[352b]
the gods too1 are just.” “Have it that they
are,” he said. “So to the gods also, it seems, the
unjust man will be hateful, but the just man dear.”
“Revel in your discourse,” he said, “without
fear, for I shall not oppose you, so as not to offend your partisans
here.” “Fill up the measure of my feast,2 then, and complete it
for me,” I said, “by continuing to answer as you have
been doing. Now that the just appear to be wiser and better and more capable
of action and the unjust incapable of any common action,
1 This is the conventional climax of the plea for any moral ideal. So Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1179 a 24, proves that the σοφός being likest God is θεοφιλέστατος. Cf. Democ. fr. 217 D.μοῦνοι θεοφιλέες ὅσοις ἐχθρὸν τὸ ἀδικεῖν;382 E, 612 E, Philebus 39 E, Laws 716 D. The “enlightened” Thrasymachus is disgusted at this dragging in of the gods. Cf. Theaetetus 162 Dθεούς τε εἰς τὸ μέσον ἄγοντες. He is reported as saying (Diels p. 544.40) that the gods regard not human affairs, else they would not have overlooked the greatest of goods, justice, which men plainly do not use.
2 ἑστιάσεως keeps up the image of the feast of reason. Cf. 354 A-B, Lysis 211 C, Gorgias 522 A, Phaedrus 227 B, and Tim. 17 A, from which perhaps it becomes a commonplace in Dante and the Middle Ages.
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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