This text is part of:
κάτω κτλ. refers to the illustration in 584 D ff. The meaning of μέχρι πάλιν is ‘as far as back again’ sc. to the intermediate point: cf. μέχρι δεῦρο, μέχρι ἐνταῦθα, and other instances of the same usage in Stephanus-Hase Thes. s.v. μέχρι and Kühner-Blass Gr. Gr. II 1 p. 539 f. πλανῶνται. They are like ‘wanderers’ who have lost the way: cf. the common use of πλανᾶσθαι in the New Testament; e.g. Pet. II 2. 15. τὸ ἀληθῶς ἄνω refers to 584 D: but the words are intended also to suggest the deeper Platonic use of ‘the true Above,’ where Truth and Pureness dwell: see Phaed. 109 B ff., with VII 514 A note βοσκημάτων δίκην κτλ. Cf. Tim. 91 E (the heads etc. of brute beasts are εἰς γῆν ἑλκόμενα in sympathy with their earthly souls) and VII 519 A, B notes With κεκυφότες εἰς τραπέζας cf. the description of Syracusan gluttony in the seventh Platonic Epistle 326 B ff. χορταζόμενοι (cf. II 372 D) and ὀχεύοντες are properly used of brute beasts, and therefore suitable after βοσκημάτων δίκην. ἕνεκα τῆς τούτων πλεονεξίας is equivalent to ὥστε τούτων πλέον (sc. than others) ἔχειν.
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.