move, and speak.  Their souls seem to be naked, and separated from them, with only the external similitude of a body, and unless you attempt to touch, you can scarce believe but they have one; they are a kind of upright shadows, {119} only not black.  In this place nobody ever grows old:  at whatever age they enter here, at that they always remain.  They have no night nor bright day, but a perpetual twilight; one equal season reigns throughout the year; it is always spring with them, and no wind blows but Zephyrus.  The whole region abounds in sweet flowers and shrubs of every kind; their vines bear twelve times in the year, yielding fruit every month, their apples, pomegranates, and the rest of our autumnal produce, thirteen times, bearing twice in the month of Minos.  Instead of corn the fields bring forth loaves of ready-made bread, like mushrooms.  There are three hundred and sixty-five fountains of water round the city, as many of honey, and five hundred rather smaller of sweet-scented oil, besides seven rivers of milk and eight of wine.

Their symposia are held in a place without the city, which they call the Elysian Field.  This is a most beautiful meadow, skirted by a large and thick wood, affording an agreeable shade to the guests, who repose on couches of flowers; the winds attend upon and bring them everything necessary, except wine, which is otherwise provided, for there are large trees on every side made of the finest glass, the fruit of which are cups of various shapes and sizes.  Whoever comes to the entertainment gathers one or more of these cups, which immediately, becomes full of wine, and so they drink of it, whilst the nightingales and other birds of song, with their bills peck the flowers out of the neighbouring fields, and drop them on their heads; thus are they crowned with perpetual garlands.  Their manner of perfuming them is this.  The clouds suck up the scented oils from the fountains and rivers, and the winds gently fanning them, distil it like soft dew on those who are assembled there.  At supper they have music also, and singing, particularly the verses of Homer, who is himself generally at the feast, and sits next above Ulysses, with a chorus of youths and virgins.  He is led in accompanied by Eunomus the Locrian, {121a} Arion of Lesbos, Anacreon, and Stesichorus, {121b} whom I saw there along with them, and who at length is reconciled to Helen.  When they have finished their songs, another chorus begins of swans, {122a} swallows, and nightingales, and to these succeeds the sweet rustling of the zephyrs, that whistle through the woods and close the concert.  What most contributes to their happiness is, that near the symposium are two fountains, the one of milk, the other of pleasure; from the first they drink at the beginning of the feast; there is nothing afterwards but joy and festivity.