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Titans, their "deeds unrighteous," and are doomed to "suffer the suffering" and do penance for their "ancient sin."

What, then, is the nature of the punishment? The answer is the Orphic-Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis. By the law of the Orphic Fate the soul is condemned to an indefinite series of incarnations.2 It must again and again take on a perishable body. "Clothed in a strange garment of flesh," it must wander in this "meadow of woe," "this roofed-in cave," "this cheerless realm of wrath and death and throngs of dooms and loathsome disease and decay."3 Each existence on earth is a punishment, each body a tomblike prison in which the soul is exiled from its rightful home and deprived of its fellowship with the gods.5

This wandering of the soul from one existence to another, from a higher to a lower, from a lower to a higher, is conceived as a cycle or wheel of life, κúKλos, τρóxоs. In this cycle it is theoretically possible that the soul may fall indefinitely until it is born into the lowest form of earthly existence, or rise indefinitely until it becomes a god; but the chances are that it will not rise to any height, because the ancient guilt tends to beget an endless brood, and so the series of earthly punishments and imprisonments goes on and on. The cycle of rebirths is then for the majority of indefinite duration; or, when any limit is set to it, it is a minimum of ten thousand years."

So far the doctrine is simple enough, but the idea of reward or punishment by progress or retrogression in the earthly life is complicated with the notion of reward or punishment in the lower world between incarnations, and with that of eternal bliss or eternal pain.

If the life on earth has been one of signal wickedness and the soul is beyond cure, it is sent to the torments of the damned in the lowest.

1 See Compagno tablet b, Timpone Grande tablet; Pindar, fr. 106, and Weil's commentary, p. 36. Abel Orphica 222, 223; Empedocles (Stein) 383, 384.

Empedocles 402, 381, 391, 385-87.

4 Plato Crat. 400 C. Cf. Phaedo 62 B and Verg. Aen. vi. 733.

s Empedocles 381.

• Abel Orphica 225, 226. This is the κύκλου βαρυπένθεος αργαλέοιο of the gold tablets. Cf. perfecto temporis orbe of Aen. vi. 745 and rota in Aen. vi. 748.

7 Plato Phaedr. 249 A; in Empedocles, 30,000 seasons. See Dieterich Nekyia, p. 119, and Rohde Psyche II, p. 379, n. 3.

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depths of Hades, where its release from the cycle consists in the more terrible fate of endless suffering. Of the other souls, the good are sent for a time to an Elysium in Hades, while the unworthy but not beyond hope, are sent to a place of punishment. The temporary sojourn in Hades is one of purification. Those in the place of punishment are purified through suffering; those in Elysium, apparently through companionship with the good and a foretaste of greater joys to come. The purification in Hades goes on for a considerable length of time-definitely, a period of a thousand years.3

The purpose of the mysteries was, naturally, to exempt their votaries so far as possible from the cycle of exile and to reconcile the soul with god. They could at least promise to the mystic who had submitted himself to the rites of initiation, the ceremonies of purification and the Orphic rules of life, that between incarnations he would not suffer punishment, but would pass the time in comparative joy in Elysium. But there were degrees of virtue within the Orphic sect. To the chosen few who in each life kept their soul from guilt they promised complete purification and release from the "wearisome cycle" after three lives of the body and three purgations in the Elysium of Hades.5 When at length the last penance is done and the last purgation is accomplished, the soul recovers its pure divinity, regains its lost estate and goes to dwell forever with the gods."

These are the main ideas of mystic thought as they are gathered from Orphic fragments, from Empedocles, Pindar and Plato. Whether they are taken from one common source, an Orphic-Pythagorean poem,

Plato Phaedo 113 E; Repub. 615 D, E; Gorg. 525 C; Pindar Ol. 2. 74.

For Elysium as a place of purgation see Maas Orpheus 231, Abel Orphica 231, where the good are purifed and receive a “milder fate,” ἐν καλῷ λειμῶνι, βαθύρροον ἀμφ' ̓Αχέροντα. Corresponding to this "fair meadow" is the Elysium of Pindar, fr. 129 (Rohde Psyche II, pp. 210, 211), and Plato's Vorparadies in the heavens, Phaedr. 249; Repub. at end.

3 Plato Phaedr. 249; Verg. Aen. vi. 748.

4 Abel Orphica 266.

s Pindar Second Olympian 75 ff., according to Rohde's interpretation; Plato Phaedr. 249 A-where the Elysium of Hades is replaced by an intermediate heaven. Cf. Claudian In Rufin. ii. 491 ff. The gold tablets furnish no evidence on this point, but see Gruppe's suggestion in Roscher, p. 1127.

6 In the Compagno tablets the soul is freed from its mortality and is pronounced a god. It is sent és ëdpas evayéwv; in the Neoplatonic language of Proclus, #pòs тò voepòv eldos, Abel Orphica 226; probably to Zeus or the "Starry Heaven," whence came its divine, immortal essence. See Rohde Psyche II, pp. 130,

131. So also Empedocles 449-51; Plato Phaedr. 247; and in more popular language, Pindar Ol. 2.71.

with which, or with some abstract of which, Vergil was acquainted, may, in spite of Dieterich and Norden, be regarded as still an open question. But that these notions in the form in which I have reviewed them formed a part of the literary inheritance of Vergil admits of little doubt.

But to explain the Vergilian passage in question we must add an element drawn from another source, from Stoic pantheism in its more popular form, as it is reflected in Cicero and the Roman writers of his time and later-the doctrine that the soul is a spark from the divine ethereal fire which pervades and rules the world. This pure emanation from the divine essence becomes soiled with earthly taint and fettered with an earthly body, whence mortal desires, sorrow and pain.1

So far this is only a more rational expression of the Orphic conception of the soul, but the pure Stoic teaching had nothing of the idea of metempsychosis. The necessity of penance and purification after death is, however, recognized. On the death of the body the soul is not yet cleansed of the earthly stain, but must wander for a time in the dense, heavy atmosphere near the earth, the turbulent region of clouds and storms, where it does penance and is purified, after which it soars into the pure region of the sun and finds its home in the ethereal fire whence it came.3

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This idea of a purgation which the later Stoic thought located in the cloudy atmosphere between the earth and heaven's "pure serene" is borrowed by Vergil, though it is expressed in Orphic terms, and, seemingly, made a part of his scheme of purification in Hades.4 Lines 735-44 can mean only that all who are sent to the broad spaces of Elysium must pass through a stage of preliminary punishment and purification, not all in equal degree, but each in accordance with his merits. Quisque suos patimur manes.

It is the following lines which present the difficult problem:
Mittimur Elysium et pauci laeta arva tenemus
donec longa dies, perfecto temporis orbe,

Rohde Psyche II, pp. 320, 321; Cicero Tusc. i. 42-45; Verg. Aen. vi. 724–34.

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Do we have here simply an instance of Vergil's eclectic tendency, or was the Stoic teaching in the source from which he learned it already contaminated and confused with earlier mystic ideas?

concretam exemit labem purumque relinquit
aetherium sensum atque aurai simplicis ignem.
Has omnes, ubi mille rotam volvere per annos,
Laetheum ad fluvium deus evocat agmine magno,
scilicet immemores super ut convexa revisant
rursus et incipiant in corpora velle reverti.

Is the Elysium here mentioned merely a poetic substitute for the Stoic ethereal heaven? Is it, in other words, the final goal of the soul, the ultimate paradise, and do the "few" possess the "happy fields" forever? This is the general view.1

But as the text stands they possess the happy fields only until the long cycle of time completed has washed away the last trace of impurity and left the clear, ethereal essence. It is assumed, therefore, that lines 745-47 have dropped out of their right place and should be written after 742.2 The sense would then be that after the punishment and purification described in 739-43 have continued through the longa dies perfecto temporis orbe, and cleansed the soul of every taint, then finally the few enjoy Elysium.

To this remedy it may be objected that it is too heroic to be used save as a last resort:3 and, furthermore, it clears up one difficulty only to make another. We may well ask: If only those who have undergone this long purification are in Elysium, how can Anchises be there? But this is a minor inconsistency, of which Vergil might easily have been capable. The serious objection appears in 748-51. It is not the few only who possess the happy fields. "All these" (has omnes) who are not released from the cycle and are summoned by the god to drink of Lethe and undergo another incarnation are also in Elysium, not in a place distinct from it as Norden holds. He regards the seclusum nemus in valle reducta et virgulta sonantia silvae in which these are congregated

Of the editors Wagner, Heyne, Conington, Ribbeck, but not Norden; also of Rohde Psyche II, p. 165, n. 2; Dieterich Nekyia, p. 155. Cf., however, Maas op. cit., p. 231.

Ribbeck actually gives this order in his text.

3 Dieterich has an ingenious explanation which aims to do away with the difficulty without disturbing the lines. He would put a period after tenemus, 744, marking a distinct pause in the words of Anchises. After ignem, 747, he would remove the period, making ll. 745-47 look forward rather than backward. This would be helped out, he thinks, by some dramatic gesture of Anchises. The sense would then be the same as if 11. 745-47 were written after 751. (Nekyia, p. 156.) However, this is rather too ingenious. See objections to it in Glover's Studies in Vergil, p. 249.

as the purgatory to Elysium proper and the region where the punishments mentioned in 740-42 take place. He cites as a parallel "the kindliest region of the air which they call the meadows" of Plutarch's De facie in orbe lunae 943 C. But this is simply the Vorparadies of the mystic teaching, not a place of purification through punishment. Plutarch combines Stoic and Orphic ideas. The ultimate paradise, according to the passage, is the upper surface of the moon. Between the moon and the earth is a region where the wicked are punished, and another distinct from this where the good are purified.

The only distinction between "the few" of 744 and "all these" of 748 is that the latter are doomed to return to earth after their sojourn of a thousand years. These must drink of the water of Lethe in order that they may lose the vision of Elysian joy and so be willing to return to the upper world. If they were anywhere else than in the paradise of Hades, if they were in a region of purgation through punishment as Norden thinks,

Quam vellent aethere in alto

Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores!"

Does Vergil's Elysium then serve as the eternal home of the chosen few, and at the same time as the temporary abode between incarnations of those who are condemned to revisit the earth? This is incredible, or at any rate without parallel in Greek or Roman thought.

Nor is there any clear parallel in this realm of ideas, so far as I know, for an Elysium in Hades as the final abode of the good.3 The lower world was at best thought of as an awesome place. With all that poetic fancy could do to paint a subterranean region in cheerful colors, furnish it with light and deck it with flowers and groves, an Elysium in Hades remained nevertheless a place of comparative gloom. That is why Plato put even his Vorparadies somewhere in the heavens and his ultimate paradise in the heaven that is above the heavens. The teaching

His edition of Aeneid vi, pp. 21 ff.

Said of those in Vergil's limbo, vss. 435, 436.

3 A possible instance is the x@pos evoreßov of the Pseudo-Platonic Axiochus. The "Isles of the Blest" of Plato's Gorgias are probably not in the lower world. See Weil, p. 61, and Stewart's Myths of Plato, p. 109. 4 A place where, as in the Orphic lines above quoted, the good have a "milder fate,” μaλaкwτeрov oltov, not that of ideal bliss.

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