Plato, Republic

[363a] urge the necessity of being just, not by praising justice itself, but the good repute with mankind that accrues from it, the object that they hold before us being that by seeming to be just the man may get from the reputation office and alliances and all the good things that Glaucon just now enumerated as coming to the unjust man from his good name. But those people draw out still further this topic of reputation. For, throwing in good standing with the gods, they have no lack of blessings to describe, which they affirm the gods give to pious men, even as the worthy Hesiod and Homer declare, [363b] the one that the gods make the oaks bear for the just: “‘Acorns on topmost branches and swarms of bees on their mid-trunks,’ and he tells how the ‘Flocks of the fleece-bearing sheep are laden and weighted with soft wool,’”Hes. WD 232ff. and of many other blessings akin to these; and similarly the other poet:“ Even as when a good king, who rules in the fear of the high gods,
Upholds justice and right, and the black earth yields him her foison,
” [363c]

“ Barley and wheat, and his trees are laden and weighted with fair fruits,
Increase comes to his flocks and the ocean is teeming with fishes.
”

Hom. Od. 19.109

And Musaeus and his son¹ have² a more excellent song³ than these of the blessings that the gods bestow on the righteous. For they conduct them to the house of Hades in their tale and arrange a symposium of the saints,⁴ where, reclined on couches crowned with wreaths, [363d] they entertain the time henceforth with wine, as if the fairest meed of virtue were an everlasting drunk. And others extend still further the rewards of virtue from the gods. For they say that the children's children⁵ of the pious and oath-keeping man and his race thereafter never fail. Such and such-like are their praises of justice. But the impious and the unjust they bury in mud⁶ in the house of Hades and compel them to fetch water in a sieve,⁷ and, while they still live, [363e] they bring them into evil repute, and all the sufferings that Glaucon enumerated as befalling just men who are thought to be unjust, these they recite about the unjust, but they have nothing else to say.⁸ Such is the praise and the censure of the just and of the unjust.

“Consider further, Socrates, another kind of language about justice and injustice