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And what is this, Sulla? Do not ask about these things, for I am going to give a full explanation myself. Most people rightly hold man to be composite but wrongly hold him to be composed of only two parts. The reason is that they suppose mind to be somehow part of soul, thus erring no less than those who believe soul to be part of body, for in the same degree as soul is superior to body so is mind better and more divine than soul. The result of soul <and body commingled is the irrational or the affective factor, whereas of mind and soul> the conjunction produces reason; and of these the former is source of pleasure and pain, the latter of virtue and vice.1
In the composition of these three factors earth furnishes the body, the moon the soul, and the sun furnishes mind <to man> for the purpose of his generation2 even as it furnishes light to the moon herself. As to the death we die, one death reduces man from three factors to two and another reduces him from two to one3; and the former takes place in the <earth> that belongs to Demeter <<wherefore ‘to make an end’ is called> ‘to render <one's life> to her’ and Athenians used in olden times to call the dead ‘Demetrians’>,4 <the latter> in the moon that belongs to Phersephone, and associated with the former is Hermes the terrestrial, with the latter Hermes the celestial.5 While the goddess here6 dissociates the soul from the body swiftly and violently, Phersephone gently and by slow degrees detaches the mind from the soul and has therefore been called ‘single-born’ because the best part of man is ‘born single’ when separated off <by> her.7 Each of the two separations naturally occurs in this fashion: All soul, whether without mind or with it,8 when it has issued from the body9 is destined to wander <in> the region between earth and moon but not for an equal time. Unjust and licentious souls pay penalties for their offences; but the good souls must in the gentlest part of the air, which they call ‘the meads of Hades,’
10 pass a certain set time sufficient to purge and blow away <the> pollutions contracted from the body as from an evil odour.11 <Then>, as if brought home from banishment abroad, they savour joy most like that of initiates, which attended by glad expectation is mingled with confusion and excitement.12 For many, even as they are in the act of clinging to the moon, she thrusts off and sweeps away; and some of those souls too that are on the moon they see turning upside down as if sinking again into the deep.13 Those that have got up, however, and have found a firm footing first go about like victors crowned with wreaths of feathers called wreaths of steadfastness,14 because in life they had made the irrational or affective element of the soul orderly and tolerably tractable to reason15; secondly, in appearance resembling a ray of light but in respect of their nature, which in the upper region is buoyant as it is here in ours, resembling the ether about the moon,16 they get from it both tension and strength as edged instruments get a temper,17 for what laxness and diffuseness they still have is strengthened and becomes firm and translucent. In consequence they are nourished by any exhalation that reaches them, and Heraclitus was right in saying: ‘Souls employ the sense of smell in Hades.’
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1 Cf. De Virtute Morali, 441 D 442 A, De Genio Socratis, 591 D-E. The ultimate source of Plutarch's conception of the relation of mind, soul, and body is such passages of Plato as Timaeus, 30 B, 41-42, 90 A; Laws, 961 D-E, Phaedrus, 247 C (cf. Thévenaz, L'Ame du monde . . . chez Plutarque, pp. 70-73). Plutarch himself ascribes the twofold division, soul and body, to οἱ πολλοί and so cannot intend a reference to any philosophical school; by those who make soul a μόριον τοῦ σώματος he might mean Stoics (cf. De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1052 F ff., De Communibus Notitiis, 1083 C ff.) but might equally well mean Epicureans or materialists generally. Against Adler's argument (Diss. Phil. Vind. x, pp. 171-172) that the first of the two notions rejected is Platonic and the second Stoic, so that Plutarch's source must have been Posidonius, cf. Pohlenz, Phil. Woch. xxxii (1912), p. 653, and R. M. Jones, The Platonism of Plutarch, p. 55.
2 Cf. De Genio Socratis, 591 B, where motion and generation are linked by Mind in the sun and generation and destruction by Nature in the moon.
3 For a ‘mortal soul’ or ‘mortal part’ of the soul cf. Plato, Timaeus, 42 D, 61 C, 69 C-D.
4 Cf. Class. Phil. xlvi (1951), p. 151.
5 Cf. De Iside, 367 D-E. Hermes appears in the myth of Persephone as early as Homeric Hymn II, 377 ff. and is connected with Hecate in the fragment of Theopompus in Porphyry, De Abstinentia, ii. 16. Cf. also Quaest. Graec. 296 F and Halliday's note ad loc.
6 i.e. on earth, Demeter, which is why Plutarch refers to her with αὕτη, though she is the former of the two mentioned.
7 μονογενής, which appears as an epithet of Hecate and Persephone (cf. Hesiod, Theogony, 426; Orphic Hymns, xxix. 1-2 [Abel]; Apollonius Rhodius, iii. 847), means ‘unique’: cf. Timaeus, 31 B and 92 C, to which Plutarch refers in De Defectu Oraculorum, 423 A and C, where he interprets the word to mean ‘only born.’ Here, however, he probably takes the final element in an active sense such as it has in Καλλιγένεια, an epithet of Demeter, the moon, and the earth.
8 This may mean only ‘whether the soul has been obedient to reason in life or has not but ὅλη κατέδυ εἰς σῶμα,’ as De Genio Socratis, 591 D-E puts it; but at 945 B infra Plutarch speaks of souls which ἄνευ νοῦ assume bodies and live on earth, and by avow here he may intend to refer to the separation of such souls from their bodies. He cannot mean, as Raingeard supposes, souls whose minds have immediately passed to the sun, for he has just said that the separation of mind from soul takes place at the second death on the moon and neither here nor in 944 F infra does he allow for any exception in the sense of the doctrine of the Hermetic Tractate, x. 16, where νοῦς is separated from ψυχή at the moment when the soul leaves the body (cf. Scott, Hermetica, ii, p. 265). In De Genio Socratis, 591 D 592 D Plutarch makes νοῦς and φυχή not really two different substances as here in the De Facie but considers ψυχή to be a degeneration of νοῦς.
9 Cf. De Sera Numinis Vindicta, 563 E: ἐπεὶ γὰρ ἐξέπεσε τὸ φρονοῦν τοῦ σώματος . . .
10 For the location of Hades cf. De Iside, 382 E and the etymology in De Latenter Vivendo, 1130 A (cf. Plato, Gorgias, 493 B and Phaedo, 80 D); for the identification of Hades with the dark air cf. [Plutarch], De Vita et Poesi Homeri, § 97; Philodemus, De Pietate, c. 13 (Dox. Graeci, p. 547 b); Cornutus, c. 5 and c. 35; Heraclitus, Quaestiones Homericae, § 41. Reference to a mead (λειμών) or meads in the underworld is common: cf. Odyssey, xi. 539, 573 and xxiv. 13-14; Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, 32 f 6 and 222; Plato, Gorgias, 524 A, Republic, 614 E and 616 B. The Neo-Platonists argued that the λειμών in these Platonic passages is meant to be located in the atmosphere under the moon: Proclus, In Rem Publicam, ii, pp. 132. 20-133. 15 (Kroll); Olympiodorus, In Gorgiam, p. 237. 10-13 (Norvin); Hermias, In Phaedrum, p. 161. 3-9 (Couvreur).
11 Cf. De Antro Nymph. §§ 11-12 (p. 64. 24-25 [Nauck]); Proclus, In Timaeum, iii, p. 331. 6-9 (Diehl); and in general on the pollution of the soul by association with the body Plato, Phaedo, 81 B-C. Plutarch in a different context uses the words: . . . ὅταν ἀτμοὶ πονηροί . . . ταῖς τῆς φυχῆς . . . ἀνακραθῶσι περιόδοις (De Tuenda Sanitate, 129 C).
12 For life on earth as the soul's exile from its proper home cf. De Exilio, 607 C-E; and for the comparison with initiates and what follows in this vein a few lines below cf. fragment VI (vii, p. 23. 4-17 [Bernardakis]).
13 Cf. De Genio Socratis, 591 C, and Plato's Phaedrus, 248 A-B, especially αἱ δὲ δὴ ἄλλαι γλιχόμεναι μὲν ἅπασαι τοῦ ἄνω ἕπονται, ἀδυνατοῦσαι δέ, ὑποβρύχιαι συμπεριφέρονται κτλ.
14 For life as an athletic contest and the soul as athlete cf. De Sera Numinis Vindicta, 561 A, De Genio Socratis, 593 D-E and 593 F 594 A. The conception is Platonic (cf. Republic, 621 C-D, Phaedrus, 256 B); and it is irrelevant to cite oriental notions of life as a combat and immortality as a triumph as Soury does (La Démonologie de Plutarque, p. 189, n. 1) after Cumont. Soury follows Raingeard in misconstruing στεφάνοις . . . λεγομένοις and supposing that πτερῶν εὐσταθείας is an ‘expression mystique’ (op. cit. pp. 189 and 191-192). εὐσταθείας does not depend upon πτερῶν or vice versa; and Plutarch has simply woven the ‘feathers of the soul,’ which appear throughout the myth of the Phaedrus, into a wreath that is given to the souls of the good for their steadfastness, just as the Victorious souls in Phaedrus, 256 B become ὑπόπτεροι because in life they were ἐγκρατεῖς αὑτῶν καὶ κόσμιοι.
15 Cf. De Genio Socratis, 592 A, and Plato's Phaedrus, 247 B (n.b. εὐήνια ὄντα ῥᾳδίως πορεύεται).
16 αἰθήρ for Plato was simply the uppermost and purest air (cf. Timaeus, 58 D, Phaedo, 109 B and 111 B); but here the word is probably used under Stoic influence, for which see note d on 928 D and note g on 922 B supra and cf. [Plato], Axiochus, 366 A (ἡ ψυχὴ συναλγούσα τὸν οὐράνιον ποθεῖ καὶ σύμφυλον αἰθέρα). These last sentences of chapter 28 show several definitely Stoic traits, especially the conception of ‘tension,’ nourishment of the soul by the exhalations, and the use of the quotation from Heraclitus. It has long been customary to compare with this passage Cicero, Tusc. Disp. i. 19, 43, and Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Math. ix. 71-73 (cf. Heinze, Xenokrates, pp. 126-128; K. Reinhardt, Kosmos und Sympathie, pp. 308-313 and p. 323; R. M. Jones, Class. Phil. xxvii [1932], pp. 113 ff.).
17 For the Stoic doctrine of τόνος cf. De Stoicorum Repugnantiis, 1054 A-B, De Communibus Notitiis, 1085 C-D, and S. V. F. ii, frags. 447 and 448. The metaphor of ‘tempering’ was also commonly used by the Stoics in connection with the soul: cf. S. V. F. ii, frags. 804-806.
18 Frag. 98 (i, p. 173. 3 [Diels-Kranz]). For the nourishment of disembodied souls cf. the passages of Cicero and Sextus cited in note e, p. 203. Here the argument of Lamprias in 940 c-d supra is incorporated into the myth, which thereby appears to substantiate the argument.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Harold Cherniss and William C. Helmbold. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1957. 12.
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