1 Cf. 345 E, Aristot. Eth. Nic. 1134b 6.
2 Plato habitually explains metaphors, abstractions, and complicated defintions in this dramatic fashion. Cf. 352 E, 377 A, 413 A, 429 C, 438 B, 510 B.
3 Cf. Aristotle Politics 1318 b 36. In a good democracy the better classes will be content, for they will not be ruled by worse men. Cf. Cicero, Ad Att. ii. 9 “male vehi malo alio gubernante quam tam ingratis vectoribus bene gubernare”; Democr. fr. 49 D.: “It is hard to be ruled by a worse man;” Spencer, Data of Ethics, 77.
4 The good and the necessary is a favorite Platonic antithesis, but the necessary is often the condicio sine qua non of the good. Cf. 358 C, 493 C, 540 B, Laws 628 C-D, 858 A. Aristotle took over the idea, Met. 1072 b 12.
5 This suggests an ideal state, but not more strongly than Meno 100 A, 89 B.
6 The paradox suggests Spencer's altruistic competition and Archibald Marshall's Upsidonia. Cf. 521 A, 586 C, Isocrates vii. 24, xii. 145; Mill, On Representative Government, p. 56: “The good despot . . . can hardly be imagined as conseting to undertake it unless as a refuge from intolerable evils;” ibid. p. 200: “Until mankind in general are of opinion with Plato that the proper person to be entrusted with power is the person most unwilling to accept it.”
7 εἰσαῦθις lays the matter on the table. Cf. 430 C. The suggestiveness of Thrasymachus' defintion is exhausted, and Socrates turns to the larger question and main theme of the Republic raised by the contention that the unjust life is happier and more profitable than the just.
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