X. THE ORPHICS…

X. THE ORPHICS

The earliest authority who mentions Orphic sects and their practices is Herodotos (ii, 81), who calls attention to the correspondence between certain sacerdotal and ascetic ordinances of the Egyptian priesthood, and the "Orphic and Bacchic" mysteries. The latter, he says, are really Egyptian and Pythagorean, or in other words they were founded by Pythagoras or Pythagoreans upon Egyptian models; and thus, in the opinion of the historian, they cannot have come into existence before the last decade of the sixth century. Herodotos then, either in Athens or elsewhere, had heard during his journeys of certain private societies who by calling themselves after the name of Orpheus, the prototype of Thracian song so well known to legend, recognized the origin of their peculiar cult and creed in the mountains of Thrace, and did honour to Bakchos the Thracian god. The fact that the Greek Orphics did indeed worship Dionysos, the lord of life and death, before all other gods, is clearly shown by the remains of the theological poems that originated in their midst. Orpheus himself, as founder of the Orphic sect, is actually said to have been the founder also of the Dionysiac initiation-mysteries.[1\10]

This gathering-together in the name of Orpheus for the purpose of offering a special worship to Dionysos was, then, the work of sects who, in private association, practised a cult which the public and official worship of the state either did not know of or disdained. There were many such associations, and of very varied character, which kept themselves aloof from the organized religion of the community, and were tolerated by the state.[2\10] As a rule, they were "foreign gods"[3\10] who were thus worshipped; and generally by foreigners who thus kept up the special worship of their own homes, though they did not always exclude natives of their adopted country. Now, Dionysos, the god of the Orphic sects, had for a long time ceased to be a foreigner in Greek countries; since his arrival from Thrace he had been refined and matured under the humanizing sun of Greece, until he had become a Greek god, and a worthy associate of the Greek Olympos. It is possible, however, that in this process, the old Thracian god may have seemed to his original worshippers to have lost his real {336} character, and they may on that account have joined together to offer, in separation from the official worship, a special cult in which all the old ideas of the national religion should be preserved unaltered. A secondary wave of influence thus broke upon the long-since-Hellenized god, the Thracian Dionysos in Greece, and this wave the official worship either had not the power or lacked the will to assimilate. It was therefore left to special sects who honoured the god after their own private laws. Whether indeed they were Thracians who, as in the similar case of the unmodified worship of Bendis,[4\10] or Kotytto, thus reinstituted their ancient and national worship of Dionysos in Greek countries, we cannot with certainty tell; but this special cult would certainly not have achieved the importance it did in Greek life if it had not been joined by Greek adherents brought up in the native conceptions of Greek piety, who under the name of "Orphics" once more adapted the Thracian god to Greek modes of thought--though this new adaptation differed from the previous assimilation of the god by the official worship of the state. We have no reason for believing that Orphic sects were formed in Greek states before the second half of the sixth century,[5\10] that critical age of transition when in so many places primitive and mythological modes of thought were developing into a theosophy, which in its turn was making an effort to become a philosophy. The Orphic religious poetry is itself clearly marked by this effort--for in Orphism it never became more than an effort and never succeeded in reaching its goal.

The exact point of origin of this combined movement of religion and theosophy, the various steps and manner of its development remain hidden from us. Athens was a centre of Orphism; it does not therefore follow that Orphism had its origin there, any more than had the multifarious tendencies and activities in art, poetry, and science that at about the same period flowed together, and as though driven by an unseen intellectual current, found their meeting place at Athens. Onomakritos, we are told, the giver of oracles in the court of Peisistratos "founded the secret worship of Dionysos".[6\10] This appears to refer to the first founding of an Orphic sect at Athens; and we meet with the name of Onomakritos among the authors of Orphic poems. But the real authorship of these poems is far more often ascribed to certain men of Southern Italy and Sicily, who can be more or less clearly connected[7\10] with the Pythagorean societies which were flourishing in those districts about the last decades of the sixth and the first of the fifth centuries. {337}

It seems certain that in Southern Italy at that time, Orphic societies were already in existence--for whom else can these writers have intended their "Orphic" poems? In any case we must take it as certain that the correspondence of Orphic and Pythagorean doctrine on the subject of the soul is not purely accidental. Did Pythagoras when he came to Italy (about 532) find Orphic societies already settled in Kroton and Metapontum, and did he associate himself with their ideas? Or did the "Orphic" sectaries (as Herodotos imagined[8\10]) owe their inspiration to Pythagoras and his disciples? The various cross-currents of reciprocal influence can no longer be disentangled by us, but if the Pythagoreans were the sole creditors in the bargain we should undoubtedly find the whole body of Orphic doctrine thoroughly permeated with conceptions that belong exclusively to the Pythagorean school. In the wreckage of the Orphic poems, however, except for a few negligible traces of the Pythagorean mystic theory of numbers,[9\10] we find nothing that must necessarily have been derived by the Orphics from Pythagorean sources.[10\10] Least of all did they need to derive the doctrine of the migration of souls and its application from this source. It is possible, therefore, that it was the independently developed Orphic doctrine which exerted an influence upon Pythogoras and his adherents in Southern Italy; just as it was a ready-made Orphic teaching (and that, too, perhaps, brought from Southern Italy) with which Onomakritos, the founder of the Orphic sects at Athens, associated himself--about the same time as Pythagoras' similar action in Kroton. It is hardly possible to interpret in any other way the various relations of the Orphics with each other when we learn that at the court of the Peisistratids, in addition to Onomakritos, two other men who had arrived from Southern Italy were active and were counted among the earliest writers of Orphic poems.[11\10]

§ 2

The Orphics wherever we meet with them in Greek countries always appear as members of a private cult-society who are held together by a specially organized and individual mode of worship. The old Thracian worship of Dionysos in its straining after the infinite conducted its revels under the open sky of night, seeking out deserted mountain-sides and forests where it was farthest from civilization and closest to unspoiled and untrammelled nature. How this cult may have accommodated itself to the narrow limitations of ordinary {338} city-life, it is hard to imagine;[12\10] though it is natural to suppose that much of the extravagance that was literal and actual enough in the old northern festival of night was represented in the milder worship of Greece by mere symbol. We have less difficulty in discovering the side of their religious activity which the Orphics, apart from the private worship of the conventicle, revealed to the outer world of the profane. Orpheus himself in the tradition had been not merely the inspired singer but the seer, the magically endowed physician and purification-priest as well,[13\10] and the Orphics, as his followers, were active, too, in all these directions.[14\10] In the composition of Greek Orphism the kathartic ideas which had been evolved on Greek soil were combined in a not unnatural alliance with the old Thracian worship of Dionysos. The Orphic priests of purification were preferred to others of their kind by many religious people.[15\10] But among the inner circles of Orphism the sacerdotal activities of purification and the removal of daimonic hindrances, which were by no means given up, tended rather to produce deeper and broader ideas of purity and of release from the earthly and the transitory. In some such way was evolved that asceticism which in close combination with the Thracian worship of Dionysos gave the peculiar tone to the faith and temperament of the sectaries and gave to their lives their special direction.

The Orphic sect had a fixed and definite set of doctrines; this alone sufficed to distinguish it both from the official worships of the state, and from all other cult-associations of the time. The reduction of belief to distinct doctrinal formulæ may have done more than anything else to make Orphism a society of believers--none of the other theologi of the time, Epimenides, Pherekydes, etc., accomplished as much. Without its fundamental religious doctrine Orphism in Greece is inconceivable; according to Aristotle the "doctrines" of Orpheus were put into poetical form by the founder of the Orphic sect in Athens, Onomakritos.[16\10] The uncertain accounts given us by the later authorities do not allow us to make out quite clearly[17\10] what was the extent of Onomakritos' work in the formation or collection of Orphic doctrinal poetry. What is important is the fact that he is distinctly named as the author of the poem called "Initiations".[18\10] This poem must have been one of the basic, and in the strictest sense "religious", writings of the sect; a poem of this character may very well have had for its central incident the dismemberment of the god at the hands of the Titans--a story which Onomakritos is said to have put into verse.[19\10] {339}

The religious beliefs and worship of the sect were founded upon the detailed instructions of certain very numerous writings dealing with matters of ritual and theology. These claimed the authority of religious inspiration,[20\10] and were as a whole supposed to be the work of the primitive Thracian bard, Orpheus, himself. The anonymity which concealed the identity of the real authors of these poems was not, however, very thoroughly preserved; even towards the end of the fourth century there were those who claimed to be able to give with certainty the names of the original authors of the various poems. Strictly canonical authority, such as would at once have reduced to silence every conflicting view or statement, never seems to have belonged to any of these writings. In particular, there were several "Theogonies"[21\10]--poems which attempted to give expression to the fundamental ideas of Orphic speculation on religious subjects--and in spite of much harmony in general effect they differed considerably from each other in particular mode of expression. They represented ever-renewed and increasingly elaborate attempts to construct a connected doctrinal system for Orphism. With unmistakable allusion to the oldest Greek theological system--that which had been committed to writing in the Hesiodic poem--these Orphic Theogonies described the origin and development of the world from obscure primordial impulses to the clear and distinct variety-in-unity of the organized kosmos, and it described it as the history of a long series of divine powers and figures which issue from each other (each new one overcoming the last) and succeed each other in the task of building and organizing the world until they have absorbed the whole universe into themselves in order to bring it forth anew, animated with one spirit and, with all its infinite variety, a unity. These gods are certainly no longer deities of the familiar Greek type. Not merely the new gods evolved by the creative fancy of Orphism--creatures which had almost entirely lost all distinct and sensible outline under the accumulation of symbolical meaning--but even the figures actually borrowed from the Greek world of divinities are turned into little more than mere personified abstractions. Who would recognize the Zeus of Homer in the Orphic Zeus who after he has devoured the World-God and "taken unto himself the power of Erikapaios",[22\10] has become himself the Universe and the Whole? "Zeus the Beginning, Zeus the Middle, in Zeus all things are completed."[23\10] The concept here so stretches the personality that it threatens to break it down altogether; the outlines of the individual figures are {340} lost and are merged into an intentional "confusion of deities".[24\10]

Still, the mythical envelope was never quite given up; these poets could not do without it altogether. Their gods did indeed strive to become pure abstractions but they were never quite successful in throwing off all traces of individuality and the limitations of form and matter: the concept never quite broke through the veil of mythology. The poets of the Orphic Theogonies vied with one another in their attempts to make the half-seen and half-conceived accessible alike to the imagination and the reason; and in succession gave varying expression to the same fundamental conceptions until finality was reached as it seems in a poem whose contents are better known to us than the others from quotations made from it by Neoplatonic writers--the Theogonical poem of the four-and-twenty Rhapsodies. Into this poem was poured all the traditional material of mythological and symbolical doctrine, and in it such doctrine achieved its final expression.[25\10]

§ 3

This combination of religion and quasi-philosophical speculation was a distinguishing feature of the Orphics and of Orphic literature. Religion only entered into their Theogonical poetry in so far as the ethical personalities of the divinities therein described had not entirely faded away into transparent allegories.[26\10] It was abstract speculation alone which really prevailed there, little respect being paid to religion; and as a result a much greater licence was given to speculative construction.

This abstract speculation, however, reached its climax in a religious narrative of the first importance for the beliefs and cult of the sect. At the end of the series of genealogically connected deities came the son of Zeus and Persephone, Dionysos, who was also given the name of the underworld deity Zagreus.[27\10] To him, even in infancy, was entrusted the rule of the world by Zeus. But the wicked Titans, urged on by Hera, approached him by a stratagem. They were the enemies of Zeus, and had already been overthrown by Ouranos,[28\10] but had, it seems, been let loose again by Zeus from Tartaros. They made Dionysos trust them by giving him presents, and while he was looking at his own image in a mirror[29\10] that they had given him, they fell upon him. He tried to escape them by repeated transformations of shape; finally, in the form of a bull,[30\10] he was at last overcome and his body torn to pieces which his savage foes thereupon devoured. The heart alone {341} was rescued by Athene, and she brought it to Zeus who swallowed it. From Zeus there sprang the "new Dionysos", the son of Zeus and Semele, in whom Zagreus came to life again.

The myth of the dismemberment of Zagreus by the Titans was already put into verse by Onomakritos;[31\10] it continued to be the culminating point of the doctrinal poetry of the Orphics. It occurred not only in the Rhapsodies,[32\10] but in other versions of the Orphic legend composed in complete independence of these.[33\10] It is a religious myth in the stricter sense; its ætioloqical character is most marked;[34\10] its purpose is to explain the religious implication of the ritual dismemberment of the bull-god at the Bacchic nocturnal festivals, and to derive that feature from the legendary sufferings of Dionysos-Zagreus.

But though the legend thus has its roots in the primitive sacrificial ritual of ancient Thrace,[35\10] in its extended form it belongs entirely to the region of Hellenic thought; and in this combination of the two elements it becomes truly Orphic. The wicked Titans belong entirely to strictly Greek mythology.[36\10] In this case, as the murderers of the god, they represent the primeval power of evil.[37\10] They dismember the One into Many parts; by their impiety the One divine being is dispersed into the multiplicity of the things of this world.[38\10] It is reborn as One in the new Dionysos sprung from Zeus. The Titans--so the legend goes on to relate--who had devoured the limbs of the god were destroyed by Zeus with his lightning flash. From their ashes sprang the race of men in whom, in conformity with their origin, the good derived from Dionysos-Zagreus is mixed with a wicked Titanic element.[39\10]

With the rule of the new-born Dionysos and the origin of mankind, the series of mythological events in the Orphic poetry came to an end.[40\10] With the entry of mankind into Creation[41\10] the existing period of the world begins; the period of world-revolutions is over. The poems now turn to the subject of man and the revelation of his fate, his duty and his purpose in the world.

§ 4

The mixture of the elements that make up the totality of his being in itself prescribes for man the direction that his effort shall take. He must free himself from the Titanic element and, thus purified, return to the god, a fragment of whom is living in him.[42\10] The distinction between the Titanic and Dionysiac elements in man is an allegorical expression of the popular {342} distinction between body and soul; it also corresponds to a profoundly felt estimate of the relative value of these two sides of man's being. According to Orphic doctrine man's duty is to free himself from the chains of the body in which the soul lies fast bound like the prisoner in his cell.[43\10] The soul has a long way, however, to go before it can find its freedom; it may not by an act of violence tear its bonds asunder for itself.[44\10] The death of the body only frees it for a short while; for the soul must once more suffer imprisonment in a body. After leaving its old body, it flutters free in the wind, but a breath of air sends it into a new body again.[45\10] So it continues its journey, perpetually alternating between an unfettered separate existence, and an ever-renewed incarnation--traversing the great "Circle of Necessity" in which it becomes the life-companion of many bodies both of men and beasts. Thus, the "Wheel of Birth"[46\10] seems to return ever upon itself in hopeless repetition: in Orphic poetry (and there perhaps for the first time occurs the despairing thought of the exact repetition of the past; events which have already been lived through once returning again with the convergence of the same attendant circumstances.[47\10] Thus, Nature, ever reverting to its own beginnings, draws men with it in its senseless revolution round itself.

But the soul has a way open for escape from this perpetual recurrence of all things that threatens to close in upon it; it may hope "to escape from the circle and have a respite from misery".[48\10] It is formed for blessed freedom, and can at last detach itself from the condition of being it has to endure upon earth--a condition unworthy of it. A "release" is possible; but man in his blindness and thoughtlessness cannot help himself, cannot even, when salvation is at hand, turn himself towards it.[49\10]

Salvation comes from Orpheus and his Bacchic mysteries; Dionysos himself will loose his worshipper from Evil and the unending way of misery. Not his own power, but the grace of the "releasing gods" is to be the cause of man's liberation.[50\10] The self-reliance of the older Greece is breaking down; in humility of heart the pious man looks elsewhere for help; he needs the revelation and mediation of "Orpheus the Ruler"[51\10] in order to find the way of salvation; he must follow his ordinances of salvation with perfect obedience if he is to continue in that way.

It is not only the sacred mysteries themselves, in the form in which Orpheus has ordained them, which prepare for the release; a complete "Orphic life"[52\10] must be developed out {343} of them. Asceticism is the prime condition of the pious life. This does not mean the practice of the respectable bourgeois virtues, nor the discipline and moral reformation of a man's character; the height of morality is in this case the turning again towards god,[53\10] and the turning away not merely from the weaknesses and errors of earthly being but from the whole of earthly life itself; renunciation of all that ties man to mortality and the life of the body. The fierce determination with which the Indian penitent tears away his will from life, to which every organ in his body clings desperately--for this, indeed, there was no place among the Greeks, the lovers of life--not even among the world-denying ascetics. Abstention from the eating of flesh was the strongest and most striking species of self-denial practised by the Orphic ascetics.[54\10] Apart from this, they kept themselves in all essentials uncontaminated by certain things and situations which rather suggested to a religious symbolism than actually indicated in themselves attachment to the world of death and transitoriness. The long-standing ordinances of the priestly ritual of purification were taken up and added to;[55\10] but they were also raised to a higher plane. They are no longer intended to free men from the effects of daimonic contacts; the soul itself is made pure by them[56\10]--pure from the body and its polluting association, pure from death and its loathsome mastery. In expiation of "guilt" the soul is confined within the body,[57\10] the wages of sin is in this case that life upon earth which for the soul is death. The whole multiplicity of the universe, emptied of its innocent and natural sequence of cause and effect, appears to these zealots under the uniform aspect of a correlation between crime and punishment, between pollution and purification. Thus, mysticism enters into the closest alliance with kathartic practices. The soul which comes from the divine and strives to return thither, has no other purpose to fulfil upon earth (and therefore no other moral law to obey); it must be free from life itself and be pure from all that is earthly.

The Orphics, moreover, were the only people who could venture among themselves or before strangers to greet each other with the special name of the "Pure".[58\10] The first reward of his piety was received by the initiate of the Orphic mysteries in that intermediate region whither men must go after their earthly death. When a man dies, Hermes leads the "deathless soul" into the underworld.[59\10] Special poems of the Orphic community announced the terrors and delights of the underworld kingdom.[60\10] What the Orphic {344}mystery-priests vouchsafed to their public upon these hidden matters--outdoing the promises made in the Eleusinian mysteries in coarse appeal to the senses--may have been the most popular, but was certainly not the most original feature of Orphic teaching.[61\10] In Hades a judgment awaited the soul--it was no instinctive fancy of the people, but the "sacred doctrine"[62\10] of these sectaries which first introduced and elaborated the idea of compensatory justice in the world of the dead. The impious suffer punishment and purgation in the depths of Tartaros;[63\10] those who have not been made pure by the Orphic mysteries lie in the miry Pool;[64\10] "dreadful things[65\10] await" the disdainer of the sacred worship. By a conception that is quite unique in ancient religion, participation in the Orphic ceremonial enables the descendant to obtain from the gods "pardon and purification" for his departed ancestors who may be paying the penalty in the next world for the misdeeds of the past.[66\10] But for the initiate of the Orphic mysteries himself who has not merely borne the narthex but has been a true Bakchos,[67\10] his reward is that he shall obtain a "milder fate" in the kingdom of the underworld deities whom he has revered on earth, and dwell "in the fair meadows of deep-running Acheron".[68\10] The blessed home of refuge no longer lies like the Homeric Elysium upon earth, but below in the world of the Souls, for only the released soul reaches there. There, the initiated and purified will live in communion with the gods of the nether world[69\10]--we feel that we are listening to Thracian and not Greek conceptions of the ideal when we hear of the "Banquet of the Pure" and the uninterrupted intoxication which they enjoy there.[70\10]

But the depths restore the soul at last to the light, for its lasting habitation is not below; it stays there only for the interval which separates death from its next rebirth. For the reprobate this is a time of punishment and purgation--the Orphics could not distress their hearers with the awful and intolerable idea of the perpetual punishment of the damned in Hell; many times over the soul rises again to the light and in continually renewed bodies fulfils the cycle of births. For the deeds of its past life it is recompensed in the next life that it lives, and each man must now suffer exactly what he has done to another.[71\10] So he pays the penalty for ancient guilt: the "thrice-ancient law"--what thou hast done thou shalt suffer--is thus fulfilled for him in far livelier fashion than it could be in any torments of the shadow-world. So surely also shall the pure be rewarded in future lives by ever-increasing happiness. How exactly the Orphic fancy filled out the {345} individual gradations in the scale of happiness is beyond our knowledge.[72\10]

But the soul is immortal, and even sinners and the unredeemed cannot perish entirely. Hades and the life on earth holds them in their perpetual round, and this is their punishment. For the soul of the blessed, however, neither Hades nor earthly life can offer the highest crown of happiness. If it has been made pure and spotless in the Orphic mysteries and the Orphic manner of life, it is freed from the necessity of rebirth and withdrawn from the cycle of becoming and perishing. The "purification" ends in a final redemption. The soul mounts upwards from the base level of earthly life, not to become nothing in a final death, for it is now that it first truly begins to live; hitherto it has lain imprisoned in the body like the corpse in the grave.[73\10] It was death for the soul when it entered into life--now it is free and will no more suffer death; it lives for ever like God, for it comes from God and is itself divine. We do not know whether these theosophists went so far as to lose themselves in detailed picturing and contemplation of the blissful heights of the divine life.[74\10] In the remains of their poems we read of stars and the moon as other worlds,[75\10] perhaps as the dwelling-place of illuminated spirits.[76\10] But perhaps also the poet allowed the soul to flee from its last contact with mortality without himself desiring to follow it into the unbroken radiance of divinity that no earthly eye can abide.

§ 5

This, then, is the keystone that completes the arch of Orphic religion--the belief in the divine, immortal, and abiding life of the soul for whom union with the body and its desires is a thwarting hindrance and repression--a punishment from which its one desire, as soon as it is awakened to a full knowledge of itself is to escape in order that it may belong entirely to itself in full enjoyment of its powers. The contrast between these ideas and those of the Homeric world is complete; there, the soul released from the body was credited only with a poor, shadowy, half-conscious existence, so that an eternity of godlike being in the full enjoyment of life and its powers was only thinkable if the body and the soul, the twofold self of man, were translated in undissolved communion out of the world of mortality. The Orphic legends about the origin of the human race do not tell us the real source and derivation of the very different beliefs about the soul held by the Orphics; those legends only give expression to the {346} way--and only one of many ways[77\10]--in which the already established confidence in the divinity of the soul was deducible from what might be considered the oldest historical story of mankind, and how it might be brought into connexion with the Orphic legend of the gods. This persuasion, the belief that a god was living in man and a god that could not be free until he had broken through the prison of the body, was deeply rooted in the worship of Dionysos and the ecstasies belonging to that worship; we cannot be in much doubt that it was taken over ready-made, together with the "enthusiastic" cult of the divinity, and further developed by the Orphic believers. We have already met with traces of this belief even in the Thracian home of the Dionysiac cult; and in what we know of the Thracian form of the religion, traces are not absolutely wanting of an ascetic tendency of living that would easily and naturally arise from such a belief.[78\10] Even in those Northern countries we found the belief in the transmigration of souls bound up with the religion of Dionysos, and that belief, when it is naively held, has as its essential presupposition the idea that the soul, in order to have a complete life, and one that can survive bodily death, must of necessity be united to another body. Even this idea is, however, quite foreign to Orphism. The Orphics retained, in spite of everything, the doctrine of transmigration, and combined it in a strange alliance with their own belief in the divinity of the soul and its vocation to a life of perfect liberty. It is evidently improbable that they invented that doctrine entirely on their own account; the first principles of their creed by no means led necessarily to it. Herodotos[79\10] asserts distinctly that the doctrine of transmigration came to the Greeks from Egypt; and as a consequence, that it was from Egyptian tradition that the Orphics received it. This assertion has no more to recommend it than any other of Herodotos' many pronouncements as to the Egyptian origin of Greek opinions and legends, and it is even less likely to mislead us in view of the fact that it is by no means certain and not even probable that a belief in transmigration ever really existed in Egypt.[80\10] This belief has arisen independently in many places on the surface of the earth, without the need of transmission from one place to another;[81\10] it might easily arise in a country where the belief prevailed that there existed only a limited number of souls of which each one--in order that no earthly body might be without its spiritual guest--must inhabit many perishable life-tenements, and not be bound to any one of them by a real inner necessity. This, {347} however, is a conception common to popular psychology all over the world.[82\10] If it is still considered more probable that the idea of a migration of the soul through many temporary bodies was not spontaneously evolved by the Orphics, but was received by them from the hands of others, there is yet no reason to reject the most natural assumption--namely, that this also was one of the beliefs that the Orphics took over with the cult of Dionysos from Thrace. Like other mystics,[83\10] the Orphics took over the belief in transmigration from popular tradition and turned it into a serviceable member of their own body of doctrine.[84\10] It served them by giving a striking and physical expression to their own conception of the inevitable connexion between guilt and penance, pollution and the refining power of punishment, piety and future blessedness upon which all their religious ethic depended. It was with an exactly similar purpose that they also retained and developed the old Greek idea of a place of the souls in the depths below the earth.

But if they believed in the transmigration of souls, that belief did not with them hold the highest place. There is a realm where the ever free and divine souls have their being, a realm to which the series of lives in earthly bodies is only transitional, and the way to it was pointed out by the saving doctrine of the Orphic mysteries, by the purification and salvation afforded by Orphic asceticism.

NOTES TO CHAPTER X

[1\10: ~. . . ho/s pote kai\ teleta\s mustêri/das heu/reto Ba/kchou~, AP. vii, 9, 5 (Damagetos). ~dio\ kai\ ta\s hupo\ tou= Dionu/sou genome/nas teleta\s Orphika\s prosagoreuthê=nai~, D.S. 3, 65, 6. ~heu=re de\ Orpheu\s ta\ Dionu/son mustê/ria~ [Apollod.] 1, 3, 2, 3. (Dionysum) Iove et Luna (natum), cui sacra Orphica putantur confici: Cic., ND. iii, 58; cf. Lyd., Mens. 4, 51, p. 107 W. ~Bakchika/~ an Orphic poem: Suid. ~Orpheu/s~ (cf. Hiller, Hermes, 21, 364 f.), whence fr. 3 (Abel); and perhaps frr. 152, 167, 169, 168. ~ta\ Orphika\ kalou/mena kai\ ta\ Bakchika/~ are already reckoned as a single class by Hdt. ii, 81.]

[2\10: This is seen in the decree of the Council and people of Athens dealing with the ~e/mporoi Kitiei=s~ and their temple of "Aphrodite"--CIA. ii, 168 (333/2 B.C.).--That on the other hand such foreign mystery-cults were not always so tolerated (or not without resistance is shown by the case of Ninos: Dem., FL. (19) 281 with Sch.; cf. D.H., Dinarch. 11.]

[3\10: ~theoi\ xenikoi/~, Hsch., see Lob., Agl. 627 ff. A nameless ~theo\s xeniko/s~ occurs in CIA. i, 273 f., 18.--The foundation of such ~thi/asoi~ for foreign deities (or deities at least not officially worshipped by the city in question) is almost invariably the work of foreigners (many exx. from Rhodos in BCH. 1889, p. 364). They are all foreigners, e.g. whose names occur in the decree of the ~thiasô=tai~ of the Karian Zeus Labraundos, CIA. ii, 613 (298/7 B.C.); cf. ib. 614; SIG. 726. Merchants from Kition found a cult of their Aphrodite (Astarte) in Athens, just as some Egyptians had a little while before put up ~to\ tê=s I/sidos hiero/n~ there: CIA. ii, 168. The names of foreigners (in addition to Athenians) are very numerous among the ~o/nomata tô=n eranistô=n~ of a **collegium of ~Sabaziastai/~ in the Peiraeus (second century B.C.): ~Eph. Arch.~ 1883, p. 245 f. The foreign worship would then begin to receive the support of natives of the host-city (most of them being at first of the poorer classes), and in this way the new religion would gain a footing in its adopted home. (Pure Athenian citizens compose the society of the Dionysiastai in the Peiraeus, second century B.C., Ath. Mitt. ix, 288 = CIA. iv, 2, 623 d.)]

[4\10: The Bendideia early became a state festival in Athens (even fifth century, CIA. i, 210, fr. K, p. 93). An allusion in Plato (Rp. 327 A), however, shows that the Thracians (who must have introduced the cult of Bendis into Athens, or at least into the Peiraeus, the home of most ~thi/asoi~) still kept up a special worship of their goddess in their own manner, side by side with the Hellenized cult. It appears at least as if the worship in its remodelled Greek form seemed to them no longer the right one. (Bendis, too, like Dionysos, is a divinity of both this world and the next: see Hsch. ~di/logchon~.)]

[5\10: Alleged traces of Orphic influence on special sections of the Iliad (~Dio\s apa/tê~) or the Odyssey are entirely illusory, nor did the Orphic doctrines exert any influence on the Hesiodic Theogony. On the other hand, Orphism was itself strongly affected by the primitive Greek theology the fragments of which were put together in the Hesiodic poem.]

[6\10: ~Onoma/kritos . . . Dionu/sô| sune/thêken o/rgia~, Paus. 8, 37, 5.] {349}

[7\10: Among the writers of Orphic poems mentioned by (1) Clem. Al., Str. 1, 21, p. 397 P. (from Epigenes) and (2) Suidas (from Epigenes and another authority: both Su. and Clem. probably got their information through the mediation of D.H.)--two certain Pythagoreans are named, Brotinos (of Kroton or Metapontum) and Kerkops (not the Milesian). [Abel, Orphica, p. 139.] From lower Italy or Sicily come: Zopyros of Herakleia (the same person is probably meant by Iamb., VP. 190, 5 N., when he counts Zopyros among the Pythagoreans coming from Tarentum), Orpheus of Kroton, Orpheus of Kamarina (Suid.), Timokles of Syracuse. Pythagoras himself is mentioned among the writers of Orphic poems in the ~Triagmoi/~ of [Ion] (at least as early as the beginning of the fourth century). Apart from these the only names of conjectured composers of Orphic poems are: Theognetos ~ho Thettalo/s~, Prodikos of Samos, Herodikos of Perinthos, Persinos of Miletos; all of whom are unknown to us except Persinos, whom Obrecht not improbably identifies with the court poet of Euboulos of Atarneus mentioned by Poll. ix, 93 (cf. Lob. 359 f. Bgk., PLG. iii, 655). In this case he is an Orphic of a much later period.]

[8\10: ~homologe/ousi de\~ (sc. ~Aigu/ptioi) tau=ta~ (prohibition to bury the dead in woollen clothing) ~toi=si Orphikoi=si kaleome/noisi, kai\ Bakchikoi=si, eou=si de\ Aigupti/oisi kai\ Puthagorei/oisi~, Hdt. ii, 81. There can be no doubt that Hdt. in these words meant to derive the ~Orphika\ kai\ Bakchika/~ (the four datives are all neuters, not masc.) from the ~Aigu/ptia kai\ Puthago/reia~, i.e. the Pythagorean ordinances which were themselves derived from Egypt (cf. Gomperz, Sitzb. Wien. Ak. 1886, p. 1032). If he had regarded the ~Puthago/reia~ as entirely independent of the ~Aigu/ptia~ (and the ~Orphika/~ as independent of the Pythag.) he certainly could not have brought them in here. (This answers Zeller, Ber. Berlin. Ak. 1889, p. 994, who introduces a comma before ~kai\ Puth.~)--It is equally impossible (with Maass, Orpheus, p. 165, 1895), to connect the ~eou=si de\ Aigupti/oisi~ with ~Bakchikoi=si~ only; it must of necessity go with ~toi=si Orphikoi=si~ as well; for it is the whole point of Hdt.'s note to show that the religious usage which he mentions has, like so much else of the kind in Greece wherever it may be found, been borrowed from Egypt, and "is Egyptian". In this he would fail completely if he did not regard the ~Orphika/~ (and hence also the ~Puthago/reia~) as ~Aigu/ptia eo/nta~ and clearly say so. Hdt. certainly has no idea, as Maass would have us believe, of making a generic distinction between ~Orphika/~ and ~Bakchika/~: ~Bakch.~ is the name of the genus of which ~Orph.~ is the species.--"the ~Orphika/~, and the ~Bakchika/~ in general." Not all ~Bakchika/~ are ~Orphika/~. This use of ~kai\~ whereby the whole is added subsequently to the part is perfectly regular and legitimate (it may also add the part to the whole as in the cases adduced by Maass, 166 n.: ~ta\s Dionusiaka\s kai\ ta\s Orphika/s~, etc.). Hdt. mentions the ~Puthago/reia~ last in order to indicate by what intermediate step the Egyptian element in the first-mentioned ~Orphika/~ was specially assisted--he has further in ii, 123, shown clearly enough that he regarded Pythagoras as one of the pupils of the Egyptians (P. in any case is one of the teachers of immortality there referred to). This is also obvious from his whole attitude.--Hdt.'s opinion does not in any case oblige us to believe in it. He was forced to regard Pythagoras as the earliest author of Orphic doctrine because his connexion with Egypt seemed certain (cf. Hdt. ii, 123) while that of the ~Orphikoi/~ themselves was not so: in this way only could Hdt. seem to prove the Egyptian origin of that doctrine.--The priority of the Orphics is often supposed to be proved by the witness of Philolaos (fr. 14 D.) ap. Clem. Al., Str. {350} 3, 3, p. 518 P. (and cf. Cic., Hortens. fr. 85 Or.); it must be admitted, however, that the passage does not prove what it is supposed to do.]

[9\10: Frr. 143-51 (cf. Lob. 715 ff.). Here, indeed, Orphic and Pythagorean doctrine are mixed up inextricably. Fr. 143 (~Puthagorei/ôs te kai\ Orphikô=s~ Syrian.) belongs to the ~eis to\n arithmo\n Puthago/reios hu/mnos~ which is several times distinctly so called by Proclus. (The frr. are in Nauck, Iamb., VP., p. 228. fr. iii). Fr. 147 (Lyd. Mens.) obviously comes from the same (Nauck, p. 234, fr. ix). The same is at least highly probable of the frr. 144-6, 148-51. Probably what Orpheus says of the number 12 comes from the same ~hu/mnos~ (ap. Procl. _in _Rp.__ ii, 131, 10 Kroll). Proclus, however (_in _Rp.__ 169, 25 K.), also cites ll. 2-5 from the ~hu/mnos~ (Nauck, fr. iii) but this time attributes them to an ~eis to\n arithmo\n Horphiko\s hu/mnos~. This Orphico-Pythagorean ~hu/mnos~ had at any rate nothing to do with the (Rhaps.) Theogony of Orpheus. On the other hand, the words ~tetra/da tetrake/raton~, which acc. to Procl. _in _Rp.__ 169, 29 K., occurred ~muria/kis~ in the ~Orphikê\ theologi/a~, come from the Theogony. They were possibly used as a title of Zagreus the ~kero/en bre/phos~ (Nonn., D. vi, 165): though what is here said by Proclus about the ~Dionusiakê\~ (i.e. of Zagreus) ~theo/tês~, viz. that it ~tetra/s estin~, was applied rather to the four-eyed Orphic Phanes by Hermias (fr. 64 Ab.).]

[10\10: On the other hand, there is much in Orphic theology and poetry that is taken immediately from the primitive Thracian worship of Dionysos and absent from Pythagorean teaching. This makes it very probable that even such theologoumena as are common to Orphism and Pythagoreanism really go back to the fanatical cult of Dionysos, or at least were easily thence derived by religious speculation: in this case the Orphics may well have got them from this original source of mystic lore that was common to both parties and not by the circuitous route of Pythagorean teaching. Orphism remained more closely attached to the common source than did Pythagoreanism, and may for that reason be regarded as somewhat older than its rival and be supposed to have originated independently of it.]

[11\10: Zopyros of Herakleia, Orpheus of Kroton: Tz., Prol. in Aristoph. ([p. 20, 28 Kaibel, Com. Fr.] Ritschl, Opusc. i, 207); Suid. ~Orph. Krotônia/tês~ (from Asklepiades of Myrlea).]

[12\10: We may not simply take it for granted that the account given in Dem. 18, 259-60, of the nocturnal initiations and the processions by day through the city held by a mystical sect, is intended to describe the secret mysteries of an Orphic conventicle (as Lob. does 646 ff., 652 ff., 695 f.). The explanation of the ~apoma/ttein tô=| pêlô=|~ of that passage by reference to the specially Orphic myth of Zagreus and the Titans is arbitrary in itself and hard to reconcile with the language of Demosth. (Harp. and Phot. are responsible for this expl.) Hardly more successful is the derivation of the call ~a/ttês hu/ês~ from the ~a/tê~ of Dionysos (Zagreus) on being torn to pieces by the Titans: EM. 163, 63. A definite connexion undoubtedly does exist between the ~Orphika\ o/rgia~ and the ~Saba/zia kai\ Mêtrô=|a~ (Str. 471) described by Dem.; but the Orphics were never called worshippers of Sabazios nor their god ~Saba/zios~, and it seems likely that their secret worship was different from the ceremonies of the ~Sabaziastai/~ that Dem. had in view (the latter may have retained more of the primitive barbaric ritual: cf. the ins. given in ~Eph. Arch.~ 1883, p. 245 f. = CIA. iv, Supp. ii, n. 626 b; from the end of second century B.C.).]

[13\10: See Lob., Agl. 235 f., 237, 242 f.]

[14\10: To attribute the practical side of Orphism to a late degeneration {351} of the once purely speculative character of the sect (as many have done) is a very arbitrary proceeding and quite unjustifiable on historical grounds. The fact that a clear description of this activity does not occur before the fourth century (in Plato) does not prove that it did not exist earlier. Apart from this an ~orpheotelestê/s~ named Philippos is mentioned by Plu., Apoph. Lac. 224 E as a contemporary of King Leotychidas II of Sparta (reigned 491-469). This evidence is not to be so easily set aside, as K. O. Müller, Introd. Scient. Myth. 311 ff., would like to do. The Orphic sect from the very beginning derived its strength from its telestic and kathartic practices.]

[15\10: Thphr., Ch. 28 (16).]

[16\10: ~autou= (Orphe/ôs) me\n ei=nai ta\ do/gmata, tau=ta de/ phêsin~ (Aristot.) ~Onoma/kriton en e/pesi katatei=nai~ Arist. ~p. philosophi/as~ fr. 10 [7] Rose, Arist. Pseudepig.]

[17\10: Tatian, Gr. 41 (p. 42 Schw.), seems to speak only of redaction (~sunteta/chthai~) of the ~eis Orphe/a anaphero/mena~ among already existing Orphic poems as the work of Onomakritos (in the same way Onomakr. is only the ~diathe/tês~--the arranger not the author--of the ~chrêsmoi/~ of "Mousaios", Hdt. vii, 6). Traces of an external linking-together of the individual poems of Orpheus in a "redaction" are not wanting (cf. the linking-together of the poems of the Epic Cycle or of the corpus Hesiodeum): first of all coming in all probability the greater ~kratê/r~ (as in the enumeration of Clem. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 397 P.); see Lob. 376, 417, 469.--Clem. Al., Str. i, p. 397 P. (and Eus., PE. 10, 11, p. 495 D) is only derived from Tatian, though Onomakr. is here definitely called the author of the ~eis Orphe/a phero/mena poiê/mata~. Onomakr. seems also to have been simply regarded as the author of the ~Orphika/~ in the doxographical excerpt ap. S.E. P. iii, 30 = M. 9, 361, p. 287 Mutschm.; cf. Gal., H. Philos. (Dox., p. 610, 15): ~Onoma/kritos en toi=s Orphikoi=s~.--On the other hand, in the--admittedly incomplete--enumeration of Orphic poems in Clem. Al., Str. i, 21, p. 397 P., not one is attributed to Onomakr., and in Suid. ~Orpheu\s~ he is only given the ~chrêsmoi/~ (no confusion with the ~chrêsmoi/~ of Mousaios is to be suspected here) and the ~teletai/~. Paus. (8, 37, 5) mentions (without naming them) ~e/pê~ of Onomakr. (cf. Ritschl, Opusc. i, 241). Some at least of the poetry going under the name of Orpheus must have been ascribed to Onomakr. by Arist. (fr. 10 [7 Teubn.]).]

[18\10: Suid. ~Orpheu/s~, 2721 A Gaisf.]

[19\10: Onomakr. ~ei=nai tou\s Tita=nas tô=| Dionu/sô| tô=n pathêma/tôn epoi/êsen autourgou/s~, Paus. 8, 37, 5. Lob., p. 335, thinks this refers to the "Theogony": but no authority attributes a single one of the several Orphic Theogonies to Onomakr. as its real author. We should rather be inclined to think of the ~teletai/~ which is distinctly ascribed to Onomakr. and which at least dealt with the practical side of worship: cf. Pl., Rp. 364 E-365 A, ~lu/seis, katharmoi/ adikêma/tôn ktl. ha\s dê\ teleta\s kalou=sin~ (but it was not that the mystical ~bi/bloi~ were called ~teletai/~ as Gruppe, Gr. Culte u. Mythen, i, 640, mistakenly supposes: he is otherwise quite right in his protest against Abel's treatment of the ~teletai/~). They must almost necessarily have dealt with the reproduction of the ~pa/thê tou= Dionu/sou~ (as providing the ~hiero\s lo/gos~ to the ~drô/mena~), and, as the central idea of the orgiastic cult, must have included the most important circumstance of the Orphic ~teletai/~ (see D.S. 5, 75, 4; Clem. Al., Protr. ii, 17, p. 15 P.).]

[20\10: One of the poems (perhaps indeed the poem of the ~rhapsô|di/ai~, and in that case the ~hiero\s lo/gos~ as well) made Orpheus distinctly appeal to a revelation made to him by Apollo: fr. 49 (see Lob. 469).] {352}

[21\10: Besides the three Theogonies distinguished by Damascius there were (apart from other more doubtful traces) at least two other variations of the same theme: see fr. 85 (Alex. Aphrod.) and frr. 37; 38 (Clem. Rom.); cf. Gruppe, i, 640 f.--The series of divine rulers given by "Orpheus" acc. to Nigid. Fig. ap. Serv. Ecl. iv, 10 (fr. 248 Ab.), conflicts with all the other Theogonies but agrees in some particulars with Lact. i, 13 (fr. 243). Still, this remark need not necessarily have been taken from any Orphic "Theogony".]

[22\10: (Zeus) ~. . . prôtogo/noio chano\n me/nos Êrikapai/ou, tô=n pa/ntôn de/mas ei=chen heê=| eni\ gaste/ri koi/lê|~, fr. 120 (from the Rhapsodiai. We are accustomed to read here ~chanô/n~ with Zoëga (Abh. 262 f.): but ~chanô/n~ does not mean "catching up or devouring" [Zo.]; at most it might mean, in bad late-Greek, just the opposite of this--"abandoning" (transitive). Lobeck's explanation (p. 519 n.) is also unsatisfactory. The word may have been originally ~chadô/n~.]

[23\10: The line occurred in various forms in the Theogonic poem; frr. 33 (Plato?); 46 [Arist.] de Mundo); 123 (Rhapsod).; see Lob. 520-32. It seems certain then (Gruppe's doubts go too far: Rhaps. Theog. 704 ff.) that the line appeared in the oldest form of Orphic Theogony and was merely borrowed thence, like so much else that was ancient, by the Rhapsod. Theogony (i.e. the words, ~Zeu\s kephalê\ ktl.~ which would be the oldest form, as Gruppe rightly remarks: ~kephalê\ = teleutê/~; cf. Pl., Ti. 69 B). Even the writer of the speech against Aristogeiton A ([Dem.] 25), an Orphic adherent, appears, as Lob. remarks, to allude to the words in § 8.]

[24\10: Theokrasia must have belonged to Orphic theology from the outset: Lob. 614; though the most extreme examples of this may perhaps come from later poems: frr. 167; 169 (Macr.); 168 (D.S.); 201 (Rhaps.), etc., being probably derived from the "Little Krater" (fr. 160), in which Chrysippos seems to be imitated (Lob. 735 and fr. 164), and from the ~Diathê=kai~, fr. 7 (J.M.) a forgery in Judaeo-Christian interests which nevertheless made use of many ancient pieces of Orphic literature (the ~hiero\s lo/gos~: Lob. 450 ff., 454).--Theokrasia is met with even in the orthodox poets of the fifth century, though they did not invent it; the "theologoi" of the sixth century Epimenides and Pherekydes were as familiar with it as were the Orphics; cf. Kern, de Theogon. 92.]

[25\10: See Append. ix.]

[26\10: It must have been chiefly the religious significance of the gods which caused the retention of their personalities and prevented them from fading into mere personifications of abstract ideas or elementary powers with which religion could have had nothing further to do.]

[27\10: In the statements of the Neoplatonic writers this first Orphic Dionysos is regularly called ~Dio/nusos~ simply (perhaps also ~Ba/kchos~: fr. 192). Nonnus in recounting the Orphic legend calls him Zagreus: D. vi, 165; cf. ~Zagre/a geiname/nê~ (of Perseph.) with clear allusion to Callim. fr. 171, ~hui=a Diô/nuson Zagre/a geiname/nê~. Callim. here, as elsewhere, seems to have in mind the Orphic story. Tz. on Lyc. 355 calls the god of the Orphic legend ~Dio/nuson to\n kai\ Zagre/a kalou/menon. Zagreu/s~ the great Hunter is a name of the all-absorbing Hades: thus also the Alkmaionis fr. 3 Kink. Zagreus is identified with the Dionysos of nocturnal revelry in E., Kret. fr. 472, 10 (a reference in Ba. 1181 Kirchh.); and see above, chap. viii, n. 28. This Dionysos is regarded as a ~chtho/nios~ (see Hsch. ~Zagreu/s~) and this must indubitably have been quite familiar to the poets who made him the son of Persephone: ~chtho/nios ho tê=s Persepho/nês Dio/nusos~ (Harp. ~leu/kê~). {353} They were as clearly conscious as was Herakleitos of the fact that ~hôuto\s Ha/idês kai\ Dio/nusos~, whereas this consciousness was undoubtedly obscured in the public ceremonial of Dionysos-worship (to which, however, Hcl.'s saying refers). Zagreus-Dionysos was never identified with the ~I/akchos~ of the Eleusinia (to which Orph. fr. 215, l. 2 refers); though Dionysos alone was often so identified.]

[28\10: Ouranos casts the Titans into Tartaros: frr. 97, 100. Acc. to Procl. (fr. 205) and Arn. (196: prob. not from the Rhaps.) we should be led to suppose that the Titans after they had torn Zagreus in pieces were cast down to Tartaros by Zeus. In Arn. this is set down side by side with the statement that the Titans were destroyed by the lightning of Zeus (~hê Tita/nôn kerau/nôsis~, Plu., Es. Carn. 1, 7, p. 996 C), though obviously incompatible with the latter statement, as it is also (even more so) with the origin of mankind from the ashes of the Titans which is known not only to Olympiodoros (_ad _Phd.__, p. 68 Finckh: Lob. 566), but also to Proclus who got it from the "Rhapsodiai" (as also did Olymp.): Procl., _in _Rp.__ ii, 74, 29; i, 93 Kroll. It seems from this that Proclus (and perhaps Arn.) in error ascribed the ~katatarta/rôsis~ of the Titans to Zeus instead of to Ouranos.]

[29\10: Nonn. vi, 173; O., fr. 195. Perhaps Proclus is right in explaining this doubling of the god's figure in the mirror as meaning his entrance upon the ~meristê\ dêmiourgi/a~. A reference to a similar explanation of this ~Dionu/sou ka/topton~ occurs even in Plot. 4, 3, 12 (Lob. 555)--? also in the strange statement made by Marsilius Ficinus as to the crudelissimum apud Orpheum Narcissi fatum (was Zagreus another Narcissus?) fr. 315; cf. Plot. 1, 6, 8. The entry of the one origin of the universe into the multiplicity of phenomena is first clearly referred to in the dismemberment of Zagreus, but it would be quite like this symbol-loving poetry to introduce the same motif in a different form with a passing reference earlier in the poem.]

[30\10: Nonn., D. vi, 197 ff.]

[31\10: Paus. 8, 37, 5.]

[32\10: Procl., O., frr. 195, 198, 199. In any case Nonn. vi, 169 ff. is following the Rhapsodiai.]

[33\10: Callim. and Euphor. knew of the dismemberment of Dionysos by the Titans: Tz. ad Lyc. 208 (from the completer version in EM.). In any case it is not from the Rhaps. that this legend is also known to D.S. 5, 75, 4; Cornut. 30, p. 62, 10 Lang; Plu., Es. Carn. 1, 7, p. 996 C; Is. et Os. 35, p. 364 F; Clem. Al. (see Orph. frr. 196, 200).--A roughly caricatured drawing on a hydria belonging to the early fourth century found at Rhodos and made probably in Attica appears in JHS. xi (1890), p. 243; where it is said to represent the dismemberment of Zagreus as conceived by Orphics. The picture, however, does not agree at all with the meaning thus attributed to it; the interpretation cannot be the right one.]

[34\10: A true ~hiero\s lo/gos~, i.e. an account of the origin of ritual acts founded upon myth or legend. (The Orphics had such accounts, e.g. of the prohibition against being buried in woollen clothing: Hdt. ii, 81 fin.)]

[35\10: That the tearing in pieces of the bull in the primitive Thracian manner occurred also in the Orphic ~o/rgia~ may perhaps be deduced from the fact that in the legend Orpheus himself is torn in pieces by the Mainads. The priest stands in the place of the god: what the god suffers in the ritual ~drô/mena~ that the priest suffers too. This is frequently met with. ~Orpheu\s ha/te tô=n Dionu/sou teletô=n hêgemô\n geno/menos ta\ ho/moia pathei=n le/getai tô=| sphete/rô| theô=|~, Procl. in {354} Rp. i, 175 Kr. The ancients were fully aware that the bull torn in pieces in the Bacchic orgies represented the god himself (and this not only in Orphic ritual but from the beginning in the Thracian worship): the idea is often expressed (see e.g. Firm. Mat., Error. P.R. vi, 5), but nowhere more clearly than in the Orphic ~hiero\s lo/gos~.]

[36\10: The introduction of the Titans from Hellenic mythology into the Thracian myth is clearly described as the work of Onomakritos by Paus. 8, 37, 5.]

[37\10: ~Titê=nes kekomê=tai, hupe/rbion êtor e/chontes~, fr. 102. ~amei/lichon êtor e/chontes kai\ phu/sin eknomi/ên~, fr. 97. As early as Hesiod the Titans are hated by their father as ~deino/tatoi pai/dôn~ (Theog. 155). ~Titanikê\ phu/sis~ is the evil character that cannot keep an oath: Pl., Lg. 701 C; Cic., Lg. iii, 5; impios Titanas, Hor., O. 3, 4, 42.]

[38\10: This explanation of the ~diamelismo/s~ of Zagreus is often put forward (though subtilized into a Neoplatonic sense) by those who use the Orphic Rhapsodiai: see Lob. 710 ff. But even Plutarch has something of the sort (E ap. D. 9, p. 389 A), and it cannot be doubted that this (apart from its Platonist wrappings) was the meaning of the legend in the mind of its first inventor. Nor can the conception that the separate existence (multiplicity) of things first came into the world by an act of impiety, have been strange to the theologoi of the sixth century: we must admit this at once on remembering the doctrine of Anaximander that the multiplicity of things which has arisen out of the original one ~a/peiron~ is in itself an ~adiki/a~ for which it must pay "recompense and punishment" (fr. 2 Mull., 9 Diels). Such personification of the processes of nature and the reading of an ethical sense into them, combined as it was with a quietist tendency, was much more likely to have arisen in the fanciful minds of semi-philosophical mystics than to have been given to them by the philosophers.]

[39\10: See the accounts given in Lob. 565 f.: they come from the Rhapsodiai. The fact that the origin of men and the doctrine of Metempsychosis as well were dealt with in the Rhaps. follows from Procl. _in _Rp.__ ii, 338 Kroll. It must, however, have been from older Orphic poetry--at any rate, not from the Rhaps.--that the story was derived by D. Chr. 30, 10 f. Plutarch, too, does at least refer to it: ~to\ en hêmi=n a/logon kai\ a/takton kai\ bi/aion hoi palaioi\ Tita=nas ôno/masan~, Es. Carn. 1, 7, p. 996 C; and possibly Opp., H. v, 9-10; Ael. fr. 89, p. 230, 19 f. Herch. (Lob. 567 g). Even the words of Xenokrates (fr. 20, p. 166 Heinze) seem to allude to this Orphic myth. Thus the Rhapsodiai in this case also were following older Orphic teaching and poetry. Orph. H. 37 derives from a later age. What Nic. Th. 8 ff. reproduces (mistakenly?) as Hesiodic tradition was perhaps really an echo of Orphic poetry. Was the derivation of Man from the Titans suggested by still earlier fancies such as e.g. meet us in passages like h. Hom. Ap. 335 (137) f.: ~Titê=ne/s te theoi\ tô=n e\x a/ndres te theoi/ te~--? This is not Homeric (for all the Homeric ~patê\r andrô=n te theô=n te~), though possibly it had a different sense from what it had for "Orpheus".]

[40\10: Dionysos is the last of the divine rulers of the world: frr. 114, 190. Hence ~despo/tês hêmô=n~, Procl. _in _Crat.__, pp. 59, 114 Boiss. (though Procl. also speaks of e.g. Hermes as ~ho despo/tês humô=n~ in Cr., p. 73 B.). Dionysos is the sixth ruler; Zeus who came before him being the fifth: frr. 113 (85, 121, 122). The order given is: 1 Phanes, 2 Nyx, 3 Ouranos, 4 Kronos, 5 Zeus, 6 Dionysos. This is definitely stated by Syrian.: fr. 85 (Proclus follows his master: frr. 85, 121), and confirmed by the fragments of the Rhapsodiai: frr. 86, 87, 96, 113. It seems, however, as if Plato actually found this order (as Syrian. thought) {355} in the Orphic Theogony which he read. It is true that as their silence shows the Neoplatonists did not find the verse cited by Plato in the Rhapsodiai as they knew them. (Plato's line is ~he/ktê| d' en geneê=| katapau/sate ko/smon aoidê=s~: Plu., E ap. D. 15, p. 391 D, has the meaningless ~thumo/n~ instead of ~ko/smon~--did he read ~thesmo/n~?) They were right, however, in deducing from the line that the ancient Orphic Theogony referred to by Plato also knew of six generations of the gods (following the Pythagorean ~te/leios arithmo/s~?) and ended with the sixth generation. The verse was intended doubtless by Plato himself in rather a different sense and he only quotes it humorously (Gruppe differs; Rhaps. Theog. 693 f.). This passage therefore provides important evidence of the harmony that existed between the Rhapsodiai and the oldest Orphic Theogony in the general outlines of their construction. It is, of course, quite a different question whether the six rulers in the poem referred to by Plato were the same as those given by the Rhaps.; nor can we tell whether Dionysos there occupied the last place, though the predominance held by Dionysos in Orphic belief makes it very probable that he did.]

[41\10: The authorities who speak of the origin of mankind from the ashes (or the blood) of the Titans (Lob. 565 ff.) express themselves in such a way that we are forced to suppose that they regarded this as essentially the first appearance of men. This, however, cannot be reconciled with what Proclus, as usual following the Rhapsodiai, says of the golden and silver ages of mankind under Phanes and Kronos, which then, and not till then, are followed by the third and last race, ~to\ titaniko\n ge/nos~: see fr. 244 and esp. _in _Rp.__ ii, 74 Kr. ~thnêtoi/~ in the reign of Phanes even occurs in the line quoted by Syrian. (in Ar. Meta. 935a 22 Us.) fr. 85. It is impossible to say whether this improvement upon the Hesiodic legend of the Ages of Mankind actually occurred in an ancient Orphic Theogony (the one used perhaps by Lactant.; O., fr. 243, 8; cf. 248), and was thence taken for the Rhapsodiai without being reconciled with the legend of the origin of men from the ashes of the Titans; or whether the two scarcely reconcilable accounts of the origin of men were somehow or other made to agree. (Fr. 246 [Plu.] prob. comes from a picture of the long life enjoyed by the earliest generations of men: see Lob. 513. This picture does not necessarily presuppose a series of several ~geneai/~ before the Titanic race.)]

[42\10: ~me/ros autou= (tou= Dionu/sou) esme/n~, Olymp. (from Orphic doctrine) _in Pl. _Phd.__, p. 3 Finckh. ~ho en hêmi=n nou=s Dionusiako/s estin kai\ a/galma o/ntôs tou= Dionu/sou~, Procl. _in _Crat.__, p. 82 Boiss. The Hellenes are accustomed to make use of the dismemberment, re-integration and resuscitation of Dionysos ~eis to\n peri\ tê=s psuchê=s lo/gon ana/gein kai\ tropologei=n~, Orig., Cels. 4, 17, p. 21 Lo.]

[43\10: ~hoi amphi\ Orphe/a~ think that the soul has the body as a ~peri/bolon, desmôtêri/ou eiko/na~, Pl., Crat. 400 C. Certainly Orphic, too (as the Schol. also say), is ~ho en aporrê/tois lego/menos lo/gos hôs e/n tini phroura=| esmen hoi a/nthrôpoi ktl.~, Pl. Phd. 62 B; see Lob. 795 f.]

[44\10: fr. 221 (Phd. 62 B with Sch.). The similar saying of Philolaos is, as Plato's manner of recording it shows (Phd. 61 E-62 B) evidently derived from a saying of the Orphic ~apo/rrêta~ (and Philolaos himself appealed to the ~palaioi\ theolo/goi te kai\ ma/nties~ in confirmation of the closely connected doctrine of the enclosure of the ~psuchê/~ in the ~sê=ma~ of the ~sô=ma~: fr. 23 Mull. 14 Di.). The doctrine continued to be taught by Pythagoreans: see Euxitheos Pyth. ap. Klearch. in Ath. iv, 157 CD; Cic., Sen. 73. It had moreover some root in popular belief and in legal usage: see above, chap. v, n. 33.] {356}

[45\10: According to the ~Orphika\ e/pê kalou/mena~, ap. Arist. de An. 1, 5, p. 410b, 28 ff.: ~tê\n psuchê\n ek tou= ho/lou eisie/nai anapneo/ntôn pherome/nên hupo\ tô=n ane/môn~. (The ancient commentators add nothing fresh.) ~ek tou= **ho/lou~ means simply "out of space". The ~a/nemoi~ were regarded as daimonic powers subordinate and related to the ~Tritopa/tores~: see above, chap. v, n. 124. We cannot say how this conception was made to square with the other articles of Orphic belief (purgation of souls in Hades, etc.). It is plainly nothing but an attempt at such reconciliation that (following the Rhapsodiai, fr. 224) makes the souls that pass in death out of the bodies of men, go into Hades, while those that have inhabited the bodies of animals fly about in the wind ~eiso/ken auta\s a/llo apharpa/zê| mi/gdên ane/moio pnoê=|sin~. Aristotle knows nothing of any such restriction. Plato (Phd. 81 D; rather differently 108 AB) apparently making free use of Orphic ideas regards all the ~mê\ katharô=s apoluthei=sai psuchai/~ as liable to the same fate as that allotted by the Rhapsodiai to the beasts. (Of course it is possible to suppose that the ~psuchai/~ on being released from Hades for a new ~ensôma/tôsis~ first of all fly about in the wind round the dwelling places of the living and are then breathed into a new body. This would not prevent there being a predestined conjunction of a particular soul with the particular ~sô=ma~ corresponding to its state of purification.)--The establishment in later Orphic poetry of the theory that the ~psuchai/~ dwelt in the air may have been assisted by the philosophic theory of the soaring-up of the ~pneu/mata~ into their element the aether (of which more below). This theory, though not first put forward by the Stoics, was specially favoured by them: it almost attained the status of a popularly accepted belief. When the realm of the souls had thus been at least in part transferred to the air, late Orphic poetry began to regard one of the four rivers of the soul-world, ~Ache/rôn~, as the ~aê/r~: frr. 155, 156 (Rhaps.). There is no reason to see in all this the traces of a supposed ancient conception in which Okeanos is really a river in the sky (in spite of Bergk's fanciful speculations in Opusc. ii, 691-6). The elevation of the soul-kingdom to the sky is in Greek thought invariably the result of comparatively late speculation. We might even ask whether there is not Egyptian influence at work in the transference of Okeanos (= the Milky Way?) to the sky. Such influence would be late of course; but in Egypt the idea of the Nile in the sky was quite familiar.]

[46\10: ~ku/klos tê=s gene/seôs~, fr. 226; ~ho tê=s moi/ras trocho/s~, rota fati et generationis: see Lob. 797 ff.]

[47\10: ~hoi d' autoi\ pate/res te kai\ huie/es en mega/roisin (polla/kis) êd' a/lochoi semnai\ kednai/ te thu/gatres . . . gi/gnont' allê/lôn metameibome/nê|si gene/thlais~, frr. 225, 222 (Rhaps.). Here, as Lob. 797 rightly remarks, there is an allusion to the dogma of the recurrence of exactly the same state of things in the world. The doctrine of complete ~paliggenesi/a~ or ~**apokata/stasis hapantôn~ (see Gataker ad. M. Ant.^1, p. 385) was closely and indeed indissolubly bound up with the doctrine of the migration of souls. (Illogicality belongs rather to the conception of the break in the circle caused by the secession of individual souls.) It was therefore found among the Pythagoreans to whom it is ascribed by Eudemos fr. 51 sp. (see Porph., VP. 19, p. 26, 23 ff. N.; used later still in a Pythagorean sense by Synes., Aeg. 2, 7, p. 62 f. Krab.). It was borrowed from the Pythagoreans by the Stoa (by Chrysippos esp.), which after its usual fashion pushed the rather bizarre fancy to pedantic extremes. (After the Stoic model is Plot. 5, 7, and perhaps also the genethliaci spoken of by Varro ap. Aug., CD. 22, 28.) It is at least {357} probable in the extreme that these ideas were first held by the Orphics and not borrowed by them from the Stoics: there are even traces in Orphic tradition of the great World-year (which is always closely connected with the ~apokata/stasis tô=n hapa/ntôn~): Lob. 792 ff.]

[48\10: ~ku/klon te lê=xai kai\ anapneu=sai kako/têtos~ were the words Proclus probably had before him: (fr. 226) _in _Tim.__ 330 B. The forms ~a\n lê/xai kai\ anapneu/sai~--thus rightly accented here by Schneider--come from Procl. himself, who accommodates the words of the original to the construction of his own sentence. We must therefore not write ~au= lê=xai~ with Gale and Lob. 800. In this case the subject of the sentence is the praying soul; on the other hand, in the form preserved by Simp., ~ku/klon t' allu=sai kai\ anapsu=xai kako/têtos~, the subject is the gods to whom the soul prays; ~psuchê/~ being object. In either form the freeing of the soul from the circle is regarded as a grace from the gods.]

[49\10: fr. 76. The lines of the Carm. Aur. 55 ff. (Nauck, p. 207) are probably modelled on the Orphic ~ou/t' agathou= pareo/ntos ktl.~ The point is: few are they who trouble about the salvation that Orpheus (or Pythagoras) brings them; the ~ho/sioi~ are always a small minority.]

[50\10: frr. 208, 226. ~Dio/nusos luseu/s, lu/sios, theoi\ lu/sioi~; see Lob. 809 f. and cf. fr. 311 (Ficinus).]

[51\10: ~Orphe/a t' a/nakt' e/chôn ba/kcheue . . . ~ E. Hp. 953 (N.B. ~a/nax~ not ~despo/tês~, l. 88).]

[52\10: ~Orphiko\s bi/os~, Pl., Lg. 782 C; Lobeck, 244 ff.]

[53\10: The Pythagorean ~e/pou theô=|, akolouthei=n tô=| theô=|~ (Iamb., VP. 137, from Aristoxenos) might also have been given to the Orphics as their motto.]

[54\10: ~a/psuchos bora/~ of the Orphics: E., Hp. 952, Pl., Lg. 782 CD; Lob., p. 246. This, too, is the meaning of Ar., Ra. 1032, ~Orpheu\s me\n ga\r teleta/s th' hêmi=n kate/deixe pho/nôn t' ape/chesthai~, i.e. using slain animals for food. Hor., AP. 391 f.: silvestris homines . . . caedibus et victu foedo deterruit Orpheus means to speak not of the ritual vegetarianism of "Orpheus", but of the previous cannibalism of men which Orpheus had put an end to. As this is nowhere else mentioned of Orpheus we might perhaps regard it as mistaken allusion on the part of Horace to the passage of Aristoph. quoted above. It is not, however, impossible that Horace did in fact have in mind some Orphic verse which really reported something like what he himself says of Orpheus. The Orphic fragment [247] ap. S.E., M. ii, 31; ix, 15 (Lob., p. 246), may have arisen in the same way; see Maass, Orpheus, 77. (The well-known lines of Kritias [S.E., M. ix, 54 fr. 25 Di.] and Moschion, p. 813 Nauck, can hardly have anything to do with Orphism and should rather be connected with the theories of the Sophists and Demokritos--followed later by the Epicureans--about the gradual evolution of human civilization from miserable and savage origins; and not from a "golden age" of which the Orphics too spoke.)]

[55\10: Prohibition to bury corpses in woollen garments: Hdt. ii, 81 (in each case in order that nothing ~thnêsei/dion~ might cling to the departed). Prohibition against eating eggs: Lob. 251 (eggs are part of the offering to the dead and the food of the ~chtho/nioi~, and so forbidden: so rightly explained by Lob. 477). It was forbidden in Orphic poetry, as well as Pythagorean, to eat beans: Lob. 251; Nauck on Iamb., VP., p. 231 f.: the reason here, too, being that beans as part of the offerings to the dead, putantur ad mortuos pertinere (Fest.); see Lob. 254 and Crusius, Rh. Mus. 39, 165. The same or similar reasons are everywhere at work to cause the eating of certain foods to be forbidden {358} both by the Pythagorean ordinances and in the mystical cult of the ~chtho/nioi~: it is because they are used as offerings to the beings of the lower world, ~pro\s ta\ peri/deipna kai\ ta\s proklê/seis tô=n nekrô=n~, or even because they have names which, like ~ere/binthos~ or ~la/thuros~, recall ~e/rebos~ and ~lê/thê~: Plu., QR. 95, p. 286 E. The purified state requires above all complete separation from anything connected with the realm of the dead and the divinities of the dead.]

[56\10: Cf. fr. 208.]

[57\10: The soul is confined within the body (according to those ~amphi\ Orphe/a), hôs di/kên didou/sês tê=s psuchê=s hô=n dê\ he/neka di/dôsin~, Pl., Crat. 400 C. The exact nature of this "guilt" of the soul is not explained in our remains of Orphic literature. The point, however, is chiefly that the life within the body is according to their doctrine not in accordance with but contrary to the proper nature of the soul.]

[58\10: ~sumpo/sion tô=n hosi/ôn~, Pl., Rp. 363 C. ~hosi/ous mu/stas~, Orph., H. 84, 3; see above, chap. vi, n. 18.]

[59\10: ~psucha\s athana/tas kata/gei Kullê/nios Hermê=s gai/ês es keuthmô=na pelô/rion~ fr. 224 (it would be vain to look for an example of ~atha/natos~ used as adjective to ~psuchê/~ in Homer). Hermes ~chtho/nios~ leads the souls down into Hades and also upwards again (to fresh ~ensômatô/seis~): Orph., H. 57, 6 ff. (For the Pythagorean Hermes see D.L. viii, 31.)]

[60\10: Especially in the ~kata/basis eis Ha/idou~ (Lob. 373; cf. above, chap. vii, n. 3). The descent lay through the chasm at Tainaron: see above, chap. v, n. 23, and cf. Orph., Arg. 41.--Other Orphic poems may also have dealt with such matters: ~polla\ memutholo/gêtai peri\ tô=n en Ha/idou pragma/tôn tô=| tê=s Kallio/pês~, Jul., Or. vii, p. 281, 3 Hertl. [216 D].]

[61\10: ~lu/seis kai\ katharmoi/~ of the living and even the dead carried out by Orphic priests: Pl., Rp. 364 E. Reward of the initiated in Hades: cf. the anecdote of Leotychidas II in Plu., Apophth. Lac., p. 224 E; and of Antisthenes in D.L. vi, 4. Those who feared the bite of Kerberos or the water-carrying to the leaky cask (see App. iii) sought protection against such things in ~teletai\ kai\ katharmoi/~: Plu. N.P.Q. Suav. Epic. 27, p. 1105 B. Hope of immortality for the soul rests on the Dionysiac mysteries acc. to Plu., Cons. ad Ux. 10, p. 611 D.]

[62\10: It is significant that the belief in a judgment and punishment of ~psuchai/~ is based in [Pl.] Ep. vii, 335 A not on popular acceptance or the statements of poets but on ~palaioi/ te kai\ hieroi\ lo/goi~; cf. above, chap. vii, n. 13.]

[63\10: fr. 154 (punishment in Hades of those guilty of crimes against their own parents? fr. 281).]

[64\10: See above, chap. vii, n. 15.]

[65\10: ~deina\ perime/nei~: Pl., Rp. 365 A; cf. fr. 314 (Ficinus).]

[66\10: fr. 208 (Rhaps.) ~o/rgia/ t' ektele/sousi (a/nthrôpoi), lu/sin progo/nôn athemi/stôn maio/menoi; su\~ (sc. Dionysos) ~de\ toi=sin~ (dat. commodi), ~e/chôn kra/tos, hou=s k' ethe/lêstha lu/seis e/k te po/nôn chalepô=n kai\ apei/ronos oi/strou~ (of continual rebirth). That this belief in the efficacy of prayers for the "poor souls of the departed" belonged to the earlier stratum of Orphism follows from Pl., Rp. 364 BC, E, 365 A, where he speaks of ~lu/seis te kai\ katharmoi/~ of the Orphics which promised to deliver living and dead from the ~adikê/mata autou= ê\ progo/nôn~. (It has been wrongly attempted to fasten the same belief on Plato himself, in the Phaedo.)--For Gnostic and early Christian ideas of the same kind see Anrich, D. Ant. Mysterienwesen, 87, 4; 120 n. But even in the Rigveda (7, 35, 4) we may find the thought that the "pious works of the pious" can help others to salvation (Oldenberg, Rel. d. {359} Veda, 289). Religious pietism seems to produce the same effects everywhere.]

[67\10: ~polloi\ me\n narthêkopho/roi ktl.~ was an Orphic verse. Lob. 809, 813.]

[68\10: fr. 154.]

[69\10: ~ho kekatharme/nos te kai\ tetelesme/nos ekei=se (eis Ha/idou) aphiko/menos meta\ theô=n oikê/sei~, fr. 228 (Pl.).]

[70\10: ~sumpo/sion tô=n hosi/ôn~ in Hades, ~me/thê aiô/nios~ their reward: Pl., Rp. 336 CD (cf. Dieterich, Nekyia, 80 n.). Plato there mentions Mousaios and his son (Eumolpos) as authorities for these promises and contrasts with them, by a ~hoi de/~, others who made different promises; perhaps referring to other Orphic poems (cf. fr. 227). But Mousaios, himself always closely connected in Plato with Orpheus (Rp. 364 E, Prot. 316 D, Ap. 41 A, Ion, 536 B), here simply means "Orphic poetry". A literature of essentially Orphic character went under his name. So Plu., Comp. Cim. et Luc. 1 seems right in substituting simply ~to\n Orphe/a~ for the ~Mousai=os~ named in Pl.]

[71\10: Pl., Lg. 870 DE; then in more detail for a special case but derived from same source: ~no/mô| . . . tô=| nu=n dê/~ (i.e. in 870 DE) ~lechthe/nti~ 872 DE, 873 A.--The idea of such a religio-juridical talio was popular also in Greece: see below (chap. xi, n. 44). Frequently for instance in curses of vengeance the wish is that the doer may suffer exactly the same thing as that which he has done to his victim. Exx. from Soph. (best is Tr. 1039 f.) given by G. Wolff in S., Aias, 839; cf. A., Cho. 309 ff., Ag. 1430.--As a Neoplatonic idea: Plot. 3, 2, 13; Porph. and Iamb. ap. Aen. Gaz., Theophr., p. 18 B.]

[72\10: We may, however, suppose that the ideas of the Orphics corresponded with the statements of Empedokles, Plato, etc., about the series of births.]

[73\10: ~sô=ma--sê=ma~ is Orphic: Pl., Crat. 400 C.]

[74\10: Complete escape from the world of birth and death is distinctly anticipated for the pious Orphic in fr. 226, ~ku/klon te lê=xai ktl.~ The other and positive side completing this negative promise is not clearly supplied for us by any fragment. (We never even hear distinctly of the return of the individual soul to the one Soul of the World; though certain Orphic myths--probably of late origin--seem to suggest such a doctrine of Emanation and final Remanation.)]

[75\10: frr. 1, 81. The moon was regarded as inhabited, like the world, by Pythagoreans too (esp. Philolaos) and also by Anaxagoras.]

[76\10: This at least was the belief of Pythagoreans and later of Platonics: see Griech. Roman, 269; Wyttenb. on Eun. VS. 117. But the idea occurs as early as in the Ti. of Plato, esp. in 42 B. It may have been long familiar to Greek popular belief (as to other peoples; cf. Tylor, ii, 70), and reached Orphics from that source. (Similar though not quite the same is the popular belief ~hôs aste/res gigno/meth' ho/tan tis apotha/nê|~, Ar., Pa. 833 f., which the Greeks shared with all the nations of the earth: cf. "Pythagoras" ap. Comm. Bern. in Lucan, 9, 9.)--No opinion can be built upon the statement of Ficinus (fr. 321).]

[77\10: Orphic poetry must have varied in its account of what happened to the dismembered limbs of Zagreus-Dionysos. That the Titans tore the god limb from limb seems to have been common to all versions of the Theogonic poem (see nn. 28, 41; p. 341). But whereas according to one account the Titans then devoured the god (except the heart) and from the mixed Titanic and Dionysiac elements of their bodies after they had been destroyed by lightning the race of men had its origin (p. 341); according to others the mangled limbs {360} of the god were brought by Zeus to Apollo who buried them taking them "on to Parnasos", i.e. at Delphi: see Orph. fr. 200 (Clem. Al.) and so, too, Callim. fr. 374. The Rhapsodiai gave the first version in detail, but also preserved an account resembling the second (see frr. 203, 204: the ~heni/zein ta\ meristhe/nta tou= Dionu/sou me/lê~ there refers probably to the reunion of the collected limbs for the purpose of burial and not for the restoration of the dead god to life. This is also possibly the meaning of the ~Dionu/sou melô=n kollê/seis~ in Jul., Chr., p. 167, 7 Neum. But Or., Cels. 4, 17, p. 21 Lom., speaks of the reanimation of Dionysos ~suntitheme/nou~ after the dismemberment). This second account, where it occurs alone, of course excludes the Anthropogony from the Titans' ashes. The second version unmistakably connects itself with the Delphic legend of the grave of Dionysos at the foot of Apollo's tripod (see above, pp. 97 f.) as K. O. Müller observed, Introd. Scient. Myth. 242. It does, in fact, accord in this instance, but apart from this it has no connexion whatever with the real Delphic legend about the disappearance of Dionysos into the underworld and his periodic return to this world. (See above, chap. viii, n. 28. The Orphic and Delphic legends are elaborately compared and worked in together as though they were separate fragments of a single whole in Lübbert's book, de Pindaro theologiae Orph. censore: Ind. Sch. Bonn. Lib. 1888, p. xiii f.--with shocking results and no intrinsic justification.) Whether this second version was the one put forward by Onomakritos is uncertain. In any case, both accounts are much older than the Rhapsodiai, in which, it appears, they were included side by side and superficially harmonized (--only the limbs of the god not devoured by the Titans being buried acc. to this version). Besides these two versions there may have been another Anthropogony differing from that given in the first account: the existence of something of the kind is perhaps to be deduced from what the Rhapsodiai themselves have to tell about the golden and silver generations of mankind (see above, n. 41).]

[78\10: Of the Thracian Mysoi ~le/gei ho Poseidô/nios kai\ empsu/chôn ape/chesthai~ (which Pythagoras is said to have learnt from Zalmoxis, Str. 298) ~kat' euse/beian, dia\ de\ tou=to kai\ thremma/tôn; me/liti de\ chrê=sthai kai\ ga/lakti kai\ turô=|, zô=ntas kath' hêsuchi/an; dia\ de\ tou=to kalei=sthai theosebei=s te kai\ kapnoba/tas~ (perh. ~kapnobo/tas~ acc. to an ancient conjecture). ~ei=nai de/ tinas tô=n Thra|kô=n hoi\ chôri\s gunaiko\s zô=sin, hou\s kti/stas kalei=sthai, anierô=sthai/ te dia\ timê\v kai\ met' adei/as zê=n~, Str. 296. The religious character of this asceticism is seen in the words ~kat' euse/beian~ and the name ~theosebei=s~; also in the word ~anierô=sthai~, which are all used of the ~kti/stai~ as of a monastic order. Jos., AJ. 18, 1, 5, says of the Essenes ~zô=si d' oude\n parêllagme/nôs all' ho/ti ma/lista emphe/rontes Dakô=n~ (i.e. ~Thra|kô=n, Getô=n~: Getae, Daci Romanis dicti, Plin., NH. iv, 80) ~toi=s polistai=s kaloume/nois~. In any case the same Thracian ascetics are meant whom Poseidonios (literally translating a Thracian word) calls the ~kti/stai~. Thus, they are said like the Essence to live without women, eat no meat, and in the practice of various other asceticisms live together and have all things in common.--It cannot be certainly decided how old this Thracian asceticism was, its exact connexion with Dionysiac religion, and whether it could or did give any impulse in the direction of asceticism to the Orphics. (Following Hom., ~N~ 4 ff., many told similar stories of the nomadic Skythoi: see Ephor., frr. 76, 78; or of the fabulous Argimpaioi, Hdt. iv, 23; Znb., Pr. 5, 25, p. 129, 1, etc. Griech. Roman, 203.--~apochê\ empsu/chôn~ occurred also among the Atlantes and certain Indian races: Hdt. iv, 184; iii, 100.)] {361}

[79\10: ii, 123. His words make it plain that the Greek teachers of transmigration of souls whom he has in mind (Pherekydes, Pythagoras, Orphics, Empedokles) had no idea of the Egyptian origin of that doctrine (Rh. Mus. 26, 556, 1).]

[80\10: The Egyptian monuments show no knowledge of a general transmigration of souls, due to a law of nature or the decree of the gods. We can see very well, however, what it was in Egyptian traditions that might seem like a doctrine of transmigration to Herodotos (cf. Wiedemann, **Erläut. zu Herodots 2. B. p. 457 f.).]

[81\10: It is sufficient to refer to Tylor's collections: ii, 3 ff.--In antiquity the Greeks met with a doctrine of Transmigration, apart from Thrace, among the Keltic races (Caes., BG. 6, 14, 5; D.S. 5, 28, 6; cf. Timagenes ap. Amm. Marc. 15, 9, 8). This was the sole reason why Pythagoras was made the pupil of the Gallic Druids: Alex. Polyh. ap. Clem. Al., Str. i, p. 355/6 P., etc.]

[82\10: That it was not unnatural for the Greeks also to have the conception of the migration of the soul from its first body to some other suitable second or third body (entry of ~tê=s tuchou/sês psuchê=s eis to\ tucho\n sô=ma~ acc. to Arist.) may be seen from the fact that in Greek popular tales of the transformation of men into beasts the idea regularly prevails that while the body changes in such cases the "soul" remains the same as before. Thus, explicitly in Hom. ~k~ 240 (cf. Sch. there and 329); cf. also Ov., M. ii, 485; Nonn., D. v, 322 f.; Aesop., F. 294 (Halm): [Luc.] Asin. 13, 15 init.; Apul., M. iii, 26 init; Aug., CD. 18, 18, p. 278, 11 ff. Domb., etc. (In all transformation stories this is regularly implied and gives the point to the story.) This is true from the earliest times onward, down to Voltaire's muleteer who was turned into a mule et du vilain l'âme terrestre et crasse à peine vit qu'elle eut changé de place.)--The beasts also have a ~psuchê/~: e.g. ~x~ 426.]

[83\10: Brahmins, Buddhists, Manichaean, etc.]

[84\10: A fixed term for "transmigration of souls" does not seem to have been offered by Orphic teaching. It was later called ~paliggenesi/a~ (a term which did not exactly fit the real meaning of the idea: this seems to have been its oldest name (cf. ~hai psuchai\ pa/lin gi/gnontai hek tô=n tethneô/tôn~, Pl., Phd. 70 C), and remained its most ceremonious one. "Pythagoras" non ~metempsu/chôsin~ sed ~paliggenesi/an~ esse dicit: Serv., A. iii, 68. ~metensôma/tôsis~, is not uncommon (frequent in Hippol., RH., p. 12, 53 D.-S.; 266, etc.). The word most commonly used among ourselves, ~metempsu/chôsis~, is among the Greeks precisely the least usual; it occurs e.g. in D.S. 10, 6, 1; Gal. iv, 763 K.; Tertul. de An. 31; Serv., A. vi, 532; 603; Suid. s.v. ~Phereku/dês~. ~metempsuchou=sthai~ occurs in Sch., A.R. i, 645.]

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XI. THE PHILOSOPHERS

The Orphic teaching, in which a protracted movement of religion in Greece reached comprehensive expression, might seem almost an anachronism, appearing as it did in an age when a religious interpretation of the world and of mankind was hardly any longer admissible. Eastwards, on the coasts of Ionia, a new view of the world had arisen which, like a youth that has come of age, demanded the right to pursue its course without any guidance from traditional beliefs. The Ionic maritime cities were the meeting-place of all the collected wisdom and experience of mankind; and there all the more serious knowledge and study--both indigenous and of foreign origin--of "Nature", the earth, and the heavenly bodies, was gathered together in the intelligence of those ever-memorable spirits who at that time were laying the foundations of natural science, and of all science in general. This knowledge was now attempting to turn itself into an organized and all-embracing whole. Observation and constructive study combined with an imaginative vision to hazard a picture of the world and reality as a whole. Because it was impossible anywhere in this world to find anything completely and for ever fixed and dead, speculation inevitably pressed forward to the discovery of the undying source of Life, that perpetually fills, moves, and rebuilds this whole, and of the laws according to which it works and necessarily must work.

This was the direction pursued by these earliest pioneers of philosophy; and they pursued it unhampered by any subservience to mythical or religious modes of thought. Where mythology and the theology founded upon it saw a complete history of cosmic events each one of which was the result of the separate and unique action of divine personalities endowed with consciousness and the power of arbitrary choice--there the philosopher saw the play of everlasting forces which could not be completely resolved into the single events of any historical process, for, without beginning or end they had been ever in action, tirelessly fulfilling themselves in accordance with unchanging laws. In such a universe there seemed {363} to be little room left for divine figures created by man after his own image, and worshipped by him as the guiding and supreme powers of the world. And in fact, the foundations were now laid of that tremendous structure of free inquiry, which finally succeeded in weaving out of its treasure new worlds of thought, where even those who had quarrelled or were dissatisfied with the old religion (now inwardly falling into decay for all its outward appearance of being at the most brilliant zenith of its powers) might yet find a refuge if they would not fall back upon sheer nothingness.

And yet Greece never saw a thorough-going opposition and conscious quarrel between science and religion. In a few special cases the religion of the state was forced to recognize its incompatibility with the openly expressed opinions of individual philosophers, and took steps to make its claims to universal supremacy respected. But for the most part, the two streams of influence flowed on side by side for centuries without ever coming into hostile contact. The propagandist temper was completely absent from philosophy from the very beginning. (Even when it appeared later as among the Cynics it produced very little effect on the supremacy of the state religion.) Religion on its side was not represented by any priestly caste which might have been led to take up arms for religion and for what it believed to be its own interest alike. Theoretic contradictions might the more easily remain unobserved when religion depended so little upon fixed dogma or upon a world-embracing whole of opinions and doctrines; while Theology, wherever it accompanied the worship of the gods (~euse/beia~), which was the real core of religion, was, just as much as philosophy, the business of individuals and their adherents gathered together outside the limits of the official religion of the state. Philosophy (except in a few special and unrepresentative cases) never sought open war with religion--not even with the weakened and diluted religion of the masses. In fact the juxtaposition of philosophy and religion (with theology itself by their side) sometimes went beyond the external conditions of the time, and affected the private intellectual life of certain thinkers. It might seem as if religion and philosophy were not merely different but dealt with different provinces of reality, and thus even strict and philosophically minded thinkers could honestly and without imagining disloyalty to philosophy, adopt particular and even fundamental conceptions from the creed of their fathers, and allow them to grow up side by side and at peace with their own purely philosophical ideas. {364}

§ 2

What the Ionic philosophers in connexion with the rest of their cosmology had to say about the soul of man did not for all its striking novelty bring them into direct conflict with religious opinion. Philosophy and religion used the same words to denote totally different things; it could surprise no one if different things were said about quite different objects.

According to the popular view, which finds expression in Homer, and with which, in spite of their very different estimate of the relative values of body and soul, the religious theory of the Orphics and other theologi also agreed--according to this view the "psyche" was regarded as a unique creature of combined spiritual and material nature that, wherever it may have come from, now dwells within man and there, as his second self, carries on its separate existence, making itself felt when the visible self loses consciousness in dream, swoon, or ecstasy (see above, pp. 6 f.). In the same way, the moon and the stars become visible when no longer obscured by the brighter light of the sun. It was already implied in the conception itself that this double of mankind, which could be detached from him temporarily, had a separate existence of its own; it was no very great step from this to the idea that in death, which is simply the permanent separation of the visible man from the invisible, the latter did not perish, but only then became free and able to live by and for itself.

This spiritual being and the obscure manifestations of its existence in the living man, did not attract the observation of the Ionian philosophers. Their thoughts were all for the universe as a whole; they looked for the "origins" (~archai/~) of all that is and becomes; for the simple elements of multifarious appearance and for the force which turns the simple into the multifarious while controlling, moving, and giving life to primeval matter. The power of life, the force which can set in motion both itself and all else that without it would be fixed and motionless--this force penetrates all being; where it manifests itself most strikingly in separate individual beings, there it is what these philosophers call the "psyche".

Thought of in this way, the psyche is something quite different from the old psyche of popular belief, idly observing the life and activities of its body, as of some stranger, concentrated in itself, and pursuing its own secret, hidden life. And yet the name given to these very different concepts remained the same. The application of the word "psyche" {365} to the power which gives life and movement to the visible body--man's power of life--might have been suggested to the philosophers by a manner of expression which, though in the strict sense of the words conflicting with Homeric conceptions, is occasionally observable in the Homeric poems, and seems to have become more and more frequent in late times.[1\11] In more exact language, the "psyche" of these philosophers is a collective expression for all the powers of thought, desire, and will (~no/os, me/nos, mê=tis, boulê/~), and especially for the functions denoted by the untranslatable word ~thumo/s~--powers which according to the Homeric and popular partition all belong entirely to the side of the visible man and his body.[2\11] According to that view, they are all expressions of the body's natural powers of life--though they cannot indeed be awakened to real life before the arrival of the "psyche"--and in Homeric usage are almost the exact opposite of the "psyche", for they perish at death, while the psyche leaves them behind to wander about in its separate shadow-life.

But the soul, according to the view of the physiologists, has quite a different relation to the totality of life and living, and differs in this respect both from the Homeric psyche and the Homeric ~thumo/s~. The same force which manifests itself so strongly, as though specially concentrated there, in the psyche of man, works and rules in all matter as the general source of life that creates and preserves the world. Thus, the psyche loses the special singularity that distinguished it from all the other things and substances in the world, and made it incomparable and unique. Later reporters are wrong in attributing to these Ionic thinkers (for whom vital power and material substance seemed immediately and indissolubly united) the conception of a separate, independent "World-Soul". Not as emanations from a single Soul of the World did they conceive the separate souls of men; but neither did they conceive them as simply independent, unique, and entirely incomparable essences. They are expressions of that force which everywhere in all the phenomena of the world produces life and is itself life. Attributing spiritual qualities to the primeval source of things, the physiology of the "Hylozoists" naturally could not assume any profound distinction between that source and the "soul". Deprived in this way of its separateness, the soul acquired a new importance in exchange; in another sense from that of the mystics and theologians it could still be thought of as something divine, for it was a participator in the one Force which builds and rules the world. It is not the abode of a single daimonic {366} nature, but instead, the very nature of god is alive within it.

The closer its inward connexion with the universal Whole the less, of course, will the soul be able to preserve its individual existence, which was only lent to it while it gave life and movement to the body, when that body, the sign and support of its separateness, is overtaken by death. These earliest philosophers whose view was almost entirely concentrated on the broad outlines of the life of nature as a whole, would hardly have regarded it as part of their task to formulate a deliberate opinion about the fate of the puny individual soul after the death of its body. In no case could they have spoken of an immortality of the soul in the same sense as did the mystics who regarded the soul of which they spoke as something which has entered from without into material existence, and as a spiritual essence quite distinct from everything material. The latter were thus able to attribute to the psyche a capacity for separate and continued existence which was inadmissible in the case of a force of movement and sensation completely inhering in matter and in the shaping of matter. And it was such a force which the physiologists called the soul.

Ancient tradition, nevertheless, asserts that Thales of Miletos, whose genius first began the philosophic study of nature, was the first "to call the soul (of man) immortal".[3\11] But Thales, who recognized a "soul" also in magnets and plants,[4\11] and thought of the material stuff and the motive force of the "soul" as inseparable, can only have spoken of the "immortality" of the human soul in the same sense as he might have spoken of the immortality of all "soul-forces" in nature. Like the primal Matter which works and creates by reason of its own natural powers of life, so, too, the universal Force which permeates it[5\11] is imperishable and indestructible, as it is uncreated. It is entirely and essentially alive and can never be "dead".

Anaximander said of the "Unlimited" from which all things have been developed by separation, and by which all things are enveloped and directed, that it never grows old, but is immortal and imperishable.[6\11] This cannot be intended to apply to the human soul as a separate existence; for like all separate creations out of the "Unlimited" it must "in the order of the time" pay the penalty for the "offence" of its separate existence,[7\11] and lose itself again in the one primordial matter.

Nor could the third in this series--Anaximenes of Miletos--have differed seriously from Thales in the sense in which {367} he spoke of the soul as "immortal"; for him it was of the same nature[8\11] as the one divine[9\11] primal element of Air that is eternally in movement and produces all things out of itself.

§ 3

In the teaching of Herakleitos of Ephesos the living power of the primal essence--the one[10\11] and universal, out of which arises through change the many and the particular, which manifests itself in the union, regarded as indissoluble, of matter and motive force--received even greater prominence than with the older Ionians. By them matter itself--described as either limited or not limited in reference to one particular quality--is regarded as self-evidently in motion. For Herakleitos the origin of all multiplicity lies rather in the creative energy of absolute Life itself which is at the same time a definite material substance or analogous to one of the known substances. The idea of life, and that form of it which makes its appearance in man, must have been more important for him than for any of his predecessors.

This never-resting force and activity of becoming that has neither beginning nor end, is represented by the Hot and Dry and called by the name of that elementary condition which cannot be thought of as ceasing to move, namely, Fire. The ever-living (~aei/zôon~) fire, which periodically kindles itself and periodically goes out (Bywater, fr. 20), is formed entirely of movement and livingness. Living belongs to everything; but living is becoming, changing, becoming something different without cessation. Every appearance brings forth from itself, at the moment of its appearance, the opposite of itself. Birth, life, and death, and fresh birth clash together in a single burning moment, like the lightning (fr. 28).

That which thus moves itself in unceasing vitality and has all its being in becoming; which perpetually changes and "in backward-straining effort" finds itself again--this is something endowed with reason, creative in accordance with reason and "art"; is Reason (~lo/gos~) itself. In creating the world it loses itself in the elements; it suffers its "death" (frr. 66, 67) when in the "Way downwards" it becomes water and earth (fr. 21). There are degrees of value in the elements decided by the relation which they hold towards the moving and self-vivifying fire. But that which in the multiplicity of the phenomena in the world, yet preserves its godlike fiery nature--this is for Herakleitos "psyche". Psyche is fire.[11\11] Fire and psyche are interchangeable terms.[12\11] And so, too, the psyche of man is fire, a part of the universal fiery {368} energy that surrounds it and upholds it, through the "inhalation" of which it maintains itself alive;[13\11] a portion of the World-Reason by participation in which it is itself rational. In men God is living.[14\11] But god does not descend into man, as in the teaching of the Theologians, entering as a finite individuality into the vessel of the individual human life. As a united whole he surrounds men with his flood and reaches after and into them, as though with fiery tongues. A portion[15\11] of his universal Wisdom is living in the soul of man: the "drier", more fiery, nearer to the universal Fire and further from the less living elements he is, the wiser will he be (frr. 74, 75, 76). If he sundered himself from the universal wisdom, man would become nothing; it is his business in thinking, as in acting and in moral behaviour, to surrender himself to the One Living essence that "nourishes" him and is the Mind and Law of the world (frr. 91, 92, 100, 103).

But the soul itself is also a portion of the universal Fire that in the perpetual variation of its form of being has been encompassed by the body and become entangled in corporeality. Here we no longer have the rigid, unmediated contrast between "Body" and "Soul" such as it appeared from the standpoint of the theologian. The elements of the body, water and earth, have themselves arisen and perpetually arise out of the fire which changes into all other things, and into which everything else changes (fr. 22). So it is the soul itself, the creative fire, which creates the body. "Soul," i.e. Fire, unceasingly turns itself into the lower elements; there is no contrast between them, and it is but a continual flux of transition.

While it is enclosed in the body the soul is still affected by unceasing change. In this it is like everything else. Nothing in the world can for a single moment preserve the parts which compose it unaltered; the perpetual movement and alteration of its being constitute its life. The sun itself, the greatest fire-body, becomes another sun every day (fr. 32). So, too, the soul, though distinct from the body and a self-existing substance, yet is a substance that never remains like itself. In unceasing alteration of its material substance, its contents are perpetually being transposed. It loses its fire of life in the lower elements; it absorbs fresh fire from the living Fire of the universe that surrounds it. There can be no question of the permanent identity of the soul, of the spiritual personality, with itself. What in the unbroken process of upward and downward straining seems to maintain itself as a single person, is in reality a series of souls and {369} personalities, one taking the place of another and ousting and being ousted in turn.

Thus, even while it is in life, the soul is perpetually dying--but to live again; ever supplementing the departing soul-life or supplying its place with another. So long as it can recruit itself from the surrounding World-Fire, so long the individual lives. Separation from the source of all life, the living and universal fire of the world, would be death for it. The soul may temporarily lose its life-giving contact with the "common world": this happens in sleep and dreaming which enclose it in their own world (frr. 94, 95), and this is already a partial death to it. Sometimes, too, the soul has a tendency to transform itself to a humidity not always made good by fresh fire; the drunkard has a "moist soul" (fr. 73). Finally, there comes the moment when the soul of man cannot any longer repair the loss of the living fire which is taken from it in the perpetual alteration of its matter. Then it dies; death carries off the last of the series of living fires which in their continuity made up the human soul.[16\11]

But in Herakleitos' world there is no such thing as death in the absolute sense--an end followed by no beginning, an unconditional cessation of becoming. "Death" is for him only a point where one condition of things gives way to another; a relative "not-being", involving death for one but simultaneously bringing birth and life for another (frr. 25, [64], 66, 67). Death, just as much as life, is for him a positive thing. "Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and earth the death of water" (fr. 25). The One that is in all things is at once dead and alive (fr. 78), immortal and mortal (fr. 67); a perpetual "death and becoming" agitates it. So, too, the "death" of man must be the exit from one positive state of things, and the entry into another, also positive, condition. Death occurs for man when the "soul" is no longer within him. Only the body is then left; alone and by itself it is no better than dung (fr. 85). But the soul--what becomes of that? It must have altered; it was fire, but now it has descended on the "Way downwards" and become water--to become earth after that. So it must happen to all fire. In death the fire in man "goes out" (fr. 77). "It is death for the souls to become water" says Herakleitos clearly enough (fr. 68).[17\11] The soul must tread this path at last, and treads it willingly; change is for the soul its delight and refreshment (fr. 83). The soul has then changed itself into the elements of the body, has lost itself in the body. {370}

But it cannot rest permanently in this transformation. "For the souls it is death to become water; for the water it is death to become earth. And yet from earth comes water; and from water, soul" (fr. 68). Thus, in the restless up and down of becoming, in the "Way upwards" the soul reconstitutes itself out of the lower elements. But not that soul which had formerly animated the particular individual and of whose complete self-identity in the midst of the influx of the Fire-spirit there could be no question even during the life of the body. The inquiry after an individual immortality or even a continued existence of the separate soul could hardly have had any meaning at all for Herakleitos. Nor can he have admitted it under the form of the "transmigration of the soul".[18\11] It is quite certain that Herakleitos can never have distinctly asserted the changeless persistence of the individual human soul in the midst of the unbroken stream of becoming in which all fixity is nothing but an illusion of the senses. But it is also incredible that, in despite of his own fundamental principles, he even admitted the possibility of this popular view with an indulgence quite foreign to his nature.[19\11] What could have tempted him to do so? We are told[20\11] that it was from the mysteries that he adopted this opinion which was one of their most important doctrines. Herakleitos, however, only casts an occasional glance at the mysteries and what might be called their "doctrine" (just as he glanced at other prominent manifestations of the excited religious life of his time[21\11]); and he does so in order to harmonize their teaching with his own--a result which he achieves rather by imposing an interpretation than by patiently eliciting one. He demonstrates that the mysteries might be harmonized with his own doctrine,[22\11] which seemed to him able to explain all the phenomena of the world; that contrariwise he ever sought to set his own teaching in harmony with that of the mysteries, or that the latter had shown him the way to his thought, or could ever have tempted him to set foot outside his own self-chosen path--of this there is not a scrap of evidence to be had.

The individual in its isolation has, for Herakleitos, neither value nor importance: to persist in this isolation (if it had been possible would have seemed to him a crime.[23\11] The Fire is for him indestructible and immortal as a totality, not as divided into individual particles, but only as the one Universal Mind that transforms itself into all things and draws all things back again into itself. The soul of man has a claim to immortality as an emanation of this universal Reason, {371} and shares the immortality which belongs to it. So, too, the soul, even when it has lost itself in the elements, finds itself again. Between "want" and "satisfaction" (frr. 24, 36), this process of becoming has its perpetual being. A day will come when the Fire will "overtake" everything (fr. 26); God will then be utterly by himself--all in all. But that is not the purpose of this world; here change, becoming and passing away will never end. Nor should they end; the "Strife" (fr. 43) which has created the world, and ever fashions it anew, is the most inward nature of the All-living which it perpetually stirs to insatiable desire of becoming. For the desire and refreshment of all things is Change (frr. 72, 83), the coming and going in the interplay of Becoming.

It is the precise opposite of a quietistic mood that speaks from the whole teaching of Herakleitos. His voice is a trumpet call that grows louder and louder as his lofty and majestic spirit with ever-increasing intensity proclaims prophet-like the last word of wisdom. He knows well that it is only labour that can give meaning to rest, and hunger to satisfaction; only sickness can call forth the desire of health (fr. 104). That is the law of the world which binds together the opposing contraries, each of which is engendered from the last, with an inward and complete necessity. He bows before it and assents to it. For him the fixity of the soul in a Blessedness that was without activity and without change--even if such were thinkable[24\11]--would not have seemed a possible goal of desire.

§ 4

Even before the days of Herakleitos the torch of philosophic inquiry had been borne from the coasts of Ionia to the West by Xenophanes of Kolophon who in a life of adventure had wandered as far as Southern Italy and Sicily. For his fiery temperament the most subtle reflection was turned into life and experience, and the one enduring source of Being to which he ever directed his gaze became the universal Divinity that is all perception and thought, that tirelessly embraces all things in its thought and intelligence, and, without beginning or end, perpetually remains the same with itself. What Xenophanes had to say about this God which for him is the same as the world, became the basis for the elaborated doctrine of the Eleatic school which, in declared opposition to Herakleitos,[25\11] denied all possibility of movement, becoming, alteration, division of the One into Many, to the one absolute Being that completely and entirely occupies Space, is raised {372} above all development, whether temporal or spatial, and remains perpetually enclosed in itself in absolute self-sufficiency.

For this view the whole multiplicity of things that presses itself upon sense-perception is an illusion. Deceptive also is the apparent existence of a multiplicity of animated beings, just as the whole of nature is an illusion. It was not "Nature", the content of actual experience, that provided the starting-point of the philosophy of Parmenides. Without any assistance from experience, simply by the pure logical deductions to be made from a single fundamental concept (that of "Being"), which was to be grasped only by the understanding, this philosophy claimed to arrive at the whole content of its teaching. For the philosophic scientists of Ionia the soul also had been a part of nature and the science of the soul a department of the science of nature; and this inclusion of the psychical within the physical was the peculiarity in their doctrine of the soul which distinguished it from the ordinary popular psychology. When, however, the whole of Nature was to be ruled out of account as a subject of scientific knowledge, the derivation of psychology from physiology had to be given up as well. These aphysici[26\11] were logically debarred from holding any doctrine of the soul.

With a complaisance that is remarkable in view of the uncompromising logical vigour with which they deduced their main theory and based it on abstract, super-sensual knowledge, the Eleatics conceded so much at least to the region of appearance and the pressure of sense-perception that, although they did not deduce from their own fundamental conceptions a physical theory of multifarious appearance and its development, yet, side by side with their rigid doctrine of being, in unjustified and unjustifiable relation with it, they did in fact put forward such a theory. Xenophanes, himself, had already in the same way offered a physical theory of limited and relative validity. Parmenides in the second part of his doctrinal poem, developed, "in deceptive adornment of words," not an authoritative statement of the true nature of being, but "human opinions" of becoming and creation in the world of multiplicity. This, too, must be the standpoint of the physiological doctrines put forward by Zeno of Elea, the boldest dialectician who upheld the doctrine of the motionless All-One. In the course of such a physiology, and with the same implied reservations, the Eleatic philosophers dealt also with the nature and origin of the soul. Their physical doctrine was framed entirely on the lines of the older type of {373} natural philosophy, and they regarded the relation of the spiritual to the corporeal from exactly the same point of view as their predecessors had done. For Parmenides (146 ff, Mull. = fr. 16 Diels) the mind (~no/os~) of man depends for its existence upon the mixture of two ingredients of which everything, including its body, is composed. These ingredients are the "Light" and the "Night" (the Warm and the Cold, Fire and Earth). What is intellectually active is, even in mankind, the "nature of his limbs"; the character of his thought is determined by the one of the two elements which preponderates in the individual. Even the dead man (because he still has a body) has feeling and sensation; but these powers are deserted by the warm and the fiery and given over to the cold, the dark, and silence. All that is has some capacity of knowledge.[27\11]--It would be impossible to condemn the "soul" to corporeality more completely than is here done by the bold philosopher of abstract Reason, who at the same time denied so unconditionally all validity to sense-perception. The soul is evidently no longer an independent substance but a mere resultant of material mixture, a function of elements in composition. For Zeno, too, the "soul" in the same way was an exactly equal mixture of the four elementary properties of matter, the Warm, the Cold, the Dry, and the Wet.[28\11]

It is, therefore, startling, in the face of these utterances, to find that Parmenides also said about the "soul" that the deity that rules the world "at one time, sends it out of the Invisible into the Visible, and at another time back again".[29\11] Here, the soul is no longer a condition arising from the mixture of material elements, but an independent being credited with pre-existence before its entry into the "Visible", i.e. before its entry into the life of the body, and also with a continued existence after its separation from the realm of visibility--and indeed, with a sojourn, several times repeated, in those two worlds. Did Parmenides distinguish between this independently existing soul and the being that perceives in the mixture of the elements and as mind (~no/os~) thinks, but whose existence is bound up with the elements and the body they together compose? It is obvious at any rate that in what he says of the psyche, and its alternate life in the visible and the invisible, Parmenides is not speaking as a physiologist, but as an adherent of the Orphic-Pythagorean theosophy. While reserving for himself his knowledge of "Truth" and unalterable Being, he could select as he liked among the "opinions of men" when speaking only hypothetically. In his doctrine as a practical teacher with an ethical purpose {374} in view he preferred to adopt the conceptions of the Pythagoreans with whom he lived in close association.[30\11]

§ 5

Ionic physiology had fixed its attention on Nature as a whole, and on the phenomena of life displayed in every nook and corner of the universe; man, as a mere ripple on the surface of the ocean of becoming and taking form, was almost entirely neglected. A philosophy that made it its main effort to learn the nature of man, and, still further, with the knowledge so acquired, to show man the way and purpose of his living, had to try other paths.

This is what Pythagoras of Samos did. What he called his "Philosophy"[31\11] was in essence a practical effort. Plato[32\11] tells us that Pythagoras was so peculiarly honoured because he discovered a special mode of directing one's life. A distinct way of living, formed on a religious and ethical basis, was his creation. How far his "polymathy",[33\11] which indubitably contained already the substance of Pythagorean science, may have become a system in his hands, is not distinctly known. What is certain is that in Kroton he formed a society which, together with the strict rules in accordance with which he organized their manner of life for his associates, eventually spread far and wide among the Achæan and Dorian cities of the Italian "great Greece". In this society a profound conception of human life and its purposes was given practical and visible application, and to have brought this about must be regarded as the act and the special service of Pythagoras. The fundamental conception of this way of life, except in so far as it may have contained from the beginning a mystic philosophy of numbers, was by no means the special invention of Pythagoras; the new and potent feature which he introduced was the force of personality which was able to give life and body to the ideal. What was apparently lacking in similar movements in ancient Greece was now provided by a great man who for his followers was a pattern and an example, a leader inspiring imitation and emulation. His personality became a centre to which a whole community was attracted by a sort of inward necessity. Before very long this founder of a community appeared to his followers as a superman, unique and incomparable among all other men. Some lines of Empedokles,[34\11] who did not himself belong to the Pythagorean society, bear witness to this fact, and to his followers Pythagoras became in memory a saint or even a god in human form, and they related legends of the miracles he had {375} performed. For us it is difficult to form a connected picture or trace the real features of the man beneath the dazzling halo of the saint.

The teaching which enabled him to knit together his followers in a far closer bond of fellowship in living than had been achieved by any Orphic sect, must still in the main have coincided with what in the Orphic doctrine immediately related to the religious life. He too pointed out the way of salvation for the soul and his doctrine of the soul formed the central feature of his philosophy.

So far as our scanty and dubious evidence serves us, the substance of the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul may be stated as follows.

The soul of man, once more regarded entirely as the "double" of the visible body and its powers, is a daimonic immortal being[35\11] that has been cast down from divine heights and for a punishment is confined within the "custody" of the body.[36\11] It has no real relationship with the body; it is not what may be called the personality of the individual visible man; any soul may dwell in any body.[37\11] When death separates it from the body the soul must first endure a period of purgation in Hades[38\11] and then return again to the upper world. The souls invisibly swarm about the living;[39\11] in the tremulous motion of motes in the sunbeam the Pythagoreans saw the movement of the "souls".[40\11] The whole air is full of souls.[41\11] Upon earth, however, the soul must seek out another body, and this may be repeated many times. So it wanders a long way, passing through many bodies of men and beasts.[42\11] Very ancient tradition[43\11] said that Pythagoras himself remembered the earlier incarnations through which his soul had passed (and of which he gave information for the instruction and warning of the faithful). Here, too, the doctrine of the soul's transmigrations took on an edificatory character in a religious and ethical sense. The conditions of the new incarnations and the character of the new lifetime are governed by the performances of the past life. What the soul has done in the past, that it must suffer in its own person when it becomes a man again.[44\11]

It is thus of primary importance both for the present life and for future incarnations to know and to follow the methods of salvation delivered by Pythagoras to his followers. The society points out the way to its company of the faithful in purifications and initiations, in a "Pythagorean life"[45\11] entirely organized with the same purpose in view--to "follow the god".[46\11] Much of the old ritual symbolism that had been {376} in use for ages must have been incorporated in this Pythagorean asceticism.[47\11] The theological ethic of asceticism was essentially negative in character, and here, too, it meant nothing more than a protecting of the soul against the attacks of external evil that might come and pollute it.[48\11] All that matters is to keep the soul pure: no need for moral reformation--only that it be kept free from external evil. The fact of immortality, the soul's perpetuity, stands fast and unalterable; as it was from the beginning so it must ever be and live.[49\11] To lift it at last altogether from this earthly existence and restore it to a free divine state of being--that, at least, was the final goal.[50\11]

The practical philosophy of the Pythagorean school is founded upon a conception of the soul as absolutely distinct from "nature", and, in fact, opposed to it. It is thrust into the life of nature, but it is in a foreign world where it preserves its self-enclosed individuality intact and from which it escapes into independence to undergo ever-renewed incarnations. Its origin is supra-mundane, and so, too, when liberated from the shackles of natural life it will one day be enabled to return to a supernatural existence as a spirit.

Not one of these ideas is achieved by a process of scientific thinking. Physiology, the science of the world and all the phenomena of the world could never lead to the conception of the soul's separateness from nature and its life. It was not from Greek science, but neither was it, as ancient tradition would have us believe, from foreign lands, that Pythagoras got his belief in the fallen nature of the soul, descended from supra-mundane heights to this earthly nature, and in its long pilgrimage through many bodies on the completion of which it is to be free at last, through purifications and initiations. He may have owed much to his travels; from his stay in Egypt, perhaps, he may (like Demokritos after him) have derived the stimulus to his mathematical discoveries and much else besides of the "learning" which Herakleitos ascribes to him. His doctrine of the soul, on the other hand, simply reproduces in essentials the fanciful ideas of the old popular psychology, as it had been enlarged and transformed by the theologi and the purification priests. Tradition was right in its estimation of his character, when it set him in this company and made him the pupil of Pherekydes of Syros, the theologos.[51\11]

It can hardly be doubted that Pythagoras himself laid the foundations of the Pythagorean science--the doctrine of the creation of the world and perhaps, too, the interpretation of {377} all being and becoming in the world as due to the action and relation of numbers, as the essential basis of all things--all this, at least in elementary outline, must have been handed on by him to his followers. After his death the two sides of his doctrine continued to develop for a period in loose conjunction side by side; the guidance of life by the mystical and religious philosophy (though this, indeed, was hardly capable of further development), and the scientific interest which grew into a fairly elaborate system. Indeed, with the break-up of the Pythagorean society and its bifurcation in the fifth century, the scattered members of the band now brought into touch with the scientific studies of other communities and cut off from the ideal of the Pythagorean life which could only be realized within the limits of the society, were forced to continue their scientific studies in solitude. Pythagorean science, evolving, as it did, a picture of the world as a whole, no less than Ionian physiology deprived the soul of the unique and, indeed, antagonistic relation to nature that Pythagorean theology had given it. Philolaos, conceiving it in a manner strictly conforming to the mathematical and musical theory, called the soul a Harmony of contrary elements united together in the body.[52\11] If, however, the soul is only a binding-together of opposites to unity and harmony, then it must, when death breaks up the conjunction of the united elements, itself pass away and perish.[53\11] It is difficult to imagine how the older Pythagorean faith in the soul as an independent being dwelling in the body and surviving it--in the immortal soul, in fact--could be accommodated to this conception. Can it be that the two conceptions were not originally intended to be brought into conjunction at all, or were not meant to exclude each other? Ancient tradition spoke of different groups among the followers of Pythagoras who had also different objects, methods, and aims of study; nor shall we be inclined to deny all credibility to this tradition when we observe how little, in fact, Pythagorean science and Pythagorean faith had to do with each other.[54\11]

And yet we have to admit that the same Philolaos, who described the soul as a harmony of its body, also spoke of the soul as an independent and imperishable being. We may well doubt whether these two contradictory utterances can really come from the same man and apply to the same object; though the same man might really speak in varying language about the one soul if he recognized different parts of the soul of which different truths held good; and this was, in fact, first suggested by the Pythagorean school.[55\11] {378}

§ 6

Empedokles of Akragas did not belong to the Pythagorean school (it lost its external unity in his time); but he approaches Pythagorean doctrine so closely in his opinions and teaching about the soul of man, its problems and destinies, that there can be no doubt about Pythagorean influence upon the formation of his convictions on these points. His many-sided activities also included the study of natural science and he took up the researches of the Ionic Physiologists with zeal and a marked aptitude for the observation and synthesis of natural phenomena. But the roots of his peculiar individuality--the pathos which moved and agitated him--lay in a practical activity far removed from scientific investigation and representing a brilliant resuscitation in a very different age of the character and practice of the mantis, the purification-priest and magical-physician of the sixth century. The introduction to his "Purifications"[56\11] gives a picture of his triumphal progress from city to city, crowned with ribbons and garlands, adored as a god and questioned by thousands: "Where is the road to healing?" He intends to give his disciple Pausanias the results of his own experience and to teach him all his remedies for disease and their virtues, the arts of stilling the winds and stirring them up, producing drought or rain, raising the dead from Hades.[57\11] He himself boasted of being a magician and his pupil Gorgias saw him "do magic".[58\11] Through him those efforts of the Kathartes, the expiation-priest and seer, which an earlier and already distant-seeming time had honoured as the highest form of wisdom, at last achieved a voice and literary expression--an expression given them with the fullest personal experience of the truth of their claims by one who was convinced of their power to control nature and sure of the godlike status of the man who had reached these almost superhuman heights of empire over nature. As a god, an immortal no longer subject to death, he passed through all the land--so Empedokles himself tells us.[59\11] He may have won credit in many places. He did not, indeed, found an ordered society of disciples and adherents, a sect: this does not seem to have been his intention. But he alone as a unique and unparalleled being, a self-confident personality of the greatest force and weight impressed himself masterfully both as mystic and politician upon the mundane affairs of his contemporaries and pointed the way beyond time and all things temporal to a blessed and divine state as the final goal of human life. He {379} must have made a profound impression upon the men among whom he lived,[60\11] though he disappeared from their midst like a comet, and left no permanent traces of his presence behind him. Many legends still witness to the astonishment that his appearance among men provoked, more especially those legends that in varying form related his end.[61\11] They are all expressions of the same belief: that he, as his own verses had foretold, in his departure did not have to suffer death; he had vanished, "translated" body and soul together to an everlasting divine life, as once Menelaos had been and so many great figures of the ancient days, and even a few Heroes of more recent times.[62\11] Once more the ancient conception shows in this story that it still lives on: immortal life can only be obtained by undissolved union of the psyche with its body. Such a legend hardly did justice to Empedokles' own idea. When he claimed to be a god who would never die he certainly did not mean that his psyche would remain for ever bound to his body. On the contrary, he thought that in "death", as men[63\11] call it, it would be freed from this last corporeal envelope[64\11] and never again have to enter into a body, but would live for ever in freedom and divinity. His conception of the conscious after-life of the psyche was as different as it was possible for it to be from the Homeric conception on which that translation legend was based.

Empedokles united in his own person to an astonishing degree the most sober attempts at a study of nature that was scientific according to its lights, and quite irrational beliefs and theological speculations. Occasionally the scientific impulse passes over to influence even the world of his beliefs;[65\11] but as a rule theology and natural science exist side by side in his mind quite independently. As a physiologist he inherited the already extensive and variously developed stock of ideas belonging to the older generations of inquirers and thinkers. He himself was able to unite conceptions derived from the most different sources into an original whole that satisfied himself at least. Becoming and passing-away, all qualitative change, were denied by him as by the Eleatics, but the permanent substance of Being is for him no single indivisible unity. There are four "roots" of things, the four bodies of elements, which in this division are for the first time clearly distinguished. It is the mixture and separation of the essentially indivisible elements that cause the appearance of becoming and perishing; and those two processes are caused by the two forces--clearly distinguished from the elements--of attraction and repulsion, {380} Love and Hate, which in the creative process struggle and in turn overmaster each other until at last, in the final victory of one of the two forces, all things are either united or divided; in either case an organic world ceases to exist. The present state of the universe is one in which "Love", the tendency to amalgamation of differences, is prevailing; when this tendency is completed, there will be an absolute levelling-out of all distinction; a result which Empedokles, a quietist in his scientific studies as well, regards as the most desirable end.

In this world, then, that experiences only mechanical movement and change, and from whose evolution Empedokles by an ingenious turn is able to exclude all idea of purpose, there are also to be found souls; or rather psychical powers which grow up entirely within it. Sense-perception is expressly distinguished from the capacity of thought by Empedokles.[66\11] The former takes place when each of the elements, from the mixture of which the perceiving being has its origin, comes into contact with, and so becomes aware of, the same elements in the object perceived, through the "passages" that connect the interior of the body with the exterior.[67\11] "Thinking" has its seat in the heart's blood, where the elements and their powers are mixed most equally. Or rather this blood actually is thinking and the power of thought;[68\11] the material substance and its vital functions thus also for Empedokles completely coincide. Plainly, nothing in the nature of a permanent substantial "soul" is here intended by the thinking-power of the "mind", but rather a capacity of bringing together and unifying the individual sense-activities;[69\11] a capacity no less than the individual powers of sensation bound up with the elements, the senses, and the body.[70\11] With the varying constitution of the body, they too vary.[71\11] Both capacities, that of sense-perception, and that of thought, as vital expressions of the matter that is combined together in the organic creature, are present in all organisms; in men, in beasts, and even in plants.[72\11]

If we give the name of "soul"[73\11] to the sum of these psychical powers--a name generally reserved for the common permanent substratum of the changing psychical activities--we cannot avoid concluding, in accordance with the logic of this philosopher, that the "soul" must be perishable. With the death and destruction of the individual the elementary parts that go to compose him are disunited, and the soul which in this case is nothing but the highest resultant of that composition, must itself disappear with their dissolution--as it had come into being with their union.[74\11] {381}

It might seem as if Empedokles himself was as far as possible removed from drawing such conclusions from his own premises. No one speaks more distinctly and forcibly of the spiritual, individual beings that dwell in men and in other creatures of nature as well. They are regarded by him as Daimones fallen to the corporeal world, who have to pass through many different forms of life till they may at last hope for release.

In the introduction to his poem on Nature, he describes, from his own experience, and the information of the Daimones who had once led his soul down to this earthly Vale of Grief,[75\11] how by an ancient decree of the gods and the compulsion of Necessity, every daimon that has "polluted" itself by drinking the blood or eating the flesh of living beings,[76\11] or has broken its oath,[77\11] is banished for a long period[78\11] from the company of the blessed. It is thrust down to the "Meadow of Disaster", into the realm of contradiction,[79\11] the cave of misery upon this earth, and must now wander through many "painful ways of life"[80\11] in changing incarnations. "Thus, I myself was once a boy and also a maiden, a bush, a bird, and a voiceless fish in the salty flood" (ll. 11, 12 = fr. 117). This daimon that in expiation of its crime must wander through the forms of men, beasts, and even plants, is evidently no other than what popular speech and that of theologians as well called the "psyche", the soul-spirit.[81\11] In all essentials though perhaps in clearer language, Empedokles merely repeated[82\11] what the adherents of the doctrine of Transmigration had long told of its divine origin, its fall and penal banishment in earthly bodies. So, too, when as teacher of the means that bring salvation, he tells how more gracious forms and conditions of life may be obtained in the series of births, till at last complete release from rebirth is achieved,[83\11] Empedokles follows in the footsteps of the purification-priests and theologi of old. It is a matter of keeping the daimon within us free from the pollutions that bind it fast to the earthly life. To this end the methods of religious purification are most efficacious; Empedokles respects them quite as much as did the old Kathartai. It is necessary to keep the internal daimon far removed from every kind of "sin",[84\11] more particularly from the drinking of blood and the eating of meat which must necessarily involve the murder of kinsmen daimones which are dwelling in the slaughtered beasts.[85\11] By purification and asceticism (which here again dispenses with a positive form of morality aimed at reforming the man) a gradual process to purer and better births is achieved;[86\11] in the end the persons thus reborn in a purified condition {382} become seers, poets, doctors, and are the leaders of mankind.[87\11] Finally, when they have emerged superior even to these highest steps of earthly life, they return to the other immortals, and become themselves gods released from human misery, escaping death, and now indestructible.[88\11] Empedokles regard himself as one who has reached the last stage,[89\11] and points out to others the way up to it.

Between what Empedokles the mystic here tells us of the soul that was once living its divine life, but has since been plunged into the world of the elements, though it is not for ever bound to them; and what Empedokles the physiologist teaches of the psychical powers that dwell in the elements and are bound to the body that is composed of the elements and perish with their dissolution, there seems to be a hopeless contradiction. And yet if we are to grasp the whole truth of what Empedokles means, we must neither leave on one side half of what he says,[90\11] nor yet by well-meaning interpretation seek to bring the philosopher into harmony with himself,[91\11] when he clearly speaks with two different voices. The two voices say different things, and yet in the mind of Empedokles, there is no contradiction in what they say, for they are dealing with totally distinct objects. The psychical powers and faculties of feeling and perception which are functions of matter, born in matter, and determined by it, together with the thinking faculty that is no other than the heart's blood of men--these neither make up the character and content of that soul-spirit which dwells in men, beasts, and flowers, nor are they expressions of its activity. They are entirely bound up with the elements and their combination, and in man they are joined to the body and its organs; they are the powers and faculties of this body, and not of a special and invisible entity, the soul. The soul-daimon is not made out of the elements, nor is it for ever chained to them. It enters as a stranger into this world in which the only permanent component parts are[92\11] the four elements, and the two forces of Love and Hate; and it enters it from another world, the world of gods and spirits, to its detriment; the elements cast it about from one to another "and they all hate it" (fr. 115, 12, l. 35 M.). This living soul, with its independent existence, that thus enters into foreign and hostile surroundings, only enters into such earthly creatures as already possess senses, feeling and perception, together with reason or the faculty of thinking, the crowning manifestation of their material union. It is, however, as little identical with these psychical faculties as it is with the mixture of elementary matter or, in {383} the case of men, with the heart's blood. It exists, unmixed and incapable of mixture, alongside the body and its faculties which indeed only have life--"what men call life"--(fr. 15, 2, l. 117 M.) when united with it. When they are separated from it they fall into dissolution; not so the soul, which continues its journey and visits other dwelling places, and does not share in their dissolution.

This peculiar dualistic doctrine reflects the two sides of Empedokles' own mental activity. He probably intended in this way to unite the views of both the physiologists and the theologians. To the Greeks, such a twofold division of the inner life may have seemed less surprising than it does to us. The conception of a "soul" that as an independent, unique, and self-contained spiritual being dwells within the body, while the body does not receive its intellectual faculties of perceiving, feeling, willing and thinking from the soul, but exercises these by its own power--this conception agrees at bottom with the ideas of popular psychology that are as a rule described or implied in the Homeric poems.[93\11] The only difference is that these ideas of poet and populace are elaborated and defined by the speculations of theologians and philosophers. How deeply impressed upon the Greek mind such conceptions, derived eventually from Homer, actually were, can be measured by the fact that a conception of the twofold origin of psychic activity, its twofold nature and sphere of action, closely related to that of Empedokles, is continually recurring in more advanced stages of philosophy. It occurs not merely in Plato, but even in Aristotle, who in addition to the "soul" that directs and expresses itself in the physico-organic nature of man, recognizes another being of divine descent that enters into man "from without", the "mind" (~nou=s~) which is separable both from the soul and from the body, and is alone destined to survive the death of the man to which it was assigned.[94\11] In the doctrine of Empedokles, too, it is a stranger-guest from the distant land of gods that enters into man to give him a soul. This being is indeed far below the "mind" of Aristotle in philosophic importance; nevertheless, in the introduction of this Stranger into the world composed of the elements and vital faculties, a sense of the absolute uniqueness of spirit, its unlikeness to everything material, its essential distinctness from matter, finds expression, if only in a limited theological fashion.

In the light of such theological considerations, the soul seems also to Empedokles something essentially distinct from its prototype, the Homeric psyche, which after its separation {384} from the body passes to the twilight of a shadowy dream-life. To him, the soul is of divine race, too noble for this world of visibility, and only when it escapes from this world does it seem to him to begin its real and full life. Though confined within the body, it has its separate existence there; it has no concern with the everyday business of perception and sensation--not even with that of thinking, which is nothing else but the heart's blood. But it is active in the "higher" mode of knowledge, in ecstatic inspiration;[95\11] to it alone belongs the profound insight of the philosopher who is enabled to pass beyond the limits of mere experience and sense-perception, and behold the totality of the universe in its true nature.[96\11] To it alone apply all the requirements of ethical and religious systems--duties in this higher sense belong only to the soul; it is something in the nature of a "conscience". Its highest duty is to free itself from the unhallowed union with the body, and the elements of this world; the rules of purification and asceticism refer solely to it.

Between this soul-daimon that yearns after its divine home, and the world of the elements, there exists no inward bond or necessary connexion. And yet, since they have become implicated in each other's existence, a certain parallelism exists between them in character and destiny. In the mechanically moved world, too, the separate and particular phenomena tend back again towards their starting point, the inwardly coherent Unity from which they once took their origin. A day will come when, after all struggle has been done away, "Love" alone will have absolute rule; and this means for the poet--who in his description even of this world of mechanical attraction and repulsion interpolates half-realized ethical concepts[97\11]--a state of absolute goodness and happiness. If there is no longer any world, then, until another one is created, no soul-daimon can be bound any more to the individual organisms of a world. Have they then all returned to the blessed communion of the immortal gods? It appears that not even the gods and daimones (and so not the spirits enclosed in world as "souls") are regarded by Empedokles as having everlasting life. "Long-living" is the name he repeatedly applies to them; he never distinctly ascribes eternal life to them.[98\11] They, too, shall for a period enjoy "the happiness of profoundest peace" until, just as the elements and forces are drawn into the unity of the Sphairos, they, too, come together in the unity of the godlike Universal Mind, thence at a new world-creation to appear once more as individual separate being.[99\11] {385}

§ 7

Empedokles took a fully developed "hylozoic" system (which in itself, with its introduction of the motive forces of Conflict and Love, already betrayed a latent dualism) and attempted to combine with it an extreme form of spiritualist teaching. His attempt illustrates very clearly the observation that a philosophic science of nature in itself could never lead to the establishment of the axiom that the individual "soul" after its separation from the body continues to exist, still less that it is indestructible. Any one who still felt it necessary to assert that axiom could find support for it only by allowing physiology to be either overwhelmed by theological speculation, or else supplemented by it in the manner attempted by Empedokles.

Such an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable can have found few adherents among those who were accessible to scientific ideas, nor was it likely to tempt the physiological philosophy from the path which it had hitherto followed. Soon after Empedokles, and in essentials hardly influenced by him, Anaxagoras and Demokritos developed those doctrinal systems which were the last products of the independent speculation of Ionia. Demokritos was the founder and completer of the atomic doctrine according to which there exist "in reality" only the indivisible, minutest material bodies--which, while qualitatively indistinguishable, yet differ in shape, position, and arrangement in space as well as in bulk and weight--and empty space. He was obliged to seek for the "soul" (which to the materialist may easily present itself as being a separate, substantial, self-existent thing) among those minutest bodies out of which the whole fabric of the world of appearance is built up. The soul is that which confers movement upon the inherently motionless collections of bodies. It is composed of the round and smooth atoms which, in the universal condition of unrest that keeps all the atoms in agitation, are the most easily moved, for they offer least resistance to change of position, and can most easily penetrate others. These atoms compose fire and the soul. It is the soul-atom--one being inserted between every two of the other atoms[100\11]--which gives these their movement; and it is from all the soul-atoms uniformly disposed throughout the whole body that the body gets its movement, whence also (though it must be admitted in an unintelligible manner) comes the power of perception, which equally depends on movement, and the thought arising thence, of this same body. {386} During the life-time of the individual body, the continuance of the soul-atoms is secured by the breathing which continually replaces the smooth soul-particles that are as continually being expelled from the whole atom-complex by the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere. The breathing is always drawing in fresh soul-stuff from the air which is full of floating soul-atoms, and supplies it to the body. A time comes, however, when the breathing refuses this function, and death occurs, which is simply the insufficient supply of these moving and animating atoms.[101\11] With the coming of death, there is an end to the union of the atoms, whose amalgamation had formed the particular living organism. Neither the soul-atoms nor any of the other atoms are destroyed; they do not alter in kind; but from the loose state of aggregation which even in the living body hardly amounted to an absolute unity to which a single common name could be applied--from this they now escape entirely. It is scarcely possible to see how, on this view of what essentially constitutes mental and vital phenomena, as a mere resultant of the separate and individual activities of individual and disconnected bodies, the unity of the living organism and the spiritual entity could ever come into being. It is even more evident that a unified "soul" could not possibly continue to exist after the dissolution which takes place at death of the atoms that in their union made up the organism. And, in fact, the soul-atoms disperse;[102\11] they return whence they came into the restless mass of world-stuff. The human individual, in this view of the case, perishes in death entirely.[103\11] The materials out of which he was shaped and composed are indestructible, and reserved for future construction; but his personality--the invisible personality, the "soul", just as much as the visible--has but a single existence strictly limited to its one appearance in time. The continued existence of the soul after death, an immortality in whatever manner the thing may be conceived, is here for the first time in the history of Greek thought, expressly denied. The Atomist, with the candid precision that distinguishes him, draws the necessary consequences of his premises.

Anaxagoras strikes out a path almost directly opposed to this materialist doctrine. As the first decisive and conscious dualist among Greek philosophers, he takes the material substratum of being, the inexhaustible many of distinctly characterized and distinctly separate "Seeds" of things--which are nevertheless indistinguishably intermingled with each other--and sets over against them a force which he {387} obviously did not mean to derive from them, to which he gives a name usually attached to the faculty of thought in man, and which in any case he thought of as analogous to that faculty.[104\11] This "Mind", simple, unmixed and unchangeable, is given such titles and adjectives that it is impossible to mistake the effort of Anaxagoras to think of it as something distinct from everything material, and in fact, absolutely immaterial and incorporeal.[105\11] It is at once power of thought and force of will; at the creation of the world it gives the first circular impulse to the intrinsically motionless lump of matter; the creation of distinct forms in accordance with a conscious purpose is begun by it--though the carrying out of this purpose is indeed to be completed in accordance with pure mechanical laws without the interference of "Mind". This "Mind" that plans and orders but does not make the world, that with the conscious insight of its omniscient wisdom[106\11] influences matter without being influenced in turn, that moves without being moved;[107\11] set over against the multiplicity of things as an indivisible unity,[108\11] "having nothing in common with anything outside itself"[109\11] but entirely self-contained[110\11]--how shall we conceive of it otherwise than as an almost personified, transcendent divine power confronting the world of matter as something foreign to it, ruling the world from without by magical, not mechanical, means?

But this transcendent is also completely immanent. **Wherever in this world life and independent movement are found, there, too, the mind as the source of life and movement must be active. "Mind rules all that has soul" says Anaxagoras.[111\11] In saying this he has not indeed asserted the presence of "Mind" within the animated being nor yet identity of nature as between soul and mind. But when we hear that Mind "goes through all things,[112\11] that in everything there is a part of all things, except of mind, and in some things of mind also",[113\11] that must imply the penetration of many associations of matter by mind (hardly any longer to be thought of as immaterial) whereby the previously asserted transcendency of mind seems to be given up. At any rate, as such associations in which is "Mind", living and animated beings are regarded. It is in them that "Mind" is present in continual, equal creativeness, though in different degrees;[114\11] indeed, Mind is or constitutes that very thing that we call the "soul" of a living being.[115\11] Among these living beings, which exist upon the moon,[116\11] as well as on earth, are not only men and beasts, but also plants.[117\11] In all these "Mind" is active; without losing any of its purity or unity, it is mixed with them.[118\11] {388} How we are to conceive the omnipotent Mind, whose oneness and self-containedness has been so emphatically asserted, as nevertheless entering simultaneously into the infinity of individual being--that certainly remains obscure. It is clear, however, that having thus derived all animated being from the single World-Mind, Anaxagoras could not speak of the continued existence of individual, self-existent "souls" after the dissolution of the material concretions in which moving and animating "soul-force" had once lived. The view is definitely ascribed to him that separation from the body is also "the soul's death".[119\11] Nothing, indeed, of the component parts that belong to the whole perishes, and no change in its nature takes place. So "Mind", whose manifestations the "souls" were, maintains itself unaltered and undiminished; but after the dissolution of the united, which "the Hellenes" regard as its destruction,[120\11] though the component parts of the individual remain, yet not that particular mixture in which the peculiarity of the individual was inherent--"Mind" remains, but not the soul . . .

Thus, the first distinct separation of the intellectual thinking principle from the material substance with which it was--not fused, much less identified, but--contrasted in sovereignty and independence, did not lead to the recognition of the indestructibility of the individual spirit.

Shall we say that the mental, self-moved, life-giving principle, whether set over against the material and corporeal or indivisibly united with it, is for the physiologist always something universal--that the essentially real is impersonal? For him the individual, the personality conscious of itself and of the outer world, can be nothing but a manifestation of the universal, whether the latter is regarded as fixed and at rest, or as a living process that untiringly develops itself, recruits itself, and reconstructs itself in ever renewed creations. The only permanent, unchanging reality is the universal, the essential and fundamentally real Nature which appears in all individual things, speaks out of their mouth, and, in reality, only works and lives in them. The individual human soul has its indestructibility only in its identity with the universal that represents itself in it. The individual forms of "appearance", having no independence of their own, cannot permanently abide.

The view that imperishable life belongs to the individual soul could only be reached by a line of thought that took as a fact and held fast to it as something given that the individual spirit is a reality. (Its appearance and disappearance in the {389} midst of the one universe was indeed for the physiologists the true miracle, the problem never satisfactorily solved.) Such a belief in individuality, the belief in an independently existent individual substance that had never had a beginning and could therefore never have an end, was the contribution, however fancifully it might be expressed, of the theologians and the mystics. For them immortality, the power of substantive duration unlimited by time, was extended also to include the individual. The individual soul is for them a self-existent, individual, divine being, indestructible because it is divine.

Greek philosophy underwent many changes in the course of its speculations during the following ages; but exactly in proportion as it, to a greater or lesser degree, accepted theological elements or on the other hand rejected such elements, did it give fundamental support to the view of the soul's immortality, or grudgingly admit it, or absolutely reject it.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XI

[1\11: ~psuchê/~ = "life," "concept of life," in Homer (though not indeed used to denote psychical powers during lifetime): see above, pp. 30, 31. So, too, occasionally in the remains of the Iambic and Elegiac poets of the earliest period: Archil. 23; Tyrt. 10, 14; 11, 5; Sol. 13, 46; Thgn. 568 f., 730; (Hippon. 43, 1?). ~psuchê/~ = "life" in the proverbial phrase ~peri\ psuchê=s trechei=n~ (see Wessel. and Valck. on Hdt. vii, 57; Jacobs on Ach. Tat., p. 896**). ~psuchê/~ frequently = "life" in the idiom of the Attic orators (see Meuss, Jahrb. f. Philol. 1889, p. 803).]

[2\11: See above, pp. 5, 30. Even the Homeric poems in one case show a slight uncertainty of language and of psychological conception when they use ~thumo/s~, the highest and most general of the powers of life dwelling within the visible and living man, in the sense of ~psuchê/~, the double of the man who dwells as a lodger in his body, separate and taking no part in the ordinary business of his life. The ~thumo/s~ (see above, chap. i, n. 57) is active during the man's lifetime, is enclosed in the midriff (~en phresi\ thumo\s~) and when that is overtaken by death is itself overwhelmed (~Ps~ 104): on the arrival of death it leaves the body and perishes--while the ~psuchê/~ flies away intact. The distinction is clearly maintained, e.g. in ~l~ 220 f.: "fire destroys the body" ~epei/ ken prô=ta li/pê| leu/k' oste/a thumo/s, psuchê\ d' êu/t' o/neiros apoptame/nê pepo/têtai~. ~thumo/s~ and ~psuchê/~ therefore leave the body of the slain man simultaneously (~thumou= kai\ psuchê=s kekadô/n~ ~L~ 334, ~ph~ 154); but in very different ways. The relation between them becomes, however, interchangeability in the single case when it is said of the ~thumo/s~ that it in death will enter ~apo\ me/le/ôn do/mon A/idos ei/sô~--~Ê~ 131; in reality this could only be said of that very different being, the ~psuchê/~. (When a fainting-fit has passed over we do indeed hear, not that the ~psuchê/~--though this it was that had left the man: see above, chap. i, n. 8--but that ~es phre/na thumo\s age/rthê~, ~Ch~ 475, ~e~ 458, ~ô~ 349. This, however, is not a case of ~thumo/s~ instead of ~psuchê/~, but ~thumo/s~ is merely an abbreviated form of the whole statement which would be in full: both ~thumo/s~ and ~psuchê/~ have now returned into the man; cf. ~E~ 696. It is a kind of synecdoche.) In the line ~Ê~ 131 we really, then, do have ~thumo/s~ instead of ~psuchê/~ either as the result of a misunderstanding of the real meaning of the two words or merely through an oversight. But never (and this is the most essential point) do we have a case in Homer of the opposite exchange of significance: i.e. of ~psuchê/~ used in the sense ~thumo/s~ (~no/os, me/nos, êtor~, etc.), as meaning the mental power and its activity in the living and waking man. Just this, however, and more than this, the sum and substance of all the mental powers in general, is what the word ~psuchê/~ means in the language of the philosophers (except those affected by religious tendencies). They left out of account altogether that spiritual double of mankind whom the popular psychology called the ~psuchê/~, and were thus free to use the word to express the whole psychical content of the human individual. From the fifth century onwards we find the word ~psuchê/~ used commonly, and even regularly, in this sense in the vocabulary of non-philosophical poets and prose writers. Only theologians and poets, or philosophers of a theological tendency, continued to use the {391} word in its ancient and primitive sense. Indeed, when the separation of a spiritual being from the body of a man in death was being spoken of, ~psuchê/~ always continued to be the proper word for this sense even in popular language. (An extremely rare example of ~thumo/s~ in this sense, comparable with ~Ê~ 131, is [Arist.] Pepl. 61 Bgk.; ~thumo/n . . . aithê\r lampro\s e/chei~. In the corresponding epigram, Epigr. Gr. 41, we have ~psuchê/n~.)]

[3\11: ~e/nioi~, among them Choirilos of Samos: D.L. i, 24 (from Favorinus): Vors.^4, i, p. 1, 21.]

[4\11: Arist., An. 1, 2, p. 405a, 20 f. "Aristotle and Hippias" ap. D.L. i, 24; Vors., p. 2, 1. ~ta\ phuta\ e/mpsucha zô=|a~, Dox. 438a, 6, b, 1.]

[5\11: Metaphorical language: ~Thalê=s ô|ê/thê pa/nta plê/rê theô=n ei=nai~, Arist., An. 1, 5, p. 411a, 8. ~to\n ko/smon (e/mpsuchon kai\) daimo/nôn plê/rê~, D.L. i, 27; Dox. 301b, 2; Vors. p. 2, 20. Pl., Lg. 899 B, is an allusion to the ~theô=n plê/rê pa/nta~ (as Krische remarks, Theol. Lehr. d. Gr. Denker, p. 37). There is perhaps a half-mocking reference to the words in the saying attributed by anecdotal tradition to Herakleitos: ~ei=nai kai\ entau=tha theou/s~ (i.e. in his own hearth) Arist., PA. 1, 5, p. 645a, 17 ff. Hence Herakleitos himself was credited with the opinion of Thales in slightly altered form: ~pa/nta psuchô=n ei=nai kai\ daimo/nôn plê/rê~, D.L. ix, 7 (Vors., p. 68, 29), in the first (and valueless) of the two lists of the doctrines of Herakl. there given.]

[6\11: Arist., Phys. 3, 4, p. 203b, 10-14. Dox. 559, 18. Vors., p. 17, 35.]

[7\11: Anaximander, fr. 2 Mull. Vors., p. 15, 26. That Anaximander declared the soul to be "like air" is an erroneous statement of Theodoret.: see Diels, Dox. 387b, 10 (Vors. 21, 5).]

[8\11: Anaximenes in Dox. 278a, 12 ff.; b, 8 ff. fr. 2 Diels.]

[9\11: Anaxim. calls ~to\n ae/ra theo/n~, i.e. it has divine power: Dox. 302b, 5; 531a, 17, b, 1-2. Vors. 24, 18. This at least is to be understood in the same sense in which Anaximander is said to have called ~to\ a/peiron, to\ thei=on~ (Arist., Phys. 3, 4, p. 203b, 13; Vors., p. 17, 35).]

[10\11: ~he\n pa/nta ei=nai~, fr. 1 (Byw.); 50 (Diels).]

[11\11: Arist., An. 1, 2, p. 405a, 25 ff. Vors. 74, 30. Hkl. is also meant in p. 405a, 5. Dox. 471, 2 (Arius Didymus); 389a, 3 ff.]

[12\11: Arist., p. 405a. 25 ff. Hkl. fr. 68 (36 D.).]

[13\11: S.E., M. 7, 127, 129-31. Vors. 75, 14 ff.]

[14\11: ~ho theo/s~ is both the Universal Fire, that transforms itself into the world, and at the same time its power (and ~lo/gos~: frr. 2 [1], 92 [2]): fr. 36 (67). ~to\ pu=r theo\n hupei/lêphen~, Herakl.: Cl. Al., Prot. 5, 64, p. 55 P. [Vors. n. 8 A 8]. ~pu=r noero\n to\n theo\n (ei=nai ephthe/gxato)~, Hippol., RH. i, 4, p. 10, 57 Mill.--"Zeus" as metaphor for this universal fire (hence ~ouk ethe/lei kai\ ethe/lei~), the "only wise one"; fr. 65 (32).]

[15\11: ~hê epixenôthei=sa toi=s hêmete/rois sô/masin apo\ tou= perie/chontos moi=ra (perie/ch.~ = the universal Fire) is said of the soul and its reasoning faculty ap. S.E., M. vii, 130; Vors., p. 75, 19; (cf. ~aporroê\ kai\ moi=ra ek tou= phronou=ntos~, Plu., Is. et O. 77, p. 382 B). This is fully Herakleitean in thought if not also in actual form of expression.]

[16\11: That Herakleitos drew the conclusions affecting also the "Soul"--the spiritual man--freely paraphrased in the text, arising necessarily out of his doctrine of the perpetual change in the material substance that excludes all possibility of lasting self-identity in any object (frr. 40, 41, 42, 81 = 91, 12, 49 a), is proved especially by the words of Plutarch in the eighteenth chapter of his treatise de E Delph. p. 392--a chapter which is entirely based on Herakleitos, who is twice actually cited in it. Not only does ~ho ne/os~ die ~eis to\n akma/zonta ktl.~, but ~ho chthe\s (a/nthrôpos) eis to\n sê/meron te/thnêken, ho de\ sê/meron eis to\n {392} au/rion apothnê/skei. me/nei d' oudei/s, oud' e/stin hei=s, alla gigno/metha polloi\ peri\ he\n pha/ntasma ktl.~; cf. Cons. ad Apoll. 10, p. 106 E. Herakl. is also the origin of what is said in Plato, Smp. 207 D ff.: each man is only apparently one and the same; in reality, even while he is still alive, "he continually suffers a new and different man to take the place of the old and departing one"--and this applies, just as much to the soul as to the body. (Only from the standpoint of Herakleitean doctrine--here adopted in passing by Plato as suiting his chosen method of argument--is the conclusion he reaches justified; the conclusion is that it is only by the perpetual substitution of a new being like the old one that man has immortality, and not by the eternal preservation of his own proper being; for this advantage belongs peculiarly to the divine. This, of course, cannot possibly be understood as the serious teaching of Plato himself.)--The Herakleitean denial of personal identity in men is alluded to by Epicharmos (or a pseudo-Ep.?) ap. D.L. iii, 11, ll. 13-18; Vors., p. 118-19 (cf. Wytt. ad Plu., Ser. Num. V. 559 A = vii, p. 397 f. Ox.; Bernays, Rh. Mus. viii, 280 ff.); and cf. Sen., Ep. 58, 23.--It is instructive to compare with Herakl.'s doctrine of the instability of the psychic complex the very similar theory of the influx and reflux of the elements of the "soul" as described in the Indian doctrine of Jainism. The soul (in the Indian doctrine) continually transforms, re-arranges, and restores itself, just like the body. See Deussen, System d. Vedânta, 330.]

[17\11: The apparently contradictory statement ~psuchê=|si te/rpsin, mê\ tha/naton, hugrê=|si gene/sthai~ ap. Porph., Antr. Nymph. 10 (72 By., 77 D.), does not represent the words or real opinion of Hkl., but only of Numenios' (fr. 35 Thedinga) arbitrary and personal interpretation of Hkl. doctrine (see Gomperz in Sitzb. d. Wien. Ak. 113, 1015 ff.).]

[18\11: A doctrine of transmigration of souls is attributed to Hkl. by Schuster, Heraklit, p. 174 ff. (1873). The utterances of Herakleitos there quoted to prove this thesis (frr. 78, 67, 123 = 88, 62, 63) do not, however, imply anything of the kind and there is not the slightest indication in the whole of Hkl's doctrinal system upon which a theory of the transmigration of the soul might be founded.]

[19\11: To prove that Herakleitos spoke of a continuation of the life of the individual soul after its separation from the body, appeal is made partly to the statements of later philosophers, partly to actual utterances of Herakl. (cf. in particular Zeller, Greek Phil. to Socr. ii, 86; Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Heraklit im Lichte der Mysterienidee, p. 214 ff.). Platonist philosophers do, of course, attribute to Herakleitos a doctrine of the soul which taught the pre-existence of the individual soul, "its fall in birth," and its departure into a separate life of its own after death (cf. Numenios ap. Porph., Ant. 10; Iamb., ap. Stob., Ecl. i, 375, 7; 38, 21 ff. W.; Aen. Gaz., Thphr., pp. 5, 7 Boiss.). These accounts, however, are plainly but private and arbitrary interpretations of Herakleitean sayings (~metaba/llon anapau/etai, ka/mato/s esti toi=s autoi=s aei\ mochthei=n kai\ a/rchesthai~) in the light of the conceptions current among those philosophers themselves; they are homiletic, fancifully conceived expositions of very short and ambiguous texts, and can so much the less serve as witnesses of Herakleitos' real opinions since Plotinos (4, 8, 1) openly admits that Herakl. in this matter has omitted ~saphê= hêmi=n poiê=sai to\n lo/gon~. Others read into certain Herakleitean utterances the Orphic doctrine of ~sô=ma--sê=ma~, the entombment of the soul in the body (Philo, Leg. Alleg. 1, 33, i, p. 65 M.; S.E., P. iii, 230), which cannot, however, be seriously supposed to be his teaching. The soul did not for Hkl., any more than for the Pythagoreans or Platonics, {393} come into existence at birth (substantially) out of nothing (which was the popular idea); it rather, as a portion of the universal fire (the universal psyche) is in existence from eternity. But it certainly does not follow, because later writers insisted on finding in him the idea so familiar to themselves, that Hkl. himself accepted the pre-existence of disembodied separate souls possessing complete and absolute individuality. A few enigmatic and highly picturesque expressions--typical of this philosopher's favourite manner of expressing abstract ideas by clothing them in symbolic imagery--might tempt to such an interpretation. ~atha/natoi thnêtoi/, thnêtoi\ atha/natoi, zô=ntes to\n ekei/nôn tha/naton to\n de\ ekei/nôn bi/on tethneô=tes~ (fr. 67 = 62)--that certainly does sound as if Hkl. had meant to speak of the entrance into the human life of individual divine beings (and this was simply substituted in inaccurate quotations of the saying: ~theoi\ thnêtoi/, a/nthrôpoi atha/natoi~, etc.; cf. Bernays, Heraklit. Briefe, 39 ff.). And yet Herakleitos can only have meant, in conformity with his whole position, that eternal and perishable, divine and human are alike and interchangeable; he has for the moment personified ~to\ thei=on~ (also called ~ho theo/s~ fr. 36 = 67; cf. fr. 61 = 102) as individual ~atha/natoi~, but he only means what he says in another place: ~tauto\ to\ zô=n kai\ tethnêko/s~ (fr. 78 = 88), ~bi/os~ and ~tha/natos~ are the same (fr. 66 = 48). It seems to me impossible to extract from these words of this 67th fragment (62nd), or from no. 44 (= 53), a doctrine of the ascent to divinity of special great men (with Gomperz, Sitzb. Wien. Ak. 1886, p. 1010, 1041 f.). Nor would anything be asserted by such a doctrine about the immortality of such men. The striking phrase ~anthrô/pous me/nei teleutê/santas ha/ssa ouk e/lpontai~ (fr. 122 = 27) is certainly understood by Cl. Al. as referring to the punishment of the soul after death. But the same Cl. Al., Str. **v, 9, p. 649 P., is capable of explaining the Herakleitean ~ekpu/rôsis~ (in which Herakl. actually speaks of a ~kri/sis~ by fire: fr. 26 = 66) as a ~dia\ puro\s ka/tharsis tô=n kakô=s bebiôko/tôn~. In fact, he is giving to statements torn from their context a meaning that accords with his own knowledge and comprehension. The same sentence (fr. 122 = 27) is given a quite different and consolatory sense by Plu. ap. Stob., Fl. 120, 8 fin.; cf. Schuster, Heraklit, p. 190, n. 1. Herakl. himself need have meant nothing more than the perpetual process of change that "awaits men after death".--Other utterances are no more conclusive for a doctrine of immortality in Hkl. (fr. 7 = 18 belongs to quite another context). "Those who have fallen in war are honoured both by gods (whose existence was not denied by Hkl. nor was it necessary that he should) and men," fr. 102 = 24; that their reward was anything else but fame--for example, blessed immortality--is not suggested even by Cl. Al. (Str. iv, 16, p. 571 P.), and is certainly not to be extracted from H.'s words, fr. 126 = 5 (the fool) ~hou/ti ginô/skôn theou\s oud' hê/rôas hoi/tine/s eisin~ simply shows that Hkl. did not share the popular ideas about gods and Heroes, but supplies nothing positive.--In fr. 38 = 98 we have ~hai psuchai\ osmô=ntai kath' ha/|dên~. Are we really to deduce from this that Herakl. believed in a regular Homeric Hades? ~ha/|dês~ is a metaphorical expression for the opposite of the life on earth (just as it is used metaphorically for the opp. of ~pha/os~ by the Herakleitean [Hippocr.] de Victu, 1, 4, p. 632 Kühn = vi, 476 Lit.). For the souls ~ha/|dês~ means the ~ho/dos ka/tô~ and the sense of the dictum is: after disappearing in death the souls when they have travelled on the way downwards through water and earth will at last rise up again through water, and drawing in to themselves pure, dry "fire" will become "souls" again, (~osmô=ntai~ is remarkable {394} but not to be altered. ~hosiou=ntai~ Pfleiderer; but the connexion in which Plu. quotes the saying of Herakl. [Fac. O. L. xxviii, p. 943 E] shows that there is no reference to the purification of the souls in Hades, but merely of their nourishment and strengthening by the ~anathumi/asis~ of the fiery aether; cf. also S.E., M. ix, 73, following Poseidonios. This ~anathumia=n~--and the becoming "fiery" again--is what Hkl. calls ~osma=sthai~.)--From the hopelessly corrupt fr. 123 = 63 nothing intelligible can be extracted.--Nowhere can we find clear and unambiguous statements of Herakleitos witnessing to his belief in the immortality of the individual soul; and it would require such statements to make us attribute to Herakleitos a conception that, as everyone admits, is in hopeless contradiction with the rest of his teaching. He says perfectly plainly that in death the soul becomes water; and that means that it, as the soul = fire, perishes. If his belief had been anything like that of the mystics (as the Neoplatonists supposed) he must have regarded death--the liberation of the soul from the fetters of corporeality and the realm of the lower elements--as a complete issue of the soul into its proper element, the fire. Whereas, what he teaches is the opposite of this: the soul perishes, becomes water, then earth, and then water again, and finally soul once more (fr. 68 = 36). Only in this sense is it indestructible.]

[20\11: e.g. by Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Heraklit, etc., p. 209, and frequently.]

[21\11: The Sibyl fr. 12 = 92; the Delphic Oracle 11 = 93; Kathartic practices 130 = 5; Bakchoi, etc., 124 = 14.]

[22\11: ~hôuto\s Ha/idês kai\ Dio/nusos~ fr. 127 = 15 (and to that extent--as being reconcilable with the doctrine of Hkl.--may the Dionysiac mysteries be considered valid: this must be the meaning of the sentence). On the other hand, we have disapproval of the ~mustê/ria~ carried out ~anierôsti/~ by men: fr. 125 = 14 (for the worshippers do not perceive the real meaning of the ceremonies).]

[23\11: In contrast to the Neoplatonic writers who attributed to Hkl. a doctrine of the soul like the Orphico-Pythagorean, the [Plutarchian] account in the Placita Philos. is again much nearer the real meaning of Herakleitos; cf. 4, 7 (where the name of Herakleitos has fallen out, as can be seen from Theodoret; see Diels, Dox., p. 392; Vors. 76, 1) ~. . . exiou=san (tê\n anthrô/pou psuchê\n) eis tê\n tou= panto\s psuchê\n anachôrei=n pro\s to\ homogene/s~. Even this is not quite correct as expressing what Hkl. really thought as to the fate of the soul but it does at least show once more that the contrary views of the Neoplatonists are also only interpretations, not evidence.]

[24\11: ~Hêra/kleitos êremi/an kai\ sta/sin ek tô=n ho/lôn anê/|rei; e/sti ga\r tou=to tô=n nekrô=n~. Dox., p. 320; Vors. 73, 10. ~sta/sis~ and ~êremi/a~ could never make a real "life"--not even a blessed life far removed from the world--but are signs of what is "dead", i.e. of what is nowhere to be found in this world, in fact, Nothing.]

[25\11: Parmenldes' polemic against Herakleitos: l. 46 ff. Mull.; fr. 6, 4 ff. Diels; see Bernays, Rh. Mus. vii, 115 (cf. Diels, Parm. 68).]

[26\11: Aristotle (acc. to S.E., M. x, 46; Vors. 142, 33 ff.) ~aphusi/kous autou\s ke/klêken, ho/ti archê\ kinêseô/s estin hê phu/sis, hê\n anei=lon pha/menoi mêde\n kinei=sthai~.]

[27\11: Thphr., Sens. § 4; Vors. 146, 13 f.]

[28\11: ~gegenê=sthai tê\n tô=n pa/ntôn phu/sin ek thermou= kai\ psuchrou= kai\ xêrou= kai\ hugrou=, lambano/ntôn eis a/llêla tê\n metanolê/n, kai\ psuchê\n kra=ma hupa/rchein ek tô=n proeirême/nôn kata\ mêdeno\s tou/tôn epikra/têsin~, Zeno ap. D.L. ix, 29; Vors. 166, 14. The composition out of four elements instead of two as with Parmenides may have been arrived at by Zeno {395} in imitation of the "four roots" of Empedokles, each of which was distinguished by possessing one of the four qualities ~thermo/n ktl.~ The statement that the ~psuchê/~ arises from the equal mixture of the four qualities reminds us of Empedokles' account of ~phronei=n~ (Vors. 218, 1 = 220, 23; Thphr., Sens. 10, 23). On the other side, Zeno takes over and applies to the ~psuchê/~ what the Pythagorean physician Alkmaion said about ~hugi/eia~ (Vors. 136, 1; Dox., p. 442; cf. Arist., An. 408a, 1): his point of view is almost identical with that of those Pythagoreans who regarded the "soul" as made up out of a ~harmoni/a~ of the Cold, the Warm, etc. (see below). He may have actually got his views from the acquaintance of Pythagorean physiologists (he was regarded as a "Pythagorean": Str. 252).]

[29\11: Simpl. ad Arist., Ph., p. 39 D.; Vors. 162, 11; cf. Diels, Parm. 109 f. (1897).]

[30\11: Parmenides pupil of Diochaites the Pythagorean and of Ameinias, also as it appears a Pythagorean: Sotion ap. D.L. ix, 21; Vors. 138. He was counted a Pythagorean by tradition which, however, was very free with its attributions of this kind. Call. fr. 100d, 17; Str. 252; V. Pyth. ap. Phot., Bibl. 249, p. 439a, 37 Bk.; Iamb., VP. 267 (with Sch., p. 190 N.). The Pyth. influence on Parmenides may have been essentially of an ethical nature: ~eis hêsuchi/an proetra/pê hupo\ Ameini/ou~, D.L. ix, 21. ~Parmeni/deios kai\ Puthago/reios bi/os~ as equivalent: [Ceb.] Tab. 2 fin. Str., p. 252, connects the good government of Elea with the Pythagorean influence of Parmenides (and of Zeno). Parmenides law-giver of Elea: Speus. ~p. philoso/phôn~ ap. D.L. ix, 23.]

[31\11: ~philosophi/an de\ prô=tos ôno/mase Puthago/ras kai\ heauto\n philo/sophon~: D.L., Proem. 12 (though the rest is from the fictitious dialogue of Herakl. Pont. see Cic., TD. v, 8-9).]

[32\11: Pl., Rp. 600 AB.]

[33\11: ~polumathi/ê, histori/ê~ of Pythag.; Herakl. frr. 16, 17 = 40, 129. ~pantoi/ôn ta\ ma/lista sophô=n epiê/ranos e/rgôn~ is said of Pythag. by Emped. (429 Mull.) fr. 129, 3.--The Pythagorean account of the construction of the world was known to Parmenides at the beginning of the fifth century and imitated by him in several points: Krische, Theol. Lehren d. gr. D. 103 ff. (To what extent Parmenides in other respects controverted Pythag. doctrine--as has been recently asserted of him--may be left undecided.) Fanciful speculations about numbers are attributed to Pythag. himself by Aristot., MM. 1182a, 11 ff.; Vors. 347, 3.]

[34\11: Emped. 427 ff. Mull.; fr. 129 Diels. That this praeconium does really refer to Pythag. (as Timaeus and others supposed) and not to Parmenides (as the undefined ~hoi de/~ of D.L. viii, 54, thought) appears to be proved by l. 4 ff., which allude to a remarkable power of ~ana/mnêsis~ which was certainly attributed by legend to Pythag., never to Parmenides.]

[35\11: ~psuchai/~ filling the whole air, not distinguished from ~dai/mones~ and ~hê/rôes~, Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 32; Vors.^4 i, xliv (who in this section of his account--§§31 ff.--is giving older Pythagorean ideas. Poseidonios expresses the same ideas; but it does not therefore follow that he got them from the Stoics. Poseid. borrowed and elaborated many Pythagorean views). More subtly expressed: the soul is ~atha/natos~ because it is eternally in motion like ~ta\ thei=a pa/nta~, the moon, sun, stars, and heaven; Alkmaion ap. Arist., An. 405a, 29 ff.; Vors. 133, 40; cf. Krische, 75 f. The perpetual movement of the ~psuchai/~ was one of the older Pythag. beliefs: it is expressed in the old fable (known already to Demokritos) of the motes in the sunbeam, {396} which, in their continual agitation, are, or enclose, swarming souls (see below, n. 40). In Alkmaion's treatment of the doctrine there is the additional idea that the soul of man ~e/oike toi=s athana/tois~. The derivation of its immortality and divinity from its origin in the World-soul (this is often said to be a Pythagorean doctrine: Cic., ND. i, 27; Sen. 78; D.L. viii, 28; S.E., M. ix, 127) does indeed suggest Stoic pantheism in the form of its expression but in substance it may very well go back to the older Pythag. teaching. (The genuineness of the frag. [21 D.] of Philolaos ap. Stob., Ecl. i, 20, 2 ff.; Vors. 318, 13, remains, however, dubious.) The idea that the soul and ~nou=s~ of man came to him from an impersonal ~thei=on~, an all-pervading ~en tô=| panti\ phro/nêsis~, must have been widespread even in the fifth century. It finds expression in Xen., M. 1, 4, 8-17; 4, 3, 14, where it is certainly not an original fancy of Xenophon's, but must have been derived by him from somewhere or other (not from Socrates, however, nor Plato).]

[36\11: ~en phroura=|~, Pl., Phd. 62 B. This is traced back to Pythag. belief (though he misinterprets the meaning of the word ~phroura/~) by Cic., Sen. 73; cf. the Pythagorean Euxitheos ap. Ath. 157 C; Vors. 315, 19. See Böckh, Philol. 179 ff. (Philolaos fr. 15 [16 Mull.] speaks of the World-soul or God who holds and contains all things ~en phroura=|~ without mentioning the human soul: see Böckh, p. 151.) The comparison of life in the body to a ~phroura/~ may very well be Pythagorean; nor is this **prevented by the fact that it is also Orphic (see above, chap. x, n. 43). This comparison implies the conception of the earthly life as a punishment. ~dia/ tinas timôri/as~ the soul is enclosed in the body: Philolaos fr. 14 (23) appealing to ~palaioi\ theolo/goi te kai\ ma/nties~ (cf. Iamb., VP. 85, ~agatho\n hoi po/noi . . . epi\ kola/sei ga\r eltho/ntas dei= kolasthê=nai~).--Espinas in Arch. f. Ges. d. Philos. viii, 452, interprets the ~en phroura=|~ of Pl., Phd. 62, as = "in the cattle-pen" or "sheep-fold"; the idea of God as the Shepherd of man would then be vaguely present even here (cf. Plt. 271 E; Criti. 109 B). It remains, however, to be proved (to begin with) that ~phroura/~ is ever used in the sense of ~sêko/s~ or ~heirktê/~.]

[37\11: Arist., An. 1, 3, p. 407b, 22 ff.]

[38\11: ~hoi en tô=| tarta/rô=|~ terrified by thunder acc. to Pythag. belief: Arist., An. Po. 94b, 32 ff.; ~su/nodoi tô=n tethneô/tôn~ in the depths of the earth, Ael., VH. iv, 17 (perhaps from Arist. ~p. tô=n Puthagorei/ôn~). Description of the condition of things in Hades given in the Pythagorean ~Kata/basis eis ha/|dou~. As in the case of the Orphics this purgation and punishment in the spirit-world must have belonged to the parts of the ~Puthago/reioi mu=thoi~ that were quite seriously believed.]

[39\11: ~ekriphthei=san~ (out of the body) ~autê\n (tê\n psuchê\n) epi\ gê=s pla/zesthai en tô=| ae/ri homoi/an tô=| sô/mati~ (being a complete ~ei/dôlon~ of the living): Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 31.]

[40\11: Arist., An. 1, 2, 4, p. 404a, 16 ff.; Vors. 357, 1; many called the ~en tô=| ae/ri xu/smata~ themselves "souls", others ~to\ tau=ta kinou=n~. This may rest on a real popular belief which, however, has already been partially elevated to a philosophical standing: the souls are compared to what is evidently itself in perpetual agitation (Arist., l. 19 f.). This was undoubtedly Pythagorean (and old Ionic) teaching: see Alkmaion ap. Arist., An. 405a, 29 ff.; Vors. 133, 40. (Statement of Dox. 386a, 13 ff., b, 8 ff., is more doubtful.)]

[41\11: D.L. viii, 32; Vors^4. i, p. xliv.]

[42\11: That the Pythagoreans believed in the entry of the soul into the bodies of animals also is implied in the satirical verses of Xenophanes {397} (fr. 6) ap. D.L. viii, 36. All probability suggests that this was the reason for the injunction to abstain from flesh food among the older Pythagoreans themselves (and with Empedokles). (S.E., M. ix, 127 ff., however, drags in the "World-Soul" in a moment of untimely Stoicism. S.E.'s own quotation from Empedokles shows that the latter at any rate derived the ~apochê\ empsu/chôn~ simply from the fact of Metamorphosis, and not at all from the ~psuchê=s pneu=ma~ which rules in all life; though this last is attributed to him by S.E.)]

[43\11: See Appendix x.]

[44\11: According to the Pythagoreans ~to\ di/kaion~ is nothing else than ~to\ antipepontho/s~, i.e. ~ha\ tis epoi/êse tau=t' antipathei=n~: Arist., EN. 5, 5, p. 1132b, 21 ff.; MM. 1194a, 29 ff. (also given with fanciful numerical expression, MM. 1182a, 14; Sch. Arist. 540a, 19 ff.; 541b, 6 Br.; [Iamb.] Theol. Arith., p. 28 f. Ast). This definition of justice was simply taken over by the Pythagoreans from popular sayings such as the verse of Rhadamanthys ap. Arist., EN. about the ~dra/santi pathei=n~ and similar formulae: see collection in Blomfield's Gloss. in A., Cho. 307; Soph. fr. 229 P. Compensatory justice of this kind we may suppose was manifested in the rebirths of men (in this respect the P. went beyond the commonplace sense of that ~trige/rôn mu=thos~): we may assume this without further hesitation if we remember the completely analogous application of this conception by the Orphics (above, chap. x, n. 71).]

[45\11: ~Puthago/reios tro/pos tou= bi/ou~, Pl., Rp. 600 B.]

[46\11: ~akolouthei=n tô=| theô=|~, Iamb., VP. 137 (following Aristoxenos); Vors. 362, 32; ~he/pou theô=|~ Pythagoras ap. Stob., Ecl. ii, p. 49, 16 W. See Wyttenb. on Plu., Ser. Num. Vind. 550 D.]

[47\11: Ancient testimony ascribes to the Pythagoreans: abstinence from flesh-food or at least from the flesh of such animals as are not sacrificed to the Olympians (the ~anthrô/pou psuchê/~ does not enter into the ~thu/sima zô=|a~ in transmigration: Iamb., VP. 85; Vors. 359, 13); from eating fish, particularly ~tri/glai~ and ~mela/nouroi~, and beans; from using linen clothing (or being buried in it: Hdt. ii, 81); and a few other forms of abstinence and measures assuring ritual purity. The whole apparatus of ritual ~hagnei/a~ is ascribed to the older Pythagoreans by Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 33. This, as a general statement is certainly correct. It is customary to say that it began among the degenerate Pythagoreans after the break up of the Italian society (so esp. Krische, De Soc. a Pythag. cond. scopo politico, Gött., 1831). But when Aristoxenos, the contemporary of the later, scientifically-minded Pythagoreans, denies all such superstitious ideas and regulations to the original Pythagoreans, his evidence really applies only to those Pythagorean scholars with whom he was acquainted and who seemed to him to have preserved the real spirit of the older Pythagoreanism much more truly than the ascetic (and in any case degenerate) Pythagoreans of the same period. Everything, however, goes to show that the strength of the surviving community as it had been founded by Pythagoras lay in the religious and mystical elements of its doctrine; and that what was oldest in Pythagoreanism was what it had in common with the faith and religious discipline of the Orphics. To this side belongs what we learn from tradition of the older Pythagorean asceticism. Much, then, that is of early Pythagorean origin (though certainly combined with other and later elements) is to be found in many of the ~akou/smata~ or ~su/mbola~ of the Pythagoreans, esp. in those of them (and they are numerous) that give directions of a ritual or merely superstitious kind. A fresh collection, arrangement and {398} explanation of these remarkable fragments would be very useful: Göttling's purely rationalist treatment of them does them less than justice. (Corn. Hölk, De acusmatis s. symbolis Pythag., Diss. Kiel. 1894.)]

[48\11: Efforts in a more positive direction may perhaps be seen in the practice of the musical form of ~ka/tharsis~ which Pythag. and the Pythagoreans used in accordance with an elaborate system: cf. Iamb., VP. 64 ff., 110 ff.; Sch. V. on ~Ch~ 391; also Quint. 9, 4, 12; Porph., VP. 33, etc.--What Aristoxenos has to say about Pythagorean ethics, moralistic parainesis and edification--most of it of a purely rationalist kind--can scarcely be said to have historical value.]

[49\11: Good formulation of Pythag. belief ap. Max. Tyr. 16, 2, i, 287 R.: ~Puthago/ras prô=tos en toi=s He/llêsin eto/lmêsen eipei=n, ho/ti hautô=| to\ me\n sô=ma tethnê/xetai, hê de\ psuchê\ anapta=sa oichê/setai athanê\s kai\ agê/rôs. kai\ ga\r ei=nai autê\n pri\n hê/kein deu=ro~. i.e. the life of the soul is not only endless but without beginning; the soul is immortal because it is timeless.]

[50\11: The withdrawal of the soul from the ~ku/klos ana/gkês~ and its return to an emancipated existence as a bodiless spirit was never so clearly held in view for the "Pure" by the older Pythagorean tradition as it was among the Orphics (and Empedokles). It is, however, hardly thinkable that a system which regarded every incarnation of the soul as a punishment and the body as its prison or its tomb should never have held out to the true ~ba/kchoi~ of its mysteries the prospect of a full and permanent liberation of the soul, at last, from corporeality and the earthly life. Only so could the long chain of deaths and rebirths reach a final and satisfactory conclusion. Eternally detained in the cycle of births the soul would be eternally punished (this is e.g. the idea of Empedokles: 455 f., fr. 145 D.); and this cannot have been the real conclusion of the Pythagorean doctrine of salvation. Claud. Mamertus, de An. 2, 7 [Vors. 320, 12], gives it as a doctrine of Philolaos [fr. 22] that the (pure soul after its separation from the body leads a "bodiless" life in the "Universe" (the ~ko/smos~ situated above the ~ourano/s~): see Böckh, Philol. 177. Apart from this the only evidence for the withdrawal of the soul is late: Carm. Aur. 70 f. (making use of the Empedok. verses, fr. 112, 4 f. = 400 Mull.), Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 31 (~a/gesthai ta\s kathara\s [psucha\s] epi\ to\n hu/psiston~ "in altissimum locum" Cobet: but an ellipse of ~to/pon~ is hardly admissible. ~ho hu/psistos~ = the highest God would be a Hebraic form of expression, nor can it be a possible one here for Alex. Polyh.--we should also, with this meaning of ~hu/psistos~, expect ~pro\s t. hu/.~ ad superiores circulos bene viventium animae, secundum philosophorum altam scientiam, Serv., A. vi, 127--should we then supply ~epi\ to\n hu/psiston <ku/klon>~? Or perh. ~epi\ to\ hu/psiston~?)--An escape of the souls after the expiry of their ~peri/odoi~ must have been known as a Pythagorean belief to Luc., VH. ii, 21. (Vergil, too, is speaking in a Pythagorean sense, A. vi, 744, pauci laeta arva [Elysii] tenemus.--i.e. for ever without renewed ~ensôma/tôsis~--see Serv., A. vi, 404, 426, 713. It is true the line is out of its right place, but there can be no doubt that it reproduces the words and the--in this section Pythagorean--opinion of Vergil.) The idea that the cycle of births is never to be broken cannot be regarded as Pythagorean nor even as Neopythagorean. (A few isolated later accounts of Pythag. doctrine; e.g. D.L. viii, 14 (from Favorinus), Porph., VP. 19, and also the cursory description in Ov., M. xv--with a good deal of foreign matter added--speak of the Pyth. doctrine of soul-transmigration without also referring to the possibility of ~ku/klou lê=xai~; but they are not meant to deny that {399} possibility but merely leave it unmentioned as unnecessary in the context.) There seems to be no example of a Greek doctrine of transmigration that did not also include a promise to the ~ho/sioi~ or the ~philo/sophoi~ that they would be able to escape from the cycle of births (at least for a world-period: as Syrian. took it, though probably not Porph.). Such a promise, as the consummation of the promises of salvation therein made, could only be dispensed with in the case of a doctrine of transmigration in which being born again was itself regarded as a reward for the pious (as in the teaching which Jos., BJ. 2, 8, 14, attributes to the Pharisees). By Greek partisans of the doctrine of Metempsychosis rebirth upon earth is always regarded as a punishment or at any rate a burden, not as a desirable goal for the life of the soul. We must therefore presume that the promise of escape from the cycle of rebirth was made also by the oldest Pythagorean teaching as the final benefit of its message of salvation. Without this completing touch Pythagoreanism would be like Buddhism without the promise of a final attainment of Nirvâna.]

[51\11: Pythagoras is called the pupil of Pherekydes as early as Andron of Ephesos (before Theopompos): D.L. i, 119; Vors. ii, 199, 18. Pherekydes was regarded as "the first" who taught the immortality of the soul (Cic., TD. i, 38) or more correctly metempsychosis (Suid. ~Pherek.~); cf. Preller, Rh. Mus. (N.F.), iv, 388 f. A hint of such teaching must have been found in his mystical treatise (cf. Porph., Antr. 31; Vors. ii, 204, 12--Gomperz is rather too sceptical, Gk. Thinkers, i, 542). This teaching seems to have been the chief reason which tempted later writers to make the old theologos into the teacher of Pythagoras, the chief spokesman of the doctrine of the soul's transmigrations.--It is, however, an untenable theory that Pherek. illustrated his doctrine of transmigration by the example of Aithalides. What the Sch. on A.R. i, 645 [Vors. ii, 204, 24], quotes from "Pherekydes" about the alternate sojourn of the ~psuchê/~ of Aithalides in Hades and on earth, does not come from Pherekydes the theologos (as Göttling, Opusc. 210, and Kern, de Orph. Epim. Pherec., pp. 89, 106, think) but without the slightest doubt from the genealogist and historian; this is the only Pherekydes who is used by the Sch. of Ap. Rh., and he is used frequently. Besides this, the way in which the different statements of the various authorities used in this Scholion are distinguished, shows quite clearly that Pherekydes had only spoken of Aithalides' alternate dwelling above and below the earth, but as still being Aithalides, and not as metamorphosed by the series of births into other personalities living upon earth. Pherekydes was obviously reproducing a Phthiotic local-legend in which Aithalides as the son of (the chthonic?) Hermes alternately lived on and below the earth, as an ~heterê/meros~--like the Dioscuri in Lacedaimonian legend (~l~ 301 ff.: in that passage and generally in the older view--as held by Alkman, Pindar, etc.--both the Dioscuri change their place of abode together: it is not till later that the variant arose acc. to which they alternate with each other: see Hemst. Luc. ii, p. 344 Bip.). It was Herakleides Pont. who first turned the alternate sojourning of Aithalides into death and resurrection (he also made Aithalides one of the previous incarnations of Pythagoras; see Appendix x); but as a different person, so that A. thus became an example of metempsychosis. It is not hard to see why Aithalides was chosen as one of the previous incarnations of P., nor how the old miracle-story, preserved to literature by Pherekydes, was thus transformed to suit its new purpose. Plainly Pherekydes did not say that Hermes {400} also gave Aithalides the power of memory after his death (otherwise the statement to this effect in Sch. A.R. would have stood under the name of Pherek.); and the privilege was rather meaningless until after Herakleides' narrative. Perhaps it was Her. who first added this touch to the story. Ap. Rh. follows him in this point (i, 643 ff.), but not--or not plainly, at least: 646 ff.--in what Herakleides had invented about the metempsychosis of Aithalides.]

[52\11: Macr., Som. Scip. 1, 14, 19, attributes this view to Pythagoras and Philolaos, being certainly correct in the case of the latter; since the opinion that the soul is a ~kra=sis~ and ~harmoni/a~ of the warm and the cold, the dry and the wet, which go to make up the body, is given by Simmias in Pl., Phd. 86 B, as a tradition that he has received and not an invention of his own. But what else can this mean than a tradition handed down in Thebes by his teacher Philolaos (Phd. 61 D)? (Hence ~Harmoni/as tê=s Thêbaïkê=s~, 95 A.) It is true that Claud. Mam. de An. ii, 7, only attributes to Philolaos the doctrine that the soul is bound up with the body "in eternal and incorporeal harmony" (convenientiam): which would imply an independent substance of the soul side by side with that of the body. But this must have been a misunderstanding of the real meaning of Philolaos. Aristoxenos, too, can only have got his doctrine of the soul as a harmony from his Pythagorean friends. Perhaps, too, this was the influence which suggested to Dikaiarchos his view that the "soul" is a ~harmoni/a tô=n tessa/rôn stoichei/ôn~ (Dox., p. 387), and indeed ~tô=n en tô=| sô/mati thermô=n kai\ psuchrô=n kai\ hugrô=n kai\ xêrô=n~, as Nemes., Nat. Hom., p. 69 Matth., tells us--thus exactly resembling Simmias in Plato (unless indeed the passage in Nemes. is a mere reminiscence of Plato strayed here by accident). See also chap. x, n. 27.]

[53\11: See Pl., Phd. 86 CD. Pre-existence of the soul impossible if it is only an ~harmoni/a~ of the body: 92 AB.]

[54\11: It was in itself almost unavoidable that a community founded like the Pythagorean mainly on a mystical doctrine but not ill-disposed to scientific studies, should, as it was extended (and still followed practical aims) split up into two parties: an inner circle of qualified teachers and scholars, and one or more groups, outside and attached to them, of lay members for whom a special teaching suited for popular comprehension would be provided. Thus the inner circle of Buddhism, the Bikshu, was surrounded by the common herd of "worshippers"; and the same can be seen in Christian monastic organisations. A division, then, of the followers of Pythagoras into Akousmatikoi and Mathematikoi--Pythagoreioi and Pythagoristai--etc., is not in itself at all incredible.]

[55\11: The division of the soul, or the ~duna/meis~ of the soul, into the ~logiko/n~ and the ~a/logon~ was made, before Plato, by Pythagoras--so we might have learnt, ~autou= tou= Puthago/rou suggra/mmatos oudeno\s eis hêma=s sôzome/nou~, from the writings of his followers, acc. to Poseidonios ap. Galen, de Plac. Hipp. et Pl. 5, p. 459 Müll. = v, 478 K.; cf. also 425 K. (Vors. 34, 23). From Poseidonios evidently comes the same opinion in Cic., TD. iv, 10. And, in fact, a fragment of Philolaos ~p. phu/seôs~, fr. 13 Diels (Theol. Ar., p. 20, 35 A.), gives a division of the ~archai\ tou= zô/|ou tou= logikou=~, which depends upon the idea that the highest living organism contains within itself and makes use of all the lower organisms as well (~nou=s~ in the head, ~anthrô/pou archa/--psucha\ kai\ ai/sthêsis~ in the heart, ~zô/|ou archa\--rhi/zôsis kai\ ana/phusis~ in the navel, ~phutou= archa\--spe/rmatos metabola/~ and ~ge/nnêsis~ in the ~aidoi=on, xunapa/ntôn archa/~). Then in the psychical region we have a division between the ~logiko/n~ {401} and the ~a/logon~ according to their nature and "seat" in man (~logiko/n~ being made up of reasoning power, ~nou=s~, specific to man, and sense-perception, ~ai/sthêsis~, which also belongs to the other ~zô=|a~, while the ~a/logon = rhi/zôsis kai\ ana/phusis~ and resembles the ~ai/tion tou= tre/phesthai kai\ au/xesthai~, or the ~phutiko/n~, a part of the ~a/logon tê=s psuchê=s~ in Arist., EN. 1, 13, p. 1102a, 32 ff.). This evidently represents an attempt at a division of the soul into ~logiko/n~ and ~a/logon~, such as Poseidonios must have found carried out by other Pythagoreans. A clear distinction between ~phronei=n (xunie/nai~ and ~aistha/nesthai~ was made by the Pythag. physician Alkmaion, whose division was at least different from and more profound than that of Empedokles (with whom he is contrasted by Thphr., Sens. 25; Vors. 132, 20). Empedokles did indeed distinguish between thinking and perceiving, but thinking (~noei=n~) was only a ~sômatiko/n ti hô/sper to\ aistha/nesthai~ and to this extent ~tauto/n~ with it (Arist., An. 3, 3, p. 427a, 21). Alkmaion cannot, therefore, have made ~xunie/nai sômatiko/n~. These Pythagoreans were on the way to separating from the soul as a whole a separate, thinking soul that required no sense-perception for its thought, the ~nou=s~. To this latter alone would divinity and immortality be ascribed, as in later philosophy (and thus Dox. 393a, 10, though unhistorically and prematurely, gives ~to\ logiko\n [tê=s psuchê=s] a/phtharton~ as a doctrine of "Pythagoras").--It is certainly difficult to see how Philolaos' doctrine of the distinction between the ~anthrô/pou archa/~, the ~nou=s~--an element of the soul belonging exclusively to men--and the ~zô/|ou archa/~ (confined to ~ai/sthêsis~ and ~psucha/~, power of life) could possibly be reconciled with the older Pythagorean doctrine of the soul's transmigration. Acc. to that belief the soul wanders through the bodies of animals as well as men, and the idea implies the view that the same soul could inhabit animals as well as men; that, in fact, ~pa/nta ta\ geno/mena e/mpsucha~ are ~homogenê=~ (Porph., VP. 19; cf. S.E., M. ix, 127). Philolaos, on the contrary, holds that the soul of man is differently constituted from the souls of animals--the latter lack ~nou=s~ (it is not merely that its efficacy is hindered in animals by the ~duskrasi/a tou= sô/matos~ as is said wrongly to be the opinion of Pythag. by Dox. 432a, 15 ff.). The same difficulty arises again in the case of Plato's doctrine of transmigration.--Alkmaion who ascribes ~xunie/nai~ to man alone seems not to have held the transmigration doctrine.]

[56\11: 401 ff. Mull.; fr. 112, 5 Diels.]

[57\11: 462 ff. fr. 111.]

[58\11: Satyros ap. D.L. viii, 59; Vors. 195, 26.--Especially famous was his feat of driving away adverse winds from Akragas (cf. fr. 111, 3); see also Welcker, Kl. Schr. iii, 60-1.--The asses' skins with which Emped. kept the north winds away from Akragas were at any rate intended as apotropaic materials--magic means of driving away spirits. In the same way protection against hail and lightning is obtained by hanging up the skin of a hyena, a seal, etc. (see Geop. i, 14, 3-5; i, 16, and Niclas' notes there). These skins ~e/chousi du/namin antipathê=~: Plu., Smp. 4, 2, 1, p. 664 C.--Other magic charms against hail--the ~chalazophu/lakes~, Plu., Smp. 7, 2, 2, p. 700 F; Sen., NQ. 4b, 6.]

[59\11: ~. . . egô\ d' humi=n theo\s a/mbrotos, ouke/ti thnêto/s, pôleu=mai meta\ pa=si tetime/nos ktl.~ 400 f. (fr. 112, 4 f.).]

[60\11: A late echo is to be found in the inspired lines of Lucretius in praise of Empedokles, i, 717 ff.]

[61\11: The well-known story of Empedokles' leap into the crater of Mt. Aetna--intended by his complete disappearance to call forth the belief that he had not died (Luc., DM. xx, 4), but had been translated {402} alive--is a parody of a serious translation legend and presupposes the existence of one. The parodists' version was contradicted early by Empedokles' follower, the physician Pausanias: D.L. viii, 69 (this does not come from the fabulously conceived narrative of Herakleides Pont. It does not follow, from the epigram quoted by D.L. viii, 61, fr. 156; AP. vii, 508, that Paus. died before Emped.; the authorship of that ep. is uncertain and in any case it is not very worthy of credit). The seriously intended legend must then have arisen soon after the disappearance of Empedokles: it was founded upon the fact that no one did know where Emp. had died (~tha/natos a/dêlos~, Timaeus ap. D.L. viii, 71), or could point to the grave which covered his remains. (This is expressly stated by Timaeus, who, in other respects, contradicts the translation-fable as well as the story of the leap into Mt. Aetna: D.L. viii, 72. In the face of this no importance need be attached to what some one--Neanthes apparently--states ap. D.L. viii, 73; that there was a grave of Emped. at Megara.) Free elaboration was given to the translation story by Herakleides Pont. ~p. no/sôn~: D.L. viii, 67-8 (in return, his philosophic rivals contemptuously applied a malicious story of feigned translation to Herakleides himself, who in this way wished to legitimize his own claim to be god or Hero: D.L. v, 89 ff. From other sources comes Suid. ~Hêrakl. Euthu/phronos~; cf. Marx, Griech. Märchen v. dankb. Thieren, p. 97 ff.). All kinds of stupid variations of the story of Empedokles' end ap. D.L. viii, 74.]

[62\11: See above, chap. ii, and p. 129.]

[63\11: Cf. 113 ff.; fr. 9.]

[64\11: ~sarkô=n chitô/n~, 414, fr. 126.]

[65\11: His treatment of the woman who seemed to be dead (~a/pnous~, D.L. viii, 60) has quite the appearance of a psychophysical experiment; one, however, that was intended to prove the correctness of precisely the irrational side of his doctrine of the soul.]

[66\11: ~gui/ôn pi/stis~ is distinguished from ~noei=n~ in v, 57 (fr. 4, 13), and ~no/ô| de/rkesthai~ from ~de/rkesthai o/mmasin~ in 82 (fr. 17, 21); cf. ~ou/t' epi/derkta ta/d' a/ndrasin ou/t' epakousta/, ou/te no/ô| peri/lêpta~, 42 f. (fr. 2, 7).--Elsewhere it is true that Emped. (who throughout avoids prosaic exactitude in the use of technical terms) uses ~noê=sai~ as simply = sense-perception following epic idiom: e.g. 56 (fr. 4, 12; but it is not quite correct to say that Emped. ~to\ phronei=n kai\ to\ aistha/nesthai tauto/ phêsi~, as Arist. declares: An. 427a, 22).]

[67\11: 378 ff.; fr. 109: ~gai/ê| me\n ga\r gai=an opô/pamen~, etc. (~hora=n~ is here used in its widest sense, ~ei=dos anti\ ge/nous~, and = ~aistha/nesthai~. Thus, ~no/ô| de/rkesthai~ in 82 [17, 21] = ~aistha/nesthai~, and very commonly words denoting one of the modes of perception are used instead of those of another ~ei=dos~, or for the whole ~ge/nos~ of ~ai/sthêsis~. Lob., Rhemat. 334 ff.).]

[68\11: 372 ff. Mull.; fr. 105: ~hai/matos en pela/gessi . . . tê=| te no/êma ma/lista kukli/sketai anthrô/poisin; hai=ma ga\r anthrô/pois perika/rdio/n esti no/êma~.--The blood is the seat of ~to\ phronei=n; en tou/tô| ga\r ma/lista kekra=sthai ta\ stoichei=a~, Thphr., Sens. 10, 23 f.]

[69\11: A kind of ~suggumnasi/a tô=n aisthê/seôn~ as the physician Asklepiades defines the idea of the ~psuchê/~ (Dox. 378a, 7).--It resembles what Arist. calls the ~prô=ton aisthêtê/rion~.--This function which Emped. calls ~phronei=n~ would probably be the ~henopoiou=n~ of the perceptions which Aristot. found wanting in Emp. (An. 409b, 30 ff.; 410a, 1-10; b, 10).]

[70\11: ~to\ noei=n~ is ~sômatiko\n hô/sper to\ aistha/nesthai~, Arist., An. 427a, 26.]

[71\11: Arist., Metaph. 1009b, 17 ff.]

[72\11: 298 Mull.; fr. 110, 10: ~pa/nta ga\r i/sthi phro/nêsin e/chein kai\ nô/matos hai=san~. The ~pa/nta~ must be understood quite literally; for it is the {403} elements in which the powers of perception inhere (~he/kaston tô=n stoichei/ôn psuchê\n ei=nai~ is the opinion attributed to Emped. by Arist., An. 404b, 12). But elements are present in the mixture of all things, and thus stones, etc., have ~phro/nêsis~ and a "portion of mind" in them (though the statement that it is ~hai/ma~ that first produces ~phro/nêsis~ will not square with this: Thphr., Sens. 23). Emped. attributed complete sensation and perception to plants, and even gave them ~nou=s~ and ~gnô=sis~ (without blood?): [Arist.] Plant. 815a, 16 ff.; b, 16 f. That is why they, too, are capable of harbouring fallen daimones.]

[73\11: Emped. himself does not use the word ~psuchê/~ at all in the fragments that have been preserved to us; and it is hardly probable that he himself would have used the term of the psychical faculties of the body even if he regarded these as gathered together to a substantive unity. Later authorities, on the other hand, in their accounts of the doctrine of Emped. give the name of ~psuchê/~ precisely to these "somatic" intellectual faculties; thus Arist., An. 404b, 9 ff.; 409b, 23 ff.: ~hai=ma phêsin ei=nai tê\n psuchê/n~, Gal., Hipp. et Pla. 2 = v, 283 K.; cf. Cic., TD. i, 19; Tert., An. 5.]

[74\11: 113-19 Mull.; frr. 11, 15, do not (as Plu., adv. Col. 12, p. 1113 D, understood them) teach the pre-existence and persistence after death of the psychic powers within the world of the elements, but merely speak of the indestructibility of the elements that are the component parts of the human body, even when the latter has suffered dissolution.]

[75\11: ~a/tês leimô/n~, fr. 121, 4 (21 Mull.; cf. 16) is the name given by Empedokles to the earth; and not to Hades (as has been supposed), of which--as an intermediate place of purgation between two births--there is nowhere any mention in his verses. That the ~aterpê\s chô=ros~ (fr. 121, 1) to which Emped. is cast down, the realm of ~Pho/nos ktl.~ (fr. 121) and the ~A/tês leimô/n~, all refer to the earth, ~ho e/ggeios to/pos, ta\ peri\ gê=n~, is expressly stated by Themistios, Or. 13, and Hierocl. in C. Aur. 24 (fr. 121), p. 470 Mull. [FPG. i]; Synes. also implies it (Ep. 147, p. 283 C; Prov. i, 89 D); the same is distinctly implied for fr. 121, 4, and by Jul., Or. vii, 226 B; Philo, ii, p. 638 M.--Procl., _in _Crat.__, p. 103 Boiss., connects fr. 121, 3, ~auchmêrai/ te no/soi kai\ sê/psies e/rga te rheusta/~ immediately with fr. 121, 2, and both lines acc. to him apply to ~ta\ hupo\ tê\n selê/nên~; i.e. not to any kind of underworld but to the region of the earth (cf. Emp. ap. Hippol., RH. i, 4; Vors. 210, 27; Dox. 559). The idea that Hades is being spoken of in these lines is a view peculiar to moderns who have misunderstood the poet and set aside the clear testimony of Themistios and the rest. Maass, Orpheus, 113, speaks as though the interpretation in favour of Hades rested upon a tradition which I "contradicted". On the contrary, that interpretation is itself contradicted by definite tradition and by common sense (for Emp. falls from Heaven to earth and not, please God, to Hades!). The view is quite baseless (though Maass himself finds in the ~e/rga rheusta/~ of fr. 121 [20 M.]--the inconstant, transitory works of men upon earth--a support for his Hades-view: these "fluid works" or things are, he thinks, nothing else but the stream of filth, the ~skô\r aei/nôn~, in Hades of which pious invention rumoured: certainly an ingenious interpretation). Emp. is, in fact, the first to regard this earthly sojourning as the real Hell--the ~asunê/thês, aterpê\s chô=ros~ (fr. 118, 121, 1, the latter a parodying reminiscence of ~l~ 94)-- an ~a/ntron hupo/stegon~ (fr. 120) filled with all the plagues and terrors of the original Hades (121). Stoics and Epicureans (see below) took up the idea after him and elaborated it in detail. The daimones that are shut up in this life here below--a ~zôê\ a/bios~ (fr. 2, 3)--are as if dead: {404} frr. 125 (?), 35, 14. The Orphic idea of the ~sô=ma--sê=ma~ (see above, p. 345) was thus thoroughly and energetically carried out. (Macr., in S. Scip. 1, 10, 9 ff., attributed the idea that the inferi are nothing else but the material world of earth to the old theologi (§ 17) who, he says, lived before the development of a philosophic science of nature.)]

[76\11: 3 Mull.; fr. 115, 3: ~eu=te/ tis (tô=n daimo/nôn) amplaki/ê|si pho/nô| phi/la gui=a miênê|~. He means ~brô=sis sarkô=n kai\ allêlophagi/a~ as Plu. paraphrases it, Es. Carn. 1, p. 996 B (for this must always imply acc. to Emp. the "murder" of a spirit of the same race: fr. 136). Even for God it is a crime to taste of a meat ("blood")-offering and, in fact, there were only bloodless offerings made in the Golden Age (which was described by Emp. not in the ~Phusika/~--the principle of which work denied that there had ever been such a period--but in some other poem in which he left his philosophic doctrine out of account; perhaps the ~Katharmoi/~): 420 ff. M; fr. 128, 3 ff.]

[77\11: fr. 115, 4. The earth then becomes the place of their banishment and punishment for gods that have broken their oath. This is a version of the impressive picture in Hes., Th. 793 ff. Dei peierantes were punished for nine years (cf. Hes., Th. 801) in Tartaros: Orpheus (not Lucan in his "Orpheus") ap. Serv., A. vi, 565. (To this also alludes the poet from whose elegiac verses came the frag. ap. Serv., A. vi, 324: ~tou=~ [sc. ~Stugo\s hu/datos] stugno\n pô=ma kai\ athana/tô|~: this is probably how the words should be read.) So that instead of the "underworld" or Tartaros, the world is for Emp. the worst place of sorrows. From Emp. is derived the conception that the realm of the inferi is our world, that inhabited by men, and that there is no other, nor any need of another ~ha/|dês~--a conception often alluded to and improved upon by Stoic and other semi-philosophers (esp. clear in Serv., A. vi, 127, often only in allegorical sense: Lucr. iii, 978 ff. [See also Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, p. 107.]).]

[78\11: 30,000 ~hô=rai~: which means probably "years" (hardly "seasons" as Dieterich, Nekyia, 119, takes it). The figure 30,000 has no special meaning (e.g. 300 periods of a life-time each): it is merely a concrete phrase for "innumerable" (and is frequent: Hirzel, Ber. sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. 1885, p. 64 ff.). This enormous period of time is the divine counter-part, as measured by divine standards of time, of the ~me/gas eniauto/s~, the ennaëteris during which the earthly murderer had to fly from the land of his violent deed. The fiction of Emp. clearly shows the influence of this expiation of murder by ~apeniautismo/s~.]

[79\11: fr. 121 (22 ff.).]

[80\11: ~argale/as bioi/toio keleu/thous . . . ~ fr. 115, 8 (8).]

[81\11: Emp. does not even use the word ~psuchê/~ of these ~dai/mones~ confined within corporeality. They are so named, however, regularly and without qualification by the later authors who quote verses from the Prooimion of the ~Phusika/~, Plutarch, Plotinos, Hippolytos, etc.]

[82\11: Peculiar to Emp. is the attempt to give actual details of the crimes for which the spirits are condemned to ~ensôma/tôsis~; and also the extension of metempsychosis to plants (which is occasionally attributed, but by late authorities only, to the Pythagoreans as well).]

[83\11: The entirely unpurified seem not to have been condemned to everlasting punishment in Hades, of which in general he shows no knowledge, by Emp. (as by the Pythagoreans sometimes). He merely, it seems, threatens them with ever-renewed rebirth upon earth and the impossibility of ~to\ ku/klou lê=xai~ (until the complete ascendency of ~phili/a~). This appears to be the meaning of fr. 145 (455 f.) from the way in which Cl. Al., Protr. ii, 27, p. 23 P., cites the lines.] {405}

[84\11: As we may paraphrase--though indeed here, too, only with reservations--the ~kako/tês~ and ~kako/têtes~ of Emp. fr. 145 (454 f.).]

[85\11: frr. 136-7, 128, 9 f. (424, 440). Very remarkable in a thinker of such an early period is what is said (fr. 135) about the ~pa/ntôn no/mimon~ which forbids ~ktei/nein to\ e/mpsuchon~.--Apart from this we have other vestiges of kathartic rules: purification with water drawn from five springs: fr. 143 (see Append. v); abstention from the eating of beans (fr. 141) and of laurel leaves (fr. 140). The laurel is sacred as a magic plant, together with the ~ski/lla~ (see App. v) and ~rha/mnos~ (see above, chap. v, n. 95). Cf. Gp. 11, 2, etc. Its special sacredness gives the laurel its importance in the cult of Apollo. Emp. (like Pythagoras) seems to have paid special honour to Apollo: it appears from something that is said ap. D.L. viii, 57, that he wrote a ~prooi/mion eis Apo/llôna~: the exalted conception of a divinity that is pure ~phrê\n hierê/~ in abstraction from all sense-perception, elaborated by Emp. in frr. 133-4, was regarded by him as applying particularly ~peri\ Apo/llônos~ (Amm. in Arist., Interpr. 249, 1 ed. Brand. 135a, 23).]

[86\11: In fanciful ways: fr. 127 (lion, laurel), 448 Mull.]

[87\11: fr. 146 (457) ~pro/moi~ being used probably with intention as a vague term: regal power would hardly have seemed to possess special merit to the democratically minded Emp. He hardly knew it in any form but the tyrannis and to this he showed himself an energetic opponent (even though the violent language of Timaeus, the enemy of tyrants, is not to be taken quite literally). He himself was offered royal power, but he refused it with contempt as one who was ~pa/sês archê=s allo/trios~: Xanthos and Arist. ap. D.L. viii, 63; Vors. 196, 10. He might all the same (and rightly) regard himself in political matters, too, as one of the ~pro/moi~; it is plain that in the enumeration of those who were ~eis te/los~ born as ~ma/nteis te kai\ humnopo/loi kai\ iêtroi/, kai\ pro/moi anthrô/poisin epichthoni/oisi pe/lontai~, and were never to be born again, he includes himself especially, and, in fact, takes himself as the model of this last and highest stage upon earth. He himself was all these things simultaneously.]

[88\11: frr. 146-7 (459 ff.) ~e/nthen anablastou=si theoi\ timê=|si phe/ristoi, athana/tois a/lloisin home/stioi, e/n te trape/zais~ (read ~e/n te tra/pezoi~--a tmesis, = ~entra/pezoi/ te); eu/nies andrei/ôn ache/ôn, apo/kêroi, ateirei=s~.]

[89\11: Emped. perhaps described himself as "god" also in fr. 23, 11 (144) ~alla\ torô=s tou=t' i/sthi~ (he is speaking to Pausanias), ~theou= pa/ra mu=thon akou/sas~. See Bidez, Biogr. d'Emp., p. 166 (1894)--unless these words would be better taken as an abbreviated comparison (with omission of ~hôs~): "as certainly as if you had received these words from a god."]

[90\11: As Plu. is inclined to do: Exil. xvii, p. 607 D.]

[91\11: As several modern critics have attempted to do.]

[92\11: fr. 17, 30 (92).]

[93\11: See above, chap. i, pp. 4 ff.]

[94\11: As late again as Plotinos, who speaks of the ~ditto\n en hêmi=n~: the ~sô=ma~ which is a ~thêri/on zô|ôthe/n~ and the ~alêthê\s a/nthrôpos~ distinct from it, etc. (1, 1, 10; 6, 7, 5).]

[95\11: At any rate Emp. spoke of the ekstasis, the furor which is an animi purgatio and to be entirely distinguished from that which is produced by alienatio mentis (~phronei=n alloi=a~, fr. 108): Cael. Aur., Morb. Chron. i, 5, p. 25 Sich. = Vors. 223. A special ~enthousiastiko/n~ in the soul as its ~theio/taton~ (part): Stoics (and Plato) acc. to Dox. 639, 25. A special organ of the soul which effects the union with the divine, being the ~a/nthos tê=s ousi/as hêmô=n~, is mentioned in Proclus (Zeller, Phil. d. Griech.^2 iii, 2, 738).] {406}

[96\11: ~to\ ho/lon~, the whole reality of Being and Becoming in the world, cannot be comprehended by man through his senses nor even with ~nou=s~: fr. 2 (36-43). But Empedokles has in his own persuasion grasped it; he is situated ~sophi/ês ep' a/kroisi~ (fr. 4, 8), ~autê\n epagge/lletai dô/sein tê\n alê/theian~ (Procl., in Ti. 106 E. Proclus declares that the words ~sophi/ês ep' a/kroisi~--and this is a further point--are meant to apply to Emped. himself. (I do not quite understand Bidez' doubts about what is said here, and in what follows: see Archiv. f. Gesch. d. Phil. ix, 203, 42.) Whence, then, did the poet obtain this knowledge of the truth since it is revealed neither to the senses nor to the ~nou=s~? At any rate, the ~psuchopompoi\ duna/meis~ (Porph., Antr. 8), who conducted his soul-daimon out of the region of the gods, say to the soul (fr. 2, 8): ~su\ d' ou=n epei\ hô=d' elia/sthês~ (i.e. "since you have been cast up here--on the earth"--not "since you have so desired it", as Bergk, Opusc. ii, 23, explains: which would be a distorted idea expressed in distorted language)--~peu/seai ou ple/on êe\ brotei/ê mê=tis ho/pôpen~ (thus with Panzerbieter, for ~o/rôre~). According to this we must suppose that his more profound knowledge (insight into the ~mi=xi/s te dia/llaxi/s te mige/ntôn~ of the elements, together with knowledge of the destiny and purpose of the soul-daimones, etc.), which he cannot have got on earth or in his earthly body must have been brought with him out of his divine past-life. This knowledge is then peculiar to the daimon (or ~psuchê/~ in the older sense) that is buried in the body; and Emp. presumably owes it to an ~ana/mnêsis~ of his earlier life (a faculty that is only rarely active). From what other source could he have got his knowledge of his previous ~ensômatô/seis~ (fr. 117)? He has even farther and more profound knowledge than he dares communicate--fr. 4 (45-51), and says quite plainly that he is keeping back in piety a last remnant of wisdom that is unsuited for human ears (to this extent the authorities--~a/lloi d' ê=san hoi le/gontes~--of S.E., M. vii, 122--have rightly understood him).--The belief in a miraculous power of ~ana/mnêsis~ that goes beyond the present life of the individual may have been derived by Emp. from Pythagorean doctrine or mythology. Emp. himself follows the legend of the Pyth. school and attributes such a power of recollection to Pythagoras: ~ho/ppote ga\r pa/sê|si . . .~ fr. 129 [430 ff.]. See Append. x. The eager development--indeed, the cult--of the ~mnê/mê~ in Pythagorean circles is well known. The invention of the myths describing the fountain of Mnemosyne in Hades may also be Pythagorean (see below). Throughout the various ~ensômatô/seis~ of the soul it is the undying ~mnê/mê~ that alone preserves the unity of personality which (as the ~psuchê/~) lives through all these transformations and is bound together in this way. It is evident how important this idea was for the doctrine of transmigration (it occurs also in the teaching of Buddha). Plato, like Empedokles, seems to have got the idea of an ~ana/mnêsis~ reaching beyond the limits of the present life from the Pythagoreans: he, then, it is true, developed the idea in connexion with his own philosophy to unexpected conclusions (cf. further, Dieterich, Nekyia, 122).]

[97\11: ~phili/a~ is for him (not indeed in his words but in his intention as Arist. understood him): ~aiti/a tô=n agathô=n, to\ de\ nei=kos tô=n kakô=n~, Metaph. 985a, 4 ff.; 1075b, 1-7. Hence the ~êpio/phrôn Philo/têtos amemphe/os a/mbrotos hormê/~ (fr. 35) is contrasted with ~Nei=kos maino/menon~ (115, 14), ~oulo/menon~ (17, 19), ~lugro/n~ (109). The ~sphai=ros~ in which only ~phili/a~ prevails while ~nei=kos~ is completely vanquished, is called ~moni/ê| periê/rgeï gai/ôn~, fr. 27, 28.] {407}

[98\11: ~theoi\ dolichai/ônes~ (frr. 20, 12, 23, 8). Exactly the same is said of the ~dai/mones hoi/te bi/oio lelo/gchasi makrai/ônos~ (115, 5). In the face of these expressions, so definitely setting a period to the lifetime of the gods, we must suppose that the epithets which Emp. applies to himself--he is to be in the future ~theo\s a/mbrotos ouk e/ti thnêto/s~, 112, 4--are merely intended to assert that he shall not die any more in his incarnation as a man (the same thing must be meant when those who are delivered from the circle of rebirth are called ~apo/kêroi, a/teirei=s~ (147); the gods are only called ~a/thanatoi~ by traditional convention). Plutarch also, Def. Or. 16, p. 418 E, distinctly states that the ~dai/mones~ of Emp. eventually die. That the gods (but not ~to\ thei=on~ itself) were liable to extinction had already been the opinion of Anaximander and Anaximenes. Acc. to Emp. the individual ~dai/mones~ would be reabsorbed into the universal divinity, the ~sphai=ros~ (just as the individual deities of the Stoics are reabsorbed at the world-conflagration into Zeus who is alone indestructible). [= ll. 131, 141, 461, 460 M.]]

[99\11: Emp., frr. 133, 134 (389-96), speaks of a supersensual divinity that is entirely ~phrê\n hierê/~: he gives to this divinity the name of Apollo, but the description is said to apply ~peri\ panto\s tou= thei/ou~. Hipp., RH. vii, 29, p. 386 D.-S., refers the description to the ~sphai=ros~. The ~sphai=ros~, in which no ~nei=kos~ is left was called by Emp. ~ho theo/s, ho eudaimone/statos theo/s~ (Arist., An. i, 5, 410b, 5-6; Metaph. ii, 4, 1000b, 3). It is, however, certain that Emp. would not have **regarded the ~sphai=ros~ as pure ~phrê\n hierê/~. It appears, in fact, that in the ~sphai=ros~, in which everything is together and united, even the divine power thought of as supersensual is brought to a close. In the world-state of multiplicity caused by ~nei=kos~ divinity seems to be regarded as separate from the elements and the forces. "Furious conflict" (115, 14) then attacks even the divinity and divides it against itself; hence the origin of individual ~dai/mones~ as a self-caused division of the divine, a desertion from the One ~thei=on~--the individual ~dai/mones~ are ~phuga/des, theo/then~ (115, 13). These individual ~dai/mones~ are entangled in the world from its origin until at last, having become purified, they rise again to the heights of divinity; and when all individuality is again fused into one by ~phili/a~ they return once more into the universal divinity in order with it to enter into the ~sphai=ros~.--Thus we may perhaps reconstruct the Empedoklean fantasy. His lines do not supply sufficient evidence for the complete reconstruction of his picture of the perpetually recurring process. We should naturally expect a certain obscurity to cling to this attempt to fuse together physiology and theology.]

[100\11: Lucr. iii, 370-3.]

[101\11: All that is essential on the subject of Demokritos' doctrine of the soul is to be found in Arist., An. i, 2, p. 403b, 31-404a, 16; 405a., 7-13; i, 3, p. 406b, 15-22; Resp. iv, p. 471b, 30-472a, 17.--The air is full of the particles which Demokritos calls ~nou=s~ and ~psuchê/~: Resp. 472a, 6-8 [Vors. ii, 36]. The atoms hovering in the air become visible as "motes in the sunbeam"; of these some are the soul-atoms (this must be the meaning of An. 404A, 3 ff.; Iamb. ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 384, 15 W., is only drawing upon Arist.). This is a modification of the opinion held by the Pythagoreans (mentioned also by Arist. 404a, 16 ff.) that the motes in the sunbeam are "souls" (see above, chap. x, n. 34). Inhalation of the world-stuff as a condition of life in the individual is imitated from Herakleitos (see S.E., M. vii, 129).]

[102\11: The soul acc. to Dem. ~ekbai/nei me\n tou= sô/matos, en de\ tô=| ekbai/nein diaphorei=tai kai\ diaskeda/nnutai~, Iamb. ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 384, 16 f. W.] {408}

[103\11: Dem. ~phthartê\n (ei=nai tê\n psuchê\n) tô=| sô/mati sundiaphtheirome/nên~, Dox. 393a, 8 [Vors. A 109]. Since the disruption of the soul-atoms is not effected at a single blow death may, in consequence, sometimes be only apparent; i.e. when many but not all the soul-particles have escaped. For this reason also, with the possible re-assemblage of the soul-atoms, ~anabiô/seis~ of the apparently dead may occur. Cases of this kind seem to have been treated in the work ~peri\ tô=n en Ha/idou~: see Procl., _in _Rp.__ ii, 113, 6 Kr.; D.L. ix, 46; it is counted among the most famous, or at least the most popular of Dem.'s writings in the anecdote ap. Ath. 168 B; cf. [Hp.] Ep. 10, 3, p. 291 Hch. [ix, 322 Lit.]; Vors. 55 C, 2. This view of the retention of vitality, of course, only applies to the period immediately following the (apparent) death (it is fairly correctly represented by [Plu.] Plac. Ph. 4, 4, 4 [Dox. 390], it was probably attributed to Dem. on account of a similar observation made by Parmenides; see above, p. 373). Nevertheless, out of it grew up the assertion, which was then attributed to Dem., that in fact ~ta\ nekra\ tô=n sôma/tôn aistha/netai~: e.g. Alex. Aph. in Arist., Top. 21, 21; [Vors. ii, 38, 8]; Stob., Ecl. i, p. 477, 18 W. In the case, at least, of those that are really "dead", i.e. of bodies that have been deserted by all the soul-atoms, Dem. certainly never taught the presence of ~ai/sthêsis~: against the vulgarization of his opinions that would attribute such a view as this to him (as Epicurus himself did) the Democritici spoken of by Cic. (TD. i, 82) made their protest.--The work ~peri\ tô=n en Ha/idou~ can certainly not have confined itself to considerations of a purely physical nature; otherwise Thrasyllos (D.L. ix, 46) could not have classified it among the ~êthika\ bibli/a~ of Dem. [Vors. ii, 19]. It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what from Dem.'s point of view there could have been to say about "the things in the Underworld". It is hardly possible to suppose (as Mullach, Dem. fr., pp. 117-18, and Heyne do) that Dem. would think himself obliged either to answer or to parody the fabulous inventions of the poets about the realm of shadows. It is difficult to be certain that Dem. was really the author of the work: the forgery of later times was particularly fond of turning the most clear-headed of materialists into a mage and a jack-of-all-trades. (Dem.'s observations of the possibility of ~anabiou=n~ is in part at least the origin of the writing ~p. t. en ha/|dou~; it is also responsible for the anecdote that makes him promise to the Persian king that he will restore his dead wife to life again, etc.--a variation of an ingenious story widely spread both in the East and the West. See my Lecture on Greek Novel-writing: Verh. der Philologenvers. zu Rostock, 1875, p. 68 f.)--The "fragmenta moralia" of Dem. are with rare exceptions (e.g. Mull. frr. 7, 23, 48, 49, etc. = 146, 159, 147, 127 D.) wholesale fabrications of the feeblest kind. One of them, however (119 Mull., 297 D.), agrees at least with what Dem. may very well have said about the punishments in Hell (though in rather different words--he was incapable of quite such a monstrosity as ~muthoplaste/ontes~, which sounds very late Greek. Vain efforts have been made to justify this ~muthoplaste/ô~ by reference to the older ~muthopla/stês~. But ~muthopoio/s, odophu/lax, arguroko/pos~, etc., are also old, and it is no secret that verbs derived by further extension from such composite verbal nouns are mostly late formations: thus ~muthopoie/ô, odophulake/ô, argurokope/ô~, and again ~petrobole/ô, hierophante/ô, teknoktone/ô~, etc.). In another of these falsa no echo even of Dem.'s thought is to be found: fr. moral. 1 Mull. [171 D.] ~psuchê\ oikêtê/rion dai/monos~.]

[104\11: Dem., whose inquiries set out from the study of inorganic nature, {409} was led to predicate a mechanical obedience to law in organic nature as well. Anaxagoras starting from the study of organic nature and in particular of man, its highest development, derived from that study the concept of purpose--purpose consciously undertaken and carried out--and this idea affected his outlook upon the whole of nature, including inorganic nature. This teleological system, regarded as of universal application, is made by him to depend on a Being modelled upon the human mind, the only source, in fact, from which he could have derived his experience of action carried out in accordance with pre-arranged purpose.]

[105\11: Cf. here and on what follows, Heinze, Ber. d. Sächs. Ges. d. Wiss. 1890, pp. 1 ff.]

[106\11: ~nou=s~ must be omniscient if it ~gnô/mên peri\ panto\s i/schei~ (fr. 6 M. = 12 D.). It has organized (~dieko/smêse~) not only what was and is but also what is to be: frr. 6, 12 [12, 14 D.].]

[107\11: Arist., Ph. 256b. 24 ff.]

[108\11: ~ho ga\r nou=s~ (of Anaxag.) ~hei=s~: Arist., Metaph. 1069b, 31. On the other hand, ~chrê/mata a/peira plê=thos~: Anaxag. fr. 1.]

[109\11: ~Anaxago/ras phêsi to\n nou=n koino\n outhe\n outheni\ tô=n a/llôn e/chein~. Arist., An. i, 2, p. 405b, 19 ff.; cf. iii, 4, p. 429b, 23 f.]

[110\11: Anaxag. fr. 6 [12]: ~ta\ me\n a/lla <pa/nta> panto\s moi=ran mete/chei, no/os de/ esti a/peiron kai\ autokrate\s kai\ me/miktai oudeni\ chrê/mati, alla\ mou=nos auto\s eph, heôutou= esti. (a/peiron~ does not seem to supply the required opposition to what proceeds: ? ~haplo/on~. Anaxag. used the word of ~nou=s~ acc. to Arist., An. 405a, 16; 429b, 23. Zeller also suggests ~haplo/on~, Archiv f. G. d. Philos. v, 441.)]

[111\11: ~ho/sa psuchê\n e/chei, kai\ ta\ me/zô kai\ ta\ ela/ssô, pa/ntôn no/os krate/ei; kai\ tê=s perichôrê/sios tê=s sumpa/sês no/os ekra/têse, ô/ste perichôrê=sai tê\n archê/n~, fr. 6 [12]. This ~kratei=n~ at the beginning of the ~perichô/rêsis~ cannot at any rate take place by the inter-mixture of ~nou=s~ in the ~spe/rmata~ or by the entry of ~nou=s~ into these. Because ~nou=s~ is both ~apathê/s~ and ~amigê/s~s, it ~kratoi/ê a\n amigê\s ô/n~, Arist., Ph. 256b, 27; cf. 429a, 18. Does this also apply to ~nou=s~ when it ~tô=n psuchê\n echo/ntôn krate/ei~? And yet in this case it appears to be divided, as ~mei/zôn~ or ~ela/ttôn~ in each case, in the ~zô=|a~.--No one can help being reminded here of the insoluble aporiai raised in Aristotle's own doctrine of the active ~nou=s~ which, in this case too, is ~apathê/s, amigê/s, chôristo/s~ from the body; is also deprived of all attributes of individuality (which reside entirely in the lower psychical powers) and thus appears as a common divine spirit. And yet it is said to be a ~mo/rion tê=s psuchê=s~, present ~en tê=| psuchê=|~, dwelling inside the body yet having nothing in common with it, and in any case is thought of as an individual mind. In the case of Anaxagoras the same aporiai apply also to the nourishing, feeling, desiring, and moving soul (as it is called by Arist.); for all the "parts" of the soul are included almost indistinguishably by him under the conception of ~nou=s~.--The difficulty of reconciling the unity and inward continuity of the spiritual (immaterial, that cannot be thought of as divided)--with its individuation and distribution into the multiplicity of souls, is one which repeatedly occurs in Greek philosophy.]

[112\11: ~dia\ pa/ntôn io/nta~, Pl., Crat. 413 C.]

[113\11: ~en panti\ panto\s moi=ra e/nesti plê\n no/ou; e/sti hoi=si de\ kai\ no/os e/ni~, fr. 5 [11].]

[114\11: ~no/os de\ pa=s ho/moio/s esti kai\ ho me/zôn kai\ ho ela/ssôn~, fr. 6 [12].]

[115\11: Arist., An. i, 2, p. 404b, 1-7: Anaxag. often gives ~to\n nou=n~ as ~to\ ai/tion tou= kalô=s kai\ orthô=s; hete/rôthi de\~ (he says) ~tou=ton ei=nai tê\n psuchê/n; en ha/pasi ga\r hupa/rchein auto\n toi=s zô/|ois, kai\ mega/lois kai\ mikroi=s {410} kai\ timi/ois kai\ atimote/rois~ (in which case the ~nou=s~ that dwells within all the ~zô=|a~ cannot be any longer regarded as ~ho kata\ phro/nêsin lego/menos nou=s~). Anaxag. had expressed himself indistinctly: ~hê=tton diasaphei= peri\ autôn~ (i.e, the relation between ~nou=s~ and ~psuchê/~). Cf. 405a, 13 f. In the sense of the words as used by Anaxagoras ~nou=s~ and ~psuchê/~ were simply identified by Plato: Crat. 400 A.]

[116\11: D.L. ii, 8 [Vors. 375]. Acc. to Anaxag. the moon has ~oikê/seis (alla\ kai\ lo/phous kai\ pha/raggas~). Fr. 10 [4] probably refers to the men and other ~zô=|a~ in the moon (to whom yet another moon gives light). Anaxag. ~tê\n selê/nên gê=n phêsi\n ei=nai~ (i.e. an inhabitable heavenly body like the earth), Pl., Ap. 26 D; cf. Hippol., R.H. i, 8, 10, p. 22, 40 D.-S.--We are reminded of the Orphico-Pythagorean fantasies about life on the moon (see above, chap. x, n. 76).]

[117\11: Anaxag. counted the plants as ~zô=|a~ and ascribed emotions to them: ~hê/desthai kai\ lupei=sthai~ [Arist.] Plant. 815a, 18. Like Plato and Demokritos Anaxag. also regarded plants as ~zô=|a e/ggeia~: Plu., QN. 1, 911 D.]

[118\11: In spite of its entry into ~chrê/mata, nou=s~ is yet said to remain "unmixed" and unaffected by them: ~autokra/tora ga\r auto\n o/nta kai\ oudeni\ memigme/non pa/nta phêsi\n auto\n kosmei=n ta\ pra/gmata dia\ pa/ntôn io/nta~, Pl., Crat. 413 C. We thus have at the same time ~dia\ pa/ntôn io/nta~ and denial of mixture which is reiterated in stronger and stronger language. Thus ~nou=s~ even so remains still ~eph' heôutou= (ei mê\ ga\r eph' heôutou ê=n, a/llô| te/ô| eme/mikto a/n; metei=che de\ a\n hapa/ntôn chrêma/tôn ei eme/mikto/ teô|; en panti\ ga\r panto\s moi=ra he/nesti ktl.~ So perhaps we should read fr. 6 [12] restoring a completed syllogism. In the traditional text the clause ~ei eme/mikto/ teô|~ is superfluous and in the way). It takes no particle of the others into itself.]

[119\11: [Plu.] Plac. Phil. 5, 25, 2 (Aët., Dox. 437; Vors. 397, 18), in the chap. ~pote/rou esti\n hu/pnos kai\ tha/natos psuchê=s ê\ sô/matos~; Anaxag. taught: ~ei=nai de\ kai\ psuchê=s tha/naton to\n diachôrismo/n~. Nothing else can be meant by the words--the theme of the chapter alone shows it--than: the death of the soul (as well as of the body) occurs with its separation (from the body). ~to\n diachôrismo/n~ is subject and ~ei=nai tê=s psuchê=s tha/naton~ predicate of the sentence (not the other way round as Siebeck seems to think: Ges. d. Psychol. i, 285). The violent alteration proposed by Wyttenbach (de immort. animi, **Opusc. ii, 597 f.) has not the smallest justification: ~ei=nai de\ kai\ to\n tha/naton psuchê=s diachôrismo\n kai\ sô/matos~. There could have been no reason at all in appealing specially to Anaxagoras for a confirmation of the popular conception of death (it would be nothing more). Further, in this particular connexion such a definition of death is quite out of place; since the theme of the chap. is only to ask the question whether death also affects the soul, not what it is. ~psuchê/~ here must mean the individual soul, not the ~nou=s~ which is the basis of the individual souls. Anaxag. made the individual soul perish at death--so much is certain. It must be admitted that we cannot say for certain whether the Placita are referring to an actual utterance of Anaxag. or are only drawing conclusions from his teaching.]

[120\11: fr. 17 [17].]

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