And they produce a bushel Footnote 1ὅμαδον, lit. noise, hubbub, babel, here contemptuous. There is no need of the emendation ὁπμαθόν. Cf. 387 A, and Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, p. 82; cf. John Morley, Lit. Studies, p. 184,
A bushel of books.
of books of Musaeus and Orpheus, the offspring of the Moon and of the Muses, as they affirm, and these books they use in their ritual, and make not only ordinary men but states believe that there really are remissions of sins and purifications for deeds of injustice, by means of sacrifice and pleasant sport Footnote 2Cf. Laws 819 B. for the living,
and that there are also special rites for the defunct, which they call functions, that deliver us from evils in that other world, while terrible things await those who have neglected to sacrifice.
What, Socrates, do we suppose is the effect of all such sayings about the esteem in which men and gods hold virtue and vice upon the souls that hear them, the souls of young men who are quick-witted and capable of flitting, as it were, from one expression of opinion to another and inferring from them all the character and the path whereby a man would lead the best life? Such a youth Footnote 3Cf. Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 25: His (Plato’s) imagination was beset by the picture of some brilliant young Alcibiades standing at the crossways of life and debating in his mind whether the best chance for happiness lay in accepting the conventional moral law that serves to police the vulgar or in giving rein to the instincts and appetites of his own stronger nature. To confute the one, to convince the other, became to him the main problem of moral philosophy.
Cf. Introduction x-xi; also The Idea of Good in Plato’s Republic, p. 214. would most likely put to himself the question Pindar asks, Is it by justice or by crooked deceit that I the higher tower shall scale and so live my life out in fenced and guarded security?
Pindar, Fr. The consequences of my being just are, unless I likewise seem so, not assets, Footnote 4φανερὰ ζημία is familiar and slightly humorous. Cf. Starkie on Aristoph. Ach. 737. they say, but liabilities, labor and total loss; but if I am unjust and have procured myself a reputation for justice a godlike life is promised. Then since it is the seeming
Simonides, Fr. 76 Bergk, and Eur. Orest. 236 as the wise men show me, that masters the reality
and is lord of happiness, to this I must devote myself without reserve. For a front and a show Footnote 5A Pindaric mixture of metaphors beginning with a portico and garb, continuing with the illusory perspective of scene-painting, and concluding with the craftly fox trailed behind. I must draw about myself a shadow-line of virtue, but trail behind me the fox of most sage Archilochus, Footnote 6Cf. Fr. 86-89 Bergk, and Dio Chrysost. Or. 55. 285 R. κεπδαλέαν is a standing epithet of Reynard. Cf. Gildersleeve on Pindar Pyth. ii. 78. shifty and bent on gain. Nay, ’tis objected, it is not easy for a wrong-doer always to lie hid. Footnote 7Cf. my review of Jebb’s Bacchylides, Class. Phil., , vol. ii. p. 235. Neither is any other big thing facile, we shall reply. But all the same if we expect to be happy, we must pursue the path to which the footprints of our arguments point. For with a view to lying hid we will organize societies and political clubs, Footnote 8Cf. George Miller Calhoun, Athenian Clubs in Politics and Litigation, University of Chicago Dissertation, . and there are teachers of cajolery Footnote 9Lit. persuasion. Cf. the defintion of rhetoric, Gorgias 453 A. who impart the arts of the popular assembly and the court-room. So that, partly by persuasion, partly by force, we shall contrive to overreach with impunity. But against the gods, it may be said, neither secrecy nor force can avail. Well, if there are no gods, or they do not concern themselves with the doings of men, neither need we concern ourselves with eluding their observation. Footnote 10For the thought compare Tennyson, Lucretius: But he that holdsThe gods are careless, wherefore need he careGreatly for them?
Cf. also Euripides I.A. 1034-1035, Anth. Pal. x. 34. If they do exist and pay heed, we know and hear of them only from such discourses and from the poets who have described their pedigrees. But these same authorities tell us that the gods are capable of being persuaded and swerved from their course by sacrifice and soothing vows
and dedications. We must believe them in both or neither.
Book 2