1. Plutarch, Romulus, 2.5, 14.2, 17.3, 28.6-28.10, 29.1-29.11 (1st cent. CE - 2nd cent. CE)
| 2.5. When Tarchetius learned of this, he was wroth, and seized both the maidens, purposing to put them to death. But the goddess Hestia appeared to him in his sleep and forbade him the murder. He therefore imposed upon the maidens the weaving of a certain web in their imprisonment, assuring them that when they had finished the weaving of it, they should then be given in marriage. By day, then, these maidens wove, but by night other maidens, at the command of Tarchetius, unravelled their web. And when the handmaid became the mother of twin children by the phantom, Tarchetius gave them to a certain Teratius with orders to destroy them. 17.3. Tatius agreed to this, whereupon she opened one of the gates by night and let the Sabines in. Antigonus was not alone, then, in saying that he loved men who offered to betray, but hated those who had betrayed; nor yet Caesar, in saying of the Thracian Rhoemetalces, that he loved treachery but hated a traitor; but this is a very general feeling towards the base on the part of those who need their services, just as they need certain wild creatures for their venom and gall; for while they feel the need of them, they put up with them, but abhor their vileness when they have obtained from them what they want. 28.6. It is said also that the body of Alcmene disappeared, as they were carrying her forth for burial, and a stone was seen lying on the bier instead. In short, many such fables are told by writers who improbably ascribe divinity to the mortal features in human nature, as well as to the divine. At any rate, to reject entirely the divinity of human virtue, were impious and base; but to mix heaven with earth is foolish. Let us therefore take the safe course and grant, with Pindar, Fragment 131, Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Gr. i.4 p. 427. that Our bodies all must follow death’s supreme behest, But something living still survives, an image of life, for this alone Comes from the gods. 28.7. Yes, it comes from them, and to them it returns, not with its body, but only when it is most completely separated and set free from the body, and becomes altogether pure, fleshless, and undefiled. For a dry soul is best, according to Heracleitus, Fragment 74 (Bywater, Heracliti Ephesii reliquiae, p. 30). and it flies from the body as lightning flashes from a cloud. But the soul which is contaminated with body, and surfeited with body, like a damp and heavy exhalation, is slow to release itself and slow to rise towards its source. 28.8. We must not, therefore, violate nature by sending the bodies of good men with their souls to heaven, but implicitly believe that their virtues and their souls, in accordance with nature and divine justice, ascend from men to heroes, from heroes to demi-gods, and from demi-gods, after they have been made pure and holy, as in the final rites of initiation, and have freed themselves from mortality and sense, to gods, not by civic law, but in very truth and according to right reason, thus achieving the fairest and most blessed consummation. |
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