Plato Republic 10.616

ἐκτός : i.e. outside the στόμιον. It seems to me quite clear from this passage that the δαιμόνιος τόπος is not in the aether, as Proclus appears to suppose (l.c. pp. 128 ff.), but somewhere on the true surface of the earth as described in Phaed. 109 E ff.

ἐπ) ἀσπαλάθων κνάπτοντες . ἐπὶ κνάφου ἕλκων= διαφθείρων· τὸ γὰρ πρότερον οἱ γναφεῖς ἀκανθῶν σωρὸν συστρέψαντες, τὰ ἱμάτια ἐπὶ τοῦ σωροῦ ἔκναπτον· ὁ δὲ σωρὸς ἐλέγετο γνάφος. ὁ οὖν Κροῖσος τὸν ἐχθρὸν περιέξαινε ταῖς ἀκάνθαις καὶ οὕτως ἔφθειρεν (Hesychius, with reference to Hdt. I 92). In the Apocalypse of Peter v. 30 we read of χάλικες ὀξύτεροι ξιφῶν καὶ παντὸς ὀβελίσκου, πεπυρωμένοι, καὶ γυναῖκες καὶ ἄνδρες ῥάκη ῥυπαρὰ ἐνδεδυμένοι ἐκυλίοντο ἐπ’ αὐτῶν κολαζόμενοι. The form κνάμπτοντες appears in A (see cr. n.) and several MSS, but κνάμπτω is a bye-form of γνάμπτω and means not ‘card’ but ‘bend’ (Stephanus-Hase s.v.).

τοῖς ἀεὶ παριοῦσι κτλ. According to Norden l.c. p. 393 the idea that incurable sinners serve as παραδείγματα in Hades is probably Orphic or Pythagorean. It meets us also in Pindar ( Pyth. 2. 21 ff., of Ixion) and in Virg. Aen. VI 618 ff. Phlegyasque miserrimus omnes Admonet, et magna testatur voce per umbras ‘Discite iustitiam moniti, et non temnere divos.’ The fullest exposition of the theory is to be found in Gorg. 525 B —D.

ὧν ἕνεκά τε κτλ. The words ταῦτα ὑπομένοιεν, which Schneider still retains after ἕνεκά τε, have scarcely any MS support and are an obvious gloss. The construction is ὧν ἕνεκά τε ἄγοιντο καὶ ὅτι εἰς τὸν Τάρταρον ἐμπεσούμενοι ἄγοιντο.

ὅτι εἰς . See cr. n. I formerly, with Hermann and Baiter, read εἰς ὅ τι, regarding τὸν Τάρταρον as a gloss. But there is reason in Richards' remark that οἷ or ὅποι would be more natural than εἰς ὅ τι: and in any case it is hardly likely that Plato would have omitted to specify the destination of these sinners by its name. Cf. Phaed. 113 E (quoted above on 615 E) and (for Plato's conception of Tartarus) ib. 112 A ff.

ἔφη : sc. ὁ ἐρωτώμενος (615 D), as before.

σφίσιν : i.e. to ὁ ἐρωτώμενος and his comrades.

τοῦτον ὑπερβάλλειν . The words τὸν φόβον, which Ξ and other MSS add after ὑπερβάλλειν, may be genuine, but as they are absent from A, q and several MSS besides, it is perhaps safer to omit them.

καὶ τὰς μὲν κτλ. At this point Er's own narrative is resumed.

τὰς εὐεργεσίας : ‘the blessings which they received.’ This clearly refers, as Proclus also believed (l.c. p. 185), to the souls ἐν τῇ ὑπὸ γῆς πορείᾳ. See on 615 B, and compare Matthew Arnold's well known poem ‘Saint Brandan.’

καὶ ἀφικνεῖσθαι κτλ. ‘And on the fourth day they arrived at a point from which they descried extending from above through all the heaven and earth a straight light, like a pillar, resembling the rainbow more than anything else, but brighter and purer.’ The souls see the light for the first time on the fourth day after they begin their march, and consequently on the eleventh day from Er's arrival at the meadow. The remaining incidents occupy one day, and it is on the twelfth that Er revives ( δωδεκαταῖος— ἀνεβίω 614 B). See on ἕωθεν in 621 B. As far as the Greek is concerned, ἄνωθεν may be construed either with καθορᾶν or with τεταμένον. In the former case, we should probably have to suppose (with Boeckh l.c. p. 299) that Er's point of view is outside the Universe; but it will be shewn in Appendix VI that there are serious difficulties in the way of this supposition, and the second alternative is to be preferred. It has already been remarked that Plato in all probability thinks of the λειμών as somewhere on the true surface of the Earth described by him in the myth of the Phaedo (614 C note), and it is apparently along this surface that the souls progress until they come in view of the light. As regards the shape and position of the light, Plato's language is clear and precise. The light is ‘straight, like a pillar,’ and ‘stretched through all the heaven and earth.’ The only natural interpretation of these words is that a column or shaft of light spans the entire Universe, like the diameter of a circle, and passes through the centre of the Earth, which, according to Plato, is situated in the middle of the whole ( Phaed. 108 E ff., Tim. 40 B ). With διὰ παντὸς—τεταμένον we may compare Tim. 40 B τὸν διὰ παντὸς πόλον τεταμένον (of the axis of the Universe). The words μάλιστα τῇ ἴριδι προσφερές refer, not of course to the shape, but to the colour of the light, as appears from λαμπρότερον δὲ καὶ καθαρώτερον. The correction of προσφερῆ to προσφερές in A (see cr. n.) is late, but προσφερές is intrinsically a better reading, and might easily have been altered to προσφερῆ under the influence of κίονα. In defence of προσφερῆ Schneider cites ἀπωχετευμένον in VI 485 D, but the two cases are not exactly parallel: see note ad loc. Other views on this passage are discussed in App. VI.

εἰς ὃ ἀφικέσθαι κτλ. ‘At this light they arrived after a day's march forward, and there, at the middle of the light’ etc. Instead of προελθόντας, A and other MSS have προελθόντες (see cr. n.), which Schneider defends by saying that the nominative refers not to all the party, but only to Er and his immediate companions. But even in that case the accusative would be more correct, and in point of fact it is clear from what follows that Er is accompanied throughout by all the souls about to be born again. A few other MSS besides q have the accusative. If the light is ‘straight, like a pillar,’ and stretches ‘through all the heaven and earth,’ it follows that as the Earth is in the middle of the Universe, the ‘middle of the light’ will be at the centre of the earth. See fig. i on p. 443. No other interpretation of κατὰ μέσον τὸ φῶς is either natural or easy: see App. VI. It would seem therefore that at the end of the fourth day after leaving the meadow the souls are at the central point both of the Universe and of the Earth, as is maintained by, among others, Schneider and Donaldson (l.c. p. 307); and this view is also in harmony with some of the most important features in the remaining part of the narrative: see on 617 B, 621 A, B.

καὶ ἰδεῖν αὐτόθι κτλ. ‘and there, at the middle of the light, they saw, extended from heaven, the extremities of its chains; for this light chains the heavens, holding together all the revolving firmament, like the undergirders of men of war.’ The pronoun αὐτοῦ is ambiguous, and as far as concerns the grammar might be referred either to τοῦ οὐρανοῦ or to τὸ φῶς. If we choose the former alternative, αὐτοῦ will be an objective genitive, denoting that which is bound; if the latter, the meaning, as Professor Cook Wilson points out, is ‘its chains,’ ‘its bands,’ i.e. ‘the chains of which the light consists,’ for in the next clause the light is said to be a chain ( ξύνδεσμος). The second of these views is on grammatical grounds somewhat more natural than the first; but whichever alternative we adopt, it is clear from the explanatory clause εἶναι γὰρ— περιφοράν, not only that the chains are the binding chains of heaven, but also that it is the light itself, and nothing else, which fulfils the function of binding the Universe together ( εἶναι γὰρ τοῦτο τὸ φῶς ξύνδεσμον τοῦ οὐρανοῦ). In what way the light performs this office, Plato indicates by the much-disputed words οἷον τὰ ὑποζώματα τῶν τριηρῶν. The evidence on the subject of the ‘undergirders’ of ancient men of war has been collected and discussed by Boeckh Urkundenüber d. Seewesen des Attischen Staates pp. 133—138: see also J. Smith Voyage and Shipwreck of St Paul pp. 210—215 and Breusing Nautik d. Alten pp. 170—184. It may be taken as established that the ὑποζώματα were ropes and not planks, as some of the ancient commentators supposed (e.g. Proclus in remp. II p. 200. 25, a Scholiast quoted by Kroll l.c. II p. 381, and Suidas S.V. ὑποζώματα, who follows a scholium on Ar. Knights 279 ), and also that they were fastened round the outside of the vessel; but on the question whether the ὑποζώματα ran round the ship in a horizontal direction, or were passed under the hull, there is more room for difference of opinion. The former view is maintained by Boeckh and Breusing, the latter by J. Smith (l.c. pp. 108 f., 115, 210—215), who reminds us that a similar process, known by the name of ‘frapping,’ is still occasionally resorted to in the case of wooden ships during a storm at sea (pp. 108 f.). The evidence bearing on this matter has recently been investigated by Professor Cook Wilson (see Report of the Proceedings of the Oxford Philological Society for Hilary Term 1902 in Cl. Rev. XVI p. 234), who will shortly publish a detailed discussion of the whole subject. In the meantime he writes to me as follows:—“After careful reading of all the passages quoted by the authorities I feel sure (what one might infer a priori from the mechanical conditions) that this method” [i.e. frapping] “was known to the ancients, and was the method used in an emergency at sea, as e.g. in St Paul's ship. I conjecture also that these undergirders first had the name ὑποζώματα, and that if the belts or girdles supposed by Boeckh had this name, it was transferred to them from the true undergirders, which were probably the first and primitive form and remained in use always, even after the trireme belts had been invented.” The evidence in short, points to two kinds of ὑποζώματα ( Cl. Rev. l.c.), the first employed occasionally under exceptional circumstances, and passing under the hull of the vessel, the second (see Boeckh l.c. p. 137) forming part of the regular equipment of a warship, attached before she went to sea, and running horizontally round the hull. The second variety is clearly represented on a bronze relief of the forepart of a war vessel, said to date from Roman imperial times, and now in the Berlin Museum. The sketch of the relief on p. 443, fig. ii is from a photograph in the possession of Professor Cook Wilson. There is also a (somewhat inaccurate) drawing of the relief in Beger Thesauri regii et electoralis Brandenburgicii Vol. III p. 406. (Some writers, and among them J. Smith, have maintained that the longitudinal bands in Beger's picture are only ornaments, and not ropes; but it is quite clear from the photograph that they are really ropes and serve as ὑποζώματα of the horizontal kind.) To which of the two varieties does Plato here allude? The words οἷον τὰ ὑποζώματα τῶν τριηρῶν, οὕτω πᾶσαν συνέχον τὴν περιφοράν, seem clearly to regard the ὑποζώματα as permanent σκεύη of warships, holding the hull together in ordinary circumstances, and not merely resources to be employed in times of difficulty and danger; and since the light whose action the ὑποζώματα serve to illustrate is (in Plato's view) an essential part of the Universe, the illustration is better and more pointed if the ὑποζώματα are also of the more permanent sort. It may also be noted that if Plato had meant the undergirders which pass under the keel he would probably have written ὑποζώματα τῶν νεῶν, and not ὑποζώματα τῶν τριηρῶν, for the vertical ὑποζώματα were not confined to triremes. For these reasons it would seem that Plato has in view such ὑποζώματα as are described by Boeckh, viz. girdles running round the hull from stern to stem outside the vessel.

ἐκ δὲ τῶν ἄκρων κτλ. : ‘and from the extremities they saw extended the spindle of Necessity, by which all the revolving spheres are turned. The shaft and hook thereof are made of adamant, and the whorl partly of adamant, and partly of other materials.’ With this sentence we pass to the second part of Plato's description, in which he tries to depict the movements of the celestial bodies by a new image—that of Necessity and her spindle. Regarded in itself, this image is tolerably clear and coherent, if we are willing to allow a large admixture of supernatural mechanics; but Plato fails to shew how it is to be reconciled with what has just preceded, and no one has hitherto succeeded in effecting the reconciliation, without doing violence to the Greek. See on 616 D, E and App. VI. The rapid imagination of the writer has already escaped from the earlier picture and fallen under the spell of a new conception, and we shall best apprehend his meaning if we consider what the peculiar nature of that conception demands. The ordinary spindle was shaped somewhat as in figure iii on p. 444, in which a b is the shaft, and c the whorl. (There is no hook in the figure: but its position would of course be at a.) The fibres were attached to the hook and twisted into a thread by the revolutions communicated to the spindle by the finger and thumb: see Blümner Technologie etc. I pp. 109—120, from whom the figure is borrowed. It is essential to the notion of a spindle that the hook should be fastened to the fibres which are to be spun. For this reason Plato finds it necessary, in using the similitude of a spindle, to attach the hook ( ἄγκιστρον) to something which may correspond to the fibres; and he accordingly fastens it to the ends of the chains of light depending from the heavens in his previous image, at the point where these ends meet the ends from below, κατὰ μέσον τὸ φῶς. If we treat this construction as a piece of serious mechanics, Plato's device is open to many obvious criticisms. In fastening the spindle to the ἄκρα τῶν δεσμῶν from above, he forgets or ignores the ends from below. It will further be observed that he says nothing about the direction of the spindle: it is merely ‘stretched from the ends’ of the chains. We shall presently see that the shaft of the spindle symbolises the axis of the Universe, so that—if we are to connect the two images in Plato's mind —it is natural to suppose that the spindle extends downwards, following the line of the light. Here again there are difficulties, the most serious of which perhaps is that, as the axis of the Universe must go through the earth, the effect of attaching the spindle ‘at the middle of the light’ will be to depress the earth itself below the centre of the whole. But it should be remembered that Plato's object in this passage is not to furnish a scientific account of the celestial mechanism: see below on 616 D, E, 617 A. We are dealing with a work of literature and not of science, and the machinery of a myth ought not to be rigorously scrutinized from the scientific point of view. Inconsistencies of this kind are found to be inseparable from such poetical representations of the Universe. In the present case they arise chiefly from the juxtaposition of two essentially irreconcileable conceptions—that of a sphere girdled and traversed by light, and that of Necessity and her spindle. See on 616 D, E. For the rest, it should be noted that adamant symbolises τὸ ἀπαθὲς καὶ ἀδάμαστον (cf. Proclus l.c. II 209. 22), and is the appropriate material for the ἠλακάτη, since in Plato's picture the ἠλακάτη stands for the axis of the whole. ἠλακάτη is not elsewhere found in the sense of the shaft of a spindle: ordinarily it means ‘distaff.’ See on 616 D, E below. Plato does not inform us in what way the whorl is μεικτὸν ἔκ τε τούτου (i.e. ἀδάμαντος ) καὶ ἄλλων γενῶν: but I think he means that while the outermost circle, which is the circle of ταὐτόν ( Tim. 36 C ), is composed of adamant, the others, which form collectively the circle of θάτερον, are made, either in whole or in part, of less durable stuff. Herwerden rejects the preposition before ἀδάμαντος, without any reason that I can see.

τὴν δὲ τοῦ σφονδύλου φύσιν κτλ. The whorl of Necessity's spindle is a composite structure, consisting of eight concentric hemispheres, fitted into one another like a nest of boxes: see below on 616 E. The adverb διαμπερές should be construed with ἐξεγλυμμένῳ.

κύκλους κτλ. : lit. ‘shewing their rims as circles above’ (“so dass sie ihre Ränder oben als Kreise zeigen” Schneider). Cf. 616 E τὸν τοῦ χείλους κύκλον. The translation “each concentric circle shewing its rim above the next outer” (D. and V.) betrays a complete misapprehension of the whole passage. Donaldson (l.c.) gives the sense correctly: “shewing their rims on the surface like so many circles.” The words νῶτον—ἐληλάσθαι mean ‘forming a single whorl, with a continuous surface, round the shaft, which is driven right through the middle of the eighth,’ not “and on their lower side all together form one continuous whorl” (Jowett). νῶτον is regularly thus used of the upper surface of an object: cf. for example Phaedr. 247 B ἔξω πορευθεῖσαι ἔστησαν ἐπὶ τῷ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ νώτῳ. It is important to observe that there is no interval between the different lips: cf. Proclus l.c. II 216. 15 ff. ἡ συνέχεια τῆς ἐναρμόσεως διὰ τὸ μὴ παρεμπίπτειν κενὸν συνεχὲς ποιεῖ τὸ ἐκ πάντων νώτων ἐννοούμενον νῶτον ἀπὸ κυρτῆς εἰς κυρτὴν διῆκον, ἀπὸ τῆς ἐσχάτης ἐπὶ τὴν πρωτίστην, and see on 616 E below. On ἠλακάτην Proclus remarks εἰ δὲ διαμπερὲς ἐληλάσθαι διὰ πάντων φησὶν τὴν ἠλακάτην, συντόμως καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἐξέφηνεν, δἰ ἣν ἠλακάτην τὸν ἀξονα προσείρηκεν, καὶ ὅτι παρὰ τὸ ἐληλάσθαι (l.c. p. 214. 26 ff.). As the usual meaning of ἠλακάτη is ‘distaff’ and not the shaft of a spindle, I think it not unlikely that Proclus is right in this suggestion. For other verbal plays in the myth cf. 620 E note

τὸν μὲν οὖν πρῶτόν τε κτλ. According to this reading, which was known to Proclus (l. c. pp. 218 ff.) and is found in all our MSS without any important variation except the omission of ἕκτου (line 31) in Vat. Θ, the order of the different whorls in respect of breadth of rim, beginning with the broadest, is as follows:—

τὸν μὲν τοῦ μεγίστου : sc. σφονδύλου χείλους‐κύκλον.

ποικίλον . The epithet ποικίλον means ‘spangled,’ rather than “exhibiting a variety of colours” (D. and V.). The reference is to the heavens ‘stellis ardentibus aptum’: cf. Proclus l. c. 222. 29 φησὶ ποικίλον μὲν εἶναι τὸν τοῦ μεγίστου διὰ τὴν τῶν ἀπλανῶν ἀστέρων ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ κύκλῳ ποικιλίαν and VII 529 C note

τὸν δὲ τοῦ ἑβδόμου κτλ. The attributes which belong to the planets are poetically transferred to the rims which they inhabit.

τὸν δὲ τοῦ ὀγδόου . We infer that Plato believed the moon to be an opaque body fastened in the eighth rim and lightened by the Sun. The discovery that the moon shines with borrowed light was ascribed to Anaximenes (Zeller^{5} I p. 248).