Republic, Book X, 614b

“It is not, let me tell you,” said I, “the tale3 to Alcinous told4 that I shall unfold, but the tale of a warrior bold,5 Er, the son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian.6 He once upon a time was slain in battle, and when the corpses were taken up on the tenth day already decayed, was found intact, and having been brought home, at the moment of his funeral, on the twelfth day7 as he lay upon the pyre, revived,8 and after coming to life related what, he said, he had seen in the world beyond. He said that when his soul9 went forth from his body he journeyed with a great company 614c and that they came to a mysterious region10 where there were two openings side by side in the earth, and above and over against them in the heaven two others, and that judges were sitting11 between these, and that after every judgement they bade the righteous journey to the right and upwards through the heaven with tokens attached12 to them in front of the judgement passed upon them, and the unjust to take the road to the left13 and downward, they too wearing behind signs 614d of all that had befallen them, and that when he himself drew near they told him that he must be the messenger14 to mankind to tell them of that other world,15 and they charged him to give ear and to observe everything in the place. And so he said that here he saw, by each opening of heaven and earth, the souls departing after judgement had been passed upon them, while, by the other pair of openings, there came up from the one in the earth souls full of squalor and dust, and from the second there came down from heaven a second procession of souls clean and pure, 614e and that those which arrived from time to time appeared to have come as it were from a long journey and gladly departed to the meadow16 and encamped17 there as at a festival,18 and acquaintances greeted one another, and those which came from the earth questioned the others about conditions up yonder, and those from heaven asked how it fared with those others. And they told their stories to one another, the one lamenting 615a and wailing as they recalled how many and how dreadful things they had suffered and seen in their journey beneath the earth1—it lasted a thousand years2—while those from heaven related their delights and visions of a beauty beyond words. To tell it all, Glaucon, would take all our time, but the sum, he said, was this. For all the wrongs they had ever done to anyone and all whom they had severally wronged they had paid the penalty in turn tenfold for each, and the measure of this was by periods of a hundred years each,3 615b so that on the assumption that this was the length of human life the punishment might be ten times the crime; as for example that if anyone had been the cause of many deaths or had betrayed cities and armies and reduced them to slavery, or had been participant in any other iniquity, they might receive in requital pains tenfold for each of these wrongs, and again if any had done deeds of kindness and been just 615c and holy men they might receive their due reward in the same measure; and other things not worthy of record he said of those who had just been born4 and lived but a short time; and he had still greater requitals to tell of piety and impiety towards the gods and parents5 and of self-slaughter. For he said that he stood by when one was questioned by another ‘Where is Ardiaeus6 the Great?’ Now this Ardiaeos had been tyrant in a certain city of Pamphylia just a thousand years before that time and had put to death his old father 615d and his elder brother, and had done many other unholy deeds, as was the report. So he said that the one questioned replied, ‘He has not come,’ said he, ‘nor will he be likely to come here.

“‘For indeed this was one of the dreadful sights we beheld; when we were near the mouth and about to issue forth and all our other sufferings were ended, we suddenly caught sight of him and of others, the most of them, I may say, tyrants.7 But there were some 615e of private station, of those who had committed great crimes. And when these supposed that at last they were about to go up and out, the mouth would not receive them, but it bellowed when anyone of the incurably wicked8 or of those who had not completed their punishment tried to come up. And thereupon,’ he said, ‘savage men of fiery aspect9 who stood by and took note of the voice laid hold on them10 and bore them away. But Ardiaeus 616a and others they bound hand and foot and head and flung down and flayed them and dragged them by the wayside, carding them on thorns and signifying to those who from time to time passed by for what cause they were borne away, and that they were to be hurled into Tartarus.1 And then, though many and manifold dread things had befallen them, this fear exceeded all—lest each one should hear the voice when he tried to go up, and each went up most gladly when it had kept silence. And the judgements and penalties were somewhat after this manner, 616b and the blessings were their counterparts. But when seven days had elapsed for each group in the meadow, they were required to rise up on the eighth and journey on, and they came in four days to a spot whence they discerned, extended from above throughout the heaven and the earth, a straight light like a pillar, most nearly resembling the rainbow, but brighter and purer. To this they came 616c after going forward a day's journey, and they saw there at the middle of the light the extremities of its fastenings stretched from heaven; for this light was the girdle of the heavens like the undergirders2 of triremes, holding together in like manner the entire revolving vault. And from the extremities was stretched the spindle of Necessity,3 through which all the orbits turned. Its staff and its hook were made of adamant, and the whorl of these and other kinds was commingled. And the nature of the whorl was this: 616d Its shape was that of those in our world, but from his description we must conceive it to be as if in one great whorl, hollow and scooped out, there lay enclosed, right through, another like it but smaller, fitting into it as boxes that fit into one another,4 and in like manner another, a third, and a fourth, and four others, for there were eight of the whorls in all, lying within one another, 616e showing their rims as circles from above and forming the continuous back of a single whorl about the shaft, which was driven home through the middle of the eighth. Now the first and outmost whorl had the broadest circular rim, that of the sixth was second, and third was that of the fourth, and fourth was that of the eighth, fifth that of the seventh, sixth that of the fifth, seventh that of the third, eighth that of the second; and that of the greatest was spangled, that of the seventh brightest, that of the eighth 617a took its color from the seventh, which shone upon it. The colors of the second and fifth were like one another and more yellow than the two former. The third had the whitest color, and the fourth was of a slightly ruddy hue; the sixth was second in whiteness. The staff turned as a whole in a circle with the same movement, but within the whole as it revolved the seven inner circles revolved gently in the opposite direction to the whole,1 and of these seven the eighth moved most swiftly, 617b and next and together with one another the seventh, sixth and fifth; and third2 in swiftness, as it appeared to them, moved the fourth with returns upon itself, and fourth the third and fifth the second. And the spindle turned on the knees of Necessity, and up above on each of the rims of the circles a Siren stood, borne around in its revolution and uttering one sound, one note, and from all the eight there was the concord of a single harmony.3 And there were another three 617c who sat round about at equal intervals, each one on her throne, the Fates,4 daughters of Necessity, clad in white vestments with filleted heads, Lachesis, and Clotho, and Atropos, who sang in unison with the music of the Sirens, Lachesis singing the things that were, Clotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be. And Clotho with the touch of her right hand helped to turn the outer circumference of the spindle, pausing from time to time. Atropos with her left hand in like manner helped to turn the inner circles, and Lachesis 617d alternately with either hand lent a hand to each.

“Now when they arrived they were straight-way bidden to go before Lachesis, and then a certain prophet5 first marshalled them in orderly intervals, and thereupon took from the lap of Lachesis lots and patterns of lives and went up to a lofty platform and spoke, ‘This is the word of Lachesis, the maiden daughter of Necessity, “Souls that live for a day,6 now is the beginning of another cycle of mortal generation where birth is the beacon of death. 617e No divinity7 shall cast lots for you, but you shall choose your own deity. Let him to whom falls the first lot first select a life to which he shall cleave of necessity. But virtue has no master over her,8 and each shall have more or less of her as he honors her or does her despite. The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.9“’ So saying, the prophet flung the lots out among them all, and each took up the lot that fell by his side, except himself; him they did not permit.10 And whoever took up a lot saw plainly what number he had drawn. 618a And after this again the prophet placed the patterns of lives before them on the ground, far more numerous than the assembly. They were of every variety, for there were lives of all kinds of animals and all sorts of human lives, for there were tyrannies among them, some uninterrupted till the end1 and others destroyed midway and issuing in penuries and exiles and beggaries; and there were lives of men of repute for their forms and beauty and bodily strength otherwise 618b and prowess and the high birth and the virtues of their ancestors, and others of ill repute in the same things, and similarly of women. But there was no determination of the quality of soul, because the choice of a different life inevitably2 determined a different character. But all other things were commingled with one another and with wealth and poverty and sickness and health and the intermediate3 conditions. —And there, dear Glaucon, it appears, is the supreme hazard4 for a man. 618c And this is the chief reason why it should be our main concern that each of us, neglecting all other studies, should seek after and study this thing5—if in any way he may be able to learn of and discover the man who will give him the ability and the knowledge to distinguish the life that is good from that which is bad, and always and everywhere to choose the best that the conditions allow, and, taking into account all the things of which we have spoken and estimating the effect on the goodness of his life of their conjunction or their severance, to know how beauty commingled with poverty or wealth and combined with 618d what habit of soul operates for good or for evil, and what are the effects of high and low birth and private station and office and strength and weakness and quickness of apprehension and dullness and all similar natural and acquired habits of the soul, when blended and combined with one another,6 so that with consideration of all these things he will be able to make a reasoned choice between the better and the worse life, 618e with his eyes fixed on the nature of his soul, naming the worse life that which will tend to make it more unjust and the better that which will make it more just. But all other considerations he will dismiss, for we have seen that this is the best choice, 619a both for life and death. And a man must take with him to the house of death an adamantine1 faith in this, that even there he may be undazzled2 by riches and similar trumpery, and may not precipitate himself into tyrannies and similar doings and so work many evils past cure and suffer still greater himself, but may know how always to choose in such things the life that is seated in the mean3 and shun the excess in either direction, both in this world so far as may be and in all the life to come; 619b for this is the greatest happiness for man.

“And at that time also the messenger from that other world reported that the prophet spoke thus: ‘Even for him who comes forward last, if he make his choice wisely and live strenuously, there is reserved an acceptable life, no evil one. Let not the foremost in the choice be heedless nor the last be discouraged.’ When the prophet had thus spoken he said that the drawer of the first lot at once sprang to seize the greatest tyranny,4 and that in his folly and greed he chose it 619c without sufficient examination, and failed to observe that it involved the fate of eating his own children, and other horrors, and that when he inspected it at leisure he beat his breast and bewailed his choice, not abiding by the forewarning of the prophet. For he did not blame himself5 for his woes, but fortune and the gods and anything except himself. He was one of those who had come down from heaven, a man who had lived in a well-ordered polity in his former existence, 619d participating in virtue by habit6 and not by philosophy; and one may perhaps say that a majority of those who were thus caught were of the company that had come from heaven, inasmuch as they were unexercised in suffering. But the most of those who came up from the earth, since they had themselves suffered and seen the sufferings of others, did not make their choice precipitately. For which reason also there was an interchange of good and evil for most of the souls, as well as because of the chances of the lot. Yet if at each return to the life of this world 619e a man loved wisdom sanely, and the lot of his choice did not fall out among the last, we may venture to affirm, from what was reported thence, that not only will he be happy here but that the path of his journey thither and the return to this world will not be underground and rough but smooth and through the heavens. For he said that it was a sight worth seeing to observe how the several souls selected their lives. 620a He said it was a strange, pitiful, and ridiculous spectacle, as the choice was determined for the most part by the habits of their former lives.1 He saw the soul that had been Orpheus’, he said, selecting the life of a swan,2 because from hatred of the tribe of women, owing to his death at their hands, it was unwilling to be conceived and born of a woman. He saw the soul of Thamyras3 choosing the life of a nightingale; and he saw a swan changing to the choice of the life of man, and similarly other musical animals. 620b The soul that drew the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion; it was the soul of Ajax, the son of Telamon, which, because it remembered the adjudication of the arms of Achilles, was unwilling to become a man. The next, the soul of Agamemnon, likewise from hatred of the human race because of its sufferings, substituted the life of an eagle.4 Drawing one of the middle lots the soul of Atalanta caught sight of the great honors attached to an athlete's life and could not pass them by but snatched at them. 620c After her, he said, he saw the soul of Epeius,5 the son of Panopeus, entering into the nature of an arts and crafts woman. Far off in the rear he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites6 clothing itself in the body of an ape. And it fell out that the soul of Odysseus drew the last lot of all and came to make its choice, and, from memory of its former toils having flung away ambition, went about for a long time in quest of the life of an ordinary citizen who minded his own business,7 and with difficulty found it lying in some corner disregarded by the others, 620d and upon seeing it said that it would have done the same had it drawn the first lot, and chose it gladly. And in like manner, of the other beasts some entered into men8 and into one another, the unjust into wild creatures, the just transformed to tame, and there was every kind of mixture and combination. But when, to conclude, all the souls had chosen their lives in the order of their lots, they were marshalled and went before Lachesis. And she sent with each, 620e as the guardian of his life and the fulfiller of his choice, the genius9 that he had chosen, and this divinity led the soul first to Clotho, under her hand and her turning10 of the spindle to ratify the destiny of his lot and choice; and after contact with her the genius again led the soul to the spinning of Atropos11 to make the web of its destiny12 irreversible, and then without a backward look it passed beneath the throne of Necessity. 621a And after it had passed through that, when the others also had passed, they all journeyed to the Plain of Oblivion,1 through a terrible and stifling heat, for it was bare of trees and all plants, and there they camped at eventide by the River of Forgetfulness,2 whose waters no vessel can contain. They were all required to drink a measure of the water, and those who were not saved by their good sense drank more than the measure, and each one as he drank forgot all things. 621b And after they had fallen asleep and it was the middle of the night, there was a sound of thunder and a quaking of the earth, and they were suddenly wafted thence, one this way, one that, upward to their birth like shooting stars.3 Er himself, he said, was not allowed to drink of the water, yet how and in what way he returned to the body he said he did not know, but suddenly recovering his sight4 he saw himself at dawn lying on the funeral pyre.—And so, Glaucon, the tale was saved,5 as the saying is, and was not lost. 621c And it will save us6 if we believe it, and we shall safely cross the River of Lethe, and keep our soul unspotted from the world.7 But if we are guided by me we shall believe that the soul is immortal and capable of enduring all extremes of good and evil, and so we shall hold ever to the upward way and pursue righteousness with wisdom always and ever, that we may be dear to ourselves8 and to the gods both during our sojourn here and when we receive our reward, 621d as the victors in the games9 go about to gather in theirs. And thus both here and in that journey of a thousand years, whereof I have told you, we shall fare well."

Antonia's Summary and Interpretation

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