The Republic
described by Plato in the most expressive manner, yet with the fewest
possible touches. As Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic. iv. 16), the aged
Cephalus would have been out of place in the discussion which follows,
and which he could neither have understood nor taken part in without a
violation of dramatic propriety (cp. Lysimachus in the Laches).
His ‘son and heir’ Polemarchus has the frankness and impetuousness of
youth; he is for detaining Socrates by force in the opening scene, and
will not ‘let him off’ on the subject of women and children. Like
Cephalus, he is limited in his point of view, and represents the
proverbial stage of morality which has rules of life rather than
principles; and he quotes Simonides (cp. Aristoph. Clouds) as his
father had quoted Pindar. But after this he has no more to say; the
answers which he makes are only elicited from him by the dialectic of
Socrates. He has not yet experienced the influence of the Sophists like
Glaucon and Adeimantus, nor is he sensible of the necessity of refuting
them; he belongs to the pre-Socratic or pre-dialectical age. He is
incapable of arguing, and is bewildered by Socrates to such a degree
that he does not know what he is saying. He is made to admit that
justice is a thief, and that the virtues follow the analogy of the
arts. From his brother Lysias (contra Eratosth.) we learn that he fell
a victim to the Thirty Tyrants, but no allusion is here made to his
fate, nor to the circumstance that Cephalus and his family were of
Syracusan origin, and had migrated from Thurii to Athens.
The ‘Chalcedonian giant,’ Thrasymachus, of whom we have already heard
in the Phaedrus, is the personification of the Sophists, according to
Plato’s conception of them, in some of their worst characteristics. He
is vain and blustering, refusing to discourse unless he is paid, fond
of making an oration, and hoping thereby to escape the inevitable
Socrates; but a mere child in argument, and unable to foresee that the
next ‘move’ (to use a Platonic expression) will ‘shut him up.’ He has
reached the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in
advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus. But he is incapable of defending
them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his confusion with
banter and insolence. Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him
by Plato were really held either by him or by any other Sophist is
uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality
might easily grow up—they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers
in Thucydides; but we are concerned at present with Plato’s description
of him, and not with the historical reality. The inequality of the
contest adds greatly to the humour of the scene. The pompous and empty
Sophist is utterly helpless in the hands of the great master of
dialectic, who knows how to touch all the springs of vanity and
weakness in him. He is greatly irritated by the irony of Socrates, but
his noisy and imbecile rage only lays him more and more open to the
thrusts of his assailant. His determination to cram down their throats,
or put ‘bodily into their souls’ his own words, elicits a cry of horror
from Socrates. The state of his temper is quite as worthy of remark as
the process of the argument. Nothing is more amusing than his complete
submission when he has been once thoroughly beaten. At first he seems
to continue the discussion with reluctance, but soon with apparent
good-will, and he even testifies his interest at a later stage by one
or two occasional remarks. When attacked by Glaucon he is humorously
protected by Socrates ‘as one who has never been his enemy and is now
his friend.’ From Cicero and Quintilian and from Aristotle’s Rhetoric
we learn that the Sophist whom Plato has made so ridiculous was a man
of note whose writings were preserved in later ages. The play on his
name which was made by his contemporary Herodicus (Aris. Rhet.), ‘thou
wast ever bold in battle,’ seems to show that the description of him is
not devoid of verisimilitude.
When Thrasymachus has been silenced, the two principal respondents,
Glaucon and Adeimantus, appear on the scene: here, as in Greek tragedy
(cp. Introd. to Phaedo), three actors are introduced. At first sight
the two sons of Ariston may seem to wear a family likeness, like the
two friends Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo. But on a nearer
examination of them the similarity vanishes, and they are seen to be
distinct characters. Glaucon is the impetuous youth who can ‘just never
have enough of fechting’ (cp. the character of him in Xen. Mem. iii.
6); the man of pleasure who is acquainted with the mysteries of love;
the ‘juvenis qui gaudet canibus,’ and who improves the breed of
animals; the lover of art and music who has all the experiences of
youthful life. He is full of quickness and penetration, piercing easily
below the clumsy platitudes of Thrasymachus to the real difficulty; he
turns out to the light the seamy side of human life, and yet does not
lose faith in the just and true. It is Glaucon who seizes what may be
termed the ludicrous relation of the philosopher to the world, to whom
a state of simplicity is ‘a city of pigs,’ who is always prepared with
a jest when the argument offers him an opportunity, and who is ever
ready to second the humour of Socrates and to appreciate the
ridiculous, whether in the connoisseurs of music, or in the lovers of
theatricals, or in the fantastic behaviour of the citizens of
democracy. His weaknesses are several times alluded to by Socrates,
who, however, will not allow him to be attacked by his brother
Adeimantus. He is a soldier, and, like Adeimantus, has been
distinguished at the battle of Megara (anno 456?)...The character of
Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the profounder objections are
commonly put into his mouth. Glaucon is more demonstrative, and
generally opens the game. Adeimantus pursues the argument further.
Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick sympathy of youth;
Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up man of the world. In
the second book, when Glaucon insists that justice and injustice shall
be considered without regard to their consequences, Adeimantus remarks
that they are regarded by mankind in general only for the sake of their
consequences; and in a similar vein of reflection he urges at the
beginning of the fourth book that Socrates fails in making his citizens
happy, and is answered that happiness is not the first but the second
thing, not the direct aim but the indirect consequence of the good
government of a State. In the discussion about religion and mythology,
Adeimantus is the respondent, but Glaucon breaks in with a slight jest,
and carries on the conversation in a lighter tone about music and
gymnastic to the end of the book. It is Adeimantus again who volunteers
the criticism of common sense on the Socratic method of argument, and
who refuses to let Socrates pass lightly over the question of women and
children. It is Adeimantus who is the respondent in the more
argumentative, as Glaucon in the lighter and more imaginative portions
of the Dialogue. For example, throughout the greater part of the sixth
book, the causes of the corruption of philosophy and the conception of
the idea of good are discussed with Adeimantus. Glaucon resumes his
place of principal respondent; but he has a difficulty in apprehending
the higher education of Socrates, and makes some false hits in the
course of the discussion. Once more Adeimantus returns with the
allusion to his brother Glaucon whom he compares to the contentious
State; in the next book he is again superseded, and Glaucon continues
to the end.
Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the successive
stages of morality, beginning with the Athenian gentleman of the olden
time, who is followed by the practical man of that day regulating his
life by proverbs and saws; to him succeeds the wild generalization of
the Sophists, and lastly come the young disciples of the great teacher,
who know the sophistical arguments but will not be convinced by them,
and desire to go deeper into the nature of things. These too, like
Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, are clearly distinguished from one
another. Neither in the Republic, nor in any other Dialogue of Plato,
is a single character repeated.
The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly consistent.
In the first book we have more of the real Socrates, such as he is
depicted in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in the earliest Dialogues of
Plato, and in the Apology. He is ironical, provoking, questioning, the
old enemy of the Sophists, ready to put on the mask of Silenus as well
as to argue seriously. But in the sixth book his enmity towards the
Sophists abates; he acknowledges that they are the representatives
rather than the corrupters of the world. He also becomes more dogmatic
and constructive, passing beyond the range either of the political or
the speculative ideas of the real Socrates. In one passage Plato
himself seems to intimate that the time had now come for Socrates, who
had passed his whole life in philosophy, to give his own opinion and
not to be always repeating the notions of other men. There is no
evidence that either the idea of good or the conception of a perfect
state were comprehended in the Socratic teaching, though he certainly
dwelt on the nature of the universal and of final causes (cp. Xen.
Mem.; Phaedo); and a deep thinker like him, in his thirty or forty
years of public teaching, could hardly have failed to touch on the
nature of family relations, for which there is also some positive
evidence in the Memorabilia (Mem.) The Socratic method is nominally
retained; and every inference is either put into the mouth of the
respondent or represented as the common discovery of him and Socrates.
But any one can see that this is a mere form, of which the affectation
grows wearisome as the work advances. The method of enquiry has passed
into a method of teaching in which by the help of interlocutors the
same thesis is looked at from various points of view. The nature of the
process is truly characterized by Glaucon, when he describes himself as
a companion who is not good for much in an investigation, but can see
what he is shown, and may, perhaps, give the answer to a question more
fluently than another.
Neither can we be absolutely certain that Socrates himself taught the
immortality of the soul, which is unknown to his disciple Glaucon in
the Republic (cp. Apol.); nor is there any reason to suppose that he
used myths or revelations of another world as a vehicle of instruction,
or that he would have banished poetry or have denounced the Greek
mythology. His favorite oath is retained, and a slight mention is made
of the daemonium, or internal sign, which is alluded to by Socrates as
a phenomenon peculiar to himself. A real element of Socratic teaching,
which is more prominent in the Republic than in any of the other
Dialogues of Plato, is the use of example and illustration τὰ φορτικὰ
αὐτῷ προσφέροντες, ‘Let us apply the test of common instances.’ ‘You,’
says Adeimantus, ironically, in the sixth book, ‘are so unaccustomed to
speak in images.’ And this use of examples or images, though truly
Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into the form of
an allegory or parable, which embodies in the concrete what has been
already described, or is about to be described, in the abstract. Thus
the figure of the cave in Book VII is a recapitulation of the divisions
of knowledge in Book VI. The composite animal in Book IX is an allegory
of the parts of the soul. The noble captain and the ship and the true
pilot in Book VI are a figure of the relation of the people to the