Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

" And this has been demonstrated by us at great length in our lectures on the Phcedrus, and that this is the only way in which such de-gradation can take place. If, however, it is necessary to remind you that this meaning (logos) is that of Plato, it must be added that in the Republic1 he says that the soul of Thersites assumed an ape [life], but not an ape's body, and in the Phcedrus 2 that [the soul] descends into a brutish life, and not into a brutish body, for the mode of life goes with its appropriate soul. And in the passage [from the Timceus] he says that it changes into a brute-like nature ; for the brutish nature is not the body but the life [principle] of the brute." 3

1 Lib. X. 620 c. 2 Phcedr., 249 B.

3 Comment, in Plat. Tim., 329 D ; ed. Schneider (Warsaw,
1847), pp. 800, 801. With all of this the views of Basilides
(F. F. F., 275 ff.) may be most instructively compared.

XIV
THE VISION OF EK

" BUT to the Mindless ones, the wicked and depraved, the envious and covetous, and those who murder do and love impiety, I am far off, yielding my place to the Avenging Daimon." — C. ff., i. 23.

ER SON OF ARMENIUS

To this Daimon it is that the " way of life " of the man is surrendered at death (§ 24). In this connection we may consider the Story or Vision of "Er Son of Armenius," which Plato tells at the end of the last book (X.) of his Republic (614B ff.), for the symbolism is very similar to that of our tractate and the subject is more or less the same.

This Er is said by Clement of Alexandria to have been Zoroaster, "but no trace of acquaintance with Zoroaster is found elsewhere in Plato's writings, and there is no reason for giving him the name of Er the Pamphylian. The philosophy of Heracleitus cannot be shown to be borrowed from Zoroaster, and still less the myths of Plato." *

What the source of the story is, scholarship has so far been unable to discover; the vast majority of scholars holding it to be an invention of Plato.

1 Jowett, Dialogues, iii. clxvi.

It is the story of a man "killed in battle," whose body was brought home on the tenth day still fresh and showing no sign of decomposition. On the twelfth day, when laid on the funeral pyre, Er awakes and tells a strange story of his experiences in the invisible world.

This story should be taken in close connection with Plutarch's similar but fuller Vision of Aridaeus (Thespesius), upon which I have commented at length in my " Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries." 1

FROM THE MYSTERIES

I there stated that the experiences of Aridseus were either a literary subterfuge for describing part of the instruction in certain Mysteries, or the Vision, in popular story form, was considered so true a description of what was thought to be the nature of the invisible world and the after-death conditions of the soul, that it required little alteration to make it useful for that purpose.

I would now suggest that the Story of Er is also used by Plato for a somewhat similar purpose. It is further interesting to notice that one of the characters in the Vision of Er is called Ardiaeus, while in Plutarch the main personage is called Aridseus. The transposition of a single letter is so slight as to make the names practically identical, and the subject matter is so similar that we are inclined to think that there must be some connection between the Visions. Moreover, Aridaeus is said to have been a native of Soli in Cilicia, just as Er is said to have been a Pamphylian ; the tradition of such stories would thus seem to have been derived from Asia Minor, and the origin of them may

1 The Theosophical Review (April, May, June, 1898), xxii. 145 ft'.,
232 ff., 312 ff.

thus be hidden in the syncretism of that land — where West and East were for ever meeting. It is, however, much safer to assume that, in the Story of Er, Plato is handing on the doctrines of Orphic eschatology ; l whether or not the story already existed in some form, and was worked up and elaborated by the greatest artist in words of all philosophers, will perhaps never be known. But to the story itself.

THE CYLINDER

614 c. — Er, in a certain daimonian or psychic plane (TOTTO? rt? Satfjiovioi), is made a spectator of a turningpoint or change of course in the ascent and descent of souls. He thus seems to have been in a space or state midway between Tartarus and Heaven — presumably the invisible side of the sublunary space.