James Adam, The Republic of Plato

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ὠνίναντο κολαζόμενοι. An earlier generation looked upon punishment as retributory—δράσαντι παθεῖν. This view appears in Hes. Fr. 217, ed. Goettling, and especially in Aeschylus, e.g. Ag. 1563 f., Choeph. 309—314, 400 —404, 886, 927: in Sophocles and Euripides it is rarer (Ant. 1074—1076, El. 1411 f., 1495 f., Andr. 438, Suppl. 614 —616), and Euripides expressly argues against it in Or. 508 ff. Traces of a milder theory were however contained in the doctrine πάθος μάθος (Ag. 176 ff.), as well as in the use of words like σωφρονίζειν, δικαιοῦν, εὐθύνειν, for ‘punish.’ In Plato punishment is remedial. Ignorance or vice is in the soul what disease is in the body (IV 444 C, cf. IX 591 A, B), and the judge is the soul's physician (III 409 E ff., Gorg. 478 D): hence (Gorg. 480 B ff.) the sinner should go before the judge as a patient visits his doctor, and we should even prosecute our guilty friends and relations. See also Laws 854 D, 862 E, 934 A, 944 D τὸν γὰρ κακὸν ἀεὶ δεῖ κολάζειν, ἵν᾽ ἀμείνων ᾖ. The punishment, again, which awaits the wicked after death is intended to cure their souls, unless they are incurable: and such as are themselves incurable, help to cure others by their deterrent example (X 616 A): so that in its deepest relations this doctrine reaches to the very roots of Plato's philosophy, with all due deference to Mr W. S. Lilly, who with much intemperance of language denounces those who attribute such a view to Plato (Fortnightly Review N.S. XLVI p. 116).

ἐν τῇ αὑτοῦ πόλει: ‘in one's own city,’ with reference to the subject of διαμαχετέον, not to τινα. Plato implies that the preachers of such theology must be suppressed in his ideal city. In all this Teichmüller (Lit. Fehd. I p. 114) detects an assault upon Isocrates, but his evidence is of the slightest.