ughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the
slaughter of men, of gladiators. Nature has herself, I fear, imprinted
in man a kind of instinct to inhumanity; nobody takes pleasure in seeing
beasts play with and caress one another, but every one is delighted with
seeing them dismember, and tear one another to pieces. And that I may
not be laughed at for the sympathy I have with them, theology itself
enjoins us some favour in their behalf; and considering that one and the
same master has lodged us together in this palace for his service, and
that they, as well as we, are of his family, it has reason to enjoin us
some affection and regard to them. Pythagoras borrowed the
metempsychosis from the Egyptians; but it has since been received by
several nations, and particularly by our Druids:

"Morte carent animae; semperque, priore relicts
Sede, novis domibus vivunt, habitantque receptae."

["Souls never die, but, having left their former seat, live
and are received into new homes."--Ovid, Met., xv. 158.]

The religion of our ancient Gauls maintained that souls, being eternal,
never ceased to remove and shift their places from one body to another;
mixing moreover with this fancy some consideration of divine justice; for
according to the deportments of the soul, whilst it had been in
Alexander, they said that God assigned it another body to inhabit, more
or less painful, and proper for its condition:

"Muta ferarum
Cogit vincla pati; truculentos ingerit ursis,
Praedonesque lupis; fallaces vulpibus addit:
Atque ubi per varios annos, per mille figuras

Egit, Lethaeo purgatos flumine, tandem
Rursus ad humanae revocat primordia formae:"

["He makes them wear the silent chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty
souls he encloses in bears, the thieves in wolves, the deceivers in
foxes; where, after successive years and a thousand forms, man had
spent his life, and after purgation in Lethe's flood, at last he
restores them to the primordial human shapes."
--Claudian, In Ruf., ii. 482.]

If it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of a lion; if
voluptuous, in that of a hog; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare; if
malicious, in that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified it
by this chastisement, it again entered into the body of some other man: