the greatest disgrace

September 25, 2024

‘The greatest disgrace possible,’ he said.

‘And yet, is it really any more disgraceful,

would you say,

................than the person who

in addition to

spending

the greater part of his life

in the law-courts

as defendant or plaintiff,

is also convinced,

Such is his Ignorance

of What is Good,

.....that his cleverness at committing crimes,

and his sub-sequent ability

to use every evasion

and loophole

to escape conviction

and avoid paying the penalty,

is actually a matter for self-congratulation?

And all for the sake of what is trivial and of no importance,

because he does not realise

how much finer and better it is

to see to it

that his life

does not

depend on

finding

a juror who is half-asleep.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘That is worse than the previous example.’

‘And don’t you think it’s a disgrace,’ I asked, ‘to need medical attention, not as a result of injuries or the onset of some seasonal illness,

but because our inactivity, and a routine such as we have described, have

filled us up with gas and ooze, like a marsh, and compelled those clever

doctors of the school of Asclepius to invent names like “wind” and “flux”

for our diseases?’

‘Yes, they really do have some extraordinary new names for diseases,’

he said.

53 Sicily in general, and the court of Dionysius at Syracuse in particular, were noted

for elaborate cuisine.

54 Corinth was a noted supplier of hetairai — female dining companions, professionals

something like the Japanese geisha, except that sex was taken for granted as part of

the service.

55 Athenian lawcourts were in fact staffed by amateurs - jurymen chosen by lot from a

pool of citizen volunteers, and a judge who was no more than a presiding magistrate,

also chosen by lot, and held office only for a year. Hence the word translated as

‘judges’ at 405a also means ‘jurors’.

Written published read distributed translated integrated into the language you pretend to understand.

An explanation generated from long hours of thought put to the test of real Ity bitty analysis of words spoken down to the grave where the inflection point points to the ion in Zion the star you are when you stand under the understanding of the word G as expressed in the let th er Α β Γ

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