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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

63.7 · Foreknowledge of death must cease

“‘First, then,’ he said, ‘they must cease to know their death in advance; for now they do know it beforehand. Prometheus has already been instructed to put an end to this knowledge among them.’”¹⁷⁸⁶

63.8 · Soul judges soul without coverings

“‘Next, they must be judged stripped of all these things, for they must be judged after death. The judge too must be stripped and dead, contemplating with the soul itself the soul itself of each person who has suddenly died, bereft of all relatives and having left all that adornment upon the earth, so that the judgment may be just.’”¹⁷⁸⁷

63.9 · Three sons appointed as judges

“‘Recognizing this before you did, I appointed sons of my own as judges: two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthys, and one from Europe, Aeacus. When they die, they will judge in the meadow, at the crossroads from which the two roads lead, one to the Isles of the Blessed, the other to Tartarus.’”¹⁷⁸⁸

63.10 · Minos settles the difficult cases

“‘Rhadamanthys will judge those from Asia, and Aeacus those from Europe. To Minos I shall grant the privilege of seniority, to decide further whenever either of the others has a case he cannot resolve, so that the judgment concerning the journey assigned to human beings may be as just as possible.’”¹⁷⁸⁹

64.1 · Plato: Er returns to life

Plato, Republic, Book X.

“Yet I shall not tell you a tale of Alcinous,” I said, “but one of a valiant man, Er son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth. He once died in war. When the bodies were gathered on the tenth day, already decaying, his was taken up intact. He was brought home for burial, and on the twelfth day, as he lay on the funeral pyre, he returned to life. Having revived, he told what he had seen in the other world.”¹⁷⁹⁰

64.2 · The four openings

He said that when his soul left him, it journeyed with many others, and they reached a certain supernatural place. There were two openings in the earth beside one another, and two others in the heaven above, directly opposite them.¹⁷⁹¹

64.3 · The judges and the signs of judgment

Judges sat between these openings. After passing judgment, they ordered the just to travel along the road to the right and upward through heaven, with signs of the judgments attached in front. The unjust were to take the road to the left and downward, also bearing signs, but behind them, of everything they had done.¹⁷⁹²

64.4 · A messenger to the living

When he himself approached, they said that he must become a messenger to human beings concerning what happened there. They instructed him to listen to and observe everything in the place.¹⁷⁹³

64.5 · Souls leaving and returning

He saw souls departing there through the respective openings of heaven and earth after judgment had been passed on them. Through the other two openings, souls came up from the earth covered with grime and dust, while others descended from heaven clean.¹⁷⁹⁴

64.6 · Meeting in the meadow

Each arriving company seemed to have returned from a long journey. They gladly went into the meadow and made camp as though at a festival gathering. Those who knew one another exchanged greetings. The souls arriving from the earth asked the others about what happened above, ⟨and⟩ those from heaven asked about what had happened below.¹⁷⁹⁵

64.7 · Two accounts of the journey

They told one another their stories. Some lamented and wept as they remembered all the terrible things they had suffered and seen on their journey beneath the earth, a journey lasting a thousand years. Those from heaven, in turn, described their blessed experiences and sights of unimaginable beauty.¹⁷⁹⁶

64.8 · Tenfold repayment

To recount the greater part, Glaucon, would take a long time. But he said that the chief point was this: for every wrong they had ever done anyone, and for every person each had wronged, they had paid the penalty in turn, ten times for each offense. Each repayment occupied a hundred years, on the assumption that this was the length of a human life, so that they would pay a tenfold recompense for the wrong.¹⁷⁹⁷

64.9 · Wrongdoing on a large scale

For example, if any had caused the deaths of many, betrayed cities or armies and delivered people into slavery, or shared responsibility for some other maltreatment, they would receive tenfold suffering for all these acts.¹⁷⁹⁸

64.10 · Good deeds and very short lives

And again, if they had performed good deeds and had been just and reverent, they received their due on the same terms. About those newly born who had lived only a short time, he said other things that need not be recalled.¹⁷⁹⁹

64.11 · Greater recompenses

He described still greater recompenses for irreverence and reverence toward gods and parents, and for killing committed with one’s own hand.¹⁸⁰⁰

64.12 · Ardiaeus the tyrant

For he said that he had been present when one person asked another where Ardiaeus the Great was. This Ardiaeus had been tyrant of a city in Pamphylia a thousand years before that time. He had killed his elderly father and his elder brother and committed many other impious deeds, according to the account. The person questioned replied, he said: “He has not come, nor will he come here.”¹⁸⁰¹

64.13 · The opening refuses passage

“For among the terrible sights we witnessed was this. When we were near the mouth of the opening, about to ascend after enduring everything else, we suddenly saw him and others, almost all of them tyrants. There were also some private individuals who had committed great wrongs. They thought they were now going to ascend, but the opening would not admit them. It bellowed whenever anyone incurably wicked in this way, or anyone who had not paid a sufficient penalty, attempted to go up.”¹⁸⁰²

64.14 · The fiery guards

“Then,” he said, “savage men, fiery to look upon, who stood nearby and observed the scene, seized some of them separately and led them away.”¹⁸⁰³

1786.The object understood with put an end is the foreknowledge just described. Prometheus is assigned this particular task within Zeus’s reform. The passage supplies no further account of how it is accomplished.

1787.The repeated itself emphasizes direct examination without the earlier coverings. The printed construction shifts from the genitive phrase each person who has died to accusative expressions describing the person stripped of relatives and adornment; English preserves the intended relation without altering the Greek. Kosmos here is adornment, not the universe.

1788.The two outgoing roads are expressed by the Greek dual, phereton tō hodō, retained in the transcription. Together with the approach they form the crossroads. Asia and Europe belong to the story’s allocation of judges, and the appointment is expressly to take effect after those judges die.

1789.The scan prints aporēton with a single rho, interpreted as a matter that presents difficulty; the apparatus distinguishes this from the reading with doubled rho. Presbeia conveys the prerogative of seniority. English supplies may be in the final clause, where the printed excerpt leaves the verb unexpressed. Excerpt 63 ends at p. 451 line 2; the story of Er follows in excerpt 64.

1790.The edition locates this excerpt at Republic 614B-616C. The opening plays on Alkinou, of Alcinous, and alkimou, valiant. English adds in the other world to clarify the literal there. The account is presented through the dialogue’s narrator and Er’s report; the decimal subdivisions are modern comparison divisions.

1791.Daimonion describes the character of the place, without identifying a particular god or daimon. The printed hou is the pronoun referring to Er, not the alternative oun, then, recorded in the apparatus. The paired openings establish separate routes into and out of each region.

1792.The Greek leaves road understood after the feminine article. The signs distinguish the decision displayed on the front of the just from the record of deeds displayed behind the unjust. The participial construction concerning attachment is compressed; English does not assign an agent beyond what the passage requires.

1793.Angelos here means messenger. Er receives an assignment to report rather than an order to enter one of the routes. Listening as well as seeing matters because his narrative includes accounts given by other souls.

1794.The returning souls’ condition gives visible expression to the contrast between their journeys. Auchmos conveys dirt or squalor here and is distinguished from the dust named alongside it. The Greek dual marks the two remaining openings.

1795.The editor supplies kai, and, from the parallel Plato text; the addition remains marked on both sides. The two places are literally there and among those others. English uses above and below to keep the exchange clear. Panēgyris suggests a general festival assembly.

1796.The thousand years belong expressly to the journey described. Eupatheiai denotes good or happy experiences, in contrast to the suffering recalled by the other company. The contrast concerns both what the souls underwent and what they witnessed.

1797.The direct address to Glaucon briefly brings the dialogue’s narrator forward. The hundred-year life is an assumption within the narrative’s scheme of repayment. The English separates the condensed Greek references to wrongs and persons wronged while preserving both.

1798.The scan prints kakouchias, maltreatment, retained here. The examples extend responsibility beyond the person who directly acts: metaitioi includes those sharing in the cause. The omitted object of delivered into slavery is made explicit as people, without narrowing it to one of the preceding groups.

1799.The corresponding recompense for good deeds follows the same general scheme. The narrator expressly declines to recount the treatment of very short lives; the missing detail is not supplied. Hosioi conveys religious or sacred propriety as well as moral conduct.

1800.The printed autocheiras phonou is grammatically difficult and is retained. English provisionally takes it as personal responsibility for homicide; it does not impose the narrower meaning suicide. Misthoi, recompenses, covers both favorable and unfavorable outcomes in this context.

1801.The great is the designation used in the narrative, not an endorsement. Er now reports another soul’s testimony about Ardiaeus. The printed an hēxei combines the particle an with a future indicative; English conveys the emphatic exclusion without silently altering the Greek.

1802.The testimony distinguishes incurable wickedness from a penalty not yet sufficiently paid. Idiōtai are private persons, contrasted with rulers, not people deficient in intelligence. The printed houtōs, in this way, and the personified bellowing of the opening are retained.

1803.The edition prints thema, scene or spectacle; the apparatus records phthengma, sound, in the parallel Plato text. English follows the printed reading. Diapyroi idein describes the men’s fiery appearance without specifying their substance. The sentence continues with the treatment of Ardiaeus.