THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 The Estate of 
 Miss Bertha Newell 
 
"■'if*" 
 
 II 
 
Selections from Plato, from 
 THE Translation of Sydenham 
 AND Taylor, Revised and 
 Edited by T. W. Rolleston. 
 
 IXCLUDTNG PORTIONS OF THE " PIIAEDRUS," 
 THE "REPUBLIC," "GREATER HIPPIAS," AND THE 
 "BANQUET," TOGETHER WITH THE "APOLOGY OF 
 SOCRATES," THE " CRFTO," THE PHAEDO:' AND 
 THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 
 
 LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 B ?^5 
 
 r '" n 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE OPENING OF THE " PHAEDRUS 
 
 TRUTH AND ITS SHADOWS 
 
 THE OBLIGATIONS OF MORALITY 
 
 A SOPHIST IN SPARTA 
 
 THE BANQUET 
 
 THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES 
 
 THE CRITO 
 
 THE PHAEDO . 
 
 THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO 
 
 PAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 7 
 
 24 
 
 104 
 
 137 
 154 
 247 
 
 853 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It has often been observed that the eminent figures of 
 the world's intellectual history have been, in a singular 
 degree, men of their own age ; men whose sympathies were 
 keenly attuned to the impulses of a certain special period 
 of human development, their works rooted in its cravings, 
 addressed to its capacities, racy of the soil in which they 
 grev7. This is doubtless true ; but it is also true that the very 
 greatest have commonly been men not of one but of two 
 ages. They help to forward some great change and advance 
 in the development of the human spirit : they help it, but 
 they are also its product, and not less are they tlie product 
 of the order which they displace. They look before and 
 after; and we see those few towering figures touched with 
 the sunset light of one epoch and the dawn of another. 
 There is Shakespeare, for instance, so full of the feudal 
 spirit, with all its stateliness and splendour, yet so genially 
 alive to the exuberant democratic vitality of the new era, 
 whose figures, grotesque, jovial, audacious, and unabashed, 
 mingle in his pages with the stately procession of courtiers 
 and princes, and justify their claim to be there by their own 
 inherent human interest. There is Dante, in whom the 
 dying spirit of unquestioning faith, reverence, and submis- 
 sion was so deeply blended with the new spirit of haughty 
 
viii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 independence and individuality. There is Homer, whose 
 action moves in a primitive world of heroic simplicity, where 
 gods walk on earth with men, yet in whom we can clearly 
 perceive, ever recurrent, yet ever coming, as it were, from 
 another world of thought, a sad, meditative, questioning 
 strain, laden with a sense of the mystery and pathos of 
 life t— 
 
 " Zrjvos [ihv iraXs fja Kpovlovos, avrap oC'^vv 
 Wxov dTreLpeairjp.^^ ^ 
 
 Perhaps it is their position in the midst of crossing influences 
 which has so liberated the souls of these men from the 
 narrowness and stiffness of formula, and permitted them so 
 deep and intense a vision of reality. 
 
 In no great author is this position at one of the turning 
 points of time more distinctly marked than in the case 
 of Plato, and never was human thought at a crisis more 
 momentous. He appears in the history of philosophy as 
 the last of the dogmatists or seers, and the first to feel and 
 to inspire the thirst for scientific knowledge. Up to 
 his time — or to that of Socrates, whose teaching is 
 inextricably blended with Plato's — all inquiry into the 
 constitution of the universe and its. ethical and physical 
 laws had been speculation pure and simple — guess work, 
 often inspired by fine insight, but never checked by 
 systematic analysis, or justified by ratiocination. In Plato, 
 however, the rarest gifts of poetic vision are united with the 
 dawning spirit of sceptical inquiry, and from that union 
 Philosophy was born. It is true indeed that from the point 
 when Plato took his stand the human spirit has long ago 
 departed. Yet that point of departure is also the goal 
 which philosophy hopes to reach when it has completed the 
 circle of investigation on which it was then compelled to 
 
 ^ I was the child of Saturnian Zeus, yet had I infinite pain. 
 
INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 enter; the point at which the hghts of inspiration atid of 
 science meet ; at which the one ceases to delude and the 
 other to disenchant. 
 
 That which was novel in Plato, his introduction of the 
 analytic method, his unsparing cross-examination of the 
 current beliefs of the day, has often been represented as the 
 source of his real value and significance. Important it 
 doubtless was, but if any one is tempted to think that it 
 alone is important, let him contemplate this tendency 
 as developed in the Pyrrhonic Scepticism, where it not only 
 subverted the orthodoxies of the day, but proved incon- 
 testably that all conviction whatever upon any subject is 
 impossible to the logical intellect as such. Pyrrhonism was 
 the apotheosis and also the suicide of the analytic method. 
 This method does undoubtedly play a great part in the 
 Platonic philosophy, but it is not the main part of that 
 philosophy; nor is Plato at war with himself, or floundering 
 between marsh and dry land, where he now preaches, 
 poetises, or mythologises, now analyses and subverts. It is 
 certain at any rate, whether we can follow him or not, that 
 Plato held analysis by itself to be a very poor instrument 
 for arriving at the highest truths, and also that he gave it an 
 appropriate place in a coherent system of thought which 
 included much else, and much that he rated far higher. 
 
 The true philosopher, in Plato's system, was required 
 above all to have a clear and vivid apprehension of the 
 ultimate existences of Nature, and especially of moral facts; 
 but this apprehension does not come in as the conclusion of 
 any dialectical process whatever. It is an intuition, the 
 gift of a certain "divine reason" in the soul, and is not 
 properly subject to argument at all. Righteousness, 
 Beauty, Temperance, Courage, and so forth— these things 
 
X INTR OD UCTION, 
 
 are not to be investigated through phenomena, but pheno- 
 mena through them. We do not arrive at them but set out 
 from them, when we begin to truly philosophise. 
 
 But before we can arrive at them a certain process of 
 initiation is necessary. Let us consider for a moment w4iat 
 these ultimate realities, or, as Plato called them, ideas, are. 
 They are that which veritably Is, as opposed to that which 
 Seems. They are that which is eternal and immutable, as 
 opposed to that which comes into being, grows, passes, and 
 vanishes. They are that which is One as opposed to that 
 which is Many. They are the object of true knowledge, 
 for true knowledge can concern itself only with what is 
 fixed and stable ; phenomena are the object of opinion 
 only, conveyed through sensuous perception. They are 
 related to phenomena as substance to shadow. Nothing 
 that our sense makes us aware of in the material world has 
 any real existence, save in so far as it partakes of the nature 
 of an Idea. The Idea is the only reality, and the use of 
 sensible objects is to awaken the mind to perceive the Idea. 
 Paradoxical as it may seem, this insistance upon the empty 
 and unreal character of the sensible world is intended to 
 give true worth and meaning to that world, and is indeed 
 the only way in which this can be done. The sensible 
 universe must "die to live." Only by realising its absolute 
 unreality, as an object, can we come to understand its true 
 value as the symbol and image of an object. 
 
 How to pass from the perception of the image to the 
 contemplation of the reality is the great preliminary ques- 
 tion, and this was rendered a difficult one for Plato by the 
 manner in which he conceived his doctrine of Ideas. Of 
 the difficulties which attend that doctrine, stated as he 
 stated it, he was very well aware, and they are set forth 
 with great fulness and force in the Parnienide&, In this 
 
INTRODUCTION. xi 
 
 work Socrates, then a young man, is represented as cross- 
 questioned by the ancient sage Parmenides, on his doctrine 
 of archetypal existences or Ideas. ''Is there," asks Par- 
 menides, " an absolute Justice, Beauty, Goodness, apart 
 from deeds of justice, beautiful objects, and so forth?" 
 Socrates affirms that there is. " What, then, about objects 
 and creatures composed of physical elements, as man, fire, 
 water, and the like ? " Socrates declares that he cannot 
 quite satisfy himself whether there are also archetypal forms 
 of these things. *' And do you doubt also about the Ideas 
 of mean and ridiculous things — hair, and filth, for example?" 
 Socrates admits that the consideration of these things was 
 nearly upsetting his doctrine of Ideas in general. Parmenides 
 replies that when Socrates is a true philosopher he will not 
 regard anything as mean and despicable merely because 
 current opinion holds it so, and then proceeds to expose the 
 real difficulty of the Socratic view, the difficulty of providing 
 for any intelligible relation between the Idea and its image 
 in the sensible world, regarded as separate things. This 
 difficulty is found to be insuperable, at least it is not 
 overcome by Socrates, who is nevertheless represented in 
 the Phaedo as clinging to his doctrine of Ideas up to the 
 last hour of his life. 
 
 But here, as often elsewhere, it is necessary to remember 
 that in Plato's day, in the very infancy of ratiocinative thought, 
 language was not so precise as in our own. " If this is not 
 true, something of the kind is " — this remark of Socrates 
 upon a certain occasion in the Phaedo suggests to us the 
 danger of always taking the words of Plato as a full and 
 exact reflection of his thought. What is great and memor- 
 able about his doctrine of Ideas is that in it he furnished a 
 basis for all subsequent attempts to give meaning and 
 worth to the visible universe and to our life in connection 
 
xii INTR OD UCTION, 
 
 with it — to show us the abiding and stable through the 
 veil of change and decay — to do what Goethe spoke of as 
 the supreme prerogative of the human intellect : — 
 
 " Er kann dem Augenblick 
 Dauer verleihn." 
 
 That is what all philosophy worthy of the name — all 
 philosophy which is not ultimately self-destructive — must 
 endeavour to do. Plato's attempt to do this was a most 
 fruitful and inspiring one. It needs rather to be corrected 
 and harmonised with itself than displaced in favour of 
 something else : let us see how this correction may take 
 place. 
 
 To begin with: it may be observed that we ought not to 
 be able to speak of the " Platonic Ideas," but only of the 
 Platonic Idea. Multiplicity is a character of the individual, 
 the phenomenal, the seeming, not of Reality. Properly 
 speaking — and here we take the ground from part of the 
 argument of Parmenides — there are no ideas of this, that, 
 and the other, but only the Idea perceived in a variety of 
 different ways, which, when examined, fall into a series of 
 progressive grades of development. 
 
 Again, Plato was greatly embarrassed by not having 
 anticipated the great discovery of Kant, to the door of 
 which his thought was constantly leading him — the greatest 
 and most illuminating conception that ever appeared in the 
 field of philosophy — namely, that much of what had for- 
 merly been regarded as object of knowledge, is in reality 
 only a form or mode of knowledge. Space, Time, and 
 Causality are such modes — they are not qualities of the 
 Thing in Itself, but mental forms through which we per- 
 ceive it, and are in this sense prior to all experience. 
 Through them only are the phenomena of multiplicity and 
 
INTR OD UCTION. xiii 
 
 of all change and transition possible — we now understand 
 not only that these are not affections of the Thing in 
 Itself, but also why they cannot be. The gulf between the 
 Reality and the image is now also filled up. The reality 
 is not something different from the object of sense, for the 
 object of sense is the reality, seen under certain modes of 
 perception. 
 
 It is true, however, that if we only see it under these 
 modes we do not really see it at all ; and here a last and 
 most important step remains to make. Kant was of 
 opinion that the Thing in Itself could never be known, 
 since our modes of cognition inevitably intrude and secure 
 that whatever is known by the human mind shall not be 
 the thing as it is but a conditioned representation of the 
 thing. Plato, on the other hand, held that the Idea (which 
 is identical, as Schopenhauer has shown, with the Kantian 
 Thing in Itself) can be known through the abstractive 
 power of the intellect. The senses tell us of beautiful 
 objects, which come into being, fade, and perish, and are in 
 all ways subject to physical laws. But the intellect can 
 abstract from these an absolute Beauty, the Idea of Beauty, 
 which appears wholly unconditioned by space, time, and 
 causality. It may be, and has been, objected that we 
 cannot conceive a wholly abstract Beauty, a Beauty which 
 has no relation to any object of sense, imagined or 
 perceived. This is quite true, if by '' conceive " we mean, 
 to form a kind of mental picture of how the thing might be 
 perceived if it were present to observation. Neither can we 
 in this sense " conceive " the existence of any perfect 
 mathematical figure — a line which is length without 
 breadth, a point which is locality without magnitude, a 
 circle whose curve nowhere includes a right line. But this 
 objection really begs the question. Why should we be 
 
xiv INTRODUCTIOX. 
 
 required to show the Idea of Beauty in a place where, 
 ex-hypothesi, it is not to be found? It is not to be found 
 in sense, and is therefore not to be pictured to the 
 imagination ; but it does not follow that it exists nowhere 
 else, nor that there is no other faculty by which it may be 
 apprehended. 
 
 But all is not done, and this Plato certainly felt, when the 
 work of the abstracting intellect is done. The intellect 
 may get rid of the modes of time, space, and causality, but 
 there is one remaining mode, more intimately and neces- 
 sarily connected with all cognition than any other, which 
 still interposes to prevent full and perfect knowledge of 
 reality. This was not included by Kant among his forms of 
 cognition, and it is strange that it was not, for nothing is 
 more obviously one of these forms : in fact, it was hidden 
 because it was so conspicuous. It is the mode of perceiving 
 things under the relation of an individual subject and an 
 individual object. A subject, a Me, which perceives, and 
 an external object, not Me, which is perceived, these two 
 complementary elements appear to enter into all perception 
 and cognition, and just because they do this so intimately, 
 we might suspect that here, again, we are in presence 
 of a mere form of cognition and not of a reality. Now in 
 Plato's intellectual cognition of abstract ideas we certainly 
 have not got rid of this form — there is still an individual 
 subject and an individual object here, and true Being still 
 escapes us. 
 
 Must it then escape us for ever ? Perhaps not, if we can 
 accept the conclusions of Schopenhauer, who in dealing 
 with this question has taken up what seemed a daring 
 metaphor of poetry and given it a literal interpretation and 
 a place in a reasoned system. Coleridge, in his majestic 
 poem on Mont Blanc, wrote— 
 
IXTRODUCTION. xv 
 
 " Oh dread and silent Mount ! I gazed on thee 
 Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, 
 Did'st vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer 
 I worshipped the Invisible alone. 
 Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, 
 So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, 
 Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, 
 Yea, with my Life, and Life's own secret joy : 
 Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused, 
 Into the mighty vision passing — there 
 As in her natural shape, swelled vast to Heaven." 
 
 In a far less exalted strain, but to the same purpose, wrote 
 
 Byron — 
 
 " [ live not in myself, but I become 
 
 Portion of that around me ; and to me 
 
 High mountains are a feeling ; " 
 and again — 
 
 " Are not the mountains, waves and skies, a part 
 Of me and of my soul, as I of them ? " 
 
 Here, freely translated, is Schopenhauer's rendering of the 
 same idea in plain prose — 
 
 "When, uplifted by the power of the spirit, we relinquish the 
 ordinary methods of observing things, and think no more of the Where, 
 the When, the Why, and the Wherefore in things, but only of the 
 What ; when we dismiss even abstract Thought, the conception of the 
 reason, and in place of all these things give up the whole power of the 
 spirit to contemplation, occupy ourselves entirely with this, and let it 
 fill our whole consciousness; whatever the object is, be it a landscape, 
 a tree, a rock, a building, when, to use a pregnant German phrase, we 
 lose ourselves entirely in this object, forgetting our individuality, our 
 Will, and becoming a pure mirror of the object, so that it is as though 
 the object alone were there, without any one who perceives it, and the 
 contemplator can no longer be distinguished from the contemplation ; 
 when in this way the object has passed out of all relation to anything 
 outside itself, and the subject out of all relation to the Will : then 
 indeed is the thing perceived no more the individual thing as such ; 
 it is the Idea, the eternal form ; and in the same way does he who is 
 
X vi INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 rapt in this contemplation cease to be an individual any longer, for in 
 such a contemplation the Individual is lost : he is the pure subject of 
 cognition. . . . This was the thought that hovered before the mind of 
 Spinoza when he wrote — Mens seterna est, quatenus res sub aeterni- 
 tatis specie concipit."^ 
 
 Again that profoundest of paradoxes comes true — the 
 individual must "die to live." 
 
 This view of things will, as Schopenhauer admitted, be 
 startling to many readers. It must be especially so in Eng- 
 land, where philosophy is somewhat timid and myopic, and 
 does not like to leave the solid earth and the things that it 
 can feel and grasp. Here we are certainly asked to leave 
 the solid earth, and to step into a rarer element. But if 
 we are absolutely resolved never to do this, then let us leave 
 Plato alone ; for with him, and with all thinkers who have 
 philosophised in his spirit, the great business of philosophy 
 is to bring us to the point whence we can make that step 
 without falling into the abysses of unreason. That Plato 
 expressed or conceived the matter precisely in the same 
 terms as Schopenhauer, cannot, of course, be asserted; but 
 there is a passage in his Seventh Epistle, a wonderful 
 passage, and one which should nevc be far from the mind 
 of the reader of Plato, which shows that his perception of 
 the difficulties of true cognition, and his solution of them, 
 were substantially the same as Schopenhauer's. Speaking 
 of loquacious and shallow people who professed to have 
 learned the deepest subjects of the Platonic instruction, he 
 declares that they must necessarily be ignorant of them : — 
 
 ^ "The mind is eternal, in so far as it conceives things under 
 the form of eternity." The original of the passage quoted from 
 Schopenhauer will be found in "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," 
 Drittes Buch, Die Platonische Idee : das Objekt der Kunst. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xvii 
 
 " For concerning these things there has never been any treatise by 
 me, nor ever will be. They are not to be delivered in so many w(jrds, 
 like other branches of learning, but from much intercourse and dis- 
 cussion about the subject, and by, as it were, living in familiarity with 
 it, then of a sudden a light is kindled in the soul, as it were of a tlame 
 leaping forth, and thenceforth itself nourishes itself there." 
 
 Discourse with one in whose soul that h'ght had been 
 kindled was, for Plato, the best means of enkindling it in 
 one's own : and now we begin to see a certain use and mean- 
 ing in the Platonic dialectic quite apart from any conclusions 
 which that dialectic may establish or subvert. We see the 
 meaning of dialogues which lead to no end, like the 
 Theaeiettis^ of dialogues which run counter to the main 
 tenets of Plato, like the Pannenides ; of the poetry, the 
 mythology, the eloquence, the dramatic vividness, the 
 unrivalled literary art ; of all that bewilders, fascinates and 
 arouses, in this wonderful legacy of ancient wisdom. With 
 Plato we philosophise in a place haunted by divine influ- 
 ences, such as that shady resting-place by the Ilissus to 
 which Phaedrus drew Socrates to talk of love and beauty. 
 And it is these divine influences, not any definable doctrines 
 or reasonings, which shall really crown the teacher's work. 
 
 v'^ Let us try to put the philosophic conclusions of Schopen- 
 hauer into language less technical, and to connect them 
 with universally recognised realities. When Kant spoke of 
 two things which filled him with unfailing awe and reverence, 
 the majestic order of the starry heavens, and the moral law 
 in man's soul; when Wordsworth spoke of Duty as the 
 "stern daughter of the voice of God," whose smile was the 
 fairest thing that man could know, these men clearly 
 apprehended the thing they spoke of in a quite 
 different way from that, e.g., of John Stuart Mill, who 
 accounts for the sense of Duty by the association of fear 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 with forbidden actions produced by punishments inflicted 
 in early infancy, or from that of Mr. Herbert Spencer, who 
 simply removes the punishment and fear to a period many 
 generations distant, connecting them with the present by 
 evolution through heredity — that convenient process of 
 moral alchemy by which it is supposed possible to take as 
 gold out of the crucible of the years what has been put in 
 as dross. Now, every reader of Newman's Gram?nar of 
 Assent will remember the masterly and illuminating manner 
 in which he there draws out and makes clear the difference 
 between what he terms real and formal assent — things 
 indistinguishable, as a rule, unless we look to their effect in 
 action, but there revealing themselves as very different 
 things indeed. Newman illustrates his point by referring 
 to a time when England's coast defences were considered to 
 be in a very defective state. For many years every one 
 knew it, said it, and believed it; yet notliing was done until 
 a certain trifling incident brought the truth home, as the 
 saying is, to the mind of the nation. The danger appre- 
 hended soon passed away, but not the passion of activity 
 which it had provoked — the formal assent to the proposition 
 that England was insecure had become a real one. 
 
 Now it seems justifiable to apply this distinction to 
 objects as well as to propositions. There may be a real 
 and a formal perception of an object (an object either of 
 thought or of sense), just as there may be a real and a 
 formal assent to a proposition. Wordsworth and Kant had 
 a vital and real perception of Duty — Mill and his school a 
 formal and superficial one. Peter Bell had only a formal 
 perception of that "primrose by the river's brim" — the 
 poet had a real one. How, now, are our formal perceptions 
 to be transmuted or vitalised into real perceptions ? This 
 may take place in many ways and in some which are not 
 
INTR OD UCTION. xix 
 
 capable cf being defined or explained — we are not in the 
 region of science here. But in general terms it may be 
 said that Art, in all its forms, is the grand means of bringing 
 about this mysterious transmutation, and making us con- 
 scious of the Ideal (which is the Real) world under the 
 phantom world which passes for real to the ordinary sense. 
 And Art does this largely by abandoning the attempt to 
 represent the individual — which the sense can do a thousand 
 times better — and by regarding everything that it deals with 
 in an ideal and universal light, "sub specie aeternitatis," 
 as Spinoza wrote, which the senses cannot do at all. Now 
 this function of Art in vitalising our formal perception of 
 things, is it not in truth the Fame as the function assigned 
 to it by Schopenhauer, in overcoming the last obstacle 
 which intervenes between the soul and the true vision for 
 which it longs ? For to Schopenhauer the " Platonic Idea " 
 is the "object of Art." 
 
 ** Art renders the eternal Ideas which have been apprehended in pure 
 contemplation, that which is substantial and abiding in all the pheno- 
 mena of the world ; and becomes, according to the material in which 
 it renders them, plastic art, poetry or music. And the essential char- 
 acter of genius consists precisely in the exceptional capacity for this 
 contemplation." " That the idea is apprehended more easily in a work 
 of art than in the actual world arises from the fact that the artist, who 
 has passed from the knowledge of the actual world to that of the idea, 
 renders the latter for us and not the former : he has disengaged it from 
 actuality, he omits all disturbing accidents, and lets us see the world 
 through his eyes. "^ 
 
 ^ It may be noted here that Schopenhauer ranks music highest among 
 the arts, and regards it as holding a place entirely distinct and apart. 
 For these give us the Idea through representations of objects of sense, 
 whereas music employs no such media, but shows us the reality directly. 
 Music speaks to us of true Being, the other arts only of its shadows. 
 Though there were no sensible world at all, there might still be Music, 
 and all that music evokes. 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The last truth about things cannot be conveyed in any 
 precise form of words. To communicate it is the province 
 of poetry. But through famiharity a poetic thought often 
 loses its original vitalising power, it stiffens into formula, 
 and the formula takes the place of that which it was 
 intended to reveal. Such formulas often come to exercise 
 a malignant and tyrannous power upon the spirit, and here 
 we come upon another great function of the Platonic 
 dialectic. It is to break up these formulas, to expose their 
 insufficiency, their contradictions, and to bring us back 
 again and again to the inward vision. In this sense there 
 is a strong subversive element in Plato, but he is never 
 subversive for the sake of subversion alone. The true 
 characteristic of the Platonic dialectic is that it is, as 
 Socrates calls it, maieiiiic. His mother Phaenerete was a 
 midwife, and he himself, he tells us, is of the same pro- 
 fession too — by skilful interrogation he delivers souls of the 
 truths with which they are pregnant, and which they cannot 
 bring into clear consciousness. Sometimes no truth appears 
 at all, as in the Theaetetiis or the Greater Hippias — but 
 what of that ? We have been concerning ourselves about 
 it, and who knows when or how the moment of illumination 
 may appear ? 
 
 The ancient critics classified Plato's dialogues elaborately 
 as maieutic, subversive, expository, and so forth, but in point 
 of fact hardly one of them is of one class alone. No author 
 is more difficult to classify and systematise. A philosopher 
 who has become one of the greatest influences in European 
 thought, he is also among the Greek writers who have done 
 most to make the world in which they lived near and real 
 to us. Two thousand years have passed away since Agatho 
 won the prize for tragedy, and feasted his friends in 
 Athens, yet the laughter and the talk at that immortal 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxi 
 
 Banquet ring as fresh and natural as if we heard them 
 yesterday in Paris. In Paris — for it is of Paris that we 
 inevitably think in the view of Athenian society given us by 
 Plato, with its wit, its grace, its sensitiveness to every kind 
 of intellectual interest, its fascinating mixture of the earnest 
 and the gay. How Parisian, for instance, is that vwt which 
 Simmias in the Phaedo says will surely be current among the 
 Athenians when they hear that Socrates, then under capital 
 sentence, taught his disciples that a philosopher should 
 welcome death : " Quite right ; he knows what is proper for 
 him, and we do everything to facilitate his objects ! " Less 
 Parisian, certainly, is the note of magnanimity which comes 
 out in the admiration so often expressed for Sparta. 
 Brasidas is represented in the Banquet as the grand modern 
 type of heroism — Brasidas, whose glory was associated 
 with a cruel war in which Athens had been crushed and 
 humiliated by Sparta. Such an allusion to Moltke would 
 hardly have been tolerated in Paris, nor is Paris alone in 
 the lack of one grand antique virtue. Two tliousand years, 
 with many endowments and refinements, have not brought 
 us more magnanimity. 
 
 The Banquet is perhaps the most varied in its interest 
 and the most striking in artistic power of all the Platonic 
 dialogues, and (with a few omissions) it is here chosen to 
 accompany the Apologia, Cri/o, and Phaedo, partly for the 
 above reason, and partly because it gives so vivid and 
 complete a picture of Socrates in his daily life and con- 
 verse ; as the other dialogues do of his behaviour in the 
 face of persecution, temptation, and death. The dramatic 
 power of the Banquet is particularly noteworthy. Every 
 personage stands out distinctly, and every circumstance 
 and episode is devised with the finest artistic invention, the 
 attention of the reader to the higher aspects of the question 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 being now aroused or intensified, now diverted or relaxed; 
 till it is led fresh and vigorous to the climax in the 
 wonderful speech of Diotima. A modern work would 
 probably have ended there, but it was a fixed rule 
 in Greek art never to conclude with a climax. The 
 heightened feeling must sink gradually to the normal 
 level, and it is this law which Plato obeys in the intro- 
 duction of Alcibiades and the narration of the close of the 
 feast. 
 
 The Phaedo is also in its way a work of consummate 
 artistic power. Its grave and mystic beauty affects us like 
 a strain of solemn music — a funeral dirge whose long- 
 resounding chords speak to us of sorrow, tenderness, 
 exaltation, and heroic faith. The pause in the middle of 
 the dialogue, when Cebes and Simmias have apparently 
 shattered the thesis of Socrates, who, after a minute's 
 suspense, takes up the lost cause of immortality and bears 
 it to victory, in a resistless onset of intellectual power, is 
 a triumph of artistic genius, and forms in itself a most 
 touching and beautiful episode. The arguments of the 
 Phaedo^ it must be admitted, are not likely to convince 
 any one against his will. They mostly proceed upon 
 assumptions which any one who seriously questions 
 the immortality of the soul will not be disposed to 
 grant. The best argument is the attitude of Socrates 
 himself as revealed in this and the two previous 
 dialogues — his calmness, his confidence, his disdain of life 
 when offered to him at the sacrifice of the ends for which a 
 good man lives. Unless the soul is in some sense immortal, 
 Socrates and all martyrs who have preceded and followed 
 him were the victims of a miserable delusion. Man has 
 been cheated by the deepest instincts of his heart, and it is 
 a fundamental belief with Plato that the universe does 
 
INTROD UCTION. xxiii 
 
 not cheat. Time is the reflection, albeit the " troubled 
 reflection of Eternity " — the world is " a sensible Divinity, the 
 image of the Intelligible."' Plato does not argue this — it 
 is open to any one to reject it. In the last resort one may 
 reject anything : this is simply a condition of the subjective 
 consciousness. But without assumptions somewhere it is 
 possible neither to think nor to act, and this assumption is 
 the necessary basis of all moral action. 
 
 It may be noticed that in this dialogue Plato has 
 accurately described and effectively combated the modern 
 materialistic view of the nature of the soul. The argument 
 of Simmias that the conscious life is a "harmony" — i.e.^ a 
 result of certain varying combinations and affections of 
 matter, as music results from certain combinations of vibrat- 
 ing strings — is simply a poetic statement of the modern view 
 that consciousness is a mere product of molecular action in 
 certain forms of protoplasm. And the argument by which 
 Socrates met the suggestion of Simmias is precisely that by 
 which the great German thinker, Hermann Lotze, has met 
 the same view, re-stated with added force by the materialistic 
 school of to-day. Plato and Lotze both point to the 
 hegemonic quality, the commanding and controlling power 
 in the human soul as a proof that it is not a mere chain of 
 sensations dependent upon the matter in which it inheres. 
 And here at least Plato stands upon solid rock. This 
 sense of command and control, the sense of will, is present 
 beyond all possibility of dispute in the developed human 
 consciousness. We may reject it as a delusion if we like — 
 but surely there is nothing else of which we have a better 
 right to feel convinced. 
 
 Another of the selections here given raises a question of 
 peculiar interest, and one to which the key is not at once 
 
 ^ I'lalo : llic 'J iiiiutis. 
 
XXIV INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 obvious. This is the passage from the Republic which I 
 have entitled " The Obhgations of Morahty." In it 
 Glauco puts the case for the utihtarian view of morahty 
 in a very extreme form. He paints for us the righteous 
 man reputed as a malefactor, scourged, bound, and 
 crucified, and contrasts with him an unrighteous man 
 successful and respected, affirming that if under these 
 circumstances we prefer the righteous to the unrighteous 
 life — which, it is implied, no one would think of doing — 
 then and then only have we a right to say that righteousness 
 is at bottom anything better than mere expediency. This 
 looks at first sight like a clear and justifiable issue — in 
 reality it involves a deep confusion of thought. The ideal 
 unrighteous and righteous man are objects of the intellect, 
 and as such their respective claims upon our approbation 
 are intuitively given through the moral sense. But if we 
 take them out of the ideal and bring them into the actual 
 world, as we do in attaching to them experiences such as 
 prosperity, reputation, and so forth, then we must subject 
 them to its laws. They cannot be both in it and out of it 
 at the same time. The moral order of the world in which 
 we find ourselves is not an accident which might be so or 
 might be otherwise. Set the man to act and it will soon be 
 clear whether he is nourishing the wild and warring appetites 
 in himself, or the divine element which can control and 
 harmonise them. If we choose to make experience our 
 criterion we must abide by experience as it is, and not as it 
 may be invented. Lives like those which Glauco has invented 
 were never lived on earth. His account of the righteous 
 man maligned and put to death as a malefactor has indeed 
 been taken as a prophetic vision of the life of Christ, yet 
 He was surely not more a man of sorrows and acquainted 
 with grief than a man of gladness and acquainted with joys. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxv 
 
 Had he not up to the last scene of his Hfe " honour, 
 love, obedience, troops of friends " ? 
 
 Napoleon I. afforded a signal instance of profound and 
 thorough unscrupulousness, attended, for a time, by great 
 prosperity. But the vice in him was a devouring and 
 corrupting force : it corrupted even his intellect. He 
 committed the enormous folly of outraging the moral sense 
 of mankind, and thus arrayed against himself powers which 
 proved stronger even than his own daemonic might of genius. 
 
 The selfish and passionate parts of our nature will, if 
 uncontrolled, destroy the man and defeat themselves. The 
 impulse towards pleasure will, if gratified at the expense of 
 right, destroy the sense of right, and ultimately its own self. 
 The sense of right in controlling the sense of pleasure does 
 not however destroy even the latter ; it purifies and intensifies 
 it. Thus the righteous man, in the long run, is the complete 
 and harmonious man, the unrighteous is maimed, stunted, 
 and at war with himself. All this is matter of experience ; 
 yet, after all, the force of it is as nothing when confronted 
 with a passionate personal desire. Here something which 
 transcends experience must come in — that something which 
 forms the diapason of the whole Platonic philosophy. The 
 natural order of things and the slow processes by which it 
 justifies itself, what are these to me, unless the natural 
 order is a reflection of some divine order which, as such, 
 has a claim on my every thought and action ? And so it 
 was for Plato : the sensible world is an image of Divinity, 
 and thus its laws have higher and stricter sanctions than 
 any which their own action can confer. 
 
 I have closed the present selection with a work of very 
 remarkable interest, both biographical and philosophical, 
 the Seventh Epistle of Plato. It gives, in Plato's own 
 
xxvi INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 words, an account of his attempt to play a leading part in 
 the world of action at a critical moment in the history 
 of Hellenic civilisation. Dionysius the Elder, Tyrant of 
 Syracuse, was dead. His dominion was by far the greatest 
 of the Greek settlements in Sicily, and he had successfully 
 combated the encroachments of the Carthaginian power in 
 the island. He was the greatest representative of Hellenism 
 outside Hellas itself, but he had gained this position partly 
 by enslaving and depopulating the other Hellenic com- 
 munities of Sicily, and his rule was despotic and cruel. He 
 left his dominions secured, as he said, with " chains of 
 adamant," to his son Dionysius the younger. Besides the 
 mother of the young Dionysius, Doris, he had married a 
 second wife, Aristomache, by whom he had two sons, 
 Hipparinus and Nysaeus. The brother of this Aristomache 
 was Dion, the friend and pupil of Plato, of whose doings 
 the Seventh Epistle treats. The younger Dionysius 
 appears to have been a man capable of generous impulses 
 and enthusiasms, but with an underlying vein of deceit and 
 selfishness which soon became the dominant feature in his 
 character ; and he was deeply immersed in the life of luxury 
 and profligacy for which Syracuse was proverbial. Dion, on 
 the other hand, was a man of lofty and severe character, 
 ambitious no doubt, but sincerely and deeply devoted to 
 worthy aims, and in particular, to the regeneration and 
 liberation of his country. A free community, governed not 
 by the will of a despot, but by recognised laws in whose 
 framing every citizen might have a part — this was what 
 Dion desired to make of Syracuse, and he entreated the 
 help of Plato, whose extraordinary influence over the young 
 he well knew, in winning the new ruler of Syracuse to the 
 cause of reform and freedom. For a time all went well — 
 it seemed, men said, as though Plato were the Tyrant of 
 
INTRODUCTION. xx\ni 
 
 Syracuse, so docile to his teachings was the young roi 
 philosophe. But the mind of Dionysius grew weary of the 
 discipHne and study which Plato seems to have imposed 
 upon him with injudicious severity. In addition to this, 
 his jealousy of Dion, to whom he must continually have 
 felt himself inferior in character, attainments, and influence, 
 soon involved every friend of Dion's in suspicion. Dion 
 was decoyed to the sea-shore, hurried into a small boat, and 
 sent into banishment ; while Plato in the end was glad to 
 escape in safety from the scene of his failure. The cause 
 for which he had hoped to win a bloodless victory was then 
 tried out by arms. Dion, returning with a body of friends 
 and a small force of mercenary troops, achieved a most un- 
 expected measure of success. The adamantine tyranny 
 seemed to crumble at a touch. But with all his capacities 
 and virtues, Dion, partly it was said owing to his haughty 
 and reserved manners, could not win the trust and affection 
 of his countrymen. The first use they made of the liberty 
 he gave them was to banish him and his troops from 
 Syracuse. He retired, magnanimously obedient to the will 
 of the city; and with still greater magnanimity returned to 
 liberate it once more when the power of Dionysius revived, 
 and the Syracusans appealed in their extremity to the man 
 they had insulted and exiled. His ascendency was now 
 secure, but before he could complete his plans for the 
 settlement of the government in Syracuse, he fell by the 
 hand of an assassin who rose to power through his 
 crime. 
 
 The document in which Plato describes his own part in 
 these events is surely one of no ordinary interest, if we can 
 be convinced, as all antiquity was apparently convinced, 
 that the Seventh Ei)istle is a genuine work of the author in 
 whose name it is written. In spite of the sceptical attitude 
 
xxviii INTR OD UCTION, 
 
 usually taken by continental scholars, Mr. Grote, the 
 greatest English authority on Plato, accepted the Epistles 
 as genuine. Dr. Jowett, on the other hand, in the Preface to 
 the second edition of his translation of the Dialogues, com- 
 bats the view of Grote, and insists that all the Epistles are 
 spurious. But on this point Dr. Jowett's authority cannot be 
 held to balance that of Grote. Grote had obviously read 
 and deeply studied the writings in question. Dr. Jowett 
 was content to adopt the objections of a foreign scholar, 
 Karsten, without even taking the precaution of verifying his 
 references to the text. This confidence was unfortunately 
 quite misplaced, for Karsten's text appears to have a purely 
 subjective existence. Thus he attributes to the Seventh 
 Epistle — which has admittedly a better claim to be con- 
 sidered genuine than the others — statements which not 
 only are not found in that document, but which are flatly 
 contradicted there. His gravest objection is that the 
 Seventh Epistle represents Socrates as having been put to 
 death under the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. Doubtless 
 Plato could not have made such a blunder; but how, 
 one may ask, does Dr. Jowett suppose that Grote could 
 have failed to detect it ? The plain fact is that no such 
 statement occurs in the Seventh Epistle at all, or could 
 possibly be supposed to occur there by any one who 
 had read the original text with ordinary attention. The 
 account given of the death of Socrates is that which is 
 usually accepted as historically true, and we are distinctly 
 told that this event occurred after the downfall of the 
 Tyrants. 
 
 The chief reason against regarding the Epistles as 
 genuine is the fact that, so far as we know, authors of the 
 classical period of Greek literature were not in the habit of 
 writing, or at least of preserving, epistles. But it would be rash 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxix 
 
 to draw any positive deduction from uniformity of custom 
 when we really know so little of what was customary. And 
 until better arguments than Karsten's are forthcoming, I 
 venture to treat the Seventh Epistle as a genuine work of 
 Plato, Regarded as such, it is of particular interest from 
 the light it throws on Plato's own character; and the 
 character it reveals is one so consistent, natural, and well- 
 defined that this in itself affords a strong presumption of 
 the genuineness of the Epistle. Plato had once paid a visit 
 to Syracuse in the time of the elder Dionysius, which had 
 ended in his being seized and sold as a slave by order of 
 that despot, whose literary tastes did not prevent him 
 from regarding philosophy, however charming a thing 
 at Athens, as a most objectionable influence in Syracuse, 
 and one quite incompatible with the kind of power he 
 wielded there. And now the successor of the tyrant 
 invites him to take the leading part in the reform of 
 a government hateful and discreditable to all Hellendom. 
 It was a great opportunity; but it is clear that Plato was by 
 no means fitted to use it to good purpose. He wished, he 
 writes, to show that philosophy was something better than 
 fine words ; yet the words of Plato are deeds in themselves, 
 and there was no more reason why he should aspire to do 
 the work of Timoleon than why Timoleon should hold him- 
 self only half a man because he could not have written the 
 Phaedo. What Plato could give to the work of reform in 
 Sicily was courage, stainless integrity, and the sacrifice of 
 his safe and honoured position, his cherished pursuits, in 
 Athens. And all these he did give. Tried by his own 
 loftiest teachings, his conduct was blameless and even heroic. 
 But of practical judgment and the art of managing men he 
 had no gifts at all — the very defects which certain features 
 of his ideal Republic would lead us to suspect. What, for 
 
XXX INTRO D UC TION. 
 
 instance, could have been more ill-judged than his behaviour 
 in the matter of the arrest of Heracleides, where, as he tells 
 us, he endeavoured, in the presence of at least two and 
 probably many more witnesses, to shame Dionysius into the 
 observance of a compact, while as yet there was no real 
 evidence that he had any intention of breaking it ? What 
 wonder that Dionysius resented this treatment exactly as 
 Plato tells us he did ? And we may be sure that this was 
 not the only occasion on which he was chafed and humiH- 
 ated under Plato's tutorship. The result was simply an 
 illustration of Plato's own saying, that the philosopher is 
 the last man who will be able to see his way clearly through 
 the dimness and confusion of practical life. 
 
 It remains to add a word or two as to the version of 
 Plato which has been made use of for the present volume. 
 The great work of Taylor and Sydenham was published in 
 1804, and was the first complete English translation of 
 Plato. The leading part in the enterprise was taken by 
 Thomas Taylor, " the Platonist," as he was called, whose 
 fifty works in exposition or translation of Greek philosophy 
 bear noble witness to a zeal for learning as pure and ardent 
 as that of one of the Renaissance scholars to whom Greek 
 literature came like the discovery of a new world. Taylor's 
 oddities — among other things he professed as a religion the 
 sublimated polytheism of the Neo-Platonists — gained him 
 much ridicule in his own day. He lived, not exactly 
 obscure, but certainly poor and unappreciated, devoting 
 himself with an energy as untiring as it was unrewarded to 
 his great task of making Greek philosophy known to his 
 countrymen. He was not a trained scholar — he learned 
 Greek to read Plato, instead of, in the orthodox fashion, 
 reading Plato to learn Greek. His translation is far from 
 
INTR OD UCTION. xxxi 
 
 faultless, but it is an honest and even an able one. It has 
 not a few errors and obscurities — here rectified to the best 
 of his present editor's ability — but he never attempts to 
 make sense of what he does not understand ; he loved the 
 work he was doing, and spared no pains to make it as per- 
 fect as he could, and his English, though not elegant, is 
 always strong and dignified. 
 
 Of the Platonic translations here given, all but the 
 Banquet and the Hippias Major are the work of Taylor. 
 Sydenham was a scholar of a very different stamp, though 
 like Taylor he lived for learning, and lived neglected and 
 poor. The circumstances of his death in a debtor's prison 
 gave rise to the Literary Fund which is so successful an 
 institution at the present day. He was an jNI.A. of Oxford, 
 and a much better scholar than Taylor, as well as master 
 of a more lucid and graceful style, but by no means so 
 close and deep a thinker. His great fault is prolixity 
 — the meaning of Plato is often swathed in clouds of 
 verbiage, and in some of the more important passages, such 
 as the speech of Diotima, I have had to condense his 
 tumidity of expression to no small extent in order to 
 make visible the fine Hellenic outlines of Platonic 
 thought. 
 
 The style of Plato, uniting, as it does, consummate perfec- 
 tion of structural finish with an equally consummate ease and 
 freedom of movement, is unapproachable in English. It is 
 the ideal Greek prose, moving in the wreathed measures of 
 a stately choric dance, just as the typical Latin prose moves 
 with the simpler and weightier rhythm of the march. The 
 present volume can make no pretensions to the reproduc- 
 tion of this matchless style — even Dr. Jowett's fluent and 
 graceful English is far from reproducing it. But if I am 
 not mistaken the many readers of the ''Camelot Series'' 
 
xxxii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 have here the opportunity of making themselves acquainted 
 with an extensive and very interesting tract of the Platonic 
 philosophy in a form which permits some true approach to 
 the mind and the art of a supreme thinker and a supreme 
 artist. 
 
 T. W. RCLLESTON. 
 
SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 THE OPENING OF THE " PHAEDRUS." 
 
 Socrates. Whither are you going, my dear Phaedrus, and 
 from whence came you ? 
 
 Fhaedrus. From Lysias, the son of Cephalus, Socrates ; 
 but I am going, for the sake of walking, beyond the walls 
 of the city. For 1 have been sitting with him a long time, 
 indeed from very early in the morning until now. But 
 being persuaded by Acumenus,^ who is your associate as 
 well as mine, to take some exercise, I determined to go for 
 a walk on the road. For he said this was more refreshinEr 
 than the racing-ground. 
 
 Soc. He speaks well, my friend, on this subject : and 
 so Lysias then, as it seems, was in the city ? 
 
 Ihaedr. He was. For he dwells with Epicrates in the 
 house of Morychus, which is next to that of Olympius. 
 
 Soc. But what was his employment there ? Or did not 
 Lysias treat you with a banquet of orations ? 
 
 Fhaedr. You shall hear, if you have but leisure to walk 
 along with me and attend. 
 
 Soc. But what, do you not think that I, according to 
 Pindar, would consider as a thing superior to business the 
 relation of your conversation with Lysias ? 
 
 ^ A physician, — father of the physician, Eryximachus, who appears 
 in the Banquet. At the racing-ground there were covered ways for 
 onlookers to stroll about in. 
 
2 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 Fhaedr. Come on, then. 
 
 Soc. Begin the relation, then. 
 
 Fhaedr. And indeed, Socrates, the hearing of this is 
 proper for you. For I do not know how it happened so, 
 but our discourse was amatory. For Lysias had composed 
 an oration on love, and this in a very elegant manner; in 
 the course of which he asserts that one who does not love 
 ought to be favoured rather than a lover. 
 
 Soc. Generous man ! I wish he had likewise asserted 
 that this should be the case with the poor rather than the 
 rich, the old than the young, and so in all the rest, that 
 thus I myself and many more of us might be favoured ; for 
 then his discourse would have been both polite and publicly 
 useful. I am therefore so desirous of hearing his oration, 
 that if you should even walk as far as Megara, and, like 
 Herodicus, when you had reached the walls immediately 
 turn back again, I should not leave you. 
 
 Fhaedr. What do you say, most excellent Socrates ? 
 Do you think me, who have never studied such things, 
 capable of relating, in such a manner as it deserves, a 
 discourse which Lysias, the most skilful writer of the present 
 age, was a long time composing at his leisure ? I am 
 certainly far from entertaining such a supposition : though 
 I would rather be able to do this than be the possessor of 
 a great quantity of gold. 
 
 Soc. O Phaedrus, if I do not know Phaedrus, I am 
 likewise forgetful of myself; but neither of them happens 
 to be the case. For I well know that he has not only 
 heard the discourse of Lysias once, but that he has desired 
 him to repeat it often ; and that Lysias willingly complied 
 with his request. But neither was this sufficient for 
 Phaedrus ; but having at length obtained the book, he 
 considered that which he mostly desired to see. And 
 sitting down to peruse it very early in the morning, he 
 continued his employment, till being fatigued, he went out 
 for a walk ; and, by the Dog, as it appears to me, committed 
 it to memory, unless perhaps it was too long for this pur- 
 pose. But he directed his course beyond the walls, that he 
 
THE OPENING OF THE '' PHAEDRUS.'' 3 
 
 might meditate on this oration. Meeting, however, with 
 one who was madly fond of discourse, he rejoiced on 
 beholding him, because he should have a partner in his 
 corybantic fury ; and desired him to walk on. But when 
 that lover of discourse requested him to repeat the oration, 
 he feigned as if he was unwilling to comply ; but though he 
 was unwilling that any one should hear him voluntarily, he 
 was at length compelled to the relation. I therefore entreat, 
 Phaedrus, that you will quickly accomplish all I desire. 
 
 Phaedr. Well then, I will endeavour to satisfy you in 
 the best manner I am able; for I see you will not dismiss 
 me till I have exerted my utmost abilities to please you. 
 
 Soc. You perfectly apprehend the truth respecting me. 
 
 Phaedr. I will therefore gratify you ; but in reality, 
 Socrates, I have not learned by heart the words of this 
 oration, though I nearly retain the sense of all the argu- 
 ments by which he shows the difference between a lover 
 and one who does not love ; and these 1 will summarily 
 relate to you in order, beginning from the first. 
 
 Soc. But show me first, my friend, what you have got 
 there in your left hand, under your cloak; for I suspect 
 that you have got the oration itself. And if this be the case, 
 think thus with yourself respecting me, that I perfectly esteem 
 you, but that, when Lysias is present, it is by no means my 
 intention to listen to you. And therefore show it me. 
 
 Phaedr. You ought to desist ; for you have destroyed 
 those hopes, Socrates, which I entertained respecting you; 
 the hopes, I mean, of contesting with you. But where are 
 you willing we should sit while we read ? 
 
 Soc. Let us, turning thither, direct our steps towards the 
 river Ilissus : and afterwards, when you shall think proper 
 to rest, we will sit down. 
 
 Phaedr. And this will be very seasonable, as it appears, 
 for i am at present without shoes ; but this is always the 
 case with you. It will be easy, therefore, for us to walk by 
 the side of the brook, moistening our feet ; nor will it be 
 unpleasant, especially at this season of the year, and at this 
 time of the day. 
 
4 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Soc. Go on then, and at the same time look out for a 
 place where we may sit down. 
 
 Fhaedr. Do you see that most lofty plane tree ? 
 
 Soc. Why, what then ? 
 
 Fhaedr. For there, there is a cool shade, moderate 
 breezes of wind, and soft grass, upon which we may either 
 sit, or, if you are so disposed, lie down. 
 
 Soc. Let us go, then. 
 
 Fhaedr. But inform me, Socrates, whether this is not 
 the place in which Boreas is reported to have ravished 
 Orithya from Ilissus ? 
 
 Soc. It is reported so indeed. 
 
 Fhaedr. Was it not just here, then ? for the brooks here- 
 abouts appear to be grateful to the view, pure and trans- 
 parent, and very well adapted to the sports of virgins. 
 
 Soc. It was not; but two or three stadia lower down, 
 where we meet with the temple of Artemis, and in that very 
 place there is a certain altar sacred to Boreas. 
 
 Fhaedr. I did not perfectly know this. But tell me, by 
 Zeus, Socrates, are you persuaded that this fabulous narra- 
 tion is true ? 
 
 Soc. If, like our wise men, I should disbelieve it, it 
 would not be absurd of me; and then I should sophisti- 
 cate the transaction, and say that the wind Boreas hurled 
 from the neighbouring rocks Orithya, sporting with Phar- 
 macia ; and that she, dying in consequence of this, was said 
 to have been ravished away by Boreas, or from the hill of 
 Ares. There is also another report that she was not 
 ravished from this place, but from that. But for my own 
 part, Phaedrus, I consider interpretations of this kind as 
 pleasant enough, but at the same time, as the province of a 
 man vehemently curious and laborious, and not entirely 
 happy; and this for no other reason than because after 
 such an explanation it will be necessary for him to rectify 
 the form of the Centaurs and the Chimaera ; and besides 
 these a crowd of Gorgons and Pegasuses will pour upon him 
 for an exposition of this kind, and other prodigious natures, 
 immense both in multitude and novelty. All which, if any 
 
THE OPENING OF THE ''PHAEDRUS:' 5 
 
 one, not believing in their literal meaning, should draw to a 
 probable sense, employing for this purpose a kind of narrow 
 and clownish wisdom, he will stand in need of most abundant 
 leisure. With respect to myself indeed, I have not leisure 
 for such an undertaking; and this because I am not yet 
 able, according to the Delphic precept, to know myself. 
 But it appears to me to be ridiculous, while I am yet 
 ignorant of this, to speculate things foreign from the know- 
 ledge of myself. Hence, bidding farewell to these, and 
 crediting that which is held to be the truth about them, 
 I do not, according to what I said just now, contemplate 
 these, but myself, considering whether I am not a wild 
 beast possessing more coils than any Typhon, and far more 
 raging and fierce ; or whether I am a more mild and 
 simple animal naturally participating of a certain divine 
 and modest condition. — But are we not, my friend, in 
 the midst of our discourse, arrived at our destined seat? 
 and is not yonder the tree to which you were to lead us ? 
 
 Phaedr. That indeed is it. 
 
 Soc. By Hera, a beautiful retreat. For the plane tree 
 very widely spreads its shady branches, and is remarkably 
 tall; and the willow too is high and shady, and is in its 
 fairest bloom, filling all the place with the most agreeable 
 odour. Add, too, that a most pleasant fountain of extreme 
 cool water flows under the plane tree, as our feet could 
 testify, and which appears to be sacred to certain nymphs, 
 and to Achelous, from the statues and ornaments with 
 which it is adorned. Then again, if you are so disposed, 
 take notice how lovely and very agreeable the air of the 
 place is, and what a summer-like and sonorous singing 
 resounds from the choir of grasshoppers. But the most 
 charming thing of all is the grass, which in a manner so 
 admirable naturally adapts itself to receive on the gradual 
 steep the reclining head. So that, my dear Phaedrus, you 
 have done most excellently well to lead me in here. 
 
 Phaedr. But you, O wonderful man, appear to act 
 most absurdly ; for by your discourse one might judge 
 you to be some stranger and not a native of the place. 
 
f) SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 And indeed one might conclude that you had never 
 passed beyond the bounds of the city, nor ever deserted 
 its walls. 
 
 Soc. Pardon me, most excellent Phaedrus, for I am a 
 lover of learning, and hence I consider that fields and 
 trees are not willing to teach me anything, but men in 
 the city.^ You indeed appear to have discovered an 
 enchantment capable of causing my departure from thence. 
 For as they lead famished animals whither they please by 
 extending to them leaves or certain fruits ; so you, by 
 extending to me the discourses contained in books, may 
 lead me about through all Attica, and indeed wherever 
 you please. But now, for the present, since we are arrived 
 hither, I for my part am disposed to lie down; but do you, 
 assuming whatever position you think most convenient, 
 begin to read. 
 
 1 Compare Lessing's remark to the poet 
 D into the fields, I to the coffee-house. ' . 
 
 of nature, Kleisf. — *' Yon 
 go' ' " " ' " 
 
TRUTH AND ITS SHADOWS. 
 
 From the ^'- Republic^'' Book vii. 
 
 Socrates and Glauco. Socrates loqiiiiiir. 
 
 After these things, said I, assimilate, with reference to 
 education and the want of education, our nature to such a 
 condition as follows. Consider men as in a subterraneous 
 habitation, resembling a cave, with its entrance expanding 
 to the light, and answering to the whole extent of the cave. 
 Suppose them to have been in this cave from their child- 
 hood, with chains both on their legs and necks, so as to 
 remain there, and only be able to look before them, but by 
 the chain incapable to turn their heads round. Suppose 
 them likewise to have the light of a fire burning far above 
 and behind them ; and that between the fire and the 
 fettered men there is a road above. Along this road, 
 observe a low wall built, like that which hedges in the 
 stage of mountebanks on which they exhibit their wonderful 
 tricks. 
 
 I observe it, said he. 
 
 Behold now, along this wall, men bearing all sorts of 
 utensils, raised above the wall, and human statues, and 
 other animals in wood and stone, and furniture of every 
 kind. And, as is likely, some of those who are carrying 
 these are speakinc;, and some are silent. 
 
 You mention, said he, a strange comparison, and strange 
 fettered men. 
 
 But such, however, as resemble us, said I ; for, in the 
 
8 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 first place, do you think that such as these see anything of 
 themselves, or of one another, but the shadows formed by 
 the fire falling on the opposite part of the cave ? 
 
 How can they, said he, if through the whole of life they 
 be under a necessity of having their heads unmoved? 
 
 But what do they see of what is carrying along? Is it 
 not the very same ? 
 
 No doubt. 
 
 If, then, they were able to converse with one another, do 
 not you think they would deem it proper to give names to 
 those very things which they saw before them ? 
 
 Of necessity they must. 
 
 And what if the opposite part of this prison had an 
 echo, when any of those who passed along spake, do you 
 imagine they would reckon that what spake was anything 
 else than the passing shadow? 
 
 Not I, by Zeus, said he. 
 
 Such as these, then, said I, will entirely judge that there 
 is nothing true but the shadows of those things. 
 
 By an abundant necessity, replied he. 
 
 With reference, then, both to their freedom from these 
 chains and their cure of this ignorance, consider the nature 
 of it, if such a thing should happen to them. When any 
 one should be loosed, and obliged on a sudden to rise up, 
 turn round his neck, and walk and look up towards the 
 light ; and in doing all these things should be pained, and 
 unable, from the splendours, to behold the things of which 
 he formerly saw the shadows, what do you think he would 
 say, if one should tell him that formerly he had seen trifles, 
 but now, being somewhat nearer to reality, and turned 
 towards what was more real, he saw with more rectitude ; 
 and so, pointing out to him each of the things passing along, 
 should question him and oblige him to tell what it were ; 
 do you think he would be in doubt and would deem what 
 he had formerly seen to be more true than what was now 
 pointed out to him? 
 
 By far, said he. 
 
 And if one should oblige him to look to the light itself, 
 
TRUTH AND ITS SHADOWS. 9 
 
 would not he find pain in his eyes and shun it; and, turning 
 to such things as he is able to behold, reckon that these are 
 really more clear than those pointed out ? 
 
 Just so, replied he. 
 
 But if one, said I, should drag him from thence violently 
 through a rough and steep ascent, and never stop till he 
 drew him up to the light of the sun, would he not, whilst he 
 was thus drawn, both be in torment and be filled with 
 indignation? And after he had even come to the h'ght, 
 having his eyes filled with splendour, he would be able to 
 see none of these things now called true. 
 
 He would not, said he, suddenly at least. 
 
 But he would require, I think, to be accustomed to it 
 some time, if he were to perceive things above. And first 
 of all he would most easily perceive shadows, afterwards the 
 images of men and of other things in water, and after that 
 the things themselves. And with reference to these, he 
 would more easily see the things in the heavens, and the 
 heavens themselves, by looking in the night to the light of 
 the stars, and the moon, than by day looking on the sun, and 
 the light of the sun. 
 
 How can it be otherwise ? 
 
 And last of all, he may be able, I think, to perceive and 
 contemplate the sun himself, not in water, nor resemblances 
 of him, in a foreign seat, but himself by himself, in his own 
 proper region. 
 
 Of necessity, said he. 
 
 And after this he would now reason with himself con- 
 cerning the sun; that it is he who gives the seasons, and 
 years, and governs all things in the visible place, and that 
 of all those things which he formerly saw, he is in a certain 
 manner the cause. 
 
 It is evident, said he, that after these things he may now 
 arrive at such reasonings as these. 
 
 But what ? when he remembers his first habitation and 
 the wisdom which was there, and those who were then his 
 companions in bonds, do you not think he will esteem him- 
 self happy by the change, and pity them ? 
 
10 SELECTION'S FROM PLATO. 
 
 And that greatly. 
 
 And if there were any honours and encomiums and 
 rewards among themselves, for him who most acutely per- 
 ceived what passed along, and best remembered which of 
 them were wont to pass foremost, which latest, and which 
 of them went together ; and from these observations were 
 most able to presage what was to happen ; does it appear to 
 you that he will be desirous of such honours, or envy those 
 who among these are honoured, and in power ? Or will he 
 not rather wish to suffer that of Homer, and vehemently 
 desire 
 
 " A labourer to some ignoLle man 
 To work for hire, . . . " ^ 
 
 and rather suffer anything than to possess such opinions, 
 and live after such a manner ? 
 
 I think so, replied he, that he would suffer and embrace 
 anything rather than to live in that manner. 
 
 But consider this further, said I : If such a one should 
 descend, and sit down again in the same seat, would not his 
 eyes be filled with darkness, in consequence of coming 
 suddenly from the sun ? 
 
 Very much so, replied he. 
 
 And should he now again be obliged to give his opinion 
 of those shadows, and to dispute about them with those who 
 are there eternally chained, whilst yet his eyes were dazzled, 
 and before they recovered their former state (which would 
 not be effected in a short time) would he not afford them 
 laughter? and would it not be said of him, that, having 
 ascended, he was returned with vitiated eyes, and that it 
 was not proper even to attempt to go above, and that who- 
 ever should attempt to liberate them, and lead them up, 
 if ever they were able to get hirn into their hands, should 
 be put to death ? 
 
 They would by all means, said he, put him to death. 
 
 The whole of this image now, said I, friend Glauco, is to 
 
 ^ " In the light of day," Achilles adds [Odyss. xi.), contrasting servi- 
 tude in the upper world with dominion in Hades. 
 
TR UTB AND ITS SHADO WS. 1 1 
 
 be applied to our previous discourse ; for if you compare 
 this region, which is seen by the sight, to the habitation of 
 the prison ; and the hght of the fire in it to the power of the 
 sun; and the ascent above, and the vision of things above, 
 to the soul's ascent into the intelligible place ; you will 
 apprehend my meaning, since you want to hear it. But 
 God knows whether it be true. This is the way in which 
 things appear to me. In the intelligible place the Idea of 
 the Good is the last object of vision and is scarcely to be 
 seen ; but if it be seen we must collect by reasoning that it 
 is the cause to all of everything right and beautiful, 
 generating in the visible place, light, and its lord the 
 sun; and in the intelligible place, it is itself the lord, 
 producing truth and intellect ; and this must be beheld 
 by him who is to act wisely either in his own or in public 
 affairs. 
 
 I agree with you, said he, as far as I am able. 
 
 Come now, said I, and agree with me likewise in this. 
 And do not wonder that such as arrive hither are unwilling 
 to act in human affairs, but their souls always hasten to 
 converse with things above ; for it is somehow reasonable 
 it should be so, if these things take place according to our 
 above-mentioned image. 
 
 It is indeed reasonable, replied he. 
 
 But what? do you think that this is anything wonderful, 
 that when a man comes from divine contemplations to 
 human evils, he should behave awkwardly and appear 
 extremely ridiculous, whilst he is yet dazzled, and is 
 obliged, before he is sufficiently accustomed to the present 
 darkness, to contend in courts of justice, or elsewhere, 
 about the shadows of justice, or those images which 
 occasion the shadows, and to dispute how these things are 
 apprehended by those who have never at any time beheld 
 Justice itself? 
 
 This is not at all wonderful, said he. 
 
 But if a man possesses intellect, said I, he must re- 
 member that there is a twofold disturbance of the sight, 
 and arising from two causes : when we betake ourselves 
 
12 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 from light to darkness, and from darkness to light. And 
 when a man considers that these very things happen with 
 reference also to the soul, whenever he sees any one dis- 
 turbed and unable to perceive anything, he will not laugh 
 in an unseasonable manner, but will consider whether the 
 soul, coming from a more splendid life, be darkened by 
 ignorance, or going from abundant ignorance to one more 
 luminous, be filled with the dazzling splendour, and so 
 will congratulate the one on its fate and its life, and com- 
 passionate the life and fate of the other. And if he wishes 
 to laugh at the soul that goes from darkness to light, his 
 laughter would be less improper, than if he were to laugh at 
 the soul which descends from the light to darkness. 
 
 You say very reasonably, replied he. 
 
 It is proper, then, said I, that we judge of them after 
 such a manner as this, if those things be true : That educa- 
 tion is not such a thing as some announce it to be ; for 
 they somehow say, that whilst there is no science in the 
 soul, they will insert it, as if they were inserting sight in 
 blind eyes. 
 
 They say so, replied he. 
 
 But our present reasoning, said I, now shows, that this 
 power being in the soul of every one, and the organ by 
 which every one learns, and being in the same condition as 
 the eye would be if it were unable otherwise than with the 
 whole body to turn from darkness to light, must, in like 
 manner, with the whole soul be turned from the mutable 
 world till it be able to endure the contemplation of Being 
 itself, and the most splendid form of Being. And this we 
 call the Good — do we not? 
 
 We do. 
 
 This then, said I, would appear to be the art of his 
 conversion, in what manner he shall, with the greatest ease 
 and advantage, be turned. Not to implant in him the 
 power of seeing; but considering him as possessed of it, 
 only improperly situated, and not looking at what he ought, 
 to contrive some method by which this may be accom- 
 plished. 
 
THE OBLIGATIONS OF MORALITY. 
 
 Fro7)i the ''Republic'^ Book iL 
 
 Socrates and Glauco. 
 
 When I had said these things I imagined that the debate 
 was itt an end ; but this it seems was only the introduction : 
 for Glauco, as he is on all occasions most courageous, so 
 truly at that time did not approve of Thrasymachus giving 
 up the debate ; but said, Socrates, do you wish to seem to 
 have persuaded us, or to have persuaded us in reality, that in 
 every respect it is better to be righteous than unrighteous? 
 
 I would choose, said I, to do it in reality, if it depended 
 on me. 
 
 You do not then, said he, do what you desire. For, tell 
 me, does there appear to you any good of this kind : such 
 as we would choose to have, not regarding the conse- 
 quences, but embracing it for its own sake? as joy, and 
 such pleasures as are harmless ; though nothing else arises 
 afterwards from these pleasures than that the possession 
 gives us delight. 
 
 There seems to me, said I, to be something of this kind. 
 
 But what? is there something too which we both love 
 for its own sake, and also for what arises from it? as 
 wisdom, sight, and health ; for we somehow embrace these 
 things on both accounts. 
 
 Yes, said I. 
 
 But do you perceive, said he, a third species of good, 
 among which is bodily labour, or being treated for sickness, 
 
14 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 or practising physic, or other lucrative employment ? for 
 we say, those things are troublesome, but that they profit 
 us, and we should not choose these things for their own 
 sake, but on account of the rewards and those other 
 advantages which arise from them. 
 
 There is then, indeed, said I, likewise this third kind. 
 
 But what now? in which of these, said he, do you 
 place righteousness ? 
 
 I imagine, said I, in the best of them — in that which 
 both on its own account, and for the sake of what arises 
 from it, is desired by the man who is in pursuit of happi- 
 ness. 
 
 It does not, however, said he, seem so to the many, but 
 to be of the troublesome kind, which is pursued for the 
 sake of glory, and on account of rewards and honours ; but 
 on its own account it is to be shunned, as being difficult. 
 
 I know, said I, that it seems so, and it was in this view 
 that Thrasymachus some time since despised it, and com- 
 mended unrighteousness ; but it seems I am one of those 
 who are dull in learning. 
 
 Come then, said he, hear me likewise, if this be agreeable 
 to you ; for Thrasymachus seems to me to have been 
 charmed by you, like an adder, sooner than was proper: 
 but with respect to myself, the proof has not yet been made 
 to my satisfaction, in reference to either of the two ; for I 
 desire to hear what each is, and what power it has by itself, 
 when in the soul — bidding farewell to the rewards and the 
 consequences arising from them. I will proceed therefore 
 in this manner, if it seem proper to you : I will renew the 
 speech of Thrasymachus ; and first of all I will tell you 
 what they say righteousness is, and whence it arises ; and 
 secondly, that all those who pursue it pursue it unwillingly, 
 as necessary, but not as good; thirdly, that they do this 
 reasonably; for, as they say, the life of the unrighteous man 
 is much better than that of the righteous. Although, for 
 my own part, to me, Socrates, it does not appear so, yet I 
 am in doubt, having my ears stunned in hearing Thrasy- 
 machus and innumerable others. But 1 have never, hitherto. 
 
THE OBLIGATIONS OF MORALITY. 15 
 
 heard from any one such a discourse as I wish to hear con- 
 cerning righteousness, as being better than unrighteousness: 
 I wish, then, to hear it commended, as it is in itself; and I 
 most especially imagine I shall hear this from you : where- 
 fore, pulling oppositely, I shall speak in commendation of 
 an unrighteous life ; and in speaking shall show you in what 
 manner I want to hear you condemn unrighteousness and 
 commend righteousness. But see if what 1 say be agree- 
 able to you. 
 
 Extremely so, said I ; for what would any man of intellect 
 delight more to speak and to hear of frequently ? 
 
 You speak most handsomely, said he. And hear what I 
 said I was first to speak of; what righteousness is, and 
 whence it arises ; for they say that, according to nature, to 
 do wrong is good; but to suffer wrong is bad; but that the 
 evil w4iich arises from suffering wrong is greater than the 
 good which arises from doing it : so that, after men had 
 done one another wrong and likewise suffered it, and had 
 experienced both, it seemed proper to those who were not 
 able to shun the one and choose the other, to agree among 
 themselves, neither to do wrong nor to be wronged: and that 
 hence laws began to be established, and their compacts ; 
 and that which was enjoined by law they denominated 
 lawful and righteous; and that this is the origin and essence 
 of righteousness : being in the middle between what is best 
 when he who does wrong is not punished, and what is 
 worst, when the person wronged is unable to punish ; and 
 that righteousness, being thus in the middle of both these, 
 is desired, not as good, but is held in honour from a feeble- 
 ness in doing wrong, for the man who had ability to do 
 wrong would never, if really a man, consent to this agree- 
 ment neither to wrong nor be wronged ; for otherwise he 
 were mad. This, then, Socrates, and of such a kind as this, 
 is the nature of righteousness ; and this, as they say, is its 
 origin. And we shall best perceive that those who pursue 
 it pursue it unwillingly, and from an impotence to injure, if 
 we imagine in our mind such a case as this: Let us give 
 
i6 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 liberty to each of them, both to the righteous and the un- 
 righteous, to do whatever they indine ; and then let us 
 follow them, observing how their inclination will lead each 
 of them. We should then find the righteous man, witli full 
 inclination, going the same way with the unrighteous, 
 through a desire of having more than others. This every 
 nature is made to pursue as good, but by law is forcibly led 
 to an equality. And the liberty I speak of may be chiefly 
 of this kind; if they happened to have such a power as they 
 say happened once to Gyges, the progenitor of Lydus: for 
 they say that he was the hired shepherd of the then 
 governor of Lydia ; and that, a prodigious rain and earth- 
 quake happening, part of the earth was rent, and an opening 
 made in the place where he pastured his flocks ; that when 
 he beheld and wondered, he descended, and saw many other 
 wonders which are transmitted to us in myths, and a brazen 
 house likewise, hollow and with doors ; and on looking 
 in, he saw within a dead body larger in appearance than 
 that of a man, which had nothing else upon it but a 
 gold ring on its hand ; which ring he took off, and came up 
 again. That when there was a convention of the shepherds, 
 as usual, for reporting to the king what related to their 
 flocks, he also came, having the ring : and whilst he sat with 
 the others he happened to turn the stone of the ring to the 
 inner part of his hand ; and when this was done he became 
 invisible to those who sat by, and they talked of him as 
 absent ; that he wondered, and, again handling his ring, 
 turned the stone outward, and on this became visible; and 
 that, having observed this, he made trial of the ring, 
 whether it had this power ; and that it happened, that on 
 turning the stone inward he became invisible, and on turn- 
 ing it outward, he became visible. That, perceiving this, 
 he instantly managed so as to be made one of the embassy 
 to the king, and that on his arrival he debauched his wife ; 
 and with her, assaulting the king, killed him, and possessed 
 the kingdom. If now, there were two such rings, and the 
 righteous man had the one, and the unrighteous the other, 
 none, it seems, would be so adamantine as to persevere in 
 
THE OBLIGATIONS OF MORALITY. 17 
 
 righteousness, and endure to refrain from the things of 
 others, and not to touch them, whilst it was in his power 
 to take, even from the Forum, without fear, whatever he 
 pleased ; to enter into houses and embrace any one he 
 pleased ; to kill, and to loose from chains, whom he pleased ; 
 and to do all other things with the same power as a god 
 among men, — acting in this manner, he is in no respect 
 different from the other, but both of them go the same road. 
 This now, one may say, is a strong proof that no one is 
 righteous from choice, but by constraint ; as it is not a good 
 merely in itself, since every one does wrong wherever he 
 imagines he is able to do it ; for every man thinks that un- 
 righteousness is, in itself, more profitable than righteousness; 
 and bethinks justly, according to this way of reasoning: since, 
 if any one with such a liberty would never do any wrong, 
 nor touch the things of others, he would be deemed by men 
 of sense to be most wretched, and most void of understand- 
 ing; yet would they commend him before one another, 
 imposing on each other, from a fear of being injured. 
 Thus much, then, concerning these things. But, with refer- 
 ence to the difference of their lives whom we speak of, we 
 shall be able to discern aright, if we set apart by themselves 
 the most righteous man and the most unrighteous, and not 
 otherwise ; and now, what is this, this separation ? Let us 
 take from the unrighteous man nothing of unrighteousness, 
 nor of righteousness from the righteous man, but let us make 
 each of them perfect in his own profession. And first, as to 
 the unrighteous man, let him act as the able artists ; as a 
 complete pilot, or physician, he comprehends the possible 
 and the impossible in the art; the one he attempts, and the 
 other he relinquishes ; and, if he fail in anything, he is able 
 to rectify it : so, in like manner, the unrighteous man 
 attempting pieces of unrighteousness in a dexterous manner, 
 let him be concealed, if he is to be deemed exceedingly 
 unrighteous; but if he be caught, let him be deemed to have 
 failed : for the most complete unrighteousness is, to seem 
 righteous, not being so. We must give then to the com- 
 pletely unrighteous the most complete unrighteousness; and 
 
i8 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 not take from him, but allow him, whilst doing the greatest 
 wrong, to procure for himself the highest reputation for 
 righteousness; and if in anything he fail, let him be able to 
 rectify it : and let him be able to speak so as to persuade, 
 if anything of his unrighteousness be spread abroad: let 
 him be able to do by force what requires force, through his 
 courage and strength, and by means of his friends and his 
 wealth : and having supposed him to be such a one as this, 
 let us place the righteous man beside him, in our reasoning, a 
 simple and ingenuous man, desiring, according to ^schylus, 
 not the appearance but the reality of goodness : let us take 
 from him the appearance of goodness; for, if he shall 
 appear to be righteous, he shall have honours and rewards; 
 and thus it may be uncertain whether he be such for the 
 sake of righteousness, or on account of the rewards and 
 honours : let him be stripped of everything but righteous- 
 ness, and be made completely contrary to the other; whilst 
 he does no wrong, let him have the reputation of doing the 
 greatest; that he may be tortured for righteousness, not 
 yielding to reproach, and such things as arise from it, but 
 may be immovable till death ; appearing indeed to be 
 unrighteous through life, yet being really righteous ; that so 
 both of them arriving at the utmost pitch, the one of 
 righteousness, and the other of unrighteousness, we may 
 judge which of them is the happier. 
 
 Strange ! said I, friend Glauco, how strenuously you purify 
 eacli of the men, as a statue which is to be judged of ! 
 
 As much, said he, as I am able : whilst then they con- 
 tinue to be such, there will not, as I imagine, be any further 
 difficulty to observe what kind of life remains to each of 
 them. It must therefore be told. And if possibly it should 
 be told in a somewhat raw manner, imagine not, Socrates, 
 that it is I who tell it, but those who commend unrighteous- 
 ness preferably to righteousness ; and they will say these 
 things: That the righteous man, being of this disposition, 
 will be scourged, tormented, fettered, have his eyes burnt, 
 and lastly, having suffered all manner of evils, will be 
 crucified ; and he shall know that he should not desire the 
 
THE OBLIGATIONS OF MORALITY. 19 
 
 reality but the appearance of righteousness : and that it is 
 much more proper to pronounce that saying of ^schylus, 
 concerning the unrighteous man ; for they will in reality say 
 that the unrighteous man, as being in pursuit of what is real, 
 and living not according to the opinion of men, wants not 
 to have the appearance but the reality of unrighteousness — 
 
 "Reaping the hollow furrows of his mind, 
 Whence all his glorious counsels blossom forth." 
 
 In the first place, he holds the magistracy in the state, being 
 thought to be just ; next, he marries wherever he inclines, 
 and matches his children with whom he pleases ; he joins 
 in partnership and company with whom he inclines ; and 
 besides all this, he will succeed in all his projects for gain ; 
 as he does not scruple to do wrong : when then he engages 
 in competitions he will both in private and in public surpass 
 and exceed his adversaries ; and by this means he will be 
 rich, and serve his friends, and hurt his enemies : and he 
 will amply and magnificently render sacrifices and offerings 
 to the gods, and will honour the gods, and such men as he 
 chooses, much better than the righteous man. From 
 whence they reckon, that it is likely he will be more 
 beloved of the gods than the righteous man. Thus they 
 say, Socrates, that both with gods and men there is a better 
 life prepared for the unjust man than for the just. 
 
 When Glauco had said these things, I had a design to 
 say something in reply. . . . 
 
 From the '^Republic" Book ix. 
 
 . . . Since we are now come to this part of our argument, 
 said I, let us recapitulate what we first said, on account of 
 which we have come hither : and it was somewhere said, 
 that it was advantageous to do wrong, if one were com- 
 pletely unrighteous, but were reputed righteous. \Vas it 
 not so said } 
 
 It was indeed. 
 
 Now then, said I, let us settle this point. . . . Let us in 
 
20 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 our reasoning fashion an image of the soul, that the man 
 who said those things may know what he said. 
 
 What kind of image? said he. 
 
 One of those creatures, said I, which are fabled to have 
 l)een of old, as that of Chimaera, of Scylla, of Cerberus ; 
 and many others are spoken of, where many particular 
 natures existed together in one. 
 
 They are spoken of indeed, said he. 
 
 Form now one figure of a creature, various and many- 
 headed, having all around lieads of tame creatures, and of 
 wild, and having power in itself of changing all these heads, 
 and of breeding them out of itself. 
 
 This is the work, said he, of a skilful former : however, 
 as the formation is easier in thought than in wax and such 
 like, let it be formed. 
 
 Let there be now one other figure of a lion, and one of 
 a man ; but let the first be by far the greatest, and the 
 second be the second in bulk. 
 
 These are easy, said he, and they are formed. 
 
 Conjoin now these three in one, so as to exist somehow 
 with one another. 
 
 They are conjoined, said he. 
 
 Form now around them the external appearance of one 
 of them, that of the man ; so that to one who is not able 
 to see what is within, but who perceives only the external 
 covering, the man may appear one creature. ^ 
 
 This is formed around, said he. 
 
 Let us now tell him who asserts that it is profitable to 
 this man to do wrong, but to do righteousness is unprofit- 
 able, that he asserts nothing else than that it is profitable 
 for him to feast the multiform creature, and to make it 
 strong ; and likewise the lion, and what respects the lion, 
 whilst the man he kills with famine, and renders weak, so as 
 to be dragged whichever way either of those drag him ; and 
 that he will also find it advantageous never to accustom the 
 
 ■^ The three natures conjoined in man represent respectively, as a 
 previous passage informs us, the Appetitive, the Irascible, and the 
 i^sition^l elements. 
 
THE OBLIGATIONS OF MORALITY. 21 
 
 one to live in harmony with the other, nor to make them 
 friends, but suffer them to be biting one another, and to 
 fight and devour each other. 
 
 He, said he, who commendeth the doing unrighteousness, 
 undoubtedly asserts these things. 
 
 And does not he again who says it is profitable to do 
 righteousness, say that he ought to do and say such things 
 by which the inner man shall come to have the most entire 
 command of the man, and, as a tiller of the ground, shall 
 take care of the many-headed creature, cherishing the mild 
 ones, and nourishing them, and hindering the wild ones 
 from growing up, taking the nature of the lion as his ally, 
 and, having a common care for all, make them friendly to 
 one another, and to himself, and so nourish them ? 
 
 He who commends righteousness undoubtedly says such 
 things as these. 
 
 In all respects, then, he who commends righteousness 
 would seem to speak the truth, but he who commends 
 unrighteousness to speak what is false ; for, with regard to 
 pleasure, and applause, and profit, he who commends 
 righteousness speaks the truth, and he who discommends it 
 speaks nothing genuine. Nor does he discommend with 
 understanding what he discommends. 
 
 Not at all, said he, as appears to me at least. 
 
 Let us then in a mild manner persuade him (for it is not 
 willingly he errs), asking him, O blessed man ! do not we 
 say that the maxims of things beautiful and base become so 
 upon such accounts as these : Those are good which sub- 
 ject the brutal part of our nature most to the man, or rather 
 perhaps to that which is divine : but those are evil which 
 enslave the mild part of our nature to the brutal. Will he 
 agree with us ? or how ? 
 
 He will, if he be advised by me, said he. 
 
 Is there then any one, said I, whom it profits, from this 
 reasoning, to take gold unrighteously, if something of this 
 kind happens — if, whilst he takes the money, he at the 
 same time subjects the b.st part of his nature to the worst ? 
 Or if, taking gold for it, he should enslave a son or a 
 
2 2 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 daughter, and that to savage and wicked men, shall we say 
 this would not profit him, not though he should receive for 
 it a prodigious sum ? But if he enslaves the most divine 
 part of himself to the most impious and polluted part, 
 without any pity, is he not wretched ? and does he not take 
 a gift of gold to his far more dreadful ruin than Eriphyle 
 did when she received the necklace for her husband's life? 
 
 By far, said Glauco ; for I will answer you for the man. 
 
 And do you not think that to be intemperate has of old 
 been discommended on such accounts as these, because 
 that in such a one that terrible, great, and multiform beast 
 was indulged more than was meet? 
 
 It is plain, said he. 
 
 And are not arrogance and moroseness blamed, when 
 the lion and the serpentine nature increases and stretches 
 beyond measure ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 And are not luxury and effeminacy blamed because of 
 the remissness and looseness of this disposition, when it 
 engenders in the man cowardice ? 
 
 What else ? 
 
 Are not flattery and illiberality blamed, when any one 
 makes this irascible part itself subject to the brutal crew, 
 and for the sake of wealth and its insatiable lust, accustoms 
 the irascible to be affronted from its youth, and instead of 
 a lion to become an ape ? 
 
 Entirely so, said he. 
 
 But why is it, do you think, that mechanical arts and 
 handicrafts are despised ? Shall we say it is on any other 
 account than this, that when a man has the form of that 
 which is best in his soul, naturally weak, so as not to be 
 able to govern the creatures within himself, but to minister 
 to them, he is able only to learn what flatters them ?^ 
 
 ^ That is to say, a handicraft is merely a means of making money. 
 It is singular that Plato should have attempted to justify rather than 
 condemn the prevalent Athenian view upon the unworthy nature of the 
 mechanical arts. There is probably not one of them into which ideal 
 aims may not and do not enter. 
 
THE OBLIGATIONS OF MORALITY, ^3 
 
 It is likely, said he. 
 
 In order, then, that such a one may be governed in the 
 same manner as the best man is, do we not say that he 
 must be the servant of one who is the best, and who has 
 within him the divine governor? not at all conceiving that he 
 should be governed to the hurt of the subject (as Thrasy- 
 machus imagined), but, as it is best for every one to be 
 governed, by one divine and wise, most especially if he 
 possess it as his own within him, but if not, then subjeciing 
 himself to it externally ; that as far as possible we may all 
 resemble one other and be friends, governed by one and 
 the same ? 
 
 Rightly indeed, said he. 
 
 And law at least, said I, plainly shows it intends such 
 a thing, being an ally to all in the city ; as does likewise the 
 government of children, in not allowing them to be free 
 until we establish in them a proper government, as in 
 a city ; and having cultivated that in them which is best, 
 by that which is best in ourselves, we establish a similar 
 guardian and governor for youth, and then truly set it free. 
 
 It shows so indeed, said he. 
 
 In what way then shall we say, Glauco, and according 
 to what reasoning, that it is profitable to do unrighteous- 
 ness, to be intemperate, or to do anything base, by which a 
 man shall indeed become more wicked, but yet shall acquire 
 more wealth or any kind of power ? 
 
 In no way, said he. 
 
 But how shall we say it is profitable for the unrighteous 
 to be concealed, and not to suffer punishment? or does he 
 not indeed, who is concealed, become still more wicked? 
 but he who is not concealed, and is punished, has the 
 brutal part quieted, and made mild, and the mild part set 
 at liberty. And the whole soul being settled in the best 
 temper, in possessing temperance and righteousness, with 
 wisdom, acquires a more valuable habit than the body does 
 in acquiring vigour and beauty, with a sound constitution ; 
 in as far as the soul is more valuable than the body. 
 
A SOPHIST IN SPARTA. 
 
 From the '•''Greater HippiasT 
 
 Socrates and Hippias. 
 
 Soc. Hippias, the fine and the wise ! what a long time it 
 is since last you touched at Athens ! 
 
 Hip. It is because I have not had leisure, Socrates. 
 For the Eleans, you are to know, whenever they have any 
 public affairs to negotiate with any of the neighbouring 
 cities, constantly apply to me, and appoint me their 
 ambassador for that purpose, in preference to all others : 
 because they consider me as a person the ablest to form 
 a right judgment of what is argued and alleged by every 
 one of the cities, and to make a proper report of it to 
 them. My embassies, therefore, have been frequent to 
 many of those powers; but oftenest, and upon points the 
 most in number, as well as of the highest importance, 
 to the Lacedaemonians. This is the reason then, in 
 answer to your question, why so seldom I visit these 
 parts. 
 
 Soc. This it is, Hippias, to be a man truly wise and 
 perfectly accomplished. For, being thus qualified, you 
 have, in your private capacity, great presents made you 
 by the young men of the age ; and are able to make 
 them ample amends by the greater advantages which they 
 derive from you : then, in your public character, you are 
 able to do service to your country, as a man ought, who 
 would raise himself above contempt, and acquire reputation 
 
A SOPHIST IN SPARTA. 25 
 
 among the multitude. But, Hippias, what sort of reason 
 can Idc given, why those in former days, who are so highly 
 famed for wisdom, Pittacus and Bias, and Thales the 
 Milesian, with his disciples, successors, and followers, down 
 to Anaxagoras, if not all, yet most of them, are found to 
 have lived the lives of private men, declining to engage in 
 public affairs ? 
 
 Bip. What other reason, Socrates, can you imagine 
 beside this, that they had not a sufficient reach of wisdom 
 for the conduct of their own private affairs and those of 
 the public at the same time? 
 
 Soc. Tell me then, in the name of Zeus, whether, as 
 all other arts are improved, and the workmen of former 
 times are contemptible and mean in comparison with ours, 
 shall we say that your art, that of the Sophists, hath in 
 like manner received improvement; and that such of the 
 ancients as applied themselves to the study of wisdom were 
 nothing, compared to you of the present age? 
 
 Htp. Perfectly right : that is the very case. 
 
 Soc. So that, were Bias to be restored to life again in 
 our days, he would be liable to ridicule, appearing in com- 
 petition with you Sophists : your case being parallel to that 
 of our modern statuaries, who tell us that Daedalus, were 
 he alive, and to execute such works as those to which he 
 owed his great name, would but expose himself and become 
 ridiculous. 
 
 Hip. The truth of the matter, Socrates, exactly is as you 
 say. I, myself, however, make it my custom to bestow my 
 commendations rather upon the ancients, and upon all such 
 as flourished in times precedent to our own ; giving them 
 the pre-eminence and precedence above ourselves ; in order 
 to escape the envy of the living, and for fear of incurring 
 the resentment of the dead. 
 
 Soc. In my opinion, Hippias, you see the matter in a 
 just light, and consider it thoroughly well. I myself can 
 witness the truth of what you say. It is indeed certain 
 that your art is in this respect really improved, in that you 
 are able to manage the concerns of the public, and at the 
 
26 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 same time to give attention to your own private interests. 
 For Gorgias, that great Sophist of Leontium, came hither 
 on a pubUc embassy from his country, as the ablest 
 man among the Leontines, to negotiate their affairs of 
 state : and here he acquired glory by his fine harangues 
 in the assembly of the people ; at the same time that 
 by his exhibitions before private companies, and his 
 teaching our young men, he collected and raised very 
 considerable sums of money from this city. Or, if 
 you would have another instance, there is my own friend 
 the famous Prodicus ; who has frequently been sent 
 hither on public embassies : but the last time, not long 
 since, when he came as an ambassador from Ceos, his 
 speeches before the Council gained him great honour ; and 
 his private exhibitions in the meantime, together with the 
 tuition of our young men, procured him an immense heap 
 of money. But not one of those ancient sages ever thought 
 proper to exact money by way of fee or reward for his 
 teaching : or ever took it into his head to display his 
 wisdom before a mixed multitude. So simple were they, 
 and so much of a secret was it to them how valuable a 
 thing was money ! Whereas each of the others, whom I 
 mentioned, has made more money of his wisdom than any 
 artificer could ever earn from any art whatever : and prior 
 to these Protagoras did the same. 
 
 Hip. You know nothing, Socrates, of what high ad- 
 vantages belong to our profession. To give you only one 
 instance. Going upon a certain time to Sicily, where 
 Protagoras then resided, high in reputation and reverend in 
 years, I, though at that time in age greatly his inferior, 
 gained, in a very short time, more than 150 minas : nay, 
 from one place only, and that a very little one, Inycum, I 
 took above twenty. This, when I brought home with me, 
 and presented it to my father, it struck him and my other 
 friends m the city with wonder and astonishment. To say 
 the truth, I am inclined to think that not any two of the 
 Sophists, name which you please, taken together, have 
 acquired so much money as myself. 
 
A SOPHIST IN SPARTA, 27 
 
 Soc. A fair and notable evidence have you produced, 
 Hippias, proving not only your own wisdom, but iiow wise 
 the world, too, is become nowadays j and what difference 
 there is between the modern wisdom and the ancient in 
 point of excellence. For of these predecessors of yours 
 there is reported great folly, according to your account of 
 things. To Anaxagoras, for instance, it is said, happened 
 the contrary of that lucky fate which befell you. For, when 
 great wealth had been left him, he, through negligence, 
 they say, lost it all : so silly was he with his wisdom. And 
 of other ancient sages they relate stories of the same kind. 
 A clear proof, I think, therefore, this which you exhibit, in 
 what a wise age we live ; and what disproportion the wisdom 
 of it bears to that of former times. Many too, I know, are 
 agreed in this opinion, that a wise man ought, in the first 
 place, to be wise to himself. Now the standard of this 
 kind of wisdom is, it seems, who can get the most money. 
 But so much for this. And now tell me, as to your own 
 gains, from which of the cities whither you have travelled 
 did you collect the largest sums ? Undoubtedly it must 
 have been from Sparta, whither you have gone the oftenest. 
 
 Hip. Not from thence, Socrates, by Zeus ! 
 
 Soc. How say you ? What, the least sum from thence ? 
 
 Hip. Never anything at all. 
 
 Soc. It is a prodigy what you relate: and I am amazed 
 at it, Hippias. But tell me, as to that wisdom of yours, has 
 it not the power to improve in virtuous excellence all your 
 followers who are conversant with it, and will learn ? 
 
 Hip. In the highest degree, Socrates. 
 
 Soc. Were you able, then, to improve the sons of the 
 Inycians, yet wanted such ability with regard to the sons of 
 Sparta? 
 
 Hip. Far from it. 
 
 ^oc The Sicilians, then, I warrant, have a desire of 
 virtuous improvement, but the Spartans not so? 
 
 Hip. Strongly so, Socrates, have the Spartans. 
 
 Soc. Was their want of money, then, the reason why 
 they loll owed you not ? 
 
28 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 Hip. By no means ; for of money they have plenty. 
 Soc. What account, then, can be given in such a case as 
 this, when they were desirous of improvement, and in no 
 want of money to purchase it ; and you were able to furnish 
 them with the highest degrees of it ; why did they not send 
 you away loaded with riches ? What ; certainly the reason 
 of it cannot be this, that the Spartans can educate their 
 sons in a better manner than you could educate them? Or 
 shall we say they can ? and do you admit this to be true ? 
 
 Hip. By no means in the world. 
 
 Soc. Were you not, then, able to persuade the young 
 men at Sparta that, by the help of your conversation, they 
 might make greater advances in virtue than ever they could 
 hope to do from the company and converse of their fathers ? 
 Or could you not persuade those fathers that they would do 
 better to commit the instruction of their sons to your 
 management than to undertake that care themselves, if they 
 had any affectionate regard for their offspring? For it 
 could not be that they envied their children the attainment 
 of the highest excellence in virtue. 
 
 Hip. I have no suspicion of their envying them such an 
 attainment. 
 
 Soc. Well now ; and Sparta is really governed by good 
 laws. 
 
 Hip. Who makes a doubt of it ? 
 
 Soc. Very well ; and in cities governed by good laws the 
 highest value is set on them ? 
 
 Hip. Certainly. 
 
 Soc. And how to teach virtue to others you know best 
 of all men ? 
 
 Hip. By much, Socrates. 
 
 ^oc. Now, the man who knows best how to teach and 
 impart to others the art of horsemanship, of all countries in 
 Greece would not such a man meet with most honour, and 
 acquire most wealth, in Thessaly, and wherever else this art 
 was cultivated most ? 
 
 Hip. It is probable he would. 
 
 Soc. And will not the man who is capable of delivering 
 
A SOPHIST IN SPARTA. 29 
 
 the most valuable instructions with regard to virtue, meet 
 with most honour, and pick up most money too, if he he 
 that way inclined, in Sparta, and every other Grecian city 
 governed by good laws ? But in Sicily, my friend, rather, 
 do you suppose, or at Inycum ? Ought we, Hippias, to 
 give credit to this ? for, if you say it, we must believe. 
 
 Hip. The truth is, Socrates, that the Spartans hold it 
 sacred to make no innovation in their laws ; and to educate 
 their youth in no other way than what is agreeal)le to their 
 ancient usages. 
 
 Soc. How say you ? Do the Spartans hold it sacred 
 not to do what is right, but to do the contrary ? 
 
 Hip. I would not say any such thing, not I, Socrates. 
 
 Soc. Would not they do right, then, to educate their sons 
 in the better way, and not in the worse ? 
 
 Hip. It is true they would ; but the laws do not permit 
 them to have their youth educated by foreigners, or after 
 a foreign mode. For be assured, if any foreigner ever 
 acquired wealth at Sparta by teaching or instructing their 
 youth, much more so should I ; since they take great 
 pleasure in hearing my dissertations, and give me high 
 encomiums; but in the affair of education, the law, as I 
 said, does not permit them the benefit of my instructions. 
 
 Soc. The law, Hippias, do you suppose mischievous to 
 the public or beneficial ? 
 
 Hip. It is instituted, I presume, for the benefit of the 
 public; but sometimes, where the frame of the law is bad, 
 it proves a public mischief. 
 
 Soc. Well, but do not legislators always frame a law 
 with a view of procuring for the public the greatest good, 
 and because without law it were impossible to live in a state 
 of order and good government ? 
 
 Hip. Without doubt, they do. 
 
 Soc. When those, therefore, who undertake the making 
 of laws fail of procuring good, they have missed their end, 
 and erred from good government and law. Or how say you 
 otherwise 7 
 
 Hip. Accurately speaking, Socrates, I must own the 
 
30 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 thing is so; but men are not used to describe it in these 
 terms. 
 
 Soc. Do you speak of men who know what law means, 
 or of men who want that knowledge ? 
 
 Hip. I speak of the bulk of mankind, the multitude. 
 
 Soc. Are these such as know the truth of things, this 
 multitude ? 
 
 Hip. Certainly not. 
 
 Soc. But those who have that knowledge, the wise, hold 
 that which is more beneficial, to be in reality, and accord- 
 ing to the truth of things, more a law to all men than what 
 is less beneficial. Do not you agree with them in this ? 
 
 HiJ>. I agree that in reality so it is. 
 
 Soc. Is not the nature and the condition of everything 
 such as those hold it to be who are really knowing in the 
 thing ? 
 
 Hip. Undoubtedly. 
 
 Soc. Now to the Spartans, you say, an education under 
 you, a foreigner, and after a foreign manner, would be more 
 beneficial than to be educated after the manner of their own 
 country. 
 
 Hip. And I say what is true. 
 
 Soc. And that which is more beneficial is more a law. 
 This you say likewise, Hippias. 
 
 Htp. I have admitted it so to be. 
 
 Soc. According, therefore, to your account, to have the 
 sons of the Spartans educated under Hippias, is more 
 agreeable to law ; and their education under their fathers 
 is more repugnant to law ; supposing that from you they 
 would receive advantages really greater. 
 
 Hip. And so indeed would they, Socrates. 
 
 Soc. Now from hence it follows that the Spartans 
 violate the law in not making you presents of money, and 
 committing their sons to your care. 
 
 Hip. Be it so : for you seem to argue thus in my 
 favour, and it is not my business to controvert your 
 argument. 
 
 Soc. Violators of the law then, my friend, we find these 
 
A SOPHIST IN SPARTA, 31 
 
 Spartans, and that in the most important article too ; these, 
 who are thought to be the greatest observers of it. But, in 
 the name of the gods, Hippias, of what kind are those 
 dissertations for which they give you those high encomiums ? 
 and upon what topics do they take that great pleasure in 
 hearing you harangue ? No doubt they must be the same 
 in which you have so much excellent knowledge ; those 
 which relate to the stars and the phenomena of the 
 sky ? 
 
 mp. They by no means endure to hear a word upon 
 these subjects. 
 
 Soc. But they take pleasure in hearing a lecture upon 
 the subject of geometry ? 
 
 mp. Not at all : for many of the Spartans know not 
 even the common rules of arithmetic ; nay, scarcely, I may 
 say, how to reckon. 
 
 Soc. They are far from enduring, then, to hear you 
 discourse on the nature of logic and argument.'^ 
 mp. Very far from that, by Zeus. 
 
 Soc. The subjects then, I warrant you, are those upon 
 which you are able to dissert, divide, and distinguish, with 
 the greatest accuracy of all men ; concerning the power of 
 letters and syllables, of harmonies and rhythms. 
 
 Hip. What harmonies, or what letters, my good man, 
 do they concern themselves about ? 
 
 Soc. Well ; what are the subjects, then, upon which they 
 attend to you with so much pleasure to themselves, and so 
 much commendation of you ? Tell me yourself, since I 
 cannot find it out. 
 
 Hip. Concerning the genealogies, O Socrates, of the 
 heroes and of men ; concerning the migrations of tribes 
 and settling of colonies ; the antiquity and first foundation 
 of cities; in a word, concerning everything in ancient 
 story they hearken to me with the utmost pleasure. 
 So that I have been obliged to study those things myself 
 for their sakes, and to perfect myself in that sort of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Soc. By ZeuSj Hippias, it was fortunate for you that 
 
32 SELECTIONS FROM PL A TO, 
 
 the Spartans take no pleasure in hearing a man reckon up 
 our archons from the time of Solon. For, if they did, the 
 perfecting yourself in such a catalogue would put you to no 
 little trouble. 
 
 Hip. Why so, Socrates? Upon hearing f.fty names 
 repealed only once, I will undertake to remember them. 
 
THE BANQUET. 
 
 PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE. 
 
 Apollodorus. 
 
 Friend of Apollodorus. 
 
 Glauco. 
 
 Aristodemus. 
 
 Socrates. 
 
 Agatho. 
 
 Pausanias. 
 Aristophanes. 
 Eryximachus. 
 Phaedrus. 
 
 DiOTIMA. 
 
 Alcibiades. 
 
 Scene — Pri7icipaUy within the city of Athens. 
 
 Apollodorus. The affair concerning which ye enquire I 
 think myself now not quite unprepared to relate to you. 
 For it happened a few days since as I was walking up to the 
 city from my house at Phalerus, that an acquaintance of 
 mine, who was going the same way, seeing me at a consider- 
 able distance before him, called out to me ; and by way of 
 joke at the same time said, Apollodorus, you Phalerean, will 
 you not stop a while till I come up to you ? ^ Upon which I 
 stopped, and stayed for him. As soon as he had joined me, 
 Apollodorus, said he, I was just now inquiring after you; 
 from a desire I have to be thoroughly acquainted with what 
 passed in the conversation between Agatho, and Socrates, 
 and Alcibiades, and the rest who were of the party, at an 
 entertainment where the subject of their discourse was Love. 
 I should be glad to be informed by you what was said on the 
 occasion. For the person who gave me some account of it, 
 sucn as he received from Phoenix, the son of Philippus, told 
 me that you knew every particular ; but that, as to himself, 
 he did not pretend to be at all perfect or exact in his relation. 
 
 ^ Phaldrus was a favourite starling-point of processions. 
 
34 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Do you then give me an account of it yourself; for you 
 have the best right to relate a conversation in which an 
 intimate friend of your own had the most distinguished 
 share. But first, said he, tell me, were you yourself one of 
 the company ? 
 
 It appears plainly, said I, indeed, that your author by no 
 means gave you an exact account of the circumstances of 
 that conversation, if you suppose it passed so lately as to 
 admit a possibility of my being of the company. 
 
 Really, I imagined so, replied he. 
 
 How could it be, said I, Glauco? Do you not know 
 that Agatho has not been at Athens for these many years ? 
 whereas it is not yet three since I first became a follower of 
 Socrates, and began, as I have continued ever since, daily 
 to observe and study all his sayings and actions. Before 
 that time, running about here and there, wherever chance 
 led me, and fancying myself all the while well employed, 
 no mortal was in so wretched a condition as I : it is such 
 as you are in at present, who give every study and every 
 pursuit the preference to that of philosophy. 
 
 Leave off railing, said he, and tell me when that con- 
 versation happened. 
 
 Before we wrote ourselves men, replied I. It was at the 
 time when Agatho brought his first tragedy upon the stage, 
 and won the prize with it. It was the very next day after 
 that himself and his chorus-singers had offered the usual 
 thanksgiving-sacrifice for his victory. 
 
 It is then, said he, a long while since, it seems. But 
 who was it, continued he, that related the conversation to 
 you ? Was it Socrates himself? 
 
 Not Socrates, by Zeus, replied I ; but the same person 
 who related it to Phoenix. It was one Aristodemus, a 
 Cydathenian, a man of remarkably low stature, who always 
 went barefoot. He was of the party, being one of those 
 who at that time were the most attached to the person and 
 company of Socrates. Not but that I asked Socrates him- 
 self concerning some of the particulars reported by Aristo- 
 demus ; and he allowed they were reported justly. 
 
THE BANQUET. 
 
 :>:■) 
 
 Why then, said Glauco, should you not favour me with 
 that relation ? The way to the city is perfectly convenient 
 for people to converse together as they go along. Upon 
 which we resumed our walk and entered into the relation 
 which my friend desired. So that I am now, as I said, not 
 quite unprepared upon the subject. If then I am to relate 
 the afiair over again to you, so it must be. Besides, I must 
 own that when I am discoursing myself, or hearing the 
 discourse of others, upon philosophical subjects, I am (to 
 say nothing of the improvement) beyond measure delighted. 
 But when I hear conversation of any other kind, especially 
 the usual discourse between you rich people, who are still 
 contriving to heap up money, I feel a tediousness in myself, 
 and a concern for you, my friend, who imagine you are 
 employing your time to good purpose, while you are only 
 trifling. On the other hand, it is possible you may think 
 that 1 lead an unhappy life ; and I believe those thoughts 
 of yours are just : but as to you I do not say I believe, for 
 I know, the state which you are in to be unhappy. 
 
 Friend, You are always the same man, Apollodorus, 
 always railing at yourself and the whole world. You seem 
 to me as if you absolutely thought all men wretched, and 
 yourself in the first place ; excepting none but Socrates. 
 Whence you acquired your surname, " the madman," for 
 my part I know not : but in your discourse you are always 
 the same as you are now, chafing against yourself and all 
 other people, — Socrates alone excepted. 
 
 ApoL My dearest friend, it is evident enough now, that 
 the entertaining such notions of myself, and of all of you, 
 proves me beyond question out of my senses and a 
 madman. 
 
 Friend. It is not worth the while, Apollodorus, to 
 dispute about this at present. Only do what I desired of 
 you, and give me an account of the speeches made at that 
 banquet. 
 
 Apol. The speeches then were as follows : — But I had 
 better, I think, give you the whole history of that affair from 
 ihe beginning, just as Aristodemus gave it me. For he told 
 
36 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 me that he met Socrates fresh out of the bath, and with 
 sandals on his feet, and as all this was unusual with him he 
 asked him whither he was going, that he had made himself 
 so spruce and fine. And Socrates told him he was going 
 to Agatho's house to sup with him. For yesterday at the 
 sacrifice, said he, I quitted his company for fear of the 
 crowd, but promised to be with him to-day. Now thus fine 
 have I made myself that I may visit so fine a person in a 
 manner not unbecoming. But what think you, said he, 
 Aristodemus, of going to supper there yourself, without 
 invitation ? 
 
 And I replied, said Aristodemus, that I was entirely at 
 his disposal. 
 
 Follow me then, said Socrates ; to corrupt the old 
 proverb, by altering it, — and proving that 
 
 " When made by worthy men are feasts, 
 The worthy go, unbidden guests."^ 
 
 Homer, before us, seems not merely to have corrupted, but 
 to have offered violence to the proverb by reversing it. 
 For, notwithstanding that he describes Agamemnon as a 
 man excellent in all military virtues, and Menelaus as a 
 man weak in arms, who 
 
 "failed of manly force 
 To fling the well-aimed javelin " {Iliad xvii. 588) ; 
 
 yet on occasion of a sacrifice and feast made by Agamem- 
 non, he has brought Alenelaus to the banquet uninvited, a 
 meaner man to the banquet of his betters. 
 
 Perhaps, replied Aristodemus on hearing this, I too shall 
 incur the imputation of a conduct, not, Socrates, such a one 
 as you have supposed, but like that in Homer, if I go to the 
 banquet of a man of great abilities, without being entitled to 
 it either by merit or invitation. Will you, therefore, if you 
 
 1 The proverb ran — 
 
 " When made by meaner men are feasts, 
 Their betters go, unbidden guests." 
 
 That is, because the meaner would not presume to invite the better. 
 
THE BANQUET, 37 
 
 lead me thither, make an apology for so doing ? for as to 
 myself I shall not confess my coming without invitation, 
 but shall plead that I was invited by you. 
 Well, says Socrates, 
 
 '* With social steps, companions of the way " {Iliad x. 224), 
 
 as we walk along we will consult together what speech to 
 make. But come, let us be going. 
 
 After this little talk together, he said, on they went. But 
 in the way, Socrates musing, and attentive to something in 
 his own mind, was outwalked by Aristodemus; and observ- 
 ing him to stop, bid him walk on. When he was come to 
 Agatho's house, the door of which was open, an accident, 
 he said, happened, which put him into some confusion. 
 For a servant who was coming out, meeting him then upon 
 the spot, led him directly to the banquet-room, where he 
 found the company just going to supper. Immediately 
 Agatho, on seeing him enter the room, said : Aristodemus, 
 you are come very opportunely to sup with us. But if any 
 other purpose brings you hither, defer it to another time. I 
 was looking about for you in the temple yesterday, with 
 intention to desire your company, and could not see you. 
 But how came you not to bring Socrates with you ? 
 
 Upon which I looked back, but could nowhere see 
 Socrates following me as I had imagined. However, I 
 declared I had come along with Socrates, upon his invitation 
 hither to supper. 
 
 You did well, said Agatho; but where is he then him- 
 self? 
 
 He was following me in but just now, said Aristodemus, 
 and I know as little as you do what has become of him. 
 
 Boy, said Agatho, to one of his servants, will you go and 
 see if you can find Socrates, and conduct him in ? Then, 
 turning to me, Do you, Aristodemus, said he, take your 
 place next to Eryximachus. And immediately he ordered 
 a servant to wash my feet clean, that I might take my place 
 upon the couch. 
 
 Just then the boy who had been sent out returned, and 
 
38 SELECTIONS FR OM PL A TO. 
 
 told us that Socrates had withdrawn himself into the porch 
 of some neighbouring house, and was there standing; 
 and when I called to him, said the boy, he would not 
 come. 
 
 Absurd, said Agatho : go and call him again; and do not 
 leave him in that manner. 
 
 But Aristodemus said that he himself opposed it, and 
 desired that Socrates might be let alone, for that it was 
 usual with him so to do. As he goes along he will some- 
 times stop, said he, without regarding where, and stand still 
 a while. I make no doubt but he will be here presently. 
 Let me entreat you, therefore, not to disturb him, but leave 
 him at quiet. 
 
 Be it so then, if you think best, said Agatho, but let the 
 rest of us proceed to supper. Then turning to his servants, 
 Boys, said he, serve us up something or other; it is left 
 to you what, for there is nobody to give you any particular 
 directions : you know it is not my way on these occasions. 
 You are now to suppose me and these gentlemen, my 
 friends here, invited by you to supper : entertain us hand- 
 somely, therefore, that you may have our commendations. 
 Immediately upon this, he said, they went to supper; but 
 Socrates was still missing. Agatho, therefore, would every 
 now and then be giving orders to his people to call Socrates 
 in, but I, said he, constantly opposed it. At length 
 Socrates, having stayed away, ns usual, not very long, 
 entered ; about the time, at furthest, when supper was half 
 over. Agatho, then, who lay on the couch at the lower 
 end of the tabic, alone, said, Come hither, Socrates, and lay 
 yourself down by mc; that by being close to you I may 
 have the benefit of that piece of wisdom of which you 
 made a new acquisition in the porch. For it is plain that 
 you found it, and nre in possession; otherwise you would 
 never have desisted from the pursuit. 
 
 Socrates then, sitting down on the couch, said, It would 
 be well, Agatho, if wisdom were a thing of such a nature, 
 as to pass from those who abound with it into such as want 
 it, when they sit close to one another, and are in contact; 
 
THE BANQUET. 39 
 
 like water running through the wooP out of the fuller vessel 
 into the emptier. If this quality attend wisdom, I shall 
 set a high value upon partaking of your couch : for I shall 
 expect to have wisdom flow into me from you in great 
 quantity, and of a kind which appears the fairest. As for 
 the little which I have it must be mean and trivial, doubtful 
 and questionable, seeming but a dream. But the wisdom 
 you are master of is splendid, and promises a future great 
 increase of brightness, having already in the morning of 
 your age shone out with so much glory; as more than thirty 
 thousand Grecians, before whom it appeared the other day, 
 can witness. 
 
 You are a joker, Socrates, said Agatho. But this con- 
 troversy between us about our wisdoms shall be tried by- 
 and-by, and Bacchus shall decide the cause. At present 
 turn your thoughts to the table. 
 
 Upon this, he told me, Socrates reclined himself and 
 made his supper. After he and the rest of them had done, 
 performed their libations, sung the piaises of the God, and 
 gone through the other usual ceremonies, they were begin- 
 ning to sit in to drinking when Pausanias, he said, opened 
 the conversation thus : — 
 
 Well, gentlemen, said he, what method shall we take to 
 find most pleasure in our bottles to-night? For my own 
 part, I confess to you that last night's revel sits very heavy 
 on me, and I want a little respite. I imagine too that 
 many more of us are in the same condition, such as were 
 here at the entertainment yesterday. Consider therefore 
 what way is the best to make drinking agreeable and easy 
 to us. 
 
 Aristophanes then said, It is a good proposal of yours, 
 Pausanias, in my opinion, this, that we should by all means 
 procure ourselves an easy drinking-bout. For I am one 
 of those who were well soaked yesterday. 
 
 Upon hearing this Eryximachus, the son of Acumenus, 
 
 ' Sydenham remarks that in Wiltshire water is filtered by being 
 conducted from a full vessel into an empty one along strands of twisted 
 woou 
 
4 o SEL E CTIONS FR OM PL A TO. 
 
 said, Both of you say well. But I should be glad to be 
 informed about one other person, and that is Agatho; in 
 what condition of strength he finds himself with regard 
 to drinking. 
 
 I am by no means very strong at present myself neither, 
 said Agatho. 
 
 It is lucky for us, said Eryximachus, for me, and 
 Aristodemus, and Phaedrus and the rest of us, if you 
 fail and are disabled, you stout men at the bottle. For 
 we are at all times weak in that respect. Socrates, indeed, 
 I except; for he is equally well qualified to drink or to 
 let it alone. So that he will be satisfied, and ready to 
 comply, whichever course we take. Since none of the 
 company, therefore, seem inclined to drink hard, I may 
 be the less displeasing, perhaps, if I speak the truth about 
 this matter in plain terms. For I have been convinced 
 myself, from the experience acquired in our profession, 
 that hard drinking is usually attended with ill consequences. 
 For which reason I should neither choose to venture far in 
 drinking myself, nor advise it to any other person, especially 
 when oppressed with the load of the last night's excess. 
 
 As for me, said Phaedrus, addressing himself to Eryxi- 
 machus, I am accustomed to hearken to your advice in 
 everything, especially in what relates to your own pro- 
 fession : but now I find all the rest of the company are 
 in the same complying disposition. 
 
 This they all assented to, and agreed not to make the 
 present meeting a drinking bout ; but to drink, every man, 
 just as much as might be agreeable to him. 
 
 This point thus being determined, said Eryximachus, 
 that we are to drink at our own pleasure and that no 
 compulsion is to be used; the next thing I have to offer 
 is this, that the flute girl, who has just entered the room, 
 may be dismissed, to play to herself, or if she pleases, to 
 the women in the inner rooms; and that we may enjoy 
 one another this evening in the way of conversation. The 
 manner and the subject I am ready, if you permit me, to 
 propose. To this they all unanimously gave assent, and 
 
THE BANQUET. 41 
 
 desired him to propose accordingly. Eryximachus then 
 said — 
 
 I shall begin my proposal after the manner of Euripides 
 in his prologue to the Melanippe, for 
 
 " The tale I have to tell is not my own; " 
 
 I have it from Phaedrus here. For Phaedrus is continually 
 saying to me, with an air of indignation, Is it not astonish- 
 ing, says he, Eryximachus, that the poets have made 
 hymns and odes in honour of others of the Deities; and 
 yet not one poet, among so many in every age, has ever 
 composed a panegyric upon Love \ but the praises of a 
 god so powerful, and of so excellent a nature, to this day 
 remain unsung? The same complaint I have to make 
 against the Sophists : the best of whom, as you will find, 
 have, in their prosaic compositions, made encomiums on 
 Herakles, and other great and illustrious persons ; as the 
 celebrated Prodicus has done for instance. This however 
 is not greatly to be wondered at. But I have lately met 
 with a treatise written by one of those wise men, con- 
 taining a high panegyric upon salt, on account of its 
 utility. And many other things of as little worth you 
 may see set off with great encomiums. That so much pains 
 should be bestowed upon subjects so mean, and yet that no 
 man should ever, to this day, have undertaken to give Love 
 his due praises, but that so great a god has been neglected 
 to such a degree, is it not astonishing? Now Phaedrus, in 
 all this, which I have repeated from his mouth, seems to me 
 to plead well. I should be glad therefore to have him 
 gratified and to contribute my share to his gratification. 
 Besides that, I think it highly becoming this assembly to 
 decorate with all possible honours the Deity of Love. If 
 all of you then are of the same opinion with me, we may 
 spend our time agreeably enough to-night in discoursing. 
 For my proposal is, that every man of us should deliver an 
 oration in praise of Love, as proper and handsome a one as 
 he is able, the right hand way down, and that Phaedrus 
 
4 2 SEL ECTIONS FR OM PL A TO. 
 
 should take the lead, as he is at the upper end and is, 
 besides, the father and founder of the argument. 
 
 You may be assured, Eryximachus, said Socrates, that 
 none of us will put a negative on your proposal. By no 
 means should I do so, who pretend not to the knowledge of 
 any other matters than those which belong to Love: neither 
 would Agatho, nor Pausanias: no more will Aristophanes, 
 without dispute ; for his whole time is taken up about 
 Bacchus and Aphrodite : nor indeed will any other person 
 whom I see present. We, indeed, who sit lowest and are 
 to speak last, shall have the disadvantage. However, if the 
 prior speakers speak well and full to the point, we shall 
 desire nothing more. Let Phaedrus, then, with our best 
 wishes to attend him, begin, and make his panegyric upon 
 Love. 
 
 To this all the rest of the company consented, and joined 
 with Socrates in the encouraging Phaedrus to begin. Now, 
 what was said by each of the several speakers Aristodemus 
 did not perfectly remember ; neither can I, indeed, all that 
 he told me: but the speeches of those whom I looked on as 
 the most considerable persons, and everything which I 
 thought most worth remembering, I will endeavour to relate 
 to you distinctly. He told me, then, that Phaedrus, in 
 compliance with the request made him, spoke first; and 
 began somewhat in this way, with saying — 
 
 The Speech of Phaedrus. 
 
 That Love was powerful and wonderfully great, both on 
 earth and among the gods; that superior dignity belonged 
 to him on many accounts, but especially with regard to his 
 generation. For to be one of the eldest of the gods, said 
 he, is a circumstance redounding highly to his honour. 
 And that he enjoys this advantage appears in that he had 
 no parents ; and that never any writer, whether uninspired 
 or poet, pretended that he had. But Hesiod says — 
 
 "Cliafts was first produce«-l ; Earth rose the next, 
 Wide-bosoin'ci, a fix'd seat secure to all 
 For ever yielding ; and with her rose Love." 
 
THE BANQUET. 43 
 
 Here the poet tells us that next after Chaos were born these 
 two, Earth and Love. Parmenides relates the generation 
 thus : — 
 
 "First from th' eternal council forth came Love, 
 First of the gods." 
 
 And Acusilaus says the same thing with Hesiod. On so 
 many different hands is it agreed that Love is among the 
 most ancient of the gods. And as he is thus of highest 
 antiquity in the nature of things, so is he the cause of the 
 greatest good to human kind. For to young persons, at 
 their first setting out in life, I know no greater good than 
 love ; to the person beloved, if he has a worthy lover, or to 
 the lover if his friend be worthy : because that which should 
 be our leading principle in order to right conduct in every 
 circumstance of life consanguinity has not the power to 
 excite in us, neither have honours, nor riches, nor aught 
 else, so effectually as love. The principle I mean is the 
 sense of shame attending a base conduct, together with a 
 sense of honour in the doing what is honourable. For 
 without such a principle no State and no person can execute 
 anything great or noble. In confirmation of this I take 
 upon me to assert that if a lover be found committing a 
 base action, or suffering base usage from any, through 
 cowardice, or without taking his revenge, he is not in so 
 much pain at being seen by his father, by his companions, 
 or by any other person, as at being seen by the person he 
 loves. The same effect we see it has upon the latter, to be 
 more ashamed of the lover's sight than of the eyes of the 
 whole world, if discovered in doing aught unworthy. If, 
 tiierefore, there could be any contrivance to have a city or 
 an army composed of men who love each other and are 
 loved, the interest of the whole could not be promoted by 
 any better way than this ; in wliich every iniHvidual would 
 have a care not to behave basely, and a zeal to behave 
 nobly, excited by a desire to gain the good opinion of some 
 other. Such a people fighting side by side in battle, a 
 handful of them would conquer, I could almost say the 
 world. For a man deserting his rank or throwing down his 
 
44 SELECTIONS EROM PLATO. 
 
 arms would less endure to be seen by one he loves than by 
 all mankind. Rather than bear this, he would choose to 
 die a thousand deaths : so would he, rather than forsake 
 the defence of one he loved, or rather than forbear flying 
 to his aid, if he had fallen into any danger. There is 
 not any man such a dastard, whom Love himself would 
 not inspire, and make an enthusiast in virtue : so that he 
 should become equal to a man born with a disposition the 
 most excellent. For what Homer says of certain of his 
 heroes, that some god inspired them with a force resistless, 
 this in reality Love does to lovers; such an effect being 
 produced in them by Love alone. And then to die for 
 another only lovers are ready ; not only men, but women 
 too. A signal instance of this appears in the daughter of 
 Pelias, Alcestis ; who, as the story goes among the Grecians, 
 undertook to reprieve her husband's life by her own death, 
 when no mortal could be found willing to die for him, 
 though he had both a father and a mother then living. But 
 Love wrought in her heart an affection for him so far surpass- 
 ing theirs, that she proved them to be, in comparison with 
 herself, strangers to his blood, and in name only his 
 relations. When, therefore, she had executed her under- 
 taking, the gods themselves, as well as men, deemed the 
 achievement so singularly noble, that out of many persons, 
 eminent for many virtues, she was added to the number 
 of those select few distinguished by being restored to 
 life again after death as a reward for their distinguished 
 excellence; for to her also was her departed soul 
 sent back again by the gods, admiring at the 
 heroic greatness of her resolution. So much do they 
 encourage us to make love our care, by bestowing superior 
 honours on all such as exercise upon that subject in par- 
 ticular superior virtue. But Orpheus, the son of CEnger, 
 the gods dismissed from the invisible regions, without 
 grantmg him to succeed in the purpose of his journey 
 thither; showing him only the phantom of his wife, but not 
 restoring to him the reality: for that he appeared effeminate 
 and cowardly, suitable to his profession, that of a mere 
 
THE BANQUET. 45 
 
 fiddler ; not daring to die for the sake of love, like Alcestis ; 
 but contriving actually to go alive to the other world. For 
 this did the gods assign him an adequate punishment, 
 ordaining his death to be by women. In a very different 
 way disposed they of Achilles, the son of Thetis, in sending 
 him to the islands of the blest : because, though he had 
 heard from the goddess, his mother, that he must soon die 
 himself after he had slain Hector — but that, if he slew not 
 Hector he should return home and live to a good old age — 
 he dared to make death his choice ; not only hazarding his 
 life in aid of his friend Patroclus, as ready to die that he 
 might save him, but afterwards avenging his death at the 
 expense of his own life, as resolute not to survive him. 
 This exalted virtue of his the gods paid a singular regard 
 to ; and rewarded with their choicest favours the regard 
 which he had shown to friendship. . . . Thus have I 
 performed my part, in asserting Love to be the eldest in 
 age, and of highest dignity among the gods ; and to be in a 
 peculiar manner the author of virtue and happiness to all of 
 human kind, both in life and death. 
 
 Such, Aristodemus told me, was the discourse of 
 Phaedrus. After Phaedrus spoke some others, whose 
 speeches, he said, he did not well remember : omitting 
 these, therefore, he repeated next that of Pausanias, who 
 began thus : — 
 
 The Speech of Pausanias. 
 
 In my opinion, Phaedrus, the subject was not fairly and 
 distinctly set before us, when it was proposed in general 
 terms that we should make encomiums upon Love. This 
 indeed would have been right, were there but one Love, 
 or if Love were but of one kind. But since the truth is 
 otherwise, the better way is to declare first which Love it is 
 our present business to praise. To put this matter, there- 
 fore, on a right footing, I shall, in the first place, distin- 
 guish that Love whose praises we ought to celebrate, and 
 then do my best to celebrate them myself in a manner 
 worthy of his Deity. We all know that it is the office of 
 
46 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Love to attend always upon Aphrodite. If then there were 
 only one Aphrodite, there had been no occasion for more 
 than one Love. But since there are two Aphrodites, there 
 must of necessity be two Loves. For it is undeniable that 
 two different goddesses there are, each of whom is an 
 Aphrodite, one of them elder, who had no mother, and was 
 born only from Uranus, or Heaven, her father; she is 
 called the celestial Aphrodite : the other, younger, daughter 
 of Zeus and Dione; and to her we give the name of the 
 vulgar Aphrodite. Agreeably to this account, it is proper 
 lo call that Love who attends on the latter Aphrodite by 
 the name of the vulgar Love, and the other by the name 
 of the celestial. All the gods, indeed, it is our duty to 
 honour with our praises : but we ought to distinguish, as 
 well as we are able, each by his peculiar attributes ; that we 
 may give to each his due praise. For every action or 
 operation is attended with this condition : the doing it, 
 considered simply in itself, is neither base nor honourable : 
 as, for instance, every one of the things we are now doing, 
 drinking, singing, or discoursing, is in itself a matter of 
 indifference; but the manner of doing it determines the 
 nature of the thing. Rightly performed it is right and 
 honourable ; wrongly, it is wrong and dishonourable. 
 So, likewise, not every Love is generous or noble, or 
 merits high encomium ; but that Love only who prompts 
 and impels men to love generously and nobly. The 
 attendant of the vulgar Aphrodite is a Love truly vulgar, 
 suffering himself to be employed in any the meanest actions : 
 and this Love it is who inspires the mean and worthless. 
 Those who are the most addicted to this love are, in the first 
 place, the least disposed to friendship; in the next place, 
 they are more enamoured of the bodies than of the minds 
 of their paramours; and besides, they choose for the objects 
 of their passion the silliest creatures they can light on : 
 for, confining their views to the gratification of their passion 
 by the act of enjoyment, they are regardless in what manner 
 they gratify it, whether basely or honourably. Hence it 
 comes that in the pursuit of their loves, and afterwards in 
 
THE BANQUET. 47 
 
 the enjoyment, they are equally ready for any action which 
 offers itself, whether good or bad indifferently. For the 
 Love who inspires them is born of that younger Aphrodite, 
 in whose generation there is a mixture of the male and the 
 female ; whence it is that she partakes of both. But the 
 other Love is sprung from the celestial Aphrodite ; from her 
 whose properties are these : — In the first place she partakes 
 not of the female, but of the male only ; whence she is the 
 parent of male friendship : then, she is in age the elder, 
 and a stranger to brutal lust ; and hence it happens, that as 
 many as are inspired by this love addict themselves to 
 friendship, conceiving an affection for that which by nature 
 is of greater strength and understanding. Now, whether 
 the man who is under the influence of love feels the genuine 
 impulse of this generous affection, is easy to discern. For, 
 if so, he fixes not his love on any person who is not arrived 
 at maturity of understanding. But commencing their loves 
 from this date, one may presume them duly qualified, both 
 of them, to live together through life, partners in all things. 
 Nor is the lover likely in this case to act like those who, 
 after deceiving the inexperience of those they love, desert 
 them for others with contempt and derision. And .there 
 ought to be a law against the love of very young people, 
 lest much passion and zeal be spent in uncertainty ; 
 because what so young a person may hereafter prove, 
 whether good or bad, either in mind or body, there is no 
 knowing. Men of virtue, indeed, themselves to themselves, 
 do make this a law ; but upon those vulgar lovers we should 
 put a public restraint of this kind. . . . 
 
 On the whole, the case, I believe, stands thus : the 
 affair of love, as I said at first, considered simply and 
 generally, is neither right nor wrong ; but carried on and 
 accomplished with honour, is fair and honourable ; trans- 
 acted in a dishonourable manner, is base and dishonourable. 
 Now it is dishonour to gratify a vicious or bad lover, or to 
 yield to him from base and unworthy motives : but to grant 
 favours to a good and virtuous lover, and comply with his 
 love from generous and noble views, is to do oneself an 
 
48 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 honour. The vicious lover is he of the vulgar sort, who is 
 in love with the body rather than the mind. For he is 
 not a lasting lover, being in love with a thing which is not 
 lasting ; since, with the flower of youth when that is gone 
 which he admired, the lover himself too takes wing 
 and flies away, shaming all his fine speeches and fair 
 promises. But he who is in love with a noble character 
 loves all his life long, for he is united with that which is 
 durable and abiding. Our custom wills accordingly that all 
 lovers should be well and fairly proved ; and that, after 
 such probation, one kind of lover should be rewarded, and 
 the other avoided. It encourages therefore the lovers to 
 pursue, but bids the beloved one fly : by all ways of trial, 
 and in every kind of combat, making it appear of which sort 
 the lover is, and of which sort his mistress. For this reason 
 it is deemed dishonourable, in the first place, to be won 
 soon or easily ; in order that time may be gained ; for of the 
 truth of many things time seems to be the fairest test : in the 
 next place, it is held dishonourable to be won by considera- 
 tions of profit or power ; or to yield to ill-usage or terror, 
 through want of noble endurance ; or to be flattered with 
 riches or rank instead of despising such kind of obligations. 
 For none of these things appear fixed or durable ; much less 
 can they give rise to any generous affection. There remains 
 then only one way, in which, according to our custom, the 
 beloved may honourably yield and consent to the lover's 
 passion. For as any kind of servitude which the lover 
 undergoes of his own free choice is not by our custom 
 deemed adulation, nor accounted a matter of disgrace ; so, 
 on the other part, there is left only one other servitude or 
 compliance not disgraceful in the beloved, and this is that 
 which is for the sake of virtue. For it is a settled rule with 
 us, that whoever pays any court or attendance, whoever 
 yields any service or compliance to another in expectation 
 of receiving by his means improvement in wisdom, or any 
 other branch of virtue, is not by such voluntary subjection 
 guilty of servility or base adulation. Now these two cus- 
 toms, that relating to servitude for love and that relating to 
 
THE BANQUET. 49 
 
 servitude for virtue and wisdom, must concur in one in order 
 to make it honourable for the beloved one to comply with the 
 lover's passion. For when the lover and the beloved meet 
 together, bringing with them their respective rules, each of 
 them : the lover that it is right to minister any way to the 
 service of the beloved ; and the beloved, that it is right to 
 yield any service of compliance for the sake of improvement 
 in wisdom and virtue ; the one also with abilities to teach and 
 make better ; the other with a desire of instruction and the 
 being bettered ; — then, both those rules thus corresponding 
 and conspiring, it falls out that the lover may honourably 
 be gratified. Besides, in this case it is no dishonour even 
 to be deceived, but in every other case there is dishonour 
 whether one is deceived or not. For it is none the less 
 disgraceful to have yielded for the sake of wealth to a lover 
 supposed to be wealthy, if he should turn out to be poor — 
 it shows that one will do anything for any one for the sake 
 of money. And this is base. But in the same way, to have 
 yielded to a lover supposed to be good, and for the sake of 
 improvement to come by his afiection, is yet to have been 
 nobly deceived if he should turn out evil and an improve- 
 ment is not gained. For that shows that one will do any- 
 thing for anybody for the sake of virtue and bettering, and 
 nothing can be more honourable than this. This is that 
 Love, the offspring of the celestial Aphrodite, himself 
 celestial ; of high worth both to states and to individuals, 
 compelling as well the lover as the beloved, with the 
 utmost care to cultivate virtue. All the other Loves hold 
 of the other Aphrodite, of her the vulgar. Thus much, 
 Phaedrus, have I to contribute on this sudden call to the 
 subject you have jiroposed to us, the praise of Love. 
 
 Pausanias here pausing, — for I learn from the wise to use 
 parities in speaking, and words of similar sound ; ^ Aristo- 
 demus told me it came next in turn to Aristophanes to 
 speak ; but whether from repletion, or whatever else was the 
 
 ^ The speech of Pausanias is an imitation of the pedantic and afTected 
 style of the Sophists. There are some fine things in it, caught from 
 cvurent discussions, but no real thought. 
 
50 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 cause, he happened to be seized with a fit of the hiccups, 
 and consequently became unfit for speech-making. Upon 
 which, as he sat next to Eryximachus the physician, he 
 addressed him thus : Eryximachus, says he, it is only fair 
 that you should either cure my hiccups or speak in my turn 
 till they have left me. To which Eryximachus replied, 
 Well, I will do both. I will speak in your turn, and you, 
 when your hiccups are gone, shall speak in mine ; and while 
 I am speaking, if you will hold your breath for a consider- 
 able time, your hiccups, perhaps, will have an end. Should 
 they continue, notwithstanding, then gargle your throat with 
 water. But if they are very obstinate, take some such thing 
 as. this feather, and tickle your nose till you provoke a sneez- 
 ing. When you have sneezed once or twice, your hiccups 
 will cease, be they ever so violent. As soon as you begin 
 your speech, says Aristophanes, I shall set about doing what 
 you bid me. Eryximachus then began in this manner :— 
 
 The Speech of Eryximachus. 
 
 Since Pausanias, after setting out so excellently well, 
 ended his discourse imperfectly, it seems a task incum- 
 bent on me to finish the argument which he began. For in 
 distinguishing two different kinds of Love he made, I think, 
 a very proper and just distinction. But that Love gives an 
 attraction, not only to beautiful persons but to many other 
 things besides, and that he dwells not only in human hearts 
 but also in other beings, in the bodies of all animals, and 
 in plants, and, in fine, that he lives throughout all nature ; 
 my own art, that of medicine, has given me occasion to 
 observe, and to remark how great and wonderful a god is 
 Love, stretching everywhere his attractive power, and reach- 
 ing at all things, whether human or divine. I shall instance 
 first in medicine, that I may pay my first regards to my own 
 profession. I say, then, that our bodies partake of this two- 
 fold Love. For bodily health and disease are confessedly 
 different and unlike, and love and long for unlike things. 
 The love in a healthy body is of one kind; the love in a 
 diseased body is of another kind, quite different. Now, as 
 
THE BANQUET. 51 
 
 Pausanias says, it is honourable lo comply with a good 
 lover, but dishonourable to yield to one who is vicious: so 
 is it with respect to the body: whatever is in a sound and 
 healthy state it is commendable and right to please ; it is 
 the physician's duty so to do, and the effectual doing of it 
 denotes him truly a physician. But to gratify that which is 
 diseased and bad is blamable ; and the physician who 
 would" practise agreeably to the rules of art must deny it 
 the gratification which it demands. For medical science, in 
 a word, is the knowledge of those amorous passions of the 
 body, which tend to filling and emptying. Accordingly, 
 the man who in these passions or appetites can distinguish 
 the right love from the wrong, he has most of all men the 
 science belonging to a physician. And the man who is 
 able to effect a change, so as in place of one of those loves 
 to introduce the other; and knows how to infuse love into 
 those bodies which have it not, yet ought to have it ; and 
 how to expel a love with which they are, but ought not to 
 be possessed ; he is a skilful practiser of his art. For those 
 things in the body which are most at variance must he be 
 able to reconcile to each other, and to conciliate amity 
 between them and mutual love. The things most at variance 
 are such as are the most contrary one to the other ; as the 
 cold to the hot, the bitter to the sweet, the dry to the moist, 
 and all others of that sort. Into these things, thus at 
 variance, our ancestor Asclepius had power to inspire a 
 spirit of love and concord ; and, as our friends here, the 
 poets, tell us, and as 1 believe, framing into a system the 
 rules for so doing, was properly the author of our art. So 
 that medicine, in the manner I have described, is all under 
 the direction and management of Love. So is the gymnastic 
 art in like manner, and so is the art of agriculture. And 
 that music is so, too. is evident to every man who considers 
 the nature of this art with the least attention ; and 
 is perhaps the very thing which Heracleitus meant 
 to say — for his way of expressing himself is inaccurate 
 and obscure. "The One," says he, "disagreeing with 
 itself, yet proceeds in amicable concord ; like the harmony 
 
5 2 SELECTIONS FR OM PL A TO, 
 
 made by the bow and lyre." Now it is very absurd to say 
 that in harmony any disagreement can find place ; or that 
 from disagreeing things harmony can come. But his mean- 
 ing perhaps was this : that things in their own nature 
 disagreeing, that is, sounds, some shrill and others deep, at 
 length brought to an agreement by the musical art, compose 
 harmony. For harmony cannot consist of shrill and deep 
 sounds whilst they remain in disagreement: because harmony 
 is consonance, or a conspiration of sounds ; and conson- 
 ance is one kind of agreement : but it is impossible that any 
 agreement should be between disagreeing things, so long as 
 they disagree : and no less impossible is it, that things 
 between which there is no agreement should at the same 
 time harmonise together, so as to produce harmony. And 
 so it is with rhythm, which is composed of quick and slow 
 syllables, things once disagreeing, but now brought into 
 accord. 1 In both these cases, where things differ and are 
 opposite to one another, it is the art of music which brings 
 about the reconcilement and agreement ; just as the art of 
 medicine does in the former case, inspiring them in the 
 same manner with the spirit of love and concord. And 
 thus musical science is the knowledge of those amorous 
 conjunctions whose offspring are harmony and rhythm. 
 Now in the systems in themselves, 'whether of harmony or 
 of rhythm, there is no difficulty at all in knowing the 
 amorous conjunctions : for here Love is not twofold. But 
 when the intention is to apply rhythm and harmony to the 
 ears of some audience, then comes the difficulty ; then is 
 there need of a skilful artist, whether in composing the 
 odes, and setting them to music, or in rightly performing 
 those already composed and set ; which is called education. 
 For here that distinction takes place ; here we must recur 
 again to that rule of Pausanias, that the decent, the well- 
 ordered, and the virtuous we must gratify, for the sake of 
 preserving their love, and such as are yet deficient in virtue 
 
 ^ Thus a lonpj and short syllable disagree, but taken together they 
 agree with and balance another long and short — a very pregnant 
 observation. 
 
THE BANQUET. 53 
 
 that we may improve them. The Love by whom these are 
 inspired is the noble, the celestial ; that Love who attends 
 the celestial muse. But the attendant of Polyhymnia, and 
 the follower of every muse at random, is the other Love, he 
 of the vulgar kind : whom wc ought cautiously to indulge, 
 whenever we indulge him ; that he may enjoy his own 
 pleasures without introducing disorder and debauchery. 
 And this is an affair of no less difficulty than in our art it 
 is to manage prudently the appetites which regard the table ; 
 so as to permit them the enjoyment of their proper pleasures, 
 without danger of diseases. Thus in the practice of music, 
 and of medicine, and in every other matter, whether human 
 or divine, we are to take note, as far as may be, of both 
 Loves, for both are to be found in all things. 
 
 Full of both too is the constitution of the annual seasons. 
 And when those contraries in nature before mentioned, the 
 hot and the cold, the dry and the moist, under the influence 
 of the modest Love, admit a sober correspondence together, 
 and temperate commixture, they bring along with them, 
 when they come, fair seasons, fine weather, and health to 
 men, brute animals, and plants, doing injury to none. But 
 when that love who inspires lawless and ungoverned 
 passion prevails in the constitution of the season, he 
 corrupts, injures, and ruins many of the fair forms of nature. 
 For the usual fruit of this Love are plagues, and other preter- 
 natural diseases, which come upon animals, and vegetables 
 too ; mildews, hailstorms, and blights being generated from 
 the irregular state of the amorous affections in those 
 elementary beings, and the want of temperance in their 
 conjunctions : the knowledge of which their amorous 
 affections, and consequent conjunctions, considered as 
 owing to the aspects of the heavenly bodies, and as respect- 
 ing the seasons of the year, is called astronomy. Further, 
 all kinds of sacrifice, and all the subjects of the diviner's 
 art, those agents employed in carrying on a reciprocal inter- 
 course between the gods and mortals, are employed with no 
 ■other viewthan to preserve tiie right love and cure that which is 
 wrong. For every species of impiety is the usual consequence 
 
54 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 of not yielding to and gratifying the better Love, the orderly ; 
 and of not paying to him but to the other Love our principal 
 regards in everything we do relating to our parents, whether 
 living or deceased, or to the gods. In such cases, to 
 superintend the Loves, to cherish the right and cure the 
 wrong, is the business of divination. And thus divination 
 is an artist, skilled in procuring and promoting friendliness 
 and good correspondence between the gods and men, 
 through her knowledge of what amorous affections in men 
 tend to piety and justice, and what are opposite to these, 
 and lead the contrary way. So widely extensive, so highly 
 predominant, or rather so all-prevailing, is the power of 
 Love. Of all love in general this is true; but especially, 
 and the most true is it, of that Love who attains his ends in 
 the attainment of good things, and enjoys them without 
 ever exceeding the bounds of temperance, or violating the 
 laws of justice. For it is this Love who bears the chief 
 sway both in the human nature and the divine ; it is this 
 Love who procures for us every kind of happiness ; enabling 
 us to live in social converse one with another, and in 
 friendship with beings so much superior to ourselves, the 
 gods. It is possible now, after all, that, in the panegyric 
 I have made on Love, I may have omitted, as well as 
 Pausanias, many topics of his due praise : it has not, how- 
 ever, been done designedly; and if I have left aught 
 unsaid, it is your business, Aristophanes, to supply that 
 deficiency : or if your intentions are to celebrate the God 
 in a different waj^ now that your hiccups are over, you may 
 begin. 
 
 To this Aristophanes replied, I am now indeed no longer 
 troubled with my hiccups : but they would not be easy 
 before I brought the sneezings to them. I wonder that a 
 modest and decent part of the body should be in love with 
 and long for these ticklings, or be pleased with boisterous 
 roaring noises, such as sneezing is : for as soon as I had 
 procured it a good sneezing, immediately it was quiet. 
 
 Eryximachus upon this said, Friend Aristophanes, con- 
 sider what you are about : you are raising up a spirit of 
 
THE BANQUET. 55 
 
 ridicule here, just as you are going to begin your speech ; 
 and put me upon the watch, to lay hold upon something or 
 other in it for the company to laugh at, when you might, if 
 you pleased, have spoken in quiet. 
 
 To which Aristophanes in a good-humoured way replied, 
 You are in the right, Eryximachus : what I said just now 
 let it be looked upon as unsaid. But, pray, do not watch 
 me. For I am in pain for the speech I am going to make; 
 not for fear there should be anything in it to laugh at ; for 
 a laugh would be an advantage gained to me, and the 
 natural product of my muse; but for fear it should be 
 really in itself ridiculous. 
 
 You shoot your bolt, Aristophanes, said Eryximachus, 
 and then think to march off! But take care what you say, 
 and expect to be called to a strict account for it. Perhaps, 
 however, I shall be gracious enough to spare you. — Aristo- 
 phanes then began : — 
 
 The Speech of Aristophanes. 
 
 My intentions, Eryximachus, are to speak in a way very 
 different, I assure you, from the way taken by you and 
 Pausanias in your speeches. To me men seem utterly 
 insensible what the power of Love is. For, were they 
 sensible of it, they would build temples and erect altars to 
 him the most magnificent, and would offer to him the 
 noblest sacrifices. He would not be neglected, as he is 
 now, when none of these honours are paid him, though, of 
 all the gods. Love ought the most to be thus honoured. 
 For of all the gods Love is the most friendly to man, his 
 relief and remedy in those evils the perfect cure of which 
 would be productive of the highest happiness to the whole 
 human race. I will do my best, therefore, to make his 
 power known to you, and you shall teach it to others. But 
 you must first be informed what the human nature is, and 
 wliat changes it has undergone. For our nature of old was 
 different from what it is at present. In the first place there 
 were three sorts or species of the human kind ; not, as at 
 
56 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 present, only two, male and female ; there being a third 
 species beside, which partook of both the others : the name 
 only of which species now remains, the species itself 
 being extinct and lost. For there existed actually and 
 flourished hermaphrodites, one being, who partook of both 
 the other sexes, the male and the female. But they are 
 now become merely a name, a name of abuse and reproach. 
 In the next place, the entire form of every individual of the 
 human kind was cylindrical ; for their bodies, back and 
 sides together, were circular. Every one had four hands, 
 and the same number of legs. They had two faces, each, 
 upon their round necks every way alike : but these two 
 faces belonged but to one head ; on the sides of which 
 were placed these faces, opposite one to the other. Each 
 had also four ears. From this description it is easy to con- 
 ceive how all the other parts of the human body were 
 doubled. They walked upon whichever legs they pleased, 
 on any side, and, as they walk now, upright. But when 
 any one wanted to go with expedition, then, as tumblers, 
 after pitching on their hands, throw their legs upward, and 
 bring them over, and thus tumble themselves round ; in 
 the same manner did the people of those days, supported 
 by their eight limbs alternately, and wheeled along with 
 great despatch. Now you are to know that these three 
 species of the human race were precisely so many in num- 
 ber, and their bodies made in such a form, for this reason, 
 — because the male kind was produced originally by the 
 sun, the female by the earth, and the third, which partook 
 of the other two, by the moon ; for the moon, you know, 
 partakes of both the others, the sun and the earth. The 
 bodies, therefore, of each kind were round, and the manner 
 of their running was circular, in resemblance of their first 
 parents. Their force and strength were prodigious ; their 
 minds elevated and haughty ; so they undertook to invade 
 heaven. And of one of them is related the same fact 
 which Homer relates of Ephialtes and Otys, that they set 
 about raising an ascent up to the skies, with intention to 
 attack the gods. Upon which Zeus and the other Deities 
 
THE BANQUET. 57 
 
 consulted together what they should do to these rebels ; 
 but could come to no determination about the punishment 
 proper to be inflicted on them. They could not resolve 
 upon destroying them by thunder, as they did the giants ; 
 for thus the whole human race would be extinct ; and then 
 the honours paid to them by that race would be extinct 
 together with it, and their temples come to ruin. Nor yet 
 could they suffer those mortals to continue in their inso- 
 lence. At length Zeus, after much consideration of so 
 difficult a case, said : I have a device, by which the race of 
 men may be preserved, and yet an end put to their inso- 
 lence ; as my device will much diminish the greatness of 
 their strength. For I intend, you must know, to divide 
 every one of them into two : by which means their strength 
 will be much abated, and at the same time their number 
 much increased, to our advantage and the increase of their 
 honours. They shall w^alk upright upon two legs ; and if 
 any remains of insolence shall ever appear in them, and 
 they resolve not to be quiet, I will again divide them, each 
 into two ; and they shall go upon one leg, hopping. As he 
 said, so did he; he cut all the human race in twain, as 
 people cut eggs to salt them for keeping. The face, 
 together with the half-neck of every half-body, he ordered 
 Apollo to turn half round, and fix it on that side where the 
 other half of the body was cut off; with intention that all 
 people, viewing themselves on that side where they had 
 suffered the loss of half themselves, might be brought to a 
 sober way of thinking, and learn to behave with more 
 modesty. For what remained necessary to be done, he bid 
 him exercise his own healing art. — Accordingly, Apollo 
 turned the face of every one about to the reverse of its 
 former situation : and drawing the skin together, like a 
 purse, from all parts of the body, over that which is now 
 called the belly, up to one orifice or opening, he tied up at 
 the middle of the belly this orifice, now called the navel. 
 He then smoothed most part of the wrinkles of the skin, 
 after having framed the bones of the breast under it ; in 
 the same manner as shoemakers smooth the wrinkles of the 
 
5 8 SEL E CTIONS FR OM PL A 70. 
 
 leather, when they have stretched it upon the last. But a 
 few wrinkles, those on the belly and navel, he let remain, 
 for a memorial of their old crime and punishment. Now, 
 when all the human race were thus bisected, every section 
 longed for its fellow half. And when these happened to 
 meet together, they mutually embraced, folded in each 
 other's arms, and wishing they could grow together and be 
 united. The consequence was that they both died through 
 famine, and so forth, doing nothing at all for themselves 
 because they would do nothing apart. And if one of these 
 halves died, and left the other behind, the surviving half 
 was immediately employed in looking about for another 
 partner; and whether it happened to meet with the half of 
 a whole woman (which half we now call a woman), or with 
 the half of a whole man, they were continually embracing. 
 After all, Zeus, seeing them thus in danger of destruction, 
 took pity on them, and contrived another device; which 
 had these ends in view: that if a man should meet with a 
 woman they might, in the embrace, reproduce and continue 
 the human kind; but if he met with another man, that 
 they might be satisfied and cease, and apply themselves to 
 business and affairs of life. From all this it appears how 
 deeply mutual love is implanted by nature in all of the 
 human race; bringing them again to their pristine form; 
 coupling them together; endeavouring out of two to make 
 one, and thus to remedy the evils introduced into the 
 human nature. So that every one of us at present is but 
 the tally of a human creature; which has been cut like a 
 polypus, and out of one made two. Hence it comes that 
 we are all in continual search of our several counterparts, 
 to tally with us. As many men, accordingly, as are sections 
 of that double form called the hermaphrodite are lovers of 
 women, and of this species are the generality of profligates. 
 So, on the other hand, as many women as are addicted to 
 the love of men arc sprung from the same amphibious race. 
 But such women as are sections of the female form are not 
 much inclined to men; their affections tend -rather to their 
 own sex. Men, in like manner, such as are sections of the 
 
THE BANQUET. 59 
 
 male form, follow the male; and whilst they are children, 
 being originally fragments of men, it is men they love, and 
 in whose company they are most delighted. Those children 
 and youths who are of this sort are the best, as being the 
 most manly in their temper and disposition. Some people, 
 I know, say they are shameless and impudent : but in this 
 they wrong them; for it is not impudence and want of 
 modesty, but it is manly assurance, with a manly temper 
 and turn of mind, by which they are led to associate with 
 those whom they resemble. A shrewd conjecture may 
 hence be formed, from what race they originally spring; a 
 conjecture justified by their conduct afterwards. For only 
 boys of the manly kind, when they arrive at the age of 
 maturity, apply themselves to political affairs : and as they 
 advance further in the age of manhood, they delight to 
 encourage and forward the youth of their own sex in manly 
 studies and employments; but have naturally no inclination 
 to marry and beget children : they do it only in conformity 
 to the laws, and would choose to live unmarried, in a state 
 of friendship. Such persons as these are indeed by nature 
 formed for friendship solely, and to embrace only what is 
 congenial with themselves. Now, whenever it fortunes that 
 a man meets with that very counterpart of himself, his other 
 half, they are both smitten with love in a wondrous manner; 
 they recognise their ancient intimacy; they are strongly 
 attracted together by a consciousness that they belong to 
 each other; and are unwilling to be parted, or become 
 separate again, though for ever so short a time. Those 
 pairs who of free choice live together throughout life, are 
 such as have met with this good fortune. Yet arc none of 
 them able to tell what it is they would have one from the 
 other. For it does not seem to be the sexual congress. In all 
 appearance, it is not for the sake of this that they feel such 
 extreme delight in the company of each other, and seek it 
 when they have it not, with so eager a desire. It is evident 
 that their souls long for some other thing, which neither can 
 explain; something which they can only give obscure hints 
 of, in the way of cenigmas; and each party can only gucsb 
 
6o SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 at in the other, as it were, by divination. But when they 
 are together and embracing, were Hephaestus to stand by 
 with his tools in his hand, and say, " Mortals ! what is it 
 ye want, and would have, one from the other ? " and finding 
 them at a loss what to answer, were he to demand of them 
 again, and say, "Is this what ye long for; to be united 
 together with the most entire union, so as never, either day 
 or night, to be separate from each other ? If ye long for 
 this, I will melt you down, both of you together, and to- 
 gether form you both again ; that instead of two ye may 
 become one ; whilst ye live, living a joint life, as one per- 
 son ; and when ye come to die, dying at once one death, 
 and afterwards, in the state of souls departed, continuing 
 still undivided. Consider now within yourselves, whether 
 ye like the proposal, and whether ye would be glad to have it 
 carried into execution." — I am certain that not a single mortal 
 to whom Hephaestus should make this offer would reject it. 
 It would appear that none had any other wish ; and every 
 man would be conscious to himself that the secret desire 
 which he had of old conceived in his heart, was at length 
 brought to light and expressed in clear language, that is, to 
 be mingled and melted in his beloved, and out of two to be 
 made one. The cause of which desire in us all is this, that 
 our pristine nature was such as I have described it ; we 
 were once whole. The desire and pursuit of this wholeness 
 of our nature, our becoming whole again, is called Love. 
 For, as I said, we were anciently one : but now as a punish- 
 ment for our breach of the laws of justice, the gods have 
 compelled us to live asunder in separate bodies : just as 
 the people of Arcady are treated by the Spartans.^ If, 
 therefore, we behave not to the gods with reverence and 
 decency, there is reason to fear we shall be again cleft in 
 
 1 The Spartans compelled the Arcadians to break up their large city 
 of Mantineia and live in scattered villages. This took place B.C. 385, 
 which gives a superior limit for the date of the composition of the 
 Dialogue. The victory of Agathon, however, took place more than 
 thirty years previously, so that the introduction of the allusion here is an 
 anachronism. 
 
THE BANQUET. 6i 
 
 sunder, and go about with our guilt delineated in our 
 person, like figures carved in bas-relief on columns, split 
 down by the nose, as friends divide a token between them. 
 The consideration of this should engage every man to pro- 
 mote the universal practice of piety towards the gods ; that 
 we may escape this misfortune and attain to that better 
 state, as it shall please Love to guide and lead us. Above 
 all, let none of us act in opposition to this benign Deity ; 
 whom none oppose but such as are at enmity with the gods. 
 For, if we are reconciled to Love and gain his favour, we 
 shall find out and meet with our true beloved, the other 
 half of ourselves; which at present is the good fortune but 
 of a few. Eryximachus now must not carp at what I say, 
 on a suspicion that I mean Pausanias and Agatho : though 
 perhaps they may be of the fortunate few : but I say it of 
 all in general, whether men or women, through the whole 
 human race, that every one of us might be happy, had we 
 the perfection of Love, and were to meet with our own 
 proper paramours, recovering thus the similitude of our own 
 pristine nature. If this fortune be the best absolutely, it 
 follows, that the best in our present circumstances must be 
 that which approach to it the nearest ; and that is, to meet 
 witli partners in love, whose temper and disposition are the 
 most agreeable and similar to our own. In giving glory to 
 the divine cause of this similarity and mutual fitness, we 
 celebrate in a proper manner the praise of Love ; a deity 
 who gives us in our present condition so much relief and 
 consolation, by leading us to our own again ; and further, 
 gives us the fairest hopes that, if we pay due regard and 
 reverence to the gods, he will hereafter, in recovering to us 
 our ancient nature, and curing the evils we now endure, 
 make us blest and happy. 
 
 Thus, Eryximachus, you have my speech concerning 
 Love, a speech of a different kind from yours, and in no 
 way interfering with what you have said. Therefore, as I 
 desired of you before, do not, I pray you, make a jest 
 of it ; that we may hear, peaceably and quietly, all the 
 speeches which remain to be spoken ; or rather, both the 
 
62 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 speeches ; for I think only those of Agatho and Socrates 
 are yet behind. 
 
 Well, I shall not disobey you, said Eryximachus : for I 
 must acknowledge that I have been highly entertained and 
 pleased with your speech. If I was not perfectly well 
 assured that Socrates and Agatho were deeply versed in 
 the science of Love, I should much fear they would be 
 at a loss for something to say, so copiously and so variously 
 has the subject been already handled. But now, notwith- 
 standing this, I am under no concern about the success of 
 those great masters. 
 
 I do not wonder, said Socrates, that you are free from 
 all concern about the matter, since you have come off so 
 honourably yourself, and are out of all danger. But if 
 you were in the circumstances I am in, much more in 
 those which I shall be in when Agatho shall have made 
 his speech, your fears would be not a few, and your 
 distresses, like mine at present, no trifles. 
 
 I see, said Agatho, you have a mind, Socrates, by such 
 suggestions, to do as enchanters do with their drugs, that 
 is, to disorder and disturb my thoughts, with imagining 
 this company here to be big with expectations of hearing 
 some fine speech from me. 
 
 I must have forgotten then, Agatho, said Socrates, the 
 courage and greatness of mind which you discovered lately, 
 and of which I was a spectator, when you came upon the 
 stage, together with the actors just going to exhibit your 
 compositions ; when you looked so large an audience in 
 the face without being in the least daunted ; I must have 
 forgotten this, if I thought you could be now disturbed 
 on account of us, who are comparatively so few in number. 
 
 I hope, Socrates, said Agatho, you do not imagine me 
 so full of a theatre, as not to know that a few men of 
 sense make an assembly more respectable and awful to 
 a man who thinks justly, than a multitude of fools. 
 
 I should be greatly mistaken indeed, said Socrates, if 
 I imagined in you, Agatho, anything which savoured of 
 rustic dulness. 1 am satisfied enough, that if you met 
 
THE BANQUET. 63 
 
 with any whom you supposed wise, you w^ould regard 
 them more than you would the muhitude. But I doubt 
 we have no pretensions to any such particular regard, 
 because we were at the theatre and made part of that 
 multitude. The case, I suppose, is in truth this : Were 
 you in the presence of other sort of men, that is, the wise, 
 in reverence to them, perhaps, you would be ashamed if 
 you were then employed in any action you thought unbe- 
 coming or dishonourable. Is it not so ? or how say you ? 
 
 It is true, said Agatho. 
 
 And would you not, said Socrates to him again, revere 
 the multitude too, and be ashamed even in their presence, 
 if you were seen by them doing anything you thought base 
 or wrong ? 
 
 Phaedrus here interposed ; and said. My friend Agatho, 
 if you go on giving answers to all the questions put to you 
 by Socrates, he will be under no manner of concern what 
 becomes of our affair of the speeches, or what the rest of 
 us here are doing in the meantime. It is sufficient for 
 him, if he has but somebody to talk with in his own way, 
 especially if it be a person who is handsome. I must 
 confess I take much pleasure myself in hearing Socrates 
 dispute : but it is necessary for me to look to the affair 
 I set on foot myself, that of the panegyrics on Love, and 
 to take care that I have a speech from every person in 
 this assembly. When you have, each of you, paid your 
 tribute to the God, you may then dispute, with all my 
 heart, at your own pleasure. 
 
 You say well, Phaedrus, said Agatho ; and nothing 
 hinders but that I begin my speech. For I shall not want 
 frequent opportunities of disputing again with Socrates. 
 
 The Speech of Agatho. 
 
 I shall begin by showing what I ought to say, and then 
 say it. For none of those who have gone before me have, 
 in my opinion, celebrated the praise of J.ove; but all have 
 made it their sole business to felicitate human kind upon 
 the good they enjoy through the beneficence of that god. 
 
64 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 For what he is in himself, he from whom all this happiness 
 is derived, none of them has shown. Now, whatever the 
 subject of our panegyric be, there is but one right way to 
 take in the composing it : and that is, the showing how 
 excellent is the nature, and how good are the operations or 
 effects, of that person or thing we are to praise. In this 
 way it is that we ought to make our panegyrics on Love ; 
 praising, first, the excellence and absolute goodness of his 
 own nature, and then his relative goodness to us in the 
 blessings he bestows. According to this method, I take 
 upon me, in the first place, to say, if without offence to what 
 is sacred and divine I may be allowed to say it, that, though 
 all the gods enjoy a state of blessedness, yet Love is blest 
 above all others, as he excels them all in beauty and virtue. 
 The most beautiful he must be, for these reasons : first, in 
 that he is the youngest of the gods, my Phaedrus ! Of this 
 he himself gives us a convincing proof, by his running 
 away from Old Age, and outrunning him who is evidently so 
 swift-footed. For Old Age, you know, arrives and is with 
 us sooner than we desire. Between Love and him there is 
 a natural antipathy : so that Love comes not within a wide 
 distance of him ; but makes his abode with youth, and is 
 always found in company with the young. For as the old 
 proverb says, "Like always goes to like." I must own, 
 therefore, though I agree with Phaedrus in many other of his 
 opinions, I cannot agree with him in this, that Love is elder 
 than Kronos and Lapetus. Of all the gods, I affirm, he is 
 the youngest, and enjoys perpetual youth. Accordingly I 
 contend, that, if any such events happened among the gods 
 as Hesiod and Parmenides report, they were occasioned by 
 the power of Necessity, not that of Love. For, had Love 
 been with them, there had been no mutilations, no chains, 
 none of those many other acts of violence had been done 
 or suffered amongst them : but friendship and peace had 
 flourished in heaven, as they do now, and have ever done, 
 since Love began his reign and became chief amongst the 
 gods. Thus then it appears that Love is young. Nor is 
 he less delicate and tender. But he wants a poet such as 
 
THE BANQUET. 6^ 
 
 Homer to express in fit terms how great his tenderness. 
 Now Homer, where he tells us that Ate or Mischief was a 
 goddess of a subtle and a fine frame, thus describes the 
 tenderness and delicacy of her feet : 
 
 " The tender- footed goddess shuns the ground; 
 With airy step, upon the lieads f)f men 
 Sets her fine treading, and from head to head 
 Trips it along full nimbly." 
 
 The poet here produces a fair proof, I think, of her tender- 
 ness, her going on the soft place rather than the hard. The 
 same argument shall I make use of, to prove the tender- 
 ness of Love. For he neither walks on the ground, 
 nor goes upon human heads (which in truth are places 
 not altogether soft) ; but in the softest places possible 
 to be found does Love make the place of his range, 
 of his dwelling too. For in the manners and souls of 
 gods and men he fixes his abode : not in all souls 
 indiscriminately; for if he lights on any whose manners 
 are rough, away he marches, and takes up his residence 
 in tender souls, whose manners are the softest. Since, 
 therefore, with his feet, and all over his fine frame, he 
 endures not to touch any but the softest persons, nor in 
 any but their softest parts, he cannot but be extremely 
 delicate and tender. Thus have we seen that Love is full 
 of youth, delicacy, and tenderness. He is, besides, of a 
 soft and yielding substance. For it would be impossible 
 for him to diffuse himself through every part of us, and 
 penetrate into our inmost soul, or to make his first entry 
 and his final exit unperceived by us, if his substance were 
 hard and resisting. But a clear proof of his yielding, easy, 
 and pliant form is that gracefulness of person which it is 
 certain belongs to him in the highest degree by the acknow- 
 ledgment of all : for Ungracefulness and Love never agree, 
 but are always visibly at variance. That he excels in beauty 
 of colour is evident from his way of life, m that he continually 
 dwells among flowers. For Love resides not in a body, or 
 in a soul, or any other [)lace where flowers never sprung; 
 
 5 
 
66 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 or if they did, when they are all fallen and the place quite 
 deflowered But wherever a spot is to be found flowery 
 and fragrant, he there seats himself and settles his abode. 
 
 Concerning the beauty of this deity, thus much is sufficient; 
 though much still remains unsaid. I am to speak next of 
 his virtue. And here the highest praise which can be 
 attributed to any being is justly due to Love ; that he does 
 no injury to god or man ; nor by god or man can he be 
 injured. He never acts through compulsion or force him- 
 self; for compulsion or force cannot reach Love: nor ever 
 forces he or compels others ; for every being obeys freely 
 and willingly every dictate and command of Love : where 
 both parties then are willing and each is freely consenting 
 to the other, those in the city who are kings, the Laws, say 
 there is no injustice done. But not only the perfection of 
 Righteousness belongs to Love; he is equally endowed 
 with consummate Temperance. For to be superior to 
 pleasure, and to govern the desires of it, is everywhere 
 called temperance. Now it is universally agreed that no 
 pleasure is superior to Love ; but, on the contrary, that all 
 pleasures are his inferiors. If so, they must be subjects 
 and servants, all of them, to Love ; and he must rule, and 
 be the master. Having dominion thus over all pleasures 
 and all desires, in the highest degree must he be temperate. 
 Then, in point of valour, not Ares himself can pretend to 
 vie with Love. For it is not, Ares has Love, but Love has 
 Ares, the love, as fame says, of Aphrodite. Now the person 
 who has another in his possession must have the mastery 
 over that person whom he possesses. The subduer and 
 master then of him who in valour excels all others, must 
 himself in that virtue excel without exception all. Thus we 
 have already shown the Righteousness, Temperance, and 
 Fortitude of this god. To show his Wisdom is yet 
 wanting, and I must do my best to be in no way wanting to 
 my subject. In the first place then, that I may honour my 
 own art, like Eryximachus, with my first regard — in the 
 wisdom of poetry Love is so great a master that he is able 
 to make any one a poet. For though a man be ever so 
 
THE BANQUET. 67 
 
 much a stranger to the Muses, yet, as soon as his soul is 
 touched by Love, he becomes a poet. It concerns me to 
 lay a particular stress on this argument, to prove Love an 
 excellent poet, in all that kind of creative power which is 
 the proper province of the Muses. For no being can 
 impart to another that which itself has not, or teach 
 another that which itself knows not. In the other 
 kind of the creative power, the making of animals, it 
 is undeniably to the wisdom of this deity that all living 
 things owe their generation and production. Then, for the 
 works of the mechanic arts, know we not that every artist 
 who hath Love for his teacher becomes eminent and 
 illustrious ; but that the artist whom Love inspires not and 
 animates never rises from obscurity ? The bowman's art, 
 the art of healing, and that of divination were inventions 
 of Apollo, under the guidance of Love and the influence 
 of his power ; so that even he was the disciple of the God 
 of Love. Prompted by Love the Muses invented the art of 
 music, Hephaestus the art of working metals, Athene the 
 art of weaving, and Zeus the art of well governing the gods 
 and mortals. From the beginning of that aera were the 
 affairs of the gods well settled ; from the time when Love 
 arose and interposed among them, — the Love certainly of 
 beauty ; for disorder and deformity are by no means the 
 objects of Love. Antecedent to that time it was, as I 
 observed before, that those many sad and strange accidents, 
 they tell us, befell the gods : it was when Necessity reigned 
 and ruled in all things. But as soon as the God we cele- 
 brate was born, the love of the Beautiful gave rise to every 
 good which blesses either gods or mortals. Thus, 
 Phaedrus, in the first place Love, as he appears to me, is 
 most excellent himself in beauty and in virtue; in the next 
 place he is the cause of the like excellences in other beings. 
 I feel within me an inclination to make a verse or two on 
 this subject, on the effects which Love produces : — 
 
 The rugged main he smooths, the rage of men 
 He softens; through the troubled air he spreads 
 A calm, and lulls the unquiet soul to rest. 
 
68 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 It is he who frees us from reserve and strangeness ; and 
 who procures us openness and intimacy : it is he who 
 estabhshes social meetings and assembhes, such as this of 
 ours : in festivals, in dances, in sacrifices, he is the leader 
 and lord ; introducing courtesy and sweetness, banishing 
 rusticity and savageness ; lavishing benevolence and kind- 
 ness, curbing malignity and ill-will : gracious to good men, 
 the admiration of wise men, the glory of the gods: the envy 
 of those to whose lot he falls not, the treasure of the 
 fortunate : the parent of delicacy, grace, luxury, kindness, 
 passion, and longing : watchful of the good, careless of the 
 evil : in difficulties, in fears, in longings and in entreaties 
 the best guide, encourager, friend, and saviour : the 
 beauty and the ornament of gods and men : a guide the best 
 and fairest, whom it is the duty of every one to follow; 
 joining in the chorus to his praise, or bearing part in that 
 sweet song sung by Love himself with which he enchants 
 the soul of every god and mortal. — This is my speech, 
 Phaedrus, which I consecrate to Love; a speech partly 
 jocose and partly serious, such as the best of my poor 
 abilities in wit and eloquence are able to furnish out. 
 
 When Agatho had done speaking, Aristodemus told me, 
 the room rang with the applauses of the company ; all of 
 them loudly declaring that Agatho's speech on Love was 
 worthy of himself and worthy of the God. Upon which 
 Socrates, directing his eyes to Eryximachus, said. Well, 
 what think you now, you son of Acumenus? Think 
 you not that I had good grounds for those fears 1 told 
 you I was under ? and that I spake prophetically when I 
 said that Agatho would make an admirable speech, and 
 that I should be driven to distress } 
 
 The first thing, replied Eryximachus, I think you foretold 
 truly, "that Agatho's speech would be excellent ; "' but the 
 other, that " yourself would be driven to distress," I do not 
 believe was a true prophecy. 
 
 How, my good friend, said Socrates, should I avoid 
 being at a loss, and distressed for something to say ? or 
 how, indeed, could any other person, who was to speak, 
 
THE BANQUET. 69 
 
 after a speech on the same subject so full of beauty and 
 variety? It was not, I must acknowledge, in all respects 
 and in all the parts of it equally admirable : but who, that 
 heard the conclusion, could help being astonished at the 
 elegant choice of words and beauty of the diction? For 
 my part, when I consider how little I shall be able to say 
 anything that will not fill far short of it, I should be 
 tempted to run away for very shame, had I any possi- 
 bility of making my escape. For, w^hilst he was speaking, 
 he put me in mind of Gorgias, and to say the truth 
 that w^hich Homer relates struck me at the time' very 
 sensibly.^ Now, thought I, what if Agatho should at the 
 last send forth the head of that formidable speaker, Gorgias, 
 to assault my imagination, and thus should, by the con- 
 clusion of his speech, stop my speech, and turn into stone 
 my speaking faculties ! I considered, how ridiculous it was 
 in me, to profess myself a great master in love matters, and 
 consent to bear a part with you in making panegyrics on 
 Love, when at the same time I was entirely ignorant of the 
 affair we undertook, and knew not the right way to celebrate 
 the praise of anything. For I was so silly as to imagine 
 that we ought never to say anything but what was true in our 
 encomiums on any subject whatever ; that the real proper- 
 ties of it were the materials which lay before us, as it were, 
 to work on ; and that the business of a panegyrist was 
 nothing more than out of these materials to select the 
 handsomest and best, and frame them together in the 
 handsomest and best manner. Prepossessed with this 
 imagination, I had entertained a strong opinion that I 
 should speak well on the subject proposed, because I well 
 knew what praises were with truth to be ascribed to Love. 
 Whereas I now find that this is not the right way of making 
 a panegyric ; but that, when we praise, we are to attribute 
 to our subject all qualities which are great and good, 
 
 1 Odyssty, xi. Socrates imitates the Homeric phraseology, puns 
 on Gorgon and Gorgias, and ironically ridicules the alTected style 
 of Agathon by comparing it to that of the famous rhetorician and 
 sophist. 
 
70 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 whether they truly belong to it or not. Should our enco- 
 miums happen to be false, the falsehood of them, to be 
 sure, is not material. For the proposal, it seems, was this, 
 that each of us should make a panegyric, which, by com- 
 mon consent, was to pass and be taken for a panegyric 
 made on Love ; and not to make a panegyric properly 
 belonging to Love, or such a one as he truly merited. 
 Hence it is, I presume, that you gather from all quarters 
 every topic of praise, and attribute to Love all kinds of 
 perfection ; representing him and his operations to be of 
 such a nature, that he cannot fail of appearing in the 
 highest degree beautiful and good — to all those, I mean, 
 who are unacquainted with him — for he certainly can never 
 be deemed so by those who know him : and thus the pane- 
 gyric is made fine and pompous. But for my part, I was 
 an utter stranger to the composing of panegyrics after this 
 manner ; and in my ignorance it was that I agreed to be 
 one of the composers. Only with my tongue therefore did 
 I engage myself : my mind was no party to the agreement. 
 And so farewell to it ; for I shall never make panegyrics in 
 this way : I should not, indeed, know how. Not but that 
 I am ready to speak the truth on the subject proposed, if 
 you have any inclination to hear it, and if I may be allowed 
 to speak after my own manner ; for I mean not to set my 
 speech in competition with any of yours, and so run the 
 risk of being deservedly laughed at. Consider, therefore, 
 Phaedrus, for it is your affair, whether such a kind of speech 
 as you have to expect from me would be agreeable to you ; 
 and whether you would like to hear the truth spoken con- 
 cerning Love in terms no higher than are adequate and 
 fitting, and with such a disposition of the several par- 
 ticulars as shall happen to arise from the nature of the 
 subject. 
 
 Phaedrus, then, and the rest of the company, made it 
 their joint request to him, that he would speak in the 
 manner which he himself judged to be the most proper. 
 
 But stay, said Socrates ; give me leave first to propose to 
 Agatho a few questions ; that, after we have agreed together 
 
THE BANQUET. 71 
 
 on some necessary premises, I may the better proceed to 
 what I have to say. 
 
 You have my consent, said Phaedrus ; so propose your 
 questions. 
 
 Socrates then, as Aristodemus told me, began in this 
 manner : — 
 
 Introduction to the Speech of Socrates. 
 
 In my opinion, my friend Agalho, you began your 
 speech well, in saying that we ought in the first place to 
 set forth the nature of Love, what he is in himself", and 
 afterwards to show his effects, and what he operates in 
 others. This introduction of yours I much approve of. 
 Now, then, tell me further concerning Love : and since you 
 have so fairly and amply displayed the other parts of his 
 nature, answer me also to this question, whether Love is 
 the love of something, or of nothing ? I ask you not 
 whether it is of mother or father, or such like ; for the 
 question whether Love is the love of mother or father would 
 be ridiculous ; but I mean it as if I were asking about this 
 very thing, a father ; and as if the question itself was, 
 whether a father was the father of something or not:^ in 
 this case you would certainly answer, if you answered 
 rightly, that a father was the father of a son or a daughter : 
 — would you not ? 
 
 Certainly I should, said Agatho. 
 
 And an answer of the same kind you would give me, said 
 Socrates, if I asked you concernmg a mother ? 
 
 Agatho again assented. 
 
 Answer me now, said Socrates, to a question or two more, 
 that you may the better apprehend my meaning. Suppose 
 I were to ask you concerning a brother, with regard to that 
 very circumstance, his being a brother, is he brother to some 
 person or not ? 
 
 Agatho answered in the affirmative. 
 
 ^ That is, whether his nature is absolute, not of necessity inferring 
 the co-existence of any other being ; or whether it is relative, in which 
 Ihc being of sonic correlative is implied. — Sydenham. 
 
72 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 And is not this person, said Socrates, either a brother or 
 a sister ? To which, when Agatho had assented, 
 
 Try then, said Socrates, to tell me concerning Love; is it 
 the love of something or of nothing ? 
 
 Of something, by all means, replied Agatho. 
 
 Whatever you think that something to be, said Socrates, 
 for the present keep your thought to yourself; only remem- 
 ber it. And let me ask you this question further, relating to 
 Love : Does Love desire that something of which it is the 
 love, does it or not? 
 
 Desires it, answered Agatho, without doubt. 
 
 Whether, when possessed of that which it desires and 
 loves, does it then desire and love it, or only when not 
 possessed of it ? 
 
 Only when not possessed of it, it is probable, replied 
 Agatho. 
 
 Instead of being probable, said Socrates, consider if it 
 be not necessary that every being which feels any desire 
 should desire only that which it is in want of; and that as 
 far as any being is free from want, so far it must be free 
 also from desire. Now to me, Agatho, this appears in the 
 highest degree necessary. But how does it appear to you? 
 
 To me in^the same manner, replied Agatho. 
 
 You say wtII, said Socrates. I ask you then, Can a man 
 whose size is large w^ish to be a man of large size ? or a man 
 who is strong, can he wish to be strong ? 
 
 The impossibility of this, replied Agatho, follows from 
 what we have just now agreed in. For the man who is 
 what he would wish to be, must in that respect, and so far, 
 be free from want. 
 
 True, said Socrates : for if it were possible that the strong 
 could wish to be strong, the swift to be swift, the healthy to 
 be healthy, one might then perhaps imagine it equally 
 possible in all cases of the like kind, that such as are 
 possessed of anything good or advantageous could desire 
 that which they already have. I mention this in general, 
 to prevent our being imposed upon. For the person who 
 enjoys any of these advantages, if you consider, Agatho, 
 
THE BANQUET. 73 
 
 must appear to you to have of necessity at present that 
 which he has, whether he wills it or not : and how can this 
 ever be the object of his desire ? Should any man, there- 
 fore, say thus : T, who am now in health, desire to be 
 healthy; or, I, who have now riches, desire to be rich, and 
 long for those very things which I have; we should make 
 him this reply : — You mean, friend, you that are at present 
 possessed of riches, or health, or strength, would be glad 
 to continue in possession of them always : for at this pre- 
 sent you possess them, whether you will or not. When you 
 say, therefore, that you desire what is present with you, 
 consider, whether you mean any other thing than this; you 
 would be glad that what is present with you now might be 
 present with you for the time to come ? Would he not 
 acknowledge, think you, that this was his only meaning? 
 
 Agatho agreed that he w^ould. 
 
 This, then, said Socrates, is to love and desire that from 
 which he is now at some distance, neither as yet has he ; 
 and that is, the preserving of what he possesses at the 
 present, and his continuing in possession of it for the future. 
 
 It certainly is so, replied Agatho. 
 
 This man, therefore, said Socrates, and every one who 
 feels desire, desires that which lies not ready for his 
 enjoyment, that which is not present with him, that which 
 he has not, that which he himself is not, and that which he 
 is in want of; such things only being the objects of love 
 and of desire. 
 
 Agatho to this entirely assented. 
 
 Come then, said Socrates, let us agree upon these con- 
 clusions : Is not Love, in the first place, love of something? 
 in the next place, is it not love of that which is wanting? 
 
 Clearly so, replied Agatho. 
 
 Now then, said Socrates, recollect what it was you told 
 us in your speech was the proper object of Love. But I, if 
 you please, will remind you of it. I think you said some- 
 thing like this, "That the affairs of the gods were put in 
 good order and well-established through love of things 
 beautiful : for that things of opposite kind to these could 
 
74 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 never be the objects of love." Did you not tell us some 
 such thing ? 
 
 I own it, answered Agatho. 
 
 You own the truth, my good friend, replied Socrates. 
 Now if this be as you say, must not Love be love of beauty, 
 and not of deformity ? 
 
 I agree, said Agatho. 
 
 And have you not agreed too, said Socrates, that Love is 
 love of something which is wanting, and not of anything 
 possessed already? 
 
 True, replied Agatho. 
 
 It follows then, said Socrates, that Love is not in pos- 
 session, but in want, of beauty. 
 
 It follows of necessity, said Agatho. 
 
 Well then, said Socrates, that to which beauty is absolutely 
 wanting, that which is totally unpossessed of beauty, do you 
 call that beautiful ? 
 
 Certainly not, replied Agatho. 
 
 Are you still then, said Socrates, of the same opinion, 
 that Love is beautiful — if we have reasoned rightly ? 
 
 Agatho then made answer : I am in danger, Socrates, of 
 being found ignorant in the subject I undertook to praise. 
 
 You have honestly and fairly spoken, said Socrates. And 
 now answer me to this little question more : Think you not 
 that everything good is also fair and beautiful ? 
 
 I do, said Agatho. 
 
 If then, said Socrates, Love be in want of beauty, and if 
 everything good be fair and beautiful. Love must be in want 
 of good too. 
 
 I am not able, replied Agatho, to argue against you, 
 Socrates, and therefore I admit it to be true what you say. 
 
 You arc not able, my beloved Agatho said Socrates, to 
 argue against the truth : for to argue against Socrates is 
 nothing difficult. And here shall I dismiss you from being 
 further questioned. But the discourse concerning Love, 
 which I heard formerly from Diotima the prophetess, a 
 woman wise and knowing in these and many other subjects; 
 so profoundly knowing, that when the plague seemed to be 
 
THE BANQUET. 75 
 
 approaching Athens, and when the people offered sacrifice 
 to avert it, she caused the coming of that distemper to be 
 delayed for the space of ten years (she it was who instructed 
 me in the knowledge of all things that appertain to Love) : 
 a discourse, I say, on this subject, which I once heard from 
 her, I will try if I can relate again to you. It began with 
 the points agreed on just now between me and Agatho; 
 and I will relate it to you by myself as well as I am able. 
 
 The Speech of Socrates. 
 
 Right and proper is it, Agatho, to follow the method 
 marked out by you ; in the first place to declare what kind 
 of a being Love is, and afterwards to show what are the 
 effects produced by him. Now I think the easiest way that 
 I can take, in executing this plan, will be to lay before you 
 the whole of this doctrine in the very same manner and 
 order in which I myself was examined and lectured on the 
 subject by Diotima. She began with me, on my saying to 
 her much the same things that were asserted just now by 
 Agatho ; that Love was a deity excellent in goodness, and 
 was also one of those who were fair and beautiful. And 
 she refuted me with the same arguments I have made use 
 of to refute Agatho ; proving to me that Love, according 
 to my own account of him, was neither beautiful nor 
 good. 
 
 How say you, Diotima? then said L Is Love an ugly 
 and an evil being ? 
 
 Soft, replied she ; no abusive language : do you imagine 
 that every being who is not beautiful must of course be 
 ugly? 
 
 Without doubt, answered I. 
 
 And every being who is not wise, said she, do you 
 conclude it must be ignorant ? Do you not see there is 
 something between wisdom and ignorance? 
 
 I asked her what that could be. 
 
 To think of things rightly, as being what they really are, 
 without being able to assign a reason why they arc such. 
 
76 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Do you not perceive, said she, that this is not to have the 
 science or true knowledge of them ? For, when the cause 
 or reason of a thing remains unknown, how can there be 
 science ? Nor yet is it ignorance : for that which errs not 
 from the truth, how should that be ignorance? Such 
 then is Right Opinion, something between wisdom and 
 ignorance. 
 
 You are certainly in the right, said I. 
 
 Deem it not necessary then, said she, that what is not 
 beautiful should be ugly \ or that what is not good must of 
 consequence be evil. To apply this to the case of Love ; 
 though you have agreed he is neither good nor beautiful, 
 yet imagine not he must ever the more on that account be 
 ugly and evil ; but something between those opposites. 
 
 Well, said I, but he is acknowledged by all to be a 
 powerful god, however. 
 
 By all who know him, do you mean, said she, or by all 
 who know him not? 
 
 By all universally, replied I. 
 
 Upon which she smiled, and said, How, Socrates, should 
 he be acknowledged a powerful god by those who absolutely 
 deny his divinity? 
 
 Who are they ? said I. 
 
 You yourself, replied she, are one of them, and I am 
 another. 
 
 Explain your meaning, said I. 
 
 My meaning, said she, is easy to be explained. For 
 answer me to this question : Say you not that the gods are, 
 all of them, blest and happy? or would you offer to say of any 
 one of the gods, that he was not a blest and happy being? 
 
 Not I, for my part, by Zeus. 
 
 By a happy being, said she, do you not mean a being 
 possessed of things fair, beautiful, and good? 
 
 It is granted, answered I. 
 
 And you granted before, said she, that Love, from his 
 indigence and want of things good and beautiful, desired 
 those things of which he was destitute. 
 
 I allowed it. 
 
THE BANQUET. 77 
 
 How then, said she, can he be a god, he who is destitute 
 of things fair, beautiful, and good? 
 
 It appears, said I, that he by no means can. 
 
 You see then, said she, that, even in your own judgment. 
 Love is no god. 
 
 What ! said I, must Love, then, be a mortal ? 
 
 Far from that, replied she. 
 
 Of what nature was he, then ? I asked her. 
 
 Of like kind, answered she, with those natures we have 
 just now been speaking of, an intermediate one, between 
 the mortal and the immortal. 
 
 But what in particular, O Diotima ? 
 
 A great daemon, replied she. For the daemon-kind is of 
 an intermediate nature between the divine and the human. 
 
 What is the power and virtue, said I, of this intermediate 
 kind of being? 
 
 To transmit and interpret to the gods, said she, what 
 comes from men ; and to men, in like manner, what comes 
 from the gods ; from men their petitions and their sacrifices : 
 from the gods, in return, the revelation of their will. Thus 
 these beings, standing in the middle rank between divine 
 and human, fill up the vacant space, and link together all 
 intelligent nature. Through their intervention proceeds 
 every kind of divination, and the priestly art relating to 
 sacrifices, and the mysteries and incantations, with the 
 whole of divination and magic. For divinity is not mingled 
 with man ; but by means of that middle nature is carried 
 on all converse and communication between the gods and 
 mortals, whether in sleep or waking. Whoever has wisdom 
 and skill in things of this kind is a dcemoniacal man: the 
 knowing and skilful in any other thing, whether in the arts, 
 or certain manual operations, are illiberal and sordid. 
 These daemons are many and various. One of them is 
 Love. 
 
 But, said I, from what parents was he born ? 
 
 The history of the parentage, replied she, is somewhat 
 long to relate: however, I will j;ive you the relation. At 
 the birth of Aphrodite, the gods, to celebrate that event, 
 
78 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO, 
 
 made a feast ; at which was present, among the rest, Plenty, 
 the son of Counsel. After they had supped. Poverty came 
 a-begging, an abundance of dainties being there, and loitered 
 about the door. Just then Plenty, intoxicated with nectar 
 (for as yet wine was not), went out into the gardens of Zeus, 
 and oppressed with the load of liquor he had drunk, fell 
 asleep. Poverty, therefore, desiring through her indigence 
 to have a child from Plenty, artfully lay down by him, and 
 became with child of Love.^ Hence it is that Love is the 
 constant follower and attendant of Aphrodite, as having 
 been begotten on the birthday of that goddess: being also, 
 by his natural disposition, fond of all beauty, he is the more 
 attached to Venus herself on account of her being beautiful. 
 Now, as Love is the son of Plenty and of Poverty, the 
 condition of his life and fortune is as follows: — In the first 
 place, he is always poor ; and is far from being either fair or 
 tender, as the multitude imagine him ; for he is rough and 
 hard and dry, without shoes to his feet, and without a house 
 or any covering to his head ; always grovelling on the earth, 
 
 ^ As a specimen of the neo-Platonic methods of interpretation I may 
 append Taylor's note on this myth, " By F/ejity, the son of Counsel, 
 we must understand that divine cause of abundance which subsists in 
 Jupiter, the demiurgus of the world. For Jupiter is called Miyns, or 
 Counsel, by Orpheus, as we are informed by Proclus in Tim., p. 102. 
 Poverty is Matter, which in itself is destitute of all things, but is filled, 
 as far as it can be filled, from Plenty, whose overflowing fulness 
 terminates in its dark and rebounding seat. Plato, therefore, in calling 
 Love the offspring of Plenty and Poverty, appears to comprehend its 
 whole series. For Love, considered as the same with Desire, is, accord- 
 ing to its subsistence in Jupiter, the son of Plenty; but, according to its 
 ultimate subsistence, it is the offspring of Matter, for Matter also desires 
 good, though her desire is most debile and evanescent. But by Poverty 
 being pregnant with Love at the birth of Venus, Plato occultly intimates 
 that the divine abundance in the demiurgus of the world proceeds into 
 matter in conjunction with the illuminations of divine beauty." Taylor 
 adds that "intoxication with nectar signifies that deific energy through 
 which divine natures are enabled to provide immutably for all things.'' 
 "By the gardens of Jupiter," he tells us, "we may conceive that the 
 splendour, grace, and empyrsean beauty of the demiurgic illuminations 
 of the maker of the universe are signified." Finally, "sleep, when 
 applied to divine natures, signifies an energy separate from sensibles." 
 
THE BANQUET 79 
 
 and lying on the bare ,s;round, at doors, and in the streets, 
 in the open air ; partaking thus of his mother's disposition, 
 and living in perpetual want. On the other hand, he 
 derives from his father's side qualities very different from 
 those others : hence it is that he is courageous, sprightly, and 
 prompt to action ; a mighty sportsman, always contriving 
 some new device to entrap his game : much addicted to 
 thought, and fruitful in expedients ; all his life philosophis- 
 ing ; powerful in magic and enchantment, nor less so in 
 sophistry. His nature is neither mortal nor immortal ; for 
 sometimes, in one and the same day, he lives and flourishes, 
 when he is in plenty ; and presently afterwards he dies ; 
 and soon after that revives again, as partaking of his father's 
 nature. Whatever abundance flows in upon him is continually 
 stealing away from him : so that Love is never absolutely in 
 a state either of affluence or of indigence. Again, he is 
 seated in the midst between Wisdom and Ignorance. For 
 the case is this with regard to wisdom : — None of the gods 
 philosophise, or desire to become wise ; for they are so ; 
 and if there be any other being beside the gods who is 
 truly wise, neither does such a being philosophise. Nor 
 yet does philosophy, or the search of Wisdom, belong to 
 the Ignorant. For on this very account is the condition of 
 Ignorance so wretched, that notwithstanding she is neither 
 fair, good, nor wise, yet she thinks she has no need of any 
 kind of amendment or improvement. So that the ignorant, 
 not imagining themselves in need, neither seek nor desire 
 that which they think they want not. 
 
 Who are they then, O Diotima, said T, who philosophise, 
 if they are neither the wise nor the ignorant ? 
 
 That is evident, said she : even a child may now discover 
 that they must be such as stand in the middle rank of being; 
 in the number of whom is Love. For wisdom is among the 
 things of highest beauty ; and all beauty is the object of 
 love. It follows therefore of necessity, that Love is a 
 philosopher, or a lover of wisdom ; and that, as such, he 
 stands between the adept in wisdom and the wholly ignor- 
 ant. This, as well as all the rest of his condition, is 
 
8o SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 owing to his parentage ; as he derives his birth from a father 
 wise and rich in all things, and from a mother unwise and 
 in want of all tilings. Such, dear Socrates, is the nature of 
 this da:imon. But that you had other thoughts of that 
 being, whom you took for Love, is not at all surprising. 
 For, if I may guess from the description you gave of him 
 yourself, you seem to have taken for Love that which is 
 beloved, not that which loves : and from this mistake it 
 arose, as I imagine, that Love appeared to you in all 
 respects so beauteous. For the object of Love, the lovable, 
 is truly beauteous and delicate, is perfect and completely 
 blest. But to the subject of love, the lover, belongs 
 a different nature, such a one as I have described to you. 
 ' Be it granted such, Diotima, said I ; for what you tell me 
 bids fair to be the truth. But now, such being his nature, 
 of what advantage is he to human kind ? 
 
 This, Socrates, said she, in the next place I shall do my 
 best to teach you. Already then it appears what kind of 
 being Love is, and of what parents he was born : and that 
 his object is beauty you yourself have asserted. Now what 
 answer shall we make should we be asked this question, 
 " O Socrates and Diotima ! how or in what respect mean ye, 
 when ye say that beauty is the object of Love?" or to 
 speak more clearly, " What is it which the lover of beauty 
 longs for ? " 
 
 To possess it, replied L 
 
 Your answer, said she, draws on a further question : 
 What will be the state or condition of that man who has 
 gained possession of beauty ? 
 
 I told her, I could by no means answer readily to such a 
 question. 
 
 Suppose then, said she, that changing the subject of the 
 question, and putting good in the place of beauty, one were 
 to ask you thus, and say. Answer me, Socrates, to this ques- 
 tion, what is it which the lover of good longs for ? 
 
 To possess it, I replied. 
 
 And what, she asked me again, will be the state of that 
 man who is in possession of good ? 
 
THE BANQUET. 8i 
 
 This, said I, is a question I can answer with much less 
 difficulty, thus : that such a man will be happy. 
 
 Right, said she ; for by the possession of good things it 
 is that the happy are in that happy state which they enjoy. 
 Nor is there any room to question further, and ask, Why, or 
 for the sake of what, a man wishes to be happy ; but a con- 
 clusive answer appears to have been given, fully satisfactory. 
 
 True, said I, without dispute. 
 
 Now this wishing and this longing, said she, let me ask 
 you, whether in your opinion it is common to all men ; 
 whether you think that all wish to be always in possession 
 of things good, or how otherwise ? 
 
 I think just so, replied I, that such a wish is common to 
 all. 
 
 Well, then, Socrates, said she, must we not acknowledge 
 that all men are in love ; seeing that the affections of them 
 all are always fixed on the same things ? or shall wt say that 
 some are in love and some are not ? 
 
 It is a thought, said I, which, I confess, a little surprises me. 
 
 Be not surprised, said she ; for the case is nothing more 
 than this, that the name of love, which belongs to all love in 
 general, we appropriate to one particular kind of love, singled 
 out from the others, which we distinguish by other names. 
 
 To make me conceive your meaning more perfectly, said 
 I, cannot you produce some other case parallel to this ? 
 
 I can, said she. The following case is parallel : Making 
 or creating, you know, comprehends many kinds of opera- 
 tion. For all cause by which anything proceeds out of 
 non-being^ into being is creation. So that all the operations 
 
 ^ Bein 10- does not signify being or entity in general, but the particular 
 form or essence of anything, the being what it is. So non-being, just 
 before, does not signify absolute non-entity, but the non-being of some 
 particular thing, or the want of some form, which is afterwards intro- 
 duced into existence. x\ccordingly creation, immediately after, signifies 
 not what is nowadays generally understood by that term, a making of 
 something out of mere nothing ; for Plato seems to have had no notion 
 of the possibility of this ; but here is to be understood the making some 
 form or being, in the sense just now mentioned, newly to exist, a parti- 
 cular one, which existed not before. — Sydenham. 
 
 6 
 
82 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 and all the works executed through any of the arts, are 
 indeed so many creations : and all the artists and the work- 
 men are real creators, makers or poets. 
 
 True, said I. 
 
 And yet you know, continued she, that they are not all of 
 them called poets or makers, but are distinguished by 
 different names : whilst one particular kind of creation, that 
 which is performed in metre through the Muse's art, is 
 singled out from the other kinds ; and the name, to which 
 they have all an equal right, is given to that alone. For 
 that alone is called poesy or making : and the artists in this 
 species of creation only are peculiarly distinguished by the 
 name of poets or makers. 
 
 Perfectly right, said I. 
 
 Ju-t so is it then in the case of Love, said she. Univer- 
 sally all desire of things good, and all that longing after 
 happiness, which is in every individual of human kind, is 
 the mighty Deity of Love who by secret ways and stratagems 
 subdues and governs the hearts of all. His votaries in 
 many ways, such as those engaged in the pursuit of wealth, 
 or strength of body, or wisdom, are not said to be in love ; 
 nor is the name of lover allowed to any such. But to those 
 only who are devoted to Love in one particular way, and 
 addict themselves to one certain species of love, we appro- 
 priate those terms of love and lovers and the being in love, 
 which ou2;ht to be considered as general terms, applicable 
 in common to all the different kinds. 
 
 In all appearance, said I, you are entirely in the right. 
 
 She proceeded however to confirm the truth of what she 
 had said, in the following manner : — There is a saying, 
 continued she, that lovers are in search of the other half 
 of themselves. But my doctrine is, that we love neither 
 the half nor even the whole of ourselves, if it happen not, 
 my friend, some way or other to be good. For we are 
 willing to have our feet and our hands cut off, though our 
 own, if we deem them incurably and absolutely evil. It is 
 not to what is their own that men have so strong an attach- 
 ment, nor do they treat it so tenderly on that account. 
 
THE BANQUET. 83 
 
 unless there be a man who thinks good to be his own 
 and properly belonging to him, but evil to be foreign to his 
 nature. So true is it that there is no other object of love to 
 man than good alone. — Or do you think there is ? 
 
 By Zeus, caid I, there appears to me no other. 
 
 Is this now sufficient for us ? said she : and have we 
 done justice to our argument if we finish it with this 
 simple and slender conclusion, that all men love what is 
 good? 
 
 Why not ? said I. 
 
 What ? said she ; must we not add this, that they long to 
 have possession of the loved good ? 
 
 This, said I, must be added. 
 
 And not only now to have possession of it, said she 
 again, but to have possession of it for ever too ; must not 
 this be added further ? 
 
 This further, said I. 
 
 Love, then, in fine, said she, is the desire of having good 
 in perpetual possession. 
 
 ^lost true, said I ; in every tittle you are right. 
 
 Since then, said she, this general desire is found always 
 to subsist and operate in all, can you tell me in what 
 particular way it operates on those who are commonly said 
 to be "in love"? What is the aim of such lovers, and 
 what the work or effect of this kind of love ? 
 
 Were I able to tell, O Diotima, replied I, I should not 
 have been so full of admiration at your wisdom; nor 
 should I have applied myself to you to be taught these very 
 things, if I already knew them. 
 
 Well, said she, I will teach you, then. The aim of these 
 lovers and the work of this love is to generate upon the 
 beautiful as well in a mental way as in that which is 
 corporeal. 
 
 Your words, said I, have need of some diviner to inter- 
 pret them : I confess I do not apprehend their meaning. 
 
 I will express myself then, said she, in plainer language. 
 All of human race, O Socrates, are full of the seeds of 
 generation both in their bodies and in their minds : antl 
 
84 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 when they arrive at maturity of age, they naturally long to 
 generate. But generate they cannot upon the ugly or vile, 
 but only upon the beautiful : for this is a work above 
 human art, it is divine. For to conceive and to impregnate 
 is to immortalise the kind : it is producing immortality out 
 of an animal which is mortal. This cannot take place in 
 what is inharmonious ; and all that is inharmonious is ugly 
 and vile to the divine, but the beautiful is harmonious. 
 For Beauty is that celestial influence which favours, and 
 that goddess who patronises the work of generation. 
 Hence, whenever that which teems with generative power 
 approaches that which is beautiful, it smiles benignly ; and 
 through the delight it feels, opening and diffusing itself 
 abroad, it breeds or generates. But whenever it meets with 
 that which is ugly and vile, it grows morose, saddens, and 
 contracts itself; it turns away, retires back, and generates 
 not; but, restraining the swollen power within it bears the 
 burthen with uneasiness. Hence it is that they who are 
 full of this, and long to generate, employ much of their 
 creative power^ upon the beautiful: it is because the 
 beautiful frees them from those generative throes with 
 which they labour. But, Socrates, this is not, as you 
 imagined, the love of beauty. 
 
 What is it then ? said I. 
 
 It is the love, replied she, of generating and begetting 
 issue, there where we find beauty. 
 
 Be it so, said I. 
 
 It certainly is so, she replied. 
 
 But, said I, what has Love to do with generating? 
 
 Because generating, answered she, perpetuates and in 
 some manner immortalises that which is mortal. Now, 
 that the desire of immortality must always accompany the 
 
 ^ Sydenham takes the old reading irolrjcrLs instead of the emendation, 
 now universally adopted, of irroiriaLs. The latter would make the 
 passage mean: "Are in such a flutter and excitement about the 
 beautiful." The old reading does not seem by any means "inept," 
 as Stallbaum describes it ; though it reads a little awkwardly in the 
 original, and is very likely wrong, 
 
THE BANQUET. 85 
 
 love of good follows from what we before agreed in, that 
 love was the desire of having good in perpetual possession. 
 For the necessary consequence of that position is this, that 
 Love desires immortality. 
 
 All these things learned I formerly in a conversation with 
 Diotima, discoursing upon Love. At another time she 
 thus questioned me : What do you imagine, Socrates, to be 
 the cause of that love and that desire we lately spoke of? 
 Do you not observe, how vehement are the passions of all 
 brute animals when the season comes in which they 
 couple? Birds as well as beasts, you may perceive them 
 all sick with love : so intense is their desire, in the first 
 place, to generate and breed; nor less afterwards in the 
 rearing of their young. In defence of these you see them 
 ready to engage in fight, the weakest animals with the 
 strongest. To support these you see them willingly them- 
 selves perishing with famine ; in short, doing and suffering 
 for their sakes the utmost possible. Those indeed of 
 human kind, continued she, one might imagine acted thus 
 from a motive of reason in themselves : but in brute 
 animals, can you assign the cause why the affections of love 
 should be so deep and strong ? 
 
 I told her, I was at a loss to account for it. 
 
 And do you think, said she, ever to become a thorough 
 adept in the science of love, if you are at a loss in a case 
 so easy? 
 
 It is for this very reason, said I, Diotima, as I lately told 
 you, that I come to you for instruction : it is because I am 
 sensible how much I want it. Do you, therefore, teach me 
 what the cause is of these vehement affections and of all 
 else that pertains to love. 
 
 Upon which she said, If you believe that love is, what 
 you liave often owned it to be, the desire of having good in 
 perpetual possession, you will be at no loss to conceive 
 what the cause is of those affections. For the case of brute 
 animals and that of the human kind are in this respect 
 exactly the same ; in both the same principle prevails ; the 
 mortal nature seeks to be perpetuated, and, as far as 
 
86 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 possible, immortalised. Now this is possible in one only 
 way, that is, by generation ; in which some new living 
 thing is constantly produced to supply the place of the 
 deceased old one. And in no other manner than this is 
 life continued to any individual being, of which we say that 
 it lives still, and pronounce it to be the same being. 
 Thus every man, for instance, from his infancy on to old 
 age, is called the same person ; though he never has 
 anything in him which abides with him, and is continually 
 a new man ; having lost the man he was in his hair, in his 
 flesh, in his bones, in his blood, in fine in his whole body. 
 Nor in his body only, but in his soul too does he undergo 
 incessant change. His ways, his manners, his opinions, 
 his desires and pleasures ; his fears and sorrows ; none of 
 these ever continue in any man the same, but new ones are 
 generated and spring up in him, whilst the former fade and 
 die away. But a paradox much greater than any yet 
 mentioned is with regard to knovvledge : not only some 
 new portions of knowledge we acquire, whilst we lose 
 others of which we had before been masters ; and never 
 continue long the same persons as to the sum of our present 
 knowledge ; but we suffer also the like change in every 
 particular article of that knowledge. For what we call 
 recollection supposes some knowledge to have actually, us 
 it were, left us ; and indeed oblivion is the departure of 
 this knowledge : recollection, then, raising up in the room 
 of this departed knowledge a fresh remembrance in our 
 minds, preserves in some manner and continues to as that 
 which we had lost; so as to make the memory of it, the 
 likeness, seem the very same thing. Indeed everything 
 mortal is preserved in this only way, not by the absolute 
 sameness of it for ever, like things divine, but by leaving 
 behind it when it fades and departs another in its room, a 
 new being, bearing its resemblance. By this contrivance 
 in Nature, Socrates, does body and every other thing 
 naturally mortal partake of immortality. Immortal after a 
 different manner is that which is naturally immortal 
 Wonder not, therefore, that all beings are full of regard for 
 
THE BANQUET, 87 
 
 their offspring. For this ardour, this love follows every 
 being for the sake of immortality. 
 
 And I marvelled at her discourse, and said, Oh Diotima, 
 wisest of women, are these things so in very truth? And 
 she answered, as confidently as if she were an accompiisLed 
 sophist, Assuredly, Socrates, tliey are so. P^or look only at 
 the love of fame and glory, how it operates on men, and 
 what effect it has on their conduct. You must wonder at 
 their folly in labouring so much and suffering so greatly 
 in the pursuit of it, unless you consider the mighty power 
 of that passion which possesses them, a zeal to become 
 illustrious in after ages, and to acquire a fame that may last 
 for ever and be immortal. For this, more than for the 
 sake of their families or friends, are they ready to encounter 
 dangers, to expend their treasures, to undergo the severest 
 hardships, and to meet death itself. Do you think, con- 
 tinued she, that Alcestis would have died for Admetus, or 
 Achilles to avenge Patroclus, or your Athenian Codrus to 
 preserve the kingdom for his children, had they not 
 imagined their virtue would live for ever in the remem- 
 brance of posterity, as it does to this day ? Yea in truth, 
 she said ; for surely with a view to the immortality of 
 virtue and the never-dying glory which attends it, have all 
 great actions been performed. And the more so the better 
 men are, for they arc in love with immortality. 
 
 Now in men of certain constitutions, she continued, the 
 generative power lies chiefly in their bodies. Such men 
 turn to the other sex — this is the way in which they are 
 enamoured, — and procure to themselves, by begetting 
 children, the preservation of their names, a remembrance 
 of themselves which they hope will be immortal, a happiness 
 to endure for ever. In men of another stamp, the faculties 
 of generation lie in the s{)irit. For those there are who 
 are more prolific in their souls than in their bodies ; and are 
 full of the seeds of such an offspring as it peculiarly belongs 
 to the human soul to conceive and to generate. And what 
 is this but wisdom and every other virtue? Of these are 
 the poets and all artificers such as are related to have been 
 
88 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 inventors. But by far the most excellent and beauteous 
 part of wisdom is that which is conversant in the founding 
 and well-ordering of states and other settlements of men ; a 
 part of wisdom distinguished by the names of Temperance 
 and Justice. When the soul of any man has been teeming 
 with the seeds of this wisdom from his youth (and of divine 
 souls it is the native property thus to teem), as soon as he 
 arrives at maturity of age he longs to sow them in the souls 
 of others and thus to propagate wisdom. And he too, I 
 suppose, looks about and searches for beauty, where he may 
 generate, for never can he generate on aught that is ugly 
 and vile. Meeting first then with outward beauty, that of 
 the body, he welcomes and embraces it, and turns away 
 from where he sees deformity in the body. But if he has 
 the good fortune to meet also with the beauty of a well- 
 natured and generous soul, he then entirely attaches him- 
 self to this double beauty ; and to this partner of his soul 
 he is now full of eloquence about virtue, and what a good 
 man should be, and what are his objects ; and he tries to 
 educate his friend. Indeed, while he is conversing in- 
 timately with that which is fair, or even moved by the 
 recollection of that converse, if apart, those seeds of wisdom, 
 which he was before big with, burst forth spontaneous, and 
 he generates. And in company they nourish and tend that 
 which has been generated ; for nobler is the converse of 
 such than that of the fathers and mothers of children, and 
 firmer their affection, and more fair and immortal the off- 
 spring they have united to produce. Who would not choose 
 to be the father of such children rather than of mortals 
 sprung from his body ? Who that considers Homer, 
 Hesiod, and other excellent poets with the admiration they 
 deserve, would not wish for such an issue as they left 
 behind them, such as perpetuates their memory with the 
 highest honour and procures them an immortality of fame ? 
 Or such a posterity, said she, as that whose foundation 
 Lycurgus laid at Lacedaemon, a race of which himself was 
 the first father, the preservers of their country and of all 
 Greece? Amongst yourselves, what honours are paid to 
 
THE BANQUET. 89 
 
 the memory of Solon, who begat the Laws ? And abroad 
 as well as at home how illustrious are the names of many 
 others, Barbarians as well as Grecians, who have exhibited 
 to the world many noble actions, and have thus begotten 
 all kinds of virtue ! To men like these have temples often 
 been erected, on account of such their progeny : but never 
 was any man thus honoured on account of his mortal merely 
 human offspring.^ 
 
 In the ]\Iysteries of Love thus far, perhaps, Socrates, you 
 may be initiated and advanced. But to be perfected and 
 to attain the intuition of the secret and inmost things, to 
 which those others ought to be an introduction and pre- 
 paration, I doubt whether you may be able. However, said 
 she, not to be wanting in a readiness to give you thorough 
 information, I will do my best to conduct you till we have 
 reached the end. Do but you your best to follow me. 
 Whoever then enters upon this great affair in a proper 
 manner, and begins according to a right method, must from 
 his earliest youth have been conversant with bodies that are 
 beautiful. To begin with, then, if his leader^ lead aright, 
 he must love some one person of beautiful form, and with 
 him generate noble and fair discourse. He must then con- 
 sider that the beauty of one bodily form is sister to that of 
 another bodily form; and if it is right for him to pursue 
 outward beauty, he must lack understanding not to con- 
 ceive that the beauty of all bodily form is one and the 
 same. With this conception in his mind he must become 
 a lover of all bodily forms, and he will relax that ardour 
 of his about one form in particular, and will despise it 
 and hold it cheap. After this, he must learn to esteem 
 
 ^ We have here a pause, or break, more solemn and awful tlian any 
 to be met with elsewhere in Plato. But it has great propriety in this 
 place, as it becomes the sublime and mysterious character of Diotima ; 
 and as it is necessary, besides, for ushering in with the greater solem- 
 nity those very sublime and mysterious speculations which follow. — 
 Sydenham. The course of Diutima's whole discourse, horn beginning 
 to end, appears to observe the three gradations of initiation into the 
 Mysteries — purgation, illumination, and intuition. 
 
 * That is, his daemon. — Taylor. 
 
90 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 that beauty which is inward, and of the soul, to be of 
 greater worth than that of the body. As soon, therefore, 
 as he meets with a person of sweet and generous nature, 
 even though he have little of the bloom of beauty, with 
 that person he is satisfied, and he will love and cherish him, 
 and will bring forth for his sake such discourse as tends to 
 the improvement of youth. And then he cannot but arrive 
 at the perception of beauty in institutions and laws, and all 
 subjects of discipline and practice; and he comes to dis- 
 cover that all this beauty is of one kin, so that he will 
 esteem bodily beauty but a small and insignificant part of 
 it. And after institutions and practices he must proceed to 
 the sciences, so that he may perceive the beauty of these 
 too. And then, regarding the great extent of beauty which 
 he now surveys, and being no longer, like a mean and 
 illiberal slave, in subjection to one form only, some one 
 human being or practice; but betaking himself to that wide 
 sea of beauty and contemplating it, he will bring forth, in 
 the unstinting fertility of wisdom, a multitude of high and 
 noble discourses, and thoughts, until, having grown and 
 waxed strong there, he perceive that one Science which is 
 vast enough for a beauty so vast. But now try, continued 
 she, to give me all the attention you are master of. 
 
 Whoever has been thus far instructed in the things per- 
 taining to Love, by contemplating the beautiful in a right 
 succession and order, is now near the perfect intuition of 
 his subject. For suddenly he will behold a marvellous 
 thing, Beauty in its very essence, — that vision, O Socrates, 
 for the sake of which all our former labours and pains were 
 undertaken. This beauty, in the first place, is from ever- 
 lasting, and knows neither beginning nor ending, neither 
 growth nor decay. Then it is not beautiful when looked 
 at in one way and ugly in another, nor beautiful at one time 
 and not so at another, nor beautiful in certain relations and 
 situations and ugly in others, nor beautiful to some persons 
 and ugly to other persons. Nor does it appear to any one 
 as if it were such a thing as a face, nor has it hands or 
 other bodily parts, nor is it some particular doctrine or 
 
THE BANQUET. 91 
 
 science. It resides not in any other being, as, for instance, 
 in some animal ; or in the earth or the heavens or anything 
 else; but it subsists alone with itself, and possesses an 
 essence eternally uniform. All other forms which are 
 beautiful participate of this; but in such a manner that by 
 their generation or destruction this suffers no diminution, 
 receives no addition, nor undergoes any kind of alteration. 
 When from those beginnings through the right love of 
 beautiful youth a man goes on and begins to gain a sight of 
 this supreme beauty, he must have almost attained some- 
 what of his end. Now to go on, or to be led by another, 
 along the right way of Love, is this : beginning from those 
 lower manifestations of the beautiful to go on in a con- 
 tinual ascent, all the way proposing this highest Beauty as 
 an end, and, using the rest but as so many steps in the 
 ascent, to proceed from one to two and from two to all 
 beautiful forms, and from the beauty of form to the beauty 
 of disciplines and practices, and from the beauty of 
 disciplines and practices to the beauty of sciences ; until at 
 length from these sciences he attains that science which 
 is the science of no other thing than that supreme 
 Beauty; and thus finally learns to know what the very 
 essence of beauty is. Here is to be found, dear Socrates, 
 said the stranger-prophetess, here if anywhere, the happy 
 life, the ultimate object of desire to man : it is to 
 live in beholding this consummate beauty ; the sight 
 of which if you ever attain, it will appear not to be 
 in gold nor in magnificent attire, nor in the fairness of fair 
 youth whom now it dazzles you to behold, and you are 
 ready, you and others, if it were possible, to spend your 
 whole lives with them and neither to eat nor drink, but only 
 to gaze upon their beauty. What then, she continued, 
 might we expect if you should sec Beauty uncorrupted, 
 ])ure and unmixed, not that of the corruptible bodily nature 
 of men and colours, and all the rest of that perishing and 
 fading trash, but the divine and unchangeable Beauty 
 itself ? Think you, said she, that the life of that man 
 would be contemptible and mean who should ever fix his 
 
92 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 eyes on that beauty, and behold that which he ought to 
 behold, and be conversant with it ? Perceive you not, said 
 she, that in beholding the beautiful with that eye with which 
 alone it is possible to behold it, thus and thus only could a 
 man ever attain to generate or bring forth not mere images 
 or semblances of virtue — for not with an imaore or semblance 
 does he converse — but the true and very things which 
 come of conversance with the True. Thus begetting 
 and nourishing true virtue would he not become dear to 
 the gods, and himself one of the immortals if ever man 
 was? 
 
 The doctrines which I have now delivered to you, 
 Phaedrus, and to the rest of my friends here, I was taught 
 by Diotima, and am persuaded they are true. Full of this 
 persuasion myself I endeavour to persuade others, and to 
 show them that towards this great attainment human nature 
 will not easily find a better associate and helper than Love. 
 And therefore I insist that every man ought to pay honour 
 to Love, and I myself honour him and diligently serve him, 
 and exhort others to do the same. And not only now but 
 at all times, so far as in me lies, do I celebrate the power 
 and virtue of Love. — This speech, Phaedrus, you may 
 accept, if you choose, for an encomium on Love ; or if not, 
 call it anything else you please. 
 
 Socrates having thus spoken, the rest praised his oration, 
 but Aristophanes endeavoured to say something because 
 Socrates in his speech had mentioned him. On a sudden, 
 however, a loud knocking was heard at the door of the 
 porch, together with the voices of revellers and the sound of 
 the pipe. Upon this Agatho said to the servants. See who 
 are there, and if there is any one among them fit for this 
 company, call him in ; if not, say that we are no longer 
 drinking. Not long after this the voice of Alcibiades, who 
 was very much intoxicated, was heard in the court, shouting, 
 and asking where Agatho was, and commanding to be led 
 to him. The flute-girl, therefore, on whom he leaned, and 
 some of his friends, brought him to Agatho, and stood with 
 him at the doors, he being crowned with a heavy garland 
 
THE BANQUET 93 
 
 of ivy and violets, having many fillets on his head, and 
 exclaiming, All hail, my friends! Either receive as your 
 associate in drinking a man very much intoxicated, or let 
 us depart, crowning Agatho alone, for whose sake we came. 
 For I could not, says he, be with you yesterday ; but now I 
 come with fillets on my head, that from my own I may 
 crown the head of the wisest and most beautiful person, if I 
 may be allowed so to speak. Do you therefore laugh at me 
 as one intoxicated? However, though you may laugh, I 
 know well that I speak the truth. But tell me at once 
 whether I may come in to him as I am or not ? Will you 
 drink with me or not ? And then there was a great 
 shouting and bidding him to come in and lie down, and 
 Agatho invited him. And so he came in, led by his friends; 
 and as he was taking off his fillets to crown Agatho he held 
 them before his eyes so that he did not perceive Socrates ; 
 and he sat down in the middle between Socrates and 
 Agatho, Socrates making room for him. Alcibiades then, 
 being seated, saluted and crowned Agatho, and then 
 Agatho said, Boys, take off the shoes of Alcibiades that he 
 may recline as the third among us. Alcibiades said. By 
 all means ; but who is this third drinking companion of 
 ours ? and at once turning himself round saw Socrates ; but 
 seeing him he started and exclaimed, O Herakles ! what is 
 this? Are you again sitting hereto ensnare me? as it is 
 usual for you to appear suddenly where I least expected to 
 find you. And now for what purpose are you here ? And 
 why do you lie on this couch, and not by Aristophanes, or 
 some other person who makes it a study to be jocose? 
 But instead you have contrived to sit with the handsomest 
 person in the room. 
 
 And Socrates said to Agatho, See if you can assist me ; 
 for the love of this man has become no trifling thing to me; 
 since from the time when I began to be his friend I am no 
 longer at hberty either to behold or speak to any other 
 beautiful person ; or if I do, there is nothing he will not do 
 from jealousy and envy, and he reviles me and will scarcely 
 keep his hands from me. Restrain him now and conciliate 
 
c)4 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 us, or if he should attempt violence assist me; for I am 
 greatly alarmed at this mad passion of his. 
 
 Alcibiades then said, There shall be no conciliation 
 between you and me. At some other time, however, I 
 shall take vengeance on you for these things. But now, 
 Agatho, says he, give me some of your fillets that I may 
 crown the wonderful head of this man, that he may not 
 blame me for crowning you, but not him, who vanquishes 
 all men in discourse, not only lately, as you have done, 
 but at all times. And at the same time receiving the fillet, 
 he crowned Socrates, and lay down again. 
 
 And when he had lain down he cried, Come, gentlemen, 
 drink, for you appear to be sober. This is not to be 
 allowed; it was agreed we should drink. I therefore 
 choose myself to be the master of the feast till you have 
 drunk enough. Agatho ! pass the cup, if you have a large 
 one. Or rather. Bring hither, boy, said he, that cooling 
 vessel, which seems to hold more than four pints. Having 
 filled this vessel, he first drank himself, and afterwards 
 ordered them to fill it up for Socrates, and at the same 
 time said. This stratagem of mine, gentlemen, is nothing 
 to Socrates ; for let him drink as much as any one may 
 command, he will not be in the least intoxicated. Socrates 
 therefore, when the boy had filled the vessel, drank. But 
 then Eryximachus said. How shall we do, Alcibiades ? 
 Shall we neither say nor sing anything over the cup, but 
 drink away as if we were thirsty ? 
 
 And Alcibiades said, Hail, Eryximachus ! best of men, 
 sprung from the best and wisest of fathers. 
 
 And hail to you, said Eryximachus. But what shall 
 we do? 
 
 Whatever you tell us, said Alcibiades, for we must all 
 obey you. As Homer says, " One physician is worth a 
 host of other men." Command, therefore, whatever you 
 please. 
 
 Hear, then, said Eryximachus. Before you came in it 
 seemed to us to be proper that every one, beginning at 
 the right hand, should deliver an oration in praise of Love, 
 
THE BANQUET, 95 
 
 to the best of his ability. All the rest of us, therefore, 
 have delivered our orations ; and it is just, since you have 
 not spoken, but have drunk, that you should also deliver 
 one : and when you have spoken, you may order Socrates 
 to do whatever you please, and he may also order him 
 on his right hand, and in a similar manner with respect to 
 the rest. 
 
 Alcibiades then said, You speak well, Eryximachus ; but 
 it is not equitable that a man intoxicated should engage in 
 a competition of eloquence with those that are sober. But, 
 O blessed man, tell me if you believe all that Socrates has 
 just now been saying ? Or do you know that it is just the 
 contrary ? For if I, he being present, should praise any 
 one, whether god or man, except himself, he would not 
 keep his hands from me. 
 
 Hold your tongue, said Socrates. 
 
 By Poseidon, said Alcibiades, do not contradict me — • 
 there is no one else I would praise in your presence. 
 
 Do so then, said Eryximachus. Praise Socrates, if you 
 will. 
 
 How do you say? said Alcibiades. Shall I, O Eryxi- 
 machus, attack him and revenge myself before you ? 
 
 So then, said Socrates, what have you in your mind ? 
 Will you praise me by ridiculing me, or what will you 
 do? 
 
 I shall speak the truth, said Alcibiades, if you will permit 
 me. 
 
 Indeed, said Socrates, I not only permit but command 
 you to speak the truth. 
 
 I shall begin at once then, said Alcibiades. But observe, 
 
 Socrates, if I should assert anything that is not true, stop 
 me when you please and say that in this I have spoken 
 falsely ; for I shall not willingly lie in anything. But if 
 
 1 tell things anyhow, as I happen to remember them, do 
 not be surprised, for it is no easy matter for a man as 
 drunk as I am to give a fair and orderly account of thy 
 wonderful nature. 
 
 This, gentlemen, is the way I shall endeavour to praise 
 
9^ SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 Socrates, — through images. He, indeed, will perhaps sus- 
 pect that I am ridiculing him — but my image will be for 
 the sake of truth, and not for the sake of the ridiculous. 
 I say then that Socrates most resembles those Silenuses 
 that are seated in the workshops of statuaries, which the 
 artists have fabricated with pipes or flutes in their hands ; 
 and which, when one opens them, disclose the images of 
 the gods which they contain inside. And again I say that 
 he resembles the satyr Marsyas. That your outward form 
 is similar to these, O Socrates, even you yourself will not 
 deny; but that you also resemble them in other things, 
 hear in the next place. You are contumelious : or are you 
 not? For, if you do not acknowledge it, I will bring 
 witnesses. Are you not also a flute-player ? Yea, and one 
 much more wonderful than Marsyas. For he charmed men 
 through instruments, by a power proceeding from the 
 mouth ; and he also accomplishes this even now, when 
 any one uses his melodies. For I call the melodies of 
 Olympus Marsyan, because he learned them from Marsyas. 
 Those melodies, whether produced by a good player or 
 by some common flute-girl, alone lay hold of the hearers, 
 and manifest, because they are divine, those that stand in 
 need of the gods and the Mysteries. But you in this 
 respect only differ from that harmony, that you effect this 
 very same thing by mere words without instruments. We, 
 too, when we hear some other person relating the discourse 
 of another, though he that relates it should be a very good 
 rhetorician, yet we pay, as I may say, no attention to it; 
 but when any one hears you, or another person relating 
 your discourses, though he that repeats them should be a 
 very bad speaker, and whether it be a woman or a man or 
 a lad that is the auditor, we are astonished and possessed. 
 And I, my friends, unless I were afraid of seeming to be 
 very much intoxicated, would tell you upon oath in what 
 manner I have been affected by the discourses of this man, 
 and am affected even now. For when I hear him, my heart 
 leaps much more than that of those who celebrate the 
 mysteries of the Corybantes; and my tears flow at his 
 
THE BANQUET. 97 
 
 discourses. I also see very many others affected in the 
 same manner. When I hear Pericles or other good 
 rhetoricians, I think, indeed, that they speak well, but I 
 suffer nothing of this kind ; nor is my soul agitated with 
 tumult, nor is it indignant as if it felt its servile condition. 
 But by this Marsyas I am often so affected, that it appears 
 to me I ought not to live while I lead such a life as I do. 
 You will not, Socrates, say that these things are not true. 
 And even now I perceive that, if I were willing to listen to 
 him, I could not bear it, but should be affected in the very 
 same manner. For he would compel me to acknowledge 
 that, being yet deficient in many things, I neglect myself 
 and attend to the affairs of the Athenians. By violence, 
 therefore, restraining my ears, I depart from him, flying as 
 it were from the Sirens, lest I should sit at his feet till I 
 became old. From him alone, likewise, of all men I have 
 suffered that which no one would think to be in me : he 
 has made me ashamed. But I am ashamed before him 
 alone. For I am conscious that I am unable to refute him, 
 that what he exhorts me not to do ought not to be done ; but 
 when I depart from him I am vanquished by the honour 
 which I receive from the multitude. I therefore avoid 
 and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed 
 of what I have confessed to him. And often, indeed, 
 it would be a pleasure to me no longer to see him 
 among men ; and yet again, if this should happen, I 
 well know that I should be in a much greater degree 
 afflicted ; so that I am ignorant in what manner I should 
 use this man. 
 
 And from the pipings of this satyr both I and many 
 others have suffered such-like things. But hear from me 
 how much he resembles the things I likened him to, 
 and w^hat a wonderful power he possesses. For be w-ell 
 assured of this, that no one of you knows him ; but I will 
 manifest him, since I have begun to speak. You see that 
 he is impassioned about beautiful persons, and he is always 
 with them and struck with them. And again he is "ignorant 
 of all things" and "knows nothing," as he pretends. Is 
 
 7 
 
98 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 not this Silenical ? Yea in truth, for it is his external 
 vesture, Hke a carved Silenus; but when he is opened 
 inwardly, would you think, O my fellow-guests, how replete 
 he is with virtue! Know also that neither if any one is 
 beautiful does he care anything about that, but despises it 
 more profoundly than any one could conceive ; and the 
 same with riches or any other distinction prized by the 
 multitude. But he thinks all these possessions are of no 
 worth, and that we are nothing, and he passes the whole of 
 his life among us in irony and jest. But when he is serious, 
 and is opened, I know not whether any one of you has seen 
 the images which are within. But I have seen them, and 
 they appeared to me so divine, golden, all-beautiful, and 
 wonderful, that I was ready to do in an instant whatever 
 Socrates might command. . . . 
 
 So I wandered about dubious, and more enslaved by 
 this man than any one by any other. And after this we 
 made the campaign against Potidaea together, where he and 
 I were messmates. And here, in the first place, he not 
 only surpassed me, but all others, in labours. And when 
 we were compelled through a deficiency in provisions to 
 fast, as is sometimes the case in a campaign, the rest were 
 nothing to him in respect to endurance. Again, in feasts 
 at the military table, he alone was the only person that 
 appeared to enjoy them ; and though he was unwilling to 
 drink, yet when compelled he vanquished all the rest. 
 And what is most wonderful of all, no one ever saw 
 Socrates intoxicated. This, I think, you will presently see 
 tested. But with respect to endurance in the severity of 
 the winter (for the winter there is very severe), he performed 
 wonders ; and once, the cold being so dreadful that no one 
 could venture out, or, if he did venture he was very abun- 
 dantly clothed, and had his feet bound and wrapt in wool 
 and sheep-skins, Socrates then went out with just the same 
 clothing as before this he was accustomed to wear. He 
 likewise marched through the ice without shoes more easily 
 than others with shoes. And the soldiers looked angrily at 
 him, as if he despised them. 
 
THE BANQUET. 99 
 
 And thus much for these particulars, but in Homer's 
 words, 
 
 ** All the heroic heart endured and did " 
 
 in that campaign it is worth while to hear. For thinking 
 deeply about something one morning, he stood still con- 
 sidering it, and when he could not come to a conclusion 
 about it he would not desist, but stood exploring. It was 
 now mid-day, and the soldiers perceived him, and wondered, 
 and said one to the other that Socrates had stood from the 
 morning cogitating. At length when it was evening some 
 of the Ionian soldiers having supped laid themselves down 
 (for it was then summer) on the bare ground, that they 
 might observe whether he continued in the same posture 
 through the night. But he stood till it was morning and 
 the sun rose ; after which, having worshipped the sun, he 
 departed. If you are also willing, hear how he conducted 
 himself in battle; for it is but just to relate this. For in 
 that engagement on the occasion of which the commanders 
 of the army conferred on me those rewards which are 
 usually given to such as have conducted themselves best in 
 battle, no other man saved me than Socrates ; for, as I was 
 wounded, he was not willing to leave me, but saved both 
 my arms and me. And I indeed, O Socrates, at that time 
 urged the commanders to give you the rewards which are 
 bestowed on the most valiant ; and for saying this you 
 neither blame me nor accuse me of speaking falsely. The 
 commanders, however, looking to my rank, wished me to 
 receive those rewards; and you also were more desirous 
 that I should receive them than yourself. 
 
 Further still, O fellow-guests, it was well worth while to 
 behold Socrates when our army fled from Delium ; for I 
 happened to be in that battle among the cavalry, but 
 Socrates was among the foot. The ranks, then, being 
 broken he and Laches retreated ; and I meeting with and 
 seeing the troops, immediately exhorted them to take 
 courage, and said that I would not abandon them. Here I 
 could see Socrates better than at Potidaea ; for I was in 
 
100 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 less fear, because I was on horseback. In the first place, 
 then, he greatly surpassed Laches in prudent caution ; and 
 in the next place, he appeared to me, O Aristophanes, if I 
 may quote that verse of yours, to bear himself just the same 
 there as here;^ striding along and rolling his eyes around 
 he calmly surveyed both friends and enemies ; so that it 
 was manifest to every one, even at a considerable distance, 
 that he who touched this man would be very strenuously 
 resisted. Hence both he and his companion retreated with 
 security ; for scarcely is any one attacked who thus con- 
 ducts himself in battle, but they pursue those that fly 
 rapidly and in disorder. 
 
 There are many other things, indeed, in which Socrates 
 is admirable and for which he might be praised. And in 
 some one or other of his ways others perhaps may merit 
 the same praise, but to resemble no other man neither of 
 the ancients nor the moderns, this is a circumstance worthy 
 of all wonder. For such as Achilles was, such also, it may 
 be conjectured, was Brasidas, and others ; and again, such 
 as Pericles was, such also it may be said were Antenor and 
 Nestor. And there are likewise others that after the same 
 manner may be compared with others. But such a prodigy 
 is this man, both as to himself and his discourses, that no 
 one by searching will find any man that nearly resembles 
 him, neither among those of the present age nor among 
 the ancients. He can, therefore, only be said to resemble, 
 both in himself and his discourses, those things to which I 
 have compared him, viz., no one among men, but the 
 Silenuses and Satyrs. For I omitted to mention this before, 
 that his discourses are most similar to the Silenuses when 
 opened. For the discourses of Socrates, to him who is 
 willing to hear them, will at first appear to be perfectly 
 ridiculous ; since he clothes himself in words and language 
 like the skin of a reviling Satyr. For he speaks of pack- 
 asses, of coppersmiths, shoemakers and tanners, and he is 
 
 ^ Said, in the Frogs of Aristophanes, of Sophocles in the under- 
 world. The description of Socrates striding and rolling his eyes is 
 quoted from the Clouds of Aristophanes. 
 
THE BANQUET. loi 
 
 always saying the same things in the same words, so that 
 every inexperienced and ignorant man will ridicule his dis- 
 courses. But he who beholds these discourses when opened, 
 who penetrates into their depth, will, in the first place, find 
 that they alone of all other discourses contain intellect 
 within them ; and in the next place that they are most 
 divine, and are full of images of virtue, and have a very 
 ample extent, or rather extend themselves to everything 
 which it is fit he should consider who intends to become a 
 truly worthy man. 
 
 These then are the things, my fellow-guests, for which I 
 praise and also for which I blame Socrates. I have like- 
 wise inserted in them the injuries which he has done me. 
 Nor has he acted in this manner towards me alone, but also 
 towards Charmides the son of Glauco, Euthydemus the son 
 of Diodes, and very many others ; for he has deceived these, 
 pretending to admire them, when at the same time he made 
 them admire and adore him. Hence I caution you, O 
 Agatho, not to be deceived by this man, but knowing what 
 I have suffered, take care, and do not, as the proverb says 
 of fools, become wise by experience. 
 
 Aristodemus related, that when Alcibiadcs had thus 
 spoken, his outburst excited a general laugh, because he 
 appeared to be still an adorer of Socrates. Socrates there- 
 fore said, You seem to me, O Alcibiades, to be sober ; for, 
 otherwise, you would not have attempted in so eloquent 
 and circuitous a manner to conceal that for the sake of 
 which you have said all these things ; and which you have 
 brought in at the end as if it had nothing to do with the 
 main purpose. Your object is to separate me and Agatho : 
 for you think that I ought to care for nobody but you, and 
 that nobody but you ought to care for Agatho. But you 
 have not escaped detection, and this Satyric and Silenic 
 drama is perfectly clear to us. But, dear Agatho, may 
 none of these contrivances succeed ! and let us endeavour 
 that nothing may come between you and me. 
 
 To this Agatho rei)lied. Indeed, Socrates, you appear to 
 speak the truth ; and I infer that he sits between you and 
 
I02 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 me in order to separate us. He will however derive no 
 advantage from this ; for I will come and sit next to you. 
 
 By all means, said Socrates, come hither and sit below 
 me. 
 
 O Zeus ! Alcibiades exclaimed, how much do I suffer 
 from this man ! He thinks it necessary to thwart me in 
 everything; but O wonderful man, suffer Agatho, at least, 
 to sit between us. 
 
 It is impossible, said Socrates : for you have praised me, 
 and I must now praise him who sits on my right hand. If 
 therefore Agatho sit below you he certainly will not praise 
 me again, when he ought rather to be praised by me. But 
 cease, my friend, and do not envy my praise of the lad, for 
 I very much desire to make an encomium on him. 
 
 Excellent ! excellent ! cried Agatho to Alcibiades : I will 
 not stay here a moment when I have such reason to change 
 my place, that I may be praised by Socrates. 
 
 After this Agatho rose, that he might sit by Socrates : 
 but on a sudden many revellers came to the gates, and 
 finding them open in consequence of some one having 
 gone out, they entered and seated themselves. Hence all 
 things were full of tumult; and as there was no longer 
 any order observed, every one was compelled to drink a 
 great quantity of wine. Aristodemus therefore said that 
 Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and some others, went home, and 
 thst he fell asleep, and slept there very abundantly, the 
 nights being long ; and awoke about daybreak, the cocks 
 then crowing. When he had awakened he saw that some 
 of the guests were asleep, and that others had departed ; 
 but that Agatho, Aristophanes, and Socrates were the only 
 persons awake and were drinking to the right hand out of a 
 great bowl. He also added that Socrates was arguing with 
 them, and that he did not recollect much of what it was 
 about, as he was not at the beginning of the discussion, 
 and was only half awake. However, the sum of it, he said, 
 was this, that Socrates was compelling them to acknowledge 
 that it was the province of the same person to compose 
 comedy and tragedy ; and that he who was a tragic artist 
 
THE BANQUET. 16^ 
 
 was a comic artist too. To these things they assented by 
 compulsion, not attending much to the argument, for they 
 were sleepy. And then Aristophanes fell asleep first, and 
 afterwards, it being now day, Agatho ; but Socrates, having 
 laid them to sleep, rose and went away, Aristodemus 
 following him as usual. And Socrates went to the Lyceum, 
 and, having bathed there, spent the rest of the day as 
 usual : and in the evening went home to rest. 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 
 
 spoken on his Trial before the Court of the Heliaa. 
 
 I KNOW not, O Athenians, how you may hav« been affected 
 by my accusers : I indeed have through them almost for- 
 gotten myself, so persuasively have they spoken ; though, 
 as I may say, they have not asserted anything which is true. 
 But among the multitude of their false assertions I am 
 most surprised at this, in which they say that you ought to 
 beware of being deceived by me, as if I were an eloquent 
 speaker. For that they should not be ashamed of asserting 
 that which facts will immediately confute, since in the 
 present instance I shall appear to you to be by no means 
 eloquent, — this seems to me to be the consummation of 
 impudence ; unless they call him eloquent who speaks the 
 truth. For, if they assert this, I shall indeed acknowledge 
 myself to be a rhetorician, though not according to theii 
 conceptions. They have not then, as I said, asserted any- 
 thing which is true; but from me you will hear all the truth. 
 Not, by Zeus, O Athenians, that you will hear from me a 
 discourse splendidly decorated with words and phrases, and 
 adorned in other respects, like the harangues of these men; 
 but you will hear me speaking in such language as may 
 casually present itself. For I am confident that what I say 
 will be just, nor let any one of you expect it will be other- 
 wise : for it does not become one of my age to come 
 before you like a lad with a studied discourse. And, 
 indeed, I very much request and beseech you, O Atlienians, 
 that if you should hear me apologising in the same terms 
 and modes of expression which I am accustomed to use in 
 the Forum, on the Exchange and Public Banks, and in 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 105 
 
 other places, where many of you have heard me, — that you 
 will neither wonder nor be disturbed on this account ; for 
 the case is as follows : — I now for the first time come before 
 this tribunal, though I am more than seventy years old ; and 
 consequently I am a stranger to the mode of speaking which 
 is here adopted. As, therefore, if I were in reality a 
 foreigner, you would pardon me for using the language and 
 the manner in which I had been educated, so now I request 
 you, and this justly, as it appears to me, to suffer the mode 
 of my diction, whether it be better or worse ; and to attend 
 to this, whether I speak what is just or not : for this is the 
 virtue of a judge, as that of an orator is to speak the truth. 
 
 In the first place, therefore, O Athenians, it is just that I 
 should answer the first false accusations of me, and my first 
 accusers, and afterwards the latter accusations, and the 
 latter accusers. For many have been accusers of me to 
 you for many years, and who have asserted nothing true, of 
 whom I am more afraid than of Anytus and his accom- 
 plices, though these indeed are powerful in persuading ; but 
 those are still more so, who, having been conversant with 
 many of you from infancy, have persuaded you, and accused 
 me falsely. For they have said, that there is one Socrates, a 
 wise man, studious of things on high, and exploring every- 
 thing under the earth, and who also can make the worse 
 appear the better argument. These men, O Athenians, 
 who spread this report are my dire accusers. For those 
 who hear it think that such as investigate these things do 
 not believe that there are gods. In the next place, these 
 accusers are numerous, and have accused me for a long 
 time. They also said these things to you in that age in 
 which you would most readily believe them, some of you 
 being boys and lads ; and they accused me unchallenged, 
 there being no one to speak in my defence. But that 
 which is most irrational of all is this, that neither is it 
 possible to know and tell their names, except some one of 
 them should be a comic poet. Such however as have per- 
 suaded you by employing envy and calumny, together with 
 those who, being persuaded themselves, have persuaded 
 
io6 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 others, — with respect to all these, the method to be adopted 
 is most dubious. For it is not possible to call them to 
 account here before you, nor to confute any one of them ; 
 but it is necessary, as if fighting with shadows, to make my 
 defence and refutation without any to answer me. Consider, 
 therefore, as I have said that my accusers are twofold, some 
 having accused me lately, and others formerly ; and think 
 that it is necessary I should answer the latter of these 
 first ; for you also have heard these my accusers, and much 
 more than you have those by whom I have been recently 
 accused. Be it so. I must defend myself then, O Athenians, 
 and endeavour in this so short a space of time to remove 
 from you the calumny which you have so long entertained. 
 I wish, therefore, that this my defence may effect something 
 better both for you and me, and that it may contribute to 
 some more important end. I think however that it will be 
 attended with difficulty, and I am not entirely ignorant what 
 the difficulty is. At the same time let this terminate as 
 Divinity pleases. It is my business to obey the law, and to 
 make my apology. 
 
 Let us repeat, therefore, from the beginning what the 
 accusation was, the source of that calumny in which Melitus 
 confiding brought this charge against me. Be it so. What 
 then do my accusers say? For their accusation must 
 be formally recited as if given upon oath. It is this : 
 Socrates acts wickedly, and with criminal curiosity 
 investigates things under the earth, and in the 
 
 HEAVENS. He also MAKES THE WORSE TO APPEAR THE 
 BETTER ARGUMENT; AND HE TEACHES THESE THINGS TO 
 
 OTHERS. Such is the accusation : for things of this kind 
 you also have yourselves seen in the comedy of Aristo- 
 phanes;^ for there one Socrates is exhibited, who affirms 
 that he walks upon the air, and idly asserts many other 
 trifles of this nature; of which things however I neither 
 know much nor little. Nor do I say this as despising such 
 a science, if there be any one wise about things of this 
 
 ^ See the Clouds of that poet, ver, \\2 et seq. et ver. i88. 
 
THE APOLOG V OF SOCRATES. 107 
 
 kind, lest Melitus should charge mc with this as a new 
 crime, but because, O Athenians, I have no such knowledge. 
 I adduce many of you as witnesses of this, and I call upon 
 such of you as have at any time heard me discoursing, and 
 there are many such among you, to teach and declare to 
 each other if you have ever heard me speak much or little 
 about things of this kind. And from this you may know 
 that other things also, which the multitude assert of me, are 
 all of them of a similar nature : for no one of them is true. 
 For neither if you have heard any one assert that I attempt 
 to teach men, and that I make money by so doing, — neither 
 is this true. This indeed appears to me to be a beautiful 
 thing, if some one is able to instruct men, like Gorgias the 
 Leontine, Prodicus the Cean, and Hippias the Elean. For 
 each of these, in the several cities which he visits, has the 
 power of persuading the young men, who are permitted to 
 apply themselves to such of their own countrymen as they 
 please without any charge, to adhere to them only, and to 
 give them money and thanks besides for their instruction. 
 There is also another wise man, a Parian, who I hear has 
 arrived hither. For it happened that I once met with a 
 man who spends more money on the sophists than all 
 others, — I mean Callias the son of Hipponicus. I there- 
 fore asked him, for he has two sons, O Callias, said I, if 
 your two sons were two colts or calves, should we not have 
 some one to take care of them, who w^ould be paid for 
 so doing, and who would make them beautiful, and the 
 possessors of such good qualities as belong to their nature ? 
 But now, since your sons are men, what master do you 
 intend to have for them ? Who is there that is scientifically 
 knowing in human and political virtue of this kind ? For 
 I think that you have considered this, since you have sons. 
 Is there such a one, said I, or not ? There certainly is, he 
 replied. Who is he ? said I. And whence is he ? And 
 for how much money does he teach ? It is Evenus the 
 Parian, said he, Socrates, and he teaches for five mina^ 
 k£i^^)- ^^^^ I indeed considered Evenus to be a happy 
 and fortunate man, if he in reality possesses this art, and so 
 
io8 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 elegantly teaches. I therefore should also glory and think 
 highly of myself, if I had a scientific knowledge of these 
 things; but this, O Athenians, is certainly not the case. 
 
 Perhaps, however, some one may reply : But, Socrates, 
 what have you done then ? Whence have these calumnies 
 against you arisen ? For unless you had more curiously 
 employed yourself than others, and had done something 
 different from the multitude, so great a rumour would never 
 have been raised against you. Tell us, therefore, what it 
 is, that we may not pass an unadvised sentence against 
 you. He who says these things appears to me to speak 
 justly, and I will endeavour to show you what that is which 
 has occasioned me this appellation and calumny. Hear, 
 therefore; and though perhaps I shall appear to some of 
 you to jest, yet be well assured that I shall tell you all 
 the truth. For I, O Athenians, have acquired this name 
 through nothing else than a certain wisdom. But of what 
 kind is this wisdom ? Perhaps it is human wisdom. For 
 this in reality I appear to possess. Those indeed whom I 
 just now mentioned possessed perhaps more than human 
 wisdom, which I know not how to denominate : for I have 
 no knowledge of it. And whoever says that I have, 
 speaks falsely, and asserts this to calumniate me. But, 
 O Athenians, be not disturbed if I appear to speak some- 
 what magnificently of myself. For this w^hich I say is 
 not my own assertion, but I shall refer it to one who is 
 considered by you as worthy of belief. For I shall adduce 
 to you the Delphic ]3eity himself as a testimony of my 
 wisdom, if I have any, and of the quality it possesses. 
 You certainly then know Chierepho : he was my associate 
 from a youlh, was familiar with most of you, and accom- 
 panied you in and returned with you from your exile. 
 You know, therefore, what kind of a man Chserepho was, 
 and how eager in all his undertakings. He then, coming 
 to Delphi, had the boldness to consult the oracle about 
 this particular. Be not, as I said, O Athenians, disturbed: 
 for he asked if there was any one more wise than I am. 
 And the Pythian priestess answered that there was not 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES, 109 
 
 any one more wise. His brother can testify to you the 
 truth of these things ; for Chaerepho himself is dead. 
 
 Consider then on what account I assert these things : for 
 I am going to inform you whence this calumny against me 
 arose. When I heard this answer of the oracle, I thus 
 considered with myself, What does the God say ? and 
 what does he obscurely signify ? For I am not conscious 
 to myself that 1 am wise, either in a great or in a small 
 degree. What then does he mean in saying that I am 
 most wise ? For he does not lie, since that is not possible 
 to him. And for a long time, indeed, I was dubious what 
 he could mean. Afterwards with considerable difficulty I 
 betook myself to the following mode of investigating his 
 meaning. I went to one of those who appear to be wise 
 men, that here if anywhere I might confute the prediction, 
 and evince to the oracle that this man was more wise than 
 I. Surveying, therefore, this man (for there is no occasion 
 to mention his name, but he was a politician); while I 
 beheld him and discoursed with him, it so happened, O 
 Athenians, that this man appeared to me to be wise in the 
 opinion of many other men, and especially in his own, but 
 that he was not so. And afterwards I endeavoured to 
 show him that he fancied himself to be wise, but was not. 
 Hence I became odious to him, and also to many others 
 that were present. Departing, therefore, I reasoned with 
 myself that I was wiser than this man. For it appears that 
 neither of us knows anything beautiful or good : but he 
 indeed not knowing, thinks that he knows something ; 
 but I, as I do not know anything, neither do I think that 
 I know. Hence in this trifling particular I appear to be 
 wiser than he, because I do not thmk that I know things 
 which I do not know. After this I went to another of 
 those who appeared to be wiser than he was ; and of him 
 also I formed the same opinion. Hence also I became 
 odious to him and many others. 
 
 Afterwards, however, I went to others, suspecting and 
 grieving and fearing that I should make enemies. At the 
 same time, however, it appeared to me to be necessary 
 
no SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 to pay the greatest attention to the oracle of the God, and 
 that, considering what could be its meaning, I should go to 
 all that appeared to possess any knowledge. And by the 
 Dog, O Athenians (for it is necessary to tell you the truth), 
 that which happened to me was as follows : — Those that 
 were most celebrated for their wisdom appeared to me to 
 be most remote from it; but others who were considered as 
 far inferior to them possessed more of intellect. But it is 
 necessary to relate to you my wandering, and the labours 
 as it were which I endured, that the oracle might become to 
 me unconfuted. For after the politicians I went to the 
 poets both tragic and dithyrambic, and also others, expect- 
 ing that I should here immediately find myself to be less wise 
 than these. Taking up, therefore, some of their poems 
 which appeared to me to be the most elaborately written, 
 I asked them what was their meaning, that at the same 
 time I might learn something from them. I am ashamed 
 indeed, O Athenians, to tell you the truth; but at the same 
 time it must be told. For, as I may say, all that were 
 present would have spoken better about the things which they 
 had composed. I discovered this, therefore, in a short 
 time concerning the poets, that they did not effect by 
 wisdom that which they did, but by a certain genius and 
 from enthusiastic energy, like prophets and those that utter 
 oracles. For these also say many and beautiful things, but 
 they understand nothing of what they say. Poets, there- 
 fore, appeared to me to be affected in a similar manner. 
 And at the same time I perceived that they considered 
 themselves, on account of their poetry, to be the wisest 
 of men in other things, in which they were not so. I 
 departed, therefore, also from them, thinking that I sur- 
 passed them by the very same thing in which I surpassed 
 the politicians. 
 
 In the last place, therefore, I went to the artificers. For 
 I was conscious to myself that I knew nothing, as I may 
 say, but that these men possessed knowledge, because I 
 had found them acquainted with many and beautiful things. 
 And in this indeed I was not deceived ; for they knew 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. iii 
 
 things which I did not, and in this they were wiser than 
 I. But, O Athenians, good artificers also appeared to me 
 to have the same fault as the poets. For each, in conse- 
 quence of performing well in his art, thought that he was 
 also most wise in other things, and those the greatest. And 
 this their error obscured that very wisdom which they did 
 possess. I therefore asked myself in behalf of the oracle, 
 whether I would choose to be as I am, possessing no part 
 either of their wisdom or ignorance, or to have both which 
 they possess. I answered, therefore, for myself and for the 
 oracle, that it was better for me to be as I am. 
 
 From this my investigation, O Athenians, many enmities 
 were excited against me, and such as were most grievous 
 and weighty, so that many calumnies were produced from 
 them ; and hence I obtained the appellation of the wise 
 ma?i. For those that hear me think that I am wise in 
 these things, the ignorance of which I expose in others. 
 It appears, however, O Athenians, that Divinity is wise in 
 reality, and that in this oracle he says this, that human 
 wisdom 1 is but of little, or indeed of no worth; and it 
 seems that he used my name, making me an example, as if 
 he had said. He, O men, is the wisest among you, who, 
 like Socrates, kfwws that he is in reality of no worth with 
 respect to wisdom. These things, therefore, going about, 
 I even now inquire and explore in obedience to the God, 
 both among citizens and strangers, if any one of them 
 appears to me to be wise; and when I find he is not, 
 giving assistance to the (lod, I demonstrate that he is not 
 wise. And in consequence of this employment I have 
 no leisure worth mentioning either for public or private 
 transactions ; but I am in great poverty through my 
 religious cultivation of the God. 
 
 Besides, the youth that spontaneously follow me, who 
 especially abound in leisure, as being the sons of the most 
 
 ^ This is the key to the profound meaning of Socrates when he 
 said that he knew that he knew nothing. For, as I have elsewliere 
 observed, he only intended by this to signify the nothingness of liuman 
 when comparctl with divine knowledge. — Taylor. 
 
1 1 2 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 wealthy, rejoice on hearing men confuted by me ; and 
 often imitating me, they afterwards endeavour to make 
 trial of others. In which attempt I think they find a 
 numerous multitude of men who fancy that they know 
 something, but who know little or nothing. Hence, there- 
 fore, those who are tried by them are angry with me, and 
 not with them, and say that there is one Socrates a most 
 wicked person, and who corrupts the youtL And when 
 some one asks them what he does, and what he teaches, 
 they have nothing to say, but are ignorant. That they 
 may not, however, appear to be dubious, they assert things 
 which may be readily adduced against all that philosophise, 
 as, that he explores things on high and under the earth, 
 that he does not think there are gods, and that he makes 
 the worse to appear the better reason. For 1 think they 
 are not willing to speak the truth, that they clearly pretend 
 to be knowing, but know nothing. Hence, as it appears 
 to me, being ambitious and vehement and numerous, and 
 speaking in a united and plausible manner about me, they 
 fill your ears, calumniating me violently from old time 
 even till now. Among these, Melitus, Anytus, and Lycon, 
 have attacked me; Melitus indeed being my enemy on 
 account of the poets ; but Anytus on account of the 
 artificers and politicians ; and Lycon on account of the 
 orators. So that, as I said in the beginning, I should 
 wonder if I could remove such an abundant calumny from 
 your minds in so short a time. These things, O Athenians, 
 are true; and I thus speak, neither concealing nor subtract- 
 ing any thing from you, either great or small ; though I 
 know well enough that I shall make enemies by what I 
 have said. This, however, is an argument that I speak the 
 truth, that this is the calumny which is raised against me, 
 and that the causes of it are these. And whether now or 
 hereafter you investigate these things, you will find them 
 to be as I have said. Concerning the particulars, there- 
 fore, which my first accusers urged against me, let this be 
 a sufficient apology to you. 
 
 In the next place, I shall endeavour to reply to Melitus, 
 
THE APOLOG Y OF SOCRA TES. 1 1 3 
 
 that good man and lover of his country, as he says, 
 and also to my latter accusers. For again, as being 
 different from the former accusers, let us take their oath 
 also. The accusation then is as follows : Socrates, it 
 
 says, IS AN EVIL-DOER, CORRUPTING THE YOUTH ; AND, NOT 
 BELIEVING IN THOSE GODS IN WHICH THE CITY BELIEVES, 
 HE INTRODUCES OTHER NOVEL DEMONIACAL NATURES. 
 
 Such then is the accusation ; of which let us examine every 
 part. It says, then, that I do evil by corrupting the youth. 
 But I, O Athenians, say that Melitus does evil because he 
 intentionally trifles, rashly bringing men into danger, and 
 pretending to be studious and solicitous about things which 
 were never the objects of his care. But that this is the 
 case I will endeavour to show you. 
 
 Tell me then, O Melitus, whether you consider it as a 
 thing of the greatest consequence, for the youth to become 
 the best of men ? 
 
 I do. 
 
 Come, then, do you therefore tell them what will make 
 them better? For it is evident that you know, since it is the 
 object of your care. For, having found me to be a corrupter 
 of youth, as you say, you have brought me hither, and are 
 my accuser; but come, inform me who it is that makes 
 them better, and signify it to this assembly. Do you see, 
 O Melitus, that you are silent, and have not anything to 
 say ? Though, does it not appear to you to be shameful, 
 and a sufficient argument of what I say, that this is not the 
 object of your attention ? But tell me, O good man, who 
 it is that makes them better ? 
 
 The laws. 
 
 I do not, however, ask this, O best of men, but what 
 man it is that first knows this very thing, the laws. 
 
 These men, Socrates, are the judges. 
 
 How do you say, Melitus ? Do they know how to 
 instruct the youth, and to make them better ? 
 
 Especially so. 
 
 But whether do all of them know how ? or do some of 
 them know, and others not ? 
 
 8 
 
1 14 SELECTIONS FROM PL A TO, 
 
 All of them. 
 
 You speak well, by Hera, and adduce a great abundance 
 of those that benefit. But what? Can these auditors also 
 make the youth better, or not ? 
 
 These also. 
 
 And what of the senators ? 
 
 The senators also can effect this. 
 
 But, O Melitus, do some of those that harangue the 
 people in an assembly corrupt the more juvenile ; or do all 
 these make them better ? 
 
 All these. 
 
 All the Athenians therefore, as it seems, make them to 
 be worthy and good, except me, but I alone corrupt them. 
 Do you say so ? 
 
 These very things I strenuously assert. 
 
 You charge me with a very great infelicity. But answer 
 me : Does this also appear to you to be the case respecting 
 horses, viz., that all men can make them better, but that 
 there is only one person that spoils them ? or does the 
 perfect contrary of this take place, so that it is one person 
 who can make them better, or, at least, that those possessed 
 of equestrian skill are very few ; but the multitude, if they 
 meddle with and make use of horses, spoil them ? Is not 
 this the case, O Melitus, both with respect to horses and 
 all other animals ? It certainly is so, whether you and 
 Anytus say so, or not. For a great felicity would take 
 place concerning youth if only one person corrupted, and 
 the rest benefited them. However, you have sufficiently 
 shown, O Melitus, that you never bestowed any care upon 
 youth ; and you clearly evince your negligence, and that 
 you pay no attention to the particulars for which you 
 accuse me. 
 
 Further still, tell me, by Zeus, O Melitus, whether it is 
 better to dwell in good or in bad polities? Answer, my 
 friend : for I ask you nothing difficult. Do not the 
 depraved always procure some evil to those that continually 
 reside near them ; and do not the good procure some good? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
THE APOLOG Y OF SOCRA TES. 1 15 
 
 Is there then any one who wishes to be injured by his 
 associates, rather than to be benefited? Answer, O good 
 man : for the law orders you to answer. Is there any one 
 who wishes to be injured ? 
 
 There is not. 
 
 Come then, whether do you bring me hither, as one 
 that corrupts the youth, and makes them depraved wiUingly, 
 or as one who does this unwiUingly ? 
 
 I say that you do it wilHngly. 
 
 But what, O jMeHtus, is it possible that you, who are 
 so much younger than I am, should well know that the 
 depraved always procure some evil to those that are most 
 near to them, and the good some good ; but that I should 
 have arrived at such ignorance as not to know that, if I 
 make any one of my associates depraved, I shall be in 
 danger of receiving some evil from him ; and that I, there- 
 fore, do this so great an evil willingly, as you say? I 
 cannot be persuaded by you, O INIelitus, as to these things, 
 nor do I think that any other man would : but either I 
 do not corrupt the youth, or I corrupt them unwillingly. 
 So that you speak falsely in both assertions. But if I 
 unwillingly corrupt them, the law does not order me to be 
 brought hither for such-like involuntary offences, but that 
 I should be taken and privately taught and admonished. 
 For it is evident that, if I am taught better, I shall cease 
 doing that which I unwillingly do. But you, indeed, have 
 avoided me, and have not been willing to associate with 
 and instruct me ; but you have brought me hither, where 
 the law orders those who require punishment, and not 
 discipline, to be brought. Wherefore, O Athenians, this 
 now is manifest which I have said, that JMelitus never paid 
 the smallest attention to this affair. 
 
 At the same time, however, tell us, O Melitus, how you 
 say I corrupt the youth. Or is it not evident, from your 
 written accusation, that I teach them not to believe in the 
 gods in which the city believes, but in other new divine 
 powers? Do you not say that, teaching these things, I 
 corrupt the youth ? 
 
1 1 6 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO, 
 
 Perfectly so : I strenuously assert these things. 
 
 By those very gods, therefore, Melitus, of whom we 
 are now speaking, I charge you speak in a still clearer 
 manner both to me and to these men. For I cannot learn 
 whether you say that I teach them to think that there are 
 not certain gods, though I myself believe that there are gods, 
 not being by any means an atheist, nor in this respect an 
 evil-doer — not, indeed, such as the city believes in, but 
 others, and that this it is for which you accuse me, that I 
 introduce other gods ; or whether you altogether say that I 
 do not believe there are any gods, and that I teach this 
 doctrine also to others. 
 
 I say this, that you do not believe that there are any 
 gods. 
 
 O wonderful Melitus, why do you thus speak ? Do I 
 then think, unlike the rest of mankind, that the sun and 
 moon are not gods ? 
 
 He does not, by Zeus, O judges : for he says that the 
 sun is a stone, and that the moon is earth. 
 
 O friend Melitus, you think that you accuse Anaxagoras ; 
 and you so despise these judges, and think them to be so 
 illiterate, as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras the 
 Clazomenian are full of these assertions. Besides, would 
 the youth learn those things from me, which they might buy 
 for a drachma at most in the theatre,^ and thus might de- 
 ride Socrates if he pretended they were his own, especially 
 since they are likewise so absurd? But, by Zeus, do I 
 then appear to you to think that there is no God ? 
 
 None whatever, by Zeus. 
 
 What you say, O Melitus, is incredible, and, as it appears 
 to me, is so even to yourself. Indeed, O Athenians, this 
 man appears to me to be perfectly insolent and intemperate 
 in his speech, and to have in reality written this accusation, 
 impelled by a certain insolence, wantonness, and youthful- 
 ness. For he seems, as it were, to have composed an 
 senigma in order to try me, and to have said to himself, 
 
 ^ Euripides, and probably others, made the physical doctrines of 
 Anaxagoras current through the drama. 
 
THE APOLOG V OF SOCRA TES. 1 1 7 
 
 Will the wise Socrates know that I am jesting, and speaking 
 contrary to myself? Or shall I deceive him, together with 
 the other hearers? For he appears to me to contradict 
 himself in his accusation, as if he had said, Socrates is im- 
 pious in not believing that there are gods, but believing 
 that there are gods. And this, indeed, must be the asser- 
 tion of one in jest. 
 
 But let us jointly consider, O Athenians, how he appears 
 to me to have asserted these things. And do you, O 
 Melitus, answer us, and, as I requested you at first, be 
 mindful not to disturb me if I discourse after my usual 
 manner. Is there then any man, O Melitus, who thinks 
 that there are human affairs, but does not think that there are 
 men ? Pray answer me, and do not make these clamorous 
 digressions. And is there any one who does not think that 
 there are horses, but yet thinks that there are equestrian 
 affairs ? or who does not think that there are pipers, but 
 yet that there are things pertaining to pipers ? There is 
 not, O best of men. For I will speak for you, since 
 you are not willing to answer yourself But answer also 
 to this : Is there any one who thinks that there are 
 dasnioniacal affairs, but yet does not think that there are 
 daemons ? 
 
 There is not. 
 
 How averse you are to speak ! so that you scarcely 
 answer, compelled by the judges. Do you not, therefore, 
 say that I believe in and teach things daemoniacal, whether 
 they are new or old ? But indeed you acknowledge that I 
 believe in things daemoniacal, and to this you have sworn 
 in your accusation. If then I believe in daemoniacal affairs, 
 there is an abundant necessity that I should also believe in 
 the existence of daemons. Is it not so? It is. For I 
 suppose you to assent, since you do not answer. But 
 with respect to daemons, do we not think either that they 
 are gods, or the sons of gods ? Will you acknowledge 
 this or not ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 If, therefore, I believe that there arc demons as you say, 
 
I r 8 SELECTIONS FROM PL A TO. 
 
 if daemons are certain gods, will it not be as I say, that you 
 speak a:nigmatically and in jest, since you assert that I do 
 not think there are gods, and yet again think that there are, 
 since I believe in daemons ? But if daemons are certain 
 spurious sons of the gods, either from nymphs, or from 
 certain others, of whom they are said to be the offspring, what 
 man can believe that there are sons of the gods, and yet 
 that there are no gods ? For this would be just as absurd 
 as if some one should think that there are colts and mules, 
 but should not think that there are horses and asses. 
 However, O Melitus, it cannot be otherwise but that you 
 have written this accusation, either to try me, or because 
 there was not any crime of which you could truly accuse 
 me. For it is impossible that you should persuade any 
 man who has the smallest degree of intellect, that one and 
 the same person can believe that there are dsemoniacal and 
 divine affairs, and yet that there are neither daemons, nor 
 gods, nor heroes. That I am not, therefore, impious, O 
 Athenians, according to the accusation of Melitus, does not 
 appear to me to require a long apology ; but what I have 
 said is sufficient. 
 
 As to what I before observed, that there is a great 
 enmity towards me among the vulgar, you may be well 
 assured that it is true. And this it is which will condemn 
 me, if I should happen to be condemned, viz., the hatred 
 and envy of the multitude, and not Melitus, nor Anytus ; 
 which indeed has also happened to many others, and those 
 good men, and will, I think, again happen in futurity. For 
 there is no reason to expect that it will terminate in me. 
 Perhaps, however, some one will say. Are you not ashamed, 
 Socrates, to have applied yourself to a study through which 
 you are now in danger of being put to death ? To this 
 person I shall justly reply. That you do not speak well, 
 O man, if you think that life or death ought to be regarded 
 by the man who is capable of being useful though but in a 
 small degree ; and that he ought not to consider this alone 
 when he acts, whether he acts justly, or unjustly, and like a 
 good or a bad man. For those demi-gods that died at Troy 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 119 
 
 would, according to your reasoning, be vile characters, as 
 well others as the son of Thetis, who so much despised the 
 danger of death when compared with disgraceful conduct, 
 that when his mother, who was a goddess, on his desiring 
 to kill Hector, thus I think addressed him — My son, if you 
 revenge the slaughter of your friend Patroclus, and kill 
 Hector, you will yourself die, for, said she, death awaits 
 you as soon as Hector expires : — Notwithstanding this, he 
 considered the danger of death as a trifle, and much more 
 dreaded living basely, and not revenging his friends. For 
 he says. May I immcdiately-die, when I have inflicted just 
 punishment on him who has acted unjustly, and not stay 
 here by the curved ships an object of ridicule, and a 
 burden to the ground ? Do you think that he was 
 solicitous about death and danger ? For this, O Athe- 
 nians, is in reality the case : wherever any one ranks himself, 
 thinking it to be the best for him, or wherever he is ranked 
 by the ruler, there, as it appears to me, he ought to abide, 
 and encounter danger, neither regarding death nor anything 
 else before that which is base. 
 
 I therefore, O Athenians, should have acted in a vile 
 manner, if, when those rulers which you had placed over 
 me had assigned me a rank at Potidaea, at Amphipolis, 
 and at Delium, I should then have remained where they 
 stationed me, like any other man, and should have 
 encountered the danger of death ; but that, when Divinity 
 has ordered, as I think and apprehend, that I ought to 
 live philosophising, and exploring myself and others, I 
 should here, through fear of death, or any other thing, 
 desert my rank. For this would be vile : and then in 
 reality any one might justly bring me to a court of 
 judicature, and accuse me of not believing in the gods, in 
 consequence of not obeying the oracle, fearing death, and 
 thinking myself to be wise when I am not. For to dread 
 death, O Athenians, is nothing else than to appear to be 
 wise, without being so : since it is for a man to appear to 
 know that which he does not know. For no one knows 
 but that death may be to man the greatest of goods ; but 
 
120 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 they dread it, as if they well knew that it is the greatest of 
 evils. And how is it possible that this should not be the 
 most disgraceful ignorance, I mean for a man to imagine 
 that he has a knowledge of that of which he is ignorant ? 
 But I, O Athenians, differ perhaps in this from the 
 multitude of men ; and if I should say that I am wiser 
 than some one in anything, it would be in this, that not 
 having a sufficient knowledge of the things in Hades, I also 
 think that I have not this knowledge. But I know that to 
 act unjustly, and to be disobedient to one more excellent, 
 Avhether god or man, is evil and base. I shall never, 
 therefore, fear and avoid things which for aught I know 
 may be good, before those evils which I know to be evils. 
 So that neither if you should now dismiss me (being 
 unpersuaded by Anytus, who said that either I ought 
 not to have been brought hither at first, or that, 
 when brought hither, it was impossible not to put me 
 to death, telling you that if I escaped, all your sons 
 studying what Socrates had taught them would be cor- 
 rupted), if besides these things you should say to me, 
 O Socrates, we now indeed shall not be persuaded by 
 Anytus, but we shall dismiss you, though on this con- 
 dition, that afterwards you no longer bu.sy yourself with 
 this investigation, nor philosophise, and if hereafter you are 
 detected in so doing, you shall die, — if, as I said, you 
 should dismiss me on these terms, I should thus address 
 you : O Athenians, I honour and love you : but I obey 
 Divinity rather than you ; and as long as I breathe and am 
 able, I shall not cease to philosophise, and to exhort and 
 indicate to any one of you I may happen to meet, such 
 things as the following, after my usual manner : O best of 
 men, since you are an Athenian, of a city the greatest and 
 the most celebrated for wisdom and strength, are you not 
 ashamed of being attentive to the means of acquiring 
 riches, glory, and honour, in great abundance, but to 
 bestow no care nor any consideration upon prudence^ and 
 
 ^ Meaning intellccttial pnidefice, which is the contemplation of the 
 forms contained in intellect. — Taylor. 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. i2t 
 
 truth, nor how your soul may subsist in the most excellent 
 condition ? And if any one of you should contend with 
 me, and say that these things are the objects of his care, I 
 should not immediately dismiss him, nor depart, but I 
 should interrogate, explore, and reason with him. And if 
 he should not appear to me to possess virtue, and yet pre- 
 tend to the possession of it, I should reprove him as one 
 who but little esteems things of the greatest worth, but 
 considers things of a vile and abject nature as of great 
 importance. In this manner I should act by any one I 
 might happen to meet, whether younger or older, a stranger 
 or a citizen ; but rather to citizens, because ye are more 
 allied to me. For be well assured that Divinity commands 
 me thus to act. And I think that a greater good never 
 happened to you in the city, than this my obedience to the 
 will of Divinity. For I go about doing nothing else than 
 persuading both the younger and older among you, neither 
 to pay attention to the body, nor to riches, nor anything 
 else prior to the soul ; nor to be so much concerned for 
 anything, as how the soul may subsist in the most excellent 
 condition. I also say that virtue is not produced from 
 riches, but riches from virtue, as likewise all other human 
 goods, both privately and publicly. If, therefore, asserting 
 these things, I corrupt the youth, these things will be 
 noxious ; but if any one says that I assert other things than 
 these, he says what is untrue. In addition to this I shall 
 say, O Athenians, that whether you are persuaded by 
 Anytus or not, and whether you dismiss me or not, I shall 
 not act otherwise, even though I should die for it many 
 times. 
 
 Be not disturbed, O Athenians, but patiently hear what I 
 shall request of you ; for I think it will be advantageous for 
 you to hear. For I am about to mention certain other 
 things to you, at which perhaps you will be clamorous ; 
 though let this on no account take place. Be well assured 
 then, if you put me to death, being such a man as I say I 
 am, you will not injure me more than yourselves. For 
 neither IMelitus nor Anytus injures me ; for neither can 
 
T 2 2 SELECTIONS FROM PLA TO. 
 
 they. Indeed, I think it is not possible for a better to be 
 injured by a worse man. He may indeed perhaps con- 
 demn me to death, or exile, or disgrace ; and he or some 
 other may consider these as mighty evils. I however do 
 not think so ; but, in my opinion, it is much more an evil 
 to act as he now acts, who endeavours to put a man to 
 death unjustly. Now, therefore, O Athenians, it is far fron? 
 my intention to defend myself (as some one may think), 
 but I thus speak for your sake, lest in condemning me you 
 should sin against the gift of Divinity. For, if you should 
 put me to death, you will not easily find such another 
 (though the comparison is ridiculous) whom Divinity has 
 united to this city as to a great and generous horse, but 
 sluggish through his magnitude, and requiring to be excited 
 by some gadfly. In like manner Divinity appears to have 
 united such a one as I am to the city, that I might not 
 cease exciting, persuading, and reproving each of you, and 
 everywhere lighting upon you through the whole day. 
 Such another man will not easily arise among you. And if 
 you will be persuaded by me, you will spare me. Perhaps, 
 however, you, being indignant, like those who are awakened 
 from sleep, will repulse me, and, being persuaded by Anytus, 
 will inconsiderately put me to death. Should this be the 
 case, you will pass the rest of your time in sleep, unless 
 Divinity should send some other person to take care of 
 you. But that I am such a one as I have said, one 
 imparted to this city by Divinity, you may understand from 
 hence. For my conduct does not appear to be human, in 
 neglecting everything pertaining to myself and my private 
 affairs for so many years, and always attending to your con- 
 cerns, addressing each of you separately, like a father, or an 
 elder brother, and persuading you to the study of virtue. 
 And if indeed I had obtained any emolument from this 
 conduct, and receiving a recompense had exhorted you to 
 these things, there might be some reason for asserting that 
 I acted like other men ; but now behold, even my accusers 
 themselves, who have so shamelessly calumniated me in 
 everything else, have not been so impudent as to charge 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 123 
 
 me with this, or to bring witnesses to prove that I ever 
 either demanded or sohcited a reward. And that I speak 
 the truth, my poverty I think affords a sufficient testimony. 
 
 Perhaps, therefore, it may appear absurd, that, going 
 about and involving myself in a multiplicity of affairs, I 
 should privately advise these things, but that I should never 
 dare to come to your public assembly, and consult for the 
 city. The cause of this is that which you have often heard 
 me everywhere asserting — viz., because a certain divine and 
 daemoniacal voice is present with me, which also Melitus 
 in his accusation derided. This voice attended me from a 
 child; and, when it is present, always dissuades me from 
 what I intended to do, but never incites me. This it is 
 which opposed my engaging in political affairs ; and to me 
 its opposition appears to be most right and proper. For 
 be well assured, O Athenians, if I had formerly attempted 
 to transact political affairs, I should have perished long 
 before this, and should neither have benefited you in any 
 respect, nor myself. And be not indignant with me for 
 speaking the truth. For it is not possible that any man 
 can be safe, who sincerely opposes either you, or any other 
 multitude, and who prevents many unjust and illegal actions 
 from taking place in the city ; but it is necessary that he 
 who will really contend for the right, if he wishes even but 
 for a little time to be safe, should live privately, and not 
 engage in public affairs. 
 
 I will present you with mighty proofs of these things, not 
 words, but that which you honour more, namely, deeds. 
 Hear then the circumstances which have happened to me, 
 that you may know that I shall not yield to any one con- 
 trary to what is becoming, through dread of death ; though 
 at the same time by not yielding I should perish. For I, 
 O Athenians, never bore the office of magistrate^ in the 
 city, but I have been a senator : and it happened that our 
 Antiochean tribe governed, when you thought proper to 
 
 ^ The people of Athens were divided into tribes, .ind fifty men were 
 chosen by turns out of each, who governed thirty-five days, and were 
 called Prytani or Senators. 
 
1 24 SELECTIONS FROM PLA TO. 
 
 condemn the ten generals collectively, for not taking up 
 the bodies of those that perished in the naval battle ;i and 
 in so doing acted illegally, as afterwards appeared to all of 
 you. At that time I alone of the Prytaneans opposed you, 
 that you might not act contrary to the laws, and my suffrage 
 was contrary to yours. When the orators also were ready 
 to point me out and condemn me, and you likewise were 
 exhorting and vociferating to the same end, I thought that 
 I ought rather to encounter danger with law and justice, 
 than adhere to you in your injustice, through fear of bonds 
 or death. And these things indeed happened while the 
 city was yet a democracy ; but when it became an oligarchy, 
 the Thirty sent for me and four others to the Tholus,^ and 
 ordered us to bring Leon the Salaminian from Salamis, in 
 order to be put to death ; for by these orders they meant 
 to involve many others in guilt. Then indeed I, not in 
 words but in deeds, showed them, if I may use so vulgar an 
 expression, that I cared not a snap of my fingers for death ; 
 but that all my attention was directed to this, that I might 
 do nothing unjust or unholy. For that dominion of the 
 Thirty, though so strong, did not terrify me into the per- 
 petration of any unjust action. But when we departed 
 from the Tholus, the four indeed went to Salamis, and 
 brought with them Leon ; but I returned home. And 
 perhaps for this I should have been put to death, if that 
 government had not been rapidly dissolved. These things 
 many of you can testify. 
 
 Do you think, therefore, that I could have lived for so 
 many years, if I had engaged in public affairs, and had 
 acted in a manner becoming a good man, giving assistance 
 to justice, and doing this in the most eminent degree? 
 Far otherwise, O Athenians : for neither could any other 
 man. But I, through the whole of my life, if I do any- 
 thing publicly, shall appear to be such a man ; and being 
 
 1 This battle was fout^ht hy Callicratidas, the Lacedaemonian general, 
 against the ten Athenian generals, who obtained the victory. 
 
 2 The Tholus was a kind of clerks' office, where the Prytani dined, 
 and the clerks sat. 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 125 
 
 the same privately, I shall never grant anything to any 
 one contrary to justice, neither to any other, nor to any 
 one of these whom my calumniators say are my dis- 
 ciples. I however was never the preceptor of any one ; 
 but I never repulsed either the young or the old that 
 were desirous of hearing me speak after my usual 
 manner. Nor do I discourse when I receive money, and 
 refrain from speaking when I do not receive any ; but I 
 similarly offer myself to be interrogated by the rich and the 
 poor : and if any one is willing to answer, he hears what I 
 have to say. Of these too, whether any one becomes good 
 or not, I cannot justly be said to be the cause, because I 
 never either promised or taught them any discipline. But 
 if any one says that he has ever learnt or heard anything 
 from me privately which all others have not, be well assured 
 that he does not speak the truth. 
 
 Why therefore some have delighted to associate with me 
 for a long time ye have heard, O Athenians. I have told 
 you all the truth, that men are delighted on hearing those 
 interrogated who think themselves to be wise, but who are 
 not : for this is not unpleasant. But, as I say, I am 
 ordered to do this by Divinity, by oracles, by dreams, and 
 by every mode by which any other divine destiny ever 
 commanded anything to be done by man. These things, 
 O Athenians, are true, and might easily be confuted if 
 they were not. For if, with respect to the youth, I corrupt 
 some, and have corrupted others, it is fit, if any of them 
 have become old, that, knowing I gave them bad advice 
 when they were young, they should now rise up, accuse 
 and take vengeance on me ; but if they themselves are 
 unwilling to do this, that their fathers, or brothers, or 
 others of their kindred, should now call to mind and 
 avenge the evil which their relatives suffered from me. 
 But in short many of them are here present, whom I see : — 
 In the first place, Crito, who is of the same age and city 
 that I am, and who is the father of this Critobulus : in 
 the next place, Lysanias the Sphecian, the father of this 
 ^schines; and further still, Antipho the Ccphisian, the 
 
126 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 father of Epigenes. There are also others whose brothers 
 are in this assembly — viz., Nicostratus, the son of Zotidas, 
 and the brother of Theodotus. And Theodotus indeed is 
 dead, and so will not hinder him. Paralus also is here, 
 the son of Demodochus, of whom Theages was the brother ; 
 likewise Adimantus, the son of Aristo, the brother of whom 
 is this Plato ; and ^antidorus, of whom Apollodorus is the 
 brother. I could also mention many others, some one of 
 whom Melitus, especially in his oration, ought to have 
 adduced as a witness. If however he then forgot to do so, 
 let him now produce him, for he has my consent ; and if 
 he has anything of this kind to disclose, let him declare it. 
 However, you will find the very contrary of this to be the 
 case, and that all these are ready to assist me who have 
 corrupted and injured their kindred, as Melitus and Anytus 
 say. It might indeed perhaps be reasonable to suppose 
 that those whom I have corrupted would assist me; but 
 what other reason can the relatives of these have, who are 
 not corrupted, and who are now advanced in age, for giving 
 me assistance, except that which is right and just? For 
 they know that Melitus lies, and that I speak the truth. 
 Be it so then, O Athenians : and these indeed, and perhaps 
 other such-like particulars, are what I have to urge in my 
 defence. 
 
 Perhaps, however, some one among you will be indignant 
 on recollecting that he, when engaged in a much less 
 contest than this, suppliantly implored the judges with many 
 tears; that he also brought his children hither, that by 
 these he might especially excite compassion, together with 
 many others of his relatives and friends : but I do none of 
 these things, though, as it may appear, I am brought to 
 extreme danger. Perhaps, therefore, some one thus think- 
 ing may become more hostile towards me, and, being 
 enraged with these very particulars, may give his vote with 
 anger. If then any one of you is thus affected, — I do not 
 think there is any one, but if there should be, I shall appear 
 to myself to speak equitably to such a one by saying that I 
 also, O best of men, have certain relatives. For, as Homer 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 127 
 
 says, I am not sprung from an oak, nor from a rock, but 
 from men. So that I also, O Athenians, have relations, 
 and three sons ; one now a lad ; but the other two, boys : 
 I have not however brought any one of them hither, that I 
 might supplicate you on that account to acquit me. Why 
 is it then that I do none of these things ? It is not, O 
 Athenians, because I am contumacious, nor is it in con- 
 tempt of you. And as to my fearing or not fearing death, 
 that is another question. But it does not appear to me to 
 be consistent either with my own credit or yours, or that of 
 the whole city, that I should do anything of this kind at 
 my age, and with the reputation I have acquired, whether 
 true or false. For it is admitted that Socrates surpasses in 
 something the multitude of mankind. If, therefore, those 
 among you who appear to excel either in wisdom, in 
 fortitude, or any other virtue, should act in such a manner 
 as I have seen some when they have been judged, it would 
 be shameful : for these, appearing indeed to be something, 
 have conducted themselves very strangely, thinking they 
 should suffer something dreadful by dying, as if they would 
 be immortal if you did not put them to death. These men, 
 as it appears to me, would so disgrace the city, that any 
 stranger might apprehend that such of the Athenians as 
 excel in virtue, and who are promoted to the magistracy 
 and other honours in preference to the rest, are no better 
 than women. For these things, O Athenians, ought not to 
 be done by us who have gained some degree of reputation, 
 nor should you suffer us to do them, if we were willing ; 
 but you should show that you will much sooner condemn 
 him who introduces these lamentable dramas, and who thus 
 makes the city ridiculous, than him who quietly expects 
 vour decision. 
 
 But exclusive of our credit, O Athenians, neither does it 
 appear to me to be just for the accused to entreat his judge 
 nor to supplicate for an acquittal; but in my opinion he 
 ought to teach and persuade him. For a judge does not 
 sit for the purpose of showing favour, but that he may judge 
 what is just : and he takes an oath that he will not show 
 
128 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 favour to any, but that he will judge according to the laws. 
 Hence it is neither fit that we should accustom you, nor 
 that you should be accustomed to forswear yourselves : for 
 in so doing neither of us will act piously. Do not, there- 
 fore, think, O Athenians, that I ought to act in such a 
 manner towards you as I should neither conceive to be 
 honourable, nor just, nor holy ; and especially, by Zeus, 
 since I am accused of impiety by this Melitus. For it 
 clearly follows, that if I should persuade you, and, though 
 you have taken an oath, force you to be favourable, I 
 might then indeed teach that you do not think there are 
 gods ; and in reality, while making my defence, I should 
 accuse myself as not believing in the gods. This however 
 is far from being the case : for I believe that there are gods 
 more than any one of my accusers ; and I refer it to you 
 and to Divinity to judge concerning me such things as will 
 be best both for me and you. 
 
 After Socrates had thus spoke?i, votes were taken by the 
 Judges^ and he was condemned by a ?naJority of Jive or six 
 voices. His speech after his condemnation com??iences in the 
 paragraph immediately following. 
 
 That I should not, therefore, O Athenians, be indignant 
 with you because you have condemned me, there are many 
 reasons, and among others this, that it has not happened to 
 me contrary to my expectation ; but I much rather wonder 
 that there should have been so great a number of votes on 
 both sides. For I did not think that I should have wanted 
 such a few additional votes for my acquittal. But now, as 
 it seems, if only three votes had changed sides, I should 
 have escaped condemnation. Indeed, as it appears to me, 
 I now have escaped Melitus ; and I have not only escaped 
 him, but it is perfectly evident that unless Anytus and 
 Lyco had risen to accuse me, he had lost his thousand^ 
 drachmas, since he had not had the fifth part of the votes 
 on his side. 
 
 Melitus then thinks that I deserve death. Be it so. 
 
 ^ An accuser was obliged to have a fifth part of the votes, or else he 
 was fined in a thousand drachmas. 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 129 
 
 But what punishment,! O Athenians, shall I assign to 
 myself? Is it not evident that it will be such a one as I 
 deserve ? AVhat then do I deserve to suffer or to pay, for 
 not having during my life concealed what I have learned, 
 but neglected all that the multitude esteem, riches, domestic 
 concerns, military command, authority in public assemblies, 
 and other magistracies ? for having avoided the conspiracies 
 and seditions which have happened in the city, thinking 
 that I was in reality a more worthy character than to 
 depend on these things for my safety ? I have not, there- 
 fore, applied myself to those pursuits, by which I could 
 neither benefit you nor myself; but my whole endeavour 
 has been to benefit every individual in the greatest degree ; 
 striving to persuade each of you, that he should pay no 
 attention to any of his concerns, prior to that care of him- 
 self by which he may become a most worthy and wise man ; 
 that he should not attend to the affairs of the city prior to 
 the city itself; and that attention should be paid to other 
 things in a similar manner. What then, being such a man, 
 do I deserve to suffer? Some kind of good, O Athenians, 
 if in reality you honour me according to my desert ; and 
 this such a good as it is proper for me to receive. What 
 then is the good which is adapted to a poor man who is a 
 benefactor, and who requires leisure that he may exhort 
 you to virtue ? There is not anything more adapted, O 
 Athenians, than that such a man should be supported at 
 the pubhc expense in the Prytaneum ; and this much more 
 than if some one of you had been victorious in the Olympic 
 games with horses, or in the two or four-yoked car. For 
 such a one makes you appear to be happy, but I cause you 
 to be so : and he is not in want of support, but I am. If, 
 
 ^ When the criminal was found guilty, and the accuser demanded a 
 sentence of death, the law allowed the prisoner to condemn himself to 
 one of these three punishments — viz., perpetual imprisonment, a fine, 
 or banishment. This privilege was first enacted on the behalf of the 
 judges, that they might not hesitate to pass sentence on those who, by 
 condemning themselves, owned their guilt. Socrates, therefore, in 
 obedience to the laws, and in order to proclaim his innocence, instead 
 of a punishment demanded a reward worthy of himself. — -TAYLOR. 
 
 9 
 
1 30 SEL ECTIONS FR OM PL A TO. 
 
 therefore, it is necessary that 1 should be honoured accord- 
 ing to what is justly my desert, I should be honoured with 
 this support in the Prytaneum. 
 
 Perhaps, therefore, in saying these things, I shall appear 
 to you to speak in the same manner as when I reprobated 
 lamentations and supplications. A thing of this kind, 
 however, O Athenians, is not the case, but rather the 
 following. I am determined not to injure any man 
 willingly ; though I shall not persuade you of this, because 
 the time in which we can discourse with each other is but 
 short. For if there was the same law with you as with 
 others, that in cases of death the judicial process should 
 not continue for one day only but for many, I think I 
 should be able to persuade you. But now it is not easy in 
 a short time to dissolve great calumnies. Being, however, 
 determined to injure no one, I shall be very far from 
 injuring myself, and of pronouncing against myself that I 
 am worthy of evil and punishment. What then ? Fearing 
 lest I should suffer that which Melitus thinks I deserve, 
 which I say I know not whether it is good or evil ; that I 
 may avoid this, shall I choose that which I well know to be 
 evil, and think that I deserve this? Whether then shall I 
 choose bonds ? But why is it necessary that I should live 
 in prison, in perpetual subjection to the eleven magistrates ? 
 Shall I pay a fine then, and remain in bonds till it is dis- 
 charged ? But this is what I just now said : for I have not 
 money to pay it. Shall I then choose exile ? For perhaps 
 I shall be thought worthy of this. I should, however, O 
 Athenians, be a great lover of life, if I were so absurd as 
 not to be able to infer that if you, being my fellow-citizens, 
 could not endure my habits and discourses, which have 
 become to you so burthensome and odious, that you now 
 seek to be liberated from them, it is not likely that others 
 would easily bear them. It is far otherwise, O Athenians. 
 My life would be beautiful indeed were I at this advanced 
 age to live in exile, changing and being driven from one 
 city to another. For I well know that, wherever I may go, 
 the youth will hear me when I discourse, in the same 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 131 
 
 manner as they do here. And if I should repel them, they 
 also would expel me, persuading the more elderly to this 
 effect. But if I should not repel them, the fathers and 
 kindred of these would banish me on account of these very 
 young men themselves. 
 
 Perhaps, however, some one will say, Can you not, 
 Socrates, live in exile silently and quietly ? But it is the 
 most difficult of all things to persuade some among you 
 that this cannot take place. For if I say that in so doing I 
 should disobey Divinity, and that on this account it is 
 impossible for me to live a life of leisure and quiet, you 
 would not believe me, in consequence of supposing that I 
 spoke ironically. And if, again, I should say that this is 
 the greatest good to man, to discourse every day concerning 
 virtue, and other things which you have heard me dis- 
 cussing, exploring both myself and others ; and if I should 
 also assert that a life without investigation is not worthy for 
 a man to live, much less, were I thus to speak, would you 
 believe me. These things, however, O Athenians, are as I 
 say ; but it is not easy to persuade you that they are so. 
 And at the same time I am not accustomed to think myself 
 deserving of any ill. Indeed, if I were rich, I would amerce 
 myself in such a sum as I might be able to pay ; but now I 
 am not in a condition to do this, unless you would allow 
 the fine to be proportioned to what I am able to pay. For 
 thus perhaps I might be able to pay a mina of silver (;^3). 
 But Plato here, O Athenians, Crito, Critobulus, and 
 ApoUodorus, exhort me to pay thirty minae {£()o)^ for 
 which they will be answerable. I amerce myself, therefore, 
 in thirty minae; and these will be my securities for the 
 payment. 
 
 Socrates having a?fierced himse/f in obediefice io the laws, 
 the judges took the affair into co?isideratio?i, a?id, without 
 any res^ard to the fi?ie, condeitmed him to die. After the 
 se?ite?tce 7vas pronounced^ Socrates addressed them as in the 
 next paras^raph. 
 
 Now, O Athenians, your impatience and precipitancy will 
 draw upon you a great reproach, and give occasion to those 
 
132 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 who are so disposed, to revile the city for having put that 
 wise man Socrates to death. For those who are wilHng to 
 reproach you will call me a wise man, though I am not. If, 
 therefore, you had waited but for a short time, this very thing, 
 my death, would have happened to you spontaneously. For 
 behold my age, that it is far advanced in life, and is near to 
 death. But I do not say this to all of you, but to those only 
 who have condemned me to die. This also I say to them : 
 Perhaps you think, O Athenians, that I was condemned 
 through the want of such language, by which I might have 
 persuaded you, if I had thought it requisite to say and do 
 anything, so that I might escape punishment. Far other- 
 wise : for I am condemned through want indeed, yet not 
 of words, but of audacity and impudence, and because I 
 was unwilling to say such things to you as you would have 
 been much gratified in hearing, I at the same time weeping 
 and lamenting, and doing and saying many other things 
 unworthy of me, as I say, but such as you are accustomed 
 to hear and see in others. But neither then did I think it 
 was necessary, for the sake of avoiding danger, to do any- 
 thing so slavish, nor do I now repent that I have thus 
 defended myself; but I should much rather choose to die, 
 after having made this apology, than to live after that 
 manner. For neither in a judicial process, nor in battle, 
 is it proper that I or any other should devise how he may 
 by any means avoid death ; since in battle it is frequently 
 evident that a man might easily avoid death by throwing 
 away his arms, and suppliantly converting himself to his 
 pursuers. There are also many other devices in other 
 dangers, by which he who is ready to do and say any- 
 thing may escape death. To fly from death, however, O 
 Athenians, is not difficult, but it is much more difficult to 
 fly from depravity; for it runs swifter than death. And 
 now I indeed, as being slow and old, am caught by the 
 slower; but my accusers, as being skilful and swift, are 
 caught by the swifter of these two, improbity. Now, too, I 
 indeed depart, condemned by you to death ; but they being 
 condemned by truth, depart to depravity and injustice. 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 133 
 
 And 1 acquiesce in this decision, and they also. Perhaps 
 it is necessary that these things should be so, and I think 
 they are right. 
 
 In the next place, I desire to predict to you who have 
 condemned me, what will be your fate. For I am now in 
 that situation in which men especially prophesy — viz., when 
 they are about to die. For I say, that you, my murderers, 
 will immediately after my death be punished,^ in a manner, 
 by Zeus, much more severe than I shall. For now you 
 have done this, thinking you should be liberated from the 
 necessity of giving an account of your life. The very con- 
 trary, however, as I say, will happen to you : for many will 
 be your accusers, whom I have restrained, though you did 
 not perceive it. These too will be more troublesome, because 
 they are younger, and will be more indignant against 
 you. For, if you think that by putting men to death you 
 will restrain others from upbraiding you that you do not 
 live well, you are much mistaken ; since this mode of 
 liberation is neither sufficiently efficacious nor becoming. 
 But this is the most beautiful and the most easy mode, not 
 to disturb others, but to act in such a manner that you may 
 be most excellent characters. And thus much I prophesy 
 to those of you who condemned me. 
 
 But to you who have acquitted me by your decision, I 
 would willingly speak concerning this affair during the time 
 that the magistrates are at leisure, and before I am brought 
 to the place where I am to die. Attend to me, therefore, 
 O Athenians, during that time. For nothing hinders our 
 conversing with each other, as long as we are permitted so 
 to do; since I wish to demonstrate to you, as friends, the 
 meaning of that which has just now happened to me. To 
 me, then, O my judges (and in calling you judges I rightly 
 
 ^ This prediction was fulfilled almost immediately after the death of 
 Socrates. The Athenians repented of their cruelty; and his accusers 
 were universally despised and shunned. One of them, Melitus, was 
 torn in pieces; another, Anytus, was expelled the Ileraclea, to which 
 he fled for shelter; and others destroyed themselves. And, in addition 
 to this, a racing plaj^uc soon after desolated Athens. — Tayluk. 
 
1 34 SELECTIONS FROM PLA TO. 
 
 denominate you), a certain wonderful circumstance has 
 happened. For the prophetic voice of the daemon, which 
 opposed me in the most trifling affairs, if I was about to 
 act in anytiiing improperly, prior to this, I was continually 
 accustomed to hear; but now, though these things have 
 happened to me which you see, and which some one would 
 think to be the extremity of evils, yet neither when I 
 departed from home in the morning was the signal of the 
 God adverse to me, nor when I ascended hither to the place 
 of judgment, nor when I was about to speak, — though at 
 other times it frequently restrained me in the midst of 
 speaking. But now, in this affair, it has never been adverse 
 to me, either in word or deed. I will now, therefore, tell 
 you what I apprehend to be the cause of this. For this 
 thing which has happened appears to me to be good ; nor 
 do those of us apprehend rightly who think death to be an 
 evil; of which this appears to me to be a great argument, 
 that the accustomed signal would have opposed me, unless 
 I had been about to do something good. 
 
 After this manner too we may conceive that there is 
 abundant hope that death is good. For to die is one of 
 two things. For it is either to be as it were nothing, and to 
 be deprived of all sensation ; or, as it is said, it is a certain 
 mutation and migration of the soul from this to another place. 
 And whether no sensation remains, but death is like sleep 
 when unattended with any dreams, in this case death will be 
 a gain. For, if any one compares such a night as this, in 
 which he so profoundly sleeps as not even to see a dream, 
 with the other nights and days of his life, and should declare 
 how many he had passed better and more pleasantly than 
 this night, I think that not only a private man, but even the 
 Great King himself, would find so small a number that they 
 might be easily counted. If, therefore, death is a thing of 
 this kind, I say it is a gain : for thus the whole of future 
 time appears to be nothing more than one night. But if 
 again death is a migration from hence to another place, and 
 the assertion is true that all the dead are there, what greater 
 good, O my judges, can there be than this? For if some 
 
THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES. 135 
 
 one arriving at Hades, being liberated from these who 
 pretend to be judges, should find those who are true judges, 
 and who are said to judge there — viz., Minos and Rhada- 
 manthus, .^Eacus and Triptolemus, and such others of the 
 demi-gods as lived justly, would this be a journey to despise? 
 At what rate would you not purchase a conference with 
 Orpheus and Musoeus, with Hesiod and Homer ? I indeed 
 should be willing to die often, if these things are true. For 
 to me the association will be admirable, when I shall meet 
 with Palamedes, and Ajax, the son of Telamon, and any 
 other of the ancients who died through an unjust decision. 
 The comparing my case with theirs will, I think, be no 
 unpleasing employment to me. But the greatest pleasure 
 will consist in passing my time there, as I have done here, 
 in interrogating and exploring who among them is wise, and 
 who fancies himself to be but is not so. What, O my 
 judges, would not any one give for a conference with him 
 who led that mighty army against Troy, or with Odysseus, 
 or Sisyphus, or ten thousand others, both men and women, 
 that might be mentioned? For to converse and associate 
 with these, and interrogate them, would be an inestimable 
 felicity. There, assuredly, it is no capital crime to do so ; 
 since they are in other respects more happy than those that 
 live here, and are for the rest of time immortal, if the 
 assertions respecting these things are true. 
 
 You, therefore, O my judges, ought to entertain good 
 hopes with respect to death, and to be firmly persuaded of 
 this one thing, that to a good man nothing is evil, neither 
 while living nor when dead, and that his concerns are never 
 neglected by the gods. Nor is my present condition the 
 effect of chance ; but this is evident to me, that now to die, 
 and be liberated from the affairs of life, is better for me. 
 On this account the accustomed signal did not in this affair 
 oppose me. Nor am I very indignant with those that 
 accused and condemned me, though their intention in so 
 doing was to injure me ; and for this they deserve to be 
 blamed. Thus much, however, I request of them : That 
 you will punish my sons when they grow up, afflicting them 
 
1 36 SELECTIONS FR OM PL A TO. 
 
 as I have afflicted you, if they shall appear to you to pay 
 more attention to riches or anything else than to virtue ; and 
 if they shall think themselves to be something when they 
 are nothing, that you will reprobate them as I do you, for 
 neglecting the care of things to which they ought to attend, 
 and conceiving themselves to be of some consequence when 
 they are of no worth. If ye do these things, your conduct 
 both towards me and my sons will be just. But it is now 
 time for us to depart hence, — for me to die, but for you to 
 live. Which of us, however, will arrive at a better thing is 
 manifest to none but Divinity. 
 
THE CRITO. 
 
 PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE. 
 
 Socrates and Crito. 
 Scene — TJie Prison of Socrates. 
 
 Soc. Why came you at this early hour, Crito ? Or is 
 it not yet morning ? 
 
 Cri. It is. 
 
 Soc. But what time of the morning is it ? 
 
 Cri. It is now the break of day. 
 
 iSoc. I wonder how the keeper of the prison came to 
 admit you. 
 
 Cri. He is accustomed to me, Socrates, in consequence 
 of my frequently coming hither ; and he is also in a certain 
 respect under obligations to me. 
 
 Soc Did you come just now, or some time ago ? 
 
 Cri. It is a considerable time since I came. 
 
 ^oc. But why did you not immediately call me, and not 
 sit down in silence ? 
 
 Cri. Not so, by Zeus, Socrates ; nor should I myself 
 be willing to be for so long a time awake and in sorrow. 
 But I have for some time admired you, oil perceiving how 
 sweetly you slept. And I designedly did not call you, that 
 you might continue in that pleasant condition, indeed 1 
 have often and formerly through the whole of your life con- 
 sidered you as happy on account of your manners, but far 
 more so in the present calamity, because you bear it so 
 easily and mildly. 
 
13S SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Soc. But it would be absurd, Crito, if a man of my age 
 were to be indignant when it is necessary for him to die. 
 
 Cri. And yet others, Socrates, equally old, when they 
 have been involved in such-like calamities, have notwith- 
 standing their age been indignant with their present fortune. 
 
 Soc. It is so. But why did you come to me so early? 
 
 Ct'i. I come, Socrates, bearing a message not unpleasant 
 to you, as it appears to me, but bitter and weighty to me and to 
 all your associates; and which I indeed shall bear most heavily. 
 
 Soc. What is it ? Is the ship come from Delos, on the 
 arrival of which I am to die ? 
 
 Cri. Not yet ; but it appears to me, from what certain 
 persons coming from Sunium have announced, and who left 
 it there, that it will arrive to-day. From these messengers, 
 therefore, it is evident that it will be here to-day; and con- 
 sequently it will be necessary for you, Socrates, to die to- 
 morrow. 
 
 Soc. But with good fortune, Crito : and if it please the 
 gods, be it so. Yet I do not think that it will arrive here 
 to-^day. 
 
 Cri. Whence do you infer this ? 
 
 Soc. I will tell you. For on the day after, or on the 
 very day in which the ship arrives, it is necessary that I 
 should die. 
 
 Cri. Those that have power over these things say so. 
 
 Soc. I do not, therefore, think that it will come this, but 
 the next day. But I infer this from a certain dream which 
 I saw this night a little before you came ; and you appear 
 very opportunely not to have disturbed me. 
 
 Cri. But what was this dream ? 
 
 Soc. A certain woman, beautiful, of a pleasing aspect 
 and in white raiment, seemed to approach, and calling me, 
 to say, " The third day hence, O Socrates, you will arrive at 
 the fertile Phthia."i 
 
 Cri. What a strange dream, Socrates ! 
 
 Soc. Manifest, however, as it appears to me, O Crito. 
 
 ^ This is a line of the Iliai^ ix. 363. 
 
THE CRITO. 139 
 
 Cri. Very much so, as it seems. But, O blessed Socrates, 
 be now persuaded by me, and save yourself. For, if you 
 die, not one calamity only will befall me ; but, exclusively 
 of being deprived of you, an associate so necessary as I 
 never have found any other to be, those who do not well 
 know me and you, will think that I might have saved you 
 if^ I had been willing to spend my__money, but th at I 
 neglected to do so. Though what can be more Base than 
 such an opinion, by which I should appear to value riches 
 more than my friends ? For the multitude will not be 
 persuaded that you were unwilling to depart hence, though 
 we endeavoured to effect your escape. 
 
 Soc. But why, O blessed Crito, should we so much 
 respect the opinion of the multitude ? For the most worthy 
 men, whose opinion ought rather to be regarded, will think 
 these things to have been so transacted as they were. 
 
 Cri. Nevertheless, you see, Socrates, that it is necessary 
 to pay attention to the opinion of the multitude. For the 
 present circumstances now evince that the multitude can 
 effect not the smallest of evils, but nearly the greatest, if 
 any one is calumniated by them. 
 
 Soc. I wish, O Crito, the multitude could effect the 
 greatest evils, that they might also accomplish the greatest 
 good : for then it would be well. But now they can do neither 
 of these. For they can neither make a man wise, nor destitute 
 of wisdom ; but they do whatever they do by chance alone. 
 
 Cri. Let these things be so. But answer me, Socrates, 
 whether your concern for me and the rest of your associates 
 prevents you from escaping hence, lest we should be 
 molested by informers, as having fraudulently taken you 
 from hence, and be forced either to lose all our property, 
 or a great sum of money, or to suffer something else besides 
 this ? For, if you fear any such thing, bid farewell to it. 
 For we shall be just in running this risk to save you, or, if it 
 were requisite, one even greater than this. But be persuaded 
 by me, and do not act otiierwise. 
 
 Soc. I pay attention to these things, Crito, and also to 
 many others. 
 
I40 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Cri. Do not then dread these things. For those who 
 have agreed to save you, and to take you from hence, 
 demand no great sum for this purpose. And, in the next 
 place, do you not see how poor the informers are, and that 
 on this account your Hberty may be purchased at a small 
 expense ? My property too, which I think is sufficient, is 
 at your service. And if, out of regard to me, you do not 
 think fit to accept my offer, there are friends here who are 
 readily disposed to pay what may be necessary. One also 
 among them, Simmias the Theban, has brought with him a 
 sum of money sufficient for this purpose. Cebes, too, and 
 very many others are ready to do the same : so that, as I 
 said, neither fearing these things, should you hesitate to save 
 yourself, nor should you be troubled on leaving the city (as 
 in court you said you should) from not knowing how to 
 conduct yourself. For in many other places, wherever you 
 may go, you will be beloved. And if you are disposed to 
 go to Thessaly, you will there find my friends, who will pay 
 you every attention, and will render your abode there so 
 secure, that no one in Thessaly will molest you. Besides 
 this, Socrates, neither do you appear to me to attempt a 
 just thing, in betraying when you might save yourself; and 
 in endeavouring to promote the earnest wishes of your 
 enemies, who strive to destroy you. To this I may also 
 add, that you appear to me to betray your own children, 
 whom it ls~fncumbent on you to maintain and edu cate ; 
 and, as far as pertains to you, leave them to the guidance 
 of chance ; though it is likely that such things will happen 
 to them as orphans are wont to experience. However, 
 either it is not proper to beget children, or it is requisite to 
 labour in rearing and instructing them when begotten. But 
 you appear to me to have chosen the most indolent mode 
 of conduct ; though it is proper that you should choose 
 such things as a good and brave man would adopt, especially 
 as you profess to have made virtue the object of your 
 attention through the whole of life. I am, therefore, 
 ashamed both for you and those familiars who are our 
 "associat es as well as yours, lest the whole a ffair concerning 
 "~ ^ (^, 
 
. THE CRITO. 141 
 
 you should a pp ear to have been accomplished through a 
 certain cowardice on our part. And in the first place, your 
 standing a trial which might have been prevented; in the 
 next place, your defence; and, in the last place, the 
 extremity to which you arc now brought, will be placed to pyv 
 the account of our viciousness and cowardice, and will ' 
 be considered as so many ridiculous circumstances which 
 jnight have been avoided, if we had exerted ourselves 
 even in a trifling degree. See, therefore, O Socrates, 
 whether these things, besides being evil, will not also be 
 disgraceful both to you and us. Advise then with yourself 
 quickly, though indeed there is no time for consultation ; 
 for on the following night all this must be done. But, if 
 we delay, it will be impossible to effect your escape. By all 
 means, therefore, be persuaded by me, Socrates, and do not 
 in any respect otherwise. 
 
 Soc. My dear Crito, your alacrity is very commendable, if 
 it is attended with a certain rectitude; but if not, by how much 
 the greater it is, by so much is it the more blamable. It is 
 necessary, therefore, to consider whether these things ought 
 to be done or not. For I am a man of that kind, not only 
 now but always, who acts in obedience to that reason which 
 appears to me on mature deliberation to be the best. And 
 the reasons which I have formerly adopted, I am not able 
 now to reject in my present fortune, but they nearly appear 
 to me to be similar : and I venerate and honour the same 
 principles as formerly; so that, unless we have anything 
 better to adduce at present than these, be well assured that 
 I shall not comply with your request, not though the power 
 of the multitude should endeavour to terrify us like children, 
 by threatening more bonds and deaths, and ablations of 
 property. 
 
 Cri. How may we consider these thing? in the best 
 manner ? 
 
 Soc. If, in the first place, we resume that which you said 
 concerning opinions, considering whether it was well said 
 by us or not, that to some opinions we ought to pay attention, 
 and to others not; or rather indeed, before it was necessary 
 
142 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 that I should die, it was v/ell said, but now it becomes 
 evident that it was asserted for the sake of discussion, 
 though in reahty it was merely a jest and a trifle. I desire, 
 however, O Crito, to consider, in common with you, whether 
 that assertion appears to me in my present condition to be 
 different, or the same, and whether we shall bid farewell to 
 or be persuaded by it. But thus I think it is everywhere 
 said by those who appear to say anything pertinently, that, 
 as I just now asserted of the opinions which men opine, 
 some ought to be very much attended to, and others not. 
 By the gods, Crito, does not this appear to you to be well 
 said ? For you, so far as relates to human power, are out 
 of danger of dying to-morrow, and such a calamity as the 
 present will not seduce you into a false decision. Consider 
 then : does it not appear to you to have been asserted with 
 sufficient rectitude, that it is not fit to reverence all the 
 opinions of men, but that some should be honoured and 
 others not ? Nor yet the opinions of all men, but those of 
 some and not those of others? What do you say? Are 
 not these things well said ? 
 
 Crt. Well. 
 \ Soc. Are not worthy opinions, therefore, to be honoured, 
 but base opinions not ? 
 
 Crt. They are. 
 \/^oc. And are not worthy opinions those of wise men ; 
 but base opinions those of the unwise ? 
 
 Cri. Undoubtedly. 
 
 Soc. Come then, let us again consider how things of this 
 kind were asserted. Whether does he who is conversant in 
 gymnastic exercises pay attention to the praise and blame 
 and opinion of every man, or of that one man alone who is a 
 physician, or the preceptor of boys in their bodily exercises? 
 
 Cri. Of that one alone. 
 
 Soc. Is it not, therefore, proper that he should fear the 
 blame and embrace the praise of that one, but not the praise 
 and blame of the multitude ? 
 
 Cri. Evidently. 
 
 Soc. In this manner, therefore, he ought to act and 
 
THE CRITO. 143 
 
 exercise himself, and also to eat and drink, which appears 
 fit to the one who presides and knows, rather than in that 
 which may appear to be proper to all others. 
 
 Cri. Certainly. 
 
 Soc. Be it so. But if he is disobedient to that one, and 
 disregards his opinion and his praise, but honours the 
 opinion and praise of the multitude, who know nothing, 
 will he not suffer some evil? 
 
 Cri. How is it possible he should not ? 
 
 Soc. But what is this evil, whither does it tend, and to 
 which of the things pertaining to him who is disobedient ? 
 >/. Evidently to his body, for this it corrupts. 
 
 Soc. You speak well. We must form the same conclu- 
 sion, therefore, Crito, in other things, that we may not run 
 through all of them. With respect, therefore, to things just 
 and unjust, foul and fair, good and evil, and which are ikTw" 
 the subjects of our consultation, whether ought we to follow 
 the opinion of the multitude, and to dread it, or that of one 
 man if there is any one knowing in these things, whom we 
 ought to reverence and fear rather than all others; to whom 
 if we are not obedient, we shall corrupt and injure that 
 which becomes better by the just, but is destroyed by the 
 u njust ? Or is this nothing ? 
 
 Cri. I think, Socrates, we ought to follow the opinion of 
 that one. 
 
 Soc. Come then, if, not being persuaded by the opinion 
 of those that are judges, we destroy that which becomes 
 better by health, but is corrupted by disease, can we live 
 after this destruction ? But is not this of which we are 
 speaking the body ? 
 
 Cri. Yes. 
 
 Soc. Can we, therefore, live after the body is depraved 
 and corrupted? 
 
 Cri. By no means. 
 
 Soc. But can we live when that is corrupted which is 
 injured by the unjust, but benefited by the just ? Or shall 
 we think that to be viler than the body, whatever it may be^ 
 pertaining to us, about which justice and injustice subsist? 
 
1 44 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 Cri. By no means. 
 
 Soc. It is, therefore, more honourable. 
 
 C^i. By far. 
 \/Soc: We should not, therefore, O best of men, be so 
 very much concerned about what the multitude say of us , 
 but what that one man who knows what is just and unjust, 
 and what truth itself is, asserts respecting us. So that you 
 did not act rightly at first, in introducing tEe opinion of the 
 multitude concerning things just, beautiful, and good, and 
 the contraries of these, as that to which we ought to pay 
 attention. Though some one may say that the multitude 
 are able to put us to death. 
 
 Cri. Some one, Socrates, may indeed say so. 
 [/Soc. True. But the assertion which we have discussed 
 appears to me to be still where it was before : and again, 
 consider whether this is still granted by us, that we are not 
 to admit the merely living, but living well, to be a thing of 
 the greatest consequence. 
 
 Cri. It is granted. 
 ylSoc. And is this also granted, or not, that it is the same 
 thing to live well, beautifully, and justly ? 
 
 Cri. It is. 
 
 Soc. From what has been assented to, therefore, this must 
 be considered, whether it is just for me to endeavour to d epar t 
 hence, the Athenians not dismissing me, or whether it is 
 not just. And if it should appear to be just indeed, we 
 should endeavour to accomplish it ; but if not, we must bid 
 farewell to the attempt. For as to the considerations which 
 you adduce concerning money, opinion, and the education 
 of children, see, Crito, whether these are not in reality the 
 reflections of the vulgar, who rashly put men to death, and 
 if it were in their power would recall them to life, and this 
 without being at all guided by intellect. But by us, since 
 reason requires it, nothing else is to be considered than as 
 we just now said, whether we shall act justly in giving money 
 and thanks to those who may lead me hence ; or whether in 
 reality, both we that are led from hence, and those that lead 
 us, shall not in all these things act unjustly. And if it 
 
THE CRITO, 145 
 
 should appear that we in so doing shall act unjustly, we 
 jnust by no means pay attention to these things, rather than 
 to the consideration whether we shall do anything unjustly ; 
 not even if it should be necessary for us to stay here and die 
 qu ietly, or to suffer anything else whatever. 
 
 Cri. You appear to me, Socrates, to speak well ; but see 
 what is to be done. 
 
 Soc. Let us consider, O good man, in common ; and if 
 you can in any respect contradict what I say, contradict 
 me, and I will assent to you ; but if you cannot, cease, 
 
 blessed man, to repeat often to me the same thing, that 
 
 1 ought to depart hence, though the Athenians forbid. 
 For I shall think it a great thing if you can persuade me 
 thus to act, but not if you attempt this contrary to my will. 
 See then, whether the beginning of this consideration 
 satisfies you, and endeavour to answer the interrogation in 
 such a way as you think it is proper. 
 
 Cri. I will endeavour. 
 
 toe. Shall we say then, that we should by no means 
 willingly act unjustly? Or may we in a certain respect act 
 unjustly, and in a certain respect not ? Or is to act unjustly 
 by no means neither good nor beautiful, as we have often 
 confessed before, and as we just now said? Or are all 
 those things which we formerly assented to dissipated in 
 these few days ; and has it for some time been concealed 
 from us, that though we are so old, yet in seriously dis- 
 coursing with each other, we have in no respect differed 
 from children ? Or is it not much rather, as we then said, 
 the truth that, whether the multitude admit it or not, or 
 whether we should suffer things more grievous or more 
 mild than these, to act unjustly is evil and base to him who 
 thus acts ? 
 
 C^i. We shall say so. 
 \/^Soc. By no means, therefore, ought we to act unjustly. 
 -/. We ought not. 
 
 ^Soc. Neither, therefore, ought he who is injured to 
 return the injury, as the multitude think, since it is by no 
 means proper to act unjustly. 
 
 10 
 
146 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Cri. So it appears. 
 
 Soc. But what then? Is it proper to do evil to any 
 onp, O Crito, or not ? 
 V^Cri. It is not proper, Socrates. 
 
 Soc. But what ? Is it just to repay evil with evil, as 
 themultitude say, or is it not just ? 
 yCri. By no means. 
 
 Soc. For doing evil to men differs in no respect from 
 acting unjustly [doing wrong]. 
 
 Cri. Your assertion is true. 
 
 Soc. Neither, therefore, is it proper to return an injury, 
 nor to do evil to any man, however you may be injured by 
 him. But see, Crito, while you acknowledge these things, 
 that you do not assent to them contrary to your opinion. 
 For I know that these things appear to and are opined by 
 very few. But those to whom these things appear, and 
 those to whom they do not, can have no common ground 
 of argument, and they must necessarily despise each other 
 when they see each other's decisions Do you therefore 
 consider, and very diligently, whether it thus appears to 
 you in common with me, and whether deliberating we 
 should begin from hence, that it is never right either to 
 do a wrong, or to return a wrong, or when suffering evil to 
 revenge it by doing evil in return ; or, whether you will 
 depart and not agree with us in this principle. For it 
 thus appears to me both formerly and now; but if it in 
 any respect appears otherwise to you, speak and inform 
 me. And if you acquiesce in what has been said above, 
 hear what follows. 
 
 Cri. But I do acquiesce and accord with you. Speak, 
 therefore. 
 
 Soc. I will say then that which is consequent to this, 
 or rather I will ask you, whether, when a man has promised 
 to do things that are just, he ought to do them, or to break 
 his promise? 
 V^Cri. He ought to do them. 
 
 Soc. From these things then thus consider. If we 
 should depart hence without the consent of the city, 
 
THE CRTTO. 147 
 
 shall we do evil to certain persons, and those such as we 
 ought not in the smallest degree to injure, or shall we not? 
 And shall we acquiesce in those things which we assented 
 to as being just, or shall we not ? 
 
 Cri. I cannot reply to your question, Socrates : for I 
 do not understand it. 
 
 Soc. But thus consider. If to us, intending to make 
 off from hence, or in whatever manner it may be requisite 
 to denominate it, the Laws and the Republic should present 
 themselves in a body, and thus address us, — Tell us, O 
 Socrates, what is it you intend to do ? Do you con- 
 ceive that by this thing w^hich you attempt, you w'U 
 destroy anything else than, as far as you are able, 
 us the Laws, and the whole city? Or does it appear 
 to you to be pos sible for that citv to sfnhsist: and not h^ ■ 
 subverted, in which Justice is not only without strength, but 
 isTikewise divested of its authority and corrupted by private 
 persons ? — What should we say, Crito, to these things, and 
 to others of a similar kind? For much might be said, 
 and particularly by rhetoricians, on the subversion of that 
 law which provides that sentences once passed shall not be 
 infringed. Shall w^e say to them that the city has not 
 passed an equitable sentence upon_us_? Shall we say this, 
 or s^raething else? 
 vCri. This, by Zeus, Socrates. 
 
 Soc. Will not the Laws then thus address us ? O 
 Socrates, has it not been admitted by us and you, that 
 one should acquiesce in the sentences which the city 
 may pass? If then we should wonder at the Laws thus 
 speaking, perhaps they would say. Be not surprised, O 
 Socrates, at what we have asserted, but answer, since 
 you are accustomed both to interrogate and reply. For 
 what is the charge against us and the city, for which you 
 endeavour to destroy us ? Did we not first beget you ? 
 And was it not through us that your father married your 
 mother, and planted you ? Tell us, therefore, whether 
 you blame these laws of ours concerning marriage as 
 improper ? I should say I do not blame them. But do 
 
148 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 you blame those laws concerning the nurture and education 
 of children in which you were yourself instructed ? Or did 
 not the laws framed for this purpose order in a becoming 
 manner when they commanded your father to instruct you 
 in music and gymnastic ? 1 should say they ordered well. 
 Since then we begot and nourished and educated you, can 
 you deny that both you and your progenitors are our 
 offspring and servants ? And if this be the case, do you 
 think that there is an equality^ of justice between us and 
 you, and that it is just for you to attempt to do those 
 things to us which we endeavour to do to you ? Or will 
 you admit that there is no equality of justice between you 
 and your father, or master, if you happen to have either of 
 them, so that you are not to return to these any evil you 
 may suffer from them, nor, when they reproach you, 
 contradict them, nor, when they strike you, strike them 
 again, nor do many other things of a similar nature; but 
 that against your country and the Laws it is lawful for you 
 to act in this manner, so that if we endeavour to destroy 
 you, thinking it to be just, you also should endeavour, as 
 far as you are able, to destroy in return, us the Laws and 
 your country, and should say that in so doing you act 
 justly, — you who in reality make virtue the object of your 
 care? Or, are you so wise as to be ignorant that your 
 country is more honourable, venerable, and holy than your 
 mother and father, and all the rest of your progenitors, and 
 ranks higher both among the gods and among men endued 
 with intellect? That it is also more necessary for a man 
 to venerate, obey, and assent to his country, when con- 
 ducting itself with severity, than to his father? Likewise 
 that he should be persuaded by it, and do what it orders ? 
 That he should quietly suffer, if it orders him to suffer? 
 And that, if it commands him to be beaten, or confined in 
 bonds, or sends him to battle to be wounded or slain, he 
 should do these things, and that it is just to comply ? And 
 
 ^ Wholes in the order of nature are more excellent than parts ; and 
 in consequence of this, as being more honourable, there is no recipro- 
 city of obligation between the two. — Taylor. 
 
THE CRITO. 149 
 
 that he should neither dechne nor recede from nor desert 
 his rank ; but in war, in a court of justice, and everywhere, 
 the commands of the city and his country should be 
 obeyed ; or he should persuade his country to that which 
 is naturally just ; but that it is not holy to offer violence 
 either to a mother or a father, and much less to one's 
 country ? — What shall we say to these things, Crito ? Shall 
 we acknowledge that the Laws speak the truth or not? 
 
 C?'i. To me it appears that they do. 
 
 Soc. Consider, therefore, O Socrates, perhaps the Laws 
 will say, whether our assertion is true, that your present 
 attempt against uS is unjust. For we are the authors of 
 your birth, we nourished, we educated you, imparting both 
 to you and all the other citizens all the good in our power, 
 at the same time proclaiming that every Athenian who is 
 willing has the liberty of departing wherever he pleases, 
 with all his property, if after having explored and seen the 
 affairs of the city, and us the Laws, we should not be 
 constituted according to his wishes. Nor does any one of 
 us the Laws impede or forbid any one of you from 
 migrating into some colony, or any other place, with all his 
 property, if we and the city do not please him. But, on 
 the other hand, if any one of you continues to live here 
 after he has seen the manner in which we administer justice, 
 and govern the city in other particulars, we now say, that 
 he in reality acknowledges to us, that he will do such 
 things as we may command. AVe also say, that he who is 
 not obedient is triply unjust, because he is disobedient to 
 his begetters, and to those by whom he was educated ; and 
 because, having promised to be persuaded by us, he is 
 neither persuaded, nor does he persuade us, if we do any- 
 thing improperly ; though at the same time we only propose, 
 and do not fiercely command him to do what we order, but 
 leave to his choice one of two things, either to persuade 
 us, or to obey our mandates ; and yet he does neither of 
 these. 
 
 And we say that you also, O Socrates, will be obnoxious 
 to these crimes if you execute what you intend to do j nor 
 
150 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 will you be the least, but the most obnoxious of all the 
 Athenians. If, therefore, I should ask them the reason 
 of this, they would perhaps justly reproach me by saying, 
 that I promised to submit to all these conditions beyond 
 the rest of the Athenians. For they would say, This, O 
 Socrates, is a great argument with us, that both we and the 
 city were pleasing to you ; that you especially of all the 
 Athenians would never have dwelt in it, if it had not been 
 particularly agreeable to you. For you never left the city 
 for any of the public spectacles except once, when you 
 went to the Isthmian games, nor did you ever go elsewhere, 
 except in your military expeditions. You never went any 
 other journey like other men ; nor had you ever any desire 
 of seeing any other city, or becoming acquainted with any 
 other laws ; but we and our city were sufficient for you, so 
 exceedingly were you attached to us, and so much did you 
 consent to be governed by our mandates. Besides, you 
 have begotten children in this city, in consequence of being 
 pleased with it. Further still, in this very judicial process, 
 you might have been condemned to exile, if you had been 
 willing, and might then have executed with the consent of 
 the city what you now attempt without it. Then however 
 you carried yourself loftily, as one who would not be indig- 
 nant, if it were requisite that you should die; but you 
 preferred, as you said, death to exile. But now you are 
 neither ashamed of those assertions, nor do you revere us 
 the Laws, since you endeavour to destroy us. You also do 
 that which the most vile slave would do, by endeavouring 
 to make your escape contrary to the compacts and agree- 
 ments according to which you consented to become a 
 member of this community. In the first place, therefore, 
 answer us this very thing, whether we speak the truth in 
 asserting that you consented to be governed by us in 
 reality, and not merely in words ? Do we in asserting this 
 speak the truth ? What shall we say to these things, Crito ? 
 Can we say anything else than that we assent to them ? 
 
 Cri. It is necessary so to do, Socrates. 
 
 Soc, Do you not then, they will say, violate these com- 
 
THE CRITO. 151 
 
 pacts and agreements between us; which you consented 
 to neither from necessity nor through deception, nor in 
 consequence of being compelled to deliberate in a short time; 
 but during the space of seventy years, in which you might 
 have departed if you had been dissatisfied with us, and the 
 compacts had appeared to you to be unjust ? You how- 
 ever neither preferred Lacedsemon nor Crete, w^iich you 
 are perpetually saying are governed by good laws, nor any 
 other city of the Greeks or Barbarians ; but you have been 
 less out of Athens than the lame and the blind, and other 
 mutilated persons. So much did the city and we the Laws 
 please you beyond the rest of the Athenians. For who can 
 be pleased with a city without the laws ? But now you do not 
 abide by the compacts. You will however abide by them 
 if you are persuaded by us, Socrates, and do not become 
 ridiculous by escaping from the city. 
 
 For consider what advantage can be derived either to 
 yourself or your friends by violating those compacts. For 
 in consequence of your escaping from hence, it is nearly 
 evident that your friends will be exposed to the danger 
 either of banishment, or of the loss of their property. And 
 as for yourself, if you retire to any neighbouring city, 
 whether Thebes or Megara (for both are governed by good 
 laws), you will be considered, Socrates, as an enemy to 
 their polity. And such as have any regard for their coun- 
 try will look upon you as a corrupter of the laws. You 
 will also confirm them in their good opinion of your judges, 
 who will appear to have very properly condemned you. 
 For he who is a corrupter of the laws will very much appear 
 to be a corrupter of youth and of stupid men. Will you 
 then avoid these well-governed cities, and men of the 
 highest character ? Supposing you should, will it then be 
 worth while for you to live ? Or, should you go to these 
 cities, will you not blush, Socrates, to discourse about the 
 same things as you did here — viz., that virtue and justice, 
 institutes, and the laws, should be objects of the greatest 
 attention to men ? And do you not think that this con- 
 duct of Socrates would be very indecorous ? You mubt 
 
152 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 necessarily think so. But perhaps, avoiding these cities, 
 you will go to Thessaly, to the guests of Crito. For there 
 there is the greatest disorder and intemperance. And 
 perhaps they will willingly hear you relating how ridicu- 
 lously you ran away from prison, providing yourself with 
 some device, such as a peasant's leathern dress, or something 
 else which those that make their escape are accustomed to 
 provide, and thus altering yoiir usual appearance. 
 
 Do you think no one will say, that you, though an old 
 man, and likely to live but a very little longer, have dared 
 to desire life with such sordid aviditv, and to transfiress the 
 greatest laws ? Perhaps not, if you take care to offend no 
 man. But if you should, you will hear, Socrates, many 
 I things unworthy of you. You will live, and in subjection to 
 ^^ ' all men. But what will you do in Tliessaly besides feast- 
 ing ? having come to Thessaly as to a supper. And where 
 shall we find those discourses concerning justice, and the 
 other virtues } — But do you wish to live for the sake of your 
 children, that you may nurture and instruct them ? What 
 then ? Bringing them to Thessaly, will you there educate 
 them, making them foreigners to Athens, that they may also 
 derive this advantage from you ? Or, if you should not do 
 this, but should leave them here, will they be better nur- 
 tured and educated because you are alive ? Your friends 
 will take care of them ; but do you suppose that your 
 children will be taken care of by your friends if you go to 
 Thessaly, and that they will be neglected by them if you 
 depart to Hades ? If indeed any advantage is to be 
 derived from those that call themselves your friends, it is 
 proper to think that they will not. 
 
 But, O Socrates, being persuaded by us your nurses, 
 neither pay more attention to your children, nor to life, nor 
 to anything else than to justice, that, when you arrive at 
 Hades, you may be able to defend all these particulars to 
 the rulers there. For if, transgressing the laws, you should 
 thus act, it will neither be better, nor more just, nor more 
 holy to yourself, nor to any one of your friends ; nor will it 
 be more advantageous to you when you arrive at Hades. 
 
THE CIUTO. 153 
 
 But you will depart, if you do depart, suffering, not doing 
 wrong, and that not from us the Laws, but from men. If, 
 however, you should so disgracefully escape, returning 
 injury for injury, and evil for evil, transgressing your agree- 
 ments and compacts with us, and injuring those whom you 
 ought not to injure in the smallest degree — viz., yourself, 
 your friends, your country, and us ; — in this case, we shall 
 be wroth with you as long as you live ; and in another life, 
 our brothers the Laws who reside in Hades will not 
 receive you graciously ; knowing that you attempted, as far 
 as you were able, to destroy us. Let not Crito, therefore, 
 rather than us, persuade you to do what he says. 
 
 Be well assured, my dear friend Crito, that I seem to hear 
 this voice of the Laws, just as those who are agitated with 
 corybantic fury think they hear the melody of pipes. And 
 the sound of these words, like a humming in my ears, 
 renders me incapable of hearing anything else. You see 
 then what appears to me at present ; and if you should say 
 anything contrary to these things, you will speak in vain. 
 At the same time, if you think it right to do anything more, 
 then speak. 
 
 Cri. But, Socrates, I have nothing further to say. 
 
 Soc. Desist, therefore, Crito, and let us do thus since 
 thus Divinity will have us act. 
 
THE PHx^EDO. 
 
 PERSONS OP^ THE DIALOGUE. 
 
 echecrates. 
 Phaedo. 
 
 SlMMIAS. 
 
 Cebes. 
 
 Crito. 
 
 The Gaoler. 
 
 Echecrates. Were you present, Phaedo, with Socrates 
 that day when he drank the poison in prison ? or did you 
 hear an account of it from any other ? 
 
 Phaedo. I myself, Echecrates, was present. 
 
 Echec. What then was his discourse previous to his 
 death ? and how did he die ? for I should be very glad to 
 hear the account : for scarcely does any one of the Phliasian^ 
 citizens now visit Athens ; and it is some time since any 
 stranger has arrived from thence who might afford us some 
 clear information about these particulars. All indeed that 
 we heard was, that he died through drinking the poison ; 
 but he who acquainted us with this had nothing further to 
 say about other particulars of his death. 
 
 Fhaed. What! did you not hear the manner in which 
 he was tried ? 
 
 Echec. Yes : a certain person related this to us ; and we 
 wondered, as his sentence was passed so long ago, that he 
 should not die till a considerable time after. ^V'hat, thtn, 
 Phaedo, was the reason of this ? 
 
 Fhaed. A certain fortune happened to him, Echecrates : 
 for, the day before his trial, the stern of that ship was 
 crowned which the Athenians send every year to Delos. 
 
 ^ Phlius was a city of Peloponnesus situated not far from the Isthmus. 
 Vide Strab , lib viii. , Pausan. in Corinth, et Stcph. de Uib. et fop. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 155 
 
 Echec. But what is the meaning of this ? 
 Phaed. This is the ship, as the Athenians say, in which 
 Theseus formerly carried the twice seven young children^ 
 to Crete, and saved both them and himself. The Athenians, 
 therefore, as it is reported, then vowed to Apollo, that if 
 the children were preserved, they would send every year a 
 sacred embassy to Delos; which, from that time, they 
 regularly send every year to the God. As soon, therefore, 
 as the preparations for the sacred spectacle commence, the 
 law orders that the city shall be purified, and that no one 
 shall be put to death by a public decree till the ship has 
 arrived at Delos, and again returned to Athens. But this 
 sometimes takes a long time in accomplishing, when the 
 winds impede their passage; but the festival itself com- 
 mences when the priest of Apollo has crowned the stern of 
 the ship. Now this, as I told you, took place on the day 
 preceding the trial ; and on this account that length of time 
 happened to Socrates in prison between his sentence and 
 his death. 
 
 Echec. And what, Phaedo, were the circumstances re- 
 specting his death ? what were his sayings and actions ? 
 and who of his familiars were present with him ? or would 
 not the magistrates suffer that any should be admitted 
 to him, so that he died deprived of the presence of his 
 friends ? 
 
 Phaed. By no means ; but some, and indeed many, 
 were present with him. 
 
 Echec. Endeavour to relate all these particulars to us in 
 the clearest manner, unless you have some business which 
 may prevent you. 
 
 Phaed. But 1 am at leisure, and will endeavour to gratify 
 your request : for indeed to call to mind Socrates, whether 
 I myself speak or hear others, is to me always the most 
 pleasant of all things. 
 
 Ecliec. Truly, Phaedo, others who hear you will be 
 aifected in the same manner : but endeavour, as much as 
 
 ^ The tribute of victims for the Minotaur, u hich Theseus slew. 
 
156 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 you arc able, to narrate every circumstance in the most 
 accurate manner. 
 
 FJiaed. And indeed I myself, who was present, was 
 wonderfully affected ; for I was not influenced with pity, 
 like one present at the death of a familiar : for this man, O 
 Echecrates, appeared to me to be blessed, when I con- 
 sidered his manner and discourses, and his intrepid and 
 generous death. Hence it appeared to me, that he did 
 not descend to Hades without a divine destiny, but that 
 there also he would be in a happy condition, if ever 
 man was. On this account I was entirely uninfluenced 
 with pity, though apparently I ought not to have been, on 
 so mournful an occasion ; nor yet again was I influenced by 
 pleasure through philosophical converse, as I used to be : 
 for our discourses were of this kind. But, to speak ingenu- 
 ously, a certain wonderful passion, and an unusual mixture 
 of pleasure and grief, were present with me, produced by 
 considering that he must in a very short time die. And, 
 indeed, all of us who were present were nearly affected in 
 the same manner, at one time laughing, and at another 
 weeping : but this was eminently the case with one of us, 
 Apollodorus; for you know the man, and his manner of 
 behaviour. 
 
 Echec. How is it possible that I should not ? 
 
 Phaed. He was remarkably affected in this manner; and I 
 myself, and others, experienced great trouble and confusion. 
 
 Echec. Who then, Phaedo, happened to be present ? 
 
 Phaed. Of native Athenians, ApoUodorus, Critobulus, 
 and his father Crito were present ; likewise Hermogenes, 
 Epigenes, ^schines, and Antisthenes.^ And besides 
 these, Ctesippus the Paianian, Menexenus, and some other 
 Athenians were present : but Plato I think was sick. 
 
 Echec. Were there no strangers ? 
 
 Phaed. Yes : Simmias the Theban, Cebes,^ and 
 
 ^ This Antisthenes, as principally imitating Socrates in his endurance 
 and contempt of pleasure, was the author of the Cynic sect, and the 
 preceptor oi Diogenes. 
 
 '-^ This Cebes is the author of the allegorical table now extant. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 157 
 
 Phsedondes ; and among the Megarensians, Euclid and 
 Terpsion. 
 
 Echec. But what ! were not Aristippus^andCleombrotus 
 there ? 
 
 Fhaed. By no means : for they were said to be at ^gina. 
 
 Echec. Was any other person present ? 
 
 Fhaed. I think those I have mentioned were nearly all. 
 
 Echec. Will you now then relate what were his discourses? 
 
 Fhaed. I will endeavour to relate the whole to you from 
 the beginning. For we were always accustomed to visit 
 Socrates, myself and others meeting in the morning at the 
 place where he was tried, for it was very near to the prison. 
 Here we waited every day till the prison was opened, dis- 
 coursing among ourselves, fcr it was not opened very early 
 in the morning ; but, as soon as we could be admitted, we 
 went to Socrates, and generally spent the whole day with 
 him. And then, indeed, w^e met together sooner than 
 usual ; for the day before, when we left the prison, we 
 heard that the ship from Delos was returned. We deter- 
 mined, therefore, among ourselves, to come very early in 
 the morning to the usual place; and we met together 
 accordingly : but when we arrived, the gaoler who used to 
 attend upon us, told us to wait, and not enter till he called 
 us. For, says he, the eleven magistrates are now freeing 
 Socrates from his bonds, and announcing to him that he 
 must die to-day. But not long after this he returned, and 
 ordered us to enter. When we entered, we found Socrates 
 just freed from his fetters, but Xantippe (you know her) 
 holding one of his children, and sitting by him. As soon, 
 therefore, as Xantippe saw us, she began to lament in a most 
 
 1 A philosopher of Cyrenc, and founder of the Cyrenaic sect. What 
 is here said concerning the absence of Arislippus and Clcomhrotus is 
 well explained by Demetrius in hhhook ire pi Y^pfx-qv da's. "Plato, he 
 observes, says this in order to reprove Aristippus and Cleombrotus, who 
 were feasting in /Egina at the time that Socrates was in prison, and did 
 not sail to see their friend and master, though they were then at the 
 entrance of the Athenian harbour. IMato, however, does not clearly 
 relate these particulars, because his narration would have been an open 
 defamation. " — Taylor. 
 
158 SELECTIONS FROM PLA TO. 
 
 violent manner, and said such things as are usual with 
 women in affliction ; and among the rest, Socrates, says she, 
 this is the last time your friends will speak to you, or you to 
 them. But Socrates looking upon Crito, Crito, says he, let 
 some one take her home. Upon which some of Crito's 
 domestics led her away, beating herself, and weeping 
 bitterly. But Socrates, sitting upright on the bed, drew up 
 his leg, and rubbing it with his hand, said at the same time, 
 What a wonderful thing is this, my friends, which men call 
 ihepleasajit and a^^reeadle / and how admirably is it affected 
 by nature towards that which appears to be its contrary, the 
 painful I for they are unwilling to be present with us both 
 together ; and yet, if any person pursues and receives the 
 one, he is almost under a necessity of receiving the other, 
 as if they were two bodies with a single head. And it seems 
 to me, says he, that if ^sop had perceived this he would 
 have composed a fable from it, and would have informed 
 us, that Divinity, being willing to reconcile contending 
 natures, but not being able to accomplish this design, con- 
 joined their summits in a nature one and the same ; and 
 that hence it comes to pass, that whoever partakes of the 
 one is soon after connected with the other. And this, as it 
 appears, is the case with myself at present ; for the pain 
 which was before in my leg, through the bond, is now 
 succeeded by a pleasant sensation. 
 
 But here Cebes replying, said. By Zeus, Socrates, you 
 have very opportunely caused me to recollect : for certain 
 persons have asked me concerning those poems which you 
 composed — viz., the Fables of yEsop which you versified, 
 and your exordium to Apollo, and other pieces of com- 
 position ; and, among the rest, Evenus lately inquired with 
 what design you did this after coming here, when before 
 you have never attempted anything of the kind. If, there- 
 fore, you have any desire that I may have an answer ready 
 for Evenus, when he again interrogates me on this occasion 
 (and I am certain that he will do so), tell me what I must 
 say to him. You may truly inform him, says he, Cebes, 
 that I did not compose these verses with any design of 
 
THE PHAEDO. 159 
 
 rivalling him, or his poems (for I knew that this would be 
 no easy matter) ; but that I might try to explore the 
 meaning of certain dreams, and that 1 migiit fulfil my 
 religious obligation, if this should happen to be the music 
 which they have often ordered me to exercise. For in the 
 past part of my life the same dream has often occurred to 
 me, exhibiting at different times a different appearance, yet 
 always advising me the same thing ; for it said, Socrates, 
 make and exercise music. And indeed, in the former part 
 of my life, I considered that this dream persuaded and 
 exhorted me respecting the very thing I was doing, in the 
 same manner as runners in the races are exhorted; for, by 
 persuading me to exercise music, it signified that I should 
 labour in philosophy, which is the greatest music. But now 
 since my sentence has taken place, and the festival of the 
 God has retarded my death, it appeared to me to be 
 necessary that, if the music which the dream has so often 
 exhorted me to undertake should happen to be of the 
 ordinary sort, I should by no means resist its persuasions, 
 but comply with the exhortation : for I considered that it 
 would be more safe for me not to depart from hence before 
 I had cleared myself by composing verses, and obeying the 
 dream. Thus, in the first place, I composed some verses in 
 honour of the God to whom the present festival belongs ; 
 but after the God, considering it necessary that he who 
 designs to be a poet should make fables and not discourses, 
 and knowing that I myself was not a mythologist, on these 
 accounts I versified the fables of ^sop, which were at 
 hand, and were known to me ; and began with those first 
 that first presented themselves to my view. Give this 
 answer, Cebes, to Evenus : at the same time bid him 
 farewell for me ; and tell him, if he is wise he will follow 
 me. But I shall depart, as it seems, to-day; for such are 
 the orders of the Athenians. 
 
 Upon this Simmias replied, What is this, Socrates, which 
 you command me to tell Evenus? for I often meet with 
 him; and from what I know of him, I am certain that he 
 will never willingly comply with your request. 
 
i6o SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 What, then, says Socrates, is not Evenus a philosopher? 
 
 To me he appears to be so, says Siramias. 
 
 Both Evenus, therefore, will be willing to follow me, and 
 every one who is worthy to partake of philosophy ; not 
 perhaps indeed by violently depriving himself of life, for 
 this they say is unlawful. And at the same time, as he thus 
 spoke, he withdrew his leg from the bed, and placed it on 
 the ground ; and afterwards continued to discourse with us, 
 in a silting posture, the remaining part of the time. Cebes,^ 
 therefore, inquired of him. How is this to be understood, 
 Socrates, that it is not lawful to commit suicide, and yet 
 that a philosopher should be willing to follow one who is 
 about to die? 
 
 What, says he, Cebes, have not you and Simmias heard your 
 familiar Philolaus discourse concerning things of this kind ? 
 
 We have not, Socrates, heard anything clearly on this 
 subject. 
 
 But I, says Socrates, speak in consequence of having 
 heard ; and what I have heard I will not enviously conceal 
 from you. And perhaps it is becoming in the most 
 eminent degree, that he who is about to depart thither 
 should consider and mythologise about this departure : I 
 mean, what kind of a thing we should think it to be. For 
 what else can such a one be more properly employed 
 about, till the setting^ of the sun? 
 
 On what account then, Socrates, says Cebes, do they say 
 that it is unlawful for a man to kill himself? for I myself 
 have some time since heard from Philolaus, when he 
 resided with us, and from some others, that it was not 
 proper to commit such an action ; but I never heard any- 
 thing clear upon the subject from any one. 
 
 Prepare yourself, then, says Socrates, for perhaps you 
 
 ^ Socrates and Cebes are here speaking about two different kinds of 
 death ; the latter about a physical, and the former about a pre-elective 
 or free-will death. — Taylor. 
 
 - It was a law, says Olympiodorus, with the Athenians, to put no one to 
 death in the day, just as it was an injunction with the Pythagoreans not 
 to sleep in mid-day, when the sun exhibits his most strenuous energy. — T. 
 
THE PIIAEDO. i6i 
 
 may be satisfied in this particular : and perhaps it may 
 appear to you wonderful, if this alone should be the 
 absolute truth, that it is better, not for some men only but 
 for all, to die than to live ; and yet that these men must 
 not, on pain of impiety, do good to themselves, but await 
 some other benefactor. 
 
 Then Cebes, gently laughing, Zeus knows that, says he, 
 speaking in his own Boeotian tongue. 
 
 For this indeed, says Socrates, appears to be irrational ; 
 and yet, perhaps, it is not so, but has a certain reason on 
 its side. For the discourse which is delivered about these 
 particulars, in the arcana of the mysteries,^ that we are 
 placed as ifi a certain prison secured by a guard ^ and that it 
 is not proper for any one to free himself front this confine?nent^ 
 and 7nake his escape, appears to me to be an assertion of 
 great moment, and not easy to be understood. But this 
 appears to me, O Cebes, to be well said, that the gods take 
 care of us, and that we who are men are one of the 
 possessions belonging to the gods. Or does not this appear 
 to you to be the case ? 
 
 It does to me, says Cebes. 
 
 Would not you, therefore, if any one of your servants 
 should destroy himself, when at the same time you did not 
 signify that you were willing he should die, would you not 
 be angry with him ? and if you had any punishment, would 
 you not chastise him ? 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 Perhaps, therefore, it is not irrational to assert, that a 
 man ought not to kill himself before Divinity lays him 
 under a certain necessity of doing so, such as I am subject 
 to at present. 
 
 ^ Taylor, following Olympiodorus and Proclus, refers this passage to 
 the Mysteries, and gives, from the former, the substance of an argument 
 against suicide founded on a mystical doctrine of the divine origin of 
 the body. For this argument the passage in the text would be simply 
 a veil, penetrable only to the initiated. The Greek, however, does not 
 necessarily imply an allusion to the Mysteries, commonly so called; and 
 may perhaps refer to the obscure doctrines of the Pythagoreans, to 
 which sect Philolaus belonged. 
 
 II 
 
1 62 SELECTIONS FROM PL A TO. 
 
 This, indeed, says Cebes, appears to be reasonable. 
 But that which you said just now, Socrates, that philo- 
 sophers would very readily be willing to die, appears to be 
 absurd, if what we have asserted is agreeable to reason, 
 that Divinity takes care of us, and that we are one of 
 his possessions ; for it is irrational to suppose that the 
 wisest men should not be grieved, when departing from 
 that servitude in which they are taken care of by the gods, 
 who are the best of governors. For such a one will by no 
 means think that he shall be better taken care of when he 
 becomes free : but some one who is deprived of intellect 
 may perhaps think that he should fly from his master, and 
 will not consider that he ought not to fly from a good 
 master, but that he should by all means abide in his 
 service. Hence he will depart from him in a most 
 irrational manner : but he who is endowed with intellect 
 will desire to live perpetually with one who is better than 
 himself. And thus, Socrates, it is reasonable that the 
 contrary of what you just now said should take place : for 
 it is proper that the wise, when about to die, should be 
 sorrowful, but that the foolish should rejoice. 
 
 Socrates upon hearing this, seemed to me to be pleased 
 with the reasoning of Cebes ; and looking upon us, Cebes, 
 says he, never suffers anything to pass without investigation, 
 and is by no means willing to admit immediately the truth 
 of an assertion. 
 
 But indeed, says Simmias, Cebes, O Socrates, appears to 
 me to say something now to the purpose. For with what 
 design can men, truly wise, fly from masters who are better 
 than themselves, and, without any reluctance, free them- 
 selves from their servitude? And Cebes appears to me to 
 direct his discourse to you, because you so easily endure to 
 leave us, and those beneficent rulers the gods, as you 
 yourself confess. 
 
 You speak justly, says Socrates ; for I think you mean 
 that I ought to make my defence, as if I was upon my 
 trial. 
 
 By all means, says Simmias. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 163 
 
 Be it so then, says Socrates : and I shall endeavour that 
 this my apology may appear more reasonable to you than 
 the other did to my judges. For, with respect to myself, 
 says he, O Simmias and Cebes, unless I thought that I 
 should depart, in the first place, to other ^ gods who are 
 wise and good, and, in the next place, to men who have 
 migrated from the present life, and are better than any 
 among us, it would be wrong not to be troubled at death : 
 but now believe for certain, that I hope to dwell with good 
 men; though this, indeed, I will not confidently assert: 
 but that I shall go to gods who are perfectly good rulers, 
 you may consider as an assertion which, if anything of the 
 kind is so, will be strenuously affirmed by me. So that, on 
 this account, I shall not be afflicted at dying, but shall 
 entertain a good hope that something remains for the dead ; 
 and, as it was formerly said, that it will be much better 
 hereafter for the good than the evil. 
 
 What, then, Socrates, says Simmias, would you have 
 departed with such a conception in your intellect, without 
 communicating it to us ? Or will you not render us also 
 partakers of it ? For it appears to me, that this will be 
 a common good ; and at the same time it will be an 
 apology for you, if you can persuade us to believe what 
 you say. 
 
 I will endeavour to do so, says he. But let us first 
 attend to Crito : what is it that he has for some time 
 seemed anxious to say to me ? 
 
 What else, says Crito, should it be, Socrates, except what 
 he who is to give you the poison has long ago told me, that 
 you ought to speak as little as possible ? For he says that 
 those who dispute become too much heated, and tliat 
 nothing of this kind ought to be introduced with the 
 poison, since those who do not observe this caution are 
 sometimes obliged to drink the poison twice or thrice. 
 
 Let him, says Socrates, only mind his business, and 
 
 1 By other gods y Socrates means such as are supermundane, or of an 
 order superior to the ruling divinities of the world. In short, those 
 gods are here signified that are unconnected with body. — Taylqr. 
 
i64 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 administer the poison twice ; and even, if occasion requires, 
 thrice. 
 
 I was almost certain, says Crito, that this would be your 
 answer ; but he has been plaguing me to do this, as I said, 
 some time since. 
 
 Let him be, says Socrates ; but I am desirous of render- 
 ing to you, as my judges, the reason, as it appears to me, 
 why a man who has truly passed his life in the exercise of 
 philosophy should with great propriety be confident when 
 about to die, and should possess good hopes of obtaining 
 the greatest advantages after death ; and in what manner 
 this takes place I will endeavour, Simmias and Cebes, to 
 explain : 
 
 Those who are conversant with philosophy in a proper 
 manner, seem to have concealed from others that the whole 
 of their study is nothing else than how to die and be dead.^ 
 If this then is true, it would certainly be absurd that those 
 who have made this alone their study through the whole of 
 life, should, when it arrives, be afflicted at a circumstance 
 upon which they have before bestowed all their attention 
 and labour. 
 
 But here Simmias laughing, By Zeus, says he, Socrates, 
 you cause me to laugh, though I am very far from desiring 
 to do so at present : for I think that the multitude, if they 
 heard this, would consider it as well said against philo- 
 sophers ; and that men of the present day would perfectly 
 agree with you, that philosophers should in reality desire 
 death, and that our fellow-citizens are by no means ignorant 
 that they deserve it. 
 
 And indeed, Simmias, they would speak the truth, except 
 in asserting that they are not ignorant of it : for both the 
 manner in which true philosophers desire to die, and how 
 they are worthy of death, is concealed from them. But let 
 us bid farewell to such as these, says he, and discourse 
 
 ' It is well observed by Olympiodorus, that to die {airodui^aKeLv) 
 differs from to be dead {Tedvdvai). For the cathartic philosopher dies 
 in consequence of meditating death ; but the theoretic philosopher is 
 dead, in consequence of being separated from the passions. — Taylor. 
 
THE PHA^DO. 165 
 
 among ourselves : and to begin, Do you think that death is 
 anything? 
 
 Simmias replied, Entirely so. 
 
 Is it anything else than a liberation of soul from body? 
 and is not this to die,^ for the body to be liberated from the 
 soul, and to subsist apart by itself? and likewise for the 
 soul to be liberated from the body, and to be essentially 
 separate. Is death anything else but this ? 
 
 It is no other, says Simmias. 
 
 Consider then, excellent man, whether the same things 
 appear to you as to me; for from hence I think we shall 
 understand better the subjects of our investigation. Does 
 it appear to you that the philosopher is a man who is 
 anxiously concerned about things which are called plea- 
 sures, such as meats and drinks? 
 
 Not at all, Socrates, says Simmias. 
 
 But what about amorous pleasures — does he care for them ? 
 
 By no means. 
 
 Or does such a man appear to you to esteem other 
 particulars which regard the observance of the body, such 
 as the acquisition of excellent garments and sandals, and 
 other ornaments of the body ? whether does he appear to 
 you to esteem or despise such particulars, employing them 
 only so far as an abundant necessity requires? 
 
 A true philosopher, says Simmias, appears to me to be 
 one who will despise everything of this kind. 
 
 Does it, therefore, appear to you, says Socrates, that the 
 whole employment of such a one will not consist in things 
 which regard the body, but in separating himself from the 
 body as much as possible, and in converting himself to his 
 soul? 
 
 IL does appear so to me. 
 
 ^ Plato beautifully defines death to be a separation of the body from 
 the soul, and of the sr)ul from the body. For, with respect to souls 
 that are enamoured wiih body, the body is indeed separated from the 
 soul, but not the soul from the body, because it is yet conjoined with it 
 through habitude or alliance, from which those shadowy phantoms are 
 produced that wander about sepulchres. — Tayluk. 
 
i66 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Is it not, therefore, first of all evident, in things of this 
 kind, that a philosopher, in a manner far surpassing other 
 men, separates his soul in the highest degree from com- 
 munion with the body? 
 
 It appears so. 
 
 And to the many^ O Simmias, it appears that for him 
 who accounts nothing of this kind pleasant, and who does 
 not partake of them, it is not worth while to live ; but that 
 he nearly approaches to death who is not concerned about 
 the pleasures of the body. 
 
 You entirely speak the truth. 
 
 But what with respect to the acquisition^ of wisdom? Is 
 the body an impediment or not, if any one associates it in 
 the investigation of wisdom ? What I mean is this : Have 
 sight and hearing in men any truth?- or is the case such 
 as the poets perpetually sing, that 
 
 " We nothing accurate or see or hear ?" 
 
 ^ Socrates having shown from life that the philosopher is willing to 
 die, now proves this from kno7vled^e as follows : — The philosopher 
 despises the senses : he who does this despises also the body, in which 
 the senses reside : he who despises the body is averse to it : he who is 
 averse to it separates himself from the body: and he who separates 
 himself from the body is willing to die ; for death is nothing else than a 
 separation of the soul from the body. 
 
 But it is here necessary to observe, that there are three energies of 
 the soul : for it either converts itself to things subordinate, and acquires 
 a knowledge of sensibles; .or it converts itself to itself, and sees all 
 things in itself, because it is an omniform image containing the reasons 
 of all things; or it extends itself to the intelligible, and beholds ideas. 
 As there are, therefore, three energies of the soul, we must not suppose 
 that the politic, cathartic, and theoretic characters differ from each 
 other in this, that the political character knows sensibles; the cathartic, 
 the reasons in the soul ; and the theoretic, ideas — since no one is in 
 reality a ])hilosopher who has not a knowledge of all things : but they 
 differ in this, that the political philosopher is conversant with pleasures 
 and pains ; for he attends to the body as an instrument, and his end is 
 not a privation, Ijut a moderation of the passions. But the cathartic 
 and theoretic philosophers attend to the body as a neighbouring trille, 
 that it may not become an impediment to their energies; and the end 
 with them is liberation from the passions. — Taylor. 
 
 ^ Plato says that there is no truth in the senses, because they do 
 
THE PHAEDO, 167 
 
 Though if these senses are neither accurate nor clear, by no 
 means can the rest be so : for all the others are in a certain 
 respect more depraved than these. Or does it not appear 
 so to you ? 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 When then does the soul touch upon the truth ? for, 
 when it endeavours to consider anything in conjunction 
 with the body, it is evidently then deceived by the body. 
 
 You speak the truth. 
 
 Must not, therefore, something of reality become 
 manifest to the soul in the energy of reasoning, if this is 
 ever the case ? 
 
 It must. 
 
 But the soul then reasons best when it is disturbed by 
 nothing belonging to the body, neither by hearing, nor 
 sight, nor pain, nor any pleasure, but subsists in the most 
 eminent degree, itself by itself, bidding farewell to the 
 body, and, as much as possible, neither communicating nor 
 being in contact with it, extends itself towards real being ? 
 
 These things are so. 
 
 Does not the soul of a philosopher, therefore, in these 
 employments, despise the body in the most eminent degree, 
 and, flying from it, seek to become essentially subsisting by 
 itself? 
 
 It appears so. 
 
 not properly know : for passion is mingled with their knowledge, in 
 consequence of being obtained through media. For intellect is said to 
 know accurately, because tliat which understands is the same with the in- 
 telligible, or the object of intellection. Besides, sense cannot sustain the 
 accuracy of sensiblcs. Thus, for instance, the eye cannot bear to look 
 at that which is white in the extreme. For sensible objects, when they 
 are transcendent, destroy the senses. Sense, however, may be said to 
 be always true and accurate when it is compared with assimilative 
 knowledge, such as that of images in mirrors. When, therefore, sense 
 is said, as it is by Aristotle, to be the principle of science, it must not 
 be considered as the producing principle, but as agitating the soul to a 
 recollection of universals, and as performing the office of a messenger 
 and herald, by exciting our soul to the evolution of the sciences. The 
 poets who assert that the senses know nothing accurately are I'ar- 
 menides, Empedoclcs, and Epicharmus. — Tayluk. 
 
i68 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 But what shall we say, Simmias, about such things as the 
 following ? Do we say that the just itself^ is something or 
 nothing ? 
 
 By Zeus, we say it is something. 
 
 And do we not also say, that the beautiful and the good 
 are each of them something ? 
 
 How is it possible we should not ? 
 
 But did you ever at any time behold any one of these 
 with your eyes ? 
 
 By no means, says he. 
 
 But did you ever touch upon these with any other cor- 
 poreal sense (but I speak concerning all of them; as for 
 instance, about magnitude, health, strength, and, in one 
 word, about the essence of all the rest, and which each 
 truly possesses) ? Is then the most true nature of these 
 
 ^ The energy of our soul, as we have before observed, is triple : for 
 it either converts itself to things subordinate, obtaining a knowledge of 
 and adorning them, or it converts itself to itself, and acquires a know- 
 ledge of itself, or it converts itself to natures more excellent than its 
 own. Socrates, therefore, having shown that the philosopher is willing 
 to die, from a conversion to things subordinate, because he flies from 
 the body, despising it ; and having also shown this from a conversion 
 to himself, because he attends to the body no further than extreme 
 necessity obliges him ; he now also shows that he is willing to die, from 
 a conversion to things more excellent. For he wishes to know ideas; 
 but it is impossible for the soul to know these while energising with the 
 body, or having this communicating with it in the investigation of them. 
 For, if sense possesses something impartible, as is evident from the 
 collected nature of its perception : for it knows, for instance, at once, 
 that this particular thing is white, and not black ; since, if it knew this 
 divisibly, it would be just as if I should perceive one part of a thing, 
 and you another;* — much more therefore does the rational soul perceive 
 impartibly. It differs, however, from sense in this, that sense knows, 
 but does not know that it knows ; for it is not converted to itself, since 
 neither body, nor things which possess their being in body, are con- 
 verted to themselves ; but the rational soul knows both sensibles and 
 itself: for it knows that it knows. If this then be the case, the soul 
 will not receive, as its associate in investigation, either the body or the 
 senses, or the instruments of sense, if it wishes to know things accurately. 
 — Taylor. 
 
 * For these partible perceptions would never produce a perception of that 
 which is white, as one thiny.— Tavluii. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 169 
 
 perceived through the ministry of the body ? or rather shall 
 we not say, that whoever among us prepares himself to 
 think dianoetically [intellectually] in the most eminent and 
 accurate manner about each particular object of his specula- 
 tion, such a one will come nearest to the knowledge of each? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 Will not he, therefore, accomplish this in the most pure 
 manner, who in the highest degree betakes himself to each 
 through his dianoetic power, neither employing sight in 
 conjunction with the dianoetic energy, nor bringing in any 
 other sense, together with his reasoning ; but who, exercising 
 a pure dianoetic energy as it subsists, at the same time 
 endeavours to hunt after everything which has true being 
 by itself separate and pure ; and who in the most eminent 
 degree is liberated from the eyes and ears, and in short 
 from the whole body, as disturbing the soul, and not suffer- 
 ing it to acquire truth and wisdom by its conjunction ? 
 Will not such a man, Simmias, procure for himself real 
 being, if this can ever be asserted of any one ? 
 
 You speak the truth, Socrates, says Simmias, in a trans- 
 cendent manner. 
 
 Is it not necessary, therefore, says Socrates, from hence, 
 that an opinion of this kind should be present with genuine 
 philosophers in such a manner, that they will speak among 
 themselves as follows : In the consideration of things, 
 this opinion, like a kind of path, leads us in conjunction 
 with reason from the vulgar track, that, as long as we 
 are connected with a body, and our soul is contaminated 
 with such an evil, we can never sufficiently obtain the 
 object of our desire; and this object we have asserted 
 to be truth ? For the Ijody subjects us to innumerable 
 occupations through necessary aliment, and fills us 
 with love, desire, fear, all various images, and a nmlti- 
 tude of trifling concerns ; not to mention that, if we 
 are invaded by certain diseases, we arc hindered by them in 
 our hunting after real being ; so that, as it is said, ive can 
 never irul}\ and in reality^ aapiire wisdom through the body. 
 For nothing else but the body and its desires cause wars, 
 
17o SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 seditions, and contests of every kind : for all wars arise 
 through the possession of wealth ; and we are compelled 
 to acquire riches through the body, becoming subservient 
 to its cultivation; so that on all these accounts we have no 
 leisure for the exercise of philosophy. But this is the 
 extremity of all evils, that if at any time we are at leisure 
 from its attendance, and betake ourselves to the speculation 
 of anything, then invading us on all sides in our investi- 
 gations, it causes agitations and tumults, and so vehemently 
 impels us, that we are not able through its presence to 
 perceive the truth ; but it is in reality demonstrated to us, 
 that, if we are designed to know anything purely, we must 
 be liberated from the body, and behold things with the soul 
 itself. And then, as it appears, we shall obtain the object 
 of our desire, and of which we profess ourselves lovers — viz., 
 wisdom, when we are dead, as our discourse evinces ; but 
 by no means while we are alive: for, if we can know nothing 
 purely in conjunction with the body, one of these two 
 consequences must ensue, either that we can never possess 
 knowledge, or that we must obtain it after death ; for then 
 the soul will subsist apart by itself, separate from the 
 body, but never before this takes place ; and while we live 
 in the body, as it appears, we shall approach in the nearest 
 manner possible to knowledge, if in the most eminent 
 degree we have no association with the body, nor any 
 communication with it (except what the greatest necessity 
 requires), nor are filled with its nature, but purify ourselves 
 from its defiling connection, till Divinity itself dissolves our 
 bonds. And thus being pure, and liberated from the mad- 
 ness of body, it is proper to believe that we shall then 
 associate with others who are similarly pure, and shall 
 through ourselves know everything genuine and sincere : 
 and this perhaps is the truth itself; for it is by no means 
 lawful that the pure should be touched by that which is 
 impure. And such, O Simmias, in my opinion, ought to be 
 the discourse and sentiments of all such as are lovers of learn- 
 ing in a proper manner. Or does it not seem so to you ? 
 It does, Socrates, more so than anything. 
 
THE PHAEDO. lyt 
 
 If all this then, says Socrates, is true, my friend, much 
 hope remains for him who arrives at that place to which I 
 am now departing, that he shall there, if ever anywhere, 
 sufficiently obtain that for the sake of which we take so 
 much pains in the present life : so that the journey which 
 is now assigned me will be accompanied with good hope ; 
 as will likewise be the case with any other man who thinks 
 that he ought to prepare his dianoetic part in such a manner 
 that it may become as it were pure. 
 
 Entirely so, says Simmias. 
 
 But does not purification consist in this, as we formerly 
 asserted in our discourse : I mean, in separating the soul 
 from the body in the most eminent degree, and in accus- 
 toming it to call together and collect itself essentially on all 
 sides from the body, and to dwell as much as possible, both 
 now and hereafter, alone by itself, becoming by this means 
 liberated from the body as from detaining bonds ? 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 Is not death called a solution and separation of the soul 
 from body ? 
 
 Perfectly so, says he. 
 
 But those alone who philosophise rightly, as we have said, 
 always and especially long for solution of the soul : and this 
 is the meditation of philosophers, a solution and separation 
 of the soul from the body; or do you not think so? 
 
 I do. 
 
 Would it not, therefore, as I said at first, be ridiculous 
 for a man who has so prepared himself in the present life 
 as to approach very near to death, to live indeed in the 
 manner we have described, and yet, when death arrives, be 
 afflicted ? would not this be ridiculous ? 
 
 How indeed should it not ? 
 
 In reality, therefore, says he, O Simmias, those who 
 philosophise rightly will meditate how to die ; and to be 
 dead will be to them of all men a thing the least terrible. 
 But from hence consider as follows: for, if- tlt^y^ifre on all 
 sides enemies to the body, but desire' tb^ljossess the soul 
 subsisting by itself, would it not be very irrational for them 
 
172 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 to be terrified and troubled when death approaches, and to 
 be unwilling to depart to that place, where when they 
 have arrived they may hope to enjoy that which they were 
 lovers of in the present life (but they were lovers of wisdom), 
 and to be liberated from the association of that nature to 
 which they were always inimical ? Or do you think it 
 possible, that many should be willing, of their own accord, 
 to descend into Hades, allured by the hope of seeing and 
 conversing with departed beautiful youths, wives, and 
 children whom they have loved; and that the true lover 
 of wisdom, who has exceedingly nourished this hope, that 
 he shall never possess wisdom as he ought anywhere but in 
 Hades, should be afflicted when dying, and should not 
 depart thither with readiness and delight ? For it is neces- 
 sary, my friend, to think in this manner of one who is a 
 true philosopher ; since such a one is very much of opinion 
 that he shall never anywhere, but in that place, acquire the 
 possession of wisdom with purity; and if this be the case, 
 would it not be very irrational, as we just now said, for a 
 man of this kind to be terrified at death ? 
 
 Very much so, by Zeus, says he. 
 
 This then will be an argument sufficient to convince you, 
 that he whom you behold afflicted, when about to die, is 
 not a philosopher, but a lover of body; and this same 
 person is a lover of riches and honours, either desiring the 
 possession of one of these, or of both. 
 
 The case is entirely so, says he, as you represent it. 
 
 Does not then, O Simmias, that which is called fortitude 
 eminently belong to philosophers ? 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 Docs not temperance also, which even the multitude 
 thus denominate as a virtue, through w^hich wc are not 
 agitated by desires, but regard them with moderation and 
 contempt ; does it not, I say, belong to those only who 
 despise the body in the most eminent degree, and live in 
 the exercise of philosophy ? 
 
 It is necessary, says he. 
 
 For, if you are willing, says Socrates, to consider the 
 
THE PHAEDO. 173 
 
 fortitude and temperance of others, they will appear to you 
 to be absurdities. 
 
 But how, Socrates ? 
 
 You know, says he, that all others look upon death as a 
 very great evil. 
 
 In the highest degree so, says he. 
 
 And those who are bold among these, sustain death 
 when they do sustain it, through the dread of greater 
 evils. 
 
 They do so. 
 
 All men, therefore, except philosophers, are bold through 
 fearing and dread, though it is absurd that any one should 
 be bold through fear or cowardice. 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But what, are not the moderate among these affected in 
 the same manner ? and are they not temperate by a certain 
 intemperance ? Though this is in a certain respect impos- 
 sible, yet a passion similar to this happens to them with 
 respect to this foolish temperance : for, fearing to be 
 deprived of other pleasures which at the same time they 
 desire, they abstain from the one being vanquished by 
 others. And though they call intemperance a subjection 
 to pleasures ; yet at the same time it happens to them, 
 that, being vanquished by certain pleasures, they control 
 others ; and this is similar to what I just now said, that 
 after a certain manner they become temperate through 
 intemperance. 
 
 It seems so, indeed. 
 
 But, O blessed Simmias, this is by no means the right 
 road to virtue, to change pleasures for pleasures, pains for 
 pains, fear for fear, and the greater for the lesser, like 
 pieces of money: but that alone is the proper coin, I 
 mean wisdom, for which all these ought to be changed. 
 And indeed, for the sake of this, and with this every- 
 thing must in reality be bought and sold, both fortitude 
 and temperance, justice, and, in one word, true virtue, 
 which subsists with wisdom, whether pleasures and pains, 
 and everything else of this kind, are present or absent : but 
 
1 74 SELECTIONS FROM PL A TO. 
 
 if these are separated from wisdom, and changed one with 
 another, such virtue does not merit to be called even a 
 shadowy description, but is in reality servile, and possesses 
 nothing salutary and true. But that which is in reality true 
 virtue is a purification from everything of this kind ; and 
 temperance and justice, fortitude, and thought itself, are 
 each of them a certain purification. And those who instituted 
 the Mysteries for us appear to have had a true and deep mean- 
 ing when they signified formerly, in an obscure manner, 
 that whoever descended into Hades 2ini7iitiaied^ and without 
 being a partaker of the Mysteries^ should he plunged into mire; 
 but that whoever arrived there, purified and initiated, should 
 dwell with the gods?- For, as it is said by those who write 
 about the Mysteries, 
 
 '* The thyrsus-bearers numerous are seen, 
 But few the Bacchuses have always been." 
 
 These few are, in my opinion, no other than those who 
 philosophise rightly ; and that I may be ranked in the 
 number of these, I shall leave nothing unattempted, but 
 exert myself in all possible ways. But whether or not my 
 exertions have been properly directed, and whether I have 
 accomplished anything, I think, if Divinity pleases, I shall 
 clearly know very shortly when I arrive thither. And this, 
 says he, Simmias and Cebes, is my apology, why upon leav- 
 ing you, and the rulers of the present life, I ought not to be 
 afflicted and indignant, since I am persuaded that I shall 
 there meet with masters and companions not less good than 
 such as are here. This indeed is incredible to many ; but 
 I am well content if my apology shall have more influence 
 with you than with the judges of the Athenians. 
 
 When Socrates had thus spoken, Cebes, renewing the 
 discourse, said, Other things, Socrates, appear to me to be 
 well spoken ; but what you have asserted about the soul will 
 produce in men much incredulity, who think, when it is 
 
 ^ "Purification " was the first grade of initiation into the Mysteries ; 
 '' dwelling with the gods " was the last. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 175 
 
 liberated from the body, that it is no longer anywhere, but 
 that, on that very day in which a man dies, it is destroyed 
 and perishes, and this immediately as it is freed from the 
 body ; and, besides this, that on its departure it becomes 
 dissipated like wind or smoke, makes its escape, and flies 
 away, and is no longer anywhere : for if it remained any- 
 where essentially collected in itself, and liberated from those 
 evils which you have now enumerated, there would be an 
 abundant and fair hope, Socrates, that what you have 
 asserted is true. But it will perhaps require no small per- 
 suasion and faith, in order to be persuaded that the soul 
 remains, though the man dies, and that it possesses a certain 
 power and thought. 
 
 You speak the truth, Cebes, says Socrates ; but what shall 
 we do? Are you willing that we should discourse about 
 these particulars, whether it is likely that this should be 
 the case with the soul, or not? 
 
 Indeed, says Cebes, I shall hear with great pleasure your 
 opinion on this subject? 
 
 For I do not think, answered Socrates, that any one who 
 should hear this discussion, even though he should be a 
 comic poet, could say that I trifled, and discoursed about 
 things not accommodated to my condition. If it is agree- 
 able to you, therefore, and it is requisite to investigate these 
 particulars, let us consider whether the souls of dead men 
 survive in Hades, or not. 
 
 The assertion indeed, which we now call to mind, is an 
 ancient one, I mean that souls departing from hence exist 
 in Hades, and that they again return hither, and are generated 
 from the dead. And if the case is such, that living natures 
 are again generated from the dead, can there be any other 
 consequence than that our souls are there ? for they could 
 not be again generated if they had no subsistence ; and lliis 
 will be a sufflcient argument that these things are so, if it is 
 really evident that the living cannot be generated from any- 
 thing else than the dead. But, if this is not the case, it will 
 be necessary to adduce some other reason. 
 
 Entirely so, says Cebes. 
 
\/ 
 
 176 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 You should not, therefore, says he, consider this assertion 
 with respect to men alone, if you wish to learn with facility ; 
 but we should survey it as connected with all animals and 
 plants, and, in one word, with everything which is endued 
 with generation. Are not all things, therefore, so generated, 
 that they are produced no otherwise than contraries from 
 contraries, I mean those which have any contrary? as the 
 beautiful is contrary to the base, and the just to the unjust ; 
 and a thousand other particulars subsist in the same manner. 
 We should consider, therefore, whether it is necessary, 
 respecting everything which has a contrary, that this con- 
 trary should be generated from nothing else than that which 
 is its contrary. As for instance, is it not necessary that, when 
 anything becomes greater, it should become so from being 
 before smaller? 
 
 It is so, says he. 
 
 And is not the weaker generated from the stronger, and 
 the swifter from the slower ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But what if anything becomes worse, must it not become 
 so from the better? and if more just, must it not be 
 generated from the more unjust ? 
 
 How should it not? 
 
 We have then, says he, sufficiently determined this, that 
 everything is thus generated — viz., contraries from contraries. 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But what, is there anything among these which has a 
 middle subsistence between both (since all contraries are 
 two), so as to cause two generations from this to that, and 
 from that again to this ? for between the greater thing and 
 the lesser thing there is an increasing and a diminution ; 
 and hence we say that the one is increased, but the other 
 diminished. 
 
 It is so, says he. 
 
 And must not to be separated and mingled, to be cooled 
 and heated, and everything in the same manner, though 
 sometimes we do not distinguish the several particulars 
 by names, must they not in reality be everywhere thus 
 
THE PHAEDO. 177 
 
 circumstanced, be generated from each other, and pass 
 by generation into one another? 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 What then, says Socrates, is there anything contrary to 
 the being ahve, as sleeping is contrary to waking ? 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 But what is this contrary ? 
 
 To be dead. 
 
 Are not these, therefore, generated from each other, 
 since they are contraries? and since they are two, are there 
 not two processes of generation between them ? 
 
 How should there not ? 
 
 I will, therefore, says Socrates, tell you what one of 
 these conjunctions is which I have just now spoken of, and 
 what its generations are ; do you tell me what the other is. 
 But I say, that the one of these is to sleepy but the other to 
 awake ; and from sleeping awaking is generated, and from 
 awaking sleeping ; and the generations of these are on the 
 one hand to be laid asleep, and on the other to be roused. 
 Have I sufficiently explained this to you or not ? 
 
 Perfectly so. 
 
 Do you, therefore, says he, inform me, in a similar 
 manner, concerning life and death. Do you not say that 
 living is the contrary of to be dead? 
 
 I do. 
 
 And that they are generated from each other ? 
 
 Certainly. 
 
 What then is generated from that which is alive ? 
 
 That which is dead, says he. 
 
 But what, says Socrates, is generated from the dead ? 
 
 It is necessary to confess, says he, that this must be 
 the tiving. 
 
 From the dead, therefore, says he, O Cebes, living 
 things, and men who are alive, are generated. 
 
 It appears so, says he. 
 
 Our souls, therefore, says Socrates, subsist in Hades. 
 
 So it seems. 
 
 Is not, therefore, one of the processes of generation 
 
 12 
 
1 78 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 subsisting about these manifest? for to die is, I think, 
 sufficiently clear; is it not? 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 What then shall we do? shall we not render back a 
 contrary generation in its turn, but say that nature is 
 defective and lame in this particular ? Or is it necessary to 
 assign a certain contrary process to the being dead 1 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 But what is this ? 
 
 To be restored back again to life. 
 
 But, says Socrates, if there is such a thing as to revive 
 again, will not this reviving be a generation from the dead 
 to the living ? 
 
 Perfectly so. 
 
 This then is agreed upon by us, that the living are 
 generated from the dead no less than the dead from the 
 living : but, this being the case, it is a sufficient argument 
 to prove that the souls of the dead must necessarily exist 
 somewhere, from whence they may again be generated. 
 
 It appears to me, says he, Socrates, that this must 
 necessarily follow from what has been admitted. 
 
 Take notice, then, says he, O Cebes ! that we have not 
 unjustly made these concessions, as it appears to me : for if 
 other things, when generated, were not always restored in 
 the place of others, revolving as it were in a circle, but 
 generation subsisted according to a right line, proceeding 
 from one thing alone into its opposite, without recurring 
 again to the other, and making an inflection, you know that 
 all things would at length possess the same form, would be 
 affected with the same passion, and would cease to be 
 generated. 
 
 How do you say? says he. 
 
 It is by no means difficult, replies Socrates, to understand 
 what I assert ; but just as if there should be such a thing 
 as falling asleep without recurring again to a state of waking, 
 generated from a sleepy condition, you know that all things 
 would at length exhibit the delusions of Endymion, and 
 nothing would be anything any more, because everything 
 
^ 
 
 I 
 
 THE PHAEDO. 179 
 
 would suffer the same as happened to him — viz., would be 
 laid asleep. And if all things went on being united, without 
 ever being separated, the doctrine of Anaxagoras would 
 soon be verified ; for all things would be one confused 
 mass. In the same manner, my dear Simmias, if all such 
 things as participate of life should die, and after they are 
 dead should abide in that lifeless form, and not revive 
 again, would there not be a great necessity that all things 
 should at length die, and that nothing should live? for if 
 living beings are generated from other things, and living 
 beings die, how can it be otherwise but that all things must 
 be extinguished through being dead ? 
 
 It appears to me, Socrates, says Cebes, that it cannot be 
 otherwise; and in my opinion you perfectly speak the 
 truth. 
 
 For to me, Cebes, says Socrates, it seems that nothing is 
 so certain, and that we have not assented to this through 
 deception ; but that there is such a thing in reality as 
 reviving again ; that the living are generated from the dead; 
 that the souls of the dead have a subsistence ; and that the 
 condition of the good after this life wiL be better than at 
 present ; but of the evil, worse. 1^ 
 
 But, says Cebes, interrupting him, according to that" ^ 
 doctrine, Socrates, which you are frequently accustomed to 
 employ (if it is true), that learning, with respect to us, is 
 nothing else than reminiscence ; according to this, it is 
 necessary that we must have learned the things which we 
 now call to mind in some former period of time. But this 
 is impossible, unless our soul subsisted somewhere before 
 it took up its residence in this human form ; so that from 
 hence the soul will appear to be a certain immortal nature. 
 
 But, Cebes, says Simmias, interrupting him, recall into 
 my memory what demonstrations there are of these 
 particulars; for I do not very much remember them at 
 present 
 
 The truth of this, says Cebes, is evinced by one 
 argument, and that a most beautiful one ; that men, when 
 
'A 
 
 i6o SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 'interrogated, if they are but interrogated properly, will 
 speak about everything correctly. At the same time, they 
 could never do this unless science and right reason resided 
 in their natures. And, in the second place, if any one 
 \ leads them to diagrams,^ or anything of this kind, he will 
 in these most clearly discover that this is really the case. 
 
 But if you are not persuaded from this, Simmias, says 
 Socrates, see if, from considering the subject in this 
 manner, you will perceive as we do. For you do not under- 
 stand how that which is called learning is reminiscence. 
 
 I do not disbelieve it, says Simmias ; but I desire to be 
 informed concerning this, which is the subject of our dis- 
 course, I mean reminiscence ; and indeed, from what Cebes 
 has endeavoured to say, I almost now remember, and am 
 persuaded : but nevertheless I would at present hear how 
 you attempt to support this opinion. 
 
 We defend it then, says Socrates, as follows : we confess 
 without doubt, that if any one calls anything to mind, it is 
 necessary that at some time or other he should have 
 previously known this. 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 Shall we not confess this also, says Socrates, that when 
 science is produced in us, after some particular manner, it is 
 reminiscence ? But I mean by a particular manner, thus : 
 If any one, upon seeing or hearing anything, or appre- 
 hending it through the medium of any other sense, should 
 not only know //, but should also think upon something 
 else, of which there is not the same, but a different science, 
 should we not justly say, that he recollects or remembers 
 the particular, of which he receives a mental conception ? 
 
 How do you mean ? 
 
 Thus, says Socrates : In a certain respect the science of 
 a man is different from that of a lyre. 
 
 How should it not ? 
 
 ^ Diagrams — that is, geometrical figures. Cebes seems to mean that 
 the obvious and necessary quality of geometrical truths implies some 
 cognition of them prior to the experience of the present life. In point 
 of fact it does more, it implies something prior to all experience. 
 
THE PHAEDO. i8i 
 
 Do you not, therefore, know that lovers when they see a 
 lyre, or a vestment, or anything else which the objects of 
 their affection were accustomed to use, no sooner know the 
 lyre, than they immediately receive in their intellectual part 
 the form of the beloved person to whom the lyre belonged ? 
 But this is no other than reminiscence : just as any one, 
 upon seeing Simmias, often recollects Cebes ; and in a 
 certain respect an infinite number of such particulars 
 continually occur. 
 
 An infinite number indeed, by Zeus, says Simmias. 
 
 Is not then, says Socrates, something of this kind a 
 certain reminiscence ; and then especially so, when any one 
 experiences this affection about things which, through time, 
 and ceasing to consider them, he has now forgotten ? 
 
 Entirely so, says Simmias. 
 
 But what, says Socrates, does it happen, that when any 
 one sees a painted horse and a painted lyre, he calls to 
 mind a man ? and that when he beholds a picture of 
 Simmias, he recollects Cebes ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 And will it not also happen, that on seeing a picture of 
 Simmias he will recollect Simmias himself? 
 
 It certainly will happen so, says he. 
 
 Does it not therefore follow, that in all these instances 
 reminiscence partly takes place from things similar, and 
 partly from such as are dissimilar? 
 
 It does. 
 
 But when any one recollects anything from similars, must 
 it not also happen to him, that he must know whether this 
 similitude is deficient in any respect, as to likeness, from 
 that particular of which he has the remembrance ? 
 
 It is necessary, says he. 
 
 Consider then, says Socrates, if the following particulars i 
 are thus circumstanced. Do we say that there is such a 
 thing as the Equal? I do not say one piece of wood to 
 another, nor one stone to another, nor anything else of this 
 kind ; but do we say that the Equal itself, which is some- 
 thing different from all these, is something or nothing ? 
 
1 82 SELECTIONS FROM PL A TO. 
 
 We say it is something, by Zeus, Socrates, says Simmias, 
 and that most confidently. 
 
 Have we also a scientific knowledge of that which is 
 equal itself? 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 But from whence do we receive the science of it? Is it 
 not from the particulars we have just now spoken of — viz., 
 on seeing wood, stones, or other things of this kind, which 
 are equals, do we not form a conception of that Equal 
 which is different from these ? But consider the affair in 
 this manner : Do not equal stones and pieces of wood, 
 although they remain the same, at one time appear equal, 
 and at another not? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But what, can equals themselves ever appear to you un- 
 equal ? or can equality seem to be inequality ? 
 
 By no means, Socrates. 
 
 These equals, therefore, are not the same with the equal 
 itself. 
 
 By no means, Socrates, as it appears to me. 
 
 But from these equals, says he, which are different from 
 the equal itself, you at the same time understand and 
 receive the science of the equal itself. 
 
 You speak most true, says he. 
 
 Is it not, therefore, either similar to these or dis- 
 similar ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But indeed, says Socrates, this is of no consequence : for 
 while, in consequence of seeing one thing, you understand 
 another, from the view of this, whether it is dissimilar or 
 similar, it is necessary that this conception of another thing 
 should be reminiscence. 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But what will you determine concerning this ? says 
 Socrates. Do we suffer anything of this kind respecting 
 the equality in pieces of wood, and other such equals as we 
 have just now spoken of? and do they appear to us to be 
 equal in the same manner as the equal itself? and is 
 
THE PHAEDO. 1S3 
 
 something or nothing wanting, through which they are less 
 equal than the equal itself? 
 
 There is much wanting, says he. 
 
 Must we not, therefore, confess, that when any one, on 
 beholding some particular thing, understands that he wishes 
 this, which I now behold, to be such as something else is, 
 but that it is deficient, and falls short of its perfection ; 
 must we not confess that he who understands this, neces- 
 sarily had a previous knowledge of that to which he asserts 
 this to be similar, but in a defective degree? 
 
 It is necessary. 
 
 What then, do we feel something of this kind or not 
 about equals and the equal itself? 
 
 Perfectly so. 
 
 It is necessary, therefore, that we must have previously 
 known the equal itself before that time, in which, from first 
 seeing equal things, we understood that we desired all these '■ 
 to be such as the equal itself but that they had a defective 
 subsistence. 
 
 It is so. -^ 
 
 But this also we must confess, that we neither under- 
 stood this, nor are able to understand it, by any other 
 means than either through the sight, or the touch, or some 
 other of the senses. 
 
 I speak in the same manner about all these. For they 
 are the same, Socrates, with respect to that which your 
 discourse wishes to evince. 
 
 From the senses then we come to understand that all 
 equals in sensible objects aspire after the equal itself 
 and are deficient from its perfection. Or how shall 
 we say ? In this manner : Before we begin to see, or 
 hear, and to perceive other things, it necessarily follows, 
 that we must in a certain respect have received the science 
 of the equal itself so as to know what it is, or else we 
 could never refer the equals among sensibles to the equal 
 itself^ and be convinced that all these desire to become 
 such as the equal itself but fall short of its perfec- 
 tion. 
 
tS4 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 This, Socrates, is necessary, from what has been pre- 
 viously said. 
 
 But do we not, as soon as we are born, see and hear, and 
 possess the other senses? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But we have said it is necessary that prior to these we 
 should have received the science of the equal itself. 
 
 Certainly. 
 
 We must necessarily, therefore, as it appears, liave 
 received it before we were born. 
 
 It appears so. 
 
 If, therefore, receiving this before we were born, we were 
 born possessing it; we both knew prior to our birth, and as 
 soon as we were born, not only the equals the greater, and 
 the lesser, but everything of this kind : for our discourse at 
 present is not more concerning the equal than the beautiful, 
 the good, the Just, and the holy, and in one word, about 
 everything which we mark with the signature of that which 
 is, both in our interrogations when we interrogate, and in 
 our answers when we reply: so that it is necessary we 
 should have received the science of all these before we 
 were born. 
 
 All this is true. 
 
 And if, since we receive these sciences, we did not forget 
 each of them, we should always be born knowing, and 
 should always know them, through the whole course of our 
 life: for to know is nothing else than this, to retain the 
 science which we have received, and not to lose it. Or do 
 we not call oblivion the loss of science ? 
 
 Entirely so, says he, Socrates. 
 
 But if, receiving science before we were born, we lose it 
 at the time of our birth, and afterwards, through exercising 
 the senses about these particulars, receive back again those 
 sciences which we once before possessed, will not that 
 which we call learning be a recovery of our own proper 
 science ? and shall we not speak rightly when we call this a 
 kind of reminiscence ? 
 
THE PHAEDO. 1S5 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 For this appears to be possible, that when any one 
 perceives anything, either by seeing or hearing, or employ- 
 ing any other sense, he may at the same time know 
 something different from this, which he had forgotten, 
 and to which this is similar, or to which it approaches, if it 
 is dissimilar. So that, as I said, one of these two things 
 must be the consequence : either that we were born 
 knowing these, and possess a knowledge of all of them, 
 through the whole of our life : or that we only remember 
 what we are said to learn afterwards ; and thus learning will 
 be reminiscence. 
 
 The case is perfectly so, Socrates. 
 
 Which, therefore, will you choose, Simmias : that we are 
 born knowing, or that we afterwards remember the par- 
 ticulars of which we formerly received the science ? 
 
 At present, Socrates, I have no choice. 
 
 But what will be your choice in the following instance, 
 and what will be your opinion about it ? Can a man, who 
 possesses science, render a reason concerning the objects of 
 his knowledge, or not ? 
 
 There is a great necessity, says he, Socrates, that he 
 should. 
 
 And does it also appear to you, that all men can render 
 a reason of the particulars concerning which we have just 
 now spoken ? 
 
 I wish they could, says Simmias ; but I am much more 
 afraid that to-morrow at this hour there will no longer be 
 any one here capable of doing this. 
 
 You do not therefore think, Simmias, that all men know 
 these particulars ? 
 
 By no means. 
 
 They remember, therefore, the things wliich they have 
 once learned. 
 
 It is necessary. 
 
 But when did our souls receive this science ? for they did 
 not receive them from those from whom we are born men. 
 
 Certainly not. 
 
1 86 SELECTIONS FROM FLATO. 
 
 Before this period, therefore. 
 
 Certainly. 
 
 Our souls, therefore, Simmias, had a subsistence before 
 they were in a human form, separate from bodies, and 
 possessed intelligence. 
 
 Unless, Socrates, we received these sciences while we 
 were making our entrance into the present life; for that 
 space of time is yet left for us. 
 
 Let it be so, my friend. But in what other time did we 
 lose these ? for we were not born possessing them, as we 
 have just now acknowledged. Did we lose them at the very 
 time in which we received them ? Or can you mention any 
 other time ? 
 
 By no means, Socrates : but I did not see that I spoke 
 nothing to the purpose. 
 
 Will then the case remain thus for us, Simmias ? For if 
 those things have a subsistence which we perpetually pro- 
 claim — viz., a certain something beautiful and good, and 
 every such essence ; and if we refer to this all sensible 
 objects, as finding it to have a prior subsistence, and to be 
 ours, and assimilate these to it, as images to their exemplar ; 
 it is necessary that, as these essences have a subsistence, so 
 likewise that our soul should have subsisted before we were 
 born : but if these are not, this discourse will have been 
 undertaken in vain. Is it not so? and is there not an 
 equal necessity, both that these should have a subsist- 
 ence, and that our souls should have had a being before 
 we were born, and that the one cannot be without the 
 other? 
 
 The same necessity, Socrates, says Simmias, appears to 
 me to take place in a most transcendent manner; and the 
 discourse flies to a beautiful circumstance, I mean the con- 
 joined subsistence of our soul before we were born, and of 
 that essence which you now speak of. For I possess nothing 
 which is so clear to me as this, that all such things as the 
 beautiful and the good subsist, in the most eminent degree, 
 together with everything else which you now mention ; and, 
 with respect to myself, it is sufficiently demonstrated. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 187 
 
 But how does it appear to Cebes ? says Socrates : for it 
 is necessary that Cebes also should be persuaded. 
 
 In my opinion he is sufficiently so, says Simmias, although 
 he is the most resolute of all men in not assenting to what 
 is said. Yet I think he is sufficiently persuaded that our 
 soul had a subsistence before we were born. But whether 
 or not the soul remains after death, does not appear to me, 
 Socrates, says he, to be yet demonstrated ; but that doubt 
 of the multitude, which Cebes mentioned, still presses hard 
 upon me, whether, when a man dies, the soul is not dissi- 
 pated, and this is the end of its existence. For what 
 hinders but that it may be born, and may have had a 
 subsistence elsewhere, and this before it came into a human 
 body ; and yet, after it departs, and is liberated from this 
 body, may then die and be corrupted ? 
 
 You speak well, Simmias, says Cebes ; for it appears that 
 the half only of what was necessary has been demonstrated, 
 I mean that our soul subsisted before we were born : but it 
 is necessary that you should demonstrate, besides this, that it 
 no less subsists after we are dead, than it did before we were 
 born, in order that the demonstration may be complete. 
 
 This, Simmias and Cebes, says Socrates, is even now 
 demonstrated, if you are only willing to connect into one 
 and the same the present discourse, and that which we 
 before assented to; I mean that every vital nature is 
 generated from that which is dead. For if the soul had a 
 prior subsistence, and it is necessary when it proceeds into 
 the present life, and is generated man, that it should be 
 generated from nothing else than death, and to be dead ; 
 how is it not necessary that it should also subsist after 
 death, since it is requisite that it should be generated again ? 
 Its existence, therefore, after death, is even now, as I said, 
 demonstrated. But you and Simmias would gladly, it 
 appears, search into the subject still further. You arc 
 afraid, like boys, lest on the soul's departure from the body 
 the winds should tear it in pieces, and widely disperse it, 
 — especially if any one should die during a stormy blast, 
 and not when the heavens are serene ! 
 
1 88 SELE CTIONS FR OM PL A TO. 
 
 Upon this Cebes laughing, Endeavour, says he, O Socrates, 
 to persuade us of the contrary, as if we were afraid, or rather 
 as if not we were afraid, but, perhaps, some boy among us, 
 by whom circumstances of this kind may be dreaded : him, 
 therefore, we should endeavour to persuade not to be 
 terrified at death, as if it was some dreadful spectre. 
 
 But it is necessary, says Socrates, to charm him every day 
 till he becomes well. 
 
 But from whence, says he, O Socrates, can a man 
 acquire skill in such enchantment, since you are about to 
 leave us ? 
 
 Greece, says he, Cebes, is very spacious, in some part of 
 which good men may be found : and there are many bar- 
 barian nations, all which must be wandered over, inquiring 
 after an enchanter of this kind, without sparing either riches 
 or labour, as there is nothing for which wealth can be more 
 seasonably bestowed. But it is necessary that you should 
 inquire among yourselves ; for perhaps you will not easily 
 find any one who is more able to accomplish this than 
 yourselves. 
 
 Let these things be so, says Cebes : but, if you please, 
 let us return from whence we made this digression. 
 
 It will be agreeable to me, says Socrates : for how should 
 it not be so? 
 
 You speak well, says Cebes. 
 
 Some such thing, therefore, says Socrates, we ought to 
 inquire of ourselves — viz., what is naturally affected by dis- 
 solution ; and respecting what we ought to fear, lest this 
 should take place ; and to whom a fear of this kind is 
 proper : and after this, wc should consider whether it is 
 soul or not ; and, as the result of these speculations, 
 should either be confident or fearful concerning our soul. 
 
 You speak true, says he. 
 
 Is it not, therefore, natural to that which is collected 
 together, and a composite, that it should be dissolved so 
 far as it is a composite ; and that, if there is anything 
 without composition, to this alone, if to any other, it 
 belongs not to suffer affections of this kind ? 
 
THE PHAEDO. 189 
 
 This, says Cebes, appears to me to be the case. 
 
 But does it not follow, that things which always subsist 
 according to the same, and in a similar maimer, are in the 
 most eminent degree incomposites ; but that such things as 
 subsist differently at different times, and never according to 
 the same, are composites ? 
 
 To me it appears so. 
 
 Let us return, therefore, says he, to the particulars of our 
 former discourse : Whether is essence itself (which both in 
 our inquiries and answers we established as having a being) 
 that which always subsists similarly, and according to the 
 same, or that which subsists differently at different times ? 
 And does the equal itself^ the beautiful itself and everything 
 which truly is, ever receive any kind of mutation ? Or 
 does not everything which always truly is, and has a 
 uniform subsistence, essentially abide in a similar manner 
 according to the same, and never in any respect receive any 
 mutation? 
 
 It is necessary, Socrates, says Cebes, that it should sub- 
 sist similarly, and according to the same. 
 
 But what shall we say concerning many beautiful things, 
 such as men, horses, garments, or other things of this kind, 
 which are either equal or beautiful ; and of all such as are 
 synonymous to these ? Do these also subsist according to 
 the same, or rather are they not entirely contrary to those, 
 so that they neither subsist similarly according to the same, 
 either with respect to themselves or to one another, or, in 
 one word, in any manner whatever ? 
 
 These, says Cebes, never subsist in a similar condition. 
 
 These, therefore, may be touched, may be seen and per- 
 ceived by the other senses ; but those natures which always 
 subsist according to the same, cannot be apprehended by 
 any other means than the discursive energy of the intellectual 
 power. But things of this kind are invisible, and cannot be 
 seen. 
 
 You speak most truly, said Cebes. 
 
 Are you willing, therefore, says he, that we should establish 
 two species of beings, the one visible, and the other invisible. 
 
1 90 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Let us establish them, says he. 
 
 And that the invisible subsists always according to the 
 same, but the visible never according to the same. 
 
 And this also, says he, we will establish. 
 
 Come then, says Socrates, is there anything else belonging 
 to us, than on the one hand body, and on the other soul? 
 
 Nothing else, says he. 
 
 To which species, therefore, shall we say the body is 
 more similar and allied ? 
 
 It is manifest to every one, says he, that it is allied to the 
 visible species. 
 
 But what shall we say of the soul ? Is it visible, or 
 invisible ? 
 
 It is certainly not visible to men, Socrates, says he. 
 
 But we speak of things which are visible or not so, with 
 respect to the nature of men. Or do you think we speak 
 of things visible to any other nature ? 
 
 Of those which regard the nature of men. 
 
 What then shall we say respecting the soul, that it is 
 visible, or cannot be seen ? 
 
 That it cannot be seen. 
 
 The soul, therefore, is more similar to the invisible species 
 than the body, but the body is more similar to the visible. 
 
 It is perfectly necessary it should be so, Socrates. 
 
 And have we not also formerly asserted this, that the 
 soul, when it employs the body in the speculation of any- 
 thing, either through sight, or hearing, or some other sense 
 (for to speculate through sense is to speculate through 
 body), then, indeed, it is drawn by the body to things 
 which never subsist according to the same, wanders and is 
 agitated, and becomes giddy like one intoxicated, through 
 passing into contact with things of this kind ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But when it speculates anything itself by itself, then it 
 departs to that which is pure, eternal, and immortal, and 
 which possesses a sameness of subsistence : and, as being 
 allied to such a nature, it perpetually becomes united with it, 
 when it subsists alone by itself, and as often as it may : and 
 
THE PHAEDO. 191 
 
 then, too, it rests from its wanderings, and is ever the same 
 being concerned and united with things that are ever the 
 same; and this passion of the soul is denominated wisdom. 
 
 You speak, says he, Socrates, in every respect beautifully 
 and true. 
 
 To which species, therefore, of things, formerly and now 
 spoken of, does the soul appear to you to be more similar 
 and allied? 
 
 It appears to me, Socrates, says he, that every one, and 
 even the most indocile, must admit, in consequence of this 
 method of reasoning, that the soul is both totally and 
 universally more similar to that which subsists perpetually 
 the same, than to that which does not so. 
 
 But to which is the body most similar? 
 
 To the other species. 
 
 But consider also as follows : that, since soul and body 
 subsist together, nature commands that the one should be 
 subservient and obey, but that the other should rule and 
 possess dominion. And in consequence of this, which again 
 of these appears to you to be similar to a divine nature, and 
 which to the mortal nature ? Or does it not appear to you 
 that the divine nature is essentially adapted to govern and 
 rule, but the mortal to be governed and be subservient ? 
 
 To me it does so. 
 
 To which, therefore, is the soul similar ? 
 
 It is manifest, Socrates, that the soul is similar to the 
 divine, but the body to the mortal nature. 
 
 But consider, says he, Cebes, whether, from all that has 
 been said, these conclusions will result to us, that the soul 
 is most similar to the divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform 
 and indissoluble nature, and which always subsists similarly 
 according to the same; but that the body is most similar to 
 the nature which is human, mortal, void of intellect, multi- 
 form, dissoluble, and which never subsists according to the 
 same. Can we, my dear Cebes, produce any arguments to 
 show that this is not the case? 
 
 We cannot. 
 
 What then ? in consequence of all this, must it not be 
 
192 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 the property of the body, to be swiftly dissolved ; but of 
 the soul, on the contrary, to be entirely indissoluble, or 
 something bordering on such a state ? 
 
 How should it not ? 
 
 Do you conceive, therefore, says he, that when a man 
 dies, the visible part of him, or the body, which is situated 
 in a visible region (and which we call a dead body subject 
 to dissolution, ruin, and dissipation), does not immediately 
 suffer any of these affections, but remains for a considerable 
 space of time; and if any one dies possessing a graceful 
 body, that it very much retains its elegant form ? for, when 
 the body is bound and buried according to the manner in 
 which the Egyptians bury their dead, it remains almost 
 entire for an incredible space of time ; and though some 
 parts of the body may become rotten, yet the bones and 
 nerves, and everything of this kind, are preserved as one 
 may say immortal. Is it not so ? 
 
 Certainly. 
 
 Can the soul, therefore, which is invisible, and which 
 departs into another place of this kind, a place noble, pure, 
 and invisible, viz., into Hades,^ to a beneficent and prudent 
 God (at which place, if Divinity is willing, my soul will 
 shortly arrive) ; can the soul, I say, since it is naturally of 
 this kind, be immediately dissipated and perish on its being 
 liberated from the body, as is asserted by the many ? This 
 is certainly, my dear Cebes and Simmias, far from being the 
 case. But this will much more abundantly take place, if it 
 is liberated in a pure condition, attracting to itself nothing 
 of the body, as not having willingly communicated with it 
 in the present life, but fled from it and collected itself into 
 itself; an employment of this kind having been the subject 
 of its perpetual meditation. But this is nothing else than 
 to philosophise rightly, and to meditate with facility, how to 
 he dead in reality. Or will not this be a meditation of death ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 Will not th e squI , therefore, when in this condition, 
 
 ^ Hades, o.-LQ(\%, the iavisible. 
 
THE PHAEDO, 193 
 
 d epart to t^hnf which is similar to itself, a divine nature, and 
 which is likewise immortal and wise r and when ir arrives 
 thither, will it not become happy, being liberated from 
 wandering and ignorance, terror and insane love, and from 
 all other evils belonging to the human nature ; and so, as it 
 is said of the initiated, will in reality pass the rest of its 
 time in the society of the gods ? Shall we speak in this 
 manner, Cebes, or otherwise? 
 
 In this manner, by Zeus, says Cebes. 
 
 But I think that if the soul departs polluted and impure 
 from the body, as having always been its associate, attending ^ 
 upon and loving the body, and becoming enchanted by it, ^MftKi) 
 through its desires and pleasures, in such a manner as to jTi Ct, 
 think that nothing really is, except what is corporeal, which K 
 can be touched and seen, eaten and drunk, and employed (i)/i,^, 
 for the purposes of venereal occupations, and at the same 
 time is accustomed to hate, dread, and avoid that which is ^\tvM/< 
 dark and invisible to the eye of sense, which is intelligible Y 
 
 and apprehended by philosophy ; do you think that a soul 
 thus affected can be liberated from the body, so as to 
 subsist sincerely by itself ? 
 
 By no means, says he. 
 
 But I think that it will be contaminated by a corporeal 
 nature, to which its converse and familiarity w^ith the body, 
 through perpetual association and abundant meditation, 
 have rendered it similar and allied. 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But it is proper, my dear Cebes, to think that such a 
 nature is ponderous and heavy, terrestrial and visible ; and 
 that a soul of this kind, through beingj connected with such 
 a j T^ature, is ren dered he avy, and drawn dow^n ap:am mto the 
 visible region from Its dread of that which is invisible and 
 Hades, and, as it is said, wanders about monuments and 
 tombs ; about which indeed certain shadowy phantoms of 
 souls appear, being the images produced by such souls as 
 have not been purely liberated from the body, but which 
 participate of the visible nature ; and on this account they 
 become visible. 
 
194 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 It is very reasonable to suppose so, Socrates. 
 
 It is reasonable indeed, Cebes : and likewise that these 
 are not the souls of the worthy, but of the depraved, who 
 are compelled to wander about such places; by these means 
 suffering the punishment of their former conduct, which was 
 evil; and they are compelled thus to wander till, through 
 the desire of a corporeal nature, which attends them, they 
 are again bound to a body. They are bound, however, as 
 it is proper they should be, to such manners as they have 
 Exercised in the present life. 
 
 But what do you say these manners are, Socrates ? 
 
 As, for example, that such as are addicted to gluttony, 
 arrogant injuries, and drinking, and have no prudence nor 
 reverence, shall enter into the tribes of asses and brutes of 
 this kind. Or do you not think it proper that they should ? 
 
 You speak in a manner perfectly becoming. 
 
 But shall we not say, that such as held in the highest 
 estimation injustice, tyranny, and rapine shall enter into the 
 tribes of wolves, hawks, and kites ? Or where else can we 
 say such souls depart? 
 
 Into tribes of this kind, certainly, says Cebes. 
 
 It will, therefore, be manifest concerning the rest into 
 what nature each departs, according to the similitudes of 
 manners which they have exercised. 
 
 It is manifest, says he ; for how should it not be so? 
 
 Are not, therefore, says he, those among these the most 
 happy, and such as depart into the best place, who have 
 made popular and social virtue their study, which they call 
 indeed temperance and justice, and which is produced from 
 custom and exercise, without philosophy and intellect? 
 
 But how are these the most happy ? 
 
 Because it is fit that these should again migrate into a 
 social and mild tribe of this kind ; such as bees, wasps, or 
 ants, or into the same human tribe again, and become 
 temperate and orderly men. 
 
 It is fit. 
 fia X* jc But it is no t lawful for any to pass into the genus o f 
 '^Vp^ods, cxcep fTuch as, through a love of learning^, have 
 
THE PHAEDO, 195 
 
 philosophised, and departed from hence perfectly pure. 
 And for the sake of this, my dear Simmias and Cebes, 
 those who have philosophised rightly abstain from al l 
 d esires beloni^inp; to the hndy, and strenuously persevere 
 in this abstinence, without giving themselves up to their 
 dominion ; nor is it because they dread the ruin of their 
 families, and poverty, like the multitude of the lovers of 
 wealth ; nor yet because they are afraid of ignominy and the 
 infamy of improbity, like those who are lovers of dominion 
 and honours, that they abstain from these desires. 
 
 For it would not, Socrates, become them so to do, says 
 Cebes. 
 
 It would not, by Zeus, says he. Hence those, O Cebes ! 
 who take care of their soul, and do not live in a state of 
 subserviency to their bodies, bidding farewell to all such 
 characters as we have mentioned above, do not proceed in 
 the same path with these during the journey of life, because 
 such characters are ignorant how they should direct their 
 course ; but considering that they ought not to act contrary 
 to philosophy, and to its solution and purification, they give 
 themselves up to its direction, and follow wherever it leads. 
 
 In what manner, Socrates ? 
 
 I will tell you. 
 
 The lovers of learning well know, that when philosophy 
 receives their soul into her protection (and when she does 
 so, she finds it vehemently bound and agglutinated to the 
 body, and compelled to speculate thincjs through this, as 
 through a place of confinement, instead of beholding her- 
 self through herself; and besides this, rolled in every kind 
 of ignorance : philosophy likewise beholds the dire nature 
 of the confinement, that it arises through desire; so that he 
 who is bound in an eminent degree assists in binding him- 
 self); the lovers of learning therefore, 1 say, know that 
 philosophy, receiving their soul in this condition, endeavours 
 gently to exhort it, and dissolve its bonds ; and this she 
 attempts to accomplish, by showing that the inspection of 
 things through the eyes is full of deception, and that this 
 
196 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 is likewise the case with perception through the ears and 
 the other senses. Philosophy too persuades the soul to 
 depart from all these fallacious informations, and to employ 
 thein no further than necessity requires ; and exhorts her 
 to call together and collect herself into one. And besides 
 this, to believe in no other than herself, with respect to 
 what she understands, herself subsisting by herself, of that 
 which has likewise a real subsistence by itself; and not to 
 consider that as having a true being which she speculates 
 through others, and which has its subsistence in others. 
 And lastly, that a thing of this kind is sensible and visible ; 
 but that what she herself perceives is intelligible and in- 
 visible. The soul of a true philosopher, therefore, thinking 
 that he ought not to oppose this deliverance, abstains as 
 much as possible from pleasures and desires, griefs and fears, 
 considering that when any one is vehemently delighted or 
 terrified, afflicted or desirous, he does not suffer any such 
 mighty evil from these as some one may perhaps conceive, 
 I mean such as disease and a consumption of wealth, 
 through indulging his desires; but that he suffers that 
 which is the greatest, and the extremity of all evils, and this 
 without apprehending that he does so. 
 
 But what is this evil, Socrates, says Cebes ? 
 
 That the soul of every man is compelled at the same time 
 to be either vehemently delighted or afflicted about some 
 particular thing, and to consider that about which it is thus 
 affected, as having a most evident and true subsistence, 
 though this is by no means the case ; and that these are 
 most especially visible objects. Is it not so ? 
 
 Entirely. 
 
 In this passion, therefore, is not the soul in the highest 
 degree bound to the body ? 
 
 In what manner ? 
 
 Because every pleasure and pain, as if armed with a nail, 
 fasten and rivet the soul to the body, cause it to become 
 corporeal, and fill it with an opinion, that whatever the body 
 asserts is true. For, in consequence of the soul forming 
 the same opinions with the body, and being delighted with 
 
THE PHAEDO, 197 
 
 the same objects, it appears to me that it is compelled to 
 possess similar manners, and to be similarly nourished, and 
 to become so affected, that it can never pass into Hades in 
 a pure condition; but always departs full of a corporeal 
 nature ; and thus swiftly falls again into another body, and, 
 becoming as it were sown, takes root and grows there ; and 
 lastly, that thus it comes to have no share in communion 
 with that which is divine, pure, and unchangeable. 
 
 You speak most true, Socrates, says Cebes. 
 
 For the sake of these things, therefore, O Cebes ! those 
 who are justly lovers of learning are well-conducted and 
 courageous, and not for the sake of such as the multitude 
 assert. Or do you think it is ? 
 
 By no means ; for it cannot be. 
 
 But the soul of a philosopher reasons in this manner; 
 and does not think that philosophy ought to free him from 
 the body, but that when he is freed he may give himself 
 up to pleasures and pains, by which he will again be 
 bound to the body, and will undertake a work which it is 
 impossible to finish, reweaving, as it were, the web of Pene- 
 lope. But procuring tranquillity with respect to these, and 
 following the guidance of the reasoning power, and being 
 always conversant with this, contemplating at the same 
 time that which is true, divine, and not the subject of 
 opinion, and being likewise nourished by such an object of 
 contemplation, he will think that he ought to live in this 
 manner while he lives, and that when he dies he shall depart 
 to that which is akin to him — such as we have spoken of — 
 being liberated from the maladies of the human nature. 
 But from a nutriment of this kind the soul has no occasion 
 to fear (while it makes these, O Simmias and Cebes ! its 
 study), lest, in its liberation from the body, it should be 
 rent asunder, and, being blown about and dissipated by the 
 winds, should vanish, and no longer have anywhere a sub- 
 sistence. 
 
 When Socrates had thus spoken, a long silence ensued ; 
 and Socrates seemed to revolve with himself what had been 
 
198 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 said ; as likewise did the greatest part of us : but Cebes and 
 Simmias discoursed a little with each other. And Socrates 
 at length looking upon them, What, says he, do our asser- 
 tions appear to you to have been not sufficiently demon- 
 strated ? for many doubts and suspicions yet remain, if any 
 one undertakes to investigate them sufficiently. If, there- 
 fore, you are considering something else among yourselves, 
 I have nothing to say ; but if you are doubting about those 
 particulars which we have just now made the subject of our 
 discourse, do not be remiss in speaking about and running 
 over what has been said, if it appears to you in any respect 
 that we might have spoken better ; and receive me again as 
 your associate, if you think that you can be any ways bene- 
 fited by my assistance. 
 
 Upon this Simmias said, Indeed, Socrates, I will tell you 
 the truth: for some time since each of us being agitated 
 with doubts, we impelled and exhorted one another to inter- 
 rogate you, through our desire of hearing them solved ; but 
 we were afraid of causing a debate, lest it should be dis- 
 agreeable to you in your present circumstances. But 
 Socrates, upon hearing this, gently laughed, and said. This 
 is strange, indeed, Simmias ; for I shall with difficulty be 
 able to persuade other men that I do not consider the 
 present fortune as a calamity, since I am not able to 
 persuade even you ; but you are afraid lest I should be 
 more morose now than I was prior to the present event. 
 And, as it seems, I appear to you to be more despicable 
 than swans with respect to divination, who, when they per- 
 ceive that it is necessary for them to die, sing not only as 
 usual, but then more than ever ; rejoicing that they are 
 about to depart to that deity in whose service they are 
 engaged. But men, because they themselves are afraid of 
 death, falsely accuse the swans, and assert that, in conse- 
 quence of their being afflicted at death, their song is the 
 result of grief. Nor do they consider that no bird sings 
 when it is hungry or cold, or is afflicted with any other 
 malady ; neither the nightingale, nor the swallow, nor the 
 lapwing, all which they say sing lamenting through distress. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 199 
 
 But neither do these birds, as it appears to me, sing through 
 sorrow, nor yet the swans; but in my opinion these last are 
 prophetic, as belonging to Apollo ; and in consequence of 
 loreseeing the good which Hades contains, they sing and 
 rejoice at that period more remarkably than at any preceding 
 time. But I consider myself as a fellow-servant of the 
 swans, and sacred to the same Divinity. I possess a divin- 
 ing power from our common master no less than they ; nor 
 shall I be more afflicted than the swan in being liberated 
 from the present life. Hence it is proper that you should 
 both speak and inquire about whatever you please, as long 
 as the eleven magistrates will permit. 
 
 You speak excellently well, says Simmias; and as you 
 give me permission, I will both tell you what are my doubts, 
 and how far Cebes does not admit what has been said. 
 For, as to myself, Socrates, I am perhaps of the same opinion 
 about these particulars as yourself; that to know them 
 clearly in the present life is either impossible, or a thing very 
 difficult to obtain. But not to argue about what has been 
 said in every possible way, and to desist before by an arduous 
 investigation on all sides weariness is produced, can only 
 take place among indolent and effeminate men. For it is 
 necessary, in things of this kind, either to learn or to discover 
 the manner of their subsistence ; or, if both these are im- 
 possible, then, by receiving the best of human reasonings, and 
 that which is the most difficult of confutation, to venture 
 upon this as on a rat't, and sail in it through the ocean of 
 life, unless some one should be able to be carried more 
 safely, and with less danger, by means of a firmer vehicle, 
 or a certain divi?ie reason} I shall not, therefore, now be 
 ashamed to interrogate, in consequence of the confession 
 which you have made ; nor shall 1 blame myself hereafter, 
 
 ^ Divine reason — Getos X670S ; evidently in contrast to the human 
 reasonings, avOpwiriuoi \6yoi, just before alluded to, and therefore mis- 
 leadinj^ly rendered "word of God" by Dr. Jowett. Plato was not 
 thinking of what is called *' revelation," in the sense in which that word 
 might have been applied to a Delphic oracle, but of the possiliility of 
 an intuitive sense of spiritual truths independent of the raliocinative 
 faculty. 
 
V 
 
 200 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 that I have not spoken what appears to me at present : for, 
 upon considering what has been said, both with myself and 
 together with Cebes, your doctrine did not seem to be 
 sufficiently confirmed. 
 
 And perhaps, my friend, says Socrates, you have the 
 truth on your side ; but inform me in what respect it did 
 not seem to be sufficiently confirmed. 
 
 In this, says he; because any one may assert the same 
 about harmony,^ and a lyre, and its chords ; that, for 
 instance, harmony is something invisible and incorporeal, 
 all-beautiful and divine, in a well-modulated lyre : but the 
 lyre and its chords are bodies, and of a corporeal nature ; 
 are composites and terrestrial, and allied to that which is 
 mortal. When any one, therefore, shall either have broken 
 the lyre, or cut and burst the chords, some person may 
 contend from the same reasoning as yours, that it is necessary 
 the harmony should yet remain, and not be destroyed (for it 
 cannot in any respect be possible that the lyre should subsist 
 when the chords are burst, and the chords themselves are of a 
 mortal nature; but that harmony, which is connate and allied 
 to that which is divine and immortal, should become extinct, 
 and perish prior to the mortal nature itself); because it is neces- 
 sary that harmony should be somewhere, and that the wood 
 and chords must suffer putrefaction, before this can be sub- 
 ject to any affection. For I think, Socrates, that you yourself 
 have also perceived this, that we consider the soul as being 
 emphatically something of this kind : the body is as it were 
 
 ^ Harmony has a triple subsistence. For it is either harmony itself, 
 or it is that which is first harmonised, and which is such according to 
 the whole of itself; or it is that which is secondarily harmonised, and 
 which partially participates of harmony. The first of these must be 
 assigned to intellect, the second to soul, and the third to body. This 
 last too is corruptible, because it subsists in a subject ; but the other 
 two are incorruptible, because they are neither composites, nor 
 dependent on a subject. vSimmias, therefore, reasons falsely in what he 
 here says, in consequence of looking to the third species of harmony 
 only. Hence, the rational soul is analogous to a musician, but the 
 animated body to harmonised chords : for the former has a subsistence 
 separate, but the latter inseparable from the musical instrument. — 
 Taylor. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 201 
 
 strung and held together by heat and cold, dryness and 
 moisture, and the like, and the soul is the mingling and 
 harmony of these, when they are beautifully and moderately 
 tempered with each other. I f, therefore, the soul_ is a kind 
 of harmony , it is evident that when our body suffers above 
 measure either trom intension or relaxation, through diseases 
 and other maladies, t he soul must from necessity immedi - 
 ately perishj jhou.gh of the most divine nature (in the same 
 manner as other harmonies perish, which either subsist in 
 sounds or in the works of artificers) ; but the remaining 
 parts of the body of each person must subsist for a long 
 time, till they are either burnt or become rotten. Consider 
 then what we shall say to this discourse, if any one should 
 think, since the soul is the temperament of things subsisting in 
 the body, that it perishes the first, in that which is called death. 
 
 Socrates then beholding us, and laughing as he was accus- 
 tomed to do very often, Simmias, says he, speaks justly. If 
 any one of you, therefore, is more prompt than I am, why does 
 he not reply to these objections ? for he seems not to have 
 handled this affair badly. But it appears to me, that before 
 we make our reply we should first hear Cebes, and know 
 what it is which he objects to our discourse ; that we may have 
 some time to deliberate what we shall say ; and that after- 
 wards, upon hearing the objections, we may either assent to 
 them, if they appear to assert anything becoming ; or, if 
 they do not, that we may defend the discourse we have 
 already delivered. But, says he, tell me, Cebes, what it is 
 which so disturbs you, as to cause your unbelief. 
 
 I will tell you, says Cebes : your discourse seems to me 
 to be yet in the same state, and to be liable to the same 
 accusation as we mentioned before. For, that our soul had 
 a subsistence before it came into the present form, is an 
 assertion, I will not deny, and very elegantly, and (if it is 
 not too much to say) sufficiently demonstrated : but that it 
 still remains when we arc dead, does not appear to me to 
 have been clearly proved ; nor do I assent to the objection 
 of Simmias, that the soul is not stronger and more lasting 
 than the body, for it appears to mc to be much mjre 
 
202 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 excellent than all these. Why then, says reason, do you yet 
 disbelieve ? for, since you see that when a man dies that 
 which is more imbecile still remains, does it not appear 
 to you to be necessary that the more lasting nature 
 should be preserved during this period of time ? Con- 
 sider, therefore, whether I shall say anything to the 
 purpose in reply. For I, as well as Simmias, as it 
 seems, stand in need of a certain similitude : for to me 
 these things appear to be asserted in the same manner, as 
 if any one should say concerning an aged dead weaver, that 
 the man has not yet perished, but perhaps still survives 
 somewhere ; and should exhibit as an argument in proof of 
 this assertion a vestment woven by himself, which he wore, 
 and which is yet safe and entire. And if he should ask 
 some one not crediting his assertion, which is the more 
 lasting, the genus of man or of a garment, whose sub- 
 sistence consists in its use and in being worn ; then should 
 it be replied, that the genus of man is much more lasting, 
 he might think it demonstrated, that the man is more likely 
 to be preserved, since that which is of a shorter duration 
 has not yet perished. But I do not think, Simmias, that 
 this is the case. For consider with yourself what I say: 
 since every person must apprehend, that he who asserts 
 this speaks foolishly. For this weaver, having worn and 
 woven many such vestments, died after them, being many, 
 but I think before the last ; and yet it cannot be anything 
 the more inferred on this account, that the man is viler or 
 more imbecile than a vestment. And I think that the soul, 
 with respect to the body, will receive the same similitude ; 
 and he who shall assert the same concerning these, will 
 appear to me to speak in a very equitable manner ; I mean 
 that the soul is of a lasting nature, but the body more 
 debile and less durable. But I should say that each soul 
 wears many bodies, especially if it lives many years ; for, if 
 the body glides away like a stream, and is dissolved while 
 the man yet lives, but the soul perpetually re-weaves that 
 which is worn and consumed, it will be necessary indeed, 
 that when the soul is destroyed it should then be clothed 
 
THE PHAEDO. 203 
 
 with the last vestment, and should perish prior to this 
 alone. But the soul having perished, then the body will 
 evince the nature of its imbecihty, and, becoming rapidly 
 rotten, will be perfectly dissolved : so that, in consequence 
 of this reasoning, it is not yet proper that we should be 
 persuaded to believe with confidence, that our soul subsists 
 somewhere after we are dead. For, if any one should 
 assent to him who asserts even more than you have done, 
 and should grant that not only our soul had an existence 
 before we were born into the present life, but that nothing 
 hinders us from admitting that certain souls after death 
 may still have a subsistence, exist in some future period, 
 and often be born, and again perish (for so naturally strong 
 is the soul, that it will preserve itself through frequent 
 births) ; but this being granted, it may still follow, that it 
 will not only labour in those many generations, but that, 
 finishing its course, in some one of these deaths, it will 
 entirely perish. But no one should say that this death and 
 dissolution of the body, which also introduces destruction 
 to the soul, can be known : for it is impossible that it can 
 be perceived by any one of us. If this, however, be the 
 case, it will not follow that he who possesses the confidence 
 of good hope concerning death is not foolishly confident, 
 unless he can demonstrate that the soul is perfectly 
 immortal and undecaying : for otherwise it will be neces- 
 sary, that he who is about to die should always fear for his 
 soul, lest in the death, which is at hand, he should entirely 
 perish through the separation of his body. 
 
 When we heard them, therefore, speak in this manner, 
 we were all of us very disagreeably affected, as we after- 
 wards declared to each other ; because, as we were in the 
 highest degree persuaded by the former discourse, they 
 again seemed to disturb us and to cast us into unbelief; 
 and this in such a manner, as not only to cause us to deny 
 our assent to the arguments which had been already 
 adduced, Vjut to such as might afterwards be asserted, 
 fearing lest cither we should not be proper judges of 
 
204 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 anything, or that the things themselves should be unworthy 
 of belief. 
 
 Echec. By the God, Phaedo, I can easily pardon you : 
 for, while I am now hearing you, I cannot refrain from 
 saying to myself. In what arguments can we any longer 
 believe? For the discourse of Socrates, which a little 
 before was exceedingly credible, is now fallen into unbelief. 
 For the assertion, that our soul is a kind of harmony, 
 gained my assent both now and always in a wonderful 
 manner; and now it is mentioned, it recalls as it were into 
 my memory a knowledge that I formerly was of the same 
 opinion. And thus I am perfectly indigent again of some 
 other reason, as if from the very beginning, which may 
 persuade me that the soul of a dead man does not die 
 together with the body. Tell me, therefore, by Zeus, how 
 Socrates pursued the discourse; and whether he, as you 
 confess was the case with yourself, seemed vexed at these 
 objections ; or, on the contrary, answered them with calm- 
 ness ; and whether he defended his doctrine sufficiently, or 
 in a defective manner. Relate all these particulars to us as 
 accurately as you can. 
 
 Phaed. Indeed, Echecrates. I have often admired 
 Socrates ; but never more so than at that time. That he 
 should be able indeed to say something in reply, is perhaps 
 not wonderful ; but I especially admired, in the first place, 
 this in him, that he received the discourse of the young 
 men in such a pleasant, benevolent, and wonderful manner ; 
 and, in the next place, that he so acutely perceived how we 
 were affected by their objections ; and lastly, that he so 
 well cured our disturbance, recalled us, as if flying and 
 vanquished, and caused us, in conjunction with himself, to 
 pursue and consider the discourse. 
 
 Echec. But how did he do this? 
 
 Phaed. I will tell you : I happened at that time to sit at 
 his right hand, upon a low seat near his bed ; but he 
 himself sat much higher than I did. Stroking me on the 
 head, therefore, and compressing the hair which hung on 
 my neck (for he used sometimes to play with my hair), 
 
THE PHAEDO. 205 
 
 To-morrow, said he, Phaedo, you will perhaps cut off these 
 beautiful locks. ^ 
 
 It seems so, indeed, said I, Socrates. 
 
 But you will not, if you will be persuaded by me. 
 
 But why not, said I. 
 
 For both you and I, said he, ought to cut off our hair 
 to-day, if our argument must die, and we are not able to 
 recall it to life again. And I indeed, if I was you, and I 
 found that argument fled from me, would take an oath after 
 the manner of the Argives, that I would never suffe-r my 
 hair to grow, till, by contesting in disputation, 1 had 
 vanquished the objections of Simmias and Cebes. 
 
 But, said I, Hercules is reported not to have been 
 sufficient against two. 
 
 Call upon me, therefore, said he, as your lolaus^ while 
 the light yet lasts. 
 
 I call then, said I, not as Hercules upon lolaus, but as 
 lolaus upon Hercules. 
 
 It is of no consequence, said he. 
 
 But, in the first place, we must be careful that we are not 
 influenced by a certain passion. 
 
 What passion, said I ? 
 
 That we do not become, said he, haters of reason, in the 
 same manner as some become haters of men. For no 
 greater evil can happen to any one than to be a hater of 
 reasons. But a hatred of reason and a hatred of mankind 
 are both produced in the same manner. For misanthropy 
 is produced in us through very much believing without art 
 in some particular person, and considering him as a man 
 true, sincere, and faithful, whom in the course of a short 
 acquaintance we find to be depraved and unfaithful ; and 
 that this is the case again with another. And when any 
 one often suffers this disappointment, and especially from 
 those whom he considered as his most intimate familiars 
 
 1 As a sign of mourning. 
 
 - lolaus was the son of Iphiclus, King of Thessaly. He assisted 
 Hercules in concjucring tlic Ilydra, and burnt with a hot iron the place 
 where the heads had been cut off, to prevent the growth of others. 
 
2o6 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 and friends, at length, through finding himself thus 
 frequently hurt, he hates all men, and thinks that there is 
 nothing sincere in any one. Or have you never perceived 
 that this is the case ? 
 
 Entirely so, said I. 
 
 But is not this base, said he ? and is it not evident that 
 such a one attempts to associate of men, without possessing 
 the art which respects human affairs ? For if he dealt with 
 them in the right manner, he would think, as the case really 
 is, that men very good, or very bad, are but few in number; 
 and that the greater part of mankind are those which 
 subsist between these ? 
 
 How do you mean, said I ? 
 
 In the same manner, said he, as about things very small 
 and very great. Do you think that anything is more rare 
 than to find a very large or a very small man, or dog, or 
 anything else ; and again anything excessively swift or slow, 
 beautiful or base, white or black? Or do you not perceive 
 that the summits of the extremes of all these are rare and 
 few, but that things subsisting between these are copious 
 and many? 
 
 Entirely so, said I. 
 
 Do you not, therefore, think, says he, that if a contest of 
 improbity should be proposed, those who hold the first 
 rank among the bad would be found to be but few ? 
 
 It is agreeable to reason to think so, said I. 
 
 It is so, indeed, said he ; but in this respect arguments 
 are not like men (I was following up your question) ; but 
 in this they are like, when any one, for instance, without 
 possessing the art belonging to discourse, believes that a 
 certain discourse is true, and shortly after it appears to him 
 to be false, as it is sometimes the one and sometimes the 
 other, and the same thing happens to him about different 
 discourses. And this is particularly the case with those who 
 practise arguing on all sides ; for these you know think that 
 they at length become most wise, and alone perceive that 
 there is nothing sound and stable either in things or 
 reasons ; but that everything turns now one way, now 
 
THE PHAEDO, 207 
 
 another, like the tide in the river Euripus, and does not 
 abide in any one condition for any portion of time what- 
 ever. 
 
 You speak perfectly true, said I. 
 
 Would it not then, said he, Phaedo, be a passion worthy 
 of commiseration, if, when a certain reason is true and 
 firm, and is capable of being understood, yet some one 
 falling from this should be involved in doubt, because he 
 has heard reasons, which, though remaining the same, yet 
 have at one time appeared to be true, and at another false ; 
 and should not accuse himself and his own want of skill, 
 but at length through grief should transfer all the blame 
 from himself to the reasons ; and thus should pass the 
 remainder of his life, hating and slandering reasons, and 
 deprived of the truth and science of things ? 
 
 By Zeus, said I, such a one would be miserable indeed. 
 
 In the first place, therefore, said he, we should be very 
 careful against admitting the opinion, that no reasoning can 
 be sound ; but we should much rather think that we 
 ourselves are not yet sound, and that we ought vigorously 
 and cheerfully to study how to be so. And this indeed 
 ought to be the case with you and others, for the sake of 
 the whole remainder of your life, but with me, for the sake 
 of death itself; as there is danger at the present time, 
 lest I should not behave philosophically, but, like those 
 who are perfectly unskilled, contentiously. For such as 
 these, when they controvert any particular, are not at all 
 concerned how that subsists about w^hich they dispute ; but 
 are alone anxious, that what they have established may 
 appear to the persons present to be true. And I seem to 
 myself at present to differ alone in this respect from such 
 as these : for I am not solicitous that my discourse may 
 appear true to those who are present (except just as it may 
 happen in passing), but that it may appear to be so in the 
 most eminent degree to me myself. For I thus reason, my 
 dear friend (and see in how grasping and covetous a manner), 
 that if my assertions are true, it will be a beautiful circum- 
 stance to be persuaded of their truth ; but that if nothing 
 
2o8 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 remains for the dead, I shall at least have the advantage of 
 being less afflicted with my present condition than others 
 are. But this ignorance of mine will not continue long 
 (for it would be bad if it should), but shortly after this will 
 be dissolved ; and being thus prepared, says he, Simmias 
 and Cebes, I shall now return to the discourse. But, that 
 you may be persuaded by me, pay no attention to the 
 person of Socrates, but be much more solicitous in assenting 
 to the truth, if I should appear to you to assert anything 
 true; but if this should not be the case, oppose me with all 
 your might, and beware, lest through too much ardour I 
 should deceive both myself and you, and, acting in this respect 
 like bees, should depart from you, leaving my sting behind. 
 
 But to begin, says he : In the first place, remind me of 
 what you have said, if it should appear that I have forgotten 
 it. For Simmias, I think, distrusted and was afraid lest 
 the soul, though it is at the same time more divine and 
 beautiful than the body, should perish before it, as sub- 
 sisting in the form of harmony. But Cebes appears to me 
 to have admitted this, that the soul is more lasting than the 
 body ; but yet that it is perfectly uncertain, whether after 
 the soul has worn out many bodies, and this often, it may 
 not at length, leaving body behind, itself also perish ; so 
 that this will be death itself, I mean the destruction of the 
 soul, since the body perpetually perishes without ceasing. 
 Are not these the things, Simmias and Cebes, which we 
 ought to consider? 
 
 They both confessed that the particulars were these. 
 
 Whether, therefore, says he, do you reject the whole of 
 our former discourse, or do you reject some things and not 
 others? 
 
 They replied, We admit some things, and not others. 
 
 What then, says he, do you say about that discourse, in 
 which we asserted that learning is reminiscence ; and that, 
 this being the case, our soul must necessarily have sub- 
 sisted somewhere before it was bound in the body ? 
 
 I indeed, says Cebes, was both then wonderfully per- 
 
THE PHAEDO. 209 
 
 suaded by that discourse, and now firmly abide in the same 
 opinion. 
 
 And I also, says Simmias, am aftected in the same 
 manner; and 1 should very much wonder should I ever 
 conceive otherwise about this particular. 
 
 But, says Socrates, it is necessary, my Theban guest, 
 that it should ai)pear otherwise to you, if you still continue 
 of the opinion, that harmony is something composite, and 
 that the soul is a certain harmony, composed from things 
 extended through the body. For you will never assent to 
 yourself asserting, that harmony was composed prior to the 
 things from which it is to be composed ; or do you think 
 you can ? 
 
 By no means, says he, Socrates. 
 
 Do you perceive, therefore, says he, that you will not be 
 consistent in your assertions, when you say that the soul 
 had a subsistence before it came into a human form and 
 into body, but that at the same time it was composed from 
 things which then had not a being ? For neither is harmony 
 such as that to which you assimilate it ; but the lyre, and 
 the chords, and the sounds yet unharmonised, have a prior 
 existence ; but harmony is composed the last of all, and is 
 the first dissolved. How, therefore, can this discourse be 
 consonant with that ? 
 
 In no respect, says Simmias. 
 
 But it certainly is proper, says he, that a discourse about 
 harmony should be consonant, if this can ever be asserled 
 of any other. 
 
 It is proper, indeed, says Simmias. 
 
 But this discourse of yours is not consonant. Consider, 
 therefore, which of these assertions you will choo.se, that 
 learning is reminiscence, or that the soul is harmony. 
 
 I prefer the former, Socrates, by much ; for the latter 
 gained my assent without a demonstration, through nothing 
 more than a certain probability and specious appearance ; 
 from whence also it appears evident to the multitude of 
 mankind. But I well know, that the discourses which 
 frame their demonstrations from assimilative reasons only 
 
 14 
 
2IO SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 are nothing more than empty boastings ; and unless a man 
 defends himself against them, they will very much deceive 
 him, both in geometry and all other speculations. But the 
 discourse about reminiscence and learning was delivered 
 through an hypothesis highly worthy of reception. For in 
 this it was said that our soul had a subsistence somewhere 
 before it came into the present body, as it is an essence 
 possessing the appellation of that which truly is. But, as 
 I persuade myself, I assent to this doctrine in a manner 
 sufficient and proper; and hence it is necessary, as it 
 appears to me, that I should neither assent to myself nor to 
 any other asserting that the soul is harmony. 
 
 But what, says he, Simmias ? Does it appear to you that 
 it can either belong to a harmony, or to any composition, 
 to subsist independently of the things from which it is 
 composed ? 
 
 By no means. 
 
 And indeed, as it appears to me, it can neither perform nor 
 suffer anything else, besides what these perform and suffer. 
 
 He agreed it could not. 
 
 It does not, therefore, belong to a harmony to be the 
 leader of the materials from which it is composed, but to 
 follow them. 
 
 This also he granted. 
 
 It is far, therefore, from being the case, that a harmony 
 will either be moved or found contrary, or in any other 
 respect be adverse to its parts. 
 
 Very far, indeed, says he. 
 
 But what, does not every harmony naturally subsist in 
 such a manner as to be a harmony, in the manner in which 
 it is harmonised ? 
 
 I do not understand you. 
 
 But, says he, if it were possible that it could be har- 
 monised more fully and well it would be more of a harmony, 
 but if less and worse then less of a harmony. 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But can it be said of the soul, that, even in the smallest 
 circumstance, one soul is more soul than another ? 
 
THE PHAEDO, 211 
 
 By no means, says he. 
 
 Consider then, says he, by Zeus, is it truly said, that one 
 soul possesses intellect and virtue, and is good ; but that 
 another is foolish and vicious, and is bad ? 
 
 It is truly said. 
 
 Among those, therefore, who establish the soul as har- 
 mony, what can any one call virtue and vice in the soul ? 
 Will he call the one harmony, and the other discord ? And 
 that the one, that is to say the good soul, is harmonised ; 
 and, as it is harmony, possesses another harmony in itself; 
 but that the other is discord, and does not contain in itself 
 another harmony ? 
 
 I know not what to reply, says Simmias ; but it is mani- 
 fest, that he who establishes this would make some such 
 reply. 
 
 But it has been granted, says he, that one soul is not more 
 or less soul than another; and this is no other than to con- 
 fess, that one harmony is not more nor less harmony than 
 another : is it not so ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But that which is neither more nor less harmony, is 
 neither more nor less harmonised : is it not so ? 
 
 It is. 
 
 But can that which is neither more nor less harmonised 
 participate more or less of harmony? or does it equally 
 participate? 
 
 Equally. 
 
 The soul, therefore, since it is not more or less soul than 
 another, is not more or less harmonised. 
 
 It is not. 
 
 But since it is thus affected, it will neither participate 
 more of discord nor of harmony. 
 
 By no means. 
 
 And again, in consequence of this condition, can one soul 
 participate more of vice or virtue than another, since vice is 
 discord, but virtue harmony ? 
 
 It cannot. 
 
 But rather, Simmias, according to right reason, no soul 
 
2 1 2 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 will participate of vice, since it is harmony : for doubtless 
 the harmony, which is perfectly such, can never participate 
 of discord. 
 
 It certainly cannot. 
 
 Neither, therefore, can the soul, which is perfectly soul, 
 participate of vice : for how can it, in consequence of what 
 has been said ? In consequence of this reasoning, there- 
 fore, the souls of all animals will be similarly good ; since 
 they are naturally similarly souls, with respect to the essence 
 of soul. 
 
 To me it appears so, Socrates, says he. 
 
 If the hypothesis therefore was right, would it appear 
 to you to be beautifully said, and that this consequence 
 ensued, that the soul is harmony ? 
 
 By no means, says he. 
 
 But what, says Socrates, among all the things which are 
 inherent in man, would you say that anything else governed 
 except soul, if he be a wise man ? 
 
 I should not. 
 
 But whether does the soul govern, by assenting to the 
 passions belonging to the body, or by opposing them ? My 
 meaning is this, that when heat and thirst are present, the 
 soul, if it governs, will frequently draw the body to the 
 contrary — /.(?., not to drink ; and hunger being present, 
 that it shall not eat ; and in a thousand other instances we 
 may behold the soul opposing the desires of the body : may 
 we not? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 Have we not above confessed, that if the soul was 
 harmony, it would never sound contrary to the intentions, 
 relaxations, or vibrations, or any other passion belonging to 
 its component parts, but that it would follow, and never 
 rule over them ? 
 
 We have granted this, says he; for how could we do 
 otherwise ? 
 
 But what, does not the soul now appear to act just the 
 contrary to this, ruling over all those particulars, from 
 which it may be said it subsists, opposing, we may say, all 
 
THE PHAEDO. 213 
 
 of them through the whole of hie, and exercising absolute 
 dominion over them all manner of ways, punishing some of 
 these indeed with greater difficulty, and accompanied with 
 pain; some through gymnastic and medicine, and some by 
 milder methods, and some again by threats, and others by 
 admonishing desire, anger, and fear ; addressing that which 
 it opposes, as being itself of a different nature? just as 
 Homer does in the Odyssey^ where he says of Ulysses — 
 
 " Ilis breast he struck, and cried, My heart, sustain 
 Tliis ill ! for thou hast borne far greater pain" (xix. 15), 
 
 Do you think that Homer devised this in consequence of 
 thinking that the soul is harmony, and of such a kind as to 
 be led by the passions of the body, and not such as is 
 naturally adapted to lead and govern, and which is some- 
 thing much more divine than harmony? 
 
 By Zeus, Socrates, I do not think that he did. 
 
 By no means, therefore, most excellent man, shall we do 
 well, in asserting that the soul is a kind of harmony : for by 
 thus asserting, as it appears, we shall neither agree with 
 Homer, that divine poet, nor be consistent with ourselves. 
 
 It is so, indeed, says he. 
 
 Let it then be so, says Socrates ; and thus, as it appears, 
 your Theban Harmonia, Simmias, has not treated us 
 with much severity. But how shall we prosper with her 
 Cadmus ?^ 
 
 Vou appear to me, says Cebes, to be likely to find out a 
 way : for you have delivered this discourse against harmony 
 in a wonderful manner, and beyond what I expected. For, 
 while Simmias related his doubts, I thought it would be a 
 most admirable thing, should any one be able to reply to 
 his discourse. He therefore appears to me, in a manner 
 perfectly extraordinary, not to have sustained the very first 
 assault of your discourse. I should not, therefore, be sur- 
 prised if the arguments of Cadmus met with the same fate. 
 
 My good friend, says Socrates, do not speak so magnifi- 
 
 ' Harmonia was the wife of Cadmus King of Thebes. Simmias; was 
 a Tlicban. 
 
214 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 cently, lest some Nemesis should subvert our future dis- 
 course. These things, indeed, will be taken care of by 
 Divinity. But we, coming to close quarters, in Homeric 
 manner, will try whether you say anything to the purpose. 
 This then is the sum of what you inquire : you think it 
 proper to demonstrate that our soul is without decay, and 
 immortal ; that a philosopher who is about to die with all 
 the confidence of hope, and who thinks that after death he 
 shall be far more happy than in the present life, may not 
 indulge a stupid and foolish confidence. But you say, 
 though it should be shown that the soul is something 
 robust and deiform, and that it subsisted before we were 
 born, yet nothing hinders but that all these arguments may 
 not evince its immortality, but only that the soul is more 
 lasting than the body, that it formerly existed somewhere 
 for an immense period of time, and that it knew and per- 
 formed a multitude of things. But that, for all this, it will 
 be nothing the more immortal ; but that, entering into the 
 body of a man, it will be the principle of destruction to 
 itself, as if connected with a disease : so that it will both 
 lead a miserable life in the body, and at last will perish in 
 that which is called death. But you say it is of no conse- 
 quence whether it comes into body once or often, with 
 respect to our occasion of fear : for it is very proper that he 
 who neither knows, nor is able to render a reason, why the 
 soul is immortal, should be afraid of death, unless he is 
 deprived of intellect. This, I think, Cebes, is the sum of 
 what you say ; and I have repeated it often, that nothing 
 may escape our observation ; and that, if you are willing, 
 you may either add or take away from our statement of the 
 objections. 
 
 But Cebes replied, I have nothing at present either to add 
 or take away ; but these are the objections which I make. 
 
 Socrates, therefore, after he had been silent for a long 
 time, and considering something by himself, said : You 
 require, Cebes, a thing of no small importance : for it is 
 necessary to treat concerning the whole cause of generation 
 
THE PHAEDO. 215 
 
 and corruption. If you are willing, therefore, I will relate 
 to you what happened to me in this investigation ; and 
 afterwards, if anything which I shall say shall appear to 
 you useful, with respect to pcr-uading you in the present 
 inquiry, employ it for this purpose. 
 
 But I am most assuredly willing, says Cebes. 
 Hear then my narration : When I was a young man, 
 Cebes, I was in a wonderful manner desirous of that wis- 
 dom which they call a history of nature : for it appeared to 
 me to be a very superb affair to know the causes of each 
 particular, on what account each is generated, why it 
 perishes, and why it exists. And I often tossed myself as 
 it w^ere upwards and downwards ; considering, in the first 
 place, whether after that which is hot and cold has received 
 a certain rottenness, as some say, then animals are nourished; 
 and whether the blood is that through which we have intel- 
 ligence, or air, or fire ; or whether none of these, but the 
 brain, is that which affords the senses of hearing, seeing, 
 and smelling ; so that memory and opinion are generated 
 from these, and that from memory and opinion obtaining 
 fixity, Science is accordingly produced ? And again con- 
 sidering the corruptions of these, and the changes with 
 which the heavens and the earth are affected, I at length 
 appeared to myself so unskilful in the speculation of these, 
 as to receive no advantage from my inquiries. But I will 
 give you a sufficient proof of the truth of this : for I then 
 became so very blind, with respect to things which I knew 
 before with great clearness (as it appeared both to myself 
 and others) through this speculation, as to want instruction 
 both in many particulars, which I thought I had known 
 before, and in this, too, how a man is increased. For I 
 thought it was evident to every one that this took place 
 through eating and drinking : for when, from the aliment, 
 flesh accedes to flesh, bone to bone, and everywhere 
 kindred to kindred parts, then the bulk which was small 
 becomes afterwards great ; and thus a little man becomes a 
 large one. Such was then my opinion ; does it appear to 
 you a becoming one ? 
 
2 1 6 SELECTIONS PROM PL A TO. 
 
 To me, indeed, it does, says Cebes. 
 
 But still further, consider as follows : for I thought that 
 I seemed to myself sufficiently right in my opinion, when, 
 on seeing a tall man standing by a short one, I judged that 
 he was taller by the head ; and in like manner one horse 
 than another: and still more evident than these, ten things 
 appeared to me to be more than eight, because two is 
 added to them, and that a bicubital is greater than a cubital 
 magnitude, through its surpassing it by the half. 
 
 But now, says Cebes, what appears to you respecting 
 these ? 
 
 By Zeus, says he, I am so far from thinking that I know 
 the cause of these, that I cannot even persuade myself, 
 when any person adds one to one, that then the one to 
 which the addition was made becomes two ; or that the 
 added one, and that to which it is added, become two, 
 through the addition of the one to the other. For I should 
 wonder, since each of these, when separate from one 
 another, was one, and not then two; if, after they have 
 approached nearer to each other, this should be the cause 
 of their becoming two — viz., the association through 
 which they are placed nearer to each other. Nor yet, 
 if any person should divide one, am I able to persuade 
 myself that this division is the cause of its becoming two. 
 For that former cause of two being produced is contrary to 
 this. For then this took place, because they were collected 
 near to each other, and the one was applied to the other; 
 but now, because the one is removed and separated from 
 the other. Nor do I any longer persuade myself, that I 
 know why one is produced ; nor, in one word, why anything 
 else is either generated or destroyed, or is, according to this 
 method of proceeding : but, in order to obtain this know- 
 ledge, I mix in, in some random fashion of my own, a 
 new method, by no means admitting this which I have 
 mentioned. 
 
 But having once heard a person reading from a certain 
 book, composed, as he said, by Anaxagoras — when he came 
 to that part, in which he says that intellect orders and is 
 
THE PIIAEDO. 217 
 
 the cause of all things, I was delighted with this cause, and 
 thought that, in a certain respect, it was an excellent thing 
 for intellect to be the cause of all ; and I considered that, if 
 this was the case, disposing intellect would adorn all things, 
 and place everything in that situation in which it would 
 subsist in the best manner. If any one, therefore, should 
 be willing to discover the cause through which everything is 
 generated, or destroyed, or is, he ought to discover how it 
 may subsist in the best manner, or suffer, or perform any- 
 thing else. In consequence of this, therefore, it is proper 
 that a man should consider nothing else, either about 
 himself or about others, except that which is the most 
 excellent and the best : but it is necessary that he who 
 knows this should also know that which is subordinate, 
 since there is one and the same science of both. But thus 
 reasoning with myself, I rejoiced, thinking that I had 
 found a preceptor in Anaxagoras, who would instruct me in 
 the causes of things agreeably to my own conceptions ; and 
 that he would inform me, in the first place, whether the 
 earth is flat or round ; and afterwards explain the cause and 
 necessity of its being so, adducing for this purpose that 
 which is better, and showing that it is better for the earth 
 to exist in this manner. And if he should say it is situated 
 in the middle, that he would, besides this, show that it is 
 better for it to be in the middle ; and if he should render 
 all this apparent to me, I was so disposed as not to require 
 any other species of cause. I had likewise prepared myself 
 in a similar manner for an inquiry respecting the sun, and 
 moon, and the other stars, their velocities and revolutions 
 about each other> and all their other properties ; so as to be 
 able to know why it is better for each to operate in a certain 
 manner, and to suffer that which it suffers. For I by no 
 means thought, after he had said that all these were orderly 
 disposed by intellect, he would introduce any other cause of 
 their subsistence, except that which shows that it is best for 
 them to exist as they do. Hence I thought that in assign- 
 ing the cause common to each particular, and to all things, 
 he would explain that which is best (or each, and is the 
 
2 iS SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 common good of all. And indeed I would not have 
 exchanged these hopes for a mighty gain ! but having 
 obtained his books with prodigious eagerness, I read them 
 with great celerity, that I might with great celerity know 
 that which is the best, and that which is bad. 
 
 From this admirable hope, however, my friend, I was 
 forced away, when, in the course of my reading, I saw him 
 make no use of intellect, nor employ certain causes, for the 
 purpose of orderly disposing particulars, but assign air, 
 aether, and water, and many other things equally absurd, 
 as the causes of things. And he appeared to me to be 
 affected in a manner similar to him who should assert, that 
 all the actions of Socrates are produced by intellect ; and 
 afterwards, endeavouring to relate the causes of each par- 
 ticular action, should say, that, in the first place, I now sit 
 here because my body is composed from bones and nerves, 
 and that the bones are solid, and are separated by intervals 
 from each other; but that the nerves, which are of a nature 
 capable of intension and relaxation, cover the bones, 
 together with the flesh and skin by which they are contained. 
 The bones, therefore, being suspended from their joints, the 
 nerves, by straining and relaxing them, enable me to bend 
 my limbs as at present ; and through this cause I here sit in 
 an inflected position — and again, should assign other such- 
 like causes of my conversation with you — viz., voice, and 
 air, and hearing, and a thousand other such particulars, 
 neglecting to adduce the true cause, that since it appeared 
 to the Athenians better to condemn me, on this account, it 
 also appeared to me to be better and more just to sit here, 
 and, thus abiding, sustain the punishment which they have 
 ordained me. For otherwise, by the Dog, as it appears to 
 me, these nerves and bones would have been carried long 
 ago either into Megara or Boeotia, through an opinion of 
 that which is best, if I had not thought it more just and 
 becoming to sustain the punishment ordered by my 
 country, whatever it might be, than to withdraw myself and 
 run away. But to call things of this kind causes is extremely 
 absurd. Indeed, if any one should say that without 
 
THE PHAEDO. 219 
 
 possessing such things as bones and nerves, and other 
 particulars which belong to me, I could not do the things I 
 think right, he would speak the truth : but to assert that I 
 act as I do at present through these, and that with these 
 things intellect is concerned and not with the choice of what 
 is best, would be an assertion full of extreme negligence 
 and sloth. Not to be able to distinguish between the true 
 cause of a thing and that without which the cause would 
 
 not be a cause ! And this indeed appears to me to be 
 
 the case with the multitude of mankind, who, handling things 
 as it were in darkness, call them by names foreign from the 
 truth, and thus denominate things causes which are not so. 
 Hence, one placing round the earth a certain vortex, 
 produced by the celestial motion, renders by this means the 
 earth fixed in the centre ; but another places air under it, as 
 if it was a basis to a broad trough. But they neither 
 investigate that power through which things are now 
 disposed in the best manner possible, nor do they think 
 that it is endued with any divine strength : but they fancy 
 they have found a certain Atlas, more strong and immortal 
 than such a strength, and far more sustaining all things ; 
 and they think that the good and the becoming do not in 
 reality connect and sustain anything. With respect to my- 
 self, indeed, I would most willingly become the disciple of 
 any one ; so that I might perceive in what manner a cause 
 of this kind subsists. But since I am deprived of this 
 advantage, and have neither been able to discover it myself, 
 nor to learn it from another, are you willing, Cebes, that 
 I should show you the manner in which, for lack of a better, 
 I made enquiry into causes ? 
 
 I am, says he, abundantly willing. 
 
 It appeared to me therefore, says Socrates, afterwards, 
 when I had failed in my investigations of existence, that I 
 ought to take care lest I should be affected in the same 
 manner as those are who attentively behold the sun in an 
 eclipse : for some would be deprived of their sight, unless 
 they beheld its image in water, or in a similar medium. 
 And something of this kind I perceived with respect to my- 
 
220 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 self, and was afraid lest my soul should be perfectly blinded 
 through beholding things with my eyes, and through en- 
 deavouring to apprehend them by means of the several 
 senses. Hence I considered that I ought to fly to Reason, 
 and in that survey the truth of things. Perhaps, indeed, this 
 similitude of mine may not in a certain respect be proper : 
 for I do not entirely admit that he who contemplates things 
 in Reason, surveys them in images, more than he who con- 
 templates them in external effects. This method, however, 
 I have adopted ; and always establishing that reason as an 
 hypothesis, which I judge to be the most valid, whatever 
 appears to me to be consonant to this, I fix upon as true, 
 both concerning the cause of things and everything else ; 
 but such as are not consonant I consider as not true. 
 But I wish to explain to you what I say in a clearer 
 manner : for I think that you do not at present under- 
 stand me. 
 
 Not very much, by Zeus, says Cebes. 
 
 However, says he, I now assert nothing new, but what I 
 have always asserted at other times, and in the preceding 
 disputation. For I shall now attempt to demonstrate to you 
 that species of cause which I have been discoursing about, 
 and shall return again to those particulars which are so 
 much discussed; beginning from these, and laying down as 
 an hypothesis, that there is a certain Beauty, itself subsisting 
 by itself; and a certain Goodness, and Greatness, and so of 
 all the rest ; which if you permit me to do, and allow that 
 such things have a subsistence, I hope that I shall be able 
 from these to demonstrate this cause to you, and discover 
 that the soul is immortal. 
 
 But, says Cebes, in consequence of having granted you 
 this already, you cannot be hindered from drawing such a 
 conclusion. 
 
 liut consider, says he, the things consequent on these, 
 and see whether you will then likewise agree with me. For 
 it appears to me, that if there be anything else beautiful, 
 besides the Beautiful itself, it cannot be beautiful on any 
 other account than because it participates of the Beautiful 
 
THE PHAEDO. 221 
 
 itself; and I should speak in the same manner of all things. 
 Do you admit such a cause? 
 I admit it, says he. 
 
 1 do not therefore, says Socrates, any longer perceive, nor 
 am I able to understand, those other ingenious causes ; but if 
 any one tells me why a certain thing is beautiful, and assigns 
 as a reason, either its possessing a florid colour, or figure, 
 or something else of this kind, I bid farewell to all that, 
 for it only confuses me ; but this I retain with myself, 
 simply, uncriticall)', and perhaps foolishly, that nothing 
 else causes it to be beautiful, than either the presence, or 
 communion, or in whatever manner the operations may take 
 place, of the Beautiful itself For I cannot yet affirm how 
 this takes place; but only this, that all beautiful things 
 become such through the Beautiful itself. For it appears to 
 me most safe thus to answer both myself and others ; and 
 adhering to this, I think that I can never fall, but that I 
 shall be secure in answering, that all beautiful things are 
 beautiful through the Beautiful itself Does it not also 
 appear so to you ? 
 It does. 
 
 And that great things, therefore, are great, and things 
 greater, greater through Magnitude itself; and things lesser, 
 lesser through Smallness itself? 
 Certainly. 
 
 Neither, therefore, would you assent, if it should be said 
 that some one is larger than another by the head, and that 
 he who is lesser is lesser by the very same thing, i.e., the 
 head : but you would testify that you said nothing else than 
 that, with respect to everything great, one thing is greater 
 than another by nothing else than Magnitude, and that 
 through this it is greater, i.e.^ through Magnitude; and 
 that the lesser is lesser through nothing else than 
 Smallness, and that through this it is lesser, />,, through 
 Smallness. For you would be afraid, I think, lest, if you 
 should say that any one is greater and lesser by the head, 
 you should contradict yourself: first, in asserting that the 
 greater is greater, and the lesser lesser, by the very same 
 
222 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 thing; and afterwards that the greater is greater by the 
 head, which is a small thing ; and that it is monstrous to 
 suppose, that anything which is great can become so through 
 something which is small. Would you not be afraid of all 
 this? 
 
 Indeed I should, says Cebes, laughing. 
 
 Would you not also, says he, be afraid to say that ten 
 things are more than eight by two, and that through this 
 cause ten transcends eight, and not by Multitude and 
 through Magnitude ? And in like manner, that a thing 
 which is two cubits in length is greater than that which is 
 but one cubit, by the half, and not by Magnitude ? for the 
 dread is indeed the same. 
 
 Entirely so, says he. 
 
 But what ? one being added to one, will the addition be 
 the cause of their becoming two ? or if one is divided, and 
 two produced, would you not be afraid to assign division as 
 the cause ? Indeed you would cry with a loud voice, that 
 you know no other way by which anything subsists, than by 
 participating the proper essence of everything which it 
 participates ; and that in these you can assign no other 
 cause of their becoming two, than the participation of the 
 Duad ; and that it is proper all such things as are about to 
 become two, should participate of this, and of Unity, what- 
 ever is about to become one. But you would bid farewell 
 to these divisions and additions, and other subtilties of this 
 kind, and would leave them to be employed in answering, 
 by those who are wiser than yourself. And fearing, as it is 
 said, your own shadow, and your own unskilfulness, you 
 would adhere to this safe hypothesis, and answer in the 
 manner I have described. But if any one should attack 
 this hypothesis, you would refrain from answering him till 
 you had considered the consequences resulting from thence, 
 and whether they were consonant or dissonant to one 
 another. But when it is necessary for you to assign a reason 
 for your belief in this hypothesis, you will assign it in a similar 
 manner, laying down again another hypothesis, which shall 
 appear to be the best of higher hypotheses, and so on, till you 
 
THE PHAEDO. 223 
 
 arrive at something sufficient. At the same time you will by 
 no means confound things by mingling them together, after 
 the manner of the contentious, when you discourse con- 
 cerning the principle and the consequences arising from 
 thence, if you are willing to discover anything of true being. 
 For by such as these, perhaps, no attention is paid to this. 
 For these, through their wisdom, are able to be quite con- 
 tent with the confusion they make. But you, if you rank 
 among the philosophers, will act, I think, in the manner I 
 have described. 
 
 Both Simmias and Cebes said, You speak most truly. 
 
 Echec. By Zeus, Phaedo, they assented with great 
 propriety : for he appears to me to have asserted this in a 
 manner wonderfully clear ; and this even to one endued 
 with the smallest degree of intellect. 
 
 Phaed. And so, indeed, Echecrates, it appeared in every 
 respect to all who were present. 
 
 Echec. And well it might : for it appears so to us, now 
 we hear it, who were not present. But what was the dis- 
 course after this ? 
 
 If I remember right, after they had granted all this, and 
 had confessed that each of the several species was some- 
 thing, and that others participating of these received the 
 same denomination, he afterwards interrogated them as 
 follows : If then you allow that these things are so, when 
 you say that Simmias is larger than Socrates, but less than 
 Phaedo, do you not then assert that both Magnitude and 
 Parvitude are inherent in Simmias ? 
 
 I do. 
 
 And yet, says he, you must confess, that this circumstance 
 of Simmias surpassing Socrates does not truly subsist in the 
 manner which the words seem to imply. For Simmias is 
 not naturally adapted to surpass Socrates, so far as he is 
 Simmias, but by the magnitude which he possesses: nor, 
 again, does he surpass Socrates so far as Socrates is Socrates, 
 but because Socrates possesses parvitude with respect to his 
 magnitude. 
 
224 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 True. 
 
 Nor, again, is Simmias surpassed by Phaedo, because 
 Phaedo is Phaedo, hut because Phaedo possesses magnitude 
 with respect to the parvitude of Simmias. 
 
 It is so. 
 
 Simmias, therefore, is allotted the appellation of both 
 small and great, being situated in the middle of both; 
 exhibiting his smallness to be surpassed by the greatness 
 of the one, and his greatness to the other's smallness, which 
 it surpasses. And at the same time, gently laughing, I 
 seem, says he, to be speaking as if I were composing a 
 treatise ; but, notwithstanding this, it is as I say. 
 
 He allowed it. 
 
 But I have mentioned these things, in order that you may 
 be of the same opinion as myself. For to me it appears, 
 not only that Magnitude is never willing to be at the same 
 time both great and small, but that the magnitude which 
 we contain never desires to receive that which is small, nor 
 be surpassed ; but that it is willing to do one of these two 
 things, either to fly away, and gradually withdraw itself, 
 when its contrary the small approaches to it, or to perish 
 when it arrives ; but that it is unwilling, by sustaining and 
 receiving Parvitude, to be different from what it was. In 
 the same manner as I myself receiving and sustaining Parvi- 
 tude, and still remaining that which I am, am small. But 
 that which is great dares not to be small. And in like 
 manner the small^ which resides in us, is not willing at any 
 time to subsist tft becotni?ig great, or to be great : nor does 
 anything else among contraries, while it remains that which 
 it was, wish at the same time to subsist in becomiftg^ and 
 being, its contrary; but it either departs or perishes in 
 consequence of this affection. 
 
 It appears so to me, says Cebes, in every respect. 
 
 But a certain person, who was present, upon hearing this 
 (I do not clearly remember who it was), By the gods, 
 says he, was not the very contrary of what you now assert 
 admitted by you in the former part of your discourse — viz., 
 that the greater was generated from the less, and the less 
 
THE PHAEDO. 225 
 
 from the greater; and that generation among contraries 
 plainly took place from contraries ? But now you appear 
 to me to say, that this can never be the case. Upon this 
 Socrates, after he had inclined his head, and had listened to 
 his discourse, said, You very manfully put me in mind ; yet 
 you do not understand the difference between what is now 
 and what was then asserted. For then it was said, that a 
 contrary thing was generated from a contrary ; but now, 
 that the contrary in itself can never become contrary to 
 itself, neither in us, nor in nature. For then, my friend, we 
 spoke concerning things which possess contraries, calling 
 the contraries by the appellation of the things in which they 
 reside; but now we speak of things which receive their 
 denomination from the contraries residing in them. And 
 we should never be willing to assert that these contraries 
 receive a generation from one another. And at the same 
 time, beholding Cebes, he said, Did anything which has 
 been said by this interrogator disturb you also ? 
 
 Indeed, says Cebes, it did not; and I cannot say that I 
 am not easily disturbed. 
 
 We ingenuously, therefore, says he, assent to this, that 
 the contrary can never become contrary to itself 
 
 Entirely so, says Cebes. 
 
 But still further, says he, consider whether you agree with 
 me in this also. Do you call the hot and the cold anything ? 
 
 I do. 
 
 Are they the same with snow and fire ? 
 
 They are not, by Zeus. 
 
 The hot, therefore, is something different from fire^ and 
 the cold from snow. 
 
 Certainly. 
 
 But this also is, I think, apparent to you, that snow, as 
 long as it is such, can never, by receiving heat, remain what 
 it was before — viz., snow, and at the same time become 
 hot; but, on the accession of heat, must either withdraw 
 itself from it, or perish. 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 And again, that firo, when cold approaches to it, must 
 
/ 
 
 226 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 either depart or perish; but that it will never dare, by 
 receiving coldness, still to remain what it was — />., fire, and 
 vet be at the same time cold. 
 
 You speak truly, says he. 
 
 But, says Socrates, it happens to some of these, that not 
 only the species itself is always thought worthy of the same 
 appellation, but likewise something else, which is not 
 indeed that species, but which perpetually possesses the 
 form of it as long as it exists. But in the following instances 
 my meaning will perhaps be more apparent. The odd 
 number ought always to possess that name by which we 
 now call it : should it not ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 But is this the case with the odd number alone (for this 
 is what I inquire)? or is there anything else which is not 
 indeed the same with the odd, but yet which ought always 
 to be called odd, together with its own proper name, 
 because it naturally subsists in such a manner, that it can 
 never desert the form of the odd ? But this is no other 
 than what happens to the number three, and many other 
 things. For consider, does not the number three appear to 
 you to be always called by its proper name, and at the 
 same time by the name of the odd, though the odd is not 
 the same as the triad! Yet the triad, and the pentad, and 
 the entire half of number, naturally subsist in such a 
 manner, that though they are not the same as the odd, yet 
 each of them is always odd. And again, two and four, and 
 the whole other order of number, though they are not the 
 same as the even, yet each of them is always even : do you 
 admit this or not ? 
 
 How should I not ? says he. 
 
 See then, says Socrates, what I wish to evince. But it is 
 as follows : It has appeared, not only that contraries do not 
 receive one another, but that even such things as are n ot 
 contrary to each other, and yet always possess contraries^ 
 do not appear to receive that idea whicn is ronrmrv to thp 
 i dpn whi^h thov contain^ [Hit ttiat on its approach they 
 either perish or depart. Shall we not, therefore, say that 
 
THE PHAEDO. 227 
 
 three things would first perish, and endure anything what- 
 ever, sooner than sustain to be three things, and at the 
 same time to be even ? 
 
 Entirely so, says Cebes. 
 
 And yet, says Socrates, the duad is not contrary to tlie 
 triad. 
 
 Certainly not. 
 
 Not only, therefore, do contrary species never sustain the 
 approach of each other, but certain other things likewise 
 cannot sustain the accession of contraries. 
 
 You speak most true, says he. 
 
 Are you willing, therefore, says he, that, if we are able, 
 we should define what kind of things these are. 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 Will they not then, Cebes, says he, be such things as 
 compel whatever they occupy, not only to retain their idea, 
 but likewise that of some contrary ? 
 
 How do you mean ? 
 
 Exactly as we just now said. For you know it is neces- 
 sary, that whatever things the idea of three occupies should 
 not only be three, but likewise odd. 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 To a thing of this kind, therefore, we assert, that an idea 
 contrary to that form, through which it becomes what it is, 
 will never approach. 
 
 It cannot. 
 
 But it becomes what it is through the odd : does it not ? 
 
 Certainly. 
 
 But is not the contrary to this the idea of the even ? 
 
 It is. 
 
 The idea of the even, therefore, will never accede to 
 three things. 
 
 Never. 
 
 Are not three things, therefore, destitute of the even ? 
 
 Destitute. 
 
 The triad, therefore, is an odd number. 
 
 It is. 
 
 The things which I mentioned then are defined — viz., 
 
2 28 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 such things, which, though they are not contrary to some 
 particular nature, yet do not at the same time receive it ; 
 just as the triad in the present instance, though it is not 
 contrary to the even, yet does not anything more receive it 
 on this account : for it always brings with it that which is 
 contrary to the even ; and in hke manner the duad to the 
 odd, and fire to cold, and an abundant multitude of other 
 particulars. But see whether you would thus define, not 
 only that a contrary does not receive a contrary, but like- 
 wise that the nature which brings with it a contrary to that 
 to which it approaches, will never receive the contrariety of 
 that which it introduces. But recollect again, for it will 
 not be useless to hear it repeated often. Five things will 
 not receive the form of the even ; neither will ten things, 
 which are the double of five, receive the form of the odd. 
 This,^ therefore, though it is itself contrary to something ^ 
 else, yet will not receive the form of the odd ; nor will the 
 sesquialter, nor other things of this kind, such as the half 
 and the third part, ever receive the form of the whole, if 
 you pursue and assent to these consequences. 
 
 I most vehemently, says he, pursue and assent to them. 
 
 Again, therefore, says Socrates, speak to me from the 
 beginning; and this not by answering to what I inquire, 
 but, in a different manner, imitating me. For I say this, in 
 consequence of perceiving another mode of answering, 
 arising from what has now been said, no less secure than 
 that which was established at first. For, if you should ask 
 me what that is, which, when inherent in any body, causes 
 the body to be hot, I should not give you that safe and 
 unskilful answer, that it is heat, but one more elegant 
 deduced from what we have just now said; I mean, that it 
 is fire. Nor, if you should ask me what that is, which when 
 inherent in a certain body, the body is diseased, I should 
 not say that it is disease, but a fever. Nor, if you should ask 
 what that is, which when inherent in a number, the number 
 will be odd, I should not say that it is oddness, but unity, 
 
 1 That is, the double. ^ ^hat is, the half. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 229 
 
 and in a similar manner in other particulars. But see 
 whether you sufficiently understand my meaning. 
 
 Perfectly so, says he. 
 
 Answer me then, says Socrates, what that is, which, when 
 inherent in the body, the body will be alive ? 
 
 Soul, says he. 
 
 Is this then always the case ? 
 
 How should it not, says he? 
 
 Will soul, therefore, always introduce life to that which it 
 occupies ? 
 
 It will truly, says he. 
 
 But is there anything contrary to life, or not? 
 
 There is. 
 
 But what ? 
 
 Death. 
 
 The soul, therefore, will never receive the contrary to that 
 which it introduces, in consequence of what has been already 
 admitted ? 
 
 Assuredly it cannot, says Cebes. 
 
 But what ? how do we denominate that which does not 
 receive the idea of the even ? 
 
 Odd, says he. 
 
 And how do we call that which does not receive justice, 
 and that which does not receive music? 
 
 We call, says he, the one unjust, and the other un- 
 musical. 
 
 Be it so. But wl"!at do we call that which does not 
 receive death ? 
 
 Immortal, says he. 
 
 The soul does not receive death ? 
 
 It does not. 
 
 The soul, therefore, is immortal. 
 
 Immortal. 
 
 Let it be so, says he. And shall we say that this is now 
 demonstrated ? Or how does it appear to you ? 
 
 It appears to me, Socrates, to be most sufficiently demon- 
 strated. 
 
 What then, says he, Cebes, if it were essential to (lie odd 
 
230 SELECTIONS FROM FLATO. 
 
 that it should be free from destruction, would not three 
 things be indestructible ? 
 
 How should they not? 
 
 If, therefore, it was also essential that a thing void of heat 
 should be indestructible, when any one should introduce 
 heat to snow, would not the snow withdraw itself, safe and 
 unliquefied? For it would not perish; nor yet, abiding, 
 would it receive the heat. 
 
 You speak the truth, says he. 
 
 In like manner, I think if that which is void of cold was 
 indestructible, that when anything cold approached to fire, 
 the fire would neither be extinguished nor destroyed, but 
 would depart free from damage. 
 
 It is necessary, says he. 
 
 Hence, says Socrates, it is necessary to speak in this 
 manner concerning that which is immortal : for, if that 
 which is immortal is indestructible, it is impossible that the 
 soul, when death approaches to it, should perish. For it 
 follows, from what has been said, that it does not receive 
 death, and of course it will never be dead. Just as we 
 said, that three things will never be even, nor will this ever 
 be the case with that which is odd : nor will fire ever be 
 cold, nor yet the heat which is inherent in fire. But some 
 one may say. What hinders but that the odd may never 
 become the even, through the accession of the even, as we 
 have confessed; and yet, when the odd is destroyed, the 
 even may succeed instead of it? We cannot contend with 
 him who makes this objection, that it is not destroyed: for 
 the odd is not free from destruction ; since, if this was 
 granted to us, we might easily oppose the objection, and 
 obtain this concession, that the odd and three things would 
 depart, on the approach of the even ; and we might contend 
 in the same manner about fire and heat, and other parti- 
 culars : might we not ? 
 
 Entirely so. 
 
 And now, therefore, since we have confessed respecting 
 that which is immortal, that it is indestructible, it must 
 follow that the soul is, together with being immortal, like- 
 
THE PHAEDO, 23! 
 
 wise indestructible : but if this be not admitted, other 
 arguments will be necessary for our conviction. But 
 there is no occasion for this, says he. For it is scarcely 
 possible that anything else should be void of corruption, if 
 that which is immortal and eternal is subject to dissolution. ^ 
 
 But I think, says Socrates, that Divinity, and the form 
 itself of life, and if anything else besides this is immortal, 
 must be confessed by all beings to be entirely free from 
 dissolution. All men, indeed, says he, by Zeus, must 
 acknowledge this ; and much more, as it appears to me, 
 must it be admitted by the gods. vSince, therefore, that 
 which is immortal is also incorruptible, will not the soul, 
 since it is immortal, be indestructible? 
 
 It is perfectly necessary. 
 
 When, therefore, death invades a man, the mortal part of 
 him, as it appears, dies ; but the immortal part departs safe 
 and uncorrupted, and withdraws itself from death. 
 
 It appears so. 
 
 The soul, therefore, says he, O Cebes, will, more than 
 anything, be immortal and indestructible; and our souls 
 will in reality subsist in Hades. 
 
 And therefore, says he, Socrates, I have nothing further 
 to object to these arguments, nor any reason why I should 
 disbelieve their reality: but if either Simmias, or any person 
 present, has anything to say, he will do well not to be 
 silent: for I know not what other opportunity he can have, 
 besides the present, if he wishes either to speak or hear 
 about things of this kind. 
 
 But indeed, says Simmias, I have nothing which can 
 hinder my belief in what has been said. But yet on 
 account of the magnitude of the things about which wc 
 have discoursed, and through my despising human imbe- 
 cility, I am compelled to retain with myself an unbelief 
 about what has been asserted. 
 
 Indeed, Simmias, says Socrates, you not only speak well 
 in the present instance, but it is necessary that even those 
 
 ^ In the La'MS (Book x.) immortality is distinguished from indestruc- 
 tibility, the latter attribute being claimed both for body and soul. 
 
232 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 first hypotheses which we estabHshed, and which are 
 believed by us, should at the same time be more clearly 
 considered : and if you sufficiently investigate them, you 
 will follow reason, as it appears to me, in as great a degree 
 as is possible to man. And if this becomes manifest, you 
 will no longer make any further inquiry. 
 
 You speak true, says he. 
 
 But it is just, my friends, says he, to think that if the 
 soul is immortal, it requires our care and attention, not 
 only for the present time, in which we say it lives, but like- 
 wise with a view to the whole of time : and it will now 
 appear, that he who neglects it must subject himself to a 
 most dreadful danger. For, if death were the liberation of 
 the whole man, it would be an unexpected gain to the 
 wicked to be liberated at the same time from the body, 
 and from their vices together with their soul : but now, 
 since the soul appears to be immortal, no other flight from 
 evils, and no other safety remains for it, than in becoming 
 as good and as wise as possible. For when the soul arrives 
 at Hades, it will possess nothing but discipline and educa- 
 tion, which are said to be of the greatest advantage or 
 detriment to the dead, in the very beginning of their pro- 
 gression thither. For thus it is said : that the daemon of 
 each person, which was allotted to him while living, en- 
 deavours to lead each to a certain place, where it is neces- 
 sary that all of them, being collected together, after they have 
 been judged, should proceed to Hades, together with their 
 leader, who is ordered to conduct them from hence thither. 
 But there receiving the allotments proper to their condition, 
 and abiding for a necessary time, another leader brings 
 them back hither again, in many and long periods of time. 
 The journey, therefore, is not such as Telephus asserts it 
 to be in Eschylus. For he says that a single and simple 
 path leads to Hades : but it appears to me that the path is 
 neither simple nor one. For there would be no occasion 
 of leaders, nor could any one ever wander from the right 
 road, if there was but one way. But now it appears to 
 have many divisions and dubious turnings : and this I con- 
 
THE PHAEDO. 2^3 
 
 jecture from our holy and legal rites. The soul, therefore, 
 which is properly adorned with virtue, and which possesses 
 wisdom, willingly follows its leader, and is not ignorant of 
 its present condition : but the soul which still adheres to 
 body through desire (as I said before), being for a long 
 space of time terrified about it, and struggling and suffering 
 abundantly about the visible place, is with violence and 
 great difficulty led away by its presiding daemon. And 
 when it arrives at that place where other souls are 
 assembled, all the rest fly from and avoid this unpurified 
 soul, which has been guilty either of unjust slaughter, or 
 has perpetrated such deeds as are allied to this, and are the 
 works of kindred souls ; nor is any one willing to become 
 either its companion or leader. But such a soul wanders 
 about, oppressed with every kind of anxiety and trouble, 
 till certain periods of time are accomplished : and these 
 being completed, it is driven by necessity to an abode 
 accommodated to its nature. But the soul which has 
 passed through life with purity and moderation, obtaining 
 the gods for its companions and leaders, will reside in a 
 place adapted to its purified condition. 
 
 There are indeed many and admirable places belonging 
 to the earth ; and the earth itself is neither of such a kind, 
 nor of such a magnitude, as those who are accustomed to 
 speak about it imagine, as I am persuaded from a certain 
 person's account. 
 
 How is this, Socrates, says Simmias ? For I myself also 
 have heard many things about the earth ; and yet perhaps 
 not these particulars which have obtained your belief I 
 should therefore be glad to hear you relate them. 
 
 Indeed, Simmias, says he, the art of Glaucus does not 
 appear to me to be necessary,^ in order to relate these 
 particulars ; but to evince their truth, seems to me to be 
 an undertaking beyond what the art of Glaucus can accom- 
 plish. Besides, I myself perhaps am not able to accomplish 
 
 ^ A proverb of unknown origin, about matters requiring little trouble. 
 
234 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 this ; and even though I should know how, the time which 
 is allotted me to live, Simmias, seems by no means sufficient 
 for the length of such a discourse. However, nothing 
 hinders me from informing you what I am persuaded is 
 the truth, respecting the form of the earth, and the places 
 which it contains. 
 
 And this information, says Simmias, will be sufficient. 
 
 I am persuaded, therefore, says he, in the first place, that 
 if the earth is in the middle of the heavens, and is of a 
 spherical figure, it has no occasion of air, nor of any other 
 such like necessity, to prevent it from falling : but that the 
 perfect similitude of the heavens to themselves, and the 
 equilibrity of the earth, are sufficient causes of its support. 
 For that which is equally inclined, when placed in the 
 middle of a similar nature, cannot tend more or less to one 
 part than another ; but, subsisting on all sides similarly 
 affected, it will remain free from all inclination. This is 
 the first thing of which I am pursuaded. 
 
 And very properly so, says Cebes. 
 
 But yet further, says he, that the earth is prodigiously 
 great; that we who dwell in places extending from Phasis 
 to the pillars of Hercules, inhabit only a small portion of it, 
 about the Mediterranean Sea, like ants or frogs about a 
 marsh ; and that there are many others elsewhere, who 
 dwell in many such-like places. For I am persuaded, that 
 there are everywhere about the earth many hollow places of 
 all-various forms and magnitudes ; into which there is a 
 confluence of water, mists, and air : but that the earth itself, 
 which is of a pure nature, is situated in the pure heavens, 
 in which the stars are contained, and which most of those 
 who are accustomed to speak about such particulars de- 
 nominate sether. But the places which we inhabit are 
 nothing more than the dregs of this pure earth, or cavities 
 into which its dregs continually flow. We are ignorant, 
 therefore, that we dwell in the cavities of this earth, and 
 imagine that we inhabit its upper parts. Just as if some 
 one dwelling in the middle bottom of the sea, should think 
 that he resided on its surface, and, beholding the sun and 
 
THE PHAEDO. 235 
 
 other stars through the water, should imagine that the sea 
 is the heavens ; but through sloth and imbecility having 
 never ascended to the top of the sea, nor emerged from its 
 deeps into this region, has never perceived how much purer 
 and more beautiful it is than the place which he inhabits, 
 nor has received this information from any other who has 
 beheld this place of our abode. In the very same manner 
 are we affected : for, dwelling in a certain hollow of the 
 earth, we think that w^e reside on its surface ; and we call 
 the air heaven, as if the stars passed through this, as through 
 the heavens themselves. And this likewise, in the same 
 manner as in the above instance, happens to us through our 
 imbecility and sloth, which render us incapable of ascending 
 to the summit of the air. For, otherwise, if any one could 
 arrive at its summit, or, becoming winged, could fly thither, 
 he would be seen emerging from hence ; and just as fishes, 
 emerging hither from the sea, perceive what our region con- 
 tains, in the same manner would he behold the several particu- 
 lars belonging to the summit of the earth. And besides this, 
 if his nature was sufficient for such an elevated survey, he 
 would know that the heavens which he there beheld were 
 the true heavens, and that he perceived the true light and 
 the true earth. For this earth which we inhabit, the stones 
 which it contains, and the whole region of our abode, are all 
 corrupted and gnawed, just as things in the sea are corroded 
 by the salt : for nothing worthy of estimation grows in the 
 sea, nor does it contain anything perfect ; but caverns and 
 sand, and immense quantities of mud and filth, are found in 
 it wherever there is earth. Nor are its contents to be by 
 any means compared with the beauty of the various particu- 
 lars in our place of abode. IJut those upper regions of 
 the earth will appear to be yet far more excellent than these 
 which we inhabit. For, if it is proper to tell you a beautiful 
 fable, it is well worth hearing, Simmias, what kind of places 
 those are on the upper earth, situated under the heavens. 
 
 And gladly should we hear it, O Socrates, said Simmias. 
 
 It is reported then, my friend, says he, in the first place, 
 that this earth; if any one surveys it from on high, ai)pcar3 
 
236 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 like those balls which are covered with twelve pieces of 
 leather, various, and distinguished with colours ; a pattern 
 of which are the colours found among us, and which our 
 painters use. But there the whole earth is composed from 
 materials of this kind, and such as are much more splendid 
 and pure than our region contains : for they are partly 
 indeed purple, and endued with a wonderful beauty ; partly 
 of a golden colour ; and partly more white than plaster or 
 snow ; and are composed from other colours in a similar 
 manner, and those more in number and more beautiful 
 than any we have ever beheld. For the hollow parts of 
 this pure earth, being filled with water and air, exhibit a 
 certain species of colour, shining among the variety of other 
 colours in such a manner, that from any one view the earth 
 is always varicoloured. Hence, whatever grows in this 
 earth grows analogous to its nature, such as its trees, and 
 flowers, and fruits : and again, its mountains and stones 
 possess a similar perfection and transparency, and are 
 rendered beautiful through various colours ; of which the 
 stones so much honoured by us in this place of our abode 
 are but small parts, such as sardin-stones, jaspers, and 
 emeralds, and all of this kind. But there nothing subsists 
 which is not of such a nature as I have described; and 
 there are other things far more beautiful than even these. 
 But the reason of this is because the stones there are pure, 
 and not consumed and corrupted, like ours, through rotten- 
 ness and salt, from a conflux of various particulars, which 
 in our places of abode cause filthiness and disease to the 
 stones and earth, animals and plants, which are found 
 among us. But this pure earth is adorned with all these, 
 and with gold and silver, and other things of a similar 
 nature : for all these are naturally apparent, since they are 
 both numerous and large, and are diffused everywhere 
 throughout the earth ; so that to behold it is the spectacle 
 of blessed spectators. This earth too contains many other 
 animals and men, some of whom inhabit its middle parts ; 
 others dwell about the air, as we do about the sea ; and 
 others reside in islands which the air flows round, and 
 
THE PHAEDO. 237 
 
 which are situated not far from the continent. And in one 
 word, what water and the sea are to us, with respect to 
 utihty, that air is to them : but what air is to us, that aether 
 is to the inhabitants of this pure earth. But the seasons 
 there are endued with such an excellent temperament, that 
 the inhabitants are never molested with disease, and live 
 for a much longer time than those who dwell in our regions; 
 and they surpass us in sight, hearing, and wisdom, and 
 everything of this kind, as much as air excels water in 
 purity — and aether, air. And besides this, they have groves 
 and temples of the gods, in which the gods dwell in reality ; 
 and likewise oracles and divinations, and sensible percep- 
 tions of the gods, and such-like associations with them. 
 The sun too, and moon, and stars, are seen by them such 
 as they really are ; and in every other respect their felicity 
 is of a correspondent nature. 
 
 And in this manner indeed the whole earth naturally 
 subsists, and the parts which are situated about it. But it 
 contains about the whole of its ambit many places in 
 its concavities; some of which are more profound and 
 extended than the region which we inhabit : but others 
 are more profound, indeed, but yet have a less chasm than 
 the places of our abode ; and there are certain parts which 
 are less profound, but broader than ours. But all these 
 are in many places perforated into one another under the 
 earth, according to narrower and broader avenues, and have 
 passages of communication through which a great quantity 
 of water flows into the different hollows of the earth, as 
 into bowls ; and besides this, there are immense bulks of 
 ever-flowing rivers under the earth, and of hot and cold 
 waters ; likewise a great quantity of fire, mighty rivers of 
 fire, and many of moist mire, some of which are purer, and 
 others more muddy; as in Sicily there are rivers of mud, 
 which flow before a stream of fire, which is itself a flaming 
 torrent. And from these the several places are filled, into 
 which each flows at particular times. But all these are 
 moved upwards and downwards, like a swinging or oscil- 
 lation in the earth. And this is the cause of it : There is 
 
238 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 a chasm in the earth, and this the greatest, and totally 
 perforated through the whole earth. And of this Homer 
 thus speaks — 
 
 " Far, very far, where under earth is found 
 A gulf, of every depth, tlie most profound : " 
 
 which he elsewhere and many other poets denominate 
 Tartarus, For into this chasm there is a conflux of all 
 rivers, from which they again flow upwards. But each 
 derives its quality from the earth through which it flows. 
 And the reason why they all flow into, and again out of this 
 chasm, is because this moisture cannot find either a bottom 
 or a basis. Hence it swings and seethes upwards and 
 downwards : and this too is the case with the air and wind 
 which are situated about it. For they follow this moisture, 
 both when they are impelled to more remote places of the 
 earth, and when to the places of our abode. And as in 
 respiration the flowing breath is perpetually expired and 
 inspired, so there the wind, which is swayed about together 
 with the moisture, causes certain vehement and immense 
 winds during its ingress and departure. When the water, 
 therefore, being impelled, flows into that place which we 
 call downwards, then the river flows through the earth into 
 different channels, and fill them ; just as those who pour into 
 another vessel the water which they have drawn. But when 
 this water, departing from thence, is impelled hither, it 
 again fills the rivers on the earth ; and these, when filled, 
 flow through channels and through the earth ; and when 
 they have severally passed through the avenues, which are 
 open to each, they produce seas, lakes, rivers, and fountains. 
 Flowing back again from hence under the earth, and some 
 of them streaming round longer and more numerous 
 places, but others round such as are shorter and less 
 numerous, they again hurl themselves into Tartarus ; and 
 some indeed much more profoundly, but others less so, 
 than they were drawn ; but the influxions of all of them are 
 deeper than the places from which they flow upwards. And 
 the effluxions of some are on a side opposite to their 
 
THE PHAEDO. 239 
 
 influxions, but in others both take place on the same side. 
 There are some again which entirely flow round in a circle, 
 folding themselves like snakes, once or often about the 
 earth ; and tending downwards as much as possible, they 
 again fall into the chasm. On every side the rivers can 
 descend to the centre, but not beyond it, for the part 
 opposite to both directions is steep. 
 
 The other rivers, indeed, are many, great, and various : 
 but among this abundance there are certain streams, four 
 in number, of which the greatest, and which circularly flows 
 round the earth the outermost of all, is called the Ocean. 
 But that which flows opposite, and in a contrary direction 
 to this, is Acheron ; which, flowing through other solitary 
 places, and under the earth, devolves its waters into 
 the Acherusian marsh, into which many souls of the dead 
 pass ; and abiding there for certain destined spaces of time, 
 some of which are more and others less extended, they are 
 again sent into the generations of animals. The third river 
 of these hurls itself forth in the middle, and near its source 
 falls into a mighty place, burning with abundance of fire, 
 and produces a lake greater than our sea, and hot with 
 water and mud. But it proceeds from hence, turbulent and 
 miry, and, encircling the earth, arrives both elsewhere and 
 at the extremities of the Acherusian marsh, with the water 
 of which it does not become mingled ; but, often revolving 
 itself under the earth, flows into the more downward parts 
 of Tartarus. And this is the river which they still denomi- 
 nate Pyriphlegethon ; the streams of which burst up in 
 gushes in various parts of the earth. But the fourth river, 
 which is opposite to this, first falls as it is said into a place 
 dreadful and wild, and wholly tinged with a gloomy colour, 
 which they denominate Styx : and the influxive streams of 
 this river form the Stygian marsh. But falling into this, 
 and receiving vehement powers in its waters, it hides itself 
 under the earth, and, rolling round, proceeds contrary 
 to Pyriphlegethon, and meets with it in the Acherusian 
 marsh, in a contrary direction. Nor is the water of this 
 river mingled with anything, but, revolving in a circle, it 
 
240 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 hurls itself into Tartarus, in a course opposite to Pyri- 
 phlegethon. But its name, according to the poets, is 
 Cocytus. 
 
 These being thus naturally constituted, when the dead 
 arrive at that place into which the dcemon leads each, in the 
 first place they are judged, as well those who have lived in 
 a becoming manner, and piously, and justly, as those who 
 have not. And those who appear to have passed a middle 
 kind of life, proceeding to Acheron, and ascending the 
 vehicles prepared for them, arrive in these at the Acherusian 
 lake, and dwell there ; till being purified, and having 
 suffered punishment for any injuries they may have com- 
 mitted, they are enlarged ; and each receives the reward of 
 his beneficence, according to his deserts. But those who 
 appear to be incurable, through the magnitude of their 
 offences, because they have perpetrated either many and 
 great sacrileges, or many unjust slaughters, and such as are 
 contrary to law, or other things of this kind — these, a 
 destiny adapted to their guilt hurls into Tartarus, from 
 which they will never be discharged. But those who are 
 found to have committed curable, but yet mighty crimes, 
 such as those who have been guilty through anger of any 
 violence against their father or mother, and have lived the 
 remainder of their lives penitent for the offence, or who 
 have become homicides in any other similar manner ; with 
 respect to these, it is necessary that they should fall into 
 Tartarus : but after they have fallen, and have dwelt there 
 for a year, the waves hurl them out of Tartarus ; and the 
 ordinary homicides indeed into Cocytus, but the slayers of 
 fathers and mothers into Pyriphlegethon. But when, being 
 borne along by these rivers, they arrive at the Acherusian 
 marsh, they here bellow and invoke those whom they have 
 slaughtered or injured. But, invoking these, they sup- 
 pliantly entreat that they would suffer them to enter into the 
 lake, and forgive them. And if they persuade them to do 
 this, they depart, and find an end to their maladies : but if 
 they are unable to accomplish this, they are carried back 
 again into Tartarus, and from thence again into the rivers. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 241 
 
 And they do not cease from suffering this, till they have 
 persuaded those they have injured to forgiveness. For this 
 punishment was ordained them by the judges. But those 
 who shall appear to have lived most excellently, with respect 
 to piety — these are they, who, being liberated and dismissed 
 from these places in the earth, as from the abodes of a 
 prison, shall arrive at the pure habitation on high, and 
 dwell on the setherial earth. And among these, those who 
 are sufficiently purified by philosophy shall live without 
 bodies, through the whole of the succeeding time, and 
 shall arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than these, 
 which it is neither easy to describe, nor is the present time 
 sufficient for such an undertaking. 
 
 But for the sake of these particulars which we have 
 related, we should undertake everything, Simmias, that we 
 may participate of virtue and prudence in the present life. 
 For the reward is beautiful, and the hope mighty. To 
 affirm, indeed, that these things subsist exactly as I have 
 described them, is not the province of a man endued with 
 intellect. But to assert that either these or certain par- 
 ticulars of this kind take place, with respect to our souls and 
 their habitations — since our soul appears to be immortal — 
 this is, I think, both becoming, and deserves to be hazarded 
 by him who believes in its reality. For the risk is a noble 
 one, and we must allure ourselves with things of this kind, 
 as with enchantments : and, on this account, I produced 
 the fable which you have just now heard me relate. But, 
 for the sake of these, it is proper that the man should be 
 confident about his soul, who in the present life bidding 
 farewell to those pleasures which regard the body and its 
 ornaments, as things foreign from his nature, has earnestly 
 applied himself to disciplines, as things of far greater con- 
 sequence ; and who having adorned his soul not with a 
 foreign but its own proper ornament — viz., with temperance 
 and justice, fortitude, liberty, and truth, expects a migration 
 to Hades, as one who is ready to depart whenever he 
 shall be called upon by Fate. You, therefore, says he, 
 Simmias and Cebes, and the rest who are here assembled, 
 
242 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 will each depart in some period of time posterior to the 
 present ; but 
 
 Me now calling, Fate demands : 
 
 (as some tragic poet would say) and it is almost time that I 
 should betake myself to the bath. For it appears to me 
 better to wash myself before I drink the poison, and not to 
 trouble the women with washing my dead body. 
 
 When, therefore, he had thus spoken, — Be it so, Socrates, 
 says Crito : but what orders do you leave to these who are 
 present, or to myself, or respecting your children, or any- 
 thing else in the execution of which we can particularly 
 oblige you ? 
 
 None such as are new, says he, Crito, but that which I 
 have always said to you ; that if you take care of yourselves, 
 you will always perform in whatever you do that which is 
 acceptable to myself, to my family, and to your own selves, 
 though you should not promise me anything at present. 
 But if you neglect yourselves, and are unwilling to live 
 according to what has been now and formerly said, as 
 vestiges of direction in your course, you will accomplish 
 nothing, though you should now promise many things, and 
 in a very vehement manner. 
 
 We shall take care, therefore, says Crito, to act as you 
 desire. But how would you be buried ? 
 
 Just as you please, says he, if you can but catch me, and 
 I do not escape from you. And at the same time gently 
 laughing, and addressing himself to us, I cannot persuade 
 Crito, says he, my friends, that I am that Socrates who now 
 disputes with you, and orders every part of the discourse ; 
 but he thinks that I am he whom he will shortly behold 
 dead, and asks how I ought to be buried. But all that 
 long discourse which some time since I addressed to you, 
 in which I asserted that after I had drunk the poison I 
 should no longer remain with you, but should depart to 
 certain felicities of the blessed, this I seem to have declared 
 to him in vain, though it was undertaken to console both 
 
THE PHAEDO. 243 
 
 you and myself. Promise, therefore, says he, for me to 
 Crito, just the contrary of what he promised to my judges. 
 For he promised that I should not run away ; but do you 
 engage that when I die I shall not stay with you, but shall 
 depart and entirely leave you ; that Crito may more easily 
 bear this separation, and may not be afflicted when he sees 
 my body either burnt or buried, as if I suffered some dread- 
 ful misfortune ; and that he may not say at my interment, 
 that Socrates is laid out, or is carried out, or is buried. 
 For be well assured of this, says he, excellent Crito, that 
 when we do not speak in a becoming manner, we are not 
 only culpable with respect to our speech, but likewise affect 
 our souls with a certain evil. But it is proper to be con- 
 fident, and to say that my body will be buried, and in such 
 a manner as is pleasing to you, and which you think is most 
 agreeable to our laws. 
 
 When he had thus spoken he rose, and went into 
 a certain room, that he might wash himself, and Crito 
 followed him : but he ordered us to w^ait for him. 
 We waited, therefore, accordingly, discoursing over and 
 reviewing among ourselves what had been said; and 
 sometimes speaking about his death, how great a calamity 
 it would be to us ; and sincerely thinking that we, like 
 those who are deprived of their father, should pass the 
 rest of our life in the condition of orphans. But when 
 he had washed himself, his sons were brought to him 
 (for he had two little ones, and one considerably advanced 
 in age), and the women belonging to his family like- 
 wise came in to him : but when he had spoken to them 
 before Crito, and had left them such injunctions as he 
 thought proper, he ordered the boys and women to depart; 
 and he himself returned to us. And it was now near the 
 setting of the sun : for he had been absent for a long time 
 in the bathing-room. But when he came in from washing, 
 he sat down ; and did not speak much afterwards. For 
 then the servant of the eleven magistrates came in, and 
 standing near liim, T do not perceive that in you, Socrates, 
 says he, which I have taken notice of in others ; I mean, 
 
244 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 that they are angry with me, and curse me, when, being 
 compelled by the magistrates, I announce to them that they 
 must drink the poison. But, on the contrary, I have found 
 you at the present time to be the most generous, mild, and 
 the best of all the men that ever came into this place : and, 
 therefore, I am well convinced that you are not angry with 
 me, but with the authors of your present condition. You 
 know those whom I allude to. Now, therefore (for you 
 know what I came to tell you), farewell, and endeavour to 
 bear this necessity as easily as possible. And at the same 
 time bursting into tears, and turning himself away, he 
 departed. 
 
 But Socrates looking after him, And thou too, says he, 
 farewell ; and we shall take care to act as you advise. And 
 at the same time turning to us. How courteous, says he, is 
 the behaviour of that man ! During the whole time of my 
 abode here, he has visited and often conversed with me, 
 and proved himself to be the best of men ; and now how 
 generously he weeps on my account ! But let us obey him, 
 Crito, and let some one bring the poison, if it is bruised ; 
 but if not, let the man whose business it is bruise it him- 
 self. 
 
 But, Socrates, says Crito, I think that the sun still hangs 
 over the mountains, and is not yet set. And at the same 
 time I have known others who have drunk the poison very 
 late, after it was announced to them ; who have supped and 
 drunk abundantly; and who have enjoyed converse with 
 whomsoever they desire. Therefore, do not be in such 
 haste ; for there is yet time enough. 
 
 Upon this Socrates replied. Such men, Crito, act with 
 great propriety in the manner you have described (for they 
 think to derive some advantage by so doing), and I also with 
 great propriety shall not act in this manner. For I do not 
 think I shall gain anything by drinking it later, except 
 becoming ridiculous to myself through desiring to live, and 
 being sparing of life when nothing of it any longer remains. 
 Go, then, says he, be persuaded, and comply with my 
 request. 
 
THE PHAEDO. 245 
 
 Then Crito, hearing this, gave the sign to the boy that 
 stood near him. And the boy departing, and having stayed 
 for some time, came, bringing with him the person that was 
 to administer the poison, and who brought it properly pre- 
 pared in a cup. But Socrates, beholding the man — It is 
 well, my friend, says he ; but what is proper to do with it ? 
 for you are knowing in these affairs. 
 
 You have nothing else to do, says he, but when you have 
 drunk it to walk about, till a heaviness takes place in your 
 legs ; and afterwards lie down : this is the manner in which 
 you should act. And at the same time he extended the cup 
 to Socrates. But Socrates received it from him — and in- 
 deed, Echecrates, with great cheerfulness; neither trembling, 
 nor suffering any alteration for the worse in his colour or 
 countenance : but, as he was accustomed to do, beholding 
 the man with a bull-like aspect, What say you, says he, 
 respecting this potion ? Is it lawful to make a libation of it, 
 or not ? 
 
 We only bruise, says he, Socrates, as much as we think 
 sufficient for the purpose. 
 
 I understand you, says he : but it is certainly both lawful 
 and proper to pray to the gods, that my departure from 
 hence thither may be attended with prosperous fortune ; 
 which I entreat them to grant may be the case. And at 
 the same time ending his discourse, he drank the poison 
 with exceeding facility and alacrity. And thus far, indeed, 
 the greater part of us were tolerably well able to refrain from 
 weeping : Vjut when we saw him drinking, and that he had 
 drunk it, we could no longer restrain our tears. But from 
 me, indeed, notwithstanding the violence which I employed 
 in checking them, they flowed abundantly ; so that, cover- 
 ing myself with my mantle, I deplored my misfortune. I 
 did not indeed weep for him, but for my own fortune ; con- 
 sidering what an associate I should be deprived of But 
 Crito, who was not able to restrain his tears, w\as compelled 
 to rise before me. And Apollodorus, who during the whole 
 time prior to this had not ceased from weeping, then wept 
 aloud with great bitterness ; so that he infected all who were 
 
246 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 present, except Socrates. But Socrates, upon seeing this, 
 exclaimed — What are you doing, excellent men ? For, 
 indeed, I principally sent away the women, lest they should 
 produce a disturbance of this kind. For I have heard that 
 it is proper to die joyfully and with propitious omens. Be 
 quiet, therefore, and summon fortitude to your assistance. 
 
 When we heard this we blushed, and restrained our tears. 
 But he, when he found during his walking that his legs felt 
 heavy, and had told us so, laid himself down in a supine 
 position. For the man had ordered him to do so. And at 
 the same time he who gave him the poison, touching him at 
 intervals, considered his feet and legs. And after he had 
 vehemently pressed his foot, he asked him if he felt it. 
 But Socrates answered he did not. And after this he 
 again pressed his thighs : and thus ascending with his hand, 
 he showed us that he was cold and stiff. And Socrates also 
 touched himself, and said, that when the poison reached 
 his heart he should then leave us. But now his lower 
 belly was almost cold ; when uncovering his face (for he 
 was covered), he said (which were his last words) : 
 
 Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius.^ Discharge this 
 debt, therefore, for me, and do not neglect it. 
 
 It shall be done, says Crito : but consider whether you 
 have any other commands. To this inquiry of Crito he 
 made no reply ; but shortly after moved himself, and the 
 man uncovered him. And his eyes were fixed ; which 
 when Crito perceived, he closed his mouth and eyes. 
 This, Echecrates, was the end of our associate ; a man, as 
 it appears to me, the best of the men of that time with 
 whom we were acquainted, and, besides this, the most wise 
 and just. 
 
 ^ The sacrifice paid on recovery from an illness. 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO.i 
 Plato to the Kindred and Associates of Dion — Frosperity. 
 
 You write to me that it is requisite to think that your 
 sentiments about poHtics are the same as those of Dion ; 
 and that I should be exhorted to join with you as much 
 as possible, both in word and in deed. Indeed, if you have 
 the same opinion and desire with him, I shall certainly join 
 with you ; but if you have not, it will be requisite to delibe- 
 rate frequently on the subject. But what his thoughts and 
 desire were I can relate to you, not from conjecture, but 
 because I know them well. 
 
 When I first came to Syracuse I was about forty years 
 old, and the age of Dion was then the same as that of 
 Hipparinus at present. He has likewise always persevered 
 in the opinion which he then entertained ; I mean, that the 
 Syracusans ought to be free, and governed by the best laws. 
 So that it is by no means wonderful if some god has caused 
 Dion to accord with him in opinion respecting a polity. 
 But the manner in which this came about is a thing which 
 deserves to be heard both by young and old. I will then 
 endeavour to relate the affair to you from the beginning, for 
 at present it will be opportune. 
 
 When I was a young man I was affected just as many others 
 are, for I was determined, as soon as I became my own 
 master, to betake myself immediately to the public affairs 
 of the State. In the meantime certain political events took 
 place. The polity which existed at that time being reviled 
 
 ^ See Introduction, pp. xxv. -xxx. 
 
248 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 by many, there was a change. Then one-and-fifty men 
 being chosen as governors, eleven of them presided in the 
 city and ten in the Piraeus; and each of these settled in the 
 assembly what was to be done in the other cities. But the 
 remaining thirty were invested with the supreme authority. 
 Some of these being my familiars, were well known to me, 
 and immediately called on me to attend to politics, as a 
 thing proper for me to study. And I felt as it was not 
 wonderful that a youth should feel ; for I thought that they 
 would govern the city so as to bring it from iniquity to 
 justice and goodness, and in consequence of this I diligently 
 attended to their conduct. But I perceived that these men, 
 in a short time, evinced that the former polity was golden 
 in comparison with theirs; for, besides acting unjustly in 
 other respects, they sent Socrates, who was my friend and 
 older than I, and who, I am not ashamed to say, was the 
 most righteous man of any one then existing; they sent 
 him, I say, together with certain others, in order to arrest 
 and bring back one of the citizens by force, so that he 
 might be punished by death. They likewise endeavoured 
 to make Socrates join with them in the management of 
 affairs whether he was willing or not. He refused, however, 
 to comply, and determined to expose himself to every 
 danger rather than be a partaker of their impious deeds. 
 All which when I perceived, together with other similar 
 particulars of no small importance, I was indignant, and 
 withdrew myself from the evil men of that time. 
 
 Not long after this the Thirty Tyrants were cut off, and 
 the whole of the then existing polity was subverted. Again 
 therefore I was inclined, though in a more moderate degree, 
 to engage in public affairs. But many circumstances then 
 took ])lace, at which any one might be indignant, owing to 
 the disordered state of affairs at that time. Nor was it 
 wonderful that in such mutations certain enemies should be 
 punished in a rather severe manner, although those that then 
 returned to power were very moderate. However, through 
 a certain fortune it happened that our friend Socrates was 
 brought into a court of justice, and was accused of the 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 249 
 
 greatest impiety, and which pertained to Socrates the least 
 of all men. For some indicted him for impiety and others 
 gave sentence against him, who had just refused to 
 partake of the unholy deed respecting the arrest of a 
 fugitive, when those who condemned him were themselves 
 among those fugitives. On perceiving these things, there- 
 fore, together with the men who had the management of 
 political affairs, and their laws and manners, the more I 
 considered them as I advanced in years, by so much the 
 more difficult did the right administration of political 
 concerns appear to me ; for this cannot be accomplished 
 without friends and faithful associates. But at that time it 
 was not easy to find such : for the city was no longer 
 governed according to our fathers' manners and institutions, 
 and it was not easy to establish other new ones ; for both 
 the written laws and the unwritten customs had become 
 corrupted. And now this remarkable thing took place, that 
 I who at first was ardently desirous of engaging in political 
 concerns, when I beheld the disordered state of things, 
 became at length giddy with the view. However, I did not 
 withdraw my attention from them, but determined to see 
 whether some improvement might not take place respecting 
 these very things, and the whole polity ; and always to wait 
 a fitting opportunity for acting. At last I perceived that 
 all the cities existing at present were badly governed. For 
 as to what relates to laws, they are nearly in an uncurable 
 state, unless by the aid of some extraordinary device or 
 other, and the favour of Fortune. I was therefore compelled 
 to say, in praise of genuine philosophy, that through this it 
 is that we are enabled to perceive what is just and right in 
 public and in private transactions. Hence the human race 
 will never see the end of its evils until that class of men who 
 philosophise with rectitude and truth obtain the government 
 of ])olitical affairs, or until those who govern, by some divine 
 endowment, become true philosophers. With this conception 
 I first came to Italy and Sicily. But on arriving there I was 
 by no means pleased with the life which they called happy, 
 a life full of Italian and Syracusan luxury, and which 
 
250 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 consists in repletion twice a day, never lying alone at night, 
 and such other particulars as follow a life of this kind : for 
 from these manners no man under the heavens would ever 
 become wise, however admirable his natural disposition may 
 be : nor will such a one ever become temperate. And the 
 same thing may be said respecting the other virtues. But 
 no city will remain contented and quiet under its laws when 
 the citizens are of opinion that it is proper to consume all 
 their possessions in superfluous cost, and that they should 
 be idle and heedless of everything except feasting and 
 debauchery. For it is necessary that such cities as these 
 should never cease changing into tyrannies, oligarchies, and 
 democracies, and that those who are powerful in them 
 should not even endure the name of a just and equitable 
 polity. With these and the above-mentioned conceptions I 
 came to Syracuse : perhaps through the interference of 
 fortune. It appears, indeed, that some superior power was 
 there laying the foundations of all that has since happened 
 concerning Dion and the Syracusans, and, it may be feared, 
 of more that is to happen still, if you obey not the counsels 
 I now give a second time. However, I affirm that the begin- 
 ning of all the transactions was my journey to Sicily.^ For I 
 associated with Dion, who was then a young man, and in my 
 discourse explained and advised him to do such things as 
 were best for mankind; not knowing that I was then in 
 some sense contriving the dissolution of the tyranny. For 
 Dion being very docile, both with respect to other things 
 and what was then said by me, he so acutely apprehended 
 and readily embraced my doctrines that he surpassed all the 
 young men with whom I was ever acquainted. He was 
 likewise determined to pass the remainder of his life in a 
 manner superior to that of the great majority of the Italians 
 and Sicilians — viz., in pursuing virtue rather than pleasure 
 and luxury. Hence he was hated by those who lived 
 conformably to tyrannic institutes, even till the death of 
 Dionysius. 
 
 ^ This was a journey which Plato had taken in the lifetime of the elder 
 Dionysius. See Introduction, p. xxix. 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 251 
 
 After this he perceived that the very same conception 
 which he had framed through the assistance of right reason, 
 did not subsist in him alone, but in certain other persons, 
 though they were not numerous, among whom, he thought, 
 Dionysius the younger might be brought with the speedy 
 assistance of the gods, in which case not only his own life 
 but that of the other Syracusans would be transcendently 
 happier and more blessed. On this account he thought 
 that I ought by all means to come with the utmost celerity 
 to Syracuse, that I might assist them in their undertakings ; 
 remembering how easily, by my conversation, he had been 
 inflamed with the desire of living the noblest and best kind 
 of life. If he could but enkindle this desire in Dionysius, 
 as he was attempting to do, he was in hopes that a happy 
 and true life, without slaughter and the other existing evils, 
 would flourish through every part of Syracuse. ^ 
 
 Dion, rightly conceiving that this would be the case, 
 persuaded Dionysius to send for me, and himself requested 
 that I would by all means come with the utmost celerity, 
 before other persons, associating with Dionysius, should 
 turn him away from the best life to another. But it is 
 necessary to relate more fully what he said. Why, says he, 
 should we expect a fitter opportunity than that which a 
 divine fortune has now sent us? He likewise mentioned 
 the empire of Italy and Sicily, the power of Dionysius in 
 this empire, and his vehement desire after philosophy and 
 erudition. He informed me how much inclined his own 
 nephews and the familiars of Dionysius were to the 
 doctrines and mode of life which I inculcated, and how 
 able to influence Dionysius to embrace them. He added 
 that now if at any time there was reason to hope that 
 philosophers might become rulers of mighty cities. With 
 these, therefore, and many other such reasons, did he urge 
 me to comply with his request. But I was fearful of the 
 
 ^ This seems to have been the first recorded case in liistory in which 
 philosophic ideas directly inspired important political actions ; a fact 
 which alone would give a peculiar interest to the narration of Dion's 
 enterprise. 
 
252 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 event; as the desires of young men are hasty, and often 
 frustrate themselves. 
 
 However, I knew that the disposition of Dion was 
 naturally grave, and that his age was sufficiently mature. 
 Hence while I was considering and doubting whether I 
 should go, and comply with his request, and how; it at the 
 same time occurred to me that I ought to go; and that if 
 ever any one thought of working out what had been already 
 thought out respecting laws and polity, now was the time to 
 make the attempt. For by the persuasion of one single 
 man, all good might be achieved. With this conception 
 and this confidence, and not from the motives which some 
 have thought, I left my home; feeling at the same time in 
 myself the greatest shame lest I should ever appear to 
 myself to be nothing more than a man of words, and never 
 voluntarily undertake the achievement of any deed. I was 
 likewise fearful lest I should betray the hospitality and 
 friendship of Dion, who was verily in no small dangers ; 
 who if he should fall into any calamity or be banished 
 by Dionysius and his other enemies, would fly to us, 
 and thus address us : "I come to you, O Plato, an exile, 
 not because I wanted horse soldiers and foot soldiers 
 to oppose my enemies, but because I wanted words 
 and persuasion, by which I know you are especially 
 able to convert young men to probity and justice, and unite 
 them in friendship and fellowship with each other. And 
 because you would not give me this, I have now left 
 Syracuse, and have betaken myself hither. As to what 
 relates to myself indeed, this will bring you less disgrace : 
 but as to philosophy, which you always praise, and which 
 you say is dishonoured by other men, have you not now 
 betrayed it, as far as you could, together with me ? If 
 indeed we had been inhabitants of Megara, you would have 
 come to my assistance when I had called you, or I should 
 have considered you as the most depraved of men. But 
 now, excusing yourself through the length of the journey, and 
 the magnitude of the voyage, and the labour, you think you 
 shall avoid discredit, though this is far from being the case. 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO, 253 
 
 If Dion had thus addressed me I should certainly have 
 been at a loss for a becoming answer. I therefore came to 
 Syracuse, with reason and justice, relinquishing my own 
 studies, which were not unworthy ones, under a tyranny 
 which I thought little adapted either to my studies or 
 myself. But coming thither I discharged my obligations, 
 doing the part of a friend and a philosopher without 
 reproach, which would indeed have been a sorry part if, 
 through effeminacy and fear, I had become involved in evil 
 disgrace. On my arrival then (for there is no occasion to be 
 prolix) I found all things about Dionysius full of sedition 
 and calumnies respecting the tyranny of Dion.^ I defended 
 Dion to the utmost of my power, but I was able to effect 
 but little. For on the fourth month nearly, after my arrival, 
 Dionysius accused Dion of endeavouring to obtain the 
 tyranny by stratagem, and disgracefully sent him into exile 
 in a small ship. After this, all of us that were the friends 
 of Dion were fearful lest Dionysius should accuse and 
 punish any of us as co-operating with Dion in his stratagem. 
 It was likewise reported in Syracuse that I was put to death 
 by Dionysius, as being the cause of everything that then 
 happened. But he, perceiving that we were all thus affected, 
 and dreading lest something of greater consequence should 
 arise from our fear, received all of us benevolently, consoled 
 me, desired me to confide in him, and requested that I 
 would by all means stay. For he would derive no advantage 
 from my flight. He therefore pretended with great urgency 
 to entreat me to stay ; but we know that the entreaties of 
 tyrants are mingled with a kind of necessity. 
 
 Contriving therefore to prevent my departure, he obliged 
 me to reside in the acropolis, whence it was not possible to 
 escape by sea, not merely because Dionysius would prevent 
 any master of a ship from doing so, but because it could 
 not be done then without his direct orders. Nor was there 
 any merchant or provincial magistrate who on seeing me 
 leave the country would not immediately have me brought 
 
 * Dion had practically a large share in the government of Syracuse 
 at this time. 
 
254 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 back again to Dionysius ; especially since the report at that 
 time was contrary to that which was circulated before ; for 
 now it was said that Dionysius again received Plato with 
 wonderful kindness. And indeed this was the case : for it 
 rs necessary to speak the truth. He behaved to me with 
 increasing kindness every day, and was delighted with my 
 manners and habits. But he wished me to praise him 
 more and to consider him as my friend in a far greater 
 degree than Dion : and he made extraordinary efforts to 
 accomplish this. However, he neglected the best means of 
 effecting this, if it could have been effected, I mean 
 associating and becoming familiar with me, in hearing and 
 learning discourses concerning philosophy. But this he 
 was fearful of doing, lest, as was suggested by my calumni- 
 ators, he should be restrained and embarrassed in his designs, 
 and Dion should have the entire management of affairs. 
 However, I endured everything, persevering in the opinion 
 which I entertained when I first came to Syracuse, and 
 trying if by any possible means Dionysius would be brought 
 to a desire of a philosophic life. But he rendered my 
 endeavours ineffectual by his opposition. 
 
 And the first period of my sojourn in Sicily passed in 
 this way. But after this I went away and returned again, 
 at the earnest solicitations of Dionysius. But on what 
 account I came thither, and what I did there, things how 
 reasonable and just, I may relate to you, with whom I am 
 taking counsel as to what is to be done in the present state 
 of affairs ; and for the sake of those who ask for what 
 purpose I went there a second time. And may I avoid 
 relating trifles and by-events as though they were of main 
 consequence ! This is what I have to say : 
 
 I think that he who gives his advice to a sick man, and 
 one who uses bad diet, should persuade him in the first place 
 to change his mode of living ; and if the diseased person is 
 willing to comply with him in this, that he should then per- 
 suade him to other things; but if he is unwilling to comply, 
 then I should think that his adviser, if he abandons him, 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 255 
 
 acts like a man and a physician, but if he still continues 
 with him, that he acts like one effeminate and destitute of 
 art. I assert the same thing likewise of a city, whether it 
 has one governor or many. For if the polity proceeds in a 
 right way, it is the province of a man endued with intellect 
 to give it useful advice ; but if the very contrary of this 
 happens to be the case, and the people do not by any 
 means wish to tread in the steps of an upright polity, but 
 proclaim to their adviser that he must relinquish his con- 
 cern about the polity, and not disturb it, for if he does, he 
 shall suffer death ; and at the same time exhort him to be 
 subservient to their wills and desires, and thus advise them 
 how they may always procure pleasures with celerity and 
 ease ; when this is the case I should consider him who 
 endures to give such advice as effeminate, but him who does 
 not endure it, as a man. 
 
 In consequence of this view, when any one consults me 
 about one of the greatest concerns of his life, as about the 
 acquisition of riches, or the attention pertaining to the body 
 or soul, if he appears to me to live daily in an orderly manner, 
 or is willing to be persuaded when I give him my advice, 
 then I readily join with him in consultation, nor do I de- 
 sist until the affair is brought to a conclusion. But if either 
 he does not at all consult me, or, if he does, obviously 
 neglects to follow my advice, in this case I should not 
 willingly give advice to such a one, nor would I be 
 compelled to do it, even if he were my son. But I would 
 voluntarily give advice to a slave, and, if he were un- 
 willing, force him to follow it. I should not, however, 
 think it holy to force my father, unless he were void of 
 understanding through disease. 
 
 Again, if those that consult me live according to an 
 established mode which is pleasing to themselves, but not 
 to me, I would not hate them, because I had admonislied 
 them in vain, nor yet, flattering, be subservient to them, and 
 afford them means of gratifying desires which, if I were to 
 embrace, I sliould not wish to live. With the same con- 
 ception respecting his country a wise man ought to live; 
 
2 5 6 SELE CTJOiVS FR OM PL A TO, 
 
 exposing its errors, if it appears to him not to be well 
 governed, when this can be done without speaking in vain 
 or losing his hfe. But he should never by violence effect a 
 change in the government of his country, when it cannot be 
 brought to the best condition without the expulsion and 
 slaughter of citizens ; but in this case he should lead a 
 quiet life and pray for the good both of himself and the city. 
 In the very same manner I advise you to act. And I 
 advised Dionysius to live daily in such a manner with Dion 
 that he might both have the mastery over himself, and 
 acquire faithful friends and associates, that the same thing 
 might not befall him which had happened to his father. 
 For his father having obtained the possession of and 
 re-established many and great cities in Sicily, which had 
 been subverted by the Barbarians, could not establish in 
 the government of these faithful men, neither from his own 
 associates, nor from among strangers, nor from his younger 
 brothers whom he himself had educated. Nor yet could 
 he find men worthy to be trusted either among the private 
 persons whom he had made rulers nor among the poor 
 whom he had made rich men. But among these he could 
 not procure one faithful friend, either by persuading or 
 teaching, or by the benefits which he conferred. He was 
 seven times worse than Darius, who neither confiding in his 
 brothers nor in those that were educated by him, but only 
 in those that were associated with him in the subduing of a 
 Median eunuch, ^ he divided seven parts of his dominions 
 between them, each of which was larger than all Sicily, and 
 found them to be faithful adherents who plotted neither 
 against him nor against each other. He likewise gave an 
 example how a good legislator and king ought to act. For 
 he established laws by which the Persian government is 
 preserved even at present. To which we may add that the 
 Athenians, after they had taken possession of many Grecian 
 cities which they had not founded themselves and which 
 had been subverted by the. Barbarians, preserved their 
 
 ^ The usurper, Pseudo-Smerdis. 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 257 
 
 empire over them for seventy years, in consequence of 
 procuring to themselves friends in each of the cities. 
 
 But Dionysius [the elder] having collected all Sicily into 
 one cily, and in his wisdom confiding in no one, was with 
 difficulty saved. For he was destitute of friends and men 
 in whom he could confide, than which there can be no 
 greater sign of vice, as on the contrary the possession of 
 these is the greatest proof of virtue. I therefore, and Dion, 
 advised Dionysius — since by his father's management he 
 had neither received proper discipline and education, nor 
 had he fitting associates — to procure himself friends from 
 among his equals in age, and who were in agreement to live 
 a virtuous life. But above all things we urged him to be 
 such a one himself, asserting that he was greatly deficient 
 in this respect, not indeed in plain terms (for this was not 
 safe), but in an obscure manner, contending in our dis- 
 course, that when this is the case every man will become the 
 saviour both of himself and those whom he governs ; but 
 that when he does not incline in this direction he will cause 
 the very contrary of this to take place. But if he entered 
 upon the course which we advised, and made himself a 
 prudent and temperate man, and if afterwards he restored 
 the desolated cities of Sicily, and bound them together with 
 such laws and polities, that they might be friendly both to 
 him and to each other, in resisting the incursions of the 
 Barbarians, then he would not only double but greatly 
 multiply his paternal kingdom. For thus the Carthaginians 
 would much more readily become subject to his power than 
 they were to that of Gelon ; nor would he, on the contrary, 
 like his father, be compelled to pay a tribute to the Bar- 
 barians. 
 
 This was the substance of what we said, and the advice 
 which we gave to Dionysius, at the very time when it was 
 reported in many places that we were forming stratagems 
 against him. Indeed the men who raised these reports 
 prevailed on Dionysius, expelled Dion, and threw us into 
 fear. And now, to make a short story of tliese great affairs 
 which transacted themselves in so little a period of lime, 
 
 17 
 
258 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 Dion coming from Peloponesus and Athens, admonished 
 Dionysius with deeds as well as words. When therefore 
 Dion had hberated and twice restored the city to its 
 inhabitants, the Syracusans were then affected in the same 
 manner towards him as Dionysius had been before, when 
 Dion endeavoured to educate him so that he might become 
 a king worthy of his kingdom, and be his friend through 
 the whole of life; while those that calumniated Dion 
 reported that he was plotting to gain the tyranny, and 
 doing everything to procure that the mind of Dionysius, 
 allured by philosophy, might neglect the affairs of govern- 
 ment and commit them entirely to Dion, who by fraudulent 
 usurpation would expel Dionysius from the kingdom. 
 
 And this was what was now reported a second time 
 among the Syracusans,^ and it prevailed, in a victory very 
 absurd and base to those who were the causes of it. But 
 it is proper that the particulars of this affair should be 
 heard by you, who now call upon me to settle the present 
 affairs. I, being an Athenian, the friend and ally of Dion, 
 came to the Tyrant in order that instead of war I might 
 make peace and friendship ; and I was vanquished by the 
 calumniators. But Dionysius, by loading me with honours 
 and riches, endeavoured to persuade me to stay with him, 
 and to make me his friend, that I might serve as a witness 
 that Dion had deserved his expulsion. However, he was 
 entirely disappointed in his expectations. But when Dion 
 afterwards relumed to Syracuse he brought with him two 
 Athenian brothers, who had not become his friends through 
 philosophy, but from that casual association of most friends 
 which arises from performing the rites of hospitality, and 
 from being initiated together in the sacred Mysteries. From 
 these causes, and from offering to attend Dion in his return 
 to Syracuse, he had contracted a friendship with them. 
 But these men, on their coming to Sicily, when they under- 
 stood that Dion was calumniated as endeavouring by 
 
 ^ Viz., that Dion having expelled Dionysius was aiming at the 
 tyranny for himself instead of establishing a free government. 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 259 
 
 stratagem to obtain the tyranny, and calumniated by those 
 very men whom he had Hberated, not only betrayed their 
 companion and guest-friend, but becoming as it were 
 perpetrators of murder with their own hands they assisted 
 the murderers with arms. However, I shall neither pass by 
 in silence, nor relate the particulars of this base and unholy 
 deed : for it has been the study of many others to repeat it, 
 and will be in the future. 
 
 But I will wipe away the infamy with which the Athenians 
 are branded. For I say that he was an Athenian whom no 
 riches or honours could induce to betray Dion.^ For he 
 was not made a friend through common friendship, but 
 through the communion of liberal discipline ; in which 
 alone he who is endued with intellect ought to confide, 
 rather than in kinship of souls and bodies. These men are 
 not of consequence sufficient to bring disgrace on the city 
 for killing Dion ; for they were men of no repute. And 
 this much I have said for the sake of giving advice to the 
 friends and kindred of Dion. 
 
 I give you likewise the same advice as before, and address 
 you in the same words the third time — viz., that you should 
 neither subject Sicily, nor in my opinion any other state, 
 to despotic men, but to the laws ; for this is neither good 
 for the governors nor the governed, nor for their children 
 nor their children's children, but the experiment is perfectly 
 pernicious. But little and illiberal souls delight to seize 
 gain of this kind, understanding nothing of things just and 
 good, human and divine, whether pertaining to the present 
 time or to futurity. Of the truth of these things I endeav- 
 oured first to persuade Dion, and afterwards Dionysius, and 
 now, in the third place, you. Be persuaded therefore by 
 me, for the sake of Zeus, who saves the third time. 
 
 In the next place look to Dionysius and Dion, the 
 former of whom, not following my advice, now lives dis- 
 gracefully; but the latter, who followed my persuasions, 
 died nobly. For he who aspires after the most excellent 
 
 ^ Referring to Plato himself. 
 
26o SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 things, both for himself and for his country, will endure 
 whatever may befall him in an upright and noble manner : 
 for we are all mortal, nor if one of us should happen to be 
 otherwise would he on that account be happy, as the 
 multitude think. For to inanimate things there is nothing 
 worth mentioning either of good or ill; but this is an 
 attribute of soul, whether conjoined with or separate 
 from a body. But it is proper to believe in ancient and 
 sacred teachings, which inform us that the soul is immortal, 
 that it has Judges of its conduct, and that it suffers the 
 greatest punishments when it is separated from the body. 
 On this account we must hold it a lesser evil to suffer than . 
 to do the greatest injuries. This indeed the man who is a 
 lover of wealth and who is poor in soul does not hear, and 
 if he did hear he would deride it, in consequence of 
 thinking that he ought impudently to seize on all sides, 
 like a wild beast, whatever he can eat and drink, and what- 
 ever can contribute to venereal delight ; which is a thing 
 slavish and disgracious, and is not properly to be denomin- 
 ated pleasure. Such a one being blind does not see that 
 he can never satisfy insatiable Desire, nor by what con- 
 sequences unholy deeds are followed, and what evil is 
 attached to each act of injustice, nor what a base and 
 wretched journey the wrong-doer must make both while 
 he moves upon the earth and when he returns beneath it. 
 
 When I said these and other things of the like kind to 
 Dion I persuaded him of their truth. But I was most 
 justly enraged with his murderers, in the same manner 
 nearly as with Dionysius : for both of them injured me, 
 and all the rest, as I may say, in the highest degree. For 
 they destroyed a man who was willing to use justice; but 
 Dionysius, who did not by any means wish to use justice, 
 through the whole of his government obtained the greatest 
 power. If, however, under his government, philosophy and 
 power had been united in reality, they would have presented 
 to all men, both Greeks and Barbarians, a true and suffi- 
 ciently luminous opinion that neither any city nor any man 
 can ever be happy unless they pass through life with wisdom 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 261 
 
 and in subjection to justice ; whether they possess these in 
 themselves, or are properly educated and instructed under 
 the rule of pious governors. 
 
 These then are the things in which Dionysius injured 
 me ; for the other things in which I was injured are small 
 compared with these. But he who slew Dion did not 
 know that he was doing the same thing as Dionysius. For 
 I clearly know, as far as it is possible for one man to speak 
 confidently of another, that if Dion had retained his 
 government, he would never have changed it into any other 
 form than that which he first gave to Syracuse when he 
 delivered it from slavery, and established it gloriously in the 
 institutions of liberty. After this he would have brought 
 order among the citizens, by every possible contrivance, 
 with such laws as are adapted to them and are the most 
 excellent. And besides these things he would have settled 
 all Sicily, and freed it from the Barbarians, by expelling 
 some and subjecting others, more easily than this was done 
 by Hiero. But if these things had taken place, through a 
 man just, brave, temperate, and who was a philosopher, 
 the same opinion of virtue would have been produced 
 among the multitude, as would have flourished among all 
 men, if Dionysius had followed my advice. But now either 
 some daemon, or some pernicious character, replete with 
 iniquity and impiety, and, what is of the greatest con- 
 sequence, with the audacity of ignorance, in which all evils 
 are rooted, and from which they germinate and afterwards 
 produce the most bitter fruit — this daemon, or this dire 
 person, has a second time subverted and destroyed every- 
 thing. 
 
 But now, for the sake of the omen, let us speak with 
 good hope of the third time. I advise you, therefore, my 
 friends, to imitate Dion, and to acquire that patriotic 
 benevolence which he possessed, and that temperate mode 
 of living which he adopted. But you have clearly heard 
 from me, what are the auspices by which you should 
 endeavour to accomplish his wish : and if there is any one 
 among you who is unable to live in the Doric manner, 
 
262 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 according to the traditions of his fathers, but follows the 
 Sicilian mode of living, and that which was adopted by the 
 murderers of Dion, neither call on him to join with you, nor 
 believe that he will ever be sincere and faithful in any 
 undertaking. But you should exhort the rest to re-establish 
 the whole of Sicily, and introduce both in Sicily and all 
 Peloponesus equitable laws, without dreading the Athenians: 
 for men are to be found there who surpass all others in 
 virtue, and who abhor the audacity of those that slaughter 
 their friends. 
 
 But if these things should have to be postponed, and the 
 many and all-various seditions and discords which spring up 
 daily urge us to immediate exertion ; in this case, every 
 man who through a divine fortune partakes, though in a 
 small degree, of right opinion, ought to know that there will 
 be no end to the evils resulting from sedition, till those who 
 vanquish in battle refrain from slaughtering and banishing 
 their fellow-citizens, and from the remembrance of injuries ; 
 and, giving respite to their desire of vengeance, become 
 reconciled to their enemies ; and till, obtaining the empire 
 over themselves, they establish common laws, which no less 
 pertain to themselves than to those they have vanquished, 
 at the same time compelling them to use these laws. But 
 they should compel them by a twofold necessity — viz., of 
 fear and shame. By the necessity of fear, evincing their 
 power ; in consequence of being superior to them : but by 
 the necessity of shame, through their appearing to surpass 
 them, both in vanquishing pleasures, and in subjection to 
 the laws. For there is no other way by which a city 
 labouring under sedition can find a period to its evils. But 
 seditions, enmities, hatred, perfidy, will always arise in 
 cities which are thus affected towards themselves. Those, 
 therefore, that have the greatest power in cities, if they 
 desire the welfare of their country, should choose among 
 themselves, in preference to others, such men as they have 
 heard to be the most excellent characters : and in the first 
 place they should choose old men, who possess children, 
 wives, and estates, and progenitors such as are most worthy 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 263 
 
 and renowned ; and who possess sufficient property. But 
 fifty such men will be sufficient for a city of ten thousand 
 inhabitants. These should be called forth with prayers and 
 the greatest honours, but after they are called they should 
 be bound by an oath, and exhorted to establish laws, 
 that they may not give more to the victors than to the 
 vanquished, but impart that which is equal and common to 
 the whole city. All things however consist in the establish- 
 ment of laws. For when the victors are more willing to be 
 subject to the laws than those that are vanquished, all 
 things will be well, and full of felicity, and every evil will be 
 banished. But if this is not the case, there is no need to 
 call me or any other, to join with him in the administration 
 of affairs who is not persuaded by the precepts I have now 
 enjoined. For these are the sisters of the things which I 
 and Dion very wisely attempted to accomplish among the 
 Syracusans. They were, however, second attempts ; for 
 the first was that public good which we attempted to effect 
 in conjunction with Dionysius. But some fortune superior 
 to mankind frustrated our attempt. Do you therefore now 
 endeavour to accomplish these things more prosperously, 
 and may good destiny and divine fortune accompany you. 
 
 And thus much concerning my advice and precepts, and 
 my first journey to Dionysius. But of my second journey 
 and voyage, and how reasonable and well-considered it was, 
 he may now hear an account who is so inclined. For the 
 first time of my residence in Sicily passed away, as I have 
 already said, before I could advise the kindred and asso- 
 ciates of Dion ; but after this I persuaded Dionysius, to 
 the utmost of my power, to suffer me to depart : but we 
 mutually agreed that when a peace took place (for there 
 was then a war in Sicily), Dionysius should recall Dion and 
 me, as soon as his government was more securely estab- 
 lished. He likewise thought it proper that Dion should 
 understand that I was not banished by him, but was to 
 return to him at a certain time. And I agreed to these 
 conditions. 
 
264 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 A peace therefore taking place, Dionysius sent for me, 
 but required that Dion should absent himself for another 
 year: but he requested me by all means to come. Dion 
 too exhorted and entreated me to set sail, for it was very 
 strongly reported from Sicily that Dionysius was again 
 wonderfully inflamed with a desire of philosophy ; and on 
 this account Dion earnestly requested me to set sail for 
 Sicily. But I, though I knew many such things happened 
 to young men respecting philosophy, at the same time 
 thought it more safe not to comply with the request of 
 Dionysius and Dion. I therefore answered both of them 
 that I was an old man, and that nothing which was done at 
 present was according to the agreement. But it seems 
 that after this Archytas^ had betaken himself to Dionysius : 
 for, before I set sail from Sicily, I had made Archytas and 
 certain other Tarentines the guests and friends of Dionysius. 
 There were likewise certain others among the Syracusans 
 of whom some had heard something of philosophy from 
 Dion, and some who were full of things they had overheard 
 about philosophy, and who appeared to me to be en- 
 deavouring to discourse with Dionysius about things of 
 this kind, as if Dionysius had heard all such things as were 
 the subject of my thoughts. But indeed he was not 
 naturally inapt with respect to learning, and was ambitious 
 in a wonderful degree. Perhaps, therefore, he was pleased 
 with the discourse of these men ; and he was manifestly 
 ashamed that he had heard nothing from me when I went 
 to see him. Hence he was at the same time inflamed with 
 a desire of hearing me more clearly, and stimulated by 
 ambition. But on what account he did not hear me dis- 
 course, when I first came to Sicily, I have related above. 
 
 After therefore I had returned home safe, and refused to 
 comply with his second invitation, Dionysius appeared to 
 be very ambitious, and through his desire of renown to be 
 afraid, lest I should seem to certain persons to despise him, 
 and that my dislike of his disposition, habits, and mode of 
 
 ' A famous philosopher and geometer. 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 265 
 
 living, had induced me to refuse complying with his re- 
 quest. But it is just that I should speak the truth, and 
 endure it with equanimity if any one on hearing what 
 took place should despise my philosophy, and think that 
 the Tyrant was a man of sense. For Dionysius sent 
 to me the third time a three-ranked galley, for the sake of 
 procuring me an easy passage. He sent also Archidemus, 
 whom he thought I most esteemed of all the friends of 
 Archytas who were then in his dominions, together with other 
 illustrious persons in Sicily. And all these announced to us 
 the same thing — viz., that Dionysius was wonderfully given 
 to philosophy. Besides this, he sent me a long epistle, 
 knowing how I was affected towards Dion, and that Dion 
 was desirous I should set sail and come to Syracuse. The 
 letter therefore was composed with a view to all these par- 
 ticulars, and the beginning of it was as follows : — Dionysius 
 to Plato : after which followed such things as are usual, 
 and immediately after this he said that complying with his 
 request I should now come to Sicily. He then proceeded: 
 " In the first place the particulars respecting Dion shall be 
 accomplished according to your wish ; but 1 know you wish 
 for moderate measures, and that I would accede to them. 
 However, unless you come, your desires respecting Dion 
 will not be gratified, neither tlie things pertaining to him- 
 self nor other matters." This was what he wrote, but it would 
 be long and foreign to the purpose to refer to the rest of his 
 letter. Other letters likewise came to me from Archytas, 
 and other Tarentines, praising the philosophic disposition 
 of Dionysius, and adding, that unless I now came their 
 friendship with Dionysius, which had been effected through 
 me, and which was of no small consequence with respect to 
 political affairs, would be entirely destroyed. 
 
 As therefore at that time I was thus incited to comply with 
 the request of Dionysius, some drawing me from Sicily and 
 Italy, and others at Athens impelling me, as it were, by 
 their prayers ; and again reason proclaiming that I ought 
 not to betray Dion, together with the guests and others 
 belonging to Tarentum : — when I likewise considered that it 
 
266 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 was nothing wonderful, if a young man, who was formerly 
 unwilling to hear respecting things of great moment, should 
 become docile and be inflamed with a desire of the best life, 
 and that it was proper to prove clearly, in what manner he 
 was affected, and not by any means betray him, nor become 
 myself the cause of a disgrace so truly great, if the case with 
 Dionysius was in reality such as it was reported to be ; — 
 screened by this reasoning, as with a veil, I commenced my 
 journey, fearing many things, and prophesying, as it seems, 
 not altogether well. I came therefore to Sicily the third 
 time under the protection of the Saviour Zeus. And this 
 expedition I actually accomplished, being again fortunately 
 saved. But for these things I return thanks to Dionysius, 
 after God ; because when many were willing to slay me, he 
 prevented them, and conducted himself with some degree of 
 moderation in my affairs. 
 
 When therefore I arrived in Sicily, I thought it was 
 proper, in the first place, to try whether Dionysius was in 
 reality enkindled by philosophy as by a fire, or whether the 
 report concerning him at Athens was entirely vain. But 
 there is a certain method of making an experiment about 
 things of this kind, by no means ignoble, but truly adapted 
 to tyrants, and especially to those that are full of things 
 heard and understood amiss, which as soon as I arrived I 
 perceived was very much the case with Dionysius, But 
 to such as these it is requisite to show what the 
 whole business of philosophy is and how many 
 other things and how great labour it entails. For 
 he who hears that this is the case, if he is truly a lover 
 of wisdom, and is adapted to and worthy of its acquisition, 
 being a divine person, will think that he hears of an admir- 
 able way, and that he ought immediately to betake himself 
 to it, and that life is no life unless one does this. After this 
 he will not cease exciting both himself and the leader of 
 this way till he either obtains the consummation of his 
 wishes, or receives a power by which he may be able to 
 conduct himself without a guide. 
 
 Such a one, therefore, will so live that all his actions may 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 267 
 
 accord with these conceptions. But before all things he 
 will be perpetually intent on philosophy, and will daily 
 procure for himself such nutriment, as may especially render 
 him docile, of a good memory, and able to reason ; living 
 soberly and hating intoxication. 
 
 But those that are not lovers of wisdom in reality, but 
 have merely taken the colour of doctrines, like those whose 
 bodies are tanned by the sun, when they perceive what a 
 multitude of disciplines, what mighty labour, and what 
 temperate food are requisite to the acquisition of philosophy, 
 such as these, thinking that philosophy is a thing difficult 
 and impossible for them to obtain, cannot be brought to 
 make it the object of their pursuit. But some of these 
 persuade themselves that they have sufficiently heard the 
 whole of philosophy, and that they require nothing further. 
 This mode of experiment is perspicuous and most safe, when 
 employed upon the effeminate, and such as are incapable of 
 enduring labour : for thus they can never accuse him who 
 points out to them the arduousness of the undertaking, but 
 must blame themselves as unable to engage in all that is 
 requisite to the acquisition of philosophy. 
 
 This method of examination I employed upon Dionysius; 
 but I neither enumerated all the requisites, nor did Diony- 
 sius require that I should. For there were many things, 
 and those of the greatest consequence, in which he pretended 
 to be sufficiently versed, through the misunderstood doctrines 
 which he had heard from others. But I am informed that 
 he afterwards wrote about the things which he then heard, 
 putting together, as if by his own art of composition, things 
 in which there was nothing of what he then heard from me. 
 However, I am entirely ignorant of the truth of this report. 
 But I know that others have written about the same things. 
 
 Thus much, however, I shall say respecting all those who 
 either have written, or shall write, aftirming that they know 
 those things which arc the objects of my study (whether 
 they have heard them from mc or from others, or whether 
 they have discovered them themselves), that they have not, 
 in my opinion, understood anything about the matter ; for 
 
268 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO, 
 
 about these things there never was and never will be any 
 treatise of mine. For a thing of this kind cannot be 
 expressed in words, like other branches of learning, but by 
 long familiarity and living together with the thing itself, a 
 light as it were of a fire leaping forth will suddenly be 
 kindled in the soul, and there itself nourish itself. Indeed, 
 thus much I know, that the things written or spoken by me 
 would have been best spoken ; and that they were badly 
 written would not grieve me in the least. 
 
 But if it appeared to me that the particulars of which I 
 am speaking could be adequately written and expressed in 
 words for the multitude, what could we accomplish more 
 beautiful in life than to write down what would be of such 
 mighty benefit to mankind, and to bring Nature into the 
 light before all? I think, however, that an attempted 
 explanation of this kind would only be beneficial to a few 
 among men, and those men, who from some small hints 
 would be able to discover everything for themselves. But 
 with respect to the rest of mankind, some it will fill with an 
 ignorant contempt, and others with a lofty and arrogant 
 hope as if they have learned certain profound truths. I 
 intend therefore to speak further about these particulars; 
 for thus perhaps I shall say something clearer respecting 
 them than I have yet said. For there is a certain true 
 discourse which is adverse to him who dares to write any- 
 thing about things of this kind, and which has often been 
 delivered by me before, and, as it seems, must be delivered 
 by me at present. 
 
 Of each thing that exists there are three particulars 
 through which science concerning it is to be attained. 
 And a fourth is science itself. And we may set down as a 
 fifth the Thing itself, which is known and true. One of 
 these is the name of a thing, the second is its definition, 
 the third the image of it, the fourth science. Now take 
 each of these, desiring to learn what we have lately asserted, 
 and think as follows concerning them all. A circle is 
 called something, whose name we have just uttered. After 
 this follows its definition, composed of words : for that 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 269 
 
 which everywhere is equally distant from the extremes to 
 the middle is the definition of that which we signify by the 
 name of a round, and a circumference, and a circle. And 
 thirdly comes the actual circle which may be painted or 
 blotted out, which may be made by a compass or destroyed. 
 None of which affections the Circle Itself, with which each of 
 these is concerned, suffers ; as being of a different nature. 
 But the fourth is science and intellect, and true opinion 
 about these things.^ And all this again must be established 
 as one thing which neither subsists in voice, nor in corpo- 
 real figure, but is inherent in soul. It is therefore manifest 
 that this fourth is different in nature from the Circle Itself,^ 
 and again different from the three we have previously 
 mentioned. But among the number of these, intellect, by 
 its kinship and similitude, proximately approaches to the 
 fifth, while the rest are more remote from its nature. The 
 same may likewise be affirmed of a straight and crooked 
 figure, of Colour, and of the Good, the Beautiful, and the 
 Just. And again, of every body, whether fashioned by the 
 hand, or by the work of nature, whether fire or water, and 
 the rest of this kind ; likewise of every animal, and of the 
 dispositions of souls, and of all actions and passions. And 
 unless one after a manner receives all four of these he will 
 never perfectly participate the science about the fifth. For 
 it must be added that these four no less endeavour to 
 evince about everything the quality which it possesses than its 
 being, through the weakness of reasonings. On this account, 
 no one endued with intellect will ever dare to consider as 
 equally immutable things which are the objects of intellec- 
 tual vision, and such as have a subsistence in corporeal 
 figures.^ 
 
 ^ I.e.^ the scientific conception of a circle in the mind. 
 
 ^ The Circle Itself — ?'.(?., the Idea of a circle — must be identified with 
 the fifth thing. It must be remembered that with Plato this Ideal Circle 
 was supposed to have an objective existence, and is therefore different 
 from the fourth thing. 
 
 •^ The foregoing passage is obscure in places and probably corrupt, 
 like many other passages in this Epistle. I do nut understand the 
 " weakness of reasonings." 
 
2 70 SELECTIONS FROM PL A TO. 
 
 But again, it is requisite to attend to what was just now 
 said. Every circle which by the hands of men is either 
 painted or fashioned by a compass, is plainly contrary to 
 our fifth : for it everywhere participates of the right line. 
 But we must affirm that the Circle Itself has neither much or 
 little of anything contrary to its own nature. Besides the 
 names of things are entirely unstable, for nothing hinders 
 our applying the appellation of straight to that which we now 
 denominate round, and calling the straight by the denomina- 
 tion of the round, nor will there be any less stability in 
 things when their names are changed into the contrary. 
 The same reasoning is likewise true of definition, since it is 
 composed of nouns and verbs which possess no stabihty. 
 And in a variety of ways it may be proved that no one of 
 these four is certain and firm. But the greatest thing of 
 all, as I just observed, is this, that since there are two 
 things, essence and quality, when the soul seeks to know, 
 not the quality of a thing but what it is, unless it first 
 investigates these four, and sufficiently discusses them by a 
 reasoning process and sensible inspection, and this con- 
 tinually through everything which is asserted and shown, it 
 will be filled, as I may say, with all possible ambiguity and 
 obscurity. 
 
 In such cases, therefore, as through a depraved education, 
 we are not accustomed to investigate the truth, but are 
 contented with the image that is exhibited to our view, we 
 do not become ridiculous to each other when, being interro- 
 gated, we are able to discuss and argue about those four. 
 But when a man is compelled to distinguish that fifth 
 from the rest, and make it clear, any one who wishes, and has 
 the faculty of upsetting theories, will prevail, and he will make 
 him who is explaining that fifth in reasonings or writings 
 or answers to seem to the generality of the audience as if 
 he knew nothing of the things whereon he takes in hand to 
 speak or write : for they are often ignorant that it is not 
 [that which is in] the mind of the writer or speaker which 
 is refuted, but the nature of each of the four things, 
 which is in an imperfect and corrupt condition. But when 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 271 
 
 a man has gone through all these four things, taking each 
 one of them from every side in turn, scarcely then will the 
 science of the rightly conditioned object be attained by the 
 rightly conditioned mind. But when the mind is ill-condi- 
 tioned, as is the case with the habits of souls possessed by the 
 multitude, who are badly disposed with respect to learning 
 and whose manners are depraved, not even Lynceus him- 
 self could enable such as these to see. In one word, neither 
 docility nor memory will confer on any one the power of 
 perceiving things of this kind, who is not allied to them : 
 for they are not naturally inherent from the first in disposi- 
 tions which are foreign to them. So that those who are not 
 naturally adapted and allied to the Just and other things 
 that are beautiful, though they may be docile and of a good 
 memory with respect to other particulars ; and again, those 
 that are allied to the Just and Beautiful but are indocile and 
 of a bad memory, will never learn as far as it is possible to 
 learn the truth pertaining to virtue and vice. For it is neces- 
 sary to learn this, and at the same time the falsehood and 
 truth of the whole of being, with all possible exertion and a 
 great length of time, as I said in the beginning. But after 
 agitating together the several names and definitions, and 
 sensible perceptions of things, and after they have been 
 tested in mild and kindly argument, and subjected to ques- 
 tionings and answerings without prejudice, then, striving as 
 much as is possible to human power, wisdom and intellect 
 on these matters will at length scarcely shine forth. 
 
 On this account every serious man will be very far from 
 writing among men about serious realities, lest he fall into 
 invidiousness and difficulties. But in one word it is requi- 
 site to know from these things that when any one sees the 
 writings of another, whether of a legislator on the laws, or 
 on any other subjects, he will see that these are not the 
 things which are considered by him to be the most serious, 
 if he is himself a serious man : but the true objects of his 
 pursuit are situated in a region of surpassing beauty. But 
 if the things of most serious import to him have really been 
 committed to writing, then it might be said that not the gods 
 
272 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 indeed, but men, destroy the intellects of men.'^ And thus 
 much for this fable or digression, which he who acutely 
 follows will well understand. 
 
 Whether therefore Dionysius has written anything about 
 the highest or first natures, or any other person inferior or 
 superior to him, according to my decision he has neither 
 heard or learnt anything respecting these natures ; for 
 otherwise he would have venerated them in the same 
 manner as I do, and would not have dared to hurl them 
 forth into incongruity and indecency. For he could not 
 write about them for the sake of recalling them to his 
 memory ; as there is no occasion to fear that any one will 
 ever forget them, when they are once comprehended by the 
 soul, for they lie in the shortest space of all things. But 
 perhaps he did this for the sake of base ambition, either 
 asserting that these doctrines were his own, or pretending 
 to partake of discipline of which he was unworthy to 
 partake, loving the renown which arises from such partici- 
 pation. 
 
 Perhaps, however, we may allow that Dionysius has written 
 about these things, if what he has asserted was produced by 
 our conversation. But, O Zeus, says the Theban, how was 
 it produced ? For I discussed these things with him, as I 
 have said, only once ; but never afterwards. In the next 
 place, he who is anxious to find out the cause of what then 
 happened respecting these things, ought to know why we 
 did not discuss them a second and third time, and often : 
 whether it was that Dionysius, having only heard them 
 once, thought that he knew them, and knew them 
 sufficiently, that he discovered them himself, or had for- 
 merly learned them from others. Or was it that he thought 
 the things that were said were trifling ? Or did a certain 
 third thing happen to be the case — viz., that they were in 
 
 ^ Alluding to an Homeric phrase, "the gods have destroyed thy 
 wits." Plato is doubtless condemning the attempt to construct a for- 
 mulated system of belief about the ultimate divine realities, which can 
 only be properly spoken of in poetry, where they are not directly spoken 
 of at all. 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 273 
 
 reality too great for him, and that he would not have been 
 able to live if he paid regard to wisdom and virtue ? For 
 if it is said that he considered the things about which he 
 wrote as trifling, this will be opposed by many witnesses, 
 who assert the contrary, and who are much better judges 
 about things of this kind than Dionysius. But if he 
 invented them or learnt them, and they deserve to be 
 made subservient to the discipline of a liberal soul, how 
 does he come, not being anything wonderful himself, to so 
 readily dishonour the leader and master in these things ? 
 
 But how he dishonoured him I will now relate. Not 
 long after this [my arrival] he would not permit the pro- 
 curators of Dion to send that portion of his wealth to 
 Peloponnesus, which some time before he had suffered him 
 to possess and enjoy, as if he had entirely forgotten the 
 letter which he wrote to me. For he asserted that this 
 property did not belong to Dion but to Dion's son, who, as 
 he was his own nephew, was according to law under his 
 protection. And such were the transactions of that time. 
 
 From hence we may accurately see how Dionysius was 
 affected towards philosophy ; and it is lawful for me to be 
 indignant, whether I am willing or not, for it was then 
 summer, and the time when the ships sail out. But it 
 seemed that I ought not to be more oftended with 
 Dionysius than with myself, and with those who compelled 
 me to come the third time to the strait about Scylla and 
 
 " Dire Charybdis measure o'er again." 
 
 I was therefore forced to tell Dionysius that it was impos- 
 sible for me to stay with him while Dion was used so 
 ignominiously. But he consoled me and requested me to 
 stay ; thinking it would not be well for him that I should 
 be so swift a messenger of such transactions as these : and 
 when he could not persuade me he said he would prepare 
 the means of sending me away. However, being enraged, I 
 was determined to depart with a fleet then starting, blink- 
 ing that I ought to suffer everything, if he should attempt 
 to stop me \ as I was manifestly injured, although I had 
 : 18 
 
2 74 SELECTIONS FROM FLA TO. 
 
 done no injury. But when he found that I could not by 
 any means be induced to stay, he devised the following 
 means to retard my departure. On the day after these 
 things had taken place he thus plausibly addressed me : 
 Dion, says he, and the affairs of Dion about which we have 
 often disagreed, shall be entirely removed out of our way ; 
 for on your account I will act as follows towards Dion. I 
 think it fit that he shall take up his residence in Pelopon- 
 nesus, not as an exile but as one who may come hither 
 when it shall seem good to him, to me, and to you who are 
 his friend. This shall take place if he forms no plots 
 against me ; and you, your friends, and the friends of 
 Dion who are here shall be bound for his fulfilling this 
 agreement. But the money which he may receive shall be 
 deposited in Peloponnesus and Athens with those you 
 shall think fit : Dion too shall have the use of it, but shall 
 not be authorised to take it away without your consent ; 
 for I should not very much believe that he would act 
 rightly towards me if he had the entire possession of this 
 wealth, which is not inconsiderable. But I have greater 
 confidence in you and your friends. See therefore 
 whether these things are agreeable to you, and stay for the 
 sake of them this year, at the expiration of which you shall 
 receive this money and depart. I well know indeed that 
 Dion will be greatly indebted to you for acting in this 
 manner on his account. 
 
 When I heard these things I was perfectly indignant, but 
 at the same time I said I would consider the affair and give 
 him an answer on the following day. This was our compact 
 at that time. I therefore consulted with myself after this, 
 but in a very confused manner; but the following con- 
 sideration first presented itself to me as the cardinal point 
 of my consultation : What if Dionysius intends to do 
 nothing of what he promises to do, but on my departure 
 both he and many others should write in a plausible manner 
 to Dion, what he has now said to me, that he indeed was 
 willing hut that 1 was unwilling he should act in this 
 manner, and that I entirely neglected his concerns ; and 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 275 
 
 besides this, if Dionysius being unwilling that I should 
 depart, should, without giving orders to any pilot, signify to 
 all men, as he easily could, that he did not consent to my 
 setting sail, what sailor would be willing to take me on 
 board from the palace of Dionysius? For, in addition to 
 other evils, my lodging was in the garden which surrounded 
 the palace ; from whence the porter would not be willing to 
 dismiss me without an order from Dionysius. But if I 
 stay another year I can indeed send an account of these 
 transactions to Dion, and acquaint him with my situation 
 and conduct. And if indeed Dionysius should do anything 
 of what he promises to do my conduct will not be entirely 
 ridiculous : for perhaps the property of Dion, when rightly 
 estimated, does not amount to less than 100 talents [over 
 ;£23,ooo]. But if the issue of affairs should be such as it 
 is likely to be, I shall be at a loss how to act. At the 
 same time it is perhaps necessary that I should stay here a 
 year longer, and endeavour to test the words of Dionysius 
 by his actions. 
 
 Thus thinking with myself, I told Dionysius on the 
 following day that I thought it best to stay ; but I said he 
 ought not to consider me as possessing absolute authority 
 over Dion. I added that he should write to Dion in con- 
 junction with me, acquainting him with the compact we 
 had made, and asking him whether he was satisfied with 
 these things, and with me, and whether he wished for 
 anything further. Lastly, that he should write to him as 
 soon as possible, and should not make any innovation in 
 his affairs. This is what was said, and these are nearly the 
 things in which we agreed. 
 
 But after this the ships sailed, and therefore it was no 
 longer possible for me to depart. Dionysius then, as if 
 recollecting something he had omitted, said that the half of 
 Dion's property ought to remain with his son, and that the 
 other half should be sent to Dion. This property he said 
 he would sell, and when he had sold it, deliver one half to 
 me to be sent to Dion, and keep the other half for his son, 
 for, he said, it will be most just to act in this manner. 
 
2 76 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 And I, being amazed at this statement, thought it would be 
 entirely ridiculous to say anything further. At the same 
 time, however, I observed to him that we ought to wait for 
 an answer from Dion, and again send him an account of 
 these particulars. But Dionysius, after this, in a very hasty 
 manner, sold the whole of Dion's property to whom and for 
 what he pleased, without making any mention of it whatever 
 to me : and again I in like manner said nothing to him 
 respecting the affairs of Dion ; for I thought I should be 
 able to do nothing further in them. And thus far and in 
 this way did I assist philosophy and my friends. 
 
 But after this I and Dionysius so lived together that I 
 like a bird was always looking out and longing to fly away, 
 but he was devising in what manner he might scare me, and 
 give up no part of the property of Dion. At the same 
 time, however, we were said to be friends, forsooth, through 
 the whole of Sicily. 
 
 But at this period Dionysius endeavoured to diminish the 
 pay of the mercenary troops, contrary to the custom of his 
 father ; and the soldiers being enraged assembled in a body, 
 and declared that this should not take place. Dionysius 
 therefore endeavoured to force them to submission, and for 
 this purpose shut the gates of the Acropolis : but the soldiers 
 immediately marched to the walls, vociferating a certain 
 barbarous and warlike paean ; at which Dionysius, being 
 terrified, granted the soldiers all they desired, and those 
 that carried crescent shields more than the usual pay. But 
 a report was spread that Heracleides was the cause of this 
 disturbance ; ^ upon hearing which Heracleides immediately 
 disappeared. Dionysius therefore endeavoured to take him, 
 but not being able to discover his place of retreat, he 
 
 ^ This was extremely likely. Heracleides, at first the friend and 
 colleague, became afcervvards the rival of Dion, whom he endeavoured 
 to thwart and supplant when the latter had driven out Dionysius. 
 Accordingly certain friends of Dion murdered Heracleides, a deed from 
 the guilt of which the fame of Dion is certainly not clear. It was the one 
 stain on a career otherwise marked by singular raagnaui.t?aity and 
 uprightness. 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 277 
 
 ordered Theodotes to attend him in the gardens, in which 
 at that time I happened to be walking. Other parts of 
 their discourse I neither know nor heard, but what Theo- 
 dotes said to Dionysius before me I both know and 
 remember. For he said — 
 
 Plato, I am persuading Dionysius that if he were to bring 
 Heracleides hither to answer the charges made against him, 
 and if it does not appear to Dionysius that he should dwell 
 in Sicily, yet I think it is proper that, receiving his wife and 
 son, he should be permitted to set sail for Peloponnesus, 
 and there reside, not injuring Dionysius in any way, and 
 enjoying his own property. I have therefore prior to this 
 sent and shall again send for him. But whether he com- 
 plies with my first or second citation, I think it proper that 
 he should receive no injury, either here or outside the city, 
 but that he shall be sent out of the kingdom till Dionysius 
 shall think fit to recall him ; and I request Dionysius to 
 accede to these terms. Do you accede or not? says he, 
 speaking to Dionysius. He answered — 
 
 I do accede, nor shall he suffer anything worse, contrary 
 to what has been now stated, should he make his appear- 
 ance at your house. 
 
 However, on the evening of the following day, Eurybius 
 and Theodotes came to me in great haste and wonderfully 
 alarmed : and Theodotes said to me, Plato, were you not a 
 witness yesterday to the compact which Dionysius made 
 with me and you respecting Heracleides? To which I 
 replied, Undoubtedly I was. But now, says he, the soldiers 
 with crescent shields are running everywhere in order to 
 take Heracleides, and there is reason to fear that he is 
 concealed at no great distance. Attend us therefore at 
 once to l^ionysius. In consequence of this wc followed 
 and came to him ; and they indeed stood silent and wee[)- 
 ing ; but I said — 
 
 These men, Dionysius, arc afraid lest you should make 
 some alteration respecting Heracleides, contrary to your 
 compact yesterday : for it appears to me that he has 
 returned and has been seen somewhere here. 
 
278 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 But Dionysius on hearing this was violently enraged, and 
 his countenance exhibited all various colours, such as anger 
 produces : but Theodotes, falling at his feet, and taking his 
 hand, wept, and suppliantly implored him not to do any 
 such thing. Then I, resuming the discourse, consoled him 
 and said — 
 
 Take courage, Theodotes, for Dionysius dares not act 
 contrary to the compact which he made yesterday. 
 
 But he, looking at me, and in a very tyrannic manner. 
 With you, says he, I made no compact, neither great nor 
 small. 
 
 To which I replied, By the gods, you promised me that 
 you would not do the very things which this man now 
 requests you not to do. And having thus said, I turned 
 from him and left the place. 
 
 After this Dionysius endeavoured to find Heracleides : 
 however, Theodotes sent messengers to him, and exhorted 
 him to fly. But Dionysius sent Tisias and the soldiers with 
 the crescent shields, and ordered them to pursue him. Hera- 
 cleides however, as it is said, escaped them, and in the small 
 part of a day fled into the dominions of the Carthaginians. 
 But now Dionysius appeared to have a pretext for withholding 
 the property of Dion on the score of my enmity towards him. 
 And in the first place he sent me from the Acropolis, pretend- 
 ing it was requisite that the women should perform a ten-day 
 sacrifice in the gardens in which I resided. He therefore 
 ordered me at that time to take up my residence, out of the 
 Acropolis, with Archidemus : but when I was there Theo- 
 dotes, sending for me, was indignant at many of the then 
 transactions and complained of Dionysius. But Dionysius 
 hearing that I had been with Theodotes made this another 
 pretext of enmity towards me, similar to the former, and 
 sent a certain person to ask me, whether I had really been 
 with Theodotes, at his request. To which I readily replied, 
 I had. The messenger therefore said, Dionysius ordered 
 me to tell you that you by no means do well, in always pre- 
 ferring to him Dion and the friends of Dion. This is what 
 was said, and after this Dionysius never again sent for me 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 279 
 
 to his palace, as it was now clear that I was the friend of 
 Theodotes and Heracleides, and an enemy to him ; and he 
 considered me as no longer well affected towards him, be- 
 cause the property of Dion had been entirely consumed. 
 
 After this I dwelt out of the Acropolis among the mer- 
 cenary soldiers : but certain Athenians and others who 
 acted as servants to Dionysius came to me and informed 
 me that I was evil-spoken of among the soldiers, and that 
 certain persons threatened to kill me if they could lay hold 
 of me. I devised therefore the following means of preser- 
 vation : I sent to Archytas and other friends at Tarentum, 
 and informed them of my situation : but they, under the 
 pretext of a certain embassy from the city, sent Lamiscus, 
 who was one of my friends, with a galley of thirty oars ; 
 and Lamiscus, on his arrival, informed Dionysius that I wished 
 to depart and desired him by all means to grant my request. 
 To this Dionysius assented, and dismissed me with a viati- 
 cum. However, I neither asked for the money belonging to 
 Dion, nor did any one give it me. 
 
 But when I came to Peloponnesus to the Olympic games, 
 I there met with Dion, who was beholding the celebration of 
 them, and informed him of the past transactions; but he, call- 
 ing Zeus to witness, immediately declared to me and to my 
 companions and friends, that he would prepare to punish 
 Dionysius, both on account of his deceiving me, while I was 
 his guest (for thus he said and thought), and for expelling and 
 banishing him unjustly. On hearing this I advised him to call 
 upon his friends, if they were willing. But I said, as to myself, 
 you have forced me, after a manner, together with others, 
 to become the companion and guest of Dionysius, and a 
 partaker with him of sacred rites ; and when I was accused 
 by many of plotting with you against him and his Tyranny; 
 yet he did not put me to death, but respected me. To this 
 I added that my age rendered me unfit to engage in the 
 concerns of war ; and that I should act as a mediator 
 between them if at any time their friendship should require 
 the assistance of a conciliator. But I said that as long as 
 
28o SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. 
 
 they were enemies they must seek assistance elsewhere. I 
 said these things, inspired with hatred and aversion towards 
 all my wandering and ill-fortune in Sicily. 
 
 Those who would not obey or be persuaded by my 
 counsels, were the authors of all the evils which they have 
 since brought upon themselves. Indeed, if Dionysius had 
 given Dion the property which was his due, or if he had 
 been perfectly reconciled to him, we may say, humanly 
 speaking, that no hostilities would have taken place. For I 
 could easily have restrained Dion by my will and power. But 
 now they have attacked each other and filled all things with 
 evils. Indeed, Dion had the same wish which I should say 
 both I and every other upright person ought to have, respect- 
 ing his own power and that of his friends, and respecting 
 his own city — I mean the wish to do good when in authority, 
 and in the greatest authority to do the greatest good. But 
 this will not be effected by him who endeavours to enrich 
 himself and his friends, who forms plots against the city and 
 brings conspirators together, without means, and without 
 self-control ; and is vanquished by a cowardly yield- 
 ing to gratification : who besides this slays those 
 that are wealthy, calling them enemies, and distri- 
 butes their substance, at the same time proclaiming 
 to his adjutants and associates that no one ought to accuse 
 him as he is poor. After the same manner any one may 
 benefit a city and be honoured by it by carrying a law to 
 divide the property of the few among the many,i or when 
 the ruler of a great city and of many lesser ones unjustly 
 distributes to his own city the property of the lesser. For 
 after this manner neither Dion nor any other person would 
 ever voluntarily take upon themselves an authority, which 
 would always be pernicious to himself and posterity; but 
 he will endeavour to establish such a polity, and such laws, 
 as are the most just, and the best, and which can be 
 effected by the fewest deaths and banishments. 
 
 This conduct indeed was now adopted by Dion, who 
 
 ^ This had been done in Syracuse, and wa^ resisted by Dion. 
 
THE SEVENTH EPISTLE OF PLATO. 281 
 
 preferred suffering things impious to the commission of 
 them ; but who at the same time endeavoured to guard 
 against suffering them. Yet he fell, after he had arrived at 
 the summit of advantage over his enemies. Nor in this 
 did he suffer anything astonishing ; for a pious man, who 
 is also temperate and prudent, will never be wholly 
 deceived about the impious. But neither perhaps is it 
 wonderful if the same thing has happened to him as to a 
 good pilot, from whom the future storm is not entirely con- 
 cealed, but who may be ignorant of the magnitude of a 
 sudden tempest whereby he may be violently overwhelmed. 
 After the same manner, through unexpected circumstances, 
 did Dion fall : for he was not entirely ignorant that his 
 enemies were bad men, though he was unacquainted with 
 the profundity of their ignorance and the rest of their 
 depravity and rapacity. Through being deceived in this 
 he fell, and by his fall involved Sicily in infinite woe. 
 
 What therefore I advise you to do, after the present 
 relation of these particulars, I have already nearly men- 
 tioned. But it appeared to me necessary to show on what 
 account I came a second time to Sicily, on compulsion as 
 it were, through the irrationality and absurdity attached to 
 the transaction. If therefore what has been now said shall 
 appear to any one to be reasonable, and the excuses for 
 what occurred are sufficient, then what has been said above 
 has been rightly and sufficiently said. 
 
 TIIF, \VAI.Ti;U SCOTT I'llLSS, >E\VCAiJlLE-OiN-TYNE. 
 
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 THE STORY OF ORATORIO. By ANNIE W. PATTER- 
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 THE STORY OF NOTATION. By C. F. ABDY WILLIAMS, 
 
 M.A., Mus. Bac. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE ORGAN, By C. F. ABDY 
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 THE STORY OF CHAMBER MUSIC. By N. KILBURN, 
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 and Bishop Auckland Musical Societies. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE VIOLIN, By PAUL STOEVING, 
 Professor of the Violin, Guildhall School of Music, London. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE HARP. By WILLIAM H. GRATTAN 
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 THE STORY OF ORGAN MUSIC. By C. F. ABDY 
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 THE STORY OF THE PIANOFORTE. By ALGERNON S. 
 
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 THE STORY OF ENGLISH MINSTRELSY, By EDMOND- 
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 THE STORY OF THE ORCHESTRA. By STEWART 
 
 MACPIIERSON, Fellow and Professor, Royal Academy of Music. 
 
 THE STORY OF MUSICAL SOUND. By CHURCHILL 
 
 SIBLEV, Mus. Doc. 
 
 THE STORY OF CHURCH MUSIC. By THE EDITOR. 
 
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