(117)
For I have been ere now a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird and a dumb fish in the sea. R. P. 182.
(118)
I wept and I wailed when I saw the unfamiliar land. R. P. 182.
(119)
From what honour, from what a height of bliss have I fallen to go about among mortals here on earth.
(120)
We have come under this roofed-in cave.[1]
(121)
. . . the joyless land, where are Death and Wrath and troops of Dooms besides; and parching Plagues and Rottennesses and Floods roam in darkness over the meadow of Ate.
(122, 123)
There were[2] Chthonie and far-sighted Heliope, bloody Discord and gentle-visaged Harmony, Kallisto and Aischre, Speed and Tarrying, lovely Truth and dark-haired Uncertainty, Birth and Decay, Sleep and Waking, Movement and Immobility, 5crowned Majesty and Meanness, Silence and Voice. R. P. 182 a.
(124)
Alas, O wretched race of mortals, sore unblessed: such are the strifes and groanings from which ye have been born!
(125)
From living creatures he made them dead, changing their forms.
- ↑ According to Porphyry (De antro Nymph. 8), these words were spoken by the "powers" who conduct the soul into the world (ψυχοπομποὶ δυνάμεις). The "cave" is not originally Platonic but Orphic.
- ↑ This passage is closely modelled on the Catalogue of Nymphs in Iliad xviii. 39 sqq. Chthonie is found already in Pherekydes (Diog. i. 119).
