James Adam, The Republic of Plato

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τούτων δὲ πότερα κτλ. Grote pronounces the Platonic commonwealth impossible because “we cannot understand from whence the force is to come, tending and competent to generate” it at the first. Once begun, he holds, “there is no reason why it might not have continued.” That the real difficulty is in starting it, Plato himself clearly understands (cf. 501 A note). He would not however allow that the difficulty is insurmountable; since a θεία τις τύχη (IX 592 A) may well occur. But the true fulfilment of Plato's Ideal, as he himself foretells in IX 592 B, is to be sought, not in any single earthly commonwealth, but in its influence, direct and indirect, upon the moral, political, religious, and intellectual progress of mankind: see V 470 E note and Zeller's dissertation on Der platonische Staat in seiner Bedeutung für die Folgezeit in his Vorträgen und Abhandlungen^{2} pp. 68 ff.

ἄλλως κτλ. For ἄλλως ‘merely’ cf. Theaet. 176 D γῆς ἄλλως ἄχθη. On εὐχαῖς see V 450 D note

βαρβαρικῷ -- ἐπόψεως. Cf. Phaed. 78 A. Touches of this kind are rare in Plato and generally full of pathos, as if the hope of mankind no longer lay in Hellas. The present sentence is a confession of the fact that the foundations of Plato's city are not laid in Hellenism, but in Humanity, understood as Plato himself understands the word in 501 B. See on V 470 E.