice dim, and the fears of the wicked evanescent.’

IV. When all this had been said, and while I was deep in thought, Timon said: ‘Shall I intervene and with my own hand add the crowning stone of difficulty to our argument, or shall I allow it first to win through for itself against what we have already heard?’ ‘What need’, I said, ‘to let in the “third wave” and sluice the argument anew, if it prove unable to force aside the first objections and escape them? In the first place, then, we will start from our own ancestral hearth, from the |F| reserve, I mean, which the philosophers of the Academy show in speaking of what is divine; and reverently clear ourself from any claim to speak with knowledge about these matters. It is a graver mistake than for unmusical persons to discuss music, or civilians a campaign, if we mere men are to scrutinize the things which belong to Gods and daemons; the inartistic trying to track the inner thought of the artist, by fanciful and random conjecture. If it is hard for a layman to guess at the reasoning which led a doctor to use the knife later and not sooner, or to apply a lotion to-day and not yesterday, surely it is not easy for a mortal to speak with any certainty about God, more than this—that |530| he best knows the proper time for the curative treatment of vice, and applies the due punishment, as a medicine, to each man accordingly; for vice admits of no measure common to all, the proper time is not the same for every case. That the medical treatment of the soul which we call “Right” and “Justice” is of all arts the greatest, we have the testimony of thousands of witnesses, Pindar[207] among them. He acclaims the sovereign ruler of all the Gods as “in art most excellent”, because Justice is of his workmanship, and to her it pertains to determine the “when” and the “how” and the degree of punishment for every offender. And Plato[208] tells us that Minos, who is a son of Zeus, has become a learner of this art; showing that it is not possible for one who has not learnt, and acquired |B| the knowledge, to go straight in questions of right, or to apprehend the guiding principle. Even the laws which men frame are not everywhere, and on the face of them, reasonable; some enactments appear simply ludicrous. In Lacedaemon, for instance, the Ephors, when they first enter office, make proclamation that no one is to grow a moustache, and that “men should obey the laws, that the laws may not be hard upon them”. The Romans, when they release slaves “into freedom” give them a tap with a light reed. When they draw a will, they make one set of persons “heirs” and “sell” the property to others, which appears strange. Strangest of all is the enactment |C| of Solon, that the man who takes neither side in a party contest, but stands out, should lose the franchise. One might go on to mention many legal absurdities, where the intention of the lawyers and the reason of the provisions are out of our knowledge. Then, if human codes are so inscrutable, what wonder that, in speaking of the Gods, we cannot lightly lay down the principle upon which they punish some offenders later, some sooner?

V. ‘All this is no pretext for evading the issue; but it is a plea for indulgence; that the argument, having its harbour of refuge in sight, may rear itself confidently from the depths to meet the difficulty. Now first consider that, as Plato[209] shows, |D| God sets himself before us for a pattern of all good things, and implants in those who are able to follow God that human virtue which is, in a sort, likeness to himself. For Universal Nature, while yet unorganized, found the beginning of its change to a world of order in assimilation to the idea and excellence of God, and in a measure of participation therein. The same Plato[210] tells us that Nature kindled in us the sense of sight, in order that the soul, by gazing in wonder at the bodies which move through heaven, may become accustomed to welcome what is shapely and well ordered, to abhor ill-regulated and |E| roving passions, and to eschew, as the origin of all vice and naughtiness, whatever is random and fortuitous. For man has no greater natural enjoyment of God than to imitate and pursue all that in him is fair and good, and so to attain to virtue. Therefore is God slow and leisurely in inflicting punishment on the bad, not that he fears mistake on his own part if he punish quickly, or any repentance; rather he is putting away from us all brutish vehemence in the punishments we inflict, and teaching |F| us not to choose the moment of heat and agitation, when

High over reason temper leaps supreme,[211]

to spring upon those who have vexed us, as though glutting a thirst or a hunger; but to copy his own gentleness and long-suffering, to be orderly and staid when we set our hand to punishment, taking Time for a counsellor who will never have Repentance for his consort. For it is a smaller evil, as Socrates |551| used to say, to drink turbid water in our greediness, when we find it by the way, than with the reason still muddied, full of wrath and frenzy, before it has settled down and run clear, to glut ourselves in the punishment of a body which is of one race and tribe with our own. It is not, as Thucydides would tell us, the retribution following most closely on the injury received, but that most remote from it, which really exacts what is its due. For as temper, according to Melanthius,[212]

Does dreadful deeds, and banishes good sense,

so reason, on the contrary, employs justice and moderation, setting passion and temper afar. So it is that even human examples make men gentle, as when we hear that Plato stood long over his servant with rod uplifted, correcting, as he said |B| himself, his own temper; or, again, as Archytas, informed of some disorderly behaviour of his workmen in the field, and feeling himself unusually irritated and harsh, did nothing, but just said, as he went away, “Well for you that I am feeling angry.” If sayings like these and anecdotes about men drain away what is rough and violent in our anger, much more when we see God, in whom is no fear nor any sort of repentance, yet reserving punishment and abiding his time, may we well become |C| cautious in such matters, and deem the gentleness and lofty patience which he exhibits a god-like part of virtue. By his punishment he corrects a few, by the slowness of his punishment he helps and admonishes many.

VI. ‘Let us now turn our attention to a second point, which is this: All kinds of human retribution deal out pain for pain and stop there. “Suffering for the doer”[213] is their principle, and beyond it they do not go. So they follow sin like a howling pack which hunts on the heels of the offences. Whereas God, we may suppose, when he sets his hand to punish a soul that is sick, |D| scrutinizes its passions, if perhaps they may be bent aside, and a way opened to repentance; he fixes a time, in cases where the wickedness seated within is not absolute or inflexible. He knows how large a portion of virtue, proceeding from himself, souls carry with them when they pass to birth, how powerful within the noble principle naturally is, and how ineffaceable; that it may flower into vice contrary to nature, when nurture and company are bad and corrupting, yet is afterwards cured in some persons and recovers its own proper state. And so he |E| does not bring down punishment equally upon all. What is incurable he at once removes out of the life and prunes away, because, happen what may, it is injurious to others, most injurious of all to a man’s self, to consort with wickedness all his time. Where the sinful principle may be supposed to exist through ignorance of the good rather than from deliberate preference for the base, he gives them time for reformation; but if they persist, they, too, receive punishment in full; for he has no fear, we may be sure, lest they escape him at the last. Now consider how many changes take place in human character and life. And this is why that in them which changes is called “tropos” (turning) and “ethos” (ēthos), because habit (ĕthos) finds its way in so often, and masters them so mightily. I think |F| myself that the ancients called Cecrops “double-shaped”, not, as some say, because from a good king he became a very dragon of a tyrant, but, on the contrary, because he was, to begin with, perverse and terrible, and afterwards became a mild and humane ruler. This instance may be an uncertain one, but we know of Gelon at any rate, and Hiero in Sicily, and Pisistratus son of Hippocrates, how they won power by wickedness, but all used |552| it virtuously; came to rule through unlawful ways, but turned out fair and patriotic rulers; introduced the reign of law and of careful agriculture, found their subjects men of jest and gossip, and made them sober and industrious. Gelon, moreover, fought nobly at the head of his people, won a great battle against the Carthaginians, and refused them a peace when they sued for one, until he had bound them in a covenant to give up the practice of sacrificing their children to Cronus. Then, in Megalopolis, there was a tyrant Lydiadas, who changed |B| his ways in the actual course of his reign, and in disgust with his own injustice restored to the citizens their laws, and fell gloriously fighting for the country against its enemies. Suppose some one had slain Miltiades while tyrant in the Chersonese, as he first was, or had got a conviction for incest against Cimon, or had robbed Athens of Themistocles by a prosecution for his riotous passage through the market-place, as was done with Alcibiades later on, where would be our Marathons, our Eurymedons, that noble Artemisium, |C|

where Athens’ sons

Set firm the shining base of Liberty?[214]

For great natures produce nothing petty; their vehemence and energy cannot rest for very intensity, they toss about on the surge before they settle into their solid and abiding character. As then one ignorant of husbandry would not welcome the prospect of a piece of land full of thick undergrowth and weeds, with many wild creatures on it, and streams of water, and deep mud; whereas, to one who has learned to use his senses and to discriminate, those very things suggest strength and fatness and everything that is good in the soil, so it is with great natures. They break out early into many strange bad growths, |D| out of which we, in our intolerance, think it our duty to cut away and stunt all that is rough and prickly; but the Judge who is better than we and who sees the good and generous crop to come, waits for Time, the fellow-worker with Reason and Virtue, and that ripeness whereby Nature yields the proper fruit.

VII. ‘So much for this. Now do you not think that some of the Greeks are right in copying the Egyptian law which enacts that a pregnant woman who has been condemned to death should be kept in custody until she has borne a child?’ ‘Certainly’, they said. I went on: ‘Next, suppose a person not pregnant with children, but able, if time be given, to bring into |E| the light of the sun some secret action or design, either by denouncing a hidden evil, or by becoming the promoter of a salutary policy or the inventor of some needful expedient, is it not the better course to let punishment wait on convenience rather than to inflict it too soon? It seems to me to be so.’ ‘And to us’, said Patrocleas. ‘And rightly,’ said I, ‘for consider that if Dionysius had paid the penalty at the beginning of his reign, no Greek settler would have been left in Sicily, because the Carthaginians would have devastated it. So neither Apollonia, nor Anactorium, nor the Leucadian peninsula would have been occupied by Greeks if Periander had |F| been punished without such a long interval. I think that Cassander also had a respite in order that Thebes might be re-established. Most of the foreigners who helped to seize this temple crossed over with Timoleon into Sicily; and when they had conquered the Carthaginians, and put an end to the tyrannies, met deservedly miserable deaths themselves. Surely Heaven uses some bad men to punish others, like executioners, and afterwards crushes them, and this has been the case, I think, |553| with most tyrants. For as the gall of the hyaena, the refuse of the seal, and other products of disgusting animals, have their specific use in disease, so there are some who need the sharp tooth of chastisement; on whom the God inflicts a bitter and implacable tyrant, or a harsh rough ruler, and only removes this torment when he has relieved and purged their ailment. Such a medicine was Phalaris to the Agrigentines, and Marius to the Romans. To the Sicyonians the God declared in plain terms that their state needed beadles with whips, because they had taken by force from the men of Cleonae a boy named Teletias, who was to be crowned at the Pythian games, as being their own citizen, and torn him in pieces. The Sicyonians got |B| Orthagoras for a tyrant, and after him Myron and Cleisthenes, who put an end to their bad ways, while the Cleonaeans, who never found such a remedy, have come to nothing. Listen to Homer,[215] who says somewhere

So sprung from meaner sire a nobler son,

Skilled in all art and excellence.

Yet that son of Copreus has left us no brilliant or signal achievement, while the posterity of Sisyphus and Autolycus and Phlegyas burst into flower of glory and virtue in the persons of great kings. Pericles at Athens came of a house which was under a curse. Pompey the Great, at Rome, was the son of Strabo, whose corpse the Romans cast out and trampled |C| in their hatred. What is there strange then if God acts like the farmer, who does not cut down the thistle till he has picked the asparagus, or like the Libyans who do not burn the dry stalks before they have collected the gum; who spares to destroy a bad and rough-grown root of a noble race of kings till the due fruit has issued from it? For it were better for the Phocians that Iphitus should lose tens of thousands of cattle and horses, or that even more gold should leave Delphi, and silver too, than that Ulysses should never have been born, or Asclepius, or |D| the other brave men and mighty benefactors who have come of bad and vicious lines.

VIII. ‘But do you not all think it better that punishments should fall in the fitting time and manner than hastily and at once? There is the case of Callippus, who was slain by his friends with the very dagger which he had used to slay Dion in the guise of a friend. Again, there is Mitys[216] of Argos, killed in a party quarrel, whose brazen statue in the market-place fell on the murderer during a public performance and killed him. And I think you know all about Bessus the Paeonian, Patrocleas, and Ariston of Oeta, the commander of foreign troops?’ |E| ‘Indeed I do not,’ he replied, ‘but I want to hear.’ ‘Ariston,’ I said, ‘with the consent of the tyrants, took down the ornaments of Eriphyle, deposited here, and carried them off to his wife for a present. Then his son, enraged with his mother for some reason, set fire to the house, and burnt up all who were within it. Bessus, it appears, slew his own father, and for a long time escaped detection. Afterwards, having come to some friends for supper, he put his spear through a swallows’ nest and brought it down, and destroyed the young birds. All present exclaimed, as well they might: “Man, what has |F| possessed you to do such a monstrous thing?” To which he replied: “Have they not been telling lies against me this long time, shrieking that I have killed my father?” Astonished at such a speech, they informed the king, an inquiry was held, and Bessus suffered.

IX. ‘So far’, I said, ‘we have been speaking, as was agreed, upon the assumption that some respite is really granted to wicked men. For what remains, you must suppose that you are listening to Hesiod,[217] laying down, not with Plato[218] that punishment is |554| “suffering which waits on wrongdoing”, but that it is a contemporary growth, springing up with sin, from the same place and the same root,

Bad counsel to the counsellor is worst,

and

Who plots ’gainst others, plots his heart away.

The corn-beetle is said to carry in herself an antidote compounded on a principle of opposites, but wickedness as it grows breeds its own pain and punishment, and suffers the penalty, not by and by, but in the very moment of insolence. In the body, every criminal who is punished[219] carries forth his own |B| cross; but vice fabricates for herself, out of herself, all the instruments of her chastisement; she manufactures a terrible life, piteous and shameful, with terrors and cruel pains, with regrets and troubles unceasing. But there are persons just like children, who see evildoers on the stage crowned and caparisoned, as often happens, in gold and purple, and dancing heartily; and gape and gaze, as though these men were happy indeed; until they are seen goaded and lashed, and fire issuing out of those gay and costly robes. Most bad men are wrapped as in a vesture |C| of great houses, and eminent offices and powers; and so it is unperceived that they are being punished, until, before you can think, they are stabbed or hurled down a rock, which is not to be called punishment, but the end or consummation of punishment. For as Herodicus of Selymbria, who fell into a hopeless decline, and, for the first time in human history, combined gymnastics with medicine, made death, in Plato’s[220] words, “a long affair for himself”, and for similar invalids, so has it been with bad men. They thought to escape the blow at the time; the penalty comes, not after more time, but over more time, and is lengthened, not retarded. They were not punished after they |D| came to old age, but became old under punishment. I speak of length of time in a sense relative to ourselves, since to the Gods any span of human life is as nothing. “Now”, instead of “thirty years ago”, for the torture or hanging of a criminal, is as though we were to speak of “afternoon” not “morning”; the rather that he is confined in life, a prison where is no change of place, no escape, yet many feastings the while, and business affairs, and gifts, and bounties, and amusements, just as men play dice or draughts in jail, with the rope hanging over their heads.

X. ‘Yet where are we to stop? Are we to say that prisoners |E| awaiting execution are not under punishment until the axe shall fall? Nor he who has drunk the hemlock, and is walking about while he waits to feel the heaviness in the legs which precedes the chill and stiffness of approaching insensibility? Yet we must say so, if we think that the last moment of the punishment is the punishment, and leave out of account the sufferings of the intervening time, the fears, and forebodings, and movements of |F| remorse, in which every sinner is involved. This would be like saying that a fish when he has swallowed the hook has not been caught until he has been roasted by the cook, or at least sliced up, before our eyes. Every man is in the grasp of Justice when he has done a wrong, he has nibbled away the sweets of Injustice which are the bait; but he has the hook of conscience sticking there and, as it pays him out,[221]

Like spear-struck thunny makes the ocean boil.

For the forwardness and the audacity of vice of which we hear |555| are strong and ready till the crimes are committed, then passion fails them like a dying breeze, and leaves them weak and abject, a prey to every fear and superstition. Thus the dream of Clytaemnestra in Stesichorus[222] is fashioned true to the reality of what happens. It was like this:

She thought a serpent came on her, his crest

Dabbled with gore, and, lo, from out it peered,

Child of the race of Pleisthenes, the King.

For phantoms of dreams, and visions of midday, and oracles, and thunderbolts, and whatever has the appearance of being caused by a God, bring storms and terrors upon those who are in such a mood. So it is told that Apollodorus, in his sleep, saw |B| himself being flayed by Scythians and then boiled, and that his heart murmured out of the cauldron the words, “I am the cause of this to thee.” And, again, he saw his daughters all on fire, and running around him with their bodies burning. Then Hipparchus, son of Pisistratus, a little before his death, saw Aphrodite throwing blood at his face out of a sort of bowl. The friends of Ptolemy “Thunderbolt”[223] beheld him called to justice by Seleucus before a jury of vultures and wolves, and |C| dealing out large helpings of flesh to his enemies. Pausanias had wickedly sent for Cleonice at Byzantium, a maiden of free birth, that he might enjoy her person in the night, then, as she approached, he killed her out of some panic or suspicion; and he would often see her in his dreams, saying to him:

To judgement go; man’s lust works woe to man.

When the phantom never ceased to trouble him, he sailed, as it appears, to Heracleia, where is the Place of Summons of Souls, and with soothing rites and libations set himself to call up the soul of the girl; she appeared to him and told him that he “will cease from his troubles when he reaches Lacedaemon”; and, directly he got there, he died.[224]

XI. ‘Then, if nothing remains for the soul after death, but |D| death is a limit beyond which is neither grace nor punishment, we should rather say that bad men who are punished quickly, and who die off, are used gently and indulgently by Heaven. For if it could be held that there is no other evil for the bad while life and time last, yet even so, when injustice is tried and proved an unfruitful, thankless business, which yields no return for many and great struggles, the mere sense of these upsets the soul. You will remember the story of Lysimachus, how, under |E| great stress of thirst, he surrendered himself and his power to the Getae, and, when now their prisoner, said as he drank: “Wretch that I am, for so brief a pleasure to have lost so great a kingdom!” And yet to resist the physical compulsion of appetite is very hard. But when a man, by grasping at money, or in envy of political reputation and power, or for the pleasure of some union, has wrought a lawless dreadful deed, and afterwards, when the thirst or frenzy of passion has left him, sees, as |F| time goes on, the disgrace and terror of iniquity becoming permanent, with nothing useful, or necessary, or delightful gained, then is it not natural that he should often reckon up and feel how hollow is the glory, how ignoble and thankless the pleasure, for which he has upset all that is greatest and noblest in human codes of right, and filled his own life with shame and confusion? Simonides[225] used to say in jest that he found the chest of silver always full, but that of gratitude empty; and so bad men, when they look into the wickedness within them, find that, through the pleasure which has a short-lived return, it is |556| left void of hope, but filled to the brim with fears and pains and joyless memory, with suspicion of the future, and distrust of the present. So Ino on the stage,[226] when she is repenting of what she has done:

Say, maidens, how may I start clear, and dwell

Here in the house of Athamas, as though

I had done nothing of the deeds I did?

Such thoughts we may suppose that the soul of every bad man rakes up within itself, while it calculates how it may escape |B| from the memory of its misdoings, and cast out conscience, and become pure, and lead another life as from the beginning. There is no confidence, nothing free from caprice, nothing permanent or solid, in the designs of wickedness, unless, save the mark! we are to call wicked-doers philosophers of a sort! But where love of wealth or pleasure, as of great prizes, and envy undiluted, are lodged by the side of hate and ill-temper, there, if you look deep, you will find superstition seated, and softness to meet toil, and cowardice to meet death, and a rapid shifting of impulses, and a vain-gloriousness which comes of arrogance. They fear those who censure them, and equally fear those who |C| praise, as being victims whom they have deceived, and who are the bitterest enemies of the bad, just because they praise so heartily those whom they take to be good. For hardness in vice, as in bad steel, is unsound, its rigidity is soon broken. Hence more and more, as time goes on, they discover their own condition; they are vexed and discontented, and spurn their own life away. We see that a bad man, when he has restored a pledge, or gone bail for an acquaintance, or given a patriotic subscription or a contribution which brings him glory and credit, is immediately seized with repentance, and grieves at |D| what he has done, so shifty and unsettled is his judgement. We see others when applauded in the theatre at once groaning inwardly, as ambition subsides into greed of money. And did not, think you, those who sacrificed men to get a tyranny, or to advance a conspiracy, as Apollodorus did, or who robbed their friends of money, as Glaucus the son of Epicydes did, repent, and hate themselves, and suffer pain at what had been done? For my own part, if I may be allowed to say so, I think that the doers of unholy deeds need no God nor man to punish them; their own life is sufficient, when ruined by vice, and thrown into all disorder. |E|

XII. ‘But keep an eye on the discussion,’ I said, ‘for it may be running out beyond our limits.’ ‘Perhaps it is,’ said Timon, ‘if we look on, and consider the length of what remains to be said. For now I am going to call up the final difficulty, as a champion who has been standing out, since those which came forward first have pretty well had their round out. Turn to the charge so boldly thrown at the Gods by Euripides,[227]

The parents’ trips upon their offspring turned,

and take it that we too who have so far been silent adopt his arraignment. If, on the one hand, the doers paid the penalty |F| themselves, then there is no need to punish those who did no wrong, seeing that justice does not allow even the doers to be punished twice for the same offences. If, on the other, the Gods, out of indolence, have allowed the punishment to drop, as against the wicked, and then exact it late in the day from the guiltless, the set-off of tardiness against injustice is all wrong. You will remember the story of what happened to Aesop in this place; how he came with gold from Croesus, to sacrifice to the God magnificently, and make a distribution among the Delphians, four minae apiece. There was some angry difference, it appears, between him and the brotherhood; so he |556| performed the sacrifice, but sent the money back to Sardis, judging the men unworthy of the bounty. They worked up a charge of sacrilege against him, thrust him down from the rock called Hyampeia, and killed him. Then, in his wrath at this, the God brought sterility on their land, and every form of strange disease; so that they went round the Assemblies of the Greeks asking by repeated proclamation that any who chose to come forward should punish them on Aesop’s behalf. In the third generation, Iadmon,[228] a Samian, came, no blood relation of Aesop, but a descendant of those who had bought him at Samos; and to him they paid certain penalties, and |B| were set free from their troubles. From that time the punishment of sacrilegious criminals was transferred to Nauplia from Hyampeia. Not even those most devoted to Alexander, among whom we reckon ourselves, commend him for throwing the city of Branchidae into ruins, and putting its inhabitants to the sword, because of the treacherous surrender by their forefathers of the temple at Miletus. Then Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, derided with open laughter the Corcyraeans who asked “why he plundered their island?” “Because, of course,” he said, “your fathers sheltered Ulysses.” And, in like manner, when the Ithacans complained of his soldiers taking their sheep, “Why, |C| your king”, he said, “came to us, and blinded the shepherd too!”[229] Now is it not even more monstrous of Apollo to destroy the Pheneatae[230] of the present day, by blocking the pit which took their water, and deluging all their land, because, a thousand years ago, as the story goes, Hercules snatched away the prophetic tripod and brought it to Pheneus? And what of his promise to the Sybarites of release from their troubles when they should have propitiated the wrath of the Leucadian Hera “by three destructions”? Again, it is not long since the |D| Locrians have ceased to send those maidens to Troy,

Who with no trailing robes, feet bared, as slaves,

At early dawn must sweep Athene’s fane,

No veils, though grievous eld were drawing near,[231]

because of the misbehaviour of Ajax. Where do you find the reasonableness and justice here? Certainly we do not praise the Thracians, because they still brand their own wives to avenge Orpheus, or the Barbarians living about the Eridanus for wearing black, in mourning for Phaethon as they say. It would have been still more ridiculous, I think, if the men living when Phaethon perished thought nothing about it, and then those |E| born five generations or ten generations after the sad occurrence began to change into mourning clothes for him! Yet there is nothing but stupidity in that, nothing terrible or beyond cure; but the angers of the Gods pass underground at the time, like certain rivers, then afterwards breakout to injure quite different persons, and bring the direst ruin at the last. What reason is there in that?’

XIII. At the first check, I, in terror lest he should go back to the beginning and introduce more and greater cases of |F| anomaly, at once proceeded to ask him: ‘Come,’ I said, ‘do you take all these things for true?’ ‘Suppose that they are not all true, but that some are, do you not think that the same perplexity comes in?’ ‘Perhaps’, said I, ‘it is as with persons in a violent fever, who feel the same heat, or nearly the same, whether they are wrapped in one cloak or in many, yet we must give some relief by removing the excess. If you will not allow this, drop the point (though to my thinking, most of the instances look like myths and inventions); but call to mind the recent Theoxenia, and that “fair portion” which is set aside and |558| assigned by proclamation to the descendants of Pindar, and how impressive that seemed and how pleasant. Who could fail to find pleasure in that graceful honour, so Greek and so frankly of the old world, unless he be one whose

Black heart of adamant

Was wrought in chilly fire,

in Pindar’s[232] own words? Then I pass over’, I said, ‘the similar proclamation made at Sparta, in the words,

After the Lesbian bard,[233]

in honoured memory of old Terpander, for the case is the same. But I appeal to you, who claim, as I understand, precedence among the Boeotians as Opheltiadae, and among the Phocians |B| because of Daiphantus; and who stood by me formerly, when, speaking in support of the claim of the Lycormae and Satilaeans through their ancestor to receive the honour and wear the crown due to the Heraclidae, I argued that those sprung of Hercules had the strongest right to be confirmed in the honours and prizes, because their ancestor received no worthy prize or return for his good deeds to the Greeks.’ ‘And a noble contention it was,’ he said, ‘and worthy indeed of Philosophy!’ ‘Then pray drop’, I said, ‘that vehement tone in your arraignment, and do not make it any grievance that some born of bad or vicious ancestors are punished; or else never rejoice or applaud in the other case, when noble birth is honoured. For |C| if the gratitude due to virtue is to be kept active for the benefit of the family, it is logical and right also that the punishment for crimes should never be exhausted or fail, but should run a parallel course, so that payment should follow deserts under either head. Any one who finds pleasure in seeing honour done to the descendants of Cimon at Athens, but makes it a grievance that those of Lachares or Ariston are banished, is too soft and too careless, or, as I would rather say, is quarrelsome and captious in all his attitude to Heaven. He challenges, if the children of an unjust and evil man appear to prosper, and he challenges if the families of the bad are abased or extinguished; he blames |D| the God equally if the children of a good father are in trouble, or of a bad one.

XIV. ‘There,’ I said, ‘let all this serve for so many dykes or barriers against those bitter and aggressive assailants! Now, let us go back, and pick up the end of the thread in this dark place with its windings and wanderings; I mean our argument about the God. Let us guide ourselves with quiet caution towards what is likely and reasonable, since certainty and truth are beyond us, even as to our own actions. For instance, why do we order the children of persons who have died of consumption |E| or dropsy to sit with both feet dipped into water until the corpse is consumed? The idea seems to be that, if this is done, the disease does not shift its seat or approach them. Or again, why is it that, if one goat have taken the herb eryngium[234] into her mouth, the whole flock halts until the goatherd comes and takes it out? And there are other occult properties, with ways, whether of contact or of dissemination, by which they pass, with incredible speed and over incredible intervals, through one to another. Yet we find intervals of time wonderful, but |F| not those of place; although it is really more wonderful that a disease which began in Aethiopia[235] infected Athens, where Pericles died and Thucydides took it, than that, when Delphians and Sybarites had been wicked, the punishment circled round to attack their children. There is correspondence of forces from last to first, and there are connecting links, the cause of which, unknown, it may be, to us, produces in silence its proper effect.[236]

XV. ‘Not but that the public visitations of cities by the wrath of Heaven can be readily accounted for on the score of |559| justice. A city is a thing one and continuous, like an animal, which does not cease to be itself in the changes due to growth, nor become, as time goes on, different from what it was; it is always consentaneous and at one with itself, and awaits all the consequences, whether censure or gratitude, of what it does or did, so long as the association, which makes it one and complex, preserves its unity. To divide it, according to time, into many cities, or, rather, into an infinite number of them, is like making many men out of one, because he is now elderly, was formerly younger, and, still further back, was a boy. Or |B| rather, the whole idea is like those tricks of Epicharmus out of which the “Increasing Fallacy” of the Sophists sprang. The man who formerly received the loan does not own it now, for he has become a different person. The man who was asked to dinner yesterday, comes an unbidden guest to-day, for he is some one else. Yet the stages of growth produce greater variations in each one of ourselves than they do in cities as wholes. Any one who had seen Athens thirty years ago would recognize it to-day; manners, movements, amusements, business, popular gratitude, and resentments, all quite as of old. Whereas a man would hardly be recognized in figure by friend or relation who should meet him after an interval, while the changes in character so easily produced by anything—a word, an |C| exertion, a feeling, a law—produce an effect of strangeness and novelty even to one always in his company. Yet he is spoken of as one man from birth to the end; and we insist that a city, which remains the same in exactly the same sense, is liable for the reproaches incurred by ancestors, by the same title as it claims their reputation and power. Otherwise we shall have everything, before we know it, in the river of Heraclitus,[237] which he says a man cannot enter twice, because Nature disturbs and alters all things in her own changes.

XVI. ‘But if a city is a thing one and continuous, I take it that a family also depends from a single origin which assures |D| a certain pervading force of association. An offspring is never separated from its begetter, as is a piece of man’s handicraft; it has been made out of him, not by him; thus it has in itself some permanent portion of him, and whether it be punished or honoured, receives what is its due. If it were not that I might seem to trifle, I would say that graver injustice was done to the statue of Cassander when it was melted down by the Athenians, and to the corpse of Dionysius when it was thrust out beyond the frontier by the Syracusans, than to the descendants of those men in the punishments which they received. For there is nothing of the nature of Cassander in the statue, and the soul |E| of Dionysius has quitted the corpse; whereas in Nisaeus, and Apollocrates, and Antipater and Philip, and similarly in the other sons of bad men, the determining part of their parents is inborn in them, and is there; it is not quiescent or inactive, since by it they live and are nourished, are directed, and think. There is nothing strange or remarkable if, being of them, they have what was theirs. In a word, as in Medicine, what is |F| serviceable is also just. It is ridiculous to talk of the injustice of cauterizing the thumb when the pain is in the hip, or scarifying the region of the stomach for a tumour inside the liver, or of oiling the ends of the horns of cattle, if there is softening of the hoofs. So it is with punishments; to think that there is any other justice than what heals the mischief, or to be indignant if the treatment be applied to one set of persons through another set (as in opening a vein to relieve weak eyes) is to see nothing beyond the range of sense, to fail |560| to remember that a schoolmaster who chastises one boy teaches a lesson to many boys, and that a general who executes one man in ten, brings all to their duty. And thus not only one part through another part, but also soul through soul receives certain dispositions, be they of deterioration or amendment, in a truer sense than body through body. In the case of body, the affection arising must be the same, and the alteration produced must be the same; whereas soul is led by its own imaginings in the way of assurance or fear, and so becomes permanently worse or else better.’

XVII. While I was still speaking, Olympicus broke in: ‘It seems to me’, he said, ‘that your argument relies on a great |B| fundamental assumption—the permanence of the soul.’ ‘Subject to your consent, it does,’ I replied, ‘or rather to your consent already given; for, from the initial supposition that God dispenses to us according to our deserts, the discussion has proceeded to its present stage.’ ‘Then’, he said, ‘you think that, because the Gods survey and administer all our affairs, it follows that our souls are either wholly imperishable, or, permanent for a certain time after death.’ ‘Oh no! good friend,’ I said, ‘but the God is so petty, so important a trifler, that, dealing with men like us, who have nothing in us divine or like him in any way, or persistent, or solid, but who wither away altogether “like leaves”, as Homer[238] said, and |C| perish within a short span, he makes us of so great account! That would be like the gardens of Adonis which women nurse and tend in crockery pots; souls of a day springing up within a pampered flesh wherein no strong living root finds room, and then at once snuffed out on the first pretext. But, if you will, let the other Gods be, and look at our own God here. Knowing that the souls of those who die perish at once, like mists or smoke-wreaths exhaled from the bodies, does he, think you, require men to bring so many propitiations for the departed, |D| and such great honours to the dead, deceiving and tricking his believers? For myself, I will never give up the permanence of the soul, unless some one like Hercules shall come, and remove the tripod of the Pythia, and lay waste the place of the oracles. But in our own time so long as many such prophecies are given as once were delivered to Corax the Naxian, it is nothing less than impious to condemn the soul to death.’ Here Patrocleas asked: ‘But what was the prophecy delivered, and who was this Corax? The fact and the name are equally strange to |E| me.’ ‘Not at all,’ I said, ‘the fault is mine for using a by-name instead of the real one. The man who killed Archilochus in battle was called Calondas, it appears; Corax was a by-name given to him. Turned out, at first, by the Pythia, as having slain a man sacred to the Muses, then, having put in a plea of justification, accompanied by prayers and supplications, he was ordered to go to the “dwelling of Tettix” and propitiate the soul of Archilochus. This place was Taenarus; for thither, they say, Tettix the Cretan went with an expedition, and there he founded a city, and dwelt near the “Place of the |F| Passage of Souls”. So, when the Spartans had been ordered to propitiate the soul of Pausanias, the “Conductors of Souls” were sent for out of Italy, and, after having done sacrifice, ousted the ghost from the temple.

XVIII. ‘Thus’, I continued, ‘the argument which assures the Providence of God and also the permanence of the human soul, is one only; it is impossible to remove either and to keep the other. But if the soul exists after death, it becomes more probable that a requital is made to it in full both of honours |561| and of punishments. Like an athlete, it is engaged in a contest during life; the contest done, it then receives in its own self all its due. However, what rewards or what chastisements it there receives in its own self, are nothing to us that are alive, they are disbelieved or are unmarked. But those which pass through children or family are manifest to those who are here, and turn away many bad men and pull them up short. But to prove that there is no more disgraceful and grievous punishment than for a man to see his own descendants suffering on his account; and that when the soul of an offender against piety or law looks after death, and sees, not the overthrow of statues or |B| memorials effaced, but sons or friends or kinsmen involved in great misfortunes, all because of itself, and paying its penalties, it could not be content, no, not for all the honours which are given to Zeus, to become a second time unjust and profligate, I can tell you a story which I have lately heard; yet I hesitate lest it may appear to you a myth, so I confine myself to showing the probability.’ ‘On no account!’ said Olympicus, ‘give us the whole of that story too.’ As the others made the same petition, ‘Let me make good’, said I, ‘the probability of the view, then we will start the myth, if myth indeed it be.

XIX. ‘Now Bion says that it would be more ridiculous |C| if God were to punish the sons of wicked men, than for a doctor to drug a descendant or a son for the disease of a grandfather or a father. But the cases are dissimilar in one respect, though closely alike in another. The treatment of one person does not relieve another from disease; no patient with eye disease or fever was ever the better for seeing an ointment or a plaster applied to another. The punishments of the wicked are exhibited to all, because the effect of the reasonable operation of justice is to restrain some through the punishment of others. But the point of resemblance between the parallel adduced |D| by Bion and our problem he failed to observe; it is this: when a man has fallen into a sickness which is bad but not incurable, and afterwards through intemperance and self-indulgence has surrendered his body to the malady and has died of it, then, if there be a son, not evidently diseased but only with a tendency to the same disease, a physician, or relative, or trainer, or a kind master who has learnt the state of the case, will put him upon a strict diet and remove made dishes and drinks and women, and use regular courses of physic, and harden his body by exercises, and will thus disperse and expel the symptoms, and |E| not allow the little seed of a great trouble to reach any size. Is not that the tone which we adopt, entreating sons of fathers or mothers with a tendency to diseases to pay attention to themselves, and to watch out, and not be careless, but to get rid at once of the first beginnings in the system, taking them in time while they are easy to move and loosely seated?’ ‘It is indeed’, they said. ‘Then we are doing nothing out of place, but a necessary act, one which is useful and not ludicrous, when we introduce the sons of epileptic or bilious or gouty sires to gymnastic exercise, diet, and drugs, not when they are |F| suffering from a disease but in order that they may not take it; for a body which proceeds out of a vitiated body deserves no punishment but rather medical care and watching; if any one in his cowardice and softness chooses to miscall that punishment, because it removes pleasures and applies the sharp prick of pain and trial, we have nothing more to say to him. Now then, does a body, the issue of a faulty body, deserve treatment and care, and yet we must endure to see the likeness of a kinsman’s |562| vice springing up within a young character, and making its growth there, and to wait until it be spread over his system and manifest itself in his passions,

And show the evil fruit

Of mind awry,

as Pindar[239] says?

XX. ‘Or is the God in this to be less wise than Hesiod,[240] who exhorts and charges:

Ne’er after gloomy burial, of life

Sow thou the seed, but fresh from heavenly feasts,

meaning that the act of generation admits not only of vice and virtue, but also of grief and joy and the rest, and therefore he would bring men cheerful and pleasant and open-hearted to the task? But the other matter does not come out of Hesiod, nor is it the effect of human wisdom, but of the God, |B| to see through likenesses and differences of temperament, before they stand revealed by a plunge through the passions into great crimes. For the cubs of bears while still tiny, and the young of wolves and apes, show at once the character of their kind, there is no disguise or pretence; but the nature of man is plunged at once into customs and rules and laws, and often conceals the bad points and imitates the good, so that the inborn stain of vice is entirely effaced and removed, or else is undetected for a long time; it assumes a sheath or cloke of |C| cleverness, which we fail to see through. We perceive the wickedness with an effort each time that the blow or prick of the several misdoings touches us. In a word, we think that men become unjust when they commit an injustice, become intemperate when they do a violence, become cowardly when they run away. It is as though we should think that the scorpion grows a sting when he strikes, or vipers their venom when they bite, which would be simple indeed! Take any single bad man, he does not become bad when he appears bad; he has the vice from the first, but it comes out as he gets opportunity and power, the thief, of thieving, the born tyrant, of forcing the laws. But God, by his own nature, apprehends |D| soul better than body; and we may be sure that he is neither ignorant of the disposition and nature of each, nor waits to punish violence of the hands, or insolence of the tongue, or profligacy of the body. For he has himself suffered no wrong; is not angry with the robber because he has met with violence, does not hate the profligate because he has been assaulted; but, as a remedial measure, he often chastises the man whose tendency is to adulterous crime, or to greed, or to injustice, thus destroying vice before it has taken hold, as he might an epilepsy.

XXI. ‘Yet we were indignant a little while ago, that the wicked are punished so late and so slowly. And now we complain |E| because God sometimes cuts short the habit and disposition before any wrong is done, not knowing that the thing to come is often worse and more alarming than the thing done, what is hidden than what is apparent, and unable to calculate the reasons why it is better to leave some alone even after they have committed an offence, and to be beforehand with others who are still meditating one; exactly as drugs are of no use for certain persons when sick, but are of service to others who are not actually sick, but are in a state still more dangerous. |F| So it is not always a case of

The parents trip upon their offspring turned

By Heav’n’s high hand.[241]

If a good son be born of a bad sire, as a healthy child of a sickly parent, he is relieved from the penalty of race, saved by adoption out of vice. But the young man who throws back to the likeness of a tainted race ought, surely, to take to the debts on his inheritance, that is, to the punishment due to wickedness. Antigonus was not punished because of Demetrius, nor—to go back to the heroes of old—Phyleus for Augeas, nor Nestor |563| for Neleus. These all came of bad sires, but were good. But where natural disposition has embraced and adopted the family failing, in those cases Justice pursues and visits to the uttermost the likeness in vice. For as warts and spots and moles of parents disappear in their children, but return on the persons of grandchildren; as again a Greek woman had borne a black child, and when charged with adultery, discovered that she was of Ethiopian parentage in the fourth degree; and as, yet again, out of the sons of Nisibeus, lately dead, who was reported to be related to the “Sown Men” of Thebes, one reproduced |B| the mark of a spear on his body—family likeness re-emerging from the depths, after such long intervals—, even so it is often the case that characteristics and affections of the soul are concealed and submerged in the early generations, but afterwards break out again in later individuals, and Nature restores the familiar type, for vice or for virtue.’

XXII. When I had spoken thus I remained silent. Olympicus laughed quietly, and said: ‘We are not applauding you, lest we should seem to be letting you off the myth, as though the demonstration of your view were sufficient without it; when we have heard it, we will give judgement.’ So I went on to tell them: ‘Thespesius of Soli, a kinsman and friend of that Protogenes who has been with us here, after an early life |C| of great profligacy, quickly ran through his fortune, changed his ways perforce, and took to the pursuit of wealth; when he had the usual experience of the profligates who do not keep their wives when they have them, but cast them away and try wrongfully to get their favours when united to other men. He stopped at nothing disgraceful if it led to enjoyment or gain, and in a short time got together an inconsiderable fortune and a mighty reputation for evil. What hit him hardest was an answer |D| delivered to him by the oracle of Amphilochus. It appears that he had sent to ask the God “whether he will do better the rest of his life?”[242] The answer was that he “will live better when he has died”. And sure enough this, in a way, so fell out not long afterwards. He fell over from a high place, upon his head; there was no wound, but he appeared to die of the mere blow, and on the third day, at the very time of the funeral, revived. He quickly recovered his strength, and came to himself, and the change of life which followed was incredible. For the Cilicians know of no man more fair in all business relations, or more holy in religious duties, so formidable a foe or so faithful a friend. |E| Hence those who were brought into contact with him were very curious to hear the cause of the difference, thinking that a character so completely remodelled must have been the result of no trifling experience. And so it truly was, according to the story related by him to Protogenes, and other equally considerate friends. For, when sentience left his body, he felt affected by a change, as a helmsman might do when first plunged overboard into the depth of the sea; then, recovering a little, he seemed to himself to breathe all over and to look around, while his soul opened like one great eye. But he saw |F| nothing of what he had been seeing before, only stars of vast size, at infinite distances from one another, each emitting a ray of marvellous colour and of a tonic force, so that the soul, riding smoothly on the light, as though over a calm sea, was carried easily and quickly in every direction. Passing over most of the sights he saw, he said that the souls of those who die make a flame-like bubble where the air parts as they rise |564| from below, then the bubble quickly bursts, and they emerge with human form but light in bulk, with a movement which is not the same for all. Some bound forth with marvellous agility, and dart upwards in a straight line, while others whirl round together like spindles, now with an upward tendency, now a downward, borne on by a mingled confused agitation, which after a very long time, and then with difficulty, is reduced to calm. Most of them he did not recognize, but seeing two or three persons of his acquaintance, he tried to approach them and speak. They would not hear him, and |B| appeared not to be themselves, but to be distraught and scared out of their senses, shunning all sight or touch, while they roamed about, first by themselves; then they would meet and embrace others in like case, and whirl round in random indefinite figures of every sort, uttering unmeaning sounds, like cries of battle mingled with those of lamentation and terror. Others above, on the extremity of the firmament, were cheerful to behold, often drawing near to one another in kindness, and turning away from those other turbid souls; and they would signify, as it seemed, their annoyance by |C| out drawing close together, but joy and affability by opening and dispersing. There he saw, he said, the soul of a kinsman, but not very certainly, for the man had died while he was himself a child. However, the soul drew towards him, and said, “Hail Thespesius!” He was surprised at this, and said that his name was not Thespesius, but Aridaeus. “Formerly so,” was the reply, “but from now Thespesius. For you are not really dead, but, by some appointment of Heaven, have come hither with your sentient part, the rest of your soul is left within the body, as a light anchor. Let this be a sign to you now and hereafter; the souls of the dead make no shadow, and their eyes do not |D| blink.”[243] When Thespesius heard this, he drew himself together in deeper thought, and as he gazed, he saw a sort of dim and shadowy line which wavered as he moved, while the others were transparent within, all set around with brightness, yet not all equally. Some were like the full moon at her purest, and emitted one smooth, continuous, uniform colour; over others there ran scales, so to call them, or slender weals; others were quite dappled and strange to look upon, branded with black spots like those on serpents; others again showed open blunted scars. Then |E| the kinsman of Thespesius (for nothing forbids us to designate the souls in this way by the names of men) began to explain it all to him, as thus: “Adrasteia, daughter of Zeus and Necessity, has been appointed to punish all crimes in the highest place; no criminal has there ever yet been, so small or so great, as to pass unseen or to escape by his might. But there are three modes of punishment, and each mode has its proper guardian minister. Some men are punished, at once in the body and through their body, and these swift Retribution handles; her |F| method is a gentle one, and passes over many crimes which ask for expiation. Those whose cure is a heavier matter are passed after death to Justice by the daemon. The wholly incurable Justice rejects; and these the third, and the fiercest, of the satellites of Adrasteia, whose name is Erinnys, chases, as they wander and try to escape in all directions; and it is pitiful and cruel how she brings them all to nothing and plunges them into the gulf which is beyond speech or sight. As to the |565| other two modes of justification,” he went on, “that which is wrought by Retribution during life resembles the usage of barbarian countries. For as in Persia they pluck off and scourge the robes and the hats of men under punishment, while their owners implore them to stop, so punishments through money or upon the person get no close grip, they do not fasten on the vice itself, but are mostly for appearance and appeal to the senses. But whoever makes his way here from earth unchastened and unpurged, Justice firmly seizes him, with his soul naked and manifest, having no place into which to skulk, |B| that he may hide and veil his wickedness, but eyed from all sides, and by all, and all over. And first she shows him to good parents, if such he has, or to ancestors, a contemptible and unworthy sight. If these are all bad, he sees them punished and is seen by them, and so is justified during a long time, while each of his passions is dislodged by pains and toils, which as much exceed in greatness and intensity those which are through the flesh, as a day dream may be clearer than that which comes in sleep. Scars and weals left by particular passions[244] are more |C| persistent in some men than in others. And look”, he said, “at those motley colours upon the souls, which come from every source. There is the dusky, dirty red, which is the smear made by meanness and greed; the fiery blood-red of cruelty and harshness. Where you see the bluish grey, there intemperance in pleasures has been rubbed away, and a heavy work it was; malice and envying have been there to inject that violet beneath the skin, as cuttle-fishes their ink. For down on earth vice brings out the colours, while the soul is turned about by the passions and turns the body, but here, when these have been smoothed away, the final result of purgation, and chastisement is this, that the soul becomes radiant all over |D| and of one hue. But as long as the colours are in it, there are certain reversions to passion, with throbbings and a pulsation which in some is faint and easily passes off, in others makes vigorous resistance. Of these souls, some, being chastised again and again, attain their fitting habit and disposition; others are transferred into the bodies of beasts by masterful ignorance and the passionate love of pleasure;[245] for ignorance, through weakness of the reasoning part and inactivity of the speculative, inclines on its practical side towards generation; while the love of pleasure, requiring an instrument for intemperance, |E| craves to unite the desires with their satisfaction, and to have share in corporeal excitement, since here is nothing save a sort of ineffectual shadow, and a dream of pleasure without its fulfilment.” Having said this, he began to lead him on, moving rapidly yet covering, as it seemed, a space of infinite extent with unfaltering ease, borne upwards on the rays of light, as though by wings, until he reached a great chasm which yawned downwards. There he was deserted by the supporting force, and saw the other souls in the same case. Packing together, like birds, and borne down and around, they |F| circled about the chasm, which they did not venture to cross outright. You might see it within, resembling the caves of Bacchus, dressed in wood and greenery, and gay with blossoms of flowers of every sort; and it exhaled a mild and gentle breeze which wafted odours of marvellous delight, and produced such an atmosphere as wine throws off for its votaries; for the souls feasted on the fragrant smells and were relaxed into mutual kindliness. All around a bacchic humour prevailed, and laughter, and every joy which the Muses can give where men sport and are merry. By this way, he said, Dionysus went up to the Gods, and |566| afterwards brought Semele; it is called “the Place of Lethe”. Here he did not allow Thespesius to linger, even though he would, but kept drawing him away by force, explaining to him as he did so that the sentient mind becomes wasted and sodden by pleasure, while the irrational and corporeal part is watered and pampered and suggests recollection of the body, and, from that recollection, a yearning and desire which makes for generation (genesis), so named because it is a leaning towards earth (Ge-neusis)[246] when the soul is weighed down by moisture. Having travelled another journey as long as the first, he seemed to be gazing into a mighty bowl, with rivers discharging into |B| it, one whiter than foam of the sea, or snowflakes, another with the purple flush of the rainbow, others tinged with different hues. From a distance each showed its proper ray, but as he drew near the rim became invisible, and the colouring was dulled, and the more brilliant hues deserted the bowl, leaving only the whiteness. And there he saw three daemons seated close together in a triangle, mingling the streams in certain measures. Now the soul-conductor of Thespesius told him that thus far Orpheus advanced, when he was questing |C| for the soul of his wife, and, from not rightly remembering, put out an untrue account among men, namely that “there was an oracle at Delphi, held by Apollo and Night in common, whereas Night has nothing in common with Apollo. Really,” he said, “this oracle is shared by Night and the moon, having nowhere an earthly bound, or a single habitation, but roaming over men everywhere in dreams and phantoms. From here it is that dreams, which are mingled, as you see, with what is deceitful and embroidered, get so much simplicity and truth as they scatter abroad. The oracle of Apollo”, he continued, |D| “you have not seen, nor will you ever be able to see it, for the earthly element of the soul does not mount upwards or allow that; it is attached closely to the body and bends downwards.” And as he spoke, he led him on, and he tried to show him the light coming, as he said, from the tripod, resting on Parnassus between the breasts of Themis. Earnestly desiring to see, he saw nothing for the brightness. But he heard, as he passed, a woman’s shrill voice chanting in verse many things, among them the time of his own death. The daemon told him that the voice was that of the Sibyl,[247] who was singing about things to be, as she was carried round on the face of the moon. He |E| desired to hear more, but was thrust off by the whirling of the moon to the opposite side, as though caught in the eddies, and only heard scraps, one of which was about Mount Vesuvius and the future destruction by fire of Dicaearcheia, and a fragment of song about the emperor of that day, how that

so good a man

Shall die upon his bed, and end his reign.[248]

After that, they turned to the sight of those under punishment. At first they met only with repulsive and piteous spectacles. Afterwards, when Thespesius found friends and relations and intimates, whom he could never have conceived of as punished, enduring sore sufferings and penalties both ignominious and |F| painful, and pitying themselves to him and weeping aloud; and at last saw his own father emerging from a certain pit, all over brands and scars, reaching out his hand towards his son and not permitted to be silent, but compelled by the warders to confess his infamous conduct to some strangers who had come with gold—how he had poisoned them, and had escaped detection there on earth, but had been convicted here, how he had already suffered part, and was now led to suffer the remainder—, then he did not dare to supplicate |567| or to entreat for his father, so great was his consternation and horror. Wishing to turn about and flee, he saw no longer that gracious and familiar guide, but was thrust forward by others of terrible visage, because it was necessary that he should go through it all. There he beheld the shadows of those who had been notoriously wicked, and who had been punished on the spot, not savagely handled as were the former ones, because[249] their trouble was in the irrational seat of the passions. |B| But those who had passed through life under a veil or cloak of the appearance of virtue, were compelled by others, who stood around, laboriously and painfully to turn their soul inside out, writhing and bending themselves back unnaturally, as the scolopendrae[250] of the sea, when they have gorged the hook, turn themselves inside out. Others they would flay, and fold the skin back, to show how scarred and mottled they were beneath it, because the vice was seated in the rational and directing part. Other souls he said that he saw intertwined like vipers, by twos or threes or more together, gnawing one another out of spite and rancour for what they had suffered |C| in life, or done. And there were lakes lying side by side, one of boiling gold, one of lead, exceeding cold, and one of iron, which was rough. Over these stood daemons, as it might be smiths, with tongs, picking up by turns the souls of those whose wickedness came of greed and grasping, and plunging them in. When they had become all fiery and transparent in the burning gold, they were thrust into the bath of lead; and when frozen till they became hard as hailstones, they were shifted on to the iron, and there they became hideously black, |D| and were broken up and crushed, so hard and brittle were they, and their shapes were changed. Then they were conveyed, just as they were, back to the gold, enduring dire pains in the transition. Most pitiful of all, he said, was the case of those who seemed already quit of Justice and then were seized up anew. These were the souls whose penalty had come round to any descendants or children. For whenever any one of these last came up and met them, he would fall upon them in anger, and shout aloud, and show the marks of his sufferings, reviling and pursuing, while the parent soul sought to flee and hide |E| itself, but could not; for the torturers would run swiftly after and bring them to Justice, and force them through all from the beginning, while they bewailed themselves because they knew the punishment before them. And there were some, he said, to whom a number of their offspring were attached, clinging to them just like bees or bats, and jibbering in wrathful recollection of what they had suffered on account of their parents. Last of all, while he was looking at the souls returning to a second birth—how they were violently bent and transformed into animals of every sort by the executioners of this task, |F| who used certain implements and blows, here squeezing together the limbs entire, here twisting them aside, here planing them away and getting rid of them altogether, to fit into other characters and other lives—, there appeared among these the soul of Nero, already in torment, and pierced with red-hot nails. For it the executioners had prepared the form of a viper, as Pindar describes it, wherein the beast is to be conceived, and live, after having devoured its own mother. And then, he said, there shone out a great light, and from the light came a voice commanding them to shift Nero to some other milder species, and to fashion a beast to sing around marshes and pools, for that he had paid the penalty of his crimes; and moreover some benefit was due to him from the Gods, because he had freed |568| the best and most God-loving race, that of Hellas. Up to this point, Thespesius had been, he said, a spectator. But as he was about to return, he suffered a horrible fear. For a woman of marvellous form and stature seized hold of him: “Come here, fellow!” she said, “that thou mayest have a better memory of these things.” Then she brought near him a rod, such as painters use, red-hot, but another woman prevented her. He, sucked up by a sudden violent wind, as out of a blow-pipe, fell on to his own body, and just opened his eyes on the edge of the tomb.’

FROM THE DIALOGUE ‘ON THE SOUL’
A FRAGMENT

[Preserved by Stobaeus, Florileg. 119.[251]]

I. When Timon had spoken thus, Patrocleas replied: ‘Your argument is as forcible as it is ancient, yet there are difficulties. For if the doctrine of immortality is so very old, how is it that the fear of death is “oldest of terrors”[252]? Unless, of course, it is this which has engendered all other terrors. For there is nothing “fresh or new” in our mourning for the dead, or in the use of those sad sinister forms of speech, “Poor man!” “Unfortunate man!”’

II. ‘But there’, said Timon, ‘we shall find a confusion of ideas between what perishes and what does not. Now when we speak of the dead as having “passed away” and being “gone”, there is clearly no suggestion of anything actually harsh, only of a change or transition of some sort. Where that change takes place for those who undergo it, and whether it be for worse or better, let us consider by looking into the other words used. Our actual word for death[253], in the first place, does not appear to point to a movement downward, or beneath the earth, but rather to a mounting upward towards God of that which passes. Thus we may reasonably suppose that the soul darts out and runs upward, as though a bent spring had been released, when the body breathes it out, and itself draws an upward vital breath. Next, look at the opposite of death, which is generation; this word, on the contrary, expresses a tendency downward, an inclination to earth[254] of that which at the time of death again speeds upward. Hence, too, we call our natal day by a name which means a beginning of evils and of great troubles.[255] Perhaps we shall see the same thing even more clearly from another set of words. A man when he dies is said to be “released”, and death called a “release”—if you ask the question “from what?”, a release from body[256]—for body is called dĕmas, because the soul is kept in bondage in it, contrary to nature, nothing being forcibly detained in a place which is natural to it. A further play upon this “bondage” and “force” gives the word “life”, as Homer,[257] I think, uses Hesperus for the feminine “evening”, and so, in contrast to “life”, the dead is said to come to his rest, released from a great and unnatural stress. So with the change and reconstitution of the soul into the Whole; we say that it has perished when it has made its way thither; while here it does not know this unless at the actual approach of death, when it undergoes such an experience as those do who are initiated into great mysteries. Thus death and initiation closely correspond, word to word,[258] and thing to thing. At first there are wanderings, and laborious circuits, and journeyings through the dark, full of misgivings where there is no consummation; then, before the very end, come terrors of every kind, shivers, and trembling, and sweat, and amazement. After this, a wonderful light meets the wanderer; he is admitted into pure meadow lands, where are voices, and dances, and the majesty of holy sounds and sacred visions. Here the newly initiate, all rites completed, is at large; he walks at large like the dedicated victim with a crown on his head, and joins in high revelry; he converses with pure and holy men, and surveys the uninitiate unpurified crowd here below in the dirt and darkness, trampled by its own feet and packed together; through fear of death remaining in its ills, because it does not believe in the blessings which are beyond. For that the conjunction of soul with body, and its imprisonment, are against nature, you may clearly see from this.’

III. ‘From what?’ said Patrocleas. ‘From the fact that of all our experiences sleep is the most agreeable. First, it always extinguishes any perception of pain, because its pleasure is mingled with so much that is familiar, secondly, it overpowers all other appetites, even the most vehement. For even those who are devoted to the body become disinclined for pleasure when sleep comes on, and when they slumber reject loving embraces. Why dwell on this? When sleep takes possession, it excludes even the pleasure which comes from learning, and discussion, and philosophic thought, as though a smooth deep stream swept the soul along. All pleasure, perhaps, is by its essence and nature a respite from pain, but of sleep this is absolutely true. For, though nothing exciting or delightful should approach from without, yet we feel pleasure in a sound sleep; sleep seems to remove a condition of toil and hardness. And that condition is no other than that which binds soul to body. In sleep the soul is separated, and speeds upward, and is gathered unto itself after having been strained to fit the body, and dispersed among the senses. Yet some assert that, on the contrary, sleep immingles soul with body. They are wrong. The body bears its witness the other way, by its lack of sensation, its coldness, and heaviness, and pallor proving that the soul leaves it in death, and shifts its quarters in sleep. This produces the pleasure; it is a release and respite for the soul, as though it laid down a burthen which it must again resume and shoulder. For when it dies it runs away from the body for good; when it is asleep, it plays truant. Therefore death is sometimes accompanied by pains, sleep always by pleasure; in the former case the bond is snapped altogether, in the latter it gives, and is slackened, and becomes easier, as the senses are loosened like parting knots, and the strain which ties soul to body is gone.’

IV. ‘Then how is it’, said Patrocleas, ‘that we do not feel discomfort or pain from being awake?’ ‘How is it’, said Timon, ‘that when the hair is cut, the head feels lightness and relief, yet there was no sense of oppression at all while the hair was long? Or that men released from bonds feel pleasure, yet there is no pain when the chains are on? Or why is there a stir of applause when light is brought suddenly into a banquet, yet its absence did not appear to cause pain or trouble to the eye? There is one cause, my friend, in all these cases; that gradual habituation made the unnatural familiar to the sense, so that it felt absolutely no distress then, but felt pleasure when there was release and a restoration to nature. The strangeness is seen at once when the proper condition comes, the presence of what pained and pressed by contrast with the pleasure. It is exactly so with the soul: during its association with mortal passions, and parts, and organs, that which is unnatural and strange produces no apparent pressure because of that long familiarity; yet when discharged from the activities of the body, it feels ease, and relief, and pleasure. By them it is distressed, and about these it toils, and from these it craves leisure and rest. For all that concerns its own natural activities—observation, reasoning, memory, speculation—it is unwearied and insatiable. Satiety is nothing but a weariness of pleasure, when soul feels with body. To its own pleasures soul never cries “Enough”; but while it is involved in body, it is in the plight of Ulysses.[259] As he clung to the fig-tree, and hugged it, not from love of the tree, but fearing Charybdis down below, so soul clings to body and embraces it, from no goodwill to it or gratitude, but in horror of the uncertainty of death,

For life the gods conceal from mortal men,

says the wise Hesiod.[260] They have not strained soul to body by fleshy bonds, one bond they have contrived and one encompassing device, the uncertainty of what comes after death, and our slowness to believe; since, “if the soul were persuaded”, as Heraclitus[261] says, “of all the things which await men when they have died, no force would keep it back.”’

ON SUPERSTITION

INTRODUCTION

The drift of Plutarch’s remarkable Treatise on Superstition is well given in the opening words of Bacon’s famous Essay: ‘It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely, and certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity.’ The word—the same which, in its adjective, St. Paul applies, almost in a good sense, to the Athenians of his day[262]—is correctly defined by Theophrastus, in his ‘character’ of the superstitious man, as timidity with regard to the supernatural, and this timidity at once passes into cowardice. There is in this treatise a fighting spirit and a directness of attack unusual in Plutarch, who mostly speaks with academic balance about conflicting schools of thought. Thus it has been suggested that one or other of his writings against the Epicureans may be intended to supply the required study ‘On Atheism’. There are many passages in the Lives and also in the Moralia where the author is seen to mediate between credulity and scepticism, superstition and atheism; usually showing a tendency to ‘the more benign extreme’; there is more to be lost by an undue hardening of the intellect than by a wise hospitality to beliefs and ideas which lie beyond strict proof. Here the attack is one-sided and uncompromising. At the end of the treatise true piety is exhibited as a middle path between superstition and atheism. This is not to be understood of a quantitative excess or defect. Piety in excess may induce a habit which deserves the name of superstition, such as has been the fair butt of satirists in all ages, and of humorists like Theophrastus. But Plutarch is thinking not of excess, but of perversion, a piety directed to wrong powers, or to powers conceived of in the wrong way. There is a striking instance in the Life of Pelopidas (c. 21), when some of the prophets invited that great soldier to obey the warning of a dream by slaying his daughter, for which there were ancient precedents. ‘But some on the other side urged, that such a barbarous and impious oblation could not be pleasing to any superior beings; that Typhons and Giants did not preside over the world, but the general father of Gods and men; that it was absurd to imagine any Divinities or powers delighted in slaughter or sacrifices of men; or, if there were any such, they were to be neglected, as weak and unable to assist; such unreasonable and cruel desires could only proceed from, and live in, weak and depraved minds.’

The situation is saved by the good sense of the augur Theocritus, the same who plays a quaint and gallant part in the enterprise described in The Genius of Socrates; and a chestnut colt takes the place of the daughter. And there is no doubt on which side of the argument Plutarch’s sympathies lie.

An admirable running commentary on Plutarch’s treatise is supplied by the Discourse on Superstition of John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist (1618-52), here printed as an Appendix to it. Like Bacon, John Smith has written also a Discourse on Atheism, from which it may be sufficient for the present purpose to quote the words of the Son of Sirach appended as his conclusion:

‘O Lord, Father and God of my life, give me not a proud look, but turn away from thy servants a Giant-like minde’ (Ecclus. 23, 4).

See, for this whole treatise, Dr. Oakesmith’s Chapter IX, pp. 179 foll.

ON SUPERSTITION

|164 E| The stream of ignorance and of misconception about the Gods passed, from the very first, into two channels; one branch flowed, as it were, over stony places, and has produced atheism in hard characters, the other over moist ground, and this has produced superstition in the tender ones. Now any error of judgement, especially on such matters, is a vicious thing, but if passion be added it is more vicious. For all passion is ‘deceit accompanied by inflammation’; and as dislocations are more |F| serious when there is also a wound, so are distortions of the soul when there is passion. A man thinks that atoms and a void are the first principles of the universe; the conception is a false one, but does not produce ulceration or spasm, or tormenting pain. Another conceives of wealth as the greatest |165| good; this falsity has poison in it, preys on his soul, deranges it, allows him no sleep, fills him with stinging torments, thrusts him down steep places, strangles him, takes away all confidence of speech. Again, some think that virtue is a corporeal thing, and vice also; this is a gross piece of ignorance perhaps, but not worthy of lament or groans. But where there are such judgements and conceptions as these:

Alas, poor Virtue! so thou art but words,

And as a thing I was pursuing thee[263]—

dropping, he means, the injustice which makes money, and the intemperance which is parent of all pleasure—, these it is worth our while to pity and to resent also, because their presence |B| in the soul breeds diseases and passions in numbers, very worms and vermin.

II. And so it is with the subjects of our present discourse. Atheism, which is a faulty judgement that there is nothing blessed or imperishable, seems to work round through disbelief in the Divine to actual apathy; its object in not acknowledging Gods is that it may not fear them. Superstition is shown by its very name to be a state of opinion charged with emotion and productive of such fear as debases and crushes the man; he thinks that there are Gods, but that they are |C| grievous and hurtful. The atheist appears to be unmoved at the mention of the Divine; the superstitious is moved, but in a wrong and perverted sense. Ignorance has produced in the one disbelief of the power which is helping him, in the other a superadded idea that it is hurting. Hence atheism is theory gone wrong, superstition is ingrained feeling, the outcome of false theory.

III. Now all diseases and affections of the soul are discreditable, but there is in some of them a gaiety, a loftiness, a distinction, which come of a light heart; we may say that none of these is wanting in a strong active impulse. Only there is this common charge to be laid against every such affection, that by stress of the active impulse it forces and |D| constrains the reason. Fear alone, as deficient in daring as it is in reason, keeps the irrational part inoperative, without resource or shift. Hence it has been called by two names, ‘Deima’ and ‘Tarbos’,[264] because it at once constricts and vexes the soul. But of all fears that which comes of superstition is most inoperative, and most resourceless. The man who never sails fears not the sea, nor the non-combatant, war; the home-keeping man fears no robbers, the poor no informers, the plain citizen no envy, the dweller among the Gauls[265] no earthquake, among the Ethiopians no thunder. The man who fears the Gods fears everything, land, sea; air, sky; darkness, light; sound, silence; to dream, to wake. Slaves forget |E| their masters while they sleep, sleep eases the prisoner’s chain; angry wounds, ulcers that raven and prey upon the flesh, and agonizing pains, all stand aloof from men that sleep:

Dear soothing sleep, that com’st to succour pains,

How sweet is thy approach in this my need.[266]

Superstition does not allow a man to say this; she alone has no truce with sleep, and suffers not the soul to breathe awhile, and |F| take courage, and thrust away its bitter heavy thoughts about the God. The sleep of the superstitious is a land of the ungodly, where blood-curdling visions, and monstrous whirling phantoms, and sure penalties are awake; the unhappy soul is hunted by dreams out of every spell of sleep it has, lashed and punished by itself, as though by some other, and receives injunctions horrible and revolting. Then when they have risen out of sleep, they do not scorn it all, or laugh it down, or perceive that none of the things which vexed them was real, but, escaped from the shadow of an illusion with no harm in it, they fall upon a vision of the day and deceive themselves outright, and spend |166| money to vex their souls, meeting with quacks and charlatans who tell them:

If nightly vision fright thy sleep,

Or hags their hellish revel keep,[267]

call in the wise woman, and take a dip into the sea, then sit on the ground, and remain so a whole day.

Ah! Greeks, what ills outlandish have ye found,[268]

namely, by superstition—dabbling in mud, plunges into filth, keepings of Sabbaths, falling on the face, foul attitudes, weird prostrations. Those who were concerned to keep music regular used to enjoin on singers to the harp to sing ‘with |B| mouth aright’. But we require that men should pray to the gods with mouth aright and just; not to consider whether the tongue of the victim be clean and correct, while they distort their own and foul it with absurd outlandish words and phrases, and transgress against the divine rule of piety as our fathers knew it. The man in the comedy has a passage which puts it happily to those who plate their bedsteads with gold and silver:

The one free gift of gods to mortals, sleep,

Why make it for thyself a costly boon?[269]

|C| So we may say to the superstitious man, that the Gods gave sleep for oblivion of troubles and a respite from them; why make it for thyself a cell of punishment, a chamber of abiding torment, whence the miserable soul cannot run away unto any other sleep? Heraclitus[270] says that ‘waking men have one world common to all, but in sleep each betakes him to a world of his own.’ The superstitious has no world, no, not a common world, since neither while he is awake does he enjoy his reason, nor when he sleeps is he set free from his tormentor; reason ever drowses, and fear is ever awake; there is no escape, nor change of place.

IV. Polycrates was a terrible tyrant in Samos, Periander |D| at Corinth, yet no one continued to fear them when he had removed to a free and democratic state. But when a man fears the sovereignty of the Gods as a grim inexorable tyranny, whither shall he migrate, where find exile, what sort of land can he find where no Gods are, or of sea? Into what portion of the world wilt thou creep and hide thyself, and believe, thou miserable creature, that thou hast escaped from God? There is a law which allows even slaves, if they have despaired of liberty, to petition to be sold, and so change to a milder master. Superstition allows no exchange of Gods, nor is it possible to find a God who shall not be terrible to him who fears those of his country and his clan, who shivers at the ‘Preservers’ and trembles in alarm before the beneficent beings from whom we ask wealth, plenty, peace, concord, a successful |E| issue for our best of words and works. And then these men reckon slavery a misfortune, and say:

A dire mishap it is, for man or maid,

To pass to service of some ill-starred lord.[271]

Yet how much more dire is it, think you, for them to pass to lords from whom is no flight, or running away, no shifting. The slave has an altar to flee unto, even for robbers many temples are inviolable, and fugitives in war, if they lay hold of shrine or temple, take courage. The superstitious shudders in alarm at those very things beyond all others, wherein those who fear the worst find hope. Never drag the superstitious man from temples; within them is punishment and retribution |F| for him. Why more words? ‘Death is the limit of life to all mankind.’[272] Yes, but even death is no limit to superstition; superstition crosses the boundaries to the other side, and makes fear endure longer than life. It attaches to death the apprehension of undying ills, and when it ceases from troubles, it |167| thinks to enter upon troubles which never cease. Gates are opened for it into a very depth of Hades, rivers of fire and streams which flow out of Styx mingle their floods; darkness itself is spread with phantoms manifold, obtruding cruel visions and pitiful voices; there are judges and tormentors, and chasms and abysses which teem with myriad evil things. Thus has superstition, that God-banned fear of Gods, made that inevitable to itself by anticipation, of which it had escaped the suffering in act.[273]

V. None of these horrors attaches to atheism. Yet its ignorance is distressing; it is a great misfortune to a soul |B| to see so wrong and grope so blindly about such great matters, because the light is extinguished of the brightest and most availing out of many eyes when the perception of God is lost. But to the opinion now before us there does attach from the very first, as we have already said, an emotional element, cankering, perturbing, and slavish. Plato[274] says that music, whose work it is to make men’s lives harmonious and rhythmical, was given to them by Gods, not for wanton tickling of the ears, but to clear the revolutions and harmonies of the soul from the disturbing impulses which rove within the body, such as most often run riot, where the Muse is not or the Grace, |C| and do violence and mar the tune; to bring them to order, to roll them smooth, to lead them aright, and settle them.

But they whom Zeus not loves (says Pindar)[275]

Turn to the sound a dim disdainful ear

What time the Muses’ voice they hear.

Yes, they grow savage and rebellious, as the tigers, they say, are maddened and troubled at the sound of the drum, and at last tear themselves to pieces. A lesser evil then it is for those who, through deafness and a dulled ear, are apathetic and insensible to music. Tiresias was unfortunate that he could not see his children and familiar friends, but far worse was the |D| case of Athamas and of Agave, who saw them as lions and stags. Better, I think, it was for Hercules in his madness not to see his sons, or feel their presence, than to treat his dearest ones as enemies.

VI. What then? Comparing the feeling of the atheists with that of the superstitious, do we not find a similar difference? The former see no Gods at all, the latter think that they exist as evil beings. The former neglect them, the latter imagine that to be terrible which is kind, that tyrannical which is fatherly, loving care to be injury, the ‘unapproachable’[276] to be savage and brutal. Then, trusting to coppersmiths, or marble workers, or modellers in wax, they fashion the forms of the Gods in human shape, and these they mould and frame and worship; while |E| they despise philosophers and men who know life, if they point them to the majesty of God consisting with goodness, and magnanimity, and patience, and solicitude. Thus in the former the result is insensibility and want of belief in all that is fair and helpful, in the latter confusion and fear in the presence of help. In a word, atheism is an apathy for the Divine which fails to perceive the good, superstition is an excess of feeling which suspects that the good is evil. They fear the Gods, and they flee to the Gods for refuge; they flatter and they revile them; they invoke and they censure them. It is man’s common lot not to succeed always or in all. |F|

They, from sickness free and age,
Quit of toils, the deep-voiced rage
Of Acheron for ay have left behind,

as Pindar[277] says; but human sufferings and doings flow in a mingled stream of vicissitude, now this way, now that.

VII. Now look with me at the atheist, first when things cross his wishes, and consider his attitude. If he is a decent, quiet person, he takes what comes in silence, and provides his own means of succour and consolation. If he be impatient and querulous, he directs all his complainings against Fortune, and |168| the way things happen; he cries out that nothing goes by justice or as Providence ordains, all is confused and jumbled up; the tangled web of human life is unpicked. Not so the superstitious: if the ill which has befallen him be the veriest trifle, still he sits down and builds on to his annoyance a pile of troubles, grievous and great and inextricable, heaping up for himself fears, dreads, suspicions, worries, a victim to every sort of groaning and lamentation; for he blames not man, nor fortune, nor |B| occasion, nor himself, but for all the God. From that quarter comes pouring upon him, he says, a Heaven-sent stream of woe; he is punished thus by the Gods not because he is unfortunate, but because he is specially hated by them, all that he suffers is his own proper deserts. Then the atheist, when he is sick, reckons up his own surfeitings, carouses, irregularities in diet, or over-fatigues, or unaccustomed changes of climate or place. Or, again, if he have met with political reverses, become unpopular or discredited in high quarters, he seeks for the cause in himself or his party.

Where my transgression? or what have I done? what duty omitted?[278]

But to the superstitious every infirmity of his body, every |C| loss of money, any death of a child, foul weather and failures in politics, are reckoned for blows from the God and assaults of the fiend. Hence he does not even take courage to help himself, to get rid of the trouble, or to remedy it, or make resistance, lest he should seem to be fighting the Gods, and resisting when punished. So the doctor is thrust out of the sick man’s chamber, and the mourner’s door is closed against the sage who comes to comfort and advise. ‘Man,’ he says, ‘let me take my punishment, as the miscreant that I am, an accursed |D| object of hate to Gods and daemons.’ It is open to a man who has no conviction that there are Gods, when suffering from some great grief and trouble, to wipe away a tear, to cut his hair, to put off his mourning. How are you going to address the superstitious in like case, wherein to bring him help? He sits outside, clothed in sackcloth, or with filthy rags hanging about him, as often as not rolling naked in the mud, while he recites errors and misdoings of his own, how he ate this, or drank that, or walked on a road which the spirit did not allow. At the very best, if he have taken superstition in a mild form, he sits in the house fumigating and purifying himself. The old women ‘make a peg of him’, as Bion says, and on it they hang—whatever |E| they choose to bring!

VIII. They say that Tiribazus, when arrested by the Persians, drew his scimitar, being a powerful man, and fought for his life; then, when they loudly protested that the arrest was by the king’s orders, at once dropped his point, and held out his hands to be tied. Is not this just what happens in the case before us? Other men make a fight against mischances and thrust all aside, that they may devise ways of escape and evade what is unwelcome to themselves. But the superstitious man listens to nobody, and addresses himself thus: ‘Poor wretch, |F| thy sufferings come from Providence, and by the order of the God.’ So he flings away all hope, gives himself up, flies, obstructs those who try to help him. Many tolerable troubles are made deadly by various superstitions. Midas[279] of old, as we are to believe, dispirited and distressed by certain dreams, was so miserable that he sought a voluntary death by drinking bulls’ blood. Aristodemus, king of the Messenians, during the war with the Lacedaemonians, when dogs were howling like wolves, and rye grass sprouting around his ancestral hearth, in utter despair at the extinction of all his hopes, cut his own throat. Perhaps it would have been better for Nicias[280], the Athenian |169| general, to find the same release from superstition as Midas or Aristodemus, and not, in his terror of the shadow when the moon was eclipsed, to sit still under blockade, and afterwards, when forty thousand had been slaughtered or taken alive, to be taken prisoner and die ingloriously. For there is nothing so terrible when the earth blocks the way, or when its shadow meets the moon in due cycle of revolutions; what is terrible is that a man should plunge[281] into the darkness of superstition, |B| and that its dark shadow should confound a man’s reason and make it blind in matters where reason is most needed.

Glaucus, see! the waves already from the depth of ocean stirred,

And a cloud is piling upwards, right above the Gyrean point,

Certain presage of foul weather.[282]

When the helmsman sees this, he prays that he may escape out of the peril, and calls on the Gods that save; but, while he prays, his hand is on the tiller, and he lowers the yard-arm,

Furls his mainsail, and from billows black as Erebus he flees.[283]

Hesiod[284] tells the farmer to pray to Zeus below the earth and holy Artemis before he ploughs or sows, but to hold on to |C| the plough-handle as he prays. Homer[285] tells us that Ajax, before meeting Hector in single combat, commanded the Greeks to pray for him to the Gods; then, while they were praying, he was arming. Agamemnon, when he had given orders to the fighters:

Let each his spear set, and prepare his shield,

then begs of Zeus:

Grant that this hand make Priam’s halls a heap.[286]

For God is the hope of valour, not the subterfuge of cowardice. The Jews, on the other hand, because it was a sabbath, sat on in uncleansed clothes, while their enemies planted their ladders and took the walls, never rising to their feet, as though entangled in the one vast draw-net of their superstition.[287]

IX. Such then is superstition in disagreeable matters and on |D| what we call critical occasions, but it has no advantage, even in what is more pleasant, over atheism. Nothing is more pleasant to men than feasts, temple banquets, initiations, orgies, prayers to the Gods, and solemn supplications. See the atheist there, laughing in a wild sardonic peal at the proceedings, probably with a quiet aside to his intimates, that those who think this all done for the Gods are crazed and possessed; but that is the worst that can be said of him. The superstitious man wants to be cheerful and enjoy himself, but he cannot.

Rife too the city is with heavy reek

Of victims slain, and rife with divers cries,

The wail for healing and the moan for death.[288]

|E| So is the soul of the superstitious. With the crown on his head he grows pale; while he sacrifices he shudders; he prays with a quivering voice and offers incense with hands that shake; he shows all through that Pythagoras[289] talks nonsense when he says: ‘We reach our best when we draw near to the Gods.’ For it is then that the superstitious are at their miserable worst; the halls and temples of the Gods which they approach are for them dens of bears, lairs of serpents, caverns of monsters of the sea!

X. Hence it comes upon me as a surprise when men say that |F| atheism is impiety, but that superstition is not. Yet Anaxagoras had to answer a charge of impiety for saying that the sun is a stone, whereas no one has called the Cimmerians impious for thinking that there is no sun at all. What do you say? Is the man who recognizes no Gods a profane person, and does not he, who takes them for such beings as the superstitious think, hold a far more profane creed? I know that I would rather men said about me that there is not, and never has come |170| into existence, a Plutarch, than that there is a man Plutarch unstable, shifty, readily provoked, revengeful over accidents, aggrieved at trifles; who, if you leave him out of your supper party, if you are busy and do not come to the door, if you pass him without a greeting, will cling to your flesh like a leech and gnaw it, or will catch your child, and thrash him to pieces, or will turn some beast, if he keep one, into your crops, and ruin the harvest. When Timotheus was singing of Artemis at Athens in the words:

Wanderer, frenzied one, wild and inebriate!

|B| Cinesias the composer rose from his place with ‘Such a daughter be thine!’ Yet the like of this, and worse things too, do the superstitious hold about Artemis:

She would burn a hanging woman,
She a mother in her pangs;
She would bring pollution to you
From the chamber of a corpse.
In the crossways swoop upon you,
Fix on you a murderer’s shame.[290]

Nor will their views about Apollo, or Hera, or Aphrodite be a whit more decent, they fear and tremble at them all. Yet what was there in Niobe’s blasphemy about Latona, compared to what |C| superstition has persuaded fools to believe about that goddess, how she felt herself insulted and actually shot down the poor woman’s

Six daughters, beauteous all, six blooming sons,[291]

so greedy of calamities for another woman, so implacable! For if the Goddess had really been full of wrath and resentment of wickedness, and felt aggrieved at insults to herself, disposed to resent, rather than to smile at human folly and ignorance, why then she ought to have shot down those who lyingly imputed to her such savage bitterness, in speech or books. Certainly we denounce the bitterness of Hecuba as savage and beastly: |D|

In whose mid-liver I my teeth would set,

And cling and gnaw.[292]

But of the Syrian Goddess superstitious men believe that if one eats sprats or anchovies, she munches his shins, fills his body with sores, and rots his liver.[293]

XI. How then? Is it impious to say bad things about the Gods, but not impious to think them? Or is it the thought of the blasphemer which makes his voice amiss? We men scout abusive language as the outward sign of ill-feeling. We reckon for enemies those who speak ill of us because we think that they also think ill. Now you see the sort of things which the superstitious think about the Gods; they take them to be capricious, |E| faithless, shifty, revengeful, cruel, vexed about trifles, all reasons why the superstitious must perforce hate and fear the Gods. Of course he does, when he thinks that they have been, and will be again, authors of his greatest ills. But if he hates and fears the Gods, he is their enemy. Yet he worships, and sacrifices, and sits before their shrines. And no wonder; men salute tyrants also, and court them, and set up their figures in gold. But ‘in silence’ they hate them, ‘wagging the head’.[294] Hermolaus remained Alexander’s courtier, Pausanias served on Philip’s |F| bodyguard, Chaereas on that of Caligula; but each of them would say while he attended on his master

Sure thou shouldst rue it if my arm were strong.[295]

The atheist thinks there are no Gods, the superstitious wishes that there were none; he believes against his will, for he fears to disbelieve. And yet, as Tantalus would gladly slip from beneath the stone swinging over his head, so is it with the superstitious and his fear, a pressure no less sore. He would reckon the atheist’s mood a blessed one, for there is freedom in it. As things are, the atheist is quite clear of superstition; the superstitious is at heart an atheist, only too weak to believe what he wishes to believe about the Gods.

|171| XII. Again, the atheist is in no sense responsible for superstition, whereas superstition provides atheism with a principle which brings it into being, and then an apology for its existence which is neither true nor honest, but is in a sense colourable. For it is not because they find anything to blame in sky, or stars, or seasons, or cycles of the moon, or movements of the sun around the earth, ‘those artificers of day and night’,[296] or espy confusion and disorder in the breeding of animals or the increase of fruits, that they condemn the universe to godlessness. No! Superstition and its ridiculous doings and emotions, words, |B| gestures, juggleries, sorceries, coursings around and beatings of cymbals, purifications which are impure, and cleansings which are filthy, weird illegal punishments and degradations at temples—these give certain persons a pretext for saying that better no Gods than Gods, if Gods accept such things and take pleasure in them, Gods so violent, so petty, so sore about trifles.

XIII. Were it not better then for those Gauls[297] and Scythians to have had no notion at all about Gods, neither imagination nor record of them, than to think that there are Gods who take |C| pleasure in the blood of slaughtered men and who accept that as the supreme form of solemn sacrifice? What? Were it not an advantage to the Carthaginians to have had a Critias or a Diagoras for their first lawgiver and to recognize neither God nor daemon, than to offer such sacrifices as they did offer to Cronus?[298] It was not the case which Empedocles puts against those who sacrifice animals:

Father, uplifting his son, not marking the change of the body,

Prays as he takes the dear life, poor fool.

Knowing and recognizing their own children, they used to sacrifice them—nay, the childless would buy children from poor parents and cut their throats as though they were lambs or chickens—, and the mother would stand by dry-eyed and with |D| never a groan. If she should groan or weep, she would have to lose the merit, and the child was sacrificed all the same, while the whole space in front of the shrine was filled with the rattle of drums and the din of fifes, in order that the sound of the wailing might be drowned. Suppose that Typhons, say, or Giants, had turned out the Gods and were our rulers, in what sacrifices but these would they delight, or what other solemnities would they require? Amestris,[299] wife of Xerxes, buried twelve men alive, as her own offering to Hades, who, as Plato[300] tells us, is |E| kind and wise and detains souls by persuasion and reason, and so has been named ‘Hades’. Xenophanes,[301] the natural philosopher, when he saw the Egyptians beating their breasts and wailing at their feasts, gave them a home lesson: ‘If these are Gods, do not mourn them; if men, why sacrifice to them?

XIV. There is no sort of disease so capricious and so varied in emotions, such a medley of opposite, or rather conflicting, opinions, as is that of superstition. We must flee from it then, but as safety and advantage point, not like men who run for their lives from robbers or beasts or fire, never looking round or using their heads, and plunge into pathless wastes with pits and |F| precipices. For that is how some flee from superstition and plunge into a rough and flinty atheism, overleaping Piety seated in the middle space.

APPENDIX
A SHORT DISCOURSE OF SUPERSTITION

By JOHN SMITH

THE CONTENTS OF THE ENSUING DISCOURSE

The true Notion of Superstition well express’d by Δεισιδαιμονία, i.e. an over-timorous and dreadful apprehension of the Deity.

A false opinion of the Deity the true cause and rise of Superstition.

Superstition is most incident to such as Converse not with the Goodness of God, or are conscious to themselves of their own unlikeness to him.

Right apprehensions of God beget in man a Nobleness and Freedome of Soul.

Superstition, though it looks upon God as an angry Deity, yet it counts him easily pleas’d with flattering Worship.

Apprehensions of a Deity and Guilt meeting together are apt to excite Fear.

Hypocrites to spare their Sins seek out waies to compound with God.

Servile and Superstitious Fear is encreased by Ignorance of the certain Causes of Terrible Effects in Nature, &c., as also by frightful Apparitions of Ghosts and Spectres.

A further Consideration of Superstition as a Composition of Fear and Flattery.

A fuller Definition of Superstition, according to the Sense of the Ancients.

Superstition doth not alwaies appear in the same Form, but passes from one Form to another, and sometimes shrouds it self under Forms seemingly Spiritual and more refined.

Of Superstition

Having now done with what we propounded as a Preface to our following Discourses, we should now come to treat of the main Heads and Principles of Religion. But before we doe that, perhaps it may not be amiss to enquire into some of those Anti-Deities that are set up against it, the chief whereof are Atheism and Superstition; which indeed may seeme to comprehend in them all kind of Apostasy and Praevarication from Religion. We shall not be over-curious to pry into such foule and rotten carkasses as these are too narrowly, or to make any subtile anatomy of them; but rather enquire a litle into the Original and Immediate Causes of them; because it may be they may be nearer of kin then we ordinarily are aware of, while we see their Complexions to be so vastly different the one from the other.

And first of all for Superstition (to lay aside our Vulgar notion of it which much mistakes it) it is the same with that Temper of Mind which the Greeks call Δεισιδαιμονία, (for so Tully frequently translates that word, though not so fitly and emphatically as he hath done some others:) It imports an overtimorous and dreadfull apprehension of the Deity; and therefore with Hesychius Δεισιδαιμονία and Φοβοθεΐα are all one, and Δεισιδαίμων is by him expounded ὁ εἰδωλολάτρης, ὁ εὐσεβής, καὶ δειλὸς παρὰ θεοῖς, an Idolater, and also one that is very prompt to worship the Gods, but withall fearfull of them. And therefore the true Cause and Rise of Superstition is indeed nothing else but a false opinion of the Deity, that renders him dreadfull and terrible, as being rigorous and imperious; that which represents him as austere and apt to be angry, but yet impotent, and easy to be appeased again by some flattering devotions, especially if performed with sanctimonious shewes and a solemn sadness of Mind. And I wish that that Picture of God which some Christians have drawn of him, wherein Sowreness and Arbitrariness appear so much, doth not too much resemble it. According to this sense, Plutarch hath well defined it in his book περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας in this manner, δόξαν ἐμπαθῆ καὶ δέους ποιητικὴν ὑπόληψιν οὖσαν ἐκταπεινοῦντος καὶ συντρίβοντος τὸν ἄνθρωπον, οἰόμενον τε εἶναι θεοὺς εἶναι δὲ λυπηροὺς καὶ βλαβερούς, a strong passionate Opinion, and such a Supposition as is productive of a fear debasing and terrifying a man with the representation of the Gods as grievous and hurtfull to Mankind.

Such men as these converse not with the Goodness of God, and therefore they are apt to attribute their impotent passions and peevishness of Spirit to him. Or it may be because some secret advertisements of their Consciences tell them how unlike they themselves are to God, and how they have provoked him; they are apt to be as much displeased with him as too troublesome to them, as they think he is displeased with them. They are apt to count this Divine Supremacy as but a piece of tyranny that by its Soveraign Will makes too great encroachments upon their Liberties, and that which will eat up all their Right and Property; and therefore are lavishly afraid of him, τὴν τῶν θεῶν ἀρχὴν ὡς τυραννίδα φοβούμενοι σκυθρωπὴν καὶ ἀπαραίτητον, fearing Heaven’s Monarchy as a severe and churlish Tyranny from which they cannot absolve themselves, as the same Author speaks: and therefore he thus discloseth the private whisperings of their minds, ᾅδου τινες ἀνοίγονται πύλαι βαθείαι, καὶ ποταμοῖ πυρὸς ὁμοῦ καὶ στυγὸς ἀπορρῶγες ἀναπετάννυνται, &c., the broad gates of hell are opened, the rivers of fire and Stygian inundations run down as a swelling flood, there is thick darkness crowded together, dreadfull and gastly Sights of Ghosts screeching and howling, Judges and tormentors, deep gulfes and Abysses full of infinite miseries. Thus he. The Prophet Esay gives us this Epitome of their thoughts, chap. 33: The Sinners in Zion are afraid, fearfulness hath surprized the hypocrites: who shall dwell with the devouring fire? who shall dwell with everlasting burnings? Though I should not dislike these dreadful and astonishing thoughts of future torment, which I doubt even good men may have cause to press home upon their own spirits, while they find Ingenuity less active, the more to restrain sinne; yet I think it little commends God, and as little benefits us, to fetch all this horror and astonishment from the Contemplations of a Deity, which should alwayes be the most serene and lovely: our apprehensions of the Deity should be such as might ennoble our Spirits, and not debase them. A right knowledge of God would beget a freedome and Liberty of Soul within us, and not servility; ἀρετῆς γὰρ ἐλπὶς ὁ Θεός εστιν οὐ δουλείας πρόφασις, as Plutarch hath well observ’d; our thoughts of a Deity should breed in us hopes of Vertue, and not gender to a spirit of bondage.

But that we may pass on. Because this unnaturall resemblance of God as an angry Deity in impure minds, should it blaze too furiously, like the Basilisk would kill with its looks; therefore these Painters use their best arts a little to sweeten it, and render it less unpleasing. And those that fancy God to be most hasty and apt to be displeased, yet are ready also to imagine him so impotently mutable, that his favour may be won again with their uncouth devotions, that he will be taken with their formall praises, and being thirsty after glory and praise and solemn addresses, may, by their pompous furnishing out all these for him, be won to a good liking of them: and thus they represent him to themselves as Lucian, in his De Sacrificiis [c. I] speaks too truly, though it may be too profanely, ὡς κολακευόμενον ἥδεσθαι, καὶ ἀγανακτεῖν ἀμελούμενον. And therefore Superstition will alwaies abound in these things whereby this Deity of their own, made after the similitude of men, may be most gratified, slavishly crouching to it. We will take a view of it in the words of Plutarch, though what refers to the Jews, if it respects more their rites than their Manners, may seem to contain too hasty a censure of them. Superstition brings in πηλώσεις, καταβορβορώσεις, σαββατισμούς, ῥίψεις ἐπὶ πρόσωπον, αἰσχρὰς προκαθίσεις, ἀλλοκότους προσκυνήσεις, wallowings in the dust, tumblings in the mire, observations of Sabbaths, prosternations, uncouth gestures, and strange rites of worship. Superstition is very apt to think that Heaven may be bribed with such false-hearted devotions; as Porphyrie, Lib. 2, περὶ ἀποχῆς, hath well explained it by this, that it is ὑπόληψις τοῦ δεκάζειν δύνασθαι τὸ θεῖον, an apprehension that a man may corrupt and bribe the Deity; which (as he there observes) was the Cause of all those bloudy sacrifices and of some inhumane ones among the Heathen men, imagining διὰ τῶν θυσιῶν ἐξωνεῖσθαι τὴν ἁμαρτίαν like him in the Prophet that thought by the fruit of his body and the firstlings of his flock to expiate the sinne of his Soul. Micah 6.

But it may be we may seeme all this while to have made too Tragicall a Description of Superstition; and indeed one Author whom we have all this while had recourse to, seemes to have set it forth, as anciently Painters were wont to doe those pieces in which they would demonstrate most their own skill; they would not content themselves with the shape of one Body onely, but borrowed severall parts from severall Bodies as might most fit their design and fill up the picture of that they desired chiefly to represent. Superstition it may be looks not so foul and deformed in every Soul that is dyed with it, as he hath there set it forth, nor doth it every where spread it self alike: this πάθος that shrowds it self under the name of Religion, wil variously discover it self as it is seated in Minds of a various temper, and meets with variety of matter to exercise it self about.

We shall therefore a little further inquire into it, and what the Judgments of the soberest men anciently were of it; the rather that a learned Author of our own seems unwilling to own that Notion of it which we have hitherto out of Plutarch and others contended for; who though he have freed it from that gloss which the late Ages have put upon it, yet he may seem to have too strictly confined it to a Cowardly Worship of the ancient Gentile Daemons, as if Superstition and Polytheism were indeed the same thing, whereas Polytheism or Daemon-worship is but one branch of it, which was partly observed by the learned Casaubon in his Notes upon that Chapter of Theophrastus περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας, when it is described to be δειλία πρὸς τὸ δαιμόνιον, which he thus interprets, Theophrastus voce δαιμόνιον et Deos et Daemones complexus est, et quicquid divinitatis esse particeps malesana putavit antiquitas. And in this sense it was truly observed by Petronius Arbiter,

Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor—

The whole progeny of the ancient Daemons, at least in the Minds of the Vulgar, sprung out of Fear, and were supported by it: though notwithstanding, this Fear, when in a Being void of all true sense of Divine goodness, hath not escaped the censure of Superstition in Varro’s judgment, whose Maxim it was, as S. Austin tells us, Deum a religioso vereri, a superstitioso timeri: which distinction Servius seems to have made use of in his Comment upon Virgil, Aeneid 6, where the Poet describing the torments of the wicked in hell, he runs out into an Allegoricall exposition of all, it may be too much in favour of Lucretius, whom he there magnifies. His words are these, Ipse etiam Lucretius dicit per eos super quos jamjam casurus imminet lapis, Superstitiosos significare, qui inaniter semper verentur, et de Diis et Cœlo et locis superioribus male opinantur; nam Religiosi sunt qui per reverentiam timent.

But that we may the more fully unfold the Nature of this πάθος, and the effects of it, which are not alwaies of one sort, we shall first premise something concerning the Rise of it.

The Common Notions of a Deity, strongly rooted in Mens Souls, and meeting with the Apprehensions of Guiltiness, are very apt to excite the Servile fear: and when men love their own filthy lusts, that they may spare them, they are presently apt to contrive some other waies of appeasing the Deity and compounding with it. Unhallowed minds, that have no inward foundation of true Holiness to fix themselves upon, are easily shaken and tossed from all inward peace and tranquillity; and as the thoughts of some Supreme power above them seize upon them, so they are struck with the lightning thereof into inward affrightments, which are further encreas’d by a vulgar observation of those strange, stupendious, and terrifying Effects in Nature, whereof they can give no certain reason, as Earthquakes, Thundrings, and Lightnings, blazing Comets and other Meteors of a like Nature, which are apt to terrifie those especially who are already unsetled and Chased with an inward sense of guilt, and, as Seneca speaks, inevitabilem metum ut supra nos aliquid timeremus incutiunt. Petronius Arbiter hath well described this business for us,

Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor, ardua cœlo

Fulmina cum caderent, discussaque moenia flammis,

Atque ictus flagraret Athos—

From hence it was that the Libri fulgurales of the Romanes, and other such volumes of Superstition, swelled so much, and that the pulvinaria Deorum were so often frequented, as will easily appear to any one a little conversant in Livy, who everywhere sets forth this Devotion so largely, as if he himself had been too passionately in love with it.

And though as the Events in Nature began sometimes to be found out better by a discovery of their immediate Natural Causes, so some particular pieces of Superstitious Customs were antiquated and grown out of date (as is well observ’d concerning those Charms and Februations anciently in use upon the appearing of an Eclipse, and some others) yet often affrights and horrours were not so easily abated, while they were unacquainted with the Deity, and with the other mysterious events in Nature, which begot those Furies and unlucky Empusas ἀλάστορας καὶ παλαμναίους δαίμονας, in the weak minds of men. To all which we may adde the frequent Spectres and frightfull Apparitions of Ghosts and Mormos: all which extorted such a kind of Worship from them as was most correspondent to such Causes of it. And those Rites and Ceremonies which were begotten by Superstition, were again the unhappy Nurses of it, such as are well described by Plutarch in his De defect. Oracul., Ἑορταὶ καὶ θυσίαι, ὥσπερ ἡμέραι ἀποφράδες, καὶ σκυθρωπαί, ἐν αἷς ὠμοφαγίας, &c. Feasts and Sacrifices, as likewise observations of unlucky and fatall dayes, celebrated with eating of raw things, lacerations, fastings, and howlings, and many times filthy Speeches in their sacred rites, and frantick behaviour.

But as we insinuated before, This Root of Superstition diversely branched forth it self, sometimes into Magick and Exorcismes, other times into Pædanticall Rites and idle observations of Things and Times, as Theophrastus hath largely set them forth in his Tract περὶ δεισιδαιμονίας: in others it displayed itself in inventing as many new Deities as there were severall Causes from whence their affrights proceeded, and finding out many φρικτὰ μυστήρια appropriate to them, as supposing they ought to be worshipt cum sacro horrore. And hence it is that we hear of those inhumane and Diabolicall sacrifices called ἀνθρωποθυσίαι, frequent among the old Heathens (as among many others Porphyry in his De abstinentia hath abundantly related) and of those dead mens bones which our Ecclesiastick writers tell us were found in their Temples at the demolishing of them. Sometimes it would express itself in a prodigall way of sacrificing, for which Ammianus Marcellinus (an heathen Writer, but yet one who seems to have been well pleased with the simplicity and integrity of Christian Religion) taxeth Julian the Emperor for Superstition. Iulianus, Superstitiosus magis quam legitimus sacrorum observator, innumeras sine parsimonia pecudes mactans, ut æstimaretur, si revertisset de Parthis, boves iam defuturos: like that Marcus Caesar, of whom he relates this common proverb, οἱ λευκοὶ βέες Μάρκῳω τῷ Καίσαρι, ἄν συ νικήσῃς, ἡμεῖς ἀπωλόμεθα. Besides many other ways might be named wherein Superstition might occasionally shew it self.

All which may best be understood, if we consider it a little in that Composition of Fear and Flattery which before we intimated: and indeed Flattery is most incident to base and slavish minds; and when the fear and jealousy of a Deity disquiet a wanton dalliance with sin, and disturb the filthy pleasure of Vice, then this fawning and crouching disposition will find out devices to quiet an angry conscience within, and an offended God without, (though as men grow more expert in this cunning, these fears may in some degree abate). This the ancient Philosophy hath well taken notice of, and therefore well defin’d δεισιδαιμονία by κολακεία, and useth these terms promiscuously. Thus we find Max. Tyrius in his Dissert. 4 concerning the difference between a Friend and a Flatterer. ὁ μὲν εὐσεβής, φίλος θεῷ, ὁ δὲ δεισιδαίμων, κόλαξ θεοῦ· καὶ μακάριος ὁ εὐσεβής, ὁ φίλος θεοῦ, δυστυχὴς δὲ ὁ δεισιδαίμων. ὁ μὲν θαρσῶν τῇ ἀρετῇ, πρόσεισι τοῖς θεοῖς ἄνευ δέους· ὁ δὲ ταπεινὸς διὰ μοχθηρίαν, μετὰ πολλοῦ δέους, δύσελπις, καὶ δεδιὼς τοὺς θεοὺς ὥσπερ τοὺς τυράννους. The sense whereof is this, The Pious man is God’s friend, the Superstitious is a flatterer of God: and indeed most happy and blest is the condition of the Pious man, God’s friend, but right miserable and sad is the state of the Superstitious. The Pious man, emboldened by a good Conscience and encouraged by the sense of his integrity, comes to God without fear and dread: but the Superstitious being sunk and deprest through the sense of his own wickedness, comes not without much fear, being void of all hope and confidence, and dreading the Gods as so many Tyrants. Thus Plato also sets forth this Superstitious temper, though he mentions it not under that name, but we may know it by a property he gives of it, viz.: to colloque with Heaven, Lib. 10, de Legibus, where he distinguisheth of Three kinds of Tempers in reference to the Deity, which he then calls πάθη, which are, Totall Atheism, which he saies never abides with any man till his Old age; and Partial Atheism, which is a Negation of Providence; and a Third, which is a perswasion concerning the Gods ὅτι εὐπαράμυθοί εἰσι θύμασι καὶ εὐχαῖς, that they are easily won by sacrifices and prayers, which he after explaines thus, ὅτι παραιτητοί εἰσι τοῖσιν ἀδικοῦσιν, δεχόμενοι δῶρα, &c., that with gifts unjust men may find acceptance with them. And this Discourse of Plato’s upon these three kinds of Irreligious πάθη Simplicius seems to have respect to in his comment upon Epictetus, cap. 38, which treats about Right Opinions in Religion; and there having pursued the two former of them, he thus states the latter, which he calls ἀθεΐας λόγον as well as the other two, as a conceit θεοὺς παρατρέπεσθαι δώροις, καὶ ἀναθήμασι, καὶ κερματίου διαδόσεσιν, quod muneribus et donariis et stirpis distributione a sententia deducuntur, such men making account by their devotions to draw the Deity to themselves, and winning the favour of Heaven, to procure such an indulgence to their lusts as no sober man on earth would give them; they in the meanwhile not considering ὡς μεταμέλειαι, καὶ ἱκετεῖαι, καὶ εὐχαί, καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα, ἀναλογοῦσι τῷ κάλῳ, that Repentance, Supplications, and Prayers, &c., ought to draw us nearer to God, not God nearer to us; as in a ship, by fastning a Cable to a firm Rock, we intend not to draw the Rock to the Ship, but the Ship to the Rock. Which last passage of his is therefore the more worthy to be taken notice of, as holding out so large an Extent that this Irreligious temper is of, and of how subtil a Nature. This fond and gross dealing with the Deity was that which made the scoffing Lucian so much sport, who in his Treatise De Sacrificiis tells a number of stories how the Daemons loved to be feasted, and when and how they were entertained, with such devotions which are rather used Magically as Charms and Spells for such as use them, to defend themselves against those Evils which their own Fears are apt perpetually to muster up, and to endeavour by bribery to purchase Heaven’s favour and indulgence, as Juvenal speaks of the Superstitious Aegyptian,

Illius lacrimae mentitaque munera præstant
Ut veniam culpae non abnuat, ansere magno
Scilicet et tenui popano corruptus Osiris.

Though all this while I would not be understood to condemn too severely all servile fear of God, if it tend to make men avoid true wickedness, but that which settles upon these lees of Formality.

To conclude, Were I to define Superstition more generally according to the ancient sense of it, I would call it Such an apprehension of God in the thoughts of men, as renders him grievous and burdensome to them, and so destroys all free and cheerfull converse with him; begetting in the stead thereof a forc’d and jejune devotion, void of inward Life and Love. It is that which discovers itself Pædantically in the worship of the Deity, in anything that makes up but onely the Body or outward Vesture of Religion; though then it may make a mighty bluster; and because it comprehends not the true Divine good that ariseth to the Souls of men from an internall frame of Religion, it is therefore apt to think that all its insipid devotions are as so many Presents offered to the Deity and gratifications of him. How variously Superstition can discover and manifest itself, we have intimated before: To which I shall only adde this, That we are not so well rid of Superstition, as some imagine when they have expell’d it out of their Churches, expunged it out of their Books and Writings, or cast it out of their Tongues, by making Innovations in names (wherein they sometimes imitate those old Caunii that Herodotus speaks of, who that they might banish all the forrein Gods that had stollen in among them, took their procession through all their Country, beating and scourging the Aire along as they went;) No, for all this, Superstition may enter into our chambers, and creep into our closets, it may twine about our secret Devotions, and actuate our Formes of belief and Orthodox opinions, when it hath no place else to shroud itself or hide its head in; we may think to flatter the Deity by these, and to bribe it with them, when we are grown weary of more pompous solemnities: nay it may mix it self with a seeming Faith in Christ; as I doubt it doth now in too many, who laying aside all sober and serious care of true Piety, think it sufficient to offer up their Saviour, his Active and Passive Righteousness, to a severe and rigid Justice, to make expiation for those sins they can be willing to allow themselves in.

ON THE FACE WHICH APPEARS ON THE ORB OF THE MOON
A DIALOGUE

INTRODUCTION

Plutarch’s Dialogue on The Face in the Moon is not a scientific treatise, and its author would have disclaimed any intention of writing to advance science. It is discussion for the sake of discussion, the ‘good talk’ of which Plutarch wished that Athens should have no monopoly, any more than she had when the Boeotian Simmias and Cebes were among the trusted friends of Socrates, or, later, when ‘plain living and high thinking’ could be exhibited in lofty perfection in the Theban home of Epaminondas. A mixed company, which includes an astronomer, another mathematician, a literary man, and professed philosophers (there is no Epicurean here), with Lamprias, Plutarch’s brother, for president, discusses the movements and physical nature of the moon, from many points of view. Reference is made throughout to a previous discussion at which Lamprias, and Lucius, another of the speakers, had been present, when a person called ‘Our Comrade’ had dealt faithfully with the Peripatetic view, endorsed by the Stoics, that the moon is not of substance like our earth, but is a fiery or starlike body. This discussion had wandered into mystical theories as to the moon’s office in the birth and death of human souls, and her connexion with ‘daemons’. Sylla has joined the present company with a myth to relate bearing on these deep subjects, which had come to him at Carthage as a traveller’s tale. Its production is delayed until the end of the Dialogue, which it closes after the manner of a Platonic myth; the phrases with which it is opened and dismissed may be compared with those of the Gorgias. This double device, of referring part of the matter to a former conversation (as the E at Delphi is a recollection of an old discourse by Ammonius), and part to a new and strange tale, skilfully relieves this elaborate Dialogue. Some difficulty is caused by the imperfect, or doubtful, condition of the text of the opening chapter, as no complete explanation seems to be given as to the place or time of the former discussion. Probably this abruptness is intentional, but the text requires careful attention.

Perhaps this Dialogue throws more light on the views about the solar system accepted or under discussion in the first century of our era than a scientific treatise could have done. No reference is made to the great astronomical work of Ptolemy, which belongs to the second century, and closed most questions until the sixteenth. The estimate, e.g. of the moon’s distance (56 earth’s radii) is not Ptolemy’s (59). Some of the geographical details, as that of the Caspian Sea, seem to show that Ptolemy’s geographical work was not known to the Author.

It may be useful to enumerate some of the simpler of the accepted views about the heavens :

(1) That the earth is a Sphere was known to Pythagoras and allowed by Plato (Phaedo 110 B), and affirmed by Aristotle, De Caelo, 2, 14, 297 b 18. The moon, and, according to Aristotle, the stars, are also spherical.

(2) That the moon derived her light from the sun was a discovery due to Anaxagoras (fifth century B.C.).

(3) The true cause of eclipses was known to the Pythagoreans, and is stated by Aristotle, and, with more precision, by Posidonius.

(4) The inclination of the equator to the sun’s path is stated by Oenopides of Chios (a little after Anaxagoras).

(5) That the moon revolves round the earth at a moderate distance is stated by Empedocles.

(6) The other planets (including the sun) revolve round the earth at a distance vastly less than that of the fixed stars. (No actual estimate of the distances or sizes is given even by Ptolemy, who is not able to state a parallax for any, or an angular diameter.)

(7) That the planets share in the (apparent) daily motion of the stars, and also have an (apparent) motion of their own in the reverse direction was held by Pythagoras.

All these refer to physical facts and can be stated without the use of mathematical language, though many of the discoverers were expert mathematicians. Gradually, and certainly from the time of the great astronomer Hipparchus (about 130 B.C.), attention came to be fixed upon the accurate mathematical interpretation of observed apparent facts; in a favourite phrase, the object was ‘to save the phenomena’, irrespective of physical and actual fact.

In the case of the moon, the two lines of inquiry are less sharply divided than in that of other bodies. Very correct statements as to her size and distance from the earth may be gathered from Plutarch’s Dialogue. A guess is even hazarded that she is lighter than the earth, bulk for bulk, because of the action of fire in the past.

The mathematical account of the movements of the moon has its history. As we have seen, it was early realized that she revolved round and near the earth in a circular orbit. Soon it appeared that there were irregularities in this movement. The ‘First Anomaly’, a difference of speed observed at different parts of the orbit, was well understood by Hipparchus. It could be expressed, so as to ‘save the phenomena’, by either of two methods, both resting on the assumption that no curve except a circle was admissible, and both superseding the ingenious but cumbrous arrangement of ‘concentric Spheres’ known to Aristotle. One was that of ‘movable eccentrics’, where the orbit of the planet was round a point outside the earth, itself shifting. The other, which prevailed, and was finally adopted by Ptolemy, was that of epicycles, circles described round points in the primary orbit, by means of which the planet’s motion could be retarded or quickened at will, and its position modified. By this device, the visible movement could be, and was, recorded with great accuracy, but sometimes at the expense of physical truth. Thus the epicyclic arrangement for the moon’s orbit involved, if closely looked into, the consequence that her distance from us at nearest must be half that at the farthest, and her angular diameter double! Kepler, after the work of a lifetime (1571-1630), discovered the cause of this ‘anomaly’ in the shape of the orbit, which is elliptical, not circular, and substituted ‘eccentricity’ for ‘anomaly’ as the key-word. Newton (1642-1727) proved that a body revolving round another must move in an ellipse, with the larger body at one focus. Thus the wheel had come full circle, and physical and mathematical inquiry met after two thousand years of separation. The ‘Second Anomaly’ due to the action of the sun (the ‘Evection’) was indicated by Hipparchus, worked out as a phenomenon by Ptolemy, and its physical cause explained by Newton. The inclination of the moon’s path to the sun’s was known to Hipparchus as 5°, and the recession of her nodes was familiar to him. A third anomaly now known as ‘Variation’ is instructive because its discovery has been claimed for an Arabian astronomer of about A.D. 1000. After an exhaustive discussion during the last century (1836-71), it seems to be proved that the claim rested upon a mistake, and that the sole credit is due to Tycho Brahe (see Dreyer, p. 252). In fact, whatever in astronomy does not belong to modern science is Greek, after allowing for what the Greeks may have learnt in early ages from Chaldaeans or Egyptians. The Romans contributed nothing, the Indians learnt much from scientific men who accompanied Alexander, and used it skilfully, but did not advance it. And the modern makes a really continuous whole with the ancient Greeks, for it is not only astronomy which should be considered, but the essential preliminaries, such as the study of the Conic Sections, which, in its geometrical form, is purely Greek.

One authority to whom Plutarch twice refers by name requires special mention. This was Aristarchus of Samos, who belongs to the middle or later part of the third century B.C. He is the author of a work on ‘The Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon’ which is extant. It was well edited by Wallis for the Oxford Press in 1688, and more recently (1913) and in a modern form, by Sir Thomas Heath, F.R.S., who has prefixed an invaluable history of astronomy prior to Aristarchus. The book is rigorously mathematical, and contains six ‘hypotheses’, and eighteen propositions deduced from them. The second of the hypotheses, ‘That the earth is in the relation of a point and centre to the sphere in which the moon moves’, is quoted by Plutarch, apparently as being accepted by Hipparchus. The sixth, ‘That the moon subtends one-fifteenth part of a sign of the Zodiac (i. e. 2°)‘, raises a curious point which is fully considered by Sir T. Heath. That Aristarchus should at any time have thus exaggerated (multiplied by four) a measurement which seems open to some sort of simple observation, and have based good work upon it, seems very strange, firstly, because he must have considered the matter, (since he is aware that the same figure may stand for sun and moon); and, secondly, because Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), whose knowledge and good faith are beyond question, says that ‘Aristarchus discovered that the sun appeared to be about one seven hundred and twentieth part of the circle of the Zodiac (30´)‘, which is roughly correct.[302]

The fourth hypothesis runs: ‘That when the moon appears to us halved, its distance from the sun is then less than a quadrant by one-thirtieth of a quadrant (i.e. is 87°).’ From this is directly deduced (Hypothesis 6 is not here used) Prop. 7, an elaborate proof that ‘the distance of the sun from the earth is greater than eighteen times, but less than twenty times, the distance of the moon from the earth’, quoted by Plutarch in c. 10. The fact assumed does not appear to be open to observation; perhaps Aristarchus, or a predecessor, arrived at it by comparing the average times taken by the moon over the first and second quarters of her orbit. The true (theoretical) figure is 89° 50´. The sequel is very interesting. Hipparchus, a century later, adopted the result in calculating the parallax of the sun, which he found to be 3´ of arc (more than twenty times too much). This was adopted by Ptolemy in the second century A.D., and remained the official estimate until nearly A.D. 1700, though both Hipparchus and Kepler had protested, the latter stating as his opinion that the parallax could not be greater than one minute of arc, or the distance less than twelve millions of miles. Shortly before A.D. 1700 improved knowledge of the orbit and distances of Mars enabled the sun’s parallax to be reduced to 9-1/2 seconds of arc, and his distance stated at eighty-seven millions of miles, which is not very inadequate. It was a great achievement of Aristarchus, though he led the world into error, to state a reasoned figure at all, and to think in such mighty units.

His cosmical speculation is even more daring. It is known to us from this Dialogue (c. 6) and also from Archimedes, who records it in his (extant) Arenarius without comment. Aristarchus proposed to ‘disturb the hearth of the universe’ by his hypothesis that the heaven of the stars is fixed, while the earth has a daily motion on her axis and an annual motion round the sun. It was a brilliant intuition, possible in an age of comparatively simple knowledge, which could not easily have been advanced when the complexity of the several orbits was increasingly realized (see Dreyer, pp. 147-8). Dr. Dreyer (p. 145) makes the interesting suggestion that Aristarchus took the idea from some early form of the system of ‘movable eccentrics’, and, further (p. 157), that if that system had prevailed against that of epicycles, it must have flashed, sooner or later, upon some bright mind, that there was one eccentric point, namely, one in the sun, central to the orbits of all the planets.

It is to be observed that ‘Heraclides of Pontus’ (at one time a pupil of Plato’s) discovered the movement of the two inner planets round the sun. It is possible (as contended by Sciaparelli) that he believed all the planets to move round the sun, and the sun round the earth, in fact anticipated Tycho Brahe. Further, there is a statement that he anticipated Aristarchus as to the movement of the earth; but Sir T. Heath, who examines the evidence very fully, concludes that the evidence has been misread. Aristarchus certainly contended for the diurnal rotation of the earth, but this was rejected by Hipparchus and passed out of account for many centuries.

The history of the emergence of the heliocentric theory has a curiously close counterpart in that of the circulation of the blood. Harvey communicated his discovery to the College of Physicians on April 17, 1616, but he had kept it back for twelve years out of deference to the great and deserved authority of Galen, which it was dangerous to dispute, as Copernicus held back his ‘Treatise of Revolutions’ for thirty years, because it was very dangerous, even for the nephew of a Bishop, himself the Canon of a cathedral far north of the Alps, to question the findings of Ptolemy. ‘Yet for years the profession had been in latent possession of a knowledge of the circulation. Indeed a good case has been made out for Hippocrates, in whose works occur some remarkably suggestive sentences’ (see The Growth of Truth, the Harveian Oration of 1906, by Sir William Osler, M.D., F.R.S.). Bacon, who ‘writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor’—i.e. seeks to eliminate error from facts stated, and then to apply the law (see De Morgan, Bundle of Paradoxes, p. 50)—, would have none of the Copernican hypothesis. Nor would Sir Thomas Browne, though he preferred Dr. Harvey’s discovery ‘to that of America’. But truth will out, at her own time and through the ministers of her choice.

Behind the horseplay of the Stoics and Academics, on the subject of the centre of the universe and the laws which light and heavy bodies obey, there seems to lie some real groping after a general cosmic law, such as gravitation. Thus the earth and the moon draw bodies, each from its own surface to its own centre, and if the earth draws the moon, it is as a part of herself, once ejected and now reclaimed.

There is no direct evidence of the time or place when this Dialogue is supposed to take place, nor of the date of its composition. Much of the matter is common to it with the Dialogue On the cessation of the Oracles, one passage of which has been thought (by Adler) to be an extract from it. Lamprias takes the principal place in both, and Plutarch is not present, at least under his own name. The solar eclipse mentioned in c. 19 as recent would give a clue if it could be identified. Ginzel (Spezieller Kanon) has selected three for special consideration, viz., those of April 30, A.D. 59, March 20, A.D. 71, and January 5, A.D. 75. By the kindness of J. K. Fotheringham, Esq., D.Litt., Fellow of Magdalen College, who has made the laborious computation, I am able to state the respective magnitude of these eclipses at Chaeroneia as 11·08, 11·82, 10·38 (totality = 12). Thus Ginzel’s preference for No. 2 is confirmed; it was there a large partial eclipse, and the time of greatest phase was 11 hours 4·1 minutes local solar time. Several stars would become visible, 66/67 of the sun’s diameter being obscured; a few might be visible during No. 1, none during No. 3.

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE

1. Sextius Sylla, the Carthaginian, mentioned in the Life of Romulus (c. 15) as ‘a man wanting neither learning nor ingenuity’, who had supplied Plutarch with a piece of archaeological information. Elsewhere (De cohib. ira, c. 1) he is addressed as ‘O most eager Sylla!’ In another Dialogue he declines to be led into a discussion on all cosmology by answering the question ‘whether the egg or the bird comes first?’ (Sympos. 2, 3).

He has a story, or myth, to tell about the moon, which he is impatient to begin. This story, which he had heard from a friend in Carthage, is mainly geographical in interest. The details remind us of those quoted from Pytheas about his journeys to Britain and the Northern Seas. The whole conception of the globe is clearly earlier than that of Ptolemy (see especially as to the Caspian Sea, c. 26). The myth also introduces us to the worship of Cronus as practised at Carthage, and connects it with the wonders of the moon, and her place in the heavenly system.

In c. 17 Sylla raises a good point, about the half-moon, which was being passed over.

2. Lamprias, a brother, probably an elder brother, of Plutarch directs the course of the conversation, and himself expounds the Academic view, referring to Lucius for his recollections of a recent discussion at which both had been present, when the Stoic doctrines on physics had been criticized.

In some of the Symposiacs and other dialogues Lamprias takes a similar place; in others both brothers take part. Lamprias probably died early.

‘Evidently a character, a good trencherman, as became a Boeotian, one who on occasion could dance the Pyrrhic war dance, who loved well a scoff and a jest ... and who, if he thrust himself somewhat brusquely into discussions which are going forward, was quite able to justify the intrusion.’—Archbishop Trench.

3. Apollonides, astronomer and geometrician; perhaps the latter would be the more correct designation. In another Dialogue (Sympos. 3, 4) a ‘tactician’ of the name appears.

As Apollonius, the great mathematician (living about 200 B.C.) was also a geometrician who contributed to astronomical theory, not himself an astronomer, it seems likely that the name Apollonides has been coined by Plutarch for ‘one of the clan of Apollonius’, i. e. a young professor of geometry. Apollondes is treated rather brusquely by Lamprias, certainly with less respect than Menelaus. He seems to have cast in his lot with the Stoics in their physical opinions.

4. Aristotle, a Peripatetic. Perhaps the name was given to him to mark the School to which he belonged. In the Dialogue On the Delays in Divine Punishment an ‘Epicurus’ is a representative Epicurean.

5. Pharnaces, a Stoic, who sturdily supports his physical creed against all comers.

6. Lucius, an Etruscan pupil of Moderatus the Pythagorean, spoken of in one place (Sympos. 8, 7 and 8) as ‘Lucius our comrade’. He is elsewhere reticent as to the inner Pythagorean teaching, but is courteous and ready to discuss ‘what is probable and reasonable’.

Kepler is inclined to complain of his professorial tone and longwindedness in the present Dialogue. This is hardly fair, as he is for the most part reporting a set discourse heard elsewhere, and that by request. Lamprias has to give him time to remember the points (c. 7). In c. 5 he asks that justice may be done to the Stoics. He associates himself with the Academics on physical matters.

7. Theon (see Preface, p. xii), represents literature (as he does in other Dialogues, notably in that on the E at Delphi). He is a welcome foil to the more severe disputants. In c. 24 he interrupts by moving the previous question—‘Why a moon at all?’ and is congratulated on the cheerful turn which he has given to the discussion. Theon may sometimes recall to readers of Jules Verne’s pleasant Voyage autour de la lune the sallies of Michel Ardan the poet.

8. Menelaus, a distinguished astronomer who lived and observed at Alexandria. Observations of his, which include some taken in the first year of Trajan, A.D. 98, are recorded by Ptolemy (Magna Syntaxis, 7, 3, p. 170) and other writers.

ANALYSIS

[The opening chapters are lost. There must have been an introduction of the speakers, with some explanation as to time and place, a reference to a set discussion at which some of the speakers had been present, and a promise of Sylla to narrate a myth, bearing upon the moon and her markings, which he had heard in Carthage. This conversation had taken a turn, prematurely as Sylla thinks, towards the mythical or supernatural aspects of the moon.] But see note (1) on p. 309.

c. 1. It is agreed that the current scientific or quasi-scientific views on the markings of the moon’s face shall be first considered, then the supernatural.

cc. 2-4. Lamprias mentions

(i) The view that the markings are due to weakness of human eyesight. This is easily refuted.

(ii) The view of Clearchus, the Peripatetic, that they are caused by reflexion of the ocean on the moon’s face. But ocean is continuous, the markings are broken; they are seen from all parts of the earth, including ocean itself (and the earth is not a mere point in space, but has dimensions of its own); and, thirdly, they are not seen on any other heavenly body.

c. 3. The mention of Clearchus brings up the view, adopted from him by the Stoics, that the moon is not a solid or earth-like body, but is fire or air, like the stars. This view had been severely handled in the former conference.

c. 6. Pharnaces complains that the Academics always criticize, never submit to be criticized. Let them first answer for their own paradox in confusing ‘up’ and ‘down’, if they place a heavy body, such as the moon is now said to be, above. Lucius retorts: ‘Why not the moon as well as the earth, a larger body, yet poised in space?’ Pharnaces is unconvinced.

cc. 7-15. To give Lucius time to remember his points, Lamprias reviews the absurd consequences from the Stoic tenet that all weights converge towards the centre of our earth. Why should not every heavy body, not earth only, attract its parts towards its own centre? Again, if the moon is a light fiery body, how do we find her placed near the earth and immeasurably far from the sun, planets, and stars? How can we assume that earth is the middle point of the Whole, that is, of Infinity? Lastly, allow that the Moon, if a heavy body, is out of her natural place. Yet why not? She may have been removed by force from the place naturally assigned to her to one which was better. Here the tone of the speaker rises as he lays down, often following the thought and the words of Plato’s Timaeus, the theory of creative ‘Necessity’ and ‘The Better’.

c. 16. Lucius is now ready to speak, but Aristotle intervenes with a reference to the view, held by his namesake, that the stars are composed of something essentially different from the four elements, and that their motion is naturally circular, not up or down. Lucius points out that it is degrading to the moon to call her a star, being inferior to the stars in lustre and speed, and deriving her light from the sun. For this, the view of Anaxagoras and of Empedocles, is the only one consistent with her phases as we see them (not that quoted from Posidonius the Stoic).

cc. 17, 18. To an inquiry from Sylla whether the difficulty of the half-moon (i. e. how does reflexion, being at equal angles, then carry sunlight to the earth, and not off into space beyond us?) had been met, Lucius answers that it had. The answer given was: (i) Reflexion at equal angles is not a law universally admitted or true; (ii) there may be cross lights and a complex illumination; (iii) it may be shown by a diagram, though this could not be done at the time (such a diagram is supplied by Kepler), that some rays would reach the earth; (iv) the difficulty arises at other phases also. He repeats the argument drawn from the phases as we see them; and ends with an analogy: Sunlight acts on the moon as it does on the earth, not as on the air; therefore the moon resembles earth rather than air.

c. 19. This is well received, and Lucius refers (a second analogy) to solar eclipses, and in particular to a recent one, to show that the moon, like the earth, can intercept the sun’s light, and is therefore, like it, a solid body. The fact that the track of the shadow is narrow in a solar eclipse is explained.

c. 20. Lucius continues his report, and describes in detail what happens in a lunar eclipse. If the moon, he concludes, were fiery and luminous, we should only see her at eclipse times, i. e. at intervals, normally of six months, occasionally of five.

c. 21. Pharnaces and Apollonides both rise to speak. Apollonides raises a verbal point about the word ‘shadow’; Pharnaces observes that the moon does show a blurred and fiery appearance during an eclipse, to which Lamprias replies by enumerating the successive colours of the moon’s face during eclipse, that proper to herself being dark and earth-like, not fiery. He concludes that the moon is like our earth, with a surface broken into heights and gullies, which are the cause of the markings.

c. 22. Apollonides objects that there can be no clefts on the moon with sides high enough to cast such shadows. Lamprias replies that it is the distance and position of the light which matter, not the size of objects which break it;
c. 23. And goes on himself to supply a stronger objection—that we do not see the sun’s image in the moon—and the answer. This is twofold: (a) general, the two cases differ in all details; (b) personal to those who, like himself, believe the moon to be an earth, and to have a rough surface. Why should we see the sun mirrored in the moon, and not terrestrial objects or stars?

c. 24. Sylla’s myth is now called for, and the company sits down to hear it. But Theon interposes: Can the moon have inhabitants or support any life, animal or vegetable? If not, how is she ‘an earth’, and what is her use?

c. 25. Theon’s sally is taken in good part, and gravely answered at some length by Lamprias.

c. 26. The mention of life on the moon calls up Sylla, who again feels that he has been anticipated. He begins his myth, heard from a stranger met in Carthage, who had himself made the northward voyage and returned. Once in every thirty years (or year of the planet Saturn) an expedition is sent out from Carthage to certain islands in the Northern Atlantic where Cronus (Saturn) reigns in banishment. The stranger had charged Sylla to pay special honour to the moon,
cc. 27-29. instructing him as to the functions of Persephone in bringing about the second death—the separation of mind from soul—which takes place on the moon, and the genesis of ‘daemons’,
c. 30. to whom are assigned certain functions on earth. Sylla commends the myth to his hearers.

OF THE FACE WHICH APPEARS
ON THE ORB OF THE MOON

I. Here Sylla said:[303] ‘All this belongs to my story, and comes |920 B| out of it. But I should like to ask in the first place whether you really backed on to those views about the moon’s face which are in every one’s hand and on every one’s lips.’ ‘Of course we did,’ I answered, ‘it was just the difficulty which we found in these which thrust us off upon the others. In chronic diseases, patients grow weary of the common remedies and plans of treatment, and turn to rites and charms and dreams. Just so in obscure and perplexing enquiries, when the common, received, familiar accounts are not convincing, |C| we cannot but try those which lie further afield; we must not despise them, but simply repeat to ourselves the spells which the old people used, and use all means to elicit the truth.

II. ‘To begin, you see the absurdity of calling the figure which appears in the moon an affection of our eyesight, too weak to resist the brightness, or, as we say, dazzled; and of not observing that this ought rather to happen when we look at the sun, who meets us with his fierce strong strokes. Empedocles has a pretty line giving the difference between the two:

The sun’s keen shafts, and moon with kindly beams.

Thus he describes the attractive, cheerful, painless quality of her light. Further, the reason is given why men of dim and weak eyesight do not see any distinct figure in the moon; |D| her orb shines full and smooth to them, whereas strong-sighted persons get more details, and distinguish the features impressed there with clearer sense of contrast. Surely the reverse should happen if it were a weakness and affection of the eye which produced the image; the weaker the organ the clearer should be the appearance. The very irregularity of the surface is sufficient to refute this theory; this image is not one of continuous and confluent shadow, but is well sketched in the words of Agesianax: |E|

All round as fire she shines, but in her midst,

Bluer than cyanus, lo, a maiden’s eye,

Her tender brow, her face in counterpart.

For the shadowy parts really pass beneath the bright ones which they encircle, and in turn press and are cut off by them; thus light and shade are interwoven throughout, and the face-form |F| is delineated to the life. The argument was thought to meet your Clearchus also, Aristotle, no less unanswerably; for yours he is, and an intimate of your namesake of old, although he perverted many doctrines of the Path.’

III. Here Apollonides interposed to ask what the view of Clearchus was. ‘No man’, I said, ‘has less good right than you to ignorance of a doctrine which starts from geometry, |921| as from its native hearth. Clearchus says that the face, as we call it, is made up of images of the great ocean mirrored in the moon. For our sight[304] being reflected back from many points, is able to touch objects which are not in its direct line; and the full moon is of all mirrors the most beautiful and the purest in uniformity and lustre. As then you geometers think that the rainbow is seen in the cloud when it has acquired a moist and smooth consistence, because our vision is reflected on to the sun,[305] so Clearchus held that the outer ocean is seen |B| in the moon, not where it really is, but in the place from which reflexion carried our sight into contact with it and its dazzle. Agesianax has another passage:

Or ocean’s wave that foams right opposite,

Be mirrored like a sheet of fire and flame.’

IV. This pleased Apollonides. ‘What a fresh way of putting a view; that was a bold man, and there was poetry in him. But how did the refutation proceed on your side?’ ‘In this way’, I answered. ‘First, the outer ocean is uniform, a sea with one continuous stream, whereas the appearance of the dark places in the moon is not uniform; there are isthmuses, so to call them, where the brightness parts and |C| defines the shadow; each region is marked off and has its proper boundary, and so the places where light and shade meet assume the appearance of height and depth, and represent very naturally human eyes and lips. Either, therefore, we must assume that there are more oceans than one, parted by real isthmuses and mainlands, which is absurd and untrue; or, if there is only one, it is impossible to believe that its image could appear thus broken up. Now comes a question which it is safer to ask in your presence than it is to state an answer. Given that the habitable world is “equal in breadth and length”,[306] is it possible that the view of the sea as a whole, thus reflected from the moon, |D| should reach those sailing upon the great sea itself, yes, or living on it as the Britons do, and this even if the earth does, as you said that it does, occupy a point central to the sphere in which the moon moves?[307] This’, I continued, ‘is a matter for you to consider, but the reflexion of vision from the moon is a further question which it is not for you to decide, nor yet for Hipparchus. I know, my dear friend [that Hipparchus is a very great astronomer], but many people do not accept his view on the physical nature of vision, since it is probably a sympathetic |E| blending and commixture, rather than a succession of strokes and recoils such as Epicurus devised for his atoms. Nor will you find Clearchus ready to assume with you that the moon is a weighty and solid body. Yet “an ethereal and luminous star”, to use your words, ought to break and divert the vision, so there is no question of reflexion. Lastly, if any one requires us to do so, we will put the question, how is it that only one face is seen, the sea mirrored on the moon, and none in any of all |F| the other stars? Yet reason demands that our vision should be thus affected in the case of all or of none. But now,’ I said, turning to Lucius, ‘remind us which of our points was mentioned first.’

V. ‘No;’ said Lucius, ‘to avoid the appearance of merely insulting Pharnaces, if we pass over the Stoic view without a word of greeting, do give some answer to Clearchus, and his assumption that the moon is a mere mixture of air and mild fire, that the air grows dark on its surface, as a ripple courses over a calm sea, and so the appearance of a face is produced.’

‘It is kind of you, Lucius,’ I said, ‘to clothe this absurdity in sounding terms. That is not how our comrade dealt with it. He said the truth, that it is a slap in the face to the moon when they fill her with smuts and blacks, addressing her in one breath |922| as Artemis and Athena,[308] and in the very same describing a caked compound of murky air and charcoal fire, with no kindling or light of its own, a nondescript body smoking and charred like those thunderbolts which poets[309] address as “lightless” and “sooty”. That a charcoal fire, such as this school makes out the moon to be, has no stability or consistence at all, unless |B| it find solid fuel at once to support and to feed it, is a point not so clearly seen by some philosophers as it is by those who tell us in jest that Hephaestus has been called lame because fire progresses no better without wood than lame people without a stick! If then the moon is fire, whence has it all this air inside it? For this upper region, always in circular motion, belongs not to air but to some nobler substance, which has the property of refining and kindling all things. If air has been generated, how is it that it has not been vaporized by the fire and passed away into some other form, but is preserved near fire all this time, like a nail fitted into the same place and wedged there for ever? If it is rare and diffused, |C| it should not remain stable, but be displaced. On the other hand, it cannot subsist in a solidified form, because it is mingled with fire, and has neither moisture with it nor earth, the only agents by which air can be compacted. Again, rapid motion fires the air which is contained in stones, and even in cold lead, much more then that which is in fire, when whirled round with such velocity. For they are displeased with Empedocles, when he describes the moon as a mass of air frozen like hail and enclosed within her globe of fire. Yet they themselves hold that the moon is a globe of fire which encloses air variously distributed, and this though they do not allow that she has |D| clefts in herself, or depths and hollows (for which those who make her an earth-like body find room), but clearly suppose that the air lies upon her convex surface. That it should do so is absurd in point of stability, and impossible in view of what we see at full moon; for we ought not to be able to distinguish black parts and shadow then; either all should be dull and shrouded, or all should shine out together when the moon is caught by the sun. For look at our earth; the air which lies in her depths and hollows, where no ray penetrates, remains in shadow unilluminated; that which is outside, diffused over the earth, has light and brilliant colouring, because from its rarity it easily mingles, and takes up any quality or influence. |E| By light, in particular, if merely touched, or, in your words, grazed, it is changed all through and illumined. This is at once an excellent ally to those who thrust the air into depths and gullies on the moon, and also quite disposes of you, who strangely compound her globe of air and fire. For it is impossible |F| that shadow should be left on her surface when the sun touches with his light all that part of the moon which is framed within our own field of vision.’

VI. Here Pharnaces, while I was still speaking, broke in: ‘Round it goes again, the old scene-shifter of the Academy brought out against us; they amuse themselves with arguing against other people, but in no case submit to be examined on their own views, they treat their opponents as apologists, not accusers. I can speak for myself at any rate; you are not going to draw me on to-day to answer your charges against the Stoics, unless we first get an account of your conduct in turning the universe upside down.’ Lucius smiled: ‘Yes, my friend,’ he said, ‘only do not threaten us with the writ of heresy, such as Cleanthes used to think that the Greeks should have |923| had served upon Aristarchus of Samos, for shifting the hearth of the universe, because that great man attempted “to save phenomena” with his hypothesis that the heavens are stationary, while our earth moves round in an oblique orbit, at the same time whirling about her own axis. We Academics have no view of our own finding, but do tell me this—why are those, who assume that the moon is an earth, turning things upside down, any more than you, who fix the earth where she is, suspended in mid air, a body considerably larger than the moon? |B| At least mathematicians tell us so, calculating the magnitude of the obscuring body from what takes place in eclipses, and from the passages of the moon through the shadow. For the shadow of the earth is less as it extends, because the illuminating body is greater, and its upper extremity is fine and narrow, as even Homer,[310] they say, did not fail to notice. He called night “pointed” because of the sharpness of the shadow. Such, at any rate, is the body by which the moon is caught in her eclipses, and yet she barely gets clear by a passage equal to three of her own diameters. Just consider how many moons go to make an earth, if the earth cast a shadow as broad, at its shortest, as three moons. Yet you have fears for the moon lest she should tumble, while as for our earth, Aeschylus[311] has perhaps satisfied you that Atlas |C|

Stands, and the pillar which parts Heaven and Earth

His shoulders prop, no load for arms t’ embrace.

Then, you think that under the moon there runs light air, quite inadequate to support a solid mass, while the earth, in Pindar’s[312] words, is compassed “by pillars set on adamant”. And this is why Pharnaces has no fear on his own account of the earth’s falling, but pities those who lie under the orbit of the moon, Ethiopians, say, or Taprobanes, on whom so great a weight might fall! Yet the moon has that which helps her against falling, in her very speed and the swing of her passage round, as objects placed in slings are hindered from falling by the |D| whirl of the rotation. For everything is borne on in its own natural direction unless this is changed by some other force. Therefore the moon is not drawn down by her weight, since that tendency is counteracted by her circular movement. Perhaps it would be more reasonable to wonder if she were entirely at rest as the earth is, and unmoved. As things are, the moon has a powerful cause to prevent her from being borne down upon us; but the earth, being destitute of any other movement, might naturally be moved[313] by its own weight; being heavier than the moon not merely in proportion to its greater bulk, |E| but because the moon has been rendered lighter by heat and conflagration. It would actually seem that the moon, if she is a fire, is in need of earth, a solid substance whereon she moves and to which she clings, so feeding and keeping up the force of her flame. For it is impossible to conceive fire as maintained without fuel. But you Stoics say that our earth stands firm without foundation or root.’ ‘Of course,’ said Pharnaces, ‘it keeps its proper and natural place, namely the essential middle point, that place around which all weights press and |F| bear, converging towards it from all sides. But all the upper region, even if it receive any earth-like body thrown up with force, immediately thrusts it out hitherward, or rather lets it go, to be borne down by its own momentum.’

VII. At this point, wishing Lucius to have time to refresh his memory, I called on Theon: ‘Theon, which of the tragic poets has said that physicians

Purge bitter bile with bitter remedies?’

Theon answered that it was Sophocles.[314] ‘And physicians must be allowed to do so,’ I said, ‘we cannot help it. But philosophers must not be listened to, if they choose to meet paradoxes with paradoxes, and, when contending against strange views, to invent views which are more strange and wonderful still. |924| Here are these Stoics with their “tendency towards the middle”! Is there any paradox which is not implicit there? That our earth, with all those depths and heights and inequalities, is a Sphere? That there are people at our antipodes who live like timber-worms or lizards, their lower limbs turned upper-most as they plant them on earth? That we ourselves do not keep perpendicular as we move, but remain on the slant, swerving like drunkards? That masses of a thousand talents’ weight, borne through the depth of the earth, stop when they reach the middle point, though nothing meets or resists them; or, if mere momentum carry them down beyond the middle point, they wheel round and turn back of themselves? That |B| segments of beams[315] sawn off at the surface of the earth on either side, do not move downwards all the way, but as they fall upon the surface receive equal thrusts from the outside inwards and are jammed around the middle? That water rushing violently downwards, if it should reach this middle point—an incorporeal point as they say—would stand balanced around it for a pivot, swinging with an oscillation which never stops and never can be stopped? Some of these a man could not force himself |C| to present to his intellect as possible, even if untrue! This is to make

Up down, down up, where Topsy-Turvy reigns,[316]

all from us to the centre down, and all below the centre becoming up in its turn! So that if a man, by the “sympathy” of earth, were to stand with the central point of his own body touching the centre, he would have his head up and his feet up too! And if he were to dig into the space beyond, the down part of his body would bend upwards, and the soil would be dug out from above to below; and if another man could be conceived meeting him, the feet of both would be said to be up, and would really become so!

VIII. ‘Such are the monstrous paradoxes which they shoulder and trail along, no mere wallet, Heaven help us! but |D| a conjurer’s stock-in-trade and show-booth; and then they call other men triflers, because they place the moon, being an earth, up above, and not where the middle point is. And yet if every weighty body converges to the same point with all its parts, the earth will claim the heavy objects, not so much because she is middle of the whole, as because they are parts of herself; and the inclination of falling bodies will testify, |E| not to any property of earth[317], as middle of the universe, but rather to a community and fellowship between earth and her own parts, once ejected, now borne back to her. For as the sun draws into himself the parts of which he has been composed, so earth receives the stone as belonging to her, and drawn down towards herself; and thus each of such objects becomes united with her in time and grows into herself. If there is any body neither assigned originally to the earth, nor torn away from it, |F| but having somehow a substance and nature of its own, such as they would describe the moon to be, what is there to prevent its existing separately, self-centred, pressed together and compacted by its own parts? For it is not proved that earth is the middle of the universe, and, further, the way in which bodies here are collected and drawn together towards the earth suggests the manner in which bodies which have fallen together on to the moon may reasonably be supposed to keep their place with reference to her. Why the man who forces all earth-like and heavy objects into one place, and makes them parts of one body, does not apply the same law of coercion to light bodies, I cannot see, instead of allowing all those fiery structures to exist apart; nor why he does not collect all the stars into the same place, and hold distinctly that there must be a body common to all upward-borne and fiery units.

|925| IX. ‘But you and your friends, dear Apollonides, say that the sun is countless millions of stades distant from the highest circle, and that Phosphor next to him, and Stilbon, and the other planets, move in a region below the fixed stars and at great intervals from one another; and yet you think that the universe provides within itself no interval in space for heavy and earth-like bodies. You see that it is ridiculous to call the moon no earth because she stands apart from the region below, and then to call her a star while we see her thrust so many |B| myriads of stades away from the upper circle as though sunk into an abyss. She is lower than the stars by a distance which we cannot state in words, since numbers fail you mathematicians when you try to reckon it, but she touches the earth in a sense and revolves close to it,

Like to the nave of a wagon, she glances,

says Empedocles,[318]

which near the mid axle....

For she often fails to clear even the shadow of earth, rising but little,[319] because the illuminating body is so vast. But so nearly does she seem to graze the earth and to be almost in its embrace as she circles round, that she is shut off from the sun by it unless |C| she rises enough to clear that shaded, terrestrial region, dark as night, which is the appanage of earth. Therefore I think we may say with confidence that the moon is within the precincts of earth when we see her blocked by earth’s extremities.

X. ‘Now leave the other fixed stars and planets, and consider the conclusion proved by Aristarchus in his Magnitudes and Distances;[320] that the distance of the sun is to the distance of the moon from us in a ratio greater than eighteen to one, |D| less than twenty to one. Yet the highest estimate of the distance of the moon from us makes it fifty-six times the earth’s radius, and that is, even on a moderate measurement, forty thousand stades. Upon this basis, the distance of the sun from the moon works out to more than forty million three hundred thousand stades. So far has she been settled from the sun because of her weight, and so nearly has she approached the earth, that, if we are to distribute estates according to localities, the “portion and inheritance of the earth” invites the moon to join her, and the moon has a next claim to chattels and persons |E| on earth, in right of kinship and vicinity. And I think that we are not doing wrong in this, that while we assign so great and profound an interval to what we call the upper bodies, we also leave to bodies below as much room for circulation as the breadth from earth to moon. For he who confines the word “upper” to the extreme circumference of heaven, and calls all the rest “lower”, goes too far, and on the other hand he who circumscribes “below” to earth, or rather to her centre, is preposterous. On this side and on that the necessary interval must be granted,[321] since the vastness of the universe permits. Against the claim that everything after we leave the earth is “up” and poised on high, sounds the counterclaim that everything |F| after we leave the circle of the fixed stars is “down”!

XI. ‘Look at the question broadly. In what sense is the earth “middle”, and middle of what? For the Whole is infinite; now the Infinite has neither beginning nor limit, so it ought not to have a middle; for a middle is in a sense itself a limit, but infinity is a negation of limits. It is amusing to hear a man labour to prove that the earth is the middle of the universe, not of the Whole, forgetting that the universe itself lies under the same difficulties; for the Whole, in its |926| turn, left no middle for the universe. “Hearthless and homeless”[322] it is borne over an infinite void towards nothing which it can call its own; or, if it find some other cause for remaining, it stands still, not because of the nature of the place. Much the same can be conjectured about the earth and the moon; if one stands here unshaken while the other moves, it is in virtue of a difference of soul rather than of place and of nature. Apart from all this, has not one important point escaped them? If anything, however great, which is outside the centre of the earth is “up”, then no part of the universe is “down”. Earth is “up”, and so are the things on the earth, absolutely |B| every body lying or standing about the earth becomes “up”; one thing alone is “down”, that incorporeal point which has of necessity to resist the pressure of the whole universe, if “down” is naturally opposed to “up”. Nor is this absurdity the only one. Weights lose the cause of their downward tendency and motion here, since there is no body below towards which they move. That the incorporeal should have so great a force as to direct all things towards itself, or hold them together about itself, is not probable, nor do they mean this. No! it is found on all grounds[323] to be irrational, and against the facts, that “up” should be the whole universe, and “down” nothing but an incorporeal and indivisible limit. The other view is reasonable, which we state thus, that a large space, possessing breadth, is apportioned both to “the above” and to “the below”.

XII. ‘However, let us assume, if you choose, that it is |C| contrary to nature that earth-like bodies should have their motions in heaven; and now let us look quietly, with no heroics, at the inference, which is this, not that the moon is not an earth, but that she is an earth not in its natural place. So the fire of Aetna is fire underground, which is contrary to nature, yet is fire; and air enclosed in bladders is light and volatile by nature, but has come perforce into a place unnatural to it. And the soul, the soul itself,’ I went on, ‘has it not been imprisoned in the body contrary to nature, a swift, and, as you hold, a fiery soul in a slow, cold body, the invisible within the sensible? Are we therefore to say that soul in body is nothing, and not rather that Reason, that divine thing, has been made subject to weight and density, that one which ranges all heaven |D| and earth and sea in a moment’s flight has passed into flesh and sinews, marrow and humours, wherein is the origin of countless passions?[324] Your Lord Zeus, is he not, so long as he preserves his own nature, one great continuous fire? Yet we see him brought down, and bent, and fashioned, assuming, and ready to assume, any and every complexion of change. Look well to it, my friend, whether when you shift all things |E| about, and remove each to its “natural” place, you are not devising a system to dissolve the universe and introducing Empedoclean strife, or rather stirring up the old Titans against Nature, in your eagerness to see once more the dreadful disorder and dissonance of the myth? All that is heavy in a place by itself, and all that is light in another,

Where neither sun’s bright face is separate seen,

Nor earth’s rough brood, nor ocean any more,

|F| as Empedocles says! Earth had nothing to do with heat, water with wind; nothing heavy was found above, nothing light below; without commixture, without affection were the principles of all things, mere units, each desiring no intercourse with each or partnership, performing their separate scornful motions in mutual flight and aversion, a state of things which must always be, as Plato[325] teaches, where God is absent, the state of bodies deserted by intelligence and soul. So it was until the day when Providence brought Desire into Nature, and |927| Friendship was engendered there, and Aphrodite, and Eros, as Empedocles tells us and Parmenides too and Hesiod,[326] so that things might change their places, and receive faculties from one another in turn, and, from being bound under stress, and forced, some to be in motion some to rest, might all begin to give in to the Better, instead of the Natural, and shift their places and so produce harmony and communion of the Whole.

XIII. ‘For if it be true that no other part of the universe departed from Nature, but that each rests in its natural place, not needing any transposition or rearrangement, and never from the first having needed any, I am at a loss to know what there is for Providence to do, or of what Zeus, “in art most excellent”,[327] is the maker and the artist-father. There would |B| be no need of tactics in an army if each soldier knew of himself how to take and keep place and post at the proper time; nor of gardeners or builders if the water of its own nature is to flow over the parts which need it, and moisten them, or if bricks and beams should of themselves adopt the movements and inclinations which are natural, and arrange themselves in their fitting places. If such a theory strike out Providence |C| altogether, and if it be God’s own attribute to order and discriminate things, what marvel is it that Nature has been so disposed and partitioned that fire is here and stars there, and again that earth is planted where it is and the moon above, each held by a firmer bond than that of Nature, the bond of Reason? Since, if all things are to observe natural tendencies, and to move each according to its nature, let the sun no longer go round in a circle, nor Phosphorus, nor any of the other stars, because it is the nature of light and fiery bodies to move upwards, not in a circle! But if Nature admits of such local variation as that fire, here seen to ascend, yet when it reaches heaven, joins in the general rotation, what marvel if heavy |D| and earthlike bodies too, when placed there, assume another kind of motion, mastered by the circumambient element? For it is not according to Nature that light things lose their upward tendency in heaven, and yet heaven cannot prevail over those which are heavy and incline downwards. No, heaven at some time had power to rearrange both these and those, and turned the nature of each to what was better.

XIV. ‘However, if we are at last to have done with notions enslaved to usage,[328] and to state fearlessly what appears to be true, it is probable that no part of a whole has any order, or position, or movement of its own which can be described in absolute terms as natural. But when each body places itself at the disposal of that on account of which it has come into being, |E| and in relation to which it naturally exists or has been created, to move as is useful and convenient to it, actively and passively and in all its own states conforming to the conservation, beauty, or power of that other, then, I hold, its place, movements and disposition are according to Nature. In man certainly, who has, if anything has, come into being according to Nature, |F| the heavy and earth-like parts are found above, mostly about the head, the hot and fiery in the middle regions; of the teeth one set grows from above, the other from below, yet neither contrary to Nature; nor can it be said of the fire in him that when it is above and flashes in his eyes it is natural, but when it is in stomach or heart, unnatural; each has been arranged as is proper and convenient.

Mark well the tortoise and the trumpet-shell,

says Empedocles, and, we may add, the nature of every shell-fish, and

Earth uppermost, flesh under thou shalt see.

Yet the stony substance does not squeeze or crush the growth[329] |928| within, nor again does the heat fly off and be lost because of its lightness; they are mingled and co-ordinated according to the nature of each.

XV. ‘And so it is probably with the universe, if it be indeed a living structure; in many places it contains earth, in many others fire, water, and wind, which are not forced out under stress, but arranged on a rational system. Take the eye; it is not where it is in the body owing to pressure acting on its light substance, nor has the heart fallen or slipped down |B| into the region of the chest because of its weight; each is arranged where it is because it was better so. Let us not then suppose that it is otherwise with the parts of the universe; that earth lies here where it has fallen of its own weight, that the sun, as Metrodorus of Chios used to think, has been pressed out into the upper region because of his lightness, like a bladder, or that the other stars have reached the places which they now hold as if they had been weighed in a balance and kicked the beam. No, the rational principle prevailed; and some, like eyes to give light, are inserted into the face of the Whole and revolve; the sun acts as a heart, and sheds and distributes out of himself heat and light, as it were blood and breath. |C| Earth and sea are to the universe, according to Nature, what stomach and bladder are to the animal. The moon, lying between sun and earth, as the liver or some other soft organ between heart and stomach, distributes here the gentle warmth from above, while she returns to us, digested, purified, and refined in her own sphere, the exhalations of earth. Whether her earth-like solid substance contributes to any other useful purposes, we cannot say. We do know that universally the Better prevails over the law of Stress. How can the view of the Stoics lead us to any probable result? That view is, that the luminous and subtle part of the atmosphere has by its rarity formed the |D| sky, the dense and consolidated part stars, and that, of the stars, the moon is the dullest and the grossest. However, we may see with our eyes that the moon is not entirely separated from the atmosphere, but moves within a great belt of it, having beneath itself a wind-swept region, where bodies are whirled, and amongst them comets. Thus these bodies have not been placed in the scales according to the weight or lightness of each, but have been arranged upon a different system.’

XVI. This said, as I was passing the turn to Lucius, the |E| argument now reaching the stage of demonstration, Aristotle said with a smile: ‘I protest that you have addressed your whole reply to those who assume that the moon herself is half fire, and who say of all bodies in common that they have an inclination of their own, some an upward one, some a downward. If there is a single person who holds that the stars move in a circle according to Nature, and are of a substance widely |F| different from the four elements, it has not occurred to our memory, even by accident; so that I am out of the discussion, and you also, Lucius.’ ‘No, no, good friend’, said Lucius. ‘As to the other stars, and the heaven in general, when your school asserts that they have a nature which is pure and transparent, and removed from all changes caused by passion, and when they introduce a circle of eternal[330] and never-ending revolution, perhaps no one would contradict you, at least for the present, although there are countless difficulties. But when the theory comes down and touches the moon, it no longer retains in her case the “freedom from passion” and the beauty of form of that body. Leaving out of account her other irregularities and points of difference, this very face which appears upon her has come there either from some passion proper to herself or by admixture of some other substance. |929| Indeed, mixture implies some passion, since there is a loss of its own purity when a body is forcibly filled with what is inferior to itself. Consider her own torpor and dullness of speed, and her heat, so faint and ineffectual, wherein, as Ion[331] says—

The black grape ripens not;

to what are we to assign this, but to weakness in herself and passion, if passion can have place in an eternal and Olympian body? It comes to this, dear Aristotle; look on her as earth, and she appears a very beautiful object, venerable and highly adorned; but as star, or light, or any divine or heavenly body, I fear she may be found wanting in shapeliness and grace, and do no credit to her beautiful name, if out of all the multitude in heaven she alone goes round begging light of others, as Parmenides says, |B|

For ever peering toward the sun’s bright rays.

Now when our comrade, in his dissertation, was expounding the proposition of Anaxagoras, that “the sun places the brightness in the moon”, he was highly applauded. But I am not going to speak of things which I learned from you or with you, I will gladly pass on to the remaining points. It is then probable that the moon is illuminated not as glass or crystal by the sunlight shining in and through her, nor yet by way of accumulation of light and rays, as torches when they multiply their light. For then we should have full moon at the beginning of the month just as much as at the middle, if she does not conceal or block the sun, but allows him[332] to pass through |C| because of her rarity, or if he, by way of commixture, shines upon the light around her and helps to kindle it with his own. For it is not possible to allege any bending or swerving aside on her part at the time of her conjunction, as we can when she is at the half, or is gibbous or crescent. Being then “plumb opposite”, as Democritus puts it, to her illuminant, she receives and admits the sun, so that we should expect to see her shining herself and also allowing him to shine through her. Now she is very far from doing this; she is herself invisible at those times, and she often hides him out of our sight.

So from above for men,

as Empedocles says, |D|

She quenched his beams, shrouding a slice of earth

Wide as the compass of the glancing moon;

as though his light had fallen, not upon another star, but upon night and darkness.

‘The view of Posidonius, that it is because of the depth of the moon’s body that the light of the sun is not passed through to us, is wrong on the face of it. For the air, which is unlimited, and has a depth many times that of the moon, is filled throughout with sunlight and brightness. There is left then that of Empedocles, that the illumination which we get from the moon |E| arises in some way from the reflexion of the sun as he falls upon her. Hence her light reaches us without heat or lustre, whereas we should expect both if there were a kindling by him or a commixture of lights. But as voices return an echo weaker than the original sound, and missiles which glance off strike with weaker impact,

E’en so the ray which smote the moon’s white orb

reaches us in a feeble and exhausted stream, because the force is dispersed in the reflexion.’

XVII. Here Sylla broke in: ‘All these things no doubt |F| have their probabilities; but the strongest point on the other side was either explained away or it escaped our comrade’s attention; which was it?’

‘What do you mean?’ said Lucius. ‘The problem of the half-moon, I suppose?’

‘Precisely,’ said Sylla, ‘for as all reflexion takes place at equal angles, there is some reason in saying that when the moon is in mid-heaven at half-moon, the light is not carried from her on to the earth, but glances off beyond it; for the sun, being |930| on the horizon, touches the moon with his rays, which will therefore, being reflected at equal angles, fall on the further side and beyond us, and will not send the light here; or else there will be a great distortion and variation in the angle, which is impossible.’

‘I assure you’, said Lucius, ‘that point was mentioned also;’ and here he glanced at Menelaus the mathematician, as he went on: ‘I am ashamed, dear Menelaus,’ he said, ‘in your presence to upset a mathematical assumption which is laid down as fundamental in all the Optics of Mirrors. But I feel obliged to say’, he continued, ‘that the law which requires reflexion in all cases to be at equal angles is neither self-evident |B| nor admitted. It is impugned in the instance of convex mirrors, when magnified images are reflected to the one point of sight. It is impugned also in that of double mirrors, when they are inclined towards one another so that there is an angle between them, and each surface returns a double image from one face, four images in all, two on the right, two on the left, two from the outer parts of the surfaces, two dimmer ones deep within the mirrors.[333] Plato[334] gives the cause why this takes place. He has told |C| us that if the mirrors be raised on either side, there is a gradual shifting of the visual reflexion as it passes from one side to the other. If then some images proceed directly to us, while others glance to the opposite side of the mirrors, and are returned thence to us, it is impossible that reflexion in all cases takes place at equal angles. They observe[335] that these images meet in one point, and further claim that the law of equal angles is disproved by the streams of light which actually proceed from the moon to the earth, holding the fact to be |D| far more convincing than the law. However, if we are so far to indulge the beloved geometry as to make her a present of this law, in the first place it may be expected to hold of mirrors which have been made accurately smooth. But the moon has many irregularities and rough parts, so that the rays proceeding from a large body, when they fall on considerable eminences, are exposed to counter-illuminations and reciprocal dispersion; the cross-light is reflected, involved, and accumulated as though it reached us from a number of mirrors. In the next place, even if we allow that the reflexions are produced at equal |E| angles upon the actual surface of the moon, yet, when the distance is so great, it is not impossible that the rays may be broken in their passage, or glance around, so that the light reaches us in one composite stream. Some go further, and show by a figure that many lights discharge their rays along a line inclined to the hypothenuse; but it was not possible to construct the diagram while speaking, especially before a large audience.[336]

XVIII. ‘Upon the whole question,’ he went on, ‘I am at a loss to see how they bring up the half-moon against us; the point fails equally upon her gibbous and crescent phases. For if the moon were a mass of air or fire which the sun illuminated, |F| he would not have left half her sphere always in shadow and darkness as seen by us; but even if he touched her in his circuit only in a small point, the proper consequence would follow, she would be affected all through, and her entire substance changed by the light penetrating everywhere with ease. When wine touches water on its extreme surface, or a drop of blood falls into liquid, the whole is discoloured at once, and turned to crimson. But the air itself, we are told, is not filled with sunshine by emanations or beams actually mingling with it, but by a change and alteration caused by something like a prick or touch. Now, how can they suppose that when star touches star or light light, it does not mingle with or alter the substance throughout, but only illuminates |931| those points which it touches superficially? The circular orbit of the sun as he passes about the moon, which sometimes coincides with the line dividing her visible and invisible parts, and at other times rises to right angles with that line so as to cut those parts in two, and in turn be cut by her, produces her gibbous and crescent phases by the varying inclination and position of the bright part relatively to that in shadow. This proves beyond all question that the illumination is contact not commixture, not accumulation of light but its circumfusion. But the fact that she is not only illuminated herself but also sends |B| on the image of her brightness to us, allows us to insist the more confidently on our theory of her substance. For reflexions do not take place on a rarefied body, or one formed of subtle particles, nor is it easy to conceive light rebounding from light, or fire from fire; the body which is to produce recoil and reflexion must be heavy and dense, that there may be impact upon it and resilience from it. To the sun himself the air certainly allows a passage, offering no obstructions or resistance; whereas if timber, stones, or woven stuffs be placed to meet his light many cross rays are caused, and there is illumination all |C| round them. We see the same thing in the way his light reaches the earth. The earth does not pass his ray into a depth as water does, nor yet throughout her whole substance as air does. Just as his orbit passes round the moon, gradually cutting off a certain portion of her, so a similar orbit passes round the earth, illuminating a similar part of it and leaving another unilluminated, for the part of either body which receives light appears to be a little larger than a hemisphere. Allow me to speak geometrically in terms of proportion. Here are three bodies approached by the sun’s light, earth, moon, air; we see that the moon is illuminated like the earth, not like the air; but bodies naturally affected in the same way by the same must be themselves similar.’

XIX. When all had applauded Lucius, ‘Bravo!’ said I, |D| ‘a beautiful proportion fitted to a beautiful theory; for you must not be defrauded of your own.’ ‘In that case,’ he said, with a smile, ‘I must employ proportion a second time, in order that we may prove the moon like the earth, not only as being affected in the same way by the same body, but also as producing the same effect on the same. Grant me that no one of the phenomena relating to the sun is so like another as an eclipse to a sunset, remembering that recent concurrence[337] of sun and moon, which, beginning just after noon, showed us |E| plainly many stars in all parts of the heavens, and produced a chill in the temperature like that of twilight. If you have forgotten it, Theon here will bring up Mimnermus and Cydias, and Archilochus, and Stesichorus and Pindar[338] besides, all bewailing at eclipse time “the brightest star stolen from the sky” |F| and “night with us at midday”, speaking of the ray of the sun as “a track of darkness” and, besides all these, Homer[339] saying that the faces of men are “bound in night and gloom” and “the sun is perished out of the heaven”, i.e. around the moon, and how this occurs according to Nature, “when one moon perishes and one is born”. The remaining points have been reduced, I think, by the accuracy of mathematical methods to the one[340] certain principle that night is the shadow of earth, whereas an eclipse of the sun is the shadow of the moon when it falls within our vision. When the sun sets he is blocked from our sight by the earth; when he is eclipsed, by the moon. |932| In both cases there is overshadowing; in his setting it is caused by the earth, in his eclipses by the moon, her shadow intercepting our vision. From all this it is easy to draw out a theory as to what happens. If the effect is similar, the agents are similar; for the same effects upon the same body must be due to the same agents. If the darkness of eclipses is not so profound, and does not affect the atmosphere so forcibly, let us not be surprised; the bodies which cause respectively night and eclipse are similar in nature, but unequal in size. The Egyptians, I believe, say that the moon’s bulk is one two-and-seventieth part of the earth’s, Anaxagoras made her as large as Peloponnesus; but |B| Aristarchus[341] proves that the diameter of the earth bears to that of the moon a ratio which is less than sixty to nineteen, and greater than a hundred and eight to forty-three. Hence the earth because of its size removes the sun entirely from our sight, the obstruction is great and lasts all night; whereas if the moon sometimes hides the sun entirely, yet the eclipse does not last long and has no breadth; but a certain brightness is apparent around the rim, which does not allow the shadow to be deep and absolute. Aristotle,[342] I mean the ancient philosopher, after giving other reasons why the moon is more |C| often visibly eclipsed than the sun, adds this further one, that the sun is eclipsed by the interposition of the moon,[343] [the moon by that of the earth and of other bodies also.] But Posidonius gives this definition of what occurs: an eclipse of the sun is a concurrence of the shadow of the moon with our vision[344] ... for there is no eclipse, except to those whose view of the sun can be intercepted by the shadow of the moon. In allowing that the shadow of the moon reaches to us, I do not know what he has left himself to say. There can be no shadow of a star; shadow means absence of light, and it is the nature of light to remove shadow, not to cause it.

XX. ‘But tell me’, he went on, ‘what proof was mentioned |D| next?’ ‘That the moon was eclipsed in the same way’, I said. ‘Thank you for reminding me’, he said. ‘But now am I to turn at once to the argument, assuming that you are satisfied, and allow that the moon is eclipsed when she is caught in the shadow, or do you wish me to set out a studied proof, with all the steps in order?’ ‘By all means,’ said Theon, ‘let us have the proof in full. For my own part, I still somehow need to be convinced; |E| I have only heard it put thus, that when the three bodies, earth, sun, and moon, come into one straight line eclipses occur, the earth removing the sun from the moon, or the moon the sun from the earth; that is, the sun is eclipsed when the moon, the moon when the earth, is in the middle of the three, the first case happening at her conjunction, the second at the half-month.’

Lucius replied: ‘These are perhaps the most important points mentioned; but first, if you will, take the additional argument drawn from the shape of the shadow. This is a cone, such as is caused by a large spherical body of fire or light overlapping a smaller body also spherical. Hence in eclipses the lines which mark off the dark portions of the moon from the bright give circular sections. For when one round body approaches |F| another, the lines of mutual intersection are invariably circular like the bodies themselves. In the second place, I think you are aware that the first parts of the moon to be eclipsed are those towards the East, of the sun those towards the West, |933| and the shadow of the earth moves from East to West, that of[345] the moon on the contrary to the East. This is made clear to the senses by the phenomena, which may be explained quite shortly. They go to confirm our view of the cause of the eclipse. For since the sun is eclipsed by being overtaken, the moon by meeting the body which causes the eclipse,[346] it is likely, or rather it is necessary, that the sun should be overtaken from behind, the moon from the front, the obstruction beginning from the first point of contact with the obstructing body. The moon comes up with the sun from the West as she races against him, the earth from the East because it is moving from the opposite direction. As a third point, I will ask you to |B| notice the duration and the magnitude of her eclipses. If she is eclipsed when high up and far from the earth, she is hidden for a short time; if near the earth and low down when the same thing happens to her, she is firmly held and emerges slowly out of the shadow; and yet when she is low her speed is greatest, when high it is least. The cause of the difference lies in the shadow; for being broadest about the base, like all cones, and tapering gradually, it ends in a sharp, fine head. Hence, if the moon be low when she meets the shadow, she is caught in the largest circles of the cone, and crosses its most profound and darkest part; if high, she dips as into a shallow pond, because the shadow is thin, and quickly makes her way out. |C| I omit the points of detail mentioned as to bases and permeations, which can also be rationally explained as far as the subject-matter allows. I go back to the theory put before us founded on our senses. We see that fire shines through more visibly and more brightly out of a place in shadow, whether because of the density of the darkened air, which does not allow it to stream off and be dispersed, but holds its substance compressed where it is, or whether this is an affection of our senses; as hot things are hotter when contrasted with cold, and pleasures are more intense by contrast with pains, so bright things stand out more clearly by the side of dark, setting the imagination on the alert by the contrast. The former cause appears the more |D| probable, for in the light of the sun everything in the nature of fire not only loses its brightness, but is outmatched and becomes inactive and blunted, since the sun’s heat scatters and dissipates its power. If then the moon possess a faint, feeble fire, being a star of somewhat turbid substance, as the Stoics themselves say, none of the effects which she now exhibits ought to follow, but the opposite in all respects; she ought to appear when she is now hidden, and be hidden when she now appears; be hidden, that is, all the time while she is dimmed by the surrounding |E| atmosphere, but shine brightly out at intervals of six months, or occasionally at intervals of five, when she passes under the shadow of the earth. (For of the 465 full moons at eclipse intervals, 404 give periods of six months, the remainder periods of five.) At such intervals then the moon ought to appear shining brightly in the shadow. But, as a fact, she is eclipsed and loses her light in the shadow, and recovers it when she has cleared the shadow; also she is often seen by day, which shows that she is anything but a fiery or starlike body.’

|F| XXI. When Lucius had said this, Pharnaces and Apollonides sprang forward together to oppose. Apollonides made way to Pharnaces, who observed that this is a very strong proof that the moon is a star or fire; for she does not disappear entirely in eclipses, but shows through with a grim ashy hue peculiar to herself. Apollonides objected to the word ‘shadow’, a term always applied by mathematicians to a region which is not |934| lighted, whereas the heavens admit of no shadow. ‘This objection’, I said, ‘is contentious, and addressed to the name, not to the thing in any physical or mathematical sense. If any one should prefer to call the region blocked by the earth not “shadow”, but “an unlighted place”, it is still necessarily true that the moon when it reaches that region is darkened. It is merely childish’, I went on, ‘not to allow that the shadow of the earth reaches it, since we know that the shadow of the moon, falling upon the sight and reaching to the earth, causes an |B| eclipse of the sun. I will now turn to you, Pharnaces. That ashy charred colour in the moon, which you say is peculiar to her, belongs to a body which has density and depth. For no remnant or trace of flame will remain in rarefied bodies, nor can burning matter come into existence, without a substantial body, deep enough to allow of ignition and to maintain it, as Homer[347] has somewhere said:

When fire’s red flower was flown, and spent the flames,

Which smoothed the embers.

For burning matter is evidently not fire but a body submitted to fire, and altered by it, which fire is attached to a solid stable mass and is permanent there, whereas flames are the kindling |C| and streaming away of rarefied fuel which is quickly dissolved because it is weak.

‘Thus no such clear proof could exist that the moon is earth-like and dense, as this cinder-like colour, if it really were her own proper colour. But it is not so, dear Pharnaces; in the course of an eclipse she goes through many changes of complexion, and scientific men divide these accordingly by time and hour. If she is eclipsed at early evening, she appears strangely black till three and a half hours have elapsed; if at midnight, she emits that red and flame-like hue over her surface which we know; after seven and a half hours the redness begins to be removed, and at last towards dawn she takes a bluish or light-grey hue, |D| which is the real reason why poets and Empedocles invoke her as “grey-eyed”. Now, people who see the moon assume so many hues as she passes through the shadow do wrong in fastening upon one, the cinder-like, which may be called the one most foreign to her, being rather an admixture and remnant of light which shines round her through the shadows, than her own peculiar complexion, which is black and earth-like. But whereas we see on our earth that places in shadow which are near purple or scarlet cloths, or near lakes, or rivers open to the sun, partake in the brilliance of these colours and offer many varied splendours because of the reflexions, what wonder |E| if a great stream of shadow, falling upon a celestial sea of light, not stable or calm but agitated by myriads of stars and admitting of combinations and changes of every kind, presents to us different colours at different times impressed on it by the moon? For a star or a fire could not show when in shadow as black or grey or blue. But our hills and plains and seas are coursed over by many-coloured shapes coming from the sun and |F| by shadows also and mists, resembling the hues produced by white light over a painter’s pigments. For those seen on the sea Homer has endeavoured to find such names as he could, as “violet” for the sea, and “wine-dark” and again “purple wave”, and elsewhere “grey sea” and “white calm”. But the varying colours which appear on land at different times he has passed over as being infinite in number. Now, it is not likely that the moon has one surface as the sea has, but rather that she resembles in substance the earth, of which Socrates[348] |935| of old used to tell the legend, whether he hinted at the moon, or meant some other body. For it is nothing incredible or wonderful if, having nothing corrupt or muddy in her, but enjoying light from heaven, and being stored with a heat not burning or furious, but mild and harmless and natural, she possesses regions of marvellous beauty, hills clear as flame, and belts of purple, her gold and silver not dispersed within her depths, but flowering forth on the plains in plenty, or set |B| around smooth eminences. Now, if a varying view of these reaches us from time to time through the shadow, owing to some change and shifting of the surrounding air, surely the moon does not lose her honour or her fame, nor yet her Divinity, when she is held by men to be holy earth of a sort and not, as the Stoics say, fire which is turbid, mere dregs of fire. Fire is honoured in barbarous fashions by the Medes and Assyrians, who fear what injures them, and pay observance or rites of propitiation to that, rather than to what they revere. But the name of earth, we know, is dear and honourable to every Greek, we reverence her as our fathers did, like any other God. But, being men, we are very far from thinking of the moon, that |C| Olympian earth, as a body without soul or mind, having no share in things which we duly offer as first-fruits to the Gods, taught by usage to pay them a return for the goods they give us, and by Nature to reverence that which is above ourselves in virtue and power and honour. Let us not then think that we offend in holding that she is an earth, and that this her visible face, just like our earth with its great gulfs, is folded back into great depths and clefts containing water or murky air, which the light of the sun fails to penetrate or touch, but is obscured, and sends back its reflexion here in shattered fragments.’

XXII. Here Apollonides broke in: ‘Then in the name of |D| the moon herself,’ he said, ‘do you think it possible that shadows are thrown there by any clefts or gullies, and from thence reach our sight, or do you not calculate what follows, and am I to tell you? Pray hear me out, though you know it all. The diameter of the moon shows an apparent breadth of twelve fingers at her mean distance from us. Now, each of those black shadowy objects appears larger than half a finger, and is therefore more than a twenty-fourth part of the diameter. |E| Very well; if we were to assume the circumference of the moon to be only thirty thousand stades, and the diameter ten thousand, on that assumption each of these shadowy objects on her would be not less than five hundred stades. Now, consider first whether it be possible for the moon to have depths and eminences sufficient to cause a shadow of that size. Next, if they are so large, how is it that we do not see them?’

At this, I smiled on him and said, ‘Well done, Apollonides, to have found out such a demonstration! By it you will prove that you and I too are greater than the Aloades[349] of old, not |F| at any time of day, however, but in early morning for choice, and late afternoon; when the sun makes our shadows prodigious, and thereby presents to our sense the splendid inference, that if the shadow thrown be great, the object which throws it is enormous. Neither of us, I am sure, has ever been in Lemnos, but we have both heard the familiar line,[350]

Athos the Lemnian heifer’s flank shall shade.

For the shadow of the cliff falls, it seems, on a certain brazen |936| heifer over a stretch of sea of not less than seven hundred stades. Will you think then that the height which casts the shadow is the cause, forgetting that distance of the light from objects makes their shadows many times longer? Now consider the sun at his greatest distance from the moon, when she is at the full, and shows the features of the face most expressly because of the depth of the shadow; it is the mere distance of the light which has made the shadow large, not the size of the several |B| irregularities on the moon. Again, in full day the extreme brightness of the sun’s rays does not allow the tops of mountains to be seen, but deep and hollow places appear from a long distance, as also do those in shadow. There is nothing strange then if it is not possible to see precisely how the moon too is caught by the light, and illuminated, and yet if we do see by contrast where the parts in shadow lie near the bright parts.

XXIII. ‘But here’, said I, ‘is a better point to disprove the alleged reflexion from the moon; it is found that those who stand in reflected rays, not only see the illuminated but also the illuminating body. For instance, when light from water |C| leaps on to a wall, and the eye is placed in the spot so illuminated by reflexion, it sees the three objects, the reflected rays, the water which caused the reflexion, and the sun himself, from whom proceeds the light so falling on the water and reflected. All this being granted and apparent, people require those who contend that the earth receives the moon’s light by reflexion, to point out the sun appearing in the moon at night, as he appears in the water by day when he is reflected off it. Then, as he does not so appear, they suppose that the illumination is caused by some process other than reflexion, and that, failing reflexion, |D| the moon is no earth.’

‘What answer then is to be given to them?’ said Apollonides, ‘for the difficulty about reflexion seems to apply equally to us.’ ‘Equally no doubt in one sense,’ I answered, ‘but in another sense not at all so. First look at the details of the simile, how “topsy turvy”[351] it is, rivers flowing up stream! The water is below and on earth, the moon is above the earth and poised aloft. So the angles of reflexion are differently formed; in the one case the apex is above in the moon, in the other below on the earth. They should not then require that mirrors should produce every image and like reflexions at any distance, since |E| they are fighting against clear fact. But from those like ourselves who seek to show that the moon is not a fine smooth substance like water, but heavy and earth-like, it is strange to ask for a visible appearance of the sun in her. Why, milk does not return such mirrored images, nor produce optical reflexion, the reason being the unevenness and roughness of its parts. How can the moon possibly send back the vision off |F| herself as the smoother mirrors do? We know that even in these, if any scratch or speck or roughness is found at the point from which the vision is naturally reflected it is obscured; the blemishes are seen, but they do not return the light. A man who requires that she should either turn our vision back to the sun, or else not reflect the sun from herself to us, is a humorist; he wants our eye to be the sun, the image light, man heaven! That the reflexion of the sun’s light conveyed to the moon with the impact of his intense brilliance should be borne back to us is reasonable enough, whereas our sight is weak and slight and merely fractional. What wonder if it deliver a stroke which has no resilience, or, if it does rebound, no continuity, but is broken up and fails, having no store of light to make up for dispersion about the rough and uneven |937| places. For it is not impossible that the reflexion should rebound to the sun from water and other mirrors, being still strong and near its point of origin; whereas from the moon, even if there are glancings of a sort, yet they will be weak and dim, and will fail by the way because of the long distance. Another point: concave mirrors return the reflected light in greater strength than the original, and thus often produce |B| flames; convex and spherical mirrors one which is weak and dim, because the pressure is not returned from all parts of the surface. You have seen, no doubt, how when two rainbows appear, one cloud enfolding another, the enveloping bow shows the colours dim and indistinct, for the outer cloud lying further from the eye does not return the reflexion in strength or intensity. But enough! Whereas the light of the sun reflected from the moon loses its heat entirely, and only a scanty and ineffectual remnant of its brilliance reaches us, do you really think it possible that when sight has the double course to travel, |C| any remnant whatever should reach the sun from the moon? No! say I. Look for yourselves’, I went on. ‘If the effects of the water and of the moon on our sight were the same, the full moon ought to show us images of earth and plants and men and stars, as other mirrors do. If, on the other hand, our vision is never carried back on to these objects, whether because of its own feebleness or of the roughness of the moon’s surface, then let us never demand that it should be carried by reflexion on to the sun.

XXIV. ‘We have now’, I said, ‘reported all that was said then, and has not escaped our memory. It is time to call on Sylla, or rather to claim his story, as he was allowed to be a listener on terms. So, if it meet your approval, let us cease our walk, and take our places on the benches and give him a seated |D| audience.’ This was at once agreed, and we had taken our seats, when Theon said: ‘I want as much as any of you, Lamprias, to hear what is now to be said, but first I should like to hear about the alleged dwellers in the moon, not whether there are any such, I mean, but whether there can be; for if the thing is impossible, then it is also absurd that the moon should be an earth; it will appear that she has been created for no end or use, if she bears no fruit, offers no abode to human beings, no existence, no livelihood, the very things for which we say that she has been created, in Plato’s[352] words, “our nurse, and of |E| day and night the unswerving guardian and maker”. You see that many things are said about this, some in jest, some seriously. For instance, that the moon hangs poised over the heads of those who dwell beneath her, as if they were so many Tantali; while as for those who dwell on her, they are lashed on like Ixions by the tremendous speed. Yet hers is not a single motion, but, as |F| it is somewhere put, she is a Goddess of the Three Ways. She moves in longitude over the Zodiac, in latitude, and in depth; one movement is revolution, another a spiral, the third is strangely named “Anomaly” by scientific men, although there is nothing irregular or confused to be seen in her returns to her stations. Therefore it is no wonder if a lion[353] did once fall on to Peloponnesus, owing to the velocity; the wonder is that we do not see every day

Fallings of men, lives trampled to the dust,[354]

men tumbling off through the air and turning somersaults. Yet |938| it is ridiculous to raise a discussion about their remaining there, if they can neither come into being nor subsist at all. When we see Egyptians and Troglodytes, over whose heads the sun stands for the space of one brief day at the solstice and then passes on, all but shrivelled up by the dryness of the air around them, is it likely, I ask you, that people in the moon can endure twelve summers in each year, the sun standing plumb straight above them at every full moon? Then as to winds and clouds and |B| showers, without which plants can neither receive nor maintain existence, it is out of the question to conceive of their being formed, because the surrounding atmosphere is too hot and too rare. For even here the highest mountain tops do not get our fierce and conflicting storms, the air being already in turmoil from its lightness escapes any such condensation. Or are we really to say that, as Athena dropped a little nectar and ambrosia into Achilles’ mouth when he was refusing nourishment, even so the moon, who is called and who is Athena,[355] feeds man by sending up ambrosia day by day, in which form old Pherecydes |C| thinks that the Gods take food! For as to that Indian root, of which Megasthenes tells us that men, who neither eat nor drink but are without mouths,[356] burn a little, and make a smoke, and are nourished by the smells, how is it to be found growing there if there is no rain on the moon?’

XXV. When Theon had finished: ‘Well and kindly done,’ I said, ‘to unbend our brows by your witty argument; it makes us bold in reply, since we have no very harsh or severe criticism to expect. It is a true saying that there is little to choose between those who are vehemently convinced in such matters and those who are vehemently offended at them and incredulous, and will not look quietly into the possibilities. To begin, supposing that men do not inhabit the moon, it does not follow |D| that she has come into being just for nothing. Why, our earth, as we see, is not in active use or inhabited in her whole extent; but a small part of her only, mere promontories or peninsulas which emerge from the abyss, is fertile in animals and plants; of the other parts, some are desert and unfruitful owing to storms and droughts, while most are sunk under the ocean. But you, lover and admirer of Aristarchus that you are, do not attend to Crates and his reading:

Ocean, the birth and being of us all,

Both men and Gods, covers the most of earth.[357]

‘However, this is a long way from saying that all has been brought into being for nothing. The sea sends up soft exhalations, |E| and delightful breezes in midsummer heat; from the uninhabited and icebound land snows quietly melt which open and fertilize all; earth stands in the midst, in Plato’s[358] words, “unswerving guardian and maker of day and night”. Nothing then prevents the moon too, though barren of animal life, from allowing the light around her to be reflected and to stream |F| about, and the rays of the stars to flow together and to be united within her; thus she combines and digests the vapours proceeding from earth, and at the same time gets rid of what is scorching and violent in the sun’s heat. And here we will make bold to yield a point to ancient legend, and to say that she has been held to be Artemis, a maiden and no mother, but in other ways helpful and serviceable. For, surely, nothing which has been said, dear Theon, proves it to be impossible that she is inhabited in the way alleged. For her revolution is one very gentle and calm; which smoothes the air, and duly |939| blends and distributes it, so that there is no fear of those who have lived there falling or slipping off her. If not this, neither are the changes and variety of her orbit due to anomaly or confusion, but astronomers make us see a marvellous order and progress in it all, as they confine her within circles which roll around other circles, according to some not herself stirring, according to others moving gently and evenly and with uniform speeds. For these circles and revolutions, and their relations to one another, and to us, work out with very great accuracy the phenomena of her varying height and depth and her |B| passages in latitude as well as in longitude. As to the great heat and continuous charring caused by the sun, you will no longer fear these if you will set against the [eleven][359] summer conjunctions the full-moons, and the continuity of the change, which does not allow extremes to last long, tempering both extremes, and producing a convenient temperature, while between the two the inhabitants enjoy a climate nearly resembling our spring. In the next place, the sun sends down to us, and drives home through her thick and resisting atmosphere, heat fed |C| by exhalations; but there a fine and transparent air scatters and distributes the stream of light, which has no body or fuel beneath it. As to woods and crops, here where we live they are nourished by rains, but in other places, as far up as round your Thebes and Syene, the earth drinks water which comes out of herself, not from rain; it enjoys winds and dews, and would not, I think, thank us for comparing it in fruitfulness with our own, even where the rainfall is heaviest. With us, plants of the same order, if severely pinched by winter frosts, |D| bring forth much excellent fruit, while in Libya, and with you in Egypt, they bear cold very badly and shrink from the winters. Again, while Gedrosia, and Troglodytis which reaches down to ocean, are unproductive and treeless in all parts because of the drought, yet, in the adjacent and surrounding sea, plants grow to a marvellous size and luxuriate in its depths; some of these called “olive-trees”, some “laurels”, some “hair of Isis”. But the “love-come-back” as it is called, if taken out of the earth, not only lives when hung up for as long as you please, but also sprouts. Some are sown close on |E| to winter, some in the height of summer, sesame or millet for instance; thyme or centaury, if sown in a good rich soil and watered, changes its qualities and strength; both rejoice in drought and reach their proper growth in it. But if, as is said, like most Arabian plants, they do not endure even dews, but fade and perish when moistened, what wonder, I ask, if roots and seeds and trees grow on the moon which need no rains or snows, but are fitted by Nature for a light and summer-like atmosphere? Why, again, may it not be probable that breezes ascend warmed by the moon and by the whirl of her revolution, and that she is accompanied by quiet breezes, which shed dews and moisture around, and when |F| distributed suffice for the grown plants, her own climate being neither fiery nor dried up, but mild and engendering moisture. For no touch of dryness reaches us from her, but many effects of moisture and fertility, as increase of plants, putrefaction of flesh, turning of wine to flatness, softening of wood, easy delivery to women. I am afraid of stirring Pharnaces to the fray |940| again, now that he is quiet, if I enumerate as cases of restoring moisture the tides of the ocean (as his own school describes them), and the fillings of gulfs when their flood is augmented by the moon. So I will rather turn to you, dear Theon, for you told us in explaining these words of Alcman,[360]

Dew feeds them, born of Zeus and Lady Moon,

that here he calls the atmosphere Zeus, and says that it is liquefied and turned into dew by the moon. Probably, my friend, her nature is opposite to the sun’s, since not only does he naturally consolidate and dry things which she softens and |B| disperses, but she also liquefies and cools his heat, as it falls upon her from him, and mingles with herself. Certainly they are in error who hold that the moon is a fiery and charred body; and those who require for animals there all the things which they have here, seem to lack eyes for the inequalities of Nature, since it is possible to find greater and more numerous divergencies and dissimilarities between animals and animals than between them and the inanimate world. And grant that men without mouths and nourished on smells are not to be found—I do not |C| think they are—, but the potency which Ammonius himself used to expound to us has been hinted at by Hesiod[361] in the line

Nor yet in mallow and in asphodel

How great the virtue.

But Epimenides made it plain in actual experience, teaching that Nature always keeps the fire of life in the animal with but little fuel, for if it get as much as the size of an olive, it needs no more sustenance. Now men in the moon, if men there be, are compactly framed, we may believe, and capable of being nourished on what they get; for the moon herself they say, |D| like the sun who is a fiery body many times larger than the earth, is nourished on the humours coming from the earth, as are the other stars too in their infinite numbers. Light, like them, and simple in their needs, may we conceive those animals to be which the upper region produces. We do not see such animals, nor yet do we see that they require a different region, nature, climate. Supposing that we were unable to approach the sea or touch it, but merely caught views of it in the distance, |E| and were told that its water is bitter and undrinkable and briny, and then some one said that it supports in its depths many great animals with all sorts of shapes, and is full of monsters, to all of whom water is as air to us, he would seem to be making up a parcel of fairy tales; just so is it with us, it seems, and such is our attitude towards the moon, when we refuse to believe that she has men dwelling on her. Her inhabitants, I think, must wonder still more greatly at this earth, a sort of sediment and slime of the universe appearing through damps, and mists, and clouds, a place unlighted, low, motionless; and must ask whether it breeds and supports animals with motion, respiration |F| and warmth. And if they should anyhow have a chance of hearing those lines of Homer:[362]

Grim mouldy regions which e’en Gods abhor,

and—

‘Neath hell so far as earth below high heaven,[363]

they will say they are written about a place exactly such as this, and that Hades is a colony planted here, and Tartarus, and that there is only one earth—the moon—being midway between the upper regions and these lower ones.’

XXVI. I had scarcely finished speaking when Sylla broke in: ‘Stop, Lamprias, and shut the door on your oratory, lest you run my myth aground before you know it, and make confusion of my drama, which requires another stage and a different setting. Now, I am only its actor, but I will first, if you see no objection, name the poet, beginning in Homer’s[364] words: |941|

Far o’er the brine an isle Ogygian lies,

distant from Britain five days’ sail to the West. There are three other islands equidistant from Britain and from one another, in the general direction of the sun’s summer setting. The natives have a story that in one of these Cronus has been |B| confined by Zeus, but that he, having a son for gaoler,[365] has been settled beyond those islands and the sea, which they call the Gulf of Cronus. To the great continent by which the ocean is fringed is a voyage of about five thousand stades, made in row-boats, from Ogygia, of less from the other islands, the sea being slow of passage and full of mud because of the number of streams which the great mainland discharges, forming alluvial tracts and making the sea heavy like land, whence an opinion prevailed that it was actually frozen. The coasts of the mainland are inhabited by Greeks living around a bay as large as the Maeotic, with its mouth nearly opposite that of the Caspian |C| Sea. These Greeks speak of themselves as continental, and of those who inhabit our land as islanders, because it is washed all round by the sea. They think that those who came with Hercules and were left behind by him, mingled later on with the subjects of Cronus, and rekindled, so to speak, the Hellenic life which was becoming extinguished and overborne by barbarian languages, laws, and ways of life, and so it again became strong and vigorous. Thus the first honours are paid to Hercules, the second to Cronus. When the star of Cronus, called by us the Shining One, by them, as he told us, the Night Watcher, has reached Taurus again after an interval of thirty years, having for a long time before made preparation for |D| the sacrifice and the voyage, they send forth men chosen by lot in as many ships as are required, putting on board all the supplies and stuff for the great rowing voyage before them, and for a long sojourn in a strange land. They put out, and naturally do not all fare alike; but those who come safely out of the perils of the sea land first on the outlying islands, which are inhabited by Greeks, and day after day, for thirty days, see the sun hidden for less than one hour. This is the night, with a darkness which is slight and of a twilight hue, and has a light over it from the West. There they spend ninety days, |E| meeting with honourable and kindly treatment, and being addressed as holy persons, after which they pass on, now with help from the winds. There are no inhabitants except themselves, and those who have been sent before them. For those who have joined in the service of the God for thirty years are allowed to sail back home, but most prefer to settle quietly in the place where they are, some because they have grown used to it, some because all things are there in plenty without pain or trouble, while their life is passed in sacrifices and festivals, or given to literature or Philosophy. For the natural beauty |F| of the isle is wonderful, and the mildness of the environing air. Some, when they are of a mind to sail away, are actually prevented by the God, who manifests himself to them as to familiars and friends, not in dreams only or by signs, for many meet with shapes and voices of spirits, openly seen and heard. Cronus himself sleeps within a deep cave resting on rock which looks like gold, this sleep being devised for him by Zeus in place of chains. Birds fly in at the topmost part of the rock, and bear him ambrosia, and the whole island is pervaded by the fragrance shed from the rock as out of a well. The spirits of whom we hear serve and care for Cronus, having been his comrades in |942| the time when he was really king over Gods and men. Many are the utterances which they give forth of their own prophetic power, but the greatest and most important they announce when they come down as dreams of Cronus; for the things which Zeus premeditates, Cronus dreams, when sleep has stayed[366] the Titanic motions and stirrings of the soul within him, and that which is royal and divine alone remains, pure and unalloyed. |B|

‘Now the stranger, having been received here, as he told us, and serving the God at his leisure, attained as much skill in astronomy as is attainable by the most advanced geometry; of other Philosophy he applied himself to the physical branches. Then, having a strange desire and yearning to see “the Great Island” (for so it appears they call our world), when the thirty years were passed, and the relief parties arrived from home, he said farewell to his friends and sailed forth, carrying a complete equipment of all kinds, and abundant store of provision for the way in golden beakers. All the adventures which befell him, and all the men whose lands he visited, how he met with |C| holy writings and was initiated into all the mysteries, it would take more than one day to enumerate as he did, well and carefully and with all details. Listen now to those which concern our present discussion. He spent a very long time in Carthage.[367]... He there discovered certain sacred parchments which had been secretly withdrawn when the older city was destroyed, and had lain a long time in the earth unnoticed; and he said that of all the Gods who appear to us we ought specially to honour the moon with all our substance (and so he charged me to do), because she was most potent in our life.

XXVII. ‘When I marvelled at this, and asked for clearer |D| statements, he went on: “Many tales, Sylla, are told among the Greeks about the Gods, but not all are well told. For instance, about Demeter and Cora, they are right in their names, but wrong in supposing that they both belong to the same region; for the latter is on earth, and has power over earthly things, the former is in the moon and is concerned with things of the moon. The moon has been called both Cora and Persephone, Persephone because she gives light, Cora because we also use the same Greek word for the pupil of the eye, in which the image of the beholder flashes back, as the sunbeam is seen in the moon. In the stories told about |E| their wanderings and the search there is an element of truth. They yearn for one another when parted, and often embrace in shadow. And what is told of Cora, that she is sometimes in heaven and in light, and again in night and darkness, is no untruth, only time has brought error into the numbers; for it is not during six months, but at intervals of six months, |F| that we see her received by the earth, as by a mother, in the shadow, and more rarely at intervals of five months; for to leave Hades is impossible to her, who is herself a ‘bound of Hades’, as Homer[368] well hints in the words,

Now to Elysian plains, earth’s utmost bound.

For where the shadow of the earth rests in its passage, there Homer placed the limit and boundary of earth. To that limit comes no man that is bad or impure, but the good after death are conveyed thither, and pass a most easy life, not, however, one blessed or divine until the second death.”‘

XXVIII. ‘But what is that, Sylla?’ ‘Ask me not of these things, for I am going to tell you fully myself. The common |943| view that man is a composite creature is correct, but it is not correct that he is composed of two parts only. For they suppose that mind is in some sense a part of soul, which is as great a mistake as to think that soul is a part of body; mind is as much better a thing and more divine than soul, as soul is than body. Now the union of soul with body makes up the passion or emotion, the further union with mind produces reason; the former is the origin of pleasure and pain, the latter of virtue and vice. When these three principles have been compacted, the earth contributes body to the birth of man, the moon soul, the sun reason, just as he contributes her light to the moon. The death which we die is of two kinds; the one |B| makes man two out of three, the other makes him one out of two; the one takes place in the earth which is the realm of Demeter, and is initiation unto her,[369] so that the Athenians used in ancient times to call the dead “Demetrians”, the other is in the moon, and is of Persephone; Hermes is the associate on earth of the one, of the other in heaven. Demeter parts soul from body quickly and with force; Persephone parts mind from soul gently and very slowly, and therefore has been called[370] “Of the Birth to Unity”, for the best part of man is left in oneness, when separated by her. Each process happens according to |C| Nature, as thus: It is appointed that every soul, irrational or rational, when it has quitted the body, should wander in the region between earth and moon, but not all for an equal time; unjust and unchaste souls pay penalties for their wrongdoings; but the good must for a certain appointed time, sufficient to purge away and blow to the winds, as noxious exhalations, defilements from the body, which is their vicious cause, be in that mildest part of the air which they call “The Meadows of Hades”; then they return as from long and distant exile back to their country, they taste |D| such joy as men feel here who are initiated, joy mingled with much amazement and trouble, yet also with a hope which is each man’s own. For many who are already grasping at the moon she pushes off and washes away, and some even of those souls which are already there and are turning round to look below are seen to be plunged again into the abyss. But those which have passed above, and have found firm footing, first go round like victors wreathed with crowns of feathers called “crowns of constancy”, because they kept the irrational part of the soul obedient to the curb of reason, and well ordered in life. Then with countenance like a sunbeam, and soul borne lightly upwards by fire, as here, namely that of the air about |E| the moon, they receive tone and force from it, as iron takes an edge in its bath; for that which is still volatile and diffuse is strengthened and becomes firm and transparent, so that they are nourished by such vapour as meets them, and well did Heraclitus[371] say that “Souls feed on smell in Hades.”

XXIX. First they look on the moon herself, her size, her beauty, and her nature, which is not single or unmixed, but as it were a composition of earth and star. For as the earth has become soft by being mixed with air and moisture, and as the blood infused into the flesh produces sensibility, so the moon, they say, being mingled with air through all her depth, is endowed with soul and with fertility, and at the same time |F| receives a balance, lightness set against weight. Even so the universe itself, duly framed together of things having some an upward tendency, some a downward, is freed from all movement of place. This Xenocrates apprehended, it would seem, by some divine reasoning, having received the suggestion from Plato. For it is Plato[372] who showed that every star has been compounded of earth and fire by means of intermediate natures given in proportion, since nothing reaches the senses into which earth and light do not enter. But Xenocrates says that the stars and the sun are compounded out of fire and the |944| first density, the moon out of the second density and her own air, and earth out of water, fire, and the third density; and that as an universal law, neither the dense alone nor the rarefied alone is capable of receiving soul. So much then for the substance of the moon. But her breadth and bulk are not what geometricians say, but many times greater. The reason why she but seldom measures the shadow of the earth with [three of] her own diameters, is not its smallness, but her heat, whereby she increases her speed that she may swiftly pass through and beyond the dark region, bearing from out it the souls of the good, as they hasten and cry aloud, for being in the shadow they no longer hear the harmony of heaven. At the same |B| time there are borne up from below through the shadow the souls of those who are to be punished, with wailing and loud cries. Hence comes the widespread custom of clanking vessels of brass during eclipses, with a din and a clatter to reach the souls. Also the face, as we call it, terrifies them, when they are near, so grim and weird is it to their sight. Really it is nothing of the kind; but as our earth has gulfs deep and great, one here which streams inwards towards us from the Pillars of Hercules, |C| outwards the Caspian, and those about the Red Sea, even such are those depths and hollows of the moon. The largest of them they call the Gulf of Hecate, where the souls endure and exact retribution for all the things which they have suffered or done ever since they became spirits; two of them are long, through which the souls pass, now to the parts of the moon which are turned toward heaven, now back to the side next to earth. The parts of the moon toward heaven are called “the Elysian plain”, those toward earth “the plain of Persephone Antichthon”.

XXX. ‘However, the spirits do not pass all their time upon her, they come down here to superintend oracles, take part |D| in the highest rites of initiation and mysteries, become guardian avengers of wrongdoing, and shine forth as saving lights in war and on the sea. In these functions, whatever they do in a way which is not right, from anger or to win unrighteous favour, or in jealousy, they suffer for it, being thrust down to earth again and imprisoned in human bodies. From the better of them, the attendants of Cronus said that they are themselves sprung, as in earlier times the Dactyli of Ida, the Corybantes |E| in Phrygia, the Trophoniades in Udora of Boeotia, and countless others in many parts of the inhabited world; whose temples and houses and appellations remain to this day. Some there are whose powers are failing because they have passed to another place by an honourable exchange. This happens to some sooner, to others later, when mind has been separated from soul; the separation comes by love for the image which is in the sun; through it there shines upon them that desirable, beautiful, divine, and blessed presence for which all Nature yearns, yet in different ways. For it is through love of the sun that the moon |F| herself makes her circuit, and has her meetings with him to receive from him all fertility. That Nature which is the soul remains on the moon, preserving traces and dreams of the former life, and of it you may take it that it has been rightly said:

Winged as a dream the soul takes flight away.[373]

Not at the first, and not when it is quit of the body does this happen to it, but afterwards when it becomes deserted and solitary, set free from mind. Of all that Homer has told us I think that there is nothing more divine than where he speaks of those in Hades:

Next was I ware of mighty Hercules,

His ghost—himself among the immortals dwells.[374]

For the self of each of us is not courage, nor fear, nor desire, any more than it is a parcel of flesh and of humours; it is that whereby we understand and think. The soul being shaped by |945| the mind and itself shaping the body and encompassing it upon all sides, stamps its form upon it, so that even if it is separated from both for a long time, yet it possesses the likeness and the stamp, and is rightly called an image. Of these, the moon, as has been said, is the element, for they are resolved into her just as are the bodies of the dead into earth; the temperate speedily, those who embraced a life of quiet and Philosophy; for, having been set free by mind, and having no further use for the passions, they wither away. But of the ambitious, |B| and active, and sensuous, and passionate, some are distracted as though in sleep, dreaming out their memories of life, as the soul of Endymion; but when their restless and susceptible nature starts them out of the moon and draws them to another birth, she does not suffer it, but draws them back and soothes them. For no trifling matter is it, nor quiet, nor conventional, when in the absence of mind, they get them a body by passionate endeavour; Tityi and Typhones, and that Typhon who seized Delphi and confounded the oracle there by insolence and force, came of such souls as these, deserted by reason, and left to the |C| wild wanderings of their emotional part. But in course of time the moon receives even these unto herself and brings them to order; then, when the sun again sows mind, she receives it with vital power and makes new souls, and, thirdly, earth provides a body; for earth gives nothing after death of what she received for birth; the sun receives nothing, save that he receives back the mind which he gives, but the moon both receives and gives, and compounds, and distributes in diverse functions; she who compounds has Ilithyia for her name, she who distributes, Artemis. And of the three Fates Atropus has her station about the sun and gives the first impulse of generation; Clotho moving about the moon combines and mingles, lastly Lachesis, upon the earth, lends her hand, and she has most to do with Fortune; for that which is without soul is powerless in itself and is affected by others, mind is free from affection and sovereign; soul a compound and a middle |D| term, has, like the moon, been formed by the God, a blend and mixture of things above and things below, and thus bears the same relation to the sun which the earth does to the moon.’

‘Such’, said Sylla, ‘is the story which I heard the stranger relate, but he had it from the chamberlains and ministers of Cronus, as he himself used to say. But you and your friends, Lamprias, may take the story in what way you will.’

NOTES

(1) c. 1, 920 B. The opening of the Dialogue is abrupt; compare that of ‘On the Instances of Delay in Divine Punishment’. Many of the Symposiacs open as abruptly, and there a former conversation is sometimes resumed by the same speakers. It seems not impossible that there had been a previous Dialogue on the Face in the Moon, and, again, that the περὶ ψυχῆς preceded the De Sera numinum Vindicta.

Wyttenbach reads τῷ γ᾽ ἐμῷ for the MSS. τῷ γὰρ ἐμῷ, but suggests τῷ παρ᾽ ἐμοί, which seems better. Sylla is not the author, but the depository, of the myth.

For εἰ δεῖ τι ... προσανακρούσασθαι he reads εἰ δή τι ... προσανεκρούσασθε. The past indicative is required by the τί δὲ οὐκ ἐμέλλομεν which follows, the reference being to the previous discussion (see Introduction). The combination εἰ δή or εἰ δή τι is a frequent one. If δή was altered to δεῖ, the further alteration of the verb would follow. Sylla’s language is nautical, as in c. 26, ‘Did you really stop rowing, and back-water on to the received views?’

(2) c. 3. 921 A. For our sight. ὄψις is an old correction for ἴτυς of the MSS., and is required by the context.

(3) c. 4. 921 C. Equal in breadth and length. Empedocles (Fr. 17, 20) has a line

καὶ Φιλότης ἐν τοῖσιν, ἴση μῆκός τε πλάτος τε.

This poetical quotation is introduced to indicate that the world is not a mere point, but has sensible dimensions. In literal truth, the habitable world was held to be twice as long as it was wide (i. e. N. to S.).

The words as to the earth occupying ‘a point central to the sphere (i. e. orbit) of the moon’ are quoted from the Second Hypothesis of Aristarchus (see Introduction). It has been proposed (by Dr. Max Adler) to substitute the name of Clearchus for that of Hipparchus. But the quarrel of Lamprias is not with philosophers but with astronomers and mathematicians, represented by Apollonides and Menelaus. The greatest of them is of absolute authority as to angles of reflexion, &c., not so when he propounds a physical theory of vision, which many find unsatisfactory. For the theory itself see the quasi-Plutarchean De Placitis, 4, 13.

For the words καίτοι γε φίλε πρίαμ᾽ (omitted in the translation), Turnebus proposed καίτοι γε φίλε Λαμπρία, which is very attractive as to the letters, but impossible, unless the text be wholly reconstructed, because Lamprias is himself the speaker.

For discrepancies between the mathematically correct theory of reflexion and its physical application see chapters 17 and 23.

(4) c. 7, 924 B. That segments of beams.... The sense intended by the translation is this: A beam is sawn into two segments on the earth’s surface. The two segments, which at first are separated by a short interval, move simultaneously towards the earth’s centre, but in converging, not parallel, lines, and jam each other long before they reach it. (This is suggested by Aristotle, de Caelo, 2, 14, 296 b 18.)

For ἀποκρίπτεσθαι Dr. Purser suggests ἀποθρύπτεσθαι, which I have rendered; ἀποκύπτεσθαι (Aristoph. Lysis. 1003), ‘to crouch aside’, seems possible.

(5) c. 9, 925 B. Perhaps the line of Empedocles may run ἅρματος ὡσπερανεὶ (L. C. P.) χνόη ᾄσσεται.

(6) c. 10, 925 E. The MSS. have ἀλλὰ καὶ κινητικὸ ταύτῃ διάστημα τὸ δέον, for which Madvig (Adv. Crit., vol. i, p. 665) makes the admirable correction: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐκείνῃ καὶ ταύτῃ δυίστημα δοτέον.

(7) c. 14, 927 F. The growth within. I read αὔξησιν, which is sometimes confused with ἕξιν. Cp. Ar. Eth. N. 3, 14, 149 b 4.

(8) c. 19, 932 C. [the moon ... bodies also]. The words in brackets have been supplied from the substance of the passage of Aristotle mentioned in the footnote.

(9) c. 19, 932 C. Posidonius’ definition is introduced because it contains an admission that the moon casts a shadow, and is therefore an earthlike, not a starlike, body. It has been proposed to alter σκιᾶς into σκιᾷ, and the construction with σύνοδος could be justified by Platonic examples (see R. Kunze in Rhein. Mus. vol. 64, p. 635), but the assumed corruption is improbable. E appears[375] to read οἷς not ἧς; the clause introduced by the relative seems to contain a limitation of the phenomenon to ‘those who experience the obscuration’, i.e. those in the track of the shadow over the earth’s surface. In this case, the words may either have come from a marginal gloss on τόδε τὸ πάθος, or should be transposed with those words, as suggested by Dr. Purser. This will be consistent with the account of a solar eclipse given by Cleomedes (2, 3, p. 172), doubtless after Posidonius; it is not αὐτοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ πάθος ἀλλὰ τῆς ἡμετέρας ὄψεως, whereas an eclipse of the moon is αὐτῆς τῆς θεοῦ πάθος, irrespective of the place of the terrestrial observer.

(10) c. 24, 937 F. A lion. Kepler suggests that there was an old confusion between λῖς, a lion, and λᾶς, a stone.

(11) c. 24, 938 C. without mouths. The MSS. have εὐστόμους, but ἀστόμους is an old correction adopted by W. Pliny, N. H. 7, 2, 25, quotes Megasthenes for a mouthless people living near the sources of the Ganges. See also Müller, Fragm. Hist. Graec. 2, 427 (Adler). For the notion of living by smell cp. Heraclitus (Fr. 38).

(12) c. 26, 941 A. This interesting passage should be read by the side of De Defectu Oraculorum, c. 18, p. 19 F (p. 135 above), which has a close verbal resemblance, and is perhaps extracted from it (Adler). Briareus may have been named in the full text here, as the son of Cronus. In Hesiod, Theogon. 147, he is the son of Uranus, and so Eustathius on Hom. Il. 1, 403, but a little later on Eustathius mentions Cronus as his father on the authority of Arrian. παρακάτω κεῖσθαι of the MSS. is difficult. Adler would read Βριάρεων δὲ τὸν υἱὸν ὡς ἔχοντα φρουρὰν τῶν τε νήσων ἐκείνων καὶ τῆς θαλάττης, ἣν Κρόνιον πέλαγος ὀνομάζουσιν, παρακατῳκίσθαι. Dr. Purser points out that the Straits of Gibraltar were first called the Pillars of Cronus, afterwards the Pillars of Briareus, and lastly the Pillars of Hercules (Schol. ad Dionys. Perieg. 64 in Müller’s Fragm. Hist. Gr. 3, 640).

I have followed the reading of Emperius πέραν κατῳκίσθαι, but without much confidence. Cronus could not well, as Dr. Purser points out, have been in one of the islands, and also beyond it.

(13) c. 26, 942 C. I venture to suggest that the text may have run something as follows:

Πλεῖστον γὰρ ἐν Καρχηδόνι χρόνον διέτριψεν ἅτε δὴ παρ᾽ ἡμῖν μέταλλα ἔχων, ὃς καί τινας, ὅθ᾽ ἡ προτέρα πόλις ἀπώλλυτο, κτλ.

The long sojourn of the stranger in Carthage would be explained if he owned mines there.

In the sequel φαινομένων may perhaps stand for Φοινικικῶν and χρῆναι for χρηστήρια εἶναι.

408 F (p. 110, l. 19). πρὸς δὲ πίστιν ἐπισφαλὴς καὶ ὑπεύθυνος. If ἐπισφαλής stands, it should rather mean ‘liable to take good faith (like an infection)‘, a very common use of the adjective and its adverb in Plutarch. See e. g. 661 B, 631 C. This seems rather a forced oxymoron here. Wyttenbach doubted, and Madvig proposed ἀνεπισφαλής, a word said to be found in Themistius.

On the passage see J. H. W. Strijd in Class. Rev., xxviii, p. 219.

Supplemental Notes 1918

418 A (p. 132, above). ... πυθυμένου (Φιλίππου) τίσιν ἀντιμαρτυρεῖν θεοῖς οἴεται τοὺς ἀνταγωνιζομένους, Τούτοις, ἔφη, τοῖς περὶ τὸ χρηστήριον, οἷς ἄρτι τοὺς ἔξω Πυλῶν πάντας Ἕλληνας ἡ πόλις κατοργιάζουσα μέχρι Τεμπῶν ἐλήλακεν.

I have followed Amyot, whose version is perhaps more intelligible than the Latin, but involves the change of θεοῖς to θείοις (Turnebus) and the transposition of Tempe and Thermopylae. If θεοῖς can be retained, the reference will be to Dionysus and Apollo, the two gods connected with the sanctuary (pp. 67, 138, &c.) and the purgation of the latter at Tempe, commemorated by periodical rites. θείοις appears to correspond more closely to ἱεροῖς above.

926 C-D (pp. 271-2). διὰ τοῦτο οὖν σώματι ψυχὴν μὴ λέγομεν εἶναι μηδέν, οὐ χρῆμα θεῖον ὑπὸ βρίθους ἢ πάχους, οὐρανόν τε πάντα καὶ γῆν καὶ θάλασσαν ἐν ταὐτῷ περιπολοῦντα, καὶ διιστάμενον εἰς σάρκας ἥκειν καὶ νεῦρα, καὶ μυελούς, καὶ παθέων μυρίων μεθ᾽ ὑγρότητος. For διιστάμενον W. proposes διιπτάμενον. I have, with great hesitation, followed Herwerden’s μηδὲ νοῦν (Emperius μηδὲ νοῦ χρῆμα), as the substantive agrees with the participle, but the whole passage is difficult. ὑπὸ βρίθους ἢ πάχους seems to be out of place (can ὑπό stand for something equivalent to ἄνευ or to Madvig’s ἀθῷον ὑπό)?

In the paper mentioned on p. 54 Dr. Max Adler adduces an interesting passage from Maximus Tyrius (diss. 22, 6) closely parallel to this, as proving that Plutarch was drawing upon Posidonius. The participle διιπταμένη occurs.

NOTE ON THE MYTHS IN PLUTARCH

The three ‘myths’ which are found in these Dialogues are all avowedly Platonic; they are introduced and dismissed in Platonic formulae, and much of the imagery is drawn from Plato. Yet the treatment is Plutarch’s own, and the style, though dignified and elevated after his fashion, never suggests an imitation of Plato which could only be parody. New matter is brought in, mostly gleaned from the astronomy of his day. The movements of the heavenly bodies have been an inspiration to later poets of verse and prose:

Minerva breathes on me, Apollo guides,

And the nine Muses point me to the Bears.

To Plutarch the subject was rather one of earnest curiosity, as he turns to account the details and their theological application, read by him in the philosophers of, or nearly of, his own age.

The purpose of the Platonic myth is to carry the argument beyond and above the region of logic and analysis, into that of poetry and constructive truth, upon matters where strict proof was impossible. The reader may be referred to Bishop Westcott’s Essay on Religious Thought in the West, and to Professor J. A. Stewart’s book on The Myths of Plato.

(1) It will be convenient to look first into the myth of Thespesius in Plutarch’s Dialogue On the Instances of Delay in Divine Punishment (see pp. 205-13 of this book). The motive is identical with that of the myth of Er in the Republic, yet with a difference. Plato gives us an experience from the world beyond death, granted to one who had been taken for dead during several days, in order to carry to a higher plane his argument for the victory here and hereafter of Justice over Injustice. Plutarch, as a moral teacher and ‘physician of souls’, concerned to restore individuals who have fallen, and to keep the falling on their feet, gives us the picture of ‘The Rake Reformed’, taking an extreme instance of a vicious character restored to sanity by glimpses of penalties and of bliss beyond this life, in order to deter and encourage others under temptation. The name Aridaeus, changed to Thespesius, ‘The Divine’, as an earnest of the reformation, reminds us of Ardiaeus the tyrant, in Plato. The language naturally falls into that of the Judgement-myth in the Gorgias. It is introduced by a similar form of words:

‘Now listen while I tell you a very beautiful story (λόγος) which you I think will call a myth (μῦθος), for all that I am about to say I wish to be regarded as true’ (Plato).

‘I can tell you a story which I have lately heard, yet I hesitate lest it may appear to you a myth.... Let me first make good the “probability” of my view, then we will start the myth, if myth indeed it be’ (Plutarch).

The details in Plutarch are fuller and grimmer, and the language, though solemn, lacks the stately reticence of Plato. We are often reminded of words and thoughts in the Eumenides of Aeschylus. The celestial imagery is vague, and does not seem to suggest any special source more modern than Plato. It has a general resemblance to a passage in the Phaedo (c. 58, p. 109 D, E).

‘We, dwelling in a hollow of the Earth, think that we dwell upon the Earth itself; and the air we call Heaven, and think that it is that Heaven wherein are the courses of the stars: whereas, by reason of weakness and sluggishness, we cannot go forth out of the air; but if a man could journey to the edge thereof, or having gotten wings could fly up, it would come to pass that even as fishes here which rise out of the sea do behold the things here, he, looking out, would behold the things there, and if his strength could endure the sight thereof, would see that there are the True Heaven, and the True Light, and the True Earth’ (Tr. J. A. Stewart).

The daemons are only mentioned as Ministers or Ushers in the after-world; there is no threefold division of the man into body, soul, and mind, only one into body and soul; there is one reference to Delphi and its oracle, where a popular belief that Night and Apollo were partners is corrected. An attentive reading will bring out a resemblance of words and phrases to those familiar to us in the Sixth Book of the Aeneid, the subject of E. Norden’s fruitful and convincing study.

(2) The beautiful story of Timarchus, the young friend of Socrates’ son, who passed into a trance in the cave of Trophonius, and saw things of the unseen world which were to be fully revealed to him three months later, i. e. in actual death, comes into the Dialogue On the Genius of Socrates (pp. 36-40) to explain the special correspondence during life between the God and those gifted souls who possess mind, and become daemons or spirits after death. Here the three-fold division into body, soul, and mind (see p. 303) is maintained. A practical application of the myth is drawn by Theanor, the young Pythagorean visitor.

As the supposed Dialogue takes place in B. C. 378, we do not expect to find in it the astronomy of Plutarch’s day, though he would not have shrunk from any anachronism. The general imagery is again that of the Phaedo, but there is a sea on which circular bodies, the stars which are men’s souls, float. The current which bears them is circular, yet not completely circular, not ending in the point where it started, but describing a continuous spiral (just as the moon does with reference to the earth’s path). This sea is inclined to the middle and highest point of the firmament by ‘a little less than eight-ninths of the whole’. This is puzzling; it may suggest the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator, or, again, that of the Milky Way to the ecliptic. Doubtless some explanation will be forthcoming. An interesting detail is ‘Styx, a way to Hades’, clearly the shadow in a lunar eclipse, since the moon ‘only avoids Styx by a slight elevation, and is caught once in one hundred and seventy-seven secondary measures’, the exact number of periods of twenty-four hours contained in six lunar months, the normal interval between two eclipses (see p. 286). ‘Secondary measures’ is a curious expression, since Plutarch elsewhere (Plat. Quaest. 3, p. 1006 E) calls periods of a day and a night ‘the primary measures’. It seems not impossible that δευτέροις here has replaced some word which the scribe could not make out, such as νυχθημέροις. We have the four principles of birth and death, as in the Face in the Moon; only there Clotho takes the moon for her sphere of office, and Lachesis the earth, here Lachesis takes the moon, Clotho the sun, Atropus the ‘unseen’. Neither list agrees with the assignment of functions by Xenocrates (see the end of Dr. M. Adler’s Dissertation mentioned below).

(3) Sylla’s tale in the Face in the Moon (pp. 299-308), a traveller’s story picked up in Carthage from one of those curious characters found on the outer margin of the Greek world in whom Plutarch delighted, is brought in with admirable dramatic fitness, shown in Sylla’s eagerness to produce it at the very outset, in the preparation for it by the skirmish between Theon and Lamprias, and in the vivacity of the narrative. It is dismissed with a Platonic formula:

‘Such is the story which I heard the stranger relate.... But you and your friends, Lamprias, may take the story in what way you will.’ Compare: ‘I am persuaded, O Callicles, that these things that are told are true.... Perchance this shall seem to you an old wife’s fable, and thou wilt despise it: well mightest thou despise it, if by searching we could find out aught better and truer’ (Gorgias, 526 D, 527 A). The astronomy of the myth is in the main that of the preceding Dialogue, and Sylla shows considerable familiarity with Plato and also with Xenocrates. It is perhaps noticeable how little interest Plutarch shows in geographical detail, contenting himself with such vague and antiquated views as sufficed for a setting to the story. He appears not to name Pytheas at all in the Lives, and only once (on a question of the tides) in the Moralia.

The whole Dialogue has been the subject of a careful study by Dr. Max Adler of Vienna (Dissertationes Vindobonenses, 1910). Without entering into his general view of the structure, we may observe that Dr. Adler seems to be very successful in establishing the close connexion between it and the Dialogue On the Cessation of the Oracles, which he is probably right—though he reserves the proofs—in regarding as based upon it, and later in date. This comes out especially in the passages about the captivity of Cronus (cp. p. 301 with pp. 135-6), and the argument about ‘the Middle’ (cp. p. 270 with p. 144). He produces a happy quotation from Maximus Tyrius to establish beyond doubt that the source of an important passage about mind (pp. 271-2) was in Posidonius. His general conclusion as to the myth, is that it too is in the main from Posidonius, and that when Plutarch draws upon Xenocrates, it is through Posidonius. The latter appears to have been a writer of great industry and encyclopaedic learning, quoted as an authority on matters of history, physical geography, and what we should now call anthropology; not an original force in Philosophy, but successful in reconciling systems and making them available for human needs; one the aim of whose life-work was, in the words of one of his most recent exponents, to make men at home in the universe (Stoics and Sceptics, by Edwyn Bevan, p. 98).

Any one who will read Sylla’s myth, with a good map of the moon’s surface before him, will be able to locate for himself the ‘Gulf of Hecate’, and the long valleys leading to the Elysian plains, which, on her side remote from earth, enjoy diffused sunlight. There need be no idea of shafts or tunnels driven through the solid body of the moon.

Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, written more than a century before Plutarch’s Dialogue, and also drawn from Posidonius, will be found an admirable companion piece, enforcing, in language of singular beauty and elevation, those duties to country and ancestors which find inadequate expression in the Greek thought of the first century of our era.

NOTE ON THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS AND THE FIVE REGULAR SOLIDS

The opinion that our World, or universe, is not the only one in the Whole, is attributed, in general terms, to many of the early Greek philosophers, notably to Anaximander. The exact meaning of a ‘Cosmos’, in this connexion, is perhaps not easy to fix. Aristotle is clear that the circle of the fixed stars is one and constant, but the author of the Stoical treatise on the Cosmos, found among his works, takes stars to be a part of the (one) Cosmos. An earth, such as ours with her atmosphere and moon, is essential, and a sun, or access to sunlight, and perhaps some planets. In the Dream of Scipio our solar system, with the earth in its centre, is described with great distinctness as a unit in space. The planets are always regarded as luminous points, stars somewhat out of place (see p. 268), possessing no definite magnitude or solid substance.

In theory the number of Cosmi might be infinite, but a shrinking from the vague ‘Infinity’, in later times associated with the Epicureans, led Plato, for instance, to restrict the number to a possible five. That he based this number upon that of the five regular solids may seem fanciful, but the solid angles and forms observed in crystals might reasonably suggest the hypothesis that the ultimate constituents of the crust of the earth would be found in the most perfect solid structures known to theory. In theory there is much that is attractive in these five solids. To one coming fresh from a study of Plane Polygonal Figures, which exist in infinite number, and, when regular, approximate more and more closely to the Plane Circle, it comes as a surprise to find that, in the next higher degree, the number of solid bodies so approximating to the Sphere is five only. Again, it seems almost a paradox that, of these five, the nearest approximation to the Sphere is attained, not by the body with twenty fine faces, but by that which shews only twelve, and those comparatively blunted and unshapely (pentagons). It was perhaps from such considerations that the Dodecahedron was held of special importance by the Pythagoreans. Plato’s study of the several faces of these solids, as available for construction or reconstruction of a world, leaves nothing to be desired, assuming that a solid body can be built out of plane figures, an assumption which appears to belong to the same habit of thought as that which makes the point the square of unity, and the lineal measure corresponding to the number two the first rectangle. As the pentagon defies the analysis available for the equilateral triangle or for the square, the Dodecahedron remains over, a model or pattern of a stitch-work world, as viewed from outside (Phaedo 110 B and Timaeus 55 C; see also Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy, p. 341 foll.). It may not be amiss to be reminded that Kepler, mathematician as well as astronomer, spent many toilsome years in the endeavour to arrange the members of our solar system upon a plan based on the five solids. ‘If Kepler went out “to seek his father’s asses”, he found a kingdom, for it was in the course of these speculations, and through them, that he discovered not only his own “Third Law”, but also the truth, overlooked by Copernicus, that the orbit of each planet lies in a plane which passes through the centre of the sun.’ (Dreyer, Planetary Systems, p. 410.)

The discussion of the plurality of worlds, in the modern sense, begins with the very attractive work of Fontenelle, brought out, in its original form, in 1686, a year before Newton’s Principia, being a series of conversations between the Author and a witty and accomplished Marquise, as to the habitability of the several members of the solar system. The argument which followed is distinguished by many great names, those of Newton himself, Bentley, Huyghens, the Herschels, Dr. Chalmers, till it was brought to a head in the middle of the nineteenth century by Dr. Whewell and Sir David Brewster, writing respectively against and for the hypothesis. The subject was then one (as readers of Anthony Trollope will remember) upon which any one might be called upon to take a side in a London drawing-room. In more recent times interest has been concentrated upon Mars, who now possesses the distinction of having two satellites. We are only concerned to invite the reader to compare the religious argument addressed to the Stoics by Plutarch (p. 142 foll.) with the religious argument drawn by Dr. Chalmers and Sir David Brewster from the enrichment of the providential scheme for man upon our earth which would follow the conception of other earths tenanted by other beings perhaps of a higher order.

But it is natural that any such speculation should begin with the moon, and in fact we find the question of her habitability discussed by Theon and by Lamprias (pp. 293-9). With the later treatises on this subject, beginning with Lucian’s witty flight of fancy, we are not concerned. But an exception must be made for the very able works of Savinien de Cyrano, known to us as Cyrano de Bergerac, whose Histoire comique des États et Empires de la Lune appeared, probably, in 1650, and was followed by a similar work about the sun. Cyrano appears to be familiar with Plutarch: thus he meets in the moon the ‘daemon of Socrates’, who has also been the tutelary spirit of Epaminondas, of Cato of Utica, and of Brutus. The idea (due in the first place to Heraclitus) of being fed on smells, is worked out with much vivacity. But with so original and daring a writer, it is not quite easy to settle how much is due to any hint from others and how much to himself. A modern reader will not need to be reminded that Cyrano was not a person of whom it was wise to give an outspoken opinion in his lifetime. But I had wished to speak with nothing but respect of a man of real learning and genius, who, from whatever cause, did not bring to perfection any work worthy of himself.

See, on the general subject, an Essay by the late Professor Henry J. S. Smith in Oxford Essays, 1855.

INDEX
OF PERSONS AND PLACES MENTIONED BY PLUTARCH IN THESE DIALOGUES

¶ In this Index the Greek spelling of ei (Lat. ī) has been usually retained.

All dates are B. C. unless otherwise stated.

The dates are often approximate and conventional.

Other numerals refer to pages of this volume.

For the speakers in each Dialogue see that Dialogue passim and the Introductions.

(The ‘Three Pythian Dialogues’ are quoted under that designation See p. 52.)

A.

Academy, Academic, the School founded by Plato in ‘the most beautiful suburb of Athens’ (Thuc. ii. 34), 65, 104, 178, 264.

Acanthus, Acanthian, a town of the Chalcidice, 94, 95.

Achaeans, 102.

Achaeus, 95.

Achĕron, a river of the lower world, 227.

Achilles, 294.

Admētus, king of Pherae in Thessaly, and husband of Alcestis, 132.

Adōnis (‘Gardens of Adonis’ were cut flowers planted in pots), 199.

Adrasteia, a name for Nemesis, ‘the unescapable’, 207.

Aegīna, an island in the Saronic Gulf, opposite to Athens, 99.

Aegon, 85.

Aegos Potami, a river, and in later times a town, in the Chersonese, famous for the sea-battle of 405, in which Lysander defeated the Athenian fleet, 88.

Aemiliānus, a rhetorician, 134, 135.

Aeolian, 121.

Aeolĭdae, 132.

Aeschylus, tragic poet of Athens, (525-456), 67, 132, 162, 265.

Aesop of Samos, writer of fables (fl. 570), a freedman of Iadmon of Samos, 94, 192.

Aetna, Mount, in Sicily, 271.

Aetolians, 92.

Agamemnon, 125, 230.

Agathŏclēs, 193.

Agāvē, daughter of Cadmus, and mother of Pentheus, 226.

Agenorĭdas, 13.

Agesianax (or Hegesianax), a poet, probably of Alexandria, third century, 260, 261.

Agesilaüs II, the lame king of Sparta, reigned 398-361 (see his Life) 11, 13, 91.

Aglaonīcē, 130.

Aglaŏphon, 166.

Agrigentum (Acragas), a town on the south coast of Sicily, 184.

Aïdoneus (Hades), 77.

Ajax, 193, 230.

Alcaeus, of Lesbos, lyric poet (fl. 600), 118.

Alcibiădes 450-404, Athenian politician, 19, 183.

Alcman, lyric poet of Sparta (fl. 630), 297.

Alcmēna, wife of Amphitryon and mother of Hercules; (on her sanctuary, in a grove near Thebes, see Pausan. ix. 16. 4), 11, 12, 13.

Alĕüs, 12.

Alexander, the Great, 95, 192, 233.

Alexis, of Thurii, poet of the so-called ‘Middle Attic Comedy’, fourth century, 137.

Aloădes, Otus and Ephialtes, giant sons of Iphimedeia, wife of Aloeus (Od. xi. 307 foll., and Il. v. 385), 289.

Alopĕcus, 109.

Alphēüs, a river of Arcadia and Elis, 160.

Alyattes, king of Lydia and father of Croesus (d. 560), 96.

Alyrius, 100.

Amēstris, 235.

Ammon, the temple of Zeus Ammon in an oasis of the Libyan Desert to the N.W. of Egypt, 117, 120.

Ammonius, an Athenian philosopher of the first century A. D., the instructor of Plutarch. A speaker in the First and Third Pythian Dialogues. See also 298, and cp. Sympos. 3, 1, 2; 8, 3; 9, 1, 2, 5, 14; and Life of Themistocles, end.

Amphiaraüs of Argos, prince and seer, who accompanied the Seven Chieftains against Thebes, and was swallowed up by the earth there, 121.

Amphictyons, ‘Dwellers around’, whose council met at Thermopylae and at Pylaea, a suburb of Delphi, 95, 110.

Amphilŏchus, son of Amphiaraüs, worshipped at Malli in Cilicia, 163, 205.

Amphīon, the district of Thebes between the rivers Strophia and Ismenus (Pausan. ix. 16 and 17), 10.

Amphipolis, a town of Macedon on the Strymon, taken by Brasidas in 424, 175 n.

Amphitheüs, a Theban patriot, imprisoned by the Polemarchs, 11, 29, 43, 50.

Amphitryon, father of Hercules, 13.

Anactorium, a town and promontory of Acarnania, 184.

Anaxagoras, 499-427, a philosopher of Clazomenae in Ionia, 71, 165, 231, 277, 283.

Andocĭdes, 16.

Androcleidas, a Theban patriot, assassinated when a refugee in Athens, 46.

Antichthon, 306.

Antigŏnus, younger son of Demetrius Sotēr, king of Syria (d. 125), 204.

Antipater, son of Cassander, king of Macedon, succeeded his brother Philip, and was himself murdered, 198.

Antiphon, 18.

Aphroditē, goddess of love, 189, 232, 272.

Apollo, 59, 62, 67, 68, 73, 76, 77, 78, 88, 93, 94, 96, 99, 121, 132, 146, 160, 161, 170, 193, 210, 232.

Apollocrates, son of Dionysius the younger, of Syracuse (d. 354), 198.

Apollodōrus, tyrant of Cassandria (Potidaea) from 379, 189, 191.

Apollonia, a town in Illyria founded from Corinth, 184.

Apollonia, a town in Pisidia, 96.

Apollonides, a speaker in the Face in the Moon. ὁ τακτικός (Sympos. 3, 4).

Arabia, 297.

Arcadia, Arcadians, 176.

Arcĕsus, Lacedaemonian Harmost, 29, 51.

Arcĕsus, of Sicily, 22.

Archelaüs, king of Macedon, 413-399, friend and host of Euripides, 59.

Archias, of Athens, the priest, 47.

Archias, of Thebes. A member of the oligarchical party, and made a Polemarch by Sparta, 8, 10, 29, 32, 43, 44, 47, 48, 50.

Archidāmus, an Athenian, 6, 7, 8, 44, 45, 47.

Archilŏchus, 714-676, of Paros, lyric and iambic poet, 63, 199, 230, 282.

Archīnus, 7.

Archȳtas of Tarentum, mathematician and statesman, fl. 300 (see Life of Marcellus, c. 14), 14 n., 181.

Argos, Argive, 85, 186.

Aridaeus, 206.

Aristarchus of Samos, astronomer and physicist (310-230), 98, 264, 269, 283.

Aristarchus, critic, of Samothrace and Alexandria (fl. 156), 295.

Aristocrătes, king of Arcadia (stoned to death 668), 176.

Aristodēmus, king of Messenia (d. 723), 229, 230.

Ariston, 186, 195.

Aristonīca, 104.

Aristotle, 384-322, founder of the Peripatetic School at Athens, 69, 84, 88, 143, 162, 283, 318.

Aristotle (see p. 255), a Peripatetic, who takes part in the Dialogue on the Face in the Moon.

Aristyllus, an astronomer (fl. 233), 98.

Arnē, a town in Thessaly, 158.

Arsălus, 138, 139.

Artĕmis, 146, 230, 232, 262, 295, 308.

Artemisium, on the north coast of Euboea, where the Greek fleet defeated that of Xerxes in 480, 183.

Asclepius (Aesculapius), 185.

Assyrians, 288.

Asterium, 92.

Athămas, 190, 226.

Athena (Pallas Athene), 16, 50, 102, 139, 193, 262, 294.

Athens, Athenian, 7, 8, 17, 18, 19, 23, 40, 47, 49, 62, 65, 88, 95, 96, 99, 177, 183, 185, 195, 196, 197, 229, 303.

Atlas, a giant son of Iapĕtus and brother of Prometheus, identified with a mountain in NW. Africa, 65, 265.

Atrŏpus, 37, 308, 315.

Attĭca, 162.

Augeas, king of the Epeans; slain for bad faith by Hercules, and succeeded by Phyleus, 204.

Ausonius, a Latin poet of Bordeaux (A.D. 310-90), 127 n.

Autolycus, son of Hermes, and grandfather of Ulysses, famed for his cunning, 185.

B.

Bacchus, 209.

Bacchylĭdas, 20.

Bacis, an ancient Boeotian seer, connected in story with the Corycian cave, 90.

Bakerwoman, the, 96.

Basilocles, a speaker in the introductory part of the Second Pythian Dialogue.

Battus, of Thera, founder of Cyrene (see Herod. 4, 150 foll.), 103, 108.

Bessus, 186.

Bias, sixth century; of Priēnē in Ionia; one of the Seven Wise Men, 61.

Bion, a Scythian philosopher and wit of the third century, 86, 201, 229.

Boeotia, 7, 9, 50, 65, 120, 194, 306.

Boēthus, a young geometrician and Epicurean (probably an Athenian), a speaker in the Second Pythian Dialogue (cp. Sympos. 5, 1 and 8, 3).

Branchĭdae, 193.

Brasĭdas, the Spartan general (d. 422), 94, 95, 175.

Briăreus, 135, cf. 299.

Britain, Briton, 117, 133, 261, 299.

Byzantium, 189.

C.

Cabirĭchus, 48.

Cadmeia, the citadel of Thebes, 8, 10, 12, 30, 51.

Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, 87.

Caesar, the Emperor Augustus (63-A.D. 14), 62.

Caligŭla, 233.

Callias, a rich Athenian, see the Symposium of Xenophon and the Protagoras of Plato, 95.

Callippus, 185.

Callistrătus, of Athens, 49.

Callistratus, archon of Delphi, 117.

Calondas, 199.

Capheisias, of Thebes, son of Polymnis and brother of Epaminondas; the chief speaker in the First Pythian Dialogue.

Caria, 13.

Carthage, Carthaginian, 91, 183, 184, 302, 316.

Carystus, on the S. coast of Euboea, noted for its marble and asbestos, 162.

Caspian Sea, supposed until Ptolemy to be an inlet of Ocean, though Herodotus describes it as an inland water (1, 202-3), 300, 305.

Cassander, 354-297, king of Macedon, began the restoration of Thebes in 315: 184, 197.

Cĕbēs, of Thebes, a companion of Socrates (see the Critias and Phaedo of Plato), 17, 35.

Cecrops, 182.

Cephisodōrus, 45, 47, 49.

Chaereas, 233.

Chaerēmon, an Athenian tragic poet (fl. 380), 104.

Chaeroneia, in Boeotia, on the borders of Phocis; Plutarch’s native town, 35, 121.

Chaldaeans, 62.

Charillus, 17.

Charon, a Theban patriot, 8, 9, 28, 29, 30, 32, 44, 45, 47.

Charybdis, 218.

Cheiron, the Centaur, instructor of Achilles, 65.

Chersonese, the Thracian, 183.

Chilon, one of the Seven Wise Men, 61.

Chios, 275.

Chius, 108.

Chlidon, 31, 44.

Cleanthes, a Stoic philosopher, b. 300, at Assos in the Troad, 264.

Clearchus, a Peripatetic philosopher of Soli, pupil of Aristotle, 260, 262.

Chonūphis, 13.

Chrysippus (280-207), the Stoic philosopher, born at Soli in Cilicia, 134, 146, 147.

Cilicia, 163, 205.

Cimmerians, 231.

Cimon, 183, 195.

Cinaethon, 107.

Cinēsias, dithyrambic poet of Athens (fl. 400), 232.

Cithaeron, the mountain range between Attica and Boeotia, 8, 43.

Clazomĕnae, a city in Ionia, 39.

Cleander, of Aegina, 99.

Cleisthĕnes, of Sicyon, 185.

Cleobulīnē, 95.

Cleobūlus, tyrant of Lindus in Rhodes, sixth century. One of the Seven Wise Men, 61.

Cleombrŏtus, of Lacedaemon, a speaker in the Third Pythian Dialogue.

Cleon, of Daulia, 169.

Cleōnae, a city in the Peloponnesus, 94, 185.

Cleonīcē, 189.

Cleotīmus, 99.

Clio, the Muse of History, 97.

Clotho, one of the Fates, 37, 308, 315.

Clytaemnēstra, 188.

Cnidus, a city of Caria, 14, 88, 122.

Conon, 7.

Copreus, 185.

Cora (Persephone), daughter of Demeter, 302.

Corax, 199.

Corcȳra, Corcyrean, 193.

Corētas, 161, 165.

Corinth, 51, 61, 83, 92, 94, 95, 224.

Corōnē (Crow), 122.

Corybantes, priests of Cybele, 306.

Corycium, the Corycian cave, on the slopes of Parnassus, 7-1/2 miles NE. of Delphi, and 3,500 feet above it (Pausanias x. 32, 2), 82.

Cosmos, i. e. Apollo, 67.

Crates, a Cynic philosopher (fl. 328), 94, 95.

Crates, a critic, of Pergamos (born at Mallus in Cilicia, fl. 155), 295.

Cratylus, a Dialogue of Plato, on etymology, 71.

Crete, 131, 200.

Cretīnus, 108.

Critias, of Carthage, 234.

Croesus, king of Lydia, d. 540 (see Herod. 1-3), 96, 192.

Crŏnus (Saturn), father of Zeus, 135, 138, 183, 235, 299, 300, 301, 306, 308.

Crotōna, a Greek colony in southern Italy, 21.

Cyclops, a satyric play of Euripides, 164;

- and see 193.

Cydias, an early poet, 282.

Cydnus, a river of Cilicia, 160.

Cylon, Cylonians, 21, 22.

Cymé (Cumae), a city on the coast of Campania, 90.

Cypsĕlus, of Corinth, tyrant 655-625, father of Periander, 94.

Cyzĭcus, a city of Mysia, 14.

D.

Dactyli, workers in iron, &c., of Mt. Ida in Phrygia, 306.

Daïphantus, 194.

Damocleidas, 43, 47.

Daulia, a town of Phocis, 169.

Deinomĕnes, of Syracuse, 99.

Delium in Boeotia, battle of, 424 (see Life of Alcibiades, c. 7, and Plato, Apol. 28, and Sympos. 221 A).

Dēlos, an island in the Aegean, sacred to Apollo, 13, 14, 60, 63, 77, 121.

Delphi, 60, 62, 67, 85, 94, 101, 110, 117, 121, 132, 138, 161, 165, 185, 192, 196, 210, 307.

Dēmētēr, 29, 302, 303.

Demetrius, a speaker in the Third Pythian Dialogue.

Demetrius, king of Macedon 294-287 (Poliorcētēs), 204.

Democrĭtus, a philosopher, of Abdēra in Thrace (460-361), 134, 277.

Diagŏras, of Melos, a disciple of Democritus (fl. 420), 234.

Diës (plural of Zeus), 146.

Dicaearcheia, the old name of Puteŏli, a city on the coast of Campania, 90, 211.

Dicaearchus, a Peripatetic philosopher and writer on questions of literary history, contemporary with Aristotle, 59.

Didymus, a Cynic philosopher (nicknamed Planetiădes), takes part in the opening of the Third Pythian Dialogue.

Diogenianus, a speaker in the Second Pythian Dialogue. For his father, of the same name, cp. Sympos. 7, 7 and 8, 1, 2, 9.

Diŏmede, 102.

Dion of Syracuse (d. 356), see his Life, by Plutarch, 186.

Dionysius, the Elder, 430-367, tyrant of Syracuse, 184, 197.

Dionȳsus (or Bacchus), the wine-god, born at Thebes, 67, 68, 138, 139, 209.

Diotŏnus, 45.

Dircē, daughter of Helios, wife of Lycus, whose sons by Antiope, Amphion and Zethus, slew her and threw her body into a well at Thebes. The Fountain of Dirce was near the Crenaean Gate, 12.

- R. Dirce was the westernmost of the three Theban streams.

Dolon, 132.

Dorian, Doric, 138, 140.

Dryus, 138.

E.

Earth (temple of, at Delphi), 97.

Echecrătēs, a ‘prophet’ of Tegyra, 121.

Echinădĕs, islands off the coast of Acarnania, 134.

Egypt, Egyptian, 11, 13, 14, 93, 117, 126, 140, 154, 184, 235, 283, 293, 296.

Elis, Elean, a state of the Peloponnesus, 94.

Ellopion, 13.

Elysian, 302, 306, 317.

Empedocles of Agrigentum, philosopher and poet (fl. 444), 16, 93, 98, 133, 134, 137, 235, 259, 263, 269, 272, 274, 278, 287.

Endymion, 307.

Epameinondas, son of Polymnis, brother of Capheisias, and friend of Pelopidas (fell at Mantineia 362), 1, 6, 9, 14, 15, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 32, 40, 43, 50.

Epicharmus, of Cos and Syracuse, writer of philosophical comedies (540-450), 196.

Epicūrus, of Samos, 342-270, philosopher and founder of the School of ‘The Garden’ at Athens, and Epicureans, 86, 87, 89, 92, 136, 137, 146, 163, 262.

- A modern ‘Epicurus’ is introduced into the Dialogue on the Delays in Divine Punishment, but leaves before its beginning.

Epicȳdēs, 191.

Epidaurus, a town and state next to Argolis, 99.

Epimenĭdes, of Phaestus in Crete, a poet and prophet (fl. 600), 117, 298.

Epitherses, 134.

Erĕbus, 230.

Erĕsus, a city of Lesbos, 140.

Eretria, a city on the west coast of Euboea, 96.

Erianthes, 29.

Eridănus, the river Po, 193.

Erinnys, the, 207.

Eriphȳlē, 186.

Erōs (Love), 272.

Erythrae, an Ionian city, 95, 99.

Ethiopia, 196, 204, 222, 265.

Euboea, 162.

Eudoxus, of Cnidus, 408-355, astronomer and mathematician, and founder of the School of Cyzicus, 14, 97, 98.

Eumētis, 95.

Eumolpĭdas, 10.

Euripides, 485 (or 480)-405, the Athenian tragedian, 59, 70, 78, 104, 107, 129, 156, 159, 160, 164, 176, 177, 178, 192.

Eurycleis, 126.

Eurymĕdon, a river in Pamphylia; in 469 Cimon defeated the Persians on its banks, 183.

Eustrŏphus, a speaker in the First Pythian Dialogue.

Euthyphron, a disciple of Socrates (see the Dialogue of Plato which bears his name), 16, 17.

F.

Fates, the, 37, 61, 308.

Fortune, 89, 90.

G.

Galaxidōrus, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 32, 43.

Galaxius, in Boeotia, 110.

Gauls, 222, 234.

Gedrosia, a district on the Indus and Indian Ocean (SE. part of Beloochistan), 296.

Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse (d. 478), 99, 182.

Getae, 190.

Giants, 235.

Glaucé, 87.

Glaucus, 191, 230.

Gorgias, of Leontini, 480-398, teacher of rhetoric (see the Gorgias of Plato), 22, 137.

Gorgĭdas, 8, 12, 43, 50.

Great Mother, the (Cybele), 107.

Great Year, the, 138.

Guides, the, of the temple and treasures of Delphi, apparently two in number, 83, 85, 88, 94, 96.

- Cp. Sympos. 5, 3, and 8, 4.

Gullies, the (cp. Rhetiste), 19.

Gyrean, cape, 230.

H.

Hādēs, 37, 38, 225, 235, 299, 302, 304, 307.

Haliartus, a town of Boeotia on Lake Copaïs, 15 miles NW. of Thebes, 11, 12, 109.

Hamadryads, 127.

Hecăte, 130, 305, 317.

Hector, 230.

Hecŭba, 130, 233.

Hegētor, 130.

Helĕnus, son of Priam, a prophet, 41.

Helĭcon, of Cyzicus, mathematician and astronomer, mentioned in Plutarch’s Life of Dion, as having foretold a solar eclipse, 14.

Helĭcon, a mountain (5,000 ft.) in Boeotia, 89.

Hellas (Greece), 124, 125, 300.

Hephaestus, the lame god of fire (see Il. 1. 590), 263.

Hēra, 193, 232.

Heracleia, probably a town in Phrygia, 189.

Heracleidae, 195.

Heracleitus, philosopher of Ephesus (end of sixth century), 73, 74, 87, 101, 127, 197, 218, 224, 304.

Heraea, the, a festival at Thebes, 31.

Heraea, a town of Arcadia, 169.

Heracleon, of Megara, a speaker in the Third Pythian Dialogue.

Hercules (Heraclēs), 13, 51, 65, 94, 100, 123, 131, 185, 193, 195, 199, 226, 300, 307.

Hercŭlēs, Pillars of, 305.

Herippĭdas, 29, 51.

Hermes, 135, 139, 303.

Hermodōrus, 39.

Hermolaüs, 233.

Herodĭcus, 187.

Herodŏtus, the historian, of Halicarnassus (484-408), 100, 131, 166.

Herophĭlé, 95.

Hesiod, the ancient Boeotian poet, eighth century, 42, 86, 98, 123, 126, 127, 128, 130, 156, 157, 161, 186, 202, 218, 230, 272, 298.

Hesperus (the Evening Star, or planet Venus), 154, 215, 268, 273.

Hiĕro, of Syracuse, brother of Gelon (d. 467). A munificent benefactor of Delphi, 88, 99, 182.

Hiĕro, the Lacedaemonian (killed in the battle of Leuctra 371), 88.

Himĕra, a town of Sicily, 140.

Hipparchus, the astronomer, of Rhodes and Alexandria, native of Nicaea in Bithynia (fl. from 160), 98, 261.

Hipparchus (son of Pisistratus), 189.

Hippocrătes, 182.

Hippostheneidas, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 44, 51.

Hippys, of Rhegium, an early Greek historian, 140.

Homer, 41, 63, 70, 76, 77, 85, 86, 87, 88, 93, 102, 126, 141, 148, 166, 199, 215, 230, 265, 282, 286, 288, 299, 302, 303, 307.

Hoplītes, river in Boeotia, 109.

Hyampeia, one of two cliffs above Thebes, 192.

Hypătes, 47, 49.

Hypatodōrus, 29.

I.

Iadmōn, 192.

Ida, Mt., in Phrygia, 306.

Iêïus, ‘invoked with the cry iē! (or iē paion!),‘ i. e. Apollo, 76.

Ilithyia, 308.

Ilium (Troy), 166.

Indian, 140.

Ino, daughter of Cadmus and wife of Athamas, a tragic heroine, 190.

Ion Chius, a writer of plays, and anecdotist (fl. 450), 276.

Iphĭtus, killed by Hercules, who had stolen the oxen of his father Eurytus, 185.

Isis, 296.

Ismenian, a name of Apollo, 60.

Ismenias, a Theban of the popular party and Polemarch, arrested by Leontides, tried by a commission appointed by Sparta, on a charge of ‘medizing’, and executed (see Life of Pelopidas), 8.

Ismenidōrus, 20.

Ismēnus, the principal (most easterly) river of Thebes, 15.

Isodaités, ‘equal divider,’ a name of Dionysus, 67.

Ister, a Greek historian, or antiquarian, 100.

Ister, the Danube, 148.

Isthmus (of Corinth), Isthmian, 94.

Italy, 15, 21, 27, 88, 200.

Ithaca, 193·

Ixīon, 293.

J.

Jason, Tagus of Thessaly (d. 370), known as ‘Prometheus’; (see Plutarch On getting advantage from enemies, c. 6, p. 89 C, and Xenophon, Hellenica, 2, 3, 18) 23.

Jews, 231.

L.

Lacedaemon, 51, 98, 99, 117, 179, 189, 229.

Lachărēs, an Athenian demagogue (fl. 296), 195.

Lachēs, Athenian general; fell at Mantineia, 418. A Dialogue of Plato bears his name, 19.

Lachĕsis, one of the Fates, 37, 308, 315.

Lamia, 89.

Lamprias, Plutarch’s brother (also the name of his grandfather); a speaker in the First and Third Pythian Dialogues and in the Face in the Moon. Cp. Sympos. 2, 2; 4, 5; 9, 15.

Lamprocles, 35.

Latōna, 232.

Law Courts, the, 17.

Lebadeia, near the western frontier of Boeotia, the seat of the oracle of Trophonius, 120, 157.

Lēda, daughter of Thestius, and mother of Helen and Clytaemnēstra, Castor, and Polydeuces, 95.

Lemnos, 290.

Leontĭdes, one of the polemarchs at Thebes, 8, 10, 11, 12, 47, 49.

Leontīni, a city of Sicily, 22.

Lesbos, 194.

Leschenorian, 60.

Lēthē (‘Oblivion’), 209.

Leucas, Leucadia, 184, 193.

Leuctra, a village of Boeotia, between Thespiae and Plataea (famous for the battle between the Spartans and Thebans in 371), 88.

Libya (Africa), 103, 108, 185, 296.

Lindos, a town on the eastern coast of Rhodes, 61.

Livia, the empress, wife of Augustus, and mother, by her first marriage, of Tiberius (d. A. D. 29), 62.

Locris, 193.

Lucania, 22.

Lucius, a speaker in the Dialogue on the Face in the Moon.

Lycians, 138, 139.

Lyciscus, 177.

Lycormae, 195.

Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, ninth century, 99.

Lycuria (an ancient name for the summit of Parnassus), a village near the Corycian cave, 82.

Lydia, 121.

Lydiădas, 183.

Lysander, the Spartan naval commander who finished the Peloponnesian war. He fell in battle against the Thebans, 395, at Haliartus (see his Life, c. 29): 109.

Lysanorĭdas, 8, 10, 12, 43, 51.

Lysimăchus, 189.

Lysis, a Pythagorean teacher, driven from Italy to Thebes, where he died, 7, 13, 15, 21, 24, 27.

Lysitheides, 7.

Lysitheüs, 48.

M.

Maeotic Bay (Sea of Azov), 300.

Magi, the, 126.

Magnesia, district of Thessaly, 96.

Malis, 89.

Marăthon, on the east coast of Attica (famous for the battle of 490), 183.

Mardonius, the Persian general (defeated and killed at Plataea, 479), 121.

Marius, 184.

Medes, 288.

Megalopŏlis, the chief town of Arcadia, 183.

Megăra, a city on the Saronic gulf, 18, 96, 122, 124.

Megasthĕnēs, a Greek writer on India (fl. 300), 294.

Melanthius, an Athenian tragic poet (fl. 420), 181.

Melētus, one of the three accusers of Socrates, a poet, 16.

Melissus, 20.

Mĕlon, 8, 30, 47, 48.

Melos, an island in the Aegean, 166.

Memphis, a city of Egypt, on the Nile, 13.

Menaechmus, 14 n.

Menelaüs, a speaker in the Dialogue on the Face in the Moon.

Mercury (the planet), 154, cp. 268.

Meriŏnēs, 131.

Messenians, 176, 229.

Metapontium (Metapontum), a Greek city in Southern Italy, 21, 88.

Mētrodōrus, of Chios, a disciple of Democritus (fl. 330), 137, 275.

Midas, a mythical king of Phrygia, 229.

Milētus, a city of Caria, 23, 193.

Miltiădes, son of Cimon, the victor of Marathon, 183.

Mimnermus, elegiac poet, of Smyrna and Colophon (fl. 600), 282.

Minos, son of Zeus, king of Crete, and afterwards a judge in Hades, 179.

Mitys, of Argos, 186.

Mnesarĕtē (Phryne), 94, 95.

Mnesinoē, 95.

Molionĭdae, the sons of Actor, by Molione, 94.

Molus, 131.

Mopsus, founder of Mallos in Cilicia, where he had an oracle, 163.

Muses, the, 35, 86, 97, 98, 199, 226.

Myrĭna, an Aeolian town on the west coast of Mysia, 96.

Myron, 185.

Myrtălē, 95.

Mys, a Carian, employed by Mardonius to consult the oracles in Greece, 121.

N.

Nāïd, the, 127.

Nauplia, the port of Argos, 192.

Navel, the, at Delphi, 117.

Naxos, an island in the Aegean, 199.

Neleus, father of Nestor, 204.

Neobūlē, 63.

Neochōrus, 109.

Neoptolĕmus, son of Achilles, 45.

Nero, A. D. 37-68. The Roman Emperor. He visited Greece (the province of Achaia) in A. D. 67, and proclaimed its freedom at the Isthmian games: 60, 213.

Nesĭchus, 108.

Nestor, 204.

Nicander, a priest of the temple at Delphi, 62, 63, 72, 170.

Nicias, the Athenian general (d. 414 at Syracuse, see his Life), 23, 229.

Night, 210.

Night-watcher (Nycturus), the, an early name for the planet Cronus (Saturn), 300.

Niŏbē, 232.

Nisaeus, 197.

Nisibeüs, 204.

Nyctelius, ‘nightly’; used as a name of Dionysus, 67.

O.

Odysseus (Ulysses), 16, 102.

Oechalia, a town in Euboea (according to the story followed by Sophocles) taken by Hercules, 131.

Oeta, a mountain range in Thessaly, 186.

Ogygia, the name given by Homer to the island of Calypso (Od. 1, 50, &c.), 299.

Olympia, in Elis, 160.

Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, 95.

Olympicus, a speaker in the Dialogue on the Delays in Divine Punishment.

Olympus, a mountain (9,754 ft.) between Thessaly and Macedon, the seat of Zeus, 70, 93.

Olynthus, a town in the Chalcidice (taken by Sparta 379), 8.

Onomacrĭtus, an Athenian poet and antiquarian (520-485), 107.

Opheltiădae, 194.

Opus, Opuntian, a Locrian town, 96.

Orchalĭdes, 109.

Orchomĕnus, a city of Boeotia, 163, 176.

Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytaemnēstra, 95.

Orneae, a town in Argolis, 95.

Orpheus, of Thrace, a minstrel, 98, 126, 193, 210.

Orphic, 72.

Orthagŏras, 185.

Osīris, an Egyptian deity, 138.

P.

Paeonia, a district of Thrace, 186.

Pallas (Athene); her image at Athens (Palladium) was believed to have been brought from Troy by Diomede. Another Palladium stood on the Acropolis (Pausanias i. 28-9): 88.

Palōdĕs, the, 134, 135.

Pan, 134, 135.

Pandărus, a Lycian archer, 102.

Parmenĭdes, of Elea in Italy, a philosopher (b. 513), 98, 272, 277.

Parnassus, the mountain (8,000 ft.) above Delphi, the highest point of a range of the same name, 210.

Parnēs, a mountain range near the northern frontier of Attica, 19.

Path, the, the Peripatetic School, 260.

Patrocleas; Plutarch’s son-in-law, a speaker in the Dialogues on the Delays in Divine Punishment and on The Soul. Cp. Sympos. 2, 9; 5, 7; 7, 2.

Pausanias, (1) Spartan statesman and general (d. 470), 99 n., 189, 200;

- (2) the slayer of Philip of Macedon, 233.

Pauson, a Greek painter of the fourth century. Aristotle (Poet. c. 2) speaks of his style as that of caricature: 86.

Paxi, two islands south of Corcyra, 134.

Peace (a woman’s name), 99.

Peisistrătus, tyrant of Athens, (d. 527), 182, 189.

Pelopĭdas, Theban general and friend of Epaminondas; fell at Cynoscephalae 364 (see his Life), 8, 43, 45, 47, 49.

Peloponnesus, 121, 283, 293.

Penelope, 135.

Peparēthus, an island in the Aegean, off Thessaly, 13.

Periander, tyrant of Corinth from 625; one of the Seven Wise Men, 61, 184, 224.

Pericles, Athenian statesman (d. 429), 185, 196.

Persephŏnē, 37, 303, 306.

Persia, 96, 121, 208, 229.

Petraeus, of Delphi, 111.

Petron, 140.

Phaestus, in Crete, 117.

Phaĕthon, a son of the Sun, 193.

Phalanthus, a Lacedaemonian, founder of Tarentum (about 708), 108.

Phalăris, tyrant of Agrigentum from 570: 184.

Phanaean, 60, 77.

Phanias, of Erĕsus in Lesbos, a Peripatetic philosopher, and pupil of Aristotle, who wrote also on history, 140.

Pharnăces (see p. 255), a Stoic, speaker in the Dialogue on the Face in the Moon.

Pharsalia, 88.

Pheidolaüs, of Haliartus, 11, 12, 13, 19, 32, 35.

Pheneātae, 193.

Phenĕüs, a town in Arcadia, 193.

Pherecȳdēs, a learned man of Syros (fl. 544), 294.

Pherenīcus, 8, 10.

Philēbus, a late Dialogue of Plato, on Pleasure, 71.

Philīnus, a speaker in the Second Pythian Dialogue. Cp. Sympos. 1, 6; 4, 1; 5, 10; 8, 7.

Philip of Macedon (d. 336), 233.

Philip, son of Cassander, king of Macedon (d. 296), 198.

Philip V, 237-179, king of Macedon, 91, 92.

Philippus, historian (of Prusa?), a speaker in the Third Pythian Dialogue. Cp. Sympos. 7, 8.

Philippus, of Thebes, 43, 44, 48, 50.

Philochŏrus of Athens, antiquarian and writer on legend (d. 260), 100.

Philolaüs, an early Pythagorean, 22.

Philomēlus, 88.

Phlĕgyas, of Orchomenus, a mythical hero, slain for impiety, 185.

Phocis, Phocians, 88, 95, 96, 100, 185, 194.

Phoebĭdas, a Spartan general, who treacherously seized the Cadmeia in 382: 8.

Phoebus, ‘The Bright’, an appellation of Apollo, 67, 76, 107, 138.

Phoenissae, a play of Euripides, 107 n.

Phosphor, Phosphorus (the planet Venus), 154, 268, 273.

Phrygia, 126, 306.

Phrynē, 95.

Phyleus, 204.

Phyllĭdas, 10, 11, 28, 29, 32, 43, 48, 50.

Pillars of Hercules (on the Straits of Gibraltar), 305.

Pindar, the Theban lyric poet (518-438), 7, 72 n., 77, 87, 98, 102 n., 104, 105, 108 n., 123, 127, 131 n., 179, 194, 202, 226, 227, 265, 273, 282.

Pisa, a town in, or adjoining, Elis, 94.

Pittăcus (652-569), patriot, and sole-ruler (‘aesymnete’) of Mytilēnē, one of the Seven Wise Men, 61.

Planetiădes (see Didymus).

Plataea, a city of Boeotia on the Asopus, near the frontier of Attica, 124.

Plato, of Athens, 430-347, founder of the Academy, 13, 14, 63, 72, 104, 126, 129, 134, 137, 156, 181, 318, 319;

- Cratylus, 71, 130, 235;
- Laws, 186;
- Minos, 179;
- Phaedo, 165;
- Republic, 167, 187;
- Sophistes, 151;
- Symposium, 130;

- Timaeus, 69, 128, 139, 141, 149, 154, 155, 180, 226, 272, 279, 293, 295, 305.

Plato, of Thebes, 12.

Pleisthĕnes, son of Atreus and father of Agamemnon (but there are variations in the story), 188.

Pleistoănax, a king of Sparta (d. 408), 99.

Plutarch, introduced only into the Dialogues on the ‘E’ at Delphi (First Pythian Dialogue) and on the Delays in Divine Punishment, 232.

Pluto, 77.

Polycrătes, of Delphi, 111.

Polycrătes, of Samos, 224.

Polygnōtus, of Thasos, painter, chiefly of Homeric subjects at Athens and Delphi (fl. 450), 166.

Polymnis, of Thebes, father of Epaminondas and Capheisias, 13, 14, 19, 20, 22, 27.

Polystyle (e mute), the, 50.

Polyxĕna, 95.

Pompey the Great (d. 48), 185.

Porch, the, the Stoic School at Athens, 93.

Poseidon, 89, 146.

Poseidonius, of Apamea in Syria, a Stoic philosopher who taught Cicero, 278, 283, 316, 317.

Praxitĕles, the Athenian sculptor (fl. 364), 95.

Priam, 41, 230.

Procles, tyrant of Epidaurus and father-in-law of Periander, seventh century, 99.

Promētheus, son of the Titan Iapĕtus, 65.

Prōteus, a mythical king of Egypt (Herod. 2, 112), 13.

Protogĕnes, 205.

Prytaneum, the, 72.

Ptolemaeus (‘Ceraunus’, the Thunderbolt), king of Macedon (d. 280), 189.

Ptōüm, a mountain on the eastern side of the Copaïc lake, with a sanctuary of Apollo, 121, 124.

Punic, 91.

Pylaea, a suburb of Delphi, 110.

Pyrilampēs, a kinsman of Plato, 18.

Pythagoras, of Samos, sixth century, philosopher and traveller, 14, 16, 21, 27, 66, 123, 228 n., 231.

Pythia, the, 72, 86, 100, 101, 103, 106, 110, 121, 164, 165, 169, 170, 199.

Pythian, 59, 60, 64, 117, 122, 123, 185.

Python, the serpent slain by Apollo, 138.

Pythōnĕs (ventriloquists), 126.

Q.

Quintus, the friend to whom the Dialogue on the Delays in Divine Punishment is inscribed, also that on Love between Brothers, 175.

R.

Red Sea (Mare Erythraeum). Before Ptolemy, the term was used loosely to include the Persian Gulf, &c.: 117, 138, 305.

Rhea, 154.

Rhegium, a Greek town in South Italy, 140.

Rhetiste (cp. the Gullies), 19.

Rhodes, 95.

Rhodōpis (see Herodotus ii. 134-5), 94.

Rome, 91, 92, 135, 179, 184, 185.

S.

Samĭdas, 49.

Samos, an island in the Aegean, 192, 224.

Sappho, the great woman lyric poet, a Lesbian, of the seventh century, 87, 104.

Sardis, the capital of Lydia, 192.

Satilaeans, 194.

Scythians, 189, 234.

Scythīnus, of Teos, an iambic poet of unknown date, 96.

Seleucus, king of Syria, assassinated by Ptolemy Ceraunus in 280: 189.

Selīnus, a Greek colony on the S.W. coast of Sicily, 92.

Selymbria, a town of Thrace, on the Propontis, 187.

Semĕlē, the mother of Dionysus (Bacchus), 209.

Serapion, or Sarapion, an Athenian poet, to whom the First Pythian Dialogue is inscribed, and a speaker in the Second.

Serāpis, an Egyptian deity, 107.

Shining-One, the, a name for the planet Cronus (Saturn), 300.

Sibylla, the Sibyl, the name of an early prophetess of Delphi; in later times an official title, also applied to other prophetic women, localized in various countries, 87, 89, 90, 95, 104, 211.

Siceliot, of the Greek colonies in Sicily, 99.

Sicily, 18, 99, 140, 184.

Sicyon, on the south shore of the Corinthian gulf, 95, 184.

Simmias, a Theban, a companion of Socrates, and (with Cebes) present at his death (see the Crito and Phaedo of Plato), 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 27, 32, 41, 42, 43.

Simonĭdēs of Ceos, a lyric poet (556-467), 97, 190.

Sisyphus, a knavish king of Corinth; some accounts make him father of Odysseus: 185.

Skotios, ‘of darkness’, i. e. Hades (Pluto), 77.

Socrates, of Athens (d. 399), 7, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 32, 35, 40, 95, 104, 180, 288.

Soli, a city of Cilicia, 149, 205.

Solon, 638-558, the Athenian law-giver; one of the ‘Seven Wise Men’, 61, 179.

Solymi, a people of Lycia, 138.

Sophistés, a Dialogue of Plato’s later period, 71.

Sophists, the, 196.

Sophocles, 495-405, tragic poet of Athens, 78, 103 n., 106, 125, 132, 266, 290 n.

Sōphrōn (latter part of fifth century), a mime-writer of Syracuse, 63.

Sparta, 11, 29, 88, 91, 106, 194, 200.

Sparti, the, ‘sown men’, the armed men who sprang up out of the ground at Thebes, when Cadmus sowed the dragon’s teeth, 82.

Spinthărus, 40.

Sporădes, the, a group of islands, off Britain, 135.

Statuaries, street of the, 17.

Stesichŏrus (Tisias), 632-560, lyric poet of Himera in Sicily, 78, 188, 282.

Stheneboea, a play of Euripides, 104 n.

Stilbon (the planet Mercury), 154, 268.

Stoics, the, 136, 146, 147, 264, 266, 285.

Strabo, cognomen of the father of Pompey the Great, 185.

Stratonīcē, 95.

Styx, 37, 38, 97, 225.

Suitors, the, i.e. of Penelope, 140.

Sybaris, a Greek town of Lucania in South Italy, 193, 196.

Syēnē (Assouan), taken by Eratosthenes to be directly under the sun at the summer solstice, 119, 296.

Sylla, a speaker in the Dialogue on the Face in the Moon.

Symbŏlum, the, 16.

Syracuse, 88, 193, 197.

Syrian goddess (Cybele?), 233.

T.

Taenărus, a cape and town in the south of Laconia, 199.

Tantălus, 234, 293.

Taprobăne (Ceylon), 265.

Tarentum, a town in S. Italy, 40.

Tarsus, in Cilicia, 117, 160.

Tartărus, the penal region of the lower world, 40, 299.

Tegyra, a village of Boeotia, near Orchomenus, 121, 122, 124.

Teiresias, a blind prophet, of Thebes, 163, 226.

Teletias, 185.

Tempē, the gorge between Olympus and Ossa in Thessaly, through which the river Penēus flows, 132, 138.

Tenĕdos, an island off the coast of the Troad, 92.

Terentius Priscus, the friend to whom the Third Pythian Dialogue is inscribed, 117.

Terpander, of Lesbos, the father of Greek music (fl. 700), 194.

Terpsion, of Megara, a disciple of Socrates (see the Theaetetus of Plato), 18.

Tettix, 199, 200.

Thalēs, of Miletus (seventh and sixth centuries), an early philosopher, one of the Seven Wise Men, 12, 61, 98.

Thamus, 134, 135.

Thasos, an island in the Aegean off Thrace, 166.

Theānōr, a young Pythagorean, who came to Thebes from Crotona, as a deputation, 21, 24, 27, 28, 40, 43, 315.

Thebes, the Boeotian, 7, 8, 12, 22, 29, 30, 43, 44, 47, 48, 184.

Thebes, the Egyptian, 296.

Thĕmis, the goddess of Justice, for some time in charge of the oracle at Delphi, 138, 211.

Themistocles, Athenian statesman (514-449), 183.

Theocrĭtus, of Thebes, ‘the prophet’, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 20, 28, 30, 32, 35, 40, 43, 44, 49;

- see Life of Pelopidas, c. 22.

Theodōrus, of Soli, in Cilicia, a mathematician, 149, 150.

Theognis, of Megara, elegiac and gnomic poet (570-490), 84.

Theon, of Hyampolis, a family friend of Plutarch, a speaker in the First and Second Pythian Dialogues, and in the Face in the Moon. Cp. Sympos. 1, 4; 4, 3; 8, 6, and the Dialogue Non posse suaviter, where the Epicureans are attacked.

Theophrastus, born at Erĕsus, a philosopher of Athens, Aristotle’s successor, 136.

Theopompus, a Theban patriot, 43, 48.

Theopompus, of Chios, historian (d. 305), 100.

Theōrius, a designation of Apollo, 77.

Theoxenia, the, 194.

Thera, Therasia, islands off Crete, 91.

Thermopylae, the coast pass between Thessaly and Locris, famous for the defence of Leonidas in 480: 132.

Thespesius (Aridaeus), 205, 206, 209, 210, 211, 213, 313, 314.

Thespiae, a town of Boeotia, 29.

Thessaly, 23, 24, 93, 95, 130, 158.

Thrace, 126, 148, 193.

Thrasybūlus, of Athens, 7.

Thrasybūlus, tyrant of Syracuse after Hiero (467), 99.

Thrasymēdēs, 169.

Thucydides, the Athenian historian (d. 401), 98, 158 n., 176, 181, 196.

Thunderbolt (Ceraunus), Ptolemy, king of Macedon (d. 280), 189.

Thymĕlē, the altar of Dionysus in the theatre, 103.

Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar, B. C. 42-37 A. D. (Emperor from A. D. 14), 135.

Timarchus, of Athens, 99.

Timarchus, of Chaeroneia, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 172, 314.

Timochăris, 98.

Timoleon, ruler of Syracuse (d. 357), 184: see his Life.

Timon, Plutarch’s brother, a speaker in the Dialogues on the Delays in Divine Punishment and on the Soul. Cp. Sympos. 1, 2, and 2, 5; and On Love between Brothers, c. 16.

Timotheüs, an Athenian, 7.

Timotheüs, of Miletus, musician and poet (446-357), 232.

Tiribazus, satrap of western Armenia (d. 385), 229.

Titans, giant sons of Uranus, 138, 272, 301.

Tityus, a giant of Euboea, 307.

Trench, battle at, 176.

Troglodytes, cave-dwellers, about the Red Sea, &c., 117, 293, 296.

Trophoniădes, 306.

Trophonius, tutelary hero of Lebadeia and its oracle, 35, 40, 315.

Trosobius, 138.

Troy, 91, 102, 148.

Trunkmakers’ street, 17.

Tyndarĭdae, Castor and Polydeucēs (Pollux), 147.

Typhons, 138, 235, 307.

U.

Udōra, 306.

Ulysses (Odysseus), 16, 140, 185, 193, 217.

Urănus (‘Heaven’), the father of Cronus, 138.

V.

Venus (the planet), 154, 268.

Vespasian, 211 n.

Vesuvius, 211.

W.

Wise Men of Greece, the (see the Dinner-Party of the Seven Sages by Plutarch, translated by Professor Tucker in this series), 6, 110.

X.

Xenocrătes, of Chalcēdon, 396-314, a philosopher, associate of Plato, 129, 134, 305, 315, 316.

Xenophănēs, philosopher of Colophon, fourth century, 235.

Xenophon, Athenian general and historian (d. about 359), 103.

Xerxes, 235.

Z.

Zagreus, a name of the mystic Dionysus, 67.

Zēnĕs (plural of Zeus), 146.

Zeus, 96, 127, 139, 147, 148, 167, 179, 200, 226, 230, 272, 273, 297, 299, 301.

Zeus Agoraios, 35.

Zodiac, the, 293.

Zones, the, 154.

Zoroaster, Persian sage, of uncertain date, 126.

Printed in England at the Oxford University Press

Footnotes

1.  ‘Tout abregé sur un bon livre est un sot abregé.’—Montaigne, iii. 8.

2.  Xylander reads οὐδέν, but οὐ before πολλά seems simpler, and makes better logic.

3.  See, e. g., p. 266.

4.  On this point, and on Plutarch’s life generally, see the buoyant and chivalrous pages of the late Mr. George Wyndham’s introduction to North’s Lives in the Tudor Translations.

5.  See pp. 54, 253. I have searched such numbers of the Dissertations as appear to have reached this country from Vienna since 1910, without coming upon the continuation of Dr. Adler’s argument. It will be of great interest when it comes to hand, but could not adequately be discussed here.

6.  ‘Où je puyse comme les Danaïdes, remplissant et versant sans cesse.’—i. 25.

7.  The Symposiacs were specially favourite reading of Archbishop Trench, whose bright little volume of Lectures is perhaps the best introduction for English readers to the Moralia.

8.  The same argument might perhaps be applied to the Lives, even as far as that of Dion, but there is no elaborate dedication there.

9.  Dr. Mahaffy has acutely pointed out that the tract De Tranquillitate animi must have been written before the accession of Titus in A. D. 79, because it contains a remark (467 E) that no Roman Emperor had yet been succeeded by his son. It is this sort of evidence of a date which we seek, but do not find, in the Symposiacs.

10.  Some of Plutarch’s characters exemplify the ‘sternness of the judgements of youth’, as the younger Diogenianus.—See p. 94.

11.  See Vol. I, p. 25.

12.  See his Preface in Vol. I, p. xlii.

13.  M. Chenevière’s study mentioned on p. 53 is very helpful but not easily accessible.

14.  See p. 14; see also Apollonius of Perga, by Sir Thomas Heath, F.R.S., Introd., p. xxi.

15.  ‘Forte’ is always used where we expect ‘fortasse’, and ‘nisi’ often for ‘si non’.

16.  Adrien Turnĕbus (i. q. Toranebus?) was a native of Les Andelys (Eure), near Rouen, and the name is said to be of local origin. Montaigne, who knew him personally, always writes Turnebus; the later form Turnèbe seems to be due to false analogy.

17.  I may now name Mr. Walter Sumner Gibson, M.A. of Balliol College, formerly an assistant-master at Charterhouse, who died on the 20th January, 1918, having in recent years acted as a Reader to the Clarendon Press.

18.  ii. 4.

19.  1514-93.

20.  See, however, an article by Mr. R. F. Macnaghten in the Classical Review of September 1914 (vol. 28, p. 185 foll.).

21.  Isthm. 1, 2.

22.  So C. F. Hermann (ap. Ed. Teub.) for δυσί τῶν ἱερῶν.

23.  Here several words of the text have been lost.

24.  Many words have been lost (three separate lacunae).

25.  Reading διεκώλυεν for διακούων.

26.  Supplying προσδοκῶν, as Ed. Teub.

27.  Many words are here lost, to the general effect of those in the brackets.

28.  i. e. each of the four sides of each of the six faces. The Greek word for ‘side’ and ‘face’ is the same.

29.  This problem (mentioned by Plutarch also in the E at Delphi, see p. 63) was in fact solved by Menaechmus, a pupil of Eudoxus, through Conic Sections, and also by Archytas, whose method is much more elaborate. See Preface, p. xiv.

30.  Il. 10, 279; Od. 13, 300-1.

31.  Il. 20, 95.

32.  συμπιέσας for the MSS. reading συμπείσας (Reiske).

33.  πταρμὸς ἤ (Ed. Teub.), for ἐφαρμόσει, is attractive, but it seems better not to anticipate the word.

34.  ἐπὶ ῥειτοῖς is K. O. Müller’s reading for ἐπὶ ρητις της of the MSS. See Wordsworth’s Athens and Attica, p. 9.

35.  Fr. 284 (the well-known fragment of the Autolycus about Athletes) l. 22.

36.  Cp. Od. 1, 170, &c.

37.  Od. 1, 27.

38.  See Life of Nicias, c. 3.

39.  Aeschylus, Prometheus, 545.

40.  Cp. Bacchylides, Fr. 37 (Life of Numa, c. 4): ‘Broad is the road’, i. e. ‘there is room for divergent opinions.’

41.  Compare Life of Coriolanus, c. 32, p. 229, with this difficult passage.

42.  Of the participle so translated only the termination remains. Reiske’s μεταλλευόντων well completes this fine image.

43.  This word is not in the Greek text.

44.  See note on the Myths of Plutarch, p. 315.

45.  Lucian (Musc. Encom. c. 7) tells the same story of Hermodorus. Plutarch has probably made a slip, as elsewhere, in names. See p. 99.

46.  Il. 7, 44-5.

47.  l. 53.

48.  i. e. in the Wooden Horse, Od. 11, 526-32.

49.  Perhaps rather ‘the Laconizing party’, as the Teubner editor suggests.

50.  8,000 feet above the sea. The Phaedriades rose to about 800 feet.

51.  Fr. 960.

52.  i.e. at draughts, with a play on words.

53.  Fr. 71.

54.  Il. 17, 29.

55.  See p. 14.

56.  Il. 1, 70.

57.  So Emperius, whose reading is that of the Paris MS. E. (See Paton in loco.)

58.  Fr. 22.

59.  A reference to the complaint with which the first attempts of Aeschylus and others to give literary form to the popular hymns in honour of Dionysus were greeted.

60.  i.e. ‘not many’.

61.  See p. 76.

62.  Fr. 392.

63.  Terms used by Heraclitus (Fr. 24), adapted by the Stoics for the periodic conflagration and renewal of the universe.

64.  Timaeus, 31 A and 55 E foll.

65.  De Caelo, 1, 8-9, 276 a 18.

66.  Il. 15, 190.

67.  See Iph. Aul. 865 and Herc. Fur. 1221.

68.  P. 409 A.

69.  Pp. 255-6.

70.  P. 23 D and p. 66 C.

71.  Cp. Pindar’s:

All vocal to the hearing of the wise,

All voiceless to the herd.—Ol. 2, 152-3.

72.  From Simonides, a favourite phrase with Plutarch.

73.  Fr. 41.

74.  Fr. 25.

75.  See on this remarkable passage E. Norden, Agnostos Theos, p. 231 f., and the view of H. Diels, communicated to him. I have followed Norden in reading εἶ, ἤ (he suggests with hesitation προσεπιθειάζειν) (and so Paton and Diels). Diels thinks that οἱ παλαιοί may cover later philosophers such as Xenophanes.

76.  Il. 4, 141.

77.  Il. 15, 362.

78.  Pindar (probably from a Threnos).

79.  Il. 9, 158.

80.  Fr. 149.

81.  Suppl. 975.

82.  Fr. 50.

83.  Fr. 728, probably from the Thamyras.

84.  Again quoted by Plutarch, p. 777 C.

85.  Od. 7, 107.

86.  Fr. 7.

87.  In a lost ‘Hymn’, Fr. 32.

88.  See H. Richards in Classical Review, vol. 29, p. 233.

89.  Reading Ἑλλήνων as Ed. Teub. fr. Stegmann.

90.  Rhet. 3, 11.

91.  Puteoli.

92.  πετρῶν καταφλεγομένων (J. H. W. Strijd in Class. Rev. vol. 28, p. 218).

93.  Quoted by Menander, Fr. 243 (Meineke).

94.  Quoted also in the Life of Agesilaus, c. 3, p. 597.

95.  Palaea Kaumene, a volcanic island ejected in 196 B. C. See Tozer’s Islands of the Aegean, p. 97 foll.

96.  Od. 3, 1.

97.  Tim. 90.

98.  See p. 283.

99.  Xen. Sympos. c. 2.

100.  Reading χώρας for δωρεᾶς with Emperius (ap. Ed. Teub.).

101.  See Herod. 1, 51.

102.  Fr. 44.

103.  Here the text is defective.

104.  Here the text is defective.

105.  I, 118.

106.  MSS. have ‘Pausanias’.

107.  These words are supplied from the text of Thucydides, 5, 10.

108.  The word ἀναγκαῖον is suggested by the Teubner Editor.

109.  Fr. 11.

110.  Od. 2, 372.

111.  Il. 2, 169 foll.

112.  Il. 4, 86 foll.

113.  Il. 5, beg.

114.  The MSS. have ‘Pandarus’, but ‘Pindar’ is a likely correction. Yet Plutarch cannot have supposed Pindar to have written this iambic line. It is quoted by Aristophanes, Peace, 699, in connexion with the stinginess of Sophocles or Simonides, and the scholiast quotes from Pindar a censure of that vice in a poet: so some confusion is possible.

115.  Oeconom. 7, 4 foll.

116.  In the Stheneboea.

117.  Isthm. 2, 3.

118.  Fr. 16 (Nauck).

119.  Isthm. 1, 69.

120.  Fr. 707.

121.  So Cobet (for Cinesons).

122.  Phoen. 958.

123.  See Herod. 4, 155 foll. and Pind. Pyth. 4. There is something amiss with Plutarch’s text here.

124.  See his Life, c. 29.

125.  Od. 2, 190.

126.  See additional note on p. 312.

127.  Fragm. adespota, 90.

128.  Whose account is, for convenience, somewhat recast and amplified. The fact is understated. ‘There cannot be more than five solids, each of which has all its faces with the same number of sides, and all its solid angles formed with the same number of plane angles.’ Todhunter, Spherical Trigonometry, c. 151.

129.  Il. 10, 173, and Leaf’s note.

130.  Od. 3, 367-8.

131.  Il. 10, 394. See p. 265.

132.  Herodotus, 8, 133-5. I have followed W.’s reconstruction.

133.  See Life of Aristides, c. 19.

134.  W. and D. 199.

135.  See p. 231.

136.  Fr. 149: see above, p. 77.

137.  Herod. 9, 28 (and see ib. c. 21).

138.  Fr. 729. Cp. O. C. 607.

139.  The words ‘and here—heroes’ have been supplied from a quotation in Eusebius, Praep. Evan. 5, 4.

140.  From a fragment, Gaisford, Poetae Minores, ii, p. 489 (cp. Ausonius, Id. 18; and Sir T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, 3, 9).

141.  Fr. 165.

142.  As Ausonius, loc. cit.

143.  Fr. 87.

144.  1 + 2 × 1 + 3 × 1 + 2^2 + 3^2 + 2^3 + 3^3 = 54.

145.  See Timaeus, 35.

146.  Il. 20, 8-9.

147.  See Heraclitus, Fr. 34.

148.  Inserting, with Mezirius, ἢ δεκάκις before τεσσάρων.

149.  The meaning is simply that 40 × 3^5 = 9720, and ‘triangle-wise’ seems irrelevant.

150.  Fr. 961 (from the Phaethon).

151.  Sympos. 202 F.

152.  W. and D. 125. Cp. Plato, Crat. 397.

153.  2, 171.

154.  Pindar, Fr. 208 (cp. Sympos. 7, 5, 4).

155.  Suppl. 214.

156.  Fr. 730.

157.  See additional note, p. 312.

158.  Cp. Life of Timoleon, c. 1.

159.  Cp. Herod. 2, 145.

160.  See p. 54.

161.  Reading οὐ πολλά (‘nihil secum trahit impossibile’. Xylander). See Preface, p. vi.

162.  Timaeus, 55.

163.  As Aristotle, De Caelo, I, 8, 276 a 18.

164.  Od. 21, 397.

165.  Il. 15, 189.

166.  Tim. 31 A, 55 C.

167.  Reading, with Madvig (partly anticipated by Emperius) ... ὃ μὴ κοινῶς ποιὸν ἢ ἰδίως ἐστίν· ὁ δὲ κόσμος οὐ λέγεται κοινῶς εἶναι ποιός· ἰδίως τοίνυν ...

168.  See e. g. De Caelo, 1, 6, 275 b 29, and Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, p. 397 note; see also p. 270 foll.

169.  Inserting κάτω, with Meziriac.

170.  Il. 13, 1 foll.

171.  See p. 115.

172.  Tim. 55 E, foll.

173.  There is a play on the words for ‘fire’, ‘Pyramid’.

174.  Soph. 249 B.

175.  Is. et Osir. c. 12.

176.  De Caelo, 2, 4, 286 b 10.

177.  Tim. 55 C.

178.  Tim. 57 C.

179.  Tim. 52 E.

180.  Fr. 925.

181.  See p. 70.

182.  W. and D. 124.

183.  W. and D. 122.

184.  μᾶλλον δὲ ὄντα. Cp. Plato, Philebus, 33, διὰ μνήμης πᾶν ἔστι τὸ γεγονός.

185.  See Thuc. 1, 12.

186.  Fr. 963.

187.  Bacchae, 297-8.

188.  Fr. 75.

189.  The text is corrupt, but probably contained ὁμίχλην. Cp. Plato, Sympos. 736 A.

190.  Theogon. 117.

191.  Fr. 371.

192.  Meteor. 1, 3, 340 b 29.

193.  Cyclops, I. 332-3 (Shelley’s tr.).

194.  Phaedo, 97 C.

195.  1, 25, where the work is ascribed to Glaucus.

196.  Od. 9, 393.

197.  Rep. 6, 18, 507 C.

198.  Cp. Plato, Laws, 716 E.

199.  See p. 313.

200.  On the proverb ‘Post Lesbium Cantorem’.

201.  i. e. in the battle of Amphipolis. See Thuc. 5, 10 and Plut. Life of Nicias, c. 9.

202.  Orestes, 420.

203.  3, 38.

204.  See Pausanias, 4, 17.

205.  Fr. 969.

206.  The author of this famous line is unknown.

207.  Fr. 57.

208.  Minos, 319 C.

209.  No specific passage can be identified with the words in the text. For the sequel cp. Timaeus, 30 A.

210.  Cp. Rep. 6, 508 A.

211.  See p. 181 n. 1.

212.  This line is a continuation of the quotation from Melanthius above.

213.  Cp. Aesch. Cho. 313, &c.

214.  Quoted several times as from Pindar (see Fr. 77), but perhaps rather Simonides.

215.  Il. 15, 641.

216.  Cp. Aristot. Poet. c. 9.

217.  W. and D. 266, 265.

218.  Laws, 5, 728 C.

219.  i.e. under Roman law. See Smith’s Dict. Ant., s.v. Crux.

220.  Rep. 406 B.

221.  See H. Richards in Class. Rev. vol. 29, p. 235, and, for the quotation, the Life of Lucullus, c. 1.

222.  Fr. 42, and see Jebb’s Introd. to the Electra of Sophocles.

223.  See Life of Aristides, c. 6. also Dion Chrys. Orat. 64.

224.  See Life of Cimon, c. 6.

225.  Again quoted, De Curiosit. 520 A.

226.  Eur. Ino, Fr. 403.

227.  Fr. 970.

228.  See Herod. 2, 134.

229.  i. e. Polyphemus. See Od. 9, 375 foll.

230.  See Herod. 66, 74, and Pausan. 4, 252, and 8, 18.

231.  From an unknown poet; Euphorion and Arctinus are suggested.

232.  Fr. 123.

233.  Hence a proverb applied to what was second-rate.

234.  Arist. H. A. 9, 3, 610 b 29.

235.  See Thuc. 2, 48; also Plague and Pestilence in Literature and Art, by Raymond Crawfurd, M.D., chap. 2 and Appendix.

236.  Cp. Plato, Laws, 4, 715 A.

237.  Fr. 41.

238.  Il. 6, 146.

239.  Fr. 211.

240.  W. and D. 735-6.

241.  Eur. Fr. 970.

242.  I have transposed the verbs as suggested in Wyttenbach’s Commentary.

243.  Cp. Dante, Purg. 3, 19 foll. The idea is Pythagorean (see Quaest. Graec. 40, p. 300).

244.  Cp. Plato, Gorg. 524 D.

245.  See H. Richards in Class. Rev., vol. 29, p. 236.

246.  Cp. p. 215, n. 1.

247.  Cp. p. 89.

248.  Probably a Sibylline verse. See Suetonius, Life of Vespasian.

249.  Reading ἅτε δή with C. F. Hermann.

250.  Cp. Aristot. Hist. Anim. 2, 14, 505 b 13, and 10, 37, 621 a 6.

251.  Where it is ascribed to Themistius. It was reclaimed for Plutarch by Wyttenbach in the Preface to his edition of the De Sera Numinum Vindicta—Leiden 1772.

252.  In the Dialogue (Ne suaviter quidem, c. 26) in which the Epicureans are attacked, the ‘hope of eternal existence’ or ‘desire to be’, is spoken of as the ‘oldest and greatest of loves’.

253.  θάνατος—ἀναθεῖν εἰς θεόν.

254.  γένεσις—γῆ, νεῦσις. Cp. p. 210, l. 6.

255.  γενέθλιον—γένεσις ἄθλων.

256.  Reading ἂν δὲ ἔρῃ, καὶ σώματος for ἂν δὲ ἔρημαι σώματος. See the Lex.-Plat. s.v. ἔρομαι.

257.  e.g. Od. 1, 423.

258.  τελευτᾶν—τελεῖσθαι.

259.  Od. 12, 432 foll.

260.  W. and D. 42.

261.  Fr. 122.

262.  Polybius (6, 56) points to ‘Deisidaimonia’ as the force which has held the Roman Commonwealth together, and kept the Romans honest.

263.  See Nauck, p. 910 (Hercules speaks).

264.  δεῖμα—δέω: τάρβος—ταράσσω.

265.  Cf. Aristot. Eth. Nic. 3, 7.

266.  Eur. Or. 211-12.

267.  Nauck, p. 910, Fragm. 375 (probably from Aeschylus).

268.  Eur. Tro. 759.

269.  Meineke 4, p. 670.

270.  Fr. 95.

271.  Nauck, Fragm. adespota, 376.

272.  Dem. de Cor., s. 97.

273.  A difficult passage. I follow W.’s suggested restoration.

274.  Tim. 47 C, &c.

275.  Pyth. 1, 25.

276.  Or perhaps ‘that which knows no wrath’.

277.  Fr. 143, quoted twice elsewhere by Plutarch.

278.  Pythag. Carm. Aur. 42.

279.  See Life of T. Q. Flamin. c. 20.

280.  Life of Nicias, c. 23. Thuc. 7, 50, 86.

281.  i.e. as the moon plunges into the shadow of the earth. See p. 269.

282.  Archilochus, Fr. 54, Bergk.

283.  Nauck, Fragm. adespota, 377.

284.  W. and D. 465 foll.

285.  Il. 7, 193 foll.

286.  Il. 2, 382, 414.

287.  1 Maccab. 2, 32 foll.

288.  Soph. O. T. 4.

289.  See p. 123.

290.  In the main from Wyttenbach’s reconstruction of this desperate passage.

291.  Il. 24, 604.

292.  Il. 24, 212.

293.  Cp. Menander, Fragm. of Demiurgus, Meineke 4, p. 102.

294.  Soph. Ant. 291.

295.  Il. 22, 20.

296.  Plat. Tim. 40 E.

297.  See Strabo, 4, c. 4.

298.  Cp. p. 183.

299.  Herod. 7, 114.

300.  Crat. 403 A, 404 B.

301.  Cp. Arist. Rhet. 2, 23, 27, 1400 b 5, where the Eleatae are named.

302.  In c. 22 Apollonides is made to state the angular diameter of the moon at 12 ‘fingers’, i. e. one degree.

303.  See Note (1), p. 309.

304.  See Note (2), p. 309.

305.  Arist. Probl. 12, 3.

306.  See Note (3), p. 309.

307.  See Aristarchus, Magnitudes and Distances, Hypothesis 2.

308.  See the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, 99-100, where the moon is the daughter of Pallas (‘the Pallantean orb sublime’, Shelley), cp. p. 294.

309.  As Homer, Od. 23, 330; 24, 539; Hesiod, Theog. 515.

310.  e. g. Il. 10, 394. Cp. Heraclides Ponticus, 15.

311.  P. V. 349.

312.  Fr. 88.

313.  W. reads μένειν (E has κινεῖν), but renders by ‘cieri’.

314.  Fr. 733.

315.  See note (4), p. 310.

316.  Professor Henry Jackson has pointed out that the words form a hexameter line. For the Greek word see p. 291. Its introduction here is due to M. Bernardakis.

317.  Reading τῇ γῇ, with Madvig.

318.  See note (5), p. 310.

319.  αἰρομένη MSS.

320.  Prop. 7.

321.  See note (6), p. 310.

322.  Cf. Il. 9, 63.

323.  Reading ὅλως (Emperius, ap. Ed. Teub.), for ὅμως.

324.  See additional note, p. 312.

325.  See e. g. Tim. 32 C.

326.  Theog. 120, 195.

327.  Pindar, Fr. 57: see p. 179.

328.  Reading ἕξει, with Emperius.

329.  See note (7), p. 310.

330.  Reading ᾀἱδίου, with Emperius.

331.  Ion Chius, Fr. 57 (Nauck).

332.  Reading διίησιν, with Madvig.

333.  I have followed the paraphrase of the Greek words suggested by Wyttenbach. For the physical facts see Ganot’s Physics, 516.

334.  Timaeus, 46 A-C (Plato does not discuss plane folding mirrors).

335.  Reading χωρεῖν for χωροῦντες.

336.  Kepler has supplied such a diagram (in his translation, p. 131).

337.  See p. 253.

338.  Pindar, Fr. 107. Paean 9 (see Oxy. Pap. 1908, 841).

339.  Od. 20, 352 and 357; 14, 162; 19, 307.

340.  Reading τὸ ἕν for τόν.

341.  Prop. 17.

342.  De Caelo, 2, 13, 293 b 20.

343.  See note (8), p. 310.

344.  See note (9), p. 310.

345.  Reading ἡ δὲ τῆς Σελήνης with Mr. W. R. Paton, see Class. Rev. vol. 26, p. 269.

346.  Strictly speaking, both cases are of ‘overtaking’, but the results follow as stated.

347.  Il. 9, 212.

348.  See Plato, Phaedo, 110 B-C.

349.  Od. 311.

350.  Soph. (Lemnians), Fr. 348.

351.  τραπέμπαλιν is due here to Meineke, ap. Ed. Teub., see p. 267.

352.  Tim. 40 B.

353.  See note (10), p. 311.

354.  Aesch. Suppl. 937.

355.  See p. 262 and note.

356.  See n. (11), p. 311.

357.  Il. 14, 246. The second line appears to have been added by Crates and is not in our texts.

358.  Tim. 40 C.

359.  Kepler would read ‘twelve’.

360.  Fr. 48.

361.  W. and D. 41.

362.  Il. 20, 64.

363.  Il. 8, 16.

364.  Od. 7, 244.

365.  See n. (13), p. 311.

366.  Reading ἐπειδὰν παύσῃ, with Madvig.

367.  See n. (14), p. 312.

368.  Od. 9, 563.

369.  i. e. the words τελεῖν, τελευτᾶν are allied, see p. 215.

370.  Plato, Tim. 31 B and end.

371.  Fr. 38.

372.  Tim. 31 B.

373.  Od. 11, 222.

374.  Od. 11, 600.

375.  From a note made in 1910, which cannot at present (1916) be verified.

- Transcriber’s Notes:

- Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.

- Typographical errors were silently corrected.

- Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.

- Footnotes have been collected at the end of the text, and are linked for ease of reference.

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Table of Contents

- Selected Essays of Plutarch
- PREFACE
- CONTENTS

- ON THE GENIUS OF SOCRATES

- INTRODUCTION
- A DIALOGUE HELD AT ATHENS
- SPEAKERS

- THREE PYTHIAN DIALOGUES

- INTRODUCTION

- I ON THE ‘E’ AT DELPHI

- ON THE ‘E’ AT DELPHI

- II WHY THE PYTHIA DOES NOT NOW GIVE ORACLES IN VERSE

- A. Introductory

- B. Philinus narrates a Conversation between

- WHY THE PYTHIA DOES NOT NOW GIVE ORACLES IN VERSE

- III ON THE CESSATION OF THE ORACLES

- ON THE CESSATION OF THE ORACLES

- ON THE INSTANCES OF DELAY IN DIVINE PUNISHMENT

- INTRODUCTION

- ON THE INSTANCES OF DELAY IN DIVINE PUNISHMENT

- FROM THE DIALOGUE ‘ON THE SOUL’ A FRAGMENT

- ON SUPERSTITION

- INTRODUCTION
- ON SUPERSTITION
- APPENDIX A SHORT DISCOURSE OF SUPERSTITION
- Of Superstition

- ON THE FACE WHICH APPEARS ON THE ORB OF THE MOON A DIALOGUE

- INTRODUCTION
- PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE
- ANALYSIS

- OF THE FACE WHICH APPEARS ON THE ORB OF THE MOON

- NOTES

- Supplemental Notes 1918

- NOTE ON THE MYTHS IN PLUTARCH

- NOTE ON THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS AND THE FIVE REGULAR SOLIDS

- INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES MENTIONED BY PLUTARCH IN THESE DIALOGUES

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE