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ἀλγούντων. “Significatur necessitas innocentibus quoque damnum inferendi, quo nocentes punire et ad pacem adigere cogantur” Schneider. τοὺς ἐναντίους. “Graecos adversarios vocat, non hostes” Stallbaum. q has Ἕλληνας for ἐναντίους—an obvious ‘interpretamentum.’ πρὸς δὲ -- ἀλλήλους. A bitter commentary on the foreign policy of Greek cities. The ‘natural’ relations between Greece and Barbary had been reversed: not only did Greeks treat Greeks as enemies, but they had begun to treat barbarians as friends. Christ (Pl. Stud. pp. 37—39) supposes that Plato wrote this passage in 374, when Plataea was destroyed by Thebes, and the surviving inhabitants fled to Athens (Xen. Hell. VI 3. 1, Isocr. Plat. 1 ff.). The same view is held by Hirmer Entst. u. Komp. etc. p. 662. Plato's rebuke would have been equally or even more telling in 386, when Greece was exhausted by the Corinthian war, and friendship with the ‘natural enemy’ had forced the peace of Antalcidas upon the Greeks, to the bitter grief and shame of patriots: cf. Isocr. Paneg. 120, 121. In any case νῦν should no doubt be referred to the time when Plato wrote these words, and not to the date of action of the dialogue. See also Introd. § 4.
The Republic of Plato. James Adam. 1902. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
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