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[620a]
He
said it was a strange, pitiful, and ridiculous spectacle, as the choice was
determined for the most part by the habits of their former lives.1 He saw
the soul that had been Orpheus’, he said, selecting the life of a
swan,2 because from hatred of the
tribe of women, owing to his death at their hands, it was unwilling to be
conceived and born of a woman. He saw the soul of Thamyras3
choosing the life of a nightingale; and he saw a swan changing to the choice
of the life of man, and similarly other musical animals.
[620b]
The soul that drew the twentieth lot chose the life of a
lion; it was the soul of Ajax, the son of Telamon, which, because it
remembered the adjudication of the arms of Achilles, was unwilling to become
a man. The next, the soul of Agamemnon, likewise from hatred of the human
race because of its sufferings, substituted the life of an eagle.4
Drawing one of the middle lots the soul of Atalanta caught sight of the
great honors attached to an athlete's life and could not pass them by but
snatched at them.
[620c]
After her, he said, he
saw the soul of Epeius,5 the son of Panopeus,
entering into the nature of an arts and crafts woman. Far off in the rear he
saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites6 clothing itself in the body
of an ape. And it fell out that the soul of Odysseus drew the last lot of
all and came to make its choice, and, from memory of its former toils having
flung away ambition, went about for a long time in quest of the life of an
ordinary citizen who minded his own business,7 and with difficulty found it lying in some
corner disregarded by the others,
[620d]
and
upon seeing it said that it would have done the same had it drawn the first
lot, and chose it gladly. And in like manner, of the other beasts some
entered into men8 and into one another, the unjust into wild creatures, the
just transformed to tame, and there was every kind of mixture and
combination. But when, to conclude, all the souls had chosen their lives in
the order of their lots, they were marshalled and went before Lachesis. And
she sent with each,
[620e]
as the guardian of
his life and the fulfiller of his choice, the genius9 that he had chosen, and this
divinity led the soul first to Clotho, under her hand and her turning10
of the spindle to ratify the destiny of his lot and choice; and after
contact with her the genius again led the soul to the spinning of
Atropos11 to make the web of its destiny12
irreversible, and then without a backward look it passed beneath the throne
of Necessity.
1 Cf. Phaedo 81 E ff., Phaedr. 248-249, Tim. 42 A-D, 91 D ff. For the idea of reincarnation in Plato see What Plato Said, p. 529, on Phaedo 81 E-82 B.
2 Urwiek, The Message of Plato, p. 213, says: “If Plato knew anything at all of Indian allegory, he must have known that the swan (Hamsa) is in Hinduism the invariable symbol of the immortal Spirit; and to say, as he does, that Orpheus chose the life of a swan, refusing to be born again of a woman, is just an allegorical way of saying that he passed on into the spiritual life. . . . ”
3 Like Orpheus a singer. He contended with the Muses in song and was in consequence deprived by them of sight and of the gift of song. Cf. also Ion 533 B-C, Laws 829 D-E, Iliad ii. 595.
4 Cf. Aesch.Ag. 114 ff.
5 Who built the Trojan horse. See Hesychius s.v.
6 Cf. Iliad ii. 212 ff.
7 For ἀπράγμονος cf. on 565 A, p. 316, note b.
8 Phaedr. 249 specifies that only beasts who had once been men could return to human form.
9 Cf. 617 E, and for daemons in Plato What Plato Said, pp. 546-547, on Symp. 202 E, Dieterich, Nekyia, p. 59.
10 δίνης: Cf. Cratyl. 439 C and Phaedo 99 B.
11 Cf. Laws 960 C.
12 τὰ ἐπικλωσθέντα: Cf. Laws 957 E, Theaet. 169 C, and the Platonic epigram on Dion, Anth. Pal. vii. 99Μοῖραι ἐπέκλωσαν, Od. i. 17, iii. 208, etc., Aesch.Eumen. 335, Callinus i. 9Μοῖραι ἐπικλώσωσ᾽.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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