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ὑποπίνοντες. Wine was sipped during dessert. ὑπο- in ὑποπίνοντες emphasizes the moderation already expressed in μετρίως: cf. Lys. 223 B ὑποπεπωκότες ἐν τοῖς Ἑρμαίοις. Dr Jackson connects πρὸς τὸ πῦρ with ὑπο πίνοντες, comparing IV 420 E, Ar. Ach. 751 al. This may be right, but the ordinary view seems to me somewhat more natural.

372D - 373C Glauco protests against the swinish character of such a life: more comfort, he thinks, should be allowed. While expressing his opinion that the healthy State is that which he has already described, Socrates is willing to describe the ‘inflamed’ (φλεγμαίνουσα) City, in case Justice and Injustice should be discovered in it (372 D—372 E).

The Second Sketch of a City now begins (372 E ff.).

Some will not be satisfied with the provisions of our first city, but will demand a variety of physical comforts and delicacies, and artistic delights. A crowd of hunters and imitative artists of different kinds will accordingly spring up, and the race of middlemen will be largely increased. As a flesh diet will come into fashion, swineherds will be in demand, and cattle will multiply. The new style of living will bring doctors to the front.

ff. The provisions of the πρώτη πόλις are insufficient for the satisfaction of human needs: for there is θυμός as well as ἐπιθυμία in the soul of man. Hence we must advance a stage further. Plato's method is as follows. He begins by enumerating many of the features of ordinary Greek life, as he found it, without distinguishing the good from the bad. The resulting picture he calls a τρυφῶσα or φλεγμαίνουσα πόλις. The next step is to purge this τρυφῶσα πόλις (cf. III 399 E λελήθαμέν γε διακαθαίροντες πάλιν ἣν ἄρτι τρυφᾶν ἔφαμεν πόλιν) by excluding some of the features, and correcting and regulating others, both by prescriptive enactments and still more by the influence of education. It is this κεκαθαρμένη πόλις which forms what we may call Plato's δευτέρα πόλις (II 372 E—IV): his third and crowning effort, the City of the Rulers, is contained in Books V—VII. Cf. VIII 543 E note and Hirzel der Dialog I pp. 235 ff.

ὑῶν. The city of Pigs is supposed by Zeller^{4} II 1 pp. 325, 893, and Dümmler Antisthenica pp. 5 ff., Proleg. zur Pl. Staat p. 61, to be a contemptuous allusion to Antisthenes' ideal commonwealth (on which see Susemihl in Fl. Jahrb. 1887 pp. 207—214). This conjecture requires us to interpret Plato's first sketch of a State as wholly ironical and intended ‘to warn us against the false ideal of a Nature-City’ (Zeller l. c.). I agree with Henkel (Stud. zur Gesch. d. Gr. Lehre vom Staat pp. 8 f.) in thinking that there is no solid ground for Zeller's theory. The πρώτη πόλις is not of course Plato's ideal republic, and his description of it is plentifully bestrewn with irony, but it is nevertheless the foundation on which his city is built, and, in point of fact, although some of its features are implicitly corrected or superseded in the sequel, it still remains on the whole, and as far as it goes, a not unpleasing picture of the life of the lowest stratum in Plato's city, and it is nowhere expressly cancelled or abolished. See also on 369 B and 372 E. The εὐχερὴς βίος (Pol. 266 C) of the πρώτη πόλις is fitly compared to that of pigs, the εὐχερέστατον γένος τῶν ὄντων (ib.); and it is appropriate that Glauco, who is nothing if not θυμοειδής (Introd. § 2), should thus express his contempt for a life which hardly if at all rises above the level of ἐπιθυμία.

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  • Commentary references from this page (2):
    • Plato, Lysis, 223b
    • Aristophanes, Acharnians, 751
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