BOOK IX.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Plato and Benjamin Jowett
And the lustful and tyrannical desires are, as we saw, at the Bgreatest distance?
Yes.
And the royal and orderly desires are nearest?
Yes.
Then the tyrant will live at the greatest distance from true or natural pleasure, and the king at the least?
Certainly.
But if so, the tyrant will live most unpleasantly, and the king most pleasantly?
Inevitably.
The measure of the interval which separates the king from the tyrant, Would you know the measure of the interval which separates them?
Will you tell me?
There appear to be three pleasures, one genuine and two Cspurious: now the transgression of the tyrant reaches a point beyond the spurious; he has run away from the region of law and reason, and taken up his abode with certain slave pleasures which are his satellites, and the measure of his inferiority can only be expressed in a figure.
How do you mean?
I assume, I said, that the tyrant is in the third place from the oligarch; the democrat was in the middle? 301
Yes.
And if there is truth in what has preceded, he will be wedded to an image of pleasure which is thrice removed as to truth from the pleasure of the oligarch?
He will.
And the oligarch is third from the royal; since we count Das one royal and aristocratical?
Yes, he is third.
Then the tyrant is removed from true pleasure by the space of a number which is three times three?
Manifestly.
expressed under the symbol of a cube corresponding to the number 729. The shadow then of tyrannical pleasure determined by the number of length will be a plane figure.
Certainly.
And if you raise the power and make the plane a solid, there is no difficulty in seeing how vast is the interval by which the tyrant is parted from the king.
Yes; the arithmetician will easily do the sum.
Or if some person begins at the other end and measures Ethe interval by which the king is parted from the tyrant in truth of pleasure, he will find him, when the multiplication is completed, living 729 times more pleasantly, and the tyrant more painfully by this same interval.
What a wonderful calculation! And how enormous is the 588distance which separates the just from the unjust in regard to pleasure and pain!
which is nearly the number of days and nights in a year. Yet a true calculation, I said, and a number which nearly concerns human life, if human beings are concerned with days and nights and months and years3.
Yes, he said, human life is certainly concerned with them.
Then if the good and just man be thus superior in pleasure to the evil and unjust, his superiority will be infinitely greater in propriety of life and in beauty and virtue?
Immeasurably greater.
BRefutation of Thrasymachus. Well, I said, and now having arrived at this stage of the argument, we may revert to the words which brought us hither: Was not some one saying that injustice was a gain to the perfectly unjust who was reputed to be just?
Yes, that was said. 302
Now then, having determined the power and quality of justice and injustice, let us have a little conversation with him.
What shall we say to him?
Let us make an image of the soul, that he may have his own words presented before his eyes.
C Of what sort?
The triple animal who has outwardly the image of a man. An ideal image of the soul, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said to grow into one.
There are said of have been such unions.
Then do you now model the form of a multitudinous, many-headed monster, having a ring of heads of all manner of beasts, tame and wild, which he is able to generate and metamorphose at will.
Source notes
3 729 nearly equals the number of days and nights in the year.