14. Do you dare to laugh at us when we speak of hell, 3501 and fires 3502 which cannot be quenched, into which we have learned that souls are cast by their foes and enemies? What, does not your Plato also, in the book which he wrote on the immortality of the soul, name the rivers Acheron, Styx, 3503 Cocytus, and Pyriphlegethon, and assert that in them souls are rolled along, engulphed, and burned up? But though a man of no little wisdom, 3504 and of accurate judgment and discernment, he essays a problem which cannot be solved; so that, while he says that the soul is immortal, everlasting, and without bodily substance, he yet says that they are punished, and makes them suffer pain. 3505 But what man does not see that that which is immortal, which is simple, 3506 cannot be subject to any pain; that that, on the contrary, cannot be immortal which does suffer pain? And yet his opinion is not very far from the truth. For although the gentle and kindly disposed man thought it inhuman cruelty to condemn souls to death, he yet not unreasonably 3507 supposed that they are cast into rivers blazing with masses of flame, and loathsome from their foul abysses. For they are cast in, and being annihilated, pass away vainly in 3508 everlasting destruction. For theirs is an intermediate 3509 state, as has been learned from Christ’s teaching; and they are such that they may on the one hand perish if they have not known God, and on the other be delivered from death if they have given heed to His threats 3510 and proffered favours. And to make manifest 3511 what is unknown, this is man’s real death, this which leaves nothing behind. For that which is seen by the eyes is only a separation of soul from body, not the last end—annihilation: 3512 this, I say, is man’s real death, when souls which know not God shall 3513 be consumed in long-protracted torment with raging fire, into which certain fiercely cruel beings shall 3514 cast them, who were unknown 3515 before Christ, and brought to light only by His wisdom. 3501     Pl. Cf. Milman’s note on Gibbon, vol. 2, c. xi. p. 7. 3502     Lit., “certain fires.” 3503     Plato, in the passage referred to ( Phædo , st. p. 113, § 61), speaks of the Styx not as a river, but as the lake into which the Cocytus falls. The fourth river which he mentions in addition to the Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus, which he calls Stygian, is the Ocean stream. 3504     So the ms. , according to Hild., reading parvæ ; but acc. to Rigaltius and Crusius, it gives pravæ —“of no mean.” 3505     So LB., Hild., and Oehler, reading doloris afficiat sensu , by merely dropping m from the ms. sensu-m ; while all the other edd. read doloribus sensuum —“affects with the pains of the senses.” 3506     i.e., not compounded of soul and body. 3507     Or, “not unsuitably,” absone. 3508     Lit., “in the failure (or ‘disappointment’) of,” etc. 3509     i.e., neither immortal nor necessarily mortal. 3510     So Gelenius emended the unintelligible ms. reading se-mina by merely adding s , followed by all edd., although Ursinus in the margin suggests se mîam , i.e., mi-sericordiam —“pity;” and Heraldus conjectures munia —“gifts.” 3511     So almost all edd., from a conjecture of Gelenius, supplying ut , which is wanting in the ms. , first ed., and Oehler. 3512     It is worth while to contrast Augustine’s words: “The death which men fear is the separation of the soul from the body. The true death, which men do not fear, is the separation of the soul from God” (Aug. in Ps. xlviii. , quoted by Elmenhorst). 3513     In the first ed., Gelenius, Canterus, Ursinus, and Orelli, both verbs are made present, but all other edd. follow the ms. as above. 3514     In the first ed., Gelenius, Canterus, Ursinus, and Orelli, both verbs are made present, but all other edd. follow the ms. as above. 3515     Lit., “and unknown.” Here Arnobius shows himself ignorant of Jewish teaching, as in iii. 12.