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Indiana University Studies 



their own choice, because of their zeal and eagerness for learning, 

 in which being eager to pass their lives they despise the pleasures of 

 the body. They are desirous not of a mortal progeny but of an im- 

 mortal, which only the soul that loves God is able to produce of 

 itself, since the Father has sown in it rays of light perceptible by the 

 mind alone, by which it will be able to contemplate the doctrines 

 of wisdom. 



IX 



They lie on the couches in divided lines, the men by themselves on 

 the right, and the women by themselves on the left. If anyone imag- 

 ines that they have prepared couches, even if not expensive ones, 

 at least rather soft ones suitable for persons who like themselves 

 are of noble birth, and refined, and cultivators of philosophy, he is 

 mistaken. For the beds are of any material that comes handy, on 

 which are laid very cheap floor-mats made of the native papyrus, 

 raised a little under the elbows that they may lean upon them. 

 For the Laconian rigor of life is relaxed slightly, and always and 

 everywhere they practice a contentedness with their food that befits 

 a free man, resenting with all their might the enticements of pleasure.^^ 



Nor are they waited upon by slaves, because they regard the 

 possession of slaves as entirely contrary to nature. For nature has 

 created all men free, but the injustice and greed of some, jealous 



*2ln common with many others of his day, Philo believed that a woman 

 might conceive and bring forth dm rov Oeov and without a mortal husband. 

 Among the Egyptians, Isis was said to have conceived thru the ears; among 

 the Greeks Danae thru a stream of gold which would mean the sunlight; 

 and in early art the Virgin Mary is pictured surrounded with rays of light. 

 Regarding the birth of Plato, Conybeare has the following interesting passage: 

 ''As the master of those who aspired to a life of pure reason, to which the 

 body and the senses should contribute little or nothing, Plato was himself 

 believed to have been born of a virgin mother, who conceived him by the god 

 Apollo. Such a myth grew up quite naturally about Plato, who is for a super- 

 ficial reader the most abstract of thinkers; just as about Aristotle it could 

 never have arisen; for he, tho really the greatest of idealists, is yet at first 

 sight the most matter-of-fact of thinkers" (Conybeare, Excursus, p. 31, 317). 



Conybeare makes the whole clear by the following note which is given 

 in condensed form: They lie down in two rows, the women on one side of 

 the table, the men on the other, leaning on the left elbow with a cushion under 

 the arm to raise them up conveniently. The person lying to the right of 

 another was said to recline in his bosom {avccKeiGdai h -w /voAttcj). So in John 

 13, 23 the meaning is that John as the beloved disciple reclined next to Jesus 



Simple banquets like the above are described in Plato's Republic ii, 

 p. 372 B. Plutarch, Lycurgus 16, 50 C tells how Spartan boys had to cut the 

 rushes to make their own beds. 



