'The natural property of a wing is to carry what is heavy upwards, lifting it aloft to the region where the race of the gods resides, and in a way, of all the things belonging to the sphere of the body, it has the greatest share in the divine, the divine being beautiful, wise, good and everything which is of that kind; so it is by these things that the plumage of the soul is nourished and increased most of all, while the shameful, the bad and in general the opposites of the other things make it waste away and perish. First in the heavens travels Zeus, the great leader, driving a winged chariot, putting all things in order and caring for all; after him there follows an army of gods and divinities, ordered in eleven companies. For Hestia alone remains in the house of the gods; of the rest, all those who alone have their place among the number of the twelve take the lead as commanders in the station given to each. Many, then, and blessed are the paths to be seen along which the happy race of gods turns within the heavens, each of them performing what belongs to him; and after them follows anyone who wishes and is able to do so, for jealousy is excluded from the divine chorus. But when they go to their feasting and to banquet, then they travel to the summit of the arch of heaven, and the climb is steep: the chariots of the gods travel easily, being well balanced and easily controlled, while the rest do so with difficulty; for the horse that is partly bad weighs them down, inclining them towards the earth through its weight, if any of the charioteers has not trained them well. Here it is that the final labour, the final contest, awaits a soul. Those souls that are called immortal, when they are at the top, travel outside and take their stand upon the outer part of the heavens, and positioned like this they are carried round by its revolution, and gaze on the thing outside the heavens.
'Now the region above the heavens has never yet been celebrated as it deserves to be by any earthly poet, nor will it ever be. But it is like this -- for one must be bold enough to say what is true, especially when speaking about truth. This region is occupied by being which really is, which is without colour or shape, intangible, observable by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect, and to which the class of true knowledge relates. Thus because the mind of a god is nourished by intellect and knowledge unmixed, and so too that of every soul which is concerned to receive what is appropriate to it, it is glad at last to see what is and is nourished and made happy by gazing on what is true, until the revolution of the whole brings itself around in a circle to the same point. In its circuit it sees justice itself, sees self-control, sees knowledge -- not that knowledge to which coming into being attaches, not the knowledge that strangely differs in different items among the things that we now say are, but that which is in what really is and which is really knowledge; and having feasted on its gaze in the same way on the other things that really are, it descends back into the region within the heavens and goes home. When it arives there, the charioteer stations his horses at their manger, throwing them ambrosia and giving them nectar to drink down with the ambrosia.'
(translation by Christopher Rowe)
