Plato, Republic, ed. John Burnet, 8.556

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[556]
οἱ δὲ δὴ χρηματισταὶ ἐγκύψαντες, οὐδὲ δοκοῦντες τούτους ὁρᾶν, τῶν λοιπῶν τὸν ἀεὶ ὑπείκοντα ἐνιέντες ἀργύριον τιτρώσκοντες, καὶ τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκγόνους τόκους πολλαπλασίους 556a κομιζόμενοι, πολὺν τὸν κηφῆνα καὶ πτωχὸν ἐμποιοῦσι τῇ πόλει.
πῶς γάρ, ἔφη, οὐ πολύν;
καὶ οὔτε γʼ ἐκείνῃ, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, τὸ τοιοῦτον κακὸν ἐκκαόμενον ἐθέλουσιν ἀποσβεννύναι, εἴργοντες τὰ αὑτοῦ ὅπῃ τις βούλεται τρέπειν, οὔτε τῇδε, ᾗ αὖ κατὰ ἕτερον νόμον τὰ τοιαῦτα λύεται.
κατὰ δὴ τίνα;
ὃς μετʼ ἐκεῖνόν ἐστι δεύτερος καὶ ἀναγκάζων ἀρετῆς ἐπιμελεῖσθαι τοὺς πολίτας. ἐὰν γὰρ ἐπὶ τῷ αὑτοῦ κινδύνῳ 556b τὰ πολλά τις τῶν ἑκουσίων συμβολαίων προστάττῃ συμβάλλειν, χρηματίζοιντο μὲν ἂν ἧττον ἀναιδῶς ἐν τῇ πόλει, ἐλάττω δʼ ἐν αὐτῇ φύοιτο τῶν τοιούτων κακῶν οἵων νυνδὴ εἴπομεν.
καὶ πολύ γε, ἦ δʼ ὅς.
νῦν δέ γʼ, ἔφην ἐγώ, διὰ πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα τοὺς μὲν δὴ ἀρχομένους οὕτω διατιθέασιν ἐν τῇ πόλει οἱ ἄρχοντες· σφᾶς δὲ αὐτοὺς καὶ τοὺς αὑτῶν—ἆρʼ οὐ τρυφῶντας μὲν τοὺς νέους καὶ ἀπόνους καὶ πρὸς τὰ τοῦ σώματος καὶ πρὸς 556c τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς, μαλακοὺς δὲ καρτερεῖν πρὸς ἡδονάς τε καὶ λύπας καὶ ἀργούς;
τί μήν;
αὑτοὺς δὲ πλὴν χρηματισμοῦ τῶν ἄλλων ἠμεληκότας, καὶ οὐδὲν πλείω ἐπιμέλειαν πεποιημένους ἀρετῆς ἢ τοὺς πένητας;
οὐ γὰρ οὖν.
οὕτω δὴ παρεσκευασμένοι ὅταν παραβάλλωσιν ἀλλήλοις οἵ τε ἄρχοντες καὶ οἱ ἀρχόμενοι ἢ ἐν ὁδῶν πορείαις ἢ ἐν ἄλλαις τισὶ κοινωνίαις, ἢ κατὰ θεωρίας ἢ κατὰ στρατείας, ἢ σύμπλοι γιγνόμενοι ἢ συστρατιῶται, ἢ καὶ ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς 556d κινδύνοις ἀλλήλους θεώμενοι μηδαμῇ ταύτῃ καταφρονῶνται οἱ πένητες ὑπὸ τῶν πλουσίων, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ἰσχνὸς ἀνὴρ πένης, ἡλιωμένος, παραταχθεὶς ἐν μάχῃ πλουσίῳ ἐσκιατροφηκότι, πολλὰς ἔχοντι σάρκας ἀλλοτρίας, ἴδῃ ἄσθματός τε καὶ ἀπορίας μεστόν, ἆρʼ οἴει αὐτὸν οὐχ ἡγεῖσθαι κακίᾳ τῇ σφετέρᾳ πλουτεῖν τοὺς τοιούτους, καὶ ἄλλον ἄλλῳ παραγγέλλειν, ὅταν ἰδίᾳ συγγίγνωνται, ὅτι ἇνδρες ἡμέτεροι· 556e εἰσὶ γὰρ οὐδέν;
εὖ οἶδα μὲν οὖν, ἔφη, ἔγωγε, ὅτι οὕτω ποιοῦσιν.
οὐκοῦν ὥσπερ σῶμα νοσῶδες μικρᾶς ῥοπῆς ἔξωθεν δεῖται προσλαβέσθαι πρὸς τὸ κάμνειν, ἐνίοτε δὲ καὶ ἄνευ τῶν ἔξω στασιάζει αὐτὸ αὑτῷ, οὕτω δὴ καὶ ἡ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἐκείνῳ διακειμένη πόλις ἀπὸ σμικρᾶς προφάσεως, ἔξωθεν ἐπαγομένων ἢ τῶν ἑτέρων ἐξ ὀλιγαρχουμένης πόλεως συμμαχίαν ἢ τῶν ἑτέρων ἐκ δημοκρατουμένης, νοσεῖ τε καὶ αὐτὴ αὑτῇ μάχεται, ἐνίοτε δὲ καὶ ἄνευ τῶν ἔξω στασιάζει;

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

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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).) — 8.556 focus

[556] But these money-makers with down-bent heads,¹ pretending not even to see² them, but inserting the sting of their money³ into any of the remainder who do not resist, and harvesting from them in interest as it were a manifold progeny of the parent sum, 556a foster the drone and pauper element in the state. They do indeed multiply it, he said. And they are not willing to quench the evil as it bursts into flame either by way of a law prohibiting a man from doing as he likes with his own,⁴ or in this way, by a second law that does away with such abuses. What law? The law that is next best, and compels the citizens to pay heed to virtue.⁵ For if a law commanded that most voluntary contracts⁶ should be at the contractor’s risk, 556b the pursuit of wealth would be less shameless in the state and fewer of the evils of which we spoke just now would grow up there. Much fewer, he said. But as it is, and for all these reasons, this is the plight to which the rulers in the state reduce their subjects, and as for themselves and their off-spring, do they not make the young spoiled⁷ wantons averse to toil of body and mind, 556c and too soft to stand up against pleasure and pain,⁸ and mere idlers? Surely. And do they not fasten upon themselves the habit of neglect of everything except the making of money, and as complete an indifference to virtue as the paupers exhibit? Little they care. And when, thus conditioned, the rulers and the ruled are brought together on the march, in wayfaring, or in some other common undertaking, either a religious festival, or a campaign, or as shipmates or fellow-soldiers 556d or, for that matter, in actual battle, and observe one another, then the poor are not in the least scorned by the rich, but on the contrary, do you not suppose it often happens that when a lean, sinewy, sunburnt⁹ pauper is stationed in battle beside a rich man bred in the shade, and burdened with superfluous flesh,¹⁰ and sees him panting and helpless¹¹—do you not suppose he will think that such fellows keep their wealth by the cowardice¹² of the poor, and that when the latter are together in private, 556e one will pass the word to another our men are good for nothing? Nay, I know very well that they do, said he. And just as an unhealthy body requires but a slight impulse¹³ from outside to fall into sickness, and sometimes, even without that, all the man is one internal war, in like manner does not the corresponding type of state need only a slight occasion,¹⁴ the one party bringing in¹⁵ allies from an oligarchical state, or the other from a democratic, to become diseased and wage war with itself, and sometimes even 557a apart from any external impulse faction arises¹⁶?

Commentary

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

οὔτε γε κτλ. καί appears before οὔτε in ΠΞ q and a majority of MSS, but the reading of A is, I now think, right. We should translate ‘At all events, said I, they are unwilling to extinguish this kind of mischief when it is beginning to break into a flame, either by preventing’ etc. If they quenched it in its earlier stages, then the πτωχοί would not be πολλοί: and πολύν bears the emphasis in both the previous sentences. For this use of γε see 559 B note, and cf. IX 581 C and (with Schneider) Isocr. Paneg. 153. With ἐκκαόμενον cf. Ar. Peace 1132 . D. and V. understand the word of ‘cauterizing,’ wrongly, as ἀποσβεννύναι shews.

ὅπῃ . I formerly, with two inferior MSS, Bekker and Ast, read ὅποι, which is certainly more exact: see the examples cited by Blaydes on Ar. Clouds 858 τὰς δ’ ἐμβάδας ποῖ τέτροφας; The verb βούλεται is however treated as more than a mere auxiliary, and the relative accommodated to it by a species of attraction, even at the cost of sacrificing something of the peculiar force of τρέπειν. Translate ‘to dispose of one's property as one likes.’

ἕτερον νόμον . Plato's language here and in ὃς μετ’ ἐκεῖνόν ἐστι δεύτερος seems to imply that such a law would not be altogether a novelty in Greece. According to Theophrastus ( Frag. 97. 5 Wimmer=Stob. Flor. 44. 22), it found a place among the laws of Charondas: ἐὰν δέ τις πιστεύσῃ, μὴ εἶναι δίκην· αὐτὸν γὰρ αἴτιον εἶναι τῆς ἀδικίας. Plato makes a similar provision in Laws 742 C, 849 E, 915 E.

τοὺς μὲν δὴ κτλ. μέν balances δέ after σφᾶς, and should not be taken with δή in the ordinary sense of the collocation μὲν δή: so that there is no reason to omit δή (with Ξ and two other MSS) on the ground that μὲν δή comes too late in the sentence. δή “priori membro dilatando inservit et vinculi per μέν iniecti nexum relaxans alterum membrum ut nova interrogatione instructum minus miremur efficit” (Schneider, comparing Laws 751 E).

ἆρ’ οὐ τρυφῶντας κτλ. Note the usual Platonic chiasmus.

παραβάλλωσιν : ‘come alongside,’ originally perhaps a nautical expression (J. and C.), as in Arist. de gen. anim. III 11. 763^{a} 31. The usage occurs again in Lys. 203 B , and tolerably often in Aristotle.

ἢ καὶ κτλ. ὅταν extends its influence to καταφρονῶνται and ἴδῃ. On θεώμενοι κτλ. Schneider remarks “post verba ἀλλήλους θεώμενοι exspectabatur μηδαμῇ ὡς πρότερον περὶ ἀλλήλων διανοῶνται, vel tale quid, quod ad utrosque se invicem conspicientes pertineret; cuius loco statim divisione facta quid iam de pauperibus divites, de divitibus pauperes sentiant, infertur. Cuius non inconsequentiae, sed breviloquentiae significandae causa supra post θεώμενοι comma—sustuli.” The effect is analogous to that produced by so-called partitive apposition (IV 431 A note), of which idiom a somewhat similar extension occurs in V 465 C, where see note. Richards suspects corruption, proposing to read either (1) θεωμένων and perhaps also ἢ κἄν or ἢ καὶ <ἐάν> instead of ἢ καί, or (2) simply to insert καί before μηδαμῇ. The second proposal is neat and scholarly; but καί was unlikely to disappear, and Plato's rapidity of thought and style renders him particularly liable to grammatical and other irregularities in his more spirited and dramatic passages: cf. VI 488 C, D, VII 531 A, and infra 558 A. See also on 549 D above.

ταύτῃ is emphatic, implying that it is otherwise when danger does not threaten.

πολλὰς κτλ. : ‘with quantities of alien fat about him’ ( viel fremdes Fleisch an sich habend, Schneider), ‘cumbered with much fat.’ παχεῖς ‘bloated’ was, it may be remembered, a nickname for oligarchs: see Gilbert Gr. Staatsalt. II p. 275 note 2 and Neil's edition of Ar. Knights App. II p. 209. ἀλλοτρίας is ‘not his own,’ i.e. no real part of him, and hence useless, superfluous. As Graser points out ( Spec. advers. in serm. Pl. p. 91), it is Homer's γναθμοῖσιν ἀλλοτρίοισι ( Od. XX 347) which is the source of this and other kindred uses of ἀλλότριος, e.g. Thuc. I 70. 6 and Isocr. Faneg. 86. Hermann thinks the meaning is that he has grown fat at the expense of others, like the drone. This explanation is less pointed, and the drone represents not the rich oligarch, but the πτωχός (555 E). With the feeling of this passage cf. Plut. Apoph. Reg. et Imp. 192 D τοῖς πολυσάρκοις ἐπολέμει ( Ἐπαμεινώνδας) καί τινα τοιοῦτον ἀπήλασε τῆς στρατιᾶς, εἰπὼν ὅτι μόλις αὐτοῦ σκέπουσι τὴν γαστέρα ἀσπίδες τρεῖς ἢ τέσσαρες.

ἄνδρες ‐‐ οὐδέν . ‘We have them at our mercy: for they're good for nothing.’ ἄνδρες ἡμέτεροι is virtually an exhortation to rise in revolt: hence παραγγέλλειν. The omission of the article heightens the dramatic effect: cf. X 617 D. ἡμέτεροι has a colloquial ring (‘they are ours’). A kindred meaning, but without any colloquial touch, appears in Xen. Cyr. II 3. 2 (quoted by Schneider Addit. p. 65) ἢν μὲν ἡμεῖς νικῶμεν—δῆλον ὅτι οἵ τε πολέμιοι ἡμέτεροι καὶ τὰ τῶν πολεμίων ἀγαθὰ πάντα: cf. also VII 5. 73. This interpretation, which Schneider finally suggested, has the support of A, II and other MSS. Baiter's ἄνδρες ἡμέτεροι εἰσὶ παρ’ οὐδέν has found considerable favour, and gives a fair sense, but παρ’ οὐδέν (for which see Jebb on Soph. Ant. 466 ) appears to me unpleasantly weak. ἄνδρες ἡμέτεροι εἰσὶν οὐδέν ( q and others) is intrinsically better (cf. 562 D), and may be right, but the intrusion of γάρ in the best MSS remains a difficulty, and παραγγέλλειν (as in Baiter's reading) is shorn perhaps of its full force. It is on the whole easier, I think, to understand ἡμέτεροι as I do than to explain the insertion of γάρ in our two oldest and best MSS.

οὐκοῦν ὥσπερ κτλ. Cf. Soph. O. T. 961 σμικρὰ παλαιὰ σώματ’ εὐνάζει ῥοπή. The Platonic simile is imitated by Arist. Pol. Z 6. 1320^{b} 33 ff. and may also, as Stallbaum thinks, have been in Demosthenes' mind when he wrote Ol. II 21.

ἔξωθεν ἐπαγομένων κτλ. A familiar feature in the history of Greek revolutions: cf. Whibley Gk Olig. p. 52 and (for examples) Gilbert Gr. Staatsalt. II passim.

Plato Republic 8.556

ed. John Burnet

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