J. Adam, A. M. Adam, Commentary on Plato, Protagoras
J. Adam & A. M. Adam, Ed.

37. μάλιστα οἱ μάλιστα δυνάμενοι. The first μάλιστα is due to Heindorf: it is necessary to the meaning. Most of the editors insert the word μάλιστα not after ποιοῦσιν but after δυνάμενοι, explaining its loss by the presence of μάλιστα following: but it comes (we think) more naturally after ποιοῦσιν.

41. ἐκ διδασκάλων ἀπαλλαγῶσιν: ἐκ is rejected by Cobet (cf. Gorg. 514C ἐπειδὴ τῶν διδασκάλων ἀπηλλάγημεν): but the phrase is just as stereotyped as εἰς διδασκάλων, to which (in l. 39) it forms an appropriate contrast—in neither of the two cases were the Greeks (in all probability) conscious in common parlance of an ellipse. Sauppe quotes a fragment of Ar. Banqueters, 42 οὐκ εὐθὺς ἀπεδίδρασκες ἐκ διδασκάλου; Plutus, 84 ἐκ Πατροκλέους ἔρχομαι, and other parallels.

42. ἀναγκάζει μανθάνειν: hardly to be taken literally, but only in the sense that ignorance was no excuse for breaking the laws.

43. κατὰ τούτους ζῆν. After ζῆν occur in the MSS. the words κατὰ παράδειγμα. ‘Facile succurrat cuivis κατὰ τούτους ζῆν καθάπερ παράδειγμα—quamquam talia notanda potius quam statim corrigenda’ says Heindorf. Most recent editors bracket or reject the words, which are open to objection on several grounds, that the laws are not an example but a rule of life, and Plato does not use παράδειγμα precisely in this way, as well as from the harsh omission of ὡς. The suggestion of Sauppe that the words are a gloss on κατὰ τούτους by a scribe referring to the illustration which follows—‘as for example’— has much probability.