The editor would like to acknowledge the assistance of Sean Kelsey, who as research assistant read through all the translations at the penultimate stage, offering many excellent suggestions for improvement, identifying the sources of Plato’s quotations, and indicating where footnotes were needed, as well as preparing the texts for submission to the publisher. For advice and help on the introduction and introductory notes he would like to thank Rachel Barney, Christopher Bobonich, Panos Dimas, D. S. Hutchinson, George Kateb, Alexander Nehamas, C.D.C. Reeve, J. B. Schneewind, and David Sedley. Discussion with Øyvind Rabbås was helpful in preparing the introductory notes for the Socratic dialogues, especially
Laches
. Paul Woodruff gave good advice on the revision of the
Epigrams
translation. For Hackett Publishing Company Deborah Wilkes and Dan Kirklin gave steady, reliable, and invariably intelligent advice and assistance on all aspects of the production of the book.
The associate editor would like to thank Nicholas Denyer, Rudolf Kassel, and Carl Werner Müller (whose book
Die Kurzdialoge der Appendix Platonica
sheds invaluable light on the spurious works in the Platonic corpus), as well as John Cooper, whose critical eye improved every introductory note.
The index was prepared by Paul Coppock. The editors would also like to thank him for his work at earlier stages of the project in overseeing the preparation of the translations on behalf of the publisher. Thanks also go to Jonathan Beere for verifying typographical errors and other corrections for the second printing, and to Adam Kissel for invaluable help in bringing some of these to the editors’ attention. Further corrections in the third printing were suggested by Rachel Barney, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, Charles Kahn, Henry R. Mendell, and Donald Morrison. The editors are grateful for these, as well as for the continued interest of the translators in the improvement of their earlier work.
Many of the translations appearing (in revised form) in this book have previously been published separately by Hackett Publishing Company:
Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Theaetetus, Sophist, Parmenides, Philebus,
Symposium, Phaedrus, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Euthydemus, Protagoras,
Gorgias, Meno, Greater Hippias, Ion,
and
Republic
.
Published here for the first time are the translations of
Cratylus, Alcibiades,
Second Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Rival Lovers, Theages, Lesser Hippias, Menexenus,
Clitophon, Timaeus, Critias, Minos, Epinomis, Definitions, On Justice, On
Virtue, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Halcyon,
and
Eryxias
.
Translations previously published by other publishers are
Statesman
, translated by C. J. Rowe, Warminster: 1995, reprinted by permission of Aris and Phillips Ltd., UK. The translation that appears here is an extensive revision of the Aris & Phillips translation. It is, however, the text that appears in the Hackett edition of
Statesman
.
Laws
, translated by Trevor J. Saunders, reprinted here by permission of Penguin Books Ltd. First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd., 1970. Reprinted with minor revisions, 1975.
Letters
, translated by Glenn R. Morrow, from Plato,
Epistles
, 1962, Library of Liberal Arts, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc.
Axiochus
, translated by Jackson P. Hershbell, 1981, The Society of Biblical Literature. Reprinted here by permission of Jackson P. Hershbell.
Epigrams
, reprinted as revised by John M. Cooper by permission of the publishers of the Loeb Classical Library from
Elegy and Iambus with the Anacreontea
, Vol. II, edited by J. M. Edmonds, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931.
Over the twenty years and more that Hackett Publishing Company has been bringing out new translations of Plato, including the work done on the translations appearing here for the first time, many scholars have generously offered their advice as line-by-line readers and consultants on the translations-in-progress of individual works—in some cases, a single reader has worked on more than one such project. The publisher gratefully acknowledges the invaluable assistance of:
William Arrowsmith
Malcolm Brown
Eve Browning Cole
John M. Cooper
Daniel Devereux
Cynthia Freeland
Marjorie Grene
Richard Hogan
D. S. Hutchinson
Mark Joyal
Richard Kraut
M. M. McCabe
J.M.E. Moravcsik
Alexander Nehamas
Martha Nussbaum
C.D.C. Reeve
Jean Roberts
T. M. Robinson
Allan Silverman
Simon Slings
Nicholas P. White
Paul Woodruff
Donald J. Zeyl
Translated by G.M.A. Grube.
The scene is the
agora
or central marketplace of Athens, before the offices of
the magistrate who registers and makes preliminary inquiries into charges
brought under the laws protecting the city from the gods’ displeasure. There
Socrates meets Euthyphro—Socrates is on his way in to answer the charges of
‘impiety’ brought against him by three younger fellow citizens, on which he is
going to be condemned to death, as we learn in the
Apology
. Euthyphro has
just deposed murder charges against his own father for the death of a servant.
Murder was a religious offense, since it entailed ‘pollution’ which if not ritually
purified was displeasing to the gods; but equally, a son’s taking such action
against his father might well itself be regarded as ‘impious’. Euthyphro
professes to be acting on esoteric knowledge about the gods and their wishes,
and so about the general topic of ‘piety’. Socrates seizes the opportunity to acquire
from Euthyphro this knowledge of piety so that he can rebut the accusations
against himself. However, like all his other interlocutors in Plato’s ‘Socratic’
dialogues, Euthyphro cannot answer Socrates’ questions to Socrates’
satisfaction, or ultimately to his own. So he cannot make it clear what piety
is—though he continues to think that he does know it. Thus, predictably, Socrates’
hopes are disappointed; just when he is ready to press further to help Euthyphro
express his knowledge, if indeed he does possess it, Euthyphro begs off
on the excuse of business elsewhere.
Though Socrates does not succeed in his quest, we readers learn a good deal
about the sort of thing Socrates is looking for in asking his question ‘What is
piety?’ and the other ‘What is … ?’ questions he pursues in other dialogues.
He wants a single ‘model’ or ‘standard’ he can look to in order to determine
which acts and persons are pious, one that gives clear, unconflicting, and unambiguous
answers. He wants something that can provide such a standard all
on its own—as one of Euthyphro’s proposals, that being pious is simply being
loved by the gods, cannot do, since one needs to know first what the gods do
love. Pious acts and people may indeed be loved by the gods, but that is a secondary
quality, not the ‘essence’ of piety—it is not that which serves as the
standard being sought.
There seems no reason to doubt the character Socrates’ sincerity in probing
Euthyphro’s statements so as to work out an adequate answer—he has in advance
no answer of his own to test out or to advocate. But does the dialogue itself
suggest to the attentive reader an answer of its own? Euthyphro frustrates
Socrates by his inability to develop adequately his final suggestion, that piety is
justice in relation to the gods, in serving and assisting them in some purpose or enterprise of their own. Socrates seems to find that an enticing idea. Does
Plato mean to suggest that piety may be shown simply in doing one’s best to
become as morally good as possible—something Socrates claims in the
Apology
the gods want more than anything else? If so, can piety remain an independent
virtue at all, with its own separate standard for action? These are
among the questions this dialogue leaves us to ponder.
J.M.C.
[2]
E
UTHYPHRO
: What’s new, Socrates, to make you leave your usual haunts in the Lyceum and spend your time here by the king-archon’s court? Surely you are not prosecuting anyone before the king-archon as I am?
S
OCRATES
: The Athenians do not call this a prosecution but an indictment, Euthyphro.
[b] E
UTHYPHRO
: What is this you say? Someone must have indicted you, for you are not going to tell me that you have indicted someone else.
S
OCRATES
: No indeed.
E
UTHYPHRO
: But someone else has indicted you?
S
OCRATES
: Quite so.
E
UTHYPHRO
: Who is he?
S
OCRATES
: I do not really know him myself, Euthyphro. He is apparently young and unknown. They call him Meletus, I believe. He belongs to the Pitthean deme, if you know anyone from that deme called Meletus, with long hair, not much of a beard, and a rather aquiline nose.
E
UTHYPHRO
: I don’t know him, Socrates. What charge does he bring against you?
[c] S
OCRATES
: What charge? A not ignoble one I think, for it is no small thing for a young man to have knowledge of such an important subject. He says he knows how our young men are corrupted and who corrupts them. He is likely to be wise, and when he sees my ignorance corrupting [d] his contemporaries, he proceeds to accuse me to the city as to their mother. I think he is the only one of our public men to start out the right way, for it is right to care first that the young should be as good as possible, just as a good farmer is likely to take care of the young plants first, and of the
[3]
others later. So, too, Meletus first gets rid of us who corrupt the young shoots, as he says, and then afterwards he will obviously take care of the older ones and become a source of great blessings for the city, as seems likely to happen to one who started out this way.
E
UTHYPHRO
: I could wish this were true, Socrates, but I fear the opposite may happen. He seems to me to start out by harming the very heart of the city by attempting to wrong you. Tell me, what does he say you do to corrupt the young?
S
OCRATES
: Strange things, to hear him tell it, for he says that I am a [b] maker of gods, and on the ground that I create new gods while not believing in the old gods, he has indicted me for their sake, as he puts it.
E
UTHYPHRO
: I understand, Socrates. This is because you say that the divine sign keeps coming to you.
1
So he has written this indictment against you as one who makes innovations in religious matters, and he comes to court to slander you, knowing that such things are easily misrepresented to the crowd. The same is true in my case. Whenever I speak of divine [c] matters in the assembly and foretell the future, they laugh me down as if I were crazy; and yet I have foretold nothing that did not happen. Nevertheless, they envy all of us who do this. One need not worry about them, but meet them head-on.
S
OCRATES
: My dear Euthyphro, to be laughed at does not matter perhaps, for the Athenians do not mind anyone they think clever, as long as he does not teach his own wisdom, but if they think that he makes others to be like himself they get angry, whether through envy, as you say, or for [d] some other reason.
E
UTHYPHRO
: I have certainly no desire to test their feelings towards me in this matter.
S
OCRATES
: Perhaps you seem to make yourself but rarely available, and not be willing to teach your own wisdom, but I’m afraid that my liking for people makes them think that I pour out to anybody anything I have to say, not only without charging a fee but even glad to reward anyone who is willing to listen. If then they were intending to laugh at me, as [e] you say they laugh at you, there would be nothing unpleasant in their spending their time in court laughing and jesting, but if they are going to be serious, the outcome is not clear except to you prophets.
E
UTHYPHRO
: Perhaps it will come to nothing, Socrates, and you will fight your case as you think best, as I think I will mine.
S
OCRATES
: What is your case, Euthyphro? Are you the defendant or the prosecutor?
E
UTHYPHRO
: The prosecutor.
S
OCRATES
: Whom do you prosecute?
E
UTHYPHRO
: One whom I am thought crazy to prosecute.
[4]
S
OCRATES
: Are you pursuing someone who will easily escape you?
E
UTHYPHRO
: Far from it, for he is quite old.
S
OCRATES
: Who is it?
E
UTHYPHRO
: My father.
S
OCRATES
: My dear sir! Your own father?
E
UTHYPHRO
: Certainly.
S
OCRATES
: What is the charge? What is the case about?
E
UTHYPHRO
: Murder, Socrates.
S
OCRATES
: Good heavens! Certainly, Euthyphro, most men would not [b] know how they could do this and be right. It is not the part of anyone to do this, but of one who is far advanced in wisdom.
E
UTHYPHRO
: Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, that is so.
S
OCRATES
: Is then the man your father killed one of your relatives? Or is that obvious, for you would not prosecute your father for the murder of a stranger.
E
UTHYPHRO
: It is ridiculous, Socrates, for you to think that it makes any difference whether the victim is a stranger or a relative. One should only watch whether the killer acted justly or not; if he acted justly, let him go, [c] but if not, one should prosecute, if, that is to say, the killer shares your hearth and table. The pollution is the same if you knowingly keep company with such a man and do not cleanse yourself and him by bringing him to justice. The victim was a dependent of mine, and when we were farming in Naxos he was a servant of ours. He killed one of our household slaves in drunken anger, so my father bound him hand and foot and threw him [d] in a ditch, then sent a man here to inquire from the priest what should be done. During that time he gave no thought or care to the bound man, as being a killer, and it was no matter if he died, which he did. Hunger and cold and his bonds caused his death before the messenger came back from the seer. Both my father and my other relatives are angry that I am prosecuting my father for murder on behalf of a murderer when he hadn’t even killed him, they say, and even if he had, the dead man does not [e] deserve a thought, since he was a killer. For, they say, it is impious for a son to prosecute his father for murder. But their ideas of the divine attitude to piety and impiety are wrong, Socrates.