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Chapter XIII**
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  1. The symmetry of both polar Zones is clearly in the poet’s mind. “Five Zones comprise the heavens; whereof one is ever glowing with the flashing sun, ever scorched by his flames. Round this, at the world’s ends, two stretch darkling to right and left, set fast in ice and black storms. Between them and the middle zone, two by grace of the Gods have been vouchsafed to feeble mortals; and a path is cut between the two (the ecliptic), wherein the slanting array of the Signs may turn.” (Georgics 1, 233-38).

  2. Cf. Macrobius. Commentary on the Dream of Scipio 1.10.11 (Stahl trans., p. 128): “Similarly, they thought that Phlegethon was merely the fires of our wraths and passions, that Acheron was the chagrin we experienced over having said or done something . . . that Cocyros was anything that moved us to lamentation or tears, and that Styx was anything that plunged human minds into the abyss of mutual hatred.”

  3. A. Dieterich, Nekyia (1893). p.27.

  4. Der kosmische Aufbau der Ienseitsreiche Dantes (1958), pp. 58-66, 88-95.

  5. See Scriptores Rerum Mythicarum Latini, ed. G. H. Bode (1968 1st ed. 1934) vol. 1, p. 176: Eundem Phlegethontem nonnulli, qui a caelo infernum incipere autumant, Martis circulum dicunt sicut et Campos Elysios . . . circulum Jovis esse contendunt.

  6. 1.1.7. Referring to Odyssey 11.639-12.2. See H. J. Mette, Sphairophoiia (1936), pp. 75, 250.

  7. G. de Santillana, Prologue to Parmenides, U. of Cincinnati, Semple Lecture, 1964. Reprinted in Reflections on Man and Ideas (1968), p. 82.

  8. Pausanias 8.184-6; ed. J. G. Frazer, Pausanias’ Description of Greece 4, pp. 248-56; also O. Waser, Roscher 4, cols. 1574, 1576. Pausanias leaves it open whether or not Alexander was killed by means of Stygian water, as was fabled.

  9. A. Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race, Its Origin and Migrations (1878), vol. 1, pp. 72f. cf. Fornander Collection of Hawaiian Antiquities and Folk-Lore, Mem. BPB Mus. 6 (1920), pp. 77f.

  10. Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, ch. 22, 422BC.

  11. Proclus (comm. on Plato’s Timaeus 138B, ed. Diehl, BT, vol. 1, p. 454) claimed this to be a “barbarous opinion” (doxē barbarikē). He shows no particular interest in the triangular plain of truth, alias our “lake” with its outlets, but he has more to say about the 180 “subordinate” and the 3 “leading” worlds (hēgemonas) at the angles, and how to interpret them. To which Festugière, in his (highly welcome and marvelous) translation of Proclus’ commentary, remarks (vol. 2, p. 336, n. 1): “On notera que Proclus donne à la fois moins et plus que Plutarque. A-t-il lu ces élucubrations pythagoriciennes elles-mêmes?”.

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