‘Now the stranger, having been received here, as he told us, and serving the God at his leisure, attained as much skill in astronomy as is attainable by the most advanced geometry; of other Philosophy he applied himself to the physical branches. Then, having a strange desire and yearning to see “the Great Island” (for so it appears they call our world), when the thirty years were passed, and the relief parties arrived from home, he said farewell to his friends and sailed forth, carrying a complete equipment of all kinds, and abundant store of provision for the way in golden beakers. All the adventures which befell him, and all the men whose lands he visited, how he met with [Sidenote: C] holy writings and was initiated into all the mysteries, it would take more than one day to enumerate as he did, well and carefully and with all details. Listen now to those which concern our present discussion. He spent a very long time in Carthage.[367]... He there discovered certain sacred parchments which had been secretly withdrawn when the older city was destroyed, and had lain a long time in the earth unnoticed; and he said that of all the Gods who appear to us we ought specially to honour the moon with all our substance (and so he charged me to do), because she was most potent in our life. XXVII. ‘When I marvelled at this, and asked for clearer [Sidenote: D] statements, he went on: “Many tales, Sylla, are told among the Greeks about the Gods, but not all are well told. For instance, about Demeter and Cora, they are right in their names, but wrong in supposing that they both belong to the same region; for the latter is on earth, and has power over earthly things, the former is in the moon and is concerned with things of the moon. The moon has been called both Cora and Persephone, Persephone because she gives light, Cora because we also use the same Greek word for the pupil of the eye, in which the image of the beholder flashes back, as the sunbeam is seen in the moon. In the stories told about [Sidenote: E] their wanderings and the search there is an element of truth. They yearn for one another when parted, and often embrace in shadow. And what is told of Cora, that she is sometimes in heaven and in light, and again in night and darkness, is no untruth, only time has brought error into the numbers; for it is not during six months, but at intervals of six months, [Sidenote: F] that we see her received by the earth, as by a mother, in the shadow, and more rarely at intervals of five months; for to leave Hades is impossible to her, who is herself a ‘bound of Hades’, as Homer[368] well hints in the words, _Now to Elysian plains, earth’s utmost bound._ For where the shadow of the earth rests in its passage, there Homer placed the limit and boundary of earth. To that limit comes no man that is bad or impure, but the good after death are conveyed thither, and pass a most easy life, not, however, one blessed or divine until the second death.”‘