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[577a]
“to
ask you to accept as the only proper judge of the two men the one who is
able in thought to enter with understanding into the very soul and temper of
a man, and who is not like a child viewing him from outside, overawed by the
tyrants' great attendance,1 and the pomp and circumstance which they assume2 in the eyes of the world,
but is able to see through it all? And what if I should assume, then, that
the man to whom we ought all to listen is he who has this capacity of
judgement and who has lived under the same roof with a tyrant3 and
has witnessed his conduct in his own home and observed in person
[577b]
his dealings with his intimates in each
instance where he would best be seen stripped4 of his vesture
of tragedy,5 and who had likewise observed
his behavior in the hazards of his public life—and if we should
ask the man who has seen all this to be the messenger to report on the
happiness or misery of the tyrant as compared with other men?”
“That also would be a most just challenge,” he said.
“Shall we, then, make believe,” said I, “that
we are of those who are thus able to judge and who have ere now lived with
tyrants, so that we may have someone to answer our questions?”
“By all means.”
[577c]
“Come, then,” said
I, “examine it thus. Recall the general likeness between the city
and the man, and then observe in turn what happens to each of
them.” “What things?” he said. “In
the first place,” said I, “will you call the state
governed by a tyrant free or enslaved, speaking of it as a state?”
“Utterly enslaved,” he said. “And yet you see
in it masters and freemen.” “I see,” he said,
“a small portion of such, but the entirety, so to speak, and the
best part of it, is shamefully and wretchedly enslaved.6” “If, then,” I said,
[577d]
“the man resembles the state, must
not the same proportion7 obtain in him, and his soul teem8 with boundless
servility and illiberality, the best and most reasonable parts of it being
enslaved, while a small part, the worst and the most frenzied, plays the
despot?” “Inevitably,” he said.
“Then will you say that such a soul is enslaved or
free?” “Enslaved, I should suppose.”
“Again, does not the enslaved and tyrannized city least of all do
what it really wishes9?”
“Decidedly so.” “Then the tyrannized
soul—
[577e]
to speak of the soul as
a whole10—also will least of all do what it wishes,
but being always perforce driven and drawn by the gadfly of desire it will
be full of confusion and repentance.11” “Of course.”
“And must the tyrannized city
1 The word προστάσεως is frequent in Polybius. Cf. also Boethius iv. chap. 2. Cf. 1Maccabees xv. 32, “When he saw the glory of Simon, and the cupboard of gold and silver plate, and his great attendance [παράστασιν].” Cf. also Isoc. ii. 32ὄψιν, and Shakes.Measure for MeasureII. ii. 59 “ceremony that to great ones ’longs,”Henry V.IV. i. 280 “farced title running ’fore the king.”
2 For σχηματίζονται cf. Xen.Oecon. 2. 4.σὸν σχῆμα ὁ σὺ περιβέβλησαι, Dio Cass. iii.fr. 13. 2σχηματίσας . . . ἑαυτόν and σχηματισμός, Rep. 425 B, 494 D.
3 It is easy conjecture that Plato is thinking of himself and Dionysius I. Cf. Laws 711 A.
4 Cf. Thackeray on Ludovicus and Ludovicus rex, Hazlitt, “Strip it of its externals and what is it but a jest?” also Gory. 523 E, Xen.Hiero 2. 4, Lucian, Somnium seu Gallus 24ἢν δὲ ὑποκύψας ἴδῃς τὰ γ᾽ ἔνδον . . . , Boethius, Cons. iii. chap. 8 (Loeb, p. 255), and for the thought Herod. i. 99.
5 Cf. Longinus, On the Sublime 7τὸ ἔξωθεν προστραγῳδούμενον, and Dümmler, Akademika p. 5.
6 In Menex. 238 E Plato says that other states are composed of slaves and master, but Athens of equals.
7 For τάξιν cf. 618 Bψυχῆς δὲ τάξιν.
8 γέμειν: cf. 544 C, 559 C, Gorg. 522 E, 525 A.
9 Cf. 445 B, Gorg. 467 B, where a verbal distinction is drawn with which Plato does not trouble himself here. In Laws 661 Bἐπιθυμῇ is used. Cf. ibid. 688 Bτἀναντία ταῖς βουλήσεσιν, and Herod. iii. 80.
10 Cf. Cratyl. 392 Cὡς τὸ ὅλον εἰπεῖν γένος.
11 Cf. Julian, Or. ii. 50 C. In the Stoic philosophy the stultus repents, and “omnis stultitia fastidio laborat sui.” Cf. also Seneca, De benef. iv. 34 “non mutat sapiens consilium . . . ideo numquam illum poenitentia subit,” Von Arnim, Stoic. Vet. Frag. iii. 147. 21, 149. 20 and 33, Stob.Ec. ii. 113. 5, 102. 22, and my emendation of Eclogues ii. 104. 6 W. in Class. Phil. xi. p. 338.
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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