Camedis Gardes) we thand and rooted in the Earth, so long as mankind shall inhabit upon the face thereof." Again, Dante makes 9 the number of (Beatrice She was in her ninth year when he first saw her (Vita Nuova, 2); his first greeting he received from her nine years afterwards at the ninth hour of the day (V. N., 3); and she departed this life on the ninth day of the ninth month of the year, according to the Syrian style (V. N. 30):—“Questo numero," he concludes (V. N. 30), "fu ella medesima; per similitudine dico, e ciò intendo così: Lo numero del tre è la radice del nove, perocchè senza numero altro, per sè medesimo moltiplicato, fa nove, siccome vedemo manifestamente che tre via tre fa nove. Dunque se il tre è fattore per sè medesimo del nove, e lo fattore dei miracoli per sè medesimo è tre, cioè Padre, Figliuolo e Spirito Santo, li quali sono tre ed uno, questa donna fu accompagnata dal numero del nove a dare ad intendere, que ella era un nove, cioè un miracolo, la cui radice è solamente la mirabile Trinitade." With this may be compared a passage in Convivio, iv. 24, in which Dante, referring to Cicero, de Senectute (§ 5), as authority, says that Plato died aged eighty-one (cf. Toynbee, Dante Dict., art. "Platone," at the end, for a quotation from Seneca, Ep. 58, to the same effect); and adds: "e io credo che, se Cristo non fosse stato crucifisso, e fosse vivuto lo spazio che la sua vita potea secondo natura trapassare, egli sarebbe all' ottantuno anno di mortale corpo in eternale trasmutato." V The contrast between the celestial mise en scène of the History of the Soul represented in the Phaedrus Myth, and the terrestrial scenery of the great Eschatological Myths in the Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic, is a point on which some remarks may be offered. In the Phaedrus Myth we are mainly concerned with (the Fall and Ascension of human Souls through the Heavenly Spheres intermediate between the Earth and the πεδίον ἀληθείας. Reference to the Sublunary Region which includes Tartarus, the Plain of Lethe, and the Earthly Paradise (Islands of the Blessed, True Surface of the Earth, τὰ περὶ γῆν = οὐρανός), is slight and distant. In the Phaedrus Myth we have light wings and a Paradiso; in the three other Myths mentioned, plodding feet and an Inferno and a Purgatorio. This distinction answers to a real difference in the sources on which Plato drew for his History of the Soul. On the one hand, he was indebted to the Pythagorean Orphics, who put Kábaρois in the forefront of their eschatology. On the other hand, he had at his disposal, for the selection of details, the less refined mythology of the κατάβασις εις "Αιδου, as taught by the Priests denounced in the Republic. fund The eschatology of the Pythagorean Orphics may be broadly characterised as celestial and astronomical. The Soul falls from her native place in the Highest Heaven, through the Heavenly Spheres, to her first incarnation on Earth. By means of a series of sojourns in Hades, and re-incarnations on Earth (the details of which are mostly taken from the mythology of the κατάβασις εἰς "Αιδου), she is purified from the taint of the flesh. Then, at last, she returns to her native place in the Highest Heaven, passing, in the upward flight of her chariot, through the Heavenly Spheres, as through Stations or Doors. одати them Presk підля denounced The earliest example which has come down to us of this celestial eschatology is that which meets us in the passage with which Parmenides begins his Poem. Parmenides goes up in a chariot accompanied by the Daughters of the Sunt ye he rides through the Gate of Justice where the paths of Day and Night have their parting; and comes to the Region of Light, where Wisdom receives him.2 In contrast to this celestial eschatology, the eschatology of the Priests denounced in the Republic may be described as terrestrial. All Souls go to a place on Earth, or under the Earth to be judged, and the good are sent to the right to eternal feasting (uéon aivios, Rep. 363 D), and the wicked to the left, to Tie for ever in the Pit of Slime. Of the true Kálapois effected by a secular process of penance and philosophic aspiration these (Priests have no conception. The 1 363 C, D; 364 B ff. 2 See Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, pp. 183 ff.; and Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, p. 197. The passage does not express the views of Parmenides himself; but is borrowed from the Pythagorean Orphics, probably for the mere purpose of decoration. The Soul-chariots of the Phaedrus Myth are derived from the same source. Sames Jo fuell му Jamu ritals. these I-free. only κálaρois which comes within the range of their thought Although Plato leaves us in the Gorgias with only the It was through what may be called its astronomical side, and not through that side which reflects the mythology of the κατάβασις εἰς "Αιδου, that the Platonic eschatology influenced subsequent religious thought and practice The doctrine of xá@apois effected by personal effort in a Cosmos governed by God, which, after all, is the great contribution made by Plato to the religious thought and practice of Europe, found its appropriate eile in the large astronomy which meets us in the Timaeus and Phaedrus-an astronomy which was afterwards elaborated, with special reference to the aerial and aethereal habitats of Daemons and disembodied human Souls, by the Stoics no less than by the Platonists. Dieterich, in his Eine Mithrasliturgie (1903), mentions the Stoic Posidonius, Cicero's teacher, as the writer who did most to unite the Pythagorean and Platonic tradition with the doctrines of the Stoa. As result of his accommodation of Platonic eschatology to Stoic doctrine, reference1 to a subterranean Hades disappears, and the History of the Soul after Death is that of its ȧváßaois from Earth to Air, from Air to Aether, and through the Spheres of the Planets to the Sphere of the Fixed Stars. The substitution of ἀνάβασις for κατάBaois, even in the case of the Souls of the wicked, connects itself closely with the "physical science" of the Stoics. In the Phaedrus Myth the Soul has wings and flies up; but कर्माशय 1 Eine Mithrasliturgie, pp. 79 and 202. 1 the Stoics give a scientific" reason for its ascent,-the "matter" of which it is made is so rare and light that it rises of necessity when it is separated from the terrestrial body. To Posidonius, and through him to Plato and the Pythagorean Orphics, Dieterich carries back the eschatology of Cicero's Somnium Scipionis and Tusculanae Disputationes,2 and of Seneca's Letter to Marcia3-an eschatology in which the Soul is represented as ascending through Heavenly Stations; while the astronomy of the pseudo-Aristotelian Tερì кóσμоν, -a work of the first century after Christ, translated in the second century by Apuleius,-he contends, is essentially that of Posidonius. The latest embodiment of the Type first made known to us in the Poem of Parmenides and the Phaedrus Myth is Dante's Paradiso, the scheme of which is "The Ascension of a Purified Sour through the Moving Heavens into the Presence of God in the Unmoved Heaven." Let us try to follow the line, or lines, along which the influence of the Phaedrus Myth (for the Poem of Parmenides scarcely counts) beside the Phaedrus Myth) was transmitted to the Paradiso. It was transmitted to the Paradiso along two main lines. The first passed through the Aristotelian Metaphysics and de Coelo-the influence thus transmitted showing itself in the definite astronomical framework of the Paradiso, and the notion of ' Amor che move il Sole e l'altre Stelle. The second line (which I believe to be necessary, with the first, for the full explanation of the scheme, and more especially of the Oos, of the Paradiso) has two strands, one of which consists of the Somnium Scipionis, and its antecedents, chiefly Stoical; the other, of certain astronomical apocalypses, chiefly Christian-these apocalypses being closely related to certain sacramental rites, or mysteries, which embody the eschatology of the Phaedrus Myth. Let me enlarge a little on these two lines of influence; and, first, try to indicate how the Myth of the vπepovρávios TÓTOS-the goal of all volition and intellection-passes through Aristotle into the Christian mythology of Dante. The vaтov oupavoû of the Phaedrus Myth (247) is the convex surface of the eighth Sphere-the Sphere of the 1 o.c. p. 201. 2 i. 18, 19. 3 Ch. 25. Earth "Heavens", Damn I Earth Varthing Logies Supersedeary. Supers. Logis ཌཅ 354 Fixed Stars, which includes, according to Plato's astronomy, the other Spheres, and carries them round with it in its revolution from east to west, while they have their own slower motions within from west to east have their own The gods, sitting in their chariots, are carried round on this outer Sphere, throughout its whole revolution, in full sight of the Eternal Region beyond, while human Souls, at least till they are perfectly purified, obtain only broken glimpses of it. We must suppose that it is in order to get a connected view of this Super-celestial Region that the newly created Souls in the Timaeus (40 E-42 E) are sent, each in its star-chariot, on a journey round the Heavens. It is the invincible desire of seeing the Super-celestial Region which draws all Souls, divine and human, up to the vŵtov oúpavoû, and obliges them to go round with the revolution of 1 See Timaeus, 36 в; Republic, 616 в ff.; and Boeckh, Commentatio altera de Platonico Systemate Coelestium Globorum, et de vera indole Astronomiae Philolaicae (Heidelberg, 1810), p. 5. /According to the system accepted by Plato as scientifically true, the Earth occupies the centre, round which the Heavens revolve; but the Earth does not revolve on its own axis; the couévny of Tim. 40 в means wrapped, or globed round" not "revolving as Arist. de Cocle, . 290 30, falsely interprets. If Plato made the Earth revolve on its axis, that would neutralise the effect of the revolution the Sphere of the Fixed Stars (Boeckh, o. c. p. 9). In the Phaedrus Myth, however, Boeckh (p. 28) is of opinion that Plato deserts the system which he accepts as scientifically true, and follows the Pythagoreans, who put 'Eoria (Aids Þvλaký) in the centre of the Universe (see Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, § 125, pp. 319 Π.). The μένει γὰρ Εστία ἐν θεῶν οἴκῳ μόνη οἱ Phaedrus, 247 A, is in favour of Boeckh's opinion; but, apart from this one clause, there is nothing in the Myth to suggest that Plato does not think of the Earth as fixed in the midst of the Heavens. If he thought of the Earth as one of the planets revolving round a Pythagorean central fire, why does the Earth not appear with the other planets, in this Myth, as one of the planet-gods in the train of Zeus? "The planetgods," Plato in effect says, after their journey come home.' 'Eoria, the hearth, is the 'home' to which they come." This is a quite natural sequence of ideas; and I think it better to suppose that it passed through Plato's mind, than to have recourse to the view that he abandoned the doctrine of the centrality of the Earth, without which, indeed, it would be very difficult to (visualise the Fall and Ascension of human Souls-the main "incident" of the Myth. The statement of Theophrastus recorded by Plutarch, that Plato in his later years regretted that he had made the Earth the centre in the Timaeus, is doubtless justly suspected by Zeller and other scholars: see Zeller's Plato, p. 379, n. 37, Eng. Transl. I have spoken of the choir of Zeus as "planet-gods"; but, as there are seven planets and twelve gods-or eleven in the absence of Hestia-the expression is only approximately exact. Cf. Thompson's Phaedrus, p. 159. For later developments of the geocentric system accepted by Plat Plato, Met. A, 1073 b 17 ff. (A is judged to be post-Aristotelian by Rose, de Arist. lib. ord. et auct. p. 242), where the system of Eudoxus with 27 spheres, that of Callippus with 34 spheres, and that of the writer himself with 56 spheres, are described. Cf. Zeller's Arist. i. 499-503, Engl. Transl." These spheres were added to explain the φαινόμενα. was see Arist. |