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The Marriage Laws in Plato's Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

G. M. A. Grube
G. M. A. Grube
Affiliation:
University College, Swansea
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Extract

The difficult and apparently inconsistent regulations by which certain marriages are forbidden in the Republic have not, it would seem, been consistently explained hitherto. It is the purpose of this article to prove that—if we read Plato's text without prejudice—marriages between brothers and sisters are nowhere prohibited, but expressly allowed; and that there are in the ideal city certain family groups, though I do not contend that any very great importance is to be attached to these.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 1927 , pp. 95 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1927

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References

page 95 note 1 The general verdict seems to be in accordance with that of Richards, Herbert: ‘Plato would being seem not to have thought out all the consequences that would or might ensue’ (Classical Review IV., p. 8)Google Scholar. Even so, no glaringly inconsistent account ought to be taken as the last word. See also Loos, I. A., Studies in the Politics of Aristotle, and the Republic of Plato (1899)Google Scholar.

page 95 note 2 Rep. V. 461B–E.

page 95 note 3 That the expression ἡ κοιωνὶία τοȋς ἐπικούροις τῶν τε παίδων καί τῶν γνναικῶν in 464B and 466A does not imply that the system is meant for auxiliaries only is proved by the expression ἡ τῶν γνναικῶν τε παίδων κοινωνία τοȋς Φύλαζιν in 464A and the use of Φύλακς throughout. The use of ἐπικοȗροι to include all guardians is explained in various ways (see Adam's note, ad loc.). The word ϕύλακες is used immediately before ἐπικοȗροι in both passages (once in 464 and three times in 466A). Plato may be using ἐπικοȗροι to avoid wearisome repetition, and because they, being younger, are chiefly concerned.

page 95 note 4 It is beyond doubt that Plato recommends infanticide. See Adam's App. IV. to Book V., and Jowett and Campbell's note on 460c. Even scholarly attempts to prove the contrary are due to Christian prejudice.

page 95 note 5 461A.

page 95 note 6 460E and Adam's note.

page 95 note 7 So Jowett and Campbell take τὀ πλῆθοѕ τῶν γάμων in their note ad loc. It is obvious that, unless the rulers can control all child-bearing unions (and not only the majority), their control is of no avail.

page 95 note 8 It is surprising that Plato cannot trust his guardians, carefully educated as they were, to obey the rulers without this rather mean trick. But we must remember the bigger portion of them—the ἐπικοȗροι—do not share in the higher intellectual training later to be described.

page 96 note 1 Classical Review, Vol. IV., pp. 6–8; Table of Affinity in Plato's Republic.

page 96 note 2 Is the standard of fitness purely physical? I think Plato is uneasy on this point, and betrays introducthis by such expressions as τοȋѕ ἀγαθοȋς τῶν νέωνἐν πολέμῳ ἢ ἂλλοθί που (460B), and αὓτη ἀκμἠ σώματός τε καì Φρονήσεως (461A); for it is contrary to Plato's usual attitude to age to say that a man's ἀκμἠ Φρονήσεως is from five-and-twenty to fifty-five. He would begin dialectic at thirty, and reaches his highest level of theoretical and practical knowledge at fifty. See VII. 539A sqq.

page 96 note 3 As Adam admits in his note ad loc.; see also Richards: ‘Although in 461D brothers and sisters are curiously omitted from the list of persons forbidden to form irregular unions, we seem obliged by these words to include them.’ The same mistake is made by Bekker (1825 edition), by Jowett (in his translations and in introduction, Vol. III., lxxiii), by Ernest Barker (preface to Methuen's translation, 1906), and in the translations of Sydenham and Taylor (1804), Davis and Vaughan: ‘all these shall refrain’ etc., where all must include brothers and sisters, following Schleiermacher (edited by Kirchmann, 1870), H. Spens (Everyman), A. D. Lindsay. Massey (1713) and Schneider (1850) preserve the ambiguity of the original. Grote is sound as far as he goes, but does not mention brothers and sisters.

page 97 note 1 It was, and is, a common superstition that an eight months' child does not live. The correct reckoning should be seven and nine, and this was the usual form of expression. But see the quotations from Polybius and οί μαθηματικοί, whose mode of expression is the same as Plato's here; in Diels, , Doxogr. Graec., pp. 427–429Google Scholar, the question διὰ τὰ ἑπταμνιαȋα γόνιμα.

page 97 note 2 The only text that puts a longer stop at ἀδελΦούς is Hermann's Teubner text, 1887.

page 98 note 1 Adam, thinking that unions between brothers and sisters are forbidden, has to suppose that the rulers would know the real blood relationship, and that they would see that a real brother and sister union would never take place. But we are not the people that are to be deceived, so why does Plato tell us that these unions are be allowed? Nor is there anything to show that any records are to be kept of how people are really related. I am sure Plato intends this secret to be kept by nobody. Without this knowledge Adam is forced by his rendering of ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ ϰρόνῳ into flagrant absurdity. He tells us that ‘a son, for example, who is born when his mother is twenty-one and his father is twenty-six cannot marry till he is forty-nine.’ The impossibility of this is evident if for ‘a son’ we substitute ‘a daughter.’ Her future husband could not be born till she is twenty-nine, and therefore cannot reach marriageable age till she is too old to have an official union at all. Besides, how is a child to know its parents' age when it does not know who its parents are.

page 98 note 2 This is a maximum. Plato nowhere gives figures, and his fighting force of 1,000, mentioned in IV. 423A, is meant as a minimum, not to be taken literally.

page 98 note 3 See Rep. X. 615B and Adam's note.

page 98 note 4 460A.

page 98 note 5 Clearly these figures are only an approximation. They are quite near enough, however, to serve as illustrations. Note that exposure and infant mortality would tend to make the children group smaller.

page 98 note 6 459E, VI. 546A, and Adam's note.

page 99 note 1 Aristotle's γίγνονται δ' ὲκάστῳ ϰίλιοι τῶν πολιτῶν υίοί (Pol. II. 1261b II) is not only an exaggeration, but quite contrary to Plato's text as we have it.

page 99 note 2 Rep. V. 463C–D.

page 99 note 3 E.g. Rep. VIII. 543 (where the reference seems to be to IV. 423E). For reference to earlier theories which would give an entirely erroneous view of what has gone before, see Rep. X. 595A, where he speaks as if he had excluded all μιμητικὴ before, a thing he did not do (as Adam notes). See also the reference in X. 603A to his earlier psychological theory of Book IV. 439D, as if he had never made θύμος the third part of the soul. The same applies to the brief recapitulation of Timaeus 18D, though ὃσοιπερ ἂν τῆς πρεπούσηςἒντος ἠλικίας γίγνωνται might be taken as those born in the seventh or tenth month after a festival, for the groups would not overlap unless there were more than four festivals a year. In any case, the Timaeus directly contradicts the Republic on the question of infanticide. On this question see Adam's App. IV. to Book V., where he comes to the conclusion that ‘in any case we must interpret the Republic by itself.’