him, and he was about to plunder the temple of Artemis at Ephesus when he was recalled by Pompey. He commanded the centre at Pharsalus, and afterwards went to Africa, where by Cato’s influence he received the command. In 46 he was defeated at Thapsus; while endeavouring to escape to Spain he fell into the hands of P. Sittius, and put himself to death. His connexion with two great families gave him importance, but he was selfish and licentious, Wanting in personal courage, and his violence drove many from his party.
10. Quintus Caecilius Metellus, surnamed Creticus, Roman general. Consul in 69 B.C., he was appointed to the command of the war against Crete, the headquarters of the pirates of the Mediterranean. Its subjugation proceeded slowly but surely until 67, when Pompey claimed the control of affairs in virtue of the powers conferred upon him by the Gabinian law. Thereupon the Cretans, who had been treated with great harshness by Metellus, offered to surrender to Pompey, who enjoyed a reputation for leniency towards the conquered. Pompey accepted the offer and sent instructions to Metellus to suspend operations. Metellus refused and completed the conquest of the island, which was annexed to Cyrene and became a Roman province. On Metellus’s return to Rome the partisans of Pompey succeeded in keeping him out of a triumph until after the Catilinarian conspiracy, when he made his entry into the city and received the name Creticus in honour of his achievements. Metellus naturally joined the senatorial party in their opposition to Pompey, and had the satisfaction of preventing the ratification of what he had done in Asia. He was one of a commission of three sent (60) to investigate the state of affairs in Gaul, where disturbances were apprehended. He appears to have been alive in 54, but nothing further is known of him.
On the family of the Metelli generally, see M. Wende, De Caeciliis Metellis, i. (Bonn, 1875), for its history up to the time of the Gracchi the new edition by P. Grobe of Drumann’s Geschichte Roms, ii.; and the article s.v. “Caecilius” by F. Münzer in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, iii. pt. 1 (1897).
METEMPSYCHOSIS (Gr. μετεμψύχωσις), or Transmigration of the Soul, the doctrine that at death the soul passes into another living creature, man, animal, or even plant. This doctrine, famous in antiquity and still held as a religious tenet
by certain sects of the civilized world, has its roots far back in
primitive culture. It is developed out of three universal
savage beliefs: (1) that man has a soul, connected in some
vague way with the breath, which can be separated from his
material body, temporarily in sleep, permanently at death;
(2) that animals and even plants have souls, and are possessed
to a large extent of human powers and passions; (3) that souls
can be transferred from one organism to another. Innumerable
examples might be mentioned of the notion that a new-born
child is the reincarnation of someone departed, as in Tibet the
soul of the Dalai-Lama is supposed to pass into an infant born
nine months after his decease. Transmigration of human souls
into non-human bodies is implied in totemism (q.v.), for, as
Professor Frazer says, “it is an article of faith that as the clan
sprang from the totem, so each clansman at death reassumes
the totem form.” All these savage notions are to be regarded
as presuppositions of metempsychosis, rather than identified
with that doctrine itself as a reasoned theory.
Till full investigation of Egyptian records put us in possession of the facts, it was supposed that the Egyptians believed in metempsychosis, and Herodotus (ii. 123) explicitly credits them with it. We now know that he was wrong. All that they believed was that certain privileged souls might in the other world be able to assume certain forms at pleasure, those of a sparrow-hawk, lily, &c. Herodotus misunderstood the Egyptians to hold beliefs identical with those which were current in his day in Greece. In India, on the contrary, the doctrine was thoroughly established from ancient times; not from the most ancient, as it is not in the Vedas; but onwards from the Upanishads. In them it is used for moral retribution: he who kills a Brahman is, after a long progress through dreadful hells, to be reborn as a dog, pig, ass, camel, &c. This we always find in metempsychosis as a reasoned theory. It is formed by combination of two sets of ideas which belong to different planes of culture: the ideas of judgment and punishment after death elaborated in a relatively cultured society by a priestly class are combined with ideas, like that of totem-transmigration, proper to a savage society. In India we may explain the whole phenomenon as an infusion of the lower beliefs of the non-Aryan conquered races into the higher religious system of their Aryan conquerors. In later Hinduism metempsychosis reached a monstrous development; according to Monier-Williams it was believed that there were 8,400,000 forms of existence through which all souls were liable to pass before returning to their source in the Deity. Buddhism appeared as a reaction against all this, and sought by a subtle modification to harmonize the theory with its own pessimistic view of the world. According to Buddhism there is no soul, and consequently no metempsychosis in the strict sense. Something, however, is transmitted, i.e. Karma (character), which passes from individual to individual, till in the perfectly righteous man the will to live is extinguished and that particular chain of lives is brought to an end.
We do not know exactly how the doctrine of metempsychosis arose in Greece; it cannot, as was once supposed, have been borrowed from Egypt and is not likely to have come from India. It is easiest to assume that savage ideas which had never been extinguished were utilized for religious and philosophic purposes. The Orphic religion, which held it, first appeared in Thrace upon the semi-barbarous north-eastern frontier. Orpheus, its legendary founder, is said to have taught that “soul and body are united by a compact unequally binding on either; the soul is divine, immortal and aspires to freedom, while the body holds it in fetters as a prisoner. Death dissolves this compact, but only to re-imprison the liberated soul after a short time: for the wheel of birth revolves inexorably. Thus the soul continues its journey, alternating between a separate unrestrained existence and fresh reincarnation, round the wide circle of necessity, as the companion of many bodies of men and animals. To these unfortunate prisoners Orpheus proclaims the message of liberation, that they stand in need of the grace of redeeming gods and of Dionysus in particular, and calls them to turn to God by ascetic piety of life and self-purification: the purer their lives the higher will be their next reincarnation, until the soul has completed the spiral ascent of destiny to live for ever as God from whom it comes.” Such was the teaching of Orphism which appeared in Greece about the 6th century B.C., organized itself into private and public mysteries at Eleusis and elsewhere, and produced a copious literature.
The earliest Greek thinker with whom metempsychosis is connected is Pherecydes; but Pythagoras, who is said to have been his pupil, is its first famous philosophic exponent. Pythagoras probably neither invented the doctrine nor imported it from Egypt, but made his reputation by bringing Orphic doctrine from North-Eastern Hellas to Magna Graecia and by instituting societies for its diffusion.
The real weight and importance of metempsychosis is due to its adoption by Plato. Had he not embodied it in some of his greatest works it would be merely a matter of curious investigation for the anthropologist and student of folk-lore. In the eschatological myth which closes the Republic he tells the story how Er, the son of Armenius, miraculously returned to life on the twelfth day after death and recounted the secrets of the other world. After death, he said, he went with others to the place of Judgment and saw the souls returning from heaven and from purgatory, and proceeded with them to a place where they chose new lives, human and animal. “He saw the soul of Orpheus changing into a swan, Thamyras becoming a nightingale, musical birds choosing to be men, the soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete. Men were seen passing into animals and wild and tame animals changing into each other.” After their choice the souls drank of Lethe and then shot away like stars to their birth. There are myths and theories to the same effect in other dialogues, the Phaedrus, Meno, Phaedo, Timaeus and Laws. In Plato’s view the number of souls was fixed;
