The Portable Plato Read online

  The secret of comedy is vision, and its gift to mortals is insight. The vision is partly ocular and imaginative, but it contains idea, a Greek word derived from seeing; and in the combination there is intellectual vision. Mathematics is the sober comic view of the world, and another portable Plato should contain the dialogues that show this side of the philosopher. But comic poetry is the great maker of the visions behind visions that are called hypotheses. It is in the moving treatment of these aids to insight that Plato has for all time set the locus of philosophical thought. The philosophic method is dialectic as it grew and developed from Socratic ironical questioning of the opinion of the common man. Plato was a bird, the wise bird that sees in the night.

  But Plato’s own life is hard to see as a comedy. It has the weight and beauty of a tragedy. He came from families of the ruling aristocracy at the height of the Periclean glory. Through his father he was supposed to have been descended from Poseidon, the god of horses and of the sea. Through his mother he was descended from Solon, the wise man and law-giver of Athens. His stepfather was a close friend of Pericles. His uncle Charmides was involved in the oligarchic movements of the Peloponnesian War. His young manhood must have been spent among the most brilliant men of the time, and he followed Socrates. Yet because of the times and their sense of doom for all that mattered, he felt himself born out of his time. He was brought to his mission by the death of Socrates, and must have found himself as a young man of thirty alone and adrift. It was in this way that he wrote the early dialogues, perhaps to know himself.

  At the age of forty he was invited by Dion, a relative and advisei to the tyrant in Syracuse, to visit Syracuse and to estimate the possibilities of educating a tyrant and building a good city which might take on the responsibilities for that promising part of the world. The visit was short and uneventful. Plato returned to Athens to join a group of serious friends who wanted to establish an institution of science and education. This was the beginning of the Academy which Plato headed. In twenty years it collected the most brilliant scholars of the time, mostly mathematicians, astronomers, and philosophers; Aristotle entered the Academy and was to be its member for another twenty years. More dialogues were written, and in 367 B.C. Plato was again invited to Syracuse to undertake the task that had been discussed ten years before. Apparently serious efforts were made on both sides, by both teacher and tyrant, to dig deep and lay wise foundations for a federation of the Greek world. There must have been discussions of moving the Academy. But personal jealousy intervened, and quarrels ensued. There is a legend that Plato was suspected of disloyalty and that he was sent home in chains. That can hardly be true, for although he was sent home, he was called back seven years later to continue the enterprise and he accepted. But this also soon failed, and Plato went back to write the so-called later dialogues.

  In the absence of real evidence on the date of the writing of The Republic it is permissible to assume that it was written after the first Platonic Syracusan expedition. It and Aristophanes’ Birds would then celebrate not only the first Syracusan expedition, but also the loss of the last best hope of Greek intelligence working in the affairs of the Western world. One of the most melancholy and fascinating speculations in all history still contemplates the what-might-have-been of this failure. Greek learning, imagination, and wisdom established itself in the East from this time on, and was carried by Alexander to the ends of the known eastern world. Roman prowess and imperium were already establishing themselves in the West. The Christian Church found the depths of the split, and today we gaze through the cloudy distance that measures the gap.

  But Plato returned to Athens and went on teaching orally in the Academy and writing the later dialogues. The Academy, that city in the sky, lasted a thousand years, presiding as much as could be over the affairs of our early forbears in government, in science, in spirit.

  But lest I also be guilty of torturing Plato with yet another attempt to “explain” him who speaks so well for himself, let me propound a riddle:

  In the third book of The Republic there is the well-known condemnation of the dramatic poets:

  “And when therefore any one of these pantomimic gentlemen, who are so clever that they can imitate anything, comes to us, and makes a proposal to exhibit himself and his poetry, we will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy and wonderful being; but we must also inform him that in our State such as he are not permitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so when we have anointed him with myrrh, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to another city. For we mean to employ for our soul’s health the rougher and severer poet or story-teller, who will imitate the style of the virtuous only, and will follow those models which we prescribed at first when we began the education of our soldiers.”

  This might be called Plato’s willing acceptance of ostracism of himself. What other city did he go to?

  At the end of the Symposium Socrates is discovered with Aristophanes and Agathon, whose tragedy had just been given the prize. They

  “were drinking out of a large goblet which they passed around, and Socrates was discoursing to them ... compelling the other two to acknowledge that the genius of comedy was the same with that of tragedy, and that the true artist in tragedy was an artist in comedy also. To this they were constrained to give assent, being drowsy and not quite following the argument. And first of all Aristophanes dropped off, then, when day was already dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to sleep, rose to depart.”

  We may be grateful that Socrates found Plato, of whom, it seems, this is a self-portrait in code.

  SCOTT BUCHANAN

  A NOTE ON THE THEATRICAL MACHINERY OF THE DIALOGUES

  I hope no earnest disciple of contemporary scholarship will be misled by the preceding pages. The heresy there proposed is fully intended by the editor. It has been composed out of disappointment with, and in opposition to, two guilds of scholars, the classicists and the philosophers. The former should be treated as Prodicus is treated in the Protagoras, respected and criticized. The latter should be treated as Hippias is treated in the Protagoras, questioned and refuted. Under this treatment both will deliver their goods to us. They should be crowned with laurel and dismissed. We should be grateful for their contributions, and read the dialogues with our own eyes.

  If we do this, we shall find the theatrical machinery an instrument of deeper vision in which both literary style and philosophical ideas will find a focus. To aid in that vision the reader may find the following suggestions useful.

  All of the characters in the dialogues are historic personages, most of them familiar even to us in other writings. Plato is reporting historic occasions, as far as we know, accurately. And yet, the events take on high dramatic effects, chiefly because the characters are stylized to the point of becoming the abstract types, or stock characters, of comedy. Perhaps the best evidence for this is that the names, although real names, are also allegorical, like those in mystery or morality plays. The etymology of them is too good to be true. Also, the plots are semi-ritualistic, although again the historic content is factual. The following selected points of interest may be welcome to the beginning reader.

  PROTAGORAS

  Probably written toward the end of the ten-year period of the earlier dialogues, 398-388 B.C.

  Historic meeting of Socrates and Protagoras about 435 B.C. at the end of the peace following the Persian War at the height of the good life in Athens. Protagoras was sixtyfive years old; Socrates thirty-five.

  The plot is a free rendering of a meeting of the Assembly or a session of a court, although the actual setting is a private home. The Alexandrian subtitle is The Sophists: An Arraignment. It could be an inverted parody on the trial of Socrates.

  The Persons of the Drama

  Protagoras. Name means “first in assembly or markets place.” Protagoras was a visitor from Abdera, one of the first professional sophists who trained young men for public life, and accepted pay for it.
He is recognized as learned and skilled in teaching, but is unaware of the limits of his powers, and, therefore, lacking in wisdom. There is an ironic play on the word sophist.

  Hippias. Name means “knight,” “aristocrat,” “plutocrat.” A follower of Protagoras and many other sophists. Has a facile tongue and a confused mind.

  Prodicus. Name means “advocate,” or “lawyer for the defense.” Another follower of Protagoras, whose scholarly pretensions consist in many pedantries.

  Critias. Name means “judge in a literary or athletic contest.” One of several Critiases, all of whom were involved in politics and were relatives of Plato.

  Callias. Name means “member of a board of magistrates.” A rich man and a soldier, he is said to have spent more money on sophists than any other man in Athens.

  Hippocrates. Name means “master of horses.” Son of Apollodorus, a devoted friend of Socrates.

  Alcibiades. Name means “strong in defense of life,” possibly also “a cure for snake-bites.” Here a very young man, Socrates’ problem-child.

  Socrates. Name means “master of life.” His irony here consists in questions that pretend ignorance.

  PHAEDO

  Also an early dialogue, written some time after the death of Socrates and before the founding of the Academy. It is often included with the Apology, Crito, and Euthyphro to complete the account of the trial and death of Socrates.

  Setting is the prison, 399 B.C. five years after the end of the Peloponnesian War.

  The clue to the plot is given in the accident that Athenian law prohibited the execution of capital sentence while the ceremonial ship was on its way to Delos and returning. The ceremony connected with this event celebrated the legendary expedition of Theseus to slay the Minotaur of Crete. Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, showed Theseus how to find his way through the Labyrinth and back by means of a thread. Theseus and his fourteen companions stopped at Delos on their way back to Athens and danced the crane dance, which imitated the windings of the Labyrinth. It seems that Socrates in the dialogue represents Theseus, and there are fourteen companions present. The dialogue is a dialectical dance celebrating the slaying of a monster, the fear of death.

  The Persons of the Drama

  Echecrates. Name means “holding power.” He is the Pythagorean narrator of the dialogue. He is aware of the power of the “idea.”

  Cebes. Name possibly means “monkey.” A Theban, close friend of Simmias, and follower of Philolaus, the Pythagorean teacher. Interested in mathematics and physics.

  Simmias. Name means “snub-nosed,” a play on this well-known feature of Socrates. Also a follower of Philolaus, interested in the physiological doctrines of the Pythagorean schooL

  Crito. Name means “judge at a contest.” He was devoted sentimentally to justice with mercy.

  Apollodorus. Name means “gift of Apollo.” He eagerly accepted Socrates’ teaching as his sentimental education.

  Phaedo. Name means “shining.” He was later a founder of the Elean and the Eretrian schools of philosophy.

  Socrates. “Master of life.” His irony consists in his role as Job, being his own and his companions’ comforter.

  Others present are: Critobulus, son of Crito; Hermogenes; Epigenes; Aeschines, writer of dialogues; Antisthenes, the first Cynic; Ctessippus, a youngster; Menexenus, a young friend of Ctessippus; Phaedonides, a Theban; Euclides, founder of the Megarian school of philosophy; Terpsion, also a Megarian. These are the witnesses and the recipients of a last will and testament.

  SYMPOSIUM

  Probably the latest of the earlier dialogues, written about 389 B.C.

  The scene is laid in Agathon’s house to celebrate the prize for a tragedy that he has written and has had performed. It is on the eve of the great Athenian expedition to Syracuse.

  There are many allegorical readings of this dialogue, but the banquet itself is enough to provide the plot. Wine, dancing girls, and flute playing are put aside or postponed to give place to talk. Characteristically enough, the talk becomes the medium for fancy rhetoric, inspired and comic poetry, and some of the highest speculation in any literature. In a closely related dialogue about love, the Phaedrus, there is considerable discussion of the kinds of madness: poetry, demonic possession, speculation, and love. The Symposium might be read as the medical theory of madness, Greek psychiatry.

  The Persons of the Drama

  Phaedrus. Name means “bright, beaming with joy.” A pupil of Hippias and Lysias.

  Pausanias. Name means “allayer of sorrow.” A pupil of Prodicus.

  Eryximachus. Name means “savior in battle” or military physician. A medical man talking Sicilian medicine.

  Aristophanes. Name means “best appearance.” He may have invented the definition of a sophist as the man who makes the worse reason appear the better. He casts his own comic character as the cure for sophistry.

  Agathon. Name means “good.” A pupil of Gorgias and Prodicus.

  Diotima. Name means “honor to Zeus.” A soothsayer, perhaps an imitation of the Pythian Maiden at the Delphic Oracle. She and the old philosopher, Parmenides, in a dialogue named for him, are the only persons who turn the tables on Socrates and ask him questions.

  Alcibiades. Name means “strong defender of life.” Here he is the elected commander-in-chief of the Sicilian expedition, embodying all the riddles of the Hellenic man, including those of Odysseus and Socrates.

  Socrates. “Master of life.” He says in this dialogue that the only science he knows is the science of love.

  THE REPUBLIC

  or the Polity [which in Greek means the constitutional government of a city]

  Probably written immediately after Plato’s first Syracusan expedition.

  The scene is laid in the house of a rich merchant of foreign origin in the Piraeus, the port city of Athens, during the Peace of Nicias, a truce in the Peloponnesian War. The persons present have just been spectators at a celebration of a foreign festival. There is the atmosphere, though no explicit proposal, of the larger political responsibilities of Athens to the community of which it was a part, a foreshadowing to us with hindsight of the Alexandrian and Roman Empires, to the founding of which The Republic made great contributions. The Platonic Syracusan expeditions give occasion for such guesses.

  The plot might be imagined as the withdrawal from the Athenian Assembly, pictured in the first book, to the meeting of the philosopher-kings in Nocturnal Council, the city of the birds.

  The Persons of the Drama

  Cephalus. The name means “head.” A retired business-man, head of a business family. A man of experience and sound opinion.

  Polemarchus. The name means “war-lord” or “general.” Son of Cephalus, pupil of Lysias, the teacher of rhetoric.

  Thrasgmachus. The name means “rash fighter.” A sophist from Thrace.

  These three men speaking in character are caricatures of the three classes in the state which is constructed in the fourth book. Their types and others are fully characterized in the eighth book.

  Adeimantus. The name means “singer of oracles” or “sooth-singer.” An older half-brother of Plato, here a young man. His medium is poetry.

  Claucon. The name means “gleaming eyes” or “owl.” He is also a half-brother of Plato, a young man. The suggestion is that he is the owl of Athena, the bird that sees in the gathering twilight.

  Socrates. “Master of life.” In this great comedy Socrates takes all the roles of all the types of comic hero, including that of the playwright himself.

  CHRONOLOGY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Translations into English: Benjamin Jowett. The Dialogues of Plato, with an introduction to each dialogue. 5 volumes. London: Oxford University Press, 1871

  The Dialogues of Plato. General introduction by Raphael Demos. 2 volumes. New York: Random House, 1937

  Various translators. Plato’s Dialogues in Greek and English. 11 volumes. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press


  Francis M. Cornford. The Republic of Plato, with introduction and notes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1942

  I. A. Richards. The Republic of Plato. Condensed with the help of Basic English. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1942

  Commentaries and references: A. E. Taylor. Plato, the Man and his Work. New York: The Dial Press, 1926

  John Burnet. Greek Philosophy, Part I. Thales to Plato. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1914 Early Greek Philosophy. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1920

  Paul Shorey. What Plato Said. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933

  Gilbert Murray. History of Ancient Greek Literature. New York: Appleton, 1927

  R. L. Nettleship. Lectures on the Republic of Plato. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1936

  J. A. Stewart. The Myths of Plato. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1905 Plato’s Doctrine of Ideas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1909

  Robert S. Brumbaugh. Plato for the Modern Age. New York: Crowell Collier, 1962.

  Harold Cherniss, Riddle of the Early Academy. New York: Russell, 1945.

  Francis M. Cornford. Before and after Socrates. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1960.

  Raphael Demos. Philosophy of Plato. New York: Octagon, 1966.

  Jacob Klein. Commentary on Plato’s Meno. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1965.

  Karl R. Popper. Spell of Plato (Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I). Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1963.

  Leo Strauss. City and Man. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964.

  Eric Voegelin. Plato. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. P., 1957.