Radio: What Will Socrates Say Next?

Skyscrapersful of radiomen hardly ever heard of the guy, but Aristocles, the son of Ariston (Plato for short) is one of radio's best scripters. He proved it recently, when the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council (TIME, Nov. 25) gave Plato's scripts an airing—three times a week over Boston's WHDH.

By cutting and simplifying Plato's far-from-Basic Greek, the Dialogues have been brought over into something very like Basic English. Last week, Bostonians tuning in on a chat between Socrates and Adeimantus On Tyranny (The Republic, Book VIII) might have thought they were hearing a couple of Harvard scholars fogging their horn-rimmed glasses with deep sighs over current world events. Excerpt :

Socrates: Come now, tell me, Adeimantus, how tyranny arises. That it grows out of democracy is fairly clear. . . . Democracy is undone by what it thinks is the best thing there is. ... Freedom. In a democracy they all say that a democracy is the only sort of government for a free man to live under.

Adeimantus: That's often said.

S.: And they go in for liberty to the neglect of everything else. Those who keep to the law they .call "willing slaves," and they praise to the skies rulers who behave like subjects and subjects who behave like lords. . . .

A.: What are you saying now?

S.: Why ... the father goes in fear of his sons and they don't pay any respect to him—just to show how free they are! And the schoolteachers take care to please the children, who in return pay them no attention. The young argue with their elders, and the old will do anything not to seem disagreeable or responsible. . . . The citizens . . . get hot and angry at the least sign that they are not completely free. In the end they make light of the very laws themselves, so as to have no master whatsoever over them.

A.: I know it. ... But what comes next?

S.: The "people" ... is the largest class in a democracy and the most powerful when it comes together.

A.: It doesn't often come together, though, except to get its share of the [wealth].

S.: It does get a share, but its leaders are good hands at keeping a lion's share for themselves. And the property owners do what they can to defend themselves. ...

A.: Yes indeed.

S: In the end the people put forward a representative to stand up for their cause —a representative they make into a great man. And he is the root from which tyranny always comes. . . . How does he turn into a tyrant? . . . The tyrant's great and famous step [is] the request for a bodyguard to keep the representative of the people safe for them.

A.: That's it.

S.: And the people grant it—being afraid for him and not for themselves . . . and once he has this bodyguard, this champion of the people clears out his rivals and stands up—a perfect and finished tyrant—no longer the representative of the people but their absolute master.

The programs usually end, as all proper radio serials should, with a cliff-hang: "Next time we'll see if Socrates hasn't some even unkinder things to say. . . ."