their return to earth. Pyriphlegethon is a stream of fire, which coils
round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus. The fourth river,
Cocytus, is that which is called by the poets the Stygian river, and
passes into and forms the lake Styx, from the waters of which it gains
new and strange powers. This river, too, falls into Tartarus.

The dead are first of all judged according to their deeds, and those who
are incurable are thrust into Tartarus, from which they never come out.
Those who have only committed venial sins are first purified of them,
and then rewarded for the good which they have done. Those who have
committed crimes, great indeed, but not unpardonable, are thrust
into Tartarus, but are cast forth at the end of a year by way of
Pyriphlegethon or Cocytus, and these carry them as far as the Acherusian
lake, where they call upon their victims to let them come out of the
rivers into the lake. And if they prevail, then they are let out and
their sufferings cease: if not, they are borne unceasingly into Tartarus
and back again, until they at last obtain mercy. The pure souls also
receive their reward, and have their abode in the upper earth, and a
select few in still fairer 'mansions.'

Socrates is not prepared to insist on the literal accuracy of this
description, but he is confident that something of the kind is true.
He who has sought after the pleasures of knowledge and rejected the
pleasures of the body, has reason to be of good hope at the approach of
death; whose voice is already speaking to him, and who will one day be
heard calling all men.

The hour has come at which he must drink the poison, and not much
remains to be done. How shall they bury him? That is a question which he
refuses to entertain, for they are burying, not him, but his dead body.
His friends had once been sureties that he would remain, and they shall
now be sureties that he has run away. Yet he would not die without the
customary ceremonies of washing and burial. Shall he make a libation of
the poison? In the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he
utters in the very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after ages.
With a sort of irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is
still unfulfilled, just as above he desires before he departs to compose
a few verses in order to satisfy a scruple about a dream--unless,
indeed, we suppose him to mean, that he was now restored to health, and
made the customar