The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

outstanding allotment of happiness to the guardians. He compares this condition to a
hypothetically unsuited choice of color for the painting of the eyes of a statue:
What we are doing at the moment, we believe, is not separating off a few of the
inhabitants, and making them happy, but constructing a complete city, and making
that happy. We’ll have a look at its opposite later. Imagine we were putting the
colors [gra&fontaj] on a[n] a)ndria&nta, and someone came along and told us
we were doing it wrong, since we weren’t using the most beautiful colors for the
most beautiful parts of the zw|&ou. The eyes, the most beautiful feature, had been
colored black, not purple. We would regard it as a quite reasonable defense to say
to him: “Hang on a minute. You surely don’t think, do you, that we should make
the eyes—or any of the other parts of the body—so beautiful that they don’t even
look like eyes. The thing to ask yourself is whether by giving the right colors to
everything we are making the whole thing beautiful.” It’s the same with us. You
mustn’t start forcing us to give the guardians the kind of happiness which will
turn them into anything other than guardians. (Resp. 420c) [148]
In this passage, Socrates uses the word gra&fontaj to refer to the application of colors
on an a)ndria&nta. The latter is the accusative singular of a)ndria&j, a word which,
according to Gloria Ferrari, can be understood as “figure of manhood,” and its material
equivalent can be found in the kouros type in sculpture. 585 As she explains further:
“although from the fifth century B.C. onward, this word is used to mean “statue”—seated
as well as standing female as well as male—there are indications that it carried special
connotations involving manliness and Apollo.” 586 Regarding the meaning of the word in
the passage, Reginald Allen, Tom Griffith, and Paul Shorey agree on the meaning of
a)ndria&nta as “statue.” Griffith, in particular, translates it as “statue of a man.” 587
Liddell and Scott point out the etymological connection of a)ndria&j with a)nh&r, that is,
585 Ferrari, Figures of Speech 125-126, ns. 76-77 where she discusses material and literary evidence for the
occurrence of the word, such as the colossal Apollo dedicated by the Naxians on Delos which is called
a)ndria&j in the inscription on its base, and also ancient writers, such as Herodotus (6.118.12) and Diodorus
Siculus (13.108.4.1), who mention a)ndria&ntej representing Apollo.
586 Ferrari, Figures of Speech 125, n. 75, citing Philipp, Tektonon Daidala 106-107, for the meaning of the
word as a statue of both a male and female figure.
587 R. E. Allen, tr., Plato. The Republic (New Haven and London, 2006) 112; T. Griffith, tr., Plato. The
Republic (Cambridge, 2000) 112; P. Shorey, ed., tr., Plato. The Republic I (London and Cambridge, Mass.,
1930; repr. 1963) 319.
299