PLATO AND THE TIMES HE LIVED IN P LA T 0 AND THE TIMES HE LIVED IN BY J. W. G. VA N OORDT LIT. HuM. Dn. MEMBER OF THE ÜAPE OF GOOD HoPE UNIVERSITY-ÜOUNCII:. OXFORD SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS I MEDIA, B.V. JAMES PARKER & Co. 1895 ISBN 978-94-017-6696-8 ISBN 978-94-017-6756-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-6756-9 C 0 NT E NT S. PAGE I. INTRODUOTORY ÜHAPTER. 1 li. THE AGE OF THE PoETS 3 In. LAW GIVERS AND PHILOSOPHERB • 10 IV. THE TRAGEDY OF GREOIAN HISTORY 16 V. SooRATES 27 VI. PLATo's LIFE. 43 VII. PLATO AND SooRATES 61 "VIII. PLATO AND THE ÜLDER SoHooLs oF PmLosoPHY 87 IX. PLATO AND THE ATHENIANS. 114 X. PLATONIAN LovE 140 XI. PLATO's IDEALIBM . 161 XII. PLATo's ÜLn AGE. 211 XIII. CoNOLUSION 255 PLATO AND THE TIMES HE LIVED IN. § I. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. FoR the present state of civilisation of the Enropean race we are mainly indebted to two nations, the Israelites and the Greeks. To call Christianity-the dominant religion among the European race-the outcome of Israelitic, or Jewish thought would be utterly at variance with the convictions of those professing the Christian faith ; but its first apostles were Jews, and whatever divine revelation was believed by the Israelites to have been bestowed upon themselves, is incor- porated with the sacred books of Christianity. Men of high standing who, in our days, do not believe in Christian revela- tion, still admit that the maintenance of Christian morality and of the practical effects of the spirit of Christianity is essential to the welfare of human society. Rarely has a higher praise been given to that spirit than by the late M. Taine in a volume published after his death.* As to the Jews, not only are those forming part of European society possessed of an influence on it unrivalled by that of any other section of the community, but it is a remarkable fact that, when in the 18th century a tendency began to prevail to break with the belief in Christian revelation, the best and wortbiest representatives of this tendency took a Jew who had lived a century before them, Spinoza, as their guide. It is hardly necessary to d well on the fact that the Greeks have not Iess proved our educators in secular wisdom than * Le Regime Moderne, vol. II p. 79 &c. and especially pp. 118-119. 1 1 2 PLATO AND THE TIMES HE LIVED IN. their Semitic brethren in matters religious. But while we have the .Jews, like the poor, always with us, hardly any- thing is seen of the Greeks, except in the immortal works of ancient Greece which have reached our times. From these works we know Greece as the great civilising power of the world for many a century, and the Greeks as a nation altogether unrivalled in mental capacity by any other of earlier or later ages. They had, however, to share the fate of all ruling races, and at a time when their inßuence was about to spread over a larger part of the world than they had ever dreamt of, two facts showed that the day of their decline had come. The one was that of their having to submit to a ruler who, although priding hirnself on being a genuine son of Greece, was in reality a foreigner. The other was that, with the great philosopher who bad been compelled by fate to take charge of the education of the man called to rule the Greeks, the time began when learning and science were to take the place, in Greece, of that spontaneaus productivity of the Grecian mind, which was characteristic of it when it was at its best. The countries conquered by Alexander were mainly destined to become provinces of an Empire founded by a nation which was scarcely known to him and his contemporaries ; and while Greek civilisation went band in band with Roman institutions in spreading over the Empire, it had lost its vitality and its productive force, the fruits of which, together with the maxims of administration and jurisprudence which were the main productions of the Roman mind, were to become the inheritance of the barbarous nations whose descendants are now ruling the world, until they have to make room for the inferior races whose days, unless the course of things be altered, are coming. Plato, the subject of this study, has exercised by his philosophy an infiuence on Christian thought hardly inferior to that of Aristotle, and is not less a genuine Greek of the noblest type than the greatest of his contemporaries and PLATO AND THE TIMES HE LIVED IN. 3 predecessors. Still even in bis works tbe signs of tbe times tbat were coming are not wanting, and it is cbiefly witb a view to delineate bis position as one of tbe last representa- tives of a great race bordering on its decline, tbat I bave ventured upon tbis sketcb. § Il. THE AGE OF THE POETS. " To cbildren," says Aristopbanes, " tbe schoolmaster makes tbings clear; to those wbo bave reacbed manhood tbe poet." So it was in tbe days of bis youtb, and if any country owed its greatness to its poets, it certainly was Greece. Wben Herodotus teils bis readers tbat tbey are indebted to Homer and Resiod for tbeir knowledge of tbe gods, tbere is a great deal of trutb in wbat be says, altbougb, for all tbat, the study of tbe mytbology and tbe primitive religious ideas of tbe Greeks is a most important one, and absolutely necessary for a proper understanding of tbeir history. The Greeks of tbe oldest days worshipped rivers and nympbs, trees, and perhaps snakes, as is usual with primitive nations ; they worsbipped Zeus and Hera, Athene and Apollo, whether or not in con- sequence of tbeir acquaintance witb Semitic ideas and usages; tbey looked up to tbe summit of Mount Olympus as to tbe abode of tbe beavenly gods, bidden from tbem by clouds except during tbe days wben its divine inbabitants bad gone to feast witb tbe men of tbe glowing faces, living in tbe distant countries wbere tbe sun sets and rises. But bow could tbey, witbout tbe Homeric poems, bave bad before their eyes tbat splendid picture of divine life on Olympus wbicb even in our days enraptures the minds of those wbo get a glance at it? How could they, witbout tbe tbeogony and the genealogical poems standing in Hesiod's name, have seen the connection between tbe many existing mytbs and reli- gious traditions, or tbat between tbe gods and tbeir own bered- itary rulers? 4 PLATO AND THE TIMES HE LIVED IN. What the men of our days learn from Homer and Resiod is the state of society in Greece at a time when it was much akin to that of primitive races, notwithstanding the fact that the existence of a comparatively high state of pre-Homeric civilisation can be, and is being, studied from ancient monu- ments; and likewise the moral and religious thoughts prevailing in the poets' days. The traditions of tribal life are still paramount in the lliad and Odyssey, although, in the latter, the state of matters wears a slightly moremodern aspect. . There are subordinate chiefs and heads of tribes; all are called kings, although the king of the tribe or nation is superior to the other chiefs; and even he, when an expedition like that against Troy is undertaken, has to submit to a king paramount. The king of the tribe is in possession of a domain cut out of the tribal lands. On the shield of Achilles the king is seen holding his sceptre and standing in his domain, where the young men of his tribe, performing their duties towards their chief, assist in cutting corn, and where an ox is killed and prepared for their dinner by the official servants of royalty. * Now among nations where tribal traditions prevail, there is a strong aristocratic tendency, and there is likewise ancestor- worship. Of this worship, however, although there is ample evidence of its existence in Greece and of its effects on the public mind, very little is found in the Homeric poems. This may be partly accounted for from the effects of historical events-which, however, as all our knowledge of them is based on poetical and popular traditions, it would be difficult to follow-and partly from the national spirit of the Greeks, who, looking up to Olympus as the residence of their Gods, saw in their kings not so much the descendants of the founders * That I!Q,{to, are the young men of the tribe bound to assist the king in the cultivation of his domain, is evident both from the passage referred to and from an expression in the narrative of Nausicaa's dream in the Odyssey. t9ijns are free men compelled by poverty to work, as overseers or otherwise, on the estates of Ianded proprietors. PLATO AND THE TIMES HE LIVED IN. 5 and primitive lawgivers of their tribes, as those on whom Zeus had bestowed the sceptre. The life, too, of kings surrounded by the great men of their tribes is like that of the Olympian gods ; the main difference is that the gods were immortal, whereas men were doomed to die. There is, perhaps, no passage in Homer which both shows more intuitive knowledge, on the part of the poet, of the motives by which man's conduct is governed, and at the same time gives a clearer insight into the relative position of Grecian kings in the Homeric times, than that about the quarre! between .Achilles and .Agamemnon. .Achille8, of course, does his duty in calling, inspired as he was by Hera, the Grecian army together for the purpose of devising measures to avert .Apollo's anger, and in asking a soothsayer to assist them ; but by pledging hirnself to protect Calchas, should even Agamemnon be pointed out by him as the cause of the evil, he naturally gives offence to the king paramount, who now insists on bis rights as such, and ultimately goes so far as to signify bis intention to make .Achilles pay for the loss inflicted on him by the soothsayer's announcement. Had not Athene intervened, bloodshed would have followed at once; but even without this the evils caused to the army by the conflict between the bravest of the Grecian chiefs and the king paramount were such as fully to justify Horace's words: " quidquid deliraut reges plectuntur .Achivi." What, however, in Horace's eyes, was a moral lesson con- veyed by Homer, was for the men in whose days the wrath of .Achilles was the subject of the most recent song, the narrative of an event which no one thought strange. It might be an unfortunate accident that the quarre! bad arisen, but the fault lay with both parties, and the fact that the army mainly relied, for its defence, on .Achilles, counter- balanced .Agamemnon's claim to be respected as holder of the sceptre bestowed on him by Zeus. But when Thersites, coming forward as the champion of the rights of the army at large, wants to have bis say about the doings of its leader,