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3.386
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Concerning the gods then,
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said I,
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this is the sort of thing that we must allow or not allow them to hear from childhood up, if they are to honor the godsWe 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. and their fathers and mothers, and not to hold their friendship with one another in light esteem.
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That was our view and I believe it right.
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What then of this? If they are to be brave, must we not extend our prescription to include also the sayings that will make them least likely to fear death? Or do you suppose that anyone could ever become brave who had that dread in his heart?
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No indeed, I do not,
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he replied.
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And again if he believes in the reality of the underworld and its terrors,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. do you think that any man will be fearless of death and in battle will prefer death to defeat and slavery?
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By no means.
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Then it seems we must exercise supervisionCf. 377 B. also, in the matter of such tales as these, over those who undertake to supply them and request them not to dispraise in this undiscriminating fashion the life in Hades but rather praise it, since what they now tell us is neither true nor edifying to men who are destined to be warriors.
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Yes, we must,
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he said.
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Then,
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said I,
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beginning with this verse we will expunge everything of the same kind:
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Liefer were I in the fields up above to be serf to another
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Tiller of some poor plot which yields him a scanty subsistence,
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Than to be ruler and king over all the dead who have perished,
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Aesch. Fr. 350
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4
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and this:
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Lest unto men and immortals the homes of the dead be uncovered
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Horrible, noisome, dank, that the gods too hold in abhorrence,
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Hom. Il. 20.64
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5
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and:
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Ah me! so it is true that e’en in the dwellings of Hades
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Spirit there is and wraith, but within there is no understanding,
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Hom. Il. 10.495
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6
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and this:
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Sole to have wisdom and wit, but the others are shadowy phantoms,
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Hom. Il. 23.103
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7
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and:
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Forth from his limbs unwilling his spirit flitted to Hades,
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Wailing its doom and its lustihood lost and the May of its manhood,
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Hom. Il. 16.856
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8
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and:
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Under the earth like a vapor vanished the gibbering soul,
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Hom. Il. 23.100
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and:
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Even as bats in the hollow of some mysterious grotto
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Fly with a flittermouse shriek when one of them falls from the cluster
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Whereby they hold to the rock and are clinging the one to the other,
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Flitted their gibbering ghosts.
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Hom. Od. 24.6
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1
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We will beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we cancel those and all similar passages, not that they are not poetic and pleasing
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2
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to most hearers, but because the more poetic they are the less are they suited to the ears of boys and men who are destined to be free and to be more afraid of slavery than of death.
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By all means.
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Then we must further taboo in these matters the entire vocabulary of terror and fear, CocytusMilton’s words, which I have borrowed, are the best expression of Plato’s thought. named of lamentation loud, abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate, the people of the infernal pit and of the charnel-house, and all other terms of this type, whose very names send a shudderφρίττειν and φρίκη are often used of the thrill or terror of tragedy. Cf. Sophocles Electra 1402, O.T. 1306, Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 540. through all the hearers every year. And they may be excellent for other purposes,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. but we are in fear for our guardians lest the habit of such thrills make them more sensitiveθερμότεροι 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. and soft than we would have them.
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And we are right in so fearing.
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We must remove those things then?
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Yes.
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And the opposite type to them is what we must require in speech and in verse?
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Obviously.
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And shall we also do away with the wailings and lamentations of men of repute?
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That necessarily follows,
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he said,
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from the other.
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Consider,
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said I,
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whether we shall be right in thus getting rid of them or not. What we affirm is that a good manThat 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. will not think that for a good man, whose friend he also is, death is a terrible thing.
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Yes, we say that.
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Then it would not be for his friend’sCf. Phaedo 117 C I wept for myself, for surely not for him. sake as if he had suffered something dreadful that he would make lament.
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Certainly not.
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But we also say this, that such a one is most of all men sufficient unto himselfαὐτάρκης 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. for a good life and is distinguished from other men in having least need of anybody else.
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True,
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he replied.
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Least of all then to him is it a terrible thing to lose sonCf. 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, or brother or his wealth or anything of the sort.
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Least of all.
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Then he makes the least lament and bears it most moderately when any such misfortune overtakes him.
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Certainly.
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Then we should be right in doing away with the lamentations of men of note and in attributing them to women,Cf. Plat. Rep. 398e. and not to the most worthy of them either, and to inferior men, in that those whom we say we are breeding for the guardianship of the land may disdain to act like these.
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We should be right,
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said he.
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Again then we shall request Homer and the other poets not to portray Achilles, the son of a goddess, as,
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Lying now on his side, and then again on his back,
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And again on his face,
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Hom. Il. 24.10
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2
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and then rising up and
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Drifting distraught on the shore of the waste unharvested ocean,
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Hom. Il. 24.10
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3
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nor
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clutching with both hands the sooty dust and strewing it over his head,
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4
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nor as weeping and lamenting in the measure and manner attributed to him by the poet; nor yet Priam,
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5
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near kinsman of the gods, making supplication and rolling in the dung,
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Calling aloud unto each, by name to each man appealing.
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Hom. Il. 22.414
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And yet more than this shall we beg of them at least not to describe the gods as lamenting and crying,
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Ah, woe is me, woeful mother who bore to my sorrow the bravest,
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Hom. Il. 18.54
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6
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and if they will so picture the gods at least not to have the effrontery to present so unlikely a likeness
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7
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of the supreme god as to make him say:
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Out on it, dear to my heart is the man whose pursuit around Troy-town
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I must behold with my eyes while my spirit is grieving within me,
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Hom. Il. 22.168
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8
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and:
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Ah, woe is me! of all men to me is Sarpedon the dearest,
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Fated to fall by the hands of Patroclus, Menoitius’ offspring.
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Hom. Il. 16.433-434
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9
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For if, dear Adeimantus, our young men should seriously incline to listen to such tales and not laugh at them as unworthy utterances, still less surely would any man be to think such conduct unworthy of himself and to rebuke himself if it occurred to him to do or say anything of that kind, but without shame or restraint full many a dirge for trifles would he chant
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10
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and many a lament.
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You say most truly,
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he replied.
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But that must not be, as our reasoning but now showed us, in which we must put our trust until someone convinces with a better reason.
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No, it must not be.
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Again, they must not be prone to laughter.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. For ordinarily when one abandons himself to violent laughter his condition provokes a violent reaction.In 563 E Plato generalizes this psychological principle.
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I think so,
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he said.
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Then if anyone represents men of worth as overpowered by laughter we must accept it, much less if gods.
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Much indeed,
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he replied.
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Then we must not accept from Homer such sayings as these either about the gods:
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Quenchless then was the laughterThis 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. that rose from the blessed immortals
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When they beheld Hephaestus officiously puffing and panting.
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Hom. Il. 1.599
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— we must not accept it on your view.
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If it pleases you to call it mine,Cf. on 334 D.
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he said;
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at any rate we must not accept it.
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But further we must surely prize truth most highly. For if we were right in what we were just saying and falsehood is in very deed useless to gods, but to men useful as a remedy or form of medicine,Cf. 382 D. it is obvious that such a thing must be assigned to physicians and laymen should have nothing to do with it.
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Obviously,
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he replied.
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The rulers then of the city may, if anybody, fitly lie on account of enemies or citizens for the benefitCf. 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. of the state; no others may have anything to do with it, but for a layman to lie to rulers of that kind we shall affirm to be as great a sin, nay a greater, than it is for a patient not to tell physician or an athlete his trainer the truth about his bodily condition, or for a man to deceive the pilot about the ship and the sailors as to the real condition of himself or a fellow-sailor, and how they fare.
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Most true,
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he replied.
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If then
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the ruler catches anybody else in the city lying, any of the craftsmen
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Whether a prophet or healer of sickness or joiner of timbers,
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Hom. Od. 17.383
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he will chastise him for introducing a practice as subversive
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5
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and destructive of a state as it is of a ship.
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He will,
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he said,
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if deed follows upon word.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.
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Again, will our lads not need the virtue of self-control?
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Of course.
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And for the multitudeFor 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. are not the main points of self-control these—to be obedient to their rulers and themselves to be rulersIn Gorgias 491 D-E, Callicles does not understand what Socrates means by a similar expression. over the bodily appetites and pleasures of food, drink, and the rest?
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I think so.
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Then, I take it, we will think well said such sayings as that of Homer’s Diomede:
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Friend, sit down and be silent and hark to the word of my bidding,
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Hom. Il. 4.412
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9
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and what follows:
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Breathing high spirit the Greeks marched silently fearing their captains,
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Hom. Il. 3.8
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10
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and all similar passages.
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Yes, well said.
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But what of this sort of thing?
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Heavy with wine with the eyes of a dog and the heart of a fleet deer,
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Hom. Il. 1.225
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1
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and the lines that follow,
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2
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are these well—and other impertinences
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3
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in prose or verse of private citizens to their rulers?
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They are not well.
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They certainly are not suitable for youth to hear for the inculcation of self-control. But if from another point of view they yield some pleasure we must not be surprised, or what is your view of it?
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This,
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he said.
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Again, to represent the wisest man as saying that this seems to him the fairest thing in the world,
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When the bounteous tables are standing
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Laden with bread and with meat and the cupbearer ladles the sweet wine
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Out of the mixer and bears it and empties it into the beakers.
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Hom. Od. 9.8-10
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4
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—do you think the hearing of that sort of thing will conduce to a young man’s temperance or self-control? or this:
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Hunger is the most piteous death that a mortal may suffer.
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Hom. Od. 12.342
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5
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Or to hear how Zeus
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6
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lightly forgot all the designs which he devised,
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watching while the other gods slept, because of the excitement of his passions, and was so overcome by the sight of Hera that he is not even willing to go to their chamber, but wants to lie with her there on the ground and says that he is possessed by a fiercer desire than when they first consorted with one another,
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Deceiving their dear parents.
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Hom. Il. 14.296
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Nor will it profit them to hear of Hephaestus’s fettering Ares and Aphrodite
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7
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for a like motive.
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No, by Zeus,
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he said,
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I don’t think it will.
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But any words or deeds of endurance in the face of all odds
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8
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attributed to famous men are suitable for our youth to see represented and to hear, such as:
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He smote his breast and chided thus his heart,
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Endure, my heart, for worse hast thou endured.
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Hom. Od. 20.17
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9
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By all means,
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he said.
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It is certain that we cannot allow our men to be acceptors of bribes or greedy for gain.
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By no means.
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Then they must not chant:
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Gifts move the gods and gifts persuade dread kings.
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unknown
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10
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Nor should we approve Achilles’ attendant Phoenix
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11
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as speaking fairly when he counselled him if he received gifts for it to defend the Achaeans, but without gifts not to lay aside his wrath;
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nor shall we think it proper nor admit that AchillesCf. Iliad xix. 278 ff. But Achilles in Homer is indifferent to the gifts. himself was so greedy as to accept gifts from Agamemnon and again to give up a dead body after receiving payment Iliad xxiv. 502, 555, 594. But in 560 he does not explicitly mention the ransom. but otherwise to refuse.
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It is not right,
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he said,
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to commend such conduct.
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But, for Homer’s sake,
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said I,
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I hesitate to say that it is positively impious
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3
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to affirm such things of Achilles and to believe them when told by others; or again to believe that he said to Apollo
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Me thou hast baulked, Far-darter, the most pernicious of all gods,
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Mightily would I requite thee if only my hands had the power.
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Hom. Il. 22.15
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4
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And how he was disobedient to the river,
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5
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who was a god and was ready to fight with him, and again that he said of the locks of his hair, consecrated to her river Spercheius:
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This let me give to take with him my hair to the hero, Patroclus,
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Hom. Il. 23.151
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6
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who was a dead body, and that he did so we must believe. And again the trailings
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7
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of Hector’s body round the grave of Patroclus and the slaughter
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8
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of the living captives upon his pyre, all these we will affirm to be lies,
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nor will we suffer our youth to believe that Achilles, the son of a goddess and of Peleus the most chaste
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9
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of men, grandson
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10
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of Zeus, and himself bred under the care of the most sage Cheiron, was of so perturbed a spirit as to be affected with two contradictory maladies, the greed that becomes no free man and at the same time overweening arrogance towards gods and men.
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You are right,
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he said.
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Neither, then,
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said I,
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must we believe this or suffer it to be said, that Theseus, the son of Poseidon, and Peirithous, the son of Zeus, attempted such dreadful rapes,Theseus was assisted by Perithous in the rape of Helen and joined Perithous in the attempt to abduct Persephone. Theseus was the theme of epics and of lost plays by Sophocles and Euripides. nor that any other child of a god and hero would have brought himself to accomplish the terrible and impious deeds that they now falsely relate of him. But we must constrain the poets either to deny that these are their deeds or that they are the children of gods, but not to make both statements or attempt to persuade our youth that the gods are the begetters of evil, and that heroes are no better than men. For, as we were saying, such utterances are both impious and false. For we proved, I take it, that for evil to arise from gods is an impossibility.
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Certainly.
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And they are furthermore harmful to those that hear them. For every man will be very lenient with his own misdeeds if he is convinced that such are and were the actions of
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The near-sown seed of gods,
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Close kin to Zeus, for whom on Ida’s top
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Ancestral altars flame to highest heaven,
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Nor in their life-blood failsPlato was probably thinking of this passage when he wrote the last paragraph of the Critias. the fire divine.
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Aesch. Niobe Fr.
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For which cause we must put down such fables, lest they breed in our youth great laxityCf. my note in Class. Phil . vol. xii. (1910) p. 308. in turpitude.
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Most assuredly.
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What type of discourse remains for our definition of our prescriptions and proscriptions?
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We have declared the right way of speaking about gods and daemons and heroes and that other world.
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We have.
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Speech, then, about men would be the remainder.
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Obviously.
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It is impossible for us, my friend, to place this here.Or possibly determine this at present. The prohibition which it would beg the question to place here is made explicit in Laws 660 E. Cf. Laws 899 D, and 364 B.
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Why?
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Because I presume we are going to say that so it is that both poets and writers of prose speak wrongly about men in matters of greatest moment, saying that there are many examples of men who, though unjust, are happy, and of just men who are wretched, and that there is profit in injustice if it be concealed, and that justice is the other man’s good and your own loss; and I presume that we shall forbid them to say this sort of thing and command them to sing and fable the opposite. Don’t you think so?
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Nay, I well know it,
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he said.
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Then, if you admit that I am right, I will say that you have conceded the original point of our inquiry?
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Rightly apprehended,
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he said.
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Then, as regards men that speech must be of this kind, that is a point that we will agree upon when we have discovered the nature of justice and the proof that it is profitable to its possessor whether he does or does not appear to be just.
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Most true,
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he replied.
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So this concludes the topic of tales.λόγων here practically means the matter, and λέξεως, which became a technical term for diction, the manner, as Socrates explains when Adeimantus fails to understand. That of diction, I take it, is to be considered next. So we shall have completely examined both the matter and the manner of speech.
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And Adeimantus said,
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I don’t understand what you mean by this.
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Well,
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said I,
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we must have you understand. Perhaps you will be more likely to apprehend it thus. Is not everything that is said by fabulists or poets a narration of past, present, or future things?
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What else could it be?
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he said.
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Do not they proceedCf. Aristotle Poetics 1449 b 27. either by pure narration or by a narrative that is effected through imitation,All art is essentially imitation for Plato and Aristotle. But imitation means for them not only the portrayal or description of visible and tangible things, but more especially the expression of a mood or feeling, hence the (to a modern) paradox that music is the most imitative of the arts. But Plato here complicates the matter further by sometimes using imitation in the narrower sense of dramatic dialogue as opposed to narration. An attentive reader will easily observe these distinctions. Aristotle’s Poetics makes much use of the ideas and the terminology of the following pages. or by both?
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This too,
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he said,
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I still need to have made plainer.
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I seem to be a ridiculous and obscure teacher,Socratic urbanity professes that the speaker, not the hearer, is at fault. Cf. Protagoras 340 E, Philebus 23 D.
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I said;
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so like men who are unable to express themselves I won’t try to speak in wholesPlato and Aristotle often contrast the universal and the particular as whole and part. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 52. Though a good style is concrete, it is a mark of linguistic helplessness not to be able to state an idea in general terms. Cf. Locke, Human Understanding, ii. 10. 27: This man is hindered in his discourse for want of words to communicate his complex ideas, which he is therefore forced to make known by an enumeration of the simple ones that compose them. and universals but will separate off a particular part and by the example of that try to show you my meaning.
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Tell me. Do you know the first lines if the Iliad in which the poet says that Chryses implored Agamemnon to release his daughter, and that the king was angry and that Chryses, failing of his request, imprecated curses on the Achaeans in his prayers to the god?
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I do.
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You know then that as far as these verses,
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And prayed unto all the Achaeans,
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Chiefly to Atreus’ sons, twin leaders who marshalled the people,
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Hom. Il. 1.15
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the poet himself is the speaker and does not even attempt to suggest to us that anyone but himself is speaking.
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But what follows he delivers as if he were himself Chryses and tries as far as may be to make us feel that not Homer is the speaker, but the priest, an old man. And in this manner he has carried in nearly all the rest of his narration about affairs in Ilion, all that happened in
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Ithaca
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, and the entire
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Odyssey
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.
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Quite so,
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he said.
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Now, it is narration, is it not, both when he presents the several speeches and the matter between the speeches?
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Of course.
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But when he delivers a speech as if he were someone else, shall we not say that he then assimilates thereby his own diction is far as possible to that of the person whom he announces as about to speak?
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We shall obviously.
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And is not likening one’s self to another speech or bodily bearing an imitation of him to whom one likens one’s self?
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Surely.
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In such case then it appears he and the other poets effect their narration through imitation.
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Certainly.
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But if the poet should conceal himself nowhere, then his entire poetizing and narration would have been accomplished without imitation.In the narrower sense. And lest you may say again that you don’t understand, I will explain to you how this would be done. If Homer, after telling us that Chryses came with the ransom of his daughter and as a suppliant of the Achaeans but chiefly of the kings, had gone on speaking not as if made or being ChrysesCf. Hazlitt, Antony and Cleopatra : Shakespeare does not stand reasoning on what his characters would do or say, but at once becomes them and speaks and acts for them. but still as Homer, you are aware that it would not be imitation but narration, pure and simple. It would have been somewhat in this wise. I will state it without meter for I am not a poet:From here to 394 B, Plato gives a prose paraphrase of Iliad i. 12-42. Roger Ascham in his Schoolmaster quotes it as a perfect example of the best form of exercise for learning a language. the priest came and prayed that to them the gods should grant to take Troy and come safely home, but that they should accept the ransom and release his daughter, out of reverence for the god;
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and when he had thus spoken the others were of reverent mind and approved, but Agamemnon was angry and bade him depart and not come again lest the scepter and the fillets of the god should not avail him. And ere his daughter should be released, he said, she would grow old in Argos with himself, and he ordered him to be off and not vex him if he wished to get home safe. And the old man on hearing this was frightened and departed in silence, and having gone apart from the camp he prayed at length to Apollo, invoking the appellations of the god, and reminding him of and asking requital for any of his gifts that had found favor whether in the building of temples or the sacrifice of victims. In return for these things he prayed that the Achaeans should suffer for his tears by the god’s shafts. It is in this way, my dear fellow,
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I said,
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that without imitation simple narration results.
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I understand,
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he said.
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Understand then,
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said I,
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that the opposite of this arises when one removes the words of the poet between and leaves the alternation of speeches.
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This too I understand,
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he said,
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—it is what happens in tragedy.
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You have conceived me most rightly,
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I said,
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and now I think I can make plain to you what I was unable to before, that there is one kind of poetry and tale-telling which works wholly through imitation, as you remarked, tragedy and comedy; and another which employs the recital of the poet himself, best exemplified, I presume, in the dithyrambThe dithyramb was technically a poem in honor of Bacchus. For its more or less conjectural history cf. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy. Here, however, it is used broadly to designate the type of elaborate Greek lyric which like the odes of Pindar and Bacchylides narrates a myth or legend with little if any dialogue.; and there is again that which employs both, in epic poetry and in many other places, if you apprehend me.
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I understand now,
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he said,
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what you then meant.
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Recall then also the preceding statement that we were done with the what of speech and still had to consider the ’how.’
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I remember.
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What I meant then was just this, that we must reach a decision whether we are to suffer our poets to narrate as imitators or in part as imitators and in part not, and what sort of things in each case, or not allow them to imitateAgain in the special limited sense. at all.
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I divine,
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he said,
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that you are considering whether we shall admit tragedy and comedy into our city or not.
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Perhaps,
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said I,
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and perhaps even more than that.This seems to imply that Plato already had in mind the extension of the discussion in the tenth book to the whole question of the moral effect of poetry and art. For I certainly do not yet know myself, but whithersoever the wind, as it were, of the argument blows,Cf. Theaetetus 172 D. But it is very naive to suppose that the sequence of Plato’s argument is not carefully planned in his own mind. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 5. there lies our course.
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Well said,
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he replied.
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This then, Adeimantus, is the point we must keep in view, do we wish our guardians to be good mimics or not? Or is this also a consequence of what we said before, that each one could practise well only one pursuit and not many, but if he attempted the latter, dabbling in many things, he would fail of distinction in all?
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Of course it is.
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And does not the same rule hold for imitation, that the same man is not able to imitate many things well as he can one?
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No, he is not.
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Still less, then, will he be able to combine the practice of any worthy pursuit with the imitation of many things and the quality of a mimic; since, unless I mistake, the same men cannot practise well at once even the two forms of imitation that appear most nearly akin, as the writing of tragedy and comedyAt the close of the Symposium Socrates constrains Agathon and Aristophanes to admit that one who has the science (τέχνη) of writing tragedy will also be able to write comedy. There is for Plato no contradiction, since poetry is for him not a science or art, but an inspiration.? Did you not just now call these two imitations?
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I did, and you are right in saying that the same men are not able to succeed in both, nor yet to be at once good rhapsodistsThe rhapsode Ion is a Homeric specialist who cannot interpret other poets. Cf. Ion 533 C. and actors.
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True.
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But neither can the same men be actors for tragedies and comediesCf. Classical Review, vol. xiv. (1900), pp. 201 ff.—and all these are imitations, are they not?
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Yes, imitations.
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And to still smaller coinage
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4
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than this, in my opinion, Adeimantus, proceeds the fractioning of human faculty, so as to be incapable of imitating many things or of doing the things themselves of which the imitations are likenesses.
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Most true,
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he replied.
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If, then, we are to maintain our original principle, that our guardians, released from all other crafts,
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are to be expert craftsmen of civic liberty,
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5
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and pursue nothing else that does not conduce to this, it would not be fitting for these to do nor yet to imitate anything else. But if they imitate they should from childhood up
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6
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imitate what is appropriate to them
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7
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—men, that is, who are brave, sober, pious, free and all things of that kind; but things unbecoming the free man they should neither do nor be clever at imitating, nor yet any other shameful thing, lest from the imitation
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they imbibe the reality.
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8
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Or have you not observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and (second) nature
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9
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in the body, the speech, and the thought?
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Yes, indeed,
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said he.
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We will not then allow our charges, whom we expect to prove good men, being men, to play the parts of women and imitate a woman young or old wrangling with her husband, defying heaven, loudly boasting, fortunate in her own conceit, or involved in misfortune and possessed by grief and lamentation—still less a woman that is sick, in love, or in labor.
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Most certainly not,
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he replied.
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Nor may they imitate slaves, female and male, doing the offices of slaves.
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No, not that either.
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Nor yet, as it seems, bad men who are cowards and who do the opposite of the things we just now spoke of, reviling and lampooning one another, speaking foul words in their cups or when sober and in other ways sinning against themselves and others in word and deed after the fashion of such men. And I take it they must not form the habit of likening themselves to madmen either in words nor yet in deeds. For while knowledge they must haveCf. Laws 816 D-E. both of mad and bad men and women, they must do and imitate nothing of this kind.
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Most true,
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he said.
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What of this?
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I said,
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—are they to imitate smiths and other craftsmen or the rowers of triremes and those who call the time to them or other things connected therewith?
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How could they,
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he said,
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since it will be forbidden them even to pay any attention to such things?
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Well, then, neighing horsesFor this rejection of violent realism Cf. Laws 669 C-D. Plato describes exactly what Verhaeren’s admirers approve: often in his rhythm can be heard the beat of hammers, the hard, edged, regular whizzing of wheels, the whirring of looms, the hissing of locomotives; often the wild, restless tumult of the streets, the humming and rumbling of dense masses of people. (Stefan Zweig). So another modern critic celebrates the cry of a baby in a Strauss symphony, the sneers and snarls of his critics in his Helden Leben, the contortions of the Dragon in Wagner’s Siegfried . and lowing bulls, and the noise of rivers and the roar of the sea and the thunder and everything of that kind—will they imitate these?
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Nay, they have been forbidden,
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he said,
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to be mad or liken themselves to madmen.
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If, then, I understand your meaning,
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said I,
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there is a form of diction and narrative in which the really good and true man would narrate anything that he had to say, and another form unlike this to which the man of the opposite birth and breeding would cleave and which he would tell his story.
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What are these forms?
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he said.
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A man of the right sort, I think, when he comes in the course of his narrative to some word or act of a good man will be willing to impersonate the other in reporting it, and will feel no shame at that kind of mimicry, by preference imitating the good man
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when he acts steadfastly and sensibly, and less and more reluctantly when he is upset by sickness or love or drunkenness or any other mishap. But when he comes to someone unworthy of himself, he will not wish to liken himself in earnest to one who is inferior,
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3
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except in the few cases where he is doing something good, but will be embarrassed both because he is unpractised in the mimicry of such characters, and also because he shrinks in distaste from molding and fitting himself the types of baser things.
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His mind disdains them, unless it be for jest.
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4
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Naturally,
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he said.
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Then the narrative that he will employ will be the kind that we just now illustrated by the verses of Homer, and his diction will be one that partakes of both, of imitation and simple narration, but there will be a small portion of imitation in a long discourse—or is there nothing in what I say?
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Yes, indeed,The respondent plays on the double meaning of οὐδὲν λέγεις and replies, Yes indeed you do say something, namely the type and pattern, etc.
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he said,
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that is the type and pattern of such a speaker.
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Then,
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said I,
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the other kind speaker, the more debased he is the less will he shrink from imitating anything and everything. He will think nothing unworthy of himself, so that he will attempt, seriously and in the presence of many,Cf. Gorgias 487 B, Euthydemus 305 B, Protagoras 323 B. to imitate all things, including those we just now mentioned—claps of thunder, and the noise of wind and hail and axles and pulleys, and the notes of trumpets and flutes and pan-pipes, and the sounds of all instruments, and the cries of dogs, sheep, and birds; and so his style will depend wholly on imitation in voice and gesture, or will contain but a little of pure narration.
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That too follows of necessity,
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he said.
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These, then,
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said I,
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were the two types of diction of which I was aking.
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There are those two,
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he replied.
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Now does not one of the two involve slight variations,Besides its suggestion of change and reaction the word is technical in music for the transition from one harmony to another. and if we assign a suitable pitch and rhythm to the diction, is not the result that the right speaker speaks almost on the same note and in one cadence—for the changes are slight— and similarly in a rhythm of nearly the same kind?
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Quite so.
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But what of the other type? Does it not require the opposite, every kind of pitch and all rhythms, if it too is to have appropriate expression, since it involves manifold forms of variation?
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Emphatically so.
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And do all poets and speakers hit upon one type or the other of diction or some blend which they combine of both?
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They must,
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he said.
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What, then,
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said I,
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are we to do? Shall we admit all of these into the city, or one of the unmixed types, or the mixed type?
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If my vote prevails,
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he said,
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the unmixed imitator of the good.
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Nay, but the mixed type also is pleasing, Adeimantus, and far most pleasing to boys and their tutors and the great mob is the opposite of your choice.
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Most pleasing it is.
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But perhaps,
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said I,
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you would affirm it to be ill-suited to our polity, because there is no twofold or manifold manThe reverse of the Periclean ideal. Cf. Thucydides ii. 41. among us, since every man does one thing.
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It is not suited.
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And is this not the reason why such a city is the only one in which we shall find the cobbler a cobbler and not a pilot in addition to his cobbling, and the farmer a farmer and not a judge added to his farming, and the soldier a soldier and not a money-maker in addition to his soldiery, and so of all the rest?
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True,
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he said.
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4
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If a man, then, it seems, who was capable by his cunning of assuming every kind of shape and imitating all things should arrive in our city, bringing with himselfGreek idiom achieves an effect impossible to English here, by the shift from the co-ordination of ποιήματα with αὐτός to the treatmnt of it as the object of ἐπιδείξασθαι and the possible double use of the latter as middle with αὐτός and transitive with ποιήματα. Cf. for a less striking example 427 D, Phaedrus 250 B-C. the poems which he wished to exhibit, we should fall down and worship him as a holy and wondrous and delightful creature, but should say to him that there is no man of that kind among us in our city, nor is it lawful for such a man to arise among us, and we should send him away to another city, after pouring myrrh down over his head and crowning him with fillets of wool, but we ourselves, for our souls’ good, should continue to employ the more austereCf. from a different point of view Arnold’s The Austerity of Poetry. and less delightful poet and tale-teller, who would imitate the diction of the good man and would tell his tale in the patterns which we prescribed in the beginning,Cf. 379 A ff. when we set out to educate our soldiers.
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We certainly should do that if it rested with us.
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And now, my friend,
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said I,
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we may say that we have completely finished the part of music that concerns speeches and tales. For we have set forth what is to be said and how it is to be said.
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I think so too,
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he replied.
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After this, then,
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said I,
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comes the manner of song and tunes?
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Obviously.
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And having gone thus far, could not everybody discover what we must say of their character in order to conform to what has already been said?
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I am afraid that everybody does not include me,
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laughed Glaucon
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4
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;
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I cannot sufficiently divine off-hand what we ought to say, though I have a suspicion.
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You certainly, I presume,
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said I,
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have sufficient a understanding of this—that the songThe complete song includes words, rhythms, and harmony, that is, a pitch system of high and low notes. Harmony is also used technically of the peculiar Greek system of scales or modes. Cf. Monro, Modes of Ancient Greek Music. is composed of three things, the words, the tune, and the rhythm?
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Yes,
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said he,
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that much.
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And so far as it is words, it surely in no manner differs from words not sung in the requirement of conformity to the patterns and manner that we have prescribed?
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True,
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he said.
3.398
And again, the music and the rhythm must follow the speech.The poets at first composed their own music to fit the words. When, with the further development of music, there arose the practice of distorting the words, as in a mere libretto, it provoked a storm of protest from conservatives in aesthetics and morals.
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Of course.
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But we said we did not require dirges and lamentations in words.
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We do not.
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What, then, are the dirge-like modes of music? Tell me, for you are a musician.
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The mixed Lydian,
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7
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he said,
3.398
and the tense or higher Lydian, and similar modes.
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These, then,
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said I,
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we must do away with. For they are useless even to womenCf. 387 E. who are to make the best of themselves, let alone to men.
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Assuredly.
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But again, drunkenness is a thing most unbefitting guardians, and so is softness and sloth.
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Yes.
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What, then, are the soft and convivial modes?
3.398
There are certain Ionian and also Lydian modes that are called lax.
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3.399
Will you make any use of them for warriors?
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None at all,
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he said;
3.399
but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the Phrygian.
3.399
I don’t knowPlato, like a lawyer or popular essayist, affects ignorance of the technical details; or perhaps rather he wishes to disengage his main principle from the specialists’ controversy about particular modes of music and their names. the musical modes,
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I said,
3.399
but leave us that modeἐκείνην may mean, but does not say, Dorian, which the Laches (188 D) pronounces the only true Greek harmony. This long anacoluthic sentence sums up the whole matter with impressive repetition and explicit enumeration of all types of conduct in peace and war, and implied reference to Plato’s doctrine of the two fundamental temperaments, the swift and the slow, the energetic and the mild. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, nn. 59, 70, 481. that would fittingly imitate the utterances and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare or in any enforced business, and who, when he has failed, either meeting wounds or death or having fallen into some other mishap, in all these conditions confronts fortune with steadfast endurance and repels her strokes. And another for such a man engaged in works of peace, not enforced but voluntary,Cf. Laws 814 E. either trying to persuade somebody of something and imploring him—whether it be a god, through prayer, or a man, by teaching and admonition—or contrariwise yielding himself to another who petitioning or teaching him or trying to change his opinions, and in consequence faring according to his wish, and not bearing himself arrogantly, but in all this acting modestly and moderately and acquiescing in the outcome. Leave us these two modes—the forced and the voluntary—that will best imitate the utterances of men failing or succeeding, the temperate, the brave—leave us these.
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Well,
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said he,
3.399
you are asking me to leave none other than those I just spoke of.
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Then,
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said I,
3.399
we shall not need in our songs and airs instruments of many strings or whose compass includes all the harmonies.
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Not in my opinion,
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said he.
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Then we shall not maintain makers of triangles and harps and all other many stringed and poly-harmonicMetaphorically. The many-toned instrumentation of the flutes, as Pindar calls it, Ol. vii. 12, can vie with the most complex and many-stringed lyre of musical innovation. instruments.
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Apparently not.
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Well, will you admit to the city flute-makers and flute-players? Or is not the flute the most many-stringed of instruments and do not the pan-harmonicsCf. 404 D, the only other occurrence of the word in Plato. themselves imitate it?
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Clearly,
3.399
he said.
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You have left,
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said I,
3.399
the lyre and the cither. These are usefulCf. my note on Timaeus 47 C, in A.J.P. vol. x. p. 61. in the city, and in the fields the shepherds would have a little piccolo to pipe on.Ancient critics noted this sentence as an adaptation of sound to sense. Cf. Demetr. Περὶ ἑρμ. 185. The sigmas and iotas may be fancied to suggest the whistling notes of the syrinx. So Lucretius v. 1385 tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum. Cf. on Catullus 61. 13 voce carmina tinnula.
3.399
So our argument indicates,
3.399
he said.
3.399
We are not innovating, my friend, in preferring Apollo and the instruments of Apollo to Marsyas and his instruments.
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No, by heaven!
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he said,
3.399
I think not.
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And by the dog,The so-called Rhadamanthine oath to avoid taking the names of the gods in vain. Cf. 592 A, Apology 21 E, Blaydes on Aristophanes Wasps 83.
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said I,
3.399
we have all unawares purged the city which a little while ago we said was wanton.Cf. 372 E. Dummler, Proleg. p. 62, strangely affirms that this is an express retraction of the ἀληθινὴ πόλις. This is to misapprehend Plato’s method. He starts with the indispensable minimum of a simple society, develops it by Herbert Spencer’s multiplication of effects into an ordinary Greek city, then reforms it by a reform of education and finally transforms it into his ideal state by the rule of the philosopher kings. Cf. Introduction p. xiv.
3.399
In that we show our good sense,
3.399
he said.
3.399
Come then, let us complete the purification.
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For upon harmonies would follow the consideration of rhythms: we must not pursue complexity nor great variety in the basic movements,Practically the feet. but must observe what are the rhythms of a life that is orderly and brave, and after observing them require the foot and the air to conform to that kind of man’s speech and not the speech to the foot and the tune. What those rhythms would be, it is for you to tell us as you did the musical modes.
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Nay, in faith,
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he said,
3.400
I cannot tell. For that there are some three formsAccording to the ancient musicians these are the equal as e.g. in dactyls (–⏑⏑), spondees (––) and anapests (⏑⏑–), where the foot divides into two equal quantities; the 3/2 ratio, as in the so-called cretic (⏑–⏑); the 2/1 as in the iamb (⏑–) and trochee (–⏑). Cf. Aristid. Quint. i. pp. 34-35. from which the feet are combined, just as there are fourPossibly the four notes of the tetrachord, but there is no agreement among experts. Cf. Monro, Modes of Ancient Greek Music. in the notes of the voice whence come all harmonies, is a thing that I have observed and could tell. But which are imitations of which sort of life, I am unable to say.Modern psychologists are still debating the question.
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Well,
3.400
said I,
3.400
on this point we will take counsel with Damon,The Platonic Socrates frequently refers to Damon as his musical expert. Cf. Laches 200 B, 424 C, Alc. I. 118 C. too, as to which are the feet appropriate to illiberality, and insolence or madness or other evils, and what rhythms we must leave for their opposites; and I believe I have heard him obscurely speakingThere is a hint of satire in this disclaimer of expert knowledge. Cf. 399 A. There is no agreement among modern experts with regard to the precise form of the so-called enoplios. Cf. my review of Herkenrath’s Der Enoplios, Class. Phil . vol. iii. p. 360, Goodell, Chapters on Greek Metric, pp. 185 and 189, Blaydes on Aristophanes Nubes 651. of a foot that he called the enoplios, a composite foot, and a dactyl and an heroicPossibly foot, possibly rhythm. δάκτυλον seems to mean the foot, while ἡρῷος is the measure based on dactyls but admitting spondees. foot, which he arranged, I know not how, to be equal up and downἄνω καὶ κάτω is an untranslatable gibe meaning literally and technically the upper and lower half of the foot, the arsis and thesis, but idiomatically meaning topsy-turvy. There is a similar play on the idiom in Philebus 43 A and 43 B. in the interchange of long and short,Literally becoming or issuing in long and short, long, that is, when a spondee is used, short when a dactyl. and unless I am mistaken he used the term iambic, and there was another foot that he called the trochaic, and he added the quantities long and short. And in some of these, I believe, he censured and commended the tempo of the foot no less than the rhythm itself, or else some combination of the two; I can’t say. But, as I said, let this matter be postponed for Damon’s consideration. For to determine the truth of these would require no little discourse. Do you think otherwise?
3.400
No, by heaven, I do not.
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But this you are able to determine—that seemliness and unseemliness are attendant upon the good rhythm and the bad.
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Of course.
3.400
And, further,Plato, as often, employs the forms of an argument proceeding by minute links to accumulate synonyms in illustration of a moral or aesthetic analogy. He is working up to the Wordsworthian thought that order, harmony, and beauty in nature and art are akin to these qualities in the soul. that good rhythm and bad rhythm accompany, the one fair diction, assimilating itself thereto, and the other the opposite, and so of the apt and the unapt, if, as we were just now saying, the rhythm and harmony follow the words and not the words these.
3.400
They certainly must follow the speech,
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he said.
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And what of the manner of the diction, and the speech?
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said I.
3.400
Do they not follow and conform to the disposition of the soul?
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Of course.
3.400
And all the rest to the diction?
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Yes.
3.400
Good speech, then, good accord, and good grace, and good rhythm wait upon good disposition, not that weakness of head which we euphemistically style goodness of heart, but the truly good and fair disposition of the character and the mind.Plato recurs to the etymological meaning of εὐήθεια. Cf. on 343 C.
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By all means,
3.400
he said.
3.400
And must not our youth pursue these everywhereThe Ruskinian and Wordsworthian generalization is extended from music to all the fine arts, including, by the way, architecture (οἰκοδομία), which Butcher (Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry, p. 138) says is ignored by Plato and Aristotle. if they are to do what it is truly theirs to doTheir special task is to cultivate true εὐήθεια in their souls. For τὸ αὑτῶν πράττειν here Cf. 443 C-D.?
3.400
They must indeed.
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And there is surely much of these qualities in painting and in all similar craftsmanshipThe following page is Plato’s most eloquent statement of Wordsworth’s, Ruskin’s, and Tennyson’s gospel of beauty for the education of the young. He repeats it in Laws 668 B. Cf. my paper on Some Ideals of Education in Plato’s Republic, Educational Bi-monthly, vol. ii. (1907-1908) pp. 215 ff.—weaving is full of them and embroidery and architecture and likewise the manufacture of household furnishings and thereto the natural bodies of animals and plants as well. For in all these there is grace or gracelessness. And gracelessness and evil rhythm and disharmony are akin to evil speaking and the evil temper but the opposites are the symbols and the kin of the opposites, the sober and good disposition.
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Entirely so,
3.401
he said.
3.401
Is it, then, only the poets that we must supervise and compel to embody in their poems the semblance of the good character or else not write poetry among us, or must we keep watch over the other craftsmen, and forbid them to represent the evil disposition, the licentious, the illiberal, the graceless, either in the likeness of living creatures or in buildings or in any other product of their art, on penalty, if unable to obey, of being forbidden to practise their art among us, that our guardians may not be bred among symbols of evil, as it were in a pasturage of poisonous herbs, lest grazing freely and cropping from many such day by day they little by little and all unawares accumulate and build up a huge mass of evil in their own souls. But we must look for those craftsmen who by the happy gift of nature are capable of following the trail of true beauty and grace, that our young men, dwelling as it were in a salubrious region, may receive benefit from all things about them, whence the influence that emanates from works of beauty may waft itself to eye or ear like a breeze that brings from wholesome places health, and so from earliest childhood insensibly guide them to likeness, to friendship, to harmony with beautiful reason.
3.401
Yes,
3.401
he said,
3.401
that would be far the best education for them.
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And is it not for this reason, Glaucon,
3.401
said I,
3.401
that education in music is most sovereign,Schopenhauer, following Plato, adds the further metaphysical reason that while the other arts imitate the external manifestations of the universal Will, music represents the Will itself. because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary?
3.402
3.402
And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distasteCf. 362 B, 366 C, 388 A, 391 E, and Ruskin’s paradox that taste is the only morality. rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth and become himself beautiful and good. The ugly he would rightly disapprove of and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but when reason cameCf. Laws 653 B-C, where Plato defines education by this principle. Aristotle virtually accepts it (Ethics ii. 3. 2). The Stoics somewhat pedantically laid it down that reason entered into the youth at the age of fourteen. the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her welcome, for by this affinity he would know her.
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I certainly think,
3.402
he said,
3.402
that such is the cause of education in music.
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It is, then,
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said I,
3.402
as it was when we learned our letters and felt that we knew them sufficiently only when the separate letters did not elude us, appearing as few elements in all the combinations that convey them, and when we did not disregard them in small things or greatPlato often employs letters or elements (στοιχεῖα) to illustrate the acquisition of knowledge (Theaetetus 206 A), the relation of elements to compounds, the principles of classification (Philebus 18 C, Cratylus 393 D), and the theory of ideas (Politicus 278 A. Cf. Isocrates xiii. 13, Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 4. 7, Blass, Attische Beredsamkeit, ii. pp. 23 f., 348 f., Cicero De or. ii. 130). and think it unnecessary to recognize them, but were eager to distinguish them everywhere, in the belief that we should never be literate and letter-perfect till we could do this.
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True.
3.402
And is it not also true that if there are any likenessesIt is of course possible to contrast images with the things themselves, and to speak of forms or species without explicit allusion to the metaphysical doctrine of ideas. But on the other hand there is not the slightest reason to assume that the doctrine and its terminology were not familiar to Plato at the time when this part of the Republic was written. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, pp. 31 ff., 35. Statistics of the use of εἶδος and ἰδέα (Peiper’s Ontologica Platonica, Taylor, Varia Socratica, Wilamowitz, Platon, ii. pp. 249-253), whatever their philological interest, contribute nothing to the interpretation of Plato’s thought. Cf. my De Platonis Idearum Doctrina, pp. 1, 30, and Class Phil . vol. vi. pp. 363-364. There is for common sense no contradiction or problem in the fact that Plato here says that we cannot be true musicians till we recognize both the forms and all copies of, or approximations to, them in art or nature, while in Book X (601) he argues that the poet and artist copy not the idea but its copy in the material world. of letters reflected in water or mirrors, we shall never know them until we know the originals, but such knowledge belongs to the same art and disciplinePlato, like all intellectuals, habitually assumes that knowledge of principles helps practice. Cf. Phaedrus 259 E, 262 B, and 484 D, 520 C, 540 A.?
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By all means.
3.402
Then, by heaven, am I not right in saying that by the same token we shall never be true musicians, either— neither we nor the guardians that we have undertaken to educate—until we are able to recognize the forms of soberness, courage, liberality,Liberality and high-mindedness, or rather, perhaps, magnificence, are among the virtues defined in Aristotle’s list (Eth. Nic. 1107 b 17), but are not among the four cardinal virtues which the Republic will use in Book IV. in the comparison of the indivdual with the state. and high-mindedness and all their kindred and their opposites, too, in all the combinations that contain and convey them, and to apprehend them and their images wherever found, disregarding them neither in trifles nor in great things, but believing the knowledge of them to belong to the same art and discipline?
3.402
The conclusion is inevitable,
3.402
he said.
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Then,
3.402
said I,
3.402
when there is a coincidence Symposium 209 B τὸ συναμφότερον, 210 C, Wilamowitz, vol. ii. p. 192. of a beautiful disposition in the soul and corresponding and harmonious beauties of the same type in the bodily form—is not this the fairest spectacle for one who is capable of its contemplationMusic and beauty lead to the philosophy of love, more fully set forth in the Phaedrus and Symposium, and here dismissed in a page. Plato’s practical conclusion here may be summed up in the Virgilian line (Aeneid v. 344): Gratior et pulchro veniens in corpore virtus.?
3.402
Far the fairest.
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And surely the fairest is the most lovable.
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Of course.
3.402
The true musician, then, would love by preference persons of this sort; but if there were disharmony he would not love this.
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No,
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he said,
3.402
not if there was a defect in the soul; but if it were in the body he would bear with it and still be willing to bestow his love.
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I understand,
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I said,
3.402
that you have or have had favorites of this sort and I grant your distinction. But tell me this—can there be any communion between soberness and extravagant pleasureExtravagant pleasure is akin to madness. Cf. Philebus 47 A-C, Phaedo 83 C-D.?
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How could there be,
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he said,
3.402
since such pleasure puts a man beside himself no less than pain?
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Or between it and virtue generally?
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3.403
By no means.
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But is there between pleasure and insolence and licence?
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Most assuredly.
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Do you know of greater or keener pleasure than that associated with Aphrodite?
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I don’t,
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he said,
3.403
nor yet of any more insane.
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But is not the right love a sober and harmonious love of the orderly and the beautiful?
3.403
It is indeed,
3.403
said he.
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Then nothing of madness, nothing akin to licence, must be allowed to come nigh the right love?
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No.
3.403
Then this kind of pleasure may not come nigh, nor may lover and beloved who rightly love and are loved have anything to do with it?
3.403
No, by heaven, Socrates,
3.403
he said,
3.403
it must not come nigh them.
3.403
Thus, then, as it seems, you will lay down the law in the city that we are founding, that the lover may kissCf. 468 B-C. and pass the time with and touch the beloved as a father would a son, for honorable ends, if he persuade him. But otherwise he must so associate with the objects of his care that there should never be any suspicion of anything further, on penalty of being stigmatized for want of taste and true musical culture.
3.403
Even so,
3.403
he said.
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Do you not agree, then, that our discourse on music has come to an end? It has certainly made a fitting end, for surely the end and consummation of culture be love of the beautiful.
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I concur,
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he said.
3.403
After music our youth are to be educated by gymnastics?
3.403
Certainly.
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In this too they must be carefully trained
3.403
from boyhood through life, and the way of it is this, I believe; but consider it yourself too. For I, for my part, do not believe that a sound body by its excellence makes the soul good, but on the contrary that a good soul by its virtue renders the body the best that is possible.
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2
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What is your opinion?
3.403
I think so too.
3.403
Then if we should sufficiently train the mind and turn over to it the minutiae of the care of the body, and content ourselves with merely indicating the norms or patterns, not to make a long story of it, we should acting rightly?
3.403
By all means.
3.403
From intoxicationCf. 398 E. There is no contradiction between this and the half-serious proposal of the Laws to use supervised drinking-bouts as a safe test of character (Laws 641). we said that they must abstain. For a guardian is surely the last person in the world to whom it is allowable to get drunk and not know where on earth he is.
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Yes,
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he said,
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it would absurd that a guardianγε emphasizes what follows from the very meaning of the word. Cf. 379 B, 389 B, 435 A. should need a guard.
3.403
What next about their food? These men are athletes in the greatest of contests,Cf. 543 B, 621 D, Laches 182 A, Laws 830 A, Demosthenes xxv. 97 ἀθληταὶ τῶν καλῶν ἔργων. are they not?
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Yes.
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3.404
Is, then, the bodily habit of the athletes we see about us suitable for such?
3.404
Perhaps.
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Nay,
3.404
said I,
3.404
that is a drowsy habit and precarious for health. Don’t you observe that they sleep away their lives,Cf. Ἐράσται 132 C καθεύδων πάντα τὸν βίον. Xenophanes, Euripides, Aristotle, and the medical writers, like Plato, protest against the exaggerated honor paid to athletes and the heavy sluggishness induced by overfeeeding and overtraining. and that if they depart ever so little from their prescribed regimen these athletes are liable to great and violent diseases?
3.404
I do.
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Then,
3.404
said I,
3.404
we need some more ingenious form of training for our athletes of war, since these must be as it were sleepless hounds, and have the keenest possible perceptions of sight and hearing, and in their campaigns undergo many changesLaws 797 D. Cf. 380 E. Aristotle’s comment on μεταβολή, Eth. Nic. 1154 b 28 ff., is curiously reminiscent of Plato, including the phrase ἁπλῆ οὐδ’ ἐπιεικής. in their drinking water, their food, and in exposure to the heat of the sun and to storms,Perhaps in the context cold. without disturbance of their health.
3.404
I think so.
3.404
Would not, then, the best gymnastics be akin to the music that we were just now describing?
3.404
What do you mean?
3.404
It would be a simple and flexibleLiterally equitable, if we translate ἐπιεικής by its later meaning, that is, not over-precise or rigid in conformity to rule. Adam is mistaken in saying that ἐπιεικής is practically synonymous with ἀγαθή. It sometimes is, but not here. Cf. Plutarch, De san. 13 ἀκριβὴς . . . καὶ δι’ ὄνυχος. gymnastic, and especially so in the training for war.
3.404
In what way?
3.404
One could learn that,
3.404
said I,
3.404
even from Homer.So Laws 706 D. The καί is perhaps merely idiomatic in quotation. For you are aware that in the banqueting of the heroes on campaign he does not feast them on fish,Homer’s ignoring of fish diet, except in stress of starvation, has been much and idly discussed both in antiquity and by modern scholars. Modern pseudo-science has even inferred from this passage that Plato placed a taboo on fish, though they are at the sea-side on the Hellespont, which Homer calls fish-teeming, Iliad ix. 360. nor on boiled meat, but only on roast, which is what soldiers could most easily procure. For everywhere, one may say, it is of easier provision to use the bare fire than to convey pots and pansCf. Green, History of English People, Book II. chap. ii., an old description of the Scotch army: They have therefore no occasion for pots and pans, for they dress the flesh of the cattle in their skins after they have flayed them, etc. But cf. Athenaeus, i. 8-9 (vol. i. p. 36 L.C.L.), Diogenes Laertius viii. 13 ὥστε εὐπορίστους αὐτοῖς εἶναι τὰς τροφάς. along.
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Indeed it is.
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Neither, as I believe, does Homer ever make mention of sweet meats. Is not that something which all men in training understand—that if one is to keep his body in good condition he must abstain from such things altogether?
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They are right,
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he said,
3.404
in that they know it and do abstain.
3.404
Then, my friend, if you think this is the right way, you apparently do not approve of a Syracusan tableProverbial, like the Corinthian maid and the Attic pastry. Cf. Otto, Sprichw. d. Rom. p. 321, Newman, Introduction to Aristotle’s Politics, p. 302. Cf. also Phaedrus 240 B. and Sicilian variety of made dishes.
3.404
I think not.
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You would frown, then, on a little Corinthian maid as the chère amie of men who were to keep themselves fit?
3.404
Most certainly.
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And also on the seeming delights of Attic pastry?
3.404
Inevitably.
3.404
In general, I take it, if we likened that kind of food and regimen to music and song expressed in the pan-harmonic mode and in every variety of rhythm it would be a fair comparison.
3.404
Quite so.
3.404
And here variety engendered licentiousness, did it not, but here disease? While simplicity in music begets sobriety in the souls, and in gymnastic training it begets health in bodies.
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Most true,
3.404
he said.
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3.405
And when licentiousness and disease multiply in a city, are not many courts of law and dispensaries opened, and the arts of chicaneδικανική: more contemptuous than δικαστική. and medicine give themselves airs when even free men in great numbers take them very seriously?
3.405
How can they help it?
3.405
he said.
3.405
Will you be able to find a surer proof of an evil and shameful state of education in a city than the necessity of first-rate physicians and judges, not only for the base and mechanical, but for those who claim to have been bred in the fashion of free men? Do you not think it disgraceful and a notable mark of bad breeding to have to make use of a justice imported from others, who thus become your masters and judges, from lack of such qualities in yourselfI have given the sense. The contruction is debated accordingly as we read ἀπορία or ἀπορίᾳ. Cf. Phaedrus 239 D, of the use of cosmetics, χήτει οἰκείων. The καί with ἀπορίᾳ is awkward or expresses the carelessness of conversation.?
3.405
The most shameful thing in the world.
3.405
Is it?
3.405
said I,
3.405
or is this still more shamefulPlato likes to emphasize by pointing to a lower depth or a higher height beyond the superlative.—when a man only wears out the better part of his days in the courts of law as defendant or accuser, but from the lack of all true sense of valuesThere is no exact English equivalent for ἀπειροκαλία, the insensitiveness to the καλόν of the banausic, the nouveau riche and the Philistine. is led to plume himself on this very thing, as being a smart fellow to put over an unjust act and cunningly to try every dodge and practice,The phrasing of this passage recalls passages of Aristophanes’ Clouds, and the description of the pettifogging lawyer and politician in the Theaetetus 172 E. Cf. 519, also Euthydemus 302 B, and Porphyry, De abstinentia, i. 34. The metaphors are partly from wrestling. every evasion, and wriggleCf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Knights 263. out of every hold in defeating justice, and that too for trifles and worthless things, because he does not know how much nobler and better it is to arrange his life so as to have no needCf. Gorgias 507 D, Thucydides iii. 82, Isocrates Antidosis 238, Antiphanes, fr. 288 Kock ὁ μηδὲν ἀδικῶν οὐδενὸς δεῖται νόμου. of a nodding juryman?
3.405
That is,
3.405
said he,
3.405
still more shameful than the other.
3.405
And to require medicine,
3.405
said I,
3.405
not merely for wounds or the incidence of some seasonal maladies, but, because of sloth and such a regimen as we described, to fill one’s body up with winds and humors like a marsh and compel the ingenious sons of Aesculapius to invent for diseases such names as fluxes and flatulences—don’t you think that disgraceful?Plato ridicules the unsavory metaphors required to describe the effects of auto-intoxication. There is a similar bit of somewhat heavier satire in Spencer’s Social Statics, 1868, p. 32: Carbuncled noses, cadaverous faces, foetid breaths, and plethoric bodies meet us at every turn; and our condolences are prepetually asked for headaches, flatulences, nightmare, heartburn, and endless other dyspeptic symptoms.
3.405
Those surely are,
3.405
he said,
3.405
new-fangled and monstrous strange names of diseases.
3.405
There was nothing of the kind, I fancy,
3.405
said I,
3.405
in the days of Aesculapius. I infer this from the fact that at Troy his sons did not find fault with the damsel who gave to the wounded EurypylusPlato is probably quoting from memory. In our text, Iliad xi. 624, Hecamede gives the draught to Machaon and Nestor as the Ion (538 B) correctly states. to drink a posset of Pramnian wine plentifully sprinkled with barley and gratings of cheese, inflammatory ingredients of a surety, nor did they censure Patroclus, who was in charge of the case.
3.406
3.406
It was indeed,
3.406
said he,
3.406
a strange potion for a man in that condition.
3.406
Not strange,
3.406
said I,
3.406
if you reflect that the former Asclepiads made no use of our modern coddlingThis coddling treatment of disease, which Plato affects to reprobate here, he recommends from the point of view of science in the Timaeus (89 C): διὸ παιδαγωγεῖν δεῖ διαίταις, etc. Cf. Euripides Orestes 883; and even in the Republic 459 C. medication of diseases before the time of Herodicus. But HerodicusCf. Protagoras 316 E, Phaedrus 227 D. To be distinguished from his namesake, the brother of Gorgias in Gorgias 448 B. Cf. Cope on Aristotle Rhet. i. 5, Wilamowitz-Kiessling, Phil. Unt. xv. p. 220, Juthner, Philostratus uber Gymnastik, p. 10. was a trainer and became a valetudinarian, and blended gymnastics and medicine, for the torment first and chiefly of himself and then of many successors.
3.406
How so?
3.406
he said.
3.406
By lingering out his death,
3.406
said I;
3.406
for living in perpetual observance of his malady, which was incurable, he was not able to effect a cure, but lived through his days unfit for the business of life, suffering the tortures of the damned if he departed a whit from his fixed regimen, and struggling against death by reason of his science he won the prize of a doting old age.Cf. Macaulay on Mitford’s History of Greece: It (oligarchical government) has a sort of valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the balance of Sanctorius; it takes no exercise; it exposes itself to no accident; it is seized with a hypochondriac alarm at every new sensation; it trembles at every breath; it lets blood for every inflammation; and this, without ever enjoying a day of health or pleasure, drags out its existence to a doting and debilitated old age. That Macaulay here is consciously paraphrasing Plato is apparent from his unfair use of the Platonic passage in his essay on Bacon. Cf. further Euripides Supp. 1109-1113; Seneca on early medicine, Epistles xv. 3 (95) 14 ff., overdoes both Spencer and Macaulay. Cf. Rousseau, Emile, Book I.: Je ne sais point apprendre à vivre à qui ne songe qu’à s’empêcher de mourir; La Rochefoucauld (Max. 282): C’est une ennuyeuse maladie que de conserver sa santé par un trop grand régime.
3.406
A noble prizeThe pun γήρας and γέρας is hardly translatable. Cf. Pherecydes apud Diogenes Laertius i. 119 χθονίῃ δὲ ὄνομα ἐγένετο Γῆ, ἐπειδὴ αὐτῇ Ζὰς γῆν γέρας διδοῖ (vol. i. p. 124 L.C.L.). For the ironical use of καλόν cf. Euripides Cyclops 551, Sappho, fr. 53 (58). indeed for his science,
3.406
he said.
3.406
The appropriate one,
3.406
said I,
3.406
for a man who did not know that it was not from ignorance or inacquaintance with this type of medicine that Aesculapius did not discover it to his descendants, but because he knew that for all well-governed peoples there is a work assigned to each man in the city which he must perform, and no one has leisure to be sickCf. Plutarch, De sanitate tuenda 23, Sophocles, fr. 88. 11 (?), Lucian, Nigrinus 22, differently; Hotspur’s, Zounds! how has he the leisure to be sick? and doctor himself all his days. And this we absurdly enough perceive in the case of a craftsman, but don’t see in the case of the rich and so-called fortunate.
3.406
How so?
3.406
he said.
3.406
A carpenter,
3.406
said I,
3.406
when he is sick expects his physician to give him a drug which will operate as an emetic on the disease, or to get rid of it by purgingFor ἢ κάτω cf. Chaucer, Ne upward purgative ne downward laxative. or the use of cautery or the knife. But if anyone prescribes for him a long course of treatment with swathingsCf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Acharnians 439. about the head and their accompaniments, he hastily says that he has no leisure to be sick and that such a life of preoccupation with his illess and neglect of the work that lies before him isn’t worth living. And thereupon he bids farewell to that kind of physician, enters upon his customary way of life, regains his health, and lives attending to his affairs—or, if his body is not equal to strain, he dies and is freed from all his troubles.This alone marks the humor of the whole passage, which Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon seems to miss. Cf. Aristophanes Acharnians 757;Apology 41 D.
3.406
For such a man,
3.406
he said,
3.406
that appears to be the right use of medicine.
3.407
3.407
And is not the reason,
3.407
I said,
3.407
that he had a task and that life wasn’t worth acceptance on condition of not doing his work?
3.407
Obviously,
3.407
he said.
3.407
But the rich man, we say, has no such appointed task, the necessity of abstaining from which renders life intolerable.
3.407
I haven’t heard of any.
3.407
Why, haven’t you heard that saying of Phocylides,
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1
3.407
that after a man has
3.407
made his pile
3.407
he ought to practice virtue?
3.407
Before, too, I fancy,
3.407
he said.
3.407
Let us not quarrel with him on that point,
3.407
I said,
3.407
but inform ourselves whether this virtue is something for the rich man to practise, and life is intolerable if he does not, or whether we are to suppose that while valetudinarianism is a hindrance to single-minded attention to carpentry and the other arts, it is no obstacle to the fulfilment of Phocylides’ exhortation.
3.407
Yes, indeed,
3.407
he said,
3.407
this excessive care for the body that goes beyond simple gymnasticsIn the Gorgias (464 B) ἰατρική is recognized as co-ordinate in the care of the body with γυμναστική. Here, whatever goes beyond the training and care that will preserve the health of a normal body is austerely rejected. Cf. 410 B. is the greatest of all obstacles. For it is troublesome in household affairs and military service and sedentary offices in the city.
3.407
And, chief of all, it puts difficulties in the way of any kind of instruction, thinking, or private meditation, forever imagining headachesAs Macaulay, Essay on Bacon, puts it: That a valetudinarian . . . who enjoyed a hearty laugh over the Queen of Navarre’s tales should be treated as a caput lupinum because he could not read the Timaeus without a headache, was a notion which the humane spirit of the English schools of wisdom altogether rejected. For the thought cf. Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 12. 6-7. and dizziness and attributing their origin to philosophy. So that wherever this kind of virtue is practicedLiterally virtue is practiced in this way. Cf. 503 D for a similar contrast between mental and other labors. And for the meaning of virtue cf. the Elizabethan: Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds. and tested it is in every way a hindrance.There is a suggestion of Stoic terminology in Plato’s use of ἐμπόδιος and similar words. Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia i. 2. 4. On the whole passage cf. again Macaulay’s Essay on Bacon, Maximus of Tyre (Duebn.) 10, and the diatribe on modern medicine and valetudinarianism in Edward Carpenter’s Civilization, Its Cause and Cure. For it makes the man always fancy himself sick and never cease from anguishing about his body.
3.407
Naturally,
3.407
he said.
3.407
Then, shall we not say that it was because Asclepius knew this—that for those who were by nature and course of life sound of body but had some localized disease, that for such, I say, and for this habit he revealed the art of medicine, and, driving out their disease by drugs and surgery, prescribed for them their customary regimen in order not to interfere with their civic duties, but that, when bodies were diseased inwardly and throughout, he did not attempt by diet and by gradual evacuations and infusions to prolong a wretched existence for the man and have him beget in all likelihood similar wretched offspring? But if a man was incapable of living in the established roundCf. Thucydides i. 130. and order of life, he did not think it worth while to treat him, since such a fellow is of no use either to himself or to the state.
3.407
A most politic Asclepius you’re telling us of,There is a touch of comedy in the Greek. Cf. Eupolis, fr. 94 Kock ταχὺν λέγεις μέν.
3.407
he said.
3.408
3.408
Obviously,
3.408
said I,
3.408
that was his character. And his sons too, don’t you in see that at Troy they approved themselves good fighting-men and practised medicine as I described it? Don’t you rememberCf. the Homeric ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ; that in the case of Menelaus too from the wound that Pandarus inflicted They sucked the blood, and soothing simples sprinkled? Hom. Il. 4.218 Plato is quoting loosely or adapting Hom. Il. 4.218. αἷμ’ ἐκμυζήσας ἐπ’ ἄρ’ ἤπια φάρμακα εἰδὼς πάσσε is said of Machaon, not of Menelaus. But what he was to eat or drink thereafter they no more prescribed than for Eurypylus, taking it for granted that the remedies sufficed to heal men who before their wounds were healthy and temperate in diet even if they did happen for the nonce to drink a posset; but they thought that the life of a man constitutionally sickly and intemperate was of no use to himself or others, and that the art of medicine should not be for such nor should they be given treatment even if they were richer than Midas.Proverbial and suggests Tyrtaeus. Cf. Laws 660 E.
3.408
Very ingenious fellows,
3.408
he said,
3.408
you make out these sons of Asclepius to be.
3.408
’Tis fitting,
3.408
said I;
3.408
and yet in disregard of our principles the tragedians and PindarCf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 1022 ff., Euripides Alcestis 3-4, Pindar, Pyth. iii. 53. affirm that Asclepius, though he was the son of Apollo, was bribed by gold to heal a man already at the point of death, and that for this cause he was struck by the lightning. But we in accordance with the aforesaid principlesCf. 379 ff., also 365 E. refuse to believe both statements, but if he was the son of a god he was not avaricious, we will insist, and if he was greedy of gain he was not the son of a god.
3.408
That much,
3.408
said he,
3.408
is most certainly true. But what have you to say to this, Socrates, must we not have good physicians in our city? And they would be the most likely to be good who had treated the greatest number of healthy and diseased men, and so good judges would be those who had associated with all sorts and conditions of men.
3.408
Most assuredly I want them good,
3.408
I said;
3.408
but do you know whom I regard as such?
3.408
I’ll know if you tell,Slight colloquial jest. Cf. Aristophanes Eq. 1158, Pax 1061.
3.408
he said.
3.408
Well, I will try,
3.408
said I.
3.408
You, however, have put unlike cases in one question.
3.408
How so?
3.408
said he.
3.408
Physicians, it is true,
3.408
I said,
3.408
would prove most skilled if, from childhood up, in addition to learning the principles of the art they had familiarized themselves with the greatest possible number of the most sickly bodies, and if they themselves had suffered all diseases and were not of very healthy constitution. For you see they do not treat the body by the body.Cf. Gorgias 465 C-D. If they did, it would not be allowable for their bodies to be or to have been in evil condition. But they treat the body with the mind—and it is not competent for a mind that is or has been evil to treat anything well.
3.408
Right,
3.408
he said.
3.409
3.409
But a judge, mark you, my friend, rules soul with soul and it is not allowable for a soul to have been bred from youth up among evil souls and to have grown familiar with them, and itself to have run the gauntlet of every kind of wrong-doing and injustice so as quickly to infer from itself the misdeeds of others as it might diseases in the body, but it must have been inexperienced in evil natures and uncontaminated by them while young, if it is to be truly fair and good and judge soundly of justice. For which cause the better sort seem to be simple-minded in youth and are easily deceived by the wicked, since they do not have within themselves patterns answering to the affections of the bad.
3.409
That is indeed their experience,
3.409
he said.
3.409
Therefore it is,
3.409
said I,
3.409
that the good judge must not be a youth but an old man, a late learnerὀψιμαθῆ: here in a favorable sense, but usually an untranslatable Greek word for a type portrayed in a charater of Theophrastus. of the nature of injustice, one who has not become aware of it as a property in his own soul, but one who has through the long years trained himself to understand it as an alien thing in alien souls, and to discern how great an evil it is by the instrument of mere knowledge and not by experience of his own.
3.409
That at any rate,
3.409
he said,
3.409
appears to be the noblest kind of judge.
3.409
And what is more, a good one,
3.409
I said,
3.409
which was the gist of your question. For he who has a good soul is good. But that cunning fellow quick to suspect evil,For this type of character cf. Thucydides iii. 83, and my comments in T.A.P.A. vol. xxiv. p. 79. Cf. Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol: They who raise suspicions on the good on account of the behavior of ill men, are of the party of the latter; Stobaeus ii. p. 46 Βίας ἔφη, οἱ ἀγαθοὶ εὐαπάτητοι, Menander, fr. 845 Kock χρηστοῦ παρ’ ἀνδρὸς μηδὲν ὑπονόει κακόν. and who has himself done many unjust acts and who thinks himself a smart trickster, when he associates with his like does appear to be clever, being on his guard and fixing his eyes on the patterns within himself. But when the time comes for him to mingle with the good and his elders, then on the contrary he appears stupid. He is unseasonably distrustful and he cannot recognize a sound character because he has no such pattern in himself. But since he more often meets with the bad than the good, he seems to himself and to others to be rather wise than foolish.
3.409
That is quite true,
3.409
he said.
3.409
Well then,
3.409
said I,
3.409
such a one must not be our ideal of the good and wise judge but the former. For while badness could never come to know both virtue and itself, native virtue through education will at last acquire the science both of itself and badness.Cf. George Eliot, Adam Bede, chap. xiv.: It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower. But I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension by a good deal of hard experience. This one, then, as I think, is the man who proves to be wise and not the bad man.Cf. Theaetetus 176 D It is far best not to concede to the unjust that they are clever knaves, for they glory in the taunt. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, n. 21.
3.409
And I concur,
3.409
he said.
3.410
3.410
Then will you not establish by law in your city such an art of medicine as we have described in conjunction with this kind of justice? And these arts will care for the bodies and souls of such of your citizens as are truly well born, but of those who are not, such as are defective in body they will suffer to die and those who are evil-natured and incurableOnly the incurable suffer a purely exemplary and deterrent punishment in this world or the next. Cf. 615 E, Protagoras 325 A, Gorgias 525 C, Phaedo 113 E. in soul they will themselvesultro, as opposed to ἐάσουσιν. put to death.
3.410
This certainly,
3.410
he said,
3.410
has been shown to be the best thing for the sufferers themselves and for the state.
3.410
And so your youths,
3.410
said I,
3.410
employing that simple music which we said engendered sobriety will, it is clear, guard themselves against falling into the need of the justice of the court-room.
3.410
Yes,
3.410
he said.
3.410
And will not our musician, pursuing the same trail in his use of gymnastics, if he please, get to have no need of medicine save when indispensableCf. 405 C. Plato always allows for the limitation of the ideal by necessity.?
3.410
I think so.
3.410
And even the exercises and toils of gymnastics he will undertake with a view to the spirited part of his natureThe welfare of the soul is always the prime object for Plato. (Cf. 591 C) But he cannot always delay to correct ordinary speech in this sense. The correction of 376 E here is of course not a change of opinion, and it is no more a criticism of Isocrates, Antidosis 180-185, than it is of Gorgias 464 B, or Soph. 228 E, or Republic 521 E. to arouse that rather than for mere strength, unlike ordinary athletes, who treatμεταχειρίζονται: this reading of Galen is more idiomatic than the MS. μεταχειριεῖται. Where English says he is not covetous of honor as other men are, Greek says he (is) not as other men are covetous of honor. diet and exercise only as a means to muscle.
3.410
Nothing could be truer,
3.410
he said.
3.410
Then may we not say, Glaucon,
3.410
said I,
3.410
that those who establishedPlato half seriously attributes his own purposes to the founders. Cf. 405-406 on medicine and Philebus 16 C on dialectics. an education in music and gymnastics had not the purpose in view that some attribute to them in so instituting, namely to treat the body by one and the soul by the other?
3.410
But what?
3.410
he said.
3.410
It seems likely,
3.410
I said,
3.410
that they ordained both chiefly for the soul’s sake.
3.410
How so?
3.410
Have you not observed,
3.410
said I,
3.410
the effect on the disposition of the mind itselfFor the thought cf. Euripides Suppl. 882 f. and Polybius’s account of the effect of the neglect of music on the Arcadians (iv. 20). of lifelong devotion to gymnastics with total neglect of music? Or the disposition of those of the opposite habit?
3.410
In what respect do you mean?
3.410
he said.
3.410
In respect of savagery and hardness or, on the other hand, of softness and gentleness?
3.410
I have observed,
3.410
he said,
3.410
that the devotees of unmitigated gymnastics turn out more brutal than they should be and those of music softer than is good for them.
3.410
And surely,
3.410
said I,
3.410
this savagery is a quality derived from the high-spirited element in our nature, which, if rightly trained, becomes brave, but if overstrained, would naturally become hard and harsh.
3.410
I think so,
3.410
he said.
3.410
And again, is not the gentleness a quality which the philosophic nature would yield? This if relaxed too far would be softer than is desirable but if rightly trained gentle and orderly?
3.410
That is so.
3.410
But our requirement, we say,Cf. 375 C. With Plato’s doctrine of the two temperaments cf. the distinction of quick-wits and hard-wits in Ascham’s Schoolmaster. Ascham is thinking of Plato, for he says: Galen saith much music marreth men’s manners; and Plato hath a notable place of the same thing in his book De rep., well marked also and excellently translated by Tully himself. is that the guardians should possess both natures.
3.410
It is.
3.410
And must they not be harmoniously adjusted to one another?
3.410
Of course.
3.411
3.411
And the soul of the man thus attuned is sober and brave?
3.411
Certainly.
3.411
And that of the ill adjusted is cowardiy and rude?
3.411
It surely is.
3.411
Now when a man abandons himself to music to playCf. 561 C. upon him and pourDemetrius, Περὶ Ἑρμ. 51, quotes this and the following sentence as an example of the more vivid expression following the less vivid. For the image cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Thesm. 18, Aeschylus Choeph. 451, Shakespeare, CymbelineIII. ii. 59 Love’s counsellor should fill the bores of hearing. into his soul as it were through the funnel of his ears those sweet, soft, and dirge-like airs of which we were just nowCf. 398 D-E, where the θρηνώδεις ἁρμονίαι are rejected altogether, while here they are used to illustrate the softening effect of music on a hard temperament. It is misspent ingenuity to harp on such contradictions. speaking, and gives his entire time to the warblings and blandishments of song, the first result is that the principle of high spirit, if he had it, is softened like ironFor images drawn from the tempering of metals cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 612 and Jebb on Sophocles Ajax 650. and is made useful instead of useless and brittle. But when he continuesCf. Theaetetus 165 E ἐπέχων καὶ οὐκ ἀνιείς, and Blaydes on Aristophanes Peace 1121. the practice without remission and is spellbound, the effect begins to be that he melts and liquefiesCf. Tennyson’s Molten down in mere uxoriousness (Geraint and Enid ). till he completely dissolves away his spirit, cuts out as it were the very sinews of his soul and makes of himself a feeble warrior.A familiar Homeric reminiscence (Iliad xvii. 588) quoted also in Symposium 174 C. Cf. Froissart’s un mol chevalier.
3.411
Assuredly,
3.411
he said.
3.411
And if,
3.411
said I,
3.411
he has to begin with a spiritlessEtymologically ἄθυμος = deficient in θυμός. nature he reaches this result quickly, but if high-spirited, by weakening the spirit he makes it unstable, quickly irritated by slight stimuli, and as quickly quelled. The outcome is that such men are choleric and irascible instead of high-spirited, and are peevish and discontented.
3.411
Precisely so.
3.411
On the other hand, if a man toils hard at gymnastics and eats right lustily and holds no truck with music and philosophy, does he not at first get very fit and full of pride and high spirit and become more brave and bold than he was?
3.411
He does indeed.
3.411
But what if he does nothing but this and has no contact with the Muse in any way, is not the result that even if there was some principle of the love of knowledge in his soul, since it tastes of no instruction nor of any inquiry and does not participate in any discussion or any other form of culture, it becomes feeble, deaf, and blind, because it is not aroused or fed nor are its perceptions purified and quickened?
3.411
That is so,
3.411
he said.
3.411
And so such a man, I take it, becomes a misologistA hater of rational discussion, as explained in Laches 188 C, and the beautiful passage in the Phaedo 89 D ff. Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 14. 6 Igitur nobis providendum est ne odio identidem sermonum laboremus. John Morley describes obscurantists as sombre hierophants of misology. and stranger to the Muses. He no longer makes any use of persuasion by speech but achieves all his ends like a beast by violence and savagery, and in his brute ignorance and ineptitude lives a life of disharmony and gracelessness.
3.411
That is entirely true,
3.411
he said.
3.412
3.412
For these two, then, it seems there are two arts which I would say some god gave to mankind, music and gymnastics for the service of the high-spirited principle and the love of knowledge in them—not for the soul and the body except incidentally, but for the harmonious adjustment of these two principles by the proper degree of tension and relaxation of each.
3.412
Yes, so it appears,
3.412
he said.
3.412
Then he who best blends gymnastics with music and applies them most suitably to the soul is the man whom we should most rightly pronounce to be the most perfect and harmonious musician, far rather than the one who brings the strings into unison with one another.For virtue as music Cf. Phaedo61 A, Laches 188 D, and Iago’s There is a daily music in his life. The perfect musician is the professor of the royal art of Politicus 306-308 ff. which harmonizes the two temperaments, not merely by education, but by elminating extremes through judicious marriages.
3.412
That seems likely, Socrates,
3.412
he said.
3.412
And shall we not also need in our city, Glaucon, a permanent overseerThis epistates is not the director of education of Laws 765 D ff., though of course he or it will control education. It is rather an anticipation of the philosophic rulers, as appears from 497 C-D, and corresponds to the nocturnal council of Laws 950 B ff. Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 86, note 650. of this kind if its constitution is to be preserved?
3.412
We most certainly shall.
3.412
Such would be the outlines of their education and breeding. For whyγάρ explains τύποι, or outlines. Both in the Republic and the LawsPlato frequently states that many details must be left to subsequent legislation. Cf. Republic 379 A, 400 B-C, 403 D-E, 425 A-E, Laws 770 B, 772 A-B, 785 A, 788 A-B, 807 E, 828 B, 846 C, 855 D, 876 D-E, 957 A, 968 C. should one recite the list of the dances of such citizens, their hunts and chases with hounds, their athletic contests and races? It is pretty plain that they must conform to these principles and there is no longer any difficulty in discovering them.
3.412
There is, it may be, no difficulty,
3.412
he said.
3.412
Very well,
3.412
said I;
3.412
what, then, have we next to determine? Is it not which ones among themαὐτῶν τούτων marks a class within a class. Cf. Class. Phil . vol. vii. (1912) p. 485. 535 A refers back to this passage. shall be the rulers and the ruled?
3.412
Certainly.
3.412
That the rulers must be the elder and the ruled the younger is obvious.
3.412
It is.
3.412
And that the rulers must be their best?
3.412
This too.
3.412
And do not the best of the farmers prove the best farmers?
3.412
Yes.
3.412
And in this case, since we want them to be the best of the guardians, must they not be the best guardians, the most regardful of the state?
3.412
Yes.
3.412
They must then to begin with be intelligent in such matters and capable, and furthermore carefulThe argument proceeds by minute links. Cf. on 338 D. of the interests of the state?
3.412
That is so.
3.412
But one would be most likely to be careful of that which he loved.
3.412
Necessarily.
3.412
And again, one would be most likely to love that whose interests he supposed to coincide with his own, and thought that when it prospered, he too would prosper and if not, the contrary.
3.412
So it is,
3.412
he said.
3.412
Then we must pick out from the other guardians such men as to our observation appear most inclined through the entire course of their lives to be zealous to do what they think for the interest of the state, and who would be least likely to consent to do the opposite.
3.412
That would be a suitable choice,
3.412
he said.
3.412
I think, then, we shall have to observe them at every period of life, to see if they are conservators and guardians of this conviction in their minds and never by sorcery nor by force can be brought to expelCf. Crito 46 B, Xenophon Memorabilia iii. 12. 7. from their souls unawares this conviction that they must do what is best for the state.
3.412
What do you mean by the expelling?
3.412
he said.
3.413
3.413
I will tell you,
3.413
said I;
3.413
it seems to me that the exit of a belief from the mind is either voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary is the departure of the false belief from one who learns better, involuntary that of every true belief.
3.413
The voluntary,
3.413
he said,
3.413
I understand, but I need instruction about the involuntary.
3.413
How now,
3.413
said I,
3.413
don’t you agree with me in thinking that men are unwillingly deprived of good things but willingly of evil? Or is it not an evil to be deceived in respect of the truth and a good to possess truth? And don’t you think that to opine the things that are is to possess the truth?
3.413
Why, yes,
3.413
said he,
3.413
you are right, and I agree that men are unwillingly deprived of true opinions.Cf. on 382 A and Sophist. 228 C, Marcus Aurelius vii. 63.
3.413
And doesn’t this happen to them by theft, by the spells of sorcery or by force?
3.413
I don’t understand now either,
3.413
he said.
3.413
I must be talking in high tragic style,The preceding metaphors are in the high-flown, obscure style of tragedy. Cf. Thompson on Meno 76 E, Cratylus 418 D, Aristophanes Frogs, passim, Wilamowitz, Platon, ii. p. 146.
3.413
I said;
3.413
by those who have their opinions stolen from them I mean those who are over-persuaded and those who forget, because in the one case time, in the other argument strips them unawares of their beliefs. Now I presume you understand, do you not?
3.413
Yes.
3.413
Well, then, by those who are constrained or forced I mean those whom some pain or suffering compelsCf. Dionysius ὁ μεταθέμενος, who went over from the Stoics to the Cyrenaics because of the pain in his eyes, Diogenes Laertius vii. 166. to change their minds.
3.413
That too I understand and you are right.
3.413
And the victims of sorceryCf. 584 A γοητεία. I am sure you too would say are they who alter their opinions under the spell of pleasure or terrified by some fear.
3.413
Yes,
3.413
he said:
3.413
everything that deceives appears to cast a spell upon the mind.
3.413
Well then, as I was just saying, we must look for those who are the best guardians of the indwelling conviction that what they have to do is what they at any time believe to be best for the state. Then we must observe them from childhood up and propose them tasks in which one would be most likely to forget this principle or be deceived, and he whose memory is sure and who cannot be beguiled we must accept and the other kind we must cross off from our list. Is not that so?
3.413
Yes.
3.413
And again we must subject them to toils and pains and competitions in which we have to watch for the same traits.
3.413
Right,
3.413
he said.
3.413
Then,
3.413
said I,
3.413
must we not institute a third kind of competitive test with regard to sorcery and observe them in that? Just as men conduct colts to noises and uproar to see if they are liable to take fright, so we must bring these lads while young into fears and again pass them into pleasures, testing them much more carefully than men do gold in the fire, to see if the man remains immune to such witchcraft and preserves his composure throughout, a good guardian of himself and the culture which he has received, maintaining the true rhythm and harmony of his being in all those conditions, and the character that would make him most useful to himself and to the state.
3.414
3.414
And he who as boy, lad, and man endures the test and issues from it unspoiled we must establish as ruler over our city and its guardian, and bestow rewards upon him in life, and in death the allotment of the supreme honors of burial-rites and other memorials. But the man of the other type we must reject. Such,
3.414
said I,
3.414
appears to me, Glaucon, the general notion of our selection and appointment of rulers and guardians as sketched in outline, but not drawn out in detail.
3.414
I too,
3.414
he said,
3.414
think much the same.
3.414
Then would it not truly be most proper to designate these as guardians in the full sense of the word, watchers against foemen without and friends within, so that the latter shall not wish and the former shall not be able to work harm, but to name those youths whom we were calling guardians just now, helpers and aids for the decrees of the rulers?
3.414
I think so,
3.414
he replied.
3.414
How, then,
3.414
said I,
3.414
might we contriveThe concept μηχανή or ingenious device employed by a superior intelligence to circumvent necessity or play providence with the vulgar holds a prominent place in Plato’s physics, and is for Rousseau-minded readers one of the dangerous features of his political and educational philosophy. Cf. 415 C, Laws 664 A, 752 C, 769 E, 798 B, 640 B. one of those opportune falsehoodsCf. 389 B. of which we were just now389 B f. speaking, so as by one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?
3.414
What kind of a fiction do you mean?
3.414
said he.
3.414
Nothing unprecedented,
3.414
said I,
3.414
but a sort of Phoenician tale,As was the Cadmus legend of the men who sprang from the dragon’s teeth, which the Greeks believed οὕτως ἀπίθανον ὄν, Laws 663 E. Pater, who translates the passage (Plato and Platonism, p. 223), fancifully suggests that it is a miners’ story. Others read into it an allusion to Egyptian castes. The proverb ψεῦσμα Φοινικικόν (Strabo 259 B) probably goes back to the Phoenician tales of the Odyssey. something that has happened ere now in many parts of the world, as the poets aver and have induced men to believe, but that has not happened and perhaps would not be likely to happen in our dayPlato never attempts a Voltairian polemic against the general faith in the supernatural, which he is willing to utilize for ethical ends, but he never himself affirms le surnaturel particulier. and demanding no little persuasion to make it believable.
3.414
You act like one who shrinks from telling his thought,
3.414
he said.
3.414
You will think that I have right good reasonκαὶ μάλ’ here as often adds a touch of humorous colloquial emphasis, which our conception of the dignity of Plato does not allow a translator to reproduce. for shrinking when I have told,
3.414
I said.
3.414
Say on,
3.414
said he,
3.414
and don’t be afraid.
3.414
Very well, I will. And yet I hardly know how to find the audacity or the words to speak and undertake to persuade first the rulers themselves and the soldiers and then the rest of the city, that in good sooth
3.414
7
3.414
all our training and educating of them were things that they imagined and that happened to them as it were in a dream; but that in reality at that time they were down within the earth being molded and fostered themselves while
3.414
their weapons and the rest of their equipment were being fashioned. And when they were quite finished the earth as being their mother
3.414
8
3.414
delivered them, and now as if their land were their mother and their nurse they ought to take thought for her and defend her against any attack and regard the other citizens as their brothers and children of the self-same earth.
3.414
It is not for nothing,οὐκ ἐτός is comic. Cf. 568 A, and Blaydes on Aristophanes Acharnians 411.
3.414
he said,
3.414
that you were so bashful about coming out with your lie.
3.415
3.415
It was quite natural that I should be,
3.415
I said;
3.415
but all the same hear the rest of the story. While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled gold in their generation,
3.415
1
3.415
for which reason they are the most precious—but in the helpers silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen. And as you are all akin, though for the most part you will breed after your kinds,
3.415
2
3.415
it may sometimes happen that a golden father would beget a silver son and that a golden offspring would come from a silver sire and that the rest would in like manner be born of one another. So that the first and chief injunction that the god lays upon the rulers is that of nothing else
3.415
3
3.415
are they to be such careful guardians and so intently observant as of the intermixture of these metals in the souls of their offspring, and if sons are born to them with an infusion of brass or iron
3.415
they shall by no means give way to pity in their treatment of them, but shall assign to each the status due to his nature and thrust them out
3.415
4
3.415
among the artisans or the farmers. And again, if from these there is born a son with unexpected gold or silver in his composition they shall honor such and bid them go up higher, some to the office of guardian, some to the assistanceship, alleging that there is an oracle
3.415
5
3.415
that the state shall then be overthrown when the man of iron or brass is its guardian. Do you see any way of getting them to believe this tale?
3.415
No, not these themselves,
3.415
he said,
3.415
but I do, their sons and successors and the rest of mankind who come after.Plato repeats the thought that since the mass of men can be brought to believe anything by repetition, myths framed for edification are a useful instrument of education and government. Cf. Laws 663 E-664 A.
3.415
Well,
3.415
said I,
3.415
even that would have a good effect making them more inclined to care for the state and one another. For I think I apprehend your meaning. XXII. And this shall fall out as traditionφήμη, not any particular oracular utterance, but popular belief from mouth to mouth. guides.
3.415
But let us arm these sons of earth and conduct them under the leadership of their rulers. And when they have arrived they must look out for the fairest site in the city for their encampment,The Platonic guardians, like the ruling class at Sparta, will live the life of a camp. Cf. Laws 666 E, Isocrates Archedamus. a position from which they could best hold down rebellion against the laws from within and repel aggression from without as of a wolf against the fold. And after they have encamped and sacrificed to the proper godsPartly from caution, partly from genuine religious feeling, Plato leaves all the details of the cult to Delphi. Cf. 427 B. they must make their lairs, must they not?
3.415
Yes,
3.415
he said.
3.415
And these must be of a character keep out the cold in winter and be sufficient in summer?
3.415
Of course. For I presume you are speaking of their houses.
3.415
Yes,
3.415
said I,
3.415
the houses of soldiersFor the limiting γε cf. 430 E. not of money-makers.
3.416
3.416
What distinction do you intend by that?
3.416
he said.
3.416
I will try to tell you,
3.416
I said.
3.416
It is surely the most monstrous and shameful thing in the world for shepherds to breed the dogs who are to help them with their flocks in such wise and of such a nature that from indiscipline or hunger or some other evil condition the dogs themselves shall attack the sheep and injure them and be likened to wolvesAristotle’s objection (Politics 1264 a 24) that the Platonic state will break up into two hostile camps, is plagiarized in expression from Plato’s similar censure of existing Greek cities (422 E) and assumes that the enforced disinterestedness, the higher education, and other precautions of the Platonic Republic will not suffice to conjure away the danger to which Plato first calls attention. instead of dogs.
3.416
A terrible thing, indeed,
3.416
he said.
3.416
Must we not then guard by every means in our power against our helpers treating the citizens in any such way and, because they are the stronger, converting themselves from benign assistants into savage masters?
3.416
We must,
3.416
he said.
3.416
And would they not have been provided with the chief safeguard if their education has really been a good one?
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But it surely has,
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he said.
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That,
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said I,
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dear Glaucon, we may not properly affirm,This is not so much a reservation in reference to the higher education as a characteristic refusal of Plato to dogmatize. Cf. Meno 86 B and my paper Recent Platonism in England, A.J.P. vol. ix. pp. 7-8. but what we were just now saying we may, that they must have the right education, whatever it is, if they are to have what will do most to make them gentle to one another and to their charges.
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That is right,
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he said.
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In addition, moreover, to such an education a thoughtful man would affirm that their houses and the possessions provided for them ought to be such as not to interfere with the best performance of their own work as guardians and not to incite them to wrong the other citizens.
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He will rightly affirm that.
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Consider then,
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said I,
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whether, if that is to be their character, their habitations and ways of life must not be something after this fashion. In the first place, none must possess any private propertyPlato’s communism is primarily a device to secure disinterestedness in the ruling class, though he sometimes treats it as a counsel of perfection for all men and states. Cf. Introduction p. xv note a. save the indispensable. Secondly, none must have any habitation or treasure-house which is not open for all to enter at will. Their food, in such quantities as are needful for athletes of warCf. 403 E. sober and brave, they must receive as an agreedCf. 551 B, Meno 91 B, Thucydides i. 108, G.M.T. 837. stipendThey are worthy of their hire. Cf. on 347 A. It is a strange misapprehension to speak of Plato as careless of the welfare of the masses. His aristocracy is one of social service, not of selfish enjoyment of wealth and power. from the other citizens as the wages of their guardianship, so measured that there shall be neither superfluity at the end of the year nor any lack.This is precisely Aristophanes’ distinction between beggary and honorable poverty, Plutus 552-553. And resorting to a common messAs at Sparta. Cf. 458 C, Newman, Introduction to Aristotle’s Politics, p. 334. like soldiers on campaign they will live together.
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Gold and silver, we will tell them, they have of the divine quality from the gods always in their souls, and they have no need of the metal of men nor does holiness suffer them to mingle and contaminate that heavenly possession with the acquisition of mortal gold, since many impious deeds have been done about the coin of the multitude, while that which dwells within them is unsullied. But for these only of all the dwellers in the city it is not lawful to handle gold and silver and to touch them nor yet to come under the same roofAs if the accursed and tainted metal were a polluted murderer or temple-robber. Cf. my note on Horace, Odes iii. 2. 27 sub isdem trabibus, Antiphon v. 11. with them, nor to hang them as ornaments on their limbs nor to drink from silver and gold. So living they would save themselves and save their city.Cf. 621 B-C, and Laws692 A. But whenever they shall acquire for themselves land of their own and houses and coin, they will be house-holders and farmers instead of guardians, and will be transformed from the helpers of their fellow citizens to their enemies and masters,δεσπόται. Cf. Menexenus 238 E. and so in hating and being hated,Cf. Laws 697 D in a passage of similar import, μισοῦντες μισοῦνται. plotting and being plotted against they will pass their days fearing far more and rathermore and rather: so 396 D, 551 B. the townsmen within than the foemen without—and then even then laying the courseThe image is that of a ship nearing the fatal reef. Cf. Aeschylus, Eumenides 562. The sentiment and the heightened rhetorical tone of the whole passage recalls the last page of the Critias, with Ruskin’s translation and comment in A Crown of Wild Olive. of near shipwreck for themselves and the state. For all these reasons,
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said I,
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let us declare that such must be the provision for our guardians in lodging and other respects and so legislate. Shall we not?
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By all means,
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said Glaucon.