[578e]
is ready to defend each
citizen.” “You are right,” I said.
“But now suppose some god should catch up a man who has fifty or
more slaves1 and waft him with his wife and children
away from the city and set him down with his other possessions and his
slaves in a solitude where no freeman could come to his rescue. What and how
great would be his fear,2 do you suppose, lest he and his wife and children be
destroyed by the slaves?” “The greatest in the
world,3” he said,
“if you ask me.”
1 Plato's imaginary illustration is one of his many anticipations of later history, and suggests to an American many analogies.
2 Cf. Critias, fr. 37 Diels ii.3 p. 324, on Sparta's fear of her slaves.
3 For ἐν παντί cf. 579 B, Symp. 194 Aἐν παντὶ εἴης, Euthyd. 301 Aἐν παντὶ ἐγενόμην ὑπὸ ἀπορίας, Xen.Hell. v. 4. 29, Thucyd. vii. 55, Isoc. xiii. 20ἐν πᾶσιν . . κακοῖς. Cf.παντοῖος εἶναι（γίννεσθαι) Herod. ix. 109, vii. 10. 3, iii. 124, Lucian, Pro lapsu 1.
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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