REPUBLIC-LOEB-Edited.doc

PLATO: REPUBLIC, translated by Paul Shorey (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical
Library, 1957).
BOOK I
. Socrates
. Glaucon
. Polemarchus
. Thrasymachus
. Adeimantus
. Cephalus
[327a] Socrates
I1 went down yesterday to the Peiraeus2 with Glaucon, the son of Ariston,
to pay my devotions3 to the Goddess,4 and also because I wished to see how
they would conduct the festival since this was its inauguration.5 I thought
the procession of the citizens very fine, but it was no better than the
show, made by the marching of the Thracian contingent.
[327b] After we had said our prayers and seen the spectacle we were
starting for town when Polemarchus, the son of Cephalus, caught sight of us
from a distance as we were hastening homeward6 and ordered his boy7 run and
bid us to wait8 for him, and the boy caught hold9 of my himation from
behind and said, "Polemarchus wants you to wait." And I turned around and
asked where his master10 was.
"There he is," he said, "behind you, coming this way. Wait for him."
"So we will," said Glaucon, [327c] and shortly after Polemarchus came up
and Adeimantus, the brother of Glaucon, and Niceratus, the son of Nicias,
and a few others apparently from the procession. Whereupon Polemarchus
said, "Socrates, you appear to have turned your faces townward and to be
going to leave us."
"Not a bad guess," said I.
"But you see how many we are?" he said.
"Surely."
"You must either then prove yourselves the better men11 or stay here."
"Why, is there not left," said I, "the alternative of our persuading12 you
that you ought to let us go?"
"But could you persuade us," said he, "if we refused to listen?"
"Nohow," said Glaucon.
"Well, we won't listen, and you might as well make up your minds to it."
"Do you mean to say," interposed Adeimantus, [328a] "that you haven't heard
that there is to be a torchlight race13 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
up14 and go out and see the sights and meet a lot of the lads there and
have good talk. So stay [328b] and do as we ask."15 "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, and16 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, [328c] 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 chaplet17
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.18
As soon as he saw me Cephalus greeted me and said, "You are not a very
frequent19 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, [328d] 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,20 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.
[328e] For to my thinking we have to learn of them as it were from
wayfarers21 who have preceded us on a road on which we too, it may be, must
some time fare--what22 it is like--is it rough23 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 threshold24 of old age.' Is it a hard part of life to bear or
what report have you to make of it?"
"Yes, indeed, Socrates," he said, "I will tell you my own feeling about it.
[329a] For it often happens that some of us elders of about the same age
come together and verify25 the old saw of like to like. At these reunions
most of us make lament, longing for the lost joys of youth and recalling to
mind the pleasures of wine, women, and feasts, and other things thereto
appertaining, and they repine in the belief that the greatest things have
been taken from them and that then they lived well and now it is no life at
all.26 And some of them [329b] complain of the indignities that friends and
kinsmen put upon old age and thereto recite a doleful litany27 of all the
miseries for which they blame old age. But in my opinion, Socrates, they do
not put the blame on the real cause.28 For if it were the cause I too
should have had the same experience so far as old age is concerned, and so
would all others who have come to this time of life. But in fact I have ere
now met with others who do not feel in this way, and in particular I
remember hearing Sophocles the poet greeted by a fellow who asked,
[329c] 'How about your service of Aphrodite, Sophocles--is your natural
force still unabated?' And he replied, 'Hush, man, most gladly have I
escaped this thing you talk of, as if I had run away from a raging and
savage beast of a master.'29 I thought it a good answer then and now I
think so still more. For in very truth there comes to old age a great
tranquillity in such matters and a blessed release. When the fierce
tensions30 of the passions and desires relax, then is the word of Sophocles
approved, [329d] and we are rid of many and mad31 masters. But indeed in
respect of these complaints and in the matter of our relations with kinsmen
and friends there is just one cause, Socrates--not old age, but the
character of the man. For if men are temperate and cheerful32 even old age
is only moderately burdensome. But if the reverse, old age, Socrates, and
youth are hard for such dispositions."
And I was filled with admiration33 for the man by these words, and desirous
of hearing more I tried to draw him out and said, "I fancy,
[329e] Cephalus, that most people, when they hear you talk in this way, are
not convinced but think that you bear old age lightly not because of your
character but because of your wealth. 'For the rich,' they say, 'have many
consolations.'"34 "You are right," he said.
"They don't accept my view and there is something in their objection,
though not so much as they suppose. But the retort of Themistocles comes in
pat here, who, when a man from the little island of Seriphus35 grew abusive
and told him that he owed his fame not to himself [330a] but to the city
from which he came, replied that neither would he himself ever have made a
name if he had been born in Seriphus nor the other if he had been an
Athenian. And the same principle applies excellently to those who not being
rich take old age hard; for neither would the reasonable man find it
altogether easy to endure old age conjoined with poverty, nor would the
unreasonable man by the attainment of riches ever attain to self-
contentment and a cheerful temper."
"May I ask, Cephalus," said I, "whether you inherited most of your
possessions or acquired them yourself?"
"Acquired, eh?" he said. [330b] "As a moneymaker, I hold a place somewhere
halfway between my grandfather and my father. For my grandfather and
namesake36 inherited about as much property as I now possess and multiplied
it many times, my father Lysanias reduced it below the present amount, and
I am content if I shall leave the estate to these boys not less but by some
slight measure more than my inheritance."
"The reason I asked," I said, is that you appear to me not to be over-fond
of money. [330c] And that is generally the case with those who have not
earned it themselves.37 But those who have themselves acquired it have a
double reason in comparison with other men for loving it. For just as poets
feel complacency about their own poems and fathers about their own sons,38
so men who have made money take this money seriously as their own creation
and they also value it for its uses as other people do. So they are hard to
talk to since they are unwilling to commend anything except wealth."
[330d] "You are right," he replied.
"I assuredly am," said I.
"But tell me further this. What do you regard as the greatest benefit you
have enjoyed from the possession of property?"
"Something," he said, "which I might not easily bring many to believe if I
told them.39 For let me tell you, Socrates," he said, "that when a man
begins to realize that he is going to die, he is filled with apprehensions
and concern about matters that before did not occur to him. The tales that
are told of the world below and how the men who have done wrong here must
pay the penalty there,40 though he may have laughed them down41 hitherto,
[330e] then begin to torture his soul with the doubt that there may be some
truth in them. And apart from that the man himself42 either from the
weakness of old age or possibly as being now nearer to the things beyond
has a somewhat clearer view of them. Be that as it may, he is filled with
doubt, surmises, and alarms and begins to reckon up and consider whether he
has ever wronged anyone. Now he to whom the ledger of his life shows an
account of many evil deeds starts up43 even from his dreams like children
again and again in affright and his days are haunted by anticipations of
worse to come. But on him who is conscious of no wrong [331a] that he has
done a sweet hope44 ever attends and a goodly to be nurse of his old age,
as Pindar45 too says. For a beautiful saying it