Book 5
474
Whereupon he, Socrates, said he, after hurling at us such an utterance and statement as that, you must expect to be attacked by a great multitude of our men of light and leading,Lit. many and not slight men. who forthwith will, so to speak, cast off their garmentsCf. Hipponax, fr. 74 (58), Theophrast. Char. 27, Aristophanes Wasps 408. and strip and, snatching the first weapon that comes to hand, rush at you with might and main, prepared to doCf. Apology 35 A, Theaetetus 151 A. dreadful deeds. And if you don’t find words to defend yourself against them, and escape their assault, then to be scorned and flouted will in very truthτῷ ὄντι verifies the strong word τωθαζόμενος. be the penalty you will have to pay. And isn’t it you, said I, that have brought this upon me and are to blame? And a good thing, too, said he; but I won’t let you down, and will defend you with what I can. I can do so with my good will and my encouragement, and perhaps I might answer your questions more suitablyCf. Theaetetus 162 A 7. The dialectician prefers a docile respondent. Cf. Sophist 217 C, Parmenides 137 B. than another. So, with such an aid to back you, try to make it plain to the doubters that the truth is as you say. I must try, I replied, since you proffer so strong an alliance. I think it requisite, then, if we are to escape the assailants you speak of, that we should define for them whom we mean by the philosophers, who we dare to say ought to be our rulers. When these are clearly discriminated it will be possible to defend ourselves by showing that to them by their very nature belong the study of philosophy and political leadership, while it befits the other sort to let philosophy alone and to follow their leader. It is high time, he said, to produce your definition. Come, then, follow me on this line, if we may in some fashion or other explain our meaning. Proceed, he said. Must I remind you, then, said I, or do you remember, that when we affirm that a man is a lover of something, it must be apparent that he is fond of all of it? It will not do to say that some of it he likes and someτὸ δὲ μή: for the idiom Cf. Philebus 22 A, Laws 797 E, 923 C, Demodocus’s epigram on the Chians, Aeschylus Persae 802, Sophocles O. C. 1671. does not. I think you will have to remind me, he said, for I don’t apprehend at all. That reply, Glaucon, said I, befitted another rather than you. It does not become a lover to forget that all adolescents in some sort sting and stir the amorous lover of youth and appear to him deserving of his attention and desirable. Is not that your reaction to the fair? One, because his nose is tip-tilted,Another of the famous sentences that would be worth a monograph. Cf. Lucretius iv. 1160, Molière, Misanthrope, ii. 5, Horace, Satire i. 338. F. Brunetière, Les Epoques du théâtre francÿais, p. 76, thinks that Molière took it from Scarron, not from Lucretius. Shakespeare Much Ado, III. i. reverses the conceit, Santayana, Reason in Society, p. 25, writes prettily about it. you will praise as piquant, the beak of another you pronounce right-royal, the intermediate type you say strikes the harmonious mean, the swarthy are of manly aspect, the white are children of the gods divinely fair, and as for honey-hued, do you suppose the very word is anything but the euphemistic invention of some lover who can feel no distaste for sallowness when it accompanies the blooming time of youth?
