The myth of the Cave, found in the seventh book of Plato's Republic, depicts a group of people chained in a cave shaft, unable to see anything but the shadows of people and the objects they carry with them, which travel past a fire behind them (186-7). This serves to illustrate the epistemology that Socrates had begun to develop in the previous book with the images of the Sun and the Line. It also works as follows in the related discussion of educational theory. Furthermore, although less obvious, the analogy can also be read as a defense of philosophy, an important topic for Plato in light of the infamous death of his teacher, “the founding myth of the academic discipline of philosophy” (Chiodi). Plato provides a heroic portrait of humans who are born chained to the realm of the visible. Plato's carefully chosen prison images are striking, but they have more than just shock value. It illustrates the impossibility of escape, the almost insurmountable difficulty of crawling out of the depths of the changing shadows towards the immutable forms, all governed and given life by the good. Most people will not receive a spontaneous understanding of good as Socrates did from his “demonic sign” (Plato 496c). Rather, they must be “dragged…from there by force…into the light of the sun” and “forced…to look at the light itself” (Plato 515d-e). All this presupposes that someone frees the people and shows them the path of the intelligible, a liberator. In other words, philosophers are not born; they are made by other philosophers. This liberator has a difficult task. She or he must turn “the whole soul until it is able to study what is and the brightest thing that is, that is, what we call the good” (Plato, once he has achieved the knowledge of the good, must not be allowed” to remain there and refuse to go down again to the prisoners in the cave and share their labors and honors” (Plato 519d), they must instead be forced to return to the “evils of human life” (Plato 517d). bliss of contemplating the good to serve those who do not wish to be served. Prisoners “believe that the truth is nothing but the shadows” that flicker before them, because it is all they know, so they will resist anyone who challenges it ( Plato 515c). Furthermore, the philosopher's wisdom will seem madness to them (Plato 517d), because of this misunderstanding, the imprisoned society will reject and ridicule its liberator, finally subjecting him to death (Plato 517a). with the death of Plato's teacher, Socrates, who was used as a spokesman throughout the Republic. Socrates was accused of impiety and tried to defend himself from these accusations (Chiodi). Although he attempted to argue his case, the jury decided against him and he was executed by having him swallow hemlock (nails). Likewise, the lover of wisdom who returns to the Cave “behaves clumsily and appears utterly ridiculous if he is forced, in courts or elsewhere, to contend with the shadows of justice” (Plato 517d-e). A philosopher would face