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πρᾶγμα: connected with δίκαιον. Const. ὁσιότης οὐ τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν, οἷον εἶναι δίκαιον πρᾶγμα.
τὸ δὲ ἀνόσιον: sc. ἡ δικαιοσύνη. The whole sent. might have closed with οἷον ὅσιον, but in order to bring out more strongly the absurdity of the result, if the parts of virtue are unlike, Socrates adds ἀλλ᾽ οἷον μὴ ὅσιον. This then leads him to add further, respecting ὁσιότης, the description οἷον μὴ δίκαιον. But this negative μὴ δίκαιον naturally calls out the yet stronger positive expression ἀλλ᾽ ἄδικον ἄρα. When now Socrates has added this for ὁσιότης, it occurs to him to complete the matter by making just such a statement regarding that which has been predicated of δικαιοσύνη, and he adds τὸ δὲ ἀνόσιον, as though following ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν ἄδικον, cf. 330 a. There is here also an imitation of easy conversational style. — To treat μὴ ὅσιον and ἀνόσιον, μὴ δίκαιον and ἄδικον, as identical, is not, to be sure, strictly logical, since ὅσιον and μὴ ὅσιον, δίκαιον and μὴ δίκαιον are contradictories, ὅσιον and ἀνόσιον, δίκαιον and ἄδικον, contraries. Infants and idiots are neither the one nor the other. But as soon as, in the case of a person, one can speak of the quality just, pious, to be not just and unjust is the same thing. The defect in the argument, however, probably occasions the words ἢ ὅ τι ὁμοιότατον below.
Hermann Sauppe. James A. Towle. Commentary on Plato: Protagoras. Ginn & Company. Boston and London. 1889.
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