[159] ἀπειροσύνη ἄλλου βιότου, etc. Hip. 191–7. τὸ ζῆν γὰρ ἴσμεν, τοῦ θανεῖν δ’ ἀπειρίᾳ πᾶς τις φοβεῖται φῶς λιπεῖν τόδ’ ἡλίου, fr. 816, 10 f. (Phoinix).
[160] The dead man is γῆ καὶ σκιά—τὸ μηδὲν εἰς οὐδὲν ῥέπει, fr. 532; cf. 533, 534. τὸ μὴ γενέσθαι τῷ θανεῖν ἴσον· ὥσπερ οὐκ ἰδοῦσα φῶς the dead woman knows nothing of herself or her sufferings, Tro. 636–44 (a locus often initiated in “consolations”: Axioch. 365 D, Plu., Cons. ad Apoll. 15, p. 110 A).
[161] φήμη τὸν ἐσθλὸν κἀν μυχοῖς δείκνυσι γῆς, fr. 865. ἀρετὴ δὲ κἂν θάνῃ τις οὐκ ἀπόλλυται, ζῇ δ’ οὐκετ’ ὄντος σώματοςs, fr. 734; cf. Andr. 772. At the sacrifice of Makaria the chorus in Hcld. 621 ff. can only offer as consolation the fame which awaits her—οὐδ’ ἀκλεής νιν δόξα πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ὑποδέξεται.
[162] Makaria voluntarily going to meet her death—εἴ τι δὴ κατὰ χθονός· εἴη γε μέντοι μηδέν. εἰ γὰρ ἕξομεν κἀκεῖ μερίμνας οἱ θανούμενοι βροτῶν οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅποι τις τρέψεται· τὸ γὰρ θανεῖν μέγιστον φάρμακον νομίζεται, Hcld. 592 ff.; cf. fr. 916.
[163] fr, 757 (the metaphor of ll. 5 ff. is employed for homiletic purposes by Epictet. ii, 6, 11–14); Andr. 1270 ff.
CHAPTER XIII
PLATO
The belief in human immortality, construed in a theological or philosophical sense, had at this time hardly penetrated to circles of ordinary lay folk. Socrates himself, when it came to such inquiries into the unknowable, never claimed to provide an answer that differed from that which would be given by the majority of his fellow citizens out of the accumulated wisdom of their ancestors. Where in the pages of Plato he is allowed to give undisguised expression to his natural and homely vigour—in the Apology—he shows little anticipation of an immortal life of the soul. Death, he thinks, either brings complete unconsciousness to men, like a dreamless sleep, or else it means the transition of the soul to another life in the realm of the Souls—a realm which, to judge by his allusions, has much more resemblance to the Homeric Hades than to any of the visionary countries imagined by theologians or theologically minded poets.[1] Both possibilities he accepts with complete equanimity, trusting in the righteousness of the controlling gods,[2] and he looks no further. How should he know with certainty where everyone was ignorant?[3]
With a like absence of concern it is possible that the majority of the cultured (who were just beginning to separate themselves from the rest of the community) left unsettled the problem of the Unknown.[4] Plato assures us that it was in his time a widespread belief of the populace that the outgoing soul-breath of the dying was caught up by the winds—especially if its exit took place in stormy weather—and was dispersed, blown away, into nothing.[5] In other ways, too, we may suppose that the orthodox Greek, when death approached, allowed his fancy to picture what might await his soul on the other side of death’s threshold.[6] But it is certain that the belief in an unending life of the soul—a life with no end because it had no beginning—was not among these thoughts. Plato himself lets us see how strange such a conception was even to those who were capable of following and understanding a philosophical discussion. Towards the end of the long dialogue upon the best kind of State his Sokrates asks Glaukon with apparent irrelevance “are you not aware that [464] our soul is immortal and never perishes?” Whereupon, we are told, Glaukon looked at him in astonishment and said, “No, in truth, of that I was not aware: can you then assert any such thing?”[7]
The idea that the soul of man may be everlasting and imperishable seemed thus a paradoxical freak to one who was no adept in the theological doctrine of the soul. If in later times the case was altered, no one contributed more effectually or more permanently to bring that change about than the great thinker and poet who established the theological conception of personal immortality in the very heart of philosophy and then gave back the idea strengthened and made more profound to its parent theology, while he himself extended the influence of that idea far beyond the bounds of school or sect by the far-reaching power of his own unaging writings which belong, not to the schoolroom, but to the greatest achievements of literature whether of Greece or of mankind. It is beyond calculation what power has been wielded since their first appearance by the Platonic dialogues in the confirmation, dissemination, and precise definition of the belief in immortality—a power that with all its alteration in the passage of the centuries has maintained itself unbroken into our own times.