Myth of Er

The Myth of Er is the story that closes Plato’s Republic (10.614b–621d). It tells of Er, a soldier from Pamphylia who was killed in battle and came back to life on his funeral pyre, and of what he saw of the judgement of souls, the Spindle of Necessity and the choice of new lives. The word “myth” is used here in its ancient sense of a tale or account, and Socrates uses it at the end to say why the tale was “saved” (621b–c).

Who Was Er?

Socrates introduces Er as a brave man, the son of Armenius and a Pamphylian by birth. He was killed in a war. When the dead were picked up on the tenth day, the other bodies were already decayed, but his was sound. He was taken home, and on the twelfth day, as he lay on the pyre, he came back to life and told what he had seen in the other world (Plato, Republic 10.614b).

The Place of Judgement

Er said that his soul left his body and travelled with a large company to a marvellous place where there were two openings side by side in the earth, and two in the heaven directly above them. Judges sat between them. After each judgement they told the just to take the road to the right and upward through the heaven, with a sign of the verdict attached in front, and the unjust to take the road to the left and downward, with signs of all they had done fastened behind (Republic 10.614c–d).

When Er came forward, the judges told him that he must be a messenger to mankind and report everything in that place. He saw souls leaving by one opening of heaven and one of earth after judgement, while by the other two, souls came up from the earth covered with dust and squalor, and others came down from heaven clean and pure. They greeted each other in a meadow as if at a festival. Those from the earth wept, remembering their sufferings under the earth, which lasted a thousand years; those from heaven told of joys and sights of indescribable beauty (Republic 10.614d–615a).

Penalties and rewards were counted in tenfold measure, over periods of one hundred years, taken as the length of a human life (Republic 10.615a–b). Er also heard of Ardiaeus, who had been tyrant of a city in Pamphylia a thousand years before and had killed his old father and his elder brother. When Ardiaeus and other tyrants, together with some private men who had done great wrong, tried to go up, the mouth did not admit them but bellowed. Fiery, savage men then seized them, bound Ardiaeus hand, foot and head, flayed him, dragged him off the road and carded him on thorns, and said that he was to be thrown into Tartarus (Republic 10.615c–616a).

The Spindle of Necessity

After seven days in the meadow, the souls had to rise on the eighth and travel on, and on the fourth day after that they saw a straight shaft of light stretching through heaven and earth, like a rainbow but brighter and purer. A further day’s journey brought them to it. There they saw the spindle of Necessity, by which all the revolutions turn, with a shaft and hook of adamant and a whorl made of eight nested whorls. On each ring stood a Siren, uttering one note, and the eight together made one harmony (Republic 10.616b–617b).

Around the spindle sat the three Fates, daughters of Necessity (Ananke), dressed in white: Lachesis, Clotho and Atropos. They sang with the Sirens, Lachesis of what has been, Clotho of what is and Atropos of what will be (Republic 10.617b–d).

The Choice of Lives

A prophet took lots and samples of lives from the lap of Lachesis and announced her word: the souls were beginning another cycle of mortal life, no divinity would be allotted to them, they would choose their own, and the soul that drew the first lot would choose first. “Virtue has no master”, he said; the blame lies with the one who chooses, and the god is blameless (Republic 10.617d–e). The samples included the lives of animals and of every kind of human being, tyrants, the poor, the beautiful, the strong and the weak, but not the quality of the soul itself, since that changes with the life chosen (Republic 10.618a–b).

The soul that drew the first lot chose the greatest tyranny at once, without careful examination, and did not see that it included the fate of eating his own children and other evils; when he looked at it at leisure he beat his breast and blamed fortune and the gods rather than himself. He had come down from heaven, from a well-ordered state in his earlier life, where he had lived virtuously by habit, not through philosophy. Most of the souls who chose carelessly were of this kind, while those who had suffered under the earth chose more carefully (Republic 10.619b–d).

Er watched the souls choose. The soul of Orpheus took the life of a swan, because it would not be born of a woman; Thamyras became a nightingale; Ajax, son of Telamon, who remembered the judgement of the arms of Achilles, chose a lion; Agamemnon chose an eagle; Atalanta chose the life of an athlete; Epeius, the son of Panopeus, became a skilled craftswoman; and the buffoon Thersites became an ape. The soul of Odysseus drew the last lot. It had given up ambition, and after a long search it found the life of an ordinary man who minded his own business, lying neglected in a corner, and chose it gladly, saying it would have done the same had it drawn the first lot (Republic 10.619e–620d).

The Plain of Lethe and Er’s Return

Once the souls had chosen, Lachesis sent each with the guardian spirit it had picked. The spirit led the soul to Clotho and then to Atropos, to make the choice irreversible, and the soul then passed beneath the throne of Necessity (Republic 10.620d–621a). They all travelled through terrible heat to the Plain of Lethe, a bare place without trees, and camped that evening by the river Ameles (Unmindful), whose water no vessel can hold. Each had to drink a measure, and those who were not saved by good sense drank more; each forgot everything (Republic 10.621a–b).

At midnight there was thunder and an earthquake, and the souls were carried up to their births like shooting stars. Er was not allowed to drink. He did not know how he returned to his body, but suddenly he opened his eyes at dawn and saw himself lying on the pyre (Republic 10.621b).

Socrates ends by saying that the tale was saved and not lost, and that if the listeners trust it, it will save them too: they will cross the river of Lethe safely and keep their souls undefiled, holding always to the upward road and practising justice with wisdom (Republic 10.621b–d).