Plato, Republic, ed. John Burnet, 9.579

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[579] 579a
οὐκοῦν ἀναγκάζοιτο ἄν τινας ἤδη θωπεύειν αὐτῶν τῶν δούλων καὶ ὑπισχνεῖσθαι πολλὰ καὶ ἐλευθεροῦν οὐδὲν δεόμενος, καὶ κόλαξ αὐτὸς ἂν θεραπόντων ἀναφανείη;
πολλὴ ἀνάγκη, ἔφη, αὐτῷ, ἢ ἀπολωλέναι.
τί δʼ, εἰ καὶ ἄλλους, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, ὁ θεὸς κύκλῳ κατοικίσειεν γείτονας πολλοὺς αὐτῷ, οἳ μὴ ἀνέχοιντο εἴ τις ἄλλος ἄλλου δεσπόζειν ἀξιοῖ, ἀλλʼ εἴ πού τινα τοιοῦτον λαμβάνοιεν, ταῖς ἐσχάταις τιμωροῖντο τιμωρίαις; 579b
ἔτι ἄν, ἔφη, οἶμαι, μᾶλλον ἐν παντὶ κακοῦ εἴη, κύκλῳ φρουρούμενος ὑπὸ πάντων πολεμίων.
ἆρʼ οὖν οὐκ ἐν τοιούτῳ μὲν δεσμωτηρίῳ δέδεται ὁ τύραννος, φύσει ὢν οἷον διεληλύθαμεν, πολλῶν καὶ παντοδαπῶν φόβων καὶ ἐρώτων μεστός· λίχνῳ δὲ ὄντι αὐτῷ τὴν ψυχὴν μόνῳ τῶν ἐν τῇ πόλει οὔτε ἀποδημῆσαι ἔξεστιν οὐδαμόσε, οὔτε θεωρῆσαι ὅσων δὴ καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ἐλεύθεροι ἐπιθυμηταί εἰσιν, καταδεδυκὼς δὲ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τὰ πολλὰ ὡς γυνὴ ζῇ, 579c φθονῶν καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις πολίταις, ἐάν τις ἔξω ἀποδημῇ καί τι ἀγαθὸν ὁρᾷ;
παντάπασιν μὲν οὖν, ἔφη.
οὐκοῦν τοῖς τοιούτοις κακοῖς πλείω καρποῦται ἀνὴρ ὃς ἂν κακῶς ἐν ἑαυτῷ πολιτευόμενος, ὃν νυνδὴ σὺ ἀθλιώτατον ἔκρινας, τὸν τυραννικόν, ὡς μὴ ἰδιώτης καταβιῷ, ἀλλὰ ἀναγκασθῇ ὑπό τινος τύχης τυραννεῦσαι καὶ ἑαυτοῦ ὢν ἀκράτωρ ἄλλων ἐπιχειρήσῃ ἄρχειν, ὥσπερ εἴ τις κάμνοντι σώματι καὶ ἀκράτορι ἑαυτοῦ μὴ ἰδιωτεύων ἀλλʼ ἀγωνιζόμενος 579d πρὸς ἄλλα σώματα καὶ μαχόμενος ἀναγκάζοιτο διάγειν τὸν βίον.
παντάπασιν, ἔφη, ὁμοιότατά τε καὶ ἀληθέστατα λέγεις, ὦ Σώκρατες.
οὐκοῦν, ἦν δʼ ἐγώ, ὦ φίλε Γλαύκων, παντελῶς τὸ πάθος ἄθλιον, καὶ τοῦ ὑπὸ σοῦ κριθέντος χαλεπώτατα ζῆν χαλεπώτερον ἔτι ζῇ ὁ τυραννῶν;
κομιδῇ γʼ, ἔφη.
ἔστιν ἄρα τῇ ἀληθείᾳ, κἂν εἰ μή τῳ δοκεῖ, ὁ τῷ ὄντι τύραννος τῷ ὄντι δοῦλος τὰς μεγίστας θωπείας καὶ δουλείας 579e καὶ κόλαξ τῶν πονηροτάτων, καὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας οὐδʼ ὁπωστιοῦν ἀποπιμπλάς, ἀλλὰ πλείστων ἐπιδεέστατος καὶ πένης τῇ ἀληθείᾳ φαίνεται, ἐάν τις ὅλην ψυχὴν ἐπίστηται θεάσασθαι, καὶ φόβου γέμων διὰ παντὸς τοῦ βίου, σφαδᾳσμῶν τε καὶ ὀδυνῶν πλήρης, εἴπερ τῇ τῆς πόλεως διαθέσει ἧς ἄρχει ἔοικεν. ἔοικεν δέ· ἦ γάρ;
καὶ μάλα, ἔφη.

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).) — 9.579 focus

[579] 579a And would he not forthwith find it necessary to fawn upon some of the slaves and make them many promises and emancipate them, though nothing would be further from his wish¹? And so he would turn out to be the flatterer of his own servants. He would certainly have to, he said, or else perish. But now suppose, said I, that god established round about him numerous neighbors who would not tolerate the claim of one man to be master of another,² but would inflict the utmost penalties on any such person on whom they could lay their hands. I think, he said, 579b that his plight would be still more desperate, encompassed by nothing but enemies. And is not that the sort of prison-house in which the tyrant is pent, being of a nature such as we have described and filled with multitudinous and manifold terrors and appetites? Yet greedy³ and avid of spirit as he is, he only of the citizens may not travel abroad or view any of the sacred festivals⁴ that other freemen yearn to see, but he must live for the most part cowering in the recesses of his house like a woman,⁵ 579c envying among the other citizens anyone who goes abroad and sees any good thing. Most certainly, he said.
And does not such a harvest of ills⁶ measure the difference between the man who is merely ill-governed in his own soul, the man of tyrannical temper, whom you just now judged to be most miserable, and the man who, having this disposition, does not live out his life in private station but is constrained by some ill hap to become an actual tyrant, and while unable to control himself⁷ attempts to rule over others, as if a man with a sick and incontinent body⁸ should not live the private life but should be compelled 579d to pass his days in contention and strife with other persons? Your analogy is most apt and true,⁹ Socrates, he said. Is not that then, dear Glaucon, said I, a most unhappy experience in every way? And is not the tyrant’s life still worse than that which was judged by you to be the worst? Precisely so, he said. Then it is the truth, though some may deny it,¹⁰ that the real tyrant is really enslaved 579e to cringings and servitudes beyond compare, a flatterer of the basest men, and that, so far from finding even the least satisfaction for his desires, he is in need of most things, and is a poor man in very truth, as is apparent if one knows how to observe a soul in its entirety; and throughout his life he teems with terrors and is full of convulsions and pains, if in fact he resembles the condition of the city which he rules; and he is like it, is he not? 580a Yes, indeed, he said.

Commentary

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

αὐτῶν τῶν δούλων . “Quum ingenui desint, a quibus auxilium petat, nonnullis ex servorum ipsorum, quos timet, numero adulari cogitur” (Schneider). This explanation, which Vermehren also approves ( Pl. Stud. p. 114), exactly meets the case, and there is no reason either to change αὐτῶν to αὖ (with Stephanus) or to delete τῶν δούλων (with Ast and Herwerden).

οὐδὲν δεόμενος : ‘when he needn't.’ He is under no obligation to set them free: why then should he make them a present of their freedom? The innuendo is in Plato's neatest style. For the language cf. (with Schneider) Plut. Tib. Gracch. 21. 2 δείσασα περὶ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς ἡ βουλὴ ψηφίζεται μηδὲν δεομένη πέμπειν αὐτὸν εἰς Ἀσίαν. The conjecture οὐδὲν δεομένους (Groen v. Prinsterer Prosop. Plat. p. 211, Ast, and Herwerden, who appeals in vain to Plut. Cato Maior 12. 3, Dem. 11. 9, and Isocr. Areop. 25) is, as Schneider shews, inept; for if the slaves do not need to be set free, because they are practically free already, “ne ero quidem opus est ut ad eos coercendos illam aliamve ineat rationem.”

ἄλλους ‐‐ γείτονας . These freeborn neighbours in Plato's simile represent surrounding independent States, who detest tyranny, and help the tyrant's subjects. See Newman's Politics of Aristotle II p. 315.

ὑπὸ πάντων πολεμίων : ‘by none but enemies’: cf. πᾶσιν ἀγρίοις in VI 496 D. The tyrant's splendid but awful isolation is admirably brought out by Plato: see also on VIII 567 B. In this respect Plato's similitude faithfully reflects the position of Dionysius I in Sicily and indeed, except for the support which Sparta lent him, in the whole Hellenic world. See Grote X p. 306 ff.

ἐν τοιούτῳ κτλ. The picture which follows is no doubt also drawn from Dionysius I: see Grote X pp. 244, 328 notes

λίχνῳ “is the same with regard to the eye, that liquorishness is to the taste” (Thomas Gray).

οὔτε ἀποδημῆσαι κτλ. The parallel with Xen. Hiero 1. 11 is singularly close. Plato speaks con amore, thinking doubtless of his own sojournings in foreign lands. See Zeller^{4} II pp. 404—414. Neuman de locis Aegypt. in oper. Plat. (1874) discovers many allusions to Plato's ‘Wanderjahre’ throughout his works.

ὅσων δὴ κτλ. Such as the Olympian games etc.: cf. Xen. l.c. τὰς κοινὰς πανηγύρεις ἔνθα τὰ ἀξιοθεατότατα δοκεῖ εἶναι ἀνθρώποις συναγείρεσθαι. Dionysius was represented at Olympia by deputy, as Hermann reminds us ( Gesch. u. System p. 116). Cf. Grote X p. 303. The phrase τι ἀγαθὸν ὁρᾷ, with which the sentence concludes, has a curiously modern sound.

οὐκοῦν κτλ. : ‘greater then, by evils such as these, is the profit which is reaped by the individual who’ etc. (“Um so grosse Übel reicher also ist der Mann” Schleiermacher). τοῖς τοιούτοις κακοῖς is dative of amount of difference: cf. II 373 E μείζονος—οὔτι σμικρῷ, ἀλλ’ ὅλῳ στρατοπέδῳ, VI 507 E οὐ σμικρᾷ—ἰδέᾳ— τιμιωτέρῳ and Laws 848 B (Schneider Addit. p. 72). The passage has been strangely misunderstood, Stephanus suggesting variously < ἐπὶ> or <πρὸς> τοῖς τοιούτοις or τῶν τοιούτων, and Ast <ἐν> τοῖς τοιούτοις. Stallbaum comes nearer to the truth in his “per huius modi mala,” but the dative is exactly as in τοσούτῳ πλείω. The view that the dative is merely one of ‘circumstance’—an alternative suggestion in J. and C.—cannot be upheld. See also on 578 C. The reference in νῦν δή is to 578 B.

ὡς μὴ κτλ. I have returned to the text of A, Π, and nearly all the MSS. Θ^{1} with Stobaeus ( Flor. 50. 50) has μὴ ὡς, and so Stallbaum and Baiter read. μὴ ὡς suits better with ἀλλὰ ἀναγκασθῇ, but the irregularity is slight, and, as Schneider observes, the sentence opens as if it were meant to be positive and not negative, so that ὡς μή is suited to what precedes. We may add that ὡς μὴ ἰδιώτης καταβιῷ is a clearer echo of μὴ ἰδιώτην βίον καταβιῷ 578 C, which Plato wishes to recall.

κἂν εἰ μή τῳ δοκεῖ κτλ. Cf. V 473 A and (for κἄν) III 408 B note The reading δοκῇ (see cr. n.) is retained by Schneider, but ε and η are easily confused, and, even if we allow sporadic instances of εἰ with the subjunctive in Attic, the analogy of V 473 A, as well as the sense, is in favour of δοκεῖ. There need not be a specific allusion in τῳ: for praises of tyranny and the tyrant's lot were common enough in Greece: cf. I 344 B, VIII 568 A notes The phrase τῷ ὄντι invites us to understand τύραννος and δοῦλος in the fullest sense: cf. V 474 A note

δοῦλος κτλ. I once too rashly placed καὶ κόλαξ after δοῦλος, in order to obtain a chiasmus, understanding δουλείας τῶν πονηροτάτων like δούλων δουλείαν in VIII 569 C. Two inferior MSS have δουλείας καὶ θωπείας: but the inversion is not difficult, because the two notions are so closely allied: cf. (with Schneider) Euthyd. 302 B ἄπορόν τινα στροφὴν ἔφευγόν τε καὶ ἐστρεφόμην (where Schanz's brackets ‘nemini nocent’).

καὶ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας κτλ. Xenophon's Hiero is in effect a diluted commentary on this sentence: cf. also Gorg. 524 E ff., and especially Shakespeare's Macbeth IV 3. 50—99, V 3. 22— 29.

σφαδᾳσμῶν =‘convulsive movements’ is a rare word. The spelling σφαδᾳσμός appears in no MS except A^{1}; but the iota is attested from other sources: see Stephanus-Hase Thes. s. v. The verb σφαδᾴζειν ( μετὰ σπασμοῦ πηδᾶν Hesych.) denotes any nervous, twitching, convulsive motion, outside one's own control, the result of excitement, fear, pain, disease etc. (Stephanus-Hase l.c.). For the sense of this passage cf. 577 E note

Plato Republic 9.579

ed. John Burnet

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