Regarding the soul and it's evolution, you're speaking with a much more sophistication than I possess! I'll have to come back to this once I've studied a great deal more.


pre-Socratic (pre-Pythagorean, really) Greeks didn't believe in any sort of detailed afterlife or rebirth narrative for souls

As a minor point of clarification, I'd go with pre-Pythagorean: Empedocles, at least, is a pre-Socratic that has a well-defined position on reincarnation. (He is one of a very few that I have studied with care, though.)