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Plato’s Life — Historical and Intellectual Context

PLATO’S LIFE

Holger Thesleff

Little is certain, but some facts and hypotheses can be sifted from a great variety of sources and traditions about Plato. Modern accounts include Davies (1971), Friedländer (1958), Guthrie (1975), Nails (2002), Ryle (1966) and Thesleff (1982:20–39), on which the following is based.

We know that Plato died in 347 BCE; his year of birth was 426 or later. Both parents belonged to the old Athenian aristocracy. His father died early, and his mother remarried to her uncle who also died, perhaps before Plato was 13. Plato, his sister and brothers grew up with his mother’s family in Athens. This ‘clan’, impoverished in the Peloponnesian War like many other landowners, was dominated by Critias, a gifted sophist and dramatist, later leader of the Thirty, who sought peace with Sparta to stop the Periclean democracy-based Athenian imperialism.

When Plato had reached his early teens, life in Athens was marked by prolonged war, poverty, political cynicism and ideological confusion. Yet, cultural life flourished in the city. As a sensitive young man with literary and intellectual preferences, Plato could seek compensation for the depressive circumstances in poetry and drama, rhetoric and philosophy (qq.v.), private discussions and homoerotic play in gymnasia.

Some detect lines of escapism in Plato’s attitudes. In spite of his professed early interest in Athenian politics, there is little evidence that he appeared in public or took physical risks, although it is reported that he served in the army three times (D. L. 3.8). Problems of ethics were in the foreground of his thinking from his early years. His political sympathies passed from the Thirty to the moderate democrats (who then contributed to the death of Socrates), ending in deep disillusionment with human society (see Ep. 7 324b–6b).

The impact of Socrates and his circle was of fundamental importance to Plato. Socrates was a moral model for him and gave the dialectical frame to his thinking (q.v. Dialectic, Elenchus). But Plato’s early commitment to speculative theory is due to influence from various pre-Socratics (q.v.) and mathematicians. After the death of Socrates, Plato seems to have spent some time with the Socratic Euclides in Megara. The theory of the utopian state may have taken shape before 392 when Republic bks 2–5 was perhaps parodied in Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae (Thesleff 1997). Plato’s mathematical orientation was stimulated by his brilliant young friend Theaetetus. His Apology did not settle the anti-Socratic sentiments. In the 390s he seems also to have presented entertaining and provocative sketches of Socratic discussions to groups of friends (q.v. Public), but the preserved written dialogues are almost certainly written at a later date.

The date and circumstances of Plato’s first voyage to the West are controversial, but there can be little doubt about the following general lines. Plato left Athens about 386 BCE, possibly frustrated by lack of intellectual response in Athens. In Tarentum in southern Italy he met Archytas, a local political leader who knew Pythagorean traditions better than Socrates’ friends did (q.v. Pythagoreans; Phaedo); he was later in communication with Plato’s circle. Probably from Locri, famous for its ancient laws, Plato went over to Sicily. At the court of Syracuse he met the ruler’s twenty-year old relative, Dion, who became his lifelong intimate friend and whose role in Plato’s political experiments should not be underestimated. After Plato’s return home (after dramatic events variously described in the sources), Anniceris the Cyrenaic purchased a piece of land in the Akadêmeia park that became Plato’s school (D. L. 3.1; q.v. Academy).

From the mid-380s onwards, Plato spent his time quietly in the Academy outside the city walls. He had perhaps started to teach his own philosophy in partial contrast to other Socratics, the sophists and Isocrates (q.v.). Some of his written works now reached a larger public. He gathered around him a small group of intellectual friends who were prepared to search into the basics of the good, of being, and of knowledge (q.v. Epistemology), and to themselves become part of a new philosophical elite. This latter ambition was supported by Dion in particular who had some hopes for a ‘philosophers’ rule’ in Syracuse. Most of Plato’s prominent students (D. L. 3.46) were in fact non-Athenians.

Plato was averse to practical politics, preferring spirited philosophical elenchus and a private ‘being together’ (sunousia). The Athenians tended to mistrust esoteric clubs, so it is understandable that Plato acquired the stigma of haughty arrogance to outsiders (Xenophon, Ap. 1). Plato’s alleged Pythagorean models were already exaggerated in antiquity. Contrary to the Pythagoreans, Plato made no point of secrecy or mystic initiation, despite some play in Symposium (q.v. Esoterism; Love), and that he accepted women ‘officially’ in the school in Athens may be doubted, though Diogenes lists two by name (D. L. 3.46).

The apparently unexpected death of Dionysius I (367 BCE) meant a sudden new turn. Dion immediately invited Plato to assist him in organizing a philosopher-led state in Sicily. The new ruler, Dionysius II, did not meet the expectations of Dion and Plato (whatever they were), and court intrigues soon forced Dion into exile; but Plato was persuaded to stay until the following spring. The explanations given in Ep. 7 reflect Plato’s own loyalty to Dion, his uncertainty and his idealism when confronted with life’s practicalities.

Back in Athens, where the Academy kept contacts with Syracuse, Plato was engaged in new challenges from younger friends, including Aristotle, and his third voyage to Sicily in 361 signalled the end of his Sicilian adventure. Dionysius had been reported to ‘have time’ for Platonic philosophy now, but Plato soon discovered that he was bluffing. Dion’s enemies saw their chance. Only with the help of Archytas did Plato escape an imminent death. Dion later managed to seize power in Syracuse, in spite of Plato’s warning, and was murdered as a ‘tyrant’.

By Greek standards, Plato was now an old man. His younger friends had taken over many Academic activities. The dialogues from Plato’s later years reflect a wide variety of new philosophic stimuli and polemics.

During Plato’s last years the scene in Athens was dominated by the Macedonian question. Athenian nationalism did not appeal to the internationally oriented Academy. The old master preferred to stay far from the glowing political debates. But by his friends, including Aristotle, Plato was venerated as an architect of philosophy and a benign and wise moral leader. After his death in 347 he was the subject of some kind of hero cult in the Academy. We have copies of a bust by Silanion which, though posthumous, is not particularly idealized.

The third-century BCE biographer, Diogenes Laertius, cites some 43 sources indiscriminately, including Alcimus, Alexander, Alexandrides, Alexis, Amphis, Anaxilaïdes, Anaxilas, Antigonus, Antileon, Antisthenes, Apollodorus, Archytas, Aristippus, Aristophanes (grammarian), Aristoxenus, Athenodorus, Chamaeleon, Clearchus, Cratinus, Dicaearchus, Euphorion, Eupolis, Favorinus, Heraclides, Hermippus, Idomeneus, Mnesistratus, Molon, Myroninus, Neanthes, Onetor, Pamphila, Panaetius, Polemo, Praxiphanes, Sabinus, Satyrus, Speusippus, Theopompus, Thrasylus, Timon, Timotheus and Xenophon. Apollodorus and Favorinus and Philodemus and Olympiodorus are also important to the biographical tradition, and Plato’s controversial Ep. 7 is crucial.

ARISTOPHANES AND INTELLECTUALS

Harold Tarrant

The plays of Aristophanes and his rivals offer something of a comic mirror of the intellectual world in which Plato’s Socrates is situated. Plato’s boyhood had coincided with a period of intellectual ferment at Athens. Pericles had associated with intellectuals such as the cosmologist Anaxagoras and the music-theorist Damon (Alcibiades 118c), and another prominent Athenian, Archelaus, had studied with Anaxagoras and developed cosmological ideas of his own. Particularly rich individuals like Callias, son of Hipponicus, host character in the Protagoras, were also liable to play host to visiting itinerant intellectuals, including those we know as ‘sophists’. However, there was probably little immediate impact on ordinary Athenians until, as Thucydides reports when discussing the effects of the plague at Athens (2.53), war forced people to rethink their attitudes to the gods and to morality. His work shows an Athens little interested in discussing traditional moral values as opposed to civic expediency and personal hedonism.

The comic playwright Aristophanes, whose creative life began in 427 BCE and extended into the 380s, like his fellow comic poets, presented various intellectuals on stage, most obviously in Clouds, produced in 423 BCE. The very fact that the new ideas had become suitable material for comedy suggests that ordinary citizens were certainly aware of them and perhaps concerned about their implications. The leading intellectual here is none other than Socrates himself, but, in spite of several details that seem to capture Socrates’ idiosyncrasies rather well, his portrait is so different from anything found in Plato that many suppose him to be simply a convenient figure on whom to father virtually all of the new ideas regardless of who had first propounded them. Insofar as this ‘Socrates’ figure runs an intellectual school or phrontistêrion, the play is an exercise of the imagination. Yet, that granted, one should note that Plato’s Socrates expresses some interest in virtually all new ideas, in spite of his professed lack of expertise in any. Some, however, read more into Aristophanes’ portrait of Socrates, and Vander Waerdt (1994b) notes that the playwright seems to have a good understanding of many contemporary theories that could have influenced Socrates, especially those of Diogenes of Apollonia.

At 314–426 the emphasis falls on cosmology and a consequent naturalistic explanation of the usual manifestations of divine power. Socrates’ ‘gods’ are the Clouds, who are employed in the explanation of rain and thunderstorms in preference to Zeus. Yet, Socrates also comes across as a priestly character (compare Birds 1553–64) who is both aloof and aloft (212–25), and conducts private ceremonies while invoking deities (254–66). This combination of pre-Socratic-style cosmology and priestly attitudes and functions can now be matched in the Derveni Papyrus, particularly since the reconstruction and publication of the first fragmentary columns in 1997. The author, who discusses rituals designed to avert hostile spirits (presumably on death), and then subjects a poem of ‘Orpheus’ about Zeus to a consistently allegorical reading, quotes Heraclitus and is influenced by the ideas of Anaxagoras and his immediate followers. The date of this work could in theory be anywhere between 430 and 350 BCE, but an early date would have made it more topical. It is noteworthy that air in the papyrus is the physical manifestation of intelligence (meaning Zeus, and some other divinities identified with him), and that airy stuffs, including Air, the Gulf (between heaven and earth), Clouds, Respiration and perhaps Mist (Derveni Papyrus 424, 627, 814), are the intelligences that Socrates acknowledges and swears by in Clouds.

Also prominent in Clouds are theories about poetry and music (636–54), and about the correct naming of things (658–93). In Plato, the character Protagoras encourages the study of poetry (Prt. 338e–9a) in which Hippias and Ion claim expertise (Hippias Minor; Ion), while correct naming is associated with the sophist Prodicus (Cratylus 384b; Prt. 339e–41e) and less decisively with the neo-Heraclitean Cratylus – with whom Aristotle says that Plato studied. More worrying, though not directly associated with Socrates or his fellow proprietor of the phrontistêrion, Chaerephon, who appears to be involved with the minutiae of biology (Clouds 143–66), are the two arguments, Superior and Inferior, that reside with them and have taken on a life of their own. It is not so much the strange, new, technical and cosmological ideas that threatened society, but the new interest in those using the courts and deliberative bodies of Athens in making the inferior (and amoral) argument appear superior (and justified). Plato (Theaetetus 172a–c) shares the worries of Aristophanes about the moral relativism that results from the application to civic life of Protagoras’ theory that there are two arguments on every matter (Antiope fr. 189; D. L. 9.51 = A1 ‘DK’; Antiope fr. 189; cf. Euripides). Techniques include appeals to the questionable conduct of the gods and of heroes (Clouds 1048–82; cf. Euthyphro 5e–6a; Republic 378b).

The tragic playwright Euripides must also be placed among the intellectuals satirized by Aristophanes (Acharnians, Thesmophoriazousai, Frogs), for he is regularly credited with words and ideas that recall the comedian’s portrait of Socrates: indeed a fragment of the first version of Clouds (Aristophanes. fr. 376K = D. L. 2.18) makes Socrates the source of Euripides’ clever, tricky-talking tragedies. On Euripides and the intellectual world both Wildberg (2006) and Conacher (1998) are useful. Religious experts including Hierocles (Peace) are another of his comic targets, and the urban-design expert Meton appears in Birds. Ameipsias’ comedy Connus (423 BC, as Clouds) revolves around a teacher of new music referred to by Plato’s Socrates as his teacher (Euthydemus 272c), and also brought Socrates on stage, while Eupolis’ Flatterers of two years later depicts the would-be intellectuals who tried to sponge off the riches of Callias, among them Protagoras (ff. 157–8) and Socrates’ strange colleague Chaerephon (f. 180).

Insofar as the plays of Aristophanes gave a vivid picture of intellectual life, Plato was influenced by them, though lamenting the bad publicity that Clouds had given Socrates. Euthd. seems to allude to Clouds a number of times; the depiction of Callias’ house in Prt. appears to owe something to the phrontistêrion, and Clouds is even quoted with approval (Symposium 221b).

EDUCATION (PAIDEIA)

Samuel Scolnicov

Education can be described as Plato’s central concern. Since before Homeric times, Greek education consisted, on the whole, of athletic training and instillation of heroic values. The chief educational aims were manly valour (aretê, a word that would later be used to designate human excellence in general) and competitiveness.

Education was deemed the responsibility of the parents until the eighteenth year. From preclassical times, infants were left at home with their mothers until the age of seven.

In classical times, elementary education was provided by professional teachers, usually of low social status, thus easily affordable, to whom the children were taken by a household slave, the paidagogos. Education consisted mainly in the learning of reading and writing and memorizing poetry, in particular Homer. Literacy was apparently already rather widespread in Athens, and in general in Greece, before classical times (Harris 1989). Poetry was taught for its educational value, as offering role models for emulation. It was to this function of poetry that Plato was to be opposed. In addition, better-to-do families would also provide instruction in music, including singing and some basic numeracy.

The physical aspect of education was not disregarded in youth, as in adulthood, and the competitive spirit remained unabated, as evidenced by the wide appeal of the pan-hellenic games and the Athenian penchant for legal disputation. Education was very much the same for both sexes except in Athens where girls learned only what was adequate for the running of a household. Girls elsewhere were taught wrestling, running and javelin throwing. In some places, there were also ‘finishing schools’ for girls, like that of Sappho in Lesbos in the sixth-century BCE.

Sparta was apparently the first Greek city to develop an institutionalized system of education, whose aim was avowedly militaristic. Boys were taken from their mothers at the age of seven and lived in communal barracks until after military service, to which they returned periodically. Literacy was not much prized. The evidence about education in other parts of the Greek world is rather more sketchy and circumstantial

In classical times, the heroic ideal was gradually superseded by paideia – initially, in aristocratic circles, ‘a profound and intimate relationship, a personal union between a young man and an elder who was at once his model, his guide, his initiator’ (Marrou 1956) and later as an ideal of culture and education, akin to the German concept of Bildung. From Protagoras’ speech in the Platonic dialogue named after him, no doubt voicing the current opinion, we know that education was thought of primarily as socialization and society was regarded as the chief educational agent.

In the fifth century BCE, democratic Athens attracted those that became known as the sophists (literally ‘experts’), itinerant intellectuals from all over Greece who introduced the idea of higher education for those who could pay. Democracy meant the demise of aristocratic values in favour of the idea of pragmatic success in private and public life. Any free man, and eventually anyone, could become kalos k’agathos (fine and good), initially a denotation of aristocracy but, with democracy, coming to designate ‘the good man’.

The sophists (q.v.) taught the art of a flourishing life, eudaimonia (generally, but misleadingly translated as ‘happiness’; q.v.) readily understood as political success. They developed and perfected rhetorical and dialectical skills as tools of success in public life and in the courts. Gorgias of Leontini wrote manuals of rhetoric, now mostly lost, which included model speeches such as the extant Encomium of Helen. The anonymous Dissoi logoi (Double arguments) is a rather schematic textbook of exercises developing Protagoras’ dictum that on every issue two opposing arguments can be developed.

The sophists’ main interest was in man and in society and they were rightly described, in modern times, as the ‘fifth-century humanists’. They developed the beginnings of what we would now call psychology, sociology, anthropology and political science. Some of them also dealt with mathematics, astronomy and the like, always with a view to their human relevance. Common to all was a keen interest in language and its uses.

Plato and Isocrates (q.v.) established the first institutions of higher learning. Little is known about their organization. Isocrates continued the sophistic line and taught rhetoric, as preparation for public life. Plato’s Academy (q.v.) was arguably the first institution of research. An inkling of Plato’s educational programme in the Academy may probably be had from the curriculum proposed by him in bks 3 and 7 of his Republic. Plato recognized the place of the mathematical sciences in his educational programme, yet was opposed, on grounds of principle, to the separation of disciplines within philosophy, though perhaps subordinated to the primacy of ethics. Many of his associates went on to serve as political advisors in Greek cities. Aristotle, in his Lyceum, possibly instituted division of labour in research. Higher education was later formalized in ‘schools’ as the Academy, the Lyceum, the Stoa, Epicurus’ Garden, etc.

ELEATICS

Herbert Granger

‘Our Eleatic tribe’, reports Plato’s Eleatic Stranger, begins with Xenophanes of Colophon, and even earlier (Sophist 242d). But the true founder of the school is Parmenides of Elea, whose most notable disciples are limited to Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Scholars accept a date of 515 for Parmenides’ birth, calculated from Plato’s depiction, very likely highly fictional, of an encounter between the old Parmenides and the young Socrates (Parmenides 127b–c). Parmenides published his only work in the first quarter of the fifth century, a poem in heroic verse, which is remarkable for its doctrines, but above all for its deft use of extensive philosophical argumentation for the first time. Despite the poem’s rational exposition of doctrines, in its elaborate proem an unnamed youth narrates his supernatural journey to an unnamed goddess lodged in some unknown place, who welcomes him warmly and tells him she shall reveal to him the ‘truth’ and the ‘opinions of mortals’, which possess no ‘true trust’ (‘DK’ B1.29–30). These two subjects make up the two expository parts of the poem.

Although no aspect of the goddess’ argument is beyond dispute, plausibly she grounds her speculation on the supposition that thought, speech and knowledge require for their subject something that exists. Accordingly, what does not exist, or ‘non-being’, cannot be thought about, expressed or known, and any conception that presupposes what does not exist is as much nonsense as ‘non-being’ itself.

The goddess proceeds a priori to deduce the basic features of reality. ‘Being’, or reality, does not suffer generation and destruction, since if it came to be it must have previously not existed, and if it perished it must pass away into nonexistence. Furthermore, since the goddess takes any change to be a variety of generation and destruction, reality is free from any sort of change, ‘alteration in place and exchange of bright colour’ (B8.40–1). Reality is also indivisible, a single object, uniform in character and limited in extent in the shape of a sphere. Some contemporary scholars, however, deny Parmenides’ belief in numerical monism, but Plato (Sph. 242d), as well as Aristotle (On Generation and Corruption 325a13–15), do not hesitate in attributing the doctrine to him.

The goddess is not deterred by the mismatch between her description of reality and what sensation reveals to be a world of a multitude of changing, diverse objects, and she requires the youth to judge her words with his ‘reason’ (‘DK’ B7.5–6). Nevertheless, when the goddess ends her discourse on truth and takes up the ‘opinions of mortals’, she lays out in detail a natural philosophy that includes a cosmogony and even a theogony. She justifies her discourse by maintaining that it lays bare the fundamental mistake inherent in mortal thinking, in its positing two opposing first principles, light and night. These in mixing with one another yield the cosmos, although light and night in their eternity and homogeneity are each like the single object of reality revealed in ‘truth’. The goddess explains to the youth that her cosmology has plausibility, presumably satisfies the testimony of the senses, and that armed with this knowledge no mortal opinion shall ever ‘outstrip’ him (B8.60–1). Zeno and Melissus indicate no interest in natural philosophy, but plausibly the ‘opinions of mortals’ provides the model for the fifth-century BCE natural philosophers who succeeded Parmenides.

Zeno and Melissus are the heirs of Parmenides, not merely in doctrine, but above all in their argumentative prowess. Parmenides has no such effect on the pre-Socratic natural philosophers, who venture little in the way of argument, and before Socrates and Plato it is the sophist Gorgias of Leontini who exemplifies best someone who emulates Eleatic argumentation (B3).

Zeno, the younger friend and fellow citizen of Parmenides, may be appreciated as marshalling his extraordinary argumentative skills in support of his teacher’s extraordinary doctrines. Plato’s Socrates prods him into confessing that his book defends Parmenides’ monism from his critics by demonstrating that their pluralism yields even more absurdities than Parmenides’ monism (Prm. 128d). Zeno largely limits himself to demonstrating the absurdities inherent in pluralism and locomotion. His arguments against pluralism proceed by deducing from its assumption of a pair of contradictory consequences. For example, a plurality of objects entails that they be both limited in number and unlimited in number. If things are many they must be just as many as they are, and thus they must be of a certain number. If things are many, they are unlimited because between any two objects there is a third, but similarly there must be objects between the third object and the two it lies between, and so on to infinity. Presumably, objects are distinct only because another object separates them. The ‘stadium’ is the best known of Zeno’s arguments against locomotion. A moving object must first arrive at the halfway point to its goal before reaching its goal, but before it arrives at the halfway point it must first arrive at the point halfway to the initial halfway point, and so on to infinity. But no object may traverse in a finite time infinite arrival points. Zeno’s argumentative dexterity prompted Aristotle to proclaim him the discoverer of ‘dialectic’ (D. L. 8.57), the argumentative style Socrates made famous.

Melissus, who commanded the Samian fleet that defeated the Athenians in 441, follows, but also deviates from, Parmenides. Reality remains eternal, one, uniform and changeless. If what is should have come to be, then previous to its existence it was nothing, but something cannot come to be from nothing (‘DK’ B1). What exists has no temporal beginning, and thus, Melissus infers invalidly, it has no temporal end. Unlike Parmenides, Melissus describes eternal reality in temporal terms, as existing in the past, present and future, not an eternal present. Melissus infers wildly and fallaciously from the eternity of what exists to its infinite magnitude, unlike Parmenides who speaks of ‘being’ as limited in the shape of a sphere. Where Parmenides gives no argument for monism, Melissus argues cleverly that the infinite extent of what is requires it to be one, because if two things existed they cannot be infinite since they would have boundaries upon one another. Further, since what is is one it must be homogeneous, alike in every way, because otherwise it would form a plurality. There can be no change of any sort, be it a change in quality, size or arrangement of parts, because change would entail the coming-into-existence of what did not exist and the passing away into nonexistence of what had existed. Melissus uses the ‘empty’, or the void, which he identifies with ‘nothing’, to formulate a novel argument against locomotion. What there is is completely ‘full’, and thus there is no place empty of what is that would allow what is to move into it. Although Aristotle dismisses Melissus as an intellectual lightweight, he develops careful arguments, often clearly expressed, and he makes original contributions to the Eleatic school.

Plato has profound respect for Parmenides, whom his Socrates describes as ‘venerable and awesome’ (Theaetetus 183e). Outstanding in Plato’s considerable debt to Parmenides are his beliefs that thought and knowledge require an existing object and that reality is discovered not through sensation but through thought alone. Plato’s transcendent forms, which are beyond space and time, provide the basis of his metaphysics and epistemology, and, although Plato is committed to a multitude of forms, in much of his exposition he conceives of them individually after the fashion of Parmenides’ ‘being’, each as being eternal, changeless and uniform in nature (e.g. Phd. 78d–9a; Ti. 27a–d). But when it comes to ‘non-being’ Plato cannot follow Parmenides. Plato explicitly shuns ‘non-being’ as the contrary of ‘being’ (Sph. 258e), and he reduces ‘is not’ to ‘differs from’ (Sph. 257b, 258d).

For further information, see Barnes (1979), Gallop (1984), Guthrie (1969) and Mourelatos (1970).

ISOCRATES AND LOGOGRAPHY

David Mirhady

At Phaedrus 278e–9b Phaedrus describes a then youthful Isocrates (c. 436/5–338 BCE) as a companion of Socrates. Socrates himself then both characterizes Isocrates as nobler than Lysias and prophesies a great career for him in philosophy. Since Isocrates and Plato were contemporaries and headed the most well known philosophical schools in Athens during the time, the temptation is very strong to see the passage as ironic, Plato casting an implicit criticism at his rival. According to this view, the Lysias who in the dialogue is so roundly criticized for the moral and intellectual weakness of his logography actually represents the historical Isocrates. Several works from both Plato and Isocrates suggest such an ongoing rivalry. Since Isocrates was devoted to written discourse, particularly logography, there is a fundamental difference between him and Plato on the issue of writing (q.v.), but there are other differences as well.

After his family fortune was wiped out in the Peloponnesian war, Isocrates began afresh as a logographer (or speechwriter) for others who were presenting cases in the law courts. We have six such speeches (including one for a trial on Aegina), but Isocrates later disavowed such forensic logographic activity (Antidosis 15.36–7). The vast majority of the more than 100 extant speeches of the Attic orators were written for the law courts, however, so that ‘logography’ in general is identified with them. In Plato (Phdr. 257c) and elsewhere (e.g. Demosthenes 58.19) the term ‘logographer’ is used disparagingly and identified with forensic chicanery. Isocrates’ oeuvre actually contains several other genres of written discourse, including letters and epideictic speeches, as well as ‘speeches’, but none of them were intended for oral delivery.

Isocrates’ early educational programme is revealed in his Against the Sophists (13), which shares many of the commonplace criticisms of the sophists that appear in Platonic dialogues: their unconcern for the truth, their selfishness, their aim of gratifying rather than educating listeners, and their distrust of their students (see Benoit 1991). It also reveals Isocrates’ understanding of ‘philosophy’ – he never uses the term ‘rhetoric’ in reference to his teaching. For Isocrates, philosophy entails devotion to a career of political leadership, particularly as that career involves engaging in political discourse, such as his own written ‘speeches’. Scholars such as De Vries (1953:39–40) have seen Platonic parodying of Against the Sophists (13–18) in Phdr. (268c and 269d), but not all are convinced.

More clearly, anti-Platonic views appear in Isocrates’ mythological Encomium of Helen. Isocrates criticizes those who believe that there is a single epistêmê for courage, wisdom and justice (Just. 10.1) and those who pretend to do elenchoi (4): ‘It is much better to conjecture reasonably about useful things than to have precise knowledge of what is useless’ (5, Trans. Mirhady). It is hard to avoid seeing Plato as the object of this criticism. The most recent commentary on Isocrates’ Busiris (Livingstone 2001:48–56), unlike the more widely held view, stresses similarities between it and Plato’s Republic rather than the criticism. In both Helen and Busiris Isocrates engages in the sophistic practises of paradoxical encomia and making the weaker argument the stronger, of praising the unpraiseworthy. Ever since Homer’s Iliad Helen’s behaviour in going to Troy and abandoning her family was seen as irresponsible, and Busiris was generally characterized as a brutal Egyptian king who killed every Greek he could get his hands on until Heracles put an end to him. Isocrates’ rehabilitation of Helen and Busiris seems part of a broader strategy to use mythological examples as positive and not negative lessons. Rather than rejecting and replacing traditional Greek mythology, as Plato does, Isocrates seeks to reform it, which would be a dissimilarity between them.

Plato’s Gorgias clearly entails a thorough critique of rhetorical teaching in general, but it seems unlikely that the Gorgias of that dialogue represents Isocrates. In the dialogue, Gorgias concedes that if his students do not have moral knowledge then they will acquire it through association with him (Grg. 459c–60a4). Isocrates never makes this claim, although he does say that his training will be an aid to acquiring moral knowledge (Against the Sophists 13.31; Antidosis 15.274, 278). In the Phdr. Socrates argues that while writing speeches is not in itself a disgrace, writing them badly is (Phdr. 258d). Inasmuch as the theme of the speeches criticized by Socrates is erotic desire, and Helen was the mythological object of erotic desire, it seems possible that Plato was indirectly criticizing Isocrates’ Encomium. Both works include criticisms of others’ works of the subject – Isocrates criticizes Gorgias’ Helen – and both make mention of Stesichorus’ palinode.

Aside from Plato and Isocrates, Alcidamas also addresses the issue of writing and logography in his short polemic On Those Who Write Written Speeches, or On Sophists. Scholars have debated the relative chronologies of Alcidamas’ essay and the works of Plato and Isocrates without consensus (see O’Sullivan 1992:23–31). It could well be that Alcidamas is criticizing Isocrates, especially since the latter was so devoted to written composition. Alcidamas argues that a training in ex tempore speaking will be superior to that for logography (see esp. 6 and 13).

In Isocrates’ epistemology doxa is approved as more practical than epistêmê, especially in decisions about the future (see Antidosis 15.271 and On the Peace 8.8). He appears, however, not to criticize dialectic, acknowledging that face-to-face communication is best for many of the same reasons discussed in Phdr. (Letter to Dionysius 2–3; Phdr. 274b–8b). He also seems to share Plato’s view of the sophist’s use of argumentative question and answer (Antid. 15.45; Sophist 225b–6a). For Isocrates the political aims of Greek unity and Athenian hegemony were also almost inseparable from philosophy (Panathenaicus 12.2). In his later writings, however, he argues that Greek unity can best be achieved under the leadership of Athens’ rival, Philip of Macedon (5. To Philip).

ORALITY AND LITERACY

Joanne B. Waugh

Orality and literacy became topics relevant to the study of Plato with the publication of Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato (1963). Havelock argued that Socrates attacked poetry in the Republic because from the Greek Dark Ages, if not before, the archetype for Greek paideia (q.v. Education) had been oral poetry – poetry that singers composed extemporaneously in performance, without the aid of writing. The evidence for the existence of such poetry in early Greece was provided by Milman Parry’s analyses of Homeric epics, analyses that demonstrated how such composition was possible.

Oral composition-in-performance is a means of preserving and communicating culture. Human societies have existed without literacy for much longer than they have existed with it. The burden of proof rests not with those who assert that early Greek society was an oral culture, but with anyone who claims that it was a literate one. Making this claim is complicated by the fact that views of what constitutes a literate society differ markedly. At one extreme, a society is deemed literate if a majority of adults can write and read their names. At the other, a society is considered literate if (a) it relies on written texts to preserve and to transmit its cultural traditions and to conduct matters of government, commerce, inquiry and law; (b) to be a functioning member of that society one must be able to read and write fluently; and (c) it has a sufficiently robust material culture to support these practises, including educating its citizens and workers. What evidence we possess does not make it easy to determine the extent to which the Greeks during the classical period were literate.

Alphabetic writing was introduced into Greece in the eighth-century BCE (Carpenter 1933) and after a time performers began to use fixed texts. From the archaic until the classical periods, writing was used more widely and in the service of the polis, but the public performance of artfully composed speech remained a primary cultural and political occasion until well into the fourth century. This explains the persistence of meter, verse and rhythmical prose, poetic and rhetorical language and traditional themes and fanciful stories in Greek texts and inscriptions – political, philosophical or legislative – from the advent of the polis to its acme. Inscriptions of ‘state’ documents on stone were found as early as the late sixth-century BCE, but inscribing public documents on stone did not become a regular practise before the middle of the fifth century (Sickinger 1999:4; Thomas 1992:137). In any case, an inference from the existence of stone inscriptions to a substantial body of writers and readers and the material culture to support literacy is problematic. Written inscriptions often function as symbolic objects the meanings of which are not confined to the words inscribed, and thus have significance even for those who cannot read them (Thomas 1992:74–100). Still, the creations and uses of written documents proliferated during the fifth century, and in its closing decade the Athenians established the Metroön as a repository for some or all state documents (Sickinger 1999:1–3; Thomas 1992:143). Only in the fourth century, however, did written documents cease to be supplementary and subordinate to oral testimony, and begin to be accepted as proof in the courts (Robb 1994:139–41; Thomas 1992:89 ff., 148 ff.). The extent and limits of classical literacy are summed up by Harris, who observes that ‘the notion that every citizen male should know how to read and write made its appearance during the classical period of Greek culture, but came nowhere near to realization even in Athens’ (1989:114). He concludes that for the period in question, the percent of literates among the population of Attica as a whole probably lies in the range of 5–10 per cent (1989:114).

Thus we find rhapsodes continuing to recite – indeed, perform – fixed texts in the classical period, especially those purporting to be the whole or part of Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey (cf. Ion). In the R. Socrates comments on Homer’s popularity and importance, pointing out that some will claim that Homer and the tragic poets know all about technical matters, human conduct and religion (598d10–e2) and the admirers of Homer say ‘Homer educated Hellas’ and that on matters of conduct he should be studied as a guide by which one regulates one’s whole life (606e2–7). According to Havelock, the persistence of these public performances of artful speech was what Plato found objectionable. The rhythm on the levels of syntax, diction, actions and events, the vivid and memorable imagery and the compelling narratives of anthropomorphic gods and heroes – the very things that made the speech artful and the performances memorable for their audiences – developed in them habits of mind inimical to philosophical modes of thought. Philosophical modes of thought, Havelock argued, are developed as writing and reading permit and encourage reflection on, and analysis of, the language and content of traditional explanations.

Questions about how, when and why ancient Greece moved from being a society that relied on oral performance in transmitting culture to one that employed writing and reading in many of its cultural affairs are now central to classical scholarship. These studies contest general claims about orality and literacy per se identified at various times with Havelock, Jack Goody and Walter Ong as technologies of the intellect, but for the most part support Havelock’s specific claims about the oral poetic tradition in Greece and its gradual acquisition of literacy. Current scholarship provides reasons to doubt that alphabetic writing was sufficient for the emergence of Greek philosophy rather than necessary.

Still, with a few notable exceptions such as Robb (1994), the importance of orality and literacy to the study of Plato has not been as widely recognized among contemporary philosophers as it should be, the result of the widespread but waning practise of ‘rationally reconstructing’ arguments alleged to be implicit in texts from the history of philosophy. These arguments need not take into account the historical and sociocultural context of a text’s author and audience, the occasion and medium of its presentation and the choice to write – and to read – philosophy in a particular way. Absent such considerations, philosophers from any period can be read as formulating doctrines on perennial philosophical problems.

When history and context are taken into account, the resulting interpretations may differ greatly from conventional ones. Consider passages in the Phaedrus (274b6–8e2) and in the Epistles (7.341b2–5; 2.314b10–c6) that are sometimes cited as relevant to discussions of orality and literacy. Socrates’ remarks about writing in the Phdr. have been taken to refer to writing simpliciter, but a strong case has been made that Socrates is referring to the technai of the sophists, an innovative form of paideia that rivals Plato’s own (Cole 1991:123). The passages in Ep. 2 and 7, from which some readers conclude that Plato never committed his philosophical views to writing yet subscribed to philosophical doctrines intimated in the dialogues, look different when viewed in relation to other artful speech of Plato’s day. The statements from these letters underscore that the point of the dialogues is not to present philosophical doctrines but to teach their audience philosophia, thereby replacing other artfully composed speech that for so long had constituted Greek paideia.

POETRY (EPIC AND LYRIC)

Catherine Collobert

Epic and lyric poetry, which flourished in the archaic period (eighth-century BCE to fifth-century BCE), is often quoted, referred to or discussed in Plato’s dialogues.

Hesiod (Theogony, Works and Days, Shield of Herakles) is more or less a contemporary of Solon and Archilochus (seventh-century BCE). Ancient Greek poetry, especially epic, has to be understood in the context of oral tradition, which shaped the epics in various ways. The most significant is that oral composition is based upon a formula, which allows for improvization. Moreover, a salient feature is performance: poetry is a performance rather than a ‘text’. Parts of the epic cycle, the Iliad and the Odyssey, whose poet was taken to be Homer, were sung by bards and later rhapsodes, as Plato describes them in the Ion, in the context of festivals like the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens.

Epic poetry introduces itself as poetry of the past, that is, the Heroic Age: the kleea proteron anthropon (Theogony 100), that is to say, the heroes of the Trojan war and their return, as in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the very beginnings of the cosmos, as in the Theog. However, the Homeric epics were not regarded as historical reports and they contain a mixture of elements from different time periods. Yet, the song is not only a celebration of the past but also of the future (Theog. 31) and the present. According to the poet of the Hymn to Apollo, the song bears on the gods’ happiness and the miserable state of human affairs (Hymn to Apollo 190–3).

Thanks to the Muses, the goddesses of poetry, the poet sings human and divine deeds. Despite the doubtful etymological relation between muse and memory, there is an acknowledged parentage between the muse and memory and the song and memory: Pindar conceives of memory as the mirror of fine deeds (Nemean 7.14–15). The Muses’ omniscience and omnipresence (Homer, Il. II.485) are imparted to the poet who has, therefore, access to the past and possesses a universal and divine knowledge. The divine gift of poetry does not only allow the poet to transmit knowledge to his audience but also gives pleasure. According to Hesiod, Zeus created poetry first for his own pleasure (Theog. 37, 51), and second, to grant mankind ‘a forgetting of ills and a rest from sorrows’ (55) and lighten their sufferings (98–9). Regarding themselves as masters of both truth and pleasure, the poets did not consider these two ends to be incompatible because pleasure does not necessarily address the irrational part of the soul, as Plato has it (Republic 603a–c, 605a–7b).

The invocation of the Muses does not lead the poet to consider himself as merely a mouthpiece of the divine. Even though the invocation is a kind of inspiration (Od. 8.499; Theog. 33) it does not equate with possession (q.v. Madness and Possession), contrary to Plato’s claim in Ion and Phaedrus. The equation allows him to deprive the poet not only of a technê but also of knowledge. Possessed, that is, under the spell of the divine and ‘out of his mind’, the poet is in an irrational state of mind, contributing nothing to his poetry. However, although the human and the divine parts in the making of the song are not clearly distinguished, the poet acknowledges a kind of autonomy through the common idea that the Muses teach the poet (Od. 8.481, 8.487, 17.518; Solon, 1.51–2; Th. 22; Hesiod, Works and Days 662). Divine inspiration does not deprive the poet of a poetic skill (Od. 14.131), contrary to what Plato claims (Ion). Pindar speaks of an inventive ability (eumachania) that prevents him from being merely the follower of Homer (Pythian 7b8–20). Comparing the poet with a seer, Pindar tells us that the skill consists chiefly of interpreting the Muses’ sayings. He thus makes the art of the poet an art of interpretation (Snell P. 6.6, f. 94a5, f. 150), which is under attack in Ion (535a). The broad range of topics that poetry embraces makes it a kind of encyclopaedia, especially the Il. and the Od. (see Plato, R. 606e2; Xenophon, Symposium 3–6). Plato’s critique of Homer’s and the poets’ alleged polymathia leads him to condemn their role in education. Poetry conveys a certain ethical insight whose values, for the most part Homeric, are called into question on account of their detrimental consequences (R. bk 3). Heroes are poor models whose imitation perverts the soul. However, this critique of the heroic posture is not only Plato’s but also that of the lyric poets, though the perspective is very different in each case. Lyric poetry (iambic, melic and elegiac poetry) is centred on the individual and the present, and expresses itself in the first person. Archilochus rejects the Homeric idealized hero and his search for kleos – Simonides of Ceos and Hipponax depict the triviality and poverty of life. However, harking back to Homer, the last representatives of lyric poetry like Bacchylides and Pindar define poetry as an art of immortalization. By bestowing fame on mortals who no longer accomplish warlike deeds but only athletic ones, the poet gives them immortality. Whether or not it is a criticism of heroism, lyric poetry does not renounce the aim of conveying a moral message and content. This is why the poet Theognis of Megara (sixth-century BCE) could be the target of Plato according to whom the poet gives an inconsistent view on virtue in his Elegies (Men. 95d–6a). Inconsistency is one of Plato’s favourite criticisms against the poets (e.g. Lg. 719c).

The sayings of lyric poets are considered to be wise and true by various characters in the dialogues and, in consequence, are subjected to Socrates’ elenchus, as in the case of Simonides in R. bk 1 and Protagoras. Plato maintains on the one hand that poetry consists of an illusory, dangerous and deceitful art, and on the other hand, that it is the product of ignorance. However, even though lyric poetry is banished from the ideal city along with epic, it is not, like Homer and to a lesser extent Hesiod, the main target of Plato’s attacks. The reason may be that Homer, as ‘the best of the poets’, embodies par excellence the figure of poetic authority against which Plato wages war (R. 606e–7a).

PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS

J. H. Lesher

Plato refers frequently to the views held by earlier thinkers, typically while lining up witnesses for or against a philosophical thesis. His characters speak approvingly of the doctrines of Parmenides and the Pythagoreans but repudiate in the strongest terms the teachings of ‘atheistic materialists’ – thinkers such as the Milesian inquirers into nature we today regard as the founders of Western philosophy and science. The chief failings of the materialists were not acknowledging the priority of soul over matter and not believing that a cosmic intelligence has arranged all things for the best. On occasion Plato states a view held by a thinker he has elsewhere criticized and he is not above borrowing the ideas of others without identifying his source. Thus, while Plato’s dialogues are an invaluable source of information for the views of earlier thinkers, his representations must be read with caution.

Plato’s Thales is the familiar combination of scientific inquirer (Theaetetus 174a) and practical sage (Hippias Major 281c; Epistle 2.311a; Protagoras 343a; Republic 10.600a). Thales is also credited with the view that ‘all things are full of gods’ (Laws 10.899b), which exempted him from the indictments of materialist cosmologies levelled in the Epinomis (988b) and Lg. bk 10 (886e). The story of Thales and the serving girl (Tht. 174a) suggests that Plato saw Thales as a prototype of the philosopher whose inquiries expose him to public ridicule and scorn.

At Sophist 242d Plato presents Xenophanes of Colophon as one of the early thinkers who affirmed that ‘all things are one’, but elsewhere Plato follows Xenophanes’ lead on a number of points. For example, the proposal to censor poetic depictions of the gods put forward in R. bk 10 echoes sentiments Xenophanes expressed in fragments ‘DK’ B1, 11, 12 and 22; the call at Apology 36e and R. 5.465d to honour the city’s wise counsellors more than victorious athletes tracks the language of Xenophanes B3; and the distinction between knowledge and true opinion (endorsed at Men. 98a and elsewhere) appears first in Xenophanes B34. Plato’s unwillingness to acknowledge his indebtedness to Xenophanes may derive from Xenophanes’ endorsement of the kind of materialist view (B27 and 29) the Athenian of Lg. bk 10 claimed warranted a minimum of 5 years of solitary confinement or the death penalty (Lg. 909). Plato might also have disliked Xenophanes’ claim that people in different regions conceive of the gods in different terms (cf. B16 and Lg. 10.889e) and that god ‘shakes all things by the thought of his mind’ (B25) but is otherwise uninvolved in human affairs (see further, Lesher 1992).

Pythagoras of Samos appears only once in the dialogues, when (at R. 10.600a) Plato identifies him as ‘the founder of a way of life’. But Philebus 16d alludes to a ‘Prometheus like figure’ who taught that ‘all things consist of a one and many, and have in their nature a conjunction of limit and unlimited’ and that ‘we must go from one form to look for two, if the case admits of this, otherwise for three or some other number of forms’. Although the evidence relating to ancient Pythagoreanism (q.v. Pythagoreanism) is often unreliable, it seems certain that at some point Plato became enamoured of Pythagorean doctrine. His most extensive account of the physical cosmos is presented by Timaeus, an imaginary Pythagorean statesman and scientist. In the R. he describes the study of mathematics as essential preparation for philosophical dialectic and an essential component in the training of the guardians (Ti. 536d). His tripartite view of the soul echoes a Pythagoras anecdote about the three kinds of lives (Diogenes Laertius 8.8). The simile of the divided line in R. bk 6 (q.v.) embodies the same fourfold progression Pythagoras’ followers identified as the tetractys their master had passed down to their generation (Aëtius I, 3, 8). Plato’s definition of justice assumes the conception of harmony described by the Pythagorean Philolaus of Croton (‘DK’ 44, B6). These and other points of contact clearly indicate that Plato knew and embraced many of the Pythagorean doctrines of his own era (see Huffman 1993).

Plato credited Heraclitus of Ephesus with the mistaken (indeed, self-defeating) doctrine of ‘flux’ or ‘radical change’, that is, that all things are changing in all respects all the time (Cratylus 401d, 402a, 411b; Phlb. 43a; Tht. 152e, 160d, 177c). But the most likely basis for Plato’s interpretation – the ‘river fragments’ ‘DK’ B12, 49a and 91b – can be read instead as affirming the unity of the opposites and the measured character of all change (see Kirk 1954). Moreover, at least one aspect of Heraclitean reality remained exempt from change, namely the logos that ‘holds forever’ (B1). Plato also expressed contempt for Heraclitus’ aphorism-spouting followers (Tht. 180) and accused him of failing to understand his own doctrine of opposites (Symposium 187a). But Plato concurred in many other aspects of Heraclitus’ philosophy. Plato held that the doctrine of flux holds true for all things located in the sensible realm, including human beings (cf. Smp. 207d). The Stranger at Sph. 242d has no difficulty in attributing to a ‘certain Ionian muse’ the view that ‘the real is both many and one and is held together by enmity and friendship [and that] in parting asunder it is always being drawn together’. In addition, at Phaedo 65a and R. 6.508 Plato indicts the senses as unsuitable sources of knowledge, much as Heraclitus had indicted ‘eyes and ears as bad witnesses’ (‘DK’ B107). The contrast of sleeping with waking, a leitmotif in many of the surviving Heraclitus fragments, became one of Plato’s favourite themes.

Parmenides of Elea (q.v. Eleatics) provided Plato with both the terminology and philosophical foundations for two key doctrines in his philosophy: a dualistic metaphysics and rationalist theory of knowledge (cf. Diotima’s description of Beauty Itself at Smp. 211a, the linking of knowledge with being at R. 5.476, and the denigration of sense perception in the simile of the divided line at R. 6.508–11). On the Parmenidean-Platonic view, ‘what is’ cannot fail to be in any way, and therefore never changes, moves, is divided, comes into being or is destroyed. Moreover, since knowledge must be a secure possession, it must have as its objects things that remain forever in possession of their attributes, which can only be the Forms or Ideas we apprehend in thought (see further, Palmer 1999 and q.v. Eleatics).

Plato refers frequently to doctrines associated with Empedocles of Akragas, but with little approval. At Men. 76c Socrates draws on an Empedoclean theory of ‘effluences’ to define colour but disparages the resulting definition as ‘pompous’. At Tht. 152e Socrates includes Empedocles among the earlier thinkers who mistakenly thought that all things are in the process of becoming. Phd. 96b contains what is probably a reference to Empedocles’ view of blood as the medium of thought (‘DK’ A30, 86 and 97). Timaeus 48b introduces a geometrical improvement on the Empedoclean doctrine of ‘roots’ (B6 and A30). And the Sph. alludes to ‘a certain muse in Sicily’ who held that ‘the real is both many and one and held together by enmity and friendship’ (Sph. 242d, 243a; cf. B26). But Plato appears to have shared Empedocles’ conception of philosophy as a guide to life as well as his view of the present life as merely one stage in the soul’s long journey (cf. B111 and 115 with the myth of Er in R. bk 10).

Plato credited Anaxagoras of Clazomenae with four doctrines: that the sun and moon are not gods but merely stone and earth (Apology 26d), that the moon receives its light from the sun (Cratylus 409b), that ‘all things are together’ (Gorgias 465d; Phd. 72c) and that ‘Mind produces order and is the cause of everything’ (Cra. 413c, 400a; Lg. 10.886d, 12.967b; Phd. 98b). In the Phd. Socrates faults Anaxagoras for failing to stick to his hypothesis that the Mind orders all things, resorting instead to causes such as ‘air, aether, water, and many other absurdities’ (Phd. 98c). In ‘DK’ B12, however, Anaxagoras speaks of Mind as ‘itself’ and ‘all by itself’ (auto and eph’ eautou), phrases Plato will employ in characterizing the Forms or Ideas (cf. Ti. 51b8). Anaxagoras would certainly have been among those ‘earlier thinkers’ praised in the Philebus for affirming ‘that reason and a marvellous organizing intelligence (noun kai phronêsin) pilot the whole universe’ (Phd. 28d).

The fact that the names of the founders of atomic theory, Leucippus and Democritus, appear nowhere in Plato’s writings provides some measure of his animosity towards materialist cosmologies. The possibility that reality consisted entirely of material bodies jostling about in empty space, and that events could be fully accounted for in terms of physical causes, were ideas Plato regarded as anathema. So, when (at Ti. 53 ff.) Plato offers his own theory of matter his geometrical ‘atoms’ are so richly endowed with aesthetic, moral, and mathematical properties as to hardly count as material bodies at all. The silent treatment Plato gave to the atomists provides a useful reminder that his representations of the views held by his predecessors were neither disinterested nor entirely dispassionate.

PYTHAGOREANS

Carl A. Huffman

Some have thought that the Pythagoreans played a powerful role in shaping Platonic thought (Guthrie 1975:35). In late antiquity, Plato could be presented as a member of the Pythagorean School (Photius 438b17). The evidence suggests, however, that Pythagorean influence on Plato has been considerably exaggerated. Indeed, recent overviews of Plato’s philosophy (e.g. Benson 2006; Kraut 1992c) make only a few, mostly passing, references to Pythagoreanism, thus suggesting that Plato is explicable with little mention of the Pythagoreans.

Plato refers explicitly to Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans only once each. Many scholars think, however, that a single sentence from the Metaphysics indicates that Aristotle thought Plato heavily indebted to Pythagoreanism. In the survey of his predecessors, Aristotle asserts that Plato’s philosophy ‘agrees with these men in most respects’ (987a29–31). Although many see ‘these men’ as the Pythagoreans, the context suggests the reference is to all the pre-Socratics (Huffman 2008). Moreover, Aristotle explains Plato’s central achievement in metaphysics, the theory of forms, in terms of the combined influence of Socrates and Heracliteans (Metaphysics 987a32–b10, 1078b12–30), without mention of the Pythagoreans. It is with principles that are even more fundamental than forms that he sees the closest connection between Plato and Pythagoreanism. Even here he stresses differences. Plato’s one and indefinite dyad correspond to the Pythagoreans’ limit and unlimited, but Plato separates his principles from the physical world, while the Pythagoreans identify theirs with it. Plato also replaces the unlimited with the indefinite dyad.

Plato’s sparse references to the Pythagoreans are in accord with Aristotle’s presentation. The sole reference to Pythagoras (Republic 600b) is positive and indicates that Plato thought of him as a private educator who left behind a way of life. There is no suggestion of any close connection to or veneration for Pythagoras. The single reference to the Pythagoreans (R. 530d) praises them for treating harmonics and astronomy as sister sciences but criticizes them for looking for numbers in heard harmonies rather than ascending to problems and treating numbers apart from sensibles (R. 531c).

Plato’s clearest nonexplicit reference to the Pythagoreans is found at Philebus 16c–17a. Socrates describes a method that ‘was hurled down from the gods by some Prometheus along with fire’ and that men before his time adopted. This method regards limit and unlimited as inherent in all things and knowledge as arising when we grasp the precise number that applies to each thing. In the later tradition, where Pythagoras becomes the source of all philosophical wisdom, this Prometheus was inevitably identified with Pythagoras. Nothing in Plato’s reference to Pythagoras in the R., however, suggests that he saw him as a divine figure and it is likely that Plato was simply referring to a revised Prometheus, who hurled down the method along with fire as gifts to humanity (Huffman 1999). The men before our time who adopt the method are undoubtedly Pythagoreans. Aristotle explicitly identifies limit, unlimited and number as basic principles of the Pythagoreans and these principles are also found in the fragments of Philolaus.

Pythagorean influence appears earlier in Plato’s career in two areas, the fate of the soul and mathematics (Kahn 2001:3–4). Vivid accounts of the judgement and reincarnation of the soul, which appear abruptly in Gorgias, Meno, Phaedo and R. are often traced to Pythagorean influence arising from his visit to Italy and Sicily in 387 BCE. Pythagoras was perhaps the first to introduce the doctrine of metempsychosis into Greece (Dicaearchus Fr. 40 Mirhady). It was, however, also found in Orphism, in Empedocles and possibly in Bacchic rites (Burkert 1985:294; Burkert 1987:87). At Laws 870d–e, Plato presents it as something taught in religious initiations (teletai), which suggests Orphic or Bacchic practises. It is, thus, far from clear that Plato was always thinking of Pythagoreans when he mentioned it.

Other aspects of Plato’s account of the fate of the soul are even less securely traced to Pythagoreanism. The unnamed ‘wise’ man who teaches (Grg. 493a) that we are dead in this life and that the body (sôma) is the tomb (sêma) of the soul is not Orphic; the Orphics are assigned a competing view at Cratylus 400c. He might be a Pythagorean, but later sources also point to Heraclitus (Dodds 1959:300). The Sicilian or Italian mythologizer mentioned in the same passage, who made the soul a leaky jar, is also not likely to be a Pythagorean. Nor is it true that, whenever Socrates refers to ‘the wise’, he is referring to the Pythagoreans (Burkert 1972:78 correcting Dodds 1959:297). The wise man of R. (583b; cf. Phlb. 44b), who regards pleasure as unreal is not a Pythagorean as Adam (1902:378); suggested he was. Pythagoreans distrusted pleasure but regarded it as all too real (Huffman 2005:323–37). The ‘wise men and women’ of Men. (81a), who are ‘priests and priestesses who have made it their concern to given an account of their practices’ are likely to be Orphics or others engaged in mysteries, since Pythagoreans are not called priests in our sources. Women did have a prominent role in Pythagoreanism, but they were also initiated into the Bacchic mysteries (Burkert 1985:294). The view that all nature is akin (Men. 81d) may be a Platonic adaption of the Pythagorean view that all animate creatures are related (Dicaearchus Fr. 40, Mirhady).

The Phd. is peopled by Pythagoreans such as Philolaus and Echecrates, but Plato does not call them Pythagoreans and is not simply presenting Pythagorean views. Socrates assigns the theory that the body is a prison, in which the soul is undergoing punishment from which it should not escape by suicide (Phd. 62c), to the mysteries and not to Philolaus. The Pythagorean idea that the soul is a harmony is heavily criticized (Phd. 86b; see Huffman 1993:328; Huffman 2009). To argue that the Phd. myth follows a Pythagorean source in the smallest details (Kingsley 1995:79–171) is implausible, since the supposed Pythagorean source has not survived. There may be Pythagorean elements in the Grg. myth, but Dodds shows that it draws on a great variety of sources. Plato’s typical transformation of his sources is clear in the case of metempsychosis. He borrows the idea that the soul goes through a series of rebirths, remembering things encountered previous to this existence. His theory of recollection grafts onto this religious idea – the distinctly Platonic notion of a separation between an intelligible world of forms and the sensible world. What we recollect is our encounter with the forms in a disembodied state, whereas Pythagoras only claimed to remember his previous physical incarnations. As an epistemological doctrine, the doctrine of recollection owes very little to Pythagoreanism.

Similarly, mere mention of mathematics is no indication that Plato is drawing on Pythagoreanism. Rigorous mathematics is Greek rather than specifically Pythagorean. The most prominent mathematicians in the dialogues, Theodorus and Theaetetus, are not Pythagoreans. In R. bk 7, although aware of Archytas’ achievements in mathematics (Huffman 2005:385–401), Plato finds its value in the ability to turn the soul from the sensible to the intelligible realm, while he criticizes the Pythagoreans for locating numbers in sensible things. Part of the terminology used to describe the nuptial number (R. 546c; cf. sunêkooi at Lg. 711e (Burkert 1972:84)) is drawn from Pythagorean sources (Huffman 2005:439–42), but there is no reason to think that the number itself was Pythagorean. The southern Italian who gives his name to Plato’s Timaeus, has been thought to represent Archytas. The situation is not so simple. The construction of the world soul relies on the mathematics of the Pythagorean diatonic scale, but it is the scale used by Philolaus not Archytas. Moreover, features of the cosmology of the Ti. are in direct conflict with Pythagoreanism. Archytas argued that the universe was unlimited in extent (Huffman 2005:540), whereas Plato’s universe has a limit. Philolaus makes the earth a planet orbiting around a central fire. Plato, like Philolaus, apparently has a spherical earth, but it is firmly in the centre. The moral cosmology of the Phd. and R. myths, and the conception of a heavenly music in the latter, owe something to Pythagoras’ own cosmology and to Philolaus’ description of the cosmos as a harmony (Huffman 2010). At Grg. 507e, the Pythagoreans are undoubtedly included among ‘the wise’, who say that heaven and earth are held together by friendship, order and justice and hence call the whole a kosmos (order), although Empedocles and Anaximander are probably included as well. Pythagoras’ invention of the word kosmos is a later fabrication (Burkert 1972:77). Socrates’ warning to Callicles that he is ignoring mathematical proportion (Politicus 508a) may be an allusion to Archytas (Huffman 2005:208–11); in the Plt. (284e) ‘the clever who say that measure is concerned with all things’ could be Pythagoreans, although the passage is problematic. In all these cases, however, as in the Ti., while Plato borrows specific aspects of Pythagoreanism, he integrates them into a system that is distinctly Platonic and often profoundly un-Pythagorean. With the exception of Plato’s later theory of principles, Pythagoreanism was just one among many influences on Plato rather than being central to his development.

RHETORIC AND SPEECHMAKING

Richard Marback

The term rhêtorikê, or rhetoric, understood as the art of using words to persuade others in assemblies and courts of law, first appears in Plato’s Gorgias. The term is a derivation of an older, commonly used word for politicians who spoke in assemblies and courts, rhêtôr. The speeches given by politicians in assemblies were deliberative. Speeches given in courts of law were judicial (see Schiappa 1991:39–58). In Grg., rhetoric is used to refer less to the practises of giving speeches in assemblies and courts of law and more to the art of teaching others to deliver such speeches. The passage where the term rhêtorikê first appears is one in which Socrates is questioning Gorgias about the identity of his art and the associated nature of the wisdom he professes to teach. The conclusions of the dialogue – that rhetoric is like cookery in that both are arts of flattery, gratification and indulgence, at the same time the sophist is like the tyrant in that both possess the power to do what they please but lack the wisdom to know and do what is best – are cynical conclusions about the roles of rhetoric and speechmaking in civic life. Many were sceptical about the teaching of speechmaking, worried about the potential created for insincerity. At the same time, rhetoric and the art of speechmaking did contribute to Athenian democracy by standardizing competence and encouraging scepticism (see further, Guthrie 1971a; also Poulakos 1995:11–46). We get a broader sense of the ancient Greek art of persuading through speeches by turning directly to the words of the sophist Gorgias himself.

In ‘Encomium of Helen’, Gorgias displays his flair for language at the same time as he delves into the mysterious power of words. The speech is a defence of Helen of Troy against any blame she carries for leaving Sparta with Paris and causing the Trojan War. Gorgias claims Helen could have been persuaded to go with Paris in four ways: by the gods, by force, by love or through speech. The first three means of persuasion – divine intervention, physical force and the passion of love – are, according to Gorgias, irresistible, and so leave Helen innocent of acting in a blameworthy manner. The fourth means by which she may have been persuaded, speech, is also irresistible, and so Helen is again found to be not blameworthy. The persuasive power of speech is irresistible because

The effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, so also in the case of speeches, some distress, others delight, some cause fear, others make the hearer bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion (14, trans. Kennedy 1963).

In this passage the word for speech is logos (q.v.), a general term that denotes word or speech or language as well as principle or reason. Here Gorgias would seem to be saying through his comparison to drugs that the effects of speech on souls is less a consequence of the idea communicated and more a result of the language of the idea’s communication.

Expressing the persuasive and, at least in this case, deceptive power of words over the soul through appeal to magic and the effects of drugs on bodies is no mere flourish or imagery. As far back as the oral culture of the Homeric tradition speech was considered a divine gift. To speak well was to be inspired as well as inspiring. Not only could epic poets be inspired and inspiring speakers, speechmaking itself was a prevalent feature in epic poetry as well as in the later tragedies (Kennedy 1994:11–29). As Gorgias remarks, poetry is speech with meter and if poetry could be understood as speech with meter, then speech could draw on the stylistics of poetry to exert influence over the emotions and perceptions of an audience. Conscious arrangement of rhythm and meter could drug and trick the souls of an audience by compelling emotional responses that confuse, overwhelm and manipulate the limitations of human memory, understanding and foresight (de Romilly 1975:3–22).

The persuasive power of a speech, then, is visceral. The sounds of words were experienced and understood as more than auditory representations communicating ideas to disembodied intellects. The soul and body were inextricably intertwined. We need only recall from Phaedrus (246–54) Plato’s myth of the charioteer of the soul to get a sense of the close relationships among reason, moral sentiments and irascible appetites. Words were indeed magical as well as medicinal. Words could and did quicken the heart, steel the nerves, inflame or extinguish the passions and mesmerize the soul. People are susceptible to the persuasive and deceptive power of speeches because they are by nature social creatures vulnerable to, and dependent on, each other.

With the realization that, through an art of rhetoric, they could manipulate words in ways that ‘drug and trick the soul’, sophists recognized the potential power to be had over the souls of others through the delivery of carefully crafted speeches. Teaching the powerful art of speechmaking, sophists taught the deliberative and judicial speaking that became increasingly important to the political functioning of ancient Athenian democracy. Of course such an education could not but run the risk of being seen by more traditional thinkers as more deceptive than persuasive. Such is the view often found in the dialogues of Plato, portraying rhetoric and speechmaking as deceptive and so as an illicit drug that contributes to the diseases of soul and to the state instead of to their health and well-being. Although Socrates himself sometimes gives speeches and seems to envisage a proper philosophic rhetoric in the Phdr., for Plato the speaking that cured souls was to be had less in speechmaking and more in the give and take of dialogue. The tension between dialogue and speechmaking reflects the question of how best to establish through language the bonds of philosophical friendship that hold people together in societies. An art of rhetoric that had as its explicit goal a training in the making of speeches which could have therapeutic effects on state and soul was a later historical development, most fully articulated after Plato by Aristotle (see further, Nussbaum 1994).

SOCRATES (HISTORICAL)

William Prior

(I) LIFE

Socrates, one of the greatest philosophers of the ancient Greek world and for several ancient schools an exemplar of what the philosophical life should be, was an Athenian citizen born in 469 BCE. He was the son of Sophroniscus, a stonecutter, and Phaenarete, a midwife; and he was married to Xanthippe, with whom he had three children (Phaedo 60a, 116a–b). His adult years coincided with the ‘Golden Age’ of Athens, and he was present during Athens’ decline and fall during the Peloponnesian War (431–404). Socrates was a public figure during at least part of this period: the comic playwright Aristophanes made him the target of his play the Clouds (423; later revised). His odd physical appearance and his way of life made him a ready target for the comic poets. Socrates served as a hoplite (a heavy-armed infantryman) in at least three of Athens’ military campaigns in the Peloponnesian War (at Potideia in 429 BCE, Delium in 424 BCE and Amphipolis in 422 BCE). Plato notes his courage during the retreat from Delium (Laches 181b; Symposium 221a).

(II) PHILOSOPHICAL ACTIVITY

Socrates seems to have spent most of his time in the agora, the public market place, discussing philosophy. He denied that he was a teacher, and he did not accept pay as did numerous other thinkers of the day, but he did attract a coterie of young followers, most importantly including Xenophon and Plato. Several of these followers made contributions to the Socratic literature, dialogues written with Socrates as the central figure (Kahn 1996:1–35). Except for the writings of Xenophon and Plato, however, only fragments of their works remain.

(III) TRIAL

In 399 Socrates was brought to trial on charges of impiety (lit. ‘not believing in the gods in whom the city believes, but in other new spiritual things’ Apology 24b) and corrupting the youth. He was found guilty, sentenced to death and executed by hemlock poisoning. Several reasons for his conviction and execution have been offered. At least one scholar (Burnyeat 1998) has argued that he was guilty of impiety. Others note his arrogance before the jury, or his relationship with antidemocratic elements within Athens (in particular, Plato’s uncle Critias and his cousin Charmides). Even more important may have been his association with Alcibiades, a highly controversial Athenian political leader, though a democratic one. Alcibiades and Socrates had an erotic relationship, comically described by Alcibiades in Plato’s Smp. (217a–19d; see also, Alcibiades I and Protagoras). Socrates’ status as the leading intellectual in Athens and as a central figure in the intellectual revolution that took place in the latter half of the fifth century doubtlessly aroused antipathy among many jurors.

(IV) THE SOCRATIC PROBLEM

The above information is generally accepted concerning Socrates. He examined others in public as well as in private and he discussed ethics. The Socratic dialogue form presumably reflects the dialectical activity of the historical Socrates. Beyond this, it is difficult to be certain what, if anything, Socrates believed or taught or what kind of person he was. The problem is that we have four early sources: Aristophanes, Aristotle, Plato and Xenophon, and they do not always agree. Three of these sources were contemporaries of Socrates who knew him personally (Aristophanes, Plato and Xenophon); the other was a member of Plato’s Academy who had access to eye witness accounts of Socrates (Aristotle). The discrepancies among our sources have produced the ‘Socratic Problem’, and its persistence in the literature may be a sign that it is insoluble.

The problem arises from the fact that Socrates wrote nothing, so that all of our earliest accounts of his views come from the sources mentioned above. Though there are areas of overlap in these sources’ portraits of Socrates, there are important differences. Controversially (cf. Dover 1968), Aristophanes portrays Socrates in the Clouds as a philosophical mountebank, a purveyor of doctrines in all areas, who dispenses these doctrines from a school called the phrontisterion (think tank). Aristophanes’ Socrates combines features of a philosopher of nature with that of a sophist. It is difficult for us to know, at this distance from the Clouds, how serious this portrait is to be taken (though Socrates takes it seriously enough to respond to it in the Ap. 18a–d, 19c–d).

For Plato and Xenophon, however, Socrates is a revered figure with the highest ethical standards. They differ to some degree on what these standards entail. For Plato, Socrates rejects the lex talionis, the repayment of ‘an eye for an eye’, whereas Xenophon’s Socrates does not (Vlastos 1991a:179–99). Plato’s Socrates has a developed theory of virtue, equating virtue with knowledge and denying the possibility of moral weakness; Xenophon’s Socrates is more of a homespun moral philosopher offering practical, moral advice. Aristotle does not offer a complete portrait of Socrates, but he offers interesting bits of information, many of which seem to confirm the portraits in the Platonic dialogues.

Plato’s portrait of Socrates has proved to be the most compelling for most contemporary scholars. Even if we confine ourselves to the Platonic portrait of Socrates, however, it is difficult, if not impossible to form a single coherent picture of his views. Socrates in the Ap. (23a–b) professes scepticism about the existence of knowledge in humans. In the Theaetetus (149a–51d) Plato portrays Socrates as a midwife who, though barren himself, elicits philosophical truths from his interlocutors. For Alcibiades in the Smp. (221d–2a), Socrates’ barrenness is only an ironic mask for philosophical riches hidden within. Numerous scholars have seen in those riches philosophical doctrines in the area of ethics. Other scholars (including Penner 1992) have attributed to Plato’s Socrates a theory of the nature of the soul. Still others have attributed to him an early version of the theory of forms (Allen 1971; Prior 2004).

Socrates remains a mystery. His influence on other philosophers, however, is not. He was more influential on Plato than any other philosopher, as is shown by the fact that he is present in all the dialogues save the very late Laws and is the leading speaker in most of them. We may not know precisely where the historical Socrates ends and the Platonic Socrates begins, but we can detect his influence on Plato throughout most of the corpus.

SOCRATICS (OTHER THAN PLATO)

Menahem Luz

The term ‘Socratic philosophers’ (Sôkratikoi) is an ancient one employed to denote either Socrates’ pupils or later philosophers who regarded him as their founder (Goulet-Cazé 1999:161–5). Since Plato and Xenophon are often considered his principal representatives today, modern scholars invented the terms ‘Other Socratics’ (Nails 2002:xxviii) or ‘Minor Socratics’ to denote Socrates’ other followers and sometimes their pupils as well (Giannantoni 1985:1–2). Plato gives a select list of Socrates’ ‘inner circle’ at the time of his execution (Phaedo 59b–c), but of these only five are examined in any detail by the ancient biographers (D. L. 2.60–105, 6. 1–19) and considered leading Minor Socratic today (Kahn 1996:1–35): Antisthenes of Piraeus, Aeschines of Sphettus, Euclides of Megara, Phaedo of Elis and Aristippus of Cyrene. By the late fourth century, ‘Socratic compositions’ (Sôkratikoi logoi) were a recognized literary genre (Aristotle, Poetics 1447b11; Rhetoric 1416a21) and sources of imitation for Socratic literature composed during the Hellenistic-Roman era when leading Minor Socratics were anachronistically considered the founders of the Cynics, Hedonists, Megarian dialecticians and neo-Eleatics (Vander Waerdt 1994a:Part II). Some of these imitations were associated with other lesser Socratics featuring in the works of Plato and Xenophon (Field 1967:133–74): for example, Crito, Simon the Cobbler, Glauco, Simmias and Cebes (Goulet-Cazé 1999: notes to pp. 202–3, 333–42). The genuine works of the leading Socratics survive only as a mass of ancient quotations supplemented by recently discovered papyrus fragments. Xenophon encapsulates many of their ideas but reformulated as conversations held between them and Socrates (e.g. Symposium i, iv; Memorabilia II. i, iii). A more reliable though selective source is Aristotle who criticizes the logic of Antisthenes and the Antistheneans (Metaphysics 1024b32–4, 1043b24–6), Aristippus (Metaphysics 996a32; Rhetoric 1398b30–3) and the style of Aeschines (Rhetoric 1417b1–2). The Minor Socratics did not form a single unified Socratic school although modern scholars have attempted to extract features common to them and Plato in order to uncover the teaching of the historical Socrates (Vlastos 1997:63n, 103, 208). Former scholars viewed them as Plato’s companions (Field 1967:Part 3) while more recent research has contrasted them: for example, the non-transcendental understanding of the good in Aeschines and Antisthenes with Plato’s theory of ideas (Rankin 1986:ch. 1); or the teachability of virtue in Antisthenes (Giannantoni 1983:II, f. 99) and Aeschines with Plato’s Men. (Bluck 1964:117–18, 368). Yet others have looked for interactions between the Socratics, Plato and Xenophon (Kahn 1994:1–35). A notable example is the question of political virtue denied in Plato’s Gorgias, but later limited to the heroes of Athenian history in Aeschines’ Miltiades, and ironically subservient to divine providence in the Men. (Bluck 1964:117–18; Dodds 1985:29–30). More provocative is the absence of Socrates’ aporia in their work, thus questioning its historicity in the Platonic Socrates.

Modern scholarship has reassessed each of the five Minor Socratics as independent thinkers aside from the Hellenistic schools allegedly descended from them:

(1)Antisthenes of Piraeus (c. 445–c. 340 BCE) was said to have first been a paid sophist composing artificial speeches concerning the Homeric heroes (Rankin 1986:ch. 7). Even after his daily conversations with Socrates, his dialogues were characterized less by dialectic and more by imaginary speeches presented by mythological heroes as in the Hercules (Luz 1996:89–92) – or by foreign historical figures as in the Cyrus (Giananntoni 1983:II, VA, ff. 92–9). In both dialogues he showed how virtue was achieved at a universal level and through effort rather than through contemplation, a point that much influenced the early Stoa (Luz 1994:115–17). Even his definition of philosophy ‘as a discussion with one’s self’ (Giananntoni 1983:II, VA ff. 100) stands in contrast to Plato’s dialectic. Moreover, his theory of language that each word denotes one single concept to be defined only by itself – as in the new fragment ‘disgracefulness is disgraceful’ (Luz 2000:92–3) – recalls Prodicus’ linguistic interest rather than Plato’s search for universal definitions (Navia 2001:ch. 4). Much of this may be connected with his direct assault on Plato in the dialogue ‘That Willy (Sathon) or on Contradiction’ criticizing Plato’s metaphysics and summarized in the saying ‘I see a horse but not Horseness’ (Giannantoni 1983:II, ff. 147–59). Citations from his work on nature (Physikos) reformulate Xenophanes but are more sophisticated: there are many gods by convention, but only one in nature (ff. 179–83; Caizzi 1966:100–1). Much of his ethical theory was passed down to the Cynics and Stoa though his relationship with them was through his writings (Long 1996:28–46): virtue was a ‘Socratic strength’ to be grasped through reason and example rather than Academic study, but once learned it becomes a ‘weapon that cannot be lost’. While he saw that true riches lay in virtue (Giannantoni 1983:II, VA, ff. 80–3), he did not reject possessions in themselves like the Cynics. Though ‘preferring madness to pleasure’ (ibid. ff. 118–28) he did not reject easily attained enjoyment (43–4).

(2)Aeschines of Sphettus (c. 435–c. 355 BCE) was a less original thinker than Antisthenes though his seven genuine dialogues were much admired in antiquity (Field 1967:146) for their unembellished ‘Socratic character’ (D. L. 2.61). Since the last publication of his fragments (Dittmar 1912; Krauss 1911), there have been substantial papyrological additions to his Alcibiades (CPF I 1989:120–34; Lobel 1919:no. 1608) and Miltiades (CPF I 1989:134–48; Patzer 1975; Slings 1975:301–8) dialogues. In the former, Socrates deflates Alcibiades’ political aspirations in that he has less epistêmê even than his hero Themistocles (Field 1967:147–9). The dialogue also explains how Socrates’ divinely inspired erôs enables him to instil self-knowledge in Alcibiades. Though this theory of Socratic erôs has been termed ‘innovative’ (Kahn 1994:87), the fragments have striking similarities to Plato’s dialogues as well as divergences with regard to the attainment of political epistêmê (Kahn 1996:19–23). In the Miltiades, Socrates persuades Miltiades to complete an education of the soul in addition to that of the body, turning to Euripides for advice, who refers them back to ‘the wisest of the Greeks’ (Socrates?) for teaching (Slings 1975:307). In the Aspasia, we have themes recalling Plato (Menexenus) and Xenophon (Oeconomicus) but where Pericles’ mistress instructs Socrates on married love.

(3)Euclides of Megara (c. 450–368 BCE) allegedly sheltered Plato after Socrates’ execution (D. L. 2.106). Although he composed six ‘eristic’ dialogues of ‘question and answer’ (ibid. 106–7), very little survives of them (Giannantoni 1985:49–57; Doering 1972:ff. 15–49) but his Socratic memoirs and style were allegedly used by Plato in the Theaetetus (143b5–6). His methodology attacked his opponents’ conclusions rather than their suppositions (Goulet-Cazé 1999:366) ‘in a manner Parmenidean’ (D. L. 2.106), that is, Zeno (Doering 1972:83–4). His pupils in the ‘dialectic school’ of Megara hence developed a number of logical-dialectical paradoxes confuting claims to real knowledge (ibid. 108) while his own appearance in Plato (Tht. 142a–3c) is in a dialogue questioning the meaning of knowledge. Euclides may nonetheless have held positive doctrines as in his identification of the Socratic good with the Parmenidean One (Goulet-Cazé 1999:316, n. 1), sometimes seen as a sign of Platonic influence (Kahn 1996:13–14). However, it is unlikely that Euclides was in philosophical agreement with Plato seeing that his ‘eristical’ method of ‘question and answer’ (D. L. 2.106) was a sophistry Plato much criticized in the Euthydemus and elsewhere. Elsewhere he compared sleep and death (Doering 1972:80–1, f. 19) in almost determinist tones (ibid. ff. 12, 13), an attitude he jokingly maintained in relation to the gods (ibid. f. 11). Logicians have been interested in his use of Zeno’s argumentation, wondering if it reached him directly or through Socrates (Kneale and Kneale 1964:8–9).

(4)Phaedo of Elis (born c. 417 BCE) returned to his native land after Socrates’ execution, but we know little of his Elian School of philosophy, which was absorbed by the Eretrian school of eristics within a few generations (Giannantoni 1983:I.IIIA fr. 1–7). In his dialogue, Zopyros, he discussed traditional physiognomy whereby a person’s character is read from his features and likely criticized as ‘grandfatherly stupidity’ (ibid. f. 9). His description of the effect of the wise as an unnoticed sting perceived by its later effect may contain his answer to physiognomy (Clay 1994:29, no. 11). In the Simon he probably discussed Socrates’ conversations with Simon the cobbler (Goulet-Cazé 1999:312), a genre later to influence the Cynics. Since the anecdotes describe Phaedo’s early life as a slave, it may be speculated that this dialogue presents the philosophy of the workingman in contrast to the ‘executive’ Cephalus (Republic 329e).

(5)Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 430–355 BCE) was much disparaged by his contemporaries as a hedonist (D. L. 2.65), believing pleasure (hêdonê) to be the highest good and end (Mannebach 1961, ff. 155–62). Xenophon (Mem. II.i.1–34, III.viii.4–10) depicts him as a sybarite corrected by Socrates, but it is clear from the argument that Aristippus sought pleasure, not luxury, and for comfort’s sake, social seclusion. Perhaps in reply to the antihedonist, Antisthenes, Aristippus claimed that he learned from philosophy ‘how to speak extravagantly’ (D. L. 2.68). Scholars have contrasted his thought to Plato’s discussions of pleasure (Gosling and Taylor 1984:42–3; Kahn 1996:17–18), but some concluded that he was a serious Socratic though much misunderstood in his time (McKirahan 1994:377–82). Since his relative Aristippus II (Mannebach 1961:ff. 163–7) developed the details of this theory, it has been difficult to draw a clear distinction between them (Giannantoni 1985:123–8, 161–70) and by the Roman period there was difficulty even in assigning his dialogues (D. L. 2.83–5). The relationship between these hedonists and the Epicureans (Giannantoni 1985:171–2) could only have occurred after Aristippus’ death.

THE SOPHISTS

Richard Marback

The Greek term from which the name sophistês, or sophist, is derived is sophos, translating as wise or the wise man. Wisdom is the knowledge of an expert, knowledge in a particular art, craft or skill, such as music, navigation or sculpture. A person wise in an art such as navigation could teach that art. Such teaching was never purely practical in nature as it was more than a handing down of technical skill. To acquire wisdom in an art required learning when, how and to what effect one’s knowledge should be put, it was to acquire a capacity for judgement. General instruction in moral judgement was considered the responsibility of ancient poets (see Guthrie 1971a). In the fifth century, the class of professional teachers grouped as sophists – a grouping that included Gorgias, Protagoras and Prodicus – taught not poetry but eloquence and persuasion in speaking and writing, especially the speaking and writing associated with political life. Gorgias drew from the poetry of Empedocles to cultivate a poetic style in political oratory. Other sophists, such as Protagoras, claimed that lessons in persuasion taught wisdom in statecraft as well as virtue of character (see Kennedy 1994).

The claim that someone could possess the wisdom of virtue (q.v.) and teach it to someone who did not possess it had among its supporters those suspicious of the possibility that such virtues as aristocratic excellence were not strictly inherited (see Jaeger 1939–44). In the fifth century the distinction between nomos and physis, or convention and nature, made it possible to think of wisdom as something more akin to ingenuity or cleverness, a human capacity for overcoming natural limitations. Those who were truly clever possessed a knowledge of, and so a facility with manipulating, the customs, habits and practises of an art. Such cleverness had negative as well as positive connotations (see Atwill 2009). Someone dexterous enough in an art such as rhetoric could potentially deceive others about what is and what is possible. One of the so-called first sophists, Protagoras, made great use of the distinction between nomos and physis. His observation that ‘Man is the measure of all things’ suggests that what can come to count as the wisdom of statecraft, or virtue, is not what is given by nature but what people become aware of, what they invent for themselves, for it is through their interactions with each other that they create the possibility of their attaining virtues and becoming good (see Jarratt 1991). The point is developed in Protagoras’ recounting of the myth of Prometheus distributing to humans the various arts by which they secure survival (Protagoras 321c–2d). As animals, humans are not adapted to survival. They depend for their survival not only on wisdom in specific Promethean arts such as saddle-making and metal-working but also on the more general political arts delivered by Hermes, the moral virtues of aidos and dikê, or the senses of justice (q.v.) and shame, which make it possible for humans to form bonds of civic friendship. These are not virtues that all humans possess in equal amounts at birth, although they are virtues all humans have the potential to acquire and develop through lives lived in civic friendship. The educational and political institutions created by humans cultivate the specific character that humanity achieves. To be human, then, is to be responsible for achieving virtue for oneself, independent of the dictates or limits of nature.

If to be human is to make one’s self, then anything becomes possible. The sophist Gorgias exploits possibility, driving a wedge between the man-made and the naturally given when he argues: Nothing exists. If it exists, it cannot be known. If it can be known, it cannot be expressed (see Sprague 1972). While the extreme scepticism of Gorgias differs from the extreme relativism of Protagoras, their views together suggest a period of critical self-awareness and increased confidence in the power of human thought, a period that has been characterized as the Greek enlightenment. It was a period during which the Greeks cultivated their humanity by cultivating their capacities in a wide variety of technical and political arts. Prodicus contributed to the cultivation of political wisdom an insistence on precision in the definition of terms and clarity in political oratory that heightened critical self-reflection. His concern for distinguishing clearly the meanings of words may have influenced Socrates to dissect the precise meaning of what his interlocutors say in response to his questions. Certainly, Prodicus and Socrates were acquainted (see Guthrie 1971a). In the Men. (96d), Socrates remarks that he had been trained by Prodicus. In the Theaetetus (151b), he explains that he has sent pupils to Prodicus to learn his art.

Sophists such as Gorgias, Protagoras and Prodicus travelled from city to city giving performances of their persuasive and verbal skills. They also taught the arts of eristic, forensics and rhetoric to those who could afford their fees. With access to education in the arts of persuasion citizens of the ancient Greek cities could more skilfully declaim and debate the ideas of justice, statecraft and virtue. The sophistic claim to teach an art of virtue may have resonated with confidence in human ambition and the demands of a democracy, but it also aroused concern about the very possibility of ethical and political wisdom (see Solmsen 1975). Because of their verbal abilities, and because their lessons were only available to those who could pay, the sophists were often envied, disdained and ridiculed. Since the sophists charged fees for their wisdom they could, unlike their rival, Socrates, become corrupted by economic necessity, constrained to craft their lessons in excellence and virtue so as to fetch from their patrons the highest prices. Socrates, unconstrained by the pursuit of fees in his quest for wisdom, was freed to discover the unfettered truth of excellence and virtue with others who were also lovers of wisdom for its own sake.

Plato’s critical presentation of the sophists as the rivals of Socrates may encourage a reading that opposes Plato and Platonism to the sophists and sophistry. Such a reading removes the drama of the dialogues from the sophistic claims to which they respond. To read Plato in this way, to read the dialogues outside the intellectual ferment regarding human wisdom, is to miss recognizing issues that most concerned the ancient Greeks, issues Plato could not consider except through earnest engagement with the sophists – the intertwined issues of appearances, being and becoming, deliberation, desire, education, friendship, justice, persuasion and virtue.