[73]. For εικονων here, I read ειδων.
[74]. Herodian, lib. viii. observes, that the Italians very much believed in the indications of future events through the viscera: and Strabo, lib. xvii. asserts the same thing.
[75]. The auspices were said to be pestiferous when there was no heart in the entrails, or when the head was wanting in the liver. This was the case with the animals that were sacrificed by Cæsar on the day in which he was slain. The same thing also happened to Caius Marius, when he was sacrificing at Utica. But when Pertinax was sacrificing, both the heart and the liver of the victim were wanting, whence his death was predicted, which happened shortly after. In the sacrifices, likewise, which Marcellus performed prior to the unfortunate battle with the Carthaginians, the liver was found to be without a head, as Plutarch and Livy, Pliny and Valerius Maximus relate.
[76]. Gale observes that this appears to have been a very ancient mode of divination, and does not differ from that which is comprehended under the term wood. Hence the Scholiast, in Nicandri Theriaca, says, “that the Magi and Scythians predicted from the wood of the tamarisk.” For in many places they predict from rods. And that Dinon, in the first book of his third Syntaxis, observes, “that the Median diviners predict from rods.” The Scholiast likewise adds the testimony of Metrodorus, who says, “that the tamarisk is a most ancient plant, and that the Egyptians, in the solemnity of Jupiter, were crowned with the tamarisk, and also the Magi among the Medes.” He adds, “that Apollo also ordained that prophets should predict from this plant, and that in Lesbos he wears a tamarisk crown, has often been seen thus adorned, and that in consequence of this he was called by the Lesbians μυρικαιον, Muricaion, [from μυρικη, the tamarisk].” What the Scholiast here says, is confirmed by Herodotus, in lib. iv. and elsewhere. To this, also, what every where occurs about prediction from the laurel pertains. For if the leaves of the laurel when committed to the fire made a noise, it was considered as a good omen, but if they made none, a bad one.
[77]. Gale, in his translation, has totally mistaken the meaning of the original in this place, and it is not unusual with him to do so. For the original is αλλ’ ουδε ως οργανον τι μεσον εξι το των κρειττονων αιτιον, και δρα δια του θεσπιζοντος ο καλων. This he thus translates: “Sed neque dicendum est fatidicum animum esse instrumentum intermedium divinorum, sacerdotem vero invocantem esse tanquam efficientem causam.” In consequence, also, of this mistake, he erroneously conceives that Iamblichus dissents from himself.
[78]. God is all things causally, and is able to effect all things. He likewise does produce all things, yet not by himself alone, but in conjunction with those divine powers which continually germinate, as it were, from him, as from a perennial root. Not that he is in want of these powers to the efficacy of his productive energy, but the universe requires their cooperation, in order to the distinct subsistence of its various parts and different forms. For as the essence of the first cause, if it be lawful so to speak, is full of deity, his immediate energy must be deific, and his first progeny must be Gods. But as he is ineffable and superessential, all things proceed from him ineffably and superessentially. For progressions are conformable to the characteristics of the natures from which they proceed. Hence the cooperating energy of his first progeny is necessary to the evolution of things into effable, essential, and distinct subsistence. The supreme God, therefore, is, as Iamblichus justly observes, alone worthy of sedulous attention, esteem, the energy of reason, and felicitous honour; but this is not to the exclusion of paying appropriate attention and honour to other powers that are subordinate to him, who largely participate of his divinity, and are more or less allied to him. For in reverencing and paying attention to these appropriately, we also attend to and reverence him. For that which we sedulously attend to, honour, and esteem in them, is that alone which is of a deified nature, and is therefore a portion, as it were, of the ineffable principle of all things.
Gale, from not understanding this, exclaims, “if these things are true, (viz. that God is alone worthy of sedulous attention, &c.) as they are, indeed, most true, to what purpose, O Iamblichus, is that mighty study and labour about dæmons and other spirits?” But the answer to this, by regarding what has been above said, is easy. For mighty study and labour about these intermediate powers is necessary, in order to our union with their ineffable cause. For as we are but the dregs of the rational nature, and the first principle of things is something so transcendent as to be even beyond essence, it is impossible that we should be united to him without media; viz. without the Gods, and their perpetual attendants, who are on this account the true saviours of souls. For in a union with the supreme deity our true salvation consists.
[79]. For these conceptions and these works teach us, that in reality we, through sacred operations, approach to divinity, but that divinity does not draw near to us. Hence Proclus in Alcibiad. εν ταις κλησεσι, και εν ταις αυτοψιαις προσιεναι πως ημιν φαινεται το θειον, ημων επανατεινομενων επ’ αυτο. i. e. “In invocations of the Gods, and when they are clearly seen, divinity, in a certain respect, appears to approach to us, though it is we that are extended to him.”
[80]. Gale, in his note on these words, after having observed that Porphyry says, that ignorance, darkness, and folly attend the soul in its lapse into body; and that, according to Servius, the soul, when it begins to descend into body, drinks of folly and oblivion, quotes also Irenæus (lib. ii. c. 59), who makes the following stupid remark: “Souls entering into this life [it is said] drink of oblivion, before they enter into bodies, from the dæmon who is above this ingress. But whence do you know this, O Plato, since your soul also is now in body? For if you remember the dæmon, the cup, and the entrance, it is likewise requisite that you should know the rest.” To this it is easy to reply, that a soul purified and enlightened by philosophy, like that of Plato, is able to recognise many things pertaining to its preexistent state, even while in the present body, in consequence of partially emerging from corporeal darkness and oblivion; but that it is not capable of knowing every thing distinctly, till it is perfectly liberated from the delirium of the body. And Gale, no less sillily, adds, “respondebunt Platonici hæc omnia cognovisse Platonem ex narratione, quæ circumferebatur de Ere Armenio, qui Lethes aquam non biberat.” i. e. “The Platonists will answer that Plato knew all these things from the narration of the Armenian Erus [in the Republic] who did not drink of the water of Lethe.” For Plato did not obtain this knowledge from any historical narration, but from possessing in a transcendent degree the cathartic and theoretic virtues, and from energizing enthusiastically (or according to a divinely inspired energy) through the latter of these virtues.
[81]. Agreeably to this, Porphyry says in his Αφορμαι προς τα νοητα, or Auxiliaries to Intelligibles, ψυχη καταδειται προς το σωμα, τῃ επιστροφη τῃ προς τα παθη τα απ’ αυτου.——And ψυχη εδησεν εαυτην εν τῳ σωματι. i. e. “The soul is bound to the body, by a conversion to the passions arising from her union with it.” And, “the soul binds herself in the body.” Philolaus also says, that the ancient theologists and prophets asserted, ως δια τινας τιμωριας α ψυχα τῳ σωματι συνεζευκται, και καθαπερ εν σαματι τουτῳ τεθαπται, “that the soul is conjoined to the body on account of certain punishments, and that it is buried in it as in a sepulchre.”