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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

68.4 · The comparison with poured water

“Water taken from vessels here below cannot still occupy the very places from which it was taken. Even when it is immediately taken up and poured out, it does not recover its own place, but mingles with the whole mass of water. Yet the soul’s case is not like this, high-minded Horus.”¹⁸⁴⁰

68.5 · The Plain of Truth

“Being myself, as it were, an initiate into the immortal nature, and having passed through the Plain of Truth, I shall explain existing things to you one by one, beginning by telling you this:”¹⁸⁴¹

68.6 · The soul’s distinctive nature

“Water is a body without reason, pressed out of many compounds into a fluid mass. The soul, however, my child, is a thing of distinctive nature and royal character, a work of the god’s hands and intellect, itself guiding itself toward intellect.”¹⁸⁴²

68.7 · Its union with the body

“What comes from one source and not from another cannot be mingled with something different. Its conjunction with the body must therefore be an arrangement made by the god under necessity.”¹⁸⁴³

68.8 · Each soul returns to its own region

“That souls are not sent up indiscriminately to one and the same place, nor at random and as chance directs, but each to its own region, is evident even from what a soul experiences [for] while still in the body and its molded form, thickened contrary to its own nature.”¹⁸⁴⁴

68.9 · An enclosure containing many creatures

“Attend also, dearly loved Horus, to the comparison I am about to give. Imagine human beings, eagles, doves, swans, hawks, swallows, sparrows, flies, snakes, lions, leopards, wolves, dogs, hares, oxen, and sheep shut in one and the same enclosure, together with some creatures that share both environments, such as seals, otters, turtles, and our crocodiles.”¹⁸⁴⁵

68.10 · Release to their accustomed places

“Then suppose, my child, that they are released from the enclosure at a single stroke. Will they ⟨not⟩ surely turn to their places: the human being to marketplaces and houses; the eagle to the upper air, where it is naturally fitted to live; the doves to the air nearby; and the hawks above them?”¹⁸⁴⁶

68.11 · Swallows, sparrows, swans, and flies

“Will the swallows not go wherever people live; the sparrows among the fruit-bearing trees; the swans wherever they can sing; and the flies close to the earth itself, rising only as far above it as they can in pursuit of the smell of human beings? For the fly, my child, is especially greedy for human beings and flies low.”¹⁸⁴⁷

68.12 · The land animals

“Will lions and leopards not go to the mountains, wolves to deserted places, and dogs in the tracks of human beings? Will ⟨the⟩ hares go ⟨to⟩ the woods, and ⟨the⟩ oxen ⟨to⟩ their stalls and fields, and the sheep to their pastures, and the snakes to the earth’s recesses?”¹⁸⁴⁸

68.13 · Creatures of land and water

“And ⟨the⟩ seals and turtles, with creatures like them, to deep waters and streams, so that they are neither deprived of level ground nor separated from their kindred water, each being turned back to its proper region by its inner faculty of judgment?”¹⁸⁴⁹

68.14 · The soul knows its destination

“In the same way, every soul, whether living as a human being or leading some other earthly life, knows where it must go. Unless, my child, one of the Typhonian company should step forward and say that a bull can live in the depths of the sea and a turtle in the air!”¹⁸⁵⁰

68.15 · Embodiment and release

“If this is their condition while immersed in flesh and blood, so that they do nothing contrary to order even while punished, for embodiment is their punishment, how much more when, from immersion and punishment * *, they have partaken of their own freedom? The most sacred arrangement is as follows.”¹⁸⁵¹

68.16 · The regions above and below the moon

“Look upward now, child of noblest nature, and behold the stations of souls. The region from heaven’s summit to the moon is reserved for gods, stars, and the other workings of providence. The region from the moon down to us, my child, is the dwelling place of souls.”¹⁸⁵²

68.17 · Air and wind have their own course

“This great expanse of air, which we customarily call wind, has within itself a course, a space of its own in which it moves to refresh earthly things, as I shall explain later.”¹⁸⁵³

68.18 · Souls pass through without mixing

“Yet its movement within itself in no way obstructs souls. While it moves, souls may dart upward and downward, as occasion brings, without hindrance. They flow through it without mixing or adhering, as water passes through oil.”¹⁸⁵⁴

68.19 · Four broad divisions

“This interval, my child Horus, consists of four broad divisions [and sixty particular regions]. The first, extending upward from the earth, contains four regions, since the earth rises in certain hills and mountain summits and reaches that far. Its height does not naturally allow it to ascend beyond these.”¹⁸⁵⁵

68.20 · The second division and its mysteries

“The second division above this contains eight regions [in which the movements of winds occur]. Attend, child, for you are hearing secret mysteries of earth and heaven and all the sacred breath between them. Here are the movement of wind and the flight of birds, for above this division air neither moves nor supports a living creature.”¹⁸⁵⁶

68.21 · The reach of the lower air

“This air has by nature the power to circulate, together with the living creatures it contains, both in its own eight regions and in the earth’s four, while the earth is ⟨not⟩ able to rise into its regions.”¹⁸⁵⁷

1840.The soul’s case makes the final contrast explicit. This water comparison illustrates the dispersal just denied, rather than a process that Isis attributes to souls. The printed epechein, occupy, and lambanei, takes or receives, are retained without adopting alternative verbs in the apparatus.

1841.The Plain of Truth belongs to Isis’s claim of privileged knowledge within the dialogue. The printed hōsper is conveyed as as it were. Adeukyia is the printed participle, understood as having traveled through; the promise continues directly into the following contrast between water and soul.

1842.Idiophyes stresses the soul’s own distinctive nature. The unusual paratethlimmenon is provisionally pressed out, preserving the contrast between a compound fluid and the soul. The final passive participle with a reflexive dative is rendered itself guiding itself; its construction remains difficult.

1843.The compressed phrase ex henos kai ouk ex allou is rendered without naming the one source more precisely. Harmonia is a fitting together or arrangement. The argument distinguishes conjunction with a body from the kind of mixture that would abolish the soul’s identity.

1844.The rejected gar remains as bracketed for. Pepachymmenē, thickened, describes the soul in embodiment. Plasma is the molded bodily form. Isis proposes that the soul’s behavior even in this condition provides evidence of an ordered destination after release.

1845.The full catalogue is retained. Creatures that share both environments interprets the difficult koinotēs as participation in land and water, in light of the examples and 68.13. This is a functional grouping within the comparison, not a modern zoological classification. Our keeps the speaker’s relation to the crocodiles.

1846.The supplemental ou, not, is credited to Meineke. The questions expect agreement that released creatures seek fitting places. Aithēr, upper air, is distinguished from the nearby aēr. The word places in the question makes the direction of the ensuing list explicit.

1847.The difficult dative tēi osmēi is provisionally taken to explain what draws the flies upward. The apparatus questions the wording; its alternative is not adopted. Anthrōpolichnon conveys a greedy appetite for human beings; the English keeps that force. Chamaipetes denotes low flight.

1848.Four supplied words in the Greek remain marked in the corresponding English positions. The repeated motion verbs are understood from the preceding question. Aulistēria are resting or sheltering places, here stalls for the oxen. The animal catalogue continues the analogy of destinations fitted to nature.

1849.The supplied article is preserved. The criterion within is an internal discriminating or directing faculty; it has not been recast as a modern biological mechanism. The clause about both land and water clarifies the shared environments mentioned earlier in the comparison.

1850.The Typhonians appear here as imagined opponents asserting a reversal of the creatures’ fitting places. The text’s unusual epigeiizousa is conveyed as leading an earthly life. The claim belongs to Isis’s analogy; no missing account of the opposing group has been invented.

1851.The printed gap remains at the point where a participle expressing release is expected. English retains from as a provisional indication of the genitives without restoring the missing verb. Baptismos here continues the image of immersion in flesh and blood. The printed posou pleon means how much more here; its genitive form is retained. Embodiment as punishment is explicit in the dialogue.

1852.The division at the moon distinguishes the upper divine region from the dwelling assigned to souls. Workings of providence interprets the condensed tēi allēi pronoiai, literally the other providence. The arrangement is being described by Isis within the dialogue.

1853.The printed idion megethos is called corrupt in the apparatus. A space of its own is a provisional rendering, preserving the text rather than substituting the proposed keleuthon, path. The relative hon grammatically refers to air. The sentence’s promised later explanation is not supplied here.

1854.The source includes both upward and downward movement, although the apparatus records omission of the latter in some witnesses. Akollēti, without adhering, supplements the denial of mixture. The water-and-oil comparison now illustrates distinctness, whereas the earlier water comparison illustrated loss of separate position.

1855.The editor rejects the bracketed statement of sixty particular regions here, although the total is retained later. The four broad divisions contain progressively more regions. The final Greek construction is compressed; English provisionally makes the earth’s height the subject, without adopting an apparatus emendation.

1856.The rejected phrase about wind remains bracketed. The subsequent statement about wind is retained, so the repetition can be assessed. Arrhēta mystēria are mysteries not to be divulged. The claims about motion and living creatures describe the dialogue’s layered cosmology; the passage soon assigns finer air to higher divisions.

1857.The supplied mē, not, is credited in the apparatus to Heeren with Canter’s interpretation. It establishes the asymmetry: this air enters the earth’s regions, but earth does not reach into the air’s own eight regions. The numbers four and eight remain separate.