Taylor - Eleusianian and Bacchic Mysteries.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

""76 Eleusinian andreach. On this account, it is said of him,that"He dragg d the three-mouth d dog to "upper day ;intimating that by temperance, continence,and the other virtues, he drew upwards theintuitional, rational, and opinionative part ofthe soul.v And as to Theseus, who is represented as suffering eternal punishment inHades, we must consider him too a& anallegorical character, of which Proclus, in theabove-cited admirable work, gives the following beautiful explanation Theseus and:Pirithous," says he, are fabled to have abducted Helen, and descended to the infernalregions, i. e. they were lovers both of mentaland visible beauty. Afterward one of these(Theseus), on account of his magnanimity,was liberated by Hercules from Hades but;the other (Pirithous) remained there, because he could not attain the difficult heightof divine contemplation." This account, indeed, of Theseus can by no means be reconciled with Virgil s :Infelixsedet, aeternumque sedebit,Theseus.**"There sits, and forever shall sit, the unhappy Theseus."