Tertullian — On the Soul 54
ON THE RECEPTION. Where then the soul will be led, we now render from here. Nearly all philosophers who claim the soul's immortality — however they will — yet claim it: Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato, and those who grant it some time from departure until the conflagration of the universe, as the Stoics — place only their own, that is the wise, in upper dwellings.
Plato does not grant this rashly to philosophers' souls, but to those who have adorned philosophy with love of boys — so even among philosophers impurity holds a great privilege. With him, then, wise souls are raised into the ether; with Arius into the air; with the Stoics under the moon. I wonder at these last, that they lay the unwise souls about the earth, when they affirm those are taught by the wise much higher up. Where will the school's region be in so great a distance of lodgings? The rest of the souls they cast down to the lower places. Plato describes these as a bosom of the earth in the Phaedo, into which all the stains of worldly filths flow together and settle there and exhale, and as by the mud of their uncleannesses pack a grosser draught and a private air there.
Latin
DE RECEPTV. [1] Quo igitur deducetur anima, iam hinc reddimus. Omnes ferme philosophi, qui immortalitatem animae, qualiterqualiter uolunt, tamen uindicant, ut Pythagoras, ut Empedocles, ut Plato, quique aliquod illi tempus indulgent ab excessu usque in conflagrationem uniuersitatis, ut Stoici, suas solas, id est sapientium, animas in supernis mansionibus collocant. [2] Plato quidem non temere philosophorum animabus hoc praestat, sed eorum qui philosophiam scilicet exornauerint amore puerorum. Adeo etiam inter philosophos magnum habet priuilegium impuritas. Itaque apud illum in aetherem sublimantur animae sapientes, apud Arium in aerem, apud Stoicos sub lunam.
[3] Quos quidem miror, quod imprudentes animas circa terram prosternant, cum illas a sapientibus multo superioribus erudiri affirment. Vbi erit scholae regio in tanta distantia deuersoriorum? Qua ratione discipulae ad magistras conuentabunt tanto discrimine absentes? Quis autem illis postumae eruditionis usus ac fructus iamiam conflagratione perituris? [4] Reliquas animas ad inferos deiciunt. Hos Plato uelut gremium terrae describit in Phaedone, quo omnes labes mundialium sordium confluendo et ibi desidendo exhalent et quasi caeno immunditiarum suarum grossiorem haustum et priuatum illic aerem stipent.