[470b]
said I, “they ought to do
neither, but confine themselves to taking away the annual harvest. Shall I
tell you why?” “Do.” “In my opinion,
just as we have the two terms, war and faction, so there are also two
things, distinguished by two differentiae.1 The two things I mean are the friendly
and kindred on the one hand and the alien and foreign on the other. Now the
term employed for the hostility of the friendly is faction, and for that of
the alien is war.” “What you say is in nothing beside
the mark,” he replied. “Consider, then,
1 I have so translated in order to imply that the Plato of the Republic is already acquainted with the terminology of the Sophist. Cf. Unity of Plato's Thought, notes 375 and 377, followed by Wilamowitz, Platon, i. p. 504. But most editors take διαφορά here as dissension, and construe “applied to the disagreements of two things,” which may be right. Cf. Sophist 228 Aστάσιν . . . τὴν τοῦ φύσει συγγενοῦς ἔκ τινος διαφθορᾶς διαφοράν.
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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