[1747] Gregory himself tells us, in his life of S. Macrina, that he went to see her after the Council of Antioch. (This and Basil's death occurred in the year 379: so that this Dialogue was probably composed in 380.) "The interval during which the circumstances of our times of trials prevented any visits had been long." He goes on to say (p. 189 B.); "And that she might cause me no depression of spirits, she somehow subdued the noise and concealed the difficulty of her breathing, and assumed perfect cheerfulness: she not only started pleasant topics herself, but suggested them as well by the questions which she asked. The conversation led naturally to the mention of our great Basil. While my very soul sank and my countenance was saddened and fell, she herself was so far from going with me into the depths of mourning, that she made the mention of that saintly name all opportunity for the most sublime philosophy. Examining human nature in a scientific way, disclosing the divine plan that underlies all afflictions, and dealing, as if inspired by the Holy Spirit, with all the questions relating to a future life, she maintained such a discourse that my soul seemed to be lifted along with her words almost beyond the compass of humanity, and, as I followed her argument, to be placed within the sanctuary of heaven." Again (p. 190 B): "And if my tract would not thereby be extended to an endless length, I would have reported everything in its order; i.e. how her argument lifted her as she went into the philosophy both of the soul, and of the causes of our life in the flesh, and of the final cause of Man and his mortality, and of death and the return thence into life again. In all of it her reasoning continued clear and consecutive: it flowed on so easily and naturally that it was like the water from some spring falling unimpeded downwards."
[1748] Two grounds are here given why this practice of grief for the departed is difficult to give up. One lies in the natural abhorrence of death, showing itself in two ways, viz. in our grief over others dying, and in recoiling from our own death, expressed by two evenly balanced sentences, oute ton horonton...hois te an...; in the latter a second oute might have been expected; but such an anacoluthon is frequent in dialogue. Oehler is wrong in giving to the second te an intensive force, i.e. "much more." The other ground lies in the attitude of the law towards death.
[1749] Reading periechonti: the same word is used below, "as long as the breath within was held in by the enveloping substance"(see p. 432, note 8). Here it means "the air": as in Marcus Antoninus, Lib. iv. 39.
[1750] Reading kataseisasa te cheiri, instead of the vox nihili metaseisasa of the two Paris Editions, which can be accounted for by meta being repeated in error from metaxu. The question which this gesture accompanied is one to which it would be very appropriate. The reading adopted is that of the Codex Uffenbach, and this phrase, kataseiein te cheiri, is unimpeachable for "commanding silence," being used by Polybius, and Xenophon (without cheiri). Wolf and Krabinger prefer this reading to that of most of the Codd., katasigesasa: and doubtless Sifanus read it ("manu silentio imperato").
[1751] isas...adelia. This is Krabinger's reading (for isos...he deilia in the Parisian Editions) with abundant ms. authority.
[1752] antipiptonton pros ton skopon touton hupoklethenton: the reading of the Parisian Editions. But the preponderance of ms. authority is in favour of hupekluthenton, "si quæ ad hoc propositum opponuntur soluta fuerint," Krabinger. The force of hupo will then be "by way of rejoinder." The idea in skopon seems to be that of a butt set up to be shot at. All the mss. but not the Paris Editions, have the article before antipiptoton: but it is not absolutely necessary, for Gregory not unfrequently omits it before participles, when his meaning is general, i.e. "Everything that," &c.
[1753] hos tuchaia, k.t.l. It is better to connect this directly with Epicurus himself, than to refer it, by bracketing the preceding sentence (with Oehler), to his followers. Macrina infers from the opinions known to her of Epicurus, what he must have said about the human soul: i.e. that it was a bubble; and then what his followers probably said. There is no evidence that Epicurus used this actual figure: still Gregory may be recording his very words.--Lucian (Charon, 68) enlarges on such a simile: and his okumoron phusema, as a description of man, is reproduced by Gregory himself in Orat. de Beatitud. p. 768 D.
[1754] to periechonti. Sifanus takes this of the surrounding atmosphere. So also Krabinger, "aere circumfuso," just as above (182 A.) it does certainly mean the air, and Wolf quotes a passage to that effect from Marcus Antoninus and the present instance also. Still there is no reason that it should not here mean the body of the man, which is as it were a case retentive of the vital breath within; and the sense seems to require it. As to the construction, although pompholux is sometimes masculine in later Greek, yet it is much more likely that peritathentos (not peritethentos of the Paris Editt.) is the genitive absolute with tou somatos: to periechonti would then very naturally refer to this.
[1755] But Dr. Hermann Schmidt sees even more than this in this bold figure. The Creation preaches, as it were, and its tones are first heard in our hearts (enechountos te kardia): and these tones are then reflected back from the heart to the contemplating eye, which thus becomes not a seeing only, but a hearing (akroates ginetai) organ, in its external activity.
[1756] enarmonious apostaseis, i.e. to which the music of the spheres was due: see Macrobius, Somnium Scipionis, c. 4: for the "retrograde" motion of the planets above, see Joannes de Sacro Bosco, Sphæra (1564), p. 47, sqq.
[1757] See On the Making of Man, c. viii. 5.
[1758] hikane. This is the reading of Codd. A and B (of Krabinger, but the common reading is ei kan he!
[1759] It may be noticed that besides the physician several others were present. Cf. 242 D, tois pollois parakathemenois
[1760] Krabinger's Latin "in intentione," though a literal translation, hardly represents the full force of this passage, which is interesting because, the terms being used specially, if not only, of fevers or inflammation, it is evident that the speaker has her own illness in mind, and her words are thus more natural than if she spoke of patients generally. If en epitasei is translated "at its height," this will very awkwardly anticipate what follows, epi tosonde...he epitasis. The doctor is supposed simply to class the complaint as belonging to the order of those which manifest themselves di' epitaseos, as opposed to those which do so di' aneseos: he then descends to particulars, i.e. epi tosonde. The demonstrative in tonde ton splanchnon has the same force as in to en tode thermon, 214 C, "such and such;" the nobler organs (viscera thoracis) of course are here meant. Gregory himself gives a list of them, 250 C.
[1761] A trochaic line to this effect from the comedian Epicharmus is quoted by Theodoret, De Fide, p. 15.
[1762] hoper de panteles tou stoicheiou meiosis legetai, "perfecta elementi diminutio;" hoper referring to the dark "new" moon just described, which certainly is the consummation of the waning of the moon: though it is not itself a meiosis.--This last consideration, and the use of de, and the introduction of tou stoicheiou, favour another meaning which might be given, i.e. by joining panteles with tou stoicheiou, and making hoper refer to the whole passage of the moon from full to new, "which indeed is commonly (but erroneously) spoken of as a substantial diminution of the elementary body itself," as if it were a true and real decrease of bulk.
[1763] ei tina touton kata ton authon logon sunousiomenen tis einai legoi dunamin, k.t.l. The difficulty here is in touton, which Krabinger takes as a partitive genitive after einai, and refers to the "elements"; and this is perhaps the best way of taking it. But still, as Schmidt points out, it is rather the human body than the elements themselves that ought here to be spoken of as the efficient cause of thought: and so he would either refer touton to ton auton ("in the same way as these instances just given"), and compares Eurip. Helen., onoma de tauton tes emes echousa tis damartos alle (Matt. Gr. p. 706); or else would join touton with the preceding diaphoros (with Codd. Mon. D, E).
[1764] Cod. Mon. D, apotelouses. This seems a better reading than that preferred by Krabinger, apotelesma einai: for apotelesma must be pressed to mean, in order to preserve the sense, "mere result," i.e. something secondary, and not itself a principle or cause: the following he, besides, cannot without awkwardness be referred to energeian
[1765] Reading ousian ouk an apodeiknuoito e to med' holos einai;
[1766] According to an author quoted by Athenæus (iv. 75), the first organist (hudraules), or rather organ-builder, was Ctesibius of Alexandria, about b.c. 200.
[1767] Remove comma after zetoumenou, in Paris Editt.
[1768] or vice versâ, i.e. the idea of badness by the negation of goodness. Krabinger appositely quotes a passage from Plotinus: "Who could picture to himself evil as a specific thing, appearing as it does only in the absence of each good?...it will be necessary for all who are to know what evil is to have a clear conception about good: since even in dealing with real species the better take precedence of the worse; and evil is not even a species, but rather a negation." Cf. Origen, In Johan. p. 66 A, pasa he kakia ouden estin, epei kai ouk on tunchanei. See also Gregory's Great Catechism, cap. v. and vii.
[1769] supposing, that is. This only repeats what was said above: "granted that the inquirer has had his doubts set at rest as to the existence of the thing." It is the reading of Krabinger (ei de ti), and the best. Sifanus follows the less supported reading oiden hoti, which is open to the further objection that it would be absurd to say, "when a man learns that A is not B he knows that it is something else." The reading of the Paris. Editt. ide is unintelligible.
[1770] (kath') hoson te...thinganomen
[1771] weight(onkou). This is a Platonic word: it means the weight, and then (morally) the burden, of the body: not necessarily connected with the idea of swelling, even in Empedocles, v. 220; its Latin equivalent is "onus" in both meanings. Cf. Heb. xii. 1; onkon apothemenoi panta, "every weight," or "all cumbrance."
[1772] Reading diastematiken. Cf. 239 A.
[1773] all' en hois...ekeino...touto.
[1774] pure(akerato). perishable (epikeron). The first word is a favourite one with the Platonists; such as Plotinus, and Synesius. Gregory uses it in his funeral speech over Flacilla, "she passes with a soul unstained to the pure and perfect life"; and both in his treatise De Mortuis, "that man's grief is real, who becomes conscious of the blessings he has lost; and contrasts this perishing and soiled existence with the perfect blessedness above."
[1775] logo tini kreittoni tes anthropines katanoeseos. So just below arrheto tini logo. The mode of the union of soul and body is beyond our comprehension. To refer these words to the Deity Himself ("incomprehensible cause"), as Oehler, would make of them, as Schmidt well remarks, a "mere showy phrase."
[1776] analuthenton. Krabinger reads analusanton, i.e. "returning"; as frequently in this treatise, and in N.T. usage.
[1777] i.e.as we have already seen (p. 433). The fact of the continuity of the soul was there deduced from its being incomposite. So that the gar here does not give the ground for the statement immediately preceding. Gregory (p. 431) had suggested two alternatives:--1. That the soul dissolves with the body. This is answered by the soul's "incompositeness." 2. That the union of the immaterial soul with the still material atoms after death cannot be maintained. This is answered by the analogy given in the present section, of God's presence in an uncongenial universe, and that of the soul in the still living body. The gar therefore refers to the answer to 1, without which the question of the soul continuing in the atoms could not have been discussed at all.
[1778] her vessel. Of course this is not the "vehicle" of the soul (after death) which the later Platonists speak of, but the body itself. The word ochema is used in connection with a ship, Soph. Trach. 656; and though in Plato (Timæus, p. 69), whose use of this word for the body was afterwards followed, it is not clear whether a car or a ship is most thought of, yet that the latter is Gregory's meaning appears from his next words.
[1779] at once. Reading (with Codd. A, B, C, and Uff.) kata tauton.
[1780] oute diacheitai. Oehler translates wrongly "noch dehnt es sich aus"; because the faculty of extension is ascribed to the intelligence (cf. ekteinesthai, diateinomenon, parekteinomene, below), but diffusion is denied of it, both here, and in the words diaschizetai (above and below), diakrisis, and diaspatai, i.e. separation in space.