Plato, Republic, ed. John Burnet, 5.475

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

← Previous Next →

[475] καὶ ἑνὶ λόγῳ πάσας προφάσεις προφασίζεσθέ τε 475a καὶ πάσας φωνὰς ἀφίετε, ὥστε μηδένα ἀποβάλλειν τῶν ἀνθούντων ἐν ὥρᾳ.
εἰ βούλει, ἔφη, ἐπʼ ἐμοῦ λέγειν περὶ τῶν ἐρωτικῶν ὅτι οὕτω ποιοῦσι, συγχωρῶ τοῦ λόγου χάριν.
τί δέ; ἦν δʼ ἐγώ· τοὺς φιλοίνους οὐ τὰ αὐτὰ ταῦτα ποιοῦντας ὁρᾷς; πάντα οἶνον ἐπὶ πάσης προφάσεως ἀσπαζομένους;
καὶ μάλα.
καὶ μὴν φιλοτίμους γε, ὡς ἐγᾦμαι, καθορᾷς ὅτι, ἂν μὴ στρατηγῆσαι δύνωνται, τριττυαρχοῦσιν, κἂν μὴ ὑπὸ μειζόνων 475b καὶ σεμνοτέρων τιμᾶσθαι, ὑπὸ σμικροτέρων καὶ φαυλοτέρων τιμώμενοι ἀγαπῶσιν, ὡς ὅλως τιμῆς ἐπιθυμηταὶ ὄντες.
κομιδῇ μὲν οὖν.
τοῦτο δὴ φάθι ἢ μή· ἆρα ὃν ἄν τινος ἐπιθυμητικὸν λέγωμεν, παντὸς τοῦ εἴδους τούτου φήσομεν ἐπιθυμεῖν, ἢ τοῦ μέν, τοῦ δὲ οὔ;
παντός, ἔφη.
οὐκοῦν καὶ τὸν φιλόσοφον σοφίας φήσομεν ἐπιθυμητὴν εἶναι, οὐ τῆς μέν, τῆς δʼ οὔ, ἀλλὰ πάσης;
ἀληθῆ.
τὸν ἄρα περὶ τὰ μαθήματα δυσχεραίνοντα, ἄλλως τε 475c καὶ νέον ὄντα καὶ μήπω λόγον ἔχοντα τί τε χρηστὸν καὶ μή, οὐ φήσομεν φιλομαθῆ οὐδὲ φιλόσοφον εἶναι, ὥσπερ τὸν περὶ τὰ σιτία δυσχερῆ οὔτε πεινῆν φαμεν οὔτʼ ἐπιθυμεῖν σιτίων, οὐδὲ φιλόσιτον ἀλλὰ κακόσιτον εἶναι.
καὶ ὀρθῶς γε φήσομεν.
τὸν δὲ δὴ εὐχερῶς ἐθέλοντα παντὸς μαθήματος γεύεσθαι καὶ ἁσμένως ἐπὶ τὸ μανθάνειν ἰόντα καὶ ἀπλήστως ἔχοντα, τοῦτον δʼ ἐν δίκῃ φήσομεν φιλόσοφον· ἦ γάρ; 475d
καὶ ὁ Γλαύκων ἔφη· πολλοὶ ἄρα καὶ ἄτοποι ἔσονταί σοι τοιοῦτοι. οἵ τε γὰρ φιλοθεάμονες πάντες ἔμοιγε δοκοῦσι τῷ καταμανθάνειν χαίροντες τοιοῦτοι εἶναι, οἵ τε φιλήκοοι ἀτοπώτατοί τινές εἰσιν ὥς γʼ ἐν φιλοσόφοις τιθέναι, οἳ πρὸς μὲν λόγους καὶ τοιαύτην διατριβὴν ἑκόντες οὐκ ἂν ἐθέλοιεν ἐλθεῖν, ὥσπερ δὲ ἀπομεμισθωκότες τὰ ὦτα ἐπακοῦσαι πάντων χορῶν περιθέουσι τοῖς Διονυσίοις οὔτε τῶν κατὰ πόλεις οὔτε τῶν κατὰ κώμας ἀπολειπόμενοι. τούτους οὖν πάντας καὶ ἄλλους τοιούτων τινῶν 475e μαθητικοὺς καὶ τοὺς τῶν τεχνυδρίων φιλοσόφους φήσομεν;
οὐδαμῶς, εἶπον, ἀλλʼ ὁμοίους μὲν φιλοσόφοις.
τοὺς δὲ ἀληθινούς, ἔφη, τίνας λέγεις;
τοὺς τῆς ἀληθείας, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, φιλοθεάμονας.
καὶ τοῦτο μέν γʼ, ἔφη, ὀρθῶς· ἀλλὰ πῶς αὐτὸ λέγεις;
οὐδαμῶς, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, ῥᾳδίως πρός γε ἄλλον· σὲ δὲ οἶμαι ὁμολογήσειν μοι τὸ τοιόνδε.
τὸ ποῖον;
ἐπειδή ἐστιν ἐναντίον καλὸν αἰσχρῷ, δύο αὐτὼ εἶναι.

Republic. Plato. ed. John Burnet. Oxford. 1905.

Sponsored by Perseus Project, Tufts University.

Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.

Current edition Perseus

Πολιτεία (Greek) (Platonis Opera Tomus IV: Tetralogia VIII. Burnet, John, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905.)

Translations (1)

Republic Perseus (Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 5-6. Shorey, Paul, translator. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1935-37 (printing).) — 5.475 focus

[475] And, in short, there is no pretext 475a you do not allege and there is nothing you shrink from saying to justify you in not rejecting any who are in the bloom of their prime. If it is your pleasure, he said, to take me as your example of this trait in lovers, I admit it for the sake of the argument. Again, said I, do you not observe the same thing in the lovers of wine?¹ They welcome every wine on any pretext. They do, indeed. And so I take it you have observed that men who are covetous of honor,² if they can’t get themselves elected generals, are captains of a company.³ And if they can’t be honored 475b by great men and dignitaries, are satisfied with honor from little men and nobodies. But honor they desire and must have. Yes, indeed. Admit, then, or reject my proposition. When we say a man is keen about something, shall we say that he has an appetite for the whole class or that he desires only a part and a part not? The whole, he said. Then the lover of wisdom, too, we shall affirm, desires all wisdom, not a part and a part not. 475c Certainly. The student, then, who is finical⁴ about his studies, especially when he is young and cannot yet know by reason what is useful and what is not, we shall say is not a lover of learning or a lover of wisdom, just as we say that one who is dainty about his food is not really hungry, has not an appetite for food, and is not a lover of food, but a poor feeder. We shall rightly say so. But the one who feels no distaste in sampling every study, and who attacks his task of learning gladly and cannot get enough of it, him we shall justly pronounce the lover of wisdom, the philosopher, shall we not? To which Glaucon replied,⁵ 475d You will then be giving the name to a numerous and strange band, for all the lovers of spectacles⁶ are what they are, I fancy, by virtue of their delight in learning something. And those who always want to hear some new thing⁷ are a very queer lot to be reckoned among philosophers. You couldn’t induce them to attend a serious debate or any such entertainment,⁸ but as if they had farmed out their ears to listen to every chorus in the land, they run about to all the Dionysiac festivals,⁹ never missing one, either in the towns or in the country-villages. Are we to designate all these, then, and similar folk 475e and all the practitioners of the minor arts as philosophers? Not at all, I said; but they do bear a certain likeness¹⁰ to philosophers.
Whom do you mean, then, by the true philosophers? Those for whom the truth is the spectacle of which they are enamored,¹¹ said I. Right again,¹² said he; but in what sense do you mean it? It would be by no means easy to explain it to another, I said, but I think that you will grant me this. What? That since the fair and honorable is the opposite of the base and ugly, they are two.

Commentary

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

ἐπ’ ἐμοῦ : ‘in my case,’ ‘taking me as your example’: cf. VII 524 E ὡσπερ ἐπὶ τοῦ δακτύλου ἐλέγομεν and X 597 B.

τριττυαρχοῦσιν . If they cannot become (not ‘be’ as J. and C.) στρατηγοί, they are glad to be τριττύαρχοι. In time of war, a στρατηγός was commander in chief; next to him came the 10 ταξίαρχοι, or “commanders of the 10 τάξεις of hoplites corresponding to the 10 φυλαί”; under the ταξίαρχοι were the τριττύαρχοι, who each commanded the hoplites of a single τριττύς. There were in all 30 τριττύες, 3 in each tribe. See Gilbert's Gk. Const. Ant. pp. 209 f. and Sandys on Arist. Pol. Ath. 61 §§ 1—3.

τὸν ἄρα κτλ. Cf. Lach. 182 D ἀλλ’ ἔστι μὲν—χαλεπὸν λέγειν περὶ ὁτουοῦν μαθήματος, ὡς οὐ χρὴ μανθάνειν· πάντα γὰρ ἐπίστασθαι ἀγαθὸν δοκεῖ εἶναι and Xen. Mem. IV 1. 2.

καταμανθάνειν . Apelt conjectures καλὰ μανθάνειν, but the text is free from objection.

τοιοῦτοι εἶναι : i.e. φιλοθεάμονες εἶναι, not φιλόσοφοι εἶναι, as the English translators appear to suppose. Glauco has clearly indicated that he does not consider such men philosophers. But as it is the love of learning which produces them, they will have to be included, unless Socrates narrows his definition, as Glauco is in fact inviting him to do. σοφία in φιλο‐σοφία is presently defined so as to exclude sense-perception: hence ‘lovers of sights and sounds’ are not ‘lovers of knowledge.’ See also on ὁμοίους μὲν φιλοσόφοις in E.

πρὸς μὲν λόγους κτλ. Cf. Prot. 347 C , D with my note ad loc. ἐπακοῦσαι should be taken with ἀπομεμισθωκότες.

οὔτε ‐‐ κώμας . Hartman would read πόλιν for πόλεις, “verum non Atticis solis urbana et ruralia erant Dionysia” (Schneider, quoting Laws 637 A, B). In Attica rural Dionysia were held during the month of Poseidon in many κῶμαι, e.g. Eleusis, Phlya, etc. “Prizes were offered by the different demes, and companies seem to have been formed in Athens for the purpose of travelling about the country and taking part in these provincial competitions” (Haigh Att. Theatre pp. 42 ff. Cf. Mommsen Fest. d. Stadt Athen pp. 349—359).

τοὺς τῶν τεχνυδρίων : sc. μαθητικούς, or rather perhaps φίλους or the like, supplied from the termination of μαθητικούς. Cf. φιλοτέχνους in 476 A. Athenaeus (X 452 C) wrongly connects τούς with φιλοσόφους.

ὁμοίους μὲν φιλοσόφοις . μέν without δέ is common enough after ἀλλά, the antithesis being contained in the preceding negative: cf. Prot. 344 A and Crito 43 D. It is also found in other cases where the antithesis is easy to supply: cf. IV 421 A, V 472 D, and Heindorf on Theaet. 161 E . Such men resemble φιλόσοφοι as the shadow resembles the substance; for the objects of sense, which they love, are shadows or copies of the objects of knowledge. The phrase receives its fullest interpretation from the simile of the Cave in Book VII.

οὐδαμῶς ‐‐ τοιόνδε . Cf. 473 A note Socrates again appeals to Glauco as one Platonist to another. We are to infer that the Theory of Ideas was already familiar in the school of Plato.

δύο αὐτὼ εἶναι should not be translated ‘that they are two things’ (D. and V.), but simply ‘that they are two.’

Plato Republic 5.475

ed. John Burnet

Search the Perseus Catalog for:

Current edition Perseus

Commentary

Stable identifiers