Republic

Plato

Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 5-6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1930-37.

And they told their stories to one another, the one lamenting and wailing as they recalled how many and how dreadful things they had suffered and seen in their journey beneath the earth[*](Cf. Phaedr. 256 D, Epist. vii. 335 B-C.)—it lasted a thousand years[*](Phaedr. 249 A, Virgil, Aen. vi. 748.)—while those from heaven related their delights and visions of a beauty beyond words. To tell it all, Glaucon, would take all our time, but the sum, he said, was this. For all the wrongs they had ever done to anyone and all whom they had severally wronged they had paid the penalty in turn tenfold for each, and the measure of this was by periods of a hundred years each,[*](The ideal Hindu length of life is said to be 100 years.) so that on the assumption that this was the length of human life the punishment might be ten times the crime; as for example that if anyone had been the cause of many deaths or had betrayed cities and armies and reduced them to slavery, or had been participant in any other iniquity, they might receive in requital pains tenfold for each of these wrongs, and again if any had done deeds of kindness and been just and holy men they might receive their due reward in the same measure; and other things not worthy of record he said of those who had just been born[*](For the words Cf. Tim. 76 E εὐθὺς γιγνομένοις. Plato does not take up the problem of infant damnation! Warburton says, and I make no doubt but the things not worth to be remembered was the doctrine of infants in purgatory, which appears to have given Plato much scandal, who did not at that time at least reflect upon its original and use. See also Mozley, Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination, p. 307, apud Seebohm. The Oxford Reformers (3rd ed.), p. 495: Augustine had laid down that the punishment of such children was the mildest of all punishment in hell. . . . Aquinas laid down the further hypothesis that this punishment was not pain of body or mind, but want of the Divine vision. Virgil, Aen. vi. 427, Anth. Pal. ix. 359. 10 θανεῖν αὐτίκα τικτόμενον. Stallbaum and Ast think ἀποθανόντων dropped out of the text after γενομένων.) and lived but a short time; and he had still greater requitals to tell of piety and impiety towards the gods and parents[*](Cf. Phaedo 113 E-114 A, where there is a special penalty for murderers and parricides.) and of self-slaughter. For he said that he stood by when one was questioned by another Where is Ardiaeus[*](Cf. Archelaus in Gorg. 471.) the Great? Now this Ardiaeos had been tyrant in a certain city of Pamphylia just a thousand years before that time and had put to death his old father and his elder brother, and had done many other unholy deeds, as was the report. So he said that the one questioned replied, He has not come, said he, nor will he be likely to come here. For indeed this was one of the dreadful sights we beheld; when we were near the mouth and about to issue forth and all our other sufferings were ended, we suddenly caught sight of him and of others, the most of them, I may say, tyrants.[*](Cf. Gorg. 525 D-526 A.) But there were some of private station, of those who had committed great crimes. And when these supposed that at last they were about to go up and out, the mouth would not receive them, but it bellowed when anyone of the incurably wicked[*](Cf. Gorg. 525 C, and What Plato Said, p. 536, on Phaedo 113 E. Biggs, Christian Platonists, ii. p. 147 At the first assize there will be found those who like Ardiaeus are incurable.) or of those who had not completed their punishment tried to come up.

And thereupon, he said, savage men of fiery aspect[*](This naturally suggests the devils, of Dante (Inferno xxi. 25 ff.) and other mediaeval literature. See Dieterich, Nekyia, p.4 and pp. 60 f.) who stood by and took note of the voice laid hold on them[*](See Rogers on Aristoph. Knights 262. Cf. Herod. i. 92 ἐπὶ κνάφου ἕλκων διέφθειρε.) and bore them away. But Ardiaeus and others they bound hand and foot and head and flung down and flayed them and dragged them by the wayside, carding them on thorns and signifying to those who from time to time passed by for what cause they were borne away, and that they were to be hurled into Tartarus.[*](Il. viii. 13 f., Hesiod, Theog. 682, 721, etc., Pind. Pyth. i. 15 f., Eurip. Orest. 265 μέσον μ’ ὀχμάζεις ὡς βάλῃς εἰς Τάρταρον.) And then, though many and manifold dread things had befallen them, this fear exceeded all—lest each one should hear the voice when he tried to go up, and each went up most gladly when it had kept silence. And the judgements and penalties were somewhat after this manner, and the blessings were their counterparts. But when seven days had elapsed for each group in the meadow, they were required to rise up on the eighth and journey on, and they came in four days to a spot whence they discerned, extended from above throughout the heaven and the earth, a straight light like a pillar, most nearly resembling the rainbow, but brighter and purer. To this they came after going forward a day’s journey, and they saw there at the middle of the light the extremities of its fastenings stretched from heaven; for this light was the girdle of the heavens like the undergirders[*](Cf. Blaydes on Aristoph. Knights 279, Acts xxvii. 17.) of triremes, holding together in like manner the entire revolving vault. And from the extremities was stretched the spindle of Necessity,[*](Plotinus, Enn. ii. 3 9, p. 35, vol. ii. Budé e. Mais (dira-t-on) rappelons-nous le fuseau; pour les anciens, c’était un fuseau matériel que tournent en filant les Moires; pour Platon, il représente le ciel des fixes; or les Moires et la Nécessité, leur mère, en le faisant tourner, filent le destin de chaque être à sa naissance; par elle, les êtres engendrés arrivent â la naissance, etc. St. Paulinus Nolanus calls it a deliramentum. Tannery, Science hellène, p. 238, thinks it alludes to the system of Parmenides. Le fuseau central de la Nécessité l’indique suffisamment; si la présence des sirènes est une marque de pythagorisme, elle pent seulement signifier soit les relations de Parménide avec l’école soit plutôt l’origine des déterminations particulières que donne Platon et qui évidemment ne remontent pas à l’Eléate. Cf. ibid. p. 246. For various details of the picture cf. Milton, the Genius’s speech in Arcades (quoted and commented on in E.M.W. Tillyard, Milton, p. 376).) through which all the orbits turned. Its staff and its hook were made of adamant, and the whorl of these and other kinds was commingled. And the nature of the whorl was this: Its shape was that of those in our world, but from his description we must conceive it to be as if in one great whorl, hollow and scooped out, there lay enclosed, right through, another like it but smaller, fitting into it as boxes that fit into one another,[*](Cf. Burnet, Early Greek Philos. pp. 216-217 In Plato’s Myth of Er, which is certainly Pythagorean in its general character, we do not hear of spheres but of the lips of concentric whorls fitted into one another like a nest of boxes . . . With 616-617 Cf. Laws 822 A-B, Tim. 36 D, Dante, Convivio, ii. 3. 5 ff. The names of the planets occur first in Epinomis 987 B-C.) and in like manner another, a third, and a fourth, and four others, for there were eight of the whorls in all, lying within one another, showing their rims as circles from above and forming the continuous back of a single whorl about the shaft, which was driven home through the middle of the eighth. Now the first and outmost whorl had the broadest circular rim, that of the sixth was second, and third was that of the fourth, and fourth was that of the eighth, fifth that of the seventh, sixth that of the fifth, seventh that of the third, eighth that of the second;

and that of the greatest was spangled, that of the seventh brightest, that of the eighth took its color from the seventh, which shone upon it. The colors of the second and fifth were like one another and more yellow than the two former. The third had the whitest color, and the fourth was of a slightly ruddy hue; the sixth was second in whiteness. The staff turned as a whole in a circle with the same movement, but within the whole as it revolved the seven inner circles revolved gently in the opposite direction to the whole,[*](Burnet, op. cit. p. 123, says; This view that the planets had an orbital motion from west to east is attributed by Aetios ii. 16. 3 to Alkmaion (96), which certainly implies that Pythagoras did not hold it. As we shall see (152) it is far from clear that any of the Pythagoreans did. It seems rather to be Plato’s discovery. Cf. ibid. p. 352.) and of these seven the eighth moved most swiftly, and next and together with one another the seventh, sixth and fifth; and third[*](The best mss. have τὸν before τρίτον. It is retained by some editors, but Schleiermacher rejected it and Adam and Burnet omit it.) in swiftness, as it appeared to them, moved the fourth with returns upon itself, and fourth the third and fifth the second. And the spindle turned on the knees of Necessity, and up above on each of the rims of the circles a Siren stood, borne around in its revolution and uttering one sound, one note, and from all the eight there was the concord of a single harmony.[*](The music of the spheres. Cf. Cic. De nat. deor. iii. 9. 26, Mayor, vol. iii. p. 86, Macrob. on Somn. Scip. ii. 3, Ritter-Preller (9th ed.), pp. 69-70 ( 81-82), K. Gronau, Poseidonios und die jüdisch-christliche Genesisexegese, pp. 59-61. Aristotle’s comment, De caelo 290 b 12 ff., is that the notion of a music of the spheres is pretty and ingenious, but not true. He reports the (Pythagorean?) explanation that we do not hear it because we have been accustomed to it from birth. see Carl v. Jan, Die Harmonie der Sphären, Philologus, lii. 13 ff.) And there were another three who sat round about at equal intervals, each one on her throne, the Fates,[*](Pictured in Michelangelo’s Le Parche. Cf. Catullus 64. 306 ff.; Lowell, Villa Franca: Spin, Clotho, spin, Lachesis twist and Atropos sever.) daughters of Necessity, clad in white vestments with filleted heads, Lachesis, and Clotho, and Atropos, who sang in unison with the music of the Sirens, Lachesis singing the things that were, Clotho the things that are, and Atropos the things that are to be. And Clotho with the touch of her right hand helped to turn the outer circumference of the spindle, pausing from time to time. Atropos with her left hand in like manner helped to turn the inner circles, and Lachesis alternately with either hand lent a hand to each. Now when they arrived they were straight-way bidden to go before Lachesis, and then a certain prophet[*](See What Plato Said, p. 550, on Phaedr. 235 C.) first marshalled them in orderly intervals, and thereupon took from the lap of Lachesis lots and patterns of lives and went up to a lofty platform and spoke, This is the word of Lachesis, the maiden daughter of Necessity, Souls that live for a day,[*](Cf. Laws 923 A, Pindar, Pyth. viii. 95, Aesch. Prom. 83, 547, Aristot. Hist. an. 552 b 18 f., Cic. Tusc. i. 39. 94, Plut. Cons. ad Apol. 6 (104 A)ἀνθρώπων . . . ἐφήμερα τὰ σώματα, ibid. 27 (115 D)ἐφήμερον σπέρμα. See also Stallbaum ad loc., and for the thought Soph. Ajax 125-126, Iliad i. 146, Mimnermus ii. 1, Soph. fr. 12 and 859 (Nauck), Job vii. 6, viii. 9, ix. 25, xiv. 2, xxi. 17, etc.) now is the beginning of another cycle of mortal generation where birth is the beacon of death. No divinity[*](Zeller-Nestle, p. 166, says that this looks like intentional correction of Phaedo 107 D. Cf. Phaedo 113 D and Lysias ii. 78 ὅ τε δαίμων ὁ τὴν ἡμετέραν μοῖραν εἰληχὼς ἀπαραίτητος. Arnobius, Adversus gentes, ii. 64, says that similarly Christ offers us redemption but does not force it upon us.) shall cast lots for you, but you shall choose your own deity. Let him to whom falls the first lot first select a life to which he shall cleave of necessity. But virtue has no master over her,[*](Cf. Milton’s Love Virtue; she alone is free (Comus).) and each shall have more or less of her as he honors her or does her despite. The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.[*](Justin Martyr. Apol. xliv. 8, quotes this. Cf. Tim. 42 D, Dieterich, Nekyia, p. 115, Odyssey i. 32 f., Bacchylides xiv. 51 f. (Jebb, p. 366) Ζεὺς . . . οὐκ αἴτιος θνατοῖς μεγάλων ἀχέων, etc., Manitius, Gesch. d. lat. Lit. d. Mittelalters, ii. p. 169. For the problem of evil in Plato see What Plato Said, p. 578 on Theaet. 176 A, and for the freedom of the will ibid. pp. 644-645 on Laws 904 C.) So saying, the prophet flung the lots out among them all, and each took up the lot that fell by his side, except himself; him they did not permit.[*](Cf. Symp. 175 C, where the words are the same but the construction different. For the indirect reflexive cf. 614 B οὖ ἐκβῆναι, Symp. 176 D, Symp. 223 B ἓ δὲ ὕπνον λαβεῖν.) And whoever took up a lot saw plainly what number he had drawn.

And after this again the prophet placed the patterns of lives before them on the ground, far more numerous than the assembly. They were of every variety, for there were lives of all kinds of animals and all sorts of human lives, for there were tyrannies among them, some uninterrupted till the end[*](For διατελεῖς Cf. Laws 661 D τυραννίδα διὰ τέλους.) and others destroyed midway and issuing in penuries and exiles and beggaries; and there were lives of men of repute for their forms and beauty and bodily strength otherwise and prowess and the high birth and the virtues of their ancestors, and others of ill repute in the same things, and similarly of women. But there was no determination of the quality of soul, because the choice of a different life inevitably[*](For the idiom ἀναγκαίως ἔχειν Cf. Phaedo 91 E, Laws 771 E, 928 E, Lysias vi. 35.) determined a different character. But all other things were commingled with one another and with wealth and poverty and sickness and health and the intermediate[*](μεσοῦνPhaedr. 241 D.) conditions. —And there, dear Glaucon, it appears, is the supreme hazard[*](Cf. Phaedo 107 C, 114 D, Gorg. 526 E, Eurip. Medea 235 ἀγὼν μέγιστος, Thucyd. i. 32. 5 μέγας ὁ κίνδυνος, Aristoph. Clouds 955 νῦν γὰρ ἅπας . . . κίνδυνος ἀνεῖται, Frogs 882 ἀγὼν . . . ὁ μέγας, Antiphon v. 43 ἐν ᾦ μοι ὁ πᾶς κίνδυνος ἦν. For the expression Cf. Gorg. 470 E ἐν τούτῳ ἡ πᾶσα εὐδαιμονία ἐστιν.) for a man. And this is the chief reason why it should be our main concern that each of us, neglecting all other studies, should seek after and study this thing[*](Cf. 443-444, 591 E-592 A, Gorg. 527 B f., Laws 662 B f., 904 A ff.)—if in any way he may be able to learn of and discover the man who will give him the ability and the knowledge to distinguish the life that is good from that which is bad, and always and everywhere to choose the best that the conditions allow, and, taking into account all the things of which we have spoken and estimating the effect on the goodness of his life of their conjunction or their severance, to know how beauty commingled with poverty or wealth and combined with what habit of soul operates for good or for evil, and what are the effects of high and low birth and private station and office and strength and weakness and quickness of apprehension and dullness and all similar natural and acquired habits of the soul, when blended and combined with one another,[*](The singular verb is used after plural subjects, because the subjects are united in the writer’s mind into one general idea. Cf. Rep. 363 A, Laws 925 E, Symp. 188 B.) so that with consideration of all these things he will be able to make a reasoned choice between the better and the worse life, with his eyes fixed on the nature of his soul, naming the worse life that which will tend to make it more unjust and the better that which will make it more just. But all other considerations he will dismiss, for we have seen that this is the best choice, both for life and death.

And a man must take with him to the house of death an adamantine[*](See Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 25, Laws 661-662, and for the word 360 B, Gorg. 509 A.) faith in this, that even there he may be undazzled[*](Cf. 576 D.) by riches and similar trumpery, and may not precipitate himself into tyrannies and similar doings and so work many evils past cure and suffer still greater himself, but may know how always to choose in such things the life that is seated in the mean[*](An anticipation of the Aristotelian doctrine, Eth. Nic. 1106 b 6 f. Cf. What Plato Said, p. 629, on Laws 691 C.) and shun the excess in either direction, both in this world so far as may be and in all the life to come; for this is the greatest happiness for man. And at that time also the messenger from that other world reported that the prophet spoke thus: Even for him who comes forward last, if he make his choice wisely and live strenuously, there is reserved an acceptable life, no evil one. Let not the foremost in the choice be heedless nor the last be discouraged. When the prophet had thus spoken he said that the drawer of the first lot at once sprang to seize the greatest tyranny,[*](Cf. Isoc. Epist. vi. 12 Xen. Hiero 7. 2 ὅμως προπετῶς φέρεσθε εἰς αὐτήν.) and that in his folly and greed he chose it without sufficient examination, and failed to observe that it involved the fate of eating his own children, and other horrors, and that when he inspected it at leisure he beat his breast and bewailed his choice, not abiding by the forewarning of the prophet. For he did not blame himself[*](Cf. What Plato Said, p. 532, on Phaedo 90 D.) for his woes, but fortune and the gods and anything except himself. He was one of those who had come down from heaven, a man who had lived in a well-ordered polity in his former existence, participating in virtue by habit[*](Phaedo 82 B.) and not by philosophy; and one may perhaps say that a majority of those who were thus caught were of the company that had come from heaven, inasmuch as they were unexercised in suffering. But the most of those who came up from the earth, since they had themselves suffered and seen the sufferings of others, did not make their choice precipitately. For which reason also there was an interchange of good and evil for most of the souls, as well as because of the chances of the lot. Yet if at each return to the life of this world a man loved wisdom sanely, and the lot of his choice did not fall out among the last, we may venture to affirm, from what was reported thence, that not only will he be happy here but that the path of his journey thither and the return to this world will not be underground and rough but smooth and through the heavens.

For he said that it was a sight worth seeing to observe how the several souls selected their lives. He said it was a strange, pitiful, and ridiculous spectacle, as the choice was determined for the most part by the habits of their former lives.[*](Cf. Phaedo 81 E ff., Phaedr. 248-249, Tim. 42 A-D, 91 D ff. For the idea of reincarnation in Plato see What Plato Said, p. 529, on Phaedo 81 E-82 B.) He saw the soul that had been Orpheus’, he said, selecting the life of a swan,[*](Urwiek, The Message of Plato, p. 213, says: If Plato knew anything at all of Indian allegory, he must have known that the swan (Hamsa) is in Hinduism the invariable symbol of the immortal Spirit; and to say, as he does, that Orpheus chose the life of a swan, refusing to be born again of a woman, is just an allegorical way of saying that he passed on into the spiritual life. . . . ) because from hatred of the tribe of women, owing to his death at their hands, it was unwilling to be conceived and born of a woman. He saw the soul of Thamyras[*](Like Orpheus a singer. He contended with the Muses in song and was in consequence deprived by them of sight and of the gift of song. Cf. also Ion 533 B-C, Laws 829 D-E, Iliad ii. 595.) choosing the life of a nightingale; and he saw a swan changing to the choice of the life of man, and similarly other musical animals. The soul that drew the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion; it was the soul of Ajax, the son of Telamon, which, because it remembered the adjudication of the arms of Achilles, was unwilling to become a man. The next, the soul of Agamemnon, likewise from hatred of the human race because of its sufferings, substituted the life of an eagle.[*](Cf. Aesch. Ag. 114 ff.) Drawing one of the middle lots the soul of Atalanta caught sight of the great honors attached to an athlete’s life and could not pass them by but snatched at them. After her, he said, he saw the soul of Epeius,[*](Who built the Trojan horse. See Hesychius s. v. ) the son of Panopeus, entering into the nature of an arts and crafts woman. Far off in the rear he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites[*](Cf. Iliad ii. 212 ff.) clothing itself in the body of an ape. And it fell out that the soul of Odysseus drew the last lot of all and came to make its choice, and, from memory of its former toils having flung away ambition, went about for a long time in quest of the life of an ordinary citizen who minded his own business,[*](For ἀπράγμονος cf. on 565 A, p. 316, note b.) and with difficulty found it lying in some corner disregarded by the others, and upon seeing it said that it would have done the same had it drawn the first lot, and chose it gladly. And in like manner, of the other beasts some entered into men[*](Phaedr. 249 specifies that only beasts who had once been men could return to human form.) and into one another, the unjust into wild creatures, the just transformed to tame, and there was every kind of mixture and combination. But when, to conclude, all the souls had chosen their lives in the order of their lots, they were marshalled and went before Lachesis. And she sent with each, as the guardian of his life and the fulfiller of his choice, the genius[*](Cf. 617 E, and for daemons in Plato What Plato Said, pp. 546-547, on Symp. 202 E, Dieterich, Nekyia, p. 59.) that he had chosen, and this divinity led the soul first to Clotho, under her hand and her turning[*](δίνης: Cf. Cratyl. 439 C and Phaedo 99 B.) of the spindle to ratify the destiny of his lot and choice; and after contact with her the genius again led the soul to the spinning of Atropos[*](Cf. Laws 960 C.) to make the web of its destiny[*](τὰ ἐπικλωσθέντα: Cf. Laws 957 E, Theaet. 169 C, and the Platonic epigram on Dion, Anth. Pal. vii. 99 Μοῖραι ἐπέκλωσαν, Od. i. 17, iii. 208, etc., Aesch. Eumen. 335, Callinus i. 9 Μοῖραι ἐπικλώσως.) irreversible,

and then without a backward look it passed beneath the throne of Necessity. And after it had passed through that, when the others also had passed, they all journeyed to the Plain of Oblivion,[*](Cf. Aristoph. Frogs 186.) through a terrible and stifling heat, for it was bare of trees and all plants, and there they camped at eventide by the River of Forgetfulness,[*](In later literature it is the river that is called Lethe. Cf. Aeneid vi. 714 f.) whose waters no vessel can contain. They were all required to drink a measure of the water, and those who were not saved by their good sense drank more than the measure, and each one as he drank forgot all things. And after they had fallen asleep and it was the middle of the night, there was a sound of thunder and a quaking of the earth, and they were suddenly wafted thence, one this way, one that, upward to their birth like shooting stars.[*](In Tim. 41 D-E each soul is given a star as its vehicle. Cf. Aristoph. Peace 833 f. ὡς ἀστέρες γιγνόμεθ’ ὁταν τις ἀποθάνῃ . . . with the Platonic epigram to Ἄστηρ: . . νῦν δὲ θανὼν λάμπεις Ἕσπερος ἐν φθιμένοιςThere is an old superstition in European folklore to the effect that when a star falls a soul goes up to God. Cf. also Rohde, Psyche, ii.6 p. 131.) Er himself, he said, was not allowed to drink of the water, yet how and in what way he returned to the body he said he did not know, but suddenly recovering his sight[*](Cf. Phaedrus 243 B ἀνέβλεψεν.) he saw himself at dawn lying on the funeral pyre.—And so, Glaucon, the tale was saved,[*](Cf. Phileb. 14 A, Laws 645 B, Theaet. 164 D.) as the saying is, and was not lost. And it will save us[*](Phaedo 58 B ἔσωσε τε καὶ αὐτὸς ἐσώθη. σώζειν is here used in its higher sense, approaching the idea of salvation, not as in Gorg. 511 C f., 512 D-E, Laws 707 D, where Plato uses it contemptuously in the tone of whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it.) if we believe it, and we shall safely cross the River of Lethe, and keep our soul unspotted from the world.[*](Cf. James i. 27, Phaedo 81 B, 2Peter iii. 14, and the Emperor Julian’s last speech animum . . . immaculatum conservavi. Cf. Marius the Epicurean, pp. 15-16: A white bird, she told him once, looking at him gravely, a bird which he must carry in his bosom across a crowded public place his own soul was like that.) But if we are guided by me we shall believe that the soul is immortal and capable of enduring all extremes of good and evil, and so we shall hold ever to the upward way and pursue righteousness with wisdom always and ever, that we may be dear to ourselves[*](Cf. Laws 693 B ἑαυτῇ φίλην, Rep. 589 B, Horace, Epist. i. 3. 29 si nobis vivere cari. Jowett’s dear to one another misses the point. Cf. my review of Lemercier, Les Pensées de Marc-Aurèle, in Class. Phil. vii. p. 115: In iii. 4, in fine, the words οἵγε οὐδὲ αὐτοὶ ἑαυτοῖς ἀρέσκονται are omitted because le gens que méprise Marc-Aurèle sont loin de mépriser eux-mêmes. That is to forget that Seneca’s omnis stultitia fastidio laborat sui is good Stoic doctrine, and that the idea that only the wise and good man can be dear to himself is found in the last sentence of Plato’s Republic. Cf. also Soph. OC 309 τίς γὰρ ἐσθλὸς οὐχ αὑτῷ φίλος;.) and to the gods both during our sojourn here and when we receive our reward, as the victors in the games[*](Cf. Vol. I. p. 480, note c, on 465 D.) go about to gather in theirs. And thus both here and in that journey of a thousand years, whereof I have told you, we shall fare well.[*](For the thought Cf. Gorg. 527 C εὐδαιμονήσεις καὶ ζῶν καὶ τελευτήσας. Cf. Vol. I. p. 104, note b, on 353 E. The quiet solemnity of εὖ πράττωμεν illustrates the same characteristic of style that makes Plato begin his Laws with the word θεός, and Dante close each of the three sections of the Divine Comedy with stelle.)