distant about five days’ sail westward from Britain; and before it
there are three others, of an equal distance from one another and also
from that, bearing north-west, where the sun sets in summer. In one of
these the barbarians feign that Saturn is detained prisoner by Jupiter,
who, as his son, having the guard or keeping of those islands and the
adjacent sea, named the Saturnian, has his seat a little below; and
that the continent, by which the great sea is circularly environed, is
distant from Ogygia about five thousand stadia, but from the others
not so far, men using to row thither in galleys, the sea being there
low and ebb, and difficult to be passed by great vessels because of
the mud brought thither by a multitude of rivers, which, coming from
the mainland, discharge themselves into it, and raise there great bars
and shelves that choke up the river and render it hardly navigable;
whence anciently there arose an opinion of its being frozen. Moreover,
the coasts of this continent lying on the sea are inhabited by the
Greeks about a bay not much smaller than the Maeotic, the mouth of
which lies in a direct line over against that of the Caspian Sea. These
name and esteem themselves the inhabitants of the firm land, calling
all us others islanders, as dwelling in a land encompassed round about
and washed by the sea. And they think that those who heretofore came
thither with Hercules and were left there by him, mixing themselves
with the people of Saturn, raised up again the Greek nation, which was
well near extinguished, brought under and supplanted by the language,
laws, and manners of the barbarians, and made it again flourish and
recover its pristine vigor. And therefore in that place they give the
first honor to Hercules, and the second to Saturn. Now when the star of
Saturn, by us called Phaenon and by them Nycturus, comes to the sign
of Taurus, as it does once in the time of thirty years, they, having
been a long time preparing what is necessary for a solemn sacrifice and
a long voyage or navigation, send forth those on whom the lots fall
to row in that vast sea, and make their abode for a great while in
foreign countries. These men then, being embarked and departed, meet
with different adventures, some in one manner, others in another. Now
such as have in safety passed the danger of the sea go first ashore in
those opposite, islands, which are inhabited by the Greeks, where they
see that the sun is scarce hidden one full hour during the space of
thirty days, and that this is their night, of which the darkness is but
small, as having a twilight from the going down of the sun not unlike
the dawning of the day; that having continued there ninety days,
during which they are highly caressed and honored, as being reputed
and termed holy men, they are afterwards conducted by the winds,
and transported into the isle of Saturn, where there are no other
inhabitants but themselves and such as have been sent thither before
them. For though it is lawful for them, after they have served Saturn
thirty years, to return home to their own countries and houses, yet
most of them choose rather to remain quietly there; some, because they
are already accustomed to the place; others, because without any labor
and trouble they have abundance of all things, as well for the offering
of sacrifices and holding festival solemnities, as to support the
ordinary expenses of those who are perpetually conversant in the study
of learning and philosophy. For they affirm the nature of the island
and the mildness of the air which environs it to be admirable; and that
there have been some persons who, intending to depart thence, have been
hindered by the Divinity or Genius of the place showing himself to
them, as to his familiar friends and acquaintance, not only in dreams
and exterior signs, but also visibly appearing to them by the means of
familiar spirits discoursing and conversing with them. For they say,
that Saturn himself is personally there, lying asleep in the deep cave
of an hollow rock, shining like fine gold, Jupiter having prepared
sleep instead of fetters and shackles to keep him from stirring;
but that there are on the top of this rock certain birds, which fly
down and carry him ambrosia; that the whole island is filled with an
admirable fragrancy and perfume, which is spread all over it, arising
from this cave, as from an odoriferous fountain; that these Daemons
serve and minister to Saturn, having been his courtiers and nearest
attendants when he held the empire and exercised regal authority
over men and Gods; and that having the science of divining future
occurrences, they of themselves foretell many things; but the greatest
and of the highest importance, when they return from assisting Saturn,
and reveal his dreams; for whatever Jupiter premeditates, Saturn
dreams; but his awakenings are Titanical passions or perturbations of
the soul in him, which sleep altogether controls, in order that the
royal and divine nature may be pure and incontaminate in itself.
This stranger then, having been brought thither, and there serving the
God in repose and at his ease, attained to as great skill in astrology
as it is possible for any one to do that has made the greatest progress
in geometry; as for the rest of philosophy, having given himself to
that which is called natural, he was seized with an extraordinary
desire and longing to visit and see the great island; for so they
call the continent inhabited by us. After therefore his thirty years
were passed and his successors arrived, having taken leave of all his
relations and friends, he put to sea, in other respects soberly and
moderately equipped, but having good store of voyage-provision in
vessels of gold. Now one day would not suffice to relate unto you in
particular what adventures befell him, how many nations he visited,
through how many countries he passed, how he searched into sacred
writings, and was initiated in all holy confraternities and religious
societies, as he himself recounted it to us, exactly particularizing
every thing. But give ear, I pray you, to what concerns the present
dispute. For he continued no small time at Carthage, a city not a
little also esteemed by us, where he found certain sacred skins of
parchment, which had been secretly conveyed thither when the old town
was sacked, and had there long lain hidden under ground. Now he told me
that, of all the Gods which appear to us in heaven, we ought chiefly to
honor the Moon, and earnestly exhorted me to be diligent in venerating
of her, as having the principal influence and dominion over our life.
27. At these things when I was amazed, and entreated him to declare and
explain them a little more fully to me, he said: The Greeks, O Sylla,
deliver many things concerning the Gods, but they are not always in
the right. For first, when they tell us that there is a Ceres and a
Proserpine, they say well; but not so well, when they put them both in
one and the same place. For one, to wit Ceres, is on the earth, and the
lady and mistress of all earthly things. The other, to wit Proserpine,
is in the moon, and the mistress of all lunar things; and she is called
both Cora and Persephone; Persephone, as being a bringer of light and
brightness, and Cora, because the apple of the eye, in which the image
of him who looks into it is represented, as the brightness of the sun
appears in the moon, is by the Greeks called κόρη. And as to what they
say concerning the wandering about of Ceres and Proserpine, and their
mutual seeking of one another, there is in it somewhat of truth, for
they long after each other, being separated, and often embrace in
shadow. And that Cora is sometimes in heaven and light, and sometimes
in darkness and night, is not untrue; only there is some error in the
computation of the time. For we see her not six whole months, but every
sixth month, caught in the shadow by the earth, as by her mother; and
this rarely happens within five months, because it is impossible she
should forsake Pluto (Hades), being herself the bound or limit of
Hades; which Homer also covertly but not unelegantly signified, when he
said,
Into th’ Elysian fields, earth’s utmost bounds,
The Gods will bring thee;[106]
for he has there placed the end and boundary of the earth, where the
shadow ceases and goes no farther. Now into that place no wicked or
impure person can have access. But good folks, being after their
decease carried thither, lead there indeed an easy and quiet, but yet
not a blessed and divine life, till the second death.
28. But what is that, O Sylla? said I. Ask me not, he replied, for I
am of myself going to declare it to you. The common opinion, which
most persons hold, is that man is a compound subject, and this they
have reason to believe. But they are mistaken in thinking him to be
compounded of two parts only. For they imagine that the understanding
is a part of the soul, but they err in this no less than those who
make the soul to be a part of the body; for the understanding as far
exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and diviner than the body. Now
this composition of the soul with the understanding makes reason; and
with the body, passion; of which the one is the beginning or principle
of pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue and vice. Of those three
parts conjoined and compacted together, the earth has given the body,
the moon the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of
man, ... as therefore brightness to the moon. Now of the deaths we
die, the one makes man two of three, and the other one of two. And the
former indeed is in the region and jurisdiction of Ceres, whence the
name given to her mysteries (τελεῖν) resembles that given to death
(τελευτᾶν). The Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred
to Ceres. As for the other death, it is in the moon, or region of
Proserpine. And as with the one the terrestrial, so with the other
the celestial Mercury doth dwell. This suddenly and with force and
violence plucks the soul from the body; but Proserpine mildly and in
a long time disjoins the understanding from the soul. And for this
reason is she called Μονογενής, that is, _only begotten_, or rather,
_begetting one alone_; for the better part of man becomes alone when
it is separated by her. Now both the one and the other happens thus
according to Nature. It is ordained by Fate that every soul, whether
with or without understanding, when gone out of the body, should
wander for a time, though not all for the same, in the region lying
between the earth and the moon. For those that have been unjust and
dissolute suffer there the punishments due to their offences; but the
good and virtuous are there detained till they are purified, and have
by expiation purged out of them all the infections they might have
contracted from the contagion of the body, as if from foul breath,
living in the mildest part of the air, called the meadows of Pluto,
where they must remain for a certain perfixed and appointed time.
And then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage or
long exile into their country, they have a taste of joy, such as they
principally receive who are initiated in sacred mysteries, mixed with
trouble, admiration, and each one’s proper and peculiar hope. For the
moon drives and chases out many souls which already long after it. And
some who are already come thither, and yet take pleasure in things
below, are seen descending down as it were into an abyss. But those
that are got on high, and are there securely seated, first go about as
victors, crowned with garlands called the wings of constancy, because
in their lives they restrained the unreasonable and passible part of
their soul, rendering it subject and obedient to the curb of reason.
Secondly, they are like to the rays of the sun in appearance, and like
to fire in their soul, which is borne aloft by the clear air which is
about the moon,—like fire here on the earth,—from which they gather
strength and solidity, as iron and steel do by their being tempered
and plunged in water. For that which was hitherto rare and loose is
compacted and made firm, and becomes bright and transparent; so that it
is nourished with the least exhalation in the world. And this is what
Heraclitus meant, when he said that the souls in Pluto’s region have
their smell exceeding quick.
29. Now they first see the moon’s greatness, beauty, and nature, which
is not simple nor unmixed, but a composition as it were of earth and
star. For as the earth mixed with wind and moisture becomes soft, and
as the blood tempered with the flesh gives it sense; so they say that
the moon, being mingled with an ethereal quintessence even to the very
bottom, is animated, becomes fruitful, and generative, and is equally
counterpoised with ponderosity and lightness. For even the world
itself, being composed of some things naturally moving upwards and
others by nature tending downwards, is exempt from all local motion or
change of place. These things also Xenocrates seems by a certain divine
reasoning to have understood, having taken his first light from Plato.
For Plato it was who first affirmed that every star is compounded of
fire and earth, by the means of certain intermediate natures given in
proportion; forasmuch as nothing can be an object of human sense which
has not in some proportion a mixture of earth and light. Now Xenocrates
says that the stars and the sun are composed of fire and the first or
primitive solid; the moon of the second solid and its own peculiar
air; and the earth, of water, fire, and the third solid. For neither
is the solid alone by itself, nor the rare alone by itself, capable or
susceptible of a soul. And let thus much suffice for the substance of
the moon.
Now as to her breadth and magnitude, it is not such as the
geometricians deliver, but manifoldly greater. And she seldom measures
the shadow of the earth by her greatness, not because she is small, but
because she adds to her motion by heat, that she may quickly pass the
shady place, carrying with her the souls of the blessed, which make
haste and cry. For when they are in the shadow, they can no longer hear
the harmony of the heavenly bodies. And withal, the souls of the damned
are from below presented to them, lamenting and wailing through this
shadow. Wherefore also in eclipses, many are wont to ring vessels of
brass, and to make a noise and clattering to be heard by these souls.
Moreover, that which is called the face of the moon affrights them
when they draw near it, seeming to them a dreadful and terrible sight;
whereas indeed it is not so. But as our earth has deep and great bays,
one here running between Hercules’s pillars into the land to us, and
others without, as the Caspian, and those about the Red Sea; so in
the moon also there are hollows and great depths. Now of these, the
greatest they call the gulf of Hecate, where the souls punish or are
punished according to the evils they suffered or did whilst they were
Daemons. The two others are long passages, through which the soul must
go sometimes to that part of the moon which is towards heaven, and
sometimes to that which is towards earth. Now that part of the moon
which is towards heaven is called the Elysian fields; and that which
is towards the earth, the fields of Proserpine that is opposite to the
earth.
30. The Daemons do not always stay in the moon, but sometimes descend
down here below, to have the care and superintendency of oracles. They
are assistant also, and join in celebrating the sublimest ceremonies,
having their eye upon misdeeds, which they punish, and preserving the
good as well in perils of war as of the sea. And if in the performance
of this charge they commit any fault, either through anger, envy, or
any unjust grace or favor, they smart for it; for they are again thrust
down to the earth, and tied to human bodies. Now those who were about
Saturn said, that themselves were some of the better of these Daemons;
as were formerly those that were heretofore in Crete called Dactyli
Idaei, the Corybantes in Phrygia, and the Trophoniades in Lebadea, a
city of Boeotia, and infinite others in several places of the habitable
earth, whose names, temples, and honors continue to this day. But the
powers of some fail, being by a most happy change translated to another
place; which translations some obtain sooner, others later, when the
understanding comes to be separated from the soul; which separation is
made by the love and desire to enjoy the image of the sun, in which and
by which shines that divine, desirable, and happy beauty, which every
other nature differently longs after and seeks, one after one manner,
another after another. For the moon herself continually turns, through
the desire she has to be joined with him. But the nature of the soul
remains in the moon, retaining only some prints and dreams of life. And
of this I think it to have been well and truly said,