[488d]
a
pilot, a master of shipcraft, the man who is most cunning to lend a
hand1 in persuading or
constraining the shipmaster to let them rule,2 while
the man who lacks this craft3 they censure as useless. They have
no suspicions4 that the true pilot must give his
attention5 to the
time of the year, the seasons, the sky, the winds, the stars, and all that
pertains to his art if he is to be a true ruler of a ship, and that he does
not believe that there is any art or science of seizing the helm6
1 Cf. 427 E, Laws 905 C, Eryx. 396 E, Aristoph.Knights 229.
2 Neither here nor in D-E can ὅπως with the future mean “in what way,” and all interpretations based on that refers to getting control. Cf. 338 E, Laws 757 D, 714 C, 962 D-E, Xen.Rep. Lac. 14. 5. Cf. Class. Phil. ix.(1914) pp. 358 and 362.
3 For τὸν δὲ μὴ τοιοῦτον Cf. Alc.II. 145 C.
4 The ppl. must refer to the sailors; hence the acc. (see crit. note). Whatever the text and the amount of probable anacoluthon in this sentence, the meaning is that the unruly sailors (the mob) have no true conception of the state of mind of the real pilot (the philosophic statesman), and that it is he (adopting Sidgwick's οἰομένῳ for the MS.οἰόμενοι in E) who does not believe that the trick of getting possession of the helm is an art, or that, if it were, he could afford time to practise it. Those who read οἰόμενοι attribute the idea of the incompatibility of the two things to the sailors. But that overlooks the points I have already made about ὅπως, and τέχνη and is in any case improbable, because the sentence as a whole is concerned with the attitude of the true pilot (statesman), which may be represented by the words of Burke to his constituents, “I could hardly serve you as I have done and court you too.” Cf. Sidgwick, “On a Passage in Plato's Republic,“Journal of Philology, v. pp. 274-276, and my notes in A.J.P. xiii. p. 364 and xvi. p. 234.
5 For the force of the article cf. Thucyd. ii. 65τὸ ἐπίφθονον λαμβάνει, and my article in T.A.P.A. 1893, p. 81, n. 6. Cf. also Charm. 156 E and Rep. 496 E.
6 ὅπως . . . κυβερνήσει. Cf. p. 20, note h.
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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