Thrasyllan Platonism 9781501737947

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THRASYLLAN PLATONISM

By the same author:

Scepticism or Platonism? The Philosophy of the Fourth Academy (1985) Plato: The Last Days of Socrates, translated by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant (i993)

THRASYLLAN PLATONISM Harold Tarrant

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 1993 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,

$12

East State Street,

Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1993 by Cornell University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tarrant, Harold. Thrasyllan platonism / Harold Tarrant, p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-8014-2719-3 (alk. paper) 1. Thrasyllus, d. 36. 2. Platonists—Rome. B517.T37 184—dc20

3. Plato—Authorship.

1993

Printed in the United States of America

Θ

I. Title.

The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements

of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

93-18778

For Judith, Georgina, and Dominic

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from The Arcadia Fund

https://archive.org/details/thrasyllanplatonOOtarr

Contents

Preface 1

My Prolegomena and Thrasyllus’ Prolegomena i. A Book on Thrasyllus? ii. The Royal Platonist-Astrologer

2

4 7 11

iv. Diogenes and Thrasyllus

17

Some Nontetralogical Orders ii. Albinus iii. The Character Classification

Another Tetralogist i. Arrangement and Interpretation in Theon ii. The Origin of Theon’s Scheme

31 32 38 46

58 58 68

iii. The Problem of Dercyllides’Date

72

iv. Andronicus and the Date of the Platonic Tetralogies

76

v. Dercyllides vi. Theon, Dercyllides, and the Breadth of the Whorls

4

i

iii. Thrasyllus and the Scholars

i. al-Farabi

3

ix

78 82

Thrasyllan Tetralogies

85

i. Democritean Tetralogies

85

ii. The Platonic Tetralogies

89

viii

I

Contents

iii. Philosophy as a Sacred Rite iv. Thrasyllus’Response to Aristophanes

5

Thrasyllan Philosophy in Porphyry i. Thrasyllus in Porphyry ii. Logos Theory, Theology, and Epistle 6

108 no H7

iv. A Link Passage

119

vi. Epistemology and Epistle 7 vii. The Epistemology: Second Account viii. The Philosophy of the ‘Five’ in the Digression ix. The Two-Way Passage of Form x. Logos and Sensation xi. Likeness and Assimilation

The Neopythagorean Parmenides i. Doxography in the In Parmenidem ii. Moderatus and the Amelian Interpretation

120 124 127 131 13 4 13d 143

148 148 150

iii. Before Moderatus

161

iv. Pre-Moderatan Theory and Epistle 2

17°

v. Moderatus to Plotinus

7

108

iii. The Logic v. The Epistemology

6

98 103

The Dialogues i. Thrasyllus as Editor ii. The Meno

173

178 178 185

iii. The Timaeus

193

iv. When Should We Question Our Texts?

199

v. The Rise of the Thrasyllan Text

201

Conclusion

207

Appendix: The Testimonia of Thrasyllus

215

Bibliography

250

Index Locorum

255

Index of Names

259

Preface

I did not set out to write this book. It evolved out of materials that I have been working on and puzzling over intermittently for the last six years—materials too interrelated to make separate publication desir¬ able, yet often defying my abilities to unify them as I should have liked. In a sense it is part two of my project on the origins of prePlotinian Platonism. Scepticism or Platonism? had sought for its episte¬ mological roots. Here I attempt to understand the work of a man whom I see as an important figure both in the history of attempts to understand the Platonic corpus as a whole and in the development of a specifically Pythagorean approach to Platonic exegesis that had a ma¬ jor role to play among the Neoplatonists. As ever, my purpose is to make people aware and to make them think. I want my conclusions to be given consideration rather than acceptance. I have included, in the hope that it will be useful for those who take up my challenge to work in this field, those testimonia and fragments of Thrasyllus of which I am aware, arranged according to subject. I have not attempted to produce an edition of them, for that, I am sure, would need another book and, for preference, an editor who is as much a polymath as Thrasyllus, but I have added brief notes and textual remarks where they contribute to the understanding of the problems I discuss. Over six years I must have built up a good many debts. I prefer not

to include a long list of names, since I will forget some and have never known others. Several of this book’s better features can be attributed to readers, whose helpful comments and references have been much appreciated. Thank you, all who have assisted; I do hope you will feel that help worthwhile. A specific debt is owed to Paul Vander Waerdt, who urged me last year to revive the project and to pursue its publica¬ tion with Cornell University Press, as well as making useful sug¬ gestions himself. Different debts are owed to institutions, including my own University of Sydney and the Australian Research Council, which have recently afforded me research support for other, loosely related projects, for this has made a considerable difference to my ability to deliver my manuscript. This is an Australian product, an exploration of vast wastelands of scholarship by a lone—but not unsupported—explorer. Harold Tarrant

Sydney

THRASYLLAN PLATONISM

CHAPTER

ONE

My Prolegomena and Thrasyllus’ Prolegomena

The interpretation of Platonic texts has always been a difficult and challenging task. The Platonic corpus contains a great variety of texts, and the thrust of one work frequently seems to run counter to the thrust of another. Today we often try to solve such problems by postulating a chronological development of Plato’s philosophy from some more or less ‘Socratic’ stage, through a period of great inventive¬ ness and confidence, towards a more critical and reflective evaluation of the progress of philosophy up to the time of writing. To hang one’s interpretation of a work on some notional chronology of the writings is hazardous even in the age of stylometry;1 but the ancients had very little notion of the order in which Plato composed his works, and where they did have such a notion (as with the belief that the Phaedrus was the first dialogue composed)2 it was likely to be based upon the most insecure of assumptions. There was little understanding of where Plato was making a philosophical advance, or of where he was advancing from confusion to clarity over key issues. And often inter¬ preters’ reverence for the dialogues as a whole made it difficult for them to write off any part of the corpus as early and immature. Plato became scripture, and all scripture must have its own validity. 1 As can be seen from the various discrepancies between the interesting new book ot Ledger [1989] and various ‘orthodox’ assumptions (e.g., over the dating of the Timaeus or the Lysis). 2D. L. 3.38; anon. Prol. 24.

I

2

Thrasyllan Platonism More serious, even within individual works seemingly contradic¬

tory positions appear to be espoused by some figure deemed to speak for Plato. What lesson are we to learn from such works? Why is it that Plato will not speak to us directly? Why will he not teach us as other philosophers do? Did he not have a clear view of his own? Did his theory of education not allow him to communicate it? Or are these tactics designed to prepare the way for a solution to the problem concerned in some other work? Plato’s use of the dialogue form entailed difficulties akin to the difficulties of interpreting drama. Can we look for the writer’s mes¬ sage in the words of any one character, or does the message emerge only when we take an overview of the action and argument of the play? Are heroes always supposed to be right? Can the antiheroes ever have something valuable to say? Yet in a sense dramatists have certain advantages in conveying a message. They write within conventions such that the audience will be expected to react in particular ways. We know whether we are confronted with a tragedy or a comedy, and our familiarity with other such plays determines our response. Plato has his comic passages, his tragic passages, his playful details, and his long stretches of serious argument. Yet there were no clear guidelines for comic dialogues and serious dialogues, and it was far more typical of Plato to produce hybrids in which the separation of the comic material from the serious was seldom easy, and even the playful elements could have their serious side. This problem is most in evidence where Plato uses the master ‘ironist’, Socrates, as his principal speaker. The Platonic dialogue, then, is a malleable text. It can have different meanings for different readers, and there is no evidence that it was not intended to do so. Plato was admired by a wide variety of writers in antiquity, both for his philosophic and for his literary qualities. All his admirers wanted to claim him as their own, believing that what they had found in the master was what the master had intended others to find. He won the approval of sceptics and dogmatists alike: of remote Pythagoreans, down-to-earth Stoics, sophisticated Peripatetics, and simple Cynics. Not all of course would want to endorse all that was contained in the Platonic corpus, but there was a desire common to many to make sense of as much of the corpus as possible. When they tried to make sense of it they were confronted with a rich amalgam of argument, models, myths, and mathematics, all provided with a setting that in some cases was sparse and in others quite intricate. Where the setting was detailed one did not know

Prolegomena

3

whether to make something of every little detail or to regard all such matters as extraneous to the work’s philosophic purpose. Problems arose when one encountered a work that one could not agree with or that did not fit one’s interpretation of the rest of Plato. One might leave it aside, perhaps, but not if one was setting oneself up as a teacher of Plato. To such persons as this, intent on preserving a reputation for authoritative exegesis, the choice might be between explaining a work or condemning it as spurious. Some works that had come down under Plato’s name were agreed to be spurious; with others there was debate. Though we still have the same problems of authenticity to solve today, we are at least blessed with certain linguis¬ tic and stylistic criteria that assist us in identifying the less convincing spuria. And we have partially managed to free ourselves from the necessity of accepting the works that we commend and of condemn¬ ing those of which we are critical. I hope that it will prove worthwhile to journey back to a time when Platonic interpretation was not as it is now, when the problems facing interpreters were of a different order, and above all when the inter¬ pretation of texts was not a supplement to one’s major philosophic activity, but rather the very essence of it. A powerful sense of tradition meant that philosophy came from the past; only by recreating that past could philosophers achieve their goals. The interpreters’ first task was to impose some order upon the collection of works that had come down under Plato’s name, and in determining how they would orga¬ nize these works they were undertaking their first major step upon the exegetical path. Here we shall be focussing upon one early contributor to the orga¬ nization and understanding of the Platonic corpus, with a perpetual eye on others who were engaged in similar tasks in the early Roman imperial period. They arranged and they interpreted, and they left the corpus in very much the same form as that in which it has reached us. Their decisions on what was genuine or spurious have influenced our decisions, often more than they should have done. Their decisions may also have influenced the very text that we use. The texts that I shall be dealing with have a fascination—and often an importance—of their own. And yet I trust that this investigation will not prove to be of entirely historical relevance; hopefully it will enable us to see many of the problems of Platonic interpretation, indeed of interpreting texts in general, in sharper focus. I hope that history will have important lessons for the present, here as elsewhere.

4

I

Thrasyllan Platonism

i. A Book on Thrasyllus? This book is not simply a book about Thrasyllus the Platonist (or Pythagorean), a seemingly remote figure about whom our informa¬ tion appears to be sadly inadequate for a lengthy study. Nor is it just a book about the emperor Tiberius’ astrologer Thrasyllus, who happens to have had an interest in Plato and a penchant for arranging his works. It does not aim to see the whole man in his historical setting in imperial circles. Rather I attempt to foster an understanding of the history of the Platonic corpus and its interpretation during a critical period, a period out of which a standard version and a standard format emerged. I refer to the first centuries b.c. and a.d. in particular. Thrasyllus happens to be the figure most clearly implicated in the organization of the corpus during this period: or that, at least, is what our sources would have us believe. The text of Plato has been transmitted to us in good, readable shape for the most part; the vagaries of time have done little to impair our ability to interpret him sensibly. It has usually been conceded that some special edition of Plato’s works was produced not long after his death in 347 b.c., probably within his school, the Academy. There seems to be a reference to such an edition, annotated with various critical marks, at Diogenes Laertius 3.66, a passage to be discussed in detail later: ‘Antigonus of Carystus says that anybody wanting to read through them when they had been recently edited paid a fee to those in possession of them’. The existence of some authoritative collection is likewise suggested by the reference in the same author’s Life of Arcesilaus3 to books of Plato acquired by Arcesilaus. Would this have been worth mentioning if Arcesilaus (who became, after all, the head of Plato’s school) had simply bought Platonic texts openly circulating in the marketplace?4 The Platonist’s long-term problem has been to determine authen¬ ticity rather than textual corruption; there are many shorter dialogues and epistles that may or may not be treated as spurious, depending upon the rather subjective assessments of individual scholars. Even so the scholarly world can still be shocked by the publication of new 3D. L. 4.32: έώκει δτη θαυμάζει καί τον Πλάτωμα καί τα βιβλία έκέκτητο αυτόν. 41 phrase this as a question. If the original information had come from a source emphasiz¬ ing that Arcesilaus felt a genuine debt to Plato, then it might have been enough to establish that he possessed any texts of the dialogues.

Prolegomena

5

theories, such as that of H. Thesleff f 1982], which seek to undermine the respectability of largely unsuspected dialogues. It is not merely whole works that can be spurious; passages can be inserted into texts for a variety of reasons, and if that is done early enough, they can contaminate all manuscripts. Such are actors’ inter¬ polations, against which scholars of Greek drama have to be on their guard. Often such passages will be detected as a result of some defect of language or style, but it is unreasonable to expect that all interpola¬ tions will display such defects; and if no such defects are present, then not even the discovery of a new papyrus omitting the line can ensure that it is deleted from our texts. Scholars will often assume that the papyrus text has had a line accidentally omitted, in preference to believing that the forerunners of our manuscripts have had one delib¬ erately inserted. In Thrasyllus we encounter a man who probably had considerable power to make undetected alterations or additions to those parts of Plato’s text that were not already well known. Attempts have indeed been made to deny that he had such influence, and to father upon an earlier age (always before Varro, sometimes the late fourth or early third century b.c.) the various innovations that were credited to Thra¬ syllus by Diogenes Laertius, both in relation to the Platonic corpus and in relation to the works of Democritus.5 Platonic scholars no doubt feel more comfortable if it can be established that the basic organiza¬ tion of the corpus was early. But there is little excuse for the parade of speculation (which is sometimes misrepresented as fact), however many eminent scholars have contributed to it. Generations of Platonists in the ancient world were just as keen to know the history of the corpus as we are; they presumably had more evidence than we have upon which to base their judgments. Yet they have provided us with no evidence for a pre-Thrasyllan tetralogical arrangement of the cor¬ pus, or for any other previous arrangement whose scope was as am¬ bitious as that of Thrasyllus—for such ‘evidence’ as scholars refer to will shortly be shown to be without foundation. We will see, therefore, that Thrasyllus cannot easily be denied credit for some substantial work on the Platonic corpus, including activities of an editorial nature, however unpalatable that fact may be. That does not mean that he has treated the corpus improperly, but there are

5 For Plato, read on; for Democritus, cf. Guthrie 1965, p. 388 n. 1; and Ch. 4.1 below.

6

Thrasyllan Platonism

reasons why we might be reluctant to trust him. These include his considerable ambition, his strong Pythagorean leanings, his shrewd political good sense, and the cavalier treatment of texts by other Platonists of that age who would have otherwise been more likely to win our confidence.6 For reasons that will already be clear, scholars have seldom seen Thrasyllus as a likely source of textual corruptions. A few, however, have been prepared to consider seriously the possibility that he has, wittingly or unwittingly, added spurious phrases, passages, or whole works to the corpus.7 And there is no doubt that the celebrated Timaeus itself, well known even in the period concerned, received textual interference between the first century

b.c.

and the second

century a.d. Important work in this area has been done by John Whittaker [1969b, 1973], who laments that more has not been undertaken: “The extent to which already in antiquity the text of Plato was deliberately tampered with in matters of detail but of nonetheless crucial concern is a topic which calls for detailed investigation.”8 Whittaker’s discoveries concern two passages relevant to the question of the world’s tem¬ porality or eternity—minute changes tended to be made so that the text would agree with a widespread belief that Plato’s world was not created in the simple sense of the word, not subject to dissolution. It would take a mammoth study to determine the extent to which Thra¬ syllus might have engaged in small-scale tampering with Platonic texts, and this certainly cannot be allowed to become a central concern of this book. What this book sets out to do is to understand generally what Thrasyllus was doing with the corpus and why; if it succeeds, however, we shall have achieved a crucial first step towards assessing whether he had the power or the motives to interfere with the textual 6Calvenus Taurus was prepared to make small but significant changes to the text of the Timaeus to make it agree with his own atemporal view of the work (see Whittaker 1969b, 1973; and below, Ch. 7.111). Moreover, Eudorus, according to some interpretations of Alex. Aphr. (on Arist. Metaph. 98837, p. 59.1-8 Hayduck), added καί την ύλην to the text of Aristotle in order to make it agree with his own idea of a single first principle in Pythagoreanism, anterior to matter. 7 One thinks of Bickel [1943-44] on interpolations and the tetralogies, though Bickel believed that the tetralogies were worked out by Plato’s immediate successors. One thinks also of Rist [1965] on Epistles 2 and 12 or Tarrant [1983b] on the digression of Epistle 7, though Rist stopped just short of accusing Thrasyllus of writing Epistle 2, and I had no special interest in seeing him (as opposed to his age) as the source of the digression. 8 073, P· 389. Dillon has recently contributed to the discussion of the emendation of texts of this work in later antiquity [1989].

Prolegomena

7

traditions. Unfortunately I shall be inclining towards a positive an¬ swer. In the case of the Timaeus we have a pre-Thrasyllan check on the text, namely, Cicero’s translation of the work (free though it is). Cicero fails to translate a number of words and phrases now found in our texts; some of these cases have arisen through oversight, through belief in their irrelevance, or through specific problems in translation. But there are no fewer than five cases9 where the discrepancies can be explained by reference to a post-Ciceronian wish to reinforce ancient authority for the doctrine of an eternal universe. That would agree well with Whittaker’s findings. Other places where I strongly suspect that Cicero’s text had no trace of phrases now present in the text will be discussed later.10 Some of the phrases concern matters that would be of great interest to a Pythagorean or to an astrologer.

ii. The Royal Platonist-Astrologer I do not know where Thrasyllus came from. John Dillon [1977] has the backing of Gundel in Pauly-Wissowa for his claim that Alexandria was his native city; this belief is widespread. H. Dorrie [1976, p. 182] andj. Glucker [1978, p. 123] note the connexion with Rhodes, where Thrasyllus became the comparion of Tiberius, and seem to be satisfied that there is no evidence to connect him with Alexandria. He could, perhaps, be identical with Thrasyllus of Mende (a region in the Nile Delta), for which reason I have included the fragments of that Thra¬ syllus in my list.11 Our lack of information about his birthplace seems to me far less important than our sure knowledge that he was the personal astrologer of Tiberius the emperor: sure, that is, if we may trust the scholiast on Juvenal (Sat. 6.576), who explicitly identifies the imperial astrologer with the Platonist (Tia; cf. T3-4) and even offers a chronology of his three main intellectual stages. It would indeed be rash to allow one’s scepticism to follow H. Furneaux and others, who 9 Tim. 28ai, 3^3, 3604-5, 4ob5, 43a2. 10They include 30ai, where Plato apparently refers to the Pythagorean origin of his theology; 3ob3, where it is said that mind cannot be present in anything without soul; 3ib2, where there is specific denial that there are two or infinite worlds; and 40C9-di, where the planets give signals for the future. II Ti ia and 1 ib; T12 cannot with certainty be attributed to this Thrasyllus. It seems to me from Tia, Tio, and Ti8c that the interests of Tiberius’ astrologer were wide enough to embrace the geography and geophysics of Thrace and Egypt (i. e., the Mendesian’s interests).

8

Thrasyllan Platonism

deny that the scholiast can be right; their line of thought is adequately answered by M. R. Dunn [ 1975].12 It is not at all surprising in this age to find a Platonist practising astrology, and still less so when one considers that this Platonist had strong Pythagorean leanings and wrote upon both the music of the spheres and the nature of heavenly bodies (T16-17). Furthermore, he was not bound by school doctrine to adhere to any orthodox position on the question of fate, and Platonists of the time tended to attribute to fate a very significant (but not overriding) influence upon the universe.13 One must also bear in mind that Thrasyllus’ personal association with Tiberius released him from the financial pressures that restrained the ordinary teacher of philoso¬ phy, and thereby gave him time for such scholarly activities as assem¬ bling and arranging the works of Plato and of Democritus. Finally, one must point out that Julian and Themistius were both of the opinion that Tiberius’ associate was not just an astrologer, but a classic case of the philosopher who partners a monarch: comparable with Augustus’ friend Arius Didymus (T3-4). Thrasyllus’ close ties with Tiberius began early, at least twelve years before the death of Augustus.14 This was early enough for him to have acquired Roman citizenship through Tiberius’ help, by

a.d.

4 at the

latest.15 Thus he had enjoyed Tiberius’ confidence for well over thirty years by the time of his death in

a.d.

36, just a year before the emperor

himself died. Long years of comparative leisure might seem ideal for the philosopher, particularly if he has no scruples about serving such a person. Plato had himself dabbled in serving an unenlightened ruler, and Pythagoras had also been involved in politics. For a philosopher who wished to remain in favour, the position of court intellectual with a despot as naturally suspicious as Tiberius was bound to be severely limiting. The philosopher would be well advised to steer clear of the major fields of ethics and politics (the bread and butter of the ordinary philosopher-teacher) and to concentrate on the theoretical disciplines or on the history of philosophy. Our evi¬ dence suggests that this is what Thrasyllus did: he undid the work 12 H. Furneaux, The Annals of Tacitus (Oxford, 1883), ad loc. He is influenced by von Christ; see Dunn 1975, p. 105 n. 23. 13 A fairly standard position was that of the Didascalicus (26), where everything seems to be subject to fate except what is in our power. This would be a rather useful position for an astrologer to hold, for the insights of an astrologer would be more valuable if humans did have the power to alter certain things in a universe where all else was fated. ,4Suet. Tib. 14; Dio 55.ii.3. IS As evidenced by the name Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus on the inscription (T8).

Prolegomena

9

of Socrates and returned philosophy to the heavens after a lengthy sojourn on earth. Music, metaphysics, arithmology, and astrology (T13-14, 24-29) all interested him; arranging the works of key phi¬ losophers seems to have been something of a personal mission. For his scholarly activities we should be grateful, but that gratitude must be tempered with caution. Thrasyllus was a master at making philosophy work for his own ends; in his position he had to be. It is scarcely credible that he should not also have been highly ambitious, and ready to make sacrifices for the sake of his personal standing. It is difficult to imagine that he approached his scholarly tasks with the same scholarly indifference that would be required today. The stories that are told about Thrasyllus’ relations with Tiberius, and indeed with Augustus,16 are not of special concern to the present undertaking. For a reconstruction of Thrasyllus’ career in imperial circles one might look rather to F. H. Cramer’s imaginative account.17 The facts that underlie the anecdotes are not easily recovered, and the popular story of how Thrasyllus averted death at Tiberius’ hands through his prophetic skills has been suspected of having no factual basis at all.18 The stories serve perhaps to illustrate the dangers that would have attended an astrologer early in the course of his relation¬ ship with an emperor, and the need for Thrasyllus to demonstrate to Tiberius that he was no charlatan. Tiberius was not always encourag¬ ing towards astrologers,19 and one suspects that an impression of genuine prophetic skill needed to be conveyed to him in order for Thrasyllus to become so influential a figure with the imperial house¬ hold. Two aspects of the testimony concerning their relationship will be of some relevance to us: one because it has a bearing on the honesty of the astrologer, the other because it is likely to have given rise to strains analogous to those that had allegedly affected Plato’s own relationship with Dionysius II of Syracuse. Thrasyllus is alleged to have saved some of those who incurred Tiberius’ wrath by persuading the emperor that he still had ten years left in which to settle the matter, though in fact he was to die within a couple of years (T7). The tale represents Thrasyllus as having falsified astrological data, which might indeed be seen as a

16 Suet. Aug. 98 = T2a; cf. T2b. 17 Cramer 1954. 18See Krappe 1927, pp. 359-66. 19 One thinks of the apparent expulsion of astrologers from Rome (and Italy?) in a.d. 16, on which see Cramer 1951, pp. 9“5°·

ΙΟ

Thrasyllan Platonism

noble lie in true Platonic tradition (Rep. 382c-d, 389b, 414-b-c, 459cd) but might also be seen as an indication of his willingness to be unfaithful to his art in order to achieve a practical goal. Could he also be unfaithful to Platonic literature at times when it suited him? The other story, which seems to have a factual basis, tells of how Tiberius acquired (Dio 57.15.7) or at least believed that he acquired (Jos. J.Ant. 18.211-18) similar skills of prescience from Thrasyllus. It would be natural for this supposed acquisition to lead to situations where the teacher thought that his teachings had been misapplied and misin¬ terpreted; analogous situations lead ‘Plato’ to protest Dionysius’ claims to philosophic knowledge in the esoteric sections of Epistles 2 and 7. Thrasyllus must have had a special interest in these sections; indeed in Chapter 5 we shall meet evidence of his having utilized the latter. How did Thrasyllus reconcile his philosophy with the patronage of a ruler like Tiberius? How, if at all, was he able to express any reserva¬ tions about the way in which the emperor behaved, either to himself or to others? Did he shut his eyes and retreat into his scholarly world, or did he attempt to influence the world by indirect means, leaving messages for the chosen few in his own works or in the way he presented the works of others? Such questions cannot expect confident answers; evidence of such practices cannot be expected to have survived. Julian, however, does tell us that Thrasyllus would have deserved reproach for his associa¬ tion with Tiberius “if he had not made a defence through the writings left behind him, revealing his true self” (T3). If this means that Thra¬ syllus published writings in which he publicly defended himself, then it is highly significant; but such works could not have avoided making reference to Tiberius and to the trappings of the principate in such a way that they would have caused displeasure either to Tiberius or later to Julian. Julian admires them; thus they must have risked Tiberius’ wrath; they could have been published only well after Tiberius’ death, owing to the continuing vulnerable position of members of Thra¬ syllus’ family in the imperial household.20 But publication long after death is not the likeliest explanation of Julian’s words; he probably means only that Thrasyllus revealed himself a true philosopher in his philosophical writings, whose merit was sufficient to cancel out the 20One is reminded both of Ennia Thrasylla (Tac. Ann. 6.48; Dio 58.28, 59.10; Suet.

Calig. 12, 26) and of the unnamed son who predicted Nero’s succession at Tac. Ann. 6.22. I prefer (with Gage [1968, pp. 76-77]) to suspend judgment on Cichorius’ view [1922] that Nero’s royal astrologer Balbillus was directly descended from Thrasyllus.

Prolegomena

11

stigma of his association with Tiberius. Julian tells us nothing about how Thrasyllus sought to express any dangerous enlightened feelings, implying only that he had sufficient good character to have had some.

iii. Thrasyllus and the Scholars Our first task will be to demonstrate that Thrasyllus did have the opportunity to exercise considerable influence upon the details ol the Platonic text that has come down to us. Many would deny that his work on the Platonic corpus involved anything of the nature of edi¬ torial activity; many would deny that he should be held responsible for the elaborate system of tetralogies and double titles that Diogenes Laertius associates with him in particular. In fact one might feel that there has been something of a conspiracy among scholars (with the notable exceptions of J. M. Rist [1965], Dunn [1975], and Dorrie [1981]) to exclude Thrasyllus from the history of Platonism. Much could be said about the motivation of those who would exclude him in this way. It is natural that Platonists should desire a respectable provenance for the tetralogical arrangement that has sur¬ vived in the manuscript tradition and for the texts that are so arranged. It is natural that they should feel uncomfortable about the possibility that a major reorganization of the corpus was undertaken in the first century a.d. by a figure of doubtful respectability. But they also have more acceptable reasons for doubting the part played by Thrasyllus, and it is our job to assess these. First, one notes that Albinus, in the fourth chapter of the miniature Prologus (= T20), links the name of Dercyllides with that of Thrasyllus as an adherent of Platonic tetralogies. It is evident that Dercyllides postulated the same first tetralogy as Thrasyllus, and some have sup¬ posed that he composed the other eight tetralogies in exactly the same way too.21 Furthermore, since Albinus mentions Dercyllides before Thrasyllus, scholars have assumed that Dercyllides worked before Thrasyllus. One cannot overemphasize the dangers of such assump¬ tions.22 We have no knowledge of Albinus’ reasons for mentioning

21 Hermann [1853, p. 13], however, supposed only that Dercyllides arranged the one tetralogy! 22 If one is confronted with a doxographical list of authors who held the same view, then one may be justified in supposing, in the absence of contrary evidence, that it appears in chronological order. When it comes to a list of Plato’s interpreters, however, one can only

12

Thrasyllan Platonism

Dercyllides first,23 or of his normal practice when mentioning pre¬ decessors; it could be that Dercyllides assumed greater importance in Albums’ mind because he was the most recent advocate of tetralogies. And we have no evidence that the Thrasyllan arrangement in tetral¬ ogies was the only one; in fact it seems that Theon of Smyrna, earlier in the second century a.d., had utilized a list of tetralogies in a different order.24 Second, an entry in Varro’s De Lingua Latina (7.37) has been inter¬ preted as referring to the Phaedo as “the fourth” work of Plato. This passage will be tackled in Chapter 3, but as Dunn [1975, p. 54] has stressed, one cannot assume the existence of pre-Thrasyllan tetralogies on the strength of what is at best a plausible reading of a passage. Third, Diogenes Laertius (3.56 = T22) lets us know that Thrasyllus himself made the claim that Plato presented25 his dialogues in groups of four—that is, in tetralogies. Theon apparently made a similar claim,26 though in this case it is a matter of Plato having arranged his books in tetralogies for reading. So both authors would seem to have had reason to believe that tetralogies go back to Plato, or at least that they were very old. But neither has made the claim that a particular tetralogical arrangement had been sanctioned by the author himself, and there was plenty of scepticism about the value of the tetralogies, which would never have occurred if it had been acknowledged that they were Plato’s own.27 It seems likely that there was an early tradi¬ tion that associated Plato with the production of groups of dialogues in quasi-tragic fashion (hence also the trilogies of Aristophanes of Byzan-

suspend judgment. Take Proclus’ In Timaeum, for example. If it were assumed that inter¬ preters appeared in chronological order, then one would have to conclude that Albinus was earlier than his teacher Gaius (1.340.24; cf. In Rep. 2.96.11-13); that Harpocration was earlier than his teacher Atticus (i-303.27ff.); that Severus followed Porphyry (1.171.9); that Theodorus was followed by such figures as Atticus (3.246.32ff.), Porphyry, Aristotle (3.272.821), and Xenarchus (1.425.1 iff.); that Plutarch followed Atticus (1.326.1) and also Severus (3.212.1-9); that Crantor followed both Plutarch and Atticus (1.276.3iff.); that Numenius followed Origenes, who followed Amelius (1.76.27^), who in turn followed Iamblichus (1.336.19-20); and that Dercyllides (!) followed Aristocles and Ptolemaeus Platonicus. It would be tedious to proceed farther. 23Cf. Dunn 1975, p. 53. 24 See below, Ch. 3.

251 feel that ‘published’ is too loaded a term to translate έκδονναι here. The analogy with dramatic sequences is best preserved by assuming that Plato has the public reading of his works in mind. 26 See Dodge 1970, pp. 593-94 (= p. 246 Flugel). 27 See Dunn [1975, p. 66], for the possibility (thought likely by Nietzsche) that the Thrasyllan tetralogies are Thrasyllus’ reconstruction of an alleged Platonic reading order.

Prolegomena

13

tium; D. L. 3.61); the tradition would no doubt have been connected with the tradition that Plato was originally a man of letters who indulged in the writing of tragedies (e.g., D. L. 3.5). Many of the works are quite obviously linked by their historical setting and the characters who participate in the discussion. And Thrasyllus may have accepted the general tradition, while claiming that the links pointed towards tetralogies rather than trilogies. For these three reasons, all based on various degrees of conjecture, scholars have excluded the possibility that Thrasyllus could have been the first to employ the tetralogical arrangement with which his name is associated by Diogenes. Thus J. A. Philip [1970] has written: “Its tetralogical order, which has been ascribed to Thrasyllus, cannot be his work” (p. 296), and “Clearly Thrasyllus is indebted to his tradition for the tetralogical order, and perhaps to Dercyllides (Albinus Eisagoge 149), who may in turn be citing Hermodorus, a colleague of Plato in the Academy” (p. 300). Philip does not offer any evidence for such strong statements but appears to be of the belief that Dercyllides can safely be dated before Thrasyllus; there is no evidence for this, merely the conjecture that Varro’s De Lingua Latina entry can refer only to Dercyllides1 tetralogical arrangement. As soon as we postulate other pre-Thrasyllan tetralogists we have destroyed the one and only ground for assuming that Dercyllides is pre-Thrasyllan. Furthermore, the assumption that because Dercyllides is known to have cited Her¬ modorus once,28 he is likely to be following him in regard to the tetralogies is really rather naive. Philip had the misfortune to be following a long chain of unfounded speculation on such matters. A.-H. Chroust [1965], besides making rash statements about Dercyllides, that he “lived or wrote about the middle of the first century b.c.” and thus that he “would be the precursor of Thrasyllus by at least fifty years” (p. 44), is guilty ol misrepresenting the passage of Varro that had been the only evidence’ for such a dating: according to him, Varro “insisted that the Platonic Phaedo ‘is the fourth dialogue of Plato.’ ” Both the term ‘insisted’ and the quotation marks are a gross distortion of the truth: that Varro, at most, may have referred to that work as ‘the fourth’. We shall see in due course just how unlikely even this claim is. Chroust’s confidence in the conjectures of scholars continues: “Der-

28Hermodorus frs. 7-8 Isnardi-Parente = Simpl. In Phys. pp. 247.3iff. and 2^6.}2ff. Diels.

14

I

Thrasyllan Platonism

cyllides himself is said to have derived his tetralogical system from Tyrannion of Amisos.” By which ancient author? we ask. But it turns out that Chroust is following some theorizing on the part of H. Usener [1892a, 1912—13]. Usener’s own speculations are more interesting, insofar as they try to assemble into a coherent whole our knowledge of a shadowy, but possibly important figure. But as far as pre-Thrasyllan Platonic tetralogies are concerned, Usener is once more dependent upon the disputed passage of Varro for their very existence. As Chroust finally admits: “There exists no tangible evidence . . . that Tyrannion himself applied the tetralogical arrangement to literature or philosophy” (p. 46 n. 1). It is a pity that this admission appears only in a footnote. Attempts to trace a tetralogical edition back in time do not stop with Tyrannion. U. von Wilamowitz [1920] and E. Bickel [1943-44] advo¬ cate an arrangement of Old Academic or very early New Academic origins. They have been followed more recently by Philip [1970]. I believe that an authoritative collection of Plato’s works would have been produced in Old Academic times, as argued, for instance, by H. Alline [1915], and I do not believe that G. Jachmann [1941, pp. 334— 36] has made any improvement by turning rather to Alexandria for the authoritative edition of Plato’s works. But why tetralogies? The only long-standing arguments for an Old Academic tetralogical edition are that Thrasyllus (and Theon) claim that Plato presented his dialogues in such dramatic groups (as we have seen) and that Aristophanes of Byzantium is represented as doing violence to some preexisting ar¬ rangement, presumably the tetralogical one, by the statement at Di¬ ogenes Laertius 3.61 that he and his followers ‘drag’ (έλκονσυ) the dialogues into trilogies.29 The term ‘drag’, however, does not imply resistance from those who sponsored a different arrangement, but only resistance from the materials themselves. He is accused of making an arbitrary arrangement of the corpus that cuts across some of the natural groupings: severing the Crito from the Apology, for instance, the Clitophon from Republic 1, and the Theaetetus from the Sophist. It is, in fact, highly unlikely that Aristophanes would have ventured to replace a complete and reasonably well-thought-out arrangement in tetralogies, had he known of one, with his own arrangement of a mere fifteen dialogues in trilogies. The grammarian had no cause to quarrel

29 Wilamowitz [1920, p. 324], Philip [1970, p. 300], Alline [1915, p. 84 η. 3], and Solmsen [1981] adopt a more cautious line and make little of έλκουοπ.

Prolegomena

15

with any reasonable preexisting arrangement. He noticed, perhaps, that the introduction to the Timaeus serves to link it with the Republic before and promises the Critias after; that the Theaetetus, the Euthyphro, the Apology, the Crito, and the Phaedo are linked by their dramatic date; that the Sophist and the Politicus are part of the same Platonic project and employ the same characters, and so on. It was thus quite natural lor him to suppose that Plato had intended to present his dialogues in quasi-dramatic groups, as tragedies had once been presented—particu¬ larly if he knew of some tradition that compared the dialogues with tragedies. He did not make the claim for all dialogues, some of which may have been unknown to him.30 He simply linked those works that he thought most needed to be linked, supplying the Cratylus to replace the unwritten Philosopher after the Politicus, and Plato s own Epistles after the death of Socrates in the Phaedo. The insistence on groupings of three may seem odd to us, but it suited the analogy with drama, and it also agreed with the established practice of the Hellenistic age: for threefold groupings were applied to the works of pre-Chrysippean Stoics and to some Socratics.31 To the traditional argument for an Old Academic tetralogical edi¬ tion Philip [1970] adds an argument of his own, which may be sum¬ marized as follows: 1. We can assume that the dichotomic classification ot dialogue charac¬ ter comes from the same source as the name titles and theme titles (and thus, apparently, from the same source as the whole tetralogical system attributed to Thrasyllus). 2. Such diaeretical classification is characteristic of the early Academy and Peripatos (and not popular thereafter?). 3. Thus name titles, theme titles, and so on come from an Old Aca¬ demic or early Peripatetic source. Furthermore: 4. Albinus, though inclined in his Didascalicus to follow Stoicizing sources, shows no sign of Stoicizing in the Prologus when following the same source as Diogenes Laertius 3.48-66 (which is also free of Stoicizing). Lack of Stoicizing is also incompatible with the Thrasyllan period. 30 Note that the works of his arrangement include most of those likely to have been used by the Middle Stoics, and only the Euthyphro and the Theaetetus of the so-called zetetic dialogues. They remain the most popular works up until the first century

a.d.,

except that

the Phaedrus and the Symposium are also extremely popular by then. 31 See Dyroff [1896, pp. 6-27, 39η] for trilogies operating in the works of the earliest Stoics and for probable trilogical elements in the catalogues of the works of the Socratics.

16

I

Thrasyllan Platonism

5. Diogenes Laertius 3.48—66 contains the discussion of name titles, theme titles, diaeresis, and tetralogies. 6. Thus name titles, theme titles, diaeresis, and tetralogies come from a pre-Thrasyllan source.

As the reader will observe, the argument is two-pronged: we should expect Stoicizing from a Thrasyllan source, but we should not expect diaeresis by dichotomic method in a late Hellenistic arrangement. Stoicizing, however, is not evident throughout Middle Platonism and need not be expected of Platonists of near-Pythagorean persua¬ sions, such as Thrasyllus. The Didascalicus shows little deep-rooted Stoicizing and is not reliably regarded as the work of Albinus in any case.32 We are certainly not entitled to expect Stoicizing in the Prologus, or in any similar treatment of the Platonic corpus. In the case of Diogenes, it is when he goes on to give a summary of Platonic doctrine that Stoicizing is observed.33 In the case of diaeresis by dichotomy, a Platonist of any age might be expected to revert to the methods of Plato’s Sophist. Philo of Alexandria, Thrasyllus’ contemporary, treats diaeresis as the common property of all philosophers and does so in a passage that begins with a list of dichotomic divisions.34 In the first century

b.c.

diaeresis

had been practised by the Academic Philo of Larissa, the Platonist Eudorus of Alexandria, and the organizer of the Aristotelian corpus whose work may perhaps have influenced Thrasyllus, Andronicus of Rhodes.35 I am less dissatisfied with the initial premise of Philip’s argument (1), for it seems to me that there is a certain continuity in Diogenes’ treatment of the Platonic corpus at 3.48-66. All the same, others have seen the character classification at 49-51 as difficult to reconcile with the tetralogies, and Dunn [1975] treats the character classification and the tetralogies as two quite independent reading orders of the dia¬ logues.36 This I doubt; the classification of characters can be seen 32 See particularly Whittaker 1974. For a possibility suggested to me by my reading of Lucian’s Nigrinus, see my 1985a. 33 This is often regarded as Posidonian (e.g., Untersteiner 1970), but the issues are probably too complex to encourage such a simple solution (cf. Long 1972). 34SeeAt(jr. 139-41. 35 For Philo and Eudorus see Stob. Eel. 2.39.2off. and 42.7ff. Wachsmuth. For An¬ dronicus see Gottschalk 1987, p. 1116. Note that the source of D. L. 3.53-57 seems to have been trying to revive an interest in Platonic logic, perhaps intended to counterbalance Andronicus’ work on the organon. 36 Reading order is certainly influenced by dialogue character in Albinus Prologus 6.

Prolegomena

17

rather as a means of explaining why Plato seems to speak so diiferently in different works. Initially only examples of the various dialogue types may have been given,37 but the complete corpus organizer, if following Andronicus, would probably have felt obliged to make the classification comprehensive. Similarly the occasional second title, such as that of the Phaedo, On the Soul, or that of the Menexenus, Funeral Oration, does indeed have an early date;38 but that does not give any indication of a systematic attempt to attach descriptive titles, as well as name titles, to every dialogue. That is very much the work ol someone who attempts a comprehensive organization of the corpus. And Diogenes (3.57) seems to be attributing the use of second titles to Thrasyllus.39 Thus one who believes, as Philip does, that the system¬ atic character classification and second titles go hand in hand with the tetralogical system should probably be attributing the whole under¬ taking to Thrasyllus rather than to the Old Academy.

iv. Diogenes and Thrasyllus It will already be clear that the evidence of Diogenes Laertius is critical to our undertaking. Much important work has recently been done on Diogenes, including a fine monograph by J. Meyer [1978] and the special 1986 volume of the periodical Elenchos. It is Diogenes who credits Thrasyllus with having played an authoritative part in the organization of the corpus, just as he attributes to him the thirteen Democritean tetralogies.40 Diogenes clearly felt confident of Thrasyllus’ role, but the question is whether Diogenes is to be trusted. At first sight it would seem plausible that the same person, whether Thrasyllus or a predecessor, should have opted for tetralogies in both cases, but in the light of scholarly doubts it would be appropriate to 37 Note how the Hipparchus and the Anterastae are tacked on to the list of ethical works without any linking καί at D. L. 3.50, and, like the Theaetetus in the ‘peirastic’ list and the Critias in the political list, they fail to appear in the list of Albinus. See below, Ch. 2.iii. 38 See here Hoerber 1957, p. 19. 391 take Thrasyllus to be the subject not just ούφησίν at the beginning of 3-57 but, alter the parenthetic clause referring to Favorinus, of τίθησι, (πρώτην μεν ovv τετραλογίαν τίθησβ, of βούλεται, (παραδεϊξαυ yap βούλεται όποιος αν είτη ό τον φιλοσόφου βίος), and of χρ-ηται (διπλαίς τε χρηται ταίς έπιγραφαίς). The only alternative would be to see Plato himself as the subject of all three, but this seems to be ruled out by the use of αντω to refer to Plato at the beginning of 3.57, after φησίν. , , . , 40D. L. 9.45 (= Ti8d): τα δέ βιβλία αυτού καί Θρασνλος άναγέγραφε κατά τάξιν ούτως ώσπερεί καί τα Πλάτωνος κατά τετραλογίαν.

18

I

Thrasyllan Platonism

take a closer look at the quality of Diogenes’ discussion of the Platonic corpus. The quality of any material in Diogenes is directly related to the quality of his source or sources. Another factor is his attentiveness to his sources, and the consistency with which he is prepared to follow them. The greater the variety of sources in a given passage, the greater Diogenes’ dependence upon his own skills to select and combine material. These skills are seldom enthusiastically spoken of. In the course of the material on Plato’s works we encounter the names of only three sources: Thrasyllus, Favorinus, and Antigonus of Carystus. This last is mentioned only in the final sentence of the section, at 3.66; he is mentioned in books 2 (136, 143), 4 (17), 5 (67), 7 (12), and 9 (62, 110), but only here in book 3. The quotation is from his Life of Zeno and is somewhat enigmatic; thus it seems improbable that Diogenes is following him directly. A source could well have made the purpose of the reference to Antigonus’ work a good deal more obvious than Diogenes does. Favorinus is mentioned at 3.48, 57, and 62. This does not indicate that Favorinus is a continuous source, as 3.57 draws on the Varia Historic1, 3.48 on the Apomnemoneumata, and 3.62 on the fifth book of the latter. Diogenes’ extensive knowledge of Favorinus will have enabled him to recall passages of interest as he wrote.41 All three extracts run counter to the main thrust of the passage, either by contradicting what had just been said (48) or by introducing material not particularly relevant to the matter in hand. This leaves only Thra¬ syllus, of named sources, as a candidate for the chief source of the passage. But the issues are complex. In the first place Diogenes seems to have used Thrasyllus directly in his Life of Democritus. He mentions a work entitled Prolegomena to the Reading of the Works of Democritus (9.41), from which quotations in 9.38 and 9.37, as well as in the catalogue at 9.45-49, must surely come (Ti8a-d). The work dealt with Democritus’ life (Ti8a), the general nature of his philosophy (Ti8b-c), and the corpus (Ti8d). It is the kind of work that would be expected from a corpus organizer, though not necessarily on the same scale as Andronicus’ work on the corpus Aristotelicum. The latter was a catalogue raisonne in at least five books (see Ptolemy catalogue, no. 97). One assumes that Thrasyllus did much the same for the Platonic corpus as he did for Democritus, and

41

Diogenes will have taken extensive notes on Favorinus as he read, or marked passages

to be copied onto single leaves by a scribe (for eventual incorporation).

Prolegomena

19

again we have material relating both to the life (D. L. 3.1 = T21) and to the works. It seems that the whole of 3.1 was drawn from Thrasyllus, as nearly the same material is used by the Arab source, al-Qifti, who draws on Theon of Smyrna.42 Theon’s respect for Thrasyllus is well attested, as he not only believes in Platonic tetralogies43 but also preserves extensive quotations from Thrasyllus’ mathematical works (Ti 3 and 14a). The material contains much that is not included in other extant accounts of Plato’s life. Thus it seems that Diogenes had at some time had Thrasyllus’ introductory work available to him. Thrasyllus’ work was evidently of the right genre to have been Diogenes’ principal source at 3.48-66. As O. Gigon states [1986, pp. j 36-37^ We are confronted with an introduction to the writings of Plato. That this is so should be evident if one considers the structure of the passage, and the purpose of its various elements: 48

49-5ia

History and nature of dialogue Types of Platonic dialogue

52

Is Plato a dogmatist? Which figures Plato uses for expounding dogma and which

53-55 56

for refuting falsehoods Induction: the logic of the dialogues Two comparisons with tragedy (Thrasyllus credited with the

51b

57-6ia 6ib-62a 62b 62c 63-64 65a 65b-66a

66b

second) Tetralogical corpus explained Trilogies of Aristophanes of Byzantium Works with which teachers and others begin Acknowledged spuria (with input from Favorinus) Problems deriving from Plato’s use of language Correct path for exegesis to follow Explanation of marginal signs in the manuscripts Antigonus on paying fees to consult an edition

It should be obvious that we are confronted here not merely with an introduction to Plato, but with an introduction to the reading of his works. It is indeed useful for the reader who is new to Plato to be told a little about the nature of the dialogue form, about different types ot

42 For an excellent discussion see Dunn [1975, PP· 122—24], who sets the material out in parallel columns. Al-Qifti’s account is mostly fuller than that of Diogenes, confirming Diogenes’ tendency to epitomize his sources, though al-Qifti does omit material relating to Plato’s divine origins that may have offended Arab sensibilities. 43 Dodge 1970, pp. 593-94·

20

Thrasyllan Platonism

Platonic dialogue, and about which characters are likely to expound Plato’s own point of view. It is salutary for those used to Stoic or Peripatetic deductive logic to be told a little about Platonic inductive arguments; it is also essential for the claim at 56a that Plato added logic to philosophy, and so brought it to completion. It elevates Plato’s stature. We should perhaps be told a bit about works designed to be read in sequence, though Diogenes, following Thrasyllus, does rather more here than we should welcome today; and we should certainly be told something about the rationale behind the order of reading that is being advocated. We want to know a little about any alternative arrangements, though we might not need to know every work that any Platonist had seen fit to start with; and we want to know of spurious works that may be missing from the edition that we are about to read (if not who else was accused of writing them). We are glad to hear of any special difficulties we might confront as a result of Plato’s fluid use of vocabulary (particularly if we are used to the technical philosophical vocabulary of the Hellenistic age). If we are teachers, we want to know how to comment on Plato; if we are pupils, we want to know how we should expect others to comment upon him. And all readers will want to know the meaning of the marginal signs of the particular edition that they are going to use. Whether we want to know about the consultation fees for an Old Academic edition is more doubtful; but it may very well be the kind of thing that a more recent editor would wish to remind us of. Altogether Diogenes has given the reader a fairly full introduction to a reading of the dialogues, an introduction that contains material far more varied than he usually includes in the bibliographic sections of his Lives. We expect a catalogue and a list of spuria, but we receive in this case far more background. He had indeed promised something special to the woman addressed in 3.47, who had a great love of Plato and of Platonic doctrine. He had thought it necessary to include for her an outline of the nature of his discourses, the order of his dialogues, and the method of induction.44 Either he has expended extra labour of his own or he has utilized one or more particularly suitable sources. 44 ύπογράφαι καί τήν φνσιν των λόγων καί τήντάξιν των διαλόγων καί την έφοδον τής επαγωγής, the final word is emended by Casaubon to αγωγής, but it is really not here that the problem lies. Induction had received an explanation as generous as that of the arrange¬ ment of the corpus. What follows is incompatible with all that has gone before: ως οίόν τε στοιχειωδώς καί επί κεφαλαίων, προς τό μή άμοιρείν αυτόν των δογμάτων την περί βίου συναγωγήν, γλαύκα γάρ εις ’Αθήνας, φασίν, εί δέη σοι τα κατ' είδος διηγείσθαι. What

Prolegomena

21

The overall unity of the passage is difficult to question, though proving the unity of passages is never an easy task. In this case I believe that the clearest indication of unity is to be found in the attitude towards Plato’s alleged dogmatism. Although 3.51 speaks of the great disagreement about whether Plato dogmatizes or not, a consistent position is taken at regular intervals. Plato is held to have dogmata, but not always to write for the purpose of handing down these dogmata. Some works have that intention, others do not. The whole character classification at 49—51 may be seen to have the purpose of distinguish¬ ing Plato’s different intentions, though it is not quite so clear here as in Albinus Prologus 3: ‘The ‘hyphegetic’ [dialogue] has been constructed for instruction and action and the demonstration of the truth, while the ‘zetetic’ is for exercise and contention and the refutation of the false.’ At section 52, following that classification, it is said that Plato ‘reveals his view concerning what he has apprehended, refutes the false, and suspends judgment on unclear matters’. There is then a list of speakers in the dialogues through whom Plato reveals his dogmata. During the section on induction we meet at 3.54 a type of induction used “not for dogmatizing but for refutation” and at 55 another type used for the presentation of his own views (εις τήν των εαυτω δοκούντων κατασκευήν). At 3-63 the reference to Plato’s alleged practice of obscuring his meaning from the uninitiated again presupposes the existence of Platonic dogmata that are not always revealed. At 3.65 it is said that the commentator ought to remark on whether things are said for the sake of dogmata (εις δογμάτων κατασκευήν) or for refutation of the false, again indicating the double view of Plato’s work, while the list of marginal signs (65-66) twice mentions signs indicating dogmata and so on. Nowhere is there any doubt expressed about whether Plato had dogmata, nor any difficulty with those passages that clearly do not pass on such doctrines, or even with passages where Plato seems to be suggesting things that run counter to his accepted doctrines. Ad hominem argument is simply accepted as a normal part of Platonic writing.

Diogenes has been more sparing of is the placita, which I take to be simply 67~8oa and which are little more than a highly condensed reading of the Timaeus. I take it that Diogenes did not feel happy about trying to write a summary of all Platonic doctrine for an enthusiastic Platonist, and so draws only on somebody’s outdated reading of the single most popular work. The addition of the divisions (8ob—109a), which are considerably less helpful than most of the bibliographic section, is presumably another attempt to give the woman something slightly different from the standard Platonic handbook. One can only hope that she appreciated it.

22

Thrasyllan Platonism

This should help to show the overall unity of Diogenes’ source, as other smaller points might also do. For instance, the section on the nature of the dialogue, that on dogma, and that on the nature of induction begin by defining their terms in a careful manner.45 There should have been no difficulty in acquiring a reasonably informative and coherent introduction to the reading of Plato in the age of Di¬ ogenes. Whose introduction Diogenes has chosen, however, is a mat¬ ter of importance that is not simple to decide. Let us consider some alternatives: 1. Diogenes’ basic source is a pre-Thrasyllan introduction to the cor¬ pus, enriched with Thrasyllan material from 56b to 61 a or 62. 2. His basic source is Thrasyllus throughout, apart from the snippets of Favorinus. 3. His basic source is a post-Thrasyllan introduction, in the Thrasyllan tradition, which had itself incorporated the Thrasyllan material. 4. His basic source is a post-Thrasyllan introduction into which he himself had incorporated the Thrasyllan material. 5. Diogenes is himself making a substantially original contribution to the genre of Platonic introductions, largely independent of sources except for a chunk of Thrasyllus and snippets of Favorinus.

In the case of option 1, one might reasonably claim that the Thra¬ syllan material on tetralogies would not have been included, and in particular would not have been credited to Thrasyllus, it very similar material had been in the original source. Thus that original source would not have discussed tetralogies and would not have included the system of second titles. It would seem, in fact, to have used the arrangement of Aristophanes of Byzantium that Diogenes rejects, and the Thrasyllan material would have been added as an improvement on the main source. Aristophanes’ teaching order probably lasted into the first century b.c., because the anonymous Theaetetus commentator presented his commentaries in an order best explained with reference to Aristophanes’ trilogies: the Timaeus, the Theaetetus, and later the Phaedo.46 It is rather unlikely that such a source for 62b could have 45 Note the similarity between 3.48 (εστι δε διάλογος (λόγος)) and 3-51 {ocvto τοίννν το δογματίζει εστί) and 3-53 {εστι μέν γάρ επαγωγή λόγος). 461 date the work to the latter part of the first century b.c. [1983a]; for the work on the Timaeus see 35.10-12, and for the work on the Phaedo, which had yet to be presented, see 48.7-9 (which also suggests that no work on the Meno is planned, regardless of its impor¬ tance for the commentator); there was also a commentary on the Symposium, which was clearly circulating widely regardless of its omission from Aristophanes arrangement.

Prolegomena

23

preceded Thrasyllus by more than a half century or so, for the great variety of starting points for a Platonic education would seem to belong to a time when Platonism was very widely taught: presumably when the authority of the Academy no longer had the power to standardize the teaching of Plato in any way. There is also the problem of the author of any such pre-Thrasyllan introduction; if Dercyllides preceded Thrasyllus, it is likely enough that he wrote an introduction to his arrangement of dialogues, but that arrangement was again tetralogical. Furthermore, Diogenes nowhere mentions Dercyllides, or any other Platonist of the appropriate period. As for option 2, that Thrasyllus’ introduction has been used more or less consistently at 3.48-66, it would seem rather likelier than option 1 at first sight. Any earlier material could have been incorporated by Thrasyllus into his introduction, and the explanation of his own ar¬ rangement could have been attributed to Thrasyllus in particular be¬ cause that was where Thrasyllus passed beyond the traditional mate¬ rial so far used. Thrasyllus is a recognized source of Diogenes, who would seem to have used his introduction to Plato (3.1) as well as his introduction to Democritus (9.37-49). Almost inevitably, such a view presents difficulties. Odd snippets of seemingly late material need not bother us, as long as we recognise that Diogenes is capable of adding details from Favorinus and elsewhere. More important are apparent inconsistencies between the larger por¬ tions of material: first, there is the problem of reconciling the classifica¬ tion of dialogue character with that of the tetralogies; and, second, that the Critias is labelled ‘political’ in the former and ‘ethical’ in the latter. In a sense, however, the former problem is illusory. As long as one refrains from giving the two classifications a similar purpose, keeping the two distinct in one’s mind, there cannot be any inconsistency. It is only if one believes that the character classification was designed to offer a reading order47 that real conflict with the tetralogies results. Admittedly, Albinus, in the Prologus, founded his reading order (which was in any case very fluid; see 5) upon dialogue character; and Andronicus of Rhodes offered nothing more than the type of work for establishing where a given treatise would be placed in the Aristotelian corpus. But the Platonic corpus was plainly different: a dialogue like the Timaeus, with obviously ‘physical’ subject matter, is clearly in¬ tended as a sequel to the Republic, whose subject matter is ethical

47 As Dunn 1975, ch. 1.

24

Thrasyllan Platonism

and/or political. Dialogue character was a useful device for distin¬ guishing between the ways in which Plato presents his materials and the degree of positive teaching (or solid refutation) that might be expected. As I see it, the problem of reconciling the character classification with the tetralogies is rather different and has two parts: (a) the charac¬ ter classification lists all works in the tetralogical corpus and no others (in spite of controversy over spuria), and (b) the list of dialogues in tetralogical order actually appends the character descriptions as well as the second titles. Thus either Thrasyllus himself did in fact use the character descriptions in conjunction with the tetralogies or they have been appended to the specifically Thrasyllan material by some later hand: by Diogenes,48 before Diogenes, or after Diogenes. They do not make any obvious contribution to the understanding of the tetralogies; so why should they have been added by Thrasyllus? It was perfectly appropriate that they should have been mentioned earlier, after a discussion of what constitutes a dialogue, as in Albinus Prologus 3; it was not appropriate here. So my answer to the first difficulty is that there is no real conflict between 3.49-51 and 58-60, but rather an internal conflict in 58-60 because of the conflation of two classifica¬ tions with distinct purposes that tend to detract from one another.49 This conflation has not only brought about the addition of dialogue characters to the list of 3.58-60; it has also ensured that all works in the corpus are included in the character classification at 49—51. I shall in due course be arguing that the Hipparchus and the Anterastae are late additions to the bottom of the ‘ethical’ list and that the Theaetetus is a late addition to the bottom of the ‘peirastic’ list. They were almost certainly not present in the list employed by Albinus in Prologus 3. Furthermore, no connectives are used to link the last two works in the ethical’ list, and their authenticity was not established at that time.50 And it is distinctly odd that the Theaetetus should have been described as ‘peirastic’ rather than as ‘maieutic’, bearing in mind that it is this 48 We now know much more about the stages of composition that a work such as that of Diogenes or Philodemus’ life of Plato and history of the Academy went through (Gaiser 1988, pp. 25-27; Gigante 1986, pp. 31-34), and it seems to me that the addition of dialogue characters to the tetralogical list could well have been part of Diogenes’ process of‘polishing’ his collection of excerpts. 49 In fact Thrasyllus may have found an elaborate means of combining the two classifica¬ tions, but one that would have required a long and detailed explanation that Diogenes would have had to abridge radically. See further Ch. 4.11 below. 50 For the Anterastae see even Thrasyllus (Ti8d); for the Hipparchus, the Erastae, and Alcihiades 2 see Aelian VH 8.2 and Athenaeus 11.506c.

Prolegomena

25

work that describes and employs the maieutic method of Socrates. Thus, in my view, these three works at least were added to the character classification late, since Thrasyllus is Albinus’ source. It is worth noticing that the Critias, labelled here Atlanticus, is also at the bottom of the list and is also omitted by Albinus. As for the second objection it can now be answered in a variety of ways. If the character descriptions were added to 3.58-60 later than Thrasyllus, then Thrasyllus could easily have seen the Critias as ‘politi¬ cal’ himself; the description ‘ethical’, which does seem wrong as long as the Republic is called ‘political’,51 could have arisen through confu¬ sion with the Crito or simply as a result of a scribe’s guess (once he had failed to locate the Critias in the character classification because it had been listed under its second title). Alternatively, even the inclusion of the Critias in the character classification may have been late,52 as the dialogue is last in its list, out of natural order.53 The upshot of this is that there are not large portions of material in the bibliographic section of book 3 of Diogenes Laertius that could not have stemmed from Thrasyllus or that display inconsistencies one with another. The inconsistencies can readily be explained on the assumption that an excerptor of modest abilities, whether Diogenes himself or somebody else intent on producing a slimmer version of Thrasyllus’ work, had tried to make some of the material rather more systematic than Thrasyllus had ever desired. In view of the fact that Diogenes does seem to use Thrasyllus’ introductions to the reading of Democritus and of Plato directly, option 2 would seem to be a likely one. We come then to option 3: Diogenes could indeed be following a 511 tend to believe that the ‘correct’ description must be ‘political’ as long as the Republic

is so labelled; for the Critias purports to show the Republic's ideal state in action. The manuscript tradition cannot help us here, as no good manuscript preserves the work’s character description. I am grateful here to S. R. Slings and G. Zonkers for checking all the MSS of the Critias to see what was included in the dialogue headings. Ven.gr. 184 (E) has ‘ethical’, but as this was a copy of Ven.gr. 187 (N), which has no such description, this detail would seem to have been added from Diogenes—as, I presume, have those of the Clarkianus (B), which appear to have been written in a second hand and in noticeably reddish ink (see Waddell 1894, pp. cvii-cxi). E is the only MS to include a character description for the Critias.

52 It is to be emphasized, however, that any addition of this work to the list of political dialogues cannot have been inspired by the need to bring the character classification into line with the tetralogical list. In that case, even if the character of the Critias had been inadver¬ tently omitted, or if no characters had yet been appended, the work would appear under its name title rather than the alternative Atlanticus. 53 The work should perhaps come immediately after the Republic, to which it is a sequel, rather than being included after the Laws group.

26

Thrasyllan Platonism

post-Thrasyllan introduction, which utilized Thrasyllus a good deal. Such introductions were of course written by Albinus, Theon of Smyrna,54 and perhaps by Dercyllides. There were certainly others (though I suspect they do not include the papyrus, published in the seventies and dated to the second century a.d., which has obvious overlap with the first nine chapters of Diogenes’ appendix to Plato’s works).55 The real questions, in the case of such updated introductions in the Thrasyllan tradition, are how far they would have followed Thrasyllus and whether they would not have voiced their disagree¬ ment in places. As we shall see in our discussion of Theon, although he agreed in principle with tetralogies, it is likely that he organized his own tetralogies rather differently; Albinus did not even accept the notion of tetralogies, at least not as a guide to reading order; and though it is clear that Dercyllides accepted the same first tetralogy, nothing else is known about his arrangement. I shall in fact argue that he is the inspiration behind Theon’s order. Introductions written later than that of Albinus would probably have to take alternative arrange¬ ments of the corpus into account besides those of Thrasyllus and Aristophanes of Byzantium.56 What we should have to presume in the case of a post-Thrasyllan source is that (a) it was written by a firm adherent of Thrasyllus, who also rejected the arrangement of Aristophanes;57 (b) it either came soon after Thrasyllus or ignored alternative arrangements like that of Albinus, perhaps because it was little more than an epitome; (c) Di¬ ogenes was happy to use such a source for several chapters without making any reference to it; and (d) it nevertheless appealed more to Diogenes than an obvious choice that he used elsewhere. It was proba¬ bly a reliable source for the part that Thrasyllus played in the organiza¬ tion of the corpus; it probably reflected Thrasyllus’ views for the most part, if only because of the complete lack of signs of disagreement. But

54 As known from the relevant entry in al-Nadim’s Fihrist [Dodge 1970, p. 614]; the work is generally agreed to have been extensively used by Arabs writing on the philosophers. For Theon’s having used Thrasyllan material also extant in D. L. 3.1 see above, n. 42. 55 See Haslam 1972 and 1977; and Ch. 4.1V below. 56 After all, 3.62 gives a list of eight dialogues with which Platonic reading programmes began; I assume that there were comparatively few rival ways of teaching Plato before Thrasyllus, and thus that this is post-Thrasyllan; it includes Alcibiades 1, with which Albinus (Pro/. 5) began; it suggests a period when much Platonism was taught, and when there was intense discussion of reading order. One might guess that the second century b.c. would best fit this requirement. 57 Hence the έλκει of 3.61.

Prolegomena

27

it does seem that option 3 imports an additional figure unnecessarily into the transmission of this material. With option 4 we still have problems. If a post-Thrasyllan source was utilized, then we should expect it to refer a good deal to Thrasyllus anyway. Ifit did not do so, then one would suppose that it took a position very different from that of Thrasyllus on reading order at least. Yet no inkling of such a contrasting arrangement is given, except at 3.62, which provides a number of starting points. One would again expect Diogenes to have named his source, particularly at points where it might be at odds with Thrasyllus (and therefore controver¬ sial). Moreover, what we have here seems to be an introduction to dialogues as collected in their Thrasyllan order; it does not strike the reader that the Thrasyllan material was grafted onto an essentially alien source. In option 5 we meet a possibility so unlikely that it should not seriously be considered. Diogenes is not a Platonist, and it is clear from the beginning of book 10 that he favours the vastly different philoso¬ phy of Epicurus; it is Platonists or those scholars who make extensive use of Plato (such as Galen) who might have been interested in produc¬ ing this kind of introduction to Plato’s works. At several points a fairly strong line on major issues is taken: there is the question of whether Plato dogmatizes at 3.51, for instance, which is presented as a contem¬ porary issue but which would have been settled in favour of an affir¬ mative answer long before Diogenes’ time. Aristophanes’ trilogies are firmly rejected at 3.61, and the writer has clear ideas about the correct method of Platonic exegesis in 3.65. A voice of some authority intro¬ duces us to the problems of Plato’s language at 3.64-65. This is not characteristic of Diogenes. And we do not receive the impression that this introduction has been created according to anything like Di¬ ogenes’ standard methods of excerpting numerous sources, pasting them together, and then applying some superficial polish.58 It may therefore seem quite likely that Diogenes actually employed Thrasyllus as the principal source for 3.48-66. There is one section, however, that has the appearance of being written later, and that is the section at 62b on the starting point of Platonic education programmes. 58 That this had been the method employed in the ‘life’ at least of Plato is shown by the opening words of 4.1: τά μεν περί Πλάτωνος τοσαντα ην ές τό δυνατόν ημϊν σνναγαγεϊν, φίλοιτόνως διειλήσασι τά λεγάμενα περί τάνδρός. It is, however, not characteristic of the other ‘appendices’ to the ‘life’, the section on doctrine at 3.6yff. and that on divisions at 3.8off., both of which seem relatively unified.

28

Thrasyllan Platonism

Besides the Republic and the Euthyphro, the starting points of the arrangements of Aristophanes and Thrasyllus, respectively, we are told that Alcihiades i, the Theages, the Clitophon, the Timaeus, the Phaedrus, and the Theaetetus sometimes played this role. The Alcihiades was indeed favoured by Albinus (Prologus 5), and the Theages heads the list associated with Theon, as we shall see.59 The Phaedrus was fa¬ voured by the proponents of an allegedly chronological order (anon. Prol. 24; D. L. 3.38). The Timaeus and the Theaetetus would perhaps have been used by those who believed that physics or epistemology was the first subject for study. The Clitophon could be used as an introduction to the Republic or to the eighth Thrasyllan tetralogy as a whole. But could all these different starting points have been already in use in Thrasyllus’ time? Perhaps, but I doubt it. It is likely that the activities of Thrasyllus in particular accounted for four of these start¬ ing points being the first member of their tetralogy. Albinus sees the Epistles, the Theages, and the Euthyphro—starting points of Thra¬ syllus, Theon, and possibly some Ncopythagoreans60—as rivals to his own. Why does Diogenes’ source here feel the need to mention more? Were more works really being used as the introductory text in Thra¬ syllus’ day than in Albinus’? And if so, why would Thrasyllus have taken such pains to mention them all? Why should he have mentioned his own starting point in the middle of the list, obscuring his own role with the words “Some people [begin with the] Euthyphro"?61 I find it hard to accept that Thrasyllus was Diogenes’ source here. But who else could be? The length of the list suggests that this may be the work of some¬ body who wanted to utilize the disagreement about the correct Pla¬ tonic starting point; such disagreements (δυαφωνίαυ) were used pri¬ marily by the Sceptics, among whom we must reckon Favorinus, whose name appears at the end of 3.62 as the source of the view that Leon composed the Halcyon. Was more of 62 taken from Favorinus? It would be relatively easy to see him as the source of the whole list of 59 See Ch. 3 below. 60 This is only a guess, but Numenius shows the Pythagorean disquiet about the way the dialogues do not make Plato’s opinions clear (fr. 24.60-66 des Places), and he may well have been among the earliest to make substantial use of Epistle 2. This is shown by his use of the term ‘King’ to describe his first God (fr. 12.13), as well as by his positioning of two further gods below this. It was not until around his time that we know the Epistles were used as a source for Platonic doctrine. Moreover, Numenius could easily have been regarded as a rival by Albinus. 61 άρχονται δέ οί μέν ... , οί δ’ ... , οί δ' ... , ένιοί δέ Ενθνφρονος. άλλοι. . . . τινες. ... οί δ'... . έτεροί. . . . πολλοί δε.

Prolegomena

29

spuria, which is again a particularly long one and differs from what our manuscripts offer as well as from the list of agreed spuria in the anonymous Prolegomena.62 C. W. Muller [1975, PP· 33 —41 ] builds much on the claim that Diogenes must follow here the same source as was used for the tetralogies; we expect a list of spuria to follow a catalogue. Yet what Thrasyllus needs to tell us is what he has himself excluded as spurious, not what is ‘by agreement’ spurious. And this information needs to come straight after the catalogue, not after the discussion of starting points.63 There is no reason why both the long list of starting points and the long list of agreed spuria should not come from a single source: somebody like Favorinus, no friend of dogmatic Platonism, writing satirically about the travails of the corpus orga¬ nizers.64 However, there is another important possibility here. Diogenes himself would have known quite a bit about the practice of Platonic schools in his own day. He could have learnt about it from a variety of personal informants. One did not need to be inclined towards Plato¬ nism in order to supply information of this kind. He could have added this material on the starting points (not present in his main source because it is too early) and then gone back to his main source and compared its list of spuria with another given by his favourite source of spicy information: Favorinus. Hence their lists of spuria are combined to create a list of agreed spuria, and Diogenes refers also to Favorinus on the question of the authorship of the Halcyon. Thrasyllus had sug¬ gested no author. There is, perhaps, no necessity to believe that Thrasyllus was Di¬ ogenes’ principal source throughout 3.48-66; the possibility of a postThrasyllan main source, itself containing much Thrasyllan material, if rather ‘uneconomic’, must still be considered; and some will prefer to keep other options alive too. Yet in none of these cases do I consider it at all likely that we have a gravely misleading story of Thrasyllus’ role 62 Anon. Prol. 24 gives Sisyphus, Demodocus, Alcyon, Eryxias, Definitions. Only the last is omitted by Diogenes, which may indicate that he was working from a list of spurious dialogues. Manuscripts of Plato preserve Axiochus, On Virtue, and On Justice as well as those five. The last two are not obviously included in the list of D. L. 3.62, though it is possible that they may appear there under the titles Midon or Hippotrophos and Acephaloi. 63 Muller also uses the fact that anon. Prol. 25 gives us a list of spuria after discussing tetralogies; but the very different list of spuria and the failure to list the tetralogies seriously flaw his argument. 641 doubt whether Favorinus is also likely to have been the source of the material on Aristophanes of Byzantium, since the Thrasyllan introduction seems to be trying directly to undermine Aristophanes’ influence. See Ch.

4.1V

below.

Thrasyllan Platonism

30

in promoting the tetralogies and supplying systematic second titles. Moreover, I suspect that whichever option we choose we should allow that various other materials in this section will have been identical with materials used by Thrasyllus, simply because introductions to an au¬ thor’s works are likely to have been the kind of genre that settled for updating a previous author’s work except where disagreement arose. The similarities between Albinus Prologus 3 and Diogenes Laertius 3.48-51 are indicative of this, as are those between the papyrus intro¬ duction65 and Diogenes 3.48-56. In order to evaluate the evidence that Thrasyllus may be Diogenes’ principal source here, we have to understand more about the options available to corpus organizers in the second century a.d. and about the rationale behind the various arrangements. Once we have done this, we shall be able to e'valuate Thrasyllus’ work and fix his place in the history of Platonism a good deal more precisely. 651 refer to the Oxyrhynchus author published by Haslam [1977], on which see Ch.

below.

4.1V

CHAPTER

TWO

Some Nontetralogical Orders

An examination of three nontetralogical arrangements of the Platonic dialogues will give us some idea of the range of alternatives that were open to the Platonists of the early imperial period who sought to understand the Platonic corpus as a whole and the interrelation of its parts. Even today to strive for such an understanding is a mammoth task, but one that every respectable Platonist should sooner or later attempt. The material that I shall present will show, I hope, that followers of Plato devoted considerable thought to all aspects of the corpus in this period and were not simply metaphysicians, as the scope of their fragments, which have been preserved most often by Chris¬ tian and Neoplatonist writers, might tend to suggest. Nor indeed is there any sign of a lack of originality on the part of these writers. They boldly took up a significant challenge and found solutions that re¬ flected their own philosophic concerns. The way the evidence is pre¬ served presents many problems for modern evaluation of their contri¬ bution, but I am confident that the reader will find this material rewarding even in its own right. We will look at the following three arrangements: that in al-Farabi, which I attribute with moderate confidence to Galen, the arrangement of Albinus as encountered in his Prologus, and the character classifica¬ tion found in association with the Thrasyllan tetralogies in Diogenes Laertius. 3i

32

I

Thrasyllan Platonism

i. al-Farabi I begin with this early Arab philosopher, who was active through¬ out the first half of the tenth century, purely because he seems to preserve a reading order that is likely to have been Middle Platonic. The second part of his treatise The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle does indeed preserve a detailed account of how Plato is supposed to have produced writings that reflect the successive stages of his own inves¬ tigation: and thus by implication that can serve as a reading order to guide the development of others. This part is headed “The Philosophy ot Plato, Its Parts, the Ranks of Order of Its Parts, from the Beginning to the End.” F. Rosenthal and R. Walzer [1948] were responsible for bringing alFarabi’s discussion of the Platonic corpus within the grasp of the classicist and pointed to various features that suggest a Middle Platonic source: assumptions about Plato’s dogmatic purposes, coupled with complete freedom from Neoplatonic influences (pp. xii-xvi). The work embraces the entire Platonic corpus of thirty-six works as used by Thrasyllus,1 as opposed to the much reduced Neoplatonic canon associated with Iambhchus in particular (anon. Prol. 26). The Par¬ menides is seen as a work on dialectic, not as a work of metaphysics and theology as in Neoplatonism. And though Alcihiades 1 is made the starting point, as in the Neoplatonic canon, it is also the starting point in one of Albinus’ preferred schemes (Prol. 5). Rosenthal and Walzer (p.xv) argued that Theon may have been the source used by al-Farabi, noting that Theon’s work on the order and titles of the dialogues was known to the Arabs. Dunn [1975, P· 147] argued against any such possibility, primarily on the grounds that

1 heon approved of a tetralogical arrangement; al-Farabi’s version seems not to be reconcilable with any plausible tetralogical order. Dunn names no alternative source. It seems to me that his listing of the corpus according to al-Farabi has in fact obscured certain features, and that a more faithful account of the list should be presented here. AlFarabi does not simply arrange dialogues but presents, first and fore¬ most, the alleged stages of Platonic inquiry:2 the name of a dialogue is 1

The Minos is in fact omitted, but it is likely that this is due to oversight. There are some slight problems about the place of the Symposium, the Lysis, and the Philebus too, but these are still less likely to have been deliberately omitted. - Rosenthal and Walzer [1948, p. x] emphasize the assumed correspondence between the proper reading order and the order of composition. But the source was emphasizing order of investigation (by Plato and hopefully by the student too) rather than that of composition.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

33

then usually appended, as if to illustrate that stage. There are some dif¬ ficulties arising from seemingly inadequate correspondence here, and some missing names of dialogues (Politicus, Symposium, Lysis, Clitophon) have to be supplied. It must be appreciated that, like Dunn’s, my own listing must be a much abbreviated version of what al-Farabi has to offer. Group A i. Human things, knowledge/life 2. Search for perfect knowledge 3. True happiness 4. How perfect knowledge can exist 5. This knowledge attained by inquiry

Alcibiades 1 Theaetetus Philebus, Symposium, or Lysis Protagoras Meno

Group B What arts supply this knowledge? 6. Not religious science 7. Not language science 8. Not poetry 9. Not rhetoric 10. Not sophistry 11. Not sophistry 12. Dialectic useful, not sufficient

Euthyphro Cratylus Ion Gorgias Sophist Euthydemus Parmenides

Group C Investigation of practical arts leads to awareness of 13. What is not gainful 14. What is gainful 15. The hypocritical way 16. The hypocritical way 17. The pleasure seeker’s way

Alcibiades 2 Hipparchus Hippias 1 Hip pi as 2 3 On Pleasure4

3 The two works are strangely seen as being about two different sophists. If one postu¬ lates a well-informed Middle Platonic source, it is difficult to believe that we are confronted with a close account of what that source had said here. 4 This is taken by editors and by Dunn and Rosenthal and Walzer [1948, p.xix] to be the Symposium. However, the title given is the regular subtitle for the Philebus. The entry fits the latter work better. I quote from the translation of Muhsin Mahdi [1962]: ‘Then he investi¬ gated the pleasure-seekers’ way of life and whether or not it is a way of life by which man achieves the desired perfection. He explained the pleasure that is true pleasure; what the pleasure is that is generally accepted and desired by the multitude; that true pleasure is the pleasure originating in the desired perfection; and that no part of the pleasure-seekers’ way of life leads to the pleasure originating in the desired perfection’. The completion/perfection of the best life and various distinctions between (e.g., true and false) pleasures are vital themes of the Philebus, while none of this has much bearing on any ordinary interpretation of the

Thrasyllan Platonism

34

Group D Dismissal of current scientific and practi¬ cal arts leads to investigation of 18. How scientific/practical art ought to be 19. How philosophy is actually useful

Theages Erastae

20. Required practical art (= prince-statesman’s)

[ Politicus]* * * * 5 6

21. Moderation 22. Courage 23. Friendship

Charmides Laches

24. Rapture, etc.7

[Lysis or Symposium] Phaedrus

Group E Philosophy and the state 25. 26. 27. 28.

One must accept city’s conditions On preferring death On preferring death A new city

29. Divine and natural beings 30. What the citizens should obey 31. Theoretical/practical art to rule 32. How the legislator should be

Crito8 Apology9 Phaedo Republic Timaeus Laws Critias Epinomis

Group F (?) 33. Socrates’ and Thrasymachus’ ways useful 34. Appropriate exaltation 35. Reforming cities

[Clitophon] Menexenus Epistles

One assumes that a few oddities may be due to al-Farabi’s failure to understand the exact intentions of his source from time to time. The general outline, however, seems to be the product of some individual’s careful (but not impartial) reading of the corpus; the arrangement

Symposium. Galen was well aware of the fundamental importance of these distinctions between pleasures to the work as a whole (PHP i. 9- 5—6)· The only problem is the apparent connexion of the Philebus with stage 3; other works are not obviously connected with more than one stage. But the work’s relevance to stage 3 seems less strong than its relevance here, while stage 3 could perhaps be associated more easily with the Lysis or the Symposium. It is important then to note that stage 3 in fact refers to the Philus (glossed ‘friend’). Perhaps the investigation of‘friendship’ in 23 is really that of love, using the Symposium. 5 It seems clear that this must be supplied. 6 One or the other must clearly be supplied. See n. 4 above. 7 This hardly does justice to a very long description of the type of investigation believed to have been at the root of this dialogue. 8 Mistakenly identified with the Apology. vHere called Protest of Socrates against the Athenians.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

35

makes reasonable sense, and there is only a minimal tendency to organize the works so as to allow for proximity of dramatic date or for shared interlocutors. In this respect it may have been influenced by chapter 4 of Albums’ Prologus. There seems to be no attempt to sort dialogues into groups of equal numbers, nor does there appear to have been any significant attempt to make the conventional dialogue char¬ acters influence the order (as might have been expected if the source had also tried to follow Prologus 6). Originality is shown in the very close association of the Sophist with the Euthydemus (rather than with the Theaetetus or the Politicus) and in the novel but not naive ways of reading works such as the Protagoras and the Meno. It is also shown in the willingness to blend the works of tetralogies eight and nine (plus the Menexenus) into an unusual order. It is worth asking, then, whether any original Plato scholar who was likely to have been influenced by Albinus in selected respects was known to the Arab world. The answer is quite simple. The Arabs knew Galen as a Platonist, as a writer of compendia of the dialogues, and as a pupil of Albinus.10 In particular they admired the compen¬ dium of the Parmenides,11 which figured in the same book of com¬ pendia as other works of the ‘logical’ character, plus the Euthydemus. This addition is easily explained if Galen, like al-Farabi’s source, had thought that the work had the same purpose as that of the Sophist. We know from the De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis that Galen viewed the Sophist, the Politicus, and the Parmenides as essentially ‘logical’12 and from Damascius’ Life of Isidore (fr. 244) that he saw Ideas as being central to the Parmenides. Above all, however, the De Placitis Hippo¬ cratis et Platonis shows that he thought it to be about a dialectic that was not Socrates’ dialectic, but a dialectic lacking practical application, which could be attributed to the Eleatics.13 This agrees well with what is said in al-Farabi in relation to this work—namely, that dialectic is very useful for arriving at the desired knowledge, but that another faculty is needed to accompany it. That is, of course, where the Ideas and their recollection could have been thought to have made a contri¬ bution. It seems highly likely then that al-Farabi’s Parmenides was Galen’s Parmenides, and that his Euthydemus was Galen’s Euthydemus.

10 Or of Arminus, as the Fihrist of al-Nadim calls him. Galen refers to himself as a pupil of Albinus in Libr. Propr. p. 19 Muller. 11 Dodge 1970, p. 593; Ibn Rushd made use of the Republic compendium. 12 PHP 9.5, p. 765 Muller = p. 753 Kuhn; 9.7, p. 800M = 781K. 13ΡΗΡ9·7, p. 800M = 781K.

36

Thrasyllan Platonism

There is of course an objection to seeing Galen as al-Farabi’s source, but I do not think that it is a strong one. The Politicus in al-Farabi seems to be separated from the other works of this book of Galen’s compen¬ dia. If al-Farabi’s order is Galen’s, why should the latter have wanted to include the Politicus in the book of ‘logical’ compendia at all? The answer is not, I think, difficult. The Politicus was of course clearly related by internal references to the inquiry conducted in the Sophist, and its methods were very similar. It was, even in al-Farabi, a contri¬ bution to the same debate about the art that could supply the correct theoretical and practical basis for life. In general there ought to have been some relation between the way in which Galen organized his compendia and the way in which he thought Platonic education might best proceed. Tlowever, this did not need to be a slavish relation. Practical considerations would apply, as might other theoretical considerations. The compendia of the Republic and the Timaeus took up two books, and that of the Laws a further one. It is possible that the remainder of the political/ethical group (25-35) could be tackled in a single book, as their combined length was a fraction of that of the Laws. It is also possible that dialogues 1—5 were treated together as a single book of compendia, probably after some introductory remarks including the justification for the reading order (subsequently used by al-Farabi). This leaves a further three books to be allocated to dialogues 6-24, including the ‘logical’ group (7, 10-12, 18), which was one of the three. A further division might have been made, grouping all the works exposing experts or types of life to¬ gether (roughly equivalent to the ‘agonistic’ type), including dialogues 6, 8,9, 15, 16, 17; that would leave works of an ethical character but of little political relevance (13, 14, 18, 19, 21-24). One feature of the arrangement seems to accord particularly well with the philosophy of one who would see the writing of compendia as an important task. Stage 33, using the Clitophon, argues that the way of Thrasymachus as well as that of Socrates is useful. This is not a distinction between elenctic and dogmatic approaches, since the theo¬ rist has identified a positive purpose in virtually the whole of the corpus. Still less does it advocate the use of sophistry alongside that of philosophy (see 10 and 11). It is a distinction between the longer path, which leads to understanding through protreptic, elenctic, and dog¬ matic stages, and the short, direct path, which requires the acceptance of the authority of the teacher. Hence the works following dialogue 33,

Some Nontetralogical Orders

37

the Menexenus and the Epistles, adopt the direct, uncritical manner of address. This seems to bring the scheme that we are dealing with very much in line with that of Philo of Larissa’s theory as reported by Arius in Stobaeus (Eel. 2.39.2off. W), where the comparison between the tasks of philosophy and those of a doctor is highlighted. This comparison, and perhaps the fact that Arius, Augustus’ philosopher, had apparently approved it, must have been extremely attractive to Galen. After a protreptic stage (= Group A), an apotreptic stage (= Group B), the expulsion of false opinions (cf. Group C), and the encouragement of true (cf. Group D), we come to a part of philosophy dealing with personal and political happiness (= Group E). Though this completes the student’s path, philosophy has one further function, namely, to provide epitomes and manuals for those without the leisure to pursue it fully. No doubt Galen would have been well aware that most medical practitioners did not feel they had the leisure to study his beloved Plato in depth; and with his well-known conviction that doctors should be thoroughly familiar with philosophy, one can see why he should have been convinced of the need for compressing Plato’s message (as he saw it) into a shorter space. If it could be established that Galen was behind this pattern of Platonic education, then it would provide a fascinating insight into the relationship between Galen’s medical practice and Platonism as he saw it, and also into the relationship between his philosophy and his politi¬ cal theory. Naturally one seeks to know what bearing his very close relationship with Marcus Aurelius and subsequent emperors would have upon his view of Platonic philosophy. Politics seems, not un¬ usually, to be the ultimate end of the education programme outlined; the Politicus discovers that the art for which the philosopher had been seeking throughout Groups B and C is in fact the statesman’s art. Emphasis on the acceptance of and obedience to the city’s regulations, the balance of theoretical and practical considerations, and the require¬ ments of a good legislator all seem calculated to win an emperor’s approval. That Galen was the source of al-Farabi’s view of the Platonic corpus seems to me to be an attractive theory, though not yet one that compels belief. What we have said about the arrangement, however, does seem to indicate that it derives approximately from Galen’s time and from somebody not far removed from Albinus. I shall refer

38

Thrasyllan Platonism

hereafter to this theory as that of Galen(?); it will be used principally to illustrate the diversity of opinion concerning the organization of the corpus that flourished in the second century a.d. or thereabouts.

ii. Albinus In spite of the extreme brevity of Albinus’ Prologus, we do not receive the impression of great consistency in his attitude towards the correct method of organizing the corpus. This is not entirely surpris¬ ing, since his views seem more fluid than those of other corpus com¬ mentators. Rejecting in chapter 4 the tetralogical arrangement qua educational device, on the grounds that it is determined too much by dramatic considerations, he states that Platonic logos has no single defined starting point, but that it is rather like a circle. It is difficult to know how carefully Albinus had thought about the circle analogy: he was not just thinking of the circle’s lack of any obvious starting point but was also reflecting upon the circle’s being a complete and perfect shape (thus signifying that there is nothing lacking in the Platonic corpus). But he may also have remembered that in spite of the flexi¬ bility of the starting point the circle’s parts will always come in the same sequence for anybody moving in one direction: if one moves clockwise, then one will meet A-B-C-D or B-C-D-A or C-D-A-B or D-A-B-C; if counterclockwise, A-D-C-B, and so on. The circle al¬ lows some flexibility, but it also imposes certain limitations. Chapter 5 of the Prologus actually begins with the observation that the lack of a definite starting point does not give one the freedom to approach the corpus in any order at all. However, even here it is still the starting point that is Albinus’ main concern, and he goes on to argue that there will be appropriate starting points for any given individual. Individuals vary according to natural ability, age, motiva¬ tion, previous learning, and background circumstances. Only for the ideal student does Albinus offer a suitable plan of study: Alcibiades 1, Phaedo, Republic, and Timaeus. These works are dialogues 1, 27, 28, and 29 in Galen (?), and it is indeed in chapter 5 that Albinus comes closest to that arrangement. Alcibiades 1 was to remain a popular starting point in Iamblichus and beyond (anon. Prol. 26), in this case because it promoted self-knowledge. Galen (?) stresses human nature and the sort of knowledge and sort of life that are necessary for

Some Nontetralogical Orders

39

happiness. Albinus emphasizes the ability of the dialogue to make readers turn inwards and recognize what they must take care of (i.e., their souls). Thus the reasons why the work was widely used in an introductory capacity remained similar throughout late antiquity. The order Phaedo-Republic-Timaeus is unremarkable, and the rea¬ sons given for studying those works are not particularly enlightening. The Phaedo is studied because it provides a paradigm of the philoso¬ pher and the philosopher’s pursuits, which is roughly the reason given at Diogenes Laertius 3.57 for studying the whole of the first tetralogy. Albinus adds that we learn from the Phaedo how Plato’s philosophy proceeds on the assumption that the soul is immortal. The Republic is chosen for its contribution to the theory of education, particularly as a path to virtue. The Timaeus is selected as a text that illustrates Platonic theology, emphasizing that it is the goal of humans to imitate the divine. All three works belong to the class of dialogues aimed at positive instruction, the ‘hyphegetic’ dialogues, which comes third in the theory of education outlined in Prologus 6, whereas Alcibiades 1 belongs to the second stage. Albinus does not see any need to include a work from the ‘peirastic’ dialogues, which in Prologue 6 read at the first stage; perhaps the ideal pupil may safely miss this stage. Nor are dialogues from the fourth and fifth stages mentioned, but Albinus does not say that the pupil should not pass beyond the Timaeus. Chapter 5 selected only the first works in such a person’s Platonic education programme. If there is an inconsistency between chapters 5 and 6, it is rather that the latter tends to suggest the order physics (with theology)-ethics-politics-‘economy’,14 while the former places the physical and theological work after the ethical and political ones. ‘Suggestions’ not made explicit in chapter 6 need not reflect the views of Albinus himself. We meet here a five-stage plan of reading designed to follow five necessary stages of a Platonic education pro¬ cess. These five stages bear some relation, though not a close one, to material found in Theon of Smyrna’s introductory work on Platonic mathematics,15 and it is fairly clear that Theon and Albinus owe something to a tradition of five stages; common elements were a ‘cathartic’ first stage and the overall goal of‘assimilation to the divine’. 14 PP.

150.25 and 151.1-2 Hermann; ‘economy’ was virtually the science of household management, seeing the individuals not just in themselves but in relation to a unit smaller than the polis. 15 For details, see below, Ch. 4.111.

40

Thrasyllan Platonism

Since Albinus is claiming here to give a summary only of the proper order of works,16 and since the notion of a proper order is itself problematic in view of what had been said in chapters 4 and 5,17 one suspects that Albinus is extracting what he finds useful in an earlier proposal for a reading order. We shall discuss the origin of this tradi¬ tion in relation to Theon, but for our present purposes it is necessary to concentrate on how the various works in the corpus contributed to the stages as Albinus conceived them. Albinus’ hve stages of Platonic education may be summarized as follows:

1. False opinions are expelled, much as a doctor tries to expel by purgatives whatever is causing disease.18 2. The natural notions’, thought to be ‘recollectable’ innate knowledge of the sort suggested by the Meno and the Phaedo, are awakened, elicited, cleansed, and clarified. 3. Once the soul has been prepared in this way, it can receive the doctrines that will fulfill it,19 physics/theology and ethics/politics. 4. The doctrines must then be bound fast in the soul by ‘the reasoning ot the cause’ (cf. Meno 98a),20 so that the ultimate goal is kept in view. 5. We must learn to counter the arguments of sophists, which drag us in the opposite direction.

We may note that Plato’s Meno was fairly influential in determining details of this education programme. ‘Recollection’, described in Meno 8ia-86b, clearly lies behind stage 2, and the debt of stage 4 to Meno 98a

16 P. 150.13 Hermann: εν κεφαλαίω. 17 Strictly speaking, Albinus seems to have ruled out any single προσήκουσα τάξις for the reading of the dialogues, though an arrangement of Plato’s works may still be necessary for purposes of library management, and so on. Unfortunately it does not seem to be an arrangement of such restricted scope that Albinus has in mind when he writes: τήν προσή¬ κουσα τάξις των διαλόγων τύ) κατά Πλάτωνος διδασκαλία τω τά Πλάτωνος αίρουμένω. At best Albinus has in mind a preferred order in which the teacher is to teach the dialogues as opposed to the ideal order in which a pupil is to meet them. 18 The comparison with the doctor may owe something to Philo of Larissa’s detailed comparison of philosophy with medicine at Stob. Eel. 2.39.2off.W; ultimately Plato has encouraged it in numerous texts, the most important of which is Sophist 23ob-e. 19 δόγματα καθ' ά τελειοϋται, p. 150.24 Hermann. The verb τελειόω perhaps suggests the comparison of philosophy with a sacred rite (τέλος) employed widely by Theon in the parallel passage. 20 Like Galen (in numerous places), Albinus shows that he knew the modern manuscript reading of Meno 9833-4; anon. Tht. columns 3 and 15 had something different.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

4i

is clearer still.21 It is quite possible that the separation of stages 4 and 5 was achieved as a result of reading two separate stages at Meno 98a6: first, right opinions become knowledge (by the reasoning of the cause) so that they do not waver through any inherent instability, and then they become permanent, having grown immune to the counterargu¬ ments of sophists and so forth. The purgation process of stage 1 has something in common with the earlier reduction of Meno to a state where he (like the slave boy later) recognizes his ignorance (8oa-b, 84a-c). The revelation of doctrine at stage 3 might be compared with Meno 87c-89a, where Socrates’ views on how knowledge leads to virtue are expounded in a fairly straightforward manner, only to be challenged and abandoned in what follows. We nowhere see Meno led on to knowledge proper or immunity against the sophists in the dialogue, but it is clear that stages similar to 4 and 5 are required if his education in virtue is to be completed. The dialogues to be met at the various stages of instruction are as follows. Stage 1 focuses on the ‘peirastic’ dialogues, which are of an elenctic or cathartic character; stage 2 on the ‘maientic’, which draw out notions. The ‘hyphegetic’ dialogues, treating moral and physical doctrine, are featured at stage 3. The ‘logical’ dialogues, which sepa¬ rate truth from falsehood, make up stage 4, and, finally, at stage 5 are the ‘endeictic’ or ‘anatreptic’ dialogues, dealing with sophists. Unfortunately we must postpone discussion of the meaning of the technical terms until we examine the origins of the classification of dialogue types. Even so some useful remarks may be made about what Albinus has achieved here. He has taken what was almost certainly a preexisting classification of dialogue types and related it to a theory of education that was not itself wholly original. The combination has entailed a number of changes to the original type classification. ‘Hyphegetic’ had been the name given to what we may call the ‘in¬ structional’ dialogues of the corpus, and had been one of the two most basic divisions: the other being the ‘zetetic’ or ‘critical’ dialogues. As Albinus defined them in chapter 3, the hyphegetic works aimed at instruction, action, and demonstration of the truth, the zetetic at training, debate, and refutation of the false. From Diogenes Laertius 3.49 it appears that the classification had once been rigorously di21 Our text of the Meno talks of the ‘binding’ stage being identical with ‘recollection’. The separation of stages 2 and 4 in Albinus might suggest that his text did not have the sentence that maintains their identity, namely, 9834-5: τούτο δ’ εστίν, ώ Μένων εταίρε, άνάμνησπ, ώς εν τοϊς ττρόσθεν ώμ,ολόγηται. Stobaeus also omits it (Eel. 2.162.14W), though one cannot be sure that he did so because it was missing in his text.

42

Thrasyllan Platonism

chotomic, with each of the basic divisions having two species and four subspecies within it. The terms for the species do not occur in Albinus, and the dichotomy has been abandoned. There are an indeterminate number of subspecies within the hyphegetic class, and they include physical, ethical, and political works, as at Diogenes Laertius 3.50, but not the so-called logical works, which are now classed as zetetic.22 The distinction between the two subspecies of what Diogenes calls the agonistic’ species seems of no relevance to Albinus’ education pro¬ gramme; both ‘endeictic’23 and ‘anatreptic’ are included at stage 5. In effect, while stage 3 suggests a class of works to be read, stage 5 suggests a species, and stages 1, 2, and 4 subspecies, of the zetetic class. This is the kind of reorganization of the system of dialogue types that has been required to achieve good coordination between the types and one’s reading programme, and I suggest that it is an indication that the classification of dialogue types (or characters) was not originally designed to establish a reading order, pace Dunn [1975]. Albinus’ achievement here may be best appreciated if we understand which dialogues he attributed to which classes and subspecies. This, how¬ ever, has been no easy matter to determine, since there has been considerable corruption of the text. Albinus’ account of the so-called character classification is found in chapter 3, and several oddities are present: 1. The Apology is the only work listed as ethical. 2. The Parmenides, with the Protagoras, is listed as elenctic, this being a corruption of endeictic. 3. Dialogues 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 of those dialogues listed as political are elsewhere (naturally) regarded as ethical, though dialogues 2, 4, 6, and 8 are political elsewhere. 4. Dialogues 1,3, and 5 of those dialogues listed as logical are elsewhere regarded as maieutic, though dialogues 2, 4, and 6 are logical else¬ where. 22 P. 151.6 Hermann. Freudenthal [1879, p. 263] emended δντος καί αυτού ζητητικού to όντος αυτού καί ζητητικού, thus giving the logical works a double character, part zetetic, part hyphegetic. Like Dunn [1975, p. 175], I do not like this emendation, but, unlike Dunn, I do not believe that a double status is particularly appropriate (Dunn argued that it was so, on the basis of the Didascalicus also being the work of Albinus). Two points are to be made. First, it is evident trom pp. 150.35-151.4 that the logical works cannot fit in the hyphegetic class as conceived by Albinus. Second, we know from Proclus In Prm. pp. 630.37-631.5 that some people relegated the Parmenides to the class of‘logical exercise’, and to that of aporetic rather than ‘instructional’. We clearly have here a reference to Platonists who did not regard the logi¬ cal dialogues as instructional. Whether Proclus has Albinus himself in mind is not certain. 23 The term ενδεικτικός has been too much to entrust to Albinus’ scribes; we read at p. 151.1 ο επιδεικτικού and at p. 148.32 ελεγκτικά). But in both cases it is clear that the term encountered in Diogenes (3.49, 51) was intended.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

43

5. Dialogue 1 of those dialogues listed as elenctic (for endeictic) is logical elsewhere; dialogue 2 is endeictic elsewhere. 6. The logical class appears to be listed with the hyphegetic dialogues, even though Albinus regards it as zetetic. 7. The Theaetetus, the Phaedrus, the Atlanticus (= the Critias), the Erastae, and the Hipparchus are all missing, while it is not asserted that there were two Alcibiades works or two Hippias works.

J. Freudenthal [1879, p. 260-61] and O. Schissel [1931] pointed the way to a solution of these difficulties, producing a general cure. They saw that the dialogues were once arranged in columns, as indicated by the verb υπάγονται at p. 148.30 Hermann, but their cure was not such as to allow for Albinus having had any remotely original views about the classification of the dialogues. A very precise explanation is re¬ quired if the oddities in Albinus are to be understood. The alternations between dialogues elsewhere of two different char¬ acters, as seen in points 3, 4, and 5 above, clearly indicate contamina¬ tions brought about by the conflation of two adjacent columns. There is no sign of a more general contamination—nothing involving three columns or more. One would indeed expect no more than two col¬ umns of dialogues per papyrus column, and even this might have involved squashing in places. The primary manuscript (Vat.gr. 1029) provides important evidence that a scribe had begun to read across just two columns,24 where he should have been reading down. It is now easy to see how basic errors were made:

Physical Timaeus Political Republic 25 Symposium Epistles Menexenus Clitophon Philebus

(Maieutic cont.) Logical Theages Cratylus Lysis Sophist Laches Politicus Endeictic Parmenides Protagoras

24 See, for instance, Schissel 1931, p. 217; Dunn 1975, p. 158: τώ μέν φυσικώ τώ δέ ήθικώ Τίμαιος, ’Απολογία. 25 It is difficult to insist that both works were omitted simultaneously because of the similarity between the names Phaedo and Phaedrus, but I offer an economical explanation of how both omissions occur. The Phaedrus follows the Phaedo in D. L. 3.51; the Atlanticus, however, follows the Epinomis at 3.51, though its natural place is of course after the Republic, forming a kind of trilogy, Timaeus-Republic-Atlanticus, before another trilogy, Minos-LawsEpinomis.

44

Thrasyllan Platonism

By reading across two columns, the scribe takes the Crito, the Phaedo, and so on as political works; the Thedges, the Lysis, and the Laches as logical; and the Parmenides as endeictic. So far everything is relatively straightforward. The difficulties come when one tries to explain why further contaminations have not taken place. We note that originally everything seems to have been presented as one long list of just two columns. The Theages continues a listing of the maieutic dialogues already in progress, and the logical works are not in fact listed with the hyphegetic works, as it would seem, because they belong to what was originally the bottom part of the list. I suspect that there was a fairly obvious break below the Epinomis and the Philebus, as this was the end of the hyphegetic class, and the list continued as follows: Epinomis xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx Peirastic Euthyphro Meno Ion Charmides Logical Cratylus Sophist Politicus Parmenides Anatreptic Hippias i, etc.

Menexenus Clitophon Philebus xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx Maieutic Alcibiades i Alcibiades 2 Theages Lysis Laches Endeictic Protagoras

The lower part of the list was removed for reasons of space and used to create another double column at the side, hence: Physical Timaeus Political Republic

Symposium Epistles Menexenus Clitophon Philebus

Logical Cratylus Sophist Politicus Parmenides Anatreptic Hippias 1 Hippias 2 Euthydemus Gorgias

Theages Lysis Laches Endeictic Protagoras

Some Nontetralogical Orders

Peirastic Euthyphro Meno Ion Charmides

45

xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx Maieutic Alcibiades 1 Alcibiades 2

Next, the bottoms of the columns were adjusted to make better use space:

Symposium Epistles Menexenus Clitophon Philebus xxxxxxxxx Maieutic Alcibiades 1 Alcibiades 2

Parmenides

Protagoras

Anatreptic Hippias 1 Hippias 2 Euthydemus Gorgias

By now the peirastic, maieutic (part), and anatreptic columns are too far separated to be fused, and they alone remain uncontaminated. Of course odd details of my account of the corruption could be wrong, but some very similar solution to the problems is required. Note my postulation that the order in which zetetic characters were listed originally was identical with the order in which they appear in the education programme of chapter 6: peirastic, maieutic, logical, endeictic, and anatreptic; similarly the subspecies of hyphegetic dia¬ logues follow the order suggested by chapter 6: physical-ethicalpolitical. In spite of our differences, notably regarding the significance of pairs of columns (on which I insist), Schissel and I are in agreement about the order in which the columns were started. I refuse, however, to acknowledge that all dialogues listed by Diogenes Laertius in his version of the classification (3.50-51) were listed by Albinus. I believe that the Phaedrus and the Atlanticus were likely to have been present, but as for the Theaetetus and the Erastae and the Hipparchus it seems to me that they were added late in Diogenes’ list.26 The two minor dialogues were open to suspicions of spuriousness,27 whereas the 26 See also Chs. i.iv and 2.iii below. The way certain dialogues seem to have been tacked on to lists without the use of καί, re, or δέ is suggestive. 27See Ch. i.iv with n. 50.

46

Thrasyllan Platonism

7 heaetetus, I believe, was thought to display all types of zetetic dis¬ course.28

iii. The Character Classification We move now to discuss the character classification, not so much as it is found within Albinus, or even as it is found at Diogenes 3.49—51, but rather as it originated.29 What were the intentions of the person who devised the classification, and what were the meanings of the terms that figure in it? What appears 111 Diogenes is a piece of scholarship with no obvious origin; it reappears in a full but modified form in Albinus and then disappears except for odd traces of its terminology. It is never ex¬ plained, and the difference between maieutic and peirastic dialogues is particularly obscure. Moreover, one wonders whether it could not have been more useful as a classification of elements within dialogues than of the dialogues themselves, for it seems arbitrary to impose any one character on a work like the Gorgias, the Phaedrus, or the Meno. It would have been one thing to list various dialogues in which certain characters are to be found, and another to aim at the listing of each dialogue under a single heading. Then one has to ask whether the listing of the dialogues according to characters has anything to do with reading orders, as Dunn [1975] assumes (Albinus Prol. 6 offers us an example); for if it had no practical application initially, then it must seemingly have been devised in answer to theoretical problems. But which problems? These questions can be answered only after a review of the key terms. The term ‘zetetic’ might be explained in two ways: (a) with refer¬ ence to the Meno, where the adjective occurs at 8iei in relation to the claim that the theory of recollection gives one the incentive to persist with one’s inquiries, and (b) with reference to the term’s application to Academic and Pyrrhonist sceptics.30 Since the zetetic class of dialogue is opposed to that which offers positive instruction, it would seem that the passage of the Meno that is most relevant is 8qb-c, where it is 28 See below, Ch. 2.iii ad fin. -^Thus the focus will be somewhat different from that of the very full discussion of this question in Nusser[i99i, pp. 101-43], which reached me long after these early chapters had attained a virtually final form. 30For the former see Tarrant I985d, ch. 1; for the latter, D. L. 9.70; S.E. PH 1.7.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

47

observed that one will not be inquisitive about what one thinks one knows already. The zetetic works are those that might appear to concentrate upon the rejection of false doctrine and of its teachers; they are not so much works that ‘make inquiries’, for the hyphegetic works do this too; they are the works that are intended to make readers or listeners ‘inquisitive’. This agrees well with the aims of New Aca¬ demic philosophy, but we should resist any temptation to see these works as ‘sceptic’ as opposed to ‘dogmatic’. The purpose of the classi¬ fication is more to show how all Plato’s works contribute to philoso¬ phy’s ends than to emphasize a rift between opposing groups of dialogues. I would suggest too that any such attempt to see both main groups as contributing to Platonic education in a legitimate way would not have antedated the zetetic aims of the New Academy and did not antedate the period when Academics again became reconciled to the notion of positive philosophic instruction. Most scholars would there¬ fore be reluctant to see the classification emerging publicly until at least after the death of Clitomachus, if they agree with my observa¬ tions regarding its purpose. Dunn [1975] believes that it originated in the period following Philo of Larissa and Andronicus of Rhodes (pp. 20—21), but is very keen not to attribute its origin to Thrasyllus himself (p. 18). There is actually a chance that Thrasyllus did not use it.31 Dunn relies primarily upon the presence of seemingly Aristotelian terminol¬ ogy within the classification,32 and the similarity between the diaeresis of Aristotelian philosophy at Diogenes 5.28 and that of the hyphegetic dialogues (p. 17). The subclasses gymnastic and agonistic ought surely to be con¬ cerned with two different ways of ensuring that the pupil becomes zetetic: one may discuss with pupils their own ideas, or one may tackle the false doctrine and unsound methods of rival educators by whom they may be influenced. Thus the agonistic works are those in which some kind of sophist acts as a prominent interlocutor and has the foundations of his educational theory exposed, while in the gymnastic works a young person’s ideas will be tested and will either be revealed to be false or be brought into sharper focus so that they will not be misleading. The Laches, admittedly, finds Socrates conversing with

31 Hermann 1853. 32 Pp. 12-13; he follows the work of von Christ [1886, p. 457]; the chief term considered is πειραστικός.

48

Thrasyllan Platonism

two older men, but the purpose of the conversation is to determine who should educate the sons of Lysimachus and Melesias, and there is no reason why they—and the young listener—should not have views similar to those expressed by one or both generals. The species of gymnastic dialogue are peirastic and maieutic. The latter obviously has to be interpreted with an eye upon Socratic mid¬ wifery, as discussed in the Theaetetus (i 49-151), but this has various aspects: the assistance of the young person to produce his ‘concep¬ tions’, the recognition of true ideas and the rejection of false ones. Most of the interlocutors of the maieutic group of dialogues seem suitable young men to have midwifery practised upon them (Alcibiades, Theages, Lysis, and Menexenus), but Nicias and Laches are again a case apart. Furthermore, if one honestly believes that the Theaetetus was classed from the beginning as peirastic, then how is it that Theaetetus himself was not seen as a suitable candidate for the midwife’s attentions (in spite of I57c-d, i6ocff., i84a-b, 2iob-d, and, above all, 151 b—c)? Are Charmides and Euthyphro any less ‘pregnant’ than Lysis, Menexenus, Laches, and Nicias? Maieutic di¬ alogues are obviously not distinguished from peirastic ones because of ‘pregnant’ interlocutors, or because of the examination and rejection ol a young person’s false notions, since all works labelled ‘peirastic’ perform this task. To judge from Albinus (Prol. 3) these groups of dialogues ought to be being distinguished on the basis of the characters participating: ‘The hyphegetic aims at (στοχάζεται) things (πράγματα), the zetetic at persons (πρόσωπα).’33 Furthermore all zetetic dialogues take their title from a particular interlocutor, while several of the remaining ones do not. But since we are unable to draw any dividing line based upon the nature of the interlocutors, we are forced to ask whether the author of the classification might have supposed that the works that he called ‘maieutic’ actually brought any truths to light. Improbable though this suggestion seems, there may be a grain of truth in it. Albinus (Prol. 6) believed that the peirastic works were suitable for his initial cathartic stage of Platonic education, because they incorporated both elenctic and protreptic elements: refutation with encouragement, perhaps. The use of the comparison with the

33 Dunn

[1975, p. 16] compares Theophrastus (Ammonius De bit. p. 53), who distin¬ guished between arguments directed towards the listeners and those directed towards things {πράγματα). But I doubt whether this limited parallel can be of much assistance.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

49

doctor’s purges, in which Sophist 23ob-e was an influence, again sug¬ gests that Albums’ first stage aimed at little more than demonstrating to pupils their own ignorance. The maieutic dialogues, however, be¬ longed to Albinus’ next stage, at which it was necessary to awaken and clarify the pupils’ ‘natural notions’ (their innate recollectable knowl¬ edge of ideas in Platonic terms); this implies that there would be some elements of truth in the pupils’ souls (and the young interlocutor’s soul) waiting to emerge through Socratic questioning.34 We are asked to believe, therefore, that there is somehow more positive truth that emerges from such works as the Theages and the Lysis than there is in the Meno or the Ion. Yet the truth cannot be held to emerge in the same way as it does in a hyphegetic dialogue. For one thing Albinus (Prol. 3) says that whereas the latter are composed with a view to instruction and action and demonstration of the truth, the zetetic works are composed with a view to exercise and debate and refutation of falsehood. All zetetic dialogues are thus expected to place a greater emphasis on the refuta¬ tion of false views than on the demonstration of truths; but the maieu¬ tic dialogues, of course, are not held to be demonstrating truths so much as eliciting them from the interlocutor by other means. There is no doubt that the Laches and the Lysis remain basically inconclusive as far as their announced topics are concerned, and yet in the course of searching for courage the Laches uncovers virtue as a whole (i99e), while the Lysis’ failed search for ‘the dear’ uncovers some useful material on what is ‘primarily dear’ at 2i8dff. The Lysis cannot but bring one closer to an appreciation of what it is that one really pursues, and this tendency is shared both by the Alcibiades dialogues and by the Theages. And even if Nicias has failed to satisfy us that he has defined courage, as he had set out to do, he has come close to telling us what we had really desired to know all along: how the correct object of pursuit is not the brash and ill-considered boldness of a Laches, but the knowledge to determine what conduct really would be sensible. So these dialogues have the effect of explaining to interlocutors, readers, or listeners not any ordinary truths about the outside world but their own innate impulses towards, and consciousness of, what motivates them and what is good for them. The Stoic terminology of ‘natural

34 Compare Dunn 1975, p. 33: “But in the eyes of Albinus . . . characters like Alcibiades and Theages are distinguished from characters like Ion and Meno, because a certain intuition of real knowledge is awakened in the former, but not the latter.

50

Thrasyllan Platonism

notions’, then, is not simply a by-product of the popularity of Stoic language, but an indication of Stoic influences behind the thought: the Stoic doctrine of an innate spark of reason, of natural impulses towards what is good lor us, and of a consequent natural notion of some of these forces. It would thus seem that the theory underlying the separation of peirastic and maieutic dialogues would not rest on the lack of elenctic and protreptic elements in the maieutic class but rather would be based on the ability of the latter species to awaken and elucidate certain ‘soul truths’ in the reader, often as a by-product of the main investigation. Thus Olympiodorus, writing centuries later but as part of a tradition centuries old, attributes to the first Alcibiades three separate parts (In Ale. 11.7): an elenctic one, a peirastic one, and, finally, a maieutic one! The first two elements are, according to Albinus, those of a peirastic dialogue, and the third brings readers into contact with their real selves—their soul.35 One may have doubts about the adequacy of trying to explain the original intention of these terms with reference to Albinus, and then looking to Olympiodorus for confirmation, but a grave shortage of other evidence leaves one little option. The meaning of the term ‘peirastic’ from Aristotle on36 seems to confirm the expec¬ tation that it here refers to works of an elenctic character; the only doubt would be over the objects of the ‘testing’ process of such works, for the term could refer not just to the interlocutors’ opinions (i.e., the propositions in which the interlocutors happen to believe), but also to the interlocutors themselves.37 Here one might profitably introduce the evidence from Galen (PHP 2> P· l79 Muller = p. 22 Kuhn) that Dunn [1975, p. 27] cites in reference to the meaning of these terms. Discussing not dialogues but rather arguments, Galen mentions several forms that are not ‘epistemonic’ but are used by the dialectician for (a) gymnastic purposes, (b) refuting sophistry, (c) testing youths’ suitability for midwifery {πείραν λαβείν μαυενσεως μεψακίον), and (d) leading them forward to the discovery of something and making them at a loss (7τροσα35 Olympiodorus’ material here is clearly akin to material on the purpose of the dialogue against which Proclus had already reacted (In Ale. 8). His lateness may be less of a problem than meets the eye. 36Dunn [1975, PP- 12-13] makes some useful observations here. The De Sophisticis Elenchis distinguishes four kinds of λόγοι: διδασκαλικοί, διαλεκτικοί, 7τειραστικοί, and εριστικοί; the same work sets out to examine the last, the Analytics the first, and the Topics the other two, which are frequently identified with each other. 37Cf. Syrianus In Met. p. 63.29-32.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

5i

yayslv επί τονος ενρεσιν απορήσαί τε ποιήσαι). This last was prob¬ ably glossed μαιενσασθοίί at some time, and I take it that (d) is indeed designed to pick out the maieutic process, even though it might have been more appropriate to mention the ‘at-a-loss’ element before the discovery element. One sees that there is a close connexion between these uses of arguments and the classification of zetetic dialogues, though gymnastic was there the species containing the two subspecies maieutic and peirastic.38 Since Galen would in that case be interpreting ‘peirastic’ as meaning ‘able to test young people’s suitability for mid¬ wifery’, seeing the peirastic stage of education as the preliminary of the maieutic stage as Albinus did, there is a strong argument for seeing peirastic dialogues as those that test young persons for their suitability for further Platonic education. The necessity for such a testing process is hinted at in Theaetetus 151b, where Socrates acknowledges that some young men do not seem to be ‘pregnant’ after preliminary studies with him. But, more particularly, we should note that Theaetetus wonders at 15 7C whether the theory just put forward is Socrates’ own idea, or whether it has been suggested in order to ‘make trial of (αποπειρώμαι) himself. The first idea seems to be rejected by Socrates, who states that he has no claim to knowledge himself, and goes on to say not that he is testing Theaetetus but that he is acting as midwife to him. Indeed the early pages of the work were clearly making trial of the young man (i44d148ε), after which Socrates, realising that Theaetetus is pregnant, explains midwifery and goes on to practise it (i5ieff.). I believe that the distinction between peirastic and maieutic dialogues originated in the Theaetetus itself. In most respects it is still more difficult to find texts that will help one to understand the distinction between the two subspecies of ago¬ nistic dialogue. Albinus (Pro/. 6) seems to have used both types indif¬ ferently at stage 5 of his education programme, assisting the pupil to withstand the assaults of the sophists. The notion of anatreptic argu¬ ment is not difficult to understand, since the root verb is used twice in Plato’s antieristic work, the Euthydemus (278b, 286c), for the upturning of arguments or theories by sophistic means. We might hesitate to believe that Plato resorts to sophistic methods himself, but the Di38 it seems to me not improbable that the gymnastic purposes were intended to include purposes (b) to (d), since the first kcxl, which I have interpreted above as a linking and , could rather have been intended to mean both : introducing the first of a list specifying three species of gymnastic purpose.

52

Thrasyllan Platonism

dascalicus assures us that he used eristic argument against the so-called eristics like Euthydemus and Hippias—that is, in at least 75 percent of the anatreptic works.39 We are also told that arguments based on endoxa are used in conversations with sophists and young men (an apparent allusion to agonistic and gymnastic dialogues, respectively). The author seems aware ol the classification of dialogue characters, is prepared to use the term ‘hyphegetic’ (p. 158.28 Hermann) as well as to maintain the basic distinction between instruction and inquiry (ζήτησις) and between elenchus and demonstration (p. 158.15—18), and seems to have made a close connexion between dialogue character, interlocutor type, and syllogisms employed. Even so, he is not keen to use any ol the terminology relating to subspecies of zetetic dialogue, and thus lor our purpose his usefulness is limited. When it comes to the endeictic dialogue, the Protagoras, we are confronted with a greater problem, as the normal second-century sense of the adjective ‘indicative of must be rejected. The primary question is whether the term derives from the active of the verb, meaning ‘to expose or show a person up’, or whether the middle su§8ests tlic sense giving a display . I should be fairly confident that the former alternative was correct, but for the following consider¬ ations: 1. At Albinus Prologus 6 (p. 151.10 Hermann) we have the reading επι¬ δεικτικός replacing ενδεικτικός, and it is difficult to know whether we must attribute it to scribal error or to Albinus’ having regarded the terms as equivalent. However, it is difficult to see what a dialogue of display could contribute to Albinus’ stage 5. 2. The initial stage of Philo of Larissa’s education programme (Stob. Eel. 2.40.7-9W) displays (ένδείκννται) the benefits of philosophy and refutes its opponents. 3. The Protagoras does indeed set out to display Socrates’ versatility in a way that other antisophistic works do not; this is evident in the praise that he receives from the sophist at 36id-e.

4· The middle ένδείζοκτθαι is found at Protagoras 317C7, referring to Protagoras’ desire to give a display of his skills in front of Prodicus and Hippias; this is only a small point, since the verb is common in Plato in various senses.

3';This connexion between anatreptic and eristic is dwelt on by Dunn [1975, pp. 36-38]. He refers to Alexander In Soph. El. p. 2. i8fF., where the Euthydemus is regarded as a haven for sophistic arguments, as also is the Protagoras.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

53

Considerations in favour of the meaning ‘tending to expose’ are like¬ wise not lacking: 1. Such a meaning would give the Protagoras a more obvious role at stage 5 of Albinus’ education programme. 2. It would make endeictic works more obviously works of contention (agonistic). 3. Socrates’ own skills, though revealed, emerge in the course of an attempt to test those of Protagoras and to find out on Hippocrates’ behalf what Protagoras really is. 4. Philo’s education programme, though showing slight signs of over¬ lap with Albinus’ in relation to the cathartic stage, may have no direct connexion with the division of dialogue character at all.

Even if this were all there was to be said, I should on balance be obliged to conclude that those who first postulated endeictic character as a subspecies of agonistic were trying to indicate a dialogue type in which Socrates tries to expose a sophist in various ways, partly per¬ haps by contrasting his own skills with those of the sophist concerned; in other works of an antisophistic type it could plausibly be maintained that Socrates tackled the sophists in a more direct fashion. However, we have not yet considered the evidence of the Theaetetus. It is my contention that this work also provides a model for the two types of agonistic dialogue: Socrates is very conscious of the rather sophistic character of the arguments that he employed to discredit Protagoras early in the discussion of his views (see I04c-d, i66aff.), and he announces a new policy that will be fairer to Protagoras thereaf¬ ter. The key passage, however, is 167ε, which can have suggested both the term for the agonistic species and that for the endeictic subspecies: Plato claims that one should keep one’s contests (άγωνίζεσθαί)40 free from one’s dialectical pursuits (δίαλέγεσθοα), using the former for playing games and tripping up (σφάλλω; cf. άνατρέπω) one’s oppo¬ nents as far as possible, and the latter for being serious and for setting one’s opponents aright, showing up (ενδείκννσθοα) for them the slips that they themselves or other influences upon them have been respon¬ sible for. it will be objected that this passage associates ‘agonistic’ only with tripping up opponents, marking it off from ‘endeictic’. But the fact of the matter is that though Socrates’ manner of tackling Pro40 Cf. i68d2 and 16409: ον φάσκοντες ά-γωνισταί αλλά φιλόσοφοι.

54

Thrasyllan Platonism

tagoras docs change from this point in the dialogue, the atmosphere of debate and dispute suggested by the term ‘agonistic’ continues. The passage in fact suggests a rather different term41 that could embrace both the activity of ‘tripping up’ opponents and that of showing opponents their errors, but it gives a great deal of help to anybody desiring to find, in Plato, two separate ways of tackling opponents in philosophy. It is perfectly natural that these two ways should be characterized by a word suggesting that one’s aim is to trip opponents up,42 and a word suggesting that genuine errors are politely brought to their attention. The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that all the subspecies of zetetic dialogue were determined as a result of careful study of the Theaetetus, and that, furthermore, all these kinds of zetetic conversa¬ tion were actually detected in the Theaetetus. Initially Socrates had ‘tested’ Theaetetus’ aptitude for his own services; at various points he labels his services for Theaetetus as those of the midwife (157c, 184a, 210b); but much of the dialogue also tackles the expert Protagoras, and the work employs one manner against him to begin with, and another alter I09d. It is a pity that we do not have more of the anonymous Theaetetus commentator, for he certainly seems to be regarding the work as zetetic,43 and it is entirely possible that his discussion of 157c and I07d-e would have treated different ways in which Platonic ζτ\ττ\cri? manifested itself. But it runs out around 153, and a fragment on 157d-e offers no help. A commentary on the Theaetetus would in fact have been a very natural place for the subspecies of zetetic dialogue to be first discussed. II the subspecies of zetetic dialogue were all originally detected within the Theaetetus, then it would follow that these subspecies were not primarily designed to characterize whole works, and none of them could suffice to describe the whole Theaetetus at any rate. As we have already seen, Albinus thinks that zetetic works ‘aim at’ the persons concerned, and we suspected that the subspecies employed would relate to the type of interlocutor or opponent being tackled. We have

41 This term is άμφίσβητητίκός, as ‘Protagoras’ is quite content that Socrates should continue ‘disputing’ the situation (ihydf twice). I believe that the term ‘agonistic’ may in fact have resulted from a lapse of memory; the terms ‘agonistic’ and ‘amphisbetedc’ are easily confused, for in the Sophist amphisbetedc is itself a subspecies of agonistic (225a-b, 226a2-

3)· 42 Usually by tricks of language; see 164C7-8, i66ci, i68b7-c2. 43 See Tarrant I985d, pp. 69-71.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

55

also seen how Galen seems to link the characters with the type of argument employed, and the author of the Didascalicus (ch. 6) relates types of argument either to the hyphegetic type of dialogue or (presum¬ ably in zetetic dialogues) to the type of opponent: here endoxa are used against young men and sophists, while eristic argument is used against eristic practitioners, like Euthydemus and Hippias. Again, Olympiodorus was apparently following a long tradition when he saw three styles of conversation, only one of them maieutic, within the Alcibiades i. Thus I would suppose that whoever devised the classification of dialogue character (in the zetetic works at least) used examples of the kind ‘as when he talks with Euthydemus, Gorgias, or Hippias’ and ‘as when he tackles Protagoras’. In the latter case he would be allotting an endeictic character not only to parts of the Protagoras, but also to a large portion of the Theaetetus. In the former case he would be allotting an anatreptic character not to the whole Gorgias (which contains some very serious and thoroughly philosophical debate with Callicles), but just to the initial arguments designed to embarrass Gorgias himself. What one meets in Diogenes Laertius 3.50-51, however, are no longer mere examples of dialogue character determined with reference to the interlocutor. The dominant character of every work is bluntly stated in a way that would have been foreign to any scholar without a fixed idea of the corpus and a strong desire for tidy organization. It matters little that two species of dialogue have only one member, while the ethical species has eleven; the dialogues had to be distributed among the eight subspecies of dialogue character. Or that at least is the final situation. Diogenes’ ultimate source here may well have omitted the Theaetetus (because of its many roles) and the Erastae and the Hipparchus (because of their dubious status), for those works were probably missing too from the list that Albinus had originally given in Prologus 3. It is my belief, then, that the classification of dialogue character originally evolved to meet a perceived need for distinctions between the styles and purposes of various conversations within the Platonic corpus. Such a need is unlikely to have been felt before serious Platonic exegesis began. It had begun by the time of Diogenes’ source at 3.65 at least, and the source there requires that exegesis should treat not only what was being said, but also its purpose and whether or not what was said was true. It was evidently thought particularly important to know whether a statement is made with a view to teaching or refutation, and

Thrasyllan Platonism

56

no doubt the interpreters would have been happier to detect falsehoods and ironies within the zetetic works. It must have been puzzling in those early days that Plato could sometimes allow Socrates to resort to the methods that he criticized elsewhere, and that he occasionally argued for positions that seemed to conflict with the usual thrust of his philosophy: how could they see one Plato behind the many works of the corpus? That a single Plato could be found was assumed a little earlier than Thrasyllus by Eudorus of Alexandria (Stob. Eel. 2.49.25, 55.6W), who asserted that the apparent multitude of opinions found in Plato was in fact just a multitude of‘voices’ or ways of expression. If one looks for examples of these ways of expression at Eclogues 2.49.1823 W, one finds that Plato was held to have expressed his theory of the telos in the logical, physical, and ethical modes. These three manners of expression conform with three of the dialogue characters; they do not assure us that Eudorus would have acknowledged the five other char¬ acters, but they do show how the period sought to reconcile different ways in which Plato expressed himself by assuming different styles of conversation linked with a plurality of purposes. They also show that, for Eudorus, Plato did not speak in a consistently peirastic fashion in the Theaetetus, or even in a consistently zetetic fashion, and that he did not consistently speak politically in the Republic; could it be that no definite character had been assigned to particular dialogues by this time? There is certainly no evidence that this had taken place, and the anonymous Theaetetus commentator seems not to discuss at the outset what type of character the Theaetetus has: even though one could imagine some controversy, if characters were already allotted to dia¬ logues, as to whether it were a peirastic, maieutic, or logical work. No need is yet44 felt to label the dialogue with any technical term of dialogue character. We have no evidence at all for the rigid application of character labels to all (or any) dialogues until we come to Thrasyllus at Diogenes 3.58-60. Even here it is possible that the characters were added later to the Thrasyllan catalogue, and so one who denied Diogenes 3.50-51 was already Thrasyllus could that this phenomenon was post-Thrasyllan. The repeated in Albinus, and of course in Diogenes,

that the source for plausibly maintain rigid application is but there is some

indication that the author of the Didascalicus and Galen would have used the terminology more flexibly. 441

date the work close to the time of Eudorus; see my 1983a; 1983d, ch. 4.

Some Nontetralogical Orders

57

In conclusion, then, it must be said that the question of the prove¬ nance of the classification ought properly to have two parts: (a) what is the origin of the division of types of conversation, and (b) what is the origin of the application of a given type to all (or nearly all) dialogues in the corpus? Concerning (a) it may be said that there are some signs of the character classification in the pre-Thrasyllan Platonists, and that the zetetic subspecies properly developed in conjunction with the interpretation of the Theaetetus; while it should be said regarding (b) that there is no motive for such labelling except for the corpus orga¬ nizer, and that there is real doubt as to whether it precedes Thrasyllus himself. When one addresses the question of a motive for the classi¬ fication of dialogues according to purpose, one is forced in the end to recall the tremendous interest in this kind of division, and in Aristo¬ telian diaeresis as a whole,45 shown by Andronicus. A Platonist rival of Andronicus would emulate his achievement properly only if he were able to classify all or nearly all of the works in the corpus according to purpose, and to structure his classification in accordance with the principles of Platonic division. This again suggests that the full details of the character classification do not antedate Thrasyllus. Lack of relation to the tetralogical reading programme need occasion no surprise: nobody was yet claiming that the dialogues should be read one type at a time. It was left to Platonists after Thrasyllus to try to coordinate reading order and dialogue type more convincingly. 45Moraux 1971, pp. 7off., i2off.; Gottschalk 1987, cols. 1115-16.

CHAPTER

THREE

Another Tetralogist

i. Arrangement and Interpretation in Theon Thrasyllus is best known as an arranger of Plato’s works as well as those of Democritus. For Diogenes Laertius he was the architect of the extant Platonic tetralogies; he was one of two persons linked with tetralogies by Albinus (Prol. 4 = T20). He arranged the works of Democritus into similar groups (D. L. 9.45-48 = Ti8d) and appar¬ ently provided them with a work of introduction (D. L. 9.41 = Ti8a). Such arrangements would be of limited interest to us if there were neither philosophic purpose behind them nor any other cogent moti¬ vation. If Thrasyllus had merely rearranged books on a shelf and recatalogued them, or even if he had read them, arranged them, and written introductory notes, then he would have had no tangible effect on the history of Platonism, and his activities would have been little noticed in antiquity. Albinus and Diogenes would have had little cause to refer to him over a century later. The primary evidence that arrangement went hand in hand with interpretation is encountered in the Arabic tradition. Early in the history of Arab Platonic scholarship Hunain had written on ‘that which ought to be read before Plato’s books’;1 thus he seems to have contributed to a genre of introductions along Thrasyllan or Albinan 1 58

Encyclopaedia of Islam, s.v. “Aflatun.”

Another Tetralogist

59

lines. Al-Nadim, making much use of Theon of Smyrna, talks of tetralogies, titles, and the like.2 Usaybi’a, and al-Mubashshir some¬ what later, mention tetralogies in their lives of Plato and declare that each member of a tetralogy shares in some general purpose (though each also has a specific purpose of its own). Usaybi’a also states that each tetralogy was linked to the next.3 Such a statement will come as a surprise to the average Platonic scholar, who will not be used to thinking of the tetralogical arrangement as especially fitting. We do not know whether this view was encouraged ultimately by Thrasyllus, whose tetralogical order clearly influences the lists of dialogues that follow in both writers (but without dictating it), or by Theon, whose book Sequence of Reading Plato's Books and the Titles of His Compositions is referred to by al-Nadim [Dodge 1970, p. 614]. But in my view either would have wanted his arrangement to be in accord with these principles. The very fact that Theon wrote an introductory work, one of whose principal tasks was to discuss the proper reading order of the dialogues, implies that he was prepared to argue in favour of improve¬ ments upon the Thrasyllan and Dercyllidean order(s), or at least for the superiority of one over the other; and yet we can be quite sure that his order was again tetralogical, for both al-Nadim and al-Qifti at¬ tribute to Theon the statement that Plato himself arranged his books in groups of four. Taken together with Thrasyllus’ claim that Plato ar¬ ranged his works in tetralogies (D. L. 3.56), this surely means that they considered that there was evidence both that Plato had arranged his works in groups like the dramatists and that these groups were tetralogies rather than trilogies (as previously suggested by Aris¬ tophanes of Byzantium); but they had no evidence outside the corpus as to what these fourfold groupings may have been; otherwise they would not have been able to debate the issue: the authority of the master would have been good enough. The object of the exercise was to rediscover the lost order and to present (hopefully) the original Platonic order to the reader. In this respect their aim was shared by Galen (?) as well as by those who claimed to follow an order of composition beginning with the Phaedrus and ending with the Laws (anon. Prol. 24); it is just that neither of the latter arrangements ac¬ knowledged the legitimacy of the tetralogical groups. 2 Dodge 1970, pp. 591-94; the material also finds expression in al-Qifti’s entry on Plato. 3 Usaybi’a is translated by Dunn 1975, pp. 127-28; al-Mubashshir by Rosenthal 1975, pp. 28-29.

6o

Thrasyllan Platonism

Before we consider Thrasyllus and Dercyllides, it would seem advisable to look at Theon’s views, which are, I believe, instructive in many ways—once difficulties of transmission have been overcome. Theon’s extant Introduction to Platonic Mathematics quotes both Thra¬ syllus and Dercyllides at length, and there is no doubt that both were respected authors in Theon’s type of Platonist circles. Theon himself does not display much originality, but he must have had a mind of his own on occasion, however plagiaristic he could be. Dunn [1975, p. 143] believes that Theon’s introduction to the works of Plato, as known to the Arabs, consisted of a life and a section on the works. The life was utilized more by al-Qifti than by al-Nadim, and indeed it can be shown from al-Qifti that Theon was following the same source as Diogenes in the first chapter of his life, namely, Thrasyllus.4 Al-Nadim follows his use of Theon as a source for Plato’s life with some discussion of the Republic and the Laws and then goes on to say that Plato wrote his books as dialogues depicting conversations be¬ tween others, and that he named each book after the person for whom it was written.5 This is a rather odd statement, and al-Qifti at this point talks rather of the persons who had requested the book, adding that they are concerned with various disciplines [Lippert 1903, p. 17]. But this too is odd. I suspect that the original had said something about zetetic works only (for many of the other works could never have had a name title), and that it had spoken of such works being named after the person connected with (i.e., claiming to have) the quality or skill to be examined. That would be a reasonable claim. There follows imme¬ diately a list of dialogues with name titles (omitting all others),6 which begins with what seems to be an intended collection of zetetic works. The list appears also in al-Qifti, though with slight changes that serve to remind one of the kind of transmission problems that such lists face; but al-Nadim is older, and he seems more reliable here too.7 There may be no absolute proof that the list has something to do with Theon, but the material on Plato’s life had been explicitly con¬ nected with him, and soon after will come Theon’s claim that Plato wrote tetralogies. We are thus reasonably assured that this material also stems from Theon. Moreover, traces of a tetralogical order are quite clearly present. The list begins: 4SeeDunn 1975, pp. 121-25. 5 Dodge mistranslates ‘the name of the person with whom the composition was related’. My thanks to A. Μ. H. Shboul for alerting me. 6 This has been noted by Dunn 1975, p. 132. 7 See Dunn 1975, p. 151 n. 38.

Another Tetralogist A. B. C.

Theages Alcibiades 1 Elippias Ma.

Laches Alcibiades 2 Hippias Mi.

Erastae Euthydemus Ion

61

Charmides Gorgias Protagoras

The twelve works make adequate tetralogies when taken in the order in which they are listed. There is, however, a natural division after the first six, which are more concerned with the education of the young (hence gymnastic?), leaving six more concerned with tackling experts (hence agonistic?). Of these works only the Erastae is regarded as hyphegetic elsewhere, and I have already argued that it was probably not present in the original lists of ethical works (Ch. i.iv, etc.), and in this case it would not have become established as hyphegetic either. It is concerned with refuting the false view that philosophy is polymathy, and has far more to do with the education of young men than it has to do with moral teaching. Next we meet the first Thrasyllan tetralogy without the Apology, a work that cannot take a name title: D.

Euthyphro

Crito

Phaedo

Then come the Theaetetus, the Clitophon,8 9 the Cratylus, the Sophist, the Timaeus, and the Parmenides. These are the remains of two tetralogies that have become muddled as a result of the contamination of two adjacent columns and the removal of two works not usually known by name titles: E. F.

Theaetetus Clitophon

Cratylus [Republic]

Sophist Timaeus

Parmenides (?)y [Atlanticus]

It will be noted that F is Thrasyllus’ eighth tetralogy, while E contains the same works as Thrasyllus’ second tetralogy, except that the Par¬ menides has perhaps replaced the Politicus. If so, then it seems that the latter has been reserved for inclusion among some other works relat¬ ing to political ethics, so that the Parmenides has moved farther forward

8 Nusser [1991, p. 149] refuses to accept the position of the Clitophon here and substitutes the Politicus, thus in my view placing the latter work in a very strange position, prior to, but in the same group as, the Sophist. 9 If the work at the end of this list (Atltqs) should not be taken as the Politicus, then it may be that Politicus has here been taken as something other than a name title (unlike Sophist, which functions here as well as at D. L. 3.58 as a name title), and the Parmenides might be the first item in the next tetralogy (G).

Thrasyllan Platonism

62

in the order, thus being united with the majority of the other logical works in the corpus. This, together with the separation of the Theaetetus from the Sophist by the Cratylus, would suggest that Theon had not been too much swayed by shared dramatis personae when deter¬ mining where a work should be placed. The pattern of the last three tetralogies in this arrangement is un¬ clear. Besides the dialogues not usually known by name titles (Sym¬ posium, Laws, Epinomis) and the Epistles, we are missing the Lysis and the Philebus. The listed order of the remaining works is Phaedrus-MenoMinos-Hipparchus-Menexenus-Atltqus (sic). If the last is the Politicus, as usually supposed,1(1 then it may reasonably be taken as part of the main list. If, however, it were the Critias (labelled Atlanticus) that stood here, then the probability would be that neither this topic-titled work nor the Menexenus was meant to be part of the main list; for all other works are introduced as dialogues’, while these two at the end are simply called ‘books’. By reading Atlanticus here we could explain the shift in terminology as due to Theon’s separation of these two near monologues from the dialogues proper. If we read Politicus, then we ought proba¬ bly to explain the absence of the Philebus and the Lysis by their having been listed as On Pleasure and On Friendship; whereas if we read Atlanticus, we might alternatively explain absences by the omission the final members of tetralogies:11 E

F

Tht. Crat. Sph. [Pit.

Clit. [Rep.] Tim. Atl.

G Prm. [ Symp. ] Phdr. Phlb.

H Meno Hip parch. [Menex. ] Lysis

I Minos [Laws] [Epin. 1 Ep.)

This reconstruction would have had the advantage that it did not break up the natural grouping Theaetetus-Sophist-Politicus, which must be considered one of the primary reasons for supposing that Plato wrote dialogues in dramatic sequences. Furthermore, it only rearranged in¬ ternally the contents of the third Thrasyllan tetralogy, and the Lysis would be placed together with the Menexenus, because the character ‘Menexenus’ was present there too. It is surely necessary to keep the "'Dunn 1975, P· 151 n. 39· Compare Dodge’s translation. Niisser [1991] chooses to put the Critias (Atlanticus) here. 11 Though superficially attractive, this line has one serious difficulty. The list of named dialogues has not itself been transmitted in tetralogical order; rather it has been extracted from tetralogies: presumably by Theon himself.

Another Tetralogist

63

groups Minos-Laws-Epinomis and Symposium-Phaedrus together and to retain the Epistles as the last work in the corpus. Such principles should be followed even if allowing that the Politicus was the last work named: E

F

H

G

I

Tht.

Clit.

[Lysis]

Meno

Minos

Crat.

[Rep.]

[Phlb.]

Hip parch.

[Laws]

Sph.

Tim.

[Symp.]

Men ex.

[Epin.]

Prm.

[Atl]

Phdr.

Pit.

[Ep.}

Here the position of the Parmenides in Thrasyllus’ third tetralogy has been quite naturally taken by the Lysis, which shares with the other works a concern with the primary object of desire. The omission of the Lysis and the Philebus might naturally have occurred as a result of their being known by subject titles, since this is a list of name titles only. As we saw in Chapter 2.1, it was also the case in Galen (?) that the Philebus was known as On Pleasure, and there is a high probability that the third work in that arrangement, the Philus, should be identified with the Lysis cited by its subject title On Priendship or (better) On the Friendly (Peri tou Philou). Perhaps Theon’s interest in the names of dialogues is responsible for these works having been known by subject titles in Galen (?) too. Overall this is the likeliest explanation of our evidence. A further consideration in favour of the Politicus being identified with the Atltqus is that there is no real excuse for that work to have been omitted. Like Sophist, Politicus functions as a name title in Diogenes Laertius 3.58 (T22), and wherever one of these works has been included on these grounds both ought to be present. However, I need not establish either of my reconstructions as the correct one; I offer them exempli gratia. For reasons that may become obvious, the internal order of the last twelve works of the corpus is not of major importance to me. The main lesson to be drawn from our discussion is that there is a great deal more logic in the list preserved by al-Nadim than scholars, taking their cue fromj. Lippert [1894, p. 45], have usually supposed. Muller [1975, P· 27 n· 4] took little notice of a list that lacked so many works of undoubted authenticity, and it was left to Dunn [1975, p. 132] to find the rationale behind (most of) the omissions. He finds traces of Thrasyllan tetralogies, with signs of the increased influence of the concept of dialogue character, and is happy to attribute the list to Theon. My own belief is that we must see here

64

Thrasyllan Platonism

(a) a complete list, in tetralogies,12 of a significant class of dialogues that were thought to be concerned with good qualities or intellectual disci¬ plines and to be named after a character seeking or claiming them, and (b) a further list of dialogues, not belonging to that class, that were normally known by name titles. The latter list had been extracted from a catalogue arranged in non-Thrasyllan tetralogies, but certain works either had been missed then or had fallen out in the course of transmis¬ sion to the Arab world. In these circumstances we cannot accept the general view13 that the list was not intended to rival that of Thrasyllus. Any attempt to find the rationale behind the original classification must obviously concentrate on the earlier part of it, which is well preserved compared with the latter part. That it should have begun with works that lead the pupil to philosophy and continued with those that counter the claims of rival disciplines is extremely helpful. Of the first six works, the Theages and the Erastae are both subtitled On Philosophy in al-Nadim,14 while the Laches is On Courage, the Charmides On Temperance, and the two Alcibiades are On the Beautiful, a strange title but one that picked out a quality in which Alcibiades himself was supposed to excel.15 Al-Qifti preserves a subtitle for the Euthydemus too: On Wisdom. Again Euthydemus and Dionysodorus certainly claim to have a wisdom (27438), wisdom is the subject in which Socrates instructs Cleinias, and the terminology of wisdom abounds in the early pages.16 We ought to be expecting some definite rationale behind the subtitles that appear here, because it is clear from the title given by al-Nadim (Sequence oj Reading Plato's Books and the Titles of His Compositions [Dodge 1970, p. 614]) that titles were being carefully examined, and if name titles were generally identical with those of Thrasyllus, then we must expect some innovations in the area of subtitles. In my view the first six works could be described as protreptic. The Theages ends with Theages becoming Socrates’ pupil; the Laches with the conviction that Socrates is the right teacher for the sons of Melesias and Lysimachus; the Erastae with the concept of philosophy as excel12 Contrast the approach of Niisser 1991, pp. 144-59. 13Cf. Dunn 1976, p. 74 n.io. 14 The Theages because of Theages’ desire for wisdom (i22e), and the Erastae because the man called an αντεραστής at 132C5 thought he had espoused philosophy. 15 Note that the terminology of beauty occurs at 10435 and a further forty-eight times in Ale. 1, though it appears only six times in Ale. 2. 1627ICI, C5, c6, d3, 272b9, d5, 273C3; the first two sophisms and much of the more serious content (including 277d-282e and 288b-292e) are also about wisdom.

Another Tetralogist

65

lence rather than as polymathy; the Charmides with Socrates’ promise to teach Charmides. The Alcibiades works end with Socrates winning over Alcibiades, and here there is also a feeling that the young man is being won over from something. Though the protreptic tone continues in the Euthydemus17 and the Gorgias, the apotreptic element now domi¬ nates, and the Hippias works, the Ion, and the Protagoras can be read in the same light. Plato is trying to expose the shortcomings of rival experts.18 It was Philo of Larissa’s education programme, known from Stobaeus’ Eclogues 2 (p. 39.2off. W) probably via Eudorus and Arius Didymus, that began with a preliminary stage of this kind. Philo compared the role of philosophy with that of a doctor, who persuades the patient to take the cure and counters those giving contrary advice. Protreptic and apotreptic are found to be philosophy’s equivalents here. Just as the doctor then expels what is causing the problem and introduces health-giving food or medicines, so the philosopher then expels false doctrines and introduces healthy ones. And just as the doctor’s con¬ cern is then for the achievement of the goal of a healthy constitution, so the philosopher aims to lead the pupil towards the goal in ethics and politics. Besides writing detailed works on ethics and politics, he produces something more in the nature of moral handbooks tor those who will not have the time for intense study. So Philo’s protreptic and apotreptic stage is surely related to tetral¬ ogies A-C in Theon. Removal of false doctrines and presentation of healthy ones might perhaps be accomplished by tetralogies E and F, respectively, since they seem to include the remaining material least related to ethics and politics. Tetralogy E has a predominantly logical appearance, which might signify that it is well able to expel false¬ hoods, while the tetralogy Clitophon-Republic-Timaeus-Cntias is pecu¬ liarly wide-ranging and undoubtedly aimed at encouraging healthy views (but often not necessarily true ones) about justice, education, the state, the universe, and the past. Note how well the Clitophon would belong at a point where the reader was used to hearing Socrates 17 For the protreptic element in the Euthydemus see 27521,

27805, 278CI2—282