Myth of Er

The Myth of Er (/ɜːr/; Ancient Greek: Ἤρ, romanized: ér, gen.: Ἠρός) is a legend that concludes Plato's Republic (10.614–10.621).

Two days later he revives on his funeral-pyre and tells others of his journey in the afterlife, including an account of metempsychosis and the celestial spheres of the astral plane.

Those returning from underground appeared dirty, haggard, and tired, crying in despair when recounting their awful experiences, as each was required to pay a tenfold penalty for all the wicked deeds committed when alive.

Er recalled the first one to choose a new life: a man who had not known the terrors of the underground but had been rewarded in the sky, hastily chose a powerful dictatorship.

In the Myth of Er the true characters of the falsely-pious and those who are immodest in some way are revealed when they are asked to choose another life and pick the lives of tyrants.

Those who were treated with infinite injustice, despairing of the possibility of a good human life, choose the souls of animals for their future incarnation.

Whereas success, fame, and power may provide temporary heavenly rewards or hellish punishments, philosophic virtues always work to one's advantage.

Based on Plato's descriptions within the passage, the orbits can be identified as those of the classical planets, corresponding to the Aristotelian planetary spheres: The descriptions of the rims accurately fit the relative distance and revolution speed of the respective bodies as would appear to an observer from Earth (aside from the Moon, which revolves around the Earth slightly more slowly than the sun).

[2] In the Armenian story, the king Ara was so handsome that the Assyrian queen Semiramis waged war against Armenia to capture him and bring him back to her, alive, so she could marry him.

To avoid continuous warfare with the Armenians, Semiramis, reputed to be a sorceress, took Ara's body and prayed to the gods to raise him from the dead.

[3] Armen Petrosyan suggests that Plato's version reflects an earlier form of the story where Er (Ara) rises from the grave.