Justice Rewarded, by Gods and by Men

Well then, I said, we settled the other matters in our argument, and did not praise justice for its wages or its repute, as you said Hesiod and Homer did, but found justice itself, for the soul itself, best, and that one must do just things whether one has the ring of Gyges or not, and along with such a ring the cap of Hades too?

Most true, he said.

Is it not now, then, I said, Glaucon, free of reproach to give back, besides those things, the wages also to justice and to the rest of virtue — as many and as great as it provides to the soul from men and from gods, both while the man still lives and after he has died?

Certainly, he said.

Will you, then, give me back what you borrowed in the argument?

What in particular?

I granted to you that the just man should seem unjust and the unjust man just; for you asked that, even if it were not possible for this to escape the notice of both gods and men, it must nevertheless be granted for the sake of the argument, so that justice itself might be judged against injustice itself. Or do you not remember?

I would indeed be committing an injustice, he said, if I did not.

Since, then, I said, they have been judged, I now claim back, on behalf of justice, the reputation it actually has from both gods and men, and ask that we agree it is thought of in this way, so that it too may carry off the prizes of victory, gaining from its reputation what it gives to those who possess it, since it has been shown to give the goods that come from actually being just, and not to deceive those who truly take hold of it.

What you ask is just, he said.

Then, I said, first you will grant me this — that the gods, at least, are not unaware what sort each of the two is?

We will grant it, he said.

And if they do not escape notice, the one would be dear to the gods, the other hateful to them, just as we agreed also at the beginning.

That is so.

And shall we not agree that for the man dear to the gods, whatever comes to him from the gods, all comes about in the best way possible, unless some necessary evil awaited him from an earlier fault?

Certainly.

This, then, is how one must think about the just man — whether he falls into poverty or into sicknesses or into any other of the things thought bad — that for him these things will end in some good, whether he is living or even after he has died. For the man who is willing to make it his earnest purpose to become just and, by practicing virtue, to be like a god so far as a man can, is surely never neglected by the gods.

It stands to reason, he said, that such a man should not be neglected by one like him.

Must we not, then, think the opposite of this concerning the unjust man?

Very much so.

Such, then, would be the prizes of victory from the gods for the just man.

So it seems to me, at any rate, he said.

But what, I said, of the rewards from men? Is it not so, if we must state the truth of the matter? Do not the clever and unjust act just like those runners who run well on the way out but not on the way back? At first they spring off sharply, but in the end they become ridiculous, their ears drooping on their shoulders, and they run off without a crown, while those who are true runners, once they reach the finish, take the prizes and are crowned. Is this not, for the most part, what happens with the just as well? Toward the end of each action and each association and of life itself, are they not held in good repute and do they not carry off the prizes from men?

Very much so.

Will you bear with me, then, if I say about these men the very things you yourself said about the unjust? For I will say that the just, once they have grown old, hold office in their own city if they wish to, marry from wherever they wish, and give their daughters in marriage to whomever they want; and everything that you said about the unjust, I now say about these men. And again, about the unjust — that most of them, even when they go undetected while young, are caught at the end of the race and become ridiculous, and, growing old, are wretchedly abused by strangers and citizens alike, scourged, and suffering what you yourself called crude, and you spoke truly — and then they will be racked and burned — take it that you have heard from me too all those things they suffer. But see whether you can bear what I am saying.

Quite so, he said; for what you say is just.

Such, then, I said, would be the prizes and wages and gifts that come to the just man while he lives, from both gods and men, in addition to those goods which justice itself provided.

Very much so, he said — fine and secure things.

These things, then, I said, are nothing either in number or in magnitude compared to those that await each of the two after he has died; and we must hear about them, so that each may fully receive what our argument owes him to hear.

The Myth of Er: The Journey, and the Spindle of Necessity

Do go on, he said, since there is not much else I would hear more gladly.

It is not, though, a tale of Alcinous that I shall tell you, I said, but the tale of a valiant man, Er son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth, who once died in war; when the dead were taken up on the tenth day, already decayed, he was taken up sound, and, carried home and about to be buried on the twelfth day, he came back to life as he lay on the pyre, and once revived he told what he had seen there. He said that when his soul went out of him it traveled with many others, and they came to a certain supernatural place, in which there were two chasms in the earth, adjoining each other, and, opposite them, two others in the heaven above. Judges sat between them, and these, whenever they had given judgment, ordered the just to travel the road to the right and upward through the heaven, with signs of the judgments passed fastened on them in front, and the unjust the road to the left and downward, these too wearing on their backs signs of everything they had done. And when he approached, they told him that he must become a messenger to mankind of the things there, and they urged him to listen and to observe everything in the place. He saw, then, at each of those two chasms — the one of heaven and the one of earth — souls departing once judgment had been given for them, and, at the other two, from one, souls going up out of the earth, full of squalor and dust, and from the other, different souls coming down pure from heaven. And the souls that kept arriving seemed to have come as if from a long journey, and, going off gladly into the meadow, camped there as though at a festival, and those who knew one another greeted each other, and the ones who had come from the earth asked the others about the things there, and those from heaven about what had befallen the others. And they told each other their stories: the ones from the earth, wailing and weeping, recalling how many things and what things they had suffered and seen in their journey beneath the earth — the journey lasted a thousand years — while the ones from heaven, in turn, told of delights and of sights of inconceivable beauty. Now to relate most of it, Glaucon, would take a long time; but he said the main point was this: for all the wrongs anyone had ever done, and to however many people, each had paid the penalty for all of them in turn, tenfold for each — this being reckoned by each period of a hundred years, human life being taken as that length — so that they might pay tenfold requital for the wrong, and, for instance, if some had been the cause of many deaths, either by betraying cities or armies, and had thrown men into slavery, or had been accessories to some other affliction, for all of these they received tenfold pains for each, and again, if they had done good deeds and had been just and pious, they received their due reward in the same proportion. And concerning those who had just been born and lived only a short time, he told other things not worth mentioning. And for impiety and piety toward the gods, and toward parents, and for murder by one's own hand, he described still greater recompenses.

For he said that he was present when one was asked by another where Ardiaeus the Great was. Now this Ardiaeus had been tyrant in a certain city of Pamphylia, a thousand years already before that time, having killed his aged father and his elder brother, and having done many other unholy things besides, as it was said. He said, then, that the one who was asked replied: "He has not come, nor will he come here. For indeed we witnessed this too, one of the terrible sights: when we were near the mouth, about to go up, and had gone through everything else as well, we suddenly caught sight of him and others — nearly all of them tyrants, though there were also some private men who had committed great wrongs — whom, though they thought they were now about to go up, the mouth would not receive, but it bellowed whenever one of those so incurably disposed toward wickedness, or who had not paid a sufficient penalty, tried to go up. At that point, he said, savage men, fiery to look at, standing by and recognizing the sound, seized some and led them off, and, having bound Ardiaeus and others hand and foot and head, they threw them down and flayed them, and dragged them out along the road, tearing them on thorn bushes, and explaining to all who passed by why this was done, and that they were being led away to be cast into Tartarus. There, then, he said, though many and varied fears had come upon us, this one surpassed the rest — each man's fear that the sound would come for him as he was going up — and each went up most gladly when it stayed silent." And such, then, were the judgments and punishments, and the benefits, in turn, corresponded to these. And when seven days had passed for each of them in the meadow, they had to rise up from there and set out on the eighth day, and arrive on the fourth day at a place from which they could see, from above, a straight light stretched through the whole of heaven and earth, like a column, most closely resembling the rainbow, but brighter and purer; and they reached it after advancing a day's journey, and saw there, at the middle of the light, the ends of its bonds stretched down from heaven — for this light was the bond of heaven, like the undergirding cables of triremes, holding its whole revolution together in this way — and from the ends stretched the spindle of Necessity, through which all the revolutions turned; its shaft and its hook were made of adamant, and the whorl was a mixture of this and other kinds of material. The nature of the whorl was as follows: its shape was like that of the ones here, but one must understand, from what he said, that it was of this kind — as if, within one great whorl, hollow and scooped out all the way through, another such whorl, smaller, lay fitted inside it, like buckets that fit into one another, and so, too, a third besides, and a fourth, and four others. For the whorls were eight in all, lying one within another, showing their rims as circles from above, and forming, around the shaft, the continuous surface of a single whorl; and the shaft itself was driven right through the middle of the eighth. Now the first and outermost whorl had the widest circle of rim; the second widest was that of the sixth; third was that of the fourth; fourth was that of the eighth; fifth was that of the seventh; sixth was that of the fifth; seventh was that of the third; and eighth was that of the second.

The Choice of Lives, and the River of Forgetfulness

And that of the largest was many-colored; that of the seventh, brightest; that of the eighth had its color from the light the seventh cast upon it; those of the second and fifth were similar to each other, more yellow than the rest; the third had the whitest color; the fourth was reddish; and the sixth was second in whiteness. And as it turned, the whole spindle revolved with a single motion, but within that revolving whole, the seven inner circles turned slowly in the direction opposite to the whole; of these, the eighth moved fastest, and next, keeping pace with one another, the seventh, sixth, and fifth; third in speed, as it appeared to them, came the fourth, circling back on itself; fourth came the third; and fifth, the second. And it turned upon the knees of Necessity. On each of its circles, above, stood a Siren, carried around with it, uttering a single sound, one note; and from all eight together a single harmony sounded in concord. And round about, seated at equal distances, three others, each on a throne, the daughters of Necessity, the Fates — Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos — dressed in white, with garlands on their heads, sang to the harmony of the Sirens: Lachesis of what has been, Clotho of what is, and Atropos of what is to come. And Clotho, touching it with her right hand, helped turn the outer revolution of the spindle, pausing from time to time; Atropos, with her left, did the same for the inner revolutions in turn; and Lachesis, in her turn, touched each with either hand. So they themselves, once they had arrived, had at once to go to Lachesis. A prophet first arranged them in order, then took from the lap of Lachesis lots and patterns of lives, mounted a high platform, and said—

"This is the word of Lachesis, maiden daughter of Necessity. Souls of a day, here begins another cycle of the mortal, death-bearing race. No guardian spirit will be allotted to you; you yourselves will choose a guardian spirit. Let whoever draws the first lot choose first a life that he will then be bound to by necessity. Virtue has no master; each of you will have more or less of it as you honor or dishonor it. The one who chooses bears the responsibility; the god bears none."

Having said this, he threw the lots among them all, and each one picked up the lot that fell beside him — except Er, who was not allowed to; and to the one who picked it up, it was clear what number he had drawn. After this, he set out before them once more the patterns of lives on the ground, far more numerous than the souls present. They were of every kind; for there were the lives of all the animals, and indeed all the human lives too. Among them were tyrannies, some lasting to the end, others breaking apart partway through and ending in poverty, exile, and beggary; there were also the lives of men of high repute, some for their looks and beauty and the rest of their strength and skill in contests, others for their birth and their ancestors' virtues, and likewise lives of men without repute in these same respects, and of women too, in the same way. No fixed character of soul was attached to them, since a soul that chooses a different life necessarily becomes different itself; but the rest of these lives were mixed together with each other, and with wealth and poverty, some with sickness, some with health, and some stood midway between these. Here then, it seems, my dear Glaucon, lies the whole danger for a human being, and for this reason above all each of us must take care that, setting aside every other study, he becomes a seeker and a student of this one, if he can somehow learn and discover who will make him able and knowledgeable, so that he can tell a good life from a bad one and always, everywhere, choose the better from among those open to him; reckoning up all that has just been said, and how these things, combined with one another or kept apart, bear on the virtue of a life, so as to know what beauty mixed with poverty or with wealth, joined with which condition of soul, produces evil or good, and what noble birth and low birth, private life and rule, strength and weakness, quickness and slowness to learn, and all such things belonging to the soul by nature or acquired, produce when mixed together — so that, reasoning from all of these at once and looking to the nature of the soul, one is able to choose between the worse life and the better, calling worse whichever will lead the soul toward becoming more unjust, and better whichever leads it toward becoming more just. He will let everything else go; for we have seen that this is the best choice for a person, both living and once dead. One must hold to this judgment as unyieldingly as adamant on the way down to Hades, so that there too he remains unshaken by riches and evils of that kind, and does not fall into tyrannies and similar courses of action, working many incurable evils and himself suffering still greater ones — but instead always knows to choose the middle life among such things, and to flee the extremes on either side, both in this life, as far as possible, and in every life to come; for it is this way that a person becomes happiest.

And so, then too, the messenger from that place reported that the prophet had spoken thus: "Even for the one who comes forward last, if he chooses with understanding and lives with resolve, a life worth loving — not a bad one — awaits him. Let neither the one who chooses first grow careless, nor the one who chooses last lose heart."

When the prophet had said this, Er said that the one who had drawn the first lot came forward at once and chose the greatest tyranny, making the choice, in his folly and greed, without examining everything closely enough — not noticing that bound up in it was his fate to eat his own children, along with other evils; and when he had time to look it over calmly, he beat his breast and lamented his choice, not standing by what the prophet had foretold; for he did not blame himself for these evils, but chance and spirits and anything at all rather than himself. He was one of those who had come from heaven, having lived his earlier life under a well-ordered constitution, sharing in virtue by habit and without philosophy. And, broadly speaking, those who had come from heaven were caught out in such choices no less often, being unexercised in hardships; whereas most of those who had come from the earth, having themselves suffered and having seen others suffer, did not make their choices in haste. For this reason, then, most souls undergo a change between evils and goods also because of the chance of the lot; since, if someone always, whenever he arrives at life here, practiced philosophy in a sound way, and the lot for his choice did not fall among the last, it seems likely, from what is reported from that other place, that he would not only be happy here, but that his journey from here to there and back again would not be rough and underground, but smooth and through the heavens.

This, he said, was indeed a sight worth seeing — how each of the souls chose its life; for it was pitiful to see, and absurd, and wonderful all at once. For the most part they chose according to what they were used to in their former life. He said he saw the soul that had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan, unwilling, out of hatred for womankind because of his death at their hands, to be conceived in a woman and born; he saw the soul of Thamyras choosing that of a nightingale; and he saw a swan too changing over to take up a human life, and other musical creatures doing likewise. The soul that had drawn the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion; it was the soul of Ajax son of Telamon, which shrank from becoming a human because it remembered the judgment over the arms. Next after him came the soul of Agamemnon, and it too, out of hatred for the human race because of what it had suffered, exchanged its life for that of an eagle. The soul of Atalanta, drawing a lot somewhere in the middle, caught sight of the great honors given to an athlete, and could not pass them by, but took them. After her, he saw the soul of Epeius son of Panopeus passing into the nature of a craftswoman; and far off among the last, he saw the soul of Thersites, the buffoon, putting on the form of an ape. And it happened that the soul of Odysseus had drawn the last lot of all and came forward to choose; with the memory of his former hardships, his ambition had died away, and he went about for a long time searching for the life of a private man who kept out of everything, and with difficulty found one lying somewhere, neglected by all the others, and on seeing it he said that he would have done the same even if he had drawn the first lot, and he chose it gladly. And in the same way, souls passed from the other animals into human beings and into one another, the unjust changing into wild creatures and the just into tame ones, and every kind of mixture occurred.

Now when all the souls had chosen their lives, they came forward to Lachesis in the order in which they had drawn their lots; and she sent with each of them the spirit he had picked, to guard his life and fulfill what he had chosen. This spirit first led the soul to Clotho, under her hand and the turning of the spindle's whirl, confirming the fate that the soul had chosen when it drew its lot; then, having touched this, it led the soul on to the spinning of Atropos, making what had been spun irreversible; and from there, without turning back, the soul went beneath the throne of Necessity, and having passed through it, once the others too had passed through, they all journeyed to the plain of Lethe through terrible heat and stifling air; for it was bare of trees and of anything that the earth grows. So, as evening was already coming on, they camped beside the river Ameles, whose water no vessel can hold. Everyone was required to drink a certain measure of the water, but those not preserved by practical wisdom drank more than the measure; and everyone who drank it forgot everything. And when they had fallen asleep and it was the middle of the night, there came thunder and an earthquake, and from there, suddenly, they were carried up in different directions, each to his birth, shooting upward like stars. As for himself, he was kept from drinking the water; yet by what way and how he arrived in his body, he did not know, but suddenly, looking up, he saw himself at dawn lying on the funeral pyre.

And so, Glaucon, the story was saved and not lost, and it could save us too, if we are persuaded by it, and we shall cross the river of Lethe safely and not defile our soul. But if we are persuaded by me, believing the soul to be immortal and able to bear all evils and all goods, we shall always hold to the upward road and pursue justice together with practical wisdom in every way, so that we may be friends both to ourselves and to the gods, both while we remain here and when we collect the prizes of justice — like victors going about to gather them — and so may fare well both here and on the thousand-year journey we have gone through.