Topography and deep structure in Plato: the construction of place in the Dialogues 9781438462691, 9781438462714, 1438462697, 9781438462707, 1438462700

Table of contents :
Machine generated contents note: Physical Space and Narrative Space --
Depth and Surface --
Plot and Settings --
Historical Space and the Canon --
ch. 1 Descent into the Maelstrom --
The Republic, the Oracle of Trophonius, and the Peloponnesian War --
The Long Walls --
The Cave --
The Opening of the Republic and the Oracle of Trophonius --
The Oracle of Trophonius --
Socrates as a Leader of Souls --
The Myth of Er --
ch. 2 The Menexenus, Socrates, and the Battle of Arginusae --
Dead Souls --
The History of Athens --
The Battle --
The Trial --
The Anachronism --
The City of the Dead --
ch. 3 The Symbolism in the City Plan of Plato's Atlantis --
The Present Past and Past Present --
Intentional Incompleteness? --
The Circuit Walls of Atlantis --
Oreichalkos and Platonic Metallurgy --
Geomancy --
ch. 4 The Slow Boat from Delos, or Socrates's Ship Comes In? --
Which Ship Is That? --
The Woman in White --
Reenactment: Saving Athens Again --
Socrates and Divination --
Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On --
The Delia --
ch. 5 Wrestling and the Fair Fight in Plato --
Plato's View of Wrestling --
Wrestling for Phaedrus --
Lysis: Wrestling as an Enactment of Philosophic Dialogue --
The Republic: Thrasymachus as Pankratist --
Wrestling, Dialectic, and Authenticity --
Theomachia: Calliope versus Aphrodite in Plato's Philebus --
War and Remembrance --
War, Conflict, and the Good --
ch. 6 The Good as Architectonic --
Alcibiades's Eccentric Orbit of the Good --
The Allegory of the Cave and the Myth of the True Earth --
The Good as Architectonic --
Interdimensionality.

Citation preview

Topography and Deep Structure in Plato

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SUNY series in Ancient Greek Philosophy ————— Anthony Preus, editor

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Topography and Deep Structure in Plato The Construction of Place in the Dialogues

CLINTON DEBEVOISE CORCORAN

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Cover painting: Charles Sheeler, American, 1883–1965, The Artist Looks at Nature, 1943, Oil on canvas, 53.3 × 45.7 cm, Gift of Society for Contemporary American Art, 1944.32. Reproduced with the permission of the Art Institute of Chicago. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2016 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production, Eileen Nizer Marketing, Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Corcoran, Clinton DeBevoise, author. Title: Topography and deep structure in Plato : the construction of place in the Dialogues / Clinton DeBevoise Corcoran. Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2016. | Series: SUNY series in ancient Greek philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016007294 (print) | LCCN 2016037322 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438462691 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438462714 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Plato. Dialogues. | Place (Philosophy) Classification: LCC B395.C653 2016 (print) | LCC B395 (ebook) | DDC 184—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007294 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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To My Daughters, Abigail and Alexandra

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Contents

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction. Plato’s Esoteric Conception of Space Physical Space and Narrative Space Depth and Surface Plot and Settings Historical Space and the Canon

1 10 14 17 19

Chapter 1. Descent into the Maelstrom The Republic, the Oracle of Trophonius, and the   Peloponnesian War The Long Walls The Cave The Opening of the Republic and the Oracle of Trophonius The Oracle of Trophonius Socrates as a Leader of Souls The Myth of Er

23

Chapter 2. The Menexenus, Socrates, and the Battle of Arginusae Dead Souls The History of Athens The Battle The Trial The Anachronism The City of the Dead

51 51 56 57 60 60 65

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viii

Contents

Chapter 3. The Symbolism in the City Plan of Plato’s Atlantis The Present Past and Past Present Intentional Incompleteness? The Circuit Walls of Atlantis Oreichalkos and Platonic Metallurgy Geomancy Chapter 4. The Slow Boat from Delos, or Socrates’s Ship Comes In? Which Ship Is That? The Woman in White Reenactment: Saving Athens Again Socrates and Divination Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On The Delia

71 71 73 78 83 89 93 93 95 103 104 107 111

Chapter 5. Wrestling and the Fair Fight in Plato 119 Plato’s View of Wrestling 119 Wrestling for Phaedrus 123 Lysis: Wrestling as an Enactment of Philosophic Dialogue 133 The Republic: Thrasymachus as Pankratist 135 Wrestling, Dialectic, and Authenticity 137 Theomachia: Calliope versus Aphrodite in Plato’s Philebus 139 War and Remembrance 145 War, Conflict, and the Good 147 Chapter 6. The Good as Architectonic Alcibiades’s Eccentric Orbit of the Good The Allegory of the Cave and the Myth of the True Earth The Good as Architectonic Interdimensionality

151 151 157 164 167

Notes 175 Bibliography 233 General Index

249

Index of Names

273

Index Locorum

281

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List of Figures

1.1. The Piraeus

29

1.2 A cross section of an archaic city circuit wall

31

1.3. A Bronze Age tholos tomb, often referred to as a beehive tomb

35

1.4. Trophonius from a 1675 woodcut

37

1.5. A map of the Harbor, Long Walls, and Circuit Walls of Athens

48

2.1 Dispositions at the Battle of Arginusae

58

2.2. The Dromos Road and the Kerameikos

66

3.1 Map of Plato’s Atlantis drawn by Lucinda Rodd from The End of Atlantis 82 3.2. “Red Mercury” (Cinnabar) in crystalline form

84

4.1. The topography of Attica

97

4.2. Black figure vase paintings (penteconter and triaconter)

101

ix

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Acknowledgments

Permission to use the cover image was granted by the Chicago Institute of Art. The painting is Charles Sheeler’s 1943 oil “The Artist Looks at Nature.” I would like to thank the following journals for permission to reprint sections of previously published papers. The first part of chapter 4 appeared as “The Slow Boat from Delos, or Socrates’ Ship Comes in?” in The Nautilus: A Maritime Journal of Literature, History, and Culture 1 (2010): 31–43. Chapter 5 was based on “Wrestling and the Fair Fight in Plato” in Nikephoros: Zeitschrift für Sport und Kultur im Alterum XVI, no. 3 (2003): 61–85. Parts of chapter 6 were previously published in “The Problem of Dramatic Expectation in Aristotle’s Poetics” in Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 38, no. 3 (1997): 285–294. I would also like to thank Leanne Jernigan, Shannon LeFever, Caroline McAlister, Fred Humphrey, and editors Andrew Kenyon, Anthony Preus, and the anonymous readers of SUNY Press for their help in the preparation of this manuscript for publication.

xi

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Introduction Plato’s Esoteric Conception of Space

σημεῖόν ἐστιν, οὗ μέρος οὐθέν. Euclid’s Elements 1 Def. 1.

I recall the first day of my freshman year in 1977 in Greek Philosophy, when I heard Dr. Darnell Rucker claim that nothing, no element of a Platonic dialogue, was an accident—that all the component parts, even, if not especially, those plot elements that appear inconsequential, were intentional constructs and thematically related. Aristophanes’s hiccups in the Symposium, Socrates’s covering his face in the first speech of the Phaedrus, and his hiding his head in the last moment of the Phaedo were all actions rife with meaning.1 What may, at first, seem to be insignificant details of the setting—sitting under the shade of the plane tree (ὑπὸ τῆς πλατάνου) and the mesmerizing hum of the cicadas in the Phaedrus,2 the mysterious effulgence of the red metal circuit walls of Atlantis, and the melancholy image of the homeless bees in the Critias—often belie deeper and sometimes cryptic thematic issues. Diskin Clay argues that we may take this as an axiom: “In the dialogues of Plato, it seems nothing is accidental.”3 This depth itself is not purely an accident of Plato’s poetic method, but results from his intentional construction of philosophic mythos, a mythos in accord with the logos of the Good. The Good structures all dimensions of the natural and human worlds, and it also serves as a guide for Plato’s construction of his settings, themes, and the various narrative uses of space-time in the dialogues. Time and space, whenever and wherever they make their appearance, are always artifacts of the Good. Thus, to understand the various uses and structures of space in the dialogues, it is essential to explain its relation to the Good. Plato, as a philosopher-poet, has special access to the Good. He formulates several famous mytho-poetic constructs to reflect the nature of

1

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Topography and Deep Structure in Plato

the Good in his dialogues. These highly spatialized structures are designed to lead readers to a transcendent experience of the Good. The Divided Line, the Allegory of the Cave, the Simile of the Sun, and the Myth of Er in the Republic; the Ladder of Love in the Symposium; the Myth of the True Earth in the Phaedo; and the Chariot myth in the Phaedrus is each a hierarchical construct that maps the Good’s relation to different dimensions of reality. Although superficially these constructs describe different places and scenarios that seem to have different purposes, in the end, each depicts the same superstructure; all of them present a path for souls to travel from the Realm of Becoming to the Realm of Being, and beyond Being to the Good. The Good serves concurrently as a veridical principle for dialectic constructions and an aesthetic principle for artistic constructions—the true and the beautiful. Thus, Dialectic is as much an aesthetic principle as an epistemic one. Thomas Szlezák points out, “There is only one way that leads to knowledge of the ἀρχή [the Good]: dialectic (533a8–9, c7–d4). Dialectic is characterized by a double movement of thought: the step-by-step (see 511b6: οἷον ἐπιβάσεις τε καὶ ὁρμάς) ascent to the non-hypothetical starting point, and the ordered (ἐχομενος τῶν ἐκείνης ἐχομενων) descent (see 511b8: καταβαíνῃ) from the highest to the lowest point.”4 This latter knowledge gained from the descent supplements the former knowledge of the Forms in-themselves gained from the ascent. The knowledge of the Forms is obtained from increasing abstraction as illustrated in the escape from the Cave in the Republic, the chariot flight in the Phaedrus, or the ascension of the Ladder of Love in the Symposium. In turn, the knowledge of the descent requires both knowledge of the Forms and knowledge of how the Forms can be reapplied to the Realm of Becoming. Plato’s iconic representation of the ascent to and descent from the Good is embodied in the philosopher’s escape from, and return to, the Cave in the Republic. The Socrates of the dialogues is Plato’s archetypal and artistic portrait of the philosopher-artist who has made the round trip.5 In addition, Plato depicts Socrates as the author of these famed myths. The Good itself is represented analogically by the sun. Szlezák observes that “[i]n the sensible world there is something that is ‘very similar’ to the idea of the Good and represents an (exact) ‘correspondent’ (ἀνάλογον [Republic 508b 13]) to it: the sun.”6 The light of the sun reveals the order of things and nourishes them, but it is not the things themselves. Once the Philosopher-King “has seen the Good itself,” he uses it as a model to put himself, the city, and its citizens “in order” (Republic 540a–b).7 At Republic 500d–e and 501c, Socrates describes philosophic

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Introduction

3

artists as “painters of constitutions” who “use the divine model” to sketch the city. The inferior imitative poet who copies “images of virtue” and “has no grasp of the truth” (600e) “produces work that is inferior with respect to the truth” (605b–c).8 The mediated vision of ordinary mimetic art brings Plato to critique all literary poesis that is not driven by a direct noetic intuition of the Good. Earthly poets, those caught in the Realm of Becoming, not having direct access to the Good, cannot represent its nature. In fact, their models are at a third remove from the Forms. In themselves, the Forms and the Good exist, as Socrates avers, in “a place beyond heaven—none of our earthly poets has ever sung or ever will sing its praises enough! . . . What is in this place is without color and without shape and without solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman” (Phaedrus 247c–d).9 Plato’s criticism of the “earthly poets” is well known and consumes volumes of the secondary literature on this topic; seldom studied are the aesthetic principles that explain the invisible structure of the Good that Plato uses to create the dialogues. Specifically, this book concerns his intentional effort to construct the non–spatio-temporal realm of the Forms and the Good in the narrative space of his dialogues. I take narrative space to include narrative voice, point of view, and frames.10 In the dialogues, space and time are fabrications. Plato’s failure to construct such an ideal world would make his art subject to the very criticisms he levels at the “earthly poets.” The Good is itself beyond Being (Republic 509b).11 The Good is an objective idea and as such the Good is not a being, but rather a principle of the order of beings, or the order of orders. Aristoxenus records Aristotle’s reference to Plato’s public “Lecture on the Good” (τὴν περὶ τἀγαθοῦ ἀκρóασιν), where apparently Plato identified the Good with the One. More than those of any of the other Presocratics, Parmenides’s conception of the One undergirds Platonic metaphysics. It would be difficult to overstate the influence the problem of the One and the Many on Parmenides and Plato. Plato inherits the conflicting tensions inherent in the strict monism of Parmenides,12 the idea that there is one unchanging substance that guides and underlies all other phenomena and processes.13 Parmenides’s depiction of the One in his Way of Truth leaves the Greek philosophic tradition with a dilemma: how can a perfectly balanced spherical, indistinguishable homogeneous mass explain a variegated phenomenal existence?14 The problem that Zeno, Melissus, and then Plato inherit is that, while the notion of a strict metaphysical monism is appealing, no order can exist without the introduction of some form of difference.15

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Topography and Deep Structure in Plato

For Plato, the One cannot be reduced to the Eleatic principles of being and non-being, as they provide no principle for differentiation of the One.16 Even at the level of the One, Plato needs to introduce a principle of differentiation to explain the generation of the Forms. The Tübingen School argues that to avoid the logical dilemmas of a strict monism, Plato introduced the Pythagorean concept of the Indefinite Dyad (ἀόpιστος δυάς) as a second primitive to provide just such a principle for differentiation.17 As Hans Krämer notes, “Plato traces these [Forms] back to unity and multiplicity, namely, by subsuming identity, equality, and similarity under unity, and difference, inequality, and dissimilarity under the multiplicity.”18 Once a principle of differentiation is introduced, the high-order Forms, such as identity, equality, ratio, symmetry, harmony, and so forth, become possible. This also explains how the One becomes an ethical principle. Again, as Krämer writes, “[a]mong its functions, the function of the ‘good’ as the principle of order and unity in the state and soul is particularly important. It refers to the uniting, limiting, and balancing activity of the one.”19 Justice is a kind of ordered activity; a good individual has a well-ordered soul. Likewise, it explains the constructive role the Good plays as an ἀρχή in aesthetics, and in creation in the Timaeus. For Plato, any poetic element, no matter how seemingly insignificant, insofar as it is good, must partake in some form of order as it proceeds from these two principles. The philosopher-artist must learn to recognize the hidden varying structure of the Good as it is reflected on all levels of reality. The Indefinite Dyad, as Dimitri Nikulin writes, is “an ideal principle of otherness (ἑτερότης) and inequality (ἀνισότης).”20 These principles are beyond any particular type of order, the same way the form of triangularity is not the image of a triangle, a triangular object, or even a particular kind of triangle (right, isosceles, etc.). The case of the Good is more abstruse; the Good is revealed in all the possible orders created by the One and the Indefinite. The Good, in-itself, can have no structure other than the objective orders that can be generated from the manifold ideas produced from the various combinations of the One and the Indefinite.21 Hence, the principles are not a definite order of any sort; rather, they generate order. To use quasi-Kantian terminology, they are the transcendent grounds for the possibility of generating any type of order whatsoever. In this book, “deep structure” is defined in two ways: 1) it is the order the Good generates and that the Forms possess in themselves in the Realm of Being; but 2) it is also the natural order that underlies the manifestation of images and objects in the Realm of Becoming. Deep structure is the manifestation of the Form of Unity in Being and Becom-

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Introduction

5

ing, while the Indefinite Dyad causes the manifestation of Difference in Being and Becoming. In this study, “topography,” broadly speaking, refers to the resurfaced narrative world that Plato sculpts to artificially concentrate the deeper order of the Forms and the Good in the narrative setting and action of his dialogues. This concentration of Form in the dialogues allows for a more effective and artistic expression of themes. During the philosopher’s return to the Cave, her eyes must adjust to the dark; they acquire a special knowledge that can see through the distorted and mixed patterns of the Forms reflected in Becoming (the Cave) to reconstitute the originals. Returning to the Cave teaches the philosopher to recognize the distorted ideas and mixed patterns of the Forms in particulars.22 The philosopher who has seen the Good, the Beautiful, and the Just will, once habituated to the dark of the Cave, “discern them infinitely better than the dwellers there” (Republic 520c).23 Thus, a central project for Plato’s art is to retranslate and reorder objects and images in Becoming so that they better capture the ideal and non–spatio-temporal nature of the Good and the Forms. Thus, in the realm of Plato’s dialogues, images, history, objects, actions, characters, and ideas are all refashioned from a higher perspective on the structure of Becoming. As mentioned, this knowledge has two dimensions—a knowledge of the Good in-itself gained in the ascent to the Good, and a knowledge that is gained in the descent from the Good (Republic 511b and 518a). All Becoming participates in Being, and, insofar as it exists, its existence is coextensive with some order. Becoming inflects the order of the Good and Being in time and space. Time and space as dimensions of Becoming are patterns for organizing objects, images, and shadows. Cynthia Hampton writes, “It [the Good] provides the unique ‘place’ for everything so that each entity may fulfill its own function, purpose, goal (telos), or nature, and thus contribute to the fulfillment of the whole. The Good first unifies the Forms by establishing a unique “place” for each within the whole structure of the Forms (i.e., within itself). This unique place defines each Form, or, in other words, gives its essence. The Forms in turn order the physical world. A sensible object is directed towards some Form and so is directed towards its good.”24 One consequence of the unity of the Good is that within the dialogues, anything’s narrative “place” either serves as a pointer toward the Good or, given its narrative frame, may be represented as a deformation of the Good, or as remote from the Good, or as moving to the Good. Thus, there is a normative dimension to place; an object is strange, or literally out of place (atopos) in a setting, or it is fit.25

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Topography and Deep Structure in Plato

There is a subtle interplay of Platonic metaphysics with time, space, and setting in the dialogues. The Divided Line, the Allegory of the Cave, the Battle between the Gods and Giants, the Ladder of Love, the Doctrine of the Third Remove, and the Quarrel of Poetry and Philosophy all suggest dimensions of reality beyond the visible and tangible.26 Therefore, to avoid interpretative confusions, it is essential to understand the different metaphysical levels that Plato uses to craft his topography and construct his settings. Often the reflections of meaning at one level of reality (i.e., on the Divided Line) are incommensurable with meanings at another level. The Divided Line maps different ontic, aesthetic, and epistemic levels and gives those dimensions a topographical expression in the Allegory of the Cave. However, the movement from one level of the Divided Line to another often stretches analogies beyond their breaking point. Here an old Platonic saw rears its head: the painting of the horse little resembles the actual horse. Across levels some properties disappear altogether, others are created, but most bear only an analogical relationship to their originals.27 The Divided Line maps this hierarchical procession of orders and objects that stretches from the Good to the Forms, to mathematical concepts, to physical objects, and all the way down to images and shadows. As the Divided Line illustrates, the “natural” inflections or representations of the Forms become less ordered, more diverse, and less easily intelligible the further removed they become from the Good.28 Images and objects famously occupy the two visible levels of the Divided Line (Republic 509d–511e).29 Images exist in two-dimensional space, while objects exist in three-dimensional space.30 Knowledge derived from hypothetico-deductive systems comprises the third level, sometimes referred to as mathematicals, the first dimension of invisible ideal objects. The image of a triangle and a physical triangle are not congruent with the Form of triangularity. For example, the Form of triangularity cannot be the shape of a triangle, or it would have to be a specific kind of triangle—right, isosceles, equilateral, and so forth. The Form of triangularity must be the definition of triangularity, an invisible, non-spatial definition that applies universally to all kinds of existent triangles. In-itself, the definition of triangularity is not an extended thing; it is dimensionless. But even the elements that construct the definitions of geometric objects themselves—lines, points, and planes—need defining. It is necessary to postulate these objects to generate Euclidean plane geometry, but their own status when understood as spatial objects generates incongruities. A point cannot have parts; it must be dimensionless, but if it is dimensionless it takes up no space. But if it

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Introduction

7

takes up no space, how can it generate spatial objects like a line; moreover, how can it generate a limit without having an inside or outside? Another problem Plato was aware of was the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes and the irrationality of a number like the  2. A triangle whose legs measure one unit will have a hypotenuse whose length equals the square root of  2. Plato’s teacher, Theodorus of Cyrene, “was the first to prove the irrationality of the square roots of the nonsquare integers from 3 to 17.”31 The discovery of incommensurable magnitudes overturned the Pythagorean conceit; the universe was not built from perfectly commensurable numbers, and for Plato it stands as another confirmation of the status of mathematical objects as hypothetical constructions.32 The Indefinite Dyad (ἀόpιστος δυάς) explains the presence of incommensurables in numbers and figures.33 Ironically, non-spatial conceptions underlie and generate geometrical objects.34 Thus, the definitions of mathematical objects are themselves constructions and also proceed hypothetically. It is only on the fourth level of the Divided Line, the level of dialectic, that a non-hypothetical concept of the nature of space is considered. That is where the idea of space itself is brought into question and the possibility of different kinds of space is entertained. Yet the introduction of the indefinite creates a complexity for Plato. Because Plato’s art involves the remodeling of the non–spatio-temporal Good and Forms in narrative space-time, it entails the construction of a narrative space-time that reflects, as far as is possible, ideal, eternal, dimensionless, invisible, unchanging, and recurrent patterns.35 It is these patterns that most closely approximate the nature of the Good and the One. But in imitating these patterns, Plato must use the only medium available to his otherworldly art: the superficial and ephemeral temporal activities and living patterns that naturally occur in and characterize Becoming.36 These patterns, which are already exemplified in an adulterated way in the artifacts of human culture and the forms of natural objects, are refashioned by Plato to approximate human activity, character, and history in their eternal and dimensionless models. In the natural course of human affairs, history, ethics, character, and culture will already to some degree exhibit these deeper patterns but in a highly diluted and disorganized form.37 Outwardly, Plato frames, builds, and trims his dialogues in the conventional guise of Becoming—mimicking the superficial appearance of things in the world, while on the topographical level shaping events to conform to the Good. Plato’s esoteric doctrine requires an esoteric method. The esoteric dimensions of the dialogues can be uncovered on several levels. Here traditional hermeneutic methods are very useful for

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Topography and Deep Structure in Plato

d­ etermining Plato’s intent. Form criticism, historical criticism, literary criticism, and redaction criticism all have a critical place in reading the corpus, but Plato’s dialectic method requires that these methods be reframed by the Good/One. As in conventional forms of literature, the dialogues contain hidden meanings in the literary symbolism, allusions, allegory, myth, irony, and actions of their narratives. To understand these kinds of connections, we should entertain “the idea of a literary cosmos” that “implies a nexus of interpretative interrelationships far richer than the linear connections suggested by developmentalist schemes,” as Jacob Howland writes.38 For instance, why does Plato repeatedly resort to different but related metaphors of metals in the Republic, Critias, Timaeus, and Statesman? Why are metals treated as analogous to souls? Is Plato using an underlying phenomenology of metals? Do the mining of the earth and refining of ores uncover our hidden autochthonic origins and unstated theurgistic connections? Plato fills his dialogues with riddles and puzzles: does Socrates really believe in incubatory divination (Crito), who is the Eleatic Stranger, and so forth. Even the missing interlocutor or unspoken words can take on the same significance as the recorded actions and speeches. The incompleteness one finds in the dialogues is also a Platonic device. Who is the missing fourth interlocutor of the Timaeus; where are the missing dialogues the Hermocrates and the Philosophos?39 Did Plato intentionally leave the Critias incomplete? Are the so-called aporetic dialogues truly aporetic, or do they reach unstated conclusions? Finally, are some doctrines ineffable? Many aspects of the Realm of Being, even given Plato’s plastic art, cannot be mimetically captured. The philosopher is compelled to enter inexpressible, unsayable, and unutterable dimensions of thought because the dialogues are all set, by necessity, in the Cave (world). In such a setting, because there often is no direct or perfect way to transpose the Good onto the Realm of Becoming, Plato sometimes expresses the nature of the Forms and the Good by structuring his narrative space so as to call attention to the incomplete imitation by omission. Another difficulty Plato faces is another artifact of the human world: the written word. As Socrates observes in the Phaedrus, the written word is only an image of the living form of philosophic discourse (276a). The dialogues themselves, as static linguistic artifacts, necessarily stand at a remove from their originals, the Forms and the Good. The Forms and the Good can be reached by dialectic, but ultimately they are ineffable, and their extensions and essences may not easily transfer to the meanings and references of concepts in ordinary language. Noetic intuition takes

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Introduction

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us to the highest level of the Divided Line, where thought ascends and language collapses. The evidence that Plato adopted an esoteric method is strong.40 Within the corpus, we have the testimony of The Seventh Letter (344c), the discussion of the inferiority of writing to philosophic discourse in the Phaedrus (274c–277a), and the ultima ratio for the theory of ineffable knowledge: non-verbal, non-hypothetical, noetic intuition on the highest level of objects on the Divided Line (Republic 509d–513e). Each of these sources attests to the limits of expression within written language. Given Plato’s own testimony in these three works, it is difficult to see how he could fail to use some form of “unwritten doctrine.” Beyond Plato’s own intimations of an esoteric doctrine, doxographers insisted early on, and continue to assert, that Plato maintained two sets of doctrines.41 Two passages mentioned earlier come to mind: the reference to “unwritten teachings” (agrapha dogmata) from the Physics (209b) and Aristoxenus’s report of Aristotle’s mysterious reference to Plato’s “Lecture on the Good” (τὴν περὶ τἀγαθοῦ ἀκρóασιν).42 To these consuetudinary references to an “unwritten doctrine,” I would add the greater part of the Parmenides (137c ff.). The Parmenides is a clear attempt to address metaphysical difficulties with the doctrine of the One. Because noetic intuition is ineffable, the doctrine of the Forms is approached in the Parmenides in an apophatic manner. The doctrine cannot be stated, except as a systematic and exhaustive series of verbal antinomies that point to a resolution that can only be thought. The contradictions result from the attempt to transpose the concepts of time, space, limit, and change from objects in Becoming onto non–spatio-temporal ideas, and the One. Concepts that play such essential roles in engendering the contradictions of the Parmenides—inside, outside, before, and after—cannot be applied to Being. Plato admits an interaction (mixing) of the Forms, but their modalities are very different from the changes of physical objects.43 As Plato’s transcendence myths illustrate, he does not see these conceptual and linguistic limits as insurmountable obstacles to a noetic intuition.44 The One and the Good can be thought, but not stated, without contradiction. In a famous passage from the Parmenides (130e), after claiming that everything has a Form, the young Socrates is reluctant to affirm that mud has a Form. Then Socrates is eldered by Parmenides, who tells him, “That’s because you are still young, Socrates, and philosophy has not yet gripped you as, in my opinion it will in the future, once you will begin to consider none of the cases beneath your notice. Now, though, you

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still care about what people think, because of your youth.”45 Socrates has already made the ascent, but on his return, his eyes have not yet fully adjusted to the dark of the Cave. Socrates has yet to learn how to fully adapt the Forms to things.46 That is, while everything in Becoming has a Form, multiple Forms may combine to compose images and objects. Identity and unity are established in Being, not in Becoming. The transcription of the high-level Forms of unity and difference into the Realm of Becoming can cause conceptual difficulties.47 Socrates uses the analogy of the light of a day in the Parmenides (131b) and the comparison of the Good to the sun in the Republic (516b and 517b–c) to show how the Good can reveal order, but not itself be reduced to any of the orders it reveals.48 After Socrates gives the sunlight analogy, Parmenides challenges his image of “one and the same thing be[ing] in many places at the same time,” but Socrates is rightly hesitant to accept Parmenides’s replacement analogy, which compares a Form to a sail resting over many different people. The problems inherent in Parmenides’s material conception of the Forms and the One are crucial for understanding Plato’s reasons for positing an ideal conception of space. Parmenides’s reification of Socrates’s light of day metaphor makes the One spatially divisible—a characteristic it cannot possess without contradiction (Parmenides 131b–c). Timaeus cautions about reading back properties of Becoming into Being: “All in all, none of the characteristics that Becoming has bestowed upon things that are borne about in the realm of perception are appropriate to it” [viz., the invisible Realm of the Forms, including the One and the Good].49 As if to demonstrate this category mistake, Parmenides immediately confirms his spatial conceptualization of the Forms by constructing a dilemma that makes the Form of largeness divisible (Parmenides 131d–c). The entire second part of the Parmenides then proceeds on this kind of category mistake and systematically examines the contradictions that result if the One is conceived of as having the characteristic limits of things existing in time and space.50

Physical Space and Narrative Space The artifacts of the Philosopher-poet stand in a relation to the Good and to the Forms that is similar to the de¯miourgos’s creation of natural objects. Richard Patterson observes: “The creator in Timaeus’ creation story is the divine artisan or craftsman (de¯miourgos) who fashions the visible and spatial images (eikones) looking to noetic, non-spatial models”

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(paradeigmata, 29a–b).51 Thus, both the de¯miourgos’s and the philosopherpoet’s creative inspiration comes from the same source—the Good.52 Just like the de¯miourgos, the philosopher-poet has a direct noetic intuition of the Good, and both artisans must conform their creations to the limits of their respective mediums. Still, the philosopher-poet’s imitations of the Good are not constrained by the limits of physical existence in the same way the de¯miourgos’s constructs are. The de¯miourgos must conform his creations to the necessities of physical existence (οὖν ἡ τοῦδε τοῦ κόσμου γένεσις ἐξ ἀνάγκης τεκαὶ νοῦ συστάσεως ἐγεννήθη) (Timaeus 48a) and the restraints of that “third kind of thing,” the receptacle (χώρα). The philosopher-poet’s artifice is limited only by the author’s creative use of narrative space-time in mimicking the order of the Forms and the Good within philosophic dialogue. Hence, it is vital not to conflate the creation of narrative space-time in the dialogues with the construction of physical space-time in the Timaeus. Drew Hyland is on point in claiming that [o]ne must note the irony that notwithstanding the pervasive presence of “place” in the Platonic dialogues, when scholars turn to a thematic treatment of this issue, they too often ignore its manifest presence in the dramatic context of every dialogue and turn instead to the more abstract and often explicitly mythical speeches about “space,” such as the famous discussion in the Timaeus. In doing so, they do justice neither to place nor to Plato.53 Narrative space can be constructed without applying the limits of physical bodies. Thus, it is somewhat ironic that the philosopher-poet can, through allegory, symbol, myth, simile, and metaphor, escape many of the mundane limits of space-time, while the de¯miourgos must operate within the constraints of physical Becoming.54 In relation to the Good, narrative space is logically prior to physical space—narrative space is constructed on a higher plane of the Divided Line.55 Plato’s construction of elaborate and overlapping narrative frames shows his careful attention to and manipulation of time and space in the dialogues.56 Plato, as a philosopher-poet, can bend the laws of nature. Nevertheless, a brief outline of the discussion of space in the Timaeus will help to show just how physical space is more constrained than narrative space. Dana Miller observes that Plato uses three terms somewhat interchangeably in the Timaeus when discussing space, noting that “a subtle distinction can be made between χώρα and ἔδρα—τόπος.”57 Miller cites

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several uses that can distinguish the terms. The receptacle (χώρα), a “third kind of thing” in addition to Being and Becoming, is a space where sensible things are generated in Becoming. Here space is portrayed as a kind of container independent of what it contains. The term ἔδρα, literally “seat,” is the receptacle (χώρα), understood as a kind of indefinite plastic substratum on which things become, and which both alters and is altered by the objects “seated” in it. The third term, τόπος is used more generally for a particular fixed place in space and time. Miller cautions that we “seize upon the empirical fact that all bodies are in place and draw a conclusion about [B]eing, mistaking [B]eing for what comes to be (the ‘image’). ‘We’ do so under the influence of a false notion of place, namely, that it is what is in relation to being, not coming to be. To think in this manner is for us ‘to wander in a dream state.’ ”58 Presumably, it is not only the notion of space as the limit of body, or being in a place, that is infused with materiality, but also the notions of space as a container and space as a kind of substratum that are additionally infused with conceptual residues of material existence. These problems speak to the necessity of conceiving of a non-physical conception of limit. The problem of the Parmenidean One, as Melissus realized, is that thinking of the One as a homogeneous spherical mass creates several limits: a center, a circumference, and thereby an inside and outside.59 This leads to other contradictions, such as the impossibility of conceiving of a physical dimensionless point, the impossibility of forming curvature from dimensionless points, and so forth. Suddenly the One is no longer one. Plato’s distinctions between different kinds of space may explain an enigmatic passage from Aristotle’s Physics. Aristotle claims, “This is why Plato in the Timaeus identifies matter and space: he identifies ‘what participates’ with ‘space,’ although in his so-called ‘unwritten teachings’ (agrapha dogmata) he gives a different account.”60 Possibly, Aristotle is referring to the Timaeus’s description of the construction of three-dimensional space in Becoming from two-dimensional triangles that form the sides of the simplest solids: pyramids (54b–c). It makes sense that Plato would also have to have a different, non-material conception of space for the upper reaches of the Divided Line.61 It is only on the highest level of thought on the Divided Line, the dialectic, that assumptions about the nature of material space itself would be brought into question. Plato’s dialogues illustrate that the construction of narrative places in the dialogues often transcends these commonplace notions of space, relying instead on nonrepresentational notions drawn from an ideal conception of space-time.

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To summarize, while at first glance the dialogues do appear to imitate naturalistic ideas of space-time and other conventional notions of Becoming, on a deeper level, Plato builds elaborate narrative settings to create unique spatial frames that more closely model the ideality of Being. In fact, Plato’s philosophic art must significantly alter conventional perceptions of reality, if the Good and the Forms are not things that can be captured as determinate objects in space-time. Likewise, Plato does not, as a conventional artist would, directly model the nature of images and objects in Becoming, but rather he constructs Becoming after the fashion of Being. The normal patterns of life’s actions played out through time and in space are conformable to the Good only so far as the limits of Becoming allow such conformation. However, in the condensing, expanding, and overlapping of frames of space and time—whether narrative, historical, or physical—Plato creates new ontic configurations that push the natural limits of Becoming.62 Thus the philosopher-poet’s creations are superior to the ordinary mimetic artist’s and craftsman’s work. The philosopher-poet intentionally and systematically uses the Forms and the Good as models, while the craftsmen and the artists imitate objects and images in the world. For example, the images created by the philosophic poet are informed by the noetic vision of the Forms themselves, while the prisoners and puppeteers in the Cave, having no idea of the true originals, end up compounding the natural distortions already found in things and recasting these idiosyncrasies in their representations and reproductions. As Richard Patterson writes, “[i]n similar fashion the carpenter of Republic 596–7 makes a bed looking into the Bed-in-nature; his activity, too, is analogous to that of the painter, whose painting of a bed is only an image of the carpenter’s bed, which is in turn only an image of the ‘really real’ Bed-in-nature or Form of Bed.”63 The craftsmen’s and artists’ imitations stand thus at a second and third remove, respectively, while the philosophic poet’s imitations, being unmediated noetic visions, are at a first remove from the Forms (Republic 596a–598d). Conversely, the imitations of worldly artists and craftsmen are highly mediated visions. C. D. C. Reeve observes, “We know that no ordinary craftsman can have access to the form of the bed in propria persona; only philosopher-kings have autonomous access to forms of any kind (2.8–12). Hence the craftsman’s access to the forms of the bed must be mediated.”64 In this light, the protracted wrangling to classify the literary genre of the various Platonic dialogues is misguided and reductionist. Plato is not simply writing a funeral oration or ­history in the Menexenus

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or a Homeric epic in the Republic, or creating a cosmogony or an origin myth in the Timaeus; his artistic form is framed not by genres, but by the rules of philosophical poesis. It is in this way that Plato’s dialogues escape his own famous critique of traditional Greek poetry; his art is not mimetic, if by that we mean that it is based on a representation of things in the world; it is only mimetic if by that we mean that it imitates the Good as the One.

Depth and Surface The Good constructs the Forms, and the Forms break through into Becoming in recurrent archetypal patterns in human character, political structures, religion, and cycles of cultural, natural, and human history, revealing a kind of philosophia perennis. Those who can see the Forms in the distorted objects, images, and the activities of the world see through the surface of things to the recurrent patterns hidden beneath the hurlyburly of Becoming. To use Jaspers’s phrase, Plato is careful to trace ciphers of the transcendent (Chiffren der Transzendencz) in the dramatic actions, characters, and settings he represents.65 In addition to using conventional literary devices, such as allegory and symbolism, Plato constructs worlds parallel to, or within, Becoming to model the immanence of the transcendent. He uses expansion, compression, superimposition, telescoping, and interdimensionality in time, space, and action in his representations to model the increasing unity of higher-level Forms as they approach the Good. Chapter 1 explores how Plato uses these spatial and temporal constructs to compound religious and philosophical themes in the Cave Analogy. In the Republic, the constructs of the Divided Line, the Cave, the Simile of the Sun, and the Myth of Er are intentionally superimposed to create one intersecting and synchronous vision of the Good. As many scholars have observed, the dialogues serve as symbolic paths to the Good. The Divided Line can be used to map metaphysical, epistemic, ethical, and aesthetic hierarchies onto the form of the dialogues.66 The topology of the Republic, the Piraeus, the Long Walls, the Circuit Walls, and Athens, and the motions between these features, are temporal and spatial sketches of the intersection between Becoming and the non–spatio-temporal Realm of Being. The artistic concentration of Form in the philosophic rendering of Athens’s topology is designed to penetrate to Being’s deeper structures. Another way of representing the Good and the Forms in Becoming is to identify repeated patterns in time and space. Chapter 2 explores

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the overlapping and layering of worlds in the setting of the Menexenus. Here the realm of the dead and the living, the philosophical and political life, and Athens’s past and present are overlapped in the setting of the dialogue. By focusing on recurrent patterns in Athenian funeral orations, the Menexenus creates overlaps in the space of both the living and the dead and in different periods of Athens’s past. In the Menexenus, the sacred space of Athens’s public graveyard is presented as a continuous present that manifests itself as a tragic eternal return of the same.67 The Menexenus presents Athens as a necropolis; here Socrates, possibly appearing from the grave and speaking from a graveyard, writes Athens’s epitaph and provides her a last warning. The Menexenus, as with the Timaeus-Critias, translates the timeless forms of political evolutions into time, space, and existence. Chapter 3 explores the Timaeus-Critias, and with it Plato’s most famous depiction of place: the mysterious lost empire of Atlantis. Plato evokes the mysterious quality of an advanced, long-lost, underseas city to help create a timeless narrative viewpoint. His inventive setting has so successfully tapped the collective unconscious that it has transcended its own frame within the dialogues. The intricate details Plato provides of Atlantis’s city plan have been overwritten by succeeding generations of overly enthusiastic devotees of literature and mythology. Chapter 3 investigates the stratification of topography and history in the Myth of Atlantis and Athens in the Timaeus-Critias. The myth’s remote expanses of time are spatially matched by the vast dimensions of Atlantis’s empire. The chapter looks closely at Plato’s elaborate visualization of the topography of Atlantis in the Timaeus-Critias. Atlantis is a seascape packed with symbols that, to borrow Strauss’s phrase, “bespeak political decay.”68 The Critias extrapolates a mythic past and fantastic future, creating a non-natural temporal and spatial juxtaposition of the same state, Ur-Athens and Atlantis, at two different times. In the Timaeus-Critias, Plato reexamines the question of war and the origins of war on the corporate Athenian psyche. Flaws in the incipient form of her polis and the natural course of the empire surface in Athens’s war with herself. The mines, wells, walls, harbors, and triremes of Atlantis become specific topics (topoi eidoi) from which Plato draws his allusions and thematic comparisons with Athens.69 Ur-Athens becomes a physical counterpoint to each of Athens’s and Atlantis’s features.70 The war between Ur-Athens and Atlantis becomes a kind of historical fiction that, through temporal and spatial extension, reveals new perspectives and hidden dimensions concerning the Form of Athens’s polis. In his history of Athens in the Menexenus and the Timaeus-Critias, Plato creates multiple perspectives on Athenian history by extending, telescoping,

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and ­overlapping events and places to achieve a kind of compaction and concentration of Form not reproducible in the natural reaches of space and time. Chapter 4 examines the Crito’s and Phaedo’s merging of sacred spaces. Plato achieves this by compressing Theseus’s voyage with the Socratic mission, his dream of the maiden, and Athens’s history with the island of Delos. The different spatial and temporal dimensions of the journey of the sacred triaconter, the Delias, become metaphors for Socrates’s divinely inspired life mission. Socrates’s dream in the Crito subtly invokes a long view of Delos’s history and, with it, a particularly heinous Athenian transgression of sacred space during the Peloponnesian War. Socrates becomes the true savior and true king of Athens, lifting a national curse and purifying Athens’s desecration of her natural allies. Chapter 5 explores Plato’s use of the metaphor of wrestling and combat to provide another kind of spatial model for the interaction of the Forms and the process of dialectic. Combat, including war, becomes a metaphor for inevitable competition of orders on all levels of reality. There is a consistent Platonic hierarchy of wrestling allusions throughout the corpus; the hierarchy from best to worst forms of wrestling is upright, ground, and pankration. The ranking parallels the hierarchy of best and worst kinds of argument and character, but it also distinguishes the most ordered and most ungainly practices. Socrates adjusts his wrestling to the character, setting, and argument of a given dialogue in order to practice protreptic. In the Lysis, Phaedrus, Republic, Critias, Philebus, Symposium, and Theatetus, using combat and myths concerning combat, he models learning through healthy competition, love play, pankration, war, theomachy, and instruction. By means of the elenchus and dialectic, Socrates competes to untangle, sort, and order the fragmented patterns of the Forms in Becoming to best reflect the order of Being and the Good in the world. Chapter 6 looks at the hierarchies postulated in the parallel worlds contained in the Phaedo’s Myth of the True Earth. As Sara Brill observes, the topography of the underworld in the Myth of the True Earth is a psychic map: “Socrates explicitly links the variety of souls to the varied character of the true earth, such that the topography of the earth mirrors the taxonomy of souls.”71 The topographical hierarchies found in the afterworlds of the Myth of the True Earth, Allegory the Cave, the Myth of Er, and the underworld of the Gorgias reveal a systematic structure. Plato symbolizes the epistemic, metaphysical, and ethical valuations of these structures as top-down relations with life paths connecting the various levels. The last part of Chapter 6 looks at how Socrates’s integrity is

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reflected in the depiction of his physical actions in the Symposium. The same technique can be seen in Plato’s characterization of Phaedrus. His character observes Aristotelian rules for consistency within the Symposium, but his portrait also deepens in the Phaedrus. In the Symposium’s characterization, the Good is apprehended in the constancy of Socrates’s, and the inconstancy of Alcibiades’s, actions, thoughts, and allegiances. Their loyalties mark their soul’s invisible alignment or non-alignment with the Good. On a deeper level, Socrates’s embodiment of the unity of the virtues is a direct reflection of his discernment of the order of the Good. The image of the just soul can be writ large on the model of a just city to make it visible to nous (Republic 368d–369a). There is a quantitative size of a city that is appropriate to its Form, beyond which a city’s desires corrupt its Form (Republic 373b). Famously, the Form of Justice is itself self-limiting—“doing one’s own work,” or, in other words, fulfilling one’s nature, and not exceeding it (Republic 433a–434a). The Form of Justice interacts with the Idea of the Good and the Form of Sameness when it is understood as a kind of harmony, proportionality, or equality. As the Eleatic Visitor notes in the Sophist, even the violent giants can be forced to admit that the activities of the soul are invisible and non-bodily but real (Sophist 247b–c).

Plot and Settings Plato’s predilection for liminal settings—the underworld, wrestling arenas, graveyards (see Chapter 2 on the Menexenus), dreams, prisons, battlefields, courtrooms, caves, and religious festivals—shows his desire to imitate the crossover of the Good into profane space. In these “thin places,” at the intersection of different worlds, his themes are best manifested. Thus the settings of the dialogues—the characters, themes, plots, images, and allusions— are conscious allegorical constructions by which Plato leads his audience to the apprehension of the Good. The physical world and settings of the dialogues reflects these same patterns. Hence, all the different forms of space that Plato represents—physical space, narrative space, dramatic space, sacred space, mythic space, and historical space—are artifacts constructed to conform to the Good. This approximation of the Good holds whether the action imitated is the panoscopic sweep of Athenian history or is seen in a character’s seemingly insignificant involuntary gestures. As Leon Craig points out, “a stammer, a lisp, a sneeze, or a blush” (cf. Phaedrus 234d, 237a, 240d) all can reveal unstated meanings and themes.72 The dialogues’ plots

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and arguments are often enactments of the themes being discussed, and as such, the actions and mise-en-scène are constructed to contrast with or complement the spoken themes. Leo Strauss believes that the unifying principle of the Platonic proems is often revealed by the settings. He writes, “This principle is revealed primarily by the setting of the dialogue: its time, place, characters, and action.”73 Strauss explains, “It is reasonable to expect that the setting was chosen by Plato as the most appropriate with a view to the subject matter, but on the other hand what Plato thought about the subject matter comes to our sight first through the medium of the setting.”74 Strauss cites the Republic, whose frame is the Piraeus, “the seat of Athens’ naval and commercial power” on the day of a “new and strange religious procession,” as an example of Plato’s use of the thematic rôle of the setting.75 And it should be added that it occurs, like so many of the dialogues, during the heart of the Peloponnesian War. The manifold appearance of walls throughout the dialogues also bespeaks a thematic concern for the proper relationship of Form to limit, and war to peace. How do the circuit walls of Plato’s Athens compare to the monumental circuit walls of Mythical Atlantis, or to the small garden wall surrounding the acropolis of Ur-Athens as described in the Critias? Do these images relate to the “little wall” (teichı´on) that, according to Socrates, protects philosophers at Republic 496d? In the dialogues the discussion of the dimensions of these walls, the materials of the walls, their decoration, form, and purpose, all are bounded by critical and normative Platonic assessments. Walls, as limits, are congruent with a thing’s natural form, or they reveal its extravagance or overreach. Plato’s transcendental metaphysic necessarily alters the inflection of the Forms in his settings. He modifies time and place to accommodate the rich, deep, and dense nature of the Forms. In other words, Plato’s constant appeal to elaborate temporal frames, intricate topography, divination, and recollection in the dialogues forces readings that go well beyond the immediate and passing references to conventional time, space, and change. The non-spatial, a-temporal, and indivisible Forms may well be characterized by manifold expressions in time and extension in space, parts, and activities that enact the nature of the Form, albeit in an analogical and incomplete way. Things in existence may participate in the Forms through activity. The key to these questions is found in Plato’s allegorical construction of each of the elements of the dialogues. As Harold Tarrant argues in his introduction to Proclus’s commentary on the Timaeus, “[a]mong the

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first tasks of any commentary is to articulate the skopos or thing at which the work to be examined aims. This strong unity assumption justifies a meticulous examination of every word in a text. There can be neither purely extraneous elements in the Dialogues nor any unit of meaning so small that it plays no role in the overall plan of the work.”76 For instance, why, after the description of the Allegory of the Cave, does Plato refer to the polis as a “hive”? (Republic 520b6). The image, as is shown in Chapter 1, is much more than a simple metaphor of sociality and consilience. Later chapters argue that the image opens up an entire subterranean world of interrelated symbols and allusions that point beyond themselves. Diskin Clay maintains, in accord with a long-standing ancient literary practice, that clues to Plato’s authorial intent may often be revealed in the opening words of his carefully crafted dialogues.77 Hence, the first words of the Republic are much more than a literal description of an action, place, or time. The first words often indicate the thematic direction of the dialogue—an ascent from the world to the Forms, or a descent from the Forms to the Realm of Becoming. In the Laws, the first words are tied to both the theme and the setting of the dialogue. The Athenian Stranger asks, “Is it a god or some human being, strangers, who is given the credit for laying down your laws?” (Laws 624a). As Thomas Pangle writes, “[t] he cave-sanctuary to which the three old men are headed (but which they never reach, at least in the dialogue) is apparently the same as the one where Minos met with Zeus” (Minos 319e).78 That is, it is the location where the laws were handed down from Zeus to King Minos. The location also harkens back to the Cave, the locus classicus in the Republic for the transmutation of original to copy.

Historical Space and the Canon The dialogues lend themselves to an intra- and inter-textual reading, and the dialectic meaning of the dialogues was not garnered in a simple sequence but often must be viewed holistically, retrospectively, or prehensively. The dialogues require additional interpretive steps beyond reading for the thematic context of one dialogue: 1) reading across several dialogues for thematic context, 2) reading across the corpus for thematic context, and 3) reading for the dialogues’ contemporary historical context. For instance, Plato’s critique of Athens’s history in the Peloponnesian War is foreshadowed within and across dialogues. Taken together, these different dramatic and narrative perspectives all tie back to the Good.79 Plato fills the

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dialogues with allegories, myths, metaphors, signs, and images that extend dramatic and thematic meanings across the corpus. The dialogues present the possibility that there is an overarching narrative structure among different dialogues and an intentional and complementary diachronic relationship between dialogues.80 Robert Brumbaugh maintains that Plato’s internal references signify that the Timaeus and Parmenides are extensions of the Republic: “We are invited by a comparison of their openings to see both the Timaeus and the Parmenides as continuations of the Republic along two lines that were not developed in it in detail: cosmological-political and epistemological-ethical.”81 For instance, many scholars argue that the status of the summary of the Republic (viz., the discussion in the frame of the Timaeus) must be read in the context of what that summary leaves out—all the philosophical sections of the Republic.82 The Republic is an ideal city constructed around philosophic principles; the Timaeus-Critias is the same city viewed from the point of view of Realpolitik. The dialogues provide complementary constructions of Athens, what is, and what should be. Thus, critics who are overly concerned with whether the speeches of the Timaeus occur on the day after the discussion in the Republic often miss Plato’s larger thematic concerns; whatever the interval between the discussions, this is not an accidental juxtaposition of accounts. The plots of the Republic, Apology, Menexenus, and Timaeus-Critias; Alcibiades; and again the Symposium and Phaedrus are built to form a continuous and epic philosophic narrative. In many cases, the traditional sequencing of dialogues is significant, as no one could deny that the order of the first Thrassylian Tetrology (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo) is full of crosstextual meaning and references. But one might more convincingly argue that the setting and dramatic dates of these dialogues establish the same sequence, and do so more surely. In some cases, however, the traditional tetrologic groupings of the dialogues can do violence to the inner connections between dialogues. For instance, Chapters 2 and 3 discuss Isabel-Dorothea Otto’s thesis that the Critias provides a critical background for understanding the themes of the Menexenus.83 In her article “Der Kritias vor dem Hintergrund des Menexenus,” Otto gives another example of a more subtle thematic crossover of dialogues: The autochthonic motif in both of these dialogues especially serves to demonstrate connections among topography, philosophy, and politics and will thus make the fullness and thoroughness of the place descriptions in the Kritias philosophically comprehensible.84

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The description of the topography of Atlantis in the Critias is a projection of the autochthonic themes developed in both dialogues; the characteristics of the physical world come to embody the psychic dimensions of the Athenians’ desires. More importantly, the alignment of human origins with divine and natural history in the Critias reveals the ultimate continuity of natural, divine, and human history. It also reveals a universal and proto-scientific approach to causation. This continuity is expressed in both dialogues through the deep structure of autochthonic myths. It would be hard to argue that any traditional grouping or developmentalist theory would anticipate that connection. The dialogues also create a synchronic effect of deepening overlays by showing the actions of the same city, Athens, from different perspectives and at different moments. The long view of Athenian history revealed in the Critias and embodied in Ur-Athens and its descendent, Atlantis, is mirrored in the origin myth of Athens reported in the Menexenus. A recurrent theme in the dialogues is “How and why did Athens find herself in such a desperate situation in the fourth century after such promise at the start of the fifth century?” Platonic images throughout the dialogues show Athens on a steep slide, and Plato creates topographies that suggest Athens is a morally lost city of the dead. Just like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, Athens is a city that mistakes her true condition. Plato depicts the critical junctures—Potidaea (432), the Siege of Syracuse (413), the Battle of Arginusae and the Trial of the Generals (406), the Trial of Socrates (399), and the Corinthian War (395–387), at which Athens turns against herself and her benefactor, Socrates. Socrates’s bravery in actions at the battles in Potidaea (432–429) and Delium (424 BCE) are background to many of the dialogues; his steadfast character models the Good in the Realm of Becoming and provides a foil to his contemporaries’ shifting allegiances. The dialogues analyze many of the key players in the wars and foreshadow looming tragic reversals with intimations of what is to come. Chapter 1 starts with an analysis of the opening words of the Republic. Clay notes, “The closing of the Republic returns to its beginning . . . Socrates at last turns Glaucon back to the ‘upward path’ in the final sentence of the Republic” (τῆς ἄνω ὁδοῦ ἀεὶ ἑξόμεθα).85 We begin with Socrates’s descent.

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The Republic, the Oracle of Trophonius, and the Peloponnesian War ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ωὑτή. Heraclitus, frag. 60, Hippolytus Ref. IX, 10, 4

“I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, the son of Ariston, to make my prayers to the goddess. As this was the first celebration of her festival, I wished to see how the ceremony would be conducted” (Rep. 327a).1 So begins Plato’s Republic. When Socrates starts his return trip from the Piraeus between the Long Walls back up to Athens, he is accosted by Polemarchus and crew, who threaten to physically compel him to remain. After Polemarchus’s threat of force, Adeimantus attempts to add further inducements; there will be an all-night feast (Pannuchis), and he asks Socrates, “Do you really not know that there is to be a torch race on horseback this evening in honor of the goddess?” Socrates replies: “On horseback?  .  .  .  that is a novelty. Are they going to race on horseback and hand the torches on in relay?” “That’s it,” quips Adeimantus (328a).2 The imagery of the horseback relay race ties the walls of Athens’s harbor and the Long Walls to the central image of the Republic, the Cave. Eric Voegelin points out that the opening lines of the Republic are allusions to Greek religion and politics, and he connects Socrates’s forced descent to the Piraeus to the thematic core of the Republic, the Allegory of the Cave.3 The Athenians, as the prisoners in the Cave Allegory, are arrogantly unaware of the subterranean origin of their politics and religion. The Allegory of the Cave is the central image of the Republic, and it marks the

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thematic movement of the philosopher’s journey to enlightenment and her soteriological return mission. The descent to the Piraeus in Book I, the Allegory of the Cave itself in Book VII, and the Myth of Er in Book X are all, as Voegelin notes, thematically and imagistically connected.4 Thus, the themes of the Allegory of the Cave are echoed once in the opening of the Republic, once in its middle, and finally again at the end in the Myth of Er.5 The Cave is a metaphor for the Piraeus as the underworld, a place where Socrates, just like the philosopher in the Allegory of the Cave, is compelled to return. As Voegelin states, “the Piraeus to which Socrates descends, is a symbol of Hades,” and the opening phrase of the Republic (κατέβην χθὲς εἰς Πειραιᾶ) is an allusion to the Greek mystery cults and Homeric mythology.”6 The connections of the cave imagery to Greek religion are explored in the second part of this chapter. The first part of the chapter, however, concentrates on Voegelin’s other suggestion that the Allegory of the Cave also contains contemporary political allusions to imperial Athens. “Socrates walked down the five miles from the town to the harbor. Down went the way from Athens to the sea in space; and down went her way from Marathon to the disaster of the sea power in time . . . For, with the unfolding of Athenian sea power under Pericles, the Piraeus had grown through the influx of foreign traders and workers. The Thracian businessman, seamen, and harbor workers had brought with them their cult of Bendis.”7 While I agree with Voegelin’s assessment of the political symbolism of the descent, I think he is incorrect about Socrates’s regard for Bendis. Voegelin writes, “As a citizen, with due respect for recognized cults, he offered his prayers to the foreign goddess who had come to the polis over the sea.”8 I think it is unlikely that Socrates would have shown “due respect” for foreign cults or would have offered his prayers to Bendis, or that he would have viewed the procession, whether the Thracian or Athenian, with anything other than an ironic approbation. Rather, Socrates would have contended that the Athens of old had been dragged down to Thrace’s level. The official recognition of the Thracian Bendis cult in the Piraeus had, for the Athenians, a political motive. Robert Garland observes: “It is evident from Thucydides that at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War the Athenians attached considerable importance to the advantages to be derived from an alliance with the Odrysian Thracians. The granting of a site on which to worship their deity would surely have been seen as a highly expedient way of consolidating such an arrangement.”9 Socrates (at least Plato’s Socrates) was never one to enjoy religious or political spectacles. Alan Bloom notes:

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The difference between Athenian and Socratic tastes, however, can be measured by the differences between a torch race in honor of the goddess and a friendly discussion about justice. Socrates’ piety brings him down to the Piraeus with Glaucon and puts him into the situation where he must discuss the city, and piety disposes him to care for the city. But his piety is rather lax; it is open to change and mixed with curiosity. He does not tell us the result of his prayers, but his observations lead him to the recognition that the Athenian procession was no better than that of the Thracians. Socrates’ theory stands above the enthusiasm of national pride and is somehow beyond mere citizenship. His piety belongs to the city [I would say the old city]; his thought does not.10 In fact, even the phrase “the goddess” in the first line of the Republic may be intentionally ambiguous. Socrates may be referring first to Ouranian Athena, the true ancient protectress of Athens, rather than to the Chthonic Bendis, a usurping foreign corruptress.11 G. M. A. Grube observes, “ ‘The Goddess’ [ἡ θεός] in an Athenian writer, especially where the scene is laid in Athens, usually means Athena, and it may do so here.”12 It is unlikely that Bendis is Socrates’s sole referent because it is exactly her associations with Thrace that make her suspect. The establishment of the Athenian Thalassocracy with its imperial tribute is soundly critiqued by Socrates in the Gorgias. Socrates makes an unusual and excoriating accusation near the end of the Gorgias: Men say that they made our city great, not perceiving that it is swollen (οἰδεῖ) and ulcerous (ὕπουλός) because of its ancient counselors. With no regard for self control or justice they stuffed our state with harbors and docks and walls and tribute-money and all such nonsense; so when this presumed attack of illness finally comes, they will blame the advisors who happen to be about at the time, while praising to the sky Themistocles, and Cimon, and Pericles, though they were the true authors of the trouble.13 It would be hard to miss the literal and figurative allusions in this passage: Themistocles’s, Cimon’s, and Pericles’s imperial policies have brought the plague to Athens and the Athenian body politic. In addition, Socrates’s

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mention of tribute is no idle criticism. Donald Kagan notes that “[i]n 431 the annual income of Athens was about 1,000 silver talents, of which 400 came from internal revenue and 600 from the tribute and other sources.”14 Athens’s luxurious existence and porcine growth depended on the maintenance, defense, and extension of its imperial tribute system through naval dominance. As Socrates observes when he describes the diseased luxurious city in the Republic, there will be a need for “all sorts of delicacies, perfumed oils, incense, prostitutes, and pastries.”15 In Book II, Socrates argues that the luxurious city, on account of its rapacious needs and other states’ envy, can only survive through the maintenance of a standing military force.16 In addition to the passage from the Gorgias, two passages from the Laws depict Plato’s disdain for Themistocles’s and Pericles’s imperial policies—the first passage, Laws 919d, contends that an ideal city should be located far from the sea to escape the corrupting influence of its harbor, and the second, at 778d–779a, holds that the city’s old walls would best be left buried. This last passage is perhaps an oblique critique of Athens’s rebuilding of the harbor and Long Walls in 394–391 BCE during the Corinthian War after their dismantling at the end of the Peloponnesian War.17 The harbors, docks, and walls are natural outgrowths of imperial Athenian mercantilism.

The Long Walls Fortification of Athens’s port, the Piraeus, began under Themistocles’s direction in 493 BCE, and the circuit walls were finished in 476. The Long Walls connecting Athens to its port were constructed in part in response to Megara’s successful defense and connection to its port, Nisaea, via defensive walls in 460 BCE.18 The Athenian Long Walls were completed in 457–458 BCE. As Garland notes, “[t]he linking of the Asty to the coast marks the moment when the Piraeus came of age. The total length of the circuit walls of both towns, combined with the Long Walls and Phaleric Wall, was greatly in excess of 30km.”19 The effect of this project was that, as Kagan argues, “Pericles had all but turned Athens itself into an island by constructing the Long Walls that connected the city itself with its port and naval base at Piraeus. In the current state of Greek siege warfare, these walls were invulnerable when defended so that if the Athenians chose to withdraw within them, they could remain there safely; and the Spartans could neither get at them nor defeat them.”20

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But as invulnerable as the Athenians may have felt, the Periclean policy had several major flaws. This monumental achievement meant thirty-one kilometers of continuous fortification to defend, and it meant the Athenians were penned inside. The length of the walls would mean they were impossible to continuously or fully garrison; periodic watchtowers were manned, but it was essential that reinforcements could be quickly alerted and swiftly moved where needed. In the above regard, it may be that the torch relay race evolved, in part, as a reenactment or rehearsal of emergency signaling and/or a military drill using the same ramparts and interior perimeter roads that would be used in actual emergencies. During the first year of the Peloponnesian War, when Athens was put under siege by Spartan forces, the Athenians were forced to abandon homes and farms outside the perimeter walls and live inside the protection of Athens’s Long Walls and the connected circuit walls of the Piraeus. The siege of the Spartans caused severe overpopulation in Athens, in the Piraeus, and between the Long Walls. The overpopulation was the proximate cause of the plague of 431–430 BCE, which resulted in the deaths of more than one-quarter of the Athenian populace, including a major author of Athens’s maritime policy, Pericles. Of course the ultima situ of the Republic is the house of Polemarchus (“war leader”), the son of an arms maker, Cephalus, whose fortune is due to war.21 The stage is set for the discussion of Athens’s militarism. Famously, Cephalus defines justice as the repaying of one’s debts. The house frames Socrates’s refutation of Cephalus’s definition: would you rearm a madman (Republic 331c–d)? We might read this question figuratively; is it just for an irrational Athens to be constantly rearmed? Following MacDowell (1978), Debra Nails speculates that Polemarchus has already inherited the house from his father.22 In the sequence of speeches, Polemarchus, of course, literally inherits the argument from his father (see 331d). Ironically, Polemarchus’s definition of justice—to help one’s friends and hurt one’s enemies—also inherits the same flaw as his father’s reasoning; he never asks whether his friends deserve to be helped or his enemies deserve to be injured, just as Cephalus never asks if it is appropriate that a debt be repaid. On a deeper level, the Athenian audience of Plato’s Republic would of course know Polemarchus’s ultimate fate. It is his misfortune after the war to receive a summary execution at the hands of his enemies, the Thirty, in 404 BCE. Sometimes Plato combines his plots with the action of history itself to create dramatic ironies.23 Thus, the larger historical context—events before and after the dramatic date of the Republic—must be considered an extended part of the setting, or argument, of the dialogue.24

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The Cave In addition to the worship of the chthonic goddess Bendis, the opening of the Republic presents several cave allusions. First, there is the descent of the procession itself from Athens between the cave-like “Long Walls.”25 Second, there is the procession that starts the Bendedia and the procession of figures on the road in the Allegory of the Cave. Third, the sacrifices during the festival are to a chthonic goddess; sacrifices to chthonic gods are carried out in caves or pits and at dusk or at night.26 Fourth, the chariot race in honor of the goddess is a torch relay at night around the interior of the Piraeus’s defensive walls. This race would look like the passage of shadows on the interior of the Cave in Plato’s parable. The spectators of the relay race would most likely be facing the exterior walls surrounding the defensive circuit road on which the relay would take place. There are two likely locations for the race course. The first course would be from the Bendideion on the southwest slope of Mounychia on a road that Garland conjectures ran from the Hippodamian Agora to the sanctuary of Bendis in the southeast corner of the Mounychia harbor entrance (see fig. 1 in Garland). Spectators could watch from Mounychia Hill. Another logical place to hold the relay race would have been the access road following the interior circuit of the curtain wall around the Lower Peninsula (Akte) of the Pireaus. The audience could then have watched from the Themistoclean cross wall that cuts across Akte Hill. The view from this hill would have been unobstructed, as the lower promontory of the Piraeus would not have been built up in this period.27 One can easily imagine the dramatic effect that would be created by the play of torchlight and shadows on the interior circuit walls of the Piraeus.28 The reflections mirror the Cave’s shadows, which are cast by objects ported in front of the inferior light of the fire—that is, the artificial fire that is located behind the elevated wall. It is also possible the race proceeded, at points, on the parodos and ramparts with the backdrop being the crenellations of the parapet. Fifth, the dramatic date of the dialogue (411 or 421), the inauguration of the public festival for Bendis (Bendideia), sets the events of the Republic right in the heart of the Peloponnesian War at a time when Athens’s citizens have literally become, after twenty years of war, prisoners of their own imperial policies.29 An example of this selfimprisonment is that, as Garland observes: The decision to include in the festival a procession from the Asty to the Piraeus may have been determined partly by the

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Figure 1.1. The Piraeus. From Robert Garland, The Piraeus (1987), 8. Rights held by Bristol Classical Press, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

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fact that from 431 onwards, following the abandonment of the Attic countryside during the Peloponnesian War, other processions, such as those associated with the Brauronia and the Eleusinian Mysteries, had either to be suspended, or, at best, much reduced in size. The journey from the Asty to the Piraeus, all of which could be accomplished within the security of the Long Walls, thus provided the only safe route for a leisurely sacred procession.30 Thus the procession had been forced by fear and necessity from the bucolic beauty of the sacred way to Eleusis to fit within the overpopulated clutter of the narrow Long Walls. If we look carefully at the Allegory of the Cave—the description of the interior wall, the road, and the puppeteers—even more parallels with imperial Athens emerge. Plato writes: At some distance further up is the light of a fire burning behind them; and between the prisoners and the fire is an elevated road (ἐπάνω ὁδόν) with a parapet built along it, like the screen at a puppet show, which hides the dramatists while they display their images over the top. “I see,” he said. Picture as well that along this rampart persons are carrying along various artificial objects, figures of humans and other animals, constructed of wood or stone, and all sorts of materials, which project above the parapet.31 H. L. Sinaiko translates the word “elevated” (ἐπάνω), but Grube’s and Cornford’s translations leave this term out.32 The Allegory of the Cave is undoubtedly the dramatic and thematic climax of the Republic, but Grube holds that “[t]hese shadows of themselves and each other are never mentioned again. A Platonic myth or parable, like a Homeric simile, is often elaborated in considerable detail. These contribute to the vividness of the picture but often have no other function, and it is a mistake to look for any symbolic meaning in them. It is the general picture that matters.”33 On the contrary, I think the image of the elevated road as a military rampart/parodos and the low wall as a parapet and the Athenian public being strung along by their puppeteers— Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles—is a carefully chosen and compelling image. Consider the passage in the Gorgias, where Gorgias claims, “You

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Figure 1.2. A cross section of an archaic city circuit wall. From R.V. Nicholls, Annual of British School at Athens liii–liv (1958–59): p. 51, fig. 7. The classical Athenian walls were higher and roofed over the parapet in the Piraeus. Reproduced with permission of the British School at Athens.

know, of course, that these docks and walls of Athens and the construction of the harbors proceeded from the counsel of Themistocles and, in part, Pericles, not from mere craftsmen.” Socrates replies: “So they say, Gorgias, about Themistocles; as for Pericles, I myself was present and heard him when he gave us advice about the Middle Wall.”34 Plato leaves little doubt as to whom he holds responsible for these walls. Here there is an implicit criticism of the Athenians’ reliance on huge, impregnable walls and a vast military. They are a poor substitute for the courage and improvisation that marked Athens’s defense during the Persian Wars. As Socrates says in the Alcibiades, “So it’s not walls or war-ships or shipyards that cities need, Alcibiades, if they are to prosper, nor is it numbers or

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size, without virtue” (134b).35 As the Atlantis myth will show, no excess of external force, massive fortifications, and vast territories will compensate for an internal corruption of form. The physical position of the Piraeus below Athens and the spatial relationship of the false fire to the sun in the Cave Allegory are parallels. The Piraeus sits downhill from Athens; they are connected by looming fortified walls. Plato could easily have had the shadows on the backside of the cave wall created by filtered natural light from the cave’s entrance, but he chose to have two sources of light, one artificial and one natural, with a long, connecting tunnel in between them.36 As we have argued, the long tunnel of the Cave is an analogue to the road between the Long Walls. The false light of the harbor’s frenetic commerce overshadows the true form of the city, a city upon a hill, with a modest and sustainable agrarian past. The luxurious and feverish city that Socrates describes so well in Book II of the Republic is one that has grown beyond the natural bounds of desire (372b–374b). The need for lebensraum to support the inflated desires leads to wars (373b–e). In Plato, psychic space is mirrored in physical space. While the Cave analogy reflects this political dimension of space, it additionally creates a psychic space. The chambers of the Cave itself serve as a model of the human psyche. As such, the Cave’s interiority marks out the mind, while the exterior space demarks the world and the forms beyond. Artifacts are constructed out of, and on the inside of, the natural cave, while the surface of the earth holds only natural objects. For Plato, the artificial objects of the interior cave—the road, the low wall, the fire, the chains, and the objects carried—all become instruments of distortion. The puppeteers’ constructions are used to deceive and control the cave dwellers by manipulating the objects of their perceptions and stoking their desires. Thus, the escape from the cave is an escape not only from the natural limits of our native consciousness, but also from self-delusion and the deception of the puppeteers. Here Francis Bacon’s notion of the Idols of the Mind provides an elaboration of Plato’s model of the cave as psyche.37 For Plato and Bacon, the source of the intellect’s deformations are manifold: first are those mental defects natural to the human as a species (the Idols of the Tribe) and second are those Idols that result primarily from some form of experience or acculturation. This last set Bacon enumerates as the Idols of the Cave, the self-delusion of individual prejudices; the Idols of Theater, the misrepresentations of cultural and social constructions and dogma; and finally the Idols of the Marketplace, the ambiguities of language. Because

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these last three Idols are primarily constructed through experience, they are easily stage managed by the puppeteers. The spatial distortions of the shadows become metaphors for the distortions of the desires; the artificial objects become metaphors for the artifice of the puppeteers. While for Bacon the Idols of the Mind are incidental by-products of our nature and nurture, for Plato, the puppeteers intentionally distort our natural instincts to prey on weakness. Particularly, they prey on the appetitive desires of the psyche (avarice, fear, pride) to control the prisoners. Nothing argued here should be construed to hold that the traditional metaphysical and epistemological interpretations of the Cave are wrong, or even overstated; rather, as with any allegorical interpretation, the particular political, psychological, and religious allusions discussed here should be seen as stratifications of meaning that add further dimensions and weight to Plato’s project.38 The symbolism of the Cave can be understood as a timeless and universal allegory, as Grube would have it, but how much richer the picture is when it also strikes home. Plato’s audience is Athens, and his imagery is intended to resonate with the harrowing war experiences that have been cast in the Athenian psyche. The Athenians are prisoners of their own wall, their own greed, and their own fears. The Peloponnesian War was the turning point for the Athenian Empire and Greek civilization—many Greeks in addition to Plato saw the catastrophic effects of Athens’s maritime mercantilism. Among these thinkers, Isocrates, Xenophon, Aristophanes, and Thucydides all found fault with the actions of imperial Athens. A composition date of circa 380 BCE means the Republic was written during another tumultuous period, the so-called Second Empire, when Athens was attempting to rebuild her fortifications and navy to restore her ascendency in the Mediterranean after the Peloponnesian War. In this light, the Republic is both Plato’s analysis of what went wrong in the Peloponnesian War and a warning not to repeat the failed policies of the past.39 In addition to the political critique contained in the image of the Cave Allegory, the opening scene has striking parallels with religious accounts of the Oracle of Trophonius. This oracle, although less well known to the modern world than the Delphic Oracle, was one of the major Greek oracular sites.

The Opening of the Republic and the Oracle of Trophonius As previously noted, the Allegory of the Cave is the central image of the Republic; it also marks the thematic movement of the philosopher’s

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journey to enlightenment and the return, for the Cave is a place where the philosopher is compelled to return. This theme is picked up again at the end of the dialogue in Book X when Plato presents the Myth of Er. Eric Voegelin observes that the first word of the Republic (κατέβην) is also a direct allusion to Greek religion and cultic practice: “The goddess whom he approaches is the Artemis-Bendis. This is understood by the Athenians as the chthonian Hecate who attends to souls on the way to the underworld.”40 Voegelin continues: The Kateben opens the vista into the symbolism of depth and descent. It recalls the Heraclitean depth of soul that cannot be measured by any wandering, as well as the Aeschylean dramatic descent that brings up the decision for Dike. But above all, it recalls the Homer who lets his Odysseus tell Penelope of the day when “I went down [kateben] to Hades to inquire about the return of myself and my friends” (Od. 23. 252–3), and there learned of the measureless toil that was in store for him and had to be fulfilled to the end.41 The Oracle of Trophonius encompasses many of the themes of the Eleusinian Cult.42 The fertile energy that underlies all life is celebrated in the Eleusinian mysteries as one continuous life force. The fecundity of the earth itself, plant fertility, animal fertility, and human fertility are all seen as one of a kind. The closer something is to the earth and the longer its durance, the more powerful it is. The hierarchy of beings the Eleusinian Cult posits presents a schema of powers that is the exact inverse of the modern worldview. The Eleusinian Cult, like many traditional chthonic religions, assumes an animistic hierarchy where natural objects, such as caves, mountains, rocks, rivers, and oceans, rank highest. These places are the oldest, most powerful, and most sacred sources of life energy. Next in order of power come plants, whose sustenance is itself rooted in the earth, and many of which are very long-lived. Deciduous trees even appear to draw a kind of immortality from the earth, apparently dying in the fall and being brought back to life by the fertile power of the earth in the spring. Third in rank are animals who live in the earth, under the water, and in the air: snakes, cicadas, beetles, birds, bees, bats, and crabs.43 Often the animals appear to exhibit a kind of transubstantiation, to shed one substance for another; they seem to have mystic powers of reincarnation that stem from their intimacy with the elements of the earth itself. Bees often live underground, and their harvesting of honey appears to con-

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nect the animal, plant, and human worlds. The Greeks treated honey as a preservative (even of bodies) and restorative; bees were often considered souls of the dead.44 Symbolically, honey becomes a distillation of the fertile, dynamistic life energy running through nature and is often a drink of prophetesses.45 Daniel Ogden observes, “Like cicadas, bees had a number of associations significant for necromancy: they were held to emerge from the carcasses of humans or animals; they were thought to live in caves; they had prophetic powers of their own, and had notably revealed the quasi-necromantic oracle of Trophonius.”46 In fourth place on the hierarchy are heroes like Trophonius, who plays a shaman-like role of a spiritual intermediary, connecting humans back to their own roots in the archaic powers of nature. As Ogden notes, “Trophonius’ name itself signifies fertility (trepho¯, trophos, etc.).”47 In last place in the animistic hierarchy come humans. Eleusinian sacrifices speak to the cyclic and dynamistic nature of the generative and regenerative power of the underworld. The later personification of these natural cycles in religious rituals, such as the Thesmophoria, and in myths and hymns, such as the account of Demeter and Persephone, are an anthropomorphic attempt to express and celebrate the hidden logos of these mystic continuities. The fertile life energy within spirits is transferrable; a sacrifice or

Figure 1.3. A Bronze Age tholos tomb, often referred to as a beehive tomb. Wilhelm Lübke and Max Semrau. Grundriß der Kunstgeschichte (Esslingen: Paul Neff Verlag, 1908), 14. s.vv. “beehive tomb,” “tholos tomb.” Public Domain.

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natural transformation of one form of life dynamistically releases energy to other things—the cycles of the seasons, the tides, night and day, and life and death—and marks the passages and exchanges of these energies. The underlying monistic belief in a cyclic fertile life force helps to explain the Athenians’ belief in their own autochthonic origins and Greek notions of spontaneous generation. Plato taps into the secrets of these cycles, creating a philosophic model and journey that creates a mystic connection of all objects in the Realm of Becoming to the invisible Forms in the Realm of Being.48 Plato is, with the images of the Cave—the shadows, the play of light, and the animals—tying philosophy to the Eleusinian mysteries: the postulation of a noumenal reality that undergirds phenomenal experience, and the noetic journey of the initiate that reveals the secret order of things and the mysterious cycle of life and death.

The Oracle of Trophonius The Trophonium, a cave-crypt oracle, was in operation for at least a thousand years, from the eighth century BCE to the second century CE, when it was apparently collapsed by an earthquake, fell into disuse, or was filled in by Christians.49 As Albert Schacter notes, “Katabas is the conventional term used for describing a consultation of Trophonius.”50 Early references to the oracle are found in Hesiod F245 and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo 295–297.51 In contemporary times, the site of the Trophonium was discovered in Lebedia, Greece, in 1969.52 In ancient times, the oracle was said to have been discovered when the Boeotians in Lebadeia followed a swarm of bees into the cave.53 There is only one direct reference to Trophonius in the Platonic corpus (Axiochus 367c); still, immediately following the Allegory of the Cave in the Republic (520b–d) there are several possible allusions to the crypt.54 In this brief passage, the term tropho and its cognates occur three times (520b3, 520b4, and 520d6), as do the terms k­ atabateon (520c1) for the philosopher’s return and descent into the Cave, and autophues (520b3) for “self-nourishing.” The passage in question concerns the philosopher who is self-nourishing (self-sustaining) as Socrates is. In other words, he who comes by his philosophic ability naturally owes no debt to the city, whereas he whose education has been cultivated by the city must repay his debt. Presumably the latter must be compelled to assume leadership roles in the city. Also, Plato refers to the city as a hive at 520b6. At 520c the philosopher’s vision upon his

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Figure 1.4. Trophonius from a 1675 woodcut. Public Domain.

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return to the Cave is compared to “waking,” while the prisoners are said to be “dreaming.” The Oracle is primarily incubatory, although other mechanisms, which are discussed later in this chapter, were definitely in play. In addition, Bloom picks out an interesting necromantic connotation when he chooses to translate εἴδωλα as “phantom” instead of the more conventional “image.”55 The occurrence of nine of these terms in such proximity seems unlikely to be happenstance and brings to mind Trophonius, the nurturer, and Socrates, both of whose lives are self-sustaining and self-sufficient. Pausanius (fl. c. 160 CE) gives his personal account of his experience at the oracle: When a man decides to go down to visit Trophonius, he is first of all lodged for a prescribed number of days in a building which is sacred to Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche [the good daimon and daimon of good fortune].56 While living there he observes certain rules of purity, and is in particular allowed no warm baths: his bath is the river Herkyna.57 He gets plenty of meat from the sacrifices, for anyone who intends to make the descent sacrifices both to Trophonius himself and to the children of Trophonious, and also to Apollo and Kronos and Zeus surnamed Basileus [king] and Hera the Charioteer and Demeter whom they surname Europe and call “the nurse of Trophonius.” . . . The method of descent is this . . . After this he is brought by the priests, not straight to the oracle, but to springs of water which lie close to one another. Here he has to drink the water called Lethe, in order to achieve forgetfulness of all that he has hitherto thought of; and on top of it another water, the water of Mnemosyne, which gives him remembrance of what he sees when he has gone down. He next looks upon a statue which is said to be the work of Daidalos, and which the priest reveal to none save those who intend to go down to the abode of Trophonius, and when he has seen the statue and worshipped it and prayed . . .58 . . . Inside the enclosure is an opening in the earth, not a natural chasm but an accurate and skillful piece of building. In shape this chamber is like an oven. Its breadth across the middle to all appearances is about six feet, and even its depth one would not estimate to be more than 12. It is made without any means of descent to the bottom, but whenever a man goes down to visit Trophonius they bring a light narrow

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ladder for him. When he has gone down he finds an opening between the bottom and the masonry, whose breadth appeared to be two spans, and its height a span. He lies down on the ground, and holding in his hand cakes kneaded with honey,59 he thrusts his feet into the opening and pushes forward himself, trying to get his knees, just as a great and swift river would catch a man in its swirl and draw him under (ὥσπερ ποταμῶν ὁ μέγιστος καὶ ὠκύτατος συνδεθέντα ὑπὸ δίνης ἀποκρύψειεν ἄνθρωπον). From this stage on, once men are inside the adyton, they are not all instructed of the future in the same way; some have heard, others have seen as well. The way back is through the same opening, feet foremost.60 When a man has come up from the abode of Trophonius, the priests take him over again and set him on a seat called the seat of Mnemosyne, which is not far from the adyton, and while he is seated there they ask him of all he has seen and learned. Then when they have heard it they put him in charge of his friends, who lift him up and carry him to the house of Agathe Tyche and Agathos Daimon where he lodged before, for he is still in the grip of fear and unaware of himself and those around him. But later on his wits will return to him unimpaired, and in particular he will recover the power of laughter. I do not write this from hearsay, for I have consulted Trophonius myself, as well as seeing others who have done so.61 The divinatory portion of the oracle is only a sideshow to what serves as the main event, the emotional purgation of the fear of death. The oracle is structured as a ritual death and rebirth; it operates via a homeopathic catharsis; it drives out the fear of death via a ritual reenactment of death and rebirth. The supplicant is nearly catatonic in being brought up, and he slowly recovers his “wits,” especially, Pausanius notes, the power of laughter. The inducement and careful cultivation of the fear before and during the oracle are clearly intentional elements.62 The preparatory haruspications from the goat sacrifices show them that the danger from Trophonius is present, while at the same time assuring them that the threat will remain at manageably safe levels. The emotional release of surviving one’s death produces a powerful abreaction, perhaps even a life-altering experience of rebirth. Another account of a consultation with Trophonius comes from Plutarch’s work (ca. 46–120 AD) De Genio Socratis (589F–592E):

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If we assume Timarchus, then, in his desire to learn the nature of Socrates’ sign [the Daimon], acted like the high-spirited young initiate in philosophy he was: consulting to no one but Cebes and me, he descended into the crypt of Trophonius, first performing the rites that are customary at the oracle. He remained underground two nights and a day, and most people had already given up hope, and his family was lamenting him for dead, when he came up in the morning with a radiant countenance. He did obeisance to the god, and as soon as he had escaped the crowd, he began to tell us of the many wonders he had seen and heard. He said that on descending into the oracular crypt (καταβὰς εἰς τὸ μαντεῖον) his first experience was of profound darkness; next, after a prayer, he lay a long time not clearly aware whether he was awake or dreaming. It did seem to him, however, that at the same moment he heard a crash and was struck on the head, and that the sutures parted and released his soul . . . soul drifts up . . . next it faintly caught the whir or something revolving overhead with a pleasant sound. At this point in the account, as Plutarch narrates, Timarchus is shown a kind of microcosmos of the underworld, the heavens, and earth: But looking down he saw a great abyss, round as though a sphere had been cut away; most terrible and deep it was, and filled with a mass of darkness that did not remain at rest, but was agitated and often welled up. From it could be heard innumerable roars and groans of animals, the wailing of men and women, the noise and uproar of every kind, coming faintly from far down in the depths, all of which startled him not a little. After an interval someone he did not see addressed him: “Timarchus, what would you have me explain?” “Everything,” he answered; “for what is here that is not marvelous?” “Nay,” the voice replied, “in the higher regions we others have but little part, as they belong to the gods; but you may, if you wish, inquire into the portion of Persephone” [the sub-lunar sphere].

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This last section seems to be relating exactly the kind of knowledge that Socrates complains is attributed to him in the Apology and the Clouds—that “he busies himself studying things in the sky and below the earth.”63 Plutarch’s dialogue now enters a long excursus (591b–592e) that sketches the cosmological structure of the world and then describes the reincarnation of souls. Plutarch’s account of Timarchus’s consultation with Trophonius reveals a clear gnostic concern for a physical and spiritual dualism; the body contaminates and retards the soul from achieving its natural ethereal wanderings. Plutarch’s account is similar to the one Socrates sketches in the Phaedo (64c–69d) except that in Plutarch’s, the evil of the body is even more fully reified. Finally, Timarchus’s journey comes to an abrupt end: When the voice ceased Timarchus desired to turn (he said) and see who the speaker was. But once more he felt a sharp pain in his head, as though it had been violently compressed, and he lost all recognition and awareness of what was going on about him; but he presently recovered and saw that he was lying in the crypt of Trophonius near the entrance, at the very spot where he had first laid himself down.64 It would appear that, after two nights and a day in the cave, Timarchus saw stars before receiving a bump on the head.65 Both Pausanius’s and Plutarch’s accounts make it clear that the divinatory portion of the oracle was a red herring and that the oracle’s real purpose was to induce a loss of self that allowed for the ritual descent/death and ascent/rebirth. It is significant that at the moment of psychological induction into the oracle (the mock death), both accounts contain descriptions of “revolving,” falling, and being “drawn under,” as the dizzying effects of the sensory deprivation and lack of external references would naturally create an experience of vertigo. Once the visitor has arrived in the underworld, the hallucinatory effect of the prolonged sensory deprivation, fear, and the drug, if used, would leave the supplicant in a highly suggestible state. Various theories and combinations of theories have been postulated to explain the exact psychological mechanism of the oracle. Incubation, intoxication, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, shock, psychological suggestion, or even trauma (a blow to the head as in the Timarchus consultation) have all been proposed. Another possibility is that the oracle also involves the ingestion of a psychotropic drug.66 There is some evidence for the use of each

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of these techniques, and it would seem probable that their use in some combination would be the most efficacious.

Socrates as a Leader of Souls A direct reference to the Trophonium occurs in Aristophanes’s lampoon of Socrates in the Clouds. Here, when Socrates invites Strepsiades to descend into the thinkery, Strepsiades compares it to the crypt, proclaiming: Strep. Ah me, unhappy! I shall become half-dead (he¯mithne¯s). Soc. Don’t chatter; but quickly follow me hither with smartness. Strep. Then give me first into my hands a honeyed cake; for I am afraid of descending within, as if into the cave of Trophonius.67 It is likely that Plato answers Aristophanes’s jest in the Phaedo at 64c when he writes, “And they (hoi polloi) are not at all aware in what sense the true philosophers are half dead, or in what sense they deserve death, or what sort of death they deserve.”68 Plato is eager to show, contra Aristophanes’s characterization, that Socrates is not a conjurer who leads people down into the underworld, but rather a philosopher who, as in the Cave Analogy, reluctantly returns to the cave to lead people up and out. In the Phaedrus, Socrates asks, “Is not rhetoric in its entire nature an art which leads the soul by means of words?” (ἆρ᾽ οὖν οὐ τὸ μὲν ὅλον ἡ ῥητορικὴ ἂν εἴη τέχνη ψυχαγωγία τις διὰ λόγων). Plato’s criticism of rhetorical psychagogia at 261a in the Phaedrus is that he does not have an object beyond words, that is, that it is persuasive through style alone without concern for content (Phaedrus 262c–d).69 Literally, this term means a leading of the soul. Originally the term is drawn from Greek religion, where it can have dual meanings of conjuring up the dead or of being led down to the underworld. In a passage cited by D. W. Lucas from Aeschylus’s Persians, Dareios’s ghost addresses the Persian chorus after news of the defeat of the Persians has reached them. Dareios exclaims, “But you are performing a dirge, standing near the tomb, and pitifully summon me, raising your voices in necromantic wails. Leaving Hades is especially difficult, and the gods of the underworld are better at taking than releasing.”70 As stated, psychagogia can have dual meanings: the leading of one into the underworld or, as in the Aeschylus passage, the bringing up of the dead. Elizabeth Asmis notes, “From this use, there evolved the

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notion of influencing the souls of living people, with the connotations of either ‘alluring’ or ‘beguiling’ them.”71 But what makes Asmis’s theory applicable to philosophic protreptic? Why is Socrates’s use of the term in the Phaedrus at 271 different than at 261? The simple claim that the rhetorician must know the kinds of soul there are does not assure us that the rhetorical craft will be used to a good end. How is true protreptic to be distinguished from false psychic leadings? In her article “Psychagogia in Plato’s Phaedrus,” Elizabeth Asmis contends that this passage is not Plato’s last word on psychagogia—that the term has both dual meanings and dual roles in the dialogue: The notion of psychagogia [thus] has a pivotal role in the Phaedrus. Its importance moreover is not confined to the latter part of the dialogue. It serves as a theme for the entire dialogue. Just as in his dialectical discussion Socrates moves from the notion of a sham rhetoric to that of a genuine rhetoric, so the action of the dialogue as a whole moves from a display of pseudo-rhetoric to a revelation of a genuine rhetoric; and is a transition from psychagogia as beguilement to psychagogia as guidance of the soul. Throughout this progression Socrates serves as an example of true rhetorician and true “psychagogue.” Against Aristophanes’ portrait [Birds, 1555: ψυχαγωγεῖ Σωκράτης and Clouds, 506ff.] of Socrates as conjuror of souls, Plato sets a portrait of Socrates as a “psychagogue who guides souls to the truth by seeking it himself.”72 Asmis (1986) argues that this pivotal shift in meaning occurs at 271c in the Phaedrus, where “Socrates now relies on the etymology of the term psychagogia to reveal its underlying true meaning, guidance of the soul.”73 At 271c–d, Plato writes, “Since the nature of speech is in fact to direct the soul, whoever intends to be a rhetorician must know how many kinds of soul there are” “(ἐπειδὴ λόγου δύναμις τυγχάνει ψυχαγωγία οὖσα, τὸν μέλλοντα ῥητορικὸν ἔσεσθαι ἀνάγκη εἰδέναι ψυχὴ ὅσα εἴδη ἔχει).74 Asmis sees the plot movements of the Phaedrus as a psychic reversal, where Socrates plays a protreptic role in turning Phaedrus’s passion from Lysias to Socrates, from Lysian rhetoric to philosophy, and from seduction, force, and beguilement to friendship, cooperation, and honesty. More generally, Plato is distinguishing psychic leadings that involve loss of self from those that preserve self-consciousness and understanding. Inspiration that preserves reason and self-awareness involves an ascent to the divine, while psychic unions drag us down into our more bestial natures.

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At 244 and following, a classification of states of manic inspiration is distinguished by degrees of mental self-possession. The highest form of divinely inspired mania is described in Plato’s Phaedrus at 244a.75 E. R. Dodds outlines the four types of mania as follows:

1) Prophetic Madness, whose patron god is Apollo.



2) Telestic Mania, or Ritual Madness, whose patron god is Dionysus.



3) Poetic Madness, inspired by the Muses.



4) Erotic Madness, inspired by Aphrodite and Eros.76

In the first three types of madness, the gods create the mania in the human agent directly; in the last, erotic madness, they excite a desire for an object outside of and other than the lover. Prophetic, Telestic, and Poetic madness require trances or possession states that tend toward psychic unions with their objects. The Muses, Dionysus and the oracular spirits are fused with their subjects; in contrast, erotic madness or enchantment requires a milder possession state in which there is a self-conscious awareness of the separation of the lover from the object of inspiration. The beauty or goodness of the beloved is a mediated expression of the qualities of the ultimate object. Philosophic eros is dependent upon and enhanced by the heightened self-awareness of difference between lover and object. The enchantment of the philosopher preserves the expressive quality of the beloved’s otherness. On the contrary, Prophetic Madness works when the prophetess is possessed, not when she is under self-control.77 Telestic Madness (Phaedrus 244d–e) also requires trance states. Again, the poet not possessed (exercising self-control) by the muses will be exceeded by the possessed poets (Phaedrus 245a). Thus, erotic madness is superior to the other three types of divinely inspired madness exactly because it preserves the difference between lover and beloved. The one condition under which erotic madness is vitiated and becomes identical to the other three forms of madness is when the lover loses his self-control and has his way with the beloved (Phaedrus 256a–d). In this case, the intercourse is physical and results in a psychic union, or loss of self, just like the other three forms of madness. There are several intriguing structural similarities between the Allegory of the Cave and the oracle. One physical parallel between the Allegory of the Cave and the Oracle of Trophonius is the feature of the cave within the cave. In both accounts, an exterior cave forms a passageway between

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two worlds. Both caves have points where human architecture, masonry walls, are superimposed over a natural cave.78 Walter Burkert observes that caves first served civilizations as habitations, later burial grounds, and finally as sanctuaries.79 Guthrie notes A. B. Cook’s explanation of the architecture at the oracle: “the oven-like shape of the sunken entrance to the adyton” shows “that it was the tholos or beehive-tomb of an old Boeotian king.”80 In the classical world, these Late Bronze Age tombs were often mistaken as treasuries. These last two facts help to explain Trophonius’s legendary reputation as an architect of a treasury and thief. The Trophonium has several mystic dimensions: first, it is a place of great antiquity; second, it is a numinous space that contains Trophonius; and last, it is the location of a liminal experience of death and rebirth. In the Trophonium, the interior cave likely holds the priests who may manipulate machinery to provide the sound effects and lighting, just as the puppeteers manipulate the figures they carry across the elevated road in the interior chamber of Plato’s cave to provide the play of shadow puppets for the prisoners. For Plato, the knowledge of the prisoners is shifting and uncertain; even the best at guessing the progression and shapes of the shadows on the back wall of the cave can only do so with likelihood. While many other parallels exist between the Oracle of Trophonius and Plato’s Republic, one striking juxtaposition between their themes is that the Republic includes a critique of the kind of homeopathic purgation of the ritual death and rebirth contained in the oracle, while exploring conversely how philosophy presents the “true art of dying.”81 While Plato makes extensive use of the Eleusinian frame, theme, terminology, and the imagery of descent, he, at the same time, intentionally reverses the religious ritual; knowledge is gained not from the descent but rather from the ascent and in an escape from the Cave. The movement to mystical gnosis is from dark to light, not from light to dark. Another physical parallel is the compelled entrance into the Cave. In Book VII of the Republic, the philosopher is compelled to bring knowledge back to the Cave, not out of it—just as Socrates is compelled to return to Cephalus’s house in the Piraeus by Polemarchus and his press gang.

The Myth of Er For Plato, the proper release from the fear of death comes only from the life of philosophy, where it is “the aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner to practice for dying and death.”82 Ethically, the

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Oracle of Trophonius is deeply disturbing in a Platonic sense; nothing has been learned through this manic catharsis, and sham divinations are taken for wisdom. Superstitions about death and the nature of the underworld have only been increased, and fears bought off only temporarily. The moral character and self-knowledge of the visitor to Trophonius is in no way improved. The fear of death is a distraction from the philosophical life, a distraction that must be overcome through the pursuit of philosophy. Socrates warns in the Apology, “For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.”83 Feeling good about oneself and a release from guilt are themselves ­dangerous if they come with no greater self-knowledge. Socrates extends his forewarning, “The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding iniquity; for that runs faster than death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick and the faster runner, who is iniquity, has overtaken them.”84 Time and again in the dialogues, Socrates criticizes the use of extrinsic motivations (such as prisons, fines, and death) as tools for moral improvement and instruction.85 Consider Socrates’s strongest rebuke of Crito: “So unless we can find better principles on this occasion, you can be quite sure that I shall not agree with you—not even if the power of the people conjure up fresh hordes of bogies (μορμολύττηται) to terrify our childish minds.”86 Consider also the passage in the Phaedo where Socrates claims the real philosopher is not afraid of death: “Then Simmias as the true philosophers are ever studying death, to them, of all men, death is the least terrible.”87 Philosophy is thus the true cure for the Cave and the real cure for ignorance. While in the Oracle of Trophonius the mystical gnosis is achieved in a descent that involves visions of shadows and strange sounds—much like Plato’s description of the back wall of the Cave—the philosopher’s knowledge, on the other hand, is achieved in an ascent from the Cave—through knowledge.88 Moreover, the knowledge the philosopher gains from the Myth of Er is the knowledge of how to live a good life, and the causal consequences of people’s good and evil choices and actions are revealed outside the limited perspective of the present: “No divinity shall cast lots for you, but you shall choose your own destiny.”89 This knowledge is also based on Mnemosyne, but it is not a memory of that “which gives him remembrance of what he sees when he has gone down”; rather, it is based on what moral lessons they can recollect from the memory of their previous lives. On the contrary,

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the oracle’s catharsis is a release from the consequences of one’s previous choices, wiping the soul’s slate clean and allowing one to be reborn by drinking from the well of forgetfulness “in order to achieve forgetfulness of all that he has hitherto thought of.”90 By contrast, in the Myth of Er, one’s choice of a new life is made with full cognizance of the existential quality of one’s previous life, and then, and only then, does one drink from the river of forgetfulness (lethê). Still, Socrates notes, mistakes are made in choosing lives: “And, ignoring the warning of the Speaker, he blamed chance, daemons, or guardian spirits, and everything else for these evils but himself.”91 For similar reasons, the Oracle of Trophonius is not morally edifying—it presents a release from the consequences of one’s choices, a catharsis, without any concomitant intellectual recognition. Thus, for these reasons, the Oracle of Trophonius for Plato would represent the worst inclinations of Homeric myth and religion, just those Plato wishes to censor in Republic II, III, and X; at the same time, the Myth of the Cave and Er represent the construction of true philosophic myths and an exact thematic inversion of the oracle.92 Hence, Plato is doing exactly what he requires of the philosophers in the Republic: inventing a philosophic myth in accord with reason and the Good.93 There is, of course, a parallel irony in Socrates’s reversal of the standard revelation of the Delphic Oracle—he learns nothing from it, except that his wisdom consists in knowing nothing. As the passage from Aristophanes’s Clouds and the account from Plutarch illustrate, the connection of the Oracle of Trophonius to Socratic philosophy did not go unnoticed in the ancient world,94 although Plutarch’s interpretation of the consultation seems to remain far too caught up in the emotional drama and spectacle of the event. For all the differences between the Myth of Er and the Oracle of Trophonius, there are many points where the two myths seem to converge. These similarities include the cave itself, the journey to the underworld, the waters of forgetfulness and memory, and Er’s and Trophonius’s roles as guides (psychagogue) to the mysteries of the afterlife. Both have escaped death and both have undergone the mystery of the cycle of reincarnation by becoming heroic, semi-divine guides through the underworld. The ancient Athenians, like most other humans, are prisoners of their own bodies, greed, and fears; these fetters make them subject to manipulation through images and rituals that are specifically constructed to reinforce and tighten these bonds. It is not enough to simply break the bonds of illusion that prevent the prisoners from seeing the truth (the Good and the Forms). This vision of the Good must be ­translated

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Figure 1.5. A map of the Harbor, Long Walls, and Circuit Walls of Athens. From US Army Cartographer. Public Domain.

c­ orrectly back into the language and images of the Cave—that is, brought into the lived world (the world of Becoming). Knowledge of the ascent (particular to Form) from the Cave (Republic 516e, 518a) is not the same as knowledge of the descent (Form to particular) back into the Cave (Republic 520c).95 The Myth of Er plays out the consequences of life choices over reincarnations and various lives. Plato is not postulating an actual theory of reincarnation with concomitant reified heavenly and underworld realms— the truths the Myth of Er teaches are for us, the living. The truths are relevant to the choices made in this life, in the here and now. Nevertheless, these existential choices have eternal weight and consequences. Socrates notes at the close of Republic IX, “But perhaps, I said, there is a model of it [the ideal city] in heaven, for anyone who wants to look at it and to make himself its citizen on the strength of what he sees. It makes no difference whether it is or ever will be somewhere, for he would take part in the practical affairs of that city and no other.”96 But, if they are not guided by the affairs of that city, Socrates’s quote from Euripides may better explain their destiny. “I shouldn’t be surprised that Euripides’ lines

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are true when he says: ‘But who knows whether being alive is being dead. And being dead is being alive’ ” (Gorgias 492e). Still, after seeing the Good, the philosopher, like Socrates, is compelled to return to the Piraeus. She is compelled to return to the Cave because this is the only reality where human life can be lived. The philosopher must learn to transpose the non–spatio-temporal forms of the ideas into temporal and spatial myths and images that inflect these truths.

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2

The Menexenus, Socrates, and the Battle of Arginusae

It was appointed by law in Athens, that the obsequies of the citizens who fell in battle should be performed at the public expense, and in the most honorable manner. Their bones were carefully gathered up from the funeral pyre where their bodies were consumed, and brought home to the city. There, for three days before the interment, they lay in state, beneath tents of honor, to receive the votive offerings of friends and relatives,–flowers, weapons, precious ornaments, painted vases (wonders of art, which after two thousand years adorn the museums of modern Europe),–the last tributes of surviving affection. Ten coffins of funereal cypress received the honorable deposit, one for each of the tribes of the city, and an eleventh in memory of the unrecognized, but not therefore unhonored, dead, and of those whose remains could not be recovered. —Edward Everett, “Gettysburg Address,” 18631

Dead Souls The Menexenus presents some of the most complex tonal problems in the entire Platonic corpus. The tonal shifts make the interpretation of Plato’s intent problematic. Charles Kahn calls the dialogue a “riddle,” “for this little work is almost certainly the most enigmatic of all of Plato’s writings.”2 R. E. Allen observes that many scholars would like to claim that the dialogue is spurious, but Aristotle’s citing it twice in his Rhetoric makes that option a virtual impossibility (1367b8, 1415b3).3 Socrates’s claim that

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he was taught the speech by Aspasia, Pericles’s mistress, is difficult to take at face value. He quips he was “taught it by the lady herself—and I narrowly escaped a beating every time my memory failed me” (236b–c).4 Kahn identifies this as one of the key questions of the Menexenus: Why does Plato credit Aspasia for the oration?5 Lucinda Coventry argues that the attribution serves two purposes: it distances Socrates from the content of the speech while it associates the orations “attributed to her with the other examples of the genre.”6 Coventry explains, Finally, of course, Socrates could reply that this is in any case not his speech at all, but that of Aspasia. The introduction of Aspasia distances Socrates from the speech: he can emphatically deny responsibility for it at 236a8, αὐτὸς μὲν παρ᾽ ἐμαυτοῦ ἴσως οὐδέν. Socrates similarly insists on the external origin of the speech with the third person ἔλεγε at 236d2, and at 249d 1–2. The impression of dissociation is enhanced by Socrates’ reluctance to repeat Aspasia’s speech, comparable to his attempts to avoid delivering his first speech in the Phaedrus (236–7), and in contrast with his unalloyed eagerness to recount a philosophical discussion at Protagoras 310a.7 Regardless, by the end of the speech, Menexenus is hardly fooled about its true author. When Socrates concludes, οὗτός σοι ὁ λόγος, ὦ Μενέξενε, Ἀσπασίας τῆς Μιλησίας ἐστίν, Menexenus incredulously replies, νὴ Δία, ὦ Σώκρατες, μακαρίαν γε λέγεις τὴν Ἀσπασίαν, εἰ γυνὴ οὖσα τοιούτους λόγους οἵα τ᾽ ἐστὶ συντιθέναι (249d). The Aspasian attribution is not simply a humorous aside—it forms an essential part of the thematic frame of the dialogue. Plato’s ascription undoubtedly invites comparisons between Pericles’s famous funeral oration from the early part of the Peloponnesian War (431) and this Aspasian eulogy at the end of the Corinthian War (386). Whether Aspasia is viewed as a muse, eraste¯s, or hetaira for Pericles— that is, whether she is seen as an idealized partner, an equal, or a courtesan, it is clear that Aspasia is for Plato a metaphorical embodiment of Pericles’s political desires. I. M. Plant observes that “Aristophanes refers to her as a keeper of prostitutes, implies that she has the power to influence both Pericles’s and Athens’s politics, and that she sent Athens to war to avenge the theft of her two girls.”8 Thus, imperial Athens, as imperial Atlantis, has its conception in lust. So we can add Aspasia and Clito9 to the list of women whose faces launched a thousand ships. She seduces Pericles,

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as Pericles’s imperial aspirations seduce and possess both him and Athens. Edmund Bloedow argues that with the person of Aspasia, “Plato is representing not only popular oratory, but also popular opinion at Athens at the time of the King’s Peace—all selected, arranged and stated in such a way as to produce the greatest possible irony.”10 The commingling of the characters of Pericles and Aspasia also establishes thematic parallels between events and popular opinions at the start of the Peloponnesian War and at the end of the Corinthian War. In running together the two speeches, Plato highlights the continuity of Athenian delusions. In the Menexenus, misdirection, omission, euphemism, and misplaced emphasis seem to carry Socrates’s revisionist history of Athens. For example, Collins and Stauffer note, “Astonishingly, Socrates’ history of Athens at war makes no mention of Athenian imperialism. This incredible omission requires more than a little fancy footwork on Socrates’ part.”11 While Stephen Salkever also observes that “over half of the epitaphios in the Menexenus (239d1–46a3) is chock-full of errors, omissions, and hyperbole,” and “even though the dialogue’s opening and closing conversation are insistently playful and ironic, the last part of the speech, the consolatio, also presents a picture of good Athenian citizenship that seems plausibly Platonic or Socratic.”12 Lesley Dean-Jones addresses the tonal shift the consolatio introduces: “The problem with viewing Plato’s Epitaphios as an out-and-out satire is that in the second part of the speech, following the summary of Athenian history, Socrates relates that the words of the fallen soldiers would address themselves directly to their sons if they could, and this part of the speech is recognizably Socratic in tone, exhorting the living to virtue in terms which recall the theory of the unity of virtues.”13 The problem of classifying the Menexenus’s genre is made more complex by its increasing seriousness as it proceeds. Christopher Long is right, I think, to warn about trying to “pigeonhole” the genre of the dialogue. Overall the dialogue’s structure mirrors the parts of its form, but its tone and excesses flout and transcend the standard usage of the genre’s conventions. Long maintains that the humor and playfulness Socrates exhibits at the start of the dialogue provides an antidote to the spell cast by funeral speeches.14 On the other hand, the farcical start provides an antipode to the increasingly tragic sweep of the narrative. The sequence of the dialogue’s sections presents a continuously shifting tone, from its lighthearted start to the dry irony of the speech to a serious, elegiac, and even ominous ending. The Satyr-like opening seems to revel in its impudence, much as Socrates seems to revel in the irreverent ideas of dancing naked (236c–d) or being beaten by Aspasia

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(236b–c).15 Once the speech moves beyond the introductory exchange, the historical section lacks the verbal repartee that makes Socrates’s ironic jousts in dialogues like the Ion or Euthyphro so obvious. The last section, the exhortation of the dead to the living, is the most solemn. Still, almost no scholar doubts that the speech is, in some fashion, a running critique of Pericles’s famous funeral oration.16 Lucinda Coventry, Franco Trivigno, Charles Kahn, Frances P ­ ownall, and Charles Kerch all emphasize the parodic or at least the critical character of the Menexenus.17 The Menexenus criticizes not just Pericles, but Thucydides; and not just Thucydides, but Athens.18 The epitaph is a critique not just of the form of funeral orations, but also of the dangers of rhetorical flattery in general; not just of the danger of rhetorical flattery, but also of the cultivation of fevered political desires. Franco Trivigno explains the anomalous parts of the framework of the Menexenus using a device from comic theory. For instance, he writes, “I will show that the anachronism is a consequence of a particular parodic strategy, that of amplification; that the dialogue’s parody targets not only Pericles’ funeral oration in particular but funeral oratory, rhetoric, and Athens as well; and that the parody has serious philosophical implications.”19 By nature and convention, a funeral oration is anti-philosophic; it is ceaselessly laudatory, regardless of merit. Trivigno argues that the amplifications in the Menexenus go well beyond the formulaic conventions of its genre; they are self-contradictory and incredible. He maintains that “Socrates adopts the logic of patriotic, revisionist history and amplifies the revisions to absurdity. In this way, Plato exposes the deceptive and self-aggrandizing character of the history section as a whole.”20 He gives several instances of these tendencies; one is the recurring claim that Athenian wars are either purely defensive or fought for the liberation of the oppressed. Yet another invention is that Athens always fights against Persia, sometimes alone. A third example is Socrates’s failure to mention the aggressive imperialism of Athens’s fifth-century empire. Finally, after the Persian Wars, she is forced to fight other Greeks because of their envy (242a). Each of these instances is at best a half-truth. In short, the historical section of the oration lacks critical self-evaluation.21 Paul Mahoney agrees with Trivigno’s assessment of the modus operandi of the Menexenus. He argues that Aspasia’s speech is full of self-contradictions that are intended to systematically deconstruct the surface claims of the speech.22 Mahoney writes, “What is outrageous ultimately is the manner in which the speech gradually, subtly but surely, undermines its various claims.”23 Many of these contradictions are generated from Aspasia’s equivocal use of the doctrine of autochthony. In

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Socrates’s day, it is a rhetorical commonplace that Athenians are superior to other peoples because they sprang from the ground.24 Aspasia’s speech opens with the argument that Athens is superior to other states in being autochthonic, while other lands have the relation of a stepmother (μητρυιά) to their migrant populations (237b). Yet, being a foreign-born mistress, Aspasia would seem to embody just such a corruption of the pure autochthonic nature of the Athenians.25 Indeed, this is a very strange claim for Aspasia to make, as Aspasia is herself a stepmother, literally to Pericles’s first two sons, and because she is Melisian, also by extension to Athens. Is she excluding herself from falling under the umbrella of Athenian autochthony? As Pappas and Zelcher observe, “[a]utochthony does not justify talk of mixed breeds and adulterated Greeks. Being born of the soil and not are absolutely distinct conditions; and you either live with your mother or you do not.”26 Aspasia elaborates on her claims of Athenian exceptionalism, holding that Athens’s position is special because she is beloved of the gods.27 But Aspasia does not rest her account here, and she quickly undermines her claim that Athens is beloved of the gods. The first claim is undercut, as Mahoney notes, because Aspasia leaves out the well-known mythic contest between Athena and Poseidon for the patronage of Athens.28 This is a contest that Athena wins by providing the more useful gift, the olive tree. If, as in Aspasia’s account, nature and not Athena provides the fruit, and humans are generated from the earth, then gods are hardly the true patrons of the city.29 Mahoney notes the irreverence of this claim. Aspasia’s other claim for Athenian exceptionalism appears at first to rest on autochthony (237b–239a). As Pappas and Zelcer note, “[p]atriotism could hardly be more direct than autochthony makes it, and it is easy to read the Menexenus either as an expression of the crudest bigotry or (if it is being ironic) as a satire of bigotry.”30 Yet at the very moment that “Aspasia’s” speech seems most bigoted and most provincial, she (or Socrates) uses dialectic jujitsu and turns the argument on itself, making autochthony a cosmopolitan basis for human rights. She asserts that “we and our fellow-citizens, all sprung from one mother (the earth) do not think that it is right to be each other’s slaves and masters.”31 Vincent Rosivach also observes the “elegant” egalitarian language of Socrates’s/ Aspasia’s description of the political reasoning behind Athenian autochthony: “Equality of birth in the natural order makes us seek equality of rights in the legal” (239a).32 Because nature is the nourisher and source of all, not just the Athenians, Apasia’s claim is actually universalist in character even though the birthright is stated as if it were exclusive. Simply

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put, equality of birth, the fact that we are all “created equal,” becomes the basis of the claim for equality of rights (239a).33 Thus, Aspasia does not end up excluding herself from the benefits of Athenian citizenship. This passage recalls the Republic’s description of the “Noble Lie.”34 The function of the Noble Lie is to promote class harmony in the face of external aggression and to suppress internal discontent. Kenneth Dorter observes that Plato relates the “Noble Lie” in two parts (Republic 414d–e and 415a–c).35 The first part concerns the promulgation of the myth of autochthony and the pretense that the different educational tracks for guardians and rulers were all a “dream,” while the second part proposes the so-called “Myth of Metals.” The autochthonic origin of all citizens is to be promulgated, even to the rulers and the Guardians, to create a strong civic bond. Interestingly, Socrates admits that some Guardians will not be convinced by these explanations (Republic 414b–c).36 Just as the myth works within the hypothetical Republic and mythic Atlantis, so the myth has worked in states throughout human history—all citizens are willing to forget class differences and fight fanatically for the motherland, fatherland, or homeland.37 At the same time, and to achieve the same effect of patriotic unity, the differences in the education of different classes are to be downplayed as a “dream.” The special treatment of the guardians, even though an essential part of the education system of the Republic, will be deemphasized to reduce envy between classes. Even the Myth of Metals functions to promote social concord by making character differences a matter of nature, or the Gods; the preferential treatment of gold and silver souls cannot be wholly attributed to differences in education or training and therefore cannot be blamed on some perceived favoritism by the civic body.38 Nevertheless, selective education is exactly what is required to consistently produce guardians and philosopher-kings.

The History of Athens The epitaph presents an unabashedly one-sided account of Athenian history. When bad events happen, they occur by chance or misfortune. Good events are, of course, due simply to Athenian virtue.39 No line is more patently outrageous than when Socrates claims that Athens, by winning the Battle of Arginusae (406 BCE), “won not only that naval engagement, but also the rest of the war” (243c–d).40 The aftermath of the battle, the last great Athenian victory of the Peloponnesian War, presented the final occasion when peace with Sparta could have been achieved on favor-

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able terms. Athens spurns Sparta’s peace offer and continues the war. A year later (405 BCE) at the battle of Aigospotami, Athens’s navy suffers a catastrophic defeat. Losing control of the sea, Athens was blockaded and, being unable to resupply, was forced to surrender in 404 BCE. Infamously, after thirty years of war, Athens had its Harbor and Long Walls razed while flute girls played in celebration. A puppet government, the Thirty, was installed by the Spartans, and Athens’s navy was reduced to twelve ships. What, then, is Socrates’s reasoning for claiming victory—what, if any, sense can be made of Socrates’s assertion that by winning at Arginusae, Athens won the Peloponnesian War?41 His explanation was “that our city could never be defeated in war, not even by all mankind. And that belief was true. We were overcome by our own quarrels, not by other men; by them we remain undefeated to this day, but we conquered ourselves and suffered defeat at our own hands” (243c–d). The internecine “quarrels” that lead to Athens’s defeat resurface in Plato’s Apology at 32a–e, where Socrates recounts his involvement in the trial of the eight victorious Athenian generals who were accused of failing to recover the Athenian survivors and dead following the naval battle. Plato and Xenophon record that on the day of the trial, Socrates happened to be the citizen serving as president (Prostates) in the Prytany for the trial of the generals. Mass trials were outlawed by the Athenian constitution. The injustice of the mass prosecution is made clear from Aristotle’s account of the action in the Constitution of Athens.43 As Aristotle notes, one general was himself pulled from the waters; some others did not even participate directly in the battle. Yet they were all tried as a group. A later but possibly related incident from Plato’s Apology recounts Socrates’s refusal to participate (32a–e) in the unjustified arrest of a prominent citizen, Leon of Salamis.42 Instead of following the orders of the regime and arresting the general, Leon of Salamis, Socrates walks home (Apology 32d).44 As Socrates notes, his flagrant refusal to participate in the arrest could have led to his execution had the Thirty not been soon overthrown.

The Battle There is some Platonic irony in the fact that because of the inferior training of their relief force, the normally superior navy forces the Athenians to use the land mass of the Arginusae Islands as a second line of battle and thus prevent the Spartan forces from getting in behind them and executing a diekplous maneuver.45

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Figure 2.1. Map of ancient Athens

Figure 2.1.  Dispositions at the Battle of Arginusae (406 BCE). From Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy by John R. Hale, copyright © 2009 by John R. Hale. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.

This battle is further described in the Menexenus at 243c where Socrates says, “After they [the Athenian relief squadron] had, as everyone agrees, behaved most heroically in overcoming their enemies and rescuing their friends, they met with undeserved calamity: their dead were not picked up from the sea and do not lie here.”46 The passage, as is the case with many in the Menexenus, passes over a key point: it was not just the dead who were not picked up, but also many Athenian and allied survivors. The reason for the calamity was the sudden occurrence of a

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storm after the battle. Triremes were built for speed and ramming; seaworthiness was a tertiary consideration. To attempt a rescue of the survivors and collect the dead in rising seas and storm winds would have hazarded the remaining ships and crews. A long, narrow, high hull; shallow drafts; and eighty-five oar ports on each side made the triremes very dangerous vessels to operate in any kind of running sea. The lower tier of oar ports was only nineteen inches above the waterline. While the lower oar ports of the thalamioi were covered with leather sleeves (asko¯mata), these coverings would certainly ship water if immersed for any length of time.47 As Victor Hanson observes, The paradox of Arginusae was not that the Athenians had nearly annihilated the Spartan fleet but that they had lost some 26 triremes with most of their crews in the process.48 Lurid stories soon filtered back to Athens of the abandonment of survivors in the “thousands” bobbing in the stormy water and clinging to wreckage, along with the “abandoned” corpses of the dead, which likewise were not retrieved.49 To make the case against the generals even more complex, before withdrawing to attack the blockading Spartan forces at Mytilene, they did, in fact, designate that two of the navarchoi, Thrasybulus and Theramenes, former generals serving here as trierarchs only, remain behind with a squadron to pick up the dead and the survivors.50 Both had been Strategoi. But, unlike contemporary admirals, they did not operate with independent commands. They served under the generals. Hale explains, “Confusingly, at Athens the naval commands were the responsibility of the ten annually elected generals (Strategoi), and their term navarchos, which is rendered as ‘navarch’ in this book, referred not to an admiral but to a naval officer in command of a small squadron and subordinate to the generals. Unlike Sparta, Athens had no unified command of its entire naval effort under a single individual.”51 So it was the naval officers who broke off the rescue, although the generals too, with the bulk of the Allied forces, were thwarted by the storm in their attempt to surprise the remaining Spartan blockading force at Mytilene. It must have been a wrenching decision to abandon the survivors and bodies, but in all likelihood it was a simple matter of preservation of the remaining forces and not cowardice or dereliction of duty. Although initially under suspicion, the two navarchs were first to return to Athens, and they were able to turn sentiment against the generals.

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The Trial The trial, as the action itself, was full of reversals. Because Thrasybulus and Theramenes by returning first were able to shift suspicion to the generals, the generals were forced to defend themselves. At first they presented a convincing case; for it appeared that the generals would be acquitted, but the next day Callixeinus, playing to the outrage and indignation of the jurors, roused the crowd against the generals.52 After the conviction and executions had been carried out, the Athenians apparently began to suspect that their own verdict had been too swift and ill considered; nevertheless, the damage of the decision was irredeemable. Interestingly, the injustice Socrates attempts to prevent in the Assembly foreshadows the injustice that would befall him before the very same body just six years later.53 Unlike the conclusion that the Athenians won the Peloponnesian War because they had never been beaten by others, Socrates’s premise for that claim at 243c–d—“but we conquered ourselves and suffered defeat at our own hands”—is arguably true.54 The actions that followed the battle, the execution of six of the generals and flight of two others, depleted Athens of a competent general staff and surely did not encourage other Athenians to assume future leadership roles.55 But, most importantly, Athens, by overreaching, missed her golden opportunity to end the war on favorable terms.56 The Athenians were able, as the old proverb goes, “to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.” In his speech, Socrates notes several times that only Athenians can defeat Athenians, and these quarrels proved him right. But, of course, the stasis arguably reveals a deeper endemic lack of justice in the city.

The Anachronism R. E. Allen observes that the Menexenus “carries the story” of Athenian history “down to the King’s peace of 387 B.C. because Socrates died in 399 B.C., almost fifteen years before this is an anachronism.”57 The King’s peace, which ends the Corinthian War, is exactly the occasion of the Menexenus. Thus, the funeral oration that is offered to the Athenian dead of the Corinthian War is, with the character of Aspasia and other internal allusions, set in historical parallel with Pericles’s funeral oration from the Peloponnesian War. Bruce Rosenstock elaborates on this anomaly. He argues that the anachronism can be explained if Socrates is imagined to be literally speak-

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ing from the dead.58 Rosenstock records a footnote from Loraux’s book on the Menexenus that provoked his reading: After I [viz. Loraux] had finished this book, P. Vidal-Naquet suggested to me that the dramatic date of the Menexenus (386) makes the dialogue between Aspasia and Socrates, both of whom had long been dead, a dialogue between ghosts. A dialogue of ghosts on the speech to the dead, denounced as an illusion because it carries the Athenians to the Islands of the Blessed: the parodic intention becomes multiplied to infinity! This certainly throws some light on the celebrated “anachronism” that has so puzzled critics.59 In Rosenstock’s view, a spectral Socrates haunts Athens with its predicted failure; the interim since his execution has proved him right. Rosenstock has a suggestive and convincing, if somewhat Confucian, explanation of the anachronism: The city in its corporate identity is the living embodiment of all the generations, past and future; and in it the dead and the living are brought together in the fullness of its present. I would suggest that it is precisely to challenge even further the reader’s natural assumptions about temporality, especially about the irrevocable disappearance of the dead into the past and the inhabitation of the present only by the living, that Plato has incorporated the glaring anachronism of the Menexenus. More specifically, I suggest that the anachronism of the Menexenus can be seen to represent a dead Socrates speaking to a readership contemporaneous with Plato.60 To further support his theory that the anachronism is an intentional construct, Rosenstock argues that the Menexenus is also a palimpsest. Socrates is speaking both to the Menexenus of the Lysis (Menexenus of Athens, son of Demophon) and, as a subtext, to Menexenus of Alopece, his son.61 He is warning them both to stay out of politics (234a–b). A slain ­philosopher king returns from the dead to warn his son of the rot in the state of Athens. Again, this frame of the dialogue enacts and repeats the later theme of the consolation (a dead father gives advice to his son). Socrates has become the ghost of Athens’s wars—past, present, and future.

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Lesley Dean-Jones, in an article published almost contemporaneously with Rosenstock’s, proposes a similar reading of the dialogue.62 She writes, “Though dead, Socrates himself is the only one who can inspire his son to acquire true virtue.”63 Dean-Jones maintains that the reader’s perspective will shift from the Menexenus of the Lysis to Menexenus his son when the readers realize that Socrates’s first-person narration carries well beyond the events of Socrates’s own life. As Dean-Jones writes, “the reader has been jerked from the past into a present where the shade of Socrates is addressing his living son.”64 Several critics have noted a distinct change in tone when the dialogue shifts from the ironic history of Athens to the soldiers’ exhortation of their sons. As Kahn claims, the second part of the dialogue has an “unmistakable earnestness.”65 To this one might add that, at least in part, the elegiac tone stems from the passing down to each new generation the tragic duty pro patria mori.66 This change of perspective also highlights the thematic juxtaposition of Pericles’s Funeral Oration with the funeral oration for the Corinthian War. The occasion of the dialogue ironically depicts Socrates’s foreshadowing from the Gorgias, who truly knows whether the Athenians are dead in life, while Socrates lives on in death: “I shouldn’t be surprised that Euripides’ lines are true when he says: ‘But who knows whether being alive is being dead. And being dead is being alive’ ” (Gorgias 492e).67 Socrates’s apparition also fulfills his dying wish from the Apology—that his enemies criticize his sons as he has others. Also, as he had presaged, instead of ridding themselves of him, his accusers have immortalized his claims (Apology 41e). While most funeral speeches are the survivors’ exhortations to live up to the deeds of the dead, Socrates’s specter haunts his countrymen, warning them not to repeat their errors. Pericles’s own legacy is three dead sons, a city of death, and incessant imperial and internecine warfare. If Rosenstock’s and Dean-Jones’s speculations are correct, then Socrates again plays the role of psychagogue in the Menexenus, this time attempting to save both his son Menexenus, and the additional Menexenus, his young friend, by leading them out of the Athenian necropolis.68 Rosenstock asserts that the effect of the three-day “bewitching” (235a) of the Oration “is similar to that of the Eleusinian Mysteries on its initiates. In both, men and women sense themselves to be taken out of their mundane existence and brought into an ideally transfigured world that presages their life after death. But the Funeral Oration offers only a false idealization of the Athenian landscape.”69 Note Socrates’s comment on the effects of funeral orations: “They cast a spell over our souls . . . the speaker’s words and the sound of his voice sink into my ears with so

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much resonance that it is only with difficulty that on the third or fourth day I recover myself and realize where I am. Until then I could imagine that I dwell in the Islands of the Blessed” (235b–c). The strength of the spectral reading is that it explains both the anachronism and the tonal shift at the end of the dialogue when Socrates’s narrative voice seems to change from the specific parody of the epitaphios and its practitioners to a general warning about the continuing and tragic consequences of the Athenian’s failure to see through the flattery of their leaders to the cyclic patterns of imperial pleonexy. Many scholars naturally place the composition date of the dialogue at 386 BCE, just after the events in Socrates’s recounting of Athenian history leave off.70 Again, if Rosenstock and Dean-Jones are correct about Socrates speaking from the dead, then the theme of being outside of time, viewing Athenian history sub specie aeternitatis, is also central to the Menexenus. Ironically, by 386, the events of the Democratic Restoration have re-created many of the conditions that led to Peloponnesian War: the walls, the fleet, and the Athenians’ imperial ambitions have all been reconstituted. By 393 BCE, as Barry Strauss observes, Conon was able, through an alliance with the Persian Empire, to regain two of these elements in one stroke: “At Corinth, he convinced Pharnabazus to allow him to take the fleet to Athens and once there, to rebuild the Long Walls and the fortifications of the Piraeus (Xen. 4.8.9). It would be hard to exaggerate the strategic importance of this event to Athens.”71 Socrates’s ghostly reappearance in 386 is a confirmation of his prior predictions and a harbinger of what is to come. The real issue at stake in the Menexenus is who is to write the true epitaph of Athens—Pericles or Socrates? Most ominously, by 386 BCE, Athens already was about to repeat the mistakes that led to her surrender in 404 BCE. Her heavy reliance on sea power had again placed her in a precarious position.72 The Persians, who had funded Athens’s rearmament were alarmed by Athens’s rapid military resurgence and switched sides, allying with Sparta (392 BCE). During the closing phases of the Corinthian War in 386 BCE, the Persians captured eight of Thrasybulus’s triremes, and, as Xenophon notes, the Persian king Antalcidas, the whole number of his ships amounting to more than eighty, was master of the sea, so that he also prevented the ships from the Pontus from sailing to Athens, and compelled them to sail to the ports of his people’s allies. The Athenians, therefore, seeing that the enemy’s ships were many, fearing that they might be completely subdued, as they had been before

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[viz. after the battle of Aigospotami, 405 BCE], now that the King had become an ally of the Lacedaemonians, and being beset by the raiding parties from Aegina, for these reasons were exceedingly desirous of peace.73 Yet even after the near debacle of the Corinthian War, Athens would continue to rebuild her navy throughout the fourth century. It would be a mistake to limit Socrates’s critiques of Athens’s imperial ship-of-state to these two unique historical moments—as Plato intends Socrates to embody the eternal ideals he expounds, so Socrates’s critiques of Athens, and more generally human nature and institutions as embodied by Athens, are timeless. The anachronism is an intentional construct that highlights Socrates’s ongoing legacy. The story of Atlantis in the Critias and the account of the degeneration of political states in Republic VIII reveal the Platonic view of the universal and natural tide of political evolutions—the inevitable overreach of a state not possessed by the virtues of self-knowledge and self-control.74 Plato’s history in the Menexenus reveals the internal degeneration of the city-state described in book VIII of the Republic: the slide from aristocracy, the ebb of timocracy, the waning of oligarchy, the chaos of democracy, and the final collapse into tyranny. The truth seeker is replaced by the honor lover, the honor lover by the money craver.75 In the Persian Wars, an aristocratic Athens leads the fight against external aggression while pride, hubris, and greed come to guide her self-centered actions in the Peloponnesian War. The democratic sensibility of the Periclean Age leads to the tyranny of the Thirty. Finally, the Democratic Restoration leads to the Corinthian War and the threat of an imposed Persian tyranny. Rather than the empty panegyric of the conventional funeral oration that exhorts the living to emulate the deeds of the dead, the Menexenus is an ironic warning from the dead, a warning from father to son and from citizen to state not to repeat the errors of the past. The Corinthian War is a mirror of the Peloponnesian War—Athens’s history is not defined by accumulated glory and virtue, but rather by self-compounding tragedy. Thus, Socrates’s claim that no other state can defeat Athens is true in the sense that, as at Arginusae, she eventually defeats herself. Concerning the outlandish claim that Athens won the Peloponnesian War, Coventry observes that “the author of the Republic would hardly see disaster resulting from internal division as preferable to defeat by external enemies.”76 Socrates lives on in history even after his death while his accusers, without knowing it, have become the living dead.

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The City of the Dead The minimalist opening of the Menexenus creates a somewhat placeless, otherworldly atmosphere. In the first line of the Menexenus, Socrates asks if Menexenus is coming from the Agora. He replies, “Out of the Agora Socrates—from the Council Chamber” (ἐξ ἀγορᾶς, ὦ Σώκρατες, καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ βουλευτηρίου).77 The exchange gives the impression that they have met outside and are headed in different directions. But the dialogue leaves open the question of where exactly it takes place. Stavros Tsitsiridis notes that it is not clear why Socrates would ask Menexenus whether he is coming from the Agora: “Why Socrates starts off asking Menexenus whether he is coming ‘from the Market’ cannot be clearly ascertained. Presumably the reason is that the Market was the most frequently visited place in Athens, so Socrates’s assumption that someone might be coming from ­ there or going there is a completely natural one.”78 Tsitsiridis’s suggestion that the Agora is such a prominent place that anyone might be coming out of or going into it is not in itself a wholly satisfactory explanation of Socrates’s question. It is more reasonable to suppose that at least one or more of the following conditions would also hold: that Socrates is proximate to the market, that Menexenus is coming from the direction of the market, or that he is on a main thoroughfare from the market. Socrates’s question also has a more figurative dimension (“Where are you coming from?”) in the sense of “What force is guiding your spirit?”—in Menexenus’s case, philosophy or politics? (234a).79 Socrates’s teasing him about the fact that he is specifically coming from the council chambers is an indication that Menexenus may be straying from the path of philosophy. From 246c on, the dialogue shifts from Athens to the underworld and assumes the voice of the dead. Here the Menexenus presents scores of markers indicating that Athens has figuratively become a necropolis. The occasion of the dialogue itself, its reference to Pericles’s and Thucydides’s earlier orations, the anachronistic presence of Socrates, ­ Aspasia, and Menexenus (if we assume the presence of Menexenus of Athens, son of Demophon) haunt the false foreground of the speech. Socrates is explicit about who the narrators are. He says, “I will tell you what I heard from them and what—judging by what they said then [when alive]—they would gladly say to you now, if only they could. Whatever I report you must imagine you are hearing it from them in person.”80 Socrates’s effective use of prosopopeia recalls his speaking as the Laws in the Crito (50a–54d). Notably, the new voice allows Plato a back door by which to introduce the deep setting of the dialogue. “When your destiny conveys

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you here” (ὅταν ὑμᾶς ἡ προσήκουσα μοῖρα κομίσῃ), the dead fathers say.81 It is unclear from the phrase whether the fathers speak proximately from a graveyard or more figuratively from the land of the dead. The meeting place of the dialogue’s exchange could be on the Dromos, a wide road that cuts through the Kerameikos, the ancient public burial ground of notable Athenians. The cemetery straddles the Northwest circuit wall of the city. The ancient road is a straight shot from the Agora (see fig. 2.2). The Kerameikos was one of Socrates’s favorite haunts.82 The Outer Kerameikos is the place where Pericles delivered his famous Epitaphios, and, as is fitting, it happens to be his final resting place.83 The district contains many of the remains of the 430–429 plague victims and contains the Demosion Sema where Athenian war dead were given an epitaph by dignitaries and buried at state expense.84 The Dromos is a wide road that ran from the Agora through the double-arched Dipylon Gate where it then splits, one road leading on to the Platonic Academy (c. 387) and another, the Sacred Way, on to Eleusis. Here Socrates and

Figure 2.2. The Dromos Road and the Kerameikos. Based on the image: Karte Athen MKL1888.png from the 1888 edition of Meyers Konversationslexikon. Revised with modern updates, but not showing the Roman-era features. Public Domain.

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Menexenus would be surrounded by stele, cenotaphs, and life-sized funerary statues of warriors and politicians, some built into the city circuit wall that divides the graveyard roughly in half.85 As noted, Pericles’s imperial ambitions bring about his death and the deaths of all three of his sons. Yet not one of them dies nobly or gloriously in the defense of Athens. Pericles’s first two sons, Xanthippus and Paralus, die in the plague of 429 BCE. The Athenian assembly then grants Pericles’s son by Aspasia, Young Pericles, an exemption to Pericles’s own citizenship law that requires citizens be born to two Athenian parents.86 In an irony of history, by the time of Arginusae, Young Pericles was a general in command of one of the naval squadrons at Arginusae. Young Pericles, Pericles II, was one of the generals arrested and executed after the battle.87 It is hard to imagine a more ironic setting for the critique of Pericles’s imperial ambitions than the Kerameikos. Forty-three years after the start of the Peloponnesian War, the results of Pericles’s project lie underfoot.88 Here one might agree with Socrates’s observation from the Phaedrus: stones can sometimes speak more truly than the orators.89 We know that Plato sets the Menexenus in 386 sometime in the days before the ceremony in honor of the Athenian casualties of the Corinthian War. F. Jacoby proposes that the ceremony where the ashes of the war dead were buried in the Kerameikos occurred once a year during the Athenian festival of the dead, the Genesia.90 Jacoby writes, “[T]here existed in Athens, and as far as we know only in Athens, a public festival of the dead, called Genesia, celebrated in late autumn on the fifth of the month of Boedromion with a sacrifice for mother earth [Ge].”91 Another component of the public burial of the war dead was the staging of honorary funeral games. It was the duty of the Polemarch to organize games (άγὼν ἐπιτάϕιος) in honor of the dead.92 It would not be unusual for Socrates, as he does in so many other dialogues, to use this occasion to be metaphorically competing with Aspasia, Pericles, Lysias, Thucydides, Archinus, or Dion, vying to give the truest Athenian epitaphios.93 Jacoby postulates that the Athenian custom of burying the war dead in the Kerameikos with honors may have been combined with the Genesia festival.94 Thus, the Menexenus may be set in the days preceding the f­estival. Athenian lore maintained that the souls of the dead would wander until they were returned and properly interred in the motherland.95 Not much is known about the festival except that the dead did leave the underworld and wander on the surface of the earth.96 Tsitsiridis observes the explanation of the restless spirits, “According to Greek beliefs, the dead who were left unburied could find no rest in the underworld.”97 It was the duty of

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the Strategoi to care for the remains of the dead.98 It was the failure to observe this custom, F. Jacoby notes, that played “such a fatal part at the end of the Great War.”99 It also helps to explain the inconsolable superstitious anger of the Athenian populous. The failure to rescue the survivors and the loss of the sailors’ bodies caused an eternal and irretrievable harm. Plato’s setting in the Menexenus condenses conventional conceptions of time and space. Rosenstock writes, “Naturalistic assumptions about time are called into question, first of all, by the very nature of a Funeral Oration. The Funeral Oration focuses on the interlocking bonds that tie together past, present, and future generations into a single community.”100 These interlocking bonds can display recurrent patterns in history. As historical events are juxtaposed by the construct of the speech, the common themes invite formal comparisons. Pappas and Zelcer add to this analysis from the Republic of the latitudinal degeneration of relations between classes within the Athenian state an analysis from the Menexenus of the longitudinal degeneration of Athens’s foreign relations with allied and barbarian states.101 In this analysis, the silver and bronze states usurp their natural positions by ruling over the Panhellenically motivated gold (Athenians). Pappas and Zelcer contend that the history section of the Menexenus recounts the recurrent cycle of political degeneration outlined in Book VIII of the Republic, but that it extends the Republic’s analysis from the internal conditions of a city-state to international affairs.102 Pappas and Zelcer identify the three players of Socrates’s historical narrative as the Athenians, the Greeks, and the barbarians, and these nations correspond, respectively, to the rational, spirited, and appetitive parts of the soul. In the Persian wars, the spirited part, the allied Greek city-states, still follow the direction of Athens. Later in the Peloponnesian War, because of jealousy, they rebel against Athens, the rational element. The same motives that control justice in the individual soul and in the state play out in the history of international relations.103 In terms of space, Athens’s ancient graveyard would possess the type of dimensionality that Ogden notes belongs to the underworld. Visitors often reported entering underworld portals at one point and finding themselves exiting somewhere else without an intervening sense of having traveled any distance. There are many separate gates to Hades, but underground they form one continuous and dimensionless place. Ogden observes, “That underworld features were capable of such bilocation, indeed multi-location, should not surprise us: after all, this was within the abilities of those devotees of the underworld, the Greek ‘shamans.’ ”104 The compression of time and space establishes a deeper thematic unity

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between events otherwise separated by history and locale. For Plato, it allows him to better express the non-spatio-temporal characteristics of the Forms in the natural world—and, what is even better, he can do so without having to introduce the Dickensian deus ex machina of timetraveling angels. A long-dead Socrates, speaking in the voice of the dead, haunts the Athenian Kerameikos more alive than the living Athenians he warns. The surreptitious allusions to other dimensions allow Plato to have the best of both worlds; he can use the temporal, spatial, and metaphysical characteristics of the underworld without having to directly allude to the device or to posit the dimension as actual.105 Moreover, these dimensions would both inflect the non-spatio-temporal properties the Forms have in-themselves and create the overlapping temporal and spatial properties the Forms would have in the Realm of Becoming. The temporal and spatial overlays forge deeper identities between recurring formal trends and themes, while the superficial dross of history is simultaneously revealed as ephemera. The possible setting of the dialogue in the Kerameikos at the time of the Genesia, the anachronism, the juxtaposition of Pericles’s and Socrates’s funeral orations from the Peloponnesian and Corinthian Wars, and Socrates’s peculiar history and the prosopopeia all create foils that uncover deeper synchronicities between events. As Rosenstock remarks, funerals ground personal, familial, social, and political affairs in the same time and space.106 Socrates’s prophetic remarks about the future course of the Athenian Empire in the Republic, Gorgias, and Apology have played out in the Menexenus. By the time of Arginusae, Athens has reached the penultimate moment of political degeneration: rule by the mob. Anger, superstition, and jealousy, not reason, rule at Athens in the aftermath of Arginusae; the generals, and later Socrates, die as scapegoats. The tyranny of the Thirty will soon follow. But within a decade, Athens is back to her old intrigues with Sparta and Persia. Then, during the Corinthian War, the Athenians reestablish their power by means of the exact pattern of imperial overreach that lead to the debacle of the Peloponnesian War. By the end of the Corinthian War, they are backed into the same corner in which they found themselves two decades earlier, when Sparta cut off her grain supply at the Hellespont. The next chapter examines how Plato, in the Timaeus-Critias, constructs historical time and space in the same way he does in the Menexenus, and to the same end. Events are juxtaposed with one another in anachronistic ways to create atemporal viewpoints, and spatial dimensions are overlaid to compound themes. Plato’s cyclic construction of historical space represents the One as it plays out in natural and human affairs.

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Chapter 3 turns to the dialogue Seth Bernardete calls the first science fiction story.107 In the Timaeus-Critias, it is Poseidon, not Athena, who founds Atlantis, and it is his spirit and desire for Clito that influences all aspects of the city’s topography and design. The counterpoint to Atlantis’s artificial topography is primitive Athens’s symbiotic relation to her landscape. Athena’s warlike ethos pervades the spirit of the city. In fact, it is argued in the following chapter that in the Timaeus-Critias, Plato, as he does in the Menexenus, intentionally and surreptitiously melds both past and future, divine and human, and alternate historical perspectives. The difficulty of fixing the genre of the Menexenus and the Timaeus-Critias stems from Plato’s shifting between and working outside the conventions of different literary and rhetorical genres. The thematic content of the dialogue drives and sets the parameters of the literary form. Therefore it is a mistake to retrospectively apply literary and rhetorical conventions to inform us about Plato’s intent; rather, his literary design is constructed from the relations of the higher Forms to the Good.

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3

The Symbolism in the City Plan of Plato’s Atlantis

The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest man’s field than a hundred-gated Thebes that has wandered farther from the true end of life . . . Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. —Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The Present Past and Past Present Plato’s Timaeus and Critias famously describe the great lost city of Atlantis. Plato’s description of Atlantis in the Timaeus and the Critias are the earliest references of any kind that exist to the lost city. The Critias has traditionally been grouped with what appears to have been a planned trilogy of dialogues, including the Timaeus and Hermocrates.1 In the brief portion of the Critias that we have, spanning only fifteen Stephanus pages, Plato carefully elaborates the city-state’s plan. The occasion of the dialogues is the annual celebration of the Greater Panathenia;2 the festival is a celebration of Athens’s patroness. The story of Atlantis has been, as is well attested to by the Western tradition, the source of many later fabulous, fantastic, and outlandish accounts of the mythical civilization.3 Atlantis has been variously described as the Greek island of Thera (Santorini) or Crete, located in the southwest of Spain, the Indian Ocean, the Bermuda Triangle, North America, Central America, Africa, the Amazon, off of Japan,

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or the Azores, among other sites. Critias locates Atlantis outside the Pillars of Hercules, the Greeks’ name for the Strait of Gibraltar. This chapter is faithful to the myth’s originator, Plato, and to a close reading of his text as it is presented in the extant section of the Critias, and to the parallel but shorter description of Atlantis found in the opening of the Timaeus. Specifically, it concentrates on the symbolic function of the topographical features of Plato’s description of the great sea-bound city-state. Etiological features that have to do with alleged historical precedents, possible mythological origins, potential geological disasters, or features somehow attributed to an actual lost civilization are not considered. Aristotle is credited with having said: “Plato alone made Atlantis emerge from the waves, and then he submerged it again.”4 In history, Plato sets the story of a great war between Athens and Atlantis 9,000 years in his past.5 The narrative sequence of the Timaeus-Critias purports to be an account of the ancient war between Athens and Atlantis, but Critias’s full account of the conflict is postponed in the Timaeus and then again cuts off just as Zeus is about to judge Atlantis in the Critias (121c).6 The last line of the Critias ends mid-sentence with Zeus beckoning the other gods to conference over a decadent Atlantis’s fate.7 Presumably, this is the moment before Zeus sends the cataclysmic maelstrom that envelops Athens’s army and Atlantis (Timaeus 25c–d). And, so far as is known, the Hermocrates remained unwritten.8 What is extant is a comparison of the two rival cities. Arnaldo Momigliano notes, “The myth of the Critias was imagined to describe the victory of the ideal [ancient agrarian] Athenians over the [decadent] thalassocracy of Plato’s contemporary Athens.”9 Thus, the city functions as a Gedankenexperiment; Athens is pitted against herself.10 As many scholars have noted, the themes and accounts of the Critias and the Republic are closely intertwined. John Luce writes, “One of the main functions of the narrative is to show a city like the ideal state of the Republic involved in political and military action.”11 Socrates describes this function in the Timaeus: “My feelings are like those of a man who gazes upon magnificent-looking animals, whether they are animals in a painting or even actually alive but standing still, and who then finds himself longing to look at them in motion or engaged in some struggle or conflict that seems to show off their distinctive physical qualities. I felt the same thing about the city [viz. the city that resembles the Republic] we have described” (19b–c).12 Again, the form behind something in the Realm of Becoming is only revealed through time and motion; no static representation can do it justice.13 The above passage also expresses a strange Kampfes Lust on

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Socrates’s part, a craving that recalls his statement in the Theaetetus that he has a terrible lust for “these exercises,” in logomachy (169b–c).14 An object’s nature is revealed in trials, tests, and action; an argument’s strengths are revealed in dialectic, in its ability to stand up to counterarguments and generate proofs.15

Intentional Incompleteness? The summary Socrates recounts in the Timaeus (17c–19b) of some of the themes discussed on the previous day covers a limited portion of the Republic, primarily books III and IV. No scholar questions that the portions of the argument Socrates reviews from the previous day do in fact exist in the Republic, or that the content of those sections mostly concerns the training and education of the Guardians for war.16 Yet, as Peter Kalkavage observes, Socrates’s summary leaves out the philosophical sections of the Republic. The summary is incomplete. Socrates omits everything that involves an ascent beyond the strictly political: the concern for justice in the individual soul and the analogy between the soul and city, the transition from pre-philosophical “best” cities to the city ruled by philosopher-kings, the conversion and ascent of the soul from becoming to Being and the mathematical education that leads to dialectic, the attack on poets and poetry, and the inevitable degeneration of the best city if such a city came into being.17 Plato’s two city portraits are meant to be realpolitik snapshots of two cities at different stages; moral and philosophical questions are held in abeyance. While F. M. Cornford provides an excellent temporal argument for why the dramatic action of the Timaeus cannot immediately follow the Republic, he does not have a corresponding explanation for why the dialogue opens with Socrates’s recapitulation of the themes taken from a large section of the argument of the Republic.18 Cornford concludes, far too strongly, that “[t]he design of the present trilogy is thus completely independent of the Republic.”19 Gerard Naddaf seems to err on the other side, claiming that “[p]rimitive Athens is not only given a divine origin, but the polity advocated by Hephaestos and Athena (and modeled on that of the Republic) is coeval with that of the Republic.”20 Considering that

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this recapitulation is one of the few intertextual summaries of extended portions of the contents of another dialogue in Plato’s works, it warrants a careful comparison. Evidence of the incompleteness in the accounts of the TimaeusCritias comes from many directions. Pierre Vidal-Naquet observes that the first lines of the Timaeus foreshadow the narrative’s incompleteness. He writes, “Plato alerts the reader to the incomplete nature of the situation, for what does Plato say? ‘One, two, three—but where my dear Timaeus, is the fourth of our guests of yesterday?’ ”21 He maintains that the missing fourth is Pericles, and that the referenced illness is his contracting of the plague. If the missing interlocutor is Pericles or Alcibiades,22 this would put the dramatic date of the dialogue sometime from 429 to 421 during the early stages of the Peloponnesian War. The missing person’s non-presence would cast a shadow over the whole of the proceedings.23 Space, time, and nonbeing are all inescapable characteristics of the Realm of Becoming. The recounting cannot be fully accurate, and there will necessarily be many lacuna and inaccuracies contained within a dialogue’s narrative structure. Nevertheless, the passage of events through time and space presents a positive opportunity to reconstruct a formal invariance. As Timaeus himself states, time “is the moving image of eternity” (Timaeus 37d). The Timaeus presents us with four slices, or snapshots, of Athens in time: (1) Ur-Athens, (2) the dramatic setting in Athens during the war, (3) the hyperbolic form of Athens’s present seen as Atlantis, and finally (4) a retrospective perspective of the postwar Athens from the dialogue’s composition date. The effect of compounding these viewpoints is to create an atemporal perspective on Athens’s flawed Form. As for the latest possible dramatic date of the dialogue, A. E. Taylor argues that the presence of Hermocrates in Athens establishes the Syracuse expedition as a terminus ante quem.24 This is significant for the fourthcentury audience of the dialogue; they, unlike the characters, know what fate has in store for Athens at Syracuse. The fourth-century perspective of the dialogues frames the fifth-century dramatic dates. The readers do not need to hear Hermocrates’s speech about the future, for they have lived it. Hermocrates does not give his speech about the future because the future has already taken place. Lampert and Planeaux write, “Hermocrates would become a most fateful opponent of Athens’ own, very real imperial ambition, the man most responsible for the ruin of that ambition. For Hermocrates would—a few years after the conversation in the TimaeusCritias—advocate and help conduct a brilliant military campaign, directing his city’s and island’s resistance against Athens’ great Sicilian adventure.”25

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Plato is using an unreferenced future disaster as a fait accompli. Lampert and Planeaux argue persuasively that the missing fourth speaker is not Pericles but rather Alcibiades.26 Whoever it is, it makes sense that the fourth speaker would be a prominent Athenian statesman, one who is, or will be, in some way responsible for Athens’s present circumstances. Another way in which Plato calls attention to the incompleteness of his narratives is the elaborate frames he uses to relate the dialogues. The Timaeus-Critias’s account of Atlantis is not a firsthand account of Atlantis in itself, but a frame within a frame many times removed from the original events. This kind of layering of frames is, of course, a recurrent and familiar device in Plato’s dialogues, most notably the complex temporal and spatial narrative frames of the Symposium and the Theaetetus. The narrator of the dialogue is often far removed from the events by both time and space. There are still other indicators that we are dealing with a construction. The length of time since the events, 9,000 years, stretches credulity, while the equally long and impossible genealogy, tying the story to Plato’s family and giving it a mysterious Egyptian provenance, does more to undermine the story’s credibility than it does to establish it. Finally, there is Plato’s breaking off the Critias mid-sentence (121c), a device that Francis Bacon borrows to create mystery in his New Atlantis. In addition to the use of historical time and space, Plato also uses setting, character, lacuna, memory, and myth to evoke remote and uncertain narratives.27 Ultimately, these motifs of the adventure form serve Plato’s metaphysical end; they call attention to the accounts of ephemeral things in Becoming and highlight the author’s hand in the construction. In addition to these cautions, there is Timaeus’s famous claim that he is only giving a “likely account” (εἰκος λόγος) of the generation of the universe. David Runia maintains that the frame of the Timaeus distinguishes the “likely account” that deals with the recalcitrant necessity of physical existence from the pure dialectic section that begins the dialogue and concerns Being and the Good as archai (Timaeus 29a).28 Runia argues that the “philosophical status of the argumentation in the proœmium . . . is that it is dialectic in the Platonic sense a compressed report of the results of dialectical exercise.”29 Runia admits that his thesis that the dialectical argumentation of the proœmium has a special status that “is not subject to the limitations of the ‘likely account’ may seem unnecessarily and implausibly strong.”30 One reason Runia gives for his reading is intertextual; we should not read the Timaeus’s proœmium in isolation from principles established in other Platonic dialogues (Republic, Phaedrus, Sophist, and Philebus).31 A second reason Runia lists for the reading is that

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the Good must be considered as a founding and a priori principle for the construction of the universe. If Runia is correct, the postulation of the Good at the start of the Timaeus establishes an a priori frame for the Forms in Being and the construction of things in Becoming (Timaeus 29a, 29e, and 30b). Timaeus starts his speech with a set of interdependent a priori principles that structure the cosmos.32 The axiom that order is “in every way” better than disorder establishes a principle of perfection (30a), a principle of compossibility (30a), a principle of uniqueness (31a–b), and a principle of simplicity.33 On this reading, the Good is an ordering of orders. A homogeneous, unchanging, eternal, and dimensionless being becomes the logically prior building block for all other orders and forms. The procession of the universe from a Pythagorean monad or an Eleatic one would seem to fit the bill.34 The order and priority of speeches set in the Timaeus follows the order and structure of the philosophic themes being treated. As in the Symposium, Plato highlights and then changes the sequence of the speeches. At the start of the Timaeus, Critias calls back his geopolitical talk, and Timaeus’s speech on cosmogony is rightly placed first (27a). The geophysical explanation frames and precedes the geopolitical account. And again, at the end of the Timaeus-Critias, geophysical cataclysm swallows human history. What motives could Plato have for positing such a fantastic story? G. E. R. Lloyd gives several reasons for Plato’s invention of the Atlantis myth: Plato’s own purposes, in his account, are complex, but one might have thought, transparent enough. He uses it, in effect, to kill three birds with one stone. First, it enables him to praise an ancient-mythical-Athens that corresponds, in many respects, with the ideal state described in the Republic. It was because their political regime was so well-ordered and harmonious that they were victorious. Secondly, in criticizing the autocratic regime of Atlantis, he evidently expresses disapproval of the autocratic Persian Empire whose invasion of Greece had had to be repelled at the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. Thirdly, he uses the story to criticize, obliquely, and sometimes not obliquely, the maritime imperialism of contemporary Athens, for the story of Atlantis is of a wealthy and prosperous state that, overconfident in its sea power, turned aggressor and invaded its neighbors, and this bears obvious similarities to the recent behavior of the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War.35

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The first two points in Lloyd’s analysis I would qualify. I agree that Plato is indeed praising the virtue of the ancient-mythical-Athens, but it is not clear to me whether or not the virtue of that early state is intrinsic or is the result of the primitive stage of their existence. That is, if tempted, as she is by excess later in her history, would Ur-Athens succumb, as she eventually does, to the vice of pleonexia? In this respect, early Athens resembles more closely what Glaucon calls the “city of pigs” in Book II of the Republic. The city has a kind of naïve, uncorrupted, and untested virtue—a virtue forced on it by privation, not freely chosen and rationally held. This, I believe, accounts for why the two versions of the Republic are not parallel—the version recounted by Socrates in the Critias is not the luxurious “ideal” city of the Republic; it is the proto-city whose virtue is a product of rustic necessity. The ornate, opulent, and overly elaborate architecture of Atlantis represents the opposite of the simple and functional structures of Ur-Athens, yet they both represent the extremes of the same continuum. Without the instantiation of philosophical rule, if the natural constraints on excess are removed, decadence will, as it is represented by imperial Atlantis, follow. This, I believe, also explains Socrates’s use of the metaphor of an animal fight (Critias 119b–c) to describe the fight between the ancient and contemporary Athens. The outcome of the trial by combat has more to do with simple strength, endurance, and spirit (thumos and epithumos)—that is, with power—than it does with any rationally chosen act of courage or virtuous disposition. Thus, the reason for the victory is the primitive, rustic toughness of the ancient Athenians over the conniving decadence of the urbane Atlantans. Early Athens and Atlantis are the same city at different stages. The seed of Athens’s decline is present in her birth. The decadent form of the city, past and future, is revealed in Becoming only by being extended through time and space and is shown manifested through various historical stages. The comprehension of these various historical acts gives one a fuller picture of the city’s form as it plays out through time. Nevertheless, even with these literary devices, Plato cannot fully force the Forms of the Ideas within the limits of temporal and spatial existence and action. The being of the Forms is necessarily limited by instantiation, as with Leibniz’s Neoplatonic Principle of Compossibility. It is impossible to fully reveal the atemporal form of the city in any existential compilations of time or place, or for that matter to exhaust its nature in any series of existential actions. This, I think, both explains the many intentional instances of incompleteness in the Timaeus and the Critias and is the reason for the panoptic view of history that Plato takes. I think Plato would agree with Aristotle that historical fiction is “truer” than Athens’s actual history

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in being more universal.36 In each case where Plato flags incompleteness, he is highlighting for us that as complete as his account of Athens is, it can never reach the fourth level of the Divided Line without the use of noetic intuition—that is to say, an ineffable, non-hypothetical dimension of thought. By analogical reasoning using the first two levels of the Divided Line, we know that the picture of a horse, or any number of pictures of a horse, will always fail to represent the horse as an actual animal. Infinite numbers of high-quality pictures and anatomical drawings will never capture what a horse, in itself, is. There is an incommensurable gulf between these different modes of being—just as there is between the instantiation of a city and the city’s ideal. The panoptic, ahistorical viewpoint, on the other hand, provides the best method for compounding events to create the fullest possible picture of Athens’s form in action. Plato’s distrust of sea power and Athens’s imperial expansion has been well documented in his other writings.37 As in the Gorgias (518e–519a) and the Laws (919d and 778d), here in the Timaeus and Critias Plato questions the issue of the proper extent and uses of sea power and walls. In the following passage from the Gorgias, Plato has Socrates explicitly critique the imperial policies of Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles. But that the city is swollen and festering, thanks to those early leaders, that they [the hoi polloi] do not notice. For they filled the city with harbors and dockyards, walls, and tribute payments and such trash as that, but they did so without justice and self-control. So when the fit of sickness comes on, they’ll blame their advisers of the moment and sing the praises of Themistocles and Cimon and Pericles, the ones who are to blame for their ills.38 Themistocles and Pericles again come in for special demeritorious mention in the Meno (93d and 94b, respectively) when Socrates angers Anytus by suggesting that if these fathers had any real virtue to convey to their sons, their sons would have turned out better and not have been corrupted.39 The consequences of design flaws may not be immediately evident and often take generations, or even longer, to play out.

The Circuit Walls of Atlantis It is with undoubtable irony that Plato’s description of the ancient Athenian acropolis posits only a single small garden wall (Plato again uses the

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term ἐπάνω (cf. Cap. I, n. 31) and then qualifies the term as follows: οἷον μιᾶς οἰκίας κῆπον ἑνὶ περιβόλῳ προσπεριβεβλημένοι on the top of the outcropping (Critias 112b).40 This is the same word that Plato uses to describe the parapet, or screen wall, behind which the puppeteers operate in the Republic (514b). The term, as is discussed in chapter 1, is usually associated with fortified walls. In primitive Athens, there is no need for the elaborate fortifications that characterize the late Atlantis/Athens; the virtue of the guardians of Ur-Athens is sufficient to secure the state. Not unlike the present-day Athenians, the imperial Atlantans turn out to be an aggressive power whose defenses incorporate successive walled ring islands, forts, and a strong navy. The circular islands are each protected by circular curtain walls and circular canals. As some scholars have noted, it is possible that the concentric rings of Atlantis symbolically stand for the successive layers of the Athenians’ defense: the Acropolis, Athens’s circuit wall, the Piraeus, her so-called “wooden walls” (her fleet), and finally her outlying island Allies of the Delian League.41 It is also possible that the three ring canals surrounding Atlantis’s main island allude to Athens’s three natural harbors on the Akte peninsula: Zea, Mounychia, and the Grand Harbor.42 Defensively, the ring harbors of Atlantis serve as huge concentric moats in front of each of the city’s ring walls. Tom Garvey observes that “Plato saw the [contemporary] Athenians as doing more than merely being steered by the rudders of greed. He was alarmed by the influence of Poseidon, hailed as the savior of all Greece, including Athens, which had grown exponentially in the wake of the Persian Wars, and specifically after the naval battle of Salamis” (480 BCE).43 Unlike most Greek city-states whose streets, waterways, and buildings follow the natural contours of their native topography, Atlantis is engineered around Poseidon’s artificial construction of a huge symmetric land and seascape. Plato states that Poseidon’s intent was to build a kingdom that was humanly unassailable (ὥστε ἄβατον ἀνθρώποις εἶναι) (Critias 113e). Poseidon has created in the rings of Atlantis a love nest for Clito.44 The city is founded in lust, the lust of a god for a mortal. When, later in Atlantis’s history, Poseidon’s project is passed onto succeeding generations of human kings (144a–e), the covetedness of the founding moment is preserved in all succeeding artifacts of the civilization. It is significant that Atlantis is artificially created and that metaphorically a sea state is carved out of a land state. In addition, the city is laid out according to a sophisticated city plan. Much like Athens’s harbor, the Piraeus, it is designed using a grid road system.45 The main thoroughfare of Atlantis is a fortified, narrow, covered waterway that cuts through the

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three outer ring islands and leads straight to the palace on the central island. Literally, this one channel that spans the radius of Atlantis becomes a continuous, yet virtually impregnable, connection to the sea. This great channel is, in function and appearance, much like the fortified Long Walls that protect the road connecting Athens to its harbor, the Piraeus. According to Themistoclean and Periclean naval strategy, Athens’s Long Walls functioned to make her unassailable. Over each of the cut-throughs in the ring islands, large bridges span the harbors, reconnecting the land rings. The channels through the ring islands are designed so that only one trireme at a time may pass under them, creating powerful defensive chokepoints at each of the bridges.46 Another of the innovative defensive features of the great radius ring islands is that they are spanned by a roof to protect the ships—a roof (καὶ κατεστέγασαν ἄνωθεν ὥστε τὸν ὑπόπλουν κάτωθεν εἶναι) whose top also does double duty as a road (see Critias 115e). Plato writes, “They constructed a roof over the channel to protect the passage of ships, for the walls of the channel through the land rings were high enough from the sea to the bridge above to allow ships to pass under” (Critias 115e).47 Even the bridges themselves were gated, walled, and fortified. Such defensive precautions would only be necessary if the land rings were themselves overrun, and the tunnel became the only access that the Atlantans had left to the sea and to the rest of their empire, which, Socrates reports, extended from the Atlantic well into the Western Mediterranean Sea. As these elaborate defensive fortifications show, the later Atlantans were serious about realizing Poseidon’s original intent of making the polis impregnable to men.48 The covered ways, interior position of the ship sheds, and the garrisons at the openings of the channels illustrate the obsessive steps Atlantis took to guard and reinforce these passages from both the land and sea. The logic of such interlocking defensive features creates a kind of infinite regress, as each new bulwark needs itself to be defended. There were no ships when Poseidon created Atlantis (Critias 113e). Desmond Lee notes that at one point, the combined bridge-channel feature presents an architectural difficulty. As Lee observes, The water rings are bridged, and the land rings pierced by roofed underpasses for the triremes. These are shown as rather awkwardly coinciding at their ends, which does not so much matter for the underpasses, but is awkward for the final bridge whose outer end must coincide with the inner end of the canal to the sea, which heads out of it and to which corresponds a canal leading to the irrigation system.49

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A dead end over the arched underpass of the channel that ends the last bridge with a fortified tower would seem to meet the requirements. But on another level, Plato’s running the two together may be intentional; that is, the overlapping road/channel becomes a metaphor for Athens’s conflation of seaways and highways. Here again, Plato could be condensing space to make a thematic point. The elaborate fortifications and defenses of Atlantis and the cavelike quality of the tunnels under the bridges may be yet one more intentional reference by Plato to the actual road between the Long Walls (Μακρά Τείχη) and the gates that protect the passage from Athens to the Piraeus. The roof of the central channel does double duty as a road and a protected sea lane for the ships heading to the central island. Plato has combined, in this one image, the channel, road, tunnel, and walls of Athens. The roofed ship sheds of Atlantis (116a) also echo the hundreds of cavelike covered ship sheds of the Athenians in the Piraeus.50 Of course, just as the historical Athens found out, this apparently fail-safe strategy would not make Atlantis impervious to a blockade (or siege); on the contrary, it invites one. An excellent depiction of Atlantis’s defenses can be seen in Luce’s projection of the city in figure 3.1 on the next page. Luce’s map shows only the land being bridged creating a tunnel for the triremes, other renderings also show bridges spanning the canals and connecting the different land rings. Textually, the description is not clear on this point, and there is room for both renderings of the bridges. At one point in his description, Critias claims, “The resulting canal was wide enough for a single trireme to sail through as it passed into the ring of water.”51 As the passage implies, it would seem that a significant purpose of the channels is to allow ships access to the inner water rings; therefore, the sides of the bridges would have to be open to the water rings, or there would have to be portals for the ships to pass through—either way, the defensive value of the covered ways would be undermined, and the enemy could cut off the capital by controlling one of the outer water rings.52 In a similar manner, Athens was cut off when she lost control of the Hellespont in 405 at Aegospotami. The passage at 115c indicates there were bridges across the land rings but not whether the covered ways for the ships continued across the water rings. An overview of the defenses suggests there is no internal limit to the logic of defensive rings. If two are better than one, then three are better than two. The rings seem to carry on ad infinitum, except, as we observed earlier in this chapter (n. 37), the area to be defended is expanding exponentially, not arithmetically.

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Figure 3.1. Map of Plato’s Atlantis drawn by Lucinda Rodd from The End of Atlantis by John V. Luce. Thames & Hudson Ltd., London.

The construction of Atlantis represents a siege mentality opposite that posited by Plato in Ur-Athens or by the allied Greek states in the “Good War” with Persia. At Thermopylae, the Spartans used the natural features of the defile, a small hill, and a small wall during the famous last stand.53 At Salamis, the Athenian and allied naval forces use the narrow channel in the Gulf of Corinth to compensate for the numeric superiority of the Persian armada. In these two battles and in the abandonment of Athens, improvised defenses and the use of natural features rather than large, elaborate fixed fortifications prove their worth.54

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Oreichalkos and Platonic Metallurgy Another among the several bizarre aspects of Plato’s description of Atlantis has to be the extensive use of metals in the construction of the colossal circuit walls of the ring islands. The first wall is ringed in bronze, while the second is invested with tin; the third wall is inlaid with a metal Socrates claims is “now unknown to us,” but is referred to as oreichalkos.55 Literally, oreichalkos means “red copper.” The identity of the metal that rings this wall has been the subject of ongoing speculation. Some commentators reasonably suppose that the substance is an exotic invention of Plato’s to add luster to his account. Others note that it is possibly a lost alloy or a conflation of different metals; still others contend that it is a known metal that later has been renamed something else.56 As the rock walls were inlaid (ποικίλα, 116b) with metals, it is difficult to imagine the metal walls would have any purpose other than ornamentation. And indeed, the use of the metals and colored stone in the construction of Atlantis seems to have as much to do with design and aesthetic concerns for the play of light as it does with any structural or military concerns (115d and 116a–b). But beyond purely aesthetic concerns for the reflection of light and the use of variegated colors in the walls, there is clearly a mystic dimension to the red effulgence of the oreichalkos. This mystery metal could be red copper or red mercury ore—what the Greeks called “mountain copper.”57 In Peri Lithos, Theophrastus possibly identifies red copper with cinnabar (red mercury ore). Interestingly, red mercury ore in crystalline form has the property of birefringence (double refraction).58 Cinnabar is often found on cliffs. The ancients would sometimes use arrows to bring it down from inaccessible heights.59 If there was a historical conflation of red copper and red mercury ore, this could account for the sparkling red light of Atlantis’s oreichalkos walls. At 116c, Diskin Clay translates that the walls around Atlantis’ Acropolis “glittered like darting fire” (περὶ αὐτὴν τὴν ἀκρόπολιν ὀρειχάλκῳ μαρμαρυγὰς ἔχοντι πυρώδεις) (Critias). Copper, on the other hand, has a steady yellow glow. The red color may indicate impurities in the metal, and the vapors emitted during the extraction of mercury from cinnabar are highly toxic. Mercury can be extracted from cinnabar at a relatively low temperature (673.8°F) or by compression (striking the cinnabar),60 distillation, or sifting. Mercury might have been seen as the pure state of the metal with the red impurities removed. At 609a in the Republic, Socrates provides “rust” (ἰόν) as an example of the natural “bad” for the metals iron and bronze because it “disintegrates” and “destroys” them. Purity in all things is a more highly ordered state and therefore is

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closer to unity and the Good. The separation of the red pigment may be seen as metaphorically removing impurities from the Mercury. The liquid state of Mercury (ὐδράργυος, water-silver, quicksilver) may be one reason Plato classifies metals as waters. For Plato, metals are a fusible form of water in a solid state (Timaeus 58d–e). Caley translates Plato’s description of gold: “Of all the substances which we have ranked as fusible kinds of water, that which is densest is formed of the finest and most uniform particles. This is a unique kind, tinged with a glittering and yellow color, that most precious of possessions known as gold, which has filtered through rocks and there congealed . . .”61 Plato places copper, as other metals, on a continuum with gold, differing not in material composition or shape but only in the spacing and density of its constituent parts.62 Here Plato borrows extensively from Leucippus’s, Democritus’s, Empedocles’s, Pythagoreas’s, and Heraclitus’s theories of substance: by constructing the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) out of four of the five regular “Platonic” solids, and generating the solids from the plane figures (triangles), plane figures

Figure 3.2. “Red Mercury” (Cinnabar) in crystalline form. Rob Lavinsky, Arkenstone specimen, Irocks.com photo.

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from lines, and lines from points, Plato is able to preserve a deep level monism while retaining the explanatory power of pluralism (atomism). Shape, arrangement, and position in space of the monadic units account for different powers and properties of the components, while each thing is built out of the same elements. Plato rejects Democritus’s claim that there is an infinite number of irregular atomic shapes. As does Heraclitus, Plato uses processes of condensation and rarefaction (cooling/jelling and melting) to explain transmutations of elements into liquids or solids, or of one element into another (cf. copper and gold). As Cornford observes, the heating breaks down “some of the icosahedra into their triangles.” Those triangles re-form as smaller, more motile icosahedra, which accounts for the liquid state.63 In book VIII of the Republic (546e–547a), the natural decline of Platonic eugenics is compared with the corruption of pure metals with inferior alloys. The comparison of metals and human rationality occurs again in the Statesman (303d–304a) where the Stranger compares refining gold to good governance: “[W]orkers separate off earth and stones and much else from the ore. When these are gone, there still remains those precious substances akin to gold which are so combined with it as to be separable only by fire; and sometimes adamant as well. These are removed only with difficulty as the metal is tried in the refining fire until at last the process reveals the sight of unalloyed gold separated off by itself.”64 This pure gold is a brilliant yellow (Timaeus 59b). Even today in the metal refining process, carbon from biological substances, particularly oak, is added to the smelting process to bond with impurities in the molten metals to create a slag that can more easily be drawn off. The confluence of elements of earth, water (molten metal), solids, fire, and air in the refining process suggests an underlying monism.65 Plato discusses the transmutation of metals in the Timaeus at 58d–59d. F. M. Cornford writes that: From this account of the metals, it does not appear that there is any bar to the transmutation of any metal into any other. The earth in copper is not, apparently, a constituent in its specific structure, since it can work its way to the surface without the copper ceasing to be copper. Thus all the metals consist solely of water icosahedra, and free transformation between the grades of icosahedra66 should make any one convertible into another. It would be interesting to know whether the alchemists were encouraged by this theory to attempt the transmutation of metals.67

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The universalizing tendency exhibited in other portions of the Timaeus may again be in evidence in the Republic’s Noble Lie (415a–c). People are not born with inherently gold, silver, or bronze souls, but rather their souls’ desires are refined through education. If the differences between people were completely attributable to an irrevocable birth nature, then the Noble Lie would not be a lie. For example, the Slave Boy from the Meno differs from Meno not in his natural intellectual ability, but in his lack of formal education and social advantage. On the extreme end of the ancient Mohs scale would be the metal Plato calls adamant. Cornford notes that adamant, which is a main constituent of the Spindle of Necessity (Republic 616c) in the Myth of Er, may be diamond or iron.68 Socrates claims the spindle’s “stem and hook are of adamant, whereas in its whorl adamant is mixed with other kinds of material” (Republic 616c).69 Gold is the finest, most uniform, and densest of the metals (Timaeus 59b). But adamant springs from gold. Plato associates gold with adamant in two places: the Timaeus 59b and Statesman 303e. In the Timaeus, adamant is the “offshoot” or “scion of Gold,” while in the Statesman it is a byproduct of the refining of gold.70 One problem with identifying adamant with diamonds is that it is described by Plato as dark or black; on the other hand, like water, diamonds are translucent and reflective. Robert Brumbaugh suggests that the colors of the whorls of the spindle have to do with the balance of the masses of the different spinning wheels. He writes, “If, however, this is true, it is not enough for both the volumes and colors of the hemispheres to be balanced; it is a balance of masses (= volume x density) that must be the point intended.”71 Brumbaugh then reasons, “If the list of sizes represents volume, that of colors in some way represents density, and a balance of masses underlies the construction of the two lists, a second tactic of confirmation is to construct and examine the new ordinal list which results if we add or multiply together the relative sizes and colors of each hemisphere. The result, given in the notes below, seems conclusive confirmation.”72 Brumbaugh refers to this as the “rule of nines.” He concludes, “The final list not only shows a balancing of symmetrically paired terms which add up to nine, but shows the property in as clear and evident a form as does either of the two sets from which it is constructed.”73 The importance of this correlation is that there is an underlying order (equilibrium) to the relationships of volume, color and “mass” in Plato’s lists. Color, transparency, and brilliance are correlated with volume and density.74

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Could the oreichalkos and the extensive use of other metals in the architecture of Atlantis be a symbol of the city’s debasement, of an exotic empire at its sunset? Is the sparkling red (cinnabar) an indication of impurities mixed in the metal? The use of even pure metals as a symbol of corruption is clear in Republic III (416e–417a) where the guardians are forbidden from handling actual gold and silver, lest the entire city be corrupted. And yet their souls are said to be metaphorically golden and silver. Ur-Athens “made no use of gold or silver—possessions they never had any need of ” (Critias 112c).75 Metals decorate not only the walls of Atlantis, but many of the other architectural features within the city. They are especially prevalent on the walls, pediments, entablature, and monuments of the center island (116c–117a). Atlantis’s obsession with metals reflects its wealth and ostentation. A seldom-mentioned parallel between Plato’s Athens and Atlantis is the presence of ore mines (Critias 114e) and the mineral wealth of the two cities. In a parallel with the contemporary Athenian state, oreichalkos is said to be the second most precious metal in Atlantis, placing only behind gold (Critias 114e), just as silver is the second most precious metal, the metal whose mining made imperial Athens’s navy possible. The dependence of Athens’s empire, especially its imperial navy, on silver mines of Laurium (Λαύριον) is well documented. The silver mines were located on the Attic peninsula, and they allowed the Athenians to build their navy, and thus their imperial tribute system—it is as if Plato is saying the metals literally made the walls. The inlaid metal walls of Atlantis become metaphorical stand-ins for Athens’s walls. As Socrates notes in Book II of the Republic, the cause of war is the desire to acquire and hoard wealth. Without the excessive wealth and overreaching of the luxurious city, there would be no need for the training and maintenance of a standing army, or for elaborate military fortifications (see Republic 373d–e). The gargantuan dimensions of Atlantis’s empire require, in turn, a huge military-mining complex. The fanciful Atlantan navy is composed of 12,000 triremes (Critias 119b). Plato’s use of the metals ties the Athenians back to the earth. But, ironically, for Plato the use of autochthony does not establish a unique claim for Athenian nationalist pride à la Pericles and other orators; rather, on a deeper level, it ties into his theory of a universal elemental and geometric theory that gives a naturalistic and pantheistic ground for human nature. If this is not obvious enough, Plato introduces the concept of a World Soul (Timaeus 34b ff), which ties not only humans together, but also animals, plants, and objects.76 Everything is ensouled, the universe itself an

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organism. The Platonic notion of a World Soul moves away from a more traditional animistic conception of the cosmos and toward a dynamistic one. It postulates a universal impersonal power that pervades all objects and is transmissible from object to object. An animistic conception is hostile to scientific and philosophic explanations because the nature and behavior of personal spirits cannot be generalized across contexts or individuals. Cornford quotes A. C. Fletcher’s description of the dynamistic (mana) conception of the Omahas: The Omahas regard all animate and inanimate forms, all phenomena, as pervaded by a common life which was continuous and similar to the will-power they were conscious of in themselves. This mysterious power in all things they called wa-kon-da, and through it all things were related to man, and to each other. In the continuity of life, a relation was maintained between the seen and the unseen, the dead and the living, and also between the fragment of anything and its entirety.77 While at first glance this may seem to be a purely mystical doctrine, it establishes a common nature in all things. All causal explanations, for all kinds of things, can proceed from universal grounds. Not only has Plato’s natural history worked against claims of Athenian uniqueness, but so has his cultural and political history. Plato further undermines the special claim of Athenian autochthony by conflating Athens with the Egyptian goddess Neath, and the founding of Athens with the founding of the Egyptian city Saïs.78 Moreover, as the moral characters of Hermocrates, Timaeus, Cebes, Clinias, and other Platonic interlocutors show, Athens is not the unique touchstone of Greek, Mediterranean, or human virtue. Even on the level of individual souls, Plato ties intellect back to primordial elements. He continues to employ Heraclitus’s fire and reason analogy. Fire refines both metals and souls, and souls must be “hammered at from childhood and freed from the bonds of kinship with Becoming” (Republic 519a).79 Xavier Márquez writes, “The gold-refining metaphor the Stranger employs suggests, furthermore, that these arts are not always separated ‘in nature,’ as it were; only the light of analysis (the ‘fire’ of phrone¯sis) can ultimately separate them.”80 Nonetheless, the elements contain soul, and soul pervades elements. Nous cannot spring ex nihilo from elements that have no potential intellective properties. Fire (tetrahedron) for Plato, as for Heraclitus, continues to be a material, formal, and directing principle of order throughout the cosmos.

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Geomancy Even in the social and political realms, Plato covertly associates political and social processes with natural cycles and substances.81 Although the account from the Critias may make it appear that the outcome of the war between ancient Athens and Atlantis is predetermined, Plato’s view is more complex than that. Because the war and the fate of the two states transpire in the Realm of Becoming, their outcomes are governed by “the likely,” not the necessary. In the Republic, Plato recommends that future auxiliaries and guardians be exposed to the conditions of real warfare. As in the Critias, warfare is compared to the outcome of animal fights (Republic 459a and 467b). When discussing the safety of the future auxiliaries and guardians observing battles, Socrates takes the precaution of having them separated from the battlefield, providing them with caretakers, and furnishing them with horses in case the battle turns the wrong way. When talking about these provisions, he admits that “such things [viz., defeats] are likely in war” (Republic 467b). Conflict and warfare, it would seem, are inevitable results of the nature of Becoming.82 Nevertheless, the general course of the empire depicted here resembles Plato’s cyclic account of the decline and fall of the ideal state, the degeneration of virtues through the corruption of the motives and the declining virtues of succeeding generations. Even the carefully controlled reproductive cycle and selective breeding program cannot prevent the vagaries of human sexual selection and undesired mutations from resulting in an eventual degeneration of individuals and political states. Many scholars have asked why the political history of Athens is mixed with an account of the universe’s origins. On a surface level, they are both accounts of generation—political history is being explained as a part of natural history.83 The narrative frame of the Timaeus reconstructs an idealized time and space; the city is formed from perfect rings, and the account spans aeons. The physical layout of Atlantis embodies a logical extension of the historical Athenian intentions and strategy. Gerard Naddaf places the Critias and the Timaeus in the Presocratic (PERI FUSEWS) tradition.84 Naddaf writes, “Every cosmogonical myth begins with a cosmogony (indissociable from a theogony), then goes on to an anthropogony and finishes with a politogony. The order of events implies that humanity and the society in which it resides are indissociable from the supernatural forces which presided over (and continue to do so) the formation of the present natural and social order.”85 Plato’s myths, as Naddaf observes, even if not meant literally, continue to emphasize the explanatory power of autochthony. But Plato does not use autochthony in the traditional

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p­ rovincial fashion of the political orators. The mythic and religious frames are guises for deeper naturalistic accounts of the universe’s origins. In Plato, the autochthony becomes a ruse for a proto-naturalistic geomancy. For the Athenians, as for others, their destiny is contained in their origins. In part, the Athenians’ fate is determined by their geography, in part by their human nature, and in part by their political organization. At the start of the Timaeus, Plato satirizes the universal tendency of genealogy to become self-aggrandizing, as his family and his country end up playing the critical roles in world history.86 The real causes of historical developments are not so idiosyncratic. Genealogy is most often a flawed kind of recollection, and it traces developments back through nonessential relations. The Athenians are a product of their environment, the very elements from which they spring, but not in a mythic sense. In the Timaeus-Critias, autochthony becomes the basis of a cosmic geomancy, which in turn reduces to the principles of the geometry of the atomic material elements. Plato has transformed mythic explanation into universal naturalistic accounts. Universal geographic, economic, psychological, anthropological, scientific, and historical determinants surreptitiously replace provincial, anthropocentric, mythic, and religious accounts. In what may be the first piece of ecological philosophy, Plato describes the disaster brought on by centuries of erosion at the ancient acropolis. Plato does not directly attribute the erosion to human actions; instead, he alludes to natural disasters and historic storms.87 Socrates states, “Many and great were the number of floods that occurred in the space of nine thousand years—for this is the number of years between that time and the present—and during this succession of natural disasters the soil was washed down from the high places” (Critias 111a–b).88 But given the centuries of overpopulation, the continuous logging for the navy, the overbuilding and farming, and the extensive mining, it can hardly be a surprise that the Acropolis and Attic peninsula were denuded. Plato shifts between the discussion of a rocky Acropolis to the wider image of a stripped Attica. “Attica of today is like the skeleton revealed by a wasting disease, once all the rich top soil had been eroded and only the thin body of the land remains” (Critias 111b).89 Plato’s most poignant image of the transformation is that the present heights “can now grow only enough to nourish the bees” (τῶν γὰρ ὀρῶν ἔστιν ἃ νῦν μὲνἔχει μελίτταις μόναις τροφήν) (Critias 111c).90 The topography that has made Athens great has been exhausted through greed and lack of foresight. The natural connection of bees to the earth is seen in their construction of honeycombs out of hexagons.91 While hexagons are not one of the regular Platonic

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solids, their surfaces do compose the two-dimensional faces of many of the Platonic solids. Honeycombs are evidence of an order behind nature and the interconnectedness of the natural world with human institutions. They also recall the comparison of the philosopher-kings in Book VII to “king bees and leaders in the hive.”92 The construction of the natural world, animal kingdoms, and human institutions are all generated in accord with the order of the Good; excess and overreach are exposed in the breach of natural limits. As with the Trophonium, hives are often constructed as caves within caves; the social order follows the natural order; and the order of the microcosm reflects the order of the macrocosm. Order—the Good—becomes the architectonic for all constructions: natural, divine, and human. A similar approach can be uncovered in Proclus’s use of theurgy as a Platonic heuristic in his commentary on the Timaeus. Harold Tarrant writes, “The accomplished theurgist understands enough about the way in which the various gods are manifested and symbolized through different physical substances in order to open himself to the ubiquitous presence of the divine in all things. It is a form of ritual magic in which the aim is to become united with the gods.”93 What Proclus and the Presocratics find in Plato is an ordering principle through all levels of being and activity in the universe. Proclus and the Presocratics appeal to a formal and teleological order that can be extended to all natural structures and creations. In short, they are looking for universal laws to explain both natural and human phenomena. Plato’s use of the underlying logic of monistic, dynamistic, and pantheistic systems allows for explanations that are universal. In Proclus’s commentary on Plato’s Timaeus at 179, he gives an explanation for the number, shape, and width of the islands of Atlantis by appealing to a procession (πρόοδος, 179, 5f) from the Monad, Dyad, and Triad.94 Throughout the corpus, Plato seeks reasons for the dimensions of things. Dimensions always have a specific reason for why they are this rather than that ratio, proportion, volume, color, and so forth. If we were to summarize the methodology of the Timaeus, we could note that Plato always searches for a sufficient reason for why things are the way they are, and while the answers are often couched in mytho-religious terms, the real explanations are given in mathematical and proto-scientific language. The same causal explanations and forces that are extended to natural objects are seen to apply to human institutions as well.95

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4

The Slow Boat from Delos, or Socrates’s Ship Comes In?

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings, The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods—rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man . . .  —William Cullen Bryant, “Thanatopsis,” c. 1813

Which Ship Is That? Plato presents a puzzling example of Socratic divination in his dialogues the Crito and the Phaedo. Socrates reports that he has had a dream predicting that the sacred Athenian state galley will not return on the day Crito awakens him in prison. Rather, it will return from its mission to the island of Delos on the day after. In his Life of Theseus, at 22–23, Plutarch claims that Theseus’s ship was an ancient triaconter, a thirty-oared vessel, kept by 93

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the Athenians until the time of Demetrius of Phaleron (ca. 350–280 BCE). In recent times, the classicist Jordan Borimir has identified the ship as the sacred triaconter, the Delias.1 The return of the Delias marks the last full day of Socrates’s life before his execution. No executions were allowed while the ship was on its religious mission. We learn these and other details of the ship’s sacred voyage to the island of Delos from the opening lines of Plato’s Phaedo. When Echecrates asks Phaedo why there was such a lag between Socrates’s conviction and execution, Phaedo explains, “The day before the trial, as it happened, the prow of the ship that the Athenians sent to Delos had been crowned with garlands.” He continues, It is the ship in which, the Athenians say, Theseus once sailed to Crete, taking with him the two lots of seven victims. He saved them and was himself saved [in slaying the Minotaur]. They vowed then to Apollo, so the story goes, that if they were saved they would send a mission to the god. They have a law to keep the city clean and pure while it lasts, and no executions may take place once the Mission has begun until the ship has made its journey to Delos and returned to Athens, and this can sometimes take a long time if the winds delay it. The mission begins when the Priest of Apollo crowns the prow of the ship, and this happened, as I say the day before Socrates’ trial. That is why Socrates was in prison a long time between his trial and his execution. (Phaedo 58a–c4)2 Socrates reveals his dream immediately after his friend Crito awakens him in prison with the news that “[the ship] has not arrived yet, but it will, I believe, arrive today, according to a message some men brought from Sunium, where they left it. This makes it obvious that it will come today, and that your life must end tomorrow.”3 Cape Sunium is approximately thirty-one nautical miles (58 km) south of Athens on the tip of the Attic peninsula.4 Socrates immediately contradicts Crito’s prediction, saying he does not believe the ship will arrive at Athens’s harbor, the Piraeus, that day. And he gives the following explanation for his conclusion: he claims he was dreaming when Crito awakened him; “I thought that a beautiful and comely woman dressed in white approached me. She called me and said: ‘Socrates, may you arrive at fertile Phthia [home of Achilles, metaphorically the underworld] on the third day.’ ”5 Given Socrates’s normal suspicion of divinatory practices, it is especially interesting that he appeals to a dream; moreover, in doing so he makes a prediction that can eas-

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ily be empirically falsified, or confirmed, in this case. Socrates says the dream’s meaning seems to him to be clear, and as Crito rejoins, “too clear” (ἐναργὲς μὲν οὖν, ὥς γέ μοι δοκεῖ, ὦ Κρίτων. Κρίτων: λίαν γε, ὡς ἔοικεν).6 Are we forced to accept Socrates’s claim about the dream at face value, or could he be concealing a natural explanation for his prediction that the ship, which has already been spotted at Cape Sunium, will not return to Athens until the next day?

The Woman in White The dream has, of course, attracted a great deal of attention from commentators, and while Socrates may state that its meaning is clear, the allusions it contains are both numerous and complex.7 As John M. Cooper notes, “on its face, the woman’s prophetic words are a paraphrasing of Homer’s Iliad Book IX line 363,” where Achilles has rejected all the presents Agamemnon offered him to get him to return to battle, and threatens to go home. He says his ships will sail in the morning, and with good weather he might arrive on the third day “in fertile Phthia” (which is his home). The dream means that Socrates’ soul, after death, will find its home on the third day (counting, as usual among the Greeks, both the first and last member of the series).8 On a figurative level, the dream presents Socrates’s life as a voyage, a voyage that is drawing to a close. Yet on another level the arrival of the ship starts another voyage and recalls Charon, ferryman of the dead, helping souls to “cross over” to the realm of the dead. In a later passage from the Phaedo (112e), Socrates describes Charon’s voyage.9 West and West note that there is yet another possible allusion in the dream—the goddess’s white dress to the sail of the ship—the white sail was Theseus’s preset signal of a successful mission, so by extension, Socrates has successfully completed his mission, a well-lived philosophic life.10 His mission, like the mission of Theseus, has saved the youth of Athens. There is, of course, substantial dramatic irony in this passage; rather than confirming the two charges of his accusers (see Apology 24b–c) that Socrates corrupts the youth of Athens and is an atheist, the dream instead confirms he has, like Theseus, saved the youth and has honored and completed his divinely inspired Delphic mission.

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Yet another strange feature of the prediction is that Plato never reveals whether subsequent events bear out the dream’s prediction; that is, the subsequent events as picked up in the narrative of the Phaedo, never tell whether he in fact dies on the third day, as the woman predicts, or not. The Phaedo reports a second sighting of the ship—its actual arrival in the Piraeus—but the context of the report does not fix the arrival time in relation to Socrates’s dream. It is, indeed, almost as if Plato teases the reader by leaving several dead-end clues as to the timing of events after the morning Crito visits Socrates in prison. Ronna Burger explains, But Socrates’ interpretation of his dream, with its denial of the rumor reported by Crito, is not confirmed by the series of Platonic dialogues in which it is presented. For Phaedo does not announce when it is that the young men receive the [second] report, [that] of the arrival of the sacred ship in the Piraeus; he explains only that, on the following morning, they gathered together as early as possible at the prison, but were compelled to wait outside by the jailor—the same man, perhaps, who let Crito in before dawn after receiving a small favor of him.11 But Burger is incorrect in one detail: Phaedo does report that the men heard of the arrival of the ship the night before. At 59d–e, Phaedo says, “On the last morning the meeting was earlier than usual; this was owing to our having heard on the previous evening (ἐπειδὴ ἐξήλθομεν ἐκ τοῦ δεσμωτηρίου ἑσπέρας) that the sacred ship had arrived from Delos, and therefore we agreed to meet very early at the accustomed place.”12 But the uncertainty about the timing of Socrates’s death remains unresolved because the sighting of the ship in the Piraeus could have taken place later on the same day that Crito reports that some men reported seeing the ship at Sunium; or it could have happened the day after that, the day that would confirm Socrates’s dream that he would die on the third day; or possibly it could have occurred on some day subsequent to that. The voyage from Cape Sunium being approximately thirty-one nautical miles—it could be rowed or sailed in a triaconter in a day—although as Echecrates notes (58b–c), given contrary winds, the delegation may have been delayed at the Athenian settlement at Sunium. The possibility that the ship arrives that evening at the Piraeus—that is on the same day as the men report to Crito that the ship has been seen at Cape Sunium— becomes more likely if the ship set out for the Pireaus while the men

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Figure 4.1. The topography of Attica. From J. S. Traill, Atlas of the Greek and Roman World in Antiquity (Saddle River, NJ: Noyes, 1981), 9.

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themselves were traveling over land from Sunium on the road to Athens.13 As stated above, Cape Sunium is easily within a day’s row, or a day’s sail of the Piraeus—assuming conditions are favorable. If the men left Sunium on foot or horseback and beat the ship to Athens, it would seem most natural to assume, as Crito does, that the Delias’s sacred flotilla would not be long behind.14 The controversy concerning the speed of ancient galleys under oar is long-standing and continues to the present day; for our purposes, a general estimate is all that is necessary.15 According to Coates, triremes were thirty percent faster than penteconters, meaning that a penteconter’s maximum speed under oar would approach seven knots.16 One would expect that penteconters and triaconters both being single banked vessels, all other factors being equal, their relative speeds would be roughly equivalent, with the edge going to the penteconter. Thus, one would expect a triaconter to be able to reach a maximum speed of around five to six knots; but its cruising speed would be something less than this, perhaps four knots.17 Besides wind, and the kind of boat, and the skill of the crew, there are, of course, any number of factors affecting the speed of a ship under sail or oar.18 Currents, waves, and sea conditions created by local hydrological or topographical conditions along a coastline can have a significant effect on speed. Assuming conditions were ideal, a rowing voyage made at an average speed of four knots from Sunium to Phaleron would take just under eight hours. But there are good reasons to believe that the sacred delegation would not have resorted to oars, and further, that they may not have been able to resort to sail, on this, the last leg of their voyage. That there could be a natural reason for Socrates’s prediction of a delay is suggested above in Plato’s own recounting of the events. The journey can take a long time, Echecrates (58c) says in the Phaedo, “especially if the winds delay it.” This could be particularly true on the return trip, which from Delos to Cape Sunium to the Piraeus in the north requires sailing directly into the prevailing winds of the Aegean, the Etesians.19 Theseus’s journey was said to start on the sixth of Munichion (very early April).20 Hence, the return of the Delias would, being in this case thirty-one days later, occur in early May.21 As Coutant and Eichenlaub note, During this time of the year [summer], northerly winds blow over the Aegean with a great frequency. These winds were called by the ancients “etesians” (yearly) and colloquially, today, are called “meltemi.” The Etesians occur between May and

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October, obtaining greatest frequency in July and August. In May, when they are usually weak and unsteady, they are referred to as ‘prodromoi’ (precursors) or forerunners by the ancients.22 Thus, the ship would be returning just at the start of the Etesians’ season, and would be subject to the prodromoi. Wind direction is even more crucial for ancient sailing vessels than modern. As Lionel Casson writes, In the case of square-rigged vessels—and all ancient ships were so rigged—the angle was as wide as 80˚; any smaller would cause a ship to lose way and eventually stop. In the language of the sea, ancient ships had to sail seven points off the wind, i.e. they could lie no closer to the direction of the wind than a course seven compass points away.23 As mentioned, it is possible to row the thirty-one miles in one day, but against the wind and after likely rowing the last long open stretch of water from the Cyclades before arriving at Cape Sunium, the crew would need to rest and reprovision—probably this would entail an overnight stay at Sunium.24 Triaconters, being war galleys, were designed for short bursts of speed; they were not suitable for, nor capable of being provisioned for continuous cruising.25 There are many factors effecting the seaworthiness, speed, and range of a triaconter: for instance, it has low sides, open decks, and a susceptibility to roll. Night travel was hazardous and would normally be restricted to emergencies and military actions; thus, the arrival of the ship at Sunium would naturally be late in the day, and there would be little chance of setting out again in the remainder of that same day and reaching Athens.26 There were no other port facilities between Sunium and Athens. War galleys are light, long, and narrow, having an approximately 10:1 ratio of length-to-beam.27 They had to be light enough to be hauled up on shore at night by the crew.28 On the basis of the excavations of the ship sheds, literary evidence, and the contemporary reconstruction of the trireme Olympias, the dimensions can be accurately reconstructed—the trireme weighed something under forty tons (including crew) and was about thirty-seven meters long and three and a half meters wide. Because of a paucity of evidence, it is more difficult to estimate the exact dimensions of the smaller and older triaconter, although seventy-five feet LOA would probably be sufficient to accommodate the fifteen rowers on each side.29 The oars for a single banked triaconter were probably ten to twelve

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feet long, and the thole pins (skalmoi) were set in the gunwale at approximately eighteen to twenty-four inches above the water line.30 In addition, because the ships are built to maximize rowing speed for ramming, they have very shallow drafts, round bottoms, no true keels, and a high ratio of freeboard to draft. All of these factors would make Athenian war galleys very susceptible to roll and adverse winds, and so history attests they were. The Athenian navy was well known for limiting the number of marines they carried to increase speed overall and speed in maneuvers, especially turns. The addition of heavily armed hoplites (epibatai) on the Athenian triremes, and penteconters, were usually restricted by the Athenians to ten to fourteen a ship—not so much because of the dead weight these marines added to the ship, but because the rapid movement of heavily armored soldiers on the upper deck could seriously affect the center of gravity of the ship. As Barry Strauss explains, “Marines, archers, the pilot, the captain, and the lookouts all sat on deck. All these men had to remain seated as much as possible, especially in battle, because even small movements could unbalance the boat and upset rowing.”31 If the center of buoyancy is shifted out of vertical alignment with the center of gravity, a torque is set up that makes the ship constantly unstable. Because of this, any list makes an oared vessel especially difficult to row. Experienced oarsmen can deal with the natural pitch, roll, and yaw of a ship, even on the ocean, but one condition in which they cannot row effectively is when the ship is not kept on an even keel. Another problem created by a list is that it can seriously affect the angle of attack of the oars. These factors would be especially critical in the much lighter triaconter than in a penteconter or trireme. We can imagine that the Delias, given her mission, was carrying a large delegation of supernumeraries and dignitaries who, in addition to simply being in the way, could by moving on what was probably a very limited upper deck32 constantly be shifting the center of buoyancy of the ship. A triaconter probably had a limited forecastle and poop with perhaps a gangway down the center, or on the sides, to serve as a fighting platform. For this reason, it is likely that when carrying a delegation on a religious mission, the sacred ships would prefer sail to oar in almost all circumstances. The exception to this preference would be travel over long stretches of open water where ancient oared war galleys were especially vulnerable to storms.33 The oar ports, although covered by leather on multibanked ships, were, on the lowest bank, only eighteen inches above the waterline on a trireme—it is not clear whether the oars on a triaconter were set on

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Figure 4.2. Black figure vase paintings (penteconter and triaconter). From J. S. Morrison, The Athenian Trireme (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 27.

the gunwale with thole pins or placed through oar ports. Some triaconters may have been fitted with out-riggers. On a triaconter, because you have to accommodate only one bank of oars, it would be possible to place the oar ports higher up than on a trireme; although, if you do, you are trading speed for every inch you move the fulcrum of the oar off the water by reducing the sweep of the stroke.34 So, in fact, it is possible that the oars on a triaconter would be placed even lower on the sides than eighteen inches. Additionally, increasing the angle of the oar relative to the rower’s body reduces the strength of the stroke. Thus, because of the nature of the construction of war galleys, it is likely that passages over long segments

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of open water would be accomplished as quickly as possible. On open water, if the winds were not in the ideal position to drive a ship quickly and directly to its destination, then oars would be used. In addition to the contrary winds, there may be another reason that the delegation would prefer not to row the final leg up the Attic coast. Because the voyage is a ritual reenactment of Theseus’s journey home, they would want to mimic the events of his return. As we know from the legend, Theseus forgot to put up the white sail on his approach to Athens as a signal indicating the successful completion of his mission, an omission that led to the suicide of his father, Aegeus. Arguably, the delegation would want to reenact this part of the story, whether by leaving up a dark sail or by ritually undoing the past and running up a white sail as a propitiation for the tragic error. If the winds were foul off Sunium, this could not be accomplished.35 Socrates, even in his jail on the Agora, would likely know the wind conditions for the harbor and its environs.36 As Morton writes, One obvious way to predict the weather conditions was to assess the winds. The ancient Greeks had a strongly developed familiarity with, and impression of, the nature of the different winds they regularly encountered, which extended to anthropomorphic, mythological, and divine characterization. Such characterization reflected the Greeks’ experience of the different winds, and the wind from any given direction was associated with particular types of weather.37 Another example of the Greeks’ fascination with the winds can be seen in the Tower of the Winds, which was built at the earliest around 200 BCE, but more likely its current structure could be dated to about 50 BCE. The tower had a large bronze wind vane in the figure of a triton fixed to its roof (forty-seven feet). While the structure is later than Socrates’s day, Joseph Noble and Derek de Sulla Price speculate that there may have been a similar earlier structure at the same site.38 Furthermore, Socrates would know the sailing patterns of ships on the last legs of their journeys to Athens. Thus, it may be that there is nothing supernatural about Socrates’s claim that the ship would not arrive on the day that Crito visits him—it may be an educated surmise that when the men left it, the ship would lay over that night at Sunium. Still, it does not explain how he could know that the ship would arrive on the third day, or the day after Crito’s visit counting inclusively—except that by that time the crew could have rested overnight, reprovisioned, and pulled on to Athens by oar.

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Reenactment: Saving Athens Again The winds, for the Athenians, were deified; and by Socrates’s time, there were eight gods, each representing a different wind direction. The Etesians would be deified by Boreas, the north wind; Skiron, the northwest wind; and Kaikias, the northeast wind. Hence, the winds, on a deep level, were themselves a reflection of divine will—as is intimated in Socrates’s dream.39 The delay of the execution because of contrary winds could easily be interpreted as a sign of divine intervention. This intervention would most likely be seen as an expression of the gods’ anger with his execution or a desire on the part of the gods to delay Socrates’s execution. On a figurative level, Plato is playing with the image of Socrates as a second Theseus, a hero who is saving the youth of Athens, and Athens herself, from the Minotaur.40 Symbolically, the Delias is being transformed from a death ship to a ship that is again on a salvific mission.41 However, there are at least three difficulties in claiming that Socrates could know the wind conditions in the Piraeus and its environs from his cell in the Agora. First, as Coutant and Eichenlaub observe, applying contemporary meteorological conditions to Socrates’s day can lead to errors: In attesting to the accuracy of Theophrastus’ numerous observational statements, we are handicapped by the fact that available modern data are not ipso facto representative of the wind conditions during Theophrastus’ time. Until recently the concept of climatic constancy has colored historical investigation, probably as an over-reaction to early 20th century environmental determinism. Significant changes in climate occurring during the historical period have now been substantiated.42 But in this case, the phenomena and direction of the Etesians is well attested to during the classical period. Second, because of the phenomena of sea breezes, local winds “may be powerful enough to counteract the prevailing Etesians, as in the case of the area of Athens, where the sea breeze from the south or south-west blows in the middle of the day in opposition to the prevailing Etesians.”43 Thus, the wind conditions in the area of the harbor were often opposite those prevailing along the Attic peninsula. Even so, the prevailing conditions for the majority of the journey from Sunium would likely be foul—indeed, a local south or southwest wind would evince as much. Third, Socrates may not have been able to see out of his cell, but it seems unlikely that it would have been difficult for him to gain that information.

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Given the above considerations, what can we assume Socrates would know about the last legs of the return voyage of the Delias? First, that the ship would have set off early in the morning from one of the Cyclades, probably Kea (Ceos), Gyanos Nisida, or Nisos Andros, and approached Sunium from the southeast (or east-southeast) under oar across open water and headed into the Etesians. It would make Sunium late in the day and take shelter in the narrow bay on the northeast side of the Cape. It is here that the crew would rest and reprovision overnight. Morton believes that “[a] delay in the ship’s progress seems necessary to explain why some of the passengers on the ship decided to return to Athens by land from Sunium, and how they arrived back in Athens before the theoric ship.”44 While the delay is attested to, there is no textual evidence in Plato that news of the ship’s arrival at Sunium is brought back to Athens by actual passengers on the ship. Morton goes on to argue, “The expectation [viz. Crito’s] that the ship will return to Athens the following day (Crito 43d) also suggests a diurnal sea breeze, which would die down in the evening until late the following morning, giving the theoric ship ample opportunity to round Sounion.”45 But if the Etesians were blowing, it would have made it difficult to sail around the Cape from east to west, even at these times. So it could be that Socrates, from his cell, realized that because the Etesians were blowing, there would be no time at which the Delias could easily sail around the headland and north into the Saronic Gulf. Note also that rowing into the headwind could easily reduce the ship’s speed by a knot or more, and that if the Delias were departing from the harbor on the northeast side of the Cape, it would add at least two and one half nautical miles to the journey to the Piraeus. These two conditions alone could turn what would be an eight-hour journey under ideal circumstances into one that easily took more than twelve hours.46 Thus, the ship, for what are forecastable reasons, may not reach the Piraeus until after dark the day after it lands at Sunium, giving Socrates the one extra day he predicts.47

Socrates and Divination But there still remains a troubling question: why would Socrates lie to his old, loyal, and admittedly somewhat slower friend, Crito? Why would he create such an elaborate dream or, at least, such an elaborate interpretation of a dream he may well have had?48 In the rest of the dialogue, Socrates has a hard time persuading Crito that it is the right thing for

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him to stay in prison and face his impending execution. His logical arguments do not seem to persuade Crito, and for an extended section of the dialogue, Socrates famously has to personify the laws of Athens and have them plead their case to Crito (50a–54d). It is also notable that some scholars believe that Achilles is lying in the Phthia passage about his threat to return home in the Iliad to be more persuasive.49 In a similar manner concerning a different dialogue, Christopher Planeaux questions Socrates’s reliability as a narrator.50 Again, in the Lysis, Plato confronts the reader with a topographical puzzle concerning time, space, and motion—Socrates’s description of his path straight to the Lyceum from the Academy cannot have been as he describes it. Instead, Planeaux notes, “Socrates swings out of his way, around the Astu, and approaches the Lyceum from the north.”51 He argues that Socrates feigns ignorance of the location of the new wrestling school to make his arrival appear to be a chance encounter. If Planeaux is correct, then, once again, the setting hides an important clue to Plato’s project. Crito, as Aegeus, misinterprets the return of the Delias as a marker of a looming tragic event, and Socrates compassionately attempts to reinterpret the sign for Crito, constructing the ship’s return as a final divine symbol, seal, and blessing of his life’s mission.52 Crito’s trust in conventional wisdom about the meaning of death is challenged by Socrates’s arguments and his dream. But it is Socrates’s arguments that establish the claim of the dream and prove he has lived the right life and fulfilled his mission, not vice versa. But if we assume this dream is merely a Socratic device to convince the pious Crito, what do we do with the other famous instances of Socratic divination—cases where Socrates appeals to, and seems to assume, the intercession of a prevenient and benevolent spirit? Allusions to divination occur in most Platonic dialogues, and there are also references to several major oracular sites: Delphi, Dodona, and the Trophonium. Divination occurs in forecasting the duration of the return voyage of the Delias. Divination occurs again in the prisoner’s interpretation of shadows in the Cave, and divination occurs twice from dreams and in Plato’s geomancy in the construction of the topography of Atlantis. The geomancy found in the Critias turns into a kind of Platonic philosophic anthropology by mapping the psyche of Poseidon and the Atlantans onto the features of their city and landscapes.53 Another recurring form of divination in the dialogues is trial by combat: animal fights, wrestling, arguments, and wars. In his book The Religion of Socrates, Mark McPherran argues that divination gets a pass on the criticisms that Plato levels at other dimen-

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sions of Greek religion. McPherran writes that “Socrates, for all his rationalism, appears to give clear and uncritical credence to the alleged god-given messages found in dreams, divinations, and other such traditionally accepted incursions by divinity.”54 While McPherran admits that Socrates often subjects divination to tests and examinations, he also gives several examples of “extrarational” divination that he believes Socrates accepts. He cites three different passages: “Socrates is, as we saw, also convinced that it is ‘true’ (alethe [Apology 33c8]) that he must philosophize even at the cost of his life because of a command given by divinations and in dreams” (Apology 33c4–8; see also Crito 44a5–b4 and Phaedo 60d8–61b8, where Socrates takes divinely given dream messages seriously).55 As argued above about the dream of the goddess from the Crito, agreeing that Socrates treats the dream seriously does not establish that the dream forms the only, a shared, or a supporting basis for his claim that he should die for philosophy. As discussed, the content of the dream in the Crito primarily concerns the timing of his death, not its ultimate justification.56 On the contrary, the thrust of the argument in the Crito is to establish Socrates’s integrity as the sufficient cause of his facing the sentence (46b, 46d–e, 48a–b, 48e, 50a–51c). As for the Apology passage, Socrates notes multiple times that his interpretation of the Delphic Oracle rests solely on the results of his lifelong mission of rationally testing the oracular pronouncement; he does not assume its truth or even its interpretation, for that matter. Moreover, as argued previously, there is an irony in Socrates’s ultimate confirmation and interpretation of the Delphic oracle—he is wise in knowing he knows nothing. In the Phaedo passage (60e–61b) McPherran cites, he fails to mention that this recurrent dream shows Socrates developing two different interpretations of the incubatory instruction “practice and cultivate the arts.” In the first interpretation, Socrates famously takes the dream to mean practice of the “art of philosophy” (viz., a reconfirmation of his initial interpretation of the mission as reported in the Apology), while the second and much later interpretation Socrates has come to while in prison is that the divine command is to compose poetry. “Being no teller of fables himself,” Socrates argues he must stick to retelling existing stories.57 Still, McPherran is right to point out that the sheer number and complexity of the references to divination and Socrates’s genuine respect for authentic religious ritual suggest that there is a deeper reality behind his allusions. Socrates does not invoke the Delphic Oracle, Apollo, or his Daimonion simply to be ironic.58 We discussed earlier Plato’s association of the Socratic mission with Theseus’s

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mission; could the seemingly divine command to compose poetry also have a salvific or redemptive dimension?

Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On In terms of the narrative sequence of Socrates’s last days, the dream of the Crito happens on the last night of his life. The recurrent dreams he reports concerning his last day in the Phaedo are narrated by Socrates later than the events of the Crito, but most of them, if not all, must have happened before the dream of the Crito.59 At first, Socrates takes the dreams he reports in the Phaedo as forms of divine approval similar in tone to the dream from the Crito. The dreams are peculiar, as A. O. Rorty notes: “These two [Phaedo 60e and Crito 44] are perhaps the most vivid dreams Socrates reports himself as having, yet it is hardly their clarity that is emphasized. Characteristically, the dreams that Socrates reports himself as having are highly schematic; rarely are they narrative.”60 Socrates reports in the Phaedo that the dream has been repeated over a long stretch of time and taken different forms. I tried to find out the meaning of certain dreams and to satisfy my conscience in case it was the kind of art they were frequently bidding me to practice. The dreams were something like this: the same dream often came to me in the past, now in one shape now in another, but saying the same thing: “Socrates,” it said, “practice and cultivate the arts.” (‘ὦ Σώκρατες,’ ἔφη, ‘μουσικὴν ποίει καὶ ἐργάζου). In the past I imagined that it was instructing and advising me to do what I was doing, such as those who encourage runners in a race, that the dream was thus bidding me to do the very thing I was doing, namely, to practice the art of philosophy, this being the highest kind of art, and I was doing that. But now, after my trial took place, and the festival of the god [Apollo] was preventing (διεκώλυέ) my execution, I thought that, in case my dream was bidding me to practice this popular art, I should not disobey it but compose poetry. I thought it was safer not to leave here until I had satisfied my conscience by writing poems (μουσικὴν ποιεῖν) in obedience to the dream. So I first wrote in honor of the god present at the festival.61

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Socrates thinks the dream may require reconsideration, not because the dream has changed but because the circumstances of his life have been altered. Socrates cites Apollo’s festival preventing his execution as a reason for his reinterpretation of the recurring dream; hence, as Socrates notes, it is after the trial and during the delay that the reinterpretation and the compositions take place. When the dream is first repeated, Socrates interprets the repetition as cheering him on. It is only at some point after he is imprisoned, his philosophic mission is completed, and he continues to have the dream that the continued recurrence of the dream becomes evidence that he may have mistaken its meaning and need to reinterpret it—that it was an indication that perhaps he did not get it right the first time. Here again, the meaning of the dreams and oracular pronouncements is not self-evident; the implications must be subjected to investigation and testing. And apparently, as with the Delphic pronouncement, Socrates is still not sure which interpretation is correct.62 Yet Socrates makes two important qualifications to his reinterpretation of the repeated dream: first, that the two arts may on a deeper level be the same, and, second, that he composes poetry “in case my dream was bidding me to practice this popular art.” Practicing philosophy and composing poetry set to music may ultimately be harmonious activities (ὡς φιλοσοφίας μὲνοὔσης μεγίστης μουσικῆς).63 Arguably, the meter, rhythm, and harmonies of music play out the inflection of the order of the intangible forms in Being in a tangible mode in time and space in Becoming. There is no contesting that Socrates goes to extreme lengths in the Republic to describe how poetry and music should be composed and structured in accord with higher metaphysical principles of order. The one, philosophy, reflects the Good as the True and the other, music, the Good as the Beautiful.64 A closer examination of the two dreams reveals that they may be connected. Christopher Dreisbach provides a useful fourfold typology for classifying dreams in the dialogues by sorting them according to the following categories: 1) the nature and source of the dreams, 2) prophetic dreams and dream divination, 3) dreams versus waking life, and 4) the moral content of dreams.65 Dreisbach’s category of the nature of dreams may be further subdivided. J. V. Luce notes yet another, fifth, use of dreams in Plato: “ὀνειρώττειν (to be deluded) occurs in a metaphorical sense in three other passages in Plato (Rep. 476c and 533b, Laws 800a). In all these passages, dreams are used to characterize dim or confused apprehension in contrast with clear or demonstrated knowledge.”66 Thus, dreams appear in Plato to run the epistemic spectrum from fleeting, baseless

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images, to phenomena indistinguishable from life, to hyperreal, divine revelations. As for the source of dreams, Plato allows that they may have a divine origin or may come from a base unconscious, or bodily, source. To the above classification of dreams from divine sources, we might add a subtype of dream, the kind of dream Socrates relates in the Phaedo (59c–61e), one that takes the form of a commandment. In addition, for Socrates, the source often differentiates dreams by their moral content. Dreams with divine origins are auspicious. A. O. Rorty illustrates dreams having a mundane psychological source with a “most familiar passage about dreams . . . if they do not live well, men enact desires in their dreams that they would not acknowledge in waking life (Republic 571 ff.).”67 Conversely, Socrates observes, those who live good lives are least troubled by disturbing dreams. Socrates’s dream from the Crito seems to have both a divine origin and to be reassuring. The thematic question raised by the Menexenus, who is really alive and who is really dead, has a parallel in the Platonic dream world. Dreisbach observes that Plato’s Theaetetus (158b–e) inaugurates “the most enduring question in the philosophy of dreams . . . how to distinguish dreams from waking life.”68 This question has a counterpart in the Cave dwellers’ false reality. They cannot distinguish shadows from reality. The dilemma in each of these cases becomes how one sees through a comprehensive delusion. As Socrates puts it: Socrates: The question I imagine you have often heard asked: what evidence could be appealed to, supposing we were asked at this very moment whether we are asleep or awake—dreaming all that passes through our minds or talking to one another in the waking state. Theaetetus: Indeed, Socrates, I do not see by what evidence it is to be proved, for the two conditions correspond in every circumstance like exact counterparts. The conversation we have just had might equally well be one that we merely think we are carrying on in our sleep, and when it comes to thinking in a dream that we are telling other dreams, the two states are extraordinarily alike. (Theaetetus 158b–c)69 For Socrates, as we saw in earlier chapters, this question of delusion is not purely academic. Our existential condition may consist in just

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such a confusion of appearance and reality.70 There are strong parallels between the Realm of Becoming and dreams and between the prisoner’s states of consciousness in the Cave and dream states. Notably, dream states often involve the kind of compression and distortion of time and space found in the inflection of the Forms in the Realm of Becoming. It is exactly the ability to “see through” these distortions to the eternal Forms ­contained in the inflections that allows one to break out of these delusions. Plato’s art consists in making the Forms manifest by creating thematic and imagistic juxtapositions that show invariances across different times, spaces, and contexts. The numinous anachronisms discussed in chapters 2 and 3, Socrates’s late appearance in the Menexenus, and Athens’s simultaneous and multiform appearances in the Timaeus/Critias reveal this dreamlike yet invariant structure. It is possible that our life in Becoming can be understood as similar to a living dream in the Cave, while death metaphorically allows entrance to the intelligible realm, a place that conversely creates the perspective of a truly awakened state.71 Whether the woman who appears to Socrates in the Crito is a daimonion, or a personification of the spirited side of his psyche à la the white horse of the Phaedrus, or the appearance of a muse, perhaps Calliope, or a goddess, like Thetis, is unclear from the dream.72 That she symbolizes an auspicious spirit and is probably from a divine source or at least the good side of his spirit is clear. The robe she wears may also be an echo of the robes worn by the maidens and other representatives of the amphictyony at the Delia festival on Delos,73 and the commandment to compose music could be seen by Socrates as an allusion to the choruses, dance, and musical contests that were such an important part of Apollo’s festival. The dream from the Crito also fits Dreisbach’s second category, as it is a prophetic utterance, and it constitutes another potential connection of the maiden figure to Delos. The dream takes the form of a reassurance, a confirmation that Socrates has done well and that he will safely cross over to the Isles of the Blessed.74 Could it be that Socrates interprets or suggests that the delay of the theoric ship is a sign that he needs to complete this one additional task before the ship can return? It seems peculiar that Plato constantly returns to the timing of the voyage. Is the apparition of the woman in the Crito a sign of Socrates’s completion of the commandments of the Phaedo? Furthermore, could it be that the completion of his task and the ship’s return are directly related to the theoric mission? The above speculations might solve several long-standing interpretive issues. The completion of the Apollonian Delian mission can then be viewed as a bookend to Socrates’s original Apollonian Delphic

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mission. Moreover, it relates to Socrates’s last words—his reference to owing a debt to Asclepius, the healer, Apollo’s son.

The Delia Delos was the birthplace of Apollo, and Theseus was claimed to be the founder of the island’s long-standing festival in the god’s honor. In archaic times, Delos was an important center for divination. H. W. Parke notes that the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, circa the late eighth century, has Apollo promise to establish his first oracle center on the island.75 Parke observes, “By the time when Pisistratus and Polycrates in the latter half of the sixth century revived the sanctity of Delos, the oracle appears already to have ceased and was not restored.”76 Yet the Delia festival appears to have survived continuously into the classical period, although it too seemed to lose some popularity, if Thucydides can be believed, in the late seventh and early sixth centuries.77 The festival was primarily musical but included athletic competitions as well. Choruses from the various islands would compete for the prize of an oracular tripod. Delos presented a renowned female chorus, while Athens entered a male choir. Irene Ringwood Arnold observes that “the essential part of the celebration seems at all times to have been the performance of the Delian maidens.”78 Part of the performance would include the Crane Dance; the bird’s back-and-forth movement was said to mimic the movement of Theseus’s party in scouring the labyrinth in search of the Minotaur.79 The performance also includes the celebrated hymns of the Delian maidens, “whose description” Susan Shelmerdine notes, “evokes that of the Muses themselves.”80 in addition there is this great wonder, whose fame will never perish: the Delian maidens, servants of the Far-shooter. When they have first praised Apollo in a hymn, and then Leto and Artemis who rain arrows, remembering men and women of old they sing a hymn, and they charm the races of men. (The Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 156–161)81 After celebrating the Delian dance of the women, the author of the Delian section of the hymn ends his song of praise with these verses, in which he [purportedly Homer] also alludes to himself:

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Well, may Apollo keep you all! And so, Dear hearts, goodbye—yet tell me not I go Out from your hearts; and if in the after hours Some other wanderer in this world of ours Touch at your shores, and ask your maidens here Who sings the songs sweetest to your ear, Think of me then, and answer with a smile, A blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle. 3.10582 The poem reads much as a self-composed memorial, similar in sentiment to some of Shakespeare’s sonnets.83 The author is immortalized through the memory of his work. The connection of the festival and the Delian Apollo to artistic creation continued to grow with time. Miriam Bisset observes that after 540 BCE, Apollo is depicted on black figure vases more and more frequently holding his kithara and not a bow; she observes, “One explanation for this shift in the representation of the god may lie in the growing popularity in Athens, after c. 540, of the Delia, the choral festival held on the island of Delos.”84 These “festivals,” Bisset maintains, “created the chance to ‘encounter’ the god through re-enactment, prayers, responses to the sacrifices and the stories told about the god retold in poetry. This suggests that an Athenian would have acquired and developed a conceptualization of the god (or some aspect of the god) through the songs sung, the processions held and the sacrifices performed at the festival.”85 In composing poetic songs, Socrates is not only paying homage to Apollo but is himself vicariously partaking in the Delia festival. By practicing the arts, Socrates has again imaginatively placed himself in a traditional Greek competition. As Socrates notes, it is Apollo’s festival that is now delaying his execution. By practicing the arts, Socrates is also obeying the command of the cryptic woman in his dream. Socrates likens himself to Apollo’s prophetic swans (Phaedo 85a–b). His dying songs are an instrument for Apollo. The appearance of the woman in the Crito could be an allusion to the Delian maidens and a confirmation that Socrates has fulfilled his duty to Apollo by practicing music. While Athens cultivated Delos as a religious center, her actions showed little, if any, respect for Delos’s political autonomy. Athenian imperial ambitions for Delos can be seen in the expropriation of the Amphictyonic League. After transforming the Amphictyonic League into the Delian League, Athens plays an increasing leadership role in the league’s finances, congresses, and political organization. It is universally acknowl-

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edged that Athens’s control and abuse of the Delian League are a critical and instigating cause of the Peloponnesian War. James Davidson notes that Isocrates identifies the start of the Athenian imperial “deterioration” with the founding of the Delian League in 478/77. Davidson quotes Isocrates as stating that “the beginning (arche¯ ) of disaster was when they took over the maritime empire.”86 In 454 BCE, Pericles moved the treasury of the Delian League from Delos to Athens.87 Thucydides relates that the Athenians reinstated the flagging Delia festival during the Peloponnesian War in 426/5, but their religious concerns for the purification of Delos were wholly tainted by their imperial ambitions.88 Another sign of increasing Athenian authority over the Delia and Delos itself was the extreme measures taken to establish and maintain purification on the island. First, the sixth-century Athenian tyrant Peisistratos moved all graves within sight of Apollo’s shrine. Borimor does not dance around the topic of later Athenian purifications: “The Athenians of 426/5 in contrast used religion as a pretext to be rid of both the living and the dead. The wholesale removal of the dead was an inhuman and cruel act.”89 All human remains were removed from the island and reinterred in a mass grave on the nearby island of Rheneia.90 And all births and deaths on the island were proscribed by the Athenians. Ultimately, the indigenous population was removed as well (422 BCE) and relocated to Atramyttium in Asia Minor.91 The Athenian rationalization for the purification of Delos appears to be an attempt to remove all signs of mortality from the island. The Delians cannot have been happy with what from their perspective must have been a usurping of their homeland, a dispossession, and an abominable sacrilege. Apollo’s own Delphic Oracle commands Athens make good her transgression (421 BCE).92 By participating remotely in the ceremony, Socrates restores the spirit of the ancient Homeric festival and reprises the archaic purification of the celebration, righting the Athenians’ contemporary desecration of the Delia, Delos, and the Delians. The Athenians realized they had gone too far in their treatment of the Delians and later tried to make partial amends by allowing some natives back onto Delos.93 Jordan Borimor maintains that “Thucydides tells the story of the purification of Delos in segments, owing to the requirements of his annalistic method. On the face of it, each section is straightforward, factual, and precise (1.8.1; 3.104; 5.1; 5.32.1; 8.108.4). But when the whole story is pieced together, no doubt remains in the reader’s mind that the entire affair was so pitiless as to be fundamentally sacrilegious.”94 Simon Hornblower refuses to excuse Thucydides on Borimor’s “requirements of his annalistic method.” He claims that the reason for Thucydides’s piecemeal account was his strong

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bias against reporting any religious dimensions of the Peloponnesian War.95 He goes so far as to say that Thucydides’s underreporting of the role of the Amphictyonies and, of course, underplaying the political significance of Delos to Athens has skewed the contemporary understanding of the causes and course of the Peloponnesian War.96 There are several well-known instances of Athenian propitiatory offerings to Apollo Delios. In 432, the Athenians set up a temple in Phaleron to appease Apollo Delios after an earthquake (2.8.3).97 Hornblower maintains that the motive for the purification of 425 was the plague of 429 and its recurrence in 426.98 Hornblower describes the most famous example of Athenian appeasement: “Pythian Apollo was, not, however, pleased with what was going on at the home of Delian Apollo, and his reaction is the other official Pythian response. In 422 the Athenians’ purification went further than in 426, and they actually expelled the Delians from Delos (v 1). Shortly afterwards, in 421, (v 32.1) they put some of them back again, on the orders of the god at Delphi, and because of recent set-backs in battle.”99 This was not the last time, Hornblower points out, that Delphi would come to the aid of Delos. The reasoning behind this last purification, Thucydides relates, is that the Athenians concluded “that they [the Delians] must have been polluted by some old offense at the time of their consecration, and that this had been the omission in the previous purification of the island which, as I have related, had been thought to have been duly accomplished by the removal of the graves of the dead.”100 Of course, it would appear from these acts that the home of the pollution lies at the feet of the Athenians. Socrates’s reverent observance of the Delia festival saves Athens from the pollution of her desecration of Delos. It is not the Athenian theoric delegation that needs to avoid the pollution of Socrates’s execution, but rather Apollo who delays Socrates’s death so that Socrates may purify the Athenians’ defilements of his festival. Socrates has divined the real source of the Athenians’ curse in the Peloponnesian War—it is not the pollution of the Delians; rather, its source is the plague of pleonexia brought on by Athens. There is an extra-Socratic precedence for just such a curse in the so-called Oath of Plataea. An epigraphic oath was found on a stele just north of Athens in the thirties. It purports to be an oath of allegiance sworn by the Greek city-states just before the Battle of Plataea in 479. Of the major battles in the Persian War, Socrates notes in the Menexenus, Plataea was unusual in that it involved the cooperation of the Athenians and the Spartans and was “at last an effort shared by both the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians” (Menexenus 241c).101 The conditions of the

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oath are interesting in that it specifies future bonds that are not to be broken. Among the conditions in the second part of the oath, from line 21 onward, the Athenians are made to swear that “they shall bury the dead of their allies, and leave none of them behind unburied,” and “after winning victory over the barbarians in battle . . . I shall not destroy Athens or Sparta or Plataea or any of the cities which have fought as our allies.”102 Paul Cartledge writes, “But more important even than the ritual is the self-imposed curse (ara) with which the text concludes: transgression of any part of the Oath, it is spelled out, will inevitably envelope the perjurers in religious pollution (the term used here is agos, an equivalent of the more usual miasma).”103 Cartledge argues persuasively throughout his book that it is unlikely the oath was actually sworn under the historical conditions it presents and that it was more likely composed later, retrospectively, looking longingly at the good old days when the Greek city-states were allied against a common enemy. Thus, the Peloponnesian Wars mark a betrayal of this oath. Athens has betrayed not only Sparta, but also Delos and her other old Allies in the Persian wars. A trend, as we discussed in chapter 2, that climaxes in the Corinthian War. On the basis of Socrates’s last line in the Phaedo, many have argued that Socrates’s death is a symbolic release from prison and the prison of his body.104 Others have pointed out that this reading is made unlikely by the use of the plural in Socrates’s line “we owe a cock to Asclepius” (Phaedo 118). In “A Cock for Asclepius,” Glenn Most argues that Socrates’s last words refer to the healing of Plato’s illness, which is mentioned at the opening of the Phaedo (59b).105 Socrates, Most avers, must know this via clairvoyance. The sacrificial thanksgiving at the end would give the Phaedo a ring composition, a literary form to which Plato is known to be partial. In an article that responds to Most’s, J. Crooks contends that “while the structure of the Phaedo is undeniably symmetrical, pairing Socrates’s last words with the early reference to Plato’s illness is arbitrary and, in effect, presupposes what it seeks to demonstrate.”106 He further contends that, given the prominence of religious themes throughout the dialogue, “it is more likely the case that the reference to Asclepius at the end mirrors the reference to the Delos mission at the beginning” (58a–e).107 It is exactly this last suggestion that also makes the most sense of the dreams. Socrates’s compositions are meant to honor Apollo.108 Asclepius, the god of healing, is the son of Apollo, the god of purification. It is well known that Asclepius healed through incubation. Dreams that held the key to a cure would be interpreted by priests. Socrates’s sacrifice of a cock to Asclepius is his thank-you for providing the dream that is the instrument

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of his, Crito’s, and metaphorically Athens’s purification. Delos is Apollo’s birthplace, it is his island, it is his festival that has been corrupted and defiled by the Athenians’ insincere pilgrimage and sacrilegious imperial acts.109 We have seen this Platonic critique of imperial Athens before, namely in chapters 1, 2, and 3. It is the Athenian delegation and Socrates’s execution that are delayed by the divine control of the winds—delayed that he may finish or reenact the true propitiatory offerings of ancient Athens, a pious Athens not yet corrupted by a thallasocracy, an Athens that at one time fought a defensive war, a “good war,” against the Persian Empire, with her allies, Sparta, the Ionians, and other Peloponnesians in a true and free Panhellenic confederation. This explains why Socrates can claim prophetic knowledge of the timing of the Delias’s return—it is the completion of his actions, the composition of his offertory poems that make the ship’s return possible. He must have access to the timing of the ship’s return because his purification allowed it to happen. Dreams break down everyday spatial and temporal relations, often combining separated events and what would otherwise be anachronistic elements. It is a common property of dreams that they combine past events and dead persons with contemporary events. Similarly, it is an essential characteristic of divination to break down ordinary barriers of space and time to reveal god’s will, distant, past, and/or future events. The spectral appearance of Socrates in the Menexenus resembles Socrates’s living but distant participation in the archaic purification festival on Delos. Who better than the spirit of a displaced Delian maiden to appear to him and consecrate his poetic offerings to the Delia and his Apollonian life?110 Socrates’s stoicism in the face of death is counterbalanced by all the careful preparations he makes for his crossing over. There are many times in the Crito and Phaedo when Socrates exhibits a devout concern for purification—for example, in the preparation of his final bath.111 A bath, music, and a sacrifice were also normal healing practices at Asclepius’s medical dormitories (Asclepieia). The Asclepieia are associated with the Trophonium. Angelica Panayotatou writes, “In this Temple, as well as in that of Asclepios in Athens and in the more ancient Trophonian caves, there was a statue of Asclepios together with the twin statue of the goddess Hygieia.”112 In still another parallel with the Trophonium, the holiest part of an Asclepieia was called the abaton or adyton.113 It is here that the patient would dream. The “Asclepieion” of Athens, Panayotatou notes, “is situated on the southern side of the Acropolis between the two theatres of Dionyses and Herodes Atticus. The distant and beautiful view of the Saronic Gulf proves that the Greeks took care that these sanctuaries should

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enjoy an agreeable outlook.”114 The temple is fed by a spring that originates in the rock of the Acropolis.115 The dormitories of the Asclepieia, the state prison, the Cave, and the Trophonium all seem to be spatially and thematically linked. Each is a liminal place where the regular spatial and temporal dimensions of human experience seem to break down, and access to the transcendent and eternal is granted. Michael Carter notes that it is a fundamental function of ritual to connect its participants “to the cosmos or to a transcendent principle.”116 Another preparation for death Socrates makes is his strange request to pour out a libation of some of the hemlock, as if the poison were the very instrument of his deliverance.117 And there is his last prayer requesting a safe passage (Phaedo 117c). His last gesture, uncovering his head with his arm (Phaedo 118a), indicates the presence of strong emotion. Unlike his covering of his face in the Phaedrus (237a), which indicates a playful dissembling on Socrates’s part, here his covering of his face likely indicates his desire to conceal a lachrymose moment from his colleagues and friends.118 It is significant that Socrates’s initial covering of his head goes unmentioned. Here Plato depicts only the moment of Socrates’s regaining his composure.119 He must have again covered his head in his last moments, as the prison officer must uncover him to check to see if he has passed (Phaedo 118a). Socrates often shows a deep reverence for religious ritual, but the rituals are reframed as enactments of parallel philosophical themes. These reverent moments, however, rarely appear to be in synch with the Athenian state’s understandings of religiosity. Chapter 5, “Wrestling and the Fair Fight in Plato,” explores the activity of wrestling as an enactment of logomachy. In the Philebus, where there is an extended example of theomachy, the outcome of the battles is determined not by the gods, but by the nature of the ideas and the Forms the gods represent.120 Divination via trial by combat becomes an analogue for trial by argument. As discussed in the introduction, Plato’s use of divination to predict the future complements his use of reincarnation and recollection to reconstruct the past. Recollection and divination are metaphors for the generalization of past events and for the prediction of future events, respectively.121 More profoundly, recollection and divination are ways of applying the eternal perspective of the Realm of Being onto the Realm of Becoming—a way of taking the long view by projecting past and future events on the present. Plato’s co-option of mythic and ritual enactment on behalf of logographic enactment allows for the dramatic modeling of the interaction of the Forms in the Realm of Becoming.

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Wrestling and the Fair Fight in Plato

ἀδικεῖν δ᾽ ἐστὶν ἐν τῷ τοιούτῳ, ὅταν τις μὴ χωρὶς μὲν ὡς ἀγωνιζόμενος τὰς διατριβὰς ποιῆται, χωρὶς δὲ διαλεγόμενος, καὶ ἐν μὲν τῷ παίζῃτε καὶ σφάλλῃ καθ᾽ ὅσον ἂν δύνηται, ἐν δὲ τῷ διαλέγεσθαι σπουδάζῃ τε καὶ ἐπανορθοῖ τὸν προσδιαλεγόμενον, ἐκεῖνα μόνα αὐτῷ ἐνδεικνύμενος τὰ σφάλματα, ἃ αὐτὸς ὑφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν προτέρων συνουσιῶν παρεκέκρουστο. Unfairness in this case occurs when someone fails to make a distinction between a debate and a dialogue. A debate need not be taken seriously and one may toy with and trip up (σφάλλῃ) an opponent in whatever way one is able, but a dialogue should be taken seriously and one should help the other person up to progress the discussion and demonstrate only those slips (σφάλματα) where the error is due to himself or his previous associates.1 —Socrates in Plato’s Theaetetus 167e–168a

Plato’s View of Wrestling The general agonistic character of Plato’s works is noted by contemporary and early exegetical authors and is a common motif of the dialogues. Wrestling, boxing, war, animal fights, battles between the gods, and all sorts of contests and competitions are common topics in the dialogues. On a deep level, these actions serve as metaphors for the mixing and sorting of the Forms in the Realms of Becoming and Being. The philosopher, as dialectician, must learn to construct and deconstruct, defend and attack,

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true and false arguments about the Good (Republic 534b–d and Phaedrus 278c–d). As discussed at the end of the chapter, Plato explicitly compares the dialectic process to a battle. Plato’s recurrent and consistent use of wrestling and martial imagery, metaphors, language, allusions, and settings also reveals the Good’s influence on Being and Becoming.2 Plato ranks the types of wrestling from chaotic, all-in fighting to what would be akin to a contemporary orderly Greco-Roman style. The resemblance of Plato’s preferred wrestling stances, holds, and moves to the One is seen in their constancy, stability, fairness, and artistry (order). The highest form of wrestling is upright. For Plato, there is an aesthetic to wrestling; the best moves are the graceful extrications and artful throws of standing wrestling (see Laws 796a). This is followed by the less artful standing throws, and then by the legal but less artful forms, such as tripping, and then by ground wrestling, and finally by the worst form, with its savage and ungainly moves, the pankration. This hierarchy of forms and styles also reveals an ethical dimension, a strong concern for fair holds and starting positions, even allowing for restarts in upright wrestling, a concern that all but vanishes in pankration. Yet another dimension of the ranking is educational. For example, does a style instill the proper virtues of grace, balance, endurance, courage, fair play, and cooperation? And there is still a fourth, practical dimension: does a style teach useful martial skills to the citizenry?3 Within the discipline of upright wrestling, as E. Norman Gardiner observes, “a convenient classification is suggested by Plato’s definition of ὀρθὴ πάλη as consisting of ἀπ᾽ αὐχένων καὶ χειρῶν καὶ πλευρῶν ἐξειλήσεως.”4 Below is a schema of the Platonic view of wrestling:

1. Upright wrestling (ὀρθὴ πάλη), also known as orthopale and stadaia pale



– Contested as best three of five throws.

– Fair starting holds and fair starting positions, including restarts (Phaedrus 236b; Republic 544b and Σ544b). – Artful fair throws and the skillful, “extricating of the neck, hands and body” (Laws 796a–b). For a definition of “fair throws” (καταβλητική), see E. N. Gardiner, 20–22. – Legal but less artful moves, for example, trips, or the “hank.” See Gardiner, 265; Theaetetus 165b, 167e; Euthydemus 278b.

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2. “Rolling” or “ground” wrestling (ἁλίνδεσις or κύλισις) or kato pale



– The “useless” (ἀχρήστου) postures of ground wrestling and pankration (Laws 796a1).



– “As for wrestling, the kind of trick introduced as part of their technique [‘dropping to the ground’ n. 5] by Antaeus and Cercyon because of their wretched obsession with winning” (Laws 796a); see also F. G. Herrmann, 106–8, E. N. Gardiner, 18–20, and M. B. Poliakoff, 33–34 and 48–49.5.5



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3. Pankration (παγκράτιον), or all-strengths, no-holds-barred boxing and wrestling



– Fought to submission or incapacity of a contestant.



– Allowed punching, choking, kicking.



– Proscribed from the ideal state (Laws 833e–834a).

– Thrasymachus’s definition of justice and pankration (Republic 338c–d). – Association of sophistry and pankration (Euthydemus 271c–272b). A fifth and most significant dimension of the above ranking is philosophical. The philosophical dimension reveals both ethical and methodological concerns about the fairness of matches. Plato frequently uses wrestling themes to model “fair” and “unfair” dialectic and protreptic practices. Concentrating on the allusions to wrestling in the Phaedrus, and combat passages from the Euthydemus, Lysis, Symposium, Republic, Theaetetus, Laws, and the Philebus, and so forth, I contend that Socrates often models the proper spirit, rules, and actions of authentic and inauthentic dialectic using the frame of wrestling matches. The metaphor of unfair and fair wrestling moves is a foil to, and a paradigm of, proper philosophic dialogue. Plato’s dialogues reveal a consistent ranking of best and worst wrestling styles and practices. The styles and moves of Greek wrestling mirror good and bad forms of dialectic argument, Socratic protreptic, and more generally sometimes reveal the thematic structure of dialogues that are set as philosophical contests. Plato’s aesthetic, ethical, educational, practical, and philosophical concerns about wrestling and agonistic contests more

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generally can themselves be understood as reflections of his overarching concern for the cultivation of the Good. F. G. Herrmann, in his article “Wrestling Metaphors in Plato’s ­Theaetetus,” comments on Plato’s remarks in Laws 796a–b: “What is said about different types of wrestling here can be directly extended to different types of argumentation. Both method and objective of training and discussion envisaged by Plato [for upright wrestling] are in sharp contrast with the ineffective show fighting and barren hair splitting of sophists in the wake of Protagoras like Euthydemus and Dionysodorus.”6 Philosophic dialectic requires true contests about real arguments with the right motives. What constitutes a fair or unfair move or throw depends not only on the purpose of the contest but also on the intents of the interlocutors; Socrates adapts his style to these factors. In the Platonic frame, there is naturally considerable overlap between the aesthetic, ethical, educational, practical, and philosophical dimensions of wrestling. Plato’s special affinity for wrestling is attested to in the biographical tradition. Diogenes Laertius relates that “he learnt gymnastics under Ariston, the Argive wrestler. And from him he received the name of Plato on account of his robust figure.” He further states, “Others again affirm that he wrestled in the Isthmian Games—this is stated by Dicaearchus in his first book On Lives.”7 In addition, the Academy, the Lyceum, and Cynosarges were all situated at gymnasia.8 Donald Kyle observes, “Although the foundation of the Platonic Academy [in 388] is of tremendous significance, it is important again to realize that the educational use of the Academy coexisted with, rather than replaced, the earlier function of the gymnasium.”9 Given the cultural prevalence of the sport and Plato’s personal familiarity with wrestling, it is not surprising that he frequently resorts to wrestling allusions, but often these references to matches and combative contests combine on a deeper level to form parts of the dramatic, argumentative, and thematic structure of the dialogues themselves. F. G. Herrmann sees the entire structural frame of the Theaetetus in terms of the rounds of a Greek wrestling match. He writes, “Theaetetus makes three attempts, each of decreasing length, to describe the nature of understanding. His suggestions are discussed by Socrates and in turn discarded . . . Socrates attacks it [the suggestions] in three rounds, interlaid with a digression in defense of Protagoras and an excursus on free and unfree ways of thinking.”10 Herrmann argues that the rounds begin at 151e2 f., 187b5 f., and 201c9/d1 and that Socrates plays the role of a “wrestling teacher who guides his pupils through the fallacies of sophistical argumentation.”11 Socrates’s method in these exchanges with the young Theaetetus is a kind

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of γυμναστικός. But I disagree with Herrmann when he claims that outside the Theaetetus and Euthydemus, “[d]ozens of relatively isolated instances of metaphorical expressions like this one [Republic 583b] could be adduced from the dialogues without difficulty. Their relevance is in general confined to their context, and they do not usually determine the structure of the dialogue as a whole.”12 I argue that, in addition to the Theaetetus and the Euthydemus, other passages from the Phaedrus, Republic, Lysis, Laws, and the Philebus referring to wrestling and combative contests reveal important philosophic themes and plot designs extending well beyond the immediate context of the reference and in some cases to common themes that cross the Platonic corpus. Arguably, philosophical contests often have much greater moral stakes than an ordinary wrestling match; if Socrates loses his debate with Protagoras or Lysias, it dooms Hippocrates’s or Phaedrus’s souls. Richard Patterson observes, “The intersection of philosophical ideas and agonistic imagery in the figure of Socrates and his interlocutors is in turn vital to the larger cultural battle for the hearts and minds of at least those few who might be turned to philosophy.”13 If the Phaedrus is taken as a wrestling match, a deep plot structure and many of the philosophic themes and exchanges of the dialogue become clear. Two themes the Phaedrus models are the role of the “fair hold” and the proper starting position for authentic dialogues and wrestling. Here Socrates, as wrestling master (παιδιοτρίβης), practices protreptic on Phaedrus.

Wrestling for Phaedrus Perhaps the Phaedrus is the dialogue where setting plays its most obvious thematic rôle. The scene of the Phaedrus is a secluded green world outside Athens’s city walls (ἔξω τείχους).14 It is the most elaborate and bucolic of any setting in the dialogues, yet at the opening Socrates seems to downplay the significance of the surroundings. Socrates claims, “Forgive me my friend. I am devoted to learning; landscapes and trees (χωρία καὶ τὰ δένδρα) have nothing to teach me—only the people in the city can do that” (230d). Still, as Kenneth Dorter has shown, the physical particularity of the setting does later teach Socrates: “It is only when he suffers ‘divine madness’ (e.g., poetic madness—245a) and virtually breaks out in dithyramb (238c5–d3) that he becomes possessed in his speech by the local nymphs and deities (238c5.f), and it is only when he breaks into epic verse (241e1) that he hears ‘a voice from this very spot!’ ” (242c2)15 (καί τινα φωνὴν ἔδοξα αὐτόθεν ἀκοῦσαι). As Dorter notes, it is then that the

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trees and nymphs speak to him. At 275b–c, near the end of the Phaedrus, Socrates seems to have reversed course, making the strange claim that Zeus’s oak at Dodona, or “even a stone,” can speak truly, while people can lie. The setting reveals the dialogue’s themes. On a deep level, everyone and everything is a potential source of poetic inspiration. Lysias’s clever and insincere speech imitates only the surface of things. Even Socrates must reverse course from his first speech; it is not until Socrates ties the lightning bolt experience of the vision of Phaedrus (light) to the transcendent dimension of the chariot journey that he can speak truly about eros. The light of the Good shines through all dimensions of reality. Alfred Geier argues that the tree, being the loftiest and grandest object on the landscape, symbolizes the seduction of the speeches, and as such, its shelter blocks out the object that is even higher, the Sun—Plato’s simile of the Good.16 I think Geier is correct to call attention to light as a symbol of the Good in the Phaedrus, and indeed the setting even recalls the description of the blindingly bright surface of the earth in the Allegory of the Cave (Republic 516a–c). But here I think it is also likely that the shade of the broad plane tree stands in for Plato, the artist, who frames the pleasant scene and provides the shade for Socrates’s and Phaedrus’s reflection on eros and writing. Even though the setting is nature, Plato is self-consciously calling attention to the fact that the setting is itself his artifact, but also an artifact of the Athenians. Socrates refers to the road on which they are walking, the sanctuary of Agra, an altar (Phaedrus 229c), and refers to the statuettes of nymphs (Phaedrus 230c). The dialogue itself functions as an exemplar of the cultivation of a Garden of Memory, a device Socrates later recommends for “those who already know” (Phaedrus 278a). Early in the Phaedrus, Socrates explicitly states he is not interested in investigating “strange things” (τὰ ἀλλότρια σκοπεῖν) if he does not yet know himself. As he claims, “But I, Phaedrus, think such explanations are very pretty in general, but are the inventions of a very clever and laborious and not altogether enviable man, for no other reason than because after this he must explain the forms of the Centaurs, and then that of the Chimaera, and there presses in upon him a whole crowd of such creatures, Gorgons and Pegasuses, and multitudes of strange inconceivable, portentous natures” (Phaedrus 229d–e).17 Yet, suspiciously, it is Socrates who has a few lines earlier corrected Phaedrus as to the location of the abduction of Oreithyia by Boreas (Phaedrus 229c). Socrates knows the lay of the land. The irenic “greenworld” of the Phaedrus, and Socrates’s gentle and playful tone throughout the dialogue, would seem to belie the wrestling frame. But beneath the halcyon shadow of the plane tree (της πλατάνου)18

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and besides the charm of the brook there is an undercurrent of aggression: the abduction of Oreithyia, Socrates wondering if he is Typho, the jostling of the winged souls, and the lovers who are devotees of Ares. Moreover, there is Socrates’s competition with Lysias for Phaedrus’s soul, the allusions to victory, and, of course, the wrestling imagery itself. He is a winged erotes with a ἔρως δεινὸς for argument. Socrates’s wrestling with Phaedrus, Lysias, and himself is designed to appeal to Phaedrus’s Ares-like character. Phaedrus’s character is well revealed in his speech in the Symposium. Love, Phaedrus argues, causes good actions because of the “mutual emulation” it engenders in the lovers.19 Lovers would never allow their beloved to see them perform shameful acts. And men like these fighting shoulder to shoulder, few as they were, might conquer—I almost said—the whole world in arms. For the lover would rather anyone than his beloved should see him leave the ranks or throw away his arms in flight—nay, he would sooner die a thousand deaths.20 Phaedrus condemns Orpheus for cheating his way into Hades, not “having the courage to die as Alcetis did for love . . .”21 Socrates must wrestle Phaedrus and Lysias fairly, that is, equally, if he is to turn Phaedrus’s soul. Socrates’s first trick of ironic self-distancing fails in his first speech. It is only when he bares his soul that Phaedrus authentically engages with him. One reason Socrates insists that Phaedrus reveal he is speaking from Lysias’s speech is that he wants the speech to be Phaedrus’s; he will not allow Phaedrus to secretly use Lysias as his champion in this fight. While there are feints on both parts and unexpected twists in the Phaedrus, they are fair moves and holds. Notably, the Socratic irony directed at Phaedrus is playful and not dismissive or caustic. Socrates’s playful wrestling with Phaedrus, on the one hand, and his appeal to the combative virtues of Phaedrus’s martial nature, on the other, are both intentional protreptic moves designed for Phaedrus’s conversion. As agonistic arts, wrestling and philosophy naturally share many themes. Beyond the common educational, practical, and aesthetic concerns the Platonic wrestling hierarchy shares with Platonic philosophy lies a distinct concern for correct philosophic logomachy, a concern guised in metaphors of fair holds, fair starts, restarts, and the like. The “fair play” rules are ultimately expressions of concern for the perfection of the form of the arts and aids to protreptic. Arguably, Socrates plays the instructional role of the wrestling master and philosophic mentor to Phaedrus,

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­ heaetetus, Lysis, and Alcibiades; he is co-inquirer with Glaucon and AdeT imantus, while he practices ἀνατρεπτικός (refutation) with Thrasymachus, Philebus, Euthydemus, and Dionysodorus.22 In gymnasia and other settings, Socrates enacts the proper spirit of philosophic protreptic as upright and authentic wrestling with himself, ideas, and others. Moreover, Socrates models at many points the difference between the cooperative palestric that marks philosophic discourse from the quarrelsome sophistic debate that aims solely at victory. In at least five dialogues—Euthydemus, Phaedrus, Republic, Theaetetus, and Philebus—the discourse is not only portrayed as combat, but, in fact, the encounter becomes an important basis of the argument, plot, and theme of these works.23 Plato’s wrestling allusions are not a coincidental or haphazard collection of images, but rather form a consistent and intentional thematic and dramatic enactment of the nature of philosophic exchange. In this dialogue, Socrates is in pursuit of Phaedrus’s soul and in competition with Lysias’s enchanting rhetoric. He is urging Phaedrus to take the path of philosophic friends pursuing the truth cooperatively, rather than succumbing to Lysias’s disingenuous speech and following the seductive course of empty rhetoric (see 257b). Thomas Scanlon identifies a Greek iconographic motif of winged erotes wrestling with one another in attic red figure pottery that can be mapped to Socrates’s role in the Phaedrus. Scanlon writes, “Eros then fights against himself or ‘wrestles’ with himself in the person of the two individuals [pictured wrestling] in either a homo- or heteroerotic relationship. Thus the metaphor of a wrestling Eros probably portrays the internalized eros of the lover, and his agonistic attempt to realize it with his beloved.”24 The wrestling may even, as it does in the Phaedrus, extend to a third party. The wrestlers often fight in the presence of Aphrodite and other goddesses for a woman who also observes the contest. Scanlon explains, There may also be implied the external struggle of two or more rivals, the Greek term for which is anteraste¯s, who vie for the affection of a beloved. In this case, the “wrestling match” would be for the “prize” of a beloved’s affection, and the metaphor would also describe an external struggle of self versus other for a common goal. Such a struggle fits the athletic image well, and it may be that the wrestling iconography at once allows for all three levels of meaning: internal struggle, lover struggling with the beloved, and rival lovers contesting for a beloved.25

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Socrates fights with Lysias over Phaedrus. Scanlon notes that in the Phaedrus, Plato first applies the term anteros (counter-love), which previously had been reserved for the response of a beloved in heterosexual relations, to homosexual relations at 255b–e.26 Naturally, Socrates’s goal is not that of the conventional eraste¯s; rather than forcing his doubled self to submit to his own desire (eros), or forcing the submission of the beloved (anteros), or forcing the submission of the rival (anteraste¯s), his victory is instead demonstrating his mastery of (freedom from) these three forces.27 That Socrates is wrestling with Lysias, Phaedrus, and himself is evident throughout the Phaedrus. At the start of the dialogue, as Mark Moes notes, “at 228e Phaedrus expresses disappointment that Socrates won’t let him try out his powers of memorization by attempting to recite Lysias’s speech, he says: ‘Socrates, you have knocked out (ekkekroukas) of me the hope I had to exercise with you.’ ”28 But here Phaedrus’s exercise is onesided and deceptive; he tries to use another’s set speech as if it were his own. Before Socrates can exercise with Phaedrus, he must honestly confront Phaedrus. Ultimately both Socrates and Phaedrus must abandon posturing and face one another directly. Socrates’s dialectic exercise requires a free and honest two­-sided exchange. When Phaedrus has finished reciting Lysias’s speech, and Socrates attacks it, Phaedrus exclaims, “Now, my friend, you have given me a “fair hold” (περὶ μὲν τούτου, ὦ φίλε, εἰς τὰς ὁμοίας λαβὰς ἐλήλυθας [236 b–c]).29 Consider Walter Hamilton’s translation: “you have laid yourself open to the same treatment as you gave me.”30 Phaedrus will not allow Socrates to hold back coyly. To “come to grips” fairly, neither contestant can have an unassailable position. Socrates well knows that his attack on Lysias’s speech will in turn make Phaedrus require a counter speech of him. Socrates admits in jest that he provoked the counter-hold: “I laid hands on” (ἐπελαβόμην) Phaedrus’s beloved.31 Neither party can, a priori, fairly exempt himself from the contest. Note Herrmann’s observation that Theodorus’s statement at 162a in the Theaetetus, “the expression τὸν οὖν Θεαίτητον πάλιν λαβέ, ‘choose Theaetetus again,’ can be read as a wrestling metaphor, take or get a grip on Theaetetus again.”32 Later in the same playful exchange (234d–237a), Phaedrus threatens Socrates with physical force and a withholding of speeches to compel Socrates to speak.33 The logic of a fair argumentative structure in a shared inquiry requires an exhaustive, cooperative, and symmetrical questioning. At the start of the Phaedrus, all three characters are dissembling. Phaedrus disguises Lysias’s intent: “It is aimed at seducing a beautiful

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boy, but the speaker is not in love with him—this is what is so clever and elegant about it: Lysias argues that it is better to give your favors to someone who does not love you than to someone who does.”34 Lysias’s speech is itself, of course, a blatant lie—he pursues and lusts after Phaedrus and uses the speech, by which he ostensibly denies his love, as the very instrument with which he plies his seduction. Phaedrus hides Lysias’s speech under his cloak, a visual prop of his own hidden desire for Lysias and at the same time a secreting of his love token. Yet it is Socrates’s protreptic ἀνατρεπτικός that uncovers Lysias’s real motive, “I laid hands on Phaedrus’ beloved.” And it is Phaedrus’s counter hold that in turn compels Socrates to reveal his real motive, that he is a lover (erotes) of speeches.35 But Socrates in still another ruse covers his head while he gives his first speech, an indication that he is not speaking from his heart—he is in fact speaking ironically; he does not believe what he is saying, but he is trying to force Phaedrus to see the insincerity of Lysias’s speech. Phaedrus complains that Socrates does not, in good Lysian style, give the flip side of the argument, the virtues of the non-lover, but Socrates does not present it because, as he says, there truly is no other side (241d)—Lysias is really and only a lover. But Phaedrus does not see, or refuses to admit, the irony of Socrates’s ploy, perhaps because he knows full well Lysias’s intent, and he is still enamored with the cleverness of Lysias’s pass. Hence, Socrates fails to throw Lysias, and he is forced into the recantation where he uncovers his head and reveals his true stance as another of Phaedrus’s erastes (243b). In the Phaedrus, there is a two-step process at the start of the dialogue, while still in a refutative mode, where Socrates and Phaedrus use deception while sparring; later in the cooperative instructional mode, from 243e forward until the end of the dialogue, Socrates and Phaedrus abandon deception and pursue the inquiry as philosophic friends. This occurs once Socrates assumes the role of a lover, and Phaedrus metaphorically yields to him.36 Socrates’s relationship with Lysias remains adversarial throughout the dialogue. In a passage from the Theaetetus when Theodorus attempts to bow out of the argument prematurely, Socrates introduces a wrestling image to accuse him of a kind of “mal foi.” He says, “If you went to a wrestling school at Sparta, Theodorus, would you expect to look at the naked wrestlers, some of them making a poor show, and not strip so as to let them compare your own figure?”37 In other words, you cannot fairly critique others while you exempt yourself from the contest.38 But when Theodorus complains that his “limbs are stiff at his age, and instead of dragging me into your exercises, you will try a fall (προσπαλαίειν) with

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a more supple youth,” Socrates agrees it would be fair to shift the contest to Theaetetus.39 In fact, the Theaetetus is full of images comparing wrestling to fair dialectical exchanges. Socrates says, Unfairness in this case occurs when someone fails to make a distinction between a debate and a dialogue. A debate need not be taken seriously and one may toy with and trip up (σφάλλῃ) an opponent in whatever way one is able, but a dialogue should be taken seriously and one should help the other person up to progress the discussion and demonstrate only those slips (σφάλματα) where the error is due to himself or his previous associates.40 The right motive is essential to create emotions that promote rather than impede philosophic dialogue. If an interlocutor is emotionally bowled over, humiliated, confused, or shamed, it is unlikely he will follow, or agree, from that point on with the course of an argument. In an Euthydemus passage (277d), Socrates again attempts to put the interlocutors on equal footing. He observes, “Now Euthydemus was getting ready to give the young man the third fall in this wrestling match, but I saw the boy was out of his depth, and hoped to give him time to rest that he might not drown . . .”41 In all three cases, the wordplay concerns the issue of the legitimacy or authenticity of the exchange; specifically, is it a fair, that is, equal (ὁμοίας) fight? These exchanges should be cooperative because neither party should want, or allow himself or others, an unfair advantage.42 If there is an obvious difference in skill levels, and the weaker party admits and allows it, then the dialogue usually enters an instructional mode (ὑφηγητικός), as it does in the Phaedrus. The ultimate concern for the fairness of the match is not to see who the better man is, or simply to protect the feelings of the contestants, but to prevent the deleterious effect any type of imbalance creates on the quality of the dialectic exchange, whether that imbalance is due to age, motive, experience, temperament, skill, or cheating. In the Ringen volume, Phaedrus 236b is compared to Republic 544b.43 Glaucon and Socrates require a restart when a mistake has been made in the argument, and they will not continue until they reset at the point and in the same position where the digression began: “Well, then, like a wrestler, give me the same hold again (τὴν αὐτὴν λαβὴν), and when I ask the question, try to give the answer you were about to give before.”44 The scholiast’s notes explain Republic 544b as follows, “ὥσπερ παλαιστής. ἔθος

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γὰρ τούτοις, ὅταν πέσωσιν ὁμοῦ, ὡς μηδένα ἐπιπεσεῖν τοῦ λοιποῦ, πάλιν ἐγερθέντας ἐφ’ ὁμοίῳ συμπλεκῆναι σχήματι, ὅπερ τὴν αὐτὴν εἰπε λαβήν.” The purpose of the exchange here is not agonistic; rather, the purpose is further inquiry. Similarly, Socrates claims at 167e that in a philosophical discussion, it is a requirement to “help the other up” if he has slipped.45 Proper philosophic argument, like proper wrestling, is concerned primarily with the correct practice and form of the art, with correctly developing an idea, not winning and losing. Socrates, thus compelled by Phaedrus’s “fair hold,” tries in his first speech to best Lysias on Lysias’s own terms, but in fact it is Socrates who suddenly reverses his own course midstream. Friendships based on eros, Socrates now argues passionately, can be the greatest mortal blessing so long as they remain unconsummated.46 If the friendship remains chaste, “ordered by the rule of philosophical life . . . they have won self-mastery and inward peace.”47 Again, Plato uses a wrestling image (τῶν τριῶν παλαισμάτων τῶν ὡς ἀληθῶς Ὀλυμπιακῶν ἓν νενικήκασιν)48 to express that victory has been won in “one of the three truly Olympic contests [of wrestling].”49 But what are the three contests? The allusion could be to the number of rounds it takes to win a Greek wrestling match. Michael Poliakoff states, “To win a formal competition, a Greek wrestler needed to score three falls against his opponent; thus a maximum of five bouts could occur.”50 That an allusion to three rounds is Plato’s intent is buttressed by the passage from the Euthydemus (277d) mentioned earlier. 51 G. J. De Vries applies the clincher to the Phaedrus passage, quoting the Republic at 583b: “That, then, would be two points in succession and two victories for the just man over the unjust. And now for the third in the Olympian fashion to the savior and to the Olympian Zeus” (τὸ δὲ τρίτον Ὀλυμπικῶς τῷ σωτῆρί τε καὶτῷ Ὀλυμπίῳ Διί).52 Victory has been won in three rounds of Olympic wrestling. But if this is the literal meaning of the allusion, what are the three figurative victories that the lover can win? One victory is explicitly stated to be over oneself; one could assume another victory is over the beloved (i.e., not being seduced into a physical consummation of the love).53 Alcibiades actually wrestles several times alone with Socrates in an attempt to seduce him, but he confesses, “We took exercise together, and I was sure that this would lead to something. He took exercise and wrestled with me many times when no one else was present. What can I tell you? I got nowhere.”54 But what would the third victory be? As conjectured earlier, the third victory could be over the rival (anteraste¯s), in this case Lysias. Or perhaps the third victory is the last, the mastery of the art itself, whether it be philosophy or wrestling. On this reading, the third victory would

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be not only Socrates’s turning of Phaedrus from style to content, from rhetoric to philosophy, but also the understanding he shows in the last section of the dialogue of the fundamental principles of philosophic and rhetorical composition. This last interpretation fits the traditional protreptic interpretation of the Socratic mission. Protreptic requires self-mastery, mastery of the other(s), and mastery of the art of philosophy.55 The Phaedrus is thematically arranged around the rounds of a Greek wrestling match. It is plotted as a five-part dialogue. Round one is composed of some initial sparring and Lysias’s speech as delivered by Phaedrus (227a–234c). Round two continues the sparring, and Socrates gives his first speech (234c–241d). The third round is Socrates’s recantation of his first speech, the palinode (241d–243e). The fourth round is Socrates’s second speech in praise of eros (244a–257b). And, finally, the last round is Socrates’s arguments showing the superiority of philosophy over rhetoric (257c–279c). In his first speech, Socrates improves Lysias’s speech, but it is a pyrrhic victory. Socrates has betrayed himself and blasphemed the god.56 The third fall, the palinode, marks the middle and the turning point, literally the “taking it back” or refutation of Socrates’s first speech that is critical of eros. Dramatically and literally, this reversal occurs at high noon.57 Socrates, after losing the first two rounds (first to Lysias and second to himself), masters himself and with a reversal wins the first round for philosophic eros. In the fourth part of the dialogue, at the end of the Chariot myth, Phaedrus admits that Lysias would be unable to best Socrates’s account (ὥστε ὀκνῶ μή μοι ὁ Λυσίας ταπεινὸς φανῇ, ἐὰν ἄρα καὶ ἐθελήσῃ πρὸς αὐτὸν ἄλλον ἀντιπαρατεῖναι).58 Socrates has beaten the anteraste¯s and evened the match by winning a second fall. And, finally, Socrates takes his third and last fall when he demonstrates the superiority of philosophy over rhetoric. Hence, Socrates wins this match three falls to two. Interestingly, the analogy of a contest or match with an embodied champion of pleasure occurs in three different dialogues: the Phaedrus, Republic, and Philebus. Pleasure takes the form of Aphrodite in the Philebus, the unjust man in the Republic, and the dark horse in the Phaedrus.59 The argument and plot of the Philebus are structured as a martial roundrobin contest to determine the best life. In the first match, Philebus pits pleasure, personified by Aphrodite, against all comers; when Socrates gives a convincing counterexample, Protarchus exclaims, “By now it seems to me indeed that pleasure has been defeated as if knocked down by your present arguments, Socrates. In her fight for victory, she has fallen.”60 The metaphor of the contest for the best life is continued throughout

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the rest of the Philebus. In the end, in two of these dialogues, victory goes to the philosophic soul, and in the remaining, the Republic, it goes to the “just man.” On its surface, wrestling may appear to present several disanalogies with Socratic dialectic. First, while it makes sense to say that someone should win a debate having truth on his side, it makes less sense to say winning a wrestling match involves having the Good on one’s side. Victory in wrestling would seem to depend only on technique, strength, experience, intelligence, skill, and endurance. That the “right,” if such a notion makes sense in wrestling, should prevail in a trial by combat would appear to be a quaint idea. But given the Platonic wrestling hierarchy, standing wrestling and Socratic philosophy are ultimately concerned with the perfection of their arts, not simply victory and defeat.61 Hence, it makes sense to critique and review moves and even the motives of a match, whether they lead to defeat or victory; this review of motives and technique is a logical requirement for determining what is good and proper to an art. A hold or move may work; that is, it may be successful for any number of incidental reasons, but this in no way ensures that it was a good or true move; likewise, a wrestler may win or dominate a match, but his victory in no way ensures that he fought well or with the right motive. From a Platonic perspective, the reason that the hoi polloi misjudge success in politics, rhetoric, and art is the same reason that they misjudge success in wrestling; that is, they assume power and popular approbation are the sole criteria for excellence, just as most people assume victory is the only real criteria for judging wrestling. A second disanalogy appears to be that in wrestling, deceit, feints, and trickery are common, necessary, and even respectable stratagems, while these devices seem alien to the spirit of truth seeking that is endemic to Socratic elenchus. Still, Socrates himself often uses feints when he wrestles with Phaedrus and Thrasymachus, but he does so to compel them to reveal their true motives and beliefs, just as they resist his moves with their own evasions. In short, Socrates dissembles in order to reveal. Socrates is continually accused of cheating by his interlocutors. One recurrent complaint is that his claim of ignorance allows him to be, in effect, unassailable—because he never himself holds a position, there is nothing to seize on, forcing his opponents to expose themselves unilaterally to attack. First, Socrates often demonstrates the weakness of his interlocutor’s position, then proceeds to an instructional mode. Yet this is not the case in the Phaedrus. When Socrates’s initial attack fails, Phaedrus’s fair hold

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compels him to defend a position first before assuming an instructional mode later in the palinode.

Lysis: Wrestling as an Enactment of Philosophic Dialogue Another Platonic model of constructive argument between friends is seen in the Lysis, which is set, not by accident, in a Palaestra, or wrestling school.62 Two scholars have noted the role of the setting and the themes it enacts as central to understanding the Lysis. Christopher Tindale writes, “Socrates is detained outside a wrestling-school into which he is ultimately drawn. One is struck immediately by the backdrop of physical struggle and fierce competitiveness against which the dialogue ensues. We see the discussion of friendship rise and fall within an environment that knows the daily effort of men and boys bettering themselves by overcoming and being overcome.”63 Tindale elegantly argues for an esoteric interpretation of the dialogue, writing that “to describe in words alone what friendship is would be to falsify it in one way, to prevent the necessary moment of encounter in the discovery of the idea. Because one cannot capture in a definition a living reality.”64 Francisco Gonzalez argues that “the location of the discussion in a wrestling school and the description of the competitive games the boys play there suggest the theme of competition and its relation to friendship.”65 Gonzalez rightly, I believe, sees the wrestling as an enactment of Socratic dialectic. Though we receive no definition or answer at the end of the dialogue, Socrates’ actual inquiry exhibits the nature of friendship by assimilating and developing philosophically all three characteristics introduced by the dramatic setting. The competition initially found in the games of the school in the wrestling taught there and in the rivalry between Lysis and Menexenus, is transformed into that never satiated desire for wisdom and virtue that characterizes Socratic dialectic.66 Lysis and Menexenus, friends of the same age, backgrounds, and abilities, are ashamed to let one another down; they excel for the other. Their love is reflected in their expectations of their friend’s expectations for them. Thus, their friendship is always compelling them to be better than they are. Hippothales, who hides himself from his beloved and never enters the

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philosophical discourse, is never brought into the fray and therefore never beyond his self-reflecting preconceived infatuation. The Lysis, I believe, elucidates a theme in the Phaedrus; the beloved perceives in him- or herself the qualities the lover perceives and tries to exemplify them for the lover. In this way, the beloved is also spurred on to the eternal Forms. As Socrates notes in the Phaedrus, the beloved “has caught a disease of the eye from another” (the lover) but without realizing that “his lover is as it were a mirror in which he beholds himself.”67 One critical difference between the lover, Hippothales’s self-infatuation in his image of Lysis, and the beloved’s image of himself in the eyes of their lover is that Hippothales constructs the image himself, while the beloved’s image of him- or herself is given by the lover. Another critical difference is that in the Phaedrus the philosophical lover and beloved enter a continuing discourse that leads them beyond themselves to the Forms, while Hippothales never enters a discourse, that is, wrestles with Lysis. Wrestling is not only an image of Socratic dialectic but also a model of Socratic protreptic; Socrates attempts to turn Phaedrus, Lysis, and Hippocrates to philosophy. The protreptic can play out in several ways: It may be a battle between Socrates and equally matched rival lovers over a prize beloved, as in the cases of Lysias and Protagoras. Or it may be a fair contest between friends, where the contestants are equally matched and ashamed to let one another down, as with Lysis and Menexenus. Or, finally, it may be a training match between unequals, as with Socrates and Lysis, where the master guides the inferior and the inferior aspires to emulate the master. The ancient Thrasyllan grouping of the Platonic dialogues provides a rough but not exhaustive method for classifying the purpose and intent of some of the dialogues and characters; especially useful are the agonistic and refutative categories. As A. H. Chroust observes, the early doxographical tradition, summarized in Diogenes Laertius’s schema for the Corpus Platonicum, divides the corpus into two general types, the one adapted to instruction (ὑφηγητικός), and the other to inquiry (ζητητικός)  . . . The inquiring (or inquisitorial) dialogue also has two main subdivisions, the one aiming at training the intellect (γυμναστικός), the other at overpowering the adversary in a controversy (ἀγονιστικός). And that part which aims at training the intellect, in turn, contains two further subdivisions, the one akin to the midwife’s art (μαιευτικός), and the other being merely tentative (πειραστικός). And the part which aims at overpowering an

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adversary in a controversy (agonistic) is also subdivided into one part that raises critical objections (probative, ενδειτικός) and another part which is destructive to the main position (refutative, ἀνατρεπτικός).68 Unfortunately, the doxographical tradition has often taken these divisions as classifications of the purpose of dialogues as a whole, rather than as categories for understanding the motives of specific exchanges between characters at specific points in any given dialogue. The motive of philosophic inquiry must be a shared desire to pursue the truth. The right kind of competition in the pursuit of truth is not only healthy, but it may, for Plato, be a necessary starting point for philosophic inquiry. Like other craft and art analogies in Plato, what on the surface appears to be a competitive endeavor, pitting one practitioner’s art against another’s, mistakes the purpose of the art. The true aim of all arts and wrestling is the perfection of the art, not simply victory. Thrasymachus and Socrates are both philosophers, but Thrasymachus’s motive is to beat Socrates. True doctors do not try to outdo other doctors, nor musicians other musicians (Republic 349b–350d). After multiple refutations in Book I, Thrasymachus seems genuinely interested in the progress of the dialogue. Book II in the Republic marks a shift from a refutative to an inquiring mode. The inquiring mode requires a fair playing field—stripped of motives ulterior to the pursuit of truth. In this setting, refutation and critical objections aim not at overpowering the opponent but rather at instruction (ὑφηγητικός), training (γυμναστικός), and inquiry. Socrates’s method varies with the context of the exchange according to whether the purpose of the dialectic is instruction (γυμναστικός), inquiry, or overpowering an adversary. The Lysis is classified as a training dialogue (γυμναστικός), specifically of the maieutic type.69 Wrestling, like erotic intercourse, becomes a model of dialectic training and intercourse.70 Wrestling and philosophic eros are not poor images of the form of dialectical exercise; rather, they are in their pure forms models for the proper pursuit of philosophy.

The Republic: Thrasymachus as Pankratist But not all contests are healthy. The opening of the Republic portrays destructive philosophic wrestling using the pankration as the paradigm. Thrasymachus’s motive to win at all costs is an anti-philosophic motive. His approach to philosophic dialogue is that of a battle on which to wager, with clear

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winners and losers (Republic 337d). When Thrasymachus gives his infamous definition of justice, that it is “the advantage of the stronger,” Socrates asks if “stronger” is to be taken in the sense of the pankration—the Greek allstrengths contest, a brutal combination of no-holds-barred wrestling and boxing (Republic 338c–d).71 As Thrasymachus himself notes, Socrates takes his definition in exactly its most ridiculous and weakest sense, and Thrasymachus rightly objects that Socrates knows full well that he does not mean that—but here Socrates has adopted Thrasymachus’s style of combat. He is not out to further the dialogue but to catch as catch can, to humiliate Thrasymachus for protreptic purposes. Socrates’s motive here is not to dialogue with Thrasymachus but to bully Thrasymachus in exactly the way Thrasymachus bullies others. Socrates can do nothing to help him until he sees the futility of this motive. Therefore, Socrates must first refute (ἀνατρεπτικός) Thrasymachus’s position, and he must do it in the only fashion that Thrasymachus recognizes—a contest of arguments. In fact, Socrates turns Thrasymachus’s own argument on its head; justice turns out to be the interest of the weaker (342d). “When it had come to this point in the discussion and it was apparent to everybody that his formula of justice had suffered a reversal of form” (ὅτι ὁ τοῦ δικαίου λόγος εἰς τοὐναντίον περιειστήκει . . .),72 Socrates has achieved an artistic περιτροπή. As Herrmann notes, “περιτροπή, turnabout, is a technical term of rhetoric and philosophy which denotes the turning of an argument against its proponents as a means of refutation.”73 περιτροπή would be a class of ἀνατρεπτικός, and it is a term used, as Herrmann shows, simultaneously in the context of philosophy and wrestling (Clouds 901 and Euthydemus 286c2).74 ­Herrmann cites uses of the term περιτροπή from Sextus Empiricus, where it references both wrestling and argument.75 If Thrasymachus’s motive is to win, he will never look at an argument in itself or allow an argument to flow freely.76 Thus, we see two types of competition modeled in the Platonic dialogues; the destructive debate is best exemplified by Thrasymachus. Thrasymachus desires to win, to prove his point. The natural give and take of a philosophic discourse and even the common or shared goal of discovery is abandoned for the glory and honor of victory.77 Thrasymachus’s self-understanding is ironic in that he seems to think he is independent and tough, playing others as dupes, yet Thrasymachus, above all the others wants adulation and approval—first for his definition and second in his desire to bet on the outcome of the discourse. But clearly Thrasymachus’s concern for the opinions of others is seen in his hesitant answers when Socrates catches him in contradictory definitions: “He acceded reluctantly” (346d) and “with hesitancy, reluctance, and an amazing amount of sweat” (350d).78 And earlier at 339e, he is speechless because he is so flustered. Thrasymachus ’s owner-

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ship and possessiveness about his definition prevent him from entering into real philosophic discourse. The combative beginning of the Republic is very different from the cooperative discourse that is modeled by Glaucon and Adeimantus after Thrasymachus gives up—cooperative even to the point of Glaucon’s assuming the role of devil’s advocate to help further progress the discussion (357a). Socrates reports that “Glaucon, who is always an intrepid, enterprising spirit in everything, would not acquiesce in Thrasymachus’ abandonment of his case, but said, ‘Socrates, is it your desire to seem to have persuaded us or really to persuade us that it is without exception better to be just than unjust?’ ”79 Glaucon, unlike Thrasymachus, has no preconceived investment in the answer (winner); he is truly interested in fairly and rigorously pressing both sides of the argument.

Wrestling, Dialectic, and Authenticity Why is wrestling a trope for Socratic method in these dialogues?80 Wrestling, like eros, mimics the mutuality, the give and take of dialectic activity. “Das Ringen taucht des ofteren als Metapher in erotischem Zusammenhang auf.”81 To be performed well, wrestling and dialectic must be simultaneously competitive and cooperative. Likewise, wrestling and philosophic discourse are at the same time both playful and serious activities. There is in the moments of wrestling, eros, and dialectic an unfolding, intense, and shared experience of discovery. In addition, there is the fact that there is no prearranged outcome in dialectic or wrestling (this is a critical element of the Phaedrus), and it speaks to the integrity of the interlocutors and more generally to the integrity of the process. In true dialectic and real wrestling there must not be a predetermined outcome, as there is both in Lysias’s highly formal rhetoric and in staged combat; rather, there must be a free give and take between the participants,82 and there must be open willingness to admit defeat. Socrates’s reversal of his own position in the palinode marks this point, and later Phaedrus also reverses his stand, acknowledging the superiority of Socrates’s arguments over Lysias’s. The self-knowledge and the knowledge of the other result from the confrontation. The knowledge is forced on participants by the figurative holds and throws of the argument; evasion that is so easy and so prevalent in ordinary social circumstances is not permissible in Socrates’s dialectic. The interlocutors in a philosophical discussion must be willing to put themselves as well as their arguments on the line. In the Phaedrus, the inner contest is symbolized in the struggle of the dark horse with

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the light horse and the charioteer (253d–257a), and the outer contest is symbolized by the winged souls who battle with one another (248a–b). Here I am heavily influenced by what the existentialist thinker Karl Jaspers says about the “loving struggle liebender Kampf ”: The love in this communication is not blind love regardless of its object. It is the fighting, clear-sighted love of possible Existenz tackling another possible Existenz, questioning it, challenging it, making things hard for it. The struggle in this communication is the individual’s fight for Existenz, both for his own and for the other’s. It is unlike the struggle for existence in which all weapons are brought into play and trickery and fraud become inevitable, in which my fellow man is treated as an enemy, as simply part of the “other than I,” like resistant nature . . . It is a struggle in which both combatants dare to show themselves without reserve and to allow themselves to be thrown into question.83 As Theodorus again notes, Socrates requires exactly this kind of commitment and earnestness from his interlocutors: “The Spartans tell you to go away if you will not wrestle, but Antaeus is more in your line [Socrates’s]; you will let no one who comes near you go until you have stripped him by force for a trial of strength.”84 The conventional nakedness of Greek athletic competitions bespeaks of an openness, a baring of the soul, and thus a lack of deceit. As Theodorus complains, “You don’t let any comer go till you have stripped him and made him wrestle with you in argument.”85 The motive of philosophic inquiry must be a shared desire to pursue the truth. The right kind of competition in the pursuit of truth is not only healthy, but it may, for Plato, be a desire that is necessary for philosophic inquiry. Socrates repeats in several dialogues that one should be happy with and thankful for the person who refutes you, for she has done you a favor (cf. Republic 337d and Gorgias 458a).86 In response to Theodorus, Socrates brags, perhaps a little ironically: But I am more a fiend for exercise than Sciron and Antaeus. I have met with many and many a Heracles and Theseus in my time, mighty men of words; and they have battered me. But for all that I don’t retire from the field, so terrible a lust (ἔρως δεινὸς) has come upon me for these exercises. You must not grudge me this, either; try a fall (προσανατριψάμενος) with me and we shall both be better.87

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Socrates, as others, it would seem, is the better even for losing; for losing and winning both advance an argument and create shared learning moments. Taking criticisms personally, as Anytus does in the Meno, destroys dialogue, creates a dangerous dynamic, and eliminates the possibility of acquiring self-knowledge in an exchange.88 The struggle, its mutuality, and the surprise of shared philosophic discovery require the rare combined virtues of trust, courage, endurance, vulnerability, and cooperation. Friends, even when they disagree, must be able to enjoy philosophic discourse. Tindale writes, The view of friendship extolled here [in the Lysis] is inextricably wedded with learning. One acts for the sake of the other’s betterment; friends wrestle, throw and are thrown on a sphere above the physical . . . the quest for knowledge is a co-operative venture.89 Wrestling and philosophic discourse are both inner and outer struggles; Socrates battles Lysias and Phaedrus, but most profoundly, he struggles with his own desire. The point in the Phaedrus where Socrates owns and displays his desire is the moment that at once makes him vulnerable and courageous. His confession in the palinode and following becomes the basis of the trust and cooperation exhibited between the friends from that point forward. At some level the communication is ineffable, but the art is capable of being experienced and transmissible. W. C. Helmbold and W. B. Holther conclude that in the Phaedrus, “[w]e have seen that Socrates’s view of the propagation of philosophy as the planting of seeds of wisdom in the soul requires personal contact.”90 The other is necessary to keep the inquiry honest, and the inner struggle is necessary to keep the self honest with itself.

Theomachia: Calliope versus Aphrodite in Plato’s Philebus Protarchus: Well yes Socrates, it does look to now as if pleasure has been given a knockout blow by your last arguments; in her fight for victory, she has fallen. Prôtarchos ἀλλὰ μήν, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ νῦν μὲν ἡδονή σοι πεπτωκέναι καθαπερεὶ πληγεῖσα ὑπὸ τῶν νυνδὴ λόγων: τῶν γὰρ νικητηρίων πέρι μαχομένη κεῖται (Philebus 22e).91

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Plato does not limit Logomachy to humans; in the Philebus, goddesses become surrogates for arguments, and their battles enact the clash of philosophic ideas. The Theomachia of Books 20 and 21 of the Iliad are given a new spin here. Yet again, Plato is reluctant to name names, forcing the reader to infer the contestant’s name by her nature and actions. Near the beginning of Philebus, Socrates poses a thought experiment. Would one prefer a life of pleasure devoid of reason or a life of reason devoid of pleasure?92 Nobody, Socrates argues, would choose a life of pleasure if it meant “you would not realize that you were enjoying yourself even while you do. You would thus not live a human life, but the life of a mollusk or one of those creatures in shells that live in the sea.”93 The Philebus is structured as a martial round-robin contest between three contestants, each embodying different kinds of pleasures and knowledge; this is a device to determine a ranking of lives and which has the superior claim to being the best life. One contestant, Aphrodite, is explicitly identified; the other, the Muse of Philosophy, Calliope, is suggested by her title and functions, but the third remains the mystery challenger. In the contest for the Good, Philebus pits pleasure against all comers. Plato’s dialogue starts, however, with Philebus swiftly backing down from Socrates’s challenge to fight for this thesis: “I absolve myself of all responsibility and now call the goddess herself as my witness.”94 Socrates makes it clear a few lines later that the above reference is to Aphrodite and that Philebus identifies her with pleasure. Socrates says, “We must do our best, making our start with the goddess herself—this fellow claims that though she is called Aphrodite her truest name is pleasure,”95 and Philebus’s Aphrodite is the Aphrodite of intense sexual pleasure, of carnal union.96 Protarchus takes up the agon, and pleasure’s claim to be the best life is quickly dispatched by Socrates. Socrates argues that nobody would choose the life of pleasure without reason or memory, because, as mentioned, it would reduce human existence to unconnected momentary experiences, the life, Socrates says, of a mollusk.97 It may appear then that the Philebus, which almost all scholars date later than the Phaedrus, presents a challenge to the view of erotic madness extolled in the Phaedrus and championed in that dialogue by Aphrodite. In the Phaedrus, the patroness and inspiration for the fourth and highest type of madness, erotic madness, is Aphrodite.98 The fourth kind of madness is what Socrates calls philosophic madness, a madness that, when properly cultivated, transports the philosopher, who when he sees the beauty of the earth, is transported with the recollection of true beauty; he would like to fly away, but

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he cannot; he is like a bird fluttering and looking upward and careless of the world below; and for this he is esteemed mad.99 The transcendence of the chariot trip in the Phaedrus leads to even greater gifts. It takes one beyond heaven to a vision of the realm of ousia ontos ousa.100 But Aphrodite, the champion of sexual desire and beauty, does not come off as well in the Philebus. Aphrodite is “knocked out, she has fallen,” quips Protarchus; and Socrates observes, “She will not get as much as third prize, if we can put some trust in my insight for now.”101 Typical of the castigation sexual pleasure receives in this dialogue is a line from late in the Philebus. [A]nd I think it is true especially of the greatest pleasures— we detect in them an element either of the ridiculous or of extreme ugliness, so that we ourselves feel ashamed, and do our best to cover it up and hide it away, and we leave that sort of thing to the hours of darkness, feeling that it should not be exposed to the light of the day.102 But the depiction of Aphrodite here is of sexual union, whereas in the Phaedrus the fourth kind of madness, philosophic madness, is the erotic madness caused by unconsummated sexual desire. These are two different sorts of pleasures: Aphrodite Pandemos and Aphrodite Ourania.103 In one experience, consciousness is reduced to the present moment, while in the other experience, consciousness is extended through the past and present. Thus, by considering Aphrodite to encompass only one kind of pleasure, we may not have heeded Socrates’s own warning at the start of the Philebus that, “as to pleasure, I know that it is complex, and, just as I said, we must make it our starting point and consider carefully what sort of nature it has.”104 The distinction is clear in the Phaedrus where Socrates argues that sexual union with the desired vitiates a relationship and leaves the lovers a life at a lower level of understanding.105 On the other hand, Aphrodite Ourania transports one from the Realm of Becoming and the particular to the Realm of Being and universality. In addition to the complex nature of Aphrodite, there is another, unnamed goddess competing in the dialogue, and the evidence suggests it is Calliope. The description of her, and references to her other appellations, leave little doubt as to her true identity. I argue that in the Philebus, Calliope is playing the role of discrimination, while Aphrodite Ourania, as she does in the Phaedrus, transports. Calliope, in applying limit (πέρας) to the Forms mixed in the Realm of Becoming, creates harmonies by

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establishing ratios between different things. Socrates exclaims, “Is it not the presence of these factors in them which forges a limit and thereby creates different kinds of music in their perfection?”106 Thus, the three goddesses in the competition are Calliope, Aphrodite Ourania, and Aphrodite Pandemos. Socrates invokes the muses twice in the Phaedrus, once at 237b and a second time at 259b–d: And to Calliope, the oldest among them, and Urania, the next after her, who preside over the heavens and all discourse, human and divine, and sing with the sweetest voice, they report those who honor their special kind of music by leading a philosophical life.107 Presiding over the “discourse” of the heavens is presumably a metaphor for Calliope and Urania overseeing the proper separation and mixing of the Forms in the Realm of Being, and resolving conflicts or incommensurability between the Forms. But their harmonizing influence is felt equally in Becoming. The passage above, especially the phrase “those who honor their special kind of music by leading a philosophical life,” harkens back to Socrates’s conjecture in the Phaedo (61a) concerning the connection between the composition of music and living a philosophic life. The philosopher’s life and philosophic discourse in resolving differences emulates the activities of the muses. Socrates further singles out Calliope in the Philebus as a tonic for mortal ills: It is the goddess herself, fair Philebus, who recognizes how excess and the overabundance of our wickedness allow for no limit (πέρας) in our pleasures and their fulfillment, and she therefore imposes law and order and limit on them. And while you may complain that this ruins them, I by contrast call it their salvation.108 This reference clearly is to Calliope and not Aphrodite; Calliope puts limit on the unlimited. In the preceding lines, Socrates has just given music, her province, as an example of the imposition of limit (πέρας) on the unlimited.109 That Calliope is Socrates’s model here is evidenced by his last speech in the Philebus, where he again contrasts the unmixed pleasure of animal passions with the love of discrimination in the argument found in the Muse of Philosophy:

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It is the animals on which the multitude rely just as diviners rely on birds, when they decide that pleasures are of first importance to our living a good life, and suppose that animal desires are authoritative evidence, rather than those desires that are known to reasoned argument, divining the truth of this and that by the power of the Muse of Philosophy [Calliope].110 Clearly the multitude (Pandemos) relies on Aphrodite, while Socrates prizes Calliope. In fact, Socrates emulates the role of the goddess herself in his design of a contest to discriminate the best life and to divide pleasure into various kinds. At this point one might fairly ask what unique role or place Calliope has with regard to the two Aphrodites. Or is Aphrodite Ourania, or Calliope, the true patroness of philosophy? As stated above, Aphrodite as she represents the pleasure of sexual union (Pandemos) is not the same kind as Aphrodite who is the exciter of sexual desire and the embodiment of beautiful forms (Ourania). Aphrodite Ourania functions as the goddess who takes one beyond the embodied individual to the highest levels of the Forms; Calliope discriminates between the Forms themselves. Calliope’s pleasure is pleasure of the soul unaffected by the body. Aphrodite Ourania then is knowledge of the ascent to the Forms, and Calliope becomes the discrimination of the Forms in things and the separation and mixing of forms in themselves in the Realm of Being. That is to say that Calliope attends to the hierarchical relationship, or fit, of the Forms—say, pleasure, beauty, equality, or fairness—and judges how the possible relations between the Forms in the Realm of Being are best combined. This mixing is metaphorically represented as divine conflict. Even on the level of the highest Forms, there is some incommensurability between Forms (“all discourse human and divine”) once they process from the One.111 Take, for instance, the Forms of fairness and equality; a fair fight is not necessarily an equal fight, yet equality and fairness are unified as one approaches the higher Form of Sameness. The life of pleasure is like the unlimited, while that of reason approximates limit. Plato intentionally picks Calliope the goddess of music, harmony, limit, and philosophy to represent the philosophic task of ordering the Forms.112 Notably, the fabled Calliope is also the mediator of divine conflicts.113 Aphrodite’s pleasure is associated with the body and becoming, and it involves the pleasure of restoration, as Socrates argues, “When the natural combination of limit and unlimitedness that forms a live organism . . . is destroyed, this destruction is pain, while the return towards its

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own nature, this general restoration is pleasure.”114 Socrates distinguishes bodily pleasure from a pleasure of the soul that is divorced from the body. “But now as for the other type of pleasure, of which we said that it belongs to the soul itself. It depends entirely on memory.”115 After this he distinguishes recollection from memory and makes recollection a process when “the soul recalls as much as possible by itself, without the aid of the body, what she has once experienced with the body.”116 Calliope’s pleasure is this last sort, a superior pleasure that comprehends the beauty of the object in itself and is not reduced to the subject’s affective relationship to the object of desire. So while Aphrodite Ourania draws one out of oneself and toward the object, Calliope’s pleasure derives from the contemplation of the structure of the object in itself, without regard to its ability to sate any specific desire. Hence, Calliope’s pleasure is a truer and more complete experience than that of Aphrodite’s pleasures. As the created topographies in the underworld accounts of the Gorgias, Phaedo, Menexenus, and Republic and the landscape of Atlantis represent metaphysical hierarchies, so the finishing places of the goddesses in the Philebus parallel the kind of lives that correspond to living in those dimensions of reality. The diagram below outlines the results of the competition in the Philebus and the relation of the lives to their ultimate objects and cause: Finishing Places

1. Ultimate object: The One/Good and the Forms; see Philebus 16c and 23d–24e.



2. The Truth (ale¯theia) (Socrates’s Goddess); see 22c, 28a–b, and 30b.



3. Philosophical Life of Reasoning: Calliope/harmony neither pain nor pleasure Recollection 21d–22b

4. Mixed Life of Pain and Pleasure: Aphrodite Ourania, bodily restoration pleasure/pain Memory 21d–22b

5. Hedonistic Life: Pure Pleasure—mollusk like: Aphrodite Pandemos No Memory 21c Aphrodite Pandemos rates “not even third place” (22e), and later she is placed in “fifth position” at 67a. The life of philosophy being self-suffi-

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cient (self-­nourishing) will not experience want (pain) or desire (pleasure). It may seem that the Philebus violates the Republic’s proscription of representing fighting and warring gods (Republic 378b), but here the fighting is structured as a contest (agon) for the best life, and the battle is clearly represented as a metaphor. Moreover, it fits the Platonic project of redoing Homer in a manner that is in accord with a philosophic life and principles.

War and Remembrance Catherine Zuckert has suggested a method for a Unitarian reading of Plato that organizes the corpus according to the dramatic dates of the dialogues.117 Such an approach suggests the Peloponnesian War itself as an overarching framing device.118 One of the strengths of Zuckert’s use of dramatic dates to arrange the dialogues is the Platonic perspective it sheds on the most cataclysmic event in Athenian history. On this schema, only three dialogues stand outside the scope of the war and its immediate aftermath: the Laws, Parmenides, and Menexenus.119 Arguably, the first and last of these also provide an antebellum and postbellum critique of Athens. The Panhellenism exhibited in the Laws presents a positive foil to the debacle of the Peloponnesian War, while the Menexenus provides an analogue to Athens’s long-standing and continuing imperialism. Zuckert maintains that the Laws provides an occasion for the unnamed interlocutors from Athens, Sparta, and Crete to reflect on the positive lessons learned from the Persian Wars.120 At the other extreme, chapter 2, concerning the Menexenus, shows the Greeks’ failure in the Corinthian War to heed the hard-won lessons of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars. The dialogues are composed by Plato with the advantage of a generation of retrospection on the events they recount. The composition of a funeral oration for Corinthian War dead provides the setting of the Menexenus. It also provides Plato with the opportunity to take the long view of Athens’s imperial ambitions; the epitaph for the Corinthian War dead (ca. 387 BCE) is repeatedly tied back to Pericles’s funeral oration at the start of the Peloponnesian War (431 BCE). In this case, Pericles’s speech is a specter that haunts the actions of the Menexenus’s complication. Similarly, events that happen after the dramatic date of a dialogue can become part of its frame. Athenians reading the Symposium are fully aware of what is about to happen to Alcibiades and Athens after the party is over. Hermocrates does not get his say in the Timaeus-Critias while he is at Athens, but he will reply soon enough in Syracuse. In the Menexenus,

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Socrates’s history of imperial Athens represents the phantom of Athens, a necropolis unaware of her own death. Other dialogues take up the theme of flawed Athenian generalship. Plato’s Laches is apparently set during the Peace of Nicias (421 BCE) in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE). As do many other dialogues in the Platonic corpus, the Laches, Menexenus, Republic, Apology, Critias, and Timaeus ask the pressing question: what caused the fall of the Athenian Republic? The Peloponnesian War overshadows the tragic fates of Alcibiades, Polemarchus, Laches, Nicias, and Charmides. Martha Beck provides Plato’s answer using the context of the Republic’s study of philosopher-kings to elucidate the arguments and themes of the Laches.121 Plato’s analysis reveals the character flaws in Athens’s military and political leaders, Laches (d. 418 at Mantinea) and Nicias (d. 413 at Syracuse), and, by extension, the flaws of Athens herself. These flaws, in both their logic and character, lead to tragic decisions to wage unnecessary wars and to fight unwinnable battles. Beck argues that the thumos-possessed and honordriven Laches cannot see courage as anything other than endurance in the face of peril, whether that endurance be foolhardy or wise. On the other hand, Nicias exhibits a hubristic trust in divination, allowing omens to overrule sound reasoning at Syracuse.122 The knowledge of the art of good generalship remains simply that—the knowledge of good generalship; an eclipse of the moon does not change the balance of a tactical or strategic situation (198c–199a). Only Socrates’s actions during the retreat at Delium, unlike Laches’s and Nicias’s respective notions of blind fury and superstitious obedience, bespeak a true courage—a human courage tempered by knowledge.123 While Laches’s and Nicias’s views of courage and generalship work in most situations, they fall tragically short at other critical moments in Athenian history. As Beck explains: In each dialogue [The Laches and The Republic], Athens is at a turning point: its citizens can choose to develop a truly philosophical view of human excellence and a system of education to inculcate it, or they can choose to listen to the sophists and create a society where every citizen is out for himself, trying to get as much money, power, and status as possible.124 Unfortunately, as Beck points out, Athens chooses the low road, the course of empire, where fear, greed, honor, and power become motives that outrank the good. Plato leaves us a prophetic and cautionary analysis of not only the consequences of Athens’s imperial ambitions but also the tragic

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destiny and inevitable decline that face any state with hegemonic aspirations. Having a leadership and populous that can discern the difference between wars of aggression and wars of self-defense means the difference between self-destruction and self-preservation.

War, Conflict, and the Good In conclusion, Socrates often models the proper spirit, rules, and actions of authentic dialectic using the frame of theomachia, war, martial contests, and wrestling matches. There is a consistent Platonic hierarchy of wrestling allusions throughout the corpus; the hierarchy from best to worst forms of wrestling is upright, ground, and pankration. The ranking parallels the hierarchy of best and worst kinds of argument. One can always ask the Platonic question: does an activity result in increased order or increased disorder? Good conflict results in a kind of sorting, while bad creates chaos. On a deep level, Calliope’s setting limits is exactly the function the Good exercises on being. Her knockout blow to Aphrodite symbolizes victory over a consciousness that is literally unable to discriminate. It is a consciousness that is unable to restrain the unlimited desire for pleasure. The undifferentiated One must be divided in such a way that it preserves order; that is, the Forms must reflect an internal harmony, symmetry, balance, and ratio in their structure, hierarchy, and mixing. This order may be compound and complex, combining many different forms. The conflict inherent in agonistic settings represents in Becoming, through time and space, the compounding and resolution of the Forms of sameness and difference through combative activity.125 Even the Realm of Being, as the level of mathematical incommensurables reveals, inevitably contains incompatible relations of Forms, unless the conflicts can be resolved in a higher synthesis of relations between Forms, and ultimately by the One itself. Leon Harold Craig’s study of Plato’s Republic, The War Lover, mistakes the purpose of Plato’s obsession with war.126 While it is undeniable that the theme of war is central to the project of the Republic, it is by no means clear that Plato is happy about, or reconciled to, the role of war in history. The number, constancy, and violence of wars have by Plato’s day brought the Athenian state to the edge of the cataract. Conflict is an inevitable result of Becoming, but the kind, degree, and manner of conflict are not. Isn’t the opening of the Republic a model of how wars should be resolved through the use of philosophic discourse? Jill Frank, contra Craig, takes

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just such a line: “By modeling interactions among political actors who do not resort to violence against the historical backdrop of an extremely violent war, the Republic depicts a different possible future while also arguing for the conditions necessary for such change.”127 As we have seen, the physical compulsion of the first scene is turned, by the last scene, to persuasion through philosophic reasoning and argumentation. At the end, Socrates turns Glaucon back toward the Good, and they are released—a war of reason overcomes brute physical force. Plato acknowledges the value of war, conflict, and wrestling insofar as the activities are metaphors for discrimination (cf. the battle of Ur-Athens and Atlantis), not as metaphors for blind brute force (cf. Thrasymachus’s character in Book I). For Plato, the embodiment of war and wisdom in Athena is part of the divine power to create and restore order, a power in art that is especially embodied by Calliope. The glorification of Bendis is a throwback to a different model of power. Craig’s book title comes from the Timaeus 24c–d: “Being a lover of war [φιλοπόλεμός] and a lover of wisdom the Goddess [Athena] chose the place that would bear men most closely resembling herself, and there made her first settlement [viz. Ur-Athens].”128 Craig maintains that “[t]he only regime that is explicitly acknowledged to provide its inhabitants some prospect of living out their lives in peace is promptly denounced as ‘a city of pigs’—and perhaps justly so” (372d; cf. 372b7–8 with 607a4).129 Four counterpoints can be noted here: (1) It is Glaucon who denounces the city, and Socrates disagrees with the characterization (372e); (2) it is the abandonment of the first polis that provides the rationale for the introduction of the luxurious state, the state that brings about more frequent wars and demands much greater defensive and offensive capabilities; (3) the passage at 607a 4 allows for hymns to the gods; and (4), while it is true that Socrates’s depiction of the “city of pigs” is of a comically rustic city, it is clear that he thinks it is morally superior to the feverish and luxurious city that follows.130 Socrates in fact states that by living moderately, the inhabitants of the “city of pigs” will live in peace (372d) and will not fall into war or want (372c). This last sentiment is certainly consonant with many other Platonic doctrines throughout the corpus. The common Platonic metaphors of winnowing, refining metals, weaving, hunting, and wrestling are ways of sorting out the relations between the Forms in themselves and as they are inflected in Becoming. In terms of the language of the Philebus, the activities are metaphors for setting exact limits on the different forms of plurality. Plato’s emphasis on the high-level Forms of fairness and symmetry in wrestling is a concern that the activity, as in all other arts, be modeled on the structure of

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the Good.131 At the end of Book VII in the Republic, Socrates explicitly associates dialectic battle with knowledge of the Good: Unless someone can distinguish in account the Form [Idea] of the Good (τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέαντοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέαν) from everything else, can survive all refutation, as if in battle (καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν μάχῃ διὰ πάντων ἐλέγχων διεξιών), striving to judge things not in accordance with opinion but in accordance with Being, and can come through all this with his account still intact, you’ll say that he does not know the Good itself or any other good. And if he gets hold of some image (εἰδώλου) of it, you’ll say that it’s through opinion, not knowledge, for he is dreaming and asleep throughout his present life, and before he wakes up here, he will arrive in Hades and go to sleep forever. (534b-d)132 Lacking the knowledge of the Good dooms one to live life as a dream; conversely, as Szlezák points out, “Dialectical knowledge of the Good is εὐδαιμονία for humans” (498c3; 532e2–3; 540b6–c2; cf. 519c5).133 The passage above also shows a close parallel to the Phaedrus at 278c–d. Here Socrates notes that it is the verbal agility to “defend” the written word that distinguishes the philosopher from the ordinary poet and rhetorician who falls back on his static verses (καὶ ἔχων βοηθεῖν, εἰς ἔλεγχον ἰὼν περὶ ὧν ἔγραψε). In addition to the Socratic virtues of self-control and selfculture, it would appear that the ability to defend against external attacks is necessary to sustain virtue. All conflict, whether it is wrestling, boxing, argument, or warfare, presents a clash of different orders. It is the work of the philosopher to arrange these orders in harmony as with the structure of beings depicted by the Divided Line. Philosophic discourse and dialectic create greater harmony by construction and separation, while debate creates disharmony through a confusion of levels of order.134 Someone who is unable to reconcile these orders is “completely unmusical and unphilosophical” (ἀμούσου τινὸς καὶ ἀφιλοσόφου, Sophist 259e).135 The higher-level Forms: unity, difference, sameness, ratio, proportionality, harmony, and symmetry, are examples of ways of ordering stable relations in the soul and the principles of order in the Realms of both Being and Becoming. Some conflict, however, is unavoidably built into the system as soon as plurality is introduced into the cosmology (Timaeus 35a) or the Indefinite Dyad is introduced to the One.136

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The Good as Architectonic

As is his desire so is his will; as is his will, so is the deed he does; whatever deed he does, that he attains. —Br.had-a¯ran.yaka Upanis.ad, IV. 4.51

Alcibiades’s Eccentric Orbit of the Good The Good as an architectonic principle guides the construction of all dimensions of the dialogues. The inclusion of each element, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, is the manifestation of a deeper order, or a tendency toward a greater disorder. David Lachterman argues that the Good must be understood as both a metaphysical entity and an ethical principle.2 He maintains that rather than conceiving of it solely as an abstruse and intangible reality, the Good should also be manifest in the most minute details of Becoming, in the Divided Line’s visible realms of both objects and of images. Lachterman writes, “A Platonic argument or proof, such as it is, cannot be understood apart from this subtle and extraordinarily intricate interplay between the ordinary and the unexpected consequences or underpinnings of the ordinary.”3 Failure to maintain the “two-world view,” Lachterman argues, leads to reductive readings that conceive of the Good either as a metaphysical entity or solely as an ethical conception.4 The Symposium represents just such a fusion of surprisingly deep metaphysical themes with the routine mischievousness of a drinking party. The physical motions and actions of Socrates and Alcibiades mark out a waltz of sameness and difference, order and disorder: a dance that inscribes Alcibiades’s eccentric orbit around Socrates’s circle of the same.5 151

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The clash of arguments, characters, and city-states is literally the recurrent resolution of the circles of the different and the same in Becoming. In Becoming, the higher order does not always carry the day. In the turmoil and disorder of Becoming, battles and contests are liminal settings.6 As David Sider observes, the Symposium is also agonistic in structure: “From start to finish, the Symposium is presented as a contest.”7 It shares with the Phaedrus, Philebus, Theaetetus, Euthydemus, and Book I of the Republic an agonistic structure. As argued in chapter 5, the dramatic action of the Phaedrus is divided into five different speeches, each of which represents a round of a wrestling match.8 Socrates is in a contest with Lysias over Phaedrus. In the Symposium, Socrates is again in a contest, in this instance matched against Alcibiades for Agathon’s attention. Socrates’s speech is also matched against the two dionysiac dramatic champions, Aristophanes and Agathon, and other heavyweights at the dinner.9 In the Phaedrus, Socrates acts as the pursuer, while in the Symposium he is the pursued (217c). However, in both cases he is not seeking an erotic conquest, but is using protreptic to turn Phaedrus and Alcibiades toward the Good. Sider suspects that “Alcibiades’ reference to his wrestling bout with Socrates (217b–c) is meant to recall many wrestling scenes in Satyr plays,” and it provides a framing device for his speech.10 But underneath the comic competition, the real Socratic agon is over the tragic destiny of the souls of the interlocutors. Plato’s choice in two different dialogues to concentrate on the conversion of the martial characters of Alcibiades and Phaedrus indicates his long-standing focus on the Republic’s critical concern with the cultivation of philosophers from the guardian class. Similarly, Athens’s tragic failure to produce worthy strategoi is analyzed in the Symposium, Charmides, and Laches.11 The agonistic frame of Republic I, Phaedrus, and the Symposium is by no means an accident. All the elements of the dialogues—their settings, characters, themes, myths, allusions and actions—are part of Plato’s extended argument. Even actions that happen after the dramatic date of the dialogue complete the argument. Compare this to Aristotle’s statements that sometimes a plot includes references to events that happen outside of a drama: viz., τὰ ἔξω τοῦ δράματος (Poetics 1454b3) and ἔξω τῆς τραγῳδίας (Poetics 1454b7).12 Plato’s use of external events is, I believe, much more extensive than Aristotle’s description encompasses. He assumes his readers know the main characters and historic background of the actions of his dialogues, and he uses those events to frame and complete his arguments. Plato could assume his contemporary readers would know these events; indeed, the appreciation of the ironies of the Menexenus requires this background.

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The dramatic date of the Symposium’s frame is set after the Peloponnesian War ends, while the date of the dinner party follows Agathon’s victory at the Dionysia in 416 BCE. From the point of view of the plot of the Symposium, Alcibiades’s external actions, both historical and future, are critical to the argument of the dialogue. The dramatic date is set just before Alcibiades heads off in 415 to lead the Syracuse expedition while under suspicion of the hermocopidae. As Debra Nails notes, many of the Socratic circle were implicated in the profanation.13 No direct mention of Alcibiades’s later betrayal of Athens is necessary, as his inconstancy frames his manifold appearances in the dialogues.14 Plato’s portrayal of Alcibiades’s character takes on an especially tragic depth in light of his later relationship with Athens. His intense but wavering loyalty to Socrates and their comic repartee at once suggest a unique closeness between them and foreshadow his break with Socrates and later with Athens. Alcibiades’s eulogy recounts two complementary military actions in which he and Socrates faced encirclement. First, Alcibiades credits Socrates with singlehandedly saving him and his armor at Potidaea (432–430 BCE). Next, he reports his encouragements to Socrates and Laches during the broken retreat at Delium (424 BCE). Given his later actions, his words are especially wrenching: “I started shouting encouragements to them, telling them I was never going to leave their side” (Symposium 221a).15 Rather than becoming a philosopher-king under Socrates’s influence and saving Athens, Alcibiades has by his own admission tragically succumbed to the seductive power of the demos: “the moment I leave his side, I cave in to my desire to please the crowd” (Symposium 216b).16 And, in no small part, his treason later helps to seal Athens’s fate. It is thematically telling that Alcibiades, who snags Agathon’s victory wreath—stealing his glory, so to speak—is blinded by it when it falls over his eyes, obscuring his vision of Socrates, who is on the couch right next to him (Symposium 213a). Glory, the adulation of the demos, literally obstructs his vision of the truth. One wonders whether Plato meant to suggest that the party took place on, or near, the night of the desecration of the Hermes. The Hermes were ithyphallic statues placed at crossroads as guardians of travelers, and many Athenians took their mutilation as a dire omen for the Syracuse expedition.17 Metaphorically, crossroads are dangerous turning points, and arguably the expedition became the Athenian point of no return in the Peloponnesian War. C. D. C. Reeve has argued that the Symposium contains several internal allusions to the profanation.18 Reeve writes, “The use of the technical term ‘uninitiated’ (bebe¯los) at Symposium 218b6, strongly suggests that Plato had the latter scandal in mind. He uses the odd term agalma

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[a statue or image of a god], I am confident, in part to memorialize the former scandal too.”19 Regardless of the exact timing of the two events, Plato has Alcibiades, in sharp contrast to Socrates, crash the party with a roving debauched group. Recall that Socrates, who has an invitation, stops outside Agathon’s house apparently in one of his trances, letting the uninvited Aristodemus precede him (Symposium 174c). Ultimately, Socrates is retrieved by an attendant (175a). The entrances are clearly contrasted. The series of speeches leading up to Socrates’s account all represent incomplete and often rationalized visions of eros. Socrates’s recounting of Diotima’s lessons gives the first comprehensive view of eros—a vision that is confirmed and completed by Alcibiades’s complementary speech, which functions as a kind of via negativa. Until this point, the themes of love have become more universal; the appearance of Alcibiades brings the party back to the particular. Socrates’s account of the Ladder of Love reaches the high point of argument in the dialogue. The ascending order of the Forms of beauty built up in the Ladder of Love comes tumbling down in Alcibiades’s plunge into the particular. Chaos more naturally reigns in the Realm of the Sensibles. It is tempting to take the moment of Alcibiades’s appearance as the turning point (metabasis) of the Symposium, as these two speeches should be taken together—the first as the last action of the complication and the second as a part of the resolution or unraveling (lusis). Aristotle’s long exposure to the dialogue form at the Academy, and later his own composition of dialogues—dialogues now for the most part lost, but highly reputed in the ancient world—suggest a respect for and intimacy with the genre.20 A brief recounting of the thematic turns of several Platonic dialogues reveals the artful use of reversals.21 At 1452a in the Poetics, Aristotle defines reversal, stating, “Reversal is a change by which the action veers round to its opposite, and this change should occur as we have said according to necessity and probability.”22 As Gerald Else, S. H. Butcher, and others argue, a full peripeteia should be taken to apply to a general trend of events, not only to the specific incident that marks the turning point (metabasis) of this trend.23 This is an excellent description of what happens to Thrasymachus’s definition of justice. It suffers a περιτροπή in the first book of the Republic. As discussed in chapter 5, what is reversed is the form of the argument; the interest of the weaker, not the interest of the stronger, turns out to be justice. In a good plot, the relation between the complication and the unraveling should be one of identity (ὧν ἡ αὐτὴ πλοκὴ καὶ λύσις); the reversal cannot exist merely as a turning point that stands alone, unrelated to preceding or following events.24 As Aristotle notes in a dramatic causal sequence, “διαφέρει γὰρ

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πολὺ τὸ γίγνεσθαι τάδε διὰ τάδε ἢμετὰ τάδε.”25 The reversal can proceed, as Aristotle argues, from good to bad events or from bad to good events, and if it includes a change of fortune as well, from good to bad fortune or bad to good fortune (Poetics 1453a 13–15 and 1453a 30–39). As an Aristotelian drama has a necessary and probable sequence of actions, so the Platonic dialogue establishes a continuous thematic examination of the same argument (logos). The difference between Platonic reversals and Aristotelian dramatic reversals is that generally the construction of the argument (logos) rather than the structure of action drives the plot (mythos) of a dialogue. Even Aristotle refers to Plato’s dialogues as Σωκρατικοὺς λόγους (Poetics 1447b 11). In a Platonic dialogue, it is the movement and structure of the argument that forms the complication, the turning point, and the unraveling. The physical settings and other dramatic constructs reflect the themes of the arguments presented in the dialogues.26 As we have seen, Plato’s dramatic actions may provide markers of turning points, recognition scenes, and resolutions, but often the markers are understated: small gestures, unintentional reactions, hiccups, sweating, blushing, irony, anger, or a character’s silence. The sudden and unexpected entrance of Alcibiades more properly fits Aristotle’s characteristics of excellent reversals: first, that they are contrary to expectation (παρὰ τὴν δόξαν), and second, that they include concomitant recognition scenes (καλλίστη δὲ ἀναγνώρισις, ὅταν ἅμα περιπετείᾳ γένηται, 1452a 32). Aristotle writes, “[W]hen actions occur contrary to expectation, and yet still on account of one another . . . they are more wondrous if they happen in this way rather than [simply] of themselves, or [simply] by accident” (Poetics 1452a 2–6).27 It is more wondrous that Socrates’s constancy is confirmed in an unexpected way by the accidental appearance of a drunken former lover. Alcibiades gives multiple examples of Socrates’s bravery and imperturbability at Potidaea and Delium and further illustrates Socrates’s temperance and self-control by relating how he spurns Alcibiades’s increasingly brazen advances. Alcibiades’s appearance, as a foil, reinforces the characterization of Socrates’s constancy. The words and actions of Alcibiades, who is drunk, contrast with Socrates’s sober words and actions and lend greater credence to his self-revelations—in vino veritas. Alcibiades claims that Socrates’s λόγων are like the small, hollow statues of Silenus, full of gods and excellences, and “if you go behind their surface, you’ll realize that no other arguments make any sense” (Symposium 221e–222a and 215b).28 His comparison of Socrates with the Silenus figure recurs multiple times (216d, 216e–217a, and 221d-222a). As his Silenus metaphor shows, Alcibiades can recognize the beautiful soul

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in Socrates, but he constantly slips down a rung of the Ladder of Love (211c), being seduced by the latest beautiful body, in this case Agathons’s. Alcibiades opens his encomium by observing that Socrates is difficult to describe (ἀτοπίαν), strange, and out of place (Symposium 215a). Indeed, Socrates enters his habitual trance standing fixed (ἕστηκεν) on the porch of Agathon’s neighbor at the start of the dialogue (174d–175b), and Alcibiades reports a similar incident from the campaigns (220c) where Socrates stands fixed in place (αὐτόθι ἕωθέν) for twenty-four hours, transported and seemingly oblivious and impervious to his surroundings. In the retreat at Delium, the enemy moves around him (221a). Socrates’s physical actions mimic the motionless center of the One. The action of the party also revolves around Socrates, while Alcibiades’s behavior returns like a fugue to the theme of his own inconstancy. Alcibiades’s speech is introduced with his gate crashing and closes with another party’s gate crashing. Alcibiades’s eulogy starts with a kind of musical couch scene where he and Socrates compete to be seated next to Agathon (Symposium 213c). The jest is repeated again after Alcibiades finishes his speech and just before the second group of gate crashers arrives (Symposium 222e). As Reeve notes, Alcibiades breaks the left-to-right (epi dexia) order of speeches set by Eryximachus.29 His playful verbal jests and sham dismay at Socrates’s presence, the seat swapping, and the order of the speeches all ironically recall Alcibiades’s exhortation at Delium that he will always stay at Socrates’s side (Symposium 221a).30 If, as Reeve suggests, Alcibiades has broken ranks, “Socrates’ own fabled orderliness must be of a sort that neither wine, nor sexual desire, nor extremes of hot or cold, nor lack of sleep, nor normal human weakness can disrupt. Expressed figuratively as a movement, it must be that of the circle of the same.”31 Socrates’s constancy is a foil to Alcibiades’s consistent inconsistency. The return of the dramatic action to the circle of the same is an intentional Platonic construct; the constancy and imperturbability of Socrates’s character mimics the Good. Many commentators have noted an inversion of themes in the Symposium; the tragic poet gives the dainty comic account of eros, while the comic poet gives the rending tragic version. The last image of the dialogue has Socrates talking with Agathon and Aristophanes late into the night, “trying to prove to them that authors should be able to write both comedy and tragedy: the skillful tragic dramatist should also be a comic poet” (223d).32 Sider observes that “Plato is also awarding himself the prize for being that man who did in fact write a drama that is at once comic and tragic [a Satyr play].”33 The culminating incident

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of this thematic reversal is, of course, Socrates’s suggestion at the end of the Symposium to Agathon and Aristophanes that a true tragic poet and a true comic poet could practice each other’s arts, suggesting a deeper identity between the two genres.34 As the Hermes misadventure shows, the comic imperfections of life in Becoming can just as easily turn tragic. Here again the philosopher has revealed a deeper identity connecting the themes of two seemingly disparate arts. While comedy and tragedy express the imperfections of Becoming, the identity of the arts of philosophy and music express a movement toward the unity of Being. Meanwhile, Alcibiades, who made such a meteoric entrance, has vanished, and Socrates has become the center of attention of Alcibiades’s desire, Agathon. In addition, Socrates has captured the attention of an old nemesis, Aristophanes, the author of the Clouds (423 BCE). The same imperfections and shortcomings that make the Realm of Becoming tragic also make it comic—the subject of tragic and comic imitation, flawed human action, is the same. The actions of contraries in the Realm of Becoming are resolved over time into one complete Being.

The Allegory of the Cave and the Myth of the True Earth If, as we have seen in the Symposium, the Good lurks behind the smallest gestures and seemingly inconsequential actions, it also guides Plato’s invention of settings, natural and human history, and myths concerning the destiny of souls. While we have examined Athens’s destiny in the Allegory of the Cave (chapter 1), the Menexenus (chapter 2), the Myth of Atlantis (chapter 3), and Plato’s recasting of the Theseus myth (chapter 4), we have not explored the individual destiny of the soul. In the Phaedo, Plato models the structure of the afterworld on the order, or disorder, of the souls that fill it. While there are many mythic and religious antecedents to Plato’s Myth of the True Earth, the elaborate topographical description of Hades at the end of the Phaedo goes well beyond any known Greek mythic descriptions of the underworld (107c–115a).35 There is a legitimate philosophic question about Plato’s invention of such an intricate account: what is the function of this extended narrative section? Radcliffe Edmonds observes that some commentaries give short shrift to this section of the dialogue.36 Edmonds sees the clue to the elaborated myth in Socrates’s observation that the road to Hades is “neither single nor simple” (Phaedo

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107e–108a).37 The philosopher is a pathfinder negotiating the numerous and treacherous pitfalls encountered in the underworld. As Hackforth notes, the True Earth replaces Elysium and Plato’s more traditional use of the Isles of the Blessed (μακάρων νῆσοι) in the myth of the afterlife as related in the Gorgias (523a and 524a).38 The myth outlines the many ways in which individuals can become restless souls having difficulty finding peace in the afterlife (Phaedo 108b–c).39 Edmonds inventories the main sources of restless souls from traditional Greek religion: “the ἄταφοι or unburied dead, the ἄωροι or untimely dead, and the βιαιοθάνατοι or those killed violently.”40 As discussed in chapter 4, another source of ghosts was disinterment and the disrespectful handling of remains. In each of these cases, the course of a person’s life or burial is curtailed or disrupted by an external force. These incomplete burials not only can cause disruptive ghosts, but more generally they can offend the gods and disturb the natural order of events. As we saw in chapter 4, propitiatory rituals may be necessary to atone for the transgressions. On the whole, safe passage to the underworld is not assured, and traditional mythic accounts allude to the need for daimonic guides to Hades. For Socrates, wandering souls are produced in the image of, and after the manner of, their attachment to embodied lives (Phaedo 81c–d). Socrates’s concern is secondarily with the safe passage to Hades; he is primarily concerned that immortality be earned in a good life. Socrates’s account of the Myth of the True Earth is immediately preceded by a mysterious allusion to a proverbial “Art of Glaukos.” Socrates’s allusion to Glaukos’s art has prompted speculation about the nature of Glaukos’s techne¯ (Phaedo 108d), especially because Socrates makes this reference only to immediately dismiss the art, claiming that it is not needed.41 Diskin Clay explains Socrates’s reference to Glaukos in the Phaedo using a parallel passage from the Republic, “where Socrates offers Glaukos ‘of the sea’ as an image of the disfigurement of the incarnate soul” (Republic 611d).42 Clay finds the image of a monstrous Glaukos established in Greek lore: “We do not know what Plato’s source for this image of Glaukos might have been, but the few fragments from Aeschylus’ Glaukos Pontios render some details: he is described in terms of the Republic as a beast with human form, covered with shells, mussels, and shellfish.”43 The disfigurement is a kind of lasting karmic tie to the Realm of Becoming. While Glaukos’s condition is everlasting, for Plato it is by no means an apotheosis. Plato’s portrait of Glaukos is far less anthropomorphic than those by later mythologists, and more horrific. Later myths have him as a bisected merman, half fish tail and half human head and torso. Clay is

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most assuredly on the mark when he concludes, “The marvelous art of Glaukos is that of passing beyond the mortal, trasumanar.”44 Thematically, this reading makes the most sense in context and best fits the other Platonic reference to Glaukos from the Republic. But while Clay is right about Glaukos’s transcending his mortality, I think he is incorrect to assume that Plato’s Glaukos is a wholly enviable or estimable figure. His explanation does not account for the parallels and differences between the lives of a monstrous figure like Glaukos and other Platonic references to similar demigods, such as Er, Trophonius, or Triptolemos. Clay notes that one of the traditional theories of the scholiasts speculates that Glaukos was a drowned sailor who came back to life.45 Moreover, Socrates’s allusion to Glaukos’s art and the phrase “of the sea” may class Glaukos with Er, Triptolemos,46 and Trophonius, among others, who have died and been transformed but have not fully gone over to the other side. These specters serve as intermediaries; once human, they now dwell at the cusp of the lower world, serving as immortal and prophetic oracles to the mysteries of the afterlife. While these figures uncover the chthonic roots of cyclic death and regeneration, what they do not reveal is the changeless, dimensionless, eternal realm of the forms. Alcibiades’s “Satyr Marsyas” references indicate that Socrates is Hermes’s old helper. He is a psychagogue, or perhaps more properly he should be understood as a Hermetic psychopompos, but is playing this role for the living rather than the dead (Symposium 215b–c).47 For Socrates, immortality is achieved in the choices and actions of this life, which explains why he claims Glaukos’s art is not needed (Phaedo 108d). The knowledge of the powers of a magical sea grass will not lead to true purification of the soul. The indefinite continuance of life in a degenerated body in a twilight world is a false immortality—to use Hegel’s phrase, it is a schlechte Unendlichkeit.48 It is only the philosopher who can negotiate the manifold pitfalls of immorality and reach true immortality: “Those who have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy live in the future altogether without a body; they make their way to even more beautiful places which it is hard to describe clearly, nor do we have time to do so” (Phaedo 114c). In the Phaedo at 64a, philosophy is presented as the “art of dying.” It cures through knowledge, as Socrates claims, separating the soul and the body. As such, philosophy represents the antithesis of the magical Art of Glaukos, which instead of purifying leads only to successive and continual accretions of matter. Julia Annas argues, “The philosopher, with complete detachment from the body, is aiming at escape from reincarnation, and this presupposes that those less perfect are rewarded, but are still not free from being reincarnated.”49 But even these

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individuals, unlike Glaukos, can work off their impurities through time and natural processes “until the surge tosses them out” (ἐκβάλλει τὸ κῦμα).50 Glaukos has no such release. The Myth of the True Earth presents a path to spiritual ascent and purification that directly contrasts with Glaukos’s everlasting imprisonment in his corrupted bodily form. The arcane art of Glaukos is the false art of procuring everlasting life. Elizabeth Belfiore argues that Socrates uses a kind of counter-magic. She writes, “Socrates himself is compared with a magician (Meno 80b) who enchants people (Symposium 215c–d); the myth at the end on the Phaedo (114d) is said to be an epode (spell), and knowledge is called a pharmekon at Republic 595b and an epode at Republic 608a.”51 Belfiore notes the thematic inversion; magic disguises the truth, while Socrates’s spells and enchantments reveal it.52 Alcibiades’s comparison of Socrates to the miniature statue of the Satyr Marsyas reveals the deeper inner truths hidden behind the false exterior, while magic presents the false exterior as the truth. Plato’s treatment of eschatology in the Phaedo shifts traditional Greek religion’s fixation with defilement after death, or in the manner of death, to the concern for intrinsic moral character of the life lived.53 Doing harm, not suffering it, becomes the determinative factor for one’s fate (Phaedo 108b–c; Gorgias 527b). One’s final station ultimately reduces to an agent’s autonomous choices made in this life. Edmonds claims, “Rather than rituals that need to be performed after death, Plato emphasizes solutions to the potential problems of the transition that must be performed before death.”54 As examples of Socrates’s flouting of orthodox funeral ritual, Edmonds cites his bathing before death and his lack of concern for the treatment of his corpse.55 Purification after death cannot affect the soul. The degree of purification of the soul before death matches the level of purification of the realm of the afterlife one attains. Philosophers, who purify themselves during life, “live altogether in the future without a body”; while those who cannot be purified by punishments in the afterworld, “because of the enormity of their crimes,” are cast eternally into the Stygian depths (Phaedo 114c and 113e).56 The myth, as each of Plato’s afterworld accounts, stands as a cautionary tale to the living about the moral course of their lives. Paul Friedländer observes that Plato constructs the topography of the underworld around the eschatology of dead souls. He writes, “Below the surface of the earth, the hollows are connected by a great number of channels filled with water, warm and cold, but also with streams of liquid mud and powerful rivers of fire . . . The important thing is that we realize that all these features are invented and described in order to prepare, and make possible, the destiny of the different categories

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of soul.”57 The violent and erratic motions of the fluids emulate the nature of the souls that inhabit these regions. Each subterranean cavern projects a different destiny for the course of different kinds of lives. Oddly, Friedländer thinks Plato bases the first part of his account on actual geography, shifting later to mythic representations. In a more reasonable vein, Hackforth writes, “Indeed the whole complex of science, pseudo-science, and mythology of which the myth (in a wide sense) consists, is designed with marvelous skill to support the eschatological doctrine of rewards and punishments hereafter by fitting it into a plausible framework, based upon the doctrine of a spherical earth—the one doctrine which we may assuredly reckon to have been accepted by Plato as solid scientific truth.”58 At 110b, Socrates describes the Earth as a sphere viewed from the outside. Hackforth argues that this ties the vision of the earth to the vision of the spherical universe described in the Timaeus at 55c: “The dodecahedron is the nearest of the five regular solids to a sphere, so that balls could be made of twelve pieces of flexible leather, each having the shape of a regular pentagon.”59 Here the Platonic conception of the structure of space follows a Parmenidean model, while the generation of space follows the Pythagorean model.60 Daniel Graham notes that Plato adopts the well-rounded (eukyklos) Parmenidean view of the universe. He writes, “The first vision of a heavenly sphere seems to arise in Parmenides’ cosmology. Parmenides is the originator of the ‘centrifocal’ universe, as Furley dubbed it, a spherical universe in which rotation symmetry prevails and motions are measured relative to the sphere’s center.”61 Balance and rotational symmetry are prime concerns in the cosmology of the Timaeus and central for the Spindle of Necessity in the last book of the Republic (616b–617d).62 Plato’s repeated use of the image of nested circles and spheres in his myths and cosmologies is striking: the rings of Atlantis, the Spindle of Necessity, the spherical earth at the center of the spherical heavens (Phaedo), the orbits of different radii of the spokes of a spinning disk (Laws 893c–d), and so forth. At the creation of the cosmos in the Timaeus, God maps the inner nature of the world soul onto the physical structure of the universe: “And he gave it a shape appropriate to the kind of thing it was. The appropriate shape for that living thing (world soul) that is to contain within itself all the living things would be the shape that embraces within itself all the shapes that are” (Timaeus 33b).63 This shape is also a sphere. Plato’s intentional and continual use of spherical forms and cyclic motions, especially interpenetrating Forms like the world soul, highlights his reduplications of the One throughout his artistic constructions.

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The physical description of the topography of the True Earth corresponds in several ways with the Republic’s Allegory of the Cave.64 We live in the hollows (κοῖλα) of the earth but do not realize it, thinking we live on the surface (Phaedo 109c–d). Plato compares us to submarine dwellers who see everything above the surface through the distorting medium of the sea (Phaedo 109c–110b.) The True Earth (ἡ  ὡς  ἀληθῶς γῆ), the earth itself (αὐτὴ ἡ  γῆ), rests above us and is pure and undefiled. The description of the subterranean world of the Republic and the description of the submarinelike world of the Phaedo are parallel universes. Similarly, the surface of the earth in the Allegory of the Cave and the upper domain of the True Earth in the Phaedo are analogous realms. Objects are seen in their true light, colors are brighter, and elements are purer. Under the earth, the outflow and inflow of the labyrinthine channels, chambers, and dynamism of the underground rivers of water, mud, and lava suggest an inward psychic struggle of the individual soul. The confluence of subterranean rivers suggests a cataract of subconscious desires reminiscent of the collision of winged souls the Phaedrus describes at 248a–b. The soul’s struggle to transcend is further embodied and elaborated in the Phaedrus’s myth of the charioteer, and the white and black horses. While the Phaedo is primarily concerned with the individual destiny of the soul, the Phaedrus adds the dimension of interpersonal relations, erotic love, and competition. The Symposium extends the horizon and explores the interface of interpersonal relations with the broader social realm. Recall that both Alcibiades and Agathon are emboldened by the madding crowd (216b and 194b–c). The Allegory of the Cave again widens the perspective, subsuming the other stages and adding the soul’s struggle to transcend impeding external social and political forces.65 As argued in chapter 1, the coercive political and social forces are symbolized by the elevated interior road and the figures carried beside the low wall behind the prisoners. Thus, the theme of the soul’s transcendence in the Phaedo starts with the soul itself (αὐτός); the Phaedrus’s account adds an interpersonal dimension; the Symposium extends to the social realm; the Republic’s account adds the political world; and, finally, the Timaeus’s mythos encompasses natural and theological forces. At any of these levels, the soul’s progression can be propelled, impeded, or dragged down by personal, interpersonal, social, political, or natural forces. Radcliffe Edmonds argues that Plato’s recycling of archaic Greek underworld accounts has adapted the myths to fit to his philosophy. He sees parallels between Hades and the invisible realm on the Divided Line. He writes, “Plato uses the traditional myth of the journey of the soul to

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the realm of the dead (Ἅιδου) as a vehicle to discuss the philosopher’s quest for understanding of the unseen realm (το ἀιδες), the level of reality perceivable only by intellect, which Plato regarded as the underlying true being which shaped all things.”66 The Myth of the True Earth presents a journey and a three-level cosmology that is similar to the philosopher’s ascent from a lower realm to a higher reality in the Allegory of the Cave. Each of Plato’s four afterworld cosmologies (Phaedo 108a and 113d, Republic 614c, Gorgias 524a, and Phaedrus 249a) is hierarchically structured. Frutiger observes that in the eschatologies, the levels are connected by chemins dans l’Hadès.67 Metaphorically, these paths represent the soul’s judgment or decision points. Taken as a whole, I do not think it would be unreasonable to see each of these cosmologies as a kind of graphic depth psychology. The geography of each of the worlds is the topographical representation of the soul’s structure and dynamics. The description of the purification of elements in the Myth of the True Earth, the pure air, metals, and gems, reveals both a process of rarefication and a reification of the physical, not seen in the later cosmological accounts of the transcendent dimensions in the Republic. Socrates speaks of the soul as intermingled and trapped in the body; final purification comes at death when the two are separated (Phaedo 67c–e). There is a lingering physicalism in Plato’s account of the True Earth: the colors and elements of the upper region are brighter because of their purity (110b–111a), while in the Cave analogy, objects on the surface of the earth are brighter because of the intense light of the Sun (532a–c). In the Republic, the intelligible and invisible realms are not distilled elements of Becoming; they are separate orders of reality. These myths are at once models that approximate the structure of the soul, city, and universe, and models for an ordered life. As in the Republic, the city is a projection of the psyche, the psyche writ large, in the same way the spherical topography of the underworld in the Phaedo is a model that reveals the moral condition of the soul. Socrates’s qualification of the Myth of the True Earth that “[n]o sensible man would insist that these things are as I have described them” (Phaedo 114d) has a soul mate in another famous passage at the end of Book IX in the Republic (592b)68 where Socrates says “But perhaps, I said, there is a model of it in heaven, for anyone who wants to look at it and to make himself a citizen of it on the strength of what he sees. It makes no difference whether it is or ever will be somewhere, for he would take part in the practical affairs of that city and of no other.”69 Both statements suggest that while the details of the accounts may not correspond to a physical hell or an actual city, the

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accounts are true in a deeper ethical and metaphysical sense—that these places, whether or not they exist, are objective models of good and evil lives and good and bad structures. A sister passage to the two above is Timaeus’s famous claim that the cosmogony he recounts is only a “likely story” (Timaeus 29d). Here the universe constructed by Timaeus in accord with the Good may not exactly resemble the actual cosmos, but the actual universe will be constructed on interdependent rational principles identical to the ones used by Timaeus. In all three of these passages, the Good is the source of the principles used to build the account of the underworld, design the republic, and create the universe. The Good is understood as the formal and final cause of the soul’s, the city’s, or the universe’s unity and order—that is, the degree to which the activities of these different structures are derived from and approximate the nature of the Good. But how is it that the Good serves as an ordering and generative principle?

The Good as Architectonic I claimed in the introduction that the Good was the order of orders—that it was the source of order but not itself any particular kind of order. While Plato places the Good itself beyond Being (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας ὑπερέχον), it is the principle upon which all other dimensions of Being and Becoming derive their reality.70 Order and being are coextensive terms; for Plato, it is a tautological claim that if something is real it has a structure. Even shadows, reflections, and images have an ontological status on the lowest level of the Divided Line, although they have less order and have a less perfect kind of order. According to the Tübingen School and other exponents of the esoteric tradition, the structure of the order originates in the binary interaction of two principles. The One (ἔν) and the Indefinite Dyad (ἀόpιστος δυάς) generate the order of the Forms, and, in turn, the order of the Forms71 becomes the model the Demiurge uses to create the ordered universe (cosmos).72 Created things, the ordered universe (cosmos), the ordered state (justice), and the ordered soul (one that stays within the limits of its nature) ultimately reflect the same objective structures.73 Thus, the Good is logically prior to the Forms, and the Forms are logically prior to objects. Each level of the Divided Line instantiates the perfection of the level preceding it, insofar as that is logically and ontologically possible. The Good and the Forms are indivisible unities that are outside of time and space. Time and space are imperfect expressions of the changeless and motionless Realm of Being (Timaeus 38a).74 In the Realm of Becoming,

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circles and spheres in motion are the most perfect possible expressions of the Forms. The principles used by Plato in the Timaeus are very close to those adduced by Leibniz in the Monadology and the Theodicy for the creation of the universe: God’s goodness (Timaeus 30b) requires a kind of Principle of Sufficient Reason (30b–c), which requires a Principle of Plenitude (30c5), which requires the Principle of Compossibility (30b) and a Principle of Uniqueness/the Best of all Possible Worlds (31b and 34b), which in turn requires the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles, and so forth. There is an ultimate reason why each thing is what it is, and that reason is the Good. The maximization of order requires the imposition of limit (πέρας) by using the above principles on undifferentiated Being. The Philebus demonstrates the metaphysical necessity of limit and the parallel role reason plays in discriminating different qualities of lives. The good life is exactly the one that is self-limiting and ordered according to its essence; the bad life is the indiscriminate and unlimited one. The nature of a thing, person, or complex sets its limit according to its form, what is just for it. Hampton writes, “The Good in the Republic is the model towards which the philosopher-rulers look so that they may be able to order their own souls, the polis, and its citizens properly (540b; see also 484d, 500d–e, and 506a–b).”75 The Good is nothing more than the order that nourishes, sustains, and promotes a thing’s nature. It was further argued in the introduction that Plato needed to expand on the Eleatic principles of being and nonbeing, as they provide no principle for differentiation of the One.76 Being and sameness, while superior to difference, are unlimited and cannot, of themselves, produce limit.77 The Tübingen School argues that Plato introduced the Pythagorean principle of the Indefinite Dyad (ἀόpιστος δυάς) as a second primitive78 to provide just such a principle for differentiation.79 Dimitri Nikulin explains, “The two principles [the One and the Indefinite Dyad] are the principles of all things, including ideal being(s) . . . Unity and multiplicity are thus present in all things, and account for both identity and differentiation in all things, including the ideal Forms and numbers.”80 Ideal beings would include the high level Forms of identity, sameness, and difference. Krämer elaborates, noting that “Plato traces these [forms] back to unity and multiplicity, namely, by subsuming identity, equality, and similarity under unity, and difference, inequality, and dissimilarity under the multiplicity.”81 F. M. Cornford describes the Pythagorean conception of the Indefinite Dyad: Thus the Dyad, as the first even number, stands for the female receptive field, the void womb of unordered space, the evil

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principle of the Unlimited. The Triad is its opposite, the good principle of Limit, the male whose union with the Unlimited produces the Limited. As Aristotle says: “The Universe and all things (in it) are limited or determined by three” (the Triad). The numbers 5 (2 + 3) and 6 (2 x 3) are both symbols of the marriage of Even and Odd, Unlimited and Limit.82 To take a classic example, the form of triangularity cannot be the shape of a triangle, or it would have to be a specific kind of triangle— right, isosceles, equilateral, and so forth. The form of triangularity must be the definition of triangularity, a definition that applies universally to all kinds of triangles. The definition of triangularity is not an extended thing; it is dimensionless. If physical space is constructed from these ideal figures, we might ask why the receptacle is even needed in the Timaeus. The answer, it would seem, is that without the receptacle, or something like it, such a system would entail the impossible condition that all physical space be constructed out of dimensionless triangles.83 Dana Miller puts the problem succinctly: “Plato’s account of body reduces it to its components, namely triangles, of finite two-dimensional plane surfaces that form a finite three-dimensional solid by their intersections. But because triangles are not three-dimensional, they are not bodies, therefore, the ultimate components of bodies are not bodies at all.”84 Physical space cannot be constructed directly from ideal objects. This may explain why Plato is forced to hold the peculiar position that there are elemental, indivisible lines that have dimension.85 These extended elements are essential to the derivation of space—he is here referring to the construction of physical space.86 For the Tübingen School, Plato’s solution to the dilemmas above is to understand the Good as the One: an infinitesimal, dimensionless, undifferentiated ideal entity that is the ultimate source of all Being and Becoming.87 Slezáck writes, In connection with the explanation of noetic knowledge, Socrates calls the idea of the good τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχήν (511b7). Yet it has this function not only in an epistemological sense, but at the same time also as the ultimate causa finalis, and further as “that which gives birth” (τεκοῦσα) to the sun as the origin of the being of the ideas, as well as, indirectly, of the becoming of visible objects.88 The One is both limited, insofar as it is one, and unlimited, insofar as it is undifferentiated.89 On the Divided Line, Plato puts mathematical

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objects below the Forms and above visible objects, and visible objects below mathematical objects but above images. The Good is above even the Forms; therefore, the One is not simply a number.90 All being is then described in terms of the Pythagorean procession from this One that is mediated by the Dyad. Two points construct a line; three points a two-dimensional triangular plane figure. Three-dimensional solids are constructed from two-dimensional, three-sided plane figures. Four points make up the simplest solid: a three-dimensional pyramid, the tetrahedron. Other geometric solids are constructed from different arrangements of tetrahedrons.91 In the Timaeus, all other three-dimensional objects in the universe are constructed of pyramids. These entities, the so-called five Platonic solids (Tetrahedron/fire, Cube/earth, Octahedron/air, Dodecahedron, and Icosahedron/water) become the building blocks of the created cosmos. This procession is described in detail in the Timaeus (53c–56c). For the Pythagoreans, the first four natural numbers establish a mystical relation of outflow from, and return to, the One called the Tetractys. The return to the One is represented by the number ten, which is the sum of the four numbers (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10).92 Kirk and Raven translate a famous Pythagorean oath concerning the Tetractys: it is the “fount and root of eternal nature” (παγὰν ἀενάου φύσεως ῥίζωμά τ’ἔχουσαν).93 In addition, the sequence of the first four numbers establishes the ratios of the musical harmonies. These harmonies, as Schofield observes, have a cosmogonic and cosmological significance for the Pythagoreans and Plato: “[F]rom these four numbers one can construct the harmonic ratios of the fourth, the fifth, and the octave (cf. the acusma on beauty). The capital importance of these ratios for the early Pythagoreans can be glimpsed in the reference to the sirens, whose song Plato identifies with the music of the spheres in which the heavenly bodies move (Republic 616b–617e).”94 Here the interplay of sameness and difference in the Form of ratio is translated into both celestial astronomy and the sensuous mediums of symmetry, harmony, rhythm, and melody. In the terrestrial realm, while harmony can be expressed simultaneously, rhythm and melody need time to establish ratios. So it is with Plato’s dialogues—the patterns of the Good in Becoming must ultimately be established both through and in time and space.

Interdimensionality There is no clearer example of Plato’s deliberate use of interdimensionality than his direct transposing of the separate levels of the Divided Line onto the imagery and dramatic arch of the Allegory of the Cave. Just as

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a line on a map, the passageway depicted in the Cave creates a continuous narrative connection between the four distinct metaphysical realms of the Divided Line. The image of the prisoner’s journey and the long passageway of the Cave presents a succession of noncontinuous realms of space, time, and being. But in addition to representing the philosopher’s journey in terms of depth, another way that Plato represents interdimensionality is by simultaneously overlapping these realms of reality. The Good, because it escapes the limits of space and time, allows Plato a powerful mytho-poetic tool to create settings, frames, and arguments that juxtapose different dimensions of reality, overlapping worlds that would otherwise be in noncontinuous times and places. By overlaying past, present, and future times and superimposing spaces in his narrative frames, Plato creates the kind of dimensionality exhibited in liminal spaces, such as the Trophonium. The crypt forms a continuous connection to all points of the underworld by means of what Ogden calls “bi- or multi-location.”95 The transposing of time and space allows Plato to create worldly settings with interpenetrating spatio-temporal dimensions that simulate the non–spatio-temporal nature of the Forms. It should not be surprising that time is used in the dialogues as the moving image of eternity (Timaeus 37d). The Menexenus focuses all Athenian history through the lens of the memorial for Corinthian War dead. Athens is repeating her errors in a vicious eternal return. In the Timaeus/Critias, Athenian history is again viewed panoptically from her origin to her demise, but in such a way as to allow two asynchronous periods of her history to interact. In the Crito and Phaedo, the mythic origins of Athenian history intersect with Socrates’s life and Athens’s contemporary abuse of Delos during the Peloponnesian War. In the Symposium, Socrates’s steadfast courage is juxtaposed with Alcibiades’s and Laches’s retreats, which foreshadow the disaster at Syracuse. From the point of view of the early fourth century, Plato is asking what factors brought about the cataclysm of the Peloponnesian War and, more importantly, what factors would prevent such a disaster from recurring. Planeaux rightly comments that the atmosphere of many of the dialogues’ settings during religious festivals “needs to be explored more thoroughly.”96 The inclusion of these festivals furthers the sense of numinous and liminal space and time in the dialogues. Planeaux cites the following examples of festivals that occur in the dialogues: Republic/Bendideia, Symposium/Lenaea or City Dionysia,97 Timaeus-Critias/Lesser Panathenaea, Parmenides/Greater Panathenaea, Hippias Major and Minor/Olympia, Lysis/ Hermaea,98 Ion/Asclepiad and Panathenaea, and in the Crito/Phaedo the Delia. To Planeaux’s list we should add the Athenian festival of the Gene-

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sia, which may form the backdrop of the Menexenus.99 Moreover, the Menexenus and the Lysis may be connected thematically by the festivals of Genesia and Hermaea. Both festivals involve the recollection of the dead and the wandering of souls in the world.100 Michael Carter suggests that the funeral speech of the Menexenus exemplifies the ritual transformation of time.101 “Ritual theory,” Carter writes, “suggests that this special conception of time creates an awareness of immortality, a sense of being outside the temporal. In so doing, it offers its participants a different foundation of order beyond everyday perceptions. Socrates also achieves this sacralization of time in his speech.”102 Carter gives several examples of Socrates’s use of past, present, and future times (239d, 241c, and 247c) to invoke atemporal perspectives.103 At 239d, Carter notes, Socrates requests his audience to “mentally place themselves in that time . . . ,” while at 241c he asks them to imagine future eulogies. At 247c, Socrates assumes his “mysterious personification” of the war dead.104 The memorializing of funeral rituals typically asserts a strong continuity with the past to construct a sense of a renewal in an eternal present.105 Zina Giannopoulou recognizes a similar bridging role that memory plays in the narrative frame of the Theaetetus.106 She writes, Time is thematized in both the prologue and main dialogue. In recounting his tale to Euclides, Socrates looks back to a memorable conversation, and Euclides records it a little later, makes inquiries of points he cannot recall on subsequent visits to Socrates, and corrects his version still later upon returning home. The piecemeal recording of the dialogue requires that the past be revisited from the vantage point of an ever-renewed present.107 She goes on to note that “past and present thus interpenetrate” and provide a “foil to the Heraclitean ontology of the flux.”108 The prologue also serves to set the dialogue as a tragic elegy for Theaetetus. Similarly, mythic time and space, as in the story of Atlantis or the description of the afterworld in the Phaedo, create temporal continuities. Socrates’s compression of Athenian history in the Menexenus allows for the thematic juxtaposition of distant but related events. Plato uses temporal frames, myths, and history to break down the experienced gap between the past and future and the eternal and present. Time is not the only dimension to undergo transformations in the dialogues. Hackforth maintains, “One of the effects of myths such

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as these [viz. the Phaedo’s depiction of the True Earth] is to extend our mental horizon both in time, beyond this brief life, and more especially in space, beyond this little corner (or ‘hollow’) of earth which is all we know by sensible experience.”109 The underworld is crisscrossed by rivers and filled with chambers. Consider Socrates’s claim that the surface of the earth is much larger than we assume it to be (Phaedo 109a–b). The antiquity of the Atlantis story is matched by the vast, antediluvian reaches of the Atlantan city-state and continent. Plato also explores the psyche’s dimensions in inner space with Alcibiades’s image of the Marsyas figurine in the Symposium.110 Nikulin quotes Aristotle, observing that “Plato recognized two infinites: the great and the small” (δύο τὰ ἄπειρα‚τὸ μέγα καὶ τὸ μικρόν) (Physics Γ4, 203a15–16).111 The soul can be writ large as a city, or trapped in a cave (Republic), or depicted as the geography of the underworld (Phaedo), or represented as the miniaturized contents of a hollow figurine (Symposium), but however it is drawn, its dimensions are irrelevant as the noetic space it occupies is ideal; the magnitudes it may assume are infinite. Plato’s telescoping spherical models of the soul, city, world and universe ultimately generate from the dimensionless dialectic of the limited and unlimited nature of the One. Memory, reincarnation, and divination create connections between distant, past, and future events by collapsing and expanding time and space.112 Plato’s metaphysical cement for connecting all these psychic processes is the self-limiting transcendental order of the dimensionless Good. Because each of the activities listed above often involves psychic journeys, or at least an imaginative psychic displacement, they are naturally connected to translocations of this sort. In addition to psychic journeys, physical travels often indicate movements toward, or from, Being or Becoming. An obvious use of this motif is the recurrent framing device of an interlocutor’s movement up or down between Athens and the Piraeus. As in the Republic, the opening lines of the Symposium present one of Socrates’s enthusiastic devotees, appropriately named Apollodorus, who is also delayed by an associate; in this case, though, he is on his way up to Athens from the Piraeus. “The day before yesterday, I chanced to be going up to town [Athens] from my house in Phalerum, when one of my acquaintances caught sight of me from behind, some way off, and called in a bantering tone ‘Hullo, Phalerian!’ ” (172a).113 Apollodorus’s associate requests that the story of the party be told on the road up to the astu: “τί οὖν,’ ἔφη, ‘οὐ διηγήσω μοι; πάντως δὲ ἡ ὁδὸς ἡ εἰς ἄστυ ἐπιτηδεία πορευομένοις καὶ λέγειν καὶ ἀκούειν” (173b). The Laws opens with the protagonists on a long walk down to Zeus’s Cave on Crete (625b), a

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journey that remains unfinished in the dialogue. Here, unlike the first part of the Symposium, the dialogue moves from the universal to the particular.114 The same imagery recurs in the opening lines of the frame of the Theaetetus at 142a where Euclides says, “I went down to the harbor” (εἰς λιμένα καταβαίνων). Within these overarching thematic movements, the twists and turns of the protreptic mark the Socratic battle for the souls of the interlocutors. Will Socrates’s arguments bring them into harmony with the circle of the same, or will their souls succumb to greater disorder? Plato’s frequent reference to and representation of altered states of consciousness—drunkenness, spells, trances, mania, dreams, enrapture, intense competition, and “the bacchic frenzy of philosophy” (Symposium 218b)—establish true and false gateways to the transcendent dimension of Being. Each of these psychic states mimics and exposes the overlapping dimensions of noetic being. Furthermore, the settings and allusions to liminal spaces—caves, graveyards, gates, battlegrounds, crossroads, and wrestling schools—create a phenomenology of overlapping or interpenetrating worlds. Of the kinds of madness discussed in the Phaedrus (244a), only erotic madness of the higher sort—which is compared to philosophic inspiration (249c)—enhances the awareness of unity in diversity (ἐκ πολλῶν ἰὸν αἰσθήσεων εἰς ἓν λογισμῷ συναιρούμενον, 249b–c). Each of the other manias collapses experience into a faux oneness, and awareness sinks into an undifferentiated and unknowable mass. On the other hand, manias of the kind typified by Socrates’s rational self-possession in the trances described in the Symposium exhibit an increased capacity for discrimination, endurance, and self-control. Self-and-other consciousness are preconditions for a noetic intuition of all of the overlapping and stratified dimensions of Being and Becoming.115 Any state, such as dreaming, drunkenness, or religious frenzy, that tends to greater psychic unity without simultaneously maintaining mental discrimination is a dangerous one for Plato. Absence, non-being in Becoming, is another effective layering device, as any number of extra-dimensional frames can be superimposed to create alternate spaces and compound themes. In the Timaeus, Hermocrates’s undelivered speech about Athens’s future is delivered by subsequent history, and the missing fourth speaker may be a victim of his own policies. Where is the Philosophos? One might answer that she is hiding in plain sight, enacted in the Sophist, Theaetetus, Parmenides, and so forth. Is there not a demonstration of the immortality of the soul ghosting through the Phaedo’s recounting of Socrates’s last day? Plato becomes the Philosophic myth maker he describes in the Republic at 501c, “a painter of ­constitutions.”116

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Speaking of the philosopher-kings, Plato later writes, “And once they have seen the Good itself, they must each in turn put the city, its citizens, and themselves in order, using it as their model.”117 Knowledge gained in the ascent from the Cave is not the same as knowledge gained in the descent (Republic 517d–518b).118 Knowledge of things in Becoming is in many ways more complex than in the Realm of Being, given the multiple overlap of Forms and distortions of time and space. Difference and the indefinite play increasingly complex roles on the lower levels of the Divided Line. Plato’s art compensates for this complexity by imposing devices that emphasize the universal and timeless nature of the Forms and Good. He freely uses literary techniques that create a mystical or otherworldly sense of access to past, present, future, and distant events. However, in doing so he is careful not to openly violate the conventions of the mundane world. For instance, he creates access to the past by using popular Greek beliefs concerning rebirth and necromancy, grants access to the future by appealing to cultural conventions about divination, and allows for access to distant events by opening symbolic portals to other times and locations by appealing to well-known traditional myths, rituals, and sacred sites.119 Plato’s principle of imitation following his metaphysics is not representational.120 Because he is guided in his construction by another reality, the Forms and the Good, his art conforms Becoming to Being. Hidden behind and underneath this apparent reality, he gives signs and clues to the extra-dimensionality he is illuminating. In the rough and tumble of Becoming, Plato always plants signs of the circle of the same. The prevalence of circles, spheres, and cycles in the imagery and actions of the Symposium, Critias, and the Timaeus harken back to Being, just as the broken and incomplete circles and disrupted cycles in these same dialogues harken back to the deforming presence of Becoming. The structures and patterns imitated in the dialogues are as complete as a process can become in Becoming. In his myths, architecture, history, settings, characterizations, and arguments, certain themes always come around again, and when they appear, although they may seem inconsequential, they are touchstones to deeper realities. Krämer suggests that one of the tasks that future research on the unwritten doctrines should continue is “further commentary on the dialogues in light of the inner-Academic teaching of Plato as assumed in the background of the dialogues.”121 In 1977, when my Greek Philosophy professor claimed that there were no accidental elements in the dialogues, as an eighteen-year-old American, I was not unlike Plato’s Athenian youth Meno, more enamored of fancy

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abstract definitions (Meno 76d), hardly crediting what seemed to me to be inconsequential and incongruous narrative details built into the settings, frames, and characters of the dialogues. Thirty-eight years later, now that I am on the other side of the podium, these peculiarities do not seem extraneous; rather, it strikes me how readily even they translate to other places and times. It is my hope that this study has elucidated some of the debt that Plato’s literary constructions owe to his metaphysics.

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Notes

Introduction   1.  Unless otherwise noted, English translations of the dialogues are taken from John M. Cooper, ed., Plato: The Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), hereafter Cooper. Greek text is from John Burnet, ed., Platonis Opera (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1901–1907), as transcribed in the Perseus Project, unless otherwise noted. Gregory Crane, ed., “Perseus Digital Library,” Tufts University, 2013, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/. As Steven Lowenstam observes, Plato seems to highlight the issue of the order of speeches in the Symposium, calling attention to the sequence with Aristophanes’s hiccupping fit. “Aristophanes’ Hiccups,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 27, no. 1 (1986): 43–56. The question of the sequence of the speeches matters not only because they construct a dialectic progression, a conversation whose parts build off one another, but also because new themes are raised by suggesting alternate plot structures. Here the last question of the dialogue, one that seemingly goes unanswered—what is the fundamental relationship of comedy and tragedy?—is presented in the middle with the comic poet’s (Aristophanes’s) tragic account of love and the tragedian’s (Agathon’s) comic account. Yet, as has been pointed out, the entire dialogue is an enactment of the tragicomic nature of life.  2. Phaedrus 230b. G. R. F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato’s Phaedrus, Cambridge Classical Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 192. Unless otherwise specified, the Socrates referred to in this book is Plato’s Socrates. Plato’s most famous creation may be his characterization of Socrates as the paradigm philosopher and a model philosopher-artist. For an extended analysis of the broad and loftiest (ὑψηλοτάτην) plane-tree, see Alfred Geier’s Plato’s Erotic Thought: The Tree of the Unknown (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2002). See especially 151–156.   3. Diskin Clay, “Plato’s First Words,” in Beginnings in Classical Literature, ed. Francis M. Dunn and Thomas Cole, 113–130 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 124. Cf. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 60.

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 4. Thomas Szlezák, “The Idea of the Good as Arche¯ in the Republic,” in Dmitri Nikulin, The Other Plato: The Tübingen Interpretation of Plato’s Inner Academic Teachings (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012), 123; hereafter, Nikulin.  5. Ibid., 128.  6. Szlezák, “The Idea of the Good,” in Nikulin, 121. Szlezák goes on to list fourteen characteristics of the Good as discussed in the Republic, comparing them with eight characteristics garnered from the indirect tradition (121–125).  7. Trans. Grube and Reeve in Cooper.   8. Trans. Grube and Reeve in Cooper. The painter has his mimetic “counterpart” (ἀντίστροφον) in the poet.  9. Trans. Nehamas and Woodruff in Cooper. 10. Dramatic frame naturally includes his settings, but also any spatialization of his themes in his characters and arguments. 11. See also the Republic 509b. 12. For Heraclitus’s monism, see frag. 50, Diels-Kranz. 13. As Aristotle notes, Presocratics had a tendency to conflate the formal and final causes. 14. Parmenides, frag. 8.42, Simplicius’ Physics; Plato, Sophist 244e–245b. Of course, being a sphere, Parmenides’s One does have a limit that is problematic. 15. In the Phaedo, Socrates wonders how one can ever become two (96e–97b). As Joe Sachs points out, this passage is a reference to the Parmenidean problem of generating difference out of unity. Socrates and the Sophists: Plato’s Protagoras, Euthydemus, Hippias, and Cratylus (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2012), 4. Another way to put this is: if time and space are ideal, the One cannot generate a second without violating the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles. Socrates wonders how it is possible that being brought into mere physical proximity (ἐπλησίασαν) can make two one, or one two. 16. This problem is especially acute for the status of phenomena; how does a strict monism explain even the appearance of difference, given that you start with an undifferentiated substance? – 17. See Hans Joachim Krämer, “EPEKEINA TES OUSIAS,” in Nikulin, 41. Cornford observes that the later Pythagoreans’ discovery of irrational numbers and incommensurability of diagonal of a square provides another motive for the introduction of a second principle. Francis MacDonald Cornford, Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides’ Way of Truth and Plato’s Parmenides (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, n.d.), 12–13. 18. Krämer, “Plato’s Unwritten Doctrine,” in Nikulin, 71. For evidence that Plato made use of the Dyad as a primitive, see Aristotle’s Metaphysics Bk. I, Ch. ix, 990b 2–991a 8; Bk. XIII, Ch. iv, 1078b 34–1079b 3; Theophrastus’s Metaphysics §9 11a 27–11b 7; and Aristotle’s Metaphysics 987b 23–35. – 19. Krämer, “EPEKEINA TES OUSIAS,” in Nikulin, 53. 20. Nikulin, “Plato: Testimonia et Fragmenta,” in Nikulin, 17.

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21. I do not mean to suggest that there is an actual substantive process of procession as the Neoplatonic tradition would have it; rather, the Good is independent of Being and existence, and any resemblance that beings have to it is merely a parallel order of two different realms of reality. Still, their being anything at all would be dependent on having some intrinsic order. But the order of a physical being is not the same thing as the order of an ideal being. 22. This knowledge, because of the mixing of the Forms in Becoming, is more complex than the knowledge of the Forms in-themselves. Socrates inquires incredulously in the Euthyphro, “Come now, my dear Euthyphro, tell me, too, that I may become wiser, what proof do you have that all the Gods consider that man to have been killed unjustly who became a murderer while in your service, was bound by the master of his victim, and died in his bonds before the one who bound him found out from the seers what was to be done with him, and that it is right for a son to denounce and prosecute his father on behalf of such a man. Come try to show me a clear sign that all the gods definitely believe this action to be right. If you can give me clear adequate proof of this, I shall never cease to extol your wisdom” (9 a–b). Trans. G. M. A. Grube in Cooper. This is not, on Socrates’s part, an ironic appeal to Socratic Ignorance; it is a genuine expression of the difficulty of applying the Form of justice in complex factual conditions. It is one thing to understand the Form of justice in-itself, quite another to apply it correctly to its manifold permutations in the world. 23. Trans. Paul Shorey in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961); hereafter, Hamilton and Cairns. 24. Cynthia Hampton, Pleasure, Knowledge and Being (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 90. 25. Cf. Glaucon’s remark about the Allegory of the Cave at Republic 515a, ἄτοπον, ἔφη, λέγεις εἰκόνα καὶ δεσμώτας ἀτόπους. 26. Vide Phaedrus 247c–d. ἡ γὰρ ἀχρώματός τε καὶ ἀσχημάτιστος καὶ ἀναφὴς οὐσία ὄντως οὖσα, ψυχῆς κυβερνήτῃ μόνῳ θεατὴ νῷ (What is in this place is without color and without shape and without solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman). Trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff in Cooper. For the Battle of the Gods and Giants, see Sophist 246a–249d. 27. Cf. the so-called “Ladder of Love” in the Symposium 210a–211d. 28. Even at the highest level, the Forms overlap and mix with one another (ἀλλήλων κοινωνίᾳ) (Republic 476a); διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν συμπλοκὴν ὁ λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν (Sophist 259e). In the ascent to the One, the mixing of the Forms with one another creates more inclusive syntheses of orders, but concomitantly new and increasing kinds of indefiniteness at each level in the descent from the One. 29. Robert Brumbaugh makes a salient conclusion concerning a hermeneutic problem that has assumed historic proportions—the impossibility of visually

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representing Plato’s description of the ratios of the Divided Line: “spatialization projects badly.” He argues that Plato intentionally includes incommensurability in the description of the Divided Line to demonstrate the danger of trying to directly map one dimension of reality onto another. “Plato’s Divided Line,” The Review of Metaphysics 17, no. 3 (1964): 425–435, 435. 30. Chapter 3 discusses Plato’s presentation of the construction of threedimensional objects. 31. Carl Boyer and Merzbach Uta, A History of Mathematics, 2nd ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1968), 85. Interestingly, Plato places Socrates, Theodorus, and Theaetetus, who also studied with Theodorus, in a dialogue about the limits of knowledge. For more on the hypothetical status of mathematics, see C. D. C. Reeve, “Plato’s Metaphysics of Morals,” 40. 32. For the Pythagoreans, the many proceed from the One in the form of a mystical relation, the Tetractys (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10). The progression from, and return to, the One generate the universe. The mystical sequence is the secret to the construction of geometric solids (substance), music, reincarnation, and life itself. The Pythagorean theory has a considerable influence on Plato’s conception of the Good. See Cornford, Plato and Parmenides, 1–27; Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), 210–219; Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957), 9–10. 33. It would go well beyond the scope of this book to give an exhaustive argument for the identification of the Good with the One. Nonetheless, the thesis should provide ample aesthetic support for connecting the Good and the One and thereby supplement metaphysical, epistemic, and ethical arguments that are well developed by the Tübingen school and other interpreters (see n. 4 above). 34. As Nickolas Pappas notes, Euclid’s Elements assumes the Parallel Postulate and primitively defines a point as a thing, “which has no parts.” But he continues, “non-Euclidean geometry gave the lie to this traditional confidence, by showing that points, lines, and planes admit of radically divergent interpretations.” Plato and the Republic (London: Routledge, 1995), 142. Pappas notes that Socrates calls Dialectic “the work of destroying hypothesis 533c.” 143. 35. I agree with Drew Hyland that the consideration of topos should also include time: “A crucial dimension of place in the broader sense surely must be the ‘time’ of the dialogue. It goes without saying that anything that happens in a place also happens at a given time. Strictly speaking, therefore, I should say that in the dialogues place in the narrower sense is co-primordial with time.” Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 17. 36. Brian Marrin, “Painting, Image, and Metaphor in Plato’s Republic” (paper presented at the annual meeting for the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy, New York, October 16–18, 2009). 37. Even natural history will reveal the order of the Good and the Forms in its unfolding.

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38. Jacob Howland, “Re-reading Plato: The Problem of Platonic Chronology,” Phoenix 45, no. 3 (1991): 189–214. Howland further contends that such an interpretive approach requires that the dialogues be entertained as “dramatizations of impromptu conversations . . . full of reversals, digressions, incomplete gestures, unfulfilled promises, and the like.” The Republic: The Odyssey of Philosophy (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1993). A Unitarian reading does not preclude the consideration of developmental elements, if, as is historically attested to, in the case of the composition of the Republic, Plato constantly came back to rewrite the dialogues. 39. See chapter 3 for a discussion of the status of the Hermocrates. Mary Louise Gill believes Plato intentionally did not write the Philosophos. She argues, “Plato sets out the puzzle associated with the philosopher but hides the pieces of the puzzle in plain sight” (i.e., in the dialectical exercises of the Parmenides, Sophist, Statesman, and Theaetetus). Philosophos: Plato’s Missing Dialogue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1–6 et passim. 40. The metaphysics of the three figures who most influenced Plato are decidedly esoteric in nature. Parmenides’s mystic chariot journey, Pythagoras’s secret doctrines, and Heraclitus’s hidden logos each propounds the notion of a quasi-religious gnostic order of knowledge that is open only to the initiate. And from Pythagoras and Heraclitus, Plato borrows the idea that the apparent flux of phenomenal existence has an underlying logos, a hidden order. Plato restricts the Heraclitean flux to the Realm of Becoming. In Heraclitus, the apparently opposite categories of love and strife are seen on a continuum that reveals the secret and unifying logos under the appearance of difference. On Plato’s rejection of the extreme positions of Parmenides and Heraclitus, see Theaetetus 179c–181b and Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge, 92–95. 41. See Aristotle, Physics Bk. IV, Ch. ii, 209b 15, trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, in Richard McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941). 42. See Konrad Gaiser, “Plato’s Enigmatic Lecture ‘On the Good,’ ” Phronesis 25, no. 1 (1980): 5–37. See also Hans Joachim Krämer, “Platons Ungeschriebene Lehre,” trans. Mario Wenning in Nikulin, 65–81. 43. Sophist 259e. 44. See Republic 511b. 45. Trans. Mary Louise Gill and Paul Ryan in Cooper. 46. Republic 520c. 47. To establish identity in a symbolic system, you must use self-reference. Jens Halfwessen writes, “[T]he ‘good’—as the final principle of being, knowledge, and value—must nonetheless lie ‘beyond being’ (epekeina te¯s ousias). It must lie beyond being because the statement that ‘the one is’ already entails a duality, namely between oneness and being, from which every other fundamental determination of being is derived, as Hypothesis II of the Parmenides shows.” Halfwessen, “Monism and Dualism in Plato’s Doctrine of Principles,” in Nikulin, 145. On the

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difficulty of the One and Being being two names for the same thing, see Sophist 244b–c. In fact, any symbolic or linguistic system that involves self-reference by definition duplicates the referent [self/same]. Thus, a strict metaphysical monism must necessarily be impossible to represent symbolically—as the symbol is not the same thing as what it represents. See also Cornford, Plato’s Parmenides, ix. 48. Trans. Gill and Ryan in Cooper. I knew an analytic philosopher in graduate school who, upon seeing a devotee of Plato, would often track an invisible target with his index finger and, when he had caught his eye, exclaim seriously, “Look, there goes the Good!” 49. Timaeus 38a, trans. Zeyl in Cooper. 50. It is interesting that Plato has the fictional Parmenides make exactly the same mistake about the One as his historical counterpart when he claims, “But since there is a furtherest limit, it is bounded on every side, like the bulk of a well-rounded sphere, from the center equally balanced in every direction.” Simplicius, frag. 8, l. 42–44, Physics 145, 27, in Geoffrey Steven Kirk and John Earle Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 276; hereafter Kirk and Raven. Melissus corrects Parmenides’s conception of a bounded sphere by claiming the One must be unlimited in time and in magnitude. Simplicius, frag. 2, 29, 22; 109, 20, and 3; 109, 31, Physics in Kirk and Raven, 299. See comments by Raven, 300–301. Mary Louise Gill argues that the second part of the Parmenides is an exercise in dialectic. Philosophos: Plato’s Missing Dialogue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Certainly the last part of the Parmenides contains dialectic exercise, but Mitchell Miller, F. M. Cornford, Diskin Clay, and the Neoplatonics, among others, also see the exercise as a via negativa leading to the Platonic metaphysics, with a specific noetic content. Miller argues persuasively and comprehensively that the contradictions of the second half of the Parmenides result when the One and the forms are taken as spatio-temporal beings. Plato’s Parmenides: The Conversion of the Soul (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 97ff. The second half of the Parmenides is a reductio ab absurdum of any proof of the existence, or nonexistence, of the One. Plato gives a clue to the nature of the second half of the Parmenides when he has Socrates describe Zeno’s book as a secreted reductio of pluralism (Parmenides 128a–e). Zeno calls Socrates a “Spartan hound” for tracking down his intent, but he objects that it was not his goal to disguise the book’s purpose of defending the One. It seems that the nature of the subject matter requires that proofs be indirect. 51. Richard Patterson, Image and Reality in Plato’s Metaphysics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), 27. 52. The divine urge of the demiourgos to create a greater order in Becoming matches the inspiration of the philosopher-poet. 53. Drew Hyland, Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues, 13–14. 54. In the world, for example, the perfect shape, circularity, and the perfect solid, a sphere, are both constructed from unrounded triangles. 55. The receptacle (χώρα), a “third kind of thing,” in addition to Being and Becoming; it is a space where sensible things are generated in Becoming.

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Dana Miller, The Third Kind in Plato’s Timaeus, Hypomnemata 145 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 126 and 129. 56. Consider the elaborate narrative frames of the Theaetetus and Symposium. Euclides’s elaborate temporal reconstruction of the dialogue he recounts in the Theaetetus may actually perfect the original discussion. He made notes at the time, wrote more down afterward, and checked his description against Socrates’s memory of the discussion, finally creating a book (143a–c). Thus, at a minimum his method assures his report closely approximates the nature of the original. 57. Miller, The Third Kind, 129. 58. Ibid., 126. 59. See Sophist 244e–245b. 60. Aristotle’s Physics 209b 11–15. The Timaeus passage is at 52a–b. For recent discussions, see Nikulin, The Other Plato, 5, and Krämer, “The Unwritten Doctrine,” in Nikulin, 65–81. 61. Space understood as the receptacle can only be understood by a bastard sort of reasoning. Timaeus 52b. 62. Plato may have inspired Aristotle’s maxim that poetry is a more philosophic and more serious thing than history because it represents the universal rather than the particular (διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν: ἡ μὲν γὰρ ποίησις μᾶλλον τὰ καθόλου, ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία τὰ καθ᾽ ἕκαστονλέγει). Aristotle’s Poetics 1451b 11–12. 63. Patterson, Image and Reality, 28. 64. C. D. C. Reeve, Philosopher-Kings (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 86. 65. Karl Jaspers. The concept occurs throughout his early and late works, notably Philosophy (1932), especially volume III, Metaphysics, and Of Truth (1947). 66. Many scholars have directly commented on the thematic arrangement of spatial patterns in the Republic, Phaedo, and beyond. See especially the discussion of the underworld myths in Voegelin, Brill, Seery, Fendt, and Edmonds. Sara Brill notes the correspondence between the nature of topography and the moral character of souls in the Phaedo, while Gene Fendt sees the “sun-line-cave” structure as a healing map that has a cathartic function for the soul that ascends it; Voegelin posits allusions to Athens’s contemporary political decline in the spatial alignment of the Cave-Piraeus to Athens in the Republic. Seery contra Voegelin takes a somewhat different political line concerning the spatial arrangement (see chapter 1, n. 4). John Seery, “Politics as Ironic Community: On the Themes of Descent and Return in Plato’s Republic,” Political Theory 16, no. 2 (1988): 229–256; Gene Fendt, Comic Cure for Delusional Democracy: Plato’s Republic (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), xv; Sara Brill, Plato on the Limits of Human Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013); Eric Voegelin, Plato (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966); Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the “Orphic” Gold Tablets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 67. See chapter 2 for a full discussion of this suggestion concerning the setting of the Menexenus.

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68. Leo Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 155. 69. See Aristotle’s Topics and Rhetoric. Specific topics (topoi eidoi) differ from commonplaces (koinoi topoi) in drawing their meaning directly from the Form, or essence, of a thing. Lane Cooper, The Rhetoric of Aristotle: An Expanded Translation with Supplementary Examples for Students of Composition and Public Speaking (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960), 1395b–1396b. See especially 154– 158. 70. See Isabel-Dorothea Otto, “Der Kritias vor dem Hintergrund Des Menexenos,” in Interpreting the Timaeus-Critias: Proceedings of the IV Symposium Platonicum, ed. Martinez Calvo and Luc Brisson (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1997), 65–81; hereafter, Calvo and Brisson. 71. Sara Brill, Plato on the Limits of Human Life, 67. 72. Leon Harold Craig, The War Lover: A Study of Plato’s Republic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), xvii. 73. Strauss, The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, 155. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, ed. and trans. Harold Tarrant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 17, 12. We should view Plato’s works, Jacob Howland argues, following Plato and Olympiodorus, as “live animals, preserving their living, moving character.” According to Diskin Clay, the “the principle of logographic necessity decrees that every literary composition should be structured like a living organism having its own body so it lacks neither a head nor feet but has a middle and extremities adjusted to one another and the whole” (Phaedrus 246c). 77. Clay, “Plato’s First Words,” 113–130. 78. Thomas Pangle, The Laws of Plato (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 513. 79. See especially Szlezák, “Idea of the Good,” in Nikulin. 80. Szlezák, “Idea of the Good,” in Nikulin, 127–128. 81. Brumbaugh, Plato on the One, 28. 82. See discussion in chapter 3. In important ways, Ur-Athens of the Critias resembles what Glaucon calls “the City of Pigs” in Book II of the Republic. Both states have a kind of rustic virtue begot of necessity, a virtue that is untested by plenty. 83. Otto, “Der Kritias,” in Calvo and Brisson, 65–81. 84. Inbesondere das in beiden Dialogen [viz. Kritias and Menexenus] verwendete Autochthoniemotiv wird dazu dienen, Zusammenhänge zwischen Topographie, Philosophie und Politik aufzuzeigen und so die Fülle und Ausfuhrlichkeit der Ortsbeschreibungen im Kritias philosophisch verständlich zu machen. Ibid., 66. English trans. David Limburg and C. Corcoran. 85. Republic 612c.

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Chapter 1  1. Republic 327a, trans. G. M. A. Grube and C. D. C. Reeve in Cooper.  2. Republic 328a, trans. Grube and Reeve in Cooper.   3. Eric Voegelin, Plato (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 54. The descent to the Piraeus, of course, would be between the Long Walls of Athens. The north and south walls were approximately 10 to 20 meters high and 138 meters apart, except at their throats, where the walls widened. The torch relay races in honor of Bendis most likely would take place around the interior circuit walls of the harbor itself, casting shadows on those circuit walls of the harbor. For the practice of using horse relays and lanterns for defensive signaling, see Aeneas the Tactician (ca. 357–356 BCE), On the Defense of Fortified Positions, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928, 1984), VI, 44–46. He writes, “If there are no such places from which the signals may be given to the city [that is, no direct line of sight], there must be relays of persons at different points to receive the signals as they are raised and pass them on to the city. If there are at hand horses and places fit for the use of horses, it is best to employ relays of horsemen so that messages may be conveyed more quickly.” Salamis used fire signals across the Aegean to warn Athens of the approach of Spartan forces in 429/8 (Thucydides 2. 94. 1). See also Nic Fields and Brian Delf, Ancient Greek Fortifications 500-300 BCE (New York: Osprey Publishing, 2003); and R. E. Wycherley, How the Greeks Built Cities, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1962), 43.   4. The image of a cave also recurs in Book II, with the story of the Ring of Gyges. Just as with the Trojan horse, what appears at first to be a gift turns out to be a curse. Republic 359c–360d. Jacob Howland also sees the descent to the Pireaus and ascent to Athens in the Republic as allusions to the underworld and the Realm of Forms. The Republic: The Odyssey of Philosophy, 43–45. See also John Seery, “Politics as Ironic Community: On the Themes of Descent and Return in Plato’s Republic,” Political Theory 16, no. 2 (1988): 229–256. Seery finds Voegelin’s grouping of Hades, the Piraeus, and the Cave as parallel underworlds problematic; while Athens stands as upper world to the mercantile Pireaus, she does not lie above or outside of the Cave in the latter allegory (232). Voegelin’s analogy can hold, however, if the Pireaus is taken as a metaphor for the fallen luxurious state that Athens has become—the one that is “like us” in the Allegory of the Cave. Voegelin, it will be recalled, places the descent in space and time; “down went her way from Marathon to the disaster of the sea power in time.” Plato, 52–53. Sean Steel gets Voegelin exactly right on this very point: see “Katabasis in Plato’s Symposium,” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 31, no. 1 (2004): 61. The cliffs of the Acropolis are riddled with caves that contain religious shrines. See John M. Camp, The Archaeology of Athens (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2001), 121, fig. 114. The sanctuaries on the northwest slopes include the Klepsydra (a hidden well), the Cave of Apollo, and the Cave of Pan; to the east, the Cave of

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Aglauros; and to the north, the Cave of Aphrodite Pandemos and Eros. Oscar Broneer and M. Z. Pease observe, “The rugged slopes of the Athenian Acropolis, with their overhanging cliffs, narrow underground passages, and numerous small caverns made a special appeal to the religious imagination of the early inhabitants of Athens.” “The Cave on the East Slope of the Acropolis,” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 5, no. 2 (1936): 247–272. For an extended discussion of the civic and religious importance of the caves of the Acropolis, see Joan Connelly, The Parthenon Enigma (New York: Knopf, 2014), 27–39. In a literal sense, Athens sits on and sprang out of these cliffs. Evidence that the caves were inhabited and treated as religious shrines by early Athenians extends into the second millennium BCE. Connelly observes, “At the very core of Athenian solidarity and civic devotion was the awareness of a shared past, and part of that awareness for some was special pride in being earthborn, or gegenes (from the Greek Ge or Gaia, meaning ‘Earth,’ and genes, meaning ‘born’). Gegenes denotes a literal springing up from the earth itself.” 37.   5. At Republic 612b, Socrates exhumes the image of the Ring of Gyges again in Book X, associating it with the cap of Hades.   6. Voegelin, Plato, 53. Howland also connects the descent to the Piraeus with Odysseus’s descent to Hades and kathodos and anados in the Eleusinian Mystery Cults. The Republic: The Odyssey of Philosophy, 43–52. On the importance of Plato’s first words, see Diskin Clay’s “Plato’s First Words,” 114.  7. Plato, Respublica, ed. Simon Sling (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 327a. Voegelin, Plato, 52–53.   8. Voegelin, Plato, 53.   9. Robert Garland, The Piraeus (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 119. 10. Alan Bloom, The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 311. 11. For a discussion concerning the date of the introduction of the cult, see Christopher Planeaux, “The Date of Bendis’ Entry into Attica,” Classical Journal 96, no. 2 (2000–01): 165–192. 12. G. M. A. Grube, Plato’s Republic (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974), n. 1, 2. Voegelin believes the reference is to Artemis. As Guthrie observes, Bendis is “also called the Great Goddess, a goddess of the fruits of the earth identified with Artemis, Persephone, and Hekate.” W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954), 43. 13. Gorgias 518e–519a, trans. W. C. Helmbold (New York: Macmillan, 1985). 14. Donald Kagan, The Peloponnesian War (New York: Viking, 2003), 61. 15. Republic 373a, trans. Grube and Reeve in Cooper. 16. Republic 373e–374a. 17. Laws 919d and 778d. Also compare Alcibiades I 134b; if, as Arnaldo Momigliano notes, we can take that dialogue as authentic. “Sea Power in Greek Thought,” The Classical Review 58, no. 1 (1944): 4–5. Note also the ironic treatment of the battle of Arginusae (406 BCE) in the Menexenus (243c–d), composed under somewhat more ironic circumstances, by Socrates under the tutelage of

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Aspasia, Pericles’s mistress. Of course, in the Critias, Plato raises the issue of the walls and sea power again using the guise of the civilization of Atlantis. He describes a state not unlike contemporary Athens. The Atlantans turn out to be an aggressive imperial power whose defense incorporates successive walled ring islands, forts, a strong navy, and even a hippodrome around the main circuit wall of the inner island. τά τε ἄλλα καὶ κατὰ μέσην τὴν μείζω τῶν νήσων ἐξῃρημένος ἱππόδρομος ἦν αὐτοῖς, σταδίου τὸ πλάτος ἔχων, τὸ δὲ μῆκος περὶ τὸν κύκλον ὅλον ἀφεῖτο εἰς ἅμιλλαν τοῖς ἵπποις (see Critias 116a and 117c). Momigliano notes, “The myth of the Critias was imagined to describe the victory of the ideal state [ancient Athens] over sea imperialism [contemporary Athens] . . .” “Sea Power,” 4–5. Metaphorically, it is possible that the rings of Atlantis stand for the successive layers of the Athenian’s defense: the Acropolis, Athens’s circuit wall, the Piraeus, and her Allies. For a full discussion of these issues, see chapters 2 and 3. 18. David H. Conwell, Connecting a City to the Sea: The History of the Athenian Long Walls (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 57n114. He collects the other known classical examples of Long Walls in Argos, Megara, Patrai, and Sestos and contemporary discussions. 19. Garland, Piraeus, 25. 20. Kagan, Peloponnesian War, 51. Winter, Scranton, and Garland confirm Thucydides’s observation that it would be nearly impossible to continuously man the circumvallation of Athens (the old city circuit/the Long Walls/the Piraeus’s walls [Thucycides 2.13.6ff). As Winter says, “In actual fact there would have been heavy concentrations of troops around the gateways and in the more strategically placed towers: certain stretches of curtain must therefore have been very lightly guarded, or not guarded at all, as Thucydides says this was the case with half of the Piraeus-Mounychia circuit.” Greek Fortifications (Toronto: University Press of Toronto, 1971), supplement, Phoenix IX, 305n50; Robert L. Scranton, Greek Walls (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941); “The Fortifications of Athens at the Start of the Peloponnesian War,” American Journal of Archaeology 42, no. 4 (1938): 429; Garland, Piraeus, 164. It would also seem reasonable to assume that many troops in the Piraeus were kept inland, but still on the Akte peninsula, in reserve to deploy to the circuit wall when and where a threat was presented. 21. Craig notes “the special poignancy of portraying these particular young men as participants in history’s most celebrated discussion of justice and tyranny.” See Craig’s discussion of the character and name in The War Lover, 341n1. 22. Debra Nails, The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and other Socratics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 84; Republic 328b. 23. For an elaboration of this point, see Seery, “Politics as Ironic Community,” 231. 24. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1455b 24. 25. The procession starts “from the shrine of Hestia in the purtaneion, a further indication of the importance attached to the [Bendis] cult, since the purtaneion in the Asty was the symbolic centre of all Athenian civic and religious authority.” For more on the Purtaneion, see Geoffrey C. R. Schmalz, “The

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Athenian Prytaneion Discovered?” Hesperia 75, no. 1 (2006): 33–81. For more information on Bendis, see Garland, Piraeus, 121. 26. Guthrie, Greeks and Their Gods, 222. 27. See Winter, Greek Fortifications, 110–111; Scranton’s Greek Walls; and Scranton, “Fortifications of Athens,” 525–536. 28. There is a controversy about whether during the Peloponnesian War the circuit wall of the Piraeus extended all the way around the Akte peninsula or whether it cut across the top of the hill, the so-called Themistoclean cross wall (see figs. 1.1 and 1.5). As one can see, the Kononian Wall on Winter’s diagram follows the coast closely along the shore. Scranton and Winter believe the fourthcentury Kononian circuit wall was the first to extend around the entire shoreline of the Akte Peninsula. Garland believes it was likely that there was a complete Themistoclean circuit during the fifth century. He writes, “It is not improbable that this wall adopts more or less the same course as its Themistoclean predecessor, perhaps even incorporating portions that escaped destruction in 404.” Piraeus, 165. David Conwell places the Piraeus circuit wall as phase Ia 462/1–458/7 (fifth century). Connecting a City to the Sea: The History of the Athenian Long Walls (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 38–39, 41n16 and see 232, fig. 1. 29. There is yet another controversy concerning the year of the first performance of the Bendedia and thus the fixing of the dramatic date of the Republic. Most scholars put that event sometime between 432/1 and 411 BCE. See Garland, Piraeus, 118. For a full discussion of the difficulty of setting a dramatic date for the Republic, see Debra Nails, “The Dramatic Date of Plato’s Republic,” The Classical Journal 93, no. 4 (1998): 383–396. Whatever the date, everyone agrees that the dialogue is overshadowed by the Peloponnesian War. 30. Garland, Piraeus, 121. 31. Republic 514b, my translation. The Greek term used here for elevated is ἐπάνω (see Henry Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 609). At 1.179 in his history, Herodotus clearly uses the term to describe the positioning of houses in Babylon on a defensive exterior wall as part of the wall’s parapet and the spaces between the houses as a rampart that is capable of holding “a four-horse chariot.” ἐπάνω δὲ τοῦ τείχεος παρὰ τὰ ἔσχατα οἰκήματα μουνόκωλα ἔδειμαν, τετραμμένα ἐς ἄλληλα: τὸ μέσον δὲ τῶν οἰκημάτων ἔλιπον τεθρίππῳ περιέλασιν. πύλαι δὲ ἐνεστᾶσι πέριξ τοῦ τείχεος ἑκατόν, χάλκεαι πᾶσαι, καὶ σταθμοί τε καὶ ὑπέρθυρα ὡσαύτως. N.B., beside the above passage Liddell and Scott give an additional use of the term in Herodotus at 3.54, where its occurrence describes an upper military tower. A. D. Godley, trans., Herodotus (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1920), vols. 2, 3. 32. H. L. Sinaiko, Love, Knowledge, and Discourse in Plato (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1965, 1979), 167; Grube, Plato’s Republic, 168; F. M. Cornford, The Republic of Plato (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), 227–228. 33. Grube, Plato’s Republic, 168n1. 34. Gorgias 445d–e, trans. Helmbold. The “Middle Wall,” also called the Southern Long Wall, was added between the Northern Long Wall and the Phaleric Wall in 458–7 BCE. See Garland, Piraeus, 22–24.

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35. Trans. D. S. Hutchinson in Cooper. 36. See Republic 532b. 37. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Book I. See also Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning, Book II. 38. For example, the multifaceted and intimate connections between the Divided Line and the Cave. The parallels between the two images are, of course, epistemological, metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic. 39. These themes are treated in chapter 2. After the rebuilding of the Piraeus circuit and Long Walls in 394–1 BCE, the Piraeus was raided in 387, 378, and 361 BCE. See Garland, Piraeus, 172. 40. Voegelin, Plato, 54. 41. Ibid., 53. 42. For evidence linking the Eleusinian Cult to the Oracle of Trophonius, see Pierre Bonnechere, “Trophonius of Ledadea: Mystery Aspects of an Oracular Cult in Boaotia,” in Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults (London: Routledge, 2003), 169–192. 43. In the Critias, the ancient acropolis is something of a land of milk and honey, nothing like the barren, craggy outcropping it has become, stripped of trees and topsoil by eons of erosion from storms. It has become a place where, as Socrates notes, even the bees can barely find enough food. Critias 111b–c. See chapter 3. 44. Daniel Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 59. 45. Yulia Ustinova, Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind: Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 59–60. 46. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, 56, 38. See also Phaedrus 259a–d. 47. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, 246. 48. Here Plato presents a triple irony; the ascent from darkness to light is like the ascent from the visible to the invisible realm on the Divided Line—except that the invisible, as in the Cave, here again becomes the intelligible. 49. E. Vallas and N. Faraclas, “Peri Tou Manteiou Tou Trophoniou en Lebadeia,” Athens Annals of Archaeology 2 (1969): 228–233. 50. Albert Schachter, “A Consultation of Trophonios,” American Journal of Philology 105, no. 3 (1984): 258–270, 260n11. 51. Ogden notes (81) of the Hesiod fragment (F245) that it is “a new discovery, only in the 1990 edition, on p. 190a” of Merkelbach and West. 52. Vallas and Faraclas, “Peri Tou Manteiou Tou Trophoniou en Lebadeia,” 228–233. 53. Ustinova, Caves, 59–60. 54. The Axiochus is most likely a late product of the Academy; its theme is the unfounded fear of death. See D. S. Hutchinson’s notes in Cooper, 1734–1735. 55. Bloom, Republic of Plato, 199. See Liddell and Scott. 56. Trophonius’s status, although he starts as human, seems to be semidivine, as his death gave him a kind of bodily immortality and an existence in between the underworld and the earth. Note that here the Daimons, unlike Socrates’s, do not play any prudential role; rather, they are simply bought off.

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57. The shock of a cold-water bath is another common feature of rites of passage. It also may be related to ritual ascetic purification. Ur-Athens has only one spring whose heat remains temperate throughout the year (112d), while degenerate Atlantis has both hot and cold springs, one of which they converted to a warm bath (117a–b). For a full discussion of the topographical contrasts between the two states, see chapter 3. 58. Cf. Plato, Meno 97d–e. 59. The use of honey cake as a chthonic oblation was common in Greek rituals, such as in the Thesmophoria and the Bouphonia (Guthrie lists other examples on 221 and 228). According to Pausanius, the rediscovery of the oracle occurred when an individual followed a swarm of bees into the cave. Description of Greece 9.40.1–2. An entheogen might be ingested with the cakes or mead mixed with the spring water. Cf. Adrienne Mayor, “Mad Honey! Bees and the Baneful Rhododendron,” Archaeology 52, no. 6 (1995): 32–40. Mayor writes that Xenophon’s troops were overcome by honey in 401 BCE in Asia Minor in the territory of Colchis. They became intoxicated madmen and then collapsed. Mayor reports the effect of the substance on J. Grammer, a confederate surgeon who experienced “a queerish sensation of tingling all over,” then blurred vision, and finally “an empty, dizzy feeling about the head and nausea. He seemed dead drunk” (34). And she observes that “Greek and Roman medical authorities thought that it might reverse the madness of the insane” (33). In 1891, German scientist P. C. Plugge isolated the toxic compound acetylandromedol, which is a type of grayanotoxin found in the honey from early blooming rhododendrons. Acetylandromedol causes breathing inhibition, paralysis, and a hypnotic effect. This poison clearly produces a deathlike state. Mayor concludes, “The key may lie in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, written sometime between the eighth and sixth century B.C.E. It describes the mysterious bee-oracles or melissai, young women who revealed the future while under the influence of ‘maddening’ fresh honey” (40). This assumes that the cakes, as the animal sacrifices, were eaten by the visitors. For further information on the melissai, see G. W. Elderkin, “The Bee of Artemis,” American Journal of Philology 60, no. 2 (1939): 203–213. See also Ion 534a, where Socrates mentions the intoxicating effects of milk, presumably fermented, and honey on the Bacchae. 60. One would assume that the priests descend into the crypt ahead of the visitor and pull them into the inner chamber; like Trophonius’s servants, they could naturally provide the impetus, sounds, and lights for the visitor. Significantly, the priests are absent in the ascent up the hill and during the descent into the oracle—it is the hermai, not the oracular priests, who ultimately lead the visitor to the cave. 61. Pausanius, Description of Greece 9.39.5–14, trans. Guthrie. Greeks and Their Gods, 225–28. Even without considering the Oracle of Trophonius, many scholars have considered Plato the originator of depth psychology (Tiefenpsychologie). His wondering whether he is Typho (230a) in the Phaedrus is often cited as evidence that his search for self-knowledge has led him to the unbridled instincts of the

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unconscious mind. The oracle’s parallel with the psychoanalytic theory of the death instinct (Thanatos) in a symbolic return to the womb (cave) is also striking. See Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 3rd ed. (New York: Norton, 1923, 1961). 62. Whatever specific combinations of mind-altering techniques are used to produce such a liminal state, it seems clear that the overall structure of the rituals at the oracle ultimately is meant to induce a fear that is purged by a homeopathic catharsis. The fear of death is driven out by surviving a mock death. For the theory of sensory deprivation and shock treatment, see D. Kouretas, “The Oracle of Trophonius: A Kind of Shock Treatment Associated with Sensory Deprivation in Ancient Greece,” British Journal of Psychiatry 113 (1967): 1441–1446. For more on sensory deprivation and drugs, see also Yulia Ustinova, “Cave Experiences and Ancient Greek Oracles,” Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture 2, no. 3 (2009): 265–286; and Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind: Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth (Oxford University Press Premium, 2009), 315. 63. Apology 19b, trans. Grube. 64. Plutarch, Moralia, vol. VII, De Genio Socratis (589F–592E), trans. Phillip De Lacy and Benedict Einarson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959). Greek text: Plutarch, Moralia, ed. Gregorius N. Bernardakis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1891), 3. Ogden notes that many found themselves at different locations when exiting the underworld, and he notes that such an experience is closer to a kind of spatial “dimensionality” that cannot be transposed to distance on the surface. Greek and Roman Necromancy, 252. Lucian makes fun of the priest of the Trophonium and this alleged power of being in two places at once in his Dialogues of the Dead. 65. Ogden believes the bump was metaphorical; that is, it marked souls leaving the body, and the oracle was produced simply by dreams. Greek and Roman Necromancy, 18–19, 82. It is difficult to reconcile his interpretation with the accounts in Plutarch and Pausanius of being drawn into the interior cave, suffering a blow to the head (Plutarch only), and being left in a catatonic state after the consultation, and so forth. It could be that the blow to the head may be a late Hellenistic, and less artistic, addition to the procedure at the oracle. 66. For other honey-based intoxicants, see Michael Rinella, Pharmekon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010), 9–10. He writes, “Mead based from honey is arguably the ancestor of all fermented intoxicants, predating both wine and beer. Many variations of mead were apparently available for consumption in ancient Greece, including but not limited to hydromel (honey and water), metheglin (honey, water, and, spices), and oinomeli or mulsum (wine mixed with honey and water).” Rinella notes that in the Symposium (203b), Poros becomes drunk with nectar. Honey, nectar, and ambrosia were closely associated in the classical world. For the necromantic use of melikraton, honey-milk, see Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, 100. 67. Clouds 506ff. Ogden notes that Socrates also appears as a psychagogos in Aristophanes’s Birds at 1553–1564. Greek and Roman Necromancy, 97. 68. Phaedo 64c, trans. Grube.

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69. Phaedrus 261a7–8. Greek text: Burnet, ed., Plato in Twelve Volumes, trans. Harold N. Fowler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925), Vol. 9, 269. For a further discussion of the term, see Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Nehamas and Woodruff in Cooper, 55–56n137. 70. Aeschylus, Persians, trans. and ed. Edith Hall (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1996), 78–79. 71. Elizabeth Asmis, “Psychagogia in Plato’s Phaedrus,” Illinois Classical Studies 11, nos. 1/2 (1986): 153–172. 72. For general etymological references, see Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 2026; for a discussion of the concept in Plato, especially the Phaedrus, see Asmis, “Psychagogia,” 153–172; Phaedrus, trans. Nehamas and Woodruff, 55–56n137; and also Evanghelos Moutsopoulos, La Musique Dans L’oeuvre de Platon (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), 259–260. Moutsopoulos writes, “Platon exprime cette double signification lorsqu’il se refere ‹‹ a ceux qui, pareils a des betes fauves, non comteste de nier l’existence des dieux  .  .  .  ››” For a discussion of the term in Aristotle’s Poetics, see Alfred Gudeman, Aristoteles, ΠΕΡΙ ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΗΣ (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1934): 182–183, ns. 33 and 34. 73. Asmis, “Psychagogia,” 157. 74. Phaedrus, trans. Nehamas and Woodruff. 75. Cf. Ion 533a–536e. 76. Eric Robertson Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (London: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 64. 77. Cf. Phaedrus 244b. 78. See Francis Bacon’s discussion of idols of the tribe and idols of the cave in Novum Organum. 79. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 24; and Martin P. Nilsson, The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and Its Survival in Greek Religion, 2nd ed. (Lund: Geerup, 1950). 80. Guthrie, Greeks and Their Gods, 230. Beehives also have the feature of an artificial structure being built within another shelter, a cave, a tree, a carcass, and so forth. The inner sanctum is of course the natural one; civilization is built on top of and grows out of the divine site (cf. Atlantis). 81. Phaedo 64a. 82. Ibid. 83. Apology 29a–b. See also Phaedo 64c. 84. Apology 39a–b. 85. Crito 46c. 86. Crito 46c, trans. Hugh Tredennick, The Last Days of Socrates, 3rd ed. (London: Penguin Classics, 2003). Cf. Phaedo 77e, where Cebes exclaims, “but perhaps there is a child in us who has these fears; try to persuade him not to fear death like a bogey” (ἀλλ᾽ ἴσως ἔνι τις καὶ ἐν ἡμῖν παῖς ὅστις τὰ τοιαῦτα φοβεῖται. τοῦτον οὖν πειρῶ μεταπείθειν μὴ δεδιέναι τὸν θάνατον ὥσπερ τὰ μορμολύκεια). Trans. Grube in Cooper. See Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 1146. 87. Phaedo 67e.

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88. Cf. the ascent passages of the Symposium (201d–212c). The ascent passage in the Symposium, like the Cave Allegory in the Republic, marks the dramatic and thematic climax of that dialogue. 89. Republic 617e. 90. Guthrie, Greeks and Their Gods, 225–227. While Er and Trophonius both serve as guides, having observed the mystery of the underworld, Plato’s Er dies a heroic death in battle, while the mythic Trophonius dies on the lam after murdering his brother to escape punishment for stealing from a treasury. 91. Republic 619c. 92. Republic 607b. 93. Republic 607a. 94. See Aristophanes, Clouds 506; and, of course, Plutarch’s account of Timarchus’s consultation. 95. The myth expresses these differences by using the metaphors of one’s eyes being blinded by the sun/Good and then having to adjust to the darkness in the return to the Cave. 96. Republic 592b, trans. Grube and Reeve in Cooper.

Chapter 2  1. Edward Everett, “Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863),” Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project, accessed March 2015, http://voicesof­democracy. umd.edu/everett-gettysburg-address-speech-text/.   2. Charles Kahn, “Plato’s Funeral Oration: The Motive of the Menexenus,” Classical Philology 58, no. 4 (1963): 220–234.   3. Reginald E. Allen, Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Gorgias, Menexenus (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 319.  4. Trans. Paul Ryan in Cooper.  5. Kahn, “Plato’s Funeral Oration,” 220ff.  6. Lucinda Coventry, “Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Menexenus,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 109 (1989): 1–15, 3.  7. Ibid., 5. For an extended discussion of “Plato’s Rejection of P ­ ericles’ Erotic Relations Model of Democratic Citizenship,” see S. Sara Monson, “Remembering Pericles: the Political and Theoretical Import of Plato’s Menexenus,” Political Theory 26, no. 24 (1998): 489–513.  8. Acharnians l. 516–539. Ian Michael Plant, Women Writers of Ancient Greece and Rome (London: Equinox Publishing, Ltd. and University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 41. Thomas M. Kerch notes that “a precedent was set in Aristophanes’ Acharnians for ridiculing the mistress of Pericles, whose influence over the statesman allegedly led to the Megarian Decree and ultimately to the Peloponnesian war.” “Plato’s Menexenus: A Paradigm of Rhetorical Flattery,” Polis 25 (2008): 94–114. For a rehabilitation of Aspasia’s figure, see Madeleine Henry, Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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  9. See the discussion of Clito and Atlantis in chapter 3. There is a secondary irony in Plato’s using a popular caricature of Aspasia, especially one fostered in part by Aristophanes, for comic effect. 10. Edmund Bloedow, “Aspasia and the Mystery of the Menexenus,” Wiener Studien 87–88 (1975): 32–48, 42. 11. Susan Collins and Devin Stauffer, “The Challenge of Plato’s Menexenus,” Review of Politics 61 (1999): 99. They go on to describe Socrates’s most blatant dodge: “In what is only the most far-fetched example of the length to which this requires Socrates to go, he claims that the Sicilian expedition—an expedition fueled in Thucydides’ description by imperial longings so strong as to be called a form of ‘love’ (see sec. VI. 24)—was simply another demonstration of Athens’s commitment to the defense of freedom, this time the freedom of the Leontinians” (242e–243e), 100. See also Collins and Stauffer, Plato’s Menexenus and Pericles’ Funeral Oration: Empire and the Ends of Politics (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 1999). 12. Stephen Salkever, “Socrates’ Aspasian Oration: The Play of Philosophy and Politics in Plato’s Menexenus,” The American Political Science Review 87, no. 1 (1993): 133–143. For a discussion of the rhetorical structure of the dialogue, see Coventry, “Plato’s Rejection,” 7ff. 13. Lesley Dean-Jones, “Menexenus—Son of Socrates,” The Classical Quarterly 45, no. 1 (1995): 52. On the other hand, Lucinda Coventry warns about the temptation of taking the last part of the dialogue as serious Platonic philosophy. “Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Menexenus,” 10–15. 14. Christoper Long, “Dancing Naked with Socrates: Pericles, Aspasia, and Socrates at Play with Politics, Rhetoric, and Philosophy,” Ancient Philosophy 23, no. 1 (2003): 49–69. 15. Ibid., 53. 16. Beyond the numerous verbal and rhetorical parallels between Thucydides’s rendition of Pericles’s oration and Plato’s Aspasian version, Monson argues that the dialogue is a specific criticism of Thucydides historiography. She writes, “The allusions in the Menexenus to Thucydides, to Pericles, and specifically to Thucydides’ construction of Pericles’ significance are not veiled or hidden, nor are they few.” “Remembering Pericles,” 491. On this point, I think it is hard to find a better and more discerning statement than Kahn’s when he says, “I do not think the whole of the Menexenus, can be interpreted as an attack on Thucydides, or as a parody of his funeral oration. In fact, I am not sure that Plato’s speech is accurately described either as a parody, a caricature, or a satire of its more famous predecessor. But that there is a relationship, that this relationship is antagonistic, and that the antagonism centers on the figure of Pericles—so much, I think, is clear.” “Plato’s Funeral Oration,” 223. 17. Coventry, “Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Menexenus,” 1–15; Franco Trivigno, “The Rhetoric of Parody in Plato’s Menexenus,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 42, no. 1 (2009): 29–58; Kerch, “Plato’s Menexenus”; Kahn, “Plato’s Funeral Ora-

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tion,” vide n. 1; Frances Pownall, Lessons From the Past (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). See especially 56–64. 18. Unlike the other scholars listed above, Kerch questions the tradition’s tendency to see Plato and Thucydides at odds on the interpretation of Pericles’s statesmanship. He writes, “[T]o interpret the Menexenus as an attack on Thucydides not only disregards its other aspects, but also presupposes that Thucydides himself favored Periclean political leadership and Athenian imperialism: a view which itself is open to debate.” “Plato’s Menexenus,” 96, 99ff. Yet Thucydides’s variances from Pericles seem to be closer to the Machiavellian and ex post facto variety than they are to scruples concerning the intrinsic justice of Athens’s actions. 19. Trivigno, “The Rhetoric of Parody in Plato’s Menexenus,” 30. 20. Ibid., 38. 21. Paul Mahoney, “The Origin of the Olive: On the Dynamics of Plato’s Menexenus,” Polis 27, no. 1 (2010): 38–57, 46. 22. Ibid., 39f. 23. Ibid., 41. 24. See Isocrates 8.49 and 12.124–125; Thucydides 1.2.5; Euripides, Ion 589ff.; Aristophanes, Wasps 1076 in Crane, “Perseus Digital Library.” Of course, the claim was also not unique to Athens, as many Greek city-states had autochthonic myths, including Plato’s own account of the first king of Atlantis, Evenor (Critias 113c–114c). Indeed, it is an archetypal myth throughout history and in many different cultures. For an excellent etymological survey of the uses of the term, see Vincent Rosivach, “Autochthony and the Athenians,” The Classical Quarterly 37, no. 2 (1987): 303–304. Rosivach observes that autochthony has two senses, living in a land “since time immemorial” and literally being “born from the earth (γηγενής, cf. e.g. Pl. Soph. 247c with 248c),” 297. 25. Mahoney, “On the Origin of the Olive,” 38–57. See also Rosivach, “Autochthony and the Athenians,” 303n34. 26. Nickolas Pappas and Mark Zelcer, “Plato’s Menexenus as a History That Falls into Patterns,” Ancient Philosophy 33, no. 1 (2013): 23. 27. See Mahoney, “On the Origin of the Olive,” 41–42. 28. According to the myth, Poseidon provides a useless saltwater well. 29. Mahoney, “On the Origin of the Olive,” 43. 30. Pappas and Zelcer, “Plato’s Menexenus as a History,” 22. 31. 238e–239a, trans. Ryan in Cooper. 32. ἀλλ᾽ ἡ ἰσογονία ἡμᾶς ἡ κατὰ φύσιν ἰσονομίαν ἀναγκάζει ζητεῖν κατὰ νόμον. 239a. English trans. mine. Vincent Rosivach, “Autochthony and the Athenians,” 303–304. See also Pappas and Zelcer, “Plato’s Menexenus as a History,” 23. 33. Nicole Loraux, Born of the Earth (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 34. 34. The Noble Lie is sometimes referred to as the “Myth of Metals.” 35. Kenneth Dorter, The Transformation of Plato’s Republic (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 100–101.

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36. Ibid., 100. Presumably the perspicacious among the guardians would see that the logic that allows autochthony to work for one people at one time would also apply for all peoples at all times and all places. 37. Cf. Shakespeare, Richard II 2.1, 40–51. 38. Similarly, the elaborate marriage lottery for Guardians in the Republic functions to eliminate the appearance and possibility of parental favoritism. The Platonic view of the underlying unity of metals is discussed in chapter 3, §4, “Oreichalkos and Platonic Metallurgy.” Refining metals transmutes them into purer forms, just as for Plato education refines souls. The noble lie denies the possibility of transmutation, maintaining that souls are born as unalterable kinds of metals. The Battle of Arginusae illustrates how civic discord can easily arise from class jealousy. The generals got in trouble with Athenian citizens for granting citizenship to those slaves and metics who participated in the battle even though their actions were meritorious, while being born in a certain locale is purely an accident. The Athenians were jealous even though the generals bestowed earned civic rights on metics and slaves while the natives had been granted civil rights by an accident of birth. 39. Bloedow, “Aspasia and the Mystery of the Menexenus,” 36–41. See also Trivigno, “Rhetoric of Parody,” 38–39. 40. Trans. Ryan in Cooper. 41. It is difficult to credit Pamela Huby’s claim that the Athenians would miss many of the “misrepresentations” of Athens’s history—it would be surprising to find anyone in 386 BCE who thought the Athenians had won the Peloponnesian War. “The Menexenus Reconsidered,” Phronesis 2, no. 2 (1957): 104–114, 110. 42. For a discussion of the problem of fixing Leon’s Identity, see James W. McCoy, “The Identity of Leon,” The American Journal of Philology 96, no. 2 (1975): 187–199. McCoy thinks he may have been one of the senior generals trapped with Athenian forces in Mytilene. 43. Aristotle, Constitution of Athens, trans. Kurt von Fritz and Ernst Kapp (1950; repr., New York: Hafner Press, 1974), 34, 1. 44. Compare Meno 93c–94e, where Socrates singles out Pericles’s and Themistocles’s sons as ne’er-do-wells of illustrious fathers—an incident that provokes Anytus’s rage. The trial and execution of the generals serves as a strange confirmation of Socrates’s claim that only the Athenians can and did beat themselves. John Hale notes that some historians doubt Socrates was actually presiding in the trial that day, as the sole sources for that fact are the accounts from Plato and Xenophon. Lords of the Sea (New York: Viking, 2009), 354. In the Gorgias from 473e to 474a, Socrates cites, as evidence of his own ignorance of the ins and outs of politics, that he did not know the procedure for taking a vote in the Assembly. 45. See Hale’s definition of the maneuver in Lords of the Sea, 334. The situation is somewhat analogous to the American position in the Battle of Midway in 1942; the outnumbered American aircraft carriers were able to use Midway Island itself as what has been commonly referred to as a fourth and unsinkable American carrier.

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46. Trans. Ryan in Cooper. The victory of the relief squadron released the main Athenian fleet under Conon, which had been blockaded in the inner harbor of Mytilene by Spartan forces. 47. Nic Fields, Ancient Greek Warship: 500-322 BC (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2007), 14. 48. The full complement of a trireme is 200; thus the loss of 26 could potentially place about 5,000 dead, wounded, and swimming Athenians and allies in the sea. As Barry Strauss notes, “Of the 150 ships present, 110 were Athenian, so it is probably fair to multiply the total casualty figures by two-thirds to obtain Athenian losses: 3,300 men.” Athens after the Peloponnesian War: Class, Faction and Policy 403-386BC (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 181. Because triremes had positive buoyancy even when swamped, many of the sailors could survive engagements by staying with the hull and clinging to wreckage. However, for any oarsmen stuck on the cramped and overcrowded lower tiers, extricating themselves from a holed trireme must have proved a dicey affair. Many of the crew of the relief squadron were slaves and metics who were, because of the emergency, quickly pressed into service with little formal training. 49. Victor Davis Hanson, A War Like No Other (New York: Random House, 2005), 282. 50. Hale, Lords of the Sea, 224. 51. Ibid., 333. Thrasyllus had supreme command; see Hale, 225. Indeed, given the minimal state of ship-to-ship communication, the numerous independent commands of the smaller Athenian naval squadrons may have given them a tactical advantage. For a discussion of the tactical disposition of the Athenians and their allies, see Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 454–458. 52. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 464–465. For a discussion of the longterm tension between the generals and the demos, see Luca A. Asmonti, “The Arginusae Trial, the Changing Role of Strategoi and the Relationship between Demos and Military Leadership in Late-Fifth Century Athens (Part 1),” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 49, no. 1 (2006): 1–21; and Peter Hunt, “The Slaves and Generals of Arginusae,” American Journal of Philology 122, no. 3 (2001): 359–380. Asmonti and Hunt argue that the generals’ freeing of the slaves who participated in the battle created a popular “backlash” against the strategoi. 53. For more on Socrates and the graphe paranomon, see Debra Hamel, The Battle of Arginusae, Victory at Sea and Its Tragic Aftermath in the Final Years of the Peloponnesian War (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2015), 89–90 and n. 24, 114. 54. Bruce Rosenstock observes that Socrates’s “judgment” that “private enmities (idiai diaphorai) led to the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War” echoes Thucydides’s claims at 2.66.12. “Socrates as Revenant: A Reading of the Menexenus,” Phoenix 48, no. 4 (1994): 335. 55. See Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 466. As others have noted, Aristotle’s and Plato’s report of ten generals, in the Apology (32b) and Constitution of Athens (34, 1 and 182n118), respectively, is incorrect, but it is likely here that Aristotle

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and Plato add in the former generals Thrasybulus and Theramenes, who, acting as navarchoi, were also under suspicion. 56. When the Spartans offer to abandon Decelea and sue for peace, a drunk Cleophon enters the assembly in his armor and sways the assembly to continue the war. See Constitution of Athens, 34, 1–2; and Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, 468. 57. R. E. Allen, “Plato’s Menexenus, Translation and Commentary,” The Dialogues of Plato (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), vol. I, 319. 58. Rosenstock, “Socrates as Revenant,” 331–347. Rosenstock observes that “the idea that the dead may walk as ghosts above ground is not at all foreign to Greek culture. In Athens on the fifth day of Boedromion, the spirits of the dead were thought to emerge from their graves” (339n15). Rosenstock credits A. E. Taylor and H. S. Stern as scholars who earlier entertained the possibility that Socrates is speaking from the dead. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (London: Methuen, 1926), 41; Stern, “Plato’s Funeral Oration,” The New Scholasticism 48, no. 4 (1974): 503–508. 59. Rosenstock, “Socrates as Revenant,” 331. See Nicole Loraux, The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), 466n303. 60. Rosenstock, “Socrates as Revenant,” 338. 61. Nails, The People of Plato, 202–203. 62. Lesley Dean-Jones, “Menexenus—Son of Socrates,” 51–57. 63. Ibid., 55. 64. Ibid., 53. 65. Kahn, “Plato’s Funeral Oration,” 229. 66. Horace, Odes III. 2.13. 67. Trans. Donald J. Zeyl in Cooper. Cf. Rosenstock, “Socrates as Revenant,” 339, 343, and 345. He argues that the Menexenus is a follow-up to the Apology and an illustration of the rhetorical flattery described in the Gorgias. Pownall with E. R. Dodds sees the Menexenus as the applied demonstration of the reproaches of rhetoric found in the Gorgias. E. R. Dodds, Plato: Gorgias (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959). As Pownall notes in Lessons From the Past, this is not the only occurrence of patent anachronism in the dialogues: “Plato’s disregard for strict historical truth is perhaps best illustrated by his frequent and emphatic use of anachronism. The most obvious examples are the major anachronisms found in the Gorgias and Symposium. Although the dramatic date of the Gorgias is set soon after 427, the date of Gorgias’s visit to Athens (Pericles’ death in 429 is referred to as recent at 503c), references are made to Archelaus’s accession to the Macedonian throne in 413 (470d) and to the trial of the generals in Athens after the Battle of Arginusae in 406 (473e)” (47). To be cautious, I believe we should agree with Robin Waterfield that 473e is “possibly” a reference to the Arginusae trial. Still, Pownall observes that the blatant anachronism of the Menexenus is “of a different nature altogether” (48). The anachronistic references in the Gorgias to Pericles, Arginusea, and the political misuse of rhetoric may serve to highlight its thematic connections to the Menexenus.

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68. Trans. Ryan in Cooper. “In contrast to the Funeral Oration, philosophy is the authentic preparation of the soul for its destiny beyond this life, a claim which we find in the Meno and the Gorgias and which finds its full expression in the Phaedo.” Rosenstock, “Socrates as Revenant,” 343. As argued in chapter 1, Plato makes the exact same criticisms about the effect of the Eleusinian mysteries on the Athenians (Trophonius, the Cave, the descent, etc.). 69. Rosenstock, “Socrates as Revenant,” 343. 70. Rosenstock makes another interesting suggestion: “Although certainty cannot be had on this point, it is possible that the Funeral Oration was delivered on the Genesia.” “Socrates as Revenant,” 339. 71. Strauss, Athens after the Peloponnesian War, 127. 72. See Fields, Ancient Greek Warship, 33; cites Xenophons’s Hellenika 5.1.2. 73. Hellenica 5.1.28–29, emphasis added; see also Strauss, Athens after the Peloponnesian War, 159–160. 74. See Coventry, “Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Menexenus,” 14–15. 75. Nickolas Pappas notes that it is awkward that the number of kinds of souls is fewer than the number of degenerate forms of state. Plato and the Republic (London: Routledge, 1995), 158. 76. Coventry, “Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Menexenus,” 9. 77. Menexenus 234a, my translation. 78. Warum Sokrates gleich am Anfang den Menexenos fragt, ob er ‘vom Markt’ kommt, läßt sich nicht mit Sicherheit klären. Der Grund hängt vermutlich damit zusammen, daß der Markt der am stärksten besuchte Ort in Athen war, so daß die Annahme, daß jemand dorthin geht oder von dorther kommt, ganz näturlich ist. Stavros Tsitsiridis, Platons Menexenos: Einleitung, Text und Kommentar (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner, 1998), 129. English trans. David Limburg and C. Corcoran. 79. Tsitsiridis also notes that the “where” question is common to the opening of several dialogues and that it might warrant further consideration, namely in Phaedrus 227a1, Ion 530a1, and Protagoras 309a1. Platons Menexenos, 129. R. E. Wycherley observes that the initial meeting place of the Phaedrus is carefully specified: Phaedrus has just left Lysias’s “house called Morychia here (τῇδε), near the Olympieion.” He surmises that the “site of the Morychos, now occupied by Epikrates, is a very short distance inside the city wall, and just north of the Olympieion. The two meet very near the house, which Phaidros points out to Socrates, and leave the city by the gate immediately north-east of the Olympieion (‘Gate of Aigeus’).” See his “Scene of Plato’s Phaedrus,” Phoenix 17 (1963): 88–98, 91. 80. Menexenus 246c, trans. Ryan in Cooper. 81. Menexenus 247c. Given the characteristic of what Ogden called the “dimensionality” of the underworld, there may be many surface gates to one underworld place. 82. Bettany Hughes, The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life (New York: Knopf, 2011), 73. For a timeline of burials at the

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­ erameikos, see Robert Garland, The Greek Way of Death, 2nd ed. (1985; repr., K Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), 124–127. 83. Pericles gave an earlier epitaph in commemoration of Athenians who died fighting the Samians in 439. Garland, Greek Way of Death, 90. 84. Camp, The Archaeology of Athens, 261–263. See Socrates’s ironic remark about the practice at Menexenus 234b–c, and Thucydides’s account of the ritual in Book II of his History of the Peloponnesian War. This was also the site of another memorial address honoring Athenian dead in the Corinthian War attributed to Lysias, Oration II. 85. Garland, Greek Way of Death, 102. 86. Hale, Lords of the Sea, 152. 87. Ibid., 230–231. 88. I am reminded of Aristotle’s statement from the Nicomachean Ethics: “For it seems that to some extent good and evil really exist for a dead man, just as they may exist for a man who lives without being conscious of them, for example, honors and disgraces, and generally the success and failure of his children and descendants.” Trans. Martin Ostwald, EN 1100a 18–21. 89. Phaedrus 275b–c. 90. Felix Jacoby, “Patrios Nomos: State Burial in Athens and the Public Cemetery in the Kerameikos,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 64 (1944): 37–66. See also F. Jacoby, “ΓΕΝΕΣΙΑ A Forgotten Festival of the Dead,” The Classical Quarterly 38 (1944): 65–75. The return of the cremated remains was a charge of the strategoi (37n1). For more recent treatments of the festival, see Donald G. Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1993); and Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 91. Jacoby, “Patrios Nomos,” 37. The practice of interment in the Eleusinian religion, and in countless other societies, is of course suggestive of a figurative planting for later rebirth. 92. Jacoby, “Patrios Nomos,” 38. A tradition that has Homeric roots. 93. Here one is reminded of the competition of speeches in the Symposium and Phaedrus and the agonistic frames in the Phaedrus, Philebus, Euthydemus, and Book I of the Republic. See chapter 5 for a full discussion of agonistic themes and imagery in the frames of these and other dialogues. 94. Jacoby, “Patrios Nomos,” 37–38. He argues that the first common public burial of the war dead (the πάτριος νόμος), contra Thucydides’s earlier sixthcentury date, took place in 465/4 or 464/3 (41 and 55). Even today in the United States, where we lack an entrenched autochthonic mythos, the effort to repatriate the remains of war dead is constantly and tirelessly pursued. 95. See Radcliffe G. Edmonds, Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the “Orphic” Gold Tablets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 172–173. The Athenian ἄταϕοι of Arginusae could not make the transition to Hades and would wander restlessly haunting the earth. 96. Rosenstock, “Socrates as Revenant,” 339n15.

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 97. Nach griechischen Vorstellungen konnte ein Toter, der unbestattet gelassen wurde, keine Ruhe in der Unterwelt finden. Tsitsiridis, Platons Menexenos, 324. English trans. C. Corcoran and Fred Humphrey.   98. The remains would be cremated at the battle site, placed in urns, and then transported back to the Kerameikos for the common state burial. Jacoby, “Patrios Nomos,” 42. The common autochthonic birth and common military graves, polyandrion, suggest a democratic Weltanschauung.   99. Jacoby, “Patrios Nomos,” 61. 100. Rosenstock, “Socrates as Revenant,” 338. Cf. Socrates speaking for the Laws in the Crito. 101. See Pappas and Zelcer, “Plato’s Menexenus as a History.” 102. Ibid., 26. 103. Pappas and Zelcer: “Thus where Republic viii confines itself to the doings within one city, holding the rest of Greece fixed, the Menexenus speech situates Athens amid neighboring and domestic powers holding internal politics constant.” “Plato’s Menexenus as a History,” 26–27. 104. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, 253. 105. There is Socrates’s amusing speculation in the Apology (41a–c) of the prospect of his being let loose in Hades to badger the figures of history. Time and space will not limit his mission—“if indeed what we are told is true.” Trans. G. M. A. Grube. 106. Rosenstock, “Socrates as Revenant,” 338. See his n. 58. 107. Seth Bernardete, “On Plato’s Timaeus and Timaeus’ Science Fiction,” Interpretation 2, no. 1 (1971): 21–63.

Chapter 3  1. See Timaeus 27a–b and Critias 108c–d, and also Warman Welliver, Character, Plot and Thought in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias (Leiden: Brill, 1977). Welliver argues persuasively that Plato intentionally left the Critias to appear incomplete. For Welliver, this also entails that the two dialogues originally comprised one continuous dialogue; thus, the Atlantis frontispiece in the Timaeus is framed by its recapitulation as an end piece in the Critias. Desmond Lee estimates the dramatic date of these two dialogues to be approximately 425 BCE.  2. Timaeus 21a. See H. W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), chap. 1, 29ff.   3. See Critias 108e and Timaeus 24e.  4. Strabo, Geographica, Book II, 102, 20–30 and Book XIII, 598. The attribution and interpretation of these passages is controversial. See Harold Tarrant’s discussion in Proclus’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, 62–63 and 289 n798.  5. The duration of 9,000 years is a time span that recurs in the Phaedrus (259a), where it is the amount of time those who have not experienced the true

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mystery of erotic love will wander the earth before finally being led “mindless, beneath it.”  6. The actual account of Atlantis in the Timaeus is very short (24e–25e); Critias’s frame for the account in the preceding sections is much longer.  7. The natural disaster that engulfs Atlantis could be attributed to Poseidon’s power over earthquakes, volcanoes, and the sea.  8. Desmond Lee contends that “the Hermocrates was to have brought the story down to the present and grappled with present realities.” Plato: Timaeus and Critias (London: Penguin, 1977), 149.  9. Arnaldo Momigliano, “Sea Power in Greek Thought,” The Classical Review 58, no. 1 (1944): 4–5. 10. As Diskin Clay notes, this interpretation also found a strong and early defender in Pierre Vidal-Naquet, “Athenes et l’ Atlantide,” Revue des Etudes Grecques 77 (1964): 420–444; and in The Atlantis Story, trans. Janet Lloyd (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2007), XVI–XVII. See Diskin Clay, “The Plan of Plato’s Critias,” in Calvo and Brisson, 53n7. 11. John V. Luce, “The Literary Perspective: The Sources and Literary Form of Plato’s Atlantis Narrative,” in Atlantis: Fact or Fiction, ed. Edwin S. Ramage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 54. 12. Trans. Zeyl in Cooper. See also Edwin S. Ramage, “Perspectives Ancient and Modern,” in Atlantis: Fact or Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 20. 13. For instance, the form of triangularity cannot be any particular existent triangle, whether it is a shadow, an image, or an object; nor can it be any particular type of triangle, isosceles, equilateral, or right. It can only be an intellectual object outside of physical space and time whose unfolding in becoming comprehends the infinite possibilities of all its physical manifestations. The intercourse of the Forms (Republic 490a–b) is metaphorical and should be understood as a range of compossible interactions of one Form, or Forms, with others. It is in this sense that the Forms change, not in themselves, but in being combined in new relations with other Forms. The set of possible interactions must extend beyond the limit of space, time, and motion as we understand those phenomena in the Realm of Becoming while retaining this idealized modality. 14. See the discussion of 169b–c in chapter 5. 15. Cf. the discussion of Republic 534b–d at the end of chapter 5. 16. Socrates specifically and repeatedly asks if his recounting has been accurate and exhaustive, and Timaeus concurs that it has been ten different times. Timaeus 17c–19a. Such Platonic flags invite the reader to consider the actual parallels more closely. 17. Peter Kalkavage, Plato’s Timaeus (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2001), 8. In this regard, the omission of the Timaeus’s summary resembles the Menexenus’s anti-philosophic, or at least a-philosophic nature. See Mahoney, “On the Origin of the Olive,” 46–47, 52n22; Coventry, “Philosophy and Rhetoric in the Menexenus,” 10f.

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18. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, xx–xxii. “That day, moreover, was not the day after the feast of Bendis (Thargelion 19 or 20), when the conversation with Glaucon and Adeimantus at the house of Cephalus took place.” The occasion of the Timaeus and Critias is the annual celebration of the Greater Panathenia. 19. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, xxii. 20. Naddaf, “Plato and the περὶ ϕύσεως, Tradition,” in Calvo and Brisson, 34. 21. Vidal-Naquet, The Atlantis Story, 15. Proclus in his commentary writes, “But one should also bear in mind that the dialogue in question is Pythagorean . . . they [the Pythagoreans] said that all physical creation is held together by numbers, that all the products of nature are composed according to numbers and that these numbers are shared by other things, just as all the forms within the cosmos are shared.” 110–111. Without the presence of Tetractys of the Decad, the mystical return to the One cannot be completed; the many cannot be resolved into their source. Kirk and Raven, Presocratic Philosophers, 230–231. The imperfection of becoming, as exemplified in the illness of the missing interlocutor, and in the instantiation of numbers instead of their pure forms, guarantees that human accounts will always be incomplete and inadequate. F. M. Cornford does not think the identity of the missing interlocutor is significant, but arguably his nonappearance qualifies the whole of the dialogue. As Proclus goes on to observe, “monad, dyad, and triad” are different from “one, two, and three.” He explains, “The former are simple, and each is itself, while the later are participating in those.” Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, ed. and trans. Harold Tarrant, vol. I, 111. 22. See Laurence Lampert and Christopher Planeaux, “Who’s Who in Plato’s Timaeus-Critias and Why,” The Review of Metaphysics 52, no. 1 (1998). 23. Pericles’s non-presence likewise qualifies the proceedings of the Menexenus. In Being and Nothingness, J. P. Sartre gives a phenomenological dimension to the experience of someone’s absence: “In fact Pierre is absent from the whole café; his absence fixes the café in its evanescence; the café remains ground; it persists in offering itself an undifferentiated totality to my marginal attention; it slips into the background; it pursues its nihilation. Only it makes itself ground for a determined figure; it carries the figure everywhere in front of it, presents the figure everywhere to me.” Trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 10. In this way, Pericles’s non-presence haunts the whole of the Timaeus. 24. A. E. Taylor notes in A Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus that Hermocrates’s banishment is recorded in Xenophon (15). He writes, “The rival theory that the visit to Athens is supposed to fall after the failure of the Syracuse expedition in the banishment of Hermocrates which is mentioned by Xenophon (Hellenica i.I. 27, 3.13) is merely preposterous” (18). Taylor refuses to speculate as to the identity of the missing guest, but he does note that “[t]he guests of Critias are thus men of eminence in their respective cities” (London: Methuen, 1929), 26. 25. Lampert and Planeaux, “Who’s Who,” 91. Lampert and Planeaux maintain that 421, during the Peace of Nicias, another crucial historical decision point, best suits the dramatic date for the Timaeus-Critias (94).

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26. Ibid., 107ff. 27. For example, as with Apollodorus in the Symposium, his excessive adoration of Socrates may cause uncertainty as to the objectivity of his narration. 28. David Runia, “The Literary and Philosophical Status of Timaeus’ Proœmium,” in Calvo and Brisson, 101–116. 29. Ibid., 112–113. Emphasis in original. 30. Ibid., 113. 31. Ibid., 102–103. 32. These principles are in effect identical to those Leibniz poses in the Monadology, although Plato’s introduction of the irrational, which is made necessary by the introduction of plurality, eliminates the possibility of a completely rational and deterministic principle of sufficient reason à la Leibniz. 33. Arguably the principle of simplicity is derivable from goodness (order), uniqueness, and compossibility. 34. Parmenides’s perfectly rounded sphere would have to be replaced by a dimensionless one. 35. G. E. R. Lloyd, foreword to Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s The Atlantis Story, xi–xii. 36. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1451b 7–8. 37. See chapter 4. Tom Garvey, “Plato’s Atlantis Story: A Prose Hymn to Athena,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 48, no. 4 (2008): 381–392, 391. Garvey also contends that the mythic war is an allusion to the Persian wars; in addition, he concurs with Gill’s thesis that the war also symbolizes the more contemporary conflict between the Athenians and Spartans. Christopher Gill, “The Genre of the Atlantis Story,” Classical Philology 72, no. 4 (1977): 287–304, 297; see also Gill, “Plato’s Atlantis Story and the Birth of Fiction,” Philosophy and Literature 3, no. 1 (1979): 75. For more recent treatments of this topic, see Pierre Vidal-Naquet (1981); Pradeau (1995); and T. K. Johansen, Plato’s Natural Philosophy: A Study of the Timaeus-Critias (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 38. Gorgias 519a, trans. Donald Zeyl in Cooper. See also Alcibiades I, 134b and Meno 94a–b. 39. Nails, The People of Plato. Pericles’s sons Paralus and Xanthippus II were hippeus who both died in the Plague; Themistocles’s son, Cleophantus, was a noted horseman. See Nails, 216–217, 223–227, and 279. As Cooper notes (634n7), Socrates uses similar arguments concerning the failure of elders to pass on virtue in the Theages 126d, Alcibiades 118d–119a, and Protagoras 319e–320b. 40. There is one uncharacteristically unclad and unadorned “stone circuit wall” (ἔνθεν λιθίνῳ περιεβάλλοντο τείχει) that surrounds the palace on the center island (Critias 116a). Could this be an artifact linking Atlantis back to the archaic wall of Ur-Athens? 41. The Athenian strategy of a layered defense based on islands and forts resembles in some ways the failed Japanese strategy in World War II. Any extension of the radius of a circle, eo ipso, increases the length of the perimeter and the area to be defended in a geometric progression. H. P. Willmont’s comments

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about the Japanese defensive posture in World War II could easily be transposed to the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War. He writes, “The philosophy to which the Japanese were committed and sought to further enact by taking Port Moresby was conducted from various bases on islands strewn across the length and breadth of the Pacific. It was, in effect, the naval equivalent of the Maginot Line strategy.” The Barrier and the Javelin: Japanese and Allied Pacific Strategies: February to June 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 516. In a similar vein, Peter Wooley comments on Japan’s difficulty in defending its archipelago: “The rub was that the forces and logistical lines were extended to the limit. The perimeter of this island nation’s possessions now extended over thousands of miles of land borders on the Asian continent as well as through thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean.” Geography & Japan’s Strategic Choices: From Seclusion to Internationalization (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2005), 99. 42. After an abortive raid by the Spartans early in the Peloponnesian War (429/8), the Athenians constructed moles, turrets, and used chains to block off the entrances, making all three of the harbors closed ports (kleistos limen) with one narrow entrance. “This they did by extending the circuit walls on either side of each harbor’s mouth by means of moles known as Chelai, thereby decreasing the width of the entrance passage. The moles terminated in fortified towers to which a chain was attached, a device enabling the port to be completely sealed off in time of danger.” Garland, Piraeus, 29. 43. Garvey, “Plato’s Atlantis Story,” 391. 44. For Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), the first moment of human culture starts in fear, the strike of a lightning bolt that awakens the self-conscious awareness of otherness. That first historical event establishes a sense of place and creates the human institutions of religion, marriage, burial, and farming; in Plato, the Critias posits the divine origin of human institutions in Poseidon’s lust and covetousness, which cultivate the defensive landscape of Atlantis. See Vico’s New Science. Plato, as Vico, is providing a mytho-poetic account of the generation of culture from a pre-civilized state. 45. See Garland, Piraeus, 144–145. Hippodamus of Miletus is credited with the grid design of the streets of the Piraeus. 46. Trans. Clay in Cooper. 47. Ibid. 48. Aristophanes also parodies the sense of invulnerability the walls gave the Athenians in the Birds. Atlantis’s continued allegiance to Poseidon is seen in the hippodrome around the main circuit wall of the most inner island. τά τε ἄλλα καὶ κατὰ μέσην τὴν μείζω τῶν νήσων ἐξῃρημένος ἱππόδρομος ἦν αὐτοῖς, σταδίου τὸ πλάτος ἔχων, τὸ δὲ μῆκος περὶ τὸν κύκλον ὅλον ἀφεῖτο εἰς ἅμιλλαν τοῖς ἵπποις (Critias 116a and 117c). 49. Lee, Plato, 152–153; Critias 115c and 115e. Emphasis is in Lee’s original text. 50. One of the particular and famous features of the Athenian (harbor) walls was the incorporation of roofs over the parapets that were open on the interior

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side. The configuration of two covered ship sheds on the rings of Atlantis is also reminiscent of the covered twin ship sheds at the fortified Athenian naval base at Sunion, where the slipways were cut 1.4 meters into the base of a rock cliff and roofed. Cf. Critias 116a and E. J. Andre Kenny, “The Ancient Docks on the Promontory of Sunion,” The Annual of the British School at Athens 42 (1947): 199. 51. Critias 115e, trans. Clay in Cooper. Emphasis mine. 52. Lee could argue that the continuation of the tunnel/road would provide even greater security for sea-borne traffic and make blockades even more difficult to establish. There are historical examples of triremes being ported over short distances, so conceivably if one of the land rings were breached by enemy forces, those forces could establish a naval force in one of the water rings. Still, the construction of a continuous covered channel/tunnel/road through each of the water rings would seem to be an architectural feat that might surpass even the technical skills of Atlantis. Either way, defending land and sea approaches independently requires a doubling of defenses. 53. Herodotus, History Book VII, 225. “They withdrew themselves back to the narrow part of the way (τῆς ὀδοῦ), and passing within the wall (τὸ τεῖχος) they took post.” Trans. A. D. Godley (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938), vol. III. 54. Admittedly the Greeks lose at Thermopylae, but the defense they mount is legendary. In this regard, one might also consider the defensive decision to abandon Athens and even the Acropolis. 55. See 57 and 191 in Earle R. Caley and John F. C. Richards, Theophrastus on Stones (Columbus: Ohio State University, 1956). Cinnabar mines were known to the Athenians at Ephesus, as was the refining process, which Theophrastus attributes to an Athenian “Kallias” (Peri Lithos §59). Theophrastus puts Kallias’s discovery at approximately 405–406 BCE. Caley and Richards, following Kirchner (1901) and Jaeger (1938), suggest that “the Kallias mentioned here was the son of Hipponicus, one of the wealthy Athenian operators of the silver mines at Laurion,” although they admit that attribution is uncertain. Op. cit., 199. 56. Thirty-nine ingots of an alloy composed of 75 to 80 percent copper and 10 to 15 percent zinc, with the remainder made of nickel, lead, and iron, were recently discovered in a sixth-century shipwreck 1,000 feet off Sicily in shallow water near the ancient city of Gela. The city, founded in the seventh century, was famed for its production of advanced decorative arts. Rosella Lorenzi, “Atlantis’ Legendary Metal Found in Shipwreck,” Discovery News, January 6, 2015, http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/atlantis-legendary-metal-foundin-shipwreck-150106.htm. 57. Cooper, 1300n11. 58. For the decorative use of cinnabar in the fourth century, see Arie Wallert, “Unusual Pigments on a Greek Marble Basin,” Studies in Conservation 40, no. 3 (1995): 178. If Plato means oreichalkos to be the crystalline form of red mercury ore, then its translucent properties would cause suffusion of a soft red light that

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might suggest a noumenal presence. Translucent marble was used decoratively in Greek temple construction. 59. Caley and Richards, Theophrastus on Stones, §58, 57. 60. Ibid., 203. 61. Timaeus 59b in Caley and Richards, Theophrastus on Stones, 63. 62. The ultimate source of all substances is generated from the one monadic point. See J. J. Cleary’s account of the derivation in “Plato’s Teleological Atomism,” in Calvo and Brisson, 239–247. Cleary writes, “Timaeus begins his new account by taking for granted that fire, earth, water, and air are bodies whose form involves depth . . . he goes on to argue that in every case, depth is necessarily bounded by surface, and that every rectilinear surface is composed of triangles. Interpreted geometrically, this means that triangles are prior in analysis as the limiting surfaces of solid bodies” (243). 63. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 250. See also Cornford’s explanation of Plato’s theory of different sizes or “grades” of the same element (230–239). 64. J. B. Skemp, trans., Plato’s Statesman (Indianapolis & Cambridge: Hackett, 1992), 84. Plato argues that verdigris results from earthly impurities working their way out of the copper over time (Timaeus 59c). 65. Earth is the one recalcitrant element that cannot be transmuted. 66. Icosahedra are one of the five regular Platonic solids. The logic behind choosing icosahedra as water particles is that the greater number of sides approximates the shape of a sphere, giving water/metal its qualities of flow and fusibility. Cf. Democritus’s theory of the relationship between atomic shapes and motions on the visible scale. For Plato, the monadic points must be “indivisible sameness,” while anything constructed out of points (e.g., lines) would be “divisible sameness.” Theaetetus is often given credit for the proof that the icosahedra are regular solids. See Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 210; and Cleary, “Plato’s Teleological Atomism,” in Calvo and Brisson, 240. 67. Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 252. 68. Ibid., 251–252. 69. Trans. Grube and Reeve in Cooper. 70. See Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 251n2. 71. Robert Brumbaugh, “Colors of the Hemispheres in Plato’s Myth of Er (Republic, 616 E),” Classical Philology 46, no. 3 (1951): 173–176. Brumbaugh admits this must be a proto concept of mass, but he thinks Plato would be aware of the force of momentum (176n8). Brumbaugh follows up this article with a second, “Plato Republic 616E: The Final ‘Law of Nines,’ ” Classical Philology 49, no. 1 (1954): 33–34. 72. Brumbaugh, “Colors of the Hemispheres,” 174. See also the chart of width-to-color ratios on 176. 73. Ibid., 174. 74. Cf. Phaedo 110c–111a, where the precious metals of the “True Earth” are purified and “plainly visible, abundant, massive, and spread all over the earth;

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happy therefore are they whose eyes dwell upon that spectacle.” R. Hackforth, trans., Plato’s Phaedo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 177. 75. Trans. Clay in Cooper. 76. The entity recurs in the Philebus and the Statesman. 77. Cornford, From Religion to Philosophy, 85. The quote is from Alice C. Fletcher, “The Significance of the Scalp Lock,” Journal of Anthropological Studies xxvii (1897–8): 436. 78. Timaeus 21e. 79. Trans. Grube and Reeve in Cooper. Hephaestus, the blacksmith, and Athena found ancient Athens (Timaeus 23e). Hephaestus “provides the seed.” 80. Xavier Márquez, A Stranger’s Knowledge: Statesmanship Philosophy and Law in Plato’s Statesman (Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2012), 306–307. 81. Tarrant, Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, 6. 82. “War reflects her true character” (Timaeus 20b). 83. Cf. Statesman 272c–274e. 84. Naddaf, “Plato and the περὶ ϕύσεως, Tradition,” in Calvo and Brisson, 27–36. See also Runia, “The Literary and Philosophical Status of Timaeus’ Prooemium,” in Calvo and Brisson, 104ff. 85. Naddaf, “Plato and the περὶ ϕύσεως, Tradition,” in Calvo and Brisson, 28–29. 86. Cf. Menexenus 247b: “[Y]ou are aware that for a man with self-respect nothing is more disgraceful than to make himself honored not through himself, but through his ancestors’ glory.” This statement bears some irony for the audience of a military memorial. 87. More than eighty years ago, A. E. Taylor makes the same point; the ecological degradations are attributable to human actions, but Plato makes them sound like natural disasters. See Taylor’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1928), 103. 88. Trans. Clay in Cooper. 89. Ibid. 90. My translation. 91. For a discussion of other mystical dimensions of bees, see chapter 1, §2 on the Oracle of Trophonius. 92. Republic 520b. Trans. Shorey in Hamilton and Cairns. 93. Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus, ed. and trans. Tarrant, 6. 94. Ibid., 278–279. He also refers to the “column of opposites” “whose inspiration” Tarrant says, “was the famous Pythagorean column, through which tension or conflict pervades all metaphysical levels below the primal One” (81–82). For the column of opposites, see Aristotle, Metaphysics 986a 21f. For Proclus’s view on the symbolism of the time span of 9,000 years, see 146, 1–30. See also Taylor’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, 242–243. 95. For Proclus, the significance of the mathematical ratios, correlations, and proportions is often simply a matter of their allusion to known Platonic or Pythagorean doctrine; rarely are they indicative of a natural property of the thing

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itself. This is a sign of a return to a kind of numerology. Cornford turns elegiac in his last line of From Religion to Philosophy, bemoaning Neoplatonism when it becomes “the escape of the alone to the alone . . . In this ecstasy, Thought denies itself; and Philosophy, sinking to the close of her splendid curving flight, folds her wings and drops into the darkness whence she arose—the gloomy Erebus of theurgy and magic” (263).

Chapter 4  1. For more on the ship, see Jordan Borimir, The Athenian Navy in the Classical Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 153–181; and Louis Dyer, Studies of the Gods in Greece at Certain Sanctuaries Recently Excavated (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891), 376–381. For information on the kinds and uses of the ancient ships, see Lionel Casson, The Ancient Mariners, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), especially 91–92.  2. Trans. Grube in Cooper.  3. Crito 43d.  4. See figure 1. The Delias left from Phaleron, Athens’s ancient harbor, Theseus’s mythological point of departure.  5. Crito 44a–b.  6. Crito 44b.  7. See Scott Kramer, “Socrates’ Dream: Crito 44a–b,” The Classical Journal 83, no. 3 (1988): 193–197. Leo Strauss argues that the dream woman could be an allusion to “a central passage of the Apology of Socrates (28 c2–d5) where Socrates presents Achilles as a model of noble conduct, he speaks of a beautiful woman, the Goddess Thetis.” Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 101. Socrates, as Achilles, is choosing a noble death over an ignoble immortality. Iliad xviii, 70ff. On the other hand, as James A. Arieti points out, the reference to Phthia creates a contrast between Achilles, who threatens to voluntarily leave his compatriots, and Socrates, who chooses to remain even as he is condemned by his fellow citizens. “A Dramatic Interpretation of Plato’s Phaedo,” Illinois Classical Studies 11, nos. 1/2 (1986): 142.  8. Cooper, Plato: Complete Works, 39n1.  9. Plato, Phaedo 112e, trans. W. R. M. Lamb and H. N. Fowler in Plato: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914). 10. Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West, 4 Texts on Socrates (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984). 11. Ronna Burger, The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 24–25. 12. Benjamin Jowett, trans., The Dialogues of Plato, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1892). 13. Charles Gulick reports, “Over the road from Sunium, thirty miles away, messengers could report at Athens the sighting of a vessel bound for the Piraeus

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several hours before it arrived.” The Life of the Ancient Greeks (New York: Appleton and Company, 1902), 9. One wonders here if Gulick’s evidence for this claim is, in fact, the Phaedo. The use of signaling from promontories was known to, and used by, the Greeks; here it is not out of the question that the sighting of the ship at Sunium could be relayed by a series of signal towers to Athens. Signaling could easily have been set up between Sunium and the Piraeus using the Zoster promontory and the promontory of Colias on the Saronic Gulf. By Socrates’s day, this approach to Athens up the Saronic Gulf from the south would be the busiest sea lane and militarily the most heavily watched and guarded approach from the sea. 14. Margaret Oliphant, The Atlas of the Ancient World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992). “The temple of Poseidon on Cape Sunium is said to have evoked the same sort of emotion in ancient Athenian sailors returning home as the Statue of Liberty and the White Cliffs of Dover were later to inspire in American and British mariners. It was this temple, built in the later 5th century B.C., that stirred the British Romantic poet Lord Bryon to write: ‘Place me on Sunium’s marbled steep, /Where nothing save the waves and I/May hear our mutual murmurs sweep,/There swan-like let me sing and die’ ” (90). The site also inspired Frederic Edwin Church’s masterpiece The Ruins at Sunium (ca. 1869). 15. See John F. Coates, “The Trireme Sails Again,” Scientific American 261, no. 4 (1989): 96–103; Vernon Foley and Werner Soedel, “Ancient Oared Warships,” Scientific American 244, no. 4 (1981); G. B. Grundy, “The Rate of Sailing Warships in the Fifth Century B.C.,” The Classical Review 23, no. 4 (1909): 107–108. 16. Coates, “Trireme Sails Again,” 97. 17. For a discussion of the computation of the speeds of oared vessels, see the appendix to chapter 6 of J. G. Landels, Engineering in the Ancient World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 166–169. 18. The best and most comprehensive treatment of these factors is in Jamie Morton, The Role of the Physical Environment in Ancient Greek Seafaring (Leiden: Brill, 2001). For an interesting Greek rowing innovation that increases speed, see John R. Hale, “The Lost Technology of Ancient Greek Rowing,” Scientific American 274, no. 5 (1996): 66–71. 19. Lionel Casson, “Grain Trade of the Hellenistic World,” Transactions of the American Philological Association lxxxv (1954): 168–187. For a discussion of the timing of the annual mission, see H. W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 137. “Sea breezes may be powerful enough to counteract the prevailing Etesians, as in the case of the area of Athens, where the sea breeze from the south or southwest blows in the middle of the day in opposition to the prevailing Etesians.” De Ventis XXIII. 20. Parke, Festivals, 137. 21. Xenophon says the voyage took thirty-one days (Memorabilia 4.8.2), but Debra Nails puts Socrates’s execution in June or July well into the season of the Etesians on the basis of the Phaedo’s claim (58a–b) that the trial took place in the month of Thargelion (May/June). The People of Plato, 322.

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22. De Ventis XXI–XXII. 23. Lionel Casson, “The Isis and Her Voyage,” Transactions of the American Philological Association lxxxi (1950): 45. 24. I cannot agree with Morton, who argues that the theoric ship (the Delias) would have put up at Legrena Bay on the southwest corner of Sunium and become embayed there by southerly and westerly winds. It seems more likely that the Delias would have approached Sunium from the southeast and stayed on the northeastern side of the cape in order not to be caught at anchor in the lee of the Etesians on the western side of the Cape. Morton himself notes that there was “a second, much narrower bay on the northeast side of the promontory, just behind the headland, [which] was [a] less suitable place of shelter than Legrena Bay, but nevertheless proved a valuable alternative during the southerly and westerly winds to which Legrena Bay was exposed.” Role of the Physical Environment, 112n73. 25. For questions concerning crew endurance and reprovisioning on a war galley, see A. W. Gomme, “A Forgotten Factor of Greek Naval Strategy,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 53, (1933): 18. 26. For the dangers of night travel, see Morton, Role of the Physical Environment, 261–265. 27. The “round ship” (merchantman), as opposed to the “long ship” (galley), had a ratio of 4:1. J. G. Landels, Engineering in the Ancient World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 138. 28. A trireme displaces only forty metric tons loaded. Coates, “Trireme Sails Again,” 99. 29. This is assuming the triaconter had a spacing similar to the trireme with approximately a four-foot horizontal separation between rowers and some extent of bow and stern sections too narrow to accommodate oarsmen. Casson estimates fifty feet for a twenty and one hundred twenty-five feet for a penteconter. Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 54–55. 30. For a trireme, the “oar length 4.2m (13 feet 8”) and 4.0m (13 feet).” Coates, “Trireme Sails Again,” 101. For an interesting discussion of the gearing of ancient oars, see Coates, “Tilley and Morrison’s Triremes—Evidence and Practicality,” Antiquity 69, no. 262 (1995). 31. Barry Strauss, The Battle of Salamis (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2004), xix. 32. Even many later triremes had partially open upper decks; the development of a katastroma, a fully covered main deck, was late. J. S. Morrison and R. T. Williams, Greek Oared Ships 900–322 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 338. 33. Morton, Role of the Physical Environment, 266–283. 34. See Hale, “Lost Technology,” 66–71. “These images also prove that the Greek rowers did not sit on raised benches but rather on low planks set at the same level as their feet. In this position, upper body movements are severe-

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ly restricted, and sliding becomes the best method of delivering an effective stroke.” 35. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.61.4 says Aegeus threw himself off the Acropolis when the ship came into the harbor; other historians, such as Plutarch, have him throwing himself off a cliff on the Attic coastline or the promontory of Sunium. Plutarch, Vita of Theseus 17 and 22. 36. For the location of the Athenian prison, see Virginia Hunter, “The Prison of Athens: A Comparative Perspective,” Phoenix 51, nos. 3/4 (1997): 296– 326. Hunter agrees with “J. M. Camp, who, in his study of excavations in the Athenian Agora, identified the Poros Building, a large structure (ca. 40 by 17 m.) outside the southwest corner of the Agora as the state prison” (299). See also Keith DeVries, ed., From Athens to Gordion: The Papers of a Memorial Symposium for Rodney Stuart Young (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), 17–21. This would place the prison not far (about 1,400 feet) from the location of the Tower of Winds in the Roman Agora of Athens. Nicholas G. L. Hammond, ed., Atlas of the Greek and Roman World in Antiquity (Park Ridge: Noyes Press, 1981). 37. Morton, Role of the Physical Environment, 287–288. 38. Joseph Noble and Derek de Sulla Price, “The Water Clock in the Tower of the Winds,” American Journal of Archeology 72, no. 4 (1968): 346. 39. Ibid., 345–355. See Phaedo 61a. 40. The labyrinth and the Minotaur stand symbolically for the dangerous depths of the uncontrolled human psyche. “Phaedo is an unwitting vehicle for the Platonic logographic necessity that represents Socrates’ last conversation as a reenactment in logos of Theseus’ victory over the Minotaur, dramatically embedded in the context of the Athenian reenactment of the same heroic myth.” Burger, Phaedo, A Platonic Labyrinth, 20. Burger follows an interpretation started by Jacob Klein (1971) that the Minotaur stands for the fear of death. See 21–22 and 223n13. 41. In the Seventh Letter (350b1), a triaconter happens to be the vehicle of Plato’s escape from the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse. 42. Theophrastus, De Ventis, ed. and trans. Victor Coutant and Val L. Eichenlaub (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), XVIII. For more on ancient forecasting, see Theophrastus, On Weather Signs, ed. David Sider and Carl Wolfram Brunschön (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 43. De Ventis XXIII, trans. Coutant and Eichenlaub. 44. Morton, Role of the Physical Environment, 122n96. 45. Ibid., 122–123. Crito believes the ship will return that day and that Socrates will be executed on the morrow. 46. For early June in Athens (N 37°58’), one could expect approximately fourteen and a half hours of daylight. 47. Recall that the sighting of the ship in the Piraeus is reported at night (Phaedo 59d–e). 48. We might also note here the invention of dreams as a cover for the truth in the “Noble Lie” of the Republic 415a–c. 49. See discussion, p. 95.

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50. Christopher Planeaux, “Socrates, an Unreliable Narrator? The Dramatic Setting of the Lysis,” Classical Philology 96, no. 1 (2001): 60–68. 51. Ibid., 60. 52. For another Platonic critique of divination, see the Ion. 53. See chapter 3, n. 29. 54. Mark McPherran, The Religion of Socrates (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 175. Aristotle is explicitly skeptical that incubatory prophetic divination is caused by God. See De Divinatione Per Somnum 462b 19–23, 463a 32–463b 2, and 463b 12–15. McPherran intersperses his account of Socrates’s view of divination with quotes from both Xenophon and Plato, and furthermore he does not seem concerned with differentiating between Plato’s portrayal of Socrates, Xenophon’s portrayal, and the position of the historical Socrates. 55. McPherran, Religion of Socrates, 178. 56. Although it would be hard to argue that the dream is not auspicious or expresses anything other than an approval of the manner in which Socrates has lived his life. See discussion below. 57. Phaedo 61b, trans. Grube in Cooper. 58. For a strong statement of this position, see Anna Lännström, “Trusting the Divine Voice: Socrates and his Daimonion,” Apeiron 45, no. 1 (2012): 32–49. 59. Phaedo 60d–e. Recall that Socrates notes that Crito has almost interrupted this dream (Crito 44a). 60. A. O. Rorty, “A Speculative Note on Some Dramatic Elements in the Theaetetus,” Phronesis 17, no. 3 (1972): 229. Ego lucidity is preserved in both dreams, and when Socrates is addressed he is not possessed, nor is his psychic state confused or notably altered. This lucidity is lauded by Socrates in other states of heightened awareness, whereas, in other altered psychic states, any diminishment of ego lucidity is consistently criticized by Socrates. David Roochnik lists five characteristics that distinguish the dreams of the Phaedo from “a typical prophetic dream” of “the standard Platonic sort.” See his “The Deathbed Dream of Reason: Socrates’ Dream in the Phaedo,” Arethusa 34, no. 3 (2001): 239–258. See 241–242. 61. Dialogues, trans. Jowett. In their commentary on the Symposium, Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff note that poie¯sis “means any kind of production or creation. The Greeks used poie¯te¯s however mainly for poets—for metrical verses that were actually set to music.” (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), 51n75. The Delia is described briefly in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo l. 146–164. See Susan C. Shelmerdine, The Homeric Hymns (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 1995), 71–72. 62. Ultimately for Plato, doing philosophy and composing poetry may be the same thing; philosophic poetry is the adaptation of the Forms to the Cave. 63. Phaedo 61a. 64. This interpretation was suggested to me by Fred Humphrey. This reading of the dream’s commandment to compose popular music would also align with the compulsion of the philosopher to return to the Cave (Republic 519dff.). 65. Christopher Dreisbach, “Dreams in the History of Philosophy,” Dreaming 10, no. 1 (2000): 31–41.

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66. John V. Luce, “The Theory of Ideas in the Cratylus,” Phronesis 10, no. 1 (1965): 21–36. Rorty also finds this sense used in Plato, writing that “[i]dentifying a view as a dream or saying it is like a dream suggests that it is elusive and imprecise, its details difficult to pin down.” “A Speculative Note,” 229. 67. Ibid., 230. 68. Dreisbach, “Dreams in the History of Philosophy,” 32. 69. Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge. 70. Glaucon: ἄτοπον, ἔφη, λέγεις εἰκόνα καὶ δεσμώτας ἀτόπους Republic, 515a. A similar delusion is repeated in the mythic account of the underworld from the Phaedo (109c–d). People believe they are on the surface of the earth when, in fact, they live in a hollow. Socrates: ὁμοίους ἡμῖν (Republic 515a). Crito uses the same word to describe Socrates’s vision: ἄτοπον τὸ ἐνύπνιον, ὦ Σώκρατες (Crito 44b). The reality as a dream trope is repeated in the Statesman at 277d and 278e. 71. Cf. Apology 39e–41c and Gorgias 492e. 72. Burger argues the woman is Thetis on the basis of the allusion to the Iliad. Phaedo, A Platonic Labyrinth, 24. 73. See l. 147 of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. This line and the entire section concerning the Delia (l. 147–164; cf. also l. 154) is alluded to by Thucydides (3.104). 74. There is a significant difference between the dreams in the Crito and the Phaedo. In the Phaedo the dreams are given in the form of divine commandments, while in the Crito the woman makes a distinct empirical prediction. In the Phaedo the dreams are embodiments of a message that one assumes comes to Socrates in the form of an impersonal voice, while in the Crito a beautiful woman utters a prediction. One assumes that the successful performance of the command would get the type of response Socrates reports in the Crito and stop the dreams. 75. H. W. Parke, Greek Oracles (London: Hutchison, 1967), 38, 94. 76. Ibid., 94. 77. Thucydides, 3.104 2–3. Simon Hornblower is skeptical that the festival had been suspended. “The Religious Dimensions to the Peloponnesian War, or, What Thucydides Does Not Tell Us,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 94 (1992): 169–197, 186. 78. Irene Ringwood Arnold, “Local Festivals at Delos,” American Journal of Archaeology 37, no. 3 (1933): 454–455. 79. Ibid., 454. 80. Susan C. Shelmerdine, The Homeric Hymns lines 146–164, 71. 81. Ibid. 71. 82. Homeric Hymn to Apollo, trans. Richard Crawley in The Landmark Thucydides (New York: Free Press, 1996), 212–213. 83. See especially Sonnets 71 and 81. 84. Miriam Bisset, “Visualizing Festivals: Black-figure Depictions of the Delia,” Australian Society for Classical Studies 32 Proceedings (2011): 1–11. 85. Ibid., 2.

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86. James Davidson, “Isocrates against Imperialism: An Analysis of the De Pace,” Historia Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 39, h. 1 (1990): 22–23; De Pace 100. For Plato’s possible sympathy with Isocrates, see Phaedrus 278e–279b. Nehamas and Woodruff note the possibility that this last passage should be taken ironically (see 85–86n188). But Socrates’s advice here to Phaedrus—to study Isocrates’s speeches rather than Lysias’s—may well be genuine. If Socrates’s advice at this final moment of the dialogue is ironic, it would suggest a deeply cynical and unanticipated moment that does not seem in keeping with the conciliatory and upbeat tone in his closing of the dialogue. 87. A. E. Raubitschek, “The Peace Policy of Pericles,” American Journal of Archaeology 70, no. 1 (1966): 37–41. 88. Borimor believes that one motive for the Athenian purification is the fact that in 427, forty undetected Peloponnesian ships landed unopposed on Delos and neighboring islands. “Religion in Thucydides,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 116 (1986): 137. 89. Borimor, “Religion in Thucydides,” 138. 90. Ibid. Factors contributing to the profanation would include that the Delians remains were exhumed and reburied in a mass grave off the home island. See also Astrid Lindorff, “Thrown Away Like Rubbish: Disposal of the Dead in Ancient Greece,” Papers from the Institute for Archaeology 12 (2001): 86–99. She writes, “The exhumation of burials, resulting in the careless deposition of their contents, was necessarily a symbolic statement of disgrace” (96). One can speculate that in the popular imagination of the Athenians, the disinterment would likely produce many restless spirits. 91. Thucydides 5.1.1 and Hornblower, “Religious Dimensions,” 196. 92. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. 93. Hornblower, “Religious Dimensions,” 196. Not all the Delians returned, as some were still in Asia Minor, where they had been allowed by a Persian Satrap to take refuge. 94. Borimor, “Religion in Thucydides,” 137. For a revealing contrast, consider the Athenians’ defilement of Delian graves in regard to Cimon’s repatriation and enshrinement of Theseus’s remains from Scyros, ca. 470 BCE. For discussions of the political significance of Delos, see 176, 182–184, 185–186, and 194–195 in Hornblower, “Religious Dimensions.” 95. Hornblower, “Religious Dimensions.” 96. Ibid., 176, 178, and 182. “The reason why we hear so little in the Thucydidean period about struggles for control of the great sanctuaries lies in Thucydides’ narrow view of the kind of things that mattered” (180). Emphasis in original. 97. Ibid., 184. Thucydides correctly identifies the earthquake as the natural cause of the tidal waves that followed (1.96.2). 98. Ibid., 195. 99. Ibid., 196 and Borimir, “Religion in Thucydides,” 138. Ten years later (ca. 411), those Delians who were left in Asia Minor were slaughtered by the successor to the original Persian Satrap.

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100. Thucydides, 5.1.1, 301. 101. Trans. Ryan in Cooper. 102. Paul Cartledge, After Thermopylae: The Oath of Plataea and the End of the Graeco-Persian Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 16–21. 103. Ibid., 24. 104. See Phaedrus 250c and Phaedo 64b–64d. 105. Glenn W. Most, “A Cock for Asclepius,” The Classical Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1993): 96–111. 106. J. Crooks, “Socrates’ Last Words: Another Look at an Ancient Riddle,” The Classical Quarterly 48, no. 1 (1998): 120. 107. Ibid., 120. 108. One composition mentioned is a rewrite of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (Phaedo 60d). 109. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Delos, the island, is personified as a goddess. Of the fourteen individuals mentioned in the Phaedo, nine are Athenians. Interestingly, Menexenus is one of those mentioned as present at Socrates’s death (Phaedo 59b–c). See Burger, Phaedo, A Platonic Labyrinth, 19. 110. The psyche of the dead can appear as ghosts and in dreams. Burkert, Greek Religion, 195. 111. Phaedo 116a. For allusions to the Orphic rites of purification, see Douglas J. Stewart, “Socrates’ Last Bath,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 10, no. 3 (1972): 253–259. Stewart maintains that “Socrates’ bath, indeed the whole mise-en-scéne of the Phaedo, is the simulation of a telete¯, a ritual of initiation and purification practiced by the people history has come to call Orphics” (253). The implication being, he asserts, that it may not be Socrates’s last day. 112. Angelica G. Panayotatou, “Baths and Bathing in Ancient Greece,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 12, suppl. (1919): 107–121, 119. Hygieia was one of Asclepius’s daughters. 113. Cf. Pausanius’s description of the Trophonium quoted in chapter 1. 114. Panayotatou, “Baths and Bathing,” 117. 115. Ibid., 118. Panayotatou notes that some scholars associate this with the Spring of Asclepius. 116. Michael Carter, “The Ritual Function of Epideictic Rhetoric: The Case of Socrates’ Funeral Oration,” Rhetorica 9, no. 3 (1991): 214. 117. Phaedo 117b. 118. For a discussion of the Phaedrus passage, see chapter 5. 119. Nietzsche argues that Socrates’s last words, to request a sacrifice of a cock to Asclepius, are a sign of his despising life, but his last gesture suggests a deeper ambivalence. The Gay Science, Aphorism 340, Bk. IV and Twilight of the Idols. Socrates’s sorrow at his parting is not inconsistent with his fearlessness in the face of death; the two emotions have different causes. 120. Philebus, especially 11e–23c. See discussion in chapter 5. 121. For recollection as a reconstruction of the past, see Phaedo 73d–e. In the Myth of Er in the Republic and in the description of the underworld in

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the Phaedo (107d–114d), reincarnation and the afterlife project the consequences of actions well beyond one’s lifetime. For a discussion of the topography of the underworld in the Phaedo, see chapter 6. The divine is sometimes invoked by Plato as a sign that the exact mechanism of a phenomena is not understood. Two such instances of Socrates’s invocation of the gods can be found at the end of the Meno (100b), as to the question whether virtue can be taught, or again in the Republic, to explain the accident of Socrates’s philosophical education and nature.

Chapter 5   1. My translation, cf. Phaedrus 257b. My thanks to Drs. Allen Bäck, Caroline McAlister, and Carole Stoneking for their valuable contributions to this chapter.  2. For the seminal discussion of Greek wrestling terminology and practices, see E. Norman Gardiner’s three-part article “Wrestling” in the Journal of Hellenic Studies 25 (1905): 14–31, 263–292; and Journal of Hellenic Studies 26 (1906): 4–22. For a more contemporary survey of wrestling allusions in Plato and others, see Georg Doblhofer, Werner Petermandl, and Ursula Schachinger, Ringen: Texte, Übersetzungen, Kommentar (Wien: Böhlau, 1998). They cite the following wrestling passages: Plato: Alcibiades 1, 106e; Alcibiades 1, 107e; The Rival Lovers 132c–d; Euthydemus 277d; Euthydemus 278b; Gorgias 515e; Hippias Major 295c; Laws 7, 795b–c; Laws 7, 795d–796b; Laws 7, 814c–d; Laws 7, 819b; Laws 8, 833d–834a; Phaedrus 236b; Phaedrus 256b; Statesman 294d–e; Republic 8, 544b; Republic 9, 583b; Sophist 232d–e; Symposium 217b–e; Theages 122e; and Theaetetus 162b. For a contemporary discussion of the agonistic character of Plato’s works, see Richard Patterson, “Philosophos Agonistes: Imagery and Moral Psychology in Plato’s Republic,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 35, no. 3 (1997): 327–354. Patterson contends “that the philosophic life as Plato sees it . . . is one continuous agon—life’s greatest agon, in fact, and the only one that really matters” (329). Other examples of the association of physical contests and philosophy may be eristics, or fighting with words, as exhibited in the Euthydemus, the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, and many passages from the Gorgias that describe the battle (μάχη) between the sophists and philosophers. For example, see the opening of the Gorgias at 447a. The dramatic frame of so many dialogues in wrestling schools, Lysis, Charmides, Euthydemus, and the Theaetetus is unlikely to be chance. Heather Reid notes, “in Lysis Socrates is on his way from one gymnasium (the Academy) to another (the Lyceum) when he is pulled aside into [a] new wrestling school” (Lysis 203–204a). 157. Reid writes “The new wrestling school is identified by [Stephen G.] Miller as the Palaestra of Mikkon.” Heather Reid, “Wrestling with Socrates,” Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 4, no. 2 (2010): 157–169. See 168, n. 3. Miller’s discussion is in The Berkeley Plato: From Neglected Relic to Ancient Treasure (Oakland: University of California Press, 2009), 48. For an excellent philological exposition of the frame of the Theaetetus, see Fritz Gregor Hermann,

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“Wrestling Metaphors in Plato’s Theaetetus,” Nikephoros 8 (1995): 77–109. Yet other examples of contests include the opening line of the Laches, τεθέασθε μὲν τὸν ἄνδρα μαχόμενον ἐν ὅπλοις, ὦ Νικία τε καὶ Λάχης (178a). Finally, there is the round-robin contest of the life of pleasure and the life of reason in the Philebus: 12a, 15d, 23a, 67a–b, and so forth.   3. Learning to stay on one’s feet and fighting equally well with both arms in battle speaks to both the practical and aesthetic goals of wrestling. Cf. Plato, Laws 796a–b and 795b–c.  4. Laws 796a.  5. Trans. Trevor J. Saunders in Cooper. Gardiner believes that all ground wrestling was eo ipso pankration and that even touching a knee constituted a fall in ὀρθὴ πάλη. See Michael B. Poliakoff ’s Combat Sports in the Ancient World: Competition, Violence, and Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 170 n5. The assumption that there was no ground wrestling outside of the pankration has been undermined by later scholarship, although, as Poliakoff notes, the view still has currency (33). For discussions of ground wrestling, see Nicolaos Yalouris, ed., The Eternal Olympics (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1979) and Poliakoff. Poliakoff believes that Gardiner’s view of Greek sportsmanship is romanticized; he writes that “expecting the palaestra at any time to correspond to the playing fields of Eton will lead us into a deep confusion” (28–30). To stand up for Gardiner, however, much of the brutality and “cheating” depicted in Greek art and literature is from mythological and Olympic accounts where artistic exaggeration and competitive excess would naturally prevail; one could hardly expect that this kind of savage competition could be endured, or would be countenanced, in the routine daily exercises of Athenian palaestrae.  6. Herrmann, “Wrestling Metaphors,” 108.  7. Diogenes Laertius, III.4, trans. R. D. Hicks. The Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980).   8. Thomas F. Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 204.  9. Donald G. Kyle, Athletics in Ancient Athens, Mnemosyne; Bibliotheca Classica Batva Supplement, vol. 95 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), 76. For a history of the Academy, see Kyle’s discussion, 71–77. 10. Hermann, “Wrestling Metaphors,” 77–78. 11. Ibid., 78, 109. 12. Ibid., 101. 13. Patterson, “Philosophos Agonistes,” 330. 14. Phaedrus 227a. 15. Kenneth Dorter, “Imagery and Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 9, no. 3 (1971): 279–288. 16. Geier, Plato’s Erotic Thought, 151–156. 17. Trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff in Cooper. 18.  Phaedrus 230b. 19.  Symposium 178e, trans. Michael Joyce in Hamilton and Cairns.

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20. Symposium 178e–179a, trans. Joyce in Hamilton and Cairns. 21. Symposium 179d, trans. Joyce in Hamilton and Cairns. 22. The Gorgias is also classified as a refutative dialogue. 23. Heather Reid finds the agonistic metaphor frames the Protagoras as well. “Wrestling With Socrates,” 160. 24. Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics, 263. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 263–264. The motif also echoes the jostling of winged souls who frequently trample one another in their frenzy to ascend (Phaedrus 248a–b). 27. The triangle is repeated in the Protagoras, with Socrates and Protagoras contesting for Hippocrates’s soul. See Patterson’s remark about Sophist 232d in “Philosophos Agonistes” 337n21. 28. Mark Moes, Plato’s Dialogue Form and the Care of the Soul (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 35. 29. Phaedrus 236b–e. Trans. Fowler in Hamilton and Cairns. Greek text is from Plato, vol. I (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). 30. Walter Hamilton, Plato: Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII (London: Penguin Classics, 1973), 33. 31. Phaedrus 236b, trans. Fowler in Hamilton and Cairns. See also Herrmann, “Wrestling Metaphors,” 93; Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 1021. 32. Herrmann, “Wrestling Metaphors,” 93. See also 166a. 33. Phaedrus 236c–d. The compulsion of the philosopher to speak recalls the necessity of the return to the Cave (Republic 519e–520a) and the opening lines of the Republic (327c) where others threaten to hold Socrates physically if he will not discourse with them. Wrestling with the transcendent, with another, or with oneself as a metaphor for revelation and self-revelation also recalls Jacob’s struggles with the angel—the angel whom he will not let go of until he receives its blessing, seeing the face of god (Genesis 32–33). The New Oxford Annotated Bible, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 34. Phaedrus 227c, trans. Nehamas and Woodruff in Cooper. 35. Phaedrus 236d–237a. 36. See Nussbaum’s eloquent exposition of this passage. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 211–212. 37. Theaetetus 162b, trans. Cornford in Hamilton and Cairns. 38. Theodorus later exclaims, “It is no easy matter to escape questioning in your company, Socrates. I was deluded when I said you would leave me in peace and not force me into the ring like the Spartans; you seem to be as unrelenting as Sciron.” Theaetetus 169a–b, trans. Cornford in Hamilton and Cairns. See text to n. 75. 39. Theaetetus 162b–e, trans. Cornford in Hamilton and Cairns. 40. Theaetetus 167e, my translation. Socrates seems to heed his own advice about blame at 257b in the Phaedrus. Another analogy between tripping and

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fairness occurs at 165b, σφαλεὶς γὰρ ἧττον ἀσχημονήσει. See also Euthydemus 278b:  ὑποσκελίζων καὶ ἀνατρέπων . . .  41. Euthydemus 277d, trans. W. H. D. Rouse in Hamilton and Cairns. 42. See Friedrich Nietzsche’s remarks about fair battles for warlike philosophers in Ecce Homo: “Equality before the enemy: the first presupposition of an honest duel.” Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals & Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1967), 232. 43. Doblhofer, Petermandl, and Schachinger, Ringen, 281. 44. Republic 544b, trans. Grube, rev. Reeve in Cooper. 45. See Herrmann’s discussion in “Wrestling Metaphors,” 95–96. 46. Phaedrus 256b–c. 47. Phaedrus 256a–b, trans. R. Hackforth in Hamilton and Cairns (vide n. 19). 48. Phaedrus 256b. Anne Lebeck notes, “The image of a victory at the games appears in various forms throughout the dialogue” (227b9–10; 245b3; 248a4; 245b5; as well as this passage at 256b3–7). The earlier allusion and image are from chariot racing. See Anne Lebeck, “The Central Myth of Plato’s Phaedrus,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 13 (1972): 270. Lebeck does not see the victory image as the central one; rather, it is the entire myth of the chariot (246a3–256e2), 267. I agree with her, but note that this last victory at 256b is the culmination of the chariot allegory. 49. Trans. Fowler in Plato, vol. I. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925). See also Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 1290. 50. Poliakoff, Combat Sports, 23. Or the allusion could be to the three types of Olympic wrestling: 1) “upright wrestling,” 2) “rolling” or “ground” wrestling, or, finally, 3) the Pankration. Nicolaos Yalouris, ed., The Eternal Olympics (Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1979), 202. “Fame was also gained for winning two or three of the ‘heavy events’; wrestling, boxing and the pankration in the same Olympiad” (230). C. J. Rowe translates the passage, 256b, as “the first of their three submissions” and compares the passage to 249a3–5. Rowe concludes, “The struggle with our evil horse is ‘truly Olympic’ (a) in that it exceeds even competition in the games at Olympics in importance; and perhaps also (b) because the victors will have shown themselves to be followers of Olympian Zeus, who provides the model for the philosophical life.” Plato: Phaedrus, 2nd ed., trans. and commentary by C. J. Rowe (Wiltshire: Aris and Phillips, 1986), 189. 51. As Poliakoff observes, “in Plato’s dialogue the Euthydemus Socrates described a critical point in a contest of wit at the moment when one pundit attacked his youthful adversary and attempted, as if it were a wrestling match, to throw him for the third time.” Combat Sports, 23. 52. Republic 583b, trans. Paul Shorey in Hamilton and Cairns. G. J. De Vries writes, “In the Olympic Games the wrestler had to throw his opponent three times to be crowned.” A Commentary on the Phaedrus of Plato (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1969), 177. 53. Cf. Charmides 155d and, see below, Symposium 217c.

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54. Symposium 217c, trans. Nehamas and Woodruff. 55. Socrates’s own ironic proposal for a punishment in the Apology is that he be given the reward of an Olympic victor (Apology 36d). Gorgias defends rhetoric as a competitive art like boxing and wrestling, claiming it is not the instructor’s fault if the power is abused by the practitioners (Gorgias 456c–457a). 56. See Alexander Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 335. 57. Phaedrus 242a; see Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, Plato: Phaedrus (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995), 23–24, n. 49. 58. Phaedrus 257c. 59. Phaedrus 246a–247b; Republic 583b; Philebus 11e–23a. 60. Philebus 22e, trans. Dorothea Frede in Cooper. See §6: “Theomachia: Calliope versus Aphrodite in Plato’s Philebus” in this chapter. ἀλλὰ μήν, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ νῦν μὲν ἡδονή σοι πεπτωκέναι καθαπερεὶ πληγεῖσα ὑπὸ τῶν νυνδὴ λόγων . . .  61. Cf. Patterson, “Philosophos Agonistes,” 328. 62. The Palaestra is named after the Greek goddess of wrestling. The following account is from Philostratos: “Palaestra, the daughter of Hermes who spent her adolescent years in the forests of Arkadia, invented wrestling, and the whole earth rejoices at the discovery, for the iron weapons of war will be flung far away from the hands of men, and the stadia will gain sweeter glory than the military camps, and men will compete naked.” The Eternal Olympics, 202. The seriousness with which Plato took wrestling as military and spiritual training is seen in the Republic at 452a–c and 457a–c, where he argues that women guardians should undergo the same gymnastic training at the Palaestra as men. This is likely a critique of the Athenian coddling of women and a reference to the Lacedaemonian practice later recorded by Plutarch: “But even to the women Lycurgus paid all possible attention. He made the maidens exercise their bodies in running, wrestling, casting the discus, and hurling the javelin . . .” Plutarch, Lycurgus XIV 2–4, trans. Bernadette Perrin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959). See also Laws 795b–796d and 813d–814d. The Charmides is also set in a Palaestra; here the metaphorical struggle is for self-control, as Socrates indicates at 155d. 63. Christopher Tindale, “Plato’s ‘Lysis’: A Reconsideration,” Apeiron 18, no. 2 (1984): 102–109. 64. Ibid., 107. 65. Francisco J. Gonzalez, “Plato’s ‘Lysis’: An Enactment of Philosophical Kinship,” Ancient Philosophy 15 (1995): 71. Gonzalez notes that Christopher Tindale also discusses wrestling as enactment of philosophic friendship. 66. Ibid., 87. The third characteristic Gonzalez refers to in addition to wrestling and competition is ‘submission’: “they must submit to who they ‘belong’: the gods, their parents, their school teachers, and the slaves who are their attendants” (71). For the interpretation of Platonic dialogues as enactments, see Francisco Gonzalez, ed., The Third Way: New Directions in Platonic Studies (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995). See especially Gerald A. Press, “Plato’s Dialogues

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as Enactments,” in Gonzalez, 133–152. Press sees the enactment theory as having roots in J. L. Austin’s and John R. Searle’s work (133–134). 67. Phaedrus 255d, trans. Hackforth in Hamilton and Cairns. 68. A. H. Chroust, “The Organization of the ‘Corpus Platonicum’ in Antiquity,” Hermes 93, no. 1 (1965): 34–46, 36–37. 69. Ibid., 37. 70. See David L. Roochnik, “The Erotics of Philosophical Discourse,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 4, no. 2 (1987): 109–129. 71. It is worth noting that Thrasymachus leaps into the discussion like a “wild beast” (336b). As Poliakoff notes, “a second century C. E. author remarked sardonically that the fan name Lion for pankratiasts was appropriate because of the way they broke the rules and bit each other.” Combat Sports, 56. 72. Republic 343a, trans. Shorey in Hamilton and Cairns. See also Socrates’s statement to Thrasymachus at 339e, δίκαιον εἶναι ποιεῖν τοὐναντίον ἢ ὃ σὺ λέγεις. 73. Herrmann, “Wrestling Metaphors,” 105. 74. Ibid., 105–106 and cf. n. 2. 75. Ibid., 104–105. 76. Socrates makes a similar admonition to Gorgias “being more anxious for verbal victory than to investigate the subject under discussion.” Gorgias 457d, trans. W. D. Woodhead in Hamilton and Cairns. 77. Cf. Theaetetus 164d. 78. Republic 350d, my translation. 79. Republic 357a, trans. Shorey in Hamilton and Cairns. 80. Nietzsche quips that Socrates fascinates because “he discovered a new kind of agon, that he was the first fencing-master in it for the aristocratic circles of Athens . . . he touched on the agonal instinct of the Hellenes—he introduced a variation into the wrestling-matches among youths and young men.” Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1968). 81. Doblhofer, Petermandl, and Schachinger, Ringen, 380; see also Scanlon, Eros and Greek Athletics, 269–270. 82. For the playful competition of the Phaedrus, see Anne Lebeck’s discussion in “The Central Myth,” 288. 83. “Als Kampf ist diese Kommunikation der Kampf des Einzelnen urn Existenz, welcher ein Kampf urn die eigene und andere Existenz in einem ist. Wahrend es im Daseinskampf die Nutzung aller Waffen gilt, List und Trug unvermeidbar werden und ein Verhalten gegen den Anderen als Feind—der nur das schlechthin Andere gleich der Widerstand leistenden Natur ist . . .” Karl Jaspers, Philosophy, vol. 2, trans. E. B. Ashton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 147. 84. Theaetetus 169b, trans. Cornford in Hamilton and Cairns. 85. Theaetetus 169b, trans. M. J. Levett, rev. Myles Burnyeat in Cooper. 86. I am again reminded of Karl Jaspers’s notion of the loving struggle where “both combatants dare to show themselves without reserve and to allow themselves to be thrown into question . . . It never aims at superiority and victory; if these are gained, they will be felt as disturbing, indeed culpable, and will

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be fought in turn. All cards are put on the table; there is no calculating reserve whatever. Mutual transparency is sought not only in matters at issue but in the means of questioning and of contention. Each combatant penetrated himself along with the other.” Philosophy, 147–148.  87. Theaetetus l69b–c, trans. M. J. Levett, rev. Myles Burnyeat in Cooper. See also Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 1501.  88. Meno 94e. See also Socrates’s remarks at 100b–e.   89. Tindale, “Plato’s ‘Lysis’: A Reconsideration,” 107.  90. W. C. Helmbold and W. B. Holther, “The Unity of the ‘Phaedrus,’ ” ed. W. M. Green and L. A. Mackay, University of California Publications in Classical Philology 14 (1952): 387–417, 409.  91. Philebus 22e–23a, trans. Hackforth and Dorothea Frede in Cooper.  92. Philebus 21b–c, trans. Frede.  93. Philebus 21c, trans. Frede.  94. Philebus 12b, trans. Frede.  95. Ibid.   96. Socrates, unlike Philebus, is hesitant to associate Aphrodite with pleasure simpliciter, “I always feel a more than human dread over what names to use for the gods—it surpasses the greatest fear.” Frede cites the phrase “greatest fear” as a reference to Cratylus 400d–401a, where the names of the Gods are allowed a human origin to avoid hubristic claims of knowledge. Aphrodite’s dual titles may indicate just such a blasphemy (see Philebus 12c).  97. Philebus 21c.  98. For a discussion of the types of madness and their patron deities, see E. R. Dodd, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 64.  99. Phaedrus 249c, trans. Jowett. 100. Phaedrus 247b and 247c. 101. Philebus 22e–23a and 22e. πορρωτέρω δ᾽ ἐστὶ τῶν τριτείων, εἴ τιτῷ ἐμῷ νῷ δεῖ πιστεύειν ἡμᾶς τὰ νῦν. 102. Philebus 65e–66a, trans. Hackforth. 103. Plato has some small role in the inversion of characters and the reputations of the two Aphrodites, viz., the beautification of Aphrodite Ourania and the degradation of Aphrodite Pandemos. But there are, in addition to Plato’s treatment of the issue in the Phaedrus and Philebus, larger historical and cultural forces responsible for the decline of the chthonic goddesses and gods and, in turn, the elevation of sky goddesses and gods. Although this inversion of power should not be simply understood as a moral distinction in Plato, more than in purely mythic contexts, there certainly is this dimension at play in the dialogue. 104. Philebus 12c, trans. Frede in Cooper. 105. Phaedrus 256a–256d. 106. Philebus 26a. 107. Nehamas and Woodruff continue: “Although they were usually referred to collectively in this period, each of the Muses was assigned to one of the arts—Terpsichord to dance and Erato to lyric poetry. Urania (whose name means

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‘heavenly’) was associated with astronomy. Calliope (who came to be the Muse of epic poetry) was accorded the highest honor in Hesiod’s Theogony (line 80, ff.) as the Muse responsible for the ability of high officials she calls kings to render good judgments that are persuasive and bring conflicts to an end.” Plato, Phaedrus, 53n131. 108. Philebus 26b–c, trans. Frede in Cooper. 109. Philebus 26a. 110. Philebus 67b, trans. Hackforth. 111. Here, as argued in chapter 1, procession should be taken metaphorically. 112. Philebus 26a–c. 113. She mediates the fight between Aphrodite and Demeter over Adonis, giving each goddess half his time. Athena also plays the role of divine mediator in her design of a contest with Poseidon to decide the patron of Athens. 114. Philebus 32b, trans. Frede in Cooper. See also Phaedo 60b–c. Here Plato anticipates Freud’s later theory of pleasure as presented in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). The ultimate experience of pleasure is a restoration of a homeostatic state, not an increase in excitation. 115. Philebus 33c, trans. Frede in Cooper. 116. Philebus 34b, trans. Frede in Cooper. 117. Catherine Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of The Dialogues (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). This reading places the Laws first and the Menexenus last. Zuckert argues that “in this dialogue [Laws] Plato asks his readers to imagine a conversation took place after the Persian Wars, to which there are many references, but before the Peloponnesian War, to which there is no reference at all.” 11. 118. Ibid., 8–9, 13, 14, 16, 216–217, 247–249, 281, 595. 119. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, 8–19 et passim. 120. Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers, 53–54. 121. Martha Beck, Civilized Killing: Maintaining a Strong Military in a Free and Open Society: A Reading of Plato’s “Laches” (New York: Global Scholarly Publications, 2011). 122. Peter J. Ahrensdorf, “The Question of the Historical Context and the Study of Plato,” Polity 27, no. 1 (1994): 113–135. See especially 121–123, where Ahrensdorf discusses the Platonic implication of the incident in detail. 123. Beck, Civilized Killing, 31–32. 124. Beck, Civilized Killing, 101. 125. The resolution of conflicts between the Forms of fairness and equality in sport ultimately must be resolved by appeals to the higher Forms of sameness and difference. 126. Craig, War Lover, passim. 127. Jill Frank, “Wages of War: On Judgment in Plato’s Republic,” Political Theory 35, no. 4 (2007): 443–467. 128. Craig, War Lover, 2. 129. Ibid., 15.

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130. See the discussion of Ur-Athens in chapter 3, a city not unlike the one Glaucon calls the “City of Pigs.” 131. High level in that their generality approaches the One. 132. Trans. Grube, rev. Reeve in Cooper. See Miller’s discussion, The Third Kind, of this passage at 125–126. 133. Szlezák, “The Idea of the Good as Arche¯ in the Republic,” in Nikulin, 123. Cf. Symposium 204e–205a, where the possession of the Good is the cause of happiness. 134. Cf. Sophist 260a, σκόπει τοίνυν ὡς ἐν καιρῷ νυνδὴ τοῖς τοιούτοις διεμαχόμεθα καὶ προσηναγκάζομεν ἐᾶν ἕτερον ἑτέρῳ μείγνυσθαι and 253d–e. 135. Trans. Nicholas White in Cooper. 136. Dialectic concerns the exact number and relations of the intermediary forms to the One and the unlimited. Socrates warns Protarchus that people jump too quickly from the One to the unlimited without being careful to dialectically develop all the intervening forms of plurality (Philebus 18e–19a).

Chapter 6   1.  S. Radhakrishnan, ed. and trans., The Principle Upanishads (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1953, 1992), 272. As a sister passage to the above, Radhakrishnan cites Laws 904c; see also Theaetetus 176e–177a.  2. David Lachterman, “What Is ‘The Good’ of Plato’s Republic,” St. John’s Review XXXIV (1989–90): 139–171.  3. Ibid., 141–142. Emphasis in the original.  4. Ibid., 140.  5. Timaeus 36c–d. See C. D. C. Reeve’s remark below.   6. Plato’s agonistic imagery and themes “writes in” Heraclitus’s notions of strife and war. Cf. Origen, Celsum frag. 80, VI, 42 and Hippolytus, Ref. frag. 53, IX, 9, 4 in G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).   7. David Sider, “Plato’s Symposium as Dionysian Festival,” Quaderni Urbinati di Culture Classica 4 (1980): 41–56, 42.  8. For an analysis of the dramatic structure of the Phaedrus, see chapter 5. Dramatically and literally, the palinode occurs at high noon in Socrates’s showdown with Lysias. Again, the moment marks a concomitant recognition and reversal, which is not surprising because the point of arguments is to provoke recognitions on the parts of the interlocutors. In this regard, the reversals of logoi more naturally induce recognitions than reversals of action where the characters may, or may not, realize their change of fortune or circumstance.  9. Somewhat ironically, it is Agathon whom Aristotle picks out at 1456a 16–20 for being especially good at designing popular plots reversals. Aristotle observes, “In his Reversals of the Situation, however, he shows a marvelous skill

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in the effort to hit the popular taste,—to produce a tragic effect that satisfies the moral sense.” Poetics 1456a 16–20, trans. Butcher. But here Agathon is having the table turned on himself; his self-glorifying definition of the young and dainty eros has turned out silly in light of Socrates’s and Alcibiades’s speeches. In his ability to pursue and hit the popular taste, Agathon seems to closely resemble Alcibiades. Consider Socrates’s jibe at him at 175e in the Symposium. 10. Sider, “Plato’s Symposium as Dionysian Festival,” 49n21. He gives as examples Pratinas’s Palaistai, Phrynichus’s Antaeus or Libyans, id. Kerkyon, and possibly Phryincus’s Alcestis or Sophocles’s Admetus. 11. I am thinking of the personages of Nicias, Laches, Pericles, Themistocles, Cimon, and Alcibiades, whose actions and careers fall under critical Platonic review. In addition, many scholars have noted Plato’s extended reference to Theaetetus’s campaign disease and resulting premature death as another instance of the tragic loss of a promising philosopher-king. Theaetetus 142a–e. 12. Of course for Aristotle, an author’s overreliance on external actions indicates a flaw in the plot; these actions should be referenced only if to include them would cause greater implausibility, or staging difficulties. 13. Nails, The People of Plato, 18. 14. For a full discussion of the complex episode, see Nails, The People of Plato, 17–20. 15. Trans. Nehamas and Woodruff in Cooper. As Alcibiades notes, unlike Socrates and Laches, he was mounted and could at almost any moment easily have avoided encirclement by retreating. For another confirmation of Socrates’s bravery at Delium, see Laches 181b. 16. Trans. Nehamas and Woodruff in Cooper. 17. See Nails’s account. 18. C. D. C. Reeve, “A Study in Violets: Alcibiades in the Symposium,” in J. H. Lesher, Debra Nails, and Frisbee C. C. Sheffield, eds., Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 131. 19. Ibid. 20. Among these dialogues, the titles and extant fragments of Aristotle’s Protrepticus and On Philosophy suggest an affinity for Platonic method, even if, as Werner Jaeger asserts, the latter dialogue marks Aristotle’s break from Platonic metaphysics. Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of his Development, 2nd ed., trans. Richard Robinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923, 1933), see chapter 4. 21. There are also the thematic reversals discussed in chapter 1 in the Cave Allegory, taking illusion for reality and reality for illusion. One might also mention the thematic inversions discussed in chapter 2: that in trying Socrates, the Athenians are judging themselves; in executing Socrates they destroy themselves, while Socrates lives on, and so forth. Or those in chapter 3: that Ur-Athens’s David to Atlantis’s Goliath is the more virtuous of the two states. Consider the metaphors of wrestling reversals in chapter 5: Socrates’s turning arguments on their heads, and so forth. The double movement of these “opposite effect” inversions fits Aristotle’s definition of reversal perfectly.

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22. Poetics 1452a 22–24, trans. Butcher. ἔστι δὲ περιπέτεια μὲν ἡ εἰς τὸ ἐναντίον τῶν πραττομένων μεταβολὴ καθάπερ εἴρηται, καὶ τοῦτο δὲ ὥσπερ λέγομενκατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἢ ἀναγκαῖον. 23. Gerald F. Else, Aristotle’s Poetics: The Argument (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 342–345; Samuel Henry Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, 4th ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1951), 330–331. See also J. Kamerbeek, “A Note on Arist. Poet. C. XI, 1452 A 22–26, 29–33,” Mnemos 18, no. 1 (1965): 279. Butcher proposes a more extended conception of reversal: “The tragic peripeteia suggests a series of incidents or a train of action (ta prattonmena) tending to bring about a certain end but resulting in something wholly different. The situation, as it were, turns upon the agent who is attempting to deal with it,—swings around and catches him in the recoil.” 24. Poetics 1456a 9. 25. Poetics 1452a 20–21. 26. The Apology, which at first glance seems to confine itself to narrative recitation of the events of Socrates’s trial, in fact carefully embeds a complication, turning point, and denouement—viz., the defense, verdict, and sentencing phases of Socrates’s trial. The action of the plot becomes a foil to the thematic reversal embedded in the argument of the defense: Socrates is not injured by the verdict; his accusers are hurt by it. In fact, it is Athens that is on trial, not Socrates. Plato is wont to use natural oppositions for dramatic effect as well: transitions from night to day, sleep to waking, and life to death. For Plato, natural contrarieties can also provide a continuous backdrop for dramatic action. For example, Plato builds these contraries into the opening scene of the Crito. He is quite careful and specific with the imagery; Crito comes in not just at dawn, but at the darkest moment just before dawn (Ὄρθρος βαθύς, 43a). What psychologically appears as the darkest moment of life (waking to your last day) may present another opening. In a Taoist sense, each contrary, even at its most extreme moment, contains its opposite. The contraries are especially prevalent in the Cave Allegory, where the images and themes of light and dark, night and day, waking and dreaming, and life and death come up repeatedly (Republic 516a, 516e, 518a, 520d–e, 521c, etc.). 27. Trans. Butcher. 28. The image of Socrates as an outward Silenus figure that conceals divinities is a sign of depth, disguise, intricacy, and compaction. 29. Reeve notes that order is restored at the last when Socrates, Agathon, and Aristophanes, the last three awake, pass the wine bowl from left to right. “A Study in Violets,” 142. 30. On the thematic importance of the order of speeches and the position of speakers at the party, see Reeve, “A Study in Violets,” 142. 31. Ibid., 145. Cf. Timaeus 37a–c. 32. Trans. Nehamas and Woodruff in Cooper. 33. Sider, “Plato’s Symposium as Dionysian Festival,” 43. Sider argues that Aristophanes’s account is “primarily comic” (49) and that Agathon’s account is marked by tragic language. While these two observations may be true of the

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outward form of the poet’s accounts, I think the core stories encroach on one another’s professed genres. 34. Symposium 223d. 35. The myth is undeniably eclectic; notably, Plato borrows elements from Homer, the Orphics, and the Pythagoreans, among others. Hackforth, following Burnet, assigns “Anaxagoras as well as Archelaus an influence on Plato’s account.” Plato’s Phaedo, 173n6. After providing a twelve-point, six-page, parallel comparison of the four Platonic eschatological myths with Orphic and Pythagorean sources, Perceval Frutiger concludes, “Les parallèles que nous venons d’établir démontrent péremptoirement que tous les éléments essentiels des mythes eschatologiques sont empruntés à la tradition orphico-pythagoricienne.” Les Mythes de Platon (Paris: Alcan, 1930), 260. “Not so fast,” Radcliffe G. Edmonds III cautions concerning Frutiger’s above conclusion; Edmonds cites Hitchcock (1974), 125 n. 13, Thomas (1938), 6–24, and Dodds (1959), “about the difficulty of assigning these traditional elements to an exclusively ‘Orphic’ context.” Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the Orphic Gold Tablets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), see 164n13. The same caution should be given concerning the Pythagorean, Dionysian, and Eleusinian traditions, as Plato freely borrows elements from each and still manages to form his own novel constructs. 36. Specifically, he cites Bostock’s and Gallop’s commentaries on the Phaedo. Myths of the Underworld Journey, 160n4; David Bostock, Plato’s Phaedo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); David Gallop, Plato: Phaedo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). 37. See Edmond’s discussion in Myths of the Underworld Journey, 188–190. 38. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedo, 174. In the Gorgias, as in the Myth of the True Earth and the Allegory of the Cave, the philosopher gets special mention as an individual suited to reach the higher ground (Gorgias 526c). 39. For a detailed account of the different sorts of “restless souls,” see Edmonds, Myths of the Underworld Journey, 172–176. 40. Ibid., 172. See also Garland, Greek Way of Death, 101–103. 41. “But indeed, Simmias, there seems to me to be no need of The Art of Glaucos” (ἀλλὰ μέντοι, ὦ Σιμμία, οὐχ ἡ Γλαύκου τέχνη γέ μοι δοκεῖ εἶναι διηγήσασθαι ἅ γ᾽ ἐστίν). 42. Diskin, Clay. “The Art of Glaukos (Plato Phaedo 108D4-9).” The American Journal of Philology 106, no. 2 (1985): 230–236, 234. 43. Ibid., 235. 44. Ibid., 236. A rival theory championed by John Burnet proposes that the art of Glaukos involves the design of a Pythagorean machine with four disks that produce a harmonious sound when spun. Burnet, Plato’s Phaedo. See appendix II. 45. Erich Klostermann, ed., Eusebius Werke, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1972), vol. 4, 15.5–21. The first explanation given by Eusebius in Contra Marcellum is that Glaukos “is the human fisherman from Anthedon in Boeotia, who ate of an imperishable grass and became immortal, a god of the sea and a prophet.” See also Diskin Clay’s “The Art of Glaukos (especially 236, and 231, 233, and 235n12).

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46. Apology 41a. The Apology passage also lists Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus as judges in Hades, but Triptolemos’s name does not recur with these last three kings as judges in the Gorgias’s account of the underworld (523e–524a ff.). This may be because Triptolemos’s life may more closely resemble Er’s, Glaukos’s, and Trophonius’s in being a spirit that knows the mysteries of eternal life, but still lives as an intermediary between the two worlds. Triptolemos teaches mortals the Eleusinian mysteries concerning agriculture and regeneration. Twice-born souls are called, as Robert Garland notes, deuteropotmos or hysteropotmos, that is, a person, as Er, who by coming back to life has two fates. Greek Way of Death, 100–101. The last four figures play the roles of teachers of the mysteries of rebirth, while the role of navigating one’s ultimate fate in the underworld rests with the hermetic figures and daimones (philosophers). The three kings are more properly underworld judges. 47. Cf. Elizabeth Belfiore, “Elenchus, Epode, and Magic: Socrates As Silenus,” Phoenix 34, no. 2 (1980): 136. In the Gay Science, Nietzsche calls Socrates the Pied Piper of Athens. Aphorism 340. 48. Phänomenologie des Geistes, passim. Cf. The Myth of Er. 49. Julia Annas, “Plato’s Myths of Judgement,” Phronesis 27, no. 2 (1982): 119–143. 50. Phaedo 114a. 51. Belfiore, “Elenchus, Epode, and Magic,” 128, 133. 52. Ibid., 136–137. 53. Cf. The Myth of Er at Republic 619e–620a. 54. Edmonds, Myths of the Underworld Journey, 181–182. 55. Ibid., 181. Phaedo 115a and 115c. 56. Trans. Grube in Cooper. 57. Paul Friedländer, Plato: An Introduction, 2nd ed., trans. Hans Meyerhoff (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958, 1969), 266–267, 180. Still, even the spherical earth is presented as an a priori deduction (see Phaedo 108e–109a). Hackforth notes, “This theory is mentioned by Aristotle de caelo, 295 B 10ff., and is there ascribed to Anaximander.” Plato’s Phaedo, 169n3. The theory also has antecedents in the Pythagorean cosmology of Philolaus of Croton (frag. 7. Huffman), and the theories of Parmenides and Empedocles. See Phillip S. Horky, Plato and Pythagoreanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 154–155. Echecrates, Phaedo’s auditor, and Socrates’s primary interlocuters in the Phaedo, Simmias and Cebes, were students of the fifth-century Pythagorean Philolaus (Phaedo 88c–89a, and 61d–e). Peter Kingsley argues convincingly that most of the physical features of the Myth of the True Earth can be ascribed to Plato’s personal acquaintance with the topography and Pythagoreans of Sicily. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic: Empedocles and the Pythagorean Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 58. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedo, 180. Cf. Phaedo 109a. 59. Ibid., 176n1. The other regular solids are the “constituent particles of the four elements” (176). Hackforth apud Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 218f. For

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a Parmenidean description and teleological explanation of the spherical shape of the universe, see Timaeus 33b; see also The Good as Architectonic below. 60. For the Pythagorean view, see § IV, Interdimensionality, below. 61. Daniel W. Graham, Science Before Socrates: Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and the New Astronomy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 217. 62. Rotational balance appears to be Philolaus’s motive for the postulation of a counter-earth in the same orbit but opposite to the earth. Graham, Science Before Socrates, 196n23. Another motive could be that it allowed Philolaus to posit a Decad of ten astral bodies (192–193). 63. Trans. Zeyl in Cooper. 64. For the classic study of the afterworld parallels between the Republic, Phaedo, Phaedrus, and Gorgias, see Frutiger, Les Mythes de Platon, 209–225 and 249–265. For a slightly more conservative interpretation of the overlaps between The Cave and the True Earth, see Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedo, 174–175. See also Diskin Clay, who notes, “The hierarchical scheme of three levels which structures the world as it is viewed in this passage [Phaedo 109 c3–d5] has its counterpart in the image of the cave in Book VII of the Republic, and its imagery of emergence connects it with the central myth of the Phaedrus” (235). “The Art of Glaukos (Plato Phaedo 108D4–9),” The American Journal of Philology 106, no. 2 (1985): 230–236. 65. The hidden hollows of the inside of the Silenus statue complement the hollows of the underworld of the True Earth. The microcosm of the statue and the macrocosm of the earth are both models of the psyche. 66. Edmonds, Myths of the Underworld Journey, 160. 67. Frutiger, Les Mythes de Platon, 258. He gives the phrases τρίοδος, τὼ ὁδώ, and δύο χάσματα from the Gorgias and Republic, respectively, as examples. 68. Trans. Grube in Cooper 69. Trans. Grube and Reeve in Cooper. 70. Republic 509b. For a complete discussion of the One (ἔν) as Plato’s – Good, see Hans Joachim Krämer, “EPEKEINA TE S OUSIAS,” in Nikulin, 39–64. The Good/One has an objective structure, is real, even if it is not a being. Lloyd P. Gerson, “Plato on Identity, Sameness, and Difference,” The Review of Metaphysics 58, no. 2 (2004): 305–332, 312n22. Gerson holds that Sameness is a subclass of Identity. 71. Notably, the highest-level Forms, such as Sameness, Difference, and Being. Eugenio E. Benitez, “The Good or the Demiurge: Causation and the Unity of Good in Plato,” Apeiron: A Journal for Ancient Philosophy and Science 28, no. 2 (1995): 113–140. See 121 et passim. 72. “The Divine Reason causes mixed things to come to be as efficient cause. Limit, on the other hand, since it brings definiteness to whatever it is added, is what makes a thing be such-and-so; it is a formal/final cause.” Benitez, “The Good or the Demiurge,” 137. 73. Plato has realized Anaxagoras’s plan of having nous direct all things (cf. Phaedo 97c).

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74. Timaeus 38a. 75. Hampton, Pleasure, Knowledge, and Being, 88. 76. This problem is especially acute for the status of phenomena; how does a strict monism explain even the appearance of difference, given that one starts with an undifferentiated substance? 77. Timaeus 35a. – 78. See Krämer, “EPEKEINA TES OUSIAS,” in Nikulin, 41. Cornford observes that the later Pythagoreans’ discovery of irrational numbers and incommensurability of the diagonal of a square provides another motive for the introduction of a second principle. Plato and Parmenides, 12–13. 79. Cf. Theophrastus’s Metaphysics §9 11a 27–11b 7 and Aristotle’s Metaphysics 987b 23–35. 80. Nikulin, “Plato: Testimonia et Fragmenta,” in The Other Plato, 17–18. 81. Krämer, “Plato’s Unwritten Doctrine,” in Nikulin, 71. 82. Francis Cornford, “Mysticism and Science in the Pythagorean Tradition (Continued),” The Classical Quarterly 17, no. 1 (1923): 1–12. While the One contains limit (its absolute oneness), it is not the kind of limit that can generate multiplicity. 83. Impossible in that Plato, unlike Leibniz, does not argue for an entirely ideal universe. 84. Dana Miller, The Third Kind in Plato’s Timaeus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 165. 85. Aristotle, Metaphysics 992a 20–22. “The existence of these doctrines in the Early Academy is questioned only by those who completely reject the testimony of Aristotle on agrapha dogmata.” J. A. Philip, “The ‘Pythagorean’ Theory of the Derivation of Magnitudes,” Phoenix 20, no. 1 (1966): 32–50, 35n4. 86. Philip adduces Aristotle’s Metaphysics (992a 20–22) for evidence that Plato held points to be “conventions of geometry.” He writes, “Speusippus held that the elements were point, line, plane, and solid. Plato and Xenocrates held that the first element was a minimum indivisible line rather than a point.” “The ‘Pythagorean’ Theory,” 35. As Horky notes, by the time the Epinomis was written, “[t]he mathematical theories developed in rudimentary and sometimes ambiguous ways by Plato became central to the accounts of generation, unity, and being of the intellectuals associated with the Early Academy: in the Epinomis, for example, primordial cosmological growth progresses from point to line, line to plane, plane to solid, a theory that appears late in Plato’s dialogues and, I think, in response to the old problem of the ‘Growing Argument’ ” (Laws 893e1–894b1). Plato and Pythagoreanism, 197. 87. It is not my intent here to provide a proof of the “Pythagorean” procession, but rather to sketch Plato’s “likely story” of its evolutions. There are, of course, any number of metaphysical problems with the theory as it has come down to us, not the least of which are Aristotle’s telling objections in the Metaphysics. Namely, if number is substance, how do we account for the physical nature of the universe, and what is the efficient cause of the procession? “Plato

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on the other hand believed that numbers existed independently of sensible things, and this χωρισμός marks the difference between Platonism and Pythagoreanism.” Philip, “The ‘Pythagorean’ Theory,” 35.  88. Szlezák, “The Idea of the Good,” in Nikulin, 122–123.  89. The One was considered both even and odd by the Pythagoreans, in that it partook of both limit and unlimitedness. In the Pythagorean system, even numbers were considered unlimited, while odd numbers were thought of as limited.   90. The One should not be considered a number in that numbers can be predicated of many things and are not unique. See also Cornford, “Pythagorean Mysticism and Science,” 2–3. For Plato, numbers have an intermediate position between the Forms and sensible objects, that is, on the second level of the Divided Line. The sixth-century Pythagoreans did not distinguish between intellectual objects and physical substance; see Aristotle, Cornford, and Philip. Philip argues that what has traditionally been taken as the Pythagorean theory of the derivation of magnitudes really has a Platonic origin that is co-opted by later third-century Pythagoreans. See “The ‘Pythagorean’ Theory.”  91. Lucio Russo, “The Definition of Fundamental Geometric Entities Contained in Book I of Euclid’s Elements,” Archive for the History of Exact Sciences 52, no. 3 (1998): 195–219.  92. On the occurrence and use of the Decad in Plato, see Horky, Plato and Pythagoreanism, 191n94.  93. Aetius 1, 3, 8 (DK58 B 15). Kirk and Raven, Presocratic Philosophers, 233–34. The imagery of the flow recalls Plato’s description in the Phaedo of the complex inflow and outflow of the subterranean rivers that intersect in the bowels of the earth (111d). It is a point worth consideration that all the rivers and chambers of Plato’s underworld render the spherical earth somewhat of a hollow.  94. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed., 233.  95. Ogden, Greek and Roman Necromancy, 252. The tomb’s antiquity and the numinous presence of Trophonius also pull the visitor out of the mundane time and space.  96. Planeaux, “Socrates, an Unreliable Narrator?,” 65n25.  97. Sider gives several convincing arguments that the Symposium is set during the City Dionysia rather than during the Lenaea. See “Plato’s Symposium as Dionysian Festival,” 41 and 43–47.  98. Planeaux observes that Socrates arrives at the wrestling school on a specific day: “It is during the Hermaea (ὡς Ἑρμαῖα ἄγουσιν, 206d1–2). The Hermaea was celebrated at Athenian παλαῖστραι on the third day of the Anthesteria, a festival in honor of Dionysus and Hermes.” “Socrates, an Unreliable Narrator?” 64.   99. See the discussion in chapter 2 in the section titled “City of the Dead.” 100. During the Hermaea, “spirits of the dead were allowed to roam about the land of the living.” Planeaux, “Socrates, an Unreliable Narrator?” 65. 101. Carter, “Ritual Functions of Epideitic Rhetoric,” 209–232. 102. Ibid., 223.

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103. Ibid., 223, 230. 104. Ibid., 230. See also chapter 2 §6, “The City of the Dead.” 105. The “Gettysburg Address” is an excellent example of this technique. In a similar sense, Plato’s allusions to, and repurposing of, the Oracle of Trophonius, Delos, Hades, and the Demosion Sema transforms what has been turned by Athens into profane space back to sacred. 106. Zina Giannopoulou, Plato’s Theaetetus as a Second Apology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 24. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid. 109. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedo, 172. 110. Two parallel passages are brought to mind: Heraclitus’s: “You would not find the boundaries of soul, even by travelling along every path (ὁδόν): so deep a measure does it have.” Diogenes Laertius, frag. 45, IX, 7 in Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd ed., 203. Also, Shakespeare’s fantastical Queen Mab: Drawn with a team of little atomies . . .  Her chariot is an empty hazelnut, Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub. Mercutio in Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 1.4, lines 61, 71–72. 111. Nikulin, “Plato: Testimonia et Fragmenta,” in The Other Plato, 17. 112. The trans-historical and universal religious beliefs in divination, reincarnation, and restless ghosts speak to Diotima’s description of the archetypal human need to transcend the finite and participate with the immortal. 113. W. R. M. Lamb, trans., Plato (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925), vol. III. 114. Cf. Minos 319e, where the Cave of Zeus appears again. 115. Symposium 175b and 220c–d. Trance may be too strong a word if it suggests that Socrates loses self-awareness. 116. See also Republic 500e. 117. Republic 540a–b, trans. Grube and Reeve in Cooper. 118. It is also remarkable how many dialogues start outdoors: Theaetetus, Republic, Symposium, Lysis, Phaedrus, Menexenus, Euthyphro, Laws, and Parmenides. 119. Across times and cultures, gates, doors, and crossroads have been considered liminal spaces. Gates mark transitions or transformations between different psychic states or dimensions of reality—for example, the doors in the Myth of Er and the underworld crossroads described in the Gorgias at 524a. Many of Athens’s gates make stealth appearances in the dialogues. Phaedrus, Itonian Gate (Cap. V); Crito, Sunium Gate (Cap. IV); Republic, harbor gates and Piraean Gate (Cap. I); Menexenus, Dipylon Gate (Cap. II); Symposium, Phaleric Gate (Cap. VI); Lysis, Diochares Gate, Acharnian Gate, and so forth (Cap. II). For the tacit role of the last two gates, see Planeaux, “Socrates, An Unreliable Narrator?” For a

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discussion of gates, rivers, and roads as portals to Hades, see Ruth Padel, In and Out of The Mind: Greek Images of the Tragic Self (Princeton: Princeton, University Press, 1992), 79–80. 120. Aristotle takes a realist approach to imitation in the Poetics: “For tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality.” Poetics 1450a 9–10, trans. Butcher. 121. Krämer, “Plato’s Unwritten Doctrine,” in Nikulin, 78.

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General Index

abduction of Oreithyia, 124–125 Academy, 66, 105, 122, 187n54, 215n2, 216n9, 229n85 Acropolis, 78, 79, 90, 116–117, 185, 187n43, 204n54, 210n35 caves, 183–184n4 physical features, 183–184n4 Adeimantus, 23, 126, 137, 201n18 Aegean, 98, 183n3 Aegeus, 102, 105, 210n35 Aegina, 64 Aeschylus Glaukos Pontios, 158 Persians, 42, 190n70 afterworld, 16, 157, 160, 163, 169, 228n64 cosmologies, 163 depth psychology, 163, 188 Elysium, 158 Gorgias, 163 Hades, 162–163, 183n4, 184n5, 184n6, 198n95, 199n105, 231n105, 232n119 guides, 158 judges, 227n46 Isles of the Blessed, 110, 158 Phaedo, 163 Republic, 163 Stygian depths, 160 Agathon’s comic account of Eros, 156–157, 224n9, 225n33

agon, 152, 215n2. See also wrestling and combat animal fights, 89, 105, 119 boxing, 119, 121, 136, 149, 218n50, 219n55 dialectic, 55, 73, 120–122, 127, 129, 132, 133, 135, 137, 147, 149 eristics, 215n2 eros, 126 loving struggle, 138, 220n86 Nietzsche, 220n80 Philebus, 140 Protagoras, 122, 217n23 Republic, 145 round-robin, 140, 216n2 staged combat, 137 theomachia, viii, 139–140, 147, 219n60 agonistic character of Plato’s work, 119, 121–122, 215n2 frames, 152, 198n93, 217n23 imagery, 123, 223n6 themes, 125, 134–135, 147, 198n93 ἀγονιστικός, overpowering mode, 134 άγὼν ἐπιτάϕιος. See funeral games agrapha dogmata. See unwritten teachings/doctrines Akte hill, 28 peninsula, 28, 79, 185n20, 186n28

249

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General Index

Akte (continued) Themistoclean cross wall, 28, 186n26 Alcibiades, 74, 75, 126, 130, 146, 152, 155, 157, 159, 160, 162, 168, 170, 224n9, 224n11, 224n15 betrayal of Athens, 145, 153 inconstancy, 17, 151, 154, 155, 156 Alcibiades, 20, 31, 184n17, 202n38, 202n39, 215n2 allegorical constructions, 17, 18, 33 Allegory of the Cave, 2, 6, 19, 23, 24, 33, 36, 167, 183n4, 225n26 allegory, 33 as a model of the human psyche, 32–33 elevated road (ἐπάνω ὁδόν), 30 fire, 30 invisible realm, 163, 187n48 light, 30, 163 Myth of the True Earth, compared with, viii, 157 Oracle of Trophonius, compared with, 44–45 philosopher, 24, 163, 226n38 prisoners, 23, 45, 177n25 puppeteers, 30 return to the Cave, 34, 36, 38, 42, 45, 49, 189n61, 191n95, 211n64, 217n33 road, 28, 30 shadows, 30 sun, 163 surface, 124, 162, 163 symbolism, 2, 24, 30 traditional interpretations, 33 wall, 30 Ambrosia, 189n66 Amphictyony, 110 anachronisms, vii, 65, 69, 110, 116, 196n67 analogical, 2, 6, 18, 78 ἀνατρεπτικός. See refutative mode angel, 69, 217n33

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animism, 34, 35, 88 Anteraste¯s, 130–131, 135 Anteros, 127 Apollo, 36, 38, 44, 94, 106, 107, 111–112, 113–116, 183 Delian, 110, 111, 112, 114 depictions on vases, 112 festival, 108, 110, 112 god of purification, 115 priest of, 94 prophetic swans, 112 Pythian, 114 Apology, 20, 41, 46, 57, 58–59, 69, 95, 106, 146, 191n3, 195n55, 196n67, 199n105, 207n7, 207n9, 219n55, 225n26, 227n46 plot, 225n26 Socrates’s dying wish, 62 thematic reversals, 225n26 aporetic dialogues, 8 Aristophanes, 152, 156–157, 175, 192n9, 225n29 Acharnians, 191n8 Birds, 189n67, 203n48 Clouds, 191n94 tragic-comic account of Eros, 225n33 Wasps, 193n24 Aristotle De Caelo, 227n57 De Divinatione Per Somnum, 211n54 Metaphysics, 176n18, 206n94, 229n79, 229n85, 229n86, 229n87 Nicomachean Ethics, 198n88 On Philosophy, 224n20 Poetics, 190n72, 224n9, 232n120 plot, 152 reversal, 154, 181n62 Agathon’s, 223–224 Aristotle’s definition, 225n22 bad to good and good to bad,  155 Butcher’s conception, 225n23 contrary to expectation, 155 Σωκρατικοὺς λόγους, 155

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General Index Physics, 9, 12, 179n41, 180n50, 181n60 Protrepticus (see Aristotle: On Philosophy) Rhetoric, 51 Topics, 15, 182n69 Arkadia, 219n62 art, 3, 5, 7, 8, 13–14, 42, 45, 51, 106, 107–108, 110, 112, 125, 130–131, 132, 135, 139, 146, 148, 159, 172, 204n56, 216n5, 219n55, 221n107 artifacts, 1, 7, 8, 10, 17, 32, 79 ascent, 41, 43, 73, 160, 183n4, 187n48, 188n60, 191n88 from cave, 45, 46, 48, 163, 172 to the Forms, 2, 10, 19, 143 to the Good/One, 2, 5, 177n28 upward path, 21 Asclepieia, 116–117 Asclepius/os, 111, 115, 116, 214n119 Athena, 25, 55, 70, 73, 148, 202n37, 206n79, 222n113 Athenian(s), 15, 23, 24, 25, 27, 34, 53, 55–57, 59–60, 62–63, 66–69, 75–78 Agora, 28, 65–66, 102, 103, 210n36 agrarian, 32, 72 ancient, 47 Assembly, 60, 67, 194n44, 196n56 autochthonic origins, 36, 55 citizenship, 53, 56 constitution, 57 Delian graves, defilement of, 16, 213n94 empire, 26, 33, 69 exceptionalism, 55 fleet, 79, 195n46 gegenes, 184n4 generals, 57 history, 15, 17, 21, 53, 56, 63 imperialism, 24, 26–27, 53, 63, 69 ambition towards Delos, 112 Isocrates, 33, 113, 193n24, 213n86 maritime, 24 maritime policy, 27, 58

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mercantilism, 26 naval dominance, 26 navy, 58, 100, 207n1 necropolis, 62 prison, 210n36 prisoners, 23, 28, 33, 47 psyche, 15, 33 Republic, 146 Second Empire, 33 state galley, 93 thallasocracy, 25, 72 tribute, 25–26, 78 Athens Academy, 66, 105, 122, 154, 187n54, 215n2, 216n9, 229n85, 229n86 Acropolis erosion, 90 ancient-mythical-Athens, 76–­77 as City of the Dead, vii, 21, 65, 230n99, 231n104 Asty/Astu, 26, 28, 30, 105, 170, 185 circuit wall, ix, 14, 18, 26–27, 28, 48, 66, 67, 79, 183n3, 185n17, 185n20, 186n28, 202n40, 203n42, 203n48 desecration of Delos, 16, 112, 113–116, 168 dockyards, 78 form, 15, 74 harbor(s), ix, 15, 23–26, 28, 31, 32, 48, 57, 78, 79, 80, 94, 102–103, 171, 183n3, 203n42, 203n50, 207n4, 210n35, 231n119 Lyceum, 105, 122, 215n2 militarism, 27 Olympieion, 197n79 on trial, 26 overpopulation, 27, 90 Piraeus closed ports, 203n42 Grand Harbor, 79 Moles, 203n42 Mounychia, 28, 79, 185n20 towers, 185n20, 203n42 Zea, 79

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252

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Athens (continued) primitive (see Athens: Ur-Athens) Roman Agora, 210n36 sea power, 24, 63, 76, 78, 183n4, 184–185n17, 200n9 (see also Athenian thallasocracy) tribute, 25–26, 78, 87 Ur-Athens, 15, 18, 21, 74, 77, 79, 82, 87, 148, 182n82, 188n57, 202n40, 223n130, 224n21 (see also Athens: ancient-mythicalAthens) acropolis, 90 natural landscape, 70 small garden wall, 78–79 (see also walls: little wall from the Republic; walls: low wall of Cave) walls, 26–27, 31 wooden walls, 79 Atlantis, vii, 15, 71–74, 79, 91, 157, 161, 169–170, 199n1, 200n6, 200n7, 201n21, 204n56, 224n21 Acropolis, 83 canals, 79 channel, 79–80 city plan, 15, 203n49 decadence of, 15, 32, 52, 64, 72, 74, 77, 87, 188n57 empire, 15, 87 Evenor, 193n24 frame, 75 fortifications, 80–81, 79–82, 204n44 founded in lust, 79 imperialism, 51, 64, 76, 185n17 irrigation, 80 landscapes, 105 main island, 79 main thoroughfare, 79 map, 82 myth, 15, 18, 56, 71, 76 Poseidon, allegiance to, 70, 79, 203n48 rings, 79, 204n52

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ship sheds, 81, 204n50 topography, 15, 21, 70, 72, 79, 89, 91, 105, 144, 185n17, 190n80 unassailable, 79 walls, 202n40 circuit walls, viii, 1, 78–79 features, 83, 87 war with Athens, 72, 89, 148, 202n37 Atomism, 85, 205n62, 205n66 atopos, 5 Atramyttium, 113 Autochthonic, 8, 20, 21, 36, 54–56, 193n24, 193n25, 193n32, 194n36, 198n94, 199n98 Autochthoniemotiv, 182n84 Autophues, 36 Attica, ix, 30, 97, 102, 184n11, 210n35 denuded, 90 mining, 87 peninsula, 90, 94, 103 Bacon, Francis Advancement of Learning, 187n37 Idols of the Cave, 32 Idols of the Marketplace, 32–33 Idols of the Mind, 32–33 Idols of the Theater, 32 Idols of the Tribe, 32, 190n78 New Atlantis, 75 Novum Organum, 187n37, 190n78 Battles Aigospotami, 64 Arginusae, vii, 56–57, 58, 64, 67, 69, 194n38 casualties, 59, 198n95 Islands, 57 trial (see Trial of Generals) Delium, 21 Mantinea, 146 Marathon, 76 Midway, 194n45 Plataea, 76, 114–115

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General Index Potidaea, 21 Salamis, 76, 82 Syracuse Expedition, 74, 146, 153, 201n24 Thermopylae, 82 Beautiful, the, 108 Becoming. See Realm of Becoming bees, 1, 34, 90, 187n42 as souls of dead, 35 associated with Oracle of Trophonius, 188n59 bee oracles, melissai, 188n59 beehives, 190n80 beehive-tomb, 45 caves, 36, 188n59 hive, 91 honeycombs and hexagons, 90–91 mystical dimensions, 206n91 necromancy, 34–35 prophetic powers, 35 Being. See Realm of Being Bendis, 24–25, 28, 34, 148, 183n3, 184n11, 184n12, 185n25, 201n18 best life, 131, 140, 143, 145 Boeotia, 36, 226n45 boxing. See wrestling and combat. See also under agon Bronze Age, ix, 35, 45 Calliope, viii, 110, 139–144, 147–148, 219n60, 222n113 Cap of Hades, 184n5 cave. See Acropolis; Allegory of the Cave; Trophonium chariot, 186n31, 231n110 Parmenides, 179n40 Phaedrus, 2, 124, 131, 138, 141, 162 race, 28, 218n48 Charmides, 146, 152, 215n2, 218n53, 219n62 Chiffren der Transzendencz, 14 chthonic, 25, 28, 34, 159, 188n59, 221n103 Cimon, 25, 30, 78, 213n94, 224n11

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ciphers. See Chiffren der Transzendencz Circle of the Same, 151, 156, 171, 172 circuit walls, viii, ix, 1, 14, 18, 26, 27, 28, 48, 78, 83, 183n3, 185n20, 203n42 City upon a Hill, 32 Colias, promontory, 208n13 combat. See under wrestling and combat commonplaces, 182n69 Corinth, 63, 82 Cosmology, 149, 161, 163, 178n32, 201n18, 205n66, 227n57, 227n59 Cratylus, 176n15, 212n66, 221n96 Crete, 71, 94, 145, 170 Critias, as incomplete, viii, 8, 74, 77, 199n1 Crito, 8, 16, 20, 65, 93, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, 112, 168, 190n68, 199n100, 207n7, 211n59, 212n70, 212n74, 225n26, 231n119 Cyclades, 99, 104 Delia. See under festivals Delian, 113–114, 213n93, 213n99 Apollo, 110, 112, 114 dance, 111 League, 79, 112–113 maidens, 111–112, 116 Delias. See under ships: triaconters Delos, viii, xi, 16, 93–94, 110, 112, 113, 168, 212n78, 213n88, 231n105 Athenian desecration of, 113–114, 116, 213n90, 213n94 birthplace of Apollo, 111 divination center, 111 female chorus, 111 mission to, 94, 96, 98, 115 personified as a goddess, 214n109 political autonomy, 112 political significance, 114–115, 213n94

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General Index

Delos (continued) purification, 113–114, 116 religious center, 111–112 treasury, 113 Delphic Oracle, 33, 47, 106, 113 Delusion, 32, 53, 109–110, 181n66, 212n70 De¯miourgos, 164, 180n52, 228n71, 228n72 democratic restoration, 63, 64 Democritus, 84, 85, 205n66 descent, vii, 2, 23. See also katabasis & kathodos from the Forms, 2, 19 from the Good, 2, 5 Oracle of Trophonius, 38–39, 41, 46, 188n60, 197n68 to the Cave, 36, 45–46, 48, 172, 177n28, 181n66, 197n68 to the Piraeus, 21, 23–24, 28, 34, 183n3, 183n4, 184n6 developmentalist theories, 8, 21, 179n38 diagonal of a square, 176n17, 229n78 dialectic, 2 dialectical knowledge of the Good, 149 Diekplous, 57 Dike, 34 Diodorus Siculus’s Library of History, 210n35 Dionysian, 224n9, 225n33, 226n35, 230n97 Dionysus, 44, 230n98 discrimination, 141–143, 148, 171 Divided Line, 2, 6–­7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 78, 149, 151, 162, 164, 166–168, 172, 178n29, 187n38, 187n48, 230n90 divination, 116, 117, 146, 170, 172. See also wrestling and combat Daimonion, 106, 110, 211n58 extrarational, 106 incubatory, 8, 38, 106, 211n54

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Ion, 211n52 McPherran, Mark, 105 oracular pronouncements, 108 oracular sites Delphi, 33, 47, 105–106, 111, 113, 114 Dodona, 105, 124 Trophonium, 36, 42, 45, 47, 91, 105, 116–117, 168, 189n64, 214n113 Prophetic, 35, 44, 69, 95, 108, 110, 112, 116, 146, 159, 211n54, 211n60 rationally testing, 106 doxographical tradition, 134–135 dream(s), viii, 17, 38, 56, 110, 171, 189, 210n48, 211n59, 214n110 Crito, 16, 94–96, 105, 107–108, 109, 110, 115, 116 delusions, 108, 212n66, 12 divination, 93–96, 104–106, 212n74 (see also divination: incubatory) maiden, 16, 94, 106, 110, 212n74 oracular pronouncements auspicious, 105, 109, 211n56 commands, 103, 107–108, 109, 112, 211n64, 212n74 revelations, 106, 109 Phaedo, 106–108 recurrent, 106 source, 108 versus waking life, 40, 109, 149, 212n70, 225n26 vivid, 109, 211n60 Dyad, 91, 165, 167, 176n18, 201n21 dynamistic, 35–36, 88, 91 Early Academy, 229n85, 229n86 earthly poets and worldly artists, 3, 13 earthquake, 36, 114, 200n7, 213n96 Edward Everett’s “Gettysburg Address,” 51 εἴδωλα, 38

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General Index Eleatic, 4, 17, 76 Eleatic Stranger, 8 principles of being and non-being, 165 Eleusinian Cult, 34, 198n91, 226n35 hymns, 35 mysteries, 30, 36, 62, 184n6, 187n42, 187n68, 227n46 sacrifices, 35 Thesmophoria (see under festivals) Eleusis, 30, 66 ενδειτικός, 135 ἐπάνω ὁδόν, 30 epekeina te¯s ousias. See Good, the Epinomis, 229n86 Epitaphios, 53, 63, 66, 67 Eraste¯s, 127–­128 Erebus, 207n95 eros, philosophic, 44, 135 ἔρως δεινὸς, 125, 138 erotic mania/madness, 44, 140–141, 171 esoteric doctrine/method/tradition, vii, 1, 7–9, 133, 149, 164, 179n40 Etesians. See under winds Euclidean plane geometry, 6 Euclid’s Elements, 1, 178n34, 230n91 Euthydemus, 120, 121, 123, 126, 129, 130, 136, 152, 176n15, 198n93, 215n2, 218n40, 218n51 Euthyphro, 20, 54, 177n22, 231n18 Existenz, 138, 220n83 false immortality, 159 fear of death, 39, 45–46, 187n54, 189n62 festival(s), 223n7 Anthesteria, 230n98 Asclepiad, 168 Bendideia, 28, 168 Brauronia, 30 Bouphonia, 188n59 City Dionysia, 153, 168, 230n97

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Delia, viii, 110–112, 168, 207n4, 211n61, 212n73, 212n84 Choruses, 110 Crane Dance, 111 Genesia, 67, 69, 169, 197n70 Greater Panathenaea, 168 Hermaea, 168­–169, 230n98, 230n100 Lenaea, 168, 230n97 Lesser Panathenaea, 168 of the dead (see festivals: Genesia) Olympia, 168 processions, 30, 112 Thesmophoria, 35, 188n59 first words. See opening words Form(s), 9, 32, 47, 125, 130, 134, 146, 149, 161, 166–167, 180n50, 183n4, 222n125, 230n90 as limits, 18, 165 Athens, 15, 74, 77 beauty, 154 bed, form of, 13 dialectic, 16, 135, 223n136 difference, 3–4, 10, 147, 149, 165, 167 dimensionless models, 16, 159 eternal, 134, 159 equality, 4, 143 fairness, 143, 148 harmony, 4, 147, 149 hierarchical fit, 143 hierarchical relationship, 14, 16, 120, 147 high level, 4, 10, 70, 148, 149, 165, 228n71 identity, 4, 165 incommensurability, 143, 147 indivisible, 18, 164 inflected in space, 15, 16, 49, 69, 76, 77–78, 108, 110 instantiation, 4–7, 10, 117, 119, 148, 172, 211n62 intercourse of, 200n13 in-themselves, 2–3, 4, 69, 143, 148, 177n22 justice, form of, 17, 177n22

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256

General Index

Form(s) (continued) justice in-itself, form of, 177n22 largeness, 10 logically prior to things, 164 mixing in Becoming, 141, 172, 177n22 mixing with one another, 9, 142–143, 177n28 non spatio-temporal, 3, 5, 7 ordering, 5–6, 143, 147, 164 plurality, 4 proportionality, 149 sameness, form of, 4, 17, 143, 147, 149 spheres, 164–165, 172 symmetry, 4, 148 triangularity, form of, 4, 6, 166, 167, 200n13 unity, form of, 4, 10, 149 Form criticism, 8 frames. See under space Freud, Sigmund’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 189n61, 222n114 funeral games, 67 funeral oration, 13, 15, 52, 54, 60, 62, 64, 68, 69, 145, 192n16, 197n68, 197n70 Garden of Memory, 124 gates, 66, 68, 71, 80, 81, 171, 185n20, 197n79, 197n81, 231–232n119 generalship, 146 geomancy, viii, 89, 90, 105 geometric objects, generation of, 6, 7, 167, 178n32, 205n62 Glaucon, 21, 23, 25, 77, 126, 129, 137, 148, 177, 182n82, 201n18, 212n70, 223n130 Glaukos, 158–160, 226n44, 226n45, 227n46 Good, the, viii, 1–2, 10, 70, 83–84, 119–120, 124, 132, 152 Architectonic for dialogues, 1–3, 5, 10, 12, 17, 47, 151, 156, 168

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for republic, 164 for underworld, 164 for universe, 1, 151, 164 as arche¯, 1–4, 11, 75–76, 91, 166 ascent to, 5 as limit, 165 as the beautiful, 2, 108 as the true, 2, 108 battle, 140, 146–149 Becoming and, 5–7, 8, 13, 14, 21, 167 beyond Being, 2–3, 164, 179n47 descent from, 5 ethical principle, 151 Forms, 5, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 17, 70 indivisible, 164 itself, 172 logically prior to forms, 14, 76, 164 non spatio-temporal, 3, 5, 14, 168 nourishes, 165–166 objective structure, 4 One, the, 3–4, 8, 9, 10, 14, 166 order of orders, 3, 76, 164 Plato’s Lecture on, 3, 9 principle of order, 16 vision of, 2–3, 5, 11, 14, 17, 47–49 Gorgias, 16, 25, 26, 30, 49, 62, 69, 78, 138, 144, 158, 160, 163, 184n13, 186n34, 194n44, 196n67, 197n68, 202n38, 215n2, 217n22, 219n55, 220n76, 226n38, 227n46, 228n64, 228n67, 231n119 graphe paranomon, 195n53. See also Trial of Generals graveyard, 15, 17, 66–68, 171 Greek religion, 23, 24, 34, 42, 106, 158, 160, 190n79 Gulf of Corinth, 82 γυμναστικός. See training Hades. See underworld Harmonies, 108, 141, 167 Hellespont, 69, 81 Hephaestus, 206n79

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General Index Heraclitus, 84 flux, 179n40 logos, 179n40 love, 179n40 monism, 23, 176n12 soul, 231n110 strife, 179n40, 223n6 war, 223n6 Hermes, 153, 157, 159, 219n62, 230n98 Hermocrates, 88, 145, 171, 201n24 Hermocrates, 8, 71, 72, 179n39, 200n8 Herodotus’s History, 186n31, 204n53 Hetaira, 52 Hippias Major, 168, 215n2 Hippias Minor, 168 Hippodamus of Miletus, 203n45 history historical criticism, 8 human, 14, 21, 56, 76, 157 in Timaeus-Critias, 15–16, 69, 76 natural, 21, 88, 89, 178n37 hoi polloi, 132 Homer, 14, 145, 198n92, 226n35 Iliad, 95, 105, 140, 207n7, 212n72 Odyssey, 34 Homeric epic, 14 Hymn to Apollo, 36, 111, 211n61, 212n73, 214n108, 214n109 Hymn to Hermes, 188n59 simile, 30 honey, 34, 90, 187n43, 188n59 Bacchae, 188n59 cakes, 39, 42 drink of prophetesses, 35 intoxicant, 188n59, 189n66 preservative, 35 restorative, 35 horse relay race, 23, 27, 28, 183n3 Hygieia, 116, 224n112 hypothetico-deductive, 6 immortality, false, 159 incommensurable, 6, 7, 78, 142, 143, 147, 176n17, 178n29, 229n78

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incompleteness as Platonic device, vii, 8, 18, 73–75, 77, 78, 172, 179n38, 199n1, 201n21 Indefinite Dyad (ἀόpιστος δυάς), 4–5, 7, 149, 164–165 indirect tradition, 176n6 ineffable, 8–9, 78, 139 infinity, great and small, 170 inquiring mode, 135 instructional mode, 125, 128, 129, 132, 133 interlocutor, 8, 74, 88, 122, 123, 129, 132, 137–138, 145, 152, 170–171, 201n21, 223n8 Ion, 197n79 irrational numbers, 176n17, 229n78 Islands of the Blessed, 61, 63 Isocrates’s De Pace, 213n86 Kampfes Lust, 72 katabasis & kathodos, 183, 184n6 καταβὰς εἰς τὸ μαντεῖον, 40 κατέβην. See opening words Kerameikos, ix, 66–67, 69, 198n82, 198n90, 199n98 koinoi topoi. See commonplaces Lacedaemonians. See Spartans Laches, 146, 152, 216n2, 222n121, 224n15 Ladder of Love, 2 Laws, 108, 120–122, 123, 145, 161, 170, 184n17, 215n2, 216n3, 222n117, 223n1, 229n86 Lebadeia, 36 Leibniz, G. W. Monadology, 165, 202n32 Theodicy, 165 life of pleasure, 140, 143, 216n2 liminal settings. See space: liminal liminal state, 189n62 limit, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 32, 77, 91 Calliope, 141, 142–143, 147 Reason, 142, 148, 165, 170, 228n72

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literary criticism, 8 logographic necessity, 117, 182n76, 210n40 Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead, 189n64 lyric poetry, 221n107 Lysias, 43, 67, 123, 124–131, 134, 139, 152, 197n79, 213n86, 223n8 Lysian style, 137 Oration II, 198n84 Lysis, viii, 16, 61–62, 105, 121, 123, 126, 133–134, 168, 169, 211n50, 215n2, 231n118, 231n119 friendship, 133, 139, 219n65 Menexenus, 134 training dialogue, 134–135 madness/mania divine, 44 self control and loss of self-control, 171 types, 44–45, 123, 140, 141, 171, 188, 221n98 mathematics as a hypothetical system, 178n31 melissai. See bees Menexenus, 52, 62, 65, 67 Demophon’s son, character from Lysis, 61, 65, 133–134 Socrates’s son, Menexenus of Alopece, 61, 192n13 Menexenus, 192n12, 192n13, 192n16 anachronism, vii, 54, 60–61, 63–64, 69, 110, 196n67 Aspasia, 52–56, 60–61, 65, 67, 184– 185n17, 191n8, 192n9, 192n16 comic theory, 54 consolatio, 53, 61 dramatic date, 61 funeral oration, 13, 15, 52–54, 60, 62, 64, 67–69, 145, 169, 192n16, 197n68, 197n70 genre, 53–54, 70 history in, 53, 56–57, 57–59, 60, 63–64, 67–69

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palimpsest, 61 parody, 54, 63, 192n16 Pericles’s funeral oration, 192n16 pro patria mori, 62 revisionist history, 192n11 setting of, 65–69; map, 66 Meno, 78, 86, 139, 160, 172–173 metallurgy, viii, 83, 194n38 metals adamant, 85–86 bronze, 68, 83, 86, 102 copper, 83, 84 density, 84, 86 fusible, 84 gold, 84–86, 87 finest, most dense, and uniform, 84, 86 refining, 85–86, 88 iron, 83, 86, 204n56, 219n62 lead, 204n56 mercury, 83–84 birefringence, 83 cinnabar, 83, 84, 87, 204n55, 204n58 mountain copper, 83 oreichalkos, 83 red copper, 83 red mercury ore, 83, 84, 204n58 nickel, 204n56 refining, 8, 85, 148, 194n38, 204n55 rust, 83 slag, 85 smelting, 85 tin, 83 transmutation, 85, 194n38 verdigris, 205n64 water, 84 zinc, 204n56 midwife’s art, 134 mollusk, 140, 144 monism, 85, 176n12, 176n16 μορμολύττηται, 46 Muse of Philosophy. See Calliope muses, 44, 111, 142, 221n107

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General Index music, 108, 110, 111–112, 116, 142–143, 149, 157, 167, 178n32, 211n61, 211n64 mystical gnosis, 45–46 mythos, 1 Myths, 8–9, 11, 14, 16, 17, 30, 55, 56, 75, 89–90, 102, 117, 152, 160–161, 168–169, 171–172, 181n66, 191n90, 191n95, 202n4, 210n40, 221n103 Atlantis, 15, 18, 21, 32, 56, 71, 72, 76–77, 157, 185n17, 193n24, 193n28, 202n37 Chariot Myth, 2, 131, 162, 218n48, 228n64 Eleusinian, 35 eschatological, 226n35 Gorgias, 16, 158 Myth of Er, vii, 2, 14, 24, 34, 45–49, 86, 205n71, 214–215n121, 227n48 doors, 231n119 existential life choices, 48 Myth of Metals, 56, 193n34 Myth of the True Earth, viii, 2, 16, 157–163, 212n70, 226n35, 226n38, 228n64 hierarchical, 163 hollows, 160, 162, 228n65 physicalism in, 163 purification of elements, 163 purification of metals, 163 Pythagoreans of Sicily, 227n57 topography, 16, 227n57 mytho-poetic, 1–2, 168, 203n44 philosophic, 171 Ring of Gyges, 183n4, 184n5 Theseus myth, 157 Mytilene, 59, 194n42, 195n46 narrative, 8, 13, 20, 53, 72, 74, 96, 157, 173, 225n26 frame, 5, 11, 75, 89, 169, 181n56 setting, 5, 75, 13

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sequence, 107, 168 space, vii, 1, 3, 5, 7–8, 10–12, 17, 168 viewpoint, 5, 15, 19, 63, 68, 74–75 natural objects, 7, 10, 32, 34, 91 navarchoi, 59, 196 necromancy, 35, 172 necropolis, 15, 62, 65, 146 Neoplatonic, 77, 177n21, 180n50, 207n95 Nietzsche, Friedrich Ecco Homo, 218n42 The Gay Science, 214n119, 227n47 Twilight of the Idols, 220n80 nymphs, 123–124 Oath of Plataea, 114 objects ideal, 6, 9–10, 13, 36, 162–163, 166, 230n90 mathematical, 6–7, 166–167 physical, 4–5, 6, 7, 9–10, 12–13, 28, 30, 32–33, 36, 91, 151, 164, 166–167, 177n21, 230n90 three-dimensional, 167, 178n30 two-dimensional, 6 olive tree, 55 One, the, 9, 69, 120, 144, 149, 156, 157, 161, 176n15, 178n33, 179n47, 180n50, 223n136, 228n70 as an ethical principle, 4, 147, 164 Being and, 147, 164–167, 177n28, 229n76, 229n82 dimensionless, 166, 170, 202n34 identified with the Good, 3, 7–8, 9, 14 Melissus, unlimited in time and magnitude, 3, 12, 180n50 needs additional principle for differentiation, 165 non-spatio-temporal, 10 not a number, 167, 230n90 Parmenides, 3–4, 12, 76, 165, 176n14, 180n50

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260

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One, the (continued) procession from, 143, 167 Pythagorean, 167, 178n32, 201n21, 206n94, 230n89 undifferentiated, 147 opening, 20, 24, 28, 33, 65, 72, 94, 115, 197n79, 215n2 Crito, 225n26 Laches, 216n2 Phaedrus, 123 Republic, vii, 21, 23, 24, 135, 147, 217n33 Symposium, 170 Theaetetus, 171 words, 19 Oracle of Trophonius, vii, 23, 33, 34, 35–38, 159, 187n42, 187n56, 188n61, 191n90, 197n68, 206n91, 227n46, 230n95, 231n105 Allegory of the Cave, 44–47 Aristophanes, 42 consultation of, 38–42, 188n60 Pausanius’s account, 38–39 Plutarch’s account, 39–41 death and rebirth, 39, 45 homeopathic catharsis, 39, 45, 189n62 incubation, 41 inner chamber, 44 lethe¯, 38 seat of Mnemosyne, 39 sensory deprivation, 189n62 tholos tomb, 35, 45 Orphic, 214n111, 226n35 Panhellenism, 145 pankration. See under wrestling and combat Pannuchis, 23 paradeigmata, 11 Parmenides, dialogue, 9–10, 20, 145, 168, 171 second part, 9, 179n40 as dialectic exercise, 179n39, 180n50 as a reductio ad absurdum, 180n50

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as a reductio of pluralism, 180n50 as a via negativa, 9 Parmenides, fictional character, 180n50 Parmenides, historical figure, 3, 161, 176n14, 176n17, 179n40, 180n50, 202n34, 227n57 Way of Truth, 3 Peloponnesian War. See under wars penteconters. See under ships πέρας. See limit Pericles, 52, 62–63, 78, 87, 185n17, 191n8, 196n67, 201n23, 224n11 citizenship law, 67, 191n7 funeral oration, 52, 54, 60, 62, 65–67, 69, 145, 192n16, 198n83 imperial ambitions, 24, 26, 30–31, 52–53, 67, 78, 193n8 non-presence in Timaeus, 74–75 Periclean policy, 24–27, 113 sons, Paralus and Xanthippus II, 55, 67, 194n44, 202n39 περὶ ϕύσεως tradition, 89, 201n20, 206n84, 206n85 Persia, 54, 69 Persian, 42, 63, 64 Armada, 82 Empire, 63, 76, 116 War (see under wars) Phaedo eschatology, 160 mise-en-scéne, 214n111 opening lines, 94 spherical earth, 161 spherical universe, 161 topography of underworld, 163 World Soul, 87–88, 161 Phaedrus, viii, 17, 43, 123–125, 126–134, 137, 139, 152 Ares-like character, 125 Orpheus, condemnation of, 125 speech in Symposium, 125 Phaedrus, viii, 1–2, 3, 8–9, 16, 17, 20, 67, 75, 110, 117, 119–120,

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General Index 123–126, 129–130, 132, 134, 137, 140–142, 162–163, 171, 175n2, 182n76, 188n61, 190n72, 213n86, 217n26, 218n50, 223n8, 228n64, 231n118 agonistic structure, 120–121, 126–128, 152, 198n93 as wrestling match, 131, 139, 152 Chariot Myth (see under Myths) five round plot structure, 131 palinode (see Phaedrus: recantation) philosophy and rhetoric, 42–44, 52, 149 praise of eros, 131 recantation, 128, 131, 133, 137, 139, 223n8 setting, 197n79 ἔξω τείχους, 123 green world, 124 high noon, 131 Phalerum/Phaleron, 98, 114, 170, 207n4 pharmekon, 160 Philebus, viii, 75, 131, 139, 144, 145, 206n76, 221n101, 221n103, 222n114, 223n136 agonistic structure, 16, 117, 121, 123, 126, 140, 141, 152, 198n93 dating, 140 limit, 141–142, 148, 165 plot as round-robin contest, 131–132, 140, 144, 216n2 Philolaus counter-earth, 228n62 Pythagorean cosmology, 227n57 philosopher-poet/philosopher artist, 1, 2, 4, 10–11, 13, 175n2, 180n52 unmediated noetic visions, 13 philosopher’s return to cave, 2, 5, 24, 33–34, 36, 42, 45, 49, 211n64, 217n33 philosophia perennis, 14 philosophic, 3, 14, 20, 43, 44, 54, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 105, 108, 117,

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261

121–123, 126, 131, 132, 135, 139, 143, 146, 148, 157 discourse, viii, 8, 9, 11, 52, 121, 126, 129, 130, 133–134, 136, 137, 139, 142, 147, 149 education, 36, 214–215n121 friendship, 126, 128, 133–134, 219n65 inquiry, 135, 138 inspiration, 171 life, 15, 46, 95, 130, 142, 144–145, 215n2, 218n50 madness, 140–141 poet, 1, 2–3, 13–14, 36, 47, 171, 181n62, 211n62 Philosophos, 8, 171, 179n39 philosophy, 9, 65, 90, 106–108, 123, 125, 130–131, 134–135, 136, 139, 144, 211n62, 215n2 art of dying, 45–46, 159, 197n68 bacchic frenzy of, 171 cure for Cave, 207n95 music and, 157 Phthia, 94–95, 105, 207n7 Phrynichus (tragedian), 224n10 Pillars of Hercules, 72 Piraeus, ix, 14, 23–24, 28, 45, 49, 79, 80, 81, 94, 96, 98, 103, 185n17, 207–208n13, 210n35, 210n47 as Cave, 31–32, 181n66 as underworld, 24, 32, 183n4 circuit walls, 27, 31, 57, 183n3, 186n28, 197n39 corrupting influence, 26, 32, 78 descent to, 24, 25, 30, 170, 183n3, 184n6 fortification, 23, 26, 28, 63, 81, 185n20, 203n42 grid design, 79, 204n45 harbors, 79, 297n4 map, 29, 48 Mounychia, 28, 185n20 naval base, 18 raids, 187n39

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262

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place, iii, 3, 5, 10–12, 15–16, 18–­20, 34, 45, 65–66, 68, 96, 117, 148, 156, 159, 164, 168, 173, 177n26, 187n43, 189n64, 197n79, 197n81, 203n44. See also topos as “co-primordial with time,” 178n35 thin places, 17 plague, 25, 27, 66, 67, 74, 114, 202n39 πλατάνου, 1, 124 Platonic, 6, 8, 16, 18, 21, 46, 53, 57, 64, 75, 88, 91, 105, 109, 116, 120, 122, 125, 132, 133, 145, 147, 148, 151, 156, 159, 161, 179n38, 192n13, 194n38, 200n16, 206n95, 211n52, 211n60, 222n122, 224n11, 230n90 Academy, 66, 122 corpus, 8, 9, 16, 19–20, 36, 51, 91, 123, 134, 145, 146, 147, 148 dialogue, 1, 11, 13, 75, 96, 105, 134, 136, 154–155, 219n66 eugenics, 85 literary constructions, 210n40 metallurgy, viii, 83 metaphysics, 3, 6, 180n50, 224n20 method, 224n20 myths, 30, 226n35 poesis, 3, 14 proems, 18 reversals, 155 solids, 84, 90–91, 167, 205n66 pleasure, 131, 141, 143–145, 221n96 homeostatic state, 143–144, 188– 189n61, 216n2, 222n114 not limited, 142–143, 147 Phaedrus, dark horse, 131 Philebus Aphrodite Pandemos, 131, 141, 143–144 defeated, 131, 139 life of pleasure vs. life of reason, 140, 143 Republic, unjust man, 131 pluralism, 85, 180

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Plutarch, 189n65 Life of Lycurgus, 219n62 Life of Theseus, 93, 210n35 Moralia: De Genio Socratis, 39–41, 47, 189n64, 191n94 poetry, 1, 3, 14, 106–108, 112, 181n62, 211n62 ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, 6, 73, 215n2, 221n107 comic and tragic poets compared, 156–157, 175n1 point of view, 3 Polemarchus character, 23, 27, 45 historical figure, 27, 146 Pontus. See Hellespont Poros Building, 210n36 Pratinas’s Palaistai, 224n10 presocratics, 3, 89, 91, 176n13 Proclus’s Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, 91, 182n76, 199n4, 201n21, 206n81 prosopopeia, 65, 69 protreptic, 16, 43, 121, 123, 125–126, 128, 131, 134, 136, 152, 171 psychagogia, 42–43, 190n71, 190n72 psychagogue, 43, 47, 62, 159 psychoanalytic theory, 189 Purtaneion, 185n25 Pythagoras, 179n40 Pythagorean, 206n94, 226n35, 226n44, 230n89, 230n92 cosmology, 227n57 derivation of magnitudes, 229n85 doctrine, 206n95 incommensurability of the diagonal, 7, 176n17, 229n78 Indefinite Dyad, 4, 165–166 monad, 76 mystical return to the One, 201n21 number as substance, 201n21, 299–230n87, 230n90

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General Index

procession, 76, 167, 229n87 Pythagoreans, sixth-century, 230n90 Pythagoreans, third-century, 230n90 ratios, 167 sources, 226n35 Tetractys, 167, 178n32, 201n21

Realm of Becoming, 2–4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 19, 21, 36, 48, 73, 74, 76, 88, 119, 141, 149, 151, 157, 158, 166–167, 168, 179n40 battles, 89 disorder, 154, 157 distortion of time and space, 9, 11, 16, 69, 72, 77, 117, 172, 200n13 dreams, 110 Realm of Being, 2, 4, 8, 14, 16, 36, 73, 117, 119, 141–143, 147, 149, 168, 172, 183n4 being and identity, 10 being and unity, 10 changeless, 159, 164 ideal being, 13, 177n21 intelligible realm, 108, 163, 187n48 motionless, 164 Realm of Sensibles. See Realm of Becoming Realpolitik, 20, 73 recollection, 18, 90, 117, 140, 144, 214n121 redaction criticism, 8 red figure pottery, 126 refutative mode, 128, 134–135, 217n22 reincarnation, 34, 41, 47–48, 117, 159, 170, 178n32, 214–215n121, 231n112 remains, 51, 66, 198n94, 213n94 cremation, 51, 198n90, 199n98 Delian, 113, 213n90 disinterment, 158 disrespectful handling of, 68, 113, 158 Republic, vii, viii, 2, 3, 5, 8, 14, 16, 19, 20, 23, 28, 56, 68, 69, 72,

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263

75, 79, 89, 108, 121, 123, 126, 129, 130–132, 134–137, 144, 145, 146, 147–148, 158–159, 160, 162, 163, 168, 171–172, 179n38, 181n66, 183nn4–6, 184n12, 186n31, 191n88, 197n75, 205n71, 214–215n121, 217n33, 218n52, 219n62 Book I, 152, 198n93; Book II, 47, 77, 87, 182n82; Book III, 47, 73, 87; Book IV, 73; Book V, 89; Book VII, 149; Book VIII, 64, 68, 85, 199n103; Book IX, 48, 163; Book X, 47, 228n64, 231n118 composition date, 33 divided line, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 78, 149, 151, 162, 164, 166–168, 172, 178n29, 187n38, 187n48, 230n90 dramatic date, 27, 186n29 first words, 19, 21, 34 ideal city, 17, 20, 76, 77 luxurious city, 26, 32 marriage lottery, 194n36 mathematical education, 73 noble lie, 56, 86, 210n48 philosopher-kings, 146 pleonexia, 77, 114 setting (see under space) Spindle of Necessity, 86, 161 Rheneia, 113 rhetoric, 42–43, 54, 70, 126, 131, 132, 136, 137, 192n12, 196n67, 219n55 ritual, 35, 44, 47, 91, 102, 106, 115, 117, 158, 160, 172, 187n57, 188n59, 189n62, 198n84, 214n111 death and rebirth, 39, 41, 45 theory, 169 time, 169 Sacred Way, 30, 66 Samians, 198n93 Sanctuary of Agra, 124

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General Index

sail analogy, 10 Saronic Gulf, 104, 116, 208n13 Sartre, J. P., Being and Nothingness, 201n23 satyr plays, 152, 156 schlechte Unendlichkeit. See false immortality scholiast, 129–130, 159 Scyros, 213n94 self-knowledge, 46, 64, 137, 139, 188 self-mastery, 130, 131 self-nourishing, 36, 38 setting. See under space Seventh Letter, 9, 210n41 Shakespeare Richard II, 94n37 Romeo and Juliet, 231n110 Sonnets, 112, 212n83 ships angle of attack of the oars, 100 center of gravity, 100 galleys, 93, 98–101, 209n25, 209n27 leather sleeves, 59 night travel, 99, 209n25 oar ports, 59, 100–101 penteconters marines, 100 speed, 98 round ship, 209n27 ship sheds, 80, 81, 99, 204n50 ship-to-ship communication, 195n51 square-rigged vessels, 99 theoric ship (see triaconters: Delias) triaconters Delias, 16, 94, 98, 100, 103–105, 116, 207n4, 209n24 cruising speed, 98 length, 99 maximum speed, 98 oar length, 100–101 outriggers, 101 thole pins, 100–101

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trierarchs, 59 triremes, 15, 63, 81, 87, 195n48, 204n52, 209n30 displacement, 209n28 katastroma, 209n32 marines, 100 oars, 59 oar length, 100, 209n30 Olympias, 99 speed, 98 war galleys, 99, 100–101 long ship, 209n27 ports, 100–101 range, 99 seaworthiness, 59, 100 Shrine of Hestia, 185n25 siege of Athens, 27 of Atlantis, 81–82 of Syracuse, 21 warfare, 26 signaling, 27, 183n3, 208n13 Simile of the Sun and the Good, 2 Simplicius’s Physics, 176n14, 180n50 skopos, 19 Socrates, 102–105, 119 as a second Theseus, 103 as paradigm philosopher, 175 as paradigm philosopher-artist, 2, 4, 175n2 as paradigm wrestler, 121, 123 ἀτοπίαν, 156 bath, 116, 160, 214n111 Bendis and, 24–25 bravery, 21, 155, 224n15 Delia, 112–114, 116 dream(s), 103, 105–111 ἔρως δεινὸς (see Socratic: terrible lust) execution, 103, 114–115, 116–117 Hermetic psychopompos, 159 integrity, 16, 106 Pied Piper of Athens, 227n47

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General Index President of Prytany, 57 prison, 93, 94, 96, 102, 105, 115, 210n36 sign, 105 trial, 21, 94 youth of Athens, 95, 103 Socratic, 25, 47, 53, 114 agon, 132, 152, 171 constancy, 17, 155–156 dialectic, 132, 133–134 divination, 93, 105–106 elenchus, 132 ignorance, 177n22 irony, 125, 177n22 method, 137 mission, 16, 106, 108, 131 Apollonian Delian mission, 110 Apollonian Delphic mission, 95 divine symbol, 105 protreptic, 121–123, 134 self-control, 149 Spartan hound, 180n50 terrible lust, 73 trance, 154, 156, 171, 231n115 true king and savior of Athens, 16 young Socrates, 9 Sophist, 17, 75, 149, 171, 176n14, 176n15, 177n26, 177n28, 179n39, 179n43, 180n47, 181n59, 215n2, 217n27, 223n134 Sophists, 122, 126, 146, 215n2 Sophocles’s Admetus, 224n10 souls, vii, 2, 8, 16, 17, 34, 35, 40–43, 47, 51, 62, 73, 123, 132, 138, 139, 143–144, 149, 155–156, 162–163, 171, 189n64 destiny, 95, 152, 157, 160–162, 197n68, 197n75 ghosts, 42, 61, 158, 196n58, 214n110, 231n112 Heraclitus on, 34, 231n110 incarnate, 158

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models of, 16, 56, 68, 86–87, 132, 164, 170, 181n66 ordered, 4, 164–165, 171, 177n26, 194n38 purification, 88, 159–160 restless souls, 67, 158, 169, 226n39 ἄταφοι, 158 ἄωροι, 158 βιαιοθάνατοι, 158 soul city analogy, 73, 164 twice born deuteropotmos and hysteropotmos, 227n46 winged, 125, 138, 162, 217n26 space, 81, 85, 110, 183n4 as an artifact of the Good, 1, 3, 14–15, 17 Becoming, 5, 9, 13, 15, 74, 77, 108, 110, 147, 167 Being, 12–13, 108 dimensionality, 116, 168 dimensionless, 6–7, 68, 166, 168, 170 divination, 116 dramatic frame, 176n10, 215n2 esoteric conception, vii, 1 historical, vii, 13, 19, 69 ideal, 9–10, 12, 89, 166, 176n15, 200n13 non-hypothetical nature of, 7 non-material, 12 non-representational, 12 non-spatio-temporal, 7, 164, 168 inner, 170 interdimensionality, viii, 14, 167– 168, 228n60 liminal, 168, 171 battlefields, 152 cave, 117, 171 courtrooms, 17 crossroads, 231n119 doors, 231n119 festivals, 17, 168–169 gates, 231n199

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266

General Index

space, liminal (continued) graveyards, 69 outdoors, 118 prisons, 17 Trophonium, 168 underworld, 170 wrestling arenas, 152 mythic, 75, 169 narrative, vii, 1, 3, 7–8, 11, 13, 75, 168 noetic, 7, 170 numinous, 45, 168, 230n95 Parmenidean, 161 physical, vii, 10–12, 13, 32, 166, 200n13 geometric solids, 166 Platonic conception, 166 Psychic, 32 Pythagorean model of generation, 161 theory, 165–166 receptacle, the, 11–12, 166 as an indefinite plastic substratum, 12 third kind of thing, 11–12, 180n55 understood by a bastard sort of reasoning, 181n61 sacred and profane, 15, 16–17, 231n105 setting, 1, 6, 75, 126, 147, 152, 155, 157, 168, 171–173 Academy, 66, 105, 122, 215n2 Charmides, 219n62, 215n2 Euthydemus, 198n93, 215n2 Lyceum, 105, 122, 215n2 Lysis, 105, 133, 168, 215n2, 231n119 Menexenus, 14–16, 17, 20, 21, 65, 67, 68–70, 145, 168–169, 181n67, 182n84, 231n119 mise en scène, 18, 214n111 Palaestra of Mikkon, 215n2 Phaedo, 169–170 Phaedrus, 123–124

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Republic, 27, 28, 135 Symposium, 230n97, 231n118, 231n119 Theaetetus, 215n2 theme, 75 Timaeus, 69–70, 74, 89, 169 spatial images/eikones, 10 spatialization of forms/Good, 74, 164, 172 “projects badly,” 178n29 two-dimensional, 6, 12 three-dimensional, 6, 12 space-time/spatio-temporal, 1 as ideal, 7, 13 naturalistic ideas of, 7, 11, 13 Sparta, 26, 56–57, 59, 63, 69, 115– 116, 128, 145 Spartans, 26, 27, 57, 59, 82, 114, 138, 180n50, 183n3, 195n46, 196n56, 202n37, 203n42, 217n38 specific topics, 15, 182n69 spring(s), 38 Asclepieion, 117, 214n115 cold, 57 hot, 57 temperate, 57 square roots, 7 stadia, 219n64 Statesman, 8, 85, 86, 179n39, 205n64, 206n76, 212n70 statues Agalma, 153 Daidalos, 38 Hermes, 153, 157 Silenus, 155, 225n28, 228n65 Strabo, Geographica, 199n4 Strait of Gibraltar. See Pillars of Hercules Strategoi. See Athenian generals sub specie aeternitatis, 63 Sunium, 231n119 Cape, 94, 99, 102–104, 210n35 distance from Athens, 96, 98, 207–208n13

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General Index Legrena Bay, 209n24 road to Athens, 97–98 Ruins at Sunium, The, 208n14 temple of Poseidon, 208n14 Symposium, 1, 2, 75, 125, 151, 152, 153, 155, 159, 162, 168, 223n133, 231n115 Agathon, 224n9, 225n33, 162 agonistic structure, 16, 121, 152, 156 Alcibiades, 153, 155–156, 162 ascent passages, 2, 170–171 circle of the same, 151, 156, 171–172 Dionysian festival, 225n33, 230n97 dramatic date, 145, 153 Dionysia in 416 BCE, 153 Syracuse expedition, 153 gate crashing, 156 Hermocopidae, 153–154 Good, the, 17, 157 opening lines, 170 order of speeches, 76, 156, 175n1, 225n30 plot, 20, 153 position of speakers, 225n30 relationship of tragedy and comedy, 156–157 Socrates, 168, 170 turning point, 154 Taoism, 225n26 Teichı´on. See walls: little wall from Republic Thanatopsis, 93 Theaetetus, 109, 205, 215n2 Theaetetus agonistic structure, 73, 122–123, 127, 128–129, 152 frame of, 215n2, 216n2 opening lines, 171 Thebes, 71 Themistocles, 25, 26, 30–31, 78, 194n44, 202n39, 224n11 theomachy, 16, 117

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Theophrastus, 83 De Ventis, 103, 210n42, 210n43 Metaphysics, 176n18, 229n79 On Weather Signs, 210n42 Peri Lithos, 83, 204n55, 205n59, 205n61 Thera, 71 Theseus, 111, 138, 207n4 Aegeus’s suicide, 210n35 labyrinth, 111 Minotaur, 103, 210n40 mission, 16, 94–95, 98, 102, 106–107 myth, 157 remains, 213n94 ship, 93 white sail, 95, 102 Thetis, 110, 207n7, 212n72 theurgy, 91, 207n95 Third Remove, 3, 6, 13 third kind of thing. See under space: receptacle, the Thirty, the, 27, 57, 64, 69 Thrace allies of Athens, 24 Bendis cult, 24–25 Thrasyllus, 20, 134 Thrasymachus’s definition of justice, 121, 136, 154 tidal waves, 213n97 Tiefenpsychologie, 188n61 Timaeus atemporal perspective, 69, 74, 77 composition date, 74 cosmogony, 14, 76, 89, 164 cosmology, 143, 161, 205n66, 227–228n59 dramatic date, 74, 199n1, 201n25 frame, 199n1 genealogy, 75, 90 geophysical explanation, 76 geopolitical account, 76 Hermocrates, 74, 88, 145, 171 incompleteness in, viii, 8, 73–75, 77–78

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268

General Index

Timaeus (continued) likely story, 164, 229n87 Leibnizian Principles: best of all possible worlds, 165; principle of compossibility, 76–77, 202n33; principle of identity, 165; principle of simplicity, 202n33; principle of sufficient reason, 202n32 missing interlocutor, 8, 74, 171, 201n21 Proœmium, 75, 202n28 time, 1, 3, 5–7, 9, 10–13, 14–16, 17–19, 24, 63, 64, 68–69, 72, 74, 75, 77, 89, 105, 108, 110, 116, 147, 157, 164, 167, 168, 169–173, 176n15, 178n35, 180n50, 183n4, 193n24, 194n36, 199n105, 200n13, 230n95 eternal present, 169 moving image of eternity, 74, 168 mythic, 169 topoi eidoi. See specific topics topology, 14 topos, 178n35 training (γυμναστικός), 134–135 trees plane tree, 1, 124, 175n2 Zeus’s oak at Dodona, 124 triaconters. See under ships Trial of Generals, 195n52, 196n67 triremes. See under ships Trophonium. See under divination: oracular sites Trophonius, vii, ix, 35, 36, 37, 38–41, 42, 45, 47, 159, 187n56, 188n60, 191n90, 227n46, 230n95 Tübingen school, 4, 164–165, 178n33 turned to philosophy. See protreptic underworld. See also afterworld bilocation or multilocation, 68 crossroads, 153, 171, 231n119 dimensionless, 68

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gates, 68, 197n81, 232n119 geography, 161, 163, 170 Gorgias, 16, 144, 158, 163, 197n68, 226n38, 227n46, 228n64, 228n67, 231n119 judges, 227n46 portals, 68, 172, 232n119 topographies, 16, 144, 160, 162– 163, 215n121, 227n57 unitarian reading, 19, 145, 179n38 unwritten teachings/doctrines, 9, 12, 229n85 Upanishads, 223n1 ὑφηγητικός. See instructional mode Vico, Giambattista, The New Science, 203n44 walls, 18, 25, 26, 32, 33, 45, 48, 63, 123, 203n48, 204n53 archaic wall of Ur-Athens, 202n40 as limits, 18 Athens’ rebuilding of, 26, 187n39 cave wall, 32, 45–46 circuit walls, 31 Athens, ix, 14, 18, 183n3, 185n17, 197n79 Atlantis, viii, 1, 15, 18, 185n17, 202n40 Kononian, 186n28 Themistoclean, 28, 80, 186n28 Ur-Athens, 18 circumvallation of Athens, 185n20 crenellations, 28 curtain wall, 28, 79 length in Athens, 26–27 little wall from the Republic, 18 (see also walls: low wall of Cave; Athens: Ur-Athens: small garden wall) Long Walls Athens, vii, ix, 14, 23, 26–28, 30–32, 57, 63, 183n3, 185n18, 187n39

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General Index fortified, 63 Nisaea, 26 road, 32, 80–81 low wall of Cave, 28, 30, 32, 162 (see also walls: little wall from the Republic; Athens: Ur-Athens: small garden wall) map, 48 Middle Wall, 31, 186n34 North Long Wall, 186n34 old walls, 26 parapet, 79, 186n31 parodos, 28, 30 Phaleric Wall, 186n34 Piraeus circuit wall, 23, 26, 27–28, 57, 185n20, 186n28, 187n39, 203n42 Piraeus-Mounychia circuit, 185n20 roof, 203n50 Themistoclean cross wall, 28, 186n28 ramparts, 30, 186n31 screen wall, 79 South Long Wall, 186n34 wars, 54 Corinthian War, 21, 26, 52–53, 60, 62–63, 64, 67, 69, 115, 145, 168, 198n84 Peloponnesian War, vii, 16, 18, 19, 23–24, 26–­27, 28, 30, 33, 52, 53, 56–57, 60, 63, 64, 67, 68–69, 74, 76, 113–115, 145–146, 153, 168, 184n14, 185n20, 186n28, 186n29, 191n8, 194n41, 195nn48–54, 195–196n55, 196n56, 187n71, 187n73, 198n84, 203n41, 203n42, 212n77, 222n117 Persian Wars, 31, 54, 64, 68, 79, 82, 114, 145, 202n37, 214n102, 222n117 winds, 59, 94, 96, 102, 209n24 anthropomorphic, 102

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Boreas, 103, 124 divine, 102–103, 116 will, 103 sign, 103 Etesians, 98–99, 103–104, 208n19, 208n21, 209n24 Kaikias, 103 local winds (see winds: sea breeze) meltemi, 98 mythological, 102 prodromoi, 99 sea breeze, 103 Tower of Winds, 102, 210n36 winged erotes, 125, 126 World Soul, 87–88, 161 wrestling and combat, xi, 16, 119–138 aesthetic dimension, 120 Alcibiades wrestles Socrates, 130 all-in, 120 allusions, 16, 121–122 art, 125, 130, 132, 135, 148–149 as a spatial model, 16 brutality, 216n5 cheating, 129, 132, 216n5 competition, 125–126, 130, 142, 144, 152, 162 cooperative, 133, 135–136, 138 destructive, 136 play, 16, 124, 125, 127, 137, 220n82 deceit, 132, 138 dialectic and, 120 authentic, 121 exercise, 75, 179, 180n50 fair exchanges, 121 logomachy, 73, 117, 125, 140 dramatic frame, 121 educational dimension, 120–121 enactment, viii, 18, 117, 126, 133, 219–220n66 philosophic dialectic, 117 philosophic friendship, 219n65 eros/Eros, 126–127, 130–131, 135, 137 ethical dimension, 120

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General Index

wrestling and combat (continued) fair, 120–121, 125, 135 contest, 134 counter-hold, 127 equal (ὁμοίας), 127, 129 equally matched, 134 holds, 123 Nietzsche, F., 218n42 restarts, 120, 125 sportsmanship, 216n5 starting positions, 123 τὴν αὐτὴν λαβὴν, 129 (see also wrestling and combat: fair: restarts) tripping, 120, 217n40 unfairness, 119, 121–122, 129 fall, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 138, 216n5 feints (see wrestling and combat: deceit) Good, the, 120, 121–122, 132, 140, 147, 148–­149 Greco-Roman style, 120 ground, ἁλίνδεσις, 16, 121 gymnasia, 17, 105, 122, 133, 126, 215n2, 216n5, 219n62 Academy, 122 Athenian palaestrae, 216n5 Cynosarges, 122 Lyceum, 122, 215n2 Palaestra Goddess, 219n62 Palaestra of Mikkon, 215n2 wrestling school, 133, 216n5,  219n62 setting Charmides, 215n2, 219n62 Euthydemus, 126, 198n93, 215n2 Lysis, 126 Theaetetus, 126 hierarchy of forms of, 16, 120–121 loving struggle, 138, 220n86 metaphors, 122 nakedness, 138

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Olympian Zeus, 130 Olympic, 216n5 heavy events, 218n50 victory, 130, 218n52, 219n55 ὀρθὴ πάλη (see wrestling and combat: trope: upright) παιδιοτρίβης (see wrestling and combat: wrestling master) περιτροπή (see wrestling and combat: reversal of form) Palaestra (see wrestling and combat: gymnasia) pankration, 16, 121 lion, 220n71 proscribed from the ideal state, 121 sophistry and pankration, 122 submission, 121 Thrasymachus’ definition of justice and pankration, 136– 137, 154, 220n72 useless, 121 passages, 215n2 philosophical dimension, 121 Plato Ariston, 122 Isthmian Games, 122 robust figure, 122 practical dimension, 120 martial skills, 120 war, 145–149 reversal of form, 136 rounds, 122, 130–131 self-control, 149, 219n62 self-revelation, 217n33 Socrates fencing-master, 220n80 wrestling master, 123, 125 Socratic protreptic, 121, 134 standing (see wrestling and combat: trope: upright) terminology, 215n2 throw, 120, 122, 128, 137, 139, 218n51, 218n52 trial by combat, 105

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General Index trickery (see wrestling and combat: deceit) tripping, 119 (see also wrestling and combat: fair) hank, 120 σφάλλῃ, σφάλματα, 119, 129 trope, 137 upright, 120 women, 219n62 wrestling master, 123

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271

wrestling school (see wrestling and combat: gymnasia) Xenophon, 33, 57, 63, 188, 194n44, 201n24, 211n54 Hellenika, 197n72 Memorabilia, 208n21 ζητητικός. See inquiring mode Zoster, promontory, 208n13

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Index of Names

Achilles, 95, 105, 207n7 Adeimantus, 126, 137 Adonis, 222n113 Aeacus, 227n46 Aegeus, 102, 105 Aeneas the Tactician, 183n3 Aeschylus, 42, 158 Agamemnon, 95 Agathe Tyche, 38–39 Agathon, 152–154, 156–157, 162, 223–224n9 Agathos Daimon, 38–39 Aglauros, 184n4 Ahrensdorf, Peter J., 146, 222n122 Alcetis, 125 Alcibiades, 17, 31, 74–75, 126, 130, 145–146, 151–157, 159, 160, 162, 168, 170 Allen, Reginald E., 51, 60 Anaxagoras, 226n35 Anaximander, 227n57 Annas, Julia, 159 Antaeus, 121, 138 Antalcidas, 63 Anytus, 78, 139 Aphrodite, viii, 44, 126, 131, 139, 147, 221n96, 221n103, 222n113 Ourania, 140–144 Pandemos, 140–144, 184n4 Apollo, 36, 38, 44, 94, 106, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115

Apollodorus, 170 Archelaus, 196n67, 226n35 Archinus, 67 Ares, 125 Arieti, James A., 207n7 Aristodemus, 154 Ariston, the Argive wrestler, 122 Aristophanes, 1, 33, 42, 43, 47, 52, 152, 156–157 Aristotle, 3, 9, 12, 51, 57, 72, 77–78, 152, 154–155, 166, 170, 176n13, 223–224n9 Aristoxenus, 3, 9 Arnold, Irene Ringwood, 111 Artemis, 111, 184n12 Asclepius, 111, 115–116 Asmis, Elizabeth, 42–43 Asmonti, Luca A., 195n52 Aspasia, 52–53, 54, 55–56, 60, 65, 67 Athena, 25, 55, 70, 73, 148 Athenian Stranger, 19, 85, 88 Austin, J. L., 220n66 Bäck, Allen, 215n1 Bacon, Francis, 32–33, 75 Beck, Martha, 146 Belfiore, Elizabeth, 160 Bendis, 24, 25, 28, 148, 184n12 Benitez, E., 228n72 Bernardete, Seth, 70 Bisset, Miriam, 112

273

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274

Index of Names

Bloedow, Edmund, 53 Bloom, Alan, 24–25, 38 Bonnechere, Pierre, 234 Boreas, 103, 124 Borimir, Jordan, 94, 113 Brill, Sara, 16 Broneer, Oscar, 184n4 Brumbaugh, Robert, 20, 86, 177n29 Bryant, William Cullen, 93 Burger, Ronna, 96, 210n40 Burkert, Walter, 45 Burnet, John, 226n35 Butcher, S. H., 154, 225n23 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 208n14 Caley, Earle R., 84, 204n55 Calliope, 110, 140–144, 147, 148 Callixeinus, 60 Camp, John M., 183n4, 198n84 Carter, Michael, 117, 169 Cartledge, Paul, 115 Casson, Lionel, 99 Cebes, 40, 88 Cephalus, 27, 45 Cercyon, 120 Charmides, 146 Charon, 95 Chroust, A. H., 134 Cimon, 25, 30, 78 Clay, Diskin, 1, 19, 21, 83, 158–159, 182n76, 228n64 Cleary, J. J., 205n62 Cleophantus, 202n39 Cleophon, 196n56 Clinias, 88 Clito, 52, 70, 79 Coates, John F., 98 Collins, Susan, 53, 192n11 Connelly, Joan, 184n4 Conon, 63 Conwell, David H., 185n18 Cook, A. B., 45 Cooper, John M., 95 Cooper, Lane, 182n69

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Cornford, F. M., 30, 73, 85, 86, 88, 165–166, 201n18 Coutant, Victor, 98–99, 103 Coventry, Lucinda, 52, 54, 64 Craig, Leon Harold, 17, 147, 148, 185n21 Critias, 72, 76, 81 Crito, 46, 93–96, 102, 104–105, 116 Crooks, J., 115 Daidalos, 38 Dareios, 42 Davidson, James, 113 Dean-Jones, Lesley, 53, 62 Delf, Brian, 183n3 Demeter, 35, 38 Demetrius of Phaleron, 94 Democritus, 84, 85 De Sulla Price, Derek, 102 De Vries, G. J., 130, 218n52 Dicaearchus, 122 Diels-Kranz, 176n12 Diodorus Siculus, 210n35 Diogenes Laertius, 122, 134 Dion, 67 Dionysius of Syracuse, 210n41 Dionysodorus, 122, 126 Dionysus, 44, 116 Diotima, 154 Dodds, Eric Robertson, 44 Dorter, Kenneth, 56, 123–124 Dreisbach, Christopher, 108–110 Dunn, Francis M., 175n3 Echecrates, 94, 96, 98 Edmonds, Radcliffe G., 157–158, 160, 162–163, 226n35 Eichenlaub, Val L., 98–99, 103 Elderkin, G. W., 188n59 Eleatic visitor, 17 Else, Gerald F., 154 Empedocles, 84 Epikrates, 197n79 Er, 159, 191n90

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Index of Names Erato, 221n107 Eros, 44 Eryximachus, 156 Euclid, 1, 178n34, 230n91 Euclides, 169, 171, 181n56 Euripides, 48–49, 62 Europe (Demeter), 35, 38 Eusebius, 226n45 Euthydemus, 122, 126, 129 Euthyphro, 177n22 Everett, Edward, 51 Faraclas, N., 187n49, 187n52 Fendt, 181n66 Ferrari, G. R. F., 175n2 Fields, Nic, 183n3, 195n47, 197n72 Fletcher, A. C., 88 Foley, Vernon, 208n15 Frank, Jill, 147–148 Frede, Dorothea, 221n96 Freud, Sigmund, 222n114 Friedländer, Paul, 160–161 Frutiger, Perceval, 163, 226n35 Furley, David J., 161 Gaiser, Konrad, 179n42 Gallop, David, 226n36 Gardiner, E. Norman, 120 Garland, Robert, 24, 26, 28, 186n28, 203n42 Garvey, Tom, 79 Geier, Alfred, 124 Gerson, Lloyd P., 228n70 Giannopoulou, Zina, 169 Gill, Christopher, 202n37 Gill, Mary Louise, 179n31, 180n50 Glaucon, 21, 25, 77, 126, 129, 137, 148, 212n70 Glaukos, 158–160, 226n45 Gonzalez, Francisco J., 133, 219n66 Gorgias, 30–31 Graham, Daniel W., 161 Grammer, J., 188n59 Green, W. M., 221n90

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275

Grube, G.M.A., 25, 30, 33 Grundy, G. B., 208n15 Gudeman, Alfred, 190n72 Gulick, Charles, 207n13 Guthrie, W. K. C., 45, 184n12 Hackforth, R., 158, 161, 169–170, 227n57 Hale, John, 58, 59, 209n34 Halfwessen, Jens, 179n47 Hamel, Debra, 195n53 Hamilton, Walter, 127 Hampton, Cynthia, 5, 165 Hanson, Victor Davis, 59 Hecate, 34 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 159 Helmbold, W. C., 139 Hephaestos, 73 Hera, 38 Heracles, 138 Heraclitus, 23, 84, 85, 88 Hermes, 157, 159 Hermocrates, 74, 88, 145, 171 Herodotus, 186n31, 204n53 Herrmann, F. G., 121, 122–123, 127, 136 Hesiod, 36 Hippocrates, 123 Hippodamus of Miletus, 203n45 Hippolytus, 23 Hipponicus, 204n55 Hippothales, 133–134 Holther, W. B., 139 Homer, 34, 95, 111, 145 Horky, Phillip S., 229n86 Hornblower, Simon, 113–114, 213n96 Howland, Jacob, 8, 179n38, 182n76 Huby, Pamela, 194n41 Hughes, Bettany, 187n82 Humphrey, Fred, xi, 199n97, 211n64 Hunt, Peter, 195n52 Hunter, Virginia, 210n36 Hutchinson, D. S., 187n54 Hygieia, 116

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276

Index of Names

Hyland, Drew, 11, 178n35 Isocrates, 33, 113 Jacob, 217n33 Jacoby, Felix, 67–68 Jaspers, Karl, 14, 138, 220n83, 220–221n86 Johnston, Sarah Iles, 198n90 Kagan, Donald, 26 Kahn, Charles, 51, 52, 54, 62, 192n16 Kalkavage, Peter, 73 Kallias, 204n55 Kamerbeek, J., 225n23 Kerch, Charles M., 54, 191n8, 193n18 King Minos, 19 Kingsley, Peter, 227n57 Kirk, G. S., 167 Klein, Jacob, 210n40 Kouretas, D., 189n62 Krämer, Hans Joachim, 4, 165, 172, 228n70, 229n78, 229n81, 232n121 Kramer, Scott, 207n7 Kronos, 38 Kyle, Donald G., 122 Laches, 146, 153, 168 Lachterman, David, 150 Lampert, Laurence, 74–75 Landels, J. G., 208n17 Lännström, Anna, 211n58 Lebeck, Anne, 218n48, 220n82 Lee, Desmond, 80, 81–82, 200n8 Leibniz, G. W., 77, 165, 202n32 Leon of Salamis, 57 Leto, 111 Leucippus, 84 Liddell, Henry, 186n31, 190n72, 190n86, 217n31, 218n49, 221n87 Lloyd, G. E. R., 76–77 Long, Christopher, 53 Loraux, Nicole, 61, 193n33, 196n59

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Lorenzi, Rosella, 204n56 Lowenstam, Steven, 175n1 Lucas, D. W., 42 Luce, John, 72, 81–82, 108 Lucian, 189n64 Lycurgus, 219n62 Lysias, 43, 67, 124–128, 130–131, 134, 137, 152 Lysis, 123, 133–134, 139 Mahoney, Paul, 54, 55 Márquez, Xavier, 88 Marrin, Brian, 178n36 Marsyas, 170 Mayor, Adrienne, 188n59 McAlister, Caroline, 215n1 McCoy, James W., 194n42 McPherran, Mark, 105–106 Melissus, 3, 12, 180n50 Menexenus, 52, 133–134 Menexenus of Alopece, son of Socrates, 61–62, 192n13, 196n62 Menexenus of Athens, son of Demophon, 52, 61–62, 65, 67, 214n109 Meno, 86, 172 Mercutio, 231n110 Merzbach, Uta, 178n31 Miller, Dana, 11–12, 166 Miller, Mitchell, 180n50 Minos, 19 Moes, Mark, 127 Momigliano, Arnaldo, 72, 185n17 Monson, Sara S., 192n16 Morrison, J. S., 101 Morton, Jamie, 102, 104, 209n24 Most, Glenn, 115 Moutsopoulos, Evanghelos, 190n72 Naddaf, Gerard, 73, 89 Nails, Debra, 27, 153 Neath, 88 Nehamas, Alexander, 211n61, 221– 222n107

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Index of Names Nicias, 146 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 214n119, 218n42, 220n8 Nikulin, Dmitri, 4, 165, 170 Nilsson, Martin P., 190n79 Noble, Joseph, 102 Odysseus, 34 Ogden, Daniel, 35, 68, 168 Oliphant, Margaret, 208n14 Olympiodorus, 182n76 Oreithyia, 124–125 Orpheus, 125 Ostwald, Martin, 198n88 Otto, Isabel-Dorothea, 20 Padel, Ruth, 231–232n119 Palaestra, 219n62 Pan, 183n4 Panayotatou, Angelica, 116–117 Pangle, Thomas, 19 Pappas, Nickolas, 55, 68, 178n34, 199n103 Paralos, 67, 202n39 Parke, H. W., 111 Parmenides character, 9, 10, 161, 180n50 historical figure, 3 Patterson, Richard, 10, 13, 123, 215n2 Pausanius, 38–39, 41, 188n59 Pease, M. Z., 184n4 Peisistratos, 111, 113 Penelope, 34 Pericles, 24–27, 30–31, 52–53, 54, 55, 60, 62–63, 65–67, 74–75, 78, 113, 145, 185n17, 191n8, 196n67, 201n23, 224n11 Pericles II (Young Pericles), 67 Persephone, 35, 40 Petermandl, Werner, 215n2, 218n43 Phaedo, 94, 96 Phaedrus, 17, 123–128, 131, 132, 134, 137, 139, 152 Pharnabazus, 63

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277

Philebus, 126, 131 Philip, J. A., 229n85, 229n86, 229– 230n87 Philolaus of Croton, 227n57, 228n62 Philostratos, 219n62 Phryincus, 224n10 Planeaux, Christopher, 74–75, 105, 168, 230n98, 230n100 Plant, Ian Michael, 52 Plugge, P. C., 188n59 Plutarch, 39–41, 47, 93 Polemarchus character, 23, 27, 45 historical figure, 27, 146 Poliakoff, Michael B., 121, 130, 216n5, 218n51, 220n71 Polycrates, 111 Poseidon, 55, 70, 79–80, 105 Pownall, Frances, 54, 196n62 Pratinas, 224n10 Press, Gerald A., 154, 219n66 Proclus, 18, 91, 182n76, 199n4, 201n21, 206n81, 206nn93–95 Protagoras, 122, 123, 134 Protarchus, 131, 139–141 Pythagoras, 84 Queen Mab, 231n110 Raubitschek, A. E., 213n87 Raven, J. E., 167 Reeve, C. D. C., 13, 153–154, 156 Reid, Heather, 215n2 Rhadamanthus, 227n46 Richards, John F. C., 204n55 Rinella, Michael, 189n66 Roochnik, David L., 211n60 Rorty, A. O., 107, 109, 212n66 Rosenstock, Bruce, 60–61, 62, 68, 69, 196n58, 197n68, 197n70 Rosivach, Vincent, 55 Rowe, C. J., 218n50 Rucker, Darnell, 1 Runia, David, 75–76

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278

Index of Names

Russo, Lucio, 230n91 Sachs, Joe, 176n15 Salkever, Stephen, 53, 192n12 Sartre, J. P., 201n23 Scanlon, Thomas F., 126–127 Schachinger, Ursula, 218n43 Schacter, Albert, 36 Schmalz, Geoffery C. R., 185n25 Schofield, Malcolm, 167 Sciron, 138 Scott, Robert, 186n31, 190n72, 190n86, 217n31, 218n49, 221n87 Scranton, Robert L., 185n20, 186n27, 186n28 Searle, John, R., 220n66 Seery, John, 181n66, 183n4, 185n23 Sextus Empiricus, 136 Shakespeare, William, 112, 194n37, 231n110 Shelmerdine, Susan C., 111 Sider, David, 152, 156 Silenus, 155 Simmias, 46 Simplicius, 176n14, 180n50 Sinaiko, H. L., 30 Soedel, Werner, 201n15 Sophocles, 224n10 Speusippus, 229n85 Stauffer, Devin, 53, 192n11 Steel, Sean, 183n4 Stern, H. S., 196n58 Stewart, Douglas J., 214n111 Stoneking, Carole, 215n1 Strabo, 199n4 Strauss, Barry, 63, 100, 195n48 Strauss, Leo, 15, 18, 207n7 Strepsiades, 42 Szlezák, Thomas, 2, 149, 166 Tarrant, Harold, 18–19, 91, 206n94, 207n95 Taylor, A. E., 74, 201n24 Terpsichord, 221n107

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Theaetetus character, 109, 122, 126, 129, 178n31 historical figure, 169, 178n31, 205n66, 224n11 Themistocles, 25, 26, 30–31, 78 Theodorus of Cyrene, 7, 127–128, 138, 217n38 Theophrastus, 83, 103, 204n55 Theramenes, 59, 60 Theseus, 16, 93, 95, 98, 102, 103, 106, 111, 138 Thetis, 110 Thoreau, Henry David, 71 Thrasybulus, 59, 60, 63 Thrasymachus, 121, 126, 132, 135– 137, 154 Thucydides, 24, 33, 54, 65, 67, 111, 113, 114, 185n20, 193n18 Timaeus, 10, 74, 76, 88, 164 Timarchus, 40–41 Tindale, Christopher, 133, 139 Triptolemos, 159 Trivigno, Franco, 54 Trophonius, 35–40, 45–46, 159, 191n90 Tsitsiridis, Stavros, 65, 67–68 Typho, 125, 188n61 Urania, 142, 221n107 Ustinova, Yulia, 187n53, 189n62 Vallas, E., 187n52 Vico, Giambattista, 203n44 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre, 74 Voegelin, Eric, 23–24, 34, 183n4 Wallert, Arie, 204n58 Waterfield, Robin, 196n67 Welliver, Warman, 199n1 West, Grace Starry, 95, 207n10 West, Thomas G., 95, 207n10 Williams, R. T., 209n32 Willmont, H. P., 202–203n41

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Index of Names Winter, Frederick E., 185n20 Woodruff, Paul, 211n61, 221– 222n107 Wooley, Peter, 203n41 Wycherley, R. E., 197n79 Xanthippus, 67 Xanthippus II, 202n39 Xenocrates, 229n86

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279

Xenophon, 33, 57, 63, 208n21 Yalouris, Nicolaos, 218n50 Young Pericles (Pericles II), 67 Zelcer, Mark, 55, 68, 199n103 Zeno, 3, 180n50 Zeus, 19, 38, 72, 124, 130, 170 Zuckert, Catherine, 145, 222n117

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Index Locorum

Aeneas the Tactician On the Defense of Fortified Positions Book VI, 44–46: 183n3 Aeschylus Persians 78–79: 42 Aetius I, 3, 8 (DK58 B15): 167 Aristophanes Acharnians 516–539: 52 Birds 1553–1564: 189n67 1555: 43 Clouds 506 ff.: 42, 43, 47 901: 136 Wasps 1076: 55 Aristotle Constitution of Athens 34 1–2: 57, 195n55–56 De Caelo 295b 10 ff.: 227n57 De Divinatione Per Somnum 462b 19–23: 211n54 463a 32–463b 2: 211n54 463b 12–15: 211n54 Metaphysics 986a 21 f.: 206n94

987b 23–35: 176n18 990b 2–991a 8: 176n18 992a 20–22: 166 1078b 34–1079b 3: 176n18 Nicomachean Ethics 1100a 18–21: 198n88 Physics 203a 15–16: 170 209b: 9 209b 11–15: 12 209b 15: 9 Poetics 1447b 11: 155 1450a 9–10: 232n120 1451b 11–12: 181n62 1452a: 154 1452a 2–6: 155 1452a 20–21: 155 1452a 22–24: 154 1452a 32: 155 1453a 13–15: 155 1453a 30–39: 155 1454b 3: 152 1454b 7: 152 1456a 9: 154 1456a 16–20: 223–224n9 Rhetoric 1367b 8: 51 1395b–1396b: 182n69 1415b 3: 51

281

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282 Bacon, Francis Advancement of Learning Book II: 187n37 New Atlantis: 75 Novum Organum Book I: 32, 44–45 Diodorus Siculus Library of History 4.61.4: 210n35 Diogenes Laertius frag. 45, IX: 7, 231n110 III.4: 122 Euclid Elements: 178n34 1 Def. 1: 13 Euripides Ion 589 ff.: 55 Genesis 32–33: 217n33 Heraclitus frag. 60: 23 Herodotus 1.179: 186n31 3.54: 186n31 7.225: 81–82, 204n53 Hesiod frag. 245: 36 Theogony 80 ff.: 221–222n107 Hippolytus Refutations IX 10, 4: 23 Homer Iliad Book IX 363: 95, 105 Book XVIII 70 ff.: 207n7 Odyssey Book XXIII 252–3: 34

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Index Locorum Homeric Hymn to Apollo 1. 146–164: 211n61 1. 147: 110 1. 147–164: 212n73 1. 156–161: 111 l. 165–172: 112 l. 295–297: 36 Homeric Hymn to Hermes: 188n59 Horace Odes III. 2.13: 62 Isocrates 8.49: 55 12.124–125: 55 Parmenides frag. 8.42: 3 frag. 8.42–44: 189n50 Pausanius Description of Greece 9.39.5–14: 39 9.40.1–2: 188n59 Philolaus of Croton frag. 7: 227n57 Plato Alcibiades I 118d–119a: 202n39 134b: 31–32, 184n17 Apology 19b: 40–41 24b–c: 95 28c2–d5: 207n7 29a–b: 46 32a–e: 57 32b: 58–59, 195n55 32d: 57 33c4–8: 106 33c8: 106 36d: 219n55 39a–b: 46 41a: 159 41a–c: 199n105 41e: 62

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Index Locorum Axiochus 367c: 36 Charmides 155d: 219n62 Cratylus 400d–401a: 221n96 Critias 108c–d: 71 108e: 71 111a–b: 90 111b: 90 111b–c: 187n43 111c: 90 112b: 79 112c: 87 112d: 188n57 113c–114c: 193n24 113e: 79, 80 114e: 87 115c: 80–81 115d: 83 115e: 80–81 116a: 81, 185n17, 202n40, 203n48 116a–b: 83 116b: 83 116c: 83 116c–117a: 87 117a–b: 188n57 117c: 185n17, 203n48 119b: 87 119b–c: 77 121c: 72, 75 144a–f: 79 Crito 43a: 225n26 43d: 94, 104 44: 107 44a: 107 44a–b: 94 44a5–b4: 106 44b: 94–95, 212n70 46b: 106 46c: 46

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283

46d–e: 106 48a–b: 106 48e: 106 50a–51c: 106 50a–54d: 65, 105 Euthydemus 271c–272b: 121 277d: 129, 130 278b: 120 286c2: 136 Euthyphro 9a–b: 177n22 Gorgias 445d–e: 31 456c–457a: 219n55 457d: 220n76 458a: 138 470d: 196n67 473e: 196n67 473e–474a: 194n44 492e: 48–49, 62 503c: 196n67 518e–519a: 25, 78 519a: 78 523a: 158 523e–524a ff.: 227n46 524a: 158, 163, 231n119 526c: 226n38 527b: 160 Hippias Major 295c: 215n2 Ion 530a1: 197n79 534a: 188n59 Laches 178a: 216n2 198c–199a: 146 Laws 624a: 19 625b: 170 778d: 78 778d–779a: 26 796a: 120, 121

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284 Plato, Laws (continued) 796a1: 121 796a–b: 120, 122 800a: 108 833e–834a: 121 893c–d: 161 893e1–894b1: 229n86 919d: 26, 78 Lysis 203–204a: 215n2 206d1–2: 230n98 Menexenus 234a: 65 234a–b: 61 234b–c: 66 235a: 62 235b–c: 62–63 236a8: 52 236b–c: 52, 54 236c–d: 53 236d2: 52 237b: 55 238e­­–239a: 55 239a: 55–56 239d: 169 239d1–246a3: 53 241c: 114, 169 242a: 54 242e–243e: 192n11 243c: 58 243c–d: 56–57, 60, 184n17 246c: 65 247b: 206n86 247c: 169 249d: 52 249d1–2: 52 Meno 76d: 173 80b: 160 93c–94e: 194n44 93d: 78 94b: 78 94e: 139 100b: 215n121

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Index Locorum Minos 319e: 19 Parmenides 128a–e: 180n50 130e: 9 131b: 10 131b–c: 10 131d–c: 10 137c: 9 Phaedo 58a–b: 208n21 58a–c4: 94 58a–e: 115 58b–c: 96 58c: 98 59b: 115 59b–c: 214n109 59c–61e: 109 59d–e: 96, 210n47 60d: 214n108 60d–e: 107 60d8–61b8: 106 60e: 107 60e–61b: 106 61a: 103, 108, 142 61b: 106 61d–e: 227n57 64a: 45, 159 64b–d: 115 64c: 42 64c–69d: 41 67c–e: 163 67e: 46 73d–e: 214n121 77e: 190n86 81c–d: 158 85a–b: 112 88c–89a: 227n57 96e–97b: 176n15 107c–115a: 157 107d–114d: 215n121 107e–108a: 157 108a: 163 108b–c: 158, 160

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Index Locorum 108d: 158–159 108d4–9: 158 108e–109a: 227n57 109a–b: 170 109c–d: 162, 212n70 109c–110b: 162 110b: 161 110b–111a: 163 110c–111a: 205n74 111d: 230n93 112e: 95–96 113d: 163 113e: 160 114a: 160 114c: 159–160 114d: 160, 163 115a: 160 115c: 160 116a: 116 117b: 117 117c: 117 118a: 115, 117 Phaedrus 227a: 123 227a–234c: 131 227a1: 197n79 227b9–10: 218n48 227c: 127–128 228e: 127 229c: 124 229d–e: 124 230a: 188n61 230b: 1, 124 230c: 124 230d: 123 234c–241d: 131 234d: 17 234d–237a: 127 236–237: 52 236b: 120, 127, 129 236b–c: 127 236b–e: 127 236c–d­ : 127 236d–237a: 128

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285

237a: 17, 117 237b: 142 238c5: 123 238c5–d3: 123 240d: 17 241d: 128 241d–243e: 131 241e1: 123 242a: 131 242c2: 123 243b: 128 243e: 128 244: 44 244a: 44, 171 244a–257b: 131 244d–e: 44 245a: 44, 123 245b3: 218n48 245b5: 218n48 246a–247b: 131 246a3–256e2: 218n48 246c: 182n76 247b: 141 247c: 141 247c–d: 3, 6 248a4: 218n48 248a–b: 138, 162, 217n26 249a: 163 249a3–5: 218n50 249b–c: 171 249c: 140–141, 171 250c: 115 253d–257a: 137–138 255b–e: 127 255d: 134 256a–b: 130 256a–d: 44, 141 256b: 130, 218n50 256b–c: 130 256b3–7: 218n48 257b: 126, 217n40 257c: 131 257c–279c: 131 259a: 199n5

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286 Plato, Phaedrus (continued) 259a–d: 187n46 259b–d: 142 261: 43 261a­7–8: 42 271: 43 271c: 43 271c–d: 43 274c–277a: 9 275b–c: 67, 124 276a: 8 278a: 124 278c–d: 120, 149 278e–279b: 213n86 Philebus 11e–23a: 131 11e–23c: 117 12a: 216n2 12b: 140 12c: 141, 221n96 15d: 216n2 16c: 144 18e–19a: 223n136 21b–c: 140 21c: 140, 144 21d–22b: 144 22c: 144 22e: 131, 139, 141, 144 22e–23a: 139, 141 23a: 216n2 23d–24e: 144 26a: 142 26a–c: 143 26b–c: 142 28a–b: 144 30b: 144 32b: 143–144 33c: 144 34b: 144 65e–66a: 141 67a: 144 67a–b: 216n2 67b: 143 Protagoras 309a1: 197n79

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Index Locorum 310a: 52 319a–320b: 202n39 319e–320b: 202n39 Republic 327a: 23 327c: 217n33 328a: 23 328b: 27 331c–d: 27 331d: 27 336b: 220n71 337d: 135–136, 138 338c–d: 121, 136 339e: 136 342d: 136 343a: 136 346d: 136 349b–350d: 135 350d: 136 357a: 137 359c–360d: 183n4 368d–369a: 17 372b–374b: 32 372c: 148 372d: 148 372e: 148 373a: 26 373b: 17 373b–e: 32 373d–e: 87 373e–374a: 26 378b: 145 414b–c: 56 414d–e: 56 415a–c: 56, 86, 210n48 416e–417a: 87 433a–434a: 17 452a–c: 219n62 457a–c: 219n62 459a: 89 467b: 89 476a: 177n28 476c: 108 484d: 165 490a–b: 200n13

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Index Locorum 496d: 18 498c3: 149 500d–e: 2, 165 501c: 2, 171 506a–b: 165 508b13: 2 509b: 3, 164 509d–511e: 6 509d–513e: 9 511b: 5, 9 511b6: 2 511b7: 166 511b8: 2 514b: 30, 79 515a: 212n70 516a: 225n26 516a–c: 124 516b: 10 516e: 48 517b–c: 10 517d–518b: 172 518a: 5, 48 519a: 88 519c5: 149 519d ff.: 108 519e–520a: 217n33 520b: 91 520b–d: 36 520b3: 36 520b4: 36 520b6: 19, 36 520c: 5, 10, 36, 48 520c1: 36 520d6: 36 532a–c: 163 532b: 32 532e2–3: 149 533a8–9: 2 533b: 108 533c7–d4: 2 534b–d: 120, 149 540a–b: 2, 172 540b: 165 540b6–c2: 149 544b: 120, 129–130

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287

Σ544b: 120 546e–547a: 85 571 ff.: 109 583b: 123, 130, 131 592b: 48, 163 595b: 160 596–597: 13 596a–598d: 13 600e: 3 605b–c: 3 607a: 47 607a4: 148 607b: 47 608a: 160 609a: 83 611d: 158 612b: 184n5 612c: 21 614c: 163 616b–617d: 161 616b–617e: 167 616c: 86 617e: 46 619c: 47 Seventh Letter 344c: 9 350b1: 210n41 Sophist 244b–c: 180n47 244e–245b: 3, 12 246a–249d: 177n26 247b–c: 17 259e: 9, 149, 177n28 Statesman 277d: 212n70 278e: 212n70 303d–304a: 85 303e: 86 Symposium 172a: 170 173b: 170 174c: 154 174d–175b: 156 175a: 154 175b: 171

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288 Plato, Symposium (continued) 178e: 125 178e–179a: 125 179d: 125 194b–c: 162 201d–212c: 191n88 203b: 189n66 204e–205a: 223n133 211c: 156 213a: 153 213c: 156 215a: 156 215b: 155 215b–c: 159 215c–d: 160 216b: 153, 162 216d: 155 216e–217a: 155 217b–c: 152 217c: 130, 152 218b: 171 218b6: 153 220c: 156 220c–d: 171 221a: 153, 156 221d–222a: 155 221e–222a: 155 222e: 156 223d: 156, 157 Theaetetus 142a: 171 142a–e: 224n11 143a–c: 181n56 151e2 f.: 122 158b–c: 109 158b–e: 109 162a: 127 162b: 128 162b–e: 128–129 165b: 120, 218n40 167e: 120, 129, 130 167e–168a: 119 169a–b: 217n38 169b: 138

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Index Locorum 169b–c: 73, 138 179c–181b: 179n40 187b5 f.: 122 201c9–d1: 122 234d–237a: 127 Theages 126d: 202n39 Timaeus 17c–19a: 200n16 17c–19b: 73 19b–c: 72 20b: 206n82 21a: 71 21e: 88 23e: 206n79 24c–d: 148 24e: 71 24e–25e: 72 25c–d: 72 27a: 76 27a–b: 71 29a: 75, 76 29a–b: 11 29d: 164 29e: 76 30a: 76 30b: 76, 165 30b–c: 165 30c5: 165 31a–b: 76 31b: 165 33b: 161, 165, 228n59 34b ff.: 87 35a: 149, 165 36c–d: 151 37d: 74, 168 38a: 10, 164 48a: 11 52a–b: 12 52b: 12 53c–56c: 167 54b–c: 12 55c: 161 58d–e: 84

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Index Locorum 58d–59d: 85 59b: 84, 85, 86 59c: 205n64 Plutarch Life of Lycurgus 14, 2–4: 219n62 Life of Theseus 17: 210n35 22: 210n35 22–23: 93 Moralia: De Genio Socratis 589F–592E: 39–40, 41 591B–592E: 41 Sextus Empiricus: 136 Adv. Math. VII: 94–5 Shakespeare Richard II 2.1, 40–51: 194n37 Romeo and Juliet 1.4, 61 and 71–72: 231n110 Sonnets 71 and 81: 112 Simplicius Physics: 176n14, 180n50 Strabo Geographica Book II, 102, 20–30: 72, 199n4 Book XIII, 598: 199n4 Theophrastus De Ventis XVIII: 103

289

XXI–XXII: 98–99 XXIII: 208n19 Metaphysics §9 11a27–11b7: 176n18 Peri Lithos: 83, 205n59, 205n61 §59: 204n55 Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War 1.2.5: 55 1.8.1: 113 1.96.2: 213n97 2.8.3: 114 2.13.6 ff.: 185n20 2.66.12: 195n54 2.94.1: 183n3 3.104: 113 3.104 2–3: 111 3.105: 112 5.1: 113 5.1.1: 113–114 5.32.1: 113 8.108.4: 113 Xenophon Hellenica 1.1.27: 201n24 3.13: 201n24 4.8.9: 63 5.1.2: 63 5.1.28–29: 63 Memorabilia 4.8.2: 208n21



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