Plato Republic 9.571

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.) — 9.571 focus

Notes on the current edition

Republic

1. For ἐν καλῷ cf. Soph. El. 348, Eurip. Heracleid. 971, Aristoph. Eccl. 321, Thesm. 292.
2. Cf. on 558 D.
3. For κολαζόμεναι cf. on 559 B, p. 293, note c.
4. Cf. Aristot. Eth. Nic. 102 b 5 ff.
ὁ δ’ ἀγαθὸς καὶ κακὸς ἥκιστα διάδηλοι καθ’ ὕπνον
, etc.; also his Problem. 957 a 21 ff. Cic. De divin. i. 29 translates this passage. Cf. further Herod. vi. 107, Soph. O.T. 981-982. Hazlitt writes
We are not hypocrites in our sleep,
a modern novelist, In sleep all barriers are down. The Freudians have at last discovered Plato’s anticipation of their main thesis. Cf. Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. p. 74:
It has been perhaps Freud’s most remarkable thesis that dreams are manifestations of this emergence of desires and memories from the unconscious into the conscious field.
The barriers of the Freudian unconscious are less tightly closed during sleep
sententiously observes an eminent modern psychologist. Cf. Valentine, The New Psychology of the Unconscious, p. xiii. and ibid. p. 93:
Freud refers to Plato’s view that the virtuous man does in actual life, but I believe he nowhere shows a knowledge of the following passage in the Republic. . . .
Cf. ibid. p. 95:
The germ of several aspects of the Freudian view of dreams, including the characteristic doctrine of the censor, was to be found in Plato. The Freudian view becomes at once distinctly more respectable.
Many of the ancients, like some superstitious moderns, exalted the unconscious which reveals itself in dreams, and made it the source of prophecy. Cf. commentators on Aesch. Eumen. 104, Pindar, fr. 131 (96) Loeb, p. 589:
εὕδει δὲ πρασσόντων μελέων, ἀτὰρ εὑδόντεσσιν ἐν πολλοῖς ὀνείροις | δείκνυσι τέρπνων ἐφέρποισαν χαλεπῶν τε κρίσιν
,
but it sleepeth while the limbs are active; yet to them that sleep, in many a dream it giveth presage of a decision of things delightful or doleful.
(Sandys, Loeb tr.) Cf. Pausan. ix. 23, Cic. De div. i. 30, Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, pp. 105-107 (ed. J. A. Symonds). Plato did not share these superstitions. Cf. the irony of Tim. 71 D-E, and my review of Stewart’s Myths of Plato, Journal of Philos. Psychol. and Scientific Methods, vol. iii., 1906, pp. 495-498.
5. The Greeks had no good word for instinct, but there are passages in Plato where this translation is justified by the context for ἦθος, φύσις and such words.
6. For the idiom οὐδὲν ἐλλείπει cf. Soph. Trach. 90, Demosth. liv. 34. Cf. also 602 D and on 593 A, p. 200, note b.
7. Cf. Browning, Bishop Blougram’s Apology,
And body gets its sop and holds its noise.
Plato was no ascetic, as some have inferred from passages in the Republic, Laws, Gorgias and Phaedo. Cf. Herbert L. Stewart, Was Plato an Ascetic? Philos. Re., 1915, pp. 603-613; Dean Inge, Christian Ethics, p. 90:
The asceticism of the true Platonist has always been sane moderate; the hallmark of Platonism is a combination of self-restraint and simplicity with humanism.

Commentary

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

οὐ ‐‐ διῃρῆσθαι . The psychological foundation of Tyranny, as well as of Oligarchy and Democracy, is Desire; but there are three varieties of Desire, and it is the lowest of these, viz. the Unnecessary and παράνομοι, which Tyranny represents. See VIII 558 D note, and cf. Nettleship Lect. and Rem. II pp. 310—314.

ἔτ’ ἐν καλῷ . See cr. n. ἐν καλῷ might well be written ἐγκαλῶ in early Greek script: see Meisterhans Gr. d. Att. Inschr.^{3} pp. 106—108. It is strange that Apelt ( Berl. Philol. Woch. for 1895 p. 965) should defend ἔτ’ ἐγκαλῶ: “soll ich (das Fehlende) noch einklagen” gives a poor sense. For ἐν καλῷ see Jebb on Soph. El. 384 νῦν γὰρ ἐν καλῷ (i.q. εὔκαιρον) φρονεῖν.

παράνομοι is more like our ‘unnatural’ than ‘lawless’: cf. Phaed. 113 E , Phaedr. 254 A , Eur. Med. 1121 ὦ δεινὸν ἔργον παράνομόν τ’ εἰργασμένη (addressed to Medea after she has slain her children), and the author of the Διαλέξεις ἠθικαί in Mullach Frag. Phil. Gr. I p. 546 τοὶ δὲ Ηέρσαι—καλὸν νομίζοντι καὶ τᾷ θυγατρὶ καὶ τᾷ ματρὶ καὶ τᾷ ἀδελφᾷ συνίμεν· τοὶ δὲ Ἕλλανες καὶ αἰσχρὰ καὶ παράνομα. The phrase οὐ κατὰ νόμον in Hdt. I 61 has the same connotation. Compare the ‘bestial’ states— θηριώδεις like θηριῶδες below in 571 C—described in Arist. Eth. Nic. VII 6. 1148^{b} 16 ff.

ἐγγίγνεσθαι παντί : ‘are born in,’ ‘form an original part of every one’ (D. and V.), not simply ‘arise in’ (as Bosan quet suggests, ignoring or forgetting ἀπαλλάττεσθαι and λείπεσθαι). Cf. ἐγγίγνεται in 572 A and ἑκάστῳ ἔνεστι 572 B. There is something of ‘the ape and tiger’ in every human being: see infra 588 C ff. These παράνομοι ἐπιθυμίαι doubtless represent “der verbrecherische Hang der menschlichen Natur” (Krohn Pl. St. p. 216), but we ought not to compare Plato's conception with the doctrine of ‘original sin,’ as Schleiermacher ( Platons Staat p. 601) and Susemihl ( Gen. Entw. II p. 238) appear to do. According to Plato, Man is an οὐράνιον φυτόν, οὐκ ἔγγειον.

λέγεις δὲ καὶ κτλ. ‘And pray what are these desires?’ lit. ‘and you mean by these desires, pray, which?’ καί “significat accessionem aliquam pro interrogantis voluntate necessariam vel maiorem in modum expetitam” (Schneider, who compares Polit. 291 A τίνας αὐτοὺς καὶ λέγεις ; Euthyd. 271 A and Heindorf ad loc.).

τὰς περὶ τὸν ὕπνον κτλ. “The cursed thoughts that Nature Gives way to in repose” ( Macbeth II 1. 8). We must however beware of supposing that Plato regards sleep as the time when the lowest part of soul normally and naturally asserts its sway. It is only in the vicious, and after acts of self-indulgence, that the beast within us pollutes our slumber: cf. Cic. de div. I 115 and II 119. To translate ὅταν by ‘when’ (D. and V.) is therefore misleading: it means ‘as often as.’ See 571 D note

ἰέναι “vix sanum videtur,” says Herwerden. The text is perfectly sound. Although the man is, as we say, sleeping, his θηριῶδες ‘has shaken off sleep’ and ‘seeks to go and gratify its instincts.’ The theory is that in dreams the part of the soul concerned is not asleep, but awake, and goes out to seek the object of its desire. Cf. 572 A note

μητρί τε κτλ. Cf. Soph. O. T. 981 f. πολλοὶ γὰρ ἤδη κἀν ὀνείρασιν βροτῶν | μητρὶ ξυνηυνάσθησαν, with Jebb ad loc.

ὡς οἴεται goes closely with μίγνυσθαι (‘intercourse, as it supposes, with’ etc.). ὡς Οἰδίπους (suggested by Förster Rhein. Mus. for 1885 p. 631) is a tasteless conjecture, which confuses reality and dreamland.

μιαιφονεῖν τε ὁτιοῦν : such as parricide and other unnatural murders ( φόνοι παράνομοι Phaed. 113 E ).

βρώματός τε κτλ. Cannibalism, etc.: cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. VII 6. 1148^{b} 20—25.

αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ . The genitive depends on ὑγιεινῶς ἔχῃ as in ἡδέως ἔχων ἐμαυτοῦ Alexis ap. Athen. X 419 C and other examples quoted by Blaydes on Ar. Lys. 1125 and Wasps 357.

ἑστιάσας κτλ. For the metaphor in ἑστιάσας see I 354 A note The general meaning of this passage is best illustrated from Tim. 45 E —46 A γενομένης δὲ πολλῆς μὲν ἡσυχίας βραχυόνειρος ὕπνος ἐμπίπτει, καταλειφθεισῶν δέ τινων κινήσεων μειζόνων, οἶαι καὶ ἐν οἵοις ἂν τόποις λείπωνται, τοιαῦτα καὶ τοσαῦτα παρέσχοντο ἀφομοιωθέντα ἐντὸς—φαντάσματα, with which Aristotle's theory closely agrees: see Eth. Nic. 113. 1102^{b} 7 ff. and Stewart's note. In like manner Zeno recommended his followers to gauge their moral ‘progress’ ( προκοπή) by the nature of their dreams ( Frag. 160 ed. Pearson). See also on 572 A.

τὸ ἐπιθυμητικὸν κτλ. In Cic. de div. II 119 the Pythagorean veto on beans is attributed to this motive. Plato's psychology in this passage recalls the myth of the Phaedrus: cf. especially 253 C— 256 E of that dialogue.

ἀλλ’ ἐᾷ κτλ. The bearing of this remarkable chapter on the theory of divination did not escape Cicero, who has translated, or rather paraphrased, from ὅταν 571 C to ἅπτεται 572 A: see his de div. I 60, 61. In Tim. 71 D — 72 B it is not, as here, the best part of soul which is said to perceive ‘past, present, or future’ in dreams, but ἡ περὶ τὸ ἧπαρ ψυχῆς μοῖρα κατῳκισμένη, the function of λογισμός being to interpret the visions seen by the ἐπιθυμητικόν in divination (whether ὄναρ or ὕπαρ ), ὅπῃ τι σημαίνει καὶ ὅτῳ μέλλοντος ἢ παρελθόντος ἢ παρόντος κακοῦ ἢἀγαθοῦ (ib. 72 A). In the present passage Plato appeals to the widespread popular view that the soul during sleep is freed from the trammels of the body, foresees the future, and has access to a region of truth denied, with few exceptions, to the waking mind: “viget enim animus in somnis, liberque est sensibus et omni impeditione curarum, iacente et mortuo paene corpore” (Cic. de div. I 115): see Pind. Frag. 131 3-5 Bergk τὸ γὰρ ἐστὶ μόνον | ἐκ θεῶν· εὕδει δὲ πρασσόντων μελέων, ἀτὰρ εὑδόντεσσιν ἐν πολλοῖς ὀνείροις | δείκνυσι τερπνῶν ἐφέρποισαν χαλεπῶν τε κρίσιν, Aesch: Ag. 179 ff. ( στάζει δ’ ἔν θ’ ὕπνῳ κτλ.), Eum. 104 εὕδουσα γὰρ φρὴν ὄμμασιν λαμπρύνεται and Xen. Cyr. VIII 7. 21 , and cf. generally Rohde Psyche^{2} I pp. 6 ff., II pp. 309 note 2 and 414. On this view the Stoic theory of divination by dreams was based (see Cic. l.c. I 110 ff.), and the same idea appears also in Aristotle Frag. 12 ὅταν—ἐν τῷ ὑπνοῦν καθ’ ἑαυτὴν γένηται ἡ ψυχή, τότε τὴν ἴδιαν ἀπολαβοῦσα φύσιν προμαντεύεταί τε καὶ προαγορεύει τὰ μέλλοντα. We may compare the lines of Wordsworth:

ὀρέγεσθαί του . Schneider and Stallbaum read ὀρέγεσθαι τοῦ αἰσθάνεσθαι with II (see cr. n.) and a majority of MSS; but such an expression would be heavy and unpleasing. Jowett and Campbell think “ καὶ αἰσθάνεσθαι should perhaps be struck out and the accent restored to του,” while Burnet omits καί, reading ὀρέγεσθαί του αἰσθάνεσθαι. The text, I believe, is sound, but cannot mean ‘to aspire further ( καὶ) to perceive something which it knows not’ (J. and C.). We may translate ‘to yearn after it knows not what and perceive what it knoweth not.’ Just as in evil dreams the baser part of soul reaches out after the object of its desires (571 C), so also the βέλτιστον, in these happier visions of the night, has longings which are all its own. ὀρέγεσθαι expresses the instinctive and unconscious turning of the soul towards the fountain of her being, and the waking counterpart of these visions of the night are just

ἡσυχάσας . ἡσυχάζω is used transitively only in the aorist: cf. Solon ap. Arist. Ath. Pol. 5. 3. Schleiermacher ( Platons Staat p. 601) thinks that Plato recognises here, and in ἐγείρας, ἑστιάσας, πραύνας, κινήσας etc., a fourth principle or ‘part’ of soul, that viz. which is able to excite or calm the others. Krohn on the other hand sees in this passage a sort of implicit recognition of the ‘ego’ as a separate and distinct entity ( Pl. St. p. 217). The latter view is nearer the truth (cf. V 462 C, D notes); but we ought not to press the words too much: cf. ἐπιεικεῖ τινι ἑαυτοῦ βίᾳ κατέχει ἄλλας κακὰς ἐπιθυμίας VIII 554 C, and III 411 B note

εἴδη . Other examples of this rare form of the dual in Plato are cited by Roeper de dual. usu Plat. p. 12.

μάλιστα : i.e. more than when he retires to sleep in any other condition. It is better, in view especially of the second half of this clause, to understand μάλιστα in this way, than to take the word generally, as if divination by dreams were the best way of grasping truth. Plato would hardly say this, nor indeed would the average Greek. See especially Tim. 71 D ff.

παράνομοι . 571 B note

βουλόμεθα . W. H. Thompson's ἐβουλόμεθα is unnecessary and even awkward with the present ἐστίν just following. The Greek means simply ‘but what we want to notice is this’ etc.

καὶ πάνυ belongs to μετρίοις (Schneider) rather than to δοκοῦσιν (J. and C.): ‘however virtuous we may some of us appear to be.’

οἷον ἔφαμεν ἐ=ναι . VIII 561 A— 562 A.

ἦν δέ που κτλ. : ‘he had been, you remember, produced, by having been brought up from early years’ etc. Socrates recalls the genesis of the democratical man (described in 558 C, 559 D ff.) before recalling his nature (in D below). Ast suggested γεγονὼς <καὶ> or γεγονώς <τε καὶ>, taking γεγονώς of birth. The correct interpretation was pointed out by Schneider.

παιδιᾶς ‐‐ καλλωπισμοῦ . Plato is less severe than in VIII 559 D— 562 A. He has since discovered a yet lower depth than merely democratical desire, and the democratical man is almost virtue itself compared with the tyrannical.

κομψοτέροις κτλ. VIII 559 D note

τὸ ἐκείνων εἶδος : ‘their kind of conduct.’ εἶδος is used almost like τρόπον, as in Thuc. II 41. 1, VI 77. 2 and VIII 56. 2. Ficinus has mores, but it does not follow that he read <*>θος, which is less suitable with ὁρμήσας .

κατέστη κτλ. VIII 561 A —562 A. The words ὡς ᾤετο qualify μετρίως: cf. 571 D.

οὔτε ἀνελεύθερον κτλ. : i.e. ‘in the mean between ὀλιγαρχία and ἀναρχία’ etc. (J. and C., comparing VIII 561 A and 561 E). ἔζη for ζῇ was conjectured by Ast, on account, no doubt, of ᾤετο. Schneider holds that ᾤετο refers to the time “quo primum ingrediens in istam vivendi rationem optimum factu statuebat omnibus pariter cupiditatibus obtemperare.” It is difficult to understand ᾤετο otherwise than as the imperfect of recapitulation; and I prefer to think that Plato, in spite of the inconsistency, wrote ζῇ rather than ἔζη in order to bring the δημοτικός before us as a living reality, so as to prepare for θὲς τοίνυν—τεθραμμένον. There is no MS authority for ἔζη.

περὶ τὸν τοιοῦτον : “anlangend den so beschaffenen” (Schneider), “touching such a person” (D. and V.).

τίθει κτλ. The present echoes τίθημι (cf. I 339 D, VII 514 B, 519 B, 527 B, VIII 564 A al.), and is in itself more appropriate than θές to introduce a succession of pictures. τοίνυν means ‘further’ (I 339 D note). The reference in ἅπερ καὶ —πατέρα is to VIII 559 E ff.

προστάτην κτλ. This overmastering passion becomes the champion of the drone-desires, exactly as the budding tyrant is the προστάτης of the proletariate: see VIII 564 D, 565 C ff. With ἕτοιμα διανεμομένων cf. τῶν ἑτοίμων ἀναλωτής VIII 552 B (J. and C.).