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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: in the age of Socrates, but, like the unity of God, had a foundation in the
popular belief. The old Homeric notion of a gibbering ghost flitting away
to Hades; or of a few illustrious heroes enjoying the isles of the blest;
or of an existence divided between the two; or the Hesiodic, of righteous
spirits, who become guardian angels,--had given place in the mysteries and
the Orphic poets to representations, partly fanciful, of a future state of
rewards and punishments. (Laws.) The reticence of the Greeks on public
occasions and in some part of their literature respecting this
'underground' religion, is not to be taken as a measure of the diffusion of
such beliefs. If Pericles in the funeral oration is silent on the
consolations of immortality, the poet Pindar and the tragedians on the
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