XVII. While I was still speaking, Olympicus broke in: ‘It seems to me’, he said, ‘that your argument relies on a great [Sidenote: B] fundamental assumption—the permanence of the soul.’ ‘Subject to your consent, it does,’ I replied, ‘or rather to your consent already given; for, from the initial supposition that God dispenses to us according to our deserts, the discussion has proceeded to its present stage.’ ‘Then’, he said, ‘you think that, because the Gods survey and administer all our affairs, it follows that our souls are either wholly imperishable, or, permanent for a certain time after death.’ ‘Oh no! good friend,’ I said, ‘but the God is so petty, so important a trifler, that, dealing with men like us, who have nothing in us divine or like him in any way, or persistent, or solid, but who wither away altogether “like leaves”, as Homer[238] said, and [Sidenote: C] perish within a short span, he makes us of so great account! That would be like the gardens of Adonis which women nurse and tend in crockery pots; souls of a day springing up within a pampered flesh wherein no strong living root finds room, and then at once snuffed out on the first pretext. But, if you will, let the other Gods be, and look at our own God here. Knowing that the souls of those who die perish at once, like mists or smoke-wreaths exhaled from the bodies, does he, think you, require men to bring so many propitiations for the departed, [Sidenote: D] and such great honours to the dead, deceiving and tricking his believers? For myself, I will never give up the permanence of the soul, unless some one like Hercules shall come, and remove the tripod of the Pythia, and lay waste the place of the oracles. But in our own time so long as many such prophecies are given as once were delivered to Corax the Naxian, it is nothing less than impious to condemn the soul to death.’ Here Patrocleas asked: ‘But what was the prophecy delivered, and who was this Corax? The fact and the name are equally strange to [Sidenote: E] me.’ ‘Not at all,’ I said, ‘the fault is mine for using a by-name instead of the real one. The man who killed Archilochus in battle was called Calondas, it appears; Corax was a by-name given to him. Turned out, at first, by the Pythia, as having slain a man sacred to the Muses, then, having put in a plea of justification, accompanied by prayers and supplications, he was ordered to go to the “dwelling of Tettix” and propitiate the soul of Archilochus. This place was Taenarus; for thither, they say, Tettix the Cretan went with an expedition, and there he founded a city, and dwelt near the “Place of the [Sidenote: F] Passage of Souls”. So, when the Spartans had been ordered to propitiate the soul of Pausanias, the “Conductors of Souls” were sent for out of Italy, and, after having done sacrifice, ousted the ghost from the temple.