Seven Books of Arguments Against the Pagans, Vol. II

trabalibus clavis affixi fastened with nails like beams] Beam-nails, that is, those by which the beams of houses were fastened, so heavy and of portentous size: hence, by metaphor, concerning those things which are immutable, which it is not permitted to avoid. Horace in that most famous place, I, Ode XXXV, v. 15 sq.:

Savage Necessity always goes before you,
Carrying beam-nails and wedges in her bronze hand.

Where see Cruquius and Mitscherlich. Petronius, Ch. 75: You know that what I have once destined is fixed with a beam-nail. Where see the interpreters. O.

neque ad sedes remeantibus patrias obstacula impeditionis opponant nor do they place obstacles of hindrance to those returning to their ancestral seats] For they thought that demons or genii were given as guardians and moderators of the whole life to individual men emerging into this light; and that they drag their charges into judgment when they depart from here; and that by their testimony the sentence is delivered by the judge. This was the opinion of Plato, which he proposes in the Phaedo, and which Apuleius explains in the book On the God of Socrates. Cf. Augustine, Book X, City of God, Ch. 9. Servius on the words of Virgil: We each suffer our own manes (Aeneid VI, 743). When we are born, he says, we are allotted two genii. One is he who urges toward good; the other, who depraves toward evil. With them assisting, after death we are either carried off into a better life, or we are condemned into a worse one: through whom we either earn leisure or a return into bodies. Therefore he calls the genii manes, whom we are allotted with life. Herald.

Cap. XIV. — Quid Plato idem vester in eo volumine, quod de animae immortalitate composuit, non Acherontem etc. What of that same Plato of yours in that volume which he composed on the immortality of the soul, does he not [mention] Acheron, etc.?] See Plato, Phaedo, pp. 112–114, H. Stephanus ed. (pp. 251–258, Vol. I, Bipontine ed.) and Eusebius in Evangelical Preparation, Book XIII, Ch. VII. Elmenh. Conf. Grotius on Martianus Capella, p. 37. O.

rem inenodabilem suscipit etc. he undertakes an unknottable matter, etc.] He thinks, therefore, that souls, if they are devoid of matter, cannot be affected by passion and bodily pains, which is also the opinion of Tertullian (Apologeticus, Ch. XLVIII) and others. Wherefore Arnobius, with Tertullian, thought the souls were bodily (but of a thinner and spiritual body, pneumatikou spiritual), and he judged them to suffer. Herald.

et doloribus afficiat sensuum and may affect with pains of the senses] Thus Sabaeus. Manuscript code: doloris affici sensu to be affected with a sense of pain, that is, he says, which the Leiden editor changed for some reason. Doloris afficiat sensu. Elmenh.: sensus the senses, accusative plural. O.

condemnare] from the MS. Others [read] condemnari to be condemned. O.

vanescunt they vanish] Stewechius reads evanescunt they vanish away. O.