Fathers, when they address exhortations to their sons, and all those who have others in their charge, Footnote 1Who, in Quaker language, have a concern for, who have charge of souls. Cf. the admonitions of the father of Horace, Satire i. 4. 105 ff., Protagoras 325 D, Xenophon Cyr. i. 5. 9, Isocrates iii. 2, Terence Adelphi 414 f., Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, i. p. 187, and the letters of Lord Chesterfield, passim, as well as Plato himself, Laws 662 E.
urge the necessity of being just, not by praising justice itself, but the good repute with mankind that accrues from it, the object that they hold before us being that by seeming to be just the man may get from the reputation office and alliances and all the good things that Glaucon just now enumerated as coming to the unjust man from his good name. But those people draw out still further this topic of reputation. For, throwing in good standing with the gods, they have no lack of blessings to describe, which they affirm the gods give to pious men, even as the worthy Hesiod and Homer declare, the one that the gods make the oaks bear for the just:
Acorns on topmost branches and swarms of bees on their mid-trunks,
and he tells how the Flocks of the fleece-bearing sheep are laden and weighted with soft wool,
Hes. WD 232ff. and of many other blessings akin to these; and similarly the other poet: Even as when a good king, who rules in the fear of the high gods, Upholds justice and right, and the black earth yields him her foison,
Barley and wheat, and his trees are laden and weighted with fair fruits, Increase comes to his flocks and the ocean is teeming with fishes.
Hom. Od. 19.109
And Musaeus and his son Footnote 2Cf. Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, iv. p. 83. The son is possibly Eumolpus. have Footnote 3For the thought of the following cf. Emerson, Compensation: He (the preacher) assumed that judgement is not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the next life. No offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine.
a more excellent song Footnote 4νεανικώτερα is in Plato often humorous and depreciative. Cf. 563 E νεανική. than these of the blessings that the gods bestow on the righteous. For they conduct them to the house of Hades in their tale and arrange a symposium of the saints, Footnote 5συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων. Jowett’s notion that this is a jingle is due to the English pronunciation of Greek. where, reclined on couches crowned with wreaths, they entertain the time henceforth with wine, as if the fairest meed of virtue were an everlasting drunk. And others extend still further the rewards of virtue from the gods. For they say that the children’s children Footnote 6Kern, ibid., quotes Servius ad Virgil, Aeneid iii. 98 et nati natorum
and opines that Homer took Iliad xx. 308 from Orpheus. of the pious and oath-keeping man and his race thereafter never fail. Such and such-like are their praises of justice. But the impious and the unjust they bury in mud Footnote 7Cf. Zeller, Phil. d. Gr. i. pp. 56-57, 533 D, Phaedo 69 C, commentators on Aristophanes Frogs 146. in the house of Hades and compel them to fetch water in a sieve, Footnote 8Cf. my note on Horace, Odes iii. 11. 22, and, with an allegorical application, Gorgias 493 B. and, while they still live, they bring them into evil repute, and all the sufferings that Glaucon enumerated as befalling just men who are thought to be unjust, these they recite about the unjust, but they have nothing else to say. Footnote 9Plato teaches elsewhere that the real punishment of sin is to be cut off from communion with the good. Theaetetus 176 D-E, Laws 728 B, 367 A Such is the praise and the censure of the just and of the unjust.
Book 2