Greek Texts & Translations

For they who constructed us, remembering the injunction of their Father, when He enjoined upon them to make the mortal kind 71eas good as they possibly could, rectified the vile part of us by thus establishing therein the organ of divination, that it might in some degree lay hold on truth. And that God gave unto man's foolishness the gift of divination ^note a sufficient token is this: no man achieves true and inspired divination when in his rational mind, but only when the power of his intelligence is fettered in sleep or when it is distraught by disease or by reason of some divine inspiration. But it belongs to a man when in his right mind to recollect and ponder both the things spoken in dream or waking vision by the divining and inspired nature, and all the visionary forms that were seen, and by means of reasoning to discern about them all 72awherein they are significant and for whom they portend evil or good in the future, the past, or the present. But it is not the task of him who has been in a state of frenzy, and still continues therein, to judge the apparitions and voices seen or uttered by himself; for it was well said of old that to do and to know one's own and oneself belongs only to him who is sound of mind. Wherefore also it is customary to set the tribe of prophets ^note to pass judgement 72bupon these inspired divinations; and they, indeed, themselves are named “diviners” by certain who are wholly ignorant of the truth that they are not diviners but interpreters of the mysterious voice and apparition, for whom the most fitting name would be “prophets of things divined.”

For these reasons, then, the nature of the liver is such as we have stated and situated in the region we have described, for the sake of divination. Moreover, when the individual creature is alive this organ affords signs that are fairly manifest, but when deprived of life ^note it becomes blind and the divinations it presents are too much obscured to have any 72cclear significance.

The structure of the organ which adjoins it, ^note with its seat on the left, is for the sake of the liver, to keep it always bright and clean, as a wiper that is laid beside a mirror always prepared and ready to hand. Wherefore also, whenever any impurities due to ailments of the body occur round about the liver, the loose texture of the spleen cleanses and absorbs them all, seeing that it is woven of a stuff that is porous and bloodless: hence, when it is filled with the offscourings, the spleen grows to be large and festered; 72dand conversely, when the body is cleansed, it is reduced and shrinks back to its primal state.

Concerning the soul, then, what part of it is mortal, what part immortal, and where and with what companions and for what reasons these have been housed apart, only if God concurred could we dare to affirm that our account is true ^note; but that our account is probable we must dare to affirm now, and to affirm still more positively as our inquiry proceeds: affirmed, therefore, let it be.

72eThe subject which comes next to this we must investigate on the same lines; and that subject is the way in which the remainder of the body has been generated. ^note Its construction would most fittingly be ascribed to reasoning such as this. Those who were constructing our kind were aware of the incontinence that would reside in us in respect of drinks and meats, and how that because of our greed we would consume far more than what was moderate and necessary; wherefore, lest owing to maladies swift destruction should overtake them, 73aand the mortal kind, while still incomplete, come straightway to a complete end,—foreseeing this, the Gods set the “abdomen,” ^note as it is called, to serve as a receptacle for the holding of the superfluous meat and drink; and round about therein they coiled the structure of the entrails, to prevent the food from passing through quickly and thereby compelling the body to require more food quickly, and causing insatiate appetite, whereby the whole kind by reason of its gluttony would be rendered devoid of philosophy and of culture, and disobedient to the most divine part we possess.

As regards the bones and the flesh and all such substances 73bthe position was this. All these had their origin in the generation of the marrow. For it was in this that the bonds of life by which the Soul is bound to the body were fastened, and implanted the roots of the mortal kind; but the marrow itself was generated out of other elements. Taking all these primary triangles ^note which, being unwarped and smooth, were best able to produce with exactness fire and water and air and earth, God separated them, each apart from his own kind,