d kings and potentates
and public men, for they are the authors of the greatest and most
impious crimes, because they have the power. And Homer witnesses to
the truth of this; for they are always kings and potentates whom he has
described as suffering everlasting punishment in the world below:
such were Tantalus and Sisyphus and Tityus. But no one ever described
Thersites, or any private person who was a villain, as suffering
everlasting punishment, or as incurable. For to commit the worst crimes,
as I am inclined to think, was not in his power, and he was happier than
those who had the power. No, Callicles, the very bad men come from the
class of those who have power (compare Republic). And yet in that very
class there may arise good men, and worthy of all admiration they are,
for where there is great power to do wrong, to live and to die justly is
a hard thing, and greatly to be praised, and few there are who attain
to this. Such good and true men, however, there have been, and will be
again, at Athens and in other states, who have fulfilled their trust
righteously; and there is one who is quite famous all over Hellas,
Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus. But, in general, great men are also
bad, my friend.

As I was saying, Rhadamanthus, when he gets a soul of the bad kind,
knows nothing about him, neither who he is, nor who his parents are; he
knows only that he has got hold of a villain; and seeing this, he stamps
him as curable or incurable, and sends him away to Tartarus, whither
he goes and receives his proper recompense. Or, again, he looks with
admiration on the soul of some just one who has lived in holiness
and truth; he may have been a private man or not; and I should say,
Callicles, that he is most likely to have been a philosopher who has
done his own work, and not troubled himself with the doings of other men
in his lifetime; him Rhadamanthus sends to the Islands of the Blessed.
Aeacus does the same; and they both have sceptres, and judge; but Minos
alone has a golden sceptre and is seated looking on, as Odysseus in
Homer declares that he saw him:

'Holding a sceptre of gold, and giving laws to the dead.'

Now I, Callicles, am persuaded of the truth of these things, and I
consider how I shall present my soul whole and undefiled before the
judge in that day. Renouncing the honours at which the world aims, I
desire only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, when
I die, to die as well as I c