The Republic
before, while the unjust, having the seal behind, were bidden to
descend by the way on the left hand. Him they told to look and listen,
as he was to be their messenger to men from the world below. And he
beheld and saw the souls departing after judgment at either chasm; some
who came from earth, were worn and travel-stained; others, who came
from heaven, were clean and bright. They seemed glad to meet and rest
awhile in the meadow; here they discoursed with one another of what
they had seen in the other world. Those who came from earth wept at the
remembrance of their sorrows, but the spirits from above spoke of
glorious sights and heavenly bliss. He said that for every evil deed
they were punished tenfold—now the journey was of a thousand years’
duration, because the life of man was reckoned as a hundred years—and
the rewards of virtue were in the same proportion. He added something
hardly worth repeating about infants dying almost as soon as they were
born. Of parricides and other murderers he had tortures still more
terrible to narrate. He was present when one of the spirits asked—Where
is Ardiaeus the Great? (This Ardiaeus was a cruel tyrant, who had
murdered his father, and his elder brother, a thousand years before.)
Another spirit answered, ‘He comes not hither, and will never come. And
I myself,’ he added, ‘actually saw this terrible sight. At the entrance
of the chasm, as we were about to reascend, Ardiaeus appeared, and some
other sinners—most of whom had been tyrants, but not all—and just as
they fancied that they were returning to life, the chasm gave a roar,
and then wild, fiery-looking men who knew the meaning of the sound,
seized him and several others, and bound them hand and foot and threw
them down, and dragged them along at the side of the road, lacerating
them and carding them like wool, and explaining to the passers-by, that
they were going to be cast into hell.’ The greatest terror of the
pilgrims ascending was lest they should hear the voice, and when there
was silence one by one they passed up with joy. To these sufferings
there were corresponding delights.
On the eighth day the souls of the pilgrims resumed their journey, and
in four days came to a spot whence they looked down upon a line of
light, in colour like a rainbow, only brighter and clearer. One day
more brought them to the place, and they saw that this was the column
of light which binds together the whole universe. The ends of the
column were fastened to heaven, and from them hung the distaff of
Necessity, on which all the heavenly bodies turned—the hook and spindle
were of adamant, and the whorl of a mixed substance. The whorl was in
form like a number of boxes fitting into one another with their edges
turned upwards, making together a single whorl which was pierced by the
spindle. The outermost had the rim broadest, and the inner whorls were
smaller and smaller, and had their rims narrower. The largest (the
fixed stars) was spangled—the seventh (the sun) was brightest—the
eighth (the moon) shone by the light of the seventh—the second and
fifth (Saturn and Mercury) were most like one another and yellower than
the eighth—the third (Jupiter) had the whitest light—the fourth (Mars)
was red—the sixth (Venus) was in whiteness second. The whole had one
motion, but while this was revolving in one direction the seven inner
circles were moving in the opposite, with various degrees of swiftness
and slowness. The spindle turned on the knees of Necessity, and a Siren
stood hymning upon each circle, while Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos,
the daughters of Necessity, sat on thrones at equal intervals, singing
of past, present, and future, responsive to the music of the Sirens;
Clotho from time to time guiding the outer circle with a touch of her
right hand; Atropos with her left hand touching and guiding the inner
circles; Lachesis in turn putting forth her hand from time to time to
guide both of them. On their arrival the pilgrims went to Lachesis, and
there was an interpreter who arranged them, and taking from her knees
lots, and samples of lives, got up into a pulpit and said: ‘Mortal
souls, hear the words of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. A new
period of mortal life has begun, and you may choose what divinity you
please; the responsibility of choosing is with you—God is blameless.’
After speaking thus, he cast the lots among them and each one took up
the lot which fell near him. He then placed on the ground before them
the samples of lives, many more than the souls present; and there were
all sorts of lives, of men and of animals. There were tyrannies ending
in misery and exile, and lives of men and women famous for their
different qualities; and also mixed lives, made up of wealth and
poverty, sickness and health. Here, Glaucon, is the great risk of human
life, and therefore the whole of education should be directed to the
acquisition of such a knowledge as will teach a man to refuse the evil
and choose the good. He should know all the combinations which occur in
life—of beauty with poverty or with wealth,—of knowledge with external
goods,—and at last choose with reference to the nature of the soul,
regarding that only as the better life which makes men better, and
leaving the rest. And a man must take with him an iron sense of truth
and right into the world below, that there too he may remain undazzled
by wealth or the allurements of evil, and be determined to avoid the
extremes and choose the mean. For this, as the messenger reported the
interpreter to have said, is the true happiness of man; and any one, as
he proclaimed, may, if he choose with understanding, have a good lot,
even though he come last. ‘Let not the first be careless in his choice,
nor the last despair.’ He spoke; and when he had spoken, he who had
drawn the first lot chose a tyranny: he did not see that he was fated
to devour his own children—and when he discovered his mistake, he wept
and beat his breast, blaming chance and the Gods and anybody rather
than himself. He was one of those who had come from heaven, and in his
previous life had been a citizen of a well-ordered State, but he had
only habit and no philosophy. Like many another, he made a bad choice,
because he had no experience of life; whereas those who came from earth
and had seen trouble were not in such a hurry to choose. But if a man
had followed philosophy while upon earth, and had been moderately
fortunate in his lot, he might not only be happy here, but his
pilgrimage both from and to this world would be smooth and heavenly.
Nothing was more curious than the spectacle of the choice, at once sad
and laughable and wonderful; most of the souls only seeking to avoid
their own condition in a previous life. He saw the soul of Orpheus
changing into a swan because he would not be born of a woman; there was
Thamyras becoming a nightingale; musical birds, like the swan, choosing
to be men; the twentieth soul, which was that of Ajax, preferring the
life of a lion to that of a man, in remembrance of the injustice which
was done to him in the judgment of the arms; and Agamemnon, from a like
enmity to human nature, passing into an eagle. About the middle was the
soul of Atalanta choosing the honours of an athlete, and next to her
Epeus taking the nature of a workwoman; among the last was Thersites,
who was changing himself into a monkey. Thither, the last of all, came
Odysseus, and sought the lot of a private man, which lay neglected and
despised, and when he found it he went away rejoicing, and said that if
he had been first instead of last, his choice would have been the same.
Men, too, were seen passing into animals, and wild and tame animals
changing into one another.
When all the souls had chosen they went to Lachesis, who sent with each
of them their genius or attendant to fulfil their lot. He first of all
brought them under the hand of Clotho, and drew them within the
revolution of the spindle impelled by her hand; from her they were
carried to Atropos, who made the threads irreversible; whence, without
turning round, they passed beneath the throne of Necessity; and when
they had all passed, they moved on in scorching heat to the plain of
Forgetfulness and rested at evening by the river Unmindful, whose water
could not be retained in any vessel; of this they had all to drink a
certain quantity—some of them drank more than was required, and he who
drank forgot all things. Er himself was prevented from drinking. When
they had gone to rest, about the middle of the night there were
thunderstorms and earthquakes, and suddenly they were all driven divers
ways, shooting like stars to their birth. Concerning his return to the
body, he only knew that awaking suddenly in the morning he found
himself lying on the pyre.
Thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved, and will be our salvation, if
we believe that the soul is immortal, and hold fast to the heavenly way
of Justice and Knowledge. So shall we pass undefiled over the river of
Forgetfulness, and be dear to ourselves and to the Gods, and have a
crown of reward and happiness both in this world and also in the
millennial pilgrimage of the other.
The Tenth Book of the Republic of Plato falls into two divisions:
first, resuming an old thread which has been interrupted, Socrates
assails the poets, who, now that the nature of the soul has been
analyzed, are seen to be very far gone from the truth; and secondly,
having shown the reality of the happiness of the just, he demands that
appearance shall be restored to him, and then proceeds to prove the
immortality of the soul. The argument, as in the Phaedo and Gorgias, is
supplemented by the vision of a future life.
Why Plato, who was himself a poet, and whose dialogues are poems and
dramas, should have been hostile to the poets as a class, and
especially to the dramatic poets; why he should not have seen that
truth may be embodied in verse as well as in prose, and that there are
some indefinable lights and shadows of human life which can only be
expressed in poetry—some elements of imagination which always entwine
with reason; why he should have supposed epic verse to be inseparably
associated with the impurities of the old Hellenic mythology; why he
should try Homer and Hesiod by the unfair and prosaic test of
utility,—are questions which have always been debated amongst students
of Plato. Though unable to give a complete answer to them, we may
show—first, that his views arose naturally out of the circumstances of
his age; and secondly, we may elicit the truth as well as the error
which is contained in them.
He is the enemy of the poets because poetry was declining in his own
lifetime, and a theatrocracy, as he says in the Laws, had taken the
place of an intellectual aristocracy. Euripides exhibited the last
phase of the tragic drama, and in him Plato saw the friend and
apologist of tyrants, and the Sophist of tragedy. The old comedy was
almost extinct; the new had not yet arisen. Dramatic and lyric poetry,
like every other branch of Greek literature, was falling under the
power of rhetoric. There was no ‘second or third’ to Aeschylus and
Sophocles in the generation which followed them. Aristophanes, in one
of his later comedies (Frogs), speaks of ‘thousands of tragedy-making
prattlers,’ whose attempts at poetry he compares to the chirping of
swallows; ‘their garrulity went far beyond Euripides,’—‘they appeared
once upon the stage, and there was an end of them.’ To a man of genius
who had a real appreciation of the godlike Aeschylus and the noble and
gentle Sophocles, though disagreeing with some parts of their
‘theology’ (Rep.), these ‘minor poets’ must have been contemptible and
intolerable. There is no feeling stronger in the dialogues of Plato