Selected Essays of Plutarch, Vol. II. · Plutarch
ANALYSIS
For no trifling matter is it, nor quiet, nor conventional, when in the absence of mind, they get them a body by passionate endeavour; Tityi and Typhones, and that Typhon who seized Delphi and confounded the oracle there by insolence and force, came of such souls as these, deserted by reason, and left to the [Sidenote: C] wild wanderings of their emotional part. But in course of time the moon receives even these unto herself and brings them to order; then, when the sun again sows mind, she receives it with vital power and makes new souls, and, thirdly, earth provides a body; for earth gives nothing after death of what she received for birth; the sun receives nothing, save that he receives back the mind which he gives, but the moon both receives and gives, and compounds, and distributes in diverse functions; she who compounds has Ilithyia for her name, she who distributes, Artemis. And of the three Fates Atropus has her station about the sun and gives the first impulse of generation; Clotho moving about the moon combines and mingles, lastly Lachesis, upon the earth, lends her hand, and she has most to do with Fortune; for that which is without soul is powerless in itself and is affected by others, mind is free from affection and sovereign; soul a compound and a middle [Sidenote: D] term, has, like the moon, been formed by the God, a blend and mixture of things above and things below, and thus bears the same relation to the sun which the earth does to the moon.’ ‘Such’, said Sylla, ‘is the story which I heard the stranger relate, but he had it from the chamberlains and ministers of Cronus, as he himself used to say. But you and your friends, Lamprias, may take the story in what way you will.’
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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