=295.= Of far more importance to us is the theory of purgatory familiar through the description in Virgil’s _Aeneid_: ‘In the beginning the earth and the sky, and the spaces of night, Also the shining moon, and the sun Titanic and bright Feed on an inward life, and, with all things mingled, a mind Moves universal matter, with Nature’s frame is combined. Thence man’s race, and the beast, and the feathered creature that flies, 5 All wild shapes that are hidden the gleaming waters beneath. Each elemental seed has a fiery force from the skies, Each its heavenly being, that no dull clay can disguise, Bodies of earth ne’er deaden, nor limbs long destined to death. Hence their fears and desires, their sorrows and joys; for their sight, 10 Blind with the gloom of a prison, discerns not the heavenly light. Nor, when life at last leaves them, do all sad ills, that belong Unto the sinful body, depart; still many survive Lingering within them, alas! for it needs must be that the long Growth should in wondrous fashion at full completion arrive. 15 So due vengeance racks them, for deeds of an earlier day Suffering penance; and some to the winds hang viewless and thin, Searched by the breezes; from others the deep infection of sin Swirling water washes, or bright fire purges, away. Each in his own sad ghost we endure; then, chastened aright, 20 Into Elysium pass. Few reach to the fields of delight Till great time, when the cycles have run their courses on high, Takes the inbred pollution, and leaves to us only the bright Sense of the heaven’s own ether, and fire from the springs of the sky[150].’ Although we cannot accept Virgil as a scientific exponent of Stoic teaching, yet there is much reason to suppose that he is here setting forth a belief which met with very general acceptance in our school, and of which the principle is that the sufferings of the disembodied are not a punishment for past offences, but the necessary means for the purification of the soul from a taint due to its long contact with the body. [Sidenote: Probable Stoic origin.]