Page:The Republic of Plato (3rd ed.) (Lindsay, 1923).djvu/418

Rh making a thorough examination, and so did not notice that in his choice it was fated that he should devour his own children and suffer-other evil things. So when he came to examine it at his leisure-he began to gash his breast and bewail his choice, not abiding—by the warnings of the prophet. For he did not blame himself for his evils, but chance and the angels and everything rather than himself. Now he was of those who had come from heaven, and had lived in his former life in a well-ordered city and had participated in virtue by habit and not by philosophy. Generally speaking, not the least part of those who were caught in this way had come from heaven, for they had not been disciplined by labours; while of those from earth, the most, because they had themselves endured labours, and had seen the labours of others, were in no hurry to make their choice. For these reasons, and because of the fortune of the lot, most souls had a change of evil and good. For if any man always steadfastly pursue philosophy whenever he comes to life in this world, and if the lot of choice fall to him not among the last, it appears, from what we are told from yonder, not only that he will be happy in this life, but that his journey from here to the world beyond and back again to this world will not be along the rough and earthly track, but along the smooth and heavenly way.

“And he said that it was a sight worth seeing to behold the several souls choose their lives. And a piteous and a laughable and amazing sight it was also. The choice was mostly governed by what they had been accustomed to in their former life. He said that he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus’ choosing the life of a swan; his death at the hands of women had so made him hate the whole race, that he would not consent to be born of woman. The soul of Thamyras he saw choosing the life of a nightingale. He also saw aswan turning to choose a human life, and other musical creatures doing the same. ‘The soul that had the twentieth choice took a lion’s life. It was the soul of Ajax, the son of Telamon, who refused to become a man because he remembered the judgment concerning the