James Adam, The Republic of Plato

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τούτου τοίνυν κτλ. “Construe: (ἡ παιδεία) εἴη ἂν τέχνη τῆς περιαγωγῆς (i.q. τοῦ περιάγειν, quod praecedit) τούτου αὐτοῦ (τοῦ ὀργάνου τῆς ψυχῆς, ᾧ καταμανθάνει ἕκαστος）—οὐ (τέχνη) τοῦ ἐμποιῆσαι αὐτῷ τὸ ὁρᾶν—ἀλλὰ (τοῦ) μηχανήσασθαι τοῦτο (ὥστε βλέπειν οἷ ἔδει）” Ast. This interpretation is, I believe, correct. Plato began by asserting that Education is not what certain Sophists declare it to be—the putting of sight, as it were, into blind eyes. For there is already in every man's soul an eye or ὄργανον, which sees or learns already; what is required is to turn this ὄργανον round. Hence he concludes (τοίνυν) Education is not (as the Sophists say) an art of putting sight into the soul's eye (τοῦ ἐμποιῆσαι αὐτῷ τὸ ὁρᾶν refers to τυφλοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ὄψιν ἐντιθέντες), but an art of turning round just this very eye or ὄργανον which is present in every soul from the first. The prevailing view since Schneider regards τούτου αὐτοῦ as anticipating and explained by, not as depending on, τῆς περιαγωγῆς. This yields a tolerable sense, but makes it difficult to supply the subject of μεταστραφήσεται, and αὐτῷ is also awkward. On Ast's view τίνα— μεταστραφήσεται explains τούτου αὐτοῦ τῆς περιαγωγῆς, and the subject of μεταστραφήσεται as well as the antecedent of αὐτῷ is at once seen to be τὸ ὄργανον ᾧ καταμανθάνει ἕκαστος, for it is identical with the antecedent of τούτου αὐτοῦ.

τοῦ ἐμποιῆσαι κτλ. The genitive has been wrongly taken as one of the rare examples in good Greek of an independent final infinitive (Weiske quoted in A. J. Ph. IV p. 418), a construction for which see Jannaris Historical Greek Grammar pp. 483, 578. It depends on τέχνη: see last note. For διαμηχανήσασθαι Ast (with some inferior MSS) reads δὴ μηχανήσασθαι: but cf. (with Schneider) Laws 746 C τοῦτ᾽ αὐτὸ διαμηχανᾶσθαι ὅπως ἂν γίγνηται.

αἱ μὲν τοίνυν κτλ. ἄλλαι is anticipative )( ἡ δὲ τοῦ φρονῆσαι below. καλούμεναι (as Bosanquet points out) should be taken with ψυχῆς (lit. ‘which are called soul's’ i.e. ‘which are commonly said to belong to the soul’). Plato does not mean to deny that they are virtues, but they do not belong to soul essentially and from the first. Krohn (Pl. St. pp. 185 ff.), who, with the editors generally, takes καλούμεναι as ‘sogenannten,’ affirms that Plato here discards the virtues of Book IV; but he is merely contrasting these and other virtues or excellencies with νόησις.

ἐγγύς τι εἶναι. Campbell conjectures ἐγγύς τι τείνειν. I once thought of ἐγγύς τι τεῖναι, taking the aorist as an explicit reference to the ethical virtues already discussed; but the text is doubtless sound: cf. V 472 C and VIII 544 D (μεταξύ τι τούτων πού εἰσιν).