[149:2] Porphyry, _Vita Plotini_, 23. 'We have explained that he was good and gentle, mild and merciful; we who lived with him could feel it. We have said that he was vigilant and pure of soul, and always striving towards the Divine, which with all his soul he loved. . . . And thus it happened to this extraordinary man, constantly lifting himself up towards the first and transcendent God by thought and the ways explained by Plato in the _Symposium_, that there actually came a vision of that God who is without shape or form, established above the understanding and all the intelligible world. To whom I, Porphyry, being now in my sixty-eighth year, profess that I once drew near and was made one with him. At any rate he appeared to Plotinus "a goal close at hand." For his whole end and goal was to be made One and draw near to the supreme God. And he attained that goal four times, I think, while I was living with him--not potentially but in actuality, though an actuality which surpasses speech.' [150:1] _C. I. G._, vol. xii, fasc. 3; and Bethe in _Rhein. Mus._, N. F., xlii, 438-75. [150:2] Irenaeus, i. 13, 3. [150:3] Bousset, chap. vii; Reitzenstein, _Mysterienreligionen_, p. 20 ff., with excursus; _Poimandres_, 226 ff.; Dieterich, _Mithrasliturgie_, pp. 121 ff. [152:1] Eur. fr. 484. [152:2] _R. G. E._{3}, pp. 135-40. I do not touch on the political side of this apotheosis of Hellenistic kings; it is well brought out in Ferguson's _Hellenistic Athens_, e. g. p. 108 f., also p. 11 f. and note. Antigonus Gonatas refused to be worshipped (Tarn, p. 250 f.). For Sallustius's opinion, see below, p. 223, chap. xviii _ad fin._ [153:1] Cf. ψυχὴ οἰκητήριον δαίμονος, Democr. 171, Diels, and Alcmaeon is said by Cicero to have attributed divinity to the Stars and the Soul. Melissus and Zeno θείας οἴεται τὰς ψυχάς. The phrase τινὲς τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπὸ τῶν ἄστρων ῥέουσαν, Diels 651, must refer to some Gnostic sect. [154:1] See for instance Frazer, _Golden Bough_{3}, part I, i. 417-19. [154:2] Aesch. _Pers._ 157, 644 (θεός), 642 (δαίμων). Mr. Bevan however suspects that Aeschylus misunderstood his Persian sources: see his article on 'Deification' in Hastings's _Dictionary of Religion_. [154:3] Cf. Aristotle on the Μεγαλόψυχος, _Eth. Nic._ 1123 b. 15. εἰ δὲ δὴ μεγάλων ἑαμτὸν ἀξιοῖ ἄξιος ὤν, καὶ μάλιστα τῶν μεγίστων, περὶ ἓν μάλιστα ἂν εἲη. . . . μέγιστον δὲ τοῦτ' ἂν θείημεν ὃ τοῖς θεοῖς ἀπονέμομεν. But these kings clearly transgressed the mean. For the satirical comments of various public men in Athens see Ed. Meyer, _Kleine Schriften_, 301 ff., 330. [155:1] Lysander too had altars raised to him by some Asiatic cities. [156:1] Dittenberger, _Inscr. Orientis Graeci_, 90; Wendland, _Hellenistisch-römische Kultur_, 1907, p. 74 f. and notes.