Plato Republic 4.419

Paul Shorey (Translator)

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Republic. Plato. Paul Shorey (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1935-37.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Republic (English) (Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 5-6. Shorey, Paul, translator. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1935-37 (printing).)

Editions (1)
Πολιτεία Perseus (Platonis Opera Tomus IV: Tetralogia VIII. Burnet, John, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.) — 4.419 focus

Notes on the current edition

Republic

1. Adeimantus’s criticism is made from the point of view of a Thrasymachus (343 A, 345 B) or a Callicles ( Gorgias 492 B-C or of Solon’s critics (cf. my note on Solon’s Trochaics to Phokos, Class. Phil . vol. vi. pp. 216 ff.). The captious objection is repeated by Aristotle, Politics 1264 b 15 ff., though he later (1325 a 9-10) himself uses Plato’s answer to it, and by moderns, as Herbert Spencer, Grote, Newman to some extent (Introduction to Aristotle’s Politics, p. 69.), and Zeller ( Aristotle, ii. p. 224) who has the audacity to say that
Plato demanded the abolition of all private possession and the suppression of all individual interests because it is only in the Idea or Universal that he acknowledges any title to true reality.
Leslie Stephen does not diverge so far from Plato when he says ( Science of Ethics, p. 397):
The virtuous men may be the very salt of the earth, and yet the discharge of a function socially necessary may involve their own misery.
By the happiness of the whole Plato obviously maens not an abstraction but the concrete whole of which Leslie Stephen is thinking. But from a higher point of view Plato eloquently argues (465 B-C) that duty fulfilled will yield truer happiness to the guardians than seeking their own advantage in the lower sense of the word.
2. Cf. 362 C, and Laws 909 D ff. where they are forbidden.

Commentary

Commentary on Plato, Republic (Plato. The Republic, Vol 1-2. Adam, James, editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902-1903.) focus

καὶ ὁ Ἀδείμαντος κτλ. Adimantus' objection is the dying echo of the view already advocated by Thrasymachus, that a ruler should rule for his own profit: cf. I 343 A, 344 B notes Socrates declines to discuss the question now, because it is irrelevant. In the further account of the communism of the ruling class, the difficulty solves itself. A higher happiness—so we are told— comes from self-victory than from indulgence (V 465 D ff.: cf. IX 583 C note). Compare the conversation of Socrates with Aristippus in Mem. II 1. 17 ff.

μή . On μή with the infinitive after verbs of saying see I 346 E note

δἰ ἑαυτούς : i.e. they have themselves to thank for not being εὐδαίμονες. Cf. V 465 E οὐκ οἶδα ὅτου λόγος ἡμῖν ἐπέπληξεν ὅτι τοὺς φύλακας οὐκ εὐδαίμονας ποιοῖμεν, οἶς ἐξὸν πάντα ἔχειν τὰ τῶν πολιτῶν οὐδὲν ἔχοιεν; and Solon 33 1 f. οὐκ ἔφυ Σόλων βαθύφρων οὐδὲ βουλήεις ἀνήρ· | ἐσθλὰ γὰρ θεοῦ διδόντος αὐτὸς οὐκ ἐδέξατο (he of his own initiative refused). διά is used exactly as in I 354 B. This view, which is Ast's, gives an excellent meaning, and Schneider, who at first proposed a subtler explanation, adopts it in his translation (“durch ihre eigene Schuld”). The various conjectures δή, αὐτοῖς ὧν (Stephanus), δὴ αὐτοὺς ὧν (Buttmann), αὐτοὺς δἰ ὧν (Herwerden) need no refutation.

ἄλλοι : not οἱ ἄλλοι (Bekker, Stallbaum, etc.), which might be taken as referring to the lower classes in Plato's State. Plato would not be likely to permit these to have οἰκίαι καλαὶ καὶ μεγάλαι. ἄλλοι means ‘other rulers,’ i.e. rulers in other cities; and κεκτημένοι belongs to οἱ δέ: ‘possessing, like other rulers, lands,’ etc. So Schneider, rightly. For the idiomatic position of οἷον ἄλλοι cf. VII 515 A, 528 B, IX 589 B al.

μισθωτοί is not otiose as Badham supposes. We should translate ‘just like paid auxiliaries.’ The emphasis on μισθωτοί prepares us for Socrates' correction when he says they do not, strictly speaking, even get μισθός.