for he has there placed the end and boundary of the earth, where the shadow ceases and goes no farther. Now into that place no wicked or impure person can have access. But good folks, being after their decease carried thither, lead there indeed an easy and quiet, but yet not a blessed and divine life, till the second death.

28. But what is that, O Sylla? said I. Ask me not, he replied, for I am of myself going to declare it to you. The common opinion, which most persons hold, is that man is a compound subject, and this they have reason to believe. But they are mistaken in thinking him to be compounded of two parts only. For they imagine that the understanding is a part of the soul, but they err in this no less than those who make the soul to be a part of the body; for the understanding as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and diviner than the body. Now this composition of the soul with the understanding makes reason; and with the body, passion; of which the one is the beginning or principle of pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue and vice. Of those three parts conjoined and compacted together, the earth has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of man, ... as therefore brightness to the moon. Now of the deaths we die, the one makes man two of three, and the other one of two. And the former indeed is in the region and jurisdiction of Ceres, whence the name given to her mysteries (τελεῖν) resembles that given to death (τελευτᾶν). The Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred to Ceres. As for the other death, it is in the moon, or region of Proserpine. And as with the one the terrestrial, so with the other the celestial Mercury doth dwell. This suddenly and with force and violence plucks the soul from the body; but Proserpine mildly and in a long time disjoins the understanding from the soul. And for this reason is she called Μονογενής, that is, only begotten, or rather, begetting one alone; for the better part of man becomes alone when it is separated by her. Now both the one and the other happens thus according to Nature. It is ordained by Fate that every soul, whether with or without understanding, when gone out of the body, should wander for a time, though not all for the same, in the region lying between the earth and the moon. For those that have been unjust and dissolute suffer there the punishments due to their offences; but the good and virtuous are there detained till they are purified, and have by expiation purged out of them all the infections they might have contracted from the contagion of the body, as if from foul breath, living in the mildest part of the air, called the meadows of Pluto, where they must remain for a certain perfixed and appointed time. And then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage or long exile into their country, they have a taste of joy, such as they principally receive who are initiated in sacred mysteries, mixed with trouble, admiration, and each one’s proper and peculiar hope. For the moon drives and chases out many souls which already long after it. And some who are already come thither, and yet take pleasure in things below, are seen descending down as it were into an abyss. But those that are got on high, and are there securely seated, first go about as victors, crowned with garlands called the wings of constancy, because in their lives they restrained the unreasonable and passible part of their soul, rendering it subject and obedient to the curb of reason. Secondly, they are like to the rays of the sun in appearance, and like to fire in their soul, which is borne aloft by the clear air which is about the moon,—like fire here on the earth,—from which they gather strength and solidity, as iron and steel do by their being tempered and plunged in water. For that which was hitherto rare and loose is compacted and made firm, and becomes bright and transparent; so that it is nourished with the least exhalation in the world. And this is what Heraclitus meant, when he said that the souls in Pluto’s region have their smell exceeding quick.

29. Now they first see the moon’s greatness, beauty, and nature, which is not simple nor unmixed, but a composition as it were of earth and star. For as the earth mixed with wind and moisture becomes soft, and as the blood tempered with the flesh gives it sense; so they say that the moon, being mingled with an ethereal quintessence even to the very bottom, is animated, becomes fruitful, and generative, and is equally counterpoised with ponderosity and lightness. For even the world itself, being composed of some things naturally moving upwards and others by nature tending downwards, is exempt from all local motion or change of place. These things also Xenocrates seems by a certain divine reasoning to have understood, having taken his first light from Plato. For Plato it was who first affirmed that every star is compounded of fire and earth, by the means of certain intermediate natures given in proportion; forasmuch as nothing can be an object of human sense which has not in some proportion a mixture of earth and light. Now Xenocrates says that the stars and the sun are composed of fire and the first or primitive solid; the moon of the second solid and its own peculiar air; and the earth, of water, fire, and the third solid. For neither is the solid alone by itself, nor the rare alone by itself, capable or susceptible of a soul. And let thus much suffice for the substance of the moon.

Now as to her breadth and magnitude, it is not such as the geometricians deliver, but manifoldly greater. And she seldom measures the shadow of the earth by her greatness, not because she is small, but because she adds to her motion by heat, that she may quickly pass the shady place, carrying with her the souls of the blessed, which make haste and cry. For when they are in the shadow, they can no longer hear the harmony of the heavenly bodies. And withal, the souls of the damned are from below presented to them, lamenting and wailing through this shadow. Wherefore also in eclipses, many are wont to ring vessels of brass, and to make a noise and clattering to be heard by these souls. Moreover, that which is called the face of the moon affrights them when they draw near it, seeming to them a dreadful and terrible sight; whereas indeed it is not so. But as our earth has deep and great bays, one here running between Hercules’s pillars into the land to us, and others without, as the Caspian, and those about the Red Sea; so in the moon also there are hollows and great depths. Now of these, the greatest they call the gulf of Hecate, where the souls punish or are punished according to the evils they suffered or did whilst they were Daemons. The two others are long passages, through which the soul must go sometimes to that part of the moon which is towards heaven, and sometimes to that which is towards earth. Now that part of the moon which is towards heaven is called the Elysian fields; and that which is towards the earth, the fields of Proserpine that is opposite to the earth.

30. The Daemons do not always stay in the moon, but sometimes descend down here below, to have the care and superintendency of oracles. They are assistant also, and join in celebrating the sublimest ceremonies, having their eye upon misdeeds, which they punish, and preserving the good as well in perils of war as of the sea. And if in the performance of this charge they commit any fault, either through anger, envy, or any unjust grace or favor, they smart for it; for they are again thrust down to the earth, and tied to human bodies. Now those who were about Saturn said, that themselves were some of the better of these Daemons; as were formerly those that were heretofore in Crete called Dactyli Idaei, the Corybantes in Phrygia, and the Trophoniades in Lebadea, a city of Boeotia, and infinite others in several places of the habitable earth, whose names, temples, and honors continue to this day. But the powers of some fail, being by a most happy change translated to another place; which translations some obtain sooner, others later, when the understanding comes to be separated from the soul; which separation is made by the love and desire to enjoy the image of the sun, in which and by which shines that divine, desirable, and happy beauty, which every other nature differently longs after and seeks, one after one manner, another after another. For the moon herself continually turns, through the desire she has to be joined with him. But the nature of the soul remains in the moon, retaining only some prints and dreams of life. And of this I think it to have been well and truly said,

which it does not immediately, as soon as it is separated from the body, but afterwards, when it is alone and divided from the understanding. And of all that Homer ever writ, there is not any passage more divine than that in which, speaking of those who are departed this life, he says,

For every one of us is neither courage, nor fear, nor desire,—no more than flesh or humors,—but the part by which we think and understand. And the soul being moulded and formed by the understanding, and itself moulding and forming the body, by embracing it on every side, receives from it an impression and form; so that although it be separated both from the understanding and the body, it nevertheless so retains still its figure and semblance for a long time, that it may with good right be called its image.

And of these souls (as I have already said) the moon is the element, because souls resolve into her, as the bodies of the deceased do into earth. Those indeed who have been virtuous and honest, living a quiet and philosophical life without embroiling themselves in troublesome affairs, are quickly resolved; because being left by the understanding, and no longer using corporeal passions, they incontinently vanish away. But the souls of the ambitious and such as have been busied in negotiations, of the amorous and such as have been addicted to corporeal pleasures, as also of the angry and revengeful, calling to mind the things they did in their lives, as dreams in their sleep, walk wandering about here and there, like that of Endymion; because their inconstancy and their being over-subject to passions transports them, and draws them out of the moon to another generation, not letting them rest, but alluring them and calling them away. For there is nothing small, staid, constant, and accordant, after that being forsaken by the understanding, they come to be seized by corporeal passions. And of such souls, destitute of reason and suffering themselves to be carried away by the proud violence of passion, were bred the Tityi and Typhons; and particularly that Typhon who, having by force and violence seized the city of Delphi, overturned the sanctuary of the oracle there. Nevertheless, after a long tract of time the moon receives those souls and recomposes them; and the sun inspiring again and sowing understanding in them, the moon receives them by its vital power, and makes them new souls; and the earth in the third place gives them a body. For she gives nothing ... after death of all that she takes to generation. And the sun takes nothing, but reassembles and receives again the understanding which he gave. But the moon gives and receives, joins and disjoins, unites and separates, according to divers faculties and powers; of which the one is named Ilithyia or Lucina (to wit, that which joins), and the other Artemis or Diana (to wit, that which separates and divides). And of the three fatal Goddesses or Parcae, she which is called Atropos is placed in the sun, and gives the principle of generation; and Clotho, being lodged in the moon, is she who joins, mingles, and unites; and the last, named Lachesis, is on the earth, where she adds her helping hand, and with her does Fortune very much participate. For that which is without a soul is weak in itself and liable to be affected by others. The understanding is sovereign over all the rest, and cannot be made to suffer by any. Now the soul is a certain middle thing mixed of them both; as the moon was by God made and created a composition and mixture of things high and low, having the same proportion to the sun as the earth has to her.

This (said Sylla) is what I understood from this guest of mine, who was a stranger and a traveller; and this he said he learned from the Daemons who served and ministered to Saturn. And you, O Lamprias, may take my relation in such part as you please.