In the tenth book of his _Republic_ (pp. 614 _sqq._) Plato records the narrative of one Er, an Armenian, concerning his experiences in the world of spirits. This Er had been killed in battle, and brought away with the rest of the slain, but was restored to life. His soul, upon issuing from the body, had been conveyed to a certain spiritual (δαιμόνιον) place, where there were two openings leading down below the earth, and two others leading up into heaven, over against one another. Between these openings judges were stationed, who dismissed the souls of the righteous to heaven by the upper and right-hand way, having first impressed upon their foreheads the decree of absolution, and despatched the wicked downward by the left-hand path, branded behind with the record of their misdeeds. The judges commanded Er to see and hear all that passed, that he might become the messenger of it all to mankind. The souls of the departed, after a progress lasting a thousand years, returned by the second openings from the celestial and subterranean regions respectively. The return of the one company was marked by joy and gladness, by reason of the delights which they had enjoyed, and the spectacles of inconceivable beauty through which they had passed, in the course of their heavenly journey; they then entered for a while into a smiling meadow, there to hold converse with others of the just, both those whom they had known while in the body, and others whom they then met for the first time. The other company appeared all parched and dusty from their journey, weeping and dismayed at the remembrance of all they had seen and suffered during their passage beneath the earth, for there each sinner was requited tenfold for all the crimes that he had committed. Among these guilty ones, special mention is made of homicides: of those who had betrayed cities or armies, and brought them into captivity; of those who had committed impiety towards the gods, or inflicted violence upon their parents; all of whom were singled out for eximious penalties. Some indeed, such as bloody tyrants, and certain private persons who were stained with enormous crimes, lost their return entirely; these were dragged back by wild-looking, fire-scathed men, fettered hand and foot, beaten down and flayed, carded with carding-combs, and finally cast down into Tartarus. With the exception, however, of this last and worst class of criminals, the punishments allotted to all were but of temporary duration, and the ‘souls of a day’ entered upon ‘another period of mortal, death-fraught existence’ under conditions imposed by ‘the Destinies, daughters of Necessity.’