Where Do the Souls Go?
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Εἰ διαμένουσιν αἱ ψυχαί, πῶς αὐτὰς ἐξ ἀιδίου χωρεῖ ὁ ἀήρ; πῶς δὲ ἡ γῆ χωρεῖ τὰ τῶν ἐκ τοσούτου αἰῶνος θαπτομένων σώματα; ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐνθάδε ἡ τούτων μετὰ ποσήν τινα ἐπιδιαμονὴν μεταβολὴ καὶ διάλυσις χώραν ἄλλοις νεκροῖς ποιεῖ, οὕτως αἱ εἰς τὸν ἀέρα μεθιστάμεναι ψυχαί, ἐπὶ ποσὸν συμμείνασαι, μεταβάλλουσι καὶ χέονται καὶ ἐξάπτονται εἰς τὸν τῶν ὅλων σπερματικὸν λόγον ἀναλαμβανόμεναι καὶ τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον χώραν ταῖς προσσυνοικιζομέναις παρέχουσι. τοῦτο δ’ ἄν τις ἀποκρίναιτο ἐφ’ ὑποθέσει τοῦ τὰς ψυχὰς διαμένειν.
If the souls persist after death, how does the air have room for them from all eternity? And how does the earth have room for the bodies of those buried over so vast an age? For just as here the change and dissolution of these bodies, after they have lasted a while, makes room for other corpses, so the souls that pass into the air, after abiding for a time, change and are poured out and kindled back into the seminal reason of the Whole, being taken up again — and in this way they make room for those newly settling in beside them. So one would answer, on the supposition that the souls persist.
A physical puzzle Marcus poses even on the assumption that souls survive death: how could air or earth have room for all the souls and bodies of so many ages? His answer — as bodies decompose to make room for new corpses, so surviving souls are reabsorbed into the generative reason of the cosmos.
Marcus reasons about survival after death not by asserting a doctrine but by working through a difficulty, in the manner of a natural philosopher. Grant, for argument’s sake (ἐφ᾽ ὑποθέσει), that souls do διαμένειν, persist. Then a problem arises: the accumulated souls of countless generations would have to be stored somewhere, and neither the air above nor the earth below could hold so many from all eternity. The objection is really a version of the ancient worry about an actual infinity of stored things.
His solution keeps the whole scheme within Stoic physics. Souls, on this view, do not survive forever intact; like the buried bodies that decompose to make room for new corpses, souls that pass into the air last "for a time" and are then reabsorbed — μεταβάλλουσι καὶ χέονται καὶ ἐξάπτονται, they change, are diffused, and flare back up into the σπερματικὸς λόγος, the seminal reason of the universe. Being fiery breath, the soul flares out into the cosmic fire from which it came, freeing space for the next arrivals. Even personal survival, then, is temporary and cyclical: a portion of the cosmos briefly individuated and then recalled. The careful hedge "so one would answer, supposing the souls persist" shows Marcus’s honesty — he is testing a hypothesis, not preaching immortality.
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