48.3 · Ignorance as the soul’s evil

The soul’s evil is ignorance. For a soul that has come to know none of the things that exist, neither their nature nor the good, is blind and is tossed about amid bodily affections. Unhappy in its ignorance of itself, it is enslaved to strange and wretched bodies, carrying the body like a burden and no longer ruling but being ruled. This is the soul’s evil.¹⁶³⁴

49.1 · The pious soul becomes wholly mind

By the same author. A human soul, ⟨not⟩ every one, but the pious soul, is something daimonic and divine. Such a soul, after it has been released from the body and has fought the contest of piety (the contest of piety is to know the divine and to wrong no human being), becomes wholly mind.¹⁶³⁵

49.2 · Human souls and human bodies

But the impious soul remains in its own substance, punished by itself and seeking an earthly body to enter, [into] a human one, however. For no other body can contain a human soul, nor is it lawful for a human soul to fall into the body of an irrational animal. This is God’s law: to preserve a human soul from such an outrage.¹⁶³⁶

50.1 · Porphyry on Apollodorus’s account of Hades

Porphyry, from the writings On the Styx. In the twentieth book of Apollodorus’s work On the Gods, which deals with Hades, we found the following statements about the Styx.¹⁶³⁷

50.2 · Interpreting the rivers’ names

“For we must begin with these matters, and we must not disregard the suggestion conveyed by the names. Starting from considerations of this sort, people have plausibly named even the rivers believed to exist in Hades: Acheron, for example, from achē, ‘sorrows,’ as Melanippides too says in Persephone:¹⁶³⁸

50.3 · Melanippides on Acheron

And in earth’s hollows he is called Acheron, pouring forth sorrows for ⟨mortals⟩.¹⁶³⁹

50.4 · Licymnius: springs of tears

For Licymnius too says:

With countless springs of tears and sorrows ⟨Acheron⟩ brims,

and again:

Acheron ferries sorrows to mortals.¹⁶⁴⁰

50.5 · Sophocles: the soul of Achilles

Acheron and the Acherusian lake are the same, as Sophocles too presents Achilles’ soul saying in Polyxena:

Leaving the lake’s shores without a paean, dark in their depths, I have come, leaving the male streams of Acheron that ring with sharply striking laments,¹⁶⁴¹

50.6 · Unhealed shores and barren streams

By ⟨“shores without a paean”⟩ he means the shores of the dead, which have no healer; by male ⟨“streams,”⟩ those that bring forth nothing. For they called fruitful things female and barren things male, because the male supplies only the seed, while the female also nurtures. Hence “female dew” means dew that produces abundantly and nourishes.¹⁶⁴²

50.7 · Leaving sorrow and naming Gorgyra

They reasonably say that Acheron is crossed by those who have departed: for one who has died has passed beyond almost all the sorrows of living and is in complete freedom from distress and pain. They also fashioned Gorgyra as Acheron’s wife because the things in Hades appear terrifying to most people. Accordingly, Sophron also called his very nurse Mormolyca.”¹⁶⁴³

50.8 · Styx and the gods’ oath

After saying this about Acheron, Apollodorus adds the following about Styx in these very words: “They conceived Styx as a terrible and fearsome divine power, the gods’ oath. They settled her in Hades and deemed her worthy of this name because people are gloomy with grief and the things in Hades are hated. She is the gods’ oath because of an opposition: she possesses, so far as lies in her, a power destructive of existing and living things, whereas the gods stand apart from this in both their purpose and their character.”¹⁶⁴⁴

50.9 · Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon

Having said this much about Styx, he adds: “They fashioned the river Cocytus from wailing; it is a branch of Styx and gloom. Pyriphlegethon too is of this kind. For its name comes from the dead being burned with fire, as Homer says:¹⁶⁴⁵

50.10 · Homer: the soul flies away like a dream

For sinews no longer hold flesh and bones together; the fierce force of blazing fire subdues them as soon as life has left the white bones, and the soul, flying away like a dream, flutters off.¹⁶⁴⁶

50.11 · Souls as images without solidity

For he conceives souls as resembling the images that appear in mirrors and those formed in water. These are altogether like us and imitate our movements, but have no solid substance to be grasped and touched. Hence he calls them ‘images of mortals who have died.’”¹⁶⁴⁷

51.1 · The earthly water of Styx

From the same work. All have reported Styx to be water upon earth, with the natural power to avenge itself upon those who dare swear falsely by it. Historians have recorded the renowned water of Styx in Arcadia. Among them is Herodotus, who, recounting the affairs of Cleomenes in his sixth book, writes as follows:¹⁶⁴⁸

51.2 · Cleomenes and the Arcadian oath

“From there he came to Arcadia and set about revolutionary undertakings, uniting the Arcadians against Sparta. He brought other oaths to bear as well, and was especially eager to lead the Arcadian leaders to the city of Nonacris, binding them by an oath on the water of Styx.”¹⁶⁴⁹

51.3 · Callimachus on water and horn vessels

Callimachus, in his work On Nymphs, also describes the water’s peculiar property, saying: “Styx is water at Nonacrine in Arcadia which breaks every vessel except those made of horn.”¹⁶⁵⁰