the capacity of being wholly loosed from the chains that confine our
spirit, and can make use of the life which is not dependent on generation.
When the soul is thus separate from the body in sleep, then that (latter)
kind of life which usually remains separable and separate by itself,
immediately awakes within us, and acts according to its proper nature,...
and in that state has a presaging knowledge of the future." Then, omitting
a distinction between sleeping and waking inspiration, and coming to the
latter, in which, also, the _offlati_ have a presaging power, he
proceeds:--"Yet those (latter) are so far awake that they can use their
senses, yet are not capable of reasoning,... for they neither (properly
speaking) sleep when they seem to do so, nor awake when they seem awake;
for they do not of themselves foresee, nor are they moved by any human
instrumentality; neither know they their own condition; nor do they exert
any prerogative or motion of their own; but all this is done under the
power and by the energy of the deity. For that they who are so affected do
not live an ordinary animal life is plain, because many of them, on
contact with fire, are not burnt, the divine inward afflatus repelling the
heat; or, if they be burnt, they do not feel it; neither do they feel
prickings, or scratchings, or other tortures. Further, that their actions
are not (merely) human, is apparent from this, that they make their way
through pathless tracks, and pass harmless through the fire, and pass over
rivers in a wonderful manner, which the priestess herself also does in the
Cataballa. By this it is plain that the life they live is not human, nor
animal, nor dependent on the use of senses, but divine, as if the soul
were taking its rest, and the deity were there instead of the soul.
Various sorts there are of those so divinely inspired, as well by reason
of the varying divinity of the inspiring gods as of the modes of
inspiration. These modes are of this sort--either the deity occupies us, or
we join ourselves to the deity, &c.... According to these diversities,
there are different signs, effects, and works of the inspired; thus, some
will be moved in their whole bodies, others in particular members; others,
again, will be motionless. Also they will perform dances and chants, some
well, some ill. The bodies, again, of some will seem to dilate in height,
of others in compass; and others, again, will seem to walk in air."

Taking thes