On Providence (The Egyptian Tale)

Contents

Reading pages: 93–122 · 123–146 · 147–172 · 173–174

1. 93Synesius's preface: the work concerns the sons of Taurus; its first part was read under the bad brother's rule, the rest added after the good brother's return.
2. 94The preface commends the work's range: doctrine, models of vice and virtue, and a history of current events, all in the form of a myth.
3. 95The Egyptian tale begins: Osiris and Typhos were brothers by birth, but kinship of souls depends on their source, light or darkness.
4. 96Souls from below rise to defy divine law; souls from heaven descend to order the world and, if undefiled, return to their source.
5. 97Osiris, the younger brother, loved stories and learning from infancy and soon became quiet and modest beyond his years.
6. 98Osiris was modest and kind; Typhos rejected all learning and took his brother's self-restraint for cowardice.
7. 99Typhos was boorish and violent, by turns sluggish and riotous, and proud of the harm his strength could do.
8. 100Typhos, lustful and envious of his popular brother, bought a following of boys who would slander Osiris.
9. 101The brothers' paths diverged at once: Osiris held offices with distinction, while Typhos, made treasurer, was caught stealing.
10. 102Typhos ruined every office he held and kept company with the most debauched men, whom he rewarded for their shamelessness.
11. 103In office Typhos was savage and erratic; his fits of distraction and torpor sometimes saved his victims.
12. 104Typhos quibbled over trifles, dozed through night sessions, and hated men of sense; folly and madness ruled him.
13. 105The aged king, priest and sage, prepares to depart to the gods; priests and soldiers gather from all Egypt to elect his successor.
14. 106Swineherds and foreign mercenaries, Typhos's followers, are barred from the election, which takes place by two mountains at Thebes.
15. 107The election is held on the sacred mountain: the king and priests in the centre, the soldiers around them, the onlookers below.
16. 108Soldiers vote by hands and priests by weighted votes; a tie is settled only when the gods themselves appear.
17. 109The gods appear at the election; Osiris waits as the law requires, while Typhos swims the Nile to bribe the voters.
18. 110Typhos is rejected by every vote; Osiris is brought over in honour amid good omens, though evil daemons threaten a plot.
19. 111The gods warn Osiris that Typhos, a tool of envious daemons, must be removed, or Egypt will suffer greatly.
20. 112The daemons mean to give Typhos power; the gods urge Osiris to banish him and foresee that his brotherly love will yield.
21. 113Osiris trusts the gods to protect him; his father explains that the gods are chiefly occupied with contemplation of the highest God.
22. 114Divine care descends through ranks and weakens toward the lowest beings, where daemons, reckless and far from the divine, have their place.
23. 115Like a puppet set in motion, the world runs well for a time after the gods give it a start; the good is sent from elsewhere.
24. 116An initiation with two pairs of eyes figures contemplation and action; the gods act in the world only as necessity requires.
25. 117The gods act by founding a good kingship and then return to their own work; the king must remember his heavenly origin.
26. 118Daemons besiege the soul through its irrational part, kindling desire and anger until they master it or give up.
27. 119If the higher soul masters the lower, it becomes immune to daemons, a heavenly plant; then the daemons turn to a second, outward attack.
28. 120Defeated within, daemons attack from outside by war and faction; a king who unites strength and wisdom can withstand them.
29. 121The double image of Hermes, young and old, and the Sphinx symbolize the union of strength and wisdom in a ruler.
30. 122Osiris should not burden the gods but use his own strength; the gods return only when the world's harmony wears out.
31. 123The gods intervene only in great crises; people who choose evil must not blame providence, which asks them to do their part.
32. 124The old king departs, urging Osiris to strike first; Osiris instead rules gently and tirelessly, filling Egypt with good things.
33. 125Osiris made virtue, learning, eloquence and piety flourish, neglected wealth for himself, and remitted taxes.
34. 126Osiris restored cities and attended to individuals, honouring the deserving and freeing a scholar from public burdens.
35. 127Osiris hoped to win over his brother by kindness, but envy grows with virtue; Typhos fell into a frenzy of grief.
36. 128Typhos, sleepless and haunted by his defeat, hid at home; his vain wife felt his loss of the throne even more keenly.
37. 129Typhos's ambitious and luxurious wife drove his shame at losing the throne; Osiris's wife kept out of public view.
38. 130Osiris's wife stayed modestly hidden, and Osiris placed happiness in virtue: lives are masks that God and fortune assign, to be played well.
39. 131The good man plays any part well; Osiris, knowing the soul is the measure of happiness, was unmoved by externals.
40. 132Typhos and his wife, who lived by fortune, despaired when the kingship passed them by; Typhos's grief became a public joke.
41. 133Typhos's wife revived him with pleasures; his house filled with debauchery to drive away his grief.
42. 134Amid Typhos's debauchery, evil daemons, enraged by Egypt's happiness under Osiris, prompt a plot for tyranny.
43. 135Typhos's wife frightens the wife of the foreign commander with a tale that Osiris means to destroy her husband and children.
44. 136She claims Osiris plans to expel or kill all the barbarians, and that Typhos, their friend, lost the throne because they were absent.
45. 137Having terrified the Gothic woman, Typhos's wife gradually leads her to consider a rising against the unarmed Osiris.
46. 138The women agree that the Goths will put Typhos on the throne and enjoy Egypt's wealth; rumours of a plot are spread to the commander.
47. 139Typhos secretly offers the Gothic commander the capital to plunder; the commander refuses to sack it but marches against Osiris.
48. 140Osiris surrenders himself to save the city; the barbarians, respecting his virtue, refuse Typhos's demand for his death and only exile him.
49. 141Under Typhos taxes multiplied and governorships were sold; Egypt's lament rose to heaven, but the gods waited so that all might see vice for what it is.
50. 142Typhos tried to erase Osiris's memory; favour could be bought only through his venal wife or by slandering Osiris before his cronies.
51. 143Some won favour by slandering Osiris; one rustic philosopher, whom Osiris had helped, wrote poems in his honour but kept them private.
52. 144Silent under Osiris for fear of flattery, the philosopher openly praised Osiris and cursed Typhos once the tyrant ruled.
53. 145The philosopher praised Osiris to Typhos's face; Typhos detained him, but a god appeared and promised that the tyranny would last only months.
54. 146The god foretells the foreigners' fall when the rulers tamper with worship, and Typhos's removal after a purification of the air by water and fire.
55. 147When Typhos tries, through the barbarians, to give a foreign cult a temple in the city, the stranger recognizes the god's sign.
56. 148Book Two: with faith in providence failing, the gods send night terrors and panics on the barbarian general and his army.
57. 149The barbarians, terrified without cause, behaved like madmen; even the well prepared need God, though success hides his part.
58. 150The invincible barbarian army suddenly packed up and slipped out of the city; the terrified citizens expected a massacre.
59. 151An old beggar woman at a city gate sees the Goths secretly carrying their goods out and fears the city's ruin.
60. 152The old woman reproaches the Goths for their ingratitude; a Goth moves to kill her, but a stranger, perhaps divine, overpowers him.
61. 153A brawl breaks out at the gates; the citizens, far more numerous, fight the Goths who were still carrying their goods out.
62. 154Each side suspects a plot; the Goths outside flee farther off, while those trapped inside imagine their army destroyed.
63. 155Only the Goths at the gates knew the city was undefended; the citizens won the fight for the gates and shut them.
64. 156The Goths missed their chance to retake the city: God's wisdom is invincible and man is his plaything, as Homer showed in Patroclus's games.
65. 157As in Homer's games, the strong lose; the citizens, leaderless, destroy the Goths left in the city, even burning them in a temple, while Typhos protests.
66. 158The people take the gates from Typhos, give thanks, and ask the high priest for Osiris's return; Typhos, left in place for a time, grows more rapacious.
67. 159Typhos tries to bribe the priest and recalls the Goths, who now aim to destroy Egypt; all Egyptians come to hate him.
68. 160At a council of gods and elders, Typhos's and his wife's treason with the Goths is exposed, and he is placed under guard for trial.
69. 161The gods doom Typhos to Tartarus after death; the narrator says Osiris's sacred story may be told only in part.
70. 162Osiris's exile brought him initiation; his triumphant return and his sparing of Typhos may be told, but the rest must remain hidden.
71. 163Osiris's later reign surpassed his first, restoring the golden age when Justice lived among men, as the Greek poets sing.
72. 164The Aratus quotation ends; Justice left earth when seafaring began, and her return belongs to Osiris's second reign.
73. 165The gods restored Osiris's power gradually, since good order comes only with time; the narrator refrains from revealing secrets.
74. 166Why do extreme virtue and extreme vice spring from one family? Philosophy answers with Homer's two jars of Zeus.
75. 167When one child receives an unmixed portion, the other gets the opposite, as the fig tree puts its bitterness in leaves and bark and its sweetness in the fruit.
76. 168As gardeners plant foul plants to draw off the soil's bad juices, a wicked brother may purify a family for the birth of pure virtue.
77. 169Why do the same events recur across ages? Synesius begins from the cosmos as one sympathetic whole whose heavenly part acts on the earthly.
78. 170If the heavens return to the same configurations, the same lives and events return on earth; so an ancient story may come alive again.
79. 171The myth's further meanings must stay hidden; readers who guess at them from Egyptian writings will disagree and act impiously.
80. 172Like Pythagoras's spectator at the festival, one should wait for events in order and not peer behind the curtain at what is to come.
81. 173Like a herald who announces only what the president of the games allows, one to whom God reveals the future must keep it secret.
82. 174The wise keep revealed truth secret and others should not pry; time will show all: "the days to come are the wisest witnesses."