[563d]
“It is my own dream1 you are
telling me,” he said; “for it often happens to me when I
go to the country.” “And do you note that the sum total
of all these items when footed up is that they render the souls of the
citizens so sensitive2 that they chafe at the slightest
suggestion of servitude3 and will not
endure it? For you are aware that they finally pay no heed even to the
laws4 written or unwritten,5
1 Cf Callimachus, Anth. Pal. vi. 310, and xii. 148μὴ λέγε . . . τοὐμὸν ὄνειρον ἐμοί, Cic.Att. vi. 9. 3, Lucian, Somnium seu Gallus 7ὥσπερ γὰρ τοὐμὸν ἐνύπνιον ἰδών, Tennyson, “Lucretius”: “That was mine, my dream, I knew it.”
2 This sensitiveness, on which Grote remarks with approval, is characteristic of present-day American democracy. Cf. also Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, p. 51 “And so if he is stopped from making Hyde Park a bear garden or the streets impassable he says he is being butchered by the aristocracy.”
3 Cf. Gorg. 491 Eδουλεύων ὁτῳοῦν, Laws 890 A.
4 Cf. Laws 701 Bνόμων ζητεῖν μὴ ὑπηκόοις εἶναι
5 For unwritten law Cf. What Plato Said, p. 637, on Laws 793 A.
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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