sacred to the nymphs, that are called Naiads. And therein are mixing bowls and jars of stone, and there moreover do bees hive. And there are great looms of stone, whereon the nymphs weave raiment of purple stain, a marvel to behold; and there are waters welling evermore. Two gates there are to the cave, the one set towards the North wind, whereby men may go down, but the portals towards the South pertain rather to the gods, whereby men may not enter: it is the way of the immortals.”’ He goes on to argue that the cave was a temple before Homer wrote, and that ‘the ancients did not establish temples without fabulous symbols,’ and then begins to interpret Homer’s description in all its detail. The ancients, he says, ‘consecrated a cave to the world’ and held ‘the flowing waters’ and the ‘obscurity of the cavern’ ‘apt symbols of what the world contains,’ and he calls to witness Zoroaster’s cave with fountains; and often caves are, he says, symbols of ‘all invisible power; because as caves are obscure and dark, so the essence of all these powers is occult,’ and quotes a lost hymn to Apollo to prove that nymphs living in caves fed men ‘from intellectual fountains’; and he contends that fountains and rivers symbolize generation, and that the word nymph ‘is commonly applied to all souls descending into generation,’ and that the two gates of Homer’s cave are the gate of generation and the gate of ascent through death to the gods, the gate of cold and moisture, and the gate of heat and fire. Cold, he says, causes life in the world, and heat causes life among the gods, and the constellation of the Cup is set in the heavens near the sign Cancer, because it is there that the souls descending from the Milky Way receive their draught of the intoxicating cold drink of generation. ‘The mixing bowls and jars of stone’ are consecrated to the Naiads, and are also, as it seems, symbolical of Bacchus, and are of stone because of the rocky beds of the rivers. And ‘the looms of stone’ are the symbols of the ‘souls that descend into generation.’ ‘For the formation of the flesh is on or about the bones, which in the bodies of animals resemble stones,’ and also because ‘the body is a garment’ not only about the soul, but about all essences that become visible, for ‘the heavens are called by the ancients a veil, in consequence of being as it were the vestments of the celestial gods.’ The bees hive in the mixing bowls and jars of stone, for so Porphyry understands the passage, because honey was the symbol adopted by the ancients for ‘pleasure arising from generation.’ The ancients, he says, called souls not only Naiads but bees, ‘as the efficient cause of sweetness’; but not all souls ‘proceeding into generation’ are called bees, ‘but those who will live in it justly and who after having performed such things as are acceptable to the gods will again return (to their kindred stars). For this insect loves to return to the place from whence it