Page:The Republic by Plato.djvu/89

Rh suns” of which all Rome was talking, when he can converse about “the two nations in one” which had divided Rome ever since the days of the Gracchi. Like Socrates again, speaking in the person of Scipio, he is afraid lest he should assume too much the character of a teacher, rather than of an equal who is discussing among friends the two sides of a question. He would confine the terms “king” or “state” to the rule of reason and justice, and he will not concede that title either to a democracy or to a monarchy. But under the rule of reason and justice he is willing to include the natural superior ruling over the natural inferior, which he compares to the soul ruling over the body. He prefers a mixture of forms of government to any single one. The two portraits of the just and the unjust, which occur in the second book of the “Republic,” are transferred to the State—Philus, one of the interlocutors, maintaining against his will the necessity of injustice as a principle of government, while the other, Lælius, supports the opposite thesis. His views of language and number are derived from Plato; like him he denounces the drama. He also declares that if his life were to be twice as long he would have no time to read the lyric poets. The picture of democracy is translated by him word for word, though he has hardly shown himself able to “carry the jest” of Plato. He converts into a stately sentence the humorous fancy about the animals, who “are so imbued with the spirit of democracy that they make the passers-by get out of their way” (i. 42). His description of the tyrant is imitated from Plato, but is far inferior. The second book is historical, and claims for the Roman Constitution (which is to him the ideal) a foundation of fact such as Plato probably intended to have given to the Republic in the “Critias.” His most remarkable imitation of Plato is the adaptation of the vision of Er, which is converted by Cicero into the “Somnium Scipionis;” he has “romanized” the myth of the “Republic,” adding an argument for the immortality of the soul taken from the “Phædrus,” and some other touches derived from the “Phædo” and the “Timæus.” Though a beautiful tale and containing splendid passages, the “Somnium Scipionis” is very inferior to the vision of Er; it is only a dream, and hardly allows the reader to suppose that the writer believes