The Myth of Er

Author: Plato

Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE

Country or Culture: Greece

Genre: Myth

PLOT SUMMARY

Er, a Pamphylian soldier, is killed in battle. After he is buried, his soul leaves his body and journeys to the afterworld in the company of other souls. The afterworld has two openings in the ground and two openings in the heavens. In between the two sets of openings are judges who sentence souls to heaven or hell based on the good or bad deeds they have committed on earth. The judges tell Er that he is to observe all he can of the afterworld and tell people on earth what it is like. Er sees that the souls rising out of the ground are crying, dusty, and travelworn, whereas the souls departing from the heavens are clean, bright, and full of praise regarding heaven’s delights and beauty.

Er then learns about the judgments made in the afterlife. For every wrong committed, a wrongdoer is made to suffer the same act ten times over, while a good deed yields a tenfold payment in kind; the punishment or reward is meted out over a thousand-year period, which represents ten human lifespans of one hundred years each. A member of Er’s company asks another soul if he knows about the punishment received by Ardiaeus the Great, who had murdered his elderly father and older brother and committed other horrendous crimes one thousand years earlier. The spirit replies that he saw Ardiaeus and other tyrants attempt to leave to leave the underworld before their punishment was completed. Instead of being admitted to the opening leading to heaven, Ardiaeus and the others were bound, whipped, dragged along the road, carded like wool, and cast back into hell.

Er then journeys with the party of souls to the heavens, where they reach a bright light purer than a rainbow. He describes the light as a heavenly belt that holds the universe together. Extending from its ends is the steel spindle of Necessity. The whorl to which the spindle is attached is composed of seven others all fitted together inside one another, representing the stars, moon, Saturn, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. On top of the spindles are the Sirens, who are singing or humming. They are accompanied by Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos, the three Fates.

Er and his companions are then greeted by an Interpreter, or prophet. The Interpreter takes a handful of numbered lots from Lachesis and tosses them at the souls. They each pick up the closest one and thus receive a number—except for Er, who is not allowed to choose a lot. The Interpreter then spreads out a selection of animal and human lives representing a wide spectrum of nature and gives instructions to the group about choosing a new life based on the order of their numbers. Those souls who have descended from heaven, and thus have not witnessed suffering on earth or in hell, choose lives based on greed, lust, or another evil, while those who do not want to duplicate their earthly suffering choose lives they think will allow them to avoid the hardships they have already experienced. Er witnesses the reincarnation of several souls, including Orpheus, who chooses to become a swan rather than undergo birth to a woman, as women had been his murderers, and Odysseus, who draws the last lot and chooses the life of an ordinary man in contrast to his rather ambitious life full of strife. Er then returns to his own body on earth while the others continue on their journeys to other worlds.

SIGNIFICANCE

The myth of Er represents the imagination of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (ca. 428–347 BCE) and forms the end of the final chapter (chapter 10) in his profound classic the Republic. As with the rest of the book, the narrative is written in the form of a Socratic dialogue, narrated by Socrates to Glaucon, Plato’s brother.

While the primary emphasis of the Republic is the exploration of the meaning and nature of justice, the myth of Er deals mostly with the consequences of living a just or unjust life. It is one of the first narratives that argues for the immortality of the soul and describes a day of judgment, when rewards or punishments are meted out in the afterlife for choices made on earth. For these reasons, the narrative is considered to have exerted much influence on early Christianity and its leading proponents, such as Saint Augustine and Clement of Alexandria; however, all but a few Gnostic Christian sects rejected the notion of reincarnation portrayed in the myth.

As part of a foundational work in philosophy, the myth of Er has been highly influential in the development and study of ethics, metaphysics, and other philosophical disciplines. Of its many themes and arguments, free will and the related issue of nature versus nurture continue to be debated as they were during Plato’s time. In the narrative, Plato stresses the need for philosophical reasoning in making sound moral choices. He also suggests that humans are free to make their own choices in life, although he puts forth the idea that society and experience shape those decisions. For example, Er tells about witnessing the souls of Greeks who have chosen to be reincarnated as greedy criminals because they had not been exposed to those evils while in the heavenly afterlife. Er also mentions the decision made by the Trojan war hero Ajax to be reincarnated as a lion because of his experience with human injustice. Apparently, Plato envisioned Ajax as still feeling bitter about Odysseus being awarded Achilles’s armor instead of himself, one of several references to Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey. Scholars have historically debated Plato’s reasons for including the myth of Er in the Republic, as it seems to contradict the work’s main proposition that a moral life is worth living without any overt or ulterior punishments or rewards.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Annas, Julia. “Book Ten.” An Introduction to Plato’s Republic. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1981. 335–54. Print.

Blackburn, Simon. “The Farewell Myth.” Plato’s Republic: A Biography. New York: Atlantic, 2006. 158–62. Print.

Halliwell, Francis Stephen. “The Life-and-Death Journey of the Soul: Interpreting the Myth of Er.” The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic. Ed. G. R. F. Ferrari. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. 445–73. Print.

Partenie, Catalin, “Plato’s Myths.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford U, 20 Sept. 2011. Web. 29 May 2013.

Plato. Plato’s Republic. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. 1873. Mills: Agora, 1997. Print.

---. The Republic. Trans. Reginald E. Allen. New Haven: Yale UP, 2006. Print.