judgment on them and had bound
their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the
right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend
by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their
deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew near, and they told him that
he was to be the messenger who would carry the report of the other world
to men, and they bade him hear and see all that was to be heard and seen
in that place. Then he beheld and saw on one side the souls departing at
either opening of heaven and earth when sentence had been given on them;
and at the two other openings other souls, some ascending out of the
earth dusty and worn with travel, some descending out of heaven clean
and bright. And arriving ever and anon they seemed to have come from a
long journey, and they went forth with gladness into the meadow, where
they encamped as at a festival; and those who knew one another embraced
and conversed, the souls which came from earth curiously enquiring about
the things above, and the souls which came from heaven about the things
beneath. And they told one another of what had happened by the way,
those from below weeping and sorrowing at the remembrance of the things
which they had endured and seen in their journey beneath the earth
(now the journey lasted a thousand years), while those from above were
describing heavenly delights and visions of inconceivable beauty. The
story, Glaucon, would take too long to tell; but the sum was this:--He
said that for every wrong which they had done to any one they suffered
tenfold; or once in a hundred years--such being reckoned to be the
length of man's life, and the penalty being thus paid ten times in a
thousand years. If, for example, there were any who had been the cause
of many deaths, or had betrayed or enslaved cities or armies, or been
guilty of any other evil behaviour, for each and all of their offences
they received punishment ten times over, and the rewards of beneficence
and justice and holiness were in the same proportion. I need hardly
repeat what he said concerning young children dying almost as soon
as they were born. Of piety and impiety to gods and parents, and of
murderers, there were retributions other and greater far which he
described. He mentioned that he was present when one of the spirits
asked another, 'Where is Ardiaeus the Great?' (Now this Ardiaeus lived
a thousand years before the time of