Plato's use of the term daiμoves is strictly Hesiodic—he is speaking not of such Gods at all, but of the spirits of deceased men of the Golden Class. As Mr. Adam, in his note on the passage, says, "Plato compares his 'golden citizens' with the heroes of the Hesiodic golden age. He would fain surround them with some of the romantic and religious sentiment that clung around the golden age of Greek poetry and legend." The two doctrines of Saíuoves which we find in Platothat enunciated in the Golden Age Myth and Diotima's Discourse, and that adopted from Hesiod in Rep. v. 468 Ewere both taken over by the Stoics, and accommodated to the tenets of their "physical science." According to the Stoics, the Soul, vxn, is material, σωματική, but its matter is rarer and fner (ἀραιότερον and λEπтоμеρÉστEρоV-Chrysippus apud Plutarch de Stoic. Repugn. 41) than that of the body. The Soul is, in fact, πveûμa ěveрμov, "hot air, or breath."1 ἔνθερμον, At When Souls leave their earthly bodies they do not immediately perish. According to Cleanthes, they all retain their individuality until the Conflagration, μέχρι τῆς ἐκπυρώσεως: according to Chrysippus, only the Souls of Wise Men.2 the Conflagration, however, all Souls perish as individualsare dissolved back into the one substance, the elemental fire, God, whose άπоoπáoμaта, or sundered parts, they were during the term of their individual existence. When Souls leave their earthly bodies, they rise into the Air which occupies the space between the Earth and the Moon, τὸν ὑπὸ σελήνην τόπον. That the dissolution of, at any rate, the majority of Souls inhabiting this aerial space takes place before the Conflagration is clearly the view of Marcus Aurelius in a curious passage (Comment. iv. 21), in which he meets the difficulty of the Air having room for so many separate beings. Room, he says, is always being made in the quodque has indigere auxilio daemonum, his voluerit illos praebere tutelam. Quasdam tamen animas, quae vitam eximie per trinam incorporationem egerint, virtutis merito aereis, vel etiam aethereis, plagis consecrari putat, a necessitate incorporationis immunes." The whole passage relating to Daemons in the Commentary of Chalcidius (cxxvi. -cxxxv.) is interesting. He compares the Daemons of Plato with the angels of the Hebrews. 1 Diog. Laert. vii. 157. 3 Posidonius, in Sext. Phys. i. 73. Air for new-comers by the progressive dissolution of their predecessors, just as room in the Earth is always made for new bodies by the progressive dissolution of those earlier buried :εἰ διαμένουσιν αἱ ψυχαί, πῶς αὐτὰς ἐξ ἀϊδίου χωρεῖ ὁ ἀήρ; πῶς δὲ ἡ γῆ χωρεῖ τὰ τῶν ἐκ τοσούτου αἰῶνος θαπτομένων σώματα; ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐνθάδε ἡ τούτων πρὸς ἥντινα ἐπιδιαμονὴν μεταβολὴ καὶ διάλυσις χώραν ἄλλοις νεκροῖς ποιεῖ, οὕτως αἱ εἰς τὸν ἀέρα μεθιστάμεναι ψυχαί, ἐπὶ ποσὸν συμμείνασαι, μεταβάλλουσι καὶ χέονται καὶ ἐξάπτονται, εἰς τὸν τῶν ὅλων σπερματικὸν λόγον ἀναλαμβανόμεναι, καὶ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον χώραν ταῖς προσσυνοικιζομέναις παρέχουσιν. It is probably to the Stoic Posidonius, whose astronomy has been mentioned as influential in the development of the theory and practice of Mithras-worship and similar sacramental cults,1 that the idea of the Air as the habitat of the Souls of the deceased and also of daiμoves-an order of beings distinct from that of human Souls-is chiefly indebted for its vogue. Posidonius wrote a treatise περὶ ἡρώων καὶ Saiμóvwv, quoted by Macrobius (Sat. i. 23), and Cicero (de Div. i. 64) quotes him as saying that the Air is full of Souls and Daemons. That belief in Daemons-spirits which have never been incarnate in human bodies-is as consistent with the "materialism" of the Stoics as belief in the continued existence of human Souls in the Air, is insisted upon by Zeller, and, indeed, is obvious. So much for Stoical belief. But it was exactly the astronomy Pythagorean and Platonic in its origin popularised by the Stoic Posidonius, which seems to have suggested a mode of escape from the Stoical doctrine that the Soul, though subsisting for a longer or shorter time after the death of the body, yet is ultimately dissolved. Above the Air-the Stoical habitat of Saípoves and Souls of deceased men, equally doomed to dissolution, according to the orthodox doctrine of the school there is the Aether.1 Into this region Souls purified by Philosophy— 1 See supra, pp. 352 ff. 2 See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 320. 3 Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, p. 333, Engl. Transl. I use the term "aether" here in its proper sense, as the name of the element which contains the "visible gods," the stars. This element is sometimes, as in the Epinomis, 984 (cf. Zeller, Plato, p. 615), called up, fire, while "aether" or, it may be, by sacramental observances—rise, and there, though united to God, retain their individuality for ever. This is the doctrine of the Somnium Scipionis — which probably owes its astronomy to Posidonius-and of the Tusc. Disp. (i. 17, 18, 19); it is the doctrine to which even the Stoic Seneca (ad Marc. 25. 1) seems to incline, and it inspired those sacramental cults, Orphic, Mithraic, and Egyptian, which became so important in the religious life of the first two centuries of the Christian era.2 In this doctrine of Aether, the region of the heavenly spheres, as everlasting home of purified Souls, we have, of course, merely the mythology of the Timaeus and Phaedrus framed in an astronomical setting somewhat more definite than that furnished by Plato himself. What it is important, however, to recognise is that this mythology, so framed, takes the place of what is properly called πῦρ, fire, in the list "fire, air, water, earth." Bywater (Journ. of Phil. vol. i. pp. 37-39, on the Fragm. of Philolaus) quotes the de Coelo, i. 270 b, and the Meteor. 339 b, for "aether" above the four elements, and remarks that "the occurrence of this quinta essentia in the Platonic Epinomis is one of the many indications of the late origin of that Dialogue.' 1 See Rohde, Psyche, ii. 320, and Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, quoted supra, Ρ. 352. 2 The following references to the Commentary of Hierocles (President of the School of Alexandria) on the Golden Hymn of the Pythagoreans may be taken to show how the astronomy of the Timaeus and Phaedrus influenced eschatology even in the fifth century of the Christian era. Hierocles (see Mullach's Fragm. Phil. Graec. i. 478 ff.) is commenting on the lines ἀλλ ̓ εἴργου βρωτῶν, ὧν εἴπομεν, ἔν τε καθαρμοῖς, and, after referring for vloxov to the Phaedrus Myth, and remarking that it embodies Pythagorean doctrine, says that, for the purification of the aethereal body-πρὸς τὴν κάθαρσιν τοῦ αὐγοειδοῦς ἡμῶν σώματος—we must put away the filth of the terrestrial body, and submit ourselves to purificatory observances, καθαρμοί, which he describes by means of which we shall rise from the Place of Generation and Corruption, and be translated to τὸ ἠλύσιον πεδίον καὶ Αἰθέρα τὸν ἐλεύθερον. But as the terrestrial body must be shed on Earth, the συμφυές, i.e. the aerial body, must be shed in the aerial region immediately under the Moon (cf. Plut. de fac. in orbe lunae, 28, quoted p. 440 infra). Then the aethereal or astral body (τὸ ἀστροειδές, αυγοειδές, φωτεινὸν σῶμα or ὄχημα) which is the immortal vehicle of the Soul, is free to ascend, with the Soul, into the Aether :—τοῦτο δὲ γενόμενος ὡς οἷόν τε μετὰ τὴν κάθαρσιν, ὁ ἀεί εἰσιν οἱ μὴ εἰς γένεσιν πίπτειν πεφυκότες, τοῖς μὲν γνώσεσιν ἐνοῦται τῷ παντί, καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἀνάγεται τὸν θεόν· σῶμα δὲ συμφυὲς ἔχων, τόπου δεῖται εἰς κατάταξιν ἀστροειδή, οἷον θέσιν ζητών. πρέποι δ ̓ ἂν τῷ τοιούτῳ σώματι τόπος ὁ ὑπὸ σελήνην προσεχῶς, ὡς ὑπερέχων μὲν τῶν φθαρτῶν σωμάτων, ὑποβεβηκὼς δὲ τῶν οὐρανίων, δν αἰθέρα ἐλεύθερον οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι καλοῦσιν· αἰθέρα μέν, ὡς ἄϋλον καὶ ἀΐδιον σῶμα· ἐλεύθερον δέ, ὡς ὑλικῶν παθημάτων καθαρόν. τί οὖν ὁ ἐκεῖσε ἐλθὼν ἔσται, ἢ τοῦτο ὅ φησιν, ἔσσεαι ἀθάνατος θεός, ώμοιωμένος τοῖς ἐν ἀρχῇ τῶν ἐπῶν λεχθεῖσιν ἀθανάτοις θεοῖς, οὐ φύσει ἀθάνατος θεός. appeared to Platonists to be a sufficiently 'up-to-date" refutation of the "materialism" of the Stoics. The Soul, when perfectly purified, rises out of the Air into the Aether, returning to its original home, and there lives for ever and ever. Its perfect purification—effected by Philosophy, or ritual performances, or both-guarantees its immortality; for its eternal intelligible essence-voûs-stripped of perishing sensible vehicles, terrestrial-owμa-and aerial-xis alone left. Of this intelligible essence Aether is the vehicle. The aethereal region is full of fulgor vivi e vincenti1 -immortal spirits made pure by Philosophy, and suffering, and holy rites. This Platonist doctrine is set forth by Plutarch in his de genio Socratis, and in his de facie in orbe lunae. In a curious passage in the latter work (ch. 28) he tells us that reason-vous-has its home in the Sun. Thither the purified spirit returns, having shed its corporeal vehicle—owμa—-on Earth, and its aerial-ʊxý—on the Moon. This is the order of purification. And the order of generation, he explains, is the contrary of that of purification: —Of the three parts which make up man, the Sun supplies νοῦς, the Moon ψυχή, the Earth σώμα. Death on Earth makes the three two; death on the Moon makes the two one. Every Soul, whether rational or irrational,3 must wander for a time in the region between the Earth and the Moon. In the lower parts of this region the unrighteous are punished and corrected, while the righteous tarry for an appointed time in its highest parts-in the region of the softest air, which is called the Meadow of Death-ev TÊ πραοτάτῳ τοῦ ἀέρος ὃν λειμῶνας ᾅδου καλοῦσι;4 then, being filled, like those initiated, with a strange joy, half amazement half hope, they aspire to the Moon. There, now styled Saíuoves by Plutarch,5 they have their abode, descending sometimes to Earth to help men to assist at mysteries, to watch and punish crimes, to save in battle and at sea. The good among them (for some of them are wicked and become incarnate again in human bodies) are the Souls of those who lived on Earth in the reign of Cronus, and they are still worshipped in many places. When one of these good Daemons at last loses his power on Earth and fails his worshippers, it is because his lunar death has taken place—his true Self, νοῦς, has at last been separated from the ψυχή, which remains, like a corpse, on the Moon. The separation of νοῦς from ψυχή is effected by the operation in him of Love of the Solar Image-ἀποκρίνεται δ ̓ ἔρωτι τῆς περὶ τὸν ἥλιον εἰκόνος, δι ̓ ἧς ἐπιλάμπει τὸ ἐφετὸν καὶ καλὸν καὶ θεῖον καὶ μακάριον, οὗ πᾶσα φύσις, ἄλλη δ ̓ ἄλλως, ὀρέγεται : . λείπεται δὲ ἡ ψυχῆς φύσις ἐπὶ τῇ σελήνῃ, οἷον ἴχνη τινὰ βίου καὶ ὀνείρατα διαφυλάττουσα · · αὐτὸς ἕκαστος ἡμῶν οὐ θυμός ἐστιν, οὐδὲ φόβος, οὐδ ̓ ἐπιθυμία, καθάπερ οὐδὲ σάρκες, οὐδὲ ὑγρότητες, ἀλλ ̓ ᾧ διανοούμεθα καὶ φρονοῦμεν τούτων δὲ ἡ σελήνη στοιχεῖόν ἐστιν, ἀναλύονται γὰρ εἰς ταύτην, ὥσπερ εἰς τὴν γῆν τὰ σώματα τῶν νεκρῶν. Plutarch's other work, mentioned above, the de genio Socratis, is so important for the doctrine of Daemons, that it cannot be dismissed in a paragraph like that just devoted to the de facie in orbe lunae. On the whole, I think the best way of laying its contents before the reader is to let it speak for itself in the Myth of Timarchus, which indeed presents all that is essential to Plutarch's daemonology. As in the case of the Aridaeus-Thespesius Myth, I avail myself here again of Philemon Holland's version. There was one Timarchus of Chaeronea, who died very young, and requested earnestly of Socrates to be buried near unto Lamprocles, Socrates his son, who departed this life but few days before, being a dear friend of his, and of the same age. Now this young gentleman, being very desirous (as he was of a generous disposition, and had newly tasted the sweetness of Philosophy) to know what was the nature and power of Socrates' familiar spirit, when he had imparted his mind and purpose unto me only and Cebes, went down into the cave or vault of Trophonius, after the usual sacrifices and accustomed compliments due to that oracle performed: where, having remained two nights and one day, inasmuch as many men were out of all hope that he ever would come forth again—yea, and his kinsfolk and friends bewailed the loss of him-one morning betimes issued forth very glad and jocund. . . . He recounted unto us many wonders strange to be heard and seen: for he said that being descended into the place of the oracle, he first met with much darkness, and afterwards, when he had made his prayers, he lay |