The Intelligent Troglodyte’s Guide to Plato’s Republic, 2016a

1 A Religious Festival in the Piraeus
See 327a-328b. The dialogue opens on a summer’s day at an unspecified time
during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) in the streets of the Piraeus, the
seaside port of Athens and its primary link to the outside world. Plato is writing in
hindsight, years after the war. So he and his audience know things that the
characters in the dialogue do not. Remarkable military blunders are to result in the
fall of Athens to Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. An oppressive antidemocratic
government known as “the Thirty” is to come to power. The wealth of
the house of Cephalus is to be confiscated. Lysias is to be driven into exile.
Niceratus is to be put to death. Polemarchus is to be put to death. The Thirty are
themselves to be overthrown, only to be replaced by a restored democracy that in
four years' time is to try and convict Socrates for promoting unorthodox religious
views and corrupting the youth. Socrates is to be put to death. Plato sets his
intellectual drama against this background: ruinous war (with Athenian greed and
pride at its root), civil strife, political instability, and injustice upon injustice. But
in the foreground we find ourselves in a setting of apparent peace and civility.
Socrates narrates in retrospect – how long after is unclear, but at least one season
has gone by (see 350d). He and one of Plato’s two older brothers, Glaucon, have
gone down to the Piraeus to take part in religious festivities dedicated to “the
goddess.” This goddess, who is identified at 354a as Bendis, was worshipped by
the Thracians, allies of Athens during the war. The worship of Bendis may have
been instituted in Athens in support of this important alliance. “Do you see how
many we are?” Polemarchus asks, playfully. “Certainly.” “Well, then, either you
must prove yourselves stronger than all these people or you will have to stay
here.” “Isn’t there another alternative still: that we persuade you that you should
let us go?” “But could you persuade us, if we won’t listen?” Socrates is evidently
on good terms with Polemarchus and the others. And yet, one is reminded through
this interchange how people deaf to rational persuasion can band together and
wield political power.
How is persuasion different from coercion?