Part 53 (2/2)
He said that his soul, being separated from his body, went with a large company to a very agreeable place, where they saw as it were two great openings, which gave entrance to those who came from earth, and two others to go to heaven. He saw at this same place judges who examined those arrived from this world, and sent up to the right those who had lived well, and sent down to the left those who had been guilty of crimes. Each of them bore upon his back a label on which was written what he had done well or ill, the reason of his condemnation or his absolution.
When it came to the turn of Eros, the judges told him that he must return to earth, to announce to men what pa.s.sed in the other world, and that he must well observe everything, in order to be able to render a faithful account to the living. Thus he witnessed the miserable state of the wicked, which was to last a thousand years, and the delights enjoyed by the just; that both the good and the bad received the reward or the punishment of their good or bad deeds, ten times greater than the measure of their crimes or of all their virtues.
He remarked amongst other things, that the judges inquired where was a certain man named Andaeus, celebrated in all Pamphylia for his crimes and tyranny. They were answered that he was not yet come, and that he would not be there; in fact, having presented himself with much trouble, and by making great efforts, at the grand opening before mentioned, he was repulsed and sent back to go below with other scoundrels like himself, whom they tortured in a thousand different ways, and who were always violently repulsed, whenever they tried to reascend.
He saw, moreover, the three Fates, daughters of Necessity or Destiny.
These are, Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos. Lachesis announced the past, Clotho the present, and Atropos the future. The souls were obliged to appear before these three G.o.ddesses. Lachesis cast the lots upwards, and every soul laid hold of the one which it could reach; which, however, did not prevent them still from sometimes missing the kind of life which was most conformable to justice and reason.
Eros added that he had remarked some of the souls who sought to enter into animals; for instance, Orpheus, from hatred to the female s.e.x, who had killed him (by tearing him to pieces), entered into a swan, and Thamaris into a nightingale. Ajax, the son of Telamon, chose the body of a lion, from detestation of the injustice of the Greeks, who had refused to let him have the arms of Hector, which he a.s.serted were his due. Agamemnon, grieved at the crosses he had endured in this life, chose the form of the eagle. Atalanta chose the life of the athletics, delighted with the honors heaped upon them. Thersites, the ugliest of mortals, chose the form of an ape. Ulysses, weary of the miseries he had suffered upon earth, asked to live quietly as a private man. He had some trouble to find a lot for that kind of life; but he found it at last thrown down on the ground and neglected, and he joyfully s.n.a.t.c.hed it up.
Eros affirmed also that the souls of some animals entered into the bodies of men; and by the contrary rule, the souls of the wicked took possession of savage and cruel beasts, and the souls of just men of those animals which are gentle, tame, and domestic.
After these various metempsychoses, Lachesis gave to each his guardian or defender, who guided and guarded him during the course of his life. Eros was then led to the river of oblivion (Lethe), which takes away all memory of the past, but he was prevented from drinking of its water. Lastly, he said he could not tell how he came back to life.
Plato, after having related this fable, as he terms it, or this apologue, concludes from it that the soul is immortal, and that to gain a blessed life we must live uprightly, which will lead us to heaven, where we shall enjoy that beat.i.tude of a thousand years which is promised us.
We see by this, 1. That a man may live a good while without eating or breathing, or giving any sign or life. 2. That the Greeks believed in the metempsychosis, in a state of beat.i.tude for the just, and pains of a thousand years duration for the wicked. 3. That destiny does not hinder a man from doing either good or evil. 4. That he had a genius, or an angel, who guided and protected him. They believed in judgment after death, and that the souls of the just were received into what they called the Elysian Fields.
Footnotes:
[615] John xi. 14.
[616] Luke vii. 11, 12.
[617] 2 Kings iv. 25.
[618] 2 Kings xiii. 21.
[619] Luke xvi. 24.
[620] Plato, lib. x. de Rep. p. 614.
CHAPTER LIV.
THE TRADITIONS OF THE PAGANS CONCERNING THE FUTURE LIFE ARE DERIVED FROM THE HEBREWS AND EGYPTIANS.
All these traditions are clearly to be found in Homer, Virgil, and other Greek and Latin authors; they were doubtless originally derived from the Hebrews, or rather the Egyptians, from whom the Greeks took their religion, which they arranged to their own taste. The Hebrews speak of the _Rephaims_,[621] of the impious giants ”who groan under the waters.” Solomon says[622] that the wicked shall go down to the abyss, or h.e.l.l, with the Rephaims. Isaiah, describing the arrival of the King of Babylon in h.e.l.l, says[623] that ”the giants have raised themselves up to meet him with honor, and have said unto him, thou has been pierced with wounds even as we are; thy pride has been precipitated into h.e.l.l. Thy bed shall be of rottenness, and thy covering of worms.” Ezekiel describes[624] in the same manner the descent of the King of a.s.syria into h.e.l.l--”In the day that Ahasuerus went down into h.e.l.l, I commanded a general mourning; for him I closed up the abyss, and arrested the course of the waters. You are at last brought down to the bottom of the earth with the trees of Eden; you will rest there with all those who have been killed by the sword; there is Pharaoh with all his host,” &c. In the Gospel,[625] there is a great gulf between the bosom of Abraham and the abode of the bad rich man, and of those who resemble him.
The Egyptians called _Amenthes_, that is to say, ”he who receives and gives,” what the Greeks named Hades, or h.e.l.l, or the kingdom of Hades, or Pluto. They believed that Amenthes received the souls of men when they died, and restored them to them when they returned to the world; that when a man died, his soul pa.s.sed into the body of some other animal by metempsychosis; first of all into a terrestrial animal, then into one that was aquatic, afterwards into the body of a bird, and lastly, after having animated all sorts of animals, he returned at the end of three thousand years to the body of a man.
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