Thesis advisor: Robert C. Bartlett / A translation and close study of the “myths” of the afterlife that conclude Plato’s Republic and Gorgias. This thesis attempts to understand the essential political teachings of the dialogues in question—about the definition of justice, its rightness, and its consequences—through the lens of their final stories. Glaucon and Callicles represent two responses to the apparent problem that the unjust fare better than the just. To Callicles, Socrates offers his “political art in truth” in the place of Gorgias’ “art” of rhetoric. To Glaucon, Socrates presents an orderly universe and an orderly city that seem to mirror justice in the soul. Both men require different, salutary accounts of justice from Socrates. These are not false or unphilosophic fables, but true images of τὰ ἔσχατα, of the ultimate and most extreme things—not as guides to any underworld but to the best way of life possible among living human beings. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.

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