[405a]
and disease multiply in a city,
are not many courts of law and dispensaries opened, and the arts of
chicane1 and medicine give themselves airs when
even free men in great numbers take them very seriously?”
“How can they help it?” he said.“Will you be able to find a surer proof of an
evil and shameful state of education in a city than the necessity of
first-rate physicians and judges, not only for the base and mechanical, but
for those who claim to have been bred in the fashion of free men? Do you not
think
[405b]
it disgraceful and a notable mark
of bad breeding to have to make use of a justice imported from others, who
thus become your masters and judges, from lack of such qualities in
yourself2?” “The most shameful thing in the
world.” “Is it?” said I, “or is this
still more shameful3—when a man only wears out the better part of
his days in the courts of law as defendant or accuser, but from the lack of
all true sense of values4 is
led to plume himself on this very thing, as being a smart fellow to 'put
over' an unjust act
[405c]
and cunningly to try
every dodge and practice,5 every evasion, and wriggle6 out of
every hold in defeating justice, and that too for trifles and worthless
things, because he does not know how much nobler and better it is to arrange
his life so as to have no need7 of a nodding juryman?” “That
is,” said he, “still more shameful than the
other.” “And to require medicine,” said I,
“not merely for wounds or the incidence of some seasonal maladies,
[405d]
but, because of sloth and such a
regimen as we described, to fill one's body up with winds and humors like a
marsh and compel the ingenious sons of Aesculapius to invent for diseases
such names as fluxes and flatulences—don't you think that
disgraceful?8”
“Those surely are,” he said, “new-fangled and
monstrous strange names of diseases.” “There was nothing
of the kind, I fancy,” said I, “in the days of
Aesculapius. I infer this from the fact that at Troy his sons
[405e]
did not
find fault with the damsel who gave to the wounded Eurypylus9 to drink a posset
of Pramnian wine plentifully sprinkled with barley and gratings of cheese,
1 δικανική: more contemptuous than δικαστική.
2 I have given the sense. The contruction is debated accordingly as we read ἀπορία or ἀπορίᾳ. Cf. Phaedrus 239 D, of the use of cosmetics,χήτει οἰκείων. The καί with ἀπορίᾳ is awkward or expresses the carelessness of conversation.
3 Plato likes to emphasize by pointing to a lower depth or a higher height beyond the superlative.
4 There is no exact English equivalent for ἀπειροκαλία, the insensitiveness to the καλόν of the banausic, the nouveau riche and the Philistine.
5 The phrasing of this passage recalls passages of Aristophanes'Clouds, and the description of the pettifogging lawyer and politician in the Theaetetus 172 E. Cf. 519, also Euthydemus 302 B, and Porphyry, De abstinentia, i. 34. The metaphors are partly from wrestling.
6 Cf. Blaydes on Aristophanes Knights 263.
7 Cf. Gorgias 507 D, Thucydides iii. 82, Isocrates Antidosis 238, Antiphanes, fr. 288 Kock ὁ μηδὲν ἀδικῶν οὐδενὸς δεῖται νόμου.
8 Plato ridicules the unsavory metaphors required to describe the effects of auto-intoxication. There is a similar bit of somewhat heavier satire in Spencer's Social Statics, 1868, p. 32: “Carbuncled noses, cadaverous faces, foetid breaths, and plethoric bodies meet us at every turn; and our condolences are prepetually asked for headaches, flatulences, nightmare, heartburn, and endless other dyspeptic symptoms.”
9 Plato is probably quoting from memory. In our text, Iliad xi. 624, Hecamede gives the draught to Machaon and Nestor as the Ion(538 B) correctly states.
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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