Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

54.7 · Souls sent by Persephone

They are sent to the vapors of the blood by Persephone, for it is impossible for them to come without being sent by those who preside over them. For this reason he also prays

to mighty Hades and dread Persephone.¹⁶⁸¹

54.8 · The order of appearances and the argument’s limit

She sends the women first, since they dwell near Acheron and are inferior to the souls of men. For the souls of men dwell in unmixed darkness, far from the river and from those being punished. All these matters are full of divine wisdom, but we pass over them quickly: they are not our present subject, and have necessarily been brought in for the sake of the interpretation of Styx.¹⁶⁸²

55.1 · Porphyry: the soul and its image

Porphyry, from Starting Points toward the Intelligible. Just as, for a soul, being on earth means not treading the earth as bodies do, but presiding over a body that treads the earth, so too a soul is in Hades when it presides over an image whose nature allows it to be in a place, but whose substance is ⟨dark⟩. Thus, since Hades is a dark place underground, the soul comes to be in Hades by drawing the image along with it, although it is not severed from being.¹⁶⁸³

55.2 · The imprint upon the accompanying breath

For when the soul leaves the solid body, the breath accompanies it, which it gathered from the spheres. Through attachment to the body, it has projected the particular formative principle by which it was related during life to a body of a certain kind. Through this attachment an imprint of imagination is impressed upon the breath, and in this way the soul draws the image along with it. It is said to be in Hades because the breath was of an invisible and dark nature.¹⁶⁸⁴

55.3 · How an immaterial soul is said to move

Since the heavy, moist breath extends as far as the regions underground, the soul itself too is said to pass beneath the earth. This does not mean that an immaterial substance changes places and comes to be in places, but that it assumes relations to bodies naturally capable of changing places and occupying a place. Such bodies receive it according to their capacities, in consequence of the soul’s own particular disposition. For whatever its disposition, it finds a body defined by its rank and its proper characteristics.¹⁶⁸⁵

55.4 · Aetherial, sunlike, and moonlike bodies

Accordingly, when its disposition is purer, a body close to the immaterial is congenial to it, namely the aetherial body. When it proceeds from reason to the projection of imagination, the sunlike body is congenial to it. When it has become feminine and is affected with passion toward form, the moonlike body lies beside it. But when it falls into bodies constituted from moist exhalations, whenever it settles in accordance with its own formless form, complete ignorance of being follows, together with darkness and childishness.¹⁶⁸⁶

55.5 · The weight of the lingering shadow

Indeed, even at its departure, if its breath is still clouded by the thoroughly moist exhalation, the soul draws a shadow along with it and is weighed down. Such breath naturally hastens into the earth’s depths, unless some other cause draws it in the opposite direction. Just as a soul clothed in the earthen shell must be held upon the earth, so a soul drawing moist breath along with it must be clothed in an image.¹⁶⁸⁷

55.6 · Habitual attachment to nature

It draws moist breath along with it when it has continually practiced consorting with nature, whose activity is in moisture and rather beneath the earth.¹⁶⁸⁸

55.7 · Dry radiance

But when it has practiced withdrawing from nature, it becomes a dry radiance, without shadow or cloud. For moisture forms a cloud in air, while dryness brings forth a dry radiance from the vapor.¹⁶⁸⁹

56.1 · Plato: Socrates’ hope after death

Plato, from the Phaedo. “For my part,” he said, “Simmias and Cebes, if I did not think that I would go first to other gods, wise and good, and then to dead human beings better than those here, I would be wrong not to resent death. But as things are, be assured that I hope to reach good men. On this point I would not insist very strongly. Yet as for going to gods who are thoroughly good masters, be assured that, if I would insist on anything else of this kind, I would insist on this too.”¹⁶⁹⁰

56.2 · A better prospect for the good

“For these reasons I do not resent death in the same way, but have good hope that ⟨there is something⟩ for those who have died, and, as has indeed long been said, something far better for the good than for the bad.”¹⁶⁹¹

57.1 · The invisible soul and its destination

From the same work. “The soul, then, the invisible thing that departs to another place of the same kind, noble, pure, and invisible, to Hades in the true sense, to the good and wise god, where, god willing, my own soul must shortly go: is this soul, of such a character and nature, immediately blown apart and destroyed when it leaves the body, as most people say?”¹⁶⁹²

57.2 · Philosophy as practice for death

“Far from it, my dear Cebes and Simmias. The case is much more like this: suppose it departs pure, drawing nothing bodily along with it, because during life it had no willing association with the body, but fled it and gathered itself into itself, always practicing this. This means nothing other than practicing philosophy rightly and truly practicing being dead with ease. Would this not be the practice of death?”

“Certainly.”¹⁶⁹³

1681.Homer, Odyssey 11.47. The person praying is Odysseus. “Those who preside” renders the Greek without adding an unprinted noun. The epithet epainē is rendered “dread,” its force in this formula. Persephone’s sending of the souls explains the restriction on appearances stated earlier.

1682.The hierarchy of women’s and men’s souls is stated as Porphyry presents it. The men’s “unmixed darkness” is not described as punishment: their position is expressly far from the punished souls. Theosophia means divine wisdom here, without reference to the later modern movement bearing that name. This closes excerpt 54 and the present extracts from On the Styx.

1683.The heading names a different work by Porphyry. The edition cites page 76 of Holstenius. “Dark” marks a supplement affecting part of the Greek word skoteinēn. The soul’s presence in a place is explained through its relation to a body or image, not through bodily extension of the soul itself. “Being” denotes the reality from which the soul is not detached.

1684.Pneuma, “breath,” is the subtle accompaniment or vehicle of the soul in this account; it is distinct from both the soul and its solid body. The spheres are the cosmic spheres. “Particular formative principle” provisionally renders logos merikos, here a principle of bodily relation rather than ordinary reasoning. The Greek shifts from a participle referring to the soul to “an imprint” as subject; English divides the construction without hiding that difficulty.

1685.The distinction between literal movement of bodies and the soul’s relations to them is central. The compressed clause concerning the bodies’ capacities and the soul’s disposition is translated provisionally: the condition of the soul determines the kind of body suited to receive it. “Proper characteristics” supplies the sense of the substantival tois oikeiois, whose noun is not expressed.

1686.The sequence associates different dispositions with aetherial, sunlike, moonlike, and moist bodies. Thēlyntheisē is literally “having become feminine”; its gendered valuation is retained. The final Greek construction is difficult: “constituted” agrees with “bodies” across an intervening clause. English brings those words together, but retains the unresolved expression “its own formless form” rather than silently repairing it. This sentence remains provisional.

1687.“Departure” is the soul’s exit from the solid body. The “earthen shell” is a bodily covering; the comparison explains how a subtler image can also accompany and burden the soul. The qualification concerning another counteracting cause remains unspecified. The descent belongs literally to the accompanying breath, consistently with the distinction made above.

1688.The adjective “moist” stands without its noun in Greek; “breath” is understood from the preceding sentences. Meletan conveys practice or habitual exercise, here directed toward association with nature. The final “rather beneath the earth” follows the compressed printed wording and does not add an unexpressed comparison.

1689.The final contrast is between moist cloudiness and dry radiance. It completes the account of the soul’s accompanying condition as shaped by its practice and attachment. “From the vapor” follows apo tēs atmidos; the translation leaves the ancient physical imagery intact rather than recasting it as a modern explanation. Excerpt 55 ends here; Plato’s Phaedo follows in excerpt 56.

1690.The edition identifies the extract as Plato, Phaedo 63B-C. Socrates speaks to Simmias and Cebes. His expectation of meeting good dead people is expressly less firmly asserted than his expectation of good divine rulers; the translation preserves that difference. “Other gods” follows the printed allous. The decimal suffixes are modern comparison divisions.

1691.The words einai ti, “there is something,” are supplied in Wachsmuth’s edition from the parallel Phaedo text and remain marked. The phrase leaves the prospect general rather than naming a particular reward. This closes excerpt 56.

1692.The heading continues the Phaedo; Wachsmuth gives 80D-82C for excerpt 57. “Invisible” renders aeides, whose sound is linked here with Hades. “In the true sense” makes that interpretive connection explicit in the Greek. The opening question contrasts the soul’s described nature and destination with the popular fear that it disperses at death.

1693.The repeated meletan, “practice,” connects a way of living with readiness for separation from the body. The wording “itself into itself” remains in the supplied text, although the apparatus notes its absence from most witnesses to the parallel Plato passage. “Being dead” follows the perfect infinitive tethnanai. The argument’s consequence follows in the next unit.