exist, by that purest intellectual exercise about the things which do
exist, whereby alone the eye of the soul is nourished and brightened, as
Socrates says in the Phaedrus; and that the Noetic Gods will give to me
the perfect reason, and the Noeric Gods the power which leads up to
this, and that the rulers of the Universe above the heaven will impart
to me an energy unshaken by material notions and emancipated from them,
and those to whom the world is given as their dominion a winged life,
and the angelic choirs a true manifestation of divine things, and the
good daemons the fulness of the inspiration which comes from the Gods,
and the heroes a grand, and venerable, and lofty fixedness of mind, and
the whole divine race together a perfect preparation for sharing in
Plato's most mystical and far-seeing speculations, which he declares to
us himself in the Parmenides, with the profundity befitting such topics,
but which he (i.e. his master Syrianus) completed by his most pure and
luminous apprehensions, who did most truly share the Platonic feast, and
was the medium for transmitting the divine truth, the guide in our
speculations, and the hierophant of these divine words; who, as I think,
came down as a type of philosophy, to do good to the souls that are
here, in place of idols, sacrifices, and the whole mystery of
purification, a leader of salvation to the men who are now and who shall
be hereafter. And may the whole band of those who are above us be
propitious; and may the whole force which they supply be at hand,
kindling before us that light which, proceeding from them, may guide us
to them."

Surely this is an interesting document. The last Pagan Greek prayer, I
believe, which we have on record; the death-wail of the old world--not
without a touch of melody. One cannot altogether admire the style; it
is inflated, pedantic, written, I fear, with a considerable
consciousness that he was saying the right thing and in the very finest