Complete Works (345 page)

1
. Accepting the emendation
akouontes per t
ō
n t
ē
ide
in b4–5.

V

P
LATO TO
P
ERDICCAS,
¹
W
ELFARE
.

I have advised Euphraeus, as you wrote me, to look studiously after your interests, and it is right that I should give you also the proverbial “holy counsel” of a friend on the various matters you mention, and [d] particularly as to the use you should now make of Euphraeus. The man can be of service to you in many ways, but most of all in supplying what you now lack, for you are young and there are not many who can counsel young men about it. Constitutions, like species of animals, have each their own language—democracy one, oligarchy another, and monarchy still another. Many persons would say they know these languages, but for the [e] most part, and with rare exceptions, they fall short of understanding them. The constitution that speaks its own language to gods and men, and suits its actions to its words, always prospers and survives; but it goes to ruin if it imitates another. Now in this Euphraeus can perhaps be of most use to you, though he will be a manly aid in other respects as well; I believe that he can search out the words appropriate to monarchy as well as any
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man in your service. Use him, then, for this, and you will not only profit yourself but confer upon him a very great benefit.

If anyone hears this and says, “Plato apparently claims to know what is good for a democracy, but though he is at liberty to speak in the assembly and give it his best advice, he has never yet stood up and said a word,” you can answer by saying, “Plato was born late in the life of his native city, and he found the demos advanced in years and habituated by former [b] advisers to many practices incompatible with the advice he would give. Nothing would be sweeter to him than to give advice to the demos as to a father, if he did not think he would be risking danger in vain and accomplish nothing. He would do the same about advising me, I know. If we seemed to him incurable, he would bid us a long farewell and refrain from advising about me or my affairs.” Good luck! [c]

1
. Perdiccas III, elder brother of Philip and king of Macedon from 364 to 359.

VI

P
LATO TO
H
ERMIAS AND
E
RASTUS AND
C
ORISCUS
,
¹
W
ELFARE
.

It is evident to me that some god has graciously and generously prepared good luck for you, if you receive his gift properly. For you are living as neighbors to one another and each of you needs what the others can best [d] supply. Hermias should know that his power for all purposes has its greatest support not in the number of his horses or other equipment of war, nor in the gold he adds to his treasury, but in steadfast friends of solid character. And to Erastus and Coriscus I say, “old as I am,” that they need to supplement their knowledge of the Ideas—that noble doctrine—with the knowledge and capacity to protect themselves against wicked [e] and unjust men. They are inexperienced, since they have spent a great part of their lives with us, among men of moderation and good will; this is why I said they need some power to protect them, that they may not be forced to neglect the true wisdom and concern themselves more than is fitting with that which is worldly and necessary. Now this power that they need Hermias apparently possesses, both as a natural gift (so far as one
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may judge without knowing him), and as an art perfected by experience.

What is the point of these remarks? To you, Hermias, since I have known Erastus and Coriscus longer than you have, I solemnly declare and bear witness that you will not easily find more trustworthy characters than these neighbors of yours, and I therefore advise you to make it a matter of central importance to attach yourself to them by every honorable means. Coriscus and Erastus in their turn I advise to hold fast to Hermias and to [b] try to develop this mutual alliance into a bond of friendship. If ever any one of you should seem to be weakening this union (for nothing human is altogether secure), send a letter to me and my friends declaring the grievance; for unless the injury be very grave, I believe your sense of justice and your respect for us will make the words that we may send more efficacious than any incantation would be in binding up the wound and causing you to grow together again into friendship and fellowship as [c] before. If all of us, you and we alike, according to our several abilities and opportunities, apply our wisdom to the preservation of this bond, the prophecies I have just uttered will come true. What will happen if we do not, I will not say, for I am prophesying only what is good, and I declare that with God’s help we shall bring all these things to a good issue.

Let this letter be read, if possible, by all three of you gathered together, otherwise by twos, and as often as you can in common. Adopt it as a just [d] and binding law and covenant, taking a solemn oath—in gentlemanly earnest, but with the playfulness that is the sister of solemnity—in the name of the divine letter of all things present and to come, and in the name of the lordly father of this governor and cause, whom we shall all some day clearly know, in so far as the blessed are able to know him, if we truly live the life of philosophy.

1
. Hermias was tyrant of Atarneus and Assos in the Troad; Erastus and Coriscus were members of the Academy.

VII

P
LATO TO THE
F
RIENDS AND
F
OLLOWERS OF
D
ION
, W
ELFARE
.

You have written me that I must consider your aims as identical with those that Dion had, and you therefore urge me to co-operate with you
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as much as I can, both in word and in deed. My answer is that if your views and purposes are really the same as his, I agree to join with you; if not, I shall have to consider the matter further. What his principles and ambitions were I can tell you, I may say, not from conjecture, but from certain knowledge. For when I first came to Syracuse, being then about forty years of age, Dion was of the age that Hipparinus is now; and it was [b] then that he came to the opinions which he continued to hold until the end; the Syracusans, he thought, ought to be free and live under the best of laws. It would not then be surprising if some divine power should bring Hipparinus also to the same mind that Dion had about government. To learn the way in which these convictions come about is instructive to young and old alike; and since the present occasion seems appropriate, I will try to describe how they originated in my own case.

When I was a young man I had the same ambition as many others: I thought of entering public life as soon as I came of age. And certain happenings in public affairs favored me, as follows. The constitution we [c] then had, being anathema to many, was overthrown; and a new government was set up consisting of fifty-one men, two groups—one of eleven and another of ten—to police the market place and perform other necessary duties in the city and the Piraeus respectively, and above them thirty other [d] officers with absolute powers. Some of these men happened to be relatives and acquaintances of mine, and they invited me to join them at once in what seemed to be a proper undertaking. My attitude toward them is not surprising, because I was young. I thought that they were going to lead the city out of the unjust life she had been living and establish her in the path of justice, so that I watched them eagerly to see what they would do. But as I watched them they showed in a short time that the preceding constitution had been a precious thing. Among their other deeds they named Socrates, an older friend of mine whom I should not hesitate to [e] call the justest man of that time, as one of a group sent to arrest a certain citizen
¹
who was to be put to death illegally, planning thereby to make
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Socrates willy-nilly a party to their actions. But he refused, risking the utmost danger rather than be an associate in their impious deeds. When I saw all this and other like things of no little consequence, I was appalled and drew back from that reign of injustice.
²
Not long afterwards the rule of the Thirty was overthrown and with it the entire constitution; and once more I felt the desire, though this time less strongly, to take part in public [b] and political affairs. Now many deplorable things occurred during those troubled days, and it is not surprising that under cover of the revolution too many old enmities were avenged; but in general those who returned from exile
³
acted with great restraint. By some chance, however, certain powerful persons brought into court this same friend Socrates, preferring against him a most shameless accusation, and one which he, of all men, [c] least deserved. For the prosecutors charged him with impiety, and the jury condemned and put to death the very man who, at the time when his accusers were themselves in misfortune and exile, had refused to have a part in the unjust arrest of one of their friends.

The more I reflected upon what was happening, upon what kind of men were active in politics, and upon the state of our laws and customs, and the older I grew, the more I realized how difficult it is to manage a city’s affairs rightly. For I saw it was impossible to do anything without friends [d] and loyal followers; and to find such men ready to hand would be a piece of sheer good luck, since our city was no longer guided by the customs and practices of our fathers, while to train up new ones was anything but easy. And the corruption of our written laws and our customs was [e] proceeding at such amazing speed that whereas at first I had been full of zeal for public life, when I noted these changes and saw how unstable everything was, I became in the end quite dizzy; and though I did not cease to reflect how an improvement could be brought about in our laws
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and in the whole constitution, yet I refrained from action, waiting for the proper time. At last I came to the conclusion that all existing states are badly governed and the condition of their laws practically incurable, without some miraculous remedy and the assistance of fortune; and I was forced to say, in praise of true philosophy, that from her height alone was it possible to discern what the nature of justice is, either in the state or in [b] the individual, and that the ills of the human race would never end until either those who are sincerely and truly lovers of wisdom come into political power, or the rulers of our cities, by the grace of God, learn true philosophy.

Such was the conviction I had when I arrived in Italy and Sicily for the first time. When I arrived and saw what they call there the “happy life”—a life filled with Italian and Syracusan banquets, with men gorging themselves twice a day and never sleeping alone at night, and following all the [c] other customs that go with this way of living—I was profoundly displeased. For no man under heaven who has cultivated such practices from his youth could possibly grow up to be wise—so miraculous a temper is against nature—or become temperate, or indeed acquire any other part of virtue. Nor could any city enjoy tranquillity, no matter how good its laws, [d] when its men think they must spend their all on excesses, and be easygoing about everything except the feasts and the drinking bouts and the pleasures of love that they pursue with professional zeal. These cities are always changing into tyrannies, or oligarchies, or democracies, while the rulers in them will not even hear mention of a just and equitable constitution.

These, plus the conviction previously mentioned, were my thoughts on [e] coming to Syracuse—a coming which may have been mere coincidence, but which seems to have been the work of some higher power laying then the foundation for what has since come to pass with respect to Dion and Syracuse; and for still further misfortunes, too, I fear, unless you now obey
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the advice which I am giving for the second time. How can I say that my coming to Sicily then was the beginning of it all? In my association with Dion, who was then a young man, I imparted to him my ideas of what was best for men and urged him to put them into practice; and in doing so I was in a way contriving, though quite unwittingly, the destruction of the tyranny that later came to pass. For Dion was in all things quick to learn, especially in the matters upon which I talked with him; and he listened with a zeal and attentiveness I had never encountered in any [b] young man, and he resolved to spend the rest of his life differently from most Italians and Sicilians, since he had come to love virtue more than pleasure and luxury. For this reason his way of life was more than annoying to those who guided themselves by the practices of tyranny, until the death of Dionysius. After that event he conceived that these convictions which he himself had got from proper instruction might arise in others besides [c] himself; and observing that they were in fact making their appearance in the minds of some, at least, of his associates, he thought that by the help of the gods Dionysius himself might be counted among this number; and if this should happen, it would mean an incalculably blessed life for the tyrant himself and the other Syracusans. Furthermore, he thought that by all means I should come to Syracuse as soon as possible and become a partner in his plans, for he recalled our conversations together and how [d] effectively they had aroused in him the desire for a life of nobility and virtue. If now he could arouse this desire in Dionysius, as he was attempting to do, he had high hopes of establishing throughout the land a true and happy life, without the massacres and deaths and the other evils that have come to pass. With this just purpose in mind Dion persuaded Dionysius to send for me, and he himself wrote urging me by all means to come at [e] once before certain others came in contact with Dionysius and diverted him to a less worthy ideal of life. His petition, though too long to give in full, was as follows: “What better opportunity can we expect,” he said, “than the situation which Providence has presented us with?” He mentioned the empire in Italy and Sicily, his own power in it, the youth of
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Dionysius, and the eager interest he was showing in philosophy and culture; Dion’s nephews and other relatives, he said, could be easily persuaded to accept the life and doctrine that I have always taught, and would be a very strong additional influence upon Dionysius; so that now, if ever, might we confidently hope to accomplish that union, in the same persons, of philosophers and rulers of great cities.