Chapter III: Part 3

Among these he said that he saw the soul of a kinsman of his, yet at first was not sure of his identity, as he himself was but a boy when this man died; but the soul, drawing near him, said, “Hail, Thespesius.” When he marvelled at this, and replied that his name was not Thespesius, but Aridaeus, the soul said, “It was Aridaeus, but from henceforth it is Thespesius;[62:1] for you are not yet dead; but by a certain allotment of the gods you come hither with your perceptive faculties, while you have left the rest of your soul, like an anchor, in your body. Let it be a token of this to you, both now and hereafter, that the souls of the dead neither cast a shadow nor wink.”[63:1]

Thespesius on hearing this became more self-collected in mind, and, taking a closer look, he saw that there moved along with him a certain dim and shadowy line, while those about him were surrounded with light, and transparent within. However, they were not all equally so. Some, indeed, like the clearest full moon, emitted continuously a uniform and unflickering light; but of the others, some had their bodies streaked with what looked like scales and flabby scourge-marks; some were very much discolored, and disgusting to the sight, like snakes branded all over with black spots; and others, still, had slight scars. The kinsman of Thespesius (for there is nothing to forbid one’s giving human titles to disembodied souls), explaining these appearances one by one, told him that Adrasteia, daughter of Necessity[63:2] and Zeus, holds the highest place of all, ordaining punishment for wrong-doings of every kind, and that of the guilty there was never either great or small that could escape her, whether by craft or by force. But a different mode of punishment is assigned to each of the three custodians and executive ministers that have the guilty in charge. The first of these, swift Poena,[64:1] takes in hand those who are punished at once while in the body and by means of their bodies, yet in a somewhat mild way, and passing over many things that need cleansing. Those the cure of whose guilt is a heavier task the Deity gives over after death to Dice.[64:2] But as for those whom she rejects as utterly incurable, Erinnys,[64:3] the third and sternest of Adrasteia’s subordinate ministers, chasing them as they wander and flee in different directions, removes them all from sight in misery and wretchedness, and plunges them into a destiny too horrible to be told or seen. Of the other chastisements, he compared that of Poena in the earthly life to certain modes of punishment practised by barbarians. For as among the Persians they strip off and beat the clothes and the turbans of those that are punished,[64:4] while the culprits beg with tears that the scourge may be laid aside,—so punishment by loss of wealth or by bodily suffering has not an intensely penetrating power, nor does it lay hold on the guilt in its own interior seat, but is inflicted generally for appearance’s sake, and to make an impression on the bodily senses.[65:1] But him who comes hither from these punishments uncorrected and uncleansed Dice takes in hand, open and naked as he is in soul, having nothing whereby to conceal or hide or cover his depravity, but beheld in every direction and by all and in his entire selfhood, and shows him first to his good parents, if good they are, as being despicable to his progenitors and unworthy of them. If they too are bad, he, seeing them punished, and being seen by them, is released only after having long expiated every one of his crimes by pains and sufferings which in magnitude and severity exceed those which come through the body alone, as much as reality is more substantial than a dream. But the scars and scourge-marks after punishment remain in some more conspicuous; in others, less so. “See,” said he, “those motley colors of every kind in the souls,—that dark and squalid dye, the pigment of meanness and avarice,—that blood-red and fiery hue, of cruelty and bitterness; where there is a bluish tint, intemperate indulgence in sensual pleasure has as yet hardly been rubbed off; while the malevolence that is united with envy discharges that violet-colored and ulcerous secretion, as the cuttle-fish emits his ink. For, as on the earth the wickedness of the soul controlled by the passions, while the soul controls the body, produces certain shades of complexion, so here such tints mark the last stage of the process of cleansing and correction, by which, the evil affections being altogether expelled, the soul becomes of clear complexion and of a uniform color. But so long as these evil affections remain in a man, certain revivals of the passions take place, accompanied by palpitation and excitement, in some souls slight and soon quenched, in others intensely strong. Of these last some, punished again and again, at length attain a suitable habit and disposition; but others by the force of ignorance and the fascination of sensual pleasure are carried back earthward into the bodies of beasts. For they are inclined to seek this new and lower birth by the predominance of the physical tendency, while reason is feeble, and their mental vision dull. Having in their spiritual state no longer the organs requisite for vicious indulgence, they still crave to satisfy their desires by sensual pleasure, and to give them full play by means of a body.[66:1] Here, indeed, there is nothing but a certain fruitless shadow and dream of sensual pleasure which has no realization.”

When the friend of Thespesius had thus spoken, he led him rapidly to a certain place that appeared immense, toward which he moved directly and easily, transported on light-beams as on wings,—until, coming to a large and deep cavern, he was deserted by the force that had borne him, and he saw other souls there in a like condition. Clustering together like birds, they flew round the chasm in a circle, but did not dare to cross it. Within, it resembled the caves of Bacchus,[67:1] like them diversified with boughs of trees, and living green, and flowers of every hue; and it exhaled a soft and mild breeze, wafting up odors of wonderful sweetness, and producing an effect similar to that which wine has on those who drink it freely. The souls filled with these sweet perfumes were dissolved in mirth, and kept embracing one another, and jollity and laughter, and every Muse of sport and gladness, had possession of the place all around. The spirit said that by this opening Dionysus[67:2] went up to the gods, and afterward led Semele up by the same way, and that the place is called Lethe.[68:1] He did not suffer Thespesius to remain there, though he wanted to stay, but took him away by force, teaching him at the same time, and telling him how the mind is melted and soaked by sensual pleasure, while the unreasoning and body-like part of the soul, being thus nourished and made fleshly, calls up the remembrance of the body, and from that remembrance wakes a desire and longing that draw it toward another birth, or genesis,[68:2] which is so called as being an inclination toward the earth in the soul that is thus weighed down and water-logged. Then, passing in another direction by as long a route as that previously traversed, Thespesius seemed to see from afar a vast basin, and rivers pouring into it, one whiter than the sea-foam or snow, another purple like that which Iris paints on the rainbow, others still with various tints, which, as beheld from a distance, had each its own peculiar lustre. But when he drew near, the circumambient air being more rarefied and the colors fading, the basin lost all of its surpassing beauty except its whiteness. He then saw three daemons sitting together in a triangle, mixing the rivers with one another in certain proportions.

The spirit-guide of Thespesius told him, that Orpheus advanced thus far when he was seeking his wife’s soul, and, failing in memory, carried back to men a false report that there was in Delphi an oracle that was the common property of Apollo and Night, while in fact Night has nothing in common with Apollo. “But the oracle here,” said the spirit, “is common to Night and the Moon, having no earthly limits, but wandering everywhere among men in visions and spectres. From this are dispersed dreams, mingled, as you see, blending the simple and the true with the false and the grotesque. But you do not see,” said he, “the oracle of Apollo, nor can you see it; for the earthly part of your soul cannot release or loose itself for an upward flight, but tends downward as not yet wholly undetached from the body.” At the same time, his guide, leading him on, attempted to show him the tripod, shining upon Parnassus through the bosom of Themis;[69:1] yet, though he wanted to see it, he could get no distinct view of it because of its intense brilliancy. But, in passing, he heard the shrill voice of a woman, uttering in rhythm among other things what sounded to him like the prediction of the time of his own death. The spirit said that it was the voice of a Sibyl,[69:2] who, borne round on the face of the moon, sang of things to come. Then he, while he wished to hear more, was forcibly driven, as on successive eddies, in a direction opposite to that in which the moon was rushing on her course. But among the predictions which he caught in passing was one about Vesuvius,[70:1] and about the destruction of Dicaearchia[70:2] by fire, and also a scrap of verse about the then reigning Emperor,[70:3]—

“Good though he be, disease shall soon dethrone him.”

After this, they turned to the inspection of those undergoing punishment, and indeed from the very outset they had only mournful and pitiable spectacles. Thespesius, without expecting it, happened among friends and kinsmen and associates under punishment, who in horrible suffering, and under penalties equally shameful and painful, addressed to him their lamentations and wailings.

At length his eyes fell on his own father, coming up from an abyss, covered with scars and scourge-marks, stretching out his hands to him, and not permitted to keep silence, but forced by those presiding over his punishment to confess his blood-guiltiness in the case of certain guests of his who had money, and whom he had killed by poison. There, on earth, he had concealed the deed from all; but being here convicted, he was now enduring such sufferings as his son saw, and they were leading him where he would suffer still more. From amazement and dread, Thespesius dared not offer supplication or intercession for his father; and desiring to return and flee, he no longer saw his gentle and familiar guide. But, forced forward by certain fearful-looking beings, as if it were necessary for him to advance, he saw that the shades of those who had been openly wicked or who had been punished in this world were not so severely dealt with as others, nor in the same way, having been made aimlessly and slavishly vicious by the unreasoning and passion-driven element of the soul; while as for such as had lived all their days in secret vice, disguised under the pretence and reputation of virtue, others standing round them, as ministers of justice, compelled them with toil and pain to make the soul’s interior outermost, which they did, wriggling and twisting themselves in unnatural ways, as the sea-polyps, when they have swallowed the hook, turn themselves inside out. Some of them the tormentors flayed, and then laid them open, showing them inwardly ulcerated and scarred with the depravity in their minds and in the governing principles of their lives. Thespesius said that he saw other souls interwreathed like vipers, two, three, or more together, and devouring one another from remembered enmity and ill will for what they had suffered or done in life.

There were also lakes lying side by side, one of boiling gold, one of lead intensely cold, another of rough iron; and certain daemons, like metal-workers, with their instruments took up and thrust in the souls of those who had been guilty through greed and cupidity. When in the gold they had become fiery and transparent by burning, these daemons plunged them into the lake of lead; and when they had there become frozen like hail, they were transferred to the lake of iron. There they were made horribly black, and were so fractured and bruised by the hardness of the iron, as to look like different beings; and then in this deformed condition they were carried again to the lake of gold, enduring intense torment in these successive transportations. But those suffered most horribly of all who thought that they had been at length released from the hands of justice, yet who were again apprehended for fresh punishment. These were they the punishment of whose guilt passed on to some of their children or descendants. When one of these comes and meets them, he falls upon them with anger, and cries out against them, showing the tokens of his sufferings, reviling and pursuing the souls that long to escape and hide, yet are unable so to do; for the ministers of justice run after them to subject them to fresh chastisement, and push them on, while they from the beginning lament bitterly, well knowing the punishment that awaits them. He said too that some, indeed many, of the souls of the descendants of bad men clustered together, sustained in this posture like bees or bats, and venting in shrieks their indignation at the remembrance of what they had suffered on account of their parents or ancestors.

Last of all, he saw the souls destined to a second birth, by main force, bent and transformed into all sorts of beasts by artificers who fashioned them by appropriate tools and by blows as upon an anvil, compressing all their parts, reversing some, planing down some, and utterly destroying some, so as to fit them for habits and modes of life other than human. Among these appeared the soul of Nero, having already endured other torments, and now pierced with red-hot nails. The artificers had taken this soul in hand, and given it the form of Pindar’s viper,[73:1] a form in which the creature after being conceived eats its way to life through its mother’s bowels; when, as Thespesius said, a light suddenly shone forth, and from the light came a voice commanding that he should be transformed into another more gentle brute,—one of those croaking creatures that burrow about swamps and ponds;[73:2] for though he had been punished for his wrong-doings, yet something of mercy was due to him from the gods, because he had emancipated the Greeks,[74:1] of all his subjects the best race and dearest to the gods.

Thus far Thespesius saw; but when he was about to return to the earth, he was in utter desperation through terror. For a certain woman, of marvellous form and stature, laying hold of him, said, “Come hither, that you may remember these things the better,” and she was about to strike him with a red-hot wand such as the encaustic painters use, when another woman prevented her. Then he, as if suddenly forced through a tube by an intensely strong and powerful wind, alighted on his own body, and awoke hard by his own tomb.

FOOTNOTES:

[1:1] A name probably chosen for this retreating collocutor because the dialogue is anti-Epicurean in its dogmas and its spirit, and the supposed arguments to be refuted were therefore such as an Epicurean would have urged. Epicurus denied the Divine Providence, and maintained that the gods did not concern themselves with human affairs.

[1:2] Some commentators suppose this to be the second part of a dialogue, of which the first part is lost. But it is more probable that the reader is, for dramatic effect, introduced into the midst of a prepared scene. This was not an uncommon device in the philosophical dialogues that have come down to us from early time. Plato, Cicero, and Lucian furnish instances of it, and two other of Plutarch’s dialogues begin in a similar way. _Cinius_ is a name that occurs nowhere else. A purely conjectural emendation of a single letter would give us the better known name, _Quintus_. The scene of this dialogue is the temple of Apollo at Delphi,—the temple in which Plutarch officiated as priest.

[2:1] Plutarch’s son-in-law.

[2:2] Plutarch’s brother.

[2:3] The figure by which arguments are called spears or javelins, and are said to be hurled when uttered—in itself not unnatural—occurs frequently in the ancient classics. Indeed, the most authentic derivation of the Latin _dicere_, _to speak_, is from the Greek δικεῖν, _to hurl_. The French word _trait_ offers an analogy in point.

[2:4] Brasidas, the most distinguished Spartan general, and the leader of the Spartan forces, in the earlier part of the Peloponnesian war, was slain near Amphipolis, at the moment of victory. Cleon, the Athenian general, was killed at the same time. The incident referred to in the text has no record in history; but a scholiast on Aristophanes says that Cleon and Brasidas killed each other, referring probably to the tradition that they both were killed by Cleon’s spear.

[3:1] A verse from the _Orestes_,—the reply of Orestes when asked whether Apollo would give him no assistance in his troubles.

[3:2] In a speech of Cleon in favor of the slaughter of the men and the enslavement of the women and children of Mytilene, for the attempt to release themselves from the sway of the Athenians.

[4:1] One of the seven wise men of Greece, as also of the smaller number of four to whom alone the possession of pre-eminent wisdom was ascribed by some authorities. He is said to have been the author of the selfish maxim, that one should love his friends as if he were at some future time going to hate them.

[4:2] Aristocrates, king of Orchomenus in Arcadia, joined the Messenians in war against Sparta, and was bribed by the Lacedaemonians to betray his allies in the battle of Taphrus. Many years afterward, his treachery became known, and he was stoned to death by his own subjects.

[4:3] There is no historical vestige of this transaction, or of the king implicated in it. The scene of the story was probably Orchomenus in Boeotia, and Plutarch, as a Boeotian, would naturally have been familiar with chapters of local history too remote in time or too insignificant to have left any permanent record.

[5:1] Probably, if not Lyciscus, those implicated with him in his crime took refuge in Athens, and many years afterward, at some crisis which created superstitious alarm, their bodies were disinterred and transported beyond the limits of the state,—a not unusual mode of lustration in the early time.

[5:2] This is from a lost tragedy.

[6:1] This name occurs as that of an interlocutor in one of the Symposiacs.

[7:1] The reference here is, undoubtedly, to an hexameter verse from some unknown poet, quoted by Sextus Empiricus in the third century:—

Ὀψὲ θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά.

“The mills of the gods grind late, but they grind fine.”

[7:2] Αὐτὸν, evidently meaning Plutarch.

[7:3] I doubt whether there is reference here to every third wave as having a fuller flow. Timon, though inclined at the outset to the other side, is represented as so affected by the arguments of Patrocleas and Olympicus that he is prepared to make a third speech against the Divine Providence, yet is willing to yield place to his brother; and the speech which Plutarch supersedes is the third wave.

[8:1] In some poem not now extant.

[9:1] We have evidence from other sources that the Spartans were accustomed to shave the upper lip, and in Sparta custom and law were identical.

[9:2] Slaves might be manumitted in Rome by having their names inscribed on the roll of taxable citizens with permission of their masters, in which case they must have been possessed of some _peculium_,—property of their own earning or given them by their masters. They might also be made free by will. But the oldest mode of manumission is that here referred to. The slave was brought before the magistrate, whose lictor laid a rod or wand on his head, after which ceremony the master pronounced him free.

[9:3] In this, which was one of several modes in which wills were made in Rome, the testator made a fictitious sale of his property to a friend, who received his instructions as to the disposal of it. The person thus made the purchaser filled very much the place that with us is held by the executor of a will.

[10:1] Solon’s theory was, that neutrality in a disturbed condition of the state indicated either indifference to the public well-being or the most sordid selfishness; while sedition might be sometimes justifiable, and at the worst was not inconsistent with honesty of purpose.

[10:2] The “harbor or refuge” is man’s inevitable ignorance of Divine things, which is often a sufficient answer for doubts or objections which man cannot solve or refute.

[11:1] From an unknown poet.

[12:1] A tragedian, of whom only a few fragments are preserved.

[12:2] This whole section looks almost like a paraphrase of St. Paul’s exhortation: “Be ye kind, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God [for Christ’s sake] hath forgiven you. _Be ye_ therefore _followers of God_, as dear children; and walk in love.”

[14:1] Τρόπος, from τρέπειν, _to turn_. Our phrase _turn of mind_ virtually denotes a change, i. e. a direction of mind not native or normal.

[14:2] Ἦθος, _habit_. Habits are not native, but always imply a change from a previous state in which they had not begun to be.

[14:3] A man in the upper part of his body; in the lower, a dragon.

[14:4] Gelon first obtained the sovereignty of Gela in Sicily, by setting aside the minor sons of the late king, of whom he had been appointed guardian. He subsequently availed himself of dissensions in Syracuse, to obtain the sovereignty of that city, which rose to great prosperity and wealth under his reign.

[14:5] Hieron was the brother and successor of Gelon, who left an infant son. Some accounts say that he assumed the sovereignty in his nephew’s name, and retained it as in his own right. He was tyrannical in his rule, but was successful in war, and was distinguished for his patronage of literature and of learned men. Aeschylus and Pindar were among his invited and permanent guests.

[15:1] Peisistratus obtained supreme power in Athens no less than three times, and always by intrigue and violence. But his administration was wise and beneficent. He enriched Athens with several of the most costly and tasteful public edifices. He was a liberal patron of letters. He settled the poor of the city in the outlying districts of Attica, and laid the foundation for the agricultural prosperity of the state.

[15:2] This treaty could have had only a temporary effect; for at a subsequent period we read of two hundred children being burned at the shrine of Cronus in Carthage, as a propitiatory sacrifice when a successor of Gelon appeared in arms before the city. In the Hebrew Scriptures we learn that this particular form of human sacrifice was largely practised by the Canaanites,—the stock of which the Phoenicians who settled Carthage were an offshoot.

[15:3] Lydiades rose from an obscure condition to a despotic sovereignty over Megalopolis, and probably with little scruple as to the means of elevation; but, becoming convinced that it was for the interest of the city to join the Achaean league as a free state, he abdicated the crown, and was chosen commander of the forces of the republic thus constituted. He died in battle.

[16:1] We are reminded here of the stanza in Byron’s song:—

“The tyrant of the Chersonese
Was freedom’s best and bravest friend;
That tyrant was Miltiades.
O that the present hour might send
Another despot of the kind!
Such chains as his were sure to bind.”

[16:2] Elpinice, whose first husband was Cimon, was his father’s daughter; but they had different mothers. In the earlier ages, for obvious reasons, kindred was reckoned only on the mother’s side, and the intermarriage of the children of the same father and different mothers was legal, and not unusual. We find traces of the lawfulness of such marriages in Hebrew history as late as the time of David. Cimon’s marriage was probably lawful; but public sentiment had then advanced so far as to render such a union discreditable, if not absolutely infamous. It is worthy of remark here that the Greek names for _brother_ and _sister_, ἀδελφός and ἀδελφή, in their derivation and original use denote a relation on the mother’s side alone.

[16:3] The stories that have come down to us of the riotous living, recklessness, and debauchery of Themistocles as a young man almost transcend belief. It is related of him that he was once drawn in a carriage through the thronged market-place by four shameless women harnessed like horses.

[17:1] Ἀρτεμίσιον, Artemisium. The first naval battle between the Grecian forces and Xerxes was fought off Artemisium. Themistocles commanded the Athenian portion of the fleet, and the splendid victory was ascribed, in great part, to his skill and prowess.

[17:2] From Pindar,—commemorative of this battle.

[18:1] Before Dionysius the elder obtained the undisputed sovereignty of Syracuse, Sicily had been devastated by the Carthaginians, and several of its chief cities destroyed. In the first year of his reign, the Carthaginian general, after a successful campaign, offered him terms of peace, solely because his own army had suffered severely from pestilence. But in subsequent wars Dionysius repeatedly defeated the Carthaginians, and, whatever his demerits, he raised his kingdom to a high degree of prosperity, and rendered it attractive to the emigrants whom the over-peopled Greek cities were constantly sending to every region where Greek enterprise, genius, and skill could hope for recognition and reward.

[19:1] Periander was the tyrant of Corinth in the seventh century before Christ. His history is obscure; but the traditions with regard to him relate many acts of violence and cruelty, and also very great misfortunes, and his domestic life was overshadowed equally by crime and by misery. The three places named in this sentence were early Corinthian colonies, and they may have been settled by Periander’s enterprise, or may have been places of refuge from his caprice and oppression.

[19:2] The island of Leucadia was a peninsula in Homer’s time, and was probably still so when the Corinthian colony was established.

[19:3] Alexander destroyed Thebes; twenty years afterward Cassander rebuilt it. Plutarch very probably refers to the tradition that Cassander poisoned Alexander. Not that he was free from other undoubted crimes; for his whole life was marked by sporadic acts of violence. He cannot be said to have received any specific punishment; but he was kept in perpetual harassment by the quarrels among the successors of Alexander.

[19:4] That is, this temple of Delphi, the scene of the dialogue.

[20:1] In the Phocian war two Phocian leaders with their associates seized the treasure deposited in the temple at Delphi, and used it to hire foreign mercenaries. Those concerned in the robbery were wandering as outlaws in Peloponnesus, when Timoleon enlisted them for service in Sicily against the Carthaginians. They contributed largely to his success; but after their dispersion most of them encountered such disasters as were regarded as the normal penalty of sacrilege.

[20:2] So little is really known about Phalaris that he is almost a mythical personage. His name, however, will always remain associated with his brazen bull, and his trying his first experiment with it by roasting in it its inventor, who certainly best deserved the doom.

[20:3] The readers of Roman history may doubt the medicinal virtue of Marius, who certainly served as a seton on the body politic.

[21:1] History throws no light on this specific crime; but the Sicyonians had the reputation of being a licentious and otherwise vicious people. The curative process under Orthagoras and the dynasty that he founded lasted a full century.

[21:2] Of Cleonae we know very little except that it was, and now is not. Near its site is a hamlet of half a dozen houses that bears the name of Clenes. Nemea, where the Nemean games were held, was in its territory.

[21:3] One of his maternal ancestors had been cursed, and banished from Athens, a century and a half before his birth, for an insurrectionary enterprise.

[21:4] He was killed by lightning, which the people regarded as a retributive bolt from heaven. He deserved hatred, Cicero says, for his cruelty, treachery, and avarice.

[22:1] One tradition makes Odysseus the son of Sisyphus, and only the step-son of Laertes, who, however, married Anticleia before her son was born. Autolycus was the father of Anticleia, and it was he that stole the cattle of Iphitus.

[22:2] Aesculapius in Grecian fable was the son of Apollo by Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas, who, in what might seem righteous indignation against the wanton god, set fire to his Delphian temple, having of course first ravaged it.

[23:1] Dion obtained supreme power in Syracuse, though not the title of King, on the expulsion of Dionysius the younger. Callippus, his professed friend, was the leader of the band of malcontents that killed Dion, although he did not kill him with his own hand, perhaps shrinking from the act of murder on account of an oath which, when under suspicion, he had sworn at the altar of Persephone, that he would remain faithful to his friend. His aim was the place which Dion had held. It was his but a little while, and then, after a series of misfortunes and wanderings, he was killed at Rhegium with the same weapon that had been employed in the murder of Dion.

[23:2] Eriphyle received a golden necklace as a reward for betraying her husband Amphiaraus, who secreted himself to avoid going to the Theban war in which it was predicted that he should perish. His son Alcmaeon avenged his father by killing his mother, and then made of the necklace a sacred deposit in the temple at Delphi. Aristo was the commander of one of the bands of mercenaries hired by the pillage of the temple.

[23:3] The Phocian leaders who committed this sacrilege.

[23:4] In this temple.

[24:1] The Spanish fly, which was used for medicinal purposes in very early times, as it is now.

[25:1] Such spectacles—never, so far as we know, witnessed in Greece—were not uncommon in Rome. Christians were thus exhibited and murdered on the stage in the sight of admiring and applauding multitudes; and we have no reason to doubt that other reputed malefactors were similarly dealt with. This treatise may have been written after Plutarch had been in Rome; at any rate, Roman customs were well known throughout the empire.

[27:1] Agamemnon, the husband of Clytemnestra, whom she murdered on his return from Troy, was the son of Pleisthenes. Stesichorus wrote a tragedy entitled _Orestes_, from which, undoubtedly, these verses are taken.

[28:1] Apollodorus, king of the small state of Cassandreia, was regarded as having been unsurpassed in tyranny, cruelty, and debauchery. The mention of his daughters in this vision makes it probable that he was guilty of some horrible outrage of violence or lust of which they were the victims.

[28:2] The crime or type of depravity of which Hipparchus was guilty can be inferred only from the vision here reported.

[28:3] Ptolemy Ceraunus was the eldest son of Ptolemy Soter; but, on account of his violent passions and moral obliquity, his father designated a younger son as his successor. Ceraunus then emigrated to Macedonia, became intimate with Seleucus, murdered him treacherously, and himself assumed the sovereignty; but in less than a year he was defeated by the Gauls who then first invaded that region, was taken prisoner, and was put to death with the utmost barbarity.

[28:4] Plutarch tells this story with fuller details in his life of Cimon. The Pausanias referred to is the Spartan viceroy and general of that name. Byzantium, which had been a stronghold of the Persians, was held by the Lacedaemonians, under Pausanias, at the time of the retreat of the Ten Thousand.

[29:1] The rites differ; but the belief in necromancy has undergone no essential change from the days of the witch of Endor to the present time, and there have probably been in every age, as now, ceremonies which have brought credulous men and women into imagined communion with departed spirits. The history of necromancy shows many resemblances, and still more analogies, in different countries, ages, and degrees of culture.

[30:1] One of Alexander’s generals, and after Alexander’s death king of Thrace.

[30:2] Simonides is said to have been the first poet who eulogized the subjects of his verse from mercenary motives. As his panegyrics had great poetical merit, and were much sought and well paid for, yet with few expressions of gratitude, he was wont to say that his chest of money was full, the chest designed for thanks empty.

[31:1] These verses are probably from a lost tragedy of Euripides. The myths about Ino are various, and mutually inconsistent. According to some she killed, according to others she endeavored to kill, the children of her husband, Athamas, by a former wife. Still others charge her with the murder of her own son or sons. She at length leaped into the sea, and emerged a goddess, under the name of Leucothea,—certainly a better name in heaven than she could have borne on earth.

[32:1] Apollodorus is said to have bound his associates in some movement for his own aggrandizement by bringing them together at a festival, and at its close giving them evidence that they had been feeding on human victims.

[33:1] Glaucus, a Lacedaemonian, had a high reputation for integrity, and on the ground of it received from a foreigner a deposit of a large sum of money. When the owner’s sons claimed the deposit, he disclaimed all knowledge of it. But a threat of the Delphian oracle led him to make restitution afterward. Nevertheless the threat took effect, and he and his whole family perished.

[33:2] In this section Timon seems to cite indiscriminately the cases of delayed or protracted punishment by men which are confessedly foolish or wicked, and alleged instances of delayed punishment on the part of the gods. The _gravamen_ of the objection is, “How can that be just or right for the gods to do, which when men do they encounter either ridicule or condemnation?”

[34:1] That Aesop was killed by the Delphians for the cause here stated there seems to be no doubt; nor yet that Idmon, a descendant of the man of the same name who had owned and emancipated Aesop, received a large sum of money from the Delphians by way of expiation for their crime, to which they had probably in the mean time ascribed every bad harvest and every epidemic. It must be remembered that, before the rotation of crops became the habit of agriculturists, bad harvests were very frequent, and that, in the absence of sanitary rules and precautions, dangerous epidemics prevailed at short intervals in all the cities of the old world. It was not unnatural that these calamities should have been regarded as retributive judgments where a gross crime had been committed.

[34:2] A _mina_ was about the metallic equivalent of twenty dollars, but of course with a much larger purchasing power.

[35:1] A small town in Central Asia, built by the Branchidae, who were priests and custodians of the temple of Apollo Didymeus in an Ionian city bearing their name, near Miletus. The temple was burned by Darius, was rebuilt, and was burned again by Xerxes, on his retreat from Greece. The priests surrendered the treasures under their charge to Xerxes, followed him in his flight to escape punishment for sacrilege, and built the town which Alexander destroyed. His alleged motive for his cruel treatment of the Branchidae was revenge for the sacrilege and treason of their ancestors.

[36:1] It was at Scheria, according to Homer, that Odysseus was kindly received by Nausicaa, entertained sumptuously by King Alcinous, her father, and provided with the ship on board of which he reached Ithaca. The inhabitants of Corcyra maintained that their island was the Homeric Scheria, which very probably never existed except in the poet’s brain.

[36:2] Polyphemus.

[36:3] The territory of Pheneus is so situated at the confluence of two mountain streams as to be of necessity liable to inundation. There was an old canal, said to have been constructed by Hercules, and designed to carry off any abnormal excess of water; but it had early become obstructed and useless, and Pliny says that there had been no less than five periods when the region had been entirely devastated by the overflow of the rivers.

[37:1] There were three occasions on which the Sybarites incurred the special anger of Hera. Her statue was overturned in some civic commotion. Afterward the people of Sybaris killed thirty members of a delegation from their neighbors of Crotona, and cast out their bodies to be devoured by wild beasts. On this occasion, the goddess was seen by night with an angry and threatening mien. In the third place, a slave who had taken refuge at her altar was pursued and scourged by his master, who held his father’s tomb as so much more sacred than her temple that he ceased beating the slave when he sought refuge there. Sybaris is known to have been twice destroyed before Plutarch’s time. There may have been a third destruction of which we have no record; but there is nothing in the text to forbid our so construing it as to leave the threat still hanging over the city, and the third destruction still impending.

[37:2] The tradition was that Ajax was guilty of an outrage on Cassandra, the priestess of Athene. He on his return voyage was destroyed by shipwreck, and the Locrians were supposed to have suffered on account of his crime visitations of pestilence and other dire calamities. When they consulted the oracle, the reply was, that the guilt of Ajax could be expiated only by their sending annually to Troy, for a thousand years, two virgins to perform menial service in the temple of Athene. The hero, the crime, and the expiation are, more probably than not, all mythical.

[38:1] The Thracian men were tattooed as well as the women, and it was probably for both men and women a preferred mode of ornament.

[38:2] I can find nowhere else any reference to this observance; but nothing is more probable than that Phaethon’s name should have been attached to some religious anniversary in the region in which he was said to have perished.

[39:1] “Of the viands” is an interpolation of my own. At a feast a “portion” was “carried off,” and I know not what it could have been, if not a part of the food and wine on the table. If there were none of Pindar’s posterity at hand to receive the portion, there were undoubtedly hungry officials ready in this behalf to represent them.

[39:2] I suppose that the first place at a Spartan civic festival was formally assigned to Terpander, long dead, and that the most distinguished living guest was made to regard himself as second in honor.

[40:1] Ὑμεῖς. Plutarch is here addressing, not Timon alone, but two or all three of his interlocutors.

[40:2] Descendants of Opheltes. He came from Thessaly to Thebes, and brought with him a body of armed adherents. He founded a royal line in Boeotia.

[40:3] Delphi being in Phocis, the claims on the score of Daiphantus would be availing in all processions and festivities connected with the temple service.

[40:4] A victory that the Phocians under Daiphantus had gained five hundred years before was still celebrated in Plutarch’s time.

[40:5] I can find elsewhere no notice of these races, or families.

[41:1] Lachares was a demagogue who early in the third century B. C. obtained virtually supreme power in Athens, plundered the Parthenon, stripped the statue of Athene of its ornaments, committed numerous acts of high-handed tyranny, and was finally expelled from the city on the charge of having taken measures for betraying it into the hands of Antiochus.

[41:2] Ariston was an Epicurean philosopher, who raised himself to a virtual tyranny in Athens, but surrendered to Sulla when he besieged the city.

[42:1] Ἠρυγγίτην, _eryngium_, now the name of a genus containing several species of snakeroot.

[42:2] The plague that raged in Athens early in the Peloponnesian war, of which Thucydides gives so remarkable an account.

[43:1] Plutarch gives an early specimen of this argument in his life of Theseus: “The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus; for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers for the logical question, as to things that grow; one party holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”

[45:1] Athens had been under the government of men who had been virtually Cassander’s viceroys. The city after his death came under the rule of Demetrius Poliorcetes, and it was probably by his order that the statue of Cassander was destroyed.

[45:2] Dionysius the elder.

[45:3] Nisaeus was the son of Dionysius the elder, and was sovereign of Syracuse for a short time while his brother Dionysius the younger was in exile. Aelian names him in a chapter specially devoted to eminent φιλοπόται, i. e. drunkards.

[45:4] Apollocrates was the son of Dionysius the younger, and grandson of the elder. His father in going into exile left him in command of the citadel of Syracuse, which he was soon compelled to surrender. He holds the third place, as Nisaeus the second, in Aelian’s list of distinguished drunkards.

[45:5] These were both sons of Cassander. Philip succeeded his father as king of Macedonia, but died almost immediately upon his accession to the throne, leaving probably memory of his vices, of which Plutarch had knowledge, but no record of which has come down to our time. Antipater, his next younger brother, in some sort succeeded him, first murdering his mother, who favored the claims of her still younger son. He himself was murdered before he could obtain undisturbed possession of his kingdom.

[46:1] These obsolete modes of medical practice can now only provoke a smile; but the argument is complete, if we will substitute for them the treatment cited at the close of the sentence,—blood-letting for ophthalmia, which, if not in rule now, was so thirty years ago.

[48:1] The reference in this last clause is to the opinion largely held by the Stoics, that the soul is not immortal, but is destined to survive the body, and to live till the consummation of the existing universe, which, after completing a cycle of many thousands of years, will be destroyed by fire.

[48:2] This sentence is, as I believe, ironical. Some editors and translators make it interrogative; but the grammatical construction, as it seems to me, is opposed to this view.

[48:3] This term, as applied to vessels or shallow earth-beds, where what is sown can only spring up and wither without coming to seed, occurs in Plato’s Phaedrus. The very brief life and untimely end of Adonis may perhaps account for this peculiar use of his name.

[49:1] Several hundred years ago. Archilochus, the earliest Ionian lyric poet, flourished, and was killed in battle, in the seventh century B. C. This entire passage may be regarded as an _argumentum de concessis_, and as such it is perfectly legitimate. The inspiration of the Delphian oracle and priestess was believed in by many of those for whom Plutarch wrote; and to them he said, “Can you believe that all these oracular utterances about expiations for the dead and posthumous honors to be paid to them have had reference to beings that ceased to exist when they ceased to breathe?”

[50:1] Or, “the home of the grasshopper”; for _tettix_ (τέττιξ) means _grasshopper_. The oracle, as usual, was ambiguous. Calondas, _alias_ Corax, is represented as not understanding it at first, but finding out afterward that a Cretan named Tettix had settled at Taenarus, or Taenarum, he inferred that his home was designated by the oracle.

[50:2] This place was on the southernmost cape of Greece, now Cape Matapan. The peninsula which forms this cape had a famous temple of Poseidon, was sacred to the infernal gods, and was the site of an avenue, through a cave, to and from the infernal regions,—the avenue by which Hercules dragged Cerberus to the light of day.

[50:3] Pausanias, the Spartan, after a career of mingled glory and shame, being detected in treasonable intrigues, took refuge in the temple of Athene. When he was nearly exhausted by hunger the Ephori dragged him out of the temple, and he died at its threshold. For their sacrilege the Delphian oracle ordered that he should be re-interred on the spot where he died, and that two brazen statues should be erected in honor of the goddess in her temple at the public charge. Very naturally, his ghost was supposed to haunt the sacred enclosure whence he had been taken to die. See p. 28, n. 4.

[51:1] The clause, “than there is that they should be fully rendered in this life,” has nothing in the original to correspond to it; but it is necessary in order to convey the obvious meaning of the sentence.

[52:1] Probably, as it seems to me, not Bion the poet, but a philosopher of that name,—a man of infamous character, an atheist in his professed belief, and remarkable for pithy and epigrammatic sayings, full of bitter humor and biting sarcasm, some of which are still extant. Horace speaks of those who find pleasure in _Bioneis sermonibus et sale nigro_.

[54:1] Or, “Is not God wiser than Hesiod?” With this interrogative construction, which the sentence will bear, the sense is,—“Hesiod teaches the hereditary transmission of character as a fact; God, still more, traces these inherited traits before they appear to human view.” According to the rendering that I have given, the sense is,—“The transmission of character from father to son is recognized not only by God in his providence, but equally by wise men, as, for instance, by Hesiod.”

[57:1] Demetrius Poliorcetes, king of Macedonia, who was guilty of great crimes, and in a not over-virtuous age was distinguished for unbounded licentiousness. He died in captivity, having surrendered to Seleucus, king of Syria, after expulsion from his own kingdom and a series of consequent disasters. Antigonus, his son, was a man of eminent virtue, had a diversified, but on the whole a prosperous career, and died at the age of eighty, after a reign of nearly half a century.

[57:2] Augeas, having made a contract with Hercules by which a tenth part of his cattle were to be the price for cleansing his stables in a day, refused to pay the price; and Hercules waged with him a war in which he and all his sons but Phyleus perished. Hercules placed Phyleus on his father’s throne, as king of the Epeians in Elis. The father’s story is, of course, mythical, and the son hardly falls within the domain of authentic history.

[57:3] The chief offence charged in Grecian myth against Neleus was his refusing to perform expiatory rites for Hercules after he had killed Iphitus, whose father was the friend of Neleus. Hercules, according to some traditions, made war on Pylos, the kingdom of Neleus, and killed him, with all his sons except Nestor.

[58:1] _Sparti_, from σπείρω, _the sown men_, i. e. the armed men that sprang from the teeth of the dragon sown by Cadmus, from whom the oldest families in Thebes—a large part of the Boeotian aristocracy—were said to have descended. Something like this mythical birthmark had probably made its appearance on the body of a member of one of these ancient families. Nisibis was a Syrian city with an extensive commerce, with many Greek, and probably some Boeotian immigrants.

[58:2] It may be that, in cases where the inheritance of a morbid physical constitution, or of proclivity to moral evil, seems to lapse in the first generation and to reappear in the second, the children of the diseased or depraved father have the physical or moral traits of their father, but are made and kept vigilant and faithful in self-care and self-discipline by the memory of their father’s infirmities or sins; while their children have the inheritance without the warning.

[59:1] If Plutarch made this story, as he probably did, it was undoubtedly suggested by the story, unlike in its details, yet with not dissimilar purpose, which Plato tells of Er, the Pamphilian, in the tenth book of _The Republic_.

[59:2] Soli was a considerable city in Cilicia.

[59:3] Μεθ’ ἡμᾶς, _after us_, is the reading in all the manuscripts and older editions; μεθ’ ἡμῶν, _with us_, is a conjectural emendation which the sense seems to require.

[60:1] Amphilochus was one of the heroes of the Trojan war. He was the son of a seer, and was believed to be endowed with the gift of prophecy. The oracle bearing his name at Mallos in Cilicia was said to have been founded by him, and it had a wider and more enduring reputation for veracity than any other ancient oracle.

[60:2] Εἰ βέλτιον βιώσεται. The question related to his property,—to his means of comfortable living. I therefore use in translating it the familiar colloquialism, _better off_. The answer has a moral significance. Βέλτιον is an ambiguous word,—applicable equally to condition and to character.

[60:3] “Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy,” was sound ethical doctrine, equally with Gentile and with Jew, until men saw in the divine humanity of Jesus Christ the qualities of character which had been most despised, transfigured and glorified.

[62:1] Thespesius means _divine_.

[63:1] Plutarch (Greek Questions, 39) writes: “The Pythagoreans say that the souls of the dead neither give a shadow nor wink.”

[63:2] Ἀνάγκη. This mythical parentage may account for the name of Adrasteia, which is probably derived from διδράσκειν, _to escape_, with the α privative, and thus means _unescapable_.

[64:1] _Punishment._

[64:2] _Justice._

[64:3] One of the Erinnyes, or Furies. There are different myths as to their number, though there were commonly said to be three. Their name is probably derived from ἐρινύειν, _to be in a rage_. They were in Grecian fable the type of implacable anger and unrelenting vengeance.

[64:4] Plutarch in his _Apophthegms_, says of Artaxerxes Longimanus, who was not an unwise, but an over-indulgent king: “He first ordained as a punishment for his nobles who had offended, that they should be stripped and their garments scourged instead of their bodies; and whereas their hair should have been plucked out, that the same should be done to their turbans.” We do not learn that his example was followed by any of his successors, or that he employed this method as to criminals in general. But the illustration is a happy one.

[65:1] In these forms of punishment, it is the soul’s clothes, i. e. the body, not the soul itself, that is punished.

[66:1] The body of a brute.

[67:1] There were in Naxos, on Parnassus, and elsewhere various caves dedicated to Bacchus, i. e. to mirth and jollity; and the mouths of these caves were, of course, decked with all of verdure and bloom that could make them charming and attractive.

[67:2] Dionysus as the son of Zeus had a right to leave the abode of the dead, and to claim his seat on Olympus. His mother Semele, being a mortal woman, had no such right; but he rescued her from the dead, and bore her to Olympus, where she became a goddess under the name of Thyone.

[68:1] _Oblivion._

[68:2] Γένεσις. According to this derivation γένεσις comes from γῆ, _the earth_, and νεύειν, _to incline toward_,—a fanciful derivation, the genuineness of which there is good reason to doubt.

[69:1] Themis preceded Apollo as the inspirer of the Delphian oracle.

[69:2] The ancients imagined, as we easily may, something like the outlines of a human face in the disk of the moon, and among their myths, or rather poetical fancies, was this of a Sibyl revolving with the moon, and singing, as she rides across the firmament, the fate of men and nations.

[70:1] The great eruption of A. D. 79.

[70:2] The earlier name of Puteoli.

[70:3] Vespasian, who died in A. D. 79.

[73:1] Nero’s matricide is here referred to. Plutarch, no doubt, had in his mind some then well-known figure or description in a poem of Pindar now lost.