[500b]
he said, “concur.” “And do
you not also concur1 in
this very point that the blame for this harsh attitude of the many towards
philosophy falls on that riotous crew who have burst in2
where they do not belong, wrangling with one another,3 filled with spite4 and always talking
about persons,5 a thing least befitting philosophy?” “Least of
all, indeed,” he said.“For surely, Adeimantus, the man whose mind is truly fixed on
eternal realities6 has no leisure
1 For a similar teasing or playful repetition of a word cf. 517 C, 394 B, 449 C, 470 B-C.
2 For the figure of the κῶμος or revel rout Cf. Theaet. 184A, Aesch.Ag. 1189, Eurip.Ion 1197, and, with a variation of the image, Virgil, Aen. i. 148.
3 Cf. Adam ad loc. and Wilamowitz, Platon, ii. 121.
4 Isoc.Antid. 260 seems to take this term to himself; Cf. Panath. 249, Peace 65,Lysias xxiv. 24πολυπράγμων εἰμὶ καὶ θρασὺς καὶ φιλαπεχθήμωνDemosth, xxiv, 6.
5 i.e. gossip. cf. Aristot.Eth. Nic. 1125 a 5οὐδ᾽ ἀνθρωπολόγος, Epictetus iii. 16. 4. Cf. also Phileb. 59 b, Theaet. 173 D, 174 C.
6 Cf. on 486 A, also Phileb. 58 D, 59 A, Tim. 90 D, and perhaps Tim. 47 A and Phaedo 79. This passage is often supposed to refer to the ideas, and ἐκεῖ in 500 D shows that Plato is in fact there thinking of them, though in Rep. 529 A-B ff. he protests against this identification. And strictly speaking κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἀεὶ ἔχοντα in C would on Platonic principles be true only of the ideas. Nevertheless poets and imitators have rightly felt that the dominating thought of the passage is the effect on the philosopher's mind of the contemplation of the heavens. This confusion or assimilation is, of course, still more natural to Aristotle, who thought the stars unchanging. Cf. Met. 1063 a 16ταὐτὰ δ᾽ αἰεὶ καὶ μεταβολῆς οὐδεμιᾶς κοινωνοῦντα. Cf. also Sophocles, Ajax 669 ff., and Shorey in Sneath, Evolution of Ethics, pp. 261-263, Dio Chrys. xl. (Teubner ii. p. 199), Boethius, Cons. iii. 8 “respicite caeli spatium . . . et aliquando desinite vilia mirari.”
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
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.