A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries

The other authority is from Proclus in his Commentary on Plato’s Politics, page 372. Speaking concerning the priestly and symbolical mythology, he observes that from this mythology Plato himself establishes many of his own peculiar doctrines, "since in the Phaedo he venerates, with a becoming silence, the assertion delivered in the secret discourses, that men are placed in the body as in a certain prison, secured by a guard. He testifies, according to the mystic ceremonies, the different allotments of pure and impure souls in Hades, their habits, and the triple path arising from their essences; and this according to paternal and sacred institutions. All these are full of a symbolic theory and of the poetical descriptions..."