'Why yes, Socrates,' said Simmias, 'we'd be glad to hear this tale.' 5 'Well then, my friend, first of all the true earth, if one views it from above, is said to look like those twelve-piece leather balls, variegated, a patchwork of colours, of which our colours here are, c as it were, samples that painters use. There the whole earth is of such colours, indeed of colours far brighter still and purer than these: one portion is purple, marvellous for its beauty, another is golden, and all that is white is whiter than chalk or snow; and the earth is 5 composed of the other colours likewise, indeed of colours more
numerous and beautiful than any we have seen. Even its very hollows, full as they are of water and air, give an appearance of colour, gleaming among the variety of the other colours, so that its d general appearance is of one continuous multi-coloured surface. This being its nature, things that grow on it, trees and flowers and fruit, grow in proportion; and again, the mountains contain stones likewise, 5 whose smoothness, transparency, and beauty of colour are in the same proportion; it is from these that the little stones we value, sardian stones, jaspers, emeralds, and all such, are pieces; but there, e every single one is like that, or even more beautiful still. This is because the stones there are pure, and not corroded or corrupted, like those here, by mildew and brine due to the elements that have flowed together, bringing ugliness and disease to stones and earth, 5 and to plants and animals as well. But the true earth is adorned with all these things, and with gold and silver also, and with the other 111 things of that kind as well. For they are plainly visible, being many in number, large, and everywhere upon the earth; happy, therefore, are they who behold the sight of it. Among many other living things upon it there are men, some dwelling inland, some living by 5 the air, as we live by the sea, and some on islands surrounded by the air and lying close to the mainland; and in a word, what the water and the sea are to us for our needs, the air is to them; and what air is for us, aether is for them. Their climate is such that they are free b from sickness and live a far longer time than people here, and they surpass us in sight, hearing, wisdom, and all such faculties, by the extent to which air surpasses water for its purity, and aether sur- 5 passes air. Moreover, they have groves and temples of gods, in which gods are truly dwellers, and utterances and prophecies, and direct awareness of the gods; and communion of that kind they experience face to face. The sun and moon and stars are seen by them as they c really are, and their happiness in all else accords with this.
'Such is the nature of the earth as a whole and its surroundings; but in it there are many regions within the hollows it has all around it,81 5 some deeper and some more extended than the one in which we dwell, some deeper but with a narrower opening than our own region, and others that are shallower in depth but broader than this one. All d these are interconnected underground in every direction, by passages
both narrower and wider, and they have channels through which 5 abundant water flows from one into another, as into mixing bowls, and continuous underground rivers of unimaginable size, with waters hot and cold, and abundant fire and great rivers of fire, and many of liquid mud, some purer and some more miry, like the rivers of mud e in Sicily that flow ahead of the lava-stream, and the lava-stream itself; with these each of the regions is filled, as the circling stream happens to reach each one on each occasion. All of this is kept moving back and forth by a kind of pulsation going on within the 5 earth; and the nature of this pulsation is something like this: one of the openings in the earth happens to be especially large, and per- 112 forated right through the earth; it is this that Homer spoke of as: A great way off, where lies the deepest pit beneath earth; and it is this that he, and many other poets have elsewhere called 5 Tartarus. Now into this opening all the rivers flow together, and from it they flow out again; and each acquires its character from the nature b of the earth through which it flows. The reason why all the streams flow out there, and flow in, is that this liquid has neither bottom nor resting place. So it pulsates and surges back and forth, and the air and the breath enveloping it do the same; because they follow 5 it, when it rushes towards those areas of the earth and again when it returns to these; and just as in breathing the current of breath is continuously exhaled and inhaled, so there the breath pulsating together with the liquid causes terrible and unimaginable winds, as it c passes in and out. Now when the water recedes into the so-called "downward" region, it flows along the courses of those streams through the earth82 and fills them, as in the process of irrigation; and when it leaves there again and rushes back here, then it fills 5 these ones here once more; these, when filled, flow through the channels and through the earth, and reaching the regions into which a way has been made for each, they make seas and lakes and rivers d and springs; and then dipping again beneath the earth, some circling longer and more numerous regions, and others fewer and shorter ones, they discharge once more into Tartarus, some a long way and others a little below where the irrigation began; but all flow in 5 below the point of outflow, some across from where they poured out, and some in the same part; and there are some that go right
round in a circle, coiling once or even many times around the earth like serpents, and then, after descending as far as possible, discharge once more. It is possible to descend in either direction as far as the e middle but no further; because the part on either side slopes uphill for both sets of streams.
'Now there are many large streams of every kind; but among their number there happen to be four in particular, the largest of which, 5 flowing outermost and round in a circle, is the one called Oceanus; across from this and flowing in the opposite direction is Acheron, which flows through other desert regions, and in particular, flowing 113 underground, reaches the Acherusian Lake, where the souls of most of those who have died arrive, and where, after they have stayed for certain appointed periods, some longer, some shorter, they are sent forth again into the generation of living things. The third river issues 5 between these two, and near the point of issue it pours into a huge region all ablaze with fire, and forms a lake larger than our own sea, boiling with water and mud; from there it proceeds in a circle, turbid and muddy, and coiling about within the earth it reaches the b borders of the Acherusian Lake, amongst other places, but does not mingle with its water; then, after repeated coiling underground, it discharges lower down in Tartarus; this is the river they name Pyriphlegethon, and it is from this that the lava-streams blast frag- 5 ments up at various points upon the earth. Across from this again issues the fourth river, first into a region terrible and wild, it is said, coloured bluish-grey all over, which they name the Stygian region, c and the river as it discharges forms a lake,83 the Styx; when it has poured in there, and gained terrible powers in the water, it dips beneath the earth, coils round and proceeds in the opposite direction to Pyriphlegethon, which it encounters in the Acherusian lake from 5 the opposite side; nor does the water of this river mingle with any other, but it too goes round in a circle and discharges into Tartarus opposite to Pyriphlegethon; and its name, according to the poets, is Cocytus.