Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitStobaeus, Volume II

Reading language

Book II Chapter 8

Porphyry continued

Or someone might say that horoscopic observation at conception reveals the lot for choosing a human life or a dog’s,⁸⁸⁵ while horoscopic observation at emergence from the womb indicates the choice of the secondary life in addition to the one already chosen.⁸⁸⁶

Porphyry continued

But one might concede that the shaping of the myth drew upon traditions handed down among the Egyptians. Whether Plato elaborated it in detail according to these very conceptions, however, is difficult to pronounce upon.⁸⁸⁷

Porphyry continued

Since you are also a lover and admirer of Homer, consider whether he too, before Plato, knew the twofold character of lives: one kind is fixed, which the soul can choose or decline to choose; but once it has chosen, being in an inescapable condition * * to change it, it directs that life through virtue or vice.⁸⁸⁸ For it is with this life in mind that he says:

Porphyry continued

But I say no man has escaped his fate, neither coward nor brave, once he has been born.⁸⁸⁹

He would thus be saying this about the primary and inviolable life. But concerning the secondary life, that it is up to us, what, then, does Homer say?⁸⁹⁰

Porphyry continued

Ah, how mortals blame the gods! For they say that evils come from us; but they themselves too, through their own recklessness, bear pains beyond their allotted fate.⁸⁹¹

Porphyry continued

Why, then, “but they themselves too”? For this indicates that something also comes to them from the gods, even if the greater part is due to themselves. Or, because the patterns of lives come from the gods, does this mean that even the gods themselves are not free from responsibility for people’s falling into evils?⁸⁹² But he acquits them on the ground that they made the souls self-governing and allowed them to choose lives; whereas people, through haste and ignorance, “through their own recklessness, bear pains beyond their allotted fate.”⁸⁹³

From Iamblichus’s letter to Macedonius on fate

The soul’s substance, considered in itself, is immaterial, incorporeal, wholly ungenerated and indestructible, possessing being and life from itself, entirely self-moving, and a principle of nature and of all movements. Insofar as it is such, therefore, it contains within itself a life that is both self-governing and independent.⁸⁹⁴

Iamblichus continued

⟨And⟩ insofar as it gives itself to things that come to be and subjects itself to the movement of the universe, to that extent it is also led under fate and serves the necessities of nature.⁸⁹⁵ But insofar as it exercises its own intellectual activity, which is in truth free from all things and self-chosen, to that extent it acts voluntarily in what belongs to it and truly lays hold of the divine, the good, and the intelligible.⁸⁹⁶

From the same work

We should therefore train ourselves to live the life that accords with intellect and holds fast to the gods.⁸⁹⁷ For this life alone restores to us the soul’s masterless authority, frees us from the bonds of necessity, and makes us live not some human life, but the divine life filled with good things by the will of the gods.⁸⁹⁸

The same author

For now, to state the matter as a whole: fate’s movements throughout the cosmos are assimilated to immaterial and intellectual activities and revolutions, and its order is modeled on intelligible and undefiled good order.⁸⁹⁹ Secondary causes depend on prior causes, and the multiplicity within becoming on indivisible substance; thus everything belonging to fate is connected with providence, which takes precedence. Fate, then, is interwoven with providence in its very being; fate exists by virtue of providence’s existence and has its being from it and around it.⁹⁰⁰

Iamblichus continued

Given this, the human principle of acting is in harmony with both these principles of the whole; but there is also in us a principle of actions released from nature and free from the motion of the whole. It is therefore not contained in the principle of the whole.⁹⁰¹ Because it is ⟨not⟩ produced from nature or from the motion of the whole, it stands prior, being older and not imparted by the whole. Yet because it has allotted itself certain shares from all the regions of the cosmos and from all the elements, and uses all these shares, it is also contained in fate’s ordering, contributes to it, completes the constitution within it, and uses it as it should.⁹⁰²

885.Εἰ μή τις, unless someone should say, introduces an alternative to the preceding account. The English Or someone might say conveys that qualification without turning it into an unqualified doctrine. Σπορά is conception, literally sowing; emergence from the womb follows ἐκ γαστρὸς ἐκτροπή.

886.Ὡροσκοπία concerns determining or observing the ascendant. The alternative assigns different roles to the observations at conception and birth: the primary kind of life and the secondary life added to it. Compare Ptolemy’s On Conception and Birth (Tetrabiblos III.2 in Hübner’s edition; included in III.1 in Robbins’s). That discussion also distinguishes the two occasions for astrological judgment, but does not establish an identical doctrine or direct dependence.

887.This explicit reservation limits the whole proposed parallel. Porphyry distinguishes a possible Egyptian background for the shaping of the myth from the harder claim that Plato followed the particular astrological conceptions just set out. Neither the concession nor the final uncertainty warrants presenting that detailed derivation as established history.

888.The two asterisks after ἔχουσα mark a gap, not necessarily two missing words. The missing text may have governed μεταβάλλειν, to change; the English deliberately leaves this broken connection visible. No wording meaning unable is supplied from an editorial reconstruction. The question proposes that Homer already knew the distinction of lives; it does not establish that Homer explicitly taught Porphyry’s account of the soul’s prior choice.

889.Iliad VI.488–489, spoken by Hector to Andromache as he prepares to return to battle. Coward and brave give κακός and ἐσθλός their force in that setting. Μοῖρα is an allotted fate or portion. The English is newly translated from the quotation as printed by Wachsmuth.

890.The identification of this fate with a primary, inviolable life is Porphyry’s interpretation. The potential expression εἴη ἂν λέγων is retained as would be saying; the passage does not turn the Homeric lines into an explicit declaration of the distinction between primary and secondary lives.

891.Odyssey I.32–34, Zeus addressing the gods with Aegisthus’s actions in mind. Themselves too retains καὶ αὐτοί, because Porphyry’s next question depends on those words. Ὑπὲρ μόρον means beyond the allotted portion or fate. Only these three lines are quoted here; the wider story supplies context, rather than additional anthology text.

892.The question raises the difficulty that the gods supply the patterns from which lives are chosen. Αἰτία can mean cause or responsibility; free from responsibility makes the force of outside the cause clear in this argument. Porphyry does not simply omit the possible objection to divine responsibility: he states it before giving his answer.

893.The acquittal rests on the souls’ self-government and permission to choose. The subsequent masculine plural refers to the people whose haste and ignorance lead to the quoted sufferings. The repeated final verse has ἔχουσιν here, while the preceding quotation has ἔχουσι; both local forms are retained. This closes excerpt 42; the following excerpt has a new attribution to Iamblichus.

894.The attribution introduces Iamblichus’s letter to Macedonius on fate. Οὐσία denotes the soul’s own being or nature; immaterial and incorporeal retain the distinct descriptions ἄϋλος and ἀσώματος. Ἀρχή is a principle or source, not necessarily a beginning in time. The qualification considered in itself and the subsequent insofar as are essential to the distinction developed in the following sentences.

895.Supplied ⟨Καί⟩ is shown as ⟨And⟩. The repeated insofar as and to that extent relate the soul’s subjection to fate to its engagement with things that come to be. The passage does not erase that qualification by declaring every activity of an embodied soul either wholly compelled or wholly independent.

896.Νοερά is intellectual, describing an activity of intellect; νοητόν is intelligible, what intellect apprehends. Ἄφετος means free or released, while αὐθαίρετος means chosen by oneself. The contrast concerns the soul’s modes of activity and retains both its relation to nature and its voluntary apprehension of what is divine.

897.Μελετητέον calls for practice or training, not merely considering a theory. Νοῦς is intellect, corresponding to the intellectual activity in the preceding excerpt. Ἀδέσποτος means without a master, while ἐξουσία is authority or power; the expression characterizes the soul’s independence in this form of life.

898.Wachsmuth prints θεῶν, of the gods, in place of the transmitted θείων, divine. The English follows his printed text: the gods’ will is distinguished from the good things with which the life is filled, expressed by ἀγαθῶν. Βούλησις means will.

899.The attribution continues Iamblichus, whose letter to Macedonius on fate is named at II.8.43. Πεπρωμένη and εἱμαρμένη both designate fate here. Νοερός, intellectual, describes activities of intellect; νοητός, intelligible, describes what is apprehended by intellect. The distinction is retained in English.

900.The dependence of secondary causes on prior causes leads to the dependence of fate on providence, πρόνοια. Prior and taking precedence express causal rank here. Γένεσις denotes coming into being, the realm of becoming contrasted with indivisible substance. The images of interweaving and existence from and around providence preserve the text’s claim that fate is subordinate to and inseparable from providence.

901.Both these principles refers to providence and fate. Wachsmuth then prints a fresh clause, there is also ... a principle within us, rather than repeating it has; the English retains that construction. In the next sentence, the principle supplies what is understood in the Greek phrase in that of the whole.

902.Supplied ⟨οὐκ⟩ is retained as ⟨not⟩: the principle is not derived from nature or cosmic motion. The printed ἐνδιδομένη, imparted, is questioned in the apparatus but not replaced here. The passage describes both priority to the cosmic principle and participation in fate through shares taken from the cosmos. Κατασκευή is an organized constitution; the English keeps its connection with the ordering just described.