[520c]
and more complete education1 than the others, and you are more capable
of sharing both ways of life. Down you must go2 then, each in his turn, to the
habitation of the others and accustom yourselves to the observation of the
obscure things there. For once habituated you will discern them infinitely3 better than the dwellers there,
and you will know what each of the ‘idols’4 is and whereof it is a semblance, because you have
seen the reality of the beautiful, the just and the good. So our city will be
governed by us and you with waking minds, and not, as most cities now which are
inhabited and ruled darkly as in a dream5 by men who fight one another
1 For τελεώτερον . . . πεπαιδευμένους Cf. Prot. 342 Eτελέως πεπαιδευμένου.
2 They must descend into the cave again. Cf. 539 E and Laws 803 B-C. Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philos. 89-90: “it was he alone, so far as we know, that insisted on philosophers descending by turns into the cave from which they had been released and coming to the help of their former fellow-prisoners.” He agrees with Stewart (Myths of Plato, p. 252, n. 2) that Plato had in mind the Orphic κατάβασις εἰς Ἅιδου to “rescue the spirits in prison.” Cf. Wright, Harvard Studies, xvii. p. 139 and Complete Poems of Henry More, pp. xix-xx “All which is agreeable to that opinion of Plato: That some descend hither to declare the Being and Nature of the Gods; and for the greater Health, Purity and Perfection of this Lower World.” This is taking Plato somewhat too literally and confusing him with Plotinus.
3 For μυρίῳ cf. Eurip.Androm. 701.
4 i.e. images, Bacon's “idols of the den.”
5 Plato is fond of the contrast,ὕπαρ . . . ὄναρ. Cf. 476 C, Phaedr. 277 D, Phileb. 36 E, 65 E, Polit. 277 D, 278 E, Theaet. 158 B, Rep. 574 D, 576 B, Tim. 71 E, Laws 969 B, also 533 B-C.
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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