Plato, De Re Publica 457a–b: female athletics in Plato’s ideal state

Plato, De Re Publica 457a–b: female athletics in Plato’s ideal state

early-to-mid 420s - 347 BCE

Literary source

“The women of the guardians, then, must strip, since they will be clothed with virtue as a garment, and must take their part with the men in war and the other duties of civic guardianship and have no other occupation. But in these very duties lighter tasks must be assigned to the women than to the men because of their weakness as a class. But the man who ridicules unclad women, exercising because it is best that they should, ‘plucks the unripe fruit’ of laughter and does not know, it appears, the end of his laughter nor what he would be at. For the fairest thing that is said or ever will be said is this, that the helpful is fair and the harmful foul.”

Paul Shorey, Plato, The Republic, vol. 1, Books I-V (The Loeb Classical Library; 237), Cambridge, MA 1930.

ἀποδυτέον δὴ ταῖς τῶν φυλάκων γυναιξίν, ἐπείπερ ἀρετὴν ἀντὶ ἱματίων ἀμφιέσονται, καὶ κοινωνητέον πολέμου τε καὶ τῆς ἄλλης φυλακῆς τῆς περὶ τὴν πόλιν, καὶ οὐκ ἄλλα πρακτέον: τούτων δ᾽ αὐτῶν τὰ ἐλαφρότερα ταῖς γυναιξὶν ἢ τοῖς ἀνδράσι δοτέον διὰ τὴν τοῦ γένους ἀσθένειαν. ὁ δὲ γελῶν ἀνὴρ ἐπὶ γυμναῖς γυναιξί, τοῦ βελτίστου ἕνεκα γυμναζομέναις, “ἀτελῆ” τοῦ γελοίου “σοφίας δρέπων καρπόν”, οὐδὲν οἶδεν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἐφ᾽ ᾧ γελᾷ οὐδ᾽ ὅτι πράττει: κάλλιστα γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο καὶ λέγεται καὶ λελέξεται, ὅτι τὸ μὲν ὠφέλιμον καλόν, τὸ δὲ βλαβερὸν αἰσχρόν.

John Burnet (ed.), Platonis Opera, vol. 4, Tetralogia VIII, Oxford 1902.