horn-coot, having carried it thither while it was yet a lambkin, it had got away, and saved itself among the bushes. As for us, having with much toil and sweat overcome the difficult ways at the entrance, we found the top of the mountain so fertile, healthful, and pleasant, that I thought I was then in the true Garden of Eden, or earthly paradise, about whose situation our good theologues are in such a quandary, and keep such a pother. As for Pantagruel, he said that here was the seat of Areté— that is as much as to say, Virtue-described by Hesiod. This, however, with submission to better judgments. The ruler of this place was one Master Gaster, the first master of arts in the world. For, if you believe that fire is the great master of arts, as Tully writes, you very much wrong him and yourself: alas, Tully never believed this. On the other side, if you fancy Mercury to be the first inventor of arts, as our ancient Druids believed of old, you are mightily beside the mark. The satirist's1 sentence that affirms Master Gaster to be the master of all arts is true. With him peacefully resided old Goody Penia, alias Poverty, the mother of the ninety-nine Muses, on whom Porus, the lord of Plenty, formerly begot Love, that noble child, the mediator of heaven and earth, as Plato affirms in Symposio. We were all obliged to pay our homage, and swear allegiance to that mighty sovereign; for he is imperious, severe, blunt, hard, uneasy, inflexible; you cannot make him believe, represent to him, or persuade him anything. He does not hear. . . . He only speaks by signs. What company soever he is in, none dispute with him for precedence or superiority. . . . He held the first place at the Council of Basle; though some will tell you that the Council was tumultuous, by the contention and ambition of many for priority. Every one is busied, and labours to serve him; and, indeed, to make amends for this, he does this good to mankind, as to invent for them all arts, machines, trades, engines, and crafts; he even instructs brutes in arts which are against their nature, making poets of ravens, jackdaws, chattering jays, parrots, and starlings, and poetesses of magpies, teaching them to utter human language, speak, and sing. At the court of that great master of ingenuity, Pantagruel observed two sorts of troublesome and too officious apparitors, whom he very much detested. The first were called Engastrimythes; the others Gastrolaters. . . . The first were soothsayers, enchanters, cheats, who gulled the mob, and seemed not to speak and give answers from the mouth, but from the belly. . . . In the holy decrees, 26, qu. 3, they are styled 1 Persius, Prologus— Magister artis, ingenique largitor Ventriloqui; and the same name is given them in Ionian by Hippocrates, in his fifth book of Epid., as men who spoke from the belly. Sophocles calls them Sternomantes. . . . As for the Gastrolaters, they stuck close to one another in knots and gangs. Some of them merry, wanton . . . others louring, grim, dogged, demure, and crabbed; all idle, mortal foes to business, spending half their time in sleeping, and the rest in doing nothing, a rentcharge and dead unnecessary weight on the earth, as Hesiod saith; afraid, as we judged, of offending or lessening their paunch. . Coming near the Gastrolaters, I saw they were followed by a great number of fat waiters and tenders, laden with baskets, dossers, hampers, dishes, wallets, pots, and kettles. . Those gastrolatrous hobgoblins being withdrawn, Pantagruel carefully minded the famous master of arts, Gaster. . . . From the beginning he invented the smith's art, and husbandry to manure the ground, that it might yield him corn; he invented arms, and the art of war, to defend corn; physic and astronomy, with other parts of mathematics, which might be useful to keep corn a great number of years in safety from the injuries of the air, beasts, robbers, and purloiners; he invented water, wind, and hand-mills, and a thousand other engines to grind corn, and to turn it into meal; leaven to make the dough ferment, and the use of salt to give it a savour, for he knew that nothing bred more diseases than heavy, unleavened, unsavoury bread. He found a way to get fire to bake it; hour-glasses, dials, and clocks to mark the time of its baking; and as some countries wanted corn, he contrived means to convey it out of one country into another. He invented mules. . . . He invented carts and waggons. He devised boats, gallies, and ships. . . . Besides, seeing that, when he tilled the ground, some years the corn perished in it for want of rain in due season, in others rotted, or was drowned by its excess, . . . he found out a way to conjure the rain down from heaven only with cutting a certain grass. . . . I took it to be the same as the plant, one of whose boughs being dipped by Jove's priest in the Agrian fountain, on the Lycian mountain in Arcadia, in time of drought, raised vapours which gathered into clouds, and then dissolved into rain, that kindly moistened the whole country. Our master of arts was also said to have found a way to keep the rain up in the air, and make it fall into the And as in the fields, thieves and plunderers sometimes stole, and took by force the corn and bread which others had toiled to get, he invented the art of building towns, forts, and castles, to hoard and secure that staff of life. On the other hand, finding none in the fields, and hearing that it was hoarded up and secured in towns, forts, and castles, and watched with more care than ever were the golden pippins of the Hesperides, he turned sea. engineer, and found ways to beat, storm, and demolish forts and castles, with machines and warlike thunderbolts, battering-rams, ballistas, and catapults, whose shapes were shown us, not overwell understood by our engineers, architects, and other disciples of Vitruvius. 202 D Symposium 202 D-212 A Τί οὖν ἄν, ἔφην, εἴη ὁ Ἔρως; θνητός; Ηκιστά γε. Ε ̓Αλλὰ τί μήν; Ὥσπερ τὰ πρότερα, ἔφη, μεταξὺ θνητοῦ καὶ ἀθανάτου. Τί οὖν, ὦ Διοτίμα; Δαίμων μέγας, ὦ Σώκρατες· καὶ γὰρ πᾶν τὸ δαιμόνιον μεταξύ ἐστι θεοῦ τε καὶ θνητοῦ. Τίνα, ἦν δ ̓ ἐγώ, δύναμιν ἔχον; Ἑρμηνεύον καὶ διαπορθμεύον θεοῖς τὰ παρ ̓ ἀνθρώπων καὶ ἀνθρώποις τὰ παρὰ θεῶν, τῶν μὲν τὰς δεήσεις καὶ θυσίας, τῶν τε τὰς ἐπιτάξεις τε καὶ ἀμοιβὰς τῶν θυσιῶν. ἐν μέσῳ δὲ ὂν ἀμφοτέρων συμπληροῖ, ὥστε τὸ πᾶν αὐτὸ αὑτῷ ξυνδεδέσθαι. διὰ τούτου καὶ ἡ μαντικὴ πᾶσα χωρεῖ καὶ ἡ τῶν ἱερέων τέχνη τῶν τε περὶ τὰς θυσίας καὶ τὰς τελετὰς καὶ τὰς 203 ἐπῳδὰς καὶ τὴν μαντείαν πᾶσαν καὶ γοητείαν. θεὸς δὲ ἀνθρώπῳ οὐ μίγνυται, ἀλλὰ διὰ τούτου πασά ἐστιν ἡ ὁμιλία καὶ ἡ διάλεκτος θεοῖς πρὸς ἀνθρώπους, καὶ ἐγρηγορόσι καὶ καθεύδουσι. καὶ ὁ μὲν περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα σοφὸς δαιμόνιος ἀνήρ, ὁ δὲ ἄλλο τι σοφὸς ὢν ἢ περὶ τέχνας ἢ χειρουργίας τινὰς βάναυσος. οὗτοι δὴ οἱ δαίμονες τούτων ἐστὶ καὶ ὁ πολλοὶ καὶ παντοδαποί εἰσιν, εἷς δὲ Ἔρως. Πατρὸς δέ, ἦν δ ̓ ἐγώ, τίνος ἐστὶ καὶ μητρός; Β Μακρότερον μέν, ἔφη, διηγήσασθαι. ὅμως δέ σοι ἐρῶ. ὅτε γὰρ ἐγένετο ἡ ̓Αφροδίτη, εἱστιῶντο οἱ θεοί, οἵ τε ἄλλοι καὶ ὁ τῆς Μήτιδος υἱὸς Πόρος. ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἐδείπνησαν, προσαιτήσουσα, οἷον δὴ εὐωχίας οὔσης, ἀφίκετο ἡ Πενία καὶ ἦν περὶ τὰς θύρας. ὁ οὖν Πόρος μεθυσθεὶς τοῦ νέκταρος, οἶνος γὰρ οὔπω ἦν, εἰς τὸν τοῦ Διὸς κῆπον εἰσελθὼν βεβαρημένος ηΰδεν. ἡ οὖν Πενία, ἐπιβουλεύουσα διὰ τὴν αὑτῆς ἀπορίαν παιδίον ποιήσασθαι ἐκ τοῦ Πόρου, - κατακλίνεταί τε παρ ̓ αὐτῷ καὶ ἐκύησε τὸν Ἔρωτα. διὸ δὴ καὶ τῆς ̓Αφροδίτης ἀκόλουθος καὶ θεράπων γέγονεν ὁ Ἔρως, γεννηθεὶς ἐν τοῖς ἐκείνης γενεθλίοις καὶ ἅμα φύσει ἐραστὴς ὢν περὶ τὸ καλόν, καὶ τῆς ̓Αφροδίτης καλῆς TRANSLATION OF THE DISCOURSE OF DIOTIMA What then is Eros?-is he Mortal? Nay, Mortal he verily is not. What then is he? Betwixt Mortal and Immortal, she answered. What sayest thou, Diotima? He is a great Daemon, Socrates: for the whole tribe of Daemons is betwixt God and Mortal. And what is their office? said I. They are Interpreters, and carry up to the Gods the things which come from men, and unto men the things which come from the Gods our prayers and burnt-offerings, and their commands and the recompenses of our burnt-offerings. The tribe of Daemons being in the midst betwixt these twain -the Godhead and Mankind-filleth up that distance, so that the Universe is held together in the bond of unity. Through the intermediation of these cometh all divination; the art of priests cometh also through them, and of them that have to do with burnt-offerings and initiations and enchantments and every sort of soothsaying and witchery. The Godhead mingleth not with Mankind; but it is through the Daemons only that Gods converse with men, both when we are awake and when we are asleep and he who hath the wisdom whereby he understandeth this work of the Daemons is a man inspired, and he who hath any other wisdom whereby he excelleth in some art or craft is a mechanic. Now these Daemons are many and of all sorts: and one of them is Eros. And who is his Father, I said, and who is his Mother? That is a longer story, she said, but I will tell it unto thee. On the day that Aphrodite was born, the Gods made a feast, and with them sat Abundance the son of Prudence. When they had eaten, Poverty, perceiving that there was good cheer, came for to beg, and she stood at the door. Now Abundance, having made himself drunken with nectar-for there was no wine then,-entered into the Garden of Zeus, and being heavy with drink, slept; and Poverty, being minded by reason of her helplessness to have a child by Abundance, lay with him, and she conceived and bore Eros. Wherefore Eros became the companion and servant of Aphrodite; for | God |