[1]: A modified quotation from Hom. Od. 9.271; Hom. Od. 17.485-7
[2]: Cf. Od. 17.485-7
[3]: Cf. Hom. Od. 17.485-7.
[4]: Hom. Od. 17.485-7
[5]: Plato’s etymology—ἀσπαλιευτική from ἀνασπᾶσθαι— is hardly less absurd than that suggested in the translation. The words at an angle are inserted merely to give a reason In English for the words which follow them.
[6]: The word μουσική, here rendered liberal arts, is much more inclusive than the English word music, designating, as it does, nearly all education and culture except the purely physical. In the Athens of Socrates’ day many, possibly most, of the teachers of music in this larger sense were foreigners, Greeks, of course, but not Athenians.
[7]: Apparently a term descriptive of some part of the process of weaving; cf. Plat. Crat. 338b.
[8]: The connection between disproportion and missing the mark is not obvious. The explanation that a missile (e.g. an arrow) which is not evenly balanced will not fly straight, fails to take account of the words πρὸς ἄλληλα. The idea seems rather to be that moving objects of various sizes, shapes, and rates of speed must interfere with each other.
[9]: Cf. Plat. Theaet. 232d.
[10]: Apparently a reference to a proverbial expression. Cf. Hes. WD 216 ἔγνω παθών; Herodotus, 1.207 τὰ παθήματα μαθήματα.
[11]: Parmenides Fr. 7
[12]: This refers apparently to Pherecydes and the early lonians.
[13]: Heracleitus and his followers.
[14]: Empedocles and his disciples.
[15]: In both cases, i.e. whether you say that one only is or that both are, they would both be one, namely being.
[16]: The Eleatic Zeno and his school.
[17]: In other words, one, considered as a word, will be the name of unity, but considered as a reality, it will be the unity of which the word one is the name. The sentence is made somewhat difficult of comprehension, doubtless for the purpose of indicating the confusion caused by the identification of the name wlth the thing.
[18]: Parmenides Fr. 8.43
[19]: The Ionic philosophers, the Eleatics, Heracleitus, Empedocles, the Megarians, Gorgias, Protagoras, and Antisthenes all discussed the problem of being and not-being.
[20]: The atomists (Leucippus, Democritus, and their followers), who taught that nothing exists except atoms and the void. Possibly there is a covert reference to Aristippus who was, like Plato, a pupil of Socrates.
[21]: This refers to the story of Cadmus, who killed a dragon and then sowed its teeth, from which sprang fierce warriors to be his companions. Born of the dragon’s teeth and of earth, they would naturally be of the earth, earthy.
[22]: i.e., between the process of coming into existence and existence itself. It is difficult to determine exactly who the idealists are whose doctrines are here discussed. Possibly Plato is restating or amending some of his own earlier beliefs.
[23]: Nothing further seems to he known about this prayer. Stallbaum thought the reference was to a game in which the children said ὅσα ἀκίνητα καὶ κεκινημένα εἴη, may all unmoved things be moved.
[24]: Cf. 242d above.
[25]: Those are here satirized who deny the possibillty of all except identical predication. Such were Antisthenes, Euthydemus, and Dionysodorus. The two last are probably those referred to as old men whose learning came late in life.
[26]: Eurycles was a ventriloquist and soothsayer of the fifth century, cf. Aristoph. Wasps 1019
[27]: By practice, i.e., by empirical knowledge as opposed to reason.
[28]: i.e., sameness and difference can he predicated of both.
[29]: See Plat. Theaet. 251e ff
[30]: Being is many, for each and every thing in all the classes is; but not-being is infinite, for not only is it true that everything in each of the classes is not, but not-being extends also to all conceptions which do not and cannot have any reality.
[31]: i.e., if he will not accept our proof that being is not, etc., he must disprove our arguuents respecting the participation of idea in one another, and then proceed to draw his inference.
[32]: The two particles οὐ and μή in Greek.
[33]: Parmenides Fr. 7.1
[34]: The denial, that is to say, of all the interrelations of ideas leads to purely negative results. Examples of this are the exclusive antithesis of being and not-being and the mutual exclusion of rest and motion. The difficulty is solved at once when we recognize that positive and negative are necessarily interwoven in the nature of things, that the negative has only a relative existence and is not the opposite of the positive, but only different from it.
[35]: The English word fancy, though etymologically identical with the Greek φαντασία, has lost the close connection with seeming (φαίνεσθαι) which the Greek retains. The Greek word is therefore more comprehensive than the English, denoting that which appears to be, whether as the result of imagination or of sensation. Cf. 235 D ff.
[36]: Perhaps a sort of pun is intended, for πρόβλημα was already beginning to have the meaning of problem.
[37]: The science of language, in all its branches, was young in the time of Plato. Words of general meaning were necessarily used in a technical sense. So here ὄνομα and ῥῆμα are used as parts of grammatical terminology in the sense of verb and noun, though Plato elsewhere employs them with their ordinary meanings. Similarly the distinction between vowels and consonants (Plat. Theaet. 203; cf. Plat. Soph. 253) was at least relatively new, as was that between the active and the passive voice. How important Plato’s part was in the development of linguistic study can no longer be accurately determined.
[38]: See Plat. Theaet. 235d ff
[39]: See Plat. Theaet. 219
[40]: This was the current explanation of reflection. Mirrors and smooth objects were supposed to contain a luminous principle which met on the smooth surface with the light coming from the object reflected. So in the act of vision the fire within the eye united with the external fire (Plat. Tim. 46a). The words τῆς ἔμπροσθεν . . . ἐναντίαν αἴσθησιν refer to the transposition of right and left in the reflection (cf. Plat. Theaet. 193c).