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The Structure of Plato's Crito

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

There are features in both the logical and the dramatic structure of the Crito the interest of which has not, I think, been sufficiently appreciated. They are worth discussion; and this will lead further to a consideration of the dialogue as μίμησις in the sense in which Aristotle uses the word in the Poetics.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1958

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References

page 45 note 1 This part of my paper is largely taken from the first of the three J. H. Gray lectures which I gave at Cambridge in 1954. I read the whole at a meeting of the Edinburgh Classical Society, and have made some changes as a result of subsequent discussion.

page 46 note 1 We are reminded here, though the situation is so different, of Antigone's words to Oedipus (O.C. 1189–91): ὐφυσας αὐτόν ὣστε μηδὲ δρῶντά σε | τὰ τῶν κακίστων δυσσεβέστατ', πάτερ, | θέμις έ γ' ε ναι κεῑνον ᾀντιδρᾶν κακῶς.

page 46 note 2 Cf. SirBarker, E., Greek Political Theory: Plato and his Predecessors (London, 1918), 27, 38Google Scholar; Zimmern, A. E., The Greek Commonwealth (Oxford, 1931), 75Google Scholar; von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. & Niese, B., Staat und Gesellschaft bei der Griechen und Römer (Berlin, 1910), 70, 116.Google Scholar

We may add in passing that the Republic, in which the doctrine of total obedience to the ideal state is promulgated, is concerned primarily with the search for justice in the individual soul, not in the state.