Various - Notes and Queries, Number 38, July 20, 1850

For the assistance of the general reader, I have introduced hasty translations of the several passages quoted.

(And I moreover tell you, and do you meditate well upon it, that) you yourself are not destined to live long, for even now death is drawing nigh unto you, and a violent fate awaits you,—about to be slain in fight by the hands of Achilles, the irreproachable son of Oacus.

Consider now whether I may not be to you the cause of divine anger, in that day when Paris and Phoebus Apollo shall slay you, albeit so mighty, at the Scaean gate.

Wherefore I have an earnest desire to prophesy to you who have condemned me; for I am already arrived at that stage of my existence in which, especially, men utter prophetic sayings, that is, when they are about to die.

That time, indeed, the soul of man appears to be in a manner divine, for to a certain extent it foresees things which are about to happen.

Pythagoras the Samian, and some others of the ancient philosophers, showed that the souls of men were immortal, and that, when they were on the point of separating from the body, they possessed a knowledge of futurity.

The soul, says Aristotle, when on the point of taking its departure from the body, foretells and prophesies things about to happen.