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[615a]
and
wailing as they recalled how many and how dreadful things they had suffered
and seen in their journey beneath the earth1—it lasted a thousand years2—while those from heaven related their delights
and visions of a beauty beyond words. To tell it all, Glaucon, would take
all our time, but the sum, he said, was this. For all the wrongs they had
ever done to anyone and all whom they had severally wronged they had paid
the penalty in turn tenfold for each, and the measure of this was by periods
of a hundred years each,3
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so that on the assumption that this was
the length of human life the punishment might be ten times the crime; as for
example that if anyone had been the cause of many deaths or had betrayed
cities and armies and reduced them to slavery, or had been participant in
any other iniquity, they might receive in requital pains tenfold for each of
these wrongs, and again if any had done deeds of kindness and been just
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and holy men they might receive
their due reward in the same measure; and other things not worthy of record
he said of those who had just been born4 and lived but a short time; and he had
still greater requitals to tell of piety and impiety towards the gods and
parents5 and of self-slaughter. For he said that he stood by when
one was questioned by another ‘Where is Ardiaeus6 the Great?’ Now this Ardiaeos had been tyrant in a
certain city of Pamphylia just a thousand years before that time and had put
to death his old father
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and his elder
brother, and had done many other unholy deeds, as was the report. So he said
that the one questioned replied, ‘He has not come,’ said
he, ‘nor will he be likely to come here.“‘For indeed this was one of the
dreadful sights we beheld; when we were near the mouth and about to issue
forth and all our other sufferings were ended, we suddenly caught sight of
him and of others, the most of them, I may say, tyrants.7 But there were
some
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of private station, of those who
had committed great crimes. And when these supposed that at last they were
about to go up and out, the mouth would not receive them, but it bellowed
when anyone of the incurably wicked8 or of
those who had not completed their punishment tried to come up. And
thereupon,’ he said, ‘savage men of fiery aspect9 who stood
by and took note of the voice laid hold on them10 and bore them away. But Ardiaeus
1 Cf. Phaedr. 256 D, Epist. vii. 335 B-C.
2 Phaedr. 249 A, Virgil, Aen. vi. 748.
3 The ideal Hindu length of life is said to be 100 years.
4 For the words Cf. Tim. 76 Eεὐθὺς γιγνομένοις. Plato does not take up the problem of infant damnation! Warburton says, “and I make no doubt but the things not worth to be remembered was the doctrine of infants in purgatory, which appears to have given Plato much scandal, who did not at that time at least reflect upon its original and use.” See also Mozley, Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, p. 307, apudSeebohm.The Oxford Reformers(3rd ed.), p. 495: “Augustine had laid down that the punishment of such children was the mildest of all punishment in hell. . . . Aquinas laid down the further hypothesis that this punishment was not pain of body or mind, but want of the Divine vision.” Virgil, Aen. vi. 427, Anth. Pal. ix. 359. 10θανεῖν αὐτίκα τικτόμενον. Stallbaum and Ast think ἀποθανόντων dropped out of the text after γενομένων.
5 Cf. Phaedo 113 E-114 A, where there is a special penalty for murderers and parricides.
6 Cf. Archelaus in Gorg. 471.
7 Cf. Gorg. 525 D-526 A.
8 Cf. Gorg. 525 C, and What Plato Said, p. 536, on Phaedo 113 E. Biggs, Christian Platonists, ii. p. 147 “At the first assize there will be found those who like Ardiaeus are incurable.”
9 This naturally suggests the devils, of Dante (Inferno xxi. 25 ff.) and other mediaeval literature. See Dieterich, Nekyia, p.4 and pp. 60 f.
10 See Rogers on Aristoph.Knights 262. Cf. Herod. i. 92ἐπὶ κνάφου ἕλκων διέφθειρε.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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