Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, On the Nature of the Gods, and On the Commonwealth

THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.

For as our bodies fall to the ground and are covered with earth (humus), from which we derive the expression "to be interred" (humari), that has occasioned men to imagine that the dead continue, during the remainder of their existence, under ground; which opinion has drawn after it many errors, which the poets have increased. For the theatre, being frequented by a large crowd, among which are women and children, is wont to be greatly affected on hearing such pompous verses as these:

Lo! here I am, who scarce could gain this place,
Through stony mountains and a dreary waste;
Through cliffs, whose sharpen'd stones tremendous hung,
Where dreadful darkness spread itself around.

And the error prevailed so much—though indeed at present it seems to me to be removed—that although men knew that the bodies of the dead had been burned, yet they conceived such things to be done in the infernal regions as could not be executed or imagined without a body; for they could not conceive how disembodied souls could exist; and, therefore, they looked out for some shape or figure. This was the origin of all that account of the dead in Homer. This was the idea that caused my friend Appius to frame his Necromancy; and this is how that idea regarding the lake of Avernus, in my neighborhood, got about:

From whence the souls of undistinguish'd shape,
Clad in thick shade, rush from the open gate
Of Acheron, vain phantoms of the dead.

And they must needs have these appearances speak, which is not possible without a tongue, and a palate, and jaws, and without the help of lungs and sides, and without some shape or figure; for they could see nothing by their mind alone—they referred all to their eyes. To withdraw the mind from sensual objects, and abstract our thoughts from what we are accustomed to, is an attribute of great genius. I am persuaded, indeed, that there were many such men in former ages; but Pherecydes the Syrian is the

¹ Pherecydes was a native of Scyros, one of the Cyclades; and is said to have obtained his knowledge from the secret books of the Phoenicians.