let me add something more: There is another
side to Glaucon's argument about the praise and censure of justice
and injustice, which is equally required in order to bring out what I
believe to be his meaning. Parents and tutors are always telling their
sons and their wards that they are to be just; but why? not for the sake
of justice, but for the sake of character and reputation; in the hope of
obtaining for him who is reputed just some of those offices, marriages,
and the like which Glaucon has enumerated among the advantages accruing
to the unjust from the reputation of justice. More, however, is made of
appearances by this class of persons than by the others; for they
throw in the good opinion of the gods, and will tell you of a shower of
benefits which the heavens, as they say, rain upon the pious; and this
accords with the testimony of the noble Hesiod and Homer, the first of
whom says, that the gods make the oaks of the just--

'To bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle;
And the sheep are bowed down with the weight of their fleeces,'

and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them. And Homer
has a very similar strain; for he speaks of one whose fame is--

'As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god, Maintains justice;
to whom the black earth brings forth Wheat and barley, whose trees are
bowed with fruit, And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives
him fish.'

Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his son
vouchsafe to the just; they take them down into the world below, where
they have the saints lying on couches at a feast, everlastingly drunk,
crowned with garlands; their idea seems to be that an immortality of
drunkenness is the highest meed of virtue. Some extend their rewards
yet further; the posterity, as they say, of the faithful and just shall
survive to the third and fourth generation. This is the style in which
they praise justice. But about the wicked there is another strain; they
bury them in a slough in Hades, and make them carry water in a sieve;
also while they are yet living they bring them to infamy, and inflict
upon them the punishments which Glaucon described as the portion of the
just who are reputed to be unjust; nothing else does their invention
supply. Such is their manner of praising the one and censuring the
other.

Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking
about justice and injustice, whi