5 1 highest good of the commonwealth; it is also the highest good of the individual. The state exists not to make its citizens powerful, but to make them virtuous, i.e. happy, for virtue makes for happiness. Although virtue is with Plato always a means, it is also a good avтoû χάριν. The end at which virtue aims is likeness with God: ὁμοίωσις δὲ (i.ε. θεῷ) δίκαιον καὶ ὅσιον μετὰ φρονήσεως γενέσθαι. The highest good then is the becoming like God; it is not pleasure as in the school of the Hedonists, though this forms part of the highest good.* A life absolutely without pleasure or pain, i.e. a life of complete apathy, does not make for happiness, and cannot, therefore, be the virtuous life. The highest pleasure is that which is found in the contemplation of truth, and of this pleasure none has tasted save the philosopher: τῆς δὲ τοῦ ὄντος θέας, οἵαν ἡδονὴν ἔχει, ἀδύνατον ἄλλῳ γεγεῦσθαι πλὴν τῷ φιλοσόφῳ. In the writings of Plato a fundamentally ethical conception of good and bad is wanting. The soul is a purely transcendental substance into which the bad enters from without, i.e. from the body,-"a material substance essentially different from the soul and in which the soul is for a time entombed. This evil of being imprisoned in a material body has to be counteracted by moral education. Inasmuch as moral good is the becoming like God, one must free himself as much as possible from the influences of the body, though not through suicide, and strive toward the attainment of truth, especially toward a knowledge of the idea of good. The ground of virtuous effort lies in the kinship between the soul and ideas. All real virtue is based on knowledge. The innate longing for truth drives the soul to seek it for its own satisfaction, but perfect satisfaction can be reached only in the contempla 1 Zeller: Die Phil. d. Griechen, II. 1. p. 892. 2 Überweg-Heinze: Grundriss d. Gesch. d. Phil. des Alterthums, pp. 170, 174. 8 Theaet. 176 B. Überweg-Heinze: Grundriss u.s.w. p. 174. Cf. Philebus 21 D E, 63 E, 66 C. Zeller: II. 1. 874. Republic 582 C. Timaeos 86 A seqq.; Phaedon 66 B; Theaet. 176 A. It has already been noticed that Plato makes a distinction between philosophical and ordinary virtue. The distinction between the two corresponds to that between miσthμn and dóta; the former is firm, fixed, and the result of clear insight; the latter is accidental, unreliable, and is based on custom rather than any rational principle. Cf. Zeller: Die Phil. d. Griechen, II. 1. 881. 4te Aufl. tion of pure being,' Toù ovтos, i.e. of the ideas. This the soul does through the element λογιστικόν, and the virtue is σοφία or νοεῖν τὰ voηrá. Through this virtue we contemplate the idea good or the deity. In this the soul finds its highest happiness, to which all virtue is a means. This transcendental element in the Ethics of Plato corresponds, as Paulsen points out, to the religious element in Christian Ethics. In Greek Ethics the object is to determine what is the highest good and how to reach it: it is essentially a philosophy of virtue. In Christian Ethics the object is to determine what according to the law of God is duty and what is sin: it starts with the assumption that the law of God is the absolute ethical standard. In Christian Ethics, as in the Ethics of Plato, the chief cardinal virtue does not always appear to be the same. In the history of Christian dogma faith is the chief virtue; otherwise love appears to be the first. With Plato σopía seems frequently to have the highest place, because it has immediately to do with the idea good and is the virtue of the highest faculty; while dikatoσúvn is in the Platonic system, as a whole, the chief and all-embracing virtue, and is used, moreover, synonymously with ȧperý. The relationships in which the various cardinal virtues stand to each other and to the man who practises them may be briefly summarized as follows: a) A man is wise when reason performs its duty; when it recognizes truth and makes wise use of it; when, as governing principle, it wisely guides and orders the lower elements of the soul. B) A man is courageous when the will (for the spirited element corresponds to the will in our psychology) performs its duty in controlling the concupiscent element (émiovμηrikóv) of the soul; when it serves reason as faithful ally, and acts on the judgment of λoyiσTikóv as to what is and what is not to be feared. 7) A man is moderate when the animal impulses and desires perform their functions without causing disturbance in the soul, and 1 Republic 490 B, 511 A seqq. 2 What the sun in the material world is to sight, the same is the idea of good in the spiritual world to reason. Republic VI. 508 B E. 3 Paulsen: System der Ethik, p. 21 seq. 4 Höffding: Ethische Principien, translated from the Danish by Bendixen, p. 135. when the rule of reason is accepted by the two lower elements as absolute. 8) A man whose soul is properly ordered and controlled in every way, in which all the parts do their own work in such way as to produce in the soul health, harmony, and beauty, this man deserves the name δίκαιος. Finally, Plato advocates a doctrine of future rewards; he not only teaches the immortality of the soul, but believes further that in the future life the just and virtuous man shall be rewarded.1 He says in the last book of his immortal Republic: "We must, therefore, in the instance of the just man, believe, if poverty or disease or any other reputed evil befall him, that these will finally be converted to some good, either during his life or in death. For, verily, a man can never be left uncared for by the gods, who determines to struggle zealously to become just and who practises virtue in order to become as much as in the power of man lies-like God." He who approaches most nearly to perfect virtue and likeness with God is the philosopher, a characterization of whom is found at the beginning of the sixth book of the Republic: He has the greatest love for truth and is unceasingly active in his quest for it; he hates falsehood; he is manly, noble, quick in apprehension, and despises external pomp; by association with the godlike and orderly he becomes himself, as far as is possible to man, godlike and orderly.* Such person has moral health because the several parts of the soul perform their functions normally; he has moral beauty because of the symmetry and harmony in his character; there is moral orderliness in his soul, because reason, which alone can give right judgment on the true and false, the good and bad, maintains in the soul its rightful rule. It is then in this sense that Plato says in the Republic: "Virtue would, therefore, as it seems, be a sort of health, beauty, and orderliness of the soul."5 1 Gorgias 478 E, 480 A, 505 B, 525 B. Republic X. 613 A. Diog. Laert. III. 44. 79: ἐν δὲ τοῖς διαλόγοις καὶ τὴν δικαιοσύνην θεοῦ νόμον ὑπελάμβανεν, ὡς ἰσχυροτέραν προτρέψαι τὰ δίκαια πράττειν, ἵνα μὴ καὶ μετὰ θάνατον δίκας ὑπόσχοιεν οἱ κακοῦργοι. 2 Republic X. 613 A. 4 Republic VI. 500 C. 8 Republic VI. 490 B. seqq. 5 Republic IV. 444 E. NOTES. ANTE AND Post. It has long been known that ante and post are ablatives, as in antidea postidea, but to what stems they belong and what is their relation to each other is not so clear. Their form, as well as that of their derivatives anticus and posticus (cf. Sk. antikam), points to i-stems, of which the nominatives would be the -ti stems respectively antis and postis. With ante belong Sk. anti, Gr. åvrí, and Goth. and-, doubtless from the same stem, but of uncertain case. Of the same root (cf. Sk. ani, èv, eis, in, ev-tepov, inter, etc.), but with a -to, -ta suffix, are Sk. anta (end), Goth. andis (end), Gr. ǎvrîv (acc.), avra (of uncertain case). In Latin we have of the -ti stem antes, used of rows of plants, and perhaps rows of men. If this word is regarded as meaning files, i.e. rows looked at end on,' the whole group of 1-formations is a natural one, although its connection with the simple root in iv, etc., is still obscure. Ante would naturally mean something like 'on the front end.' With this fits very well the meaning of antae used in the expression templum in antis (èv maρaσTáo), of a temple built within two side-walls, which project more or less beyond the temple itself, leaving a portico covered by the gable end of the roof. In this case the projecting side-walls are the rows or files standing 'end on' to the spectator (see Vitr. III. 1, IV. 4 and 7; Gruter, 207). The stem of post is evidently a -ti stem of the same kind as that of ante, from the root (or stem) pas, appearing in po(s)ne, Sk. paçcha (pas + qo), paçchā (instr. adv., behind), pacchāt (abl. adv., from behind, after), and in Gr. πú-μатos, πνvós. Thus the two adverbs, on the front and on the back, seem to fit in with their kindred. The only objection to the latter combination is found in the Latin postis, which is in form the precise word of which post (postid) should be the ablative, as antes represents the stem from which ante 181 should come. Now postis gives no signs of having had any meaning in Latin except that of doorpost, and hence sometimes door. It is as if postern should become the regular word for door in English. How 'the front door' should come to be 'on the back side,' it seems difficult to explain. It occurred to my colleague, Professor F. D. Allen, and myself, that the explanation of the anomaly was to be found in the Roman augural discipline or ritual, a system which must have had an enormous influence on the Latin language and customs. The words anticus and posticus seem to have a special relation to that system. Nor does the expression templum in antis seem a natural one except in connection with some special method of construction having a peculiar significance. Now if we consider that the first Roman temples were built under Etruscan influence, and that in the whole early history augury was supposed to have played a prominent part, it is natural to refer this peculiar expression, and in fact the whole system of temple construction, to the augural discipline. In Festus (M.), 157, we find minora templa fiunt ab auguribus cum loca aliqua tabulis aut linteis sepiuntur ne uno amplius ostio pateant certis verbis definita. itaque templum est locus ita effatus aut ita septus ut ea una parte pateat †angulus quod adfixus habeat ad terram (cf. Cic. de Div. II. 35; Liv. IV. 7; Plut. Marc. 5; Serv. Aen. II. 178; Interpres ad Serv. Aen. IV. 200; Varr. de L. L. VII. 8). The last part of the Festus passage is corrupt and unintelligible, but a slight change to angulos qua adfixos habeat ad terram makes very good sense. This reading would still leave it in doubt whether the rear or the front anguli were referred to. In the passage Interp. ad Serv. Aen. IV. 200, the phrase uno exitu occurs, and this method of structure seems to be emphasized here as in Festus. Nothing is said about a roof. We are thus left in doubt whether the construction was that of a bark shanty, enclosed with two side-walls and a back, with the front open to the south, or that of a sheepfold with a single door at the north, conceived as the back. The so-called auguratorium on the Palatine points to the former, and seems to be the original of the form of the auguratorium is this: however, seem to point to the second templum in antis. The The words of Festus, form of construction. The reading angulos, etc., would fit either view, but better still a |