The Republic, Book X

By Plato of Athens

Characters: Socrates, Glaucon, Adeimantus, Polemarchus, Cephalus, Thrasymachus, Cleitophon

Part I. [595a] Socrates:

"And truly," I said, "many other considerations assure me that we were entirely right in our organization of the state, and especially, I think, in the matter of poetry."^[1]

"What about it?" he said.

"In refusing to admit^[2] at all so much of it as is imitative;^[3] for that it is certainly not to be received is, I think, [595b] still more plainly apparent now that we have distinguished the several parts^[4] of the soul."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, between ourselves^[5] — for you will not betray me to the tragic poets and all other imitators — that kind of art seems to be a corruption^[6] of the mind of all listeners who do not possess, as an antidote^[7] a knowledge of its real nature."

"What is your idea in saying this?" he said.

"I must speak out," I said, "though a certain love and [p421] reverence for Homer^[8] that has possessed me from a boy would stay me from speaking. [595c] For he appears to have been the first teacher and beginner of all these beauties of tragedy. Yet all the same we must not honor a man above truth,^[9] but, as I say, speak our minds."

"By all means," he said.

"Listen, then, or rather, answer my question."

"Ask it," he said.

"Could you tell me in general what imitation is? For neither do I myself quite apprehend what it would be at."

"It is likely, then,"^[10] he said, "that I should apprehend!"

"It would be nothing strange," said I, "since it often happens [596a] that the dimmer vision sees things in advance of the keener."^[11]

"That is so," he said; "but in your presence I could not even be eager to try to state anything that appears to me, but do you yourself consider it."

"Shall we, then, start the inquiry at this point by our customary procedure?^[12] We are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single idea or form^[13] in the case of the various multiplicities to [p423] which we give the same name. Do you not understand?"

"I do."

"In the present case, then, let us take any multiplicity you please; [596b] for example, there are many couches and tables."

"Of course."

"But these utensils imply, I suppose, only two ideas or forms, one of a couch and one of a table."

"Yes."

"And are we not also in the habit of saying that the craftsman who produces either of them fixes his eyes^[14] on the idea or form, and so makes in the one case the couches and in the other the tables that we use, and similarly of other things? For surely no craftsman makes the idea itself. How could he?"

"By no means."

"But now consider [596c] what name you would give to this craftsman."

"What one?"

"Him who makes all the things^[15] that all handicraftsmen severally produce."

"A truly clever and wondrous man you tell of."

"Ah, but wait,^[16] and you will say so indeed, for this same handicraftsman is not only able to make all implements, but he produces all plants and animals, including himself,^[17] and thereto earth and heaven and the gods and all things in heaven and in Hades under the earth."

"A most marvellous sophist,"^[18] [596d] he said.

"Are you incredulous?" said I. "Tell me, do you deny altogether the possibility [p425] of such a craftsman, or do you admit that in a sense there could be such a creator of all these things, and in another sense not? Or do you not perceive that you yourself would be able to make all these things in a way?"

"And in what way,^[19] I ask you," he said.

"There is no difficulty," said I, "but it is something that the craftsman can make everywhere and quickly. You could do it most quickly if you should choose to take a mirror and carry it about everywhere. [596e] You will speedily produce the sun and all the things in the sky, and speedily the earth and yourself and the other animals and implements and plants and all the objects of which we just now spoke."

"Yes," he said, "the appearance of them, but not the reality and the truth."

"Excellent," said I, "and you come to the aid of the argument opportunely. For I take it that the painter too belongs to this class of producers, does he not?"

"Of course."

"But you will say, I suppose, that his creations are not real and true. And yet, after a fashion, the painter^[20] too [p427] makes a couch, does he not?"

"Yes," he said, "the appearance of one, he too."

Part II. [597a] "What of the cabinet-maker? Were you not just now saying that he does not make the idea or form which we say is the real couch, the couch in itself,^[21] but only some particular couch?"

"Yes, I was."

"Then if he does not make that which really is, he could not be said to make real being but something that resembles real being but is not that. But if anyone should say that being in the complete sense^[22] belongs to the work of the cabinet-maker or to that of any other handicraftsman, it seems that he would say what is not true."

"That would be the view," he said, "of those who are versed^[23] in this kind of reasoning."

"We must not be surprised, then, if this too is only a dim adumbration in comparison with reality."

[597b] "No, we must not."

"Shall we, then, use these very examples in our quest for the true nature of this imitator?"

"If you please," he said.

"We get, then, these three couches, one, that in nature^[24] which, I take it, we would say that God produces,^[25] or who else?"

"No one, I think."

"And then there was one which the carpenter made."

"Yes," he said.

"And one which the painter. Is not that so?"

"So be it."

"The painter, then, the cabinet-maker, and God, there are these three presiding over three kinds of couches."

"Yes, three."

[597c] "Now God, whether because he so willed or because some compulsion was [p429] laid upon him^[26] not to make more than one couch in nature, so wrought and created one only,^[27] the couch which really and in itself is. But two or more such were never created by God and never will come into being."

"How so?" he said.

"Because," said I, "if he should make only two, there would again appear one of which they both would possess the form or idea, and that would be the couch that really is in and of itself, and not the other two."

"Right," he said.

"God, then, I take it, knowing this and wishing [597d] to be the real author of the couch that has real being and not of some particular couch, nor yet a particular cabinet-maker, produced it in nature unique."

"So it seems."

"Shall we, then, call him its true and natural begetter, or something of the kind?"

"That would certainly be right," he said, "since it is by and in nature^[28] that he has made this and all other things."

"And what of the carpenter? Shall we not call him the creator of a couch?"

"Yes."

"Shall we also say that the painter is the creator and maker of that sort of thing?"

"By no means."

"What will you say he is in relation to the couch?"

[597e] "This," said he, "seems to me the most reasonable designation for him, that he is the imitator of the thing which those others produce."

"Very good," said I; "the producer of the product three removes^[29] from nature you call the imitator?"

"By all means," he said.

[p431] "This, then, will apply to the maker of tragedies also, if he is an imitator and is in his nature three removes from the king and the truth, as are all other imitators."

"It would seem so."

"We are in agreement, then, about the imitator. [598a] But tell me now this about the painter. Do you think that what he tries to imitate is in each case that thing itself in nature or the works of the craftsmen?"

"The works of the craftsmen," he said.

"Is it the reality of them or the appearance? Define that further point."^[30]

"What do you mean?" he said.

"This: Does a couch differ from itself according as you view it from the side or the front or in any other way? Or does it differ not at all in fact though it appears different, and so of other things?"

"That is the way of it," he said: "it appears other but differs not at all."

[598b] "Consider, then, this very point. To which is painting directed in every case, to the imitation of reality as it is^[31] or of appearance as it appears? Is it an imitation of a phantasm or of the truth?"

"Of a phantasm,"^[32] he said.

"Then the mimetic art is far removed^[33] from truth, and this, it seems, is the reason why it can produce everything, because it touches or lays hold of only a small part of the object and that a phantom;^[34] as, for example, a painter, we say, will paint us a cobbler, a carpenter, and other craftsmen, [598c] though he himself has no expertness in any of these arts,^[35] but nevertheless if he were a good painter, by exhibiting at a distance his picture of a carpenter he would deceive children and [p433] foolish men,^[36] and make them believe it to be a real carpenter."

"Why not?"

"But for all that, my friend, this, I take it, is what we ought to bear in mind in all such cases: When anyone reports to us of someone, that he has met a man who knows all the crafts and everything else^[37] that men severally know, [598d] and that there is nothing that he does not know^[38] more exactly than anybody else, our tacit rejoinder must be that he is a simple fellow, who apparently has met some magician or sleight-of-hand man and imitator and has been deceived by him into the belief that he is all-wise,^[39] because of his own inability to put to the proof and distinguish knowledge, ignorance^[40] and imitation."

"Most true," he said.

Part III.

"Then," said I, "have we not next to scrutinize tragedy and its leader Homer,^[41] since some people tell us that these poets know all the arts [598e] and all things human pertaining to virtue and vice, and all [p435] things divine? For the good poet, if he is to poetize things rightly, must, they argue, create with knowledge or else be unable to create. So we must consider whether these critics have not fallen in with such imitators and been deceived by them, so that looking upon their works [599a] they cannot perceive that these are three removes from reality, and easy to produce without knowledge of the truth. For it is phantoms,^[42] not realities, that they produce. Or is there something in their claim, and do good poets really know the things about which the multitude fancy they speak well?"

"We certainly must examine the matter," he said.

"Do you suppose, then, that if a man were able to produce both the exemplar and the semblance, he would be eager to abandon himself to the fashioning of phantoms^[43] and set this in the forefront [599b] of his life as the best thing he had?" "I do not."

"But, I take it, if he had genuine knowledge of the things he imitates he would far rather devote himself to real things^[44] than to the imitation of them, and would endeavor to leave after him many noble deeds^[45] and works as memorials of himself, and would be more eager to be the theme of praise than the praiser."

"I think so," he said; "for there is no parity in the honor and the gain."

"Let us not, then, demand a reckoning^[46] from Homer [599c] or any other of the poets on other matters by asking them, if any one of them was a physician and not merely an imitator of a physician’s talk, what men any poet, old or new, is reported to have restored to health as Asclepius [p437] did, or what disciples of the medical art he left after him as Asclepius did his descendants; and let us dismiss the other arts and not question them about them; but concerning the greatest and finest things of which Homer undertakes to speak, wars and generalship^[47] [599d] and the administration of cities and the education of men, it surely is fair to question him and ask, ’Friend Homer, if you are not at the third remove from truth and reality in human excellence, being merely that creator of phantoms whom we defined as the imitator, but if you are even in the second place and were capable of knowing what pursuits make men better or worse in private or public life, tell us what city was better governed owing to you,^[48] even as Lacedaemon was because of Lycurgus,^[49] and many other cities [599e] great and small because of other legislators. But what city credits you with having been a good legislator and having benefited them? Italy and Sicily say this of Charondas and we of Solon.^[50] But who says it of you?’ Will he be able to name any?"

"I think not," said Glaucon; "at any rate none is mentioned even by the Homerids themselves."

"Well, then, [600a] is there any tradition of a war in Homer’s time that was well conducted by his command or counsel?"

"None."

"Well, then, as might be expected of a man wise in practical affairs, are many and ingenious inventions^[51] for the arts and business of life reported of Homer as [p439] they are of Thales^[52] the Milesian and Anacharsis^[53] the Scythian?"

"Nothing whatever of the sort."

"Well, then, if no public service is credited to him, is Homer reported while he lived to have been a guide in education to men who took pleasure in associating with him [600b] and transmitted to posterity a certain Homeric way of life^[54] just as Pythagoras^[55] was himself especially honored for this, and his successors, even to this day, denominating a certain way of life the Pythagorean,^[56] are distinguished among their contemporaries?"

"No, nothing of this sort either is reported; for Creophylos,^[57] Socrates, the friend of Homer, would perhaps be even more ridiculous than his name^[58] as a representative of Homeric culture and education, if what is said about Homer is true. For the tradition is that Homer was completely neglected in his own lifetime by that friend of the flesh."

Part IV. [600c] "Why, yes, that is the tradition," said I; "but do you suppose, Glaucon, that, if Homer had really been able to educate men^[59] and make them better and had possessed not the art of imitation but real knowledge, he would not have acquired many companions and been honored and loved by them? But are we to believe that while Protagoras^[60] of Abdera and Prodicus^[61] of Ceos and many others are able by private teaching [600d] to impress upon their contemporaries the [p441] conviction that they will not be capable of governing their homes or the city^[62] unless they put them in charge of their education, and make themselves so beloved for this wisdom^[63] that their companions all but^[64] carry them about on their shoulders,^[65] yet, forsooth, that Homer’s contemporaries, if he had been able to help men to achieve excellence,^[66] would have suffered him or Hesiod to roam about rhapsodizing and would not have clung to them far rather than to their gold,^[67] and constrained them to dwell with them^[68] in their homes, [600e] or failing to persuade them, would themselves have escorted them wheresoever they went until they should have sufficiently imbibed their culture?"

"What you say seems to me to be altogether true, Socrates," he said.

"Shall we, then, lay it down that all the poetic tribe, beginning with Homer,^[69] are imitators of images of excellence and of the other things that they ’create,’^[70] and do not lay hold on truth? but, as we were just now saying, the painter will fashion, [601a] himself knowing nothing of the cobbler’s art, what appears to be a cobbler to him and likewise to those who know nothing but judge only by forms and colors?"^[71]

"Certainly."

"And similarly, I suppose, we shall say that the poet himself, knowing nothing [p443] but how to imitate, lays on with words and phrases^[72] the colors of the several arts in such fashion that others equally ignorant, who see things only through words,^[73] will deem his words most excellent, [601b] whether he speak in rhythm, meter and harmony about cobbling or generalship or anything whatever. So mighty is the spell^[74] that these adornments naturally exercise; though when they are stripped bare of their musical coloring and taken by themselves,^[75] I think you know what sort of a showing these sayings of the poets make. For you, I believe, have observed them."

"I have," he said.

"Do they not," said I, "resemble the faces of adolescents, young but not really beautiful, when the bloom of youth abandons them?"^[76]

"By all means," he said.

"Come, then," said I, "consider this point: The creator of the phantom, the imitator, we say, knows nothing of the reality but only the appearance. [601c] Is not that so?"

"Yes."

"Let us not, then, leave it half said but [p445] consider it fully."

"Speak on," he said.

"The painter, we say, will paint both reins and a bit."

"Yes."

"But the maker^[77] will be the cobbler and the smith."

"Certainly."

"Does the painter, then, know the proper quality of reins and bit? Or does not even the maker, the cobbler and the smith, know that, but only the man who understands the use of these things, the horseman?"^[78]

"Most true."

"And shall we not say [601d] that the same holds true of everything?"

"What do you mean?"

"That there are some three arts concerned with everything, the user’s art,^[79] the maker’s, and the imitator’s."

"Yes."

"Now do not the excellence, the beauty, the rightness^[80] of every implement, living thing, and action refer solely to the use^[81] for which each is made or by nature adapted?"

"That is so."

"It quite necessarily follows, then, that the user of anything is the one who knows most of it by experience, and that he reports to the maker the good or bad effects in use of the thing he uses. [601e] As, for example, the flute-player reports to the flute-maker which flutes respond and serve rightly in flute-playing, and will order the kind that must be made, and the other will obey and serve him."

"Of course."

"The one, then, possessing knowledge, reports about the goodness or the badness of the flutes, and the other, believing, will make them."

"Yes."

"Then in respect of the same implement the maker will have [p447] right belief^[82] about its excellence and defects from association with the man who knows and being compelled to listen to him, [602a] but the user will have true knowledge."

"Certainly."

"And will the imitator from experience or use have knowledge whether the things he portrays are or are not beautiful and right, or will he, from compulsory association with the man who knows and taking orders from him for the right making of them, have right opinion?"^[83]

"Neither."

"Then the imitator will neither know nor opine rightly concerning the beauty or the badness of his imitations."

"It seems not."

"Most charming,^[84] then, would be the state of mind of the poetical imitator in respect of true wisdom about his creations."

"Not at all."

[602b] "Yet still he will none the less^[85] imitate, though in every case he does not know in what way the thing is bad or good. But, as it seems, the thing he will imitate will be the thing that appears beautiful to the ignorant multitude."

"Why, what else?"

"On this, then, as it seems, we are fairly agreed, that the imitator knows nothing worth mentioning of the things he imitates, but that imitation is a form of play,^[86] not to be taken seriously,^[87] and that those who attempt tragic poetry, whether in iambics or heroic verse,^[88] are all altogether imitators."

"By all means."

Part V. [602c] "In heaven’s name, then, this business of imitation is concerned with the third remove from truth, is it not?"

"Yes."

"And now again, to what [p449] element^[89] in man is its function and potency related?"

"Of what are you speaking?"

"Of this: The same magnitude, I presume, viewed from near and from far^[90] does not appear equal."

"Why, no."

"And the same things appear bent and straight^[91] to those who view them in water and out, or concave and convex, owing to similar errors of vision about colors, and there is [602d] obviously every confusion of this sort in our souls. And so scene-painting in its exploitation^[92] of this weakness of our nature falls nothing short of witchcraft,^[93] and so do jugglery and many other such contrivances."

"True."

"And have not measuring and numbering and weighing^[94] proved to be most gracious aids to prevent the domination in our soul of the apparently^[95] greater or less or more or heavier, and to give the control to that which has reckoned^[96] and numbered or even weighed?"

[602e] "Certainly."

"But this surely would be the function^[97] of the part of the soul that reasons and calculates."^[98]

"Why, yes, of that."

"And often when this has measured^[99] and declares that certain things are larger or that some are smaller than the others or equal, there is at the same time an appearance of the contrary."

"Yes."

"And did we not say^[100] that it is impossible for the same thing at one time to hold contradictory opinions about the same thing?"

[603a] "And we were right in affirming that."

"The part of the soul, then, that opines in [p451] contradiction of measurement could not be the same with that which conforms to it."

"Why, no."

"But, further, that which puts its trust in measurement and reckoning must be the best part of the soul."

"Surely."

"Then that which opposes it must belong to the inferior elements of the soul."

"Necessarily."

"This, then, was what I wished to have agreed upon when I said that poetry, and in general the mimetic art, produces a product that is far removed from truth in the accomplishment of its task, and associates with the part in us [603b] that is remote from intelligence, and is its companion and friend^[101] for no sound and true purpose."^[102]

"By all means," said he.

"Mimetic art, then, is an inferior thing cohabiting with an inferior and engendering inferior offspring."^[103]

"It seems so."

"Does that," said I, "hold only for vision or does it apply also to hearing and to what we call poetry?"

"Presumably," he said, "to that also."

"Let us not, then, trust solely to the plausible analogy^[104] from painting, but let us approach in turn [603c] that part of the mind to which mimetic poetry appeals and see whether it is the inferior or the nobly serious part."

"So we must."

"Let us, then, put the question thus: Mimetic poetry, we say, imitates human beings acting under compulsion or voluntarily,^[105] and as a result of their actions supposing themselves to have fared well or ill and in all this feeling either grief or joy. Did we find anything else but this?"

"Nothing."

"Is a man, then, in all this [603d] of one mind with himself, or just as in the domain of sight there was faction [p453] and strife and he held within himself contrary opinions at the same time about the same things,^[106] so also in our actions there is division and strife^[107] of the man with himself? But I recall that there is no need now of our seeking agreement on this point, for in our former discussion^[108] we were sufficiently agreed that our soul at any one moment teems with countless such self-contradictions."

"Rightly," he said.

"Yes, rightly," said I; "but what we then omitted^[109] must now, I think, [603e] be set forth."

"What is that?" he said.

"When a good and reasonable man," said I, "experiences such a stroke of fortune as the loss of a son or anything else that he holds most dear, we said, I believe, then too,^[110] that he will bear it more easily than the other sort."

"Assuredly."

"But now let us consider this: Will he feel no pain, or, since that is impossible, shall we say that he will in some sort be moderate^[111] in his grief?"

"That," he said, "is rather the truth."

[604a] "Tell me now this about him: Do you think he will be more likely to resist and fight against his grief when he is observed by his equals or when he is in solitude alone by himself?"

"He will be much more restrained," he said, "when he is on view."

"But when left alone, I fancy, he will permit himself many utterances which, if heard by another, would put him to shame, and will do many things which he would not consent to have another see him doing."

"So it is," he said.

Part VI. [p455] "Now is it not reason and law [604b] that exhorts him to resist, while that which urges him to give way to his grief is the bare feeling itself?"

"True."

"And where there are two opposite impulses^[112] in a man at the same time about the same thing we say that there must needs be two things^[113] in him."

"Of course."

"And is not the one prepared to follow the guidance of the law as the law leads and directs?"

"How so?"

"The law, I suppose, declares that it is best to keep quiet as far as possible in calamity and not to chafe and repine, because we cannot know what is really good and evil in such things^[114] and it advantages us nothing to take them hard, [604c] and nothing in mortal life is worthy of great concern,^[115] and our grieving checks^[116] the very thing we need to come to our aid as quickly as possible in such case."

"What thing," he said, "do you mean?"

"To deliberate,"^[117] I said, "about what has happened to us, and, as it were in the fall of the dice,^[118] to determine the movements of our affairs with reference to the numbers that turn up, in the way that reason indicates^[119] would be the best, and, instead of stumbling like children, clapping one’s hands to the stricken spot^[120] and wasting the time in wailing, [604d] ever to accustom the soul to devote itself at once to the curing of the hurt and the raising up of what [p457] has fallen, banishing threnody^[121] by therapy."

"That certainly," he said, "would be the best way to face misfortune and deal with it."

"Then, we say, the best part of us is willing to conform to these precepts of reason."

"Obviously."

"And shall we not say that the part of us that leads us to dwell in memory on our suffering and impels us to lamentation, and cannot get enough of that sort of thing, is the irrational and idle part of us, the associate of cowardice?"^[122]

"Yes, we will say that."

"And does not[604e] the fretful part of us present^[123] many and varied occasions for imitation, while the intelligent and temperate disposition, always remaining approximately the same, is neither easy to imitate nor to be understood when imitated, especially by a nondescript mob assembled in the theater? For the representation imitates a type [605a] that is alien to them."

"By all means."

"And is it not obvious that the nature of the mimetic poet is not related to this better part of the soul and his cunning is not framed^[124] to please it, if he is to win favor with the multitude, but is devoted to the fretful and complicated type of character because it is easy to imitate?"

"It is obvious."

"This consideration, then, makes it right for us to proceed to lay hold of him and set him down as the counterpart^[125] of the painter; for he resembles him in that his creations are inferior in respect of reality; and the fact that his appeal is to the inferior part of the soul [605b] and not to the best part is another point of resemblance. And so we may at last say that we should be [p459] justified in not admitting him into a well-ordered state, because he stimulates and fosters this element in the soul, and by strengthening it tends to destroy the rational part, just as when in a state^[126] one puts bad men in power and turns the city over to them and ruins the better sort. Precisely in the same manner we shall say that the mimetic poet sets up in each individual soul a vicious constitution by fashioning phantoms far removed from reality, and by currying favor with the senseless element [605c] that cannot distinguish the greater from the less, but calls the same thing now one, now the other."

"By all means."

Part VII. "But we have not yet brought our chief accusation against it. Its power to corrupt, with rare exceptions, even the better sort is surely the chief cause for alarm."

"How could it be otherwise, if it really does that?"

"Listen and reflect. I think you know that the very best of us, when we hear Homer^[127] or some other of the makers of tragedy [605d] imitating one of the heroes who is in grief,^[128] and is delivering a long tirade in his lamentations or chanting and beating his breast, feel pleasure,^[129] and abandon ourselves and accompany the representation with sympathy and eagerness,^[130] and we praise as an excellent poet the one who most strongly affects us in this way."

"I do know it, of course."

"But when in our own lives some affliction comes to us, you are also aware that we plume ourselves upon the opposite, on our ability to remain calm and endure, [605e] in the belief that this is the conduct of a man, and what we were praising in the theatre that of a woman."^[131]

"I do note that."

"Do you think, then," said I, "that [p461] this praise is rightfully bestowed when, contemplating a character that we would not accept but would be ashamed of in ourselves, we do not abominate it but take pleasure and approve?"

"No, by Zeus," he said, "it does not seem reasonable."

[606a] "O yes,"^[132] said I, "if you would consider it in this way."

"In what way?"

"If you would reflect that the part of the soul that in the former case, in our own misfortunes,^[133] was forcibly restrained, and that has hungered for tears and a good cry^[134] and satisfaction, because it is its nature to desire these things, is the element in us that the poets satisfy and delight, and that the best element in our nature, since it has never been properly educated by reason or even by habit, then relaxes its guard^[135] over the plaintive part, [606b] inasmuch as this is contemplating the woes of others and it is no shame to it to praise and pity another who, claiming to be a good man, abandons himself to excess in his grief; but it thinks this vicarious pleasure is so much clear gain,^[136] and would not consent to forfeit it by disdaining the poem altogether. That is, I think, because few are capable of reflecting that what we enjoy in others will inevitably react upon ourselves.^[137] For after feeding fat^[138] the emotion of pity there, it is not easy to restrain it in our own sufferings."

[606c] "Most [p463] true," he said.

"Does not the same principle apply to the laughable,^[139] namely,that if in comic representations,^[140] or for that matter in private talk,^[141] you take intense pleasure in buffooneries that you would blush to practise yourself, and do not detest them as base, you are doing the same thing as in the case of the pathetic? For here again what your reason, for fear of the reputation of buffoonery, restrained in yourself when it fain would play the clown, you release in turn, and so, fostering its youthful impudence, let yourself go so far that often ere you are aware you become yourself [606d] a comedian in private."

"Yes, indeed," he said.

"And so in regard to the emotions of sex and anger, and all the appetites and pains and pleasures of the soul which we say accompany all our actions,^[142] the effect of poetic imitation is the same. For it waters^[143] and fosters these feelings when what we ought to do is to dry them up, and it establishes them as our rulers when they ought to be ruled, to the end that we may be better and happier men instead of worse and more miserable."

"I cannot deny it," said he.

[606e] "Then, Glaucon," said I, "when you meet encomiasts of Homer who tell us that this poet has been the educator of Hellas,^[144] and that for the conduct and refinement^[145] of human life he is worthy of our study [p465] and devotion, and that we should order our entire lives by the guidance of this poet,[607a] we must love^[146] and salute them as doing the best they can,^[147] and concede to them that Homer is the most poetic^[148] of poets and the first of tragedians,^[149] but we must know the truth, that we can admit no poetry into our city save only hymns to the gods and the praises of good men.^[150] For if you grant admission to the honeyed muse^[151] in lyric or epic, pleasure and pain will be lords of your city instead of law and that which shall from time to time have approved itself to the general reason as the best."

"Most true," he said.

Part VIII. [607b] "Let us, then, conclude our return to the topic of poetry and our apology, and affirm that we really had good grounds then for dismissing her from our city, since such was her character. For reason constrained us.^[152] And let us further say to her, lest she condemn us for harshness and rusticity, that there is from of old a quarrel^[153] between philosophy and poetry. For such expressions as ’the yelping hound barking at her master and mighty in the idle babble [607c] of fools,’^[154] [p467] and ’the mob that masters those who are too wise for their own good,’ and the subtle thinkers who reason that after all they are poor, and countless others are tokens of this ancient enmity. But nevertheless let it be declared that, if the mimetic and dulcet poetry can show any reason for her existence in a well-governed state, we would gladly admit her, since we ourselves are very conscious of her spell. But all the same it would be impious to betray what we believe to be the truth.^[155] [607d] Is not that so, friend? Do not you yourself feel her magic^[156] and especially when Homer^[157] is her interpreter?"

"Greatly."

"Then may she not justly return from this exile after she has pleaded her defence, whether in lyric or other measure?"

"By all means."

"And we would allow her advocates who are not poets but lovers of poetry to plead her cause^[158] in prose without metre, and show that she is not only delightful but beneficial to orderly government and all the life of man. And we shall listen benevolently, [607e] for it will be clear gain for us if it can be shown that she bestows not only pleasure but benefit."

"How could we help being the gainers?" said he.

"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,^[159] nevertheless refrain, so we, owing to the love of this kind of poetry inbred in us by our education in these fine^[160] polities of ours, [608a] 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^[161] 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^[162] that lays hold on truth, but that he who lends an ear to it must be on his guard [608b] fearing for the polity in his soul^[163] and must believe what we have said about poetry."

"By all means," he said, "I concur."

"Yes, for great is the struggle,"^[164] 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^[165] 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."

Part IX. [608c] "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^[166] magnitude," he replied, "if there are other [p471] things greater than those of which we have spoken."^[167]

"What great thing," said I,"could there be in a little time?^[168] For surely the whole time from the boy to the old man would be small compared with all time."^[169]

"Nay, it is nothing," he said.

"What then? Do you think that an immortal thing^[170] ought to be seriously concerned for such a little time, [608d] 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^[171] in amazement,^[172] said, "No, by Zeus, not I; but are you able to declare this?"

"I certainly ought to be,"^[173] 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."^[174]

"Listen," said I.

"Just speak on," he replied. "You speak of^[175] good [608e] 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 [p473] good."

"Yes, I think so," he said.

"How about this: Do you say that there is for everything its special good and evil, [609a] 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?"^[176]

"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 [609b] remains that could; for obviously^[177] the good will never destroy anything, nor yet again will that which is neutral and neither good nor evil."^[178]

"How could it?" he said.

"If, then, we discover^[179] 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, [609c] 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,^[180] in like manner in all the [p473] examples of which we spoke it is the specific evil which, [609d] 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.^[181] 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," [609e] 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;^[182] 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^[183] its own vice, which is disease. [610a] 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.

Part X. "On the same principle," said I, "if the badness of the body does not produce in the soul the [p477] 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 [610b] and show that we are mistaken, or,^[184] 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, [610c] 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^[185] and say, in order to avoid being forced to admit the soul’s immortality, that a dying man does become more wicked and unjust,^[186] we will postulate that, if what he says is true, injustice must be fatal [610d] 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 [p479] 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^[187] fatal to its possessor, for that would be a release from all troubles.^[188] But I rather think it will prove to be quite the contrary, [610e] something that kills others when it can, but renders its possessor very lively indeed,^[189] and not only lively but wakeful,^[190] so far, I ween, does it dwell^[191] 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^[192] will the evil appointed for the destruction of another thing destroy the soul or anything else, except that for which it is appointed."^[193]

"Still less indeed," he said, "in all probability."

"Then since it is not destroyed by any evil whatever, [611a] 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.

Part XI. "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.^[194] 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."^[195]

[p481] "You say truly."

"But," said I, "we must not suppose this, [611b] 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."^[196]

"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^[197] not put together in the best way, as now appeared to us^[198] to be the case with the soul."

"It is not likely."

"Well, then, that the soul is immortal our recent argument and our other^[199] proofs would constrain us to admit. But to know its true nature [611c] we must view it not marred by communion with the body^[200] 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 [611d] resembles that of the sea-god Glaucus^[201] whose first nature can hardly be made out by those who catch glimpses of him, because the original members of his [p483] body are broken off and mutilated and crushed and in every way marred by the waves, and other parts have attached themselves^[202] to him, accretions of shells^[203] 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. [611e] 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^[204] 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^[205] of the rocks and barnacles which, [612a] 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.^[206] And then one might see whether in its real nature^[207] it is manifold^[208] or single in its simplicity, or what is the truth about it and how.^[209] 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.

Part XII. The Ring of Gyges, the Helmet of Hades "Then," said I, "we have met all the other demands [612b] of the argument, and we have not invoked the rewards and reputes of justice as you said Homer [p485] and Hesiod^[210] 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^[211] or not,^[212] or the helmet of Hades^[213] to boot."

"Most true," he said.

"Then," said I, "Glaucon, there can no longer be any objection,^[214] can there, to our assigning to justice and [612c] 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^[215] 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,^[216] in order that the decision might be made [612d] between absolute justice and absolute injustice. Or do you not remember?"

"It would be unjust of me,"^[217] 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 [p487] that she in fact enjoys^[218] from gods and men, and I ask that we admit that she is thus esteemed in order that she may gather in the prizes^[219] 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.

[612e] "Then," said I, "will not the first of these restorations be that the gods certainly^[220] are not unaware^[221] 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^[222] and the other hateful to them, as we agreed in the beginning."^[223]

"That is so."

"And shall we not agree that all things that come from the gods [613a] work together for the best^[224] for him that is dear to the gods, apart from the inevitable evil caused by sin in a former life?"^[225]

"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^[226] [613b] so far as that is possible for man."

"It is reasonable," he said, "that such a one should not be neglected by his like."^[227]

"And must we not think the opposite of the unjust man?"

"Most emphatically."

"Such then are the prizes of victory [p489] 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^[228] from the scratch but not back from the turn? They bound nimbly away at the start, but in the end [613c] are laughed to scorn and run off the field uncrowned and with their ears on their shoulders.^[229] 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 [613d] all that you said^[230] 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^[231] is made miserable by the contumelies of strangers and townsfolk. [p491, 613e] They are lashed and suffer all things^[232] which you truly said are unfit for ears polite.^[233] 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."

Part XIII. The Myth of Er "Such then while he lives are the prizes, the wages, and the gifts [614a] 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^[234] after death. And we must listen to the tale of them," said I, "in order that each may have received in full^[235] what is due to be said of him by our argument."

"Tell me," he said, [614b] "since there are not many things to which I would more gladly listen."

"It is not, let me tell you," said I, "the tale^[236] to Alcinous told^[237] that I shall unfold, but the tale of a warrior bold,^[238] Er, the son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian.^[239] 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, [p493] and having been brought home, at the moment of his funeral, on the twelfth day^[240] as he lay upon the pyre, revived,^[241] and after coming to life related what, he said, he had seen in the world beyond. He said that when his soul^[242] went forth from his body he journeyed with a great company [614c] and that they came to a mysterious region^[243] 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^[244] between these, and that after every judgement they bade the righteous journey to the right and upwards through the heaven with tokens attached^[245] to them in front of the judgement passed upon them, and the unjust to take the road to the left^[246] and downward, they too wearing behind signs [614d] of all that had befallen them, and that when he himself drew near they told [p495] him that he must be the messenger^[247] to mankind to tell them of that other world,^[248] 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 meadow^[249] and encamped^[250] there as at a festival,^[251] 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 earth^[252] —it lasted a thousand years^[253] — 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,^[254] [615b] so that on the assumption [p497] 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 born^[255] and lived but a short time; and he had still greater requitals to tell of piety and impiety towards the gods and parents^[256] and of self-slaughter. For he said that he stood by when one was questioned by another ’Where is Ardiaeus^[257] 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.

Part XIV. "’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 [p499] ended, we suddenly caught sight of him and of others, the most of them, I may say, tyrants.^[258] 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 wicked^[259] or of those who had not completed their punishment tried to come up. And thereupon,’ he said, ’savage men of fiery aspect^[260] who stood by and took note of the voice laid hold on them^[261] 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.^[262] And then, though many and manifold dread things had befallen them, this fear exceeded all [p501] — 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.

The Spindle of Necessity. "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 undergirders^[263] of triremes, holding together in like manner the entire revolving vault. And from the extremities was stretched the spindle of Necessity,^[264] 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,^[265] 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 [p503] 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,^[266] and of these seven the eighth moved most swiftly, [617b] and next and together with one another the seventh, sixth and fifth; and third^[267] 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 [p505] the concord of a single harmony.^[268] And there were another three [617c] who sat round about at equal intervals, each one on her throne, the Fates,^[269] 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.

Part XV. "Now when they arrived they were straight-way bidden to go before Lachesis, and then a certain prophet^[270] 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 [p507] daughter of Necessity, "Souls that live for a day,^[271] now is the beginning of another cycle of mortal generation where birth is the beacon of death.^[272] [617e] No divinity^[273] 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,^[274] 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."’^[275] 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.^[276] 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 end^[277] and others destroyed midway and issuing in penuries and exiles and [p509] 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 inevitably^[278] determined a different character. But all other things were commingled with one another and with wealth and poverty and sickness and health and the intermediate^[279] conditions. —

"And there, dear Glaucon, it appears, is the supreme hazard^[280] 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 thing^[281] — 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 [p511] blended and combined with one another,^[282] 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 adamantine^[283] faith in this, that even there he may be undazzled^[284] 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 mean^[285] 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.

Part XVI. "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,^[286] 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 [p513] 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 himself^[287] 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 habit^[288] 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.^[289] He saw the soul that had been Orpheus’, he said, selecting the life of a [p515] swan,^[290] 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 Thamyras^[291] 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.^[292]

"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,^[293] 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 Thersites^[294] 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,^[295] and with difficulty found it lying in some corner disregarded by the others, [620d] and upon seeing it said [p517] 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 men^[296] 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 genius^[297] that he had chosen, and this divinity led the soul first to Clotho, under her hand and her turning2 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 Atropos^[298] to make the web of its destiny^[299] 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,^[300] 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,^[301] [p519] 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.^[302] 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 sight^[303] he saw himself at dawn lying on the funeral pyre. —

"And so, Glaucon, the tale was saved,^[304] as the saying is, and was not lost. [621c] And it will save us^[305] if we believe it, and we shall safely cross the River of Lethe, and keep our soul unspotted from the world.^[306] 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, [p521] that we may be dear to ourselves^[307] and to the gods both during our sojourn here and when we receive our reward, [621d] as the victors in the games^[308] 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.^[309]

Endnotes

1^ In Book III. On the whole question see Introduction Maximus Tyrius Dissertationes 23e ἰ καλῶς Πλάτων Ὅμηρον τῆς Πολιτείας παρῃτήσατο, and 32 ἔστι καθ᾽ Ὅμηρον αἵρεσις. Strabo i. 2 3. Athenaeus v. 12. 187 says that Plato himself in the Symposium wrote worse things than the poets whom he banishes. Friedländer, Platon, i. p. 138, thinks that the return to the poets in Book X. is intended to justify the poetry of Plato’s dialogues. On the banishment of the poets and Homer cf. also Minucius Felix (Halm), pp. 32-33, Tertullian (Oehler), lib. ii. c. 7, Olympiodorus, Hermann vi. p. 367, Augustine, De civitate Dei ii. xiv.

2^ Supra 394d, 568b, and on 398a-b, infra 607a.

3^ In the narrower sense. Cf. Vol. I. p. 224, note c, on 392d, and What Plato Said, p. 561.

4^ Lit. "species." Cf. 435b ff., 445c, 580d, 588b ff., Phaedrus 271d, Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 42.

5^ Cf. Gorgias 462b, Protagoras 309a, 339e.

6^ Cf. 605c, Meno 91c, Laws 890b.

7^ φάρμακον: this passage is the source of Plutarch’s view of literature in education; see Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat 15c.

8^ Isocrates ii. 48-49 is perhaps imitating this. For Homer as a source of tragedy cf. also 598d, 605c-d, 607a, 602b, Theaetetus 152e, schol. Trendelenburg, pp. 75 ff.; Dryden, Discourse on Epic Poetry: "The origin of the stage was from the epic poem … those episodes of Homer which were proper for the state the poets amplifies each into an action," etc. Cf. Aristotle Poetics 1448b 35 f., Diogenes Laertius iv. 40, and supra 393a ff.

9^ Cf. What Plato Said, p. 532, on Phaedo 91c, Aristotle Ethica Nicomachea 1096a 16 ἄμφοιν γὰρ ὄντοιν φίλοιν ὅσιον προτιμᾶν τὴν ἀλήθειαν, Henri-Pierre Cazac, Polémique d’Aristote contre la théorie platonicienne des Idées, p. 11, n.: "Platon lui-même, critiquant Homère, …fait une semblabe réflexion, ’On doit plus d’égards à la vérité qu’à un homme.’ Cousin croit, après Camérarius, que c’est là l’origine du mot célèbre d’Aristote." Cf. St. Augustine, De civitate Dei x. 30 "homini praeposuit veritatem."

10^ For ἦ που Cf. Phaedo 84d.

11^ Perhaps a slight failure in Attic courtesy. Cf. Laws 715d-e, and for ὀξύτερον βλεπόντων 927b, Euthydemus 281d, Republic 404a, Themistocles Orations ii. p. 32c. Cf. the saying πολλάκι καὶ κηποῦρος ἀνὴρ μάλα καίριον εἶπεν.

12^ Cf. Phaedo 76d, 100b, Philebus 16d, 479e, Thompson on Meno 72d. See Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen ii. 1. p. 660. The intentional simplicity of Plato’s positing of the concept here (cf. 597a), and his transition from the concept to the "idea," has been mistaken for a primitive aspect of his thought by many interpreters. It is quite uncritical to use Aristotle Metaphysics 991b 6 ff. to prove that Plato’s "later" theory of ideas did not recognize ideas of artefacts, and therefore that this passage represents an earlier phase of the theory. He deliberately expresses the theory as simply as possible, and a manufactured object suits his purpose here as it does in Cratylus 389. See also supra, Introduction pp. xxii-xxiii.

13^ "Forms" with a capital letter is even more misleading than "ideas."

14^ Cf. Cratylus 389a-b. There is no contradiction, as many say, with 472d.

15^ Cf. Emerson, The Poet: "and therefore the rich poets — as Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Raphael — have no limits to their riches except the limits of their lifetime, and resemble a mirror carried through the streets ready to render an image of every created thing." (Cf. 596d-e κάτοπτρον περιφέρειν and Julian, Orations v. 163d.) Empedocles, fr. 23 (Diels i.3 pp. 234-235): ὡς δ᾽ ὁπόταν γραφέες … δένδρεά τε κτίζοντε καὶ ἀνέρας ἠδὲ γυναῖκας …

16^ Climax beyond climax. Cf. on 508e p. 104, note c.

17^ It is a tempting error to refer this to God, as I once did, and as Wilamowitz, Platon i. p. 604 does. So Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, vol. ii. p. 70: "Lastly, he is called ὃς πάντα τά τε ἄλλα ἐργάζεται, καὶ ἑαυτόν, ’he that causeth or produceth both all other things, and even himself.’" But the producer of everything, including himself, is the imitator generalized and then exemplified by the painter and the poet. Cf. Sophist 234a-b.

18^ Euripides Hippolytus 921 δεινὸν σοφιστὴν εἶπας.

19^ καὶ τίς is sceptical as in Aristophanes Acharnians 86.

20^ Art is deception. Diels ii. 3 p. 339, Dialex. 3 (10) ἐν γὰρ τραγωιδοποιίᾳ καὶ ζωγραφίᾳ ὅστις [κε] πλεῖστα ἐξαπατῇ ὅμοια τοῖς ἀληθινοῖς ποιέων, οὗτος ἄριστος, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 10. 1 γραφική ἐστιν εἰκασία τῶν ὁρωμένων. Cf. Plutarch Quomodo adolescens poetas audire debeat 17f-18a on painting and poetry. There are many specious resemblances between Plato’s ideas on art and morality and those of the "lunatic fringe" of Platonism. Cf. Jane Harrison, Ancient Art and Ritual, pp. 21-22, Charles F. Andrews, Mahatma Gandhi’s Ideas, p. 332. Cf. further R. G. Collingwood,"Plato’s Philosophy of Art," Mind, 34, pp. 154-172. Stewart, Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas, p. 60, fancifully says: "Between the lines of Plato’s criticism of bad art here, as copying the particular, we must read the doctrine that true art copies or in some way sets forth the idea." But the defenders of poetry have always taken this line. Cf. Hartley Coleridge’s sonnet: "The vale of Tempe had in vain been fair|…if the sight inspired |Saw only what the visual organs show,|If heaven-born phantasy no more required|Than what within the sphere of sense may grow.|The beauty to perceive of earthly things|The mounting soul must heavenward prune her wings." Mrs. Browning, "Aurora Leigh": … Art’s the nature of what is|Behind this show. If this world’s show were all,|Then imitation would be all in art.
  William Temple, Plato and Christianity, p. 89: "In the tenth book of the Republic he says that, whereas the artificer in making any material object imitates the eternal idea, an artist only imitates the imitation (595a-598d); but in Book V he said that we do not blame an artist who depicts a face more beautiful than any actual human face either is or ever could be (472d)." But this does not affect Plato’s main point here, that the artist imitates the "real" world, not the world of ideas. The artist’s imitation may fall short of or better its model. But the model is not the (Platonic) idea.

21^ ὃ ἔστι belongs to the terminology of ideas. Cf. Phaedo 74d, 75b, 75d, Republic 507b.

22^ τελέως … ὄν: Cf. 477a, and Sophist 248 eπαντελῶς ὄντι.

23^ An indirect reference to Plato and his school like the "friends of ideas" in Sophist 248a.

24^ Cf. 597c, 598a, 501b φύσει, Phaedo 103b, Parmenides 132d.

25^ Proclus says that this is not seriously meant (apud Beckmann, Num Plato artifactorum Ideas statuerit, p. 12). Cf. Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen ii. 1, p. 666, who interprets the passage correctly; A. E. Taylor, in Mind, xii. p. 5 "Plato’s meaning has been supposed to be adequately indicted by such half-jocular instances as that of the idea of a bed or table in Republic X.," etc.

26^ In Timaeus 31a the same argument is used for the creation of one world ἵνα … κατὰ τὴν μόνωσιν ὅμοιον ᾖ τῷ παντελεῖ ζώῳ. See my De Plat. Idearum doct. p. 39. Cf. Renan, Dialogues Phil. p. 25: "Pour forger les premières tenailles, dit le Talmud, il fallut des tenailles. Dieu les créa."

27^ The famous argument of the third man. Cf. What Plato Said, p. 585, on Parmenides 132a and Introduction p. xxiii.

28^ Cf. Sophist 265e θήσω τὰ μὲν φύσει λεγόμενα ποιεῖσθαι θείᾳ τέχνῃ, Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity i. 3. 4 "those things which Nature is said to do are by divine art preformed, using nature as an instrument," Browne, apud J. Texte, Etudes de littérature européenne, p. 65 "la nature est l’art de Dieu," Cicero De Natura Deorum ii. 13 "deoque tribuenda, id est mundo, "De Legibus i. 7. 21, Seneca, De Beneficiis iv. 7 "quid enim aliud est natura quam deus?" Höffding, A History of Modern Philosophy ii. 115 "Herder uses the word Nature in his book in order to avoid the frequent mention of the name of God."

29^ Cf. 587c, Phaedrus 248e, where the imitator is sixth in the scale.

30^ Cf. Gorgias 488d, Sophist 222c.

31^ Cf. Sophist 263b, Cratylus 385b, Euthydemus 284c.

32^ Cf. 599a, Sophist 232a, 234e, 236b, Protagoras 356d.

33^ Cf. 581e.

34^ For εἴδωλον cf. p. 197, note e.

35^ Commentators sometimes miss the illogical idiom. So Adam once proposed to emend τεχνῶν to τεχνίτων, but later withdrew this suggestion in his note on the passage. Cf. 373c, Critias 111e, and my paper in T.A.P.A. xlvii. (1916) pp. 205-234.

36^ Cf. Sophist 234b.

37^ So Dryden, Essay on Satire: "Shakespeare … Homer … in either of whom we find all arts and sciences, all moral and natural philosophy without knowing that they ever studied them," and the beautiful rhapsody of Andrew Lang, Letters to Dead Authors, p. 238: "They believe not that one human soul has known every art, and all the thoughts of women as of men," etc. Pope, pref. to his translation of the Iliad: "If we reflect upon those innumerable knowledges, those secrets of nature and physical philosophy which Homer is generally supposed to have wrapped up in his allegories, what a new and ample scene of wonder may this consideration afford us." Cf. Xenophon Symposium 4. 6. Brunetière, Epoques, p. 105, says: "Corneille … se piquait de connaître à fond l’art de la politique et celui de la guerre." For the impossibility of universal knowledge Cf. Sophist 233a, Charmides 170b, Friedländer, Platon, ii. p. 146 on Hippias Minor 366c ff. Cf. also Ion 536e, 541b, 540b, and Timaeus 19d. Tate, "Plato and Allegorical Interpretation," Class. Quarterly, January 1930, p. 2 says: "The true poet is for Plato philosopher as well as poet. He must know the truth." This ignores the ἄρα in 598e. Plato there is not stating his own opinion but giving the arguments of those who claim omniscience for the poet. Wilamowitz, Platon, ii. p. 313 n. 1 completely misunderstands and misinterprets the passage. Cf. Classical Philology xxvii. (1932) p. 85. E. E. Sikes, The Greek View of Poetry, p. 175, says Rymer held that "a poet is obliged to know all arts and sciences." Aristotle from a different point of view says we expect the wise man to know everything in the sense in which that is possible, Metaphysics 982a 8.

38^ Cf. οὐδενὸς ὅτου οὐχί Charmides 175c, οὐδὲν ὅτι οὐ Alcibiades I 105e, Philebus 54b, Phaedo 110e, Euthyphro 3c, Euthydemus 294d, Isocrates Panegyricus 14, Herodotus v. 97.

39^ πάσσοφος is generally ironical in Plato. Cf. What Plato Said, p. 489, on Lysis 216a.

40^ For ἀνεπιστημοσύνην Cf. Theaetetus 199e f.

41^ For Homer as tragedian cf. on 595b-c, p. 420, note a.

42^ Cf. on 598b.

43^ Cf. 598b.

44^ Cf. Petit de Julleville, Hist. lit. francaise vii. p. 233, on the poet Lamartine’s desire to be a practical statesman, and ibid.: "Quand on m’apprendrait que le divin Homère a refusé les charges municipales de Smyrne ou de Colophon, je ne croirais jamais qu’il eût pu mieux mériter de la Grèce en administrant son bourg natal qu’en composant l’Iliade et l’Odyssée."

45^ But Cf. Symposium 209d.

46^ For the challenge to the poet to specify his knowledge Cf. Ion 536e f.

47^ Cf. Ion 541a f.

48^ Cf. Gorgias 515b, Laches 186b.

49^ Cf. Laws 630d, 632d, 858e, Symposium 209d, Phaedrus 258b, Minos 318c, Herodotus i. 65-66, Xenophon Republic Lacedaimonians 1. 2 and passim, Plutarch, Life of Lycurgus.

50^ Cf. Symposium 209d, Phaedrus 258b, 278c, Charmides 155a, 157e, Protagoras 343a, Timaeus 20e ff., Herodotus i. 29 ff. and 86, ii. 177, v. 113, Aristotle Athenian Constitution v. ff., Diogenes Laertius i. 45 ff., Plutarch, Life of Solon, Freeman, The Work and Life of Solon.

51^ On the literature of "inventions," εὑρήματα, see Newman ii. p. 382 on Aristotle Politics 1274b 4. Cf. Virgil, Aeneid vi. 663 "inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes," and Symposium 209a.

52^ Diogenes Laertius i. 23-27.

53^ Diogenes Laertius i. 105 says he was reported to be the inventor of the anchor and the potter’s wheel.

54^ In the (spurious?) seventh epistle, 328a, Plato speaks of the life and λόγος advocated by himself. Cf. Novotny, Plato’s Epistles, p. 168.

55^ Diels i. 3 pp. 27 f.

56^ Cf. ὀρφικοὶ … βίοι Laws 782c.

57^ "Of the beef-clan." The scholiast says he was a Chian and an epic poet. See Callimachus’s epigram apud Sextus Empiricus, Bekker, p. 609 (Adversus Mathematicos i. 48), and Suidas s.v. κρεώφυλος.

58^ Modern Greeks also are often very sensitive to the etymology of proper names. Cf. also on 580b, p. 369, note d.

59^ See on 540b, p. 230, note d.

60^ Cf. Protagoras 315a-b, 316c.

61^ See What Plato Said, p. 486, on Laches 197d.

62^ For διοικεῖν Cf. Protagoras 318e.

63^ See Thompson on Meno 70b.

64^ On μόνον οὐκ Cf. Menexenus 235c, Ax. 365b.

65^ Stallbaum refers to Themistocles Orations xxii. p. 254a ὃν ἡμεῖς διὰ ταύτην τὴν φαντασίαν μόνον οὐκ ἐπὶ ταῖς κεφαλαῖς περιφέρομεν, Erasmus, Chiliad iv. Cent. 7 n. 98 p. 794, and the German idiom "einen auf den Händen tragen."

66^ Cf. Protagoras 328b.

67^ The article perhaps gives the word a contemptuous significance. So Meno 89b τὸ χρυσίον.

68^ οἴκοι εἶναι: J. J. Hartman, Ad Platonis Remp. 600e, Mnemosyne 1916, p. 45, would change εἶναι to μεῖναι. But cf. Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum vii. 10 "erimus una."

69^ Cf. 366e. Gorgias 471c-d, Symposium 173d.

70^ Or "about which they versify," playing with the double meaning of ποιεῖν.

71^ For the association of χρώματα and σχήματα Cf. Philebus 12e. 47a, 51b, Laws 669a, Sophist 251a, Meno 75a with Apelt’s note, Cratylus 431c, Gorgias 465b, Phaedo 100d, Aristotle Poetics 1447a 18-19.

72^ Cf. Symposium 198b, Apology 17c. The explicit discrimination of ὀνόματα as names of agents and ῥήματα as names of actions is peculiar to Sophist 262. But Cf. Cratylus 431b, 425a, Theaetetus 206d. And in Sophist 257b ῥήματι is used generally. See Unity of Plato’s Thought, pp. 56-57. Cf. Euthydemus 304e with Symposium 187a, Phaedrus 228d, 271c and my note in Classical Philology xvii. (1922) p. 262.

73^ Cf. What Plato Said, p. 593 on Sophist 240a.

74^ Cf. 607c, Laws 840c, Protagoras 315a-b.

75^ Cf. Gorgias 502c εἴ τις περιέλοι τῆς ποιήσεως πάσης τό τε μέλος καὶ τὸν ῥυθμόν, 392, Ion 530b, Epicharmus apud Diogenes Laertius iii. 17 περιδύσας τὸ μέτρον ὃ νῦν ἔχει, Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 136 περιελόντες τοῦ ποιητοῦ τὸ μέτρον, Isocrates Evagoras 11 τὸ δὲ μέτρον διαλύσῃ with Horace, Satires i. 4. 62 "invenias etiam disiecti membra poetae," Aristotle Rhetoric 1404a 24 ἐπεὶ δ᾽ οἱ ποιηταὶ λέγοντες εὐήθη διὰ τὴν λέξιν ἐδόκουν πορίσασθαι τήνδε τὴν δόξαν. Sextus Empiricus, Bekker, pp. 665-666 (Adversus Mathematicos ii. 288), says that the ideas of poets are inferior to those of the ordinary layman. Cf. also Julian, Orations ii. 78d, Coleridge, Table Talk: "If you take from Virgil his diction and metre what do you leave him?"

76^ Aristotle Rhetoric 1406b 36 f. refers to this. Cf. Tyrtaeus 8 (6). 28 ὄφρ᾽ ἐρατῆς ἥβης ἀγλαὸν ἄνθος ἔχῃ, Mimnermus i. 4 ἥβης ἄνθη γίγνεται ἁρπαλέα; Theognis 1305: παιδείας πλουηράτου ἄνθος ὠκύτερον σταδίου Xenophon Symposium 8. 14 τὸ μὲν τῆς ὥρας | ἄνθος ταχὺ δήπου παρακμάζει, Plato, Symposium 183e τῷ τοῦ σώματος ἄνθει λήγοντι. Spenser, "An Hymne in honour of Beautie": "For that same goodly hew of white and red | With which the cheekes are sprinckled shal decay," Ségur’s refrain: "Ah! le Temps fait passer l’Amour"; Emerson, Beauty: "The radiance of the human form … Is only a burst of beauty for a few years or a few months, at the perfection of youth, and, in most, rapidly declines."

77^ The δέ γε has almost the effect of a retort.

78^ Cf. Aristotle Ethica Nicomachea 1094a 10-11 καθάπερ ὑπὸ τὴν ἱππικὴν ἡ χαλινοποιικὴ…

79^ For the idea that the user knows best see Cratylus 390 B, Euthydemus 289b, Phaedrus 274e. Zeller, Aristotle (Eng.) ii. p. 247, attributes this "pertinent observation" to Aristotle. Cf. Aristotle Politics 1277b 30 αὐλητὴς ὁ χρώμενος. See 1282a 21, 1289a 17. Coleridge, Table Talk: "In general those who do things for others know more about them than those for whom they are done. A groom knows more about horses than his master." But Hazlitt disagrees with Plato’s view.

80^ So in Laws 669a-b, Plato says that the competent judge of a work of art must know three things, first, what it is, second, that it is true and right, and third, that it is good.

81^ For the reference of beauty to use see Hippias Major 295c ff.

82^ πίστιν ὀρθήν is used because of πιστεύων above. It is a slightly derogatory synonym of δόξαν ὀρθήν below, 602a. Cf. 511e.

83^ This does not contradict book V. 477-478. For right opinion and knowledge cf. 430b and What Plato Said, p. 517, on Meno 98a-b.

84^ χαρίεις is ironical like χαριέντως in 426a and καλόν in Theaetetus 183a, but Glaucon in his answer takes it seriously.

85^ Note the accumulation of particles in the Greek. Similarly in 619b, Phaedo 59d, 61e, 62b, 64a, Parmenides 127d, Demosthenes xxiii. 101, De corona 282, Pindar Pythian Odes iv. 64a, Isocrates Peace 1, Aristotle De Generatione et Corruptione 332a 3, Iliad vii. 360.

86^ Cf. on 536c, p. 214, note b.

87^ Cf. 608a.

88^ For ἐν ἔπεσι cf. 607a, 379a, Meno 95d.

89^ The antithesis of περί and πρός marks the transition.

90^ Cf. Protagoras 356a, supra 523c.

91^ Cf. Tennyson (The Higher Pantheism) "For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool." For the illusions of sense, and measurement as a means of correcting them Cf. Philebus 41e-42a f., 55e, Protagoras 356c-d, Euthyphro 7c.

92^ ἐπιθεμένη helps to personify σκιαγραφία. Cf. Gorgias 464c.

93^ Adam’s "leaves no magic art untried" is misleading. ἀπολείπειν is here used as in 504c. For the idiomatic οὐδὲν ἀπολείπει see p. 200, note b, on 533a.

94^ Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia i. 1. 9.

95^ Cf. Protagoras 356d ἡ τοῦ φαινομένου δύναμις.

96^ λογισάμενον: Cf. Laws 644d, Crito 46b.

97^ Cf. Vol. I. p. 36, note a. Of course some of the modern connotations of "function" are unknown to Plato.

98^ For λογιστικοῦ cf. on 439d.

99^ See p. 448, note c, and my Platonism and the History of Science, p. 176.

100^ 436b, Vol. I. p. 383.

101^ Cf. 604d, Phaedrus 253d-e.

102^ Cf. Lysias ix. 4 ἐπὶ μηδενὶ ὑγιεῖ and for the idiom οὐδὲν ὑγιές on 523b, p. 153, note f.

103^ Cf. 496a, and on 489d, p. 26, note b.

104^ Cf. Phaedo 92d διὰ τῶν εἰκότων.

105^ Cf. supra 399a-b, Laws 655d, 814e ff., Aristotle Poetics 1448a 1-2 ἐπεὶ δὲ μιμοῦνται οἱ μιμούμενοι πράττοντας ἀνάγκη δὲ τούτους ἢ σπουδαίους ἢ φαύλους εἶναι, ibid. 1449b 36-37 f.

106^ See What Plato Said, p. 505, on Gorgias 482a-b.

107^ Cf. 554d, and p. 394, note e, on 586e.

108^ 439b ff.

109^ Plato sometimes pretends to remedy an omission or to correct himself by an afterthought. So in Book V. 449b-c ff., and Timaeus 65c.

110^ 387d-e.

111^ This suggests the doctrine of μετριοπάθεια as opposed to the Stoic ἀπάθεια. Joel ii. 161 thinks the passage a polemic against Antisthenes. Seneca, Epistle xcix. 15 seems to agree with Plato rather than with the Stoics: "inhumanitas est ista non virtus." So Plutarch, Consolatio ad Apollonium 3 (102 cf.). See also ibid. 22 (112e-f). Cf. Horace, Odes ii. 3. 1 "aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem," and also Laws 732c, 960a.

112^ Cf. Laws 645a, Phaedrus 238c, and for the conflict in the soul also Republic 439b ff.

113^ The conflict proves that for practical purposes the soul has parts. Cf. 436b ff.

114^ Cf. Apology, in fine.

115^ Cf. Laws 803b and Classical Philology ix. p. 353, n. 3, Friedländer, Platon, i. p. 143.

116^ Höffding, Outlines of Psychology, p. 99, refers to Saxo’s tale of the different effect which the news of the murder of Regner Lodbrog produced on his sons: he in whom the emotion was the weakest had the greatest energy for action.

117^ Cf. Shakespeare Richard II III. ii. 178: My lord, wise men ne’er sit. and wail their woes | But presently prevent the ways to wail. Herodotus i. 20 πρὸς τὸ παρεὸν βουλεύηται.

118^ Cf. Euripides Electra 639 and fr. 175 πρὸς τὸ πῖπτον, Iphigenia at Aulis 1343 and Hippolytus 718 πρὸς τὰ νῦν πεπτωκότα, Epictetus ii. 5. 3. See also Stallbaum ad loc.

119^ Cf. 440b, 607b, Herodotus i. 132.

120^ Cf. Demosthenes’ description of how barbarians box iv. 40 (51), ἀεὶ τῆς πληγῆς ἔχεται.

121^ Cf. Sophocles Ajax 582 θρηνεῖν ἐπῳδὰς πρὸς τομῶντι πήματι with Ovid, Metamorphoses i. 190: "sed immedicabile vulnus | Ense recidendum est."

122^ Cf. on 603b, p. 450, note a.

123^ ἔχει in the sense of "involves," "admits of," as frequently in Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

124^ For πέπηγεν cf. 530d.

125^ ἀντίστροφον is used as in Aristotle Rhetoric 1354a 1.

126^ Cf. p. 412, note d.

127^ Cf. p. 420, note a, on 595b-c.

128^ For ἐν πένθει cf. Sophocles Electra 290, 846, Herodotus i. 46.

129^ Cf. Philebus 48a.

130^ See the description in Ion 535e, and Laws 800d.

131^ This is qualified in 387e-388a by οὐδὲ ταύταις σπουδαίαις. Cf. also 398e.

132^ Cf. Vol. I. p. 509, note b, on 473e.

133^ Cf. Isocrates Panegyricus 168 for a different application.

134^ This contains a hint of one possible meaning of the Aristotelian doctrine of κάθαρσις, Poetics 1449b 27-28. Cf. κουφίζεσθαι μεθ᾽ ἡδονῆς Politics 1342a 14, and my review of Finsler, "Platon u. d. Aristotle Poetik," Classical Philology iii. p. 462. But the tone of the Platonic passage is more like that of Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies: "And the human nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some kind, for the noble grief we should have borne with our fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept with them, we gloat over the pathos of the police court and gather the night dew of the grave."

135^ This anticipates the idea of the "censor" in modern psychology.

136^ Cf. τῇ δ᾽ ἀσφαλείᾳ κερδανεῖς Euripides Hercules Furens 604, which is frequently misinterpreted; Herodotus viii. 60. 3.

137^ For the psychology Cf. Laws 656b and supra on 385c-d.

138^ Cf. 442a.

139^ Cf. Vol. I. p. 211, note f, La Bruyère, Des Ouvrages de l’esprit (Oeuvres, ed. M. G. Servois, i. p. 137): "D’où vient que l’on rit si librement au théâtre, et que l’on a honte d’y pleurer?"

140^ In the Laws 816d-e Plato says that the citizens must witness such performances since the serious cannot be learned without the laughable, nor anything without its opposite; but they may not take part in them. That is left to slaves and foreigners. Cf. also Vol. I. p. 239, note b, on 396e.

141^ I.e. as opposed to public performances. Cf. Euthydemus 305d ἐν δὲ ἰδίοις λόγοις, Theaetetus 177b, Sophist 232c ἔν γε ταῖς ἰδίαις συνουσίαις, and Sophist 222c προσομιλητικήν with Quintil. iii. 4. 4. Wilamowitz, Antigonos von Karystos, p. 285, fantastically says that it means prose and refers to Sophron. He compares 366e. But see Laws 935b-c.

142^ Cf. supra 603c.

143^ Cf. 550b.

144^ Isocrates, Panegyricus 159, says Homer was given a place in education because he celebrated those who fought against the barbarians. Cf. also Aristophanes Frogs 1034 ff.

145^ The same conjunction is implied in Protagoras’s teaching, Protagoras 318e and 317b.

146^ For the μέν Cf. Symposium 180e, Herodotus vii. 102.

147^ The condescending tone is that of Euthydemus 306c-d.

148^ Aristotle, Poetics 1453a 29, says that Euripides is τραγικώτατος of poets.

149^ Cf. 605c, 595b-c.

150^ Cf. Laws 801d-e, 829c-d, 397c-d, 459e, 468d, Friedländer, Platon, i. p. 142, and my review of Pater, Plato and Platonism, in The Dial, 14 (1893) p. 211.

151^ Cf. Laws 802c τῆς γλυκείας Μούσης. See Finsler, Platon u. d. aristot. Poetik, pp. 61-62.

152^ See on 604c, p. 455, note h.

153^ For the quarrel between philosophy and poetry Cf. Laws 967c-d, Friedländer, Platon, ii. p. 136. It still goes on in modern imes. Cf. Keats, "Lamia": Do not all charms fly | At the mere touch of cold philosophy? Wordsworth, "A Poet’s Epitaph": Philosopher! a fingering slave, | One that would peep and botanize | Upon his mother’s grave. But Anatole France thinks otherwise, "Les Torts de l’histoire," Vie litteraire, ii. p. 123: "J’ai remarque que les philosophies vivaient generalement en bonne intelligence avec les poetes … Les philosophies savent que les poetes ne pensent pas; cela les desarme, les attendrit et les enchante."

154^ Wilamowitz, Platon, i. p. 252, conjectures that these quotations are from Sophron; cf. also ibid. ii. pp. 386-387.

155^ Cf. p. 420, note b, on 595c.

156^ Cf. supra, Introduction p. lxiii.

157^ In Laws 658d Plato says that old men would prefer Homer and epic to any other literary entertainment.

158^ This was taken up by Aristotle (Poetics), Plutarch (Quomodo adolescens), Sidney (Defense of Poesie), and many others.

159^ βίᾳ μέν, ὅμως δέ: Cf. Epistle iii. 316e, and vii. 325a, and Raeder, Rhein. Mus. lxi. p. 470, Aristophanes Clouds 1363 μόλις μὲν ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως, Euripides Phoenissae 1421 μόλις μέν, ἐξέτεινε δ᾽, and also Sophocles Antigone 1105, Oedipus Tyrannus 998, Euripides Bacchantes 1027, Hecuba 843, Orestes 1023, Electra 753, Phoenissae 1069, Iphigenia at Aulis 688, 904.

160^ Ironical, as καλλίστη in 562a.

161^ For ἐπᾴδοντες Cf. Phaedo 114d, 77e.

162^ Cf. 602b.

163^ Cf. on 591e, p. 412, note d.

164^ Cf. Phaedo 114c, 107c, Phaedrus 247b, Gorgias 526e, Blaydes on Aristophanes Peace 276, and for the whole sentence Phaedo 83b-c, supra 465d, 618b-c f. and p. 404, note d, on 589e.

165^ ἐπαρθέντα: cf. 416c.

166^ Cf. 404c, 509a, 548b, 588a, Apology 41c, Charmides 155d.

167^ Clement, Stromata iv. p. 496b ὁθούνεκ᾽ ἀρετὴ τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις μόνη οὐκ ἐκ θυραίων τἀπίχειρα λαμβάνει, αὐτὴ δ᾽ ἑαυτὴν ἆθλα τῶν πόνων ἔχει. Tennyson, "Wages": … if the wages of Virtue be dust, | Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? | She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, | To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: | Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.

168^ Tennyson, "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After": Good, for Good is Good, he follow’d, yet he look’d beyond the grave … | Truth for truth, and good for good! The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just — Take the charm "For ever" from them, and they crumble into dust.

169^ Cf. on 486a, p. 9, mote f and 498d.

170^ For the colorless use of πρᾶγμα see What Plato Said, p. 497, on Protagoras 330c-d. Cf. Shakespeare Hamlet, I. iv. 67 "being a thing immortal as itself."

171^ ἐμβλέψας: Cf. Charmides 155c.

172^ Glaucon is surprised in spite of 498d. Many uncertain inferences have been drawn from the fact that in spite of the Phaedo and Phaedrus (245c ff.) interlocutors in Plato are always surprised at the idea of immortality. Cf. supra, Introducion p. lxiv.

173^ For the idiomatic εἰ μὴ ἀδικῶ cf. 430e Charmides 156a, Menexenus 236b, infra 612d.

174^ Cf. Protagoras 341a τὸ χαλεπὸν τοῦτο, which is a little different, Herodotus vii. 11 τὸ δεινὸν τὸ πείσομαι.

175^ See Vol. I. p. 90, note a and What Plato Said, p. 567, on Cratylus 385b.

176^ 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, Consolation of Philosophy iii. 11 (L.C.L. trans. p. 283), things are destroyed by what is hostile; Aristotle Topics 124a 28 εἰ γὰρ τὸ φθαρτικὸν διαλυτικόν.

177^ γε vi termini. Cf. 379a, Phaedo 106d.

178^ See What Plato Said, p. 490, on Lysis 216d.

179^ Cf. Vol. I. p. 529, note a, on 478d.

180^ Cf. Aristotle Politics 1309b 28 μηδὲ ῥῖνα ποιήσει φαίνεσθαι.

181^ The argument that follows is strictly speaking a fallacy in that it confounds the soul with the physical principle of life. Cf. on 35c and on 352e, Gorgias 477b-c, and supra, Introduction p. lxvii. But Dean Inge, "Platonism and Human Immortality" (Aristotle 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. 610c. Someone might object that wickedness does destroy the soul, conceived as a spiritual principle.

182^ Plato generally disregards minor distinctions when they do not affect his point.

183^ Cf. 610d.

184^ For the challenge to refute or accept the argument Cf. Sophist 259a, 257a, Gorgias 467b-c, 482b, 508a-b, Philebus 60d-e.

185^ Or "to take the bull by the horns." For ὁμόσε ἰέναι see What Plato Said, p. 457, on Euthyphro 3c. Cf. ἐγγὺς ἰόντεςPhaedo 95b.

186^ 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 Gorgias 498e, that if all pleasures are alike those who feel pleasure are good and those who feel pain are bad.

187^ For the future indicative after εἰ, usually minatory or monitory in tone, cf. Aristophanes Birds 759, Philebus 25d.

188^ Cf. Phaedo 107c, 84b, Blaydes on Aristophanes Acharnians 757.

189^ μάλα is humorous, as in 506d, Euthydemus 298d, Symposium 189a.

190^ Cf. Horace, Epistle i. 2. 32 "ut iugulent hominem surgunt de nocte latrones."

191^ For the metaphor Cf. Proverbs viii. 12 σοφία κατεσκήνωσα βουλήν. Plato personifies injustice, as he does justice in 612d, σκιαγραφία in 602d, bravery in Laches 194a, κολαστική in Sophist 229a, κολακευτική Gorgias 464c, σμικρότης Parmenides 150a πονηρία Apology 39a-b, and many other abstract conceptions. See further Philebus 63a-b, 15d, 24a, Republic 465a-b, Laws 644c, Cratylus 438d.

192^ σχολῇ: cf. 354c, Phaedo 106d.

193^ Cf. 345d.

194^ 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. …"

195^ Cf. Phaedo 72c-d.

196^ The idea of self-contradiction is frequent in Plato. See What Plato Said, p. 505, on Gorgias 482b-c.

197^ σύνθετον: Cf. Phaedo 78c, 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, Philosophie der Griechen ii. 1, pp. 828-829.

198^ 603d. see also Frutiger, Mythes de Platon, pp. 90 f.

199^ Such as are given in the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and perhaps elsewhere.

200^ Cf. also Phaedo 82e, 83d-e, 81c, 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."

201^ See schol. Hermann vi. 362, Euripides Orestes 364 f., Apollonius, Argonautica 1310 ff., Athenaeus 296b and d, Anthologia Palatina vi. 164, Frazer on Pausanias ix. 22. 7, Gädecker, Glaukos der Meeresgott, Göttingen, 1860. Cf. Lionel Johnson’s poem: Ah, Glaucus, soul of man! | Encrusted by each tide |That since the seas began | Hath surged against thy side.

202^ Cf. Timaeus 42c προσφύντα.

203^ Cf. Phaedrus 250c ὀστρέου τρόπον δεδεσμευμένοι, Phaedo 110a.

204^ Cf. Phaedo 79d, Laws 899d, and 494d τὸ σιγγενὲς τῶν λόγων.

205^ Cf. Philebus 55c περικρούωμεν, 519a περιεκόπη.

206^ Cf. Charmides 158a, Laws 695a, 783a. See λεγόμενα ἀγαθά supra 491c, 495a, Laws 661c.

207^ Cf. Phaedo 246a. In Timaeus 72d Plato says that only God knows the truth about the soul. See Laws 641d, and Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 42.

208^ Cf. Phaedrus 271a.

209^ ὅπῃ καὶ ὅπως: cf. 621b, Phaedo 100d, Timaeus 37a-b, Laws 652a, 834e, 899a-b.

210^ Supra 363b-c.

211^ 359d f.

212^ Cf. 367e.

213^ Iliad v. 845, Blaydes on Aristophanes Acharnians 390.

214^ Cf. Sophist 243a, Laws 801e ἄνευ φθόνων, Euripides Hippolytus 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 899d ff. and 905b. 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 367e, strangely argues that Phaedo 107c 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., Proverbs 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."

215^ Cf. Politicus 267a.

216^ τοῦ λόγου ἕνεκα: not the same as λόγου ἕνεκα. See on 581c, p. 374, note a.

217^ Cf. εἰ μὴ ἀδικῶ 608d.

218^ For the idiom ὥσπερ ἔχει δόξης cf. 365a ὡς … ἔχουσι τιμῆς, 389c ὅπως … πράξεως ἔχει, Thucyd. idesi. 22ὡς … μνήμης ἔχοι. For the thought cf. Isoc. viii. 33.

219^ Cf. Philebus 22b and e.

220^ γε vi termini. Cf. 379a and Classical Philology x. p. 335.

221^ Cf. 365d.

222^ Cf. Philebus 39e.

223^ Cf. 352b.

224^ This recalls the faith of Socrates in Apology 41c-d and Phaedo 63b-c, and anticipates the theodicy of Laws 899d ff., 904d-e ff.

225^ Besides obvious analogies with Buddhism, this recalls Empedocles fr. 115, Diels i. 3 p. 267.

226^ Cf. ὁμοίωσις θεῷ Theaetetus 176b, and What Plato Said, p. 578, p. 72, note d.

227^ Cf. Laws 716c-d, 904e.

228^ For the order Cf. Laws 913b λεγόμενον εὖ, Thucydides i. 71. 7, Vahlen, Op. acad. i. 495-496. for the figure of the race cf. Euripides Electra 955, 1 Corinthians ix. 24 f., Hebrews xii. 1, Galatians ii. 2, v. 7, Philippians ii. 16.

229^ English idiom would say, "with their tails between their legs." Cf. Horace, Satires i. 9. 20 "dimitto auriculas." For the idea cf. also Laws 730c-d, Demosthenes ii. 10, and for εἰς τέλος, Laws 899e πρὸς τέλος, Hesiod, Works and Days 216 ἐς τέλος ἐξελθοῦσα, Euripides 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.)

230^ Cf. Vol. I. pp. 125-127, 362b-c.

231^ Cf. Macbeth v. iii. 24: And that which should accompany old age, |As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, | I must not look to have.

232^ He turns the tables here as in Gorgias 527a. The late punishment of the wicked became an ethical commonplace. Cf. Plutarch’s De sera numinis vindicta 1, also Job and Psalms passim.

233^ Cf. 361e ἀγροικοτέρως, and Gorgias 473c.

234^ i.e. the just and unjust man.

352^ τελέως: cf. 361a.

236^ See Proclus, In Platonis rem publicam commentarii, Kroll ii. 96 ff., Macrobius in Somnium Scipipio 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.

237^ Odyssey ix.-xii. The term also became proverbial for a lengthy tale. See K. Tümpel, Ἀλκίνου ἀπόλογος, Philologus 52. 523 ff.

238^ Plato puns on the name Alcinous. For other puns on proper names see on 580b. See Arthur Platt, "Plato’s Republic, 614b," Classal Review, 1911, pp. 13-14. For the ἀλλὰ μέν without a corresponding δέ he compares Aristophanes Acharnians 428 οὐ Βελλεροφόντης: ἀλλὰ κἀκεῖνος μὲν ἦ χωλός …(which Blaydes changed to ἀλλὰ μήν), Odyssey xv. 405 and Eryxias 308b.

239^ Perhaps we might say, "of the tribe of Everyman." For the question of his identity see Platt, loc. cit.

240^ 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.

241^ 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 (1 Kings xvii. 17 ff. Cf. 2 Kings iv. 34 ff. and xiii. 21), in the New Testament the daughter of Jairus (Matthew 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. Tennyson, "In Memoriam," xxxi.: Where wert thou, brother, those four days? … | The rest remaineth unreveal’d; | He told it not; or something seal’d | The lips of that Evangelist. 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 Platonis rem publicam commentarii, ii. pp. 113-116, Rohde, Psyche ii.6 p. 191.

242^ For the indirect reflexive cf. p. 507, note f, on 617e.

243^ For the description of the place of judgement cf. also Gorgias 524a. Cf. Phaedo 107d, 113d, 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 Philosophie de Plotin pp. 28-29: "Voyez, par exemple, la manière dont Numénius … interprète le mythe du Xe livre de Ia République, et comment il précise, avec la 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."

244^ Cf. Gorgias 523e f., 524e-525b, 526b-c.

245^ Gorgias 526b, Dante, Inferno, v. 9 f.: E quel conoscitor delle peccata | vede qual luogo d’ inferno è da essa; | cignesi con la coda tante volte | quantunque gradi vuol che giù sia messa.

246^ Cf. Gorgias 525a-b, 526b. For "right" and "left" cf. the story of the last judgement, Matthew xxv. 33-34 and 41.

247^ Cf. the rich man’s request that a messenger be sent to his brethren, Luke xvi. 27-31.

248^ ἐκεῖ: so in 330d, 365a, 498c, Phaedo 61e, 64a, 67b, 68e, Apology 40e, 41c, Crito 54b, Symposium 192e. In 500d and Phaedrus 250a it refers to the world of the ideas, in 516c and 520c to the world of the cave.

249^ Cf. Gorgias 524a.

250^ Cf. 621a, 610e, and John i. 14ἐσκήνωσεν.

251^ Cf. 421b.

252^ Cf. Phaedrus 256d, Epistle vii. 335b-c.

253^ Phaedrus 249a, Virgil, Aeneid vi. 748.

254^ The ideal Hindu length of life is said to be 100 years. {In Hebrew Kabbalah, 100 is the number of perfected man, 90 of perfected woman.}

255^ For the words Cf. Timaeus 76e εὐθὺς γιγνομένοις. Plato does not take up the problem of infant damnation! Warburton says, "and I make no doubt but the things not worth to be remembered was the doctrine of infants in purgatory, which appears to have given Plato much scandal, who did not at that time at least reflect upon its original and use." See also Mozley, Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, p. 307, apud Seebohm. The Oxford Reformers (3rd ed.), p. 495: "Augustine had laid down that the punishment of such children was the mildest of all punishment in hell. … Aquinas laid down the further hypothesis that this punishment was not pain of body or mind, but want of the Divine vision." Virgil, Aen. vi. 427, Anthologia Palatina ix. 359. 10θ ανεῖν αὐτίκα τικτόμενον. Stallbaum and Ast think ἀποθανόντων dropped out of the text after γενομένων.

256^ Cf. Phaedo 113e-114a, where there is a special penalty for murderers and parricides.

257^ Cf. Archelaus in Gorgias 471.

258^ Cf. Gorgias 525d-526a, Dante, Inferno xii. 100 ff., Spenser, Faerie Queene 1. v. 51: But most of all which in that dungeon lay | Fell from high Princes courtes or Ladies bowres. Lang, "Helen of Troy": Oh, Paris, what is power? Tantalus | And Sisyphus were kings long time ago, | But now they lie in the Lake Dolorous; | The halls of hell are noisy with their woe.

259^ Cf. Gorgias 525c, and What Plato Said, p. 536, on Phaedo 113e. Biggs, Christian Platonists, ii. p. 147 "At the first assize there will be found those who like Ardiaeus are incurable."

260^ This naturally suggests the devils, of Dante (Inferno xxi. 25 ff.) and other mediaeval literature. See Dieterich, Nekyia, p.4 and pp. 60 f.

261^ See Rogers on Aristophanes Knights 262. Cf. Herodotus i. 92 ἐπὶ κνάφου ἕλκων διέφθειρε.

262^ Iliad viii. 13 f., Hesiod, Theogony 682, 721, etc., Pindar Pythian Odes i. 15 f., Euripides Orestes 265 μέσον μ᾽ ὀχμάζεις ὡς βάλῃς εἰς Τάρταρον.

263^ Cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Knights 279, Acts xxvii. 17.

264^ Plotinus, Enneads ii. 3 9, p. 35, vol. ii. Budé e. "Mais (dira-t-on) rappelons-nous ’le fuseau’; pour les anciens, c’était un fuseau matériel que tournent en filant les Moires; pour Platon, il représente le ciel des fixes; or les Moires et la Nécessité, leur mère, en le faisant tourner, filent le destin de chaque être à sa naissance; par elle, les êtres engendrés arrivent â la naissance," etc. St. Paulinus Nolanus calls it a deliramentum. Tannery, Science hellène, p. 238, thinks it alludes to the system of Parmenides. "Le fuseau central de la Nécessité l’indique suffisamment; si la présence des sirènes est une marque de pythagorisme, elle pent seulement signifier soit les relations de Parménide avec l’école soit plutôt l’origine des déterminations particulières que donne Platon et qui évidemment ne remontent pas à l’Eléate." Cf. ibid. p. 246. For various details of the picture cf. Milton, the Genius’s speech in "Arcades" (quoted and commented on in E.M.W. Tillyard, Milton, p. 376).

265^ Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, pp. 216-217 "In Plato’s Myth of Er, which is certainly Pythagorean in its general character, we do not hear of spheres but of the ’lips’ of concentric whorls fitted into one another like a nest of boxes …" With 616-617 Cf. Laws 822a-b, Timaeus 36d, Dante, Convivio, ii. 3. 5 ff. The names of the planets occur first in Epinomis 987b-c.

266^ Burnet, op. cit. p. 123, says; "This view that the planets had an orbital motion from west to east is attributed by Aetios ii. 16. 3 to Alkmaion (96), which certainly implies that Pythagoras did not hold it. As we shall see (152) it is far from clear that any of the Pythagoreans did. It seems rather to be Plato’s discovery." Cf. ibid. p. 352.

267^ The best mss. have τὸν before τρίτον. It is retained by some editors, but Schleiermacher rejected it and Adam and Burnet omit it.

268^ The music of the spheres. Cf. Cicero De Natura Deorum iii. 9. 26, Mayor, vol. iii. p. 86, Macrobius on Commentarii in somnium Scipionis ii. 3, Ritter-Preller (9th ed.), pp. 69-70 ( 81-82), K. Gronau, Poseidonios und die jüdisch-christliche Genesisexegese, pp. 59-61. Aristotle’s comment, De caelo 290b 12 ff., is that the notion of a music of the spheres is pretty and ingenious, but not true. He reports the (Pythagorean?) explanation that we do not hear it because we have been accustomed to it from birth. see Carl v. Jan, "Die Harmonie der Sphären," Philologus, lii. 13 ff. Cf. Shakespeare Merchant of Venice, V. i. 60: There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st | But in his motion like an angel sings, | Still quiring to the young ey’d cherubims …. Milton, "Arcades" (Tillyard, p. 60. ibid. p. 375, he says that Plato is referred to in Milton’s academic exercise De sphaerarum concentu); Pope, Essay on Man, i. 201-202: If Nature thundered in his opening ears | And stunned him with the music of the spheres. Complete Poems of Henry More, p. 77. Addison rationalizes the thought: The spacious firmament on high … | What though in solemn silence all | Move round the dark terrestrial ball: | What though no real voice or sound | Amidst their radiant orbs be found? | In reason’s ear they all rejoice | And utter forth a glorious voice, | For ever singing as they shine: | The hand that made us is divine.

269^ Pictured in Michelangelo’s Le Parche. Cf. Catullus 64. 306 ff.; Lowell, "Villa Franca": "Spin, Clotho, spin, Lachesis twist and Atropos sever."

270^ See What Plato Said, p. 550, on Phaedrus 235c.

271^ Cf. Laws 923a, Pindar, Pythian Odes viii. 95, Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 83, 547, Aristotle Historia Animalium 552b 18 f., Cicero Disputationes Tusculanae i. 39. 94, Plutarch Consolatio ad Apollonium 6 (104a) ἀνθρώπων … ἐφήμερα τὰ σώματα, ibid. 27 (115d) ἐφήμερον σπέρμα. See also Stallbaum ad loc., and for the thought Sophocles Ajax 125-126, Iliad i. 146, Mimnermus ii. 1, Sophoclesfr. 12 and 859 (Nauck), Job vii. 6, viii. 9, ix. 25, xiv. 2, xxi. 17, etc.

272^ Cf. Swinburne,"The Life of Man" (from Atalanta in Calydon): "Life the shadow of death. ibid. With life before and after | And death beneath and above, | For a day and a night and a morrow, "That his strength might endure for a span"; and "The Garden of Proserpine": "Here life hath death for neighbour."

273^ Zeller-Nestle, p. 166, says that this looks like intentional correction of Phaedo 107d. Cf. Phaedo 113d and Lysias ii. 78 ὅ τε δαίμων ὁ τὴν ἡμετέραν μοῖραν εἰληχὼς ἀπαραίτητος. Arnobius, Adversus gentes, ii. 64, says that similarly Christ offers us redemption but does not force it upon us.

274^ Cf. Milton’s "Love Virtue; she alone is free" (Comus).

275^ Justin Martyr, Apology xliv. 8, quotes this. Cf. Timaeus 42d, Dieterich, Nekyia, p. 115, Odyssey i. 32 f., Bacchylides xiv. 51 f. (Jebb, p. 366) Ζεὺς … οὐκ αἴτιος θνατοῖς μεγάλων ἀχέων, etc., Manitius, Gesch. d. lat. Lit. d. Mittelalters, ii. p. 169. For the problem of evil in Plato see What Plato Said, p. 578 on Theaetetus 176a, and for the freedom of the will ibid. pp. 644-645 on Laws 904c.

276^ Cf. Symposium 175c, where the words are the same but the construction different. For the indirect reflexive cf. 614b οὖ ἐκβῆναι, Symposium 176d, Symposium 223b ἓ δὲ ὕπνον λαβεῖν.

277^ For διατελεῖς Cf. Laws 661d τυραννίδα διὰ τέλους.

278^ For the idiom ἀναγκαίως ἔχειν Cf. Phaedo 91e, Laws 771e, 928e, Lysias vi. 35.

279^ μεσοῦν Phaedrus 241d.

280^ Cf. Phaedo 107c, 114d, Gorgias 526e, Euripides Medea 235 ἀγὼν μέγιστος, Thucydides i. 32. 5 μέγας ὁ κίνδυνος, Aristophanes Clouds 955 νῦν γὰρ ἅπας … κίνδυνος ἀνεῖται, Frogs 882 ἀγὼν … ὁ μέγας, Antiphon v. 43 ἐν ᾦ μοι ὁ πᾶς κίνδυνος ἦν. For the expression Cf. Gorgias 470e ἐν τούτῳ ἡ πᾶσα εὐδαιμονία ἐστιν.

281^ Cf. supra 443-444, 591e-592a, Gorgias 527b f., Laws 662b f., 904a ff.

282^ The singular verb is used after plural subjects, because the subjects are united in the writer’s mind into one general idea. Cf. Republic 363a, Laws 925e, Symposium 188b.

283^ See Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 25, Laws 661-662, and for the word supra 360b, Gorgias 509a.

284^ Cf. 576d.

285^ An anticipation of the Aristotelian doctrine, Ethica Nicomachea 1106b 6 f. Cf. What Plato Said, p. 629, on Laws 691c.

286^ Cf. Isocrates Epistle vi. 12 Xenophon Hiero 7. 2 ὅμως προπετῶς φέρεσθε εἰς αὐτήν.

287^ Cf. What Plato Said, p. 532, on Phaedo 90d.

288^ Phaedo 82b.

289^ Cf. Phaedo 81e ff., Phaedrus 248-249, Timaeus 42a-d, 91d ff. For the idea of reincarnation in Plato see What Plato Said, p. 529, on Phaedo 81e-82b.

290^ Urwiek, The Message of Plato, p. 213, says: "If Plato knew anything at all of Indian allegory, he must have known that the swan (Hamsa) is in Hinduism the invariable symbol of the immortal Spirit; and to say, as he does, that Orpheus chose the life of a swan, refusing to be born again of a woman, is just an allegorical way of saying that he passed on into the spiritual life." One is tempted to cap this with Donne: Oh, do not die, for I shall hate | All women so when thou art gone | That thee I shall not celebrate | When I remember thou wert one.

291^ Like Orpheus a singer. He contended with the Muses in song and was in consequence deprived by them of sight and of the gift of song. Cf. also Ion 533b-c, Laws 829d-e, Iliad ii. 595.

292^ Cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 114 ff.

293^ Who built the Trojan horse. See Hesychius s.v.

294^ Cf. Iliad ii. 212 ff.

295^ For ἀπράγμονος cf. on 565a, p. 316, note b.

296^ Phaedrus 249 specifies that only beasts who had once been men could return to human form.

297^ Cf. supra 617e, and for daemons in Plato What Plato Said, pp. 546-547, on Symposium 202e, Dieterich, Nekyia, p. 59.

298^ δίνης: Cf. Cratylus 439c and Phaedo 99b.

299^ Cf. Laws 960c.

300^ τὰ ἐπικλωσθέντα: Cf. Laws 957e, Theaetetus 169c, and the Platonic epigram on Dion, Anthologia Palatina vii. 99 Μοῖραι ἐπέκλωσαν, Odyssey i. 17, iii. 208, etc., Aeschylus Eumenides 335, Callinus i. 9 Μοῖραι ἐπικλώσωσ᾽.

301^ Cf. Aristophanes Frogs 186.

302^ In later literature it is the river that is called Lethe. Cf. Aeneid vi. 714 f. Milton, Paradise Lost ii.: Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls |Her wat’ry labyrinth, whereof who drinks, | Forthwith his former state and being forgets. Keats, "Ode on Melancholy": "No, no! go not to Lethe"; Tennyson, "The Two Voices": As old mythologies relate, | Some draught of Lethe might await | The slipping thro’ from state to state.

303^ In Timaeus 41d-e each soul is given a star as its vehicle. Cf. Aristophanes Peace 833 f. ὡς ἀστέρες γιγνόμεθ᾽ ὁταν τις ἀποθάνῃ … with the Platonic epigram to Ἄστηρ: … νῦν δὲ θανὼν λάμπεις Ἕσπερος ἐν φθιμένοις. There is an old superstition in European folklore to the effect that when a star falls a soul goes up to God. Cf. also Rohde, Psyche, ii.6 p. 131.

304^ Cf. Phaedrus 243b ἀνέβλεψεν.

305^ Cf. Philebus 14a, Laws 645b, Theaetetus 164d.

306^ Phaedo 58b ἔσωσε τε καὶ αὐτὸς ἐσώθη. σώζειν is here used in its higher sense, approaching the idea of salvation, not as in Gorgias 511c f., 512d-e, Laws 707d, where Plato uses it contemptuously in the tone of "whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it."

307^ Cf. James i. 27, Phaedo 81b, 2 Peter iii. 14, and the Emperor Julian’s last speech "animum … immaculatum conservavi." Cf. Marius the Epicurean, pp. 15-16: "A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely, a bird which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded public place his own soul was like that."

308^ Cf. Laws 693b ἑαυτῇ φίλην, Republic 589b, Horace, Epistle i. 3. 29 "si nobis vivere cari." Wordsworth: Hence lives he to his inner self endeared. Jowett’s "dear to one another" misses the point. Cf. my review of Lemercier, Les Pensées de Marc-Aurèle, in Classical Philology vii. p. 115: "In iii. 4, in fine, the words οἵγε οὐδὲ αὐτοὶ ἑαυτοῖς ἀρέσκονται are omitted because ’le gens que méprise Marc-Aurèle sont loin de mépriser eux-mêmes.’ That is to forget that Seneca’s ’omnis stultitia fastidio laborat sui’ is good Stoic doctrine, and that the idea that only the wise and good man can be dear to himself is found in the last sentence of Plato’s Republic." Cf. also Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus 309 τίς γὰρ ἐσθλὸς οὐχ αὑτῷ φίλος.

309^ Cf. Vol. I. p. 480, note c, on 465d.

309^ For the thought Cf. Gorgias 527c εὐδαιμονήσεις καὶ ζῶν καὶ τελευτήσας. Cf. Vol. I. p. 104, note b, on 353e. The quiet solemnity of εὖ πράττωμεν illustrates the same characteristic of style that makes Plato begin his Laws with the word θεός, and Dante close each of the three sections of the Divine Comedy with "stelle."

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