Myth of Er – Plato

Er’s Dream
Source: Plato – The Republic

This is the story of valiant Er, Armenian from Pamphylia. Killed in the war, his uncontaminated corpse was collected after ten days. The pyre was ready, when on the twelfth day he awoke and told what he had seen in the other world.

After leaving him, his soul went with others to a place where there were two holes in the earth opposite two that were in the sky.

Two judges pronounced sentences; the righteous went to heaven on the right, and the unjust to earth on the left. When they saw Er arrive, they told him that he would be the messenger among men of everything that happened there, and that he should pay attention.

Through the other hole in the earth, dirty or dusty souls came out; by the other of heaven, entirely pure souls. They seemed to have arrived from a long journey. They gathered on the prairie and, like old acquaintances, those of the earth asked for the sky, and those of the sky for the earth. Some wept over their sufferings for a millennium; others extolled its blessedness.

Each soul suffered for damage committed, another damage ten times greater, for a hundred years (human life span). Pious souls received equally greater rewards for their good deeds.

One of the souls asked about the fate of Ardieo, tyrant of Pamphylia a thousand years before. Another replied that she had not seen him.

Ardieo had murdered his old father and older brother; for those who sinned against the gods and against the fathers, the punishments were worse than those mentioned.

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Suddenly Ardieo and other great sinners emerged from the hole. The opening closed and roared, and wild beings enveloped in fire threw them into the abyss. They bound Arideo’s feet and skinned and mutilated him against thorns. For the condemned, however, the most atrocious of all was the roar.

The souls rested seven days on the prairie; on the eighth they left on the march. After four days they saw a column of light like a rainbow, but brighter; in a day more arrived at her, who occupied all of heaven and earth.

They saw the chains of heaven; light was the bond that united the entire celestial sphere. There was, enlarged, the spindle of Necessity that allows all the spheres to rotate, and the eight concentric heavens could be perceived, each one fitting into the other, like concave pots, whose edges, of different colors and brightness, form the same plane.

They rotate at different speeds and in the opposite direction of the spindle, which crosses the eighth sphere right in the center. Each heaven was presided over by a mermaid, who emitted a single sound, of invariable pitch; the eight voices formed a harmonic set.

Equidistant and on their thrones were the Fates, daughters of Necessity; Lachesis, Clotho and Atropo. They accompanied the sirens in their song; Lachesis remembered the past, Clotho spoke of the present, and Atropo foresaw the future.

Upon arriving before Lachesis, the souls were informed by a diviner who would undertake a new stage in a body carrying death: “You will choose your fate, and you will remain irrevocably united; since virtue has no owner, each one will possess it according to the honor. Divinity is innocent.”

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Each one chose an order number, except Er, and according to precedence, they chose a model of life. There were models of tyrants, beggars, outcasts, needy; prestigious for beauty, vigour, tenacity, progeny or prosapy.

There were also, for men and women, lives without any relief. Wealth and poverty, health and disease were intertwined. The danger was great; discretion and knowledge were needed to choose well.

The soothsayer said:

– Even for the last one to be chosen there will be good fortune if she is sensible; do not neglect the first, nor be discouraged by the last.

The first rushed and chose to be a tyrant; his destiny included devouring his own children. When she knew how to blame bad luck and the gods, and cursed everyone but herself; it was a soul that came from heaven and that all its life had exercised virtue. Those who came from the earth were experienced in suffering and chose more carefully.

For not being generated by a woman, out of aversion to the female sex and because he remembered his death, Orpheus chose to be a swan. Tamiras decided to reincarnate as a nightingale, and some birds as human beings.

The twentieth soul to be chosen wanted to be a lion: it was Ajax. The next one chose to be an eagle: it was Agamemnon, who, as is well known, hated Humanity. Atalanto decided to be an athlete and win honors; and Epeo decided to be an artisan. Among the last was that of Thersites, dressed in the ridiculous form of an ape: he decided to be Ulysses, whose soul remained far away and forgotten by all. Ulysses, in turn, had opted for an obscure and sedentary existence.

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When the election was over, each soul received its tutelary genius from Lachesis; Cloto confirmed the destinies and Atropo made them irrevocable.

Together with their respective tutelary genie, each soul (which could no longer retreat) passed before the throne of Necessity and headed for the plain of Oblivion, where there were no trees or anything that the earth produces, and where the heat was atrocious.

At dusk they went to the Carefree River, whose water no container can hold. Then, those who drank too much, lost their memory. At midnight, all souls slept.

The earth roared and moved, and souls were hurled into space like stars different from their previous birth.

Er was not allowed to drink; she reincarnated in her own body, raised her eyes to heaven, saw that it was dawn and found herself on her pyre.