The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 04 : $b Greece to the Roman Conquest
History
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 04 : $b Greece to the Roman Conquest
World history
“When the dead arrive at the place to which their dæmon leads them
severally, first of all they are judged, as well those who have lived
well and piously, as those who have not. And those who appear to have
passed a middle kind of life, proceeding to Acheron, and embarking in
the vessels they have, on these arrive at the lake, and there dwell, and
when they are purified, and have suffered punishment for the iniquities
they may have committed, they are set free, and each receives the reward
of his good deeds, according to his deserts: but those who appear to
be incurable, through the magnitude of their offences, either from
having committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless
murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable destiny hurls into
Tartarus, whence they never come forth. But those who appear to have been
guilty of curable, yet great offences, such as those who through anger
have committed any violence against father or mother, and have lived
the remainder of their life in a state of penitence, or they who have
become homicides in a similar manner, these must of necessity fall into
Tartarus, but after they have fallen, and have been there for a year, the
wave casts them forth, the homicides into Cocytus, but the parricides
and matricides into Pyriphlegethon: but when, being borne along, they
arrive at the Acherusian lake, there they cry out to and invoke, some
those whom they slew, others those whom they injured, and invoking them,
they entreat and implore them to suffer them to go out into the lake, and
to receive them; and if they persuade them, they go out, and are freed
from their sufferings, but if not, they are borne back to Tartarus, and
thence again to the rivers, and they do not cease from suffering this
until they have persuaded those whom they have injured, for this sentence
was imposed on them by the judges. But those who are found to have lived
an eminently holy life, these are they, who, being freed and set at
large from these regions in the earth, as from a prison, arrive at the
pure abode above, and dwell on the upper parts of the earth. And among
these, they who have sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy shall
live without bodies, throughout all future time, and shall arrive at
habitations yet more beautiful than these.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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