Republic

Consider further, Socrates, another kind of language about justice and injustice employed by both laymen and poets. All with one accord reiterate that soberness and righteousness are fair and honorable, to be sure, but unpleasant and laborious, while licentiousness and injustice are pleasant and easy to win and are only in opinion and by convention disgraceful. They say that injustice pays better than justice, for the most part, and they do not scruple to felicitate bad men who are rich or have other kinds of power to do them honor in public and private, and to dishonor and disregard those who are in any way weak or poor, even while admitting that they are better men than the others. But the strangest of all these speeches are the things they say about the gods[*](The gnomic poets complain that bad men prosper for a time, but they have faith in the late punishment of the wicked and the final triumph of justice.) and virtue, how so it is that the gods themselves assign to many good men misfortunes and an evil life but to their opposites a contrary lot; and begging priests[*](There is a striking analogy between Plato’s language here and the description by Protestant historians of the sale of indulgences by Tetzel in Germany. Rich men’s doors is proverbial. Cf. 489 B.) and soothsayers go to rich men’s doors and make them believe that they by means of sacrifices and incantations have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods[*](Cf. Mill, Utility of Religion, Three Essays on Religion, p. 90: All positive religions aid this self-delusion. Bad religions teach that divine vengeance may be bought off by offerings or personal abasement. Plato, Laws 885 D, anticipates Mill. With the whole passage compare the scenes at the founding of Cloudcuckootown, Aristophanes Birds 960-990, and more seriously the medieval doctrine of the treasure of the church and the Hindu tapas.) that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals any misdeed of a man or his ancestors, and that if a man wishes to harm an enemy, at slight cost he will be enabled to injure just and unjust alike, since they are masters of spells and enchantments[*](In Laws 933 D both are used of the victim with ἐπῳδαῖς, which primarily applies to the god. Cf. Lucan, Phars. vi. 492 and 527.) that constrain the gods to serve their end. And for all these sayings they cite the poets as witnesses, with regard to the ease and plentifulness of vice, quoting:

1. Evil-doing in plenty a man shall find for the seeking;

1. Smooth is the way and it lies near at hand and is easy to enter;
2. But on the pathway of virtue the gods put sweat from the first step,

Hes. WD 287-289and a certain long and uphill road. And others cite Homer as a witness to the beguiling of gods by men, since he too said:

1. The gods themselves are moved by prayers,
2. And men by sacrifice and soothing vows,

1. And incense and libation turn their wills
2. Praying, whenever they have sinned and made transgression.

Hom. Il. 9.497

And they produce a bushel[*](ὅμαδον, lit. noise, hubbub, babel, here contemptuous. There is no need of the emendation ὁπμαθόν. Cf. 387 A, and Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, p. 82; cf. John Morley, Lit. Studies, p. 184, A bushel of books.) of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, the offspring of the Moon and of the Muses, as they affirm, and these books they use in their ritual, and make not only ordinary men but states believe that there really are remissions of sins and purifications for deeds of injustice, by means of sacrifice and pleasant sport[*](Cf. Laws 819 B.) for the living, and that there are also special rites for the defunct, which they call functions, that deliver us from evils in that other world, while terrible things await those who have neglected to sacrifice. What, Socrates, do we suppose is the effect of all such sayings about the esteem in which men and gods hold virtue and vice upon the souls that hear them, the souls of young men who are quick-witted and capable of flitting, as it were, from one expression of opinion to another and inferring from them all the character and the path whereby a man would lead the best life? Such a youth[*](Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 25: His (Plato’s) imagination was beset by the picture of some brilliant young Alcibiades standing at the crossways of life and debating in his mind whether the best chance for happiness lay in accepting the conventional moral law that serves to police the vulgar or in giving rein to the instincts and appetites of his own stronger nature. To confute the one, to convince the other, became to him the main problem of moral philosophy. Cf. Introduction x-xi; also The Idea of Good in Plato’s Republic, p. 214.) would most likely put to himself the question Pindar asks,

Is it by justice or by crooked deceit that I the higher tower shall scale and so live my life out in fenced and guarded security?

Pindar, Fr. The consequences of my being just are, unless I likewise seem so, not assets,[*](φανερὰ ζημία is familiar and slightly humorous. Cf. Starkie on Aristoph. Ach. 737.) they say, but liabilities, labor and total loss; but if I am unjust and have procured myself a reputation for justice a godlike life is promised. Then since it is

the seeming

Simonides, Fr. 76 Bergk, and Eur. Orest. 236 as the wise men show me, that

masters the reality

and is lord of happiness, to this I must devote myself without reserve. For a front and a show[*](A Pindaric mixture of metaphors beginning with a portico and garb, continuing with the illusory perspective of scene-painting, and concluding with the craftly fox trailed behind.) I must draw about myself a shadow-line of virtue, but trail behind me the fox of most sage Archilochus,[*](Cf. Fr. 86-89 Bergk, and Dio Chrysost. Or. 55. 285 R. κεπδαλέαν is a standing epithet of Reynard. Cf. Gildersleeve on Pindar Pyth. ii. 78.) shifty and bent on gain. Nay, ’tis objected, it is not easy for a wrong-doer always to lie hid.[*](Cf. my review of Jebb’s Bacchylides, Class. Phil., 1907, vol. ii. p. 235.) Neither is any other big thing facile, we shall reply. But all the same if we expect to be happy, we must pursue the path to which the footprints of our arguments point. For with a view to lying hid we will organize societies and political clubs,[*](Cf. George Miller Calhoun, Athenian Clubs in Politics and Litigation, University of Chicago Dissertation, 1911.) and there are teachers of cajolery[*](Lit. persuasion. Cf. the defintion of rhetoric, Gorgias 453 A.) who impart the arts of the popular assembly and the court-room. So that, partly by persuasion, partly by force, we shall contrive to overreach with impunity. But against the gods, it may be said, neither secrecy nor force can avail. Well, if there are no gods, or they do not concern themselves with the doings of men, neither need we concern ourselves with eluding their observation.[*](For the thought compare Tennyson, Lucretius: But he that holdsThe gods are careless, wherefore need he careGreatly for them? Cf. also Euripides I.A. 1034-1035, Anth. Pal. x. 34.) If they do exist and pay heed, we know and hear of them only from such discourses and from the poets who have described their pedigrees. But these same authorities tell us that the gods are capable of being persuaded and swerved from their course by sacrifice and soothing vows and dedications. We must believe them in both or neither.