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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

58.49 · Release to the pure dwelling

“Those judged outstanding in living reverently are the ones released and freed from these regions within the earth as from prisons. They go upward to the pure dwelling and settle upon the earth’s surface.”¹⁷⁵³

58.50 · Those sufficiently purified by philosophy

“Among these, those who have been sufficiently purified by philosophy live altogether without bodies for the time to come and reach dwellings more beautiful still. These are neither easy to describe, nor is there enough time at present.”¹⁷⁵⁴

58.51 · The prize and the hope

“But for the sake of what we have discussed, Simmias, we must do everything we can to share in virtue and understanding during life. For the prize is noble, and the hope is great.”¹⁷⁵⁵

58.52 · A noble risk, without a claim to certainty

“To insist that these things are exactly as I have described them would not be fitting for a person of sense. But that either these things or something of this kind are true of our souls and their dwellings, since the soul appears to be immortal, seems to me both a fitting belief and a risk worth taking in believing it so. For the risk is noble, and one should, as it were, chant such things to oneself.”¹⁷⁵⁶

59.1 · Porphyry: the soul’s enduring existence

Porphyry. The soul’s continued existence and eternity are among the teachings of Pythagoras most familiar to everyone and most widely celebrated. They say that, when someone told him he thought he had seen his dead father in a dream, Pythagoras replied, “You did not merely think so: you saw him.”¹⁷⁵⁷

59.2 · Keep the bedding packed for departure

One of his precepts, they say, is “to tie up the bedding every day,” since death is a journey abroad, and we must always keep our belongings packed as we await the time for the journey ⟨there⟩.¹⁷⁵⁸

59.3 · Birth and death as changes of the soul

The person who justly puts someone to death bears to the one dying the same relation that a parent bears to the one being born. For each is a change of the soul: its passage into a body is called birth, and its passage out of a body death.¹⁷⁵⁹

60.1 · Porphyry: Circe and the unchanged mind

By the same author.

What Homer says about Circe offers a remarkable contemplation of matters concerning the soul. For he says:

They had the heads, the voices, and the bristles of swine, and their bodies; but their mind remained steadfast, just as before.¹⁷⁶⁰

60.2 · An enduring soul in changing bodies

The myth, then, is a riddle expressing what Pythagoras and Plato say about the soul: that although it is imperishable by nature and eternal, it is certainly neither unaffected nor unchanging. In what are called destructions and deaths, it undergoes change and a rearrangement into other forms of bodies, pursuing, in accordance with pleasure, what suits it and is akin to it through similarity and familiarity of its manner of life.¹⁷⁶¹

60.3 · Education guards against a bestial life

Here the benefit that comes to each person with education and philosophy is ⟨clear⟩, if the soul, remembering noble things and recoiling from shameful and unlawful pleasures, can maintain control, attend to itself, and keep watch, lest it unknowingly become a beast and embrace the nature of a body ill-suited and impure in relation to virtue: an uncultivated and irrational nature, fostering and nourishing desire and anger rather than understanding.¹⁷⁶²

60.4 · The soul changes its garment

For the fate and nature of this very rearrangement has been proclaimed a daimon by Empedocles,

wrapping them in an unfamiliar tunic of flesh,

and clothing the souls afresh.¹⁷⁶³

60.5 · Circe as the circuit of rebirth

Homer has called the circular course and revolution of rebirth Circe, the daughter of the Sun, who continually joins and links every destruction to birth, and birth in turn to destruction.¹⁷⁶⁴

60.6 · Aeaea and the bewildered souls

The island Aeaea is the portion and region of the surrounding expanse that receives the dying person. When souls first fall into it, they wander, experience unfamiliar things, lament, and do not know

where the darkness lies, nor where the sun that shines for mortals goes beneath the earth.¹⁷⁶⁵

60.7 · The mixture of embodied existence

Longing, through their pleasures, for the familiar way of life in and with flesh in which they were reared, they fall once more into the mixed draught of coming-to-be. It mixes together and truly stirs into one things eternal and mortal, intelligent and subject to affections, Olympian and earthborn. The souls are enchanted and softened by the pleasures that lead them back into birth.¹⁷⁶⁶

60.8 · Fortune and self-control at the transition

At this point especially, souls need much good fortune and much self-control, so that they do not follow and yield to the worst parts or affections of themselves and exchange their life for a miserable and bestial one.¹⁷⁶⁷

60.9 · The crossroads as the soul’s three parts

For the crossroads spoken of and believed to exist in Hades is situated somewhere here, at the divisions of the soul: the reasoning, spirited, and appetitive parts. Each supplies from itself an impulse and an inclination toward its own kind of life. These things are no longer myth or poetry, but truth and an account of nature.¹⁷⁶⁸

60.10 · When appetite rules

For those in whom the appetitive part flourishes, prevails, and rules at the change into birth undergo, he says, a transformation into sluggish [and] bodies and lives made turbid and impure by love of pleasure and gluttony.¹⁷⁶⁹

1753.The Greek opening is elliptical; English understands “outstanding” from diapherontōs, “exceptionally.” The edition’s desmōtēriōn, “prisons,” is retained. The surface here is the true earth described earlier, distinguished from the hollows where ordinary human life takes place.

1754.The passage distinguishes the pure upper dwelling from the still finer destination of those purified by philosophy. Their future life is explicitly without bodies. Socrates declines to describe the further dwellings, so no additional geography has been supplied here.

1755.The story returns to its practical purpose: cultivating aretē and phronēsis, “virtue and understanding.” Athlon is the prize of a contest. The assertion of a great hope leads directly to the qualification about certainty in the next sentence.

1756.Socrates expressly distinguishes the exact details of his account from the more general hope it supports. “Appears to be immortal” retains the qualification in the printed Greek. Epāidein evokes chanting an incantation; the phrase “as it were” makes this a comparison. This closes source excerpt 58 at printed p. 444 line 29.

1757.The heading names Porphyry without naming a work. The printed Pythagorou and doxai follow corrections recorded in the apparatus. The anecdote is presented as a report about Pythagoras, introduced by “they say.” His reply contrasts seeming with seeing; it is not converted here into independent evidence of the dream’s object.

1758.The bedding precept is interpreted as readiness for departure. Strōmatodesmon follows the edition’s correction and denotes the bundle of bedding. The supplement supplies the ending of ekeise, the directional word “there”; English marks the whole word. The reported teaching concerns preparedness for the appointed time of death.

1759.Dikaiōs, “justly,” is taken with putting to death; the qualification remains explicit. Logos here means a relation, not a spoken account. The comparison treats birth and death as opposite changes in the soul’s relation to a body. This completes excerpt 59 at printed p. 445 line 13; Porphyry’s interpretation of Circe follows in excerpt 60.

1760.The heading continues the attribution to Porphyry. The verses are Odyssey 10.239-240, describing the companions transformed by Circe. The survival of their mind within altered bodies provides the starting point for the allegory. The decimal suffixes are modern comparison divisions.

1761.Ainigma marks an interpretation beneath the narrative. The distinction is between continued existence and freedom from all change or affection; the former does not imply the latter. Metakosmēsis denotes a rearrangement into another bodily form. The difficult accumulation biou diaitēs is conveyed as manner of life.

1762.The supplement completes dēlon; English marks the whole word clear. The printed conditional an and dynētai are retained rather than replaced by the alternative wording recorded in the apparatus. The long sentence makes education a means of guarding the soul’s dispositions. The attachment of physin to the preceding genitive construction is compressed; the English interpretation remains provisional.

1763.The edition identifies the verse as Empedocles, line 402 in Stein’s numbering. The unusual printed allognōti is retained, provisionally rendered unfamiliar; the apparatus records competing readings involving a differently colored garment. The Greek does not print an object within the verse; English supplies them from the souls in the next clause. Daimōn is not equated here with an evil spirit.

1764.The identification of Circe with a circuit belongs to Porphyry’s allegorical reading. Palingenesia means renewed birth. The Sun’s continual linking of birth and destruction explains Circe’s parentage within that interpretation; it is not a separate statement by Homer in the verses quoted above.

1765.To periechon is the encompassing region, left unspecified here. Porphyry applies Odyssey 10.190-191 to the souls’ initial disorientation. The quotation begins with only part of the first Homeric line; the omitted words have not been supplied. The source’s eīs’ is retained in the second line.

1766.Kykeōn is a stirred mixture or drink, here also an image of the mingling involved in embodiment. The verb kykōsa reinforces that image. The three paired contrasts have been retained separately. The participles enchanted and softened describe the souls, following the edition’s corrections; the sentence continues into the next unit.

1767.The printed eutychia means good fortune; the apparatus’s alternative eupsychia, courage, is not adopted. Sōphrosynē is self-control or moderation. The prospect of a bestial life concerns the soul’s dispositions as it enters another embodiment, not a claim that its enduring nature is destroyed.

1768.The three roads are interpreted through the three parts of the soul. Thymoeides is the spirited part, associated with anger in the next example; it is distinguished from appetite. The assertion that the account is true and natural is Porphyry’s claim within this interpretation.

1769.The edition prints nōthē, sluggish, followed by rejected kai, preserved as the bracketed and. Removing it leaves the intended English construction. The apparatus offers alternatives and a possible additional adjective; these have not been inserted. The subject of he says is not restated, so English leaves the reference open.