t of the just the blessings which you
were attributing to the fortunate unjust. I shall say of them, what you
were saying of the others, that as they grow older, they become rulers
in their own city if they care to be; they marry whom they like and give
in marriage to whom they will; all that you said of the others I now say
of these. And, on the other hand, of the unjust I say that the greater
number, even though they escape in their youth, are found out at last
and look foolish at the end of their course, and when they come to be
old and miserable are flouted alike by stranger and citizen; they are
beaten and then come those things unfit for ears polite, as you truly
term them; they will be racked and have their eyes burned out, as you
were saying. And you may suppose that I have repeated the remainder of
your tale of horrors. But will you let me assume, without reciting them,
that these things are true?

Certainly, he said, what you say is true.

These, then, are the prizes and rewards and gifts which are bestowed
upon the just by gods and men in this present life, in addition to the
other good things which justice of herself provides.

Yes, he said; and they are fair and lasting.

And yet, I said, all these are as nothing either in number or greatness
in comparison with those other recompenses which await both just and
unjust after death. And you ought to hear them, and then both just and
unjust will have received from us a full payment of the debt which the
argument owes to them.

Speak, he said; there are few things which I would more gladly hear.

Well, I said, I will tell you a tale; not one of the tales which
Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinous, yet this too is a tale of a hero,
Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth. He was slain in battle,
and ten days afterwards, when the bodies of the dead were taken up
already in a state of corruption, his body was found unaffected by
decay, and carried away home to be buried. And on the twelfth day, as he
was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told them what he
had seen in the other world. He said that when his soul left the body
he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a
mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they
were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the
heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who
commanded the just, after they had given