ted also another doctrine of Pythagoras, namely, that the
souls of the dead pass into other forms of bodies. This did not escape
Homer's notice, for he made Hector talking with horses, and Antilochus
and Achilles himself not only talking with them but listening to them,
and a dog recognizing Odysseus before men, even before his intimates.
What other thing is he establishing but a community of speech and a
relation of soul between men and beasts? Besides, there are those who
ate up the oxen of the Sun and after this fell into destruction. Does he
not show that not only oxen but all other living creatures, as sharers
of the same common nature, are beloved by the gods?

The change of the comrades of Odysseus into swine and that type of
animal signifies this, that the souls of undeserving men are changed
into the likeness of brute beasts; they fall into the circular periphery
of the whole, which he calls Circe; whereas she is justly represented
as the child of the Sun, dwelling in the island of Aeaea, for this word
[Greek omitted] is so called because men lament and wail by reason of
death. But the prudent man Odysseus did not suffer the change, because
from Hermes, i.e. reason, he had received immortality. He went down into
Hades, as it were, dissolving and separating the soul from the body, and
became a spectator of souls both good and bad.

The Stoics define the soul as a cognate spirit, sensible to exhalations.
It has its origin from the humid portions of the body. In this they
follow Homer, who says (I. ix. 609).--

While the breath abides in the breast.

And again (I. xxiii. 100):--

Vanish'd like smoke, the spirit beneath the earth.

Here he makes the vital spirit, being humid, a breath; when it is
extinguished he likens it to smoke. And the word "spirit" itself he uses
for soul (I. xv. 262):--

His words fresh vigor in the chief infus'd.

And (I. iv. 524):--

Breathing away his spirit.

And (I. xxii. 475):--

But when her breath and spirit returned again.

That is, she collected her distracted spirit (I. v. 697):--

But soon revived, as on his forehead blew,
While yet he gasped for breath, the cooling breeze.

While his spirit was failing him in a faint, the outside breeze having
a natural affinity to it brought him back to life. This argument is
strengthened because for the external spirit he uses the word "soul,"
saying (I. xxiii. 440):--

He turned aside