Chapter XVII: Introduction (3)

‘However, this is a long way from saying that all has been brought into being for nothing. The sea sends up soft exhalations, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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, [Sidenote: 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, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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: [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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. [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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, [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 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.

Footnote 302:

In c. 22 Apollonides is made to state the angular diameter of the moon
at 12 ‘fingers’, i. e. one degree.

Footnote 303:

See Note (1), p. 309.

Footnote 304:

See Note (2), p. 309.

Footnote 305:

Arist. _Probl._ 12, 3.

Footnote 306:

See Note (3), p. 309.

Footnote 307:

See Aristarchus, _Magnitudes and Distances_, Hypothesis 2.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 309:

As Homer, _Od._ 23, 330; 24, 539; Hesiod, _Theog._ 515.

Footnote 310:

e. g. _Il._ 10, 394. Cp. Heraclides Ponticus, 15.

Footnote 311:

_P. V._ 349.

Footnote 312:

Fr. 88.

Footnote 313:

W. reads μένειν (E has κινεῖν), but renders by ‘cieri’.

Footnote 314:

Fr. 733.

Footnote 315:

See note (4), p. 310.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 317:

Reading τῇ γῇ, with Madvig.

Footnote 318:

See note (5), p. 310.

Footnote 319:

αἰρομένη MSS.

Footnote 320:

Prop. 7.

Footnote 321:

See note (6), p. 310.

Footnote 322:

Cf. _Il._ 9, 63.

Footnote 323:

Reading ὅλως (Emperius, ap. Ed. Teub.), for ὅμως.

Footnote 324:

See additional note, p. 312.

Footnote 325:

See e. g. _Tim._ 32 C.

Footnote 326:

_Theog._ 120, 195.

Footnote 327:

Pindar, Fr. 57: see p. 179.

Footnote 328:

Reading ἕξει, with Emperius.

Footnote 329:

See note (7), p. 310.

Footnote 330:

Reading ᾀἱδίου, with Emperius.

Footnote 331:

Ion Chius, Fr. 57 (Nauck).

Footnote 332:

Reading διίησιν, with Madvig.

Footnote 333:

I have followed the paraphrase of the Greek words suggested by
Wyttenbach. For the physical facts see Ganot’s _Physics_, 516.

Footnote 334:

_Timaeus_, 46 A-C (Plato does not discuss plane folding mirrors).

Footnote 335:

Reading χωρεῖν for χωροῦντες.

Footnote 336:

Kepler has supplied such a diagram (in his translation, p. 131).

Footnote 337:

See p. 253.

Footnote 338:

Pindar, Fr. 107. Paean 9 (see _Oxy. Pap._ 1908, 841).

Footnote 339:

_Od._ 20, 352 and 357; 14, 162; 19, 307.

Footnote 340:

Reading τὸ ἕν for τόν.

Footnote 341:

Prop. 17.

Footnote 342:

_De Caelo_, 2, 13, 293 b 20.

Footnote 343:

See note (8), p. 310.

Footnote 344:

See note (9), p. 310.

Footnote 345:

Reading ἡ δὲ τῆς Σελήνης with Mr. W. R. Paton, see _Class. Rev._ vol.
26, p. 269.

Footnote 346:

Strictly speaking, both cases are of ‘overtaking’, but the results
follow as stated.

Footnote 347:

_Il._ 9, 212.

Footnote 348:

See Plato, _Phaedo_, 110 B-C.

Footnote 349:

_Od._ 311.

Footnote 350:

Soph. (_Lemnians_), Fr. 348.

Footnote 351:

τραπέμπαλιν is due here to Meineke, ap. Ed. Teub., see p. 267.

Footnote 352:

_Tim._ 40 B.

Footnote 353:

See note (10), p. 311.

Footnote 354:

Aesch. _Suppl._ 937.

Footnote 355:

See p. 262 and note.

Footnote 356:

See n. (11), p. 311.

Footnote 357:

_Il._ 14, 246. The second line appears to have been added by Crates
and is not in our texts.

Footnote 358:

_Tim._ 40 C.

Footnote 359:

Kepler would read ‘twelve’.

Footnote 360:

Fr. 48.

Footnote 361:

_W. and D._ 41.

Footnote 362:

_Il._ 20, 64.

Footnote 363:

_Il._ 8, 16.

Footnote 364:

_Od._ 7, 244.

Footnote 365:

See n. (13), p. 311.

Footnote 366:

Reading ἐπειδὰν παύσῃ, with Madvig.

Footnote 367:

See n. (14), p. 312.

Footnote 368:

_Od._ 9, 563.

Footnote 369:

i. e. the words τελεῖν, τελευτᾶν are allied, see p. 215.

Footnote 370:

Plato, _Tim._ 31 B and end.

Footnote 371:

Fr. 38.

Footnote 372:

_Tim._ 31 B.

Footnote 373:

_Od._ 11, 222.

Footnote 374:

_Od._ 11, 600.

Footnote 375:

From a note made in 1910, which cannot at present (1916) be verified.

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.