The Lovers

Note on this Edition

How the volume was made

The Greek was taken from the Perseus Digital Library’s digital transcription of Burnet and cut into Burnet’s lines by reading every line-end from the photographs of his page, in the impression described in the Editorial Note. Accents, breathings and iota subscripts were read on the sharpest image of each page that the scan provides, and a doubtful mark was settled by setting it beside sure examples of each form in the same fount, and, where that image was in doubt, on the full photograph of the page. The section letters and line numbers in the margin were computed from the Stephanus divisions rather than copied, and were then compared with Burnet’s: across the 345 lines of the dialogue they fall where he prints them, and every mark in the margins was checked on the full photograph. Burnet’s apparatus was transcribed from the same images. Where the digital text differs from Burnet’s page, chiefly in the small letters it gives to the openings of speeches, this edition follows Burnet.

The dialogue is short, and it was made as a single block. The block was checked by four independent reviewers: two, dividing its pages between them, compared the Greek and the apparatus with the page images letter by letter, one compared the English with the Greek clause by clause, and one checked every fact and reference in the notes and the Editorial Note. Each finding was examined again against the evidence before it was adopted, and not all were adopted. What that check caught is recorded at the end of this Note.

The volume was then read through again as one text, since a check made clause by clause cannot see some kinds of error: a word rendered one way here and another way there, a recapitulation that states a step in other words than the step itself, a rendering that departs from the earlier volumes of the series. The translator read the whole, and four further reviewers read it independently: one for the consistency of terms across the whole book and with the earlier volumes, two for sense, omissions and continuity in its two halves, and one for the Editorial Note against the scan of Burnet’s volume. The Introduction, the Key Words of the Dialogue, the Outline and the Glossary were then written from the finished text, and their claims and references were checked against it, and against the ancient sources they cite, by three more reviewers.

What the final reading caught

It found some fifty faults that the block check had passed, most of them small and a few substantive. They fall into a few classes.

The most consequential concerned the witness. The copy reproduced was described, in the Editorial Note and on the title page, as the edition of 1901 in a later impression. Its preface is of 1901, but it also carries Burnet’s addendum of April 1910, which marks the second edition, and the publisher’s list bound in after the text, dated January 1935, offers the volume as “Ed. 2”. The title page and the Editorial Note now describe it as a later impression of the second edition, and the Editorial Note shows that it was issued no earlier than January 1935. The Editorial Note also gained what a reader of the Greek page needs to know: that at 135a7, 137e2 and 137e11 the text prints a reading that no listed witness has in that form, which of the scholars’ proposals Burnet adopts, and that within one paragraph the narrative sometimes passes from one speaker to another.

In the English, a few renderings changed the sense. At 137b Socrates’ “But I suspect, my friend, that they are not so” had read “that this is not how things are”: the Greek verb is plural, and its subject is the philosophers just called base and useless, whom Socrates is about to rescue. At 138d the second half of Socrates’ question had read “is it not shameful”, which in English presses for a yes; the Greek offers the opposite, that it is “not shameful” to be unable to follow a judge or a king, and the reply, “How could it not be shameful”, rejects that proposal. At 137d the question “some other than this one” now matches its answer, “No, but this one”. At 139a “far from being either much learning or busying oneself with the crafts” replaces “both … and”, which after “far from” could be read as “not both”; and the wise one is now “ashamed of what had been said before”, as in the Greek, so that the dialogue’s last words, “what had been said”, answer it. Tenses and moods were set right at 132a (“were thought”), 134b (“are you fighting it out”) and 135b (“were those”, a reported statement, not a guess); and at 136a the wise one’s “You appear to me” now renders the verb Burnet prints, not the “seem” of another manuscript.

Next came renderings that had not been checked against the series. Grammatistēs is “writing-master”, as in the Charmides and the Alcibiades I; oiesthai is “think” (it had twice been “suppose”); the answer Panu men oun is “Certainly”, as in the earlier volumes; banausos is “menial”, as in the Alcibiades I; and oikeisthai, of cities and households “well ordered”, now answers dioikein, “order”, as in the Alcibiades I; it had been “managed”. Words were kept off the English of other key words: ennoein at 135e is “take in”, not “understand”, which is kept for synesis; gnōnai at 136c is “find out”, not “learn”, which is kept for manthanein; the runners of 135e are “racers”, since “runners” beside “runner-up” made a pun the Greek does not make; and at 136d “so too in everything else” replaces “it is the same”, since “the same” is the argument’s word from 137c. Mathēmata is “subjects of learning” each time, and legein of the wise one’s position “mean” in Socrates’ questions (135b–e, 137a). A step and its recapitulation now share their words: “there always are craftsmen” (136e and 137a). At 134c the wise lover’s “with you, however” now repeats the shape of his own two-faced answer of 133d, as the Greek does. Some phrases that followed Lamb’s Loeb were rewritten.

In the notes, the description of Democritus as “a true pentathlete in philosophy” is now given as the continuation of Thrasyllus’ report, which it seems to be, rather than as Diogenes’ own; the runner-up is no longer “first overall”, which the dialogue does not say; the Clouds promise happiness to the would-be pupil rather than question him (412–421); the Charmides’ “white line” is quoted as Plato wrote it; Hermann’s correction at 134a is given as the two words he changed; and Heraclitus’ saying is rendered “Much learning does not teach one to have sense”, since “understanding” belongs to another word of the dialogue. Two sentences of the block record below, which misdescribed corrections it reports, were put right.

What remains undone

Two entries in the apparatus are printed as this copy has them though they look like printer’s faults (133e1, 138a2), and the damaged δ of διοικῇ at 138c1 is read as the type intended; they should be checked against another copy of the volume. The place of Stobaeus’ quotation of 138a–b is given by chapter only.

The apparatus is Burnet’s alone. It has not been collated against the manuscripts, and readings proposed since 1910 are not reported. The translation follows Burnet’s text even where later scholars would print something else.

The notes are a reader’s aid, not a commentary. They were chosen to explain what the English cannot carry, and they label the more doubtful interpretations as such. The question of who wrote the dialogue, and when, is set out in the Introduction but not argued; a reader who wants the scholarly debate will need a commentary.

The checks described above were made by independent reviewers working from the same page images. The volume has not been read by a specialist outside the project, and a reader who finds an error is asked to report it.

The record of the blocks

The notes that follow were written when the block was finished, and are kept as a record of what its check found. Where the final reading changed something they report, the text above says so.

Block I: 132a–139a (Burnet pages 1–13)

The block is the whole dialogue, from Socrates’ arrival at the school of Dionysius to the silence of the wise lover. It was drafted on 8 October 2026.

The checks. Four independent reviewers then read the block. Two compared the Greek and Burnet’s apparatus with the photographs letter by letter, one the English with the Greek clause by clause, and one every note and the Editorial Note with its sources. Every finding was examined against the photographs or the text before it was adopted.

The Greek. The text was found right letter for letter. Three readings of T in the apparatus were corrected: ἄττα at 135a7 and ἤπερ at 137c9, both with the smooth breathing the copy prints, and δικαιοσύνῃ at 138b5, with its iota subscript. The doubtful places were settled on the full photographs: καγαθὸν at 133e1, the second T at 138a2 and the lemma at 137e2 are printed as this copy has them, and the δ of διοικῇ at 138c1 shows no trace of its upper stroke.

The English. At 136a τοιοῦτόν τινα is masculine, “some such man”, not “something of this sort”; at 137a the imperfect ὡμολογοῦμεν became “we were agreeing”; the “second prizes” of 136a are now the same words in the recapitulation at 138e. “Having his neck wrung”, which in English means killing, became “having his neck twisted”, the wrestler’s hold. Words left untranslated were restored: the emphatic “you” at 134b, “rather” at 134c, “both … and” at 137b, “in these matters” at 138d, “laughed at it” at 134b. The question at 136c is again a question, and κινητέος at 134a is “nudged”, as Socrates nudged the same man at 132b. Six Stephanus letters were moved to the first word of their sections (132b, 133b, 134b, 136b, 137b, 137c), the turn of page at 132c was set where the Greek turns, and ἀντεραστής at 133b is “rival lover”, as ruled. Phrases that followed the Loeb translation of W. R. M. Lamb word for word were rewritten.

The notes. Thrasyllus (Diogenes Laertius 9.37) took for Democritus the unnamed speaker for whom the philosopher is like a pentathlete, not the philosopher of the likeness; Plato alludes to Solon’s line in the Laches and the Republic but does not quote it; the note on “decent”, “base” and “worthless” no longer claims a precedent that no single earlier volume bears out; the places in the Clouds were corrected; the folk etymology of banausos was dropped; the definition of tyrannos was put right; sources were added for Anaxagoras (Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.7.7), Oenopides (Theon of Smyrna), Heraclitus and the Statesman. In the Editorial Note the account of entries without a colon was corrected and completed, and the copy’s preface and addendum were added.

Typesetting. A Stephanus letter at the head of an English paragraph stood beside the last line of the paragraph before; it now stands beside the first line of its own.