9
(3.399e)
complex systems of metre,
or
metres of every kind:
The rhythms of Greek poetry were quantitative, based on combinations of long and short syllables (in
metra
or longer
cola)
according to fixed patterns that permitted some limited variations. (Long syllables were generally “held” for twice as long as short syllables.) Experiments with rhythmic variation (and hence complexity) comprised another set of innovations in the late fifth century that met with disapproval from conservative critics.
10
(3.400a)
there are some three principles of rhythm out of which metrical systems are framed:
Theorists classified the basic rhythms (that is, iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic, paeonic, cretic) into three groups, depending on the proportion of long and short syllables in their
metra.
Iambic and trochaic, which alternate short and long syllables, were grouped together; anapestic and dactylic, which alternate a long syllable with two short syllables, were likewise grouped together. The paeonic, which featured a long syllable followed by three short syllables, was grouped with its variant, “cretic.”
11
(3.400a)
four notes out of which all the harmonies are composed:
This is perhaps a reference to the systems of four notes (that is, tetrachords) that were the bases of scales and therefore of
harmoniai,
or modes.
12
(3.400d)
our principle is that rhythm and harmony are regulated by the words, and not the words by them:
Greek music traditionally featured no vocal flourishes such as coloratura, although in the late fifth century singers experimented with stretching out a single syllable over more than one note. This practice
(epektasis)
was yet another innovation that met with disapproval from those with conservative tastes.
13
(3.400d-e)
The beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity:
Eschewing complexity and variety in favor of simplicity (in the positive sense of the word) is the unifying principle of Socrates’ educational program for future guardians; see Socrates’ assertion at 3.404e that complexity engenders “license” in the soul and “disease” in the body, whereas simplicity guards against both, and also 3.398a-b, 3.399c-e, 3.404b, and 3.410a. For the negative association of “simplicity” with foolishness, see Thrasymachus’ ironic comment on “sublime simplicity” at 1.348c.
14
(3.401c)
then will our youth dwell in a land of health:
Socrates’ description of the young guardians’ healthy spiritual condition anticipates his definition of justice (in the individual) as the healthy, balanced, and harmonious state of the soul at 4.444c-d.
15
(3.402c)
neither we nor our guardians ... can ever become musical until we and they know the essential forms of temperance, courage, liberality, magnificence, and their kindred, as well as the contrary forms, ... and can recognize them and their images wherever they are found.... :
Scholars vigorously debate whether readers are meant to assume that Socrates is referring at this point to the metaphysical “ideas” (that is, of good-in-itself, beauty-in-itself, etc.) that are identified in books 6 and 7 as the ultimate objects of philosophical inquiry. Although the term used here (
ta eidê
) is the one used later in
Republic
and in other Platonic dialogues to designate the ideas, it is perhaps wise to assume that, since the ideas have not yet come up in
Republic’s
conversation, Socrates is currently using the term in a less specialized sense, simply to indicate that all who aim to be properly educated should be exposed, via
mousikê,
to examples of temperance, courage, and other worthy qualities (compare 3.396d-e).
16
(3.402e)
But let me ask you another question: Has excess of pleasure any affinity to temperance?:
This question, which leads to a brief discussion of how intense homoerotic attachments must be banned in the ideal state, constitutes a striking transition between the discussions of the young guardians’ training in
mousikê
and
gymnastikê.
Later in
Republic
(5.474d) Glaucon graciously accepts being characterized, for the sake of the argument, as a “man of pleasure” (literally, an “erotic man”—that is, someone who falls in love with handsome youths), and the verses quoted by Socrates at 2.368a reveal that, until recently, Glaucon has also been the object of an older man’s attentions. Moreover, in
Symposium, Phaedrus,
and elsewhere, Plato has Socrates playfully confess his erotic attraction to handsome young men, such as Alcibiades and Agathon. It is always made plain, however, that Socratic eros is wholly spiritual. The point in this passage is that, although love of beauty is ennobling and worth cultivating, it does not legitimize intemperate lust for handsome young men or boys.
17
(3.404b)
My meaning may be learned from Homer:
Socrates’ reliance upon “Homer” as an authority on diet, exercise, and medicine may come as a bit of a surprise after his extensive critical analysis of various elements in
Iliad
and
Odyssey.
It is perhaps best to take with some grains of salt Plato’s references to the expertise of Homer and other poets on various practical matters.
18
(3.405b)
pride himself on his litigiousness:
Fifth- and fourth-century critics of democracy frequently alleged that the Athenians were overly fond of going to court, both as prosecutors and as jurors. The analogy developed in this passage between medicine, which cures the ailments of the body, and corrective justice, which seeks to “cure” the ills of the soul, is paralleled in some regards in
Gorgias.
19
(3.407e)
Then, he said, you regard Asclepius as a statesman:
The parallels between rulers who care for their subjects and doctors who care for their patients have already been suggested in book 1 (for example, at 1.341c), and they figure prominently in other Platonic dialogues concerned with political leadership and management.
Statesman
293c-d advances the notion that the good ruler, like a doctor, will be obliged to make difficult decisions (such as the life-and-death choices that Socrates attributes to Asclepius) and do painful, unpleasant things.
20
(3.408c-d)
Ought there not to be good physicians in a State, and are not the best those who have treated the greatest number of constitutions, good and bad, and are not the best judges in like manner those who are acquainted with all sorts of moral natures?:
Among Plato’s dialogues, Gorgias is noteworthy for its extensive comparison of corrective justice, which metes out (often painful) punishments in order to ameliorate defects of the soul, and the art of medicine, which implements (often painful) treatments in order to cure disease in the body. In this passage, however, Socrates (perhaps with some irony) adduces an important difference between the expertise of doctors and that of people who sit in judgment of crimes—doctors benefit from the experience of physical illness, but jurors/judges (dikastai in Greek) are not profited by exposure to crime and moral defect.
21
(3.410e)
And in our opinion the guardians ought to have both these qualities?:
The cultivation of courage (3.386a-389d) and temperance (3.389d-391e) has been a preoccupation of Socrates’ description of the guardians‘early education and thus of his discussion of poetry’s content and its musical accompaniment. For more on the importance of fostering these two qualities in the citizenry, see Plato,
Statesman
306a-311c and Laws 1.626d-636c.
22
(3.412b)
Very good, I said; then what is the next question?:
In the short section that follows this question (through 3.417b), Socrates introduces several important provisions about the organization of the ideal city-state and, more particularly, about the guardians’ way of life. These provisions include: the testing of the guardians so that they may be divided into two groups, rulers (who are “guardians” in the limited sense of the word) and their helpers (“auxiliaries”); the devising of a “royal lie” designed to make citizens accept their division into “classes” of gold (rulers), silver (auxiliaries) and bronze and iron (craftsmen, farmers, et al.); the promotion and demotion of children born into each class according to their natural abilities (
physis
); and the requirement that the guardians (both rulers and auxiliaries) have no private property and “live together like soldiers in a camp” (3.416e). This last requirement, along with the provision that rulers and auxiliaries “possess” their women and children in common (4.423e), receives fuller treatment in book 5.
23
(3.413c)
we must inquire who are the best guardians of their own conviction that what they think the interest of the State is to be the rule of their lives:
Described here is the battery of tests and trials (of memory, physical endurance, and mental stability) that young guardians must undergo; those who are to be rulers will need to undergo, beginning at age twenty, yet another series of tests that measure their intellectual sophistication (7.537a-540c).
24
(3.413e) good guardians of themselves
and
of the music which they have
learned:
See note 8 on 2.367a.
25
(3.414c)
only an old Phoenician tale:
Cadmus, the legendary founder of Thebes in Boeotia, came to Greece from Phoenicia (on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea). The tale is that Cadmus killed the dragon that dwelled at the site of his newly founded city and threw its teeth in the ground; from these teeth sprang fully armed men, called Spartoi (that is, “Sown Men”). This is one of several myths that describe how individuals, or an entire people, came to be born from the earth.
26
(3.415a)
Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition
of these
he has mingled gold ... :
As Socrates indicates at 8.546e, the conception of people characterized by gold, silver, bronze, and iron is borrowed from Hesiod, Works
and
Days 109-201, which describes how the earth was successively peopled by a golden “race”
(genos),
a silver race, a bronze race, a race of “heroes,” and the current race of “iron.”
27
(3.415d)
Not in the present generation:
At 7.540e-541b Socrates acknowledges that it would be generally impossible to persuade adults to accept the beliefs and ideals necessary for the institution of the ideal state; compare 6.501a.
28
(3.416e-417a)
for that commoner metal has been the source of many unholy deeds, but their own is undefiled:
Socrates’ assertion concerning the (inevitably) corrupting influence of wealth counters the original assumption of Cephalus, who claimed at 1.331a-b that his wealth is what has enabled him to be “just” throughout his life. Property-holding in the guardian classes violates the ideal state’s foundational one-person-one-job rule, insofar as it would consequently lead rulers and auxiliaries to become “good housekeepers and husbandmen instead of guardians ...” (3.417a). Compare Socrates’ more general indication at 4.421d-422a that excessive wealth among the bronze/ iron class (who are allowed to possess private property) would be “the parent of luxury and indolence.”
Book 4
1
(4.423a-b)
Hellenes or barbarians:
Greeks (that is, Hellenes) saw themselves as ethnically and culturally distinct from other people, such as the local peoples of Asia Minor (for example, Lydians and Phrygians), as well as Egyptians, Persians, and Scythians. See also 4.435e-4.436a and 5.470c.
2
(4.424a)
the general principle that friends have all things in common:
Socrates casually mentions here another strikingly unusual aspect of the guardians’ way of life: the absence of individual families and the common “possession” of women and children. Although Adeimantus does not question Socrates’ provision about the guardians’ wives and children at this point, it is examined in detail beginning at 5.449c.
3
(4.424c)
when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them:
The word translated here as “modes” is not
harmoniai
(see note 6 on 3.398e), but the more general term
tropoi
(“styles,” “manners”). Damon’s theory concerning the relationship between musical innovation and change in fundamental political laws naturally follows on what Socrates has set forth in book 3 concerning the ethical influence of music (compare Laws 2.673a). The underlying logic is that, if the character of people changes (because of their exposure to new types of music), this ethical transformation will inevitably lead to changes in basic customs and laws (compare
Laws
3.700a-701d). Hence Socrates’ insistence that the guardians must, above all, guard against innovation in music and education; compare 8.546e.
4
(4.424d)
in the form of amusement; and at first sight it appears harmless:
On the importance of children’s games and play to the overall welfare and stability of the state, see also
Laws
7.793d-794a and 7.797a-798e, which present more detailed arguments against permitting innovations in children’s games.
5
(4.426b-c)
do not these States resemble the persons whom I was describing?:
The allusion is to 3.405a-410a. As in the earlier passage, this description of the “ill-ordered state” that forbids constitutional change but continually experiments with legislative tinkering plainly alludes to contemporary Athens. See note 18 on 3.405b.
6
(4.428a)
And is not a similar method to be pursued about the virtues, which are also four in number?:
Traditional conceptions of the virtues (
aretai
) admitted some variation. Here, the virtues are wisdom (
sophia
), courage (
andreia
), temperance or moderation (
sophrosynê
), and justice (
dikaiosynê
); in Protagoras, Plato has Socrates and Protagoras add piety (
hosiotês
) to these four. The process of elimination by which Socrates proposes to discover “justice” in the ideal state may, with good reason, strike some readers as simplistic and unconvincing, and it is perhaps wisest to assume that his argument in the following passage is meant to be merely suggestive. See 4.435c-d for the first of several passages in which Socrates and his interlocutors acknowledge the provisional and inadequate nature of their discussion.