Mystical systems
Myth of Er
Direct answer
Myth of Er: The Myth of Er is the story that ends Plato's Republic, in which a soldier revives on his funeral pyre and reports how souls are judged and choose their next lives.
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At a glance
- Also called
- plato republic book 10 myth, er the pamphylian, spindle of necessity
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Metempsychosis, Reincarnation, Near-Death Experience, Hades
The Myth of Er is the story that ends Plato's Republic, in which a soldier revives on his funeral pyre and reports how souls are judged and choose their next lives.
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What is the Myth of Er about?
Er, a man of Pamphylia, is killed in battle. Twelve days later he wakes on the pyre and tells what he saw. The dead come before judges, who send the just up into the sky and the unjust down under the earth, each for a journey of a thousand years in which deeds are repaid tenfold. Then the souls gather in a meadow and travel to a place where they see the whole frame of the heavens turning on the Spindle of Necessity.
There lots are thrown to fix the order of choosing, and patterns of lives are laid out, of every kind, animal and human. Each soul picks. The one who draws first, having lived decently by habit alone, snatches at a tyrant's life and regrets it. Odysseus, choosing last and tired of ambition, looks for the life of a private man who minds his own business. All then drink from the River of Unheeding and are carried off to birth. Er alone is forbidden to drink.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Past lives and karma.
What sets Myth of Er apart
The story puts the moment of choice before birth and then takes the memory of it away. That pairing does the philosophical work. Lives are not handed out by the gods: the lot settles only the order of choosing, there are more patterns of lives than souls, and even the last comer can choose well. But the patterns do not include character, since that is formed by the choice itself. Souls arriving from a thousand years of reward tend to choose worst, having never been schooled by suffering.
- Source: Plato, Republic, book ten, 614b to 621d
- Written: about 375 BCE
- Narrator: Er, son of Armenius, a Pamphylian who revives on the twelfth day
- Journey between lives: a thousand years of reward or punishment
- Cosmic image: the Spindle of Necessity, with eight nested whorls
- Last to choose: the soul of Odysseus, who picks a quiet private life
Often mistaken for something else: The myth in the Phaedo describes the regions of the earth and the rivers of the underworld where souls are purified; the story of Er centres on the scene of choosing the next life.
The story behind Myth of Er
Plato wrote the Republic around 375 BCE, and the story takes up the last pages of its tenth and final book. It is one of several myths of the afterlife in his dialogues; others stand in the Gorgias, the Phaedo and the Phaedrus. Its picture of the heavens as nested whorls on a spindle is an early model of the planetary system. Cicero imitated it in the Dream of Scipio, at the end of his own Republic, in the first century BCE.
Why Myth of Er matters
Myth of Er is the fullest ancient Western account of souls choosing their lives, and the source of much later talk of choosing a life before birth.
How to read Myth of Er
Teachers of philosophy read it as Plato's case that character decides fate. Writers on reincarnation cite it as an ancestor of the idea of a life plan.
Myth of Er in practice: an example
A reader who suspects that their troubles were handed to them unfairly finds the story pressing a harder question: what would you pick if the choice were yours?
Where readings of Myth of Er go wrong
Plato presents it as a story told for its moral. It is not a report of anyone's experience and he does not offer it as proof.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- myth of er plato, myth of er summary, plato republic book 10 myth, er the pamphylian, spindle of necessity
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is the Myth of Er about?
It tells of a soldier who returns from death and describes the judgement of souls, their thousand-year rewards and punishments, and the scene in which each soul chooses the life it is to live next.
What is the moral of the Myth of Er?
That a soul chooses well only if it has learned to tell a good life from a bad one. In the story the blame for a poor choice lies with the chooser and not with the gods.
Why do souls forget their past lives in the Myth of Er?
Before being born each soul must drink from the River of Unheeding, which crosses the plain of Lethe, or forgetfulness. Those without good sense drink more than the measure, and everything is forgotten.
