Gonzalez Lodge, Commentary on Plato: Gorgias

καταψευδομαρτυρηθείη τις: the Greek idiom does not require intr. verbs to be used impersonally in the passive. Cf. Xen. Apol. 24 καταψευδομαρτυρεῖν ἐμοῦ with Dem. in Meid. 136 καταψευδομαρτυροῦμαι.

δοκούντων εἶναι τί: equal to εὐδοκίμων. Cf. the English colloquialism ‘he pretends to be something.’

ὀλίγου: almost; the remnant of the phrase ὀλίγου δεῖν. H. 743 b.

μαρτυρήσου ς κτἑ.: Nicias, the celebrated general in the Peloponnesian war, who met his death in the Sicilian expedition (B.C. 413), was leader of the moderate wing of the aristocratic party. Aristocrates, the son of Scellias or Scellius, belonged, as we can judge from Ar. Av. 125 and Thuc. viii. 89, to the extreme or oligarchical order. He was one of the generals condemned to death for negligence at the battle of Arginusae. Xen. Hell. i. 7. Socrates here speaks of both as if they were still living. (See Introd. § 18.) Next to them, Socrates mentions the house of Pericles; he could not name the statesman himself because he was already dead when Gorgias visited Athens for the first time; but he, with his house, was a champion of the Athenian democracy. So we have here representatives of the chief political parties as witnesses for Polus. They agreed with each other in that they esteemed power in the state,—even tyranny, —though purchased at the price of wrong-doing, to be the highest good.

20 ff.

ἐὰν μὲν βούλῃ, ἐὰν δέ βούλῃ: are not pleonastic after ἐὰν βούλῃ, but are due partly to courtesy (cf. Prot. 353 b εἰ δὲ μὴ βούλει, εἴ σοι φίλον), and serve also by specifying to emphasize the possibility of a free choice among all parties.

ὧν οἱ τρίποδες: in this way these men show that they were δοκοῦντες εἶναι τί. They also, by the magnificence of their offerings, proved their piety, and their ‘testimony’ would be therefore the more weighty. Nicias was, according to all accounts, an honorable man. Thucydides says (vii. 86) of him, in referring to his mournful death: ἥκιστα δὴ ἄξιος ὢν τῶν γε ἐπ᾽ ἐμοῦ Ἑλλήνων ἐς τοῦτο δυστυχίας ἀφικέσθαι διὰ τὴν πᾶσαν ἐς ἀρετὴν νενομισμένην ἐπιτήδευσιν. By Dionysion is to be understood not a temple, but a spot sacred to Dionysius,—a sacred precinct. Nicias built there a kind of shrine, which possessed, among other treasures, some very costly tripods which he had dedicated to Dionysus after he had discharged the office of Choregus—a very costly liturgy in itself. The tripods were arranged apparently ἐφεξῆς with a kind of ostentation.

22 f.

ἐν Πυθίου: sc. ἱερῷ. The offering of Aristocrates must have been, according to the words of Socrates, also costly and well-known.