Alcibiades I-Plato (Πλάτων)

APPENDIX I. it seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of plato from the spurious the only external evidence to them which is of much value is that of aristotle for the alexandrian catalogues of a century later include manifest forgeries even the value of the aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to him and several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken.

Prior, however, to the inquiry about the writings of a particular author, general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness of ancient writings are the following.

Shorter works are more likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation than longer ones.

and some kinds of composition such as epistles or panegyrical orations are more liable to suspicion than others those again which have a taste of sophistry in them or the ring of a later age or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise or in which a motive or some affinity to spurious writings can be detected or which seem to have originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical author are also of doubtful credit.

While there is no instance of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery which combines excellence with length, a really great and original writer would have no object in fathering his works on Plato, and to the forger or imitator the literary hack of Alexandria and Athens.

The gods did not grant originality or genius.

Further, In attempting to balance the evidence for and against the Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic writing was common to several of his contemporaries.

Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo, and Tisthenes, and in the next generation Aristotle, are all said to have composed dialogues, and mistakes of names are very likely to have occurred.

Greek literature in the third century before Christ was almost as voluminous as our own, and without the safeguards of regular publication or printing or binding or even of distinct titles.

an unknown writing was naturally attributed to a known writer whose works bore the same character and the name once appended easily obtained authority a tendency may also be observed to blend the works and opinions of the master with those of his scholars to a later platonist the difference between plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as to ourselves The memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are but a part of a considerable Socratic literature which has passed away, and we must consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness of a particular writing if this lost literature had been preserved to us.

These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of genuineness.

1. that is most certainly plato's which aristotle attributes to him by name which two is of considerable length of three great excellence and also for in harmony with the general spirit of the platonic writings but the testimony of aristotle cannot always be distinguished from that of a latter age see above and and has various degrees of importance, those writings which he cites without mentioning Plato, under their own names, e.g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour.

They may have been supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in the case of really great works, e.g. the Phaedo, this is not credible.

those again which are quoted but not named are still more defective in their external credentials there may be also a possibility that aristotle was mistaken or may have confused the master and his scholars in the case of a short writing but this is inconceivable about a more important work e g the laws especially when we remember that he was living at athens and a frequenter of the groves of the academy during the last twenty years of Plato's life.

Nor must we forget that in all his numerous citations from the Platonic writings, he never attributes any passage found in the extant dialogues to anyone but Plato.

And lastly, we may remark that one or two great writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus, which are wholly devoid of Aristotelian, one, credentials, may be fairly attributed to Plato, on the ground of two length three excellence and four accordance with the general spirit of his writings indeed the greater part of the evidence for the genuineness of ancient greek authors may be summed up under two heads only one excellence and two uniformity of tradition a kind of evidence which though in many cases sufficient is of inferior value Proceeding upon these principles, we appear to arrive at the conclusion that 1920s of all the writings which have ever been ascribed to Plato are undoubtedly genuine.

There is another portion of them, including the epistles, the eponymous, the dialogues rejected by the ancients themselves, namely the Axiochus, Dejusto, Debrutut, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Erixias, which on grounds both of internal and external evidence we are able with equal certainty to reject.

But there still remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they are genuine or spurious.

They may have been written in youth, or possibly, like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions of pupils, or they may have been the writings of some contemporary transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master.

Not that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject them.

Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their spurious character, for who always does justice to himself? or who writes with equal care at all times certainly not plato who exhibits the greatest differences in dramatic power in the formation of sentences and in the use of words if his earlier writings are compared with his later ones say the protagoras or phaedrus with the laws or who can be expected to think in the same manner during a period of authorship extending over above fifty years in an age of great intellectual activity, as well as of political and literary transition, certainly not Plato, whose earlier writings are separated from his later ones by as wide an interval of philosophical speculation as that which separates his later writings from Aristotle.

The dialogues which have been translated in the first appendix and which appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic writings, are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First Alcibiades.

Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are cited by Aristotle, the first in the metaphysics, the latter in the rhetoric.

Neither of them are expressly attributed to Plato, but in his citation of both of them he seems to be referring to passages in the extant dialogues.

From the mention of Hippias, in the singular by Aristotle, we may perhaps infer that he was unacquainted with the second dialogue bearing the same name.

APPENDIX I. it seems impossible to separate by any exact line the genuine writings of plato from the spurious the only external evidence to them which is of much value is that of aristotle for the alexandrian catalogues of a century later include manifest forgeries even the value of the aristotelian authority is a good deal impaired by the uncertainty concerning the date and authorship of the writings which are ascribed to him and several of the citations of Aristotle omit the name of Plato, and some of them omit the name of the dialogue from which they are taken.

Prior, however, to the inquiry about the writings of a particular author, general considerations which equally affect all evidence to the genuineness of ancient writings are the following.

Shorter works are more likely to have been forged, or to have received an erroneous designation than longer ones.

and some kinds of composition such as epistles or panegyrical orations are more liable to suspicion than others those again which have a taste of sophistry in them or the ring of a later age or the slighter character of a rhetorical exercise or in which a motive or some affinity to spurious writings can be detected or which seem to have originated in a name or statement really occurring in some classical author are also of doubtful credit.

While there is no instance of any ancient writing proved to be a forgery which combines excellence with length, a really great and original writer would have no object in fathering his works on Plato, and to the forger or imitator the literary hack of Alexandria and Athens.

The gods did not grant originality or genius.

Further, In attempting to balance the evidence for and against the Platonic dialogue, we must not forget that the form of the Platonic writing was common to several of his contemporaries.

Aeschines, Euclid, Phaedo, and Tisthenes, and in the next generation Aristotle, are all said to have composed dialogues, and mistakes of names are very likely to have occurred.

Greek literature in the third century before Christ was almost as voluminous as our own, and without the safeguards of regular publication or printing or binding or even of distinct titles.

an unknown writing was naturally attributed to a known writer whose works bore the same character and the name once appended easily obtained authority a tendency may also be observed to blend the works and opinions of the master with those of his scholars to a later platonist the difference between plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as to ourselves The memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are but a part of a considerable Socratic literature which has passed away, and we must consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness of a particular writing if this lost literature had been preserved to us.

These considerations lead us to adopt the following criteria of genuineness.

1. that is most certainly plato's which aristotle attributes to him by name which two is of considerable length of three great excellence and also for in harmony with the general spirit of the platonic writings but the testimony of aristotle cannot always be distinguished from that of a latter age see above and and has various degrees of importance, those writings which he cites without mentioning Plato, under their own names, e.g. the Hippias, the Funeral Oration, the Phaedo, etc., have an inferior degree of evidence in their favour.

They may have been supposed by him to be the writings of another, although in the case of really great works, e.g. the Phaedo, this is not credible.

those again which are quoted but not named are still more defective in their external credentials there may be also a possibility that aristotle was mistaken or may have confused the master and his scholars in the case of a short writing but this is inconceivable about a more important work e g the laws especially when we remember that he was living at athens and a frequenter of the groves of the academy during the last twenty years of Plato's life.

Nor must we forget that in all his numerous citations from the Platonic writings, he never attributes any passage found in the extant dialogues to anyone but Plato.

And lastly, we may remark that one or two great writings, such as the Parmenides and the Politicus, which are wholly devoid of Aristotelian, one, credentials, may be fairly attributed to Plato, on the ground of two length three excellence and four accordance with the general spirit of his writings indeed the greater part of the evidence for the genuineness of ancient greek authors may be summed up under two heads only one excellence and two uniformity of tradition a kind of evidence which though in many cases sufficient is of inferior value Proceeding upon these principles, we appear to arrive at the conclusion that 1920s of all the writings which have ever been ascribed to Plato are undoubtedly genuine.

There is another portion of them, including the epistles, the eponymous, the dialogues rejected by the ancients themselves, namely the Axiochus, Dejusto, Debrutut, Demodocus, Sisyphus, Erixias, which on grounds both of internal and external evidence we are able with equal certainty to reject.

But there still remains a small portion of which we are unable to affirm either that they are genuine or spurious.

They may have been written in youth, or possibly, like the works of some painters, may be partly or wholly the compositions of pupils, or they may have been the writings of some contemporary transferred by accident to the more celebrated name of Plato, or of some Platonist in the next generation who aspired to imitate his master.

Not that on grounds either of language or philosophy we should lightly reject them.

Some difference of style, or inferiority of execution, or inconsistency of thought, can hardly be considered decisive of their spurious character, for who always does justice to himself? or who writes with equal care at all times certainly not plato who exhibits the greatest differences in dramatic power in the formation of sentences and in the use of words if his earlier writings are compared with his later ones say the protagoras or phaedrus with the laws or who can be expected to think in the same manner during a period of authorship extending over above fifty years in an age of great intellectual activity, as well as of political and literary transition, certainly not Plato, whose earlier writings are separated from his later ones by as wide an interval of philosophical speculation as that which separates his later writings from Aristotle.

The dialogues which have been translated in the first appendix and which appear to have the next claim to genuineness among the Platonic writings, are the Lesser Hippias, the Menexenus or Funeral Oration, the First Alcibiades.

Of these, the Lesser Hippias and the Funeral Oration are cited by Aristotle, the first in the metaphysics, the latter in the rhetoric.

Neither of them are expressly attributed to Plato, but in his citation of both of them he seems to be referring to passages in the extant dialogues.

From the mention of Hippias, in the singular by Aristotle, we may perhaps infer that he was unacquainted with the second dialogue bearing the same name.