Republic

But if not, my friend, even as men who have fallen in love, if they think that the love is not good for them, hard though it be,[*](βίᾳ μέν, ὅμως δέ: Cf. Epist. iii. 316 E, and vii. 325 A, and Raeder, Rhein. Mus. lxi. p. 470, Aristoph. Clouds 1363 μόλις μὲν ἀλλ’ ὅμως, Eurip. Phoen. 1421 μόλις μέν, ἐξέτεινε δ’, and also Soph. Antig. 1105, O.T. 998, Eurip. Bacch. 1027, Hec. 843, Or. 1023, El. 753, Phoen. 1069, I.A. 688, 904.) nevertheless refrain, so we, owing to the love of this kind of poetry inbred in us by our education in these fine[*](Ironical, as καλλίστη in 562 A.) polities of ours, will gladly have the best possible case made out for her goodness and truth, but so long as she is unable to make good her defence we shall chant over to ourselves[*](For ἐπᾴδοντες Cf. Phaedo 114 D, 77 E.) as we listen the reasons that we have given as a counter-charm to her spell, to preserve us from slipping back into the childish loves of the multitude; for we have come to see that we must not take such poetry seriously as a serious thing[*](Cf. 602 B.) that lays hold on truth, but that he who lends an ear to it must be on his guard fearing for the polity in his soul[*](Cf. on 591 E, p. 412, note d.) and must believe what we have said about poetry.By all means, he said, I concur. Yes, for great is the struggle,[*](Cf. Phaedo 114 C, 107 C, Phaedr. 247 B, Gorg. 526 E, Blaydes on Aristoph. Peace 276, and for the whole sentence Phaedo 83 B-C, 465 D, 618 B-C f. and p. 404, note d, on 589 E.) I said, dear Glaucon, a far greater contest than we think it, that determines whether a man prove good or bad, so that not the lure of honor or wealth or any office, no, nor of poetry either, should incite us[*](ἐπαρθέντα: cf. 416 C.) to be careless of righteousness and all excellence. I agree with you, he replied, in view of what we have set forth, and I think that anyone else would do so too. And yet, said I, the greatest rewards of virtue and the prizes proposed for her we have not set forth. You must have in mind an inconceivable[*](Cf. 404 C, 509 A, 548 B, 588 a, Apol. 41 C, Charm. 155 D.) magnitude, he replied, if there are other things greater than those of which we have spoken.[*](Clement, Strom. iv. p. 496 B ὁθούνεκ’ ἀρετὴ τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις μόνη οὐκ ἐκ θυραίων τἀπίχειρα λαμβάνει, αὐτὴ δ’ ἑαυτὴν ἆθλα τῶν πόνων ἔχει. )? For surely the whole time from the boy to the old man would be small compared with all time.[*](Cf. on 496 A, p. 9, mote f and 498 D.) Nay, it is nothing, he said. What then? Do you think that an immortal thing[*](For the colorless use of πρᾶγμα see What Plato Said, p. 497, on Protag. 330 C-D. Cf. Shakes. Hamlet,I. iv. 67 being a thing immortal as itself.) ought to be seriously concerned for such a little time, and not rather for all time? I think so, he said; but what is this that you have in mind? Have you never perceived, said I, that our soul is immortal and never perishes? And he, looking me full in the face[*](ἐμβλέψας: Cf. Charmides 155 C.) in amazement,[*](Glaucon is surprised in spite of 498 D. Many uncertain inferences have been drawn from the fact that in spite of the Phaedo and Phaedrus(245 C ff.) interlocutors in Plato are always surprised at the idea of immortality. Cf. ibid, Introd. p. lxiv.) said, No, by Zeus, not I; but are you able to declare this? I certainly ought to be,[*](For the idiomatic εἰ μὴ ἀδικῶ cf. 430 ECharm. 156 A, Menex. 236 B, 612 D.) said I, and I think you too can, for it is nothing hard. It is for me, he said; and I would gladly hear from you this thing that is not hard.[*](Cf. Protag. 341 A τὸ χαλεπὸν τοῦτο, which is a little different, Herod. vii. 11 τὸ δεινὸν τὸ πείσομαι.) Listen, said I. Just speak on, he replied. You speak of[*](See Vol. I. p. 90, note a and What Plato Said, p. 567, on Cratyl. 385 B.) good and evil, do you not? I do. Is your notion of them the same as mine? What is it? That which destroys and corrupts in every case is the evil; that which preserves and benefits is the good. Yes, I think so, he said.

How about this: Do you say that there is for everything its special good and evil, as for example for the eyes ophthalmia, for the entire body disease, for grain mildew, rotting for wood, rust for bronze and iron, and, as I say, for practically everything its congenital evil and disease[*](Ruskin, Time and Tide 52 (Brantwood ed. p. 68): Every faculty of man’s soul, and every instinct of it by which he is meant to live, is exposed to its own special form of corruption,; Boethius, Cons. iii. 11 (L.C.L. trans. p. 283), things are destroyed by what is hostile; Aristot. Top. 124 a 28 εἰ γὰρ τὸ φθαρτικὸν διαλυτικόν.)?I do, he said. Then when one of these evils comes to anything does it not make the thing to which it attaches itself bad, and finally disintegrate and destroy it? Of course. Then the congenital evil of each thing and its own vice destroys it, or if that is not going to destroy it, nothing else remains that could; for obviously[*](γεvi termini. Cf. 379 A, Phaedo 106 D.) the good will never destroy anything, nor yet again will that which is neutral and neither good nor evil[*](See What Plato Said, p. 490, on Lysis 216 D.). How could it? he said. If, then, we discover[*](Cf. Vol. I. p. 529, note a, on 478 D.) anything that has an evil which vitiates it, yet is not able to dissolve and destroy it, shall we not thereupon know that of a thing so constituted there can be no destruction? That seems likely, he said. Well, then, said I, has not the soul something that makes it evil? Indeed it has, he said, all the things that we were just now enumerating, injustice and licentiousness and cowardice and ignorance. Does any one of these things dissolve and destroy it? And reflect, lest we be misled by supposing that when an unjust and foolish man is taken in his injustice he is then destroyed by the injustice, which is the vice of soul. But conceive it thus: Just as the vice of body which is disease wastes and destroys it so that it no longer is a body at all,[*](Cf. Aristot. Pol. 1309 b 28 μηδὲ ῥῖνα ποιήσει φαίνεσθαι.) in like manner in all the examples of which we spoke it is the specific evil which, by attaching itself to the thing and dwelling in it with power to corrupt, reduces it to nonentity. Is not that so? Yes. Come, then, and consider the soul in the same way.[*](The argument that follows is strictly speaking a fallacy in that it confounds the soul with the physical principle of life. Cf. on 35 C and on 352 E, Gorg. 477 B-C, and ibid, Introd. p. lxvii. But Dean Inge, Platonism and Human Immortality (Aristot. Soc., 1919, p. 288) says: Plato’s argument, in the tenth book of the Republic, for the immortality of the soul, has found a place in scholastic theology, but is supposed to have been discredited by Kant. I venture to think that his argument, that the soul can only be destroyed by an enemy (so to speak) in pari materia, is sound. Physical evils, including death, cannot touch the soul. And wickedness does not, in our experience, dissolve the soul, nor is wickedness specially apparent when the soul (if it perishes at death) would be approaching dissolution. Cf. 610 C. Someone might object that wickedness does destroy the soul, conceived as a spiritual principle.) Do injustice and other wickedness dwelling in it, by their indwelling and attachment to it, corrupt and wither it till they bring it to death and separate it from the body? They certainly do not do that, he said. But surely, said I, it is unreasonable to suppose that the vice of something else destroys a thing while its own does not. Yes, unreasonable. For observe, Glaucon, said I, that we do not think it proper to say of the body either that it is destroyed by the badness of foods themselves, whether it be staleness or rottenness or whatever it is;[*](Plato generally disregards minor distinctions when they do not affect his point.)

but when the badness of the foods themselves engenders in the body the defect of body, then we shall say that it is destroyed owing to these foods, but by[*](Cf. 610 D.) its own vice, which is disease. But the body being one thing and the foods something else, we shall never expect the body to be destroyed by their badness, that is by an alien evil that has not produced in it the evil that belongs to it by nature.You are entirely right, he replied. On the same principle, said I, if the badness of the body does not produce in the soul the soul’s badness we shall never expect the soul to be destroyed by an alien evil apart from its own defect—one thing, that is, by the evil of another. That is reasonable, he said. Either, then, we must refute this and show that we are mistaken, or,[*](For the challenge to refute or accept the argument Cf. Soph. 259 A, 257 A, Gorg. 467 B-C, 482 B, 508 A-B, Phileb. 60 D-E.) so long as it remains unrefuted, we must never say that by fever or any other disease, or yet by the knife at the throat or the chopping to bits of the entire body, there is any more likelihood of the soul perishing because of these things, until it is proved that owing to these affections of the body the soul itself becomes more unjust and unholy. But when an evil of something else occurs in a different thing and the evil that belongs to the thing is not engendered in it, we must not suffer it to be said that the soul or anything else is in this way destroyed. But you may be sure, he said, that nobody will ever prove this, that the souls of the dying are made more unjust by death. But if anyone, said I, dares to come to grips with the argument[*](Or to take the bull by the horns. For ὁμόσε ἰέναι see What Plato Said, p. 457, on Euthyph. 3 C. Cf. ἐγγὺς ἰόντες Phaedo 95 B.) and say, in order to avoid being forced to admit the soul’s immortality, that a dying man does become more wicked and unjust,[*](Herbert Spencer nearly does this: Death by starvation from inability to catch prey shows a falling short of conduct from its ideal. It recalls the argument with which Socrates catches Callicles in Gorg. 498 E, that if all pleasures are alike those who feel pleasure are good and those who feel pain are bad.) we will postulate that, if what he says is true, injustice must be fatal to its possessor as if it were a disease, and that those who catch it die because it kills them by its own inherent nature, those who have most of it quickest, and those who have less more slowly, and not, as now in fact happens, that the unjust die owing to this but by the action of others who inflict the penalty. Nay, by Zeus, he said, injustice will not appear a very terrible thing after all if it is going to be[*](For the future indicative after εἰ, usually minatory or monitory in tone, cf. Aristoph. Birds 759, Phileb. 25 D.) fatal to its possessor, for that would be a release from all troubles.[*](Cf. Phaedo 107 C, 84 B, Blaydes on Aristoph. Acharn. 757.) But I rather think it will prove to be quite the contrary, something that kills others when it can, but renders its possessor very lively indeed,[*](μάλα is humorous, as in 506 D, Euthydem 298 D, Symp. 189 A.) and not only lively but wakeful,[*](Cf. Horace, Epist. i. 2. 32 ut iugulent hominem surgunt de nocte latrones.) so far, I ween, does it dwell[*](For the metaphor Cf. Proverbs viii. 12 σοφία κατεσκήνωσα βουλήν. Plato personifies injustice, as he does justice in 612 D,σκιαγραφία in 602 D, bravery in Laches 194 A,κολαστική in Soph. 229 A,κολακευτική Gorg. 464 C,σμικρότης Parmen. 150 A πονηρία Apol. 39 A-B, and many other abstract conceptions. See further Phileb. 63 A-B, 15 D, 24 A, Rep. 465 A-B, Laws 644 C, Cratyl. 438 D.) from deadliness. You say well, I replied; for when the natural vice and the evil proper to it cannot kill and destroy the soul, still less[*](σχολῇ: cf. 354 C, Phaedo 106 D.) will the evil appointed for the destruction of another thing destroy the soul or anything else, except that for which it is appointed.[*](Cf. 345 D.) Still less indeed, he said, in all probability.

Then since it is not destroyed by any evil whatever, either its own or alien, it is evident that it must necessarily exist always, and that if it always exists it is immortal.Necessarily, he said. Let this, then, I said, be assumed to be so. But if it is so, you will observe that these souls must always be the same. For if none perishes they could not, I suppose, become fewer nor yet more numerous.[*](Cf. Carveth Read, Man and His Superstitions p. 104: Plato thought that by a sort of law of psychic conservation there must always be the same number of souls in world. There must therefore be reincarnation. . . . ) For if any class of immortal things increased you are aware that its increase would come from the mortal and all things would end by becoming immortal.[*](Cf. Phaedo 72 C-D.) You say truly. But, said I, we must not suppose this, for reason will not suffer it nor yet must we think that in its truest nature the soul is the kind of thing that teems with infinite diversity and unlikeness and contradiction in and with itself.[*](The idea of self-contradiction is frequent in Plato. See What Plato said, p. 505, on Gorg. 482 B-C.) How am I to understand that? he said. It is not easy, said I, for a thing to be immortal that is composed of many elements[*](σύνθετον: Cf. Phaedo 78 C, Plotinus, Enneades i. 1. 12, Berkeley, Principles, 141: We have shown that the soul is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended; and it is consequently incorruptible. . . . cannot possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded substance. See also Zeller, Ph. d. Gr. ii. 1, pp. 828-829.) not put together in the best way, as now appeared to us[*](603 D. see also Frutiger, Mythes de Platon, pp. 90 f.) to be the case with the soul. It is not likely. Well, then, that the soul is immortal our recent argument and our other[*](Such as are given in the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and perhaps elsewhere.) proofs would constrain us to admit. But to know its true nature we must view it not marred by communion with the body[*](Cf. also Phaedo 82 E, 83 D-E, 81 C, and Wisdom of Solomon ix 14 φθαρτὸν γὰρ σῶμα βαρύνει ψυχήν, καὶ βρίθει τὸ γεῶδες σκῆνος νοῦν πολυφρόντιδα, for the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things.) and other miseries as we now contemplate it, but consider adequately in the light of reason what it is when it is purified, and then you will find it to be a far more beautiful thing and will more clearly distinguish justice and injustice and all the matters that we have now discussed. But though we have stated the truth of its present appearance, its condition as we have now contemplated it resembles that of the sea-god Glaucus[*](See schol. Hermann vi. 362, Eurip. Or. 364 f., Apollonius, Argon. 1310 ff., Athenaeus 296 B and D, Anth. Pal. vi. 164, Frazer on Pausanias ix. 22. 7, Gädecker, Glaukos der Meeresgott, Göttingen, 1860.) whose first nature can hardly be made out by those who catch glimpses of him, because the original members of his body are broken off and mutilated and crushed and in every way marred by the waves, and other parts have attached themselves[*](Cf. Tim. 42 C προσφύντα.) to him, accretions of shells[*](Cf. Phaedr. 250 C ὀστρέου τρόπον δεδεσμευμένοι, Phaedo 110 A.) and sea-weed and rocks, so that he is more like any wild creature than what he was by nature—even such, I say, is our vision of the soul marred by countless evils. But we must look elsewhere, Glaucon. Where? said he. To its love of wisdom. And we must note the things of which it has apprehensions, and the associations for which it yearns, as being itself akin to the divine[*](Cf. Phaedo 79 D, Laws 899 D, and 494 D τὸ σιγγενὲς τῶν λόγων.) and the immortal and to eternal being, and so consider what it might be if it followed the gleam unreservedly and were raised by this impulse out of the depths of this sea in which it is now sunk, and were cleansed and scraped free[*](Cf. Phileb. 55 C περικρούωμεν, 519 A περιεκόπη.) of the rocks and barnacles which, because it now feasts on earth, cling to it in wild profusion of earthy and stony accretion by reason of these feastings that are accounted happy.[*](Cf. Charm. 158 A, Laws 695 A, 783 A. See λεγόμενα ἀγαθά491 C, 495 A, Laws 661 C.)

And then one might see whether in its real nature[*](Cf. Phaedo 246 A.In Tim. 72 D Plato says that only God knows the truth about the soul. See Laws 641 D, and Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 42.) it is manifold[*](Cf. Phaedr. 271 A.) or single in its simplicity, or what is the truth about it and how.[*](ὅπῃ καὶ ὅπως: cf. 621 B, Phaedo 100 D, Tim. 37 A-B, Laws 652 A, 834 E, 899 A and B.) But for the present we have, I think, fairly well described its sufferings and the forms it assumes in this human life of ours.We certainly have, he said. Then, said I, we have met all the other demands of the argument, and we have not invoked the rewards and reputes of justice as you said Homer and Hesiod[*](363 B-C.) do, but we have proved that justice in itself is the best thing for the soul itself, and that the soul ought to do justice whether it possess the ring of Gyges[*](359 D f.) or not,[*](Cf. 367 E.) or the helmet of Hades[*](Iliad v. 845, Blaydes on Aristoph. Acharn. 390.) to boot. Most true, he said. Then, said I, Glaucon, there can no longer be any objection,[*](Cf. Soph. 243 A, Laws 801 E ἄνευ φθόνων, Eurip. Hippol. 497 οὐκ ἐπίφθονον, Aeschines, De falsa legatione 167 (49). Friedländer, Platon, ii. p. 406 does object and finds the passage inconsistent with the idealism of 592 and with Laws 899 D ff. and 905 B. Cf. Renan, Averroes, pp. 156-157, Guyau, Esquisse d’une morale, pp. 140-141. See Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 80 and n. 612, Idea of Justice in Plato’s Republic, pp. 197-198. Gomperz, ignoring this passage and interpreting the Republic wholly from 367 E, strangely argues that Phaedo 107 C proves that the Phaedo must have been composed at a time when Plato was less sure of the coincidence of justice and happiness. A religious thinker may in his theodicy justify the ways of God to man by arguing that worldly happiness is not the real happiness, and yet elsewhere remark that, as a rule, the righteous is not forsaken even in this world. Cf. Psalm 37.25 ff., Prov. 10.3 and passim. See Renan, Hist. du Peuple d’Israel, p. 376: Il en est de ces passages comme de tant de préceptes de l’Evangile, insensés si on en fait des articles de code, excellents si on n’y voit, que l’expression hyperbolique de hauts sentiments moraux.) can there, to our assigning to justice and virtue generally, in addition, all the various rewards and wages that they bring to the soul from men and gods, both while the man still lives and, after his death? There certainly can be none, he said. Will you, then, return to me what you borrowed[*](Cf. Polit. 267 A.) in the argument? What, pray? I granted to you that the just man should seem and be thought to be unjust and the unjust just; for you thought that, even if the concealment of these things from gods and men was an impossibility in fact, nevertheless, it ought to be conceded for the sake of the argument,[*](τοῦ λόγου ἕνεκα: not the same as λόγου ἕνεκα. See on 581 C, p. 374, note a.) in order that the decision might be made between absolute justice and absolute injustice. Or do you not remember? It would be unjust of me,[*](Cf. εἰ μὴ ἀδικῶ 608 D.) he said, if I did not. Well, then, now that they have been compared and judged, I demand back from you in behalf of justice the repute that she in fact enjoys[*](For the idiom ὥσπερ ἔχει δόξης cf. 365 A ὡς . . . ἔχουσι τιμῆς, 389 C ὅπως . . . πράξεως ἔχει, Thucyd. i. 22 ὡς . . . μνήμης ἔχοι. For the thought cf. Isoc. viii. 33.) from gods and men, and I ask that we admit that she is thus esteemed in order that she may gather in the prizes[*](Cf. Phileb. 22 B and E.) which she wins from the seeming and bestows on her possessors, since she has been proved to bestow the blessings that come from the reality and not to deceive those who truly seek and win her. That is a just demand, he said. Then, said I, will not the first of these restorations be that the gods certainly[*](γεvi termini. Cf. 379 A and Class. Phil. x. p. 335.) are not unaware[*](Cf. 365 D.) of the true character of each of the two, the just and the unjust? We will restore that, he said. And if they are not concealed, the one will be dear to the gods[*](Cf. Phileb. 39 E.) and the other hateful to them, as we agreed in the beginning.[*](Cf. 352 B.) That is so.

And shall we not agree that all things that come from the gods work together for the best[*](This recalls the faith of Socrates in Apol. 41 C-D and Phaedo 63 B-C, and anticipates the theodicy of Laws 899 D ff., 904 D-E ff.) for him that is dear to the gods, apart from the inevitable evil caused by sin in a former life[*](Besides obvious analogies with Buddhism, this recalls Empedocles fr. 115, Diels i3 p. 267.)?By all means.This, then, must be our conviction about the just man, that whether he fall into poverty or disease or any other supposed evil, for him all these things will finally prove good, both in life and in death. For by the gods assuredly that man will never be neglected who is willing and eager to be righteous, and by the practice of virtue to be likened unto god[*](Cf. ὁμοίωσις θεῷ Theaet. 176 B, and What Plato Said, p. 578, p. 72, note d.) so far as that is possible for man.It is reasonable, he said, that such a one should not be neglected by his like.[*](Cf. Laws 716 C-D, 904 E.) And must we not think the opposite of the unjust man? Most emphatically. Such then are the prizes of victory which the gods bestow upon the just. So I think, at any rate, he said. But what, said I, does he receive from men? Is not this the case, if we are now to present the reality? Do not your smart but wicked men fare as those racers do who run well[*](For the order Cf. Laws 913 B λεγόμενον εὖ, Thucyd. i. 71. 7, Vahlen, Op. acad. i. 495-496. for the figure of the race cf. Eurip. El. 955, 1Corinthians ix. 24 f., Heb. xii. 1, Gal. ii. 2, v. 7, Phil. ii. 16.) from the scratch but not back from the turn? They bound nimbly away at the start, but in the end are laughed to scorn and run off the field uncrowned and with their ears on their shoulders.[*](English idiom would say, with their tails between their legs. Cf. Horace, Sat. i. 9. 20 dimitto auriculas. For the idea cf. also Laws 730 C-D, Demosth. ii. 10, and for εἰς τέλος, Laws 899 E πρὸς τέλος, Hesiod, Works and Days 216 ἐς τέλος ἐξελθοῦσα, Eurip. Ion 1621 εἰς τέλος γὰρ οἱ μὲν ἐσθλοὶ τυγχάνουσιν ἀξίων, for the good at last shall overcome, at last attain their right. (Way, Loeb tr.)) But the true runners when they have come to the goal receive the prizes and bear away the crown. Is not this the usual outcome for the just also, that towards the end of every action and association and of life as a whole they have honor and bear away the prizes from men? So it is indeed. Will you, then, bear with me if I say of them all that you said[*](Cf. Vol. I. pp. 125-127, 362 B-C.) of the unjust? For I am going to say that the just, when they become older, hold the offices in their own city if they choose, marry from what families they will, and give their children in marriage to what families they please, and everything that you said of the one I now repeat of the other; and in turn I will say of the unjust that the most of them, even if they escape detection in youth, at the end of their course are caught and derided, and their old age is made miserable by the contumelies of strangers and townsfolk. They are lashed and suffer all things[*](He turns the tables here as in Gorg. 527 A. The late punishment of the wicked became an ethical commonplace. Cf. Plutarch’s De sera numinis vindicta 1, also Job and Psalms passim.) which you truly said are unfit for ears polite.[*](Cf. 361 E ἀγροικοτέρως, and Gorg. 473 C.) Suppose yourself to have heard from me a repetition of all that they suffer. But, as I say, consider whether you will bear with me. Assuredly, he said, for what you say is just.

Such then while he lives are the prizes, the wages, and the gifts that the just man receives from gods and men in addition to those blessings which justice herself bestowed.And right fair and abiding rewards, he said. Well, these, I said, are nothing in number and magnitude compared with those that await both[*](i.e. the just and unjust man.) after death. And we must listen to the tale of them, said I, in order that each may have received in full[*](τελέως: cf. 361 A.) what is due to be said of him by our argument. Tell me, he said, since there are not many things to which I would more gladly listen. It is not, let me tell you, said I, the tale[*](See Proclus, In Remp.,Kroll ii. 96 ff., Macrob. in Somnium Scip. i. 2. The Epicurean Colotes highly disapproved of Plato’s method of putting his beliefs in this form. See Chassang, Histoire du roman, p. 15. See also Dieterich, Nekyia, pp. 114 ff., and Adam ad loc.) to Alcinous told[*](Odyssey ix.-xii. The term also became proverbial for a lengthy tale. See K. Tümpel, Ἀλκίνου ἀπόλογος, Philologus 52. 523 ff.) that I shall unfold, but the tale of a warrior bold,[*](Plato puns on the name Alcinous. For other puns on proper names see on 580 B. See Arthur Platt, Plato’s Republic, 614 B, Class. Review, 1911, pp. 13-14. For the ἀλλὰ μέν without a corresponding δέ he compares Aristoph. Acharn. 428 οὐ Βελλεροφόντης· ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖνος μὲν ἦ χωλός . . . (which Blaydes changed to ἀλλὰ μήν), Odyssey xv. 405 and Eryxias 308 B.) Er, the son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian.[*](Perhaps we might say, of the tribe of Everyman. For the question of his identity see Platt, loc. cit.) 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 day[*](Thomas Browne, Urn Burial, ch. iii., Plato’s historian of the other world lies twelve days incorrupted, while his soul was viewing the large stations of the dead, See also Rohde, Psyche ii.6 pp. 92-93.) as he lay upon the pyre, revived,[*](Stories of persons restored to life are fairly common in ancient literature. There are Eurydice and Alcestis in Greek mythology, in the Old Testament the son of the widow revived by Elijah (1Kings xvii. 17 ff. Cf. 2Kings iv. 34 ff. and xiii. 21), in the New Testament the daughter of Jairus (Matt. ix. 23 f.), the son of the widow of Nain (Luke vii. 11 ff.), and Lazarus(John xi.). but none of these recount their adventures. Cf. also Luke xvi. 31 If they hear not Moses and the prophets neither will they be persuaded through one rose from the dead. But in that very parable Lazarus is shown in Abraham’s bosom and the rich man in torment. See further, Proclus, In Remp. ii. pp. 113-116, Rohde, Psyche ii.6 p. 191.) and after coming to life related what, he said, he had seen in the world beyond. He said that when his soul[*](For the indirect reflexive cf. p. 507, note f, on 617 E.) went forth from his body he journeyed with a great company and that they came to a mysterious region[*](For the description of the place of judgement cf. also Gorg. 524 A. Cf. Phaedo 107 D, 113 D, where there is no description but simply the statement that the souls are brought to a place and judged. On the topography of the myth in general cf. Bréhier, La Philos. de Plot. pp. 28-29: Voyez, par exemple, la manière dont Numénius . . . interprète le mythe du Xe livre de Ia République, et comment il précise, avec Ia lourdeur d’un théologien, les traits que la poésie de Platon avait abandonnés à l’imagination du lecteur. Le lieu du jugement devient le centre du monde; le ciel platonicien devient Ia sphère des fixes; le lieu sonterrain où sont punies les âmes, ce sont les planètes; la bouche du ciel, par laquelle les âmes descendront à la naissance, est le tropique du Cancer; et c’est par le Capricorne qu’elles remontent.) 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 sitting[*](Cf. Gorg. 523 E f., 524 E-525 B, 526 B-C.) between these, and that after every judgement they bade the righteous journey to the right and upwards through the heaven with tokens attached[*](Gorg. 526 B.) to them in front of the judgement passed upon them, and the unjust to take the road to the left[*](Cf. Gorg. 525 A-B, 526 B. For right and left cf. the story of the last judgement, Matt. xxv. 33-34 and 41.) and downward, they too wearing behind signs of all that had befallen them, and that when he himself drew near they told him that he must be the messenger[*](Cf. the rich man’s request that a messenger be sent to his brethren, Luke xvi. 27-31.) to mankind to tell them of that other world,[*](ἐκεῖ: so in 330 D, 365 A, 498 C, Phaedo 61 E, 64 A, 67 B, 68 E, Apol. 40 E, 41 C, Crito 54 B, Symp. 192 E. In 500 D and Phaedr. 250 A it refers to the world of the ideas, in 516 C and 520 C to the world of the cave.) 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, 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 meadow[*](Cf. Gorg. 524 A.) and encamped[*](Cf. 621 A, 610 E, and John i. 14 ἐσκήνωσεν.) there as at a festival,[*](Cf. 421 B.) 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.