THE DOCTRINES OF THE ORPHIC MYSTERIES 155 
as the purgatory to Elysium proper and the region where the punishments 
mentioned in 740-42 take place.t He cites as a parallel “the kindliest 
region of the air which they call the meadows” of Plutarch’s De jacie 
in orbe lunae 943 C. But this is simply the Vorparadies of the mystic 
teaching, not a place of purification through punishment. Plutarch 
combines Stoic and Orphic ideas. The ultimate paradise, according 
to the passage, is the upper surface of the moon. Between the moon 
and the earth is a region where the wicked are punished, and another 
distinct from this where the good are purified. 
The only distinction between “‘the few” of 744 and “all these” of 
748 is that the latter are doomed to return to earth after their sojourn 
of a thousand years. These must drink of the water of Lethe in order 
that they may lose the vision of Elysian joy and so be willing to return to 
the upper world. If they were anywhere else than in the paradise of 
Hades, if they were in a region of purgation through punishment as 
Norden thinks, 
Quam vellent aethere in alto 
Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores!? 
Does Vergil’s Elysium then serve as the eternal home of the chosen 
few, and at the same time as the temporary abode between incarnations 
of those who are condemned to revisit the earth? This is incredible, 
or at any rate without parallel in Greek or Roman thought. 
Nor is there any clear parallel in this realm of ideas, so far as I know, 
for an Elysium in Hades as the final abode of the good.s The lower 
world was at best thought of as an awesome place. With all that poetic 
fancy could do to paint a subterranean region in cheerful colors, furnish 
it with light and deck it with flowers and groves, an Elysium in Hades 
remained nevertheless a place of comparative gloom. That is why 
Plato put even his Vorparadies somewhere in the heavens and his ulti- 
mate paradise in the heaven that is above the heavens. ‘The teaching 
t His edition of Aeneid vi, pp. 21 ff. 
2 Said of those in Vergil’s limbo, vss. 435, 436- 
3 A possible instance is the xpos evoeBwy of the Pseudo-Platonic Axiochus. The “Isles of the Blest’’ 
of Plato’s Gorgias are probably not in the lower world. See Weil, p. 61, and Stewart’s Myths of Plato, p. 109. 
4 A place where, as in the Orphic lines above quoted, the good have a ‘“‘milder fate,” #aAaxwTepov oiror, 
not that of ideal bliss. 
