Last of all, he saw the souls destined to a second birth, by main force, bent and transformed into all sorts of beasts by artificers who fashioned them by appropriate tools and by blows as upon an anvil, compressing all their parts, reversing some, planing down some, and utterly destroying some, so as to fit them for habits and modes of life other than human. Among these appeared the soul of Nero, having already endured other torments, and now pierced with red-hot nails. The artificers had taken this soul in hand, and given it the form of Pindar’s viper,[73:1] a form in which the creature after being conceived eats its way to life through its mother’s bowels; when, as Thespesius said, a light suddenly shone forth, and from the light came a voice commanding that he should be transformed into another more gentle brute,—one of those croaking creatures that burrow about swamps and ponds;[73:2] for though he had been punished for his
wrong-doings, yet something of mercy was due to him from the gods, because he had emancipated the Greeks,[74:1] of all his subjects the best race and dearest to the gods.
Thus far Thespesius saw; but when he was about to return to the earth, he was in utter desperation through terror. For a certain woman, of marvellous form and stature, laying hold of him, said, “Come hither, that you may remember these things the better,” and she was about to strike him with a red-hot wand such as the encaustic painters use, when another woman prevented her. Then he, as if suddenly forced through a tube by an intensely strong and powerful wind, alighted on his own body, and awoke hard by his own tomb.
FOOTNOTES:
[1:1] A name probably chosen for this retreating collocutor because the dialogue is anti-Epicurean in its dogmas and its spirit, and the supposed arguments to be refuted were therefore such as an Epicurean would have urged. Epicurus denied the Divine Providence, and maintained that the gods did not concern themselves with human affairs.
[1:2] Some commentators suppose this to be the second part of a dialogue, of which the first part is lost. But it is more probable that the reader is, for dramatic effect, introduced into the midst of a prepared scene. This was not an uncommon device in the philosophical dialogues that have come down to us from early time. Plato, Cicero, and Lucian furnish instances of it, and two other of Plutarch’s dialogues begin in a similar way. Cinius is a name that occurs nowhere else. A purely conjectural emendation of a single letter would give us the better known name, Quintus. The scene of this dialogue is the temple of Apollo at Delphi,—the temple in which Plutarch officiated as priest.
[2:1] Plutarch’s son-in-law.
[2:2] Plutarch’s brother.
[2:3] The figure by which arguments are called spears or javelins, and are said to be hurled when uttered—in itself not unnatural—occurs frequently in the ancient classics. Indeed, the most authentic derivation of the Latin dicere, to speak, is from the Greek δικεῖν, to hurl. The French word trait offers an analogy in point.