Mr. Jowett's version of this dialogue is fully as lax as that of the Symposium. Still it reads pleasantly, and if one could forget the incomparable and often so much more expressive Greek, one would be fairly content with the general correctness of the paraphrase. Almost at the outset, he renders εἴ σοι σχολὴ προϊόντι ἀκούειν, 'if you have leisure to stay and listen,' instead of 'to walk on and listen,' where a slight satire is intended on the 'constitutional' and prescribed exercise of the effeminate youth. And γέγραφε γὰρ δὴ ὁ Λυσίας πειρώμενόν τινα τῶν καλῶν, οὐχ ὑπ' ἐραστοῦ δὲ, ἀλλ' αὐτὸ τοῦτο καὶ κεκόμψευται means, 'Lysias, you must know, has written about one of the handsome youths having proposals made to him, not, however, by a lover; but this is the very point he has put in a new and quaint light.' (Of course, κεκόμψευται, to which we have given a medial sense, may also be taken as a passive.) Mr. Jowett gives us nothing nearer to the above than 'Lysias imagined a fair youth who was being tempted, but not by a lover; and this was the point; he ingeniously proved that,' &c. In p. 229, A., κατὰ τὸν Ἰλισσὸν ἵωμεν should be rendered, 'let us go along or down the Ilissus,' i.e., in the bed or channel, or even along the bank; certainly not, 'let us go to the Ilissus.' Nor is ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ σοφίᾳ (p. 329, fin.), this sort of 'crude philosophy,' but 'an uncourteous (or uncivil) kind of philosophy,' viz., that which employs itself in giving the lie to received traditions.
The charming and justly celebrated passage in p. 230, B.—one of the few in Greek literature that indicate intense feeling for the beauties of nature—we propose to render as follows, nearly every word being a close representative of the equivalent Greek:—
'Upon my word, the retreat is a charming one; for not only is this plane-tree of ample size and height, but the dense shade of this tall agnus is quite beautiful to behold; in full flower too, so as to make the place most fragrant! Yon spring, also, is most grateful, that flows from under the plane-tree with a stream of very cold water, as one may judge by the feeling to the foot. Moreover, there appears, from the images and ornaments, to be a shrine here to certain Nymphs and to the Achelöus. Pray notice, also, the balmy air of the place, how delightful and exceeding sweet, and how it rings with the shrill summer chirp of the chorus of cicadas! But the quaintest thing of all is the growth of the grass, which on this gentle slope springs up in just enough abundance for one to recline one's head and be quite comfortable. So that you have proved a most excellent guide for a strange visitor, my dear Phædrus.'
Some extra pains might have been fairly bestowed on a passage almost without rival in Greek literature. But Mr. Jowett gives us the following bare and clipped paraphrase of it:—
'Yes, indeed, and a fair and shady resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents. There is the lofty and spreading plane-tree, and the agnus castus, high and clustering, in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance; and the stream which flows beneath the plane-tree is deliciously cold to the feet. Judging from the ornaments and images, this must be a spot sacred to Achelöus and the Nymphs; moreover, there is a sweet breeze, and the grasshoppers chirrup; and the greatest charm of all is the grass like a pillow gently sloping to the head. My dear Phædrus, you have been an admirable guide.'
In p. 248, C., θεσμὸς Ἀδραστείας is not 'a law of the goddess Retribution,' but simply 'a law of necessity.' Had we space, we could point out not a few very inadequate, not to say inaccurate, renderings in the grand and mystical passage about the ἰδέα of beauty, p. 250. For instance, Mr. Jowett does not see that we should construe κατειλήφαμεν αὐτὸ (viz., κάλλος) διὰ τῆς ἐναργεστάτης αἰσυήσεως τῶν ἡμετέρων, 'we realize it (here on earth) by the clearest of all our senses,' viz., the sight of the eye. The whole translation of the great allegory, in fact, reads as if it came from one who had never taken the trouble to make out exactly what the Greek meant; and, as it is very difficult, and the passage itself very sublime, the student ought to have found in Professor Jowett a safe and cautious and accurate guide to the language as well as to the mind of Plato.
We are compelled to pass on, rapidly and very briefly, to that most difficult of Platonic dialogues, the Philebus. This treats of a life made up of pleasure and intellectuality, φρόνησις, combined in certain proportions, a μικτός βίος, as the best and happiest. And the doctrine of πέρας and ἄπειρον, the Finite and the Infinite, which Aristotle (Eth., ii. 5) attributes to Protagoras, τὸ κακὸν τοῦ ἀπείρου, ὡς οἱ Πυθαγόρειοι εἴκαζον, τὸ δ' ἀγαθὸν τοῦ πεπερασμένου, is so applied as to show that mere pleasure carried to excess is self-destroying. This also is touched upon in the Tenth Book of the Ethics, ch. ii., where the μικτὸς βίος of ἡδονὴ and φρόνησις combined is preferred to either alone. It has sometimes occurred to us, that in this dialogue Plato has purposely used involved constructions and an affected obscurity of style, as if to satirize Heraclitus, or some sophist of the Ephesian school. The scholastic formulæ ἓν καὶ πολλὰ, implying synthesis and analysis, and μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον, 'the more or less,' to denote the ἄπειρον, which can always be carried forward or backward, as in 'hot and cold,' till πέρας, or definite quantity, is brought to limit them,—these and other subtleties give to the Philebus, besides its linguistic difficulties, which are great, an aspect which is seldom inviting to younger students.
In the difficult passage (p. 15, B.), about ἰδέαι, Mr. Jowett has again failed to give the exact sense. Plato says, one difficulty about them is, 'whether we must assume that the abstract principle of each quality (e.g., abstract beauty) pervades concretes and infinites, dispersed and separated in each, or exists as a whole outside of itself.' That is to say, if an abstract or ἰδέα is one thing indivisible, which yet exists in different objects, it must reside outside itself, and apart from the centre of its own οὐσία,, or essence. The words εἴθ' ὅλην αὐτὴν αὑτῆς χωρὶς, Mr. Jowett oddly translates, 'or as still entire, and yet contained in others.' In p. 15, D., ταὐτὸν ἓν καὶ πολλὰ ὑπὸ λόγων γιγνόμενα is, 'this doctrine of "one and many" being the same, brought into existence (or, as we say, brought before our notice) by discussions,' not 'the one and many are identified by the reasoning power;' nor is ἄγηρων πάθος τῶν λόγων αὐτῶν, just below, 'a quality of reason, as such, which never grows old,' but 'a conditions of discussion themselves,' &c. Surely, to render the plural λόγοι by 'reason,' is a singular error. In p. 23, D., by not noticing the emphatic ἐγὼ the author has failed to see that there is a reference to the clumsy attempts of tiros at synthesis and analysis, p. 15. fin.; so that Socrates intends to say that he fears he is not much more skilful. A few lines below, where the doctrine of causation is introduced, the words τῆς ξυμμίξεως τούτων πρὸς ἄλληλα τὴν αἰτίαν ὅρα, 'consider now the cause of the union of these conditions (the finite and the infinite) with each other,' is poorly rendered by 'find the cause of the third or compound.' In p. 24, D., Socrates argues that, if the principle of limitation (πέρας) were admissible in, or could co-exist with, 'more or less,' i.e. progressive degree, the infinite would cease, by ipso facto becoming finite. And he concludes,κατὰ δὴ τοῦτον τὸν λόγον ἄπειρον γίγνοιτ' ἂν τὸ θερμότερον καὶ τοὐναντίον ἅμα, 'according to this way of putting it, the "hotter" would become at the same time infinite and finite.' Surely Mr. Jowett quite misses the sense in rendering it, 'which proves that comparatives, such as the hotter and the colder, are to be ranked in the class of the infinite.' In p. 26, B., Socrates says that 'the goddess Harmony, perceiving the general lewdness and badness of men, and that there was no limiting principle in them, either of pleasures or of satisfying them, introduced law and order, containing in themselves the finite. And you, Protarchus (he adds), say that she thereby spoiled our pleasures; whereas I say, on the contrary, that she saved them.' If the text is right, πέρας οὐδὲν ἐνὸν is the accusative absolute; but we propose to read καὶ πέρας, &c., so that the accusative will depend on κατιδοῦσα. Mr. Jowett's version is—'Methinks that the goddess saw the universal wantonness and wickedness of all things, having no limit of pleasure or satiety, and she devised the limit of the law and order, tormenting the soul, as you say, Philebus, or, as I affirm, saving the soul.'
It is no disparagement to the best of scholars to say that a perfect translation of the whole of Plato is too great a task for any one person to perform. It would be hardly possible to have the same knowledge of every dialogue, and those less familiar to the translator would not be wholly free from some mistakes. The scholarship that can grapple with and gain a perfect mastery over the Greek of Plato, to say nothing of his philosophy, must be of a very high order. No man, perhaps, could have done the task better than Professor Jowett; and no man, probably, is more fully aware that it might have been a good deal better even than it is.