om heaven and therefore they had never been schooled by trial,
whereas the pilgrims who came from earth having themselves suffered and
seen others suffer, were not in a hurry to choose. And owing to this
inexperience of theirs, and also because the lot was a chance, many of
the souls exchanged a good destiny for an evil or an evil for a good.
For if a man had always on his arrival in this world dedicated himself
from the first to sound philosophy, and had been moderately fortunate
in the number of the lot, he might, as the messenger reported, be happy
here, and also his journey to another life and return to this, instead
of being rough and underground, would be smooth and heavenly. Most
curious, he said, was the spectacle--sad and laughable and strange; for
the choice of the souls was in most cases based on their experience of
a previous life. There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus
choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of women, hating
to be born of a woman because they had been his murderers; he beheld
also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale; birds, on
the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men.
The soul which obtained the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion, and
this was the soul of Ajax the son of Telamon, who would not be a man,
remembering the injustice which was done him in the judgment about the
arms. The next was Agamemnon, who took the life of an eagle, because,
like Ajax, he hated human nature by reason of his sufferings. About
the middle came the lot of Atalanta; she, seeing the great fame of
an athlete, was unable to resist the temptation: and after her there
followed the soul of Epeus the son of Panopeus passing into the nature
of a woman cunning in the arts; and far away among the last who chose,
the soul of the jester Thersites was putting on the form of a monkey.
There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and
his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of
former toils had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for
a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no
cares; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about and
had been neglected by everybody else; and when he saw it, he said that
he would have done the same had his lot been first instead of last,
and that he was delighted to have it. And not only did men pass into
animals, but I must