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.