Theages

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 photograph of each page, and a doubtful mark was settled by setting it beside sure examples of each form on the same page. The section letters and line numbers in the margin were worked out from the Stephanus divisions rather than copied, and were then compared with Burnet’s margin, page by page, across the 464 lines of the dialogue.

The dialogue was made in two blocks of Burnet’s pages, 1–9 and 10–17. Each 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. The first block was approved by the publisher for its voice before the second was begun. What the checks of the blocks 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 English, and three more reviewers checked them, claim by claim and citation by citation, together with the corrections made in the final reading.

What the final reading caught

It found some sixty points that the block checks had passed, most of them small. They fall into a few classes.

The largest class was renderings that had not been checked against the earlier volumes of the series. Words the series had already settled were brought into line: kalos of persons is “beautiful”, of Charmides and of Sannion (128d–e, 129d), as in the Charmides; manteis are “prophets” (131a); epimeleisthai is “care for” (121d, 123a), as in the Alcibiades I; dialegesthai is “talk” (“talked of other things”, 130b; “talk with anyone at all”, 130c); mathēma is “subject” (128b); anoētos is “senseless” (126d), answering “a man of sense” at 127d; hexis is “state” (130e), so that Aristides’ “all that state has drained away” answers his “am in a laughable state” (130c); hoi polloi are “the many” (127a); gennaios is “wellborn” (128a); homotechnos is “fellow craftsman” (125e); and the set answer Eoiken is “It seems so” (124e), no longer sharing its English with kindyneuei.

Some renderings changed the sense or the voice. The boy’s desire at 121c is now “unsafe”, so that Demodocus’ first fear is heard again in Socrates’ last advice, “safer” (130e). Socrates’ poioumai at 128b is “I count myself”, not “I claim”, which is the sense of two of the conjectures in the apparatus (prospoioumai, antipoioumai) rather than of the word Burnet prints. At 127c Demodocus’ “the talk from here on would now be addressed to you” keeps the word logos and his turn from his son to Socrates. At 124c the question is whether Aegisthus ruled in Argos, as the other rulers in the list rule “in Phthia”, “in Corinth” and “in Macedonia”. At 129d Socrates fears for the rest of the army “too”, not “at least”. Embrachy at 127c is “at all”, its sense with a relative, not “in short”. At 122c Socrates’ “adviser” became “the one advising”, beside “the one taking advice”, keeping the one verb of the Greek.

Five Stephanus letters stood after an English pronoun whose Greek is the ending of a verb in the new section, and were moved before it (121d, 123e, 125a, 125d, 127d). A few phrases still followed a published translation more closely than the Greek requires, and were reworded.

In the Editorial Note, the place of one example was wrong (124e9, not 125e9); fort. was placed on the wrong side of the siglum; the account of entries with no colon now includes those that record only what a witness has; et mox and ci. are described as Burnet uses them; the scholia in B are no longer called ancient; and the description of the notes on Burnet’s readings now promises only what the notes do. In the notes to the text, three notes were moved to the words they explain (123c, 126b, 129b); the note at 128d now says, as the English does, that the voice never turns Socrates “towards anything”; the note at 130e speaks of those who “come to be with” him; and Pericles’ ward is spelled Cleinias (126d).

What remains undone

The place of Priscian’s quotation of 127d has not been found; the Editorial Note reports it as Burnet does. Burnet’s own conventions for the vertical stroke and the asterisks in the apparatus were confirmed from his practice elsewhere in the volume, not from a statement of his.

The apparatus is Burnet’s alone. It has not been collated against the manuscripts, and readings proposed since 1909 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 is set out in the Introduction but not argued, and the date of its writing is not discussed; 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 each 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: 121a–126b (Burnet pages 1–9)

How it was made. Burnet pages 1–9 (scan pp. 19–27), 255 lines, from Demodocus’ request for a private word to the question by going to whom a man would become a clever horseman. The Greek was set line for line from the photographs of Burnet’s page, with his apparatus, and the English written and annotated; independent reviewers then checked the Greek and the apparatus against the photographs letter by letter, the English against the Greek clause by clause, and every note and the Editorial Note against their sources.

What the reviewers caught. The Greek text was confirmed line for line, but five words of the apparatus had been brought into line with the text or with each other when Burnet prints them otherwise: τᾶλλα at 121c2, without the coronis; B’s unaccented ἐλλιπειν at 123a1 and ἐστιν at 125a7; Baiter’s αὑτῶν, with the rough breathing, at 124e3; and B’s ἐγε at 125d7. The verse lines of 125b–d were measured again on the page and their indent reduced. In the English, ten Stephanus letters stood a word or two after the place where the Greek of the new section begins, and were moved. A question at 125a (“shall we deliberate together …?”) had been made a statement; a negation was missing at 124c12, and Burnet’s τοῦτον at 124d2 was untranslated; at 124a the English had followed a later hand’s article. An unreal wish at 122a, a fear at 122c and a past unreal condition at 125a had been flattened, and were restored. The verb of 123b, where Socrates asks Theages to “speak out” before him, now returns at 125a, where Theages has “spoken out against” his father. The lists of workmen at 124a–b, the name of the stoa at 121a and a few phrases elsewhere were reworded where they followed a published translation too closely. In the notes, the Apology names Paralius, not Paralus, and says only that Theages “was” his brother; it is Socrates, not Theages, who names the sophists at 127e–128a, and Callicles, not Socrates, who offers Themistocles, Pericles and Cimon as good men at Gorgias 503c; and the god of the Alcibiades I offers Alcibiades Europe but forbids him Asia. The Editorial Note now explains corr., post, sed and et sic legit, and distinguishes Burnet’s early corrector of B from the later hands.

Block II: 126b–131a (Burnet pages 10–17)

How it was made. Burnet pages 10–17 (scan pp. 28–35), 209 lines, from horsemen and javelin-throwers to the end of the dialogue, made as Block I was.

What the reviewers caught. The Greek text was confirmed line for line, including Burnet’s misprint εἰ for εἶ at 127a9, which a reader of this copy has struck through, writing εἶ in the margin; in the apparatus an iota subscript was missing from Cobet’s καθῄμην (130e2). In the English, Timarchus’ disobedience at 129c had been rendered as disbelief, although Socrates is repeating Timarchus’ own words, “I was not willing to obey Socrates”; Demodocus’ offices at 127e now keep the word “rule”, so that the father is seen to have done what the son wants to do; a reason, a comparison and an address lost at 127a, 127c and 127e were restored; one Stephanus letter was moved; and the phrases that followed a published translation too closely were reworded. In the notes, the Alcibiades I uses the same word, daimonion, of the sign, and Theages himself calls it “daimonic” before he calls it “divine”; Polus is the second of the three men Socrates argues with in the Gorgias; a Euathlus and a Philemon are known from comedy, though nothing shows they are the men named here; the fathers in the Laches ask how their sons should be educated; and the date of the conversation, 409, is marked as an inference from Socrates’ words.