This text is part of:
τὸ -- βοηθεῖν . τό belongs to δέος, “ut sensus idem sit, ac si dictum esset δέος δὲ τὸ τῆς τῶν ἄλλων βοηθείας τῷ πάσχοντι. δέος ἐστὶ τοὺς ἄλλους βοηθεῖν quin recte dicatur, nemo ambigit: quidni etiam τὸ τοὺς ἄλλους βοηθεῖν δέος dicere liceat” (Schneider)? Cf. οὐ παρὰ φύσιν τὴν τοῦ θήλεος πρὸς τὸ ἄῤῥεν (466 D). Madvig's change of τό to τοῦ has met with much favour, and is accepted even by J. and C. To my mind it destroys the balance of the two clauses, by dropping the personification of δέος, while retaining that of αἰδώς. For the sense cf. Ar. Eccl. 641—643 ἀλλ̓ <*> παρεστὼς οὐκ ἐπιτρέψει: τότε δ̓ αὐτοῖς οὐκ ἔμελ̓ οὐδὲν | τῶν ἀλλοτρίων (sc. πατέρων) ὅστις τύπτοι: νῦν δ᾽ ἢν πληγέντος ἀκούσῃ, | μὴ αὐτὸν ἐκεῖνον (illum ipsum sc. suum ipsius parentem, as Blaydes explains) τύπτῃ δεδιὼς τοῖς δρῶσιν τοῦτο μαχεῖται. Aristophanes' verses illustrate τοὺς μὲν ὡς ὑεῖς exactly; the parallel could scarcely be closer. Cf. App. I. οὐδὲν δεινὸν μή. This construction occurs only four times in the Platonic corpus: viz. in Ap. 28 A, Phaed. 84 B, Gorg. 520 D, and Epp. 7. 344 E (Weber in Schanz's Beiträge II 2, p. 50).
The Republic of Plato. James Adam. 1902. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
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.