The Making of the Platonic Corpus (Contexts of Ancient and Medieval Anthropology, 6) 3506793896, 9783506793898

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The Making of the Platonic Corpus

Contexts of Ancient and Medieval Anthropology Editors Anna Usacheva, Jörg Ulrich, Siam Bhayro Advisory Board José Filipe Pereira da Silva, Barbara Crostini, Andrew Crislip, Samuel Fernandez, Annette Weissenrieder

Vol. 6

The Making of the Platonic Corpus Edited by

Olga Alieva with

Debra Nails and Harold Tarrant

Cover image: The cover image was generated using Kandinsky 2.1 via https://fusionbrain.ai/

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. © 2023 by Brill Schöningh, Wollmarktstraße 115, 33098 Paderborn, Germany, an imprint of the Brill-Group (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands; Brill USA Inc., Boston MA, USA; Brill Asia Pte Ltd, Singapore; Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn, Germany; Brill Österreich GmbH, Vienna, Austria) Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. www.brill.com Cover design: Evelyn Ziegler, Munich Production: Brill Deutschland GmbH, Paderborn ISSN 2698-3079 ISBN 978-3-506-79389-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-3-657-79389-1 (e-book)

Table of Contents Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii List of Tables and Illustrations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi 1.

Afterthoughts on “School Accumulation” in Plato’s Academy . . . . 1 Holger Thesleff

2.

Dialoguing with Plato: Allusions, Borrowings and Exegesis in Platonic Spuria  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Marco Donato

3.

Back to Teichmüller: Literary Feuds and the Author’s Voice in Plato’s Dialogues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 David J. Murphy

4.

Materials and Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Debra Nails

5.

Some Reflections on the Nature of an Academic Edition of the Platonic Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Tianqin Ge

6.

Theory of Revision Revisited, With a Note on the Philebus  . . . . . . 104 Olga Alieva

7.

Traditional and Computational Methods for Recognizing Revisions in the Works of Plato  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Harold Tarrant

8.

Crantor of Soli as an Early Witness to a Revision of the Timaeus? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Kilian Fleischer

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Reading the Platonic Corpus in the Late Hellenistic Period: Antiochus and Alcibiades 1  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Georgia Tsouni

10. Aristotle as a Source and Critic of Plato’s Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 George Karamanolis 11.

Comparing Corpora, Rethinking Authenticity: Why Are Platonic Letters “Platonic”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Filippo Forcignanò, Stefano Martinelli Tempesta

Bibliography  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 Index of Plato’s Works  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Index of Ancient Names  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255 Index of Modern Names  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258

Acknowledgments This volume was taking shape 2019–2023, amidst the obstacles that international conflicts and a global pandemic put in the way of scholarly cooperation. We are deeply grateful to all those who supported us in our endeavor during this challenging period. Our thanks to Jörg Ulrich, Anna Usacheva, and Siam Bhayro for welcoming our volume into the CAMA series. Kai Klemm-Lorenz, Rieke Lüttmann, and Hannah Felicitas Simmat did a wonderful job copyediting the entire manuscript, and Uwe Meier, Sven Kützemeier and Patrick Tegethoff made further improvements at the typesetting stage. Ksenia Dmitrieva provided invaluable assistance in the compilation of indices. We also thank the University of Milan for its kind permission to publish the papyrus P.Worp. 1. We are grateful to Gretchen Reydams-Schils for the encouragement she gave our project. The editors would especially like to thank all the contributors for their professionalism, their patience, and their collaborative spirit.

List of Tables and Illustrations Table 2.1 Comparing On Virtue and the Meno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Table 2.2 Comparing Two Sections of On Virtue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Fig. 4.1 Illustration of Pi and Mu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Table 6.1 Summary 1 (60a7–61b4) and Summary 2 (66d7–67a15) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Table 6.2 Accuracy scores for the Delta classifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Table 6.3 Classification results (method Delta) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Table 7.1 Verbals as a percentage of total vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Table 7.2 Rates of verbal  per dein  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 Fig. 7.1 Rates of dein and verbal in successive parts of Republic  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Fig. 7.2 Position of texts according to two principal components  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Fig. 7.3 Weightings afforded to groups of responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Table 7.3 Cluster analysis into 5 clusters, 43 words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Table 7.4 Cluster analysis into 5 clusters, 39 words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Table 7.5 Cross-dialogue comparisons  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Fig. 11.1 Illustration of P.Worp. 1 recto (= P.Mil.Vogl. inv. 1264) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Introduction The Platonic corpus is a collection of works written under Plato’s name. It includes thirty-six texts (dialogues, and thirteen letters considered as one text), arranged into nine tetralogies (groups of four). While it may have earlier roots, this arrangement is most securely connected with Thrasyllus, the court intellectual of the emperor Tiberius, almost four hundred years after Plato’s death, but also with Dercyllides from approximately the same period. Prior to this, a partial arrangement of fourteen dialogues and an unknown number of letters was made by Aristophanes of Byzantium, and other partial arrangements are also known to have existed. An appendix of fluctuating composition was added, whether by Thrasyllus or someone later. It now includes the Definitions and works of doubtful authorship (De Iusto, De Virtute, Demodocus [in fact four brief dialogues], Sisyphus, Eryxias, and Axiochus—and the Halcyon in some manuscripts); but Diogenes Laertius knew of some additional titles, and does not include De Iusto and De Virtute under their present titles. Diogenes also knew nine of thirty-one epigrams ascribed to Plato in the Greek Anthology and elsewhere, but none of the epigrams made their way into the corpus, although some were quoted by such Platonists as Apuleius, Olympiodorus, and the author of the Prolegomena philosophiae Platonicae.1 Except for the appendix, the corpus has come down to us from antiquity in its ancient form. The best Byzantine manuscripts, with rare exceptions (Burnet’s W2), present the dialogues in the same tetralogical order. The tetralogies and the appendix were first published by Henri Estienne (Stephanus) in 1578, dropping the Halcyon; and modern editions, among them in the Oxford Classical Texts series (OCT), keep both the arrangement of the manuscripts and the pagination of the editio princeps. Except for minor textual amendments, the Platonic corpus has changed surprisingly little over the last two thousand years. The corpus is believed to contain all the philosophical works that Plato wrote, but it also includes some texts written by other members of the school, and it is fairly certain that not all of these texts were written in Plato’s own lifetime. The production of dialogues under Plato’s name in the Academy continued more or less till the end of the Hellenistic epoch. It was not until Sulla’s army took Athens, and the Academy ceased to exist as an educational institution, that this production stopped. For those who presented themselves as Platonists, now scattered all over the Mediterranean, the corpus, as 1 This volume does not discuss epigrams, on which see Massimo, 2020. 2 Codex Vindobonensis suppl. gr. 7.

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an authoritative expression of Plato’s thought, became the main source of Plato’s philosophy. One was free to select what was relevant within the corpus (thus, Iamblichus’ canon included only twelve dialogues), and to interpret it at one’s will, but no new material was added, and the editorial creativity had now become confined to the occasional proposal of new readings and, more frequently, the choice between two or more existing readings. But even if the Platonic corpus as we know it were firm as a mountain, we could still try reading the rock records to unravel the complex history of events that led to its formation. In this volume, we want to explore the Platonic corpus in the making, that is to discover, behind the static and systematic variety of its layers, a living whole in its dynamic and complex development. To be more specific, we are interested in two major sets of questions. The first concerns the individual components of the corpus, the institutional and the philosophical context of their emergence, and the questions of authorship and revision. The second has to do with the corpus as a whole, i.e. with the progressive organization of the dialogues into a recognised body of work, including both ancient and modern editions and classifications, as well as the formation and transformations of the canon. In practice, though, it is impossible to draw a clear line between these two aspects, and Holger Thesleff’s “Aftherthoughts on ‘School Accumulation’ in Plato’s Academy” shows how intricately connected are our views on the corpus as a whole and on its specific parts. In a critical evaluation of his own work (spanning over fifty years, 1967–2017 in our Bibliography), Thesleff admits that the prefix “pseudo-”, once used in connection with texts like Hippias Major, presupposes a clear-cut distinction between the Platonic and non-Platonic material in our corpus and ignores the specifics of “school accumulation”, which implied imitation rather than deception. Between the spurious dialogues at the “peripheral end”, such as Eryxias or Axiochus, and the real Platonic core, there is a group of dubia (Theages, Alcibiades  2, et  al.), for which the prefix “pseudo-” sounds too categorical, for here “a Platonic basis and an Academic environment” are at least arguable. Even closer to the core is a group of “semiauthentic” dialogues, based on Plato’s own texts or pieces of reasoning and “expanded by one or more other writers”. The Laws is the most prominent representative of this group, which also includes, in Thesleff’s view, the Hippias Major and Alcibiades 1. What is left must be the “genuine” Plato but, even here, “an absolute authenticity” cannot be “securely proven”, and the whole group of later dialogues, with their “baroque” style, could have been reworked by a secretary and thus also meets the criteria for “semi-authenticity”. According to Thesleff, within the group of six νοθευόμενοι, unanimously considered spurious already in antiquity and not included in the tetralogical order,

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some stand “far from the genuine Plato” (Eryxias, Axiochus, and Demodocus), whereas others could have been written by Plato’s “younger associates” in the Academy. He therefore brings them closer to the dubia from the tetralogies, such as the Theages and the Amatores. Marco Donato’s chapter “Dialoguing with Plato: Allusions, Borrowings and Exegesis in Platonic Spuria” considers in more detail two dialogues from the Appendix Platonica: the short dialogue On Virtue and the Sisyphus. Both build upon Plato’s Meno, but with notable reformulations and, at least since the end of the nineteenth century, this play of allusions has been interpreted as a sign of forgery, even if confirming the Academic origins of dubia and spuria. By inquiring into the practical and exegetical background of these reprises, Donato shows how production of school dialogues supported specific interpretations of Plato’s texts and could be used as a way to dialogue with the founder of the school through his writings. While Donato’s analysis mainly focuses on interaction through dialogues within the Academic context, David Murphy’s “Back to Teichmüller: Literary Feuds and the Author’s Voice in Plato’s Dialogues” examines the dialogues of the corpus in their interaction with the outer philosophic world. The idea that Platonic dialogues may contain hints of Plato’s “literary feuds” with contemporary thinkers has been called into question by exponents of the thesis that the fictional form of the dialogues does not allow us to find views of Plato in them. However, readers in antiquity assumed that an author could “say” something that, in the fiction, is constructed as the speech of a character; and some occasionally reacted to Plato’s criticism in their own writings. Murphy documents most salient cases of Plato’s intellectual swordplay with Isocrates, Antisthenes, Xenophon, the Megarians, and the Cyrenaics, thus offering a look at the formation of the Platonic corpus within what we can reconstruct of the intellectual marketplace of Plato’s own time. In fact, the necessity to address a wider audience of colleagues and potential students may have been among the reasons why Plato, unlike Socrates, decided to philosophise in written form, even if in the Phaedrus he is aware of the “snares of writing”. Thesleff takes exception to the idea that Plato wrote for an anonymous general public, thus favouring the view that “the Academy was not an open institution”, but Debra Nails in her “Materials and Method” challenges this assumption. “Plato’s Academy was publicly accessible” and attracted members from outside Attica: dialogues “were not written to be appreciated solely by initiates”. Recent papyrological research suggests that even the dramatic dialogues did not “place excessive demands on the reader”, as Thesleff once believed, and could be available to a wider public. This means that the definitive compilation of the Platonic corpus was not fully in the hands of a closed community of scholars that forbade major changes after Plato’s death;

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Platonic papyri, dating back to mid-third century BCE, suggest that the corpus was still far from being complete by the end of the fourth century. The nature of the Academic edition of Plato is addressed by Tianqin Ge in his “Some Reflections on the Nature of an Academic Edition of the Platonic Corpus”. Two distinct operations—that Academic editors established the definitive texts of the dialogues, or their arrangement—are possible, but the evidence is scant, and we cannot be sure that Plato’s companions busied themselves with either of these activities. The only necessary condition for the Academic edition, Ge argues, is to “determine the composition” of a collection of Plato’s texts—what today would be called the “canon”. The minimum an editor of a philosophical corpus needs to do is to “distinguish the works that contain an author’s proper ideas from the works that do not”. Such an undertaking is not limited to the investigation of authorship; as a matter of fact, it would have been of little bearing who did the writing if a doctrine in a given text was considered genuinely Platonic. This way, some dialogues we now deem spurious found their way into the corpus. The extent to which ancient writers, editors, scribes, and scholars intervened into texts is also discussed in Olga Alieva’s chapter, “Theory of Revision Revisited, with a Note on the Philebus”. Drawing on the evidence concerning the practices of revising texts in antiquity, she notes that such a genre as hypomnemata was particularly liable to revisions made both by third parties and by authors themselves. While the label hypomnema in Plato is not yet a fixed genre designation, his use of the term already develops the connotations of philosophic fluidity against the sophistic stability of a syngramma. Plato regularly uses the term hypomnema in connection with his own dialogues, and there is nothing to suggest that he considered them as definitive and fixed. But it is one thing to say that Plato’s texts could plausibly be revised, and another to establish the fact of revision. Taking Philebus as her test-case, Alieva highlights some compositional oddities of the dialogue and offers stylometric data in support of its revision. While the idea of using quantitative methods for detecting revision is an obvious, and by no means a new one, in Platonic scholarship stylometry has been traditionally used with a view primarily to build up a picture of the chronology of composition of Platonic works, and to establish authorship. The abilities of modern computational methods and tools are carefully inspected by Harold Tarrant in his “Traditional and Computational Methods for Recognizing Revisions”; he is one of the first Platonic scholars to use stylometry for questions of revision, not only date or authenticity. While unconscious style can certainly be relied on to alert us to the presence of later revisions and additions, Tarrant maintains that many stylistic features, such as the avoidance of

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hiatus, reflect Plato’s or his editors’ conscious decisions, and must be handled with great care. Multivariate analysis of routine vocabulary proves to be one of the most effective stylometric tools, but even here one has to take into account any special stylistic features that Plato may have sought in a given passage, and in particular differences of genre and register. Tarrant illustrates the possibilities and the pitfalls of stylometry by taking a close look at differences of style within Plato’s Gorgias, the third longest dialogue and one whose revision was once suspected also by Thesleff. Revision of Plato’s dialogues was discussed long before computational methods took the stage; in fact, Crantor of Soli, one of the last “Old Academics” before Arcesilaus’ sceptical turn, probably knew of several versions of Plato’s Timaeus. Kilian Fleischer, in “Crantor of Soli as an Early Witness to a Revision of the Timaeus?” analyses an intriguing passage in Proclus’s commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, where Proclus refers to Crantor of Soli with regard to the information that Plato revised or modified the Timaeus (and perhaps Critias) by adding a reference to the Egyptians in his Atlantis tale, or even by adding the tale itself, after he had been accused of plagiarism. If correct, this reading would mean that Crantor is our earliest witness to a modification of the Timaeus, but we cannot be sure whether he exploited an independent written or oral tradition, or perhaps made the story up based on his own exegesis of the Timaeus. Whatever ancient Platonists thought on the possibility of revision, they definitely held that Plato’s views were consistent throughout all philosophical domains, and regarded his work as unitary. This is certainly the case of Antiochus of Ascalon, whose role in the initiation of the dogmatic turn is assessed by Georgia Tsouni in “Reading the Platonic Corpus in the Late Hellenistic Period: Antiochus and Alcibiades  1”. For Antiochus, not only the Platonic corpus as such, but the whole subsequent Academic tradition, from Speusippus down to Polemo, represents a historical and doctrinal unity. The view that Plato should be read in the light of his successors had consequences for Antiochus’ attitude to the Platonic corpus: he was less interested in what was written by Plato’s own hand, and approached the texts “in a more inclusive fashion”, assuming that even collaborative texts could contain genuine expressions of Platonic doctrines. This might potentially explain the inclusion of texts that are now believed to be spurious, dubious, or “semi-authentic” into the corpus. The Alcibiades 1, read with a Stoic and a Peripatetic agenda in mind, came to be regarded as an authoritative expression of Platonic ethics. Drawing on the Antiochean account of Piso in Cicero’s De Finibus 5, Tsouni’s chapter offers valuable insights into the obscure early period of Platonic “dogmatisation” and into attitudes towards the Platonic corpus in the pre-Thrasyllan era.

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Not every reader in antiquity would share Antiochus’ optimism concerning symphony between Plato and Aristotle, but as the most important early reader of Plato, Aristotle did influence the way Plato was read in antiquity, being responsible, inter alia, for what counts as “Socratic” and “Platonic” in the literature, and thus shaping later readers’ views on the corpus. In his “Aristotle as a Source and Critic of Plato’s Philosophy” George Karamanolis offers a comprehensive account of Aristotle’s views on Plato’s doctrines and methods. His starting point is that Aristotle distinguishes between Plato’s and Socrates’ views or doctrines; Aristotle criticises, for instance, Socrates for identifying virtue with knowledge and for denying the possibility of incontinence, the implication being that this was not Plato’s position. This hermeneutic move proved useful for later Platonists, Antiochus among them, who wanted to do away with ostensible inconsistencies in the corpus and to establish a canon of dialogues expressing Plato’s, not Socrates’, views. Even more importantly, Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s doctrines determined, for centuries to come, what these doctrines were, at the same time, implying that not all of them were fixed in written form. Aristotle’s allusions to “unwritten doctrines” and oral discussions within the Academy make it especially tempting to discover the “real” Plato behind the play of his characters. Platonic letters, a corpusculum within our corpus, are the only documents where we might hope to find Plato’s first-person utterances, but here, as Filippo Forcignanò and Stefano Martinelli Tempesta remind us in their “Comparing Corpora, Rethinking Authenticity: Why are Platonic Letters ‘Platonic’?”, we are on an extremely slippery ground. Scholarly disputes concerning authenticity of separate letters in our corpus have a long history, and one source of disagreement lies in different approaches to what counts as “authenticity” and what counts as a criterion of authenticity. As Friedländer said, “you cannot prove that Plato wrote the Symposium”, and in many cases we must be content with the fact that a text was included in the corpus under the Academy’s supervision and contains no obvious “historiographical errors, chronological absurdities or philosophical theories that certainly belong to a later time”. Moreover, in the case of at least Epistle 8, as the authors demonstrate, we have papyrological evidence confirming its early provenance (before mid-third century BCE); and this suffices to claim an early provenance for Epistle 7 as well. This is not to say that letters (some of them) were written by Plato’s hand, but that they belong to a milieu that was “ideologically and chronologically” close to the author, as it is also the case with other epistolographic corpora, those of Isocrates and Demosthenes. Referring to Thesleff’s concept of semi-authenticity, the authors conclude: “…[W]hat is certain is that the ‘either-or logic’ which Thesleff talks about is

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inapplicable to the issue of the authenticity of the texts we are dealing with here. It is incredibly naïve to think that either Plato wrote a text, or this same text is spurious”. As the reader will have seen, the pseudo-dichotomy questioned by Thesleff is central to the whole volume, which the editors hope fulfils its modest aim in developing a more nuanced, if complex, idea of the Platonic corpus. Both separate texts and the corpus as a whole were subject to creative transformations within and beyond the Academy. Plato himself provided an example, being first to revise his own texts and to discover that the unchanging written word is an imperfect medium for the ever-unfolding philosophical discourse. This must have encouraged the revision of old dialogues and production of new ones, which, on the modern view, are not “genuine” Plato, even if produced in good faith. Yet Plato himself, as far as we can judge, believed that his authentic offspring were to be found in the minds of those who had listened to him in the right spirit, and not so much in the lifeless writings he produced. If so, then would the occasional input from his genuine pupils have made those allegedly lifeless writings any less genuine on Plato’s own criteria? This is a question impossible to answer with certainty, but it is worth reflecting on, which is exactly what this volume does. This is not to say, however, that the whole corpus is a product of institutional collaboration rather than a creation of a sole genius (which might be another naïve dichotomy, if one considers the essentially dialogical character of Plato’s philosophy). Plato’s followers mainly saw their own philosophy as a development or interpretation of Plato’s intuitions, so this “collaboration” was hardly symmetrical: for the school, Plato remained a philosophical tuning fork for everything that was produced under his name. Both in discussing the making of the corpus and the elusive meaning of “Platonic” in its title, the editors and authors benefitted from Thesleff’s wideranging and insightful research, and we use this opportunity to gratefully offer him this volume as a token of our admiration and reverence. Olga Alieva Debra Nails Harold Tarrant 2023

Chapter 1

Afterthoughts on “School Accumulation” in Plato’s Academy Holger Thesleff “Either-or” logic is normal in the discussion of the authenticity of Platonic dialogues. It is commonly thought that a text in our Platonic Corpus is either written by Plato, or it is not. The polarised debates about genuineness or spuriousness have gone on since antiquity, and there is still no end to them. My commitment, in the 1960s, to Pythagorean studies had put me on the track of so-called school accumulation in pseudepigraphy.1 I learned that it was normal in all times before the establishment of copyright rules to attach a master’s name to pieces produced in his style, sometimes with his consent, more often not, with or without fraudulent intentions. Corpus Homericum, Corpus Hippocraticum, Corpus Aristotelicum and, say, Renaissance art and music give abundant examples of school accumulation where the moment of deception was minimal from the start. The problem with Homer, Hippocrates, and even Aristotle, is that we have few or no criteria of what is actually original. Yet I believed in real originality in Plato’s case. When studying, later in the 1960s, the dialogue technique and the language of the Platonic writings, I took little account of the possibility that other writers could have had a share in Plato’s styles.2 I had become a developmentalist: I was sure that Plato’s manner of writing had developed over the decades. Roughly speaking, I believed that early style and a late date were incompatible. A typical example of this reasoning is an article published under the title “The Date of the pseudo-Platonic Hippias Major”.3 I made a careful analysis of the language and contents of this dialogue, considering also the different arguments against Platonic authorship published until then. The “pseudo-” in the * The manuscript of this article was finished in 2019. In accordance with author’s wishes, later minor editing has been undertaken by the volume’s editors, in collaboration with Dr. Lassi Jakola. 1 See references in Burkert / von Fritz (eds.), 1972. The idea is implied in some discussions of Platonic spuria; see e.g. Dalfen, 2005. 2 Thesleff, 1967 = Thesleff, 2009, 1–142. 3 Thesleff, 1976; the article has remained practically unquoted, since Arctos was hardly read by Plato scholars in those days. More on this dialogue below.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_002

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title came from the fact that, though I traced many indications of a date around 360 BCE (not later, in fact), and I found the contents to be Platonic in almost all details, the style had an early character. It was, however, somewhat dragging and exuberant and included some linguistic oddities that did not sound to me genuinely Platonic. Since I could not believe that Plato could have written this at the period when he wrote the Timaeus, or Sophist, or Philebus, and perhaps began the Laws, I simply stamped the text as spurious—though certainly not post-Platonic. Today I regard the label “pseudo-”, in this case, as misleading. After having studied problems of Platonic chronology,4 and some implications of what I called Plato’s “two-level thinking”,5 and reconsidering what I had learnt about school accumulation, I began to give more and more attention to the possibility of revision and of semi-authenticity of Platonic texts. I had become more open to “both-and” logic, which is indeed more appropriate to Plato than “either-or” solutions. And the manner in which the Platonic writings were originally published intrigued me. I have then applied the term “semi-authentic”, somewhat loosely, in various connections. A reconsideration of its meaning may be worth an attempt. The dichotomy of genuine vs. spurious is not so common in Plato studies today as it was some decades ago, but it is still there, with a large category of dubia softening the confrontation. At any rate, many scholars go on asking: Is this text by Plato, or is it not? The answer may, in fact, be “yes” and “no” at the same time.6 We know nothing for certain about Plato’s methods of writing or dictating, and finally perhaps revising, a text that eventually became part of our Platonic Corpus. There is some circumstantial evidence, however.7 The most explicit hints occur in the ancient traditions concerning the dialogue Theaetetus. The text we have is said by its introductor, Eucleides of Megara, to be a several times corrected (142c–143a) version of a narrative by Socrates about his discussion with young Theaetetus; and the manuscript is now presented in dramatic format without its narrative frame (143b–c). As such, the story is certainly a fiction: Socrates’ narrative cannot be authentic, even if Plato hints that he was 4 Thesleff, 1982 = Thesleff, 2009, 143–382. For later modifications, see Thesleff, 1989. 5 Thesleff, 1999 = Thesleff, 2009, 383–506. 6 Recently such solutions have also been considered by Renaud / Tarrant 2015 in relation to the Alc. 1; and somewhat more theoretically (though regarding a group of dialogues mostly treated as non-Platonic below) by Tarrant, Socratic Dubia, 2018. 7 See discussions of methods of composition Thesleff 1967, 33–62 = Thesleff, 2009, 27–50; and on revision generally Thesleff 1967, 16–18 = Thesleff 2009, 14–15; and Thesleff 1982, 83–87 = Thesleff 2009, 230–235.

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present;8 and the Megarian Eucleides cannot be the writer of this very Platonic text. But it suggests how Socratic stories could undergo transformations by Plato’s hand or under his supervision. There also existed another ingress to the dialogue, not known to us but said to be more matter-of-fact.9 Nobody argues today that Plato’s dialogues are historically correct reports of discussions. Plato was no historian (as Xenophon tended to be). So we may safely trust him with setting forth his own ideas in his own language and style, even when the report purports to be made by somebody else (Eucleides, Phaedo, Aristodemus, Antiphon, etc., or indeed, Socrates himself). Plato’s explicit absence (as in the notorious case of the Phaedo and, I would add, Timaeus 17a) is perhaps a method that offers him a critical or polemical distance and gives him a freer hand. The Apology stands out as a specific case. It is likely to have been “published” in the logographic manner of the time, giving the three speeches (or at least the two) that Socrates actually held at court, and which people who were present could confirm to contain approximately what Socrates had said. The writer (the logographer, like, say, a Lysias) was known to have made his own contributions to the contents and style, but he would not have totally misinterpreted or forged the message. It is reasonable to call the Apology a Platonic work, though it purports to depict what Socrates said in a given situation. The case is different with the dialogues. I have tried to argue in recent years10 that most of the dialogues were not meant for publication in the sense of being presented to an anonymous general public audience, or readership, i.e. to anyone. They were addressed to restricted audiences who knew something about philosophy and literature and the stories about Socrates, and who appreciated the playfulness, the irony, and the allusions. The historical truth about Socrates was not important to these listeners; it is a modern problem. Certainly Plato somehow speaks through all his genuine dialogues. The intriguing question, Who speaks for Plato?11 can perhaps be answered as follows: Normally, the entire little drama speaks for Plato; the only (!) philosopher present is Plato’s protagonist, being in joint dialectic with the other

8 9 10 11

It seems to me rather certain that Socrates the Younger, who appears for the first time at 147d, is a playful variety of Plato, not an historical person; see references collected in Thesleff, 2009, 621. See Thesleff, 1982, 85 = Thesleff, 2009, 232. This is one of the few signs that different “editions” of Platonic texts could be current in antiquity. Especially Thesleff, 2002 = Thesleff, 2009, 541–550. See Press, 2000.

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characters.12 It is trivial today to insist that Plato was a dramatist besides being a philosopher. Since Socrates (or his later stand-in) is not Plato’s only mouthpiece in his dialogues, it is worth noting that Plato seems to have maintained, deliberately, a certain distance also from his protagonist. Notably, it must be assumed that he was not entirely happy with the historical Socrates’ aporias, his lack of answers to the questions he asked.13 Abstractions and theories interested Plato, not his master; and Socrates was unthinkable as a philosopher-statesman for Plato’s early utopia.14 In most of the late dialogues, it is on other grounds doubtful how far Plato does identify himself with the leader of the dialogue. But he needed a dialectical situation where the philosopher is at least implicitly leading the discussion in a certain direction, even if the questions may be formally left open. The drama of a written dialogue represents such a situation. Here Plato could, very indirectly, be acting as a teacher, a New or Young Socrates.15 The field was more open for joint dialectic leading to a search for sophia (philosophia) both in the presentation of dialogues and in the background oral discussions in the Academy. In view of all these complications, is there any use for a category of semiauthentic dialogues, partly or wholly covering the dubia, between the spuria and the more or less certainly genuine dialogues? A conspectus of the Platonic texts which I have, over the years, classed as spuria or dubia or semi-authentic, conveniently starts from the very peripheral end.16 I am not not concerned with the Epigrams, or the Epistles (except for 7), or the Definitions. Going to the dialogues, most scholars would today agree that the following stand very far from the genuine Plato: Halcyon and some for which we have only the titles,17 furthermore:

12

For the term “joint dialectic”, see Thesleff, 2012. See also several of the contributions to Michelini, 2003. 13 The desperation of Clitophon is likely to have appealed to Plato; cf., below, Clit. 14 As for theories, this may seem a controversial but arguable claim. Neither comedy nor the minor Socratics (except perhaps Eucleides) suggest an approximation to the level of abstraction of, say, Plato’s Chrm., Phd. or Tht. For the dating of the early utopia in the 390s, see Thesleff, 1997 = Thesleff, 2009, 519–539). 15 Promises of more substantial “teaching” appear, for instance, at the end of La. and Grg. 16 For the recent discussion of these texts, it is sufficient to refer to Döring / Erler / Schorn (eds.), 2005. See Erler, 2007; Dillon, 2012; and Tarrant, The Platonic Corpus, 2012. 17 Listed by Diog. Laert. 3.62: Midon, Phaeacians, Swallow, Hebdome, Epimenides. Add perhaps the papyrus fragment published by Rapin / Hadot / Cavallo, 1987.

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Axiochus. A combination of Platonic and later, also non-Academic, points for consolation of a dying person, perhaps in the tradition of Crantor’s Peri penthous.18 Eryxias.19 A lengthy, rather incoherent and not very intelligent dialogue on wealth, remotely suggesting the Charmides type. The Platonic reminiscences are not sufficient to prove an Academic origin; some details point to Aeschines. Demodocus.20 A collection of four eristic pieces on giving advice, without even a mention of Socrates. But the Demodocus, addressed in the first piece, is known as the father of Theages who receives advice from Socrates in the dialogue named after him. The following dialogues seem to bring us somewhat closer to what can be expected from Plato. On the whole, it can be argued that they were written by his younger associates for use in the Early Academy, for training or as presentations of Academic thinking: Theages.21 Socrates gives advice to Theages, one of the many young men who for various reasons were unable to follow him. Here the point comes at the end: the influence of Socrates’ daimonion radiates out and requires a close synousia, even a physical contact. This magical impact of the inner voice is refuted in Plato’s authentic dialogues, but recurs with more refinement in Alcibiades 1. It seems to reflect a religious undercurrent in the Academy (cf. Laws, Epinomis, Alcibiades 2) rather than a very early stage of Plato’s thinking. Alcibiades 2.22 Alcibiades, on his way to offer a prayer to the gods, is recommended elenctically by Socrates not to be so foolish as to pray before he has learned what is really good. Socrates is prepared to become his teacher. The religious tone and the idea of a wise teacher suit a certain Early Academic attitude; the anti-Cynic traits are not necessarily, as many critics have thought, Stoic. Sisyphus.23 Socrates, here put in a mid-fourth century context, discusses paradoxes implied in giving advice and “searching for what you do not know”, common topics in the Early Academy. The points may seem partly childish, and it is rather the playful grip that gives a Platonic touch to the text. 18 19 20 21 22 23

See several of the papers in Döring / Erler / Schorn (eds.), 2005. Also, Hutchinson, 1997, 1734–1735; Erler, 2007, 333–335; Dillon, 2012, 51. See Hutchinson, 1997, 1718–1719; Erler, 2007, 331–333; Dillon, 2012, 52. See Hutchinson, 1997, 1699; Erler, 2007, 325–328; Dillon, 2012, 52. See Hutchinson, 1997, 627–628; Erler, 2007, 299–300; Dillon, 2012, 51. See Hutchinson, 1997, 596–597; Erler, 2007, 294–295; Dillon, 2012, 50. See Hutchinson, 1997, 1707–1708; Erler, 2007, 328–329; Dillon, 2012, 52.

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Hipparchus.24 The dialogue has Socrates ironically and rather Platonically analysing the concept of gain (profit, kerdos). The curious central digression on the tyrant Hipparchus and his stele with the inscription: “Do not deceive a friend” looks like a Platonic pedimental (structurally central) device. I have been playing with the possibility that Hipparchus somehow stands for Dion (whose father’s name was Hipparinus, and who was killed as a tyrant in 354). The profit involved with his wealth was a source of irritation to Plato (Epistle 7.339c, 345c–350e), and both Dion and Dionysius II could be accused of greed. Plato may have sympathised with this ambivalent criticism of Dion, though he was hardly in the mood of writing this kind of dialogue after 354. Its formal resemblance to Minos has sometimes been noted. Amatores (Rivals, or Rival Lovers, or Lovers, Erastai). An anomalous dialogue written (contrary to most dubia) as a narrative by Socrates about his conversation with some young schoolboys, suggesting what philosophy is. It is a meagre sketch, perhaps meant to be given more life and content by the presenter of the dialogue. My guess is that it is not directly inspired by Plato, but written as protreptic and training for his periphery in the Academy.25 De Justo.26 Maybe an Academic school text for training in the logic of what is to dikaion (cf. Clitophon), with many reminiscences of Socratic and Platonic points, amounting to the Socratic conclusion that nobody is willingly unjust. De Virtute.27 Usually taken to be an Academic compilation concerning the current question of the teachability of aretē. Plato’s Meno is in the background, partly quoted verbatim. The author cannot be the early Plato, as has been suggested, but he imitates Platonic style well. Socrates is made a teacher with religious inclinations (cf. Theages). It might seem possible to apply the term “semi-authentic” in a loose sense to all of these dialogues. I have done it, occasionally. But I would not recommend it now, on closer consideration. Plato’s direct share in the writing of these texts is improbable. Mere allusions or reminiscences or developments of points found in more certainly authentic dialogues do not motivate a “semi-” even if the text has been included in the Corpus as Platonic in accordance with the practice of school accumulation. 24 See Hutchinson, 1997, 609–610; Schorn, 2005; Erler, 2007, 295–297; Dillon, 2012, 50. 25 I am not convinced by the arguments for a later date. See e.g. Männlein-Robert, 2005; Erler 2007, 297–299; Dillon, 2012, 50. See also Hutchinson, 1997, 618–619. 26 See Hutchinson, 1997, 1687–1688.1695; Erler, 2007, 322–323; Dillon, 2012, 51. 27 I wonder if Müller’s arguments (2005) for a second-century date are sufficient. See Hutchinson, 1997, 1694–1695; Erler, 2007, 323–325; Dillon, 2012, 51.

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In fact, we need the category of dubia between the obvious cases of pseudoPlatonic authorship, and anything that approximates to authenticity. The current “pseudo-” sounds too categorical for the list above, beginning with Theages. Here a Platonic basis and an Academic environment and school accumulation is at least arguable, rather than mere elements of literary pastiche, or forgery or deception. It is no easy thing to change current practice in scholarship, but I seriously recommend the introduction of a “dub-” (= dubie, dubious) between the existing categories of “pseudo-” (not genuine) and the simple “authentic” which normally is not needed as a qualifier. Yet, the term “semi-authentic” should not be totally abandoned. There are cases of school accumulation which on closer inspection motivate this “semi-” as combined with the qualifier “-authentic”. I take the “semi-” in the vague sense of “partly”, with the implication that a basically genuine text or piece of reasoning by Plato has been expanded by one or more other writers, so as to give it the new character it has in its present form. Superficial revision28 or editing would not be a sufficient ground for a “pseudo-”. And the genuine basis constitutes the theoretical motivation for using the additional “-authentic” in this connection. So, in theory, semi-authenticity would be a variant of school accumulation. However, because of its element of authenticity it is (in theory!) quite an important category, to be distinguished from those dubious cases enumerated above. The obvious difficulty, for us, is to define the genuine basis and to identify the impact of one or more second hands. This can hardly be done with any exactness, but some indications can be followed up. The large body of texts preserved to us as the Platonic Laws (Nomoi, Leges) is an interesting example to start from. Antiquity (Aristotle included) and most of the later critics never questioned the authenticity of this body.29 Yet it is fairly certain that it was posthumously edited by Philip of Opus who added (presumably as his own manuscript) the Epinomis.30 The problem of what “editing” means in this case has been ventilated in recent years.31 It is not only a question of the hand of Philip. We know that several Academicians took part in lawgiving for Greek city-states in the mid-fourth century,32 so we have to 28 See Thesleff, 1982, 83–96 = Thesleff, 2009, 230–243. 29 Arist., Pol. 1264b26; his reference to the views of Socrates in this connection (1265a11) must be a slip, even if he meant Socrates the Younger. 30 Rather conclusively argued by Tarán, 1975. But Brisson, 2005 expresses his serious doubts. 31 Nails / Thesleff, 2003; see now Tarrant, 2019, 55–59, and Tarrant, 2020, 209–212 for a possibility. 32 Evidence for Academic legislation, Thesleff, 1982, 187 and n. 12 = Thesleff, 2009, 334 and n. 565.

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reckon with their contributions to this work. And is the elderly Plato, after all, likely to have bothered to write down all these detailed regulations and reflections? We have no certain means of distinguishing Plato’s personal part in the details, though recently there has been an attempt to apply a refined stylometry to the text.33 My rough guess has been that Plato wrote (or dictated or sketched) most of books 1–3 and was also closely committed to what is said in book 10. His personal engagement in the rest is more doubtful. Yet ideas such as preambles to laws, first effected in book 5, which was possibly meant as a preamble to the rest,34 the education of citizens as guardians in book 7, and the Nocturnal Councils, especially in book 12, may be basically Plato’s. But I do not think that he proposed, let alone inspired, the writing of the Epinomis. Though these are open questions, the above considerations would amount to an acceptance of the term “semi-authentic” for the Laws, but a “dub-” or rather a “pseudo-” for the Epinomis. A “dub-” is also applicable to the curious little dialogue Minos, which may have been written by an Academic dissenter at the time when Laws was in the making. Its “Socratic” author is religiously inclined and insists that law-giving ultimately derives from Zeus, via Minos, who is introduced in a myth in the centre of the dialogue (cf. Hipparchus), and again in the final myth.35 So the author seems to stand at a distance from the Greek (Athenian) view of the human element in legislation, reflected in the first books of the Laws. He also believes that Homeric mythology should be taken seriously.36 Our testing of “pseudo-” versus “authenticity” now brings us to three dialogues whose genuineness is still under debate on the either-or axis. Clitophon. This is certainly not a late compilation, and it probably operates with Antisthenean reminiscences. The explicit criticism of Socrates, who is unable to explain what “righteousness” (dikaiosynē) is, and the risk of his 33

Thesleff, 1967, 77.154 = Thesleff, 2009, 62.127 is very tentative and insufficient, but notes specifically the legal style. However, Tarrant, 2019, 57–59 argues to much the same conclusions on the basis of the observations of Nails / Thesleff, 2003, and adds a considerable amount of data of his own in Tarrant, 2020, 210–212 to show that there are three styles in Lg., one for the legal formulae in particular, another predominantly found in other material from the legislative books, and a third that dominates in books 1–4, 10, parts of 7, and the end of 12. 34 Thesleff, 2017, 210. 35 Cf. Thesleff 2017, 213. 36 I do not think, with some critics, that the dialogue can be taken as a Platonic preparation for the writing of the Lg. Such arguments need more substance. For a later fourth century date, see Manuwald, 2005; Erler, 2007, 307–308; Dillon, 2012, 51; a novel view is taken in Tarrant, Socratic Dubia, 2018.

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listener’s turning to the teaching offered by rhetors (Thrasymachus in the first place), are arguments that must have appealed to Plato at the period when he was planning to begin teaching.37 This may be the chief reason why it was preserved in the Academy as a Platonic text. But I side with those who think that both the manner of argument, the dialogue technique, and the language rather exclude a Platonic authorship.38 It may have been written by a Socratic who took a stand on an early version of Plato’s Republic 1, without knowing Plato’s new approach beginning in book 2.39 At any rate, the stamp of “pseudo-” is appropriate in this case. Alcibiades 1. Here we have a very different case. This extensive, manifestly Platonic dialogue, was considered by Neoplatonists as a good introduction to the master’s thinking. Doubts on its authorship are for the most part modern, and still current in many quarters. They concern less the language and the dialogue technique, though there are some anomalies: the elenctic first part with its matter-of-fact Socratic style may seem over-long, pedantic, and dragging;40 and the central digression on the education of the élite in Sparta and Persia is somewhat enigmatic (and hence, perhaps, just Platonic). However, Socrates’ subsequent reflections (prepared for in the opening) on his daimonion as a positively instructing god, on erōs, on taking care of oneself, on the self itself, on the soul radiating logos from the eyes, and the final play with stork-winged love, do not fit well into an early Socratic context. Theories about later additions have been proposed. Indeed, the dialogue has a heterogeneous character. The most natural explanation starts, in my view, from the assumption that Plato wrote a dialogue (in dramatic form, for a closed audience) on Alcibiades, the most flagrant case of the failure of Socrates as an instructor (cf. Charmides, Laches, Theages, Theaetetus 151a, and Clitophon!); he wrote it probably before the Symposium. As in Charmides, Socrates makes a point of his partner’s lack of self-knowledge. This issue was taken up by an associate in the Academy who expanded the draft considerably, making use of discussions in Plato’s circle about the self itself.41 The new author had also religious interests (see again

37 38

See notably the ends of Grg. and La., also R. 2, et al. Arguments and counter-arguments in Rowe, 2005; Erler, 2007, 304–307; Gonzalez, 2012, 44–45. Also Slings, 1999, 215–234. 39 On the gradual growth of R., see Thesleff, 1997 = Thesleff, 2009, 519–539. 40 There are few or no linguistic oddities; see in general Erler, 2007, 290–293, and Tarrant, Alcibiades, 2012, 38–39. But for the dragging opening, cf. La. and Hp. Ma. 41 The notion of the term auto(s) and its derivatives was clearly important in Plato’s advanced philosophy, as can be seen not only in the varieties of the theory of Forms; see Thesleff, 1999, 23–24 = Thesleff, 2009, 409 and passim; and Alican / Thesleff, 2013.

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Theages, etc.).42 “Semi-authenticity” seems to be the right label in this case: it would mean both a formal and a thematic impact by a second hand on a draft by Plato.43 Hippias Major. Here is again a different case, though related to the Alcibiades 1 problem. Hippias is another well-known public person, conceited like Alcibiades; but Socrates is not reputed to have tried to instruct him any more than he does other sophists (see Protagoras, Symposium, Euthydemus; cf. Hippias Minor). The dialogue is built as a detailed, ironically aporetic search for a definition (or rather, a Platonic explanation; cf. epistēmē in Theaetetus) of the concept kalon. The discussion touches on the theory of Forms and other advanced Platonic or Academic ideas.44 I am sure there is a playful reference to the modest hedonist Eudoxus at 287e. Much of this is fully acceptable as typically Platonic play. The surprising and at any rate original development of Socrates’ alter ego (another self) into a third character, first quoted as an acquaintance (286c), then gradually becoming a part of Socrates (304d), can be and has been explained as truly Platonic. It was rather the linguistic style that excluded for me (in 1976) a Platonic authorship. Today I would trust Plato’s ability to write vividly Socratic prose as late as the 360s.45 But I wonder if such a hide-and-seek dance around to kalon had amused him particularly then. However, the prose of Hippias Major is perhaps not so entirely Platonic: there is a relatively high frequency of hapaxes, and an over-long, dragging beginning reminiscent of Alcibiades 1.46

42 For another theory of two stages in the composition of Alcibiades 1, see Thesleff, 2017, 211–212. 43 Cf. also the semi-authenticity seemingly favoured in the conclusion of Renaud / Tarrant, 2015, 264–269. Cf. Hutchinson, 1997, 557–558, emphasising controversy about authorship. 44 The Form of to kalon is more explicitly present than the Form of aretē is in Men., see especially 286d–287d. 289d.297a–b. In e.g. Chrm. and Tht., this aspect of Forms is almost neglected, contrary to Ly., and notably Euthphr. For the hints at the dihaeretic method (285d.301b.304a–b), and the visual and acoustic aspects of kalon (297e), the closeness to the Sph. and Phlb. is remarkable; see Thesleff, 1976. On Eudoxus, Thesleff, 1976, 111. Heitsch, 1999, following other scholars, argues thoughtfully but remarkably incoherently for a post-Platonic dating; his philological points (such as the use of alla gar, not noting the hapax with de at 301b2 which suggests the writer’s own idiom) do not have the weight he attaches to them. See in general Hutchinson, 1997, 899; Erler, 2007, 301–304; Duvoisin, 2012, 58–60. 45 Looking at, say, the probably revised texts of Phdr., Tht., and Prm. where secretaries have hardly left any trace of the late style. 46 It is not so well motivated as in La., where the point may be the gradual introduction of Socrates, the potential instructor, to new listeners in a particular situation; see Thesleff, 2012.

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My hypothesis now is the following. At an early period, Plato wrote sketches of Socrates’ attempts to define or explain the meanings of important value concepts as such (later classed as Ideal Forms); namely, the four traditional cardinal virtues, virtue as such, knowledge, love, the fine (possibly even the good). These sketches could be re-read to different audiences. In the Early Academy, they were re-worked into the dialogues we have: Republic 1 (earlier version), Charmides, Laches, Euthyphro, Meno, Protagoras, Euthydemus, Republic 4 (and other texts), Republic 5, Theaetetus, Phaedo, Symposium, Lysis, and Phaedrus.47 In the centre of the final Republic the theory of the Good is explicitly introduced as closely related to the fine (kalon).48 About 360 BCE an associate of Plato expanded and elaborated this early sketch about the fine. His identity remains unknown (though he might have thought of himself as an alter ego of Plato, a Younger Socrates, to make this a Platonic joke). He might have been the person who finished Alcibiades 1. Be this as it may, the stamp “semi-authentic” seems more appropriate than “dub-” (let alone “pseudo-”) in this case, too. Following traditional principles (if not all current arguments), we distinguished above a category among the dialogues in our Corpus Platonicum for which the label “dub-” is reasonably clear. And a few cases of “semi-” stand out. However, even for the rest (the majority in fact), an absolute authenticity right across the dialogue concerned cannot be securely proven. The either-or logic does not work here. Probably all of these texts, such as we have them in our manuscript tradition, are revisions of earlier drafts. It is extremely improbable that Xenocrates, or whoever collected the standard Corpus Platonicum, only organised a copying of what were thought to be Plato’s own manuscripts, his ipsissima verba. Cases of school accumulation of various shades were included. Disregarding the cases of “pseudo-”, all the “dub-”, and the few “semi-” so far discussed, we have few or no means of distinguishing clearly the role and impact of second hands in slight revisions. Whether or not the “late style” is essentially a secretary’s style (as I am inclined to believe today), traces of it in earlier texts suggest later revisions.49 But we can seldom tell when, and how

47 48 49

The relation between the different versions of Smp. and Phdr. complicates the theory of erōs; and Ly., like Amat., stresses the aspect of philia. As is often noted. I hear a slight sarcasm in the indirect reference at R. 6.490b to the philosopher’s purposeful love of beauty (as in Smp.); cf. Thesleff, 2017, 197. For the traditions about the unpublished lecture On the Good, see Thesleff, 1999, 104–105 = 2009, 485–486. For this “baroque” style (onkos), see Thesleff, 1967, 77–80 = Thesleff, 2009, 63–64 with further references collected at Thesleff, 2009, 618. The idea of a secretary’s style occurred to me as an important clue at first at Thesleff, 1982, 71 = Thesleff, 2009, 217.

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far, the final version was brought to accomplishment in close cooperation with Plato (as in the rather sure, but complicated, case of the Republic). Here the field is wide open for speculation, or for much more detailed work. “Semi-authenticity” is a useful general label for cases where a second hand (or hands) remodelled a Platonic manuscript, or Plato’s genuine thoughts, into a manifestly new shape; see the Laws, Alcibiades 1, and Hippias Major. However, following this line, it becomes more and more tempting to class all dialogues where the leader of the discussion is not Socrates, as “semi-authentic”. As a matter of fact, this could be argued, on several grounds, for the Parmenides, Sophist, Politicus, Timaeus and Critias! I shall spare the reader from such argumentation. But it should be pointed out that this line would bring the Philebus closer to the genuine Plato.50 However, these afterthoughts must include a few notes on four small dialogues, traditionally classed as early, but stamped as perhaps “semi-authentic” in some of my self-critical works.51 These four are admittedly anomalous, but their oddities can in fact be explained better on other grounds than semi-authenticity. First of all, I would refer to the thesis I mentioned above about Platonic publication. These four dialogues were not originally meant for distribution to larger audiences. They were conceived as hypomnēmata for presenting by Plato himself to closed audiences in specific situations, though they were later written out (again probably by Plato himself) in polished form and preserved in the Academy as standard texts. They did not need a written narrative frame for potential prima vista reading. As for the Euthyphro, it is easily understandable that the ironical attitude of Socrates to religious and social conventions was not suitable for presentation by a Socratic to ordinary Athenians even in the days of the early Academy.52 An interesting parallel is Plato’s Menexenus (whose genuineness I have never doubted), written soon after 387; here the sarcastic contents and frame cannot have been intended for general consumption. The same applies to the logical play in Hippias Minor (which is said to be esoteric right at the beginning, 363a): the moral of Homer, and notably of Odysseus (and of course, the sophist) is put in question. The Ion is written out with more literary refinement (as the theme 50

And, to add a reference in passing to the Ep., I am convinced that the controversial Ep. 7 is as authentic as the Phlb. (whereas the rest of the Ep. are simply pseudepigrapha, though some of them are well informed). 51 Notably, Thesleff, 1982, 205–217.320–328 = Thesleff 2009, 352–364.366–374. 52 The general public was certainly not in sympathy with the Socratics. The attack on the Socratics by Polycrates came many years after the trial. Comedy, and perhaps pamphlets such as Clit., had their share in anti-Socraticism.

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seems to require): here the naïveté of the rhapsode and his listeners at public readings of Homer is ridiculed and combined with an agnostic view of divine inspiration. The slightly playful central digression on bacchantic inspiration, magnetism, and the unique poet Tynnichus, gives an additional Platonic touch to the dialogue, hardly very comfortable to ordinary Athenians.53 The Crito is still a different case. It looks like a torso and has, at any rate, required an oral explanation of the situation. Socrates’ excessive trust in the laws of his city goes further than the Apology, and it may look insincere in view of Plato’s normal attitude to Athenian institutions.54 I see a clue at the end of the dialogue, a point which Plato’s listeners are likely to have noticed: the argumentative speech of the Athenian Laws sounds like Corybantic music in his ears, Socrates explains. This is the only Platonically bizarre point in the text, and it is remarkable considering his attitude elsewhere to this kind of music, notably in Ion (233e–234b; also e.g. Menexenus 235c). Are laws like Bacchants or Corybants? This playful point seems to me, now, to imply a covert criticism of Socrates’ stubborn refusal of his friends’ offer to help him and, at the same time, a defence of the friends: they had done what they possibly could. This cannot be a message to the anti-Socratic opinion in Athens. But perhaps it is a sign of Plato’s preparedness to go on discussing the ontological truths in lawful attitudes, the cardinal virtues, and dikaiosynē in particular? Then, it is meant for a qualified audience, rather before the foundation of the Academy. As a conclusion to these reconsiderations and afterthoughts, the following is to be said. The tendency to so-called school accumulation was natural in Plato’s Academy. Texts not written (or dictated) by him became easily fathered on him, if they adopted his manner and, perhaps, met with his consent. This was all quite acceptable, but excluding totally irrelevant, non-Academic pieces. So the standard Corpus collected after Plato’s death clearly included material not strictly genuine, yet felt to be sufficiently Academic. There are few or no signs of a black market for forgeries of pseudo-Platonica, at least before the Hellenistic age. The Academy was vital enough to watch its treasury. However, there are other warnings against a strict dichotomy between authentic and not authentic Platonic texts. Attention was drawn above to the 53 54

Erler, 2007, 145–151 notes many details that have intrigued the moderns; cf. Janaway, 2012, 62–63; also Thesleff, 2017, 184. At least before the period of the Lg. For various theories on the anomalies of Cri., see Erler, 2007, 118–120; Young, 2012, 47–49. My earlier doubts about the authenticity of Cri. are not valid; see now Thesleff, 2017, 184.

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fact that Plato’s attitude to publicity differed from those of most of his contemporaries: he preferred to have his dialogues read to small, chosen audiences; and very probably many of his manuscripts were revised, even several times, by himself or by others, until they received the shape they have in our Corpus. Also the idea of joint dialectic, practiced by Plato and his associates, suggests that much of what is said in the dialogues does not necessarily reflect his genuine standpoint. We have been focusing on the dialogues, not on other texts. Disregarding a small group of dialogues for which the label “pseudo-” or “not by Plato” is arguably sure, we have been facing a sliding scale of texts which by various criteria come somehow close to Plato, but where different hands may have been at work on a more or less authentically Platonic basis. In theory, the term “semi-authentic” is applicable to all such cases. But as such, it is too vague. It does not tell anything about the degree of closeness to Plato. All we can do before determining the details of this closeness—often a rather hopeless task—is to operate, if necessary, with the traditional general category of dubia, or “doubtfully Platonic” (“dub-”), but keeping in mind or explicitly noting that such dialogues are likely to have been produced in Plato’s circle, and probably in his lifetime. They are not “forgeries” or written for deception, as far as we can see. However, there are examples of school accumulation which can be safely classed as “semi-authentic”. In these cases, a genuinely Platonic basis is detectable, though clearly changed or manipulated by a second hand (or hands). The emphasis here lies on authenticity, not on doubtfulness. The qualification “semi-authentic” can naturally be dropped when nuances are not under discussion. These are just authentic (though in a loose sense). This was tentatively argued above for Alcibiades 1, Hippias Major, and the Laws (excluding the Epinomis). It may be possible, if one wants new perspectives, to argue the same for all the late dialogues where Socrates is not leading the discussion. This is not done in the present article. So we may, theoretically, distinguish four categories of Platonica: The more or less totally genuine, the semi-authentic, the dubia, and the spuria (pseudepigrapha, not by Plato). Helsinki

Chapter 2

Dialoguing with Plato: Allusions, Borrowings and Exegesis in Platonic Spuria Marco Donato

The Problem of the νοθευόμενοι

Investigations into the “making” of a corpus of writings associated with the name of an ancient author are often extremely complex and bound to yield partly aporetic results. It is rare for us to be able to reconstruct the steps which have led to our present collections of texts, through centuries-long processes of selection and aggregation; and often, in this framework, ancient sources, such as lists of works or anecdotes, are problematic more than helpful. In this context, the case of the Corpus Platonicum may seem like an exceptionally fortunate one: we have sources—no matter how scattered and sometimes opaque they may be—that help us to follow its history from at least the beginning of the Hellenistic Age. Moreover, the loss of texts is negligible: we can be sure to possess all the dialogues that were considered authentically Platonic in antiquity. Ancient notices and lists correspond precisely to what we find in our Byzantine manuscripts, and we can trace the current arrangement of the corpus back at least to the first century CE. Nevertheless, this exceptional picture presents a number of difficulties: the relative abundance of ancient testimonies raises the problem of their trustworthiness, while contemporary judgments about the unity and structure of the corpus tend to orient our reading of the sources. These problems are most evident when it comes to the attempt to distinguish between “authentic” and “non-authentic” works and to determine the dynamics that led to an early gathering of textual material around the original core of Plato’s “genuine” works, “published” or at any rate edited in his own lifetime. This problem, a typical isagogical question,1 was already known in Antiquity. Diogenes Laertius (3.37) testifies to the existence of a tradition assigning the final revision of Plato’s last dialogue, Laws, to another member of the Academy, * I am grateful to Sergio Knipe for his help in revising the text and to the editors for their precious suggestions and remarks. 1 Mansfeld, 1994, 11, 105–106.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_003

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Philip of Opus. Moreover, according to this tradition, Philip did not content himself with editing the Platonic material that had been left in a preliminary state,2 but added an appendix to it in the form of the Epinomis, thereby generating what is probably the first “spurious” dialogue in our actual corpus.3 One attempt to draw the line is constituted by the arrangement of the dialogues into tetralogies associated with the philosopher and astronomer Thrasyllus—who lived at the time of Emperor Tiberius4—and described by Diogenes Laertius (3.57–62). This arrangement, which provided at the same time a classification and a reading order, was also conceived as a criterion to establish a list of authentic Platonic works. Aside from the tetralogies, Diogenes was familiar with a list of dialogues which were “unanimously” (ὁμολογουμένως) considered spurious.5 The passage is well known, but it may be useful to quote it here: νοθεύονται δὲ τῶν διαλόγων ὁμολογουμένως Μίδων ἢ Ἱπποτρόφος, Ἐρυξίας ἢ Ἐρασίστρατος, Ἀλκυών, Ἀκέφαλοι, Σίσυφος, Ἀξίοχος, Φαίακες, Δημόδοκος, Χελιδών, Ἑβδόμη, Ἐπιμενίδης. Some dialogues are agreed to be spurious: Midon, or Horsebreeder, Eryxias, or Erasistratus, Alcyon, headless dialogues, Sisyphus, Axiochus, Phaeacians, Demodocus, Swallow, Seventh Day, and Epimenides. (Diogenes Laertius 3.62, tr. White)

Some of these dialogues are preserved in the section of the νοθευόμενοι in our main Byzantine manuscripts,6 which at least since Müller’s study has been

2 It had been left “in wax” (ἐν κηρῷ) according to Diogenes (3.37): on the meaning of this expression, see Dorandi, 2007, 22 and Tarrant, 2020, 209–212. 3 The attribution is commonly accepted: see Aronadio, 2013, 173–178; contra, see Brisson, 2005, 21–23; on Philip, see Roux / Dorandi, 2012. 4 On Thrasyllus see Tarrant, 1993 and Follet / Goulet / Chase, 2016. 5 The affirmation that these dialogues were considered spurious ὁμολογουμένως has had an enormous influence on modern and contemporary studies. The current distinction between dubia and spuria (as discussed below) has been essentially based on it, at least since Souilhé, Suspects, 1930 and Apocryphes, 1930; on this see Joyal, 2014, 91. Attempts to affirm the Platonic authenticity of some of the νόθοι are extremely rare: see Oświęcimski, 1968; Oświęcimski, 1978, and Oświęcimski, 1979. The systematic presence of the genitive Πλάτωνος in Stobaeus’ lemmata for texts drawn from spurious dialogues should not be interpreted as an attribution: it simply constitutes a sign of the fact that this material was circulating as a part of the Platonic corpus; see Carlini, 2005, 29. The same may be said of the colophon Πλάτωνος Ἀλκυών appearing in P.Oxy LII 3683 (late second century CE). 6 Notably by Parisinus graecus 1807, the only independent witness for most of this section of the corpus: see Post, 1934, 52–55; Beghini, 2020, 89–91, and Donato, 2022, 23–43.

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labelled Appendix Platonica.7 Others are no more than titles.8 The fact that in the parallel list provided by the anonymous Prolegomena to Plato’s philosophy (sixth century CE) we only find mention of preserved dialogues,9 suggests that we are dealing here with an ancient, possibly material loss.10 The connection between tetralogies and νοθευόμενοι is clear, so much so that one suspects that the very application of this system produced, by exclusion, the “canon” of spuria, and that Thrasyllus himself is also a source of the list of νοθευόμενοι.11 This list never underwent significant fluctuation in Antiquity: in the case of those dialogues included in the tetralogies, we only have admissions of doubt12 or alternative attributions.13 The origins of the tetralogical system are controversial: while there are serious arguments in support of the hypothesis that it antedates Thrasyllus,14 its precise dating is uncertain. Recent studies have reproposed the idea that the arrangement in question preserves traces of a classification originating in the Academy.15 If this is the case, the exclusion of dialogues from the tetralogies represents a problem: do νοθευόμενοι have a peculiar status that sets them apart 7 8 9

10 11

12

13 14

15

Müller, 1975. If we trust Diogenes, all of these items were dialogues; on their reconstruction, see Müller, 1975, 38–39 and Brisson, 2014, 12. Anon. Prol. 26.1–6: the list is reduced to Sis., Demod., Hal. and Erx., which are cited alongside the Def., absent in Diogenes; nevertheless, some details, such as the introductory formula (πάντες τοίνυν κοινῶς ὁμολογοῦσι νόθους εἶναι), suggest that the author of the Prolegomena is drawing upon Diogenes or that the two texts share a common source. In fact, our manuscripts present additional material not found in Diogenes’ catalogue: this is the case with the two short dialogues Just. and Virt., whose identification with Diogenes’ Ἀκέφαλοι, proposed by Müller, 1975, 39 n. 1, is probable but not certain. While the possibility of an intermediate or alternative source is not to be excluded, as Müller, 1975, 33 n. 1 underlines, Diogenes’ connection between this list and the tetralogies is striking; and I believe it is more plausible to see the two lists as stemming from the same initiative: see Carlini, 2005, 25–27 and Aronadio, 2008, 30–32. Aelian VH 8.2 merely hints at the existence of ancient doubts on the Hipparch.; also vague is the suspicion, apparently voiced by Thrasyllus himself (T 19c Tarrant, apud Diog. Laert.  9.37), with regard to the Rival Lovers: on this problem see Carlini, 2005, 27 and Tarrant, Tetralogies, 2013, 21–23. The Alc. 2 was sometimes attributed to Xenophon (Athenaeus 11.506c1–5), and we have already considered the case of the Epin. The most relevant is to be found in Varro (De lingua Latina 7.37), where a paraphrase of the Phd. is cited as Plato in quarto, a position which corresponds to that of the dialogue in the tetralogies: see, among others, Carlini, 1972, 24; Mansfeld, 1994, 66, and Aronadio, 2008, 19–20; but the text may be corrupt: see Tarrant, 1993, 72–76. See Tarrant, Tetralogies, 2013 and Tarrant, Socratic Dubia, 2018. The hypothesis of an Academic origin for the tetralogies had been advanced by Wilamowitz, 1920, 320 and developed by Bickel, 1943, 129–134 and Carlini, 1972, 24–30.

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from other “suspect” dialogues which were, instead, included in this arrangement? Aside from numerological concerns,16 what could the criteria for excluding these particular items be?17 These questions are still far from having been answered. The spuria do not constitute a cohesive group and it is sometimes difficult to find common points between single works. But one of them is certainly their reliance on the text of “authentic” Platonic dialogues, from which those works evidently borrow phrases, words, expressions and arguments. In the history of Platonic scholarship, this phenomenon has mostly been studied via analytical Quellenforschung. Interpreters have underlined the consistent presence in these writings of allusions to, reformulations of, and sometimes outright quotations from Plato’s authentic texts.18 These features have been interpreted as signs of spuriousness and forgery, and later as evidence of the ancient reception of the authentic dialogues, plausibly in the context of the Academy, in the decades following Plato’s death.19 In the following pages I will focus on some of the dialogues of the Appendix, concentrating on their relationship with Plato’s writings and trying to showcase the main features of the work their authors carried out in interpreting Plato’s legacy. This inquiry will hopefully lay the ground for a better understanding of the historical origin of these texts and the reason for their association with the corpus. It may even shed light on how the “new” dialogues interacted with the Platonic core of the 16

Nine tetralogies correspond to the multiplication of the square of the first two prime numbers, one even and the other odd (22 x 32); see Mansfeld, 1994, 65 with n. 112. 17 If we can determine that these dialogues were conceived in the context of the Academy and result from the accumulation of material within this school, just like at least some of the dubia, we can ask ourselves why and when they were excluded from the canon. It seems rather unlikely that the school continued to write “Platonic” dialogues while presenting them as inauthentic or as falling “outside” the corpus. Still, the dating of some of them, such as the Ax., is arguably quite late: see Beghini, 2020, 67–87 and Thesleff, 1982, 232–233 = Thesleff, 2009, 378 (“this was apparently the last Academic dialogue to be included in the Corpus Platonicum”). 18 See, for example, the parallels listed in the notes to Heidel, 1896 and later the introductions in Souilhé, Suspects, 1930 and Souilhé, Apocryphes, 1930. 19 The same procedure has been applied to the so-called dubia, which is to say those dialogues included in Thrasyllus’ tetralogies but later considered inauthentic. I will not deal with this group, which now includes the Alc. 1, Thg., Clit. and Min., in addition to the Alc. 2, Hipparch., Amat. and Epin., which were already disputed in Antiquity (see above). But this list has varied over the decades. The category of dubia has increasingly been abandoned in recent studies, such as e.g. Döring / Erler / Schorn (eds.), 2005; Aronadio, 2008, and Brisson, 2014, which use—respectively—pseudoplatonica, “dialoghi spuri” and “écrits attribués à Platon” to label the whole group of supposedly inauthentic writings. I admit that I myself have quite often done the same thing—see Donato, 2020; Donato, Polemics, 2021; Donato, 2022—but it is probably best to maintain the distinction, at least once it has been established on firmer grounds, as shown by Thesleff (in this volume).

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Academic corpus. In particular, I will concentrate on the dialogues On Virtue and Sisyphus, as both these works find an evident model in Plato’s Meno, a text whose authenticity has never been disputed.

Condensing the Meno: The Dialogue On Virtue

The short dialogue On Virtue (Περὶ ἀρετῆς) is the second item in the selection of νοθευόμενοι preserved by codex Parisinus graecus 1807 (A), following another succinct text, On the Just (Περὶ δικαίου). These two titles are absent from the list of νόθοι preserved by Diogenes Laertius (3.62), but since Müller they have been identified with the Ἀκέφαλοι mentioned in that same list.20 20 Müller, 1975, 38–39 with n. 1 and 192; this identification is followed, among others, by Carlini, 2005, 29–30; Aronadio, 2008, 25 n. 46. 81–86, and Brisson, 2014, 374. This hypothesis—which I will not discuss in detail here—is not entirely unproblematic: in particular, I would not side with Müller in inserting in the ancient group of Ἀκέφαλοι three of the four sections composing our Demod., which he calls Demod. II, III, and IV. There is no hint to the fact that these parts were disjointed in Antiquity, and their juxtaposition may have occurred before the establishment of Diogenes-Thrasyllus’ list: following a hint by Aronadio, 2008, 83, I would argue that they constitute a series of “problems” developed for pedagogical purposes, probably in the Academy; but the same can be said of part I, which showcases a literarily more elaborate version of this kind of material. There is a unity of inspiration running through the various sections of the Demod., as already noted by Isnardi Parente, 1954, a unity that we cannot find—despite the attempts made by Pavlu, 1913—in the Virt. and Just. pair: see Souilhé, Apocryphes, 1930, 25–26 and Aronadio, 2008, 86. If we take the term ἀκέφαλος to mean “without a title”, as Müller does, the two dialogues Virt. and Just. could easily fit in: the absence of a primary title in their case is evident from the fact that they are indicated only by means of secondary ones, i.e. titles of the ἀπὸ τοῦ πράγματος sort, with περί followed by the main subject matter: on these titles, see Mansfeld, 1994, 72–73. In Diogenes’ list ἀπὸ τοῦ πράγματος titles are not added for the spuria, but we find them, with the usual formula “title ἢ subject”, in our Byzantine tradition (possibly deriving from its late-antique sources). Here the Demod. is indicated as περὶ τοῦ συμβουλεύεσθαι (Par. gr. 1807 [A], f. 326 recto), the Sis. as περὶ τοῦ βουλεύεσθαι (f. 331 recto), the Hal. as περὶ μεταμορφώσεως (f. 333 recto), the Erx. as περὶ πλούτου (f. 334 verso) and the Ax. as περὶ θανάτου (f. 341 verso). This discrepancy can be interpreted in two ways: either Diogenes did not bother mentioning the “subtitles” already attested for spuria, or—as Mansfeld, 1994, 106 suggests—these were added to the νόθοι at a later stage, a hypothesis that may be supported by the absence of περὶ μεταμορφώσεως in P.Oxy LII 3683 (second century CE), preserving the title of the Halc. This possible addition may have had the benefit of harmonizing the “edition” of the corpus in a section that, as we have seen, was subject to fluctuation and instability, and of giving a title to untitled items. The fact that no trace of the “collective title” Ἀκέφαλοι has survived in our tradition is not particularly unsettling, as the Byzantine transmission of this section is limited to codex A, in which textual items are identified and numbered progressively one by one and not in groups (the same also happens with books of the R. and the Lg., which anyway share the

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The text, which occupies a scant three pages (376–379) in the third volume of the Stephanus edition, seems to have been written on the basis of collected excerpts from Plato’s Meno, which are sometimes quoted with slight verbal changes, sometimes paraphrased, and intertwined with borrowings from other dialogues, such as the Apology and the Alcibiades.21 While we are sure that the main character of the dialogue is Socrates, whose name is mentioned once at the beginning (376b1, ὦ Σώκρατες), no information is given on the setting of the conversation22 or on the identity of his conversational partner23 and the indications found in some manuscripts must be understood as erudite conjectures made in an effort to fill in the blanks.24 If we exclude the hypothesis of an

21 22

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same title and subtitle). We cannot be sure, moreover, that Virt. and Just. were the only two Ἀκέφαλοι associated with the Platonic corpus in Antiquity, as we have seen that the νοθευόμενοι section had suffered material loss. Even if we contest the association of Virt. to Diogenes-Thrasyllus’ Ἀκέφαλοι, traces of the dialogue in a papyrus dating from the second century CE (P.Hawara 26 = Pack-Mertens 1428 = LDAB 3761) attest to its relative antiquity. Comparative tables of the parallels are given by Müller, 2005, 158 and Donato, Citations, 2021, 11; for a thorough comparison, see Müller, 1975, 197–220. For the dramatic date see Nails, 2002, 328, who finds an anachronism in the fact that the two sons of Thucydides are said to be dead, which would place the discussion “years after Socrates’ death”. In itself, this would be perfectly acceptable within the genre of Σωκρατικοὶ λόγοι, but I wonder if it is right to see in the formula τόν γ’ ἕτερον μέχρι γήρως βιοῦντα, τὸν δ’ ἕτερον πόρρω πάνυ a euphemism to express the fact that the two sons are no longer alive, or if we should simply take it to mean that they were both old at the time of the conversation. He is certainly presented as an Athenian, as most of the first section of the dialogue is borrowed from the conversation with Anytus on the good Athenian men of the past, and he cannot be too young since, exactly like Anytus (Men. 94a6–7), he has frequented Lysimachus (377d6–7). But these details are all borrowed from the Men. However, we do “know” one thing about him: the author makes the character a former lover of one of Pericles’ sons (377d8–e7). This may be a frivolous improvisation on Men. 94a–b, but I wonder whether it might instead attest to the influence of other Socratic sources, of the sort found in other spuria (see e.g. Pentassuglio, 2017, 180–184, concerning Aeschines’ influence on the Eryxias). In particular, we know that Antisthenes spoke about the two unfortunate sons of Pericles in his Aspasia, accusing them of keeping bad company (Athenaeus 5.220d). For Müller, 2005, 159, all this is a cliché, as Socrates’ interlocutor represents “den Typus des Atheners aus gutem Hause”; see also Erler, 2007, 324. On f. 175 recto, codex Vaticanus graecus 1 (O) preserves the name ἱπποτρόφος for the interlocutor, a fact that, in the past, led some interpreters to identify this dialogue with that known to Diogenes-Thrasyllus under the title of Μίδων ἢ ἱπποτρόφος. The hand who added the πρόσωπα is apparently the same who wrote the text in the column, even though the ink looks darker (see the similar apposition of πρόσωπα on f. 173 recto, for the dialogue Just.); so it is tempting to infer that the intervention is later than other scholia by the same scribe—on the hands at work in O, see Petrucci, 2013, 183–191. The indication is

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initial outline of the Meno preserved in the Academy’s collection,25 it is quite difficult to see how this sketch could be considered contemporary with or prior to Plato’s work;26 it seems more likely that we are dealing with a curious chapter in the long and complex history of the ancient reception of the Meno.27 In a previous study, I argued that the dialogue On Virtue was composed within the Academy, starting from a collection of thematically arranged fiches taken from the Meno, as well as from other dialogues preserved in the school’s collection.28 Scholars share the view that the resulting text is not a mere cento,29 but that the author’s effort was directed at crafting something new out of the existent material. If this is true, investigating what is actually new in On Virtue, compared to the Meno passages it rewrites, could help us better understand how, why and, possibly, when the dialogue came to be associated with the corpus. The most authoritative interpretation30 sees this dialogue as a product of the sceptical Academy, assigning it to the third century BCE and to the context of a polemic against the Stoics; however, other hypotheses have been

probably a conjecture on the basis of Diogenes’ list, as argued by Müller, 1975, 192–194 and Carlini, 1995, 401, but it can be an ancient one. How is it that this particular dialogue was identified with the ἱπποτρόφος? The (rather vague) assonance between Μένων and Μίδων, evoked in passing by Wilamowitz, 1920, 326 n. 3, is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon, nor is the mention of horses (378c6–d4), as it is not a matter of breeding horses here but rather of purchasing them—and especially of choosing good steeds for a race. In any case, the subsequent tradition did not take up the manuscript’s suggestion, and Socrates’ partner remains anonymous in most of our codices, which refer to him as a generic ἀνώνυμός τις or an equally vague ἑταῖρος: the name Μένων in Esc. Ψ I 1, a manuscript deriving from Gemistus Pletho’s circle, evidently stems from a reconstruction of our dialogue’s indebtedness to the Men.—see Müller, 1979, 238–239 = Müller, 1999, 631–632; Erler, 2007, 323–324, and Carlini, 1995, 401–402. 25 This has been suggested for example by Gomperz, 1941, 31 and Ryle, 1993, 88–89; see now Bertocchini, 2021, 11–12. But this position is quite isolated: contra, see, among others, Reuter, 2001, 85–86 n. 24 and Thesleff in this volume, p. 6 (“the author cannot be the early Plato, as has been suggested”). 26 This is the main difficulty with seeing it as a pastiche produced by a Socratic school, as does Brisson, 2014, 374: see Aronadio, 2008, 85–86. 27 See Müller, 1975, 249. 28 Donato, Citations, 2021, in which I further argued that the same procedure can be seen at work in the other spuria, including more elaborate ones, such as the Erx. 29 This somewhat reductive expression, however, is employed by Müller, 2005, 157. 30 That of Müller, 1975, 249–261 and Müller, 2005, 156–163, followed by Carlini, 1995, 400 and Aronadio, 2008, 83–86.

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presented.31 Let us review the data, starting from a comparison of the introductions to the two dialogues.32 Table 2.1

Comparing On Virtue and the Meno

On Virtue 376a1–b2:

Meno 70a1–4:

ΣΩ. ἆρα διδακτόν ἐστιν ἡ ἀρετή; ἢ οὐ διδακτόν, ἀλλὰ φύσει οἱ ἀγαθοὶ γίγνονται ἄνδρες, ἢ ἄλλῳ τινὶ τρόπῳ; ΕΤ.33 οὐκ ἔχω εἰπεῖν ἐν τῷ παρόντι, ὦ Σώκρατες.34 ΣΩ. ἀλλὰ ὧδε σκεψώμεθα αὐτό.

ΜΕΝ. ἔχεις μοι εἰπεῖν, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἆρα διδακτὸν ἡ ἀρετή; ἢ οὐ διδακτὸν ἀλλ’ ἀσκητόν; ἢ οὔτε ἀσκητὸν οὔτε μαθητόν, ἀλλὰ φύσει παραγίγνεται τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἢ ἄλλῳ τινὶ τρόπῳ; ΣΩ. ὦ Μένων, πρὸ τοῦ […]

SOCRATES: Can virtue be taught? If not, do men become good by nature, or in some other way? FRIEND: I can’t give you an answer right now, Socrates. SOCRATES: Well now, let’s consider it. (tr. Reuter)

MENO: Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught? Or is it not teachable but the result of practice, or is it neither of these, but men possess it by nature or in some other way? SOCRATES: Before now, Meno […] (tr. Grube)

31

See e.g. Reuter, 2001, who detects traces of an anti-Aristotelian polemic in the dialogue (cf. below), and Tarrant, 2005, 88–89, who situates it in the Academy of Polemo and Crates, identifying a proto-Stoic approach to the problem of political excellence. Thesleff, in this volume, again wonders if Müller’s arguments for a late date are sufficient. 32 For the Men. I use the edition by Bluck, 1961; the text of Virt. has been directly checked against the manuscripts Par. gr. 1807 (A), Vat. gr. 1 (O)—a direct copy of A that sometimes presents traces of independent διόρθωσις—and Par. gr. 1808 (Par), a copy of A through the intermediary of a now lost section of Ven. gr. app. cl. IV 1 (T); see Beghini, 2020, 109–110 and Donato, 2022, 26–53. 33 For Socrates’ interlocutor I use here the generic ἑταῖρος that can be found in most manuscripts (see above): let it be clear that the use of the word is purely instrumental, and I do not believe that we can speculate on the term, which was probably a mere indication of anonymity added in transmission. An unnamed ἑταῖρος also engages with Socrates in the dialogue Just. and in two dubia, the Hipparch. and the Min., but no direct link between these texts can be drawn on such a basis. 34 Müller, 1975, 199–200 sees in this phrase a parallel to Men. 71c8–d1 (see also Müller, 2005, 158), but I think there is no reason to go that far: οὐκ ἔχω εἰπεῖν comes from the Men. opening words ἔχεις μοι εἰπεῖν, while ἐν τῷ παρόντι is a modest amplification of the paraphrase by the author, suggesting that the question will have been answered by the end of the dialogue.

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As has been noted,35 while in the Meno there are four alternatives—the triad διδαχή, ἄσκησις, φύσις and the ἄλλος τρόπος36—the dialogue On Virtue only contemplates three ways, that is to say διδαχή, φύσις and the vague alternative which ultimately will be seen to coincide with divine inspiration. This discrepancy has been considered philosophically significant,37 but it is probably just an indication of the fact that the author does not want, or need, to investigate exercise—which is simply mentioned but not discussed in the Meno—but aims to make the primary question, which constitutes a sort of “table of contents”, consistent with the rest of his argument.38 More significant is the detail of the change of speaker: the question formulated by Meno in the eponymous dialogue is put into Socrates’ mouth. This transformation has been interpreted as a return to a “standard” form of Socratic dialogue, in which it is Socrates who poses the questions.39 Now, it is striking that, when searching the corpus for this “standard” form of abrupt introduction through a question posed by Socrates, we only find it in dubia and spuria: this is the case with the Hipparchus and Minos,40 in which the interlocutor is likewise nameless, and with the aforementioned short dialogue On the Just.41 Moreover, all these dialogues feature a “What is x?” question, which—broadly speaking—can be traced back to the Socratic practice of interrogation, while in the dialogue On Virtue the question leaves out the problem of the definition of virtue, in order to move on to a specific issue, that of its acquisition. What is underlined three times in the Meno as a methodological problem in Meno’s questioning, namely the impossibility to determine a quality of virtue without having defined what

35 36

See Müller, 1975, 198 and Bertocchini, 2020, 196. On this triad and its sources see Castelnérac, 2007. There is no reason to intervene in the text of the Men., as Scott, 2006, 14–18 suggests, or to integrate the passage of the dialogue Virt.; see Ferrari, 2016, 132 n. 5. 37 This is the opinion of Reuter, 2001, 82–86, who situates the omission in the context of a response to Aristotle’s conception, in which ἄσκησις is predominant. 38 See already Müller, 1975, 198–199. The same scruple of re-establishing a degree of coherence between the first question and the rest of the dialogue is possibly reflected by the omission of ἀλλ’ ἀσκητόν; ἢ οὐδ ἀσκητόν in codex Vind. suppl. gr. 39 (F) of the Meno, on which see Bluck, 1961, 202–203. However, in the light of the presence of a series of other lacunas in the manuscript, this omission is more plausibly due to a loss in transmission: see Vancamp, 2010, 46–47. 39 Müller, 1975, 199 and Müller, 2005, 159. 40 Hipparch. 225a1: τί γὰρ τὸ φιλοκερδές; τί ποτέ ἐστιν, καὶ τίνες οἱ φιλοκερδεῖς; (“What is greed? What can it be, and who are greedy people?”, tr. Smith); Min. 313a1: ὁ νόμος ἡμῖν τί ἐστιν; (“Law, in our view, what is it?”, tr. Schofield). Socrates is the speaker in both cases. 41 Just. 372a1: ἔχεις ἡμῖν εἰπεῖν ὅτι ἐστὶν τὸ δίκαιον; (“Can you tell us what the just is?”, tr. Becker).

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virtue is,42 is assumed unproblematically by the Socrates of On Virtue, who considers both ἀρετή and ἀγαθοὶ ἄνδρες to be well-established concepts, without the need for any further explanation. As already noted, the coherence between the initial question and the rest of the dialogue is striking: Socrates examines the διδακτή-hypothesis at length ([a] 376b1–378c4) and the φύσει one more briefly ([b] 378c4–379b7), refuting both and determining that virtue can be achieved only by an ἄλλος τρόπος, namely by divine inspiration ([c] 379c2–d10). The schematic nature of the dialogue is reflected by the arrangement of its various parts: in section a, dedicated to a refutation of the teachability of virtue, the author draws upon the second part of the Meno, and especially upon the dialogue with Anytus on the excellent Athenian statesmen of the past. But before comparing them to their offspring, the author has Socrates’ interlocutor draw up a list (376c7–8): Thucydides, Themistocles, Aristides and Pericles. This time, the order of presentation does not correspond precisely to what follows, as the author subsequently follows the sequence found in the Meno (Themistocles, Aristides, Pericles, and Thucydides), but the very presence of this second “table of contents” is striking,43 as such rhetorical devices can be interpreted as tools for simplifying the consultation of the work. It may be argued that the author felt this arrangement to be necessary owing to the length of the section, as nothing of the sort is to be found at the beginning of the short section b and of the conclusions in c. This last section, however, provides the addition of a precise recapitulation of the question raised at the start (379b7–c2).

42 See Men. 71bc, 86d, 100bc, exemplary passages as regards the problem of the “priority of definition” in Plato. This distance between Virt. and Men., already underlined by Jażdżewska, 2022, 150, is important for the dialogue’s conclusion, as we will see below. 43 Müller, 1975, 203 speculates about the list, its order, and its discrepancy with respect to what we find in the Men., but the central problem here seems to be the very need to provide a list. The rather odd primacy of Thucydides may perhaps be explained as resulting from perturbation in the transmission of the text, a common phenomenon in lists of names—see Burges, 1854, 86–87 n. 3—but the author may have wished to stress the importance of this last example of a καλὸς κἀγαθός, which prompts him to conclude that virtue is not teachable (378b4–c3). The discrepancy was already noted by the scribe of Par. gr. 1808, who added a rearranged list of the πατέρες (each with his correspondent υἱός) in the lower margin on f. 342 recto.

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Comparing Two Sections of On Virtue

Initial question (On Virtue 376a1–2):

Recapitulation (On Virtue 379b7–c2):

ἆρα [1] διδακτόν ἐστιν ἡ ἀρετή; ἢ οὐ διδακτόν, ἀλλὰ [2] φύσει οἱ ἀγαθοὶ γίγνονται ἄνδρες, ἢ [3] ἄλλῳ τινὶ τρόπῳ ;

πῶς οὖν ἂν ὦ Σώκρατές σοι δοκοῦσιν γίγνεσθαι, εἰ μήτε [2] φύσει μήτε [1] μαθήσει γίγνονται; [3] τίν’ ἄλλον τρόπον γίγνοιντ’ ἂν οἱ ἀγαθοί;44

SOCRATES: [1] Can virtue be taught? If not, [2] do men become good [2] by nature, or [3] in some other way? (tr. Reuter)

How then do you suppose, Socrates, that they become virtuous, if it’s neither [2] by nature nor [1] teaching? How else could [3] they become good? (tr. Reuter)

All three elements are represented in the recapitulation: the first two are mentioned in reverse order, that is starting from the last position to have been rejected (φύσει); but what is particularly significant is the reoccurrence of the vague expression ἄλλος τις τρόπος, signalling to the reader that precisely this alternative will be taken into account in what follows. Again, the rhetorical strategies used by the author are designed to guide the reader through the argument. As anticipated, the ending of the dialogue sticks to the conclusion of the Meno, affirming that virtue is a divine gift. However, there are two important differences: first, on the formal level, while the corresponding section of the Meno is a dialogue, in our text Socrates formulates a long speech in reply to his companion’s question. This speech will constitute the end of the conversation (379c2–d9), establishing once and for all that virtue does not come from teaching or nature, but from θεία μοῖρα (379d9–10). It is true that Socrates tones down the positive force of his conclusion through the verb ἔοικεν, but we are not left with a feeling of openness at the end of the On Virtue, not least because of the presence of the lengthy speech delivered by Socrates ex cathedra. This brings us to the second difference, which is one of content: in the Meno, the openness of the research is underlined precisely by Socrates at the end. The apparent results (φαίνεται) are provisional, as there is still need to search for what virtue is (ζητεῖν τί ποτ’ ἔστιν ἀρετή, 100b6): Socrates must go, so the injunction 44

I would cautiously suggest an instance of haplography in the mss. and write τίν’ ἄλλον τρόπον γίγνοιντ’ ἂν οἱ ἀγαθοὶ . The text is an any case problematic: see already Burges, 1854, 90 n. 2, who proposed we supply ἀγαθοί in the preceding phrase.

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to tackle the issue further will have to be taken up by the readers of the dialogue.45 All of this is absent in the dialogue On Virtue, where the “plausible” (ἔοικεν) conclusion is not accompanied by an invitation to engage in further research. In the light of this, On Virtue can be said to be less “sceptical” than the Meno. The direction of the conversation is clear and straightforward and the outcome is coherent with the elimination of the two alternative hypotheses. These remarks lead us to reconsider Müller’s interpretation of the philosophical background of the dialogue. While the general stance against the teachability of virtue can certainly be viewed in the context of the early Hellenistic debate on the topic, I believe there is no need to situate the dialogue’s composition in a sceptically-oriented milieu. Traces of the Academic discussion of this topic—such as the title of Xenocrates’ Ὅτι παραδοτὴ ἡ ἀρετή (Diogenes Laertius  4.12), which is used by Müller to contend that On Virtue is later than Xenocrates (and Polemo46)—only confirm the relevance of the subject within the school in the decades following Plato’s death. Indeed: a) we do not know anything about Xenocrates’ text, and arguing that virtue can be “transmitted” is not exactly tantamount to affirming its teachability;47 b) be that as it may, the post-Platonic Academy did not stick to any form of “orthodoxy”, so a position going against the transmission of virtue by teaching could have been present within the school, and could have been reinforced by this particular reading of the Meno.48 If we assume that On Virtue constitutes a school exercise or, more generally, a text designed to serve pedagogical purposes within the school, it is probably

45 46 47

48

See, among others, Bluck, 1961, 43; Klein, 1965, 255–256; Scott, 2006, 192–193; Bonazzi, 2011, 139 n. 112, and Ferrari, 2016, 300 n. 253. This is a topos of Plato’s Socratic dialogues: see the parallels given by Bluck, 1961, 439. This extension to Polemo is justified by the affirmation that Polemo and Crates “hätten keine Änderungen an der Lehre der Vorgänger vorgenommen” (Müller, 2005, 160). See already Ebert, 2018, 2: “weitergeben, παραδιδόναι, umfasst aber wohl mehr als eine Vermittlung durch Lehre”. It should be added that the Men. passage (93b4–5) quoted by Müller, 1975, 244 n. 2 in support of his explanation of παραδιδόναι in the sense of pedagogical transmission is not unproblematic: critics have convincingly argued that Plato employs a series of terms related to “transmission” and “reception” in order to implicitly stress that the adoption of the traditional (and later sophistic) conception of education as a mere transmission of knowledge from a to b is one of the major flaws of the research conducted in the dialogue: see Erler, 1991, 131–132 and Ferrari, 2016, 262 n. 198. See Krämer, 1983, 127. There are other traces of internal debate within the Old Academy, an institution whose history was all but untroubled: see, among others, Beghini, 2019. Signs of a veiled polemic against Xenocrates’ conception of οὔτε κακὰ οὔτε ἀγαθά can probably be found in the Erx., a dialogue which has been associated with Polemo’s Academy: see Aronadio, 2008, 74 and Donato, Polemics, 2021, 51–52.

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impossible to date its composition with precision.49 However, I believe it would be unwarranted to see evident traces of scepticism in this dialogue.50 In the light of the formal and structural characteristics of this work, I would argue that it should be considered a sort of ἐπιτομή of the virtue-related sections of the Meno: a typical early Hellenistic product51 designed to provide a succinct, clear and well-ordered “Platonic” treatment of the specific question of the teachability of virtue, without the digressions and complexities of the Meno. If any theoretical orientation can be attributed to the author, it must be, more generally, that of a supporter of the conception of philosophical inspiration as a godsend. This could seem (ἔοικεν) a plausible position in light of Plato’s dialogues,52 and it can be detected in other writings of the corpus, such as the Theages, which stresses the inspirational, divine and magical character of the transmission of knowledge, while also mentioning Athenian politicians’ incapacity to transmit virtue.53

New Light on Old Paradoxes: Dialectic and Eristics in the Sisyphus

While most of the dialogue On Virtue can be regarded as a school exercise, there is at least one feature of its conclusion that strikes the reader for its originality: one of the abilities of virtuous men is to help their fellow citizens by telling them “what is going to happen and what will come to be” (τὰ ἀποβησόμενα

49 See Dillon, 2012, 51–52. 50 See already Krämer, 1983, 127 and Tarrant, 2005, 191 n. 24. Doubts are also expressed by Erler, 2007, 324. In the same section of his book, Müller, 1975, 254–255 (with notes) tries to identify sceptical elements also in the Erx., an interpretation which has not gained much support among interpreters: for a critical survey of Müller’s arguments on the Erx. see Aronadio, 2008, 73–74; Dillon, 2012, 52, and Donato, Discorsi, 2021, 72. Eichholz, 1935, 148 was right in saying that “in the Eryxias […] there is no trace of Academic scepticism”; see also Döring, 2005, 69–70. 51 On the diffusion of the ἐπιτομή in Hellenistic times see, among others, Opelt, 1962; Tulli, 2000; Hoffmann, 2020, 66–76, and Damiani, 2021. On Virt. as a peculiar form of Socratic ἐπιτομή, see already Thesleff, 1982, 231 = Thesleff 2009, 376: “they [scil. Just. and Virt.] are written for the purposes of exercise or in order to memorise pieces of Socratic elenchus”. 52 See Reuter, 2001, 87–93, who rightly stresses that the author of Virt. decided to eliminate from the section on θεία μοῖρα the slippery consideration according to which virtue comes ἄνευ νοῦ (Men. 99e6). 53 Thg. 126d1–7: the argument is evoked by Theages as a typical λόγος attributed to Socrates; apart from the Men., there were other passages in Plato’s Socratic dialogues in which it could be found: see the commentary in Joyal, 2000, 243–244 and Bailly, 2004, 192–194. Proximity to the Thg. is already assumed for the dialogue Virt. by Tarrant, 2005, 191 n. 24.

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καὶ τὰ μέλλοντα ἔσεσθαι, 379c8).54 This focus on the foretelling of events brings On Virtue close to another νοθευόμενος profoundly inspired by the Meno, but in which the influence from Plato’s dialogue is subtler and more connected to its epistemological part: Sisyphus, a dialogue “on deliberation” (περὶ τοῦ βουλεύεσθαι). The Sisyphus remains one of the most enigmatic dialogues of the Appendix: together with the Demodocus, it constitutes an exception within the whole corpus in that the main speaker is never identified, even though it is generally assumed to be Socrates.55 This is a curious slip,56 as the author is quite subtle in immediately highlighting the relationship with the Meno by choosing, as the interlocutor, an otherwise little-known historical figure,57 but one who, exactly like Meno, comes from the city of Pharsalus.58 Dating the dialogue is particularly difficult.59 54

Most of the emphasis on political virtue that scholars have noted in this short dialogue— see Bertocchini, 2020, 196–197—must be traced back to its model, and I am not sure whether we can make any conjectures on the author’s position about divine control over political matters, as Tarrant, 2005, 86–88 does: aside from the specific remark just quoted, Virt. offers few original contributions to this topic. 55 Nowhere in the dialogues do we have any references to or mentions of Socrates, and in both cases the indication of the πρόσωπα in Par. gr. 1807 (f. 326 recto for the Demod., f. 331 recto for the Sis.) can be considered autoschediastic: see Sedley apud Fine, 2013, 115 n. 7. 56 It is conceivable that the dialogue was part of a non-equivocal Socratic production in the context of the Old Academy, of the sort that can be associated with the “return to Socrates” as a philosophical model in the early Hellenistic Age: see Donato, 2020, 205–210. 57 On the historical Sisyphus and the sources for his identification, see Müller, 1975, 45–50 and Nails, 2002, 262. 58 This detail is noted, in passing, by Fine, 2013, 115 = Fine, 2021, 191. The setting of the dialogue is debated, as Sisyphus is said to have been prevented from attending a performance by Stratonicus the previous day, because of an ἀσχολία in his hometown (387b6–c3). If Sisyphus had been stuck in Pharsalus the day before, there would have been no way for him to reach Athens in a day, so we are apparently left with the following alternative: either the Thessalian ἄρχοντες calling on Sisyphus’ help were, for some reason, in Athens (Taylor, 1926, 547 n. 2) or the dialogue is set elsewhere, possibly in Pharsalus, as Heidel, 1896, 25 and Dillon, 2012, 52 believe. But I wonder if we must really suppose that the author at this point was scrupulous with regard to the spatial details of his setting: possibly, all he wished to say was that Sisyphus came from Pharsalus and that he was a politician. Similar geographical inconsistencies occur elsewhere in the spuria, such as in the Erx., where Erasistratus is supposed to have come from Sicily via Megara (392b2–4); but see already the improbable stroll described by Eucleides in the Tht. (143a7–b3). For a similar position, see Müller, 1975, 48–50; Aronadio, 2008, 327–328 n. 3, and Brisson, 2014, 323. Finally, the information about Platonic dialogues set outside of Athens that we find in Anon. Prol. 16.42–47 (Westerink, 1990), and which is mentioned by Fine, 2013, 117 n. 14 = Fine, 2021, 193 n. 16, is probably rather targeting works such as the Phd. and Tht.—which, in terms of their narrative framework, are set outside of Athens—or the Lg. 59 I am not entirely persuaded by the arguments advanced by Müller, 1975, 94–104 in favour of an early composition in the mid-fourth century BCE, as they are essentially based on

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The relationship between the contents of the Sisyphus and the Meno has been thoroughly studied by Gail Fine, especially as regards the reuse of the Meno’s famous paradox concerning research.60 I will here sum up the main points of this investigation, before concentrating on the specific question of the value of Socrates’ remarks in the dialogue and offering an interpretation of the author’s literary strategy. As Fine has clearly shown, the Sisyphus takes up the aporia of the possibility of research formulated by Meno (and then re-formulated by Socrates) in the Meno (80d5–e5), applying it to the subject of deliberation (βουλεύεσθαι).61 This application is first proposed through the identification of deliberation with research (Sisyphus 388b1–c1), but the paradox continues to influence the argument even once this identification has been abandoned (389e1–2). It ultimately leads to an aporetic ending:62 deliberation appears to be impossible because it targets the future, that is to say τὸ μὴ ὄν (391c7–d1). The connection with the epistemological problem of the Meno is striking, also in light of the fact that none of the solutions proposed by Plato (ἀνάμνησις and ὀρθὴ δόξα) are evoked, and that—more generally—the conception of varying degrees of knowledge is missing.63 Socrates introduces the paradox after having presented the definition according to which good deliberation corresponds to “seeking to discover the best things that he should do” (388b3–4, τὸ ζητεῖν τὰ βέλτιστα ἐξευρεῖν τινα ἑαυτῷ

60 61 62 63

the presence of “lesser-known” historical characters such as Sisyphus, Stratonicus, and Callistratus. These arguments are taken up by Thesleff, 1982, 230 = Thesleff 2009, 335; Erler, 2007, 328–329; Aronadio, 2008, 59 and 327 n. 1; Fine, 2013, 116 n. 11 = Fine, 2021, 192 n. 13; see also Krämer, 1983, 127. Leaving aside the general problem of whether it is plausible to posit the production of texts later regarded as νόθοι during Plato’s own lifetime, this kind of argument relies too much on the assumption that what is obscure or puzzling for us, was equally so in Antiquity: we cannot exclude the loss of information or of a literary tradition involving these historical characters. The same argument has been applied to the mention of Pulytion in the Erx. by Laurenti, 1969, 69, but in this case we can catch a glimpse of the character’s popularity in ancient comedy: see Sommerstein, 1986, 105–106. As Isnardi Parente, 1977, 482 correctly underlined, writing Socratic dialogues intrinsically involves a touch of “archaism”, and this feature is also present in the Appendix. The theme of deliberation, in itself, seems to be typical of post-Aristotelian philosophy: for a later date, see Pavlu, 1926; Souilhé, Apocryphes, 1930, 59–61; Dillon, 2012, 54, who situates the dialogue in the New Academy, and Brisson, 2014, 325–326. On the hints provided by the use of terminology related to διαλέγεσθαι and dialectic, see below. Fine, 2013 = Fine, 2021, 189–217. On the ancient reception of Men. paradox, see Fine, 2014. This problem was an “innerakademischer locus classicus” (Erler, 2007, 329). See Fine, 2013, 138–141 = Fine, 2021, 210–214 on the endurance of the paradox behind the “Targeting Objection” which ends the discussion in the Sis. This absence was already highlighted by Fine, 2013, 120–121 = Fine, 2021, 195–196. The use of the verb ἐξευρεῖν is probably meaningful, as the prefix ἐξ- conveys the idea of the completeness of the “finding”.

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διαπράξασθαι). This definition is attributed to Sisyphus, as Socrates “divines” what he is trying to say. But equating deliberation with research raises the question of the object of research: is it the known or the unknown (388b8–c1)? Sisyphus answers ἀμφότερα, thus “disarming” the paradox: in order to conduct research, we have to know something about its object, while not knowing something else about it (388c1–d4). But Socrates then shifts the argument from the “objectual” to the propositional point of view: what we search for, specifically, is the information we do not have about the specific object; therefore, we search for what we do not know (388d5–6).64 The shadow of the paradox is back, and Socrates explains the importance of reconsidering the argument, defending himself against the (implicit) accusation of playing logical tricks (388d6–e2): But if that argument seems to you to be eristic (εἰ δέ σοι οὗτος ὁ λόγος ἐριστικὸς εἶναι δοκεῖ), Sisyphus, and65 put forward not with a view to the truth of the matter, but merely for debating (διαλέγεσθαι), look at it this way, and see if you agree with what was just said (tr. Gallop, modified).

Socrates then gives two examples taken from geometry.66 But what is particularly striking is that, subtly reaffirming the value of the second horn of the paradox of the Meno (is it possible to search for something that we do not know?). Now, in the Sisyphus, Socrates explicitly says that the λόγος is not ἐριστικός. If we look back at the Meno passage, the allusion is evident (Meno 80e1–5): I understand what you mean to say, Meno. Do you see what an eristic argument you’re spinning (ὡς ἐριστικὸν λόγον κατάγεις), that a person turns out not to be able to search either for what he knows or for what he doesn’t know? For he wouldn’t be searching for what he knows, since he knows it, and someone like that, at least, has no need to search; nor would he be searching for what he doesn’t know, since in that case he doesn’t even know what to search for. (tr. Sedley and Long)

What Socrates says in the Sisyphus is precisely that this λόγος—or at least the problematic part of searching for what one does not know—is not eristic at all.67 The remark is striking not only because it corrects the Meno, but also 64 See Fine 2013, 124–126 = Fine, 2021, 199–200. 65 The value of this καί is epexegetical, as remarked by Brisson, 2014, 471 n. 22. 66 In this presence of geometry, we can see another link with the Men.: see Heidel, 1896, 24–25; Souilhé, Apocryphes, 1930, 61–63, and Fine, 2013, 116 n. 11 = Fine, 2021, 192 n. 13. The geometrical problems investigated in the Sis. are the calculation of the diagonal of the square (recalling the discussion with the slave at Men. 82b–86b) and the duplication of the cube: see Müller, 1975, 105–106. 67 See Brisson, 2014, 271 n. 22.

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for the equivalence that is apparently drawn between eristics and dialectic: as scholars have noticed, the use of the word διαλέγεσθαι with the sense of “dispute” in this passage is sufficient to rule out Platonic authorship.68

Pebbles, Arguments, and a Serious Game

The conception of διαλέγεσθαι that the author of the Sisyphus showcases is not isolated: reflection on the limits of dialogue and on the distinction between verbal dispute and the search for the truth is a recurrent element in Platonic dubia and spuria. But the constant rejection of eristics is often associated, as in the Sisyphus, with captious argumentation.69 We could argue that the author of the Sisyphus proposes this rejection in order to try, quite ingeniously, to preserve his credibility as an advocate of the truth, by saying that the ἐριστικὸς λόγος of the Meno—well-known to any philosophically trained reader—is not ἐριστικός at all. In this way, the author gives the reader a hint as to the argumentative strategy he is going to employ, by making Socrates “trick” his partner. Dialogue is conceived as a “problematic” tool giving rise to aporias and problems that allow further examination of the subject. This approach clearly has Platonic roots, but it seems to be pursued in a particularly loose way in the spuria.70 In the Eryxias (395a6–c5), the reflection on the rules of argumenta68 Müller, 1975, 104, but the parallels found in Aristotle are not entirely convincing: see Fine, 2013, 129 n. 45 = Fine, 2021, 203 n. 48. This sort of equivalence between διαλέγεσθαι and eristic debating is apparently found in two fragments attributed to Arcesilaus and preserved by Stobaeus. In the first (Arcesil. F 18a Mette = F 143 Vezzoli, apud Stob. 2.2.11), the philosopher compares dialecticians (διαλεκτικοί) to jugglers (ψηφοπαῖκται), as both trick “with grace” (χαριέντως); the second (Arcesil. F 18b Mette = F 144 Vezzoli, apud Stob. 2.2.17) is a warning to stay away from dialectic as it “turns everything upside down” (συγκυκᾷ τἄνω κάτω). It is possible that these were originally criticisms of the “professional” school of dialecticians, as Long, 1988, 159 = Long, 1996, 15 suggests. The combination of dialectical tricks and the evident Eleatic background of some of the arguments might also lead us to suppose a Megaric influence on the Sis.—see already Souilhé, Apocryphes, 1930, 63–64— as already posited (albeit with less plausibility) for the central section of the Erx.: see Döring, 2005, 76–77 and Donato, 2019, 21–22. Ancient sources tend to associate Arcesilaus’ cultural background with a “Megaric” filiation, and particularly with a relationship with Diodorus Cronus (Diog. Laert. 4.33 and Num. fr. 25 des Places): see Sedley, 1977, 91–96 and Castagnoli, 2018, 169–72. 69 On the captious nature of most of the spuria, see already Heidel, 1896, 14; Souilhé, Suspects, 1930, ix–x, and Aronadio, 2008, 29. 70 A work like the Sis. presents a systematic series of ἀπορίαι in a way that is different from what we find in Plato’s aporetic dialogues: this hyper-problematising approach can in all likelihood be traced back to an Academic (or maybe even post-Aristotelian) practice, as it conforms quite precisely to the methodological premise of book B of the Metaphysics, without presenting us with the last step, that is to say the “positive” development that

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tion in the dialogic genre is developed through the comparison—again borrowed from Plato—of dialogue to πεττεία.71 It is striking to see that Socrates, in this dialogue, engages in the very behaviour we find in the Sisyphus: on the one hand, he defends himself against the accusation of playing with arguments as if they were pebbles in a game; on the other, this is precisely how he employs arguments, by advancing false premisses or taking parts of his argumentation back when he feels it is necessary to do so.72 If we compare the two dialogues, we notice that the ἐριστικὸς λόγος of the Meno seems to be just another pebble—albeit a crucial one—in the game of διαλέγεσθαι on the subject of deliberation. But how is this particular piece relevant for the author? What prompts him to let his Socrates defend an eristic argument on research as non-eristic and to apply it to the subject of deliberation? In order to grasp the importance of this “serious play” surrounding the paradox, we need to delve further into the dialogue and reach Socrates’ lengthy speech at 390a6–d4, as it is precisely here that the problem of διαλέγεσθαι returns (390b5–c1): Perhaps (ἵσως)73 you’ll say that I’ve been playing at your expense (ταῦτα ἐμοί τε εἶναι πεπαιγμένα πρὸς σέ) merely for the sake of dispute (τοῦ διαλεχθῆναι μόνον εἵνεκα), but that, in your view, nothing has been seriously proved. But at least, by Zeus, examine this next point seriously (τοῦτό γε […] σκόπει νῦν σπουδῇ), Sisyphus (tr. Gallop, modified).

enables the transition to εὐπορεῖν (was this to be left for discussion within the school? The last sentence of the Sis. is a question). On the “aporetic” method of Metaph. B and its Academic background, see Crubellier / Laks, 2009, 3–7. 71 On this ancient game (or perhaps family of games) see, among others, Austin, 1940 and Kurke, 1999. On πεττεία in Plato, see the useful repertoire in Guéniot, 1999: the association with λόγοι comes directly from R. 6.487b1–c4; see Capra, 2016 and Donato, Discorsi, 2021, 54–59. 72 Such as the identification between “useful” and conditio sine qua non, introduced at Erx. 402a1–b3 and retracted at 403e–405a. The same practice is portrayed in the Hipparch., in which Socrates explicitly takes back something he had said (229e–230a): see Donato, Discorsi, 2021, 60–69. 73 This use of ἴσως is striking compared to the rejection of eristics in the Erx., which is expressed through a three-part sentence articulated through the repetition of the same adverb (Erx. 395a6–c5): ἴσως γάρ, ἦν δ’ ἐγώ, σὺ οἴει, ὦ Ἐρυξία, τουτουσὶ μὲν τοὺς λόγους οὓς νυνὶ διαλεγόμεθα εἶναι παιδιάν, ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἀληθῶς γε οὕτως ἔχειν, […] ἴσως οὖν καὶ περὶ τῶν πλουσίων οἴει μὲν οὐδέν τι μᾶλλον οὕτως ἔχειν, λόγους δέ τινας εἶναι τοιούτους οὐδέν τι μᾶλλον ἀληθεῖς ἢ ψευδεῖς, […] καὶ οὐδὲν μὲν ἴσως θαυμαστόν […]; see Donato, Discorsi, 2021, 55–56.

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The point that Socrates raises is the following: deliberating could be something (τι),74 and not merely another, redundant name for ignorance (ἀνεπιστημοσύνη)75 or guessing (εἰκασία) or improvisation (σχεδιασμός). This is shown by the fact that good deliberation also occurs in the field of craftsmanship, and it is evident that—as there are both skilled and unskilled craftsmen—not all artisans will be equal when deliberating about the subject of their art (390c5–d4). When Sisyphus agrees, Socrates awkwardly changes the focus of the argument by noting that what all forms of deliberation deal with is the future, i.e. τὸ μὴ ὄν. By this move, the author completely twists the meaning of another Platonic argument, taken from the Theaetetus (178a–179c),76 about the possibility for craftsmen to “know” the future, and leads Sisyphus to the aporetic conclusion of the dialogue—this time accompanied by the injunction to engage in further research (391d2–5).77 74

75

76

77

This paraphrase is based on the text edited by Burnet, 1907 and Souilhé, Apocryphes, 1930 who both print εἰ δοθείη τὸ βουλεύσασθαί τι εἶναι (390c2–3), but the mss. transmit the reading εἰ δοθείη τῷ βουλεύσασθαί τι εἶναι, which could be translated “if there is something to the fact of deliberating”. Burnet, 1907 attributes the correction to Marc. gr. 184, but the intervention is already visible—ὸ replacing ῷ in rasura—in its model, Marc. gr. 186 (f. 250 recto), a codex which is known to have been thoroughly corrected by Bessarion and his collaborators. Souilhé, Apocryphes, 1930, 73 finds the correction in Laur. 80, 17, where it is introduced by a later hand (f. 286 verso), the same hand responsible for the numerous notabilia found in the margins: see Donato, 2022, 70–71. The conjecture is defended by Brisson, 2014, 473 n. 41, who underlines that τι is implicitly opposed to οὐδέν. The manuscripts present here ἐπιστήμη, but in order to make sense of the text we need to suppose a polar error and read ἀνεπιστημοσύνη. The conjecture, printed by Souilhé, Apocryphes, 1930, 73, was first proposed by Susemihl, 1865, 708 and then re-proposed by Shorey, 1931: it has since been accepted, among others, by Müller, 1975, 68; Fine, 2013, 138, n. 64 = Fine, 2021, 210–211 n. 67, and Brisson, 2014, 472 n. 42. For an attempt to retain ἐπιστήμη, see Aronadio, 2008, 333–334 n. 13; the alternative proposed by Bury, 1939, 33, ὅπερ ἐπιστήμη, is unconvincing in this context, despite the parallel found at Smp. 175e. As is well known, this constitutes the final argument raised by Socrates to refute Protagorean relativism: see, among others, Cornford, 1935, 92 and Sedley, 2002, 86–89. The ground for the application of this argument to deliberation is possibly laid by the rhetorical reflection on the “times” to which the three kinds of speech refer (Arist. Rhet. 1.3.1358b13–15); see Souilhé, Apocryphes, 1930, 63, who is anyway sceptical about the hypothesis of direct dependence on Aristotle’s treatise. I think he is right, but we cannot exclude that this classification was already known, or possibly even developed, in the Academy (cf. Pl. Sph. 262d2–4). The need to resume the research on εὐβουλία and κακοβουλία is not stressed in relation to a future occasion; rather, Socrates seems to be suggesting that Sisyphus begin the investigation again (αὖθις) on the spot. This is coherent with the characterization of Socrates in the Platonic dialogues, in which the injunction to start again from the beginning is recurrent (see e.g. Euthphr. 15c11–12, Tht. 164c1–2, Men. 79e5–6 and the note by Aronadio,

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But the previous argument, in itself, could have led to a different solution: it could have underlined that, effectively, deliberation is always linked to a form of knowledge: not the knowledge of a particular object or situation falling within the subject’s experience, but general knowledge of good and bad. Even if, at the beginning of the dialogue, Socrates assumes that the problem of “good deliberation” (εὖ βουλεύεσθαι) should be left aside for further research (387c6–d3), the continuous recurrence of the “good” and the “best” in the subsequent argumentation78 clearly shows that it is impossible to distinguish the problem of βουλεύεσθαι from that of εὖ βουλεύεσθαι. But the true εὔβουλος, in any field, is the man who is able to distinguish good from evil in his choices and actions: a portrait of this man is given in the Eryxias, in which wisdom (σοφία) is equated precisely with the capacity to εὖ βουλεύεσθαι (394e9–11) and described as a form of knowledge that allows one to act correctly (κατορθοῦν) most of the time and to avoid mistakes (ἐξαμαρτάνειν), and whose contents are τὰ κακὰ καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά, καὶ ὅσα πρακτέα καὶ ὅσα μή (393e12–394a1). To return to the Sisyphus, we can now see that Socrates’ lengthy speech at 390a6–d4 was a specific hint at how the μακρὸς λόγος on good deliberation— the very issue which the author of the dialogue does not wish to address (387d1–2) and which the author of the Eryxias instead takes up—could have been developed. At the same time, by stressing the serious nature of the problem and avoiding the accusation of engaging in pure διαλέγεσθαι, the author seems to be telling us that the “dialectical” section of the work is over, or at least that it has been temporarily broken off.79

Conclusion

Through an analysis of On Virtue and Sisyphus, I have tried to show how certain passages and themes taken from the Meno and other dialogues were used by the authors of these two works to create something new, through two different

78 79

2008, 336 n. 18), but it provides a particularly “open” ending for the work, as the dialogue does not actually reach a conclusion. On the possible pedagogical value of this ending, see above, note 70. The research object is explicitly εὖ βουλεύεσθαι in the second definition, which connects good deliberation to the search for τὰ βέλτιστα (388b2–4); see also 389b2, 390b5–7, 390d6–7, 390e9–10, etc. See already Fine, 2013, 137–138 = Fine, 2021, 210: Socrates “seems to say that, however that may be—whether Sisyphus is or is not right to think that he was speaking in jest—what he says next is serious (σκόπει νῦν σπουδῇ, 390c2). Yet what he says next moves on to a new point. So Socrates doesn’t seem to take a stand on whether he was speaking in jest”.

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strategies and on two different levels. It could be shown that a similar method of composition had been adopted for other spuria, or at least for specific sections of them: behind this work of borrowing and re-contextualization we can imagine a careful process of selection and collection of Platonic passages—the painstaking work carried out by a school on the treasure trove of writings left by its founder.80 Moreover, the different arguments found in Plato’s dialogues could be envisaged as “pebbles” (πεττοί) in the construction of new texts structured in a question-and-answer form, and inspired by the doctrines—as well as the style and dialectical structure—of the written material preserved in the Academy. This interest in Platonic and “Socratic” dialectical strategies as a dynamic tool for philosophical transmission can be traced back to the time in which a “return to Socrates” took place in the Academy, in an effort to reaffirm the direct link which, through Plato, connected the school to the Socratic heritage.81 Remarkably, our sources specifically link Arcesilaus both to the revival of Socratism in the Academy and to the “eristic” transformation of the λόγος inherited from Plato, “through questions and answers” (Diogenes Laertius 4.28).82 But, at least as regards the renewed attention to the Socratic heritage of the school, we can possibly trace this picture one generation back, that is to say to the Academy guided by Polemo.83 Unsurprisingly, it is in the last phase of the history of the Old Academy that we also find the first systematic works of exegesis on Plato’s dialogues84 and, probably, the first attempts to produce a canon of the founder’s work.85 The practice of collecting the dialogues, and reading them with a critical and meticulous eye, provided the most solid basis for fleshing out the Academy’s corpus through the writing of new texts—texts which could be attributed to Plato, since their origin was eminently Platonic, but also to Socrates, since Socrates’ voice was resurrected in them. Dialoguing with Plato, through his 80 I have tried to explore the material aspect of this work in Donato, Citations, 2021, 13–15. 81 Concerning Socrates’ importance as a model philosopher in the Hellenistic Age, see, among others, Long, 1988 = 1996, 1–34 and Alesse, 2000. 82 See Ioppolo, 2009, 213–215. 83 On Polemo’s Academy and the “return to Socrates”, see Tarrant, 2020, 203–206 and Donato, 2020, 205–207. 84 It is well known that Crantor is mentioned as ὁ πρῶτος τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐξηγητής by Proclus (In Tim. 1.76.1–2 Diehl), but probably the practice of reading and interpreting the dialogues, albeit not in a systematic way, had already been established with Xenocrates: see Tarrant, 2000, 42–71 and Sedley, 2021. 85 On the “Academic edition” of Plato’s dialogues, about which we are “informed” by Antigonus of Carystus (fr. 39 Dorandi, apud Diog. Laert. 3.66), see, among others, Carlini, 1972, 6–30; Dorandi, 2007, 104–105; Aronadio, 2008, 12–14, Donato, Citations, 2021, 7–8, and Ge (in this volume).

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writings, was a way to revive the school’s dialogue with Socrates. So, once again, we find that, from the very beginning, the “making” of the Corpus Platonicum was inherently connected to the production and adoption of new material, including the dialogues that later interpreters were to classify as νοθευόμενοι. CEREN, EA 7477, BSB, Université Bourgogne-Franche-Comté

Chapter 3

Back to Teichmüller: Literary Feuds and the Author’s Voice in Plato’s Dialogues David J. Murphy While Plato was bringing his enterprise into public view after Socrates’ death, rival thinkers claimed legitimacy for programmes of their own. Teachers of public speaking like Isocrates and Alcidamas, or associates of Socrates like Antisthenes and, with less success, Aeschines of Sphettus, through their writings sought not only to influence educated opinion but also to attract students. Although Xenophon did not take students, he strove in his Socratic discourses to depict the master as a moral exemplar and thereby to spur others toward virtue. Differences of theory, of values, of status as influencers and educators, drew these and other figures to embed criticism of rivals in their writings. We get a sense of the ferment of the first half of the fourth century through the “literary feuds”—a phrase of Gustav Teichmüller’s—that peep out from these men’s speeches and dialogues.1 Critics in antiquity reported polemic between Plato and contemporaries. We read, for example, that Antisthenes used to taunt Plato for being conceited (cf. e.g. Diogenes Laertius  6.7‒8). We also hear of doctrinal disputes that made it into writings. We may doubt ancient critics’ reports of conversations, but for their reports about writings they at least had the writings—and their reports of conversations may well be derived from writings. After Plato reportedly had attacked as self-refuting Antisthenes’ doctrine of the impossibility of contradiction, Antisthenes “wrote a dialogue against Plato, entitling it Sathōn” (Diogenes Laertius  3.35), a crude reference to the male member.2 Ancient critics noticed that the criticism in the Laws of Cyrus’ education and failure to supervise his sons’ education (3.694c‒695a) undermines the core of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, while the latter work—perhaps best classified * I am grateful to Nick Pappas for discussion of and comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. In what follows, translations are my own unless indicated otherwise. 1 The phrase gives Teichmüller the title of his monumental Literarische Fehden im vierten Jahrhundert vor Chr. (1881‒1884). On the ferment of the “school movement” in the fourth century, see Wareh, 2012; Zilioli (ed.), 2015. 2 On the meaning of the name, cf. Prince, 2015, 424.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_004

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as a historical novel/romance—had taken a stance of rivalry against Plato’s Republic.3 They identified other literary set-tos like Plato’s and Xenophon’s jousting in their respective Symposia.4 Most allusions are recoverable only from verbal or doctrinal connections, although Isocrates is judged by name in the Phaedrus (278e‒279a). In 1871 Gustav Teichmüller moved from his post at the University of Basel to take up the chair of philosophy at Dorpat (Tartu), which he held until his death at 56 in 1888. Although he delved into metaphysics and its history, he is probably known to Plato scholars today mostly from the occasional footnote citing him for identifying in Plato an allusion to some contemporary person or writing.5 In Teichmüller’s view, vestiges of literary feuds in the fourth century BCE provide a basis for establishing chronology, since some works can be dated by references to passages in other works. Teichmüller began his study from the plausible assumptions that Plato, as artists do, reacted to works of contemporaries, used contemporary material for illustrations, operated in a milieu in which writers read or exchanged work, made allusions to or hints at others’ productions in his own work, and reacted to their works’ content.6 Unlike Teichmüller’s, my goal is not to establish chronology but to contribute to our understanding of what Plato was about in writing dialogues. If in his dialogues Plato not only portrayed people philosophizing but also interacted with works of contemporary thinkers—an interaction that his audience was expected to follow—then he was playing a complex, double game that perforates the dialogue’s story with communication about the “real world” outside the story. “Double game” is my metaphor for an author’s communicating on two registers or levels: the level of the “story”, on which the author portrays persons interacting with each other, and what I call the “rhetorical” register, on which the author communicates “over the heads of the characters” to an audience, 3 Philip Stadter, 1991, 461 does not hesitate to call the Cyropaedia “the first extant novel […] fictional prose narrative”, although he notes that Xenophon does not so label it but rather claims that his own observation and research ground the account. Nevertheless, “Xenophon has chosen to tell a story of which the verifiable factual content is a very small percentage of the whole” (462); both Xenophon and Plato “use a fictional mode to present what they perceived as fundamental truths” (464); “not a novel of imperial rule, but a novel of virtue” (468). 4 Diog. Laert. 3.34; Athen. 11.504F‒505A; Gell. 14.3.2‒4. 5 For recent assessments of Teichmüller’s career, see Foley, 2015; Schwenke, 2015. 6 Teichmüller, 1881, 11‒12. Cf. Kahn, 1996, 2: “The intellectual world to which Plato’s own work belongs is defined not by the characters in his dialogues but by the thought and writing of his contemporaries and rivals such as the rhetorician Isocrates and the various followers of Socrates”. In a similar vein, many modern historical novels have been read as inscribing contemporary political issues onto the story; cf. Strehle, 2020, 28.

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often to promote what we might call “ideology”.7 By ideology I mean views about reality, personages, norms, values—the “greatest matters” (τὰ μέγιστα, Apology 22d7, Republic  3.392b1, Statesman 302b1). We see Socrates play this double game of speaking on two registers when he embeds his own criticism of writing in the words of Thamus, the king in his fable about ancient Egypt. Recognizing that the character on the story register also functions as Socrates’ mouthpiece, Phaedrus accepts two things about the criticism of writing: it is Socrates’ thoughts put in the words of Thamus; it is true no matter who says it (Phaedrus 274c‒275c). Just as Phaedrus consents to Socrates’ double game and grasps his cues, it is up to Plato’s readers—and, I think, he leaves it for us—”to take Plato’s authorial cues and follow Socrates’ [or other interlocutors’] provocative leads” (Liebert 2010, 183). I enlist the metaphors of double game and of story vs. rhetorical registers in order to grapple with the consequences of Plato’s decision to embed most of his philosophical writing in dialogues. Consequences arise because, by general agreement, Socratic dialogues are a species of what we consider fiction. That agreement starts from Aristotle’s classification of Σωκρατικοὶ λόγοι, “Socratic discourses” or “Socratic dialogues”, as a genre of μίμησις, “representation”, a classification that for us boils down to their constituting a genre of fiction.8 Because the space-time setting is invented, the work is not non-fiction. Yet, if Socratic dialogues are what we classify as fiction, then problems arise for our attempts to find literary feuds in them. A feud between, say, Plato and Xenophon has to be carried on by real-world speakers and involve real-world communication. But authors are not constituents of their stories, and many theorists hold that discourse in fiction is pretended speech acts. On such grounds, some deny that Plato, or any writer of a dialogue, properly “says” anything in his dialogues “in

7 Distinctions between a dramatic composition level of reporting and an authorial communication level of reflection have been formalised in various ways by, e.g., Gabriel, 1975, 87.95‒99; Klosko, 1983; Genette, 1993, chapter 2; Rossetti, 2001; Trabattoni, 2003; Rowe, 2007, e.g. “my first concern is with understanding the nature of Platonic rhetoric”, vii. My “rhetorical register” does much of the same work as Booth’s 1983 “rhetoric of fiction”, although I follow Genette, 1988, 139‒149 and Mikkonen, 2013, 99‒109 in talking simply about “author”, not about Booth’s “implied author” or about an “author function”. 8 Po. 1447b3‒4. The term “Socratic dialogues” (Σωκρατικοὶ διάλογοι) is found in Athen. 11.505C = Arist. De Poetis fr. 3 Ross = fr. 72 Rose. Unlike mathematical logoi, Socratic logoi represent people acting in ways that reveal moral choice, προαίρεσις, and character, Rhet. 1417a15‒22. For “fiction” as a working equivalent of Aristotle’s ποίησις (“making”), see Gallop, 1990, 146‒149; Halliwell, 2002, 166‒168. In favor of translating μίμησις as “representation”, akin to ποίησις, and not “imitation” see Hamburger, 21993, 10‒16.

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the ordinary sense of ‘say’“.9 If this denial must be accepted, it is hard to see how there can be literary feuds in dialogues. The controversy over whether Plato “says” anything in his dialogues has been with us for decades, and I cannot address it in its entirety here.10 I focus now on literary feuds because inquiry into their presence opens a new window from which to scrutinise the “Plato says” problem. What is new is the way the question of literary feuds forces us to confront the reference of a term or sentence in fiction. Contributions to the “Plato says” controversy up to now have centred on “who speaks in Plato?” and “is the speech act serious or pretended?” In order for real-world literary feuds to appear in works that we consider fiction, though—dialogues, dramas, mimes, narrative poetry, fictitious speeches, etc.—a necessary condition is Non-Exceptionalism (NE).11 NE is the thesis that terms in a fiction are not exceptional in the way they refer, that some terms like “Napoleon” can refer to real-world objects in fictional and in nonfictional discourse.12 In order for fictions to convey literary feuds, some terms will need to refer to real-world personages and their views, either under names, like Euripides in Aristophanes or Isocrates in the Phaedrus, or under locutions like “elderly people who have marvelled at” such doctrines as “it is impossible to contradict” (scil. Antisthenes, Sophist 251c4‒6). Some modern theorists of fiction, on the other hand, advocate Exceptionalism (E), at least with regard to particular terms in a fiction. On a such a view, “Napoleon” in War and Peace is exceptional because it is part of discourse in a fiction, so that this name does not refer to the historical emperor, as it does in non-fictional discourse, but to a surrogate counterpart that merely shares some properties with the real-world object. E often is motivated by possible worlds theories of fiction, on which no particular constituent of the “world” of the story is a constituent of the real world, or by realist theories, on

9 10

11

12

Mulhern, 1969, 638. Seminal expositions of the claim that Plato “says” nothing in his dialogues are by Mulhern, 1969 and Mulhern, 1971. For subsequent development, among other treatments, see Press, 2000; Corlett, 2005; Diaz-Waian / Corlett, 2012. I propose reasons to allow “Plato says” in Murphy, 2022. I consider certain speeches of Isocrates as fictions because they present a counterfactual space-time frame of their delivery. Premier is the Antidosis, the bulk of which Isocrates explicitly describes as “pretend” (προσποιουμένην, 13), but a pretend occasion of delivery also marks the Panegyricus, Nicocles, On the Peace, Areopagiticus, and Plataicus. On fictionality in Isocrates and on his incorporation of his views into fictitious speeches, see Murphy, 2013, 318‒327. To avoid multiplication of terms of art, I adopt Exceptionalism and Non-Exceptionalism from García-Carpintero, 2019.

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which objects in fiction exist as abstract objects or in some other way form part of the structure of the world.13 If E stands, Socratic dialogues will not express real-world literary feuds. On E, “authors of fiction who use referring names can never invite readers to entertain singular thoughts about real individuals, even if they intend readers to engage in imaginings about those real individuals and even if they meet all criteria of reference”.14 The name “Isocrates” will not refer to Plato’s contemporary but to a surrogate counterpart encased within the fiction. In that case, we will not be able to connect dialogues’ rhetorical register to Plato’s milieu, and many projects from before Teichmüller to the present will turn out to be misguided. Although theories of fiction, less so philosophy of language, may seem far from the concerns that motivate most labourers in the vineyard of “ancient philosophy”, I believe we must confront the theoretical implications of our general agreement today that Socratic dialogues are fictions. Someone may eventually formulate a theory of fiction so strong that it forces us to pronounce as misguided the hermeneutical assumptions of authors and audiences of a given period. Given the failure so far of any theory of fiction to win the day, however, I seek at the least to understand better the hermeneutical assumptions of Plato’s time, and at most, to consider whether they remain plausible. With regard to literary feuds, as Teichmüller pointed out, we today do not share the familiarity of Plato’s audience with the players in the fourth century’s intellectual milieu. In places in the corpus, we cannot unravel satirical allusions; “often it must be enough for us when we notice that there is something behind it” (Teichmüller’s emphasis).15 Moreover, Teichmüller adds, “Plato always writes […] in the way that Apollo speaks at Delphi, i.e. allusively, and one must think for oneself and add something of one’s own in order to connect points of relation that are only hinted at”.16 We need to receive what we can of Plato’s communication on the rhetorical register if we aspire to understand as much as we can of what he is trying to do with words. This need is not unique to the interpreter of Plato, or even to the historian of ancient philosophy. It holds for anyone who seeks to understand fictional productions of eras that 13 14 15 16

Those reaching this position from different theoretical standpoints include Landini, 1990; Ryan, 1991; Ronen, 1994; Doležel, 1998, esp. 17‒18; Voltolini, 2013; Motoarca, 2014, and García-Carpintero, 2019. Friend, 2019, 180. “es muss uns oft genug sein, wenn wir merken, dass etwas dahinter stecke” (Teichmüller, 1881, 43). “Plato schreibt immer […] in der Art, wie der Apollo in Delphi spricht, d.h. andeutend, und man muss selbst denken und von sich aus etwas hinzuthun, um die bloss angedeuteten Beziehungspunkte zu verknüpfen” (Teichmüller, 1881, 242).

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were comfortable with, or even expectant of, the “rhetoric of fiction”. As Kate Loveman says of seventeenth-century English literature,17 according to modern concepts of genre, (factual) testimony and (fictional) novels should be placed towards opposite ends of a literary spectrum and, indeed, are the province of separate academic disciplines; yet these conceptions prove inadequate for understanding the literature of the seventeenth century and the responses of its readers.

Not only do literary feuds inscribed onto fiction invite us to appreciate more fully the author’s design project; they also shed light on the mentality and hermeneutical assumptions of the author’s age. In what follows I attempt to clarify what must be true for identifications of literary feuds to be plausible. I shall begin with examples of a rhetorical register in fifth- and fourth-century fictions, above the story register. For two reasons, I do not aim to catalogue all passages in Plato that may be thought to encode literary feuds. First, mine is a different concern, viz. whether fiction can encode real-world feuds. Second, the more obscure are Plato’s allusions to contemporary thinkers, the more speculative are attempts to detect feuds in a given passage.18 Therefore, I shall review salient cases where a living thinker or his views appear to be addressed in a fourth-century dialogue.19 Next I shall note how fifth- and fourth-century authors and audiences assumed that realworld reference can occur in genres that we consider fiction. Finally, I shall bring perspectives from modern theory about fictional discourse that, in my view, lend support to ancient assumptions about reference. I hope to contribute to our understanding of Plato’s likely intentions in his writing project by showing that they included criticism of rivals’ views and works.

Rhetorical Register in Ancient Athenian Fictions

As we saw, ancient critics took speeches of Plato’s and Xenophon’s characters as conveying their authors’ attitudes. They will have done the same when they 17 18

Loveman, 2008, 125. For example, suggested proponents of the position set forth and criticised in Socrates’ “Dream Theory” (Tht. 201d‒206b) include Ecphantus or Philolaus, Antisthenes, Democritus, an unknown Academician, or mathematicians: see Waterfield, 1987, 224. 19 We do not know that Aristophanes and Lysias were alive when Plato wrote the Smp. and Phdr. For the suggestion that Lysias is veiled behind Polemarchus in R. 1 and 2, cf. Howland, 2004. If there was a proto-Republic, Lysias will have been alive when it came out.

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concluded that Antisthenes’ Sathōn was written against Plato, for it was a dialogue, and thus, unless it sported an author’s preface or the like, all its sentences would represent characters’ speech. Ancient readers could take sentences in a character’s speech as direct expressions of the author’s views, as Phaedrus saw Thamus’ speech transmit Socrates’ criticism of writing.20 Or, they could infer authorial messages from lines of or about a character. Aristophanes’ plays are replete with metatheatrical devices that break the “fourth wall” and thus divert the audience to real life, where stage machines and the like do not belong to the story.21 The scholia vetera, distilled from the great Alexandrian commentaries, inform us that in Aristophanes’ Knights the coarse Paphlagonian is a stand-in for the politician, Cleon, who with his policies is attacked in the play through various devices. This information may well come from the later Clouds: “I punched Cleon in the stomach when he was a big shot” says the chorus leader, speaking as for the poet (549). It has been often argued that Aristophanes based the protagonist, Lysistrata, on Lysimachē, priestess of Athena.22 Aristophanes’ target is explicit when in the Clouds he pillories Socrates by name. About that comedy, Socrates in Plato’s Apology complains that through “a certain Socrates” on stage (19c3), the poet accused him, the real Socrates, and persuaded people falsely that he was deceitful and harmful to the city (18a‒19c).23 Plato depicts Socrates as presupposing that Aristophanes’ intention or thought travelled from play to audience on what I am calling the rhetorical register as the poet’s assertoric speech—for an accusation (κατηγορία, Apology 19a8) is an assertion. Finally, often in comedy, and as we saw, at least once in Plato (viz. Isocrates in the Phaedrus), a living person is mentioned in a way that prompts the audience to evaluate that real-life person. Later ancient critics maintained the assumption that drama could communicate on a rhetorical register above the story register. The Hypothesis to Isocrates’ Busiris transmits an erroneous but illuminating tradition about Euripides’ Palamedes. It says that the poet, “wanting to speak covertly” 20

Although the difference between author and character was understood, ancient readers read characters’ utterances as authorial speech on a massive scale; cf. Grethlein, 2021. 21 Slater 2002, passim; Thumiger, 2009, 10‒39. 22 On Lysistrata/Lysimachē, see now Gilhuly, 2009, 148‒153. Wright, 2012 argues that Aristophanes’ comedies directed coded literary criticism to an élite audience. On democratic ideals espoused in Aristophanes’ comedies in response to oligarchic ideals, cf. Sidwell, 2009. 23 Real individuals were lampooned in Old Comedy ([Xen.] Ath. Pol. 2.18). Even theatrical masks could be made to look like the person lampooned (Sidwell, 1997, 255). A scholion on Aristophanes’ Acharnians 67 reports that a decree was passed in 440, repealed after three years, that forbade the lampooning of individuals by name in comedy.

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(αἰνίξασθαι) about Socrates’ condemnation, “represented” (ποιήσαντος) a character as speaking to the Greeks, but really to the Athenians about Socrates. At the line, “‘You killed, you killed the best of the Greeks’ […] , the whole theatre burst into tears because they realised that he was speaking covertly” (αἰνίττεται) about Socrates. Since the Palamedes was performed in 415, we may only have to do here with a later tradition that assumed that a poet can use the tragic plot to refer to a real-life person. Teichmüller pointed to an instance where Plato seems to acknowledge a rhetorical register in his own work, when words of Socrates are motivated by events that occurred after the time when the story is set. In the Seventh Letter we are told that after the Tyranny of the Thirty and the state’s sentencing Socrates to death for impiety, I came to the conclusion that all existing states are badly governed […] and I was forced to say [my italics] in praise of true philosophy, that from her height alone was it possible to discern what the nature of justice is, either in the state or in the individual, and that the ills of the human race would never end until either the tribe (γένος) of those who do philosophy (τῶν φιλοσοφούντων) sincerely and truly come into political power, or the tribe of those who are holding power (δυναστευόντων) in the cities by some divine dispensation truly does philosophy (φιλοσοφήσῃ, 326a‒b, tr. Morrow, modified).

Teichmüller took the words which Plato was “forced to say” (λέγειν τε ἠναγκάσθην, Seventh Letter 326a5) to be much of the meat of Republic  5, especially this: “Unless either the philosophers rule as kings in the cities or those now called kings and potentates (δυνασταί) philosophise (φιλοσοφήσωσι) genuinely and sufficiently […] there is no cessation of evils […] in the cities” (473c11‒ d6). Although the letter could refer to oral discourse, the coincidence of content and wording is so striking that it is plausible that the letter refers to the Republic.24 If that is so, and if Plato wrote at least the autobiographical part of the Seventh Letter, then either he is attesting that he intended for words of Socrates in the dialogue to convey assertions of his own as author, or at least, that Republic 5 expressed thought consistent with his own. As the authenticity of this part of the Letter is increasingly accepted, Teichmüller’s inference is probable.25 24

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“als ich (im fünften Buche) die richtige Philosophie lobte” (Teichmüller, 1884, 252). Thesleff, 1982, 106 = Thesleff, 2009, 255 voices the same conclusion, adding that a “Proto-Republic” may be in view, for which cf. below. Against Burnyeat’s and Frede’s athetization of the Seventh Letter, see Kahn, 2015; Szlezák, 2017, and Notomi, 2022. Contributors to Reid / Ralkowski (eds.), 2019 remain cautious but divided on authenticity. In favor of authenticity of this section I add that if the letter were written by someone else

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These modes of authorial communication on the rhetorical register, “above” the communication of the story, require the recipient to catch a message about a contemporary person. The recipient must recognise the views and actions of that person. Some recipients could think they divined two levels of authorial communication in a discourse without sufficient grounds to identify an overlevel; in the dialogical section of his Panathenaicus, Isocrates depicts such overconfidence of a listener who thinks he has ferreted out authorial “double meaning” (ἀμφιβολία, 239‒241, 246‒247). Blame for hasty conclusions about double meanings shows that rhetorical registers were easily assumed. Tactics like Antisthenes’ parodies of rivals’ names (Sathōn, and see further in the next section) are in-your-face examples.

Isocrates

In giving salient instances of literary feuds during Plato’s time, I begin with Isocrates because Socrates’ judgment about him in Phaedrus 278e‒279a is the only reference by name in Plato’s dialogues to another writer who we know was alive at the time of writing. Having made the transition from writing courtroom speeches for clients to teaching what he called both logoi, “speeches”, and “philosophy”, Isocrates in Against the Sophists (ca. 392‒390) stakes a claim against rival educators. Among those whom he disparages as “eristics” are people who cannot but be followers of Socrates. At the heart of the doctrines that Isocrates attributes to these teachers is their claim to teach a knowledge, ἐπιστήμη, by which students will know what to do in order to lead lives of virtue and happiness (Against the Sophists 3‒8). The conjunction of the doctrines and claims attacked in this passage, however, fits Antisthenes most closely among Socratics known to us. Salvos between Isocrates and Antisthenes are relevant to Plato interpretation because they help support two claims of the present study: that literary feuds were rife in the fourth century; that writers and audiences detected them in works that we must classify as fiction. In Isocrates’ opening charge that his opponents “pretend to seek the truth” (1) one can conjecture an oblique reference to Antisthenes’ dialogue, Truth.26 Isocrates may have Truth in his sights later when he writes the Helen (ca. 380s‒370). In its prooemium he attacks people who “deny that it is possible to speak falsehoods or contradict or assert two contradictory propositions about

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who had read a lot of Plato, we would expect Socrates to be identified as a philosopher and not merely as “an older man dear to me” (Ep. 7, 324d8‒e2), “our comrade” (325b6). Cf. Brancacci, 2005, 25–26.35–36.87–91 and Brancacci, 2011, 10‒11.

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the same things” (1). That position dovetails with positions that Aristotle attributes to Antisthenes.27 If Isocrates has one or more dialogues of Antisthenes in his sights, he is treating them as conveying assertions of their author.28 For his part, Antisthenes runs down Isocrates in at least two works. One is known only as a title in Diogenes Laertius’ catalogue (6.15) of Antisthenes’ works, scil. Against Isocrates’ Speech Without Witnesses. That speech by Isocrates is known to us as Against Euthynus Without Witnesses, which concerned a monetary deposit not returned in full.29 Antisthenes’ criticism or parody seems to have annoyed Isocrates, for the latter in his Panegyricus (ca. 380) disparages “those who argue about words with respect to The Deposit (τὴν παρακαταθήκην) and about the rest of the topics they currently babble about” (188, tr. Prince). Antisthenes also published a work whose title was something like Isographē or Desias or Isocrates (Diogenes Laertius 6.15).30 Antisthenes will have coined “Isographēs” in mockery either of Isocrates’ style or repetitive themes, and “Desias” in mockery of Lysias.31 The Panegyricus is a fictive oration, while Isographē looks like a dialogue, with Desias, “Binder”, being a play on “Lysias”, “one who releases”—and Lysias had written a speech for the other side in the trial about the deposit. A title with two names suggests a dialogue featuring characters who are stand-ins for these two speechwriters.32 In Plato, Isocrates came face to face with a world-historical genius as an intellectual and educational competitor. As  I noted above, Isocrates is the only writer known to be alive when evaluated by name in a Platonic dialogue. Socrates’ praise of Isocrates in the Phaedrus as by nature and character superior to Lysias, now undertaking speeches superior to forensic ones (279a3‒6), 27 Metaph. 1024b32‒34; Top. 104b21; cf. Diog. Laert. 3.35. On the likelihood that Isocrates in the Helen drew on Antisthenes’ Truth, cf. Murphy, 2013, 336. Many have supposed that the impossibility of falsehood and contradiction was defended also in Antisthenes’ dialogue, Sathōn, the title of which is often combined with the next title in Diogenes Laertius’ catalogue, scil. On Contradiction in Three Books. Strong arguments that Sathōn is a complete title, however, probably of a work that attacked Plato’s theory of forms, have been made by Brancacci, 2005, 27‒29. Dorandi (ed.), 2013 in his edition of Diogenes prints Sathōn as a stand-alone title; cf. further, Prince, 2015, 149‒150. 28 On Isocrates’ reactions to Antisthenes, see further Murphy, 2013, 329‒337 and Murphy, 2018, 106‒109. 29 Cf. Prince, 2015, 233‒235. 30 On the title see Dorandi’s (ed.), 2013, 415 apparatus in his edition of Diogenes; Patzer, 1970, 112 and 228‒231. Since Wyttenbach, some have thought that the previous phrase in Diogenes’ catalogue, viz. On Forensic Writers (περὶ τῶν δικογράφων), in fact forms part of the title of this work about Isocrates (Prince, 2015, 133). 31 For interpretations of these parodic names, cf. Patzer, 1970, 229‒232 and Brancacci, 2011, 25‒26. 32 Cf. Prince, 2015, 133‒134.

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and endowed with “a certain love of wisdom/philosophy” (279a9), has been variously assessed. I agree with those who see this as damnation by faint praise. Isocrates at the time of writing was already a prominent public intellectual, not “still young” (278e8) but probably in his sixties, who from the start (e.g. Against the Sophists 1) had claimed “philosophy” as his enterprise and denied it to opponents who included Socratics.33 The judgment that Isocrates should go on “to greater things” (ἐπὶ μείζω, Phaedrus 279a8) relegates his actual enterprise to a place behind that which Plato constructs as philosophy.34 The reader is able to judge that Isocrates has not lived up to the future presented here as possible. We have a “Socrates wavelength” qualified by an ironical “Plato wavelength” above the story register.35 Socrates and Crito in the Euthydemus discuss a certain man “clever in speeches for lawcourts”. He “occupies the borderlands between a philosophical man and a political man” and imagines himself to be “sufficiently up on philosophy and sufficiently up on politics” (305b7‒d8), although he is not so (306a‒c). This figure, in Holger Thesleff’s words, is “practically certain” to be Isocrates, “considering also the parody of Isocratean style”.36 Plato had already made a patent allusion in the Gorgias that shows up Isocrates’ “philosophy” as lacking. Socrates’ description of rhetoric as “not an undertaking based on expertise, but one of a soul good at guessing and brave (ψυχῆς δὲ στοχαστικῆς καὶ ἀνδρείας) and clever by nature to address people” (Gorgias 463a6–8) parodies Isocrates’ description of rhetoric as “the work of a soul manly and of good judgment (ψυχῆς ἀνδρικῆς καὶ δοξαστικῆς), and the student ought to have […] a fitting nature” (Against the Sophists 17).37 The implication is that Socrates’ criticisms of rhetoric in the Gorgias apply to Isocrates’ activity. In the Busiris (15‒27), Isocrates describes Egyptian institutions that match those of the Sparta-inspired Kallipolis in Plato’s Republic. After writing that the philosophers “who undertake to speak about such things and are most renowned prefer the constitution in Egypt”, Isocrates adds that the Spartans imitate Egyptian customs (17). This gratuitous reference to Sparta is a tip-off 33

Brancacci, 2011, 32 notices that “still young” serves as an ironic, antiphrastic response to “they have grown old” in Isocrates’ Helen (καταγεγηράκασιν, 1). 34 For the Phdr. reference as negative, cf. e.g. Coulter, 1967; de Vries, 1971; McAdon, 2004; Laplace, 2011; Brancacci, 2011, 32‒37. 35 On irony as communication outside the story, cf. Griswold, 2002. 36 Thesleff, 1980, 146 = Thesleff, 2009, 294; cf. for the same view, Michelini, 2000, 528‒530; Palpacelli, 2009, 221; Barney, 2010, 116 n. 38; Brancacci, 2011, 18‒23. 37 On Grg. 463a as a parody of Isocrates, see Eucken, 1983, 36‒39, who answers Dodds’s skepticism.

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that Isocrates is attaching ideas from Plato to the mythical evildoer, Busiris.38 If Isocrates wrote the Busiris in the 380s, he will have been responding to a protoRepublic known outside Academic coteries.39 When Socrates in Republic  6 complains about gatecrashers into philosophy who “are of contentious disposition (φιλαπεχθημόνως ἔχοντας) and always make their speeches about humans” (500b4‒5), Isocrates saw these words as directed at himself. We infer this from the Antidosis (354‒353). Describing an educational program that can only fit that of Plato’s Academy, Isocrates contrasts to it his own product: “we, being involved with political discourses, which those people say are contentious” (φιλαπεχθήμονας, 260). Isocrates proudly doubles down on his claim to write, not about abstruse speculations like those people he criticises (i.e. Plato and associates), but about timely matters of state. In his First Letter (2‒3), Isocrates even defuses the cogency of the point made in the Phaedrus, that the writer is not present to correct misunderstandings of his writings (275e).40 Given that the Antidosis is a fictional speech modelled blatantly on Plato’s Apology, we see Plato and Isocrates dig at each others’ intellectual enterprises through allusions in their fictions.41 These allusions are real-world references embedded in the fictions. Apparently, they were so understood by Speusippus, Plato’s nephew and successor as head of the Academy (347‒338). After Plato’s death, the Academy and the school of Isocrates were vying for the favour of Philip of Macedon. In his Philip, written in 346, Isocrates urged the king to unite and lead the Greeks against Persia. He writes that speeches delivered at panhellenic festivals are “as without legal force (ἄκυροι) as are laws and constitutions written by the sophists” (12). One cannot think of any compositions more likely to be in Isocrates’ mind than Plato’s Laws and Republic. A letter to Philip, probably written by Speusippus in 343/2, says that Isocrates’ speech was read in the Academy (1.5‒6 Natoli) and notes indignantly that “Isocrates […] has not held off (ἀπέσχηται) from Plato in the speeches (λόγοις) sent to you” (2.11‒12 Natoli).42 Isocrates had not belittled Plato’s compositions on the grounds that they were “myths” 38 39 40 41 42

Cf. Livingstone, 2001, 45‒56; Thesleff, 2009, 524‒525. Thesleff, 2009, 519‒539 updates his own hypothesis of a proto-Republic. Sullivan, 2007, 9 argues that here Isocrates pointedly replies to Plato. On Isocrates’ appropriation from Apology, cf. Too, 1995, 108 and 192‒194; Nightingale, 1995, 28–43; Ober, 2004. On the date and authenticity of the letter, see Natoli, 2004, 23‒64 and the paper by Forcignanò / Martinelli Tempesta in this volume. Diog. Laert. 4.5 and Athenaeus 11.506e‒f took the epistle as genuine. Frede’s case for inauthenticity (Burnyeat / Frede 2015, 29‒42) rests primarily on the fact that most other letters attributed to fourth-century philosophers are agreed to be spurious.

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or “fictions” (πλάσματα). He had belittled them for failing to be deliberative compositions like his own and thus for having no contemporary political application. In Isocrates’ attack on the content of Plato’s compositions and his insinuation that their author is a sophist, Speusippus sees an attack on Plato, as though Plato is responsible for the thought in them. Both Isocrates and Speusippus write as though they assume that Plato expressed views in his dialogues.

Antisthenes

Although late-nineteenth critics sought to ferret out many allusions to Antisthenes in Plato’s dialogues, I mention only three, all allusions to the denials that one can speak a falsehood or can contradict. These are consequences of Antisthenes’ oikeios logos doctrine. The denial of the possibility of contradiction is shown up as self-refuting in the Euthydemus, where it is attributed to “those around Protagoras” (286c2). Since the tradition accords the origin of this doctrine to Antisthenes, “those around Protagoras” is evidently an accommodation to the setting of the Euthydemus in ca. 407, too early for Antisthenes’ peculiar theories.43 These theses are dismissed again in the Sophist as what “youths and late learners” pride themselves in thinking they have discovered (251b‒252a, 260c‒d). “Late learner” is a recognizable tag for Antisthenes.44 Although Antisthenes will have expounded these doctrines in On Contradiction in Three Books, which as far as we know was not a dialogue, he may well have expounded them also in Truth, which was a dialogue. Marwan Rashed has made a strong case that the Phaedo is Plato’s reply to Antisthenes’ Sathōn.45 If Aldo Brancacci and others are right that Sathōn had attacked the theory of Forms,46 Plato in the Phaedo makes a strong defence while rejecting Antisthenes’ attack. The rejection, according to Rashed, occurs in Phaedo 102‒103. An individual, whose name Phaedo cannot remember, blurts out that Socrates and Cebes, in barring Tallness and Shortness from combining, contradict what they said earlier when they allowed that larger things come from having been smaller and vice versa (70e‒71b). Socrates replies by convicting this individual of failing to understand the difference between things 43 Cf. Ahbel-Rappe, 2000, 282‒290; Prince, 2015, 521‒527. On the dramatic date of Euthd. see Nails, 2002, 314. 44 Tarrant, 1996, 110‒116. 45 Rashed, 2006. 46 Brancacci, 2005, 28.151‒159.

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that have qualities and qualities themselves (103a‒b). This rejoinder reduces Antisthenes’ theory, which holds that a thing can be a human or horse but that there exists no Humanness or Horseness, to a case of failure to comprehend. Socrates had already contravened de re Antisthenes’ thesis that “every logos says the truth” when he posited that in the statement, “Simmias is taller than Socrates”, the truth is not as is said by the words (102b8‒c1). Concluding that the Phaedo is both a monument to the memory of Socrates and “one of the episodes of an inheritance dispute between Antisthenes and Plato”, Rashed adds that the dialogue’s name gives us a series, Πλάτων, Σάθων, Φαίδων, that calls attention to the “hot news” of the most notable literary feud between followers of Socrates.47 To sum up, Plato in his dialogues presents negative judgments of Antisthenes’ thought, itself expressed in dialogues as well as in treatises.48

Xenophon

We noted that ancient critics deduced from their writings a rivalry between Plato and Xenophon, a rivalry that Aulus Gellius tried to elevate into rivalry in virtue. Critics today continue to find a spirit of rivalry palpable in these men’s writings. Louis-André Dorion reminds us of the agonistic character of Greek philosophy. As a form of agôn, Greek philosophy was inherently polemical from its very beginnings, and it is implausible to suggest that this did not hold true for the Socratics, many of whom founded rival schools that each laid claim to Socrates’ philosophical heritage. The rivalry between Plato and Xenophon is just one particular case illustrating the agonistic atmosphere that reigned among the Socratics. Indeed, the ancient texts provide ample evidence that such rivalry was generalised.49

Many modern critics agree with the ancients that Cyrus’s pedagogical shortcomings are flagged in the Laws (3.694c‒695b) in response to Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, as the latter in turn responded to Plato’s Republic. The thought is, Xenophon’s historical romance fleshed out a craft of rulership based more on inborn character and moulding by custom and military training than on 47 Rashed, 2006, 122. 48 Dümmler, 1882, 29‒34, followed by others, argued that Plato’s Hp. Mi. is a reply to Antisthenes’ conceit (cf. Xen. Symp. 3.6) of ability to interpret the hidden meanings, ὑπονοίας, of poets. Pohlenz et al. thought the Hp. Mi. preceded. For the now prevalent view that both responded to a work by Hippias independently of each other, see Venturelli, 2015. 49 Dorion, 2018, 64.

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knowledge, inverting the causal hierarchy of the Republic. As a riposte, Plato has the Athenian first move the spotlight off Cyrus, Xenophon’s reforming hero, by attributing the reforms more vaguely to the Persians during Cyrus’s reign and to “the king” (694a‒b). He next traces Persian moral decline to Cyrus’s failure to provide his sons a good education (694d‒695d), summed up in “you haven’t learned from Cyrus’s mistake, so you’ve brought up Xerxes in the same habits as Cyrus brought up Cambyses” (695d8‒e2, tr. Saunders). The Athenian’s verdict directly nullifies the import of the words that Xenophon put in the mouth of Cyrus on his deathbed, in which the king reminds his sons of the education he has given them: […] from the beginning, my children, I have been training you also to honour your elders above yourselves and to be honoured above those who are younger. Take what I say, therefore, as that which is approved by time, by custom, and by the law (Cyropaedia 8.7.10, tr. Miller).

The Athenian’s words also challenge both Xenophon’s statement that Cyrus had his satraps imitate him by having their sons educated just as were princes (8.6.10) and Cyrus’s speech about educating noble boys in Babylon (7.5.86). Although Plato will have used Herodotus and perhaps other historians as well, the confluence of themes from the Cyropaedia in this section of the Laws “provides strong evidence that the passage is based on that work”, as does “the fact that its details fit so well to Plato’s over-all purpose in this section [of the Laws]”.50 As Diogenes Laertius comments, “Plato in the Laws says that his [scil. Cyrus’s] education is a fiction (πλάσμα), for Cyrus was not such [as Xenophon depicts]” (3.34). Ancient critics were also right to detect rivalry in the texts of Plato’s and Xenophon’s Symposia (Diogenes Laertius  3.34). Evidence that something is afoot is most noticeable in chapter 8 of Xenophon’s work. There Socrates makes a speech about two Aphrodites, the Pandēmos, or “common”, and the Ourania, or “heavenly” (8.9‒10). He urges male lovers to remain always on a spiritual plane with their male beloveds and not gratify physical desire. We find these two Aphrodites introduced and contrasted in Pausanias’ speech in Plato’s Symposium (180d‒181d), but unlike Xenophon’s Socrates, Pausanias allows that physical consummation of love of an older and wholesome youth pursued honourably is not shameful in Athens (182d‒184c). The giveaway that Xenophon is reacting to Plato comes when Xenophon’s Socrates attacks what he identifies as a speech of “Pausanias, lover of the poet Agathon”, who 50

Danzig, 2003, 292‒293. For other allusions to the Cyropaedia in Plato’s Lg., cf. Danzig, 2003, 295‒297; Atack, 2018, 538‒539.

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had extolled as most valiant an army of lovers and beloveds as recognised in Thebes and Elis (8.32‒35). Socrates attacks the speech as licentious for promoting physical homosexual relations, which Socrates rejects as always shameful. The claim that such an army, if ever it might come to be, would defeat all others was in fact made by Phaedrus, the first speaker in Plato’s Symposium (178e‒179b), although it was Pausanias who appealed to lovers in Boeotia and Elis (182b1‒2). It is bizarre for Xenophon’s Socrates to attack a speech of someone who is not present at the symposium, to offer no details about where or when this speech was made, and to present the Theban Band as though it already exists in the fifth century when the symposium is set: “He adduced as evidence the fact that the Thebans and the Eleians recognise the very principle, and added: Though the lovers sleep together [with their beloveds], they do not scruple to range the lovers side by side with their beloveds in the field of battle” (8.34, tr. Dakyns, modified). As Gabriel Danzig observes, Xenophon “in so doing destroys the dramatic illusion of his own work” (2005, 336). It is not credible that Plato and Xenophon both draw on a speech by some third author, either the historical Pausanias or perhaps Antisthenes.51 Since Xenophon’s readers needed to know the intended target of Socrates’ speech in chapter 8 in order to understand its motivation, and no target is presented in the story, the best explanation is that the target is external to the story. The only candidate is Plato’s Symposium. Xenophon is conflating and perhaps misremembering the speeches of Phaedrus and Pausanias in that work. Providing further evidence to support Thesleff, Danzig argues persuasively that Socrates’ speech in chapter 8 of Xenophon’s Symposium is the author’s later insertion, made “because he viewed Phaedrus’s speech as a response to and distortion of the speech of his own Critobulus”.52 That is the only speech in Xenophon’s Symposium to make ἔρως its subject. Critobulus says that the beautiful inspire followers to greater exertion and valour, and a beautiful general will inspire soldiers to follow him through fire (4.15‒16). Phaedrus’s speech expands and intensifies this theme by envisioning a whole city or army of lovers. On Thesleff’s and Danzig’s scenario, Xenophon first wrote his Symposium. Plato expanded Critobulus’ erōs theme into his own Symposium, making Critobulus’ encomium look paltry by comparison. Xenophon then inserted chapter 8 in order to attack Plato’s work as licentious. The standard view, that Xenophon’s Symposium as an entirety postdates Plato’s, relies on passages in Xenophon that seem to be clear references to dialogues of Plato. But those either occur in chapter 8 or are dubious parallels. If Thesleff and Danzig are right, as I believe 51 52

Cf. Thesleff, 1978, 157‒158; Danzig, 2005, 335‒336. Thesleff, 1978; Danzig, 2005, 336.

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they are, that chapter 8 is a later insertion, we see Plato and Xenophon capping each other in a literary feud carried out in dialogues, one that their audiences are expected to catch. Even if the standard view is right, scil. that Xenophon wrote the entirety of his Symposium after Plato’s, we have Xenophon injecting a literary feud into a dialogue.53

Megarians

One of Socrates’ followers, Eucleides of Megara (ca. 450–ca. 368), is known for influencing a group of philosophers called after him Megarians (Μεγαρικοί, Aristotle, Metaphysics 1046b29). These were known as “eristics” or “dialecticians” (Diogenes Laertius 2.30, 106) for their hair-splitting and sometimes fallacious question-and-answer arguments. In the view presented by Diogenes, “Plato says in the Euthydemus” that Socrates thought such hairsplitting (γλισχρολογίαν) useless and fit for consorting with sophists, not human people (ἀνθρώποις, 2.30). Diogenes also says that when attacking a demonstration, Eucleides went after the conclusion not the premises (2.107). Cornford plausibly says that in the type of sophist whom the Eleatic Visitor pronounces a “babbler” (Sophist 225d) “[t]here can be little doubt that the Megarians are meant, as Susemihl suggested”.54 In line with Diogenes’ material and with parallels between arguments of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus and arguments analysed by Aristotle, Dorion has gone beyond the old hypothesis that the two brothers, who apparently existed (cf. Aristotle, Sophistici Elenchi 177b12, Rhetoric 1401a26; Xenophon, Memorabilia  3.1.1), should be considered in the Euthydemus as Megarian eristics. Dorion maintains that they were in fact Megarians of the fourth century. It seems a stretch to believe that Plato has perpetrated an anachronism so radical as to portray by their names two contemporaries of his in a story set decades earlier, but then, Parmenides may have been dead by the time the action of that dialogue is set, ca. 450. Even if Dorion is wrong about the brothers’ actual dates, he makes a strong case that the Euthydemus is best understood in the perspective of a rivalry between Plato and the Megarians, with the brothers masks for them: “Thus it is absolutely plausible that Plato has transposed in the Euthydemus […] the debates 53 Ancient critics considered as evidence of literary rivalry the fact that both Plato and Xenophon produced Apologies of Socrates that differ on various details. Other Socratics may well have written Apologies also (cf. Xen. Ap. 1). I do not analyse Apologies, however, because none earlier than Plato’s is extant. 54 Cornford, 1935, 176‒177.

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that at that moment put him into opposition to the Megarians”.55 If Dorion is right, we have an instance of what one may call “ideology anachronism”, with fourth-century persons and views being put in a fifth-century story frame. As to Megarians in the Theaetetus, I do not share Ugo Zilioli’s judgment that the analogy “cannot be closer” between Socrates’ paradox of a man who covers your eye and demands whether you see his cloak with that eye (Theaetetus 165b9‒c2), and the Veiled Man argument ascribed to Eubulides of Miletus, who was influenced by Eucleides (Diogenes Laertius  2.108).56 In the Veiled Man, your father’s face is veiled, so that you both know your father, scil. by acquaintance, and do not know him, scil. by recognition. The fallacy is secundum quid in the first paradox but equivocation in the second. And we do not know that Eubulides, known for attacks on Aristotle, had formulated his paradoxes by the time Plato wrote the Theaetetus.

Cyrenaics

Although Xenophon portrays Aristippus as a hedonist bested in argument by Socrates (Memorabilia 2.1, 3.8), in Plato we hear of that Cyrenaic philosopher only as being out of town in Aegina on Socrates’ last day (Phaedo 59c4). Controversy dogs the question, are the “other much more subtle people” (κομψότεροι) at Theaetetus 156a2‒3 Cyrenaics? Socrates describes them as developing Protagorean relativism with a metaphysics of flux and a theory of perception based on it. That which survives of the Middle-Platonist Anonymous Commentary on the Theaetetus (first century CE?) breaks off before it reaches this passage, but the commentator does link the Cyrenaic thesis that only our affections, not external objects, are apprehensible to the argument in the Theaetetus that the wind itself is not cold—one person feels cold and another not (152b–c; in Theaetetum 64.21‒65.39). Zilioli has refined a view extant at least since Schleiermacher, that Cyrenaics are those “more subtle people”.57 Voula Tsouna and Kurt Lampe are two who deny this identification.58 Christopher Rowe concludes that, although the passage shows connections to what we know of Cyrenaic positions, Plato was capable of 55

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“Il est donc tout à fait plausible que Platon ait transposé dans l’Euthydème […] les débats qui à ce moment l’opposaient lui-même aux Mégariques” (Dorion, 2000, 41). Dorion joins other scholars who allow that in places Plato makes the brothers “mouthpieces” (“des portes-paroles”) of Antisthenes (Dorion, 2000, 43). Zilioli, 2013, 172. Zilioli, 2012, 47‒75; Zilioli, 2013. Tsouna, 1998, 124‒138; Lampe, 2014.

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formulating consequences of Protagoras’ position for Socrates to attack, and later Cyrenaics even could have developed Plato’s formulations.59 I do not adopt Zilioli’s well-argued hypothesis, which he concedes is not proved,60 because we do not have independent confirmation that Aristippus or his associates had taught a doctrine like that of the “more subtle people” by the time Plato wrote the Theaetetus. We may think that the “certain subtle people” of the Philebus (κομψοὶ […] τινες, 53c6), whose doctrine about pleasure Socrates cites as already public (“we have heard”, ἀκηκόαμεν, 53c4), are the same as the “more subtle” thinkers of the Theaetetus. Zeller noted that we have no other candidates for a philosophy of ethical hedonism in the mid-fourth century than Aristippus and followers.61 On the other hand, Spyridon Rangos points out that Plato’s Socrates often calls other intellectuals κομψοί, multiple candidates have been proposed for the “subtle” thinkers of the Philebus, and Socrates uses these people’s doctrine to argue against the thesis that pleasure is the good.62 While I remain agnostic toward the hypothesis that the conception of pleasure contested in the Philebus is Cyrenaic, I cannot rule it out that “something Cyrenaic lies behind” these or other views criticised in Plato, as Teichmüller might have said had he tackled their philosophy.63

Fourth-Century Assumptions About External Reference in Fiction

I laid it down at the outset that NE is a necessary condition for the presence of a rhetorical register and literary feuds in fiction. The ancient Greeks had not articulated a concept of fiction, or theories about it, that match our conceptions, but they worked from assumptions congruent with our NE. Although Hesiod’s Muses “know how to say many falsehoods that are like the truth […] and how to voice what is true” (Theogony 27‒28), mimetic writing was generally considered to interpret our world more than to invent imagined worlds.64 59 60 61 62 63 64

Rowe, 2015. Zilioli, 2012, 86. Zeller, 1922, 352‒353 n. 1. Rangos, 2019, 203 n. 1. Zilioli, 2012, 164‒170, who argues for Cyrenaics in the Phlb., mentions other dialogues where scholars have proposed allusions to Cyrenaic doctrine (49). On the mingling of truth and falsehood and of real-world and invented referents in Greek poetry, see Bowie, 1993; Ruffell, 2017. My purpose does not require an answer to the question, did Plato have what we can say was a conception of fiction? For “No”; cf. e.g. Gill, 1993; for “Yes with qualifications”, cf. e.g. Liebert, 2010.

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Presupposed by lampoons in Attic comedy and by complaints about them, for example, is the assumption that comic discourse can refer to real-life persons.65 Socrates in Plato’s Apology tries to rebut the impression created by Aristophanes’ Clouds. His reason for maintaining that this example of “first accusations” does not implicate him is not because it was made in comedy— for us, in fiction—or because the offending lines are assigned to characters in the comedy and are not “speech” of the poet. On the contrary, it is because these “first accusations” are objectively false. Socrates’ confidence that he could refute these first accusers, as far as it touches the author of the Clouds, presupposes that Aristophanes’ play contains real-world references, for it is in the real world and not in the comedy that its “false accusations” (Apology 18a8) are false. A false proposition can contain a term that refers successfully. Some real-world references in comedy were laudatory; from Cicero’s Brutus we learn that Eupolis wrote of the effects of Pericles’ eloquence (9.38, 15.59). Herodotus reports that The Athenians […] showed their profound distress at the capture of Miletus in a number of ways, and in particular, when Phrynichus produced his play, The Capture of Miletus, the audience in the theatre burst into tears. The author was fined a thousand drachmas for reminding them of their own evils, and they forbade anybody ever to put the play on the stage again (6.21, tr. Marincola and de Sélincourt).

“Their own evils” designates real-world events. The audience understood those events as the content of the story in the play.66 Phrynichus’ The Capture of Miletus, his later Phoenician Women, and Aeschylus’ Persians fill the story register with recent, real-world content, even if details are modified, and on the rhetorical register they seem to have transmitted contemporary political commentary.67 In drama and dialogues, titles of other works are cited, and whole passages of other works are quoted and discussed.68 Aristotle famously allows poetry to express universal truths about the real world (Poetics 1451b7, 1454a25), even in the mouths of characters, as when he quotes Agathon as saying, λέγει, that “it is likely […] that many things should happen contrary 65 66

Cf. above and see Henderson, 2013. “the tears that resulted from the performance of The Fall of Miletus are not reducible solely to the effect of its ‘imitation of action’ let alone to the plot or script of Phrynichus’ play […] it seems that their lamentation was the result of a shared recollection of a suffering that was theirs” (Kottman, 2003, 84). 67 Cf. Favorini, 2003; Kottman, 2003. 68 Cf. e.g. titles cited in Aristophanes’ Frogs 52‒53 and Clouds 553‒556. Plato’s citations of poetry are listed by Mitscherling, 2009.

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to what is likely” (1456a24‒25). That this is a paraphrase of lines spoken by a character in a play is confirmed by the Rhetoric, where Aristotle quotes iambic trimetres: “just as Agathon says, ‘Perhaps someone would say that this is likely, that many things happen for mortals that are not likely’” (ὥσπερ καὶ Ἀγάθων λέγει, ”τάχ’ἄν τις εἰκὸς αὐτὸ τοῦτ’ εἶναι λέγοι, βροτοῖσι πολλὰ τυγχάνειν οὐκ εἰκότα”, 1402a9‒12 = TrGF 39 F 9). But Aristotle also allows that poets refer to real-world particulars (Poetics 1460b32‒33, 1461a3‒4). Although they may invent, when portraying mythical or historical figures, poets should work within what is known (1451b15‒18). Disputes over real-world errors made by poets were rife in ancient scholarship.69 Plato’s dialogues display detail about the topography of fifth and fourthcentury Athens, and on the whole, Plato adhered to chronology in the case of people he knew.70 Moreover, the Ion conveys theorizing about reference. Socrates and Ion do not question it that speech about crafts in Homer, in other poets, and in real-life settings has the same real-world reference; the art of chariot-racing is the same profession in the Iliad (23.335‒40) as in Socrates’ and Ion’s world (Ion 537b‒538b). Thus, by arguing that poetic judgment “relates the real-world parts to the fictional whole”, the Ion reveals “a crisis in poetic reference” and “recognises the real world in many of poetry’s particulars”.71 As we saw Plato in his Seventh Letter apparently refer to the Republic, he seems to have done this even in dialogues. Quoting Socrates’ words in the Timaeus, “I felt the same thing [scil. desire to see the figures come to life] about the city that we described [scil. yesterday]” (19c1‒2), Athenaeus comments that, likening himself to a painter who wants to see his creations come to life, Plato betrays vanity in wanting to see his Republic fleshed out (Deipnosophistae 11.507E). In the Statesman, the Eleatic Visitor’s words, “Just as in the sophist we forced non-being to be” (ἐν τῷ σοφιστῇ, 284b7), have been read as Plato’s reference to his own work by title.72 If these are author references, they “break the frame” of the fiction and give us a real-world register of communication “above” that of the story. At other times, Plato breaks the story’s temporal frame by introducing anachronisms. Plato’s characters can discuss facts, knowledge of which is

69 70 71 72

See Rood et al., 2020, passim. Nails, 2002, 307‒308. Liebert, 2010, 211.214‒215. “It seems certain that the majority of the first titles […] derive from Plato himself. We should adduce his remarkable lapse at Plt. 284b7, ‘just as in the Sophist […]’” (Mansfeld, 1994, 71‒72).

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debarred to them in the temporal frame set by the story.73 As Dorion’s thesis (above) has it about the Euthydemus, “ideology anachronisms” signal literary feuds—here belonging to the fourth century, perceived by informed readers “above” the story register placed decades before. The jibes at Isocrates in the Euthydemus and Phaedrus are further examples. We have no evidence that Isocrates, born in 436, had embarked on a career of speechwriting until after the Peloponnesian War. The dramatic dates of the Euthydemus (ca. 407) and Phaedrus (ca. 418‒416, if it is supposed to have a dramatic date) are too early for him to have become known for speeches.74 As we saw, in the Euthydemus, Sophist, and Phaedo, Plato’s interlocutors associate doctrines of Antisthenes with “those around Protagoras”, “young people and late learners”, and someone whose name Phaedo cannot recall, respectively.75 The reader needs knowledge of persons external to the story to decode these ascriptions. Anachronisms “oblige the reader to acknowledge an authorial presence that self-consciously breathes into a work the air of historical difference”.76 They call attention to the author’s activity in constructing the text and require an audience of cognoscenti to be understood. On Socrates in the Parmenides, Rood et al. comment, the arguments he presents for Parmenides to criticise are the metaphysical theory of Forms, normally associated with Plato himself. The young Socrates, Parmenides suggests, is trying to develop his theory “too early” in his intellectual career (135c), signposting Plato’s deliberate anachronism in voicing his own later ideas through him.77



Real-World References in Fiction

Like critics of Plato since antiquity, Teichmüller was attuned to the formal difference between Plato, the author, and his characters. Teichmüller allowed that “it is a great advantage of the dramatic art form that one can use other personages to set upon one’s opponents most conveniently, without thereby completely committing oneself”.78 For all of that, his two volumes are replete 73 74 75 76 77 78

See Graham, 2007; Rood et al. 2020, 206‒211, who include ancient writers’ reactions to Plato’s anachronisms. On the dramatic dates of Euthd. and Phdr. see Nails, 2002, 314.317‒318. We do not have warrant to attribute οὐκ ἔστιν ἀντιλέγειν to Protagoras; cf. Lee, 2005, 72‒76. Luzzi, 2009, 75. Rood et al., 2020, 209. “dann ist dies ja der grosse Vortheil dramatischer Kunstform, dass man andere Personen brauchen kann, um auf die bequemste Weise seinen Gegnern zuzusetzen, ohne sich selbst dadurch im Ganzen zu verpflichten” (Teichmüller, 1884, 285).

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with analyses of what Teichmüller determined Plato to have “said” in his dialogues about the views and even the social status and writing style of intellectual rivals. Since Teichmüller’s day, theories of fiction have proliferated. As I averred above, Exceptionalist (E) theorists about reference—who deny, for example, that “Napoleon” in War and Peace refers to the historical emperor—tend to reach their denial from a possible worlds-theory of fiction (e.g. Doležel) or a realist theory of fictional entities (e.g. Voltolini).79 Space allows me only to propose countervailing considerations. First, other theorists of different stripes uphold Non-Exceptionalism (NE). They affirm that names originating outside a fiction do not take on “exceptional” reference properties when they are incorporated into the fiction, that e.g. “Napoleon” in War and Peace refers to the real-world emperor, about whom Tolstoy invites us to imagine certain details that may not be fact. Supporting NE are theories about names as rigid designators80 or Speech Act theory81 or various anti-realist theories about fictional entities.82 Second, premises used by various E-theorists are open to attack. For possible-worlds theories of fiction, a difficulty—fatal, in my view—is that a fictional work does not give us a possible world. Fictional worlds are indeterminate and incomplete. We do not know, for instance, Emma Woodhouse’s shoe size or blood group. Typically, such openness is not the case in possible worlds: all propositions that constitute a possible world are either p or not-p.83

“Fictional world” remains merely a metaphor for the system of things we are prompted to imagine, and as such “world” does not supply premises robust enough to support E. Likewise, E arguments made from other realist theories about fictional entities are not cogent. Alberto Voltolini, for example, who takes fictional entities to be composite (a set of properties and a make-believe process type), problematises real-world names’ reference within a fiction because, as with “Parma” in The Charterhouse of Parma, not all that is said about the surrogate counterpart in the fiction is true of the real-world object—for example, that “Parma” is the capital of a principality when during the period of the novel’s setting that 79 80 81 82 83

One possible-worlds theorist who defends real-world reference is Koťátko, 2010. Kripke, 2013, 75. Searle, 1975, 330‒331. E.g. Walton, 1990; Everett, 2013; Friend, 2019. Van Peer, 1996, 1045.

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city was the capital of a duchy. This problem arises because, on realist theories, both real-world Parma and “Parma” in the novel are entities, and if they do not share all properties, they are different entities, so that “Parma” cannot denote Parma. Realists about fictional entities often base their realism on our need to quantify over existents when we speak truths outside the fiction about those objects that originate in the fiction, like Stendahl’s character, Fabrizio, who escapes from “Parma”. The problem evaporates on an anti-realist theory, by which objects that originate in fiction do not exist. On anti-realist theories of fictional entities, Stendahl and the reader merely pretend that the realworld Parma was the capital of a principality and that a make-believe person escaped from it. Anti-realism has the advantage of skirting problems of ontic indeterminacy; in John Grisham’s 2007 novel, Playing for Pizza, set in Parma, we need not worry whether another surrogate Parma—“ParmaG”?—exists, different from surrogate “Parma” in Stendahl. At the risk of pasting modern theory onto Plato and Aristotle, I note that when Socrates tells Adeimantus that Homer “says the things after this just as though he himself is Chryses and attempts […] to make us think that the one speaking is not Homer but the priest, an old man” (Republic 3.393a7‒b2), we seem to have to do with poet and audience make-believe more than with creation of an entity. (I do not think the image of a bed in Republic 10 is fatal to my impression of poet’s speech in Republic 3, because the painted bed is not the abstract object.) The same impression comes from Aristotle’s doctrine that poets represent people acting. Aristotle does not analyse poetry as making new, incorporeal beings. The usual objection to anti-realism is that we cannot assert propositions about invented objects like “Natasha Rostova” in War and Peace, which originate in the fiction, unless we have something over which to quantify; therefore fictional objects must exist. I take the Eleatic Visitor in the Sophist and Statesman to be invented, for he has no name or genealogy. How can we quantify “character” over both the “Visitor” and the “Theaetetus” variables, when the Visitor does not exist and real-world Theaetetus exists? To the controversial problem of fictional objects I suggest only that Andrea Bonomi’s distinction between character and person84 opens a way to have real-world reference in the story and have something to quantify over so that we may assert propositions about a story. We make believe that two persons acting in the story are the Visitor, wholly make-believe, and Theaetetus, about whom we make believe that he says certain things. They are subjects of sentences internal to the story. The two characters qua characters are not persons, only objects of statements 84

Bonomi, 2008, 227.

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about the dialogue, external to the story. As Gérard Genette has pointed out, “characters […] are obviously only pseudo-objects and, like all the objects of fiction, are wholly constituted by the discourse that claims to describe them”.85 For statements about the story, we can grant that a character or a setting as effects of the text exist as abstract objects. We have an object of analysis—a character or a setting—and Theaetetus and Parma, a person and a city about which we are prompted to imagine things. If fiction is a kind of pretending, it does not follow that the content of every sentence is pretend content. Barbara Herrnstein Smith has made the valuable observation that what is pretended is the act of reporting, not necessarily the content of the report: novels such as War and Peace allude to quite real persons and events, a consideration that has created theoretical problems for many literary theorists. The essential fictiveness of novels, however, as of all literary artworks, is not to be discovered in the unreality of the characters, objects, and events alluded to, but in the unreality of the alludings themselves. In other words, in a novel or tale, it is the act of reporting events, the act of describing persons and referring to places, that is fictive. The novel represents the verbal action of a man reporting, describing, and referring.86

John Searle, who wrote that speech acts in fiction are pretend, still allows realworld reference: “In the case of realistic or naturalistic fiction, the author will refer to real places and events intermingling these references with the fictional references, thus making it possible to treat the fictional story as an extension of our existing knowledge”.87 In a similar vein are Benjamin Hrushovski’s “doubledecker” model of reference frames, Kendall Walton’s real-world references used in make-believe, and Mark Richard’s and Anthony Everett’s “piggybacking”, the principle by which an author incorporates real-world information into the pretence.88 It remains the case that different works can invite us to imagine, believe, doubt, deny (and so on) the same referential content. This can only be so if we accept a unified account of proper names. Given the clear advantages of a unified account, we should take it as the default position. The burden of proof lies with the Exceptionalist who treats the fiction and nonfiction cases differently.89 85 86 87 88

Genette, 1988, 135. Smith, 1971, 272. Searle, 1975, 330‒331. Hrushovski, 1984; Walton, 1990, esp. 70‒75.110‒113; Richard, 2000, 212‒214; Everett, 2013, 29‒71. 89 Friend 2019, 192.

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I do not know that one theory of fictional discourse and reference in fiction will win the day. I submit that NE about terms in a fiction is the superior theoretical assumption because it enables us better to account for the intentions and expectations of authors and audiences. That certainly is true for the fourth century. We do not derive NE by deduction from premises known to be true; our reasoning is abductive. “Abduction consists in this process: The surprising fact, C, is observed; But if A were true, C would be obvious and natural. Therefore it is right to suspect that A is true”.90 Ancient practice, and modern genres like historical or didactic fiction or the roman à clef (e.g. Joe Klein’s Primary Colors, where “Jack Stanton” is correlative to Bill Clinton), presume real-world reference under various construals of reference.91 On E, Isocrates’ intentions for his Antidosis could not in principle be realised, and it would be hard to see how projects like Teichmüller’s or Debra Nails’ The People of Plato could be undertaken. Authors and audiences over time have presumed the equivalent of NE on a vast scale. Since producing and consuming fictions is a social practice, praxis sets what fiction means to a given age. It is questionable whether a theory like E, arising in a different hermeneutical context, should control for the fourth century. I hope to have contributed to our understanding of the “fictions” produced by Plato and other fourth-century exponents of one or another brand of “philosophy”. If we allow that in their dialogues and fictitious speeches they referred to each other and to each other’s views, we allow literary feuds into their fictions—not mere pretend feuds with pretend intellectuals. I have argued that we have good reason to make these allowances. They do not solve the problem, “does Plato say anything in his dialogues?”, but these allowances, if they are plausible, make a “Yes” conclusion more plausible. It is hard to see how a literary feud can contain no assertions. New York

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“L’abduzione consiste in questo processo: Viene osservato il fatto sorprendente C: Ma se A fosse vero, C sarebbe ovvio e naturale. Perciò c’è ragione di sospettare che A sia vero” (Sacchetti, 2012, 404). 91 For the fascinating dispute between Henryk Sienkiewicz and critics over whether Quo Vadis contained historical “errors”, see Ziółkowski, 2020.

Chapter 4

Materials and Method Debra Nails This chapter constitutes an effort to accommodate the possible motives of Plato of Collytos—his inspirations, ambitions, disappointments—to the material conditions of writing and “publishing” in the fourth century BCE when he was active in Athens and Syracuse, writing the dialogues and other works that would be transformed into what is now considered the Corpus Platonicum. Material conditions have often been neglected in Platonic scholarship, and I hope to show why that neglect is unfortunate.1 It is fair to ask why we should now be concerned with whether Plato used a stylus on a waxed tablet, or ink on a sheet of papyrus, or dictated to a scribe, or delivered preliminary versions of his dialogues orally, or revised them from time to time, or welcomed the assistance of an editor as he grew older, or whether some of his dialogues were co-authored, or edited by others in his lifetime or afterwards. One very good reason to learn what we can about such matters, I would reply, is that most twenty-first century Platonists have confidence that the Platonic corpus as we have inherited it is so close to what Plato intended that whatever textual difficulties we now encounter are quite unlikely to change any part of the Platonic bedrock. I suspect that the confidence is unwarranted, so I take a more modest starting point: the text of Plato that philosophers have been engaging since the fourth century is a replica of a copy of Plato’s own words; and words are never more than images of thoughts. Whether the words Plato actually wrote or spoke represented his own views, as opposed to views he thought ought to be aired, has been rightly controversial from the beginning. As Malcolm Schofield warns, “even when Plato’s Socrates has ideas of his own to propound, they are expressly put forward for others to consider—for acceptance, qualification, or rejection—not as teaching imparted to those in need of instruction by someone secure in the knowledge of truth”.2

1 I am indebted to Holger Thesleff, who first turned my attention to material conditions with a 1982 footnote about the absence of eyeglasses and hearing aids in the ancient world. 2 Schofield, 2008, 37.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_005

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Why Did Plato Write, and Why Did He Write Dialogues?

Socrates of Alopece wrote nothing, while Plato was a prolific writer. That much is uncontroversial. We may surmise that Plato admired Socrates’ oral methods because he so often portrays Socrates in oral conversation. Plato also appreciated the snares of writing, as the famous snippet from the Phaedrus illustrates: Thamus tells Theuth that writing will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it, through lack of practice at using their memory, as through reliance on writing they are reminded from outside by alien marks, not from inside, themselves by themselves: you have discovered an elixir not of memory but of reminding (Phaedrus 275a2–6, tr. Rowe).

Thus we stand in need of a rationale for Plato’s long writing career resulting eventually in what we regard as the Platonic corpus.3 Plato began to write within the decade after Socrates’ execution: by 384 he had already attained a reputation sufficient to attract an invitation from Dionysius I of Syracuse, who regularly surrounded himself with noted Athenian intellectuals at his court.4 Unless one is willing to reject the authenticity of the Phaedrus, Plato was motivated to write dialogues despite clearly articulated misgivings about the deleterious effects of the written word. In this introductory section, I provide a few familiar reminders of the value of philosophising in writing. Plato had ample time, nearly twenty years by my reckoning, to witness Socrates’ oral philosophising in Athens, a mission Socrates regarded as divinely sanctioned (Apology 29d3–4, 33c4–7). The socialization of young Athenian males was monitored closely by their male relatives, so it is no stretch to 3 As with all things Platonic, a large number of interpretations have been defended. Diog. Laert. (3.38) repeats a story that the Phdr. was Plato’s first dialogue (see Tomin, 1997, who agrees, citing extensive references pro and con), suggesting that whether to write at all was a fundamental question for Plato. Without minimizing the importance of the question, we ought not to take all writing to be shameful in view of Socrates’ statement that what is shameful is to speak or write badly (Phdr. 258d4–5). 4 I have argued in some detail (Nails, 2002, 243–250), referring to the contemporaneous and later ancient sources, that Plato was born in 324/323 and that Anniceris of Cyrene probably purchased a garden (κῆπος) for him in the grove of the hero Hekademos outside the walls of urban Athens in 383, following his first trip to Sicily. The grove, much like a public park with an area for exercise (γυμνάσιον) and another for taking walks (περίπατος), had been frequented by Athenian intellectuals for some decades already, making it an appropriate place for Plato to engage in the activities that came to be associated with “the Academy” (Dillon, 2003, 2).

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suppose that Plato’s older brothers had him in tow when they were themselves engaging with Socrates. Both brothers appear in the Republic and Parmenides (126a); Glaucon appears in the Symposium frame, and with Socrates in Xenophon’s Memorabilia  3.6 as well; Adeimantus is present in the Apology (34a1–2), called on by Socrates to testify that Adeimantus’ younger brothers had not been harmed by associating with the prisoner in the dock. Plato gives us additional reasons to think he would have been acquainted with Socrates from his youth: the Lysis depicts Socrates in conversation with younger boys, some of whom would have been agemates of Plato and Glaucon;5 in the Laches, the youngsters present with their fathers already know Socrates (181a3); and other Platonic dialogues are set in the palaestras, schools, and public places that Socrates frequented. Assuming that Plato’s dialogues are roughly accurate in their depiction of Socratic methods, several aspects of his oral conduct of philosophy can be gleaned from them. Socrates conversed with whoever wanted to join him and reply to his questions (Apology 23c2–6), normally directed to one person at a time.6 Socrates’ questions kept his dialectical partners actively involved, meeting their individual confusions or progress by adjusting what he said. He could pause to draw a diagram if need be, or take a vivid example from daily life familiar to his interlocutors—whatever fit their needs and interests. Yet voluntary participation was not universal, which at least partially explains how so appealing a questioner as Socrates could inspire the confusion and fury of many Athenians. Sometimes Socrates cajoled or shamed interlocutors into continuing a discussion past their desire to engage (Callicles, Gorgias 501c7–8; Protagoras, Protagoras 333b3–4; and Thrasymachus, Republic 1.350c12–d3), but these are exceptions, and one might wonder whether the particular audience in attendance, as Plato conceived it, affected how the conversation proceeded in those cases. While the ultimate goal of an inquiry might be the exploration of some virtue or other, the immediate object of discussion was always someone’s beliefs and, when one’s own beliefs are being challenged, one’s attention is galvanised—an aid to learning. A defining trait of Socrates’ questioning method is that the answers provided by his respondents actually shape 5 Lysis himself, as we now know from his grave marker (Stroud, 1984), lived to be a grandfather, enabling us to set his date of birth and that of his friend Menexenus in or before 422 (Nails, 2002, 195–197). 6 See also Xenophon, Mem. 1.1.10.1. There have been many, many works devoted to discrete aspects of the Socratic method, labelling and assessing them. For my introductory purpose here of distinguishing Socrates’ from Plato’s ways of philosophising, “question-and-answer” is adequate. I offer a more detailed description and analysis, with examples, in Nails, 1995, 195–235.

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the discussions themselves; he folds their responses back into the mix before determining his next dialectical move. Not only are Socrates’ questions personalised, their effects are personal too: a respondent realises with a pang that a cherished belief cannot be true, or puffs up with pride after labouring to reach a conclusion for which an account can now be provided. Exerting one’s intellect toward a difficult goal—as opposed to memorizing someone else’s views, with Meno and Gorgias exhibiting the pitfalls of that—generates a private sense of satisfaction that merely reading about such experiences cannot touch. The Socratic method succeeds when a respondent develops an inner desire to seek the truth and achieve excellence, to make the examined life permanent, leaving behind any sophistic desire to defeat an opponent or entertain onlookers. What better guide than Socrates, adaptable to a variety of personalities, bringing out in each individual the wind-eggs or the truths that are ready to be born. A conspicuous feature of Socrates’ method is its very tentativeness. Aporia famously characterises the ends of several dialogues, but an option available to interlocutors when aporia occurs is to return to the beginnings: that is, to the assumptions that were introduced with their assent when that particular discussion started. Assumptions, premises, are not insulated from criticism in Socratic conversation. Moreover, the same subjects can be raised another time, beginning with suppositions incompatible with those of previous discussions. This tentativeness is, in a crucial sense, an inevitable result of the oral method, of the contingencies and accidents of the day that determine which issues are likely to arise and how far they can be pursued. But the tentativeness, which I have called double open-endedness, is a virtue of the oral method that Plato preserves in his retelling of Socratic conversations.7 The contingencies were variables largely out of Socrates’ control, however superior his dialectical skills. They were limitations on what could be accomplished philosophically, and I enumerate them because the failures of Socrates’ method led to misunderstandings, blame, and the execution of Socrates. Perhaps they also led to Plato’s using written dialogues as a corrective. (i) Some people, by the time they encountered Socrates, had been seduced by pleasure or pain to the extent that what he had to offer was unattractive to them; yet such people could distract others or kibitz from the side-lines, merely appearing to be within Socrates’ circle. (ii) Conversations usually had to be rather short, so Socrates could not introduce a systematic body of information 7 Nails, 1995, 218–231. Socrates often advises respondents to start over or turn around (μεταστρέφω, Cra. 428d6), to look both forward and backward (ὀπίσσω, Cra. 428d7–8), and—scores of times—to go back (πάλιν, e.g. Chrm. 160d5.163d7.167a9).

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that those present could address critically. (iii) There was no common background to guarantee the level of any particular philosophical discussion. (iv) A group of potential respondents was unlikely to be the same from day to day, or year to year, so advanced education, building on a shared critical understanding of others’ positions, was impossible with oral methods alone. (v) There was little opportunity, given the vagaries of a day, to develop and share the results of one’s positive philosophical efforts. Socrates’ exclusive commitment to oral philosophising led to the surprising result that he was claimed as the founder of, or taken up as the inspiration behind, later philosophical movements at odds with one another. I cannot claim that the specific failures of the Socratic method that I have just named, and the reasons for those failures, are what motivated Plato to philosophise in writing and to provide, through the Academy, a place where likeminded people could meet regularly to discuss and progress on mathematical and philosophical subjects. But, as a matter of fact, Plato’s dialogues do systematically compensate for most of the deficiencies of the Socratic oral method without sacrificing what is most valuable in the oral conduct of philosophy: philosophising orally with thoughtful others could still take place in the grove of the Academy. Plato’s dialogues were able to provide the shared background required to raise the level of discussions; complex philosophical systems, including those of other philosophers,8 could be presented for analysis; and positive contributions to knowledge could be sustained over time.9 Insofar as the dialogues preserved tentativeness about doctrine, emphasis could shift to method. Moreover, dialogue was a genre that could preserve double openendedness because it allowed full defences of competing positions, reducing the danger that others would accept some view simply because it could be found articulated in writing by Plato. Reducing—I stress—but not eliminating that danger: much of the attention on the Platonic corpus reveals the desire to take to heart what Plato really thought, a desire unworthy of philosophers. There were other excellent reasons for Plato to write. His dialogues show his disapproval of the methods of sophists and rhetoricians precisely because they failed Athenian youths, substituting simulacra for knowledge and truth. 8 And not just philosophers’ systems. See Fleischer, in this volume, for thoughts on how Plato came to be accused of plagiarism in relation to the Ti.-Criti. and how he may have responded. 9 There were other philosophical genres available to Plato, used by his predecessors and contemporaries. It is interesting that some of Plato’s dialogues drew from comedies (pace Diog. Laert. 3.5–6), giving rise to the story that he once intended to be a playwright. Havelock, 1983, 158–162 discusses specific scenes from the dialogues that he traces to Cratinus’ Laws and to Eupolis’ Demes and his Flatterers, the latter set in the house of Callias where Protagoras and other sophists are gathered.

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Given that Athens was, in the 380s, awash in written works,10 for Plato not to have written would have meant obscurity when we have abundant reason to suppose—judging, again, by the content of his dialogues—that he desired to influence Athens and her youth for the better. There was competition for that role.11 In about 390, Isocrates had railed against not only sophists but others who had set themselves up to teach political and forensic speech-writing not many years before Plato returned from his first trip to Sicily. Isocrates saw himself at that time as teaching “philosophy”: If all those who undertook to teach were willing to speak the truth and not make greater promises than they plan to fulfil, they would not have such a bad reputation among the general public. But as it is now, those who dare to make boasts with too little caution have made it appear that those who choose to take it easy are better advised than those who apply themselves to philosophy. (Against the Sophists 1.1–6, tr. Mirhady)12

Decades later, in the Antidosis, Isocrates boasted that the publication of Against the Sophists had burnished his reputation and attracted many students to him. While I resist the teacher-student model for Plato as no better than the master-disciple model, Plato knew the benefit of philosophising with others, and the publication of his dialogues was a way to announce that philosophical and mathematical activity was going on in the Academy that could attract Athenians and others outside Attica.

Are the Complete Works the Corpus?

My picture of a welcoming and fluid Academy is not congenial to all. Holger Thesleff, for example, while acknowledging that “Plato’s Academy had ambitions to influence public opinion with methods different from Isocrates’ rhetoric”, takes exception to the idea that Plato would write for a general public, or circulate his dialogues, widely: “after, but only after, the reading and perhaps acting of Socratic dialogues had become a practice in the Academy, were such 10

This included Socratic works by at least Antisthenes. I consider the availability of written works in the fifth and fourth centuries below. 11 See David Murphy’s chapter in this volume for valuable insights into contemporaneous schools of Athens. 12 Εἰ πάντες ἤθελον οἱ παιδεύειν ἐπιχειροῦντες ἀληθῆ λέγειν καὶ μὴ μείζους ποιεῖσθαι τὰς ὑποσχέσεις ὧν ἔμελλον ἐπιτελεῖν, οὐκ ἂν κακῶς ἤκουον ὑπὸ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν· νῦν δ’οἱ τολμῶντες λίαν ἀπερισκέπτως ἀλαζονεύεσθαι πεποιήκασιν ὥστε δοκεῖν ἄμεινον βουλεύεσθαι τοὺς ῥᾳθυμεῖν αἱρουμένους τῶν περὶ τὴν φιλοσοφίαν διατριβόντων. (13.1, eds. Mathieu / Brémond).

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texts circulated outside the Academy too”.13 The claim makes an assumption about Plato’s willingness to share the written word with which I disagree. I take a wide view of his audience and will argue below that the reasons Plato has been considered a gatekeeper fall away on closer inspection. In making that argument, however, I cannot avoid the more gnarled question of what, exactly, was delivered to Plato’s audience. Thesleff’s wise and often quoted statement that “the Corpus is the result of an accretion of spurious texts around an authentic core” nevertheless limits the accretion by date.14 He argues that revision of the dialogues—except for “later polishing or normalising of the language”—was unlikely after Plato’s death, that the Academy housed a “normative standard collection, no alterations permitted”.15 Reaching a similar conclusion, J.A. Philip reviews the literature adjudicating evidence of third-century interventions and infers that the “corpus” was formed by the end of the fourth century BCE, with later contributions limited to arrangement and order.16 Those two very early dates, whether 340s or 300, are much too early, I argue, to capture the Plato we read. Thesleff has two pivotal premises for his “340s” view, and he provides an abundance of subordinate considerations for each, but I nevertheless regard both premises as suspect. The first is that Plato had a “semi-divine status” that would have inhibited Academy associates from changing the text of the “Master”; they “were not so interested in the doctrines of the dialogues except for the Timaeus”.17 Such a view is almost impossible to reconcile with any philosophical success Plato may have had with his companions in the Academy. In Charmides, Meno, and Gorgias, Plato had shown the dangers of regarding someone else’s “teachings” as inviolable, and he made it exceedingly difficult in his dialogues to determine what the particulars of his own views were. It borders on cliché to repeat that Plato’s decision to write dialogues, and his non-appearance in them, militate against the view that he regarded himself as Master. Even if the philosophically minded of the academics left the editing of the would-be corpus to others who had a knack for the tedious work,18 it is likely 13 14 15 16 17 18

Thesleff, 1982, 63 = Thesleff, 2009, 209. Thesleff, 1982, 89 = Thesleff, 2009, 237. Thesleff, 1982, 87 = Thesleff, 2009, 235. Thesleff’s position on the “date of the collecting of the main body of the Corpus” is very close to the view of Tarán, 1975, 131, who cites the publication of Criti. and the unfinished Lg. as evidence that Plato’s corpus was fixed. Philip, 1970 cites the supporting arguments of Erbse, 1961 who provides a survey and extensive bibliography on the topic prior to Philip’s research. Thesleff, 1982, 87 = Thesleff, 2009, 235. This is perhaps the sort of position Tarrant, 2020, 208–216 has in mind.

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that any changes to the text by Plato’s associates after his death were changes in the service of “correcting” or “clarifying” what some scribe or copyist was believed to have written in error, or choosing between, say, two frames for the same dialogue. This is especially so if Thesleff is right that some dialogues in the contemporary corpus are “semi-authentic”, involving Plato’s associates during his lifetime: “Revisions to the texts and interpolations may have been carried out by pupils with the consent or later approval of Plato; or a dialogue may have been composed by somebody else from a draft or oral suggestions made by Plato; or a text begun by somebody else may have been finished by Plato (or by somebody else who knew his intentions)”.19 The description is rather more top-down than I would attribute to Plato, but the basic supposition of collaboration is attractive for explaining how certain dubia and spuria made their way into the corpus. Another source of variety emerges from academics over many years who could well have made or paid for copies of dialogues based on different exemplars, and retained their own versions, with results that mirror the problems later scholars address when editing a text from competing manuscripts. Noting that a different frame for the Theaetetus is mentioned in the anonymous in Theaetetus (3.28) which we have “by mere chance in a papyrus”, Thesleff proposes, “it is quite possible that there existed parallel versions to parts of other dialogues of the Corpus which the Academics later managed to get rid of”.20 If Dionysius of Halicarnassus (de Compositione Verborum 208, Reiske), accurately reported that Plato, nearing the end of his life, “combed and curled in every direction” the first line of the Republic; and if Diogenes Laertius’ 19

20

Thesleff, 1982, 94–95 = Thesleff, 2009, 242. Irwin, 2008, 63–64, in his discussion of the Platonic corpus, takes the traditional position that each work of Plato—whether a dialogue, speech, letter, or poem—is either genuine or spurious. Were it so simple! Irwin’s overview, “The Platonic Corpus”, concedes the evidence for “revisions or double versions of parts of different dialogues”, but he denies that Plato composed what would now be called a “second edition” of any dialogue (Irwin, 2008, 75–76). He allows revision for the Clit. in relation to the R.; the Min. in relation to the Lg., citing Morrow, 1960; the prologue of the Tht., citing the anonymous in Tht. 3.28–37; Cra. at 437d10, citing Sedley, Cratylus, 2003, 7–10; and internal revisions for the long dialogues R. and Lg. Evidence for revision was pursued vigorously in the nineteenth century by scores of scholars. Thesleff, 1982, 83–87 = Thesleff, 2009, 230–235 provides twenty-seven mostly twentieth-century theories of revision. His own best cases are for revision of R. (Thesleff, 1982, 102–110 = Thesleff, 2009, 250–259; Thesleff, 1989, 11–14; and Thesleff, 1997 = Thesleff, 2009, 519–539), on which Hirmer, 1897 had raised the curtain, and to which Else, 1972 also contributed; and for Grg. (Thesleff, 1982, 86–87.162–163 = Thesleff, 2009, 234–235.309–310; Thesleff, 2003 = Thesleff, 2009, 551–556), independently supported by Tarrant, 1982—but overlooked in Irwin’s sweep. Alieva, in this volume, provides an overview of textual revision in antiquity, including recent contributions to the topic. Thesleff, 1982, 85.183 = Thesleff, 2009, 23.329.

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statement that the Laws—”in the wax” at Plato’s death—was transcribed by Philip of Opus (3.37); then we have further evidence that Plato may have left multiple versions of dialogues, alternative sections of dialogues, and notes with insertions and deletions that had to be compared critically before anything remotely like an authoritative edition could be dependably assembled, copied in a fair hand by a scribe, and placed for consultation in the Academy. Semi-authenticity would have complicated the posthumous task beyond what should be regarded as trustworthy. Thesleff’s second premise for declaring the corpus complete very soon after Plato’s death is that “Plato never did (after the Apology) write for an anonymous general public,21 but for his friends and their friends” who were a “sophisticated audience with well-informed persons present to appreciate and perhaps comment on hints and allusions”.22 On this view, a dedicated group of former companions would facilitate the establishment of the corpus from scrolls already in their possession; but Thesleff concedes an important exception in his most sustained chronological study: Apology, Utopia (i.e. the proto-Republic), and Republic 1, Plato’s earliest works, did in fact reach a much wider audience, having been published prior to 390, the date of Plato’s first voyage to Sicily.23 Plato’s reputation as an Athenian intellectual, the reputation that prompted an invitation from Dionysius I in the years before there was an Academy of Plato, rested on those three. The Utopia24 had been published “unintentionally”, Thesleff argues, “to an audience who found it sufficiently shocking to memorise, have it put down in writing, and copied”.25 Aristophanes lampoons the Utopia with 21 22 23

24

25

“Apology” in this quotation is shorthand for all three works discussed below. Thesleff, 1999, 5.114 = Thesleff, 2009, 390.495. Thesleff, 1982. Earlier, Thesleff, 1967, 20 = Thesleff, 2009, 17 had placed the date of Plato’s first voyage to Sicily in “about 386”; but ancient dates are rarely as precise as we might wish. Nevertheless, it is virtually certain that early versions of the Mx. and Grg. had also been circulated early on (Thesleff, 1982, 237 = Thesleff, 2009, 381). There are two interesting possibilities here: there is the “two-scroll” version that Aulus Gellius mentions in Noctes Atticae (14.3.3) as having caused Xenophon, in his Cyropaedia, to criticise Plato’s political ideas (see Thesleff, 1997 = Thesleff, 2009, 519–539); but some version of the anonymous six-book Antiatticista (Tarrant, Origins, 2012) may be implicated. Thesleff, 2002, 294 = Thesleff, 2009, 546. If it could be memorised, Plato had already committed the Utopia to writing. Despite feats of memory reported for Plato’s time (his younger half-brother Antiphon memorised the bulk of the Prm.; the polymath Hippias could recall fifty names at one hearing, Hp. Ma. 285e7–8; and Niceratus memorised both the Iliad and the Odyssey, Xen. Smp. 3.5–6), no one, hearing the Utopia read aloud once, could have memorised it, so “having it put down in writing” can only mean copying and circulating it without Plato’s consent. The Utopia was no poem lending itself to memorization; it was roughly what we know of R. 2–5 (Thesleff, 1982, 84 = Thesleff, 2009, 231)

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his biting Ecclesiazusae, produced in 391 or 390, further motivating Plato to eschew widespread publication.26 Thus Thesleff is adamant that “the Academy was not an open institution”27 even when he conjectures28 that the widespread circulation of Plato’s dialogues “may have begun in Plato’s lifetime”: All of Plato’s dialogues, the narrated as well as the dramatic ones, include passages or sections which are simply not comprehensible without an apparatus of background knowledge of Socratic/Platonic philosophy. Or at least, such passages require the presence of somebody who is prepared to offer additional explication. […] This very obviously implies a situation of oral communication within a limited, chosen audience.29

Thesleff hypothesises, based in part on the “combing and curling” remark, that Plato, even in old age, was putting the finishing touches on the full version of “the Republic as we have it: a monument of a theory of man and society at their Best, a theory never tested nor really testable, and a monument never meant to be ‘published’ outside the Academy”.30 That is, in Thesleff’s view, Plato remained opposed to most external circulation of his works. For compiling the definitive Platonic corpus, Thesleff’s insistence on a closed community of scholars—if it were so—would be especially beneficial. It would mean there would be fewer exemplars to compare upon Plato’s death, less controversy to settle; and fewer dialogues would have escaped into the hands of persons unable to appreciate their subtleties and likely to botch copying them. But the evidence points elsewhere. Plato’s Academy was publicly accessible, without walls, and attracted early members who can be identified by their home cities outside Attica—a very strong reason to suppose that Plato had supported the copying and distribution of his dialogues. Aristotle, “the reader” could hardly be supposed to have entered the Academy on its reputation alone.

26

27 28 29 30

occupying two papyrus rolls. Memory feats associated with the oral tradition are almost always of poems or lists, though in classical times orators memorised logographers’ speeches. On memorization more generally, see Harris, 1989, 30–33; Thomas, 1989, 20–21; Thomas, 1992, 67.91–93. I find it more probable that Plato wrote and distributed other dialogues between 399 and his first trip to Sicily, not least because I calculate a date of 384 for the voyage, giving Plato about six more years to gain his reputation in the West. (My alternative dates for Plato’s life are given in Nails, 2002, 243–250). More important reasons to think that Plato continued to circulate his dialogues widely are discussed below. Thesleff, 2002, 293 = Thesleff, 2009, 544–545. Thesleff, 2002, 298 = Thesleff, 2009, 550. Thesleff, 2002, 291 = Thesleff, 2009, 543. Thesleff, 1997, 174 = Thesleff, 2009, 539.

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But there is another of Thesleff’s observations, supporting his view that the Academy was a closed community, that should be considered, namely, that, after his return from Sicily, Plato made an intentional decision to write dramatic rather than reported dialogues because the latter are less accessible to outsiders.31 The deliberate deletion of narrative elements by Eucleides at Theaetetus 143b8–c6 marks the boundary in the corpus.32 With reported dialogues (including some with dramatic frames), characters, locations, and actions could be understood easily by the wider public, an audience that did not, if it ever had, interested him, given his unhappy experience with the public reaction to his Utopia. Dramatic dialogues, on the other hand, would have been read, or heard, or performed privately among friends;33 in that case, changes of speaker—especially in dramatic dialogues with more than two speakers—would place excessive demands on the reader or performer. Thesleff consolidates his case in “Plato and His Public”,34 remarking that actors or stage managers, alert to vocatives, could well manage dialogue in written scripts. And it could also work in the Academy when performing Socratic dialogues, at least when there were only two speakers, But when several persons are involved in a lively conversation, as for instance in the Laches, it is sometimes difficult to see, without the sigla in the margin, who is saying what, unless you have first studied the text closely—or unless you happen to be the author. Indeed, here is one indication that the dramatic dialogues were originally read by the author himself and obviously, then, not to a general, open audience.35

It was common in the twentieth century to point out that there was no punctuation in the papyri of Plato’s time to signal changes of speakers, just as there were no spaces between words, and no accents, breathing marks, or lowercase letters. A paragraphus, however, marked the end of each sentence in Athenian texts of Attic prose (except in the oldest examples, such as Timotheos  P. 9875). Isocrates (Antidosis 59) tells his clerk to read from the “the mark in the 31

32 33 34 35

The distinction between reported and dramatic dialogues, and the consequences of the distinction, are discussed repeatedly and also passim (Thesleff, 1967, 45–50 = Thesleff, 2009, 36–41; Thesleff, 1982, 53–67.162–180 = Thesleff, 2009, 199–213.309–326; Thesleff, 2002, 292 = Thesleff, 2009, 544). Thesleff also cites R.3.392d–394d on διήγησις versus μίμησις (1967, 45 = 2009, 37). Ryle, 1966, 32–44 and Crombie, 1969, 363–364 support the notion of performance, and Ryle speculates that Plato’s dialogues were performed at public festivals at Athens. Thesleff, 2002, 293 = Thesleff, 2009, 545; Thesleff, 1982, 64 = Thesleff, 2009, 210 refers to support for his view from Andrieu, 1954, 209–229.283.207–208 and Turner, 1971, 15. Thesleff, 2002, 293 = Thesleff, 2009, 545.

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margin” (ἀρξάμενος ἀπὸ τῆς παραγραφῆ).36 Aristotle advises that the end of a period should be marked “not by the writer nor by the paragraph, but by the rhythm of the clausula” (Rhetoric 1409a20). Turner regarded it as likely that a paragraphus was used together with a dicolon (:) to mark changes of speaker in dramatic texts but, in the first half of the twentieth century, the evidence was slight: P.Hibeh 6, a fragment from new comedy, dated 300–280, is the only example that could be cited at the time.37 I shall return to Thesleff’s view of the difficulty of performing or reading a dramatic dialogue presently. Thesleff concludes with a pessimistic view of Platonic publication: The misunderstanding and misinterpretation of Plato began when the dialogues came into the hands of people who lacked the direct or indirect contact with their author, who did not understand the context, and who did not know how to deal with the texts: that is, when the dialogues were published and put into general circulation (a process that may have begun in Plato’s lifetime). The long story of mistakes about Plato will certainly never be finished.38

While I do not share the pessimism, and regard controversy as a precondition for philosophical progress, my aim is to underline how messy the “publishing” situation was in the fourth century, and how that chaos worked against the orderly compilation of an authoritative Platonic corpus. Philip likewise argues that the Platonic corpus was fixed by the end of the fourth century, 300 for short.39 He discredits the notion attributed to van Groningen40—and even more restrictive than Thesleff’s—that the Academy was an essentially closed community (congregation fermée) that would have protected initiates by disallowing the copying and distribution of Plato’s dialogues to outsiders; yet Philip insists against Wilamowitz that “copies were systematically multiplied”.41 He notes sensibly, The dialogues were in a sense “published” as soon as Plato chose to read them or to have them read, as the Theaetetus (143b–c) was read. They were given the status of “edition” as soon as he entrusted a finished manuscript to friends or colleagues to whom it was permitted to copy it or have it copied, in whole or part.

36 37 38 39

Turner, 1952, 7. Grenfell / Hunt (eds.), 1906, 29–35. Thesleff, 2002, 298 = Thesleff, 2009, 550. Philip, 1970, 305. He disagrees with Thesleff’s assessment of the level of philosophy required to benefit from reading Plato’s dialogues; he says of the Socratic dialogues that they “are written not for adepts but as protreptic to philosophy” (Philip, 1970, 305 n. 13). 40 Van Groningen, 1963, 9. 41 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, 1919, 286; Philip, 1970, 305.

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Whereas Thesleff holds that Plato was never, after 390, writing for indiscriminate publication, Philip promotes the more common position, with which I have already expressed sympathy, that the dialogues were “written to enlist students for the study of philosophy”.42 Yet Philip reasons that widespread reproduction of the dialogues was “improbable for the fourth century”. Apparently, then, his view is that the material conditions for writing, copying, and distributing in the fourth century were inadequate for multiple copies to be made and broadcast,43 a topic for a later section. If Plato’s Academy was to become a respectable destination for youths seeking to learn more about mathematics, astronomy, botany,44 and philosophy, one that enabled Plato to welcome likeminded friends, and informally to exclude those whom he discovered to be incapable of, or insincere about, the rigorous study of philosophy, its reputation had to be established through the publication of written works.45 I suspect that the Academy was not like a school or university but was more like what Schofield describes: “Ancient sources sometimes speak of ‘companions’ (e.g. Plutarch, Adversus Coloten 1126c). Perhaps we should think of a more or less loosely defined society of friends (recalling the Pythagorean slogan, ‘friends share what they have’), with younger adherents learning from the conversation of their seniors”.46 If dramatic dialogues were too obscure for outsiders to follow, they could well be counterproductive.

Interlude: The Flinders Petrie Platonic Papyri

Two very unusual and early papyri that were penned in an elegant book-hand some time before they were recycled in the first half of the third century, put us within fifty to a hundred years of Plato’s death. The story of their discovery is fascinating. 42 43 44

45 46

Philip, 1970, 307. Thesleff, 2002, 297 = Thesleff 2009, 549 jokes that Plato was in favour of “narrowcasting” his dialogues. The comic playwright Epicrates leaves to us a 37-line fragment in which Academy students (led by Plato, Speusippus, and Menedemus), use the method of diairesis to determine the genus of a pumpkin (frr. 9–10 in: Kassel / Austin (eds.), 1983, 160–163). Dillon, 2003, 7–8 translates the comical passage. The Academy, which had no walls in Plato’s time, provided grist for the mills of other comic poets as well: Ephippus and Antiphanes. These facts make it all the less likely that the Academy could be described as “closed”. There are ancient accounts of the dialogues’ success at such an aim. For example, one of Aristotle’s dialogues (fr. 64 Rose) cites the Grg. for attracting a Corinthian farmer, and Themistius (Or. 23.295c–d) tells of the R. effect on Axiothea of Arcadia. Schofield, 2008, 50.

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Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) was a distinguished Egyptologist, renowned for applying his strict scientific method to archaeology. The relevant part of his story is told by his colleague, the Reverend J.P. Mahaffy.47 In 1889, with years of excavations and books behind him, Petrie led an expedition to a unique necropolis in the Gurôb desert where coffins referred to as “cartons” or “cases” were made of papyrus that had been torn to small pieces to wrap the most minute contours of each corpse, painted with religious symbols, and glued in thick layers until the finished whole resembled the smooth, painted wooden coffins of Hawara. Petrie realised that many of the papyri were cast-off documents and began an arduous effort to separate and clean them. Says Mahaffy, “I can speak of these matters from personal experience, for Mr. Petrie left in my hands a large number of unseparated fragments of these mummy cases, and I know how hopeless it is in most cases to save anything from the wreck”.48 The antagonists were white chalk used as a base for colouring that washed away the ink, the strong glue binding pieces together, the worms that fed on the glue, and water that dissolved papyri into “dark-brown juice” producing stains that made the writing illegible. Crediting Petrie’s luck as well as his meticulous care, Mahaffy continues the narrative, a large number of texts were rescued from oblivion and brought home by him to England, where, with the help of Mr. Sayce and myself they were sorted, and the process of deciphering them was begun. Seldom has it fallen to the lot of modern scholars to spend such days as we spent together at Oxford in the Long Vacation of 1890: poring all day, while the sun shone, over these faint and fragmentary records; discussing in the evening the stray lights we had found and their possible significance. Gradually pieces of a Platonic dialogue emerged, which presently we determined to be the Phaedo.

The excitement was all the greater because interleaved with the dialogue were “many legal or official documents with dates, which arrested and surprised us.” Previous work had yielded papyri from the late Ptolemies or Roman emperors, but these were from “Ptolemy the son of Ptolemy Soter, and Ptolemy the son of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, brother gods—in other words, the second and third kings in the series […] As there were no dates to be found later than the third Ptolemy, it followed with moral certainty that the classical texts mixed up with the documents could not be younger than 220 BCE”. It was not only the provable early date of the Phaedo papyrus that thrilled the little band of detectives, it was that both it and a fragment of Euripides’ 47 48

I base the interlude on Mahaffy, 1891, but the Petrie-Mahaffy story is told from a different angle, bringing the account forward, by Cuvigny, 2011. Mahaffy, 1891, 9–11.

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Antiope found with it “pointed to an older generation. Neither of them is in any sense cursive; they show forms hardly changed from the lapidary style” so “they could hardly be younger than 250  BCE”.49 Mahaffy comments further, “So antique is their appearance, that Mr. Sayce and I were at one time inclined to attribute them to an Attic scribe,50 whose volume was imported into the Fayyum by some old soldier of literary tastes, who came from Hellas”.51 Moreover, the Phaedo fragment bears no tell-tale sign of Alexandrian editing for “good prose” style, for example, completely disregarding the rule of hiatusavoidance. Thus it was concluded that the Phaedo (and Antiope) fragments were pre-Alexandrine “or, at least, the condition of Plato’s text before it had been ‘improved’ by the early grammarians”. “They are, without doubt, far the oldest specimens of any classical text the modern world has yet seen”.52 Another feature of the Phaedo fragment is that it is written in a series of 18 parallel columns of 22 lines each that were rolled up so the reader could unroll the scroll with her right hand and roll it back up with her left. The columns are narrow, less than 8 centimetres, and the width of the papyrus is about 22 centimetres.53 Based on P.Petrie 1.5–8, Reynolds and Wilson calculate the length of the scroll of Plato’s Phaedo at fifteen metres, assuming the whole dialogue was contained in one scroll.54

Recent Advances

We left the Academy a few moments ago on the sour note that dramatic dialogues would be too difficult for outsiders, including potential companions and students, to follow speaker changes—whether reading them silently or attempting to perform them. Papyri, unlikely as it may seem, are helpful in our present difficulty. 49 50

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Mahaffy, 1891, 12. The more Mahaffy works with the papyri, the older they seem to him. Note, however, that Mahaffy views the writing as primarily lapidary, not “in any sense cursive”. Thompson, 1901, 112 says of the papyrus fragment, “Indeed, this copy of the Phaedo, written, as there is good reason to believe, within a hundred years of the death of Plato, can hardly differ in appearance, in a very material degree, from the copies which were published in his lifetime”. On this, at least, Mahaffy and Thompson are in agreement. Mahaffy, 1891, 34. Mahaffy, 1891, 30. For comparison, Reynolds / Wilson, 1991, 3 report that, on average, a column (σελίς) of text “was between eight and ten inches [20.3–25.4 cm.] high, containing between twenty-five and forty-five lines”. Reynolds / Wilson, 1991, 244 n. 1

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Katarzyna Jażdżewska studies the extant 82 fragments of Plato and pseudoplatonica gathered in the Corpus dei papyri filosofici greci e latini, fifty of which are from dramatic dialogues.55 The Phaedo and Laches papyri from Gurôb are the earliest, and a fifth–sixth century CE fragment of the Theaetetus, P.Ant. 78, is the latest. Of the fifty, none inserts names of speakers, but most include passages wherein there are speaker changes. These marks are indicated irregularly—”not always applied consistently and coherently by scribes”— some “as part of the textual tradition, while others were introduced by readers”.56 However, Jażdżewska adds: In two early papyri fragments of Plato’s Laches and Phaedo (PPetr II 50 and PPetr I 5–8, third century BC) and in a fragment of Xenophon’s Memorabilia (PHeid 206, ca. 280  BC) the scribes used a horizontal dash instead of a dicolon. The same notation is found in a late papyrus of Plato’s Parmenides from the fourth/ fifth century AD (PVindob G.3088).57

Jażdżewska’s description puts to rest the view that the supposed lack of punctuation in Plato’s dramatic dialogues placed excessive demands on readers and performers. The opposite seems to have been the case: the very earliest extant Platonic papyri consistently used a dash to indicate changes of speaker, ensuring that it was easy for anyone to follow the changes, even someone outside the Academy. The British Library has not yet released a digital image of P.Petrie 1.5–8 to the public, but considerable effort has been spent on describing it minutely, including calculating the number of missing lines and missing letters from the fragment, made attractive not only because of the new OCT of the Phaedo,58 but because the art of the professional scribe in ancient times was exact. Scribes were paid by the line, and the width of each column (σελίς) was consistent within the work, so making the calculation was straightforward.59 The sample of P.Petrie 1.5–8, fragment H, column 1, is illustrative, corresponding to

55 Jażdżewska, 2018, 250. Paltry though the papyrus record is, the Platonic papyri are catalogued in the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri; and information about each is accessible online at papyri.info, many with images. The British Library allows public access on the first Sunday of each month to the Platonic papyri in its collection, including P.Petrie 1.5–8 (Plato’s Phd. 67b–84b), which is Pap 488 in the library’s collection. 56 Jażdżewska, 2018, 250. 57 Jażdżewska, 2018, 251. 58 Duke et al., 1995. 59 In his Panathenaicus (136.1–10), Isocrates is impatient with those who count words.

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Phaedo 80e5–81b3—except that the lapidary style of the scribe’s letters cannot be appreciated here:60 1 ἅτε μελετῶσα ἀιεὶ τοῦτο. τὸ δὲ οὐθὲν ἄλλο ἐστὶν ἢ ὀρθῶς φιλοσοφοῦσα κ[α]ὶ τῶι ὄντι τεθνάναι μελετῶσα ῥαιδίως ἢ οὐ τοῦτ᾽ ἂν εἴη μελέτη 5 θανάτου—παντάπασί γε. [οὐκοῦν ο]ὕτω μὲν ἔχουσα εἰς [τὸ ὅμοιον αὐτ]ῆι [τὸ] ἀιδὲς ἀπέ[ρχεται] [τὸ θεῖόν τε κα]ὶ ἀθάνατον καὶ [φρόνιμον οἷ ἀ]φικομένηι ὑπάρχει 10 [αὐτῆι εὐδαίμονι εἶν]αι πλάνης καὶ ἀνοίας [καὶ φόβων καὶ] ἀγρίων ἐρώτων καὶ τῶν [ἄλλων κακῶ]ν τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων [ἀπηλλαγμέν]η{ε}ι ὥσπερ ‘δὲ’ λέγεται [κατὰ] τῶν μεμυημένων 15 [ὡς ἀληθ]ῶς τὸν λοιπὸν χρόνον [μετ]ὰ θεῶν διάγουσα. οὕτω φῶμεν [ὦ Κέβης ἢ ἄλ]λως—οὕτω νὴ Δία ἔφη [ὁ Κέβης.]—ἐὰν δέ γε οἶ μεμιασμένη καὶ ἀκάθαρτος τοῦ σώματος 20 ἀπ[α]λλάττηται ἅτε τῶι σώματι ἀεὶ συνοῦσα καὶ τοῦτο θεραπεύουσα καὶ [ἐρῶσα κ]αὶ γοητευομένη _______ Apparatus. H.1.16. pap. : διαγούσῃ Heindorf

I have shown that the evidence for dating the completion of Plato’s corpus to the 340s or even 300 is outweighed by evidence for variety within the collection of dialogues and letters, for differing copies in the possession of generations of academics, and for the probable use of the dialogues in attracting to the Academy associates and students from beyond Athens. On balance, the probability is that the Academy was an open institution, and Plato’s dialogues were not written to be appreciated solely by initiates. I turn now to the question of the material conditions for widespread copying and distribution of what may have been significantly dissimilar versions of what Plato wrote at different times.

60 The papyrus was digitally edited by Enrico Chies, Holger Essler, Costantino Ferrarese, Giorgia Melena, and Chiara Mingotti; revision by Holger Essler, https://papyri.info/ dclp/62649.

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The Papyrus Economy

There is no longer any question that, in the lifetime of Socrates, long before Plato was born, there was already an active trade in written works (βιβλία),61 that is, rolls of papyrus, scrolls containing writing, in Athens and beyond. The term χάρτης was used generically to designate a papyrus roll, but χάρτης has an additional technical meaning: it is the standard commercial unit for the trade in papyrus rolls, established by Lewis at twenty sheets glued together.62 A single sheet (κόλλημα, literally “the thing glued”) might be all that is necessary for some brief works;63 so the fact that many titles are attributed to some ancient authors is not evidence for prolific productivity. Thus we should note from the outset that the Greek terms translated and referred to ubiquitously as “books” are misleading. To take a Platonic example, Lewis reports a protracted dispute across decades, beginning near the end of the nineteenth century, over whether Plato’s Socrates was insulting Anaxagoras in the Apology (26d6–e4) with the remark that the Clazomenian’s works (βιβλία, d8) could be purchased for a drachma or less, at a time when the price of a blank papyrus roll was a drachma and two obols.64 Were the works of Anaxagoras not worth the papyrus they were written on? But there was no insult: the written works occupied not a full papyrus scroll but part of one, no more than five sheets, in Turner’s 61 Βύβλος (Attic βίβλος) is the term for the papyrus plant and, by extension, for the blank writing material made from its pith. By further extension, βίβλος comes to be used for the written works on papyri. Lewis, 1974, 78 dates the predominance of βι- from the fifth century. Plato’s favoured word for a written work is βίβλος, but he uses γραμματεῖον and, uncommonly, σύγγραμμα. Papyrus itself deserves a recommendation: it is sustainable, involves no killing of trees (as does paper) or animals (as does parchment). Its natural fibrous structure makes it unnecessary to draw lines before commencing to write. It can be produced in a variety of grades from rough to fine. 62 Lewis, 1934, 62. 63 Later, κόλλημα came to be used for a loose “page” or “sheet” more generally. Another term for “a piece of paper of any size, up to and including a roll” is the diminutive χαρτίον (Lewis, 1974, 70–77). 64 Lewis, 1974, 73–74. Referring to the expenditures incurred for the construction of the Erechtheum in Athens, at a time when a day’s wage was a drachma, “[T]he ninth prytany of 407 BCE records the disbursement of 2 drachmas 4 obols for the purchase of two χάρται ‘on which we inscribed the copies’” [of notes taken down daily in a preliminary or abbreviated way on four or more σανίδες]. So the unit price of a roll of papyrus was 1 drachma, 2 obols (Lewis, 1974, 73). Εach σανίς, he says elsewhere, “can be calculated to have afforded space for writing totalling some 3,000 letters or more” (Lewis, 1934, 61 n. 8). Economic fluctuation may have affected Egyptian manufacture and export. Herodotus (5.58) comments that some Greeks used animal skins for writing when papyrus (βύβλος) was scarce. Speusippus, in a possibly genuine letter of about 342 to Philip of Macedon, writes that Egypt’s conflict with Persia had affected the supply of papyrus (Natoli, 2004).

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estimation.65 On the other hand, what we call “book 6” of Plato’s Laws would have required, on the evidence of P.Oxy 3672, a papyrus roll twelve metres long, implying that several standard-size rolls were glued together.66 Egyptians had been painting hieroglyphics on papyrus for millennia before they developed hieratic writing about twenty-five centuries BCE. Phoenicians adapted it by the tenth century, Greeks had learned the Phoenician alphabet by the ninth, and adapted it further by about 800,67 though at different rates in different parts of Greece.68 There are early records of rolls of blank papyrus (χάρται) exported from Egypt around the Mediterranean basin.69 As the need for record-keeping grew in Athens and other Greek cities, papyrus was required for such public documentation as archives, inventories, laws, contracts, reports, lists (e.g. lists of demesmen began in Cleisthenic times in Athens), and magical spells;70 and scribes were paid to make fair copies in book-hand on papyrus from notes taken on wax tablets or in uncials on papyri. As literary papyri and prose (histories, medical treatises, philosophy, plays, orations) also came to be produced, some could be bought privately. We know little, however, about who mass-produced copies or sold them. Our best evidence is that people tended to make their own copies of works that they wanted; and the usual way of making copies was to take dictation, a fact we know from the type and frequency of phonetic errors the copies contain.71 The error rate for that type of transcription was so high that Reynolds and Wilson lament, “It is certain that a high 65 66 67 68

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Turner, 1952, 21. Reynolds / Wilson, 1991, 245. Heubeck, 1986. I elide Linear A, which perished in the twelfth century BCE, and Linear B, which is unrelated to the Phoenician script. The earliest Greek inscriptions were written from right to left, like Semitic languages, but these were succeeded in the sixth century by alternating the lines—left to right, right to left—boustrophedon, as the ox pulls the plow. A famous exception is the left-to-right graffito left by Greek sailors at Abu Simbel in 593/92 BCE, marking their progress up the Nile. “The first clear indication that the use of papyrus had spread beyond the borders of Egypt is found in a text of c. 1100 BCE generally referred to as ‘The Voyage of Wen-Amon’, who journeyed from Egypt to Phoenicia taking with him, inter alia, 500 rolls of very fine papyrus. Since the contacts of Egypt with the shores of the eastern Mediterranean antedate 1100 BCE by at least fifteen hundred years, the papyrus rolls that Wen-Amon brought no doubt represent a product long since familiar in Phoenicia” (Lewis, 1974, 84). Harris, 1989, 26–27 lists forty-one functions that writing served in Athens though he notes, “This list is not an exhaustive one”. Although Harris is primarily concerned with literacy itself in his Ancient Literacy, a title for which he apologises (Harris, 1989, viii), he has in fact amassed a trove of sources on the spread of writing. Thomas, 1992, 91–92; Skeat, 1956. If Plutarch is to be believed (Lyc. 841F), the secretary of the polis read tragedies aloud.

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proportion of the most serious corruptions in classical texts go back to this period and were already current in the books that eventually entered the library of the Museum at Alexandria”.72 The first datable reference to a bookseller (βιβλιοπώλης) is line 1288 of Aristophanes’ Birds, produced in 414; other comic poets use the term, but their dates are not so secure.73 Inscriptions on vases—some merely ornamental gibberish—proliferated for a few years after 575 when the alphabet was a plaything. But many hundreds of proper inscriptions, some on coins, survive from the sixth century. In the late sixth century, and increasingly through the fifth, Athenian vases and fragments of vases (and the occasional grave marker) depict papyrus scrolls being read.74 Collections of written works translated “libraries” are attributed to known persons—e.g. Aristophanes lampoons Euripides (Frogs 943, produced in 405) for using his collection of βιβλία to compose his tragedies.75 In the same play, the chorus tells the tragedians, “And if you’re afraid / of any ignorance among / the spectators, that they won’t / appreciate your subtleties of argument, / don’t worry about that, because / things are no longer that way. / For they’re veterans, / and each one has a book / and knows the fine points” (109–114, Henderson tr.). Ordinary, educated Athenians began to write letters.76 “Writing had thus broadened its literary, civic, political, and religious functions to a very notable degree by the end of the sixth century”.77 Jumping ahead a couple of centuries, Turner’s judgement is more ominous: “By the first thirty years of the fourth century books have established themselves, and their tyranny lies ahead”.78 An excellent piece of evidence for maritime trade in papyri, datable to the year 399, within Turner’s “first thirty years”, is provided by Xenophon in the 72 73

Reynolds / Wilson, 1991, 5. Wycherley, 1956 should be consulted for research on markets in Greek cities that had bookstalls. Eupolis, whose floruit is about 430, refers to books for sale in the Athenian agora (fr. 327 in: Kassel / Austin (eds.), 1983). 74 Consult the Beazley Archive Pottery Database https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/carc/pottery for thumbnails and descriptions, many leading to high-resolution images and references. 75 It is always risky to assume one gets the joke with comic poets, but they are important sources for the spread of writing. 76 The earliest recorded letters are the ones Herodotus mentions (3.40–43) between the tyrant Polycrates of Samos and King Amasis “in the early 520s”, see Harris, 1989, 56. Reynolds / Wilson, 1991, 5 note that Athenaeus (1.3 Kaibel) attributes a large collection of written works to Polycrates. The Athenian tyrant Pisistratus was also supposed to have been an avid collector. 77 Harris, 1989, 55. Knox, 1985, 3–4 puts the extent of widespread literacy earlier, in the first half of the seventh century, citing Archilochus, and arguing that subtleties of the metre make it unlikely that the poet intended his poems to be recalled from oral transmission. 78 Turner, 1952, 23.

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final book of his Anabasis. On the return home after the expedition with Cyrus, a ships’ graveyard was found at Salmydessos on the treacherous north coast of Thrace. “Here there were found great numbers of beds and boxes, quantities of written books [βίβλοι γεγραμμέναι], and an abundance of all the other articles that shipowners carry in wooden chests” (7.5.14.1–4, tr. Brownson). The inference that these were papyrus scrolls intended for trade along the Euxine coast seems unavoidable.79 Socrates in the fifth century,80 and Plato in the fourth, flourished in a culture where educated Athenian males were literate, and all classes were at least semi-literate. However controversial it was in the early twentieth century, we now know that Plato came of age in an environment rich with reading matter. As we know from the Phaedrus, however, and despite the widespread circulation of written works, Athenians harboured a suspicion of writing that can be seen earlier, for example, in Aeschylus’ Suppliants, produced in about 463 (P.Oxy 2256), “Joined, doweled, and bolted stays this law, / That neither scratched on tablets, nor book-sealed, / You hear announced by the tongue of freedom’s voice” (Benardete, tr.).81 In Sophocles’ Antigone, it is the unwritten laws that hold sway. In Aristophanes’ Birds, the written oracles turn out to be counterfeits. The sophist Euthydemus, who had accumulated a collection of writings, is faulted by Xenophon’s Socrates (Memorabilia  4.2.1–40) for being more concerned with classifying and cataloguing his collection than with learning their content. Isocrates is direct: “All men trust the spoken word more than the written word” (Epistle 1.2–3, Harris tr.).82

What Did Plato Know?

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Reynolds / Wilson, 1991, 245. Plato depicts Socrates as no stranger to written works. In the Phdr., he first asks to hear Lysias’ speech from the scroll Phaedrus is carrying, then asks the youth to repeat parts. In the Phd., he reports reading Anaxagoras’ work directly. Socrates tells Antiphon of unrolling papyrus scrolls of wise men of the past (Xen., Mem. 1.6.14), and Charmides says in Symp. (4.27) that he saw Socrates and Critobulus huddled together over a written work. 81 ταῦτ’ οὐ πίναξίν ἐστιν ἐγγεγραμμένα / οὐδ’ ἐν πτυχαῖς βίβλων κατεσφραγισμένα, / σαφῆ δ’ ἀκούεις ἐξ ἐλευθεροστόμου / γλώσσης (946–949, Page). 82 Harris, 1989, 88–92 lists other examples of hostility toward, and suspicion of, writing from historians, comic poets, tragedians, orators, and law codes. And yet writing persists, and eventually triumphs, so he gives scores of examples of the spread of writing and reading, including solitary reading for pleasure in the classical period (65–93).

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his time. This is no surprise, but it is worth noting that Plato’s texts demonstrate that he was well-informed about the roles of the materials and methods that were a part of his enterprise. He knew how writing tablets were used, and about taking notes on them for later elaboration. He knew how papyrus was manufactured and the particular sort of reed pen required to write on the papyrus surface. He knew the process for revising existing texts, and he knew the difference between uncials and book-hand, both of which were used on papyri. The following texts are not exhaustive. Plato’s Protagoras (326d2–5) speaks of the method used by writing-teachers with beginners. They scratch a light outline of letters with a stylus (γραφίς, d3) on wax tablets (γραμματεῖον, d4) then have the boys write the letters over the patterns. The tablets were made by applying a thin layer of wax to wooden planks, and it was especially important for the wax to be pure, smooth, properly kneaded, and not too hard or too soft, as Socrates’ lengthy description in the Theaetetus goes (194c5–195a1). A proper coating of wax enabled pupils to use a cloth to renew the surface for the next lesson, but it was not only pupils who used wax tablets for school-exercises. Reynolds and Wilson describe their use for “rough notes and other casual purposes”.83 Papyrus was not cheap, and it was also impractical for note-taking because it required wet ink and some sort of table or desk for the sheet to remain horizontal. The wax tablets of Plato’s time were just the thing for notes, and they could hold a surprising amount. Not limited to a single plank, the tablets often consisted of a stack of thin waxed boards held together with a leather thong or clasp. An Attic red figure kylix dated about 480 BCE looks so much like a youth with his laptop that it demands a second look: it represents a schoolboy with his five-leaf, folding wax tablet, typical of the time.84 A further leather strap enabled the wax tablets to be carried conveniently as a shoulder bag. That brings us to Plato’s words on note-taking. In the frame of the Theaetetus, Eucleides tells Terpsion that he heard from Socrates the conversation held with the young Theaetetus. Eucleides could not recall it all on first hearing but made notes at the time; “ἐγραψάμην […] ὑπομνήματα—I wrote me down some memoranda” (143a1) is an LSJ paradigm. Over the next weeks or months (Socrates had already been indicted), Eucleides went from Megara to Athens 83 Reynolds / Wilson, 1991, 34. 84 The commonplace γραμματεῖον is mentioned by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (Harris, 1989, 95 n. 139, lists passages) and also by Aristophanes (Clouds, 18–24). The kylix, by the Eucharides painter, was found in Orvieto, Etruria. It is permanently housed in the University of Pennsylvania Museum and can be seen online at https://www.penn. museum/sites/greek_world/pottery_big-47.html.

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to check with Socrates about parts of the story.85 Afterwards, at his leisure, Eucleides composed the full version, a βιβλίον (143b5), deliberately amending Socrates’ narrative into a dramatic dialogue that the slave could read aloud. Another telling passage is Phaedrus (276c7–d4) where Socrates says the person with knowledge does not write in ink with a pen (ὕδατι γράψει μέλανι […] καλάμου,86 c7–8), i.e. on papyrus, though he stores memoranda (ὑπομνήματα, d3) against the forgetfulness of old age. The need for taking notes appears also in the Statesman when one needs reminders ὑπομνήματα (295c4) of a doctor’s or trainer’s instructions if either will be absent from the country for an extended period. In the Statesman, Plato shows his acquaintance with the skill of making writing material by stripping the skin from the shaft of the papyrus plant (βύβλων, unique in Plato at 288e3), and exposing the pith beneath that would then be subject to a process of compounding (σύνθετος, e4). To make a single sheet, κόλλημα, the pith is cut into strips, trimmed to size, pounded flat, soaked in water, then layered (i.e. compounded) at right angles, and pressed flat to dry. A related technical matter familiar to Plato was the instrument most suited to writing on papyrus. Unlike the Egyptians, who painted papyrus with rushes, Greeks of Plato’s time wrote with stiff, hollow reeds, the ends of which were sharp and split—not unlike quill pens, though more durable. This writing “instrument may properly be called κάλαμος, reed or pen, which Plato mentions [uniquely, at Phaedrus 276c8] as the instrument for writing”.87 Turner notes the similarity of the stiff reed (from Arundo donax, now called Giant Reed), to a stylus for writing on wax and puts its adoption in Greece before the early sixth century when he insists that ordinary Athenians could write, and that there were no guilds of scribes “guarding a hereditary secret”.88 As we know, a papyrus roll (χάρτης) consisted of twenty single sheets of papyri—which brings us to the process of ungluing and gluing, that is, the process of revising an existing text. At Phaedrus 278d8–e2, Socrates makes the point that, compared to the philosopher,

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Checking with Socrates to get a story right occurs also at Smp. 173b4–6. This term will return in a moment. Turner, 1952, 10. Turner, 1952, 12. Now that students input text and have few reasons to practice penmanship, one can hardly decipher their handwriting. Perhaps something similar was the case in Athens, namely, that taking notes on a wax tablet, or in cursive on papyri, unfitted a man for the elegant “book-hand” that a professional scribe would use. “Since the computer” goes the familiar refrain, “I can’t spell and I don’t know anyone’s phone number”.

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The passage has been much debated,89 but my purpose is merely to show that whomever Plato had in mind with the description, it involves gluing (κολλάω) papyrus sheets together and taking them apart—moving text. Menexenus 236b2–6 gives us an example of both composing from notes and revising a written work: Socrates describes Aspasia as going through for him what she planned to say if the Athenians chose her to speak over the war dead. Part of it was delivered ad lib, he said, but she also glued together (συγκολλῶσα) some left-over notes from when she wrote Pericles’ funeral oration. Professional scribes, whether taking dictation or copying a work already written, used book-hand and charged for it by the line. However, one sees on some papyri notes taken in uncials as well, sometimes as a sort of marginalia on the same sheet as the book-hand. Plato, discussing early childhood education in the Laws,90 proposes that children begin the study of letters at the age of ten and continue learning to read and write for three years (809e7–8). However, “we will not insist on a severe standard of calligraphy or speed during these years for those who are not naturally inclined to it” (810b2–4, Turner, tr.)—a passage that Turner regards as suggesting that “an everyday business hand, or cursive, in which speed was the principal aim, was in fact in use in contemporary Athens and elsewhere in Greece”.91 A corollary is that the book-hand was likewise an art that grew out of a someday-scribe’s natural inclination. In this section, I have produced some of the texts that demonstrate Plato’s immersion in the rich milieu of writing in Athens in his time. Plato’s Socrates speaks many of the lines I have quoted, but I hope that the information I have given about the burgeoning of writing in the early sixth century is enough to make it plausible that fifth-century Socrates is not being misrepresented anachronistically by Plato. But if all of this is even roughly correct, far from

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Rowe, 1988, 214–216 provides a good summary of possibilities and positions. He says that the passage is “surely another deliberate self-reference” on Plato’s part; he had noted others at 277e5–8 and 278b7 where Plato is perhaps “surfacing momentarily as author”. Full disclosure: I regard Lg. as Platonic, but mostly not by Plato (Nails / Thesleff, 2003). Turner, 1952, 8.

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being the enemy of philosophy, it is writing that enabled Plato’s entire philosophic enterprise. Where Are We Now?



I mentioned contemporary Platonists’ shared assumption that the Platonic corpus has reached a state of essential reliability. I cannot share the comfortable premise, and I conclude with two personal examples of why not. The first is taken directly from a memorable Greek reading group meeting at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor shortly before I retired. Our text for the semester was Plato’s Phaedo, most of us following the new OCT edition (1995). In the well-known section on the association of ideas in relation to recollection, Socrates gives the example of a lover who thinks of his beloved whenever he sees his beloved’s lyre (λύραν) or cloak (ἱμάτιον), then asks, “is it possible to see a painting of a horse (ἳππον) or a painting of a lyre (λύραν) and recollect a person?” (73d4–e5, tr. Rowe). Richard Janko seized the moment for an emendation to e5: “Horse?—no, that should be ‘cloak’“. We agreed that the context almost required it. Then he wrote on the board ΙΠΠΟΝ and ΙΜΑΤΙΟΝ in uppercase cursive, as they would have been written in Plato’s time: in Plato’s time, and for two centuries after, uppercase pi and mu were often indistinguishable, lending further credibility to the proposed emendation.92

Fig. 4.1

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Illustration of Pi and Mu93

Richard Janko, per litteras. Thompson, 1901, appendix.

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P.Petrie 1.5–8 sadly lacks Phaedo 73e5; the passage is lost in a gap between the E and F fragments of the papyrus. Carlini prints a grainy reproduction of parts of the papyrus in black and white, but it is difficult to make out the details.94 Thompson says P.Petrie 1.5–8 is like other specimens of the period where, “The writing is a very beautiful uncial hand, minute and exact, the chief general characteristic being the great breadth, almost flatness, of many of the letters (e.g. Γ, Ζ, Η, Μ, Π, Ω), as compared with their height”.95 It is unusual in that “in certain forms the writing departs from the recognised curves of the uncial, and approaches more nearly to the rectangles of lapidary inscriptions”. Luckily for us all, nothing philosophical depended on the cloak. My second example came earlier in my life. When Brumbaugh and Wells published their index to Plato’s pre-1500 manuscripts in 1968, a project involving microfilms entered into a (paper) card catalogue, I was beginning to study Plato and ancient Greek. Their brief introduction to the difficulties of establishing a reliable text in the absence of an autograph, namely, being compelled to trust much later, conflicting copies on papyri and parchment with their omissions, transpositions, smudges, worm holes, variants, corruption, arbitrary emendation, contamination, and displacement—all of which would naturally accumulate and increase with each subsequent copy—struck me as alarming. I now appreciate their Introduction’s numerous references to alternative texts and commentary in the tradition, especially those addressed by later Platonists,96 but I do not think that “computers and modest ingenuity”97 and “a central storage of information”98 have yet solved, or are likely to solve, the “veritable maze of lines of descent and cross-comparison” that Brumbaugh and Wells identified before 1968. And were it possible to solve that puzzle, I would still lament all that has been irretrievably lost. An instance within the example that most troubles me is Plato’s Parmenides, which I fear is a lost cause. Since I have described the general problem,99 I will focus on a tiny part of it briefly: Brumbaugh complains of a “chronic confusion of EN and HEN”.100 The two would have been identical in manuscripts because the breathing mark on the latter was added by editors. But the decision whether to add it reflected each editor’s metaphysical inclination for transcendence (ἕν, one) or imminence (ἐν, in). The result of two texts Brumbaugh compares is stunning: between the eleventh-century “Tübingen manuscript and the Diès 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

Carlini, 2014, tav. 1. Thompson, 1901, 121. The volume’s proofreading is deplorable. Brumbaugh, 1972, 1. Brumbaugh, 1983, 8. Nails, 2013, 80. Brumbaugh, 1972, 185.

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Budé text, editorial preferences have replaced hen by en” in a whopping three times the standard deviation. Viewing the textual issues as properly philosophical rather than philological, Brumbaugh later101 circulated hundreds of discrepancies among three Parmenides manuscripts in philosophy archives now available only in microfiche, never giving up on the prospect of “computers and wealthy patronage”102—but we seem not a jot closer to solving the original EN-HEN “confusion”. These two examples complete my survey of reasons to believe that— although we have inherited a Platonic corpus unsurpassed in philosophical significance, inventiveness, and mystery—the written words defeat us. Interrogate them as we will—they just keep saying the same thing over and over. What matters, what really matters, is philosophical dialogue. Michigan State University

101 Brumbaugh, 1983; Brumbaugh, 1987. 102 Brumbaugh, 1972, 148.

Chapter 5

Some Reflections on the Nature of an Academic Edition of the Platonic Corpus Tianqin Ge There has been much discussion on the existence of an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus.1 However, few have been reflecting on the nature of such a possible edition of the Platonic corpus. Some may assume that it would look like a modern critical edition, or that it must be the same as the edition of other ancient literary works, about which we are better informed, such as Homer. In this chapter, instead of declaring definitively for or against an Academic edition, I would like to provide some reflections on the nature of a possible Platonic edition in the Old Academy, and to shed light on what is distinctive of an ancient edition of a philosopher made by a philosopher, which seems to receive little attention in the literature. What I aim to defend is that the notion of an ancient Platonic edition is more flexible than what we have generally understood. It is not a precursor of modern critical editions with a definitive text, critical apparatus, and so forth; nor must it be like an ancient Alexandrian edition of Homer, which contains a variety of critical signs.2 Rather, an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus primarily refers to a complete collection of texts that embodies Plato’s philosophical views—as its * Many ideas of this chapter are derived from my 2019 paper, but in this chapter I will not dwell on the issue of an edition established by Xenocrates, and leave open whether there exists an edition of the Platonic corpus made by Xenocrates. Instead, I focus on the nature of an edition of the Platonic corpus more generally, and try to spell out the necessary condition for an Academic edition. I am deeply indebted to John M. Dillon for his valuable help. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Olga Alieva, Debra Nails, and Harold Tarrant for their insightful comments and assistance during the editorial process. This work was supported by the Zhishan Young Scholars Programme of Southeast University and the National Social Science Fund of China (Grant Number: 22FZXB055). 1 For the status quaestionis, see Erler, 2007, 11–14; Görler, 1994, 841–843. Görler also agrees in postulating an Academic edition. 2 Many scholars tend to take the practice of correcting (διόρθωσις) as a necessary condition (if not a sufficient condition also) of an edition. See e.g. Montanari, 2015. However, as I shall argue below, it is not always the case for an edition of philosophical writings. Pasquali, 1988, 266 also alludes to the difference between an Alexandrian edition of Homer and a possible Academic edition of Plato, although he is still preoccupied with text-critical initiatives.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_006

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editor conceives of them,3 with a view to be made public and studied by later generations. In this way, it is Plato’s teachings that constitute the nucleus of an Academic edition of the Platonic works, no matter whether such an edition existed, or exactly who made it. Myrto Hatzimichali argues that ancient editorial activity can involve any of the following two independent activities: establishing a definitive text and/or organising a collection of texts.4 The first activity is a kind of textual criticism, while the second consists of arranging and cataloguing a collection of texts. Thus, an edition does not necessarily imply any text-critical activity; rather, it can be considered as simply a result of assembling and organising, just as the case for Andronicus’ edition of Aristotle, as is now generally acknowledged.5 Hence it is instructive to adopt Hatzimichali’s distinction here. But  I would like to add a third kind of activity: determining the composition of an edition; in other words, deciding which works contain the author’s ideas, and weeding out other works from the edition.6 This activity can also be conducted in isolation, without corpus-organisation and textual criticism. In this way, any edition of an ancient philosopher should involve at least one of these three editorial activities. Hatzimichali seems to subsume the third kind of activity under the second in her two-fold distinction, but I think it is deserving of discussion in its own right, because this is crucial for establishing an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus. In what follows, I shall examine each kind of editorial activity respectively, arguing that the first and second kinds of activities are not necessary for an edition of the Platonic corpus; rather, it is the third activity that becomes the necessary condition for an Academic edition of the Platonic writings. In a word, if there had indeed existed an Academic edition, it must have involved the work of determining the composition of the edition by the members of the Academy, which would be made available to the wider public and studied by later generations.

A Definitive Text of the Platonic Works?

First, an Academic edition need not contain a definitive text of the Platonic writings. Although many earlier scholars seemed to take it for granted that an 3 It is in this sense that it can be called the “Platonic corpus”. 4 Hatzimichali, 2013; Hatzimichali, 2016, 82. 5 In this connection, the edition may be available as a catalogue, which enables others to produce copies on the basis of the catalogue. 6 However, as I shall discuss below, it is not simply a problem of authorship.

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ancient edition of Plato’s or Aristotle’s works must contain an authoritative text, this view has now been challenged in a variety of ways.7 Indeed, there is no reason to propose that an Academic edition would be something like a modern critical edition. In this way, the fact that the variant readings in the Hellenistic papyri of the Platonic dialogues are “wild”—as (e.g.) Turner characterises them8—does not imply that there would be no earlier edition of the Platonic corpus. Furthermore, the few ancient reports which may be adduced to substantiate the existence of an Academic edition do not tell what kind of an edition it is, let alone whether it is an edition with definitive texts. The most famous one runs as follows: So much for the critical marks and his books. When they were recently (νεωστί)9 released (ἐκδοθέντα), says Antigonus of Carystus in On Zeno, anyone who wished to read them had to pay those who possessed them a fee. (Diogenes Laertius 3.66, tr. White, modified) τὰ μὲν σημεῖα ταῦτα καὶ τὰ βιβλία τοσαῦτα· ἅπερ (Ἀντίγονός φησιν ὁ Καρύστιος ἐν τῷ Περὶ Ζήνωνος) νεωστὶ ἐκδοθέντα εἴ τις ἤθελε διαναγνῶναι, μισθὸν ἐτέλει τοῖς κεκτημένοις.

This may be the most important evidence to be adduced by those who wish to defend the existence of an Academic edition. And there are many debates on this passage that need not concern us here. Suffice it to say, there is no solid evidence that this recently published edition (the use of ἐκδοθέντα and the immediate context point to this)10 would constitute a definitive text. Some scholars, such as Gigante, may think that ἅπερ should refer to both the books and the critical marks discussed immediately before,11 as Hicks’ translation indicates: “when the writings were first edited with critical marks”. If this edition did contain the critical marks, it may betoken an attempt to establish a definitive text. However, Dörrie and Baltes, among many others, disagree with this interpretation, arguing that this sentence should be separated from the earlier passages 7 8 9 10 11

See e.g. Barnes, 1991, 125; Hatzimichali, 2013. As Barnes claims, even in the case of modern authors, there is unlikely to have been a single definitive or authoritative autograph of any work. Turner, 1968, 108. I tend to take νεωστί as indicating the time of Zeno of Citium, as is proposed by Solmsen, 1981, 103; Barnes, 1991, 124, and Tarrant, 1993, 184; cf. also Erler, 2007, 12; Görler, 1994, 842; Verhasselt, 2019, 394 n. 22 for a discussion of different interpretations. For the ancient notion of publication in general, see e.g. van Groningen, 1963; Dorandi, 1996, and Dorandi, 1997. Cf. also Mansfeld, 1994, 60–61; Irwin, 2008, 64–66; Thesleff, 2009, 230–231 and Dorandi, 2010 on “publication” in Plato. Gigante, 1986, 71.

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on critical marks.12 I think the caution exercised by Dörrie and Baltes is appropriate, and we should not put too much weight on it.13 Also, there is no indication of the practice of copying from an original that has an authoritative text. Rather, this passage may indicate an endeavour of the early Academy to promote its edition of the Platonic corpus,14 which can be regarded as a depiction of its Platonism (see below for more details). Another piece of evidence concerns a possible edition possessed by the young Arcesilaus: “he also admired Plato and he owned his books (τὰ βιβλία)” (Diogenes Laertius 4.32, tr. White, modified; cf. also Academicorum Index 19.14–16).15 But this short report is more obscure, and we do not even know whether Arcesilaus possessed an edition of the Platonic corpus, or if the expression “τὰ βιβλία” simply refers to some individual copies of Plato’s works.16 In this way, there is no reason to postulate an Academic edition with a definitive text, or to believe that some ancient testimonies imply such an edition made under the Old Academy. On the other hand, the critical marks are also indicative of an attempt to establish a definitive text.17 As mentioned above, some people attach great importance to the critical signs for the existence of an ancient edition, and there is much debate on the alleged witnesses to critical marks in ancient editions of Plato’s dialogues, which I am not going to delve into.18 Admittedly, the word ἔκδοσις, which is often rendered as “edition”, is closely related to the activity of copying and correcting (διόρθωσις),19 and the reports about the use of critical signs on Plato’s dialogues may be adduced as a piece of positive evidence for the existence of an Academic edition of the Platonic writings.20 However, what I would like to emphasise is that even this phenomenon is not 12 Dörrie / Baltes, 1990, 355; Solmsen, 1981, 102–104; Lucarini, 2010, 347 n. 5. See Verhasselt, 2019, 392 n. 15 for further references. 13 Verhasselt, 2019, 392–394 provides further evidence against the contention that this edition contained critical marks. 14 Pace Lucarini, 2010, 349–351, according to whom the Academy attempted to restrict the circulation of the Platonic works by charging a fee. 15 Various interpretations of this text are mentioned in Görler, 1994, 842. 16 See Barnes, 1991, 125, n. 38: since some individual personal copies might not involve any of the three editorial activities, they would not be deemed an “edition”. But cf. Tarrant, 2020, 208–216 for an appealing proposal on the role of the “possessors of the books” in Plato’s Academy, which is related to this testimony. 17 The appearance of the critical signs, however, does not suggest that there were prior editions of the Platonic works in circulation. These critical signs can simply report different readings from uncorrected copies, which need not be a result of various editorial activities, pace Mejer, 2000, 20. 18 See e.g. Schironi, 2005, 430; Erler, 2007, 11; Verhasselt, 2019 for further discussions. 19 But cf. Dorandi, 1997, who makes a distinction between edition (ἔκδοσις) and διόρθωσις. 20 I discussed it in Ge, 2019, 374–375.382.

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necessary for an edition of the Platonic dialogues. We may suppose that a collection of Plato’s texts without critical marks is simply a result of assembling or corpus-organising.21 A passage from Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus is particularly revealing on this point: In this way, then, I have arranged the treatises, of which there were fifty-four, in six Enneads, and I have attached discourses to some of the works, haphazardly produced on account of friends who urged me to write about such matters as they themselves desired to have clarified for them. Furthermore, I have composed chapter-heads for all of them, except On Beauty, because they were missing in my copies, and in this I follow the chronological order in which the treatises were distributed. But in this matter, not only have the heads been affixed to each book but summaries also, which are numbered in sequence with the chapterheads. But now I shall try, going through all the treatises, to add punctuation to them and correct the wording where there is any defect. And whatever else has required my labour the work itself reveals. (Life of Plotinus 26.28–40, tr. Edwards) Τὰ μὲν οὖν βιβλία εἰς ἓξ ἐννεάδας τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον κατετάξαμεν τέσσαρα καὶ πεντήκοντα ὄντα· καταβεβλήμεθα δὲ καὶ εἴς τινα αὐτῶν ὑπομνήματα ἀτάκτως διὰ τοὺς ἐπείξαντας ἡμᾶς ἑταίρους γράφειν εἰς ἅπερ αὐτοὶ τὴν σαφήνειαν αὐτοῖς γενέσθαι ἠξίουν. Ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ τὰ κεφάλαια τῶν πάντων πλὴν τοῦ “Περὶ τοῦ καλοῦ” διὰ τὸ λεῖψαι ἡμῖν πεποιήμεθα κατὰ τὴν χρονικὴν ἔκδοσιν τῶν βιβλίων· ἀλλ’ ἐν τούτῳ οὐ τὰ κεφάλαια μόνον καθ’ ἕκαστον ἔκκειται τῶν βιβλίων, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπιχειρήματα, ἃ ὡς κεφάλαια συναριθμεῖται. Νυνὶ δὲ πειρασόμεθα ἕκαστον τῶν βιβλίων διερχόμενοι τάς τε στιγμὰς αὐτῶν προσθεῖναι καὶ εἴ τι ἡμαρτημένον εἴη κατὰ λέξιν διορθοῦν· καὶ ὅ τι ἂν ἡμᾶς ἄλλο κινήσῃ, αὐτὸ σημαίνει τὸ ἔργον.

Although there are some attempts to relate the Porphyrian edition of Enneads to Andronicus’ editorial activity regarding his edition of Aristotle’s works, it seems that few have noticed the following fact: after Porphyry had finished arranging the fifty-four treatises in six Enneads, he would “add punctuation to them and correct the wording where there is any defect”. We know that Plotinus often did not pay attention to stylistic problems when he was writing (Life of Plotinus 8), so it is reasonable to think that there were many corrupt words and idiomatic slips in his autographs. However, when Porphyry was preparing his edition of Plotinus, he attempted to establish a definitive text by adding the punctuation and correcting the corrupted texts, only after he had finished all other editorial tasks. It seems that for Porphyry, establishing a definitive text of Plotinus was considered as a kind of “afterthought” with regard to his edition of Plotinus, which lies outside the primary editorial practice.22 We may 21 Cf. Hatzimichali, 2013. 22 If there were some earlier attempts to correct and edit Plotinus’ manuscripts, perhaps undertaken by Eustochius or Amelius in their editions (if these editions did exist), then

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even wonder whether Porphyry had finished the correction process in his first edition of Plotinus’ Enneads, if we take a strong reading of νυνί at Life of Plotinus 26.37, in contrast to what Porphyry had done in the preceding lines.23 Based on the example of Porphyry’s editorial activities, we may conclude that, in a similar vein, neither a definitive text nor the critical marks aiming for such an authoritative text are mandatory for the existence of an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus. Furthermore, the passage above can refute a further possible objection to my proposal to the effect that the existence of commentaries presupposes an edition with a definitive text.24 Since there exist some commentaries on Plato’s dialogues in the Old Academy,25 it is natural to hold that there already existed an edition with a definitive text in the Old Academy. However, we can see that Porphyry had already composed some ὑπομνήματα26 and summaries (which can also be deemed a kind of expository work)27 on Plotinus’ Enneads, before he went through the whole text to correct the syntactical errors. For this reason, the exegetical activities do not require an already-existing edition with a definitive text. Perhaps a line-by-line running commentary needs a definitive

establishing a definitive text would be even less urgent for Porphyry, cf. Brisson, 1992, 67–69 on earlier correcting initiatives before Porphyry. 23 Goulet-Cazé, 1982, 295 claims that the use of the imperfect tense in the sentence ὃν καὶ διορθοῦν αὐτοῦ [scil. Porphyry] τὰ συγγράμματα ἠξίου [scil. Plotinus] (Plot. 7.51) entails that Porphyry had already started to correct the manuscripts of Plotinus during his master’s lifetime. However, the imperfect tense of “ἠξίου” may only indicate the repeated request made by Plotinus in the past. Admittedly, at Plot. 24.2–3 Plotinus entrusted Porphyry with the task of making arrangements (διάταξις) and corrections (διόρθωσις) of his treatises, which may imply that the Porphyrian edition of Plotinus needs to involve both tasks. But we should remember that the arrangement is prior to the correction, and can be done independently. Goulet-Cazé, 1992, 71.73 further contends that only after correction could the treatises of Plotinus be available to a wider public, and thus be regarded as published. However, this proposal assumes that an edition must involve διόρθωσις, which may not always be the case. Cf. Goulet-Cazé, 1992, 74: when someone speaks of a possible edition of Plotinus made by Eustochius, it leaves open whether this purported edition would involve διόρθωσις. 24 E.g. Baltussen, 2016, 185; Sluiter, 2000, 190–192.202. 25 See e.g. Sedley, 1997; Tarrant / Baltzly, forthcoming on Crantor’s further commentaries besides the one on the Ti. 26 It is not necessary to consider the specific form of these ὑπομνήματα composed by Porphyry because we do not know precisely what kind of commentaries were produced in the Old Academy either. See Goulet-Cazé, 1982, 307–315 for further discussions. 27 As Goulet-Cazé, 1982, 315 characterises it, “travaux exégétiques”. See further Goulet-Cazé, 1982, 315–325.

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text,28 but we cannot be certain that members of the Old Academy composed such commentaries. Therefore, there is no need to suppose that an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus contained a definitive text. If the members of the Old Academy did intend to establish a definitive text, they would have been in a better position to accomplish this task, as they had access to Plato’s Nachlass; however, as I have argued in this section, there is no good reason to assume that this must be the case.29

An Academic Order?

Is there an Academic order or arrangement of Platonic writings? I have argued elsewhere that there is no evidence to attribute a certain kind of arrangement to the Old Academy, and it is not necessary to repeat these arguments.30 However, one may claim that an edition without any order is scarcely conceivable, and there must be some kind of arrangement for an Academic edition, such as a literary one, a metaphysical one, a pedagogical one, etc., even though we do not know exactly what kind of arrangement it is. Yet I think Aristophanes’ practice of organising the Platonic writings has shown the possibility of an edition without any particular arrangement: Others, including the grammarian Aristophanes [of Byzantium], arrange (ἕλκουσι)31 the dialogues in trilogies. […] The rest follow as separate compositions in no order (ἀτάκτως). (Diogenes Laertius 3.61–62, tr. White, modified) ἔνιοι δέ, ὧν ἐστι καὶ Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ γραμματικός, εἰς τριλογίας ἕλκουσι τοὺς διαλόγους, […] τὰ δ’ ἄλλα καθ’ ἓν καὶ ἀτάκτως.

28 29

30 31

Even this is not necessarily the case. It may be better to say that a running commentary requires a more definitive text, or a text in a more reliable state; otherwise, there would be no discussion of variant readings in ancient commentaries. There might be some textual interventions in the Old Academy, such as a possible textual emendation from Xenocrates at Phd. 81b7; see Untersteiner, 1967, 408–411. However, it is one thing to say that there exists some textual tampering from a philosophical consideration; it is another to say that the Old Academy produced an authoritative text. Ge, 2019, 378–381; see also Tarrant, 1993 for a similar view. Many people think that the use of ἕλκουσι implies a kind of force in Aristophanes’ arrangement, rendering it as “drag” or “force”. See e.g. Pfeiffer, 1968, 196; Philip, 1970, 299 n. 6 and 300; Hicks’s and White’s translations. But this is not the only understanding; for example, Schironi, 2005, 428 and Mansfeld, 1994, 63 may prefer a weaker reading of ἕλκουσι, interpreting it simply as “arrange”.

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According to Diogenes, Aristophanes’ trilogies only include fifteen works (if we take the Platonic Letters as a single item), and Aristophanes leaves the remaining works “as separate compositions in no order”. This final sentence, first, implies that Aristophanes’ edition32 includes more than fifteen works that were arranged in five trilogies; otherwise, there would be no need to add the sentence τὰ ἄλλα καθ’ ἓν καὶ ἀτάκτως. The words καθ’ ἓν καὶ ἀτάκτως indicate the status of other dialogues in Aristophanes’ edition, rather than imply that other dialogues were unavailable to him at that time.33 In fact, a partial arrangement for an edition is not so surprising. We know that the Iamblichean organisation of the Platonic dialogues only involves twelve dialogues, but there is no reason to think that the Neoplatonists exclude other dialogues from the Neoplatonic edition and do not have some genuine interest in them,34 even though how the Neoplatonists put together the rest of the Platonic works remains a mystery.35 Therefore, for Aristophanes, the other works apart from these fifteen works in his edition are not in any arrangement (ἀτάκτως).36 Now if we can speak of an edition with some works not arranged, an edition of the Platonic corpus without a certain arrangement as a whole should also be conceivable. However, one may object that by ἀτάκτως the author merely means that Aristophanes did not arrange them into trilogies, and left them in their original order. If there existed an earlier arrangement before Aristophanes (which is highly unlikely), and if he took several works out of an existing order, and rearranged them into trilogies, he had already impaired the original order as a whole and made the remaining items unordered; hence it is impossible to keep the other dialogues in a proper arrangement. In any case, from Aristophanes we can see the possibility of an Academic edition without a definite arrangement. Arguably, the Academic edition might involve some work of organising and arrangement. For instance, there is a dichotomous division of the dialogues 32 Since  I believe that an edition can be simply a product of corpus-organisation and arrangement, here I can legitimately speak of an “Aristophanic edition”. Contra Tarán, 1975, 4–5 n. 11; Pfeiffer, 1968, 196–197; Pasquali, 1988, 264–265: they may have a text-critical activity in mind when speaking of an edition. 33 Cf. Tarrant, 1993, 205. 34 See e.g. Tarrant, 2014 for more discussions. 35 Since the tetralogical arrangement has been criticised at Anon. Proleg. 24–25, the Neoplatonists after Iamblichus are unlikely to have adopted it, even though there is some overlap between the Iamblichean order and the tetralogical arrangement, see Tarrant, 2014, 24–25. 36 Similarly, when Thrasyllus arranged Democritus’ works into tetralogies, he left several works “unarranged” (τὰ ἀσύντακτα, κατ’ ἰδίαν, Diog. Laert. 9.47, 49). This needs to be distinguished from the works that are not listed by Thrasyllus; see Blum, 1991, 145; Tarrant, 1993, 87–88.

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mentioned at Diogenes Laertius 3.49–51, which was attributed to Hermodorus of Syracuse by some scholars.37 And there are always some people who would like to grant an Academic ancestry to Thrasyllus’ tetralogies.38 Moreover, Tarrant seems to ascribe some discussions on the place of the Phaedrus to the Academy. The report that the Phaedrus is the earliest dialogue of Plato (e.g. Diogenes Laertius 3.38, 3.62) may have its roots in the Old Academy, perhaps derived from Crantor.39 However, the question of the correct starting point of the Platonic corpus does not necessarily amount to a corpus-organising activity.40 If we did believe that Crantor or other members of the Academy put the Phaedrus at the beginning of the edition of the Platonic corpus, we still could not know how they arranged the rest of the dialogues, and what the criterion might be; just as in the case of the so-called chronological order at Anonymous Prolegomena 24: we only know the first (the Phaedrus) and the last (the Laws), but never know how many dialogues would come in between, or whether such a comprehensive chronological order was possible in antiquity. In any case, there is no need to insist on the contention that an Academic edition must have had a certain kind of order. If a possible Academic edition of the Platonic corpus neither needed to contain a definitive text, nor had to have any particular kind of arrangement, then what would be the necessary condition for such an “edition”? In the next section, I shall argue that an edition of the Platonic corpus should primarily indicate a body of texts that embodies Plato’s philosophical teachings, as the maker of the edition conceives of them.

How Many Dialogues Should Be Included in an Edition?

Recently David Sedley has taken notice of the affinity between the establishment of a collection of canonical texts and the “invention of Platonism” by Xenocrates. According to Sedley, Xenocrates’ philosophical agenda was 37 38

See Philip, 1970, 300.303. See Lucarini, 2010, 351–357, although he ascribes the origin of tetralogies to the Academy under Arcesilaus or Lacydes. 39 Tarrant, Hermias, forthcoming. 40 In any case, the motivation for regarding the Phdr. as the first work might not be an attempt to establish a reading order, but rather a defence of the accusation on the youthful nature of the Phdr., on this point see Tarrant, Hermias, forthcoming. It is also instructive to appeal to a parallel case: in the preface to the Neoplatonic commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, there are ten questions on the study of Aristotle. The third question is “where one should begin studying Aristotle’s treatises”, but not all commentators discuss the general reading order of the Aristotelian corpus in this question.

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to “develop a version of Platonism that consolidated and unified the school tradition”, and he did so under Plato’s authority.41 Thus Xenocrates was able to select some Platonic dialogues as his “Platonist canon”. But it is not clear whether these very few canonical texts (including chiefly the Timaeus and the Phaedrus, not even the Republic) can be deemed an edition of the Platonic corpus made by Xenocrates, and (if so) what the implication of Sedley’s proposal would be. In this section I shall relate Sedley’s proposal to my examination of the necessary condition for an Academic edition, and investigate the implication of Sedley’s characterisation of Xenocrates’ Platonist canon, although I prefer not to dwell on the status of Xenocrates. I think Sedley’s emphasis on the close relation between the establishment of authority and the making of a body of canonical texts42 points to a nonnegligible activity in the making of an edition: the definitive determination of which of the philosopher’s texts must be included. In other words, the editor needs to distinguish the works that contain an author’s own views from the works that do not; he will include the former in the edition, and exclude the latter, before the whole collection is made available to a wider audience. This “athetizing” activity, compared to other editorial initiatives, may not be a very pressing task in the case of other literary works.43 However, it is the necessary condition for an edition of a philosopher made by another philosophical mind, who is often the head of a philosophical school, as is the case with the Old Academy.44 For the Old Academy as a school for Plato’s heirs, if its members did intend to produce an edition of their founder’s writings, the primary motivation would have been doctrinal. It is when one wants to turn back to Plato that an edition of the Platonic corpus becomes a desideratum. Otherwise, the members of the Academy need not care about what Plato said in his writings, but need only to inherit the “inquisitive spirit” of Plato’s dialogues (which might have been the case for the New Academy). But when they returned to Plato’s works, 41 42

Sedley, 2021, 32. Sedley has defended this thesis in a number of publications, e.g. Sedley, 1997; Sedley, Philodemus, 2003. See also Dillon, 2019, 7–23. 43 The Platonic dialogues can also be regarded as good literary works, and there exists a literary tradition of interpretation since antiquity, see Schironi, 2005, 432–434; but what I discuss in this chapter is the Academic edition, a philosophical edition that naturally belongs to the philosophical tradition. 44 Of course, an edition of literary works also involves this kind of editorial activity, but it will be based on different considerations. The editor of an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus must reflect scrupulously on which works can be regarded as the manifestation of the philosophy of Plato; whereas the maker of a literary edition may athetise a work or several verses out of the edition primarily from a stylistic perspective.

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what they paid attention to would naturally be Plato’s philosophical views.45 In order to make clear what Plato’s true theory was, they needed to establish an edition of authoritative works for further study by later generations. And it is at this point that one needs to determine the composition of the edition.46 Once the Old Academy finished determining the composition of the edition, they also set out to consolidate a body of Plato’s true doctrines, as they understood them. In this respect, by sorting out what Plato said, the members of the Old Academy could propound their Platonism and thus establish a school identity. Also, the Old Academy would then engage with other philosophical schools, objecting to allegations addressed to Plato and his heirs. As we know, there have always been anti-Platonic accusations: in Plato’s lifetime and in the Old Academy, particularly of plagiarism.47 By weeding out works that contain doubtful doctrines of Plato from the edition, the Old Academy could repudiate the allegations of plagiarism and consolidate an edition of “genuine” Platonic works for the wider public. One may think that this editorial intervention in the composition of the edition would be simply an investigation of authorship of the Platonic dialogues by removing the “spurious” works from the edition. However, I do not think it is merely an examination of authorship. When the members of the Old Academy establish an edition of the Platonic corpus, what they focus on is not “whether a certain work is composed by Plato himself”, but “whether this work contains the teachings that Plato agreed with”. Furthermore, we may even think that the question is not only “whether Plato agreed with this doctrine in a certain dialogue”, but also “whether Plato would have agreed with this doctrine”.48 When enquiring into authorship, one also needs to consider stylistic issues, crossreferences, and so forth;49 but when the Old Academy determined the composition of an edition of Plato, they focused on the philosophical views expressed 45

Although some people in the Old Academy may have been more interested in the literary aspect of the Platonic dialogues, such as Crantor’s interest in the prologues, it would be ultimately aimed at philosophical understanding. 46 Thrasyllus may also have needed to work on the composition of his edition, taking out the spurious works, consolidating the authoritative ones—as he understood them, before he arranged the Platonic works into nine tetralogies. But it is unclear whether the socalled Appendix Platonica at Diog. Laert. 3.62 was derived from Thrasyllus. Cf. Tarrant, 1993, 28–29.178–180. 47 See Haake, 2020 for a general discussion. For the accusation of plagiarism, see also Swift Riginos, 1976, 165–166.169–174; Novotný, 1977, 81, 220–222.233; Lapini, 2015, 1038, and Fleischer in this volume. 48 Dillon, 2010, 11 and Dillon, 2012, 49–50; Cf. also Thesleff, 1982, 91.94–96 = Thesleff, 2009, 239 and 241–243; Nails / Thesleff, 2003, 15–16 for a similar suggestion. 49 Cf. Ammonius in Int. 5.24–6.6; Boethius, in Int. 2.11.13–12.2, on how Andronicus athetised Aristotle’s De Interpretatione and how Alexander defended its authenticity.

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in the writings. In this way, some dialogues which we today generally consider as spurious might have belonged to an Academic edition, such as the Epinomis (perhaps regarded as the Laws’ thirteenth book) and Minos. Otherwise, it would be hard to make sense of their appearance in Aristophanes’ trilogies. If these two works were considered as spurious at that time, and were not deemed to contain what Plato would have approved, then Aristophanes, who has a strong philological and literary interest, would have had no reason to include them in his own edition.50 For the Old Academy, therefore, it is not because they are actually written by Plato—the early members of the Old Academy would have had good opportunity to know their true authors51—but because these dialogues or letters contain doctrines that Plato would have approved, and thus these works continue and extend Plato’s philosophical project. On the other hand, by rejecting some dialogues from doctrinal considerations, they would not work on dialogues that had been rejected for doctrinal reasons, since these writings did not embody Plato’s philosophical views, and did not deserve serious studying.52 As a result, an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus is an embodiment of Platonism, as the Old Academy conceives of it. At this juncture, one may further think that this concept of “edition” would be a completely personal one; that is to say, everyone in the Academy can make his own edition of the Platonic corpus, according to his own understanding of Plato’s philosophy. For instance, Xenocrates’ edition would be different from Arcesilaus’ edition, if there were such editions. However, it should be noted that the aim of the establishment of the Academic edition is also to encourage the study of Plato’s works for posterity, so it is natural to think that an Academic edition aims to exert some influence both inside and outside the Academy53 (the famous passage at Diogenes Laertius 3.66, quoted above, may point to an attempt to extend the Academic influence). In this respect, an edition made in the Old Academy would be a “collective product”, which did not merely reflect the editor’s own idea on what Plato meant in his writings, but that of the whole Academy as an institution (although under the leadership of

50 51 52

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As is held by Görler, 1994, 841–842 with further literature; see also Erler, 2007, 12. The ancient testimony that the Epin. was composed by Philip of Opus (Diog. Laert. 3.37) may have an early origin. It may be added that this editorial activity is also concerned with sentences within one work, which may imply the use of related critical marks for textual deletions (see Diog. Laert. 3.66). However, the use of these athetizing critical signs does not entail that the editor attempted to establish a definitive text, which must involve other kinds of textual correction. This was especially the case for the Old Academy, as it would be the first edition of the Platonic corpus.

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the Head).54 That is why I think that, if there existed an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus, it would include all works that appeared in Aristophanes’ edition, although I do not deny that this Academic edition could have been a more selective edition than, say, Thrasyllus’ edition. In this connection, Xenocrates’ Platonist canon, as Sedley characterises it, cannot be deemed a proper edition of Plato in the sense that I have been developing. As mentioned above, according to Sedley, Xenocrates’ Platonist canon primarily consists of the Timaeus and Phaedrus; even the Republic has been excluded.55 On the one hand, if excluding a dialogue from a canon implied that people would have no genuine interest in it, then it would be strange that Xenocrates’ Platonist canon had so little influence. His pupil Crantor seems to comment on other dialogues that do not belong to Xenocrates’ canon.56 Moreover, Xenocrates himself was reported to have composed an expository work on the Republic (Suda s.v. Ξενοκράτης: περὶ τῆς Πλάτωνος πολιτείας; cf. Diogenes Laertius 4.12).57 On the other hand, if precluding a dialogue from a canon did not prevent one from working on it, then the “canon” made by Xenocrates would not be what we normally understand it to be. The reason is that when we speak of a canon or a collection of canonical texts of Plato or Aristotle, it should at least consist of all works that interest us and embody the philosopher’s ideas.58 However, if Xenocrates’ philosophical project only enabled him to include these very few dialogues in his Platonist canon, his canon could not constitute a legitimate Academic edition of the Platonic corpus.59

Conclusion

To sum up, in this chapter I have argued that an ancient edition of a philosopher’s writings can involve one or more of the following three separate editorial 54

55 56 57 58 59

Cf. Görler, 1994, 842. It is worth noting that, at Diog. Laert. 3.66, the author speaks of “the owners” in the plural form (τοῖς κεκτημένοις), which may indicate that the edition belongs to a group of people, possibly the Old Academy. See Lucarini, 2010, 348; Verhasselt, 2019, 394 n. 22. Sedley, 2021, 28–29. See Tarrant / Baltzly, forthcoming. It is strange for Sedley, 2021, 32 n. 60 to suppose that Xenocrates in this work discussed the relation between the R. and his canon, which perhaps presented the reason why the R. did not belong to Xenocrates’ canon. I think Sedley’s notion of “canon” or “canonical texts” implies a similar understanding. Xenocrates’ Platonist canon consists of all the important Platonic texts for his invention of Platonism. Of course, my disagreement with Sedley does not imply that we cannot produce an edition by deciding its composition.

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activities: establishing a definitive text, organising a collection of texts, and determining the canon of the philosopher’s works. More importantly, I have defended the proposition that an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus can simply be a result of establishing a canon without postulating a certain arrangement or a definitive text. Therefore, the nature of an Academic edition of the Platonic corpus, if it indeed existed, consists in its embodiment of Plato’s philosophical views. This necessary condition for an ancient edition of the Platonic corpus has often been overlooked in the scholarship. Although my conclusion is concerned with the Platonic corpus here, I think my proposal is also applicable, mutatis mutandis, to editions of other ancient philosophers. With that in mind, it will be fruitful to scrutinise the concept of “edition” or “editorial activity” when we deal with an edition of a philosopher in antiquity, as the situation in philosophy will be different from that in other fields.60 Southeast University, Nanjing

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I would like to add three more relevant examples of ancient philosophical editions briefly. (1) Andronicus’ motive of producing an edition of Aristotle may also have been to establish an Aristotelianism. Hence his primary task was to decide which works should be included in the Aristotelian corpus. We know Andronicus also made arrangements for the corpus, because we have independent evidence on that, and it also contributes to his representation of Aristotle’s philosophy. Finally, Andronicus did some textual scholarship by offering variant readings of Aristotle’s texts; see e.g. Barnes, 1997, 29–31, but it is far from an attempt to establish an authoritative text for the Aristotelian corpus. (2) Something similar can be said of the Porphyrian edition of Plotinus. The Porphyrian edition is also a manifestation of the philosophy of Plotinus, as Porphyry conceives of it. Although this is achieved primarily through Porphyry’s arrangement of his master’s treatises, it is possible that he also determined the canon, i.e. the composition of the edition, and excluded some other treatises of Plotinus from it. In any case, some passages that come down to us are not found in the Porphyrian edition of the Enneads, and there might be other editions of Plotinus composed in antiquity, such as the edition of Eustochius or Amelius. See e.g. Brisson, 1992; Goulet-Cazé, 1992; Kalligás, 2001 on other possible ancient editions of Plotinus. (3) Thrasyllus’ edition of Democritus’ works may also be a characterisation of Democritus’ philosophical views, apart from his edition of Plato. Thrasyllus may have made a three-fold distinction of Democritus’ writings: (1) the works arranged in the tetralogies; (2) the works listed unordered and individually (cf. Diog. Laert. 9.47, 49); and (3) the works not included in the edition, which may be regarded as spurious. This threefold distinction reflects how Thrasyllus conceived of the philosophy of Democritus and how he determined the Democritean canon. Notably, when he did not include a work in his tetralogies, he did not simply exclude it from the edition, but left it unarranged in the edition. Perhaps Thrasyllus had a Pythagorean leaning when he composed his edition of Democritus’ works, which enabled him to depart from an earlier edition made by Callimachus. See Blum, 1991, 144–150; Tarrant, 1993, 85–89.

Chapter 6

Theory of Revision Revisited, With a Note on the Philebus Olga Alieva

Introduction

There is abundant evidence that ancient writers, editors, scribes, and scholars revised texts, just as we do today. They did so with variable success: while some revisions resulted in compositionally unified and stylistically uniform writings, others yielded poorly integrated and heterogeneous texts. Saying that a text was revised does not amount to saying that it lacks unity or perfection, though this might well be the case.1 If revision can result in both perfection and imperfection, unity and discontinuity, then it cannot be inferred from either of them. In addition, categories such as “perfection” and “unity” are highly subjective ones, meaning that discovering traces of revision will often have a tint of arbitrariness.2 That is, roughly, one set of objections raised against the theory that “some of the works of the Platonic corpus are products of a successive revision”.3 Another set of objections has to do with the fact that revisions have little to no explanatory force, even if demonstrable in some cases. Revision cannot * At each stage of preparation of this chapter, I have been privileged to have the generous advice from Debra Nails and Harold Tarrant, and I take this opportunity to thank them for all this chapter accomplishes. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Boris Orekhov who guided me through the tricky methods of stylometric research. The errors are my own. 1 As Thesleff 1982, 84 = Thesleff, 2009, 232 put it, “there is no reason why Plato (or his ‘secretary’) should have lost his sense of logic and his artistic judgement when recasting a composition”. 2 A recent attack on the theory of revision can be found in Bugay, 2018. Bugay believes that the main flaw of this approach is a sort of a posse ad esse valet consequentia: “If, say, we can divide the Phdr. into parts, it follows that Plato wrote it piecemeal. Since any Platonic dialogue can be divided into parts, depending on the position of the researcher, […] any dialogue must have been written piecemeal. It is a hypercritical, subjectivist, and mechanistic method of interpretation” (my translation). Bugay specifically questions Shichalin’s attempt to assign specific dates to specific parts of the dialogues; see, e.g., Shichalin, 2010. Thesleff’s own position is now much more cautious on this score (see Thesleff, in this volume). 3 Thesleff, 1982, 84 = Thesleff, 2009, 232. I shall refer to this thesis as “the theory of revision” to be concise.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_007

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account for features used to posit revision in the first place. If we maintain that a text was revised on the ground that it lacks unity, an “explanation” in terms of revision adds nothing to the original statement that a text lacks unity. On the other hand, if a text is, after all, a unity, then the fact that it was revised turns out to be irrelevant for hermeneutical purposes. In other words, the effort it takes to establish the fact of revision seems disproportionate to the modest result it gives.4 This chapter presents some counterarguments to these objections. Against the view that we cannot establish the fact of revision with certainty, I argue that there is good reason to take revision as the default option: as Thesleff put it, “the burden of proof actually rests with those who assert that the theory of revision is not helpful or even acceptable”.5 My argument comprises two steps: I first give a brief overview of evidence concerning preparing, editing, and revising texts in antiquity, and then focus on the hypomnematic function of written texts, as defined by Plato. The Philebus is taken as a specific test-case for these theoretical observations, and I adduce some additional evidence that this dialogue was revised. The final part of this chapter explores the applicability of modern stylometric tools, such as machine-learning classifiers, in establishing the fact of revision.

Revising a Text in Antiquity

According to Thesleff, one of the anachronistic presuppositions with which we approach ancient sources is that “the archetypus prepared and preserved by the author was a once-for-all product, and all the copies in circulation tended, in principle, to be identical reproductions of it”.6 These are, basically, two presuppositions. The first is the backbone of textual criticism aiming at establishing the definitive version of a text as intended by its author. Unless there is strong evidence to the contrary, we usually assume that whatever is published is definitive (and whatever we have was once published). The second presupposition is that a definitive version must also be a fixed one because readers, including the “first reader” himself, tend to preserve and not distort the text. Where this is not the case, we speak of intentional and unintentional corruptions, thus reinforcing the impression that a text that is not fixed is an anomaly, 4 Gloukhov, 2014, 304 admits the possibility of revisions in connection with the R., but does not deem it relevant, for the text as we have it “is not a set of independent arguments”. 5 Thesleff 1982, 84 = Thesleff, 2009, 232. 6 Thesleff 1982, 83 = Thesleff, 2009, 230.

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not a rule. Plato’s death is a force majeure which excuses his leaving the Laws unfinished, so scholars generally accept that the Laws were revised, disagreeing only on the question to what extent. That is not so for other dialogues: by implication, while being alive, one tends to issue definitive versions of one’s texts and to make sure that they remain fixed. The known practices of textual production in antiquity suggest otherwise. Heyworth and Wilson note that the “difference between the circulation of the first draft and the publication of a work was never as big in Antiquity as it became after the introduction of book printing”: authors held recitations, sent drafts to friends, welcomed criticism, added minor tweaks, made major adjustments, and rearranged earlier material.7 There is ample evidence that revision was common practice in Plato’s time or earlier. Thucydides did not write his History all in one go, Aristophanes altered his Clouds, and Isocrates’ Panathenaicus is a well-known case of “collaborative revision”.8 The fact that we have three versions of Aristotle’s Ethics is a telling reminder that the borders between “final versions” and “discarded drafts” were not as impermeable as they may seem.9 Plato himself mentions elimination of narrator’s remarks in the Theaetetus (143b7–c5),10 and a later commentator knows of a variant proem to this text in circulation (φέρεται), even if he deems it spurious (anonymous in Theaetetum 3.28–30).11 For late authors, the process of revision is documented even better. Cicero tirelessly changed personae in his Academica, and the two extant books of this text come from different “editions”.12 Philodemus’ Index Academicorum is actually preserved in two versions: P.Herc. 1021 is “an annotated draft”, whereas P.Herc. 164 is “an elegant and polished version”.13 In De libris propriis 6 (19.35, Kühn), Galen says that he revised some of his notes (ὑπομνήματα) after an unauthorised publication, and Pliny the Younger (Epistulae 3.5) diligently documents his uncle’s workflow, which included notes made first on pugillares and then transferred to opisthographic rolls (3.5.17).14 Mejer showed 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Heyworth / Wilson, 1997. See Prentice, 1930; Dover, 1968, lxxx–xcviii; and Collins, 2012, 174, respectively. On the relationship between the three Aristotelian Ethics, see Kenny, 1978, 1–49 and Kenny, 1982, 9. David Murphy, in this volume, reminds us that Xenophon’s Symposium could have been revised, too (see also Danzig, 2005). On “removing the inserenda” in the Tht., see Tarrant, Inserenda, 2016 and Thesleff, 1982, 152–157 = Thesleff, 2009, 300–304. Text in Bastianini / Sedley, 1995; on the date of this commentary, see Tarrant, Date, 1983. See, e.g., Cicero’s Att. 13.32.3, 13.16.1, 13.12.2–3, and 13.13.1, ed. Shackleton Bailey, all referring to revisions of his Academica, and discussion in Gurd, 2007. Kalligas et al., 2020, 276. See Dorandi, Opisthographos, 2000; Dorandi, Pugillares, 2001.

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that Diogenes Laertius’s technique of excerpting was mainly similar to that described by Pliny,15 and Diogenes’ testimony concerning the Laws (preserved ἐν κηρῷ16 and edited after Plato’s death) is consistent with the general practice of using “notebooks” at the earlier stages of text production.17 Some editions could be arranged by another party, as Heyworth and Wilson note, citing the example of Euclid’s Elements, revised by Theon of Alexandria in the fourth century CE. Philip of Opus qua Plato’s “secretary”18 was presumably more than a mere scribe taking dictation; and the end of the speech in the Menexenus shows that someone other than Plato updated the record.19 Eudemus is said to have dealt with textual errors in Aristotle’s Physics (Simplicius, in Physics 923.10–15), and Xenocrates could have had a similar agenda in relation to Plato’s texts.20 At least some of the discontinuities in extant texts result from negligent editing rather than conscious alterations. Thus, the text of Plato’s Cratylus in Venetus 185 (D) contains a variant version (437d10–438a2), different from that preserved by all other manuscripts,21 and another passage in the Cratylus (385b2–d1) is suspected to have been translocated.22 Multiple translocations in ancient sources (Plato, Demosthenes and Philodemus among them23) may have to do with the use of wax-covered wooden tablets (δέλτοι) or sheets of 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

Mejer, 1970, 16–28. It is difficult to imagine a pile of wood sufficient to preserve the Lg., and Dorandi, Stylet, 2000, 22 can be right reading it metaphorically (“encore en brouillon”). Another possibility is that only parts of the Lg. would still be in note form. Mejer believes that there is “no evidence that the Ancients kept notes in a bunch of slips”, but see Dorandi, Stylet, 2000, 15–18 and Dorandi, 2016. The Greek for “secretary” is ἀναγραφεύς, so in P.Herc. 1021 col. III, 37–38 = Test. 5 Tarán, 1975, 116. Nails / Thesleff, 2003, 18 argue “for the plausibility of Philip’s having gone beyond mere arranging and stitching together Platonic texts already on hand”. Thesleff, 1982, 182 = Thesleff, 2009, 328; Nails, 2002, 319. More recently, Koentges, 2020 adduced stylometric evidence to argue that the Mx. is un-Platonic entirely. On the Academic edition of Plato’s works, see discussion in Untersteiner, 1967 and Carlini, 1968, and, more recently, Ge, 2019 and this volume. Hatzimichali, 2013 gives a useful survey of text-critical and editorial initiatives in the Hellenistic period. On the Alexandrian edition of Plato, see e.g. Schironi, 2005. Schanz’s, 1881 analysis of stichometric signs proves that it is not a simple omission in B; on stichometry see Damschen, 2001. Schofield, 1972; Sedley, Cratylus, 2003, 6–14 agrees that “the passage cannot belong where it now stands”, but thinks that it cannot belong anywhere in the dialogue “as we have it”. He concludes that there was an “earlier edition” of the Cra. See Canfora, 1972 on Demosthenes’ Philippica  3, and Solmsen, 1965 on Plato’s R. In Philodemus’ Index Academicorum (P.Herc. 1021), a column intervenes between cols. 3 and 5 that is clearly out of place. See Dorandi, Stylet, 2000, 11–13, with more examples of translocations.

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papyrus (χάρτιον, χαρτίδιον etc.) or (in the Imperial period24) parchment (διφθέραι, μεμβράναι)25 at early stages of work, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus knows of an alternative opening of the Republic preserved on a tablet (δέλτος) after Plato’s death (De compositione verborum 25.212–218, Usener–Radermacher). After Lewis demonstrated that the word χάρτης did not mean a sheet, but a roll,26 one cannot go as far as Prentice, who suggested that Thucydides’ “original manuscript consisted of a pile of loose sheets with many corrections, alterations, and insertions”.27 However, translocations such as found in Demosthenes and Philodemus can only be explained by the use of “separate sheets” (whatever their material is), pugillares broadly speaking, at some stage of the work. In the Platonic Menexenus (236b6), Aspasia is said to have glued together some left-over notes (περιλείμματ’ ἄττα […] συγκολλῶσα), and even if the verb is used metaphorically (as LSJ suggests s.v. συγκολλάω), it implies that such practice was not unfamiliar.28 One must not assume that, once a text was written on a papyrus roll, it became definitive; we have already cited Pliny the Younger saying that his uncle’s “notes” were kept on opisthographic rolls, and Philodemus’ library preserves several instances of the “textual genre” known as ὑπομνήματα (among them P.Herc. 1021, also an opisthograph).29 This concerns not only the Index Academicorum, but also his On Rhetoric, preserved in several rolls. These are P.Herc. 1427 (book 1), P.Herc. 1506 (book 3) and 1674 (book 2), explicitly marked as ὑπομνηματικά; and P.Herc. 1672 (book 2) and P.Herc. 1426 (book 3) which bear no trace of such labels. The comparison of P.Herc. 1674 and 1672, which contain book 2, and P.Herc. 1506 and 1426, which contain book 3, reveal minor changes in wording and in the presentation of material (non-hypomnematic versions are more neatly written and, in the case of 1426, contain the name of the scribe). P.Herc. 1427 is a provisional copy whose text has not been fixed yet.30 Ὑπομνήματα are not necessarily “rough drafts” and may differ from fair copies only (or mainly) with respect to formal characteristics such as handwriting 24 25 26 27 28 29

30

See Roberts / Skeat, 1983, 22. See Dorandi, Scheda, 2001. Lewis, 1934, 60 and Lewis, 1974, 70–83. See also Turner, 1952, 21 nn. 3–4; Turner, 1968, 4; Johnson, 2004, 87–88. Prentice, 1930, 125. See Debra Nails in this volume. A “textual genre” is defined not in terms of form or content, but in terms of “textual function”, which is, in this case, to preserve a memory (as the etymology suggests) and to be consulted and revisited. Larsen / Letteney, 2019, 396, though focused more on the Gospel traditions, give a useful survey of the ancient evidence concerning the “textual genre” of ὑπομνήματα starting from Plato. Nicolardi, 2020.

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or presentation of text on both sides of the papyri.31 These are provisional versions destined for a limited readership or even the author himself,32 either not (yet) published or not intended for publication and normally devoid of title.33 They are characterised by a certain fluidity34: hypomnematic writings differ from “proper” books (συγγράμματα35) in being less “authored” and thus less stable, i.e. open to interventions both by the author himself or by third parties.36 Galen complains (De libris propriis 19.9–10, Kühn) that some of his books, not intended for publication (οὐδὲν πρὸς ἔκδοσιν) and given without inscription (χωρὶς ἐπιγραφῆς) to friends or pupils as a written record (ὑπομνήματα) of his lectures, were published under his or different names and “subject to all sorts of mutilations” (πολυειδῶς ἐλωβήσαντο).37 In sum, hypomnematic texts tend to be more fluid. The question to be pursued further in connection with Thesleff’s theory of revision is just how hypomnematic Plato’s texts were.

Plato’s Dialogues as Memoranda

While dialogues were certainly known outside the Academy in Plato’s lifetime, we cannot say whether these were authorised editions or “pirate copies” mentioned by Galen and by Plato himself in connection with Zeno’s book (Parmenides 128d7–8: τις αὐτὸ ἔκλεψε γραφέν). Isocrates parodies the Republic 31 Cavallo, 1984, 18; Dorandi, 2000, 88–99. 32 Plutarch, De tranquillitate animi 464F: ἀνελεξάμην περὶ εὐθυμίας ἐκ τῶν ὑπομνημάτων ὧν ἐμαυτῷ πεποιημένος ἐτύγχανον. On Plutarch’s use of ὑπομνήματα see Van der Stockt, 1999, 595, who concludes: “I am inclined to imagine it as a more or less elaborate train of thought, involving material previously gathered and certainly written in full syntactical sentences: we are beyond the stage of heuristics. On the other hand, the hypomnema does not yet display literary finish”. 33 Porphyry assigned titles to Plotinus’ texts (Vita Plotini 4.17–21): his teacher left his notes without titles (τὸ μὴ αὐτὸν ἐπιγράφειν), for he did not intend them for a wide circulation (ἐκδεδομένα ὀλίγοις). 34 I owe the notion of “fluid text” to Bryant, 2002—who, however, gives it a broader meaning, considering any authored text as essentially fluid. 35 The difference between ὑπομνήματα and συγγράμματα is repeatedly stressed by Galen, see, e.g., In Hippocratis librum de articulis et Galeni in eum commentarii IV 3.32, 18a.529, Kühn: ὑπομνηματικῶς, οὐ συγγραφικῶς (on Hippocrates); similarly Lucian, Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 16. 36 In his Letter to Gellius 2, Arrian says that he wrote (γραψάμενος) the ὑπομνήματα, but did not author (συνέγραψα) them. 37 See Mansfeld, 1994, 122 n. 217; Dorandi, Stylet, 2000, 78–79.107–108. On ὑπομνήματα in general, see Montanari, 1998.

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in his Busiris (15–27), and Aristophanes, presumably, in his Ecclesiazusae (570–710), but we cannot be sure if they have in mind an earlier version of the Republic or the text we know.38 The possibility that some dialogues other than the Laws were published posthumously should also be left open.39 Further, if all or some texts were meant for publication by Plato himself, does this mean that he considered them definitive and fixed? These are questions difficult to answer with certainty, but there are reasons to believe that Plato was not particularly concerned with the immutability of his (or someone else’s) texts: as a modern scholar put it, “writing itself […] is always a kind of miswriting”.40 In the Phaedrus 274b–277a,41 Plato reflects on various functions a written text may have and concludes that it is but an aide-mémoire for the knowledgeable (275a5: ὑπομνήσεως φάρμακον; 275d1: τὸν εἰδότα ὑπομνῆσαι; 276d3: ὑπομνήματα θησαυριζόμενος; 278a1: εἰδότων ὑπόμνησιν). According to LSJ, this is the first known occurrence of ὑπόμνημα in the sense of “memoranda”, “notes” (an earlier one in the Corpus Hippocraticum, De articulis 34, is justly suspected to be a gloss), and thus a technical use of this term can be excluded. What Plato refers to is not a specific kind of text (provisional, unpublished), but 38

39

40 41

As for “earlier versions” of the R., Ausland, 2000, 196 n. 48 gives a useful overview of the literature dating back to the nineteenth century, though he dismisses the possibility as “scholarly fiction”. Thesleff’s, 1982, 101–110 = Thesleff, 2009, 250–259 hypothesis of a “protoRepublic” has recently been accepted by Murphy, 2013, 340 and this volume. Because of the connection between the Busiris and the R., Livingstone, 2001, 48–73 dates the Busiris in the 370s. See Irwin, 2008, 67 on the Criti. and, more hesitantly, the Clit. Ryle, 1966, 254 believed that the Phlb. formed part of a trilogy which Plato did not publish and which “remained on his shelf” with the Criti. and the Lg. Though this is only circumstantial evidence that the Phlb. was not published, it is worth noticing that Aristotle (who reports some of the views discussed in the Phlb. in the Nicomachean Ethics 10), never refers to this dialogue by means of a title, as he does in some other cases, e.g. ἐν δὲ τῷ Φαίδωνι (Metaph. 991b3, 1080a2), τὰ ἐν τῷ Φαίδρῳ (Rh. 1408b20), ἐν τῇ Πολιτείᾳ (Pol. 1261a6), ἐν τοῖς Νόμοις (Pol. 1271b1), ἐν τῷ Τιμαίῳ (de An. 404b16). On titles see Rijksbaron, 2007, 20 n. 27. Bryant, 2002, 34. This passage is indeed “devastating” for those willing to present Plato as a “textualist” fully relying on the new technology for the production and transmission of knowledge; see Nails, 1995, 149, arguing against Havelock, 1963. Yet it is equally implausible to deny any such reliance to the benefit of the “unwritten teaching”, as does Szlezák, 1999, 39‒46. Goody / Watt, 1963, 329 say that Plato was “torn between” the critical procedures enabled by literacy, on the one hand, and the unwritten customs and poetic myths, on the other, but this is probably an overstatement. Cole, 1991, 123 and Waugh, 2012, 19 think that Socrates’ remarks about writing refer not to writing simpliciter, but to the technai of the sophists, but a parallel from the Plt. (considered below) does not support this view. My understanding of the passage is close to that of Yunis, 2011, 223–225: Plato neither criticises nor endorses writing as such, but draws attention to its limited functions.

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a textual function in principle attributable to any written text. If someone writes a document “which he believes to embody clear knowledge of lasting importance (βεβαιότητα καὶ σαφήνειαν), then this writer deserves reproach”, but the one who thinks that written discourses can at best serve as “reminders to those who already know (εἰδότων ὑπόμνησιν)” is not to be reproached (Phaedrus 277d1–278b4, tr. Nehamas and Woodruff). So ὑπόμνημα is, so to speak, in the eyes of the beholder: the same written discourse will be regarded as steadfast and definitive (βέβαιος) by an amateur but not by a specialist. There is a striking parallel to this passage in Hippocrates’ Epidemics 3.3.16: I consider the ability of evaluating correctly (τὸ δύνασθαι κατασκοπέεσθαι περὶ τῶν γεγραμμένων ὀρθῶς) what has been written as an important part of the art. He, who owns knowledge of it and knows how to use it, will not commit, in my opinion, serious errors in the professional practice. (tr. Reggiani)

This statement relocates “the focus from the authority of the books to the authority of their users”,42 which remains characteristic for later medical literature as well. Plato’s preference of discourses “truly written in the souls” betrays a similar attitude to writing (Phaedrus 278a3; compare Epistle 7.341c). Though a parallel between Plato’s philosophical masterpieces and, say, a collection of recipes might seem scandalous, Plato himself encourages such comparisons. In the Statesman, while discussing written laws, the Visitor says that not the text, but the “kingly man who possesses wisdom” should prevail (Statesman 294a8: ἄνδρα τὸν μετὰ φρονήσεως βασιλικόν, tr. Rowe). No law can ever be so comprehensive as to cover all the possible cases, and its very stability makes it similar to an ignorant person (ἄνθρωπον ἀμαθῆ) who is not capable of embracing anything new contrary to his earlier prescriptions (294b–c). However, the kingly man is not able to advise each citizen in every possible situation, so he puts down the laws as a kind of “reminder” (ὑπομνήματα), just like a doctor or a gymnastic trainer would do (295c1–4). A good doctor and a good legislator will not obstinately follow earlier γράμματα if things change; such obstinance is damaging both for the knowledge (ἐπιστήμῃ) and for the true art (ἀληθεῖ τέχνῃ) (295d7–e2). The Visitor then suggests that we imagine a society where written rules are provided for all the arts, and no one is permitted to inquire into these arts beyond the written rules (299b5: παρὰ τὰ γράμματα). The one who does so must be brought before the court “as corrupting other people younger than himself” (διαφθείροντα ἄλλους νεωτέρους); if found guilty, “the most extreme penalties shall be imposed on him” (299b2–c6). This 42

Reggiani, 2020, 167.

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vaticinium ex eventu implicitly connects Socrates’ death to his free treatment of the laws, comparable to a doctor’s free treatment of medical prescriptions (299c2: αὐτοκράτορας ἄρχειν […] τῶν νοσούντων). Being “autocratic” in respect to written texts distinguishes not only a true doctor, but a true philosopher as well. The word σύγγραμμα occurs many times in this part of the Statesman (297d, 299d, 300b, etc.), and if it still lacks the technical meaning of a “definitive” text, the connotations of (harmful) stability and specious expertise are clearly present. Elsewhere, the word is associated with sophists (Polus in Gorgias 462b11 and Protagoras in Theaetetus 166c8), and natural philosophers (“fluxers” in Theaetetus 179e6 and οἱ περὶ φύσεως in Lysis 214b2–5); it is applied to the political men insofar as these are compared to sophists in their excessive enthusiasm for written discourses, even if they themselves deny this affinity (Phaedrus 257d6–8). Zeno’s book, on the contrary, is not a real σύγγραμμα, though Socrates takes it to be such (Parmenides 128a6): it was not intended for publication by its author. The Laws follow the trend, set in the Phaedrus, of comparing written legislation to other forms of written discourse (858c6– d4). The fact that Plato here treats written laws as συγγράμματα, whereas in the Statesman best laws are said to be ὑπομνήματα, is not a contradiction: we cannot but adhere to the laws when the “kingly man” is not available (Statesman 297e); it is not something inherent in the laws that makes them συγγράμματα rather than ὑπομνήματα—it is our own incompetence.43 In sum, we may say that neither the word “σύγγραμμα” nor the word “ὑπόμνημα” are used as technical terms in the Platonic corpus, but both develop connotations of stability vs fluidity which are to become relevant later; and, in the Theaetetus 143a1–4, Eucleides says that he wrote ὑπομνήματα which he subsequently corrected (ἐπηνορθούμην). True, the evidence that Plato considered his texts essentially open to revision is scarce. On the other hand, the evidence that he considered them definitive and fixed is altogether lacking. Unless we believe, with some ancient commentators, that Plato’s texts are divinely inspired (and, on top of that, divinely transmitted), there is no reason to deny that they, at times, betray authorial or editorial revisions.

43

For a different interpretation, see Erler, 1987, 32.

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Philebus, a Patchwork?44

Ever since Galen, who dedicated a whole book, now lost, to the “transitions” in the Philebus,45 the readers of this dialogue have noted its “extraordinary lack of compositional unity”.46 Already Stallbaum had to argue the dialogue is neither truncatus, as Francesco Patrizi believed, nor unfinished, as Ast claimed.47 Yet even Stallbaum admitted that the Philebus is “omnium librorum Platonicorum corruptissimus”;48 “negligence”, “untidiness” and “obscurity” feature in many accounts of the Philebus,49 and a century or so ago commentators even doubted the authenticity of this text.50 According to Poste, the dialogue arose from “a boldly executed junction of two originally separate dialogues”,51 and it has been said that Owen believed the Philebus to be “a patchwork of earlier and later pieces, put together hastily for a particular historical occasion”.52 On the other hand, the “jagged and distorted”53 structure of the Philebus is often taken as an “interpretive challenge”,54 and there is no shortage of papers demonstrating its “hidden unity”—ordo tacitus, as Trendelenburg called it.55 After all, a reader willing to establish the unity of a text will always be able to do so: the book of Genesis is “many” for a historical critic embracing the documentary hypothesis, but perfectly “one” for a theologian. An “analytic” reading of a text is not necessarily incompatible with a “synthetic” one: after all, even the papal Biblical Commission admits that “the historical-critical method” is 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55

All translations of the Phlb. are Frede’s, with minor modifications. Περὶ τῶν ἐν Φιλήβῳ μεταβάσεων mentioned in De libris propriis 13 (19.46, Kühn). Kahn, 2010, 56. Ast, 1816, 293; Stallbaum, 1842, 10. Stallbaum, 1820, v. Schleiermacher, 1826, translated by Dobson 1838, 319; Guthrie, 1978, 238; Grote, 1865 = Grote, 2009, 584. Horn, 1893, 385.387 thought that the Tht. and the R., on the one hand, and the Phlb., on the other, could not have been written by the same person. Schaarschmidt, 1866, 277–326 and Döring, 1903, 123 also raised doubts concerning Plato’s authorship, as did Ueberweg, 1867, 116, who later changed his view: Zeller, 1875, 414 n. 2; for English translation see Zeller, Plato, 1888, 82 n. 86. Such dichotomic approaches to authenticity are justly questioned by Thesleff, in this volume. Poste, 1860, 105. Nussbaum, 2001, 459–460 nn. 21 and 38. The lack of unity is also noted by Striker, 1970, 9. Gosling, 1975, ix entertains the possibility that the Phlb. is a “rag-bag of arguments”, but then dismisses it in his Epilogue (Gosling, 1975, 226). Bury, 1897, ix–xi. He nevertheless concludes that this is, “after all, a well-knit, skilfully wrought dialogue”. Kelsey / Lear, 2019, 6. Trendelenburg, 1837, 12. The unity is defended, on various grounds, by Isenberg, 1940; Mueller, 1954; Hampton, 1990; Ionescu, 2007, and others.

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“indispensable […] for the scientific study of the meaning of ancient texts”.56 With respect to the Corpus Platonicum, however, scholars tend to be plus catholique que le Pope insofar as potential textual oddities are more often explained (away) rather than admitted. It is true that in most cases we cannot be sure if a contradiction or a terminological irregularity is unintentional: Plato’s dialectical method, after all, presupposes some thought-provoking disruptions. For this reason, I shall not say much on philosophical inconsistencies, genuine or putative, in the Philebus.57 Instead, it will be my task here to highlight some of the compositional oddities—and to see if any of them separately, or all of them cumulatively, support the “patchwork-hypothesis”. In so doing, I shall rely mainly on what Socrates himself says in the dialogue about its structure. Consider Socrates’ final recapitulations in the Philebus: they do not refer to arguments between 27d and 64c (see Table  6.1). The text as outlined in both summaries comprises the introductory remarks, the “dream of Socrates” (which goes after the “divine method” and basically drives it out58) with the subsequent defeat of both pleasure and intelligence, probably the fourfold ontology, and the prize-giving (referred to only in the second summary). The discussion of pleasures, which occupies the bulk of the Philebus, is skipped altogether in both recapitulations. Judging from Socrates’ summary, what we expect to see is a neat dialogue on the nature of the good: neither pleasure nor reason qualify as the good; the good life must be a mixture of the two, but reason is more closely related to the goodness of this mixture.

56 57 58

“The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church”, April 15, 1993, https://catholic-resources. org/ChurchDocs/PBC_Interp-FullText.htm. I am grateful to Prof. Mikhail Seleznev for this reference. One of such inconsistencies concerns the term “unlimited”; see Harte, 2012. Ross, 1951, 133: “Grote hits the nail on the head, as he so often does, when he says that the problem of the unity of the Idea is lost sight of in the maze of the succeeding argument; it is in fact never returned to”. For an alternative reading, see e.g. Sayre, 1986. The connection of the “divine method” to the rest of the discussion is a highly debatable topic, and I would not build much on it.

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Summary 1 (60a7–61b4) and Summary 2 (66d7–67a15)

60a7–10: “Philebus says that pleasure is the right aim for all living beings and […] that it is at the same time good for all things, so that good and pleasant are but two names that really belong to what is by nature one and the same” (≈ 66d7–8)

11b4–6

60b1–4: “Socrates […] affirms that these are not one and the same thing but two, just as they are two in name, that the good and the pleasant have a different nature, and that intelligence has a greater share in the good than pleasure” (≈ 66e1–5).

11b6–c3

66e7–10: “Suspecting that there are many other goods, I said that if something turned out to be better than these two, then I would fight on the side of reason for the second prize against pleasure, so that pleasure would be deprived even of the second rank”.

11d11–12a5

60b7–c4: “[W]e also agreed […] [t]hat […] any creature that was in permanent possession of [the good], […] would never be in need of anything else, but would live in perfect self-sufficiency”; 61a1–2: neither pleasure nor intelligence “would be perfect, worthy of choice for all and the supreme good” (≈ 67a2–3; 67a5–8).

20b6–23b9 “dream of Socrates”

67a10–12: “Then, when a third competitor showed up (≈ 61b4–5), superior to either of them, it became apparent that reason was infinitely more closely related and akin (οἰκειότερον καὶ προσφυέστερον) to the character of the victor”.

22a1–b8 (“dream of Socrates”) or 27d7–10 (“fourfold ontology”)59 and 64c5–9 (prize-giving)

67a14–15: “And did not pleasure turn out to receive fifth position, according to the verdict we reached in our discussion?”

66c4–5 (prize-giving)

I n t r o d u c t i o n

Socrates is rather light-minded in summarizing his research, as Henry Jackson noted more than a century ago saying that “recapitulatory passages which 59

The triumph of the mixed life is proclaimed twice, at 22a1–6 and 27d7–10, and if Socrates refers to 22a1–6, then there is no mention of the fourfold ontology.

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refer to the antecedent debate between Socrates and Philebus, are worthless as evidence of the matters discussed between Socrates and Protarchus”.60 “Worthless” is probably too strong a word, but it is true that these passages refer to but a part of our dialogue. Thus, Socrates says at 67a11–12: “[I]t became apparent (πέφανται νῦν) that reason was infinitely more closely related and akin (οἰκειότερον καὶ προσφυέστερον) to the character of the victor”. These words echo 64c5–65d10, where reason is demonstrated to be “more closely related and akin” (προσφυέστερον καὶ οἰκειότερον) to the “most valuable” ingredient in the mixture, i.e. measure.61 However, judging from Socrates’ recapitulation at 67a10–12, the examination of affinity followed the triumph of the mixed life, whereas in fact 37 Stephanus pages separate these arguments (from 22a1–6 or 27d7–10 to 64c5–9). Socrates’ summary would be fairer to our text if πέφανται νῦν referred to 31a8, where Socrates establishes a causal relation between reason and all good mixtures (νοῦς αἰτίας ἦν συγγενής), if one may loosely speak of “affinity” between a cause and its effect. In this loose sense, 31a8 fulfils the promise, given at 22d8, right after the triumph on the mixed life, to examine the affinity (συγγενέστερον καὶ ὁμοιότερον) between the mixed life and reason. Even so, Socrates’ recapitulations do not mention any argument after 31a8, and that still leaves us with about 30 Stephanus pages in the middle of the dialogue not summarised at all. Let us now have a look at those pages. Whereas Socrates needs a classification of pleasures and arts not to add all of them indiscriminately into the mixture, it is not obvious that he needs the classification we have. For Socrates eventually lets into the mixture true and pure pleasures (62e5: ἀληθεῖς; 63e4: ἀληθεῖς καὶ καθαράς); pleasures attendant on health and temperance (τὰς μεθ’ ὑγιείας καὶ τοῦ σωφρονεῖν) and virtue in general (63e4–6); and necessary pleasures (62e9: ἀναγκαῖαι). In the case of “moral pleasures” and “necessary pleasures”, the preceding discussion is not particularly illuminating,62 whereas in the case of “true” pleasures, it is excessive: false pleasures derivative from 60 61

62

Jackson, 1897, 68 n. 1. To say that reason is more “akin” to measure is not the same as to say that it is more akin to mixture, but this shift is prepared at 22d6–8: “[W]hatever the ingredient in the mixed life (ἐν τῷ μεικτῷ τούτῳ βίῳ) may be that makes it choiceworthy and good, reason is more closely related to that thing and more like it than pleasure”. It is therefore not surprising that the affinity of reason and mixture is no longer on the table at 64c5–9: it is something in the mixture (ἐν τῇ συμμείξει) that Socrates is now interested in, namely “measure and the nature of proportion” (64d9: μέτρου καὶ συμμέτρου φύσεως). Hackforth, 1945, 128 thinks that moral pleasures are a “vaguely indicated class”; the only reference to this kind in our dialogue is at 12d: ἥδεσθαι δὲ καὶ τὸν σωφρονοῦντα αὐτῷ τῷ σωφρονεῖν. Waterfield, 1982, 20 says that these pleasures are allowed in “entirely without warning (unless 12d counts as warning)”.

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opinion (36c–41a), probably the most fascinating for modern commentators,63 are abandoned at 42a6–b6. At 50e–52b real, or true (51b1: ἀληθεῖς), pleasures are those unmixed with (perceived) distress (51e2: τὸ δὲ μὴ συμμεμεῖχθαι ἐν αὐταῖς ἀναγκαίους λύπας). It seems that Socrates never returns to the initial hypothesis that true pleasures depend on true opinions for their truth-value, and Robin Waterfield notes one of the dialogue’s many “loose ends” here.64 This “loose end”, however, is most ingeniously tied up by Sylvain Delcomminette, who, following Norman Mooradian, reads this passage in the light of Plato’s Theaetetus.65 In the Theaetetus, Socrates demonstrates that pleasure is not a perception, but an appearance (φαντασία), and as such any pleasure includes δόξα, which introduces the possibility of falsehood in it. It is therefore possible that false pleasures derivative from opinion are not entirely absent from the final discussion of the Philebus: according to Delcomminette, all false pleasures are somehow derivative from opinion. This interpretation, however, also implies that some parts of the Philebus make better sense in the context of the argument against Protagoras, and this does not contradict (or even circumstantially supports) my hypothesis that there are different layers of composition in this text. At first sight, the polemic against the δυσχερεῖς (42c–51a) in the middle part of the dialogue is a step towards the desired classification of pleasures. Socrates now points out that “mixed pleasures” can belong not only to the body, but also to the soul, or else to both together (47c)—a reference to pleasures of anticipation at 36b. But pleasures of anticipation are first introduced as those “of the soul alone” (32b9), “pure and unmixed with each other” (32c6–8: εἰλικρινέσιν […] καὶ ἀμείκτοις λύπης τε καὶ ἡδονῆς).66 Their inclusion into the “mixed” kind can only be made with hindsight, and Badham (1878, 83) even marked 47c3–6 (περὶ δέ γ’ ὧν ψυχὴ σώματι τἀναντία συμβάλλεται […] ταῦτα ἔμπροσθε μὲν διήλθομεν) with daggers (†) as suspicious. The term “necessary pleasures” occurs in the Phlb. only here; it can only be implied that these are mild pleasures of restoration from 31b–32b. If so, it is not clear why these pleasures are not awarded a prize: see Gosling, 1975, 224. Their definition is given, though, in the R. 8.558d11–e3. 63 Ever since it has been suggested that Plato “was the first person in the history of philosophy” to treat pleasure as a “propositional attitude”; so Thalberg, 1962; Penner, 1970, 171, and many others. I give an overview of the relevant discussions in Alieva, False, 2022. 64 Waterfield, 1982, 25–26. 65 Delcomminette, 2003; Mooradian, 1996. 66 Cf. Phlb. 33c5–6: ὃ τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτῆς ἔφαμεν εἶναι, διὰ μνήμης; 34b6: ἄνευ τοῦ σώματος αὐτὴ ἐν ἑαυτῇ; 34c6–7: ἵνα πῃ τὴν ψυχῆς ἡδονὴν χωρὶς σώματος […] λάβοιμεν. This was already noted by Horn, 1893, 390.

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There is yet another notable oddity after page 32. At 32e, Protarchus has no qualms in envisaging a state when living beings are neither destroyed nor restored (μήτε διαφθειρομένων μήτε ἀνασῳζομένων), whereas at 42d the same thesis suddenly meets his objection: “When could that ever happen, Socrates?” One may say that at 42d the question is put specifically in connection with the body, not living beings in general, and that accounts for Protarchus’ surprise. But there is nothing to suggest that earlier, at 32e, Protarchus is only thinking of disembodied living beings. It is obvious enough to him that there is a third condition (τρίτη διάθεσις), “besides the one in which one is pleased or in which one is in pain”. True, such a condition is the most godlike (33e), but “nothing prevents the person who has chosen the life of reason from living in this state” (33a). At 42d, this is no longer obvious, which gives rise to Socrates’ argument that the soul must be aware of the restoration going on to enjoy it (43b). These inconsistencies may signal that some heterogeneous material is incorporated after 33a or later,67 and it is my contention that 42c9–47b9 is a likely candidate (not necessarily the only one68). Socrates has just examined false pleasures derivative from false opinions and added another type of false pleasures, those of overestimation due either to the distance from which they are observed or to the contrast which makes them seem more intense (42b). But instead of giving some examples of such hedonic illusions, he suggests considering “even more false pleasures”, mistakenly classified as pleasures. His argument, in sum, boils down to two points: (1) “middle life” (μέσος βίος) is possible and not to be confused with pleasure, no matter what the “wise” say (42c– 44c); (2) all of the most intense pleasures are of the mixed kind, and find their origin in some vicious state of soul and body, not in virtue or health (44d–47b). 67

This hypothesis squares with Thesleff’s analysis of the “compositional rhythm” in the Phlb. According to Thesleff, there are five types of exposition in Plato’s text: A = question and (brief) reply, this includes elenchus; B = conversation, the ideas to be expressed are distributed between speakers; C = reported dialogue; D = dialogue approximating to monologue; E = speech or continuous exposition of other kinds. Type C is irrelevant for our purposes, for the Phlb. is not narrated. Type B, generally used by Plato “for framework and interludes”, occurs at 11a–12b, 17e–20a, 22c–23b, 27e–28b, and then only at 67b. While the compositional rhythm in 11a–28b (≈ 17 Stephanus pages) is created, as in many other dialogues, by alteration of A/D and B sections, from 28b onwards (≈ 39 Stephanus pages), B sections are absent. Thesleff, 1967, 148–149 = Thesleff, 2009, 123 and Thesleff, 1982, 55 = Thesleff, 2009, 201. 68 At 53c–55a, the argument of the κομψοί concerning means and end is appended to the classification of pleasures. Τhis passage is out of place where it is: as Hackforth, 1945, 105 saw, this is an argument “against the original thesis of Philebus, that pleasure is the good”, a thesis refuted dozens of pages ago. The argument at Phlb. 55b–c (cf. Grg. 499b) is hardly necessitated by the argument, either.

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As  I have argued elsewhere, these two points are already implied in Republic 9.583b–586d, where we also find (a) an initial reference to the “wise”; (b) the idea that the neutral state is to be distinguished from both pleasure and pain; (c) the idea of mutual intensification in the case of mixed pleasures; (d) lexical parallels (γοητεία and γοήτευμα, οὐδὲν ὑγιές, etc.).69 The only difference is that in the Republic 9 Socrates does not specify where, and in which respect, he has modified the doctrine of the wise, whereas in the Philebus he does so explicitly (51a)—”lays bare the device”, to take a Formalists’ term. It is hardly conceivable that we are dealing with two different groups of wise men whose views on pleasure are practically indistinguishable, so I think that Republic 9 presents the same argument in a more condensed form. Its more detailed exposition, which would be out of place in the Republic, was incorporated in a different dialogue, the one recapitulated by Socrates at the end of the Philebus. The idea that some parts of the Philebus were composed prior to, or in parallel with, some (later) chunks of the Republic, is not entirely novel. Eduard Zeller thought that the Philebus is “presupposed” by Republic 6.505b5–6 (“ordinary people think the good is pleasure, whereas the more sophisticated (τοῖς κομψοτέροις) think it’s wisdom”, tr. Rowe) and Republic 9.583b–585b (the theory of false and true pleasures).70 Robin Waterfield considered the Philebus to be “a complement to, or even a commentary upon, the Republic”.71 Different accounts of δόξα in the Philebus 38b–39a and in the Theaetetus lead Ryle to the conclusion that the Philebus was composed after 366 and before 358–356 BCE.72 Thesleff considered Zeller’s interpretation “arbitrary”,73 and one reason for this harsh judgement is that such view was not supported by stylometric research. Indeed, anyone willing to date the whole of the Philebus before the Republic must disregard the fact that, on almost every stylistic criterion, the Philebus proves to be a late piece, close or maybe closest to the Laws.74 Zeller’s 69 70 71 72 73 74

Alieva, 2018, citing earlier observations by Adam, 1907, 378–380. Erler, 2013, 78, too, notes “wortgleiche Formulierungen”. Zeller, 1875, 303 n. 1 and 464 n. 4; Zeller, 1889, 491 n. 3; for an English translation see Zeller, Plato, 1888, 138; also Zeller, 1887, 219–220, criticised by Jackson, 1897. Waterfield, 1980, 298. Ryle, 1966, 251. Thesleff, 1982, 43 = Thesleff, 2009, 189. Among these criteria, let us note the following: frequency of certain reply formulae (such as τί μήν;); the preference given to καθάπερ over ὥσπερ; the complete absence of τῷ ὄντι and ὡς ἀληθῶς; the avoidance of hiatus; the use of certain rhythmic clausulae and of the anastrophic πέρι; a predominance of superlative expressions etc. Brandwood, 1990, 250 and Brandwood, 1992 argues that the Phlb. is the penultimate work. Ledger, 1989, 198 places it at the commencement of the later group (ca. 355 BCE).

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criticism of stylometric methods is well-known.75 Waterfield is equally sceptical, for stylometrists have to ignore possible revisions and “assume that the Platonic corpus consists of final versions”.76 As for Ryle, he believed that the Philebus was edited posthumously, so its “late” style would be nothing more than “secretary” style, as Thesleff suggested.77 Stylistic features, then, say little about when, and in which context, the discussion originated. These considerations against excessive reliance on stylometry are important, but we need not go so far as Howland who dismisses stylometry completely.78 Even if Plato (or his ἀναγραφεύς) revised the dialogues throughout his life, some of these revisions may still be visible for classifiers, as I shall try to demonstrate in what follows. The results of stylometric classification give some modest support to the thesis that, if not the whole of the Philebus, then at least some of its parts could be “presupposed” in the Republic. But there arises another objection. Zeller thought, as some recent commentators do, that Philebus 42c9–47b9 is an attack on Antisthenes.79 However, there is some evidence that Plato’s virtual opponent in this section is his nephew Speusippus,80 who can hardly be the “wise” of the Republic  9. This objection is not insurmountable, and not only insofar as Speusippus may owe his views on pleasure to some pythagorizing “wise” of the previous generation.81 The Republic was completed over a long period of time, probably 12–15 years (about 375–362), and books 8 and 9 contain the latest material.82 In the 360s, Speusippus is already active enough to be Dion’s “most intimate friend” in Athens and to accompany Plato on his third visit to Sicily in 361/0.83 So it is not chronologically impossible that Plato has in mind some of the Academic discussions on pleasure in Republic 9. Aristotle’s Topics, books 2–7 of which are believed to contain the earlier material from the 360s,84 is permeated with 75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84

Zeller, 1900, 282–286. Waterfield, 1980, 274. Blondell, 2002, 13 also concedes that “Plato worked on and revised his works over an extended period of time”. Thesleff, 1982, 96 = Thesleff, 2009, 243. A more extreme view is expressed by Randall, 1970, 220–221, who says (playfully?) that “anybody” could have written later dialogues. Howland, 1991. Zeller, 1875, 261–262; McConnell, 2015. See Schofield, 1971 and Dillon, 2003, 41 n. 28. Hackforth, 1945, 87; Tarán, 1981, 80, and Frede, 1997, 269 believe that the identification is based on a misunderstanding, but see Tarrant, Taste, 2010. Bringmann, 1972 pointed to Heraclides Ponticus, but this is hardly substantiated. Alieva, 2018, 15–16. Tarrant, 2011; Tarrant, Origins, 2012. Dillon, 2003, 32. See e.g., Huby, 1962.

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examples of pleasure and pain, which testifies that this was a common issue in dialectical exercises of that period.

Stylometric Evidence

To get a better idea of a dialogue’s stylistic homogeneity, one must split the text into shorter samples, as was done by Ledger, who, in turn, followed Lutosławski’s advice.85 Ledger used 1,000-word blocks, and, on his measurements, blocks 1 and 10 of the Philebus were attributed to Plato  1, whereas block 9—to the author of the Epinomis, which he took to be a misclassification.86 Tarrant also worked with relatively small samples (700 words), and discovered some late blocks of the Phaedrus cluster with several early blocks of the Philebus.87 However, his paper focused on the Phaedrus, and the possible revision of the Philebus was not specifically discussed. In another article dealing mainly with the Republic, Tarrant showed that two 5,000-word samples from the Philebus clustered somewhere at the periphery of the “Gorgias area”, and one sample—in the “Republic area”, which, given the standard chronology, is quite surprising, but may say more about the Gorgias and the Republic than about the Philebus itself.88 In sum, the possibility that the Philebus was revised has never been explored with stylometric tools. The considerations offered below cannot fully compensate for this lack, but it is my hope they could indicate some directions for prospective research.89 Stylometric analysis is known to be less effective when applied to smaller samples,90 so sample size necessary for correct classification in a supervised machine-learning setup was tested using the function size.penalise from the R  package Stylo.91 As Table  6.2 shows, even with 500-word samples and 35 features (mfw = most frequent words), the classifier is able to tell Plato 1, the author of the Gorgias and the Protagoras, from Plato 2, the author of the Sophist and the Laws. Similar output was produced for each “set” of Platos presented

85 86 87 88 89 90 91

Ledger, 1989; Lutosławski, 1897, 142. Ledger, 1989, 110. Tarrant, Support, 2010. Tarrant, 2011. On the possible revision of the Grg., see Tarrant, 1982 and this volume. For my experiments, I used Diorisis Ancient Greek Corpus: Vatri / McGillivray, 2018. There are minor lemmatization errors, but they are consistent throughout the corpus, and cannot significantly affect the output; see Vatri / McGillivray, 2020. Eder, 2015; Eder / Rybicki, 2013. Eder / Rybicki / Kestemont, 2016.

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in Table 3 to make sure that the styles associated with them “look different” for the machine and can therefore be used as training sets for the classifier. Table 6.2

Accuracy scores for the Delta classifier

Plato 1 Gorgias 500 mfw_35 1.00 mfw_70 0.99 mfw_100 0.99

Plato 2 Laws 5 1,000 1 1 1

1,500 1 1 1

Plato 1 Protagoras 500 mfw_35 0.96 mfw_70 0.96 mfw_100 0.96

500 mfw_35 0.95 mfw_70 1.00 mfw_100 0.99

1,000 1 1 1

1,500 0.99 1.00 1.00

1,000 0.85 0.97 0.95

1,500 0.89 0.98 0.97

Plato 2 Statesman 1,000 1 1 1

1,500 0.99 1.00 1.00

500 mfw_35 0.89 mfw_70 1.00 mfw_100 0.96

Our experiments show that the percentage of misclassifications grows if we take more stylistically proximate texts or increase the number of Platos to discriminate between; in this respect, Ledger’s conclusion, at which he arrived using different methods, is confirmed: differentiation between individual works of Plato is virtually impossible.92 We cannot have as many Platos as we have Platonic texts but, with 100 mfw and 1,000-word blocks, the accuracy is above 96% for all the combinations presented in Table 6.3. So much for the training sets. Let me note, though, that due to the culling procedure,93 the number of features actually used for classification of different blocks of the Philebus is somewhat lower than 100 with culling set at 80. It decreases even more, naturally, with culling set at 100: in this case, only features present in all the texts and samples are analysed—and, given the length of our samples, they cannot be many.

92 93

Ledger, 1989, 55. If culling is set at 80, only features present in 80% of samples (texts) in the corpus are used for the analysis. Culling typically (but not always) improves the accuracy of attribution; see Hoover, Testing, 2004.

block Phlb_1 = 11a1–14c1 Phlb_2 = 14c2–17c7 Phlb_3 = 17c7–20c8 Phlb_4 = 20c8–23c11 Phlb_5 = 23c11–26e5 Phlb_6 = 26e5–29e8 Phlb_7 = 29e8–33a6 Phlb_8 = 33a7–36b8 Phlb_9 = 36b9–39c3 Phlb_10 = 39c3–42d4 Phlb_11 = 42d5–45d7 Phlb_12 = 45d7–49a1 Phlb_13 = 49a1–52b5 Phlb_14 = 52b5–55c8 Phlb_15 = 55c8–59a1 Phlb_16 = 59a1–62b3 Phlb_17 = 62b3–65c6

Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2

Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2

lemmata 80 (92) 100 (40)

PL 1 = Grg.+Prt. Pl 2 = Lg. 5+Plt.

Classification results (method Delta)

% culled (number of features)

training set

Table 6.3

Pl 1 Pl 3 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 3 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2

Pl 2 Pl 3 Pl 1 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2

Pl 1 = Grg.+Prt. Pl 2 = R. 8+9 Pl 3 = Lg. 8+9 lemmata 80 (92) 100 (41) Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 3 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 1 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2 Pl 2

forms 80 (88) Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 1 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3

Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 1 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 1 Pl 3 Pl 3

Pl 1 = Grg.+Prt. Pl 2 = R. 8+9 Pl 3 = Sph.+Plt. lemmata 80 (92) 100 (42) Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3 Pl 3

forms 80 (89)

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As for the test set, it consisted of seventeen consecutive 1,000-word blocks from the Philebus; for each sample the classifier determines the “least unlikely” candidate from the training set using Burrows’ Delta distance.94 The results of my measurements are presented in Table 3; they can be easily reproduced using the classify function from the R package Stylo. What is of interest here, is that block 11 is classified into Plato 1 on most measurements, which is largely in agreement with my hypothesis, expounded above, concerning the heterogenous character of this chunk. One specifically notes that the replacement of Laws 8 and 9 with the Sophist and the Statesman leads to the classification of most blocks into Plato 3—except for block 11, which only groups together with the rest of the dialogue if we analyse wordforms instead of lemmata. One must bear in mind, though, that working under a closed-set assumption, the classifier assigns a sample to the author with least stylistic distance, even if this distance is a remote one in absolute terms.95 The results of the experiments can thus only signal various stylistic tendencies, they cannot be used to establish a relative chronology of the samples nor to prove with high certainty that the dialogue was revised. In this respect, Bugay’s objection that the theory of revision rests on the a posse ad esse valet consequentia fallacy96 still holds, despite all the figures and graphs one may summon in support of this theory. But then all statistical prediction rests on a posse ad esse valet consequentia. When studying real-life phenomena and not the immutable world of logical truths, one has to get by with probabilistic conclusions.

94

95

96

Delta was specifically tailored to the needs of humanities researchers and proved most effective in stylometric studies; see Burrows, 2002; Hoover, Testing, 2004 and Hoover, Prime, 2004; Eder, 2016; Savoy, 2020, 34–39. When tested on a corpus of ancient Greek authors, the method yields good results with relatively small samples (1000, 3000, and 5000 words) and different word frequency vectors (100, 200, 500 words), but its performance is worse with texts of similar genres (oratory, historical or medical writings); see Alieva, Testing, 2022. Similar problem concerns different “registers” within dialogues; see Tarrant, in this volume. In Alieva, Measuring, 2022, I make short-lists of stylistic neighbours for each segment of the Phlb. using for comparison the whole Platonic Corpus (instead of a limited number of author’s profiles) and the same Delta method; three out of five places in the list for block 11 are occupied by R. 6, the La., and the Grg. This is an unparalleled result: for the rest of the blocks, four out of five neighbours come from the “late” group comprising the Lg., the Plt., and the Sph. Recall Bugay’s criticism of Shichalin’s method (Bugay, 2018; Shichalin, 2010).

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Conclusion

The first two sections of this chapter argue that there is, in theory, nothing extravagant in the suggestion that some or all of Plato’s texts were revised: it perfectly accords not only with what we know about editing and publishing texts in antiquity, but also with Plato’s own utterances about the function of written texts. The third section narrows down this thesis to one specific dialogue, the Philebus, and highlights some of its compositional oddities. While some of these oddities may be explained (or explained away) by a more ingenious interpreter, their very constellation gives sufficient reason to doubt the dialogue’s homogeneity, and the stylometric analysis presented in the fourth section of this study offers some modest support for the “patchwork-hypothesis”. Reading Plato’s dialogues “analytically” may still seem a risky enterprise: Dorothea Frede, though arguing for “a later hand” in Plato’s Protagoras, admitted that “the last islands of stability must disappear once we start dissecting the dialogues themselves”.97 However, much depends on what we expect an interpretation to do. As long as our goal is to extract a coherent system out of a text, any “synthetic” interpretation will be preferable to an “analytic” one. Ryle’s unitary reading of Plato’s Parmenides is still held in great esteem, to the detriment of his later confession, made with the possibility of revision in mind, that this reading may have been “gratuitous”.98 Fortunately, we are now in a better position to see that there is more to ancient philosophy than building systems, and, from this perspective, exploring textual fluidity could bring us closer to understanding the collaborative and life-long practice philosophy is. Moscow

97 98

Frede, 1986, 729. Ryle’s “Afterword, 1963” to Ryle, 1939 in Ryle, 1966, 145–147.

Chapter 7

Traditional and Computational Methods for Recognizing Revisions in the Works of Plato Harold Tarrant

Introduction

The recent global health crisis has taught us all to be wary of those who confront us with a variety of figures, graphs, and charts designed to show us where our countries are heading and what we must do about it. In modern research on almost any discipline it is possible to collect a wide range of data, and to present an analysis visually in ways that enable the ordinary person to have some appreciation of it. Presentational skills can enhance the intended impact, but in ways that Plato would consider to yield opinion rather than knowledge. Much of the material used for wider communication would not have the same impact upon those trained in the field, and a biologist acquaintance of mine is extremely critical of work presented to justify COVID-related policy-making. The presentation of data in any field requires scrutiny, the relevance of the data and the methods of collection require investigation, and the questions asked about the meaning of the data need to be pondered by those with experience in the field. The field of Platonic studies is no exception, and as the computer and its resources became ever more refined over recent decades, the field of “Humanities Computing” began to take on a life of its own.

Platonic Statistics and Platonic Chronology

In 1989 and 1990 two books allegedly about the chronology of the various works that make up the Platonic Corpus were published by Ledger and Brandwood respectively.1 Brandwood’s consisted mainly of surveys of the works of others, involving a variety of data-sets, whether collected by visually reading the texts or by computer, that promised some kind of distinction between earlier and later works, ranging from words and phrases to the frequency of hiatus and of certain prose rhythms. Ledger’s work used a very different measure, that of 1 Ledger,1989; Brandwood, 1990.

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_008

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the frequency of letters, with most attention paid to the principal discriminators, letters in final and penultimate positions. Letters appealed to him as an element of style that the author could not consciously control, or at least not very easily. The problem with measuring the hiatus rates or the frequencies of particular rhythmic patterns had been that they did appear to become a matter of conscious control among fourth century prose authors. Therefore the main distinction that can be measured by either method is that between works that did not exercise such control, generally thought to be early and “middleperiod” works, and those that obviously did exercise control, usually identified as “late” works. Hence discrimination between two groups is easy. But these criteria are of comparatively little value in plotting the development of Plato’s style from one work to the next, and a conscious decision to adopt certain stylistic features could probably have been reversed easily enough if Plato ever wanted to return to the more natural conversational style of his earlier life. As for Ledger’s work on letters, although there had been no conscious decision to increase the number of words ending in a consonant or with a long or a short vowel in penultimate position, a preference for the avoidance of hiatus, i.e. cases where a word ending in a vowel is followed by another beginning with a vowel, would automatically lead to more final consonants and therefore to more vowels in penultimate position. Furthermore, whether those vowels were long or short might depend on which rhythms were preferred at the end of the sentence. So Ledger’s results were not independent of conscious decisions on Plato’s part. Even his method was such that there was little chance of being able to plot a steady path from the earliest dialogues to the latest. There was also another serious defect in work that had been done up until this period. It was assumed that Plato’s genuine works all employed whatever style was normal in a given period. This perhaps ignores the fact that Plato is often in dialogue with other contemporary authors, a fact that may have made him more inclined to borrow their vocabulary or even their mannerisms. Yet there are other factors that regularly affect style, one of them being genre, and the other register. One might have assumed that Plato’s dialogues all belong to a single genre, while the Epistles constitute another. Yet it might be argued, for instance, that symposia are a sub-genre of Socratic literature, or that a work dominated by a funeral speech, such as the Menexenus, would largely exhibit the generic character of an epitaphios logos. So it is not certain that we should be justified in regarding everything that is nominally a dialogue as exhibiting the generic character appropriate to that “genre”. However, it might be more accurate to agree that the Menexenus employs the dialogic register in the dialogic frame in which Menexenus and Socrates converse, while Aspasia’s funeral speech that Socrates reports in the bulk of the dialogue slips into the register

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appropriate for the delivery of an epitaphios. However one analyses it, features of style do change within individual dialogues, and my first cooperative venture into Platonic stylistics argued for a substantially different “register” or “voice” in Platonic myths.2 This applied to the bulk of Timaeus’ monologue in the Timaeus and to Critias’ report of the Atlantis myth that framed it. It did not apply to dialogic material in the introductions to either the Timaeus or the Critias. Had Ledger been allowed in his volume to reflect on the anomalous results of his seventh and eighth samples from Republic 10, it would have come to light that they both consisted mainly of material from the Myth of Er, a feature that naturally made them look rather “later” on many criteria.3 Hence various stylistic differences can be interpreted chronologically, but they may also have an explanation in the specific type of dialogue that we are dealing with, or indeed the specific register that a speaker, usually the chief speaker of a given dialogue, breaks into at any given point. Indeed, there are passages in which Socrates and other speakers draw to our attention the fact that he had suddenly broken into a speech that sounds different. Two passages in which this is so are the “Euthyphro”-inspired episode in the Cratylus and the nymph-inspired speech of the Phaedrus.4 Neither is a myth, but both show different stylistic features from the bulk of the dialogues that contain them. What this means is that it cannot be a straightforward task to detect subtle differences in style that would have a direct bearing on chronology. One needs to be reasonably confident that other explanations for the variations are not available. That confidence can only come with a broad familiarity with the Platonic corpus, the philosophy that it embraces, and the language that it ordinarily employs. Nor do I advocate that one approaches any set of stylistic data with a fixed idea of what it is that one would like to prove. A certain agnosticism is essential if the correct findings are to be achieved. How then might one have any hope of employing quantitative data to determine whether a particular Platonic work has or has not undergone various stages in its composition? To begin with, nobody who believes that some works have been substantially revised could expect to find major incoherencies, since any such revision by Plato would involve adjustments at a variety of key points. In the case of longer works it is very likely that modifications to the opening will be made after the author has a reasonable grasp of what the ending will look like, and possibly a number of other alterations, some stylistic and others more substantial. In terms of Plato’s early career, the Gorgias is 2 See Tarrant / Benitez / Roberts, 2011. 3 See Tarrant, Tetralogies, 2013, 6; Tarrant / Benitez / Roberts, 2011, 117. 4 On the former see Tarrant, Voices, 2013; on the latter Tarrant, Inserenda, 2016.

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one such longer work. Close to 28,000 words, it is equivalent to three books of Republic, amounting to 4% of Plato’s total output—a big undertaking early in life, as 514e5–6 might perhaps hint.5 It would have taken two average years of his creative life to produce, more if other dialogues were being written concurrently.

Verbals and the Gorgias

When I first taught Gorgias I was struck by the fact that Dodds’ evidence for an early date, for instance before the first Sicilian visit,6 applied principally to the arguments with Gorgias and Polus, while evidence for a rather later date applied mainly to the argument with Callicles. I also believed that the concept of “the pleasant” employed between 474d3 and 480e2, partly because it involved something fine (kalon) being an end in itself rather than just beneficial, was substantially different from that employed at 494b7 and 499b3, which argued against its identity with the good. More telling, the former passage took it for granted that pleasure and pain were opposites, while the latter argued against their involvement with opposite processes.7 Accordingly, I thought, the former passage was difficult to reconcile with the latter, unless the dialogue was written over an extended period or substantially revised later on, thus allowing for some development in Plato’s thinking on these issues. Moreover, I thought, the principal focus seemed to shift from school rhetoric to Athenian life. Hence I argued that the dialogue was written in two stages, at approximately the same time as Thesleff published a similar theory of the dialogue’s revision in Studies in Platonic Chronology.8 Somewhat later I was asked in class why there were so many verbals in Crito and, thanks to the advent of TLG, I was able to do a complete check of forms ending in –teon in Plato, and to calculate the rate of occurrence per Stephanus page for all dialogues presumed authentic, with the first book of Republic treated separately. Here are some figures (table 1):

5 See Dodds, 1959, 20 on “learning pottery on the big jar”; Plato evidently had this proverbial expression in the forefront of his mind as the Grg. draws to a close. 6 As opposed to the related claim of Kahn, 1988 that it preceded Prt. 7 Pain is there a state of need (on the analogy of hunger) while pleasure is a process of replenishment (on the analogy of eating); see Tarrant, 1982, 4. 8 Tarrant, 1982; Thesleff, 1982; Thesleff’s theory of an earlier Grg. involved narrative presentation (see especially Thesleff, 2003, but also Thesleff, 1982, 86–87 = Thesleff, 2009, 234) such as could cope with a scene change at 447c9.

130 Table 7.1

Harold Tarrant Verbals as a percentage of total vocabulary

dialogue Hippias Minor Ion Menexenus Lysis Phaedo Laches Euthydemus Hippias Major Charmides Protagoras Meno Parmenides Apology Symposium Cratylus Euthyphro Republic 1 Gorgias (overall) Theaetetus Laws Phaedrus Philebus Timaeus-Critias Republic 2–10 Statesman Sophist Crito

words

verbals

rate per 100 words

4,505 4,091 4,908 7,319 22,633 8,021 13,030 8,911 8,410 18,077 10,396 16,434 8,854 17,530 19,201 5,464 9,431 27,824 23,803 106,298 17,221 19,054 29,144 79,907 18,592 17,414 4329

0 0 1 2 8 3 5 4 4 10 6 11 6 13 18 6 13 39 40 212 35 51 83 260 67 66 19

0.000 0.000 0.020 0.027 0.035 0.037 0.038 0.045 0.048 0.055 0.058 0.067 0.068 0.074 0.094 0.110 0.138 0.140 0.168 0.199 0.203 0.268 0.285 0.325 0.360 0.379 0.439

If one allowed for the inaccuracy that follows automatically from the short samples involved in dialogues of fewer than c. 8,000 words, this gave the impression that rates of verbals should increase until the Sophist and then slowly decrease through Statesman, Timaeus-Critias, and Philebus until the

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Laws.9 Even so, it remained surprising that no verbals were found in Hippias Minor or Ion (which often seem stylistically close), while the Crito seemed to have far too many for a dialogue of its type. But if one split longer works such as Republic 2–10 and Gorgias the surprise grew. Verbals were absent from some parts of Republic (notably book 9, book 6 prior to 502c, and less unexpectedly the Myth of Er), and from all the Gorgias prior to 480e3—just after Polus has remarked on the strangeness of the conclusion. The remainder of Gorgias had a rate higher than Laws, while books 2–3 of Republic far exceeded the rate in the Sophist.10 While it was not unexpected that the arguments with Callicles seemed on this novel criterion to be substantially later than the arguments with Gorgias and Polus, could anybody believe that the internal variations within books 2–10 of Republic were determined by chronology? Of course there is little point in remarking upon the absence of any feature for which there is no possible use in the dialogue concerned. However, there are a number of common procedural uses that might have appeared in any dialogue, particularly those meaning “[one] must examine” or “[one] must state”.11 And generally a verbal would have been a possible substitute for many cases of the impersonal dei with the infinitive for “… must …”. I have preferred to compare the number of verbals relative to the number of dei rather than comparing simple rates of verbals. Collecting the figures for the impersonal dei made it apparent that there were only a very few of these, three to be precise, in Hippias Minor or Ion, making the absence of verbals less striking. By contrast there were 23 cases in the arguments with Gorgias and Polus, 19 in Republic 6 before 502c, and 37 in Republic 9—making it absolutely clear that there would have been many opportunities for the use of verbals had Plato felt them to be appropriate. Hence a more significant indicator of Plato’s love of verbals at the time of writing a particular work would be the number of verbals per dei (table 2):

9

Interestingly, this is almost the reverse of the pattern of hiatus-incidence: for the most part hiatus decreases until the Sph. and Plt., and gradually increases towards the Phlb. and Lg. 10 The rates were Grg. B 0.251, R. 2 0.664, R. 3 0.713. 11 I.e. σκεπτέον, ζητητέον, λεκτέον, ῥητέον.

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Table 7.2

Rates of verbal per dein

dialogue Ion Hippias Minor Menexenus Euthydemus Meno Phaedo Laches Apology Cratylus Parmenides Symposium Protagoras Laws12 Gorgias (all) Republic 1 Alcibiades 1 Charmides Crito Phaedrus Hippias Major Euthyphro Statesman Theaetetus Philebus Republic 2–10 Timaeus-Critias Lysis Sophist

verbal/dein 0.000 0.000 0.100 0.208 0.240 0.242 0.250 0.286 0.290 0.324 0.361 0.400 0.530 0.557 0.565 0.630 0.667 0.760 0.761 0.800 0.857 0.985 1.053 1.085 1.102 1.766 2.000 2.129

Again one seems to see something of a peak with the Sophist, falling away with subsequent hiatus-avoiding dialogues, and while the Crito now looked to be only an intermediate case, the Lysis had become exceptional—but only 12

When considering Lg. one should note that dein is particularly suited to capturing legal obligations; however, books 5–10 had lower rates of dein to verbals than in 1–4 or 11–12.

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because of an exceptionally low rate of dei. Euthyphro and Hippias Major now seem rather too close to some of the later dialogues, and the latter part of Gorgias too would give a similar result if taken separately: 0.830. It is hard to imagine that there has been a slow and steady trend preferring the verbal over time, and falling away as steadily afterwards. But my working hypothesis was that the rate of verbals per dei was nevertheless a modest chronological indicator. How does one test this? I have compared the data for two Athenian-born contemporaries, Isocrates and Xenophon. Isocrates, for whom many speeches can be dated, likewise gives the impression of being fonder of verbals as time went on, with none at all in several of the early speeches,13 rising to 19 in the Antidosis and 20 in the Panathenaicus. The rate per dei is highest in the Evagoras (1.67) and Panathenaicus (1.83).14 Hence chronology would appear to be a factor, if not an especially reliable one. Xenophontic chronology is far more uncertain, and for most of his creative life he was working in exile, presumably uninfluenced by linguistic trends at Athens. For him the rate of verbals in –teon to dei, while increasing marginally after book 4 of Hellenica (0.92, 1.11), decreases after book 4 of Anabasis (0.52, 0.33), and of Cyropaedia (0.28, 0.23), while there is a distinct drop between the first two books of Memorabilia and the last two (2.00, 2.71, 0.29, 0.23).15 Of his other Socratic works Apology has verbals only, Symposium is 1.40, and Oeconomicus 0.22. So that evidence suggests that he became less fond of the use of verbals over time. However, the late Agesilaus has the highest rate (6.00) of all works, followed by Hiero (3.00). Might the intended readership of some works have been a determining factor? So, while I believe that there is some chronological significance in a high rate of verbals, whether per word or per instance of dein, nobody should base a chronology of the dialogues solely or mainly on this factor. Let us be blunt. What is remarkable about their use in the Gorgias is that just over two fifths of the dialogue has passed before we meet even one instance, whereas the remainder uses them freely. It is as if Plato had suddenly found a new resource that he considered particularly appropriate, employing it regularly from that point on. It is not necessarily a long period of time that separates the arguments 13 In Euthynum, in Callimachum, in Lochitem, Trapeziticus, Aegineticus, ad Demonicum, Helen and Busiris: all the speeches of vol. 1 of Mathieu / Brémond, 1929–1966 except de Bigis (1) and Against the Sophists (2). I count here only the very common neuter singular form. 14 Nicocles (vol. 2: 0.10) and On the Peace (vol. 3: 0.29) still have very low rates. 15 I do not affirm that the books of these works were necessarily written in their received order, or even that the divisions between the books are more fundamental than some of the chapter divisions.

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with Gorgias and Polus from those of Callicles, but a moment of discovery. That moment of discovery could also account for the high rate of verbals in the Crito, and perhaps ultimately for the strong preference for verbals in particular parts of the Republic. The fact is that prose writers well known in Athens before Plato had used them very sparingly indeed. The eight books of Thucydides contain only fourteen verbals in –teon at a rate of less than 1 case per 10,000 words, with fewer still in the nine books of Herodotus. The Attic orators Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, and Isaeus seem to account for three cases each. In fact the verbal had at Athens been mainly a feature of comic language.16 There is no Attic precedent17 for the rate we find in the latter part of the Gorgias (23.8 cases per 10,000 words). Or none until we reach Xenophon, whose style, after he left Athens in 401 BCE, is likely to have been influenced by Greeks from far and wide. His brief Apology of Socrates contains four examples in two thousand words, while the last four chapters of Memorabilia I contain seven.18 In both cases verbals seem to have completely replaced dei. As there is more dispute than hard evidence regarding the dating of Xenophon’s works, we must here employ due caution. I shall affirm no direct connection between either of these works and Gorgias,19 claiming rather that it would have been very difficult for Xenophon to have written the opening of Apology of Socrates if he had been familiar with Plato’s Crito or Phaedo. Xenophon, as one might expect, is sufficiently familiar with other authors who have written on the trial and death of Socrates to claim (i) that they agree on the aloof tone that Socrates adopted, and (ii) that they fail to clarify that Socrates at this point considered death a better option for him than life. 16

Aristophanes has an average of over four cases per play (approx. 4.4 per 10,000 words). In Clouds all of the three cases (131, 760, 1205) are used by Strepsiades, so that it seems not to be language that the playwright associated with Socrates. 17 It is interesting that there are four cases, two contrasting pairs, in Gorgias’ own Helen. 18 The first three chapters contain three cases, but five of dei; Mem. 2.1–2 contain eleven (one dei). 19 Both Memorabilia I and the latter part of Grg. may reasonably be linked with Polycrates’ Accusation of Socrates. It is possible that Callicles’ quotation from Pindar at Grg. 484b7 should read with the most reliable MSS βιαιῶν τὸ δικαιότατον, and deliberately mimics a similar misquotation by Polycrates’ fictional Anytus (as claimed by Libanius Declamation 1.87: ὑπερτάτῳ χειρὶ βιάζεται τὸ δίκαιον [sic]), partially explaining Callicles’ following claim not to understand the poem. Though Dodds, 1959, 270–272 resists all possibility of a misquotation on Plato’s part, he regularly underestimated late antique sources, does not consider the context in which “Anytus” was said to have misquoted in Polycrates, and consequently fails to properly evaluate the thesis of Humbert, 1931. See now Dorion, Mémorables 2.1.80; Altman, 2023.

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The Crito, and in particular 53a–54d, not only clearly attributes this view to Socrates, but also explains why he held it, putting an emphasis on practical considerations that Xenophon would understand rather than on a philosophic thesis like the immortality of the soul. Xenophon had sought out and read other Socratic authors, whose works possibly circulated in draft for a limited circle only, but he had not yet read Crito. That Plato, when writing Crito, was not only taking up Xenophon’s challenge but also learning to appreciate a feature of Xenophon’s language, is thus not improbable. Plato, like other Attic prose writers, could already have used an occasional verbal without appearing to overuse it. Dialogues in which it is used sparingly include the majority of those that scholars usually refer to as “early”. And once Plato has found verbals a useful resource, they were liable to be used in greater abundance wherever justification was found, but they certainly did not have to occur in every passage of more than a certain length that he wrote. The exclusion of verbals from book 9 of the Republic (on the tyrant) seems somehow to parallel its exclusion from book 6 before 502c (on the philosopher). This could have involved a conscious decision to avoid them in those areas of the work that did not require a word for “must” very often in order to counter-balance the extreme rates which he needed when establishing the ideal state. One may compare the rates of dein and verbals here (Fig. 7.1):

Fig. 7.1

20

Rates of dein and verbal in successive parts of Republic20

The divisions in books 2 and 6 are at 368d and 502c respectively.

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What this diagram seems to show is that relatively small variations in the rate of dein seem to go hand in hand with greater variations in that of verbals. I suspect that Plato was naturally conscious of when the former was being overused, using the latter to compensate for this but also striving for some long passages where his “Socrates” sounded more like he remembered him speaking. But in any case we must surely decline to regard variations in the rate of verbals as an indication of the internal chronology of the Republic.

Positive Response Formulae

Shortly after discovering the possible significance of verbals for chronological study, I was fortunate enough to receive a grant from the Australian Research Council to look again at existing criteria for the internal dating of the Platonic corpus with a special focus on the possibility that some works incorporated later additions or revisions. Among the tasks was to look at the range of positive and negative response formulae across the dialogic parts of the corpus. Among the dialogues that I decided to divide, besides the individual books of the Republic, were Gorgias, Parmenides, Alcibiades 1,21 and books 2, 4 and 6, and often 10, of the Republic. One significant but complicated indicator of date had long seemed to be positive response formulae—ways of saying “yes”. In English this would include a variety of expressions, like “of course”, “naturally”, “absolutely”, “certainly”, “indeed”, “true” etc., and several more colloquial ways that pass in and out of fashion, and might readily situate a conversation during a given period. Greek was no different. An obvious example of a larger early positive response was panu ge while ti mēn was widely agreed to be later. I had collected all such responses for the majority of dialogues, and on the basis of generally agreed phases of Plato’s compositional life divided all of them except the simple nai into groups. In the case of responses found much more frequently in one putative chronological phase I labelled them “early”, “middle” or “late”. Where the rate was highest, but more marginally so, in “early” dialogues I labelled them E2; highest, but more marginally so, in putatively “late” dialogues became L2; and highest, but more marginally so, in putatively “middle” dialogues, either M2A if commoner in “early” than in “late”, or M2B if commoner

21 This did not involve a conviction in the work’s authenticity, but had rather been determined by Pamela Clark’s proposal that the work could be divided into a spurious part followed by an authentic section (involving what followed the central monologue and Persia and Sparta); see Clark, 1955.

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Fig. 7.2

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Position of texts according to two principal components

in “late” than in “early”. I also needed a group EL that seemed least common in the “middle” period, which was heavily dominated by the Republic. While not all data from this study survived, I recently rediscovered the percentage of each group found in most texts, but without works that were almost all monologic (e.g. Apology, Menexenus), most works likely to be spurious, and Laws beyond book I.22 Being now more conscious of the power of multivariate analysis, I decided to analyse the data in this fashion using cluster analysis and principal component analysis. The two charts here are (Fig. 7.2) a scattergram that charts the position of the texts on the first two principal components, and (Fig. 7.3) a corresponding map of the weightings given in the analysis to the various groups. One should first note from the weightings chart that PC1 (horizontal axis) appears to be separating the supposed earlier groups from the supposed later ones, with early, E2 and M2A groups, along with nai, all tending to place texts at the positive end of the scale, and late, L2 and M2B groups all exerting a pull to the left. It was something of a surprise that even the EL group did so. PC2 (vertical axis) separated most obviously the middle group at one extreme and the EL group, rarest in middle dialogues, at the other. Apart from the Hippias Major whose extreme low score on the vertical axis (and high score on the

22

The whole work had been included in the data-collection, and the absence of books other than the first seemed unimportant given their established “late” status.

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Fig. 7.3

Weightings afforded to groups of responses

horizontal) is almost certainly due to its extreme rate of nai, it was Republic books 4B, 5 and 9 that had the lowest scores here. The proximity of the dialogic part of Republic  2 (R2A) and the whole of Republic 3, or again that of Republic 6A (philosopher kings) and 6B (Sun and Line) should give one confidence both of the absence of any break between those sequences and in the overall validity of the fortuitous process. Again, many would find it credible that any text with a negative value on principal component 1 should be regarded as “middle or late”, and everything given a positive value, with the possible exceptions of the Symposium and Parmenides A, should be seen as “early”. Parmenides B, however, occupies a liminal position quite close to Theaetetus, but in the segment (negative on both axes) into which most seemingly middle dialogues had been placed. The surprise occupant of this segment is the Sophist,23 normally seen as the earliest hiatus-avoiding dialogue of those analysed.24 By comparison Statesman, Philebus and Laws 1 were all well into the upper left segment (+1.0 on PC2). While I acknowledge that a number of dialogues may have been revised, or taken up again later, there is only a limited number of cases where I suspected that a dividing line might be drawn at a particular point. For instance, I have been convinced that the Theaetetus has gone through different stages, but I have no confidence that different parts can be clearly identified. The relative earliness of Republic 1 is certainly suggested by this analysis, as is the relative 23 24

Note the proximity of Sph. to R. 2–3, which was also evident in our study of verbals. Note that Ti., Criti. and parts of the Lg. are insufficiently dialogic to produce meaningful results.

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earliness of that part of the Parmenides before the deductions. Like the two parts of the Alcibiades  1, those of the Gorgias (arguments with Gorgias and Polus, and arguments with Callicles) are far enough apart to arouse suspicions that they have not been continuously written, though other factors could surely account for this degree of separation.25 In any case their separation is not as striking as the separation of Republic 1 from all other books of the Republic, or many other divisions within the Republic.

Hiatus Across Punctuation

While the late dialogues consciously avoid too much hiatus, there is only a small movement in this direction in what we might call the middle period. One has to ignore the Parmenides because its limited vocabulary is heavily tilted towards words beginning with vowels, and there is therefore much more chance that such a word will follow another that ends in a vowel. Except across punctuation, all dialogues gave figures of between 15.7 cases of hiatus per 100 word-breaks (Phaedrus) and 21.6 (Hippias Minor). Other than book 1 (19.9%), all books of Republic gave figures between 16% and 19%, the two parts of the Alcibiades 1 differed by only 1.0%, and the two parts of the Gorgias by a mere 0.1%. Across punctuation there was much more variation, between 23.1% for Republic 2A and 35.7% for Euthydemus. Within books 2 to 10 of the Republic itself there was a variation between 23.1% and 30.4%. In this case part A of the Gorgias gave a figure of 34.3%, while part B, from the arguments with Callicles, was 29.6%. This means that there was scarcely a hint in part A that such hiatus might be best avoided, and it was comparable only with book 1 of the Republic; part B was comparable rather with most other dialogic parts of Republic.26 While these figures again suggested a later date for Gorgias B than for Gorgias A, there were sufficient other surprises in the results to warrant extreme caution. Both Lysis and Euthydemus were giving figures higher than for Gorgias A (34.9%, 35.7%), while Laches gave a figure lower than for Gorgias B (29.5%). The other was the observation that texts of a primarily monologic character seemed regularly to yield figures slightly lower than expected;27 this 25

An obvious example is when Gorgias agrees to answer as briefly as possible (449c), and uses nai quite a lot in what follows. 26 These usually varied between 30.4% (for 6B) and 28.3% (for 6A), excepting (i) book 8 (26.1%), and (ii) predominantly monologic parts such as 2A (positions adopted by Glaucon and Adeimantus, 23.1%) and 10B (Myth of Er, 23.5%); a similar effect of monologue is visible in Mx. (24.4%). 27 The Ap. (33.5%) looks like an exception.

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might also apply to texts that contained long continuous speeches, of which there is a little more in Gorgias B than in A. Phaedrus, for instance, registered the low figure of 25.1%, while that is also a plausible explanation of the Laches’ relatively low figure. A further complication would be the intended mode of delivery. The presence of hiatus would presumably have had the potential to impede the natural flow of delivery, particularly by readers less familiar with the text. So where Plato expected to be reading the entire dialogue himself (as presumably in most works where the principal conversation is narrated) there would have been less need to minimise cross-punctuation hiatus, but, if he intended to delegate reading to a slave (as happens in Theaetetus, 143b–c) or a colleague, then perhaps such potential stumbling blocks needed to be minimised. Apart from Republic books 2–10, the average rate for narrated dialogues (Charmides, Euthydemus, Lysis, Phaedo, Protagoras, Republic 1, Symposium) was 32.7% even though the Symposium contains much monologue and registers a figure of 27.9%. Any difference between narrative and dramatic presentation can have a bearing on issues of revisions to the Gorgias as well, for Thesleff postulated that the earliest version had been in narrative form.28 If that is correct, then one might suppose that Gorgias A was much less thoroughly revised than any original parts of Gorgias B.

Multivariate Analysis of Vocabulary

Since I first puzzled over the curious case of verbals I have become much more conscious of the possibilities that multivariate analysis of vocabulary can offer those who want to solve questions of authorship, chronology, or register. The frequencies of several different words, usually selected with a view to their being minimally related to subject matter, can be analysed by cluster analysis or principal component analysis to yield a far more meaningful picture of which texts or parts of a text are stylistically alike, and which show significant differences. Among many tests that I applied to the Platonic corpus are cluster analysis of the recurrent non-philosophical vocabulary of Gorgias. In test 1 (see Table 7.3) the frequencies of 43 “words”29 were compared over 37 x 700-word blocks of text. All but eight blocks were placed in either cluster 1 or cluster 2. 28 Thesleff 1982, 86–87 = Thesleff, 2009, 234–235; Thesleff, 1989, 7 n. 28; Thesleff, 2003 = Thesleff, 2009, 551–556. 29 Differences of number, gender and case are here ignored, as are the inflections of verbs; however, no nouns and few verbs or adjectives were counted as “recurrent nonphilosophical” words.

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Cluster 1 consisted of thirteen of the fifteen blocks prior to 477e, exceptions being blocks 5 [455c–457d] and 12 [471a–473a], plus also 25 [499b–501b] and 28 [505c–507c]. Cluster 2 consisted of twelve of the remaining twenty-two blocks of text, as well as blocks 5 and 12 from before 477e. Cluster 3 (closest to 2) consisted of blocks 17 [481e–484a], 20 [488d–490c] and 21 [490d–492d]. Cluster 4 (fairly close to 2) consisted of the final two blocks [522c–524d–527e], influenced by myth, along with block 18 [484b–486e], influenced by poetic material. Cluster 5 (closer to 1 than to 2) contained blocks 23–24 (494e–497a–499b). Table 7.3

Cluster analysis into 5 clusters, 43 words

block 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 455c–457d 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 471a–473a 13. 14. 15. 16. 479e–481e 17. 481e–484a 18. 484b–486e 19. 20. 488d–490c 21. 490d–492d 22. 23. 494e–497a 24. 497a–499b 25. 499b–501b 26. 27.

cluster 1 xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

cluster 2

cluster 4

cluster 5

xxxx

xxxx

xxxx

xxxx

xxxx

xxxx

cluster 3

xxxx xxxx

xxxx

xxxx

xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

142 Table 7.3

Harold Tarrant Cluster analysis into 5 clusters, 43 words (cont.)

block 28. 505c–507c 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 522c–524d 37. 524d–527e

cluster 1 xxxx

cluster 2

cluster 3

xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx

cluster 4

cluster 5

xxxx xxxx

In test 2 the frequencies of 39 words were compared. Results were not greatly different. Table 7.4

Cluster analysis into 5 clusters, 39 words

block 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 455c–457d 6. 7. 459e–462b 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 471a–473a 13. 473a–475b 14. 15. 16. 479e–481e 17. 481e–484a 18. 484b–486e 19.

cluster 1 yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy

yyyy yyyy

cluster 2

cluster 3

yyyy yyyy

yyyy yyyy

yyyy yyyy yyyy

yyyy

cluster 4

cluster 5

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Cluster analysis into 5 clusters, 39 words (cont.)

block 20. 488d–490c 21. 490d–492d 22. 23. 494e–497a 24. 497a–499b 25. 499b–501b 26. 27. 28. 505c–507c 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 522c–524d 37. 524d–527e

cluster 1

cluster 2 yyyy

cluster 3

yyyy

cluster 5

yyyy

yyyy

yyyy

cluster 4

yyyy yyyy

yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy yyyy

yyyy yyyy

What was cluster 4 in the last analysis, has now become cluster 3 (still close to cluster 2), and there have been other minor changes; but the overall picture is quite similar, with cluster 1 dominating the arguments with Gorgias and Polus, and cluster two the arguments with Callicles. The rather different diction in myth and in the lessons learned from the myth (everything from 523a) was pointed out by Tarrant, Benitez and Roberts,30 so there was no surprise that blocks 36–37 were not put in cluster 2; but the boundary between myth and other quasi-inspired literary passages is hard to determine, so that the inclusion of 18 (484a3–486b4) in the same cluster as 522c–527e may either be explained in terms of Callicles’ myth-derived lessons for Socrates, or in terms of its literary pretensions.31 30 31

Tarrant / Benitez / Roberts, 2011. It is here that Pindar is quoted (indeed perhaps deliberately misquoted) at 484b; while the influence of Euripides’ Antiope continues from 484e3 to 486d1. Note particularly the presence of the verb ἐνδείκνυσθαι at 484b2, often employed where a lesson is illustrated from myth, as it is in the discussion of the Water-Carriers myth at 493b4 and c4; Socrates also uses the verb at 488a5 to refer back to Callicles’ lessons about “the better and superior”

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Both these analyses tended to suggest that there was some kind of stylistic division causing cluster 1 to dominate in the arguments with Gorgias and Polus and cluster 2 in the arguments with Callicles. If this is so, then it should be the case that there is a statistically significant difference in the rates at which some of the component words occur. Since there were 15 blocks of text belonging wholly to the earlier arguments and 21 belonging wholly to the later arguments, it was easy to conduct a T-test that measured the probability that the first 15 blocks and the last 21 might be a randomly selected subset of the same set. Of course they had not been randomly selected, but the question was whether they had been selected in such a way as to offer explanation of the differences between the two sets of numbers. Several words used in my analyses gave less than 5% probability. They were: καί, οὗτος, ἄν, ὡς, τίς, ἔχειν, γίγνεσθαι, ἐπί, εἰς, ἕτερος, ὅπως, ἔτι, and μέλλειν.32 But the aim was to find out whether there might be a chronological factor explaining the differences. One way was to examine whether one agreed later dialogue and one agreed early33 dialogue came closer to the average for blocks 1–15 or to 17–37. I chose the Phaedrus and the Meno respectively.34 The results, with Hippias Major added, appear in the Table 7.5: Table 7.5

word καί οὗτος ἄν ὡς τίς ἔχειν γίγνεσθαι

32 33 34

Cross-dialogue comparisons

GrgA avg. 5.07 1.91 1.23 0.52 1.01 0.50 0.22

GrgB avg. 6.17 2.51 0.88 0.91 0.52 0.76 0.45

Meno avg. 4.70 2.82 1.47 0.50 0.72 0.50 0.67

HpMa avg. 5.09 2.18 1.21 0.66 0.59 0.49 0.21

Phdr. avg. 4.90 1.55 0.98 0.88 0.49 0.53 0.64

from Persian history at 483d5–484b1 and ultimately from the case of Heracles, in which it was claimed that the property of “the worse and inferior” all really belongs to “the better and superior” (484c1–3). Pronouns and adjectives involved all cases and genders, verbs involved all forms. Not necessarily “earlier”, since there is little agreement about the order of this part of the corpus. It seemed best to compare two direct dialogues, but the postulation of an early version of Grg. would not facilitate placing many dialogues earlier than that, and the best that could be hoped for is probably a dialogue unlikely to be much later. The Phdr. literary nature and monologic sections meant that it was an unsafe comparison, but all putative middleperiod dialogues have their problems.

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word ἐπί εἰς ἕτερος ὅπως ἔτι μέλλειν

Cross-dialogue comparisons (cont.)

GrgA avg. 0.10 0.09 0.08 0.05 0.02 0.01

GrgB avg. 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.16 0.13 0.12

Meno avg. 0.13 0.17 0.15 0.05 0.13 0.04

HpMa avg. 0.20 0.27 0.08 0.02 0.21 0.07

Phdr. avg. 0.30 0.39 0.16 0.06 0.18 0.14

The table presents figures that challenge a chronological explanation in bold, and those which are compatible with it but do not directly suggest it in italic. Meno and Hippias Major both come closer to the latter part of Gorgias for three words, and are roughly equidistant from the two parts for three words. They are closer to the earlier part for seven words. Phaedrus came closer to the earlier part for four words, but, as expected, to the latter part for nine words. This is by no means a stunning result, and it reminds us that interpretation is complicated, even if some seeming anomalies are easily resolved, like the high rate of γίγνεσθαι in the Meno, which is linked with its subject of how excellence comes into existence.35 Another such anomaly disappears if one recalls that the first question of the Gorgias is “who” (or “what”, τίς) Gorgias is, and “what” he practices. This affects the rate of the interrogative τίς from 448b5 to 453c6, giving high rates for the first 2,100 words, in which the average rate reaches 2.14%. Subject matter sometimes affects the rate even of the most ordinary words. In this case a fairer estimate of the rate of τίς for the earlier pages of Gorgias would involve only blocks 4 to 15, and give a rate of just 0.73%, extremely close to that of Meno. The difficulty would be that, without the first three blocks, the T-test would not have selected this word as involving two sets that differ to a statistically significant degree. Some differences between Gorgias A and Gorgias B are less related to the topic of discussion, but might still have a non-chronological explanation. Take the case of καί (“and”, “also”). Whereas the only commoner word, the definite article, shows a clear increase between what are supposedly the earliest works and the latest in the corpus, with a normal range between 7% and 13% of vocabulary, I can discern no such difference regarding καί, but what is 35

The following cases are directly or indirectly relevant: 71a5.86a8.92e8.93a4.a6.a7.a9.c1. c7.94a2.96d4.e5.98a6.99a3.a4.a8.c1 (I disregard six cases of the more technical παραγίγνεσθαι). Without the listed instances the rate for Men. would be just 0.18, marginally lower than GrgA and well within the expected range.

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notable is that Gorgias himself seems to have avoided an excessive use of it in his Palamedes (approx. 2.71% of word-count) and not in his Helen (approx. 6.55%). If one takes only the contributions of the character “Gorgias” between 449b9 and 455e3 (802 words excluding responses of only a couple of lines) one finds that Plato depicts him as using καί at a rate of 6.48%: around the same as in Helen. Again, if ones takes separately the substantial contributions of “Polus”,36 the figure is 7.48% for 508 words. If one took out these 1,310 words from the first 10,000 words of the dialogue (going to 478b5), the remainder would involve a rate of only 4.75%. It is possible that Plato was here conscious of wanting his “Socrates” to sound quite different from the two orators. Later, however, he takes on a role that tends to compete with the politician and orator that Callicles wanted to become (513b8; 522d; 523d; 527c). The block with the highest rate of all in Gorgias is the final one (from 524d: 8.78%) suggesting that καί is actually a mark of neo-Calliclean assertiveness, while the largely Calliclean block 18 had 7.86%. Likewise οὗτος seems to have been a sign of assertiveness, and reaches a rate of 3.0% or above in five of the nine blocks from 507c on. The word ἔτι (“still”, “further”) is an apparently simple case of an unusually low rate in the earlier pages. It is found only at 473b8 and 475c5, whereas it occurs 19 times in the arguments with Callicles. The negative (οὐκέτι, οὐκέτ᾽, μηκέτι) occurs six times in the latter, but never in the former. A single instance of ἔτι in Ion makes it the only comparable case that I am aware of. So it seems that the dearth of such vocabulary in the earlier part of Gorgias would be hard to explain on any hypothesis. I emphasise that these tests on vocabulary simply identify broad stylistic groups, chronology being one of several possible influences. Such tests are used mainly for settling the attributing of authorship, on the hypothesis that speakers or writers using the same register tend to use the same basic vocabulary and at similar rates throughout much of their lives. Plato, however, lived at a time when the art of speaking and writing was developing fast, and authors were liable to be influenced by such developments around them. It is widely accepted that he at times made quite radical changes to his style for whatever reason. My study of recurrent vocabulary mainly involves only minor stylistic shifts occurring after the arguments with Gorgias and Polus (73%–87% cluster 1), and before those with Callicles (92% other clusters on both analyses) without any obvious shift in genre or register. This is compatible with an extended period of composition, but more suggestive of the resumption of the work 36

448c4–9.461b3–c4.468e6–9.469a1.469c5–7.470c9–d3.471a4–d2.473b12–d2. The number of instances here is 38, in 508 words.

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after an interval. It should be remembered, moreover, that I do not postulate a period when the arguments with Gorgias and Polus circulated widely without the conclusion of the dialogue, so that, as in any similar case, I would envisage some revision of the earlier pages that introduced small changes reflecting the development of Plato’s mature style.

Thesleff’s Theory

Moving away from computational stylistics, I now propose to examine more conventional ways of arguing for a revision. It is one of Thesleff’s theses that Plato’s major contribution to the development of the Socratic dialogue was presentation in direct or dramatic form. The evidence of other Socratics, including Xenophon and Aeschines, is that it had been normal to embed Socratic conversations within a narrative.37 That might suggest that Plato would originally have found narrative presentation natural, and would have written his earliest works either as reported dialogues, or, as in the case of the Apology, as speeches—there being good prose precedents for both. A reported conversation would be easier for a single person to read aloud to an assembled gathering, and the indications point to there having been no indication of speakers in early drama or dramatic dialogue,38 making it especially difficult for a reader other than the author to interpret what was written. But only if the work was intended for the use of readers other than the author could one seriously speak of “publication”. Taking these factors into consideration, Thesleff drew on the opening of the Gorgias to show how our version cannot satisfactorily be read by the nonprivileged reader as it stands. First, we have no indication of the setting until the reference to “those inside” (447c7) makes it clear that Gorgias has just given his epideixis inside a public building, and that Callicles is already coming out when he meets Socrates and Chaerephon. The present location of Gorgias and Polus is unclear. Then there are two possible ways of interpreting the situation at 447c9. Having been told that it had been part of Gorgias’ display to invite questions from the audience, Socrates first expresses his satisfaction with what he has been told, and then turns and asks Chaerephon to put a question to Gorgias. Either this is rather hasty and presumptuous, since the display has finished, Socrates was not part of the audience, and Gorgias himself must by now be outside; or an interlude has passed and the meeting has already moved 37 38

See Thesleff, 1982, 56–64.86–87 = Thesleff, 2009, 200–210.234–235. Thesleff draws heavily on Andrieu, 1954, 209–229 etc.

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to Callicles’ house, taking up his invitation (from 447b7–8). For a conversation this length one would have expected the participants to be comfortably seated where they could easily converse, not to be standing on the steps of the building just as they had met. Furthermore Socrates has made it quite clear at 447c1–3 what questions he wants to put to Gorgias: what art he professes to teach, and what its power (dynamis) is. But by c10, after just six or seven lines, Chaerephon seems to have forgotten that this is the question at issue and fails to see what he is being told to ask Gorgias.39 His lapse of memory would be more convincing after a lapse of time. For these reasons I believe that the author intended a scene-shift, and that we are to imagine the four speakers and other invited persons following Callicles home. The dynamics of the principal conversation, apparently so important in works like Euthydemus and Protagoras, also remain totally unclear. It is only from Chaerephon’s reference to a commotion in the crowd (458c) that we can infer that this is not a small gathering. Only by Callicles addressing an aside to Chaerephon at 481b can we infer that these two are seated next to one another, and only from the semi-private conversation between Socrates and Chaerephon at 447c9–d6 can we infer that they too remain close together. I envisage a semicircle consisting in order of Gorgias, Polus, Callicles, Chaerephon and Socrates, but I could certainly be wrong. More importantly, we lack early clarity about who is supposed to be speaking, for we have to wait until Callicles has spoken twice to be told by a vocative (447a7) who it was, Chaerephon has spoken three lines before he is similarly identified (447b4), and Polus too has spoken before a vocative (448a7) makes us aware that he is also present. More recently Thesleff has acutely observed that Polus seems to have misunderstood the toutou of 448a5 as being masculine rather than neuter, unless perhaps the speaker of that line had been Socrates, as it perfectly easily could be to judge from the text.40 It would have taken a virtuoso reading of the text if the auditors were to distinguish adequately between all the speakers of the opening. Uncertainties regarding the speaker would not only occur at the outset either, for at 461b–d Polus is allowed ten lines of Greek before Socrates names him. One might add that narrative presentation, assuming that there had been one, would certainly have brought out the fact that Callicles’ discussion with Chaerephon at 481b6–10 is an aside, 39 40

Note, however, that Chaerephon’s memory is good enough to remember at 481b words addressed by Callicles to Socrates at 447c5. Socrates would more naturally think of testing people than claims, and Gorgias would not be issuing this challenge if it could be accurately claimed by Polus that he has excused himself (ἀπειρηκέναι); Thesleff, 2003, 254–256 = Thesleff, 2009, 554–555.

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with no evidence whatever that Socrates, Polus or Gorgias has overheard it. There is no doubt that narrated presentation could clarify such background issues, but who then could any narrator of such a conversation be?41 I have hitherto supposed that the original Gorgias had either been written with “Socrates” himself as narrator, or been intended for improvised narration by the author in the role of “Socrates”.42 However, in this case my preferred candidate would be Chaerephon, the person best able to report the aside at 481b. Chaerephon might also be the narrator most easily able to draw attention to the spectator noises that he mentions at 458c. More importantly, narration by somebody other than Socrates would have given Plato the opportunity to comment on Socrates’ perceived behaviour, particularly in the opening. If any figure other than Socrates is required, let us recall that in both Phaedo and Symposium one finds narrators, in the one case Phaedo and in the other Aristodemus, who are, like Chaerephon, auditors of Socrates, but are not required to participate in the principal philosophic proceedings. We should not, however, lose sight of the thesis that the earliest draft of Gorgias had terminated somewhere around 480e. Chaerephon, like Polus,43 has no further part in the dialogue after 481b, and the last words that he utters (“Nothing like asking the man himself”), insofar as they echo Callicles’ words to Socrates at 447c5, mark the end of the first part of the dialogue: the part that really was primarily concerned with the rhetorical art that Gorgias practised and the uses that it might be put to. Furthermore, speakers in the aside are rather well identified by comparison with the opening. We had been reminded that Socrates’ address at 481b2 is Polus, and a line-long question is then addressed to Chaerephon, beginning with the words “Tell me, Chaerephon” (Εἰπέ μοι, ὦ Χαιρεφῶν, 481b8). Εἰπέ μοι plus the vocative and without further introduction is used only sparingly in the Platonic corpus, and to indicate some kind of break in the conversation. At Phaedrus 229b4 it marks the resumption of the conversation after Phaedrus had led Socrates further on, while at Protagoras 311b2 it again resumes the conversation after a short distance had been travelled. At Euthydemus 283b4 and 302b4 it marks the introduction of a new sophism. At Protagoras b8 and d6, and again at Hippias Major 292c5, it introduces the new questions of anonymous interrogators. At Republic 1.343a3 it introduces 41 Cf. the aside at Euthd. 275e3–6. 42 It is fairly obvious that, if Tht. had been originally presented in narrative form (see Thesleff, 1982, 83–87, 125–127, 152–157), that “Socrates” must have been used as the narrator (142c8–d1 and 143c3). I have argued for the idea of an early narrated version of Tht. in Tarrant, Narrative Dialogue, 2010; Tarrant, Stylistic Difference, 2016 and, less directly, Tarrant, 2020. 43 Polus, however, is frequently mentioned thereafter; Chaerephon is not even named there.

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a complete change of strategy by Thrasymachus after Socrates has won the argument. There remain three cases in the Gorgias. At 447d6 it signals that Chaerephon starts to address somebody new; here at 481b6 and again at b10, when Chaerephon turns to Socrates, it again signals a new addressee. One line is the longest we have to wait in order to find out who a new speaker is, and we are kept appraised about the identity of the addressee. So the conversation here is quite easy to follow compared with the introduction. The argument for Chaerephon as narrator diminishes if 481b had not been included in any narrated original, though it remains a possibility. It actually seems to me likely that Chaerephon is relevant only to the material up to 481. It is Chaerephon, as a friend of Gorgias (447b2), who most needed to know how he should be regarded, what it was that he taught, and what its effect would be. Like Hippocrates in the Protagoras he needs Socrates’ help in exposing anything problematic in what an educator offered. At 458c3–7 he is extremely anxious to hear the debate between his two friends continue. And the debate about what rhetoric is in fact able to contribute is not over until it is established by Socrates at 481b–d that it should be employed not for seeing one’s self and one’s friends escape punishment for their misdeeds, but rather for ensuring that they are in fact punished. That is because punishment is the removal of the injustice that is harming the soul (477a). One should be ready to accuse oneself first, and any relatives or friends who are still suffering from the injustices they have committed second (480c1–3, d4). Might this obligation to pursue one’s own friends be why Chaerephon, well known for his litigious nature and willingness to expose a crime,44 had fallen out so badly with his brother (Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.3)?

44

Chaerephon was accused in comedy of being an informer (Apollodorus 26), and is used as a witness by the bread-seller in Aristophanes’ Wasps (1408, 1412), so that he must have been involved in the business of the lawcourts. It may be relevant that Aristophanes referred to Chaerephon as a “child of night” (νυκτὸς […] παῖδα, fr. 584 PCG = 573K). At the end of Aeschylus’ powerful Oresteia, the Furies that have pursued Orestes for so long are greeted as the Children of Night (Eu. 1033/4). It is likely that Aristophanes alluded to this well known passage when identifying Chaerephon in the same manner, painting him as an Erinys or avenging deity. Plato might be hinting in the Grg. at the danger to society’s rules when one couples an enthusiasm for oratory with the Socratic view of the extreme damage done to the soul by injustice. It might, for instance, induce conduct reminiscent of Euthyphro’s behaviour towards his father as depicted in the Euthphr. (4a–e). Chaerephon was similarly extreme in his conduct (Ap. 21a3, Chrm. 153b2).

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Conclusion

Short of finding a stage at which the early part of the Gorgias was known and the latter part was unknown there is unlikely to be any way of being certain that it was not written as one continuous whole. I have now argued that Isocrates contra Sophistas responds to the arguments with Polus but inspired Gorgias 519b–d,45 but I have no expectation of settling this issue. I also note there and elsewhere46, that three of the nine unusual words or phrases claimed by the Antiatticista for Gorgias are nowhere to be found in our text, but these mostly recall the arguments with Callicles, so that the most that this could do is to suggest an earlier complete text than ours, not an incomplete text. In my view what this should remind us is that there was still some fluidity in both the text and presentation of some Platonic works until the corpus received its first overall standardisation in the time of the Old Academy. The same Antiatticista shows that the Republic, whose evolution is actually attested to have involved two-book (or two-scroll) stages (Gellius, Noctes Atticae 14.3.3), was probably the text requiring the most standardisation. The uncertainties of chronology, I suspect, will never be completely resolved, and that is not my hope in writing. Rather, I aim to highlight precisely the continuing uncertainties about how Platonic works evolved. Others will rightly point to the satisfying philosophic unity of the dialogue as a whole to counterbalance the present theories of a less-than-optimal linguistic and literary unity. We should not now possess one continuous work if it had not appeared to Plato and his Academy that some important unifying themes ran right through. In many ways I see the break at around Gorgias 481 as being akin to that between the Timaeus and Critias or between the Sophist and Statesman, except that those sequences show rather more literary and linguistic continuity and comparatively little continuity of philosophic subject. University of Newcastle

45 Tarrant, Ancient Readers, forthcoming. 46 Tarrant, Origins, 2012.

Chapter 8

Crantor of Soli as an Early Witness to a Revision of the Timaeus? Kilian Fleischer There is a slightly puzzling passage in Proclus’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, related to the historical truth of the Atlantis story, which has attracted some scholarly attention. Therein, he paraphrases the early or even first commentator on Plato in a strict sense, the Academic Crantor of Soli (ca. 330–275 BCE), by presenting the latter’s discussion of the historical truth of the Atlantis tale. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever discussed the question in detail, to determine whether this passage might be taken to suggest that an early revision of the Timaeus was carried out by Plato himself, through the addition of the Egyptian setting and origin of the Atlantis tale, or even of the tale itself. The relevant passage of Proclus’s commentary reads as follows:1 [20d]. Τὸν περὶ τῶν Ἀτλαντίνων σύμπαντα τοῦτον λόγον οἳ μὲν ἱστορίαν εἶναι ψιλήν φασιν, ὥσπερ ὁ πρῶτος τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐξηγητὴς · ὃς δὴ καὶ σκώπτεσθαι μέν φησιν αὐτὸν ὑπὸ τῶν τότε, ὡς οὐκ αὐτὸν ὄντα τῆς πολιτείας εὑρετήν, ἀλλὰ μεταγράψαντα τὰ Αἰγυπτίων· τὸν δὲ τοσοῦτον ποιήσασθαι τῶν σκωπτόντων λόγον, ὥστε ἐπὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἀναπέμψαι τὴν περὶ Ἀθηναίων καὶ Ἀτλαντίνων ταύτην ἱστορίαν, ὡς τῶν Ἀθηναίων κατὰ ταύτην ζησάντων ποτὲ τὴν πολιτείαν· μαρτυροῦσι δὲ καὶ οἱ προφῆταί φησι τῶν Αἰγυπτίων ἐν στήλαις ταῖς ἔτι σῳζομέναις ταῦτα γεγράφθαι λέγοντες. οἳ δέ φασιν αὐτὴν μῦθον εἶναι καὶ πλάσμα… (Diehl 1.75.26–1.76.10). “Hear then, Socrates, an account that is very unusual, yet certainly true in all respects, as Solon, the wisest of the Seven, once used to claim” (Timaeus 20d). Some say that all this tale about the Atlantines is straightforward narrative, like the first of Plato’s interpreters, Crantor. He also says that [Plato] was mocked by his contemporaries for not having discovered his constitution himself, but having translated Egyptian originals. He took so little notice of what the mockers said that he actually attributed to the Egyptians this narrative about the Athenians and Atlantines, saying that the Athenians had at one time lived under that constitution. He says that the prophets of the Egyptians also give evidence, saying that these things are inscribed on pillars that still survive. Others say that it is a myth and an invention. … (tr. Tarrant). 1 Diehl’s Teubner text of In Timaeum is also found as Krantor F 8, Mette and FGrH 665 F 31 (Jacoby, 1958, 222); see also Dörrie, 1987, 328. © Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_009

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Tarrant’s translation seems generally sound, but the part “He took so little notice” for τὸν δὲ τοσοῦτον ποιήσασθαι … λόγον might be debatable.2 It seems to be rooted in Tarrant’s (earlier) interpretation of the passage where, concerning the phrase, he notes: “This is usually taken to mean that he took the charge very seriously, but surely there was irony involved, and Plato is actually shown to have treated the charge with total contempt, not defending himself but making the most extreme counter-claims. …”3 His understanding seems at least partly based on the assumption that Crantor rejects the historicity of the Atlantis tale. However, the last sentence (μαρτυροῦσι δὲ καὶ οἱ προφῆται), which obviously depends on Crantor (as discussed below), pretty much gives the impression that Crantor believed the story to be (historically) true.4 Hence, the common understanding of the passage—as for instance given in Nesselrath (“er habe die Vorhaltungen der Kritiker so ernst genommen, dass er …”) or Dillon (“he was so stung by this mockery”)—might be preferable in this context.5 First, some introductory remarks concerning Crantor’s biography and role as the first “interpreter of Plato” are in order. Born in Cilician Soli around 340 BCE, he became a pupil of Xenocrates and Polemo in Athens. He was obviously still an “Old” Academic, whereas his erōmenos Arcesilaus initiated the sceptical turn.6 It may be worth mentioning that Diogenes Laertius (4.24–7) and Philodemus’ Index Academicorum give us more information on Crantor, as each depends on the third-century biographer Antigonus of Carystus.7 Crantor’s death seems to have been premature to some extent: while it is not beyond all doubt that the archon-dating appearing in the Index Academicorum (276/75  BCE—archon Philocrates) really refers to Crantor’s death, it is certainly possible.8 He was an 2 Tarrant, 2007, 168–169. 3 Tarrant, 2000, 54 n. 4 translates: “[…] and such was the attention that he paid to the mocker’s charge that he attributed to the Egyptians the story of the Athenians and Atlantinians, implying that the Athenians had once lived according to this constitution”. 4 Tarrant, 2000, 55 believes that this is a satirical observation about the Egyptians; cf. Tarrant, 2007, 69. 5 Nesselrath, 2001, 33; Dillon, 2003, 219. Similarly Festugière, 1966, 111: “[…] il avait attaché tant d’importance au propos des railleurs qu’il avait rapporté aux Égyptiens cette histoire sur les Athéniens et les Atlantins”. 6 On Crantor see Krämer, 2004, 113.115.122–125 and Dillon, 2003, 216–230. A collection of the few fragments of Crantor has been provided by Mette, 1984, 1–40. Pia de Simone is currently working on a new collection of testimonies. 7 Wilamowitz, 1881, 45–77. A collection of the Antigonus fragments has been provided by Dorandi (ed.), 1999. For new readings in the Index Academicorum see Fleischer, 2018. 8 The possible reference of this date to Crantor was first brought up by Dorandi (ed.), 1991, 56–57. On the archon Philocrates see Müller, 2003, along with the note by Habicht, 2004. The date mentioned in Philodemus’ Index Academicorum col. Q.5 is discussed at due length in Fleischer, 2023, 463–465.

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outstanding figure in the Academy and would most probably have succeeded Polemo as scholarch, had he outlived him. In particular, Crantor was famous for his ethics and his treatise περὶ πένθους. As mentioned above, Proclus credits him with being the first exegete of Plato and we have a few fragments from his commentary on the Timaeus, preserved by Proclus and Plutarch (Krantor T 8–11, Mette). The above-cited passage assigns Crantor a rather unique position among early authors and interpreters of the Timaeus in general, insomuch as he seems to have believed the Atlantis story to be a historical account and hence true, as Plato purports it to be (Timaeus 20d).9 Before conducting a closer analysis of the content of the Proclus passage, we should devote a few lines to “Quellenforschung”, i.e. to Proclus’s source for the excerpt from Crantor. It seems rather unlikely that Proclus still had access to original works by Crantor in the fifth century CE, unlike Plutarch, who could still have consulted Crantor’s exegetical works when writing De animae procreatione in Timaeo.10 Accordingly, it seems likely that Proclus found the information reported by Crantor in intermediary sources. If Proclus had owned a copy of Crantor’s original commentary, most probably he would have referred to Crantor more frequently in his commentary and not only in two or three passages (Krantor T 8, 9, 11b, Mette). It is not unlikely that the source Proclus draws upon had already coined the label ὁ πρῶτος τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐξηγητής. There may even have been some kind of (contemporary) exegetical group revolving around Crantor, since later on Proclus speaks of οἱ δὲ περὶ Κράντορα τοῦ Πλάτωνος ἐξηγηταί.11 However, the phrase may apply only to a (later) exegetical tradition inspired by Crantor. Anyway, Crantor is a very early witness, who wrote his commentary on the Timaeus probably only sixty to seventy years after the dialogue was originally circulated. Hence, in the following discussion, we should evaluate whether this early date implies a certain authoritativeness. Could Crantor still have known some historical “hard facts” through the Academy’s oral tradition or early Academic treatises that are now lost? Whatever the answer, we should always bear in mind that the 9

Cf. Cameron, 1983, 88. Among later authors who think that the tale might be true, Nesselrath, 2001, 35 n. 13 mentions Philo, De aeternitate mundi 140–141, Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia  2.205, Tertullian, Apologeticus 40.3–4, Arnobius, Adversus nationes 1.5, Ammianus Marcellinus 17.7.13, and Posidonius (Strabo 2.3.6); a thorough discussion appears in Cameron, 1983, 88–91. 10 Tarrant, 2007, 168 n. 307 with reference to Tarrant, 2000, 53–56, where he discusses the difference between Xenocrates’ and Crantor’s exegesis. 11 Krantor T 9, Mette. The same phrasing occurs also in Plutarch’s De animae procreatione in Timaeo 1012f–1013a (= Krantor T 10, Mette): οἱ δὲ περὶ τὸν Κράντορα.

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intermediary source(s) between Crantor and Proclus (more than 700 years apart) may have transmitted Crantor’s original statements in a way that is not entirely accurate. At some point in this process of transmission, a source might have made misleading modifications to the original wording, or shortened Crantor so dramatically, that the decisive context or content was lost. Accordingly, the information as we read it today in Proclus, while appearing “logical” at first glance, could be a blurry or misleading mishmash, if some explanatory elements of Crantor’s original passage were condensed or skipped by those who transmitted them. Finally, it should be pointed out that according to the opinio communis what we have here is a “continuous” Crantor testimony. Nesselrath has rather convincingly argued against Cameron’s thesis that the last φησι refers to Plato.12 Tarrant thoroughly analysed the somewhat dubious expression ἱστορίαν ψιλήν and concluded that it must primarily mean “narrative with no allegorical meaning”, not necessarily implying truth in a historical sense.13 While this indeed seems to be the case, the context (the mention of the stelae) strongly suggests that Crantor also considered the story to be “historically” true; so the expression in question seems to imply this aspect, too,14 unless Proclus completely misunderstood Crantor on this point. A key question is whether the mocking charge levelled against Plato by his contemporaries, namely that he was not the true inventor of the πολιτεία but was simply adopting, translating, or plagiarizing Egyptian material,15 is based on a reliable historical testimony which Crantor still had access to. If we take this “mockery information” at face value, the tale of Atlantis in the Timaeus-Critias, as we read it today, must be regarded as Plato’s response to the allegations or statements of some people, whose identity shall be discussed further below. A minor difficulty is raised by the genitive τῆς πολιτείας, which might either refer to the Republic as Plato’s text or to the state or constitution described therein (Critias 110c–113b; Timaeus 23c–24e). In his edition, Diehl refers to the work Πολιτεία with a capital letter Π, and therefore seems to take the above expression in the genitive to refer to the constitution outlined in the

12 13 14 15

Nesselrath, 2001, 34; Cameron, 1983, 82–83. Tarrant, 2007, 63–65. Cf. Dillon, 2003, 220. Tarrant, 2007, 169 n. 308 explains his translation as follows: “By ‘translated’ I do not necessarily mean ‘rewrote in a different language’, but little more than ‘transferred to a different culture’. Nor does the Greek make it clear that the Egyptian ideas had ever been committed to writing”.

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Republic.16 Given the use of the noun εὑρετήν, which would be a strange synonym for a prose writer, Diehl and Tarrant are certainly right to take πολιτεία to mean “constitution”, which is clearly the meaning of this word in the subsequent sentence. At first, then, there seems to be no doubt that the reference is to the constitution described in the Republic (maybe in the (a) Proto-Republic),17 and hence that the difference between the use of the word with a capital letter and with a small letter is not that significant. However, there might be another, more remote possibility, namely that the word “constitution” here refers to the constitution of the Athenian state as outlined in the Atlantis tale as it was originally presented in the Timaeus (23c–24e) and Critias (110c–113b), i.e. prior to the attribution of this tale to the Egyptians. Next, we should have a closer look at the meaning and range of ὑπὸ τῶν τότε. Considering that Plato takes their mockery seriously, other contemporary Academics might be subsumed under this phrase, possibly along with other prominent (Athenian) intellectuals and philosophers, whom Plato could not ignore. Isocrates immediately comes in mind as someone who probably identified Egyptian elements in Plato, since in his Busiris he mentions philosophers praising the Egyptian constitution (caste system).18 It is hard to imagine that Egyptian priests or scholars read Plato’s Republic already during his lifetime and complained about his plagiarism, whereas it has been reasonably argued that Plato’s Atlantis tale was read by local priests from the early Ptolemaic Egypt period onward.19 Maybe comedians or “Isocratians” (i.e. sophists) alluded to alleged parallels between Plato’s work and some Egyptian traditions—probably unjustifiably, yet persistently enough to elicit a reaction from the philosopher.20 The meaning of the verb σκώπτω is rather close to that used for comedians’ mockery (κωμῳδεῖν). Diogenes Laertius tells us that Plato was a favourite target of comedic mockery, so he may have felt the need to respond at some point. Several Middle Comedy fragments mocking Plato have been preserved (Diogenes Laertius 3.26–28).21 Given this, it may be worth 16 Nesselrath, 2001, 33 translates “seine Politeia”. 17 Thesleff, 1982, 102–107 = Thesleff, 2009, 251–255. 18 Isocrates, Busiris, 17: “… as for the arrangement by which they preserve their kingship and the rest of their state, they do so well that the philosophers who attempt to discuss such things and are most highly regarded choose to praise the Egyptian state. …” (tr. Mirhady). However, the identification with Plato has not been ascertained beyond all doubt, cf. Livingstone, 2001, 48–72.138. 19 Cameron, 1983, 82. 20 Dillon, 2003, 219–220 at least thinks that the identification of Egyptian elements in the Republic by Plato’s contemporaries is possible, although he admits that this idea has not been discussed by any modern interpreter. 21 On the ridiculing of Plato in the Middle Comedy see Haake, 2020, 74–77.

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considering the possibility of translating τοσοῦτον ποιήσασθαι as “he was so annoyed” or “… upset”—at any rate, this might be the implied meaning.22 In turn, this might support the interpretation that the almost fantastic story of how the Atlantis tale was handed down to Plato (to Critias) and the unlikely ancient tale of the Egyptian priest are Plato’s ironic-sarcastic reactions to the dumb and absurd claim that the Republic is mainly inspired by Egyptian traditions or “the” Egyptian constitution.23 Contemporaries’ claims or mockery, of which we hear exclusively from Crantor, may have been real, but of course without factual foundation: Plato did not really adopt Egyptian traditions for his constitution or his Atlantis tale (at least, not to any noteworthy, non-trivial extent). Nonetheless, some people were convinced that they had identified traces of overwhelming Egyptian influence, which, according to Crantor, led Plato to react.24 The expression τὰ Αἰγυπτίων is not very specific and the omission of a noun meaning “written works (records)” cannot be taken for granted. Interestingly, the verb μεταγράφω appears in another passage, where Plato is said to have written the Timaeus by drawing upon (i.e. plagiarizing) a Pythagorean book by Philolaus (Diogenes Laertius 8.85): Γέγραφε δὲ βιβλίον ἕν, ὅ φησιν Ἕρμιππος λέγειν τινὰ τῶν συγγραφέων Πλάτωνα τὸν φιλόσοφον παραγενόμενον εἰς Σικελίαν πρὸς Διονύσιον ὠνήσασθαι παρὰ τῶν συγγενῶν τοῦ Φιλολάου ἀργυρίου Ἀλεξανδρινῶν μνῶν τετταράκοντα καὶ ἐντεῦθεν μεταγεγραφέναι τὸν Τίμαιον. He wrote one book; and it was this book, according to Hermippus, that some writer said that Plato the philosopher, when he came to Sicily to the court of Dionysius, bought from the relatives of Philolaus for forty Alexandrine minas of silver, and that from it transcribed the Timaeus. (tr. Mensch)

In this context the verb means that Plato used Philolaus’ book On Nature as a model for the Timaeus, following it very closely. In Proclus too the verb must mean that Plato exploited and imitated Egyptian writings or traditions, especially if we consider the last sentence of the passage with the reference to the still existing stelae in Egypt. There was some sort of hostile tradition accusing 22

One may object that other Greek verbs could have been used to express this sentiment. Dillon, 2003, 219 offers a kind of compromise (“he was stung”). 23 Cf. Dillon, 2003, 219: “[…] an allegation of plagiarism is always annoying, no doubt, and it is conceivable that Plato should have been concerned in the Timaeus to deliver a literary counterblow”. 24 Although it is widely believed nowadays that the entire Atlantis myth is basically a Platonic invention, some scholars have tried to identify historical elements, for instance Görgemanns, 2000. See an overview in Erler, 2007, 274–276.

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Plato of plagiarism, in which context also the mockery episode should be placed.25 Now, the meaning of the consecutive clause ὥστε ἐπὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἀναπέμψαι τὴν περὶ Ἀθηναίων καὶ Ἀτλαντίνων ταύτην ἱστορίαν is not that obvious. First, I may recall that Proclus uses ἀναπέμπω in the sense of “ascribe” very often (several dozen times in the Timaeus commentary alone), which may suggest that this word was not in the original text by Crantor. There are basically three ways to understand the part “that he actually attributed to the Egyptians this narrative about the Athenians and Atlantines” and the passage as a whole. a) Some people claimed or mocked that the constitution as created by Plato in his (proto-)Republic in fact plagiarised Egyptian ideas. No Timaeus or Critias existed at the time of the mockery. In response to the criticism, Plato wrote the Timaeus (and Critias) by inventing the Atlantis story, which he ascribed to the Egyptians (maybe with some irony involved and as a kind of cynical counterreaction against his mockers). b) At the time of the mockery there already existed an Atlantis tale invented by Plato in the Timaeus and Critias, but it was not yet connected to the Egyptians. Plato first credited the Egyptians with transmitting this tale as a reaction to the mockery. c) There was already a kind of exclusively cosmogonic Ur-Timaeus (maybe circulating to some extent) without the Atlantis tale and written before the composition of the Critias. As a reaction to the mocking, Plato later added the Atlantis tale to the “introduction” of the dialogue, ascribed it to the Egyptians and (subsequently) wrote the Critias. Let us assess the probability and implications of each option. a) The natural “flow” of the passage seems to favour this understanding. However, it has been rightly pointed out that Plato’s Republic does not easily support or invite the allegation of Egypt-plagiarism.26 One would, for instance, rather expect the identification of Pythagorean elements, which is to say parallels with Pythagorean constitutions in Southern Italy. Plato respectfully refers to Egyptians on many occasions and does not conceal a certain admiration for them;27 hence, it would not really be the first choice for mockers to assume that Plato is consciously ignoring an Egyptian model for his constitution.28 25 26

See Dörrie, 1990, 236–246. Cf. Tarrant, 2007, 67, who, however, states that some readers may have detected a kind of superficial, Egyptian touch. 27 Note, however, that there is also some criticism of Egypt in Plato, cf. Johansen, 2004, 89–90. 28 Of course, one may argue that other Egyptian references by Plato led to the idea of an Egyptian model for the R.

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Even more strikingly, Crantor believed in the historicity of the tale29 and would hardly have supported a claim of plagiarism directed against Plato. Now, if the reaction on Plato’s part were true, we would expect Crantor to either confess that the Academy’s founder plagiarised and stole “the constitution” from the Egyptians, and later tried to make up for this or hide it by writing or ascribing the Atlantis tale to them; or to draw the rather logical conclusion that Plato wrote the Atlantis tale as a witty invention ridiculing his mockers’ absurd claims. For sure, some minor logical inconsistencies in Proclus’s commentary are to be expected and may be explained away by the process of transmission or unclear phrasing, but the points raised make it seem at least legitimate to assess the alternative interpretations b) and c). b) This alternative implies that Plato first credited someone else or no one at all (in an original Timaeus-Critias) with being the source for the Atlantis tale. In this case, the word πολιτείας in Proclus would at least partly refer to the “constitution” outlined in the Atlantis myth and not exclusively to the constitution in the Republic, so that the information ὡς τῶν Ἀθηναίων κατὰ ταύτην ζησάντων ποτὲ τὴν πολιτείαν would be surprising, since it suggests that the Athenians had not been mentioned as living under such a constitution in the original version of the works. However, the expression could mean “under such a real, historical constitution as the one outlined in the Atlantis tale”. The understanding of b) requires that the Timaeus (and probably the Critias) already enjoyed a decree of circulation, but was (or were) later revised by Plato through the insertion of the reference to the Egyptians. This might be entirely possible, and some versions of texts in the Academy of Crantor’s days may have even supported the assumption of such a revision (see below), but it can hardly be proven or shown to be a probable assumption. However, the entire Proclus passage is basically about the historicity of the Atlantis tale in the Timaeus and not about the Republic; so a reference to the Atlantis constitution as found in the Atlantis tale (and not only a reference to the constitution in the Republic) is a possibility. However, it must be said that Timaeus 17–19, with its reference to the theoretical constitution discussed the day before, makes a reference to the Republic in the Proclus passage much more likely, regardless of the fact that the constitution adumbrated in Timaeus 17–19 does not exactly match the constitution of the Republic. According to this reading too, Crantor must have assumed some kind of plagiarism for the Atlantis tale, but at least there would be no logical gap concerning Crantor’s assumption of the historicity of the 29

The sentence with the stelae, as we read it, in my opinion, hardly allows for an alternative interpretation. Of course, theoretically, Proclus or his source may have completely misrepresented Crantor’s view.

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philosopher’s account: Plato “admitted” or “corrected” his plagiarism, which in Crantor’s eyes would provide the ultimate confirmation of the historicity of his tale. Moreover, according to this reading, the Egyptians only had to be credited with transmitting a story already written down in Plato’s work(s). The ὥστε ἐπὶ Αἰγυπτίους ἀναπέμψαι τὴν περὶ Ἀθηναίων καὶ Ἀτλαντίνων ταύτην ἱστορίαν, could be read to the effect that the story had already been written (i.e. invented by Plato), when Plato ascribed it to the Egyptians. Since Crantor apparently believed the story of Atlantis to be true, it seems implausible that he assumed that Plato had reacted to the mockers by inventing the story; rather, in Crantor’s view Plato must have simply reacted with a correct attribution to the Egyptians. Maybe the story had already been told in the Timaeus, but only with a reference to Solon; and Plato—knowing of Solon’s Egyptian ties—later decided to make the transmission of the story somewhat more complex by revising the text in a few relevant passages. Let us look at how this insertion of an Egyptian setting might have been accomplished. Interestingly, the Egyptians have not been mentioned yet at the beginning of the Critias section in Timaeus 20d–e, where only Solon and Critias (the grandfather) occur.30 This could theoretically indicate that originally Solon alone was said to have reported the Atlantis tale to Critias, maybe through someone (a priest) not coming from Egypt. The first reference to Egypt occurs in Timaeus 21c31 and is linked to Solon. The section Timaeus 21e–24a is the “Egyptian proem”, which is supposed to give credibility to the following first short tale about Atlantis-Athens (and the one in the Critias). Within the tale itself (Timaeus 24a–25d) there is no reference to anything Egyptian. Nor does Critias refer to any Egyptian spokesman or source in his summary (Timaeus 25e). In Timaeus 26d, he mentions the tale of the priest (ὁ ἱερεύς),32 whereas in Critias 108d and 110b several priests (ὑπὸ τῶν ἱερέων) are referred to.33 Their Egyptian origin is first implicitly evoked in Critias 113a.34 No doubt, it would have been easy for Plato to revise and “Egyptianise” an original 30

31 32 33 34

20d–e: “Let me tell you this story then, Socrates. It’s a very strange one, but even so, every word of it is true. It’s a story that Solon, the wisest of the seven sages, once vouched for. He was a kinsman and a very close friend of my great-grandfather Dropides. Solon himself says as much in many places in his poetry. Well, Dropides told the story to my grandfather Critias, and the old man in his turn would tell it to us from memory” (here and below tr. Zeyl). 21c: “And too bad that he never finished the story he’d brought back home with him from Egypt”. 26d: “the very ones the priest spoke about”. 108d: “what was said long ago by the priests and brought here to Athens by Solon […]” (hereinafter tr. Clay in Cooper 1997). 113a: “Solon […] discovered that his Egyptian sources had been first to record them [scil. names], once they had translated their meaning into their own language”.

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Timaeus or Critias by inserting the Egyptian prelude Timaeus 21e–24a and adjusting a few passages. But this does not mean that he actually did so.35 c) This variant is a kind of combination of a) and b). It assumes that an Ur-Timaeus had already been completed when Plato embedded the Atlantis account into it, including the Egyptian reference. This hypothesis would basically be supported by the somewhat disjointed appearance of the Timaeus, which has led some scholars to suppose that the section with the Atlantis myth was added at a later stage,36 although most modern scholars argue for the overall “unity” of the work and for a carefully laid out, original structure for Plato’s planned trilogy.37 The advantage of this third reading is that the attribution to the Egyptians and the composition of the Atlantis tale are brought together and seen to have occurred at the same time, which might provide a more natural interpretation of Proclus’s expression. Readings b) and c) would imply that Plato at some point revised the Timaeus (and Critias). The idea of revisions is especially important and problematic when it comes to the stylometric analysis of Plato’s oeuvre. An overview of the suggested revisions of several dialogues (by Plato himself) and related questions can be found in Thesleff (1982, 83–87 = 2009, 231–234). The Timaeus is not included in his list of revised dialogues. In our case we would not be dealing with a genuine revision, but more with a kind of addendum, which is to say the insertion either of the Egyptian setting or of a newly invented story fictionally ascribed to the Egyptians. Given the widely accepted late dates for the Timaeus and Critias, stylometry should not help us much, since the insertion of the Atlantis section in a possible Ur-Timaeus would have taken place not too long after its composition. Besides, its relatively short length makes it impossible to draw meaningful language-statistical comparisons. A closer analysis of the structure of the Timaeus would lead only to speculations based on arbitrary notions of what a good or organic structure should look like in Plato. There is definitely no such thing as an expected or universal standard structure for Platonic dialogues—particularly not for their opening sections—which would allow for likely conclusions concerning revisions. Yet, maybe we are completely missing the point here. The crucial question for a possible revision theory is not whether Crantor believed the Atlantis tale to be historically true, but whether the mockers’ allegation which Crantor 35 36 37

In this context one may mention Rosenmeyer, 1956, 163–172, who argues that the Criti. is earlier than the Ti. and that the Atlantis section was added later to the Ti. Wilamowitz, 1920, 592 regarded the Atlantis-passage in the Ti. as a later insertion, used to supplement the Criti. His hypothesis has been shared by other scholars, but most believe the passage to be a genuine part of the introduction to the trilogy project. Erler, 2007, 274: trilogy Timaeus-Critias-Hermocrates.

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reports are historically true. Dillon considers the possibility that the statement in Proclus reflects intra-Academic gossip passed down to Crantor’s generation.38 No doubt, this would at least give the testimony a certain “historical” value, regardless of the validity of it details. However, there also exists another possibility, a “worst-case” scenario, namely that Crantor had no trustworthy information whatsoever and was inferring his statement about “mockery and Plato’s reaction” exclusively from the Timaeus and some other circumstantial evidence. There is in particular one passage which to a thoughtful exegete like Crantor might have suggested that some mockery had been directed at Plato for failing to mention the Atlantis tale or the Egyptians when discussing the constitution in the Republic. τὰ μὲν δὴ ῥηθέντα, ὦ Σώκρατες, ὑπὸ τοῦ παλαιοῦ Κριτίου κατ’ ἀκοὴν τὴν Σόλωνος, ὡς συντόμως εἰπεῖν, ἀκήκοας· λέγοντος δὲ δὴ χθὲς σοῦ περὶ πολιτείας τε καὶ τῶν ἀνδρῶν οὓς ἔλεγες, ἐθαύμαζον ἀναμιμνῃσκόμενος αὐτὰ ἃ νῦν λέγω, κατανοῶν ὡς δαιμονίως ἔκ τινος τύχης οὐκ ἄπο σκοποῦ συνηνέχθης τὰ πολλὰ οἷς Σόλων εἶπεν. οὐ μὴν ἐβουλήθην παραχρῆμα εἰπεῖν· διὰ χρόνου γὰρ οὐχ ἱκανῶς ἐμεμνήμην. ἐνενόησα οὖν ὅτι χρεὼν εἴη με πρὸς ἐμαυτὸν πρῶτον ἱκανῶς πάντα ἀναλαβόντα λέγειν οὕτως. […] οὕτω δή, καθάπερ ὅδ’ εἶπεν, χθές τε εὐθὺς ἐνθένδε ἀπιὼν πρὸς τούσδε ἀνέφερον αὐτὰ ἀναμιμνῃσκόμενος, ἀπελθών τε σχεδόν τι πάντα ἐπισκοπῶν τῆς νυκτὸς ἀνέλαβον. […] καὶ δὴ καὶ τοῖσδε εὐθὺς ἔλεγον ἕωθεν αὐτὰ ταῦτα, ἵνα εὐποροῖεν λόγων μετ’ ἐμοῦ. νῦν οὖν, οὗπερ ἕνεκα πάντα ταῦτα εἴρηται, λέγειν εἰμὶ ἕτοιμος, ὦ Σώκρατες, μὴ μόνον ἐν κεφαλαίοις ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ ἤκουσα καθ’ ἕκαστον· τοὺς δὲ πολίτας καὶ τὴν πόλιν ἣν χθὲς ἡμῖν ὡς ἐν μύθῳ διῄεισθα σύ, νῦν μετενεγκόντες ἐπὶ τἀληθὲς δεῦρο θήσομεν ὡς ἐκείνην τήνδε οὖσαν, καὶ τοὺς πολίτας οὓς διενοοῦ φήσομεν ἐκείνους τοὺς ἀληθινοὺς εἶναι προγόνους ἡμῶν, οὓς ἔλεγεν ὁ ἱερεύς. πάντως ἁρμόσουσι καὶ οὐκ ἀπᾳσόμεθα λέγοντες αὐτοὺς εἶναι τοὺς ἐν τῷ τότε ὄντας χρόνῳ (Timaeus 25e–26d). What I’ve just related, Socrates, is a concise version of old Critias’ story, as Solon originally reported it. While you were speaking yesterday about politics and the men you were describing, I was reminded of what I’ve just told you and was quite amazed as I realised how by some supernatural chance your ideas are on the mark, in substantial agreement with what Solon said. I didn’t want to say so at the time, though. It was so long ago, I didn’t remember Solon’s story very well. So I realised that I would first have to recover the whole story for myself well enough, and then to tell it that way. […] And that’s how—as Hermocrates has already said—the moment I left here yesterday, I began to repeat the story to him and to Timaeus as it came back to me. After I left them, I concentrated on it during the night and recovered just about the whole thing. […] Besides, I told the whole story to Timaeus and Hermocrates first thing this morning, so that not just I, but they, too, would have a supply of material for our speech. I’ve said all this, Socrates, to prepare myself to tell Solon’s story now. I won’t just give you the main points, but the details, one by one, just the way I heard it. We’ll translate the citizens and the city you described to us in mythical fashion yesterday to the 38

Dillon, 2003, 219.

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realm of fact, and place it before us as though it were ancient Athens itself. And we’ll say that the citizens you imagined are the very ones the priest spoke about, our actual ancestors. The congruence will be complete, and our song will be in tune if we say that your imaginary citizens are the ones who really existed at that time. (tr. Zeyl)

One could easily get the impression that the entire passage, but particularly the first part, is a kind of apology or justification for why the Atlantis tale and hence the reference to the Egyptians are never brought up when discussing the constitution in the Republic. Critias states that he immediately recognised the parallels, but could not remember the whole account, and that he needs some time to recall the details. A sharp-minded interpreter could have read between these lines and inferred from the fact that the Athens of the Atlantis myth resembles the state or constitution outlined in the Republic that some critics complained about the missing reference to the Egyptians and the Atlantis tale (which in fact was only a later invention by Plato). Considering the general historical and exegetical-philosophical context in Crantor’s day, it is quite possible that the Academic inferred the statement reported by Proclus from the above-quoted passage and from the overall structure of the relevant dialogues, as we have them today. He may have been eager to find a plausible reason and motivation to explain why, after the theoretical-fictional discussion in the Republic, Plato presented an allegedly historical example of this constitution or state in action which was linked to the Egyptians. Maybe Crantor had in mind some other gossip or mockery involving Plato and combined it with his exegesis, reaching the (historically wrong) conclusion that Plato was somehow criticised for ignoring the (alleged) Egyptian origin of his constitution and was compelled to add it to the Timaeus (and Critias). The passages in Plato, especially Timaeus 25e–26d, are basically compatible with the mockery episode to be found in Proclus. No doubt, one could argue for the opposite case, namely that the description of the mockery and Plato’s reaction in Proclus is historically true and that the Timaeus (as well as Critias) preserves reminiscences of such mockery. Yet, the mockers’ anecdote fits almost too well with the structure of the Timaeus and some of its passages, which might suggest that the whole episode can ultimately be traced back to Crantor’s subtle exegesis of the Timaeus, Republic, and Critias.39 The anonymous reference ὑπὸ τῶν τότε does not really give any credibility to his statement. Hence, we cannot discard the possibility that the information given by Crantor or Proclus is only a sophisticated inference based on a reading of Plato’s dialogues—without any 39

Cf. Tarrant, 2007, 67–68.

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historic value. In this context, I should note that, in my opinion, the information about stelae in the Proclus passage is also likely to have been drawn from the Timaeus-Critias.40 Crantor may have combined the idea of written records in Sais (Timaeus 23a and 24a)41 and of the stele in Atlantis (Critias 119c–e)42 with the information preserved by Proclus, not least because it is very unspecific.43 The question of the authenticity of the Atlantis story was already (impli­citly) discussed in the second half of the fourth century, with almost everyone regarding it as a myth. Crantor may have found an “exegetical” way to confirm its historicity.44 I should also mention a more far-fetched and admittedly less probable explanation for Crantor’s statement. He may have been involved in the general process of editing and canonizing Plato’s dialogues in these decades45 and may have found some marginal notes in Plato’s manuscripts (added by his secretary Philip of Opus or other pupils), which explicitly or implicitly gave evidence of such mockery and the subsequent revision of some passages. Alternatively, Crantor may have interpreted the nature of the old manuscripts46 of the Timaeus or Critias to the effect that there had been a later revision, for which Crantor then deduced a reasonable motivation. What does all this add up to? Our main question was whether the Crantor testimony in Proclus (In Timaeum 20d, Diehl  1.75.26–76.10 = Krantor F 8, Mette) might hint at a revision of the Timaeus. We had to deal with two major uncertainties. First, has Proclus more or less preserved the original statement 40 41 42

43

44 45 46

Some scepticism is also voiced by Tarrant, 2007, 69. 23a: “they’ve [scil. events] all been inscribed (γεγραμμένα) here in our temples and preserved from antiquity on”; 24a: “At another time we’ll go through all the details one by one at our leisure and inspect the documents (τὰ γράμματα) themselves”. 119c–d: “But, as for their common empire and federation, the kings were regulated by the laws of Posidon as these had been passed down by tradition and according to an inscription which the first kings had cut on a stele of oreichalkos”; 119e: “There they slaughtered it [scil. the bull] on the crest of the stele and let its blood spill down over the inscription”. This possibility was already brought up by Cameron, 1983, 84, though with a slightly different aim. I agree that the missing “circumstantial evidence”, which Crantor would have mentioned, is suspicious and suggests a statement based on exegesis (83). However, Nesselrath, 2001, 34 is certainly right to note that such evidence may have been left out by Proclus. Hecataeus of Abdera, Anaximenes of Lampsacus, Callisthenes and Phanodemos implicitly participate in the debate by discussing the priority of Sais over Athens. This must have been inspired by Ti. 24d–25c: see Nesselrath, 2001, 34–35. Erler, 2007, 11; Tarrant, 2020, 214–215. In this context I may refer to the sophisticated, yet certainly speculative, hypothesis of Tarrant, 2020, 208–216, who thinks that there was a special position within the Academy (“possessor of the books”) reserved for the person entrusted with preserving Plato’s original books and working on them.

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by Crantor or at least its overall content? This question cannot be answered with certainty, but one may prefer the assumption that the basic content— the idea of “mockery and Plato’s reaction (his ascribing the Atlantis tale to the Egyptians)”—really was in Crantor’s original commentary, as opposed to the opposite assumption, while also assuming that the consequence (that ascription of the tale to the Egyptians) was phrased differently and had a slightly different meaning. The second uncertainty regards Crantor’s source for the mockery. Did he hear some independent “historical” evidence or come across it in writing (and believed it to be confirmed by the rendering and remarks in the Timaeus-Critias)? Or did he invent this anecdote on the basis of some passages in the Timaeus-Critias, inspired by some “unspecific” and actually unrelated information, e.g. that comedians generally mocked Plato or that there were other accusations of plagiarism directed against him? I cannot come up with a definitive answer, but the hypothesis that the mockery information is just the product of a sagacious in-depth analysis of Plato’s relevant dialogues seems quite attractive, not least because the information about stelae is likely to simply derive from a combination of passages from the Timaeus and Critias. In this case, Crantor’s information in Proclus would be of no real historical value. Assuming instead that there is some historical truth to Crantor’s statements, which certainly remains possible, one would most naturally interpret the passage to the effect that the Atlantis tale and the attribution to the Egyptians were a reaction to the mocking of the Republic and that the Timaeus (as well as the Critias) were written (and not simply revised) as a reaction to this. However, the passage might also be taken to somehow imply that Plato revised the Timaeus (and Critias) within his lifetime, mainly by adding an Egyptian context or by inserting the Atlantis tale into an exclusively cosmogonic Ur-Timaeus (and later writing the Critias). Assuming the references to mockery are historically reliable, such a “revision” (maybe more aptly: insertion) may well have occurred, and the passage Timaeus 25e–26d might be a reminiscence of such mockery, to which Plato may have somewhat ironically responded through the Atlantis tale and the idea of its Egyptian origin. University of Würzburg

Chapter 9

Reading the Platonic Corpus in the Late Hellenistic Period: Antiochus and Alcibiades 1 Georgia Tsouni

Introduction

The first century BCE signifies an important turning-point in the reading of Plato. Although the Platonic dialogues were continuously read by Plato’s successors in the Academy down to that era,1 it is in this period that a clear rupture between diverse, and arguably incompatible, readings of Plato may be discerned. On the one hand, in the New Academy under Arcesilaus, Carneades and, lastly, Philo of Larissa the focus is laid on the Socratic aspects of Plato’s teaching and the dialogic form is interpreted as a guide for a sceptical epistemology. This way of reading Plato was clearly challenged in the first century BCE. In Cicero’s philosophical works we find evidence of a dogmatic reading of Plato’s works which goes back to the fascinating, although elusive, figure of Antiochus of Ascalon. It is clear that Antiochus developed his movement as an answer to the version of history of philosophy that was circulating in the Platonic Academy in the time of Philo of Larissa; Antiochus’ controversy with Philo, his former teacher, on the event of the publication of the so-called Roman books of Philo, and a counter-treatise of Antiochus called Sosus, which is mentioned in Cicero’s Academic Books (Lucullus 11–12), centred on epistemological issues but also, inevitably, affected the interpretation of the Platonic dialogues along either dogmatic or aporetic lines. The doctrinal reading of Plato advanced by Antiochus was linked to certain presuppositions; primary among them was the idea that Plato held consistent views about philosophical issues and that his work is in that sense unitary. Such a presupposition was confronted with a major hermeneutical problem: 1 See e.g. the comments of the character Cicero at Acad. 1.46, which are indicative of the “New Academic” reading of Plato’s dialogues: Hanc Academiam novam appellant, quae mihi vetus videtur, si quidem Platonem ex illa vetere numeramus, cuius in libris nihil affirmatur et in utramque partem multa disseruntur, de omnibus quaeritur nihil certi dicitur. They call this the “New Academy”, though I think it’s old, assuming we count Plato as part of the Old Academy. In his books nothing is affirmed, there are many arguments on either side, everything is under investigation, and nothing is claimed to be certain. (tr. Brittain)

© Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_010

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how is the dialogical or furthermore Socratic or aporetic aspect of Platonic works to be integrated in the reconstruction of Platonic dogmata? Antiochus’ reading did acknowledge Socratic aporetic practice in the Platonic dialogues but viewed it only as a methodological tool which was compatible with the reconstruction of Platonic doctrines (dogmata) in all philosophical domains.2 Along these lines, he may have traced in the dialectical aspects of Platonic works a propaedeutic function which was not incompatible with the firm commitment to certain ideas, such as the primacy of virtue for happiness.3 Such an approach was reinforced by the fact that Antiochus read the Platonic texts not isolated but as part of an Academic tradition which reached from the early successors of Plato in the Academy, included Aristotle and Theophrastus, and even attempted to co-opt the Stoics as part of the same tradition. Antiochus’ approach was expressed as an attempt to systematise Platonic and Academic views along the tripartite division of philosophy into ethics, logic and dialectic, an attempt which is well documented in Antiochean passages in Cicero. However, the way Antiochus’ novel approach impinged on the specific reading of the Platonic dialogues and the way it influenced their organisation into a corpus with distinct characteristics and hierarchies is far from clear. My contribution will attempt to enlighten this obscure early period of Platonic “dogmatisation” by reconstructing a reading of Alcibiades 1 along Antiochean lines, on the basis of Piso’s account in Cicero’s De Finibus 5.

A Fluid Notion of Platonic Authority

In his attempt to oppose himself to New Academic readings of Plato, Antiochus claimed that his own reading of Platonic texts was in line with the subsequent Academic tradition, which represented an historical and doctrinal unity down 2 The key passages for the “Antiochean” understanding of Socratic practice are Luc. 15 (which stresses Socratic “irony”) and Acad. 1.16 (which alludes to Socratic ignorance and Socrates’ portrait in the Ap.). Although the passages have been read as conveying two different interpretations of Socrates (Brittain, 2006, 93, n. 14), they may be both read in a way that ascribes to Socrates mere “methodological” scepticism, see Tsouni, 2019 and, more recently, Watton, 2022. 3 In Cicero we find an attempt to account for non-Socratic elements in the dialogues, which may also go back to Antiochus: thus, Cicero alludes in Rep. to the view that Platonic dialogues unite the “Socratic”, aporetic elements with Pythagorean, theoretical ideas, pointing to narrative works such as Ti. See e.g. Rep. 1.16. In the same passage, Cicero refers to Plato’s travels to Egypt and Sicily, where he associated with Archytas and Timaeus Locrus. See also Tusc. 1.39 on the immortality of the soul, and Tusc. 4.10 on the agreement between Pythagoras and Plato concerning the division of the soul into rational and irrational parts.

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to the time of Arcesilaus. This explains the collective reference to Academics from Speusippus down to Polemo in Antiochean passages in Cicero which purport to represent the philosophical views of the Old Academy (see e.g. Academica 1.34). Such collective references are linked to methodological problems with regard to their interpretation; in particular, lacking explicit references to the works of the Hellenistic Academy in Antiochean passages, and given the very scarce surviving evidence of the original works of the successors of Plato, it is not easy to discern which of the features of the Antiochean presentation of the Academy may be attributed to Antiochus himself or to the Academic authorities that he is citing. Antiochus’ return to the pre-sceptical Academy, which is viewed as representative of Plato’s own views, had important consequences for the notion of Platonic authority as well; instead of attempting to resurrect an “authentic” Plato, purified of other subsequent influences, Antiochus claims instead that Plato may be, and indeed should be, read in the light of his successors and of subsequent philosophical developments which are witnessed in them.4 Thus, his notion of Platonic authority is dynamic and inclusive.5 Reading Plato in his Academic context may also have consequences for the understanding of the authorship of the Platonic corpus; lacking a modern concept of authenticity which aims at reconstituting what was written by Plato’s own hand,6 the Platonic corpus may have accordingly been approached in the period of Antiochus in a more inclusive fashion. Assuming this, treatises that arose within the Academy, possibly in collaboration between Plato and other Academics, were naturally thought to contain genuine expressions of Platonic doctrines. Suggestive of this is the way the Letters that have been included into the Platonic corpus are treated as genuinely Platonic by Cicero, who

4 Suggestive in this respect is Acad. 1.34: Speusippus autem et Xenocrates, qui primi Platonis rationem auctoritatemque susceperant, et post eos Polemo et Crates unaque Crantor in Academia congregati diligenter ea quae a superioribus acceperant tuebantur. Speusippus and Xenocrates, however, who were the first people to take over Plato’s theory and authority, and after them Polemo and Crates, along with Crantor—all fellow Academics—diligently preserved the doctrines they had received from their predecessors. (tr. Brittain) 5 See Tsouni, 2018. For another account of Antiochus’ notion of authority, see Petrucci, 2021. 6 Cf. Renaud / Tarrant, 2015, 5: “To the ancients, the most important question would always have been whether the dialogue was an accurate reflection of Platonic thought, with the secondary requirement that it should have arisen from Plato’s own project.”

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may also be reflecting Antiochus’ approach on this point.7 This also applies to such works which in Thesleff’s classification in this volume are deemed “semi-authentic” and related to Academic school-accumulation.8 The role assigned to Alcibiades 1 in the presentation of Old Academic ethics in Cicero’s De Finibus 5 may be an example of such an approach. Antiochus’ approach is unique not only with regard to the recognition of the wider Academic character of Platonic philosophy but also concerning the way other traditions, most notably the Peripatetic and Stoic traditions, are incorporated into this inclusive Academic identity. This seems, undoubtedly, to be related to the fact that both the Peripatos and the Stoa engaged with Plato (or Socrates), or were linked to the Academy by way of master-pupil relationships (most notably, Zeno is reported to have been a pupil of Polemo). The thesis of an Academic tradition which, in some sense, includes the Peripatos and the Stoa as well was further supported by the Antiochean view that Stoic concepts are already prefigured in the writings of the “ancients”, despite the lack of identical terminology (see e.g. Academica 1.37; De Finibus 5.74.). For Antiochus this justifies a large appropriation of Stoic vocabulary for his presentation of Platonic (and Academic) views (e.g. the notion of oikeiōsis); his aim is, however, to offer alternative readings to the ones offered by the Stoics. Reading Platonic texts alongside Peripatetic and Stoic ones resulted in a systematization of Platonic views both on the level of doctrine and on the level of the organisation of the Platonic corpus into distinct areas of inquiry. In all probability, the Stoic school served here as a paradigmatic example for the way Platonic texts could be read in an “updated” fashion, in a way that would present the Old Academy as a worthy rival of the Hellenistic philosophical schools.9 Thus, a further question that will be addressed is the way Peripatetic and Stoic influences may have impinged on the way Platonic dialogues were read in Antiochus’ time, using as an example the evidence for an Antiochean reading of Alcibiades 1. 7 See the references to the alleged letter to Archytas (9.358a) cited by Cic. at Fin. 2.45 and Off. 1.22, and the reference of Plato’s letter to Dion’s relatives at Tusc. 5.100. 8 For example, Thesleff, in this volume, forms the following hypothesis regarding Alc. 1: “The heterogeneousness of Alc. 1 can be explained by the assumption that there existed an earlier draft by Plato, which was expanded and rewritten by a younger associate”. 9 Suggestive in this respect are the expressions ars philosophiae et rerum ordo et descriptio disciplinae which are used to characterise the Old Academic philosophical system at Acad. 1.17. For the importance of the idea of a philosophical system for the conception of Plato’s authority in Antiochus, see Petrucci, 2021.

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The Antiochean Reconstruction of Platonic Ethics: the “Canonical” Status of Alcibiades 1

The attempt at systematization of Platonic/Academic doctrine in the Antiochean passages in Cicero is linked to the presentation of Old Academic philosophical doctrines along the lines of a tripartite division of the philosophical logos into ethics, physics, and logic/dialectic. The Stoics were the first to use this division systematically (see Diogenes Laertius  7.39), but already Chrysippus, in a passage from his treatise On Lives which survives in Plutarch,10 refers to the correct way the “ancients” referred to the three genera of the philosophical “theorems”, which were accordingly divided into logical, ethical and physical ones, in a way that prefigured the Stoic division. The allusion seems to be to Aristotle, who mentioned three corresponding kinds of propositions in his Topics (105b19). In the Antiochean passages in Cicero such a tripartition of philosophy is linked directly to the Academy and, even to Plato himself. Thus, Varro states at Academic Books 1.19: Fuit ergo iam accepta a Platone philosophandi ratio triplex, una de vita et moribus, altera de natura et rebus occultis, tertia de disserendo et quid verum quid falsum quid rectum in oratione pravumve quid consentiens quid repugnet iudicando. They started with a threefold theory of philosophy inherited from Plato, one part dealing with our way of life and ethical dispositions, another with nature and hidden subjects, and the third with argument, i.e. judging what is true or false, correct or incorrect in its expression. And consistent or inconsistent. (tr. Brittain)

The clear distinction of philosophical areas of investigation, modelled on Stoic practice, impacted the way the writings of the “ancients” were organised, read and possibly taught in this period. An example of this is reflected in the presentation of the Peripatetic philosophical writings at De Finibus 5.9–12; there, Piso goes to great lengths to advertise his knowledge of the Peripatetic corpus (probably a pre-Andronicean one), and in particular of the commentarii (translating in all probability the Greek hypomnēmata) of the Peripatos, treating the latter also as authoritative material for the reconstruction of the Old Academic ethical doctrines. The Peripatetic philosophical system is organised in Piso’s account according to the threefold division of philosophy into physics, dialectic and ethics; a division which leaves aside the domain of metaphysics. On the other hand, Varro’s exposition of Academic philosophy in the Academic Books supplies us with some evidence on the way the Platonic 10 St. Rep. 1035a = SVF 2.42 = LS26C.

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corpus was read by Antiochus.11 There, Varro succinctly presents the Old Academic philosophical system by means of a collection of the main dogmata that fall under the three major philosophical areas of ethics, physics and dialectic. The summary of the ethical doctrines of the Old Academy in Varro’s speech (1.19–23) focuses around the identification of some key doctrines in the ethical domain, such as the definition of the telos,12 a tripartite classification of goods,13 the question of the sufficiency of virtue for the happy life.14 No particular textual allusions to Platonic works on ethics may be traced there.15 Piso’s account of Old Academic ethics in the last book of Cicero’s De Finibus provides our most extensive evidence on the way Antiochus read the ethics of the Academic (and Peripatetic) tradition. Although the account explicitly conveys the ethics of the Old Academy, Cicero is keen to attach to it a particular Peripatetic character as well; this is highlighted both by the concise presentation of the Peripatetic corpus at De Finibus  5.9–12 and by Piso’s association with Staseas of Naples in the dialogue, who is taken to offer a slightly different version of ethics as the one offered by Antiochus.16 Whereas elsewhere I have offered an extensive analysis of the Peripatetic credentials of Piso’s account,17 here I will attempt to show how the account of Piso may contain Platonic echoes as well, presenting thus the Academy in fundamental unity with the Peripatos in the domain of ethics. More specifically, I will argue that Alcibiades 1 was one of the sources used by Antiochus in order to construct the Platonic/ 11 12

On the accessibility of Platonic texts on the part of Antiochus, see Barnes, 1989, 78. This is identified with “to have obtained everything natural in mind, body and life” (finem bonorum adeptum esse omnia e natura et animo et corpore et vita) at Acad. 1.19 (tr. Brittain). Another definition at Acad. 1.22 defines the ethical end as “to obtain all or the greatest of the primary objects nature recommends, i.e. the objects sought for their own sake. But the greatest primary objects are precisely the ones in the mind and in virtue” (tr. Brittain). (adipisci quae essent prima in natura quaeque ipsa per sese expetenda aut omnia aut maxima; ea sunt autem maxima, quae in ipso animo atque in ipsa virtute versantur). 13 Those are divided into bodily goods (1.19), psychic goods which comprise natural gifts and dispositional ones, namely the virtues (1.20) and those goods “pertaining to life” which are conducive to the use of virtue and are deemed either choiceworthy for their own sake or instrumental (1.21). 14 See Acad. 1.22, where, while the sufficiency of virtue for happiness is defended, at the same time it is admitted that the availability of bodily goods and of those pertaining to the use of virtue make a life the “happiest” possible. 15 By contrast, the so-called Doxography A in Stob. Ecl. is an early testimony of the way the Platonic telos was accompanied by explicit references to the Platonic dialogues, see Stob. Ecl. 2.7 p. 49.18–25 W. For an extensive discussion of the Doxography A in chapter 2.7 of Stob. Ecl., see Hahm, 1987. 16 See Fin. 5.75. 17 Tsouni, 2019.

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Academic pedigree of his ethical account.18 If this is plausible, it provides us with evidence on the canonical status of the dialogue in this period. This need not mean, however, that the Alcibiades 1 was the only text that Antiochus used for his reconstruction of Platonic ethics; the Laws, for example, may also have been read as an “ethical” dialogue by Antiochus.19 However, some of the main topics of Piso’s speech, namely an anthropological account and its relation to the goods which are constitutive of the telos, as also the importance assigned to self-knowledge, seem to point especially to Alcibiades 1 and, in particular, to the closing part of the dialogue. The choice of a “Socratic” dialogue as a basis for a reconstruction of Academic ethics, may also have served some of the philosophical aims of Antiochus and, in particular, his polemic against the Stoics, who also claimed a Socratic pedigree for their philosophical positions.20 Lacking verbatim quotations from the dialogue (or from works of other members of the Old Academy), whether Antiochus’ own contribution is a dogmatic reconstruction of Alcibiades 1, or not, and whether it involved direct engagement with the Platonic text or only a mediated one cannot be securely established; thus, for example, the influence of another Academic work, such as a treatise of Polemo on ethics, which is vaguely alluded to in some passages of De Finibus,21 may not be excluded. A lack of direct textual allusions to the Platonic texts is linked to Antiochean methodology: contrary to Academics and Platonists of the Imperial era, Antiochus is not engaged in textual exegesis; his aim is rather to offer on the basis of ideas found in the source texts a doctrinal reconstruction of the Platonic philosophical system.22 Finally, the Antiochean reading of the Alcibiades 1 which is proposed here, should be differentiated from the (wider) Ciceronian reception of the dialogue. Thus, passages in Cicero other than Piso’s speech in De Finibus 5 also seem to contain explicit quotations from or allusions to Alcibiades 1, however in this case they seem to reflect a non-Antiochean interpretation of the dialogue.23 18

19 20 21 22 23

An influence of the Alc. 1 on Antiochus has already been suggested by Prost, 2001, who, however, does not offer an extensive discussion of the similarities between the two texts. On the other hand, Trabattoni, 2022, who makes anew a case for Platonic influence on Piso’s account in Fin. 5, assigns no particular significance to the Alcibiades 1. The only clear allusion to a Platonic dialogue in Piso’s account is a paraphrase from the Laws (653a) at Fin. 5.58. For other “Socratic” elements in Piso’s speech, see Tsouni, 2019, 106–107.138–141. See e.g. Fin. 2.33–4; 4.14–8; 5.74. For the Polemonian influence on Antiochus’ ethics, see Dillon, 2003, 160–165. For this aspect of Antiochus’ methodology, see Chiaradonna, 2013, 33, who, for this reason deems Antiochus a “late Hellenistic”, as opposed to a “post-Hellenistic”, thinker. Other than a passage from Fin. 5 (5.44), Renaud / Tarrant, 2015, 112–125 discuss four more passages from the Ciceronian corpus (Tusc. 1.52; 5.70, Rep. 6.26 and Leg. 1.58–60) as evidence for Cicero’s reception of the Alc. 1. Whereas Tusc. 1.52 seems to engage directly with

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The Antiochean Ethical Account and Alcibiades 1 on Human Nature and Self-Knowledge

Piso’s speech has a starting-point which is identified with the (chronologically) first impulse and the starting-point of natural appropriation (oikeiōsis). This is strongly reminiscent of the Stoic ethical account of De Finibus 3, whereas a similar strategy may also be found in the Summary of Peripatetic ethics which survives in the second book of Stobaeus’ Selections.24 After grounding the telos in oikeiōsis (5.24–33), Piso’s account proceeds by offering an account of human nature as a composite of body and soul and an ensuing classification of goods into goods of the body and goods of the soul, first on the basis of natural appropriation (5.34–45) and subsequently on the basis of the inherent value of both bodily and psychic goods (or virtues) (5.46–70). The account finishes with remarks on the relative importance of the virtues in relation to the other goods admitted in the Old Academic ethical telos (5.71–74). The first part of Piso’s account is structured around the concept of natural appropriation which manifests itself from the beginning of life in all living organisms; such a natural appropriation suggests that living things have a natural tendency to reach their respective telos by virtue of impulses towards appropriate things (oikeia) supplied by nature herself. While this startingpoint maybe linked to Aristotelian teleology,25 it may well have been taken by Antiochus to express a Platonic position as well. Thus, such a reading could reflect Diotima’s account in the Symposium, where we find references to a natural desire towards the divine, which is expressed in all living organisms (207d), at the most basic biological level, through an impulse towards reproduction. An analogous desire for the divine is to be found in the mental realm in the soul’s erotic desire towards beauty which begins with perceptual beauty and culminates with the vision of beauty in the intelligible realm. Such views may have seemed compatible with Aristotelian/Peripatetic views about the teleological structure of natural impulses, which were expressed in the Antiochean version of oikeiōsis.26 the text of the dialogue, e.g. 130d8–10 (as also the first part of Rep. 6.26), Tusc. 5.70 (and possibly the second part of Rep. 6.26 as well) seem to have a looser relation to the text and perhaps bear a Stoic (or specifically Posidonian) influence. Leg. 1.58–60, on the other hand, may well bear an Antiochean influence. 24 The Stoic and Peripatetic influences on Fin. 5 are discussed extensively in Tsouni, 2019. 25 For the reconstruction of Piso’s “Peripatetic” argument from oikeiōsis, see chapter 3 in Tsouni, 2019. 26 In Smp. 205e the desire for the “good” is cast in terms of the oikeion as well, which could provide a Platonic rationale for the idea of oikeiōsis. For a similar suggestion on the importance of this passage for Antiochus’ “appropriation” of oikeiōsis, see Dillon, 2020, 194, n. 11. Trabattoni, 2022, 92–93 also makes a case for a Platonic pedigree of oikeiosis (which he

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In Piso’s Antiochean account, natural appropriation is shown in the way small children manifest through their behaviour a rudimentary understanding of the virtues, something which is cast in terms of “seeds” or “sparks” of virtue.27 For example, the tendency of children to observe all things around them, without being deterred by the threat of punishment is indicative of the human drive towards intellectual virtue, whereas children’s behaviour during their play with other children or towards their caregivers is indicative of the innate tendencies towards the social virtues (De Finibus 5.42, 5.61). Strikingly, the Antiochean spokesperson underlines that such an approach which draws on the behaviour of small children is distinctive of the Old Academic school, pointing to (unnamed) passages in the works of the representatives of this tradition (De Finibus 5.55). Alcibiades  1 may provide such an example in the Platonic corpus; in this dialogue the source of one’s knowledge of ethical virtue, and in particular of justice, forms a central point of Socrates’ interrogation. Following on Socrates’ inquiry as to how Alcibiades acquired his alleged knowledge of justice, Alcibiades initially states that he has not acquired such a knowledge through a teacher (109d). Investigating further the chronological point of acquisition of his knowledge, Socrates expresses his confidence that Alcibiades knew what was just and unjust already when he was a young boy. This confidence resides in the observation on the part of Socrates of Alcibiades’ behaviour at a very young age. Thus, he states: “sometimes when you [scil. Alcibiades] were playing knucklebones or some other game, you’d say to one or another of your playmates, very loudly and confidently […] that he was a lousy cheater and wasn’t playing fairly” (110b). After Alcibiades’ confirmation that his behaviour was indeed based on knowledge on his part (σαφῶς ἐγίγνωσκον), Socrates remarks that even as a child Alcibiades thought he understood justice and injustice (110c). The example of the child Alcibiades who has some understanding of justice when playing with his peers does not, however, lead to the consideration of some sort of innate tendency towards justice or of a rudimentary traces back to the eudaimonistic assumptions of Socratic-Platonic ethics) by alluding to the Smp. (204d). 27 Fin. 5.43: est enim natura sic generata vis hominis, ut ad omnem virtutem percipiendam facta videatur, ob eamque causam parvi virtutum simulacris, quarum in se habent semina, sine doctrina moventur; sunt enim prima elementa naturae, quibus auctis virtutis quasi germen efficitur. Nature seems to have generated the human spirit to enable us to acquire every virtue. That is why children, without instruction, are stirred by semblances of the virtues, which contain within themselves the seeds of virtue. These seeds are the basic elements of our nature, and they grow and blossom into virtue. (hereinafter tr. Woolf in Annas / Woolf, 2001)

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understanding of virtue in the dialogue. Instead, this line of thought leads to an aporetic end, when Alcibiades 1s forced to admit that he never “found out himself” (αὐτὸς ἐξευρών) about justice at a particular point in his life, because he cannot remember of a time when he did not possess his alleged knowledge (110d). At that point, Alcibiades embarks again on the investigation of whether he was ever formally taught justice by others (110d), without considering other alternative possibilities regarding his possession of an understanding of justice at a young age. The example of the young Alcibiades 1s reminiscent of examples that Piso supplies in De Finibus  5 with regard to the existence of a natural impulse towards social virtue, which is expressed in children’s games with their peers (De Finibus 5.43). However, whereas the example in Alcibiades 1 is used to show Alcibiades’ lack of knowledge of justice (a knowledge which in the course of the dialogue appears to require a dialectical engagement with another soul), children’s examples in Piso’s account are mentioned as an empirical proof for the availability of rudimentary innate notions of goodness and badness, something that in Stoic theory is related to the idea of prolēpsis. The possession of such rudimentary notions does not amount to proper knowledge of the virtues but constitutes the necessary basis for the cultivation of virtue through philosophical training. The example may suggest how Antiochus put motifs and lines of thought which appeared in aporetic dialogues into the service of a constructive reconstruction of Platonic doctrines. The second part of Piso’s speech offers an account of human nature with a view to establishing the Old Academic doctrine of the telos or aim of human life. One may read this part of Piso’s account as an engagement with and response to Alcibiades 1: In the last part of Alcibiades 1, Socrates suggests that in order to cultivate oneself, one needs to know what oneself is (τί ποτ’ ἐσμὲν αὐτοί; 128e).28 The dialogue further testifies to an attempt to define the “self” in terms of a division of soul and body, whereby the soul is deemed superior to the body, as the thing that “uses” and “rules” over the body.29 Further, three options are offered with regard to the question of “who one is”: the “self” is identified either (solely) with the body, or (solely) with the soul, or with the 28

It is suggestive in this respect that Diog. Laert. (3.59) assigns to the dialogue the subtitle “On the Nature of Humankind” (περὶ ἀνθρώπου φύσεως). 29 Alc. 1 129e–130a: ΣΩ: Τί ποτ’ οὖν ὁ ἄνθρωπος; ΑΛ: Οὐκ ἔχω λέγειν. ΣΩ: Ἔχεις μὲν οὖν, ὅτι γε τὸ τῷ σώματι χρώμενον. ΑΛ: Ναί. ΣΩ: Ἦ οὖν ἄλλο τι χρῆται αὐτῷ ἢ ψυχή; ΑΛ: Οὐκ ἄλλο. ΣΩ: Οὐκοῦν ἄρχουσα; ΑΛ: Ναί. SO: Then what is a human being? AL: I don’t know what to say. SO: Yes, you do—say that it’s what uses the body. AL: Yes. SO: What else uses it but the soul? AL: Nothing else. SO: And doesn’t the soul rule the body? AL: Yes. (hereinafter tr. Hutchinson)

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combination of the two (τὸ συναμφότερον) (130a9). On the assumption that a human being is what rules over the body, Socrates suggests that the “self” or “human being” is to be identified solely with the soul (130c1–3).30 This prefaces an important distinction which follows at 131a2–3, namely that knowledge of one’s body is knowledge of “what is one’s own” (τὰ αὑτοῦ) but not of “oneself” (αὑτὸν).31 External goods, such as wealth, are further differentiated both from the “self” and “from what is one’s own”, identified rather as “belonging to one’s own” (τῶν ἑαυτοῦ).32 This fundamental division of Alcibiades 1 seems to be reflected in the Old Academic account of De Finibus 5, where Piso presents human nature as consisting of both body and (rational) soul/mind (animus), whereby the superiority of the latter in relation to the former is clearly advocated.33 This superiority is grounded in the idea that human nature obeys the mind, which is the most superior constituent of the soul.34 Despite the superiority of the soul/mind against the body (De Finibus 5.38.), the Antiochean account attempts to integrate in its definition of the telos both aspects of the “self”, opting thereby for the 30 Ἐπειδὴ δ’ οὔτε σῶμα οὔτε τὸ συναμφότερόν ἐστιν ἄνθρωπος, λείπεται οἶμαι ἢ μηδὲν αὔτ’ εἶναι, ἢ εἴπερ τί ἐστι, μηδὲν ἄλλο τὸν ἄνθρωπον συμβαίνειν ἢ ψυχήν. Since a human being is neither a body, nor a body and soul together, what remains, I think, is either that one is nothing, or else, if one is something, one is nothing other than a soul. Cf. Cic. Tusc. 1.52: neque nos corpora sumus, nec ego tibi haec dicens corpori tuo dico. cum igitur “nosce te” dicit, hoc dicit: “nosce animum tuum”. Neither are we bodies, and in speaking these words to you, I am not speaking to your body. When then he [scil. Apollo] says, “Know thyself”, he says, “Know thy soul/mind”. (tr. Tsouni) 31 ΣΩ: Ὅστις ἄρα τῶν τοῦ σώματός τι γιγνώσκει, τὰ αὑτοῦ ἀλλ’ οὐχ αὑτὸν ἔγνωκεν. 32 ΣΩ: Ὅστις δέ γε τὰ χρήματα, οὔθ’ ἑαυτὸν οὔτε τὰ ἑαυτοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἔτι πορρωτέρω τῶν ἑαυτοῦ; 33 Fin. 5.34: Deinceps videndum est, quoniam satis apertum est sibi quemque natura esse carum, quae sit hominis natura. id est enim, de quo quaerimus. atqui perspicuum est hominem e corpore animoque constare, cum primae sint animi partes, secundae corporis. It is now sufficiently clear that everyone by nature loves themselves. We must next examine the question of what human nature is, since that is the object of our search. Evidently human beings consist of mind and body, but the mind and its components are primary, the parts of the body only secondary. Note, however, that this anthropology was widely shared by Aristotle as well, who may well also be a source of inspiration for Antiochus’ account. Renaud / Tarrant, 2005, 94–95 point, for example, to the similarities between the anthropology expounded at Alc. 1 129e–130b and Aristotle’s Protrepticus in ch. 7 of Iamblichus’ homonymous work. 34 Fin. 5.34: animumque ita constitutum, ut et sensibus instructus sit et habeat praestantiam mentis, cui tota hominis natura pareat. The human mind, for its part, has a constitution that provides it not only with senseperception but with the dominant element, intellect, which the whole human person by nature obeys.

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third possibility which was put forward by Socrates in Alcibiades 1 (130a9), i.e. the one of the “self” as a composite of soul and body.35 Thus, the Old Academic telos advanced is one that includes both the soul/mind and the body, and the corresponding psychic and bodily goods are taken to be both constituents of the happy life. Still, Antiochus maintained that our happiness is mostly defined by the psychic goods, namely the virtues. As Piso makes clear, while goods of the body pertain to oneself and influence ones’ happiness, they are almost invisible when compared to virtue, however this does not mean that they are of no importance at all. It is suggestive that external goods are not considered in Piso’s account as constituents of the telos, and thereby as parts of oneself at all, but as necessary conditions within which the telos is realised.36 This idea in particular may suggest that the division of human nature into soul and body and the ensuing comments on the subordinate role of external goods which feature in Alcibiades 1 formed the basis for the specification of the Antiochean conception of the telos. The relation between virtue and other goods, bodily and external, is thematised in other Platonic texts as well. For example, in the first book of the Laws there is reference to “divine” goods alongside “human” ones (631b–d),37 the latter including health, beauty and bodily strength, whereas as final in the row comes wealth. The passage is cited as “canonical” in the so-called doxography A in Stobaeus (2.7 p. 54.10–55.4 W), which also attempts to offer a reading of 35 E.g. Fin. 5.37: ea enim vita expetitur, quae sit animi corporisque expleta virtutibus, in eoque summum bonum poni necesse est, quandoquidem id tale esse debet, ut rerum expetendarum sit extremum. We seek a life in which the virtues of both mind and body are fully realised. This is where the supreme good is to be found, since the latter ought to represent the upper limit of what is desirable. Cf. also Prost, 2001, 249. 36 See Fin. 5.68: ita fit, ut duo genera propter se expetendorum reperiantur, unum, quod est in iis, in quibus completur illud extremum, quae sunt aut animi aut corporis; haec autem, quae sunt extrinsecus, id est quae neque in animo insunt neque in corpore, ut amici, ut parentes, ut liberi, ut propinqui, ut ipsa patria, sunt illa quidem sua sponte cara, sed eodem in genere, quo illa, non sunt. Thus we find that there are two separate categories of things that are valuable in their own right. The first is where the ultimate good is realised, namely in the category of mind and body. The second is the class of external goods, namely those that belong neither to mind nor body, such as friends, parents, children, relatives and one’s own country. These are indeed valued in their own right, but do not fall into the same class as mind and body. Antiochus could also be using here an argument of Aristotelian provenance (see N.E. 1.10 1100a31–1101b8), cf. Tsouni, 2019, 177–178, but the differentiation is compatible with a reading of Alc. 1 as well. 37 For a reference to “human” goods as opposed to “divine” ones, see also Alcinous, Didascalicus 27.3–4.

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Platonic passages along dogmatic lines, showing thereby the plurality of passages that may be found in Plato concerning the ethical telos. While pointing to the variety of Plato’s formulations, the doxographer adopts as an hermeneutical principle for his Platonic interpretation the idea that Plato testifies to a variety of expression but not to a variety of opinions, i.e. he was polyphonos but not polydoxos;38 thus, all his diverse formulations on the telos ultimately refer to the idea that happiness amounts to “living according to virtue”. Plato’s immediate successors in the Academy seem to have attempted in their own right to combine a tripartite division of goods with the overwhelming primacy of virtue for happiness.39 Accordingly, the Antiochean proposal that a happy life consists in the possession of the virtues but that the happiest life (vita beatissima) requires the integrity of the bodily aspects of human nature as well40 may reflect an attempt to convey the approach of early Academics, like Polemo, towards the telos. If we take Antiochus’ views on Polemo at face value, then he argued for the telos using an argument which was based on human nature and was cast in terms of a “life according to nature”, as already mentioned; Polemo’s views could be linked in their own right to Alcibiades 1.41 The recognition of degrees of happiness on the part of Antiochus may also be understood as an attempt to reconcile two views, which are both represented in the Platonic corpus: a position reflected in a line of argument in the Euthydemus (281a–c), according to which only wisdom is good, because it directs our conduct in relation to the right use of other things and a pluralistic account of goods, which includes non-psychic goods as well. The tension between the two accounts is expressed as an aporia in the Alcibiades 1, related to the “badness” involved in losing one’s life, even if one 38 Stob. Ecl. 2.7 p. 55.5–6 W.: Πλάτων πολύφωνος ὤν, οὐχ ὥς τινες οἴονται πολύδοξος. On the concept of “polyphony” in Doxography A, see Hahm, 1987, 3002–3004. Cf. Tarrant, Core Curriculum 2018, 112. The emphasis on Plato’s unity of doctrine despite his variety of expression is also reflected in Varro’s account in Acad. 1.17. The “polyphonia” of Plato is also mentioned in the pseudo-Plutarchean treatise De Homero, where polyphonos is an adjective related to Plato’s diversity of style, see ch. 6.4: ἴδωμεν γὰρ πρότερον τὴν τῆς λέξεως αὐτοῦ πολυφωνίαν. For the “polyphony” of a poet, cf. also Dion. Hal. Comp. 16; Max. Tyr. 18.8a. 39 The conceptions of Speusippus, Xenocrates and Polemo on the telos are registered in a doxographical passage in Clemens of Alexandria, Strom. 2.22.133.4.1–133.7.6. 40 Fin. 5.71: illa enim, quae sunt a nobis bona corporis numerata, complent ea quidem beatissimam vitam, sed ita, ut sine illis possit beata vita existere. It is true that what we count as bodily goods do make a contribution to the happiest life. But a happy life can exist without them. 41 For the likelihood that the Alc. 1 has some connection with Polemo’s Academy, see Renaud / Tarrant, 2015, 109; Tarrant, 2020, 203–206.

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exhibits the virtue of courage which is good and advantageous.42 Such a puzzle brings the character Alcibiades to admit contradiction in the dialogue (116e). The Antiochean approach, which is registered in Piso’s account in Cicero, may have attempted to solve the puzzle by admitting degrees of happiness; this may have constituted at the same time an attempt on the part of Antiochus at reconciling different “voices” in Plato’s dialogues, taking into account the subsequent Academic tradition as well. The emphasis on “self-knowledge” (γνῶθι σαυτόν, se agnoscere) is the other most characteristic motif that suggests an influence of the Alcibiades 1 on Piso’s account.43 In the ethical account of De Finibus 5, it is emphatically stated that we start our lives with a basic and rudimentary knowledge of ourselves, which is incomplete and unclear, and that we only gradually come to gain proper knowledge of ourselves.44 The incomplete self-knowledge which is manifested at an early age relates both to the tendency to preserve ourselves (granted to us by oikeiōsis) and to innate mental tendencies, which express in a very sketchy way the intellectual and social virtues.45 However, a proper knowledge of ourselves (as a composite of soul/mind and body), an idea explicitly linked in Piso’s account to the Delphic maxim,46 only appears at a later stage of life and is the outcome of the application of “skill” (ars), by which Piso alludes to the engagement with philosophy (De Finibus 5.60). Self-knowledge is further spelled out in the account as knowledge of the powers of one’s body and soul/

42 Alc. 1 116a: ΣΩ: Τὴν ἄρ’ ἐν τῷ πολέμῳ τοῖς φίλοις βοήθειαν λέγων καλὴν μὲν εἶναι, κακὴν δέ, οὐδὲν διαφερόντως λέγεις ἢ εἰ προσεῖπες αὐτὴν ἀγαθὴν μέν, κακὴν δέ. SOC: Then when you say that rescuing one’s friends in battle is admirable but bad, you mean exactly the same as if you’d called it good but bad. 43 Self-knowledge (in relation to the virtue of temperance) constitutes a major theme in the Charmides (164d–175c) as well but it is not linked there to ideas about human nature. The dialogue has also a more explicit aporetic character than Alc. 1. 44 See Fin. 5.41: progredientibus autem aetatibus sensim tardeve potius quasi nosmet ipsos cognoscimus. But, as we get older, we gradually, slowly, come to know our own selves. 45 The role of innate notions is also reflected in the account of self-knowledge given at Cic. Leg. 1.58–60, a text which may well bear Antiochean influences. 46 Fin. 5.44: Intrandum est igitur in rerum naturam et penitus quid ea postulet pervidendum; aliter enim nosmet ipsos nosse non possumus. quod praeceptum quia maius erat, quam ut ab homine videretur, idcirco assignatum est deo. iubet igitur nos Pythius Apollo noscere nosmet ipsos. So we must delve into the workings of nature and reach a deep understanding of what it requires. If not, we cannot know ourselves. This precept seemed too lofty to have a human origin and was therefore assigned to a god. Hence the Pythian Apollo bids us to know ourselves.

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intellect, whereby the latter is clearly given precedence over the former.47 This involves knowledge of the virtues of one’s mind, which are divided further in the account into the theoretical and the social or practical virtues. In Alcibiades  1 as well, “knowledge of oneself” turns out to be the major theme of the dialogue, being the prerequisite of Alcibiades’ successful engagement with politics. In line with this, at many points in the dialogue, Socrates points to Alcibiades that self-knowledge, identified with knowledge of one’s soul (130c6), is supposed to be a difficult task acquired only through effort and employment of “skill” (technē) and “cultivation” (epimeleia) (see, e.g. 129a); this aims at acquiring the virtues and “making his [scil. Alcibiades’] soul just” (135e). However, in this case skill has the specific form of one-to-one Socratic dialectic, as it is practiced in the Alcibiades 1, and suggested by a central idea of the dialogue, namely that in order for a soul to cognise itself, it needs to “look” at another soul, as if in a mirror (133b). It is important to notice that the metaphor of the mirror features also in the Magna Moralia (2.15 1213a20–24), which points to a reception of the Alcibiades 1 in a Peripatetic context; there mirroring becomes dissociated from its original erotic connotations and is integrated into the discussion of friendship. The essentially dialectical nature of the philosophical method which leads to self-knowledge is missing wholly in the Antiochean account, as also the erotic aspects with which such a process of self-knowledge is invested in Plato. An echo of Alcibiades 1 may finally be traced in the Antiochean account in references to the divinity of the intellect. In Alcibiades 1, self-knowledge is associated with knowledge of the divine nature of one’s intellect; accordingly, the part of the soul where “knowledge and thinking” reside is deemed the “more divine” part of the soul (133c). Socrates in Alcibiades 1 makes, in a much discussed passage (133c), further assumptions which liken that part of the soul to god and relate knowledge of oneself to knowledge of “everything divine” (πᾶν τὸ θεīον), namely “god and wisdom” (θεόν τε καὶ φρόνησιν).48 Furthermore, some expressions used by Socrates in the dialogue seem to suggest that there is something superior to the individual self and intellect, with which self-knowledge may be linked.49 47 Fin. 5.44: cognitio autem haec est una nostri, ut vim corporis animique norimus sequamurque eam vitam, quae rebus iis ipsis perfruatur. But the only way to gain this knowledge is to understand the powers of our body and our mind, and to follow the life that utilises them to the full. 48 For the competing theocentric and anthropocentric interpretations of this passage, see Renaud / Tarrant, 2015, 64–67. 49 This maybe also linked to references to the “self itself” (αὐτὸ ταὐτό) at Alc. 1 129b1–3, as opposed to “each (individual) self” (αὐτὸ ἕκαστον) at 130d4; for discussion of the idea of the “self itself”, see Renaud / Tarrant, 2015, 58.

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The Antiochean spokesman Piso makes three times reference to the divine character of the intellect.50 He goes on, further, to include intellectual activity, in the form of contemplation and the pursuit of natural science, as a “superior” kind of activity, into his account of the telos, alongside the exercise of the practical virtues (De Finibus  5.58). Other than Alcibiades  1, Antiochus could be drawing here on a plurality of passages from both the Platonic and the Aristotelian tradition, which advocated the divine character of the human nous.51 Note, however, that although, in his account of Old Academic physics in the second edition of the Academic Books, the Antiochean Varro makes reference to a divine intellect, alluding most probably to the Timaeus,52 no references to a divine entity, which may function as a paradigm for human life, is made in Piso’s ethical account in De Finibus. If Antiochus did have Alcibiades 1 in mind, then it is significant that he does not assign to god, as a higher instance above the human mind, a particular significance for the identification of the Old Academic telos.53 In his account, the Platonic telos is not identified, as it will be the case in so-called Middle Platonism, with assimilation to the divine but with the Stoic formula of a life according to nature (which, as it was already mentioned, is in some passages ascribed to the Academic Polemo).54 Accordingly, Alcibiades 1 must have been 50 Fin. 5.38; 5.43; 5.56. Cf. Leg. 1.59, which may bear Antiochean influences. 51 See Plato R. 7.533d; Ti. 90a; Arist. N.E. 10.7 1177b26–78a7. 52 Acad. 1.29: [Q]uam vim animum esse dicunt mundi, eandemque esse mentem sapientiamque perfectam, quem deum appellant. [T]hey [scil. the Old Academics] say that this power is the world soul, and that it is also a mind and perfect wisdom, which they call god. (tr. Tsouni) 53 One may contrast here Tusc. 5.70, which also alludes to Alc. 1 and the motif of selfknowledge, but puts an emphasis on the union with and imitation of the divine mind, perhaps transmitting thereby Posidonian views. Another passage in Rep. 6.26 (part of the so-called “Dream of Scipio”) explicitly identifies human reason with an (immortal) god. 54 E.g. Fin. 5.24: ita finis bonorum existit secundum naturam vivere sic affectum, ut optime affici possit ad naturamque accommodatissime. For the silence of Antiochus regarding the idea of “assimilation to the divine”, cf. Trabattoni, 2022, 96. Hence we arrive at the highest good, to live in accordance with nature in the best and most suitable natural condition possible. Cf. the comments in Lévy, 1990, 62–64. In Stob. Ecl. 2.7.3 p. 49.8, we find, arguably, the earliest identification of the Platonist telos with “assimilation to god as far as it is possible” (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν), a phrase taken from the digression of Plato’s Tht. (176d–e). Due to its parallel attribution to Pythagoras, this formulation of the Platonist telos in doxography A in Stob. has been attributed to Eudorus of Alexandria but it may well be a contribution of the doxographer Arius Didymus himself. For a discussion of Eudorus’ contribution with regard to the Platonist telos, see Bonazzi, 2013; Torri, 2017, 88–101. The formula was identified with the telos by all subsequent Platonist philosophers from Plotinus down to late Neoplatonism.

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taken to be compatible with an approach which did not make the transcendent character of Platonic ideas, or the divine paradigm, the focus of attention. This has a particular significance, considering the importance assigned to the dialogue by later Platonists; for example, for Proclus this dialogue, due to the emphasis placed on self-knowledge and its pedagogical function, was considered the best starting-point for the study of the Platonic corpus. The special importance ascribed to the dialogue maybe traced in Iamblichus as well, who thought that Alcibiades 1 contains the whole philosophy of Plato “as it were in seminal form (ὥσπερ ἐν σπέρματι)”.55 Even if the focus of later Platonists shifted more emphatically to the study of transcendent principles as the hallmark of Platonic philosophy, Alcibiades 1 seems to have been from the very beginnings of Plato’s “dogmatisation” a canonical text, whose privileged status later Platonists perhaps inherited already from Antiochus.

Conclusion

Antiochus’ peculiar hermeneutical assumptions concerning the dogmatic character of Plato’s dialogues and especially his views about a doctrinal unity between Academics and Peripatetics may be exemplified in the way Alcibiades 1 was read as part of an attempt to offer a dogmatic reconstruction of Academic ethics. The influence of this dialogue on the Antiochean account of Piso in De Finibus 5 may be postulated on the basis of the importance assigned to anthropological remarks for the derivation of the Old Academic telos and on the basis of the emphasis put on self-knowledge in the account. Antiochus’ aim is not to offer an exegesis of the Platonic text but to use it as evidence for a dogmatic reconstruction of Plato’s views which takes into account the subsequent Academic and Peripatetic tradition as well. Put into such a use, the dialogue is deprived of its aporetic features, its aporias being resolved in a way that, on the one hand, support the superiority of nous as the most authoritative aspect of human nature but, on the other hand, assign to the bodily aspect of human nature a place in the telos as well. Such a reading may also serve as an example of the way Antiochus traced back to Platonic texts, through the mediation of the subsequent Academic tradition, alternative positions to the ones set by a contemporary Stoic agenda. University of Crete 55 Proclus, in Alc. 11.12–15 (= Iamblichus fr. 1 Dillon).

Chapter 10

Aristotle as a Source and Critic of Plato’s Philosophy George Karamanolis

Introduction

Aristotle is undoubtedly the most important of Plato’s pupils, considered even in antiquity as a particularly gifted one (Cicero, De divinatione 1.53).1 And he is clearly one who sets himself in a constant dialogue with Plato’s philosophy and also one who had a strong impact on the understanding of Plato by later generations. Moreover, given that Aristotle was mostly responding to Plato’s works at a time when Xenocrates was trying to establish Plato’s authority for his own philosophy,2 Aristotle’s dialogue with Plato is a key piece in the puzzle of the very earliest development of Plato’s corpus. In the following I will focus on the information that Aristotle gives us about Plato’s work and Plato’s philosophy through his interpretations, including his criticism. Aristotle knows Plato both from his written work and from personal acquaintance. Aristotle often speaks of Plato and refers to views of his. While it is not always clear which views in Plato’s work he refers to, at other times he refers specifically to particular works of Plato.3 It is clear, though, that Aristotle’s acquaintance with Plato’s work and thought is deep and thorough. Aristotle’s own philosophical thought and work has been shaped by that of Plato in many ways and in all areas of philosophy. There is a long and still ongoing discussion as to how exactly Aristotle’s thought developed in dialogue with Plato. Neither the view that Aristotle was closer to Plato’s philosophy when he was younger, nor the view that he did so when he matured, is satisfactory.4 1 Düring, 1957 has collected the ancient anecdotes concerning the relation between Plato and Aristotle. 2 Sedley, 2021; Ge, 2019. 3 Aristotle in his authentic works mentions Plato by name fifty-four times and he also mentions by name fourteen dialogues of Plato. See the collection of evidence by Bonitz, 21955, s.v. Platon, who distinguishes four kinds of reference to Plato (by name, by title of work, general, and dubious). 4 The two views were proposed by Jaeger, 1934 and Owen, 1965, respectively. See recently Gerson, 2005, who, not unjustly, speaks of Aristotle the Platonist.

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Although the latter view is better supported by the existing evidence, as we will see, ultimately neither does full justice to Aristotle’s complex relation to Plato’s philosophy. Aristotle set himself in dialogue with Plato’s thought throughout his career, often adopting elements of Plato’s philosophy, such as the partition of the soul in his ethics (for instance, Nicomachean Ethics 1.13), while at other times assuming a critical position towards it, as I will explain presently, which leads him ultimately to argue for an alternative philosophical theory. Indeed Aristotle makes many references to Plato and his dialogues while he makes references also to Plato’s “unwritten doctrines” (ἄγραφα δόγματα, Physics 4.2 209b15). Aristotle does that in a context in which he speaks of Plato’s receptacle, which he identifies with matter (Physics 209b11–13). At this point he mentions the unwritten doctrines as a source of Plato’s philosophy. Aristotle’s reference has given rise to a long discussion. It has created the impression that Plato had an esoteric teaching apart from the dialogues, to which Aristotle had access.5 It remains unclear what exactly Aristotle refers to at this point, but whatever that is, it does not at all suggest that Plato had an alternative teaching not found in the dialogues, let alone diminish the value of Plato’s dialogues as source of his philosophy. It is after all Aristotle himself who credits Plato with specific doctrines while making reference to particular dialogues, as we will see below in detail. Aristotle indeed knows details of Plato’s work, which he uses without acknowledging, such as the example with the fingers that we find in Republic 523c–d and then in Metaphysics Γ.6 1011a35–38. Both Plato and Aristotle use the example with regard to contradictory appearances. Yet while Plato speaks of the different fingers that are all called fingers despite their differences, Aristotle speaks of the crossed fingers, namely whether they make one or two objects (sight says one thing, touch says another). What is more, Aristotle distinguishes within Plato’s dialogues between Socrates’ views and Plato’s own doctrines, and discusses their merits. Aristotle would not do that unless he valued the evidence of dialogues for establishing Plato’s doctrines. Famously, Aristotle criticises Socrates for identifying virtue 5 The so-called Tübingen Schule of Gaiser, Krämer, and Reale supposed that Plato had indeed an esoteric metaphysical teaching, to which Aristotle had access, and they were trying to reconstruct it. This triggered a huge scholarly discussion. For the two opposite camps, see Gaiser, 1968 and Krämer, 1959, on the one hand, and Cherniss, 1944 and Vlastos, 1963, on the other. Another reference to a possible source of Plato’s esoteric teaching is Aristotle’s reference to Peri Philosophias in De anima 1.2 404b19, although it is not clear whether Aristotle here refers to a work of Plato’s or to his own lost work with that title. See Untersteiner, 1963, 147–149. There Aristotle makes reference to Plato’s doctrine of the soul in the Ti. (see below, section 4). Also, E.E. 1.8 1218a15–33 has been considered as reflecting Plato’s esoteric teaching. See Frede, 2020, 300.

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with knowledge and for denying the possibility of incontinence.6 Aristotle’s implication is that this was not Plato’s position on virtue. Aristotle also claims that Socrates was seeking the universal in ethics and was looking for definitions (Metaphysics A.6 987b1–5), although he did not separate universals from particulars, as Plato later did (Metaphysics M.4 1078b17–37; cf. 987b12–17; more on this below).7 Platonists, but also other ancient philosophers who regarded Plato’s philosophy as a doctrinal system, considered Aristotle’s relevant reports as confirmation of their belief that Plato espoused doctrines which he presented in some form in his dialogues. Moreover, in their view, Aristotle’s remarks illuminated what these doctrines of Plato were.8 With regard to ethics, for instance, Platonists like Antiochus and Plutarch considered Aristotle as expressing in his ethics Plato’s ethics, since he espouses a moral psychology similar to that of Plato in the Republic, and explicitly criticises Socrates on that issue.9 Ancient Platonists also took Aristotle as evidence of a division between Socratic and Platonic dialogues, namely they considered Aristotle as suggesting that Plato’s early dialogues reflect Socratic views and the Socratic attitude to philosophy, that is, the aporetic attitude, while Plato in his later, more mature dialogues, such as in the Phaedo, the Republic and the Timaeus, departs from the Socratic aporetic method and presents his own theories about the soul, knowledge, cosmology, virtue, and so on. This is apparently what Antiochus proposed, according to Cicero’s report in Academica Priora 17–18. Antiochus relies precisely on a distinction between Socratic, aporetic dialogues and Platonic, doctrinal dialogues for his reconstruction of Plato’s philosophy as a doctrinal system. This is a distinction that Antiochus finds in Aristotle and also in ancient academics such as Xenocrates, and it is no accident that he relies at least partly on Aristotle for his project of reconstructing Plato’s doctrines.10 Antiochus’ spokesman Piso claims in Cicero’s De finibus that Antiochus used Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as 6

7

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N.E. 6.13 1144b26–30, 7.2 1145b21–31, 7.3 1147b13–17; E.E. 3.1 1230a6–8, 7.13 1246b32–37. This picture is consistent with the Socratic dialogues. For the Socratic view that virtue is knowledge, see La. 199d, Chrm. 174b–d, Prt. 361b–c, Euthd. 282a; for the denial of incontinence, see Prt. 353c–356c.357c–d. The structure of the sentence in Met. M.4 1078b31–32 is indicative of how Aristotle contrasts here Socrates with Plato and Platonists: ἀλλ᾽ ὁ μὲν Σωκράτης τὰ καθόλου οὐ χωριστὰ ἐποίει οὐδὲ τοὺς ὁρισμούς. οἱ δ᾽ ἐχώρισαν, καὶ τὰ τοιαύτα ἰδέας προσηγόρευσαν. See also the section on Forms below. See Karamanolis, 2006, 9–17. For a discussion of the relevant evidence see Karamanolis, 2006, 72–89.115–123. On Antiochus’ reliance on Aristotle for reconstructing Plato, see Karamanolis, 2006, 44–84.

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evidence for Plato’s own ethical views.11 Apparently Antiochus used Aristotle as a source of Plato’s doctrines on the assumption that Aristotle had access to them drawing on the doctrinal dialogues of Plato. Antiochus initiated a trend among Platonists that had several followers. Eudorus, a younger contemporary of Antiochus, also relied on Aristotle’s reports of Plato’s views on the first principles, such as those in Metaphysics A, for reconstructing Plato’s alleged doctrines. We know from Alexander of Aphrodisias that Eudorus relied especially on Metaphysics A.6 988a7–17,12 where Aristotle presents what Plato allegedly believed about causes (Πλάτων […] οὕτω διώρισεν). Aristotle argues that Plato accepted two causes, a formal one on the one hand, accounting for being, and matter on the other hand; and he suggests that the Forms are causes of being while the One is the cause of the Forms. Eudorus corrects the passage to the effect that Plato admits only one cause of being, the One, and he rejects the view that the Forms are a principle of being.13 Eudorus apparently wanted to credit Plato with what we may call metaphysical monism, often ascribed to Pythagoras (Metaphysics  A.6 987b20–988a7), which was accepted later by Neopythagorean Platonists such as Moderatus, presumably because they also accepted Eudorus’ reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics 988a7– 17 regarding Plato’s principles. Aristotle is familiar not only with Plato’s philosophical theories but also with the views of such other members of the Academy as Speusippus, Xenocrates, and Eudoxus; and he often distinguishes among the doctrines of Plato and those of the members of his circle. The latter views were largely meant to be interpretations, elaborations, and sometimes revisions of Plato’s alleged views.14 Aristotle thus distinguishes, for instance, Plato’s position on pleasure from the relevant views of such other members of Plato’s circle as Eudoxus and Speusippus (Nicomachean Ethics 10.2 1172b9–1174a12). Aristotle names Speusippus four times in his work,15 but he clearly refers to Speusippus’ views in many other passages, such as in Metaphysics M.9 1086a2–5 and N.3 1090b13–30. Aristotle accuses Speusippus of offering an episodic (ἐπεισοδιῶδες, 11 See Cicero, De finibus 5.12 and Karamanolis, 2006, 72–80 for a commentary. 12 Alexander, In Met. 58.31–59. Cf. Simplicius, In Phys. 181.7–30. 13 Πλάτων μὲν οὖν περὶ τῶν ζητουμένων οὕτω διώρισεν. φανερὸν δ᾽ ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων ὅτι δυοῖν αἰτίαιν μόνον κέχρηται, τῇ τε τοῦ τί ἐστι καὶ τῇ κατὰ τὴν ὕλην (τὰ γὰρ εἴδη τοῦ τί ἐστιν αἴτια τοῖς ἄλλοις, τοῖς δ᾽εἴδεσι τὸ ἕν). Met. A.7 988b7–12. Ιnstead of τοῖς δ᾽εἴδεσι τὸ ἕν, Eudorus reads τοῖς δ᾽εἰδόσι τὸ ἕν καὶ τῇ ὕλῃ. That is, “For the Forms are causes of being for the other things, and for those who know the One [i.e. is the cause of being] even for matter”. See Rashed / Auffret, 2014. 14 See e.g. Met. A.6 987b20–24, A.9 991b27–30, Z.2 1028b21–32, Λ.10 1075b37–1076a4, M.6 1080b21–30, N.3 1090b13–29; N.E. 1.6 1096b5–8, 10.2 1173a6–17. 15 Met. Z.2 1028b21, Λ.7 1072b31; N.E. 1.6 1096b7, 7.13 1153b5.

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1090b19), that is, fragmented, structure of reality, by which he means that Speusippus’ universe lacks causal unity and continuity. This is why he compares Speusippus’ metaphysics to a bad tragedy, namely one that lacks unity and continuity. Apparently, Speusippus reformed the connection between the levels of reality, the intelligible and the sensible, that Plato suggested in dialogues such as the Republic and Timaeus; and part of this reform was Speusippus’ rejection of Plato’s Forms. Although Aristotle is critical of Plato’s Forms, he does not approve of Speusippus’ interpretative moves in that direction. In what follows I will focus on Aristotle’s main reports on Plato’s views. My aim is to determine what we learn from Aristotle about Plato’s work. I will divide the reports thematically.

Aristotle on Plato’s Timaeus

The Timaeus is the most frequently mentioned Platonic dialogue in Aristotle’s extant writings. Clearly, Aristotle knew that dialogue extremely well; he refers both to the general theory presented in it, the account of world’s creation, and to specific views, such as about the world soul, for instance. Aristotle criticises its account of the world’s creation on several counts. One crucial objection that Aristotle puts forward in De caelo 1.10–12 targets the view advanced in the Timaeus that the world is created and also eternal.16 Aristotle argues that created entities are necessarily subject to change and corruption, and the world can be no exception; the world cannot be first a non being that then becomes an eternal being (De caelo 2.6 288b7–8). Everything that comes to be, Aristotle argues, gets corrupted and passes away (1.10 279b19–21, 2.6 288b20). Aristotle’s criticism rests on his literal interpretation of the cosmogony of the Timaeus, the first interpretation we know of. Aristotle apparently reads the speech of Timaeus as a presentation of a real cosmogony. It may well be the case that later Platonists developed the alternative, metaphorical, interpretation of the cosmogony of the Timaeus in an effort to fend off Aristotle’s criticism. Aristotle’s own cosmology was shaped by his opposition to Plato’s cosmology, as he understood it. Aristotle denies that a divine creator is needed to explain cosmic order. Unlike Plato, who assigns priority to mind, and in particular the divine mind, Aristotle’s god neither creates nor administers the world. Rather, everything that comes about in the natural world has nature as a cause. Nature

16 Εἰσὶ γάρ τινες οἷς ἐνδέχεσθαι δοκεῖ καὶ ἀγένητόν τι ὃν φθαρῆναι καὶ γενόμενον ἄφθαρτον διατελεῖν, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ Τιμαίῳ (De caelo 1.10 280a28–30).

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is a craftsman in Aristotle’s world17 and human craftmanship (τέχνη) imitates nature (Physics 2.2, 2.8). Aristotle’s cosmological project is clearly antagonistic to that of Plato in the Timaeus. Aristotle has to make a number of moves in order to account for his cosmological picture of an eternal world accounted for by nature, such as offering an argument for the eternity of motion in Physics 8.1–6 continued in Metaphysics Λ.6–10.18 Aristotle also criticises Plato’s description and the role of the receptacle. One criticism concerns the traces (ἴχνη, Timaeus 53b2) of the simple bodies, the elements, as Aristotle calls them, which move before the creation of the world. Aristotle questions the existence of a pre-cosmic state of affairs and motion of the simple bodies. The same difficulty is involved even if it is supposed, as we read in the Timaeus, that before the ordered world was made the elements moved without order. Their movement must have been due either to constraint or to their nature. And if their movement was natural, a moment’s consideration shows that there was already an ordered world. For the prime mover must cause motion in virtue of its own natural movement, and the other bodies, moving without constraint, as they came to rest in their proper places, would fall into the order in which they now stand, the heavy bodies moving towards the center and the light bodies away from it. But that is the order of their distribution in our world (De caelo 3.2 300b17–25, tr. Stocks).

Aristotle’s criticism of the Timaeus here hinges on the distinction between natural and unnatural motions that Aristotle introduces in De caelo; the dilemma is the following: either the traces of the simple bodies move naturally before the cosmos came to be or they move unnaturally. Yet the four bodies move to occupy their natural places according to their weight (3.2 300b23–24), as is suggested by the description of the receptacle in the Timaeus, according to which the receptacle acts on the traces like a winnowing basket “separating the kinds most unlike each other furthest apart and pushing those most like each other closest together into the same region” (Timaeus 53a1–2, tr. Zeyl). If it is the weight of the traces that determines their motion, then the elements move in the pre-cosmic state according to their natures (πεφυκότα, Timaeus 53b3). But if this is the case and the elements move according to their natures, they have then determinate natures, which means, Aristotle suggests, that there would already have been a cosmic order prior to the creation of the world by the divine craftsman in the Timaeus. It is open to discussion whether Aristotle is right in his criticism, but he certainly has a point, and in a way his criticism 17 Cf. Physics 2.2 194b5–15. On this topic see Solmsen, 1963. 18 On this argument see Ferro, 2022, 175–188.417–423.

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is invited by the expressions used in the Timaeus.19 Again, what Aristotle perceives as weakness in the Timaeus motivates him to suggest an alternative cosmological model of a world where motion is continuous. Aristotle also focuses on the receptacle itself. He considers it to be a substrate (ὑποκείμενον) without form and shape (ἀειδὲς καὶ ἄμορφον, De caelo 3.8 306b17–19; cf. Timaeus 51a).20 Aristotle criticises Plato’s receptacle especially in his On Generation and Corruption. One such criticism, 2.1 329a14, is that Plato’s conception of the receptacle is not very precise. Aristotle goes on in his criticism of the receptacle, arguing that Plato does not state clearly whether the receptacle exists separately from the elements, but rather argues that it serves as substrate to the elements (329a14–15). Perhaps Aristotle refers here to Plato’s description of the receptacle as a matrix (ἐκμαγεῖον, Timaeus 50c2). More puzzling, however, is Aristotle’s further criticism that Plato does not make use of the receptacle (329a15). This is puzzling because Plato does make use of the receptacle, since copies of the Forms, imitations of beings, as Plato says, enter it (Timaeus 50c–d) and ultimately give rise to the elements. Once again Aristotle sets himself in dialogue with Plato’s idea of the receptacle. Aristotle’s conception of matter (ὕλη) shows clear similarities to his understanding of it. Aristotle defines matter as “a primary substrate of each thing from which it comes to be without qualification and which persists in the result” (Physics 1.9 192a32–33).21 This definition is very close to how Aristotle describes Plato’s receptacle, as I mentioned above. Aristotle’s matter and Plato’s receptacle are both receptive of Forms and, in this sense, both Plato’s receptacle and Aristotle’s matter are filled with potentiality,22 that is, matter is capable of generation and corruption.23 Besides, Aristotle follows Plato in holding that matter is, like the receptacle, infinite and unknowable in itself (Timaeus 51a7–b2, Physics 1.4 187b7–9, 1.7 191a8). Aristotle’s attitude to Plato’s receptacle is indicative of how Aristotle could be both critical of Plato’s views and at the same time strongly influenced by them. It also shows that Aristotle had at his disposal a text of Plato’s Timaeus and that certain of his philosophical views resulted from his interaction with that work of Plato.

19

See Johansen, 2022. I am greatly indebted to Johansen’s paper in this section. As Johansen argues, one can object to Aristotle’s criticism that the traces of simple bodies have certain natures that can become potentially ordered and constitute the cosmic order. 20 On this topic, see Claghorn, 1954, 6–12. 21 On this issue, see Lennox (2018). 22 Cf. Ti. 52d6–e2, μορφὰς δεχομένη […] δυνάμεων […] ἐμπίπλασθαι. 23 Ἐστὶ δὲ ἡ ὕλη μάλιστα μὲν κυρίως τὸ ὑποκείμενον γενέσεως καὶ φθορᾶς δεκτικόν (De gen. et corr. 1.4 320a2–3). Cf. Ti. 50b5, 52b2.

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Aristotle on Plato’s Principles

In a number of places Aristotle talks about Plato’s views on principles quite generally. Aristotle is sometimes descriptive and other times evaluative. Let me begin with a passage where Aristotle refers with approval to Plato’s treatment of principles. Let us not fail to notice, however, that there is a difference between arguments from and those to the first principles. For Plato, too, was right in raising this question and asking, as he used to do, “are we on the way from or to the first principles?” There is a difference, as there is in a race-course between the course from the judges to the turning-point and the way back. (Nicomachean Ethics 1.4 1095a30–b1, hereinafter tr. Ross / Urmson)

Aristotle adopts a distinction he finds in Plato between arguments from principles and arguments toward principles, that is, arguments establishing principles. It is unclear which passage of Plato, if any, Aristotle has in mind here. It is important, though, that Aristotle is inspired by Plato in his search for principles in ethics. It is no accident that the above passage follows after Aristotle’s observations regarding the inexactness of ethics. Aristotle argues that the science of ethics is not an apodeictic one, starting from principles leading to conclusions, but rather we should start from what is known to us (1095b2).24 In what follows Aristotle criticises Plato for postulating a principle such as the Form of the Good in ethics later on in Nicomachean Ethics (1.6; see below), but for now he approves the methodological distinction between two kinds of arguments about principles that he finds in Plato. Let me now come to Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s principles. The most famous places of such a criticism are chapters 6 and 9 of Metaphysics A. I quote two important passages from Metaphysics A.6: Socrates on the other hand was concerned with ethical issues, not at all with nature as a whole. In these, however, he was inquiring into what is universal and was the first to fix his thought on definitions. Plato, accepting him as his teacher, took it that this focus on definitions concerns also other things and not the perceptible one, since it is impossible for there to be a common definition on any perceptibles, as they at any rate are always changing. He, then, called beings of this other sort “Ideas” and the perceptible ones are beyond these and are all called after these. For the many things that have the same name as the Forms are [what they are] through participation in them. As for participation, he changed only the name. For the Pythagoreans say that beings are [what they are] by imitating the numbers, whereas Plato says that they are [what they are] 24

For a commentary on this passage, see Broadie, 1991, 21–22.

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by participation changing the name. (Metaphysics  A.6 987b1–11, hereinafter tr. Reeve, modified)

This is a much discussed passage and naturally so, since it illuminates Plato’s connection to Socrates and his plea for definitions (cf. M.4 1078b17–34).25 Aristotle suggests here that Plato took over this search for definitions from Socrates and applied it also to non-ethical entities, that is, to physical entities. Yet Aristotle claims that Plato was not very innovative on this either, since already the Pythagoreans spoke of a similar relation of imitation between things and number. Aristotle contends that Plato changed only26 the name, not the substance, of the Pythagorean view, speaking of participation (μέθεξις), instead of imitation (μίμησις), as the Pythagoreans did. It has been much debated what exactly Aristotle means here and to what extent he is right in claiming that Plato’s theory had Pythagorean antecedents.27 The parallel passage of Metaphysics M.4 sheds some light; there Aristotle claims that the Pythagoreans had anticipated Socrates’ search for definitions (1078b19–31), and in this sense also anticipated Plato’s Forms. Towards the end of the chapter Aristotle refers again explicitly to Plato’s views on principles: About the topics of inquiry, then, Plato described things this way. It is evident, however, from what has been said, that he made use of only two causes, that of the what-it-is and that of the matter (for the Forms are the causes of the whatit-is of other things, as the one is of the Forms). And what the underlying matter is, of which the Forms are said in the case of the perceptibles, and the one in the case of the Forms, is evidently a dyad, namely the great and the small. (Metaphysics A.6 988a7–14)

The relation between Plato’s Forms and Pythagorean numbers is another complex issue that arises in Metaphysics A.6. We do not have evidence from Plato to the effect that he connected Forms and numbers, and it is unclear on what evidence Aristotle draws. In the parallel passage of Metaphysics M.4 Aristotle does not make such a claim.28 In Physics 1, though, Aristotle reviews critically the efforts of his predecessors to determine principles operating in nature, and he distinguishes Plato from the other physicists as follows: Plato makes the great and the small matter, and the One the Form, while the others make the One that is the underlying thing, matter, and make the opposites differences and Forms (Physics 1.4 187a17–21). Aristotle comes back to this in chapter 1.9, where 25 26 27 28

See Steel, 2012, 174–180, who also discusses the textual variants of this passage. Some mss. omit “only” (μόνον) here, and Ross in the OCT accepts the omission. For a review see Steel, 2012, 181–183. See Steel, 2012, 186–194.

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he again refers to Plato, albeit not explicitly, as one who distinguishes between the One and the Form that causes change and matter, which he also calls dyad, joint cause (συναιτία) and mother, that underlies change and persists through change (1.9 192a9–14). Aristotle attributes to Plato the view that the One functions as a formal principle while the great and the small or the dyad functions as a material principle. The question again is on what evidence Aristotle draws when he talks about these Platonic principles. Regarding the One, he may well refer to the second hypothesis of the One Being in Parmenides 142b. We do not find in Plato, however, reference to the great and the small as principles. This may well be an unwritten doctrine of Plato. Later on, Porphyry suggested that the great and small should be identified with the infinite of the Philebus.29 But this, of course, is a speculative interpretation of Porphyry. In Physics  1.9 Aristotle further identifies the receptacle in the Timaeus with matter,30 an identification that was taken over from later Platonists and became canonical in the Platonic tradition.31 Aristotle also suggests that matter as the principle of underlying change is destructive and maleficent (κακοποιόν, 192a15), a view not found in Plato but was accepted as Platonic by such later Platonists as Numenius and Plotinus. Aristotle is again critical of Plato for accounting for change through an opposition between matter that is passive and form that initiates change, although he agrees with Plato, as we have seen (section 1) that we need a substrate that underlies and persists through change, such as the receptacle (for Plato) or matter (for Aristotle). In conclusion, Aristotle’s criticisms in Metaphysics  A.6 rest on his interpretation of such works as the Phaedo, the Cratylus, the Republic, and the Timaeus, which he approaches from the point of view of his own theory of causes. Regardless of his criticisms, Aristotle attaches himself to Plato’s inquiry of causes because he finds in Plato the first presentation of a formal cause and also of a principle beyond that, the One. This is confirmed in Metaphysics A.9.

Aristotle on Plato’s Forms

Let me now pass to Aristotle’s understanding of Plato’s Forms. Aristotle frequently refers critically to Plato’s theory of Forms. It is not an exaggeration 29 Porphyry, apud Simplicium, In Phys. 453–454. I am indebted to Steel, 2012, 195 for the reference. 30 See Cherniss, 1944; Lennox, 2017, 240–241. 31 See e.g. Plutarch, De an. procr. in Tim. 1013C, Apuleius, De Platone 1.5, Alcinous, Didascalicus ch. 8, 162.24–163.10.

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to say that both ancient Platonists and we today credit Plato with a theory of Forms because Aristotle first does so. Aristotle often dismisses Plato’s alleged theory of Forms as an empty or senseless one.32 Ancient Platonists duly point out that Aristotle is critical of Plato’s Forms, but they differ in the way in which they assess Aristotle’s critical attitude.33 It is important here, however, to point out that Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s Forms takes place against a common philosophical background since both share the view that things have essences (οὐσίαι) which make them what they are, and yet they disagree about the nature of those essences.34 Aristotle agrees with Plato that there are entities that determine other entities while they do not depend on other entities for their own determination, for they are rather self-determined; as such, essences are ontologically primary, primary beings, and also distinct from all other entities. Plato and Aristotle also agree, in my view, that we are in a position to know the essences of things and that such a knowledge can count as secure knowledge (ἐπιστήμη) because it is explanatory knowledge, i.e. it explains why things are the way they are. Aristotle’s critical reports of Plato’s Forms can be divided into three categories: a) criticisms of the arguments used to establish the Forms, b) criticisms of the nature of the Forms, such as their separability, and c) criticisms of the usefulness of the Forms.35 We find three clusters of Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato’s Forms, in Metaphysics A, Z, and M. In A.9 Aristotle argues that Plato’s theory of Forms is a mere metaphor with no explanatory power. To say that there are paradigms and that the other things participate in them is to utter empty words and speak poetic metaphors. For what is it that makes things by looking to the Ideas? Is it possible for anything both to be like and become like another thing without being copied from it, so that whether Socrates exists or not, someone could become like him. And the same would clearly hold even if Socrates were eternal. Also there will be more than one paradigm of the same thing and so more than one Form—for example, the Forms of man will be animal and two footed, as at the same time will be man itself. Further, the Forms will be paradigms not only of the perceptibles but also of themselves—for example, the genus, as genus of several species. And so the same thing will be paradigm and copy. (Metaphysics A.9 991a20–31) 32 Met. A.9 991a21–23, M.5 1079b26; Post. An. 1.22 83a33; E.E. 1.8 1217b19–21. 33 Compare for instance Antiochus (Acad. 1.33), Plutarch (Adv. Col. 1114F–1115C), and Atticus fr. 9 Des Places. For a commentary on these passages see Karamanolis, 2006, 60–63.92–100.168–174. 34 See Politis, 2004, 295–303 for a clear presentation of the common ground between Plato and Aristotle on this topic. 35 On this classification, see Lloyd, 1968.

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Aristotle continues his criticism of the Forms with a reference to the Phaedo. Further, it would seem to be impossible for the substance and that of which it is the substance to be separate. And so how could the Ideas, if they are substances of things, be separate from them? In the Phaedo, however, it is said as follows: the Forms are causes both of the being and of the coming to be of things. But even if the Forms do exist, the things that participate in them would still not come to be unless there was a moving cause. Also, many other things come to be, for example a house or a ring—of which we say that there are no Forms. And so it is clear that is also possible for the others to be and to come to be through the same causes as the things we mentioned just now. (Metaphysics A.9 991b1–9)

Aristotle criticises Plato’s Forms’ separate existence but also his use of the Forms as causes.36 Separation of course can be said in many ways. Aristotle agrees with Plato that Forms as essences are ontologically distinct from changing things. Yet Aristotle disagrees with Plato that Forms as essences are separate in the sense of being distinct from sensible things. As we saw earlier, Aristotle actually argues in Metaphysics A.6 that Socrates was already in search of essences, yet he did not make them separate and distinct from sensible things as Plato did (M.4 1078b28–32). Aristotle ascribes to Plato the view that sensible things are distinct from the Forms and “are called after the Forms in virtue of their participation in the Forms” (A.6 987b8–9). But if this the case, then, Aristotle argues, how are sensible things determined, and in what sense are Forms qua essences causes, as Plato, for instance, in the Phaedo, argued? For Aristotle the changing things have an essence, a Form, with which they are identical and which also accounts for their change. When Plato distinguishes essences and changing things, then, Aristotle argues, one wonders what the role of essences is, if essences are separate from things in this radical sense (cf. Metaphysics Z.16 1040b27–30). If the Forms are separate from the things they are essences of, then they cannot possibly be their causes, as Plato claims in the Phaedo. The separation of the Forms then rules out the possibility that they qualify as essential causes, as essences. Aristotle finds the separability of Forms at odds with their causal efficacy and argues against the distinctness of Forms and sensible things. He rather thinks that Forms cannot exist outside the sensible things that they determine and that they are inseparable from them.37 In Aristotle’s view a sensible thing is what it is in virtue of its essence, and this cannot be the case if essences are separate and distinct as Plato thought. Aristotle goes on to argue that even if 36 37

See Frede, 2012, for a discussion of these passages of Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s Forms. Politis, 2004, 317–318 rightly emphasises this difference of Aristotle from Plato’s theory of Forms.

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we accept the causal efficacy of Forms as paradigms, as Plato apparently postulated, it is not clear in what sense Forms qualify as paradigms, that is, as patterns or models. It is not clear, for instance, whether a man is a copy of the Form of a man or that Form is also a copy of the Form of animal (see Metaphysics A.9 991a20–31, quoted above). But if Forms are models, formal causes, then we still need a moving cause. This is actually the role that the demiurge of the Timaeus plays, which Aristotle here does not acknowledge as a moving, efficient cause. Apart from Aristotle’s central criticism of Plato’s Forms as problematic to the extent they are separate and distinct from the changing things, Aristotle further criticises Plato that his theory of Forms leads to absurd consequences or contradictions. I will single out two such criticisms. The first one is the “third-man argument”, which is first advanced in Plato’s Parmenides (132a–b).38 Aristotle does not acknowledge Plato’s parentage of the problem but rather takes it over as a criticism against the Forms that he raises.39 Aristotle thinks that if there is one Platonic Form of human beings, which is separate in the sense of being distinct from the changing, individual, human beings, then there are infinitely many Forms of human beings. Why does Aristotle think that this is a consequence (an absurd one) of Plato’s theory of Forms? The rationale seems to be the following:40 if the essence of a thing is also the ultimate subject of predication, then we must make sure that the essence, i.e. the Form (e.g. man), and the ultimate subject of predication (man) are not two things but one. Plato’s Forms qua separate and distinct essences, however, are not ultimate subjects of predication since they can be predicated also of other things, that is, other human beings in the case of the Form of human beings. In other words, the Platonic Form determines not just one thing but many and in this sense can be predicated of many things. And if this is the case, the essence and the ultimate subject of predication are different for Plato. The following dense passage captures Aristotle’s criticism: At the same time, however, it is also clear that if indeed the Forms are as some people say they are, the underlying subject will not be primary being. For the Forms are necessarily primary beings, but not by being [predicated of] an underlying subject. For then they will be [i.e. beings] only by being participated in. (Metaphysics Z.6 1031b15–18)

38 See Vlastos, 1954; Malcolm, 1991, 47–53. 39 See further Frede, 2012, 278. 40 Aristotle’s third-man argument has been much debated in scholarship especially since Vlastos’s paper, 1954. I follow Politis’s interpretation (Politis, 2004, 319–332). See also Frede’s commentary on Met. A.9 990b14–15 (Frede, 2012, 269–280).

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If Form and the thing it predicates of are two, then we have an individual man and a separate and distinct Form of human being, which we predicate of the individual man, which means that we have two men. And if this is the case, then we should postulate a third man, a separate and distinct one from the other two, to account for them, and so on infinitely. Such an argument rests on the assumption that Forms are also instances of themselves (self-predication) and non-identical with other members of the same class (non-identity). It is noticeable that Aristotle develops an argument against the Forms that Plato first advanced, as I said earlier, which, however, does not seem to work with all cases of Forms (e.g. largeness). Aristotle points to another absurd consequence of Plato’s theory of Forms in Metaphysics M.9, where Aristotle argues that Platonic Forms are problematic to the extent that they are presented as both universals and particulars. For they at the same time make the Ideas universal and contrariwise treat them as separable and as particulars. But that this is not possible is a puzzle that has been gone through before. The cause of the conjoining of these two characteristics in one and the same thing on the part of those who spoke of their substances as universals is that they did not make their substances the same as the perceptibles. They thought that the particulars in the realm of perceptible things were flowing and that none of them remains the same but that the universal was both beyond these and something distinct from them. This, as we said in our previous discussions, was stirred up by Socrates, because of his definitions, but he did not separate these from the particulars, and he understood things correctly in not separating them. (Metaphysics M.9 1086a32–b4)

Aristotle criticises Plato and Platonists for a contradiction here; he argues that they take the Ideas as substances, universals, and then as separate, treating them as particulars. Aristotle suggests then that Platonists treat Forms both as substances and as objects of knowledge, on the assumption that there are stable objects of knowledge that make secure knowledge possible. This may be the case. But if these objects of knowledge are not only separate from things but also independent of them, then the Forms are both particulars and universals.41 And this cannot be the case. Aristotle instead argues (in Metaphysics Z) that essences cannot be universals but particulars, since they determine specific sensible things. It is noticeable, however, that in Metaphysics A.9 Aristotle twice uses the first person plural in his discussion of Plato’s theory of Forms (990b9, 992a11),42 while this is not the case in Metaphysics Z and M. Yet there

41 42

For an analysis of Aristotle’s argument here, see Shields, 2008, 511–514. For a discussion of that feature see Frede, 2012, 270.

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Aristotle still takes Plato’s theory of Forms as a valuable starting point for the development of his own ontological theory.

Aristotle on Plato on the Soul

Aristotle also comments on Plato’s statements on the soul, especially in De anima 1. In De anima 1 and 2 Aristotle reviews the theories of soul of his predecessors, including Plato’s, and he rejects them as unsatisfactory. In this context Aristotle refers twice to the Timaeus, namely in De anima 1.2 404b16–21 and 1.3 406b26–407a. In both passages Aristotle draws on the Timaeus but in the former he also makes reference to Peri Philosophias, and it is unclear whether this is Plato’s work or Aristotle’s; the doctrine Aristotle refers to, however, is Platonic,43 and is the idea advanced in the Timaeus that the world is an animal with soul and reason. In the latter passage in particular, Aristotle refers to the creation of the world soul in the Timaeus (34d–36d) and he sets out to criticise the allegedly physiological nature of the soul presented there. I cite a central part of the relevant passage: In the same way, Timaeus offers a physical account of how the soul moves the body; by being in motion itself, the soul moves the body because of its being entangled with it. For having constituted the soul out of the elements and having divided it in accordance with the harmonic numbers so that it might have an innate perception of harmony and so that the whole universe might be borne in harmonious orbits, he bent the straight into a circle. And having divided the one circle into two circles intersecting at two points, he again divided one of them into seven circles, so that the orbits of heaven were the motions of the soul. First, then, it is not right to say that the soul is a magnitude. For it is clear that he wishes this sort of soul, the soul of the universe to be what is sometimes called reason (nous), since it is at any rate surely neither such as to be perceptual nor such as to be appetitive. (De anima 1.3 406b26–407a5, tr. Shields)

Aristotle argues that Plato in the Timaeus understands the soul as reason or intellect (νοῦς, 407a5), since the world soul described in the Timaeus has neither desire nor perception. If it is a soul, then, it must be reason. Aristotle also criticises the view advanced in the Timaeus that the soul is a magnitude, presumably taking literally the suggestion from the Timaeus that the soul is a circle (407a2–3); but reason, Aristotle argues, is not a magnitude, hence Plato’s account of the soul in the Timaeus is incorrect. Aristotle finds Plato’s 43

Untersteiner, 1963, 148–149.153–154 argues that only the doctrine is Platonic and against the hypothesis that the work is Platonic.

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suggestion that the soul is reason and that the soul is a magnitude at odds with each other; not only do magnitudes not think, but also reason does not have parts, whereas all magnitudes do.44 Once again, Aristotle’s criticisms are driven by his literal interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus. Aristotle is not searching for Plato’s deeper philosophical point; Plato serves more as a basis for developing his own theories. However, Aristotle’s testimony suggests that the Timaeus was considered a crucial text among Plato’s students for finding Plato’s doctrines. Aristotle also criticises the partition of the soul in De anima 3.9; Aristotle refers in particular to the tripartition of the soul into rational, spirited, and appetitive parts, but also to the bipartition of the soul. I quote his central criticism. There is an immediate difficulty concerning both how one ought to speak of the parts of the soul and how many there are. For in a certain way there appears to be an indefinite number of them: and it is not only according to those who, when distinguishing them, mention the rational and the spirited and appetitive parts, but also those who mention the rational and the irrational parts. (De anima 3.9 432a22–26, tr. Shields, modified).

Aristotle does not specify who those are who (τινες) subscribe to the tripartition and the bipartition of the soul. It is natural, however, to suppose that Aristotle refers to Plato here,45 who divides the soul in such a way in the Republic and the Timaeus, for instance. Aristotle voices a concern here that such a division of the soul is not fully justified; the soul, he argues, could be divided also otherwise in order to explain how it initiates movement. Aristotle questions the criterion for the division of the soul and the individuation of parts in the way Plato and the Platonists suggested, since the soul is responsible for many more operations than the parts into which Plato and the Platonists divide the soul. It should be noted, however, that Aristotle himself adopts a bipartition of the soul into a rational and a non-rational part in Nicomachean Ethics 1, but also in earlier works such as the Protrepticus and the Topics (4.5 126a6–14). Aristotle sides unwaveringly with Plato in holding that the human soul consists of reason and a non-rational part. I address this topic in the next section.

44 45

For an analysis of Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s alleged view here, see Shields, 2016, 126–129. See Shields, 2016, 349–351. For a different view, according to which Aristotle criticises not Plato but Academics, see Vander Waerdt, 1987.

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Aristotle on Plato’s Ethics and Politics

Aristotle’s ethics and politics are shaped by a continuous dialogue with Plato. Aristotle both draws on Plato without always acknowledging him, but also explicitly criticises Plato. It is no accident that ancient Platonists such as Antiochus, Plutarch, and Alcinous consider Aristotle’s ethics to be in accordance with, and even a source of Plato’s ethics. As I mentioned, Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics (1.13) adopts the distinction of two parts of the soul, a rational and a non-rational one, and he holds that the non-rational part of the soul should be trained to follow the rational one if we want to be virtuous and attain eudaimonia, which is roughly the picture we get in the Republic. Yet, on the other hand, Aristotle devotes an entire chapter in Nicomachean Ethics 1 to a criticism of Plato’s doctrine of the Form of the Good (Republic 6.508e–509a). I would like to dwell on this criticism of Aristotle, which some critics see as an appendix that continues Aristotle’s criticism of the Platonic Forms in his Metaphysics.46 It is first interesting to notice that Aristotle here shows much more respect for Plato in his criticism of the Form of the Good than in similar passages of earlier works, such as in the Eudemian Ethics (1.8) and the Posterior Analytics (1.22). I quote the beginning of Aristotle’s critique. We had perhaps better consider the universal good and discuss thoroughly what is meant by it, although such an inquiry is made an uphill one by the fact that the Forms have been introduced by friends of our own. Yet it would perhaps be thought to be better, indeed to be our duty, for the sake of maintaining the truth even to destroy what touches us closely, especially as we are philosophers; for, while both are dear, piety requires us to honour truth above our friends. (Nicomachean Ethics 1.6 1096a11–17)

Aristotle clearly refers to Plato here but, as in Metaphysics A.9 990b8–11, Aristotle refers to himself in the plural, implying that he belongs to the same group with Plato, that is, he counts himself as a Platonist.47 As pointed out earlier, Aristotle refers to Plato with approval with regard to the distinction between arguments from principles and arguments toward principles (Nicomachean Ethics  1.4 1095a30–b1). Although Aristotle’s tone is decidedly milder here in comparison with his other critical passages (e.g. Posterior Analytics 1.22 83a33), he criticises Plato for relying in his ethics on a principle that is not sound, the Form of the 46 47

See Frede, 2012, 278 with references to the relevant discussion. A similar, much shorter, argument is found also in E.E. 1.8. Notice that in Met. M.4 1178b32, he refers to the friends of the Forms as “they”.

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Good. Aristotle’s main critical points against Plato’s alleged doctrine are two:48 first, Aristotle argues (Nicomachean Ethics 1.6 1096a19–22) that the term “good” (ἀγαθόν) is not a univocal term, which means that there is no single definition of “good” that applies in every context in which it is used, but rather the term has different senses when it is applied in different contexts and different sciences. We mean one thing when we say “a good father” and quite another thing when we say “a good argument”; one thing is good for the doctor, another is good for the general. Depending on where the term is predicated, the term “good” has different senses, meaning, for instance, “caring” (for a father) and “convincing” (for an argument), healthy for the doctor, victorious for the general; that is, each thing is good in a distinct, special way. If this is the case, then, Aristotle argues, there cannot be a single Form of Good, that is, a Form common to all things predicated as “good”. In other words, there is no universal quality of goodness. Subsequently Aristotle argues (1096b31–33), even if there is such a thing as the Form of the Good, its knowledge would be useless in ethics. For the Form of the Good is separate and of itself (χωριστὸν αὐτό τι καθ᾽ αὑτό, 1096b33), whereas the important thing for us is a particular act, and more especially what makes an act good or bad (cf. Eudemian Ethics 1.7 1217a23–25). At this point Aristotle draws a parallel with the crafts: And it is hard to see how a weaver or a carpenter will benefit in his art by knowing the Good itself, or how a man who has seen the Form itself will be a better doctor or general. Doctors do not seem to study even health in this way: they study the health of man, or rather the health of this individual, for it is individuals that they cure. (Nicomachean Ethics 1.6 1097a8–13)

Aristotle’s argument here rests on the univocal character of the term “good”. If, as he argued, the good argument is quite different from good food, then it is useless for a craftsman to be guided by the universal good, such as the Form of the Good, because this cannot offer any guidance as to how to do something (a specific kind of thing) well, i.e. in a good way. As Aristotle concludes, the good is different for each science; for medicine the good is health, for generalship the good is victory (Nicomachean Ethics 1.7 1097a16–20; cf. Eudemian Ethics 1.8 1218a33–41). Aristotle’s argument has been much discussed and assessed in different ways. It is clear, though, that Aristotle rejects the existence of a transcendent entity that can function as a principle or a criterion in ethics. For Aristotle the principle in ethics concerns humans themselves; ethics is the science of 48

For a comprehensive analysis of Aristotle’s critique see Frede, 2020. See also MacDonald, 1989.

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the human good and pertains to human nature: the human good should be determined with regard to human nature. And this is what Aristotle does in his ethics, which he calls “the philosophy of human nature” (ἡ περὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπεια φιλοσοφία, Nicomachean Ethics 10.9 1181b15). Politics belongs also to this kind of philosophy, as Aristotle makes clear at the end of the Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle engages with Plato’s political ideal as presented in the Republic and the Laws in book 2 of his Politics. Aristotle criticises especially the idea presented in the Republic of a united city in which the citizens would share as much as possible, including wives, children, and property (Politics 2.1 1261a3– 9). Aristotle argues instead that the unity of the city is not at odds with the diversity of its citizens; the city, Aristotle argues, is made up of different people with different specialties, and this diversity adds to the making of the city (1261b18–24). What unites the city is not sharing as much as possible but rather self-sufficiency (1261b10–13). Aristotle adds that the Socratic ideal in Plato’s Republic rather destroys personal relationships such as family relationships, for in such a scenario family names such as son and brother have no meaning (1262a6–24). Aristotle suggests that the Socratic/Platonic ideal is at odds with human nature, with human feelings and attitudes, and as such is not only an utopic ideal but also not a good one. Aristotle is particularly critical of the Platonic suggestion in favour of the abolition of private property. He distinguishes between ownership and use of property, and he claims that one option to consider would be for private property to be open to common use (1263a25–37). Despite his criticism, Aristotle acknowledges the originality and ingenuity of Plato’s political proposal. It is noticeable that Aristotle praises Socrates in a section of his work that is critical overall. I quote Aristotle: “All the writings on Socrates are original: they show ingenuity, novelty of view and a spirit of inquiry. But perfection in everything is perhaps a difficult thing” (1265a10–13).49 This is interesting, because Aristotle associates the doctrine presented in the Republic with Socrates, but he does not do that with respect to the Laws. As we have seen then, also with regard to ethics and politics, Aristotle engaged closely with Plato’s works because he takes them as a basis for the development of his own philosophical views.

49

For a more detailed analysis of Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s political ideal see Mayhew, 1997.

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The outline offered here shows how very engaged Aristotle was with Plato’s work and philosophy. Aristotle set himself in dialogue with Plato in almost every philosophical question and with regard to all philosophical areas. He clearly knew Plato’s works very well and he also had access to Plato’s oral views and to interpretations of Plato proposed by members of Plato’s circle. Aristotle often takes a literal interpretation of Plato’s work, not searching for a possible more sophisticated interpretation. He is interested in it more as a basis for the development of his own views than in order to do justice to Plato’s philosophy. On several occasions Aristotle does criticise Plato, and he distances himself from Plato’s alleged views. Yet Aristotle also follows many Platonic views, as he understood them, and he often expresses his explicit approval of them. It is also no accident that in both the Nicomachean Ethics and Metaphysics A his criticism of the theory of the Forms comes from someone who considers himself a Platonist, which is why he speaks of himself as belonging to the group of those entertaining such a doctrine. Such features show that Aristotle remained a critically minded Platonist until the end of his life, and Plato’s philosophical theories greatly shaped his philosophical thought. University of Vienna

Chapter 11

Comparing Corpora, Rethinking Authenticity: Why Are Platonic Letters “Platonic”? Filippo Forcignanò, Stefano Martinelli Tempesta

The Antiquity and “Authenticity” of the Platonic Letters: A Short Status Quaestionis

The sylloge of thirteen Platonic letters that has come down to us from Antiquity as part of the tetralogies arranged by Thrasyllus is of great interest for several reasons, the main one probably being that it gives us the opportunity to read Plato’s words in the first person, which is never the case with the dialogues. The Platonic letters were certainly composed in different periods by different hands. Some were written long after Plato’s death and are manifestly spurious. The two most important ones, however, the Seventh and the Eighth, are probably authentic—in a sense of “authentic” that will be clarified later—or at least have the full right to be regarded as such, albeit with some caution. The Platonic letters, including the spurious ones, were consciously included in the master’s corpus by the Academy, which exercised a close control over Plato’s works. Therefore, scholars cannot avoid dealing with the formation of the epistolary corpusculum. The stages of this “editorial” process, which began immediately after Plato’s death, are not easy to discern. The main aim of the present paper is precisely to reconstruct the formation of the Platonic sylloge of epistles and, at the same time, to offer some remarks on the notion of “authenticity”, and particularly on what it means for texts of this kind to be authentic. The Platonic epistolary corpus cannot be studied in isolation from the formation of similar corpora, such as those of Isocrates and Demosthenes, since they were all produced in the context of a school that strongly supervised the master’s opera. Michael Frede distinguished between philosophical and nonphilosophical epistolary corpora to support the thesis that there is no authentic collection of letters by a philosopher before Epicurus.1 But this distinction * Every word of the present paper, as well as its overall content, was shared by the two authors. However, Filippo Forcignanò is responsible for parts 1, 2 and 4; Stefano Martinelli Tempesta, for part 3. 1 Burnyeat / Frede 2015, 3–13 contra Notomi, 2022, 71–74. © Brill Schöningh, 2023 | doi:10.30965/9783657793891_012

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is an artificial one. Firstly, it cannot be mechanically applied to the formation of corpora in the context of schools that, in this respect, were more alike than dissimilar, independently of the “nature” of the schools themselves (i.e. philosophical or non-philosophical). Secondly, and consequently, it is more reasonable to compare the formation of the epistolary corpora of Demosthenes, Isocrates and Plato, precisely because they were supervised by their respective schools, than those of Heraclitus or Democritus. Thirdly, the rigid distinction between philosophical and non-philosophical schools does not apply to the school of Isocrates, because Isocrates believed he was practising “philosophy” (precisely in opposition to the Academy).2 Moreover, we are in a position to state without fear of contradiction that the editorial process of the sylloge of Platonic letters began very early. Indeed, it can be easily proved that some of the Platonic letters were certainly circulating before the systematisation carried out by Thrasyllus. As early as the end of the third century BCE, some of the letters were already part of the editions of Plato’s dialogues. This is evidenced by Diogenes Laertius (3.62), who notes that Aristophanes of Byzantium—among others—included the letters (we do not know how many or which ones)3 in the trilogies of Platonic dialogoi (ἔνιοι δέ, ὧν ἐστι καὶ Ἀριστοφάνης ὁ γραμματικός, εἰς τριλογίας ἕλκουσι τοὺς διαλόγους). Diogenes’ testimony not only suggests that the letters enjoyed fairly wide circulation during the third century BCE, as proved by the use of ἔνιοι, but the explicit mention of Aristophanes is crucial because, as Souilhé has noted, “to impose itself on such conscientious and

2 As Too, 1995, 1 writes, Isocrates “for the majority of modern scholars […] is a figure of inadequacy. He is an exception in a moment of otherwise remarkably self-aware literary, political and intellectual achievement that we have come to know as ‘classical Athens’”. So, while “scholars in Antiquity and in the Renaissance regarded Isocrates […] as the preeminent rhetorician of ancient Athens and […] a central figure in their picture of fourth-century Athens”, subsequently he became a “peripheral individual”. In particular, the distinction between philosophy (i.e. what Plato promoted in the Academy) and the activity of Isocrates, which can only be called “philosophy” in a broad sense (i.e. as a synonym for “rhetoric” or as a form of higher liberal education), is reasonable for our (Platonic and Aristotelian) parameters, but not so obvious in the context of the formation of their corpora. Curiously, no one can point to any place in Isocrates’ work where he claims to be a “rhetorician”; indeed, he refers to himself as a “philosopher”. 3 See Wilamowitz’s opinion about Aristophanes’ Sammlung: “[…] this does not mean that he found our collection, which may be regarded as attested only to Thrasyllos and Dercyllides; Cicero knows the false letters. It is rather incredible that the twelfth letter existed already at the time of Aristophanes, for it comes from an Archytas correspondence and along with the connected epistle in Diogenes 8.80 bears the note of being an ἀντιλεγόμενον” (Wilamowitz, 1920, 278).

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scrupulous critics as Aristophanes, the tradition had to be firmly established”.4 This tradition surely concerns some of the epistles that belong to the sylloge later integrated into Thrasyllus’ tetralogies. We are also in possession of very solid evidence of the Antiquity of certain Platonic letters: for P.Worp 1 (see Fig. 11.1), published by Claudio Gallazzi, contains a short passage from the Eighth letter.5 This is a very early papyrus, dating from the middle decades of the third century BCE.6 For this reason, the publication of the papyrus by Gallazzi is an event of remarkable importance for our understanding of the genesis of the corpus of Platonic letters. It is therefore surprising that it has been completely passed over in silence in Platonic scholarship: it is not mentioned by Carol Atack and Dominic Scott in the notes accompanying Scott’s edition of seminars conducted by Frede in the Michaelmas term of 2001 in which Burnyeat participated.7 Nor does Atack mention the Gallazzi papyrus in her article on the Eighth letter as a response to Plato’s literary method and political thought.8 To do so would have been appropriate, we believe, in order to correct Frede’s statement—which was certainly correct at the time of his second seminar—that “individual letters in the collection can be traced back before Thrasyllus, but not very far”.9 4 Souilhé, 1926, vi. Karsten’s concerns about Diogenes’ passage are unconvincing (Karsten, 1864, 11–14). For further details and a bibliography, see section 3 below. 5 Gallazzi, 2008. This papyrus, whose provenance is unknown, belongs to the collection of the P.Mil.Vogl. (inv. 1264). On the Seventh Letter, see Forcignanò, 2020. 6 As reported by Gallazzi, 2008, 3, this is a “small fragment of a scroll” that is part of a small group of papyri—varying significantly in terms of dating, provenance and content—donated to the University of Milan by Maurice Nahman’s daughter. It is unknown where in Egypt it was found. The second column contains the passage from the Eighth Letter. It is impossible to reconstruct the layout of the text, to know the content of the selides or to determine the approximate extent of the Epistle on the scroll. However, there are good reasons to believe that “the layout of the text must not have deviated from what appears to be the prevailing practice in the prose scrolls of the early Hellenistic period. […] Similarly, the use of diacritical marks appears to conform to the customs of the time”. It is worth noting that the papyrus fragment was surely part of a book, although it is impossible for us to determine its content and nature. The text does not differ from the two most authoritative manuscript witnesses, i.e. A (Parisinus Gr. 1807, c. ninth century CE) and O (Vaticanus Gr. 1, c. ninth–tenth century CE). 7 Burnyeat / Frede, 2015. 8 Atack, 2019, 616 argues “against attempts to fix the letter’s composition date close to Plato’s own time, and therefore to use it as evidence for the details of Sicilian history”; she adds that “the letter is both more interesting and more explicable when read as a later creative response to Plato’s political thought” (618). P.Worp  1 plays a not insignificant role in this perspective, because it forces us to reconsider precisely the dating of the Eighth Epistle, but Atack does not consider it. 9 Burnyeat / Frede, 2015, 17.

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Fig. 11.1 P.Worp. 1 recto (= P.Mil.Vogl. inv. 1264 [Papiri dell’Università degli Studi di Milano]; 4 × 3.6 cm; Plato, Epistle 8.356a 6–8) © Università degli Studi di Milano

The only scholar—as far as we were able to ascertain—who has drawn the right conclusions from the publication of the papyrus is Luciano Canfora.10 Firstly, the papyrus shows that some Platonic letters circulated not only much earlier than is evidenced by P.Oxy 52 3668 (the only other papyrus evidence of them), which contains a passage from the Second Letter and is dated to the second century CE, but also long before Cicero, who partially translates the Seventh in Tusculanae Disputationes 5.35.100.11 Secondly, since it is very unlikely that the Seventh Letter was written after the Eighth (which seems to depend on it), and since it is even more unlikely that two different contemporary forgers may have produced two similar Platonic letters, the Antiquity of the latter epistle a fortiori proves that of the former. Thirdly, the circulation—probably not long after the founding of the Great Library of Alexandria—of some Platonic letters, known to Aristophanes of Byzantium, can only be explained by their presence in an “edition” produced in the Old Academy, which must have contained at least the Seventh and Eight.12 This obviously does not mean that they 10 Canfora, 2014, 23–26. 11 Est praeclara epistola Platonis ad Dionis propinquos, in qua scriptum est his fere uerbis: “Quo cum uenissem, uita illa beata quae ferebatur, plena Italicarum Syracusiarumque mensarum, nullo modo mihi placuit, bis in die saturum fieri nec umquam pernoctare solum ceteraque quae comitantur huic uitae, in qua sapiens nemo efficietur umquam, moderatus uero multo minus. Quae enim natura tam mirabiliter temperari potest?”. Cicero is clearly translating (not paraphrasing) Ep. 7.326b5–c3. 12 While “edition” is surely a misleading term, it is hard to find a more adequate one. Therefore, we will speak of “edition” to refer to the Academy’s editorial work on the master’s corpus.

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are authentic in the sense of having been “written by Plato himself”, but that they were produced by his school either when the philosopher was still alive or when he had been dead for a few years. They are therefore a legitimate part of Plato’s corpus. Apart (perhaps) from the Twelfth, the ancients read and quoted the Platonic letters known to us as authentic, despite the fact that some of them are patently not by Plato himself.13 The only ancient evidence that, at first glance, would seem to attribute the rejection of all the epistles to an ancient author, Proclus, is chapter 26 of the Prolegomena in Platonis philosophiam. However, we should approach such evidence with extreme caution. Anonymous writes that the θεῖος Πρόκλος rejected (νοθεύει) the authenticity of the Epinomis and ἐκβάλλει δὲ καὶ τὰς Πολιτείας διὰ τὸ πολλοὺς εἶναι λόγους καὶ μὴ διαλογικῶς γεγράφθαι, καὶ τοὺς Νόμους δὲ διὰ τὸ αὐτό· καὶ τὰς Ἐπιστολὰς δ’ ἐκβάλλει διὰ τὸ ἁπλοῦν τῆς φράσεως.14 It is very unlikely that Proclus, who extensively commented on the Republic as a work clearly by Plato, expunged it from the corpus along with the Laws; this is all the more true considering that the expunction in this case would depend on the fact that the works in question are composed of many books and not written in dialogical form. The Anonymous uses ἐκβάλλει also for the epistles, so it is unadvisable to attribute a different meaning to the two occurrences of this verb. Novotný (with reference to Proclus’s quotations) therefore maintains that “quo loco verbo ‘abicit’ (ἐκβάλλει) ordinantis et docentis, non de Platonica origine dubitantis iudicium designari apparet”,15 because Proclus quotes the epistles in his commentary on Plato’s Timaeus. Until 1783, the year of the publication of Meiners’ Judicium,16 no one denied the Platonic authorship of the epistles contained in the tetralogies. Curiously 13 In A (Parisinus. Gr. 1807) the Twelfth Letter is accompanied by the subscription ἀντιλέγεται ὡς οὐ Πλάτωνος. Frede (Burnyeat / Frede, 2015, 6) notes that “this subscription in the text, found not surprisingly in O (= Vaticanus Gr. 1, ninth-tenth century), for O is an ἀπόφραγον of A, is put by O, an eminently learned scholar in the tenth or eleventh century, […] it may well be an ancient note. (It is usually taken to be so, but this is not evident”. He also adds that “another letter which invites scepticism is Ep. 1. […] At 309b2–3, Plato claims to have served often as αὐτοκράτωρ of Syracuse […]. This is completely out of line with Ep. 7”. Lastly, Frede notes that “Marsilio Ficino ascribed Ep. 1 to Dion. He, incidentally, also took Ep. 13 to be spurious”. Taken individually, these are all reasonable and balanced observations. However, it can hardly be a coincidence that the three letters whose inauthenticity is most evident—to the point that their Platonic authorship was probably disputed even by the ancients—are found at the beginning and at the end of the sylloge. 14 “He also discards the Republic because it consists of many books and it is not written in dialogical form, and the Laws for the same reason; the Letters he also discards because of the simplicity of the style” (tr. Westerink). 15 Novotný, 1930, iv: “In this passage, the verb rejects seems to indicate the judgement of one who is ordering for didactic purpose, not one who is doubting Platonic genuineness”. 16 Meiners, 1783, 51–58.

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enough, even the greatest critic of the Greek epistolary genre, Richard Bentley,17 affirmed their authenticity. Meiners, without any thorough discussion, dismissed all the Platonic epistles as openly contradictory to the dialogues and philosophically close to Pythagoreanism. More influential than Meiners was Friedrich Ast’s clear stance against their authenticity.18 No nineteenth-century German author would have argued the opposite without some embarrassment: significant proof of this is the fact that, in his own German version of Platons Werke, Friedrich Schleiermacher expunged the epistles.19 The text that contributed most to the removal of the letters from Plato’s list of authentic works was undoubtedly Hermann Karsten’s Commentatio. In contrast to Meiners’ brevity, Karsten fielded an extensive battery of arguments against the authenticity of the letters, including the Seventh, already widely acknowledged as the most important document in the sylloge.20 Furthermore, Karsten raised decisive objections to the first attempts to save the epistles against Meiners, especially that made by Tennemann.21 Even today, in our opinion, Karsten’s Commentatio is an indispensable text for the study of the Platonic epistles. On the basis of an analysis of the epistles’ style and of their use of historical sources and Platonic dialogues, Karsten believes that the Seventh Letter—considered to be a cento of Platonic passages—represents a model for all the others and is the most ancient one in the sylloge. In Karsten’s view, the Third and the Eighth could even be by the same hand as the one who wrote the Seventh, while the others were drafted on the basis of these texts.22 Karsten is also convinced that the Seventh, Third and Eighth letters were written not long after Plato’s death. As we have seen, we are now certain of the Antiquity of the Seventh and the Eighth, which—as Karsten guessed—probably served as a model for the others. Similarly, the Third appears to be one of the earliest, although it is almost certainly spurious. The picture outlined by Karsten works perfectly well even if the Seventh and Eighth letters are considered authentic. The only exception 17

18 19 20 21

22

Bentley, 1697, in: Dyce, 1836, 203. Bentley refers several times to Plato as the author of the letters, without elaborating on the authenticity of the individual epistles or of the entire sylloge; however, on p. 203 (110 of the original edition) he quotes Ep. 2.314c as “the true one [letter] of Plato”. Ast, 1816, 504–530. Schleiermacher, 1804–1828. Karsten, 1864, 5. Tennemann, 1792, I, 106–111. Karsten is right to note that some scholars, such as Fréret, 1809, 257, used information from the epistles—particularly the Seventh—as though they were authentic works by Plato, on the sole basis of the fact that no ancient author ever doubted their authenticity. Karsten, 1864, 24.

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to Karsten’s picture is the Sixth Letter: it was written after 351/350 BCE, that is to say (possibly) less than five years after the Seventh and the Eighth, which have been considered authentic by authoritative scholars such as Wilamowitz, Howald, Morrow, Pasquali, Bluck, Carlini, Neumann, and others.23 We are not claiming that it is authentic, but that it is likely to be part of the original set of texts on the basis of which the others were produced. Eduard Zeller24 accepted Ast and Karsten’s position, rejecting the sylloge of letters without reservation and criticizing those who adopted a softer position. The only German voice of any significance other than the hypercritical voice of Ast and Karsten was that of Hermann, who soberly claimed the right of the Seventh letter to be considered authentic.25 George Grote, Hans Raeder and Eduard Meyer were much more open to the idea of the authenticity of these texts between the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth: Grote and Raeder denied Platonic authorship only to the First Letter; Meyer added the Thirteenth to the spurious list, but declared all the others to be authentic.26 Such optimism may be surprising, but it was not isolated at the beginning of the twentieth century: Ritter included the Third among the authentic ones and the Fourth among the doubtful ones, confirming the authenticity of the Seventh and the Eighth; Hackforth included the Third, the Fourth, the Seventh, the Eighth and the Thirteenth among the authentic ones, judging the Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh as doubtful; Apelt and Waddington also denied Platonic authorship only to the First and the Twelfth.27 The reasons for this optimism were manifold. Some, like Meyer, gave almost exclusive importance to the letters as historical evidence, showing little interest in stylistic and philosophical aspects;28 others, like Hackforth, undoubtedly underestimated Ast’s and Karsten’s good arguments against the authenticity of some of the epistles. Rudolf Adam’s position was sober, considering only the Seventh Letter to be Platonic.29 The most important event in the history of the debate on the authenticity of the Platonic letters is undoubtedly the “conversion” of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, who in his Platon strongly affirmed the authenticity 23

Wilamowitz, 1920; Howald, 1923; Morrow, 1935; Pasquali, 1938; Bluck, 1947; Carlini, 1960; Neumann, 1977. 24 Zeller, Review, 1888, 614. 25 Hermann, 1839. 26 Grote, 1865; Raeder, 1906; Meyer, 1884. 27 Ritter, 1910; Hackforth, 1913; Apelt, 1918; Waddington, 1904. 28 See Pasquali, 1938, XIII. 29 Adam, 1910.

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of the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth, after having declared, in Aristoteles und Athen, the entire corpus of letters to be spurious, except for the Sixth.30 The prominence of the philologist from Markowitz and the exceptional nature of his radical change of perspective have had a considerable influence on the study of the letters, making it impossible to consider the Seventh and the Eighth as spurious on the basis of previous considerations—the Sixth has been studied far less. There also followed a radical change in the geography of hyper-criticism about the epistles, which shifted from Germany to English-speaking countries: Herbert Richards, who also believed the Greek of the letters to be compatible with Platonic Greek, judged them all to be spurious in terms of content; so did two great interpreters of Plato, Paul Shorey and Harold Cherniss; despite being German by birth, Ludwig Edelstein wrote his own book against the authenticity of the Seventh Letter in America (and in English); Norman Gulley argued against the authenticity of the entire corpus, as did, most recently, Burnyeat and Frede.31 It may be argued that in the twentieth century and the first two decades of the new millennium the situation regarding the epistolary corpus gradually took a clear direction: besides hypercritical excesses and exaggerated optimism,32 the majority of scholars stuck to the position expressed by Wilamowitz, considering the Seventh and Eighth letters authentic, sometimes with the addition of the Sixth.33 Authoritative doubts have also been expressed with regard to the Seventh Letter itself, for which intermediate solutions have been proposed, such as the deletion of only some parts of it.34 At the same time, there has been a certain inertia in the study of the epistles, so it is not uncommon to read justifications of the use of the Seventh—in particular for the reconstruction of Plato’s life and epistemology—based on the fact that the communis opinio now is that it is authentic.35 But this argument is almost of no value.

30

See Wilamowitz, 1893, I, 334 n. 33: “den platonischen brief könnte ich sehr wol für ächt halten”; cf. Wilamowitz, 1920, II, 278–305. 31 Richards, 1911; Shorey, 1933, 40–50; Cherniss, 1933; Edelstein, 1966; Gulley, 1972; Burnyeat / Frede, 2015. 32 For instance, Novotný, 1930 and Bluck, 1947 believe nearly all the letters to be authentic. 33 We should not forget about authoritative rejections of the Platonic authorship of the Seventh Letter, such as those by Gigon, 1980; Caskey, 1974; Mansfeld, 1989; Irwin, 2009. 34 See, for instance, Tarrant, Seventh Epistle, 1983; Bröcker, 1963 proposed—with modest results—that we consider only certain parts of the excursus as authentic. 35 See, e.g., Knab, 2006.

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“You Cannot Prove That Plato Wrote the Symposium”: Authenticity as a Matter of Method

Speaking of his long work of interpreting Plato’s thought, Werner Jaeger wrote: If it is true of any thinker, it is true of Plato that his entire philosophy is the expression of his life, and that his life is his philosophy. His two greatest books are The Republic and The Laws. That means that he did not think of politics as the occupation of a few periods in his career when he was trying to turn thought into action; he thought of it as the framework of his entire spiritual life, the principal and comprehensive object of his whole thought. After long years of constant endeavour to understand the true nature of his philosophy, I had finally reached this view of it, without having given the Letters any real consideration—because I had always shared the current prejudice against their authenticity.36 (tr. Highet)

A few years earlier, the Italian philologist Giorgio Pasquali had preceded him, noting that, first as a student and then as a teacher, he had read the Platonic dialogues several times—and the Republic many times—while completely neglecting the letters. This was because, Pasquali points out, “when I was young, Bentley’s expulsion of everything in ancient Greek literature that was written as epistles was still authoritative”; progressively, however—this scholar goes on to explain—times changed and many became convinced that the Platonic letters should not be treated as people sometimes treated their slaves in the past, that is to say, by assuming that they are guilty, unless they are able to prove their innocence. This method, concludes Pasquali, notoriously leads to the killing of many innocent people.37 Less than three decades later, Ludwig Edelstein was to begin his volume on the Seventh Letter with the following words: “During the past three or four decades, the genuineness of Plato’s Seventh Letter has become almost an axiom of Platonic scholarship”.38 Odd as it may seem, while the Vorurteil against the letters was predominant at the beginning of the twentieth century, shortly after the middle of the century it was possible to state that, at least as the Seventh Letter was concerned, authenticity was “almost an axiom”. Commenting on the Seventh Letter, Pasquali writes that—independently of the question of its authenticity (in his opinion hardly deniable)—the tone of the epistle is particularly striking. Indeed, it does not describe Plato either as a hero of free thought or as duplicitous, a cheating figure ready to get involved with tyranny, after having publicly condemned it, with very harsh words, in the 36 37 38

Jaeger, 1943, 83. Pasquali, 1938, ix. Edelstein, 1966, 1.

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Republic. On the contrary, Plato is described as a good man who is aware of the serious responsibilities he has taken on, without too much success, and of his mistakes, which he admits, somewhat through clenched teeth.39 According to Pasquali, this—along with other arguments of various kinds—makes it even more unlikely that the Seventh Letter might be the work a forger who was not interested in stressing only one side of the figure of Plato, but who—on the contrary—was always careful to engage in a sober form of depiction by providing a more balanced portrayal. Critics have all too often glossed over Pasquali’s arguments, not least because of the complex, early twentieth-century Italian language in which his book is written. However, Pasquali has set out with rare clarity and depth some of the decisive points as regards the question of the authenticity of the (pseudo-) Platonic letters, starting from the issue of the onus probandi. Edelstein poses this point in the following terms: “What are the reasons for assuming the genuineness of the Seventh Letter? For thus the problem must be put, as no one would deny”.40 In our view, this is a methodologically indefensible position. Edelstein is undoubtedly right to insist that the epistolary material produced in the fourth century is “always open to suspicion”,41 and Frede is certainly not wrong in saying that there is no definitely authentic letter by a philosopher before Epicurus42 (although, as already mentioned, this is an artificial argument). However, the devaluing of the ancient epistolary genre (which has been treated dismissively since Bentley’s time43) cannot reverse the burden of proof; not only because there are letters whose authenticity it is reasonable to assume (ones by Plato, Speusippus, Isocrates, and Demosthenes, for example), but also for a theoretical reason that Thomas Szlezák has outlined: It is a widespread view, which, strangely enough, also Edelstein shares, namely that the burden of proof lies with the proponents of authenticity since the mass of letters that have survived from Antiquity are certainly spurious. This view is methodologically, historically and literarily misguided in equal measure. Literary authenticity cannot in principle be proven, only inauthenticity.44

How should one prove that a letter by Plato is authentic? Edelstein indirectly shows that this is impossible through some of his arguments. For instance, he 39 40 41 42 43

Pasquali, 1938, 47. Edelstein, 1966, 1. Edelstein, 1966, 1. Burnyeat / Frede 2015, esp. Seminar 1. In any case, it must again be recalled that Bentley, 1697 was willing to trust the authenticity of the Platonic epistolary corpus. 44 Szlezák, 1985.

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notes that the agreement between what the Seventh letter says about the situation in Sicily and what we find in ancient historians can, at best, prove that “the author was familiar with the historical background”.45 Similarly, he criticises those who stress the analogy between the style of the epistle and that of Plato’s dialogues, observing that “there is always a chance that someone imitated Plato’s art of writing even to perfection”. Anyone who wants to prove that a text without obvious absurdities is authentic inevitably runs into the objection of the capable forger. Even if a Platonic letter were shown to be consistent with the historical and political information in our possession, with Plato’s style, and with some of his philosophical assumptions, no one could deny that it could still be the work of an excellent and well-informed forger. What can be done, rather, is demonstrate that a text is inauthentic because it contains historiographical errors, chronological absurdities or philosophical theories that certainly belong to a later time. To date, this has not been achieved by anyone. We find ourselves in a similar situation with another epistle that was apparently produced within the Academy, namely Speusippus’ letter to Philip II. As Natoli pointed out, “the fact that the Letter of Speusippus is not referred to by any contemporary source imposes a further difficulty for the historian who would mount a case for authenticity”.46 Indeed, the first author to mention this letter is Carystius of Pergamum, more than two centuries after Speusippus’ death. If we adopt Natoli’s very reasonable proposal,47 i.e. not to place the burden of proof on the one asserting the authenticity of Speusippus’ letter, and at the same time to abandon the prospect of settling the issue once and for all, contenting ourselves with reasoning in terms of probability, it seems necessary to conclude that it is definitely more likely that at least the Seventh and Eighth Platonic letters are authentic. Harold Tarrant proposed to reject the “game of authenticity” for the Seventh Letter, establishing a general methodological principle: “I accept neither the view that a work (especially a letter) has to be attributed to its purported author until it is proved spurious; nor that it should be regarded as spurious until authenticity is demonstrated. We must accept that the historian of ancient ideas examines issues on which proof is often impossible; he must adopt the ‘likely story’ or suspend judgement”.48 Like Natoli’s “probabilism”, this is a widely shared position. However, Szlezák’s warnings still hold. One of Tarrant’s two propositions is problematic: for the second view he mentions asks us (even if in a non-peremptory way) to prove 45 46 47 48

Edelstein, 1966, 2. Natoli, 2004, 18–19. Natoli, 2004, 19. Tarrant, Seventh Epistle, 1983, 75.

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that a text is authentic. As we have said, proving that a text is authentic and proving that it is spurious are not methodologically equivalent tasks: the former is de facto unfeasible. In a compelling and enjoyable paper, “The Athenaion Politeia after a Century”, Mortimer Chambers reconstructed the discovery of the London papyrus containing the largest portion of the text (P.Lond. 131, now in the British Library) and its publication by Sir Frederic Kenyon.49 In a lengthy review, W.L. Newman had been the first to address the crucial question of the authenticity of the Athenaion Politeia, denying Aristotle’s authorship.50 Chambers illustrates how, in English language studies, unlike those in other languages (German, French, Italian), the inauthenticity of the text has long been asserted, not least because of Newman’s authority. Paul Friedländer was instead one of the staunchest champions of the work’s authenticity (despite Wilamowitz’s cautious stance). In a discussion with Chambers himself,51 Friedländer settled the matter verbally: “You cannot prove that Plato wrote the Symposium”. Thus, even if Tarrant’s and Natoli’s suggestions are reasonable and worthy of consideration, it is perhaps possible to defend a sharper position: a Platonic text that, under the Academy’s supervision, became part of the corpus is “authentic” until proven otherwise. Perhaps the very notion of “authenticity” needs to be reconsidered. The preliminary question to ask in the case of the Platonic epistles is therefore not “is this text authentic?”, but rather “what are the conditions of possibility for such a text to be declared authentic?”. Holger Thesleff has deeply investigated the circumstantial evidence of Plato’s method of writing (or dictating) and revising the texts that entered his corpus.52 He has also introduced the term “semi-authentic”, of which he offers a partial revision in the present volume. No matter what terms we wish to adopt to describe a more nuanced position on the matter, what is certain is that the “either-or logic” which Thesleff talks about is inapplicable to the issue of the authenticity of the texts we are dealing with here. It is incredibly naïve to think that either Plato wrote a text, or this same text is spurious. It is not, however, just a matter of blurring an overly rigid opposition, but of bringing texts back into their context of production, i.e. (philosophical and non-philosophical) schools. In this sense, a comparison between the Platonic

49 50 51 52

Chambers, 1996. Newman, 1891. Reported in Chambers, 1996, 220. Thesleff, 1967, 17–18.33–62 = Thesleff, 2009, 14–15.27–50; Thesleff, 1982, 83–87 = Thesleff, 230–235, and this volume.

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epistolary corpus—and the Platonic corpus more generally—and that of Isocrates and Demosthenes proves particularly fruitful.

Plato, Isocrates, and Demosthenes, and the Genesis of Their Corpora: A Comparison

In order to better understand some of the dynamics in the formation of the Platonic tetralogical corpus, it seems useful to draw a comparison with the genesis of other somewhat analogous corpora, such as those of Isocrates and Demosthenes.53 In the constitution and transmission of the Isocratic corpus, Isocrates and his school played an essential role.54 It is Isocrates himself, in the so-called school scenes (Philippus 1–6; Panathenaicus 200–265), who emphasises pupils’ direct involvement in the composition of their teacher’s texts.55 Moreover— and this is the case with Plato and Demosthenes, as well—it can hardly be a matter of chance that none of the numerous surviving papyri have preserved the text of otherwise lost works. If we disregard the six surviving judicial orations, which are to be considered fictitious, and paradigmatic pieces like the Epistles and the whole of Isocrates’ corpus,56 no trace survives of the bundles of judicial orations that Aristotle (fr. 140 Rose = 128 Gigon) claimed were circulating among booksellers. Canfora has glimpsed in this information a possible controversy between Aristotle and Isocrates’ adopted son, Aphareus, who, paradoxically, claimed that his father had never even composed a judicial speech (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De Isocrate 18.2).57 Even the three titles in the epigraphic catalogue of the library of the Rhodes Gymnasium (second or first century BCE), at first attributed to lost speeches by Isocrates, are in fact works by Theopompus.58 The number of texts (twenty-one speeches and nine 53

54 55 56 57 58

On the textual transmission of Isocrates see Pinto, 2003; Carlini / Manetti (2003) and, more recently, Fassino, 2012; Martinelli Tempesta, 2015, with further bibliography, and Martinelli Tempesta, 2016; Menchelli, 2015; Vallozza, 2017. On the textual transmission of Demosthenes see Canfora, 1974 and Canfora, 1995, 164–165.172–178; Grusková / Bannert, 2014. See also: De Robertis, 2015 and Sardone, 2021. See Pinto, 2015. See Martinelli Tempesta, 2016, 88–91. See Nicolai, 2004, 158–161; and Signes Codoñer, 2002. On Isocrates’ forensic speeches, see now Whitehead, 2022, who doesn’t believe in their fictitious character. See Canfora, 1995, 165. See Maiuri, 1925, 7.14–15; Segre, 1935, 214–222; Otranto, 2000, xiii; Blanck, 2008, 204; Otranto, 2017, 157, with further bibliography. No trace remains of the twenty-two speeches falsely attributed to Isocrates in the so-called anonymous Isocratic Vita that opens the

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epistles) preserved by the medieval tradition, whose two branches date back to two late-antique editions, is not far from the number stated by Caecilius of Calacte (fr. 116, ed. Ofenloch: 28 works) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (fr. 10, ed. Usener and Radermacher: 25 works), as we can establish thanks to pseudoPlutarch’s testimony (Vitae decem oratorum 838D). In short, only Isocratean works considered to be “authentic” have been transmitted to us, and the inclusion in the corpus of a text that is certainly spurious (Ad Demonicum) is only an apparent exception, given that it was most likely included in the corpus at a very early age and is in perfect accordance—in terms of its content—with Isocrates’ teaching.59 In the case of the Demosthenic corpus, it is also possible to grasp the central role of the author’s close circle for its genesis and early circulation. In this case, as Canfora has masterfully highlighted, Demosthenes’ heirs took care of his work. The collection that reached Alexandria, and then the Byzantine Middle Ages, would appear to be a posthumous collection, a Nachlaß with ambitions of “completeness”, since it also includes sketches or working instruments such as the passages included in the so-called collection of the Proems. Around Demosthenes there is a family and political milieu that can be regarded as responsible for the preservation of his works and manuscripts: Demon of Peania, the son of Demosthenes’ cousin Demoteles, who in 323 promoted the decree revoking Demosthenes’ exile (Plutarch Demosthenes 23 and 27); Demochares (ca. 355–275), the son of a sister of Demosthenes’, his follower, and the promoter in 280/79 of a petition to the Council for a statue and other honours to Demosthenes (pseudo-Plutarch, Vitae decem oratorum, 850F–851C); and Laches, the son of Demochares and the promoter in 270 of a similar initiative (851D–F). Demon, who delivers the speech Against Zenothemis, handed down as Demosthenic (32), is probably also its author. Other speeches in the surviving collection are also due to friends and collaborators of the orator: from Halonnesus by Aegesippus (7) to the speeches by Apollodorus. It is precisely the presence in the collection of speeches by these collaborators and family members that leads one to believe that this group is responsible for the formation of the collection.60 (authors’ translation)

59 60

Neoplatonic introduction to the corpus in the ancestor of the second family of manuscripts: see Dindorf, 1852, 105, 10–20. A new edition of this text will be published by Mariella Menchelli in the forthcoming OCT Isocrates (edition coordinated by Stefano Martinelli Tempesta). Menchelli, 2015, 11–13. Canfora, 1995, 164–165.

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As far as Plato’s corpus is concerned,61 it is an established fact by now that the tetralogical order, in which the Epistles find a permanent place at the end of the ninth tetralogy, predates Thrasyllus.62 Carlo Martino Lucarini has recently taken up the issue, convincingly demonstrating what Wilamowitz63 and Pohlenz64 had already guessed, i.e. that the tetralogical order predates even the trilogical one proposed by Aristophanes of Byzantium, around 180 BCE, who must have proposed his own order starting from the tetralogical one, considered authoritative, probably because of its Academic origin.65 The structure of the tetralogical corpus inherited from and perhaps further refined—maybe in terms of the order of the tetralogies—by Thrasyllus has been traced back precisely to the Academy of Arcesilaus (268–241 BCE) or Lacydes (241–216 BCE) on the basis of sound arguments, most notably: the presence of dialogues such as Alcibiades 2 within the corpus.66 The evidence from the Milanese papyrus (P.Worp 1), which we considered above, takes us—at least for the Seventh and Eighth epistles—to an even earlier time (around the mid-third century BCE). Moreover, the fact that the circulation of dialogues organised into tetralogies, in imitation of the tragic tetralogies, dates back to Plato himself is precisely what Thrasyllus states, according to Diogenes Laertius (3.56). It is further confirmed by a papyrus from the second century CE (P.Oxy. 4941), which contains a treatise on the Theaetetus attributed either to Thrasyllus—as suggested by David Sedley67—or to an anonymous author who, according to Stefano Martinelli Tempesta,68 draws upon the same Academic sources as Thrasyllus.

61

62

63 64 65 66 67 68

Carlini, 1972 remains an important work on the ancient history of the Platonic corpus. More recently, following the recovery of the Greek text of Galen’s De indolentia, see Dorandi, 2010, particularly regarding the Ἀττικιανὰ and Panaetius’ Plato. On Galen’s De indolentia 13, see also Stramaglia, 2011, 120–129. A recent status quaestionis in Donato, 2022, 13–17. On Thrasyllus as a primary source for the catalogue of Plato’s works in Diogenes Laertius, see Dorandi, 2013, 110–112. Tarrant, Tetralogies, 2013, on the basis of linguistic-stylistic affinities that would hardly have been noticed by an imperial commentator, suggested—apparently revising his previous positions (Tarrant, 1993 and Tarrant, 1995; contra Mansfeld, 1994, 58–107)—that at least part of the tetralogical order must be much older than Thrasyllus: the latter is said to have worked on material from the ancient Academy, introducing only a few adjustments. Wilamowitz, 1920, 324–325. Pohlenz, 1916, 241 n. 1. Lucarini, 2010–2011. For some traces of the influences of Alexandrian philology on the transmitted text—but obviously not on the structure of the corpus—see Schironi, 2005; Luzzatto, 2008. See Wilamowitz, 1920, 325; Bickel, 1943; Carlini, 1962. Sedley, 2009; Sedley, 2013. Martinelli Tempesta, 2019.

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What the three corpora have in common, apart from the arrangement of the epistles at the very end, as was quite usual in Antiquity,69 is their formation each in a milieu that was chronologically and ideologically very close to the authors themselves: their own schools in the case of Isocrates and Plato; his family and political entourage in the case of Demosthenes. In all these corpora we find—to different extents and with different degrees of awareness—texts that are not genuine according to a strict definition of authorship, but certainly not spurious according to a more flexible definition, as we have seen above.

Plato’s Other Epistles

There exist other letters attributed to Plato which are not part of his corpus. Moreover, the sources (see e.g. Diogenes Laertius  3.9, 3.81) mention letters written by Plato that we do not possess. As acknowledged by Frede, it is almost certain that Plato wrote some letters.70 However, no ancient author quotes— or translates into Latin—any Platonic epistles other than those included in Thrasyllus’ tetralogies. This is why we did not refer to the other epistles previously. In the light of what has been argued so far, one should not make the naïve mistake of assuming that it was by mere chance that the letters that have reached us are those collected by Thrasyllus rather than others: for these gradually became part of the Platonic corpus of works under the supervision of the school, which had no interest in collecting other letters. The other epistles we possess are indisputably spurious. These are included both by Rudolf Hercher in the Epistolographi Graeci and by Friedrich Hermann in the sixth volume of his edition of the Platonis Dialogi.71 A very brief overview of their content follows. Hermann’s Epistle 14 (Ep. 24 Allatius, Ep. 24 Orelli, Ep. 24 Hercher, Ep. 24 Köhler) appears in Vaticanus Gr. 64, which also includes Speusippus’ letter to Philip II and Plato’s one to Philip. In Epistle 14, Plato is writing to an unknown

69 70 71

See, e.g., in Diog. Laert. the cases of Aristotle (5.27), Strato (5.60), Diogenes (6.80), Ariston of Chius (7.163), Sphaerus (7.178), and Epicurus (10.28). See Lucarini, 2010–2011, 353 n. 31. Burnyeat / Frede 2015, 15.103 n. 16. Hercher, 1873, 491–532; Hermann, 1873. As explained by Hermann, 1873, iii in his Praefatio, the first one is missing from the famous collection of Socrates and Socratics of Leo Allatius, 1637. Published in the volume, he said, were previously unedited Greek works, including letters of Socrates; they are translated into Latin with notes. Another two epistles are from the Olearius’ edition of Stanley (Olearius, 1711; Stanley, 1660–1665). The last two are from the Parisinus Gr. 1760 (fifteenth century) in Boissonade, 1833, 84.211.

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addressee,72 explaining that he does not have any of the things that Archytas has requested. He adds that he no longer knows whether philosophy is a good or a bad thing for him, as he hates to be among the crowd (ἐμοὶ δὲ φιλοσοφία οὐκ οἶδ’ ὅ τι ποτὲ χρῆμα γέγονεν, ἆρά γε φλαῦρον ἢ καλόν, ὁπότε ἐγὼ μισῶ νῦν συνεῖναι τοῖς πολλοῖς). For these reasons, and to avoid being surrounded by men who look like beasts, Plato claims to have left the city and to have found refuge in Iphistiadae (cf. Diogenes Laertius 3.41: τὸ ἐν Ἰφιστιαδῶν χώριον), where he has discovered that the misanthropic Timon finds men unworthy.73 Plato’s alleged misanthropy is present in other sources too, probably as a way to emphasise the reflective and elitist character that emerges from some dialogues.74 The isolation of the philosopher was indeed a topos (see, e.g., Dio Chrysostom 20.11). The epistle is clearly modelled on Republic 496c5–e2, Phaedo 89d–90a, and Epistle 7.325e, as already guessed by Sykutris.75 Hermann’s Epistle 15 (Ep. 25 Orelli, Ep. 25 Hercher76) is a brief letter of recommendation (to an unknown addressee) for a certain Krinis, a mutual friend. This text is irrelevant in every respect. The same applies to Hermann’s Epistle 16 (Ep.26 Orelli, Ep. 26 Hercher77), in which Plato praises an unknown recipient for his friendship with Dionysius II. Hermann’s Epistles 17 and 18 (Ep. 14 and 15 Hercher), included by Boissonade in the Anecdota Graeca, are quite similar: the former is a letter of recommendation for a certain Georgios, the latter for a certain Callimachus. In his Epistolographi Graeci, Hercher published two epistles from Plato among Theophylact Simocatta’s letters. The first is a very brief epistle (no. 70) presented as Πλάτων Ἀξιόχῳ. It draws advice on controlling one’s tongue from the arts of horsemanship and navigation. It bears no relation to the pseudoPlatonic Axiochus or to Axiochus himself.78 The second letter is another very short text (no. 85) presented as Πλάτων Διονυσίῳ. It is similar to the first and equally spurious. Plato’s letter 31 to Philip (Ep. 29 Allatius, Ep. 31 Orelli, Ep. 31 Hercher79) is declared genuine by Natoli on the basis of the analogy with Speusippus’ letter

72 Sykutris, 1933, 78. 73 Τίμων ὁ μισάνθρωπος is mentioned in two Vitae Platonis: Olympiodorus, In Alcibiadem 2.145 Westerink and Anon. Prolegomena 4.15 Westerink. 74 Swift Riginos 1976, 161–163. 75 Sykutris, 1933, 78. 76 Köhler, 1928, following Allatius, does not include this letter in her edition. 77 Again, Köhler, 1928, following Allatius, does not include this letter in her edition. 78 See Nails 2002, 63–66. 79 According to Köhler’s numeration, this is Epistle 29, attributed to Speusippus.

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to Philip II, which he considers equally authentic.80 The arguments in support of the authenticity of Speusippus’ letter are partly convincing, but far from conclusive. This is not the place to discuss the epistle in question in detail, but a few points should be made. It is undoubtedly the most important of the “Socratic” epistles and shows considerable affinities with the Platonic Seventh Letter. The investigation by Bickermann and Sykutris suggests that the letter is of a very early date, certainly earlier than the other epistles attributed to Speusippus,81 and this makes it chronologically rather close to Plato’s Seventh and Eighth epistles. This is relevant because, if the epistle were indeed Speusippian or at least a very early product of his school, it would mean that the Academy produced at least two public epistles of considerable importance (the other being of course the Seventh Letter) and ensured their preservation as a political manifesto.82 However, we have no way of comparing the epistle with Speusippus’ works, since these have not come down to us; in this respect, the difference with the Platonic epistles is enormous. However, Sykutris’ conclusion that, in terms of its style and language, the epistle is undoubtedly consistent with an early dating, is convincing83 and for present purposes also sufficient. Epistle 31, purportedly addressed by Plato to Philip, presents various problems. The first is the sender, who is identified as Plato already by Allatius, yet remains far from certain. However, what Sykutris says is convincing: since the document is a forgery probably produced to support Epistle 30, which shows 80 81 82

83

Natoli, 2004, 163–174. Bickermann / Sykutris, 1928, esp. 47–51. Natoli, 2004 believes that Speusippus’ epistle is a document and that the motivation for Speusippus’ action was to establish relations with Philip as part of his strategy to attack Isocrates. Natoli’s argument about the private character of the letter is not persuasive. The very notion of “privateness” (already argued by Harder, 1930) is problematic with respect to such a document. The idea that Speusippus sent this epistle to Philip through private channels in order to keep it private and that it then became part of the (pseudo-) Speusippean corpus of letters is implausible. Natoli’s main thesis, namely that the writing of an open pro-Macedonian letter would have been impossible in Athens, is not only weak, but does not take into account the equally problematic Syracusan allegiance of the Academy, which also included Plato’s Seventh Letter in its corpus (whoever its author may be). Not without reason, Bertelli, 1976; 1977, criticised some of the conclusions reached by Bickermann / Sykutris, 1928, yet he did not question the early date they had assigned to the epistle. Before him, even scholars inclined to accept the authenticity of some Platonic epistles had denied or expressed strong doubts about the Speusippean authorship of the letter, as in the case of Wilamowitz, 1919, 725; Wilamowitz, 1920, 280 and Pasquali, 1938, 251 n. 1. Köhler, 1928 denies its authenticity. Contra, among others, Momigliano, 1934, 36 n. 1; Merlan, 1954, 60, and Markle, 1976, 92–93.

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Plato’s endorsement of support of Philip’s reign, it makes sense for the sender to be Plato himself. As far as the authenticity of this text is concerned, we believe that the letter must be considered spurious; it is also doubtful that it is as early as Epistle 30. Margherita Isnardi Parente’s hypothesis that Epistle 31 was produced by a circle close to Speusippus together with the Fifth Platonic epistle is interesting: the affinities between the two texts are clear.84 It is far more difficult to establish the priority of one with respect to the other, but this is not the point at issue here. Indeed, it is sufficient to repeat that the letter is certainly not by Plato himself and that it finds no place in his corpus for the reasons we have amply explained above. Therefore, the existence of other letters attributed to Plato is in no way relevant to the formation of the (epistolary) corpus. Università degli Studi di Milano

84

Isnardi Parente, 1980, 399.

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C.M. Young, Crito, in: Press 2012, 47–49. H. Yunis, Plato, Phaedrus, Cambridge 2011. E.  Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, 2.  Theil.  1.  Abtheilung. Sokrates und die Sokratiker. Plato und the alte Akademie, Leipzig 31875. Revised editions 41889, 51922. —, Über die Unterscheidung einer doppelten Gestalt der Ideenlehre in den platonischen Schriften, in: SPAW, 1887, 197–224. —, Plato and the Older Academy, translated with the author’s sanction by S.F. Alleyne and A. Goodwin, London 1888. —, Review of H. Reinhold, De Platonis epistulis (Quedlinburgii, Typis expressit C. Voges, 1886), AGPh 1 (1888), 614–616. —, Die deutsche Literatur über die sokratische, platonische und aristotelische Philosophie 1896, in: AGPh 13 (1900), 272–303. D.J. Zeyl (tr.), Plato: Timaeus, Indianapolis 2000. U. Zilioli, The Cyrenaics, Durham 2012. —, 2013. The Wooden Horse. The Cyrenaics in the Theaetetus, in: G.  Boys-Stones, D. El Murr / C. Gill (eds.), The Platonic Art of Philosophy, Cambridge 2013, 167‒185. U. Zilioli (ed.), From the Socratics to the Socratic Schools: Classical Ethics, Metaphysics and Epistemology, London 2015. A. Ziółkowski, Sienkiewicz and the Topography of Ancient Rome, the Riddle of Ostrianum in Quo Vadis, in: M. Woźniak / M. Wyke (eds.), The Novel of Neronian Rome and its Multimedial Transformations: Sienkiewicz’ Quo Vadis, Oxford 2020, 39‒54.

Index of Plato’s Works Alcibiades 1 109d-110d 116a-e 128e-131a 133b-c 135e

174–175 179 175–177, 180 180 180

Apology 18a-19c 21a 22d 23c 26d-e 29d 33c 34a

43, 56 150 39 65 80 64 64 65

Charmides 153b 164d-175c 174b-d

150 179 185

Cratylus 385b-d 437d 437d-438a

107 70 107

Critias 108d 110c-113b 113a 119c

160 155–156 160 164

Crito 53a-54d

135

Epistles 1.309b 2.314c 7.234c-250e 7.324d-e 7.325b 7.325e 7.326a-c 7.339c

207 208 6 45 45 219 44, 206 6

7.341c

111

Eryxias 392b 393e-394e 395a-c 402a-b 403e-405a

28 34 31, 32 32 32

Euthydemus 281a-c 282a 283b 286c 302b 305b-d 306a-c

178 185 149 49 149 47 47

Euthyphro 4a-e 15c

150 33

Gorgias 447b-448a 448b 449b-c 453c 455c-457d 458c 461b-d 462b 463a 471a-473a 473b 474d-480e 475c 477a 480c-e 481b-d 481e-484a 483d-484c 484b 484b-486e 488d-492d 493b-c

147–150 145 139, 146 145 141–143, 146 148–150 148 112 47 141–143 146 129, 131, 146 146 150 149–150 148–150 141–143 144 134 141–143 141–143 143

252

Index of Plato’s Works

494b-499b 129 118 499b 499b-510b 141–143 65 501c 505c-507c 141–143 513b 146 129 514e 519b-d 151 522c-527e 141–143, 146

Menexenus 235c 236b

13 86, 108 22 145 24 22 33 29, 30 30 145 24 145 26, 145 20, 145 145 145 27, 145 24, 25

Hippias Major 285d 285e 286c 286d-287d 287e 289d 292c 297a-b, e 301b 304a-b, d

10 71 10 10 10 10 149 10 10 10

Meno 70a 71a 71b-c 71c-d 79e 80d-e 82b-86b 86a 86d 92e 93a-c 94a-b 96d-e 98a 99a-e 100b-c

Hippias Minor 363a

12

Minos 313a

23

Hipparchus 225a 229e-230a

23 32

On Justice 372a

23

On Virtue 376a-b 376b-379d 377d-e 378b-c 378c-d 379b-d

20, 22, 25 24 20 24 21 25

Ion

233e-234b 537b-538b

13 57

Laches 181a 65 199d 185 Laws 631b-d 653a 694c-695e 809e 810b 858c-d

177 172 37, 50–51 86 86 112

Lysis 214b

112

Parmenides 126a 65 128a 112 128d 109 132a-b 195 142b 192 Phaedo 59c 70e-71b 73d-e

54 49 87–88

253

Index of Plato’s Works 80e-81b 81b 89d-90a 102–103

79 96 219 49–50

Phaedrus 229b 257d 258d 274b-277a 274c-275c 275a 275e 276c-d 277d-278b 277e 278b-e 278e-279a

149 112 64 110 39 64 48 85 111 86 85–86 38, 45–47

Philebus 11a-12d 17e-20a 20b-23b 27d-28b 31a 32b-e 33a-34c 36c-41a 38b-39a 42a-51a 50e-52b 53с 53c-55c 60a-61b 62e-63e 64c-65d 66d-67a 67a-b

115–116, 118 118 115–116, 118 114–116, 118 116 117–118 117–118 117 119 117–120 117, 119 55 118 115 116 114–116 115–116 116, 118

Protagoras 311b-d 326d 333b 353c-357d 361b-c Republic 1.343a

1.350c-d 2.368d 3.392b 3.392d-394d 3.393a-b 5.473c-d 6.487b-c 6.496c-e 6.500b 6.502c 6.505b 6.508e-509a 7.533d 9.583b-586d

65 135 39 73 60 44 32 219 48 131, 135 119 199 181 119

Sisyphus 387b-d 388b-e 389e 390a-d 391c-d

28, 34 29, 30, 34 29 32, 33, 34 29, 33

Sophist 225d 251b-252a 251c 260c-d

53 49 40 49

Statesman 284b 288e 294a-b 295c-e 297d-e 299b-d 300b 302b

57 85 111 85, 111 112 111–112 112 39

149 84 65 185 185

Symposium 173b 178e-179b 180d-181d 182b-184c 204d-205e 207d

85 52 51 51–52 173–174 173

149

Theaetetus 142c-143c

2, 149

254 143a-c 147d 151a 152b-c 156a 164c 165b-c 166c 176d-e 178a-179c 179e 194c-195a

Index of Plato’s Works 28, 73–74, 84–85, 106, 112, 140 3 9 54 54 33 54 112 181 33 112 84

Timaeus 17a 17–19 19c 20d-e 21c-26d 23a-24e 24d-25c 25e-26d 34d-36d 50b-53b 90a

3 159 57 152, 154, 160 160–161 155–156, 164 164 162–163, 165 197 188 181

Index of Ancient Names Adeimantus 60, 65, 139 Aegesippus 216 Aelian 17 Aeschines of Sphettus 5, 20, 37, 147 Aeschylus 56, 83, 84, 150 Alcibiades 5, 9–10, 174–175, 179–180 Alcidamas 37 Alcinous 177, 192, 199 Alexander of Aphrodisias 100, 186 Amelius 94, 103 Ammianus Marcellinus 154 Ammonius 100 Anaxagoras 80, 83 Anaximenes of Lampsacus 165 Andocides 134 Andronicus of Rhodes 91, 94, 100, 103 Anniceris of Cyrene 64 Anonymous In Theaetetum 54, 106 Anonymous Prolegomena xi, 17, 97–98, 207, 219 Antiatticista 71, 151 Antigonus of Carystus 35, 92, 153 Antiochus of Ascalon xv, xvi, 166–182, 185–186, 193, 199 Antiphanes 75 Antiphon 3, 71, 83, 134 Antisthenes xiii, 20, 37, 40, 42–43, 45–46, 49–50, 52, 54, 58, 68, 120 Anytus 20, 24, 134 Aphareus 215 Apollodorus (ps.-Demosthenes) 216 Apollodorus of Carystus 150 Apuleius xi, 192 Arcesilaus xv, 31, 35, 93, 98, 101, 153, 166, 168, 217 Archilochus 82 Archytas 167, 169, 204, 219 Aristides (statesman) 24 Aristippus 54–55 Aristodemus 3, 149 Ariston of Chius 218 Aristophanes (comic playwright) 40, 42, 43, 56, 71, 82–84, 106, 110, 134, 150

Aristophanes of Byzantium xi, 96–97, 101–102, 204–206, 217 Aristotle xvi, 1, 7, 23, 31, 33, 39, 46, 53–54, 56–57, 60, 72, 74–75, 91, 94, 98, 100, 102–103, 106–107, 110, 120, 167, 170, 176, 183–202, 214–215, 218 Arius Didymus 181 Arnobius 154 Arrian 109 Arsinoe 77 Aspasia 20, 86, 108, 120 Athenaeus 17, 20, 48, 57, 82 Atticus (philosopher) 193 Atticus (Cicero’s friend) 106 Aulus Gellius 50, 71 Axiothea of Arcadia 75 Boethius 100 Caecilius of Calacte 216 Callias 67 Callicles 65, 129, 131, 134, 139, 143–144, 146–149, 151 Callimachus 103, 219 Callisthenes 164 Callistratus 29 Cambyses 51 Carneades 166 Carystius of Pergamum 213 Cebes 49 Chaerephon 147–150 Charmides 83 Chrysippus 170 Cicero xv, 56, 106, 166–173, 179, 183, 185–186, 204, 206 Cleisthenes 81 Clemens of Alexandria 178 Cleon 43 Crantor (Krantor) of Soli xv, 5, 35, 95, 98, 100, 102, 152–165, 168 Crates 22, 26, 168 Cratinus 67 Critias 128, 157, 160, 162–163

256 Crito 47 Critobulus 52, 83 Cyrus 37, 50–51, 83 Demochares 216 Democritus 42, 97, 103, 204 Demon of Peania 216 Demosthenes xvi, 107–108, 203–204, 212, 215–216, 218 Demoteles 216 Dercyllides xi, 204 Dio Chrysostom 219 Diodorus Cronus 31 Diogenes Laertius xi, 15–17, 19–21, 26, 35, 37, 46, 51, 53–54, 70, 92–93, 96–98, 101–102, 107, 153, 156–157, 170, 204–205, 217–219 Dion 6, 120, 169, 206–207 Dionysius I 64, 71, 157 Dionysius II 6, 219 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 70, 108, 215–216 Dionysodorus 53 Diotima 173 Dropides 160 Ecphantus 42 Ephippus 75 Epicrates 75 Epicurus 203, 212, 218 Epimenides 4, 16 Erasistratus 16, 28 Eubulides 54 Eucharides 84 Eucleides of Megara 2–4, 28, 53–54, 73, 84–85, 112 Euclid (mathematician) 107 Eudemus 107 Eudorus 181, 186 Eudoxus 10, 186 Eupolis 56, 67, 82 Euripides 40, 43, 76, 82, 84, 143 Eustochius 94–95, 103 Euthydemus 53, 83 Galen 106, 109, 113, 217 Glaucon 65, 139 Gorgias 129, 131, 134, 139, 143–150

Index of Ancient Names Hecataeus of Abdera 164 Heraclides Ponticus 120 Heraclitus 204 Hermippus 157 Hermocrates 161–162 Hermodorus of Syracuse 98 Herodotus 51, 56, 80, 82, 134 Hesiod 55 Hipparchus 6 Hipparinus 6 Hippias 10, 50, 71 Hippocrates 1, 109, 111, 150 Homer 1, 8, 12–13, 57, 60, 90, 178 Iamblichus xii, 97, 176, 182 Isaeus 134 Isocrates xiii, xvi, 37–41, 43, 45–49, 58, 62, 68, 73, 78, 83, 106, 109, 133, 151, 156, 203–204, 212, 215–218, 220 Krinis 219 Lacydes 98, 217 Libanius 134 Lucian 109 Lysias 3, 42, 46, 83, 134 Lysimachus 20 Menedemus 75 Meno 22–23, 28–30 Moderatus 186 Niceratus 71 Numenius 192 Olympiodorus xi, 219 Panaetius 217 Parmenides 53, 58 Pausanias 51–52 Pericles 20, 24, 56, 86 Phaedo 3, 49, 58, 149 Phanodemos 164 Philip II of Macedon 48, 80, 213, 218–221 Philip of Opus 7, 15–16, 71, 101, 107, 164 Philo of Larissa 166 Philocrates 153

257

Index of Ancient Names Philodemus 99, 106–108, 153 Philolaus 42, 157 Phrynichus 56 Pindar 134, 143 Pisistratus 82 Piso xv, 170–171, 175–177, 179, 181–182, 185 Pliny the Elder 154 Pliny the Younger 106–108 Plotinus 94–95, 103, 109, 181, 192 Plutarch 75, 81, 109, 154, 170, 178, 185, 192–193, 199, 216 Polemarchus 42 Polemo xv, 22, 26, 35, 153–154, 168–169, 172, 178, 181 Polus 112, 129, 131, 134, 139, 143–144, 146–149, 151 Polycrates 12, 82, 134 Porphyry 94–95, 103, 109, 192 Posidonius 154 Proclus xv, 35, 152, 154–155, 157–159, 161–165, 182, 207 Protagoras 49, 54, 58, 65, 67, 84, 112, 117 Protarchus 116, 118 Ptolemy Soter 76 Pulytion 29 Pythagoras 167, 181, 186 Scipio 181 Simmias 50 Simplicius 107, 186 Socrates xiii, xvi, 2–14, 20–36, 37–39, 42–60, 64–67, 80, 83–87, 110, 112, 114–119, 127–128, 134–135, 143, 147–150, 152, 160, 162, 167, 169, 174–177, 180, 184–185, 190–191, 193–194, 196, 201, 218 Solon 152, 160, 162 Sophocles 83–84 Speusippus xv, 48–49, 75, 80, 120, 168, 178, 186–187, 212–213, 219–221

Sphaerus 218 Staseas of Naples 171 Stobaeus 16, 31, 173, 177 Strabo 154 Strato 218 Stratonicus 28–29 Strepsiades 134 Suda 102 Sulla xi Terpsion 84 Tertullian 154 Themistius 75 Themistocles 24 Theon of Alexandria 107 Theophrastus 167 Theophylact Simocatta 219 Theopompus 215 Thrasyllus xi, 16–20, 97–98, 100, 102–103, 203–205, 217–218 Thrasymachus 9, 65, 150 Thucydides 20, 24, 106, 108, 134 Tiberius (emperor) xi, 16 Timaeus Locrus 128, 162, 167, 187 Timon 219 Timotheos 73 Tynnichus 13 Varro 17, 170–171, 178, 181 Xenocrates 11, 26, 35, 90, 96, 98–99, 101–102, 107, 153–154, 168, 178, 183, 185–186 Xenophon xiii, 3, 17, 37–39, 42, 50–54, 65, 71, 78, 82–83, 106, 133–135, 147, 150 Xerxes 51 Zeno of Citium 92, 109, 112, 169

Index of Modern Names Adam J. 119 Adam R. 209 Ahbel-Rappe 49 Alesse 35 Alican 9 Alieva xiv, xvii, 70, 90, 104, 117, 119, 120, 124 Allatius 218–220 Altman 134 Andrieu 73, 147 Annas 174 Apelt 209 Aronadio 16–19, 21, 26–29, 31, 33, 35 Ast 113, 208–209 Atack 51, 205 Auffret 186 Ausland 110 Austin C. 75, 82 Austin R. 32 Badham 117 Bailly 27 Baltes 92–93 Baltussen 95 Baltzly 95, 102 Bannert 215 Barnes 92–93, 103, 171 Barney 47 Bastianini 106 Beazley 82 Becker 23 Beghini 16, 18, 22, 26 Benardete 83 Benitez 128, 143 Bentley 208, 211–212 Bertelli 220 Bertocchini 21, 23, 28 Bessarion (cardinal) 33 Bickel 17, 217 Bickermann 220 Blanck 215 Blondell 120 Bluck 22–23, 26, 209–210 Blum 97, 103 * After fourteenth century CE.

Boissonade 218–219 Bonazzi 26, 181 Bonitz 183 Bonomi 60 Booth 39 Bowie 55 Brancacci 45–47, 49 Brandwood 119, 126 Brémond 68, 133 Bringmann 120 Brisson 7, 16–19, 21, 28–30, 33, 95, 103 Brittain 166–168, 170–171 Broadie 190 Bröcker 210 Brownson 83 Brumbaugh 88–89 Bryant 109–110 Bugay 104, 124 Burges 24–25 Burkert 1 Burnet xi, 33 Burnyeat 44, 48, 203, 205, 207, 210, 212, 218 Burrows 124 Bury 33, 113 Cameron 154–156, 164 Canfora 107, 206, 215–216 Capra 32 Carlini 16–17, 19, 21, 35, 88, 107, 209, 215, 217 Caskey 210 Castagnoli 31 Castelnérac 23 Cavallo 4, 109 Chambers 214 Chase 16 Cherniss 184, 192, 210 Chiaradonna 172 Chies 79 Claghorn 189 Clark 136 Clay 160 Cole 110 Collins 106

259

Index of Modern Names Cooper 160 Corlett 40 Cornford 33, 53 Coulter 47 Crombie 73 Crubellier 32 Cuvigny 76 Dakyns 52 Dalfen 1 Damiani 27 Damschen 107 Danzig 51–52, 106 De Robertis 215 Delcomminette 117 de Sélincourt 56 de Simone 153 Des Places 31, 193 Diaz-Waian 40 Diehl 35, 152, 155–156, 164 Dillon 4–6, 8, 27–29, 64, 75, 90, 99–100, 120, 153, 155–157, 162, 172–173, 182 Dindorf 216 Dobson 113 Dodds 47, 129, 134 Doležel 41, 59 Donato xiii, 15–36, 217 Dorandi 16, 35, 46, 92–93, 106–109, 153, 217 Döring 4–5, 18, 27, 31, 113 Dorion 50, 53–54, 57, 134 Dörrie 92–93, 152, 158 Dover 106 Duke 78 Dümmler 50 Düring 183 Duvoisin 10 Ebert 26 Edelstein 210–213 Eder 121, 124 Edwards 94 Eichholz 27 Else 70 Erbse 69 Erler 4–10, 13, 18, 20–21, 26–27, 29, 90, 92–93, 101, 112, 119, 157, 161, 164 Essler 79 Estienne (Stephanus) xi

Eucken 47 Everett 59, 61 Fassino 215 Favorini 56 Ferrarese 79 Ferrari 23, 26 Ferro 188 Festugière 153 Ficino 207 Fine 28–31, 33–34 Fleischer xv, 67, 100, 152–153 Foley 38 Follet 16 Forcignanò xvi, 203, 205 Frede D. 113, 120, 125, 184, 194–196, 199–200 Frede M. 44, 48, 203, 205, 207, 210, 212, 218 Fréret 208 Friedländer xvi, 214 Friend 41, 59, 61 Fritz 1 Gabriel 39 Gaiser 184 Gallazzi 205 Gallop 30, 32, 39 García-Carpintero 40–41 Ge xiv, 90, 93, 96, 107, 183 Gemistus Pletho 21 Genette 39, 60–61 Gerson 183 Gigante 92 Gigon 210, 215 Gilhuly 43 Gill 55 Gloukhov 105 Gomperz 21 Gonzalez 9 Goody 110 Görgemanns 157 Görler 90, 92–93, 101–102 Gosling 113, 117 Goulet 16 Goulet-Cazé 95, 103 Graham 57 Grenfell 74 Grethlein 43 Grisham 60

260 Griswold 47 Groningen 74, 92 Grote 113–114, 209 Grube 22 Grusková 215 Guéniot 32 Gulley 210 Gurd 106 Guthrie 113 Haake 100, 156 Habicht 153 Hackforth 116, 118, 120, 209 Hadot 4 Hahm 171, 178 Halliwell 39 Hamburger 39 Hampton 113 Harder 220 Harris 72, 81–84 Harte 114 Hatzimichali 91–92, 94, 107 Havelock 67, 110 Heidel 18, 28, 30–31 Heindorf 79 Heitsch 10 Henderson 56, 82 Hercher 218–219 Hermann 209, 218–219 Heubeck 81 Heyworth 106–107 Hicks 92 Hirmer 70 Hoffmann 27 Hoover 122, 124 Horn 113, 117 Howald 209 Howland 42, 120 Hrushovski 62 Huby 120 Humbert 134 Hunt 74 Hutchinson 5–6, 10, 175 Ionescu 113 Ioppolo 35 Irwin 70, 92, 110, 210 Isenberg 113

Index of Modern Names Isnardi Parente 19, 29, 221 Jackson 115–116, 119 Jacoby 152 Jaeger 183, 211 Janaway 13 Janko 87 Jażdżewska 24, 78 Johansen 158, 189 Johnson 108 Joyal 16, 27 Kahn 38, 44, 113, 129 Kaibel 82 Kalligas 103, 106 Karamanolis xvi, 183, 185–186, 193 Karsten 205, 208–209 Kassel 75, 82 Kelsey 113 Kenny 106 Kestemont 121 Klein Jacob 26 Klein Joe 62 Klosko 39 Knab 210 Knox 82 Koentges 107 Köhler 218–220 Koťátko 59 Kottman 56 Krämer 26–27, 29, 153, 184 Kripke 59 Kühn 106, 109, 113 Kurke 32 Laks 32 Lampe 54 Landini 41 Lapini 100 Laplace 47 Larsen 108 Laurenti 29 Lear 113 Ledger 119, 121–122, 126–128 Lee-Kyoung 58 Lennox 189, 192 Letteney 108 Lévy 181

261

Index of Modern Names Lewis 80, 108 Liebert 39, 55, 57 Livingstone 48, 110, 156 Lloyd 193 Long 30–31, 35 Loveman 42 Lucarini 93, 98, 102, 217–218 Lutosławski 121 Luzzatto 217 Luzzi 58 MacDonald 200 Mahaffy 76–77 Maiuri 215 Malcolm 195 Manetti 215 Männlein-Robert 6 Mansfeld 15, 17–19, 57, 92, 96, 109, 210, 217 Manuwald 8 Marincola 56 Markle 220 Martinelli Tempesta xvi, 203, 215–217 Mathieu 68, 133 Mayhew 201 McAdon 47 McConnell 120 McGillivray 121 Meiners 207–208 Mejer 93, 106–107 Melena 79 Menchelli 215–216 Mensch 157 Merlan 220 Mette 31, 152–154, 164 Meyer 209 Michelini 4, 47 Mikkonen 39 Miller 51 Mingotti 79 Mirhady 68, 156 Mitscherling 56 Momigliano 220 Montanari 90, 109 Mooradian 117 Morrow 44, 70, 209 Motoarca 41 Mueller 113 Mulhern 40

Müller 6, 16–17, 19–24, 26–28, 30–31, 33, 153 Murphy xiii, 37, 40, 46, 68, 106, 110 Nahman 205 Nails xiii, xvii, 7–8, 20, 28, 49, 57–58, 62, 63–66, 72, 86, 88, 90, 100, 104, 107–108, 110, 219 Napoleon 40, 59 Natoli 48, 80, 213–214, 219–220 Nehamas 111 Nesselrath 153–156, 164 Neumann 209 Newman 214 Nicolai 215 Nicolardi 108 Nightingale 48 Notomi 44, 203 Novotný 100, 207, 210 Nussbaum 113 Ober 48 Ofenloch 216 Olearius 218 Opelt 27 Orekhov 104 Orelli 218–219 Oświęcimski 16 Otranto 215 Owen 113, 183 Page 83 Palpacelli 47 Pappas 37 Pasquali 90, 97, 209, 211–212, 220 Patrizi 113 Patzer 46 Pavlu 19, 29 Peer 59 Penner 117 Pentassuglio 20 Petrie 75–78, 88 Petrucci 20, 168–169 Pfeiffer 96–97 Philip 69, 74–75, 96, 98 Pinto 215 Pohlenz 50, 170, 217 Politis 193–195 Post 16

262 Poste 113 Prentice 106, 108 Press 3, 40 Prince 37, 46, 49 Prost 172, 177 Radermacher 108, 216 Raeder 209 Ralkowski 44 Randall 120 Rangos 55 Rapin 4 Rashed 49–50, 186 Reale 184 Reeve 191 Reggiani 111 Reid 44 Reiske 70 Renaud 2, 10, 168, 172, 176, 178, 180 Reuter 21–25, 27 Reynolds 77, 81–84 Richard 61 Richards 210 Rijksbaron 110 Ritter 209 Roberts 108, 128, 143 Ronen 41 Rood 57–58 Rose 39, 75, 215 Rosenmeyer 161 Ross 39, 114, 190–191 Rossetti 39 Roux 16 Rowe 9, 39, 54, 64, 86–87, 111, 119 Ruffell 55 Ryan 41 Rybicki 121 Ryle 21, 73, 110, 119–120, 125 Sacchetti 62 Sardone 215 Saunders 51 Savoy 124 Sayce 76–77 Sayre 114 Schaarschmidt 113 Schanz 107 Schironi 93, 96, 99, 107, 217

Index of Modern Names Schleiermacher 54, 113, 208 Schofield 23, 63, 75, 107, 120 Schorn 4–6, 18 Schwenke 38 Scott 23, 26, 205 Searle 59, 61 Sedley 28, 30–31, 33, 35, 70, 95, 98–99, 102, 106–107, 183, 217 Segre 215 Seleznev 114 Shackleton Bailey 106 Shichalin 104, 124 Shields 196–198 Shorey 33, 210 Sidwell 43 Sienkiewicz 62 Signes Codoñer 215 Skeat 81, 108 Slater 43 Slings 9 Sluiter 95 Smith B.H. 61 Smith N.D. 23 Solmsen 92–93, 107, 188 Sommerstein 29 Souilhé 16, 18–19, 29–31, 33, 204–205 Stadter 38 Stallbaum 113 Stanley 218 Steel 191–192 Stendahl 60 Stocks 188 Stramaglia 217 Strehle 38 Striker 113 Stroud 65 Sullivan 48 Susemihl 33, 53 Swift Riginos 100, 219 Sykutris 219–220 Szlezák 44, 110, 212–213 Tarán 7, 69, 97, 107, 120 Tarrant xiv–xv, xvii, 2, 4, 7–10, 16–17, 22, 27–28, 35, 49, 69–71, 90, 92–98, 100, 102–103, 104, 106, 120–121, 124, 126, 128–129, 143, 149, 151, 152–158, 163–164, 168, 172, 176, 178, 180, 210, 213–214, 217

263

Index of Modern Names Taylor 28 Teichmüller xiii, 37–38, 41, 44, 55, 58–59, 62 Tennemann 208 Thalberg 117 Thesleff xii–xiii, xv–xvii, 1–14, 18, 21–22, 27, 29, 44, 47–48, 52, 63, 68–75, 86, 92, 100, 104–110, 113, 118–120, 129, 140, 147–149, 156, 161, 169, 214 Thomas 72, 81 Thompson 77, 87–88 Thumiger 43 Tolstoy 59 Tomin 64 Too 48, 204 Torri 181 Trabattoni 39, 172–173, 181 Trendelenburg 113 Tsouna 54 Tsouni xv, 166–168, 171–173, 176–177, 181 Tulli 27 Turner 73–74, 80–82, 85–86, 92, 108 Ueberweg 113 Untersteiner 96, 107, 184, 197 Urmson 190 Usener 108, 216 Vallozza 215 Van der Stockt 109 Vancamp 23 Vander Waerdt 198 Vatri 121 Venturelli 50

Verhasselt 92–93, 102 Vezzoli 31 Vlastos 184, 195 Voltolini 41, 59 de Vries 47 Waddington 209 Walton 59, 61 Wareh 37 Waterfield 42, 116–120 Watt 110 Watton 167 Waugh 110 Wells 88 Westerink 28, 207, 219 White 16, 92–93, 96 Whitehead 215 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 17, 21, 74, 153, 161, 204, 209–210, 214, 217, 220 Wilson 77, 81–84, 106–107 Woodruff 111 Woolf 174 Wright 43 Wycherley 82 Wyttenbach 46 Young 13 Yunis 110 Zeller 55, 113, 119–120, 209 Zeyl 160, 163, 188 Zilioli 37, 54–55 Ziólkowski 62