De Defectu Oraculorum

You are right, said Cleombrotus; but since it is hard to apprehend and to define in what way and to what extent Providence should be brought in as an agent, those who make the god responsible for nothing at all and those who make him responsible for all things alike go wide of moderation and propriety. They put the case well who say that Plato,[*](In the Timaeus, 48 e ff., for example.) by his discovery of the element underlying all created qualities, which is now called Matter and Nature, has relieved philosophers of many great perplexities; but, as it seems to me, those persons have resolved more and greater perplexities

who have set the race of demigods midway between gods and men,[*](Cf. Plutarch, Comment. on Hesiod, Works and Days, 122 (Bernardakis’s edition, vol. vii. p. 52); cf. also 390 e, supra.) and have discovered a force to draw together, in a way, and to unite our common fellowship - whether this doctrine comes from the wise men of the cult of Zoroaster, or whether it is Thracian and harks back to Orpheus, or is Egyptian, or Phrygian, as we may infer from observing that many things connected with death and mourning in the rites of both lands are combined in the ceremonies so fervently celebrated there. Among the Greeks, Homer, moreover, appears to use both names in common and sometimes to speak of the gods as demigods; but Hesiod[*](Cf. Plutarch, Comment. on Hesiod, Works and Days, 122 (Bernardakis’s edition, vol. vii. p. 52); cf. also 390 e, supra.) was the first to set forth clearly and distinctly four classes of rational beings: gods, demigods, heroes, in this order, and, last of all, men; and as a sequence to this, apparently, he postulates his transmutation, the golden race passing selectively into many good divinities, and the demigods into heroes.

Others postulate a transmutation for bodies and souls alike; in the same manner in which water is seen to be generated from earth, air from water, and fine from air, as their substance is borne upward, even so from men into heroes and from heroes into demigods the better souls obtain their transmutation. But from the demigods a few souls still, in the long reach of time, because of supreme excellence, come, after being purified, to share completely in divine qualities. But with some of these souls it comes to pass that they do not maintain control over themselves, but yield to temptation and are again clothed

with mortal bodies and have a dim and darkened life, like mist or vapour.