[Gargantua and Pantagruel<br> Book IV. by Francois Rabelais]@TWC D-Link book
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Book IV.

CHAPTER 4
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Not all, returned Pantagruel.
The Stoics held them all to be mortal, except one, who alone is immortal, impassible, invisible.

Pindar plainly saith that there is no more thread, that is to say, no more life, spun from the distaff and flax of the hard-hearted Fates for the goddesses Hamadryades than there is for those trees that are preserved by them, which are good, sturdy, downright oaks; whence they derived their original, according to the opinion of Callimachus and Pausanias in Phoci.

With whom concurs Martianus Capella.

As for the demigods, fauns, satyrs, sylvans, hobgoblins, aegipanes, nymphs, heroes, and demons, several men have, from the total sum, which is the result of the divers ages calculated by Hesiod, reckoned their life to be 9720 years; that sum consisting of four special numbers orderly arising from one, the same added together and multiplied by four every way amounts to forty; these forties, being reduced into triangles by five times, make up the total of the aforesaid number.

See Plutarch, in his book about the Cessation of Oracles.
This, said Friar John, is not matter of breviary; I may believe as little or as much of it as you and I please.


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