happiness, and all other properties whatsoever, are transmitted from
parents, so that those who would be responsible for bringing children
into the world should be cheerful, and sweet-tempered, and genial.
However, it is not the result of Hesiod’s maxim nor the work of human
wisdom, but of God, to discern and discriminate likenesses and
differences, before they become conspicuous by men’s falling through
the force of passion into great transgressions. The young of bears and
wolves and monkeys, indeed, show at once their inborn disposition,
without cover or concealment. But a man’s nature, conforming to
customs, opinions, and laws, conceals what in it is evil, and often
imitates the good, in such a way as either altogether to wipe off and
get rid of the native plague-spot of wickedness, or else to keep it
long concealed, craftily veiling itself and escaping our notice, so
that we are scarcely aware of his depravity when assailed as with a
blow or sting by successive instances of his wrong-doing,—imagining,
as is our wont, that men become wholly unrighteous when they first
perform an unrighteous act, or licentious when they first gratify lust
unlawfully, or cowards when they first flee from danger,—a simplicity
that may be compared to one’s thinking that the stings of scorpions
grow when they first use them, or that the poison is generated in
vipers at the moment when they bite. No bad man becomes and first
appears bad at the same time; but one has the evil in him from the
beginning, and puts it into practice, availing himself of opportunity
and ability, the thief in stealing, the tyrant in exercising despotic
rule. But God is not ignorant of any man’s disposition and nature,
inasmuch as he discerns the soul even more than the body; nor does
he wait to punish till violence has been committed by the hands,
effrontery uttered by the voice, or lasciviousness actualized in
fleshly deed. For he does not avenge himself on the wrong-doer as
himself suffering wrong, nor is he angry with the robber as having
been himself robbed, nor does he hate the adulterer as injured in his
own honor; but he often punishes beforehand the adulterers, and the
avaricious, and the unrighteous, to cure them, thus removing guilt, as
physicians attempt to cure epilepsy, before the fit seizes the patient.
21. We were scandalized a little while ago because the punishment
of the wicked is late and slow; yet now we equally call the Divine
Providence in question, because for some it checks the vicious
temperament and disposition before they become guilty; leaving it out
of mind that the potential evil might be worse and more fearful than
the crimes that are actually committed, and that which is concealed,
than that which is in open view; and unable to comprehend the reasons
why it is better to suffer some to do wrong, and to forestall others
who are also evilly disposed,—just as medicines are unsuitable for
some sick persons, while they are beneficial to some even who are not
ill, yet in a more perilous condition than those who are. Nor do the
gods visit all the transgressions of the fathers on the children;
but if a good man is the son of a bad man, as one in sound health
may be the son of an invalid, he is released from the penalty due to
his race, as one taken by adoption out of a guilty family. But for
a youth who becomes conformed to the likeness of a depraved race, it
is certainly fitting that he should receive the punishment of guilt
as a due heritage. On the other hand, Antigonus was not punished for
the sins of Demetrius,[57:1] nor, to cite other cases of bad men,
was Phyleus made to pay the penalty for Augeas,[57:2] nor Nestor for
Neleus;[57:3] for they, though the children of bad men, were good men.
But as for those whose nature loves and cherishes the inborn evil,
justice has its course, pursuing with penalty the sinful likeness that
is in them. Moreover, as the warts and birth-stains and freckles of
fathers, not appearing in their own children, crop out again in the
children of their sons and daughters; as a certain Greek woman, giving
birth to a black child, when accused of adultery, discovered that she
was descended in the fourth generation from an Aethiopian; as among the
children of Pytho the Nisibian, said to belong to the Sparti,[58:1]
the one who died lately bore the impress of a spear on his body,—a
race-mark after so many ages rising and emerging as from the depths
of the sea,—so not infrequently earlier generations conceal and merge
ancestral habits and dispositions, while afterward and through later
generations the inherited nature comes to flower, and reproduces the
family tendency to vice or to virtue.[58:2]
22. After saying these things, I was silent. But OLYMPICUS,
smiling, said,—We are not ready to express our parting commendation of
your reasoning, lest we may seem fully satisfied with your arguments,
and lose the story. When we have heard that, we will pronounce our
final sentence.
Then I spoke as follows:[59:1]—The Solian,[59:2] Thespesius, an
associate and friend of that Protogenes who was here with us,[59:3]
having led a very dissipated life in his youth, and in a short time
squandering his property, for a while on account of his impoverished
condition became desperately wicked, and, repenting of his
wastefulness, sought in evil ways to become rich again, like those
profligates who, when they have wives, do not keep them, but after
divorcing them endeavor to corrupt them when they are married to other
men. Abstaining from nothing vile that promised pleasure or profit,
he got together in a short time a property by no means large, and the
most ample reputation for depravity. But he was most widely known in
connection with a certain response that was brought from the oracle
of Amphilochus.[60:1] He sent thither, it is said, to ask the god
whether he should be better off[60:2] for the rest of his life. The
reply was that he would do better after he died. And this event in some
sort happened to him not long afterward. Falling from a precipice and
striking his neck on the ground, receiving no wound, but only a shock,
he became as one dead, and the third day had already arrived for his
funeral. But then, being suddenly aroused from his swoon and returning
to himself, he made an incredible change in his manner of life; for
the Cilicians know of no other person in his time more honest than he
in keeping his engagements, more religiously devout, more resolutely
hostile to his enemies,[60:3] or more loyal to his friends, so that
those about him wanted to know the cause of the change, thinking that
such a revolution in one’s habits could not have taken place by chance.
And they were right, as he told his story to Protogenes and to other
equally intimate friends. When his body became unconscious, the feeling
at first was such as a pilot would have if he were hurled from his ship
into the sea. Then, being somewhat recovered, he seemed to breathe
with entire freedom, and to look round in every direction, as if his
soul had been a single open eye. He saw nothing that he had ever seen
before; but he beheld immensely large stars, at vast distances from one
another, emitting a lustre marvellous in tint, and shooting forth rays,
on which the soul was borne on the light as in a chariot, in perfect
quietness, easily and swiftly.
But—omitting the greater part of what he saw—he said that the souls
of the dying rose from beneath like fiery bubbles through the parted
air. Then, the bubbles gradually bursting, they came forth, having a
human form, but of diminutive size. But they did not move alike; for
some sprang forth with wonderful agility, and mounted straight upward,
while others, whirling round in a circle like spindles, tending now
downward and then again upward, were borne with a complicated and
confused movement that could hardly be arrested even in a very long
time. He did not, indeed, know who many of these souls were; but seeing
two or three whom he recognized, he tried to join them and talk with
them. They, however, neither heard him, nor were in possession of their
right mind; but, demented and shy, shrinking from sight and touch, they
at first flitted round by themselves; then, meeting many souls in the
same condition and mingling with them, they moved in all directions
without aim or purpose, and gave utterance to inarticulate sounds like
battle-cries mingled with strains of lamentation and terror. Others
from above, in the zenith of the circumambient heavens, appeared
refulgent, and often approached one another in a kindly way, yet
avoiding those troubled souls; and they seemed to signify annoyance by
shrinking within themselves, and pleasure and approval by the expansion
and enlargement of the forms in which they moved.
Among these he said that he saw the soul of a kinsman of his, yet
at first was not sure of his identity, as he himself was but a boy
when this man died; but the soul, drawing near him, said, “Hail,
Thespesius.” When he marvelled at this, and replied that his name was
not Thespesius, but Aridaeus, the soul said, “It was Aridaeus, but from
henceforth it is Thespesius;[62:1] for you are not yet dead; but by
a certain allotment of the gods you come hither with your perceptive
faculties, while you have left the rest of your soul, like an anchor,
in your body. Let it be a token of this to you, both now and hereafter,
that the souls of the dead neither cast a shadow nor wink.”[63:1]
Thespesius on hearing this became more self-collected in mind, and,
taking a closer look, he saw that there moved along with him a certain
dim and shadowy line, while those about him were surrounded with light,
and transparent within. However, they were not all equally so. Some,
indeed, like the clearest full moon, emitted continuously a uniform and
unflickering light; but of the others, some had their bodies streaked
with what looked like scales and flabby scourge-marks; some were very
much discolored, and disgusting to the sight, like snakes branded
all over with black spots; and others, still, had slight scars. The
kinsman of Thespesius (for there is nothing to forbid one’s giving
human titles to disembodied souls), explaining these appearances
one by one, told him that Adrasteia, daughter of Necessity[63:2]
and Zeus, holds the highest place of all, ordaining punishment for
wrong-doings of every kind, and that of the guilty there was never
either great or small that could escape her, whether by craft or by
force. But a different mode of punishment is assigned to each of the
three custodians and executive ministers that have the guilty in
charge. The first of these, swift Poena,[64:1] takes in hand those
who are punished at once while in the body and by means of their
bodies, yet in a somewhat mild way, and passing over many things that
need cleansing. Those the cure of whose guilt is a heavier task the
Deity gives over after death to Dice.[64:2] But as for those whom she
rejects as utterly incurable, Erinnys,[64:3] the third and sternest
of Adrasteia’s subordinate ministers, chasing them as they wander and
flee in different directions, removes them all from sight in misery and
wretchedness, and plunges them into a destiny too horrible to be told
or seen. Of the other chastisements, he compared that of Poena in the
earthly life to certain modes of punishment practised by barbarians.
For as among the Persians they strip off and beat the clothes and
the turbans of those that are punished,[64:4] while the culprits beg
with tears that the scourge may be laid aside,—so punishment by loss
of wealth or by bodily suffering has not an intensely penetrating
power, nor does it lay hold on the guilt in its own interior seat,
but is inflicted generally for appearance’s sake, and to make an
impression on the bodily senses.[65:1] But him who comes hither from
these punishments uncorrected and uncleansed Dice takes in hand, open
and naked as he is in soul, having nothing whereby to conceal or hide
or cover his depravity, but beheld in every direction and by all and
in his entire selfhood, and shows him first to his good parents, if
good they are, as being despicable to his progenitors and unworthy of
them. If they too are bad, he, seeing them punished, and being seen
by them, is released only after having long expiated every one of
his crimes by pains and sufferings which in magnitude and severity
exceed those which come through the body alone, as much as reality is
more substantial than a dream. But the scars and scourge-marks after
punishment remain in some more conspicuous; in others, less so. “See,”
said he, “those motley colors of every kind in the souls,—that dark and
squalid dye, the pigment of meanness and avarice,—that blood-red and
fiery hue, of cruelty and bitterness; where there is a bluish tint,
intemperate indulgence in sensual pleasure has as yet hardly been
rubbed off; while the malevolence that is united with envy discharges
that violet-colored and ulcerous secretion, as the cuttle-fish emits
his ink. For, as on the earth the wickedness of the soul controlled
by the passions, while the soul controls the body, produces certain
shades of complexion, so here such tints mark the last stage of the
process of cleansing and correction, by which, the evil affections
being altogether expelled, the soul becomes of clear complexion and
of a uniform color. But so long as these evil affections remain in
a man, certain revivals of the passions take place, accompanied by
palpitation and excitement, in some souls slight and soon quenched, in
others intensely strong. Of these last some, punished again and again,
at length attain a suitable habit and disposition; but others by the
force of ignorance and the fascination of sensual pleasure are carried
back earthward into the bodies of beasts. For they are inclined to seek
this new and lower birth by the predominance of the physical tendency,
while reason is feeble, and their mental vision dull. Having in their
spiritual state no longer the organs requisite for vicious indulgence,
they still crave to satisfy their desires by sensual pleasure, and to
give them full play by means of a body.[66:1] Here, indeed, there is
nothing but a certain fruitless shadow and dream of sensual pleasure
which has no realization.”
When the friend of Thespesius had thus spoken, he led him rapidly to
a certain place that appeared immense, toward which he moved directly
and easily, transported on light-beams as on wings,—until, coming to
a large and deep cavern, he was deserted by the force that had borne
him, and he saw other souls there in a like condition. Clustering
together like birds, they flew round the chasm in a circle, but did
not dare to cross it. Within, it resembled the caves of Bacchus,[67:1]
like them diversified with boughs of trees, and living green, and
flowers of every hue; and it exhaled a soft and mild breeze, wafting
up odors of wonderful sweetness, and producing an effect similar to
that which wine has on those who drink it freely. The souls filled
with these sweet perfumes were dissolved in mirth, and kept embracing
one another, and jollity and laughter, and every Muse of sport and
gladness, had possession of the place all around. The spirit said that
by this opening Dionysus[67:2] went up to the gods, and afterward led
Semele up by the same way, and that the place is called Lethe.[68:1]
He did not suffer Thespesius to remain there, though he wanted to
stay, but took him away by force, teaching him at the same time, and
telling him how the mind is melted and soaked by sensual pleasure,
while the unreasoning and body-like part of the soul, being thus
nourished and made fleshly, calls up the remembrance of the body,
and from that remembrance wakes a desire and longing that draw it
toward another birth, or genesis,[68:2] which is so called as being an
inclination toward the earth in the soul that is thus weighed down and
water-logged. Then, passing in another direction by as long a route
as that previously traversed, Thespesius seemed to see from afar a
vast basin, and rivers pouring into it, one whiter than the sea-foam
or snow, another purple like that which Iris paints on the rainbow,
others still with various tints, which, as beheld from a distance, had
each its own peculiar lustre. But when he drew near, the circumambient
air being more rarefied and the colors fading, the basin lost all of
its surpassing beauty except its whiteness. He then saw three daemons
sitting together in a triangle, mixing the rivers with one another in
certain proportions.
The spirit-guide of Thespesius told him, that Orpheus advanced thus
far when he was seeking his wife’s soul, and, failing in memory,
carried back to men a false report that there was in Delphi an oracle
that was the common property of Apollo and Night, while in fact Night
has nothing in common with Apollo. “But the oracle here,” said the
spirit, “is common to Night and the Moon, having no earthly limits,
but wandering everywhere among men in visions and spectres. From this
are dispersed dreams, mingled, as you see, blending the simple and
the true with the false and the grotesque. But you do not see,” said
he, “the oracle of Apollo, nor can you see it; for the earthly part
of your soul cannot release or loose itself for an upward flight, but
tends downward as not yet wholly undetached from the body.” At the same
time, his guide, leading him on, attempted to show him the tripod,
shining upon Parnassus through the bosom of Themis;[69:1] yet, though
he wanted to see it, he could get no distinct view of it because of its
intense brilliancy. But, in passing, he heard the shrill voice of a
woman, uttering in rhythm among other things what sounded to him like
the prediction of the time of his own death. The spirit said that it
was the voice of a Sibyl,[69:2] who, borne round on the face of the
moon, sang of things to come. Then he, while he wished to hear more,
was forcibly driven, as on successive eddies, in a direction opposite
to that in which the moon was rushing on her course. But among the
predictions which he caught in passing was one about Vesuvius,[70:1]
and about the destruction of Dicaearchia[70:2] by fire, and also a
scrap of verse about the then reigning Emperor,[70:3]—
“Good though he be, disease shall soon dethrone him.”
After this, they turned to the inspection of those undergoing
punishment, and indeed from the very outset they had only mournful and
pitiable spectacles. Thespesius, without expecting it, happened among
friends and kinsmen and associates under punishment, who in horrible
suffering, and under penalties equally shameful and painful, addressed
to him their lamentations and wailings.
At length his eyes fell on his own father, coming up from an abyss,
covered with scars and scourge-marks, stretching out his hands to
him, and not permitted to keep silence, but forced by those presiding
over his punishment to confess his blood-guiltiness in the case
of certain guests of his who had money, and whom he had killed by
poison. There, on earth, he had concealed the deed from all; but
being here convicted, he was now enduring such sufferings as his son
saw, and they were leading him where he would suffer still more.
From amazement and dread, Thespesius dared not offer supplication
or intercession for his father; and desiring to return and flee, he
no longer saw his gentle and familiar guide. But, forced forward by
certain fearful-looking beings, as if it were necessary for him to
advance, he saw that the shades of those who had been openly wicked
or who had been punished in this world were not so severely dealt
with as others, nor in the same way, having been made aimlessly and
slavishly vicious by the unreasoning and passion-driven element of the
soul; while as for such as had lived all their days in secret vice,
disguised under the pretence and reputation of virtue, others standing
round them, as ministers of justice, compelled them with toil and pain
to make the soul’s interior outermost, which they did, wriggling and
twisting themselves in unnatural ways, as the sea-polyps, when they
have swallowed the hook, turn themselves inside out. Some of them the
tormentors flayed, and then laid them open, showing them inwardly
ulcerated and scarred with the depravity in their minds and in the
governing principles of their lives. Thespesius said that he saw other
souls interwreathed like vipers, two, three, or more together, and
devouring one another from remembered enmity and ill will for what they
had suffered or done in life.
There were also lakes lying side by side, one of boiling gold, one
of lead intensely cold, another of rough iron; and certain daemons,
like metal-workers, with their instruments took up and thrust in the
souls of those who had been guilty through greed and cupidity. When
in the gold they had become fiery and transparent by burning, these
daemons plunged them into the lake of lead; and when they had there
become frozen like hail, they were transferred to the lake of iron.
There they were made horribly black, and were so fractured and bruised
by the hardness of the iron, as to look like different beings; and
then in this deformed condition they were carried again to the lake of
gold, enduring intense torment in these successive transportations.
But those suffered most horribly of all who thought that they had
been at length released from the hands of justice, yet who were again
apprehended for fresh punishment. These were they the punishment of
whose guilt passed on to some of their children or descendants. When
one of these comes and meets them, he falls upon them with anger, and
cries out against them, showing the tokens of his sufferings, reviling
and pursuing the souls that long to escape and hide, yet are unable so
to do; for the ministers of justice run after them to subject them to
fresh chastisement, and push them on, while they from the beginning
lament bitterly, well knowing the punishment that awaits them. He said
too that some, indeed many, of the souls of the descendants of bad men
clustered together, sustained in this posture like bees or bats, and
venting in shrieks their indignation at the remembrance of what they
had suffered on account of their parents or ancestors.
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.
[2:4] Brasidas, the most distinguished Spartan general, and the leader
of the Spartan forces, in the earlier part of the Peloponnesian war,
was slain near Amphipolis, at the moment of victory. Cleon, the
Athenian general, was killed at the same time. The incident referred to
in the text has no record in history; but a scholiast on Aristophanes
says that Cleon and Brasidas killed each other, referring probably to
the tradition that they both were killed by Cleon’s spear.
[3:1] A verse from the _Orestes_,—the reply of Orestes when asked
whether Apollo would give him no assistance in his troubles.
[3:2] In a speech of Cleon in favor of the slaughter of the men and the
enslavement of the women and children of Mytilene, for the attempt to
release themselves from the sway of the Athenians.