A Letter of Condolence to Apollonius (35-37)

These are the words of the melic poet Pindar [*] regarding the righteous in the other world:

For them doth the strength of the sun shine below, While night all the earth doth overstrow.

In meadows of roses their suburbs lie, Roses all tinged with a crimson dye. They are shaded by trees that incense bear, And trees with golden fruit so fair. Some with horses and sports of might, Others in music and draughts delight. Happiness there grows ever apace, Perfumes are wafted o’er the loved place, As the incense they strew where the gods’ altars are And the fire that consumes it is seen from afar.

In happy fate they all [*] Were freed by death from labour’s thrall. Man’s body follows at the beck of death O’ermastering. Alive is left The image of the stature that he gained, Since this alone is from the gods obtained. It sleeps while limbs move to and fro, But, while we sleep, in dreams doth show The choice we cannot disregard Between the pleasant and the hard.

The divine Plato has said a good deal in his treatise On the Soul about its immortality, and not a little also in the Republic and Meno and Gorgias, and here and there in his other dialogues. What is said in the dialogue On the Soul I will copy, with comments, and send you separately, as you desired. But for the present occasion these words, which were spoken

Having collected and put together these extracts, my dearest Apollonius, with great diligence, I have completed this letter of condolence to you, which is most needful to enable you to put aside your present grief and to put an end to mourning, which is the most distressing of all things. In it is included also for your son, Apollonius, a youth so very dear to the gods, a fitting tribute, which is much coveted by the sanctified—a tribute due to his honourable memory and to his fair fame, which will endure for time eternal. You will do well, therefore, to be persuaded by reason, and, as a favour to your dear departed son, to turn from your unprofitable distress and desolation, which affect both body and soul, and to go back to your accustomed and natural course of life. Forasmuch as your son, while he was living among us, was sorry to see either you or his mother downcast, even so, now that he is with the gods and is feasting with them, he would not be well satisfied with your present course of life. Resume, therefore, the spirit of a brave-hearted and high-minded man who loves his offspring, and set free from all this wretchedness both yourself, the mother of the youth, and your relatives and friends, as you may do by pursuing a more tranquil form of life, which will be most gratifying both to your son and to all of us who are concerned for you, as we rightly should be.