(4th tetralogy : The Soul - 2nd dialogue of trilogy)

In the translations of excerpts from the Republic presented here, as in all the translations available on this site, I have sought, more than elegance, fidelity to the Greek text. Whenever possible, I have kept the order of the Greek words and tried to translate all the particles that Greek is fond of. I have also tried to translate, in particular in the answers and in the expressions induced by the indirect style of the dialogue, (1) the same Greek expression by the same English expression each time it recurred, at the risk of a monotony which is in Plato's text. (2)
But above all, I wanted to give the reader who cannot read Plato's original Greek text the means to remain as close as possible to this text. This is one of the justifications for the abundant notes (more or less depending on the excerpt and the age of the translation) which comment on the translated Greek text beyond what can be rendered by translation. Plato is an author who handles his wording in an quite extraordinary way and who most often leaves nothing to chance in what he writes (and this is particularly true in a text such as that of the allegory of the cave, a text of formidable density). He leaves nothing to chance, indeed, but that doesn't mean that he looks for "technical" precision in his vocabulary, quite the contrary! He wants to give his reader, not ready-made answers, but food for thought. And to do this, he does not hesitate to skilfully cultivate ambiguity, to choose words with multiple meanings, to use turns of phrase that can be understood in several ways. However, it is most often impossible to preserve these ambiguities in a translation, to render all the resonances that a given word could have had for a Greek of his time by a single English word. The only way, therefore, to give the reader who does not read Greek an idea of all these harmonics of the text, and not to impose on him an interpretation to the exclusion of others, perhaps also intended by Plato to encourage the reader to reflect, is to complete the necessarily reductive translation with notes that add all (or part) of what the chosen translation cannot say or suggest. This is what I have tried to do here, by showing in passing with a few examples how some of the translations available elsewhere could betray Plato here and there on points that are sometimes fraught with consequences for the understanding of what he is trying to suggest to us.
But these notes are not limited to helping the reader who does not read Plato's Greek to get as close as possible to the original text. A certain number of them may also be of interest to the specialist, familiar with these texts, because of the comments other than purely linguistic that they offer, some of which, I dare to hope, throw a new light on texts that we thought we knew.

In this work I have had at my disposal the following editions and translations of all or part of the Republic:

- The Greek text of the Republic, edited with notes and essays by Benjamin Jowett and Lewis Campbell, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1894
- The translation in English of the Republic by Benjamin Jowett available at various sites on the Internet, 1888
- The Greek text of the Republic, edited by John Burnet in volume IV of the « Platonis Opera », Oxford Classical Texts (OCT), Oxford, 1902
- Platon, La République, texte grec établi et traduit en français par Émile Chambry, in Plato's complete works published in the Budé series, volumes VI (books I-III), VII-1 (books IV-VII) et VII-2 (books VIII-X), Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1933
- Plato, Republic, Greek text with an English translation by Paul Shorey, in 2 volumes, volumes V (Republic, books I-V) and VI (Republic, books VI-X) of Plato Works in twelve volumes, Loeb Classical Library n° 237 et 276, Harvard University Press, London, 1935 (available online both in Greek and in English, at Perseus)
- The Republic, translated with introduction and notes by Francis MacDonald Cornford, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1941
- The translation in French of the Republic by Léon Robin in volume I of Plato complete works in 2 volumes published in the La Pléiade series, Paris, 1950
- Platon, La République, traduction en français de Robert Baccou, Classiques Garnier, republished as GF Flammarion, n° 90, Paris, 1966
- The Republic of Plato, translated into English with notes, an interpretive essay and a new introduction by Allan Bloom, Basic Books, 1968
- Plato's Republic, translated by G.M.A. Grube, Hackett, Indianapolis, 1974
- Platon, La République, Livres VI (from 504a) et VII, traduction en français et commentaire par Monique Dixsaut, Les œuvres philosophiques, Bordas, Paris, 1980, 1986
- Platon, La République, Livre VII, traduction en français, notes et commentaires de Bernard Piettre, Les intégrales de Philo, Nathan, Paris, 1981
- Platon, La République, traduction en français de Pierre Pachet, Folio Essais n° 228, Paris, 1993
- Platon, La République, traduction en français, introduction, notice et notes de Jacques Cazeaux, Le livre de poche, Paris, 1995
- The Republic, translated into English by G. M. A. Grube, revised by C. D. C. Reeve, in Plato Complete Works, Edited by John M. Cooper, Hackett, Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1997
- Platon, La République, livres VI et VII, traduction en français de Tiphaine Karsenti et Yannis Prélorentzos, Analyse par Yannis Prélorentzos, Classiques Hatier de la Philosophie, Paris, 2000
- Platon, La République, traduction en français, introduction et notes par Georges Leroux, GF Flammarion n° 653, Paris, 2002
- Platonis Rempublicam, Greek text edited by S. R. Slings, Oxford Classical Texts (OCT), Oxford, 2003
- Plato, Republic, translated from the New Standard Greek Text, with introduction, by C. D. C. Reeve, Hackett, Indianapolis/Cambridge, 2004

In all my translations, the references to the pages of the Stephanus edition are those provided by the edition of the Platonis Opera, Oxford Classical Texts. Each reference is a link to the corresponding text on the Perseus site where the Greek text is available: if it is not the Greek text that is displayed, but the English translation (by Paul Shorey, see above), go to the "Greek" area on a grey background on the right side of the window and click on "focus" to replace the English translation with the Greek text,  or "load" to load the Greek text just below it in the right-hand column, keeping the English translation where it is. At the bottom of the right-hand column, the "Display Preferences" area allows you to choose, in the "Greek Display" line, the way Greek text is displayed depending on the Greek fonts you have on your PC (if you are unable to display Greek in Greek characters with one of the options provided, use the "Latin transliteration" option), which will display the Greek with the latin alphabet) and then click on the "Update Preferences" button at the bottom of the "Display Preferences" area (before clicking on this button, you can take the opportunity to select "Original Language" in the "View by Default" area so that, in later accesses, Greek is displayed by default); Once the display preferences are updated, go to the "Greek" box above in the same right part of the window and click "focus" or "load" to redisplay Greek.
If the display is not set to the correct reference, go to the left side of the window, in the "Table of Contents" section and choose the book, then the section in the book to arrive at the correct reference.

The translated excerpts 

• From book II:
  • The ring of Gyges (359b-360b) with a long commentary of this story as it relates to the allegory of the cave and the myth of Er.
• From book VI:
  • The Good and the Sun (504e7-509c4) (translation only; the translation of the notes from the French version is in preparation)
  • The analogy of the line (509c5-511e5) (Introduction to both the analogy of the line and the allegory of the cave and translation of the analogy; the translation of the notes from the French version is in preparation)
• From book VII:
  • The allegory of the cave (514a1-517a7) (translation only; the translation of the notes from the French version is in preparation)
  • Socrates comments on the allegory of the cave (517a8-519d7) (translation only; the translation of the notes from the French version is in preparation)
  • Definition of dialektikè (531c9-535a2) (translation only; the translation of the notes from the French version are in preparation)
• From book X:
  • The three kinds (eidè) of seats (beds) (595c7-598d6)

(1) The Republic is a long monologue by Socrates recounting to an unidentified audience, after a short narrative that sets the context, a long discussion he had the day before in Piraeus (the port of Athens) in the house of Cephalus (historical figure, arms dealer of Syracusan origin and friend of Pericles, father of Polemarchus and the orator Lysias) with Adimantus and Glaucon,  Plato's two brothers, after a shorter exchange with, in turn, Cephalus, his son Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, in Thrace.(<==)

(2) It is worth knowing that, in Plato's time, the entire text of a written work was written in capital letters, without breathings or accents, without punctuation marks and without spacing between words (all the letters next to one another to save space on rare and expensive supports: see an example on another page of this site. And besides, every line was not preceded by the name of the interlocutor, even in direct dialogue. These particles, which Greek is fond of, formulas such as "he said" and "I replied", and in other dialogues, the frequent reminders of the name of the interlocutor to whom one is addressing by a vocative formula preceded in Greek by an ô, were means of helping the reader to find his way around and to make up for the missing punctuation. (<==)