A Day in Athens with Socrates

A Day in Athens with Socrates (1884)
Plato, translated by Ellen Francis Mason

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, page Cover

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PLATO.

A DAY IN ATHENS

WITH SOCRATES

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

THE PROTAGORAS AND THE REPUBLIC

OF

PLATO

THIRD EDITION

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1884

Copyright, 1883, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Franklin Press:

RAND, AVERY AND COMPANY

BOSTON.

PREFACE.

These dialogues have been brought together, not with the idea that they will afford any adequate conception of Plato’s philosophy, — the outgrowth of the teachings of Socrates, — but because they embody one of the most vivid pictures which have come down to us of the age in which these men lived and taught. It would be hard, indeed, to find a more perfect illustration of the distinctive characteristics of any age than is contained in the dialogues of Plato. Painter and poet no less than philosopher, he borrows colour from the scenes which surround him, and finds voice for his loftiest theories in the conversations of the men with whom he is in daily intercourse. As we follow the drama enacting before us, we feel that the lapse of centuries forms no barrier between that age and our own. Only when the action is set aside for the extended consideration of some abstract theme, are we made aware that our want of familiarity with the intellectual standpoint of that day too often proves an obstacle to a clear apprehension of the argument. Some of these difficulties may perhaps best be met by a glance at the position occupied by the newer schools of philosophy in relation to those that had gone before.

In earlier ages, intent upon examining “things under the earth and in the heavens,”^[1] philosophers seem habitually to have withdrawn themselves to solitary heights of speculative thought, whence, to use Plato’s words, “they look down with exceeding contempt upon us common men, and make but small account of us; nor even when they hold discourse do they take thought whether we keep pace with them or are left behind: each man of them goes on his own way.”^[2]

But the day was at hand when “common men” would no longer submit to entire exclusion from the world of philosophy. By this time, however, the inadequacy of systems which strove to “explain the unexplainable” had become but too apparent. An inevitable re-action took place in favour of the practical; and, answering to the new requirements of the day, a new school arose, which proclaimed the instruction of men in the right conduct of life as its chief end and purpose, and cultivated the arts of rhetoric and argumentation, which were yet novelties, as a help towards the attainment of this end.

It is easy to see, that to the active and subtle Greek mind, studies such as these would offer a peculiar attraction, and, pursued with a dangerous facility, might prove fatal to the end which they were at first intended to serve. “The Greek,” says Taine, “is a reasoner even more than a metaphysician or a savant. He takes pleasure in delicate distinctions, in subtle analyses. He delights in splitting hairs, in weaving spiders’ webs. In this his dexterity is unrivalled. Little matters it to him, that, alike in theory and in practice, this too-complicated and fine-drawn web is of no use whatever: he is content to watch the separate threads as they weave themselves into imperceptible and symmetrical meshes. Here the national vice is a final outcome of the national talent. Nowhere else has been seen a group of eminent and popular men who taught with success and glory, as did Gorgias, Protagoras, and Polus, the art of making the worse appear the better cause, and maintained with an appearance of truth an absurd proposition, however shocking it might be.”^[3]

Ethical problems, to solve which was the avowed object of this new school of philosophy, but too frequently were abandoned for a training intended to ensure worldly success and fame; high ideals, sometimes even moral standards, were practically ignored; ability in discussion, facility of expression, came to be regarded not merely as helps to reach truth, but as the sole end of education, the “greatest good of man.”^[4] It is doubtless true that to class all the immediate predecessors of Socrates indiscriminately in one school is as unfair as to make their supposed method a mere synonyme for specious argument. Also in their favour it should be remembered that an inestimable service was rendered by these men in preparing the ground for Socrates himself, and through him for all subsequent philosophers. Had the doctrine that "Man is the measure of all things” not been proclaimed by Protagoras, the conclusion would less soon have been reached, that not only is philosophy made for man, but that man also is made for philosophy; and that hence his bounden duty, nay, his privilege it is, to apply to each act of his life the test whereby the true may be separated from the false, the real from the unreal.

But between the teachings of these men and those of Socrates there is a wide divergence — one less of degree than of kind, less of method than of aim and purpose. The long-winded harangues of other teachers, their

CONTENTS.

page

PROTAGORAS

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

THE REPUBLIC

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63

Notes

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

119

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PROTAGORAS.

309 Friend. Where are you from, Socrates? But I need hardly ask,—fresh from the chase of the young Alcibiades, of course. Well, I must confess that I too, when I saw him the other day, thought him handsome still, but a handsome man,—for between ourselves, Socrates, a man he is now;¹ his beard is already beginning to grow.

Socrates. And what of that? Do you, then, not agree with Homer, who says that the most charming age is when the beard first appears,² which is now just the age of Alcibiades?

F. Well, how stand matters now? Have you just left the youth? and on what terms are you with him?

THE REPUBLIC.

NOTES ON THE PROTAGORAS.

Note 1, p. 3.

Every Athenian youth at the age of eighteen was enrolled upon the list of citizens, and admitted to the rights and duties of manhood.

Note 2, p. 3.

This passage occurs in the description of Hermes, when he meets Odysseus and gives him the charmed herb “moly” as a protection from the wiles of Circe: —

"But while through the glorious woodland I wended my way,
Ere I reached the wide dwelling of Circe, in simples well versed,
As I took my way thither, a wand in his hand, made of gold,
There encountered me Hermes: a stripling with beard of first growth
Even such did he seem, for a youth with most charm then is graced.”

—Odyssey, x., 275 ff.

By this allusion to the youth of Alcibiades, Plato seems to suggest that the dialogue took place in the year 433 B.C., when Alcibiades was eighteen years old. But no date can be assigned which does not involve grave chronological inaccuracies, since it is impossible that all the characters should have appeared together at the respective ages here ascribed to them.

Note 3, p. 4.

NOTES ON THE REPUBLIC.

Note 41, p. 65.

The Peiraeus was the chief port of Athens. It was the ome of the mefics — this term including all resident Greeks not of Athenian parentage — and of the foreign residents, as at this day are the ports of Galata and Pera in Constantinople.

Note 42, p. 65.

Plato and his two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, claimed descent on their father’s side from Codrus, the last king of Athens; while through their mother, Perictione, they were nephews of Critias, the leader of the violent faction of the Thirty Tyrants, and were also connected with the great law-giver Solon. Glaucon is said to have written a number of dialogues, none of which, however, are extant. A conversation between him and Socrates is given in the Memorabilia of Xenophon (iii. 6) in which Glaucon is cured of a wild ambition to put himself at the head of public affairs, by being led to perceive and acknowledge his own ignorance and incapacity.

Adeimantus, who is shortly to be introduced, is known to us only by the representation of him in the Republic.

Note 43, p. 65.

↑ Apology, 19 B.
↑ Sophist, 243 A.
↑ Taine, Philosophie de l’Art en Grèce, pp. 25, 26.
↑ Gorgias, 452 D.

[1] Apology, 19 B.

[2] Sophist, 243 A.

[3] Taine, Philosophie de l’Art en Grèce, pp. 25, 26.

[4] Gorgias, 452 D.

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