[431c]
appetites and pleasures and pains one
would find chiefly in children1
and women and slaves and in the base rabble of those who are freemen in
name.2” “By all
means.” “But the simple and moderate appetites which
with the aid of reason and right opinion are guided by consideration you
will find in few and those the best born and best educated.”
“True,” he said. “And do you not find this too
in your city and a domination there of the desires
1 παισί: so Wolf, for Ms.πᾶσι, a frequent error. Cf. 494 B. Plato, like Shakespeare's Rosalind, brackets boys and women as creatures who have for every passion something and for no passion truly anything.
2 Cf. on 336 A. The ordinary man who is passion's slave is not truly free. The Stoics and Cynics preached many sermons on this text. See Persius, Sat. v. 73. and 124, Epictetus Diss . iv. 1, Xenophon Memorabilia iv. 5. 4, Xenophon Oecon. 1. 22-23.
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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