[501b]
I take it, in the
course of the work they would glance1 frequently in either direction, at justice, beauty,
sobriety and the like as they are in the nature of things,2 and alternately at
that which they were trying to reproduce in mankind, mingling and blending
from various pursuits that hue of the flesh, so to speak, deriving their
judgement from that likeness of humanity3 which Homer too called when it
appeared in men the image and likeness of God.4”
“Right,” he said. “And they would erase one
touch or stroke and paint in another
1 The theory of ideas frequently employs this image of the artist looking off to his model and back again to his work. Cf. on 484 C, and What Plato Said, p. 458, Unity of Plato's Thought, p. 37.
2 i.e. the idea of justice. For φύσις and the theory of ideas Cf. 597 C, Phaedo 103 b, Parmen. 132 D, Cratyl. 389 C-D, 390 E.
3 For ἀνδρείκελον Cf. Cratyl. 424 E.
4 Il. i. 131, Od. iii. 416. Cf. 589 D, 500 C-D, Laws 818 B-C, and What Plato Said, p. 578 on Theaet. 176 B, Cic.Tusc. i. 26. 65 “divina mallem ad not.” Cf. also Tim. 90 A, Phaedr. 249 C. The modern reader may think of Tennyson, In Mem. cviii. “What find I in place But mine own phantom chanting hymns?” Cf. also Adam ad loc.
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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