Gonzalez Lodge, Commentary on Plato: Gorgias

δίκης βουλαῖσι προσθεἶ ἂν

λόγον: would give an opinion in counsels of justice.

ὑπὲρ ἄλλου: is in the mouth of Callicles a very natural change of the word of the poet. The sing. of ἄλλος, ἕτερος, and of τὶς is easily used in a generic sense.

καίτοι: would naturally lead us to expect some qualification of his severe criticism; instead of this he glides over to the rhetorical question, which, while reaffirming his opinion, summons Socrates to decide. Cf. b below.

σῇ: equiv. to

σοῦ. Cf. 485 a εὐνοίᾳ τῇ ἑαυτοῦ, Apol. 20 e ἐπὶ διαβολῇ τῇ ἐμῇ, Hom. T 321 σῇ ποθῇ, Soph. O. C. 332 “σῇ προμηθίᾳ”. See H. 694; G. 147, N. 1.

τοὺς πόρρω ἀεὶ φιλοσοφίας ἐλαύνοντας: has a poetic coloring, but also occurs in Xen. and in Crat. 410 e πόρρω ἤδη φαίνομαι σοφίας ἐλαύνειν. Euthyp. 4 b. The gen. is partitive. See H. 757; G. 168.

ἀεὶ: when used with the art. and partic. has a distributive sense. In the present case its position between πόρρω and φιλοσοφίας is also to be noted.

ἀπάγοι: this was the summary process called ἀπαγωγή, in which the guilty person, when caught in the act, was immediately arrested and brought before the Eleven. Cf. Apol. 32 b. The expression here is simply a rhetorical hyperbola, but it sounds prophetic in view of Socrates' trial later on, and was probably written designedly by the author. See Introd. § 10.

ἀδικεῖν: the pres. is the customary tense in accusations. Apol. 19 b, 24 b.

οἶσθ᾽ ὅτι: parenthetical, with no effect on the construction, much in the same way as the English phraseological ‘you know.’ The Greek expression is, however, not so colorless as the English, but assumes a recognition of the truth of the observation.