James Adam, The Republic of Plato

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535A - 536B It only remains to apportion these studies and prescribe how they are to be pursued. Our pupils must possess not only the qualities of stedfastness and courage etc., but also those other natural qualifications which our peculiar course of training demands. These are now enumerated by Socrates.

διανομὴ κτλ. Herwerden needlessly and wantonly inserts σκεπτέα after τὸ λοιπόν.

τὴν προτέραν ἐκλογήν. III 412 B ff.

ἐκείνας τὰς φύσεις κτλ. ‘I would have you suppose that it must be those natures which are to be selected,’ lit. ‘those natures must be to-be-selected.’ Kopetsch (de verbalibus Plat. p. 29) confesses himself unable to quote any parallels for the ‘pleonasm.’ We might compare the use of δεῖν in μνημονικὴν αὐτὴν ζητῶμεν δεῖν εἶναι VI 486 D, where see note; but the fact is that δεῖν is not altogether pleonastic in the present passage. Without δεῖν we should translate ‘that it is those natures’ etc. and not ‘that it must be those natures’ etc.; and there is a slight but appreciable difference between the two. Richards would expunge δεῖν or read ἀεί, but ἀεί is quite unsuitable here. ἐκλεκτάς (which I once proposed, taking the words as=‘ought to have been selected’) is equally unsatisfactory, nor does θεῖναι, which might be suggested in place of εἶναι, carry conviction. The text is in my judgment sound.

βεβαιοτάτους -- ἀνδρειοτάτους. The contrast is between stedfastness and spirit: cf. II 375 A ff. and VI 503 C with Appendix VI to Book VI. εὐειδεστάτους has not hitherto been mentioned as a qualification of Plato's rulers: for VI 494 C cannot be interpreted in such a sense. The word is however certainly genuine: cf. ἀρτιμελεῖς in 536 B.