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Book I Chapter 49

65.14 · A disagreement over exemption

On this point, however, the Platonists and Pythagoreans no longer agree with the more ancient thinkers: they subject all souls to judgment.¹⁸²¹

65.15 · Souls raised without punishment

Similarly, concerning punishment, the older thinkers place undefiled souls, and those joined to the gods in a shared act of understanding, among the gods already here. When these souls leave their bodies, they raise them to the gods without punishment.¹⁸²²

65.16 · Release after punishment

The Platonists, however, release all souls from coming-to-be into being after punishment.¹⁸²³

65.17 · Purification and the soul’s cosmic circuits

The same dispute might arise concerning purification, ⟨if⟩ these same men say that souls accompanying the gods stand above purification too, while, among the others, some maintain that the soul’s circuits around the cosmos are circuits of purification, as certain Platonists do, whereas others place the soul above even these circuits, as Plotinus says.¹⁸²⁴

67.1 · Iamblichus: the soul’s reward

In the same work.

Concerning the reward of souls, which they receive hereafter when they leave the body *, and souls equal to angels and angelic souls *, this whole matter, then, the older thinkers *.¹⁸²⁵

67.2 · The soul’s own rank

Plutarch, Porphyry, and the older thinkers preserve it in its proper rank; Plotinus, however, removes it from all these.¹⁸²⁶

67.3 · Intellect and care for the world

The more ancient thinkers rightly assign to it a disposition of intellect resembling that of the gods and bearing the form of the good, together with oversight of things here. Porphyry, however, takes this too away from it.¹⁸²⁷

67.4 · Activity beyond reasoning

Some of the older thinkers say that it stands above reasoning, yet describe its activities as so exact that even the purest and most perfect reasoning could not discover their like.¹⁸²⁸

67.5 · What belongs to embodied life

Porphyry, however, removes them altogether from the life that is free from mastery, on the ground that they are naturally bound up with coming-to-be and were given to composite living beings for their assistance.¹⁸²⁹

67.6 · Return to the original station

Timaeus in Plato leads the souls back in their ascent to the places where the creator originally sowed them in different ways, some into the Sun and others into the earth. Each remains within the boundary of its own previous creative establishment.¹⁸³⁰

67.7 · Union and distinct existence

Numenius, then, appears to champion union and undifferentiated identity of the soul with its own principles. The older thinkers, however, preserve a growing-together in which its essence remains distinct.¹⁸³¹

67.8 · Dissolution or ordered conjunction

The former position resembles dissolution, the latter an ordered conjunction. The former thinkers employ an undifferentiated connection, the latter one that preserves distinctions.¹⁸³²

67.9 · Distinction without cosmic confinement

Their distinctness, however, is neither ruled by the cosmos nor confined by nature, as some Platonists have supposed. It is wholly released from all things, just as we understand this in the case of inseparable essences.¹⁸³³

67.10 · The boundary of human lives

Those around Porphyry, as far as human lives * *; beyond this they posit another kind of soul, the non-rational.¹⁸³⁴

67.11 · Assimilation while remaining itself

Further, Porphyry assimilates the soul to all things while it remains, in itself, what it is. According to the Platonists, souls care for things without soul.¹⁸³⁵

67.12 · Participation and contemplation

Once released from coming-to-be, souls, according to the ancients, govern the whole together with the gods; according to the Platonists, they contemplate the gods’ order. Similarly, according to the former, they join angels in fashioning the whole; according to the latter, they accompany them in their circuits.¹⁸³⁶

68.1 · Hermes: Horus asks where souls go

Hermes: a discourse of Isis to Horus.

“You have wonderfully explained each matter to me,” said Horus, “mighty Isis who bore me, concerning the god’s marvelous making of souls, and I remain filled with wonder. But you have not yet told me where souls go when released from their bodies. I wish, then, to be initiated into this contemplation too, and to give thanks to you alone, immortal mother.”¹⁸³⁷

68.2 · What persists has a place

Isis said: “Attend, my child, for this inquiry is most necessary. My account will proceed in this way: that which has an established existence and does not vanish has a place.”¹⁸³⁸

68.3 · Souls are not scattered into the air

“For, wondrous and mighty child of the mighty father Osiris, souls do not rush indiscriminately out of their bodies and pour into the air, scattering among the rest of the boundless breath, so as to be unable, while remaining the same souls, to return into bodies, or even to return again to the place [to be] from which they came before.”¹⁸³⁹

1821.The disagreement concerns whether any souls are exempt from judgment. The author’s broad school labels are preserved as his own classification; the sentence does not provide names or establish uniform agreement among every member of either tradition.

1822.Homonoētikōs is provisionally rendered in a shared act of understanding, indicating an intellectual conjunction. Already here places the first association with the gods before bodily departure. The printed entitheasi is understood as place among; the following ascent is separately retained.

1823.The opposition of genesis and ousia is rendered coming-to-be and being. The contrast with the preceding position concerns passage through punishment before release. This is the author’s summary of the view he assigns to the Platonists.

1824.The supplied ei, if, follows Usener. The printed genitive katharseōs is retained and interpreted as circuits of purification. Autēn is taken to mean the soul; that reference is made explicit in English. These interpretations remain provisional. Excerpt 65 ends at p. 457 line 6; the edition next prints excerpt 67, with no separate 66.

1825.The heading continues Iamblichus’s On the Soul. The editor marks three gaps in this damaged opening; the surviving fragments are not joined by invented clauses. Epikarpia is the fruit or benefit received. Isangelous follows the printed correction. The source moves directly from excerpt 65 to 67. Decimal subdivisions are modern comparison divisions.

1826.The feminine singular it is understood as the soul, but the damaged opening leaves its precise antecedent unstated. All these is likewise not fully specified. The contrast is preserved without filling the preceding gaps or identifying Plutarch more closely than this excerpt permits.

1827.Rightly expresses Iamblichus’s approval of the older account. Agathoeidēs describes a likeness to the good; prostasia denotes oversight or protective governance. The author contrasts a godlike intellectual condition accompanied by worldly responsibility with the removal of that responsibility.

1828.Logismos is reasoning or calculation, contrasted with a higher mode of activity. Their like supplies the comparison implicit in the final clause. The point is that activity without discursive reasoning need not be less exact than reasoned activity.

1829.The feminine plural autas, them, has an uncertain antecedent in this excerpt. The English leaves it as a pronoun rather than silently supplying souls, activities, or faculties. Adespotos describes a life subject to no master; composite living beings are the recipients of the assistance mentioned.

1830.Timaeus is the speaker within Plato’s work. The local relative hēiper and the corresponding tautē connect ascent to the original distribution. The edition’s prosthen, previous, is retained. Creative establishment renders dēmiourgikē katabolē, the initial placement by the creator; it does not imply creation from nothing.

1831.The edition identifies the Numenius passage as fragment 51, page 70, in Thedinga’s numbering. Symphysis conveys growing together or natural conjunction. The contrast is between identity without distinction and conjunction preserving a different essence; appears retains the author’s qualification.

1832.The apparatus calls proseoikasi corrupt. The printed verb is nevertheless retained and the first sentence is provisional; position supplies a subject suitable to the comparison. Analysis suggests dissolution or resolution, while syntaxis suggests arrangement together. The second sentence makes the contrast in differentiation explicit.

1833.The printed achōristōn means inseparable and has not been replaced by a term meaning incorporeal or separate. Its application here is difficult. The passage affirms that retaining distinction need not entail subjection to the cosmos; the exact reference of their remains dependent on the preceding contrast.

1834.The printed gap after human lives removes the first clause’s completion; no verb has been supplied. Beyond this is a provisional interpretation of to apo toutou. The surviving second clause distinguishes another kind of soul rather than explicitly explaining the missing transition.

1835.The Greek shifts from the singular soul to an unexpressed plural subject; souls is made explicit in English. Apsycha are things without soul, not souls deprived of life. The apparatus’s proposed additional kai is not inserted into the text.

1836.Autōn, their, is taken to refer to the gods. Souls either share in the gods’ governance or contemplate their order; the parallel clause contrasts working with angels and accompanying them. The printed theōrousin, contemplate, is retained rather than the apparatus’s alternative tērousin. Excerpt 67 ends at printed p. 458 line 21.

1837.The heading attributes the discourse to Hermes while identifying Isis and Horus as its speakers. The edition gives page 34b of Patrizi as a locator. Mystēs introduces the language of initiation. Monēi is taken with to you, following the printed dative, rather than as a separate description of mother.

1838.The editor transposes the clause introducing Isis’s account to its present position; that printed order is followed. Synestos denotes something constituted or subsisting. The proposition supplies the basis for assigning souls places rather than imagining them wholly dispersed.

1839.The rejected einai is retained as bracketed to be; removing it restores the English construction. The denial concerns a dispersal that would destroy the soul’s continuing identity and prevent return. Pneuma is rendered breath, distinct from the aēr, air, into which such dispersal is imagined.