[368a]
pleased by their words on this occasion, and said:“
It was excellently spoken of you, sons of the man we
know,
”1 in the beginning of the elegy
which the admirer2
of Glaucon wrote when you distinguished yourselves in the battle of
Megara3—'Sons of Ariston,4 whose race from a glorious sire is god-like.' This, my
friends, I think, was well said. For there must indeed be a touch of the
god-like in your disposition if you are not convinced that injustice is
preferable to justice though you can plead its case in such fashion.
1 Cf. my note in Class. Phil. 1917, vol. xii. p. 436. It does not refer to Thrasymachus facetiously as Adam fancies, but is an honorific expression borrowed from the Pythagoreans.
2 Possibly Critias.
3 Probably the battle of 409 B.C., reported in Diodor. Sic. xiii. 65. Cf. Introduction p. viii.
4 The implied pun on the name is made explicit in 580 C-D. Some have held that Glaucon and Adeimantus were uncles of Plato, but Zeller decides for the usual view that they wre brothers. Cf. Ph. d. Gr. ii. 1, 4th ed. 1889, p. 392, and Abhandl. d. Berl. Akad., 1873, Hist.-Phil Kl. pp. 86 ff.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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