Concerning the Face which Appears in the Orb Of the Moon (27)

When I expressed surprise at this and asked for a clearer account, he said[*]: Many assertions about the gods, Sulla, are current among the Greeks, but not all of them are right. So, for example, although they give the right names to Demeter and Cora, they are wrong in believing that both are together in the same region. The fact is that the former is in the region of earth and is sovereign over terrestrial things, and the latter is in the moon and mistress of lunar things. She has been called both Cora and Phersephone,[*] the latter as being a bearer of light[*] and Cora because that is what we call the part of the eye in which is reflected the likeness of him who looks into it[*] as the light of the sun is seen in the moon. The tales told of the wandering and the quest of these goddesses contain the truth

[spoken covertly],[*] for they long for each other when they are apart and they often embrace in the shadow. The statement concerning Cora that now she is in the light of heaven and now in darkness and night is not false but has given rise to error in the computation of the time, for not throughout six months but every six months we see her being wrapped in shadow by the earth as it were by her mother, and infrequently we see this happen to her at intervals of five months,[*] for she cannot abandon Hades since she is the boundary of Hades, as Homer too has rather well put it in veiled terms:

But to Elysium’s plain, the bourne of earth.[*]

Where the range of the earth’s shadow ends, this he set as the term and boundary of the earth.[*] To this point rises no one who is evil or unclean, but the good are conveyed thither after death and there continue to lead a life most easy to be sure[*] though not blessed or divine until their second death.[*]