[439e]
he said,
“for us to think this.” “These two forms,
then, let us assume to have been marked off as actually existing in the
soul. But now the Thumos1 or principle of high spirit, that with which we feel
anger, is it a third, or would it be identical in nature with one of
these?” “Perhaps,” he said, “with
one of these, the appetitive.” “But,” I said,
“I once heard a story2 which I believe, that Leontius the son of Aglaion, on his
way up from the Peiraeus under the outer side of the northern wall,3 becoming aware
of dead bodies4 that lay at the
place of public execution at the same time felt a desire to see them and a
repugnance and aversion, and that for a time
1 We now approach the distinctively Platonic sense of θυμός as the power of noble wrath, which, unless perverted by a bad education, is naturally the ally of the reason, though as mere angry passion it might seem to belong to the irrational part of the soul, and so, as Glaucon suggets, be akin to appetite, with which it is associated in the mortal soul of the Timaeus 69 D. In Laws 731 B-C Plato tells us again that the soul cannot combat injustice without the capacity for righteous indignation. The Stoics affected to deprecate anger always, and the difference remained a theme of controversy between them and the Platonists. Cf. Schmidt, Ethik der Griechen, ii. pp. 321 ff., Seneca, De ira, i. 9, and passim. Moralists are still divided on the point. Cf. Bagehot, Lord Brougham: “Another faculty of Brougham . . . is the faculty of easy anger. The supine placidity of civilization is not favorable to animosity [Bacon's word for θυμός].” Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, pp. 60 ff. and p. 62, seems to contradict Plato: “The supposed conflict between reason and passion is, as I hold, meaningless if it is taken to imply that the reason is a faculty separate from the emotions,” etc. But this is only his metaphysics. On the practical ethical issue he is with Plato.
2 Socrates has heard and trusts a, to us, obscure anecdote which shows how emotion may act as a distinct principle rebuking the lower appetites or curiosities. Leontius is unknown, except for Bergk's guess identifying him with the Leotrophides of a corrupt fragment of Theopompus Comicus, fr. 1 Kock, p. 739.
3 He was following the outer side of the north wall up the city. Cf. Lysis 203 A, Frazer, Paus. ii. 40, Wachsmuth, Stadt Athen, i. p. 190.
4 The corpses were by, near, or with the executioner (ὁ ἐπὶ τῷ ὀρύγματι) whether he had thrown them into the pit (βάραθρον) or not.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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