Myth of Er
The Myth of Er closes Plato's Republic at book ten, chapters 614 through 621, and it arrives not as decoration but as the final argument. A soldier named Er, son of Armenios, dies on a battlefield. Ten days later, when the bodies are gathered for burial, his corpse has not decomposed. Two days after that, he revives on his own funeral pyre, able to describe in full detail a journey through the afterlife. What he reports is not merely a ghost story. It is Plato's account of the shape of the cosmos, the mechanics of moral consequence, and the reason a person's choices in this life determine the life they will choose next. The word "myth" here requires an explanation. In Greek, mythos means word, speech, or account. Socrates uses the term at the close of the story because Er did not drink from the River of Forgetfulness, and so his account was preserved for the living to hear. The questions this story raises stay with the listener: What do the judges at the four openings actually see? Who gets to choose their next life, and how well do they choose? And what is the Spindle of Necessity, turning at the center of the universe?
Er arrives at a place with four openings: two connected to the sky and two connected to the ground. Judges sit between these passages and direct each soul along one of two paths. The good are sent upward; the wicked are sent below. Er alone is told not to proceed. He is there to observe and report.
From one opening in the sky, clean souls descend and describe beautiful sights and extraordinary feelings. From the underground exit, souls emerge dirty, haggard, and exhausted. Each of the underground souls had to pay a tenfold penalty for every wicked act committed during life. Some cannot leave at all. Murderers, tyrants, and certain non-political criminals are trapped at the underground exit, unable to pass.
After seven days in that meadow, the souls and Er travel on. Four days later they reach a rainbow shaft of light brighter than anything previously seen. A day's travel beyond that, they arrive at the Spindle of Necessity, surrounded by Lady Necessity, her three daughters, and the Sirens. The souls are organized into rows and each receives a lottery token. Whatever order the tokens are drawn determines the order in which each soul steps forward to pick a new life.
Er watches the choices carefully. A man who had lived well and traveled through the sky, never having experienced punishment, rushes forward and selects a powerful dictatorship. Only then does he notice that his new life includes eating his own children. Er observes that this pattern repeats: those who had only known reward tend to choose badly, while those who had been punished often choose more carefully. Animals select human lives. Odysseus, exhausted by the suffering his ambition caused, chooses a quiet, private, ordinary existence.
After the choices are made, each soul is assigned a guardian spirit. They travel under the throne of Lady Necessity and then to the Plane of Oblivion, where the River Lethe flows. Every soul is required to drink from it; those who drink more forget more. Er drinks nothing, which is why he remembers. As the souls sleep, they are carried upward and scattered for rebirth. Er wakes on his funeral pyre at dawn, back in his body, with the full account intact.
Socrates introduces the story to Glaucon with a specific claim: the soul is immortal and cannot be destroyed. The Myth of Er is his evidence. Earlier in Book Two of the Republic, Socrates had raised a troubling problem. Even the gods, he argued, can be deceived by a clever person who appears just on the outside while remaining unjust within. Such a person would receive divine favor they had not earned, while a genuinely just person who appeared otherwise might be punished wrongly.
The Myth of Er resolves this. When souls arrive at the meadow of the four openings, their true characters are eventually exposed. When it is time to choose a new life, the falsely pious and the immodest reveal themselves by selecting tyrants' lives. The disguise that fooled others in mortal life offers no protection when the choice of the next life is made.
Those who lived comfortable but unreflective lives in their previous incarnation tend to repeat the same choices, not from wisdom but from habit. Those treated with extreme injustice, having despaired of any good human life, sometimes choose to become animals. Plato treats the philosophic life as the one mode of living that actually prepares a person to choose well. Fame, success, and power may bring temporary rewards in the sky or temporary punishment below, but the virtues cultivated through philosophical practice work to one's advantage in every outcome.
The figure of Odysseus anchors this argument in a recognizable name. After all his wandering and suffering, caused in large part by his obsession with reputation, Odysseus finds the token for an ordinary private life lying disregarded, picks it up, and says he would have chosen it first even if he had drawn the first token.
Plato describes the Spindle of Necessity as built like a standard Greek spindle: a hook, a shaft, and a whorl. The hook is fixed near the top of the shaft on its long side. The whorl sits at the opposite end. Spinning the hook turns the shaft, which rotates the whorl. Placed onto this celestial whorl are eight orbits, each tracing a perfect circle.
Plato assigns each orbit distinct characteristics, and scholars have matched them to the bodies known to classical astronomy. The outermost orbit corresponds to the fixed stars. The next seven, working inward, map to Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. Lady Necessity's three daughters, collectively called the Fates, are charged with keeping the rims of these orbits turning. The Sirens ride along, each singing a single note, producing together a harmony of the spheres.
Plato's descriptions of the rims correspond, with one noted exception, to the relative distances and speeds that a ground-level observer would assign to these bodies. The Moon is the anomaly: Plato notes it revolves slightly more slowly than the Sun, which does not match the observable sky but reflects a specific cosmological assumption. The Spindle places the Earth at the center, with all celestial bodies revolving around it, an arrangement that fits the broader Aristotelian planetary model that the Republic's cosmology anticipates.
The Fates keep the mechanism running not as a mechanical afterthought but as an expression of moral necessity. The same force that governs the revolutions of the planets is the force that governs the cycle of souls. The Spindle and the lottery tokens are administered in the same ceremony, attended by the same figures, underscoring that cosmic order and moral consequence are, for Plato, the same system viewed from different angles.
Scholars have noted a connection between the Myth of Er and an Armenian legend involving a figure named Ara the Handsome. In the Armenian story, the Assyrian queen Semiramis desires Ara so intensely that she wages war against Armenia to capture him alive and bring him back to marry her. She wins the battle, but Ara is killed in spite of her orders. Facing renewed Armenian hostility, Semiramis, known as a sorceress, places Ara's body where she believes the gods can raise him from the dead. When the Armenians advance to avenge him, Semiramis disguises one of her lovers as Ara and spreads word that the gods have restored him to life. In one version of the legend, her prayers are actually answered and Ara genuinely returns.
Er's patronymic links the two stories directly. Er is the son of Armenios, from Pamphylia, and his name echoes Ara. The scholar Armen Petrosyan argues that Plato's version reflects an earlier form of the Armenian story in which Er, like Ara, rises from the grave.
If Petrosyan's reading is correct, Plato did not invent the figure of the dead soldier who returns to report on the afterlife. He adapted an older Near Eastern tradition, relocating it from a war between Assyria and Armenia into the philosophical framework of the Republic. The specific name Er, son of Armenios, from Pamphylia, may be Plato's marker of that borrowed origin, a trace of the source material left visible within the philosophical argument.
Common questions
What is the Myth of Er in Plato's Republic?
The Myth of Er is a legend that concludes Plato's Republic at book ten, chapters 614-621. It follows a soldier named Er, son of Armenios, who dies in battle, revives on his funeral pyre twelve days later, and recounts a detailed vision of the afterlife, including the soul's cycle of death, judgment, and rebirth.
What happens to souls in the Myth of Er?
After death, souls are judged at a place with four openings and sent either upward through the sky or downward underground. The wicked pay a tenfold penalty for each wrong act committed in life. After seven days in a meadow, souls travel to the Spindle of Necessity, draw lottery tokens, and choose their next lives before drinking from the River Lethe and being reborn.
What does the Spindle of Necessity represent in the Myth of Er?
The Spindle of Necessity is Plato's model of the cosmos. It carries eight orbits corresponding to the fixed stars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. The three Fates, daughters of Lady Necessity, keep the spindle's rims turning, linking cosmic order to the cycle of moral consequence governing souls.
Why does Odysseus choose an ordinary life in the Myth of Er?
Odysseus selects a quiet, private, ordinary existence after remembering the suffering caused by his love of reputation in his previous life. Plato uses this choice to illustrate the story's moral: those who have suffered from their own ambitions are more likely to choose wisely when given the opportunity to pick a new life.
What is the connection between the Myth of Er and the Armenian legend of Ara the Handsome?
Scholars have linked the two stories through the name of Er himself: he is identified as the son of Armenios, from Pamphylia, and his name echoes Ara. The scholar Armen Petrosyan argues that Plato's version reflects an earlier form of the Armenian legend in which Ara, like Er, rises from the dead after a battle.
Why does Plato call this story a myth?
In ancient Greek, the word mythos means word, speech, or account, not a fictional tale. Socrates uses the term at the end of the story to explain that because Er did not drink from the River of Forgetfulness, his account was preserved and could be passed on to the living.
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