Glaucon Before Lachesis

Mark Piper unveils the long-lost epilogue to Plato's Republic.

- Mark Piper

And so I died, and found that in fact Socrates' tale of Er was true. To my infinite relief, I was judged fit to go up to heaven with the sign of my deeds upon my chest. And when my time above had come to an end, I descended through the door in the heavens with my brother Adeimantus. Cephalus and Polemarchus and Cleitophon were also there, and many other just persons besides, all of us still dazzled by the fine and beautiful sights with which we had been graced. We were also joined by a forlorn band of souls covered with dust and dirt emerging from the door in the earth. Our two groups went to the meadow together, and there made camp.

I saw that there were some amongst the ragged whom I had known in life; Thrasymachus was one of them. We exchanged greetings, and told the tales of our journeys. As it had been described long ago by Socrates, so it was: those of us who traveled above had been rewarded tenfold for our good deeds in life, and those who had gone below had suffered tenfold.

We spent seven days in the meadow, and on the eighth we were made to travel again. On the fourth day of that journey we saw the great Column of Light; and on the fifth we came to the Light itself, indeed to its very center, where the great Spindle of Fate turns on the lap of Necessity. At once we were taken to the spinner of destinies, the disposer of lots, the Lady Lachesis.