THE PHILEBUS OF PLATO EDITED BY OHAELES BADHAM. \n THE PHILEBUS OF PLATO, WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND APPENDIX; TOGETHER WITH A CEITICAL LETTER ON THE LAWS OF PLATO, AND A CHAPTER OF PALAEOGRAPHICAL REMARKS; BY CHARLES BADHAM, D.D, PBOFE380R IK THE UWH'ERSITV OF SYDNEY, KEW SOUTH WALKS. SECOND EDITION REVISED AND ENLARGED. "WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; AND 20, SOtJTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBITRGH. 1878. m ft)- ^r/^. f,j^^ I TO THE REV. W. H. THOMPSON, D.D., MASTElt OP TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBSIDGE. My dear Masteb, A vivid remembrance of you arises in my thoughts whenever I called to Plato and that I am upon occupy myself with ; now am once more editing the Philebus, I cannot but revert to the time when I derived so much help and encouragement from you in the execution of my earlier task. What then is more natural than that I should wish to see your name appearing in the pre- sent work, which is not merely a new edition, but an attempt to redeem a hasty and crude performance by something which I shall be content to leave behind me? There are many reasons why I desire to make this record of our friendship; one is the intrinsic worth of the friendship itself as it affects me. During the two and twenty years which have passed since the First Edition, your good will has never flagged. Pirst you spared no pains to enable me to remain in England; and afterwards when some StvrcQog nXovg became expedient, it was through your good opin- ion and the weight of your authority, at least as much as through any other cause, that I found my way to a haven not altogether undesirable. You also were one of the few who understood that among the trials of banishment not the least is the fear of being utterly forgotten; so while many good friends, and some very eminent scholars, have scarcely ever found sufficient leisure to prove that fear to be groundless, your letters have sustained my hopes. One other English Scholar, of whose friendship we are both proud, was not less considerate; and now I must record my great affection for him in a Book which he will not read. Never did any one so generously interpret the obligations of his high place to the prejudice of his own ease and comfort, and in favour of all who claimed his help, as the late Lord Lyttelton. He was, Platiiiiis Plutcbii!.. ,, n LETTER TO THOMPSON. as you well know, a man of infinite modesty; and of the ge- nuineness of that modesty none could doubt, who saw how per- fectly free he was from any sickly fear of publicity. He took his place in the world with frank boldness, and did his work in it according to his sense of right. As an excellent scholar, and as a champion of scholarship, he did good service to a cause not overburdened with defenders; but while ho was glad to seek re- fuge from sadder thoughts in Classical studies, he never hid himself in them to escape from any troubles or labours which could make him useful to mankind. There is yet another common friend of oui-s, who needs my praise as little as the other, and who is equally removed from all human comments; but this is pro- bably the last time I shall ever publish anything, and I will not lose my only chance of glorying in his friendship. Frederick Denison Maurice was, as he informed me many years ago, an enthusiastic admirer of Plato's Philebus. He saw more deeply of that into it, and indeed into all Philosophy, by reason devout liumility which made him so accurate an observer of many things which a man who is thinking half of his author and half of himself is sure to overlook. Where other men perplexed them- selves with their own ingenuity and love of systems, liis teach- able sympathy with all that he studied led him into truths which they had neglected as unmeaning. But it is not for me to ce- lebrate that great Heart and Mind. I merely claim him as one of those friends for whom my affection revived with peculiar vi- vidness while I was busied with the preparations for this Book. As for the Book itself, you will perhaps have leisure to decide, whether on the whole it contains many improvements on its pre- decessor: but having once addressed myself to you, I am loth to certain Platonic lucu- let you go, without taking some note of brations, the fruit of the past year. They are verbal criticisms; but verbal criticisms which make an author more legible, seem to me no barren exercise. Nor will you think so, who have never had any lot or part with the supercilious and ignorant dogmatisers who have brought scholarship to so low an ebb in England. You will be glad to find any text made a little more worthy of its author, than the Grisculi have made it; and will rejoice for the sake of those who are to come after us, if they are not scared away from important works by the almost hopeless state in which LETTER TO THOMPSON. XIT they have been left. This is why I have again taken up the same inquiry into the later books of the Laws, which I com- menced in a certain Epistola. My belief is now stronger than ever, that three fourths of the bad grammar, obscurity and uou- sence which we find in good authors is due to nothing more than interpolations, whether purposely inserted or accidentally derived from the Margin. Not that the other part of criticism which detects the right word lurking under the wrong has done all its work; very far from it. Take the following example from the Sophist, p. 218, A. Aqa toivvv, <a |ivf, ovtco xai xtt9ajteQ tms SwKQairjg naai xt^nQiOi^ivog ton; if you will read Heindorf's note, you will see that second thoughts are not always wiser. One easily confounded letter has caused all this trouble. Theaetetus says: /Iqu toivvv, <a i., ovtag— Or take this in the Politicus, 286, d; where for '^qia(itv Stiv iie(i,vrja9ctt, it is self-evident that 8. — j-ou want icp. iitfi(Qi<s9ai. In the Laws, 904, d where we now read 8ictq>iQovza xal (itti^aXs xonov ayiov okov ^Bzaxoiiiai^iioa, common sense bids us read, 6. x. ittteka^t ronov, ayiav oSov ftiva- xo^ia9tlaa, leaving out what follows. I do not know whether you have seen a striking proof of the audacity of interpolators, which I adduced from the Phaedo. It is in the passage ') beginning av 6i StSicog av, to Xtyofitvov, rrjv Cavrov axiuv, where the very opposi/e precept is put into Socrates' mouth in place of that which Plato had assigned to him; and all for what? Because the two forms Img av and imrjg av were disputing for admission, some one inserted both, but one with a change of accent and breathing, and then another came and changed jro/pstv iwiy? av za arc Ixii- into xai VJJ5 OQ^ri^ivia, xaiQiLV i(pr]g dv oix anoxgivaio, sag av Ttt ttTi ixtivTjg OQtirj&ivra exitl>aio. And on this rubbish Wytten- bach comments as on a sound logical precept. Another such forgery occurs in Euthydemus 305, c, d. Here Iv 6i rolg iSloig X6- yoig and so forth down to xokoviad-ai, ought to be removed back so as to precede aait ^laQu naaiv. But because it was inserted out of its place, in order to give it some air of continuity, the built for it this beautiful tlvai scribe bridge: (tev yag zfj aXtj^cla acpag aocpcozaT V g : which Cobet, little dreaming whose work he was correcting, altered into acpug ao(pt6zttzoi. In the same dialogue 287, B, f, we have these glaring interpolations: [a to tiquxov 1) P. 101, D. IV LETTER TO THOMPSON. nnofiiv vvv avainfivr'iaKCi xortj — [w Xiytig] — [inet ilni roig Xoyoig.] But I must now enter upon the Laws. Shall 1 follow Pindar's precept of nQoeanov TfiXavyis^ or that given in Troilus and Cres- sida, Avhich I will quote, ut obiter emendem ? 1) Let us like merchants shew our fouler wares And think perchance they'll sell: if not, tlie lustre O'th' better yet to shew will shew the better By shewing the worse first. I will not presume to say that the following correction is better or worse than the general run, but the passage is at all events if a strikingly corrupt one, and so an emendation of it, tenable, deserves a special place. In the twelfth Book p. 960, c, d, of Stephens we find the follow-, ing passage, which looks at first impenetrable; but by and by we discern a kind of bush-track, and at last, if I am not altogetlier mistaken, with a very little thought and very sober dealing with difficulties, we are able to restore an old highway in all its com- pleteness. A®. 'SI Kkiivia, noXla tmv (finQoa&iv jtaAcoj vfii'jjTai, c^jfdui' Se OVX T/XjCrO TO T(BV (JLOtQCOV TtQOGQtJllCtttt. KA. Tloia Sr}; A®. To Acf/taiv fi£V xr^v nqax7]v tlvai, Kk(o&co Si t»}v SevtcQav, 8s tcov T^v "Atqotiov TQizfjv, GareiQav ki^divimv, aTtcixaafiiva ri) Tmv xka)a9evTav too tcvqI, t^v afisraaTQOqjov antgyu^oiilvuv Svva- d xot jtoksi xal noXixda Sti jtol (iiv dij fir] jjlovov vyltiui' ecoTrjQiav aXkct xal kv TOig acofiaai TtaQaGKtva^eiv, Evvoiiiav xaig t\)v^^alg, ficiX- Xov Si aaTtiQiav rmv vofKOV.