THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO - Studyplace

INTRODucndff
their enemies; but on the whole the returning exiles showed great moderation.
Unfortunatdy, however, some of the men in power brought my
friend Socrates to trial on an abominable charge, the very last that could
be made against Socrates-the charge of impiety. He was condemned
and put to death-he who had refused to share the infamy of arresting
one of the accusers' own friends when they themselves were in exile
and misfortune.
'When I considered these things and the men who were directing
public affairs,' and made a closer study, as I grew older, of law and
custom, the harder it seemed to me to govern a state rightly. Without
friends and trustworthy associates it was impossible to act; and these
could not readily be found among my acquaintance, now that Athens
was no longer ruled by the manners and institutions of our forefathers;
and to make new associates was by no means easy. At the
same time the whole fabric of law and custom was going from bad
to worse at an alarming rate. The result was that I, who had at first
been full of eagerness for a public career, when I sawall this happening
and everything going to pieces, fell at last into bewilderment. I did
not cease to think in what way this situation might be amended and
in particular the whole organization of the state; but I was all the
while waiting for the right opportunity for action.'
This passage reveals much of Plato's character. Neither he nor
his friends had yet seen that his extraordinary gifts were not those
of a man of action, who knows that, if he is to get anything done,
he must put up with associates who are not to his liking, lay aside
ideal aspirations, and stoop to opportunism and compromise. He
is already dreaming of the perfect society, and capable of imagining
that the 'Thirty Tyrants,' of all men, might effect a moral
reformation. It is not surprising that an occasion which he would
consider 'the right opportunity for action' never presented itself.
He stood between two powerful forces, pulling opposite ways: the
importunities of his political friends, appealing to his natural ambition,
and the influence of Socrates, deepened by the recent impression
of his trial and death. Among the promising young men
pictured in the early dialogues as conversing with Socrates, one
figure is missing, the most important of all, Plato himself. But
perhaps his position may be illustrated from a dialogue in which
Alcibiades, on the threshold of public life, is convinced that he