THE REPUBLIC OF PLATO - Studyplace

INTIlODUcnoN
xxiii
death do not seem out of place. The problem is Plato's own. Callicles
is the devil's advocate, standing for those men of the world
who had tried to enlist him, and also for the impulse in Plato himself
which had tempted him to yidd. Even now the trouble was
not laid to rest by his refusal. Some twenty years later (367), when
he was invited to Sicily a second time, he was tormented by the
fear of being taken for a mere dreamer, if he should decline the
opportunity, however unpromising, of carrying his ideas into
practice. 1 His conclusion, when he wrote the Gorgias, was that to
enter politics without sacrificing the ideals he had learnt from
Socrates would be to court Socrates' fate and to incur a usdess
martyrdom. This is indicated where Socrates, after claiming to be
the one man in Athens who understands true statesmanship, adds
that if he were called before a tribunal, he would have no more
chance of acquittal than a doctor arraigned before a jury of children
by a pastry-cook. In the letter already quoted (Ep. vii. 331 n),
among some general reflections on the giving of political advice,
Plato defines the prudent man's attitude towards his own country.
He should express his disapproval, unless he thinks that no one
will listen or it will cost him his life. He must not use revolutionary
violence; if that is the only expedient, he should refrain from
action and pray for the best both for himself and for his country.
All these passages find an echo in the Republic, where the philosopher,
in his enforced inaction, is compared to the traveller taking
shelter under a wall from a driving stornr of dust and hail, 'con~
tent if he can keep his hands clean from iniquity while this life
lasts, and when the end comes take his departure, with good hopes,
in serenity and peace' (496 D, p. 204).
Callicles quotes from Euripides' Antiope a passage where Zethus
urges his twin brother Amphion, who had 'built the walls of
Thebes with ravishing sounds of his mdodious lute,' to abandon
his art and take to the active life. It is significant that this contrast
should occur in a play written towards the close of the war. In the
sixth century the wise man had been a man of affairs, like Solon
1 Ep. vii. 327-8.