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50 intimating that by temperance, continence, and the other virtues, he drew upwards the intellective, dianoetic, and doxastic part of the soul. And as to Theseus, who is represented as suffering eternal punishment in Hades, we must consider him too as an allegorical character, of which Proclus, in the above-cited admirable work, p. 384, gives the following beautiful explanation: "Theseus and Pirithous," says he, "are fabled to have ravished Helen, and descended to the infernal regions, i. e. were lovers both of intelligible and visible beauty; afterwards one of these, (Theseus) on account of his magnanimity, was liberated by Hercules from Hades; but the other (Pirithous) remained there, because he could not sustain the arduous altitude of divine contemplation." ‘This account, indeed, of Theseus, can by no means be reconciled with Virgil's:

sedet, æternumque sedebit,

Infelix Theseus.

Nor do I see how Virgil can be reconciled with himself, who, a little before this, represents him as liberated from Hades. The conjecture therefore of Hyginus is most probable, that Virgil in this particular committed an oversight, which, had he lived, he would doubtless have detected, and amended. This is at least much more probable than the opinion of Dr. Warburton, that Theseus was a living character, who once entered into the Eleusinian mysteries by force, for which he was imprisoned upon earth, and afterwards damned in the infernal realms. For if this was the case, why is not Hercules also represented as in punishment? and this with much greater reason, since he actually dragged Cerberus from Hades; whereas the fabulous descent of Theseus was attended with no real, but only intentional, mischief—Not to mention that Virgil appears to be the only writer of antiquity who condemns this hero to an eternity of pain.

Nor is the secret meaning of the fables concerning the punishment of impure souls less beautiful and profound, as the following extract from the manuscript commentary of Olympiodorus on the Gorgias of Plato will abundantly affirm:—"Ulysses," says he, "descending into Hades, saw, among others, Sysiphus, and Titius, and Tantalus: and Titius he saw lying on the earth, and a vulture devouring his liver; the liver signifying that he lived solely according to the desiderative part of his nature, and through this was