Between Heathenism and Christianity · Charles William Super
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
For in a statue of Kasander there was no part of him, and the soul of Dionysius had left the dead body long previously; but in the case of Nysaeus and of Apollokrates and of Antipater and of Philip and of all other persons in like manner who are the children of vicious parents, nature has implanted this predominant principle and it is ever present with them; is not dormant or inoperative, but they live in it and are nurtured by it; with them it abides and it directs their actions. It is not cruel or unreasonable if the children of these men share their destiny. All things considered, here, as in the healing art, what is advantageous is just, and he would make himself ridiculous who should affirm that in diseases of the hip-joint it was wrong to cauterize the thumb, and in the case of an ulcerated liver, to make an incision in the belly, and to anoint the tips of the horns of cattle if their hoofs are soft.
So in the matter of punishments; he who thinks anything else is just than what will cure vice, and is scandalized if the healing is affected on one party for the sake of another,—like the opening of a vein to relieve the eyes—evidently sees no farther than what is plain to the senses. He does not take into account that even a schoolmaster, when he punishes one pupil also corrects others, and that a general who decimates his army punishes all his soldiers. Likewise, certain qualities, good as well as bad, are transmitted not only from one body to another, but even more readily from one soul to another. For in the one case it seems reasonable that the same conditions should also produce the same change, while in the other, the soul impelled by motives and impulses is naturally inclined by boldness or timidity to become worse or better.” 17. While I was yet speaking, Olympichus interrupting me, said, “You seem, in your discourse, to proceed on a weighty assumption, namely, the continued existence of the soul.” “You will surely grant this,” I replied, “or rather, have granted it, for my argument has proceeded from the beginning on the hypothesis that God distributes to us all rewards and punishments according to our deserts.”
Hereupon he replied, “Do you then think it follows of necessity, from the fact that because the gods observe all our actions, and apportion rewards and punishments, that souls are either altogether incorruptible, or that they continue to exist for some time after death?” “My good friends,” said I, “God is not impatient, or so occupied with trifles, that if there were not something of the divinity in us, something at least in a measure similar to Himself, but if, like unto leaves, as Homer says, we are altogether transitory, and doomed to perish in a little while, He would treat us with so much consideration—like those women who plant the gardens of Adonis in fragments of pottery and bestow pains on them—cherishing those ephemeral souls of ours, that dwell in a frail body, and when they are sprung up have no firm root in life, but are forever extinguished by any sudden calamity.
But if you are agreed, let us pass over the other gods and let us consider ours here (in Delphi), whether you think, if he were aware that the souls of those who have passed from life, forthwith dissolve into nothing, like clouds or smoke, as soon as they leave the body, he would have instituted so many ceremonies for the dead, and would still require large gifts and honors for the deceased, merely to impose upon and delude the credulous. For my part, I could never give up (my faith in) the immortality of the soul unless some one should again, like another Herakles, take away the tripod of the Pythia, and eradicate and destroy the oracle. So long as even in our day many such oracular responses are rendered, as they say were given to Korax the Naxian, it is impious to assert that the soul can die.” Here Patrocleas asked, “What was the response and who was this Korax? for to me both the name and the circumstance are unknown.” “Not at all,” said I, “but I am to blame for using a cognomen instead of a name. The man who slew Archilochus in battle was called Kalondas, as you know; but he bore the eponym, Korax.
Repelled at first by the Pythia for killing a devotee of the Muses, he next had recourse to prayers and humble supplications in order to secure his restoration to favor, then was commanded to repair to the habitation of Tettix, in order to appease the soul of Archilochus. This was at Taenarus, for thither, they say, Tettix the Cretan came with his fleet, founded a city and settled near an oracle of the dead. In like manner, also, an oracle came to the Spartans, bidding them conciliate the soul of Pausanias, persons who could evoke the dead having been sent for to Italy; these, after offering sacrifice, conjured up the ghost of the dead man in the temple. 18. This, then is one argument which establishes the providence of God and at the same time the immortality of the soul, and it is not possible to reject the one and accept the other. Now if the soul survives after the death of the body, it is also quite reasonable that it shares the rewards and punishments (of the latter). For in this life it is engaged in a contest, like an athlete, and when the contest is ended it receives its deserts. To the rewards and punishments meted out when existing there by itself (separate from the body) for the deeds of the previous life, the living attach no importance; they are concealed from our knowledge, and discredited. But those that are transmitted to children and through successive generations, being plainly evident to all who live here, turn many bad men from their ways and hold them in check. There is no more grievous chastisement, and none that reaches more to the quick, than for men to see their descendants in misfortune on their account; and when the soul of an impious and unjust man beholds, after death, not statues overturned and honors annulled, but children and friends and his own household overwhelmed with calamities and paying the penalty for crimes that he has himself committed,—there is no one who would again be unjust, or who would yield to his unbridled passion, for the honors of Zeus. I have also a story to tell that I recently heard, but I hesitate to do so lest you think it a fable, I will therefore keep to what is probable. “By no means,” said Olympichus, “but repeat it entire.” When the others also joined in the request, I said, “Permit me to repeat what is probable in the story and afterward, if you like, we will take up the fable, granting, of course, that it is a fable.”
19. Now Bion says for a god to punish the children of bad men would be more ridiculous than if a physician were to administer medicine to the son or grandson, for the disease of the grandfather, or the father. In one respect the conditions are unlike, in another they are alike, or similar. Administering medicine to one man for the disease of another does not, it is true, cure the patient, and a person who is suffering from a disease of the eyes, or a fever, does not get better when he sees another annointed or having a plaster put on him; but the punishments of the wicked make it evident to all men that it is the purpose of wisely-directed justice to restrain some by the correction of others. In what respect the comparison made by Bion is pertinent to the inquiry, he himself failed to notice; for suppose, now, a man falls sick of a painful but by no means incurable disease, then gives himself up to intemperance and effeminate habits, and dies; and suppose, again, that his son does not have the same disease but only a predisposition to it,—would not a physician, or a trainer, or even a careful master, on learning this fact, put him on a frugal diet, and keep him from dainties and pastry, from drink and women, and by enjoining the continuous use of remedies and the exercise of the body in gymnastics, scatter and eradicate the little germ of a big disorder, before it had reached the serious stage? Forsooth, do not we admonish those who are born of diseased fathers or mothers, to take heed to themselves, and to be on their guard against neglecting themselves, and forthwith to expel the inbred evil while its germ is yet undeveloped, and thus take the danger by the forelock? “Most assuredly,” said they.
“Then,” replied I, “we are not doing an absurd but a necessary thing; not something ridiculous but something useful, when we recommend to the children of epileptics and hypochondriacs and gouty persons, physical exercise and wholesome diet and medicaments, not because they are sick, but to the end that they may not become sick. The body that is born of an unsound body does not need chastisement but medical treatment and good regimen. If anybody calls the interdiction of pleasures and the imposition of toil and labor, punishment, he does so because he is inept and effeminate, and no attention need be paid to him. Shall we say, then, that a body born of an unsound body is worthy of care and attention, but the congenital seeds of vice that germinate and spring up in the young character, we are to let alone and wait and dally, until the evil passions break forth openly,—‘show forth the malignant fruit of the heart,’ as Pindar says?
20. Of a truth, in this matter is the Deity any wiser than Hesiod when he exhorts and advises us ‘Not when returned from the sorrowful burial, to propagate the race, but after the feast of the immortals?’ on the ground that not only vice and virtue, but sorrow and joy and all qualities, are transferred to the offspring in procreation; that at such a time men should be jocund and in good spirits and merry. But it does not follow, according to Hesiod, nor is it the work of human wisdom, but of God, to see through and understand similarities and differences of human nature, before they have led to great crimes and are thus made plain to all men. For while the cubs of bears and the whelps of wolves and monkeys immediately disclose their inborn nature because there is nothing to conceal or disguise it, the natural disposition of man conforms to customs and opinions and laws, and thus frequently puts a mask on what is evil and imitates the good.
In this way it altogether expunges or eradicates the inborn taint of vice, or hides it for a long time by cunningly disguising itself under the cloak of virtue; inasmuch as we hardly take note of any particular act of villainy, unless it falls upon us or strikes us; or, rather, we are for the most part accustomed to regard men as bad only when they do a bad deed, licentious when they indulge their lusts, and cowards when they run away. This is doing as if we believed scorpions had a sting only when they strike, and serpents were poisonous only when they bite,—a foolish notion, verily! The man who proves to be a villain does not become so just at the moment he is found out, but he had in him from his birth the germs of iniquity, the thief merely seizing the opportunity or using his power to steal, and the tyrant to override the law. But God, depend upon it, is not ignorant of the inclinations and nature of any man because He looks to the soul rather than the body; He does not wait to punish deeds of violence, until they are done with the hands, or impurity until it is uttered with the tongue, or lasciviousness until it is committed with the sexual organs.
He does not take vengeance on the evil-doer from any wrong he has himself suffered, neither is He incensed at the robber, because he has been roughly handled, nor does He hate the adulterer because of the disgrace; yet, for the sake of betterment, He often punishes the adulterer and the miser and the unjust man, thus cutting off vice, as if it were an epilepsy, before it becomes firmly rooted. 21. A little while ago we expressed our ill-will at the late and tardy punishment of the wicked; now we find fault because in some cases, even before they perpetrate any evil deed, God checks the natural bent and disposition of men, though we are aware that the future is often worse and more to be feared than the past, and what is dormant than what is apparent. We are not able to fathom the reasons why it is sometimes better to let men commit crimes and sometimes better to anticipate them while they are merely deliberating and contriving; just as some medicines are not adapted to certain patients, though helpful to others who are not actually sick, and yet in a worse condition than the former. For this reason the gods do not ‘turn all the transgressions of the parents upon their offspring,’ but if a virtuous son is begotten by a wicked father, as it were, a sound man, by one who is diseased, he averts the penalty from the house, the offspring of one being, so to speak, adopted into another. But it is fitting that a young man who conforms himself to the likeness of a corrupt family should also share the chastisement of its villainies as a debt incurred by inheritance.
Antigonus was not punished on account of Demetrius, any more than the heroes of the olden time, Phyleus and Nestor, for the sake of Augeas and Neleus; since these men, though sprung from wicked fathers, were themselves good men. But those who cherish and take naturally to the baseness that is born in them must also expect to be pursued to the end by that justice which the likeness of vice demands. For just as warts and livid spots and freckles that fathers sometimes have, are not on their sons, but afterwards reappear on the grandsons, and granddaughters; and a certain Greek woman who had given birth to a black child for which she was charged with adultery until she proved that she was descended from an Ethiopian in the fourth generation; and one of the sons of Pytho of Nisibis, who recently died, and who was said to be sprung from the Sparti, was born with the print of a spear on his body—in which case the family likeness reappeared and came to the surface as out of the deep, after such a long space of time,—so in like manner the character and passions of the soul are often concealed in the first generations and remain unknown, but some time afterward and in other persons nature springs up and asserts its power, either for virtue or vice.”
22. When he had spoken thus he held his peace, whereupon Olympichus said with a smile, “We do not give you our approval lest we shall seem to excuse you from telling the story, on the ground that the case has been sufficiently proved; but we shall only then render our verdict when we have heard that.” In this wise I accordingly began: “Thespesius of Soli, a kinsman and friend of the Protagenes who spent some time here with us, having passed the first part of his life in great dissoluteness, and having speedily squandered all his patrimony, now pressed by the exigencies of his situation, for some time led a vicious life; besides repenting of his bad management, he also sought in every way to recover what he had lost, and acted just like those libertines who care nothing for their wives so long as they are in possession of them, but after they are divorced and married to other men, basely try to corrupt them. Accordingly, by holding aloof from no act of meanness that brought either gratification or gain, he acquired in a short time not only very great possessions, but also the reputation of being a thorough scoundrel.
Above all, an oracle brought from Amphilochus gave him a bad name; for having asked the god through a messenger, as we are told, whether he would lead a better life in the future, the answer came back that it would be better with him after he was dead. And in a measure this turned out to be true, not long after. For happening to fall on his head from a height he lay like one dead from the shock alone, for he had received no wound, and on the third day was already carried forth for burial. Then all at once recovering strength and coming to himself, he showed a most astonishing change in his manner of life; for the Cilicians know of no man of his time more just in dealings between man and man, none more reverent toward the gods, none more dreaded by his enemies, or more faithful to his friends. Consequently all who knew him were eager to hear the cause of this transformation, as they thought such an alteration of character could not be a mere matter of chance—which was in fact the case, as he himself related to Protagenes and other equally intimate friends.
For when he lost consciousness,—(literally, when his rational soul left his body)—he at first experienced about the same sensation as the result of the change that a pilot would feel who should be hurled from a ship into the deep; afterwards, having recovered a little, he thought he had entirely regained his breath and was able to see on every side with his soul opened as if it were all one eye. Yet he beheld none of the former things, but the objects he recognized were stars of immense magnitude at immeasurable distances from one another, and a radiance proceeding from them, surprising in its brilliancy and color, in which his soul moved about with facility just as a man in a calm moves a ship in any direction, easily and quickly. Though he omitted most of what he saw, he said that the souls of the dead, rising from below, made flame-like bubbles as they displaced the air before them; then, as each bubble noiselessly burst, the souls came forth, human in form but of a smaller size.
Their movements, however, were not alike, for some started forth with surprising fleetness and darted straight up, while others whirled round in a circle just like spindles, and whisking, now upward, now downward, with a kind of confused and aimless motion, they came to rest only after a long time and with great difficulty. Respecting most of the souls, however, he was in ignorance as to who they were; but recognizing two or three of his acquaintances, he tried to approach and address them, yet they neither heard him nor were in their right mind, but beside themselves and dazed, trying to avoid all notice and intercourse, moving aimlessly about, at first alone by themselves, then encountering many who were in a like condition, they joined themselves to these, and, tossed about in a disorderly manner in all directions, they uttered unintelligible cries that sounded like mingled screams of lamentation and fear. Others, again, were seen at the very summit of the upper air, radiant with joy, frequently approaching each other with signs of affection, but avoiding the disorderly ones and testifying their aversion, as he thought, by drawing themselves together, but their delight and satisfaction, by expanding and extending themselves.
Here, he said, he recognized the soul of one of his kinsmen, though not quite distinctly, for he had died when yet very young; but drawing near it saluted him with, ‘Hail, Thespesius!’ When he, in surprise, rejoined that his name was not Thespesius, but Aridaeus. ‘Formerly, it is true,’ replied the spirit, ‘that was thy name, but henceforth it is Thespesius (the Divine). For thou didst not die, but through the interposition of God art come hither in the full possession of thy faculties; the other part of thy soul thou hast left behind in thy body, as it were an anchor; and let this be a token to thee both, now, and henceforth, that the souls of the departed neither cast a shadow nor move the eyelids.’ On hearing this, Thespesius, who had by this time somewhat recovered consciousness, looked and beheld a kind of faint line about himself, while the rest were completely encircled with a radiance and diaphanous, though not all in the same manner, for some, like the moon in her brightest splendor, had a uniformly smooth and even color, while others were marked with a kind of spots or faint weals; others again were all variegated and strange to look upon; while still others were marked with livid fleckings like vipers, and some even showed slight scarifications. The kinsman of Thespesius explained these things in detail (for there is nothing to hinder us from calling the souls of men by the name they themselves bore during life) by reciting that Adrastea, the daughter of Necessity and Zeus, had been placed in the highest seat as the avenger of all crimes, and that there is no wicked man so powerful or so insignificant as to be able, either by craft or by force, to escape her.
Three attendants wait upon her to each of whom has been assigned a different mode of inflicting punishment: those who are to be chastised while yet in the body and by means of the body, swift Poena (Punishment) seizes, though in a rather mild way that still leaves behind many things needing expiation; those whose cure is a matter of greater difficulty on account of their vices, the daemon hands over, after death, to Dike (Justice), while those that Dike gives up as entirely incorrigible, the third and most terrible of the attendants of Adrastea, Erinys (the Fury), pursues, and after hounding them as they rush about trying to escape her in one way or another, she puts them all out of sight in a pitiless and awful way by thrusting them into a nameless and invisible abyss. Of the other punishments, said he, that inflicted by Poena in this life is like those of the non-Greeks. For as among the Persians the clothes and tiaras of those who are undergoing chastisement are pulled off and they are scourged, while the culprits beg with tears that their castigation may be ended; so the punishments suffered in body or estate are no severe affliction, nor do they touch vice itself, but are chiefly for appearance sake and for the outward sense.
But him who comes hither from there, unpunished and unpurged, Dike seizes and exposes his soul in all its nakedness, and there is no place where it can hide or go into concealment or cover up its baseness, but it is completely seen on all sides and by everybody. At first Dike shows this soul to honest parents, if such he had, or to ancestors, as a detestable creature and unworthy (of such ancestry); but if they were likewise wicked, he sees them undergoing chastisement, while he is in turn beheld by them receiving his deserts and expiating, for a long time, each of his evil passions with pains and torments which as far exceed in sharpness those endured in the flesh as the reality exceeds in distinctness the mere vision (before you). The stripes and weals for each of the passions remain on some a longer, on others a shorter time.” ‘Observe also,’ said he, ‘the variegated and party-colored appearance of the souls; the darkish and filthy hue is the mark of fraud and avarice, while the blood-red and flame-colored indicates cruelty and ugliness of temper; where the soul has a bluish color, a lack of self-control as against lust has not been wholly eradicated from it; inherent malevolence combined with envy give out the violet color and festering appearance underneath, just as the cuttle-fish sets free its black fluid. For yonder (in the world), vice, when the soul is changed by its passions and changes the body, occasions a variety of colors, but here (in the realm of departed spirits) there is an end of purification and punishment, and when the passions are purged out, the soul recovers entirely its native luster and uniform color. Until this takes place, paroxysms of passion break forth, causing relapses and heart-throbs, in some cases faint and easily recovered from, in others exceedingly violent.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.