Republic (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (75 page)

That is, Apollo; compare 5.470a.

Literally, an “erotic man”
(anêr erotikos)
; see note 16 on 3.402e.

Momus is, properly speaking, the personification of censure and faultfinding.

That is, the hypothetical critic posited by Adeimantus at 6.487c.

The saying was attributed to Simonides.

Literally, “those who practice opposite things”—that is, politicians and their ilk who, in their bids for power, displace philosophers from political leadership, just as the mutinous sailors in the image of the ship stand in the way of the true helmsman.

Theages was a member of Socrates’ circle who predeceased Socrates; a dialogue titled
Theages
has been preserved in the Platonic corpus but is probably not by Plato.

Heracleitus (today more commonly spelled Heraclitus) posited that the sun was extinguished every evening and rekindled every morning.

Compare
Iliad
1.131.

That is, at 3.412c-414b.

A pun on the word
tokos,
which means both “offspring” and “interest owed on a debt.”

The sun (Helios) was traditionally conceived of as a deity; in later times, Apollo (Phoebus) came to be thought of as the god of the sun.
Helios
in Greek is a masculine noun; in this passage and again in book 7, Jowett uses masculine pronouns to refer to it.

Jowett uses the masculine possessive adjective to refer to the idea of the good, although it is a neuter entity
(to agathon),
presumably because Socrates here conceives of “the good” as the “parent” or “father” of the sun.

That is,
epístemê
(also translated as “knowledge”), the cognitive faculty whereby intelligible objects (the ideas, as opposed to objects in the phenomenal realm) are known; see note 24 on 5.476d.

Duranos
(also transliterated as “Uranus”) refers to the sky (or “heavens”) and to the primeval god of the sky.
Horatos
is a verbal adjective meaning “that which is seen.”

Once again, the word for sun in Greek
(helios)
is masculine—hence the masculine pronouns in Jowett’s translation.

Odyssey
11.489. Socrates criticizes the verse at 3.386c.

That is, as would happen in the rigorous training of future guardians that is described in books 2 and 3.

The place where those who have led virtuous or exemplary lives were typically thought to be ensconced after death; see also 7.540b.

The references in this paragraph are to 4.419a-421c and 3.414b-415d.

See note 20 on 2.376e for the broad semantic range of
mousikê,
the word translated here as “music.”

Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all composed tragedies about Palamedes, a Greek chieftain at Troy, who was traditionally credited with the invention of numbers and also writing; in other sources, the god Prometheus is credited with the invention of numbers.

The term
arithmetikê,
here translated as “arithmetic,” has more to do with the “science of number”—that is, the study of the characteristics of certain types of numbers (for example, even and odd)—than with simple addition, subtraction, etc.

That is, plane geometry.

Legendary artist and craftsman. Among other achievements, he constructed the labyrinth on Crete to contain the Minotaur.

Literally, “the craftsman
(demiourgos)
of heaven.” Compare “the artificer
(demiourgos)
of the senses” at 6.507c.

See notes 32 on 6.509d and 33 on 510b.

The distinction is between
doxa
and
epistemê,
as at 5.476d-480a.

Compare 3.412c—414b; also 6.494a-495b.

That is,
megaloprepeia
(high-mindedness); compare 6.486a.

That is, at 3.412c; compare 6.498b—c.

Athenian statesman and poet (late seventh to early sixth centuries B.C.E.).

Compare 5.467a—e.

See note 6 on 5.454a for the distinction between eristic and dialectic.

Compare 1.347c.

The oracle of Apollo at Delphi. See 5.461e and 4.427b.

Compare 5.455b—457b.

Compare 6.501a.

That is, 4.445c-e.

According to an ancient commentator, the reference is to the way in which wrestlers, after being thrown, rose and resumed their positions.

Compare
Odyssey
19.162. For the assumption that the characters of individuals determine the characters of states, see 4.435e.

At 1.344c.

Timê
in Greek means “honor”;
timokratia
and
timarchia
are Platonic neologisms for the
philotimos politeia
(“honor-loving constitution” or, as Jowett translates, “government of honor”) in which the ambitious silver class dominates. See 8.548c—e.

Throughout books 8 and 9, Socrates uses the term “aristocracy” to refer to the government of “the best” that is only possible, he argues, in the ideal state.

Adapted from
Iliad
16.112.

“That which is of divine birth” is perhaps meant to signify the world as a whole; compare
Timaeus
30a.

That is, a period of gestation. The “perfect number” that describes the period of gestation of “that which is divinely born” is left unspecified.

That is, by squaring a number and then multiplying it again by its square (cubing).

More literally, “comprehending three distances and four limits.” “Three distances” refers perhaps to the height, width, and depth of a square or rectangular cube. “Four limits” may signify the four comer points on a cube that define its height, width, and depth.

Alternatively, “of elements that make things like and unlike and cause increase and decrease....” These “elements” are perhaps the numbers 3, 4, and 5, which are the lengths of the sides of the Pythagorean triangle. It may be significant that the combined cubes of these numbers (that is, 3
³
+4
³
+5
³
) yield 216, which some ancient theorists (for example, the Pythagoreans) identified as the minimum number of days for human gestation.

Literally, “the base ‘thirded,’ yoked to 5, yields two harmonies when thrice increased.” The base is 3, which is first multiplied by one and one-third times itself (that is, 3 x 4/3, equaling 4); this figure (that is, 3 x 4, or 12) is then multiplied by 5, yielding 60. 60 is then multiplied by itself raised to the third power (that is, 60x60
³
); this yields 12,960,000, which can also be expressed as (3×4×5)
⁴
. The number 12,960,000 “comprehends” two geometric figures representing “two harmonies.” The first figure is a square with sides measuring 3600 units (3600 × 3600 = 12,960,000); the second is a rectangle with sides measuring 4800 and 2700 units (4800 x 2700 =12,960,000). Readers should note that, in the original text, the number 12,960,000 is reached through a series of multiplications; Jowett’s translation, “the base of these with a third
added,”
misrepresents Socrates’ mathematical logic.

The side of the square in question is 36 “100 times as great”—that is, 36 x 100, which equals 3600.

Alternatively, “a figure having one side equal to the other, but oblong [that is, in a rectangle; two sides instead of four have the same measurement], having one side that is 100 squares of the rational diameter of 5, minus 100.” The rational diameter of 5 is 7, because the diameter of a square with sides of 5 units is the square root of 50, and the closest rational number (that is, integer) to the square root of 50 is 7, since 7 x 7 = 49. “100 squares of the rational diameter of 5,” then, is 100 x 7 x 7, or 4900. Subtracting 100 from 4900 yields 4800.

This is shorthand for “or of 100 squares of irrational diameters, wanting 2 each,” which presents an alternative way of arriving at the number 4800: that is, (50-2) x 100. The irrational diameter is the square root of 50; the square of this number is 50; “wanting 2 each” means that 2 must be subtracted from 50, yielding 48.

That is, 100 x 3
³
= 2700.

Compare 4.423e.

Compare 3.415a—c.

Adapted from Aeschylus,
Seven Against Thebes
451 and 570.

See 8.544c.

The distinction between necessary and unnecessary appetites (and pleasures) is fleshed out at 8.558d—559d.

That is, Ploutos, the god of wealth.

Another pun on the word
tokos,
which means both “offspring” and “interest (on a loan)”; compare 6.507a.

Compare 6.492a and 6.496a—b.

Compare
Odyssey
9.82—104. The reference here is to the “drone desires” mentioned at 8.559d.

Literally, unmixed wine. Greeks typically drank wine mixed with water.

Adapted from a lost play.

The proverb in question is “Like mistress, like her dog”; it refers to the imitation by female slaves of their mistresses’ ways.

The speaker’s platform in, for example, the Assembly.

“Demagogic” politicians (such as Cleon, who died in 422 B.C.E.) styled themselves as “champions [
prostatai
] of the people.”

That is, Zeus the wolf-god. Tales about werewolves were popular in antiquity.

That is, the rational part of the soul.

For the reliance of tyrants on bodyguards, see 8.566b.

“Motherland”
(metris),
as opposed to the more typical “fatherland”
(patris),
was apparently the favored expression on Crete.

Compare 9.580a and 1.344c-d.

That is,
aretê;
see note 6 on 1.335b.

Ariston’s name is derived from the adjective
aristos
(“best”); see 2.368a and also note 6 on 1.335b.

That is, the “spirit”
(thumos).

The temple of Zeus at Olympia was an important pan-Hellenic site; dedication to Olympian Zeus marks the significance of an object or deed.

That is, “deprivations.” The Greek word
kenosis
literally means an “emptying.”

The tyrannical man is “three times removed” from his oligarchical counterpart if one counts inclusively, as the Greeks regularly did; compare 10.597e.

That is, since the “timarchic” man is between them. Once again, Socrates counts inclusively.

The tyrant is 3×3 (that is, 9) times removed from the “kingly” man; the kingly man’s pleasure—which Socrates envisions in a “solid” figure—is therefore 9
³
(that is, 729) times greater than the tyrant’s.

Mythological monsters: The Chimera was envisioned as a conflation of a lion, a goat, and a serpent. The sea-dwelling Scylla had six heads and twelve feet. Cerberus was the triple-headed dog that guarded the underworld.

Oedipus’s son Polyneices, exiled from Thebes by his brother Eteocles, sought to restore himself to power with the help of King Amphiareus of Argos; to secure the reluctant King’s cooperation, he bribed Amphiareus’ wife, Eriphyle, with a necklace.

Compare 3.399e.

Compare 5.472d-e.

See note 24 on 2.379a.

On Asclepius and the Asclepiadae, see 3.405d-406c.

The traditional founder of the Spartan (Lacedaemonian) constitution and way of life (perhaps early eighth century B.C.E.).

Lawgiver in the city-state Catana (on Sicily) and Rhegium (in southern Italy) who was active in the sixth century B.C.E.

By the classical period, the Homeridae (literally, “sons of Homer”) established themselves as authoritative interpreters of the works attributed in antiquity to Homer.

Thales (late seventh to early sixth century B.C.E.) of Miletus was credited in antiquity with predicting the occurrence of a solar eclipse that took place in 585 B.C.E.; he is often cited as one of the “seven sages” and is credited with bringing Egyptian techniques of “land measurement” (that is, geometry) to the Greek world.