1 The ordinary study of music may cultivate and refine feeling. Only the mathematics of music would develop the power of abstract thought.
2 Knowledge in the true sense, as contrasted with opinion or habit.
3 Cf. supra, p. 49 note e on 495 E. This idea is the source of much modern prejudice against Plato.
4 Cf. Symp. 186 Bἐπὶ πᾶν τείνει.
5 διάνοιαι is not to be pressed in the special sense of 511 D-E.
6 A playful introduction to Plato's serious treatment of the psychology of number and the value of the study of mathematics.
7 Palamedes, like Prometheus, is a “culture hero,” who personifies in Greek tragedy the inventions and discoveries that produced civilization. Cf. the speech of Prometheus in Aesch.Prom. 459 ff. and Harvard Studies, xii. p. 208, n. 2.
8 Quoted by later writers in praise of mathematics. Cf. Theo Smyrn. p. 7 ed. Gelder. For the necessity of mathematics Cf. Laws 818 C.
9 Cf. Laws 819 D.
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