In english class my senior year of high school, we read Dante's inferno, which pertains to the stages of the underworld. While reading about the Myth of Er, I found many fascinating connections between the two. Er, the warrior who died in battle, experiences four openings. Two of which lead to the sky and the other two lead to the ground. The holy souls went into the sky and the unholy souls went into the ground, which to modern individuals could be depicted as heaven and hell. These different openings reminded me of the various layers of hell, which are the core (no pun intended) of Dante's inferno. I'm not sure if this similarity was meant to be that way, however I found it interestingly similar to each other. Also, Er acts as the messenger between the afterlife and reality, and tells the mortals about his experiences. The same thing happened for Dante's inferno, where Dante depicts through Cantos about his journey. The similarities between the two are fascinating.
Works Cited: Cummings, Philip W. Plato: The Republic. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967.
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