Page 61 - Gnosis volume 2

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The psychic life of the man without has hardly changed since the Cycle of the Father;

it is dominated by fright, hunger and sex which are the three main vehicles of the
General Law; it is still the image of misery and chaos.

According to the accounts handed down to us by his generation, this is how

Thucydides (460-395 B.C.) sketched a picture of living conditions during his time:

The country which bears the name of Greece, today, was not inhabited continuously
at the outset but witnessed frequent migrations. One abandoned one's home easily, in
order to make room for new arrivals.
One emigrated without any difficulty for the following reasons: there was no
commerce nor any established system of communications by land or by sea. Every one
tilled the soil for his personal needs, without making any large scale plantations with the
aim of enriching himself, for, with the free cities, one never knew if the harvests would
be pillaged by foreign thieves. Finally, one hoped to find enough for one's daily needs
3
anywhere .

The Arab historian Al-Masudi (900-956), notes that the situation had hardly changed
thirteen centuries later. He describes the mass emigration of a certain population

4
fleeing from the twofold scourge of the plague and war .

3
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. French translation by E.A. Bétant, Hachette,
Paris, 1873, I, 2.
4
Al-Masudi, Abu AlHassan Ali, The Meadows of Gold Fields, from the French translation by C.
Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courtelle, in 9 volumes, Paris, Editions of the Asiatic Society,
1861-1877, T. II, p. 10.