James Adam, The Republic of Plato

αὐτίκα δὲ τὴν ἐναντίαν κτλ. Here we have the first express promise of Books VIII and IX, although the promise is afterwards fulfilled in an ampler manner than is indicated here. See also 427 D.

ὥσπερ οὖν ἂν -- μέλανι. Cf. (with J. and C.) Hipp. Maior 290 B. ἀνδριάντας γράφοντας means ‘painting statues of men.’ Cf. Euripides Fr. 764. 2 γραπτοὺς ἐν ἀετοῖσι προσβλέπων τύπους. The question whether statues were ever painted in the best period is an old controversy, the echoes of which have hardly yet died away. Schubart (Fl. Jahr. 1874, pp. 20 ff.) and others prefer to take ἀνδριάντας merely as ‘likenesses of men,’ but the word was regularly, if not indeed always, used of statues. That the surface of archaic statues was regularly painted is now no longer doubtful: see Gardner Handbook of Greek Sculpture pp. 28 ff. During the best period, in the case of marble or other polished surfaces, the painting was regularly confined to the eyes, eyelids, eyebrows, hair and the like. See on the whole subject Sittl's Arch. der Kunst (in Iwan Müller's Handbuch) pp. 413, 414. μέλανι does not necessarily mean jet black, but only some dark and quiet colour. In point of fact, the eyes of the early marble statues on the Acropolis “are painted with a dark pigment, almost black” (Gardner l.c. p. 30). The use—regular in Greek—of γράφειν for painting is an interesting survival of the time when decorative art was little beyond carving in relief (Sittl l.c. p. 416). The present passage is strangely ignored by Sertorius in his interesting article “Plato und die Malerei” in Arch. f. Gesch. d. Phil. IX pp. 123—148.