Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks

by Erwin Rohde

NOTES TO CHAPTER XI

[1] ψυχή = “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?). ψυχή = “life” in the proverbial phrase περὶ ψυχῆς τρεχεῖν (see Wessel. and Valck. on Hdt. vii, 57; Jacobs on Ach. Tat., p. 896). ψυχή frequently = “life” in the idiom of the Attic orators (see Meuss, Jahrb. f. Philol. 1889, p. 803).

[2] 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 θυμός, the highest and most general of the powers of life dwelling within the visible and living man, in the sense of ψυχή, 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 θυμός (see above, chap. i, [n. 57]) is active during the man’s lifetime, is enclosed in the midriff (ἐν φρεσὶ θυμὸς) and when that is overtaken by death is itself overwhelmed (Ψ 104): on the arrival of death it leaves the body and perishes—while the ψυχή flies away intact. The distinction is clearly maintained, e.g. in λ 220 f.: “fire destroys the body” ἐπεί κεν πρῶτα λίπῃ λεύκ’ ὀστέα θυμός, ψυχὴ δ’ ἠύτ’ ὄνειρος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται. θυμός and ψυχή therefore leave the body of the slain man simultaneously (θυμοῦ καὶ ψυχῆς κεκαδών Λ 334, φ 154); but in very different ways. The relation between them becomes, however, interchangeability in the single case when it is said of the θυμός that it in death will enter ἀπὸ μέλέων δόμον Ἄιδος εἴσω—Η 131; in reality this could only be said of that very different being, the ψυχή. (When a fainting-fit has passed over we do indeed hear, not that the ψυχή—though this it was that had left the man: see above, chap. i, [n. 8]—but that ἐς φρένα θυμὸς ἀγέρθη, X 475, ε 458, ω 349. This, however, is not a case of θυμός instead of ψυχή, but θυμός is merely an abbreviated form of the whole statement which would be in full: both θυμός and ψυχή have now returned into the man; cf. Ε 696. It is a kind of synecdoche.) In the line Η 131 we really, then, do have θυμός instead of ψυχή 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 ψυχή used in the sense θυμός (νόος, μένος, ἠτορ, 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 ψυχή 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 ψυχή, 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 ψυχή 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, ψυχή always continued to be the proper word for this sense even in popular language. (An extremely rare example of θυμός in this sense, comparable with Η 131, is [Arist.] Pepl. 61 Bgk.; θυμόν . . . αἰθὴρ λαμπρὸς ἔχει. In the corresponding epigram, Epigr. Gr. 41, we have ψυχήν.)

[3] ἔνιοι, among them Choirilos of Samos: D.L. i, 24 (from Favorinus): Vors.⁴, i, p. 1, 21.

[4] Arist., An. 1, 2, p. 405a, 20 f. “Aristotle and Hippias” ap. D.L. i, 24; Vors., p. 2, 1. τὰ φυτὰ ἔμψυχα ζῷα, Dox. 438a, 6, b, 1.

[5] Metaphorical language: Θαλῆς ᾠήθη πάντα πλήρη θεῶν εἶναι, Arist., An. 1, 5, p. 411a, 8. τὸν κόσμον (ἔμψυχον καὶ) δαιμόνων πλήρη, D.L. i, 27; Dox. 301b, 2; Vors. p. 2, 20. Pl., Lg. 899 B, is an allusion to the θεῶν πλήρη πάντα (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: εἶναι καὶ ἐνταῦθα θεούς (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: πάντα ψυχῶν εἶναι καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη, 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] Arist., Phys. 3, 4, p. 203b, 10–14. Dox. 559, 18. Vors., p. 17, 35.

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

[9] Anaxim. calls τὸν ἀέρα θεόν, 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 τὸ ἄπειρον, τὸ θεῖον (Arist., Phys. 3, 4, p. 203b, 13; Vors., p. 17, 35).

[10] ἓν πάντα εἶναι, fr. 1 (Byw.); 50 (Diels).

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

[13] S.E., M. 7, 127, 129–31. Vors. 75, 14 ff.

[14] ὁ θεός is both the Universal Fire, that transforms itself into the world, and at the same time its power (and λόγος: frr. 2 [1], 92 [2]): fr. 36 (67). τὸ πῦρ θεὸν ὑπείληφεν, Herakl.: Cl. Al., Prot. 5, 64, p. 55 P. [Vors. n. 8 A 8]. πῦρ νοερὸν τὸν θεὸν (εἶναι ἐφθέγξατο), Hippol., RH. i, 4, p. 10, 57 Mill.—“Zeus” as metaphor for this universal fire (hence οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει), the “only wise one”; fr. 65 (32).

[15] ἡ ἐπιξενωθεῖσα τοῖς ἡμετέροις σώμασιν ἀπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος μοῖρα (περιέχ. = the universal Fire) is said of the soul and its reasoning faculty ap. S.E., M. vii, 130; Vors., p. 75, 19; (cf. ἀπορροὴ καὶ μοῖρα ἐκ τοῦ φρονοῦντος, Plu., Is. et O. 77, p. 382 B). This is fully Herakleitean in thought if not also in actual form of expression.

[16] 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 ὁ νέος die εἰς τὸν ἀκμάζοντα κτλ., but ὁ χθὲς (ἄνθρωπος) εἰς τὸν σήμερον τέθνηκεν, ὁ δὲ σήμερον εἰς τὸν [392] αὔριον ἀποθνήσκει. μένει δ’ οὐδείς, οὐδ’ ἔστιν εἷς, ἀλλα γιγνόμεθα πολλοὶ περὶ ἓν φάντασμα κτλ.; 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] The apparently contradictory statement ψυχῇσι τέρψιν, μὴ θάνατον, ὑγρῇσι γενέσθαι 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] 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] 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 (μεταβάλλον ἀναπαύεται, κάματός ἐστι τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀεὶ μοχθεῖν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι) 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 σαφῆ ἡμῖν ποιῆσαι τὸν λόγον. Others read into certain Herakleitean utterances the Orphic doctrine of σῶμα—σῆμα, 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. ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάνατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες (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: θεοὶ θνητοί, ἄνθρωποι ἀθάνατοι, 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 τὸ θεῖον (also called ὁ θεός fr. 36 = 67; cf. fr. 61 = 102) as individual ἀθάνατοι, but he only means what he says in another place: ταὐτὸ τὸ ζῶν καὶ τεθνηκός (fr. 78 = 88), βίος and θάνατος 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 ἀνθρώπους μένει τελευτήσαντας ἅσσα οὐκ ἔλπονται (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 ἐκπύρωσις (in which Herakl. actually speaks of a κρίσις by fire: fr. 26 = 66) as a διὰ πυρὸς κάθαρσις τῶν κακῶς βεβιωκότων. 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) οὕτι γινώσκων θεοὺς οὐδ’ ἥρωας οἵτινές εἰσιν simply shows that Hkl. did not share the popular ideas about gods and Heroes, but supplies nothing positive.—In fr. 38 = 98 we have αἱ ψυχαὶ ὀσμῶνται καθ’ ᾅδην. Are we really to deduce from this that Herakl. believed in a regular Homeric Hades? ᾅδης is a metaphorical expression for the opposite of the life on earth (just as it is used metaphorically for the opp. of φάος by the Herakleitean [Hippocr.] de Victu, 1, 4, p. 632 Kühn = vi, 476 Lit.). For the souls ᾅδης means the ὅδος κάτω 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, (ὀσμῶνται is remarkable [394] but not to be altered. ὁσιοῦνται 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 ἀναθυμίασις of the fiery aether; cf. also S.E., M. ix, 73, following Poseidonios. This ἀναθυμιᾶν—and the becoming “fiery” again—is what Hkl. calls ὀσμᾶσθαι.)—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] e.g. by Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Heraklit, etc., p. 209, and frequently.

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

[22] ὡυτὸς Ἅιδης καὶ Διόνυσος 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 μυστήρια carried out ἀνιερωστί by men: fr. 125 = 14 (for the worshippers do not perceive the real meaning of the ceremonies).

[23] 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) . . . ἐξιοῦσαν (τὴν ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴν) εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ψυχὴν ἀναχωρεῖν πρὸς τὸ ὁμογενές. 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] Ἡράκλειτος ἠρεμίαν καὶ στάσιν ἐκ τῶν ὅλων ἀνῄρει· ἔστι γὰρ τοῦτο τῶν νεκρῶν. Dox., p. 320; Vors. 73, 10. στάσις and ἠρεμία 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] Parmenldes’ polemic against Herakleitos: l. 46 ff. Mull.; fr. 6, 4 ff. Diels; see Bernays, Rh. Mus. vii, 115 (cf. Diels, Parm. 68).

[26] Aristotle (acc. to S.E., M. x, 46; Vors. 142, 33 ff.) ἀφυσίκους αὐτοὺς κέκληκεν, ὅτι ἀρχὴ κινησεώς ἐστιν ἡ φύσις, ἣν ἀνεῖλον φάμενοι μηδὲν κινεῖσθαι.

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

[28] γεγενῆσθαι τὴν τῶν πάντων φύσιν ἐκ θερμοῦ καὶ ψυχροῦ καὶ ξηροῦ καὶ ὑγροῦ, λαμβανόντων εἰς ἄλληλα τὴν μετανολήν, καὶ ψυχὴν κρᾶμα ὑπάρχειν ἐκ τῶν προειρημένων κατὰ μηδενὸς τούτων ἐπικράτησιν, 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 θερμόν κτλ. The statement that the ψυχή arises from the equal mixture of the four qualities reminds us of Empedokles’ account of φρονεῖν (Vors. 218, 1 = 220, 23; Thphr., Sens. 10, 23). On the other side, Zeno takes over and applies to the ψυχή what the Pythagorean physician Alkmaion said about ὑγίεια (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 ἁρμονία 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] Simpl. ad Arist., Ph., p. 39 D.; Vors. 162, 11; cf. Diels, Parm. 109 f. (1897).

[30] 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: εἰς ἡσυχίαν προετράπη ὑπὸ Ἀμεινίου, D.L. ix, 21. Παρμενίδειος καὶ Πυθαγόρειος βίος 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. π. φιλοσόφων ap. D.L. ix, 23.

[31] φιλοσοφίαν δὲ πρῶτος ὠνόμασε Πυθαγόρας καὶ ἑαυτὸν φιλόσοφον: D.L., Proem. 12 (though the rest is from the fictitious dialogue of Herakl. Pont. see Cic., TD. v, 8–9).

[32] Pl., Rp. 600 AB.

[33] πολυμαθίη, ἱστορίη of Pythag.; Herakl. frr. 16, 17 = 40, 129. παντοίων τὰ μάλιστα σοφῶν ἐπιήρανος ἔργων 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] 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 οἱ δέ of D.L. viii, 54, thought) appears to be proved by l. 4 ff., which allude to a remarkable power of ἀνάμνησις which was certainly attributed by legend to Pythag., never to Parmenides.

[35] ψυχαί filling the whole air, not distinguished from δαίμονες and ἥρωες, 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 ἀθάνατος because it is eternally in motion like τὰ θεῖα πάντα, 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 ψυχαί 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 ἔοικε τοῖς ἀθανάτοις. 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 νοῦς of man came to him from an impersonal θεῖον, an all-pervading ἐν τῷ παντὶ φρόνησις, 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] ἐν φρουρᾷ, Pl., Phd. 62 B. This is traced back to Pythag. belief (though he misinterprets the meaning of the word φρουρά) 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 ἐν φρουρᾷ without mentioning the human soul: see Böckh, p. 151.) The comparison of life in the body to a φρουρά 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. διά τινας τιμωρίας the soul is enclosed in the body: Philolaos fr. 14 (23) appealing to παλαιοὶ θεολόγοι τε καὶ μάντιες (cf. Iamb., VP. 85, ἀγαθὸν οἱ πόνοι . . . ἐπὶ κολάσει γὰρ ἐλθόντας δεῖ κολασθῆναι).—Espinas in Arch. f. Ges. d. Philos. viii, 452, interprets the ἐν φρουρᾷ 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 φρουρά is ever used in the sense of σηκός or εἱρκτή.

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

[38] οἱ ἐν τῷ ταρτάρῷ terrified by thunder acc. to Pythag. belief: Arist., An. Po. 94b, 32 ff.; σύνοδοι τῶν τεθνεώτων in the depths of the earth, Ael., VH. iv, 17 (perhaps from Arist. π. τῶν Πυθαγορείων). Description of the condition of things in Hades given in the Pythagorean Κατάβασις εἰς ᾅδου. As in the case of the Orphics this purgation and punishment in the spirit-world must have belonged to the parts of the Πυθαγόρειοι μῦθοι that were quite seriously believed.

[39] ἐκριφθεῖσαν (out of the body) αὐτὴν (τὴν ψυχὴν) ἐπὶ γῆς πλάζεσθαι ἐν τῷ ἀέρι ὁμοίαν τῷ σώματι (being a complete εἴδωλον of the living): Alex. Polyh. ap. D.L. viii, 31.

[40] Arist., An. 1, 2, 4, p. 404a, 16 ff.; Vors. 357, 1; many called the ἐν τῷ ἀέρι ξύσματα themselves “souls”, others τὸ ταῦτα κινοῦν. 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] D.L. viii, 32; Vors⁴. i, p. xliv.

[42] 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 ἀποχὴ ἐμψύχων simply from the fact of Metamorphosis, and not at all from the ψυχῆς πνεῦμα which rules in all life; though this last is attributed to him by S.E.)

[43] See [Appendix x].

[44] According to the Pythagoreans τὸ δίκαιον is nothing else than τὸ ἀντιπεπονθός, i.e. ἃ τις ἐποίησε ταῦτ’ ἀντιπαθεῖν: 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 δράσαντι παθεῖν 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 τριγέρων μῦθος): 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] Πυθαγόρειος τρόπος τοῦ βίου, Pl., Rp. 600 B.

[46] ἀκολουθεῖν τῷ θεῷ, Iamb., VP. 137 (following Aristoxenos); Vors. 362, 32; ἕπου θεῷ Pythagoras ap. Stob., Ecl. ii, p. 49, 16 W. See Wyttenb. on Plu., Ser. Num. Vind. 550 D.

[47] 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 ἀνθρώπου ψυχή does not enter into the θύσιμα ζῷα in transmigration: Iamb., VP. 85; Vors. 359, 13); from eating fish, particularly τρίγλαι and μελάνουροι, 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 ἁγνεία 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 ἀκούσματα or σύμβολα 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] Efforts in a more positive direction may perhaps be seen in the practice of the musical form of κάθαρσις which Pythag. and the Pythagoreans used in accordance with an elaborate system: cf. Iamb., VP. 64 ff., 110 ff.; Sch. V. on X 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] Good formulation of Pythag. belief ap. Max. Tyr. 16, 2, i, 287 R.: Πυθαγόρας πρῶτος ἐν τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐτόλμησεν εἰπεῖν, ὅτι αὑτῷ τὸ μὲν σῶμα τεθνήξεται, ἡ δὲ ψυχὴ ἀναπτᾶσα οἰχήσεται ἀθανὴς καὶ ἀγήρως. καὶ γὰρ εἶναι αὐτὴν πρὶν ἥκειν δεῦρο. i.e. the life of the soul is not only endless but without beginning; the soul is immortal because it is timeless.

[50] The withdrawal of the soul from the κύκλος ἀνάγκης 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 βάκχοι 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 κόσμος situated above the οὐρανός): 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 (ἄγεσθαι τὰς καθαρὰς [ψυχὰς] ἐπὶ τὸν ὕψιστον “in altissimum locum” Cobet: but an ellipse of τόπον is hardly admissible. ὁ ὕψιστος = 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 ὕψιστος, expect πρὸς τ. ὕ. ad superiores circulos bene viventium animae, secundum philosophorum altam scientiam, Serv., A. vi, 127—should we then supply ἐπὶ τὸν ὕψιστον <κύκλον>? Or perh. ἐπὶ τὸ ὕψιστον?)—An escape of the souls after the expiry of their περίοδοι 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 ἐνσωμάτωσις—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 κύκλου λῆξαι; 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 ὅσιοι or the φιλόσοφοι 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] 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. Φερεκ.); 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 ψυχή 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 ἑτερήμερος—like the Dioscuri in Lacedaimonian legend (λ 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] 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 κρᾶσις and ἁρμονία 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 Ἁρμονίας τῆς Θηβαϊκῆς, 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 ἁρμονία τῶν τεσσάρων στοιχείων (Dox., p. 387), and indeed τῶν ἐν τῷ σώματι θερμῶν καὶ ψυχρῶν καὶ ὑγρῶν καὶ ξηρῶν, 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] See Pl., Phd. 86 CD. Pre-existence of the soul impossible if it is only an ἁρμονία of the body: 92 AB.

[54] 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] The division of the soul, or the δυνάμεις of the soul, into the λογικόν and the ἄλογον was made, before Plato, by Pythagoras—so we might have learnt, αὐτοῦ τοῦ Πυθαγόρου συγγράμματος οὐδενὸς εἰς ἡμᾶς σωζομένου, 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 π. φύσεως, fr. 13 Diels (Theol. Ar., p. 20, 35 A.), gives a division of the ἀρχαὶ τοῦ ζῴου τοῦ λογικοῦ, which depends upon the idea that the highest living organism contains within itself and makes use of all the lower organisms as well (νοῦς in the head, ἀνθρώπου ἀρχά—ψυχὰ καὶ αἴσθησις in the heart, ῴου ἀρχὰ—ῥίζωσις καὶ ἀνάφυσις in the navel, φυτοῦ ἀρχὰ—σπέρματος μεταβολά and γέννησις in the αἰδοῖον, ξυναπάντων ἀρχά). Then in the psychical region we have a division between the λογικόν [401] and the ἄλογον according to their nature and “seat” in man (λογικόν being made up of reasoning power, νοῦς, specific to man, and sense-perception, αἴσθησις, which also belongs to the other ζῷα, while the ἄλογον = ῥίζωσις καὶ ἀνάφυσις and resembles the αἴτιον τοῦ τρέφεσθαι καὶ αὔξεσθαι, or the φυτικόν, a part of the ἄλογον τῆς ψυχῆς in Arist., EN. 1, 13, p. 1102a, 32 ff.). This evidently represents an attempt at a division of the soul into λογικόν and ἄλογον, such as Poseidonios must have found carried out by other Pythagoreans. A clear distinction between φρονεῖν (ξυνιέναι) and αἰσθάνεσθαι 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 (νοεῖν) was only a σωματικόν τι ὥσπερ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι and to this extent ταὐτόν with it (Arist., An. 3, 3, p. 427a, 21). Alkmaion cannot, therefore, have made ξυνιέναι σωματικόν. 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 νοῦς. To this latter alone would divinity and immortality be ascribed, as in later philosophy (and thus Dox. 393a, 10, though unhistorically and prematurely, gives τὸ λογικὸν [τῆς ψυχῆς] ἄφθαρτον as a doctrine of “Pythagoras”).—It is certainly difficult to see how Philolaos’ doctrine of the distinction between the ἀνθρώπου ἀρχά, the νοῦς—an element of the soul belonging exclusively to men—and the ζῴου ἀρχά (confined to αἴσθησις and ψυχά, 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, πάντα τὰ γενόμενα ἔμψυχα are ὁμογενῆ (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 νοῦς (it is not merely that its efficacy is hindered in animals by the δυσκρασία τοῦ σώματος 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 ξυνιέναι to man alone seems not to have held the transmigration doctrine.

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

[57] 462 ff. fr. 111.

[58] 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 ἔχουσι δύναμιν ἀντιπαθῆ: Plu., Smp. 4, 2, 1, p. 664 C.—Other magic charms against hail—the χαλαζοφύλακες, Plu., Smp. 7, 2, 2, p. 700 F; Sen., NQ. 4b, 6.

[59] . . . ἐγὼ δ’ ὑμῖν θεὸς ἄμβροτος, οὐκέτι θνητός, πωλεῦμαι μετὰ πᾶσι τετιμένος κτλ. 400 f. (fr. 112, 4 f.).

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

[61] 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 (θάνατος ἄδηλος, 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. π. νόσων: 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. Ἡρακλ. Εὐθύφρονος; 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] See above, [chap. ii], and [p. 129].

[63] Cf. 113 ff.; fr. 9.

[64] σαρκῶν χιτών, 414, fr. 126.

[65] His treatment of the woman who seemed to be dead (ἄπνους, 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] γυίων πίστις is distinguished from νοεῖν in v, 57 (fr. 4, 13), and νόῳ δέρκεσθαι from δέρκεσθαι ὄμμασιν in 82 (fr. 17, 21); cf. οὔτ’ ἐπίδερκτα τάδ’ ἄνδρασιν οὔτ’ ἐπακουστά, οὔτε νόῳ περίληπτα, 42 f. (fr. 2, 7).—Elsewhere it is true that Emped. (who throughout avoids prosaic exactitude in the use of technical terms) uses νοῆσαι as simply = sense-perception following epic idiom: e.g. 56 (fr. 4, 12; but it is not quite correct to say that Emped. τὸ φρονεῖν καὶ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι ταὐτό φησι, as Arist. declares: An. 427a, 22).

[67] 378 ff.; fr. 109: γαίῃ μὲν γὰρ γαῖαν ὀπώπαμεν, etc. (ὁρᾶν is here used in its widest sense, εἶδος ἀντὶ γένους, and = αἰσθάνεσθαι. Thus, νόῳ δέρκεσθαι in 82 [17, 21] = αἰσθάνεσθαι, and very commonly words denoting one of the modes of perception are used instead of those of another εἶδος, or for the whole γένος of αἴσθησις. Lob., Rhemat. 334 ff.).

[68] 372 ff. Mull.; fr. 105: αἵματος ἐν πελάγεσσι . . . τῇ τε νόημα μάλιστα κυκλίσκεται ἀνθρώποισιν· αἷμα γὰρ ἀνθρώποις περικάρδιόν ἐστι νόημα.—The blood is the seat of τὸ φρονεῖν· ἐν τούτῳ γὰρ μάλιστα κεκρᾶσθαι τὰ στοιχεῖα, Thphr., Sens. 10, 23 f.

[69] A kind of συγγυμνασία τῶν αἰσθήσεων as the physician Asklepiades defines the idea of the ψυχή (Dox. 378a, 7).—It resembles what Arist. calls the πρῶτον αἰσθητήριον.—This function which Emped. calls φρονεῖν would probably be the ἑνοποιοῦν of the perceptions which Aristot. found wanting in Emp. (An. 409b, 30 ff.; 410a, 1–10; b, 10).

[70] τὸ νοεῖν is σωματικὸν ὥσπερ τὸ αἰσθάνεσθαι, Arist., An. 427a, 26.

[71] Arist., Metaph. 1009b, 17 ff.

[72] 298 Mull.; fr. 110, 10: πάντα γὰρ ἴσθι φρόνησιν ἔχειν καὶ νώματος αἷσαν. The πάντα must be understood quite literally; for it is the [403] elements in which the powers of perception inhere (ἕκαστον τῶν στοιχείων ψυχὴν εἶναι 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 φρόνησις and a “portion of mind” in them (though the statement that it is αἵμα that first produces φρόνησις will not square with this: Thphr., Sens. 23). Emped. attributed complete sensation and perception to plants, and even gave them νοῦς and γνῶσις (without blood?): [Arist.] Plant. 815a, 16 ff.; b, 16 f. That is why they, too, are capable of harbouring fallen daimones.

[73] Emped. himself does not use the word ψυχή 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 ψυχή precisely to these “somatic” intellectual faculties; thus Arist., An. 404b, 9 ff.; 409b, 23 ff.: αἷμα φησιν εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν, Gal., Hipp. et Pla. 2 = v, 283 K.; cf. Cic., TD. i, 19; Tert., An. 5.

[74] 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] ἄτης λειμών, 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 ἀτερπὴς χῶρος (fr. 121, 1) to which Emped. is cast down, the realm of Φόνος κτλ. (fr. 121) and the Ἄτης λειμών, all refer to the earth, ὁ ἔγγειος τόπος, τὰ περὶ γῆν, 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, αὐχμηραί τε νόσοι καὶ σήψιες ἔργα τε ῥευστά immediately with fr. 121, 2, and both lines acc. to him apply to τὰ ὑπὸ τὴν σελήνην; 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 ἔργα ῥευστά 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 σκὼρ ἀείνων, 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 ἀσυνήθης, ἀτερπὴς χῶρος (fr. 118, 121, 1, the latter a parodying reminiscence of λ 94)—an ἄντρον ὑπόστεγον (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 ζωὴ ἄβιος (fr. 2, 3)—are as if dead: [404] frr. 125 (?), 35, 14. The Orphic idea of the σῶμα—σῆμα (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] 3 Mull.; fr. 115, 3: εὖτέ τις (τῶν δαιμόνων) ἀμπλακίῃσι φόνῳ φίλα γυῖα μιηνῃ. He means βρῶσις σαρκῶν καὶ ἀλληλοφαγία 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 Φυσικά—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 Καθαρμοί): 420 ff. M; fr. 128, 3 ff.

[77] 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: τοῦ [sc. Στυγὸς ὕδατος] στυγνὸν πῶμα καὶ ἀθανάτῳ: 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 ᾅδης—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] 30,000 ὧραι: 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 μέγας ἐνιαυτός, 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 ἀπενιαυτισμός.

[79] fr. 121 (22 ff.).

[80] ἀργαλέας βιοίτοιο κελεύθους . . . fr. 115, 8 (8).

[81] Emp. does not even use the word ψυχή of these δαίμονες confined within corporeality. They are so named, however, regularly and without qualification by the later authors who quote verses from the Prooimion of the Φυσικά, Plutarch, Plotinos, Hippolytos, etc.

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

[83] 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 τὸ κύκλου λῆξαι (until the complete ascendency of φιλία). 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] As we may paraphrase—though indeed here, too, only with reservations—the κακότης and κακότητες of Emp. fr. 145 (454 f.).

[85] 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 πάντων νόμιμον which forbids κτείνειν τὸ ἔμψυχον.—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 σκίλλα (see [App. v]) and ῥάμνος (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 προοίμιον εἰς Ἀπόλλωνα: the exalted conception of a divinity that is pure φρὴν ἱερή in abstraction from all sense-perception, elaborated by Emp. in frr. 133–4, was regarded by him as applying particularly περὶ Ἀπόλλωνος (Amm. in Arist., Interpr. 249, 1 ed. Brand. 135a, 23).

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

[87] fr. 146 (457) πρόμοι 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 πάσης ἀρχῆς ἀλλότριος: 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 πρόμοι; it is plain that in the enumeration of those who were εἰς τέλος born as μάντεις τε καὶ ὑμνοπόλοι καὶ ἰητροί, καὶ πρόμοι ἀνθρώποισιν ἐπιχθονίοισι πέλονται, 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] frr. 146–7 (459 ff.) ἔνθεν ἀναβλαστοῦσι θεοὶ τιμῇσι φέριστοι, ἀθανάτοις ἄλλοισιν ὁμέστιοι, ἔν τε τραπέζαις (read ἔν τε τράπεζοι—a tmesis, = ἐντράπεζοί τε)· εὔνιες ἀνδρείων ἀχέων, ἀπόκηροι, ἀτειρεῖς.

[89] Emped. perhaps described himself as “god” also in fr. 23, 11 (144) ἀλλὰ τορῶς τοῦτ’ ἴσθι (he is speaking to Pausanias), θεοῦ πάρα μῦθον ἀκούσας. See Bidez, Biogr. d’Emp., p. 166 (1894)—unless these words would be better taken as an abbreviated comparison (with omission of ὡς): “as certainly as if you had received these words from a god.”

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

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

[92] fr. 17, 30 (92).

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

[94] As late again as Plotinos, who speaks of the διττὸν ἐν ἡμῖν: the σῶμα which is a θηρίον ζῳωθέν and the ἀληθὴς ἄνθρωπος distinct from it, etc. (1, 1, 10; 6, 7, 5).

[95] 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 (φρονεῖν ἀλλοῖα, fr. 108): Cael. Aur., Morb. Chron. i, 5, p. 25 Sich. = Vors. 223. A special ἐνθουσιαστικόν in the soul as its θειότατον (part): Stoics (and Plato) acc. to Dox. 639, 25. A special organ of the soul which effects the union with the divine, being the ἄνθος τῆς οὐσίας ἡμῶν, is mentioned in Proclus (Zeller, Phil. d. Griech.² iii, 2, 738). [406]

[96] τὸ ὅλον, the whole reality of Being and Becoming in the world, cannot be comprehended by man through his senses nor even with νοῦς: fr. 2 (36-43). But Empedokles has in his own persuasion grasped it; he is situated σοφίης ἐπ’ ἄκροισι (fr. 4, 8), αὐτὴν ἐπαγγέλλεται δώσειν τὴν ἀλήθειαν (Procl., in Ti. 106 E). Proclus declares that the words σοφίης ἐπ’ ἄκροισι—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 νοῦς? At any rate, the ψυχοπομποὶ δυνάμεις (Porph., Antr. 8), who conducted his soul-daimon out of the region of the gods, say to the soul (fr. 2, 8): σὺ δ’ οὖν ἐπεὶ ὧδ’ ἐλιάσθης (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)—πεύσεαι οὐ πλέον ἠὲ βροτείη μῆτις ὅπωπεν (thus with Panzerbieter, for ὄρωρε). According to this we must suppose that his more profound knowledge (insight into the μῖξίς τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων 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 ψυχή in the older sense) that is buried in the body; and Emp. presumably owes it to an ἀνάμνησις of his earlier life (a faculty that is only rarely active). From what other source could he have got his knowledge of his previous ἐνσωματώσεις (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—ἄλλοι δ’ ἦσαν οἱ λέγοντες—of S.E., M. vii, 122—have rightly understood him).—The belief in a miraculous power of ἀνάμνησις 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: ὅπποτε γὰρ πάσῃσι . . . fr. 129 [430 ff.]. See [Append. x]. The eager development—indeed, the cult—of the μνήμη 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 ἐνσωματώσεις of the soul it is the undying μνήμη that alone preserves the unity of personality which (as the ψυχή) 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 ἀνάμνησις 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] φιλία is for him (not indeed in his words but in his intention as Arist. understood him): αἰτία τῶν ἀγαθῶν, τὸ δὲ νεῖκος τῶν κακῶν, Metaph. 985a, 4 ff.; 1075b, 1–7. Hence the ἠπιόφρων Φιλότητος ἀμεμφέος ἄμβροτος ὁρμή (fr. 35) is contrasted with Νεῖκος μαινόμενον (115, 14), οὐλόμενον (17, 19), λυγρόν (109). The σφαῖρος in which only φιλία prevails while νεῖκος is completely vanquished, is called μονίῃ περιήργεϊ γαίων, fr. 27, 28. [407]

[98] θεοὶ δολιχαίωνες (frr. 20, 12, 23, 8). Exactly the same is said of the δαίμονες οἵτε βίοιο λελόγχασι μακραίωνος (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 θεὸς ἄμβροτος οὐκ ἔτι θνητός, 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 ἀπόκηροι, ἄτειρεῖς (147); the gods are only called ἄθανατοι by traditional convention). Plutarch also, Def. Or. 16, p. 418 E, distinctly states that the δαίμονες of Emp. eventually die. That the gods (but not τὸ θεῖον itself) were liable to extinction had already been the opinion of Anaximander and Anaximenes. Acc. to Emp. the individual δαίμονες would be reabsorbed into the universal divinity, the σφαῖρος (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] Emp., frr. 133, 134 (389–96), speaks of a supersensual divinity that is entirely φρὴν ἱερή: he gives to this divinity the name of Apollo, but the description is said to apply περὶ παντὸς τοῦ θείου. Hipp., RH. vii, 29, p. 386 D.-S., refers the description to the σφαῖρος. The σφαῖρος, in which no νεῖκος is left was called by Emp. ὁ θεός, ὁ εὐδαιμονέστατος θεός (Arist., An. i, 5, 410b, 5–6; Metaph. ii, 4, 1000b, 3). It is, however, certain that Emp. would not have regarded the σφαῖρος as pure φρὴν ἱερή. It appears, in fact, that in the σφαῖρος, 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 νεῖκος 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 δαίμονες as a self-caused division of the divine, a desertion from the One θεῖον—the individual δαίμονες are φυγάδες, θεόθεν (115, 13). These individual δαίμονες 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 φιλία they return once more into the universal divinity in order with it to enter into the σφαῖρος.—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] Lucr. iii, 370–3.

[101] 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 νοῦς and ψυχή: 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] The soul acc. to Dem. ἐκβαίνει μὲν τοῦ σώματος, ἐν δὲ τῷ ἐκβαίνειν διαφορεῖται καὶ διασκεδάννυται, Iamb. ap. Stob., Ecl. i, p. 384, 16 f. W. [408]

[103] Dem. φθαρτὴν (εἶναι τὴν ψυχὴν) τῷ σώματι συνδιαφθειρομένην, 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, ἀναβιώσεις of the apparently dead may occur. Cases of this kind seem to have been treated in the work περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου: 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 τὰ νεκρὰ τῶν σωμάτων αἰσθάνεται: 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 αἴσθησις: 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 περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἅιδου 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 ἠθικὰ βιβλία 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 ἀναβιοῦν is in part at least the origin of the writing π. τ. ἐν ᾅδου; 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 μυθοπλαστέοντες, which sounds very late Greek. Vain efforts have been made to justify this μυθοπλαστέω by reference to the older μυθοπλάστης. But μυθοποιός, ὀδοφύλαξ, ἀργυροκόπος, 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 μυθοποιέω, ὀδοφυλακέω, ἀργυροκοπέω, and again πετροβολέω, ἱεροφαντέω, τεκνοκτονέω, etc.). In another of these falsa no echo even of Dem.’s thought is to be found: fr. moral. 1 Mull. [171 D.] ψυχὴ οἰκητήριον δαίμονος.

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

[106] νοῦς must be omniscient if it γνώμην περὶ παντὸς ἴσχει (fr. 6 M. = 12 D.). It has organized (διεκόσμησε) not only what was and is but also what is to be: frr. 6, 12 [12, 14 D.].

[107] Arist., Ph. 256b. 24 ff.

[108] ὁ γὰρ νοῦς (of Anaxag.) εἷς: Arist., Metaph. 1069b, 31. On the other hand, χρήματα ἄπειρα πλῆθος: Anaxag. fr. 1.

[109] Ἀναξαγόρας φησι τὸν νοῦν κοινὸν οὐθὲν οὐθενὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἔχειν. Arist., An. i, 2, p. 405b, 19 ff.; cf. iii, 4, p. 429b, 23 f.

[110] Anaxag. fr. 6 [12]: τὰ μὲν ἄλλα <πάντα> παντὸς μοῖραν μετέχει, νόος δέ ἐστι ἄπειρον καὶ αὐτοκρατὲς καὶ μέμικται οὐδενὶ χρήματι, ἀλλὰ μοῦνος αὐτὸς ἐφ, ἑωυτοῦ ἐστι. (ἄπειρον does not seem to supply the required opposition to what proceeds: ? ἁπλόον. Anaxag. used the word of νοῦς acc. to Arist., An. 405a, 16; 429b, 23. Zeller also suggests ἁπλόον, Archiv f. G. d. Philos. v, 441.)

[111] ὅσα ψυχὴν ἔχει, καὶ τὰ μέζω καὶ τὰ ἐλάσσω, πάντων νόος κρατέει· καὶ τῆς περιχωρήσιος τῆς συμπάσης νόος ἐκράτησε, ὤστε περιχωρῆσαι τὴν ἀρχήν, fr. 6 [12]. This κρατεῖν at the beginning of the εριχώρησις cannot at any rate take place by the inter-mixture of νοῦς in the σπέρματα or by the entry of νοῦς into these. Because νοῦς is both ἀπαθής and ἀμιγήςs, it κρατοίη ἂν ἀμιγὴς ὤν, Arist., Ph. 256b, 27; cf. 429a, 18. Does this also apply to νοῦς when it τῶν ψυχὴν ἐχόντων κρατέει? And yet in this case it appears to be divided, as μείζωνn or ἐλάττων in each case, in the ζῷα.—No one can help being reminded here of the insoluble aporiai raised in Aristotle’s own doctrine of the active νοῦς which, in this case too, is ἀπαθής, ἀμιγής, χωριστός 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 μόριον τῆς ψυχῆς, present ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, 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 νοῦς.—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] διὰ πάντων ἰόντα, Pl., Crat. 413 C.

[113] ἐν παντὶ παντὸς μοῖρα ἔνεστι πλὴν νόου· ἔστι οἷσι δὲ καὶ νόος ἔνι, fr. 5 [11].

[114] νόος δὲ πᾶς ὅμοιός ἐστι καὶ ὁ μέζων καὶ ὁ ἐλάσσων, fr. 6 [12].

[115] Arist., An. i, 2, p. 404b, 1–7: Anaxag. often gives τὸν νοῦν as τὸ αἴτιον τοῦ καλῶς καὶ ὀρθῶς· ἑτέρωθι δὲ (he says) τοῦτον εἶναι τὴν ψυχήν· ἐν ἅπασι γὰρ ὑπάρχειν αὐτὸν τοῖς ζῴοις, καὶ μεγάλοις καὶ μικροῖς [410] καὶ τιμίοις καὶ ἀτιμοτέροις (in which case the νοῦς that dwells within all the ζῷα cannot be any longer regarded as ὁ κατὰ φρόνησιν λεγόμενος νοῦς). Anaxag. had expressed himself indistinctly: ἧττον διασαφεῖ περὶ αὐτων (i.e, the relation between νοῦς and ψυχή). Cf. 405a, 13 f. In the sense of the words as used by Anaxagoras νοῦς and ψυχή were simply identified by Plato: Crat. 400 A.

[116] D.L. ii, 8 [Vors. 375]. Acc. to Anaxag. the moon has οἰκήσεις (ἀλλὰ καὶ λόφους καὶ φάραγγας). Fr. 10 [4] probably refers to the men and other ζῷα in the moon (to whom yet another moon gives light). Anaxag. τὴν σελήνην γῆν φησὶν εἶναι (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] Anaxag. counted the plants as ζῷα and ascribed emotions to them: ἥδεσθαι καὶ λυπεῖσθαι [Arist.] Plant. 815a, 18. Like Plato and Demokritos Anaxag. also regarded plants as ζῷα ἔγγεια: Plu., QN. 1, 911 D.

[118] In spite of its entry into χρήματα, νοῦς is yet said to remain “unmixed” and unaffected by them: αὐτοκράτορα γὰρ αὐτὸν ὄντα καὶ οὐδενὶ μεμιγμένον πάντα φησὶν αὐτὸν κοσμεῖν τὰ πράγματα διὰ πάντων ἰόντα, Pl., Crat. 413 C. We thus have at the same time διὰ πάντων ἰόντα and denial of mixture which is reiterated in stronger and stronger language. Thus νοῦς even so remains still ἐφ’ ἑωυτοῦ (εἰ μὴ γὰρ ἐφ’ ἑωυτου ἦν, ἄλλῳ τέῳ ἐμέμικτο ἄν· μετεῖχε δὲ ἂν ἁπάντων χρημάτων εἰ ἐμέμικτό τεῳ· ἐν παντὶ γὰρ παντὸς μοῖρα ἕνεστι κτλ. So perhaps we should read fr. 6 [12] restoring a completed syllogism. In the traditional text the clause εἰ ἐμέμικτό τεῳ is superfluous and in the way). It takes no particle of the others into itself.

[119] [Plu.] Plac. Phil. 5, 25, 2 (Aët., Dox. 437; Vors. 397, 18), in the chap. ποτέρου ἐστὶν ὕπνος καὶ θάνατος ψυχῆς ἢ σώματος; Anaxag. taught: εἶναι δὲ καὶ ψυχῆς θάνατον τὸν διαχωρισμόν. 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). τὸν διαχωρισμόν is subject and εἶναι τῆς ψυχῆς θάνατον 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: εἶναι δὲ καὶ τὸν θάνατον ψυχῆς διαχωρισμὸν καὶ σώματος. 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. ψυχή here must mean the individual soul, not the νοῦς 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] fr. 17 [17].

CHAPTER XII
THE LAY AUTHORS

Theology and Philosophy, each in its own way attempting to go beyond inadequate popular belief, could only very gradually transcend the limits of those narrow communities within which their influence was first felt and reach the circles in which that popular belief held sway. During the earliest successes of the theological and philosophical spirit hardly a voice was raised that might have suggested that the belief in the imperishability and divine nature of the human Soul, of the inherence of all things spiritual in one imperishable, fundamental substance, might become something more than a mystery known to the wise and illuminated, and enter into the convictions of the people and the unlearned. “After the death of the body, the Image of Life remains alive; for that alone is descended from the gods”—such is the announcement of Pindar. But for all the confidence with which, as though anticipating no contradiction, he here proclaims the view of the soul’s immortality and bases it upon its divine nature, such an opinion can at that time have been no more than the persuasion of isolated communities formed and instructed in that particular doctrine. It cannot be merely accidental,[1] that in the fragments which have come down to us of the lyric and semi-lyric (elegiac and iambic) poetry—poetry intended for a wide and unspecialized public and expressing feelings and ideas in language that all could understand—hardly a trace appears of that enhanced conception of the worth and nature of the Soul. Reflexion does not linger over such dark subjects; whenever they are illuminated for a passing moment, we discern the outlines of those figures from the spirit world just as the Homeric imagination had given them shape.

Life and light are only to be found in this world;[2] Death, to which we are all “owing”,[3] leads the soul into a realm of nothingness.[4] Inarticulate, voiceless, the dead man lies in the grave like a statue.[5] Upon earth, and not in any shadowy hereafter, is completed that judgment[6] which divine Justice passes upon the criminal himself, or upon his descendants in whom something of him still lives on. It is the lack of such descendants that forms the bitterest pang, as he goes down to Hades, of the man who passes childless out of this life.[7] [412]

More distinctly and bitterly, in this age of advancing civilization and growing sensibility, sounds the wail over the pain and affliction of life, the obscurity of its ways, and the uncertainty of its outcome.[8] Silenos, the prophetic wood-spirit, so went the ancient legend, when captured by King Midas in his rose-gardens at Bermios earned his release with the judgment of melancholy wisdom that the Greek was never tired of repeating in ever-varying forms—not to be born is the best thing for men, but having been born, let him pray that he may return as soon as possible to the kingdom of Night,[9] and of Hades.[10] The cheerful enjoyment of life is no longer so sure of itself as once it had been in the days of its naïve confidence: and yet there is no substitute attempted, no compensatory hereafter in a next world of justice and untroubled happiness. We rather hear the opinion expressed that rest is the greatest of all earthly blessings; and rest is brought by Death. Nevertheless there is little demand for consolation; a robust and virile sense of life that can put up with whatever may befall of evil or hardship in healthy indifference, is in the air, and speaks to us from many a page of this poetic legacy with unpretending veracity. No attempt is made to smooth over the hardship and cruelty of life. Man’s power is small, his efforts go unrewarded, one necessity after another besets his short life: over all alike hangs the shadow of inevitable death. All things come at last to the awful chasm—the bravest virtue and the highest authority in the world.[11] Yet life is good and death an evil; else, why do the blessed gods not die? asks Sappho[12] with feminine naiveté; though indeed, her life’s path had lain through the deepest valley of the shadow. Even the dead man, if he wishes to be preserved from utter nothingness, must depend upon the world of the living as the only place of reality; the fame of his virtues and his deeds is all that outlasts his death.[13] Perhaps some dim perception of that fame reaches even to the dead.[14] They themselves are for the living as though they had passed into nothingness; we should not, thinks a poet, give them another thought after we have buried them.[15]

Here even the time-honoured conventions associated with the cult of souls seem to be perversely cast aside. In general, the poet with his wide-ranging observation of mankind had small occasion to be reminded of the cult of the soul that the narrow circles of family or city offered to their dead, or of the conceptions thereby encouraged of the continued life enjoyed by the departed. The omission is supplied by the Orators of the fifth and fourth centuries and by what they say—and do [413] not say—of the state of things hereafter. The greatest period of lyric poetry was by that time already fading into the past, and yet whoever wished in speaking before a citizen assembly to meet with general agreement and understanding was still obliged to refrain from speaking of the blessed immortality, the eternity and divinity of the soul. The Orators[16] never pass beyond the conceptions of the survival, power, and rights of the souls of the departed which were called forth and maintained in existence by the cult of the soul. The continued existence of the souls in the next world is not called in question; but the opinion that the souls still preserve their consciousness and have any knowledge of what happens on this earth is only expressed with the most cautious avoidance of definiteness.[17] What—apart from the sacrificial offerings of their relatives—still binds the dead to the life upon earth, is little more than the fame accorded to them among the living.[18] Even in the elevated language of solemn funeral orations the consolations offered to the survivors omit all mention of any enhanced state of being, any thought of immortal life in fully-conscious blessedness, that might belong now to the glorious departed.[19] Such high visions and hopes for the future were still, it appears, as little necessary or demanded for the comfort of the people as they had been in the times of the great wars of liberty.[20] The beloved dead who had given their lives for their country in those wars, as well as many others of the time whom death had overtaken, were the recipients of the epitaphs composed by Simonides the master of brilliant and condensed inscriptions. Nevertheless, not once does he vouchsafe a word that might point forward to a land of blessed immortality for the departed. There is a vestige of life still remaining for the dead—but it is in this world; the memory of the living and their own great name honoured by after generations is all that can prolong their existence.

It seems like an echo from another world when (about the middle of the fifth century) Melanippides the dithyrambic poet addresses a god in the words: “Hear me Father, marvel of all mortal men, Thou that rulest over the everliving Souls.” The words must be addressed to Dionysos;[21] for such as entered into the magic circle of his nightly festival those visions of the imperishability of the human soul and its divine power acquired reality. Such wisdom received but partial assent from those who lived unaffected by the conceptions of isolated sects of the theologically or philosophically minded. [414]