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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

45.27 · Habitats and the fire-loving salamander

Snakes and all creeping things love earth; all swimming creatures love water; winged creatures love air, in which they also live; and those that fly very high and ⟨have⟩ their dwelling nearby love fire. Indeed, some animals also love fire: salamanders, for example, even make their lairs in fire.¹⁶²⁰

45.28 · The embodied soul’s restricted happiness

For each element is an enclosure for bodies. Every soul, then, while in the body, is weighed down and pressed upon by these four. It is reasonable that the soul too should take pleasure in some of them and be troubled by others. For this reason it does not possess the highest happiness. Yet, being divine by nature, even among these it struggles and thinks, though not as much as it would have thought if unbound from bodies.¹⁶²¹

45.29 · The soul tossed like a stalk

But if these too are shaken and disturbed, whether by illness or by fear, then the soul itself is tossed upon the waves like a stalk upon the deep, and maintains nothing steady.”¹⁶²²

46.1 · An oracle on the soul’s departure

On the souls’ manner of life after leaving the body: an oracle.

A body dissolved, having left the soul and become ⟨earth⟩, no longer knows any path that leads back to life. What has dissolved is empty ⟨dust⟩; the soul scatters toward the clear sky whence it came, aloft into simple aether. But one born from another and sprouting anew is given soul by fertile nature’s fresh tillings.¹⁶²³

47.1 · Axiochus: the account of Gobryas

Plato, from the Axiochus. And if you wish to hear another account, which Gobryas, a Magus, reported to me: [who] said that, at the time of Xerxes’ crossing, his grandfather and namesake was sent to Delos to keep inviolate the island where ⟨the⟩ two gods were born. From certain bronze tablets, which Opis and Hecaergos brought ⟨from⟩ the Hyperboreans, he had learned [also]¹⁶²⁴

47.2 · The two hemispheres of the gods

that after the body’s dissolution the soul travels to the unseen region and the dwelling beneath the earth. There Pluto has a palace no less grand than Zeus’s, since earth occupies the center of the universe and the heavens are spherical. Of their two hemispheres the heavenly gods received one, and the gods below the other, some being brothers, others children of brothers.¹⁶²⁵

47.3 · The gates and rivers of the underworld

The entrance to the road leading to Pluto’s dwelling is fortified with iron walls and bars. Once a person has opened these, the river Acheron receives him, and after it Cocytus. Having been ferried across them, one must be brought before Minos and Rhadamanthys, in a plain called the Plain of Truth.¹⁶²⁶

47.4 · Judgment without concealment

They sit as judges, examining each arrival about the life he has lived and the pursuits with which he dwelt in the body. It is impossible to lie.¹⁶²⁷

47.5 · The region of the pious

Those upon whom a good daimon breathed during life are reckoned among the inhabitants of the region of the pious. There the seasons abound in crops of every kind; there are springs of pure water, meadows of every sort in spring bloom with varied lovely flowers, gatherings of poets and theaters of philosophers, circular dances and musical performances, melodious drinking parties and feasts that provide themselves, unspoiled freedom from pain and a pleasant way of life.¹⁶²⁸

47.6 · Temperate air and the initiates’ privilege

For neither severe winter nor burning heat occurs there; temperate air flows around, mingled with the gentle rays of the Sun. In this place the initiated have a certain precedence, and there too they perform their holy rites.¹⁶²⁹

47.7 · Divine kinship and the Eleusinian goddess

How, then, should you not have the first share in this honor, being a kinsman of the gods? For Heracles and Dionysus, when descending to Hades, are said to have been initiated here beforehand and to have kindled their courage for the journey there from the Eleusinian goddess.¹⁶³⁰

47.8 · The punishments of the impious

But those whose lives were driven through wrongdoing are led by the Erinyes into gloom and chaos through Tartarus. There is the region of the impious, the Danaids’ uncompleted water-carrying, Tantalus’s thirst, Tityus’s entrails forever eaten and regenerated, and Sisyphus’s unending labor with the stone: there the ends [of the] toils begin again. There, licked all over by wild beasts, persistently burned by the torches of the Punishments, and tormented with every torment, they waste away under everlasting penalties.¹⁶³¹

48.1 · Hermes to Tat: one soul and many souls

Hermes, from the writings addressed to Tat. Have you not heard in the general teachings that all these souls come from one soul, the soul of the whole, ⟨those⟩ that roll about throughout the universe as though distributed into portions? These souls, then, undergo many changes, some toward a more fortunate condition, others toward its opposite.¹⁶³²

48.2 · Ascent and reversal through living forms

For souls in creeping creatures change into aquatic creatures; aquatic souls into land animals; terrestrial souls into birds; aerial souls into human beings. Human souls, attaining a beginning of immortality, change into daimons, and then in this way enter the company of the gods. There are two companies of gods, the wandering and the fixed. This is the soul’s most perfect glory. But a soul that has entered human beings, if it remains evil, will never attain immortality; driven backward, it will retrace the road toward creeping creatures. This is the condemnation of an evil soul.¹⁶³³

1620.The phrase en hois kai politeuetai is disturbed: the plural “in which” sits awkwardly beside singular air. English gives its likely contextual sense, while retaining the printed Greek. Wachsmuth discusses deletion or correction in the apparatus but does not mark either in his text. The supplied verb “have” remains marked. The fire-dwelling salamander is a claim made by the ancient speaker, not a zoological observation adopted here.

1621.Peribolē denotes an enclosing covering or surrounding. The passage carries the affinities of animals over to the soul’s relation to the elements. The soul remains divine and capable of thought, although its embodied condition restricts that activity. “Happiness” renders eudaimonia, here the soul’s fullest well-being.

1622.This closes excerpt 45. “These” looks back to the bodily elements or the bodily conditions they constitute. Antherikos, “stalk,” is the printed correction of a transmitted word meaning “human being.” The image explains instability through the disturbance of the soul’s surroundings. It does not say that the soul becomes mortal.

1623.The heading names an oracle without identifying its god or source. Wachsmuth supplies parts of gaia and konis; English marks the complete words “earth” and “dust.” The final phrase of line 4 is textually uncertain, as the apparatus’s alternatives show; “simple aether” provisionally follows the printed wording. The final singular verb means “is ensouled,” not “grows cold.” The return of this dissolved body is denied, while fresh generation is affirmed.

1624.The heading is reproduced as Stobaeus transmits it; it is an attribution, not an independent judgment of authorship. Wachsmuth locates the extract at Axiochus 371A-372A. Magos identifies a Persian religious figure. The sentence begins conditionally and shifts into reported speech; the English colon makes that transition readable. Both rejected connectives and supplied words remain marked. Hecaergos follows this text, although the apparatus gives Hecaerge in the parallel tradition.

1625.The reported teaching continues from the preceding unit. Basileia means a royal dwelling or palace. The familial relationship of the gods supports the comparison of their realms. The passage presents a mythical geography with a spherical heaven and a central earth; its language does not supply dimensions or an astronomical demonstration.

1626.The Greek shifts from a singular arrival at the river to a plural construction for those ferried across. English uses “a person” and “one” to carry the sequence. Minos and Rhadamanthys serve as the judges named in the following sentence. The rivers are treated again, through interpretations of their names, in excerpt 50.

1627.Enōikisthē expresses residence in the body. The inquiry concerns both the whole course of life and its particular practices, epitēdeumata. The impossibility of lying gives the Plain of Truth its immediate narrative force.

1628.Daimōn agathos is a beneficent divine power or attendant spirit. “Are reckoned among the inhabitants” follows logizontai rather than substituting the parallel reading “are settled.” Wachsmuth’s text has gatherings of poets and theaters of philosophers; the apparatus reports the opposite pairing in the parallel text. Eumelē, “melodious,” and the self-providing feasts are likewise retained.

1629.Proedria literally suggests a place in the front seats and here conveys privileged standing. The repeated “there” carries earthly initiation and observance into the blessed region. The rites themselves are not described.

1630.Gennētēs denotes a member of the same kin or clan; it is not translated as “begetter” of the gods. The address now applies the reported account to the dialogue’s addressee. “Kindled” preserves the image in enausasthai. The Greek calls the goddess “the Eleusinian” without giving her name.

1631.The Erinyes are avenging divine powers; Poinai, capitalized here as “Punishments,” are personified agents of requital. The difficult clause about ends beginning again is retained, with its rejected article represented by “[of the].” “Wild beasts” follows thērsi rather than a variant involving fire. The perpetual eating and regeneration of Tityus’s entrails appears in Stobaeus’s text even though the apparatus reports its absence from the parallel Axiochus. Excerpt 47 ends here.

1632.The source heading identifies Hermes and Tat; Wachsmuth adds locators in Patrizi, p. 10, and Parthey, p. 71, line 7. “General teachings” renders ta genika without inventing the full title of a lost work. The supplied article is represented by “those.” Hōsper, “as though,” qualifies the distribution of souls and is retained.

1633.Choros is a chorus, dance, or ordered company; the two divine companies evoke wandering and fixed celestial bodies. The sequence includes both ascent and reversal into animal forms. The phrase “a beginning of immortality” is retained rather than assimilated to other Hermetic formulations. Excerpt 49 will expressly forbid a human soul’s entry into an irrational animal: the anthology places different accounts beside one another.