مقالة انجليزى عن افلاطون

F
PLATO's Seventh Letter is genuine (a question which will be discussed in
its proper place among his writings), we are in the unique position for
a writer of his time of having an autobiographical ........ outlining
the stages οf his development and concentrating on his part in a
historical episode, the violent course of fourth-century Syracusan
politics. If he did not write it himself, its historical value is
scarcely lessened, since the sceptics agree that it must be the work of
one of his immediate disciples written either before or shortly after
his death. Such a source is of the highest value, even allowing for the
probability that its overriding aim was the vindication of Plato’s
actions and their motives.

In his own writings Plato keeps himself firmly out of sight, and they
reveal little or nothing about his life. He never writes in his own
person,[2] and mentions himself twice only, both times in intimate
connexion with Socrates, once to tell us that he was present at the
trial and once to explain his absence from the group of friends who were
with Socrates in his last hours. A number of his friends and pupils
wrote about him, including Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates, Philip of
Opus, Hermodorus and Erastus, but their productions took the form of
eulogies rather than biographies, and were already mingling legend with
fact. In a school with a religious basis, such as Plato’s Academy was
(p. 20 below), there was a traditional tendency to venerate the founder,
and even Plato’s own nephew Speusippus is credited with having followed
Pythagorean precedent so far as to give him the god Apollo for a
father.[3] We also hear of lives by pupils of Aristotle, Clearchus (an
‘encomium’), Dicaearchus and Aristoxenus. Plato was also a favourite
butt of the poets of the Middle Comedy, from whom we have a number of
satirical quotations.

Page 2

All these early writings are lost, and the earliest extant life is by
Apuleius in the second century A.D., who followed the earlier
encomiasts in making his subject a typical hero-figure. Not much later
is the book devoted to Plato in the Lives and Opinions of Eminent
Philosophers of Diogenes Laertius, and finally we have from the sixth
century lives by the Neoplatonic commentator Olympiodorus and an
anonymous author, who carry the supernatural element to even further
lengths. The most valuable is Diogenes, who, if his critical standards
as a biographer are not what we would accept today, is nevertheless
exceptional in conscientiously mentioning his sources, and they include a
number ïf Plato’s and Aristotle’s contemporaries. Some of these are
cited for sober statements of historical fact. He may quote Speusippus
and Clearchus for the story of Plato’s divine birth, but we also owe to
him the knowledge that Plato’s retirement to Megara to stay with
Euclides after the execution of Socrates is vouched for by Hermodorus.

Not all who wrote about Plato were eulogists. In the miscellany of
Athenaeus, a near contemporary of Apuleius, there are lively traces of a
hostile tradition which did not hesitate to accuse Plato of such faults
as pride, greed, plagiarism, jealousy, gross errors,
self-contradiction, lying and flattery of tyrants. For these accusations
Athenaeus cites a certain Herodicus, described as a follower of Crates
but probably living little more than a century before Athenaeus, and the
historian Theopompus, which takes us back to the fourth century B.C.[4]
Page 3

Theopompus, who wrote a work Against the School of Plato, was a pupil
of Isocrates, and in view of the rivalry between Isocrates and Plato
(p. 24 below) may have thought he was serving his master by these
violent attacks. That such denigration was also current among the
Peripatetics is shown by the astonishing declaration of Aristoxenus (ap.
D.L. 3.37) that nearly the whole of Plato’s Republic was in the
Contrary Arguments of Protagoras.

In addition to the above, Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos in their lives
ïf Dion say something of Plato’s activities in Sicily,[5] and there are
naturally a number of scattered references to him in later antiquity,
especially in Cicero, and chronological information from Apollodorus.

(b) Birth and family connexions

N ALL probability Plato was born in 427 B.C. and died at the age of
eighty in 347.[6] His birthplace was either Athens or Aegina (D.L. 3.3).
As to his family, in the words of Apuleius ‘de utroque nobilitas satis
clara’. His father Ariston traced his descent from Codrus, the last king
of Athens, and the family of his mother Perictione was connected with
Solon, who, as Field remarked (ر. and Contemps. 4), might be of less
venerable antiquity but at least had the advantage of having really
existed. Plato had two elder[7] brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, and a
sister Potone, the mother of Speusippus. Critias and Charmides, who
became members of the notorious Thirty in 404, were respectively the
cousin and brother of his mother. Ariston, says Plutarch (De am. prolis
496 f.), did not live to hear Plato expound philosophy, and after his
death Perictione married Pyrilampes, who must have been her uncle, since
Plato himself (Charm. 158a) calls him the uncle of Charmides. Plato
adds that he went on embassies to the Great King of Persia and other
rulers in Asia. From this marriage Plato acquired a half-brother
Antiphon, whom he makes the narrator of his dialogue Parmenides.[8]

Page 4

In contrast to his reticence about himself, he enjoyed introducing
his distinguished relatives into his dialogues, or mentioning them with
some precision. Charmides has one named after him, and Critias speaks in
the Charmides and Protagoras. (The Critias of the Timaeus and Critias
must be his grandfather.) Adeimantus is mentioned as Plato’s brother at
Apïl. 34a, and he and Glaucon take prominent parts in the Republic. At
the beginning of the Parmenides we are told in detail that Antiphon is
brother on the mother’s side to Adeimantus and Glaucon, and that
Pyrilampes was his father. From these and other references in Plato
himself, one can practically reconstruct his family tree, and this
suggests a considerable amount of family pride. Indeed, as Burnet says
(ش. to ر. 208), ‘The opening scene of the Charmides is a glorification
of the whole connexion.’ This has led many to conclude that family
influence must have been responsible for instilling anti-democratic
ideas into Plato from his earliest years. Burnet (ib. 209 f.)
strenuously denied this, claiming that the family traditions ‘were
rather what we should call "Whiggish"’ and that Critias and Charmides
were only at a late stage oligarchical extremists, and pointing out that
Pyrilampes was a democrat and friend of Pericles. Burnet’s remarks
bring out once again the important point that the division between
democrat and oligarch is by no means identical with that between
plebeian and high-born.[9] As to Plato, Field’s modification of Burnet
probably comes nearest the truth (ر. and Contemps. 5):
Page 5
The rich and noble families which had accepted the Periclean numbers
into the ranks of the extreme opponents of demregime and been proud to
serve it, seem to have been driven in increasing ocracy by the financial
oppression to which they were subjected to pay for the war policy of
the democratic party. At any rate it is clear that during those
susceptible years in which Plato was first coming to manhood those most
near to him were becoming more and more hostile to the democracy and
ready to go to any length to overthrow it.

This being so, the remarkable thing is perhaps not that Plato was imbued
with anti-democratic sentiments but that he flatly refused to go along
with the extreme and violent actions of elder relatives whom he had
earlier admired, and could recognize the moderation of the restored
democracy in spite of the ‘mischance’ of the trial and execution of
Socrates. The only conclusion that age and experience brought him was
the general one that ‘it is very difficult to manage political affairs
aright’, and that ‘all cities at the present time are without exception
badly governed’ (إp. 7.325c, 326a).

(c) Early years

PEUSIPPUS (fr. 28L.), relying, says Apuleius, on ‘domestica docu.menta’,
praised his quickness of mind and modesty as a boy, and the
‘firstfruits of his youth infused with hard work and love of study’. His
education, like any other Athenian boy’s, would be physical as well as
mental, and his writings witness to a continued interest in the
‘gymnastic’ side. Dicaearchus (fr. 40 W.) went so far as to say that he
wrestled at the Isthmian games.[10] حï other information goes back to
sources so near Plato’s lifetime. Those of later centuries name his
teachers of reading and writing, physical education and music, and speak
of an early interest in painting and poetry. Whatever we may think of
the story that after hearing Socrates talk he burned a tragedy that he
had written (D.L. 3.5), we can have no difficulty in accepting that the
author of the dialogues showed early poetic gifts. We have indeed a
number of epigrams, some of them both beautiful and touching, which have
come down under his name and are generally accepted as genuine.[11] We
must admit however that we know little of his personal life in early
years, though we can if we like reconstruct his experiences and tastes
from a combination of what is known of contemporary Athenian family life
and education with all the evidence of his own extra-philosophical
interests which is to be found scattered throughout his dialogues, and
which makes their effect so much more personal and immediate than that
of any purely philosophical works. This will not be attempted here.[12]
Military service can be taken for granted, doubtless (considering his
social status) in the cavalry, and he was old enough to take part in
actual engagements in the last five years of the Peloponnesian War and
later.[13]

Page 6
The statement that Plato did not hear Socrates speak until he was twenty
is attributed by Diogenes himself (3.6) to mere hearsay and introduced
as part of the improbable drama of the burning of the tragedy. It is
most unlikely that the young kinsman ïf Critias and Charmides had to
wait so long for the privilege. Another early philosophical acquaintance
is said to have been Cratylus the Heraclitean. Aristotle (....physics
987a32) says that Plato was acquainted with him ‘from his youth’,
Diogenes (without mention of source) that he ‘attached himself’ to him
after the death ïf Socrates.[14] There is probably some confusion here,
especially as Diogenes (3.5) says that before he heard Socrates, Plato
was a Heraclitean in philosophy. Aristotle is more likely to be right,
but the chronological sequence is unimportant for the point which he is
making, namely that Plato’s two-world ....physics was the product of an
abiding faith, inherited from Socrates, that permanent and stable
realities exist combined with a Heraclitean conviction that the whole
sensible world was an endless flux of change and instability. Even after
Socrates’s death, Plato was only twenty-eight, and had another fifty
years of life and philosophy ahead of him.[15]
Page 7
Citing Plato’s pupil Hermodorus, Diogenes tells that after Socrates’s
death, at the age of twenty-eight, Plato and some other pupils of
Socrates withdrew to Megara to Euclides.[16] Whether or not they were in
actual danger at Athens, they could not remain there happily at such a
time, and at Megara they would be welcomed by some of their own intimate
circle. Euclides and Terpsion of Megara were present with Socrates in
his last hours and Euclides was later represented by Plato as the
recorder of the conversation which forms his dialogue Theaetetus. One
can easily imagine the liveliness of the philosophical discussions which
would be carried on there, perhaps already on the relation between
unity and goodness and the existence or non-existence of their
opposites.[17]

How long he stayed at Megara we do not know, but before very long he
must have been summoned to active service again, for he was still of
military age and by 395 Athens was once more fighting in the ‘Corinthian
War’. However, of this our sources say nothing. ‘Next’ (after Megara),
continues Diogenes with his usual lack of any pretensions to literary
style, Plato went to Cyrene to see Theodorus the mathematician, thence
to Italy to the Pythagoreans Philolaus and Eurytus, and thence to Egypt
‘to visit the prophets’. The visit to Cyrene is also mentioned by
Apuleius. That Plato knew and respected the mathematician Theodorus of
Cyrene appears from the role which he assigned to him in the Theaetetus;
and Cyrene was also the home of the Socratic Aristippus, founder of the
Cyrenaic school (يïl. III, 490-9). According to Diogenes, the order of
his travels was Cyrene-Italy-Egypt, but Cicero (Rep. 1.10.16, Fin.
5.29.87), who does not mention Cyrene, twice makes him visit Egypt
before Italy and Sicily. The order of his travels can never be known,
and some, as might be expected, have consigned them all, with the
exception ïf Italy and Sicily, to the realm of legend. In themselves
they are natural enough. The Greek colony of Cyrene was in the fourth
century a centre of mathematicians and philosophers, and Plato had
personal reasons for a visit. A trip to Egypt, where was the flourishing
Greek commercial city of Naucratis, ‘pour un Athénien n’avait rien
d’une aventure’, as Robin says (رl. 7). Plato’s own interest in Egypt
and its myths and stories[18] is of course no proof of his having been
there, as Wilamowitz, who castigates the sceptics, freely admits (رl. I,
245 n. 1); but neither is it evidence against it. It is of interest
that Strabo (17.29), an earlier source than any of our lives of Plato
though still writing over three hundred years after his death, on a
visit to Heliopolis in Egypt was shown the places where Plato and his
pupil Eudoxus ïf Cnidus were said to have lived.[19] To those accustomed
to the ways of tourist guides this may not seem compelling evidence,
but at least it testifies to a strong tradition among the Egyptians
themselves that Plato had visited their land. The fact itself has no
legendary suggestion, nor do the sceptics seem to be chiefly influenced
by certain incredible accretions such as the presence with Plato of
Euripides (D.L. 3.6), who was dead before 406, but rather by not very
strong circumstantial con.siderations, e.g. that there is no mention of
voyages to Cyrene or Egypt in Plato’s dialogues (!) or the Platonic
epistles, and that the earliest mention of them is in Cicero: the oldest
life of Plato, parts of which have been found on a burned papyrus from
Herculaneum, mentions only the journeys to South Italy and Sicily.[20

Page 8

To lead up to these latter journeys, which were of greater importance
in his life, something must be said about the development of his
attitude to politics and philosophy, as he himself (or, if this is
preferred, an intimate friend who knew his thoughts[21]) has described
it in the Seventh Letter. As a young man, like most Athenians of his
class, he supposed he would go straight into politics, but his early
twenties coincided with the defeat ïf Athens and the oligarchic
revolution leading to the government of the Thirty. ‘Some of these’,
continues the Letter, ‘were relatives and acquaintances of mine, and at
once urged it on me as a suitable course to join their activities.’
Being young and idealistic, Plato assumed that their aim would be to
raise the moral standards of government, and he watched to see what they
would do. Young as he was, the main lines of his character are
beginning to show. Whereas most twenty-three-year-olds would have jumped
without hesitation at the opportunity offered them by a Critias or a
Charmides, he watched and waited; and what he saw of their excesses so
shocked him that he simply ‘withdrew himself from the evils of the
time’.
Page 9
ةt was not long before the Thirty fell, and under the succeeding
democracy Plato again felt, though with more hesitation, the stirrings
of desire to take part in public and political affairs. Inevitably there
were acts of vengeance on political opponents, and others which he
could not approve, but he acknowledges that on the whole the returned
exiles showed considerable moderation. Unfortunately one of their
mistakes was to execute Socrates, who was not only Plato’s friend and in
his opinion ‘the most righteous man then living’, but a man who had
defied the wrath of the Thirty to befriend one ïf their own number when
they themselves were in the wilderness. As he brooded not only on this
devastating loss but also on the kind of men who held political control,
and on the laws and customs in general, on the necessity of personal
connexions for success and the growth of corrupt practices, the young
man who had started out all eagerness for a political career felt dizzy
and confused. He did not give ُp all hope of an improvement, but ‘was
always waiting for the right moment to act’. It is not surprising, as
Cornford pointed out, that for such a man the right moment never came.
‘The whole of this long letter reveals - what we might guess from his
other writings - that his power and gifts were of such a kind that he
could never be a leading man of action in the society of his time.’[22]
His only conclusion was, he says, the scarcely practical one to which he
gave expression in the Republic, that the troubles of the human race
will never cease until either philosophers in possession of rightness
and truth attain political power or those who have the power become ‘by
some dispensation of divine providence’ genuine philosophers.

(d) Sicily and the Academy [23]

HIS was my frame of mind’, the letter continues (326b), ‘when ة first
came to Italy and Sicily.’ Earlier Plato has mentioned that he was forty
at the time, i.e. it was about the year 387 B.C.. He gives no reason
for going, but his motive in the case of Italy was probably what later
writers said, namely a desire to make personal contact with the
Pythagorean philosophers settled there, and notably with Archytas the
philosopher-statesman of Tarentum, to whose friendly relations with
Plato the Seventh Letter itself bears witness.[24] The political
instability of the Italian Greeks, and their conception of la dolce
vita,[25] were a shock to him, and provided further food for thought as
he crossed to Sicily. In doing this, he himself seems to have had no
definite purpose in mind, and later authorities were reduced to alleging
a desire to see the craters and lava-flow of Etna.[26] The letter
itself simply says that it was ‘perhaps chance, though it looks as if
some higher power contrived it to start the train of events concerning
Dion and Syracuse’ (326e). Once there, one momentous event in the visit
so eclipsed all others in his mind that he mentions nothing else, not
even the name of the tyrant Dionysius ة. This was his meeting with Dion,
then aged about twenty, to whom he became passionately attached,[27] a
meeting whose fateful consequences were all in his mind when the Seventh
Letter was written. Dion’s connexions with the tyrant were close. His
sister Aristomache was married to Dionysius, and he himself married his
own niece, Aristomache’s daughter. Plato describes him as a youth of
exceptional intellectual and moral gifts, the perfect pupil to whom he
could open his heart about his own political ideals. Dion eagerly
absorbed his Socratic teaching of the superiority of virtue to pleasure
and luxury, and renounced the lax habits of the Italiotes and Siceliotes
- thereby bringing on himself a certain unpopularity in court circles
so long as Dionysius ة was alive.

Page 10

Of the length of Plato’s stay the letter says nothing, and the fact
that his second visit occurred after the death of Dionysius ة and the
succession of his son is referred to so casually that one would never
suspect that a gap of at least twenty years intervened between his first
and second arrival.[28] There is a story not mentioned by Plato, but
current in later centuries, that the first visit ended by his being sold
into slavery by, or at the orders of, Dionysius, and ransomed either by
a Cyrenean called Anniceris or by unnamed friends. Details vary, but if
the version is correct that the sale took place on Aegina and was
effected by Pollis, a Spartan returning from an embassy to Syracuse,
Plato’s visit lasted only a matter of months; for this could only have
happened in the period when Athens and Aegina were at war, i.e. not
later than 387.[29]

In the next twenty years nothing occurred to alter his opinion that
‘politics was in a state pretty well incurable without exceptional
resources[30] and luck as well’. To see what was right for states and
individuals was itself only possible after a rigorous education and an
unbiased search for truth, conducted apart from the confusion and
prejudices of active politics - in other words it was only possible for
philosophers, ‘lovers of wisdom’. If the only good rulers are
philosophers, his duty in present circumstances was not to plunge into
the whirlpool of politics but to do what he could to make philosophers
out ïf himself and other potential rulers. The first task was
educational, and he founded the Academy. The Academy of Plato does not
correspond entirely to any modern institution, certainly not a
university of modern foundation. The nearest parallels are probably our
ancient universities, or rather their colleges, with the characteristics
that they have inherited from the medieval world, particularly their
religious connexions and the ideal of the common life, especially a
common table. That its foundation followed Plato’s return to Athens
after his first visit to the West in 387 is stated or implied by the
late biographers (e.g. D.L. 3.7). How long afterwards they do not say,
but most scholars assume, as is reasonable, that it was not long.[31]
The institution takes its name from its site, nearly a mile outside the
walls of Athens, supposedly sacred to a hero Academus or Hecademus, and
including a grove of trees, gardens, a gymnasium and other buildings.
The sanctity of the place was great, and other cults, including that of
Athena herself, were carried on there. To form a society owning its own
land and premises, as Plato did, it appears to have been a legal
requirement that it be registered as a thiasos,[32] that is, a
cult-association dedicated to the service of some divinity, who would be
the nominal owner of the property. Plato’s choice was the Muses,
patrons of education, not so much, perhaps, because he believed that
‘philosophy was the highest "music"‘ (Phaedo 61a) as because a Museion
or chapel of the Muses was a regular feature of the schools of the
day.[33] The common meals (َََُكôéل) were famous for their combination
of healthy and moderate eating with talk that was worth remembering and
recording. A guest is said to have remarked that those who dined with
Plato could feel well on the day after.[34] He himself in the Symposium
(176e) narrates how Agathon’s guests agreed to moderate the drinking,
send away the flute-girl and entertain themselves by each speaking in
turn on a set subject; and in the Protagoras (347d) through the mouth of
Socrates he pours scorn on the uneducated who need entertainment after
dinner: educated gentlemen are capable of enter.taining themselves, by
‘speaking and listening in turns in an orderly manner’. Perhaps it is
only in character when he makes Socrates add, ‘even if they have drunk a
great deal of wine’; for it was known that Socrates could take any
amount without getting drunk (Plato, Symp. 176c). (There is perhaps a
feeble echo of this feature of the Academy in the one-time practice in
our colleges of having an improving book read to the scholars at their
dinner.) In the Academy the meals were conducted according to fairly
elaborate rules. Xenocrates in his headship wrote some out, as did
Aristotle.[35] Plato himself in the Laws (639cff.) speaks at some length
of the necessity for symposia to be conducted according to rules
applied by a master of ceremonies who must remain completely sober. This
passage and the Symposium should save us from a natural impatience at
the time spent over what we are at first tempted to regard as the
trivialities of social intercourse. The periodic feasts of a thiasos
were in any case religious occasions with their appropriate
sacrifices.[36] Plato and Speusippus, wrote Anti.gonus of Carystus, did
not hold these gatherings for the sake of carousing till dawn, ‘but that
they might manifestly honour the gods and enjoy each other’s
companionship, and chiefly to refresh them.selves with learned
discussion’.[37]
Page 11
Much of the instruction would be by Plato’s favoured dialectical method,
but he also gave continuous lectures, some of which were open to a
wider audience. Aristotle, said Aristoxenus, was fond of telling the
story of Plato’s lecture ‘On the Good’. Most people came to it expecting
to hear some wonderful recipe for human happiness, and left in disgust
when his discourse was all about mathematics and astronomy. Aristotle
used to quote this as an example ïf the need for a proper introduction
when one’s audience is unprepared.[38] The lecture must have been given
in the gymnasium, a public part of the Academy precinct where Sophists
and others were wont to hold forth. Yet his own pupils attended too,
philosophers in their own right, including Aristotle, Speusippus and
Xenocrates, and wrote down and preserved what they could of it. So
Simplicius says (Phys. 151.6, Gaiser test. Cool

, and since the story
certainly goes back to Aristotle its truth cannot be doubted. Yet it is a
curious tale, and Aristotle and the others must have had better
opportunities than this of learning Plato’s thoughts on this central
topic. Nor would one expect Plato to thrust some of his most difficult
doctrine on a completely untrained audience.[39]

The subjects of study in the Academy may well have altered during
what was probably a period of nearly forty years between its foundation
and Plato’s death. If so, we have no means of dating the changes save
what we can infer from the ....... of the dialogues themselves together
with whatever can be known or guessed about their own dates. Constant
will have been mathematics (including theory of harmonics and astronomy)
and political theory. These for Plato were inseparable, for we know
from his own writings that he considered the exact sciences the
necessary preliminary to the dialectical process which alone could lead
to the final vision of the Good; and that ideally this philosophic
insight should be attained before a man was fit to govern a state. It is
reasonable to assume that the curriculum in the Academy was modelled on
that which he sets out so carefully in the Republic. To produce
political experts was undoubtedly his aim, but as in his early years so
now, when (as he thought) his own role was settled as teacher rather
than active administrator, the lure of pure philosophical theory was
still at war with the sense ïf duty to society which he so vividly
portrays in the Cave simile, where the philosophers who have seen the
true light are sternly ordered back into the darkness to help and
enlighten those whose imprisonment in illusion they themselves once
shared but have escaped. Natural science was taught at some period, at
least to beginners. In the famous quotation from the comic poet
Epicrates it is mere boys (ىهéٌـêéل) whom Plato was taking in a class to
teach them the principles of botanical classification, and the class
was held in the public gymnasium.[40] His own attitude to the study ïf
nature underwent a change. The sensible world never ceased to be
ontologically secondary, an im.permanent and imperfect reflection of the
intelligible world, which could at best be the object of belief, not of
knowledge; but between writing the Republic and the Timaeus he had
become much more favourably disposed to its study. The tremendous
interest of Aristotle (and also of Speusippus) in biology must have been
fostered in the Academy. The Epicrates fragment suggests the period
when the method of division, first mentioned in the Phaedrus and
copiously illustrated in Sophist and Politicus, was beginning to take
precedence in his mind.

Page 12

However, as we should expect of the author of the Laws, if not of the
Republic, the primary aim of education for statesmanship never left
his thoughts. It was certainly his intention that many of his pupils
should leave the Academy for politics, not as power-seekers themselves
but to legislate or advise those in power, and we have the names of a
number who did so.[41] Best attested are Erastus and Coriscus, citizens
ïf Scepsis in the Troad, who after a period of study at the Academy
returned to their native city where they attracted the attention of
Hermias the ruler of Atarneus. Under their influence and that of
Aristotle and Xenocrates he studied Platonic philosophy, and adopted a
milder form of government with satisfactory results.[42] Later, Plutarch
states that Plato sent his pupils Aristonymus, Phormio and Menedemus
to the Arcadians, Eleans and Pyrrhaeans respectively to reform their
constitutions, that Eudoxus and Aristotle both drew ُp laws for their
own cities, and that Alexander applied to Xenocrates for advice on
kingship.[43] Eudoxus is a good example of the compatibility for a
Platonist of political with scientific and philosophical work. His
legislative activity at Cnidus is vouched for by Hermippus (ap. D.L.
8.88; that of Aristotle has been doubted), and he was at the same time a
notable mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and (so we are told)
physician. It is also said that Plato himself was invited by more than
one city to draft a new constitution, but refused.rchid]Page 13
In connexion with Plato’s life and teaching mention must be made of
Isocrates, a man about eight years older than Plato who nevertheless
outlived him, dying in 338 at the age of 98. The two were professional
rivals, since Isocrates too had his school at Athens, founded a few
years before the Academy, and both claimed to be teachers of philosophia
while giving very different ....... to the word.[45] Isocrates’s
writings contain obvious attacks on the Socratic and Platonic
con.ceptions of philosophy, and replies to these, or independent
attacks, have been seen in Plato. Usually they avoid mentioning each
other’s names, though Plato once, in the Phaedrus (279a-b), speaks of
Isocrates rather curiously. Taking advantage of the dramatic date of the
dialogue he makes Socrates praise him as still a young man with the
promise of a great future ahead of him, and a mind not devoid of
philosophia. Nothing but later anecdotes is known of their personal
relations, and anything else can be left until we come to the dialogues
(chiefly Gorgias, Euthydemus and Phaedrus) where allusions to his
teaching have been found.

In 367 Dionysius ة died, and his son, whom he had kept in the
background and treated like a child, suddenly found himself raised to
the position of supreme ruler over the empire which his father had won
in Sicily and Italy. His uncle Dion, having considerable influence over
the malleable young man, persuaded him to send for Plato,[46] and
himself sent a letter emphasizing the bent of the young Dionysius for
education and philosophy and suggesting that here was the opportunity to
realize the ideal of the Republic and create a ruler who was also a
philosopher. In that work Plato admitted that those in high places are
particularly open to corruptive influences, so that the chances of
success were indeed small. But, he pleaded, is it inconceivable that the
son ïf a king or tyrant might have a philosophic nature, and once in
the whole course of time might be enabled to preserve it? One would be
enough, so we must not despair and dismiss the whole thing as pure
fantasy (Rep. 494a-502c). It was not hard for Dion to shame the author
of these words into returning to Sicily to help in the work of moulding
the young tyrant’s mind, but it is quite unfair to Plato to say that
‘his chief motive was to put his philosophical precepts into political
practice’.[47] That is not the im.pression given by the Seventh Letter,
our only evidence for his state of mind. He was now about sixty, and
had spent the last twenty years in philosophical inquiry and teaching.
He was, says the letter, full of apprehension. He mistrusted the
youthfulness of Dionysius, knowing, as he says (328b), the conflicting
and changeable impulses of the young;[48] as well he might, having
himself insisted in the Republic (498b) that immature minds were
unsuited to the serious study of philosophy. On the other hand he had
great faith in the judgement of Dion, now a mature man whose intellect
he admired and who had shared his own inmost thoughts and aspirations.
Perhaps Dion was right, and this was the only chance to train the ‘one
man who would be enough’ (for the letter repeats these words of the
Republic) before the flatterers and tempters of a tyrant got hold of
him.

Page 14

But more than anything else Plato was moved by that pathetic and
mistaken shame which the naturally theoretical and contemplative spirit
feels at failing to meet a challenge to action for which it is, in fact,
entirely unsuited. This, and a feeling that to refuse would be a
betrayal of his friendship with Dion who, he thought, might be in actual
danger from his enemies at Syracuse, constituted his chief motives for
‘leaving my own not discreditable occupations and submitting myself to a
tyranny which seemed unlikely to fit in either with my teaching or with
myself’ (329b).

On arrival Plato found a situation about as unfavourable to
philo.sophic education as could be. Dionysius was surrounded by an
atmosphere of faction and of slanders against Dion, who finally, four
months after Plato’s arrival, was accused of conspiracy and expelled
from Sicily. For Plato on the other hand Dionysius developed a jealous
affection, and tried to displace Dion in his regard. But the one course
by which he might have succeeded, namely by putting himself seriously
and willingly under Plato’s instruction in philosophy, he could not
bring himself to follow, and in the end he was persuaded to allow Plato
to return to Athens. Sicily was at war (338a),[49] and it was agreed
that both Plato and Dion himself should return when things were quieter
and safer. Meanwhile Dion joined Plato and the Academy in Athens (Plut.
Dion 17).

This, according to the usual dating, was in 365, and for the next
four years Plato was once more engaged in philosophical activity
.teaching and writing - in the Academy. Then Dionysius sent yet another
pressing invitation, though at the same time asking Plato to agree that
Dion’s recall should be postponed for another year. Dion added his own
entreaties, and all reports agreed that Dionysius was now possessed by a
genuine desire for philosophy. Plato however was unwilling, and replied
that he was an old man and in any case Dionysius had not fulfilled
their agreement. However, the pressure was increased. As evidence of his
zeal, Dionysius had collected some philosophers at his court, who held
discussions with him on the erroneous assumption that he had already
undergone instruction from Plato. In Plato’s view (338d) he combined a
genuine talent for learning with a هon.suming ambition to be well
thought of. He now felt ashamed that he had not taken more advantage of
Plato’s previous presence, and feared that a refusal on Plato’s part
would look as if Plato thought little of his gifts and disapproved of
his way of life. He therefore enlisted the philosophers to testify to
the genuineness of his progress in philosophy, his trump card being
Archytas, the Pythagorean philosopher-statesman from Tarentum. For
Archytas and his circle Plato felt great respect and warm friendship,
and he had himself brought them and Dionysius together (338d). The
combined efforts of all his friends were too much for him, and he went
back to Sicily for a third time in 361,[50] though all that the Straits
of Messene now suggested to him was the awful perils of Scylla and
Charybdis (345e).
Page 15
Never can a journey have been undertaken more unwillingly. Dragged (as
he says) by the envoys from Sicily and practically pushed out by the
enthusiasm of his friends in Athens, he yielded to the old argument that
he must not fail Dion or his Tarentine friends nor refuse to put
Dionysius to the final test. So the third act of the tragedy began. ‘At
least’, he says, ‘ة got away with my life’ .an indication of the
complete failure of the enterprise. First, he must test the mettle of
Dionysius by explaining to him what philosophy really is and the range
of preliminary studies through which it must be approached, concealing
nothing of the time and labour involved, or the truth that it must be a
constant companion and guide for a whole lifetime. Acceptance of this
programme Plato regarded as the acid test of a philosophic temperament.
In the event he was not even allowed to finish his exposition of it; so
sure was Dionysius (the very model of the Ignorant جan of Socrates, Who
does not even know that he is ignorant) that he knew the most important
points already from the pernicious instruction that he had imbibed from
certain philosophers at his court.[51] Later he went so far as to write a
‘handbook’ (ôف÷يç) of his own, based, so he claimed, on Plato’s
teaching, thereby provoking from Plato the declaration which appears at
the beginning of this volume (p. 1 [=Epist. 7.341b-d]).

Things went from bad to worse. Far from recalling Dion, the tyrant
took over his property and cut off the income which up to now he had
been receiving from it while in Greece. Plato tried to leave, but
Dionysius soothed his anger with specious proposals for Dion’s future
and the part Plato could play in it. Let him wait till the next sailing
season, and Dion would be grateful for his help. The hapless Plato asked
for time for reflection and proceeded to weigh ُp the pros and cons in
his usual deliberate way, only to conclude that in any case no one would
give him a passage without a personal order from Dionysius and that,
living as he did in the palace grounds, he was practically a prisoner.
So he ‘decided’ to remain, and Dionysius proceeded to sell ïff the whole
of Dion’s property without telling Plato beforehand. From then on, good
relations between them were at an end, though they kept up a pretence
of friendship to the outside world. After further incidents Plato
managed to get a message to Archytas at Tarentum, and his friends there,
on the pre.... of a political mission, sent one of themselves in a
ship, who prevailed on Dionysius to let Plato go.

page 16
Never can a journey have been undertaken more
unwillingly. Dragged (as he says) by the envoys from Sicily and
practically pushed out by the enthusiasm of his friends in Athens, he
yielded to the old argument that he must not fail Dion or his Tarentine
friends nor refuse to put Dionysius to the final test. So the third act
of the tragedy began. ‘At least’, he says, ‘ة got away with my life’ .an
indication of the complete failure of the enterprise. First, he must
test the mettle of Dionysius by explaining to him what philosophy really
is and the range of preliminary studies through which it must be
approached, concealing nothing of the time and labour involved, or the
truth that it must be a constant companion and guide for a whole
lifetime. Acceptance of this programme Plato regarded as the acid test
of a philosophic temperament. In the event he was not even allowed to
finish his exposition of it; so sure was Dionysius (the very model of
the Ignorant جan of Socrates, Who does not even know that he is
ignorant) that he knew the most important points already from the
pernicious instruction that he had imbibed from certain philosophers at
his court.[51] Later he went so far as to write a ‘handbook’ (ôف÷يç) of
his own, based, so he claimed, on Plato’s teaching, thereby provoking
from Plato the declaration which appears at the beginning of this volume
(p. 1 [=Epist. 7.341b-d]).

Things went from bad to worse. Far from recalling Dion, the tyrant
took over his property and cut off the income which up to now he had
been receiving from it while in Greece. Plato tried to leave, but
Dionysius soothed his anger with specious proposals for Dion’s future
and the part Plato could play in it. Let him wait till the next sailing
season, and Dion would be grateful for his help. The hapless Plato asked
for time for reflection and proceeded to weigh ُp the pros and cons in
his usual deliberate way, only to conclude that in any case no one would
give him a passage without a personal order from Dionysius and that,
living as he did in the palace grounds, he was practically a prisoner.
So he ‘decided’ to remain, and Dionysius proceeded to sell ïff the whole
of Dion’s property without telling Plato beforehand. From then on, good
relations between them were at an end, though they kept up a pretence
of friendship to the outside world. After further incidents Plato
managed to get a message to Archytas at Tarentum, and his friends there,
on the pre.... of a political mission, sent one of themselves in a
ship, who prevailed on Dionysius to let Plato go.

That was the end of Plato’s disastrous involvement in practical
politics. Speusippus, who had become friendly with Dion in Athens and
accompanied Plato to Sicily, encouraged Dion to return and oppose
Dionysius with force. Dion appealed for help to Plato, but this time
Plato held firm. He replied that it was at Dion’s instigation that he
had formed ties of religion and hospitality with Dionysius, and that
Dionysius, though he probably believed the allegations that Plato was
plotting with Dion against him, had yet spared his life. In any case he,
Plato, was no longer of an age to assist anyone in a war: he would help
any move towards reconciliation, but if that was not Dion’s purpose, he
must look elsewhere for aid. Dion crossed to Syracuse with a force of
mercenaries, fighting and confusion ensued, the city suffered slaughter
and pillage, and the venture ended with Dion’s assassination. Even after
all this, such was the hold that Dion’s personality had over Plato that
he could not bring himself to blame him. If Dionysius had only restored
his property, he said, none of this need have occurred, for his own
influence could have kept Dion in check. And he wrote the extant epitaph
on him, ending with a passionate avowal of their former love, which
tradition said was inscribed on his tomb in Syracuse (D.L. 3.30).

Our first conclusion from the evidence of the Seventh Letter and
Plutarch must be that Plato was a born theoretician, and not the man to
translate his own political and psychological theories into successful
action. حï one will think the less ïf him for that. The power of making a
quick and correct judgement of men and situations, and of taking prompt
decisions for necessary action in a situation where the leaders are
being manipulated by others whose motives are purely selfish, is not
likely, in any human being, to be found together with the intellectual
profundity that produced the ethical and ....physical theories, the
achievements in logic, epistemology and ontology which constitute
Plato’s primary and inestimable legacy to the world. It should cause no
surprise that the author of the Republic and even of the Laws was
something of a political innocent, more at home drawing up laws and
constitutions on paper than engaging in the rough-and-tumble of Greek
political life; and Syracusan politics, even by Greek standards, were
very rough indeed. By temperament he resembled his own philosopher in
Republic 6, who sees the impossibility of doing any good to a society
bent on wickedness, and stands aside like a man ....tering under a wall
while a storm drives over his head. Harward was right to say (Epistles
p. 28) that in a matter like safeguarding the interests of Dion ‘ Plato
was a child in the hands ïf Dionysius, who tricked him at every turn’.
Dionysius was not the worst; he wanted to have his own way and Plato for
a friend. But there were schemers behind the throne bent on Dion’s
downfall and the frustration of his and Plato’s plans for Dionysius, and
for these too Plato was no match. His only mistake was in thinking that
he ever could be, instead of holding back as he did at the time of the
Thirty in Athens

Page 17
In this respect it might be said that the years
had brought him no increase in practical wisdom. But the reasons why,
after all the doubts and hesitations to which he was so prone, and which
the Seventh Letter emphasizes at every turn, he finally accepted the
tall to action, bring out another, not unattractive, side of his
character. It is commonly said that he seized on the opportunity to
realize in practice his now developed ideal of the philosopher-king, or
at least that he felt it would be cowardly to let even a slender chance
slip by. The latter is true, but both the opportunity and the idea that
refusal would be shameful were put into his head by Dion (Ep. 7.328e).
What the story illustrates is the enormous importance to him of his
relations with individuals, and the way in which a personal attachment
could sway his judgement in public no less than in private affairs. As
one reads the story it is obvious that Dion is the pivot of Plato’s
movements, that the fear of seeming in Dion’s eyes to have acted
unworthily of their friendship and his own philosophy was the reason
above all others for his participating in the forlorn hope of reforming
Dionysius. Then there was Dionysius himself, who must have had
considerable personal charm, and who even after his quarrel with Dion
seemed almost pathetically anxious to retain the friendship and good
opinion of Plato. His character is extremely difficult to assess.
Aristotle, in a passing remark (رolitics 1312a4), says that Dion
despised him because he was always drunk, and there was a story (‘They
say...’, Plut. Dion 7) that soon after his accession he ‘drank
هon.tinuously for three months’, during which his court was closed to
serious men or affairs and given over to drunkenness, mirth, music,
dancing and buffoonery.[52] On the other hand, a habitual drunkard could
hardly have won the recommendation of the haughty[53] moralist Dion and
still less of the philosopher Archytas. What is certain is that he was
lazy, weak-willed, and at the mercy of advisers who hated and feared
Dion. Plato, who had taken him ُp because of his devotion to, and
absolute trust in, Dion, would only say, when finally convinced that he
could never make a philosopher out of him, and when Dionysius had
already appropriated Dion’s property, that after all he ought not to be
angry with Dionysius so much as with himself and those who had forced
him to enter the Sicilian whirlpool for the third time.
Page 18

The story of Plato’s adventures in Sicily has often been told, and ة
had intended only to summarize it briefly. It seemed, however, on a
re-reading of the sources to throw more light on his character than has
appeared from previous accounts, and sometimes a different light. All
this may be worth bearing in mind when we go on to consider his
writings. A second reason for re-telling it in this volume is that in
attempts to date the dialogues they are frequently referred to as
earlier, or later, than Plato’s first, second or third visit to Sicily;
and the significance of such statements cannot be understood without
some knowledge of the purpose and outcome of the visits them.selves.

Little is known of the remaining thirteen years of his life. Both the
Seventh and Eighth Letters were written after the death of Dion, and
show him, though no longer an active participator, willing to advise the
Dionian party provided, as he says, that they sincerely wish to carry
out Dion’s intentْon, namely, not to enslave Syracuse any longer to
autocrats but to ‘adorn and clothe her with the garment of freedom’
(336a) - freedom under the rule ïf law. Let the victors select the best
men from all Hellas and appoint them a commission to draw ُp laws
impartially. Let them also (for here lies the only hope of an end to
civil strife) refrain from all acts of vengeance and show that they
themselves are willing and able to be the servants of the laws. In the
Eighth Letter, professing to speak in Dion’s name, he goes so far as to
name a triumvirate whom he would like to see established as joint
constitutional monarchs. شwï other letters, believed by a majority of
scholars to be genuine, testify to his continued concern for Dion until
Dion’s death, and his sensitiveness to opinion about his own actions in
Syracuse. In the Fourth he congratulates Dion on his early successes,
asks for more news, and reminds him that one in his position is under a
particular obligation to act with justice, truth and magnanimity. The
Third, nominally addressed to Dionysius, accuses him of
misrepresentation and recapitulates past events in the form of an
apologia for Plato’s own conduct.

All in all, however, he was as he says (إp. 7.350d) ‘sick of his
wanderings and misfortunes in Sicily’, and once safely in Athens he
presumably turned back with relief to philosophy and worked peace.fully
in the Academy with his pupils and colleagues. With Aristotle there, no
longer a pupil but a member of seven years’ standing, not to mention
Eudoxus, Speusippus and other leading and independent intellects, there
was no lack of lively argument. Much time must have been spent too on
writing the twelve books of the Laws, which had not received their
finishing touches when he died.

Page 19

(2) PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES

LATO did not think in an intellectual vacuum. Some of his profoundest
and most original ideas resulted from the attempt to solve problems
bequeathed by his predecessors, in whom he took the liveliest interest.
Aristotle speaks of Plato’s philosophy as resembling the Pythagorean,
but with certain features of its own. This is in the first book of the
....physics, where he is discussing the contributions made by previous
philosophers to his own doctrine of ‘causes’,[54] among which he counts
the Platonic theory of Forms. Its distinctive character, he says, it
owed, first; to early reflection on the Heraclitean view that the whole
sensible world is in constant flux and cannot therefore be the object of
knowledge. Impressed with this, Plato listened to Socrates who had
abandoned the study of nature for ethics but in that field was seeking
the universal and directing attention to the importance ïf definition.
Both views seemed to Plato right, and to reconcile them he supposed that
the definitions which Socrates demanded must apply to non-sensible
realities; for he thought it impossible that the common definition could
belong to anything in the sensible world, since such things were always
changing. ‘Realities of this kind’, continues Aristotle, ‘he called
Forms [in Greek ideai, whence our ‘theory of Ideas’], and he said that
sensible things existed apart from them[55] and were named after them.’
Aristotle then goes on to make comparisons with Pythagoreanism whose
accuracy is controversial.[56] ة mention the passage now only to make
the point that besides what we can learn from the dialogues themselves
there is also external evidence for the influence of other philosophers
on Plato’s mind which may be worth examining and assessing. For the
Pythagoreans we know also of the personal ties with Archytas and others
which he formed and maintained on his visits to the West.
Page 20

In the dialogues, there is no need to emphasize the fact that Plato’s
chief inspiration for the greater part of his life was Socrates. In the
great majority of them he takes the lead throughout, even in the
Theaetetus and Philebus which must have been written in Plato’s late
maturity. In this period however we shall have to consider the
sig.nificance of a striking change. In the Parmenides, Socrates is a
young man quite overshadowed by the elderly and revered Parmenides and
though his part at the beginning is important, he is silent for
four—fifths of the whole. In the Sophist and رïliticus, which follow the
Theaetetus, he gives place to the unnamed Eleatic visitor after a few
introductory remarks, and similarly in the Timaeus to the Pythagorean
Timaeus from Locri.

Of Presocratic cosmogonical and physiological theories Plato shows
his general knowledge in the famous passage in the Phaedo (95e ff.)
where Socrates says that to answer adequately the question of Cebes he
must go into the whole question of how things come into being and
perish. The influence of Heraclitus is seen in the Symposium (207d) when
Diotima describes our bodies as being in a constant process of change
and renewal throughout our lives, affecting hair, flesh, bones, blood
and all the rest.[57] Cratylus 402a quotes Heraclitus by name for his
famous comparison ïf the world to a river into which you cannot step
twice (يol. I, 488ff.). At Theaetetus 152e he is mentioned together with
Protagoras and Empedocles as a believer in the genesis of all things
from motion and mingling, in contrast to Parmenides, the only one who
denied motion; and later in the same dialogue the Heracliteans are
satirized as people impossible to deal with (179e ff.). Faithful to
their doctrine they are in perpetual motion. They cannot argue, but
shoot out little riddling phrases like arrows, and there are no teachers
or pupils among them, for each thinks he is inspired and the others
know nothing. One is reminded of Aristotle’s hit at Cratylus, who, he
says (....physics 1010a10-15), was so overcome by the impossibility ïf
arresting even for a moment the flux ïf change that in the end he found
any speech impossible and merely moved his finger. At Sophist 242d (يol,
I, 436 f.) Plato shows that he appreciated the full paradoxical rigour
of Heraclitus’s teaching, which most others missed.

Page 21
The greatest single influence on Plato after
Socrates was Parmenides, that giant of intellect among the Presocratics
whose challenging thesis that by all rational argument motion and change
were impossible had to be met without evading his apparently
unassailable premises. ة have referred already to the dialogues in which
he, or an Eleatic follower, takes the lead, and in the Theaetetus
(183e) Socrates refuses to embark on a criticism of Parmenides because
he has always thought of him as, in the words of Homer, a ‘reverend and
awful’ figure. There is no trace of irony in this de......ion. Here and
again at Sophist 217c Plato makes him refer to his (doubtless imaginary)
meeting with Parmenides in his youth which is the subject of the
Parmenides. Actual quotations from Parmenides’s poem occur at Symposium
178b and Sophist 237a. Much of the Sophist is devoted to an examination
of his use of the verb ‘to be’ solely in an absolute sense, with its
consequence that, as he claimed, ‘what is not’ can be neither spoken nor
thought of. The mischievous use by Sophists of the exclusive choice
between ‘being’ and ‘not-being’ was satirized by Plato in the
Euthydemus, where it is argued, for example, that to wish for someone to
be no longer what he is (i.e. ignorant) is, after all, to wish him to
be no longer, i.e. to perish (283 c-d). In the Sophist he had to go to
some trouble to show that ‘what is not, in some respects has being’,
because ‘is not’ might mean only ‘is different from’. The other way in
which, at an earlier stage, Plato modified the harsh dichotomy of
Parmenides was by introducing an intermediate ontological category
between being and non-being, namely the world of becoming. Not having
the status of full, unchanging being, it could not be the object of full
knowledge, but only of doxa, belief or opinion. Nevertheless the
‘beliefs of mortals’ were not wholly false as Parmenides had claimed
(fr. 1.30), but somewhere between knowledge and ignorance as their
subject was between the being of the Forms and sheer nonentity.

Since much of Plato’s philosophy is unimaginable without the towering
figure of Parmenides, it will seem surprising that he is not mentioned
by Aristotle in his account of the genesis of the theory of Forms. A
probable explanation, if not a justification, is that this occurs in his
examination of earlier views on a particular subject, the causes of
coming-to-be and perishing. That Plato investigated these he admits, but
since Parmenides and his followers simply denied that motion and
coming-to-be take place in reality at all, they must, he says
(986b12-17, 25-6), be set aside ‘as inappropriate to the present
investigation of causes’

الترجمة

F PLATO's Seventh Letter is genuine (a question which
will be discussed in its proper place among his writings), we are in
the unique position for a writer of his time of having an
autobiographical ........
أفلاطون سابع رسالة حقيقية (وهي المسألة التي سيتم
مناقشتها في مكانها الصحيح بين كتاباته) ، ونحن في موقع فريد لكاتب من
وقته وجود........ السيرة الذاتية
outlining the stages οf his
development and concentrating on his part in a historical episode, the
violent course of fourth-century Syracusan politics. If he did not write
it himself, its historical value is scarcely lessened, since the
sceptics agree that it must be the work of one of his immediate
disciples written either before or shortly after his death
يحدد المراحل οf له التنمية والتركيز
على دوره في حلقة تاريخية ، وبالطبع العنيف للسياسات القرن الرابع
سيراقوسي. إذا لم يكتب هو نفسه ، وقيمته التاريخية نادرا ما قلت ، منذ
المتشككين نتفق على أنه يجب أن يكون عمل واحد من تلاميذه فورية مكتوبة إما
قبل أو بعد وقت قصير من وفاته
Such a source is of the
highest value, even allowing for the probability that its overriding aim
was the vindication of Plato’s actions and their motives.
مثل هذا المصدر هو من أعلى قيمة ،
وحتى السماح لاحتمال أن هدفها الأسمى هو دفاع عن أفلاطون الإجراءات
ودوافعهم.

In his own writings Plato keeps himself firmly out of
sight, and they reveal little or nothing about his life. He never
writes in his own person,[2] and mentions himself twice only, both
times in intimate connexion with Socrates, once to tell us that he was
present at the trial and once to explain his absence from the group of
friends who were with Socrates in his last hours.
في كتاباته الخاصة أفلاطون يبقي
نفسه بقوة بعيدا عن الأنظار ، وأنها تكشف عن القليل أو لا شيء عن حياته.
انه لم يكتب في شخصه ، [2] ويذكر نفسه مرتين فقط ، سواء في أوقات بمناسبه
حميمة مع سقراط ، ومرة واحدة ليقول لنا انه كان حاضرا في المحاكمة ، ومرة
واحدة لتفسير غيابه عن مجموعة من الأصدقاء الذين كانوا مع سقراط في ساعاته
الأخيرة.
A number of his friends and
pupils wrote about him, including Aristotle, Speusippus, Xenocrates,
Philip of Opus, Hermodorus and Erastus, but their productions took the
form of eulogies rather than biographies, and were already mingling
legend with fact. In a school with a religious basis, such as Plato’s
Academy was (p. 20 below), there was a traditional tendency to venerate
the founder, and even Plato’s own nephew Speusippus is credited with
having followed Pythagorean precedent so far as to give him the god
Apollo for a father.[3] We also hear of lives by pupils of Aristotle,
Clearchus (an ‘encomium’), Dicaearchus and Aristoxenus
وهناك عدد من أصدقائه والتلاميذ كتب
عنه ، بما في ذلك أرسطو ، Speusippus ، Xenocrates ، من تأليف فيليب ،
وHermodorus ايراستوس ، ولكن آثارهم اتخذ شكل كلمات التأبين التي القيت
بدلا من السير الذاتية ، وكان بالفعل أسطورة اختلاط مع الواقع. في إحدى
المدارس على أساس ديني ، مثل أفلاطون أكاديمية كان (ص 20 أدناه) ، كان
هناك اتجاه التقليدية لبجل مؤسس ، وحتى أفلاطون الخاصة Speusippus ابن أخ
له الفضل بعد أن تابعت سابقة فيثاغوري حتى الآن كما أن أعطيه الإله أبولو
للأب. [3]) ، كما اننا نسمع من الأرواح من تلاميذ أرسطو ، Clearchus (وهي
'مديح') ، Dicaearchus وAristoxenus

Plato was also a favourite butt of the poets of the
Middle Comedy, from whom we have a number of satirical quotations
أفلاطون كما كان بعقب المفضلة
للشعراء للكوميديا الأوسط ، ومنهم من أن لدينا عددا من الاقتباسات الساخرة

Page 2

All these early writings are lost, and the earliest extant life is by
Apuleius in the second century A.D., who followed the earlier
encomiasts in making his subject a typical hero-figure. Not much later
is the book devoted to Plato in the Lives and Opinions of Eminent
Philosophers of Diogenes Laertius, and finally we have from the sixth
century lives by the Neoplatonic commentator Olympiodorus and an
anonymous author, who carry the supernatural element to even further
lengths. The most valuable is Diogenes, who, if his critical standards
as a biographer are not what we would accept today, is nevertheless
exceptional in conscientiously mentioning his sources, and they include a
number ïf Plato’s and Aristotle’s contemporaries. Some of these are
cited for sober statements of historical fact. He may quote Speusippus
and Clearchus for the story of Plato’s divine birth, but we also owe to
him the knowledge that Plato’s retirement to Megara to stay with
Euclides after the execution of Socrates is vouched for by Hermodorus.
صفحة 2

تضيع كل هذه الكتابات في وقت مبكر ، وأقرب الحياة موجودة حسب أبوليوس في
القرن الثاني الميلادي ، الذي تابع encomiasts في وقت سابق من صنعه نموذجي
موضوع بطل الرقم. ليس كثيرا في وقت لاحق من هذا الكتاب المخصص لأفلاطون في
حياة وآراء الفلاسفة البارزين من Laertius دايوجينس ، وأخيرا لدينا من
حياة القرن السادس قبل Olympiodorus المعلق الأفلاطونية الحديثة ، والكاتب
المجهول ، الذي يحمل عنصر خارق للأطوال أكثر من ذلك. الأكثر قيمة هو
دايوجينس ، الذي ، إذا مقاييسه حرجة كاتب سيرة ليست ما كنا نقبل اليوم ،
حالة استثنائية في ذلك الإشارة إلى ضمير مصادره ، وأنها تشمل عددا إذا
أفلاطون وأرسطو المعاصرين. وترد بعض هذه التصريحات عن واقعية من الواقع
التاريخي. ويجوز له أن أقتبس Speusippus وClearchus عن قصة ولادة أفلاطون
الإلهي ، ولكننا ندين أيضا له مع العلم بأن التقاعد أفلاطون إلى ميغارا
البقاء مع Euclides بعد إعدام سقراط هو مكفول من قبل لHermodorus. مقالة انجليزى عن افلاطون Cleardot

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Page 3

Theopompus, who wrote a work Against the School of Plato, was a
pupil of Isocrates, and in view of the rivalry between Isocrates and
Plato (p. 24 below) may have thought he was serving his master by these
violent attacks. That such denigration was also current among the
Peripatetics is shown by the astonishing declaration of Aristoxenus (ap.
D.L. 3.37) that nearly the whole of Plato’s Republic was in the
Contrary Arguments of Protagoras.

In addition to the above, Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos in their lives
ïf Dion say something of Plato’s activities in Sicily,[5] and there
are naturally a number of scattered references to him in later
antiquity, especially in Cicero, and chronological information from
Apollodorus.
(b) Birth and family connexions
N ALL probability Plato was born in 427 B.C. and died at the age of
eighty in 347.[6] His birthplace was either Athens or Aegina (D.L. 3.3).
As to his family, in the words of Apuleius ‘de utroque nobilitas satis
clara’. His father Ariston traced his descent from Codrus, the last
king of Athens, and the family of his mother Perictione was connected
with Solon, who, as Field remarked (ر. and Contemps. 4), might be of
less venerable antiquity but at least had the advantage of having
really existed. Plato had two elder[7] brothers, Glaucon and
Adeimantus, and a sister Potone, the mother of Speusippus. Critias and
Charmides, who became members of the notorious Thirty in 404, were
respectively the cousin and brother of his mother. Ariston, says
Plutarch (De am. prolis 496 f.), did not live to hear Plato expound
philosophy, and after his death Perictione married Pyrilampes, who must
have been her uncle, since Plato himself (Charm. 158a) calls him the
uncle of Charmides. Plato adds that he went on embassies to the Great
King of Persia and other rulers in Asia. From this marriage Plato
acquired a half-brother Antiphon, whom he makes the narrator of his
dialogue Parmenides.[8]
صفحة 3

وكان Theopompus ، الذي كتب العمل ضد مدرسة أفلاطون ، تلميذ من Isocrates ،
وبالنظر إلى التنافس بين Isocrates وأفلاطون (ص 24 أدناه) قد كان يظن انه
يخدم سيده من قبل هذه الهجمات العنيفة. وكان هذا التشويه هذه أيضا في
الوقت الراهن بين Peripatetics يتبين من إعلان مذهل من Aristoxenus (ap.
دل 3.37) أن ما يقرب من كامل جمهورية أفلاطون كان في الحجج وخلافا
للProtagoras.

بالإضافة إلى ما سبق ، بلوتارخ وNepos كورنيليوس في حياتهم إذا ديون أقول
شيئا من الأنشطة أفلاطون في صقلية ، [5] ، وهناك بطبيعة الحال عدد من
الإشارات المتناثرة له في العصور القديمة في وقت لاحق ، وخاصة في شيشرون ،
والمعلومات الزمني من Apollodorus .
(ب) وتاريخ الأسرة دائرة الاتصالات
ولد ن جميع أفلاطون في 427 قبل الميلاد احتمال وتوفي عن عمر يناهز
الثمانين في 347. [6]) مسقط رأس صاحب إما أثينا أو إيجينا (تنزيل 3.3). كما
لأسرته ، على حد تعبير أبوليوس 'دي utroque كلارا ساتيس nobilitas'. تتبع
اريستون والده له من أصل Codrus ، كان على علاقة الملك الأخير من أثينا ،
وعائلة والدته مع Perictione سولون ، الذي ، كما لاحظ الميدانية (ر.
Contemps و4) ، قد يكون أقل من العصور القديمة الجليلة ولكن على الأقل
وميزة وجود قائمة فعلا. وكان أفلاطون اثنين من كبار السن ([7] الاخوة ،
وGlaucon Adeimantus ، وPotone أخت ، أم Speusippus. وكانت Critias
Charmides ، الذي أصبح أعضاء ثلاثون سيئة السمعة في 404 ، على التوالي ،
وابن عم شقيق والدته. اريستون ، ويقول بلوتارك (دي صباحا. prolis 496 (و)
، لم يعش لسماع فلسفة أفلاطون شرح ، وبعد وفاته Pyrilampes Perictione
الزواج ، الذي يجب أن يكون قد عمها ، منذ أفلاطون نفسه (Charm. 158a)
ويدعو له عم من Charmides. أفلاطون ويضيف أنه ذهب على السفارات إلى الملك
العظيم فارس وحكام أخرى في آسيا. من هذا الزواج أفلاطون اكتسب Antiphon
الاخ غير الشقيق ، الذي كان يجعل الراوي من بارمنيدس حواره. [8]

Page 4

In contrast to his reticence about himself, he enjoyed introducing
his distinguished relatives into his dialogues, or mentioning them with
some precision. Charmides has one named after him, and Critias speaks
in the Charmides and Protagoras. (The Critias of the Timaeus and
Critias must be his grandfather.) Adeimantus is mentioned as Plato’s
brother at Apïl. 34a, and he and Glaucon take prominent parts in the
Republic. At the beginning of the Parmenides we are told in detail that
Antiphon is brother on the mother’s side to Adeimantus and Glaucon,
and that Pyrilampes was his father. From these and other references in
Plato himself, one can practically reconstruct his family tree, and
this suggests a considerable amount of family pride. Indeed, as Burnet
says (ش. to ر. 208), ‘The opening scene of the Charmides is a
glorification of the whole connexion.’ This has led many to conclude
that family influence must have been responsible for instilling
anti-democratic ideas into Plato from his earliest years. Burnet (ib.
209 f.) strenuously denied this, claiming that the family traditions
‘were rather what we should call "Whiggish"’ and that Critias and
Charmides were only at a late stage oligarchical extremists, and
pointing out that Pyrilampes was a democrat and friend of Pericles.
Burnet’s remarks bring out once again the important point that the
division between democrat and oligarch is by no means identical with
that between plebeian and high-born.[9] As to Plato, Field’s
modification of Burnet probably comes nearest the truth (ر. and
Contemps. 5):
صفحة 4

وعلى النقيض من تحفظ له عن نفسه ، انه يتمتع إدخال أقاربه في الحوارات
التي يجريها حاليا ، أو أن تذكرها بشيء من الدقة. Charmides واحدة تحمل
اسمه ، وCritias يتحدث في Charmides وProtagoras. وذكرت (وCritias من
Timaeus Critias ويجب أن يكون جده.) Adeimantus كما شقيق أفلاطون في Apïl.
34A ، وهو واتخاذ Glaucon أجزاء بارزة في الجمهورية. في بداية بارمنيدس
كما قيل لنا في التفاصيل التي Antiphon هو شقيق على الجانب الأم إلى
Adeimantus وGlaucon ، والتي كان والده Pyrilampes. من هذه وغيرها من
المراجع في أفلاطون نفسه ، يمكن للمرء أن إعادة بناء عمليا شجرة عائلته ،
وهذا يشير إلى وجود قدر كبير من الفخر الأسرة. في الواقع ، كما يقول بيرنت
(ش. لر 208) ، 'المشهد الافتتاحي للCharmides هو تمجيد للبمناسبه كله.'
وهذا أدى إلى استنتاج أن العديد من نفوذ الأسرة يجب أن يكون مسؤولا عن غرس
الأفكار المعادية للديمقراطية في أفلاطون من السنوات الأولى له. بيرنت
(ib. 209 (و) نفى بشدة هذه ، زاعما أن التقاليد الأسرية 'وليس ما ينبغي
لنا أن نطلق عليه" Whiggish "' والتي كانت Critias وCharmides إلا في
مرحلة متأخرة المتطرفين حكم الأقلية ، ومشيرا إلى أن Pyrilampes كان
ديمقراطيا وصديق بريكليز. تصريحات بيرنت في ابراز مرة أخرى على نقطة مهمة
ان الانقسام بين الديمقراطيين وحكم القلة ليست بأي حال متطابقة مع ما بين
عامي ، وارتفاع المولد. [9] أما أفلاطون ، وتعديل الميدانية لبيرنت ربما
يأتي أقرب الحقيقة (ر. و Contemps 5) :

Page 5
The rich and noble families which had accepted the Periclean numbers
into the ranks of the extreme opponents of demregime and been proud to
serve it, seem to have been driven in increasing ocracy by the financial
oppression to which they were subjected to pay for the war policy of
the democratic party. At any rate it is clear that during those
susceptible years in which Plato was first coming to manhood those most
near to him were becoming more and more hostile to the democracy and
ready to go to any length to overthrow it.
This being so, the remarkable thing is perhaps not that Plato was imbued
with anti-democratic sentiments but that he flatly refused to go along
with the extreme and violent actions of elder relatives whom he had
earlier admired, and could recognize the moderation of the restored
democracy in spite of the ‘mischance’ of the trial and execution of
Socrates. The only conclusion that age and experience brought him was
the general one that ‘it is very difficult to manage political affairs
aright’, and that ‘all cities at the present time are without exception
badly governed’ (إp. 7.325c, 326a).
(c) Early years
PEUSIPPUS (fr. 28L.), relying, says Apuleius, on ‘domestica docu.menta’,
praised his quickness of mind and modesty as a boy, and the
‘firstfruits of his youth infused with hard work and love of study’. His
education, like any other Athenian boy’s, would be physical as well as
mental, and his writings witness to a continued interest in the
‘gymnastic’ side. Dicaearchus (fr. 40 W.) went so far as to say that he
wrestled at the Isthmian games.[10] حï other information goes back to
sources so near Plato’s lifetime. Those of later centuries name his
teachers of reading and writing, physical education and music, and speak
of an early interest in painting and poetry. Whatever we may think of
the story that after hearing Socrates talk he burned a tragedy that he
had written (D.L. 3.5), we can have no difficulty in accepting that the
author of the dialogues showed early poetic gifts. We have indeed a
number of epigrams, some of them both beautiful and touching, which have
come down under his name and are generally accepted as genuine.[11] We
must admit however that we know little of his personal life in early
years, though we can if we like reconstruct his experiences and tastes
from a combination of what is known of contemporary Athenian family life
and education with all the evidence of his own extra-philosophical
interests which is to be found scattered throughout his dialogues, and
which makes their effect so much more personal and immediate than that
of any purely philosophical works. This will not be attempted here.[12]
Military service can be taken for granted, doubtless (considering his
social status) in the cavalry, and he was old enough to take part in
actual engagements in the last five years of the Peloponnesian War and
later.[13]
صفحة 5
الأسر الغنية والنبيلة التي قبلت الأرقام Periclean في صفوف المعارضين
تطرفا من demregime وكانت فخورة لخدمة ذلك ، يبدو أن اضطر في ocracy
المتزايد من جانب القمع المالية التي تعرضوا لها لدفع ثمن سياسة الحرب
للحزب الديمقراطي. على أي حال فمن الواضح أنه خلال تلك السنوات التي عرضة
أفلاطون كان أول من الرجولة القادمة من هم بالقرب منه وأصبحت أكثر وأكثر
عداء للديمقراطية ومستعدة للذهاب إلى أي مدة للاطاحة بها.
وبناء على ذلك ، والشيء الرائع هو أنه ربما لا تشربوا أفلاطون مع المشاعر
المناهضة للديمقراطية لكنه يرفض رفضا قاطعا للذهاب إلى جانب الإجراءات
المتطرفة والعنيفة من الأقارب المسنين الذي كان قد أعجب في وقت سابق ،
ويمكن التعرف على الاعتدال في استعادة الديمقراطية على الرغم من 'سوء حظ'
للمحاكمة وإعدام سقراط. الاستنتاج الوحيد الذي سن وخبرة أتت به هو واحد
عام على أن 'من الصعب جدا على إدارة الشؤون السياسية على ما يرام ، وأنه'
جميع المدن في الوقت الحاضر من دون استثناء لحكم سيئ و'(إ ص 7.325c ،
326a).
(ج) والسنوات الأولى
28L PEUSIPPUS (fr..) ،
والاعتماد ، ويقول أبوليوس ، على 'docu.menta Doméstica' ، وأشاد سرعة له
من العقل والتواضع عندما كان صبيا ، و 'باكورة شبابه أكسب مع العمل الجاد
والمحبة للدراسة. التعليم له ، مثله مثل أي طفل آخر الأثيني ، وسيكون
المادية فضلا عن العقلية ، وكتاباته شاهدا على الاهتمام المستمر في
الجمباز 'الجانب. Dicaearchus (40 fr. جورج) ذهب الى حد القول انه صارع في
الألعاب Isthmian [10] ح ï معلومات أخرى يعود الى المصادر القريبة من
العمر حتى أفلاطون. تلك القرون في وقت لاحق اسم معلميه من القراءة
والكتابة ، والتربية البدنية والموسيقى ، والحديث عن وجود مصلحة في وقت
مبكر في الرسم والشعر. أيا كان رأينا في القصة أنه بعد سماع كلام سقراط
انه احرق مأساة انه كان يكتب (تنزيل 3.5) ، يمكن ليست لدينا صعوبة في قبول
أن المؤلف من الحوارات الشعرية الهدايا وأظهرت في وقت مبكر. لدينا بالفعل
عدد من حكم ، بعض منهم على حد سواء جميلة ومؤثرة ، والتي ينزل تحت اسمه
والمقبولة عموما باعتبارها حقيقية. [11] ولكن يجب أن نعترف بأننا لا نعرف
إلا القليل عن حياته الشخصية في السنوات الأولى ، على الرغم من يمكننا إذا
كنا مثل إعادة بناء خبراته والأذواق من مزيج من ما هو معروف من حياة
الأسرة المعاصرة الأثيني والتعليم مع جميع الأدلة مصالح بلده خارج
الفلسفية التي يمكن العثور عليها المنتشرة في جميع أنحاء الحوارات التي
يجريها ، والذي يجعل تأثيرها أكثر من ذلك بكثير الشخصية والمباشرة من أن
أي أعمال فلسفية بحتة. لن تكون هذه محاولة هنا ، ويمكن أن تؤخذ [12]
الخدمة العسكرية أمرا مفروغا منه ، مما لا شك فيه (النظر في وضعه
الاجتماعي) في سلاح الفرسان ، وكان من العمر ما يكفي للمشاركة في
التعاقدات الفعلية في السنوات الخمس الأخيرة من الحرب البيلوبونيسية و في
وقت لاحق. [13]

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