Justice -- Early works to 1800; Political science -- Early works to 1800; Utopias -- Early works to 1800
*362E* Nonsense, he replied. But let me add something more: There is
another side to Glaucon's argument about the praise and censure of justice
and injustice, which is equally required in order to bring out what
I believe to be his meaning. Parents and tutors are always telling their
sons and their *363A* wards that they are to be just; but why? not for the
sake of justice, but for the sake of character and reputation; in the hope
of obtaining for him who is reputed just some of those offices, marriages,
and the like which Glaucon has enumerated among the advantages accruing to
the unjust from the reputation of justice. More, however, is made of
appearances by this class of persons than by the others; for they throw in
the good opinion of the gods, and will tell you of a shower of benefits
which the heavens, as they say, rain upon the pious; and this accords with
the testimony of the noble Hesiod and Homer, the first of whom says, that
the gods *363B* make the oaks of the just--
'To bear acorns at their summit, and bees in the middle;
And the sheep are bowed down with the weight of their fleeces[3],'
and many other blessings of a like kind are provided for them. And Homer
has a very similar strain; for he speaks of one whose fame is--
'As the fame of some blameless king who, like a god,
Maintains justice; to whom the black earth brings forth *363C*
Wheat and barley, whose trees are bowed with fruit,
And his sheep never fail to bear, and the sea gives him fish[4].'
Still grander are the gifts of heaven which Musaeus and his son[5]
vouchsafe to the just; they take them down into the {43} world below,
where they have the saints lying on couches at a feast, everlastingly
drunk, crowned with garlands; *363D* their idea seems to be that an
immortality of drunkenness is the highest meed of virtue. Some extend
their rewards yet further; the posterity, as they say, of the faithful and
just shall survive to the third and fourth generation. This is the style
in which they praise justice. But about the wicked there is another
strain; they bury them in a slough in Hades, and make them carry water in
a sieve; also while they are yet living they bring them to infamy, and
inflict *363E* upon them the punishments which Glaucon described as the
portion of the just who are reputed to be unjust; nothing else does their
invention supply. Such is their manner of praising the one and censuring
the other.
[Footnote 3: Hesiod, Works and Days, 230.]
[Footnote 4: Homer, Od. xix. 109.]
[Footnote 5: Eumolpus.]
[Sidenote: Men are always repeating that virtue is painful and vice
pleasant.]
[Sidenote: They are taught that sins may be easily expiated.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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