Review: Grube's Plato Translations

[Note: The publication of this review led to a relationship with Jay Hullett, of Hackett Publishing, which turned out to be one of the most satisfying aspects of my professional life. For a happy ending to the story of the Grube translations, see my review of Plato: Complete Works, posted below.]

Published in TEACHING PHILOSOPHY 2, No.3-4 (1977-8), pp.386-7.

G. M. A. GRUBE. The Trial and Death of Socrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1975, 58 pp. $1.25, pbk. G. M. A. GRUBE. Plato's Meno. In­dianapolis: Hackett Publishing Com­pany, 1976, 33 pp. $.95, pbk. G. M. A. GRUBE. Plato's Phaedo. In­dianapolis: Hackett Publishing Com­pany, 1977, 67 pp. $1.45, pbk.

     Grube's The Trial and Death of Socrates (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and the "death scene" from the Phaedo), Meno and Phaedo continue the project of translation begun with the Republic (see the review in TP 1 :2). These editions are quite inexpensive and are intended to recommend themselves for use by stu­dents.

     Grube aims at a high degree of literalness in his renditions, but unfor­tunately, this is very often bought at the price of extreme awkwardness in the English. We are frequently given English with Greek syntax, long sentences which are not broken up, and deviant punctua­tion. All this creates a general impression of clumsiness. Some examples are the following:

Euthyphro 5D7 (p. 7). "Tell me then, what is the pious, and what the impious, do you say?"

Euthyphro 15C5-6 (p. 19). "Do you then not realize that when you say now that that what is dear to the gods is the pious?"

Crito 49B2-5 (p. 49). "Above all, is the truth such as we used to say it was, whether the majority agree or not, whether we must still suffer worse things than we do now, or will be treated more gently, nonetheless, wrongdoing is in every way harmful [sic: kakon] and shameful to the wrongdoer." (Two misprints corrected.)

Meno 96A-B3 (p. 28). "Can you men­tion any other subject of which those who claim to be teachers are not, such as the teachers of other subjects, recognized as such, but not to have knowledge of it themselves, and are thought to be poor in the very matter which they profess to teach, or any other subject of which those who are recognized as worthy men at one time say it can be taught and at other times that it cannot?"

Phaedo 76D7-E4 (p. 27). "If those realities we are always talking about exist, the Beautiful and the Good and all that kind of reality, and we refer all our sense perceptions to them, and we discover that it existed before and we had knowledge of it, and we compare our perceptions with it, then, just as they exist, so our soul must exist before we are born."

Phaedo 80C2-7 (p. 31). "You realize, he said, that when a man dies, the visible part, the body, which exists in the visible world, which we call the corpse, for which it would be natural to dissolve, fall apart and be blown away, does not immediately suffer any of these things but remains for a fair time, in fact, quite a long time if the man dies with his body in a suitable condi­tion and at a favourable season?"

Phaedo (88A1-B3 (p. 38). "For if one were to concede to a man using that argu­ment even more than you do, if one were to grant him not only that the soul exists in the time before we are born, but that there is no reason why the soul of some should not exist and continue to exist after our death, and thus frequently be born and die in turn, if one were to grant him that the soul's nature is so strong that it can survive many bodies, but if, having granted all this, one does not further agree that the soul is not damaged by its many births and is not, in the end, altogether destroyed in one of those deaths, he might say that no one knows which death and dissolution of the body brings about the destruction of the soul, since not one of us can be aware of this."

     Presumably, the primary benefit of such literalness is the achievement of ac­curacy. But Grube often fails on this score as well. There is a plethora of annoying mistakes and mistranslations, of which the following are representative.

Euthyphro 6E3 (p. 8). "Tell me then what form itself is ... " leaves out a very important "this." Perhaps this is a misprint. Euthyphro 7 A8 (p. 9). The superlative enantiotaton is translated simply as "op­posite."

Euthyphro 8A10 (p. 10), 0 thaumasie is translated as "you surprising man," which fails to capture the irony of the Greek. At 8011 (p. 11), the same phrase is not translated at all.

 Apology 17A1 (p. 22). et passim. Grube translates andres Athenaioi as "gentlemen of the jury," which it ob­viously does not mean. The translation obscures the fact that Socrates deliberate­ly refrains from employing the most customary mode of address to a jury, and renders pointless his emphatic change of address (to andres dikastai) at 40A2, after he has determined who among the jury are true judges.

 Apology 37A5 (p. 39). The translation has" I am convinced that no man willing­ly does wrong," which makes the reader perk up at an explicit mention of the famous Socratic paradox. But this is a mistranslation; the medena at 37A5 is clearly accusative and the line means that Socrates has never willingly done anyone an injustice.

 Crito 53A3-5 (p. 53). Aneu nomon at 53A5 means "without laws," and not, as Grube has it, "if its laws do not."

Meno 87B2-C3 (p. 21). "So we can say about virtue also, since we do not know either what it is or what qualities it possesses, let us investigate whether it is teachable by means of a hypothesis, and say this: if among the things existing in the soul virtue has a certain quality, would it be teachable or not? Or, as we were saying just now, can it be recol­lected? First then, if it is other than knowledge-for let it make no difference to us whichever term we use-but can it be taught?"

   In addition to being extreme­ly awkward and ungrammatical, this translation involves a transposition of lines at B6-8, giving a totally different turn to the meaning.

Phaedo 650 (p. 14). Grube capitalizes the names of the Forms of the Just, the Beautiful and the Good. Yet at 65E, we find "size, health, strength," without capitalization, although these latter are surely Forms also, as the remaining part of the line makes clear.

Phaedo 100A4 (p. 50). "Theory" for logon is overly specific.

   Other inaccuracies occur at Euthyphro 3C, 50, 5E, 8C9, 9Cl, l1E2, 14C3-4: Crito 43B3-4, 54C7; Meno 71B4, 7608-9, 76E3, 88A6, 98A7; Phaedo 61A8-Bl, 65A9-Bl, 74E, 101D7.

   Moreover, Grube's remarks in his brief Introductions and notes are at times misleading and inaccurate. Often difficult points in the text which call for comment or explanation are ignored.
   There are a number of misprints in these books and the lopsided, hand-drawn diagrams illustrating the "slave boy" episode in the Meno do not help matters any. Perhaps they are intended to remind us of the imperfection of sensible par­ticulars.

   On the whole these editions are marred by a considerable number of infelicities. It is to be sincerely hoped that the publisher will see fit to revise and correct them, especially in view of the need for inexpen­sive versions of these dialogues for use in the classroom. However, until such a revi­sion is made, I cannot recommend them for use by students.

Richard Hogan
SOUTHEASTERN MASSACHUSETTS UNIVERSITY