Volume 4

The works of Plato. A new and literal version, chiefly from the text of Stallbaum ... By Henry Cary [vol. II, Henry Davis, vols. III-VI, George Burges] / [Plato].

  • Plato
Date:
1848-1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of Plato. A new and literal version, chiefly from the text of Stallbaum ... By Henry Cary [vol. II, Henry Davis, vols. III-VI, George Burges] / [Plato]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    507/570 (page 499)
    possible,® and to make use of a compact, and a decisive law, which is indeed a just thing, and at the same time [taking an oath] ^ with attention, not devoid of taste,^ and amusement,® the sister^ of attention, and swearing by the god, who is the ruler of all things present and future, and by the father (and) lord of the ruler and cause, whom, if we philosophize truly, we shall all clearly know, as far as is possible for men under a good genius.^ EPISTLE VIL PLATO TO THE KINDKED AND FRIENDS OF DION—PROSPERITY. Ye have written to me, that I ought to think your senti¬ ments® are the same as those which Dion held ; and, more¬ over, you exhort me to make a common cause, as far as I can, in word and deed. If ye have the same opinion and desires with him I agree to unite with you; but if not, to take fre¬ quent counsel with myself. Now what his sentiments and desires were, I can tell pretty nearly, not by conjecture, but by having known them clearly. For when I came originally to Syracuse, being then nearly forty years old, Dion was of the age that Hipparinus is now; and the opinion he then held, he has still continued to hold, namely, that the Syracusans ought to be free and live according to the best laws. So that it is by no means wonderful, if some god has caused the latter to agree in the same opinion with the former on the subject of a polity. But what was the me¬ thod of producing this, is a thing not unworthy for the young ^ I cannot understand eTrofivvvrag here. It seems to have come from the end of the sentence, where one MS. omits it. 2 This is the only version I can give here of /twj djuono-^. 3 To this passage Wyttenbach, in Epist. Critic., p. 14, says Lucian al¬ luded in Amor., p. 455, cnrovdTjv—mi Tcaidiav tvjjiovffov. ^ On the metaphorical use of ddeXpbg see Ruhnken on Tim. p. 2, and Blomfield on JSsch. S. Th. 343. ^ Such I presume is the meaning here of tybaifiovoiv. ® Ficinus has “ eandem mentem in republica esse vobis conservaiidam,” as if he had found something in his MS., wanting at present in all the rest. 2 K 2