This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν: in the political sense of the word. Cf. Soph. Ant. 737 “πόλις γὰρ οὐκ ἔσθ᾽ ἥτις ἀνδρός ἐσθ̓ ἑνός”.
τοὺς τῶν ἐλευθέρων: is ironic. They consider themselves to be free men, although they are really, even according to the true opinion of Callicles (cf. 489 c above), slaves. Cf. Dem. Ol. iii. 30 τὸ μὲν πρότερον στρατεύεσθαι τολμῶν αὐτὸς ὁ δῆμος δεσπότης τῶν πολιτευομένων ἦν καὶ κύριος αὐτὸς ἁπάντων τῶν ἀγαθῶν,—νῦν δὲ τοὐναντίον κύριοι μὲν οἱ πολιτευόμενοι τῶν ἀγαθῶν καὶ διὰ τούτων ἅπαντα πράττεται, ὑμεῖς δ᾽ ὁ δῆμος ἐν ὑπηρέτου καὶ προσθήκης μέρει γεγένησθε.
ἢ καὶ οὗτοι κτἑ.: testimony to the correctness, of this statement is found in the very numerous references and complaints found in the orators, notably Demosthenes. Of course, Plato meant by τὸ βέλτιστον something a little different from the orators. Cf. Isoc. de Pace § 5 καὶ γάρ τοι πεποιήκατε τοὺς ῥήτορας μελε- τᾶν καὶ φιλοσοφεῖν οὐ τὰ μέλλοντα τῇ πόλει συνοίσειν, ἀλλ᾽ ὅπως ἀρέσκοντας ὑμῖν λόγους ἐροῦσιν. The apparent pleonasm arising from the recurrence of the same idea in but slightly varied form is artistic in showing that this thought lay uppermost in the speaker's mind.
ὥσπερ παισί: reminds of 464 d.
Gonzalez Lodge. Commentary on Plato Gorgias. Ginn & Company. Boston and London. 1891.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.