Plato Republic 10.601

τοῖς ὀνόμασι καὶ ῥήμασιν . The dative is instrumental.

δοκεῖν ‐‐ δοκεῖν . The repetition “partim perspicuitatis studio, partim sermonis familiaris negligentiae cuidam tribuenda videtur” Schneider, who cites in illustration Laws 859 D, where there is a similar repetition of εἶναι. Other parallels will be found in Engelhardt Anac. Pl. Spec. III p. 44.

ῥυθμῷ καὶ ἁρμονίᾳ κτλ. Rhythm and Pitch are the two elements of Music: see III 398 D note The words αὐτὰ ταῦτα mean ‘just these’ and no more: viz. Metre and Music. For the sense cf. (with Ast) Isocrates Evag. 8—10.

ἔχειν . ἔχει was read till Bekker, apparently without any MS authority. The influence of φήσομεν is still felt.

ἐπεὶ γυμνωθέντα ‐‐ φαίνεται . Cf. Isocr. l.c. II ἢν γάρ τις τῶν ποιημάτων τῶν εὐδοκιμούντων τὰ μὲν ὀνόματα καὶ τὰς διανοίας καταλίπῃ, τὸ δὲ μέτρον διαλύσῃ, φανήσεται πολὺ καταδεέστερα τῆς δόξης ἧς νῦν ἔχομεν περὶ αὐτῶν and Pl. Gorg. 502 C , Symp. 205 C , Phaedr. 258 D ἐν μέτρῳ ὡς ποιητής, ἢ ἄνευ μέτρου ὡς ἰδιώτης. A cursory inspection of these passages of Plato might lead one to suppose that he defined poetry as no more than λόγος ἔχων μέτρον, but we can see from other passages in his writings that it was not the μέτρον, but the μῦθος which appeared to him to be the most essential part of poetry (e.g. Phaed. 61 B ἐννοήσας ὅτι τὸν ποιητὴν δέοι, εἴπερ μέλλοι ποιητὴς εἶναι, ποιεῖν μύθους ἀλλ’ οὐ λόγους: cf. Arist. Poet. 9. 1451^{b} 29 τὸν ποιητὴν μᾶλλον τῶν μύθων εἶναι δεῖ ποιητὴν ἢ τῶν μέτρων. See also Walter Gesch. d. Aesthetik im Alt. pp. 460, 463). Whether Plato would have spoken of a prose romance as a poem, is another question, and the passages to which I have referred make it unlikely that he would have done so. Aristotle seems to attach less importance than Plato to the metrical form: see Poet. 1. 1447^{b} 17 ff. οὐδὲν δὲ κοινόν ἐστιν Ὁμήρῳ καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλεῖ πλὴν τὸ μέτρον· διὸ τὸν μὲν ποιητὴν δίκαιον καλεῖν, τὸν δὲ φυσιολόγον μᾶλλον ἢ ποιητὴν κτλ. and ib. 9. 1451^{b} 2 ff.: but it is doubtful whether even Aristotle could have said with Sir Philip Sidney ‘One may be a poet without versifying,’ although he would certainly not quarrel with the converse statement that ‘one may be a versifier without poetry.’ See on the whole subject Butcher Aristotle's Theory of Poetry^{2} etc. pp. 143 ff. and Courthope Life in Poetry etc. pp. 68 ff.

τεθέασαι γάρ που . An example is afforded by III 393 B ff., but the reference is more general.

ἔοικεν ‐‐ προλίπῃ . Aristotle cites this as an example of an εἰκών ( Rhet. III 4. 1406^{b} 36 ff.).

ἴθι δή, τόδε ἄθρει κτλ. Plato has already proved that Imitation is ‘third from Truth’ ἐκ τῆς εἰωθυίας μεθόδου (596 A), i.e. from the ontological standpoint provided by his own Ideal Theory. The following argument takes up a different standpoint, according to which knowledge is defined as ἐμπειρία or practical familiarity (601 C, D, 602 A). The attitude assumed throughout this section resembles in some respects that of the historical Socrates (601 D note). Can the two points of view be reconciled? Bosanquet makes an interesting attempt to do so (pp. 379, 389 ff.), but his misconception (as it seems to me) of Plato's Ideas renders his conclusions less valuable than they might otherwise have been. Krohn ( Pl. St. p. 255) professes himself unable to effect a reconciliation. We must admit that Plato himself does not, as a matter of fact, endeavour in this passage to connect the two arguments. Had he chosen to make the effort, I think a careful study of Euthyd. 288 E — 290 D and Crat. 390 B —E will shew on what lines he might have proceeded (see on ἐμπειρότατον in 601 D), but it is safer to suppose that he has shifted his ground, and is applying a new and less strictly scientific μέθοδος to shew that the Imitator is third from knowledge, as Imitation is from truth.

ἡμίσεως ‐‐ ῥηθέν . See on 601 E. ἡμίσεως or ἡμισέως, in whichever way accented, is surely a full adverb, and not “the genitive used adverbially” (J. and C.) like ὀλίγου, πολλοῦ, etc., although there is good authority for the genitive in ‐εως from ἥμισυς (see Lobeck Phryn. p. 247). Stephanus preferred ἡμισέως: but the adverb follows the accent of the genitive plural ( ἡμίσεων), and ἡμίσεως· ἐπίρρημα. Πλάτων Πολιτείας ἕκτῳ (Antiatt. in Bekk. Anecd. 98. 30)—a note which certainly refers to this passage: see Introd. § 4—supports the MS accentuation (Schneider). Liebhold's conjecture ἐπὶ μιμήσεως needs no refutation.

ἐπίσταται . See on ἐμπειρότατον in D below.

οὐκοῦν ἀρετὴ ‐‐ πεφυκός . The historical Socrates was in the habit of testing the beauty, excellence etc. of an object by the degree in which it fulfilled its function or purpose: see especially Xen. Symp. 5. 4 ff. together with other passages cited by Krohn Pl. St. p. 369. Plato himself adopts the same standard in I 352 E—353 E and elsewhere.

ἐμπειρότατον . Throughout the whole of this argument it is held that he who uses, e.g. an instrument, has knowledge of it ( ἐπίσταται C, εἰδώς and εἰδότι E, εἰδότος and ἐπιστήμην etc. 602 A), and Plato says nothing to make us attach any metaphysical significance to the word ‘knowledge,’ which he often employs throughout his writings without any suggestion of the Ideas (e.g. II 374 D, IV 422 C). There is no doubt a certain sense in which —if we have regard to Crat. 390 B ff. and Euthyd. 288 E ff.— ὁ χρώμενος has, not indeed scientific knowledge of the Idea, but something analogous thereto. Dialectic, which is the scientific Knowledge of Ideas, is κατ’ ἐξοχήν the χρωμένη ἐπιστήμη, the Science which alone knows in what respect each thing is good and useful, and uses things accordingly (cf. Euthyd. 290 C , Crat. 390 C ), proving itself thereby the royal or kingly science (VI 505 A note). Thus the man who uses a single instrument correctly occupies the same relative position in regard to that object which the dialectician occupies in regard to the totality of things, and is, in his own small way, a king compared with the maker and imitator of the instrument. Cf. Bosanquet p. 390. But if Plato had intended us to pursue this vein, he would, I think, have furnished us with some hints in the course of the argument itself. See also on 601 B.

οἷα ‐‐ χρῆται : ‘what are the good or bad points of the instrument he uses when he uses it,’ lit. ‘what good or bad things that which he uses does’—we cannot like the Greeks say ‘makes’— ‘in use.’ This interpretation, which is Schleiermacher's (“wie sich das was er gebraucht gut oder schlecht zeigt in Gebrauch”), seems to me the natural and obvious meaning of the Greek. In agreement, apparently, with Schneider's version, Campbell proposes “what specimens of that which he (the user) employs, the maker makes that are good or bad in actual use,” remarking that “the correlation of singular and plural arises from the collocation of particular and universal. The instrument (sing.) is good in some cases, but bad in others (plur.).” Campbell's solution has the advantage of referring ποιεῖ to ποιητής, and corresponds more exactly with χρηστῶν καὶ πονήρῶν αὐλῶν in E. The grammatical difficulty is however, I think, insuperable. If the subject to ποιεῖ must be ποιητής, it would even be easier to make ᾧ χρῆται= τούτῳ ὃς χρῆται—a rare form of attraction illustrated on V 465 D: but there is a certain elegance in applying ποιεῖ also to the instrument, which is in its way a ‘maker too’ and one by whose ἔργα the other maker must be guided. Herwerden remarks “expectabam potius οἷα ἀγαθὰ ἢ κακὰ (sc. ἐστι) ἐν τῇ χρείᾳ ὧν (i.e. τῶν οἷς ) κτλ.” It is well that his expectations have been disappointed.

ἐξαγγέλλει . Bekker and others write ἐξαγγελεῖ both here and in E below. The present echoes ἄγγελον γίγνεσθαι, and I agree with Schneider that change is needless, in spite of ἐπιτάξει and ὑπηρετήσει: cf. κεῖσθαι—ἔσεσθαι V 478 D. For the meaning cf. Crat. 390 B .

οἳ ἂν ὑπηρετῶσιν κτλ. I take this clause as a sort of parenthetical adjunct or characterisation of αὐλοποιῷ: ‘thus the fluteplayer informs the flutemaker about his flutes—the persons who are his servants in the art of fluteplaying— and he will give orders how they should be made, and the flutemaker will serve him.’ The liberty is great, but hardly greater than Plato allows himself elsewhere in the Republic: cf. III 411 C ἀκράχολοι οὖν καὶ ὀργίλοι ἀντὶ θυμοειδοῦς γεγένηνται, δυσκολίας ἔμπλεοι, IV 426 C ὡς ἀποθανουμένους, ὃς ἂν τοῦτο δρᾷ, VI 496 C, D, I 347 A note: and the break afforded by the interposition of this clause makes the difference of tense between ἐξαγγέλλει and ἐπιτάξει seem easy and natural. To the ordinary interpretation, which makes αὐλῶν the antecedent to οἳ ἄν, it is a serious and I think fatal objection that the verb ὑπηρετεῖν is used immediately afterwards of the flutemaker in a way which seems to imply that it has been used of him before: and it is also very strange and unnatural to speak of flutes as ὑπηρέται ἐν τῷ αὐλεῖν. Jowett's translation “which of his flutes is satisfactory to the performer,” though Schleiermacher, Schneider and Prantl take much the same view, cannot be fairly extracted from οἳ ἂν ὑπηρετῶσιν. Many inferior MSS read οἷα for οἵ: and Richards conjectures οἷα ποιοῦσιν or οἷα ἀποτελοῦσιν, but the change is much too great. I once suggested ὑπερέχωσιν for ὑπηρετῶσιν, but now believe the foregoing interpretation to be right.

ἐξαγγέλλει . See on ἐξαγγέλλει in D above.

πιστεύων . In the language of the Line, his state of mind is πίστις (cf. πίστιν ὀρθήν below): see App. I to Book VII. In 596 B on the other hand the δημιουργὸς πρὸς τὴν ἰδέαν βλέπει. Plato does not try to reconcile the two points of view (601 D note): but he might say that the objective reality of that which guides the δημιουργός is always the Idea, whether he acts on his own initiative or under the direction of another. See on 596 B. It should be noted that Poetry and the other imitative arts are placed higher, and not lower, than δημιουργία in Phaedr. 248 E . Here, however, Plato's purpose is a narrower one, viz. by means of an illustration derived from the mechanical arts to complete the proof—hitherto only ἡμίσεως ῥηθέν 601 C—that the Imitator does not εἰδὼς ποιεῖν, as many assert (598 E), but is in reality third from knowledge.