Now in such a city, in the polis êdê tryphôsa,+ there will be an
increase of population:-- kai hê chôra pou hê tote hikanê smikra ex
hikanês estai.+ And in an age which perhaps had the military spirit in
excess Plato's thoughts pass on immediately to wars of aggression:--
oukoun tês tôn plêsion chôras hêmin apotmêteon?+ We must take something,
if we can, from Megara or from Sparta; which doubtless in its turn
would do the same by us. As a measure of relief however that was not
necessarily the next step. The needs of an out-pushing population
might have suggested to Plato what is perhaps the most brilliant and
animating episode in the entire history of Greece, its early
colonisation, with all the bright stories, full of the piety, the
generosity of a youthful people, that had gathered about it. No, the
next step in social development was not necessarily going to war. In
either case however, aggressive action against our neighbours, or
defence of our distant brethren beyond the seas [247] at Cyrene or
Syracuse against rival adventurers, we shall require a new class of
persons, men of the sword, to fight for us if need be. Ah! You hear
the notes of the trumpet, and therewith already the stir of an
enlarging human life, its passions, its manifold interests. Phylakes
or epikouroi,+ watchmen or auxiliaries, our new servants comprehend at
first our masters to be, whom a further act of differentiation will
distinguish as philosophers and kings from the strictly military order.
Plato nevertheless in his search for the true idea of Justice, of
rightness in things, may be said now to have seen land. Organic
relationship is come into the rude social elements and made of them a
body, a society. Rudimentary though it may still be, the definition of
Justice, as also of Injustice, is now applicable to its processes.
There is a music in the affairs of men, in which one may take one's due
part, which one may spoil.
Criticising mythology Plato speaks of certain fables, to be made by
those who are apt at such things, under proper spiritual authority, so
to term it, hôs en pharmakou eidei ta pseudê ta en deonti genomena,+
medicinable lies or fictions, with a provisional or economised truth in
them, set forth under such terms as simple souls could best receive.
Just here, at the end of the third book of The Republic he introduces
such a fable: phoinikikon pseudos,+ he calls it, a miner's story, about
copper and silver and gold, such as may really [248] have been current
among the primitive inhabitants of the island from which metal and the
art of working it had been introduced into Greece.--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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