“What, then?  Does not the soul now appear to act quite the contrary, ruling over all the parts from which any one might say it subsists, and resisting almost all of them through the whole of life, and exercising dominion over them in all manner of ways; punishing some more severely even with pain, both by gymnastics and medicine, and others more mildly; partly threatening, and partly admonishing the desires, angers and fears, as if, being itself of a different nature, it were conversing with something quite different? 99.  Just as Homer has done in the Odyssey,[35] where he speaks of Ulysses—­’Having struck his breast, he chid his heart in the following words:  Bear up, my heart; ere this thou hast borne far worse.’  Do you think that he composed this in the belief that the soul was harmony, and capable of being led by the passions of the body, and not rather that it was able to lead and govern them, as being something much more divine than to be compared with harmony?”

“By Jupiter!  Socrates, it appears so to me.”

“Therefore, my excellent friend, it is on no account correct for us to say that the soul is a kind of harmony; for, as it appears, we should neither agree with Homer, that divine poet, nor with ourselves.”

“Such is the case,” he replied.

“Be it so, then,” said Socrates, “we have already, as it seems, sufficiently appeased this Theban harmony.  But how, Cebes, and by what arguments, shall we appease this Cadmus?"[36]

100.  “You appear to me,” replied Cebes, “to be likely to find out; for you have made out this argument against harmony wonderfully beyond my expectation.  For when Simmias was saying what his doubts were, I wondered very much whether any one would be able to answer his reasoning.  It, therefore, appeared to me unaccountable that he did not withstand the very first onset of your argument.  I should not, therefore, be surprised if the arguments of Cadmus met with the same fate.”

“My good friend,” said Socrates, “do not speak so boastfully, lest some envious power should overthrow the argument that is about to be urged.  These things, however, will be cared for by the deity; but let us, meeting hand to hand, in the manner of Homer, try whether you say any thing to the purpose.  This, then, is the sum of what you inquire you require it to be proved that our soul is imperishable and immortal; if a philosopher that is about to die, full of confidence and hope that after death he shall be far happier than if he had died after leading a different kind of life, shall not entertain this confidence foolishly and vainly. 101.  But to show that the soul is something strong and divine, and that it existed before we men were born, you say not at all hinders, but that all these things may evince, not its immortality, but that the soul is durable, and existed an immense space of time before, and knew and did many things.  But that, for all this, it was not at all the more