hypocrites were flayed and gashed, so as to reveal their inner nature; deadly enemies were twined together, and gnawed one another, as Ugolino gnawed the Archbishop of Pisa in the _Inferno_. Furthermore, there were three lakes--one of molten gold, one of lead, exceeding cold, and one of iron; demons armed with tongs, like smiths, plunged the souls of the avaricious into the lake of molten gold until they were heated through and through; then into the leaden lake until they were congealed like hail; and, finally, into the iron lake, where they were broken to pieces; after which they were reintegrated, for a repetition of their punishment. But most wretched was the case of them whose crimes had communicated a taint to their posterity; for when they deemed that the Divine justice had wrought its utmost upon them, they were met by the scarred and distorted souls of their descendants, who, when their parents in grief and shame tried to shirk away from them, would seize and cling to them, sometimes, even in clusters like bees or bats, and would hale them back to renewed torments. Finally, the souls who were destined to return to earth in other bodies were wrought and forged like iron to fit them for their new state. Plutarch’s eschatology displays more system than is to be found in his predecessors, or even in many of the Christian visions; however, neither by Plutarch nor by Plato is the doctrine of the metempsychosis made to fit in quite perfectly with that of a state of eternal rewards and punishments which co-exists with it. Moreover, the purgatorial scheme, though highly elaborated, is conceived entirely with reference to the preparation of the soul for a renewed existence upon earth. In following up the Greek development of the Vision legend to its completest exposition in Plutarch, we have passed by the Latin contributions to the subject, earlier than the Vision of Thespesios in point of date, though not in manner of treatment. A generation before the birth of Virgil, Cicero, in his _Somnium Scipionis_, had utilised the Vision as a vehicle of instruction; he, however, took natural philosophy for his theme, not eschatology.