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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

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Book I Chapter 49

64.15 · Dragged toward Tartarus

“But they bound Ardiaeus and others hand, foot, and head, threw them down and flayed them, and dragged them off beside the road, scraping them over thorn bushes. They indicated to everyone passing by the reasons for this, and that they were being led away to be cast into Tartarus.”¹⁸⁰⁴

64.16 · The fear of hearing the roar

Of the many and varied fears they had experienced there, this surpassed them all: that the sound might come for each of them as he ascended. They went up with the greatest relief when the opening remained silent. Such, then, were the penalties and punishments, while the benefits corresponded to them on the opposite side.¹⁸⁰⁵

64.17 · The column of light

When each company had spent seven days in the meadow, they had to rise and set out on the eighth. On the fourth day of their journey they reached a place from which they could see a light extending straight from above through all heaven and earth, like a column. It most resembled a rainbow, but was brighter and purer.¹⁸⁰⁶

64.18 · The bonds of heaven

After traveling another day’s journey, they reached the light. There, in its midst, they saw the ends of heaven’s bonds stretched out from heaven.¹⁸⁰⁷

65.1 · Iamblichus: accounts of purification

⟨Iamblichus, from On the Soul.⟩

Plotinus and most of the Platonists regard the most complete purification as the putting away of affections and form-producing discriminations, disregard for all opinion [and] and withdrawal from thoughts bound up with matter, fulfillment from intellect and being, and assimilation of what is contemplated to that which contemplates.¹⁸⁰⁸

65.2 · A higher faculty that needs no purification

Some of these thinkers also frequently declare that purification arises in the irrational soul and in the reasoning faculty concerned with opinion. But the essential rational principle itself and the soul’s intellect always stand above the cosmos; that intellect is joined to intelligible realities and never needs perfecting or release from what is superfluous.¹⁸⁰⁹

65.3 · Who carries out the three processes?

Let us next distinguish by whom each of these things is accomplished: I mean the work of judgment, of punishment, and of purification. According to most Pythagoreans and Platonists, it is accomplished by the individual souls themselves.¹⁸¹⁰

65.4 · More universal sources of action

According to the more exact thinkers among them, it is accomplished by souls that are more universal and more perfect, by the one soul that is a whole, by the order of the universe, by the intellect that rules even over the entire cosmic arrangement.¹⁸¹¹

65.5 · The gods and the higher kinds

According to what the more ancient thinkers maintain, it is accomplished ⟨by⟩ the visible gods, and above all by the Sun, by the invisible creative causes, and by all the higher kinds: I mean heroes, daimons, angels, and gods, who preside over the entire constitution of things.¹⁸¹²

65.6 · The end of judgment

What, then, is their end, for the sake of which they first came to subsist [of them]? The end of judgment is the unmixed purity of good things, the separate perfection of noble things themselves, standing wholly apart from what is imperfect, and the transcendent preeminence of superior things, itself by itself, alongside which nothing inferior can ever be ranked.¹⁸¹³

65.7 · Other views of judgment’s benefit

These are the principal points concerning judgment accepted by the older thinkers. Others, perhaps, would regard good order, the separation of the inferior from the better, and similar things as more decisive causes of its benefit.¹⁸¹⁴

65.8 · The perfection of punishment

The perfection of punishment would consist in the better prevailing over the worse, in restraining evil, overturning it, and utterly abolishing it, and in establishing for all an equality proportionate to their worth.¹⁸¹⁵

65.9 · Competing accounts of punishment

In relation to these views of the older thinkers, some posit numerical equality or multiplication as the benefit derived from punishment; others, suffering in return the very wrongs that the perpetrators previously inflicted; others, release from vice; and others, something else of that kind. Most Platonists and Pythagoreans revolve around these positions.¹⁸¹⁶

65.10 · The fullest benefits of purification

As for purification, let the following be understood as its most beneficial results: removal of what is foreign, restoration of one’s proper essence, perfection, fulfillment, self-sufficiency, ascent to the cause that brought one forth, conjunction of the parts with the wholes, and the bestowal of power, life, and activity from the wholes upon particular things, together with other results of this kind.¹⁸¹⁷

65.11 · Purification understood as release

Others do not accept the more ancient thinkers who set these forth as purification’s truly beneficial results. Instead, they place before it such lesser ends as release from the body, escape from bonds, liberation from decay, and discharge from coming-to-be, as though these surpassed the more comprehensive ends. Among them are most Platonists and Pythagoreans, divided among different positions.¹⁸¹⁸

65.12 · The limits of judgment

Let us further distinguish the limits of these three processes, determining how far each extends. Souls are subject to judgment up to this point: so long as they are assigned to coming-to-be, have not withdrawn from the universe, and remain in some way mixed with things different from themselves.¹⁸¹⁹

65.13 · Souls released from judgment

But souls that have been set free, unbound and unmixed, wholly subject to no master, belonging to themselves and filled with the gods, have at the same time been entirely released from judgment.¹⁸²⁰

1804.Knamptontes evokes carding or scraping, here against the thorns of aspalathos. The printed hōn heneka ti is compressed and irregular; reasons for this is a provisional rendering. No fuller wording from a parallel text has been inserted. The violent punishment belongs to the reported vision.

1805.The narration returns to indirect report. Unlike thema in 64.14, phthengma here expressly means a sound. The final contrast restores the favorable side of the account after the description of punishment; the benefits are corresponding reversals, not further penalties.

1806.The two time counts refer respectively to the stay in the meadow and the ensuing journey. Iris is rendered rainbow in the visual comparison. The printed phōs euthys is retained, with euthys understood adverbially as straight; the Greek has not been regularized to a neuter adjective.

1807.The reference of autou is taken to be heaven: the bonds belong to it. The excerpt ends here, at printed p. 454 line 9. This completes Stobaeus’s excerpt of the story, not the whole story of Er in the Republic; its later narrative has not been added.

1808.The attribution and title are supplied by the editor after Canter. The rejected te remains bracketed; removing its English and removes the doubled conjunction. Morphōtikai diagnōseis is provisionally form-producing discriminations. The direction of assimilation follows the printed Greek, from the contemplated to the contemplator, and has not been reversed.

1809.The passage contrasts opinion-forming reasoning with the essential rational principle and intellect. The singular auton is taken to refer to the immediately preceding intellect. Intellectual union is reported as the view of some of the thinkers under discussion, not imposed as the position of every author in the anthology.

1810.Three processes organize the following discussion: krisis, judgment; dikē, punishment or requital; and katharsis, purification. Meristai psychai are particular or individual souls, contrasted in the next unit with more comprehensive souls. The excerpt begins within a larger discussion, so these things need not refer only to the preceding sentences.

1811.The more exact thinkers is the author’s evaluation. The final genitive is taken with basileuontos, rules over; kai has the force of even. This makes the cosmic arrangement the sphere of intellect’s rule. Taking kai as another and would instead extend the list of agencies; the governing construction is preferred here.

1812.The supplied hypo, by, follows the supplement credited to Heeren. Visible and invisible distinguish two sets of divine causes; the list of higher kinds is kept in its printed order. Angeloi is angels here within that hierarchy, unlike Er’s ordinary role as a messenger in 64.4.

1813.The rejected autōn is retained as the deliberately awkward bracketed of them; it is not silently absorbed into the question. Telos is the goal or purpose of each process. The emphatic separation of superior from inferior is presented as a positive end of judgment, not merely the act of assigning a sentence.

1814.The author keeps the two accounts distinct even though both involve separation. The first stresses the independent perfection of what is superior; the second emphasizes order and differentiation as sources of benefit. Perhaps preserves the qualification in the Greek.

1815.The printed correction to teleon, perfection or completion, is followed. Equality is expressly proportional and according to worth; it does not mean identical treatment of every case. The three verbs concerning evil move from restraint through overthrow to complete removal.

1816.The alternatives distinguish a numerical measure, reciprocal suffering, and moral correction. Multiplication recalls the kind of multiplied recompense described in the preceding Platonic excerpt, but this sentence does not name that passage. Haireseis here means positions or schools of thought, not heresies.

1817.The list gives purification both a return toward its originating cause and a reception of life and power from more comprehensive realities. Oikeia ousia is one’s own or proper essence. Energeia is activity or actuality; activity fits its place beside power and life here.

1818.Lesser is the author’s assessment. Proechonta tōn holōn compares these limited aims with the more comprehensive ends listed above; tōn holōn is the standard they are said to surpass. Genesis retains the broader sense coming-to-be. The contrast concerns release from bodily conditions versus restoration and participation in greater realities.

1819.The new question concerns the range of application, following the earlier questions of agency and purpose. The printed mechris hosou is retained. Things different from themselves interprets ta diapheronta in relation to the souls; the Greek does not expressly name the things involved.

1820.The text places freedom from mastery alongside being filled with the gods; both descriptions are retained. Theōn is gods, not the apparatus’s proposed theiōn, divine things. Apolytoi, unbound, remains in the text although the apparatus asks whether it should be excluded.