Quaestiones Convivales

This startled Lamprias a little, but, after a short pause, he continued thus: Plato often tells merry stories under borrowed names, but when he puts any fable into a discourse concerning the soul, he hath some considerable meaning in it. The intelligent nature of the heavens he calls a flying chariot, intimating the harmonious whirl of the world. And here he introduceth one Er, the son of Harmonius, a Pamphylian, to tell what he had seen in hell; intimating that our souls are begotten according to harmony, and are agreeably united to our bodies, and that, when they are separated, they are from all parts carried together into the air, and from thence return to second generations. And what hinders but that twentieth (εἰκοστόν) should intimate that this was not a true story, but only probable and fictitious (αἰκοός), and that the lot fell casually (εἰκῆ). For Plato always toucheth upon three causes, he being the first and chiefest philosopher that knew how fate agrees with fortune, and how our free-will is mixed and complicated with both. And now he hath admirably discovered what influence each hath upon our affairs. The choice of our life he hath left to our free-will, for virtue and vice are free. But that those who have made a good choice should live religiously, and those who have made

an ill choice should lead a contrary life, he leaves to the necessity of fate. But the chances of lots thrown at a venture introduce fortune into the several conditions of life in which we are brought up, which pre-occupates and perverts our own choice. Now consider whether it is not irrational to enquire after a cause of those things that are done by chance. For if the lot seems to be disposed of by design, it ceaseth to be chance and fortune, and becomes fate and providence.

Whilst Lamprias was speaking, Marcus the grammarian seemed to be counting to himself, and when he had done, he began thus: Amongst the souls which Homer mentions in his Νεκυία, Elpenor’s is not to be reckoned as mixed with those in hell, but, his body being not buried, as wandering about the banks of the river Styx. Nor is it fit that we should reckon Tiresias’s soul amongst the rest,—

On whom alone, when deep in hell beneath,

Wisdom Proserpina conferred,

to discourse and converse with the living even before he drank the sacrifice’s blood. Therefore, Lamprias, if you subtract these two, you will find that Ajax was the twentieth that Ulysses saw, and Plato merrily alludes to that place in Homer’s Νεκυία.[*](What follows, to the beginning of Question XIII., is omitted in the old editions of this translation. (G.))

Now when the whole company were grown to a certain uproar, Menephylus, a Peripatetic philosopher, called to

Hylas by name and said: You see that this question was not propounded by way of mockery and flouting; but leave now that obstinate Ajax, whose very name (according to Sophocles) is ill-omened, and betake yourself to Neptune. For you are wont to recount unto us how he has been oftentimes overcome,—here by Minerva, in Delphi by Apollo, in Argos by Juno, in Aegina by Jupiter, in Naxos by Bacchus,—and yet has borne himself always mild and gentle in all his repulses. In proof whereof, there is even in this city a temple common to him and Minerva, in which there is also an altar dedicated to Oblivion. Then Hylas, who seemed by this time to be more pleasantly disposed, replied: You have forgotten, Menephylus, that we have abolished the second day of September, not in regard of the moon, but because it was thought to be the day on which Neptune and Minerva contended for the seigniory of Attica. By all means, quoth Lamprias, by as much as Neptune was every way more civil than Thrasybulus, since not being like him a winner, but the loser,...

(The rest of this book to Question XIII is lost; with the exception of the titles that follow, and the fragment of Question XII.)