incantations, binding heaven, as they say, to execute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom they appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with the words of Hesiod:
Vice in abundance
for a man's own or his ancestor's sins by sacrifices or charms, with rejoicings and feasts, and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just or unjust, at a small cost, with magic arts and
misery to many good men, and good and happiness to the wicked. And mendicant prophets go to rich men's doors and persuade them that they have a power committed to them by the gods of making atonement
poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the others.
But most extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking about virtue and the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and
quite ready to call wicked men happy and to honour them both in public and in private when they are rich or in any other way influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and
that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment and only censured by law and opinion. They say also that honesty is, for the most part, less profitable than dishonesty, and they are
injustice, which is not confined to the poets but is found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honourable but grievous and toilsome, and
else does their invention supply, such is their manner of praising the one and censuring the other.
Besides this, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking about justice and
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
third and fourth generation.
This is the style in which they praise justice, but about the impious and unjust there is another strain: they bury them in a slough in Hades and make them carry water
idea seems to be that an immortality of drunkenness is the highest meed of virtue. Some extend their rewards yet further: they say that the posterity of the faithful and just shall survive to the
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 and crowned with garlands; their
the black earth brings forth
Wheat and barley for him, whose trees are bowed with fruit;
His sheep never fail to bear, and the sea yields to him its fish.
Still grander are the gifts of heaven
with wool
and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them. Homer has a very similar strain, for he speaks of one whose fame is
When a blameless king, in his piety,
Upholds justice,
testimony of the noble Hesiod and Homer, the first of whom says, that the gods make the oaks of the just
To hear acorns at their summit and bees in the middle
And make fleecy sheep heavy-laden
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
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
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
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
confess that Glaucon has already said quite enough to lay me in the dust and take from me the power of helping justice.
Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more: there is another side to
The strongest point of all has not even been mentioned, he replied.
Well, then, according to the proverb "Let brother help brother", if he fails in any part, you assist him; although I must
say something in answer to Glaucon when Adeimantus, his brother, interposed: Socrates, he said, you do not suppose that there is nothing more to be urged?
Why, what else is there? I answered.
and, therefore, is likely to be dearer than they are to the gods. And thus, Socrates, gods and men are said to unite in making the life of the unjust better than the life of the just.
I was going to
enemies; moreover, he can offer sacrifices and dedicate gifts to the gods abundantly and magnificently, and can honour the gods or any man whom he wants to honour in a style far better than the just
