This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
[365a]
and that there are also special rites for the defunct, which they call
functions, that deliver us from evils in that other world, while terrible
things await those who have neglected to sacrifice.“What, Socrates, do we suppose is the effect of
all such sayings about the esteem in which men and gods hold virtue and vice
upon the souls that hear them, the souls of young men who are quick-witted
and capable of flitting, as it were, from one expression of opinion to
another and inferring from them
[365b]
all the
character and the path whereby a man would lead the best life? Such a
youth1 would most likely put
to himself the question Pindar asks, “‘Is it by justice or by crooked deceit that I the higher
tower shall scale and so live my life out in fenced and guarded
security?’”Pindar, Fr. The
consequences of my being just are, unless I likewise seem so, not
assets,2 they say, but
liabilities, labor and total loss; but if I am unjust and have procured
myself a reputation for justice a godlike life is promised. Then
[365c]
since it is the “‘seeming’”Simonides, Fr. 76
Bergk, and Eur. Orest. 236 as the wise men show me, that “‘masters the
reality’” and is lord of happiness, to this I must devote
myself without reserve. For a front and a show3 I must draw about
myself a shadow-line of virtue, but trail behind me the fox of most sage
Archilochus,4 shifty and bent on gain. Nay,
'tis objected, it is not easy for a wrong-doer always to lie hid.5 Neither is any other big thing
facile,
[365d]
we shall reply. But all the same
if we expect to be happy, we must pursue the path to which the footprints of
our arguments point. For with a view to lying hid we will organize societies
and political clubs,6 and there are teachers of cajolery7 who impart the arts of the
popular assembly and the court-room. So that, partly by persuasion, partly
by force, we shall contrive to overreach with impunity. But against the
gods, it may be said, neither secrecy nor force can avail. Well, if there
are no gods, or they do not concern themselves with the doings of men,
[365e]
neither need we concern ourselves
with eluding their observation.8 If
they do exist and pay heed, we know and hear of them only from such
discourses and from the poets who have described their pedigrees. But these
same authorities tell us that the gods are capable of being persuaded and
swerved from their course by ‘sacrifice and soothing
vows’ and dedications. We must believe them in both or neither.
And if we are to believe them, the thing to do is to commit injustice and
offer sacrifice
1 Cf. Unity of Plato's Thought, p. 25: “His (Plato's) imagination was beset by the picture of some brilliant young Alcibiades standing at the crossways of life and debating in his mind whether the best chance for happiness lay in accepting the conventional moral law that serves to police the vulgar or in giving rein to the instincts and appetites of his own stronger nature. To confute the one, to convince the other, became to him the main problem of moral philosophy.” Cf. Introduction x-xi; also “The Idea of Good in Plato's Republic,” p. 214.
2 φανερὰ ζημία is familiar and slightly humorous. Cf. Starkie on Aristoph. Ach. 737.
3 A Pindaric mixture of metaphors beginning with a portico and garb, continuing with the illusory perspective of scene-painting, and concluding with the craftly fox trailed behind.
4 Cf. Fr. 86-89 Bergk, and Dio Chrysost.Or. 55. 285 R.κεπδαλέαν is a standing epithet of Reynard. Cf. Gildersleeve on Pindar Pyth. ii. 78.
5 Cf. my review of Jebb's “Bacchylides,”Class. Phil., 1907, vol. ii. p. 235.
6 Cf. George Miller Calhoun, Athenian Clubs in Politics and Litigation, University of Chicago Dissertation, 1911.
7 Lit. persuasion. Cf. the defintion of rhetoric, Gorgias 453 A.
8 For the thought compare Tennyson, “Lucretius”: “But he that holds/ The gods are careless, wherefore need he care/ Greatly for them?” Cf. also Euripides I.A. 1034-1035, Anth. Pal. x. 34.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.