the Idols, 2, p. 107.
7 Jacob Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), p. 211.
8 Klein, A Commentary on Plato’s Meno, p. 255.
9 For a review of some of the complicated relationships between the Meno and the Gorgias, see E. R. Dodds, Plato Gorgias (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 23, and pp. 359–60, commentary on Gorgias 516e9.
10 This is of course a vexatious passage mainly (but not only) because of the complicated mathematics involved. The clearest exposition of the mathematics can be found in Sir Thomas Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, Vol. 1 (New York: Dover Publications, 1981), pp. 298ff. (This is a republication with corrected errata of the 1921 edition published by the Clarendon Press.) One very clear point is that Socrates’ explanation is somewhat obscure and seems to leave one or two points out. See also the thorough and very helpful discussion of this passage and most of the preceding scholarship in G. E. R. Lloyd, “The ‘Meno’ and the Mysteries of Mathematics,” Phronesis 37, no. 2 (1992): 166–83.
11 For the interpretation of the exchange as an initiation, see Lloyd, “The ‘Meno’ and the Mysteries of Mathematics,” pp. 178–83. The best translation is literal, and Heath’s cannot be bettered: “When they are asked, for example, as regards a given area, whether it is possible for this area to be inscribed in the form of a triangle or a given circle. The answer might be, ‘I do not yet know whether this area is such as can be inscribed, but I think I can suggest a hypothesis which will be useful for the purpose; I mean the following. If the given area is such as, when one has applied it (as a rectangle) to the given straight line in the circle [. . . it cannot, I (Heath) think, meaning anything other than the diameter of a circle] it is deficient by a figure (rectangle) similar to the very figure which is applied, then one alternative seems to me to result, while again another results if it is impossible for what I said to be done with it. Accordingly, by using a hypothesis, I am ready to tell you what results with regard to the inscribing of the figure in the circle, namely, whether the problem is impossible’” (from Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, Vol. 1, pp. 299 ff). For a very clear account of the logic of the passage and its application to epistemology, see Charles H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 paperback reprint of 1996 edition), pp. 309–13.
12 See June W. Allison, Word and Concept in Thucydides (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press for the American Philological Association, 1997), pp. 192–93, who argues that τὸ σαφὲς characterizes logoi “only when Thucydides determines that the attribution is true.”
13 Hornblower, Thucydides (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), pp. 34–72, reviews the entire subject and comments that there is a “fluctuation between massive subjectivity and massive comprehensiveness, or perhaps between extreme subjectivity and extreme objectivity” in both the narrative, the recounting of deeds, the erga, and the speeches or logoi. See also Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 141–144.
14 See: “But the struggle against Plato, or, so to speak more clearly and for the ‘people,’ the struggle against the Christian-ecclesiastical pressure of millennia—for Christianity is the Platonism for the ‘people,’—has created in Europe a magnificent tension of the spirit, the like of which has never yet existed on earth: with so tense a bow we can now shoot for the most distant goals.” Translation Walter Kaufman, “Preface” to Beyond Good and Evil, pp. 193 in Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: The Modern Library, 1968).
For a thorough review of Nietzsche’s thoughts on Thucydides, see Scott Jenkins, “What Does Nietzsche Owe Thucydides?” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 42, no. 1 (2011): 32–50. doi:10.5325/jnietstud.42.1.0032.
15 Jonathan J. Price, Thucydides and Internal War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 71–73. Price compares in substantial depth partisans’ psychology and actions in factional disputes with the conduct of soldiers and their state of mind.
16 A. W. Gomme et al., Historical Commentary (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1950, 1956, 1940, 1981), 3.82.l n., say that the clause διαφορῶν οὐσῶν ἑκασταχοῦ τοῖς τε τῶν δήμων προστάταις τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐπάγεσθαι καὶ τοῖς ὀλίγοις τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους, which explains the clause ἐπεὶ ὕστερόν γε καὶ πᾶν ὡς εἰπεῖν τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ἐκινήθη implies that “formally at least . . . Athens is not included among the sufferers from stasis.” He does, however, refer the reader to 2.65.11–2.65.12. But this is not right, as the clause διαφορῶν οὐσῶν ἑκασταχοῦ τοῖς τε τῶν δήμων προστάταις τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἐπάγεσθαι καὶ τοῖς ὀλίγοις τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους merely explains how it happened that stasis disturbed all of Hellas. Thucydides does not mean that stasis did not occur in the states that did not call in the Athenians as allies of one party or another, but that the availability of the Spartans and Athenians as allies helped to cause and perpetuate stasis in many states. For descriptions of stasis at Athens, see John H. Finley, Thucydides (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1963 reprint), pp. 186–87, and Felix Wassermann, “Thucydides and the Disintegration of the Polis,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 78 (1947): 46–55.
17 The translation is by Richard Crawley from the 1910 edition of his earlier translation, Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War (London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton), available online at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu (accessed July 27, 2019). All subsequent translations of Thucydides are Crawley’s except where I have relied on Hobbes or modified the translation somewhat in accordance with a modern scholarly correction or argument. In those cases, I have indicated the fact of an alteration.
18 τὸ . . . ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ means literally “the strikingly swift or sharp.” See LSJ s. v. ἔμπληκτος II, “frantic.” ἔμπληκτος derives from the verb ἐμπλήσσω, which means “to strike.” One very clear delineation of the characteristics of a society that is fracturing along revolutionary lines can be found in Price, Thucydides and Internal War, pp. 71–74.
19 LSJ s. v. νόμος.
20 See Allison, Word and Concept in Thucydides, pp. 167–69. Prof. Allison notes that Thucydides indicates that theoretical nature of his discussion by eliminating specific singular terms referring to concrete things and replacing those sorts of nouns with abstract singular terms, many of which are conceptual words in Greek ending in “-sis” or abstract concepts composed of a neuter nominative adjective together with an article so that we have an abstract concept like τὸ δ᾽ ἐμπλήκτως ὀξὺ, “the strikingly swift (or sharp) or the plain τὸ ὀξὺ “the swift” or “the sharp.”
21 See Josiah Ober, “Thucydides and the Invention of Political Science,” Version 1.0, Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, November 2005, https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/ober/020702.pdf (accessed July 1, 2019).
22 On this subject the work of James V. Morrison in his Reading Thucydides (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006) is invaluable. See, e.g., pp. 3–15.
23 See Simon Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides: Volume I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003, reprint of 1997 paperback edition): 3.83.1n. See also his further comments on this subject in Thucydides, pp. 186–90, in particular p. 186n.100. Hornblower here follows Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 507f. and n.24. I follow
