Gorgias
always been, and still continues to be in Heaven,—that he who has lived
all his life in justice and holiness shall go, when he is dead, to the
Islands of the Blessed, and dwell there in perfect happiness out of the
reach of evil; but that he who has lived unjustly and impiously shall
go to the house of vengeance and punishment, which is called Tartarus.
And in the time of Cronos, and even quite lately in the reign of Zeus,
the judgment was given on the very day on which the men were to die;
the judges were alive, and the men were alive; and the consequence was
that the judgments were not well given. Then Pluto and the authorities
from the Islands of the Blessed came to Zeus, and said that the souls
found their way to the wrong places. Zeus said: “I shall put a stop to
this; the judgments are not well given, because the persons who are
judged have their clothes on, for they are alive; and there are many
who, having evil souls, are apparelled in fair bodies, or encased in
wealth or rank, and, when the day of judgment arrives, numerous
witnesses come forward and testify on their behalf that they have lived
righteously. The judges are awed by them, and they themselves too have
their clothes on when judging; their eyes and ears and their whole
bodies are interposed as a veil before their own souls. All this is a
hindrance to them; there are the clothes of the judges and the clothes
of the judged.—What is to be done? I will tell you:—In the first place,
I will deprive men of the foreknowledge of death, which they possess at
present: this power which they have Prometheus has already received my
orders to take from them: in the second place, they shall be entirely
stripped before they are judged, for they shall be judged when they are
dead; and the judge too shall be naked, that is to say, dead—he with
his naked soul shall pierce into the other naked souls; and they shall
die suddenly and be deprived of all their kindred, and leave their
brave attire strewn upon the earth—conducted in this manner, the
judgment will be just. I knew all about the matter before any of you,
and therefore I have made my sons judges; two from Asia, Minos and
Rhadamanthus, and one from Europe, Aeacus. And these, when they are
dead, shall give judgment in the meadow at the parting of the ways,
whence the two roads lead, one to the Islands of the Blessed, and the
other to Tartarus. Rhadamanthus shall judge those who come from Asia,
and Aeacus those who come from Europe. And to Minos I shall give the
primacy, and he shall hold a court of appeal, in case either of the two
others are in any doubt:—then the judgment respecting the last journey
of men will be as just as possible.”
From this tale, Callicles, which I have heard and believe, I draw the
following inferences:—Death, if I am right, is in the first place the
separation from one another of two things, soul and body; nothing else.
And after they are separated they retain their several natures, as in
life; the body keeps the same habit, and the results of treatment or
accident are distinctly visible in it: for example, he who by nature or
training or both, was a tall man while he was alive, will remain as he
was, after he is dead; and the fat man will remain fat; and so on; and
the dead man, who in life had a fancy to have flowing hair, will have
flowing hair. And if he was marked with the whip and had the prints of
the scourge, or of wounds in him when he was alive, you might see the
same in the dead body; and if his limbs were broken or misshapen when
he was alive, the same appearance would be visible in the dead. And in
a word, whatever was the habit of the body during life would be
distinguishable after death, either perfectly, or in a great measure
and for a certain time. And I should imagine that this is equally true
of the soul, Callicles; when a man is stripped of the body, all the
natural or acquired affections of the soul are laid open to view.—And
when they come to the judge, as those from Asia come to Rhadamanthus,
he places them near him and inspects them quite impartially, not
knowing whose the soul is: perhaps he may lay hands on the soul of the
great king, or of some other king or potentate, who has no soundness in
him, but his soul is marked with the whip, and is full of the prints
and scars of perjuries and crimes with which each action has stained
him, and he is all crooked with falsehood and imposture, and has no
straightness, because he has lived without truth. Him Rhadamanthus
beholds, full of all deformity and disproportion, which is caused by
licence and luxury and insolence and incontinence, and despatches him
ignominiously to his prison, and there he undergoes the punishment
which he deserves.
Now the proper office of punishment is twofold: he who is rightly
punished ought either to become better and profit by it, or he ought to
be made an example to his fellows, that they may see what he suffers,
and fear and become better. Those who are improved when they are
punished by gods and men, are those whose sins are curable; and they
are improved, as in this world so also in another, by pain and
suffering; for there is no other way in which they can be delivered
from their evil. But they who have been guilty of the worst crimes, and
are incurable by reason of their crimes, are made examples; for, as
they are incurable, the time has passed at which they can receive any
benefit. They get no good themselves, but others get good when they
behold them enduring for ever the most terrible and painful and fearful
sufferings as the penalty of their sins—there they are, hanging up as
examples, in the prison-house of the world below, a spectacle and a
warning to all unrighteous men who come thither. And among them, as I
confidently affirm, will be found Archelaus, if Polus truly reports of
him, and any other tyrant who is like him. Of these fearful examples,
most, as I believe, are taken from the class of tyrants and kings and
potentates and public men, for they are the authors of the greatest and
most impious crimes, because they have the power. And Homer witnesses
to the truth of this; for they are always kings and potentates whom he
has described as suffering everlasting punishment in the world below:
such were Tantalus and Sisyphus and Tityus. But no one ever described
Thersites, or any private person who was a villain, as suffering
everlasting punishment, or as incurable. For to commit the worst
crimes, as I am inclined to think, was not in his power, and he was
happier than those who had the power. No, Callicles, the very bad men
come from the class of those who have power (compare Republic). And yet
in that very class there may arise good men, and worthy of all
admiration they are, for where there is great power to do wrong, to
live and to die justly is a hard thing, and greatly to be praised, and
few there are who attain to this. Such good and true men, however,
there have been, and will be again, at Athens and in other states, who
have fulfilled their trust righteously; and there is one who is quite
famous all over Hellas, Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But, in
general, great men are also bad, my friend.
As I was saying, Rhadamanthus, when he gets a soul of the bad kind,
knows nothing about him, neither who he is, nor who his parents are; he
knows only that he has got hold of a villain; and seeing this, he
stamps him as curable or incurable, and sends him away to Tartarus,
whither he goes and receives his proper recompense. Or, again, he looks
with admiration on the soul of some just one who has lived in holiness
and truth; he may have been a private man or not; and I should say,
Callicles, that he is most likely to have been a philosopher who has
done his own work, and not troubled himself with the doings of other
men in his lifetime; him Rhadamanthus sends to the Islands of the
Blessed. Aeacus does the same; and they both have sceptres, and judge;
but Minos alone has a golden sceptre and is seated looking on, as
Odysseus in Homer declares that he saw him:
“Holding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.”
Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these things, and I
consider how I shall present my soul whole and undefiled before the
judge in that day. Renouncing the honours at which the world aims, I
desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when
I die, to die as well as I can. And, to the utmost of my power, I
exhort all other men to do the same. And, in return for your
exhortation of me, I exhort you also to take part in the great combat,
which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly
conflict. And I retort your reproach of me, and say, that you will not
be able to help yourself when the day of trial and judgment, of which I
was speaking, comes upon you; you will go before the judge, the son of
Aegina, and, when he has got you in his grip and is carrying you off,
you will gape and your head will swim round, just as mine would in the
courts of this world, and very likely some one will shamefully box you
on the ears, and put upon you any sort of insult.
Perhaps this may appear to you to be only an old wife’s tale, which you
will contemn. And there might be reason in your contemning such tales,
if by searching we could find out anything better or truer: but now you
see that you and Polus and Gorgias, who are the three wisest of the
Greeks of our day, are not able to show that we ought to live any life
which does not profit in another world as well as in this. And of all
that has been said, nothing remains unshaken but the saying, that to do
injustice is more to be avoided than to suffer injustice, and that the
reality and not the appearance of virtue is to be followed above all
things, as well in public as in private life; and that when any one has
been wrong in anything, he is to be chastised, and that the next best
thing to a man being just is that he should become just, and be
chastised and punished; also that he should avoid all flattery of
himself as well as of others, of the few or of the many: and rhetoric
and any other art should be used by him, and all his actions should be
done always, with a view to justice.
Follow me then, and I will lead you where you will be happy in life and
after death, as the argument shows. And never mind if some one despises
you as a fool, and insults you, if he has a mind; let him strike you,
by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer, and do not mind the insulting
blow, for you will never come to any harm in the practice of virtue, if
you are a really good and true man. When we have practised virtue
together, we will apply ourselves to politics, if that seems desirable,
or we will advise about whatever else may seem good to us, for we shall
be better able to judge then. In our present condition we ought not to
give ourselves airs, for even on the most important subjects we are
always changing our minds; so utterly stupid are we! Let us, then, take
the argument as our guide, which has revealed to us that the best way
of life is to practise justice and every virtue in life and death. This
way let us go; and in this exhort all men to follow, not in the way to
which you trust and in which you exhort me to follow you; for that way,
Callicles, is nothing worth.