SCHOLIA ON SYNESIUS' "ON DREAMS"
NICEPHORUS GREGORAS' EXPLANATION OF SYNESIUS' TREATISE "ON DREAMS"
PREFACE
A It is nothing new or absurd if many things that were found with great difficulty in the past are improved upon, just as from the cycles of time other great and vehement natures sprout and rise up one after another, whether it be that time itself is so ordered that it always brings forth newer things upon the old, or that human nature is unable to reach that which is perfect from the very beginning. For while Isocrates says, "If you are fond of learning, you will be learned," you act in the opposite way. For you were [learned], but you are always becoming so. You are always fond of learning, as if your nature were not satisfied with what has already been achieved, unless it also further proposes material for a feverish thirst, just as if a flame were to seize upon a reed; the more it advances, devouring the fuel, by that much it multiplies its leaping and rises more vehemently against B the table beneath it. And if that great Plato, coming forward, demonstrates that the man fond of learning is in a certain way a philosopher—because he embraces sublime things in his thought and whatever mysteries rise from the earth—then nature pursues what is stronger and more excellent, which is left for you. For such are the ardors and loves of philosophy: the more deeply they enter into the reasons of things that exist and insinuate themselves into them, and the more they advance into their very enclosures, by that much do they feed and increase a swelling appetite for even higher things. That, indeed, is something that has sometimes not raised me to the least degree of admiration: in what way, although you see all the Greeks who currently flourish among us, you nevertheless overlook them, and then you do not at all hesitate to entrust to me alone the burdens of your own logical and wisdom-filled questions, nor do you leave them any opportunity for ambitious exercise.
A Since it is not fitting for a philosopher to concern himself with unjust suspicions, come, let us resolve your request as far as possible, and through you that of others, to whom indeed you promise the greatest things by this one manner of behavior. Ambitions, when one cuts away the roots that nourish the shoots of hymns, are indeed unappealing. For not even to Alexander, the son of Philip, did it remain free from envy and jealousy, seeing Philip parading himself with such frequent victories; but having become faint-hearted, he is said to have uttered a certain bacchic speech to his contemporaries, and, so to speak, one full of divine frenzy. For he said he was distressed that, since his father had forestalled everything, he would leave him no pretext for triumphs. I pass over most things in silence; but now, having once again brought forward a pretext, I wished, having bypassed this ambitious contention, to be myself the willing betrayer of opportunity and of my own fortune. For it is grave and wearisome that the task is one of no ignoble struggles, as you yourself know, and as you have proposed such a thing to certain reputable men; then, they in whom arrogance and a disorder of judgment tyrannize the mind out of season have all wisdom seated upon their eyebrows and make everything easy and light through the volubility of their tongue and their promises, proclaiming something highly ignoble. Nevertheless, since your grand tongue, reaping from every side what has been conceded for victory, both from a philosophical mind and from rhetorical persuasion, moves B and brings forth other things to us for persuasion, and since it is not fitting for a wise and truth-loving man to concern himself with unjust suspicions, come, let us resolve your request to the extent possible, and through you that of others, to whom indeed you promise the greatest things by this one manner of behavior.
C To all, indeed, who possess any share of intellect and critical science, it is acknowledged that the great Synesius did not train himself in a single kind of wisdom, but rather there is nothing which he was not; and I do not think there is anyone who would contradict this. For not only did he become a student of the entire breadth of Greek erudition to the highest degree, but he was also a participant in all the Chaldean rites; and he remained no stranger to those books and mystical initiations which the sacred scribes of the ancient Egyptians transmitted to later times, nor to those things which the theologians of Delphi dogmatized. But these things, and together with them, whatever Plato traveling from Athens and Pythagoras from Samos to the Egyptians gained—this man also energetically participated in such a feast. He even took care to know all that the voices of sorcerers and magicians instill; yet he never practiced these things. The act of bringing the words of these men, which lie in secret, to the ears of the learned—this he did, and this most of all. D For it is not permitted for a man who is wise and a lover of learning to...
A turn his eyes to this theater of the universe, which is in all respects adorned, without exploring and investigating the reasoning of all things and of the institutions, as far as it is possible to attain them, so that he may hold fast to some and abstain from others. And so long as he was a Greek by reputation, he held on to almost everything; but from the time he washed away that bitter hearing, he then abstained from most things, such as were a nuisance—like weeds—to the pure and well-ripened crop.
One might know this from the other books and discourses he has written; but one might know it even better from this present discourse, and learn as well of the man's great learning and discernment, and how his purpose is philosophical everywhere, and how a dignifying and solemn character blossoms upon his lips. But here most especially, since he is a fellow-beholder and a fellow-reveler in the inner mysteries of universal and supernatural investigations, and is as one inspired, just like the divine seers and those possessed by Phoebus. For, in order that I may use his own confessions regarding the state of his intellect here, he shows to the philosopher and teacher Hypatia that it was God who moved and compelled him to publish the present discourse, and he himself merely employed the pen, as if he had gone out of himself; but God wrought the whole thing with the utmost speed, providing abundant fountains of extemporaneous words, beyond B even what he himself, as he says, encountered later on, in some parts using things that were most difficult and not at all resembling those that were alien to his own work.
And this is clear from what follows. For since the thought of the present discourse is guarded and fortified by lofty and ethereal divine inspirations, and thus discourses upon theology, it was necessary to draw a calmness from the diction, and not to confuse the underlying meaning with the strangeness of its usage, nor to cheat the eagerness of ears fond of learning. Yet the diction did not remain uninspired, nor did it take on a weightiness from a mind so inflamed, so as to soothe the discourse with a smiling tongue; rather, it used the familiar style here as well. For nature, having bestowed upon his tongue the facility and grace as if from a self-flowing fountain, he, by using some strange and, in some places, foreign customs and words, strikes the ear, and as it were stings it and pricks it, just as the thorn does to the palm of those harvesting the rose. For it is the way of men who live in different places that a certain idiosyncrasy of character and language follows them like a natural affection, and it happens that from there, if a writing arrives at an Attic-favoring ear, it brings with it a sea of some such character. For in Ptolemais and Alexandria, and in the C region superior to Libya, dwelling far away, although they are carried by the same things, but as...
each may happen to have an opinion or understanding—some come bringing an unadulterated judgment, others one that is altogether wretched and corrupting the essential points, and others one that is half-wretched and leaning to both sides. There is fear, too, lest any of those who are in such a state, or in that, might speak amiss and smear upon us a charge of an opinion that is not good; and then, having partaken of a tongue [and diction] more common and prone to malice, might put us to the test, and, though we have done no wrong, we might receive an ill prize and one hostile to this noble pursuit. Nevertheless, we, like those who translate the opinion and language of the Indians and Persians into our own hearing and voice, remain blameless; in the same way, we too, B clarifying an alien opinion and conveying it to a clearer hearing, shall certainly remain blameless before all those who are among the learned, and whose minds are not the least besieged and agitated by envy. And then, there will always be more, I suppose, of those who do not envy, to whom this matter will appear necessary, for whose part, while they eagerly join in wishing us the best, may God give us some reward for the work; but as for the envious, may they perish miserably by their own malicious envies.
A it was as a stinging gadfly or a thorn. For among men who inhabit different places, a peculiar change of some custom at once and of language is wont to attend, just as a certain ingrained affection of the soul, and to arise thence. And if any commentary should arrive thence to an ear refined by Attic speech, it attracts to itself and assumes a sea of some such kind of discourse. For, staying in Ptolemais and Alexandria and in the upper part of Libya, he had from a remote region C habit with those who were members and disciples of the Stoic and Academic families. Yet, living not by their laws, he was their companion; and because of this, he admitted thence some opinions, as it were, while he repudiated others. In this manner, he emulated these modes of speaking that originated from there, but others not at all. And therefore, using a certain august and imperial license of nature, he emigrated from his ancestral hearths, having little regard for those whose common conversation he enjoyed. Therefore, if anyone should posit this as the cause—and that his present discourse is, for the most part, difficult to conjecture, and as it were enigmatic and obscure—he does not run or wander far from what is decent and consistent. For a mind so burdened, and a collection of every discipline and wisdom, woven together with such exuberant eloquence, D would bring much night and darkness, if anyone should wish to curiously investigate the internal and companionable sense. As if it were permissible for anyone, as a necessity, to explain this discourse according to the rationale of the intention and his own plan: that not only he who had been a participant before should become capable of all the things he discusses, as if he had begged for them, but also that he should be able to transform himself towards all kinds of opinion, and mostly of our own disparate ones, and, as it were, to change color towards varying hues, like that Pharian Proteus. For not all do approach from the same opinion, but as each has been allotted an opinion or insight: these indeed approach, bringing an integral and sincere judgment; others, however, a very disgraceful one, inasmuch as it errs with insane zeal regarding things that are consistent and appropriate; some, furthermore, one that is semi-vicious and leaning in both directions. And let no one of those who are affected in this or that way, through fear, reply perversely and incoherently, and sprinkle us with the crime and atrocious injury of a wicked opinion, and then, arrogating to themselves much of the tongue, the ignoble, the petulant, and those prone to malice, burden us with sinistral swelling before the multitude; and we, stained by no crime, bear away an ill-fated and hostile reward for this honest and excellent study. Nevertheless, with those who transfer the opinion of the Indians and Persians to our hearing and discourse, they remain blameless: in this way, even we, glowing with foreign glory and transferring it to a more lucid hearing, shall remain altogether blameless before those who are of the number of the sensible and elegant men, and whose mind envy, sitting over them, in no way shakes or disturbs. Afterwards also, there will be, I suppose, always more who will emulate this, to whom this matter will seem very useful. For whom, certainly, with favorable and eager spirit we wish the best, for us indeed may God give some reward of this work: but to the detractors, may they perish miserably with the very malicious detractions themselves.
A This explanation of ours will not be made solely for the sake of the more perfect, but now also for the sake of those who are less perfect in their understanding. For some will apply themselves to this part, others to that, and some to both, according to the capacity and will of each. As for what he discusses regarding the soul, and with which of the ancient sages he speaks in agreement, and with which he disagrees—and what he says the imagination is, and what each of those others says—and where in the body he sets the tripod for the divination that occurs in sleep, he indicates this himself to the student of B wisdom and teacher Hypatia, because many things that had not yet been philosophized upon by the Greeks had been brought forward. It is clear, therefore, that we also shall make our explanation according to her; for we shall mark each thing, being present at the place of each. But you, for the things that are well and rightly constituted according to your own mind, do not be sluggish in returning thanks in your heart and tongue to God; but for those things that are otherwise, provide us with a manifest expostulation. For of the former he is the guide, leader, and chorus master, but in the latter we are to be blamed.
INCIPIT EXPLANATIO
C PAG. 130. *If indeed there are dreams.* Just as the precious treasures of kings, and whatever is sacred and honorable among men, are covered by different veils one after another, so that they may not lie exposed to unholy crowds to be debased, nor be held in contempt—for because of their price, that which is easy and ready at hand is cheapened—so too are those things which are seen by those who are sleeping. Since, as he says, a vision is more divine and prognostic, the imaginative spirit of the soul becoming at that time purer, because it has been set free in some way from bodily and material and gross tumults, these things also are given to men in an enigmatic way, as if under a veil. D He says that their being wise and not clear is something of this kind; and he confirms this also through the verses of Hesiod. For he says: "The gods hid the effortless life from men, and before all good things the gods placed sweat." He says that to obtain good things without labor is a divine gift. And that this is given not to very many, but to very few: as wisdom without labors was awarded to Solomon; and to Samson, the insurmountable strength and vigor of the body; and again, as the liberal disciplines of the Greeks teach and urge, a certain wisdom not lowly in origin came from the providence above both to Aesop the Phrygian, and before that...
to Hesiod, and indeed to Homer. Since this wise man, Synesius, considers the notion that dreams are prophets, and that the sights seen during sleep are shadowy images of things to come, to be so certain and irrefutable that he wishes, right from the proem, A to use certain demonstrative syllogisms; but because he does not have many followers in this, he restrains the boldness of his venture with a conjunctive and, as it were, distributive bond, saying, as it were: "If you agree with me in these dogmas, whoever you are who encounters this commentary, and admit that dreams are prophets and interpreters of oracles, and that things seen while sleeping offer foreknowledge of the future, you must also know as a necessary consequence that dreams—or at least the wise ones—are not exactly clear and open." And from this he concludes that what is least conspicuous and obvious is something ingenious and wise, contradicting Euripides. For he, in the play of Orestes, brings forward Menelaus saying: "What is clever and sharp is clear and perspicuous, not that which is obscure." Therefore, he formed and wove the proem according to the argument we have mentioned into the form of a hypothetical syllogism.
B Life. He calls it free from labor here. Greatest. Benefits. With the virtue of knowing. That is, with the rational power of the soul. To know. For it does not need this from without, but is itself knowledge. To man. An aid to foresight. For the many. The common crowd. What is present. What now exists. Of what is not yet. Of the future. Having happened. With ambiguity. Of the Panhellenes. Of all the Greeks, as many as campaigned against Troy. The things before. That which has passed. And Homer. For he says that Zeus is also prior in generation. To contribute. To run together. Since. For he said above that in this God differs from man, and man from the beast. C Verses. Homeric ones, and these too. Rudely. That is, privately, and crassly, and ignorantly. According to it. Poetry.
A Philosophy. He spoke this aptly. For since the poets were philosophers, it escaped notice that they were called poets by everyone. For, acting similarly to physicians, they deposited their own philosophy into myths, verses, and soul-charming melody, and in this way covered up the bitterness of the benefit derived from them, just as the sons of physicians often hide the unpleasantness of beneficial medicines by tempering them with honey; so that, consequently, it is comprehensible to the wise, while to the profane it is pleasant to the people, but incomprehensible. For they interpret "Zeus" as nothing else than the most ancient and primordial Mind, and hence the most wise; just as they interpret "Athena" as wisdom, which they also say was born from the head of Zeus. Consistently, therefore, this wise man Synesius here interprets Zeus as Mind, and his strength as wisdom; and "prior in generation" as referring to the antiquity from which wisdom, for the most part, comes to those who possess it. Anaxagoras also says that Mind is what orders all things and is the cause of all things, so that it is shown from this that he too considers the Mind to be older than this universe. B Than minds. Meaning intellectual substances. In this way. Thus, in such a manner as this. He fasteneth. In this way is our Synesius here a follower of the doctrines of Plato, and he so hangs upon his language that he has not only attained, by meditation, to the peak and sublimity of most of his opinions, as we shall show as we proceed, but he also uses his very expressions in many places. And this "he fasteneth" he also borrowed from Plato. For he says in the *Phaedo* that every pleasure and pain, as if having a nail, fastens the soul to the body, and attaches it, and makes it corporeal, believing those things to be true which the body would declare. He fasteneth. That is, he receives it into his own right, and cements it. With the strength. That is, because he is superior in strength to the others. He turns back. He is gathered, he ascends, as if concluding in a circle. Because. That is, for the reason that. These indeed. He said these are proofs—namely, that knowledge and wisdom are able to foresee future events, and that the art of divination is occupied with these things. But if it means. Since he is a Greek in his opinion, he relates the things that they themselves believe; and he says that the world is endued with soul, and then—Just as, he says, each of the animals in the world is composed of parts and members, which indeed have fellowship and kinship with one another, so also the world, consisting of heaven and earth and the things between them, being a living creature endued with soul,
experiences and performs like things toward every living creature. And its parts, having fellowship and brotherly concord with one another, signify and portend all things about to happen in mutual concord, some more, some A less. Proceeding thereafter, he compares the world to a book, and all its parts—I mean animals and plants, and air and water, and stones, and all other things—to letters. Just as, therefore, the letters in books belonging to different languages are read—some by the sages of the Egyptians, others by those of the Greeks; and some read less and still imperfectly, just as infants do, either by syllables, or collectively, or the word all at once, while others read the discourse at once. For a discourse (logos) is a whole proposition, consisting summarily of a noun and a verb, for example, "Socrates walks." For it declares an intention, either true or false. A term (lexis) is a part of the discourse, for example, "Socrates," which declares neither truth nor falsehood. A syllable is a part of a term, for example, from "Socrates," only the "So," which signifies nothing. Thus, therefore, he says, the wise prophets and augurs also, reading the things that are in the world, foresee the future: some from the stars, or from those that remain in the fixed sphere, or from the torches that dart about in the air, which are not properly stars, but nevertheless appear to be stars, and he calls them here by the common name; but concerning the sun, and the moon, and the planets, B and furthermore he had not spoken of comets, because the wise see the future from them, either as being admitted by all that they reveal it, or because he was content to have mentioned the neighboring things, and thought it obvious from these that those also are understood. Some, therefore, he says, foresee the future from the stars; others from the entrails of the sacrificed animals, which is indeed called sacrificial and dissectional divination. Augurs did not use all the entrails for the manifestation of future things, but the liver alone; and the entrails are seven: heart, liver, spleen, stomach, lungs, and two kidneys.
Portend. Manifest, they deliver. Letters. Heavenly, aerial, terrestrial, marine. By nature. One who has read through the nature of beings by experience. Another. Wise. The torches. These appear in the elemental fire, where there is, as it were, an interspace of air and ether. In the clangor of birds. These are specifically the theories of the ornithoscopists; but others foresee the future through symbols and marks, which they themselves noted by experience; I mean the twitching of eyes or the heart, or of some other part and limb, or the tingling of the nose, or the meeting of some C
A inauspicious thing on the road, which common people call an evil "encounter," or some word spoken by chance; just as it once happened to Paullus Aemilius, the Roman general sent against the opposing army of Perseus, king of the Macedonians. For it is said that as he was about to depart, he found his little daughter in tears as he was embracing her, and having heard from her the cause of her grief, she said, "Perseus is dead." Now this Perseus, of whom she spoke, was a little dog that had been raised with his daughter. He answered, "With good fortune, my daughter, I accept the omen." The eloquent and learned Cicero sets forth these things in his book *On Divination*.
"Portents": so called by many. "Events": occurrences, encounters, which happen for one reason, but result in something else. "Of all things, meaningful": cohering by a certain mutual consent.
D Accordingly, if there were wisdom! Wishing to show even more clearly the community and kinship that the parts of the world have with one another, he says that if wisdom were in birds just as it is in humans, birds would have established an art from humans, just as humans have crafted from birds the art of divination, which they call augury or bird-watching. For just as birds have always existed from the beginning, from the moment this whole universe was composed until now, so too humans have always existed; and both are, to both of them, ancient and new. Therefore, just as birds are suitable and B apt for divination for humans, so too humans would have been suitable and apt for divination for the birds, in reverse, if wisdom were also in the birds. For it was necessary that the parts of the world participate with one another, since they are members of one living being, and therefore have sympathy for one another, and, so to speak, a "conbreathing." Saying these things, he as it were recovers himself, and is perplexed, and seems to ask himself, saying: "Might these be the *iunges* of the magicians?" For the wise man who knows this mutual kinship of these things, seeing that they are charmed by one another, and receive indication from one another—one thing dragging another, just as iron is dragged by a magnet—so too through this or that matter, and this figure, and this voice, this or that is elicited, as will be explained more clearly in what follows. For not only are trees charmed by trees, just as one palm is drawn by another, and herbs by herbs, and animals by animals, but even a certain fish is drawn by garlic, and other things by others; and what is more wonderful, demons from the air and earth are charmed by these stones, or by these herbs, or by these sounds, or by these figures, which they also call "characters." I believe these were discovered by the Chaldaeans and Egyptians from the beginning as a sign of recognition for each individual demon. They say that the *iunx* is a bird...
A that they sometimes call *iunges*, and say that Hecate speaks the same:
"I came, having heard thy wise-counseled prayer, Which mortal nature found by the gods' instructions."
And again elsewhere it says:
"Those whom it draws from the ether by artless love Easily, though unwilling, hast thou brought down to earth. But the middle ones, set upon the middle [places], Without fire, thou bringest in with divine B ones, As if dreams, [making] dæmons act in a way unworthy."
And these are [taken] from the oracles: but the Chaldaeans say the terrestrial dæmons are false, as being removed and banished C far from the divine knowledge. But if you wish, he says, to receive some truth from them about something in the future, make an altar— D
"Terrestrial, whenever you see the dæmon approaching, Sacrifice the Mnesuris stone, while uttering murmurs."
For this stone has the power of evoking a greater dæmon, who, approaching the terrestrial dæmon invisibly, will perhaps teach the truth of the things being asked, which that one will in turn teach the man who is asking. And again elsewhere: "Operate," he says, "upon the Hecatic sphere." And the Hecatic sphere is a golden sphere, having a sapphire stone in its middle, and across its entire surface various characters and figures. Turning this, they performed their invocations, which they indeed also called *iunges*.
Regarding the names which they pronounce, they give a directive, saying: "Never alter the barbarian names." For there are names given by God to each [people], having an ineffable power in sacred rites, such as Sabaoth, Adonai, Cherubim, and Seraphim, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all such names; and he says that if you translate them into the Greek dialect, you erase their power and efficacy, as also seems to the wise Origen. Asclepius, the disciple of Hermes Trismegistus, says in his discourse to the Egyptian king: "As much as is in your power, O King, preserve the teaching handed down to you by us, so that such mysteries may not come to the Greeks, nor may the proud and embellished phraseology of the Greeks make the hallowed, solid, and efficacious power of the names grow feeble." For such words, when interpreted into the ancestral dialect, contain a clear understanding of the words—for the very quality of the voice and the power of the Egyptian names contain within themselves the efficacy of what is being said—but when they are distorted and converted into another language, they become obscure and ineffective.
Voces. Incantations and charms. A And that of the digitus pedis [toe]. I myself once saw a boy who had been struck by an arrow in the tendon of his neck, and it happened that from that moment the other foot was seized by a kind of numbness, and the affliction remained incurable for the rest of his life; and while the other foot grew as he got older, this one remained in the thinness and shortness it had at that time, suspended, useless, and idle, like a lifeless weight. Therefore, it causes puzzlement to those who do not know the causes and reasons, how it was that the hand, being nearer, remained without any sensation of pain, but the foot, while lying far away, suffered with it. But as many as contemplate the things in the world with reasonable judgment, such people would find many similiar things. For not all bodies feel the same pain, nor do all the parts of the body, but only that body which is naturally prepared to suffer, and that part of the body which is apt to suffer with it, and at the time and in the manner it is natural to do so. Just as, when a sweet scent is spread through the air, neither wood, nor stone, nor indeed the ear, nor the hand, nor the foot perceives it, but only the sense of smell; just as also of melody, only the ear, and of colors, only the sight.
In inguen [groin]. The Greeks call the beginning of the thighs the groin, or as it were the upper beginning of the foot.
Unius enim ambo. Aristotle also writes in the book *History of Animals* that oxen feel less pain in their feet if someone anoints their horns with mud, or pitch, or oil. B
Præstigiis decipitur. There is one thing that is *goetia*, and another that is *magia*, and another that is *pharmacia*. *Goetia* indeed is that which consists in invoking certain spirits of matter, the impure and the maleficent demons. The name is derived from *gooi* [griefs], as if it were causing things worthy of lamentation. C
A Magic is that power which operates through intermediate demons, both immaterial and material; pharmacy is that which is harmful through food and drink. Likewise, there is another category of *kakotechnia* (maleficent art), another of *pseudotechnia* (falsifying art), and another of *mataiotechnia* (futility). For *kakotechnia* is that which was invented by sorcerers, poisoners, and magicians to the detriment of mankind; *pseudotechnia* is that which shows things to be false, such as that which deceives the eyes; *mataiotechnia* is that which vanishes together with the air that has been struck. B
*On the Hypate.* These things are taken as examples from the *Division of the Harmonic Canon*. We must, therefore, starting from there, unfold these matters for the sake of the clear understanding of those who happen upon them. The consonances through which harmonic systems are produced are many, the first of which is the *epitrits* [epitritic], which is called "through four" [the fourth]; it consists of two tones and a limma, which is also abusively called a semitone, in which the note of the fourth string, when compared to that of the first, is always found to have the epitritic ratio. The second consonance is the *hemiolios* [hemiolic], which is produced through five strings, that is to say, from three [tones] and a limma. C Here, too, the note of the fifth string, when compared to the note of the first, is always found to have a hemiolic ratio. By the "first string" here, I mean the fourth of the first consonance, that "through four." For the fourth string of the two consonances is common; it is the end of the one "through four" and the beginning of the one "through five," that is, the limit of the *epitrits* and the beginning of the *hemiolios*. These two consonances, when combined in this way, produce the system called "through all" [the octave]. We must leave the other consonances for now, as they do not contribute much to the demonstration of the question before us. D However, this system of the "through all" [octave] consists of eight strings, or notes, and five tones and two limmata. The note of the eighth string, when compared to the note of the first, is always found to have a double ratio.
The first string is called *nete*, the second *paranete*, the third *paramese*, the fifth *superparhypate*, the sixth *parhypate*, the seventh *hypate*, and the eighth the *proslambanomenos*. For it was added later by Pythagoras, as the ancient lyre of Orpheus was seven-stringed. Of such strings, some are acute in their notes, some are grave, and some are intermediate. The *hypatai* are grave, the *netai* are acute, and those between them are intermediate. But for greater clarity, we have laid out the eight-stringed rule grammatically, that is, the system of the "through all" [octave], which is composed of two tetrachords and one tone, or of two epitritic ratios and one *epogdoos* [superoctave] ratio, or rather of one epitritic and one hemiolic. For the *epogdoos* ratio, when linked to one epitritic, produces a ratio...
A of its own; but the epitritic ratio is observed in two unequal numbers when the greater contains the whole of the lesser and a third part of the lesser, as in the case of four and three. The *epogdoos* [superoctave], when the greater number contains the whole of the lesser and an eighth part of the lesser, as in the case of 8 and 9. The hemiolic [sesquialter], when the greater number contains the whole of the lesser, and half of the lesser, as in the case of 3 and 2. With these things laid down, this wise Synesius says, B "He who has plucked"—the term "plucked" (*psēlas*) refers to some melodic musical sound, from the verb *psallō*—"he who has plucked the *hypatē*," he says, "he has not moved the one next to it, that is to say, the *proslambanomenē*." For this has an *epogdoos* ratio to it, but rather the *mesē* [middle string] near it, in relation to which it also has an epitritic ratio. For by the affinity of such ratios, they sympathize with one another in an ineffable way, even when they are far apart, more so than those that are closer.
Pythagoras’s seven-stringed lyre.
[Diagram omitted: The contents of the diagram are presented in the grid below, translating the Greek labels on the schema provided in the scan]
[Grid translation of the diagram labels]: Hemiolic (fifth). Nētōn tetrachord. Hypatōn tetrachord. Epitritic. Diatessaron (fourth). Nētē, Paranētē, Paramēsē, Mēsē, Lichanos, Hypar-hypatē, Parhypatē, Hypatē, Proslambanomenē. Semitone, Tone, Tone, Semitone, Tone, Tone, Semitone.
D paten, or the lowermost string opposite the lowest; (this word *psēlas* means "he who plucks," a certain term for a musical concinnity, from the verb *psallō*, "I sing by plucking strings"). He says, therefore, that he who has plucked the *hypatē* has not moved the one which is next to it—namely, the *assumpta* [proslambanomenē]—for it has the same *epogdoos* ratio with respect to it; but [he has moved] the *mesē* that is closer, in comparison to which it also has the epitritic ratio. For by the affinity of such ratios, they consent among themselves latently, and those which are far distant do so more than those which are closer.
Of the prior. A Which they had before they were endowed with form, B when the matter was still shapeless.
Simply. Compositely one; for it would be simply and absolutely one, a flux.
Of many. With synthesis.
Of the station. Of the very station, of the very battle itself.
Of dissonants. Insofar as the acute and the grave are called dissonant.
Of concords. Because, strictly, the sesquitertian, sesquialter, and double ratios are called concordant, since they agree with one another in mutual harmony.
Harmony. It is.
Of a lyre. Upon a lyre.
Cosmic. Upon the cosmos.
Archimedes. B This marvelous Archimedes flourished in Sicily in the time of the ruler Hieron. Having turned geometric science from the sphere of the intelligible to the corporeal, and having mixed mathematical reason with mechanical constructions through the benefit of sensory perception, he set it forth more effectively for the majority. So much so that when Marcellus, the general of the Romans, sailed against Syracuse (a great city of all Sicily) with many ships and engines, Archimedes resisted those ships and engines with his own artificial ones, and delivered the Roman fleet to such slaughter that the great Marcellus, having been defeated and momentarily turning back, greatly admired the man's wisdom and was amazed at his skill in such arts, and considered his strength to be much greater than that of the mythical hundred-handed giants. Therefore, he used to say that by the force assigned to it, a given weight can be moved; and he added, in confirmation of his demonstration, that if he had another earth, he would move it, by moving from this one to that one.
Wise. The prophet.
To him. To the cosmos.
Of the cosmos. Here he calls the cosmos that which extends from the lunar sphere down to the earth. C For he says that this is both composed of the four elements and possesses a nature subject to passion and change in one way and another, and further, even subject to sorcery; but he says that everything outside of the cosmos—that is, the place above the moon—is a simple, uncompounded, and unchangeable world, and passionless, and free from sorcery, and more intellectual, and turned away from all matter that is formed from the things here below.
Free from sorcery. Free from passion.
He does not care. This is taken from Homer. For in the first rhapsody of Homer, Agamemnon says to Achilles: "I do not care about you, Nor do I heed your anger..."
Relentless. Passionless.
But that which is subject to passion. That which in the soul relates to reason and the intellect is passionless; but that which relates to matter—
A is entirely subject to passion. It is divided, that is, when you view it, into two parts: that which possesses an affinity for all things, and that which does not obey reason. For we call the one nutritive and natural, but the other pulsative and vital; yet neither of these knows how to obey reason. For they possess neither power of choice nor any power of judgment. In like manner, that which is obedient to reason is twofold. For we call one part the concupiscible, and the other the irascible. The concupiscible part is divided into pleasure and pain; for when it attains its goal, it produces pleasure; but when it misses it, pain. The irascible part is divided into three: into anger—which they call bile and wrath—and into indignation, and into resentment. Now, anger is an impulse of the spirit towards the beginning and motion of an action, or a spirit in operation; indignation and resentment, however, are an abiding and persistent spirit.
B In Divinations. They say that divination among the Greeks is multiform and operates in diverse ways, just as will be briefly stated in the progress of this book. They call a "rite" the communication of the mysteries, as it perfects those who are being initiated. Furthermore, they call those who have attained to the habit of this tradition "perfected" and "perfect."
Dissident. All things in the world are compound and formed into species; if you view them as essences, you perceive something one, having kinship and affinity for itself in every respect. But if you see them as things formed into species, you see a multitude that is distinct and has discord with itself—insofar as it relates to the whole; or rather, when you view existing things by species, you see the one as distinct; but when you view them according to the nature of being itself, you see the one as gathered together.
By the Law. For civil administration indeed forbids these rites.
And Truly the Whole. "But we," he says, "as far as it was possible for us, have traversed generally the panegyric of all divination, and we have shown that a common token of the best divination is obscurity." For things that are observed clearly and openly would not be any kind of divination, nor would they be in need of any demonstration. But our present intent and goal is to dwell upon the study of this very "best" [divination], and to make a more accurate examination of it.
The Whole. Generally and universally. Of It. Of divination. Of those within. According to potentiality. Has been praised. By us. Best. In respect to the other divinations. Separated. Specifically. Character. Token. C D
Reprehension. Refutation. Demonstration. In full nature. Manifestly and exactly. This is venerable. Obscure.
From there. Herodotus, writing the Persian affairs and composing them with others of his historical books, relates these things concerning the Greeks: that when the Athenians had sent to the Delphic oracle, the Pythian priestess, whose name was Aristonice, responded first as follows:
"Wretched one, why do you sit? Flee to the ends of the earth, Leaving behind the dwellings and the high peaks of the wheel-shaped city. For neither the head nor the body remains firm, Nor do the feet or hands or middle; For it crumbles down. For fire and keen Ares, Pursuing in a Syrian chariot, shall destroy many towers. And many temples of the gods shall I give to the rapacious fire."
And first these, but secondly to the suppliants the Pythia responded thus:
"Not even by using many entreaties can Pallas Placate Olympian Zeus, though she supplicates with many words and deep counsel. But to you I will speak this word again, bringing it near to adamant. For while all other things are being captured, as many as the limit of Cecrops Holds within, and the recesses of sacred Cithaeron, Zeus grants to the Triton-born a wooden wall, To remain alone unsacked; this shall preserve your children. Do not wait for the cavalry and the infantry coming In a great host from the continent with peace, but retire, Turning your back; you shall yet meet them face-to-face. O divine Salamis, you shall destroy the children of women, Whether Demeter is sown or gathered."
In vain. Not understanding the mind. There. According to this. Concealment. The obscurity. It must be added. We must be diligent. Thus. By divination. The mind indeed. That which is closely joined to the Creator. The species. Of the first, second, third, and fourth.
Mind, soul. Existing, becoming.
B Therefore, alternating. Wishing to show more clearly the proportion of those things proposed, or how mind and soul possess a ratio toward things that exist and things that become, he used definitions and phrases from the fifth book of Euclid’s elements. For Euclid says in the definitions of the fifth element, that an alternating ratio is the taking of the antecedent toward the antecedent, and the consequent toward the consequent; and let these numbers be suggested as an example: 16, 8, 4, 2. The ratio which 16 has toward 8, the same it has toward the 4 relative to the 2.
2, and 8 is the antecedent of 16. An alternating A proportion, therefore, arises when you take the antecedent, 16, and compare it with the antecedent, 4, and the consequent, 8, with the consequent, 2. And it is shown again in the same way that whatever ratio 16 has to 4, the same ratio 8 has to 2. It shows, therefore, from this, that whatever ratio the mind has to the soul, the things that truly exist have the same to the things that come into being—and alternately, whatever ratio the mind has to things that exist, the soul has the same to things that come into being.
*Conversely.* This is also from the writings of Euclid. For he says in the definitions of the fifth book of the *Elements* that an inverse ratio is the taking of the consequent as an antecedent, compared to the antecedent as a consequent. But for the sake of clarity of the ratio, let 16 and 8 be taken from the proposed numbers. 16, then, is the antecedent, and 8 is the consequent; but if we take 8 as the antecedent and compare it to 16 as the consequent, the inverse ratio is made. B He says, therefore, that here also, if we take the soul as the antecedent and compare it to the mind as the consequent, and likewise the things that come into being to the things that exist, the inverse ratio is made, and nonetheless it is found to be true also in this way, as an axiom proposed by us here concerning these things.
*Axiom.* Established dogma. *The soul has.* As in this diagram: [Diagram: Mind – Soul; Things that exist – Things that come into being] *It puts forth.* The soul. *It reflects. It illuminates, it teaches. *Before they were in the common.* Reason, or as if through the interior word. *Governing.* Or as the mind. *Power.* The mind indeed communicates with the rational soul by means of the word; but the rational soul communicates with the sensitive soul, and with the organic senses, by means of the phantastic spirit; but again, the sensitive soul communicates with the natural through the nourishing and growth-giving spirit. Plotinus also says that just as the spoken word is an image of the word in the soul, so the soul is an image of the mind. *To declare.* To the soul itself. *To the soul.* To the rational one. *Impressions.* Types. *This life.* The phantastic and sensory life, by which we communicate with the irrational, or rather the activity of the phantastic spirit during sleep. *And in property.* For it is seen specifically in rational animals. *Organs of sense.* Obscure and more powerful, through which C postera ratio, and nonetheless that which has been proposed by us concerning these things is found to be just as true, like an axiom and a pronouncement.
*Constitutum.* It is prescribed. *Promit.* Namely, the soul. *Et illuminat.* It illustrates and teaches. *Priusquam eas communioni.* To reason, or at any rate through reason conceived by the mind. *Vis animi moderatrix.* Or at any rate the mind. *Vis.* The mind communicates with the rational soul through the intervening reason: but the rational soul communicates with the sensitive, and with the organic parts of sensing, through the medium and interposed phantastic spirit. Again, the sensitive soul communicates with the natural through the spirit of nourishing, vegetating, and growing. Plotinus further says that just as in speech oration is an effigy and likeness of the reason which is in the soul, so also the soul is an image of the mind.
*Manifestas fecerit.* To the soul itself. *Primaria animi parte.* Namely, the rational. *Imagines.* Types, forms, and likenesses. *Vita hæc.* Phantastic, and as regards the faculty of sensing, the life through which we communicate with those lacking reason; or rather, the action of the phantastic spirit, which is vigorous during dreaming. *In proprietate naturæ.* For it seems [to exist] separately in animals that use reason. *Sensuum organa.* Obscure and more potent, through which D
these things are made manifest and visible, and possess their efficacy. *For colors.* First through the phantastic spirit, then through the external senses, which like channels receive the powers proceeding thence in various ways, and [act] according as each is situated and placed, just as happens in the passage of the air. *And of touch.* For he said above that the mind has the forms of things that truly exist, but the soul has the form of things that happen and come to pass: and similarly also the phantasy, and even more so. *Of those lacking efficacy.* Because the soul, he says, anticipated the knowledge of things that happen, but being constrained and intertwined by carnal cohesion, it requires also bodily instruments, so that it may be taught by them and recall [them] to memory. *And if perhaps.* Or [it is] as [something] better than the organic senses. *This genus.* Or as the phantasy and its sense-organs. *According to it.* The phantastic sense-organ. *They admonish.* The gods. *They exercise.* They prophesy to the gods. *Providing.* For us. *If indeed.* For it is possible in dreams to be guided toward the discovery of a treasure. *Neither if anyone.* Lying down. A *Afterward.* They say also that the poet Hesiod, being formerly a shepherd of sheep, having one day laid himself down to sleep beside Mount Cithaeron in Thessaly, thought he saw the Muses approaching him and nourishing him with a laurel leaf, and that immediately upon waking he became a wise and most skillful poet. *Poet.* As Hesiod. *He brought.* Hesiod and others. *Plots.* Also Hannibal the Carthaginian, having been defeated by Scipio the African, fled into Bithynia to Prusias; but not long after, Titus the commander, having traveled thither from Rome on account of some other necessity and business, and having seen Hannibal, and suspecting the cleverness and experience of the man, B lest he might at some time return to Carthage and Libya, plotted secretly to slay him cruelly. Hannibal, having learned this through certain dreams, took himself out of the land of the living by taking poison, finally saying this: "Let us now at last put an end to the great anxiety of the Romans, who have considered it troublesome, difficult, and late to await the death of the hated old man, but desire, like a fledgling bird, maimed by age, to take him off in death cruelly." *Unharmed.* Without loss or damage. *Sickness.* That there are indeed very many others, it would not be unbelievable, but above all would be Aristides the C orator; this is also shown by the sacred D writings inscribed under his name.
A *Instruction.* The ascent. *Let him hear.* Seek those things; for he is silent; for he does not state these things in their entirety. *The interior.* The cognitive power existing within. *Successive.* From its own, he sowed. *Strength.* Of power. *Good fortune.* Since it comes from us. *Dream.* From the dreams. *Of which he sowed.* He (the author) says that dreams come from God; but Aristotle says that dreams are not God-sent. For if they were, he says, God-sent, they would be sent only to those who live in accordance with virtue, and who are occupied with divine matters; but now we see that some wicked and ignorant men, knowing neither reason nor virtue, also see them. For it happens that some such persons are even more prone to true dreams than the good, by reason of the good temperament of their body. For these often keep the images and forms of the things seen in the phantastic faculty unconfused, some of which happen to be true. Aristotle, therefore, and many other secular philosophers, forbid that dreams be God-sent; but that there is a certain nature of spirits that has dominion over the things that appear in sleep, this he readily concedes.
B *For the harvest.* Wishing to show that attaining [knowledge] is not less than learning, he says from abundance that it is even more, so that he may attain that which is equal. *Phantasia.* In some books it is written 'life' (accusative), in others 'of life' (genitive). For it was necessary that both be set down; but because of the awkwardness, the 'one' was passed over in silence. Yet the 'one' is posited from both, as one might wish; and it takes the other from without, elliptically. *Towards those.* They are not even deemed worthy of the lesser good things. *To know.* Those who merely seem wise. *Disowned.* Of the divine Egyptian precepts. *Not of sacrifices.* That is, as if there were no need. *These toys.* For they are trifles. *Those who.* Those who prophesy through sacrifices and entrails. *Arts indeed.* He calls these what he earlier termed the 'iynges' of magicians, having called those who deign to practice these things 'magicians'; and he calls the various arts 'iynges', whatever were performed by them in a manifold way through sacrifices and the cutting of entrails. *What then.* What then, he says, is absurd, that a wise man, in that he is wise, should exist even more and beyond the commonality, and in this way become wise?
A *Thereby wise.* And thus, or as even through those of the navel boundary they made it dwell, where God [is] the B sleeper. *Therefore.* For indeed. *More divine.* More godlike. *More public.* More common. *Blessed.* But also impossible. *Through phantasy.* For through phantasy alone it would be near to being able to see God of itself, as far as is attainable. *Elder.* Therefore, more honorable. *Sense.* As ruling over the organic senses. *Most common.* As being participated in by the various sensory organs. *And body.* This also is a body, he says, as being more akin to the body, and mediating between soul and body; and he called it the first body, as speaking immediately to the soul. For the corporeal sensory organs do not speak immediately to the soul, but through the medium of the phantastic [faculty].
C *But that.* The phantastic spirit dwells in the head of man.
*Of the animal.* And these things, then, [are] his. But Plato in the *Timaeus* says this: "But indeed the desire for food and drink of the soul, and whatever it holds of need because of the nature of the body, they settled in the region between the midriff and the navel: where God, he says, constituted the form of the liver, and placed for its dwelling that which is full of juice and plump, polished, bright, and sweet, and having bitterness he fashioned it, so that in it the power carried down from the intellect—like [as] in a mirror receiving types, and providing for the seeing of images—might, when using a part of the bitterness, cause this and that; but when using the sweetness by nature conjoined with it, and directing all things in it straight, smooth, unimpeded and free, it might make the portion of the soul that dwells about the liver gracious and cheerful, and having a moderate way of life in the night, using divination in sleep, since it had no part in reason and intelligence. Wherefore they established in it the oracle. And it is a sufficient sign that God has given the art of divination to human folly. For no one of sound mind attains to divination [that is] divine and true, but rather one who, in sleep, is shackled in the power of [his] intelligence, or through disease, or by some enthusiasm is altered." And a little later he says, that "the nature of the liver, for these reasons, is of such a kind and exists in the place that we say, for the sake of divination."
*But of sense.* Of the first. *By which.* Of the senses. *Sense.* Uniform.
A Dispenses. Similarly, just as with air drawn through a flute; for while it is uniform, it is varied B as it exits through the holes in the flute, becoming sharper, or deeper, or intermediate, or consonant, or dissonant.
And as they are. Speaking of the center and straight lines, he simultaneously makes mention in power and potentiality of a circle or a sphere. For it is impossible for a center to be conceived of and thought of without a circle or a sphere, just as a circle or a sphere [cannot exist] without a center. The geometric definitions therefore assert that a circle is a flat figure contained by one line, which is called the circumference, to which the straight lines falling from the center are equal to one another. A Here, therefore, he likens the imagination to a center and a root; and to the straight branches, the powers emitted from there as far as the organic senses—I mean, sight, and hearing, and the other three—all of which he declares to be indeed one when considered in relation to the center and the root, but many in accordance with their progression and spreading out from there.
He calls the imagination the common sense, and properly a sense and more divine, as it directly converses with the intellectual soul; but he calls that sense most animalistic, and crasser, and abusively termed "sense," which acts through the put-forward and projected, and visible, sensory organs—I mean, the eyes, and ears, and nose, and the rest.
*Most animalistic.* Through the superlative he indicated that it is crasser. *Sense.* For it is thickened, extending into the density of things in generation and corruption. *More divine.* Which he properly called the phantastic spirit. *The immediate sense.* Which he called "first" above; now it is called B immediate sense, that is, imagination. *But if [through] the bodily senses.* That is, the organs of perception. *We have seen.* Namely, and what we have heard. *But it deceives.* It deceives, he says, for these three reasons: the eye. First, because of the nature of the things seen, just as a peacock's feather shows distinct colors according to the particular position. Second, because of the air and the water, and the interval. For the air is sometimes humid and thick, and sometimes dry and thin; and the interval of the thing seen is sometimes short, and sometimes long. And third, because of its own inability. *It deceives also.* For he says that the eye itself also deceives, lies, and deceives. *And by that which is perceived.* Namely, through the air and the intervening space.
A The imaginative faculty. For because of the iniquity of the resolve, man draws his soul down into matter, and from there he makes the imaginative faculty susceptible to illness, as they say happens to many after food, and especially to children. For great is the exhalation from the food, and the motion is confused and uneven and difficult to distinguish, to which it comes about that either dreams do not occur at all, or they occur uneven and unlike and difficult to interpret; just as happens in water. For when it is calm and clear, the images appear distinct; but when it is moved and disturbed, either images are not seen at all, or they are unlike and difficult to interpret.
*By which.* Philosophy.
*Being purified.* Among the Greeks, he says, imagination is purified through initiatory rites; but the people of our pious Church purify it through temperance and vigilance and fasting. B Thus, when the sensory power is purified, it becomes receptive of God; nevertheless, before calling and bringing God into itself, it first thrusts out the preceding sinful insinuations, as many as are introduced and enter into the imagination through the organic sensory organs. And this he says is a natural life: to keep the imagination pure from such things. For it is common to soul and body, and it must hold a pure communion with the soul.
*Those also which.* So that from this, those insinuations produced through the organic sensory organs also run out and withdraw, before God descends into the imaginative faculty as far as is possible. For such insinuations hasten to run out before God is invited in by the imaginative faculty; and they run out through spiritual purification.
*According to that which is natural.* Of the continent and temperate and virtuous man.
*Again, to be.* For not only of the body, but also of the rational soul and the mind.
*This.* The imaginative faculty.
*Not unsympathetic.* It is not alien to the nature of the soul, but it also runs together and suffers along with it, and does not remain by itself, having a peculiar nature like the body, which he also calls an "oyster-like covering" on account of the hardness and the resistance which it has toward the soul.
C P. 137. *Oyster-like.* From many places it is shown that this wise Synesius is an ardent follower of Plato. For not only from the opinion—that he holds the same views as he—but also from the concepts, and from the methods, and from the very words themselves. For the saying "oyster-like covering" for the body has its origin from there. For he says D also in the *Phaedrus*, [index: entries preserved]
A regarding the initiation and the contemplation of those who are pure, being pure in a pure light, and having no mark of this which we now call the body, to which we are bound like an oyster.
And "being improved," and "being depraved," also have their origin from there. For Plato speaks of sin in this way: "The figures of the gods, being evenly balanced and easily guided, travel readily; the others with difficulty." For the horse burdened by partaking of vice, inclining and weighing down toward the earth, because it is not well nurtured by the charioteer; where indeed labor and ultimate struggle are proposed for the soul, and the rest.
*Being improved.* That is, the phantastic spirit for the soul pursuing a good way of life. *Being depraved.* By matter and by stumbling. *This.* The phantastic.
*Common terminus.* He calls the phantastic faculty of the soul a common terminus of both extremes, that is, of the nature of body and of the incorporeal, of reason and of irrationality, of matter and of privation, and by this middle point the opposites meet and are joined together. He calls things "divine" those that are immaterial and incorporeal; and "lowest" those that are material, corporeal, and sensible. For this reason he says it is difficult to define its nature and to declare what it is, just as we declare about the soul that it is an incorporeal and immaterial substance and beyond sense; and again about the body, that it is a material substance, B flowing and composite.
For the phantasy is neither body nor entirely without body; and for this reason, it can admit neither the definition of body nor that of the incorporeal. For it gathers and begs something from both opposites—from the body, I say, and from the incorporeal—as much as is appropriate and fits its own nature, and a certain single nature is formed that is composed of natures so far removed from one another.
*Of both.* Of the rational soul and of the body. *Divine things.* Of the phantastic. *To be defined [to be designated].* To be grasped, contained, bounded, and understood. *Of the phantastic essence.* That is, the phantasy itself. *But it itself.* The nutritive, the vegetative, the sensitive. *Of the beast.* That which is not at all composed of reason. *It is purified.* Just as the spider, the bee, and the ant, which naturally perform works such as not even the most prudent of men could perform. But the young of monkeys, and those of bears, and of very many other animals, having a nature flexible for learning, are taught by men and become suitable for many human tasks. *At least also.* Either naturally or through human training. *Something more excellent.* Higher in knowledge. *All of the demons.* The ancients, the Greeks, of the gods and of the demons...
stated that there was a difference, and they called the greater ones gods, and the lesser ones demons. Synesius, however, sometimes assigns a distinction between them, and at other times uses the names indiscriminately. A *All the kinds of demons.* But, he says, all the kinds of demons that dwell in this world have obtained this life, which is to say, a sensory one. For in general, those kinds are nothing but phantasy. *In general.* According to their essence. *And eidolic.* Eidola, he says, are things that are bodyless, yet they have a certain thickness, some more, some less. It seems, therefore, that Synesius is here following the opinion of Democritus and Sextus and other Greeks. For they say that there are certain demons around the air and the earth, having a thickness and a certain cohesion and affection, and that they are invisible to healthy human eyes—which they also call "eidola" because they preserve, I believe, a certain imprint and shadowy tracing and image of the angelic and more immaterial nature from which they have fallen. They are difficult to destroy, B but not immortal for all time; and some of them are harmful, while others are beneficial. They say, therefore, that these approach human beings, and especially when they are sleeping, and foretell many things that are to come; yet such predictions, when made by the good ones, are clear and stir up eagerness, but when made by the harmful and baleful ones, the opposite is true.
But the human phantasy is not a circle, but by a hidden power receives the shapes of things flowing in from without and is subject to them, just like a book being read and studied by the intellect; and in the case of clear and evident things, it teaches itself of its own accord what ought to be accepted; but in the case of obscure things, it also calls upon the intellectual powers of the soul, and becomes, as it were, a council chamber concerning things to be done. C For the intellect, unless it receives its thoughts from the phantasy, has no activity concerning the generated and mutable nature of things. *Itself.* Or as a power. *With another.* Or as one with the intellect, for the most part. *Not without phantasy.* But intertwined with phantasy. *If, then, anyone.* Except if someone. *In an instant.* Just as the divine prophets and the divine Paul, having fallen into ecstasy. For then the intellect, having in a certain way gone outside of matter and having transcended the body, sees in an ineffable manner according to the nature of the intellect, without error. For this reason the divine Paul also says, "I know a man, whether in the body I do not know, or outside of the body I do not know,"* and so on. D *In an instant.* In a momentary and indivisible and very brief interval.
Scholia on Synesius "On Dreams"
*There, a transition.* Look for the discourse of Plato which he entitles *Phaedo*. *It had of a kind.* Either as a divine illumination. A *To look beyond.* Either as the intellect transcending the imagination. *And philosophy.* For Plato says in the discourse concerning the soul, from the person of Socrates: *It is difficult.* For as much as it is difficult, by so much is it blessed to look beyond. *He says.* Plato. *Devoid of imagination.* The intellectual. *Being projected.* Being set before and appearing. *The spirit, at any rate.* He calls the imagination sometimes the phantastic spirit, sometimes the animal spirit, sometimes the primary body of the soul, sometimes the spiritual soul, and sometimes the common boundary of the soul and the body. *Animal.* Either as the phantastic. *The blessed ones.* The sacred scribes of the Egyptians. *And a genius.* According to his own habit. *Penalties.* Punishments. *In this.* It repays. *And oracles.* Ancient. *By dream fantasies.* For such as is the life of each, such also are the fantasies in sleep, and they follow him according to probability, being, as it were, the echoes of daily cares; and such as the fantasies in sleep are, such it is likely for the soul to find the condition to be there after the departure from the body. B *For there is great hope for one arriving there, where I am setting forth, that I may sufficiently, if anywhere else, attain there that for which much effort has been made by us in the present life; so that the journey now enjoined upon me happens with good hope, and for any other man also it is considered to prepare the intellect as if cleansed.* And a cleansing of it is to separate the soul as much as possible from the body, and to accustom it to gather and collect itself from everywhere out of the body, as if from bonds. *And philosophy.* That of Plato, and those who are in agreement with him. *To be of the second.* Of those after death. *The first ones.* Concerning which the imagination is occupied here. *It itself.* The phantastic faculty. *Being wiped away.* And therefore of the worse habit. *Stain.* Casting filth into it. *Is taken away.* The phantastic faculty. *Heat.* Which are brought about through fasting, and wakefulness, and humility. C D
A And this therefore. The powers about the body of the soul, B being many, communicate with the Divine only in the intellectual and reasoning faculty, which Plato with good reason called a wing, as it draws the soul up from mortal and earthly things toward heavenly and more divine ones, and does not allow its phantastic faculty to be stained by material affections. And this therefore. This is the purification of the phantastic faculty. *Caverns.* The depths. *Of the earth.* It puts on. Since this wise man Synesius, as we have said, is in all things a most keen follower of Plato, and here too uses many of his borrowed sentiments, it would be just to set forth his words in this place instead of any other interpretation. He says, therefore, in the *Phaedo* concerning the polluted and impure soul, that it is weighed down by that which is corporeal, which the very intercourse and communion with the body, because of their constant association and assiduous practice, has made innate and twofold. And one must consider this to be ponderous, heavy, earthly, and visible; and being encumbered by it, such a soul is weighed down and dragged back to the visible place by fear of the invisible and Hades, just as it is said to roll about monuments and tombs, around which indeed some shadowy phantasms of souls have been seen, C of such a sort as these souls provide, being ghosts paying the penalty for an evil life previously led; and they wander about until, by the desire of the corporeal nature that accompanies them, they are again bound into a body. And they are clothed, as is likely, in such characters as they happened to have practiced in their life; as, for instance, it is likely that those who have practiced gluttony and wantonness and revelry put on the kinds of donkeys and similar beasts; those, however, who have preferred injustice and tyrannies and robberies put on the kinds of wolves and hawks and kites; but those who have practiced the political and popular virtue, which they call temperance and justice, having become so out of habit and practice, without philosophy and intellect, it is likely that they return again into such a political and gentle kind, or perhaps into bees, or wasps, or ants, or also into the human kind again, and it is likely that men of moderation arise from them; but to the kind of the gods it is not permitted to arrive for one who has not philosophized and who departs completely pure, except for the lover of learning; and he calls the philosopher a lover of learning, as one who is inquisitive and a searcher into the nature of things that are. *Wretched.* Unfortunate. *By toil.* And by punishments through time. *Purified.* The phantastic faculty.
A *For having come to be.* The phantastic soul, as it came into existence from the beginning. *With the worse.* With the material things. *With the better.* With the intellectual things. *From above.* From the spheres, as he said before. *And this.* And this, he says, is that the rational soul is able to release the phantastic spirit, which is heavily bogged down below, and to ascend—freed from the material relationship—toward the heights; this would be a gift of God, being supported by ineffable means and by a *telete*, that is, a mystical and diviner teaching that leads and disciplines it. Yet this does not happen to many souls, but with difficulty to one, or perhaps a second; nonetheless, he even complains about the ascent of this one. For he called it "wretched" and "disgraced," as having appeared unjust on account of not returning that which is foreign, from which it had borrowed. *Nature.* That is, this is natural. *Soul.* Rational. *To flow together.* To follow voluntarily. *To draw.* Unwilling. *To be drawn.* Dragged. *By wickedness.* By the material attachment. *Having granted.* Having yielded. *And this is.* For the Chaldean Oracles exhort us to stretch our mind upward continually toward God, and not to yield, allowing it to incline downward toward the terrestrial world, where nothing is trustworthy or firm, but all things are vain and false. One must consider how he called this terrestrial world, which he has also called "shrouded in darkness," "black-shining" (or dark-gleaming); and not only this, but also Hades B. C D
A. He calls it so because the Chaldeans name Hades in many ways. For they consider it a god, and the leader of the extreme and terrestrial lot. There are times when they say the world under the moon is "shrouded in darkness," and they call this Hades; and at other times the lunar sphere itself, which they also establish as the border between the ethereal world and the material one. They call "the Abyss" the matter which they place in the region under the moon. *Terrify.* The sacred oracles of the Chaldeans terrify. *Rationis capax (Ratiocinative).* He speaks of the soul, as having its existence from God. *Infidus (Faithless).* Unstable. *Amphiknephēs (Shrouded in darkness).* Dark. *Rypōn eidōlocharēs (Filthy and idol-loving).* Delighting in idols, where gods dwell, and where the more material demons frequent; and, he says, the phantastic spirit becomes thickened. *Emplēktos (Stolid).* As if struck by lightning. *Tō de eidōlō (To the idol).* Here, too, by "idol" he means the faculty of phantasy, which, being a psychic spirit and subtle, nevertheless, because of the wickedness of its choice, sometimes has a certain thickness—such or such—which he calls a condition of the spirit; and then it truly becomes an idol itself, that is, similar to those idolatrous demons. *Hē katō (The one below).* He had called it the black-shining world earlier.
B *Homoio gar (For to the like).* For since the phantastic spirit, instead of bearing the image of the soul, and being a likeness of it, became rather, through deviation, an idol similar to material demons, it naturally also finds pleasure in their companionship. *Ei de en (But if it is one).* But if the intellect also is led down with the phantasy, and they become one single thing out of both. *Kai ho nous (And the intellect).* Perhaps the intellect, having become more "idol-like" and thicker, might also accept (or welcome) this finding of pleasure. *Kaito touto kakōn (And yet this is the greatest of evils).* He says, not to perceive an evil that is present, but to find pleasure in it as if it were a good thing, would be the greatest of evils. For to find pleasure in such things and not to perceive them is the mark of those who do not even look up or seek to receive correction. *He cites as an example the scirrhus; for a scirrhus is a dirt that is difficult to wash away C and hard to cleanse. However, the statement seems obscure to many, because Synesius, using brevity, did not expand upon such an example, but wove it into the text. It would have been clearer had he said the following: that just as a scirrhus, by entering into the depth of some underlying body, becomes difficult to wash away and hard to purge and hard to cleanse; so too does the preoccupation with matter, having submerged the intellect, and—if I may say—having possessed it in its depths, and having made it as it were thicker, steals its assent through pleasure, and the earth, and D [it fails] to take remembrance or ...
A it does not permit the recollection of salvation and the thought of safety and liberation to be taken from that vehement commotion. Yet, a remedy is found that is linked to higher meditation, which is salutary repentance; for repentance is the change of counsel of a man who is bearing things heavily and with an ill spirit, and who is shuddering throughout his whole body at the depravity occupying him. For to pursue vice with hatred has its beginning in the will and free choice: for the will is the root and foundation of all words and deeds, and to it they extend and stretch the causes and the first principles. For unless the will concurs, every instruction and learning B remains lifeless and ineffective, and incomplete. For if the teacher teaches, but the will of the student is unwilling, the instruction becomes maimed; and for this reason a life tempered with sadness and bitterness is useful. And on account of this. For this reason, then, a remedial and salutary medicine is found, which is repentance, that is to say, changing one’s mind and the condemnation of the matter. To this, indeed. That is, to these things, both deeds and words stretch out their hands, or [they do so] as to the causes and principles.
Lifeless. Powerless. Maimed. Incomplete. Of the signal. Of your will, of your consent. The mixtures of things. The state of having pleasant things mixed with painful ones. C Rash. Irrational. Of joy. Of pleasure. Beyond merit. Beyond what is expected, and said by the many to be outside what is decent. Calamities. Just as many other expressions were understood in different significations in former and bygone times, and differently used by later and lesser ones, so also this word *calamity* [σῠμφορά], being originally a middle term, and understood even of that which is advantageous—as [in the verse]: *"For joys, tears creep from the eyes"*—is understood by those who came later only as something evil, and is censured beyond what is likely and beyond its merit. For in truth, calamities are not causes of evils, but [instruments] of training and prudence; on the contrary, the so-called good fortunes that are noised about are rather causes of evils. D They contribute. They work together. For removing the feeling. The great and inherent commotion of the soul. First providence. It is read in another manuscript, "the supernal providence." He calls the just method and dispensation of God, the creator of the world, "the first and supreme providence," distinguishing it clearly from others. For the Greeks, thinking the sun, moon, and stars to be ensouled, said that they also provided for earthly things from their own dwelling place. For their sake. Of the calamities. To the incautious. To those devoid of intelligence and thoughtless.
A Of happiness. For since they are the causes of ruin, the many, being deceived, proclaim them to be happiness. A snare. An ambush and a trap against souls. To the overseers. From the demons who are the overseers. Let another say it. One who thinks in the Greek manner. To the one having entered. But I say, clearly. Is reached. Is given. Things here are sweet. The deceptive quality of matter.
Mild. What he says is of this sort: Since necessity, he says, demands that the soul serve the nature of the world, it descends from above like a hired servant, so that having served for a stated time it may receive its wage, as if it were a prize, and ascend whence it descended. For all things which have generation and growth require the soul; and this is the service and ministration of the soul, that it should serve the generation of things in the world, until there exists in that receptive body of each the power to carry a soul, and it is not troubled by old age or any wasting whatsoever and earth-born corruption, such as wander about life in many ways and many turnings. But for the most part, having been deceived by the enticements of desires and pleasures, as though intoxicated, it took falsehood in place of truth, and grasping a shadow instead of reality. A hireling. A paid servant.
First life. He says "first life," distinguishing it from the second and third, which the Greeks say come to pass because of the transmigrations of souls. It serves. Or it takes the rank of one bought with silver instead of a hired servant. Of Adrastia. Of fate. Having been seduced. Having wandered through pleasure. Of the gifts. Whatever things soothe and sweeten sight, taste, hearing, smell, and touch, he says are all gifts of matter.
Of gifts. Of the pleasures in the continuity of nature. B Toward a composed state. Fixed. To serve. As if they had made a written agreement. Let us be pleased. Let us be gladdened. Of extraneous things. Spurious. To agree. To come to an arrangement in writing. But she. Adrastia is nature. Ineffable. Mystic and not brought forth through the agency of the tongue.
Let us deliberate. No one could know these things accurately who has not suffered beforehand and who has not first taken some experience of them; but those who are ensnared by the longing for children and wives might know it better. For being deprived of these at some time, or having left them of their own will, they suffer constant, rending sorrows, so to speak,
A dissecting the soul night and day, which indeed he calls material punishments. For these conjure up the idol and phantom of the thing of which one has been deprived, and frequently bring it to the memory of the one who desires it; and like wild dogs, they tear at him bitterly from every side and drag him about. Many, indeed, they have driven to their death, not being able to endure the suffering with constancy.
Fugitives. Runaways. He seizes upon. For this reason it is also called Adrastia. Not trivial. Not small. To delete. To frustrate. Punishments, then. Passionate, punitive thoughts. Material. Pressing upon the soul. Then indeed. Some say that necessity, Adrastia, fate, and nature differ from one another; but others say that one thing is signified by these terms. For what a person cannot escape, this would be Adrastia and necessity; but fate is that which governs earthly things through the chain of the natural connection and physical interlocking of beings. And they say that earthly things are subject to fate when they operate bodily and naturally; but they are under providence when they operate intellectually, that is, when men receive blessings directly from God. Of it. Of fate, which is also Adrastia and nature. B Called. By the ancients; hence temptations are named. To endure. To suffer the things that befall one, and which are grievous. Divine words. Those that appear mythical, but are mystical and more divine; for the myths seem to say that Eurystheus ordered these trials and necessities upon Heracles; but the mystical words, by unfolding the things said in an anagogical way, refer them to another meaning. Another. Similar to Heracles. Constantly. Strongly. He attempted. He laid a hand and struggled C strongly, so as to be freed. The hands. Or as of this physical world, which is governed by nature. The leap. The jump, as being weak. And it is necessary. There is need. He spares not. Matter. As of alien things. As if they had bounded away from its own genuineness. Of the jars. Homer in the Omega of the Iliad discusses such conversations with Priam, who was asking for his son Hector; it goes like this: For two jars stand at the threshold of Zeus, Of gifts that he gives of evils, but the other of goods. D
A Jupiter, mingling for him, bestows [them] with his thunderbolt, Sometimes he meets with evil, at other times with good; But he to whom he gives of the baneful, he makes him a thing of scorn, And an evil hunger drives him over the divine earth, And he wanders neither honored by gods.
*Latently.* Concealed. *Parts*. For all material things, whatsoever are in this natural world constituted of generation and corruption, are divided in two ways. For to some of them, things which are good and desirable and pre-eminent fall by lot; to others, on the contrary, come evils. Except that the good are rare, while the evils are many. *To Jupiter himself.* That is, to Homer, at that part of the Homeric verses where he says this. *Lord of matter.* Since Homer makes Zeus the dispenser in these verses of the goods and the evils that the jars contained; and this is a matter of material service, as if destiny were commanding from a higher place, it seems that he makes him the lord and ruler of matter as well. *Of the double [gift].* Of the twofold, as of that which comes from the two jars. *In error.* In the soul. *Having returned.* But having become heavy and having remained below toward the variety of material affection. For this very material affection is that which prevents [the soul] from returning to the region of the supersensible worlds, from whence it also made its first descent.
B *See.* I look upon, *God*. See. It is written *thee*, which is also better than *thee* [in the sense of] divine, being synonymous. *Is traded.* As will be said. *The account said.* The Egyptian and sacred. *Should happen upon.* Should fall into. *Dark-shining.* To that which is dark on both sides. *In a cloud-enveloped place.* The Egyptians and Chaldaeans call the world under the lunar sphere a cloud-enveloped place, dark on both sides. But they say that in the lunar sphere itself it is alternately covered and alternately luminous, that is to say, shining with one half of its part, and being without light in the other half. For indeed the moon itself is of such a nature, always having one half of its part turned toward the sun and illuminated, while the other is empty of the splendor of light, made by proportion according to its own constantly changing revolutions and circuits and various turns. But the place above the moon, up to the highest and all-encompassing sphere, they call the world luminous on all sides, that is to say, perpetually illuminated on both sides by permanent and immortal light. *Place.* To that which is terrestrial according to the soul. *Follows.* The phantastic spirit. *To the greatest extent.* Plato also says in the *Phaedrus* that this is the law of Adrasteia: whichever soul, having become a follower of God, catches sight of any of the truths, is to be unharmed until the next period, and if it can always do this, it is always unscathed, but if it, being unable to attain it, has not seen it, and having met with some chance fall, it becomes filled with forgetfulness and wickedness and is weighed down,
to be wingless; but when, having become powerless, it fails to see [the goal], and by some misfortune becomes filled with forgetfulness and vice and is weighed down; and having been weighed down, it sheds its feathers and falls to the earth, then the law prescribes this and that. Seek also what follows.
The "Opposite" arrives. "As far as the lunar sphere." For that which is opposite to it is the world which is on all sides dark, which reaches up to this point; but he speaks of it as "opposite" with respect to that which is surrounded by light and is on every side shining. C Dross. By depreciating it thus, he speaks.
A portion. And a lot.
But this one. The "all-luminous."
For not only. For he does not exhort us to lead up only the nature of the phantastic spirit to the upper world through a fitting purification, but also if it had taken anything from the fringes of fire and air—which indeed he called the dross of matter—he commands that this also be carried up together.
The "eidolic." The phantastic.
The earthly. Which previously he called a bony shell, now he calls it the body, a terrestrial integument.
The divine. He calls the phantastic spirit the "divine body," which above he called the first body of the soul.
And into one. Into a single nature having co-existed. D On the cliff. He calls it the dross of matter, which the phantasia, descending from the upper spheres, begged from the natural elements of fire and air. He says, therefore, that this also should not be left on the cliff—that is, in this world surrounded by darkness—but must be raised up through temperance and the other virtues, and led up to the ethereal world; since it exists by nature, and for the idol, there is a portion in a place that is luminous on all sides. He calls the phantastic spirit an "idol," as connatural with the rational soul, but being inferior to it. For just as the intellect is an idol and image of God, and the rational soul of the intellect; so also the irrational soul, that is, the phantastic spirit, is an idol and image of the rational soul. Since, therefore, nature—that is, the natural soul—is an idol of this phantastic spirit, and the body of this in turn, and again matter of the body; and so phantasia, he says, has a certain relational proportion toward those things which from both sides have a bond of communion and affinity with it, and tend together toward the same end. Wherefore he instructs it not only from the rational soul upward, but also downward from the natural elements, of which he speaks, descending and begging [them]—I mean fire and air.
From neighbors. And especially those, he says, have a relationship for whom the position of the region is from neighbors and is near, and in succession—just as the elemental fire is near and in succession, by way of continuity, to the celestial and ethereal body, and they are not separated as the earth is separated from the aether, which is the last and lowest of those that exist.
A Fire: The elementary.
If the better things. If the soul, although it is better than the body, has nonetheless accepted communion with the body, and has acted in concert with it through the medium of the imaginative [faculty], and has shared with the dregs some portion of the better and uncorrupted nature, in as much as it has partaken of the worse; it would not even accept the body, unless it hindered the imagination and drew it away from the soul’s natural union, but rather provided itself as docile and obedient to it, so that it might be led back to a more divine and higher condition. For just as the imaginative soul, inclining towards somatic affections, becomes thick and moves toward a more somatic condition, so also the body, inclining toward contemplation through the medium of the imagination, may become attenuated and may be etherealized along with the rational soul, passing beyond the extremity of the elements, which it called a "misty region" above. B He speaks of that which extends from the earth to the lunar sphere as being composed of the four elements. For from the lunar sphere begins the substance and nature which moves in a circular motion up to the highest and first sphere, the all-encompassing one, which he also calls "bright." The older Greeks, however, used to burn the very bodies of the dead, just as if they were placing these too, along with the soul, in the ethereal region.
If the better things. These are the rational soul and the faculty of sensation, which have withdrawn from the material elements.
Acted in concert. Coexisted.
Dregs. He means the soul and the phantastic spirit.
When it has yielded. By matter.
The worse things. Either as fire and earth, or those from which the body is composed.
But docile. This word is Platonic. For he says the chariots of the gods are docile C and obey the reins, and therefore easily travel their course.
Following. Accompanying.
The middle. The phantastic.
Of the first. Of the rational soul.
Portion. Lot.
Of the elements. The wiser of the Greeks interpret the myths concerning Athena in this way, and they say that Athena is the soul, and Zeus is the air; they say she is the daughter of Zeus, having been born from his head, that is, from the summit of heaven, and that she is simple and incorporeal. They call her "Tritogeneia," because upon descending she receives the spirited part from the aether, D and... the moon, for its nature is moist and flowing; for this reason the impostures of lusts...
occur toward it. Then, she receives the composition of the body from the elements in order. These things, then, the Greeks assert, but the Egyptians and Chaldeans say other things; but since Synesius sees them thus disagreeing, he says that one must withhold belief from them in part, and in part grant it.
*Corporeal substance.* See, again he says that the phantastic spirit is a corporeal substance, which he had called above the first body of the soul, and again a divine body, and yet again an untainted body. *Substance.* That is, the phantastic spirit. *It is altogether impossible.* It is very difficult in consideration of its dignity. *Let it be raised together.* Or, let it ascend together. *And to the celestial spheres.* From which it first descended. *Ultima (Extremes).* Wishing also to speak about the intermediate regions, he recapitulates what has been said and puts it in order. He says, therefore, that these are the two A ultimate limits or extremities of the universe: one, the lower, which is shrouded in darkness, and one, the upper, which is entirely radiant; the one is miserable, and the other is blessed. But since opposites cannot be joined immediately, he says that there are also other regions in between these two limits, many and various, which he calls "heterophae" (differently radiant) and "heteroneph" (differently dark), meaning that they partake of the limits on either side and are partly radiant—for instance, just as there is a middle between the intellect and the soul, and in the middle of the soul and the imagination is opinion, and between the imagination and the body is sense-perception. And these are the middle grounds extending through one another from the body up to the intellect, and they all participate in some way in the things bordering them on either side. Just as the air, having two extremities and termini on either side, is warm in its upper terminus, which approaches the elemental fire, but is moist in its lower terminus, near the water.
*The extremities.* The critical points. *Regions.* Other tracts and places. *Of the world.* Around the lunar sphere. *Soul.* I think, while still being in the body. *Of the spirit.* Of the phantastic (spirit). *Forms and manners.* Which seems to happen already in the case of men who live purely, blamelessly, according to virtue, and intellectually. For these, even though they are on earth, possess a mind B that travels the aether. *To its own.* As to its own proper terminus, the one that is entirely radiant. *Having fallen.* To the lower one, which is shrouded in darkness. *And it becomes indefinite.* It escapes and spreads into the variety of matter. *In the middle, however.* Or, as in the middle terminus and region, which is "heteroneph" and "heterophae." *Of the ones.* Of the blessed and the miserable limit.
A To discern. Namely, you might affirm that the soul itself is a certain wonderful nature, that is to say, it participates in the superior [nature] to the extent that it surpasses what is baser in matter. In any order. Of the middle, interjected. Or entirely. Absolutely. It is divine. Perfectly, integrally. Of the divine. The very small.
Now, that which is fallacious. That phantastic element, the wandering and lying [part] in predictions, is "alecton"—that is, it has no fixed end or place; so one must understand it as the absurd, having an affect and ignoble ambition, and of those rolling, that is, wallowing, in matter. And Aristophanes the comic poet says in the play of the Clouds, as if from Phidippides dreaming and saying: "Drive the horse away after having rolled it home," that is, "Drive the horse home, having prepared it to be rolled."
Now, that which is roaming. A kind of demon that makes its predictions while wandering.
It is "alecton." Having no fixed end or place.
Of those wallowing. The Chaldeans say that the demons who wallow in matter and earth are beasts of the earth; and they say that such beasts will inhabit our life, which has become full of passions. For such kinds of demons are substantiated in the passions, and A have their seat and material order. Therefore, even those who are subject to passions come toward these and are as if glued to them, drawing like to like, being moved and possessed of power for agitation from the passions.
Of wallowing. Of rolling demons.
For in this way. Thus through repentance.
The *sierraion*. He calls the *sierraion* the nature between the blessed and the miserable lot, which he had also called a demonic nature a little before. He says, therefore, that this demonic nature thus creeps in both to God and to an older demon, being a neighbor; yet it flies to higher things, and takes hold of the region in the higher limit prepared for the pure and more divine nature.
By nature. These things are in keeping with the opinion of Plato, and no less with that of Plotinus. For Plotinus says that all men from the beginning used sense before mind and intelligence, and having first associated with the things that fall under sense, they considered these things to be the first and the last; and thinking that what was painful or pleasant in them was, on the one hand, evil, and on the other, good, they thought it sufficient if they pursued the one and averted the other. And this seemed wise to them, according to the heavy ones among the birds, which, having taken much from the earth and become weighed down, are unable to fly on high; but those that have hung themselves a little from the lower things, moving themselves from the pleasant toward the better of the
soul, having been unable to see A the proceeding of the soul on high, they have been brought back again to actions in the name of virtue. But a third genus of divine men, by a better power and the sharpness of the eyes, saw the brilliance on high, and was raised there, as if above the clouds of the mist here, and remained there, looking down on all things here, having found rest in a place that is true and akin, as a man arriving from some great wandering into a well-ordered fatherland.
Constitution and state. We might conjecture his condition, of what sort it is; for to the man to whom it pertains, we might suspect and comprehend. The phantastic. A pure phantastic sees some of the things that are to be. B Conjecture.
As a guess and a promise from conjecture.
Of the soul. As far as can be from the shape and habit of the soul. Better. That he ends in a happy lot. Not least. But most of all, he says, we hunt and overtake from the phantasms, which the phantastic spirit projects in sleep, that is, about what it is occupied, and we conjecture in what state and disposition it happens to be, just as he had previously said, that oracles harmonize regarding it— C stating, when it is least of all aroused externally by something else, such as from some bodily weakness or bitter calamity. For just as those who are thirsty in their sleep seem to dwell around rivers and fountains of water, so also those who are freezing [seem to dwell] near fires and warm baths; and those who have a more moist belly, [near] marshy and muddy and damp places. Similarly also those who have been bereft of child or spouse by death seem to see them in their sleep, because the prattling of the reasoning faculty persuades the phantastic to spend time on such things. By another. That is, when the phantastic is not troubled by an occurring passion, such as, for instance, by love or by fear or by fever, or by any D other weakness. For such people are deceived both when awake and when asleep. For the lover, from some small similarity, seems to see the face of the one he loves. And the coward likewise thinks he is being pursued by enemies; and those suffering from fever likewise, in a confusion of the moving sight, think they see animals painted on the walls. Such movements, therefore, he now forbids, and does not admit them into the pure judgment of the phantastic.Animal. Phantastic. Of philosophy. Of a philosopher and a temperate way of life.
As. Like. Application. That which is appropriate and fitting. Projection. Progress. Power. According to power. Anticipating. Conquering, cutting off in advance. Uncontrollable. Inconceivable. Worse. By the body. As many as. Moderate sleep, water, and a little bread. Application. Contact, apprehension, or as contemplation. Coexisting. Or as those rising up. Toward the spirit. According to the most destructive aspect of the phantastic. Spirit. God. Just as when. For just as certain things, being resolved and thinned, are stretched out and broadened, and occupy more space, as also those solid bodies which are evaporated into vapor; so, on the contrary, it happens with those that are gathered and thickened. For they are contracted into a smaller volume and occupy less space than before, just as air, when thickened and becoming water, is drawn together into a smaller volume than before, as also when water is frozen into ice. Thus therefore, he says, the phantastic spirit, having been fashioned by the Creator, is sufficient for filling the cavities of the brain; if, however, by some incidental thickness it is contracted A into a smaller volume, certain parts of the cavities of the brain are said to be empty. Then, since it is not possible by nature for there to be any vacuum among things that exist, it follows of necessity that some evil spirit must enter into such empty and evacuated places, by which it is necessary that the animal, together with its imagination, be afflicted with harm. Gathered. Contracted into a smaller volume. In things that exist. For it is a philosophical dogma that there is no vacuum. Full. Filled. Penalty. Condemnation. That. Which he called intellectual application. Of piety. The perfection of divinity. We indeed. In this place, by making a repetition of what has been said, he reveals also the purpose of the book: that we had set out to speak B concerning the divination of dreams, yet, being compelled by necessity, we have also held a long discourse concerning the phantastic spirit as being a leading and necessary thing to be mentioned. Applying ourselves. Attempting. Upon this. Beyond this. We have investigated. We have discussed more curiously. Of the word. Of the proof. Here. Concerning divination. He has revealed. It has been made manifest. Of the spirit. Of the phantastic.
A Of piety. Of divine administration. That it is. The phantastic spirit. On account of such. On account of divination. From being inflamed. Luxuriating. Unfortunate. Cheap, sober. At Pytho. One. It is necessary. It is lacking. He however. This one. And that. On account of the desire for divination. To love. To. Joined. To Him, to God. Standing alongside. Following. For it is not even on account of the soul’s reconciliation to God that the need for divination would then be lesser and deserving of neglect; but as long as man exists, he requires even this. Of the better things. Just as the moon, being illuminated by the sun, has the surface of its face turned towards us light-filled, and is not mingled with it on account of the magnitude of the distance; but when it begins to turn towards it, it is already illuminated into its depths and made bright, mingling its own dim light with the great light from the sun on account of its closeness to it: so also our soul receives rays from the ruling mind, or rather from God; but only superficially when it turns A towards sensible things; yet through the depths when, turning back, it draws near to Him. Then, therefore, he says, it is not entirely turned away from the living creature, but it turns also to sensible things, and from a vantage point it clearly considers them more purely, because it is not mingled with them, nor confused by them. The things below. The things in the world. Being with them. When it is more material. So that remaining. The soul is undistracted from matter. Specters. Likenesses and prototypes. Descending. Just as the light of the sun passing through filthy places is not defiled. Better. The mind. Worse. The body. To children. To my own. Having prepared. Or as having taken varied and abundant provisions. To Pytho. To Delphi. Of Ammon. They call Ammon Zeus. Now there is a temple of Ammon lying between the Nile and Libya, to the west of the Nile, but to the east of Libya and Cyrene; and it is more to the south than the Egyptian sea, at a distance of 1500 stades. To fall asleep. To recline. Homer in the Odyssey speaks of Penelope, when she is already about to...
A not need to sleep any longer; yet Synesius exhorts those who are about to lower their eyes into sweet sleep, that they should offer such prayers to God, the best and greatest.
Irrigated. In the 17th book of the Odyssey, Homer says these things concerning Penelope: "She, washed clean, and having taken pure garments, Was praying to all the gods that she might perform Sacrifices of one hundred oxen, if perhaps Zeus might accomplish these deeds." And after a little, he says again: "And prudent Penelope began the speech to them: 'Telemachus, I truly am going up to the upper chamber To lie in bed, which has become for me a lamentable one, Always drenched in my tears, ever since Odysseus Went away with the sons of Atreus to Ilium,' and the rest."
Irrigated. Having washed with water, Penelope. As perhaps. Or as he made Penelope asking in the verses. Is present here. See how here too Synesius follows the opinion of the Chaldeans. For they say that there are distinctions among demons. Some, they say, are ethereal, others aerial, others near the earth, others aquatic, and others subterranean. Those, then, that roll about the earth and water they say are false in their nature, as being far removed from divine knowledge and filled with dark matter; but the ethereal ones are truthful, as being far from the earth and near to divine knowledge. God far away. He who is of the ethereal order. B
Of the ceremony. They call "ceremonies" properly those things which are mystically handed down in words and deeds at Pythia and Eleusis and the other oracles. But now he uses the term "ceremony" figuratively for the divination that occurs during sleep. Some. Certain ones. Hierophants. The high priests. Of ceremonies. "Of cities" is also written. From the greatest. Just as the Athenians, according to the estimation of the possessions of each of the wealthy citizens, chose those possessing greater substance to be trierarchs, so, he says, the cities also chose the wealthier and more honorable ones as hierophants. For these are able to gather what is necessary for the art from everywhere. Therefore, he detests and abhors this mode of divination that makes use of such things. And there is need. There is necessity. Cretan. From Crete. Of the sun setting. This is from Homer's Odyssey; Homer calls the sun "Hyperion," from the preposition *hyper* [above], which denotes that which is above, and from the verb *ienai* [to go], which signifies moving—that is, he who moves above us and the earth. Of Hyperion. Of the sun. These things. Those things concerning the sunset and sunrise. Artificially searching. "Those who contrive with clever talent" is also written. Of the possessions. Of the existing substance.
A He sees indeed. The republic and civil administration of the Athenians being divided into four orders, they called one that of those who possessed a census of five hundred medimni; another that of the knights; another that of the zeugitai; and the fourth that of the thetes. This thetic order was also the most indigent, always performing daily labor for wages. These orders and census valuations the Athenians were wont to speak of. So that he may survive. Scarcely living. Rower. By means of a small boat. The thete. The mercenary. The one who pays. It was a custom among the Athenians to receive every year twelve drachmas from foreign visitors who gathered in Athens for the sake of residence, and this was called the "tax of the sojourner" (metoikion). Sojourner's tax. Concerning those who are moved from abroad to Athens. Eteobutades. The Eteobutadae were an ancient, distinguished, and illustrious clan in Athens, from which the priestesses of Minerva were chosen. But it is etymologized from *eteon*—that is, the true—meaning those who are truly descended from the lineage of Butes; and the tragic poet Aeschylus calls the all-seeing Argus "Butes," or as a herdsman, as one presiding over and following Jo, the daughter of Inachus. For he brings her in saying thus: "I tremble, beholding the many-eyed Butes." Popular. Familiar, social. To be present everywhere. Since he has mentioned certain histories B here, it is worthwhile to explain them briefly for the sake of clarity of speech. Near Antioch of Syria is a certain spring named Castalia, in which they reported that Apollo prophesied in this way: at the outflowing of the water a breath was given off, which at different times produced a different agitation of the water, which the seers who inspected it used to foretell future events. So this is one history. C Another is that concerning the rock of the Delphians. This is located in the province of Phocis, three hundred stadia more to the south than Mount Parnassus, and some two hundred stadia more to the north than the Corinthian Gulf. There was a temple there near a certain rocky mountain, and in it was the prophetic tripod of Apollo. The third history is that concerning the chasm of earth which he mentions; and it is as follows: There was a certain man named Trophonius, a seer by profession. This man, led by vanity, threw himself into a certain cave and, having hidden his life there, passed away. This cave, he says, used to render oracles to those who entered and inquired about anything whatsoever. D Synesius mentions these histories here for the greater praise of the divination that occurs through dreams, saying that those other places of prophecy required the greatest labors, hardships, and expenses, but this method of foretelling grants oracles to all without labor. And not to occupy. To not dwell in one place, or as, or at the water of Castalia, or if— [alt-version omitted]
one is at A the stone of Pytho, or at the underground oracle of Trophonius, or whatever other of the local oracles.
First. Better. Component. Having the purpose of seeing a dream. For nature. For the rest of nature. Not being enough. Our essence, or nature, not being able to watch forever. The choice. The dream. For the necessary. For sleep. He says sleep is a work and necessary, and the cause of being and living. But the dream is a choice, and an accessory, and the cause of well-being.
Well-being. Living well through divination in sleep. B To be. To live. For someone. For an action. To it. For the action. You will be helped with difficulty. When, clearly, you are hindered. For it is not of any time. For he said previously that there are certain defined places subject to and suitable for prophesying, and they are few, and they provide the oracles at determined times; therefore he also says that such divination is for these reasons difficult; and further, it is difficult because of its instruments, which it needs for its service. For he said these also require frequent expense. For it would not be easy to collect a Cretan herb, and an Egyptian feather, and an Iberian bone, and whatever other things those who labor miserably over such instruments C prattle and babble.
But for what causes. I would say, the instrument, namely. There are carriages. A wagon, a vehicle. Other parts. Words and deeds full of mysteries. For it is truer to say so. They revealed, namely. And they brought forth. Willingly. Divine revelation. Someone. Any man. By way of force. For the priests who seek external divination, of whom he spoke a little before, using magical art, through certain incantations draw down some demons, and keep them against their will tyrannically and violently, and inquire of them about what they need to learn. This is clear from the incantations by which they bring Hecate into the midst, saying: "After the morning splendor, D filled with stars, I left the undefiled and vast house of God, and I ascend to the earth that nourishes the living by your warnings, and the persuasion of nefandous verses, by which a mortal man certainly charms the dull hearts of the immortals." And again, another demon, being forced, says, he says: "Hear me unwilling, since necessity has bound me." And again, another elsewhere says: "Why do you always call me down from the ether sitting here, having compelled Hecate the goddess with your divine necessities?" and the rest. For such natures of demons, having become crasser on account of deep-rooted wickedness, have acquired for themselves an irrational soul, and because of this, partly indeed—
A spontaneously, and partly unwillingly, are attracted and enticed by such things. For Plotinus says that neither free will nor reason is ever drawn by music or incantation, but only the soul devoid of reason. Although they love to be invited, even if they do not in the least demand it. Nor, when someone deceives with sorcery, does that demon who is eluded by impostures have insight or power of judgment, nor does it perceive, but only knows, when already harassed, that it is being affected by the harm. And since the natures of such demons are conquered and oppressed by incantations, sorceries, and charms, it is clear that they themselves possess an irrational soul, and composition, and density.
*Vexation and labor*. As builders, structors, architects. *By those forcing*. Tyrannizing, compelling men. *Action*. Of that busy divination there, where it is troublesome to bring along the instruments necessary for divination. *Of a malicious*. Of certain envious citizens. *Governed by him*. By his own city. *Of an unwise man*. For it would be the act of an unwise man, he says, to banish from the city governed by him the faculty of sleeping, because this is impossible. And not only does he say it is the act of an unwise man, but also of an impious one, because he legislates something contrary to God and to nature. For both God and nature have implanted this great and most necessary condition—sleeping—within the living creature. Since, therefore, it has been demonstrated, he says, that it is necessary for all to sleep, and for those sleeping to become viewers of dreams, it would be worthy also to proceed to the divination through dreams.
B Everyone, rich and poor, men and women, and to speak simply, every age. *To whom impossible*. Because. *To whom contrary*. Because. *To it*. To the divination through dreams. *Prophetess*. Divination through dreams. *Longer*. Greater. *Thus*. Or as surely. *We are persuaded*. As one persuaded by the hopes in dreams. *By nature*. Of men. *The beginning*. In poverty, and labors, and deprivation of desired things. *Surrounding*. Which the jars once held. *Prometheus*. The nature of the world, and of those things in the world, being one, has obtained a multi-titled designation, on account of the distinct powers and activities it has. For as it is the cause of all, it is called Fortune, from the fact that it alone constructs all things; but on account of the chain of the weaving of causes, it is called Fate; on account of its insuperability, Necessity; on account of the fact that it distributes one thing to one and another to another, it is called Lot [Moira]; on account of the unchangeable nature of its works, it is called Atropos; on account of the boundary of its administration, it is called "that which is destined" [Pepromene]; and on account of the advantage of the things that turn out for men, it is called Providence and Prometheus. Here, therefore, Synesius [mentions] the providential and Promethean [aspect] of the
A nature, which indicates it regarding natural things. He called him Prometheus. And Aeschylus, too, in the drama which he entitles *Prometheus Bound*, introducing Prometheus distressed by the bond and recounting the causes for which he is punished by Zeus, says: "And I stopped mortals from foreseeing [their fate], having implanted blind hopes in them." But Euripides, being more intelligent, refers the name of Prometheus to the common creator of all things, clearly saying: "What then of Prometheus, whom they say fashioned us and all other living creatures, [and] granted to the beasts, to each according to its kind, a single nature? All lions are brave, [and] in turn all hares are timid." B *At will*: To the purpose.
*Captain of the company*. A company is a military formation of sixteen men. Now, the one standing in the front and leading the company is called a captain (*lochagos*); but the one behind is the rearguard (*ouragos*). The company as a whole is called a file (*stichos*), and by some an *enomotia*. Some, however, have declared the *enomotia* to be the fourth part of the company, and its leader an *enomotarch*. Two *enomotiai* they called a double-company (*dimoiria*), and its leader a *dimoirith*. So that a half-company is also called a double-company, and the half-company leader a *dimoirith*. A syllogism is when another [premise] is placed beside the first company.
*Of the feet*. Of the fetters on the feet.
*Insomnium (Dream)*. Since this wise man Synesius, A regarding the name of dreams and *insomnia*, it has seemed good to us to discuss these matters more extensively. For there are differences in what the ancients laid down concerning those things that appear in sleep. For they say there are five types of these: of which they call one an *insomnium* (dream), another a *phantasma* (apparition), another an *oraculum* (oracle), another a *visio* (vision), and the fifth a *somnium* (common dream). And an *insomnium* is properly the echo of daytime cares; this happens either when the soul is troubled in some way, or when the body has suffered something. The soul, for example, as when a master is provoked to anger at a slave, because he perhaps B did not manage the assigned matters well and decently; then, while sleeping, he thinks he is arguing with the slave about the same things. It is just as we see happens on the sea, when the north wind has agitated it, and then when the blasts of the winds have ceased and quieted down, the turmoil of the sea remains. In the case of the body, it is as if someone, oppressed by thirst, imagines he is running beside rivers and springs. A *phantasma* is when a person is neither fully asleep nor fully awake, but, being placed as if in the middle ground and interval between these, he imagines he sees C strange forms, unusual in nature, variety, and magnitude, either all together or few at a time, moving about in various ways, and bringing either turmoil or joy. An *oraculum* is when either an angel, or a priest, or a father, or someone of those having dignity, is seen and addresses the person, bringing either danger and grief D to some...
C as something to be avoided, or bringing those things that are expected to be beneficial, as things to be grasped. A *vision* is when someone sees in their sleep, in a similar and invariable way, that which they are about to see the next day, contrary to expectations. A *dream*, however, is when we see things obscurely and enigmatically, one thing instead of another, certain elusive images of future events, covered with a great heap of rubbish, which require much skill and experience so that the revelation foretold by them may be discerned. For there is no need of another teacher for these things, but each must be their own teacher, using the habit of their own natural idiosyncrasy as a guide. For one man, having seen himself in his sleep drinking wine, encountered painful events the next day; D but another, having seen the very same thing, encountered the opposite, namely certain pleasures and joys; the cause of which we shall describe elsewhere.
*To fashion images.* That is, to occupy oneself with the fancies of vain thoughts.
*To recall.* The soul.
*Of sensation.* From those things brought in through the sensory organs.
*Self-impelled.* The imaginative nature from within.
*To present.* To show.
*A pledge.* That is, an earnest money deposit.
*With greater things.* Such as honors, dignities, wealth, wisdom.
*He proposed.* He demonstrated beforehand.
*Before things.* Before the hoped-for event.
*Knowingly.* Prudently and with some knowledge.
*Of old.* Because of foreseeing and considering.
*As befitting.* As appropriate.
*Which he praised.* The hope he commended.
*Of the blessed.* The wealthy and just.
*For.* Plato utilized this Pindaric saying in his *Republics*, but not while looking toward the exact same goal as Synesius. For the former used it while discoursing on the things in which wealth is useful to others; but the latter, while discoursing on whatever concerns the divination of dreams. For he says in the first book of the *Republic*, that he who is conscious of many sins in his life, even from dreams, like children, B is frequently frightened upon waking and lives with an evil hope; but to him who considers that he has done nothing unjustly, a sweet hope is always present and is a good "nurse of old age," as Pindar also says, that he who might lead his life justly and in a holy manner, "sweet hope accompanies him, nursing his heart, old age's nurse," and so forth. Then he says that he who is fearful of departing thither, that is to say to the underworld, realizes that the possession of wealth contributes a great part to this.
A Indeed, it [the soul] seeks the judgment in the struggles of [the] generations; had it known that all dreams have a nature to be true, human ignorance, judging them incorrectly, sometimes considers them to be false.
*All [things].* He would have transmitted all things as true through the horn gates, and not as some false things through the ivory [gates].
*Has been made.* These things were created by Homer in the *Odyssey*.
*Geese, indeed.* Homer relates these things in the 19th book of the *Odyssey*; and it is as follows: Ulysses, having returned home after that great wandering, conversed with the servants and handmaidens in the house, and he also conversed with Penelope, save that he was like a stranger and unknown. During those conversations, therefore, she thought it right to tell Ulysses of her own sorrows—that she was wasting away, lamenting, by day and night due to immeasurable griefs for her husband—and she says these things:
"But come, interpret the dream for me, and listen B to it: Twenty geese in the house are eating grain From the water, and I am gladdened looking upon them. But a great eagle, hooked of beak, came down from the mountain, And pounced upon all their necks, and slew them. But they lay Clustered in the halls; and he was carried up into the bright ether. The fair-tressed Achaean women were gathered about me, As I was lamenting—most pitifully—because the eagle killed my geese; But he came back again and sat upon a projecting beam And stayed me with a human voice, and spoke, saying: 'Take heart, daughter of far-renowned Icarius.'"
*If, indeed.* If she had been wise regarding the judgment C of dreams, she would have realized that all dreams by their nature can act seriously and be truthful. But human ignorance, comparing them indecently and ineptly, considers them sometimes to be deceptive and vain.
*All.* He used to transmit all things—some as truthful, through the gates of horn, and others as if they were not false, through those of elephantine and ivory [material].
*Has been introduced.* By Homer: these things are in the *Odyssey*.
*Geese indeed are the suitors.* Homer recounts these things in the *Odyssey* book. Thus, further, the matter stands: Ulysses, having returned home after those constant wanderings, had daily life in his own house with the servants D and handmaids, and he also lived with Penelope, except that, as a stranger, he was unknown to them. Therefore, among those confabulations, while recounting her anguishes and troubles to Ulysses—since by night and day she was wasting away and attenuating from immoderate griefs of soul on account of her husband, weeping and lamenting—she says these things:
"Guest, I pray, conceive this dream in your mind: Twenty geese are being fed, beneath a high citadel, On grain mixed with the liquid of water. While I see them feeding, I am glad; but from the high Mountain an eagle flying with hooked beak, cruel, And great, attacked them, and rushing upon their long Necks, slaughtered the conquered; but they Are strewn slaughtered everywhere, and lay in [their] blood. The noble bird was carried off into the ether on [his] wings, And rising, he simultaneously struck the air with [his] wings. While I was complaining, I myself seemed, weeping, To be pouring out tears in my sleep, and abundant wailings."
But the wily Odysseus, answering her, addressed [her, saying], "O queen, thus it is to interpret a dream in a different way, since the very Odysseus himself, for you, is here! It [will be] even as he says: it portends doom for the suitors, and not one will escape death and the Fates." Then, in turn, the circumspect Penelope addressed him: "O guest, indeed dreams are baffling and obscure in their speech B and do not all come to pass for mortals. For there are two gates for feeble dreams: the one is fashioned of horn, the other of ivory. Those which come through the sawn ivory, they deceive, bringing forth words that are not perfected; but those that come out through the polished horn, they accomplish the truth for mortals, when any one of them sees [them]." Of such. Words. Used. Of men. Creeping. Of dreams. Beside. Because of. *Pansudiei* (with all the host). Homer in the Iliad depicts Zeus, wishing to honor Achilles because of the promises [he made] to Thetis. He says, therefore, that Zeus, having sent a dream to Agamemnon while he was sleeping, orders [him] to lead all the Greeks together into the battle of the Trojans, that Agamemnon, being compelled, might clearly also urge Achilles to go forth to the war. For the term *pansudiei* embraces everyone at once and collectively. But Agamemnon, not being able to understand the thought of "with all the host," forgot about Achilles. And hence, the command of Zeus remained maimed and incomplete. Whence he was not able to take the city according to the promise. Which he says. Which is. *Ena*. Together. And let us cast away. "Let us cast away" must be taken as meaning "let us be silent," from the metaphor of those who set down the load they were carrying. Aristides also says, in his [speech] *On the Four*, as follows: "As for the babblers, O Plato, and the idle, and the cowards, cast them away from here, lest perhaps some other god might rouse the Trojans." And let us cast away. Or as in "let us lay aside" such praises, and let us be silent. But if a little. Thus it ought to be understood: Or if having been caught in [a little] lack of judgment, publicly...
A rendering [the matter] as though it were good both the sailing together and the doing [of it], and the accomplishing of all these things for all people, which I mentioned a little before, but the goods [that came] to me personally from her [the art] I have not yet made public.
148. *To one inquiring.* If a dream is a dream. And [the word] *one*. Meaning. *Of names.* Of poetic [names]. *Of the ancient.* He speaks of Ancient Attic, which began from Gorgias, whose leader was that Gorgias the Leontine: for he used also poetic names for the sake of gravity and novelty of speech. But the New Attic began from Aeschines and Demosthenes; and this was smoother and more pleasant to the ear. *And the same.* *Something.* That an action or each. B *What it is said.* Having also added the quality, that it is good. *Born as.* Surpassing. *To the mistress.* To a fixed day. *To wait at the door.* To remain at the door; from *aulizomai* (to lodge). *Fortune.* Immediately. *I have been an ambassador.* If the embassy to the emperor Arcadius had not interrupted me at some point. *And yet.* Nevertheless even then.
*Of those who summon spirits.* The science of summoning souls and the evocation of the dead mean the same thing. Thus, indeed, one and the same matter is expressed by many names C among the Greeks, just as not a few other things are. But what is signified is such: some people, using certain impostures and incantations, do other monstrous and prodigious things, and they contend that they can bring up the souls of whichever of the dead they wish. They appear, then, to summon souls through certain incantations and adjurations; for they appear and answer regarding the things asked of them. But the things that appear are not the souls of the dead, but certain demons, which indeed were formerly angelic and luminous ranks, then, on account of their swelling, pride, elevation, arrogance, and wickedness, they were once cast out from that divine choir and company, and are now wandering D around this sublunary region, having cast off at the same time both that luminosity and that subtlety, and having changed instead toward darkness, and toward a thickness that is diverse and multiform.
The wise men of the Greeks and Chaldeans say, therefore, that some of them are aerial, some watery and marine, some earthly, and others subterranean; and that some of them delight in the odors [of sacrifices], others in blood, others in certain pollutions, and others in other things, and different ones in different things. For this reason, also, the oracular Apollo commands those who pursue necromancy to use some sacrifices, and others for those who practice hydromancy, and others for aeromancy, and others for others. We, however, leaving most of these aside, let us move on only to the words of the necromancers
s for those who practice hydromancy, and others for aeromancy, and others for others. We, however, leaving most of these aside, let us move on only to the words of the necromancers, who use the magical art of divination around the corpses of the dead. A And the oracle-monger Apollo indeed exhorts them to practice these things: "Slaughtering victims," he says, "bury them for the powers below, and into a trench let blood flow. Pour out honey for the nymphs, and the gifts of Dionysus." These are the same things that Homer’s Circe instructs Odysseus to do when he is descending into Hades:
When you have reached this spot, hero, moor your ship, And dig a trench, and measuring it with your elbow, Draw it out in length, and let it be wide enough. There, as a suppliant, pour libations to all the shades: First with honeyed syrups, and then with liquid mead, Then with the sweet and bubbling wine of sacred Lyæus, And third, let the water of the sea be added to them. Add to these the white flour you have ground, And bending your knees, worship the unwarlike shades, And call upon the vanishing souls with your vows: That if it be permitted to return to the ancestral home of Ithaca, You will sacrifice a barren heifer, Whichever excels, which the whole herd surpasses, And that you wish to heap up the built-up pyre with generous fruit, And in the fortress of Laertes in sea-girt Ithaca. Vow for Tiresias a sheep with a dark fleece, Whichever wins among the flocks that graze in the pastures.
The meaning of these things is as follows: honey, because it presents itself as a rival, so to speak, to the bitterness of death; milk, on account of the dark and black color of, the shadows; wine, because of sorrows and troubles; and finally water, since man is composed of four elements. Further, he mentioned a sheep because those animals that walk on four feet are common B to those of the earth and those below; it is black because of the gloom of that place. As for the sword, it is because those who employ demonic incantations are accustomed to hold swords in their hands, lest perchance the demons, violated by the exorcisms and evocations, should suddenly rush in a fit of rage and inflict some evil upon the one exorcising and calling them forth. For this reason, therefore, they are compelled to carry swords, so that by their means they may terrify them and not allow them to approach, but rather compel them to answer from a distance when questioned. For since they are vital spirits and possess density and thickness, as we have said, they themselves also fear cutting and division; they are even distressed if they are disturbed, struck, and beaten. For indeed, in humans who are struck and in pain, it is not the flesh that endures the labor and sickness, but the vital spirit. Otherwise, it would still feel pain even when separated from the life-giving soul that produces vital spirits. Nevertheless, those who elicit the shades and awaken the souls of the dead from the underworld, using the sorceries and evocations we have enumerated, bring and entice such demons as messengers, as it were, to bring back the souls of certain dead persons whom they wish. But since they are not able to bring back the souls by necessity, it remains for those demons to transform themselves into the forms of those deceased persons, and they are seen and recognized by friends and relatives, and they answer what is asked, and perform what is commanded. For they are often ordered to proceed to the harm of certain people, and they do so. The wise Synesius himself was once in danger of suffering such harm C
from certain hostile necromantic sorcerers, but he foresaw it while dreaming and thus immediately avoided the danger. He mentions this now in praise of the divinatory art, which exerts its power in the interpretation of dreams.
*Which it possesses.* For the imaginative soul contains species in accordance with its own domestic and peculiar nature; indeed, as he stated above, the soul possesses the species of things that come to be and happen, just as the mind possesses the species of things that truly exist.
*To those who are turned.* Having thus far designated two worlds—one luminous on every side, the other dark on every side—and having stated that the shining one is superior, as well as the orders and divine powers within it, which in the Chaldean manner he calls the gods, he follows up by saying the following, which will indeed be made clear if we first set forth the Egyptian and Chaldean opinions which he himself observes and imitates. For just as Moses says that man was made in the image and likeness of God, so also do the Chaldeans and Egyptians declare that the parent and creator of the world has sown certain symbols and indications of his own property into souls. For they say that not only do souls have their origin from the paternal seeds, but all the preceding orders have also sprung forth and had their C prior origin there. Whence they exhort and admonish us that, since man was not produced from bodily temperaments into the nature of things, but had his substance and life from a higher and more ancient origin, namely from God, he also possesses a kinship and affinity with the supereminent orders. It is worth the effort for the same man to turn toward them, on account of the recollection of the more divine lot and inheritance which he received descending from the creator and parent of all things, so that he may ascend thither once more. Following these words directly, Synesius says that the soul, having rested from the tumult of vulgar and crass senses, bestows those species—that is, the recollections—which it admits and holds while descending from the supernal and heavenly region, upon those men who devote themselves to the contemplation of divine and eternal things. For it now has commerce with the more divine and supereminent orders, and a certain more divine power D and faculty adheres to it familiarly from thence, from that world, precisely, which he calls the mundane God.
*From the same source.* From the same.
*Certainly these things.* Species.
*Whether by prudence.* He calls the virtue acquired by prudence that which springs up from experience; but he calls moral virtue, which arises from habit and teaching, that which is produced by habits. Aristotle, indeed, as if tracing the true origin of the word, names it "moral" from "custom." But custom is an activity, while character is the quality that is generated in the impressionable soul through activity, which is to say, the end and the work of custom. He says that none of the moral virtues is generated in us by nature. For nothing of those things that exist by nature can be trained to be otherwise; for example, fire, being by nature upward-tending, could never be trained to be carried downward, and other things likewise.
A *Or by habits.* He means ethics, the science derived from a teacher and from habit. *To some other person.* To a man not studious. *Not for a slight one.* But for a great and necessary matter. *Of the best sort.* Just as it happened once to Balaam, a man of another race. *A class.* Of dreams. *Of things that have happened. Of things past.* *Since this, too.* The thing that will one day come into existence.
*Of existence.* The wise men say that the present world is a simulacrum of eternity; consequently, the things within it are also simulacra of the things that subsist in that [eternity]; and not only this, but they also call the imprints that originate from one another and relate to one another, simulacra as well. They say that the air is the subject capable of receiving all of these: for instance, as an example, the air receives the enunciated and articulated speech—not at all truncated—and, by shaping itself in an ineffable way, just like a mirror, it conveys it into myriad perceptions, dividing it while maintaining the parts in an unvaried manner; it does the same for all colors, all vapors, and for everything in the world that is subject to the sensory faculties. B These, then, and such things, he calls the effluences of the idols of things that fall under sense perception, and the streams of composite things. For from the first and primordial matter according to the Greeks, from which the elements arose, what kind of effluence could there be, if it is formed only by conception? But we understand its effluence from the particular things in the world that are differentiated by composition. For these are always being born, being altered, and being corrupted. And not only according to the fluidity of matter, but, so to speak, these species also partake in the experience of this corruption, and thus, he says, the things in the world deny the dignity of that which truly is. The dignity of that which is, is to always be; but these things, on the contrary, are not always, nor are they able to stand in one state, but some have been, some are coming to be, and some are about to be; therefore, the idols flowing from all these things wander about and slip, hovering in the air; they press upon, and find some rest and repose in the fantastical spirit of the soul, which is itself an idol of the soul. For the soul is an idol of the intellect, and the fantastical spirit is, in turn, an idol of the soul. Therefore, he says, whatever idols flow from those things that have been, and from those that are coming to be, these perish clearly and plainly, but those that come from future things are indefinite, difficult to conjecture, and enigmatic. For just as if someone
passing by should see the flower of an almond tree, he would know immediately that the fruit of the almond will follow the flower; yet he would not know with certainty the qualities, and the magnitude, and the actual reaching of perfection of the fruit; so also all the images A that flow from future things announce indeed that something will be; yet they do not, for the most part, [show] clearly the quality of the thing.
Images. Either as characters, and impressions, and types. Of subsistence. Of essence. Of matter. Either as coming to be from composite things; [the author] made "the flowing out" from the flowing away. Captures. Either as it lays hold of and receives. To flow out. To flow out from composite things according to matter, and form, both of which are changeable. Of the being. Of that which is strictly being. The things coming to be. The changeable things. Of these. From [it]. Slipping away. Erring. In indefiniteness. For they are types of beings and shadows, not in fact beings. Of beings. Of those that are strictly beings. To be recognized. As alien to the nature of those [beings]. In animal [spirits]. In the imaginative [spirits]. In nature. Human. And those from these. Just as a house which is just arising and emerging is not yet [truly] being: for it has not yet come into a perfect existence; B thus also Synesius conjectures here, and sets forth what he says. For example, he considers man, plainly, as long as he lives, as a thing coming to be; but when he dies, then he deems him to be perfected, and thus he is now "being" in act, as having ceased from coming to be, and having received the end of that which existed previously in potentiality. Living. Living, surviving. Of an imperfect [nature]. For that which is future is imperfect, because it has not yet come into being. Leaping forth. From the metaphor of flowers which leap forth before the fruits. From it. Read: upon it. But now. From here he begins to teach how we ought to prepare ourselves for the receiving of the art of divination by dreams. The spirit. The imaginative [faculty]. But nourishment. He teaches how one must nourish and increase the art of divination during sleep. He says that this is done through philosophy, that is, the meditation on death, C and through a temperate way of life. For these are a bridle for the passions and a certain immobility. But an intemperate and licentious way of life, he says, produces a swell and a storm in the outermost body, which this [author], following Plato, called an oyster-like covering; and the body, on the other hand, according to...
A succession, moves the sensory faculties, and these sensory faculties transmit the disturbance as far as the imagination; just as when someone disturbs water or air, and what has been disturbed in turn disturbs another thing, and that [disturbs] another, and this happens by succession for a long way. See also how he called the imagination the "first body": "first" because of the outermost and oyster-like covering, and "body" because it is thicker and more material than the soul. Feeding. Upbringing. By which. By the passions. The spirit. The imaginative [faculty]. By moderation. Through philosophy and simple diet. The outermost. The fleshly; and he called it an oyster-like covering. Of the first. Of the imaginative [faculty]. For above, too, he named the imaginative faculty the first body of the soul. Of seafaring men. A seafaring man is someone sailing on the sea. They are signified. They are indicated. Of the same. We have often encountered the same things. Signs of the weather. Storms, rains, lightning. Of the encompassing [element]. Of the air. Halo. Three, or two, or one. C He discourses on the circles that appear like a halo around the moon, starting from somewhere above: "If they encircle it [the moon] round about with a whole halo, Whether three be set around it, or two, or if there be but one, Expect both wind and fair weather— [The wind] if it [the halo] is breaking; fine weather if it is fading, and so forth." The meaning of the passage is this: If a single halo appears, expect fair weather, for the density dissipates little by little. But if it breaks, expect wind from that side whence the break occurs; and if two haloes should form, expect a storm, and an even greater one if there be three. At the first. That is, at the one. The reason. Of science. The body. The fleshly. The outermost. Above, Synesius has often named the imaginative spirit the first body of the soul, and an inviolate body, and divine; but [he calls] the flesh, along with the nerves and bones and the parts that grow with them, the outermost body and oyster-like covering; which indeed he also calls a gathering of the well-known elements, that is, of those which are so named by all men; these are the hot, the cold, the dry, and the wet. He says, therefore, that it is not possible to hand down an art for the imaginative spirit in this way, just as it is possible for this fleshly and outermost body of the soul in general, and [to provide] a single rule for dreams that appear in all sorts of ways. For the body, when it is stirred either by cold or by heat, is frequently affected in this way; but the imaginative spirit has infinite differences.
A For one part, having become thickened, is likened to the nature of the earth; another to water; another to the air near the earth in its tenuity; another to the air above the clouds; another to the sphere of elemental fire; another to the ethereal. And one part is likened to the sphere, another to the sun, and so on similarly, as each part has thickness or tenuity or light-weight, according to the proper proportion.
*Lowest body.* This is the final B arrangement of the elements. *Arrangement.* It is not so regarding the imaginative [spirit]. *And reason.* The artful medical skill regarding men not yet created, nor yet drawing vital air. *For usually.* And this passage is interjected up to: *not so by heat and cold.* *Beyond nature.* Outside of custom. *It is not hidden.* For it happens sometimes to some, a strange and newer infirmity. *As a gnomon.* We apply this rule. *One from another.* Imaginative from imaginative. *By the greater.* Through that. *Mixture.* Of thickness.
Timaeus intimates enigmatically.
Plato says in the *Timaeus* C that he who set up the universe divided souls equal in number to the stars and assigned each to each, D and having placed them as if into a chariot, he demonstrated the nature of the universe; and he told them the fated laws, that a first generation would be ordained one for all, so that no one might be diminished, and the rest.*To it, for its part.* To the Spirit. *PAGE 152.* To the living creature. To the man. *And to it.* To the Spirit. *By itself.* By its own choice. *For nothing.* For nothing else is so easily moved as spirit. *Versatile.* Easily moved. *Dissimilar.* Spirits. *The same.* Similar. *Of the same.* Images.
*But how could it happen?* The obstruction, he says, is manifold, and the failure of an accurate image in things that are contained in the imagination. For the different temperament in human bodies also shows different things that appear; and the different conduct, and manner of life, and the different nutrition, and the different time, and the different movement of those things being imaged. For, he says, clear water will show the phantasms of the things that appear more plainly than that which is colored and muddied; and even the muddied water itself, according to the differences of the colors and the pollution, will show different phantasms; and again, while the same water remains, its different movement will also itself cause a difference of the phantasms that appear. For either a phantasm would not appear at all, or else it would appear distorted and with difficulty. For such a movement...
A disrupts the rectitude and truth of dreams. Therefore, he says, it is difficult in such varied and dissimilar things for a similar spectrum to be manifested, and yet more difficult to hand down a rule.
*Transparent.* Unclouded. *That which remains.* Not moving. *To be disposed.* To be fashioned, and to receive imprints. *And the turbidity.* Or rather, the state of being clouded. For the clouding of white is one thing, and the clouding of that which appears black is another, and the clouding of that which appears red is yet another. *In matters of configuration.* Either in the eddying or the straight-flowing motions of water. *Whether then.* It seems that Synesius had also encountered the works of these men regarding the imaginative faculty and the art of divination. *Melampus.* Melampus the Egyptian was a holy scribe, a hierophant, and an excellent seer. He it was who published, as they say, the sacred rites of Egypt to the Greeks, so that they might imitate them and also apply themselves to these things having been instructed by him; but Phemonoe was a prophetess of Apollo, using hexameter verses in uttering oracles. *He will decree.* He will lay down doctrines. *Let us question.* Let us ask. *From dissimilar things.* For there are mirrors made of glass, and of iron, and of other material. *Concerning the spirit.* Either they have not spoken concerning a difference of spirit, but as if all of it were of one nature—for they affirmed that it is B prophetic, because it is prophetic in the faculty of imagination. *To be a rule.* A teacher of the future. *And a standard.* A correct guide. *Of things differing in likeness.* For many, having drunk milk in a dream, experienced, when awake, the stillness of imminent tumults, all of them equally, although they were different people; and others again, having drunk wine, were troubled, being likewise different people, and countless other examples. Yet this does not happen in all cases and always, but in some cases and others, differently and otherwise. *Likeness.* Similarity. *Obscure.* From within. *Being scattered.* Into different things in place of others. *That regarding what erupts before its time.* The matter which is to happen after two years, if it appears today in the imaginative faculty, has erupted before its proper order, and has become a leaping forward of a thing not yet present, and a blossom of a nature as yet imperfect. *But it is more difficult.* But it is, he says, more difficult to grasp and collect a common method for each individual human habit. For every man has a certain idiosyncrasy of opinion and knowledge. Therefore, phantasms are shown differently to different people, and different things become significatory to different ones, and not the same things for all. It is difficult, therefore, to collect and understand the phantasm that comes to pass differently in each person, and to declare it similar to a common phantasm—that is to say, C similar to those of others—and to give a common and single teaching of these things to all men individually, just as perhaps we assign the common reason and definition of an animal to living creatures separately and individually, as to what is the substance
A endowed with the faculty of feeling. But that these prognostications are revealed both while waking and sleeping B according to the understanding, knowledge, and disposition of each person, and sometimes according to the art in which each is individually trained, is clear from what follows. For to the king of the Assyrians, Nebuchadnezzar, who was assiduously and eagerly occupied with the discovery and acquisition of all kinds of wealth, God revealed the future through a statue adorned and fashioned of gold and silver—the very material familiar to him. Furthermore, to the Magi, who were deeply engaged with the stars and their motions and stations, He revealed the mystery of the incarnate dispensation through a star. And to Abraham himself, when he was about to depart for Egypt, He revealed the things that were to happen to him through the art familiar to him; this was the Chaldean casting of nativities and the precise science of prognostication. For, "Take for Me," God says to him, "a heifer three years old, and a goat three years old, and divide them, and set the parts of the pieces opposite one another." And having done this, he foreknew that his seed would be C a sojourner in a land not its own, and would be in bondage for four hundred years, and what follows.
*Phantasmati*. It is written also *phantasma* in some books, and in others *phantasmati*. For it was necessary that both be stated. But because of the awkwardness of the phrasing, one of the two is placed, whichever one might wish; however, it takes the other from outside, elliptically. *Paraplesion*. Similar *phantasma*. *Hexis*. Knowledge derived from habit. *A kai*. Dreams. *Sophon d' an*. It would also be wise in another way. *Kainon*. The newer one. *Agroikietai*. It would be disposed foolishly. *Ephemerisi*. It is clear from this that this Synesius also wrote a book containing his own dreams, and all that followed upon such dreams of his. For these he calls *epinyktidas*, that is to say, observations of dreams occurring at night, and of the events that followed upon and accompanied them. *En hekatera*. In the daytime and the nightly. *Tes meses*. That which verges neither toward the better nor toward the worse. *Hyph' hes*. Of observation. *Egregorota te*. Just as Aristides the orator also did. For with his other books he compiled D another book containing in detail his dreams, which he saw when he was overwhelmed by poor health. Philostratus the Lemnian, however, in his *Lives of the Sophists*, makes mention of this orator and says the following concerning him: "The Adriani produced Aristides—whether he be Eudaemonis's son, or Eudaemon." Now the Adriani is not a large city in Mysia. But Athens trained him at the time the age of Herodes flourished, and Pergamum in Asia, according to the interpretation of Aristocles' more obscure words. When
he was afflicted by an infirm and sickly constitution from a young age, he did not neglect labor, nor did he shrink from it. Therefore, he himself asserts in these divine books the nature of the disease and how his nerves became numbed with a shuddering. But when he is about to write these books, he applies and adapts to himself a certain discourse; for these diaries A are good and useful instructors in how to discourse well on any subject. In this place, Synesius encourages everyone who has the power to write not to expend the labor of their tongue and style on other absurd themes, but to make as an exercise and a display those things which are seen during sleep, and to use such things as daily commentaries. He also makes mention of such things as Lemnian Philostratus records regarding the orator Aristides, rendering the audience more eager and ready through such testimony.
For rhetorical argument. For the faculty of polished speech, history, and the customary discourse.
By nature. For just as by nature bitterness is separated and divided from honey, just as by nature sweetness is in honey; but if anyone should see in dreams that he is eating honey, he will encounter sorrow and bitterness: and the contrary, if anyone eats wormwood.
By the word [reason]. According to the reason that possesses infinite imaginations.
To imagine. To teach about imagination.
Vile. Not small.
Of being. The sweetness from the honey.
In no way. The bitterness and the harshness.
For those who have thought of nothing similar unto themselves. For ignorant men.
With time. But the imagination, he says, bringing these things without any measure of time, shows them, not as many species—that is to say, as having a distinct variety—but all at once and as one.
And he might reach out. He gives to the imagination itself.
Dream. The vision.
We perish. We imagine.
Whatever it may be. For it often shows wealth or glory or a beautiful woman, testing, as it were, how each person stands regarding his judgment and his B passion for material things.
He may wish. The imagination.
Most perfect. He calls the ancient Sophistry the most perfect rhetoric, which Philostratus the Lemnian calls "philosophizing rhetoric" in his Lives of the Sophists. For the ancient sophist, he says, discourses on those things in which those who indulge in the study of philosophy are occupied, with confidence of mind, as one who knows: and he makes the introductions to his speeches, "I know, and I understand, and I have long considered, and nothing is stable or certain for man." And such a form of introductions proclaims the nobility of the speeches, and magnanimity, and a clear grasp of reality. It is also like the divinely-inspired and oracular-sounding prophecy. For indeed the Pythian [Apollo] also makes most of his pronouncements in this way, saying, "I know the number of the sand, and the measures of the sea; and, the wall of the third-..."
- A of generation, Zeus creates a wooden work." The ancient sophistry used to discourse regarding courage, concerning justice, concerning heroes and gods, and how the idea of the world is fashioned.
Most Perfect
. Or, philosophy gathered from good habit, such as it was of old.Juvenile daring
. Or, as making a test.Giving way
. Passing by.Of believing
. For someone thinks great things about himself regarding virtue; then, seeing in a dream what is dear to those who are passionate, he himself gapes just no less than they. The imagination, therefore, making a trial and testing, and conceding a little more than the opinion which one has about himself, proves to the man that he is not impassively disposed toward the visions, but either strongly assents, or strongly repels, as each happened to be occupying his reason with the matters of the day.To believe
. Of opinion.Effort
. Relations.We loathe
. We hate.Not in the least
. Or, as strongly.Sleeping
. To us.Most sweet
. More joyful.To wipe off
. To remain.Above life
. The daily one.If, indeed, it should concern anyone
. If, therefore, someone should wish, he says, to record dreams in writing, he ought to compose them by means of names and verbs; whether, then, by words that sharply touch upon the underlying subject- B matter and meaning, and clearly reveal the underlying mind; or otherwise, the study would be dead and foolish, being unable to lead the instructed listener into the same understanding and opinion such as he himself had and has, who is writing and teaching.Inanimate
. Unintelligent and dead.But of what sort
. Or, as for the sake of teaching the listener regarding dreams.In the same place
. I say.Passion
. Disposition.Of those moving
. Of animate, living things, clearly revealing the underlying mind.Conquers
. In dreams.Everything makes room for
. It makes room for, he says, and the imagination easily teaches the sleeping one; but language would with difficulty make room, so as to teach the listener.How, then, could it?
. Or, as not easily.A dream
. An adverb, or as in sleep.He sees a dream
. A noun, or as a dream.He woke
. Still sleeping.The Aloadae, then
. There were two sons of Aloeus and Iphimedia, Otus and Ephialtes, who, having become in height and body strength unbearable and unconquerable, put an end to the wars of their neighbors; and for this reason it was mythologized that they had bound Mars. It is also mythologized that, having thought even beyond human nature, they wished to ascend to heaven; for which reason they piled mountains upon mountains, upon Parnassus indeed Ossa, and upon Ossa, Pelion, andA in a similar fashion; whereupon they perished, struck by the lightning of Zeus.
*They indeed.* The sons of Aloeus, Otus and Ephialtes, are struck by the lightning of Zeus.
*Mountains.* Ossa and indeed Pelion. For these are mountains in Thessaly. Homer says, moreover, in the *Odyssey*:
They strove to set Ossa upon Olympus, and upon Ossa Pelion with its waving leaves, that heaven might be climbable.
*Of Icarus.* Icarus was a man himself, and he wished to learn astronomy and the courses of the stars. But because he was not able to easily understand the demonstrations of the arguments, he gave up in the midst of his learning. For this reason, it was told in a myth that he fastened waxen wings to himself in order to fly to heaven; but in the midst of the flight, because the sun struck him more forcefully, the wings were melted, and he fell into that part of the sea that fell to his lot, from which the sea was also called Icarian (he therefore calls the flight of dreams more fortunate B); and having fallen, he was drowned in the sea.
*Seeing.* The land. *Signified.* Marked by a sign. *Difficult.* To be. *Said.* By day. *Happens.* In dreams. *For after a little bit.* Or as in some places it is found upon the earth. For he was not away, so that we might say he came upon the earth.
*For nothing is so.* For nothing is more proper to dreams than to steal away the intervening time and to show instantly things that are completed with time and labor by those who are awake, such as the acquisition of wealth, the luxury of houses, the abundance of wisdom, verbal discourse with angels, and all such things.
*Bleating.* The voice of sheep. *Voice.* Articulate and perfect. *Of arguments.* Those that appear in dreams. *Words.* To write books.
*For I think.* For even in dreams, other living creatures frequently appear to be conversing with humans, and plants to be shifting of their own accord, and humans to be flying like birds, and changing their form into irrational animals, and C infinitely many other monstrous spectacles. He asserts, therefore, that those who composed the myths from the beginning received their prompts from dreams. For just as the license and power of dreams display strange sights, a faint impression and an enigmatic image of the truth, and, so to speak, the preliminary sketches of things that will happen in reality, so too do myths, with a certain license, fashion plants, stones, and irrational animals conversing in human voices, and ten thousand such things, in which indeed lie hidden certain vague outlines and seeds of true exhortations; while economically displaying the phantom of pleasure to the greedy ears of the many.
*To which also a peacock.* To the myths. *Toward the autonomy.* Power, authority.
A *Preparation.* Exercise, prose composition. *To which commencement.* To men. *Of the art.* Which is a preparatory exercise. *End.* To this, the scope of the study. *As in.* As if they were practicing in vain upon the myths. *Facility.* Ease of a life without labor. *The diction.* But the diction, he says, would be something highly labored here for those who wish to write with ambition regarding dreams. He calls the words the "appendices" of things, inasmuch as they follow the things for the sake of their explication, just as a skiff follows a ship. *May it be.* The rhetorical kind of diction. *Slackening.* Descending from the height of philosophy, when one might wish to entrust some theory to a writing. *To practice.* As Aristides in the *Against the Four*. *To a wealthy man.* As Libanius in the *Declamations*. *Were.* They existed. *Talents.* Pounds. *Necessary things.* Friends to them. *Distributing.* Afterward. *Not that.* Not only not friends. *Citizen.* Such problems are often proposed to one another by rhetoricians for the sake of exercise; and most of all by Hermogenes of Tarsus. B Libanius used to meditate upon such things, and would exercise his style in them, extending the whole argument to a great length, amplifying it, composing it, and practicing it as if it were a shadow-fight, and contending in this manner. Synesius therefore remembers here one of those problems; it is as follows: A poor man and a wealthy man were enemies; the wealthy man promised that he would feed the citizens if the poor man were put to death; the people agreed. But the wealthy man did not feed the children of the poor man, and they died of famine; and he is judged for murder. Such a problem is meditated upon according to the letter and the sense. *Nonagenarian.* Here he seems to censure the sophist Libanius, who, having arrived at extreme old age, considered it worth the effort to invest his study in declaiming; for no one else’s meditations are found to be more numerous than his, nor as many. But meditation, he says, is a certain shadowed description and a preceding exercise for some work. But he who continuously practices the shadow of a work as if it were the work itself, unwittingly and secretly seizes a falsehood in place of truth, and labors in vain. *Preparation.* The shadow. *Pancratium.* They say there are five Olympic contests: boxing, wrestling, sprinting, the javelin, and the discus. But the *pancratium* was something else. For it was composed of boxing and wrestling. For it was permitted to the one who wished to engage in the *pancratium* to use not only the laws of wrestling, but also those of boxing for the sake C of victory. Here, therefore, Synesius abusively uses this
word, and says that to "pancratiate" is to hold the mastery in every respect and to conquer; just as he elsewhere uses other words abusively. For example, in the epistle to the bishops regarding Andronicus, where he says: "I was predicting that Andronicus would return to his nature from any chance cause; nor is it likely that he will be more timid, because of this and that." For here he takes the word "more timid" A for "more audacious."
*Pancratium*. As if to carry off the palm from all kinds of contests.
*To derive benefit from themselves*. That is, from their own indigenous orations and private commentaries, as if they themselves ought to benefit from their own studies and wisdom.
*Archilochus*. This Archilochus was an ancient lyric poet, who did not only sing to the lyre, but also described in heroic verse those things which were done in his own age. Philostratus also praises him in the *Lives of the Sophists*. For he introduces one of the sophists saying that Homer is the voice of the sophists, but Archilochus is the spirit of the sophists. B
*Neither indeed*. Just as Libanius in his declamations.
*The heroic [genus]*. He calls the heroic genus the Greeks who set out against Troy, whom, he says, the poets made more famous and illustrious by their own poems, while they allowed themselves to be inglorious and unpraised, saying nothing about their own life.
*Heroic*. The heroes.
*More glorious*. More famous.
*Of virtue*. Of poetry.
*Being illegally done*. Being innovated.
*Let it be entrusted*. Time. C D
FRAGMENTS FROM THE UNPUBLISHED DIALOGUE OF NICEPHORUS GREGORAS TITLED "FLORENTIUS" OR "ON WISDOM"
(Excerpted from the Royal Manuscript of Paris; published by Val. Parisot in *Cantacuzène, homme d’État et historien*, Paris, 1845. We retain the analysis written in the vernacular by learned men (*).)
The *Florentius* is one of those dialogues which Gregoras liked to compose and in which he imitates the manner of Plato and Lucian, but even more so that of the latter, while flattering himself that he reproduces the bearing and style of the former. His goal in this instance is to recount, in a redacted form, A a public colloquy he held with Barlaam in 1330 or 1331, in which it appears the advantage remained with him. He himself has made mention of his account of this species of tournament of erudition in his *History* (XI, 10), and he assures us that he wrote it only at the solicitation of his friends. He disguises therein the names of the principal personnages under pseudonyms: thus he himself becomes Nicagoras (a pseudonym that presents both the beginning of his first name and the end of the second); one recognizes Metochites in Metrodorus; it is probably Synadenus (unless one suspects Cantacuzenus himself) who is Demaratus; the two parties (for Andronicus III and his grandson) are named Heraclidae and Cecropidae; in the same way, the place names (Athens for Byzantium, Calydon for Durazzo?, the anonymous city of Thessaly for Thessalonica?, etc.); and likewise "ostracism" for simple banishment. The dialogue is truly very piquant in more than one respect; and it offers interest for literary history. It is astonishing that it has not yet been published. One will be grateful to us for extracting from it a few passages which, even while mitigating the exaggerations of Gregoras, make one grasp well the two C dominant traits of the character of Barlaam: a great presumption and a great frivolity, which, moreover, does not prevent his having combined in reality, with knowledge on various points (without being encyclopedic as he pretended), a certain facility and eloquence.
Here is how Barlaam is introduced (after ten or twelve pages of remarks relating in part to political affairs)—FLORENTIUS: A certain Xenophanes, the son of Thrasymachus, D arrived in Greece, promising to give a great demonstration of wisdom; and first, he resided in Calydon, a great city of the Aetolians; and from there he went to another city, great and yielding to none of the foremost in discourse, as many as originate from the Aetolians, extending as far as the Locrii of Ozola. CRITOBULUS: From where— A and what lineage? — FLORENTIUS: Do you know, my friend Critobulus, a certain gulf called the Tarentine, both narrow and extending to a great length, and a great city situated at its northern cape, a colony of the Lacedaemonians? — CRITOBULUS: If you mean some other one, I do not know, Florentius; but if the one beyond the Ionian gulf, I know it very well. — FLORENTIUS: This Tarentine gulf, then, my friend Critobulus, towards the west and the Zephyrus wind releases what is called the second Greece, the one that was long ago a partisan of the philosophy of Pythagoras; but to the east, the province of the Calabrians, which, to one going to the *right* to the Iapygian promontory, joins with the Ionian Sea: from which that wise man, Xenophanes, has come. B Yet he uses a dialect by nature Latin and Italian, but by force, also this very Greek, which is our native tongue. He, then, that Xenophanes—to tell it beginning from the top—was reported to us to be by lineage from Calabria, my excellent Critobulus, but that he had drawn his wisdom not from Calabria, but by going into the deeper parts of Italy, and not all or every kind of wisdom, but only that of Aristotle, as much as pertains to natural things and as much as pertains to syllogisms—since that is also very eagerly studied by the Latins and Italiotes there, not D according to