These are the words of the melic poet Pindar Frag. 129 (ed. Christ); Cf. also the two lines quoted in Moralia , 17 C, and the amplification of these lines which Plutarch gives in Moralia , 1130 C. 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. And a little farther on, in another lament for the dead, speaking of the soul, he says Frag. 131 (ed. Christ); Cf. also Plutarch, Life of Romulus , xxviii. (p. 35 D). : In happy fate they all The line is incomplete, lacking a finite verb. 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 to Callicles the Athenian, the friend and disciple of Gorgias the orator, are timely and profitable. They say that Socrates, according to Plato’s account, Gorgias , p. 523 A. says: Listen to a very beautiful story, which you, I imagine, will regard as a myth, but which I regard as a story; for what I am going to say I shall relate as true. As Homer Iliad , xv. 187. tells the tale, Zeus, Poseidon, and Pluto divided the kingdom when they received it from their father. Now this was the custom regarding men even in the time of Cronus, and it has persisted among the gods to this day—that the man who has passed through life justly and in holiness shall, at his death, depart to the Islands of the Blest and dwell in all happiness beyond the reach of evil, while he who has lived an unjust and godless life shall go to the prison-house of justice and punishment, which they call Tartarus. The judges of these men, in the time of Cronus and in the early days of Zeus’s dominion, were living, and judged the living, giving judgement on the day when the men were about to die. As time went on, for some reason the cases were not decided well. Accordingly Pluto and the supervisors in the Islands of the Blest went to Zeus and said to him that there kept coming to them at both places inadmissible persons. Very well, said Zeus, then I shall put a stop to this proceeding. The judgements are now rendered poorly; for, said he, those who are judged are judged with a covering on them, since they are judged while alive, and so, he continued, a good many perhaps who have base souls are clad with beautiful bodies and ancestry and riches, and, when the judgement takes place, many come to testify for them that they have lived righteously. So not only are the judges disconcerted by these things, but at the same time they themselves sit in judgement with a covering on them, having before their own souls, like a veil, their eyes and ears and their whole body. All these things come between, both their own covering and that of those who are being judged. In the first place, then, all their foreknowledge of death must be ended; for now they have foreknowledge of it. So Prometheus has been told to put an end to this. Secondly, they must be judged divested of all these things; for they must be judged after they have died. The judge also must be naked, and dead, that he may view with his very soul the very soul of every man instantly after he has died, and isolated from all his kin, having left behind on earth all earthly adornments, so that his judgement may be just. I, therefore, realizing this situation sooner than you, have made my own sons judges, two from Asia—Minos and Rhadamanthys‚Äîand one from Europe‚ÄîAeacus. These, then, as soon as they have died, shall sit in judgement in the meadow at the parting of the ways whence the two roads lead, the one to the Islands of the Blest and the other to Tartarus. The people of Asia shall Rhadamanthys judge, while Aeacus shall judge the people of Europe; and to Minos I shall give the prerogative of pronouncing final judgement in case the other two be in any doubt, in order that the decision in regard to the route which men must take shall be as just as possible. This, Callicles, is what I have heard, and believe to be true; and from these words I draw the following inference‚—that death is, as it seems to me, nothing else than the severing of two things, soul and body, from each other. 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.