Phaedo.
Those, however, who are curable, but
are found to have committed great sins—who have, for example, in a moment
of passion done some act of violence against father or mother and
have lived in
repentance the rest of their lives, or who have slain some other person under
similar conditions—these must needs be thrown into Tartarus, and when they
have been there a year the wave casts them out, the homicides by way of Cocytus,
those who have outraged their parents by way of Pyriphlegethon. And when they
have been brought by the current to the Acherusian lake, they shout and cry out,
calling to those whom they have slain or outraged, begging and beseeching them
to be gracious and to let them come out
into the lake; and if they prevail they come out and cease from their ills, but
if not, they are borne away again to Tartarus and thence back into the rivers,
and this goes on until they prevail upon those whom they have wronged; for this
is the penalty imposed upon them by the judges. But those who are found to have
excelled in holy living are freed from these regions within the earth and are
released as from prisons;
they mount upward
into their pure abode and dwell upon the earth. And of these, all who have duly
purified themselves by philosophy live henceforth altogether without bodies, and
pass to still more beautiful abodes which it is not easy to describe, nor have
we now time enough.But, Simmias, because
of all these things which we have recounted we ought to do our best to acquire
virtue and wisdom in life. For the prize is fair and the hope great.
Now it would not be fitting for a man of
sense to maintain that all this is just as I have described it, but that this or
something like it is true concerning our souls and their abodes, since the soul
is shown to be immortal, I think he may properly and worthily venture to
believe; for the venture is well worth while; and he ought to repeat such things
to himself as if they were magic charms, which is the reason why I have been
lengthening out the story so long. This then is why a man should be of good
cheer about his soul, who in his life
has
rejected the pleasures and ornaments of the body, thinking they are alien to him
and more likely to do him harm than good, and has sought eagerly for those of
learning, and after adorning his soul with no alien ornaments, but with its own
proper adornment of self-restraint and justice and
courage and freedom and truth,
awaits his departure to the other world, ready to go when fate calls him.