Chapter VI. That Plato Accepted the Faith Not Only in Word, but Also Confessed That With True Disposition of Mind He Believed and Was Persuaded of These Things Which We Also Believe

[P] [1] ‘LISTEN then, as they say, to a very pretty story, which you, I suppose, will regard as a myth, but I as a true story, for what I am going to say I shall tell you as being true.’

And after a little more:

‘(There was a law) that he who had lived a just and holy life should depart after death to the Islands of the Blessed, and dwell in perfect happiness beyond the reach of all evils. But the man who had lived an unjust and ungodly life must go away to the prison-house of vengeance and punishment, which they call Tartarus.’

And again a little farther on:

‘Next they must be stripped of all these wrappings and so tried, for their judgement must be after death. The judge also must be naked, that is to say, dead, examining by his very soul the very soul of each immediately after death, when it is bereft of all its kindred, and has left all that apparel behind on earth, in order that the judgement may be just.’

And afterwards he adds: [2]

‘This, Callicles, is what I have heard and believe to be true, and from these stories I gather the following conclusion: death, as it seems to me, is nothing else than the separation from each other of two things, the soul and the body.

‘And after they are separated, each of them retains its own condition almost the same as it had when the man was alive, the body having its own nature and the results of its treatment and sufferings all plainly visible. For instance, if a man’s body was large either by nature or by training or both while he was alive, his corpse also after death will be large; and if it was fat, it will be fat also after death, and so on.

‘And again, if it was his custom to wear long hair, his corpse also will have long hair; or if a man was often whipped, and bore traces of the stripes in scars on his body either from scourges or from wounds of other kinds, when alive, his body after death may be seen to have these marks. Or if a man’s limbs were broken or distorted during life, the same will be visible also after death. ‘And in a word, whatever was a man’s condition of body during life, the same conditions are also plainly visible after death, either all or most of them for a certain time.

This same then seems to me to be the case, Callicles, with reference to the soul also. When it is stript of the body, all things are visible in the soul, both its natural qualities, and the effects due to the habits of every kind which the man had contracted in his soul.

‘When therefore they have come before the judge, those from Asia before Rhadamanthus, he stops them, and examines the soul of each, without knowing whose it is; but often when he has laid hands on the Great King or some other king or potentate, he discerns that his soul has no sound part in it, but is scored with scourges, and full of scars from perjuries and injustice, of which each man’s deeds have left the print upon his soul, and all crooked from falsehood and imposture, with nothing straight, because it has been reared with no sense of truth: and from power, and luxury, and insolence, and intemperance of conduct he sees the soul full of deformity and ugliness; at sight of which he sends it off straight to prison in disgrace, where on its arrival it will have to endure its befitting punishments,

‘Now every man who is under punishment, if punished rightly by another, ought either to become better and profit by it, or to be made an example to the rest, that others, seeing the sufferings which he endures, may be brought by terror to amendment.

‘Those who receive benefit when they are punished by gods and men are they whose sins are remediable; but nevertheless it is by pain and suffering that they receive the benefit both here and in Hades, for in no other way is it possible to be delivered from iniquity.

‘But if any have been guilty of the worst crimes, and have become incurable by reason of such iniquities, of these the examples are made; and inasmuch as they are incurable, they can no longer receive any benefit themselves, but others are benefited, who see them enduring for ever the greatest and most painful and terrible sufferings for their sins, hung up there in the prison-house in Hades as signal examples, a spectacle and a warning to the wicked who from time to time arrive there. And if what Polus says is true, I foretell that Archelaus will be one of these, and every other tyrant who is like him.[3]

‘I suppose that the majority of these examples have been taken from among tyrants and kings and potentates, and those who have managed the affairs of states; for these because of their power commit the greatest and most impious crimes.

‘Homer too bears witness to this.[4] For he has represented those who are suffering eternal punishment in Hades as kings and potentates, a Tantalus, and Sisyphus, and Tityus. But Thersites, or any other common villain, no poet has represented as involved in extreme punishments as being incurable: for, I suppose, he had not the power, and therefore was happier than those who had it. In fact, however, Callicles, the men who become excessively wicked are of the class who have power. Yet there is nothing to prevent good men from being found even among these; and those who are so found are very worthy of admiration. For it is a difficult thing, Callicles, and very praiseworthy for a man who has great power of doing wrong to live always a just life, and few there be of this kind. Some there have been both here and elsewhere, and I doubt not there will be others, endowed with this virtue of administering justly whatever may be entrusted to them; and one there has been very celebrated over all Greece, Aristides son of Lysimachus: yet for the most part, my good friend, men in power turn out bad.

As I was saying therefore, when Rhadamanthus gets hold of such a man, he knows nothing else about him, neither who he is, nor of what family, but only that he is a villain: and on seeing this, he sends him off to Tartarus, with a badge upon him to show whether he seems to be curable or incurable; and on arrival there he undergoes the treatment proper to his case.

‘But sometimes after looking upon another soul that has lived a holy life in company with truth, a private man’s or any other’s (most likely, I venture to say, Callicles, the soul of a philosopher who minded his own work and did not busy himself in affairs during his life), he is delighted and sends it off to the Islands of the Blessed.

‘Aeacus also does just the same, and each of these two sits in judgement with a rod in his hand. But Minos as superintending sits alone, and holds a golden sceptre, as Ulysses in Homer says that he saw him,

“Holding a sceptre of gold, as he utters the doom of the dead.” [5]

‘For my part therefore, Callicles, I am convinced by these stories, and consider how I shall present my soul before the judge in the healthiest condition possible. So renouncing what most men deem honours, I shall try by really practising truth both to live the best life in my power, and so, when death comes, to die.

‘All other men also I exhort to the best of my ability. And you especially I in my turn invite to enter upon this mode of life and this conflict, which I declare to be worth all other conflicts here on earth.

‘And I make it a reproach to you that you will not be able to help yourself, when the trial and the judgement of which I was just now speaking come upon you. But on coming before that judge, the son of Aegina, when he lays hold of you and leads you forward, you will stand agape and turn dizzy there, just as much as I should here. And perhaps some one will smite you even to your shame upon the cheek, and will insult you in every way.

‘Perhaps, however, this appears to you a fable, like an old wife’s tale, and so you despise it. And there would be nothing strange in despising it, if by any searching we could find something better and truer.

‘But as it is you see that though there are three of you, who are the wisest of the Greeks of the present time, yourself and Polus and Gorgias, you are not able to show that we ought to live any other life than this, which appears to be of advantage in the other world as well. But amid so many arguments, while all the rest were refuted, this alone remains unshaken, that to do wrong is to be more carefully avoided than to suffer wrong, and above all a man must study not to seembut to begood, both in private and in public life.’

So then Plato supposed that Aeacus and Minos and Rhadamanthus would be judges of the dead: but the word of God protests that ‘all must appear before the judgement-seat of God; that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad.’ [6]

And again it says, ‘In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, . . . who will render to every man according to his works: to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there shall be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek;[7] . . . for there is no difference.’[8]