[411b]
is softened like iron1 and is made useful instead of useless
and brittle. But when he continues2 the practice without remission
and is spellbound, the effect begins to be that he melts and liquefies3 till he completely dissolves
away his spirit, cuts out as it were the very sinews of his soul and makes
of himself a 'feeble warrior.'4” “Assuredly,”
he said. “And if,” said I, “he has to begin
with a spiritless5 nature he reaches this result
quickly, but if high-spirited, by weakening the spirit he makes it unstable,
1 For images drawn from the tempering of metals cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 612 and Jebb on Sophocles Ajax 650.
2 Cf. Theaetetus 165 Eἐπέχων καὶ οὐκ ἀνιείς, and Blaydes on Aristophanes Peace 1121.
3 Cf. Tennyson's “Molten down in mere uxoriousness” (Geraint and Enid).
4 A familiar Homeric reminiscence (Iliad xvii. 588) quoted also in Symposium 174 C. Cf. Froissart's “un mol chevalier.”
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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