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Footnotes. Why the priests are shaven and wear linen. 264:5 περιστέλλοντες, which also means componere—that is, to lay out a corpse and so to bury
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Footnotes
263: 4 δ ι κ α ι ο σ ύ ν η ν, or Justice (Maā t), that is, the “power of the Judge, ” Hermes being Judge of the Scales. The Nine are the Paut of Hermes, he being the tenth, the mystery being here read differently from the Ogdoad point of view—that is to say, macrocosmically instead of cosmically.
264: 1 Or, perhaps, the reading should be “Wisdom. ”
264: 2 Cf. ii. 1.
264: 3 δ ε ι κ ν ύ ο υ σ α ν —probably a play on δ ι κ α ι ο σ ύ ν η ν.
264: 4 ἱ ε ρ ο φ ό ρ ο ι ς κ α ὶ ἱ ε ρ ο σ τ ό λ ο ι ς. Plutarch by his “with truth and justice” warns the reader against taking these words to mean simply the carriers of the sacred vessels and instruments in the public processions, and the sacristans or keepers of the sacred vestments.
264: 5 π ε ρ ι σ τ έ λ λ ο ν τ ε ς, which also means componere—that is, to lay out a corpse and so to bury.
264: 6 ο ἰ ή σ ε ω ς = δ ό ξ η ς, appearance, seeming—that is, the public myth; as opposed to λ ό γ ο ς = ἐ π ι σ τ ή μ η, knowledge or reality.
264: 7 Or “walk there”—that is, in “Hades. ” Or, again, the “death” is the death unto sin when they become Alive and walk among the “dead” or ordinary men.
264: 8 That is, when the initiation is a lawful one, or really takes effect; when a man’s karma permits it, that is, after passing the proper tests.
WHY THE PRIESTS ARE SHAVEN AND WEAR LINEN
IV. 1. Now, as far as the “many” are concerned, even this commonest and smallest [secret] is hid from them, —namely, why the priests cut off their hair, and wear linen robes; for some do not at all care to know about these things, while others say that they abstain from [the use of] the sheep’s wool, as they do from its flesh, because they hold it sacred, and that they shave their heads through being in mourning, and wear linen things on account of the colour which the flax in flower sends forth, resembling the æ therial radiance 1 that surrounds the cosmos.
2. But the true cause, [the] one of all, is, as Plato says, [because]: “It is not lawful for pure to touch not pure. ” 2
Now, superfluity 3 of nourishment and excretion is nothing chaste or pure; and it is from superfluities that wool and fur and hair and nails spring up and grow.
3. It would, thus, be laughable for them to cut off their own hair in the purifications, shaving themselves, and making smooth their whole body evenly, and [then] put on and wear the [hair] of animals. 4
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4. For indeed we should think that Hesiod, when he says:
Nor from five-branched at fire-blooming of Gods
Cut dry from green with flashing blade 5—
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teaches that [men] ought to keep holy day only when pure of such [superfluities], and not at the sacred operations themselves have need of purification and the removal of superfluities.
5. Again, the flax grows out of the deathless earth, and yields a fruit that man may eat, and offers him a smooth pure raiment that does not weigh upon the watcher, 1 but is well joined for every hour, 2 and is the least cone-bearing, 3 as they say, —concerning which things there is another reason (logos).
Footnotes
265: 1 χ ρ ό α ν —also meaning surface, skin, and tone in melody.
265: 2 Phæ d., 67 B.
265: 3 π ε ρ ί σ σ ω μ α —also probably here a play on that which is “round the body” (π ε ρ ὶ σ ῶ μ α )—namely, the hair.
265: 4 θ ρ ε μ μ ά τ ω ν —lit., “things nourished” (from τ ρ έ φ ω ), presumably a play on the “nourishment” (τ ρ ο φ ή ) above.
265: 5 Op. et Dies, 741 f. This scrap of ancient gnomic wisdom Hesiod has preserved, I believe, from the “Orphic” fragments still in circulation in his day in Bœ otia among the people from an Older Greece. I have endeavoured to translate it according to the most primitive meaning of the words. In later days it was thought that “five-branched” was the hand, and that the couplet referred to a prohibition against paring the nails at a feast of the Gods! In this sense also Plutarch partly uses it. But if I am right in my version, we have in the lines a link with that very early tradition in Greece which in later times was revived by the Later Platonic School, in a renewed contact with the ancient Chaldæ an mystery-tradition of the Fire. “Five-branched” would thus mean man, or rather purified man, and the saying referred to the “pruning of this tree. ” In it also we have an example of a “Pythagorean symbol” three hundred years before Pythagoras. Finally, I would remind the reader of the Saying which the Master is said to have uttered as He passed to the Passion of the Crucifixion (Luke xxiii. 31): “For if they do these things in the moist stock [A. V. green tree], what shall be done in the dry? ”—presumably the quotation of an old gnomic saying or mystery logos. The “moist nature” is the feminine side of the “fiery” or “dry. ”
266: 1 Reading σ κ ο π ο ῦ ν τ ι for σ κ έ π ο ν τ ι —that is, the soul.
266: 2 ε ὐ ά ρ μ ο σ τ ο ν δ ὲ π ρ ὸ ς π ᾶ σ α ν ὥ ρ α ν —“well adapted for every season” is the common translation; the “hour, ” however, is a technical astrological term.
266: 3 Vulg., “lice-producing”—but φ θ ε ί ρ also means a special kind of pine producing small cones; and the great cone was a symbol of the Logos, and the small cone of physical generation. It is also connected with φ θ ε ί ρ ω, meaning to corrupt, and so to breed corruption.
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p. 267
OF THE REFRAINING FROM FLESH AND SALT AND SUPERFLUITIES
V. 1. And the priests handle so hardly 1 the nature of superfluities, that they not only deprecate the many kinds of pulse, and of meats the sheep-flesh 2 kinds and swine-flesh kinds, as making much superfluity, but also at their times of purification they remove the salts from the grains, 3 having other further reasons as well as the fact that it makes the more thirsty and more hungry sharpen their desire the more.
2. For to argue that salts are not pure owing to the multitude of small lives 4 that are caught 5 and die in them when they solidify themselves, as Aristagoras said, 6 is naï ve.
3. They are, moreover, said to water the Apis also from a special well, and by all means to keep him from the Nile, —not that they think His 7 water stained with blood because of the Crocodile, 8 as some think (for nothing is so precious to Egyptians as the Nile),
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but that the water of Nile’s superfluity 1 on being drunk seems to make fat, nay, rather to make much too much of flesh.
4. And [so] they do not wish the Apis to be so nor yet themselves, but [wish] to wear their bodies on their souls compact and light, and neither to com-press nor op-press them by the mortal part prevailing and its weighing down of the divine.
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