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Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12:
1. At this point we shall discuss the order of the steps by which the soul descends from the sky to the infernal regions of this life. The Milky Way girdles the zodiac, its great circle meeting it obliquely so that it crosses it at the two tropical signs, Capricorn and Cancer. Natural philosophers named these the “portals of the sun” because the solstices lie athwart the sun’s path on either side, checking farther progress and causing it to retrace its course across the belt beyond whose limits it never trespasses.
2. Souls are believed to pass through these portals when going from the sky to the earth and returning from the earth to the sky. For this reason one is called the portal of men and the other the portal of gods: Cancer, the portal of men, because through it descent is made to the infernal regions; Capricorn, the portal of gods, because through it souls return to their rightful abode of immortality, to be reckoned among the gods.
3. This is what Homer with his divine intelligence signifies in his description of the cave at Ithaca. Pythagoras also thinks that the infernal regions of Dis begin with the Milky Way, and extend downwards, because souls falling away from it seem to have withdrawn from the heavens. …
4. So long as the souls heading downwards still remain in Cancer they are considered in the company of the gods, since in that position they have not yet left the Milky Way. But when in their descent they have reached Leo, they enter upon the first stages of their future condition. …
7. When the soul is being drawn towards a body in this first protraction of itself it begins to experience a tumultuous influx of matter rushing upon it. …
9. Now if souls were to bring with them to their bodies a memory of the divine order of which they were conscious in the sky, there would be no disagreement among men in regard to divinity; but, indeed, all of them in their descent drink of forgetfulness, some more, some less. Consequently, although the truth is not evident to all on earth, all nevertheless have an opinion, since opinion is born of failure of the memory. …
16. The difference between terrestrial and supernal bodies (I am speaking of the sky and stars and the other components) liesin this, that the latter have been summoned upwards to the abode of the soul and have gained immortality by the very nature of that region and by copying the perfection of their high estate; but to our terrestrial bodies the soul is drawn downwards, and here it is believed to be dead while it is shut up in a perishable region and the abode of mortality.
17. Be not disturbed that the reference to the soul, which we say is immortal, we so often use the term “death.” In truth, the soul is not destroyed by its death but is overwhelmed for a time; nor does it surrender the privilege of immortality because of its lowly sojourn, for when it has rid itself completely of all taint of evil and has deserved to be sublimated, it again leaves the body and, fully recovering its former state, returns to the splendor of everlasting life.
Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.12
Bibliography
| Stahl 1952, 133-137 | Stahl, William Harris. Macrobius Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. New York: Columbia University Press 1952. |
Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Cf. Macrobius on the soul’s descent (2)
Amar Annus
URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000798.php
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