[574d]
and the swarm1 of pleasures collected in his soul is grown great, will he
not first lay hands on the wall2 of someone's house or the cloak of someone who walks late at
night, and thereafter he will make a clean sweep3 of some temple, and in all these actions the beliefs which
he held from boyhood about the honorable and the base, the opinions
accounted just,4
will be overmastered by the opinions newly emancipated5 and released, which, serving as bodyguards
of the ruling passion, will prevail in alliance with it—I mean the
opinions that formerly were freed from restraint in sleep,
1 Cf. Meno 72 A, Cratyl. 401 E, Blaydes on Aristoph.Clouds 297.
2 He becomes a τοιχωρύχος or a λωποδύτης (Aristoph.Frogs 772-773, Birds 497, Clouds 1327). Cf. 575 B, Laws 831 E.
3 νεωκορήσει is an ironical litotes. So ἐφάψεται in the preceding line.
4 For ποιουμένας cf. 573 B. for the thought cf 538 C.
5 Cf. 567 E.
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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