[396d]
when he acts steadfastly and
sensibly, and less and more reluctantly when he is upset by sickness or love
or drunkenness or any other mishap. But when he comes to someone unworthy of
himself, he will not wish to liken himself in earnest to one who is
inferior,1
except in the few cases where he is doing something good, but will be
embarrassed both because he is unpractised in the mimicry of such
characters, and also because he shrinks in distaste from molding and fitting
himself the types of baser things.
1 Chaucer drew from a misapplication of Timaeus 29 B or Boethius the opposite moral: “Who shall telle a tale after a man,/ He most reherse, as neighe as ever he can,/ Everich word, if it be in his charge,/ All speke he never so rudely and so large;/ . . . Eke Plato sayeth, who so can him rede,/ The words most ben cosin to the dede./”
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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