Michael,
    I can give you Ovid's answer.

    "victa iacet pietas, et virgo caede madentis
    ultima caelestum terras Astraea reliquit."
              -Metamorphoses Book I l.149-150

    "Pity lay vanquished, and the maiden Astraea, last of the immortals,
abandoned the blood-soaked earth."

"Astraea redux" has been proclaimed in the past. Caesar had the vanquished
pass under her yoke. No evidence she was really there.

Charles
----------
>From: Michael Springate <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: New quiry
>Date: Sun, Feb 2, 2003, 10:25 PM
>

> Charles:
>
> Did EP believe in "the eternal laws of justice", and what might that phrase
> mean? Would anybody who believes in the "eternal laws of justice" be
considered
> as a mystic (given the lack of justice here on earth)?
>
> Michael
>
> charles moyer wrote:
>
>>
>>     In Pound's "Spirit of Romance" concerning Dante's "Commedia" he writes;
>>
>> "Thus the 'Commedia' is, in the literal sense, a description of Dante's
>> vision of a journey through the realms inhabited by the spirits of men after
>> death; in a further sense it is the journey of Dante's intelligence through
>> the states of mind wherein dwell all sorts and conditions of men before
>> death; beyond this, Dante or Dante's intelligence may come to mean
>> 'Everyman' or 'Mankind,' whereat his journey becomes a symbol of mankind's
>> struggle upward out of ignorance into the clear light of philosophy. In the
>> second sense I give here, the journey is Dante's own mental and spiritual
>> development. In a fourth sense, the 'Commedia' is an expression of the laws
>> of eternal justice; 'il contrapasso,' the counterpass, as Bertran calls
>> it(5) or the law of Karma, if we are to use an Oriental term."
>>    Pound's footnote (5) reads, "Inferno, XXIV."  I have looked at my copy of
>> Dante , The Carlyle-Wicksteed translation, and I wish someone could tell me
>> what in Book XXIV can be identified as "il contrapasso" or "the
>> counterpass". In fact, what IS a counterpass?
>>     I would appreciate any explanation.
>>     Thank you in advancia,
>>
>> Charles