Plato Republic 3.407

ἔργον προκείμενον . The view of work and duty here presented recalls I 352 E—353 E.

ἀκούεις . Phocylides, being dead, yet speaketh. The present ἀκούεις is just as legitimate as φησί, and well expresses the living voice of poetry in oral circulation. Heindorf (on Gorg. 503 C ) misses the point of the idiom when he says that ἀκούεις is for ἀκήκοας; while Stallbaum's explanation ‘probas’ is positively wrong. The line, as restored by Bergk Phoc. Fr. 10, is δίζησθαι βιοτήν, ἀρετὴν δ’ ὅταν ᾖ βίος ἤδη. The Horatian ‘quaerenda pecunia primum, | virtus post nummos’ gives the meaning, if primum and post are understood in a strictly temporal sense. Phocylides' maxim is one of the earliest expressions of the all but universal cry χρήματα χρήματ’ ἀνήρ (first in Alcaeus Fr. 49 B ergk), which Socrates and Plato continually preached against. It will be noticed that Plato for his own purposes represents Phocylides as laying the stress on ἀρετὴν ἀσκεῖν rather than on δίζησθαι βιοτήν, where it really falls.

τοῦτο : viz. τὸ ἀρετὴν ἀσκεῖν, as explained in the margin of A.

τῇ προσέξει τοῦ νοῦ is added as a kind of afterthought or additional specification, precisely like the infinitives in Gorg. 513 E ἐπιχειρητέον ἐστι τῇ πόλει καὶ τοῖς πολίταις θεραπεύειν, infra 407 C, IV 437 B, 443 B, V 450 B, X 598 B, Crito 52 B. The datives τεκτονικῇ etc. depend grammatically on ἐμπόδιον only, and have nothing to do with προσέξει. παρακέλευμα presently is of course the accusative, the subject to ἐμποδίζει being νοσοτροφία, and οὐδέν adverbial. Richter (in Fl. Jahrb. 1867 p. 140) should not have revived the reading of Bekker μελετῶντι ἢ νοσοτροφία· τεκτονικῇ μὲν γὰρ κτλ., which is lacking both in authority and point.

ναὶ μὰ τὸν Δία ‐‐ εἰκός γε, ἔφην (in C). See cr. n. With the MS reading εἰκός γ’ ἔφη, the distribution of the speeches causes difficulty. It will be enough to mention three alternatives, for no one has adopted or is likely to adopt the punctuation of A, where σχεδόν γέ τι —περὶ τοῦ σώματος is assigned to Socrates. We may give either (1) the whole speech ναὶ μὰ—περὶ τοῦ σώματος to Glauco, excising εἰκός γε, ἔφη with II q and some other MSS (so Schneider 1830); or (2) ναὶ μὰ—ἐπιμέλεια τοῦ σώματος to Glauco, and καὶ γὰρ—περὶ τοῦ σώματος to Socrates (Stallbaum); or (3) ναὶ μὰ—δύσκολος to Glauco, and τὸ δὲ δὴ—περὶ τοῦ σώματος to Socrates (Baiter and others, including Schneider 1842). The first view fails to account for the appearance of εἰκός γε ἔφη in A, but is right, I think, in assigning the whole speech to Glauco. Neither at καὶ γὰρ πρὸς οἰκονομίας nor at τὸ δὲ δὴ μέγιστον is it easy and natural to change the speakers. The simple expedient of writing ἔφην for ἔφη appears to me to set matters straight. For the corruption see Introd. § 5. οὐκοῦν ταῦτα etc. is also said by Socrates.

ἥ γε περαιτέρω κτλ. ‘This excessive care of the body, which goes beyond what sound bodily regimen permits.’ The Greek has a rhetorical effect like τὸ δεινόν, τὸ μέγα ἐκεῖνο—θρέμμα IX 590 A. With περαιτέρω and the genitive cf. Gorg. 484 C περαιτέρω τοῦ δέοντος. I once conjectured ἥ γε περαιτέρω γυμναστική, ἧς (‘cuius est’) etc. ( Cl. Rev. X p. 385), but Plato seems to mean that treatment of this kind has no claim to the name γυμναστική at all, and not that it is γυμναστική run mad. The MS reading is defended also by a reviewer of my Text of the Republic in Hermathena XX p. 252.

πρὸς ἑαυτόν : with μελέτας, as in μελετᾶν, φροντίζειν πρὸς ἑαυτόν etc.

διατάσεις , though its MS authority (see cr. n.) is slight, can hardly fail to be what Plato wrote. Similarly in 546 C A^{1} has ἕκαστον twice for ἑκατόν. See Introd. § 5.

ὅπῃ ‐‐ ἐμπόδιος . The reading of Ξ (followed by Stallbaum and the older editors) is certainly right. αὕτη (sc. ἔστιν) is νοσοτροφία; and ἐμπόδιος ἀρετῇ ἀσκεῖσθαι is exactly like ἐπιχειρεῖν τῇ πόλει θεραπεύειν (see 407 B note). The presence of νοσοτροφία makes it impossible for virtue to be practised or tested, as when, for example, to take a pedant's illustration, a boy evades both lectures and examinations by cherishing a nervous headache. Recent English editors have followed Baiter, and read ὅπῃ ταύτῃ ἀρετὴ ἀσκεῖται καὶ δοκιμάζεται, taking ταύτῃ as ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ, but this gives a much less satisfactory meaning. After αὕτη had been changed to ταύτῃ, the rest of the corruption was easy; but a trace of the original reading may survive in the ἀρετῇ (not ἀρετή) of A.

ἀποκεκριμένον : an isolated, local malady; “morbum separatum, non totum corpus afficientem” (Ast). Unnecessary difficulty has been raised. The word is in no sense technical, and ἀποκρίνω in the sense of ‘separate’ is common enough. The corruption ἀποκεκρυμμένον might have been foretold.

τούτοις μέν κτλ. The words τοὺς μὲν ὑγιεινῶς ἔχοντας led us to expect ἰᾶσθαι, but the construction changes in order to introduce the invention of medicine, and the ‘healing’ reappears in a different form in φαρμάκοις τε—δίαιταν. The sentence is bad grammar, but good conversational style of the looser kind. It is not easy to say whether τε after φαρμάκοις connects the clauses, or only φαρμάκοις with τομαῖς. The former use is comparatively rare in Plato (Hoefer, de part. Plat. p. 7). Partly on this ground, and partly because the union of the aorist καταδεῖξαι with προστάττειν is a little awkward, I prefer the second alternative. The asyndeton, which is of the usual explanatory or ampliative kind, is in keeping with the loose structure of the whole sentence, and seems to me to add a certain didactic impressiveness here: cf. 409 B. τὰ δ’ εἴσω—σώματα depends not so much on ἀπαντλοῦντα directly as on the composite notion ἀπαντλοῦντα καὶ ἐπιχέοντα, which expresses a certain mode of treatment, and is as it were a species of the general idiom ποιεῖν τινά τι. φυτεύειν must depend on ποιεῖν. Plato's sentences are seldom so disjointed as this: cf. however VI 488 B ff., VIII 558 A.

μὴ οἴεσθαι : for the negative (which is the more natural here, as it belongs logically to δεῖν, though grammatically to οἴεσθαι) see I 346 E note οἴεσθαι, like ἐπιχειρεῖν, depends on φῶμεν .

λυσιτελῆ is taken by Schneider as the accusative neuter in apposition to the idea in θεραπεύειν. If so, αὐτῷ for αὑτῷ must be written (with A). It is however so natural to take λυσιτελῆ as masculine that Plato would surely have expressed the other meaning in a less ambiguous way. The usual view yields a satisfactory sense, and should be preferred.

δῆλον κτλ. See cr. n. The awkwardness of taking ὅτι as ‘because’ was early felt and led to the insertion of δεικνύοιεν ἄν in several MSS ( καὶ· οἱ παῖδες αὐτοῦ δεικνύοιεν ἂν ὅτι τοιοῦτος ἦν)—a reading adopted by the older editors. Few will now dispute that δεικνύοιεν ἄν is a gloss. Besides Schneider's suggestion, which I adopt, two other proposals merit consideration: (1) δῆλοι, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, καὶ οἱ παῖδες αὐτοῦ ὅτι τοιοῦτος ἦν (Sauppe, comparing Crito 44 D), (2) δῆλον, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, καὶ οἱ παῖδες αὐτοῦ ὅτι τοιοῦτοι. ἢ οὐχ ὁρᾷς κτλ. (Madvig). The first, though regarded as possible by Schneider ( Addit. p. 25), involves what is, to say the least, a very exceptional use of δῆλος, with which “subiectum sententiae verbo ὅτι incipientis idem esse solet quod sententiae primariae” (Hartman). Sauppe's parallel from the Crito is a doubtful exception to Hartman's rule. Moreover οὐχ ὁρᾷς κτλ. is too lively: we should expect ἢ (so Π ^{2} Ξ^{2} and other MSS) οὐχ ὁρᾷς κτλ. Madvig's correction already involves two changes ( τοιοῦτοι and ἤ), but would be improved by making a third, viz. δῆλοι for δῆλον. The minimum of dislocation which yields a satisfactory sense is the reading which suggested itself to Schneider, although he did not himself adopt it. Some may be inclined to pronounce ὅτι τοιοῦτος ἦν a marginal gloss on δῆλον, as once occurred to Hartman.