The Myth of Er is an eschatological legend that concludes Plato's dialogue known as "The Republic"(10.614-10.621). The story begins as a man named Er dies in battle. When the bodies are collected, ten days after his death, Er remains undecomposed. Two days later he revives when on his funeral-pyre and tells of his journey in the afterlife, including an account of reincarnation and the celestial spheres of theastral plane. The tale introduces the idea that moral people are rewarded and immoral people punished after death.
Characterizing something as a "Myth of Er" is a metaphorical way of saying that it was seminal in beginning a new field of thought or action to which subsequent developments can be traced.
Er's tale
With many other souls as his companions Er had come across an awesome place with four openings, two into and out of the sky and two into and out of the earth. Judges sat between these openings and ordered the souls which path to follow: the good were guided into the path in the sky, the immoral were directed below. But when Er approached the judges he was told to remain, listening and observing in order to report his experience to humankind.
Meanwhile from the other opening in the sky, clean souls floated down, recounting beautiful sights and wondrous feelings. Others, returning from the earth, appeared dirty, haggard and tired, crying in despair when recounting their awful experience, for each had been rewarded tenfold for their deeds on earth. There were some, however, that could not be released from the underground. Murderers, tyrants and other non-political criminals were doomed to remain by the exit of the underground, unable to escape.
After seven days in the meadow the souls and Er were required to travel further. After four days they reached a place where they could see a rainbow shaft of light brighter than any they had seen before. After another day's travel they reached it. This was the spindle of Necessity. Several women, including Lady Necessity, her daughters and the Sirens were present. The souls were then organized into rows and were each given a lotterytoken apart from Er.
Then of their lottery tokens, they were required to come forward in order and choose their next life. Er recalled the first to choose a new soul, a man who had not known the terrors of the underground, but had been rewarded in the sky, hastily choose a powerful dictatorship. Upon further inspection he realized that, among other atrocities, he was destined to eat his own children. Er observed that this was often the case of those who had been through the path in the sky, whereas those who had been punished often chose a better life. Many preferred a life different from their previous experience. Animals chose human lives while humans often chose the apparently easier lives of animals.
After this each soul was assigned a deity to help them through their life. They passed under the throne of Lady Necessity, then traveled to the Plain of Oblivion, where the River of Forgetfulness (River Lethe) flowed. Each soul was required to drink some of the water, in varying quantities, apart from Er. As they drank, each soul forgot everything. As they lay down at night to sleep each soul was lifted up into the night in various directions for rebirth, completing their journey. Er remembered nothing of the journey back to his body. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on the funeral pyre, early in the morning, and able to recall his journey through the afterlife.
The moral
In the dialogue Socrates introduces the story by explaining to his questioner, Glaucon, that the soul must be immortal. The soul cannot be damaged or destroyed by its defect, immorality, unlike food, which will perish should it become mouldy. Neither can the soul be destroyed by any outer defect, illness for instance. In order to explain his theory that morally good people are rewarded after death, and that the opposite is true of immoral people, Socrates tells Glaucon the "Myth of Er".
Rewards and punishments result directly from the individual's conduct, rather than being administered by an external deity. This section of the Republic is one of the first extant texts to deal with responsibility and choice, central questions of Western ethics.
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