Cp. Dante, _Purg._ 3, 19 foll. The idea is Pythagorean (see _Quaest. Graec._ 40, p. 300). Footnote 244: Cp. Plato, _Gorg._ 524 D. Footnote 245: See H. Richards in _Class. Rev._, vol. 29, p. 236. Footnote 246: Cp. p. 215, n. 1. Footnote 247: Cp. p. 89. Footnote 248: Probably a Sibylline verse. See Suetonius, _Life of Vespasian_. Footnote 249: Reading ἅτε δή with C. F. Hermann. Footnote 250: Cp. Aristot. _Hist. Anim._ 2, 14, 505 b 13, and 10, 37, 621 a 6. FROM THE DIALOGUE ‘ON THE SOUL’ A FRAGMENT [Preserved by Stobaeus, _Florileg._ 119.[251]] I. When Timon had spoken thus, Patrocleas replied: ‘Your argument is as forcible as it is ancient, yet there are difficulties. For if the doctrine of immortality is so very old, how is it that the fear of death is “oldest of terrors”[252]? Unless, of course, it is this which has engendered all other terrors. For there is nothing “fresh or new” in our mourning for the dead, or in the use of those sad sinister forms of speech, “Poor man!” “Unfortunate man!”’ II. ‘But there’, said Timon, ‘we shall find a confusion of ideas between what perishes and what does not. Now when we speak of the dead as having “passed away” and being “gone”, there is clearly no suggestion of anything actually harsh, only of a change or transition of some sort. Where that change takes place for those who undergo it, and whether it be for worse or better, let us consider by looking into the other words used. Our actual word for death[253], in the first place, does not appear to point to a movement downward, or beneath the earth, but rather to a mounting upward towards God of that which passes. Thus we may reasonably suppose that the soul darts out and runs upward, as though a bent spring had been released, when the body breathes it out, and itself draws an upward vital breath. Next, look at the opposite of death, which is generation; this word, on the contrary, expresses a tendency downward, an inclination to earth[254] of that which at the time of death again speeds upward. Hence, too, we call our natal day by a name which means a beginning of evils and of great troubles.[255] Perhaps we shall see the same thing even more clearly from another set of words. A man when he dies is said to be “released”, and death called a “release”—if you ask the question “from what?”, a release from body[256]—for body is called dĕmas, because the soul is kept in bondage in it, contrary to nature, nothing being forcibly detained in a place which is natural to it. A further play upon this “bondage” and “force” gives the word “life”, as Homer,[257] I think, uses Hesperus for the feminine “evening”, and so, in contrast to “life”, the dead is said to come to his rest, released from a great and unnatural stress. So with the change and reconstitution of the soul into the Whole; we say that it has perished when it has made its way thither; while here it does not