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After he had said this, Thespesius’ kinsman hurried him at great speed through immense space, as it seemed to him, though he travelled as easily and straight as if he were carried on the wings of the sun’s rays. At last he got to an extensive and bottomless abyss, where his strength left him, as he found was the case with the other souls there: for keeping together and making swoops, like birds, they flitted all round the abyss, but did not venture to pass over it. To internal view it resembled the caverns of Bacchus, being beautiful throughout[868] with trees and green foliage and flowers of all kinds, and it breathed a soft and gentle air, laden with scents marvellously pleasant, and producing the effect that wine does on those who are topers; for the souls were elevated by its fragrance, and gay and blithe with one another: and the whole spot was full of mirth and laughter, and such songs as emanate from gaiety and enjoyment. And Thespesius’ kinsman told him that this was the way Dionysus went up to heaven by, and by which he afterwards took up Semele, and it was called the place of Oblivion. But he would not let Thespesius stay there, much as he wished, but forcibly dragged him away, instructing and telling him that the intellect was melted and moistened by pleasure, and that the irrational and corporeal element being watered and made flesh stirs up the memory of the body, from which comes a yearning and strong desire for generation, so called from being an inclination to the earth,[869] when the soul is weighed down with moisture.

Next Thespesius travelled as far in another direction, and seemed to see a great crater into which several rivers emptied themselves, one whiter than the foam of the sea or snow, another like the purple of the rainbow, and others of various hues whose brightness was apparent at some distance, but when he got nearer the air became thinner and the colours grew dim, and the crater lost all its gay colours but white. And he saw three genii sitting together in a triangular position, mixing the rivers together in certain proportions. Then the guide of Thespesius’ soul told him, that Orpheus got as far as here, when he came in quest of the soul of his wife,[870] and from not exactly remembering what he had seen spread a false report among mankind, that the oracle at Delphi was common to Apollo and Night, though Apollo had no communion with Night: but this, pursued the guide, is an oracle common to Night and the Moon, that utters forth its oracular knowledge in no particular part of the world, nor has it any particular seat, but wanders about everywhere in men’s dreams and visions. Hence, as you see, dreams receive and disseminate a mixture[871] of simple truth with deceit and error. But the oracle of Apollo you do not know, nor can you see it, for the earthiness of the soul does not suffer it to soar upwards, but keeps it down in dependence on the body. And taking him nearer his guide tried to show him the light from the tripod, which, as he said, shone as far as Parnassus through the bosom of Themis, but though he desired to see it he could not for its brightness, but as he passed by he heard the shrill voice of a woman speaking in verse several things, among others, he thought, telling the time of his death. That, said the genius, was the voice of the Sibyl, who sang about the future as she was being borne about in the Orb of the moon. Though desirous then to hear more, he was conveyed into another direction by the violent motion of the moon, as if he had been in the eddies of a whirlpool, so that he heard very little more, only a prophecy about Mt. Vesuvius and that Dicaearchia[872] would be destroyed by fire, and a short piece about the Emperor then reigning,[873] that “though he was good he would lose his empire through sickness.”