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from On the Republic of Plato: Essays 7–15
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2022
Essay 13 is a wide-ranging commentary on the short speech of the Muses in Republic VIII 546a1–547a5 and 547b2–c4. Proclus names this essay after the bee, because bees are sacred to the Muses and display a kind of appropriately ruled society.1
Plato has just completed the central books of the Republic (V, VI, and VII), in which he has advocated that women should share the philosophical rule with men and has laid out the three famous analogies of the Sun, Divided Line, and Cave. He now embarks on the decline from the government of the ideal city through to four lesser forms: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. The Muses’ speech explains the reasons behind the decline of the ideal city, stating that it occurs because of strife between the auxiliary and guardian classes after these two classes are no longer able to select the correct time for breeding the new generation.
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