[BLANK_AUDIO] Let's read from the beginning. Quote, yesterday I went down to Piraeus with Glaucon, son of Ariston, to offer up my prayers to the goddess and to see how they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. Unquote. The Athenians, always on the lookout for the new new thing. But let's back up a bit. I is Socrates. We know that guy, but do take note that we are now getting first person narration, whereas Euthophro and Meno those dialogues were written in third person. Glaucon, we've heard about him before he's also interestingly Plato's older brother. Fun fact. What about Piraeus and this festival of the goddess? Piraeus is the port. These days, it's actually its own city although within the greater Athens urban area. It's not just a row of docks. It's three deepwater ports. It was what allowed Athens to be the major naval power it was, in Socrates' day. As you can see from the slide, you'll notice quite a height. Six kilometers down, between the so-called long walls, you can imagine what those were for. Defense, to make sure Athens would not be cut off from her port in the sea. Why does this matter for dialogue purposes? Well, for a couple of reasons. Symbolically, I think it's not an exaggeration to say that going down to Piraeus is a foreshadowing of the myth, or the allegory, of the cave we are going to here later in the Republic. As in the allegory of the cave, there will be lights and shadows and a kind of parade, riders passing torches, celebrating this Festival of Bendis. More about that in a second. One last word about Piraeus, it was a hotbed of democracy. In general, Athens' sea power, founded on her port, strengthened the democrats in the city. The poor man, who rode a trireme in the time of war, is gaining power and influence relative to the aristocrats who ride horses in the cavalry. Who needs horses when you've got ships? Plato distrusts popular government. So as I mentioned so Piraeus, for him is probably a symbol of how things are heading in the wrong direction, politically, going down politically. What about that party I was telling you about? The festival, which Socrates says is a new thing. The goddess Bendis is being initiated into the pantheon of gods of the city. Who's Bendis? We don't know as much about her as we would like. She's a Thracian goddess. She's sort of being formally, civically half identified with Artemis, the Olympian goddess of the hunt. It's a bit confusing, we'll get to that. Where's Thrace? You know what? Maybe I should just slap up that map I showed you way back in lesson one, show you where everyone is from. Because I mentioned in lesson one, it's important that this discussion of Politea citizenship is a very cosmopolitan affair. You see Athens? Well, business comes from up north. They've got a lot of trees in Thrace, and Athens needs trees to build ships. So now, maybe you got a clue why why Bendis is getting invited into Athens, and, in fact, halfway up onto Olympus. While this map is up, I'll just point out where our three interlocutors hail from. Cephalus and son, they come from Sicily. Cephalus moved to town when Pericles invited in craftsmen to set up shop on favorable terms. Celphalus manufactures weapons, shields in particular. There's a war on. We'll get to that. So he's done pretty well for himself and his family. Thrasymachus he's from Chalcedon, which is what we now call, in what we now call Turkey. Way far away. Seriously, the guy's from halfway to Russia. What's he doing in Athens? Well he's a sophist. Some money to be made. Same reason as Cephalus then, but they're all Greek. Well, the Thracians aren't. They speak something else. We don't even know what they spoke. Isn't that weird? Anyway, what is Plato's point? Starting the dialog with Bendis. In the first video, I said we start with Cephalus, and in terms of the argument, that's right, but dramatically, it's Bendis standing at the gates of Plato's Utopia. So why this double greeting to Utopia courtesy of some weird Thracian goddess who doesn't even speak Greek, and a retired businessman who wants to tell you about the value of money? What's the point of this little parade? Well, first, this Bendis stuff seems like an implicit reproach to the Athenians. They're going to put Socrates to death for introducing strange gods into the city. And here they are actually introducing a strange god into the city just because they want to buy timber from the King of Thrace. How's that for hypocrisy? Is that the secret to true spirituality? Cheap wood plus the Bendis business is just so muddled. She's wearing a Thracian hat but an Athenian style kiton. That's a perfect example of how Athenian religion deals with conflict and inconsistency. Just tell the costume department to whip up some superficial mix and match ensemble. Throw a party for the people and hope for the best. More seriously, you have an us versus them conflict potentially. Athens and Thrace. A citizenship problem, you might say. How do you deal with strangers? A problem to with Politeia. That's the title of our dialogue, you recall. Rather than think this problem through in a theoretical, serious, philosophical way, you offer a blurry pseudosolution and have a parade. Like I said, everyone loves a good party. Light, and shadow, and everything moving, and kind of, a bit blurry around the edges. But I'm getting ahead of the story. The festival has two phases, you might say. It's an official civic ceremony, a sober daytime affair, that Socrates has dutifully attended. You see what a good and dutiful citizen he is. And now he and Glaucon are leaving. To march back up to the city, but they're stopped by Polemarchus, who wants him to come back home. Dad will be so glad to see them. Plus there's going to be a big party, a parade on horseback with riders passing torches back and forth. That sort of sound like the scene in the cave to you? Keep going back to this point, all those figures marching along on the wall. Flickering flames casting shadows, anyway. Socrates says, what if we won't come? And Polemarchus says, in the most friendly way, dude there's more of us than you. We'll force you. He's really being friendly. But there's some foreshadowing on the cave wall here. Plato's readers probably know what's going to happen next. Like I said, there's a war on. The Peloponnesian War. Or maybe the dialogue is set during a brief peace during that long war. We are not sure when Bendis got initiated. 414 BC? Doesn't really matter. Either the war is on, or it's going to start up again soon. And, plot spoilers, in a few years time, Athens and their allies are going to lose. The democracy will fall, the Spartans will install the so-called 30 tyrants, aristocratic Athenians with Spartan sympathies. They are bad. Their favorite hobby is, falsely accusing the innocent, executing them, and taking their money. It's a nice little business model. Very profitable in its way. Oh, and they spread the guilt around by forcing other people to collaborate or else to be victims themselves. It doesn't turn out to be a good long-term business strategy. The 30 are overthrown, the democracy is restored in 404. But not before Cephalus' family falls victim. Having money, made them targets, maybe. Cephalus, mercifully, will be dead before it all goes to Hades. But, Polemarchus will be arrested, falsely accused, and executed. We know this because he has a brother, Lisius, who barely escapes and gives a speech about it all later, which has been preserved. Why am I mentioning all this? It's kind of interesting, is it relevant? I think so. Let's wrap back around to my first slide from the first video for this lesson. In Republic, Book One, we get discussion of justice from Cephalus, from Polemarchus, from Thrasymachus. It's all friendly, or not too unfriendly. Anyway, it's just ta, it's just talk. There's a festival on. Later, there'll be a party, like I keep promising. But after that, it's going to get more serious. Cephalus's philosophy of money is either going to fail or actually backfire. In the end, his family might have been better off if they were poor, even. Polemarchus's good-hearted dependence on friendship, his yearning for honor, that's not going to pan out. He's going to be killed. Because someone else is going to have the bright idea of putting Thrasymachus' cynical philosophy of justice into practice. Someone is going to gain power and say, you know what, I think it would be just, if we killed Polemarchus and took his money. Pulling it all together. I don't know whether this is actually a good argument but I think it's part of Plato's argument, implicitly. Philosphies like Cephalus' and Polemarchus' just don't do enough to, don't take enough account of the likes of Thrasymachus. Whether Plato's or Socrates' own philosophy is likely to do any better, Is, another question of course.
