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

" ' Even for him who comes last in turn, if he but choose with his mind, and live consistently, there is in store a life desirable and far from evil. So let neither him who has the best choice be careless, nor him who comes last despair.'

"And when he had thus spoken, the one who had the first choice, Er said, immediately went and chose the largest life of autocratic power, but through folly and greediness he did not choose with sufficient attention to all points, and failed to notice the fate wrapped up with it, of ' dishes of his own children ' l and other ills. But when he had examined it at leisure, he began to beat his breast, and bemoan his choice, not abiding by what the prophet had previously told him ; for he did not lay the blame of these evils on himself, but on ill-luck and daimones, and everything rather than himself. And he was one of those who came from heaven, who in his former life had lived in a well-ordered state, and been virtuous from custom and not from a love of wisdom.2

"In brief, it was by no means the minority of those who involved themselves in such unfortunate choices who came from heaven, seeing that such souls were unexercised in the hardships of life. Many of those who came from earth, as they had suffered hardships themselves, and had seen others suffering them, did not make their choice off-hand.

1 A literary embellishment from the Tragic Muse of Greece, and the mythical recitals of Thyestian banquets.

2 tdti &vtv <pi\offo<pla.s.

"Consequently many of the souls, independently of the fortune of their turn, changed good for evil, and evil for good. For if a man should always, whenever he conies into life on earth, live a sound philosophic life, and the lot of his choice should not fall out to him among the last, the chances are, according to this news from the other world, that he will not only spend his life happily here, but also that the path which he will tread from here to there, and thence back again, will not be below the earth l and difficult, but easy and of a celestial nature.

620. — "Yes, the vision he had, Er said, was well worth the seeing, showing how each class of souls chose their lives.2 The vision was both a pitiful and laughable as well as a wonderful thing to see. For the most part they chose according to the experience of their former life. For Er said that he saw the soul that had once been that of Orpheus becoming the life of a swan for choice,3 through its hatred of womankind, because owing to the death of Orpheus at the hands of women, it did not wish to come into existence by conception in a woman. He further saw the soul of Thamyras 4 choose the life of a nightingale. On the contrary, he saw also a swan change to the choice of a human life, and other musical animals in like fashion.

"The soul that obtained the twentieth lot chose

1 The Tartarean spheres of the invisible world, popularly believed to be below the earth ; that is, philosophically, more material than earth-life.

the life of a lion; it was the soul of Ajax, son of Telamon, to avoid being a man, because it still remembered the [unjust] decision about the arms. The next soul was Agamemnon's ; and it too, out of hatred to the human race on account of its sufferings, changed into the life of an eagle.1 The soul of Atalanta obtained its lot in the middle, and letting her eye fall on the great honours paid an ' athlete,' was unable to pass it by, and took it. The soul of Epeius,2 son of Panopeus, he saw pass into the nature of a woman skilful in the arts. And far away among the last he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites putting on an ' ape.'

2 The vision (fo'a) was therefore typical.

3 The birds are typical of souls living in the air — that is, in aery bodies and not in physical ones ; or types of intelligence.

4 Or Thamyris, an ancient Thracian bard ; it is said that in his conceit he imagined he could surpass the Muses in song, in consequence of which he was deprived of his sight and the power of singing.