are also garnished with names and phrases taken out of Homer, and with
other fragments of Greek tradition.

The myth of the Republic is more subtle and also more consistent than
either of the two others. It has a greater verisimilitude than they have,
and is full of touches which recall the experiences of human life. It will
be noticed by an attentive reader that the twelve days during which Er lay
in a trance after he was slain coincide with the time passed by the spirits
in their pilgrimage. It is a curious observation, not often made, that
good men who have lived in a well-governed city (shall we say in a
religious and respectable society?) are more likely to make mistakes in
their choice of life than those who have had more experience of the world
and of evil. It is a more familiar remark that we constantly blame others
when we have only ourselves to blame; and the philosopher must acknowledge,
however reluctantly, that there is an element of chance in human life with
which it is sometimes impossible for man to cope. That men drink more of
the waters of forgetfulness than is good for them is a poetical description
of a familiar truth. We have many of us known men who, like Odysseus, have
wearied of ambition and have only desired rest. We should like to know
what became of the infants 'dying almost as soon as they were born,' but
Plato only raises, without satisfying, our curiosity. The two companies of
souls, ascending and descending at either chasm of heaven and earth, and
conversing when they come out into the meadow, the majestic figures of the
judges sitting in heaven, the voice heard by Ardiaeus, are features of the
great allegory which have an indescribable grandeur and power. The remark
already made respecting the inconsistency of the two other myths must be
extended also to this: it is at once an orrery, or model of the heavens,
and a picture of the Day of Judgment.

The three myths are unlike anything else in Plato. There is an Oriental,