James Adam, The Republic of Plato

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τῆς βολῆς πέρι κτλ. The MSS apparently read περί: πέρι is due to Benedictus. Stephanus wishes to delete the second, Richards the first preposition, but the whole sentence is loosely constructed, as if a mere child's riddle was not worth remembering or dwelling on: ‘the children's riddle about the eunuch, don't you know, about hitting the bat, what it was the riddle says he struck it with, and on what it was sitting.’ ᾧ and not ὡς (as Baiter supposed) is the reading of A.

καὶ γὰρ ταῦτα κτλ. ταῦτα is of course τὰ πολλά, as Jowett and others rightly explain. Campbell appears strangely to take it of the children's riddle. I agree with Ast that ἐπαμφοτερίζειν—see cr. n.—must be wrong. It is usual to supply ἔοικε, but this is very difficult, and the categoric affirmative is much more to the point. For the error see Introd. § 5. Hartman hastily pronounces οὔτ᾽ ἀμφότερα οὔτε οὐδέτερον spurious on the ground that “illas res οὐδέτερον esse modo (οὔτε εἶναι—νοῆσαι) dictum est,” and that “non verum est illas res non esse ἀμφότερα.” The text is perfectly sound. Phenomena, says Glauco, cannot be ‘fixedly conceived of’ as either a being or b not being, nor yet as c neither of the two. The fourth alternative is to ‘fix them in the mind’ as d both being and not being. This too is impossible, although we may say that they ‘both are and are not’ (477 A, 478 D). The reason is that they are not, in the last analysis, ‘both being and notbeing,’ but something between the two, as Socrates presently points out. (See also on οἷον in 478 D.) Phenomena cannot be fixedly conceived (παγίως νοῆσαι) in any kind of way, because they have no fixity themselves. They are in a constant state of Heraclitean flux: cf. κυλινδεῖται, πλανητόν in D and (for παγίως) IV 434 D note