(600) who loved to associate with him, and who handed down to posterity an Homeric way of life, such as was established by Pythagoras who was so greatly beloved for his wisdom, and whose followers are to this day quite celebrated for the order which was named after him? Nothing of the kind is recorded of him. For surely, Socrates, Creophylus, the companion of Homer, that child of flesh, whose name always makes us laugh, might be more justly ridiculed for his stupidity, if, as is said, Homer was greatly neglected by him and others in his own day when he was alive? Yes, I replied, that is the tradition. But can you imagine, Glaucon, that if Homer had really been able to educate and improve mankind—if he had possessed knowledge and not been a mere imitator—can you imagine, I say, that he would not have had many followers, and been honoured and loved by them? Protagoras of Abdera, and Prodicus of Ceos, and a host of others, have only to whisper to their contemporaries: ‘You will never be able to manage either your own house or your own State until you appoint us to be your ministers of education’—and this ingenious device of theirs has such an effect in making men love them that their companions all but carry them about on their shoulders. And is it conceivable that the contemporaries of Homer, or again of Hesiod, would have allowed either of them to go about as rhapsodists, if they had really been able to make mankind virtuous? Would they not have been as unwilling to part with them as with gold, and have compelled them to stay

(2) Accordingly to the Corinthians (for this is not the only instance), while discoursing on the resurrection of the dead, he makes use of a tragic Iambic line, when he said, "What advantageth it me if the dead are not raised? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Be not deceived; evil communications corrupt good manners." Others have enumerated Acusilaus the Argive among the seven wise men; and others, Pherecydes of Syros. And Plato substitutes Myso the Chenian for Periander, whom he deemed unworthy of wisdom, on account of his having reigned as a tyrant. That the wise men among the Greeks flourished after the age of Moses, will, a little after, be shown. But the style of philosophy among them, as Hebraic and enigmatical, is now to be considered. They adopted brevity, as suited for exhortation, and most useful.

(2) But if the soul connects its intellectual and divine part with more excellent natures, then its phantasms will be more pure, whether they are phantasms of the Gods, or of beings essentially incorporeal, or, in short, of things contributing to the truth of intelligibles. If, also, it elevates the reasons of generated natures, contained in it to the Gods, the causes of them, it receives power from them, and a knowledge which apprehends what has been, and what will be; it likewise surveys the whole of time, and the deeds which are accomplished in time, and is allotted the order of providentially attending to and correcting them in an appropriate manner. And bodies, indeed, that are diseased it heals; but properly disposes such things as subsist among men erroneously and disorderly. It likewise frequently delivers the discoveries of arts, the distributions of justice, and the establishment of legal institutions. Thus in the temple of Esculapius, diseases are healed through divine dreams; and, through the order of nocturnal appearances, the medical art is obtained from sacred dreams. Thus, too, the whole army of Alexander was preserved, which would otherwise have been entirely destroyed in the night, in consequence of Bacchus appearing in sleep, and pointing out a solution of the most grievous calamities. The city Aphutis, likewise, when besieged by King Lysander, was saved through a dream sent to him by Jupiter Ammon. For afterwards, he most rapidly withdrew his army from thence, and immediately raised the siege.

(327) I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess 1 ; and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait. I turned round, and asked him where his master was. There he is, said the youth, coming after you, if you will only wait. Certainly we will, said Glaucon; and in a few minutes Polemarchus appeared, and with him Adeimantus, Glaucon’s brother, Niceratus the son of Nicias, and several others who had been at the procession. Polemarchus said to me: I perceive, Socrates, that you and your companion are already on your way to the city. You are not far wrong, I said. But do you see, he rejoined, how many we are? Of course. And are you stronger than all these? for if not, you will have to remain where you are. May there not be the alternative, I said, that we may persuade you to let us go? But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you? he said. Certainly not, replied Glaucon. Then we are not going to listen; of that you may be assured.

(13) [paragraph continues] Homerus, as Hesiodus took the subject for his Theogony likewise from thence, which Ovidius took afterwards for a pattern for his Metamorphosis. The knowledge of Nature's secret operations constitutes the principal sense of all these ancient writings, but ignorance framed out of it that external or veiled mythology and the lower class of people turned it into idolatry.

(383) Your thoughts, he said, are the reflection of my own. You agree with me then, I said, that this is the second type or form in which we should write and speak about divine things. The gods are not magicians who transform themselves, neither do they deceive mankind in any way. I grant that. Then, although we are admirers of Homer, we do not admire the lying dream which Zeus sends to Agamemnon; neither will we praise the verses of Aeschylus in which Thetis says that Apollo at her nuptials ‘Was celebrating in song her fair progeny whose days were to be long, and to know no sickness. And when he had spoken of my lot as in all things blessed of heaven he raised a note of triumph and cheered my soul. And I thought that the word of Phoebus, being divine and full of prophecy, would not fail. And now he himself who uttered the strain, he who was present at the banquet, and who said this—he it is who has slain my son 15 .’ These are the kind of sentiments about the gods which will arouse our anger; and he who utters them shall be refused a chorus; neither shall we allow teachers to make use of them in the instruction of the young, meaning, as we do, that our guardians, as far as men can be, should be true worshippers of the gods and like them. I entirely agree, he said, in these principles, and promise to make them my laws.

(6) I saw Electra with companions many, 'Mongst whom I knew both Hector and Aeneas, Caesar in armour with gerfalcon eyes; I saw Camilla and Penthesilea On the other side, and saw the King Latinus, Who with Lavinia his daughter sat; I saw that Brutus who drove Tarquin forth, Lucretia, Julia, Marcia, and Cornelia, And saw alone, apart, the Saladin. When I had lifted up my brows a little, The Master I beheld of those who know, Sit with his philosophic family. All gaze upon him, and all do him honour. There I beheld both Socrates and Plato, Who nearer him before the others stand; Democritus, who puts the world on chance, Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales, Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus;

(614) 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 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,

(376) is likely to be gentle to his friends and acquaintances, must by nature be a lover of wisdom and knowledge? That we may safely affirm. Then he who is to be a really good and noble guardian of the State will require to unite in himself philosophy and spirit and swiftness and strength? Undoubtedly. Then we have found the desired natures; and now that we have found them, how are they to be reared and educated? Is not this an enquiry which may be expected to throw light on the greater enquiry which is our final end—How do justice and injustice grow up in States? for we do not want either to omit what is to the point or to draw out the argument to an inconvenient length. Adeimantus thought that the enquiry would be of great service to us. Then, I said, my dear friend, the task must not be given up, even if somewhat long. Certainly not. Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in story-telling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes. By all means. And what shall be their education? Can we find a better than the traditional sort?—and this has two divisions, gymnastic for the body, and music for the soul. True. Shall we begin education with music, and go on to gymnastic afterwards? By all means. And when you speak of music, do you include literature or not? I do. And literature may be either true or false? Yes.

(5) And the disciples of Aristotle say that some of their treatises are esoteric, and others common and exoteric. Further, those who instituted the mysteries, being philosophers, buried their doctrines in myths, so as not to be obvious to all. Did they then, by veiling human opinions, prevent the ignorant from handling them; and was it not more beneficial for the holy and blessed contemplation of realities to be concealed? But it was not only the tenets of the Barbarian philosophy, or the Pythagorean myths. But even those myths in Plato (in the Republic, that of Hero the Armenian; and in the Gorgias, that of Aeacus and Rhadamanthus; and in the Phoedo, that of Tartarus; and in the Protagoras, that of Prometheus and Epimetheus; and besides these, that of the war between the Atlantini and the Athenians in the Atlanticum) r are to be expounded allegorically, not absolutely n in all their expressions, but in those which ex press the general sense. And these we shall find indicated by symbols under the veil of allegory. Also the association of Pythagoras, and the twofold intercourse with the associates which designates the majority, hearers (akousmatikoi), and the others that have a genuine attachment to philosophy, disciples (224> aqhmatikoi, yet signified that something was spoken to the multitude, and something concealed from them. Perchance, too, the twofold species of the Peripatetic teaching - that called probable, and that called knowable - came very near the distinction between opinion on the one hand, and glory and truth on the other.

(5) A few short years and Alexander the Great went the way of all flesh, and with his body crumbled the structure of empire erected upon his personality. One year later Aristotle also passed into that greater world concerning whose mysteries he had so often discoursed with his disciples in the Lyceum. But, as Aristotle excelled Alexander in life, so he excelled him in death; for though his body moldered in an obscure tomb, the great philosopher continued to live in his intellectual achievements. Age after age paid him grateful tribute, generation after generation pondered over his theorems until by the sheer transcendency of his rational faculties Aristotle--"the master of those who know," as Dante has called him--became the actual conqueror of the very world which Alexander had sought to subdue with the sword.

(5) Sometimes an animal, when covered, struggles So that his impulse needs must be apparent, By reason of the wrappage following it; And in like manner the primeval soul Made clear to me athwart its covering How jubilant it was to give me pleasure. Then breathed: "Without thy uttering it to me, Thine inclination better I discern Than thou whatever thing is surest to thee; For I behold it in the truthful mirror, That of Himself all things parhelion makes, And none makes Him parhelion of itself. Thou fain wouldst hear how long ago God placed me Within the lofty garden, where this Lady Unto so long a stairway thee disposed. And how long to mine eyes it was a pleasure, And of the great disdain the proper cause, And the language that I used and that I made. Now, son of mine, the tasting of the tree Not in itself was cause of so great exile, But solely the o'erstepping of the bounds. There, whence thy Lady moved Virgilius, Four thousand and three hundred and two circuits Made by the sun, this Council I desired;

(516) and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day? Certainly. Last of all he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is. Certainly. He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold? Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him. And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them? Certainly, he would. And if they were in the habit of conferring honours among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honours and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer, ‘Better to be the poor servant of a poor master,’ and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?

(344) Is the attempt to determine the way of man’s life so small a matter in your eyes—to determine how life may be passed by each one of us to the greatest advantage? And do I differ from you, he said, as to the importance of the enquiry? You appear rather, I replied, to have no care or thought about us, Thrasymachus—whether we live better or worse from not knowing what you say you know, is to you a matter of indifference. Prithee, friend, do not keep your knowledge to yourself; we are a large party; and any benefit which you confer upon us will be amply rewarded. For my own part I openly declare that I am not convinced, and that I do not believe injustice to be more gainful than justice, even if uncontrolled and allowed to have free play. For, granting that there may be an unjust man who is able to commit injustice either by fraud or force, still this does not convince me of the superior advantage of injustice, and there may be others who are in the same predicament with myself. Perhaps we may be wrong; if so, you in your wisdom should convince us that we are mistaken in preferring justice to injustice. And how am I to convince you, he said, if you are not already convinced by what I have just said; what more can I do for you? Would you have me put the proof bodily into your souls? Heaven forbid! I said; I would only ask you to be consistent; or, if you change, change openly and let there be no deception. For I must remark, Thrasymachus, if you will

(17) Now also Valentinus, the Coryphaeus of those who herald community, in his book on The Intercourse of Friends, writes in these words: "Many of the things that are written, though in common hooks, are found written in the church of God. For those sayings which proceed from the heart are vain. For the law written in the heart is the People of the Beloved - loved and loving Him." For whether it be the Jewish writings or those of the philosophers that he calls "the Common Books," he makes the truth common. And Isidore," at once son and disciple to Basilides, in the first hook of the Expositions of the Prophet Parchor, writes also in these words: "The Attics say that certain things were intimated to Socrates, in consequence of a daemon attending on him. And Aristotle says that all men are provided with daemons, that attend on them during the time they are in the body,-having taken this piece of prophetic instruction and transferred it to his own books, without acknowledging whence he had abstracted this statement." And again, in the second book of his work, he thus writes: "And let no one think that what we say is peculiar to the elect, was said before by any philosophers. For it is not a discovery of theirs. For having appropriated it from our prophets, they attributed it to him who is wise according to them." Again, in the same: "For to me it appears that those who profess to philosophize, do so that they may learn what is the winged oak,'" and the variegated robe on it, all of which Pherecydes has employed as theological allegories, having taken them from the prophecy of Chum."

(1) Day was departing, and the embrowned air Released the animals that are on earth From their fatigues; and I the only one Made myself ready to sustain the war, Both of the way and likewise of the woe, Which memory that errs not shall retrace. O Muses, O high genius, now assist me! O memory, that didst write down what I saw, Here thy nobility shall be manifest! And I began: "Poet, who guidest me, Regard my manhood, if it be sufficient, Ere to the arduous pass thou dost confide me. Thou sayest, that of Silvius the parent, While yet corruptible, unto the world Immortal went, and was there bodily. But if the adversary of all evil Was courteous, thinking of the high effect That issue would from him, and who, and what, To men of intellect unmeet it seems not; For he was of great Rome, and of her empire In the empyreal heaven as father chosen; The which and what, wishing to speak the truth, Were stablished as the holy place, wherein Sits the successor of the greatest Peter.

(33) But not to protract the discourse further, in our anxiety to show the propensity of the Greeks to plagiarism in expressions and dogmas, allow us to adduce the express testimony of Hippias, the sophist of Elea, who discourses on the point in hand, and speaks thus: "Of these things some perchance are said by Orpheus, some briefly by Musaeus; some in one place, others in other places; some by Hesiod, some by Homer, some by the rest of the poets; and some in prose compositions, some by Greeks, some by Barbarians. And I from all these, placing together the things of most importance and of kindred character, will make the present discourse new and varied."

(599) these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances only and not realities? Or, after all, they may be in the right, and poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well? The question, he said, should by all means be considered. Now do you suppose that if a person were able to make the original as well as the image, he would seriously devote himself to the image-making branch? Would he allow imitation to be the ruling principle of his life, as if he had nothing higher in him? I should say not. The real artist, who knew what he was imitating, would be interested in realities and not in imitations; and would desire to leave as memorials of himself works many and fair; and, instead of being the author of encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them. Yes, he said, that would be to him a source of much greater honour and profit. Then, I said, we must put a question to Homer; not about medicine, or any of the arts to which his poems only incidentally refer: we are not going to ask him, or any other poet, whether he has cured patients like Asclepius, or left behind him a school of medicine such as the Asclepiads were, or whether he only talks about medicine and other arts at second-hand; but we have a right to know respecting military tactics, politics, education, which are the chiefest

(566) will be his destiny? Must he not either perish at the hands of his enemies, or from being a man become a wolf—that is, a tyrant? Inevitably. This, I said, is he who begins to make a party against the rich? The same. After a while he is driven out, but comes back, in spite of his enemies, a tyrant full grown. That is clear. And if they are unable to expel him, or to get him condemned to death by a public accusation, they conspire to assassinate him. Yes, he said, that is their usual way. Then comes the famous request for a body-guard, which is the device of all those who have got thus far in their tyrannical career—‘Let not the people’s friend,’ as they say, ‘be lost to them.’ Exactly. The people readily assent; all their fears are for him—they have none for themselves. Very true. And when a man who is wealthy and is also accused of being an enemy of the people sees this, then, my friend, as the oracle said to Croesus, ‘By pebbly Hermus’ shore he flees and rests not, and is not ashamed to be a coward 11 .’ And quite right too, said he, for if he were, he would never be ashamed again. But if he is caught he dies. Of course.

(405) a master in dishonesty; able to take every crooked turn, and wriggle into and out of every hole, bending like a withy and getting out of the way of justice: and all for what?—in order to gain small points not worth mentioning, he not knowing that so to order his life as to be able to do without a napping judge is a far higher and nobler sort of thing. Is not that still more disgraceful? Yes, he said, that is still more disgraceful. Well, I said, and to require the help of medicine, not when a wound has to be cured, or on occasion of an epidemic, but just because, by indolence and a habit of life such as we have been describing, men fill themselves with waters and winds, as if their bodies were a marsh, compelling the ingenious sons of Asclepius to find more names for diseases, such as flatulence and catarrh; is not this, too, a disgrace? Yes, he said, they do certainly give very strange and newfangled names to diseases. Yes, I said, and I do not believe that there were any such diseases in the days of Asclepius; and this I infer from the circumstance that the hero Eurypylus, after he has been wounded in Homer, drinks a posset of Pramnian wine well