[1]: Socrates narrates in the first person, as in the Charmides and Lysis; see Introduction p. vii, Hirzel, Der Dialog, i. p. 84. Demetrius, On Style, 205, cites this sentence as an example of trimeter members. Editors give references for the anecdote that it was found in Plato’s tablets with many variations. For Plato’s description of such painstaking Cf. Phaedrus 278 D. Cicero De sen.. 5. 13 scribens est mortuus.
[2]: Cf. 439 E; about a five-mile walk.
[3]: Plato and Xenophon represent Socrates as worshipping the gods, νόμῳ πόλεως. Athanasius, Contra gentes, 9, censures Plato for thus adoring an Artemis made with hands, and the fathers and medieval writers frequently cite the passage for Plato’s regrettable concessions to polytheism—persuasio civilis as Minucius Felix styles it. Cf. Eusebius Praep. Evang. xiii. 13. 66.
[4]: Presumably Bendis (354 A), though, as the scholiast observes, Athena is ἡ θεός for an Athenian. For foreign cults at the Peiraeus see Holm, History of Greece, iii. p. 189.
[5]: See Introduction.
[6]: Headed homeward is more exact and perhaps better.
[7]: A Greek gentleman would always be so attended. Cf. Charmides 155 A, Meno 82 B, Protagoras 310 C, Demosthenes xlvii. 36.
[8]: The bounder in Theophrastus, Char. xi. (xvii.), if he sees persons in a hurry will ask them to wait.
[9]: Charmides 153 B, Parmenides 126 A, 449 B.
[10]: Ipse, Cf. Protagoras 314 D; ipse dixit; Now you are not ipse, for I am he.—Shakes.
[11]: Cf. the playful threat in Philebus 16 A, Phaedrus 236 C, Horace, Satire i. 4. 142.
[12]: For the characteristic Socratic contrast between force and persuasion cf. 411 D, and the anecdote in Diogenes Laertius vii. 24.
[13]: See Sterrett in AJP xxii. p. 393. The torch was passed down the lines which competed as wholes. Cf. Swinburne, Hymn of Man: Where the runners outwear each other, but running with lampless hands,No man takes light from his brother, till blind at the goal he stands. For the metaphorical transmission of the torch of life cf. Plato, Laws, 776 B, Lucretius ii. 79.
[14]: Rise from the table. This is forgotten.
[15]: In American, the colloquial Greek means be a sport.
[16]: The particles single out Thrasymachus for ironical emphasis. Proclus in Tim. 3 E preserves them in his enumeration of the dramatis personae.
[17]: A companion picture to the fair vision of the youthful Lysis (Lysis, 207 A). The wreath was worn at the sacrifice.
[18]: For the seats compare Protagoras 317 D-E, Cicero Laelius 1. 2 in hemicyclio sedentem.
[19]: The language recalls the Homeric formula, πάρος γε μὲν οὔτι θαμίζεις, Iliad xviii. 386, Odyssey v. 88, Jebb on O.C. 672. Cephalus’ friendly urgency to Socrates is in the tone of Laches 181 C.
[20]: Plato characteristically contrasts the transitory pleasures of the body with the enduring joys of the mind. Phaedrus 258 E. Anaximenes imitates and expands the passage, Stobaeus, 117. 5. Pleasures are not strictly speaking of the body, but in or relating to it. See my Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 45.
[21]: Much of this passage, including the comparison of old men to travellers, is copied by Cicero, De sen. 3 ff.
[22]: Cf. Horace, Epistles i. 11 Quid tibi visa Chios? The vague neuter and the slight anacoluthon give a colloquial turn to the sentence.
[23]: Hesiod, Works and Days 290, says that the path of virtue is rough at first and then grows easy.
[24]: This, whatever its precise meaning, was a familiar phrase like our One foot in the grave. Cf. Leaf on Iliad xxii. 60, xxiv 487; Hyperides (i. xx. 13) employs it without apology in prose.
[25]: Lit. preserving. For the reverse Cf. Symposium 174 B. Cicero renders, similes cum similibus veteri proverbio facile congregantur. The proverb is ἧλιξ ἥλικα τέρπει Phaedrus 240 C, or, as in Lysis 214 A, Protagoras 337 D, Symposium 195 B, the reference may be to Homer’s ὡς αἰεὶ τὸν ὁμοῖον ἄγει θεὸς ὡς τὸν ὁμοῖον, Odyssey xvii. 218. Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, x., The ancient proverb in Homer . . . entitles this work of leading each like person to his like, peculiarly to God, himself.
[26]: The sentiment of the sensualist from Mimnermus to Byron; cf. also Simonides fr. 71, Sophocles Antigone 1165, Antiphanes, in Stobaeus 63. 12. For the application to old age Cf. Anth. Pal. ix. 127, Horace Epistles ii. 2. 55, and the ψόγος γήρως in Stobaeus, 116.
[27]: For such a litany cf. Sophocles O. C. 1235.
[28]: This suggests Aristotle’s fallacy of the false cause, Soph. El. 167 b 21. Cf. Philebus 28 A and Isocrates xv. 230.
[29]: Allusions to the passage are frequent. Theon, Progymn. ii. 66 (Spengel), turns to the anecdote in an edifying χρεία. Ammianus Marcellinus xxv. 4. 2 tells us that the chastity of the emperor Julian drew its inspiration hence. Schopenhauer often dwelt on the thought, cf. Cicero Cato M. 14, Plutarch, De cupid. divit. 5, An seni p. 788, Athen. xii. p. 510, Philostr. Vit. Apoll. 1. 13.
[30]: Cf. Phaedo 86 C, Philebus 47 A, Laws 645 B, 644 E σπῶσι.
[31]: Cf. Euripides I. A. 547 μαινομένων οἴστρων.
[32]: For Sophocles as εὔκολος cf. Aristophanes Frogs 82, and on this quality, Laws 791 C.
[33]: Cephalus prefigures the old age of the righteous, infra 612-613. There is then no parody of Antisthenes as Joel fancies.
[34]: Cf. Teles. (Hense, pp.9-10), Philemon in Plutarch p. 358, Musonius, Stobaeus 117. 8. A fragment of Anaxandrides in Stobaeus Florileg. 68. 1 is almost a paraphrase of this passage. Thucydides ii. 44 says that honour, not money, is the consolation of old age.
[35]: Lit. the Seriphean of the anecdote, which, however, Herodotus (viii. 125) tells of another. Cicero Cato M. 8 Seriphio cuidam.
[36]: Cephalus, Lysanias, Cephalus, and so frequently.
[37]: Aristotle makes a similar observation, Eth. Nic. iv. 1.20, Rhet. i. 11. 26, ii. 16. 4. For nouveaux riches, γενναῖοι ἐκ βαλλαντίου, see Starkie on Aristophanes Wasps, 1309.
[38]: Cf. Theaetetus 160 E, Symposium 209 C, Phaedrus 274 E, with Epaminondas’ saying, that Leuctra and Mantineia were his children.
[39]: Cf. Walter Scott’s Be a good man, my dear; nothing else will give you any comfort, when you come to lie here. Perhaps the earliest positive expression of faith in future life and judgement for sin is Pindar’s Second Olympian. See Rohde’s Psyche and Adam in Cambridge Praelections. The Epicureans and sometimes the Stoics unfairly reprobated Plato’s appeal here to this motive, which he disregards in his main argument and returns to only in the tenth book. Cf. 363 C-D, 386 B, 613 E ff., also 496 E, 498 D, 608 D.
[40]: Cf. 498 C and Pindar Ol. ii. 64. But 500 D, there is the realm of Platonic ideas.
[41]: Cf. Gorgias 523 A, 527 A.
[42]: The conclusion logically expected, is more credulous, shifts to the alternative preferred by Plato. ὥσπερ marks the figurative sense of nearer. καθορᾷ is not takes a more careful view of it (Goodwin) but wins a glimpse, catches sight of those obscure things, as a sailor descries land. So often in Plato. Cf. Epin. 985 C. Sir Thomas Browne, Christ. Morals, iii. 22 And having been long tossed in the Ocean of the world, he will by that time feel the draught of another. Waller on the Divine Poems—The Soul's Dark Cottage, batter'd and decay'd,Lets in new light through chinks that time has made . . .Leaving the old, both worlds at once they viewThat stand upon the threshold of the new. Rabelais, iii. 21 Aussi les anges, les heroes, les bons demons (selon la doctrine des Platonicques) voyans les humains prochains de mort comme deport très sceur et salutaire—les saluent les consolent, parlent avec eux et ja commencement leur communicquer art de divination.
[43]: Polyb. v. 52. 13, and for the thought Iamblichus, Protrepticus 127 A, Job iv. 13-14. Tennyson, Vastness ix.—Pain, that has crawl’d from the corpse of Pleasure, a worm which writhes all day, and at nightStirs up again in the heart of the sleeper, and stings him back to the curse of the light.
[44]: The better hope of the initiated, often mentioned in connection with the mysteries, blends with the better hope of the righteous (Isocrates i. 39, iv. 20, viii. 34, Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, ii. 73), and in the conclusion of the Pindar passage almost becomes the hope against which Greek moralists warn us. Cf. Pindar Nem. xi. in fine, Sophocles Antigone 615, Thuc. 2.62, Thuc. 3.45.
[45]: Pindar, Fragment 214, L.C.L. Edition.
[46]: Pindar Frag. 214, Loeb
[47]: Cf. the famous, We owe a cock to Aesculapius, Phaedo 118 A. Cf. further, Browne, Christian Morals, i. 26 Well content if they be but rich enough to be honest, and to give every man his due.
[48]: It is Platonic Doctrine that no act is per se good or bad. Plat. Sym. 181a. This opens the door to casuistry, Xen. Mem. 4.2.12, Cic. De offic. 3.25. For the argument cf. Xen. Mem. 4.2.18, Cic. De offic. 3.25. For the proverb, a knife to a child or a madman cf. Athen. 5.52, Iambl. Protrep. 18k, Jebb’s Bentley, p. 69, where Jebb misses Bentley’s allusion to it.
[49]: The argument, or one side of it, is often treated as a thesis which may be thus transferred. Cf. Philebus 12 A, Charmides 162 E, Protagoras 331 A.
[50]: Cicero Ad Att. iv. 16 Credo Platonem vix putasse satis consonum fore, si hominem id aetatis in tam longo sermone diutius retinuisset, Bagehot, Hartley Coleridge, It (metaphysical debate) attracts the scorn of middle-aged men, who depart πρὸς τὰ ἱερά, etc.
[51]: The defintion is not found in the fragments of Simonides. Cf. 433 E, and the Roman Jurists’ Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas suum cuique tribuens. For the various meanings of the Greek word cf. my Articles Righteousness and Theognis in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.
[52]: The Platonic Socrates ironically treats the poets as inspired but not wise because they cannot explain their fine sayings. Apology 22 A-B, Ion 542 A. He always assumes that the utterances of the wise men must be true. Theaetetus 152 B, Phaedrus 260 A, Laws 888 E, Euthydemus 280 A. But they are often obscure, and he reserves for himself the right of interpretation (335 E). Since the poets contradict one another and cannot be cross-examined they are not to be taken seriously as authorities. Protagoras 347 E, Meno 71 D, Lysis 214-215, Hippias Minor 365 D.
[53]: Owing to the rarity of banks reddere depositum was throughout antiquity the typical instance of just conduct. Cf. 442 E, Mayor on Juvenal Satire 13. 15, Herodotus. vi. 86, Democr. fr. 265 Diels, Philo, De spec. leg. 4. 67. Salt was a symbol of justice because it preserves ἃ παραλαμβάνει: Diogenes Laertius viii. 35. Earth is iustissima tellus because she returns the seed with interest. Socrates’ distinction between the fact of returning a deposit, and returning it rightly is expressed in Stoic terminology: ut si iuste depositum reddere in recte factis sit, in officiis ponatur depositum reddere, Cicero De fin. iii. 18.
[54]: Adam insists that the meaning of μανθάνω ὅτι here and everywhere is it is because.
[55]: In the Greek the particles indicate slight irritation in the speaker.
[56]: Cf. Lysis 214 D, Charmides 162 A, Theaetetus 152 C, 194 C, Alc. II. 147 B. The poet, like the soothsayer, is inspired, but only the thinker can interpret his meaning. Cf. 331 E, Tim. 72 A. Allegory and the allegorical interpretation are always conscious and often ironical in Plato.
[57]: Socrates often presents an argument in this polite form. Cf. 337 A-B, 341 E, Gorgias 451 B, Hippias Major 287 B ff., Thompson on Meno 72 B.
[58]: Socrates tests ambitious general definitions by the analogy of the arts and their more specific functions. Cf. Gorgias 451 A, Protagoras 311 B, 318 B. The idiomatic double question must be retained in the translation. The English reader, if puzzled, may compare Calverly’s Pickwick examination: Who thinks that in which pocket of what garment and where he has left what entreating him to return to whom and how many what and all how big?
[59]: Similarly Protagoras 312 A.
[60]: Simonides’ defintion is reduced to the formula of traditional Greek morality which Plato was the first to transcend not only in the Republic infra, 335 D-336 A, but in the Crito 49 B-C. It is often expressed by Xenophon (Memorabilia ii. 3. 14, ii. 6. 35) and Isocrates (i. 26). But the polemic is not especially aimed at them. Cf. Schmidt, Ethik, ii. 313, 319, 363, Pindar, Pyth. ii. 85, Aeschylus Choeph. 123, Jebb, introduction to Sopocles Ajax, p. xxxix, Thumser, Staats-Altertumer, p. 549, n. 6, Thompson on Meno 71 E.
[61]: Justice (the political art) must be something as definite as the special arts, yet of universal scope. This twofold requirement no definition of a virtue in the minor dialogues is ever able to satisfy. It is met only by the theory worked out in the Republic. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 14.
[62]: Justice is more nearly defined as having to do with money or legal obligations—the common-sense view to which Aristotle inclines.
[63]: Interest is ignored. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1120 a 9, splits hairs on this.
[64]: A virtue is presumably a good. A defintion that makes justice useless is ipso facto refuted. This line of argument is a standardized procedure in the minor dialogues. Cf. my Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 78. The argument continues: The arts are faculties of opposites. The fallacy is intentional, as in Hippias Minor 365, where it is argued that the voluntary lie is better than the involuntary. This impressed Aristotle, who met it with his distinction between habit and faculty (ἕξις and δύναμις). Cf Topics, vi. 12. 6, Eth. Nic. v. 1. 4, vi. 5. 7, Met. 1046 b, Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 38.
[65]: The shift from the active to the middle here helps Plato to his transition from guarding to guarding against.
[66]: The play on the Greek word recalls Shakespeare’s If you do take a thief . . . let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company, Much Ado, III. iii.
[67]: The qualified assent here marks the speaker’s perception that something is wrong. But often it expresses modesty or is a mere mannerism. Cf. 399 D, 401 D, 409 C, 410 A, 553 E, etc.
[68]: Plato playfully follows the fashion of tracing all modern wisdom to Homer. Cf. Theaetetus 152 E.
[69]: A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles (Winter’s Tale, IV. iii. 26), whom Homer celebrates (Hom. Od. 19.395). The naivete of Homer’s amoral standpoint (Cf. Odyssey xiii. 290 ff.) tickles Plato’s sense of humor, and he amuses himself by showing that the popular rule help friends and harm enemies is on the same ethical plane. So in the Euthyphro, popular piety is gravely reduced to a kind of καπηλεία or retail trade in prayer and blessings. Cf. also Dio Chrys. Or. xi. 315 R., and modern laments over the Decay of Lying.
[70]: Hom. Od. 19.395
[71]: For humorous bewilderment of Socrates’ interlocutors cf. Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 2. 19, Lysis 216 C, Alc. I. 127 D, Meno 80, Euthyphro 11 B, Symposium 201 B, Theaetetus 149 A, 169 C.
[72]: The antithesis of seeming and being is a common category of early Greek and Platonic thought. Cf. 361 A-B, 365 C, Aeschylus Agamemnon 788, and the fragments of Parmenides. This discussion of the true φίλος recalls the manner of the Lysis; cf. Aristotle Topics i. 8. 5.
[73]: Or, that is an immoral conclusion.
[74]: After the word-fence the ethical idea is reached which Plato was the first to affirm.
[75]: For Socratic comparison of animals and men Cf. Apology 30 C, Euthyphro 13 B-C, and on 451 C.
[76]: The desired conclusion and all the idealistic paradoxes of Socrates, and later of Stoicism, follow at once from the assumption that justice, being the specific virtue of man, is human excellence generally, so that nothing is of import except justice, and no real wrong (or harm) can be done to a man except by making him less just (or wise, or good). Cf Apology 41 D, Crito 44 D. The ambiguity of ἀρετή is similarly used 353 and 609 B-D.
[77]: The special work (Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 2. 12, iv. 6. 14) is generalized as the idea of specific function, which after Plato and Aristotle retains a prominent place in the moralizing of the Stoics and in all philosophizing. See 351 D, 352 E, Aristotle Eth. Nic. i. 7. 10, Idea of Good p. 210, Diogenes Laertius vii. 103, Porphyr.De abstin. ii. 41, Courtney, Studies in Philosophy p. 125, Spencer, Data of Ethics 12.
[78]: Xenophon approves the doctrine (Memorabilia ii. 6. 35, ii. 3. 14) and attributes it to Simonides (Hiero 2. 2). But Plato is not thinking specially of him. See on 332 p.
[79]: For the legend and the varying lists of the Seven Wise Men see Zeller i. 158, n. 2. No sage or saint could have taught unedifying doctrine. His meaning must have been right. Cf. 331 E, 332 B, Protagoras 345 D, Simplic. on Aristotle Physics 107. 30.
[80]: Cf. Thompson, Meno xl.
[81]: It is a Socratic paradox that doing as one likes is not power or freedom unless one likes the good. Cf. Gorgias 467 A, 577 D.
[82]: Cf. Introduction pp. ix-x.
[83]: Cf. Introduction.
[84]: Cf. Gorgias 483 A, Aristotle Soph. El. 183 b 7. Socrates asked questions but did not answer, for he admitted that he did not know. For similar complaints cf. Xenophon Memorabilia i. 2. 36, iv. 4. 9, Theaetetus 150 C, Clitophon passim.
[85]: Thrasymachus objects to definition by substitution of synonyms (Cf. Clitophon 409 C). He demands an analysis of the underlying facts (338 D-E), such as is given in the later books.
[86]: For the fancy that to be seen first by the wolf makes dumb see Virgil Eclogues 9. 53, Theocr. 14. 22, Pliny, N.H. viii. 34, Milton, Epitaphium Damonis 27 nisi me lupus ante videbit.
[87]: For similar irony Cf. Gorgias 461 C-D, 489 D.
[88]: For this type of a fortiori or ex contrario argument cf. 589 E, 600 C-D, Crito 46 D, Laws 647 C, 931 C, Protagoras 325 B-C, Phaedo 68 A, Thompson on Meno 91 E.
[89]: Cf. Heracleitus fr. 22 Diels, and Ruskin, King’s Treasuries The physical type of wisdom, gold, Psalms xix. 10.
[90]: Cf. Symposium 216 E, and Gomperz, Greek Thinkers iii. p. 277.
[91]: In American, nerve. Socrates’ statement that παθεῖν due him is μαθεῖν (gratis) affects Thrasymachus as the dicasts were affected by the proposal in the Apology that his punishment should be—to dine at the City Hall. The pun on the legal formula could be remotely rendered: In addition to the recovery of your wits, you must pay a fine. Plato constantly harps on the taking of pay by the Sophists, but Thrasymachus is trying to jest, too.
[92]: Grudging. Cf. Laches 200 B.
[93]: Cf. Cratylus 391 B.
[94]: Socrates’ poverty (Apology 38 A-B) was denied by some later writers who disliked to have him classed with the Cynics.
[95]: For this dogmatic formulation of a definition Cf. Theaetetus 151 E.
[96]: To idealists law is the perfection of reason, or νοῦ διανομή, Laws 714 A; her seat is in the bosom of God (Hooker). To the political positivist there is no justice outside of positive law, and law is the command of a political superior to a political inferior. Whatsoever any state decrees and establishes is just for the state while it is in force, Theaetetus 177 D. The formula justice is the advantage of the superior means, as explained in Laws 714, that the ruling class legislates in its own interest, that is, to keep itself in power. This interpretation is here drawn out of Thrasymachus by Socrates’ affected misapprehensions (cf. further Pascal, Pensees iv. 4, la commodite du souverain. Leibniz approves Thrasymachus’s definition: justum potentiori utile . . . nam Deus ceteris potentior!).
[97]: The unwholesomeness of this diet for the ordinary man proves nothing for Plato’s alleged vegetarianism. The Athenians ate but little meat.
[98]: The Greek is stronger—a beastly cad. A common term of abuse in the orators. Cf. Aristophanes Frogs 465, Theophrast.Char. xvii. (Jebb).
[99]: Cf. 392 C, 394 B, 424 C, Meno 78 C, Euthydemus 295 C, Gorgias 451 A δικαίως ὑπολαμβάνεις, you take my meaning fairly. For complaints of unfair argument cf. 340 D, Charmides 166 C, Meno 80 A, Theaetetus 167 E, Gorgias 461 B-C, 482 E.
[100]: This is the point. Thrasymachus is represented as challenging assent before explaining his meaning, and Socrates forces him to be more explicit by jocosely putting a perverse interpretation on his words. Similarly in Gorgias 451 E, 453 B, 489 D, 490 C, Laws 714 C. To the misunderstanding of such dramatic passages is due the impression of hasty readers that Plato is a sophist.
[101]: These three forms of government are mentioned by Pindar, Pyth. ii. 86, Aeschines In Ctes. 6. See 445 D, Whibley, Greek Oligarchies, and Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 62.
[102]: κρατεῖ with emphasis to suggest κρείττων. Cf. Menexenus 238 D, Xenophon Memorabilia 1. 2. 43. Platonic dialectic proceeds by minute steps and linked synonyms. Cf. 333 A, 339 A, 342 C, 346 A, 353 E, 354 A-B, 369 C, 370 A-B, 379 B, 380-381, 394 B, 400 C, 402 D, 412 D, 433-434, 486, 585 C, Meno 77 B, Lysis 215 B, where L. and S. miss the point.
[103]: On this view justice is simply τὸ νόμιμον (Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 4. 12; Cf. Gorgias 504 D). This is the doctrine of the Old Oligarch, [Xenophon] Rep. Ath. 2. Against this conception of class domination as political justice, Plato (Laws 713 ff.) and Aristotle Politics iii. 7) protest. Cf. Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, chap. ii.: We only conceive of the State as something equivalent to the class in occupation of the executive government etc.
[104]: Thrasymachus makes it plain that he, unlike Meno (71 E), Euthyphro (5 ff.), Laches (191 E), Hippias (Hippias Major 286 ff.), and even Theaetetus (146 C-D) at first, understands the nature of a definition.
[105]: Cf. Laches 182 C.
[106]: For the teasing or challenging repetition cf. 394 B, 470 B-C, 487 E, 493 A, 500 B, 505 D, 514 B, 517 C, 523 A, 527 C, Lysis 203 B, Sophocles O.T. 327.
[107]: For the teasing or challenging repetition cf. 394 B, 470 B-C, 487 E, 493 A, 500 B, 505 D, 514 B, 517 C, 523 A, 527 C, Lysis 203 B, Sophocles O.T. 327.
[108]: For Plato’s so-called utilitarianism or eudaemonism see 457 B, Unity of Plato’s Thought, pp. 21-22, Gomperz, ii. p. 262. He would have nearly accepted Bentham’s statement that while the proper end of government is the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the actual end of every government is the greatest happiness of the governors. Cf. Leslie Stephen, English Utilitarianism, i. p. 282, ii. p. 89.
[109]: This profession of ignorance may have been a trait of the real Socrates, but in Plato it is a dramatic device for the evolution of the argument.
[110]: The argument turns on the opposition between the real (i.e. ideal) and the mistakenly supposed interest of the rulers. See on 334 C.
[111]: Cf. 338 E and Theaetetus 177 D.
[112]: Τί λέγεις σύ; is rude. See Blaydes on Aristophanes Clouds 1174. The supspicion that he is being refuted makes Thrasymachus rude again. But Cf. Euthydemus 290 E.
[113]: Cf. Berkeley, Divine Visual Language, 13: The conclusions are yours as much as mine, for you were led to them by your own concessions. See on 334 D, Alc. I. 112-113. On a misunderstanding of this passage and 344 E, Herbert Spencer (Data of Ethics, 19) bases the statement that Plato (and Aristotle), like Hobbes, made state enactments the source of right and wrong.
[114]: Socrates is himself a little rude.
[115]: Cf. Gorgias 495 D.
[116]: Cf. Laches 215 E, Phaedo 62 E.
[117]: It is familiar Socratic doctrine that the only witness needed in argument is the admission of your opponent. Cf. Gorgias 472 A-B.
[118]: τὰ κελευόμενα ποιεῖν is a term of praise for obedience to lawful authority, and of disdain for a people or state that takes orders from another. Cleitophon does not apprehend the argument and, thinking only of the last clause, reaffirms the definition in the form it is just to do what rulers bid. Polemarchus retorts: And (I was right), for he (also) . . .
[119]: Socrates always allows his interlocutors to amend their statements. Cf. Gorgias 491 B, 499 B, Protagoras 349 C, Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 2. 18.
[120]: Thrasymachus rejects the aid of an interpretation which Socrates would apply not only to the politician’s miscalculation but to his total misapprehension of his true ideal interests. He resorts to the subtlety that the ruler qua ruler is infallible, which Socrates meets by the fair retort that the ruler qua ruler, the artist qua artist has no sinister or selfish interest but cares only for the work. If we are to substitute an abstraction or an ideal for the concrete man we must do so consistently. Cf. modern debates about the economic man.
[121]: For the idea cf. Rousseau’s Émile, i.: On me dira . . . que les fautes sont du médecin, mais que la médicine en elle-même est infaillible. A al bonne heure; mais qu’elle vienne donc sans le médecin. Lucian, De Parasito 54, parodies this reasoning.
[122]: For the invidious associations of ἀκριβολογία (1) in money dealings, (2) in argument, cf. Aristotle Met. 995 a 11, Cratylus 415 A, Lysias vii. 12, Antiphon B 3, Demosthenes. xxiii. 148, Timon in Diogenes Laertius ii. 19.
[123]: Cf. 365 D.
[124]: i.e., the one who in vulgar parlance is so; cf. τῷ ῥήματι, Plat. Rep. 340d.
[125]: A rare but obvious proverb. Cf. Schol. ad loc. and Aristides, Orat. Plat. ii. p. 143.
[126]: καὶ ταῦτα = idque, normally precedes (cf. 404 C, 419 E, etc.). But Thrasymachus is angry and the whole phrase is short. Commentators on Aristophanes Wasps 1184, Frogs 704, and Acharn. 168 allow this position. See my note in A.J.P. vol. xvi. p. 234. Others: though you failed in that too.
[127]: Cf. 541 B, Euthyphro 11 E, Charmides 153 D.
[128]: Plato, like Herodotus and most idiomatic and elliptical writers, is content if his antecedent can be fairly inferred from the context. Cf. 330 C τοῦτο, 373 C, 396 B, 598 C τεχνῶν, Protagoras 327 C.
[129]: Pater, Plato and Platonism, p. 242, fancifully cites this for art for art’s sake. See Zeller, p. 605. Thrasymachus does not understand what is meant by saying that the art (= the artist qua artist) has no interest save the perfection of its (his) own function. Socrates explains that the body by its very nature needs art to remedy its defects (Herodotus i. 32, Lysis 217 B). But the nature of art is fulfilled in its service, and it has no other ends to be accomplished by another art and so on ad infinitum. It is idle to cavil and emend the text, because of the shift from the statement (341 D) that art has no interest save its perfection, to the statement that it needs nothing except to be itself (342 A-B). The art and the artist qua artist are ideals whose being by hypothesis is their perfection.
[130]: The next step is the identification of (true) politics with the disinterested arts which also rule and are the stronger. Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 9. 11. γε emphasizes the argumentative implication of ἄρχουσι to which Thrasymachus assents reluctantly; and Socrates develops and repeats the thought for half a page. Art is virtually science, as contrasted with empiric rule of thumb, and Thrasymachus’s infallible rulers are of course scientific. Ruler is added lest we forget the analogy between political rule and that of the arts. Cf. Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics 244, Laws 875 C.
[131]: It is not content with theoretic knowledge, but like other arts gives orders to achieve results. Cf. Politicus 260 A, C.
[132]: Thrasymachus first vents his irritation by calling Socrates a snivelling innocent, and then, like Protagoras (Protagoras 334), when pressed by Socrates’ dialectic makes a speech. He abandons the abstract (ideal) ruler, whom he assumed to be infallible and Socrates proved to be disinterested, for the actual ruler or shepherd of the people, who tends the flock only that he might shear it. All political experience and the career of successful tyrants, whom all men count happy, he thinks confirms this view, which is that of Callicles in the Gorgias. Justice is another’s good which only the naive and innocent pursue. It is better to inflict than to suffer wrong. The main problem of the Republic is clearly indicated, but we are not yet ready to debate it seriously.
[133]: κορυζῶντα L. and S., also s. v. κόυζα. Lucian, Lexiphanes 18, treats the expression as an affectation, but elsewhere employs it. The philosophers used this and similar terms (1) of stupidity, (2) as a type of the minor ills of the flesh. Horace, Satire i. 4. 8, ii. 2. 76, Epictet. i. 6. 30 ἀλλ’ αἱ μύξαι μου ῥέουσι.
[134]: Literally, if you don’t know for her. For the ethical dative cf. Shakespeare Taming of the Shrew, I. ii. 8 Knock me here soundly. Not to know the shepherd from the sheep seems to be proverbial. Shepherd of the people, like survival of the fittest, may be used to prove anything in ethics and politics. Cf. Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics p. 431, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 2. 1, Suetonius Vit. Tib. 32, and my note in Class. Phil. vol. i. p. 298.
[135]: Thrasymachus’s real rulers are the bosses and tyrants. Socrates’ true rulers are the true kings of the Stoics and Ruskin, the true shepherds of Ruskin and Milton.
[136]: Cf. Aristophanes Clouds 1203 πρόβατ’ ἄλλως, Herrick, Kings ought to shear, not skin their sheep.
[137]: This (quite possible) sense rather than the ironical, so far advanced, better accords with ἀγνοεῖς and with the direct brutality of Thrasymachus.
[138]: τῷ ὄντι like ὡς ἀληθῶς, ἀτεχνῶς, etc., marks the application (often ironical or emphatic) of an image or familiar proverbial or technical expression or etymology. Cf. 443 D, 442 A, 419 A, 432 A, Laches 187 B, Philebus 64 E. Similarly ἐτήτυμον of a proverb, Archil. fr. 35 (87). The origin of the usage appears in Aristophanes Birds 507 τοῦτ’ ἄρ’ ἐκεῖν ἦν τοὔπος ἀληθῶς, etc. Cf. Anth. Pal. v. 6. 3. With εὐηθικῶν, however, ὡς ἀληθῶς does not verify the etymology but ironically emphasizes the contradiction between the etymology and the conventional meaning, simple, which Thrasymachus thinks truly fits those to whom Socrates would apply the full etymological meaning of good character. Cf. 348 C, 400 E, Laws 679 C, Thucydides iii. 83. Cf. in English the connexion of silly with selig, and in Italian, Leopardi’s bitter comment on dabbenaggine (Pensieri xxvi.).
[139]: Justice not being primarily a self-regarding virtue, like prudence, is of course another’s good. Cf. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1130 a 3; 1134 b 5. Thrasymachus ironically accepts the formula, adding the cynical or pessimistic comment, but one’s own harm, for which see 392 B, Euripides Heracleid. 1-5, and Isocrates’ protest (viii. 32). Bion (Diogenes Laertius iv. 7. 48) wittily defined beauty as the other fellow’s good; which recalls Woodrow Wilson’s favourite limerick, and the definition of business as l’argent des autres.
[140]: For the idea that the just ruler neglects his own business and gains no compensating graft cf. the story of Deioces in Herodotus i. 97, Democ. fr. 253 Diels, Laches 180 B, Isocrates xii. 145, Aristotle Pol. v. 8. 15-20. For office as a means of helping friends and harming enemies cf. Meno 71 E, Lysias ix. 14, and the anecdote of Themistocles (Plutarch, Praecept. reipub. ger. 13) cited by Goodwin (Political Justice) in the form: God forbid that I should sit upon a bench of justice where my friends found no more favour than my enemies. Democr. (fr. 266 Diels) adds that the just ruler on laying down his office is exposed to the revenge of wrongdoers with whom he has dealt severely.
[141]: The order of the words dramatically expressses Thrasymachus’s excitement and the sweeping success of the tyrant.
[142]: The European estimate of Louis Napoleon before 1870 is a good illustration. Cf. Theopompus on Philip, Polybius viii. 11. Euripides’ Bellerophon (fr. 288) uses the happiness of the tyrant as an argument against the moral government of the world.
[143]: Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1130 b 15 uses the expression in a different sense.
[144]: The main issue of the Republic. Cf. 360 D, 358 E and Gorgias 469 B.
[145]: Cf. Theophrastus, Char. xv. 19 (Jebb), Tucker, Life in Ancient Athens, p. 134. For the metaphor cf. 536 B, Lysis 204 D, Aristophanes Wasps 483. Sudden, lit. all at once.
[146]: Cf. Euripides Alcestis 680 οὐ βαλὼν οὕτως ἄπει.
[147]: Socrates reminds us that a serious moral issue is involved in all this word-play. So 352 D, Gorgias 492 C, 500 C, Laches 185 A. Cf. 377 B, 578 C, 608 B.
[148]: Plainly a protesting question, Why, do I think otherwise? Cf. 339 D.
[149]: For the impossibility of J. and C.’s or rather see my note in A.J.P. vol. xiii. p. 234.
[150]: κείσεται of an investment perhaps. Cf. Plautus, Rudens 939 bonis quod bene fit, haud perit.
[151]: Isocrates viii. 31 and elsewhere seems to be copying Plato’s idea that injustice can never be profitable in the higher sense of the word. Cf. also the proof in the Hipparchus that all true κέρδος is ἀγαθόν.
[152]: Plato neglects for the present the refinement that the unjust man does not do what he really wishes, since all desire the good. Cf. 438 A, 577 D, and Gorgias 467 B.
[153]: Cf. 365 D.
[154]: Thrasymachus has stated his doctrine. Like Dr. Johnson he cannot supply brains to understand it. Cf. Gorgias 489 C, 499 B, Meno 75 D.
[155]: The language is idiomatic, and the metaphor of a nurse feeding a baby, Aristophanes Eccl. 716, is rude. Cf. Shakespeare, He crams these words into my ears against the stomach of my sense.
[156]: Cf. Socrates’ complaint of Callicles’ shifts, Gorgias 499 B-C, but Cf. 334 E, 340 B-C.
[157]: The art = the ideal abstract artist. See on 342 A-C. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1098 a 8 ff. says that the function of a harper and that of a good harper are generically the same. Cf. Crito 48 A.
[158]: Aristotle’s despotic rule over slaves would seem to be an exception (Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics p. 245.). But that too should be for the good of the slave; infra 590 D.
[159]: See on 343 B, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1102 a 8. The new point that good rulers are reluctant to take office is discussed to 347 E, and recalled later, 520 D. See Newman, l.c. pp. 244-245, Dio Cass. xxxvi. 27. 1.
[160]: Cf. Gorgias 495 A. But elsewhere Socrates admits that the argument may be discussed regardless of the belief of the respondent (349 A). Cf. Thompson on Meno 83 D, Campbell on Soph. 246 D.
[161]: As each art has a specific function, so it renders a specific service and aims at a specific good. This idea and the examples of the physician and the pilot are commonplaces in Plato and Aristotle.
[162]: Hence, as argued below, from this abstract point of view wage-earning, which is common to many arts, cannot be the specific service of any of them, but must pertain to the special art μισθωτική. This refinement is justified by Thrasymachus’ original abstraction of the infallible craftsman as such. It also has this much moral truth, that the good workman, as Ruskin says, rarely thinks first of his pay, and that the knack of getting well paid does not always go with the ability to do the work well. See Aristotle on χρηματιστική, Politics i. 3 (1253 b 14).
[163]: κακά = troubles, miseres, 517 D. For the thought cf. 343 E, 345 E, Xen. Mem. 2.1.8, Hdt. 1.97.
[164]: Cf. 345 E, Aristot. Eth. Nic. 1134b 6.
[165]: Plato habitually explains metaphors, abstractions, and complicated defintions in this dramatic fashion. Cf. 352 E, 377 A, 413 A, 429 C, 438 B, 510 B.
[166]: Cf. Aristotle Politics 1318 b 36. In a good democracy the better classes will be content, for they will not be ruled by worse men. Cf. Cicero, Ad Att. ii. 9 male vehi malo alio gubernante quam tam ingratis vectoribus bene gubernare; Democr. fr. 49 D.: It is hard to be ruled by a worse man; Spencer, Data of Ethics, 77.
[167]: The good and the necessary is a favorite Platonic antithesis, but the necessary is often the condicio sine qua non of the good. Cf. 358 C, 493 C, 540 B, Laws 628 C-D, 858 A. Aristotle took over the idea, Met. 1072 b 12.
[168]: This suggests an ideal state, but not more strongly than Meno 100 A, 89 B.
[169]: The paradox suggests Spencer’s altruistic competition and Archibald Marshall’s Upsidonia. Cf. 521 A, 586 C, Isocrates vii. 24, xii. 145; Mill, On Representative Government, p. 56: The good despot . . . can hardly be imagined as conseting to undertake it unless as a refuge from intolerable evils; ibid. p. 200: Until mankind in general are of opinion with Plato that the proper person to be entrusted with power is the person most unwilling to accept it.
[170]: εἰσαῦθις lays the matter on the table. Cf. 430 C. The suggestiveness of Thrasymachus’ defintion is exhausted, and Socrates turns to the larger question and main theme of the Republic raised by the contention that the unjust life is happier and more profitable than the just.
[171]: This is done in 358 D ff. It is the favorite Greek method of balancing pros and cons in set speeches and antithetic enumerations. Cf. Herodotus viii. 83, the διαλέξεις (Diels, Vorsokratiker ii. pp. 334-345), the choice of Heracles (Xenophon Memorabilia ii. 1), and the set speeches in Euripides. With this method the short question and answer of the Socratic dialectic is often contrasted. Cf. Protagoras 329 A, 334-335, Gorgias 461-462, also Gorgias 471 E, Cratylus 437 D, Theaetetus 171 A.
[172]: Thrasymachus’s Umwertung aller Werte reverses the normal application of the words, as Callicles does in Gorgias 491 E.
[173]: Thrasymachus recoils from the extreme position. Socrates’ inference from the etymology of εὐήθεια (cf. 343 C) is repudiated. Injustice is not turpitude (bad character) but—discretion. εὐβουλία in a higher sense is what Protagoras teaches (Protagoras 318 E) and in the highest sense is the wisdom of Plato’s guardians (428 B).
[174]: Socrates understands the theory, and the distinction between wholesale injustice and the petty profits that are not worth mentioning, but is startled by the paradox that injustice will then fall in the category of virtue and wisdom. Thrasymachus affirms the paradox and is brought to self-contradiction by a subtle argument (349-350 C) which may pass as a dramatic illustration of the game of question and answer. Cf. Introduction p. x.
[175]: ἤδη marks the advance from the affirmation that injustice is profitable to the point of asserting that it is a virtue. This is a stiffer proposition, i.e. harder to refute, or possibly more stubborn.
[176]: e.g. Polus in Gorgias 474 ff., 482 D-E. Cf. Isocrates De Pace 31. Thrasymachus is too wary to separate the κακόν and the αἰσχρόν and expose himself to a refutation based on conventional usage. Cf. Laws 627 D, Politicus 306 A, Laws 662 A.
[177]: Cf. on 346 A.
[178]: περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας suggests the dogmatic titles of sophistic and pre-Socratic books. Cf. Antiphon, p. 553 Diels, Campbell on Theaetetus 161 C, and Aristotle Met. passim.
[179]: In pursuance of the analogy between the virtues and the arts the moral idea πλεονεξία (overreaching, getting more than your share; see on 359 C) is generalized to include doing more than or differently from. English can hardly reproduce this. Jowett’s Shakespearian quotation (King JohnIV. ii. 28), When workmen strive to do better than well,They do confound their skill in covetousness, though apt, only illustrates the thought in part.
[180]: The assumption that a thing is what it is like is put as an inference from Thrasymachus’s ready admission that the unjust man is wise and good and is like the wise and good. Jevons says in Substitution of Similars; Whatever is true of a thing is true of its like. But practical logic requires the qualification in respect of their likeness. Socrates, however, argues that since the good man is like the good craftsman in not overreaching, and the good craftsman is good, therefore the just man is good. The conclusion is sound, and the analogy may have a basis of psychological truth; but the argument is a verbal fallacy.
[181]: Cf. 608 E, Gorgias 463 E, Protagoras 332 A, 358 D, Phaedo 103 C, Soph. 226 B, Philebus 34 E, Meno 75 D, 88 A, Alc. I. 128 B, Cratylus 385 B. The formula, which is merely used to obtain formal recognition of a term or idea required in the argument, readily lends itself to modern parody. Socrates seems to have gone far afield. Thrasymachus answers quite confidently, ἔγωγε, but in δήπου there is a hint of bewilderment as to the object of it all.
[182]: Familiar Socratic doctrine. Cf. Laches 194 D, Lysis 210 D, Gorgias 504 D.
[183]: πλεονεκτεῖν is here a virtual synonym of πλέον ἔχειν. The two terms help the double meaning. Cf. Laws 691 A πλεονεκτεῖν τῶν νόμων.
[184]: Generalizing from the inductive instances.
[185]: Cf. 334 A.
[186]: Cf. Protagoras 333 B.
[187]: Cf. the blush of the sophist in Euthydemus 297 A.
[188]: The main paradox of Thrasymachus is refuted. It will be easy to transfer the other laudatory epithets ἰσχυρόν, etc., from injustice back to justice. Thrasymachus at first refuses to share in the discussion but finally nods an ironical assent to everything that Socrates says. So Callicles in Gorgias 510 A.
[189]: This is really a reminiscence of such passages as Theaetetus 162 D, Protagoras 336 B, Gorgias 482 C, 494 D, 513 A ff., 519 D. The only justification for it in the preceding conversation is 348 A-B.
[190]: So Polus in Gorgias 527 A.
[191]: Cf. Gorgias 527 A.
[192]: Cf. 331 C, 386 B. Instead of the simple or absolute argument that justice, since it is wisdom and virtue, must be stronger, etc., then injustice, Socrates wishes to bring out the deeper thought that the unjust city or man is strong not because but in spite of his injustice and by virtue of some saving residue of justice.
[193]: Thrasymachus can foresee the implications of either theory.
[194]: For the thought cf. Spencer, Data of Ethics, 114: Joint aggressions upon men outside the society cannot prosper if there are many aggressions of man on man within the society; Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, Chapter. VIII. 31: It (the loyalty of a thief to his gang) is rather a spurious or class morality, etc.; Carlyle: Neither James Boswell’s good book, nor any other good thing . . . is or can be performed by any man in virtue of his badness, but always solely in spite thereof. Proclus, In Rempub. Kroll i. 20 expands this idea. Dante (Convivio I. xii.) attributes to the Philosopher in the fifth of the ethics the saying that even robbers and plunderers love justice. Locke (Human Understanding i. 3) denies that this proves the principles of justice innate: They practise them as rules of convenience within their own communities, etc. Cf. further Isocrates xii. 226 on the Spartans, and Plato Protagoras 322 B, on the inconveniences of injustice in the state of nature, ἠδίκουν ἀλλήλους.
[195]: The specific function must operate universally in bond or free, in many, two, or one. The application to the individual reminds us of the main argument of the Republic. Cf. 369 A, 433 D, 441 C. For the argument many, few or two, one, Cf. Laws 626 C.
[196]: Plato paradoxically treats the state as one organism and the individual as many warring members (cf. Introduction p. xxxv). Hence, justice in one, and being a friend to oneself are more than metaphors for him. Cf. 621 C, 416 C, 428 D, Laws 626 E, 693 B, Epistles vii. 332 D, Antiphon 556.45 Diels ὁμονοεῖ πρὸς ἑαυτόν. Aritotle, Eth. Nic. v. 11, inquires whether a man can wrong himself, and Chrysippus (Plutarch, Stoic. Repug. xvi.) pronounces the expression absurd.
[197]: This is the conventional climax of the plea for any moral ideal. So Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1179 a 24, proves that the σοφός being likest God is θεοφιλέστατος. Cf. Democ. fr. 217 D. μοῦνοι θεοφιλέες ὅσοις ἐχθρὸν τὸ ἀδικεῖν; 382 E, 612 E, Philebus 39 E, Laws 716 D. The enlightened Thrasymachus is disgusted at this dragging in of the gods. Cf. Theaetetus 162 D θεούς τε εἰς τὸ μέσον ἄγοντες. He is reported as saying (Diels p. 544.40) that the gods regard not human affairs, else they would not have overlooked the greatest of goods, justice, which men plainly do not use.
[198]: ἑστιάσεως keeps up the image of the feast of reason. Cf. 354 A-B, Lysis 211 C, Gorgias 522 A, Phaedrus 227 B, and Tim. 17 A, from which perhaps it becomes a commonplace in Dante and the Middle Ages.
[199]: For the idea cf. the argument in Protagoras 327 C-D, that Socrates would yearn for the wickedness of Athens if he found himself among wild men who knew no justice at all.
[200]: The main ethical question of the Republic, suggested in 347 E, now recurs.
[201]: Similarly 578 C. What has been said implies that injustice is the corruption and disease of the soul (see on 445 A-B). But Socrates wishes to make further use of the argument from ἔργον or specific function.
[202]: Cf. on 344 D, ibid, pp. 71 f.
[203]: See on 335 D, and Aristotle Eth. Nic. i. 7. 14. The virtue or excellence of a thing is the right performance of its specific function. See Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, i. p. 301, Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics p. 48. The following argument is in a sense a fallacy, since it relies on the double meaning of life, physical and moral (cf. 445 B and Cratylus 399 D) and on the ambiguity of εὖ πράττειν, fare well and do well. The Aristotelian commentator, Alexander, animadverts on the fallacy. For ἔργον cf. further Epictet. Dis. i. 4. 11, Max. Tyr. Dis. ii. 4, Musonius apud Stobaeus 117. 8, Thompson on Meno 90 E, Plato, Laws 896 D, Phaedrus 246 B.
[204]: Platonic dialectic asks and affirms only so much as is needed for the present purpose.
[205]: For the equivocation Cf. Charmides 172 A, Gorgias 507 C, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 9. 14, Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1098 b 21, Newman, Introduction Aristotle Politics p. 401, Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (English ed.), ii. p. 70. It does not seriously affect the validity of the argument, for it is used only as a rhetorical confirmation of the implication that κακῶς ἄρχειν, etc. = misery and the reverse of happiness.
[206]: For similar irony cf. Gorgias 489 D, Euthydemus 304 C.
[207]: Similarly Holmes (Poet at the Breakfast Table, p. 108) of the poet: He takes a bite out of the sunny side of this and the other, and ever stimulated and never satisfied, etc. Cf. Lucian, Demosth. Encom. 18, Julian Orat. ii. p. 69 c, Polyb. iii. 57. 7.
[208]: Hirzel, Der Dialog, i. p. 4, n. 1, argues that διαλόγου here means inquiry (Erorterung), not the dialogue with Thrasymachus.
[209]: For the profession of ignorance at the close of a Socratic dialogue Cf. Charmides 175 A-B, Lysis 222 D-E, Protagoras 361 A-B, Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 2. 39. Cf. also Introduction p. x.
[210]: Knowledge of the essence or definition must precede discussion of qualities and relations. Cf Meno 71 B, 86 D-E, Laches 190 B, Gorgias 448 E.
[211]: So in Philebus 11 C, Philebus cries off or throws up the sponge in the argument.
[212]: Aristotle borrows this classification from Plato (Topics 118 b 20-22), but liking to differ from his teacher, says in one place that the good which is desired solely for itself is the highest. The Stoics apply the classification to preferables (Diogenes Laertius vii. 107). Cf. Hooker, Eccles. Pol. i. 11. Elsewhere Plato distinguishes goods of the soul, of the body, and of possessions (Laws 697 B, 727-729) or as the first Alcibiades puts it (131) the self, the things of the self, and other things.
[213]: Plato here speaks of harmless pleasures, from the point of view of common sense and prudential morality. Cf. Tim. 59 D ἀμεταμέλητον ἡδονήν, Milton’s Mirth that after no repenting draws. But the Republic (583 D) like the Gorgias (493 E-494 C) knows the more technical distinction of the Philebus (42 C ff., 53 C ff.) between pure pleasures and impure, which are conditioned by desire and pain.
[214]: Isocrates i. 47 has this distinction, as well as Aristotle.
[215]: Some philosophers, as Aristippus (Diogenes Laertius x. 1. 138), said that intelligence is a good only for its consequences, but the opening sentences of Aritotle’s Metaphysics treat all forms of knowledge as goods in themselves.
[216]: Plutarch (1040 C) says that Chrysippus censured Plato for recognizing health as a good, but elsewhere Plato explicitly says that even health is to be disregarded when the true interests of the soul require it.
[217]: For Plato’s fondness for the idea of κηλεῖν cf. The Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 500.
[218]: Cf. 366 E.
[219]: Cf. 347 C-D.
[220]: Cf. Philebus 66 E. Plato affirms that the immoralism of Thrasymachus and Callicles was widespread in Greece. Cf. Introduction x-xi, and Gorgias 511 B, Protagoras 333 C, Euthydemus 279 B, and my paper on the interpretation of the Timaeus, A.J.P. vol. ix. pp. 403-404.
[221]: Glaucon employs the antithesis between nature and law and the theory of an original social contract to expound the doctrine of Thrasymachus and Callicles in the Gorgias. His statement is more systematic than theirs, but the principle is the same; for, though Callicles does not explicitly speak of a social contract, he implies that conventional justice is an agreement of the weak devised to hold the strong in awe. (Gorgias 492 C), and Glaucon here affirms that no relally strong man would enter into any such agreement. The social contract without the immoral application is also suggested in Protagoras 322 B. Cf. also Crito 50 C, f.
[222]: The antithesis of φύσις and νόμος, nature and law, custom or convention, is a commonplace of both Greek rhetoric and Greek ethics. Cf. the Chicago dissertation of John Walter Beardslee, The Use of φύσις in Fifth Century Greek Literature, ch. x. p. 68. Cf. Herodotus iii. 38, Pindar, quoted by Plato, Gorgias 484 B, Laws 690 B, 715 A; Euripides or Critias, Frag. of Sisyphus, Aristophanes Birds 755 ff., Plato Protagoras 337 D, Gorgias 483 E, Laws 889 C and 890 D. It was misused by ancient as it is by modern radicals. Cf. my interpretation of the Timaeus, A.J.P. vol. ix. p. 405. The ingenuity of modern philologians has tried to classify the Greek sophists as distinctly partisans of νόμος or φύσις. It cannot be done. Cf. my unsigned review of Alfred Benn in the New York Nation, July 20, 1899, p. 57.
[223]: Cf. Gorgias 508 A.
[224]: So manuscripts and Proclus. There are many emendations which the curious will find in Adam’s first appendix to the book. Herodotus i. 8-13 tells a similar but not identical story of Gyges himself, in which the magic ring and many other points of Plato’s tale are lacking. On the whole legend cf. the study of Kirby Flower Smith, A.J.P. vol. xxiii. pp. 261-282, 361-387, and Frazer’s Paus. iii. p. 417.
[225]: Mr. H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man rests on a similar fancy. Cf. also the lawless fancies of Aristophanes Birds 785 ff.
[226]: The word is used of the firmness of moral faith in Gorgias 509 A and Republic 618 E.
[227]: ἰσόθεος. The word is a leit-motif anticipating Plato’s rebuke of the tragedians for their praises of the tyraant. Cf. 568 A-B. It does not, as Adam suggests, foreshadow Plato’s attack on the popular theology.
[228]: Cf. 344 A, Gorgias 492 B.
[229]: αἰσθανομένοις suggests men of discernment who are not taken in by phrases, the knowing ones. Cf. Protagoras 317 A, and Aristophanes Clouds 1241 τοῖς εἰδόσιν.
[230]: Cf. Gorgias 483 B, 492 A, Protagoras 327 B, Aristotle Rhet. ii. 23.
[231]: Cf. 580 B-C, Philebus 27 C.
[232]: Cf. Quint. iv. 5. 17 recte enim Graeci praecipiunt non tentanda quae effici omnino non possint.
[233]: Cf. Emerson, Eloquence: Yet any swindlers we have known are novices and bunglers. . . . A greater power of face would accomplish anything and with the rest of the takings take away the bad name.
[234]: Cf, Cicero De offic. i. 13.
[235]: Cf. Thucydides vii. 24 on the miscalculation of the shrewd Chians.
[236]: As Aristotle sententiously says,ὅρος δὲ τοῦ πρὸς δόξαν ὃ λανθάνειν μέλλων οὐκ ἂν ἕλοιτο (Rhet. 1365 b 1, Topics iii. 3. 14).
[237]: For the thought cf. Euripides Helen 270-271.
[238]: Cf. 540 C.
[239]: Cf. 613 E, Gorgias 486 C, 509 A, Apology 32 D. The Greeks were sensitive to rude or boastful speech.
[240]: Or strictly impaled. Cf. Cicero De Rep. iii. 27. Writers on Plato and Christianity have often compared the fate of Plato’s just man with the crucifixion.
[241]: Aesch. Seven 592-594
[242]: Aesch. Seven 592-594
[243]: Cf. on 343 D, 349 B.
[244]: Cf. 332 D.
[245]: μεγαλοπρεπῶς. Usually a word of ironical connotation on Plato.
[246]: Cf. Euthyphro 12 E ff. and 331 B, θεῷ θυσίας, where the respectable morality of the good Cephalus is virtually identical with this commercial view of religion.
[247]: Cf. 352 B and 613 A-B.
[248]: ἀδελφὸς ἀνδρὶ παρείη. The rhythm perhaps indicates a proverb of which the scholiast found the source in Odyssey xvi. 97.
[249]: Who, in Quaker language, have a concern for, who have charge of souls. Cf. the admonitions of the father of Horace, Satire i. 4. 105 ff., Protagoras 325 D, Xenophon Cyr. i. 5. 9, Isocrates iii. 2, Terence Adelphi 414 f., Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, i. p. 187, and the letters of Lord Chesterfield, passim, as well as Plato himself, Laws 662 E.
[250]: Hes. WD 232ff.
[251]: Hom. Od. 19.109
[252]: Cf. Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, iv. p. 83. The son is possibly Eumolpus.
[253]: For the thought of the following cf. Emerson, Compensation: He (the preacher) assumed that judgement is not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the next life. No offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine.
[254]: νεανικώτερα is in Plato often humorous and depreciative. Cf. 563 E νεανική.
[255]: συμπόσιον τῶν ὁσίων. Jowett’s notion that this is a jingle is due to the English pronunciation of Greek.
[256]: Kern, ibid., quotes Servius ad Virgil, Aeneid iii. 98 et nati natorum and opines that Homer took Iliad xx. 308 from Orpheus.
[257]: Cf. Zeller, Phil. d. Gr. i. pp. 56-57, 533 D, Phaedo 69 C, commentators on Aristophanes Frogs 146.
[258]: Cf. my note on Horace, Odes iii. 11. 22, and, with an allegorical application, Gorgias 493 B.
[259]: Plato teaches elsewhere that the real punishment of sin is to be cut off from communion with the good. Theaetetus 176 D-E, Laws 728 B, 367 A
[260]: The gnomic poets complain that bad men prosper for a time, but they have faith in the late punishment of the wicked and the final triumph of justice.
[261]: There is a striking analogy between Plato’s language here and the description by Protestant historians of the sale of indulgences by Tetzel in Germany. Rich men’s doors is proverbial. Cf. 489 B.
[262]: Cf. Mill, Utility of Religion, Three Essays on Religion, p. 90: All positive religions aid this self-delusion. Bad religions teach that divine vengeance may be bought off by offerings or personal abasement. Plato, Laws 885 D, anticipates Mill. With the whole passage compare the scenes at the founding of Cloudcuckootown, Aristophanes Birds 960-990, and more seriously the medieval doctrine of the treasure of the church and the Hindu tapas.
[263]: In Laws 933 D both are used of the victim with ἐπῳδαῖς, which primarily applies to the god. Cf. Lucan, Phars. vi. 492 and 527.
[264]: Hes. WD 287-289
[265]: Hom. Il. 9.497
[266]: ὅμαδον, lit. noise, hubbub, babel, here contemptuous. There is no need of the emendation ὁπμαθόν. Cf. 387 A, and Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, p. 82; cf. John Morley, Lit. Studies, p. 184, A bushel of books.
[267]: Cf. Laws 819 B.
[268]: Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 25: His (Plato’s) imagination was beset by the picture of some brilliant young Alcibiades standing at the crossways of life and debating in his mind whether the best chance for happiness lay in accepting the conventional moral law that serves to police the vulgar or in giving rein to the instincts and appetites of his own stronger nature. To confute the one, to convince the other, became to him the main problem of moral philosophy. Cf. Introduction x-xi; also The Idea of Good in Plato’s Republic, p. 214.
[269]: Pindar, Fr.
[270]: φανερὰ ζημία is familiar and slightly humorous. Cf. Starkie on Aristoph. Ach. 737.
[271]: Simonides, Fr. 76 Bergk
[272]: A Pindaric mixture of metaphors beginning with a portico and garb, continuing with the illusory perspective of scene-painting, and concluding with the craftly fox trailed behind.
[273]: Cf. Fr. 86-89 Bergk, and Dio Chrysost. Or. 55. 285 R. κεπδαλέαν is a standing epithet of Reynard. Cf. Gildersleeve on Pindar Pyth. ii. 78.
[274]: Cf. my review of Jebb’s Bacchylides, Class. Phil., 1907, vol. ii. p. 235.
[275]: Cf. George Miller Calhoun, Athenian Clubs in Politics and Litigation, University of Chicago Dissertation, 1911.
[276]: Lit. persuasion. Cf. the defintion of rhetoric, Gorgias 453 A.
[277]: For the thought compare Tennyson, Lucretius: But he that holdsThe gods are careless, wherefore need he careGreatly for them? Cf. also Euripides I.A. 1034-1035, Anth. Pal. x. 34.
[278]: Cf. Verres’ distribution of his three years’ spoliation of Sicily, Cicero In C. Verrem actio prima 14 (40), and Plato Laws 906 C-D, Lysias xxvii. 6.
[279]: His morality is the hedonistic calculus of the Protagoras or the commercial religion of other-wordliness.
[280]: For these τελεταί cf. 365 A.
[281]: Or rather mouthpieces.
[282]: Aristophanes Clouds 1241.
[283]: Cf. Gorgias 492 A.
[284]: Cf. 363 E.
[285]: Cf. 343 C.
[286]: Adam’s note on γόνιμα: i.q. γνήσια is, I think, wrong.
[287]: Cf. 506 C.
[288]: Cf. my note in Class. Phil. 1917, vol. xii. p. 436. It does not refer to Thrasymachus facetiously as Adam fancies, but is an honorific expression borrowed from the Pythagoreans.
[289]: Possibly Critias.
[290]: Probably the battle of 409 B.C., reported in Diodor. Sic. xiii. 65. Cf. Introduction p. viii.
[291]: The implied pun on the name is made explicit in 580 C-D. Some have held that Glaucon and Adeimantus were uncles of Plato, but Zeller decides for the usual view that they wre brothers. Cf. Ph. d. Gr. ii. 1, 4th ed. 1889, p. 392, and Abhandl. d. Berl. Akad., 1873, Hist.-Phil Kl. pp. 86 ff.
[292]: So Aristotle Eth. Nic. i. 2. 8 (1094 b 10).
[293]: Lit., coming into being. Cf. Introduction p. xiv. So Aristotle Politics i. 1, but iv. 4 he criticizes Plato.
[294]: C’est tout reflechi.
[295]: Often imitated, as e.g. Hooker, Eccles. Pol. i. 10: Forasmuch as we are not by ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves with a competent store of things needful for such a life as our nature doth desire . . . therefore to supply these defects . . . we are naturally inclined to seek communion and fellowship with others; this was the cause of men uniting themselves at first in civil societies.
[296]: Aristotle says that the city comes into being for the sake of life, but exists for the sake of the good life, which, of course, is also Plato’s view of the true raison d’etre of the state. Cf. Laws 828 D and Crito 48 B.
[297]: It is characteristic of Plato’s drama of ideas to give this kind of rhetorical advantage to the expression of the view that he intends to reject. In what follows Plato anticipates the advantages of the division of labor as set forth in Adam Smith, with the characteristic exception of its stimulus to new inventions. Cf. Introduction xv.
[298]: Butcher’s meat and pork appear first in the luxurious city, 373 C. We cannot infer that Plato was a vegetarian.
[299]: Aristotle adds that the medium of exchange must of itself have value (Politics 1257 a 36).
[300]: Similarly in Laws 918-920.
[301]: Aristotle (Politics 1254 b 18) says that those, the use of whose bodies is the best they have to offer, are by nature slaves. Cf Jesus of Sirach xxxviii. 36 ἄνευ αὐτῶν οὐκ οἰκισθήσεται πόλις. So Carlyle, and Shakespeare on Caliban: We cannot miss him (Tempest, I. ii).
[302]: ὄψον is anything eaten with bread, usually meat or fish, as Glaucon means; but Socrates gives it a different sense.
[303]: Cf. Introduction p. xiv. By the mouth of the fine gentleman, Glaucon, Plato expresses with humorous exaggeration his own recognition of the inadequacy for ethical and social philosophy of his idyllic ideal. Cf. Mandeville, Preface to Fable of the Bees: A golden age must be as free/ For acorns as for honesty.
[304]: On flute-girls as the accompaniment of a banquet Cf. Symposium 176 E, Aristophanes Ach. 1090-1092, Catullus 13. 4. But apart from this, the sudden mention of an incongruous item in a list is a device of Aristophanic humor which even the philosophic Emerson did not disdain: The love of little maids and berries.
[305]: τὰ ἁναγκαῖα predicatively, in the measure prescribed by necessity. Cf. 369 D the indispensable minimum of a city. The historical order is: (1) arts of necessity, (2) arts of pleasure and luxury, (3) disinterested science. Cf. Critias 110 A, Aristotle Met. 981 b 20.
[306]: θηρευταί and μιμηταί are generalized Platonic categories, including much not ordinarily signified by the words. For a list of such Platonic generalizations Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 500.
[307]: Contractors generally, and especially theatrical managers.
[308]: The mothers of the idyllic state nursed their own children, but in the ideal state the wives of the guardians are relieved of this burden by special provision. Cf. 460 D.
[309]: The rhetoricians of the empire liked to repeat that no barber was known at Rome in the first 200 or 300 years of the city.
[310]: Illogical idiom referring to the swine. Cf. 598 C.
[311]: χρείαις: Greek idiom could use either singular or plural. Cf. 410 A; Phaedo 87 C; Laws 630 E. The plural here avoids hiatus.
[312]: Cf. Isocrates iii. 34.
[313]: Cf. 591 D. Natural desires are limited. Luxury and unnatural forms of wealth are limitless, as the Greek moralists repeat from Solon down.
[314]: The unnecessary desires are the ultimate causes of wars.Phaedo 66 C. The simple life once abandoned, war is inevitable. My lord, said St. Francis to the Bishop of Assisi, if we possessed property we should have need of arms for its defense (Sabatier, p. 81). Similarly that very dissimilar thinker, Mandeville. Cf. on 372 C. Plato recognizes the struggle for existence (Spencer, Data of Ethics, 6), and the bellum omnium contra omnes, Laws 625 E. Cf. Sidgwick, Method of Ethics, i, 2: The Republic of Plato seems in many respects divergent from the reality. And yet he contemplates war as a permanent, unalterable fact to be provided for in the ideal state. Spencer on the contrary contemplates a completely evolved society in which the ethics of militarism will disappear.
[315]: i.e. as well as the genesis of society. 369 B.
[316]: ἐξ ὧν: i.e. ἐκ τούτων ἐξ ὧν, namely the appetites and the love of money.
[317]: Cf. 567 E τί δέ; αὐτόθεν. In the fourth century it was found that amateur soldiers could not compete with professionals, and war became a trade (Butcher, Demosthenes p. 17). Plato arrives at the same result by his principle one man one task (370 A-B). He is not here making citizens synonymous with soldiers nor laconizing as Adam says.
[318]: For the thought of this a fortiori or ex contrario argument cf. 421 A.
[319]: ἵνα δή ironical.
[320]: Cf. 370 B-C.
[321]: The ironical argument ex contrario is continued with fresh illustrations to the end of the chapter.
[322]: Cf. on 467 A.
[323]: For the three requisites, science, practice, and natural ability Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 596, and my paper on Φύσις, Μελέτη, Ἐπιστήμη, Tr. A. Ph. A. vol. xl., 1910.
[324]: Cf. Thucydides ii. 40.
[325]: First mention. Cf. 428 D note, 414 B.
[326]: αἰσθανόμενον: present. There is no pause between perception and pursuit.
[327]: In common parlance. Philosophically speaking, no brute is brave. Laches 196 D, 430 B.
[328]: Anger (or the heart’s desire?) buys its will at the price of life, as Heracleitus says (fr. 105 Bywater). Cf. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 1105 a 9, 1116 b 23.
[329]: Cf. Spencer, Psychology 511: Men cannot be kept unsympathetic towards external enemies without being kept unsympathetic towards internal enemies. For what follows cf. Dio Chrys. Or. i. 44 R., Julian, Or. ii. 86 D.
[330]: The contrast of the strenuous and gentle temperamnets is a chief point in Platonic ethics and education. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 59, 70, 481.
[331]: Plato never really deduces his argument from the imagery which he uses to illustrate it.
[332]: φιλόσοφον: etymologically here, as ὡς ἀληθῶς indicates. Your dog now is your only philosopher, says Plato, not more seriously than Rabelais (Prologue): Mais vistes vous oncques chien rencontrant quelque os medullaire: c’est comme dit Platon, lib. ii. de Rep., la beste du monde plus philosophe. Cf. Huxley, Hume, p. 104: The dog who barks furiously at a beggar will let a well-dressed man pass him without opposition. Has he not a general idea of rags and dirt associated with the idea of aversion? Dummler and others assume that Plato is satirizing the Cynics, but who were the Cynics in 380-370 B.C.?
[333]: καίτοι πῶς: humorous oratorical appeal. Cf. 360 C καίτοι.
[334]: Cf. 343 E. ὑπάρχοι marks the basis of nature as opposed to teaching.
[335]: Cf. Introduction pp. xxi-xxii, and Phaedrus 276 E.
[336]: Plato likes to contrast the leisure of philosophy with the hurry of business and law. Cf. Theaetetus 172 C-D.
[337]: For the abrupt question cf. 360 E. Plato here prescribes for all the guardians, or military class, the normal Greek education in music and gymnastics, purged of what he considers its errors. A higher philosophic education will prepare a selected few for the office of guardians par excellence or rulers. Quite unwarranted is the supposition that the higher education was not in Plato’s mind when he described the lower. Cf. 412 A, 429 D-430 C, 497 C-D, Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 650.
[338]: For this conservative argument Cf. Politicus 300 B, Laws 844 A.
[339]: Qualified in 410 C. μουσική is playing the lyre, music, poetry, letters, culture, philosophy, according to context.
[340]: A slight paradox to surprise attention.
[341]: Cf. Laws 753 E, 765 E, Antiphon, fr. 134 Blass.
[342]: Cf. Laws 664 B, and Shelley’s Specious names,Learned in soft childhood’s unsuspecting hour, perhaps derived from the educational philosophy of Rousseau.
[343]: The image became a commonplace. Cf. Theaetetus 191 D, Horace Epistles ii. 32. 8, the Stoic τύπωσις ἐν ψυχῇ, and Byron’s Wax to receive and marble to retain.
[344]: Cf. the censorship proposed in Laws 656 C. Plato’s criticism of the mythology is anticipated in part by Euripides, Xenophanes, Heracleitus, and Pythagoras. Cf. Decharme, Euripides and the Spirit of his Dramas, translated by James Loeb, chap. ii. Many of the Christian Fathers repeated his criticism almost verbatim.
[345]: Theogony 154-181.
[346]: Conservative feeling or caution prevents Plato from proscribing absolutely what may be a necccessary part of traditional or mystical religion.
[347]: The ordinary sacrifice at the Eleusinian mysteries. Cf. Aristophanes Acharn. 747, Peace 374-375; Walter Pater, Demeter and the Pig.
[348]: Plato does not sympathize with the Samuel Butlers of his day.
[349]: The argument, whether used in jest or earnest, was a commonplace. Cf. Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, i. 137, Laws 941 B, Aeschylus Eumenides 640-641, Terence Eunuchus 590 At quem deum! . . . ego homuncio hoc non facerem. The Neoplatonists met the criticism of Plato and the Christian Fathers by allegorizing or refining away the immoral parts of the mythology, but St. Augustine cleverly retorts (De Civ. Dei, ii. 7): Omnes enim . . . cultores talium deorum . . . magis intuentur quid Iupiter fecerit quam quid docuerit Plato.
[350]: Cf. the protest in the Euthyphro 6 B, beautifully translated by Ruskin, Aratra Pentelici 107: And think you that there is verily war with each other among the gods? And dreadful enmities and battles, such as the poets have told, and such as our painters set forth in graven sculpture to adorn all our sacred rites and holy places. Yes, and in the great Panathenaia themselves the Peplus full of such wild picturing, is carried up into the Acropolis—shall we say that these things are true, oh Euthyphron, right-minded friend?
[351]: On the Panathenaic πέπλος of Athena.
[352]: The title of a play by Epicharmus. The hurling of Hephaestus, Iliad i. 586-594.
[353]: Iliad xx. 1-74; xxi. 385-513.
[354]: ὑπόνοια: the older word for allegory; Plutarch, De Aud. Poet. 19 E. For the allegorical interpretation of Homer in Plato’s time cf. Jebb, Homer, p. 89, and Mrs. Anne Bates Hersman’s Chicago Dissertation: Studies in Greek Allegorical Interpretation.
[355]: The poet, like the rhetorician (Politicus 304 D), is a ministerial agent of the royal or political art. So virtually Aristotle, Politics 1336 b.
[356]: The γε implies that God is good ex vi termini.
[357]: It is charcteristic of Plato to distinguish the fact and the desirability of proclaiming it. The argument proceeds by the minute links which tempt to parody. Below τὸ ἀγαθόν, followed by οὐδ’ ἄρα . . . ὁ θεός, is in itself a refutation of the ontological identification in Plato of God and the Idea of Good. But the essential goodness of God is a commonplace of liberal and philosophical theology, from the Stoics to Whittier’s hymn, The Eternal Goodness.
[358]: Anticipates the proclamation of the prophet in the final myth, 617 E: αἰτία ἑλομένου· θεὸς ἀναίτιος. The idea, elaborated in Cleanthes’ hymn to Zeus, may be traced back to the speech of the Homeric Zeus in Odyssey i. 33 ἐξ ἡμεῶν γάπ φασι κάκ’ ἔμμεναι. St. Thomas distinguishes: Deus est auctor mali quod est poena, non autem mali quod est culpa.
[359]: A pessimistic commoplace more emphasized in the Laws than in the Republic. Cf. Laws 896 E, where the Manichean hypothesis of an evil world-soul is suggested.
[360]: Hom. Il. 24.527-8
[361]: Hom. Il. 24.530
[362]: Hom. Il. 24.532
[363]: The line is not found in Homer, nor does Plato explicitly say that it is. Zeus is dispenser of war in Hom. Il. 4.84.
[364]: Iliad 4.69 ff.
[365]: ἔριν τε καὶ κρίσιν is used in Menexenus 237 C of the contest of the gods for Attica. Here it is generally taken of the Theomachy, Iliad xx. 1074, which begins with the summons of the gods to a council by Themis at the command of Zeus. It has also been understood, rather improbably, of the judgement of Paris.
[366]: Aesch.
[367]: For the idea, quem deus vult perdere dementat prius, cf. Theognis 405, Schmidt, Ethik d. Griechen, i. pp. 235 and 247, and Jebb on Sophocles Antigone 620-624.
[368]: Plato’s doctrine that punishment is remedial must apply to punishments inflicted by the gods. Cf. Protagoras 324 B, Gorgias 478 E, 480 A, 505 B, 525 B, 590 A-B. Yet there are some incurables. Cf. 615 E.
[369]: Minucius Felix says of Plato’s theology, Octav. chap. xix: Platoni apertior de deo et rebus ipsis et nominibus oratio est et quae tota esset caelestis nisi persuasionis civilis nonnunquam admixtione sordesceret.
[370]: The two methods, (1) self-transformation, and (2) production of illusions in our minds, answer broadly to the two methods of deception distinguished in the Sophist 236 C.
[371]: Cf. Tim. 50 B, Cratylus 439 E. Aristotle, H. A. i. 1. 32, applies it to biology: τὸ γενναῖόν ἐστι τὸ μὴ ἐξιστάμενον ἐκ τῆς αὑτοῦ φύσεως. Plato’s proof from the idea of perfection that God is changeless has little in common with the Eleatic argument that pure being cannot change.
[372]: The Theaetetus explicitly distinguishes two kinds of motion, qualitative change and motion proper (181 C-D), but the distinction is in Plato’s mind here and in Cratylus 439 E.
[373]: Cf. Laws 765 E.
[374]: ταράξειε suggests the ἀταραξία of the sage in the later schools.
[375]: πᾶν δή generalizes from the preceding exhaustive enumeration of cases. Cf. 382 E, Parmenides 139 A.
[376]: So Aristotle Met. 1074 b 26.
[377]: Cf. Tim. 42 E ἔμενεν, which suggested the Neoplatonic and Miltonic paradox that the divine abides even when it goes forth.
[378]: Hom. Od. 17.485-486
[379]: Od. xvii. 485-486, quoted again in Sophist 216 B-C. Cf. Tim. 41 A.
[380]: Cf. Odyssey iv. 456-8. Thetis transformed herself to avoid the wooing of Peleus. Cf. Pindar, Nem. 4
[381]: Aesch.
[382]: From the Ξαντρίαι of Aeschylus.
[383]: Rousseau also deprecates this.
[384]: Cf. Aristotle De Interp. 1. 12 ἔστι μὲν οὖν τὰ ἐν τῇ φωνῇ τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ παθημάτων σύμβολα. Cf. also Cratylus 428 D, 535 E, Laws730 C, Bacon, Of Truth: But it is not the lie that passes through the mind but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it that doth the hurt.
[385]: Cf. Phaedrus 245 A μυρία τῶν παλαιῶν ἔργα κοσμοῦσα τοὺς ἐπιγιγνομένους παιδεύει, Isocrates xii. 149 and Livy’s Preface. For χρήσιμον Cf. Politicus 274 E. We must not infer that Plato is trying to sophisticate away the moral virtue of truth-telling.
[386]: Generalizing from the exhaustive classification that precedes.
[387]: Hom. Il. 2.1-34. This apparent attribution of falsehood to Zeus was an Homeric problem which some solved by a change of accent from δίδομεν to διδόμεν. Cf. Aristotle Poetics 1462 a 22.
[388]: Cf. Aeschylus Frag. 350. Possibly from the Ὅπλων κπίσις.
[389]: Hom. Il. 2.1
[390]: Aesch. Frag. 350
[391]: We may, if we choose, see here a reference to the virtue of piety, which some critics fancifully suppose was eliminated by the Euthyphro. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, note 58.
[392]: For the idea that death is no evil Cf. Apology, in fine, Laws 727 D, 828 D, and 881 A, where, however, the fear of hell is approved as a deterrent.
[393]: Cf. 377 B.
[394]: Aesch. Frag. 350
[395]: Spoken by Achilles when Odysseus sought to console him for his death. Lucian, Dialog. Mort. 18, develops the idea. Proclus comments on it for a page.
[396]: Hom. Il. 20.64
[397]: δείσας μὴ precedes.
[398]: Hom. Il. 10.495
[399]: The exclamation and inference (ῥά) of Achilles when the shade of Patroclus eludes his embrace in the dream. The text is endlessly quoted by writers on religious origins and dream and ghost theories of the origin of the belief in the soul.
[400]: Hom. Il. 23.103
[401]: Said of the prophet Teiresias. The preceding line is, Unto him even in death was it granted by Persephoneia. The line is quoted also in Meno 100 A.
[402]: Hom. Il. 16.856
[403]: Said of the death of Patroclus, and Hector, Hom. Il. 22.382; imitated in the last line of the Aeneid Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras. Cf. Bacchyl. v. 153-4: πύματον δὲ πνέων δάκρυσα τλάμων ἀγλαὰν ἥβαν προλείπων.
[404]: Hom. Il. 23.100
[405]: Hom. Od. 24.6-10
[406]: Said of the souls of the suitors slain by Odysseus. Cf. Tennyson, Oenone: Thin as the bat-like shrillings of the dead.
[407]: Cf. Theaetetus 177 C οὐκ ἀηδέστερα ἀκούειν.
[408]: Milton’s words, which I have borrowed, are the best expression of Plato’s thought.
[409]: φρίττειν and φρίκη are often used of the thrill or terror of tragedy. Cf. Sophocles Electra 1402, O.T. 1306, Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 540.
[410]: Some say, to frighten the wicked, but more probably for their aesthetic effect. Cf. 390 A εἰ δέ τινα ἄλλην ἡδονὴν παρέχεται, Laws 886 C.
[411]: θερμότεροι contains a playful suggestion of the fever following the chill; Cf. Phaedrus 251 A. With μαλακώτεροι the image passes into that of softened metal; cf. 411 B, Laws 666 B-C, 671 B.
[412]: That only the good can be truly friends was a favorite doctrine of the ancient moralists. Cf. Lysis 214 C, Xenophon Memorabilia ii. 6. 9, 20.
[413]: Cf. Phaedo 117 C I wept for myself, for surely not for him.
[414]: αὐτάρκης is the equivalent of ἱκανὸς αὑτῷ in Lysis 215 A. For the idea cf. Menexenus 247 E. Self-sufficiency is the mark of a good man, of God, of the universe (Timaeus 33 D), of happiness in Aristotle, and of the Stoic sage.
[415]: Cf. the anecdotes of Pericles and Xenophon and the comment of Pater on Marcus Aurelius in Marius the Epicurean. Plato qualifies the Stoic extreme in 603 E. The Platonic ideal is μετριοπάθεια, the Stoic ἀπάθεια,
[416]: Cf. Plat. Rep. 398e.
[417]: Hom. Il. 24.10-12
[418]: The descripition of Achilles mourning for Patroclus, Hom. Il. 24.10-12. Cf. Juv. 3.279-280: Noctem patitur lugentis amicum Pelidae, cubat in faciem mox deinde supinus.
[419]: Hom. Il. 24.10-12
[420]: Our text of Homer reads δινεύεσκ’ ἀλύων παρὰ θίν’ ἀλός, οὐδέ μιν ἠώς. Plato’s text may be intentional burlesque or it may be corrupt.
[421]: When he heard of Patroclus’s death.
[422]: Hom. Il. 22.414-415.
[423]: Hom. Il. 22.414-415
[424]: Hom. Il. 18.54
[425]: Thetis.
[426]: Cf. 377 E.
[427]: Hom. Il. 22.168
[428]: Zeus of Hector.
[429]: Hom. Il. 16.433-434
[430]: Cf. Virgil’s imitation, Aeneid 10.465 ff., Cicero, De Div. ii. ch. 10.
[431]: I have imitated the suggestion of rhythm in the original which with its Ionic dative is perhaps a latent quotation from tragedy. Cf. Chairemon, οὐδεὶς ἐπὶ σμικροῖσι λυπεῖται σοφός, N fr. 37.
[432]: The ancients generally thought violent laughter undignified. Cf. Isocrates Demon. 15, Plato Laws 732 C, 935 B, Epictetus Encheirid. xxxiii. 4, Dio Chrys. Or. 33. 703 R. Diogenes Laertius iii. 26, reports that Plato never laughed excessively in his youth. Aristotle’s great-souled man would presumably have eschewed laughter (Eth. iv. 8, Rhet. 1389 b 10), as Lord Chesterfield advises his son to do.
[433]: In 563 E Plato generalizes this psychological principle.
[434]: This laughter of the Homeric gods has been endlessly commented upon. Hegel allegorizes it. Mrs. Browning (Aurora Leigh) says: And all true poets laugh unquenchably Like Shakespeare and the gods. Proclus, In Rempub. i. 127 Kroll says that it is an expression of the abundance of divine energy. It is a commonplace that the primitive sense of humor of the Homeric gods laughs at the personal deformity of Hephaestus, but they really laugh at his officiousness and the contrast he presents to Hebe. Cf. my note in Class. Phil. xxii. (1927) pp. 222-223.
[435]: Hom. Il. 1.599-600
[436]: Cf. on 334 D.
[437]: Cf. 382 D.
[438]: Cf. 334 B, 459 D. A cynic might compare Cleon’s plea in Aristophanes Knights 1226 ἐγὼ δ’ ἔκλεπτον ἐπ’ ἀγαθῷ γε τῇ πόλει. Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia ii. 6. 37, Bolingbroke, Letters to Pope, p. 172.
[439]: Hom. Od. 17.383-384
[440]: The word is chosen to fit both the ship and the state. Cf. 422 E, 442 B; and Alcaeus apud Aristophanes Wasps 1235, Euripides Phoen. 888, Aeschines iii. 158, Epictetus iii. 7. 20.
[441]: That is, probably, if our Utopia is realized. Cf. 452 A εἰ πράξεται ᾗ λέγεται. Cf. the imitation in Epistles 357 A εἴπερ ἔργα ἐπὶ νῷ ἐγίγνετο.
[442]: For the mass of men, as distinguished from the higher philosophical virtue. Often misunderstood. For the meanings of σωγροσύνη cf. my review of Jowett’s Plato, A.J.P. vol. xiii. (1892) p. 361. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 15 and n. 77.
[443]: In Gorgias 491 D-E, Callicles does not understand what Socrates means by a similar expression.
[444]: Hom. Il. 4.412
[445]: Diomede to Sthenelos.
[446]: Hom. Il. 3.8
[447]: In our Homer this is Hom. Il. 3.8 and σιγῇ κτλ. 4.431. See Howes in Harvard Studies, vi. pp. 153-237.
[448]: Hom. Il. 1.225
[449]: Achilles to the commander-in-chief, Agamemon. Several lines of insult follow.
[450]: Cf. Philebus 42 C.
[451]: Cf. Gorgias 482 C.
[452]: Hom. Od. 9.8-10