The dialogues of Plato in five volumes, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Translated into English with analyses and introductions
Plato · en
timocracy to oligarchy: the sun, which is to the visible world what the
idea of good is to the intellectual, in the Sixth Book of the Republic
(508-9): the composite animal, having the form of a man, but containing
under a human skin a lion and a many-headed monster (Rep. ix. 588-9):
the great beast (vi. 493), i. e. the populace: and the wild beast within
us, meaning the passions which are always liable to break out (ix. 571):
the animated comparisons of the degradation of philosophy by the arts to
the dishonoured maiden (vi. 495-6), and of the tyrant to the parricide,
who ‘beats his father, having first taken away his arms’ (viii. 569):
the dog, who is your only philosopher (ii. 376 B): the grotesque and
rather paltry image of the argument wandering about without a head (Laws
vi. 752), which is repeated, not improved, from the Gorgias (509 D): the
argument personified as veiling her face (Rep. vi. 503 A), as engaged in
a chase (iv. 427 C), as breaking upon us in a first, second and third
wave (v. 457 C, 472 A, 473 C):—on these figures of speech the changes are
rung many times over. It is observable that nearly all these parables or
continuous images are found in the Republic; that which occurs in the
Theaetetus (149 ff.), of the midwifery of Socrates, is perhaps the only
exception. To make the list complete, the mathematical figure of the
number of the state (Rep. viii. 546), or the numerical interval which
separates king from tyrant (ix. 587-8), should not be forgotten.
[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]
The myth in the Gorgias is one of those descriptions of another life
which, like the Sixth Aeneid of Virgil, appear to contain reminiscences
of the mysteries. It is a vision of the rewards and punishments which
await good and bad men after death. It supposes the body to continue,
and to be in another world what it has become in this. It includes a
Paradiso, Purgatorio, and Inferno, like the sister myths of the Phaedo
and the Republic. The Inferno is reserved for great criminals only. The
argument of the dialogue is frequently referred to, and the meaning
breaks through so as rather to destroy the liveliness and consistency
of the picture. The structure of the fiction is very slight, the chief
point or moral being that in the judgments of another world there is
no possibility of concealment: Zeus has taken from men the power of
foreseeing death, and brings together the souls both of them and their
judges naked and undisguised at the judgment-seat. Both are exposed to
view, stripped of the veils and clothes which might prevent them from
seeing into or being seen by one another.
[Sidenote: _The myths of Plato._]