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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

60.11 · Anger seeks the body of a predator

But when a soul arrives at a second birth with its spirited part utterly brutalized by harsh rivalries and murderous cruelties arising from some quarrel or hostility, full of recent bitterness and resentfulness, it casts itself into the nature of a wolf or lion. It offers its body to the ruling passion as an instrument of retaliation and fits it around that passion.¹⁷⁷⁰

60.12 · Purification at the approach of death

Therefore, especially at the approach of death, one must, as in an initiation, keep oneself pure and hold the soul apart from every base passion. Having lulled every violent desire to sleep and placed envy, hostility, and anger as far as possible from the faculty of understanding, one must leave the body.¹⁷⁷¹

60.13 · Hermes as guiding reason

In this way Hermes of the golden wand, who is in truth reason, meets the soul and clearly shows it what is noble. He either bars it entirely and keeps it away from the mixed draught, or, if it has drunk, preserves it in a human life and character for the longest time possible.¹⁷⁷²

61.1 · Porphyry: Elysium and the moon

By the same author.

Again, hinting that the region about the moon is the fitting place after death for the souls of those who have lived reverently, he intimated it by saying:

But to the Elysian plain and the limits of the earth the immortals will send you, where fair-haired Rhadamanthys dwells.¹⁷⁷³

61.2 · The moon’s sunlit surface

He appropriately called the surface of the moon illuminated by the sun the Elysian plain, “when it waxes in the sun’s rays,” as Timotheus says.¹⁷⁷⁴

61.3 · The earth’s shadow as its limit

By the limits of the earth he meant the farthest reaches of night, which the mathematical astronomers say is the earth’s shadow, often touching the moon. On this account, the earth has as its limit that point beyond which its shadow does not extend.¹⁷⁷⁵

62.1 · Plato: sensation and the passions

Plato, from the Timaeus.

“First, [then,] it would be necessary for sensation to arise naturally in them all as one common faculty from forceful impressions; second, desire mingled with pleasure and pain; and, in addition, fear and anger, whatever follows upon them, and whatever by nature stands opposed to them.”¹⁷⁷⁶

62.2 · Mastery and the return to a star

“If they mastered these things, they would live justly; if mastered by them, unjustly. The one who lived well for the appointed span would return to the dwelling of the star assigned as his companion and would have a happy life.”¹⁷⁷⁷

62.3 · The sequence of further births

“But if he failed in these things, he would change into a woman’s nature at his second birth. If even then he did not cease from wickedness, he would continually change into some corresponding bestial nature, according to the likeness between the kind of wickedness he practiced and the kind of birth it produced.”¹⁷⁷⁸

62.4 · Reason restores the original condition

“And in passing through these changes he would not cease from his troubles until, following the revolution of the same and similar within him, he mastered by reason the great throng that had subsequently grown upon him from fire, water, air, and earth, noisy and irrational as it was, and reached the form of his first and best condition.”¹⁷⁷⁹

63.1 · Plato: a story offered as true

Plato, from the Gorgias.

“Listen, then,” he says, “to a very fine account, which you will regard as a myth, I suppose, but I as an account. For I shall tell you what I am about to say as something true.”¹⁷⁸⁰

63.2 · The division of divine rule

“For, as Homer says, Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto divided sovereignty among themselves after receiving it from their father.”¹⁷⁸¹

63.3 · The law governing the dead

“Under Cronus, then, this law concerning human beings existed, and it has always remained among the gods, even now: whoever has passed through life justly and reverently shall, when he dies, go to the Isles of the Blessed and dwell in complete happiness, free from evils; whoever has lived unjustly and impiously shall go to the prison of requital and punishment that they call Tartarus.”¹⁷⁸²

63.4 · Living judges make mistaken decisions

“Under Cronus, and while Zeus was still newly in power, living people judged the living, giving judgment on the day when those being judged were about to die. The cases were therefore wrongly decided. Pluto and the guardians coming from the Isles of the Blessed told Zeus that people undeserving of their destinations were arriving in both places.”¹⁷⁸³

63.5 · The misleading clothing of appearances

“Zeus therefore said: ‘I will put a stop to this. For now the cases are wrongly judged: those undergoing judgment,’ he said, ‘are judged while clothed. Many people,’ he continued, ‘have wicked souls but are dressed in beautiful bodies, noble lineages, and riches. When their judgment takes place, many witnesses come forward for them to testify that they have lived justly.’”¹⁷⁸⁴

63.6 · The judges are also clothed

“‘The judges are overawed by these things; at the same time they themselves judge while clothed, with eyes, ears, and the whole body placed as a covering before their own soul. All these things stand in their way, both their own coverings and those of the people being judged.’”¹⁷⁸⁵

1770.The printed phonikais, murderous, follows a correction in the apparatus. Baryphronēs is unusual, rendered provisionally resentfulness; the apparatus gives baryphrosynēs as an alternative. The aorist erripsen occurs within a general conditional description and is conveyed by the present. The body is treated as the instrument fitted to the prevailing disposition.

1771.Teletē is an initiation or rite; the edition retains it rather than the variant meaning death. The difficult tou phronountos is taken with as far as possible, meaning away from that which understands. This interpretation preserves the printed genitive and remains provisional; the apparatus records attempts to alter the construction.

1772.The soul is the understood object, made explicit in English; no additional noun is inserted into the Greek. Logos is now identified with Hermes as guiding reason. The edition cites Odyssey 10.227 here; that printed locator does not accompany a complete quoted verse. Piousan, the printed participle meaning having drunk, connects the conclusion to the earlier mixed draught.

1773.The heading still attributes the interpretation to Porphyry; the poet understood as he is Homer. The verses are Odyssey 4.563-564. The lunar identification belongs to the interpretation, rather than to the words of the verses themselves. English supplies dwells to complete their elliptical final clause.

1774.The edition identifies the short quotation as Timotheus, fragment 3 in the collection it cites. Aexetai is the printed correction; aliou is the poetic form for of the sun. The explanation links the name of Elysium to the moon’s illuminated surface. The brief quotation remains embedded in prose as in the source.

1775.Mathēmatikoi here concerns those giving a mathematical account of the heavens. Porphyry makes the reach of the earth’s shadow explain the poetic limits of the earth. This reports his cosmological interpretation; it should not be read as a modern measurement of the shadow’s extent. The printed relative hou and following negative are both retained.

1776.The edition locates excerpt 62 at Timaeus 42A-D. The passage begins within an account of souls entering embodied life; no missing introductory speech is invented. Rejected oun remains bracketed. Pathēmata here means impressions or affections acting upon the embodied being; erōs is rendered desire, with its pleasure and pain both explicit.

1777.The opposition between controlling the passions and being controlled by them determines the ethical outcome. The companion star renders xynnomou astrou, preserving the personal association in the Greek. The English does not add familiar to happy, although that addition is recorded for another text in the apparatus.

1778.The order of male, female, and animal embodiments reflects the hierarchy in this ancient account; it is retained as part of the text. The compressed wording around kakias tropon and geneseōs is interpreted as matching habitual vice with the resulting embodiment. This syntactical interpretation remains provisional; the Greek has not been rearranged.

1779.The internal revolution belongs to the account’s description of rational order. The noisy throng arises from the four bodily elements and is mastered by logos, reason. The text’s distinction between the original condition and what subsequently accrued is preserved. This closes excerpt 62 at printed p. 449 line 9.

1780.The edition locates excerpt 63 at Gorgias 523A-524A. The speaker is Socrates. His contrast turns on mythos and logos; account is repeated to preserve that verbal contrast, with the claim to truth stated in the next sentence. This is a different framing from his qualification at the end of the Phaedo extract.

1781.This is a prose reference to Homer, rather than a verse quotation. Pluto names the ruler of the underworld. The succession from the father prepares the contrast between judgment under Cronus and its later reform under Zeus; the excerpt itself supplies that sequence.

1782.The law itself remains constant; the procedure for judging people will change. Hosiōs and atheōs concern reverence and impiety in conduct. The latter is not used here as a precise label for a modern philosophical position. Tisis and dikē retain their paired senses of requital and punishment.

1783.The day of expected death belongs to those undergoing judgment. The complaint concerns inappropriate arrivals at both destinations, without saying that every judgment was mistaken. Epimelētai is rendered guardians; the text does not further define their offices.

1784.The clothing metaphor includes body, ancestry, and wealth, not simply garments. Zeus speaks within Socrates’ narrative. The apparatus records an additional explanatory sentence in Plato’s parallel text after are judged; it has not been added to Stobaeus’s excerpt.

1785.The impediment is double: the apparent advantages of those judged and the judges’ own bodily means of apprehension. The printed reflexives hautōn are retained. Amphiasmata extends the same clothing image; it does not introduce a second kind of formal judicial attire.