Minos

Editorial Note

The Greek text. The Greek is John Burnet’s, from the fifth volume of his Oxford Classical Text of Plato (1907), which holds the ninth of Thrasyllus’ tetralogies (the Minos, the Laws, the Epinomis and the Letters), the Definitions and the spurious dialogues; its first part, which the Minos opens, holds the Minos and Books I–VIII of the Laws. The copy reproduced is a later impression of that first part: its title page carries no date; its verso names the printer, John Johnson, Printer to the University of Oxford from 1925 to 1946; the Preface is dated November 1906, with an addendum of November 1913 reporting the rediscovery of the manuscript O (Vaticanus graecus 1); and the publisher’s list bound in at the end is dated October 1936, so that the copy was issued no earlier than that. The list names no second edition of the volume, so the text is that of the first edition (1907). The text is reproduced page for page and line for line: each left-hand page of this edition is one page of Burnet, with his line-ends, his marginal section letters and line numbers, and his apparatus criticus at the foot. In the margin, “St. II p. 313” at the head of the dialogue gives the volume and page of Stephanus’ edition at which it begins; where each later page of Stephanus begins, its number stands in place of the letter a; and within each section every fifth line is numbered. Burnet sets these in the outer margin of his page, this edition in the right-hand margin; his running heads are not reproduced. The words were taken from the Perseus Digital Library’s digital transcription of Burnet, and every line was then checked against the photographs of this copy; where the two differ, this edition prints what Burnet printed. Burnet’s title, ΜΙΝΩΣ ἢ ΠΕΡΙ ΝΟΜΟΥ, “Minos, or On Law”, and his list of the persons beneath it (ΣΩΚΡΑΤΗΣ ΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ, Socrates and a companion) are kept, with his abbreviations of the speakers’ names (ΣΩ., ΕΤ.), his capitals at the openings of speeches and of quoted speech, and his quotation marks (313c–314b, 321d). A new speech usually begins a new, indented paragraph; but from 314c Burnet runs most short exchanges together within one paragraph, joining the speeches by dashes (“σοφούς;—ΕΤ. Ἔγωγε.—ΣΩ. Οὐκοῦν”), and this edition does the same, on both pages. Where Socrates turns to a new matter within his speech, Burnet begins a new paragraph without a speaker’s name (319a9, 320b8), and so does this edition. The lines of Homer and Hesiod are set as verse (319b, 319d, 320d); Homer’s words run into the prose at 319b4 and the phrase “shepherd of the people” at 321c2 are letterspaced, as Burnet prints them. Angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ in the text enclose words that are not in the manuscripts and that Burnet supplies: the companion’s reply at 316a2–3, which he takes from the early printed editions (add. vulg.), and the relative ἃ at 321d2, whose source he does not name. His misprints in the apparatus are kept (“om A” at 314a5 and “om F” at 316e6, each without a point, and the key “a 3” for an entry that belongs to line a 4 of 315a).

Reading the apparatus. The notes at the foot of each Greek page are Burnet’s, unaltered. Entries are keyed by section letter and line as numbered in the margin, so that “a 4” is the fourth line of section a. The section letters begin again with each Stephanus page, so that on a page that runs from one Stephanus page into the next, “a 1” after “e 7” belongs to the new page (319a1). A further entry on the same line follows after a wider space without repeating the key. Usually the reading printed in the text comes first, followed by the witnesses that have it; a colon separates it from the alternatives, each followed by its witnesses. Entries with no colon report a scholar’s deletion without listing the witnesses for the text (318b2), a repetition in F (313c3), or only what the manuscripts have where Burnet notes it: a form other than the one he prints (318e3, 319b5, 319d9, 321b7), the reading he prints, confirmed (321b5) or with the corrections made to it in A (318a2), or the omission of a word he supplies (321d2). Spaced points . . . stand for the words between the first and last words of a lemma, which the entry covers but does not write out (313c1, 313c3, 317b3–4); round brackets enclose a remark on the entry (313b9, 316a4, 318a2), a further reading inside it (317d4, 318e1), or, at 318b2, the words of A on either side of the ἐν it lacks (γέγονε τοῖς). Forms are given as the manuscripts have them, without the capitals of the text (μίνων, ῥαδάμανθυν, κρῆτες), and with their own spellings and accents. A colon inside a reported reading belongs to the manuscript: A has ἀλλά: at 316a3, where the final ά and the colon are written over an erasure, and ὁπου:οῦν at 317b5. A marks a change of speaker with such a dicolon; at 317b5, inside a word within a speech of Socrates, it can mark none.

Names and abbreviations. Stephanus is Henri Estienne, whose edition of 1578 supplies the page numbers by which Plato is cited; the Minos fills pages 313–321 of his second volume. A scholar’s name standing alone after a reading marks that scholar’s reading. The scholars named are Karl Friedrich Hermann (Herm. at 316a2), whose edition of Plato appeared in 1851–53, and August Boeckh, who wrote on the Minos (1806). Alexander, cited at 313a2 for the wording of the companion’s question, is an ancient author who quotes it; Burnet does not say which Alexander. Stob. is Stobaeus, the anthologist of the fifth century AD, who quotes 317c–318a in the chapter of his Anthology on laws and customs (4.2; Wachsmuth–Hense, vol. IV, pp. 120–121); “Stob. A” is one manuscript of the Anthology. Basileensis altera is the second Basel edition of Plato (1556). Par. 1642 is a manuscript at Paris (Parisinus graecus 1642). vulg. (vulgata) is the text of the early printed editions. om. means that a witness, or an editor (316a2), leaves the words out; add., that they are added; secl., “set apart”, that a scholar deletes them; in marg., that a reading is written in the margin; in ras., that it is written over an erasure; s. v. (supra versum), that it is written above the line, and supra, “above”, that letters are written over others (316e6) or that a word stands earlier in the text (316a2); qui … pro …, “who (reads) … in place of …” (316a2; pro alone at 317d8); abscisso margine periit in A, “lost in A where the margin is cut away” (313a1); post, “after”, and iterat, “repeats”, with omissis, “leaving out” (313c3: after νομιζόμενα F repeats the words from b8 to c3, leaving out those from b9 to c2); ut vid. (ut videtur), “as it seems”; re vera, “in fact”, that the manuscripts really have the reading (315a8, 318e2, 321b5); sic, “so”, that the odd form is the manuscript’s (319a1); bis, “twice”; prius, “the first” and alterum, “the second” of two like words in the line; et mox, “and soon after”, and et infra, “and below”, that the same reading recurs; sed, “but”; et, “and”. The sign ÷ before A’s reading at 319d5 is printed as Burnet prints it: it is the mark with which A as a rule fills an erased space, and so shows an erasure in A before ἁπάντων.

The witnesses. Burnet’s apparatus to this dialogue rests on two manuscripts. A is the Paris manuscript of Plato (Parisinus graecus 1807), written in the ninth century, which his Preface calls by far the soundest witness for this tetralogy; A² is A as corrected in its revision (diorthōsis), by the same hand, as it seems. F is the Vienna manuscript (Vindobonensis 55, suppl. phil. Gr. 39), which Burnet believed to have been copied from an exemplar in uncial letters; it has nothing after the Minos. Letters written together share a reading, so that “A F” is A and F.

The English. The translation is new. It aims to be exact, with every clause answering to a clause of the Greek, and to keep Socrates’ manner: his patient questioning, his solemn warning about impiety, and his warning, near the end, never to incur the hatred of a poet. Nothing is added to make it livelier; where a joke or a play on words depends on the Greek, a note explains it. The speakers are named in small capitals, as Burnet names them, at the head of each speech and, in the exchanges he runs together, after the dash. The reading Burnet prints is translated, including the words he prints in angle brackets, which keep their brackets in the English (316a, 321d); where his choice makes a real difference to the sense, a note gives the other reading (315c, 316a, 317d, 321d).

Each right-hand page translates the Greek page opposite. When a sentence runs over the turn of Burnet’s page, the English breaks at the nearest point English word order allows. The Stephanus section letters in the margin of the English mark where each section begins.

Key terms. The words on which the argument turns have one rendering each throughout. Nomos is “law”, every time, including the musical nomoi, the “laws for the flute” (318b). Nomizein, the verb made from it, is “accept”, and ta nomizomena, the companion’s first definition, “what is accepted” (313b); nomimos is “lawful” and ta nomima “lawful usages”; anomos is “lawless” and anomia “lawlessness”; nomothetēs is “lawgiver”. Nomeus is “distributor”, and nemein and dianemein “distribute”; with a herd as its object nemein is “tend” (318a). Dogma is “resolution” and psēphisma “decree”; doxa is “opinion”, as in the series. Chrēstos is “decent” and ponēros “base”. Heuriskein is “find” and heuresis “finding”, kept apart from exeuriskein “discover” and exeuresis “discovery”. To on is “what is” and ta onta “the things that are”. Syngramma is “writing”; epistēmōn “one who has knowledge”; technē “craft”; synousia “being with”.

The notes. The notes identify persons, places and quotations, explain what the English cannot carry, and mark the places where Burnet’s choice of reading makes a real difference to the sense. Interpretations are labelled as such. They are numbered afresh on each page.