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¹ The port of Athens, some distance from the main city, was called, then as now, the Piraeus. Socrates’ omission of the article is unusual. Eva Brann (in The Music of the Republic, Paul Dry Books, 2004, pp. 117-118) argues that it suggests a journey to the Land Beyond, a place of the dead (or at least shades and shadows), an image that fits in with the descent conjured up by the dialogue’s beginning. The port area was a place of commerce, where resident alien merchants like Cephalus (a native of Syracuse in Sicily) could live and where foreign religious practices could be imported. It was legendary in antiquity that Plato had lavished great care on the composition of this first sentence.

² The “good” is implied in the word “seems” when it is used alone to indicate a decision, such as a resolution of a political assembly. The playful language of arrest, compulsion, and refusal to listen to reason is here replaced by a phrase suggesting consensus or compromise, and this phrase will recur through the dialogue.

³ This playful remark is a reversal for Polemarchus not only in his opinion but in his attitude, since he began the action of the dialogue by insisting on imposing his will on Socrates.

⁴ This alludes to an ancient legend about wolves.

⁵ The Greek word refers only to the gracious self-deprecating way of speaking that was a specialty of Socrates. It would not be applied to Thrasymachus’s own scornful sarcasm.

⁶ This is a key word for understanding how Socrates gets under Thrasymachus’s skin. If the long preceding argument seems merely verbal or logical in a petty way, the reader may be neglecting the possibility that Socrates has discerned Thrasymachus’s strongest motive as a desire to be seen as one of those discerning ones who can see beyond popular beliefs.

⁷ This sentence is a good brief description of what Socrates means by dialectic. It is useful to remember this when that word comes to be used in exalted ways, for instance in 511B or 533C-D.

⁸ One such person is Polus in Plato’s Gorgias (474C).

⁹ Thrasymachus, in spite of himself, is enacting what the conversation is about. At 498D, Socrates will say that he and Thrasymachus have become friends. This may or may not be a step in that direction.