PLATOS MYTH OF ERPlato concludes his Republic with a religious and philosophical vision of the afterlife. A man named ER died in war; after twelve days his body was uncorrupted and he returned to life, sent as a messenger from the other world to describe all that he had seen.After his soul had departed, it traveled with many other souls and came to a divine place where there were two openings in the earth; opposite were two other openings in the upper region of the sky. In the space between these four openings were judges who passed sentence. They ordered the just to go to the right through one of the openings upward into the sky, but they sent the unjust to the left through one of the downward openings.Er also saw from the remaining two openings some souls coming up out of the earth, covered with dust and dirt, and others descending from the sky, pure and shining. When they were all reunited on the plain, they recounted their experiences.The Sinners. The first group from out of the earth wept as they recounted their torments, which lasted one thousand years. Everyone had to suffer an appropriate penalty for each sin, ten times over. Those who were extraordinarily wicked (such as the evil tyrant Ardiaeus), guilty of many murders and other unholy deedswere never allowed to return out of the earth; but wild men of fiery aspect seized and flayed them and hurled them down into Tartarus.The Virtuous. The second group, on the other hand, who had descended from the opening in the sky, told of the great happiness that they had felt and the sights of indescribable beauty that they had seen as they completed their cycle of one thousand years.The Choosing of a New Life. All these souls, sinful and virtuous alike, proceeded on another journey to arrive at a special place which provided a cosmic view of the universe, controlled by the spindle of Necessity and her daughters, the three Fates, and where the Sirens song echoed the harmony of the spheres. In this place, each soul had to pick a lot and choose from examples of lives before beginning the next cycle of mortality. In front of these souls were placed the examples of every kind of life possible for human beings and for all living creatures. All-important was the choice that a soul would make; it must have learned from its experiences in life and in death to know the difference between the good life and the wicked, and always choose the better rather than the worse. This is the crucial choice for a human being always, whether living or dead, and the choice is the individuals own; god is blameless.Rebirth and Reincarnation. When all the souls had chosen their lives, whether wisely or foolishly, each was given a divine guardian spirit. After certain ordained procedures, they came to LETHE [lee'thee], the river of forgetfulness, where it was necessary that they drink a certain amount (some were unwise and drank too much). As they drank, they became forgetful of everything and fell asleep. In the middle of the night, amidst thunder and an earthquake, suddenly they were carried upward just like shooting stars, each in a different direction, to be reborn.Plato has a similar account of the afterlife in the Phaedo. He explains that true philosophers who have lived a holy life are eventually released from this cycle of reincarnation and entirely as souls inhabit beautiful dwellings. In each of our lives in this world and in each of our periods of reward or punishment in the afterlife, we are supposed to learn and become wiser and proceed upward spiritually.The Platonic Afterlife. Plato is writing in the fourth century B.C., and his vision of the afterlife is far different from Homers. Not only do human beings have a body and a soul, but moral and religious philosophy has developed concepts of virtue and sin, which merit reward and punishment in the next life, and a theory of rebirth, reincarnation, and the transmigration of souls, all of which provide dogma for mystery religions.