The meaning of the allegory is immediately apparent: the _quieta sedes_ in which deserving souls are received, has become the sky. How was this idea developed? Homer[483] had already described Olympus as “the immovable seat of the gods which is neither shaken by the winds, nor wet by the rains, nor touched by the snow, but is bright with a cloudless light.” The Epicureans applied these lines of the poet to the serene dwelling where nothing occurred to modify the perpetual peace enjoyed by the gods.[484] And the founder of Stoicism had already taught that the pious souls, separated from the guilty, inhabited “tranquil and delectable” regions.[485] Both called this dwelling of the gods or the elect by the same name—_sedes quietae_. We must here remember the distinction, established by the philosophers and often repeated, between the sublunary circle and the celestial spheres.[486] Above, the world of the eternal gods; below, the world of generation and corruption. There the pure ether always kept the same serenity; here the struggle of the elements called forth unceasing agitation and transformation. On one side reigned peace and harmony, on the other war and discord. The zone of the moon was the boundary between the two contrasted parts of the world, and “the limit between life and death.”[487] It was when they had crossed it, that the souls entered the _quietae sedes_ of the Blessed. The very ancient idea of a fearful journey which the dead had to make in order to reach Pluto’s subterranean kingdom was transferred to the space lying between the earth and the moon, for this was the region of the universe to which the name of nether world (_Inferi_)[488] was henceforth applied. As we have seen in the previous lecture,[489] when the soul, escaping from the body, was laden with material dross, it was tossed about for many centuries before it could again win to the ether. Shaken by the winds, swept to and fro by the opposing elements of air, water and fire, it had to endure a long torture before it was cleansed of the sin which weighed it down. When at length it was freed of every fleshly taint, it escaped from inward trouble also, from the pains and the passions provoked by its union with the body. “Then,” says Seneca, “it tends to return to the place whence it has been sent down; there eternal quiet awaits it when it passes from the confused and gross to the clear and pure.”[490] In the same way certain Neo-Platonists taught that souls which had lived well, rose to the celestial heights and rested there amid the stars. Even in this life the ecstasy, which gave them anticipated enjoyment of the future bliss, is described by them as a transport in which reason attains to absolute stability or equipoise, escapes from all movement and rests in the Supreme Being.[491] Peace in the celestial light: such is the highest form which the repose of the dead assumed in paganism.[492]