Republic

so now, since you are beginning on another constitution before sufficiently defining this, we are firmly resolved, as you overheard, not to let you go till you have expounded all this as fully as you did the rest.Set me down, too, said Glaucon, as voting this ticket.[*](Cf. Protagoras 330 C.) Surely, said Thrasymachus, you may consider it a joint resolution of us all, Socrates. What a thing you have done, said I, in thus challenging[*](Cf. Theaetetus 184 C, Gorgias 469 C.) me! What a huge debate you have started afresh, as it were, about this polity, in the supposed completion of which I was rejoicing, being only too glad to have it accepted as I then set it forth! You don’t realize what a swarm[*](For the metaphor cf. Euripides Bacchae 710 and σμῆνος, Republic 574 D, Cratylus 401 C, Meno 72 A.) of arguments you are stirring up[*](Cf. Philebus 36 D, Theaetetus 184 A, Cratylus 411 A.) by this demand, which I foresaw and evaded to save us no end of trouble. Well, said Thrasymachus,[*](Thrasymachus speaks here for the last time. He is mentioned in 357 A, 358 B-C, 498 C, 545 B, 590 D.)do you suppose this company has come here to prospect for gold[*](Lit. to smelt ore. The expression was proverbial and was explained by an obscure anecdote. Cf. Leutsch, Paroemiographi, ii. pp. 91, 727, and i. p. 464, and commentators on Herodotus iii. 102.) and not to listen to discussions? Yes, I said, in measure. Nay, Socrates, said Glaucon, the measure[*](Plato often anticipates and repels the charge of tedious length (see Politicus 286 C, Philebus 28 D, 36 D). Here the thought takes a different turn (as 504 C). The δέ γε implies a slight rebuke (Cf. Class. Phil . xiv. pp. 165-174).) of listening to such discussions is the whole of life for reasonable men. So don’t consider us, and do not you yourself grow weary in explaining to us what we ask or, your views as to how this communion of wives and children among our guardians will be managed, and also about the rearing of the children while still young in the interval between[*](So 498 A. Cf. on Aristophanes Acharnians 434, and Laws 792 A.) birth and formal schooling which is thought to be the most difficult part of education. Try, then, to tell us what must be the manner of it. It is not an easy thing to expound, my dear fellow, said I, for even more than the provisions that precede it, it raises many doubts. For one might doubt whether what is proposed is possible[*](Cf. 456 C, Thucydides vi. 98, Introduction xvii.) and, even conceding the possibility,[*](εἰ ὅ τι μάλιστα: a common formula for what a disputant can afford to concede. Cf. Lysias xiii. 52, xxii. 1, xxii. 10. It occurs six times in the Charmides.) one might still be sceptical whether it is best. For which reason one as it were, shrinks from touching on the matter lest the theory be regarded as nothing but a wish-thought,[*](Cf. Introduction xxxi-xxxii, 456 C, 499 C, 540 D, Laws 736 D, Aristotle Politics 1260 b 29, 1265 a 17 δεῖ μὲν οὖν ὑποτίθεσθαι κατ’ εὐχην, μηδὲν μέντοι ἀδύνατον.) my dear friend. Do not shrink, he said, for your hearers will not be inconsiderate[*](ἀγνώμονες = inconsiderate, unreasonable, as Andocides ii. 6 shows.) nor distrustful nor hostile. And I said, My good fellow, is that remark intended to encourage me? It is, he said. Well, then, said I, it has just the contrary effect. For, if I were confident that I was speaking with knowledge, it would be an excellent encouragement. For there is both safety and security in speaking the truth with knowledge about our greatest and dearest concerns to those who are both wise and dear.

But to speak when one doubts himself and is seeking while he talks is a fearful and slippery venture. The fear is not of being laughed at,[*](Cf. on 452 C-D, Euthydemus 3 C To be laughed at is no matter, Laws 830 B τὸν τῶν ἀνοήτων γέλωτα, Euripides fr. 495.) for that is childish, but, lest, missing the truth, I fall down and drag my friends with me in matters where it most imports not to stumble. So I salute Nemesis,[*](Ἀδράστειαν: practically equivalent to Nemesis. Cf. our knock on wood. Cf. Posnansky in Breslauer Phil. Abhandl. v. 2, Nemesis und Adrasteia: Herodotus i. 35, Aeschylus Prom. 936, Euripides Rhesus 342, Demosthenes xxv. 37 καὶ Ἀδράστειαν μὲν ἄνθρωπος ὢν ἐγὼ προσκυνῶ. For the moral earnestness of what follows cf. 336 E, Gorgias 458 A, and Joubert apud Arnold, Essays in Crit. p. 29 Ignorance . . . is in itself in intellectual matters a crime of the first order.) Glaucon, in what I am about to say. For, indeed,[*](γὰρ οὖν, for in fact, but often with the suggestion that the fact has to be faced, as e.g. in Timaeus 47 E, where the point is often missed.) I believe that involuntary homicide is a lesser fault than to mislead opinion about the honorable, the good, and the just. This is a risk that it is better to run with enemies[*](Almost proverbial. Cf. my note on Horace, Odes iii. 27. 21. Plato is speaking here from the point of view of the ordinary man, and not from that of his Sermon on the Mount ethics. Cf. Philebus 49 D and Gorgias 480 E, where Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, ii. pp. 332 and 350, goes astray. Cf. Class. Phil . vol. i. p. 297.) than with friends, so that your encouragement is none. And Glaucon, with a laugh, said, Nay, Socrates, if any false note in the argument does us any harm, we release you as[*](ὥσπερ marks the legal metaphor to which ἐκεῖ below refers. Cf. Laws 869 E, and Euripides Hippolytus 1433 and 1448-1450, with Hirzel, Δίκη etc. p. 191, n. 1, Demosthenes xxxvii. 58-59. Plato transfers the idea to the other world in Phaedo 114 A-B, where the pardon of their victims is required for the release of sinners. The passage is used by the older critics in the comparison of Plato with Christianity.) in a homicide case, and warrant you pure of hand and no deceiver of us. So speak on with confidence. Well, said I, he who is released in that case is counted pure as the law bids, and, presumably, if there, here too. Speak on, then, he said, for all this objection. We must return then, said I, and say now what perhaps ought to have been said in due sequence there. But maybe this way is right, that after the completion of the male drama we should in turn go through with the female,[*](Sophron’s Mimes are said to have been so classified. For δρᾶμα cf. also Theaetetus 150 A.) especially since you are so urgent. For men, then, born and bred as we described there is in my opinion no other right possession and use of children and women than that which accords with the start we gave them. Our endeavor, I believe, was to establish these men in our discourse as the guardians of a flock[*](For the use of analogies drawn from animals cf. 375-376, 422 D, 466 D, 467 B, 491 D-E, 537 A, 546 A-B, 564 A. Plato is only pretending to deduce his conclusions from his imagery. Aristotle’s literal-minded criticism objects that animals have no economy, Politics 1264 b 4-6.)? Yes. Let us preserve the analogy, then, and assign them a generation and breeding answering to it, and see if it suits us or not. In what way? he said. In this. Do we expect the females of watch-dogs to join in guarding what the males guard and to hunt with them and share all their pursuits or do we expect the females to stay indoors as being incapacitated by the bearing and the breeding of the whelps while the males toil and have all the care of the flock? They have all things in common, he replied, except that we treat the females as weaker and the males as stronger. Is it possible, then, said I, to employ any creature for the same ends as another if you do not assign it the same nurture and education? It is not possible.