Do you mean to say,
interposed Adeimantus, that you haven’t heard that there is to be a torchlight race Footnote 1See Sterrett in AJP xxii. p. 393.
The torch was passed down the lines which competed as wholes.
Cf. Swinburne, Hymn of Man: Where the runners outwear each other, but running with lampless hands,No man takes light from his brother, till blind at the goal he stands.
For the metaphorical transmission of the torch of life cf. Plato, Laws, 776 B, Lucretius ii. 79. this evening on horseback in honor of the Goddess?On horseback?
said I. That is a new idea. Will they carry torches and pass them along to one another as they race with the horses, or how do you mean?
That’s the way of it,
said Polemarchus, and, besides, there is to be a night festival which will be worth seeing. For after dinner we will get up Footnote 2Rise from the table. This is forgotten. and go out and see the sights and meet a lot of the lads there and have good talk. So stay and do as we ask.
Footnote 3In American,
the colloquial Greek means be a sport.
It looks as if we should have to stay,
said Glaucon. Well,
said I, if it so be, so be it.
So we went with them to Polemarchus’s house, and there we found Lysias and Euthydemus, the brothers of Polemarchus, yes, and Footnote 4The particles single out Thrasymachus for ironical emphasis. Proclus in Tim. 3 E preserves them in his enumeration of the dramatis personae. Thrasymachus, too, of Chalcedon, and Charmantides of the deme of Paeania, and Kleitophon the son of Aristonymus. And the father of Polemarchus, Cephalus, was also at home.
And I thought him much aged, for it was a long time since I had seen him. He was sitting on a sort of couch with cushions and he had a chaplet Footnote 5A companion picture to the fair vision of the youthful Lysis (Lysis, 207 A). The wreath was worn at the sacrifice. on his head, for he had just finished sacrificing in the court. So we went and sat down beside him, for there were seats there disposed in a circle. Footnote 6For the seats compare Protagoras 317 D-E, Cicero Laelius 1. 2 in hemicyclio sedentem.
As soon as he saw me Cephalus greeted me and said, You are not a very frequent Footnote 7The language recalls the Homeric formula,
πάρος γε μὲν οὔτι θαμίζεις
, Iliad xviii. 386, Odyssey v. 88, Jebb on O.C. 672. Cephalus’ friendly urgency to Socrates is in the tone of Laches 181 C. visitor, Socrates. You don’t often come down to the Peiraeus to see us. That is not right. For if I were still able to make the journey up to town easily there would be no need of your resorting hither, but we would go to visit you. But as it is you should not space too widely your visits here. For I would have you know that, for my part, as the satisfactions of the body decay, Footnote 8Plato characteristically contrasts the transitory pleasures of the body with the enduring joys of the mind. Phaedrus 258 E. Anaximenes imitates and expands the passage, Stobaeus, 117. 5. Pleasures are not strictly speaking of
the body, but in
or relating to
it. See my Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 45. in the same measure my desire for the pleasures of good talk and my delight in them increase. Don’t refuse then, but be yourself a companion to these lads and make our house your resort and regard us as your very good friends and intimates.Why, yes, Cephalus,
said I, and I enjoy talking with the very aged. For to my thinking we have to learn of them as it were from wayfarers Footnote 9Much of this passage, including the comparison of old men to travellers, is copied by Cicero, De sen. 3 ff. who have preceded us on a road on which we too, it may be, must some time fare—what Footnote 10Cf. Horace, Epistles i. 11
Quid tibi visa Chios?
The vague neuter and the slight anacoluthon give a colloquial turn to the sentence. it is like—is it rough Footnote 11Hesiod, Works and Days 290, says that the path of virtue is rough at first and then grows easy. and hard going or easy and pleasant to travel. And so now I would fain learn of you what you think of this thing, now that your time has come to it, the thing that the poets call the threshold Footnote 12This, whatever its precise meaning, was a familiar phrase like our
Is it a hard part of life to bear or what report have you to make of it?One foot in the grave.
Cf. Leaf on Iliad xxii. 60, xxiv 487; Hyperides (i. xx. 13) employs it without apology in prose. of old age.
Book 1