Essays and Hymns — Synesius
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ΣΥΝΕΣΙΟΥ ΚΥΡΗΝΑΙΟΥ
Translation/edition: Augustine FitzGerald
Language: English
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Numbers in [brackets] are the edition's reference loci (Stephanus, Bekker, book.line, page...). Superscript numerals refer to the Notes at the end.

Volume II of Augustine FitzGerald's English translation of the essays and hymns of Synesius of Cyrene (c. 370–c. 413), the Neoplatonist philosopher who became bishop of Ptolemais. It contains A Eulogy of Baldness, The Egyptian Tale (On Providence), Concerning Dreams, the political speeches Constitutio and Catastasis, two Homilies and the ten Hymns, with FitzGerald's notes given as footnotes. Text from the Oxford University Press edition (London: Humphrey Milford, 1930). Public domain in the United States.

## A Eulogy of Baldness

A BOOK was written in praise of hair by Dio of the tongue of gold, so brilliant a work that the bald man, in the face of its arguments, must be covered with shame. The argument, indeed, uses nature to its own advantage, for by nature we all desire to be beautiful, — to which end, in large measure, the tresses with which Nature has rendered us familiar since our childhood, contribute. For my own part, I was wounded to the heart¹ when the terrible thing began, and my hair began to fall off. When it proceeded further, and one hair went after another, — then two at a time, and finally several, — and the war became keenly contested, my head being plundered, then indeed I esteemed myself to suffer more harshly than did the Athenians at the hands of Archidamus when their groves at Acharnae were destroyed,² and soon I appeared as one of those benighted Euboeans³ who, according to the poem, made the expedition to Troy with hair hanging from the back of their heads.⁴ Which one of the gods, which of the demons did I pass over without accusation⁵ in this matter? I was even inclined to write something eulogistic of Epicurus,⁶ not as one holding the same opinions as he concerning the gods, but as one prepared to get my teeth into them in turn as far as I could. And so I said, ‘Where is the action of Providence to be found in that which is contrary to each man’s deserts? What wrongdoing have I committed that I should appear more unsightly to the fair sex?’ No great matter this, in the case of the women of the neighbourhood, for in what concerns Aphrodite I am the most righteous of men, and I could dispute the palm with Bellerophon in continence.⁷ But even a mother, even sisters, they say, set some store on the beauty of the men of their household. And Parysatis made this clear, for she lost her love for Artaxerxes the King, all on account of the handsome Cyrus.⁸
2. Thus then I lamented aloud, and thought my misfortune no small matter. But when time had made me more accustomed to it, reasoning entering in its turn struggled against my discomfiture, and it gradually retired. I thus became easier in my mind and recovered. But this very Dio has now himself retaliated with another torrent, and has resumed his attack on me accompanied by a supporter. Against two adversaries, even Heracles,⁹ the proverb says, was of no avail, for he could not resist the sons of Molione when they fell upon him from out their ambush; and also, when he fought the Hydra, for they were engaged in single combat some time, but when the Crab came to her rescue, he might have renounced the struggle had he not invoked the alliance of Iolaus against her.
Of a truth it seems to me that I have suffered a similar experience at the hands of Dio, and—alas!—I have no Iolaus for nephew. For long, now, forgetful of myself and of my arguments, I have been writing elegies and dirges concerning my hair. Yet one might say to me: 'You then, since you are the noblest of the bald, and seem to be a man of generous character—one, moreover, who troubles not about the misfortune, but who even fancies himself over it, as if in good fortune,¹⁰ when pea-soup is laid on the table and the scrutiny of brows begins—cannot you, I say, endure this essay of Dio? Nay, keep your soul in calm, as the saying goes, even as Odysseus remained undaunted in the face of the dissoluteness of women.¹¹ Make a struggle to suffer nothing at its hand. What! You would not be able, you say? Nay, you will be quite able. Only listen to this. You need not unroll the volume at all, for I will myself hold forth. It is not multi-linear, it is withal polished in style and its beauty abides in the memory, so that I could not forget it even if I would.—
3. 'After rising in the morning¹² and praying to the gods, as is my custom, I attended to my hair. I happened to be in poor health at the time, and it had been too long uncared for. The most of it had become knotted and entangled, as that which hangs about a sheep's legs, but much coarser than this, for it is tangled with fine hairs. The hair was accordingly uncouth and heavy to behold. And it was difficult to unravel; the most of it was torn out and subjected to a strain.'
Thus the idea came to me of praising those who make a cult of their hair,¹³ who love beauty, and give their hair great importance, and who not merely give it serious attention but even keep a sort of reed in the hair itself, with which they comb it when they are at leisure. And this is the most difficult thing; they guard against touching the earth with it when sleeping on the ground, for they have to place a small piece of wood under the head that it may be separated from the earth as much as possible; and they think much more of keeping their hair clean than of sleeping agreeably, for it would seem to make them fine looking and awe-inspiring, whereas sleep, however sweet, only makes them sluggish and careless. The Lacedaemonians, too, seem to me to be not neglectful of such a fact, as they came forward before the great and terrible battle at the time when they alone of all the Greeks were to engage the king. At that moment numbering only three hundred, they sate them down and dressed their hair.¹⁴ Again, Homer seems to me to consider such a thing worthy of the greatest care. It is not often that he praises handsome men for their eyes, nor does he think to make beauty evident most of all therein. He makes no encomium on the eyes of any of the heroes, except Agamemnon, and that only in praising the rest of his body besides;¹⁵ and he not merely describes the Greeks as men of quick-glancing eyes, though no less to Agamemnon does he apply the epithet common to Greeks, but he praises them all for their hair;¹⁶ in the first place Achilles:
'and she seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair'.¹⁷
Then Menelaus he calls blond because of his hair,¹⁸ and he mentions Hector's hair in these words:—
'and round about his dark hair was dragged in the dust'.¹⁹
So when Euphorbus, the fairest of the Trojans, had died, he deplored nothing else but this, saying
'His hair like to the Graces was dyed with blood
And his tresses adorned with gold and silver'.²⁰
And of Odysseus, whenever he wishes to show how beautiful he had become at the hand of Athene, he says
'his hair turned black'.²¹
And again about the same hero:
'down from his head
She sent curling hair to grow like the flower of the hyacinth.'²²
Now adornment of hair seems to become men more than women according to Homer, for when he discourses of the beauty of women, he does not so often seem to have recalled to mind their hair. He praises those amongst the deities who are female, in other ways, for he makes Aphrodite 'golden'; Hera 'ox-eyed'; and Thetis 'silver-footed': but in the case of Zeus he praises his hair most of all;—
'The ambrosial locks of the king floated waving from his head.'²³
4. There you have the words of Dio. Nevertheless, as I am no mean prophet, I knew that I should see Thrasymachus blush.²⁴
In my own case no such calamity has as yet happened. True, I was at first vanquished by the argument, but I think now that Dio was a man clever enough in speech, though one who had nothing to say, and yet went on speaking through a superfluity of power; and that he would have shown himself to far greater advantage if he had chosen to praise the very opposite case,—namely, that of my own head! For what might not a man resourceful in difficulties have accomplished, if he had fallen in with a subject suited to his powers? But now that he has both hair and skill, he employs his skill on his hair. How roguishly he has insinuated himself in this essay! For in this discourse of his there is no other lover of hair who beautifies it with a reed save only himself, and it is with this very reed that he has written his discourse. But if I in turn am bald and withal able to speak, and if the one subject is found more noble than the other, or if I am inferior to Dio, why, then, should I not strip for the contest and make trial both of myself and of my argument, to see if after all I could transfer the reproach to the men adorned with hair?
I will speak then, neither making a vigorous and trenchant preface such as orators arm their fighting speeches with, as men arm triremes with beaks, nor first sounding, like Dio, a clear measured prelude to the speech like a harpist's overture, such as —' After rising in the morning and praying to the gods, as is my custom, I attended to my hair; I happened to be unwell at the time, and it had been too long uncared for.' While he is thus going through the evidences of carelessness, he is bringing us, without our being conscious of it, to the point of praising him for the care he takes of his hair. This is what the clever fabricators of speeches do to us; at one moment they charm us, at another they astound us. Now I can grasp facts as well as any other man, but am not addicted to rhetoric. I have been practising two arts all my life,—the culture of plants, and the training of dogs against the most fearless of wild beasts, and these fingers of mine have been rubbed against shovels and hunting-spears rather than reeds; unless by reed you should mean the reed that is an arrow, instead of the author's.
So now it is not to be wondered at if my fingers have clung to that one. I shall never disgrace my ancestral rusticity,²⁵ nor shall I come on the scene rounding off little periods, forewords, and preludes or the like. I shall pursue what I consider the best course, even for the nature of a rustic, by setting the naked expressions of thought in full view. I shall fight, with facts as weapons, only by turning the pitch of my voice from argument to vehemence, from the Dorian note, as they say, to the Phrygian. But I need breath adequate to my undertakings, breath which, I prophesy, my heart will render me in abundance.
5. My argument, then, will lay it down that of all men a man who is bald has least reason to feel ashamed. For what matter it if his head is bald, so long as his mind is shaggy, as was the case with the descendant of Aeacus, whom poetry sang of? This man cared little enough for his locks of hair, which, actually, he presented to a corpse; they are indeed a sort of corpse, a life-less portion attached to living beings.²⁶ Thus those animals who are the more deprived of intelligence, are clothed with hair all over their bodies, whereas man, inasmuch as his lot in life is more brilliant, is the most bare of this natural burden. But that he may not boast of having no taint of fellowship with what is mortal, he is covered with hair in a few places. He, therefore, who has no hair anywhere is to the normal man what man is to the brute. And just as man is the most intelligent, and at the same time the least hairy of earthly creatures, conversely it is admitted that of all domestic animals the sheep is the stupidest, and that this is why he puts forth his hair with no discrimination, but thickly bundled together. It would seem that there is a strife going on between hair and brains, for in no one body do they exist at the same time.
And huntsmen also must needs contribute something to the argument, for these men are dear to me as also the art they pursue. The cleverest hounds are those whose ears and bellies are bare; the hairy ones are stupid and rash and are better kept away from the chase; and if Plato, the sage, speaks of the unjust horse, attached to the chariot driven by the soul, as being deaf, and with ears covered with hair,²⁷ how can he think any good of hair? Of course, even if Plato did not tell us so, it would of necessity follow that he would be deaf who had hair in that organ by which we hear, as one would also be blind who had hair in the organ whereby we see. That would be a monstrosity, if it ever came to pass. Already cases have occurred of the growth of a double row of eyelashes, and it seems the last of calamities that hair has made its home close to the eye, and against such hairs every violent means is set in motion lest they should precipitate the undermining of the eye. Nature does not permit the baser elements to grow with the nobler, and the noblest parts of the animal are his perceptive faculties, for in these parts of the body most of all resides the principle of life, and to these first the soul has distributed its own powers. Now sight is the most divine of all faculties²⁸ but at the same time the least hairy.
Again, as in an individual the noblest parts are the baldest, so must the best elements of the race itself be related to the race itself. This was shown a little while ago to be the case throughout the whole human race, which is as far removed from the brutes as it is from hairs. Now if man is really the most sacred of all animals,²⁹ of men who have had the good fortune to lose their hair, the bald man would be the most divine thing upon earth.
6. You may look at the pictures in the Museum, I mean those of Diogenes and Socrates, and whomsoever you please of those who in their age were wise, and your survey would be an inspection of bald heads. Let not Apollonius confuse the argument, or any one else who was a wizard and an adept in demoniac practices. For although such men are not really adorned with hair, they are able to appear so by gaining a power over the masses of mankind. But perhaps the faculty of these wizards is not knowledge, but some capacity to work miracles, and is not any sort of science but rather a power. For thus it was that while legislators regarded wisdom as one of the things most to be honoured, they kept hangmen to deal with the wizards; so that even if Apollonius did come bedecked with hair, this has no bearing on my argument. Moreover, I am kindly disposed to this man and would like to include him in my catalogue. But from what has been said, the argument seems to admit of the converse with soundness. If any one is wise he is also bald, and if he is not bald neither is he wise. And thus it is with demons also, as he who has seen the ceremonies of Bacchus will agree. As much of the company as is shaggy is adorned, some with their own hair, and others with borrowed locks, for nothing is so proper to Bacchus as the goatskin; and some of them borrow hair even from pine trees. One has seen them all shaking themselves and revelling, mayhap overcome in their disorderly leaping dances by wine, whatever wine enters at any time into the initiations; yet they seem to have been reduced to the discordant phase of nature.
There too is the chair of Silenus and his lash. He has been appointed the guardian slave of Dionysus. For I think that, being bald, he must have been also a man of sense, to keep his self-control in the midst of such aberrations. Yet I deem it no small matter that he should be preferred by Zeus to all the demons, with a view of attending upon and teaching his little son wisdom. For he Dionysus) has also to taste the pure juice of the grape and to rave at times with natural desire and approach the point of madness, until finally he joins the Bacchic women in dances. But Silenus moderates his madness lest, oft-times unconsciously, he run wild in both directions, lest he become too difficult for his father to bring up. But we must speedily come back to our point, having obtained adequate proof that brains are there whenever hair has taken its departure, and that hair is there wherever brains have taken their departure.
Socrates, the son of Sophroniscus, a moderate man in other respects and beyond any one of his associates most chary of self-praise, could not but feel this pride in his resemblance to Silenus;³⁰ for his whole desire was in this,—to prepare his head as a receptacle of mind. But like many other of the thoughts of Socrates, this also escaped the comprehension of the dull-witted, namely that he prided himself overmuch on his likeness to Silenus. The fact that the blossom of hair well befits youths at the moment of life when we have not yet begun to reason, but flits away from age and does not await maturity which manifestly makes mind and thought to dwell with living creatures, this you must surely admit condemns the nature of hair as bereft of reason. But if a man has hair even although aged? you say. Well, some old men may also be devoid of sense, nor perchance do all men attain the perfection of manhood. The case therefore stands thus, that mind and hair do not await each other but yield place as darkness does to light. Now to those seeking the cause of this the answer is somewhat cryptic. We will attempt, however, to say what may be sufficient for the present purpose, taking care to enshroud with purity all that is inviolable.
7. The first of existing things are simple, but as nature descends in the scale she becomes varied, and matter is last in order of existing things and therefore the most varied. Matter itself when it receives anything divine does not at once receive it to the full extent, but only certain appearances and germs of it; with these it becomes entwined and the greater part of it is centred in them. Perhaps therefore it keeps these by welcoming them, perhaps by overpowering the divine element through the inevitable encounter at their first meeting, before the appearance has been perfected. Each of these two states would be possible, nor are the words at war although they might seem to be. But since our discussion is not concerning these things, and since they have been introduced only because of other considerations, let us proceed to show in regard to the facts that nature grows stronger in the immature and yields to those which are strengthened. Are not the principles of the seeds which are cast into the earth something divine, even if this is only the last stage of the divine? The fruit is the consummation of these, but behold the pride of nature, behold its beauties, before this stage has been arrived at. There are roots, stem, bark, awns, husks, and other husks covering these last, but the fruit itself is still unformed and hidden.
Now when once this has appeared, all the playthings of matter are dried up and disappear, for the perfected work now needs no adornment, and that already is perfected in which there is another promise of seed. It is in memory of this that Eleusis celebrates the revelations of Demeter. If then mind is the most divine of the seeds that have come from above, and if it is settled in the head, and if the material mind is the fruit of this principle, as is the wheat of that, then nature is pursuing her accustomed course. She works her wonders around the head, and adorns it with the beauties of hair, as if with thorns or husks, or, by Zeus, even as if with blossom, the like of that wherewith she graces plants before the fruit appears. But there is no fruit on a plant³¹ before the blossom fades, and so mind will not take its place in the head before, brought to perfection, it has cast aside in due course the superfluous elements, as if by the winnowing fan of time, and has discarded all the folly of nature; so that we might regard all this as a sign that the head had already been shown forth as a perfect fruit. If then you see one conspicuously denuded, be sure that mind has pitched its tent there, and regard that head as a temple of God. Mysteries would therefore rightly be solemnized concerning the head, to be called perhaps, for the sake of the profane, ‘Unveiling mysteries’; but the wise would understand that they were festivals for the advent of the mind. And that man who has just now arrived amongst the bald, is the one newly initiated into the mysteries of the gods’ appearance among men. Again, just as wheat, pomegranates, and nuts become bad and rot in their shells and their pods, so heads may be evil, having no share in the divine element and for the most part enveloped in dead matter. I have myself observed that those who serve the divinity in Egypt do not endure³² even the hair of the eye-lids.³³ They were, it is true, laughable to behold, but they had a certain wisdom in their minds as exceptional men and Egyptians; for it is not befitting to approach with dead portions natures which are eternal, and whose being is incorporated in life. If, therefore, the man shaved by his own hand is pious, the bald by nature is by that very nature more closely united to God; for perchance the divinity itself is of such a nature. May it be propitious to my discourse, for it will indeed be uttered in a pious spirit!
8. With regard to such part of the divine nature as is hidden, why should any one trouble about it, since it is unwilling to be revealed?³⁴ Be that as it may, all that is seen consists of exact spheres, the sun, the moon, all the stars, both those that are fixed and the planets. Whether they are greater or less, they are all of like shape. Now, what could be balder than a sphere,³⁵ and what more divine?³⁶ There is a saying too, that the soul wishes to imitate God. This is the third god, the soul of the world which its own father³⁷ and demiurge of the bodily cosmos brought into the cosmos, having completed it, perfect and whole, out of all seeds and bodies, giving it on this account also a figure the most comprehensive of figures. Of those figures that have equal perimeters, that which has the most angles is always the greater, and the circle exceeds in superficies any angular figure, just as the sphere exceeds amongst those which have solidity. This is known to experts in geometry and mensuration of solids. Wherefore the entire soul animates the whole cosmos, which is a sphere,³⁸ and the souls which pour out of the entire soul and have become fragments of it, desire, each one of them, that which the entire soul wishes, to wit, to control bodies and to be the moving spirits of universes, the very thing which was the cause of their partition. In this wise Nature stood in need of particular spheres; so then above were moulded the stars, and below the heads, that these might be the mansions of souls, small universes in the universe.³⁹
For it was necessary, I think, that the cosmos should be a living thing, should be composed of living creatures. To the simpler souls it is a matter of indifference that they must take up their abode in a hairy head, far removed from the clearly defined pattern, but each wise soul according to its own deserts has received as its portion—one a star to dwell in, another a bald head. For if nature here below is weak at producing perfect precision, nevertheless she does not tolerate the part of us which looks upward and towards heaven to be formed otherwise than as a universe in its shape.
Baldness, then, appears plainly to us as also a heaven, and as many praises as one might sing of a sphere, so many does one relate of baldness also.
9. And so let Homer write and let Phidias model, if he pleases, proofs in support of Dio, granting to Zeus his clustering locks,⁴⁰ and thick hair at that, wherewith he may shake the heaven when he desires. For as to the Zeus seen in heaven, we all know what he is like; but supposing that there is some other Zeus, though I know not whether there is some other bodily one, but granting this, if anybody holds such an opinion, in any case he must be either the first one, or the one subsequent to him. In that case he is an image of this pattern. Whether one or the other, he is such as that one who is evident to all men, as far as the condition of his nature permits of resemblance. But the poetic and plastic arts and indeed all mimetic arts⁴¹ seem, least of all, truth-loving, but merely as plausible as may be, and such as seek to create what they create according to appearances, not according to truth.
By the ignorant hair is held in honour, for the opinion of the mob admires all external things, such as landed possessions, carriages, houses, and groups of dwellings, all that are not part of the nature of those possessing them, but, like hair, an alien element to their nature. For the ignorant are far from mind and from God, and in place of mind and God Nature and Fortune direct them. Now this latter is still more alien: for the foolish congratulate the recipients of Fortune’s and Nature’s gifts. Whoever therefore writes and speaks to the masses, must of necessity be plebeian in opinion, in order to model his style and deliver his speech in a manner⁴² pleasing to them. And inasmuch as they are uninstructed, they are obstinate and are determined champions of their absurd opinions, to such an extent that if any one disturbs any point of their ancestral notions, he will before long drink the hemlock. What penalty do you think Homer would have suffered from the Greeks, if he had told the very truth itself concerning Zeus, and had said nothing of those portentous things with which children are terrified?
10. Now the Egyptians are wise in this way also, that amongst them the race of prophets do not allow the vulgar and the artisans to make images⁴³ of the gods. This is in order that they may not infringe the laws in any such matter, and while they mock at the masses with those beaks of hawks and ibises, which they carve in the precincts of their temples, they themselves, descending to their sacred crypts, watch over whatever works they may have completed, and they have at their reunions little chests, which conceal, so they say, those spheres,⁴⁴ which will enrage the mob if it sees them, and the frivolous will laugh to scorn, for the mob will have jugglery. How else can they behave, being a mob?
For this reason, I think, beaks of ibises have been placed on all the statues. There is one deity, however, which they do not conceal, but openly exhibit; that is Aesculapius, and you may see him much balder than a pestle. Yet this god at Epidaurus is adorned with hair; the reason of this being that, amongst the Greeks, zeal for truth is languid,⁴⁵ and it is for that defect that a historian has justly blamed our race.⁴⁶ But the Egyptians see Aesculapius daily, and converse with him, not merely the man whose hearth he frequents, nor in such manner nor as often as he may prefer.
Now I hear it said that the Egyptian man has an art for working upon the gods, as also certain enchantments, and that by pronouncing a few foreign words he can, when he pleases, draw all the divine nature to follow such spells. From foreigners therefore, and not from the Greeks we must obtain the truer images of the divine nature. And yet, as I said a little while ago, the man who has examined the sun and the stars is satisfied not to inquire curiously into anything else: and admitting that there is any star with long hair, yet it is no star at all (for the body carried around in a circle marks the place of stars, in which nothing new ever takes place): but the space underneath the moon is the very frontier of generation and contains the combustible matter⁴⁷ of the stars falsely so called. In the one place they move together and are in succession subject to the others, in the other, being inharmonious in movement, they do not partake of the same nature. One had come all the way from the Altar to the sign of the equinox, and from there it will be carried on to the North Pole if it is not first destroyed. Of these you may see some of immense length, and to-day, if chance favours, one extending over the length of the zodiac; on the third day it will be not even a third of that size and on the tenth and the thirteenth it has rightly disappeared, dying out little by little, and becoming nothing at all. It is not even pious, in my opinion, to call these stars, but if you wish to call them so, this much at least is clear, that hair is an evil, inasmuch as even in a star it produces a perishable form. And whenever these comets appear, they are an evil portent, which the diviners and the soothsayers appease. They assuredly foretell public disasters, enslavements of nations, desolations of cities, deaths of kings, nothing small or moderate, but everything that exceeds the disastrous.
'Nowise has perished as yet an unknown star from high heaven⁴⁸
E'en from what time we were born and listened . . .'
Whatever it be that has perished, it is not a star, for all the happy bodies are spherical. Let this good then be with me and mine, one that maketh me like to the gods. For there are no other forms except those of this sort like to the gods, nor any other which it is more befitting to describe as divine in form and in image, and to endow with all the other epithets of divine beauty. And this is not that which should be, but which happens otherwise; nay, you may hear people using a nickname and calling bald men 'little moons' to their faces.
11. Now one thing had almost escaped me, the most fit of all to mention, I refer to the moon and her phases, which the sons of the bald share in name, and in form. This moon, so dear to me, begins in the form of a crescent, becomes a half moon, then again is gibbous, and ends by being a full moon. And assuredly those who have found their way to the summit of good fortune I call the ‘full moons’: it is even lawful to call them ‘suns’. For they no longer return to phases, but continue with a perfect circle shining in the face of those in heaven. As an instance: Odysseus is made sport of by the suitors, striplings with long hair and waning with dissipation, but soon to perish foully, more than a hundred in number, all of them at the hands of one bald man.⁴⁹ Him they counsel, when he is torch-bearing and kindling a light produced by man’s hand, to desist from his work for that his head suffices to light the whole house. Now this very thing is the most divine, and is not only like to the gods, but also akin to man, namely to have light and to make it. Of his splendid glitter smoothness is the cause, and smoothness in the head is nothing but the total absence of hair; for at the same moment one leaves the worse and approaches the better things, just as when we pointed out that there is an antithesis between the corpse and the living being. Now life and light, and all such things, belong to the category of the good and are so esteemed to belong. And again, if light is befitting to the bare surface, we must conclude that hair befits darkness; for this perhaps is not logical, but in every respect it is inevitable. Howbeit we must needs bring some persuasive force to the argument, and not dwell upon the mere cogency of our demonstration. In sooth all men think and say that hair is a natural parasol, and the most noble of poets, Archilochus, in praising it, praises it on the person of a courtezan. These are his words:
‘and her hair
Overshadowed her shoulders and her waist.’
But a shadow is nothing else than darkness, for absence of light is indicated by each of these words; and to those who approach nearer and investigate the matter, it is easy to see that the night is the greatest shadow, the earth opposing, as it does, a barrier to the beams of the sun. But even in the daytime dense forests have no share in light, for they are excessively shaded and bearded with hair.
12. So much then in behalf of the divine nature of this thing and of its dedication to the most brilliant of the gods in the air. And if health is also a fair thing, nay, the fairest of fair things, it is for its sake that I see many men possessed of hair fleeing for refuge to the razor, and to the pitch plaster, so as to be bald and at the same time free of disease.⁵⁰ Moreover, if ophthalmia, catarrh, and dullness of hearing and all other troubles that afflict the head itself, were removed together with this burden, even this would be a great result, and a much greater one still if both the feet and the intestines were benefited. There are those who, unfortunate in this respect, are compelled by the physicians to submit to so-called circles, and of these the beginning, the middle, and end is the pitch plaster, which attacks our hairs with more precision than iron. Surely it is a reasonable idea that from a higher position, as from a citadel,⁵¹ namely from the head,⁵² the cables of disease and health should be attached to the whole body. We, bald people, therefore, have a share of health not equal to other men, but, if God permit, be it said, even greater. And it would seem that those wooden images of Aesculapius, denuded of hair, as the Egyptian manner is, hint darkly of this very thing. There may be a lesson here for us all, and the most salutary prescription in the realm of medicine, and it seems almost to say that whoever desires to be in good health, should imitate the discoverer and champion of medicine. A cranium which is free from hair, that basks in the sun and is exposed to all the seasons, would not excite your wonder should it be turned quickly from bone into iron. In this state it would be most proof against the inroad of all diseases. Thus of spear-handles those made of marsh-grown trees and trees of the plain, are inferior, and the mountain-grown wood is stronger. Inquire the cause of Homer,⁵³ and you will hear him say that these last are reared and trained by the wind. Again, do not imagine that the wise Chiron⁵⁴ was acting to no purpose when he cut the lance for Peleus from the neighbourhood of Tempe, not from any hill slope or ravine where they grow smooth and tall, but from the summit of Pelion, where it was exposed to the impact of the winds. For these reasons the wood was good, and sufficient even to his succeeding line. The same is true of these two heads, the shaggy and the smooth. The one is of the marsh, for it is grown in the shade, the other is of the mountain, where it is exposed to all winds, and therefore the latter is strong, but the former is easily pliable.
13. Now they can test this argument who stand on the spot where the forces of Cambyses⁵⁵ and those of Psammitichus met in deadly conflict in the attack on Egypt from Arabia. For these two armies then making trial of one another, and each thinking that the present moment was the decisive one of all, were at length with difficulty separated. A great slaughter took place, and the disaster was too severe to admit of the removal of their dead, and so the survivors did nothing else for those who had perished but to separate them from the enemy corpses, mingled together, just as each one had happened to fall in the line of battle. So now there are two heaps of bones, the one of the Egyptians, the other of the Medes. Herodotus⁵⁶ (for it seems that this excellent man approached the skulls) is indeed surprised at the thinness and weakness of the latter, for he says that you might pierce them by throwing a pebble against them, and at the thickness and solidity of the former, for these met his assault as hard and rigid objects, and even a whole sling stone would not be sufficient to break them, nay, he would need a club for the purpose. And the cause, they say, to which we invoked this experiment as a witness, was the bonnet of the one race, and of the other constant exposure to the sun. And even if it is difficult to decide upon a voyage beyond the frontier passing through so many races of men, and granted that it is an unholy thing to smash the skull of a corpse with a stone, and admitting that you do not trust Herodotus, nevertheless, I, and many other people in the town, have Scythian servants who let their hair hang loose in the Scythian fashion. Now, if any one should strike one of these men with his fist,⁵⁷ he would kill him.
But there is a man at the theatre who furnishes a frequent and diverting spectacle to the public, and whom you may see at the holy period of each month if you seize the opportunity. This is one of the artificially, not one of the naturally bald, for he goes to his barber many times a day, and appears before the public for the very purpose of showing the strength of his head, to which no fearful thing is fearful, for he exposes it to seething pitch, and butts with it against a trained ram, one that tosses his head famously even when far away, and the Megarian vases collapse broken on his noble cranium. This is cut and cut to pieces, and not one of these exhibitions fails to make the beholders shiver, when they see how leaps are taken on it with more precision than on an Attic slipper. When I beheld this man, I congratulated myself on my good fortune, for I too could do all these things, but he certainly excels me in daring, and moreover in the poverty that has brought him to this point of audacity. At all events I need not make the trial, and may I never have to! But there is another boon than this, a right great one, and which falls short of none of those enumerated. For if it is our lot to attain what Pindar⁵⁸ prayed for, and we are able to live on our own means, we shall take a good seat in the theatre, and become hearers and spectators of what is being exhibited there;⁵⁹ and if supplies be needed for the city, and if the people ask for largesses, we shall employ our property lavishly. But should the demon be adverse,⁶⁰ and should our daily bread be lacking—and may such a fate never befall one of the divine race—⁶¹at all events the last of evils, hunger, is far from us, since we can all be wonder-workers; we can improvise and present on the stage, at the cost of a few blushes, an art well worth seeing.
14. Now as to the man who thinks with Dio that hair is much more fitting to men than to women, is he not taking up a position quite opposed to the evident facts of the case? For what sort of reason is there in allotting to the destiny of the stronger what weakens its very possessors? Assuredly a distinction has been made both by nature and by custom. By custom, inasmuch as hair is not esteemed beautiful in all males nor in all places, nor at all times in the same males; for the Lacedaemonians adopted long hair after Thyrea,⁶² whereas the Argives, before Thyrea, wore their hair long. There are plenty of nations who have not adopted it in the past, nor do they to-day. But always and in every place it has been thought a beautiful thing for each woman to make the care of her hair a most serious affair. The woman does not exist, nor has ever existed, who has submitted her head to a razor, unless on account of some ill-omened and horrible calamity, if so be that time has brought such misfortune. For my part I have never seen or heard of such an one. Then again nature is in harmony with custom: for no woman who ever lived has shown herself as bald.⁶³ And do not tell me that their hair-nets conceal this, for our comedies pierce all subterfuges; and if any woman has lost her hair, this is a result of some illness, and with a little care she returns to her natural condition. But of men worthy to be called men it is not easy to recall one who has not first reached this natural state. For this very thing seems to be the fulfilment of nature, even if it does not fall to the lot of all. And just as the sons of husbandmen, understanding from the vigorous growth of healthy saplings that it is their desire and nature to grow straight upward; just as these men, I say, prop up with stakes and supports as many of them as are not strong enough of themselves to accomplish this growth; so, since all those whose nature is best appear to be in a condition (of baldness) approaching my own, we must correct with the razor those not in such a state and thus assist nature.
15. It is worth while calling to mind at this point how the Lacedaemonians dressed their hair before the battle of Thermopylae,⁶⁴ that battle which Dio calls a great one for the very reason that the Lacedaemonians combed their hair before it, though not a man survived in the face of this evil omen. Now I say this not with any wish to repeat what has already been said, namely that hair even in the living is a dead body; but because it grows from the dead.⁶⁵ For this fact has been universally reported by the Therapeutae in Egypt; how a certain man whose hair had been close shaven died, and yet the year after displayed thick hair and beard. Those then of the Greeks who perished most gloriously he has drawn into his story, but he deliberately omits those who won the noblest and greatest victories and who inflicted punishment upon the barbarian king both on behalf of these very men and for the rest of Greece. I allude to the Macedonians and to the Greeks who went inland with Alexander, and whom the Lacedaemonians alone did not join. These before the battle of Arbela, which we may justly describe as a great battle, having learned by experience that hair is a disadvantage to soldiers, made the whole host of them shave, and with God, fortune, and valour to help them combined in the struggle on behalf of all the Greeks. Now the reason for the prejudice against hair was the following, as Ptolemy son of Lagus⁶⁶ related in his history, one who knew, for he was present at these events, and, because he was king at the time when he wrote his history, did not lie.
16. A Macedonian with hair unusually long and a thick drooping beard, was attacking a Persian,⁶⁷ but the Persian, although in danger, with excellent judgement drops the well-known oblong shield and spear from his hands, as insufficient for coping with the Macedonian. He then charges him, and contriving to slip in under his enemy’s guard, seizes him by the beard and hair, and thus throws the soldier, who had not struck a blow, to the ground, drawing him to himself by the hair like a fish, and once fallen slays him with his drawn scimitar. Some other Persian also saw this, and another and another, and soon they were all throwing away their shields, and in full pursuit of the enemy through the plain, where one would catch one man by his hair, and another, another; for it now passed through the Persian army like a signal that these troops could be captured by their hair, and no one probably of Alexander’s phalanx stood his ground except that portion which was bald. Meantime the king was in sore straits, exposed to unarmed men, against whom when fully armed his force was irresistible. As it was, Alexander might have been compelled to retreat to Cilicia in disgrace, and to become the laughing-stock of the Greeks, as one who had been defeated in a battle of the hair! But as matters were (for it was already destined that the Heraclidae should deprive the Achaemenides⁶⁸ of their sceptres), speedily understanding the danger, he orders the trumpets to sound the retreat, and when he has led his army as far away as possible, and has placed it in a good position, he lets loose the barbers upon it, and, induced by the gifts of the king, they shaved the Macedonians en masse.
As to Darius and the Persians, the campaign no longer proceeded according to their hopes, for as there was no longer anything to hold on to, they were condemned to struggle in armour against much superior adversaries.
17. Hair neither makes men terrible nor makes them seem so, unless they be bogies to frighten children with; for we see soldiers, at the moment when they desire to intimidate the enemy, cover their heads with helmets. And the helmet, both in its name and its function, is nothing else than a brazen cranium. And if these are bedecked with horse-hair, any one who has ever put on a helmet must know what this is designed for. But we ought to teach those who do not know that it is behind that they arrange it with hair fixed in rows between the felt lining and the helmet proper, nor could even Hephaestus himself manufacture the curved exterior as a support for hair. Standing as it does, it presents the clearest possible image of baldness, and in this way it is the most terrible of all things that soldiers wear. Achilles, therefore, says that the Trojans again plucked up courage, not because they no longer saw his horsehair plumes floating in the wind, but,—how does he put it?—
‘Because they see not the front of my helmet
Flashing near them . . .’⁶⁹
Its shining surface, its smoothness, this precisely would be baldness and a bugbear. And if Achilles had long hair (for this also he asserts) we must remember that he was young, at the age which inclines to sudden anger, a time of life which has not yet reached perfection either of soul or of body. And it is natural that a young man’s head should surge with hair, and his heart with wrath. But just as anger in the soul is not praised because of Achilles, so in the body hair is not to be commended as a marvel. None the less I admit that, as he was born of Thetis, he was by nature the best endowed for the development of every virtue, and I express my belief concerning Achilles that, had he survived, he would not have been without his share both of baldness and of philosophy. When he was young he was in some way versed in music and in medicine, and moreover, he held in so light esteem whatever hair he had, that he purified it and dedicated it to a sacred tomb.⁷⁰ Then again, Aristoxenus says⁷¹ the very same thing about Socrates, namely that he was rough by nature to the point of anger,⁷² and that when overcome by that passion he ran the gamut of all unseemliness. Socrates, however, was not yet bald at that time, for he was only twenty-five years of age when Parmenides and Zeno had come to Athens, according to Plato, to see the Panathenaic festival.⁷³ If any one later had spoken of Socrates as harsh or as a long-haired man, I think that the speaker would have raised a great laugh at his own expense amongst those who knew the man, for of all men who had pursued philosophy up to that time, he was at once the baldest, and at the same time the gentlest. Do not therefore condemn the hero to a head of hair, for at the time to which you refer he was only a springal who, a short time before, had not passed out of adolescence. Moreover, you could instance nothing as a proof that Achilles' hair would have remained until his old age. But I have many things which prove that it would not have so remained, namely the case of his father and his grandfather, for I have actually seen their statues. He came of the race of the gods, and what has once been said concerning the form of the gods is sufficient.
18. Why then, as if you had picked up a windfall, do you hold fast these words:
'She (Athene) seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair.'⁷⁴
Again, why do you call attention to a morsel of salt fish for your-self, instead of dragging the whole line into view? Well then, since you will not do so, you make it necessary for us to produce it, as thus:
‘She stood behind, and seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair.’
Well done, Dio, for it is not redundant syllables that you have suppressed, but those which contain the direct opposite of your argument. From this I divine that even at that moment of his age Achilles was somewhat bald. The goddess, the poet says, came behind him and caught him by the hair. Why any one could catch hold of me, or of Socrates himself, nay even of the oldest man of the Greeks from behind! For there the symbols of our perishable nature are left us. It is a possession belonging to neither man nor demon but clearly to a divine destiny and nature, to be altogether removed from participation in the mortal element.
‘She stood behind, and seized the son of Peleus by his fair hair’.
To catch him by his hair she stood behind him: therefore there was nothing in front wherewith to catch him.
19. On the whole there is nothing good in Dio’s argument on behalf of the growth of hair. And yet, if there had been any good in the case, Dio would have found it out, and if it had been small, would have represented it as great, for, even as matters are, he has gone a long way to find an example in the Lacedaemonians, an example quite valueless for his argument, at least as any one else would think.
He seizes upon Homer as a sacred anchor and holds on to him to the end of his book, but he employs argument with entire injustice and rhetorically, as in the present instance, where he has cut out a bit of the verse as if it were a statute, and elsewhere calls up as witnesses parts of verses which do not exist, as though they existed. For he flatly defames Hector⁷⁵ or rather Homer,⁷⁶ and perhaps both Homer and Hector. Now the latter is represented to us as re-sembling the wisest men in the matter of cutting off his hair, and he who has written the truest things concerning the heroes makes this clear, inasmuch as, I think, he made the campaign with some of these, and so served against the others, he who says these very things about Hector. And if you go to Ilium, the moment you enter there any Ilian will conduct you to the temple of Hector.⁷⁷ His statue is easy to see, and those who see it are inclined to say that it was constructed with the intent to represent him as he held himself when he taunted his brother with his artificial beauty, to wit the care which he took of his hair.⁷⁸ As to what Dio wrote down as said by Homer concerning Hector,
'and round about him
His dark locks were dragged,'⁷⁹
let any one show me where this occurs in the epic compositions of Homer. I do not think Ion the rhapsode himself could find it. Moreover, how could Homer have made a hairy man of the very person whom he introduces into his poem as one who taunted another with his foppishness? It is as if Phileas had accused Andocides⁸⁰ of sacrilege,⁸¹ just as if he were not himself the man who had filched the Gorgon's head from the shield of the goddess on the Acropolis. Such is your case in regard to this hero also.
20. Again, if Menelaus had a fair-haired head, he was not long-haired, at least as far as we can learn from the narration, nor is that an encomium on hair. The poet only shows things as they existed, nor when Homer mentions a thing must this mention be regarded as of the nature of praise. But to Dio a mention of hair and a eulogy of it are one and the same thing for the sake of his own volubility. He proceeded on the one hand to attribute to the poetry what is not there, and on the other to deprive it of what is there, and this he has done with such boldness that in order to convince us by his argument that hair is much more becoming to men than to women, he says ‘of the deities Homer has other ways of praising the females, as when, for instance, he speaks of “ox-eyed” Hera, and “silver-footed” Thetis, while in the case of Zeus he praises most of all his hair’. Perchance his copy of Homer had been mutilated of many good lines such as these, ‘Apollo king whom fair-haired Leto bore’⁸² or, ‘Place him at the fair-haired knees of Athene’.⁸³ (sic) And concerning Hera’s plot to put Zeus to sleep⁸⁴, he says that the goddess beautified herself in all other ways, and that in this she will have need also of her girdle, which, of its many powers, possesses one, the greatest of all, namely, that of stealing away the mind from its possessors. Then in the same passage he says that she anointed herself with sweet oil and that ‘. . . her hair, She combed, and bound up with her hands her shining tresses Fair, ambrosial’.⁸⁵ This is worthy then of a host of praises. It would also be quite worth while, now that the argument touches upon Zeus, if any one would quote the many passages overlooked by Dio, and especially those which he knew quite well but pretended not to know. I too know these passages, and I do not drag in false ones for the sake of my argument, nor could I admit that any one of the dwellers in heaven is hairy. The argument is the same alike for male and female. Zeus is not more clearly defined in his spherical shape than is the Aphrodite who dwells among the stars. And this has been said in like sense concerning Zeus also, whom Dio has brought in as the finishing touch to his argument, namely, that of the things Homer relates concerning the gods, the greatest part are in accordance with popular opinion, and few in accord with truth. One single point is in accordance with popular opinion, to wit, those hairs which gather strength from the head of Zeus and together shake the very heaven, a conception which has received the assent of the masses and the sculptors. But apart from Homer and the Lacedaemonians there is not a shred left of Dio's argument. And even if they be present, he has not, as I observed just now, found anything to say that is worth while concerning the nature of hairs, either by discovery of his own or by borrowing from them. He has not said of what sort they are, he has not taught their nature, he has not shown how they are beneficial to those who possess them, nor how they are evil to those who do not possess them. The present argument, examining into the real nature of the facts, has discovered that baldness is divine and related to the divine, that it is the fulfilment of nature, and a real shrine to the god through whom we have wisdom. I pass in review other innumerable benefits which it brings to body and soul, what their character is and their cause; and thus our argument has brought forth nothing which is unsupported by a luminous exposition. And it has become clear, moreover, that hair has all the opposites of these things, lack of reason, animal propensities, and all that is of the part opposed to God. Locks have been shown to be as it were awns and pods of the animal, the playthings of nature, mere excrescences of imperfect matter.
21. Now I think it is befitting to divide all men according to their races and pursuits, and to show which the one argument praises, and which the other. The adulterers certainly come from the men who care for their hair.⁸⁶ Homer⁸⁷ depicts the seducer as one fingering his shining locks, in the sense that his hair was adorned for the ruin of women. And assuredly this man is himself an adulterer, the prince of adulterers, he against whom the reproach was uttered. This one race of men is the most treacherous and the most hostile within the homes of his own countrymen. And those in defence of whom we take the field in war, for whom we incur danger, that they may not be outraged—I speak of our daughters and wives—those very ones, if the occasion arises, some fashionably dressed young man seizes upon and carries away to whatever quarter of the sea or land he desires, and if not to the sea or land far distant, to some dark corner or hiding place. Yet the heart of a wife who has been made a prisoner in wartime might remain true to the man who had married her. But the adulterer is that very thing which has first plundered her good will from the soul of him who is the partner of her life, and the loss of his erring wife is not merely half a loss. With justice then do the laws arm the executioner against these men, and the gardeners grow Attic radishes with which the first punishment is meted out to them as soon as they are taken in the act. It is this one class of men of the sort that has ruined many homes, and already certain cities also. And adultery became the pretext for a clash of two continents one against the other and for the crossing of the Greeks against Priam’s realm.
There is another vice which is much worse than this, one which exposed Alexander to our censure, and to which were addicted people like Clisthenes,⁸⁸ the Timarchi, and all who dispose of their beauty⁸⁹ for money, or if not for money then for something else, and if for no other end, simply for their abominable pleasure. In a word, let it be said that these effeminate wretches all make a cult of their hair. There are some who are to be found openly in the brothels, and yet they think they are gaining their end, since this is the best way to display fully the effeminacy of their character. And whoever is secretly perverted, even if he should swear the contrary in the market-place, and should present no other proof of being an acolyte of Cotys save only in a great care of his hair, anointing it and arranging it in ringlets, he might well be denounced to all as one who has celebrated orgies to the Chian goddess and the Ithyphalli. For Pherecydes⁹⁰ covering himself with his cloak, said, ‘It is evident from my skin’, and showed the malady on his finger. But we can recognize by his hair a young man under the influence of unnatural passion.
22. Now if the proverb also is a wise thing (and how can it fail to be wise, when Aristotle says of it that proverbs have been saved, owing to their conciseness and clearness, as remnants by which to recall the old philosophy that perished in the great destructive revolutions of humanity?).⁹¹ This, too, is a proverb, and it is also an aphorism which embodies a self-evident principle in the antiquity of that philosophy from which it is derived, and so we look at it intently. In every way the ancients were more skilled in unravelling truth than we of to-day. What, for instance, is the following aphorism, and what does it mean?
‘There is no man graced with hair who is not . . .’
The fag end you may yourself fit in to the rhythm of the trimeter; I will not utter that fearsome word, nor the thing signified by it. Well done, you have fitted it carefully—, well, what think you now?
‘Bless me! This the truth!’
The oracular utterance is before you. It is self-evident; but how many witnesses does it drag into court, both those who are now using it and as many as have used it before! For what makes proverbs immortal is the very fact that people are continually using them, because the matters themselves with which they deal are always calling them to memory. For things we observe in what is continually happening call them to witness, and give evidence (for them) by the examples themselves.
23. But although this is the case, it is wonderful what an argument Dio has brought forth in favour of hair. What further need have we of a Plato to refute this, when the rhetorician⁹² has made it evident that rhetoric is merely a hair-dressers' art? Or does it seem likely to you that the hair-dyers would make locks of hair lovelier, because a pure Greek praised such a possession before a crowded house? I think that those who have been emasculated in the rites of Cybele will give him abundant thanks for his discourse, and also the man who looks upon his neighbour's wife with unholy eyes. Assuredly he has drenched the head of every one of these with his discourse, as though with perfumed oil. It is inevitable that what is in popular esteem should be zealously aimed at, and most of all when he who distributes praise happens to be a man of distinguished reputation. And it follows from this, that such a man is quite capable of augmenting in our city the list of these most baleful creatures. But as to baldness, what types of men does it oppose to these? What men have we praised in place of adulterers? Those evidently from whom spring men who live in hallowed precincts, priests, prophets, and acolytes; again in the schools, schoolmasters and guardians of youth; and those in the ranks of the army in prosperous circumstances, namely generals and colonels; and those esteemed everywhere by the majority of men to have superior intelligence. And I think that the bard also whom Agamemnon left behind him as guardian of Clytemestra was of our race.⁹³ For he would never have entrusted to a long-haired man, a wife who came of a family already discredited.
Painters also furnish us with excellent testimony in favour of our argument, when they do not paint from the original, but also profess that they have found a model appropriate to the task. For should one of them be given a commission to paint an adulterer or effeminate wretch on a panel, if he selects a long-haired man to pose for him, he has fulfilled his order. If you order of him a philosopher or acolyte, a rather dignified bald man will certainly take his place on that panel, for this is the device on the coin.
24. I have therefore made a present of this discourse to philosophers, priests, and temperate men of every description. In it I have expressed all piety to the divine part, and have given good counsel towards men. If my work when once published is well thought of by the multitude, with the result that thereafter the wearers of long hair are put to shame and that they adopt at least a rather moderate and restrained cropping of their hair, and if it inclines them to congratulate those who need not the barber, they need not thank me for this. Let this only be the merit of my view of the case, that through it the merest tyro in speech appears to be somebody, although compared with the most brilliant man. If, on the other hand, I do not succeed in convincing these people by my discourse, then let them blame me, for actually failing, with all the facts in my favour, to withstand the simple grace of Dio. May it also profit the multitude to have taken up this essay in their hands!

## The Egyptian Tale (On Providence)


### Preface

THIS has been written in the days of the sons of Taurus,⁹⁴ and the first part here presented was read as far as the riddle of the wolf, precisely at the moment when the inferior man was ruling, after coming into power through a division in the state. The ensuing part was woven into it after the return of the better men, who begged that this history should not remain incomplete amidst misfortunes; but that since those things which were foretold according to God seemed to be in course of fulfilment, it were better in dealing with the same subject to go on to more happy fortunes than those already recounted. From the moment, therefore, in which the overthrow of the tyranny was already in progress, the story followed the sequence of events. And it is worthy of no ordinary wonderment in all this that the handling suffices for many subjects. Many doctrines which up to this moment remained undecided, have found room for investigation in this story, and each has been examined in detail. Lives are described therein which are to be taken as examples of vice and virtue; the narrative contains a history of contemporary events; and this story has been fashioned and embellished throughout with a view to its utility.

### Part One


### Chapter 1

The legend is Egyptian. The Egyptians are remarkable for their wisdom. Perhaps, therefore, this, which is only a legend, might signify, enigmatically, something more than a legend, for the very reason that it is Egyptian. And if it is not a legend, but sacred history, in that case it would be all the more worthy to be set forth in writing.
Osiris and Typho were brothers, and came of the same parents. Now the relationship of souls and that of bodies is not one thing and the same. It does not belong to souls to be born on earth from the same parents, but rather to flow from the same fountain. And the nature of the universe furnishes two kinds, one luminous, and the other indistinct, this last gushing forth from the ground, since its source is somewhere below, and leaping out of the earth’s cavities, if perchance it might so compel the divine law. But the former is suspended from the back of the Heavens;⁹⁵ for it is indeed sent down that it may order the earthly lot, but it is enjoined upon it that when descending it should take great care lest, while it is arranging and ordering disarrangement and disorder, it should itself by its propinquity be infected with dishonour and disorder. Now a law of Themis has been established which announces to souls that, whichever one of them has been acquainted with the furthest confines of existence and has withal kept guard over its nature and remained inviolate, that such a one, I say, should flow back again by way of the selfsame road, and be commingled with its own source, just as it is a necessity of nature that those who have in some way set out from the other part, should be lodged in the abysses that are akin to them.
'Envy and Anger there dwell, and there tribes of other misfortunes
Wander about through the gloom in the meadow of infatuation.'⁹⁶

### Chapter 2

Of souls there are those which are well-born, and those which are ill-born, in such wise that it might befall a Parthian to be related to a Libyan, and that those whom we call brothers should be in no wise near to one another in kinship of soul, a fact which was indicated in the case of the two Egyptian boys from the moment of their birth, and when they were adult was shown quite clearly. For the younger, born and brought up as by a divine destiny, even in childhood’s days was fond of listening, and fond of fables, for the fable is the child’s treatise on philosophy;⁹⁷ and as he grew, he always desired training which was in advance of his years. He gave ear to his father, and whatever wisdom was known to each, all that he hungered after, eager to seize first upon all knowledge at once, in puppy fashion, as, of course, all natures do which promise great things. Such natures show impatience and start before their time, already pledging themselves to the beloved goal. Then again, long before his adolescence he was even more sedate than a well-bred man of mature age, and he listened with modesty, and when he himself had, on occasion, to speak, whether to ask about what he had been listening to, or with some other purpose, every one would have noticed him hesitating and blushing. He always made way for the older Egyptians, and gave up his seat to them, and this although he was the son of the ruler of the great kingdom; and respect for those of his own age was ever with him, for it was pre-eminently in his nature to care for the feelings of men. It was indeed difficult at that period of his life to find a man in Egypt for whom the boy had not obtained at least one benefit from his father.
The elder brother, Typho,⁹⁸ on the other hand, was, in a word, a downright boor. All knowledge he hated with his whole heart, both so much as was Egyptian, and also foreign learning, teachers of which the king had placed at the disposal of his son Osiris; and he laughed the whole business to scorn, as though it were idle and calculated to enslave the mind. When he saw his brother conducting himself in an orderly way, and leading a modest life, he thought this cowardly, inasmuch as no one saw him striking a man with his fists, attacking him with kicks, or running in a disorderly fashion, withal that he was nimble, without any spare flesh, and with a body that was a light burden for the soul therein. Then again, Osiris did not gulp down drink, or give way to peals of vulgar laughter, which shook the whole body, such as his brother indulged in every day, for Typho deemed these the only acts worthy of a free man, namely to do whatsoever one chanced to desire at a given moment. He was like no one of his race in character, nor indeed like anything human, and he did not, to put it in a nutshell, even resemble himself, for he was a compound of every kind of evil. At one moment he seemed to be stupid, and a mere cumberer of the ground,⁹⁹ only keeping from his sleep long enough to fill his belly and to take other provisions for the route of slumber; at another he would neglect the moderate necessities of nature to indulge in gross horse-play, and to annoy his own equals in age and his elders. He admired strength of body as being the ultimate good, but he used it ill, wrenching off doors, throwing clods of earth, and rejoicing if any one was hurt thereby, or if he had done any other mischief, as though this bore witness to his prowess. He flamed up with untimely lust, and was violent in seeking amorous encounters. Further, envy of his brother smouldered within him, and hatred of the Egyptians, because they, the people, gave honour to Osiris, both in speech and in song, and at home in their common religious rites, all, everywhere, prayed of the gods that every sort of good thing might be his. Such was the man and so regarded. Then again, Typho took to himself bands of senseless boys, for no other reason (since it was not his nature to care for any one in his heart) than that he might have some partisans who did not hold the views of Osiris. It was easy enough for any one to win this man's good graces, and to get from Typho anything that young men desire, by merely whispering something tending to calumniate Osiris. So from childhood did the respective characters of the two foretell the difference of their lives.

### Chapter 3

But just as of two roads the first cleft, diverging only a little, as it advances, ever adds something to the gap, so that finally the two come to be a vast distance apart; thus one may see in the case of the young, how a small tendency to differ separates them immensely as they advance in life. Now these lads turned in opposite directions, not little by little, but all at once, each receiving a separate lot, the one the perfection of good, the other the acme of evil. As they grew up the antagonism of their choice grew with them; more manifest evidences of this were afforded, stamped as they were on their deeds. Osiris from his earliest youth served as a general with those duly gazetted, although the law did not yet permit men so young to bear arms, but nevertheless he governed the judgement of his fellow generals, as though he were their intelligence, and made use of them as if they were merely his hands. Then, his nature growing like a plant, he brought forth fruit ever more perfect. He became a commander of the guard, was entrusted with reports, was prefect of the city, president of the council, and gave up each post in far greater repute than that in which he had received it. But the other (Typho), when appointed minister of finance (for his father had thought best to make trial of his sons’ characters in lesser posts), brought shame upon himself, and upon the man who had appointed him, for he was found guilty of embezzling public money, accepting bribes, and of instability in administration. When he was removed accordingly to another position of authority on the chance that he might be fit for it, he behaved still more disgracefully, and of the flourishing kingdom that part over which Typho was placed passed a whole year in unspeakable plight. He then betook himself to other men, and straightway misfortune dogged them. Such was Typho as a leader of men. In private life he danced the cordax, and collected about him the most disorderly of Egyptians and strangers, those who were ready to say and to hear anything, to submit to and to do anything, so that his banqueting hall became a factory for every sort of licentiousness. Even when awake he snored, and was delighted when he heard others so doing, thinking this practice a wonderful sort of music; and there was praise and honour to that one who should prolong the unruly sound, and should spin it out most roundly. And a certain one of these men, the most heroic, was quite lost to shame, and shrinking from none of the infamies, gained many prizes, and certain posts in the government came to him as a reward for his disgraceful effrontery. Such an one was Typho at home.

### Chapter 4

Now when he took his seat in the guise of one who conducts public affairs, he showed clearly that evil takes every form, for it is at war both with virtue and with itself, and both the opposing forces are parts of it. And this gaping idiot straightway became downright mad, and barking more sharply than a Molossian hound, he would bring disasters, one on a private individual, another on a family, or again on a whole city, and he quite rejoiced in having worked a greater evil, as if thinking to wash away the dishonour of his indolence at home with the tears of men. One point a man might gain from this evil plight, that oftentimes when on the brink of doing a dreadful thing, or through perversion of judgement he would degenerate into odd suspicions so as to resemble the fanatics, and would bellow forth vigorously about the shadow at Delphi; and meanwhile the person in danger would make his escape without any further mention being made of him: or he would be overcome by lethargy, and his brain would be fuddled for some time, to such an extent that his mind was far away from his surroundings. Then, when he had pulled himself together, even so all memory of the recent incidents had escaped him, and he would dispute with members of his administration about how many ears of corn a medimnus contains, or how many cyathi a chous, giving evidence of a rare and amazing shrewdness. Many a time did sleep save a man from misfortune, for it would overtake Typho at a very opportune moment, and would even have pushed him headlong from his throne, had not an attendant dropped his lamp to support him. Thus oftentimes a tragic night-festival would end in comedy, for he never transacted official business in the daytime, inasmuch as his character was averse to the sun and the light, and more akin to darkness. Though knowing well that every one who had even a small share of sense accused him of the most complete ignorance, he did not blame himself for his eccentricity, but rather on this very account did he become the common enemy of those who had intelligence, as if they were wronging him in knowing how to pass judgement. The man was without resource in counsel, but most resourceful in plotting. Folly and madness were ever with him, evil destinies of the soul which gain strength from one another. Never have there been, nor shall there ever be in nature other evils greater than these, and more calculated to extirpate the race of man.

### Chapter 5

Every one of these things his father beheld and understood, and he watched over the Egyptians, for he was king, priest, and philosopher. The Egyptian writings declare that he was even a god. The Egyptians believe that myriads of gods reigned over them, one at a time, before the land was ruled over by men, and that the kings traced their descent, a Peiromis from a Peiromis.¹⁰⁰ When, therefore, divine laws translated the king to the greater gods, and the statutory meeting of the assembly was at hand, the event having been announced in good time, there were gathered for it all the tribes of priests and the territorial army from every city of Egypt. All these came by the compulsion of law, but all the rest of the people might be absent, nor was any one prevented from attending. They were there to watch the voting, though not to vote themselves. Swineherds, however, were forbidden the spectacle, as also whosoever was either a foreigner, or a man of foreign extraction carrying arms as a mercenary in the Egyptian army. These two classes were forbidden to be present. Thus the elder of the sons had by far the less number of votes; for Typho’s faction was composed of swineherds and foreigners, a senseless and withal a large crowd. But they submitted to the custom nor attempted anything against the proceedings, deeming their disfranchisement nothing dreadful, but only befitting them, since this decision had been given against them by law, and it was in any case natural to their condition.

### Chapter 6

Now the king is appointed by the Egyptians in the following way. There is a sacred mountain¹⁰¹ near the great city of Thebes, and just opposite to it another. The Nile flows between the two. Of these mountains the one described as opposite is the Libyan, and on this it is the custom that the candidates for the royal dignity should take their abode during the preparatory period, to the end that they may perceive nothing of the choice. But the sacred mountain is the Egyptian one. On the summit is a tent for the king, and by him are collected as many of the priests as are versed in the great wisdom. This arrangement extends to all that have precedence, for it distributes the positions at the ceremonies according to merit. A first circle is composed of these of which the king is as it were the heart. The soldiers occupy another circle next to this. These then still surround the peak, which on the widely extending mountain is another mount; it is like a nipple standing up, thus keeping the king in full view even of those encircling him at the farthest distance. And they to whom it is permitted to be present at the spectacle, surround him, taking possession of the ground at the base of the nipple. These are they who only applaud what they perceive; the others have authority over the election. As soon as the king has been invoked, and those also to whose office this belongs moved the whole assembly of priests, as if the divinity were present and were assisting in the proceedings of the election, the name of one of the candidates for the kingdom being then announced, the soldiers raise their hands, while the priests, the acolytes of the temple, and the interpreters of the oracles register their votes. This is a smaller body of men, but it is far more powerful, for one interpreter’s vote is equivalent to one hundred hands, one priest’s is equivalent to twenty hands, and the acolyte counts as ten. Then a second name of the candidates for the kingship comes up, and hands and votes are taken for him accordingly. Even if the number on each side is nearly equal, the king, by supporting one side, gives it a much greater majority, and if he throws his weight on the losing side, he equalizes the vote. Hence the necessity arises of suspending the election, and depending on the gods, both by watching patiently a still longer time, and by performing the sacred rites with greater precision, until such moment as not through any veil nor by any of the usual signs, but face to face they appoint the king himself, and the people hear the proclamation from the gods themselves. The whole ceremony takes place at one time in one of these ways, and at another time in another, as the case may be. But in regard to Typho and Osiris, the gods were clearly seen from the first, without any action on the part of the priests, and took part themselves, arranging their own procedure; and each one marshalled his own votaries, so that it was evident to all with what intent they were present. Even if they had not been there, every hand and every vote would have awaited the name of the younger of the king’s sons. But great events here below are announced beforehand by greater preludes, and the divine element is clearly shown in things that are to turn out contrary to all probability, whether they be good or whether they be evil.

### Chapter 7

Osiris therefore remained, as was right, on the spot to which he had been conducted in the first instance. But the other was in convulsions of impatience, was tormented to know the details of the election, and finally could not restrain himself from an attempt at aggression, and at destruction of the votes. Careless of himself, therefore, and of the royal laws, and launching himself in the stream, he was carried down by it, swimming with the current, the while doing and suffering all manner of things, until finally, derided by all, he lands on the other side of the river. He thought that no one saw him, save only such as he met on the way, and to whom he promised money; but every one recognized him, and detested both him and his design. They did not, however, think fit to expose his misguided nature.
But this was his most calamitous experience, that in his own presence and in his own hearing he was rejected by the votes of all, and by the hands of all; nay, even the gods cast their curse upon him; and Osiris, the one who had not concerned himself about the matter, had merely come when sent for. The gods, the priests, all in a word, bedecked with sacred garlands, and accompanied by the sound of the holy flutes, met him at the bank of the river where the flat-bottomed boat from the Libyan shore, taking the young king on board, must needs touch; and lo, there were great signs from heaven and divine voices of good omen from the same place; and every vision by which the future is sought, great and small, announced a reign prosperous for the Egyptians. So far as the demons of the more evil order appeared likely to be restive, it seemed that they would not meekly endure the happiness of mankind either, but would attack it and cause it to fester; and a kind of plot was indicated.

### Chapter 8

Now as soon as he was initiated in the kingly office by the gods and his father, they definitely announced to him, from definite knowledge, besides all the rest, benefits in swarms, but that his brother who had been born to bring ill-luck both upon the Egyptians and on his father’s hearth, must be banished if he were not to throw all things into confusion, to the end that he might neither hear of nor see the success and prosperity of Egypt that were due to the reign of Osiris himself. For Typho’s nature could endure nothing good.
The priests have now transmitted to him (Osiris) knowledge of the double essence of souls as well as the necessary opposition between those on the earth and those above. These then they begged him to remove and to strip the evil element from its good and divine parallelism, and to be in no wise ashamed before what is called by men blood relationship. And when he showed weakness, they told him that he, and the Egyptians, and their neighbours, and all the country ruled over by the Egyptians must suffer; for that the evil in question was no slight one, nor would any ordinary care be an adequate means of rebutting and weakening open and secret attacks. The reason was that Typho had allies with him also, a powerful company of those malignant demons to whom he was next of kin, and by whom he had been brought into existence in order that they might be able to make use of an implement of their evil towards men. It was for the sake of this evil, that as they advanced on their way, they engendered, nourished, delivered his mother of, and brought up after their own fashion to be a great boon to themselves,—Typho! One thing more they thought necessary for complete possession, namely to endow him with the power that rule brings with it, for then he would be a perfect man of perfect ancestors, in that he would be both able and willing to do great evils. ‘You, on the other hand,’ said one of the priests, ‘they detest as being a blessing to men and a retribution to themselves; for the misfortunes of races of men are a feast to the evil demons.’ Again then and very often the priests gave him this warning advice, namely to conduct his brother beyond the frontiers, and to let him go to his ruin in some distant place, for they knew and saw the gentle character of Osiris; but they were finally compelled by him to tell him that for a time he might hold his ground, but that unknowingly he would surrender and utterly betray himself and all men, exchanging in reality the greatest disasters for the benign name of brotherly affection. 'Nay as long as you at all events are propitious and helpful,' replied Osiris, 'I shall not fear my brother remaining, and I shall be exempt from the wrath of the demons, inasmuch as it is easy for you, if you are willing, wholly to remedy oversights on my part.'

### Chapter 9

But his father taking up the discussion, said: 'You ill comprehend this matter, my son, for the divine part in the universe is given to things of a different order, acting upon most of them through its primordial power, and filled with intelligible beauty, which is mind.¹⁰² In that region of the universe there is another and supercosmic race of gods,¹⁰³ one which, while it holds all existing things together even unto the last ones, is unswerving, and is unrelenting towards matter. That race is a happy vision to those who are gods by nature,¹⁰⁴ but still happier is it to behold its fountain head.¹⁰⁵ And moreover that race is more than full of good elements by force of its self-concentration,¹⁰⁶ being more than filled with itself, but for the others it is well to turn towards the God who is there. The efficacy of these good things is not, however, something simple or of one kind; it is to diverse parts of the universe that they (the gods) direct their care. They must bring down the action generated in their contemplation¹⁰⁷ to the work administered by them, so far as is possible. While therefore, their unsullied element has been drawn up close beneath that great first essence, they themselves marshal those next to them, and the succession of orders descends methodically to the last of existing things, and all things rejoice in the fatherly care of the first element through the agency of the intermediate elements,¹⁰⁸ but not, however, to an equal extent, for in that case there would be no degrees. The fact is that, as the existing things descend in degree they become weaker, until finally they err and falsify the order, and at that moment the existence of existing things terminates.
Now something of this sort ensues here below. That which is erring in nature gets as its part the last and most perishable portion of nature in generation and of the bodily destiny, but heaven, the highest, the most imperishable portion, has taken possession of the shape of the soul conformable to it. ‘What the gods do on high’, Osiris’ father said, pointing to them, ‘that does the demon¹⁰⁹ in these troublous elements, a nature unstable and rash, and in proportion to the greatness of his distance from there, he understands not the good ordering of divine things. Since therefore the foundation of existing things does not suffice to their own salvation (for it slips away itself from beneath them and does not await real being, but merely imitates this by the process of becoming), and since the demons are akin to this earthly nature which has for portion a destructive type of being, it is necessary for the divine power to turn itself hither, and to implant in us certain initial impulses which the world here follows with profit as long as the impulses suffice.
‘And just as marionettes moved by strings¹¹⁰ are still agitated even when the man who has given the impulse of motion to the machinery has desisted, but are not agitated for ever (for they hold not the source of motion within them, but move only so long as the force communicated to them is strong and is not dissipated by the continuance of the movement), in the same way, my dear Osiris, you must consider that what is well done and divine at once belongs and does not belong to this place, but is sent down from elsewhere. And on this account good souls are hard to find, although such might appear here, and the administrations of the gods, whenever they effect this, are doing things that properly belong to them, but not to the first life. For their happiness is of another sort, inasmuch as the very enjoyment of the first creation brings more happiness than the governance of the inferior, for the one is to turn away from matter, the other to turn towards it. Perchance you have been duly initiated, and have seen the mystic effigy in the which there are two pairs of eyes, and it must needs be that those below should be closed when those which are above are gazing, and when these two are closed, the former proceed to open in their turn. Now you may consider this as a riddle of contemplation and action, and as signifying that the intermediate deities display their energies in one of these fields at a time, but that in the case of those of the more perfect orders, they use the better most of the time, and are conversant with the inferior only of necessity. These labours also belong to the gods, who carry out the works necessary to the universe, but these are not the leading good things. So even men at one moment more or less guard their possessions, at another give themselves up to philosophy, and in that moment become more like to the divine.

### Chapter 10

'Understand then, from this, what I mean.¹¹¹ Do not ask the gods to be seated by you, for they have for their principal work contemplation and the first parts of the universe, they who are in heaven and are separated very far from us. Do not imagine that their descent to us costs them no trouble or that it is perpetual. Appointed intervals of time bring them down after the manner of engineers, to give an impulse to a salutary movement in a state.¹¹² And this is the case when they bring harmony into a kingdom, by bringing down here souls akin to their own. This is providence divine and manifold indeed, caring as it does for myriads of human beings through the agency of each single man. Needs must therefore that the gods henceforth devote themselves to their own affairs, while you who are set apart among strangers must remember your origin, and that this is a public duty that you are fulfilling for the universe. You should endeavour to ascend yourself, rather than make the gods descend to you, and you should exercise every foresight for yourself, as if you dwelt in a camp in an enemy country, a divine soul amongst demons, who will, it is natural to suppose, being earth-born, attack you, in their anger that any one should maintain foreign institutions within their borders. You must be content therefore to keep awake both by night and by day, having this care alone in your mind, not to be taken by force, one by many, a foreigner by natives of the country. It is true that there is a sacred race of heroes¹¹³ also in this country who care for the welfare of men, and are able to render both minor services and the highest, a sort of heroic settlement this, whose end is that the world about us may not be bereft of the higher nature; and they stretch out a helping hand where they have the power; but whenever matter stirs its own offshoots to warfare with the soul, the resistance from the other side is feeble as long as the gods are absent. Each thing is strong in its own domain. Now the demons will desire, first of all, to make the soul their own, and this is the way in which they make the attempt.
'It is not possible that any one should exist on this earth without having also a certain irrational part of his soul. This part the majority of men bring openly to the front, but the sage carries it at his side. Albeit we all must needs possess it. Through this then, as through a kindred force, demons come to the living being by the path of betrayal. What takes place really resembles a siege; it is what happens to coals from firebrands, for they more quickly catch the flame owing to their fitness for fire. So the nature of a demon (one of passions, or rather passion itself living and moving), when it approaches the soul, excites the passion in it, and brings this latent power into action, for it accomplishes each act by its propinquity; and every agitated state comes quite to resemble that which agitates it. In this way demons kindle lust, in this way outbursts of passions and all evils akin to these, associating with the soul through those elements therein which belong to them, and which naturally perceive their presence and are thereby stirred, and grow in power to resist the mind because of them, until they overpower the whole soul, or abandon the capture of it. This is the greatest of struggles;¹¹⁴ for there is no opportunity, no way of attack, no place that they will relinquish in their onslaught, and from quarters where one would not deem it possible, even from these they will make the attempt. Their snares are everywhere, and everywhere their contrivances. All things stir up their intestine warfare until either they take the position or give up the attempt. And from above the gods are spectators of these noble contests;¹¹⁵ in them you will bear away the crown of victory, and may you gain it in the second contests also! But there is ground for fear that you may win in the one and be defeated in the other. For whenever the divine part of the soul does not accompany the inferior element, but is ever and anon beating it back, and turning towards itself, it is in the course of nature for that element also to become at last hardened so as to resist attacks, and once so armoured, no longer to admit the influxes from the demons.¹¹⁶
'The living being, then, in this way really becomes divine, and a single whole. And this is a heavenly plant growing upon the earth,¹¹⁷ one that has not received any foreign graft, that it may put forth fruit from such, but one that even changes a foreign element to its own nature. So then the demons, giving it up in despair, then and not till then enter whole-heartedly upon the second struggle, and this is to cut the tree down, and to tear it root and branch from the soil, as if it stood in no relation to them. For they are also ashamed of their defeat, if some one of foreign race struts about in their precincts as a conqueror, a trophy of victory real and visible. Such an one brings punishment upon them, not merely in his own person, but also shares in turning away others from their dominion. Once virtue is zealously pur-sued, the evil elements must perforce go to wrack and ruin. For these reasons they plan the destruction of the private citizen and of the ruler alike, in a word of every one who is rebellious to the laws of matter. But you, for in that you are a king, may guard yourself against this more easily than any private individual. They attack by outside means when means within fail them,¹¹⁸ to wit by war and by rebellion, and by whatever maltreats the body, forces these by which a king will be less easily overcome, one at least who has forethought for himself, since it is impossible to fight an adversary in whom force and wisdom are combined, whereas, separated from each other, untutored strength and infirm purpose are easily overcome.

### Chapter 11

'You must have admired, my son, the purpose of our fathers as expressed in the sacred images. In the case of Hermes we Egyptians make the image of the divinity a double one, placing a young man beside an old one, signifying that if any one is to watch over us worthily, he must be both wise and brave, since either of these qualities is ineffectual for good without the other. The same idea is expressed by the Sphinx which is set up in the enclosures before our temples, in force a wild beast, in judgement a man, a sacred symbol of the duality of good qualities. And justly so, for force deprived of prudent leadership is carried capriciously away, mingling and confusing everything; and intellect is useless for action when unserved by hands.
'Virtue and fortune scarcely come together except for great purposes, as they have done in your case. Do not therefore importune the gods any longer, you who are able to save yourself by your own resources,¹¹⁹ if you so desire. It is not well that the gods should always be away from their own spheres, and haunt foreign and inferior places. Take heed lest it be impious to use wrongfully the foundations that have been implanted in us to the end that we should take care of the things upon earth with due order, and in accordance with the cosmic scheme that has been given us. For this is the course of men who make it necessary for the gods to come again, before the appointed time, to busy themselves with affairs here below. At that appointed time, however, when the tuning which they have attuned is becoming unstrung and old, they come back to tighten it again, and as it were to kindle it into flame when it is growing cold. This they do joyfully, for they are fulfilling this service, to use the expression, for the nature of the universe. Otherwise they will only come when this harmony has been destroyed and broken, through the iniquity of those who have taken the charge over, and only when it is possible in no other way to save these things below. A god is not at all disturbed about small things, nor whenever a mistake has been made concerning this or that detail; a tremendous fellow would he be,¹²⁰ that single man on whose account some member of the happy race should descend here! But whenever the whole order, and the vast elements therein are destroyed, then must the gods come to give the impulse to another dispensation. Let not men be wroth, then, when they suffer from self-inflicted evils, nor accuse the gods of not providing for them, for Providence demands that they in turn should contribute their share. Of a truth, in the place for evils, it is not a matter for wonder that evils should be, but it would be a matter for wonder if anything of a different nature were there. For this last is foreign and even alien, and this is the gift of Providence, which makes it possible for all of us men to be happy in all ways, if we will but bestir ourselves and use the gifts which we have therefrom. For Providence is not like the mother of the new-born babe, whose one care it is to scare away what may fly at it and do it harm, inasmuch as her infant is as yet undeveloped and helpless in itself; but resembles that mother who having brought it up and having armed it, bids it use its weapons and ward off evils. Study this at all times, and consider it as of the highest importance for men to know, for so they will believe in Providence, and will take heed for themselves, and at the same time will be pious and vigilant, nor will they imagine that an intervention of God is discordant with the practice of virtue. Farewell! You will, if you are wise, restrain your brother, removing beforehand the fate that overhangs you and the Egyptians, for this is in your power; but if you give way and show weakness, await the gods when it is too late!'

### Chapter 12

When he had finished speaking, he departed, following the same road as the gods, but Osiris remained, a marvel ill-suited to this earth, one who at once began striving to banish the forces hostile to the earth, without employing any violence at all. He actually sacrificed to Persuasion, to the Muses and to the Graces, and made all willingly fall in with the law. The gods gave in abundance out of respect for this king, all things, as many as the air bears, and as many as are the gifts of river and land, and all these pleasures he gave up to his people for their joy. He himself left all ease behind him, and preferred to undertake every toil, taking small part in sleep but the greatest in cares; in a word, he took no leisure that all might have leisure. These acts of his accordingly filled all men, whether individuals, households, relations, cities, or entire districts, with benefits, spiritual and material. For he cultivated amongst them a zeal for virtue, making all knowledge and every institution to be so cultivated for this one end, and he offered rewards to those who were best able to govern men, and to make the governed like themselves. It needs must be that what is honoured should increase, that what is neglected should come to nought. A love for all education grew up with him,¹²¹ the part which partakes of reflection as much as that which partakes of eloquence, and the result of this was that men who excelled in knowledge of this sort could no longer be seen mingled in the common herd, but were shining with honours from their sovereign, for they brought with them skill as the handmaiden of wisdom, inasmuch as intellect progresses once it is arrayed in letters. And the better or the worse clothing of the same intellect makes it appear, as in a man’s dress, seemly or unseemly. Early education¹²² Osiris thought worthy of honour, for he regarded all education as a fountain-head of virtue,¹²³ and indeed at this period of all others piety was in fashion among the Egyptians. Such are the good things of the soul, and the Egyptians under the reign of Osiris abounded in them, so that the country resembled a training school for virtue, a country in the which youth looked to one leader, doing the one thing which they saw, and saying the one thing that they heard. He himself was indifferent to wealth, but took every care that there should be enough for all, receiving no gifts himself, but delighting in bestowing them. He furthermore remitted taxes to cities, he gave to those men who were in distress; he raised the fallen, and healed that which was likely to fall; one city he enlarged, another he trained to be beautiful; where another was lacking, he added it, another that had been abandoned he helped to people. Of necessity must each man individually profit by benefits which are common to all, but it was no labour for him to condescend even to anxiety for some one individual, and so it came about that no man was seen to weep under his reign; nor was Osiris ignorant of what each man wanted, and what obstacle there was to the happiness of such and such a person. One coveted merited honour, and he gave it to him, and when another, through persistence in the study of books, had no time to gain his livelihood, he accorded to him his meals at the town hall. Another was indifferent to honour from men, and although his possessions gave him quite enough to live on, he was perhaps too shy to take up public functions. Osiris was not unaware of this, but exempted him from public functions, not annoyed by him, but rather causing him annoyance by offering something before he had been asked, and he demanded out of respect for wisdom that such a man be independent and freed from worldly business, as a sacred animal dedicated to God. In a word no one failed of his deserts except such an one as merited misfortune, and to that man he gave not his expected reward. For he made it a point of honour to conquer the most shameless man by the gentleness of his mind and by kindly deeds. In this way he thought to overcome his brother and his band of conspirators, changing their nature by the abundance of his virtue. But in this one thing he was wanting in judgement, for malignity not assuaged by virtue is rather inflamed by it. If to cling to the good is natural, to the extent that good increases, the grief occasioned by it increases also, and this is precisely what the deeply groaning brother suffered over the reign of Osiris.

### Chapter 13

As soon as Osiris had taken over the rule, Typho narrowly escaped death from dashing his wicked head on the ground, and knocking it against columns. For whole days he got himself no food, although a most gluttonous man; he rejected drink, although very fond of wine; although he loved sleep, he continued without sleeping, and he was afflicted with wakefulness, though many attempts were made to conjure it away. And although he purposely closed his eyes that his soul might be free from the stings of memory, yet memory is most contentious to any one who desires to set it aside, so that the image of his evils was with him even when his eyes were closed, and if sleep ever by chance overtook him, he would fare still more wretchedly in dreams, seeing that hill before his eyes, those votes, all those hands raised for his brother; and even when he would have been glad to arise for hatred of the cruel sight, his ears would hum for long with the din of the cheering throng. Nor could he endure to remain at rest, for his soul was distressed, and if he looked out of his house, a succession of misfortunes met him, showing themselves in the words, behaviour, and songs of the multitude. It was always 'Osiris, how fair to behold, how wise in speech is the young king', and of his high spirit that it was not boastful, and of his gentleness that it was not abased. He would return home then and lock himself in, not knowing what to do with his life; no more did his wife, she, another immense evil, her own tirewoman, greedy of the theatre and the market-place, believing, as she wished, that the eyes of all were turned upon her. On this account she deemed that her husband's fall from the royal position was an even greater misfortune for herself, thinking that in the alternative case she would confiscate the freedom of the state on a large scale and waste its resources on luxury. Now Typho was already of mature years when he fell a victim to her, like a youth in the initial stages of passion, and the half of his misfortune lay in the shame that he felt before the creature to whom he had expressed his ambition to rule in the highest position, sharing the power with her. And she, in her private life also was a most wonderful being, seeking to shine in the most opposite ways, most feminine of women, on the one hand, in seeking a fresh adornment, in adding to her beauty, and in yielding to her nature; most venturesome, on the other hand, in tampering with men's affairs and in carrying them out, busying herself about a variety of things and being an innovator besides. With these and other ends in view, she had got ready both women of perverse morals and pimps, all of like dispositions, to keep for the gratification of her own tastes both at home and abroad.
But as for Osiris, only the fact that his son was seen by men reminded the world that there were women's apartments in his house, and even his child Horus was seldom visible. For the one virtue of a woman¹²⁴ Osiris thought was that neither her person nor her name should pass the door of the court-yard. Accordingly, her rise to the pinnacle of fortune did not avert this chaste wife of his from the even tenor of her way; she was apt to be the more retiring owing to the greatness of her rank. Nor did he himself rejoice as one more happy on account of this elevation, for he knew that even had he not attained it, he would not have been any the less happy, inasmuch as each man, once that he wills to be virtuous, is himself steward to himself of such happiness. Therefore of such as dwell with virtue, whether private individuals or rulers, one may observe men equally gay at heart. Every life indeed is material for virtue; just as with the tragic actors whom we see on the stage, whosoever has trained his voice well, will take the parts of Creon and Telephus with equal skill, and in no way will robes of purple be superior to rags, so far as the volume and beauty of his declamation are concerned, or his success in bringing down the house by the sound of his strains. He will portray the handmaiden and her mistress alike with the same power of cadence, and whatever mask he puts on, the manager of the theatre demands of him that he use it aright. In like manner God and Fortune bestow upon us lives, as it were masks in the great drama of the universe, and no better or worse is one life than another; but each man makes such use of it as best he may. The earnest man can everywhere succeed in life, whether he act the pauper or king. As to the mask, it makes no difference. Surely the tragic actor would become ridiculous who shunned one mask and seized upon another. Even in the rôle of the old woman, if he shines in his art, he is crowned and heralded abroad, while if he disgraces himself in the rôle of a king, he is hooted and hissed, and on occasion is even stoned. For no life is really our own, rather are we clad without with the lives of others, and we, the better and the worse of us when we act and reveal the inner voice, are actors of living drama. These lives, then, we have only to put on and take off, as garments.

### Chapter 14

Osiris then (for he had been taught what the difference was between meum and tuum), knew that the soul is the measure of happiness. Undaunted therefore by outside forces, he succeeded in making himself and those of his household of the same way of thinking, both private individuals and rulers. But the others,— because they lived by the senses, and were devoid of reason,— were careless lovers of fortune, and considered the property of others their own; they were impregnated with vanity, they hankered after the kingdom, and, as it did not come to them, despaired of themselves, and thought that nothing was worth living for. Again and many a time the fact is worth repeating to men, that it is a sign of ill-breeding not to await life patiently, as a portion to be served at the dinner table,¹²⁵ which in due course comes to us, that we may help ourselves, but to be one’s self the one to pounce upon it beforehand, and to filch it away. A man who succeeds in this will be laughed at, for he is an unseemly fellow-guest, and will be detested by the master of the feast, inasmuch as he disturbs its decorum, as far as in him lies, by his meanness. On the other hand, if he fails, he will go so far as to weep in childhood’s way, himself clinging to the portion that has been carried past and has gone to his neighbour. Such in all respects was the experience that befell Typho, for he was hated by the gods, he himself was lamenting, and the matter was the laughing-stock of the people.
For not even the fact that he had taken to his bed for many months, and was daily expected to die, not even did this arouse pity, but stirred up anger amongst men of sterner, and laughter among men of gentler judgement, to such a point that the matter was by this time proverbial, and the question addressed to pale people was this, ‘Has not your brother had a piece of good luck?’¹²⁶ He might have perished justly by his own hand, so given up was he to evil. But at this point his execrable wife, very much a woman even in the midst of dangers, retrieved both herself and him, always managing him as one easy to control; she deterred him from weeping by occupying him with herself, banishing passion by passion and fencing off pain by pleasure. In this way he then recovered himself with an effort, yielding in a measure to evils the most hostile. At one moment he would lament, at another he would give way to anger. And licentious boys at such times, even in greater numbers, entered his house the more, bringing in their train carousals and drinking bouts, all this that he might kill time in their company and assuage his soul’s gloom.¹²⁷ Other things also they devised, that they might have as little leisure as possible to remember the good fortune of Osiris. They constructed swimming-ponds, in these ponds islands, and in the islands artificial hot baths, that men might strip themselves one after another amongst women and satisfy passion without restraint.

### Chapter 15

While they are engaged in these affairs, the idea of seizing the kingdom comes into their minds, at the suggestion of evil demons who show the way, and already they were for openly administering everything else, being on the spot and making tours together. It was intolerable to these demons to see their own schemes going to ruin and dishonour, prudence exercised, and piety gaining ground, injustice driven away, harmony established, and all good things flourishing. To the Egyptians weeping was now only a word. All things were propitious, all things in order. The state, like a single living organism, had law for its soul, and was moved by this, its parts the while harmonizing with the whole. These things goad the demons to madness, to these they cleave, employing as their instruments men akin to them. The evil is hatched in the women’s quarters in two houses. There was indeed a hearth in the royal city belonging to the commander of the foreign troops, one whom it seemed good to the Egyptians to send upon a campaign, himself and his forces. At the moment in fact they were waging an unsuccessful war against a section of their own country which had revolted, and several Egyptian villages had fared ill, for the demons had prepared this trouble for their drama. Typho's wife, that crafty ape-like creature, visiting the wife of this very man day and night, convinced without difficulty that old woman, a foreigner and unintelligent, that she held her in great regard, and foresaw a misfortune which would befall them if affairs turned out as Osiris wished. 'For', said she, 'he makes a charge of betrayal, and thinks it is a war already arranged in which he is engaged, since the foreigners have divided their army, although their policy is unanimous. He has therefore decided,' she said, 'to bring back the general by every violence and contrivance, and as soon as he is away from the camp, to ruin him completely, by relieving him of his command, as well as you, and your children. This noble offspring of yours, yes, these most lovely nurselings, even these he has decided to slaughter, while still in their youth.' And meantime she would weep, touching the young children lightly under the chin, and winning their goodwill by the pity she showed. At this the old Scythian woman straightway wailed aloud, thinking to see these horrors before her eyes, and to suffer them herself. But the other woman added still another terror, and every day one more, announcing, forsooth, plans of secret machination against themselves. The Scythians were to be destroyed root and branch out of the land, and for this Osiris was working every day; he was secretly bringing the battalions up to their strength, and was making all other arrangements for the Egyptians to live by themselves, once they had either butchered the foreigners or driven them out. This would be quite easy, as soon as he had proclaimed their general a private citizen, by serving him with a notification of his dismissal, and had brought him up for impeachment by the law. And when the general had been thus disposed of, he thinks that the others will involve little trouble. 'Now,' she continued, 'Typho is weeping at home, for he has your interest at heart, and he has always supported the foreigners politically, albeit through them we actually lost the kingdom, for they had not arrived on the scene at the moment when the result was announced. Had they done so, it would have now been possible for you to insult the Egyptians, to possess yourself of their goods, and to treat these masters of yours as slaves. But as then we were not aided by you, so now we are powerless to come to your rescue. None the less, when disasters approach our friends, it is we who suffer misfortune.'
When she had thus outwitted the old woman by her manœuvres, and had driven her into the last degree of panic, in the belief that there was no way of escape for them; now that she had enough of this, she applied another device to recall the foreigner from her terror, seeing that she had already learned to follow the one who had caused her judgement to waver as she pleased. So, little by little, she infused courage into her and filled her with hope. 'Great is the plan,' she said, 'and one that requires fresh courage, to the end that we may not be under the power of Osiris, and live or not live when he pleases.' At first she hinted darkly at the insurrection, then made insinuations about it, and at last revealed it, gradually accustoming her to the story and the enterprise, until finally she made the timid creature bold, by showing her that the power of Osiris was as nothing if once they were determined. 'For the law,' she said, 'and the habit of honour, and the ancient and ancestral tradition, enslave the slothful of their own free will. But he who rebels is only making trial of the weak, and that man is free who has strength, if he is not dumbfounded before habit, and we shall never experience that, as long as you are under arms, and Osiris does nothing else but pray to the gods, at one time giving audiences to embassies, at another stating judicial decisions, and at another engaging in some other task of peace. For Osiris will never be an evil to any of the Scythians, if we combine with you, and contribute, for our part, the prestige of rank, for yours, the military strength. Nor will you appear to be committing any great fraud, or to be disturbing the peace of the Egyptians, or to be changing the constitution, but rather to be establishing it, and making better arrangements for every one, if you secure the rule for Typho, born of the same stock as Osiris, the eldest to boot, and a more legitimate sovereign to govern Egypt. Thus in the first place it is not even likely that the Egyptians would combine against you, inasmuch as the change in regard to the hereditary constitution is not a great one. While the outward form of the government will be ours, the benefits of it will be yours, and you can batten on the whole of Egypt as if it were your own dinner table. Only promise to persuade your husband.’ ‘And you’, said the other, ‘will join in persuading him.’ This they set about doing, and when the commander was announced to be approaching on horseback, scouts suborned thereto spread rumours secretly about the plot, and under a mask of discretion succeeded in announcing what they were pretending to conceal, more clearly than those who shout loudly, and mysterious letters troubled people profoundly, letters enjoining them to secure their own safety. Finally some one said quite openly that they must save themselves from the ambush, and another would repeat this still more clearly, and then another, and again another, all these partisans of Typho and confederates of the women. The finishing touch now comes, the women meet him, they the artificers of the plot, and Typho himself, as if he had gone out of town on some other errand, joins the commander secretly, and confers with him concerning the kingdom. He persuades him to undertake this work immediately, and if necessary to let the regal city perish with Osiris, adding that the rest of Egypt was sufficient for him. ‘And at the same time’, he says, ‘your soldiers may enrich themselves by enslaving the prosperous city, the common hearth of all the conspicuous Egyptians, and by plundering its wealth.’ So our worthy Typho sacrificed this city to his hatred of its inhabitants because of their goodwill towards Osiris. This the Scythian refused to do, for he felt in awe of the sacred senate, and of the well-disciplined people, and of the privileges that the city conferred. He said that he was marching against Osiris not of his own free will, but of necessity, and that if he succeeded in overcoming him, consistently with the safety of the city and the preservation of the country, he would regard it as a point gained, that the necessity for a greater evil had not arisen.

### Chapter 16

The story refuses to linger over the sorrows of Osiris, for it is not in nature for a man to persist complacently in a harrowing recital. From that time till now the days of the sacred tears are accounted as ill-omened, and any who have the hallowed privilege of beholding may see images of these personages moving miraculously. But 'tis said this much is lawful for every one to hear, how that Osiris for country, for temples, for laws, gave himself up¹²⁸ to men threatening to destroy all unless they capture him; that he crossed the river in a cargo boat, and a guard was straightway put over him wherever he might be on land or sea, and a foreign assembly to decide what punishment he should suffer. Before this assembly Typho demanded that he should die as quickly and as brutally as possible. But the foreigners, although they considered themselves wronged, were indignant at this, and showed respect for virtue. They were for condemning him to exile; then they felt shame at this solution, and decided that it should not be a case of exile for him, but a voluntary withdrawal from the country. They allowed him to keep his money and property, although even these Typho had offered them for their own. They would no more touch them than the treasures of the temples. So he was sent on his way escorted by the god and goodly heroes, that he might leave the country at an appointed time, for it was not fated that the evil elements should triumph in Egypt, and that everything should so quickly fall into disorder and shame, as long as a holy soul dwelt there. That these evils might take place, the demons to whom such works belonged had in the beginning combined against him, and their own servant whom they had first brought into being, and quite recently into the position of tyrant, was now regaling them with all sorts of misfortune. Taxes of every sort, manifold in number, were at once imposed upon the cities, obligations that had no existence were discovered, and debts that had become a dead letter were dug up anew. The river-dweller was compelled to take over some public work on the land, and boats were demanded from the land-dweller, so that no human being might have leisure in which to be happy. These were the most public forms of abuses, and there was another more common still. Typho would send men under his own control to govern tribes, corrupt wretches to whom he sold the cities openly. Now as to those who purchased the right to govern any tribe: however young a man might be, although the lease of the district was signed for one year only, he counted on being able to acquire in that year supplies for a dissolute old age. This is a specimen of the sort of thing that happened in Typho’s reign. By written contract he agreed upon the period of their rule for those who paid him down the price.
Formerly a man was turned out of office for cause of misconduct, whereas to another the reward of virtue was still a more distinguished honour, namely the rule over a greater number of men, and a longer tenure of his post. But from this time on there was wailing everywhere from all, every man having a personal grievance to tell of, and throughout cities and town councils men were harried with every kind of ill-treatment; so that one cry alone rose from Egypt to heaven, the sound of a universal dirge. But the gods took pity on the race and prepared to come to its rescue. It did not seem good to them, however, to do so, before virtue and evil-doing had been still more clearly compared with each other, to the end that even men who used their minds and perceptions only a little might clearly distinguish the better from the worse, might pursue the one and eschew the other.

### Chapter 17

Typho was even now setting himself to eradicate in every way the memory of Osiris’ rule from the minds of men, and he pursued this end in many other ways, not least in the following. He caused cases already settled to be tried over again, and it was inevitable that he who had been convicted should win the case. Again, he gave supplementary instructions to embassies in which he who had profited by the divine tongue of Osiris was an enemy, and that man must needs dwell with misfortune, himself, as also his city and his race. But, when in difficulties, there were two ways of dealing with Typho. One was, for any man to count out money to his wife. She was throning it conspicuously as on a housetop, employing dissolute courtesans to attend to her person and business affairs, and made what had of old been called by the Egyptians the court of justice, into a sale-room for lawsuits. One who had been picked out in this wise would always find Typho merciful, for he was not only tame and amenable to the women’s side of the house, but moreover he felt gratitude to them for having gained him his kingdom.
This then was one method in the face of difficulties for those who found him difficult to manage, and there was another, namely to approach any individual of the pernicious band of Typho’s boon-companions. They were called the great and the happy, these miserable and counterfeit specimens of humanity. The way then was to approach them, and to launch some cunningly contrived squib at Osiris’ head. The people who did this were those who cared least for virtue, and who were not ashamed to make profit from any source whatever. Thus they changed in fortune as they changed in opinion, for the witticism would reach the tyrant’s palace and would be famously received at his table. He was all favour to those who favoured him. First one and then another would do this, and they benefited by it. But they knew that they were hated by the gods, and by men that were upright. The greater number, however, suffered in silence.

### Chapter 18

Now it happened that there was one man,¹²⁹ who, though of serious bent, had yet through philosophy been brought up in a more rustic mould, and had nothing in common with the ways of the city. This man had received, as all men had, very many kindnesses from Osiris; for himself exemption from public services, and for his country lighter services to that man (Osiris). And while innumerable men were making verses at that moment, writing speeches in praise of Osiris, and rendering favours to him in return for favours, he was quite as generously disposed as they, and the more so in that he was more capable, and composed, wrote, and sang to the lyre in the Dorian manner,¹³⁰ which alone he thought had room for depth of character and of expression. These poems he did not give to the public, but if there was any listener in the audience who could understand virile phrases, any one unable to endure the tickling of pleasure, but of open mind, to that one he would address his words. On the one hand he knew that Osiris was an exceptionally acute critic of writings, whether ephemeral or lasting, and on the other hand he refrained from saying anything about Osiris in his presence, partly because he did not regard word as a fitting and equal return for deed, and partly that owing to the rusticity in which he had been brought up, he was ashamed to be thought a flatterer. But when Typho seized Egypt by force and tyrannized over it, then this man became more uncourtly still; then he published, then he disclosed his works, while all shuddered at the hearing; he thought it impious not to declare openly his hatred of those who had done evil to their benefactor. Then he invoked the most sanguinary curses upon Typho both in speech and writing, and he who had always been found fault with for his habit of silence became quite garrulous, whether at home or in the forum. Osiris was everywhere in his discourses, everywhere in social gatherings at which he was present were the praises of Osiris sung, and in the teeth of those who could not endure them he flung his tales, nor did he pay any respect to his elders or friends, who admonished him, nor again did fear of his impetuosity disturb him, and he seemed like one mad with some noble madness. He did not desist until he had stood as near as possible to Typho himself, when distinguished men from all parts were gathered about him, and had pronounced a long speech of praises of his brother and had counselled him to emulate a virtue, so closely becoming him. Typho fired up and was manifestly stung to the quick, but out of respect for the assembled company, he withheld his hands and was prudent of necessity. It was possible, however, to fathom his state of mind by his face, for this passed through various stages of passion. Thus in a short space of time he turned all the colours of the rainbow. He became forthwith more hateful, and went further to the bad; the good conditions that existed under Osiris had disappeared, and he worked other evils besides, harassing the cities for which Osiris had pleaded, and devising some personal evil against him, so that he might never be able to return home in freedom, and would be forced to dwell bewailing his lot, and seeing in prosperity those by whom he was hated. While the stranger is in this plight a god gives him new strength, one clearly visible, and bidding him to endure to the end. ‘For not in a period of years, but only of months,’ he said, ‘is the sceptre of Egypt destined to lift up the claws of the wild beasts, and to abase the crests of the sacred birds.’ A cryptic allegory this; and while the stranger recognized the picture as that engraved on obelisks and sacred enclosures, the god imparted to him the understanding of the hieroglyphics, and gave him a token of the time implied. ‘Whenever’, he said, ‘those who are now in power shall attempt to introduce innovations in our religious rites, then expect that in a short time the Giants (by which he meant the foreigners) shall be cast out, themselves pursued with furies, and if some discord still remains, and if everything is not effaced at once, and if Typho himself remain still in the royal palace, despair not even then of the gods. Here is another token for you,—whenever we shall purify the air encircling the earth by water and fire, that air tainted by the breath of the ungodly, then shall Justice come even upon those who are left, and straightway expect then the better dispensation after the removal of Typho. For portentous things of this sort we disperse, burning them with lightning and shattering them with thunder.’ Then indeed what had been harsh in the past, seemed to the stranger of good augury, and he was no longer distressed at his enforced stay,¹³¹ for through that alone he was to be an eyewitness of the intervention of the gods. For it was not even in the range of human conjecture that a compact force under arms, and allowed by law in time of peace to carry the sword, should be routed without even an opponent. These things he reasoned about, how they might be, but they seemed to surpass reason. Now, when a short time had elapsed, there was a question of a certain evil stamp of religious observance, and a counterfeit of ritual as in the case of coinage, which an old law banishes from the cities, shutting out the impiety beyond the walls. Typho set himself to introduce this through the instrumentality of the foreigners, for he did not dare to do so in person through fear of the Egyptian populace, and sought to make a gift of a temple in the city, breaking the laws of his ancestors. At this moment the stranger began to think that this was what was meant by that prophecy of the god, ‘and,’ he reflected, ‘I shall probably now behold what is to follow.’ Having learned this then, he awaited on the one hand the immediate fortunes of Osiris, on the other the years that had not yet come, when his son Horus should think of choosing an alliance with the wolf instead of one with the lion.¹³² Now who the wolf is, pertains to a story which is sacred, and it would be an unholy act to declare it to the world even in the dress of a fable.

### Part Two


### Chapter 1

From this point the actions of the gods begin to be manifest, for all things were now full of all manner of evils from every quarter, and a belief in Providence had disappeared from the mind of men, their impious conjectures being largely sustained by the events witnessed. On the one hand no human agency appeared anywhere to assist them, for the foreigners were using the city as a camp; on the other hand, the commander of these was stricken with terror during the night, the Corybantes, I suppose, attacking him, and by day panic uproars took possession of the troops. The frequent occurrence of this reduces them to a state of frenzy and causes them to lose their wits. They wandered about, alone or in company, all as if possessed by the nymphs' delirium, at one moment attempting to draw their swords, and behaving as about to deliver an immediate attack, at another, on the contrary, claiming pity and asking to be spared; or again, springing up, they seemed alternately like pursuers and pursued, as though some hostile force had been secretly conveyed into the town. But in the city there was neither weapon, nor any man to use it; the people were an easy prey offered up by Typho. So this also is very clear, that a god is needed even by those well prepared for war, unless their preparations are to turn out useless, and that victory is from no other source: at the same time one deprives the victorious cause of its due in foolishly supposing it to be probable that the better prepared man will win. For when our plans turn out to be successful, a god seems to us superfluous, and disputes the honour of a victory that was already prepared by ourselves. But if no one intervenes to produce the result, and if the unseen alone is responsible, we hold nothing short of a refutation, not stated in words, but in evident fact, of the views of those who disbelieve that the gods care for mankind. Now something of this actually took place on that occasion. Here were the bold, the conquerors, the mail-clad, whose whole work and play alike were a training for war and battle, the cavalry parading in the market-place in order, or moving off in squadrons at the sound of the trumpet. If any soldier was in need of a huckster, or a cobbler, or wished to polish his sword, all kept guard over the need of each, so that the phalanx might not be dispersed even in the streets. Then lo! these men stampeded in mad flight from the lightly clad, the unarmed, from men cast down in spirit, and not even praying for victory. At a signal known to all of them, they retired from the town suddenly, secretly taking their children, their wives, their valuables, as though it were not quite possible for them openly to enslave those of the Egyptians as well. When the population saw them packing up this baggage, they did not even then understand what was happening, they only despaired for themselves the more. And so some of them shut themselves up in their houses, there to await the conflagration; while others preferring the sword to fire, purchased a lighter implement of death, not for any use, but that they might offer themselves for slaughter when the moment should come. Others attempted to take to their boats, and their minds ran on islands, on villages, and on cities beyond the frontiers; for any spot at that time seemed more secure than great Thebes, in which the Egyptian palaces had been constructed. But how gradually and with difficulty the gods brought them round to a state of confidence in events and of renewed courage to prefer safety,—this very incredible story has come to our ears.

### Chapter 2

A poor woman and very old at that, plied a trade near one of the side gates of the city, not a lucrative trade, but withal necessary for her, namely that of stretching out her hands on the chance that some one might put an obol therein. She had come very early to her vagabond's station, for life's needs are skilled in cheating nature of its sleep. Once seated, she did the proper thing. She speeded on their way with her blessings those who had roused themselves to their work, she brought good news of the day, she prayed, and promised that the god would be propitious. Now when she saw from afar what was being done by the Scythians, as soon as it was broad daylight, and how they did not cease running out and in like thieves, all of them packing and removing their belongings, she takes it to heart that this is the last sun that Thebes will look upon, for she thought they were doing this that the city might hold no pledge from them, so that when they had once moved their camp, they might begin an assault, having no fear about the prospect of further gain, since the wrongdoers share the hearths of the wronged. So, upsetting the cup¹³³ in which she collected her coins, with many bitter lamentations and appeals to heaven, ‘You’, she said, ‘when turned out of your own country, and when wanderers, Egypt received as suppliants. Moreover she treated you not merely as it were well to treat suppliants, but she gave you the honour of citizenship, and made you share in its privileges, and, to crown all, made you masters of the situation. Now even native-born Egyptians are adopting Scythian manners, their affectation of these being actually conducive to their interests. Your very ways are held in greater honour than our own. What then does all this mean? why are you moving your camp, why are you packing up, and removing your possessions? I suppose the gods are not trying you for ingratitude on account of your present conduct to your benefactors; yet they exist, and will come on the scene even if it be after the downfall of Thebes.’ When she had finished, she threw herself face downwards on the ground. Thereupon a Scythian made for her with drawn sword, as though to strike off the poor creature’s head, for he surmised that she was abusing them, and was making their night’s work public, imagining that their action was still unobserved, since none of those who had been spectators had dared to denounce them.
She therefore would have become the victim of the sword. But some one appears now, whether a god or a divine personage (at all events he seemed a man), who was evidently indignant, and turning the Scythian against himself, he meets his onset, and anticipating his blow, gathers him up and hurls him on the ground. Another Scythian then attacked him, and quickly met with the same fate. Then a hue and cry went up and men rushed to the spot. There were many foreigners, on the one hand, who, leaving the baggage animals, were caught by the incident at the gate. They were either about to go or already had gone out, and returned to help their own people as quickly as possible; on the other hand there was a great concourse of the natives. One of them is struck down and dies, another kills a Scythian, and again still another Scythian the slayer; a man falls at every moment, and at every moment a man kills another on either side. To the people anything at hand was the arm needed; they were able also by despoiling the dead and by robbing the living to make use of their swords; they were superior in numbers to the aliens, for part of these were encamped as far as possible from the town, that they might have less reason to fear an ambush, with which, though it did not really exist, the god threatened them, that they might leave the city, the heart of which they held in their hands; and another part of them, inferior in number to the civil population, were busying themselves over their goods and chattels to the end that nothing should be left behind. Far more numerous therefore, as they were, they were brought into collision with those less in number than themselves who encountered them near the gates, and those who were continually coming to the place to effect an exit. The noise grew louder, and now the action of the gods could be clearly distinguished there. For when a perception of the uproar broke over the whole extent of the city, and had reached to the camp of the aliens, since each faction had long been in fear of an attack from the other, every man of the townsfolk, thinking that now had come the decisive day for Egypt, one in which the foreigner had agreed to throw aside all decency, every man of them determined to die in action, and to make a monument of his valour, since not even a god would have seemed to them a trustworthy guarantee that they should not suffer. All invariably, therefore, broke through to the centre of disturbance, each man wishing to distinguish himself, and esteeming that it would profit him if he braved all dangers while witnesses were still alive. The foreigners on the other hand had concealed their departure, and thinking that they had been discovered, took little heed of those left behind in the city, although they made up about a fifth part of their army. Fearing only for themselves, lest their enemies should make a sortie, they took to flight, and encamped farther away, only too thankful that they had been saved with the greater part of their force instead of having to confront danger with the whole. But of the residue left behind, those in the houses, through being for long divinely infatuated, and filled with suspicion that the Scythians would suffer an intolerable disaster at the hands of the Egyptians, supposed that an attack had been made upon them, in their retreat, as on fugitives, and that soon their camp would be plundered. They thought then that it would be to their own advantage to remain on the spot and lay aside their arms, taking the place of suppliants, since then it would seem that they also had been the only ones left behind, because they had done no evil to the Egyptians, whereas the others had left the town, fearing to suffer for the acts they had committed. But those alone who happened to be near the gates and around whom the panic was in full blast, knew the truth, how that the Egyptians possessed no powerful military organization, not a hoplite, not a weapon, not a spearman, not a spear. And so these Scythians made up their minds, at the present juncture, to get possession of the gates if possible, and to call in those who had vainly given way to panic, for the whole city was being harried like a bird's nest. Now is a fierce fight waged about these gates, and in this the Egyptians are victorious and sing a paean of victory. This was another terror to the foreigners both those within the city and those without, for the latter party thought the matter had been settled by the Egyptians against the former, the former against the latter, and thus each section lamented over the other. The victors do not succeed in closing all the doors in all the gates (no small work this in Thebes,¹³⁴ whose hundred gates are celebrated in Greek song), before a man who had shared in the struggle round the gates runs through from the midst of the fighting for this very purpose, announces the news to the Scythians, and promises them the city. These then came to the spot in vain, and at once praised and blamed their fortune: for a while they greatly congratulated themselves on their escape from the net, but later they demanded orders to burst through the wall for the purpose of again occupying the town. Thus the wisdom of a god is an irresistible thing, and neither is weapon strong nor mind devising, unless a god be present with it, and so men have ere now conducted a campaign against themselves. It seems to me to have been most happily said that man is a plaything of a god, one who is always sporting and playing a game of draughts with events.¹³⁵ And I think that Homer was the first of the Greeks to observe this, and sang of a contest and of prizes offered for every sort of struggle over the tomb of Patroclus, though in every respect those who are most expected to win fall short. Teucer loses the first prize to an insignificant bowman,¹³⁶ and,
‘The best driver of whole-hoofed horses is last’;¹³⁷
again in skill of foot a young man is defeated by a man in his prime, and in the competition in heavy armour¹³⁸ Ajax is worsted— and yet, Homer heralds Ajax as being by far the best of all those assembled before Troy, with the exception of Achilles.¹³⁹ He asserts that skill, training, youth, and superiority of constitution are all small things in comparison with the divine power.

### Chapter 3

The Egyptians then, when they had now brilliantly carried the gates and had put the wall between themselves and the enemy, turning upon those who were left within, alike stray individuals and assembled masses, threw missiles, cast javelins, struck them, and ran them through. Some of them who had found a fortified shelter they smoked out as though they had been wasps, temples, priests and all, Typho, the while, thundering complaints, for he had become Scythian even in his religious views, and demanded a treaty of peace with the barbarians, scheming again to admit the enemy army, on the ground that no irremediable evil had occurred. But they, the people, were all unbidden, without generals, except that by the gift of the gods every individual was himself general and soldier, captain and private. What might not happen at a moment when the god is willing and gives the initiative to men to save themselves by every means in their power? Nor did they yet give over the gates to Typho, and in other respects the despotic rule was lifeless, the moment that the party which organized it had been banished from the city. The first meeting was held at the house of the high-priest, a sacred fire was kindled, prayers of thanksgiving were offered up for what had been accomplished, and intercessions for what should happen in the future. Then they called for Osiris on the ground that there was no other salvation for their government than he. Now the priest promised him to them, the gods granting it, together with any men who had fallen with him because they were accused of sharing his views. But they decided to beguile Typho¹⁴⁰ for some time still. He had not indeed suffered immediately his due penalty (and the penalty was that the man most culpable for the sometime servile attitude of the Egyptians towards the Scythians should become a victim and a preparatory sacrifice for the war), and when Justice,¹⁴¹ who is wise and knows well how to keep opportunities under her control, delayed his case, the latter, I say, even then thought that all this would escape the gods. And as he was still in the outward panoply of the despotic power, he began levying taxes more keenly and shamefully than ever, and went so far as to extort contributions a second time even from his servants.
At one moment he would threaten to do violent mischief while he still had the power, at another again he was grovelling, and speaking piteously, ‘that,’ quoth he, ‘I may not lose my kingdom.’ So completely had he lost his head, and had actually become so puffed up in mind as to expect to get round the priest by flattery and bribes. But it was not right of him to place money before the ordinances of his fathers. Nay, even when the aliens had broken up their camp with all their might and were already far from Thebes, he again brought them back, by envoys and suppliants and presents. Every act and device of his was a glaring announcement that he would again hand over Egyptian interests to the foreigners. He himself was evidently quite without anxiety on the score of his beloved Scythians, and even if he had not been so, at all events he was glad that he would not live to see Osiris returned from exile, and taking a place in the government. Since, in any case, the foreigners now attacked the country, obviously not, as they had done before, with a view to changing Egyptian institutions, but rather to tearing them up by the roots, and to Scythianizing the government, and since, in a word, the drama now being enacted held the most disastrous elements of two evils—war and faction—: the evil of faction, namely, the domestic cessions and betrayals which are attempted least of all in war-time; and of war, that danger which is the common lot of all: since these factions then, in an attempt to save the commonwealth, sought the transference of the leadership from its possessors to others, at that time, from both sides, the worst elements prevailed, and not one of the Egyptians, not even the most utterly worthless, was left, to whom the tyrant did not seem to be planning and doing things deserving of indignation: for they were becoming chastened through fear. Now this was the moment for which the gods had determined to wait, that no smouldering ember of the opposite faction should be secretly kept alive in the state, which might contain pretexts for evil, if not just, at least plausible. So, although late in the day, there is a meeting of gods and elders concerning Typho, and what has long been the common talk of all in private, is disclosed. Women who spoke both tongues for the benefit of the women who did not understand each other’s views, translated the words of the foreign language into the Egyptian, contrariwise the words of the Egyptian into the foreign.
And there were, moreover, the effeminate men, and spies, and all belonging to the company of those suborned by Typho and his wife against Osiris, who themselves were to give the most terrible evidence, namely that Osiris had surrendered the occupation of key positions, and had all but brought on the siege himself, that a reign of terror might envelop the sacred city: that he was in all haste to make the Scythians pass to the other side of the river also, that the Egyptian fortunes should not merely half suffer, but that all things should be removed root and branch, and that they should not have time to send for Osiris. When all this had come out, the men, on the one hand, unanimously condemn Typho to confinement, and decide to institute a second trial for him to determine what punishment he should suffer, or what fine he should pay. The gods, on the other, praised the assessors who took part, for having condemned the man according to his deserts, but they them-selves voted that when he had left this life, he should be given up to the avenging deities, and should dwell in Cocytus, and should finally become a pernicious and infernal demon, an object to be classed with the Titans and Giants, and should never see Elysium even in a dream, but would lift up his eyes with difficulty to get a glimpse of that sacred light which is an object of contemplation to virtuous souls and blessed gods.

### Chapter 4

So much for what concerns Typho, since all this may be told; for what could be sacred and ineffable in an earthly nature? But the life of Osiris is alluded to as a sacred thing, and has been deified, so that it is dangerous to expose it to the risk of narration. His birth, his upbringing, his early and later education, his important posts of leadership, and how the gods and inspired men elevated him to the highest rule, how he ruled in this, how the plot was formed against him, to what extent it succeeded, and how it ultimately failed, all this is not unworthy of general consideration, and has been told; I will only add that to this man, fortunate in all things, even his exile was not without profit. For in that time he was initiated into the most perfect mysteries of the gods above, and saw the sacred visions, and waited patiently for the spectacle, once he had laid aside state affairs. Let mention be made here also of his auspicious return, and of the crowds of men crowned with garlands conducting him back amid the company of the gods, and pouring over the whole land to escort him in turn; and then the midnight revels, the torchlight processions, the distributions of prizes, the year named after him, and also his second act of pardon to his hostile brother, mercy for whom he begged from a people boiling with indignation, and how he prayed to the gods for his brother's salvation, acting in this case with more generosity than justice.

### Chapter 5

We may safely venture to say as much as this about Osiris; but beyond this let only words of good augury be spoken, says one who cautiously employs sacred language. As to those things which lie far away, it would be the part of a foolhardy mind and tongue to reveal them, and let them be kept in holy silence untouched by written words, lest one should
'Cast an eye on anything not permitted,'
for he who reveals, as he who sees, such things incurs the wrath of the divine nature. Boeotian legends tear to pieces those who intrude and spy upon the secret rites of Dionysus. Ignorance in the case of initiations is sanctity. On this account the night is entrusted with the mysteries, and caverns that may not be trodden are hollowed out for this reason. Moments and places are chosen that know how to conceal the inspired celebration of the mysteries. Only so much perchance it is lawful to say, and cloaking the inviolable to what extent we may, we say it, how that Osiris in his old age was more glorious than in his youth. The gods gave him as a reward to rule over the state with greater prestige, so as to be shown as one superior to injury from men, and the prosperity which he had given the Egyptians, but found obliterated by Typho's period, he not merely restored, but made by its development incomparably superior to its former state. So the former seemed to be merely a prelude to the latter, and nothing but a promise once sung by the Greek poets, how that the virgin who is now a constellation (and whom we call, I think, Justice),
'on the earth dwelling aforetime,
Face to face met all men, nor ever of mortals disdained she
E'en in that far distant past the tribes or of men or of women.
With them she mingled and there took her seat, though a goddess immortal.'¹⁴²
how she stayed under the same roof with man,—
'For in that time men knew naught of bitter discord, of struggle
Of contestations that menace, of all the tumult of battle.
Thus their lifetime they passed, and the harsh sea was far away from them,
Nor did ships come to bring them supplies from lands o’er the ocean;
Theirs were the plough and the oxen, and theirs that queen of the people.
Dike, ’tis she who dispenses by thousands her gifts of all justice.
So bloomed this age for a span when the golden race the earth nourished.’¹⁴³
He says, then, that as long as men did not use the sea¹⁴⁴ they were golden and had dealings with gods, but when ships came to them for the service of a strenuous life, then Justice flitted so far away from earth, that she could scarcely be seen on a clear night; and to be sure, when she is visible, she offers us an ear of corn instead of a rudder. Probably she would come down to us now, and would again speak to us face to face if we busied ourselves with agriculture, and despised seafaring. Now no other period has attained to this that the poets sang of long ago concerning her, save only the period of the glorious reign of Osiris. And if the gods, when bringing him back from exile, did not at that very moment put everything in his hands, let us not hold a contrary view on this score. It is not in the nature of a state to change suddenly for the better, in the way that it changes suddenly for the worse; for evil is a thing self-taught,¹⁴⁵ whereas virtue is acquired only through toil. Needs must that those who purify first should intervene, but that the divinity should move leisurely and in order. But Osiris, before he entered upon a life of action, had to see and hear many things, for many a report is kept away from a king.

### Chapter 6

Enough, for we must now take care lest we parade anything of the unutterable mysteries. First, may the sacred rites be propitious to us, next, to us who have long learned of past and present happenings to a brother, it seems somewhat wonderful and worthy of inquiry, why it is that whensoever some nature is born distinctly better or worse, not in a small degree but very greatly, as for example a virtue unmixed with evil, or evil unmixed with virtue, there grows up also near at hand, in some way, its undiluted opposite, in such wise that from one home proceed two completely alien things, and at the same time there is one root for the two growths. Let us inquire then of philosophy, what she will allege as the cause of this incredible thing. She might reply, borrowing a little from poetry,—
‘There are two casks that lie in the antechamber of Zeus,¹⁴⁶
One of gifts evil such as he gives, but the other of good ones.’¹⁴⁷
He pours in and mingles from each, for the most part equally or a little less, so that the equilibrium of nature may be well established. But whenever by chance he pours in from one of the portions without reserve, and whenever in such a case some father becomes entirely happy or most unfortunate in his first-born, then what is left is inevitably employed for the other one, for the god who is the distributor will compensate for what is lacking, inasmuch as there must be an equal amount from each of the two casks. Else in the beginning there are equal seeds from both casks in the offspring, and both become one by reason of their common nature. And whenever any one spends beforehand the isolated contents of one cask in any way whatever, he has the remaining portion quite unmixed.¹⁴⁸
Saying these things philosophy might persuade us, for we see that the fruit of the fig tree is most sweet, whereas the leaves, the bark, the root and the trunk are only fit for curdling milk.
It would seem then that whatever of an inferior sort the nature of the tree possesses, this it has entirely spent on the parts unfit for food, but has left the best part uncontaminated in the fruit of the tree. Thus, too, the husbandmen’s sons, for we must employ homely illustrations if we are to do more towards the acceptance of truth: thus these men, I say, taught so perhaps by nature, plant evil-smelling flowers next to the fragrant, and sweet plants next to bitter, in order that these last, drawing to themselves by their kinship with it such amount of evil as the earth has entangled with itself, may leave the better taste and odour in the better roots, alone and cleansed. And this process purifies a garden plot.

### Chapter 7

From this argument it follows, in the fashion of one geometrical corollary emerging together with another, that the older sons in families are born quite worthless. And this becomes a purifier of seeds in relationship, when a god is preparing to generate virtue pure and undefiled. And then it turns out in this way, that precisely what seems to be most closely related, is the most alien of all things. Now while this is not very apt to take place amongst those who develop in the normal course of nature, namely those who are half evil and half good, it is found among those who look down upon nature, and occupy separate parts of it, parts which nature keeps and bestows intertwined with each other, and herein it would have been extraordinary if this had not happened.
Enough has now been said about this, but another question wrapt up in it seems to demand further consideration. That in various places and in various periods of time the same events should have often taken place,¹⁴⁹ that old men should have become spectators of the very things which they heard about when they were boys, either from books or from their grandfathers' tales, this seems to me the most incredible thing, and if it is not to remain incredible, it is worth while that a cause should be found for it. Let us speak then, when we have found the proper cause, for perhaps a philosophic truth is neither small nor very easy. We must regard the universe as a single whole completed in its parts; we shall then think of it as confluent, and animated by the same breath, for in this way only could it save its unity, and we shall not represent its parts as devoid of fellow-feeling for one another, for how can they be one unless they are knit together by nature? They will act on each other, and be acted upon by each other; some parts will only act and others will only be acted upon. Proceeding therefore on this hypothesis to the subject of our examination, we should logically make the happy body moving in a circle, the cause of what happens here below.¹⁵⁰ Both are parts of it and they have some relation with each other, and if generation functions in the things about us, the cause of the generation is in those things above us, and from thence the seeds of what takes place come here. Now if any one were to advance this view, astronomy guiding his convictions, namely that there are recurrent orbits of stars and spheres, the simple and the composite alike, that man would at one moment speak Egyptian and at another Greek, and would from both languages attain to perfect wisdom, combining intelligence with knowledge. Such a man would not fail to recognize that when the same movements come again, effects return together with causes, and lives now on the earth are the same as those of olden times,¹⁵¹ also births, upbringings, opinions, and fortunes. We should not therefore be surprised that we see quite ancient history renascent now, and that indeed we have seen it, inasmuch as things that have blossomed already, and blossomed for whole months at a time, agree completely with those things which have been revealed to us in history, and inasmuch as the ideas hidden in matter harmonize with the unutterable mysteries of story. Whatever manner of things these are, it is not yet lawful, for me at least, to divulge, though one man will make one guess, another man another: and men eager for knowledge of the future, in whose ears my story may have sounded a clarion note, will bend over this Egyptian history, drawing from thence a likeness to the present time enigmatically concealed in it. But in regard to truth, these things do not sound in unison; and let men know that they are not even pious in their attempts, when they heap up before them what should long have been kept buried,—
'For the high gods hold the life of mortals but keep it close hidden.'

### Chapter 8

Pythagoras of Samos avers that the wise man is naught but a spectator of things that are, and of things that have come into existence. For God has summoned him into the universe as to a sacred contest, to be a spectator of the proceedings therein. Let us inquire therefore what sort of spectator the appointed one should be. Or must we say something that is definite and obvious, namely that it should be he who awaits in his place the things shown him, one by one, as they stoop forward in order from out the curtain? And if any one forces his way on to the stage, and, as the phrase goes, 'looks at it like an impudent hound,' usurping a right to survey the whole preparation on the other side of the proscenium, against such an one the Greek judges arm their beadles. But even if he were to evade these, he would understand nothing clearly, he would make out with difficulty blurred and indistinguishable images. However, it is the custom in the theatre to say a foreword in advance, and it needs must be that some one come forward to discourse to the audience on what they are to see in another moment. Such a man is making no mistake, for he is in the service of the president of the games, and gets from him his knowledge, without playing the busybody to find out more, and thereby moving things that should be immovable. When he has learned his part, he must keep silent before hastening to publish it, since as a matter of fact custom enjoins that even actors do not always know at what moment of the performance they are to appear, but must await the signal for their entrance on the stage to be sent down to them. In the same way the man to whom God communicates the preparations of those things which are stored up in life by nature, out of respect for the honour granted him, should hold his peace not less, but even more, than those who have heard nothing. It is the unknown about which guesses are made, but conjecture, if it goes too far, is most unstable, and in that case words are superfluous; but there is a separation between knowledge and truth, a separation between word and truth also.
But even this will be hidden by the wise man, since God pledges this loyalty of His, as it were, and men hate facile speakers. Let not the man whom God deems unworthy of initiation, push himself forward or be an eavesdropper, for, again, men hate busybodies. In any case there is no reason for one to be distressed who is certain soon to get his deserts. A short time apportions to man what is his due, and in the end things become common objects for sight and hearing.
‘The future days
Are our wisest witnesses.’¹⁵²

## Concerning Dreams


### Preface

It is an old tradition, I think, and quite in the manner of Plato, to conceal the profound thoughts of philosophy behind the mask of some lighter treatment, that thereby whatsoever has been acquired with difficulty shall not be again lost to men, nor shall such matters be contaminated by lying exposed to the approach of the profane. This end accordingly has been most zealously pursued in the present work, and whether it attains this end, and whether in other respects it is wrought out with distinction after the manner of the ancients, let those decide who shall approach it in a spirit of loving labour.

### Chapter 1

If dreams are prophets, and if the visions seen in dreams are riddles of their future fortunes to anxious men, they would in that case be full of wisdom, though certainly not clear. In sooth their lack of clearness is their wisdom.
'For the gods keep man's life concealed.'¹⁵³
To obtain the greatest things without labour is a divine prerogative, whereas for men, not merely 'in front of virtue' but of all fair things,
'The gods have set sweat.'¹⁵⁴
Now divination must be the greatest of all good things, for it is in knowledge and, in a word, in the cognitional part of his faculties that God differs from man, as does man from the brute. But whereas the nature of God is sufficient unto Himself for knowledge, man through divination attains to much more than belongs to our human nature. For the mass of mankind can know only the present. Concerning that which has never been, it can only guess; and Calchas was the only one in the whole Greek assembly who understood
‘The things which are, the things which shall be, and the things which have been.’¹⁵⁵
And according to Homer, the affairs of the gods are dependent on the judgement of Zeus, for this reason, that
‘he came into being before them and has the more knowledge,’¹⁵⁶
by the very fact, I suppose, that he is older. For I think that the reference to age in these verses points to the conclusion that to know more comes through time, and knowledge was, it seems, the most precious thing. But if any one is persuaded on the authority of other passages that the rule of Zeus rests in the strong hand, as in the text
‘he was superior in force,’¹⁵⁷
that man’s acquaintance with poetry is that of the vulgar, and he has never heard of the philosophy therein, which affirms that the gods are nothing else but minds. It is in this sense that to the words ‘he was superior in prowess’, he has fastened the words ‘he is more ancient in days’, meaning that Zeus is an elder-born intelligence; for what else is strength of mind but intelligent thought? Whosoever, being a god, is deemed worthy to rule over gods, rules in that he is mind by the superior force of wisdom. Therefore the phrase,
‘he was superior in force,’
comes back to the same thing for us as ‘he has greater knowledge,’ and means this. For this reason also is the wise man akin to God, because he strives to approach Him in knowledge, and occupies himself with thought, in the which the divine essence has its being.

### Chapter 2

Let the foregoing be proof that divinations are amongst the best of the vocations of man; and if all things are signs appearing through all things, inasmuch as they are brothers in a single living creature, the cosmos,¹⁵⁸ so also they are written characters of every kind, just as of those in a book some are Phoenician, some Egyptian, and others Assyrian.
The scholar reads these, and he is a scholar who learns by his natural bent. One reads some of them and another reads others, one reads more and another less. In the same way one reads them by syllables, another reads the complete phrase, another the whole story. In like manner do the learned see the future, some understanding stars,¹⁵⁹ and of these, one the fixed stars, another those flames which shoot across the sky. Again, there are those who read it from the entrails, and from the cries of birds, and from their perches and flights. To others also what are termed omens are manifest, written indications these of things to be, and again voices and encounters otherwise intended,¹⁶⁰ for all things have their significance for every one. In the same way, if birds had had wisdom, they would have compiled an art of divining the future from men, just as we have from them; for we are to them, just as they are to us, alike young and old, very old and very fortunate. It must needs be, I think, that the parts of this great whole, since it all shares one feeling and one breath,¹⁶¹ belong to each other. They are, in fact, limbs of one entire body,¹⁶² and may not the spells of the magicians be even such as these? Obviously, for charms are cast from one part of it to another, as signals are given, and he is a sage who understands the relationship of the parts of the universe. One thing he attracts to himself through the agency of another thing, for he has present with him pledges of things which are for the most part far away, to wit, voices, substances, and figures. And as when the bowel is in pain, another part suffers also with it, so a pain in the finger settles in the groin,¹⁶³ although there be many organs between these parts which feel nothing.
This is because they are both portions of one living organism, and there is that which binds them one to the other more than to other things. Even to some god, of those who dwell within the universe,¹⁶⁴ a stone from hence and a herb is a befitting offering; for in sympathizing with these he is yielding to nature and is bewitched. Thus the harp-player who has sounded the highest note does not sound the sesquioctavus next, but rather strikes the epitrite and the nete, a heritage of to-day from a more ancient state of harmony. But there is in the cosmos, even as in human relationship, a certain discord also;¹⁶⁵ for the universe is not one homogeneous thing but a unity formed of many. There are parts of it which agree and yet battle with other parts, and the struggle of these only contributes to a harmonious unity of the whole, just as the lyre is a system of responsive and harmonious notes.¹⁶⁶ The unity resulting from opposites is the harmony both of the lyre and of the cosmos.¹⁶⁷ Archimedes the Sicilian¹⁶⁸ asked for a point of support outside of the earth wherefrom he might prop himself against the whole earth, for he said that as long as he was himself upon the earth he had no power over it. But the man, howso great his knowledge of the nature of the universe may be, once placed outside of it, could no longer make any use of his wisdom. He uses the universe against itself; accordingly his touch with it once lost, he will watch it in vain, and lifeless symbols only would then be recorded. And small wonder, for whatever of the divine element is outside the cosmos can in no wise be moved by sorcery.
'He sits apart and careth not
Nor taketh any thought thereof.'¹⁶⁹
It is the nature of pure reason not to be deflected; it is only the emotional element which may be cajoled. Wherefore the multitude of things in the universe and their relationship furnish the bulk of the subject-matter in the initiations and prophecies. There is a multitude of the discordant elements, but a relationship in the unity of things existing. Now, as to initiations, let not our law-abiding discourse noise them abroad; there is no offence, however, in explaining divination.

### Chapter 3

The whole of this art has already been praised as much as possible, but now it is time to appropriate the best part that is in it, and to linger over its speculative side. We must regard a character of obscurity as common to all its forms, nor must we consider as disproof of any one of them what is observed in the whole cycle of nature. Our words attempted to show that this element of obscurity is sacred, just as in the initiations the unutterable is sacred. In like manner oracles are uttered so as not to be intelligible to all men, and for this was the oracle at Pytho called Loxias (the ambiguous). Thus, when the god gave out that a wooden wall¹⁷⁰ would be the salvation of the Athenians, the people meeting in assembly would have heard the oracle in vain, had not Themistocles read its meaning. Not for this reason, therefore, should divination by dreams be dismissed, for it shares obscurity with oracles as with other phenomena. We ought to seek this branch of knowledge before all else; for it comes from us, is within us, and is the special possession of the soul of each one of us. 'Mind holds the shapes of things that be', says the ancient philosophy, and we might add that those which come into being also have a soul, since mind is to soul as real being is to becoming.¹⁷¹ Now, taking the first term with the third, and the second with the fourth, and stating them in this inverse order, we shall no less arrive at the truth, following the definitions of science.
In this way what we postulated will be demonstrated, namely that the soul holds the forms of things that come into being. It holds, indeed, all, but it produces only what is befitting, and it reflects as in a mirror¹⁷² the image, by means of which the living being grasps those things that remain there. Therefore, as we do not understand the activities of the mind before the controlling force has announced them to the multitude, and whatever has not come to that controlling force is hidden from the living being; so then we shall not have a perception even of the forms in the first soul, before the impress of them comes to the imagination. And this very imagination seems to be a sort of life in itself, a little lower down in the scale, and having its basis in a peculiar property of nature. It has even its own sense-perceptions,¹⁷³ for we see colours and we hear sounds, and we have an overpowering sense of touch, at times when the organic parts of the body are at rest. Perhaps this form of sense-perception is the more hallowed. In this way we constantly enter into relationship with gods who give us counsel and answer us in oracles, and take care of us in other ways. So then, if any one, in his dreams, receives the present of a treasure, I shall not be at all surprised; or if a man quite uncultured should fall asleep and, meeting the Muses in his dream and exchanging question and answer with them, should become a cunning bard. This has happened in our own time and does not seem to me very astounding. I pass over plots that have been revealed, and the number of people whom the dream in the guise of a physician has cured of illness. But whenever a dream opens up to the soul a path conducting it to the most perfect points from which to view existing things, a soul that has never yet aspired, nor has given its mind to the ascent,¹⁷⁴ it would be indeed the climax of the occult force in existing things that this dream should override nature and unite to the realm of mind the man who has wandered so far from it that he knows not whence he has come.
And if any one deems the way upward a great undertaking, but disbelieves in the imagination, for that even by its means the happy union may ne'er be gained, let him listen to the sacred oracles which tell of the diverging paths, after hearing, of course, the whole list of the available resources for the ascent, in virtue of which it is possible to make the seed within us grow:
'To some', it is written, 'he gave the revelation of the light to be a lesson,
Others even in their dreams, He made fruitful with His courage.'¹⁷⁵
Do you see? He makes a distinction between the happy possession of knowledge and its acquirement. One man learns, he means, while awake, another while asleep. But in the waking state man is the teacher, whereas it is God who makes the dreamer fruitful with His own courage, so that learning and attaining are one and the same. Now to make fruitful is even more than to teach.

### Chapter 4

Let this be taken as presenting the worthiness of the imaginative life, even in small matters, as against those who despair of it. It is not to be wondered at that they understand it in this way, owing to the exceptional nature of their knowledge, since they adhere to what has been abjured by the oracles, for the oracle says, 'I reck not of sacrifices, or of entrails, These be all baubles,'¹⁷⁶
and exhorts us to flee from them. But these men, as though they were above the common herd, attempt to practise arts whose province relates to the future, some taking up one, some another; they despise dreams as being too obvious, and as matters in which honours come equally to the ignorant and to the wise. But is not a man wise, precisely because he gains a greater share out of a possession common to all? Surely the other good things, nay, even the greatest are set before us as the most open to all. Amongst things visible there is nothing more august in splendour than the sun, and at the same time nothing more universal. And if to look upon a god with one’s own eye is a happy thing, the approach to Him by the imagination comes of a gaze more magnificent still. For this is the perception of perceptions,¹⁷⁷ inasmuch as the imaginative pneuma is the most widely shared organ of sensation, and the first body of the soul. There it lurks in its fastness, and directs the government of the living being as from a citadel,¹⁷⁸ for about it nature has constructed all the functions of the brain. Hearing and sight are not senses, but only subservient organs of the common sense-perception, like doorkeepers of the living being¹⁷⁹ who announce to their mistress the things perceived outside, and from which things these external organs of sense receive knocks at the door. And this is the perfect sense-perception in all its parts, for it hears and sees with its whole pneuma¹⁸⁰ and has power over all the remaining senses. It divides its powers, assigning one to one place and another to another. These powers stretch out from the living being, each one separately, and, like straight lines radiating from a centre,¹⁸¹ return to and meet in the centre¹⁸² again, all of them one in their common root though many in their outgoings. Most animal in character, therefore, is perception through the organs projected without, nor is it sense-perception at all before it comes in contact with the chief perception (i.e. imagination). But the more divine which cleaves to the soul is the direct perception. Now if we hold our bodily senses in esteem by reason of our understanding, and because we know best what we have actually seen, and spurn imagination as more faithless than sense-perception, we seem to resemble those who forget that even the eye does not reveal all things truthfully. One eye reveals nothing, and another falsifies, both in a way contrary to the nature of the things seen, and because of the medium through which they are seen. For according to the distance of the observer, objects seem greater or less. Those under the water appear larger,¹⁸³ and an oar blade once immersed strikes the eye as broken. And the eye, through its own lack of power produces this effect, for when bleared it represents everything in confusion and indistinctness, nor may a man who is diseased in his imaginative pneuma expect to have clear or well-defined images. What his disease is, by what things the imagination becomes bleared and dulled, and by what things it is purged and purified, so as to return to its natural condition, all this you must learn of the cryptic philosophy, through which the imagination becomes inspired when once purified by the initiations.
The extraneous bodies which have entered in, must make their way out again before the god brings in the imagination. Whoever keeps this purified by a life in accordance with nature has an instrument ready to his hand, and one that is thus again common to all, for this pneuma comprehends our spiritual disposition and is, therefore, not without sympathy for it, like our oyster-shell which, after all, is opposed to the better parts of the soul’s organization. But its first and special vehicle¹⁸⁴ becomes light and ethereal when the soul is exalted, whereas when that is debased, it becomes heavy and falls to the earth. Now this is, in a word, the borderland between unreason and reason, between the bodiless and the body, and is a boundary common to both,¹⁸⁵ and through this the divine elements are brought into contact with those furthest removed from them. For this reason it is difficult for philosophy to apprehend its nature, for it borrows anything that is suitable to its purpose, taking it from either of the extremes, as it were from neighbours, and so images in one nature things that dwell far apart.

### Chapter 5

Nature has poured the richness of the imaginative essence¹⁸⁶ into many parts of existing things; it descends even to the animals which have as yet no understanding, and is no longer the vehicle of the more divine soul, but itself rests upon the forces beneath, being itself the reason of the animal;¹⁸⁷ and many things this creature thinks and does befittingly through its agency. Thus a cleansing takes place even in creatures without reason, with the result that a better force enters in. Whole races of demons also have their existence in such a life as this.¹⁸⁸ For whereas these throughout all their being are phantasmic, making their appearance as images in things that are coming into being, in the case of man most things come by imagination and that alone, though in truth a good many in company with another, for we do not form thought-concepts without imagination,¹⁸⁹ unless it so be that some man in a rare moment of time grasps even an immaterial form.
To go beyond the imagination would be no less difficult than happy to achieve. ‘For’, the master¹⁹⁰ says, ‘happy the man to whom understanding and prudence come even in old age’, speaking of prudence bereft of imagination. But the life in question (i.e. dream life) is founded on imagination¹⁹¹ or on that intellect which makes use of imagination. This envelope of soul-matter which the happy have called the enveloping soul, is in turn god, demon of every sort, and phantom, and in it the soul pays its penalties, for the oracles are agreed about this, to wit, the similarity of the soul’s way of life in another world to the imaginings of the dream condition; and philosophy concludes that our first lives are but the preparation for second lives, and that the best conduct in the case of souls lightens it (i.e. the pneuma), whereas the worst imparts a stain to them. Through the attractive forces of nature, therefore, the soul is drawn upwards by reason of its own warmth and dryness. This is the winged flight of the soul, and we shall find that the expression of Heraclitus, ‘The wise soul is dry’,¹⁹² signifies naught else than this. On the other hand, when it becomes thick and moist, it sinks into the hollows of the earth by its downward momentum, lurks in holes,¹⁹³ and is finally pushed into the regions below the earth; for this spot is the most suitable to the spirits clogged with moisture, and there the life is ill-starred and full of vengeance. But it is possible through labour and time and other lives that it may become purified and rise to the surface, for becoming a thing of dual nature, it runs in a double channel of life and partly consorts with the worst, partly with the better. Now descending from the spheres, the first soul takes a lease of this other one, embarking in it as in a boat, and so associates with the world of body.
It enters upon this struggle, either to conduct that soul above with it, or at least not to remain with it below. Difficult indeed is this, and possibly it may leave the other behind, as incapable of accompanying it, a thing scarcely permitted us to believe in view of the revealed mysteries, for the ascent would be shameful for souls who do not return property not their own,¹⁹⁴ but leave upon earth what they have borrowed from above. And this might happen to one or two people as a gift of initiation and of God’s grace, but it is in the course of nature that the soul which has once been engrafted¹⁹⁵ thereon, either bends to the oar with the other or draws it away, or is drawn away by it, but in any case remains with it¹⁹⁶ until the soul’s ascent to the regions whence it came; or weighed down by reason of its evil, it drags below with it the soul which has already permitted it to grow too heavy.¹⁹⁷ And it is this with which the oracles menace the seed of mind within us, saying,
‘Bend thou not down far below to the world mid obscurity gleaming,
Alway spread out are its depths, a treacherous region where Hades
Lurks in the gloom and delighteth in phantoms, never in reason.’
How can a life unstable and unintelligent be a thing of beauty to the mind? To the phantom, indeed, because of the nature of its pneuma at that moment, the region below is befitting; for like rejoices in like. But if one comes into existence from the conjunction of both, the mind also would be swamped with sensual pleasures. Yet it would be the very last of evils, not even to perceive an evil that is present; for this is the way of those who seek not to rise above evil. And just as a hardened tumour, by reason of its no more paining us, fails to remind us to cure ourselves, so repentance is an uplifting force. A man, finding his situation intolerable, plans flight, and the will is the most important part of purification; for thus his words and deeds alike stretch out hands towards the goal. But when will is lacking, every purificatory initiation is lifeless, severed as it is from the greatest covenant. And for this reason, here and there, the minglings (of good and evil) furnish the greatest and the best service to the order of the universe, when, for a change, they bring grief to man and so purify his soul from frivolous enjoyment. Even things unjustly called misfortunes contribute greatly in loosening the hold that we keep on the lower elements. The first providence is revealed to those who have intellect by the same principles which cause distrust in it to those who lack intellect. Nor is it possible that the soul should ever be turned away from matter, if it does not fall foul of any misfortune in this world.
Therefore we must suppose that the much talked-of good fortunes are an invention of the lords of the underworld for the ambush of souls. Consequently, what Lethaean potion¹⁹⁸ there may be to the souls that have departed this life, let another tell us, but to a soul entering life such a potion is certainly offered in that which is sweet and cloying here on earth. For, descending into the first life voluntarily as a maid of service, this soul, instead of serving, becomes enslaved.¹⁹⁹ Its mission was to fulfil a service to the constitution of the universe, for the laws of Adrastea impose this upon it; but, bewitched by the gifts of matter, it undergoes an experience very like that of free men who have entered into a contract of service for an agreed-upon period, but who, captivated by the beauty of some handmaiden, desire to remain in their employment at the price of slavery to the master of the beloved. We too, when at any time from the depths of our hearts we take delight in what is of the body and lies at its portals, deeming it good, seem to confess to the nature of matter, that it is fair. Now matter receives our assent as a secret contract, and even if we plan to depart as free men, affirms that we are fugitive slaves. She tries to bring us back and arrests us as runaways, reading over to us the while our contract. Then, indeed, have we most of all need of strength and the help of God for our souls, for it entails no light struggle to take exception to, and perchance to violate, one's own contract. Then, indeed, are the penalties of matter stirred up even beyond that which was predestined against those who have rebelled against her laws. This is really the meaning of the so-called labours which sacred legends tell us that Heracles endured, and in general any other man who has attempted to gain his freedom by force, until the day when they have transported the spirit to the realm to which the hands of nature cannot attain.
But if the leap ends within the confines of matter, there is a fall, and more severe contests become necessary, for matter then treats souls mercilessly as aliens, and even if they renounce the upward path, she exacts punishment for the attempt itself, and keeps pouring out lives, but no longer from both those jars which Homer²⁰⁰ darkly shadows forth as being two portions of matter. According to that passage of his poem, Zeus is the god ruling over matter, and the dispenser of the ambiguity of destiny, and the good that comes from him has never been unmixed, though ere now it has happened to a man to partake of the more evil portion unalloyed. Now, all lives go in an erring course, one which has not risen after the first fall. But observe in how great an interval of space this pneuma dwells.²⁰¹ The argument said that, when the soul fell below, it was weighed down and sank until it encountered the murky darkly-gleaming spot, but that when the soul rises the pneuma accompanies it as far as it is able; and it is able to follow until it has come to the farthest opposite point. Listen to the oracles²⁰² as they speak of this also:
'Refuse it will not consign to the chasm abysmal of matter;
Leaves but a part in the clear-shining space given o'er to the image.'
This place is the opposite of the one encircled in gloom. And yet one might be more sharp-sighted in this case. It does not seem to bring up to the spheres the nature that has come from thence unaccompanied, but to bring with it what it snatched from the extremes of fire and air,²⁰³ when it came down to its phantom condition here below, before donning its earthly shell,²⁰⁴ and this, according to the oracle, it conducts above together with the stronger part,²⁰⁵ for the divine body could not be the off-scourings of matter. It would be logical that those things which have a common nature and are contributory to one end should not be altogether ungovernable, particularly when their domains are those of neighbours, just as fire is next to the surrounding body, and is not, like earth, the farthest from it of all.
But if the better elements yield place to the worse and rejoice in community with them, and if an uncontaminated body has been contributory to the slime, as if appropriated by the element admitted to be stronger in the conjunction of the two, possibly the inferior ones also, not struggling against the soul's energy, but docile and reasonable, meeting it themselves half-way, and keeping the medial nature undistracted, would, under the leadership of the first nature, become etherealized, and then would be borne aloft with it so as to traverse, if not the whole of the way, at least the summit of the elements, and so taste of the world of light. ‘For it has a certain portion in it,’ the oracles say: in a word, it takes its place in some one division of the orb of the world.

### Chapter 6

Let what has been said suffice concerning the destiny which the elements play. It is open to you to believe it or to disbelieve. But as to the corporeal essence which has come from thence, there is nothing to prevent it, when the soul ascends according to the law of nature, from rising out of its fallen state, from ascending with it and becoming linked with the spheres, that is to say, being carried up as if to its own natural state of being. There are, then, these two extreme lots, the one encircled by darkness and the other encircled by light, which occupy the limits of good and evil fortune. But in the hollow gulf of the universe how many intermediate places do you think there are, partly obscure and partly luminous, in all of which the soul has habitation, together with this spirit envelope (pneuma),²⁰⁶ changing with it its ideas and morals and life? When it hastens aloft to its native nobility, it is a storehouse of truth, for it is pure, brightly shining, and unmixed, being a goddess and, if it so desires, a prophetess; but when it falls, it becomes befogged, it lacks definiteness, it speaks falsely, for then the misty element of the spirit envelope²⁰⁷ (pneuma) does not comprise the vitality of existing things.
And being in a medial position it would miss some truths although it might reach others. You might thus discern to what rank the demoniac nature belongs. To state the truth either entirely or almost entirely, is divine, or near to the divine. Error in predictions of the future is a never-ending experience; passion and ambition belong to those who wallow in matter. It is in this way that the new-boiled wine puts on the guise both of a god and a superior demon and leaps in and takes possession of the country reserved for the greater nature. Now since man has a soul, we might from that source discover what his position may be. If a man’s imaginative pneuma is pure and well-defined, and whether he is waking or sleeping receives true impressions of things, it promises him a better lot, so far as the soul’s formation is concerned. Then again it is not least by the visions which it emits and around which it lives, when undisturbed by another outside force, that we investigate what is the state of the spiritual pneuma, and philosophy, the while, furnishes us with tests to this end, so that we must of necessity cherish it and together see to it that we do not at any time wander. Now the best nurture for us is that we should become active by the force of application, anticipating the onsets of weird and headlong visions, and that the emanation of life should be, as far as possible, once for all intellectual: for this is to be turned towards the best and delivered from the worst, and to hold intercourse with (material) things only as necessity entails. In15 tellectual application is the most incisive weapon against those things which combine to injure the pneuma, for this mysteriously refines it and raises it towards God; and when it has become adapted to it, draws the divine spirit-envelope (pneuma) by its kindred nature to association with the soul. In like manner, whenever it becomes compressed by reason of its density and grows too small to fill the places assigned to it by that providence which has moulded man, to wit, the cavities of the brain; then since nature abhors a vacuum in existing things, an evil spiritenvelope (pneuma) enters in; and what suffering for the soul with such an ill-omened guest at its board!
For as to those places which have come to exist for this very purpose of belonging to the pneuma, it is their nature to be occupied by a worse or by a better one. In the one case there is a penalty for the godless who have defiled the divine part in them, in the other there is the goal of piety or whatsoever is near to that goal.

### Chapter 7

We, therefore, have set ourselves to speak of divination through dreams, that men should not despise it, but rather cultivate vate it, seeing that it fulfils a service to life; and it is to this end that we have so much occupied ourselves with the imaginative nature. The immediate need of it here below has been perhaps less clearly shown by our discourse, but a better fruit of a sane spirit is the uplifting of the soul, a really sacred gain; so that it becomes a sort of cult of piety to endeavour that this form of divination should be ours. Nay, some men already through some such motive, enticed by their passion for knowledge of the future, have had set before them, instead of a groaning board a sacred and modest one, and have hailed the joys of a couch pure and undefiled. For as to the man who would consult his bed as he does the tripod of the Pythian deity, far be it from him to make the nights spent in it witnesses of unbridled passion. Rather does he bow before God and pray to Him. What is collected little by little becomes much in the end, and that which happens through quite another cause terminates in a greater one. Thus those who did not set out at first with this object have come, in their advance, to love God and one day to be united to Him. We must not therefore disregard a prophetic art which journeys to divine things, and has, dependent on it, the most precious of all things which are in the power of man. Nor indeed has the soul that is united with God less need here because of the fact that it has been deemed worthy to handle better things. Nor is it heedless of the animal in us.
Nay, from its vantage ground it has a steady and much more distinct view of things below than when it is with them and is mingled with the inferior elements. Remaining unmoved, it will give to the animal in us the appearances of things that come into existence. This is, according to the proverb, 'to descend without descending', where the better takes unchallenged mastery of the worse. This art of divination I resolve to possess for myself and to bequeath²⁰⁸ to my children. In order to enter upon this no man need pack up for a long journey or voyage beyond the frontiers, as to Pytho or to Hammon. It is enough to wash one’s hands, to keep a holy silence, and to sleep.
‘Then did she make all ablutions, and dressing in purified raiment
Prayed she long time to Athene . . .’²⁰⁹

### Chapter 8

We shall pray for a dream, even as Homer, perchance, prayed. And if you are worthy, the god far away is present with you. Nay, even what time the god sets little store on these matters, he comes to your side if only you are asleep; and this is the whole system of the initiation. In it no one has ever yet lamented his poverty, on the ground that thus he had less possessions than the rich. On the other hand, some of the ceremonies which deal with foreknowledge choose their priests from the most heavily assessed as the Athenians chose their trierarchs. And great expense there must needs be, and, no less, happy opportunity, if we are to obtain a Cretan herb, an Egyptian feather, an Iberian bone, and, by Zeus, some prodigy begotten and nourished in a hidden corner of earth or sea,
‘Where that the sun god sinks neath the earth and where he arises.’²¹⁰
For surely this and much like it is said of those who practise external divination, and what ordinary person would be rich enough for this out of his own resources? But the dream is visible to the man who is worth five hundred medimni, and equally to the possessor of three hundred, to the teamster no less than to the peasant who tills the boundary land for a livelihood, to the galley-slave and the common labourer alike, to the exempted and to the payer of taxes.
It makes no difference to the god whether a man is an eteoboutades or a newly-bought slave.²¹¹ And this accessibility to all makes divination very humane; for its simple and artless character is worthy of a philosopher, and its freedom from violence gives it sanctity. That it is present everywhere and does not employ water or rock or a chasm in the earth, is its most divine quality, and that through divination of this sort we do not become occupied with one matter only, or lose opportunities through it, this also is the first thing worthy to say of it. For surely no one ever left any important matter he might have in hand, to go home to sleep, to meet a dream by appointment. Time, however, which the living being must spend on his nature, inasmuch as our being in the waking state is insufficient to the support of its energy, time, I say, has come to convey to men, as the proverb has it, ‘the by-work which is greater than the work’, for it links the desirable with the inevitable and well-being with being itself. As to these forms of foreknowledge, on the other hand, which come to us through all manner of instruments, we must be content if, having occupied the greater part of life, they make some concession to its remaining needs and activities. If you were to give yourself up to any of these things, you would scarcely find divination of use to you for your purpose, for it is not every place or every season in which one can receive the equipment for the initiation, nor is there every facility for carrying about with you the necessary implements. To speak of nothing else but those things with which the prisons were lately congested, they are loads for a wagon or a ship’s hold. Combined with this there are other elements in the initiation, namely registrars and witnesses.²¹² For this would be a more accurate statement, since our time has made many denunciations through those who serve the laws, by whom once betrayed, such initiations become matters for the gaze and the hearing of an unholy mob.²¹³
Thus, in addition to the baseness of stooping to such practices, it is, I am persuaded, a course hateful to the god. For not to await voluntarily any one’s coming, but to set him moving by pressure and leverage, this is like the employment of force, a thing which even when it has happened among men, the legislator has not allowed to pass unpunished. In addition to all these points, difficult enough to those who seek after the future in this way, there is also the chance of interruption of their activity, and to those who go abroad, the abandonment of the art; for it is no small matter, when moving everywhere, to pack and convey the properties necessary for its practice.
Of divination by dreams, each one of us is perforce his own instrument, so much so that it is not possible to desert our oracle there even if we so desired. Nay, even if we remain at home, she dwells with us; if we go abroad she accompanies us; she is with us on the field of battle, she is at our side in the life of the city; she labours with us in the fields and barters with us in the market place. The laws of a malicious government do not forbid her, nor would they have the power to do so, even if they wished it, for they have no proof against those who invoke her. For how then? Should we be violating the law by sleeping? A tyrant could never enjoin us not to gaze into dreams, at least not unless he actually banished sleep from his kingdom; and it would be the act of a fool to wish for that which is impossible of fulfilment, and of an impious man to make laws which should be contrary to nature and to God. To her then we must go, woman and man of us, young and old, poor and rich alike, the private citizen and the ruler, the town dweller and the rustic, the artisan and the orator. She repudiates neither race, nor age, nor condition, nor calling. She is present to every one, everywhere, this zealous prophetess, this wise counsellor, who holdeth her peace. She herself is alike initiator and initiated, to announce to us good tidings; in such wise as to prolong our pleasure by seizing joy beforehand; to inform against the worst so as to guard against and to repel it beforehand.
For whatsoever things of use and of sweetness those hopes, which nourish the race of men,²¹⁴ hold out to him, and as many things as fear controls, things ominous and withal gainful, all these things are found in dreams, nor by any other thing are we so enticed towards hope. And the element of hope is so abundant²¹⁵ and so salutary in its nature that, as acute thinkers maintain, men would not even be willing to continue life, if it were only to be such as they had at the beginning. For they would forswear life by reason of the terrible misfortunes abounding therein, had not Prometheus²¹⁶ injected hopes into their nature, that drug of constancy, under the influence of which they esteem the anticipated to be more worthy of trust than that which is before their eyes. And these hopes have such force that he who is bound in fetters, whenever he permits the will of his heart to hope, is straightway unbound. He enters the army, straightway becomes a lieutenant, after a little, a captain. He then becomes a general, makes conquests, and sacrifices to the gods; his head crowned with garlands, he gives a banquet, a Sicilian or a Median,²¹⁷ as he pleases; and in truth he is forgetful of his feet as long as he dreams of being a general.
Now all this is the waking state of the dreamer, or the sleeping state of the awakened,²¹⁸ for both are concentrated upon the same underlying state, to wit the imaginative nature, and whenever we wish to convert this into images, this one benefit is always at hand; good cheer anoints our life and, flattering our soul with illusive hopes, lifts it aloft from the perception of things ill to be borne. And when it spontaneously presents hope to us, as happens in our sleeping state, then we have in the promise of our dreams a pledge from the divinity. Thus any one who has prepared his mind to enjoy those greater things which the dream state held out to him, has twice profited, for that first he had delighted in these things beforehand, and that secondly he is in a position to use them wisely, when they have come his way, because of his previous examination of them, as things which befit his life.
Thus Pindar praised hope in song, when he said concerning a happy man, that ‘with him liveth sweet hope, the nurse of youth, the fosterer of his heart, hope who chiefly ruleth the changeful mind of man’.²¹⁹ One would say that no allusion is made here to the false hope which in a waking state we mould for ourselves, but all the words of Pindar in this passage are praises of only a small part of dreams. Now the divination of dreams which follows up the phenomenon with scientific methods gives us a stronger hope, and from this it seems not to belong to the slighter class. And so the Penelope of Homer assumes that there are two gates of dreams,²²⁰ and makes half of them deceptive dreams, only because she was not instructed in the matter. For if she had been versed in their science, she would have made them all pass out through the gate of horn. As it is, she has been represented as guilty of ignorance about her very sight, for she distrusted it without reason.
‘The geese are the wooers, and I that bird, the eagle,
I am Odysseus.’²²¹
He was under the same roof as she, and it was to him that she was babbling in the vision. I seem, therefore, to hear Homer say in such words as these, that it is not right to despair of dreams, and that we should not confuse the weakness of the interpreter with the nature of the visions themselves, nor is Agamemnon in the right when he brings a charge of deception against dreams, for he erroneously interprets this prophecy concerning victory:
‘Bade thee call up then to arms the flowing-haired, the Achaeans,
Summoning all their force: thou mayst capture the wide-wayed city.’²²²
He advances indeed to take the city without striking a blow, because he has misinterpreted the phrase, ‘with all their forces’, which means that he might take it, if he armed all the Greeks, even to the last man, whereas Achilles and the Myrmidon phalanx were out of the fighting, and they were the bravest of the army. Let this suffice for my encomium on divination, and let us dismiss the subject.

### Chapter 9

Yet I have narrowly missed incurring a charge of ingratitude; for while I explained just now that (i. e., divination by dreams) is a good thing wherewith to journey or stay at home, to trade or command troops, and that it helps all men and all things, yet I have never made public what it has done for me personally.²²³ Certainly no other thing is so well calculated to join in man's pursuit of wisdom; and of many of the things which present difficulties to us awake, some of these it makes completely clear while we are asleep, and others it helps us to explain. And something of this sort happens. At one moment one seems like a man asking questions, at another the same man discovering and in process of thought. It has frequently helped²²⁴ me to write books, for it has prepared the mind and made the diction appropriate to the thought. Here it cuts out something, there it brings in new matter instead. It has befallen me already to be admonished by it also in respect of the whole style of my language, when it runs riot and flames up with novel forms of diction, in emulation of the archaic Attic,²²⁵ which is foreign to us, and this by the agency of a god who, at one moment tells me something, and again what something means, and at another shows me how to smooth down the excrescences growing out of my language. Thus it has restored my diction to a state of sobriety, and has castigated my inflated style. Moreover when I am engaged in the chase, it has suggested to me stratagems of the hunter's art against those wild beasts who show skill alike in running and hiding; and when in weariness I have been on the point of abandoning the quest, the dream has enjoined upon me a blockade of the quarry, and has promised me fortune on an appointed day, so that we have slept in the open more happily and with confidence. And when the day appointed has come and fortune is with us at last, it has shown us swarms of netted game and of wild beasts that have fallen to our spears.
My life has been one of books and of the chase, except what time I spent as an ambassador. Would that I had not been compelled to see three unspeakable years lost to my life! But even in them I derived the greatest profit from divination, and that on many occasions. For plots directed against me it made ineffective, plots of ghost-raising sorcerers.²²⁶ It exposed these to me, saved me from them all, and helped me in the management of public office in the best interest of the cities, and it finally placed me, more undaunted than was ever any Greek, on terms of intimacy with the emperor.
One man may prefer one, another man another (system of divination), but dream divination is present to all, the good genius to every man, and one that contrives something for the minds of the awakened also. In this way is a soul a wise possession, that it is free from a whole flood of vulgar sensations which attract to it extraneous matter of every sort. Whatever ideas it has, and however many things it receives from the mind, all these, when left to itself, it makes over to those who are inclined towards that which is within, and it ferries across to them whatsoe'er comes from the godhead. For as it is itself of such a character, a cosmic god is also associated with it, from the fact that its nature comes from the same source.

### Chapter 10

Such categories of dreams, then, are more divine, and are either quite clear and obvious, or nearly so, and in no wise stand in need of the diviner's science. But they may come to the help only of such men as live according to virtue, whether that be acquired by wisdom or engrained by habit, and if at a given moment they should come to any other, it would be with difficulty, though they might so come.
It is not for some trifling purpose that a dream of this higher order will come to the chance recipient. Further, a frequent and a very widely shared class will be the enigmatic. To this the science of divination must be applied, for its genesis was, so to speak, strange and portentous, and as it has sprung from such sources, its development is most obscure. Now its character is as follows. From all that nature possesses, all things that are, that have come into being and that shall be (since this too is a phase of existence), from all these things, I say, images flow and rebound from their substance. For if each perceptible thing is form coupled with matter, and if we discover an escape of matter in the combination, reasoning shows that the nature of the images also is canalized, so that in both cases perceptible things renounce the dignity of real being. Now the imaginative pneuma is a powerful reflecting mirror of all the images that flow off in this way.²²⁷ For, wandering in vain and slipping from their base, on account of the indefiniteness of their nature, and because they are recognized by no being of real existence, whenever these fall in with psychical pneumata, the which are images indeed, and have a seat fixed in nature, then they lean upon them and take their rest as though at their own hearthstone. Of those things, therefore, which have come into being, inasmuch as they have already passed into the activity of existence, the images sent forth are distinct, until in the fullness of time they become faint and evanescent. Of existing things, inasmuch as they are still standing, the images are more tenacious of life and more distinct, but those of future events are more indefinite and indistinguishable. For they are the advanced waves of things not yet present, efflorescences of unfulfilled nature, as it were, riddles of closely stored seeds, skipping away and darting out.
Thus also art is needed with a view to coming events, for the images which proceed from them are only shadowed, and the symbols are not as clear as in the case of already existing things. Nevertheless they are of a wonderful nature, even as they stand, wonderful in that they have come into existence from things that have not yet existed.

### Chapter 11

But it is high time that we should say of this art how it may help us. The best way is to prepare the divine pneuma in such wise that it may be worthy of the direction of mind and of God, and not be a recipient of obscure energies. And the best culture is the one leading through philosophy, which brings a calm from passions, for when once disturbed by these the pneuma is occupied, as it were a territory; and through a wise and temperate life, one that least maddens the animal nature and that has least tendency to bring it into the last body. For turmoil would reach even to the first body, but this ought to be kept unperturbed and unmoved. But since this is an easy prayer for every one to join in, but is of all things the most difficult to co-operate in attaining, then as we wish sleep to be unprofitable to none, come now, let us seek a definition even for indefinable things; in a word, let us put together an art of divining dream-images. Now it is something in this wise. When mariners sailing the sea come suddenly upon a rock, and presently disembarking see a city of men, as often as they see the same rock, they will take it as a sign of the city. And just as when, in the case of generals, we know from the scouts that they themselves will appear, though we do not see them (for that from the same indication they have always in the past appeared on the scene); so on each occasion we obtain from the dream-images a signal of the activity of coming events. For these are forerunners of those same things, and like things are forerunners of like. Therefore it is the skipper's fault if, when the same rock becomes visible, he fails to recognize it, or is unable to say to what land the ship is moving; and as such a man sails without a chart, in the same way the man who has often seen the same sight, if he fails to observe of what experience or fortune or event it is prophetic, such a man makes as foolish a use of his life as does the skipper in question of his ship. Thus we predict storms in a time of perfect atmospheric peace, the moment we see haloes about the moon, because on many occasions when we have observed this appearance a tempest has followed.
'When that a halo is single, then mayst thou foretell calm and wind-storms;
Broken the halo, then know that 'tis wind; when it fadeth, calm weather.
Once that the moon is surrounded by haloes twain, a storm cometh,
And should that ring grow to triple encirclement, storms rage the greater;
And ever greater, if darkened; yet greater, if broken the halo.'²²⁸
Aristotle and reason assert that in every case sense-perception creates memory,²²⁹ memory experience, experience in turn science. So then let us tread the path to dreams. To this end many books have already been collected²³⁰ by certain men, devoted to such observation. But for my part, I laugh at all these books and think them of little use. For not like the last body, which is a combination of associated elements, can it (divination) accept a (system of) art and logic altogether conformable to its nature, inasmuch as the body generally experiences the same results from the same causes, because the difference between bodies of like nature is small, and that one amongst them which is contrary to nature is not diseased without our knowledge, nor do we adopt such a standard as this.
This is not the case with the imaginative pneuma. In the first nature also one thing differs from another, because one thing belongs appropriately to one sphere, another to another, in proportion to the extent of the mingling.
‘Happy are they of a truth, nay happiest are they of all those
Souls whosoever are poured adown upon earth from high heaven;
And they are happy, they also, although no renown be their portion,
So many as from thyself, Oh Sovran, who shinest resplendent,
Spring into life e’en from Zeus and from mighty Necessity’s spindle.’²³¹
Now this is what Timaeus set forth darkly, when he assigned to each soul its proper star; but those souls which left their proper nature, by loving to dwell in the region of matter, one of them more, another less, each of these, for as much as it has unfortunate in its inclination, has sullied its pneuma. In this plight such souls take up their abode in bodies, and their whole life is passed in error, and in a disease of the pneuma, a disease unnatural to the latter on account of its original nobility, although natural to the animal being (for that itself was animated through a pneuma of this sort) unless it be that its nature is the grade in which it is enrolled of its own choice, through its practice of good and evil; for nothing is so versatile as the pneuma.
How then in the case of things dissimilar by nature, law, and experience, could the same things be revealed by the same images? This is impossible; it could not be. How could troubled and limpid waters,²³² stagnant and moving water be alike affected by the same shape? And if the difference of the troubled water at one place and another be a difference of colour, and the movements show themselves in various configurations, in this way alone would it be one in character, namely in always diverging from the clear-cut image. Now if such a difference exists, if accordingly some Phemonoe,²³³ or somebody’s Melampus,²³⁴ or any individual you please, pretends to make some general definition and arrangement concerning such phenomena, let us ascertain from such men whether it is natural that the plane mirror, the distorted, and that made from dissimilar materials, should reflect a like image of the thing shown. Such men as these have not even done, I think, any philosophical thinking at all on the nature of the pneuma, although that which is proper to it, in whatsoever state it may be, they consider to be a rule and standard for everything. Now for my own part, I do not deny that there is an element of likeness in dissimilar things; but I affirm that the obscure becomes all the more obscure by dispersion. The image of the thing which leaped out prematurely was, I presume, even in the beginning difficult to find out. It is even more difficult in an individual character to capture that which is like a general image.

### Chapter 12

For this reason we must dismiss the idea that all men are under the same laws; rather must each man hold himself as material for the art. Let him inscribe on his memory the affairs in which he has been involved, and the nature of the visions which have preceded them.
Mastery in the art is acquired without difficulty where necessity is involved in the practice. The need reminds one of the practice, and especially on every occasion that it is well off for material. For what could be more abundant than dreams, and what more fascinating? These induce even fools to pay heed to them. It would therefore be shameful for those who have lived ten years beyond adolescence to stand in need of any other diviner, shameful that they should not have accumulated an abundant store of technical principles. It would be a wise proceeding even to publish our waking and sleeping visions and their attendant circumstances; the wise thing to do, I say, unless the culture of the city is like to be too rustic for so novel an enterprise. We shall therefore see fit to add to what are called 'day books' what we term 'night books', so as to have records to remind us of the character of each of the two lives concerned; for our argument already laid it down that a certain life exists in imagination, at one moment better, at another worse than the intermediate, according to the relation of the pneuma to health and disease. If in this way, therefore, we make profitable the observation by which the art is developed, and if nothing slips our memory, in other respects also the result will be a refined pastime; it will be paying oneself the compliment of a history of one's waking and sleeping moments.
As to those who occupy themselves with public speaking, I do not know any other foundation to replace this as a comprehensive basis for exercise in the power of speech; for if the sophist of Lemnos²³⁵ says that the day books are good teachers of effective oratory on every subject, for that they do not overlook matters of lesser importance, but compel one to go through the trivial and the serious alike, is it not worth while to value night books as a subject for oratory?
Any one can see how great the work is, on attempting to fit language to visions, visions in which those things which are united in nature are separated, and things separated in nature are united, and he is obliged to show in speech what has not been revealed. It is no mean achievement to pass on to another something of a strange nature that has stirred in one's own soul, for whenever by this phantasy (of dreaming) things which are expelled from the order of being, and things which never in any possible way existed, are brought instead into being—nay, even things which have not a nature capable of existence, what contrivance is there for presenting a nameless nature to things which are per se inconceivable?²³⁶ Again, it (the phantasy) neither makes these forms appear numerous and all present at the same moment, nor yet does it present them after an interval, but exactly as the dream itself might have them and pass them on to us; for we believe whatever it wills us to believe. To survive at all and without cutting a sorry figure amidst all this, would be proof of a masterly rhetoric. It conducts itself wantonly even against our understanding itself, becoming the cause of something more than thought. For we are not indeed insensible to the visions; rather are our approbations and partialities strong, and not least our detestations. And the many trickeries that are bound up with this, attack us in our sleep. Pleasure is at that moment most of all a thing full of charm, such as to impart to our souls loves or hatreds even in the waking state. If any one were to utter no lifeless words, but rather to accomplish that for the sake of which the discourse was seriously undertaken, he would need stirring language to put his auditor into the same condition and amidst the same thoughts as himself.
Now in dreams one conquers, walks, or flies²³⁷ simultaneously, and the imagination has room for it all; but how shall mere speech find room for it? So a man sleeps and dreams; he sees a dream, and arises from it still sleeping, as he thinks, and shakes off his dream while still recumbent. He philosophizes a little on the vision that has appeared to him, according to his knowledge; and this is a dream, but the other is a double dream. Accordingly he believes it not, and thinks that now he is awake and that what appears to him is really alive. Forthwith a fierce struggle ensues,²³⁸ and a man dreams that an attack is made on himself, then that he has left all behind and is waking up, again that he has made trial of himself and has discovered the deception. In some such way must the sons of Aloeus be suffering punishment for piling up the mountains of Thessaly against the gods.²³⁹ But there is no law of Adrastea²⁴⁰ in the way of the sleeper, to forbid him from rising from earth more happily than Icarus, from soaring above the eagles, or reaching a point above the loftiest spheres themselves. So one looks steadily upon the earth from afar, and discovers a land not visible even to the moon. It is also in his power to hold converse with the stars and to meet the unseen gods of the universe. That which is difficult to describe then takes place easily, namely that the gods are visibly manifest, nor do the gods feel even a particle of jealousy.²⁴¹ The dreamer has not even descended to the earth after a short interval; he is already there. Nothing is so characteristic of dreams as to steal space and to create without time. Then the sleeper converses with sheep and fancies their bleating to be speech, and he understands their talk. So new and so extensive a wealth of subjects is there for one who has the courage to let loose his language upon them.

### Chapter 13

I even think that myths take their authority from dreams, as those in which peacock, fox, and sea hold converse. But these are small things compared with the independence of dreams. And although myths are a very small part of dreams, nevertheless they were approved by the sophists as a preparation for the work of eloquence. And for these men to whom the myth is the beginning of their art, the dream ought to be its appropriate end. And there is this in addition, that one has not worked the tongue in vain, as in the case of myths, but that he has become wiser in judgement. Let every man, then, with leisure and ease proceed to write a narrative of whatsoe'er happens in his waking and sleeping states. Let him spend some of his time on this. Of the time so spent the greatest help will be found in his knowledge of letters. Let him put together the art of divination which we have extolled, than which nothing could be of more varied service to him. Above all we must not discard even the style, which follows in the wake of subject-matter, for to the philosopher this would be mere child's-play, in which the tension of the string would be relaxed, even as the Scythians deal with their bows. And let us recommend it to the orator as the summit of his eloquence. Of a truth they do not seem to me to employ their powers opportunely upon Miltiades and Cimon,²⁴² and also on certain nameless persons; again, on rich and poor opposed to one another in politics, on which matters I have seen even old men disputing with their colleagues in the lecture-room. True, the two sat there with all the high seriousness of philosophy, and each tugged at his beard, that as far as one could guess weighed a talent. All this dignity did not prevent them from indulging in abuse and anger, or from tossing their hands about wildly, the while they delivered interminable speeches on behalf of men, their intimate friends, as I supposed at the time, but who, as the teachers of new branches were not slow to inform me, really neither existed, nor had ever been born; not to speak of their being intimate friends, they had not even any existence in nature. What state could anywhere exist of such a sort as to accord to a chief the privilege of killing a political enemy, and if at ninety years of age one is engaged in fighting a phantom, to what season does one postpone truth of speech? In fact these men do not seem to me to understand even the word ‘practice’, because it professes to work with another end in view, but consider the training to be an end in itself, and they are delighted with the road, as if it were the goal to which they were proceeding, for they have made the training a contest. It is just as if any one who had sparred in the palaestra should demand that (his practice) be heralded abroad as the pancration at Olympia.
So complete a drought of thought and such a deluge of words have possessed these men that some of them who are able to speak, have nothing worth saying; they must needs take delight in themselves, like Archilochus and Alcaeus, each of whom spent his eloquence on his own private life. Yet the course of time preserves the memory both of their sorrows and their joys, for they have not produced words hanging in the void on artificial themes, like this young and wise generation. Nor have they accorded their own proper virtue to others, as did Homer and Stesichorus, who made the heroic race more glorious by their poems (and we have profited by their zeal for virtue), but have been so completely neglected in themselves that we are unable to say anything about them except that they were great poets. Whosoever therefore aspires to be spoken of by man in the future, and is conscious of the power to create immortal works on the tablets, let him courageously follow our lawless style of composition. Then let him commend himself to time: it is a noble guardian whenever anything divine is entrusted to it.

## Constitutio

INASMUCH as I have not chosen a philosophy that stands aloof from public life, and inasmuch as the religion that most cherishes humanity urges us to acquire a character devoted to the common weal, I have given ear to your summons, and I am glad to know the reasons which have brought the two cities so speedily into agreement. For I think it will be profitable to them, both now and in the future, that they are at once grateful and show their gratitude towards those who initiated kind actions. I welcomed therefore the united expressions of the people and at the same time I extolled all individual speakers with praise. But I too must needs be of the company of eulogists, and this also becomes me more than all others. I even consider that I myself owe thanks to those who have conferred any benefit, on behalf of every one, whether an individual or a city. For how can the man whose duty it is to pray for the common good, fail in gratitude to him who has added to it by his military service and the rest of his administration? How can I fail to treat with all honour the man who has throughout laboured with the sweat of his brow, that I may obtain the object of my prayers, that the accursed barbarians should perish evilly, in evil wise? It was I indeed that prayed to God, but it was the hands of Anysius that carried out God’s will.²⁴³ Of the cavalry who attacked us the other day, over a thousand in number, not the fifth part survives, say those who have suffered. They themselves yet live and have counted the fallen. These results, too, have been attained with no great army to lead the way; but the men who fought along with them numbered forty. I will say nothing derogatory to the cavalry and infantry we are supporting, but he, Anysius, thinks that we ought to use the Unnigardae for everything. The rest of his forces, numerous as they were, he did not even lead out to be spectators of the prowess of others. These men can carry out the military plans of this chief only. He is their comrade in arms and captain; he is their fellow-soldier and general. With them as an armed guard he runs a course through the country. He appears quickly everywhere, and he conquers wherever he appears. If there were more of these troops in addition to the two hundred that we have, I boldly declare that with the help of God this young leader would transfer the war to the enemy’s country. We shall have to ask for two hundred Unnigardae, with Anysius as general, if we are to bring back our kinsmen from the land of the barbarians.
Would that I might live to see a division of spoils taken from their bodies, and the erstwhile master of barbarian captives doing his turn as a slave! It was easy enough to pray for this a day or two ago, but now we may even hope for it. Trustworthy facts before our eyes have become pledges of our expectations. To achieve this, therefore, Anysius must take the field at the head of two hundred Unnigardae. This man has both the nature and the training which fit him to handle the Unnigardae. He has the faculty of equipping them completely and of keeping them in hand. The Unnigardae with Anysius are the hands of Rome.²⁴⁴ The forty we have with us I could praise for their strength quite apart from him, but I would not answer for their judgement. Let an ambassadorial report be sent concerning him, requesting troops and an extension of time for this noble fellow. And what a man, too, in other respects! Was it not he who brought to an end the war we had in time of peace, one almost more severe than the barbarian war, proceeding as it did from the indiscipline of the soldiers and the cupidity of the officers? To him alone of the many generals is it due that a civilian who has been wronged can now raise his voice louder than a soldier’s. Who can be described as incorruptible? Is it not he who makes small case even of lawful gains of his own? Who could be more religious than he who makes a beginning with God in every word and deed? In return for all these gifts we may all of us here present pray that a long and comfortable old age may be continued to him, and that his virtue may increase as the years go by.

## Catastasis

I FOR one do not know what I ought to say²⁴⁵ about the misfortunes that are happening before our very eyes, for they who must needs lament have no time for words, nor could words be commensurate with the events. Nay, even the power of weeping has failed some men, so terrified are they by the magnitude of the evils befalling them. But since God hath regard to those that lament, and since they who wield the sceptre of the Romans ought, themselves also, to know this, do you write to whomsoever you may of those empowered to bring a statement before the council of the emperor. Let some one announce to this body, in brief, that until the other day Pentapolis was still a province valuable to an emperor. If it is outdistanced in power by other states, none the less it is more loyal than those greater in power. This is known to such as have entered into public life with a mind turned upon administration; and among these, as I hear and am persuaded, the great Anthemius²⁴⁶ holds the first place. He has seen in how many moments of crisis we have given ready support to our emperor, and of these how many were moments of tyranny. Until the other day the state of Pentapolis belonged to the Romans, who have now, to the nation's cost, passed her over in enumerating their provinces. Pentapolis has now quite clearly vanished; she has reached a state of extremity. Prolonging her agony to the seventh year,²⁴⁷ as some animal tenacious of life, she was drawing in and gathering together what breath remained to her.
The propitious memory of Anysius has made her time of life a year longer; he it was who used the lances of all men and the hands of the Unnigardae at the critical moment. There came, in consequence, a certain postponement of disaster. For they (the barbarians) were not poured over the country in a compact mass.²⁴⁸
They changed their formation to that of marauding bands. They kept retreating and advancing. But after changing their minds when already three times drawn up for battle, the plains are captured by their horse, while our own troops are shut up within walled towns, scattered apart, some here, some there;—the mistake this of Cerialis' time—and are useless to each other because they are not concentrated. The position of the enemy is therefore brilliant. They who last year were on the alert and always ready to retreat, are now besiegers, are now tearing down the walls of villages, are now investing cities with a large force at their disposal. What indeed has not turned out to their advantage! The Ausurians have put on the breastplates of the Thracian cavalry, not of necessity, but to mock at the uniform. Besides these they employed the shields of the Marcomani.²⁴⁹ The heavy-armed Roman force has degenerated into light-infantry. They find their safety in the compassion of their enemies. I weep for these men, I do not reproach them with the calamity.
What could the Unnigardae have done against a force so vastly superior, and at moments when a small detachment of them encounters its serried masses? They are preserved on the one hand by the grace of God, by their strength and by their training in arms; on the other hand by generalship: for what great harm could they have inflicted on an enemy, if dispatched against them by unwilling leaders? As often as, like young hounds, they got out of hand, these leaders would take them by the throat, and call them in, even before they had sated themselves with their charge and their wild-beast slaughter. And moreover the Unnigardae were in need of a rear-guard and of an army drawn up in order of battle. We had need, I think, of a phalanx, as an efficient sword, the more vigorous part to thrust out with and the stouter to give the second blow. In this way the stroke becomes more disruptive. In any case, the number of these troops is a small one wherewith to finish the war, a war which could not be fought to a finish in such a country as ours. But unless some one can transport Unnigardae into the enemy’s country, we shall need a force of four hundred to protect us against them. Nay, already had we need of such a force and commander before we were so completely routed and before the resources of the enemy had increased to such an extent.
For this final struggle even women joined in the campaign. I have seen, yes I have often seen a woman carrying a sword and suckling infants at the same time. Who does not desire the war that is free from danger? I am full of shame at my fears for myself, for the times and for the Empire. O for the spirit of the Romans of old! Winners of all their battles everywhere, they who united the continents by their victories, are now in danger of losing through a wretched nomadic tribe the Libyan cities, as well as the Greek, and Egyptian Alexandria also! The former loss is greater from the point of view of wealth, the latter is not less so from that of renown, if any one knows the meaning of shame and sets any store on decency. Alas for the audacity with which they have taken the land as if in a drag-net! No mountain is impassable for them nor is any fort secure. They have traversed and explored every country, and they have reduced young and old to slavery. I have long been listening to Greek historians:
‘THE ENEMY LEFT THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN BEHIND AS A TOKEN OF THE DEVASTATION THEY HAD WREAKED IN THE WAR.’
Quite otherwise have matters turned out for Pentapolis. For what possession is fairer to the Ausurian than wife and child, that the former may bear him sons, and that the latter, when of age, may serve in the army? For the children become fond of those who have filled the place of parents in their upbringing. Alas for the ill-fated colony that we are sending out! Our youth is being carried off captive to augment the armies of our foe; a people will come with enmity against their native land. A young man will devastate the land which when still a stripling he cultivated with his father. Now he is on the march, now he is led away. Now the youth of Pentapolis is still in chains. Not one comes to the rescue or is able to do so. And yet they say that the general is full of zeal, but the Alexandrians who direct the campaign there, with evil destiny for Pentapolis, do not allow him to act.
After all, who would blame the guiltless, for whom the burden of years and chronic attacks of disease have invoked our mercy? It would have been easy, no doubt, if we had been fortunate in our generals, to convict of impiety an army insolent and at war with God. What sort of sacred or holy thing have they spared? Have they not in many a place in the plain of Barca destroyed newly-dug graves? Is it not by them that the churches of our district of Ampelus have everywhere been burnt and ruined? Did they not employ the sacred communion-tables for the distribution of meat, as though they were profane? The holy vessels, solemnly used for the public libation-ritual, they take away now for the demons of the enemy country.
Which of these things could one permit to reach pious ears? Any one who thinks the citadels which they have destroyed worth remembering, and the utensils, furniture, cattle, and sheep that have been hidden in the ravines, relics of the barbarian brigandage; such a man amidst so great disasters can scarcely escape the charge of frivolity. And yet they loaded five thousand camels with their booty, and retired with three times their number by the addition of captives, and their host was so much the greater. Pentapolis is dead, extinguished; its end is come, it has been assassinated, it has perished. It has passed entirely out of existence, both for us and for its emperor. For a place from which he will get no return, will be no possession for an emperor, and who shall collect fruit from the desert? As for me, I have no longer a native place to desert. That I am not at sea and seeking an island is, in my case, only from lack of a ship, for I distrust Egypt. Even there a camel can cross with an Ausurian hoplite on its back. I shall make an island my home, a poor instead of a rich man, an alien less honoured than a citizen of Cythera, for after many inquiries I have now ascertained that Cythera is opposite Pentapolis, and perhaps the south winds will carry me thither. With their citizens I will live a stranger, a wanderer, and if I attempt to say anything about my great ancestry, they will not give it credence there.
Alas for Cyrene, whose public tablets trace the succession from Heracles down even to me! for I should not be accounted a simpleton in my grief amongst men who know of the degradation of my noble ancestry. Alas for the Dorian tombs²⁵⁰ wherein I shall find no place! Unhappy Ptolemais, of which I was the last priest to be appointed! The horror of it is ever with me. I can speak no longer, tears overpower my voice. . . . I am full of the thought of what it will mean to abandon the sacred objects. The crew ought already to have put to sea, but when any one calls me to the ship I shall beg leave to delay a little longer. I shall go first to the shrine of God, I shall make the circuit of the altar. I shall drench the most precious pavement with my tears; I shall not retreat from the spot before I have said farewell to that portal and that throne. How many times shall I call upon God and turn to Him, how often shall I press my hands upon the railings! But necessity is a mighty thing and all-powerful. I long to give to my eyes a sleep uninterrupted by the sound of the trumpet. How much longer shall I stand upon the ramparts, how much longer shall I guard the intervals between the turrets? I am weary of picketing the night patrols, guarding others and guarded myself in turn, I who used to hold many a vigil, waiting for the omens from the stars, I am now worn out watching for the onsets of the enemy. We sleep for a span measured by the water clock, and the alarm bell often breaks in upon the portion allotted me for slumber. And if I close my eyes for a moment, oh, what sombre dreams!
And to what sort of visions do our cares by day hurry us! Cessation from troubles is the beginning of troubles. We are in flight, we are taken prisoners, we are wounded, we are bound in chains, we are sold into slavery. How often have I arisen in joy that I had escaped a master! How often have I arisen gasping for breath and dripping with sweat, abandoning in the same moment sleep and the race I was running with all my might, in flight from an enemy hoplite! For us alone are the words of Hesiod vain, to wit, that ‘Hope remains within the jar’. We are all without courage and bereft of hope. The ‘unliveable’ life of the proverb, my men, is no other than the one which we are leading. What is the delay? What are we coming to?
Pentapolis has incurred the hatred of God. We are surrendered to chastisement. There was the locust than which no evil is more complete, there was the conflagration which consumed the crops of three states even before the enemy came. What is the limit to our evils? If the islands afford a respite from these, I shall sail as soon as the sea abandons its evil passions. But I fear that disaster may overtake me first. For the day appointed for the attack is near at hand, with which ’tis said the imperial courier, forerunner of the enemy force, menaced the city. That moment most of all will warn the priests that they must speedily rally to the precincts of God’s temple, if the danger reaches the very walls of the city. I shall remain in my place at the church. I shall place before me the vessels of holy water. I shall cling fast to the sacred pillars which hold up the inviolate communion table from the ground. There will I sit while I live, and lie when I am dead. I am a minister of God, and perchance I must complete my service by offering up my life. God will not in any case overlook the altar, bloodless, though stained by the blood of a priest
‘Supreme be thou in words, aye, and in deeds,
O Thalelaeus, whom all learning well befits.’

## Homilies


### Homily I

I SHALL not make this festal assembly a silent one, nor again one of many speeches; for, although it is God whom I honour in my speech, by bringing it to a speedy close I shall do what is pleasing to the assembled company. But in order that you may be a participant worthy of God in the festival, do not set your hearts on the pleasures of the table, passing from fasting to drunkenness. Offer to God a garlanded goblet of sober mixture. Our God is wisdom and reason. A beaker that confuses reflection, that disturbs the reasoning faculty, is quite alien to true reason. There is a recreation that is befitting to God, and there is one that befits evil spirits. ‘Exult ye in the Lord in fear’.²⁵¹ When you feast, he says, be you mindful of God, for it is then that most men slip into sin. When the body is well nourished and grows fleshy, it deflects the soul’s judgement. ‘In the hand of the Lord there is a cup²⁵² of unmixed wine filled with a mixture, and he pours from this vessel into that, but the dregs of it have not been drained.’²⁵³ Drink thou of that cup, and thou hast become worthy of the banquet of the bridegroom. That cup is beneficial, full of wine, and once sought, is worthy to raise us to Mind. And indeed the passage is quite clear, though many things fall a little short of comprehension. A drinking cup is full of a mixture in unmixed wine. ‘And he poured from this vessel into that’.²⁵⁴ If it was of unmixed wine, how is it full of a mixture, and if it is one, how did he pour it from this to that? The words seem to be altogether nonsensical; not so, however, if really understood. God has no interest in divinely inspired diction. The divine spirit disdains literary pettiness. Dost thou desire to behold the harmony of this discord? Concerning what sort of cup is he speaking? It is the word which we have from God, freely offered by God to men in the Old Testa-ment and the New, for by this drink is our soul watered. Inasmuch as it is a word, each of the two is unmixed, for even although a double word it is mixed together, for what has been compounded out of the two is one, a perfection of Gnosis. The Old Testament contained the promise, and the New revealed the apostle, and the phrase ‘he poured from this into that’ shadows forth the succession of the teachers of the law, that of Moses and that of the Lord, and the cup is one, for one Spirit breathed both on the prophet and the apostle, and like good painters, He sketched out, in days of old, and thereafter exactly portrayed, the parts of the Gnosis, ‘but the dregs of it have not been drained’.

### Homily II

It is a holy night that brings light to those that are accursed, a light greater than that wherewith any sun has ever illumined the day. Lo, it is not holy that even the fairest thing upon the earth should be compared to the Creator; but that light which illumines souls and lit up the perceptible sun is no piece of creation. It exists through the harmony of its present blessedness, that will bless us in the future. If you persevere in this way of thinking you will maintain the soul in a more enviable state for the present, if not for your whole life. At this moment each one of you goes about the city as an announcing messenger. Now believe ye that the words of scripture refer to you, that being on earth ye have a citizenship in heaven.²⁵⁵ Beware of missing your deserts, for hard to wash out is the stain that comes after cleansing.
• • • • • • •
The people of Leontopolis adopted a resolution whose mildness was out of keeping with their own nature. They let each other alone, and indicted their neighbours for illegal action. Until the other day brothers were invoking the arm of the law against brothers, son against father, and father against the family. Perhaps the thing now taken in hand is not really the act of men finally resorting to the ancestral course of mutual extermination; but while every private individual has his hand against his neighbour, the city is arrayed collectively against those who are unlucky enough to live near to it. It would be unendurable to them if the pattern of their constitution were not publicly that of an informer, and if it did not slip into the position of a false accuser. That we are in no way guilty, the very accusations furnish clear proofs, when we have the good fortune to get the ear of a judge. But we have learnt only to till the soil, not to address law courts. Why then do these men think fit to overstep the limits that have been assigned to them from time immemorial, and come against us, who are more aflame than they. Why do they always sell the surplus to us, who are more parched than they and wronged by our situation? Since there has been no profit this year, they insist that our misfortunes should take its place. This is the object of the writs recently issued, and their decrees have no other aim than this. And they also make a second admission, which it is only just that we should state first of all, and we alone; for it explains their most unjust attempt. For having themselves long ago laid a foundation for their false accusations, to support their shameless claims to make use of the water that does not belong to them, they have now approached this most august court.

## Hymns


### Hymn I

SOUND forth, clear-tongued lyre, after the Teian cadence, after the Lesbian movement; sing to me in more time-honoured strains a Dorian ode, not one for dainty love-laughing girls or for the adolescence of flowering youths that compelleth desire; for it is a sacred travail of divine wisdom and one unsullied that prompts me to strike the strings of my lyre to a divine refrain, and bids me flee from the honied infatuation of earthly loves. What is force and what beauty, what is gold or renown, and what are royal honours as compared with meditations upon God? Let one man be apt in driving horses, another in bending the bow; let another guard his treasure heaps, his golden joy. Another’s glory is the hair that sweeps his neck. Let him be lauded on high for the brightness of his countenance by youths and maidens in their songs; but may it be my lot to lead a life not noised abroad, a life without display in what concerns other men, but that knows in itself of what pertains to God. May wisdom be ever with me, wisdom the good guide of youth and of age, wisdom the just mistress of wealth, she who smiling shall easily bear poverty, impregnable to the bitter cares of life. May only so much be mine as shall suffice to make me independent of my neighbour’s hut, sufficient that want may not bend me down to dark forebodings.
Listen now to the song of the cicada²⁵⁶ as she drinks the morning dew. See how my lyre-strings cry out unbidden notes, how some prophetic voice flutters about and around me. What melody shall this divine parturition bear unto me? God, the Beginning created of Himself, Guardian and Father of existing things, born without birth,²⁵⁷ firmly enthroned above the pinnacles of heaven, proud in glory unwaning, God sits steadfast, of unities the pure unity, and the first monad of monads. He hath joined the elements of exalted beings, bringing them to existence in supernatural acts of birth.
From out these the monad itself, rushing on through a first-engendered form, diffused in unspeakable ways, holds the power of three summits. But the fountain head which dominates, is crowned with the beauty of children leaping from out the centre,²⁵⁸ and again rushing towards the centre therein.
Pause, audacious lyre, I entreat; pause, reveal not the mysteries²⁵⁹ to the people at large, mysteries which are celebrated without initiations; go thou and tell of the things here below; silence covereth those above. And now mind is busy with mind’s created universe, for out of this has the good beginning of man’s spirit been divided beyond division. Mind that waneth not, though descending to matter, is the seed of progenitors that reign in right divine, a seed however feeble. But of these, this one whole universal mind, this whole diffused into the whole, turns the vast hollow of the heavens, and keeping guard upon this very whole is ever present, parted into forms diverse. The one is in the convoying of the stars, another turns to the dances of angels, yet another has found an earthly form by a bond descending, and is severed from its parentage. Dark oblivion hath it drunk, and wondereth, in its blind tormenting cares, at the joyless earth. Albeit a God looking on mortal things is within it, there is still a light in the veiled pupils of its eyes, there is some courage even in those who have fallen here below, that summoneth them above, what time that, fleeing from out the waves of mortal life, they enter free from care on the sacred paths that lead to the palace of their Parent. Happy he who fleeing the voracious cry of matter, and rising from earth, urgeth with light bound his footsteps to God. Happy he who after his allotted destiny, after troubles, after bitter earthly cares, enters on the pathways of mind and beholdeth the deep profound that shineth with divine light. It is a labour to take flight with the whole wings of those desires that lift upwards to the universal Heart. Do thou only confirm thy flight by such flights as transport to the ideal world, and the Father will appear nigh unto thee and will hold out His Hands to thee. For some shaft of light shall leap forth²⁶⁰ to illumine thy paths, and will unfold to thee the field of mind, the beginning of beauty. Arise, my soul, drink from the fountain that runs with gold. In worship of the Creator ascend thou, and delay not; leave to the earth the things of the earth, and in unison with the Father thou mayest perchance move in harmony with God, thyself divine.

### Hymn II

AGAIN light shines forth, again dawn, again day, after the darkness that roams by night. Again make supplication to God, O my heart, in songs of the morning, He who has given light to the dawn, who has given stars to the night, the dancing company that encircles the universe. Ether has enveloped the expanse of billowy matter, mounting on the glory of flame, that the queenly moon may divide her last phase. Above the eighth rotation of star-borne whorls a stream bereft of stars drives onwards, hidden within its bosom, layers (of matter) in contrary currents, and circles about the great Mind, which bends with grey wings down to the confines of the lordly universe. A blessed silence²⁶¹ covers all beyond, an indivisible division alike of the perceptive and the perceived. One is the fountain-head, one the root. Lo, a thrice resplendent shape has blazed forth, for where the profundity of the Father is, there also is the august Son, offspring as it were of the Heart. Wisdom, the Creator of the universe and the unified flame of the Holy Spirit, has shone forth. One fountain-head, one root, did raise up a rich plenty of good things, a progeny that passeth all being, glowing with desire of generation, and the wondrous flames of the blessed in existence burn brightly. Whence there has now entered into the universe a choir of immortal rulers, who sing in songs of the mind the renown of the Creator, and the first conceived form. Near to their benign progenitors an ageless army of angels, now looking upon Mind, plucks therefrom the principle of beauty, and again, looking towards the spheres, directeth the deep places of the universe, drawing the world that is above even unto the extreme confines of matter, where nature subsiding, giveth birth to a horde of demons turbulent and full of guile. Thence a hero; thence now a spirit sown as seed through the lands, has filled earthly destinies with life, with cunningly devised forms.
All things hang upon Thy Will, and Thou art the root of things present, past, future and within. Thou art Father, art Mother, Thou Male, Thou Female,²⁶² Thou Voice, Thou Silence, of nature the fruitful Nature. All hail to Thee, O King, wherever it be lawful to cry this aloud, Age of ages, Root of the universe. All hail to Thee, Centre of existing things, Monad of numbers immortal, of kings that existed not before thee. Mayest Thou rejoice greatly, mayest Thou rejoice greatly, for it is with God that joy is found. Lend a propitious ear to the hymns of my choirs. Open the light of wisdom, pour down the glorious plenty of a calm life, pour down its shining grace. Drive poverty from our midst, and the earthly calamity of wealth. Drive illness from my limbs, the disorderly urge of the passions from my life, and soul-gnawing cares, to the end that the destiny of earth may not weigh down the wings of my soul, but lifting a free pinion, may I dance in the ineffable rites of Thy offspring.

### Hymn III

AWAKE my soul; give thyself unto sacred songs, lay to rest the stings that are born of matter. Arm thou the mighty impulses of mind. For the King of gods we are weaving a crown,²⁶³ a bloodless offering, libations of poesy. Thee I invoke in song, Thee in the ocean, Thee over islands, on mainlands, in cities and on craggy mountains, Thee when'er I rest the twain feet of my limbs on the far-famed plains, Thee blessed Creator of a universe. Night brings me, Thy minstrel, to Thee, O King, and I lift up to Thee hymns of the day-time, of the morning, of the evening. Thy witnesses are the beams of glittering stars, the courses of the moon, and that mighty witness, the sun,²⁶⁴ who presideth over the pure stars, the holy guardian of pious spirits. Lifting up my wing that turns away from far-reaching matter, I have advanced and come to Thy dwelling-place, Thy bosom, rejoicing. And now even unto the sacred enclosure of the Holy Sacrifice am I come, a suppliant. Now a suppliant I come to the crests of famous mountains, and the great ravine of desert Libya, the southern border, which no godless blast of wind sullieth, nor is the foot-print graven thereon of men whose cares are of the town. There, purified of passions, released from desires, ceasing to labour, ceasing to grieve, to rage or to covet, may my soul casting off all these things that cause death, render the hymn that is due unto Thee with a pure tongue and a sanctified mind.
Let earth and upper air be at peace. Let the sea be still, let air be still. Be still, ye gusts of swift winds; be stilled, onslaughts of curling waves, mouths of rivers, outwellings of springs. Let silence hold the caverns of the universe, while these sacred hymns are offered up.
Let the sinuous trend of serpents sink beneath the earth, and that winged serpent also, the demon of matter, he who clouds the soul, rejoicing in images and urging on his brood of whelps against my supplications. Do Thou, O Father, O Blessed One, keep away from my soul these soul-devouring hounds,²⁶⁵ from my prayer, from my life, from my works. May our heart’s libation be a care to Thy august messengers, wise bearers to Thee of holy hymns. Now am I borne back to the starting-point of sacred poesy. Already does the oracle echo in my mind. Be full of goodness unto me, Blessed One, be full of goodness unto me, Father, if beyond what is ordered, if beyond what is destined, I touch upon that which is Thine. Whose eye is so wise, whose so availing, that it blinketh not when checked by Thy shafts of light? Not even for gods is it lawful to gaze steadfastly on Thy flaming torches, but Mind, falling from Thy pinnacle, is fain to caress whatsoe’er is near to Thee, seeking thus to attain the unattainable, to look upon the light that glitters in Thy untiring profundity; and so relinquishing unapproachable ways, it fixes the strength of its eye upon the image that first showed itself. Thence plucking flowers of light to be hymns unto Thee, may it stay the blast of fitful winds and give thee back Thine own. For what is there, O King, that is not Thine, Father of all fathers, Father of Thyself, Fatherless Ancestor, Son of Thyself,²⁶⁶ One prior to the One, Seed of existing things, Centre of all things, Mind that wert without substance at the beginning? Root of the world, Thou the Light, everywhere visible, of primal things, wise Certainty and wisdom’s Fountain, Mind hidden by Thine own bright rays, Eye of Thyself, Master of the thunderbolt, Father of the ages, Immortal, higher than the gods, higher than intellects which thou turnest to one side and the other. Thou the mind’s source of intelligence, the Creator of divine beings, Shaper of the spirit, Nourisher of the soul, Fountain of fountains, Origin of origins, Root of roots. Thou art the Unity of unities, Number of numbers, at once Monad and Number, Mind and the Intelligent, both the knowable and what precedes it, One and All, and the One of All, and One before All, that is the seed of all things, the root and the branch, and nature in whatsoe’er is endowed with intelligence, the female element and the male.
The mind initiated in the mysteries says such and such things, moving in harmony the while around Thy awful abysm. Thou art the Generator, Thou the Generated; Thou the Light that shineth, Thou the Illumined; Thou what is revealed, Thou that which is hidden in Thine own beams; the One and All, the One Self-contained and dispersed through all things. For Thou wert poured out, ineffable Parent, that Thou mightst beget a child, to wit, far-famed Wisdom, Creator of the world, but so outwelling, Thou dost remain once delivered in the divisions undivided. I sing to Thee, Unity, I sing to Thee, Trinity; Thou art One being Three, art Three being One; and the intelligible segment holds what has been divided still indivisible. Thou wert poured out on the Son in Thy wisdom's Will, and that Will Itself was then born, a nature unutterable, the being pre-existent to matter. It is against divine law to say that a second one has come from Thee, it is against it to say that a third has come from the first. O holy Birth, O unspeakable generation; Thou art the boundary of natural forces, of the generating and the generated. I venerate the hidden ordering of intellectual things, but there is some medial element that may not be distributed. Ineffable Offspring of a Father Ineffable, the birth-pang was through Thee, and through the birth-pang Thou didst Thyself appear, showing Thyself together with the Father by the Father's Will. By the Will of the Father Thou, His Will, art ever of Thyself beside the Father. Even deep-eddying Time knoweth not the inevitable procreations, nor did long ages comprehend the tedious birth. With the Father He was revealed, He that had been for all eternity One that was to come into being. Who has controlled rashness in regard to unspeakable things? Godless are the audacities of blind mortals with cunningly devised language, but Thou art Giver of light, the light of intellect, and dost bear aloft the minds of holy men away from crooked deceit, that they sink not in the dark shades of matter.
Thee, Father of the Universe, Father of the ages, Creator of the gods, it is an act of purity to praise. They who have knowledge praise Thee, O King, and they who govern the world, they of the glittering eyes, the starry intelligences²⁶⁷ sing Thy praises, Blessed One, as the glorious mass moves rhythmically around them. The whole race of the blessed sings to Thee, they who about the world, who in the world, within and without the zones guide in their wisdom the fates of the cosmos, protectors they, side by side with the famous pilots whom the chain angelic keeps pouring forth. And the illustrious race of heroes that goeth through the works of men, works of mortal mould, by hidden pathways, (sing praises). And the soul at once steadfast and bent down to the dark-gleaming corners of the earth (sings praises). Thee blessed Nature hymns aloud, and the offspring of Nature which Thou, Blessed One, urgest on with favouring breezes, drawn from Thy channels and rolling onwards; for Thou, Leader of immaculate universes, art the Nature of natures: Thou cherishest Nature, birth of mortals, the image of the eternal monad, that even the lowest portion of the universe may be allotted an alternative lot. For it was not the divine law that the lees of the universe should contend with the summits. That which has been wholly ordained to the assemblage of real existences shall never perish, but all find their happiness, one from another and each through each. Of perishable things an eternal circle, cherished by Thy breath, places choirs to Thee throughout all things: so doth maternal Nature in her proper colours, in her proper works, embellish them. And out of living things of varied voices she creates one harmony in likeness of sound. All things bring to Thee ageless praise,²⁶⁸ even the dawn and the night, the lightnings, the snows, the firmament, the ether, and the roots of the soil, water, air, all bodies, all spirits, seeds, fruits, the plants and the grasses, roots, herbs, beasts and birds, and shoals of the swimming finny creatures. Behold now also in Thy Libya, in Thy august priesthood, a soul feeble and exhausted, one given up to holy prayers to Thee, but whom a cloud of matter besets. But Thine Eye, O Father, pierces matter, and now my heart, made fruitful with hymns to Thee, has excited my mind with fiery impulses. Do Thou, O King, kindle the uplifting beams, and grant, Father, that, fleeing the body, (the soul) may ne'er again descend to an earthly doom. But as long as I remain in the chains of a life that has commerce with matter, may a gentle destiny, O Blessed One, nourish me. May it not blow adversely, consuming my life with grim cares of the mind, so that I may have no time for the things of God, nor be involved in such cares; but rather fleeing from these, by Thy gifts, may I weave for thee this garland from the sacred meadows. I bring to Thee this praise, Leader of unsullied worlds, and to Thy wise Son, whom Thou has sent forth from Thy sacred bosom together with wisdom itself. Springing forth from Thee, He remains within Thee, that He may explore all things with subtle breathings, that He may rule the profundities of hoary ages, and direct the feet of a rugged world, even unto the last depth of what belongeth to earthly destiny; his light shining in pious hearts, that He may release living mortals from their labours, from their cares, He the Accomplisher of good deeds, the Chaser away of distresses. And why should it be a thing to wonder at, that the Maker of the universe keeps evil destinies from His own works?
I come, O Ruler of the great universe, to acquit myself of a vow made to Thee, even from Thrace, where for three years I dwelt in a way near to the king's palace²⁶⁹ in that land. And labours I endured, griefs I endured meet for many tears, bearing on my shoulders my mother-city. The earth was watered with the sweat of my limbs that toiled in the contest day by day, and my couch was moistened with the dropping of tears²⁷⁰ from my eyelids weeping from night to night. And as many temples as were builded for Thy holy ceremonies, O King, to all these I repaired. There prostrate, a suppliant, I prayed, watering the ground with the dew of my eyelids, that I might not find my journey vain. I supplicated gods that labour,²⁷¹ even as many as hold the fruitful plain of Thrace, and those who on the other side rule the Chalcedonian pastures, whom Thou, O King, hast crowned with Thy annunciating beams, to be Thy sacred ministers. The blessed ones have indeed taken to them my supplications, they have engaged in many labours with me. My life was not at that time dear to me because that my father-land was so tormented; but Thou, O King, hast lifted it from out its sorrows. O Ruler of the universe, Thou, the Ageless, sustaindest the force of my limbs, when my soul was already failing and my members already breaking up. Thou didst breathe strength into my wretched soul; a sweet ending to my labours didst Thou find me, O King, and one according to my desire, granting to my works a repose from long labours.
Do Thou, O Blessed One, preserve all these gains for the Libyans for a long roll of time, for the sake of the memory of Thy great goodness, and for the soul that has suffered grievous things. Give moreover to Thy suppliant a life free from harm, deliver me from sufferings, deliver me from diseases, deliver me from cares that bring death; grant Thy servant a life of the intellect. Adjudge me not earthly showers of gold, O King, that may render me without leisure for the things divine, nor let grim poverty attack my house and draw down to earth the meditations of my heart, for both these weigh down the soul to the earth, and both bring forgetfulness of mind, whensoe'er, O Blessed One, Thou offerest not Thy help. O Father, Fountain of pure wisdom, kindle in my mind a flame of intellect out of Thy bosom, illumine our heart out of Thy strength with a gleam of wisdom. Give this as a symbol of the sacred way to Thee, even Thine own seal. Chase from my life and from my prayer the deadly demons of matter, preserve my body safe and sound from the approach of spiteful violence, and guard in safety my spirit unpolluted, O King. In sooth I carry on me already the darkling stain of Matter, and I am held fast by desires, by earthly chains. But Thou art my liberator, Thou my purifier. Release me from evils, from illness, from fetters. I carry in me Thy seed, the spark of high-born Mind, but a spark falling down to the depths of matter.
But Thou hast deposited soul in the cosmos, and through soul hast sown mind in the body, O King. Take pity on thine handmaiden, O Blessed One. I descended from Thee to be a servant of earth, and instead of living as a hireling, I became a bondslave. Matter fettered me with magic arts. For all that, there is still some small strength in the ball of the eye hidden within me, it has not yet extinguished all its might. But a great wave has broken over me²⁷² from above, blinding the soul that seeth God. Pity, O Father, Thy suppliant handmaiden, whom longing for devouring matter strangles, when oftimes she strives to ascend by the paths of mind to thee. But do Thou, O King, kindle the lights that lead upwards, do Thou light the gleam and the beacon by augmenting the scanty seed in the noblest part of my mind. Enthrone me, O Father, in the strength of the life-bringing life, where nature advanceth not her hand, whence nor earth, nor the fated spinning of Necessity yet makes me recoil.
May false generation leave Thy servant in flight! Let fire be between me, O Father, and the tumult of the earth. Grant, O Creator, grant unto Thy minister now to spread his wings, the wings of Mind. Now at last let the suppliant soul bear the seal of the Father, a terror to hostile demons, who dart aloft from deep lurking places of the earth to breathe godless impulses upon mortals; and let this be a sign to Thy pure ministers, who throughout the depths of the august universe are keybearers to the fiery ascents, that they should open wide to me the gates of light, and that while still creeping upon the vain earth, I may not be of its soil. And of the works written in fire give me, even here, fruit as a witness, sure utterances, and as many tokens as cherish the hope immortal in souls.
I repent me of this life of clay. Hence, eyesores of godless mortals, dominations of cities! Hence all-sweetened destinies of perdition, and grace that is no grace, wherewith the beguiled soul is held fast in bondage to earth, the soul which drank, in its great cowardice, oblivion of its own good, until it fell upon envy as its portion For debauched matter has twain parts, and whoso stretches out his hand to the table, to touch the sweet viands, will in sooth greatly lament his bitter lot, when the hostile elements drag him down with them. Verily this law of earthly necessity pours out a life to mortals from two sources, and the one is unmixed and is pure good, a god or things divine. I have been inebriated with the sweet cup, I have touched the lands of evil things, I have fallen into the snare, I have known the fate of Epimetheus.²⁷³
So hate I inconstant laws; and I hasten to my Father’s care-free meadow. Thither I spread my wings in flight from the twin gifts of matter.
Behold me, Thou who dost order the mind’s life. Behold Thy suppliant, a soul upon the earth, striving towards the ascents by mind, and do Thou kindle, O King, the lights that lead aloft, giving unto me light wings. Cut Thou the knot, loose Thou the grip of the twin desires by which artful Nature bends down souls to the earth. Grant to me to escape the destiny of the body²⁷⁴ and to spring swiftly even to Thy courts, to Thy bosom, whence floweth forth the fountain of the soul. A heavenly drop I am shed upon the earth. Do thou restore me to that fountain whence I was poured forth, a wanderer who comes and goes. Grant me to mingle with ancestral light. And grant that, cared for by Thee, the Father, I may with the kingly choir bear aloft in sanctity the songs of mind. Grant, O Father, that mingled with the light I sink not again into an earthly destiny, but as long as I remain in the chains of a material life, may a kindly fortune, O Blessed One, nurture me!

### Hymn IV

To Thee I sing, when the sacred day beginneth, to Thee while it waxeth, to Thee when it toucheth the meridian, to Thee when it declineth, and when cometh wondrous night; to Thee, Creator, Healer of souls, Healer of limbs, Giver of wisdom, Banisher of diseases, Giver to souls of a life free from trouble, a life which earthly care, mother of griefs, mother of sufferings, trampleth not under foot. May my life remain to me purified of these, that in song I may tell of the hidden root of all things, nor be turned away from God by delusions that lead astray!
Thee, Blessed One, I sing to, Lord of the universe, and let earth be silent. Let all that the universe possesses keep sacred silence, while hymns and prayers are addressed to Thee, for they are Thy works, O Father. Let the whistling of the winds be still, the rustling of trees, the song of birds; let the ether be at peace, let the air be at peace, listening to the strain, and let the gushing of waters be noiseless now throughout the earth. Let the demons now flee from my pure prayer, they that delighting in the realms of darkness and haunting the tombs, impede holy songs, but the good, the happy servants of the all-understanding Creator, as many as occupy the depths and heights of the universe, let those hear benignly the hymns that are of the Father, and benignly let them bear my prayers on high. Unit of units, Father of fathers, Beginning of beginnings, Fountain of fountains, Root of roots, the Good of good things, Star of stars, Universe of universes, Idea of ideas, profound Beauty, hidden Seed, Father of ages, Father of unspeakable worlds of Mind, whence a divine breath ever distilling, floating over masses of body, it now kindleth a second universe. Thee, Blessed One, I sing to with my voice, and I sing unto Thee alike with silence,²⁷⁵ for as many things as Thou hearest of the voice, Thou hearest also out of the silence of the mind. And I sing to the Offspring, the First-born, the First-appearing.
Most glorious Offspring of the ineffable Father, Thee, Blessed One, I hymn, together with the great Father, and the travail of the Father over Thee, that Counsel of generation, the medial Beginning, the Holy Spirit, Centre of the Creator, Centre again of the Son, Mother, Sister and Daughter to Thyself,²⁷⁶ delivered of the secret Root. For in order that the Father might be poured out upon the Son, that very outpouring found a shoot, and stood in the midst, God, descended from God, in a Son who was God, and in the renowned outpouring of an immortal Father, the Son found a shoot. Thou art Unity, Trinity withal, a Unity that dost endure, and a Trinity in very truth Thou art. And the intellectual division retains still undivided that which is partitioned, but the Son, though he hath leaped forth, remains with the Father and yet conducts, without, the Father’s business, bringing down to the worlds the beatitude of life, whence the Word Himself has it. This Word I hymn, in unison²⁷⁷ with the great Father. The Mind of the ineffable Father brings Thee to birth, and Thou, so conceived, art the Word of the Creator, first to leap forward from out the primal Root, and the Root of all things that came after Thy illustrious birth. An ineffable Unity, the Seed of all things, hath begotten Thee, the Seed of all things; for Thou art in all things, and through Thee the highest, the medial, and the lowest nature, enjoy the good gifts of the generative life from God the Father. For Thee an ageless sphere rolls its untroubled course. Under Thy direction the seven planets dance in harmony²⁷⁸ in the powerful revolutions of the great vault, and the many lights of the universe adorn the one dome of sky by thy Will, most renowned Offspring; for Thou, running round about the heavenly deep, holdest together unbroken the course of ages, and under thy sacred ordinances, Blessed One, in the cavities of the unsoundable ether, dwells the company of gleaming stars. Thou dost apportion their tasks in the heavens and the air, on the earth and in the world below, and Thou allottest unto them their life. Thou art the Master of Mind, and to the gods their Ordainer, as to mortals also, as many as have quaffed the showers of Mind’s destiny. Thou art the Giver of Soul to those whose life is dependent on the soul, and art tireless in nature. A blind offspring of soul hangs from Thy chain, and as many things as are deprived of all breath²⁷⁹ pluck from Thy bosom a bond of union, carried by Thy power from the ineffable Fatherly Bosom, the hidden unity, whence the stream of life flowing onward is carried by Thy power even unto earth, through trackless worlds of mind. Thence the visible cosmos, the form of the world of mind, receives it, a descending stream of blessings. This (visible cosmos) had a second sun, the progenitor with shining eyes of a later shining light, the guardian of that matter which comes into being and perishes, a Son who is the perceptible impression of Mind, the purveyor of what good things are born in the universe, born through thy will, most august Offspring, Father unknowable, Father ineffable, Unknowable to Mind, Unutterable in speech. Thou art the Mind of mind, the Soul of souls, the Nature of natures. Lo, I bend the knee before Thee, a servant, I cast myself upon the ground, a blind suppliant; but do Thou, the Giver of light, of the light of Mind, take pity, O Blessed One, on a suppliant soul; chase away diseases, chase away cares that gnaw the soul, and chase away the shameless hound of the nether world, the demon of earth, from my soul, from my prayer, from my life, from my works. Let that demon remain outside of my body, of my spirit, and of all that is mine. Let him flee, let him leave me, the demon of matter, the power of sufferings, who builds his fortress wall against the path that leadeth above, who violateth the aspirations that seek God; and give me a companion, O King, a partner, a sacred messenger of sacred power, a messenger of prayer illumined by the divine light, a friend, a dispenser of noble gifts, a guard of my soul, a guard of my life, a guard over prayers, a guard over deeds, and one to save the body purified of disease, to save the spirit purified of shame. And bring to my soul oblivion of its passions, that the soul’s winged flight may also enrich the earth-nourished life with hymns of Thee, to the end too that I may complete the life that comes with destiny after the chains that weigh us down to earth, a life purified of matter, even unto thy courts and unto thy Bosom whence outwelleth the fountain of the soul. And do Thou extend to me thy Hand; do Thou call, Blessed One, do Thou lift up from matter a suppliant soul.

### Hymn V

LET us sing to the Son of the Bride, the Bride not wedded for destined wedlock with man. The ineffable designs of the Father produced the birth of Christ. The sacred travail of a Bride revealed the form of Man, who came bringing a fountain of light to mortals; and this ineffable Offspring knows the Root of the ages. Thou Thyself art the Light from the Fountain-head, the ray that hast shone along with the Father, that, having broken through murky matter, dost shine in pious souls. 'Tis Thou Who art the Founder of the universe, the Fashioner of the spheres of famous stars, the Founder of the centres of the earth, and Thou art of Thyself the Saviour of men. For Thee the Titan drives his horses, the unquenchable source of morning, for Thee the horned moon dissipates the shades of night. For Thee also are fruits begotten, and herds do graze. Sending out from Thy ineffable source a life-giving splendour, Thou fillest with nourishment the interlaced roots of the universe. Out of Thy profundities have blossomed forth light and mind and soul. Take pity upon Thy daughter imprisoned in mortal limbs and the material limits of destiny. Preserve Thou the force of my limbs unscathed from the ravage of disease. Grant persuasiveness to my words and glory to my deeds, even such as may become the traditions of Cyrene and Sparta;²⁸⁰ and may my soul, untrodden by grief, draw to itself a gentle nourishing life, straining a pair of eyes upon Thy Light, so that escaping from matter I may hasten on the unchanging paths, a fugitive from the sufferings of earth, to mingle with the Fountain-head of the soul. Mayst Thou achieve such an unstained life to Thy minstrel, whensoe'er I send to Thee a song, and glorify Thy Root, the greatest glory of the Father, and the Spirit that shareth the throne midway between the Root and the Branch, and in singing the might of the Father, I lull to rest, with hymns to Thee, the glorious travail of my soul. Hail, Source of the Son, hail, Form of the Father, hail, Throne of the Son, hail, Seal of the Father, hail, Strength of the Son, hail, Beauty of the Father, hail, Breath undefiled, Centre of the Son and of the Father, mayst Thou send to me with the Father the mistress of divine gifts, to water the wings of my soul.

### Hymn VI

IN unison with the Holy Self-engendered Fountain that surpasseth the unspeakable unities, I will crown with wise garlands of hymns, God, the glorious Son of the eternal God, One Offspring that leapt forth from One Father, Whom the indescribable birth-pang of the Fatherly Will has made manifest, a Son out of His unknowable Bosom, the birth-pang which has displayed the fruits of the Father's begetting, and, in bringing them to light, has been revealed Mind, fixed in the medial. And so there remain in the Fountain, poured round about, the wisdom of the Father's Mind, the splendour of His beauty. To Thee, the Engendered, the Father has granted to engender. Thou art the hidden Seed of the Father; for the Father gave Thee to universes as their beginning, that forms might be brought down to material bodies from the entities of Mind. Thou guidest the wise vault of heaven, and ever leadest to their pasturage the flock of stars. Thou rulest, O King, the choir angelic and the company of the spirits, and Thou dost dance around perishable nature. Thou dividest the indivisible Spirit (pneuma) throughout the earth,²⁸¹ and returnest to its fountain-head what has already been bestowed, releasing mortals from the necessity of death. Be propitious to these garlands of songs to Thee, and grant the calm of life to a poet of hymns. Stay Thou the changing mouth of the channels, and dry up the destructive billows of matter. Keep disease far from my mind and limbs. Calm the fatal onslaught of passion, keep off from me the dooms of poverty and of riches alike, give renowned glory to my deeds, spread abroad my good fame amongst the peoples, adorn me with the fairest garland of gently-worded persuasion, that my mind may calmly gather leisure, and that I may not groan under earthly cares, but from Thy lofty channels through the birth-pangs of wisdom may I inundate my mind.

### Hymn VII

I WAS the first to find the measure established in new harmonies wherewith to smite the strings of the lyre in praise of Thee, Blessed One Immortal, illustrious Offspring of the Virgin, Jesus of Solyma. Be propitious, O King, and accept my strain of sacred melody. We shall sing of the imperishable God, the great Son of God, the world-creating Son of the Father, Who hath given birth to the ages, the nature mingled of all things, the boundless wisdom, a God to heavenly beings, a curse to those of the underworld. What time Thou wert poured forth on the earth, even out of a mortal womb, the inventive art of the Magus was helpless, and he wondered from the rising of the star, what manner of infant had been born, who might be this God concealed, God, or nether shade or king. Come, bring Thy gifts, offerings of myrrh, presents of gold, fine perfume of frankincense. God Thou art, receive Thou the incense; I bring gold to my King, His grave will befit the myrrh. Thou hast purified the land, the waves of the sea, and the paths of the demons, the swift outflow of air, and the recesses of the infernal regions. Thou wert sent, being God, to Hades, to the assistance of the dead. But be propitious, O King, and accept my strains of sacred songs.

### Hymn VIII

IN a somewhat Dorian cadence, I will lift up a clear song on my ivory-inlaid lyre, in Thy honour, Blessed Immortal, Offspring Illustrious of the Virgin; and do Thou, O Ruler, save my harmless life, granting me night and day alike inaccessible to griefs. Make Thy light to shine in my heart from out Thy source of Mind. Apportion to my youth the strength of sound limbs and to my actions renown; bring Thou a brilliant year even to the joy of my old age, augmenting precious wisdom with health. And mayst Thou preserve my brother to me, whom e'en now in his youth, O Immortal One, Thou didst bring back, when already passing on foot beyond the portals of this earth. Thou didst extinguish then my cares, my griefs, my tears, and the burning fire of my heart. Thou didst make even a dead body to live, O Father, for Thy suppliant's sake. Preserve Thou my sister, and pair of children. All the house of the sons of Hesychius²⁸² do Thou hide under Thy hand, and the partner of my marriage bed, O King, keep Thou from illness and harm, united to me, of one mind with me; preserve my wife in ignorance of clandestine associates. May she maintain a holy couch, unsullied, pious, inaccessible to unlawful desires. Take Thou my soul away from evils and from piteous anguish, freed from the fetters of earthly life; and grant me to raise hymns with the choirs of the holy, in honour of Thy Father, and to Thy supreme power, O Blessed One, I will chant my hymns again, I will sing a song to Thee again, and again, perchance, I shall attune this unstained lyre to Thee.

### Hymn IX

Most beloved august Offspring of the Virgin of Solyma, to Thee, Blessed One, I sing. Thou hast expelled the serpent of the earth, that fountain-head of treachery, from the great gardens of the Father, even the serpent who offered the abjured fruit, nourisher of troublous destiny, to the primal youth. To Thee I sing, Illustrious Father, that wearest the crown, Son of the Virgin of Solyma. Thou didst descend even to the earth, sojourner of a day, bearing a mortal body, and didst go down beneath to Tartarus, where death reigned over nations of souls in thousands. And then shuddered at Thee the aged ancient Hades, and his hound, the devourer of man,²⁸³ drew back from the threshold; and Thou, delivering choirs of righteous souls from their woes, dost raise, with unpolluted bands, hymns to the Father. To Thee I sing, Illustrious Father that wearest the crown, Son of the Virgin of Solyma. The boundless races of demons throughout the air trembled at Thy ascent, O King. The ambrosial choir of the stars immaculate was seized with awe; and ether laughing, wise father of harmony, blended upon the seven-stringed lyre a hymn of victory to Thy might. The harbinger of dawn smiled, the messenger of day, and golden Hesperus, the star of Cytherea. The moon filling with a stream of fire its horned light, led the way, the shepherd of the gods of night. Titan spread out his far-flaming hair under the ineffable track, and recognized the Offspring of God, Mind, the Artificer of all that is best, and the origin of his own flame. But Thou, in winged flight, didst leap over the back of the azure sky, and didst take Thy place amongst the inviolate spheres of the Mind, wherein is the fountain of good things, the heaven that is kept secret, where there is neither deep-flowing time that draggeth with untiring foot the offspring of earth, nor the shameless destinies of matter’s billowy depths, but an age born of the far distant past, though ageless itself, old and yet withal ever young, is to the gods the guardian of their eternal mansion.

### Hymn X

O CHRIST, Son of God Who reigneth above, remember Thy servant, by destiny a sinner, who writeth these words, and grant me release from passions that bring death, which are implanted in me, in a sullied soul. Grant me, O Saviour Jesus, to behold Thy divine light, that appearing there I may sing a song to the Healer of souls, the Healer of bodies, together with the mighty Father and the Holy Spirit.

## Notes

On Concerning Dreams. Nicephorus Gregoras, in the early part of the fourteenth century in Constantinople, wrote a Commentary on this treatise of Synesius, On Dreams. In a letter to Joannes Cantacuzenus (Ep. 23), the substance of which is repeated in one addressed to Demetrios Cavasilas many years later (Ep. 155), he extols this work in the following terms: ‘You know, I think, that I wrote a book long ago inspired by my profound gratitude towards the great Synesius. He wrote, as you are aware, a most remarkable work on Dreams. Just as nature made every effort, and with great success, to show in him a man of the highest order among the Greeks, in like manner this work is the best of all that he has written, and he made every effort that it should appear so. . . . He gives us his own personal evidence in the matter. God inspired him, and he had no recourse to his forces as a man, he tells us, in this work. He simply lent his pen to it. God did all. Thus the work is the production, so he writes, of a man possessed by a prophetic inspiration, and full of the Divinity. For this reason the greater part of the book has been composed in an obscure style, as were the oracles that the Delphic Tripod gave forth, and that were, as you know, full of prophetic phrases sedulously concealed and unintelligible to the ignorant, phrases which screened them as if behind a curtain of heavy obscurity. Yielding to numerous requests, we have sought to elucidate this work, to what extent it was possible, by the help of a varied Commentary.' (Nic. Greg. Ep., ed. Guilland, Paris, 1927.)
There is nothing in this passage from the Letters of Nicephorus that is not contained in the text of De Insomniis, and a Letter to Hypatia, (Ep. 154), concerning the manner in which it was written. But it is interesting as showing to what an extent the works of Synesius were admired by the erudite of the fourteenth century, and also as indicating that at this time the work on Dreams, which has been regarded by modern commentators with less favour than the other essays, was esteemed as the most important. One of the friends who urged Nicephorus to write a Commentary on it was Theodorus Metochites, the Prime Minister of the Emperor Andronicus II, who was the most learned man of the fourteenth century, and had instructed Nicephorus in Greek philosophy as well as astronomy, and had become his patron at the Court. Nicephorus, like Synesius, was an astronomer as well as a rhetorician, and wrote a work on the construction of an astrolabe, which, he tells his correspondent Cavasilas (Ep. 155), he laboured over with the same ardour that he put into his study of Synesius. It seems that Byzantium in the fourteenth century was not so far off in point of culture from Athens or Alexandria of the fourth and fifth.
On Constitutio. This speech, called by Petavius Constitutio, was delivered, as Druon thinks, in 411, just after the final disgrace of Synesius’ great enemy, the roman praefect Andronicus, and recall of his friend Anysius, the general who achieved several victories over the Ausurian tribes of the Libyan desert who were attempting to besiege the cities of Pentapolis. When Synesius returned to Cyrenaica, probably in the year 405, the guerilla warfare was dragging on under the incompetent and corrupt general Cerialis, ‘a venal fellow and cheap at that’, as Synesius describes him in a letter (ep. 130) to his friend Simplicius. ‘May the wretched Cerialis perish wretchedly’, he says in the same letter, ‘he who . . . for once in his life lost faith in earth itself . . . embarked his gold on double-sailed merchant-vessels and is now tossing about on the high seas.’ From this position of vantage he sent all sorts of orders to Synesius and his friends who were defending the city. ‘Instead of being on the ramparts like me, the philosopher’, writes Synesius (ibid.), ‘the general keeps himself close to the oar-blade.’ In the same year, perhaps, he writes to his brother (ep. 125): ‘the enemy has occupied Battia, he has attacked Aprosylis, he has burnt the threshing-floors, ravaged the fields, sold the women into slavery . . .; when shall we have done with our useless chatter? when shall we act seriously? Let us collect our peasants . . . to advance upon the enemy . . . .’ The philosopher, who in De Regno urges upon the emperor Arcadius the creation of a citizen army, native to the soil, is now putting his precepts into practice, and takes the first part in the defence of Pentapolis.
On Homilies. These two homilies must have been pronounced after the consecration of Synesius, or after the year 410. They seem to be merely fragments, and it is difficult to recognize his style in them.
On Hymn VIII. Date of Hymn VIII. Druon considers that this Hymn was written in the year 405 or 406; his reason for this is that Synesius speaks of only having two children. Crawford (p. 505 n.) points out the fact that, as the children are mentioned immediately after his sister, it is not clear if they are not her children, although it is more natural to suppose that they are his own. He goes on to say: ‘the second son does seem to have been born about 405 or 406, and we have a shrewd suspicion that the second and third were twins . . . if they were not twins, what is there to show that the third was born before 408 or thereabouts? Again, there is no clear evidence that the hymn may not have been written after the death of one of the children. If there were twins, it seems almost certain that the composition must be placed at a time when one of the three boys had died, and consequently during our author's episcopate. In that case, one passage in the hymn would provide a strong argument in favour of the theory that he retained his wife. . . .' Crawford points to the fact that the hymn is entirely Christian in thought, and doubts, for this reason, whether it could be placed as early as 405. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, however, on the ground that the hymn was written when Synesius had two sons, and consequently before the birth of the third, considers that it was written long before he was made a bishop. But he warns us in another place that, although a Christian of to-day would scarcely recognize Synesius as a brother in the faith, the opposition between monotheism and polytheism was rather an inheritance of the arrogance of the Jews, and was void of any meaning in the eyes of the fourth century when applied to Christianity and Hellenism. In Hymn III, where I pointed out the discrepancy in the prayers that Synesius offered to the gods who watch over the lands of Thrace, &c., Wilamowitz is inclined to see temples to Christian saints rather than to Hellenic deities.
On Hymn IX. This hymn opens with a direct invocation to Christ, unmistakable this time, as the offspring of the Holy Virgin. Druon supposes it to have been written in the year 407 or 408, in other words shortly before he was consecrated, if we agree with Druon in placing that event in the year 410. It is replete with pagan imagery, although Christian in form.
Wilamowitz-Moellendorf considers this one of the finest. ‘Hymn IX,’ he says, ‘dealing with Christ’s descent to Hades, is more successful (than Hymn VII). The description of his leading back to the Father the souls He has delivered, and all the elements praising the victor who returns to His kingdom, is not without grandeur; one must do justice to the language which borrows so much from a foreign mythology, and the syncretism of the philosophical ideas.’ He goes on to suggest an interesting comparison to the imagery of this Hymn in Correggio’s great painting of the Assumption of the Virgin in the Duomo of Parma, where the central figure is borne up by countless angels. ‘It is not difficult’, he continues, ‘to find from an artist’s point of view, a sort of mood that would respond to this sort of mingling of the clerical and the worldly, as also of the Christian and the pagan. Is it too much to ask the same licence for Synesius as for the painter? Is not this transcendental picture in the province of real poetry, this in which he describes how the Son of God descends to the material world, and how after His victory He wings His way across the outmost spheres of the Cosmos into the transcendent, His home; from the sea of light and from the harmonies of the spheres into eternity, where there is neither time, motion, nor intercourse?’ This hymn, says Wilamowitz, has been mutilated in most editions, and he suggests a certain rearrangement of the lines (Die Hymnen des Proklos und Synesios, Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 14. März 1907, Berlin). In Professor Terzaghi’s text six lines are introduced, lines 7–12 inclusive, which are not in Migne’s edition. Again, after the eighth line in Migne he inserts a line (numbered by him 15); after the fourteenth line in Migne, Terzaghi has inserted another, the twenty-second, according to his numeration, and after the nineteenth line in Migne, he introduces three more. This brings the total number of lines in the Hymn to seventy-one.

## Notes

[1] Plato, Symp. 218 A; Aristoph. Acharn. 1.
[2] Thucyd. ii. 19.
[3] ... one of those benighted Euboeans. Dio Chrysostom alludes to the same incident in The Euboean (vii. 4, vol. i. p. 190, ed. von Arnim), τὰ γένεια ὑγιῆ κομῶντα . . . οἵους ἐπὶ Ἴλιον Ὅμηρός φησιν ἐλθεῖν Εὐβοέας, σκώπτων, ἐμοὶ δοκεῖν, καὶ καταγελῶν, ὅτι τῶν ἄλλων ᾿Αχαιῶν καλῶς ἐχόντων οἱ δὲ ἐξ ἡμίσους ἐκόμων.
[4] Iliad, ii. 542.
[5] Which of the gods . . . did I pass over without accusation? Petavius quotes some verses of Petronius (c. 109) to the same purpose.
O fallax natura deum: quae prima dedisti
Aetati nostrae gaudia, prima rapis.
[6] eulogistic of Epicurus. In allusion to the doctrine of Epicurus that the gods did not trouble themselves with the affairs of mankind. Krabinger quotes from Lucretius (ii. 646 ff.) the lines:
Omnis enim per se divom natura necesse est
Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur
Semota ab nostris rebus seiunctaque longe.
[7] Ibid. vi. 160 sqq.
[8] Xenophon, Anabasis, i. 1. 4.
[9] Plato, Phaed. 89 c; Apollodorus, ii. 5, 2; Pind. Ol. x. 34.
[10] as if in good fortune. Petavius observes that it was the custom at banquets and drinking bouts to pass jests at the expense of the bald heads present—and refers to Petronius (c. 109), Iam Tryphaena Gitona extrema parte potionis spargebat, cum Eumolpus, et ipse vino solutus, dicta voluit in caluos stigmososque iaculari.
[11] Odyssey, xx. 1–17.
[12] after rising in the morning &c. In regard to this chapter, extending over about two pages, which Synesius quotes from the works of Dio Chrysostom, I have to make the following observations. No work of Dio concerning hair was known to Photius, nor has any such work been noted by any other writer of antiquity. The chapter in question, therefore, was, until the year 1839, always regarded as the introductory part of a work by Dio, of which the rest has disappeared. In that year, however, a distinguished Dutch scholar, J. Geel, the librarian of the University of Leyden, and correspondent of the French Académie des Inscriptions, who had been making a close study of the document in question, published a letter on the subject, addressed to M. Hase, Conservateur au Département des Manuscrits, at the Bibliothèque du Roi, Paris. In this letter, which is full of very close and acute argument, he attempts to establish, and it would seem with great success, the thesis that he sets out to demonstrate, namely, that the two pages quoted here from Dio are not a fragment of the lost essay, but the whole essay. ‘For my part’, he says, ‘I have come to the conclusion that Synesius in saying at the beginning of his discourse that a work had been produced, called a Eulogy on Hair, by Dio of the tongue of gold, has fabricated a title that Dio himself had never thought of. This Eulogy of Hair, which he pretends to offer us, is only an exercise in style, a study, one such as I could point out in other of this author’s writings, as for example, the nineteenth discourse, introduced in the same way by an account of some event, and as little polished as the so-called “Eulogy”. The same thing may be said of the fifty-second discourse, one of the most interesting bits in the collection of his works. They are nothing, all of them, but thoughts jotted down on paper at the moment. At the same time, I call your attention to the extraordinary resemblance between the commencement of this fifty-second discourse, and that of the “Eulogy of Hair”. . . . If the Eulogy did not bear the marks of Dio’s style even in its smallest details, one would be tempted to suspect Synesius of bad faith, and to imagine that he had forged an imitation in order to fight with a shadow’ (Leyde, Hazenberg, 1839). There is not room here to go through all the points of this very interesting work of Geel’s, which I recommend to any one desirous to form a definite opinion on the question. The text is printed, with the readings of a Florence manuscript of Synesius, in von Arnim’s edition of Dio (vol. ii [Berol. 1896], pp. 313-19).
Another interesting discovery in regard to this essay of Synesius was made a little later. A French savant, E. Miller, published in Paris in the year 1840 a Greek text entitled, ‘Éloge de la Chevelure, discours inédit d’un auteur grec anonyme en réfutation du discours de Synésius intitulé, Éloge de la Calvitie, publiè d’après un manuscrit grec, &c.’ It seems that M. Miller came across this work of an anonymous Greek author in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where for some extraordinary reason it had escaped the notice of other scholars. ‘The writer whose work I publish to-day,’ says Miller in his Introduction, ‘has struck a blow at Synesius’ reputation. . . . It is still more extraordinary that this work has remained unnoticed until now, when we observe that it is mentioned in the Greek catalogue (Art. 21, no. 2953) with this notice, *Anonymus de Encomio Calvitii quod a Synesio scriptum est*. This title arrested my attention. . . . I commenced reading it at once . . . and finally decided to publish it with a commentary. I had hoped that the work itself would furnish me with indications that might be sufficient to decide its authorship. It is certainly remarkable in many ways, but in this particular I was disappointed. Not only does the author say nothing to throw any light on the question of authorship, but he cites no poet of antiquity except Homer and Hesiod.’ Miller means no doubt by this that we cannot assign a date to him through the authors that he quotes; I have pointed out elsewhere that there would be a similar difficulty in the case of Synesius, if we were otherwise unaware of the exact time in which he lived. ‘Nevertheless,’ Miller continues, ‘there was abundance of opportunity for quotations, and he could easily have brought upon the scene many poets of antiquity. He contents himself, however, as a philosopher with combating Synesius single-handed. In spite of this excessive dearth of sources of information, I do not wish to leave the discussion of this point of literary criticism without seeming to have arrived at some sort of solution. I have therefore endeavoured to fix approximately the period in which this champion of Dio must have written his essay, and after a conscientious examination of his style, I have sought to indicate to what class of writers he belonged.’ While admitting that a decision upon this point must be more or less conjectural, Miller goes on to point out that certain Greek writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did succeed to a certain extent in rehabilitating their style in Greek by a close study of the authors of the golden age. The anonymous work that he is criticizing he describes as showing considerable purity of Attic style, an achievement which would have been quite within the compass of such men as Demetrius Cydonius, Bessarion, or Gemistus Plethon. And this alone is sufficient to make one hesitate.
From a palaeographical point of view the manuscript in question cannot, he says, be more modern than the end of the thirteenth century, or the beginning of the fourteenth. This seems to make it impossible, therefore, to attribute it to such fourteenthor fifteenth-century writers as those just named. After weighing all possibilities, therefore, the happy discoverer of the manuscript has come to the conclusion that its author, if he were not a contemporary of Synesius, which is quite possible, must have lived in some part of the two centuries following. I shall have occasion to refer to this anonymous work in the course of my notes on this essay of Synesius. It is interesting to observe that the writer of the pamphlet directed against Synesius does not seem at all to have appreciated the irony and wit of the author he is criticizing. He shows a tendency to take everything that Synesius says quite seriously and literally, and answers him in like manner, training all the heavy artillery of a philosopher upon him. He never seems to suspect that the essay of Synesius is really a skit upon precisely such pompous people as himself, in other words, the sophists of his time. Miller describes his author as a philosopher, but I should be more inclined to class him as a sophist, who was trying to show his ingenuity at the expense of Synesius, just as Synesius was trying to show his, although in a much lighter and more jocose spirit, at the expense of Dio, whom, notwithstanding, he admired so much. 'Are you not ashamed, Synesius,' says the anonymous author, 'unless it is purely on account of your own baldness that you are speaking, are you not ashamed, I say, to write an encomium upon the work of a disease, and to leave out of consideration the praise of what is becoming and healthy?'
He begins his essay, however, with an allusion to his own hair, as follows (p. 27), καὶ μὴν ὅπερ ἐπὶ τῷ τοῦ Δίωνος ἐπεπόνθει λόγῳ Συνέσιος, τοῦτ' αὐτὸς ἐπὶ τῷ τοῦ Συνεσίου ἄντικρυς· καὶ οἷον οὗτος δυσχεραίνων, ὅτι μὴ ἐκόμα, λόγον ἐξήνεγκε, τοιοῦτον δὴ καὶ αὐτὸς ὅτε μὴ γεγένημαι φαλακρός . . .
[13] those who make a cult of their hair. Athenaeus (Deipnosoph, Lib. XII, cap. 30), in speaking of the people of Samos, says that according to the poet Asius they used to comb their hair over the back of their heads and down their shoulders, οἳ δ’αὔτως φοίτεσκον ὅπως πλοκάμους κτενίσαιντο εἰς Ἥρας τέμενος, πεπυκασμένοι εἵμασι καλοῖς, . . . χαῖται δ’ ἠωρεῦντ’ ἀνέμῳ χρυσέοις ἐνὶ δεσμοῖς.
Again (ibid., cap. 31), he quotes some lines from Phylarchus showing a tendency to regard the care of the hair as an effeminate and degenerate phase of morals, which the Colophonians learned of the Lydians, ἀβροσύνας δὲ μαθόντες ἀνωφελέας παρὰ Λυδῶν . . . ἦεσαν εἰς ἀγορὴν . . . χαίτῃσιν ἀγαλλόμεν’ εὐπρεπέεσσιν.
Speaking of the Athenians (Lib. XII. 5) he alludes to their cult of hair, κορύμβους δ’ ἀναδούμενοι τῶν τριχῶν χρυσοῦς τέττιγας περὶ τὸ μέτωπον καὶ τὰς κόρρας ἐφόρουν.
It may be inferred from a passage in the Knights of Aristophanes that the attention to hair was a mark of aristocratic tradition amongst the Athenians (Eq. 578):
Χορ. . . . οὐκ αἰτοῦμεν οὐδὲν πλὴν τοσουτονὶ μόνον·
ἦν ποτ’ εἰρήνη γένηται καὶ πόνων παυσώμεθα,
μὴ φθονεῖθ’ ἡμῖν κομῶσι μηδ’ ἀπεστλεγγισμένοις.
[14] Herodot. vii. 208.
[15] Iliad, ii. 478 ff.
[16] he praises them all for their hair. Dio in another of his works (Orat. XXXVI, 17, vol. ii, p. 5, ed. von Arnim) praises the wearing of long hair as a distinctly Greek trait and opposed to the Roman fashion. Speaking of a Greek city on the borders of Thrace, and the manners of the citizens, he observes: πάνυ οὖν ἄν τις ἥσθη τῇ ὄψει φιλόσοφος ἀνήρ, ὅτι ἅπαντες ἦσαν τὸν ἀρχαῖον τρόπον, ὡς φησιν Ὅμηρος τοὺς Ἕλληνας, κομῶντες καὶ τὰ γένεια ἀφεικότες, εἷς δὲ ἐν αὐτοῖς μόνος ἐξυρημένος, καὶ τοῦτον ἐλοιδόρουν τε καὶ ἐμίσουν ἅπαντες. ἐλέγετο δὲ οὐκ ἄλλως τοῦτο ἐπιτηδεύειν, ἀλλὰ κολακεύων Ῥωμαίους καὶ τὴν πρὸς αὐτοὺς φιλίαν ἐπιδεικνύμενος.
[17] Ibid., i. 197.
[18] Ibid., iii. 284.
[19] Ibid., xxii. 401. 402.
[20] Ibid., xvii. 51-2.
[21] Odyssey, xvi. 176.
[22] Ibid., vi. 230.
[23] Iliad, i. 529.
[24] Plato, Rep. 350 D.
[25] I shall never disgrace my ancestral rusticity. It is a favourite idea with Synesius that he is exempt from all the refinements and overculture of town life, that his is a blunt and rustic type of mind, &c. Cf. The Egyptian Tale (I, cap. 18). ‘Now it happened that there was one man, who, though of serious bent, had through philosophy been brought up in a more rustic mould, &c.' See also his letter to Olympius (Ep. 148), in which he takes to himself great credit for his devotion to the simple life of the country, and his contempt for the ways of men of the city. Cf. also Hymn III, 54: '. . . land of the Notus which no godless blast of wind sullieth, nor is the foot-print graven thereon of men whose cares are of the town.'
[26] Iliad, xxiii. 141 ff.
[27] Plato, Phaedr. 253 E.
[28] Ibid., 250 D.
[29] Plato, Leg. 766 A.
[30] Plato, Symp. 215 A; Xenophon, Symp. 4, 19.
[31] no fruit on a plant &c. The anonymous writer uses the simile of plants also, in his encomium on hair (p. 53): Εἰσὶ γὰρ αἱ τρίχες, ὡς ἔφημεν, κεφαλῆς φυτά, αἰσθήσεων ἄνθη, τέρψις ἔμψυχος, χάρις ἔμφυτος, κάλλος φαινόμενον καὶ τὰς ὄψεις εὐθὺς θηρώμενον, ἣν πάντες ἐπήνεσαυ καὶ λογογράφοι καὶ ποιηταί, καὶ ὁ τούτων προϊστάμενος Ὅμηρος. φαλακρὸν δέ τις ποιητῶν ἢ ῥητόρων μέχρι σοῦ κοσμῆσαι λόγοις προείλετο;
[32] ... those who serve the divinity in Egypt do not endure hair etc. Cf. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, p. 352 C, D: '. . . few there be who know the cause of this ceremony . . . why the priests of Isis shave their heads, and wear no hair upon them. . . . There is one cause alone, that as Plato (= Phaedo 67 B) says, it is not lawful for the pure to touch what is impure. Now it is well known that all superfluities of our food are impure, and of such is hair engendered.' Philo (De Circumcisione 1, § 5) compares the shaving of the Egyptian priests to the Jewish practice as follows: 'It [circumcision] secures the healthiness of the whole body in a way that is suited to the people consecrated to God; with which object the Egyptian priests, being extravagant in their case, shaved the whole of their bodies.'
[33] Herodot. ii. 36.
[34] Plato, Leges, 821 A.
[35] What could be balder than a sphere? Cf. Proclus on the Parmenides of Plato (Lib. vi, pp. 106-15, ed. Cousin): 'And on this account Parmenides speculating in his poem on Being in very truth, brings in the sphere also as well as the Whole, the Same, and the Other; for he describes it [Being] as like a spherical mass everywhere equidistant from a centre with all its parts, and immovable; in such sort that all things are first in mind, and secondly are as images in the monad and in every perceptible thing, physically in this, but mathematically in that. For the sphere is an intellectual concept as is Mind, and the monad; this cosmos is the perceptible sphere carrying in itself the images of eternal gods.’ Cf. also Olympiodorus (In. Plat. Phaed. D. c. ριζ’, p. 235, ed. Norvin.): ‘Ὅτι σφαιρικὸν τὸ πᾶν δείξειεν ἄν τις ἀπὸ τῆς τελικῆς αἰτίας. μμεῖται γὰρ ἡ σφαῖρα τὸ ἕν, ὅτι μάλιστα, κράτιστον οὖσα τῶν σχημάτων καὶ ἀδιάλυτον, ὡς γωνιῶν ἀπηλλαγμένη, καὶ μάλιστα πάντων χωρητικὴ διὰ τὴν αὐτὴν αἰτίαν. ἔτι ἀπὸ τῆς παραδειγματικῆς, ὅτι παντελὲς τὸ ζῷον εἰς ὃ βλέπων ὁ θεὸς ἐδημιούργει ὥστε τελειότατον σχημάτων ἡ σφαῖρα. ἔτι ἀπὸ τῆς ποιητικῆς αἰτίας· ἀίδιον γὰρ αὐτὸ καὶ ἀδιάλυτον ὁ δημιουργὸς ποιεῖ τοσοῦτον δὲ σχῆμα ὅ τε κύκλος καὶ ἡ σφαῖρα.
[36] Proclus, in Parm., Lib. VI.
[37] Plato, Timaeus, 33 B, 34 B.
[38] Wherefore the entire-soul animates the whole cosmos, which is a sphere. This is the view that dominates Plato’s Timaeus; but the sphere became a sad stumbling-block in later Greek philosophy, owing to the perpetual confusion of astronomical and psychological images. It will be remembered how in the Republic Socrates reproves the young and enthusiastic Glaucon for suggesting that astronomy is an elevating pursuit because in studying the stars one gazes upwards. But Plato in the Timaeus, as Taylor points out (Plato, The Man and his Work, p. 447), ‘never speaks of spheres, but in the language originated by Anaximander of circles.’ The later theory of Eudoxus of the revolving spheres of the universe was unknown to him. For Aristotle’s view of Eudoxus’ system, see Metaphysics, 1073ᵇ. Εὔδοξος μὲν οὖν ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης ἑκατέρου τὴν φορὰν ἐν τρισὶν ἐτίθετ’ εἶναι σφαίραις, ὧν τὴν μὲν πρώτην τὴν τῶν ἀπλανῶν ἄστρων εἶναι, τὴν δὲ δευτέραν κατὰ τὸν διὰ μέσων τῶν ζωδίων, τὴν δὲ τρίτην κατὰ τὸν λελοξωμένον ἐν τῷ πλάτει τῶν ζωδίων . . . τῶν δὲ πλανωμένων ἄστρων ἐν τέτταρσιν ἑκάστου σφαίραις. . . . Κάλλιππος δὲ τὴν μὲν θέσιν τῶν σφαιρῶν τὴν αὐτὴν ἐτίθετο Εὐδόξῳ, τοῦτ’ ἔστι τῶν ἀποστημάτων τὴν τάξιν, τὸ δὲ πλῆθος τῷ μὲν τοῦ Διὸς καὶ τῷ τοῦ Κρόνου τὸ αὐτὸ ἐκείνῳ ἀπεδίδου, τῷ δ’ ἡλίου καὶ τῷ σελήνης δύο ᾤετο ἔτι προσθετέας εἶναι σφαίρας . . . ἀναγκαῖον δέ, εἰ μέλλουσι συντεθεῖσαι πᾶσαι τὰ φαινόμενα ἀποδώσειν, καθ’ ἕκαστον τῶν πλανωμένων ἑτέρας σφαίρας μιᾷ ἐλάττονας εἶναι τὰς ἀνελιττούσας. . .
In the scholia to this passage (Bekker, vol. iv, p. 807) is the following: τοῦτο εἰπὼν εὐθὺς ἱστορεῖ ἅ τε Εὔδοξος περὶ τῶν σφαιρῶν ἔλεγε καὶ τοῦ πλήθους αὐτῶν καὶ Κάλλιππος. καὶ δεξάμενος τὴν προσθήκην τῶν σφαιρῶν, ἣν ὁ Κάλλιππος προσέθηκεν (ὁ γὰρ Εὔδοξος εἴκοσι καὶ ἓξ τὰς πάσας ἐτίθετο, Κάλλιππος δὲ τριάκοντα καὶ τρεῖς) οὕτως αὐτὸς ταῖς τριάκοντα καὶ τρισὶν ἄλλας εἴκοσι καὶ δύο προστίθησι . . . κ.τ.λ.
A long discussion follows as to the number of the ‘spheres’ necessary to explain the movements of the heavenly bodies. Synesius was an astronomer, as we see from the famous Letter to Paeonius, and the science, as he tells us in the letter in question, had made great strides. He reminds us that Hipparchus in his day was prophetic, and that his vague anticipations were fulfilled by the work of Ptolemy and ‘the divine band of his successors.’ ‘Every allowance must be made’, he adds, ‘for these men, inasmuch as the more important problems were still unsolved, and geometry was still at the nursing stage.’ It would be very interesting to know what these ‘important problems’ were. But the exact history of astronomy in the time that elapsed between Ptolemy and Synesius is lost in obscurity. We naturally scan the allusions in Synesius here and elsewhere, but find nothing to tell us whether the conceptions of Eudoxus as to the plurality of spheres in the universe was still accepted in the fourth century. In the meantime, at all events, astrology had come in to occupy a large place in the popular imagination, though of this we hear little in Synesius. But throughout all his wit and playfulness about the sphere we can easily detect the same underlying conception that we find in the passage from Proclus quoted above, namely that the sphere, being the most perfect form, is the expression of Mind, in other words the second hypostasis of the Neoplatonists, but it is worthy of observation that Synesius never endorses in so many words the doctrine of the Neoplatonic hypostases. For him the sphere is the most perfect form, and therefore the idea of the sphere must dominate the cosmos. Beyond that he does not go. He remains with the Platonic doctrine of the idea. In this respect he is pre-Aristotelian, notwithstanding the fact that he has, as I have tried to show, so frequently drawn on the works of Aristotle.
[39] Ibid., 30 B, 44 D, 69 C.
[40] Hesiod, Works and Days, 528 sqq.
[41] Plato, Republic, 595 sqq.; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 358 B-F.
[42] Plato, Gorgias, 502 D.
[43] . the Egyptians . . . do not allow the vulgar . . . to make images. The following two passages from St. Clement of Alexandria and from Plutarch in regard to the Egyptian priests, are quoted by Cudworth (vol. i, p. 532). I append the Greek text:
οἱ Αἰγύπτιοι οὐ τοῖς ἐπιτυχοῦσι τὰ παρὰ σφίσιν ἀνετίθεντο μυστήρια, οὐδὲ μὴν βεβήλοις τὴν τῶν θείων εἴδησιν ἐξέφερον, ἀλλ’ ἢ μόνοις γε τοῖς μέλλουσιν ἐπὶ τὴν βασιλείαν προιέναι, καὶ τῶν ἱερέων τοῖς κριθεῖσιν εἶναι δοκιμωτάτους, ἀπό τε τῆς τροφῆς καὶ τῆς παιδείας καὶ τοῦ γένους (Strom. v, p. 503).
Ὁ ἐκ μαχίμων ἀποδεδειγμένος εὐθὺς ἐγένετο τῶν ἱερέων, καὶ μετεῖχε τῆς φιλοσοφίας, ἐπικεκρυμμένης τὰ πολλὰ μύθοις καὶ λόγοις, ἀμυδρὰς ἐμφάσεις τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ διαφάσεις ἔχουσιν, ὥσπερ ἀμέλει καὶ παραδηλοῦσιν αὐτοὶ πρὸ τῶν ἱερῶν τὰς σφίγγας ἐπιεικῶς ἱστάντες, ὡς αἰνιγματώδη σοφίαν τῆς θεολογίας αὐτῶν ἐχούσης (Plutarch, Isis et Osiris, c. 9).
[44] chests, which conceal . . . those spheres. The priests of Egypt were reputed to be astronomers. It would seem probable, therefore, that the spheres to which Synesius alludes were models of the celestial bodies, or at all events had some connexion with astronomy. As to his statement about the priests mocking the populace, it was affirmed by Pseudo-Lucian that the Egyptians divided the heavens into twelve areas, and symbolized each of these by a different animal, and that it was from these symbols that the figures of gods were derived: ἐκ γὰρ δὴ τοῦ παντὸς ἠέρος, καὶ ἀστέρων τῶν ἄλλων ἀπλανέων τε καὶ εὐσταθέων καὶ οὐδαμὰ κινεομένων δωώδεκα μοίρας ἐτάμοντο ἐν τοῖς κινεομένοισι, καὶ οἰκεῖα ζῷα ἐόντα ἕκαστον αὐτῶν ἐς ἄλλην μορφὴν μεμιμέαται τὰ μὲν ἐνάλια, τὰ δὲ ἀνθρώπων, τὰ δὲ θηρῶν, τὰ δὲ πτηνῶν, τὰ δὲ κτηνέων. (De Astrologia, vi.)
It was maintained by certain materialist philosophers in the days of Porphyry that the Egyptian priests worshipped the stars and heavenly bodies generally, if we can draw such an inference from the letter which he writes to the Egyptian priest Anebo. This letter is quoted by Cudworth, vol. i, p. 537, in the following passage: Χαιρήμων μὲν γάρ, καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι, οὐδ’ ἄλλο τι πρὸ τῶν ὁρωμένων κόσμων ἡγοῦνται, ἐν ἀρχῇ λόγων τιθεμένοι τοὺς Αἰγυπτίων, οὐδ’ ἄλλους θεοὺς πλὴν τῶν πλανητῶν λεγομένων, καὶ τῶν συμπληρούντων τὸν ζωδιακόν, etc. (Euseb., Praep. Evang., iii. 4). The full text is printed in Thomas Gale’s edition of Iamblichus, De Mysteriis. Porphyry, it would seem, rebukes the Egyptian priests for worshipping material powers instead of spiritual. This is also the view that Sallustius, the friend of the Emperor Julian, takes of them, writing in the middle of the fourth century, although he accuses them of identifying their gods, not with the stars, but with other elements of nature. ‘The worst explanation, the material,’ he says, in regard to the stories of the gods, ‘is that which the Egyptians because of their ignorance used most; they regarded and described material things as gods, earth as Isis, moisture as Osiris, heat as Typhon,’ &c. (Nock’s translation of Sallustius, p. 7, cap. 4 of the text). ὑλικὸς δὲ ἔστι καὶ ἔσχατος, ᾧ μάλιστα Αἰγύπτιοι δι’ ἀπαιδευσίαν ἐχρήσαντο, αὐτὰ τὰ σώματα θεοὺς νομίσαντες καὶ καλέσαντες [καὶ] Ἶσιν μὲν τὴν γῆν, Ὄσιριν δὲ τὸ ὑγρόν, Τύφωνα δὲ τὴν θερμότητα κτλ.
The worship of animals by the masses in Egypt is mentioned with reprobation by Plutarch in his Isis and Osiris (p. 379 E: Αἰγυπτίων δὲ οἱ πολλοὶ θεραπεύοντες αὐτὰ τὰ ζῷα, καὶ περιέποντες ὡς θεούς, οὐ γέλωτος μόνον οὐδὲ χλευασμοῦ καταπεπλήκασι τὰς ἱερουργίας (ἀλλὰ τοῦτο τῆς ἀβελτερίας ἐλάχιστόν ἐστι κακόν)· δόξα δ’ ἐμφύεται δεινή, τοὺς μὲν ἀσθενεῖς καὶ ἀκάκους εἰς ἄκρατον ὑπερείπουσα τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν, τοῖς δὲ δριμυτέροις καὶ θρασυτέροις εἰς ἀθέους ἐκπίπτουσα καὶ θηριώδεις λογισμούς· ᾗ καὶ περὶ τούτων τὰ εἰκότα διελθεῖν οὐκ ἀνάρμοστόν ἐστι.)
The above description of the Egyptians in general as ignorant and grossly superstitious is rather in accord with what Synesius says here, speaking of them as a people who were hoodwinked by their priests. It is always of the priests that he speaks when he is extolling the wisdom of the Egyptians. We must not forget that he expresses himself frequently in favour of not enlightening the masses as to the mysteries of religion. In letter 105, notably when on the brink of accepting the bishopric, he writes: ‘The philosophic mind . . . admits the employment of falsehood. . . . I consider that the false may be beneficial to the populace, and the truth injurious. . . . I can take over the holy office on condition that I may prosecute philosophy at home, and spread legends abroad. . . . Divine truth should remain hidden: the vulgar need a different system.’ Is it possible that Synesius’ views on these matters were influenced by his admiration for the Egyptian priests? The tradition amongst Greek philosophers is as old as the time of Plato, who is always endorsing their wisdom, without, however, throwing much light on their theology. Plutarch, on the other hand, gives us so many explanations of the origin and interpretation of the myths of their religion, that we are forced to conclude that in his time either the priests themselves had become very ignorant about their own doctrines, or saw fit to throw dust in the eyes of inquiring Greeks. We find elsewhere in Synesius allusion to the fact that they were not able to interpret their own hieroglyphics (De Prov., p. 1256 c). Plutarch, in Isis and Osiris, c. 72 ff., tells us that some men account for the heads of animals in the images of gods as coming from military standards or ensigns, carried into battle in the past, and each sacred to some single tribe, which afterwards endowed its protecting deity with the emblem, and that others say that they were used in war as portentous signs to terrify the enemy with; or again, that they were the areas marked out by the priests, in the celestial vault, and referred to the astral nature of their gods, as does Porphyry in the letter quoted above.
Diogenes Laertius speaks of the philosophy of the Egyptians in the following terms (i. 10): ‘They say that matter was the first principle, next the four elements were derived from matter, and thus living things of every species were produced. The sun and the moon are gods bearing the names of Osiris and Isis respectively: they make use of the beetle, the dragon, the hawk, and other creatures as symbols of divinity, according to Manetho . . . and Hecataeus. . . . They also set up statues and temples to these sacred animals because they do not know the true form of the deity. They hold that the universe is created and perishable and that it is spherical in shape. They say that the stars consist of fire, and that, according as the fire in them is mixed, so events happen upon earth; that the moon is eclipsed when it falls into the earth’s shadow; that the soul survives death and passes into other bodies; that rain is caused by change in the atmosphere; of all other phenomena they give physical explanations. . . . They also laid down laws on the subject of justice, which they ascribed to Hermes; and they deified those animals which are serviceable to men. (Diog. Laer., translation R. D. Hicks, Loeb Library.) It must be remembered that Diogenes Laertius was writing probably in the early part of the third century, and was nearer to the time of Synesius than was Plutarch.
[45] amongst the Greeks zeal for truth is languid. Synesius does not seem to see that the aspersions made by Thucydides on the lack of any critical examination into legendary history in his time refer rather to the majority of mankind in general than to the Greek race in particular. In the passage to which Synesius alludes he says that most men are averse to taking pains in the quest of accurate information, adducing erroneous accounts generally accepted by his countrymen, and the rest of the Greeks (οἱ ἄλλοι Ἕλληνες) concerning contemporary as well as historic facts. The last words of this criticism of human credulity (Thuc. i. 20) are the following: οὕτως ἀταλαίπωρος τοῖς πολλοῖς ἡ ζήτησις τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ ἑτοῖμα μᾶλλον τρέπονται.
[46] Thucyd. i. 20.
[47] Plato, Epinom. 981 D.
[48] Aratus, Phaenom. 259–60.
[49] Odyssey, xviii. 354–5.
[50] Plato, Phaedrus, 244 B.
[51] Cf. Juv. Sat. 10, 307, and Tert. Apol. 4, each with Mayor's notes.
[52] Plato, Rep. 560 B.
[53] Iliad, xi. 256.
[54] Ibid. 830 ff.
[55] forces of Cambyses. The passages that Synesius is thinking of may be found in Herodotus, Bk. III, chap. 12: ‘I saw there a strange thing, of which the people of the country had told me. The bones of those slain on either side in this fight lying scattered separately (for the Persian bones lay in one place and the Egyptian in another, where the armies had first separately stood), the skulls of the Persians are so brittle that if you throw no more than a pebble it will pierce them, but the Egyptian skulls are so strong that the blow of a stone will hardly break them. And this, people said (which for my own part I readily believed), is the reason of it: the Egyptians shave their heads from childhood and the bone thickens by exposure to the sun. This also is the reason why they do not grow bald; for nowhere can one see so few bald heads as in Egypt. Their skulls then are strong for this reason; and the cause of the Persian skulls being weak is that they shelter their heads through their lives with the felt hats (called tiaras) which they wear. Such is the truth of this matter. I saw too the skulls of those Persians at Papremis who were slain with Darius’s son Achaemenes by Inaros the Libyan, and they were like the others’ (trans. Godley, ed. Loeb). Wilkinson, in a note to Rawlinson’s Herodotus (ad loc.), observes, ‘The thickness of the Egyptian skull is observable in the mummies;’ Druon remarks that in quoting this passage of Herodotus, Synesius has taken pains to exclude the clause in which Herodotus says that one sees fewer bald men in Egypt than anywhere else, and that it is obvious from this that all his argument is to be taken as a pure ‘jeu d’esprit,’ and a sophist’s piece of practice.
[56] Herod. iii. 10. 12.
[57] strike one of these men with his fist: see Mayor on Juvenal, 5. 171 (also on p. 436), for many parallels.
[58] Olymp. v. 23 seq.
[59] Aristoph. Plutus, 808.
[60] should the demon be adverse. He probably alludes to that individual demon mentioned in Horace’s Epistle to Julius Florus (Ep. II, 2, 187)
Scit Genius, natale comes qui temperat astrum,
naturae deus humanae, mortalis . . .
[61] one of the divine race. No doubt his Lacedaemonian ancestors are alluded to here.
[62] Herod. i. 82.
The Lacedaemonians adopted long hair after Thyrea. Here again Synesius has been taking a leaf out of Herodotus; the allusion will be found in Bk. I, cap. 82, where he is describing how when Croesus was besieged by Cyrus, he sent to the Lacedaemonians for help, as well as to the rest of the allies. ‘Now at this very time the Spartans themselves had a feud on hand with the Argives in respect of the country called Thyrea; . . . the Argives came out to save their territory from being cut off; then after debate the two armies agreed that three hundred of each side should fight, and whichever party won should possess the land. The rest of each army was to go away to its own country. . . . Having thus agreed, the armies drew off, and picked men of each side were left and fought. Neither could gain advantage in the battle; at last of six hundred there were left only three, Alcenor and Chromios of the Argives, Othryades of the Lacedaemonians: these three were left alive at nightfall. Then the two Argives, deeming themselves victors, ran to Argos; but Othryades, the Lacedaemonian, spoiled the Argive dead, bore the armour to his own armies’ camp, and remained in his place. On the next day both armies came to learn the issue; for awhile both claimed the victory. . . . At last the dispute so ended that they joined battle and fought; many of both sides fell but the Lacedaemonians had the victory. Ever after this the Argives, who before had worn their hair long by fixed custom, shaved their heads, and made a law, with a curse added thereto, that no Argive should grow his hair, and no Argive woman should wear gold, till they should recover Thyrea; and the Lacedaemonians made a contrary law, that ever after they should wear their hair long; for till now they had not so worn it’ (trans. Godley, ed. Loeb).
[63] Aristot. Hist. Nat. 518ᵃ.
[64] dressed their hair before the battle of Thermopylae. We must go back to Herodotus again, Bk. VII, chap. 208 seq.: ‘While this debate was going on, Xerxes sent a mounted spy to observe the Greeks, and note how many they were, and see what they were doing. . . .The horseman rode up to the camp and looked about him . . . . It chanced that at this time the Lacedaemonians held the outer guard, and were seen by the spy, some of them engaged in gymnastic exercises, others combing their long hair. At this the spy greatly marvelled, but he counted their number, and . . . he returned and told Xerxes all that he had seen. Xerxes apparently thought it a laughable matter that they should be engaged in such employments as looking after their hair, but Demaratus, whom he consulted on the subject, assured him that it was the custom of the Spartans when they were about to hazard their lives, to adorn their heads with care.' Rawlinson, whose translation I have just been quoting, observes that 'the particular attention bestowed on the adornment of the hair in times of imminent danger, is witnessed to by Plutarch (Lycurgus, chap. 22), and by Xenophon (Lacedaemonian Republic, xiii. 8) if we adopt in that place the reading κεκτενισμένῳ.' The passage from Plutarch is as follows: 'In time of war, too, they relaxed the severity of the young men's discipline, and permitted them to beautify their hair and ornament their arms and clothing, rejoicing to see them, like horses, prance and neigh for the contest. Therefore they wore their hair long as soon as they ceased to be youths, and particularly in times of danger they took pains to have it glossy and well-combed, remembering a certain saying of Lycurgus, that a fine head of hair made the handsome more comely still, and the ugly more terrible.' (Trans. Perrin, Loeb Library, vol. i, p. 275.)
[65] Aristot. Hist. Nat. 518b.
[66] Arrian, Exp. Alex. i, prooem. 1.
Ptolemy, son of Lagus. Arrian explains in his preface to his Life of Alexander, that since Ptolemy, son of Lagos, and Aristoboulos had both written concerning his campaigns, he himself has adopted the course of accepting for his work all statements in which these two writers agreed, and in case they disagreed of adopting the more plausible version of the two. He further states that they both seem to him the more trustworthy inasmuch as they both accompanied Alexander on his campaigns, and as to Ptolemy, he of all men was the least likely to falsify the truth, for deception is more disgraceful in a king than in any other man. From this phrase it may be inferred that Synesius had Arrian’s work in his mind when he wrote this passage. Certainly he would have agreed with Arrian. Compare his remark in the address to the Emperor Arcadius, ‘Truth is the aristocracy of language.’ The passage which he refers to here, or possibly quotes in places, is not in the few fragments we possess of Ptolemy, whom, however, Arrian frequently refers to. Ptolemy seems to have enjoyed the reputation of telling amusing anecdotes. If the one that he recounts of the dragons with human voices who conducted Alexander’s army to Ammon be taken as an example of his critical powers as an historian, the amusing war episode that Synesius tells us here will find little credence. There is, perhaps, a vein of irony in the manner in which he observes that Ptolemy must be truthful because he is a king. It reminds us of the passage in Letter 44, where he says: ‘This is the story which Rumour has recounted, and it is not ordained that a divinity should lie.’
[67] Plutarch, Theseus, 5.
[68] Arrian, Exp. Alex. iv. 10, 6.
[69] Iliad, xvi. 70, 71.
[70] Iliad, xxiii. 141 ff.
[71] Aristoxenus says. This must refer to Aristoxenus of Tarentum, a pupil of Aristotle, and a contemporary of Theophrastus. He wrote four hundred and fifty-three works, according to Suidas, and was greatly admired in the succeeding centuries. In the days of Plutarch he was considered already as a classic. The work cited here must be his celebrated Lives of Men in which he wrote of Pythagoras, Archytas, Socrates, and Plato. His description of the irascible side of Socrates is certainly not confirmed by the works of Xenophon and Plato.
[72] Plutarch, De Herodoti Malignitate, p. 856 C-D.
[73] Plato, Parmenides, 127 B.
[74] Iliad, i. 197.
[75] he . . . defames Hector. Druon refers us to Philostratus, the Heroicus, where Hector is represented as a bald man (iii. 21, xiv. 1) μετ’ οὐδεμιᾶς κόμης.
[76] let anyone show me where this occurs in . . . Homer. Synesius is quite wrong here. As Druon points out, the verse in question occurs in the twenty-second book of the Iliad, lines 401-2, but the reading that Synesius quotes is a bad one, he having substituted the word πεφόρηντο for the word πίτναντο.
[77] Philostratus, Heroicus, p. 295 (c. 10).
[78] Iliad, iii. 55.
[79] Ibid. xxii. 401, 402.
[80] as if Phileas had accused Andocides. The same phrase appears in Suidas, who must have taken it from this passage in Synesius. Druon thinks that the Andocides in question here is the orator.
[81] Isocrates, ad Callimachum, § 57.
[82] Iliad, i. 36.
[83] Ibid. vi. 273.
[84] Ibid. xiv. 159.
[85] Ibid. xiv. 175 f.
[86] The adulterers . . . come from men who care for their hair. Seneca in one of his diatribes (De Brevitate Vitae, xii. 3) asks ironically, ‘Who is not more sedulous about the adornment of his head than about its safety,’ and desires to know which one of the idlers in Rome would not rather the whole state be thrown into confusion than his own hair. The passage is interesting as showing what a cult of hair existed among men in the first century.
‘Quid? Illos otiosos vocas quibus apud tonsorem multae horae transmittuntur, dum decerpitur, si quid proxima nocte succrevit, dum de singulis capillis in consilium itur, dum aut disiecta coma restituitur aut deficiens hinc atque illinc in frontem compellitur? Quomodo irascuntur, si tonsor paulo neglegentior fuit, tanquam virum tonderet! Quomodo excandescunt si quid ex iuba sua decisum est, si quid extra ordinem iacuit, nisi omnia in anulos suos reciderunt! Quis est istorum qui non malit rem publicam turbari quam comam suam? qui non sollicitior sit de capitis sui decore quam de salute? . . .’
[87] Iliad, xi. 385.
[88] Aristophanes, Acharnians, 117 sqq.
[89] like Cleisthenes, the Timarchi, . . . dispose of their beauty. These men were selected, no doubt, as examples of evil and perverse morals from the fact that they played a conspicuous part, at least the latter, in political life. Timarchus was a rich man, and a supporter of Demosthenes. When Aeschines and Demosthenes returned from the celebrated embassy to Philip of Macedon in which they were colleagues, Demosthenes brought a formal charge of treason against Aeschines. The latter, in order to disconcert his adversary, brought an indictment against his friend and supporter, on the ground that he had committed criminal offences by his debased conduct, according to the laws of Athens which made certain offences penal. Aeschines won his case against Timarchus, in the celebrated speech which bears his name, and succeeded thereby in getting his enemy out of the way, and in making the task of Demosthenes more difficult. Demosthenes, however, won his case against Aeschines in the end, and the latter retired from public life. Both these men became the butt of the comic poets. Aristophanes in the Clouds (346 ff.) has the following witty dialogue:
Socrates. Have you ever seen a Cloud like a centaur or a pard, or wolf, or bull?
Strepsiades. Marry, I have, but what of that?
Socr. Learn that the Clouds assume whatever guise likes them best. Therefore if they chance to see a long-haired fop—one of those hirsute ‘slips of wildness’ such as the son of Xenophantus, in mockery of his lunes, they translate themselves into centaurs. . . . And just now catching sight of Cleisthenes (pointing to a member of the audience),—do you observe?—they took the guise of women.
Streps. (ecstatically prostrating himself before the Chorus) All hail to ye, then, Liege Ladies! . . . (Mitchell’s translation).
[90] Pherecydes. Diogenes Laertius tells us about this philosopher (Bk. I, 116-20), who was a pupil of Pittacus. The allusion here is to the story ‘that he died of a verminous disease, and that Pythagoras, who was present, came to see him and inquire how he was. Pherecydes would not let him come in, however, but thrust his finger through the doorway, and exclaimed, “My skin tells its own tale,” a phrase, says Diogenes, subsequently applied by the grammarians as equivalent to “getting worse”, although some wrongly understand it to mean “all is going well”. . . . Duris, in the second book of his Horae, gives the inscription on his tomb as follows:
All knowledge that a man may have had I;
Yet tell Pythagoras, were more thereby,
That first of Greeks is he; I speak no lie.’
(Diog. Laert., trans. Hicks, Loeb Library, vol. i, p. 125).
[91] Plato, Critias, 109 D; Leges, 677 B; Aristotle, Metaph. ii. 8. 1074ᵇ.
[92] Plato, Gorgias, 465 B.
[93] Od., iii. 267.
[94] sons of Taurus. The phrase ‘written at the time’, or, as Druon translates it, ‘under the reign of, the sons of Taurus,’ is obscure. Petavius reminds us of a Taurus who was consul with Florentius under the Emperors Constantine, Constantius, and Constans. It is obvious that Aurelian, ‘the better man’ mentioned in this passage, is the Osiris of the story, and ‘the inferior man’ Typho. That Aurelian had a son Taurus we know from Letter 31; he was consul in 428 (Socrates, vii. 29). He comes into this story under the name of Horus. It seems not improbable, as Crawford points out (Synesius the Hellene, p. 454), that the father of Aurelian, whose name is unknown, may also have been named ‘Taurus’. ‘The Riddle of the Wolf’ marks the end of the first part of the story, where it is alluded to as belonging to the mysteries that must not be revealed, even in the disguise of a fable. Plutarch, in Isis and Osiris, gives all the information known to Greek antiquity as to the symbolism of these names, which were identified by him in certain passages, as analogous to Greek conceptions, as in cap. 78, where he speaks of the Egyptian priests, hinting cautiously, and with the greatest reserve, at the functions of Osiris in the under-world, as similar to those of Dis and Pluto (Ἅιδου καὶ Πλούτωνος). In the same way Plutarch identifies Horus with Apollo, and Bacchus with Osiris. Osiris was the son of Helios, and Typho of Cronos, &c., &c. (cap. 12). Osiris, he tells us, was announced by an oracular voice, as born to be a beneficent monarch (μέγας βασιλεὺς εὐεργέτης Ὄσιρις γέγονε), and when he came to rule over the Egyptians, he civilized them not by the use of arms, but by persuasion, and by reason conjoined with song (μετ’ ᾠδῆς), and subdued them with the charms of every form of musical art (πάσης μουσικῆς, ibid. 13). Thus he seems to be to the Greeks identical with Dionysius. This account of the rule of Osiris in Plutarch has an unmistakable likeness to the opening passage in chapter twelve of this story, in which Synesius describes Osiris as, ‘a marvel ill-suited to this earth, one who at once began striving to banish the forces hostile to it, without employing any violence at all,’ but who ‘sacrificed to Persuasion, to the Muses and to the Graces, and made all willingly fall in with the law . . . he made it a point of honour to conquer the most shameless man by the gentleness of his mind, &c.’
It is difficult, in the face of this and other concordant passages, to resist the conclusion that Synesius had Plutarch’s essay in mind when he framed his story. Typho, in Plutarch’s version, is represented as laying snares for Osiris, and compassing his destruction. The name Typho, Plutarch tells us (cap. 62), signifies all that is perverse, preventive, and contrary, in the light of the Egyptian words that are used to designate him. But although Osiris and Typho are well and consistently chosen by Synesius for the purpose of his allegory, in that they represented, in Egyptian mythology, the powers of light and darkness, we cannot follow the historical side of the story at this distance of time with absolute certainty, for whom he meant to designate by Typho is still a moot question. Otto Seeck made out a strong case for identifying him with Caesarius, and this view, which has the endorsement of Bury, I am inclined to accept, if it is necessary to fix upon a historical personage; but it is of course possible that Typho in this story is merely symbolic of the evil political forces in general, which stood in the way of Aurelian, the friend of Synesius, whom he so much admired, and whom he has made the hero of his drama.
An analysis of the arguments advanced by Otto Seeck will be found in the appendix 27 to Bury's edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, vol. iii, p. 506. 'It had long been recognized', says Bury, 'that Egypt stood for the Empire, and Thebes for Constantinople; and the Praetorian Praefect Aurelian had been detected under the veil of Osiris. But no likely conjecture had been made as to the identity of Typhos, the wicked brother of Osiris. It was partly in consequence of this lacuna that the able attempt of Güldenpenning to reconstruct the history of the years A.D. 399 and 400, on the basis of the work of Synesius (compare my Later Roman Empire, i, p. 79 sqq.) did not carry complete conviction. But O. Seeck has recently made out a good case for the identity of Typhos, and interpreted the allegory more fully (Philologus, 52, p. 442 sqq., 1894).' Bury explains next that according to Seeck there can be no doubt that Taurus, father of Osiris and Typho, is the man who appears in the Consular Fasti of A.D. 361, who was quaestor in 353, and Praetorian Praefect in 355. He held this office (the μεγάλη ἀρχή of Synes. De Prov. c. 2, p. 1213) till 361, and presided at the Council of Ariminum (359). He then passes to Aurelian, whom Seeck describes as having built a church in 383, having in 393 become Praefect of Constantinople before Rufinus, and after the fall of Eutropius Praetorian Praefect of the East (399-400); and so on through his career, which witnessed the revolt of Gainas in 400, and his recall to the office of Praefect for the third time (402-404). Seeck has shown this by comparing Letters 31 and 38 of Synesius with the Cod. Th. 4, 2, 1, and 5, 1, 5. Now such being the history of Aurelian, Seeck explains the description of Osiris given on p. 1217 as ἐπιστάτης δορυφόρων γενόμενος καὶ ἀκοὰς πιστευθείς to stand for magister officiorum, and the word πολιαρχήσας to mean that he was subsequently Praefect of the city, &c., showing that the account given by Synesius tallies with what we know of the history of Aurelian. He observes also that what happened to Osiris in the story after his fall corresponds even more strikingly to that which happened to Aurelian, as we shall see in dealing with page 1252. But the identification of Osiris with Aurelian was never in any doubt, although Seeck and Güldenpenning have given corroborative evidence. We now come to the Emperor Arcadius, who, it is natural to suppose, would appear in the story. Seeck identifies him with the High Priest (Crawford, however, rejects this identification, cf. Synesius the Hellene, p. 456. 'The High Priest', he says, 'can be no other than S. Chrysostom', cp. Volkmann, p. 177, note). Is it not possible, on the other hand, that in this bold political squib, as Bury describes it, Synesius wishes from motives of policy to keep the Emperor entirely out of the narrative? We next come to the identification of Typho. As this is the most important part of Seeck's reconstruction, I will quote Bury's account of it: 'In the allegory, Typhos is in close alliance with the barbarian mercenaries, and instigates their attack on Thebes in order to overthrow his brother Osiris. When Osiris surrenders himself to the barbarian leader, Typhos urges that he should be put to death. Typhos then receives the kingdom and administers it tyrannically; nor is his position shaken by the fall of the barbarian leader. Before the first rise of Osiris to power he had filled a post which gave him patronage in distributing offices, the power of oppressing towns (p. 1217), and the duty of regulating measures in connexion with the payment of taxes in kind (p. 1219). These hints, taken along with the mention of torch-bearing attendants, suggest that the office was no less than that of Praetorian Prefect. It would follow that Typhos was Praetorian Prefect before 399, and again in 400.
'Eutropius had endeavoured to reduce the power of Praetorian Prefect of the East by making it a collegial office; and Eutychianus appears as holding that office (1) along with Caesarius while Eutropius was in power; (2) along with Aurelian 399-400; (3) along with Aurelian when he was restored 402. It may be assumed that he also held it between 400 and 402.
'It would follow that Caesarius, whom we find Praetorian Prefect from 396-8, and again in 400 and 401, was the prototype of Typhos, the son of Taurus and the brother of Aurelian. Some other points may confirm the conjecture. The tendency to Arianism, of which Typhos is accused, is illustrated by C. Th. 16, 5, 25, and the passion of Typhos for his wife by a notice in Sozomen, 9, 2. If Typhos is not meant for Caesarius it would seem that he must be purely fictitious.’
It would be interesting to know what part the Empress Eudoxia played in all this. Bury considers that there was a close political union between Eudoxia and Aurelian, in which case an empress of German origin must have allied herself with a statesman whose policy was anti-German.
Volkmann held the opinion that Aurelian, as the result of some court intrigue or in some other irregular way, had a brother who was the original of the Typho in this story. This view is rejected by Crawford (p. 459), as also by Miss Gardner, as resting purely on surmise. Quite apart from the improbability of such a person escaping the notice of the historians of the period, it seems an explanation too obviously derived from the evidence of the story itself. This theory, however, was held by so great an authority as Krabinger. (v. Volkmann, p. 72, note). If this were the case it would make Synesius history perfectly consistent, but on the evidence before us the view of Seeck seems to be the most plausible one.
The point is an important one; for if Synesius did not adhere to history in this case of the relationship of the two men in question, there is no reason to suppose that he may not have recorded other imaginary details in his story.
[95] Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 247 C.
[96] Empedocles, Fragment 121 (Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker⁴, i. [Berl. 1922], p. 269.)
[97] the fable is the child’s treatise on philosophy. Cf. Olympiodorus (In. Plat. Phaed., D. ρλ′, 237, ed. Norvin): Διὰ τί μύθοις χρῆται ὁ Πλάτων ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀποδείξεωσιν; ἢ ὅτι, φησί, φιλόμυθος ἡ ψυχὴ ὡς πρώτη εἰκὼν καὶ ἔξω τοῦ ὡς ἀληθῶς ὄντος γενομένη.
Plato, in the Republic, has a good deal to say concerning the influence of legends upon the minds of children, as, for instance, the remarks of Socrates (p. 377 A). ‘You know, I said, that we begin by telling children stories which, though not wholly destitute of truth, are in the main fictitious. . . . You know also that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed . . .
Let them (i.e. mothers and nurses) fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their hands.' Plato is frequently recurring to the value of first impressions on the mind of the child, and insists that knowledge in the first stages should not come to them through compulsion. In Republic, p. 536 D, he says that 'Solon was under a delusion when he said that a man, when he grows old, may learn many things—for he can no more learn much than he can run much . . . and, therefore, calculation and geometry. and all the other elements of instruction which are a preparation for dialectic, should be presented to the mind in childhood; not, however, under any notion of forcing our system of education . . . Then . . . do not use compulsion, but let early education be a sort of amusement.' All this is equally relevant to the passage at the end of page 1236, where Synesius speaks of the value of early education. It might be argued in this connexion that Plato regarded all men as 'children of an older growth', for when he has exhausted all the arguments that his dialectic method suggests, he generally turns to the myth, and tells us some legend before abandoning the subject.
[98] The elder brother Typho. Plutarch, in his Isis and Osiris, explains the symbolism of Typho in the following words: 'In the soul, reason and that understanding which is the guide and mistress of all the best things is Osiris . . . in an opposing sense the passionate, violent, unreasonable, brutish, rash and foolish part of the soul is Typho' (Is. et Os. p. 371 A–B). Again, he alludes to Osiris as representing the beginning and principle, and Isis that which receives. Horus is the compound of both. It would seem also, he says, that the poet Hesiod, when he avers that all things in the first instance were Chaos, Earth, Tartarus, and Love, has no other foundation than the significations of these names, meaning by the Earth Isis, by Love Osiris, and by Tartarus Typho (ibid. p. 374 C).
[99] Iliad, xviii. 104.
[100] Cf. Herodotus, ii. 143.
[101] There is a sacred mountain, &c. The geography of the valley of the Nile near Karnak, and the remains of the ancient city of Thebes, does not help us much to reconstitute the picture that Synesius draws here. The valley of the Nile is over six miles wide at Luxor, the little town that has grown up on what was once the southern suburb of the ancient city of Thebes, about 1,400 years B.C.; and the range of mountains on one’s left hand when looking down stream is at least five miles from the river. There cannot be said to be ‘a mountain’ near Thebes, as Synesius puts it, for it is a high range of cliffs, a sort of palisade that rises abruptly from the flat plain, and in which are the celebrated ‘Tombs of the Kings’. On our right hand, still looking down the river, and at a distance of some miles from it, there are ranges of lower hills. What the ‘two opposite mountains’ are, it would be difficult to say; but the distance between any two elevations chosen on different sides of the Nile in the neighbourhood of Thebes would be some seven miles, and such a distance does not tally with the description here. The ancient town of Thebes, with its hundred gates, was said to be about fourteen miles in circumference, and lay on both sides of the river. The legend of its great magnitude has been rather confirmed by archaeologists. Even in the days of Strabo, long after its decline, it seems to have shown remains of outer walls of some eight miles in extent. ‘Vestiges of its magnitude still exist’, says Strabo (xvii. i. 46), ‘which extend to a length of eighty stadia. The site is at present given over to villages. That part of it in which the city lies is in Arabia, another, in which is the Memnonium, is on the other side of the river (i.e. the left side, always looking down). Here are the two colossal figures near one another, each consisting of a single stone.’ The Colossi which Strabo mentions are still standing, although he speaks of one of them in his time as having suffered from an earthquake, which threw down the upper part.
Diodorus Siculus speaks of the city of Thebes as having been embellished by the King Busiris and his eight sons. According to him it was called by the Egyptians themselves the great city of Zeus (Διὸς πόλιν τὴν μεγάλην), and only by the Greeks, Thebes. It is not clear what Egyptian divinity he means to imply by Zeus. He goes on to speak of the vast extent of the walls enclosing the city that extended to 140 stadia, and of the great palaces, and magnificent temples, and stately shrines which adorned it in marvellous fashion. As to the hundred gates of which Homer speaks, he tells us that some are of opinion that these were not gates but vestibules of temples. All this, of course, was legendary in his time. The great Thebes seems to have disappeared about the time of Cambyses. There seems to be little doubt that Synesius had never visited the site, and the picture that he draws is a purely imaginary one. It is interesting as showing how little known this part of the valley of the Nile must have been, even at Alexandria, in the fourth century. (See Diod. Sic., Lib. I, cap. xv.)
[102] filled with intelligible beauty which is mind. This Platonic conception, developed in the Phaedrus, is reflected by Plotinus, (Enn. i. 6. 9): ‘Newly awakened it is all too feeble to bear the ultimate splendour. Therefore the Soul must be trained. . . . So, mounting, the soul will come first to the Intellectual-Principle and survey all the beautiful Ideas in the Supreme and will avow that this is Beauty. . . . What is beyond the Intellectual-Principle we affirm to be the nature of Good radiating Beauty before it.’ (Stephen Mackenna, i, pp. 88 f.)
[103] another and super-cosmic race of gods. This same idea of the super-cosmic gods Synesius touches on in Dreams (cap. ii). Ps.-Iamblichus in his tractate on the Mysteries, a work written in answer to Porphyry’s letter to the Egyptian priest Anebo, and which is in some sort a defence of the spirituality of the Egyptian religion against Porphyry’s accusations of materialism, tries to show that the gods are indeed classified according to higher and lower ranks, but at the same time are spiritually one. In sect. I, chap. 19 he says that ‘The intellectual conversion of secondary to primary natures, and the gift of the same essence and power imparted by the primary to the secondary Gods, connects the synod of them in indissoluble union.’ (I quote Thomas Taylor’s translation, p. 73.) ‘Since, however, the order of all the Gods is profoundly united, and the first and second genera of them, . . . are consubsistent in unity, and also every thing which is in them is one, —hence the beginning, middles, and ends in them are consubsistent according to the one itself. . . . From this cause, therefore, the perfectly incorporeal Gods are united to the sensible Gods that have bodies (ibid., pp. 74, 75). From the sensible gods, Iamblichus passes to the demons. He tells us that demons are far distant from both the visible and intelligible gods from their very essence. The demons, it is true, are invisible, and cannot be objects of sense perception, but they do not, like the gods, transcend rational knowledge and concrete intelligence.
In Dreams also Synesius speaks of gods who are within the confines of the universe, and who may therefore be propitiated by offerings of herbs, stones, and so forth, as distinguished from gods who are without the confines of the universe. Synesius, says Petavius, indicates here three grades of gods: the lowest those to whom the management of the lower world is attributed and who fulfil a double function, one an active and busy one, when they have time to administer the affairs of this world; the other a happy and quiet one, when they lift themselves up to the contemplation of the sublime divinity. The second grade contains the medial gods, to whom I understand the phrase 'the hypercosmic race of gods' (γένος θεῶν ὑπερκόσμιον) to refer to, who do not participate in the management of affairs below; and these have a third divinity above them whom he calls the Source (πηγήν), in other words, the fountain of the divine essence.
[104] those who are gods by nature. To actually become a god of some sort after death, seems to have been the Neoplatonic conception, alluded to by Synesius in Dio (1140 B), although it is doubtful to what extent the language may be figurative. In this passage he seems to use the phrase in the more strictly Platonic sense of a nature beloved by the gods, i.e. θεοφιλής as in Plato, Euthyphro, passim.
[105] fountain-head. This word (πηγή) is used first in Aeschylus in the sense of the origin of good and beautiful things, &c. v. Persians, 743.
[106] self-concentration. Plotinus is continually asserting the power of the soul to turn itself within, as a spectator of its own conceptions and emotions, as for instance in Enn. v. 8. 10: '. . . no longer is there a spectator outside gazing on an outside spectacle; the clear-eyed hold the vision within themselves, though, for the most part, they have no idea that it is within but look towards it as to something beyond them. . . . All that one sees as a spectacle is still external; one must bring the vision within and see no longer in that mode of separation but as we know ourselves . . . it is but finding the strength to see divinity within.' (Mackenna, vol. iv, pp. 85 f.)
[107] action generated in their contemplation. Contemplation, in the case of the gods, was identified with action. It was by their contemplative power, according to Synesius’ conception, that they generated the world, and kept successively regenerating it in their visits from time to time, as he tells us a little farther on. The force that descended in this way from one rank of deities to another, was a sort of emanation from the fountain head which seems to have become feebler and feebler, as it approached the realm of matter, and this necessitated the actual descent from time to time of the beings who were nearer the source.
[108] Plato, Symposium, 202 E.
[109] that does the demon. There is a good deal of confusion in the conception of demons. The demon in the time of Plato is represented as an intermediate being between gods and men. Socrates, in the Symposium, represents Eros as being, not a god but a demon, and as therefore partaking of the nature of both god and man. The demon was not understood as maleficent. Even Ps.-Iamblichus represents the demons as ministers of the gods, as in the following passage from the Mysteries. ‘In short, that which is divine is of a ruling nature and presides over the different orders of beings; but that which is daemoniacal is of a ministrant nature, and receives whatever the Gods may announce, promptly employing manual operation, as it were, in things which the Gods intellectually perceive, wish, and command. The Gods, therefore, are liberated from the powers which verge to generation; but daemons are not entirely purified from these’ (I. 20, Taylor, p. 78). He appears to give them functions somewhat resembling those of the demiurges in Plato’s Timaeus, but in this story Synesius brings them in as purely maleficent, and this conception grew in the fourth and fifth centuries, and was no doubt strongly affected by Christianity, which in the Middle Ages had come to recognize the existence of vast tribes of evil spirits.
[110] marionettes moved by strings. Puppet shows are alluded to by Philo in his indictment against Flaccus (Yonge trans., iv. 68): ‘And at times they employed poets who composed farces, and managers of puppet shows, displaying their natural aptitude for every kind of disgraceful employment, though they were very slow at learning anything that was creditable, but very acute, and quick, and ready at learning anything of an opposite nature.’ The passages describing the traits of Typho's character in this story are somewhat reminiscent of the passage above.
[111] The opening words in this chapter occur in Pindar, fragment 71 (Christ, ed. 2, p. 284).
[112] The idea of divine beings coming down at intervals, and when necessity urges them, is similar to that expressed in Synesius' indictment of Andronicus (ep. 57): 'I reserve to myself the right of judging when times and seasons are opportune, so that when it is possible I may come down, that I may do some great good when the chance arises. Thus does God Himself govern His own kingdom.'
Cf. Aristotle in the following: ὥσπερ γὰρ ὅταν κινήσῃ τι τὸ ὕδωρ ἢ τὸν ἀέρα, τοῦθ' ἕτερον ἐκίνησε, καὶ παυσαμένου ἐκείνου, συμβαίνει τὴν τοιαύτην κίνησιν προϊέναι μέχρι τινός, τοῦ κινήσαντος οὐ παρόντος, οὕτως οὐδὲν κωλύει κίνησίν τινα καὶ αἴσθησιν ἀφικνεῖσθαι πρὸς τὰς ψυχὰς τὰς ἐνυπνιαζούσας. (De Divinatione per Somnum, 464ᵃ.)
The simile of the marionettes occurs also in the pseudo-Aristotelian De Mundo, 398ᵇ: 'Ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ οἱ νευροσπάσται μίαν μήρινθον ἐπισπασάμενοι ποιοῦσι καὶ αὐχένα κινεῖσθαι καὶ χεῖρα τοῦ ζῴου . . . οὕτως οὖν καὶ ἡ θεία φύσις ἀπό τινος ἁπλῆς κινήσεως τοῦ πρώτου τὴν δύναμιν εἰς τὰ ξυνεχῆ δίδωσι . . . μέχρι ἂν διὰ τοῦ παντὸς διεξέλθῃ.'
[113] Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 122.
a sacred race of heroes. Ps.-Iamblichus (Myst. I. 3, p. 24, T. Taylor): 'I shall likewise say the same thing to you, concerning the more excellent genera that follow the Gods, I mean daemons, heroes, and undefiled souls. For it is necessary to understand respecting these, that there is always in them one definite reason of essence, and to remove from them the indefiniteness and instability of the human condition.' It will be seen that Iamblichus speaks of demons as beneficent, placing them before heroes, who in their turn are put before purified souls of ordinary men. In this work of Synesius, notably in the passage before us, the heroes are represented as a well-intentioned but feeble race, very different from the conceptions of Theseus and Heracles that prevailed in the golden days of Greek religion. On the other hand the demons are here represented purely as maleficent. There seems to have been then a time when the conception of 'demon' was used for good and evil spirits side by side.
[114] This is the greatest of struggles. All this account of the besieging of the soul is taken from Plato's Republic (Bk. VIII, p. 559); the idea of the demons is, however, that of Synesius. ‘And as in the city like was helping like, and the change was affected by an alliance from without assisting one division of the citizens, so too the young man is changed by a class of desires coming from without to assist the desires within him, that which is akin and alike again helping that which is akin and alike.’ Again, on pages 572, 573, still speaking of the soul of the young man, which he represents as in the state of siege, he continues: ‘As soon as these dire magicians and tyrant makers find that they are losing hold on him, they contrive to implant in him a master passion . . . and when his other lusts amid clouds of incense and perfumes and garlands and wines, and all the pleasures of a dissolute life, now let loose, come buzzing around him . . . then at last this lord of the soul, having Madness for the captain of his guard, breaks out into a frenzy; and if he finds in himself any good opinions . . . to these better principles he puts an end.’
[115] the gods are spectators of these noble contests. Here, again, he is still following the Republic, p. 580. ‘Come then, I say, and as the general umpire in theatrical contests proclaims the result do you also decide who in your opinion is first in the scale of happiness and who second.’
[116] admit the influxes from the demons. The following passages from Olympiodorus (Comment. in Plat. Phaed.) are interesting as showing how the functions of the demons had been classified in the fifth century. The pages referred to are those of Norvin’s edition:
‘Ὅτι γένη δαιμόνων διάφορα. ὑπέστρωται γὰρ τοῖς ἐγκοσμίοις θεοῖς τὸ μὲν δαιμόνιον γένος κατὰ τὸ ἓν τῶν θεῶν ὃ δὴ καὶ καλεῖται ἑνιαῖον καὶ θεῖον δαιμόνων γένος· τὸ δὲ κατὰ τὸν νοῦν τὸν ἐξηρτημένον τοῦ θεοῦ, ὃ καλεῖται νοερόν· τὸ δὲ κατὰ τὴν ψυχήν, ὃ καλεῖται λογικόν· τὸ δὲ κατὰ τὴν φύσιν, ὅπερ ὀνομάζεται φυσικόν· τὸ δὲ κατὰ τὸ σῶμα, ὃ δὴ καλεῖται σωματοειδές· τὸ δὲ κατὰ τὴν ὕλην, τοῦτο δὲ ὑλαῖον ἐπιφημίζεται· (p. 230).
‘Ὅτι καὶ ἄλλως οἱ μὲν εἰσιν οὐράνιοι, οἱ δὲ αἰθέριοι, οἱ δὲ ἀέριοι, οἱ δ’ ὑδραῖοι, οἱ δὲ χθόνιοι, οἱ δὲ ὑποχθόνιοι, αὕτη δὲ ἡ διαίρεσις δηλονότι ἐκ τῶν τοῦ παντὸς εἴληπται μερίδων· ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν ἀερίων ἄρχονται συνυφίστασθαι οἱ ἄλογοι δαίμονες· διὸ καὶ τὸ λόγιόν φησιν·
ἠερίων ἐλάτειρα κυνῶν, χθονίων τε καὶ ὑγρῶν.’
Διὰ τοῦτο καὶ οἱ ἔνυλοι δαίμονες παρ’ ἑαυτοῖς κατέχειν τὰς ψυχὰς ἐπιχειροῦσιν . . . (p. 94).
. . . οἱ δαίμονες οἱ ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ προιόντες οἱ μὲν κατὰ τὴν θεότητα θεῖοι γίγνονται, οἱ δὲ κατὰ τὴν ὕλην ὕλης ἔφοροι, καὶ οἱ μέσοι νοεροί, φυσικοί, σωματικοί . . . ἐπιστῆσαι δὲ χρὴ, ὅτι καὶ θεῶν γένη τοσαῦτα διῄρηται κατὰ τὰς αὐτὰς ἰδιότητας (p. 139).
Ὅτι καὶ ἄλλον τρόπον συνδιῄρηνται τοῖς ἀγελάρχαις θεοῖς οἱ δαίμονες, οὐράνιοι, αἰθέριοι, ἀέριοι, ὑδραῖοι, χθόνιοι, ὑποχθόνιοι.
Ὅτι ὄντων ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ τῶν ἄλλοτε ἄλλως ἐχόντων καὶ τῶν ταῖς ὑπερουσίοις ἑνάσι συνημμένων, δεῖ καὶ μέσον τι γένος εἶναι, τὸ οὔτε θεοῦ ἐξημμένον ἐν συναρτήματι οὔτε ἄλλοτε ἄλλως ἔχον κατὰ τὸ χεῖρον καὶ τὸ κρεῖττον, ἀλλὰ τέλειον ἀεὶ καὶ τῆς οἰκείας ἀρετῆς οὐκ ἀφιστάμενον, ἀμετάβλητον μὲν, οὐ συνημμένον δὲ τῷ ὑπερουσίῳ· τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον τὸ γένος δαιμόνιον (p. 230).
[117] Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 90 A.
[118] They attack by outside means when means within fail them. Plato in the Republic, p. 560, in describing the struggles in the young man’s soul when besieged by the evil forces of old desires and associates, puts a similar case, ‘At length they seize upon the citadel of the young man’s soul which they perceive to be void of . . . fair pursuits and true words, which make their abode in the minds of men who are dear to the gods, and are their best guardians and sentinels. . . . False and boastful conceits and phrases mount upwards and take their place . . . and if any help be sent by his friends . . . shut the gate of the king’s fastness; and they will neither allow the embassy itself to enter, nor if private advisers offer the fatherly counsel of the aged will they listen to them or receive them. There is a battle, and they gain the day. . . .’ It will be observed that Plato speaks of evil forces only, although more or less personifying them by representing a siege of the soul. Synesius, taking up the same simile, has made the protagonists of evil the demons of matter, compare Hymn III, where he prays to be saved from the ‘soul-devouring hound of matter’.
[119] able to save yourself by your own resources. Cudworth (Intellectual System, vol. i, p. 10) quotes Josephus (Antiq. Iudaicae, Lib. XIII, cap. 5, sec. 9) as giving the doctrine of the pharasaic sect amongst the Jews in this respect in the following words: ‘That some things, and not all, were the effects of fate, but some things were left in men’s own power and liberty.’ He further quotes Plutarch (De Placitis Philosoph., Lib. I. 27, p. 884): Πλάτων ἐγκρίνει μὲν τὴν εἱμαρμένην ἐπὶ τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων ψυχῶν καὶ βίων, συνεισάγει δὲ καὶ τὴν παρ’ ἡμᾶς αἰτίαν. ‘Plato inserts something of fate into human lives and actions, and he joins with it liberty of will also.’ ‘He doth indeed’, continues Cudworth, ‘suppose human souls to have within themselves the causes of their own changes to a better or worse state, and everywhere declares God to be blameless for their evils; and yet he somewhere makes the three fatal sisters notwithstanding, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, to be busy about them also.’
[120] Plato, Phaedo, 85 D.
[121] Plato, Repub. 498 B.
[122] Early education. The whole subject of early education is gone into by Plato in Laws, pp. 809–10. He says, for instance, ‘A fair time for a boy of ten years old to spend in letters is three years; the age of thirteen is the proper time for him to begin to handle the lyre. . . . Hear, however, first of all what the young aught to learn in the early years of life: . . . they ought to be occupied with their letters until they are able to read and write; but the acquisition of perfect beauty and quickness in writing, if nature has not stimulated them to acquire these accomplishments in the given number of years, they should let alone.’ The ‘Athenian Stranger’ in the Dialogue goes on to discuss the practice of learning poets by heart, or making compendiums of their works, &c. In page 819 of the same Dialogue he recurs to his favourite idea of teaching children through their games: ‘All free men, I can see, should learn as much of these branches of knowledge as every child in Egypt is taught when he learns the alphabet. In that country arithmetical games have been invented for the use of mere children, which they learn as a pleasure and amusement. They have to distribute apples and garlands for a larger and sometimes for a lesser number of persons. . . Another method of amusing them is to distribute vessels of gold, brass, silver, and the like . . . and in this way make more intelligible to their pupils the arrangement and movements of armies and expeditions . . . and again in measurements of things . . . they free us from that natural ignorance which is so ludicrous and disgraceful. . . . I, like yourself, my dear Cleinias, have late in life heard of our ignorance in these matters; to me we appear to be more like pigs than men, and I am quite ashamed, not only of myself, but of all Hellenes.' It is possible that Synesius was thinking of this passage in speaking of the attention that Osiris, his Egyptian hero in the Tale, paid to early education. Another example of Plato's views on the subject may be found in the first book of the Laws, p. 643: 'The most important part of education is right training in the nursery. The soul of the child in his play should be guided to the love of that sort of excellence in which, when he grows up to manhood, he will have to be perfected. . . . We are not speaking of education in the narrower sense, but of that other education in virtue from youth upwards, which makes a man eagerly pursue the ideal perfection of citizenship, and teaches him how rightly to rule and how to obey. This is the only education which, upon our view, deserves the name.' Again in Book II, p. 653. 'Now I mean by education that training which is given by suitable habits to the first instincts of virtue in children; when pleasure, and friendship, and pain, and hatred, are rightly implanted in souls not yet capable of understanding the nature of them, and who find them, after they have attained reason, to be in harmony with her. This harmony of the soul, taken as a whole, is virtue; but the particular training in respect of pleasure and pain which leads you always to hate what you ought to hate, and love what you ought to love, from the beginning of life to the end, may be separated off; and in my view will be rightly called education.'
Turning now again to Book I, p. 641, we find the same note quite as definitely expressed, 'But if you ask what is the good of education in general, the answer is easy—that education makes good men, and that good men act nobly, and conquer their enemies in battle, because they are good. Education certainly gives victory, although victory sometimes produces forgetfulness of education; for many have grown insolent from victory in war . . . and many a victory has been, and will be, suicidal to the victors; but education is never suicidal.' How much the conception of education as a political end is in Plato's mind may be gathered from a passage in the Republic, in Bk. VI, p. 498, where Socrates, declaring that States should pursue philosophy, continues: 'At present the students of philosophy are quite young, beginning when they are hardly past childhood.' [Cf. Synesius, supra, 'the child's philosophy'.] In childhood and youth their study, and what philosophy they learn, should be suited to their tender years: during this period, while they are growing up towards manhood, the chief and special care should be given to their bodies, that they may have them to use in the service of philosophy; as life advances and the intellect begins to mature, let them increase the gymnastics of the soul; but when the strength of our citizens fails and is past civil and military duties, then let them range at will, and engage in no serious labour, as we intend them to live happily here, and to crown this life with a similar happiness in another.' All this is interesting as showing the conception of Plato, that the real object in education was a political one, and that the developed mind of the philosopher was inseparable from the duties towards the State. Synesius, however, although he was forced by his destiny to become a shining example of the Platonic ideal, continually complains of political necessity. But here again he is thoroughly in the Platonic tradition, for elsewhere Plato admits that the true philosopher will only take up the burden of government regretfully.
[123] all education as a fountain-head of virtue. The ideas of Synesius on education, as I have already pointed out, seem to have come from his reading of Plato, the intellectual side being inseparable from the moral. Compare the passage in Timaeus, p. 87, when after representing madness and ignorance as diseases of the mind, due to a bad condition of the body, he adds: 'Further, when to this evil constitution of body evil forms of government are added and evil discourses are uttered in private as well as in public, and no sort of instruction is given in youth to cure these evils, then all of us who are bad become bad from two causes which are entirely beyond our control. In such cases the planters are to blame rather than the plants, the educators rather than the educated.'
[124] the one virtue of a woman, &c. The conception of the proper sphere and conduct of women would not seem to have changed from the time of Homer to the time of Synesius, if we are to take his statements as anything but a reflection of his favourite Greek authors. Certainly here he is reminiscent of the famous passage in the funeral oration of Pericles (Thuc. ii. 45): 'And if I am to speak of womanly virtue to those of you who will henceforth be widows, let me sum them up in one short admonition: To a woman not to show more weakness than is natural to her sex is a great glory, and not to be talked about for good or for evil among men.' Substantially the same point of view may be found in Xenophon, as in Oeconomicus (cap. 7), where Isomachus describes how in the course of the conversations he had with his young newly married wife, he took care to impress upon her that her sphere was within the precincts of the house rather than outside, to be the steward of the possessions within doors, and to direct the servants from there.
Plato is a decided cross-current to the conceptions of the sphere of women that existed in Athens at his time, and this is perhaps the only point in which Synesius does not seem to have followed his master. Plato, as we see in the Republic and elsewhere, was what we should call to-day an advanced feminist, and made an eloquent plea for the equality of the sexes, both in education and in their occupying public functions, and so forth (Rep. v. 451, 456; Laws, vii. 805). But even Plato echoes the conservative tradition in the Meno, 71 E: 'It is a man's virtue to be capable of managing the affairs of the city, and in managing them to benefit his friends and injure his enemies. . . . The woman's virtue is to take good care of her house and to preserve the things within.' This is the same language that Synesius employs in De Regno, cap. xiv, q.v. Synesius would seem to have been anything but a feminist, in spite of the fact that his mind had been largely formed by the great Hypatia. Aristotle speaks in the purely conventional strain in the Politics, 1277 B, in which he alludes to the different spheres of the sexes as follows: 'For a man would be thought a coward if he had no more courage than a courageous woman, and a woman would be thought loquacious if he imposed no more restraint on her conversation than the good man; and indeed their part of the management of a household is different, for the duty of the one is to acquire, and of the other to preserve.' It will be remembered how scandalized Synesius shows himself in the third Letter at his niece driving in a mule-cart through the crowded Forum, although she was both betrothed and in mourning. Plutarch, on the other hand, commences his essay on The Virtues of Women, with the following observations: 'Concerning virtue in women, O Clea, I do not hold the same opinion as Thucydides, for he gives the first praise to the woman concerning whom there is the least conversation amongst those without her doors, either in praise or in blame of her, for he thinks that the repute of a good woman ought to be secluded in her house with her person, and should not walk abroad. But Gorgias seems to me to put the case more happily when he demands that the good fame of the woman should be known to many, not her person.' Coming down to the days of Philo, we find him expressing the classic conception again, as in this passage in the Special Laws, III. 31, § 171: 'Let no woman busy herself about those things which are beyond the province of household management, but let her cultivate solitude; let her not be seen to be going about like one who walks the streets in the sight of other men, except when it is necessary for her to go to the temple, if she has any proper regard for herself; and even then let her not go at noon when the market is full, but after the greater part of the people have returned home; like a free-born woman, a real and true citizen, performing her vows and her sacrifices in tranquillity so as to avert evils and to receive blessings.'
Athenaeus in the Deipnosophists, Bk. XII, c. 20, tells an interesting story concerning regulations that were made in one Greek town at least: 'Phylarchus, in the twenty-fifth book of his history, tells us that there was a law at Syracuse, that the women there should not wear gold ornaments, nor garments embroidered with flowers, nor purple-bordered robes, unless they chose to profess themselves outlaws to society; . . . and also that a freewoman was not to walk abroad when the sun had set, . . . and even by day they were not allowed to go out without the authority of the officials who supervised them and without one slave following them.' ὅτι παρὰ Συρακοσίοις νόμος ἦν τὰς γυναῖκας μὴ κοσμεῖσθαι χρυσῷ, μηδ' ἀνθινὰ φορεῖν, μηδ' ἐσθῆτας ἔχειν πορφυρᾶς, ἐὰν μή τις αὐτῶν συγχωρῇ ἑταίρα εἶναι κοινή, . . . καὶ τὴν ἐλευθέραν μὴ ἐκπορεύεσθαι ἡλίου δεδυκότος, ἐὰν μὴ μοιχευθησομένην. ἐκωλύετο δὲ καὶ ἡμέρας ἐξιέναι ἄνευ τῶν γυναικονόμων ἀκολουθούσης αὐτῇ μιᾶς θεραπαινίδος. He next proceeds to tell us how Phylarchus in describing the Sybarites, who gave way to every sort of luxury, says that they forbid women to be invited to banquets, and even that if they are invited to festivities of a sacred nature, they must be asked a year before the event, in order that they might have sufficient time to get ready their dresses and other adornments that they should be worthy of the occasion. When all these conditions had been fulfilled they might come to the sacred banquet, to which alone they were eligible.
[125] await life patiently, as a portion to be served at the dinner-table. This very naïve allusion to the manners that were in vogue at banquets in the time of Synesius is interesting. One is reminded of the symposium described by Lucian (q.v.), in which a torrent of chaff and witticisms are mingled with angry arguments, and finally terminate in blows and a free fight. He says at the end: ‘thus the banquet was broken up, passing in the end out of tears again into laughter. The wounded who were prostrate were carried away in sorry plight, and especially the old man Zenothemis, with one hand holding on to his nose, and another on to his eye, shouting out that he was dying with pain. . . . This, my fair Philo, was the end of our banquet, concerning which it were well to quote that passage from the tragedy:
The demons take many shapes,
And the gods bring many things unexpectedly to pass,
And still the hoped-for is not fulfilled.
This much have I learned now, that it is not safe for the untutored to dine with such wise men as these.’
Petronius, in the famous Saturae, 66, has a description of a banquet in the house of Trimalchio, the rich freedman, which is worth reading if only for the picture he gives of the manners of the time, which was that of the Emperor Nero. One or two incidents at the feast are rather in the same line of manners as that described here by Synesius. ‘I ate a lot of the tarts,’ says one of the guests, in describing another banquet which he has just come from, ‘and gave myself such a soaking of honey. Pease and lupines were handed, a choice of nuts and an apple each. I took two myself and I have got them here tied up in my napkin; for if I do not bring some present back for my pet slave boy, there will be trouble. Oh! yes, my wife reminds me . . . pickled olives were brought round in a dish too, and some greedy creatures took three handfuls. For we had let the ham go.’
Juvenal (Satire V) describes his master of the banquet, Virro, as having all the best dishes served to himself, and the inferior ones to his clients to whom he is giving a dinner. ‘Virro is served with a lamprey, the finest that Sicilian waters can purvey, . . . for you is reserved an eel, first cousin to a water-snake’ (lines 99–103). . . . ‘Before the guests will be placed toadstools of a doubtful quality, before my lord, a noble mushroom, such a one as Claudius ate before eating that mushroom of his wife’s—after which he ate nothing more’ (146–8).
The comparison of life to a banquet was already in the fourth century an old literary tradition. Cf. Nock, Sallustius (p. xxviii), who regards it as characteristic of the ‘diatribe’. He quotes the following:
‘cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis?’ Lucretius (iii. 938): Teles . . . himself says, ‘I leave life as if it were a banquet’ (p. 16. 2, ed. Hense).
Athenaeus (Lib. X, cap. 18) quotes Aeschylus, in his ‘Phineus’ as follows:
Καὶ ψευδόδειπνα πολλὰ μαργώσης γνάθου ἐρρυσίαζον στόματος ἐν πρώτῃ χαρᾷ.
In cap. 17 he complains that those who give banquets in Alexandria shout aloud and heap execrations on the cup-bearers and slaves: κεκράγασι, βλασφημοῦσι τὸν οἰνοχόον, τὸν διάκονον, τὸν μάγειρον . . . καὶ οὐχ οἷον οἱ κεκλημένοι μετὰ πάσης ἀηδίας δειπνοῦσιν, ἀλλὰ κἂν τύχῃ θυσία τις οὖσα, παρακαλυψάμενος ὁ θεὸς οἰχήσεται καταλιπὼν οὐ μόνον τὸν οἶκον, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἅπασαν.
[126] Has not your brother had a piece of good luck? A similar witticism will be found in Macrobius, Saturnalia, Lib. II, cap. 2, § 8. ‘Eustathius deinde: Publius Mucium in primis malivolum cum vidisset solito tristiorem, “Aut Mucio”, inquit, “nescio quid incommodi accessit, aut nescio cui aliquid boni.”’
[127] Plato, Alcibiades, ii, 150 D f.
[128] Osiris . . . gave himself up, &c. Synesius speaks of Aurelian’s (Osiris’) conduct as if it were a case of voluntary self-sacrifice. Zosimus, Sozomen, and Socrates seem to know nothing of this. As to the chivalrous conduct of Gainas, the Gothic general, Grützmacher (pp. 48–9) calls attention to the fact that it was only owing to the intercession of St. John Chrysostom that Gainas was contented to exact no more than the deposition and banishment from court of the three statesmen, Aurelian the Consul, Saturninus the Magister militum, and Johannes the Comes. ‘Synesius’, says Grützmacher, ‘has certainly stated the case incorrectly in describing Gainas as a philanthropic and high-minded Barbarian, and in laying the whole blame on Caesarius. All the other writers who give an account of these events make the bold and ambitious Goth, the ally and fellow-worker with Tribigild, answerable for the menace to the capital, and we must accept their evidence. Cf. Zosimus, v. 13 ff. p. 230; Socrates, vi. 6, Migne, P.G. 67. 676 ff.; Sozomen, viii, 4, Migne, P.G. 67. 1521; Philostorgius, xi, 8, Migne, P.G. 65. 601 ff.’ He furthermore tells us, on the authority of Socrates (vi. 6), that Arcadius was obliged by Gainas to take an oath not to lay an ambush against him, and that this promise was extorted from him by a threat. He acceded to it in order to save the capital from being sacked by the Gothic army. Gibbon describes the surrender of Aurelian, the Osiris of the story, and Saturninus his colleague, who is not mentioned in it, with his accustomed dramatic power (Decline and Fall, iii. 371, ed. Bury). I cannot do better than to quote his words: ‘While this domestic revolution was transacted, Gainas openly revolted from his allegiance; united his forces, at Thyatira in Lydia, with those of Tribigild; and still maintained his superior ascendant over the rebellious leader of the Ostrogoths. The confederate armies advanced, without resistance, to the streights of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus; and Arcadius was instructed to prevent the loss of his Asiatic dominions by resigning his authority and his person to the faith of the Barbarians. The church of the holy martyr Euphemia, situate on a lofty eminence near Chalcedon, was chosen for the place of the interview. Gainas bowed, with reverence, at the feet of the emperor, whilst he required the sacrifice of Aurelian and Saturninus, two ministers of consular rank; and their naked necks were exposed, by the haughty rebel, to the edge of the sword, till he condescended to grant them a precarious and disgraceful respite. The Goths, according to the terms of the agreement, were immediately transported from Asia into Europe; and their victorious chief, who accepted the title of master-general of the Roman armies, soon filled Constantinople with his troops, and distributed among his dependants the honours and rewards of the empire. In his early youth, Gainas had passed the Danube as a suppliant and a fugitive; his elevation had been the work of valour and fortune; and his indiscreet, or perfidious, conduct was the cause of his rapid downfall. Notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of the archbishop, he importunately claimed, for his Arian sectaries, the possession of a peculiar church; and the pride of the Catholics was offended by the public toleration of heresy. Every quarter of Constantinople was filled with tumult and disorder; and the Barbarians gazed with such ardour on the rich shops of the jewellers, and the tables of the bankers, which were covered with gold and silver, that it was judged prudent to remove those dangerous temptations from their sight. They resented the injurious precaution; and some alarming attempts were made, during the night, to attack and destroy with fire the Imperial palace. In this state of mutual and suspicious hostility, the guards and the people of Constantinople shut the gates, and rose in arms to prevent, or to punish, the conspiracy of the Goths. During the absence of Gainas, his troops were surprised and oppressed; seven thousand Barbarians perished in this bloody massacre. In the fury of the pursuit, the catholics uncovered the roof, and continued to throw down flaming logs of wood, till they overwhelmed their adversaries, who had retreated to the church or conventicle of the Arians. Gainas was either innocent of the design or too confident of his success; he was astonished by the intelligence that the flower of his army had been ingloriously destroyed; that he himself was declared a public enemy; and that his countryman, Fravitta, a brave and loyal confederate, had assumed the management of the war by sea and land.’ It is ‘this conventicle’ that Synesius has in mind on p. 1257, when he speaks of ‘a certain evil stamp of religious observances’, and describes how Typho ‘sought to make a gift of a temple in the city, breaking the laws of his ancestors’. It is interesting to remark in what way Synesius, who presumably had not yet become a Christian convert, speaks of all this schism in the Church. No doubt he was influenced in his views on the subject by his friend Aurelian.
[129] there was one man. The portrait that Synesius draws of himself here is quite unmistakable, and, as Crawford says, the disguise is of the thinnest description. We must infer from this that he wished there to be no doubt as to whom it referred. There is a touch of vanity here, and even a certain affectation. He seems to have rather fancied himself on the idea that he was a person of too Spartan tastes, and of too ‘rustic’ bringing up, to be confused in any way with the super-refined literary men of the Panhellenion and the courtiers at the Emperor’s palace. This idea of himself comes somewhat into collision with the very great attention that he shows to rhetorical forms and figures of speech both in his letters and his essays. There is nothing that we possess of Synesius that shows any touch of this ‘rusticity’ that he seems to be proud of. (See Introduction.)
[130] sang to the lyre in the Dorian manner. Cf. Athenaeus (Deipnosophists, xiv. 19, p. 624 d): ἡ μὲν οὖν Δώριος ἁρμονία τὸ ἀνδρῶδες ἐμφαίνει καὶ τὸ μεγαλοπρεπὲς καὶ οὐ διακεχυμένον οὐδ’ ἱλαρόν, ἀλλὰ σκυθρωπὸν καὶ σφοδρόν, οὔτε δὲ ποικίλον οὔτε πολύτροπον.
Again (ibid. xiv. 33) in speaking of the Lacedaemonian’s cult of music, he observes, διετήρησαν δὲ μάλιστα τῶν Ἑλλήνων Λακεδαιμόνιοι τὴν μουσικήν, πλείστῃ αὐτῇ χρώμενοι . . . τηροῦσιν δὴ καὶ νῦν τὰς ἀρχαίας ᾠδὰς ἐπιμελῶς . . . ἀπὸ γὰρ τῆς τοῦ βίου σωφροσύνης καὶ αὐστηρίας μετέβαινον ἀσμένως ἐπὶ τὴν μουσικήν, ἐχούσης τὸ κλητικὸν τῆς ἐπιστήμης.
[131] no longer distressed at his enforced stay. Synesius seems to have really deeply suffered over his anxieties concerning the success of his mission to the Emperor Arcadius, in behalf of his native town. The note touched here seems to me to be a sincere one. In the De Insomniis, chapter ix, he says of his life in general, that it had always been one of books and of the chase, except that period which he spent in Constantinople as an ambassador. ‘Would that I had not been compelled’, he exclaims, ‘to see those three unspeakable years of my life.’ Again, in Hymn III (p. 1599), his description of what he suffered in this matter, is still more poignant: ‘I come, O Ruler of the great universe, to acquit myself of a vow made to Thee, even from Thrace, where for three years I dwelt in a way near to the king’s palace in that land. And labours I endured, griefs I endured, verily meet for many tears, bearing on my shoulders my mother-city. The earth was watered with the sweat of my limbs that toiled in the contest day by day, and my couch was moistened with the dropping of tears from my eyelids, weeping from night to night. . . . Prostrate, a suppliant I prayed, watering the ground with the dew of my eyelids, that I might not find my journey vain. . . . My life was not at that time dear to me, because that my fatherland was so tormented.'
[132] Cf. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 358 c.
an alliance with the wolf instead of one with the lion. This riddle of the wolf and the lion is still unsolved. Grützmacher (p. 58) remarks: 'Aurelian's son, who is spoken of here, bore the name of Taurus, like Aurelian's father. From Taurus Synesius expected that, should he in later years attain to a leading position in the state, he would call in to the assistance of the Empire, not the lion, by which we should probably understand the Goths, but the wolf, probably meaning the Huns. Synesius may have adopted this outlook, because the Huns had just put the Goth Gainas to death, had sent his head to Arcadius, and had thus shown themselves obliging towards the Eastern Roman Empire.'
Olympiodorus (In. Plat. Phaed., I. 13, p. 8, ed. Norvin) ascribes enigmatic language and silence on sacred subjects to the Pythagoreans: ἔθος δὲ ἦν τοῖς Πυθαγορείοις δι' αἰνιγμάτων λέγειν· τούτων γὰρ καὶ ἡ σιωπὴ ἐνδεικνυμένων διὰ τῆς σιωπῆς τὸ ἀπόρρητον τοῦ θεοῦ, ὃν μιμεῖσθαι δεῖ τὸν φιλόσοφον.
[133] Notice that the cup is Spartan; the κώδων was a Lacedaemonian drinking vessel used by the soldiers.
[134] Cf. Homer, Iliad, ix. 381 ff.
[135] Plato, Leges, 803 c.
[136] Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 850–883.
[137] Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 536.
[138] Cf. Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 785 ff., 836 ff. 859 ff.
[139] Homer, Iliad, ii. 768.
[140] they decided to beguile Typho, &c. All this part of Synesius' story appears fanciful. Historical facts are inextricably mixed in with romance and allegory. The picture he paints in the ensuing pages of political corruption is plausible enough, but we have no detailed evidence from the historians of the period already cited to confirm it. All that we know is that Caesarius returned as Praefectus praetorio Orientis, and held the office until the return of Aurelian. All this about deciding to deceive Typho might be taken to mean that there was a conspiracy on foot amongst the partisans of Aurelian to oust Caesarius when a suitable moment should arrive, and that this party of conspiracy was conscious of its superior power. But on this supposition what can be made of the statement that the High Priest was in conspiracy? If we were right in identifying the priest with Arcadius, it would mean that the Emperor was a conspirator. If, on the other hand, we take Crawford’s view that the priest in the story is meant to represent St. John Chrysostom, this brings him into the party of the Empress Eudoxia, his bitterest enemy, who finally secured his banishment. The whole problem is beset with difficulties, for St. John Chrysostom was the last man in the world to enter into secret machinations and plots.
[141] Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 256, for the earliest conception of Dike. (Crawford, p. 535.)
Justice (Δίκη). Cf. Demosthenes, contra Aristogitonem I (p. 772): τὴν τὰ δίκαια ἀγαπῶσαν Εὐνομίαν περὶ πλείστου ποιησαμένους, ᾗ πάσας καὶ πόλεις καὶ χώρας σῴζει· καὶ τὴν ἀπαραίτητον καὶ σεμνὴν Δίκην, ἥν . . . Ὀρφεὺς παρὰ τὸν τοῦ Διὸς θρόνον φησὶ καθημένην πάντα τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐφορᾶν . . . Cf. Orphic hymns, 42, 61. Dike is first mentioned in Hesiod, Theogony, 901, as the daughter of Themis, and sister of Eunomia (Order), and Eirene (Peace), as also of the Hours and the Fates, cf. Plutarch, Alexander 52, οὐκ οἶσθα . . . ὅτι τὴν Δίκην ἔχει πάρεδρον ὁ Ζεὺς καὶ τὴν Θέμιν, ἵνα πᾶν τὸ πραχθὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ κρατοῦντος θεμιτὸν ᾖ καὶ δίκαιον;
Synesius speaks of Dike as a goddess in letter 44, very much in the same sense as does Demosthenes: ‘none the less,’ he writes in this letter, ‘Justice sees and knows the truth. The eye of the goddess, penetrating everywhere, saw Libya, &c.’ This is only another instance of how imbued Synesius was with the Hellenic tradition. Dike, Adrasteia, Tyche, and similar personifications of the Greek religion are the terms in which he still thinks.
[142] Aratus, Phaenomena, 101 ff.
[143] Aratus, Phaenomena, 108 ff.
[144] as long as men did not use the sea. The purpose for which this attack against the seafaring spirit in States is inserted here is obscure. It is certainly very little Hellenic. But we must remember that Synesius was a Lacedaemonian by race and tradition. Can he be thinking of the lines of Empedocles, in which the poet philosopher describes the demons as chased into the sea to atone for their misdemeanours? These lines are quoted by Plutarch in Isis and Osiris, p. 361. They are interesting as an early example of the conception of demons as a maleficent force.
Plutarch (ibid. 364 A) mentions that the Pythagoreans speak of the sea as a ‘tear of Kronos’, by which they mean to signify in enigmatic form, its impurity, and alien nature.
[145] Cf. Hesiod, Works and Days, 287 f.
[146] two casks . . . in the antechamber of Zeus. Plutarch speaks contemptuously of this myth, Cf. Isis and Osiris, p. 369c: ‘To speak plainly, there is nothing that nature produces here below unmixed; nor is there a steward of two casks, who in the fashion of a huckster doles out to us our things as if they were drinks, and mixes them for us.’
[147] Homer, Iliad, xxiv. 527 f.
[148] Cf. Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 369 c.
[149] That in various places . . . the same events have taken place. The idea of humanity being destroyed by cataclysms, and new civilizations being evolved from the dust and ashes of the old, is recurred to by Plato in several of his dialogues. It is evident that Synesius here, as elsewhere, is saturated with the works of Plato, of which I will point out a few passages:
Laws, p. 677. Athenian Stranger. ‘Do you believe that there is any truth in ancient traditions? . . . the traditions about the many destructions of mankind which have been occasioned by deluges and pestilences, and in many other ways, and of the survival of the remnant. . . . I mean to say that those who then escaped would only be hill shepherds, small sparks of the human race preserved on the tops of mountains. After the great destruction, . . . there was a fearful illimitable desert and a vast expanse of land; a herd or two of oxen would be the only survivors of the animal world; and there might be a few goats. . . . And out of this state of things has there not sprung all that we now are and have: cities and governments, and arts and laws, and a great deal of vice and a great deal of virtue?’
Timaeus, p. 22. Critias. ‘There have been and will be again many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes.’
Critias, p. 109. Critias. ‘In the days of old the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment . . . now different gods had their allotments in different places. Hephaestus and Athene who were brother and sister . . . both obtained as their common portion this land [i.e. Attica], which was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue; and there they implanted brave children of the soil, and put into their minds the order of government; their names are preserved but their actions have disappeared by reason of the destruction of those who received the tradition, and the lapse of ages. For when there were any survivors, . . . they were men who dwelt in the mountains; and they were ignorant of the art of writing, and had heard only the names of the chiefs of the land, but very little about their actions. And this is the reason why the names of the ancients have been preserved to us and not their actions.’
Politicus, pp. 269–70.
Stranger. ‘There is a time when God Himself guides and helps to roll the world in its course; and there is a time . . . when He lets go, and the world being a living creature, and having originally received intelligence from its Author and Creator, turns about and by an inherent necessity revolves in the opposite direction . . . and it may be supposed to result in the greatest changes to the human beings who are the inhabitants of the world at the time . . . there necessarily occurs a great destruction of them [the lower animals] which extends also to the life of man; few survivors of the race are left. . .’
Passing down now to pp. 271–3, the Stranger describes how in those days human life was produced spontaneously; how God Himself was the Shepherd of men and ruled over them; and he paints a picture of the golden age. Beginning then on p. 273 he represents the world as ‘turning round with a sudden shock, being impelled in an opposite direction from beginning to end, shaken by a mighty earthquake, which wrought a new destruction of all manner of animals. Afterwards . . . the universal creature . . . settled down to his ordinary and accustomed course . . . executing, as far as he remembered them, the instructions of his Father and Creator, more precisely at first but afterwards with less exactness. The reason of the falling off was the admixture of matter in him; this was inherent in the primal nature, which was full of disorder until attaining to the present order’.
It will be noticed how this last sentence contains the same doctrine that Synesius is impregnated with when he writes on p. 1228 (c. 9) about ‘that which is erring in nature’. To resume the quotation from the Politicus—‘But as time went on, there was more and more forgetting, and the old discord again held sway . . . and there was a danger of universal ruin to the world. . . . Wherefore God, the Orderer of all, in His tender care, seeing that the world was in great straits, . . . again seated Himself at the helm; and bringing back the elements which had fallen into dissolution and disorder . . . set them in order and restored them, and made the world imperishable and immortal.’
The passages above, as will be seen, throw light upon several parts of this story On Providence, as for instance Synesius’ description above of the gods coming down after the manner of engineers to restore the proper functioning of the machinery of the universe, and his simile of the marionettes, whose power of motion eventually disappears when the operator has ceased his activities.
[150] Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 40, and passim.
[151] lives now on the earth are the same as those of olden times. Tertullian (De Carnis Resurrectione, cap. 12) makes of the repetition of natural events an argument for the resurrection of the body: ‘Let me say it once for all: Every creation is subject to recurrence. Everything you meet had a previous existence: whatever you have lost will come again. Everything comes a second time . . . all things begin when they have ceased to be.’ (Souter’s translation.)
[152] Pindar, Olymp. i. 34 f.
The future days . . . wisest witnesses. The quotation from Pindar with which Synesius ends his story (ἁμέραι δ’ ἐπίλοιποι μάρτυρες σοφώτατοι. Olymp. i. 33) is ironically alluded to by his so-much-admired Dio Chrysostom in his Troiana, 5, vol. i, p. 116, ed. von Arnim): καίτοι φασὶ μὲν οἱ πολλοὶ τὸν χρόνον τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ κριτὴν ἄριστον εἶναι, ὅτι δ’ ἂν ἀκούωσι μετὰ πολὺν χρόνον, διὰ τοῦτο ἄπιστον νομίζουσιν.
[153] Hesiod, Works and Days, 42; cf. p. 1234 A.
[154] Ibid., 289.
[155] Iliad, i. 70.
[156] Iliad, xiii. 355.
[157] Odyssey, xviii. 234.
[158] . . . brothers in a single living creature, the cosmos. The conception of the universe as an independent whole, and as forming a living creature, is an old conception in Greek philosophy. Plato has touched upon it in the Timaeus; there are allusions to it in the pre-Socratic philosophers. Plotinus (Enn. ii. 3. 7) compares the stars and other phenomena to letters, as Synesius does in this passage. He continues:
‘It is thus that in a being animated by one unique principle we may draw inferences as to one part from another . . .: just as our limbs are parts of our body, so we ourselves are parts of the universe. . . . Everything is full of omens, and any one is wise who learns one thing from another, . . . and it is by reason of this that birds and other animals give us prophecies. . . . One principle and one only there must be, to make this multiple being one, to convert it into one universal animal. . . . All things proceed from one principle, each playing an allotted role and all rendering mutual assistance. Each is assisted or perchance hindered by another, but their progress is not one of chance; they form a series of which each is the effect of what precedes, because of what follows.’
Similarly Aristotle (Met. 1076ᵃ) blames those (the Pythagoreans?) who ‘make the substance of the universe a mere series of episodes (for one substance has no influence on another by its existence or non-existence), and they give us many governing principles; but the world must not be governed badly.
“The rule of many is not good; one is the ruler”’ (tr. Ross).
Plotinus again in Enn. iv. 4. 35, states that ‘the universe is one single animal suffering the same things throughout by reason of its unity. Its course of life is regulated by its intelligence, it is in complete accord with itself, has nothing of the nature of chance, and presents one order, one harmony.’
[159] some understanding stars. So Plotinus (Enn. iii. 1, 6) says of the stars: ‘They are carried (in their orbits) for the benefit of the whole universe, but they fulfil incidentally another function, namely, that they who have knowledge of this sort of writing may, by looking at them as written characters, read future events from their arrangement and, according to their analogy, interpreting the thing announced; as if, seeing a bird flying high in the air, they were to conclude that a lofty act were signified.’
The Chaldeans also regarded stars as letters written in the firmament and the Cabala is full of the same imagery and belief. Plotinus, while admitting the prophetic nature of the stars and auguries from the flight of birds, attacks those who regard them as the causes of events. For him they were simply symptoms. This seems to have been the view of Synesius also.
[160] encounters otherwise intended. Schiller is quoted by Stendhal in his romance, Le Rouge et le Noir (at the head of chap. xiii of vol. ii), as saying: ‘Des propos décousus, des rencontres par effet du hasard, se transforment en preuves de la dernière évidence aux yeux de l’homme à l’imagination, s’il a quelque feu dans le cœur.’ The resemblance here to the passage in Synesius is startling.
[161] it all shares . . . one breath. The idea of a divine afflatus (σύμπνοια μία) throughout the universe is attributed to Diogenes Laertius (vii. 140) to the Stoics: ἡνῶσθαι αὐτὸν [τὸν κόσμον]· τοῦτο γὰρ ἀναγκάζεσθαι τὴν τῶν οὐρανίων πρὸς τὰ ἐπίγεια σύμπνοιαν καὶ συντονίαν.
Leibnitz, as Bouillet remarks (vol. i, p. 176), develops similar ideas in his Monadology, cap. 61: ‘Each body is affected, not only by bodies touching it; but it is sensible in some way of all that happens to these, and is also by their means sensible of other bodies in contact with the first mentioned, namely, those immediately touching it. It follows then that this communication extends indefinitely. Consequently each body feels everything which happens in the universe, and to such an extent that he who sees the whole can read in each thing that which is happening everywhere, and even that which has been or will be, by noticing in the present that which is separated by time and by distance; this is the σύμπνοα πάντα of Hippocrates.’
The following passage from Seneca (Quaestiones Naturales, ii. 32, 4) expresses the same thought: ‘Quidquid ratione fit, alicuius rei futurae signum est: fortuita et sine ratione vaga divinationem non recipiunt: Cuius rei ordo est, etiam praedictio est . . . nullum animal est quod non motu et occursu suo praedicat aliquid. Non omnia scilicet, sed quaedam notantur. Auspicium observantis est: ad eum itaque pertinet qui in ea direxerit animum.’ The same conception of the interdependence of the parts of the universe was turned to account to explain any sort of magic spells and witchcraft in general. Thus Plotinus (Enn. iv. 4. 26): ‘Magic is founded upon the harmony of the universe; it acts through forces linked one to the other by sympathy. . . . As enchantments act on the unreasoning side of the soul they can be destroyed by counter enchantments (iv. 4. 53). . . . It is only the being concentrated within (upon the world of reason) who cannot be bewitched’ (iv. 4. 54).
The idea of sympathy and strife in the universe that we first meet in the pre-Socratic philosophers was never absent from the systems that succeeded, and became a pivot for the explanations of magic in the second and third phases of Neoplatonism, and magic was said to be founded τῇ συμπatheίᾳ . . . καὶ τῇ τῶν δυνάμεων τῶν πολλῶν ποικιλίᾳ εἰς ἓν ζῷον συντελούντων, ‘by the sympathy and variety of diverse powers conspiring together into one animal’ (Plot. Enn. iv. 4. 40 in Cudworth’s Intellectual System, vol. i, p. 250). Plotinus continues: μηδενὸς μηχανωμένου ἄλλου πολλὰ ἕλκεται καὶ γοητεύεται· καὶ ἡ ἀληθινὴ μαγεία ἡ ἐν τῷ παντὶ φιλία καὶ τὸ νεῖκος. ‘The true magic is the friendship and discord that is in the universe.’
Compare in this connexion the speech of Eryximachus in Plato, Symposium, 187 A, where the physician quotes Heraclitus as saying that ‘The One at variance with itself is drawn together, like the harmony of bow or lyre.’ For the phrase ‘a single living creature’ see Plat. Tim. 30 B.
[162] limbs of one entire body. The idea of the interpenetration of the parts of the universe is taken up by Proclus (On Parmenides, ii, p. 774, ed. Cousin). He divides the forces or powers of the cosmos into ranks or grades which have a varying power of participation with each other as they go up or down the scale. We must admit, he says, that the mingling takes place in more than one way; for things which are situated in the same rank are mingled with each other in one manner, whereas things of superior rank are mingled with those inferior in a totally different manner; just as the inferior with those better than themselves. For the one sort enter into the others and communicate their own powers to the others; the others penetrate through those things which are beneath them and communicate their own individual character to them, and are within them by participation; others again install themselves in the superior ranks, sit at their board, and rejoice in the same intelligibilia as they, as being amongst them according to the cause.
The text is as follows:
Μήποτε οὖν πολλαχῶς τὴν μῖξιν γίγνεσθαι ῥητέον· ἄλλως γὰρ μίγνυσθαι τὰ σύστοιχα ἀλλήλοις, ἄλλως τὰ κρείττονα τοῖς ὑφειμένοις, ἄλλως τὰ καταδεέστερα τοῖς αὐτῶν ἀμείνοσι· τὰ μὲν γὰρ καὶ φοιτᾷ δι’ ἀλλήλων καὶ μεταδίδωσιν ἀλλήλοις τῶν οἰκείων δυνάμεων· τὰ δὲ χωρεῖ μὲν διὰ τῶν ὑφειμένων, μεταδίδωσί τε αὐτοῖς ἀφ’ ἑαυτῶν τῆς οἰκείας ἰδιότητος, καὶ ἔστιν ἐν αὐτοῖς κατὰ μέθεξιν· τὰ δὲ ἐνιδρύει μὲν αὐτὰ τοῖς κρείττοσιν, ὁμέστια δὲ αὐτοῖς γίγνεται καὶ τῶν αὐτῶν ἀπολαύει νοητῶν, ὡς ἂν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὄντα κατ’ αἰτίαν.
Καὶ οὐχ ἡμεῖς ταῦτα ἀναπλάττομεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ θεολόγοι ταῦτα αἰνίττονται διὰ τῶν ἱερῶν γάμων· ἁπλῶς μὲν γὰρ τὴν ὁμοφυῆ σύζευξιν καὶ τὴν κοινωνίαν τῶν θείων αἰτιῶν μυστικῶς γάμον προσαγορεύουσι· ταύτην δὲ τὴν κοινωνίαν ποτὲ μὲν ἐν τοῖς συστοίχοις ὁρῶσι, καὶ καλοῦσι γάμον Ἥρας καὶ Διός, Οὐρανοῦ καὶ Γῆς, Κρόνου καὶ Ῥέας· ποτὲ δὲ τῶν καταδεεστέρων πρὸς τὰ κρείττω, καὶ καλοῦσι γάμον Διὸς καὶ Δήμητρος· ποτὲ δὲ καὶ ἔμπαλιν τῶν κρείττονων πρὸς τὰ ὑφειμένα, καὶ λέγουσι Διὸς καὶ Κόρης γάμον. . . .
[163] Plato, Republic, 462 c.
[164] to some god of those who dwell within the universe. This distinction between cosmic and hypercosmic deities occurs in several Neo-Platonic writers, Cf. Sallustius, vi: ‘Of the gods some are cosmic some are hypercosmic,’ he says, and then goes on to explain how their various spheres and functions are divided. Zeus, Poseidon, Hephaestos are those who have created the universe (ποιοῦντες τὸν κόσμον), whereas Demeter, Hera, and Artemis have breathed life into it (ψυχοῦντες) and Apollo, Aphrodite and Hermes have brought it into a state of harmony. It is then guarded (φρουροῦντες) by Hestia, Athene, and Ares. Now he tells us that these gods possess the universe in the first rank, and that we must believe that other gods are contained in them. He gives as an example of this that Dionysos is included in Zeus, Asklepios in Apollo, and in Aphrodite the Graces. As the passage reads, all the deities above would be included amongst the cosmic or mundane. This whole system, in the mind at least of Sallustius, as probably in that of Iamblichus and others, had to be conceived of in some way as existing underneath the soul of the world, the third division of the Neo-Platonic trinity, from which the religious aspirant ascended through Mind, to the One, leaving aside, it would seem, the whole Olympian theogony.
[165] a certain discord also. The ancients, including Plato, had two names for the world. They called it the world in the sense of unity and harmony, and they called it also strife as contrariety and opposition.
[166] Plato, Timaeus, 36 A, B; Leges, 812 D.
[167] Cf. Proclus, In Tim. ii. p. 95 (quoted by Cudworth, i. 514).
[168] Plutarch, Marcus Marcellus, 14.
[169] Iliad, xv. 106 f.
[170] Herodotus, vii. 141, 143.
[171] mind is to soul as real being is to becoming. Similarly Proclus (on Parmenides, lib. II, p. 744, Cousin) comments on Plato’s definition of time as the image of eternity: "Ἔστι δε ὡς χρόνος πρὸς αἰῶνα οὕτω ψυχὴ πρὸς νοῦν· μέτρον γάρ. ὁ χρόνος μὲν ψυχικόν, αἰὼν δὲ νοερόν." (Cf. Pl. Tim. 37 D).
[172] reflects as in a mirror. Cf. Plot. Enn. iv. 3. 11. ‘The olden sages . . . felt the All-Soul to be a Principle ever at our call; it is but fitly preparing a place in which some phase of it may be received, and a thing is always fit to receive the operation of the Soul when it is brought to the condition of a mirror, apt to catch the image.’ (Stephen Mackenna’s translation, vol. i. 151.)
[173] imagination seems to be a sort of life . . . has sense perceptions. Aristotle in De Insomniis attempts to show the place occupied by dreams in sense perception (p. 459 a): "Ὅτι μὲν οὖν οὐκ ἔστι τοῦ δοξάζοντος, οὐδὲ τοῦ διανοουμένου τὸ πάθος τοῦτο ὃ καλοῦμεν ἐνυπνιάζειν φανερόν. ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ τοῦ αἰσθανομένου ἁπλῶς· ὁρᾶν γὰρ ἂν ἦν καὶ ἀκούειν ἁπλῶς. . . . ὑποκείσθω δ’, ὅπερ ἐστὶ καὶ φανερόν, ὅτι τοῦ αἰσθητικοῦ τὸ πάθος, εἴπερ καὶ ὁ ὕπνος· . . . ἔστι μὲν τὸ αὐτὸ τῷ αἰσθητικῷ τὸ φανταστικόν, τὸ δ’ εἶναι φανταστικῷ καὶ αἰσθητικῷ ἕτερον, ἔστι δὲ φαντασία ἡ ὑπὸ τῆς κατ’ ἐνέργειαν αἰσθήσεως γινομένη κίνησις, τὸ δ’ ἐνύπνιον φάντασμά τι φαίνεται εἶναι (τὸ γὰρ ἐν ὕπνῳ φάντασμα ἐνύπνιον λέγομεν, εἴθ’ ἁπλῶς, εἴτε τρόπον τινὰ γινόμενον), φανερὸν ὅτι τοῦ αἰσθητικοῦ μέν ἐστι τὸ ἐνυπνιάζειν, τούτου δ’ ᾗ τὸ φανταστικόν."
Von Arnim (Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, vol. ii, p. 21 f.) quotes the following definitions of the Stoa from Aetius in regard to the words φαντασία, φανταστόν, φανταστικόν, φάντασμα. As all these occur frequently in this essay on dreams, it may be worth while to give the text: Χρύσιππος διαφέρειν ἀλλήλων φησὶ τέτταρα ταῦτα. φαντασία μὲν οὖν ἐστι πάθος ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ γιγνόμενον, ἐνδεικνύμενον ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ τὸ πεποιηκός· οἷον ἐπειδὰν δι’ ὄψεως θεωρῶμεν τὸ λευκόν, ἔστι πάθος τὸ ἐγγεγενημένον διὰ τῆς ὁράσεως ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ . . .
Φανταστὸν δὲ τὸ ποιοῦν τὴν φαντασίαν· οἷον τὸ λευκὸν καὶ τὸ ψυχρὸν καὶ πᾶν ὅτι ἂν δύνηται κινεῖν τὴν ψυχήν, τοῦτ’ ἔστι φανταστόν.
Φανταστικὸν δέ ἐστι διάκενος ἑλκυσμός, πάθος ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ ἀπ’ οὐδενὸς φανταστοῦ γινόμενον καθάπερ ἐπὶ τοῦ σκιαμαχοῦντος καὶ κενοῖς ἐπιφέροντος τὰς χεῖρας· τῇ γὰρ φαντασίᾳ ὑπόκειταί τι φανταστόν, τῷ δὲ φανταστικῷ οὐδέν.
Φάντασμα δέ ἐστιν ἐφ’ ὃ ἑλκόμεθα κατὰ τὸν φανταστικὸν διάκενον ἑλκυσμόν· ταῦτα δὲ γίνεται ἐπὶ τῶν μελαγχολώντων καὶ μεμηνότων· ὁ γοῦν τραγικὸς Ὀρέστης ὅταν λέγῃ (Eur. Or. 255 seq.)
ὦ μῆτερ, ἱκετεύω σε, μὴ ’πίσειέ μοι
τὰς αἱματωποὺς καὶ δρακοντώδεις κόρας·
αὗται γάρ, αὗται πλησίον θρώσκουσί μου,
λέγει μὲν αὐτὰ ὡς μεμηνώς, ὁρᾷ δὲ οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ δοκεῖ μόνον.
[174] Plato, Repub. 517 B.
[175] Not in the Sibylline Oracles, ed. Geffcken (Leipzig, 1902).
[176] Probably from the same source as the last.
[177] This rendering must not be understood to mean a κατ' ἐξοχήν perception.
For this is the perception of perceptions. The text reads: Αἴσθησις γὰρ αἰσθήσεων αὕτη, ὅτι τὸ φανταστικὸν πνεῦμα κοινότατόν ἐστιν αἰσθητήριον . . .
A passage in Aristotle is worth comparing (De Anima, 417ᵃ): "Ἔχει δ’ ἀπορίαν, διὰ τί καὶ τῶν αἰσθήσεων αὐτῶν οὐ γίνεται αἴσθησις, καὶ διὰ τί ἄνευ τῶν ἔξω οὐ ποιοῦσιν αἴσθησιν, ἐνόντος πυρὸς καὶ γῆς καὶ τῶν ἄλλων στοιχείων, ὧν ἐστιν ἡ αἴσθησις καθ’ αὑτά, ἢ τὰ συμβεβηκότα τούτοις.
[178] See p. 259, n. 2.
[179] hearing and sight like door-keepers. Dr. W. S. Crawford has called my attention to a passage in the Letters of St. Isidore of Pelusium (Ep. ii. 107), in which, as here, the senses are described as guarding the gates. In Isidore’s simile, however, as in that of Plotinus quoted above, it is Mind (νοῦς) which is the directing agency, not imagination. χρὴ τὸν νοῦν οἷα βασιλέα αὐτοκράτορα λογισμοὺς φοβεροὺς καὶ πάντοθεν ὅπλοις πεπραγμένους [πεφραγμένους?] πρὸς τὰς τῶν αἰσθήσεων καταπέμψαι πύλας προαπαντησομένους, καὶ προλοχιοῦντας, καὶ εἴρξοντας τοὺς πολεμίους, καὶ μὴ πρῶτον συγχωρήσαντας τὴν εἴσοδον, ὕστερον ἀμφήριστον ἀναδέχεσθαι μάχην . . . Philo uses somewhat the same expression. 'God breathed into the first man, the founder of our race, the breath of life; breathing it into the principal part of his body, namely the face, where the outward senses are established, the bodyguards of the mind, as if it were the great king’ (On Special Laws, ed. Cohn, vol. v, p. 237). Cf. Plot. Enn. v. 3. 3 αἴσθησις δὲ ἡμῖν ἄγγελος, βασιλεὺς δὲ πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἐκεῖνος [νοῦς]. ‘Sensation is our messenger and intelligence our king.’
Olympiodorus commenting on the Phaedo makes the following statement: ‘We do not agree with the Peripatetics that sense perception is the principle of knowledge; for the inferior is never the cause of the superior. . . . Sense perception is like a messenger or a herald, its role is to awaken the spirit to attain knowledge.’ (Quoted by Bouillet, vol. iii, 36, from Cousin’s Fragments of the Philosophers, p. 404.)
Philo again, in a passage quoted by Eusebius, employs the same metaphor. ‘Woman . . . is always studying deceitful speeches and all other kinds of hypocrisy, like an actress on the stage. When she is alluring the eyes and ears of her husband, she proceeds to cajole his predominant mind after the servants have been deceived.’ (Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel, lib. VIII, cap. 11.)
[180] . . . it hears and sees with its whole pneuma. R. C. Kissling, in the American Journal of Philology, vol. xliii (1922), pp. 318 seq., discusses at length the ὄχημα-πνεῦμα of the Neo-Platonists in connexion with the De Insomniis of Synesius. This important study should be read in extenso. I will, however, call attention to some of the most interesting points.
The vehicle in question which brought the soul down from the spheres joined the incorporeal soul with the body. Simplicius (in Phys. vi. 4, p. 966) and Proclus (in Tim. 311 c) speak of the ὄχημα as making the soul ἐγκόσμιος. Plato (Tim. 41 D) speaks of an ὄχημα assigned to each pre-existent soul, but this refers evidently to the star itself, not to the Neo-Platonic chariot of the soul. Aristotle placed his incorporeal soul in a certain substance transmitted in the act of procreation, and which he speaks of as θερμόν and as πνεῦμα (De Gen. An. 736b, p. 29), i.e. the aether, which he conceived as the fifth body. The later harmonizing commentators identified Plato’s ὄχημα with Aristotle’s πνεῦμα. Philoponus and Hierocles followed suit, and both conceptions were comprehended under the appellation of πνευματικὸν ὄχημα . . . Mr. Kissling next points out how ‘from the Aristotelian πνεῦμα σύμφυτον the Platonic ὄχημα took on the epithet συμφυές, and from his definition (in De Gen. An. 736b, p. 29) comes the epithet αὐγοειδές, the ‘luminosi corporis amictus’ of Macrob. Somn. Scip. i. 12. 13.’
Again, he quotes Themistius (in De Anima, p. 19; p. 32, Berlin, 1899 ed.) to the same effect, and Simplicius (in De Anima, p. 73). The latter (ibid., p. 17) touches closely Synesius’ conception in the following passage—αἰσθητικὸν γὰρ καὶ φανταστικὸν καὶ τὸ αἰθερῶδες τῆς ἡμετέρας ψυχῆς ὄχημα. Syrianus (in Metaphys. 888 b. 17) and Themistius (in De Anim., p. 86 seq.) as well as Porphyry (Sent. c. 32) are in the same vein.
He now comes to Synesius (p. 321) in the following passage: ‘Synesius says (1293 A) that philosophers called the πνεῦμα of which he is speaking also πνευματικὴ ψυχή. Now, the πνευματικὴ ψυχή . . is the ὄχημα-πνεῦμα, and identical with Augustine’s ‘anima spiritalis qua corporalium rerum capiuntur imagines’. This identification of the terms of Plato and Aristotle was, he thinks, posterior to Plotinus. Porphyry (Sent., c. 32), Iamblichus, Syrianus, Hierocles, and Proclus all accept it, and Boethius (De Phil. Cons. iii. 9), alludes to it:
animas. . .
Provehis, et levibus sublimes curribus aptans.
Proclus, according to Mr. Kissling, recognizes three ὀχήματα, of which the third is ὀστρεῶδες σῶμα, the oyster-like body which Synesius mentions. The second, προσφυὲς ὄχημα, came between the two, was attached to the irrational soul and composed of the four elements. Cf. Plat. Tim. 42, c d; Procl. in Tim. 330 c. That the ὄχημα-πνεῦμα of the Neo-Platonists is meant by Synesius, is evident, he concludes from the passage (1292 c), where he describes it as descending to the lower animals, and becoming their reason, and (1293 B), where farther on he speaks of the first soul as embarking in the other one, ἐκείνης, which means the πνευματικὴ ψυχή, in other words the πνεῦμα. Synesius applies a variety of names to the pneuma—φανταστικὸν πνεῦμα, πνευματικὴ ψυχή, εἰδωλικὴ φύσις, σωματικὴ οὐσία, ἀκήρατον σῶμα, δαιμονία φύσις, φανταστικὴ φύσις, μέση φύσις, μέσον σῶμα.
‘Synesius’, says Mr. Kissling (p. 327), ‘nowhere employs the term αὐγοειδές with reference to it, yet it is indubitable that he means the first πνεῦμα or ὄχημα-πνεῦμα throughout' . . . Furthermore, this is 'inseparable from the soul and indestructible'.
[181] radiating from a centre. The same simile of the circle occurs in the pseudo-Dionysius ('the Areopagite') on 'Divine Names' (quoted by Bouillet (vol. ii, p. 225 n.) from the translation of the Abbé Darboy, v. 412): 'In the same way all the radii of a circle are united in a common centre, and this indivisible centre brings together within itself all the rays which are quite indistinguishable one from another and from their common point of departure. Completely mingled in this medial point, whenever they leave it for however short a distance, they commence immediately to separate from each other; if they go still farther they keep separating in the same ratio; in a word, in proportion as they are near or far from the central point, their distance from each other increases or diminishes. . . . Likewise in the unity of the soul numerous faculties are united which minister to the wants of each part of the body.'
Plotinus also uses the simile in describing the first hypostasis, the One (Enn. iii. 8, 7). 'The One (i.e. the first principle) becomes the second just as a circle in course of development becomes a surface (i.e. develops out of a point into a circular area), a figure in which the circumference, the centre, and the radii are distinct things holding different positions.' In this way also Mind, he goes on to say, permeates all things.
[182] meet in the centre. As Plato in the Republic points to the conclusion that man is a sort of microcosm of the State, so Plotinus represents him as the microcosm of the universe.
[183] objects . . . under the water appear larger. Macrobius in the Saturnalia (lib. VII, cap. xiv, 2) has an explanation to offer: 'Aqua densior est aeris tenuitate, et ideo eam cunctatior visus penetrat, cuius offensa repercussa videndi acies scinditur, et in se recurrit. Scissa dum redit, iam non directo ictu, sed undique versum incurrit liniamenta simulacri: et sic fit ut videatur imago archetypo suo grandior. Nam et solis orbis matutinus solito nobis maior apparet, quia interiacet inter nos et ipsum aer adhuc de nocte roscidus: et grandescit imago eius, tamquam in aquae speculo visatur.'
[184] Plato, Phaedo, 85 D.
[185] and is a boundary common to both. Simplicius (Comm. in Arist. de Anim. 591. p. 211, ll. 34 ff., ed. Hayduck) attempts to deal with Aristotle’s and Plato’s conceptions of imagination (φαντασία) with a view to reconciling them. His conclusions are that it is not an intertwining (συμπλοκή) of opinion and sense perception which constitutes imagination (a definition which Aristotle himself rejects), nor yet a mixture (μῖξις) of these two elements (the idea that he attributes to Plato), but a medial between them (μέση γὰρ ἡ φαντασία αἰσθήσεώς τε καὶ δόξης). Synesius in this passage before us (ὅλως γὰρ τοῦτο, κ.τ.λ) (p. 1292 B) seems to me to be seeking an analogy between the nature of the pneuma, which he describes as a medial between the psyche and the body, taking anything suitable to its purpose from each of these extremes (τι προσῆκον, ὡς ἐκ γειτόνων, ἀφ’ ἑκατέρου τῶν ἄκρων), as from neighbours; and the functions of the imagination which he has been describing above (p. 1289 C) as medial between mind and sensation (καὶ ἡ μὲν (i.e. φαντασία) . . . αἴσθησίς ἐστιν ἐντελής. ὅλῳ τε γὰρ ἀκούει πνεύματι . . . πάντα δύναται.). Just as in this last passage he describes imagination in the sense of a perfect, universal (ἅπασι τοῖς μέρεσι), sense perception, and able to see with the eye, hear with the ear, and so on through all the sensual organs by the power of the whole pneuma; so in this passage (Ἐρανίζεται γὰρ . . . καὶ φαντάζεται), he speaks of the pneuma as proceeding to the imaginative act. It is the pneuma then, that medial element gathered by the soul in its descent through the zones of air, water, and fire (Macrob., In. Somm. Scip., Bk. I, cap. xii), which is the medial that Simplicius postulates, and which, Synesius says, ‘images in one nature things that dwell far apart (i.e. mind and sensation, body and soul, &c.) This then is the conclusion of Synesius, that the pneuma, which he tells us (p. 1297 B) has snatched (ἔσπασε), something from the extremes of air and fire (ἀκρότητος), becomes the force of imagination (φαντάζεται).
To return to Simplicius: the passage of Aristotle he comments on is the following (Arist. de Anim. 428ᵃ 24). Φανερὸν τοίνυν, ὅτι οὔτε δόξα μετ’ αἰσθήσεως, οὔτε δι’ αἰσθήσεως, οὔτε συμπλοκὴ δόξης καὶ αἰσθήσεως φαντασία ἂν εἴη.
Aristotle in the passage previous to this has been saying: ‘If there is really that imagination in virtue of which we assert that a certain image is present with us, and if we are not merely speaking metaphorically, there is some one force or habit concerning these things, such as sense perception, opinion, knowledge, or mind, according to which we form our judgements, rightly or wrongly as the case may be. That it is not sense perception is evident from this, that sense perception is a force of energy like sight and seeing, and something makes its appearance even when neither of these comes into play, as for instance the (images) in dreams. Again, sense perception is always present, but not imagination. Now if it were the same thing as energy, imagination would fall to the lot of all the lower animals, but this seems not to be the case with the ant, the bee, or the worm. Then again, energies are always true, but imaginings for the most part false. Accordingly we do not say, when we are thoroughly aroused in the act of perception, that it seems to us that this is a man, but it is rather at that moment when we do not perceive clearly that the percepts may be true or false. And, as we said before, there are percepts visible even to those whose eyes are closed. But (imagination) is by no means one of those things such as knowledge and mind that are always true, for there is also false imagination. Now faith follows opinion (for it may not be that one who opines has no faith in his opinions), and no one of the beasts has faith, though many have imagination. All opinion implies faith, faith implies persuasion, and persuasion reason; but while some of the beasts possess imagination they have not reason: it is evident therefore that imagination is neither opinion together with sense perception, nor through sense perception; nor could imagination be the intertwining of opinion and sense perception.' This brings us to the point of Simplicius' commentary. He begins by referring to Plato as one who represented imagination (φαντασία), as a mixture (μῖξις) of opinion and sense perception in the Sophist and Philebus. (This word in most editions is printed σύμμιξις.) In the first of the two cases these are evidently the passages he has in mind (Soph., pp. 263-4):
Stranger. 'And therefore, thought, opinion, and imagination are now proved to exist in our minds both as true and false. . . . When the affirmation or denial takes place in silence and in the mind only, have you any other name by which to call it but opinion?
Theaetetus. There can be no other name.
Str. And when opinion is presented not simply, but in some form of
sense, would you not call it imagination? . . . And seeing that language is true and false, and that thought is the conversation of the soul with herself, and opinion is the end of thinking, and imagination or phantasy is the union of sense and opinion, the inference is that some of them, since they are akin to language, should have an element of falsehood as well as of truth? . . . Do you perceive, then, that false opinion and speech have been discovered sooner than we expected.'
The second is probably Philebus, p. 40:
Socrates. 'And all men, as we were saying just now, are always filled with hopes . . . and these hopes, as they are termed, are propositions which exist in the minds of each of us; . . . and the fancies of hope are also pictured in us; a man may often have a vision of a heap of gold, and pleasures ensuing, and in the picture there may be a likeness of himself mightily rejoicing over his good fortune. . . . And may we not say that the good, being friends of the gods, have generally true pictures presented to them, and the bad false pictures.'
Both opinions then, and visions (i.e. phantasies and dreams which proceed from the imagination), may be true or false. Simplicius asks in what sense Plato uses the word 'mixture' or 'mingling', and replies that it is the common share that lies between the extremities. (Cf. Synesius' phrase, μεταίχμιον, De Insom. 1292 B. Cf. also Simplic. Comm. in Arist. De Anima, p. 212, ed. Hayduck.)
[186] richness of the imaginative essence. The word 'imagination' has a somewhat different connotation for us than that which φαντασία possessed for the Greeks. This sentence of Synesius, as also the passage in Aristotle (De Anim. iii. 3. 9. 428b) from which it is obviously copied, would be more intelligible to us if the word 'instinct' were used instead of imagination. The passage in Aristotle affirms that 'as sight is the chief of our senses, imagination has received its name from the image that light reveals to us (φαντασία-φῶς), for it is not possible to see without light; and because it exists in the brain and is similar to the sensations, animated beings often act by it and by the sensations; some like brute beasts because they have no intelligence to their share, and others, as in the case of men, because their intelligence is clouded at times by passion, illness, or sleep.' We should be inclined to say that at such moments they act according to instinct rather than according to imagination. Aristotle, then, defines imagination in this way. Plotinus following him made two divisions of it, as Bouillet points out in his notes to the Enneads of Plotinus (vol. i, p. 338). In Enn. i. 8. 15 he speaks of an imagination of the senses. This is the impression made by an exterior object upon the irrational part of the soul (φαντασία δὲ πληγὴ ἀλόγου ἔξωθεν); or as Mackenna translates the passage, ‘the stroke of something unreasonable outside the Soul.’ In Enn. i. 9 he speaks of the discursive reason as the second form, ‘for’, he says, ‘in giving way to evil we are the dupes of an impure image; the reasoning of things false which in the imagination does not await the judgement of the discursive reason.’ (See also Stephen Mackenna’s translation.) Φαντασία here is διάνοια τῶν ψευδῶν, but disappears before τὸ διανοητικόν.
[187] Aristot. De An. iii. 3. 9.
[Imagination] being the reason of the animal. Again Simplicius (6r, p. 217, ed. Hayduck) expands the same idea from Aristotle De Anima, by the remark that imagination must be the ruling power in animals, as they have nothing better, but that man uses it through the fact that his impulse to actions is connected with his memory of sense-percepts; and that when his active intelligence is in abeyance, he is moved by the forces of phantasy which then assume the leadership over him, as in dreams, in inordinate desires, in anger, pleasure, pain and fear, and in diseases that cause the mind to wander. ἀλλ’ ἐν μὲν τοῖς ἄλλοις ζῴοις καὶ τὸ κατάρχον καὶ ἡγεμονοῦν τῶν πράξεων ἡ φαντασία ἐστίν, ἐπειδὴ μὴ ἔχει τι κρεῖττον. ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὸ μὲν ἄρχον τῶν πράξεων ὁ πρακτικός ἐστι νοῦς, ὅταν κατὰ λόγον ἐνεργῶμεν (οὐκ ἄνευ δὲ φαντασίας· καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸς χρῆται ταῖς φαντασίαις, διὰ τὸ περὶ τὰ αἰσθητὰ εἶναι τὰς πράξεις καὶ τὴν ἐπ’ αὐτὰς ὁρμὴν σὺν τῇ τῶν αἰσθητῶν γίνεσθαι μνήμῃ)· διὰ δὲ τὸ ἐνίοτε ἐπικαλύπτεσθαι τὸν πρακτικὸν νοῦν καὶ ἡμεῖς κατὰ φαντασίας ἡγουμένας τότε κινούμεθα . . . καὶ ἐν τοῖς πάθεσιν ὡς ἐν ταῖς ἀμέτροις ἐπιθυμίαις καὶ ὀργαῖς ἡδοναῖς τε καὶ λύπαις καὶ φόβοις οὐ χρωμένης τῷ λόγῳ τῆς ψυχῆς, καὶ ἐν νόσοις δέ τισιν ὡς ἐν ταῖς παραφροσύναις. Ibid. (p. 205), οὐ γὰρ δὴ ἡ αὐτὴ τῇ διανοίᾳ ἡ φαντασία, ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἐν ἀλόγοις ζῴοις ἡ φαντασία, ὥσπερ οὐδὲ τῇ αἰσθήσει ἡ αὐτή. προστίθησι γὰρ καὶ τοῦτο, ἐπειδὴ καὶ περὶ φαντασίας αὐτῷ ὁ προκείμενός ἐστι λόγος. Ibid. (p. 207): 'Ἀφομοιωματικὴ γὰρ ἡ φαντασία, καὶ ὡς τὰ ἐν τῇ γραφῇ ἑτέρων ἐστὶν ἀπεικάσματα, οὕτως ἔχει καὶ τὰ ἐν τῇ φαντασίᾳ· διὸ οὐχ ὡς ἀληθέσι συντίθεται ἡ ψυχή, ἵνα καὶ θαρρήσῃ ἢ φοβηθῇ· ἥδεταί γε μὴν ἢ λυπεῖται οὐχ ὡς ἐν αὐτοῖς γινομένῃ τοῖς πράγμασιν, ὡς δὲ ἐν τῇ ἐκείνων μνήμῃ.
But Simplicus (ibid., p. 267) makes the point that although Aristotle says (and in this Synesius follows him) that the soul does not take cognizance without imagination, he does not say that it has employed its phantasies, but simply that the phantasmata lie beneath the rational soul, just as the percepts lie beneath sense-perception. Here again he is in accord with Synesius, who says in the passage at the beginning of cap. v, that imagination 'is no longer the chariot . . . but itself rests upon the forces beneath.'
Aristotle (De Anim. 413^b) attributes imagination even to insects. οὕτως ὁρῶμεν καὶ περὶ ἑτέρας διαφορὰς τῆς ψυχῆς συμβαῖνον ἐπὶ τῶν ἐντόμων ἐν τοῖς διατεμνομένοις· καὶ γὰρ αἴσθησιν ἑκάτερον τῶν μερῶν ἔχει καὶ κίνησιν τὴν κατὰ τόπον, εἰ δ' αἴσθησιν, καὶ φαντασίαν καὶ ὄρεξιν. Again (ibid. 414^b): νῦν δ' ἐπὶ τοιοῦτον εἰρήσθω, ὅτι τῶν ζῴων τοῖς ἔχουσιν ἀφὴν καὶ ὄρεξις ὑπάρχει. περὶ δὲ φαντασίας ἄδηλον, ὕστερον δ' ἐπισκεπτέον. (Ibid. 415^a) οἷς μὲν γὰρ ὑπάρχει λογισμὸς τῶν φθαρτῶν, τούτοις καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ πάντα, οἷς δ' ἐκείνων ἕκαστον, οὐ πᾶσι λογισμός, ἀλλὰ τοῖς μὲν οὐδὲ φαντασία, τὰ δὲ ταύτῃ μόνῃ ζῶσιν. . . .
Synesius has evidently taken his lead here from Aristotle. His expression, καταβαίνει γέ τοι μέχρι ζῴων, οἷς οὐκ ἔτι πάρεστι νοῦς, is interesting from the presence of the word ἔτι seeming to imply that the lower animals are undergoing an evolution in the direction of a higher mentality.
Dio Chrysostom (Or. xii. De Dei Cognitione, 34 f., ed. Von Arnim, vol. i, p. 164) gives the lower animals credit for honouring God: ἦ τοῦτο μὲν οὐκ ἀνυστόν . . . κοινῇ δὲ ξύμπαν τὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γένος . . . τούτων ξυμπάντων μηδεμίαν αἴσθησιν μηδὲ ὑποψίαν λαβεῖν . . . τοῦ κορυφαίου προεστῶτος τῶν ὅλων καὶ κατευθύνοντος τὸν ἅπαντα οὐρανὸν καὶ κόσμον . . . οὐ γὰρ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων τὸ τοιοῦτον γιγνόμενον θαυμάσαι τις ἄν, πολὺ δὲ μᾶλλον ὅπως καὶ μέχρι τῶν θηρίων δικνεῖται τῶν ἀφρόνων καὶ ἀλόγων, ὡς καὶ ταῦτα γιγνώσκειν καὶ τιμᾶν τὸν θεὸν καὶ προθυμεῖσθαι ζῆν κατὰ τὸν ἐκείνου θεσμόν.
[188] The phrase in such a life as this probably alludes to the unpurified life. The conception dear to the Gnostics was that demons took up their abode in the soul, and had to be exorcized by magic, or some form of purification. Only the soul that is concentrated within itself on the world of Mind (the second hypostasis) can, according to Plotinus, be proof against sorcery (Plot. Enn. iv. 4. 43). He tells us that enchantments (ἐπῳδαί) act upon the irrational part of the soul and could only be met by counter enchantments (ἀντᾴδων καὶ ἀντεπᾴδων). Magic could therefore be used for good or for evil. It could be offensive or defensive; it could cajole the demons to render them quiet, or expel them from their stronghold in the soul, or again attack the soul directly in an evil sense. Man with magic in his hand could become demoniac; but the sage was exempt. Bouillet (vol. i, p. 536) quotes St. Clement of Alexandria as comparing man with the wooden horse of Troy, inasmuch as he contains within his breast a whole army of maleficent spirits (τοσούτων πνευμάτων διαφόρων στρατός), and he quotes Valentinus as comparing the godless soul to a hostelry disordered, soiled, and profaned by thieving intruders (Stromateis, 409).
Dr. W. S. Crawford refers me to a passage in the letters of St. Isidore of Pelusium in which the word φαντασία is palpably used in the sense of ‘instinct’. The letter (Ep. ii. 119), concerning viviparous and oviparous animals, speaks of their nature as ‘imaginative’, not logical, if we use the word ‘imaginative’ to translate φανταστική. The text is as follows: . . . “Ὥστε θαυμάζειν μὲν χρὴ τὰ γιγνόμενα ἐς τὸν πάνσοφον Δημιουργὸν ἀναφέρειν τὸ θαῦμα. ταῦτα γὰρ ἐμφαίνει, οὐ τὴν τῶν ζῴων τῆς οἰκείας διαμονῆς πρόνοιαν (φανταστικὴ γάρ ἐστιν αὐτῶν ἡ φύσις, οὐ λογική), ἀλλὰ τῆς τὰ ὅλα διοικούσης φύσεως. τὰ μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἐργάζεται διανοίᾳ, ἡ δὲ . . . τὰς ὁρμὰς ἑκάστῳ ἐνδίδωσιν . . .”
It is noticeable that while he speaks of the φύσις of the animal as imaginative, he also describes it as giving the animal its impulses (ὁρμάς). In the Stoic philosophy ὁρμή was used of blind instinct as opposed to the reasoning side of man. The interesting fact in this passage of St. Isidore is that he couples φαντασία with a word that can only be taken in the sense of blind impulse or instinct.
[189] We do not form thought concepts without imagination. νοήσεις . . . ποιεῖν, to form thoughts or conceptions.
The passage seems to mean that we cannot have thoughts without some image or words or objects of sense perception being presented to us by the imagination. Modern psychologists are endeavouring to experiment on the possibility of thinking without language; of making the mind play upon thoughts directly and without this unconscious intermediary. It is something of this sort that I take Synesius to refer to when he speaks of grasping a form bereft of matter, i. e. of the image of language that is before the mind of the thinker (εἴδους ἀύλου).
As an example of the suggestion of the image of language by the imagination, any one who is equally conversant with two modern languages must have noticed that he is apt to think in one or other of them at a given moment, and that his thought is deflected to a certain extent by the language in the channel of which the mind is running at that moment, for a language influences thought just as thought influences a language. But to think without the agency of this imaginative presentation of language is practically impossible or, as Synesius says, a rare experience. Therefore, he would say, we imagine when we think. Aristotle states in De Anima (402ᵇ) his position in regard to imagination as follows: ‘The function that seems to belong most particularly to mind is thought, but thought itself, whether it is a sort of imagination, or whether it cannot exist without imagination, could never take place without the body. . . . The soul if it has nothing that belongs exclusively to itself cannot be separated from the body.’ We infer from this passage that in Aristotle’s conception the mind and soul (‘the rational soul’ of Plotinus) could not work without the body. It is true that in another passage (De Anima, 413ᵃ) he is less affirmative. ‘It is not clear whether the soul is the actuality of the body (ἐντελέχεια) as the passenger is the soul of a ship.’ Plotinus rejects the simile of Aristotle. For him the soul pervades the body but is not enclosed in it (Enn. iv. 3. 21–2). He distinctly says (Enn. ii. 3. 9) that ‘the rational soul is not in the body, it is raised to the things intellective to the beautiful, the divine, &c. The soul is present in the body as light is present in the air.’ Synesius, in invoking the imagination as a condition of the action of mind, seems to incline rather to the view of Aristotle. Bossuet (De la Connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même, cap. iii, 20) observes that the body is not a mere instrument controlled from without, nor a ship which the soul directs after the fashion of a pilot. It would be such if it were intellectual and intellectual only, but because it is in touch with the senses it is compelled to turn its attention more especially to that which touches it and to direct this not as an extraneous thing but as one naturally and intimately united with it.
[190] cf. Plato, Phileb. 21 D-E.
[191] The life in question . . . is founded on imagination. Lang, (Das Traumbuch des Synesius von Kyrene, pp. 45–8), explains the passages in this part of the work in the following way: ‘Imagination is the organ which first brings to a man’s consciousness the contents of his soul (134 B). . . . Imagination is “life in a somewhat reduced form, and exists according to a natural law of its own”. As such it has also its own organs of sense, which are perhaps of higher value than the purely physical ones. It is, further, . . . an imperative condition to the formation of thought. In this way we might describe our life here as one of imagination. . . . The “imaginative pneuma” is the most all-embracing organ of sense and “the first embodiment of the soul”(135 D). It has its seat in the head of the living creature from which it governs as from a citadel, surrounded by its “servants”, the respective senses. In 137 A . . . the pneuma is the border region between the material and the immaterial or between the reasonable and the unreasonable . . . it is subject to deceptions and disorders, but it may be cured by the “ministrations” of philosophy. It is in immediate dependence on the soul, and when this is in good health it is light and rises, whereas an evil soul overweights it and pulls it down to earth . . . when it descends to living beings without understanding it is no longer the chariot of the soul but the logos of the animal. In 137 D the pneuma is endowed with additional qualities. In a graduated scale it may be “a god, a multiform demon, or a phantom” . . . . The first soul enters the pneuma as into a ship, and in that way gets into touch with the material world. It is inseparably linked with it until its return to the spheres. When the soul sinks it sinks with it, . . . when the soul rises it follows. . . . when the pneuma becomes heavy it collapses and cannot occupy any longer the space it filled, and as there is no vacuum in the universe, an evil pneuma takes its place.’
'I have attempted in this review', says Lang, 'to reconstruct Synesius' line of thought, which is confused by interpolations or repetitions. It is clear that the expression φανταστικὴ φύσις (143 A) includes two ideas, different, but closely related. In the one case the phrase is taken in the sense of imagination, in the other that of pneuma in its various shades of meaning. Imagination is in its essence entirely immaterial; according to its definition as the "sense of senses" it can be nothing but a function. This is made especially clear in 137 c, where it is stated that imagination is generally essential to the formation of thought. On the other hand there is a pneuma which describes something material; it consists of the material and the immaterial.'
[192] The wise soul is dry. Cf. Matt. xii. 43. 'When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, it walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.'
A passage from Philo quoted by Eusebius (Praep. Evang. VIII. 14) shows in what way the aphorism was understood by the Jewish Alexandrine. 'It is the nature of the intellect', he says, 'to be rendered acute by the lightness of the air; on which account Heracleitus said with great propriety, 'where the soil is dry there the soul is most wise and most excellent.' Diels attributes to Heracleitus himself the words καὶ ψυχαὶ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ὑγρῶν ἀναθυμιῶνται, which are found in Areios Didymos after fragment 42 (Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (ed. 3), p. 151).
[193] lurks in holes. 'We are become dwellers in the Place of Unlikeness, where, fallen from all our resemblance to the Divine, we lie in gloom and mud: for if the Soul abandons itself unreservedly to the extreme of viciousness, it is no longer a vicious Soul merely, for mere vice is still human, still carries some trace of good: it has taken to itself another nature, the Evil, and as far as Soul can die it is dead. And the death of Soul is twofold: while still sunk in body to lie down in Matter and drench itself with it; when it has left the body, to lie in the other world until, somehow, it stirs again and lifts its sight from the mud: and this is our "going down to Hades and slumbering there".' (Plot. Enn. i. 8. 10: translated by Stephen Mackenna.)
Michael Psellus is haunted with visions of the same sort in the eleventh century. Cf. Epistolae, 13, p. 251, Satha. ‘Ὡς λίαν δὲ θυμῆρες τούτοις καὶ τὸ κλητώριον. ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν στενῷ τινι χωρίῳ καὶ μή τινα διέξοδον ἔχοντι συγκλειόμενοί πως καὶ συσφιγγόμενοι, πιέζουσί πως ἀλλήλους . . . ἐπὶ πλευραῖς κείμενοι. κ.τ.λ.
[194] , shameful for souls who do not return property not their own, &c. The text is αἰσχρὰ δ’ ἂν ἐπάνοδος γένοιτο, μὴ ἀποδιδούσαις τὸ ἀλλότριον, ἀλλὰ περὶ γῆν ἀπολιπούσαις ὅπερ ἄνωθεν ἠρανίσαντο.
Olympiodorus in his commentary on Plato’s Phaedo makes use of similar language (A. II. 3, ed. Norvin): ὅτι οἱ νέοι θεοὶ δεσμεύουσι μὲν τὰς ψυχὰς ἐν τοῖς σώμασι, ὅταν τὰ ζῷα συνυφήνωσιν ἐπιτήδεια πρὸς ψύχωσιν, δανειζόμενοι μόρια ἀπὸ τῶν στοιχείων. ὅταν δὲ ἀποδιδόντες τὰ δανείσματα διαλύσωσι τὰ ζῷα, τότε λύουσι τὰς ψυχὰς τῶν δεσμῶν.
[195] the soul which has once been engrafted. Lang (Das Traumbuch des Synesius von Kryene, p. 59) quotes a passage from Iamblichus Περὶ ψυχῆς in Stobaeus (Ecl. i. 49) ‘which’, he says, ‘conducts us within the very circle of those ideas that we are familiar with in Synesius. Here we are told that the views of the Platonists relating to the union of the soul and the body are divided. The majority admitted an immediate union, the others assumed intermediate links. For some make the soul come into immediate contact with the material body, as do most of the Platonists. The others maintain that between the immaterial and the material soul, ethereal, heavenly, and pneumatic envelopes are inserted, which contain the rational life and which are the protectors of the soul. These are the chariots of the soul, and they bring it into contact with the solid material world, connecting the two by intermediate links.’ Whereas already the above quotation shows a distinct relationship to our text, this is particularly clear in the last part. Here is expressed briefly what Synesius describes as the ‘borderland between the rational and the irrational’ (Dreams, c. 4). We must not be surprised if Iamblichus talks of two souls, corporeal and incorporeal. From Proclus (In Tim. 214 A, f.) we know that in his view two souls emanate from the creative soul. But, as Lang points out, here Iamblichus further complicates the matter by assuming ethereal envelopes between the soul (i.e. the immaterial soul) and the pneuma (i.e. the material soul), so that there is not one chariot (pneuma) of the soul, as Synesius states, but two. This is only carrying the principle further. It might be carried ad infinitum.
[196] remains with it. Hierocles, quoted by Cudworth (vol. iii, p. 275), says: ἡ λογικὴ οὐσία συμφυὲς ἔχουσα σῶμα, οὕτω παρὰ τοῦ δημιουργοῦ εἰς τὸ εἶναι παρῆλθεν, ὡς μήτε τὸ σῶμα εἶναι αὐτήν, μήτε ἄνευ σώματος· ἀλλ’ αὐτὴν μὲν ἀσώματον, ἀποπερατοῦσθαι δὲ εἰς σῶμα τὸ ὅλον αὐτῆς εἶδος. The same author speaks of man as ψυχὴ λογικὴ μετὰ συμφυοῦς ἀθανάτου σώματος, i.e. a rational soul with a cognate immortal body. He concluded therefore, Cudworth goes on to say, that this enlivened terrestrial body, or mortal man, is nothing but εἴδωλον ἀνθρώπου . . . where a demon or angel . . . is also defined by him, after the same manner, ψυχὴ λογικὴ μετὰ φωτεινοῦ σώματος. Again, Proclus on Plato’s Timaeus (v. p. 430) has the following: Πάντα δαίμονα τῶν ἡμετέρων κρείττονα ψυχῶν, καὶ νοερὰν ἔχειν ψυχήν, καὶ ὄχημα αἰθέριον.
[197] drags below with it the soul . . . too heavy. It is noticeable that a few lines earlier (1293 b 2) he uses the word πνεύμασι where we might expect ψυχαῖς. Evidently then the pneuma is what becomes heavy with moisture, i.e. the part of the soul which seems to be understood as partaking of star-matter (see note on πνεῦμα, c. 6), not the ethereal or immaterial soul. This division of the soul into πνεῦμα and ψυχή must not be confounded with the rational and irrational soul of Plotinus, ψυχὴ λογική and ψυχὴ ἄλογος. The soul is dragged down by the more material part being clogged with moisture. It is then in a condition when the πρώτη ψυχή (immaterial soul) can make use of it as a πνεῦμα, and this is what is meant by its associating with the world of Body (σωματικῷ κόσμῳ). This image of the σκάφος is intelligible enough if we translate πνεῦμα by ‘envelope’, accepting the definition of it given by Proclus (see note to c. 6) as a sort of sheath which added layers to itself as it descended. But on this supposition it is not clear in what way the immaterial soul descends without a pneuma of its own. The doctrine of Plato as found in the Phaedrus that the soul was divided from matter, inasmuch as it is not moved by material forces but by its own immaterial agency, is not that of Aristotle. ‘Physics’, he affirms, ‘must be a theoretical science, but it will theorize about such being as admits of being moved, and only about that kind of substance which . . . is not separable from matter.' (Metaphysics, 1025ᵇ, Ross.) He pointedly excludes being that generates its own motion, irrespective of the forces of matter; in other words that being which Plato finds in the soul. On the next page (1026ᵃ, Ross) he goes on to say that, 'it is clear . . . why it belongs to the student of nature to study soul to some extent, i. e. so much of it as is not independent of matter.' The inference is clear. He regards the soul as partly dependent on matter and partly independent of it. We are far from Plato's conception of the soul as the absolute, metaphysical entity, self-moving and independent of material forces, as explained in the Phaedrus. A little later, he continues, 'physics deals with things which are inseparable from matter but not immovable, and some parts of mathematics deal with things which are immovable, but probably not separable but embodied in matter; while the first science deals with things which are both separable and immovable.' Aristotle finally puts the case which concerns the ψυχή as follows: 'If there is no substance other than those which are formed by nature, natural science will be the first science; but if there is an immovable substance, the science of this must be prior and be first philosophy, and universal in this way because it is first.'
Plato then is conclusive as to the nature of the ψυχή coming under the scope of the 'first philosophy'. Aristotle assigns it partly to the physical and partly to the metaphysical sciences. The atomists and Epicurus in chief carried the material side of the ψυχή a step farther. The immaterial side for them had ceased to exist. The Scholiast on Epicurus' Letter to Herodotus (c. 66, edition Von der Mühll), in commenting on the philosophers' statement that the soul cannot have the same sensations as before, once separated from the body, because its protecting envelope is not the same, remarks: 'He says elsewhere that the soul is composed of very smooth and round atoms quite distinguishable from those of which fire is constituted. . . .' Epicurus himself goes on to say (c. 67) that 'what we call incorporeal . . . is that which cannot be self-conceived, but apart from a vacuum it is impossible to conceive of the incorporeal. Vacancy can be neither active nor passive; it only allows bodies to follow their motion. Those therefore who say that the soul is incorporeal speak senselessly.'
At this moment of Greek philosophy the sense of the dualism between spirit the incorporeal and matter had become unintelligible, and the metaphysical point of view defined by Aristotle in the passage above was in eclipse. It seems to foreshadow the πνευματικὴ ψυχή of Synesius and the conception of Proclus.
[198] Lethaean potion, &c. Synesius compares the well-known image in poetry of death as the drinking of a lethal draught with the drink that a soul was said to take in the astral zone of the universe, before passing through the zones of fire, air, and water, in its descent to inhabit a body upon this earth. Macrobius, in his commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, describes at length (Bk. I, chap. xii, §§ 1 ff.), the route that the soul takes in this voyage. The principal points are the following: he tells us that the Milky Way cuts the Zodiac in two points, at Cancer and at Capricorn, and that these two signs of the Zodiac are called the Gates of the Sun. It is by these gates that the souls descend from heaven to earth, and rise again from earth to heaven ('per has portas animae de caelo in terras meare et de terris in caelum remeare creduntur'). One of these doors, he tells us, is the gate of man, the other the gate of the gods. The souls of men pass through the gate of Cancer, but they come back through that of Capricorn, which is the gate of the gods, and through this they attain the seat of the immortality which belongs to them, and pass into the rank of the gods ('in deorum numerum revertuntur'). As long as the souls have not left the gate of Cancer they are still in the rank of gods ('adhuc in numero sunt deorum'). But when they have passed down as far as the Lion they begin to make trial of the condition before them. It is at this point that the soul descending from the boundary of the Zodiac and the Milky Way leaves its spherical form, that which alone is divine, and is attenuated into a conical form ('in conum defluendo producitur'). He next tells us that Plato in the Phaedo means to make allusion to the soul first entering the zone of matter, when he represents it as stumbling with intoxication ('animam in corpus trahi nova ebrietate trepidantem'), and that we have a symbol of this in the so-called Cup of Bacchus, placed between the Lion and Cancer. This represents that forgetfulness which is the companion of intoxication, and all souls in descending drink of this cup of oblivion. ('sed oblivionem quidem omnes descendendo hauriunt; aliae vero magis minus aliae'). It is evidently to this potion that Synesius alludes. Macrobius goes on to say that the doctrine of reminiscence is used among the Greeks to explain the greater or less forgetfulness in man of the truths that were part of his knowledge before he had descended; but there is also the drink of the gods. This is no other than Hyle (ὕλη), or matter, which stamped with forms, moulds the whole body of the world ('Hyle, quae omne corpus mundi, quod ubicumque cernimus, ideis impressa formavit'). It is called nectar, and believed to be the drink of the gods. But the drink of the souls is of a lower order, and it is this that the ancients called the Lethean stream ('inferior vero atque turbidior, potus animarum'). The soul then, drawn down by the weight of this drink, has next to pass through seven Zones. In its descent it takes on a luminous body (by this no doubt he means the pneuma), and also receives certain faculties for use in the life below, from the divinities to whom the seven zones are respectively dedicated. Taking them in their order, from top to bottom, it is from the zone of Saturn that they receive reasoning power ('quod λογιστικόν et θεωρητικόν uocant'), from that of Jupiter the power of action ('quod πρακτικόν dicitur'), from that of Mars the spirited element ('quod θυμικόν nuncupatur'), in that of the Sun the faculty of feeling and thinking ('quod αἰσθητικὸν et φανταστικόν appellant'), in that of Venus the movement of desires (ἐπιθυμητικόν vocatur'), in that of Mercury the faculty of expression (ἑρμηνευτικόν dicitur'), in that of the Moon the forces necessary for increase ('φυτικόν').
[199] descending into the first life . . . this soul, instead of serving, becomes enslaved. The Greek is θῆσσα γὰρ κατιοῦσα (i.e. ψυχή) τὸν πρῶτον βίον ἐθελοντὶς ἀντὶ τοῦ θητεῦσαι δουλεύει. Nicephorus Gregoras, the Byzantine commentator, remarks on this passage: πρῶτον βίον φησὶν ἀντιδιαστέλλων πρὸς τοὺς δευτέρους καὶ τρίτους οὓς φασιν Ἕλληνες γίνεσθαι διὰ τὰς μετεμψυχώσεις. Terzaghi ('Sul Commento del Niceforo Gregoro...') Studi italiani di Filologia classica, vol. xii), points out an error here on the part of the commentator. 'Synesius', says Terzaghi, 'affirms that the soul descending into this earthly life is a slave, and he compares with this condition the heavenly life of the pure soul . . . Synesius had contrasted the first earthly life with that which follows in heaven.
Nicephorus then has misinterpreted him, all the more so that just before this the philosopher of Cyrene, to bring out the contrast between matter and spirit, had written οὐκ ἔστιν ὅπως ποτ’ ἂν ἀποστραφείη τὴν ὕλην ψυχὴ μηδενὶ κακῷ περὶ τὰ τῇδε προσκόπτουσα.’
[200] Homer, Iliad, xxiv. 527; Plato, Repub. 379 c.
[201] Druon translates pneuma here as 'imagination'.
[202] Listen to the oracles, &c. Macrobius, in his commentary upon The Dream of Scipio, Book I, chap. 3, § 2, divides the various sorts of dreams into five categories (‘omnium, quae videre sibi dormientes videntur, quinque sunt principales et diversitates et nomina’). This classification he has taken from the work of Artemidorus on Dreams (Ὀνειροκριτικά). The five divisions of which he speaks are: the prophetic dream, the vision, the oracle, the dream properly so called, and lastly the phantom. ‘Aut enim est ὄνειρος secundum Graecos quod Latini somnium vocant, aut est ὅραμα quod visio recte appellatur, aut est χρηματισμός quod oraculum nuncupatur, aut est ἐνύπνιον quod insomnium dicitur, aut est φάντασμα quod Cicero, quotiens opus hoc nomine fuit, visum vocavit.’ It will be seen from this classification which Macrobius has passed down to us from Artemidorus that the oracle was identified in some form with a dream.
[203] snatched from the extremes of fire and air. Sallustius(c. vi) speaks of the four elements, fire, air, water, and earth, as forming zones in the order indicated, in a descending scale, from the six spheres of the planets which are above them, and to each of these lower zones he assigns a deity: Hephaestus to fire, Hera to air, Poseidon to water, and Hestia to earth. (Cf. Plato’s Phaedrus, where Hestia remains at home, and does not drive a chariot over the back of heaven, with the other gods.) The soul therefore, in ascending to its source on leaving the body, must pass through these zones. See Nock’s Sallustius, prolegomena, p. lix. I find in Olympiodorus (B. ρλβ, p. 112, ed. Norvin) the following passage which is interesting in this connexion: ‘Ὅτι ὡς τὸ πῦρ εἰς μὲν τὸ κάτω βρίθει βιαιότερον καὶ διά τινος μηχανῆς αὐτοφυῶς δὲ εἰς τὸ ἄνω χωρεῖ, ὅτι ἄνω αὐτῷ καὶ ἡ ὁλότης, οὕτω καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ πάσχει πρός τε τὴν εἰς τὸ σῶμα κάθοδον καὶ τὴν εἰς τὸ ὂν ἐπάνοδον, ἐπειδὴ καὶ αὐτῆς ἡ χωριστὴ ὁλότης ἐκεῖ.
The tendency of a flame to rise seems to have suggested the placing of fire as the outer zone (σφαῖρα), as also the comparison of the Psyche to a flame, which may be found in medieval imagery.
[204] donning its earthly shell. The expression τὸ γήινον ἀμφιέσασθαι κέλυφος is reminiscent of Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum (259) χιτών γε τὸ σῶμα τῇ ὃ ἠμφίεσται. Psellus, quoted by Cudworth (vol. iii, p. 268), speaks of the Chaldeans as recognizing two envelopes of the soul, the one ‘pneumatic’, the other ‘luciform’: Δύο χιτῶνας ἐπενδύουσι τὴν ψυχὴν οἱ Χαλδαῖοι. καὶ τὸν μὲν πνευματικὸν ὠνόμασαν, ἀπὸ τοῦ αἰσθητοῦ ἐξυφανθέντα αὐτῇ· τὸν δὲ αὐγοειδῆ, λεπτὸν καὶ ἀναφῆ, ὅνπερ ἐπίπεδον.
[205] together with the stronger part. Joannes Philoponus, the Christian writer of uncertain date, is also quoted by Cudworth to show that he also conceived of these two different bodies of the soul. Just as the soul in descending to the realms of matter took on envelopes, so, once purified, it dropped the pneumatic body and took to itself the astral or luciform. These are his words concerning the πνεῦμα which remains in the earthly body until, having purified itself, it is borne aloft, freed from (the world of) generation: τότε τοίνυν καὶ τὸν θυμὸν καὶ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἀποτίθεται μετὰ τούτου τοῦ ὀχήματος, τοῦ πνεύματος λέγω. εἶναι δέ τι καὶ μετὰ τοῦτο ἄλλο τι ἀϊδίως αὐτῆς ἐξημμένον, σῶμα οὐράνιον, καὶ διὰ τοῦτο ἀΐδιον ὅ φασιν αὐγοειδὲς ἢ ἀστροειδές. Again, Hierocles (Commentaria in Aurea Carmina, No. 222), in the opinion of Mosheim, brings back the envelope which he calls the πνευματικὸν ὄχημα τῆς λογικῆς ψυχῆς to one envelope. St. Paul uses the expression σῶμα ψυχικόν (1 Cor. 15. 44).
[206] in . . . which the soul has habitation . . . with this pneuma. πνεῦμα probably signifies an etherealized covering of the soul which becomes thicker as the soul descends from its sidereal region towards earthly matter. Passages to this effect may be found as late as Proclus and even later. The most important text in Aristotle bearing on the meaning of the word is perhaps this: Λείπεται δὲ τὸν νοῦν μόνον θύραθεν ἐπεισιέναι, καὶ θεῖον εἶναι μόνον· οὐδὲ γὰρ αὐτοῦ τῇ ἐνεργείᾳ κοινωνεῖ σωματικὴ ἐνέργεια. πάσης μὲν οὖν ψυχῆς δύναμις ἑτέρου σώματος ἔοικε κεκοινωνηκέναι καὶ θειοτέρου τῶν καλουμένων στοιχείων . . . πάντων . . . ἐν τῷ σπέρματι ἐνυπάρχει, ὅπερ ποιεῖ γόνιμα εἶναι τὰ σπέρματα, τὸ καλούμενον θερμόν. τοῦτο δὲ οὐ πῦρ, οὐδὲ τοιαύτη δύναμίς ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐμπεριλαμβανόμενον ἐν τῷ σπέρματι, καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀφρώδει πνεῦμα, καὶ ἡ ἐν τῷ πνεύματι φύσις, ἀνάλογον οὖσα τῷ τῶν ἄστρων στοιχείῳ. (De Gen. An. 736ᵇ.)
This passage is somewhat obscure. Mosheim, in his commentary on Cudworth (vol. iii. 472), q.v., considers it to mean that the pneuma is not the body of the soul but a sidereal element derived from the stars or analogous to them, and inherent in the seed that produces the sentient soul. But that Aristotle recognized a division of the soul into a material and immaterial part would seem to be indicated in a passage in Metaphysics (p. 1070ᵃ 24), in which he says that just as ‘the shape of a bronze sphere exists at the same time as the bronze sphere, we must examine whether any form also survives afterwards. For in some cases this may be so, e.g., the soul may be of this sort—not all the soul but the reason; for doubtless it is impossible that all soul should survive’ (Ross). Iamblichus, on the other hand, calls attention to the difference of opinion that existed in his day on the nature of the pneuma. The greater number of Platonists, he says, introduce the soul directly into the body, while others consider that between the material body and the incorporeal soul there are coverings of an ethereal, celestial, and spiritual nature (the ψυχικὸν πνεῦμα of Synesius) which, enveloping the rational soul, are formed to hold it in place and to act as vehicles for it in its journey down to the realms of matter, and once descended there, to attach it to the material body by common intermediary links. This, at least, is the sense in which I understand the passage quoted by Bouillet (Plotinus, vol. ii, p. 656). It seems essentially to concord with a citation from Proclus on the same page. ‘Every soul’, says Proclus, ‘has a vehicle immaterial, indivisible, and unmoved in its essence. . . The vehicle of every soul descends by the addition of envelopes more and more material. It rises with the soul when it is purified of matter and has returned to its own shape, as in the same degree the soul makes use of it. In point of fact the soul descends in an irrational manner, taking to itself irrational powers, and it rises by stripping itself of all the functions that are the province of generation.’ (Elements of Theology, ccviii.)
[207] misty element of the spirit envelope. Lang (Das Traumbuch des Synesius von Kyrene, pp. 62-3) quotes an interesting passage from Porphyry (De Antr. Nymph. 11, Nauck, 64. 9): ‘Those souls which draw a body towards themselves, whether they are corporeal or the reverse, and above all those which are on the point of attaching themselves to blood and moist bodies, must needs plunge into the moisture, and, once moistened, themselves become corporeal. Therefore we must help the souls of the dead by libations of gall and blood. Of necessity the body-loving souls at least which drag the pneuma behind them in a state of moisture will condense the latter into a cloud . . . and so these become visible. From these ranks are derived those souls that owing to their imagination leave behind them in the pneuma impressions of shadowy beings. . . . The pure souls, on the other hand, are turned away from the world of creation. ‘The wisest soul is dry lustre,’ as Heraclitus says. ‘Therefore the pneuma will become moist in proportion to the soul’s desire to join itself to matter, for the soul draws the pneuma with it in the form of steam owing to its desire for this creation.’
Lang remarks again, p. 81, that ‘The considerable influence of Porphyry on the philosophic trend of Synesius’ thought is obvious, and we do not have to look for it, as Volkmann supposed, in the teaching of the Oracles handed down by Iamblichus. . . . Plotinus was an even more remote figure to him than Porphyry. Apart from the foundations common to every Neo-Platonic mind, there is little influence in the details to be traced to him. To the image of the σκάφος already mentioned we should add the no less happy comparison of the Pneuma with an “amphibium”.’ Syn. 138ᵃ.
[208] This art of divination I resolve . . . to bequeath. Synesius may have had his own ancestral Lacedaemon in mind. Cicero (De Divinatione, I. xliii. 96) speaks of the Spartan Ephors as practising divination by dreams. ‘Moreover the Spartan magistrates, not content with the careful superintendence of the state affairs, went occasionally to spend a night in the temple of Pasiphae, which is in the country in the neighbourhood of their city, for the sake of dreaming there, because they considered the oracles received in sleep to be true.’
[209] Odyssey, iv. 750, 752 (759, 761); cf. xvii. 49 f.
[210] Ibid. i. 24.
[211] Demosthenes, p. 573. 10.
[212] Cf. De Prov. 1269, B. 7.
[213] , For the gaze and the hearing of an unholy mob. Tertullian, in his treatise on Baptism (cap. ii), expresses a somewhat similar train of thought. ‘There is really nothing that so blinds men’s minds as the simplicity of divine works . . . since with so great simplicity, without any parade or novel equipment, without any expense even, a man is lowered into water. . . . I am mistaken, if the appointed ritual or hidden mysteries of idol-worship do not, on the contrary, build up for themselves the belief and influence they have, from the splendour and cost of their elaborate preparations. (See translation by A. Souter, p. 47.)
[214] Sophocles, Fragment 862 (ed. Nauck², Leipzig, 1889).
[215] the element of hope is so abundant. Cicero (De Divinatione II. lxxii. 150) takes a less optimistic view of the influence of dreams. ‘Sleep seems to be the refuge from all labours and anxieties. And yet even from this many cares and perturbations spring forth, which indeed would of themselves have no influence and would rather be despised, if certain philosophers had not taken dreams under their special patronage, and those not philosophers of the lowest order. . . . Nay, if Carneades had not resisted their extravagance, I rather fancy they would by this time be reckoned the only philosophers worthy of the name.’ Synesius mentions Carneades more than once, but not in connexion with divination. The philosophers mentioned as believers in dreams here are no doubt the Stoics.
[216] Cf. Aesch. Prometheus, 252:
[217] Cf. Thucyd. i. 130; Aristoph., frag. 216 (O.C.T.); Plat. Leges, 695 B.
[218] Cf. Aelian, Varia Historia, xiii. 29.
waking state of the dreamer, or the sleeping state of the awakened. Macrobius has it that it is the phantom (φάντασμα), the last of his five divisions of dreams (vide supra, p. 461), which comes to us when we are neither quite awake nor quite asleep. He again (Comm. Somn. Scip. I. 3. §§ 6 f.) quotes Virgil (Aen. iv. 9):
‘Anna soror, quae me suspensam insomnia terrent!’
and then continues: ‘φάντασμα vero, hoc est visum, cum inter vigiliam et adultam quietem in quadam, ut aiunt, prima somni nebula adhuc se vigilare aestimans, qui dormire vix coepit, aspicere videtur irruentes in se vel passim vagantes formas a natura seu magnitudine seu specie discrepantes, variasque tempestates rerum vel laetas vel turbulentas.’ [Iamblichus] (on the Mysteries, sect. 3, chap. ii, p. 115, T. Taylor) throws some light upon the meaning of this passage. ‘It is usual . . . in human dreams, and in dreams which are excited by the soul, or by some of our conceptions, or by reason, or by imaginations, or certain diurnal cares.’ He distinguishes here between dreams which are purely ‘human’, and those which are sent by God. Of the human, he says, ‘these indeed are sometimes true, and sometimes false . . . but the dreams which are denominated theopemptoi or sent from God . . . take place either when sleep is leaving us, and we are beginning to awake, and then we . . . hear a certain voice, which concisely tells us what is to be done; or voices are heard by us, between sleeping and waking, or when we are perfectly awake. . . .
‘But wakefulness (p. 116, Taylor reads ἄυπνος for ὕπνος), a detention of the eyes, a similar oppression of the head, a condition between sleeping and waking, . . . are all of them divine indications, and are adapted to the reception of the Gods. . . . Some therefore, not knowing these indications of prophetic dreams, and conceiving that they have something in common with human dreams, rarely and casually obtain a foreknowledge of futurity.’ Again, in chapter three, the view of Iamblichus seems to accord with that of Synesius as expressed in this work: ‘When we are asleep, we are perfectly liberated, as it were, from certain surrounding bonds, and use a life separated from generation. Hence, this form of life, whether it be intellectual or divine, and whether these two are the same thing, or whether each is peculiarly of itself one thing, is then excited in us. . . .’ Cf. Bossuet, Sermon sur la Mort, ‘Je ne sais si ce que j’appelle veiller n’est peut-être une partie un peu plus excitée d’un sommeil profond; et si je vois des choses réelles, ou si je suis seulement troublé par des fantaisies et par des vaines simulacres.’
[219] Pindar, Fragment 214, Schroeder.
[220] Penelope . . . assumes that there are two gates of dreams, &c. Macrobius quotes the following line from Virgil à propos of false dreams: ‘Sed falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia manes.’ (Aen. vi. 896.) He then goes on to say a little later that those who were desirous to know why the ivory gate should be reserved for false dreams may consult Porphyry, who comments upon the passage in Homer that relates to the two gates as follows: ‘Latet, inquit, omne verum. Hoc tamen anima, cum ab officiis corporis somno eius paululum libera est, interdum aspicit, non numquam tendit aciem, nec tamen pervenit, et cum aspicit tamen non libero et directo lumine videt sed interiecto velamine quod nexus naturae caligantis obducit.’ (Macrob. Comm. in Somn. Scip., I. iii. 6, 17, 18.) Macrobius speaks of the mysterious veil that hangs over nature and that is only to be removed for those initiated into the mysteries, and even to them by the indirect path of allegory only. See his Commentary on The Dream of Scipio, I. ii. 17: ‘De dis autem, ut dixi, ceteris et de anima non frustra se, nec ut oblectent, ad fabulosa convertunt, sed quia sciunt inimicam esse naturae apertam nudamque expositionem sui, quae sicut vulgaribus hominum sensibus intellectum sui vario rerum tegmine operimentoque subtraxit, ita a prudentibus arcana sua voluit per fabulosa tractari. sic ipsa mysteria figurarum cuniculis operiuntur, ne vel haec adeptis nudam rerum talium se natura praebeat sed summatibus tantum uiris sapientia interprete veri arcani consciis contenti sint reliqui ad venerationem figuris defendentibus a vilitate secretum.’ Julian (Ep. 4, ed. Wright = 14 Bidez), an obvious believer in divination by dreams, in writing to Oribasius, clings to the Homeric tradition as to the respective values of the two gates: τῶν ὀνειράτων δύο πύλας εἶναί φησιν ὁ θεῖος Ὅμηρος, καὶ διάφορον εἶναὶ αὐτοῖς καὶ τὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀποβησομένων πίστιν. All this conception of a veil hung over nature affected the whole question of dreams, for he asserts that it is sleep which permits the mind’s eye to penetrate this veil, which is made of horn, since the nature of horn admits of its being so thin as to be penetrable by the sight, whereas that which befogs and repels the light is ivory, the body of which is more opaque by its nature: ‘Hoc velamen cum in quiete ad verum usque aciem animae introspicientis admittit, de cornu creditur, cuius ista natura est, ut tenuatum visui pervium sit, cum autem a vero hebetat ac repellit optutum, ebur putatur, cuius corpus ita densatum est, ut ad quamvis extremitatem tenuitatis erasum nullo visu ad ulteriora tendente penetretur’ (§ 20).
As for the Iliad passage alluded to, we find in Macrobius, i. vii. 6, comment upon this also: ‘Habuit enim praeceptio, ut universus produceretur exercitus, at ille sola pugnandi hortatione contentus non vidit, quid de producenda universitate praeceptum sit, praetermissoque Achille, qui tunc recenti lacessitus iniuria ab armis cum suo milite feriabatur, &c.’
[221] Odyssey, xix. 548.
[222] Iliad, ii. 11 f.
[223] what it has done for me personally. In the same way Philo tells us (De Migratione Abrahae, vii. 35) how divine powers visited him in day dreams. (Cf. Synesius, supra, ‘now all this is the waking state of the dreamer, &c.') 'Sometimes when I have come to my work empty I have suddenly become full, ideas being in an invisible manner showered upon me and implanted in me from on high, so that through the influence of divine inspiration I have become greatly excited and have known neither the place in which I was, nor those who were present, nor myself, nor what I was saying, nor what I was writing.' These words of Philo are similar to those of Synesius in Letter 154 in which he describes the state of mind in which he wrote this treatise on Dreams.
[224] An unregistered sense of the word συνεξεργάζομαι, demanded by the context.
[225] in emulation of the archaic Attic. Proclus (De forma epistolari, Hercher, Epist. Graec., p. 7 = Libanius, ed. Förster, vol. ix, p. 33) counsels moderation in 'Atticizing' when writing letters, quoting Philostratus of Lemnos: δεῖ γὰρ τὴν τῆς ἐπιστολῆς φράσιν τῆς μὲν συνηθείας ἀττικωτέραν εἶναι, τοῦ δὲ ἀττικισμοῦ συνηθεστέραν καὶ μήτε λίαν ὑψηλὴν μήτε ταπεινὴν ἄγαν, ἀλλὰ μέσην τινά.
[226] ineffective, plots of ghost-raising sorcerers. The fear that Synesius shows of sorcery is scarcely worthy of a philosopher, if we may credit Plotinus (Enn. iv. 4. 43): 'Every being who has relations with another being can become the victim of sorcery. . . . It is only the being who is concentrated within himself (i. e. the philosopher) who is proof against sorcery.' To the same effect, Celsus (The True Discourse, 74): 'The musician Dionysius of Egypt, whom I knew personally, told me that magical practices have no power except on the ignorant and the debauched, and that they have no effect on philosophers, and on those who know how to remain their own masters and order their lives wisely.' Again, Plotinus (ibid.) has the following: 'How can the sage escape the action of enchantment and the philters used in magic? His soul escapes from them completely . . . the sage can only suffer from the unreasonable portion that he receives from the universe . . . but he will not suffer from the loves inspired by philtres.'
[227] Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, pp. 383 F, 384 A.
[228] Aratus, Phaenom. 812 ff. (Mair, p. 442).
[229] Aristotle and reason assert . . . perception creates memory. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 980ᵃ 27, Φύσει μὲν οὖν αἴσθησιν ἔχοντα γίνεται τὰ ζῷα, ἐκ δὲ τῆς αἰσθήσεως τοῖς μὲν αὐτῶν οὐκ ἐγγίγνεται μνήμη, τοῖς δ' ἐγγίγνεται. Ibid. 980ᵇ 28, Γίγνεται δ' ἐκ τῆς μνήμης ἐμπειρία τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. κ.τ.λ. 981ᵃ 2, 'Αποβαίνει δ' ἐπιστήμη καὶ τέχνῃ, διὰ τῆς ἐμπειρίας τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. ‘By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from sensation memory is produced in some of them though not in others . . . and from memory experience is produced in men . . . science and art come to men through experience.’ (Ross.)
[230] many books have . . . been collected. Mayor on Pliny, Epist. iii. 5. 4, enumerates various writers on this subject: Artemidorus, Astrampsychus, Macrobius, Philo, Aristides, Valerius Maximus.
[231] Unidentified lines.
[232] troubled and limpid waters. Synesius seems to have in mind here a passage of Aristotle’s Divination by Dreams (περὶ τῆς καθ’ ὕπνον μαντικῆς, 464ᵇ), in which he concludes that the best diviner is he who can detect obscure resemblances in the dream-images to actual things, and compares these blurred images to disturbed reflections of objects in troubled water. Τεχνικώτατος δ’ ἐστὶ κριτὴς ἐνυπνίων ὅστις δύναται τὰς ὁμοιότητας θεωρεῖν· τὰς γὰρ εὐθονειρίας κρίνειν παντός ἐστιν· λέγω δὲ τὰς ὁμοιότητας, ὅτι παραπλήσια συμβαίνει τὰ φαντάσματα τοῖς ἐν τοῖς ὕδασιν εἰδώλοις, καθάπερ καὶ πρότερον εἴπομεν. ἐκεῖ δέ, εἰ πολλὴ γίνεται ἡ κίνησις, οὐδὲν ὁμοία γίνεται ἡ ἔμφασις καὶ τὰ εἴδωλα τοῖς ἀληθινοῖς. δεινὸς δὴ τὰς ἐμφάσεις κρίνειν εἴη ἂν ὁ δυνάμενος ταχὺ διαισθάνεσθαι καὶ συνορᾶν τὰ διαπεφορημένα καὶ διεστραμμένα τῶν εἰδώλων, ὅτι ἐστὶν ἀνθρώπου, ἢ ἵππου, ἢ ὁτουδήποτε. κἀκεῖ δὴ ὁμοίως τι δύναται τὸ ἐνύπνιον τοῦτο· ἡ γὰρ κίνησις ἐκκόπτει τὴν εὐθονειρίαν. Aristotle is not very conclusive in his short essay on divination as to whether dreams foretell the future or not. In the passage just quoted he seems to imply the possibility of their being prophetic. How can a man be an expert diviner of them if there is nothing to divine? He dismisses as absurd the idea that they are sent by God (τό τε γὰρ θεὸν εἶναι τὸν πέμποντα, πρὸς τῇ ἄλλῃ ἀλογίᾳ, καὶ τὸ μὴ τοῖς βελτίστοις καὶ φρονιμωτάτοις, ἀλλὰ τοῖς τυχοῦσι πέμπειν ἄτοπον, p. 462ᵇ), on the ground that they not merely do not occur chiefly to the best and wisest, but most frequently to the vulgar, μεθ’ ἡμέραν τε γὰρ ἐγίνετ’ ἂν καὶ τοῖς σοφοῖς, εἰ θεὸς ἦν ὁ πέμπων· οὕτω δ’ εἰκὸς τοὺς τυχόντας προορᾶν· ἡ γὰρ διάνοια τῶν τοιούτων οὐ φροντιστικὴ ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἔρημος καὶ κενὴ πάντων (464ᵃ) . . . But although Aristotle rejects the idea that dreams are sent by God, he admits the possibility of their being controlled by demons. The fact that the lower animals dream would of itself be proof that dreams are not sent by the Divinity, but the demon is a possible source as being a part of nature (φύσις). Thus (p. 463ᵇ) he cautiously suggests this agency: ‘Ὅλως δ’ ἐπεὶ καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ζῴων ὀνειρώττει τινά, θεόπεμπτα μὲν οὐκ ἂν εἴη τὰ ἐνύπνια, οὐδὲ γέγονε τούτου χάριν, δαιμόνια μέντοι· ἡ γὰρ φύσις δαιμονία, ἀλλ’ οὐ θεία.’ The phrase τούτου χάριν I take to mean ‘for the purpose of divining the future’. But Aristotle begins his essay by admitting that it is not easy either to hold aloof from a belief in divination or to accept it. ‘Περὶ δὲ τῆς μαντικῆς τῆς ἐν τοῖς ὕπνοις γινομένης καὶ λεγομένης συμβαίνειν ἀπὸ τῶν ἐνυπνίων, οὔτε καταφρονῆσαι ῥᾴδιον, οὔτε πεισθῆναι (462ᵇ)’.
[233] Strabo, ix. 3, 5.
[234] Herodotus, ii. 49.
somebody’s Melampus. This usage of τῳ in a contemptuous sense may be compared to the use of aliquis in Tertullian, ‘For they are initiated into certain sacred rites by a bath, those of some Isis or Mithras,’ A. Souter’s translation of Tertullian concerning Baptism, Note, p. 51.
[235] Philostratus.
[236] phantasy . . . things, which are . . . inconceivable. This is the last time that Imagination is spoken of in this treatise. Plutarch, ‘the great’, is quoted by Johannes Philoponus in his commentary on Arsitolte, De Anima (p. 515, ed. Hayduck), as follows: ‘Once sense-perception has addressed itself to the perceptible object and has registered its form, it preserves it. It is to this form then that Imagination addresses itself, to form a representation of it, as Plutarch asserts. He also defines Imagination as the movement of the soul which takes its origin from active sense-perception. . . . According to Plutarch Imagination is double. At one extremity it touches the higher faculty, it ends where discursive reason begins. At the other extremity it touches upon the senses, of which it forms the summit. Imagination gives nothing to Mind and discursive reason, but it is purified and perfected by them, inasmuch as under their guidance it reaches the possession of truth, as far as its nature is capable of so doing.’ In the same vein of thought Iamblichus (xxi) speaks of Imagination as giving to Opinion the intuition of forms which proceed from the senses, and at the same time the conceptions that come from Mind. ‘It receives itself’, he goes on to say, ‘the images which the various powers of the soul furnish it with, and its name well expresses its function in assimilating and reflecting back all the phenomena of the intellectual faculties, whether the vegetative or the intermediary. It transmits to the other powers throughout the body the impressions which it received from Mind.'
Simplicius has the following (Commentary on Aristotle, De Anima, p. 214 Hayduck): 'Although Imagination, as Iamblichus says, represents all our rational operations, nevertheless it resembles the forms of sensation which are divisible and have extension. It is for this reason that it touches upon sense-perception.' It will be seen that the psychologists who preceded Synesius or were his contemporaries, as well as Simplicius, who wrote at a later period, did not give imagination the preponderant place in the organization of the human intellect that is accorded to it by the Cyrenean philosopher. (See Introduction, p. 78.) Plotinus also asserts (Enn. iii. 6. 16) that 'Imagination has the same relation to soul that form has to matter'. Plotinus in Enn. iv. 3. 29, makes imagination responsible for memory. 'We are free to admit that a sense percept (αἴσθημα) produces an image (φάντασμα) in the memory, and that imagination . . . has the power of keeping these images . . ., so when sensation is no longer present, imagination preserves the thing represented (ὅραμα). . . . It is therefore to imagination that the memory of things perceptible belongs.' Plotinus in recognizing the two souls, the rational (λογική) and the irrational (ἄλογος), is bound to divide imagination into two categories, sentient imagination, and intellectual imagination. 'When there is peace in that within us which is capable of reflecting the images of the Rational and Intellectual-Principles, these images appear. . . . When, on the contrary, the mirror within us is shattered through some disturbance of the harmony of the body, Reason and the Intellectual-Principle act unpictured: intellection is unattended by imagination. In sum we may safely gather that while the Intellective Act may be attended by the Imaging-Principle, it is not to be confounded with it.' (Plotinus, Enn. i. 4. 10, Stephen Mackenna's translation.) Again, in Enn. iv. 3. 30 he asks whether intellectual concepts can also be preserved by the imagination. 'If imagination', he says, 'accompanies each thought (νόησις), and if perchance it preserves an image of it, it will thus have a memory of the object of the thought in question. . . . Reason (λόγος), whose action accompanies thought, has perhaps the office of receiving it and transmitting it to the imagination.
. . . Reason unfolds it and, making it pass from the state of a thought to that of an image, displays it in our imagination as it were in a mirror. It is in this way that a thought is perceived, in this way that it remains and becomes a memory.' As to the souls and the two imaginations which belong to them, Plotinus tells us (ibid. 31) that when they are in harmony their images are confounded in one, that when they are in strife the one or other of them imposes its image on us and we are unconscious of the image of the alternative; 'just as we are unconscious of having two souls, for the two souls are confounded in one, and the one serves as a vehicle for the other.'
Aristotle had said (De Anima 431ᵃ, 17) that we cannot think without images; he adds that memory of thoughts cannot exist without images, and that it is only indirectly that memory can grasp thoughts; of itself it can only reach percepts of the senses.
[237] in dreams one conquers, walks, or flies. Cf. Cicero (De Divinatione, I. xxx. 64). 'There are . . . three ways in which men dream under the immediate impulse of the gods: one when the mind intuitively foresees things by the relation which it bears to the gods; the second arising from the fact of the air being full of immortal spirits in whom all the signs of truth are as it were stamped and visible; the third when the gods themselves converse with sleepers.'
[238] Forthwith a fierce struggle ensues. All this passage and what follows is, perhaps, reminiscent of one in Dio Chrysostom's Troiana, xi. 129 (vol. i, 148, ed. von Arnim). The editor has enclosed the page in brackets. Dio is accusing Homer of making a confused jumble of events and images in the latter part of the Iliad, and proceeds to say: ταῦτα οὐκ ἐνυπνίοις ἐοικότα τῷ ὄντι καὶ ἀπιθάνοις ψεύμασιν; ἐν γὰρ τοῖς ὄρῳ γεγραμμένοις ὀνείρασιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι τοιαύτας ὄψεις ὁρῶσι, νῦν μὲν δοκοῦντες . . . μάχεσθαι γυμνοὶ ὄντες, ἐνίοτε δὲ οἰόμενοι διώκειν καὶ τοῖς θεοῖς διαλέγεσθαι . . . καὶ οὕτως, εἰ τύχοι ποτέ, πέτεσθαι καὶ βαδίζειν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάττης. ὥστε καὶ τὴν Ὁμήρου ποίησιν ὀρθῶς ἄν τινα εἰπεῖν ἐνύπνιον, καὶ τοῦτο ἄκριτον καὶ ἀσαφές.
[239] Otus and Ephialtes, who attempted to pile Ossa on Olympus and Pelion on Ossa. Odyssey, xi. 315.
[240] Cf. Syn. Ep. 4, p. 85 of my translation.
[241] Cf. Plato, Phaedrus, 247 A.
[242] Plutarch, Cimon 18.
[243] the hands of Anysius . . . carried out God’s will. For Anysius Synesius had the greatest admiration. We first hear of him in the indictment of Andronicus (ep. 57): ‘And as against this pestilence God has arrayed the south wind, so now has a leader been chosen by Him against the Ausurians. Oh, may it prove that he is the holist and most just of all His generals!’ Events must have moved very fast if the chronology of Druon (p. 605), approved by Crawford (p. 492), placing this speech in the year 411, is accepted. Andronicus only arrived at Cyrene, Druon thinks, in 410. Then we must allow time for the awful scenes of maladministration and carnage that Synesius recounts in his indictment pronounced in 411. Synesius attacks him in this great Philippic—the so-called Letter 57—and excommunicates him in the encyclical addressed to the bishops (ep. 58), all in the same year (411) as that in which he wrote the document before us. But in 411 he speaks of Anysius as if quite recently appointed to his post as commander. Writing to Anysius (ep. 78) in the same year he congratulates him on his brilliant successes. ‘The Unnigardae,’ he says, ‘in two or three engagements . . . assisted by God and led by you have gained the greatest and most glorious victories.’ But, still following the same attempts at chronology, in the same year (411) Anysius is recalled. So he was nominated at the end of 410 and left the country in 411, during which brief period he conducted a campaign in the desert of Libya, and transformed the whole situation. In Letter 59, which Druon dates in the year 412, Synesius writes to Anysius that Pentapolis only existed while he (the general) remained there. ‘The times since your departure have betrayed us to our enemies.’ There are seven letters of Synesius in all addressed to Anysius; in ep. 94 he seems to be watching a long campaign, in ep. 78 he is begging his friend to write personally to the emperor for one hundred and sixty more Unnigardae. In those days of slow communication all this meant time. Again in epp. 6 and 14 Synesius writes to him about a certain Carnas, some trivial affair concerning the stealing of a horse, and rather as if Anysius was not on active service. These two letters contain no allusion to the war. These difficulties in chronology I call attention to without being able to offer a solution.
[244] The Unnigardae with Anysius are the hands of Rome. These Unnigardae were a sort of corps d’élite to whom Synesius attributes the successes of Anysius, and which, to judge from ep. 78, were to be had in Constantinople. The absurdity of the numbers quoted, ‘The Forty &c.’, I have discussed in the introduction to The Letters of Synesius (p. 51).
[245] I, for one, do not know what I ought to say. This speech Druon places in 412, about a year later than the last. Anysius had gone, and the situation had again become gloomy. The passionate outpouring of this oration led Lapatz, in his delightful commentaries on the letters of Synesius (p. 266) to emit the opinion that the document is a private letter which was mistaken in aftertime for a speech. He speaks of it as ‘si pathétique qu’on l’a prise à tort pour un discours.’ The suggestion is certainly an interesting one. The phrase (line 8, Migne) γράφε σὺ is one such as he would use to a correspondent, and is inexplicable as a phrase addressed to an audience. Again ἀγγειλάτω τις αὐτοῖς seems to mean: ‘Let some one of your circle of influential friends announce to the council &c.’ In other words: ‘if you write to every one you know, some one of them is sure to do it.’ The first sentence of the speech: Ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ κ.τ.λ. is clearly not an oratorical opening, but rather an epistolary one. Of the 159 actual letters of Synesius to correspondents, the following six commence with the first personal pronoun, ep. 25 ἐμοὶ μέν, ep. 30 ἐγὼ καὶ σοῦ, ep. 67 ἐγὼ καὶ βούλομαι, ep. 80 ἐγὼ μὲν οἷος ἦν, ep. 96 ἐγὼ μάρτυρα ποιοῦμαι, ep. 108 ἐμοὶ λόγχαι. This way of beginning a letter was not so uncommon in other fourth-century writers. Taking at random the first 157 letters of Libanius, I find seven which begin with the first personal pronoun, viz. epp. 22, 45, 50, 52, 58, 76, 125 (ed. Foerster). Julian, writing to Hecebolius, begins: Ἐγὼ μὲν κέκρημαι τοῖς Γαλιλαίοις . . . πράως . . . ὥστε μηδένα μηδαμοῦ βίαν ὑπομένειν, the famous defence of his policy towards the Christians (115 Bidez-Cumont, 43 Hertlein, 40 Wright), again to Atarbius we find Ἐγὼ . . . οὔτε κτείνεσθαι τοὺς Γαλιλαίους . . . βούλομαι (83 Bidez-Cumont, 71 Hert, 37 Wright) the first sentence in his letter. Other instances might be given, e.g. epp. 1, 30, 71 (Wright).
Now when we turn from the epistolographoi to the orators, we observe that it seems to have been an unwritten law with these that a speech must not begin with ἐγώ . . . or ἐμοί . . . This is true of the speeches, about 160 in number, of the ten great orators and those few which we possess of Gorgias, Lesbonax, Herodes, Alcidamas, and Hyperides. The only exception I know is the second oration against Alcibiades by Lysias. the authenticity of which is more than doubtful (ed. C. Hude, Or. xv). Antiphon, in the fourth speech of his tetralogia, desiring evidently to begin with the first personal pronoun, precedes it by the word ἰδού, thus, ἰδού, ἐγὼ τῇ τε ἀτυχίᾳ κ.τ.λ., evidently to avoid a violation of the rule. In like manner Hyperides begins two of his speeches (iv, v. ed. Kenyon) ἀλλ’ ἐγωγε and ἀλλ’ ἐγώ ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί . . . seemingly for the same reason, i.e. not to begin with ἐγώ. To come to the fourth century A. D., Libanius, in the one hundred and fifteen speeches that have come down to us (60 orations, 55 declamations, ed. Foerster), has not been guilty of beginning a single one with ἐγώ or μοί. The same is true of the few orations we have of Julian. Out of seventy-three letters of Julian, classified as authentic in the edition of Professor Wright (Loeb), five commence with the first personal pronoun. The case therefore on this count seems a strong one for the inclusion of the Catastasis among the letters.
On the other hand, the lack of any personal allusion to his correspondent, if such there be, is unusual to Synesius in a letter of such a length, and the tone is rather one of impassioned oratory. A third supposition might be made, namely that the letter was written to some friend, possibly in Alexandria or Constantinople, to be read by him at a public meeting or a private group there, in an attempt to rouse public opinion on the awful danger that threatened Pentapolis, with a view to bringing pressure to bear on the court. It does not seem the sort of speech to deliver at an acute moment of crisis, when the morale of the population required sustaining.
[246] the great Anthemius. Anthemius is mentioned in several of the letters (epp. 47, 49, 73, 75, 79, 118). Synesius seems to admire the great Roman praefect's abilities, but he criticizes him sharply for not doing more to save Pentapolis. Anthemius was appointed consul and praetorian praefect of the East in the year 405 (v. Gibbon, ed. Bury, iii, p. 383 n.), and as he retained this office some ten years, he was responsible for the administration of Libya during the later and most troublous years of Synesius' life. In letter 49 Synesius, writing to his friend Theotimus the poet, playfully compares him to Simonides, and his admirer Anthemius to Hiero I, the tyrant of Syracuse. 'You resemble him (i. e. Simonides) in this’, he writes, ‘that it was Simonides who handed down the fame of Hiero to all posterity, and that, through the poems of Theotimus, Anthemius will be famous in letters as long as Greeks shall exist.’ In letter 73 he writes to Troilus, the famous sophist: ‘you have a double motive for lifting her (Cyrene) up from her downfall, and you are able to do so because Anthemius has the character that can save cities, and moreover he has fortune and statecraft. . . . I pray that it may not come to pass in the time of the great Anthemius that Roman rule shall perish. . . . Say to him, in the name of reason, say to him: Is it not you yourself who have caused a new law to be dispatched to supplant the old one? . . . Why does not your wrath then fall upon those who glory in breaking your administrative acts? . . . we only beg Anthemius to enforce the laws of which he is the guardian.’
[247] Prolonging her agony to the seventh year. If we are right in supposing that this document was written in 412, the disastrous nature of the war must have been accentuated about the year 404, when we assume, with Druon, that Synesius was in Alexandria. Already in the year 399 he paints a gloomy picture of Cyrene in his speech before the emperor, speaking of it as ‘now a heap of ruins, &c.’ Accepting the same chronology, we can gather glimpses of the war in the letters from the year 405, and after. In Letter 132 to his brother he writes: ‘at the moment of dawn I am off on horseback, I am scouting as far out as possible. . . . We need archery in defence of our wells . . . we must either conquer now by fighting, or perish in hand-to-hand struggle with the enemy. . . .’ And this is only the first of the six years of ‘agony’! Again in Letter 130 to Simplicius he writes: ‘Alas for the young men we have lost! . . . we have planted our fields for the fires lit by our enemies . . . our cattle, our herds of camels . . . all are lost, all have been driven away.’ Passing to the year 406 (?) we find him in Letter 119 writing to his friend Trypho, the former governor of Pentapolis, that Cyrene owes its continued existence to him alone. In the year 407 a letter to his brother (ep. 108) begins: ‘I have already three hundred lances. . . . To-morrow, I think, the battle will take place. . . . I hope that . . . by the aid of God I may vanquish the enemy. . . . I commend my children to you.’ Letter 107, to his brother, contains the words: ‘The enemy is holding the country, plundering everything, and slaughtering whole populations.' Again, still in the year 407, he tells his brother (ep. 122) of a victory gained by a priest of Axomis, Faustus by name, who led a force of peasants against the enemy. Now it is strange that after this letter, if we follow Druon’s sequence, we find no reference to the war until we come to Letter 94, addressed to Anysius himself this time, and written in 411. In the thirty-seven intervening letters covering the years 408-9-10, one of which (67) is extremely long, he is writing in a most peaceful strain, nor could any one imagine on reading them that a war or any sort of disturbance was going on. Are we to conclude from this that a lull in the barbarian inroads had taken place in these three years, or that many letters have been lost, or again, that Druon’s conjectural order is fundamentally wrong? I have always been inclined to think that a great number of Synesius’ letters have been lost, and the facts we are considering are the best evidence of this. However you may rearrange the chronology of the letters, there are not enough letters alluding to the war to cover the seven years, 405-12. It seems inconceivable that so ardent a patriot and one with the power of dramatic expression evidenced in this Catastasis and letters quoted, should write thirty-seven letters without a single allusion to what was evidently nearest to his heart. But to proceed with year 411—the hypothetical date—at this juncture he writes to Anysius: ‘As soon as I learned the bad news from Cyrene the other day (that the enemy were approaching) I thought of sending to you . . . but a messenger came to inform us that the general had already occupied the high ground, &c.; send back the two brothers to Cyrene,—they will fight for their country.’ Here is another to Anysius (ep. 78) of the same year, speaking of the Unnigardae: ‘The barbarians had scarcely shown themselves when some were killed . . . and others put to flight. They (the Unnigardae) still patrol the heights, ever on the watch . . .: who would not admit . . . that they would suffice, when commanded by you, to bring the Ausurian war to an end . . .?’ Coming now to the year 412, we have a lurid picture of the war in a letter to Theophilus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, his oldest friend (ep. 69): ‘He (the messenger) was sent to solicit military co-operation . . . but the enemy did not wait . . . they have already spread en masse over the country. All is lost, all is destroyed . . . there is nothing left but the cities, nothing! What may befall to-morrow, God alone knows.’
This is the last letter in Druon’s order which speaks of the war; it might well have been the last Synesius was to write.
[248] not poured over the country in a compact mass. We have just noted that in Letter 69 he describes the barbarians as having done precisely this. I think the sense is, ‘ things were going better in the days of Anysius, for he broke the barbarians up, but now they have poured over the country.’ Letter 69 was written before the Catastasis, evidently, but probably in the same year.
[249] shields of the Marcomani. As the Marcomani (v. Gibbon, i, p. 235 n.) were a colony who from the banks of the Rhine occupied Bohemia and Moravia, one can only conclude that they had been sent at some time to Libya, possibly under Anysius himself. They are mentioned in Strabo, vii. 290, and Tacitus, Ann. ii. 62, &c.
[250] Cythera is opposite Pentapolis . . . Dorian tombs, &c. The island of Cythera is almost due north of Cyrene, but at a distance of about 280 miles. It is off the southern extremity of Laconia to the east of Cape Matapan. No doubt this means that he wishes to be near his Lacedaemon. The idea of the Dorian tombs of his ancestors was always haunting Synesius. In his indictment of Andronicus (ep. 57) he reminds his hearers that he is descended from Eurysthenes, who settled the Dorians in Sparta, and how all this has been engraved on public monuments.
[251] Cf. Ps. ii. 11.
[252] In the hand of the Lord there is a cup, &c. Crawford (Synesius the Hellene, p. 494) speaks of the part of the discourse beginning here as a ‘mystical interpretation, quite in the manner of Alexandria, of Ps. lxxv. 8 (lxxiv. 9 in the LXX), in which Synesius makes exceeding light of the value of the letter, and declares that it is the spirit alone which is of consequence . . . the cup is one, for it was One Spirit Who inspired both Prophet and Apostle’. He adds in a foot-note that there is something a little like this in Isidore, epp. 5. 281.
HOMILY 2
This so-called homily is obviously two fragments joined together, and they have no connexion with each other. The first fragment of the two Morellus, the translator, thinks is from a sermon on Easter Eve, and addressed to those newly baptized. The second ‘seems to belong’, says Crawford (p. 496), ‘to some forensic speech, and denounces the iniquities of the people of Leontopolis, a city in the Delta of the Nile’. The city is mentioned by Strabo, xvii. 802.
[253] Ps. lxxiv. 9.
[254] Ps. lxxiv. 9.
[255] Phil. iii. 20.
[256] song of the cicada. Philo in The Contemplative Life, cap. 4, in describing the life of the Therapeutae, the anchorites who lived in a community of their own, near Lake Mareotis, compares their abstinence in regard to food to that of the grasshoppers, which insects, he says, are reputed to ‘feed on air, their song, it would seem, making their scarcity (of nourishment) tolerable to them’.
[257] born without birth: ἀλόχευτος. This word is used by Coluthus, an epic poet of the end of the fifth century, line 180, in describing the birth of Athene.
[258] leaping from out the centre, &c. Cf. Plotinus, v. i. 11: ‘This Highest cannot be divided and allotted, must remain intangible but not bound to space, it may be present at many points, wheresoever there is anything capable of accepting one of its manifestations: thus a centre is an independent unity; everything within the circle has its term at the centre; and to the centre the radii bring each their own. Within our nature is such a centre by which we grasp and are linked and held; and those of us are firmly in the Supreme whose collective tendency is There.’ (Trans. Mackenna, vol. iv, p. 15.) See also the note on Dreams, p. 446.
[259] reveal not the mysteries. Here we have a trace of Gnosticism. Compare the passage in the book of Jeû, quoted in Hastings's Encyc. Relig. Eth. vi, p. 231: 'This is the book of the γνώσεις of the invisible God, contained in the hidden mysteries which show the way to the elect generation.' In the same way the magical papyri contain what they define as Gnosis. It was the privilege of the one initiated in the mysteries of the Gnostics to have a knowledge of watchwords and magical formulae that would enable his soul after death to pass through the sentinels of the planetary zones. Cf. Hippol. v. 5, Hymn of the Naassenes: 'Then said Jesus: . . . send me, O Father. With the seal will I descend, travel through all Aeons, disclose all mysteries, show the forms of the gods: the secrets of the holy path which are called "Gnosis" I will impart.' It will be seen from this to what an extent Gnosis was a supernatural revelation of a mystical character, in the eyes of its earlier exponents. The later Gnostics endeavoured to clothe their tenets in a metaphysical and philosophic dress. Synesius is perpetually referring, in his letters and elsewhere, to the danger of revealing the secrets shared by the initiated to the world outside. Of these initiations and mysteries there were many. The Gnostics derived them from Babylonia, from Persia, from Egypt, and through the Greeks, from Phrygia. To which cult of Gnosticism Synesius alludes is not clear, but it certainly seems that he had the Gnostics in mind, probably Basilides and Valentinus, their chief exponents. Bardesanes, the disciple of the latter, according to Eusebius, flourished in the last part of the second century and the first part of the third, and was the last great teacher of Gnosticism. Both he and Marcion sought to envelop their doctrines in the beliefs of the Christian Church, and seem to have largely adopted its ritual. In this way a new syncretic type of Christianity was formed, and the forces of Gnosticism, which had come into collision with the Orthodox Church, continued to survive in certain heretical sects.
[260] light shall leap forth. There is a trace here of the cult of Mithra. Wisdom, the creator and the unified flame mentioned below, is the directing mind of the world. The religion of Mithra, as Cumont has pointed out (cf. Les Mystères de Mithra, p. 201, note), was anything but Hellenic in its inspiration; it opposed the culture of Iran to that of Hellas.
[261] a blessed silence. Here again is an expression which may have a Gnostic derivation. The Valentinians regarded Sige (silence), as co-existent with Bythos, the invisible, eternal, the not-begotten. Bythos placed in the bosom of Sige the germ of production which he had produced from Ennoia (thought). Sige, made fruitful by this germ, bore Nous, like to his father, and equal to him, and alone capable of understanding Greatness. The Valentinians give to Nous the name Monogenes, i. e. the one son of the father and of the principle of all things. With Nous was also born Aletheia (truth). Bythos, Ennoia, Nous, and Aletheia form the Tetrad of the Pythagoreans, and this the Valentinians called in addition the root of all things. This is the account of the Valentinian doctrine as given by St. Irenaeus, to whom we owe most of our information on the subject (cf. St. Iren. i. 1.) It will be seen to what an extent the Gnostics had assimilated Pythagorean doctrines.
Nous, according to St. Irenaeus’ statement of the doctrine, understanding for what motive he had been engendered, produced by his union with Aletheia, Logos (the Word), and Zoe (life), so that Logos should be the father of all the Aeons that were to be born after him. He was thus the principle and the artificer of what the Gnostics described as the Pleroma (fullness or completion, vid. St. Paul, Rom. xi. 12). From the union of Logos and Zoe were born Anthropos (man) and Ecclesia (the Church). This is the primitive Ogdoad, the root and substance of all things. Synesius, it will be observed, is always returning in the Hymns to this phrase, The Root.
[262] Thou Male, Thou Female. St. Epiphanius cites a fragment from one of the Valentinians in his work on the Heresies (xxxi, cap. 5) as follows: ‘In the beginning all things were contained as unknown in Autopator, (the Father Himself), whom some call the Aeon, who is exempt from age, who is always young, who is male and female, and includes all things everywhere, without being contained in any of them. In him was Ennoia (thought); this is the name that some give her, but others call her by her own name, Charis (grace), because grace makes part of the treasures of Greatness to those who were born to greatness; indeed those who make use of her real name call her Sige (silence) because Greatness has made all things by conception and without a word. Ennoia, the incorruptible female Aeon, desiring to break her chains, seduced Greatness by the attraction of pleasure. Once united to him she bore the Father. . . . By the will of Bythos, who contains everything, Anthropos and Ecclesia, remembering the words of the Father, became united and engendered the Dodecad. . . . Thereafter Logos and Zoe desiring also to glorify Bythos, became united, that is to say had one will in common, and by this union engendered the Decad, of which the male Aeons Bythios, Ageratos, Autophyes, Monogenes, Akinetos, received the names which they bear for the glory of that One Who contains all things. The female Aeons, Mixis, Henosis, Syncrasis, Henotes, Hedone, in like manner received their name from it for the glory of Sige.’
St. Irenaeus (I. iii. 1) remarks: ‘The Valentinians declare that the things they tell concerning the Pleroma have not been clearly revealed, because all men are not capable of understanding the Gnosis, but that the Saviour indicated mysteriously in parables these things to those capable of understanding their meaning. . . . (I. iii. 5) ‘This is what they all say concerning the Pleroma’, he adds, ‘that they have imagined; they deflect from their obvious sense the most beautiful passages in their attempt to render their ideas in them conformable to their wretched invention.’
The union of Bythos and Ennoia reminds one somewhat of a passage in Philo, as Bouillet points out (vol. i, p. 505): ‘The author of this universe ought to be called the Father of His works. We will give the name of Mother to supreme Wisdom. It is to her that God united Himself in a mystic manner, to bring about the generation of all things; it is she who, made fruitful by the divine germ, gave birth at the time foretold, and with sore travail, to that one dearly-beloved son whom we call the World.’ (Philo, De Ebrietate, 8, § 30.) As to the part that Christ played in the conception of the Gnostics (for it must not be forgotten that they claimed to be Christians and the true representatives of the Christian faith), St. Irenaeus (I. ii. 6) describes it as follows: ‘Full of thankfulness to Propator, the Aeons with one accord placed in common whatever each one of them possessed that was most beautiful and perfect, the star and the goodly fruit of the Pleroma, in a word, Jesus, or the Saviour, to Whom they give His patronymic names of Christ, the Word, and the All. With Him were born in honour of the Aeons themselves, the angels, destined to serve Him as attendants.’
Bouillet again remarks (vol. i, p. 510) that the Valentinians pretended that their doctrine about Jesus was indicated in various passages in St. Paul. ‘In ipso habitat omnis plenitudo divinitatis corporaliter.’ But the Valentinians cut out the last word from the text (Col. ii. 9). He also quotes the Epistle to the Romans xi. 36, ‘Omnia ex ipso et in ipsum omnia.’ St. Irenaeus and Tertullian also say with some reason that, in the Gnostic system, Jesus is a sort of Pandora: ‘The myth in fact of the birth of Jesus, and of the angels who accompany Him, is very like the myth of Pandora in the sense in which the Neoplatonist understood it. Plotinus, for instance, expresses himself in this way: ‘Prometheus having formed a woman, the other gods adorned her, and hence she was called Pandora. . . . This myth evidently indicates the gifts that the world has received.’ (Enn. lib. IV, iii. 14.)
‘In the Gnostic myth’, continues Bouillet, ‘the intelligible gods are the Aeons; the intelligences, which are the givers of souls, are the angels who accompany Jesus, or, again according to St. Irenaeus, the lights which surround Him.’ We may compare in this connexion the phrase ‘plucking flowers of light to be hymns unto Thee’ (Hymn III. 138 ff.), and in this Hymn (45 ff.) the passage ‘an ageless army of angels, now looking upon Mind, plucks therefrom the principle of beauty’, which last is very much like the conception of the Valentinians as presented to us by St. Irenaeus.
This hymn may be compared with the Orphic verses quoted by the pseudo-Aristotle, De Mundo, 401a-b, and translated by E. S. Forster:
Zeus of the flashing bolt was the first to be born and the latest,
Zeus is the head and the middle; of Zeus were all things created;
Zeus is the stay of the earth and the stay of the star-spangled heaven;
Zeus is male and female of sex, the bride everlasting.
De Mundo was probably written as late as the beginning of the second century A.D.
[263] weaving a crown. Pindar, in the eighth Isthmian Ode, 68 (148), speaks of presenting to Cleander, the victor in the pancratium, a crown of myrtle. In the same way Hippolytus in Euripides' drama (73) offers a crown to Artemis from 'the undefiled meadows'.
[264] that mighty witness, the sun. Here again is a touch of Mithraism.
[265] the demon of matter . . . soul-devouring hounds, &c. It is very interesting to trace the different functions that Synesius assigns to demons in his various works. The terrors that came from demonology were ever present to the minds of the fourth and fifth centuries and after. They passed into the conceptions of the Middle Ages, and we find them in full force in Byzantium in the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, if we turn to the works of Michael Psellus, or Nicephoras Gregoras, or of Anna Comnena. In the Egyptian Tale we find a more ambitious and lofty rôle assigned to the demons (1228c). They remind us of the Titans in Hesiod (Theog., 392, 648, 668, &c.) who storm Olympus and fight with the immortal gods. They display in the Egyptian Tale malice, cunning, and resource. As in Hesiod they were finally imprisoned in Tartarus, so here the demon of matter is represented as sinking beneath the earth, cf. Theogony, 729 ff., where the poet says: 'There by the counsel of Zeus who drives the clouds the Titan gods are hidden under mystic gloom, in a dank place where are the ends of the huge earth. And they may not go out; for Poseidon fixed gates of bronze upon it . . .' (translation Evelyn White). All this is very like the view of the demons presented in the Essay on Dreams. The allusions to the demon or demons of matter in the Hymns point rather to a vaguely destructive agency. The prayers that Synesius is always sending up rest upon a haunting fear of their power to do him harm, not merely to the soul but to the body, a fear which was present to the Christian mind at this period, as well as to the pagan. Both the neo-Platonists and the Christian writers agreed in this point at all events, in their terror of the demons. We find it in Proclus as well. Lang (Das Traumbuch des Synesius von Kyrene, p. 85) traces the influence of Porphyry (De Abs. ii. 40) upon Synesius in the following quotation: ‘This and similar things they (the demons) do to turn us away from the true knowledge of God, and to direct our glance towards themselves. For they derive their pleasure from all contradictory and unreasonable occurrences, and advantage from our indecision, and in this way they hide themselves behind the masks of the other gods. They approach the great mass of people and inflame ambition in men. They suggest to them especially a love and longing for riches, power, and fleshly gratification, and imbue them with love for fame, from which arise insurrections, wars, and the like.’ Above all (ibid. 42), he says: ‘they wish to be gods, and to arouse the impression of being the power which rules these, that is to say the highest god himself.’ Lang further remarks that this “wallowing in matter” as a characteristic of the demons, may also be found in the commentaries on the Chaldean Oracles. “The beasts of the earth” spoken of in the Oracles are interpreted by Psellus (1140ᵃ) to mean the demons which thus wallow on the earth. ‘These animals’, says Psellus, ‘exist in our own life, which is full of passions, for they are present abundantly in the passions, and their dwelling-place is that of matter, as is their rank and degree. For this reason they are also subject to passions and fettered to them. . . .’ Again in 1140c.: ‘the Oracles call them demons of the earth because they have been thrown down from heaven and sprawl upon the ground.’ It is certainly interesting in regard to the unity and tradition of Greek sentiment to see how the same conception may be traced from the days of Hesiod to the days of Synesius and Michael Psellus, little disturbed practically by the waves of the Persian, Jewish, and Christian religions that had come into contact with it.
[266] Father of Thyself . . . Son of Thyself. Here Synesius uses the phraseology dear to the Valentinians, who affirmed that there exists on the unseen heights an eternal Aeon of all perfection, which was pre-existent to everything. This they called Proarche, the first principle, or as Synesius in this passage, Propator, i.e. the first father or Bythos, the abyss. He is invisible and incomprehensible. The mythology of the Valentinians turned largely upon this invisibility and incomprehensibility of the Almighty.
[267] starry intelligences. Plotinus attempted to take up some of the ideas from Plato’s Timaeus regarding Mind, the rational soul, and heavenly bodies (Enn. ii. 3. 9): ‘In the Timaeus, the creating God bestows the essential of the Soul, but it is the divinities moving in the kosmos (the stars) that infuse the powerful affections holding from Necessity—our impulse and our desire, our sense of pleasure and of pain—and that lower phase of the Soul in which such experiences originate. By this statement our personality is bound up with the stars, whence our Soul (as total of Principle and affections) takes shape; and we are set under necessity at our very entrance into the world: our temperament will be of the stars’ ordering, and so, therefore, the actions which derive from temperament, and all the experiences of a nature shaped to impressions.
‘What, after all this, remains to stand for the “We”?
‘The “We” is the actual resultant of a Being whose nature includes, with certain sensibilities, the power of governing them. Cut off as we are by the nature of the body, God has yet given us, in the midst of all this evil, virtue the unconquerable, meaningless in a state of tranquil safety, but everything where its absence would be peril of fall. . . .’ (Stephen Mackenna, vol. ii, p. 167–8.)
Plotinus, according to Bouillet, does not admit, as one might be inclined to think at first on reading this passage, that we actually receive our souls from the stars. All that the soul receives from the stars is the pneuma, that is to say the aerial or fiery body that it puts on before descending to the world of sense. The ‘starry intelligences’ mentioned by Synesius here seem to be the ‘divinities moving in the kosmos’ mentioned by Plotinus. These gods who add to the immortal principle of the soul the passions of the irrational soul are, according to Synesius, the protectors of man also.
[268] All things bring to Thee ageless praise, &c. Here we seem to have an echo from The Song of the Three Holy Children in the Apocrypha.
[269] from Thrace, where for three years I dwelt . . . near to the king’s palace. Synesius refers to this episode in the Essay on Dreams at the end of chapter ix: ‘My life has been one of books and of the chase, except what time I spent as an ambassador. Would that I had not been compelled to see those three unspeakable years of my life, &c.'
[270] my couch was moistened with the dropping of tears. Here Synesius seems to have the sixth Psalm in mind, v. 7: 'I am weary with my groaning; every night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.'
[271] as many temples as were builded for Thy holy ceremonies, O King, . . . I supplicated gods that labour, &c. Here is another curious instance of the polytheistic tendencies of Synesius. The temples in question it would not be easy to identify, but from his description of them they seem to allude to tutelar divinities that protected Thrace and Chalcedon. This passage is the more interesting, in view of the syncretism that appears in so much of his writings, because here at least one cannot explain the polytheistic note as a piece of imaginative or poetical imagery. This appears to be a statement of something that he actually did. So we might infer that at this period of his life he was adopting more than a conventional form of paganism. On the other hand the address to the emperor Arcadius reflects purely monotheistic conceptions. It will be noticed at the same time that he speaks of the temples in question as having been specially appointed by the One God whom he is addressing in this Hymn, and whom he regards as having inspired the minor gods in question.
[272] But a great wave has broken over me. Cf. Psalm xli. 8, 'All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me.'
[273] Brother of Prometheus and husband of Pandora.
[274] to escape the destiny of the body. Villemain, as Druon reminds us, p. 182, observed that there are many similarities between the Méditations of Lamartine and the Hymns of Synesius. Druon quotes several passages to this effect, from which I have selected one which seems to echo the thoughts of line 706 et seq.:
Je te cherche partout, j'aspire à toi, je t'aime!
Mon âme est un rayon de lumière et d'amour,
Qui, du foyer divin détaché pour un jour,
De désirs dévorants loin de toi consumée,
Brûle de remonter à sa source enflammée.
(Prem. Médit., 'La Prière'.)
[275] I sing unto Thee . . . with silence. Sige (silence) was, as we have seen, one of the principal personages in Valentinian theogony. Here and there in these hymns, Synesius seems to emphasize silence, as in Hymn III, l. 82, ‘Let silence hold the caverns of the universe while these sacred hymns are offered up.’ Whether he attaches the meaning to Sige that was dear to the Valentinians is not clear.
[276] Mother, Sister, and Daughter to Thy self. This might seem to refer to the Holy Virgin, although where she is mentioned in the other hymns, as in Hymn V and Hymn VII, he uses a direct and unmistakable phrase, as ‘the sacred travail of a Bride’, or, ‘Offspring of the Virgin, Jesus of Solyma’. ‘The Secret Root’, on the other hand, could scarcely be taken to refer to Christ, for Synesius is always using the expression ‘Root’ as an attribute of the Father. A few lines above he addresses Him as ‘Root of Roots’, and again in this passage he speaks of ‘a Shoot’, which might be taken to refer to ‘the Root’ as its origin. It is impossible to reconcile these extraordinary contradictions. Farther down, p. 385, l. 12, he speaks of the ‘Root of all things that came after Thy illustrious Birth,’ presumably then after the Nativity.
If we could omit lines 12 f. (p. 383, 29, ‘Giver’ &c.), which after all might be an interpolation, the sentence would be quite consistent. After this passage he seems to go on addressing the Son, until we get to p. 386, l. 4, where he speaks of a second great Luminary, or Sun, the perceptible impression of Mind. If we take this to mean the Holy Ghost, as I suggest, we can explain this Hymn as a laudation of the Christian Trinity. It might, however, be explained in another way, and the continual allusions to the sun and light and so forth might be regarded as touches of Mithraism.
[277] This Word I hymn, in unison, &c. This whole hymn seems to be addressed to the Holy Trinity. He begins in the first lines by addressing the Father, and so continues, as for instance in line 60, where he uses the expression ‘Unit of units, Father of fathers’, and so on to line 87, where he addresses the Son: ‘I sing to the Offspring,’ and so on. In line 98 he mentions for the first time the Holy Spirit, described as the ‘Centre of the Creator, Centre again of the Son’. The phrase which follows ‘Mother, Sister, and Daughter’, as I have just said, is somewhat obscure. We now come to line 130 (p. 385, 9), where he speaks of ‘the Word’. This passage again might be taken in several senses, according as we conceive the metaphysical or theological basis of Synesius’ thought. The text as it stands seems to place the ‘Word’ in opposition to Mind. As the Greek reads, it is then the Word which has begotten (σε) ‘Thee,’ presumably the Son. It is also the Mind of the ineffable Father which has effected this parturition, and continuing to speak of the same person (the Son?), he addresses Him as the ‘Word of the Father’. All this involves either a contradiction or an attempt to place the existence of the Persons of the Godhead on a metaphysical plane.
[278] seven planets dance in harmony. He may be alluding here to the conception of the planetary zone which is found in Gnostic literature, each of these zones having a guardian divinity. To allow the soul to pass by these without danger, the initiated in the Gnostic mysteries were supplied with magical formulae and pass-words.
[279] seq. and as many things as are deprived of all breath, &c. Druon compares this passage with the following lines from Lamartine:
Tout l’univers subsiste à l’ombre de sa main;
L’être à flots éternels découlant de son sein,
Comme un fleuve nourri par cette source immense,
S’en échappe, et revient finir où tout commence.
(Prem. Médit., ‘Dieu’.)
It would be interesting to know whether Lamartine had ever read the Hymns of Synesius. It is possible that Villemain, who was his contemporary, and like him had occupied important posts in the French government, had called his attention to them.
If we return to the first lines of Hymn II, and compare them with a passage selected by Druon from the Harmonies, ‘Encore un Hymne’, the metrical form is quite strikingly alike:
Encore un hymne, ô ma lyre,
Un hymne pour le Seigneur;
Un hymne dans mon délire,
Un hymne dans mon bonheur.
[280] The patriotic vein in Synesius, that always couples Cyrene and Sparta, is present even here.
[281] Thou dividest the indivisible Spirit (pneuma) throughout the earth. We have seen already, in commenting upon the Essay on Dreams, how important a place the conception of the Pneuma occupied in the philosophy of Synesius. He does not, however, seem to make much play on it in the Hymns. Wolfram Lang, in his commentary on the Essay on Dreams (Das Traumbuch des Synesius von Kyrene, Tübingen, 1926), p. 57, makes the following remark on the part that the term played in later Greek philosophy: ‘The idea of the Pneuma is one of the most many-sided in the whole of Greek philosophy, although it only began to play an important part when the climax of Greek culture had already been passed. The Stoics considered the Pneuma to be the material substance of the soul, and an emanation of the all-penetrating divine power. In their view the soul of man was an ἔνθερμον πνεῦμα. The various powers of the soul were located in Pneumata proper to each. Thus there was one that perceived, one that represented, another that thought, and so on. . . . The sense in which Synesius understands Pneuma is not this of the Stoics, or of Philo. . . . To the Greeks in pre-Christian days Pneuma meant the prophetic substance which enters into man. To this conception the Delphic Oracle had accustomed all Greeks. The Pneuma is a combination of material and immaterial elements. It has, as Synesius explains in 140 B, absorbed a part of the elements.’
[282] This reading was discovered by Terzaghi, and refers to the family of Hesychius, the friend to whom Letter 93 is addressed. See longer note.
the house of the sons of Hesychius. ('Ησυχιδᾶν δόμον.) This precious reading has been recovered by Terzaghi. Hesychius was the name of a dear friend of Synesius, to whom Letter 93 is addressed. In his honour Synesius gave the name Hesychius to his eldest son (cf. Letter 53, with my note).
[283] his hound, the devourer of man. It would almost seem as if Synesius identified Cerberus with the demon of matter mentioned in the fourth hymn, lines 245 ff., ‘the shameless hound of the nether world, the demon of earth.’