[540a]
or whether they will flinch and swerve.1” “How much time do you allow for
that?” he said. “Fifteen years,” said I,
“and at the age of fifty2 those who have survived the tests and
approved themselves altogether the best in every task and form of knowledge must
be brought at last to the goal. We shall require them to turn upwards the vision
of their souls3 and fix their
gaze on that which sheds light on all, and when they have thus beheld the good
itself they shall use it as a pattern4 for the right ordering of
the state and the citizens and themselves
1 Cf.ὑποκινήσαντ᾽, Aristoph.Frogs 643.
2 An eminent scholar quaintly infers that Plato could not have written this page before he himself was fifty years old.
3 Plato having made his practical meaning quite clear feels that he can safely permit himself the short cut of rhetoric and symbolism in summing it up. He reckoned without Neoplatonists ancient and modern. Cf. also on 519 B, p. 138, note a.
4 Cf. 500 D-E. For παράδειγμα cf. 592 B and What Plato Said, p. 458, on Euthyphro 6 E, and p. 599, on Polit. 277 D.
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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