This question of ours, apparently so smart, comes, of course, too late. For it is with a μῦθος that Plato answers the question of what surrounds those who have completed the mortal course here, i.e., the question of what remains in the there. At the end of the dialogue on the πολιτεία Plato has Socrates tell a story. People have often been puzzled by the occurrence of myths in the Platonic dialogues. The reason they turn up from time to time is that Plato is indeed prepared to abandon the primordial thinking in favor of the later so-called "metaphysics," but precisely this incipient metaphysical thinking still has to preserve a recollection of the primordial thinking. Hence the story.
In dialogue with Glaucon Socrates tells the concluding myth. Socrates begins with the words (Politeia, X, 614b2) ἀλλ᾽ οὐ μέντοι σοι, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, Ἀλκίνου γε ἀπόλογον ἐρῶ, ἀλλ᾽ ἀλκίμου μὲν ἀνδρός, Ἠρὸς τοῦ Ἀρμενίου, τὸ γένος Παμφύλου. "But in the meantime I will not tell you the story selected for the entertainment of Alkinoos (the king of the Phaiecians) but an ἀπόλογον, an apology (defense) of a brave man, Er, Armenios's son, one of the tribe of Pamphyliers."
The play on words between οὐ Ἀλκίνου γε ἀπόλογον and ἀλλ᾽ ἀλκίμου μὲν ἀνδρός cannot be rendered in the translation. This play on words introducing the μῦθος is not at all playful; it is supposed to indicate the essence of the λόγος about to be narrated, i.e., the essence of the μῦθος. This λόγος is called ἀπόλογος. Ἀπόλογος is used here in an essentially ambiguous sense, and indeed in a different verbal construction each time: Ἀλκίνου ἀπόλογον and ἀλκίμου ἀνδρός ἀπόλογον, i.e., an ἀπόλογος "for" Alkinoos versus an ἀπόλογος told by a brave man. In the first case, according to the meaning of its root ἀπολέγειν, to assort, to select, ἀπόλογος means something chosen for the pleasure of Alkinoos. In the second case, where it is properly meant, the same word ἀπόλογος means the "apology" by which the brave man sets apart what he says from everything else that is told and thus preserves it in its special truth. The words that follow do not abandon what they say, do not squander anything in the looseness of mere entertainment and non-committal chatter. The words that follow are protective words resisting the importunity of ordinary explanation and, strictly taken, may be said and heard only in their properly essential form. This already establishes decisively that our "reference" to the μῦθος, as a mere reference, is questionable on many grounds
"Er," the son of Armenios, had once in battle completed his life: ὅς ποτε ἐν πολέμῳ τελευτήσας. When, ten days afterwards, they collected the dead, who were already decomposed, Er was taken up as non-decomposed and brought home where he would be buried on the twelfth day. Lying on the funeral pyre, he came back to life and, as one who had come back, reported what he had seen "there." He said (614b9-cl):