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Page 1: Jonathan Barnes, The Hellenistic Platos

The Hellenistic Platos Jonathan Barnes

I

Platonism was the dominant philosophy of late antiquity and the only pagan system which seemed capable of withstanding the insidious advance of Christianity. Heinrich Dörrie, who died two years ago, was an authority on this phase of ancient thought: Der Piatonismus in der Antike, an ambitious and multi-voluminous project, is his monument. Der Piatonismus presents a copious selection of texts, accompanied by translation and commentary, to illuminate the philosophy of the impe- rial ntaxTcoviKoi: its substance, its background, its prehistory. The sec- ond volume, here under review,1 covers certain aspects of Platonism in the Hellenistic period.2

There are 200 pages of text and 300 of commentary. The text divides into five main sections, and subdivides into 37 'Bausteine'.3 Dörrie left the work unfinished at his death: the typescript has been prepared for publication by Matthias Baltes with the help of Annemarie Dörrie and Friedhelm Mann. Baltes will oversee the continuation of the project.

1 Heinrich Dörrie, Der Piatortismus in der Antike: II Der hellenistische Rahmen des kaiserzeitlichen Piatonismus. Fromann-Holzboog, Stuttgart/ Bad Cannstatt, 1990. Pp. XVÍ + 531.DM550.

2 For some comment on volume I, and on the project in general, see Phronesis 32 (1 987) 360-63.

3 Volume II contains Bausteine 36-72. In this review I shall follow Dome's own mode of reference: thus '42.2' refers to the second text in the forty-second Baustein.

APEIRON a journal for ancient philosophy and science 0003-6390/91/2402 115-128 $3.00 ©Academic Printing & Publishing

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II

In the first section of the volume, Bausteine 36-46 document Plato's early fortunes outside the Academy. The story begins with hatred and ends with honour. An honoured text attracts scholarship: Bausteine 47-50 deal with the Hellenistic editions of Plato's dialogues, and with their incor- poration into the philosophical curriculum. Since the dialogues are works of literature as well as works of philosophy, their stylistic and aesthetic merit came up for assessment: to this assessment are dedicated items 51-57. And lastly, interest in Plato the man: the growth of the biographical legends is briefly illustrated (58-61); and the curious story of Plato's connexions with Eastern wisdom - Egyptians, Persians, Jews - is narrated at length (62-71). By the end of the Hellenistic period, Plato's status was assured: an anonymous epigram, which forms Baustein 72, 'points to a future which will recognize Plato, and Plato alone, as the standard for all philosophy7 (510).

The texts are generously presented; the translations, where I have checked them, are accurate; there is a rich offering of supplementary references and a discriminating guide to the secondary literature; and the commentary provides numerous insights on controverted issues. (I may mention Dome's convincing rejection of the story that Panaetius athetised the Phaedo: the story that he did so is based upon a simple misunderstanding.4 Or again, I applaud Dome's insistence, against a common opinion, that Posidonius did not write a commentary on the Timaeus.5)

4 320-3; the story is told in an epigram, Anth Pal IX 358 = Panaetius, fr 128 van Straaten = 45.5.

5 329-32 (but Dorne ignores Sextus, M VII 93, the text most often cited for the common view). - PGen inv. 203 has been held to contain an abridgement of this putative commentary (so F. Lasserre, 'Abrégé inédit du commentaire de Posidonios au Timée de Platon', in F. Adorno et al, Protagora, Antifonte, Posidonio, Aristotele, Studi e testi

per il corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini 2 (Florence 1986)); but see W. Burkert, 'Xenarchos statt Poseidonios: zu Pap.Gen.inv.203', Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und

Epigraphik 67 (1987) 51-5. See further I.G. Kidd, Posidonius: II - the commentary, Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries 14 (Cambridge 1988), 339-40.

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The Hellenistic Platos 117

The selection and the arrangement of the texts may, however, cause some perplexity. For example, most of the passages assembled as Baustein 37 under the rubric 'literarische Diebstahl' have nothing to do with plagiarism. Again, the balance of texts is sometimes perverse.6 Again, by no means all of the texts refer to the Hellenistic background: most of the passages cited come, inevitably, from post-Hellenistic authors; and in many cases there is no reason to suppose that these authors are reporting or reflecting earlier material. Finally, the selection omits a number of items which any reader would, I suspect, wish to find.7

And two more general grumbles. First, the texts are presented virtu- ally without critical apparatus. No doubt a compilation of this sort does not require a comprehensive scholarly apparatus. But a reader is entitled to be warned when the sense of a passage depends on a controverted choice of reading or on a conjecture. Der Piatonismus does not always give such warnings. The serious student of its texts must also have the pertinent scholarly editions to hand.

Secondly, there is the matter of money. The book has been produced with a luxurious elegance rare among academic imprints. It is a pleasure to hold and a pleasure to read.8 But the elegance has its price - and 550 German marks will put the volume beyond the reach of most scholars and many libraries. Since a chief part of the scholarly utility of Der Platonismus lies in the fact that it assembles scattered and often inacces- sible texts, the question of cost is neither trivial nor vulgar. Der Platonis- mus will be of little use if it merely adorns the shelves of wealthy librarians. Let the publishers forgo luxury in their subsequent volumes and think rather of their readers' pockets.

6 Thus 67 documents the connexions between Pythagoras and the magi: the texts are there only because Dome supposes - without any particular plausibility - that the link between Pythagoras and the Persians provided a model for the link between Plato and the Persians.

7 Judgements of this sort ought no doubt to await the completion of the project; but future volumes will surely not contain the Epicurean texts whose absence I shall later lament.

8 And understanding is aided by the idiosyncratic typography, which assigns a separate line to each separate colon. Prose thus has the outward appearance of irregular verse - and is prodigal with paper.

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Christmas is coming as I write, and I have no wish to be a grouse. Grim things can be said about most books. About this book I can also say things which do not hold universally: it is the product of a wise and learned scholar; it puts together a valuable collection of texts; it strives to accomplish something which no-one has accomplished before.

Ill

In what follows I shall first say something about Plato's Hellenistic fortuna (in connexion with 36-46), and then make some remarks about the Hellenistic text of Plato (in connexion with 47-50).

IV

Here is a history. Plato was revered in his own school. The legend began early. Speusippus' IlepiSeutvov9 contained the story of Plato's semi-di- vine birth (Diogenes Laertius III 2 = 58.1); and Dörrie plausibly ascribes to Speusippus the anecdote about Socrates' prophetic dream of the swan (418), and the tale of Plato's journey to Egypt (429 n.13).10

9 On which see L. Taran, Speusippus of Athens (Leiden 1981), 228-35.

10 Other items accrued later. Dörrie is particularly concerned with the stories connect- ing Plato with Zoroaster and the magi: 'Plato's dependence on the wisdom of the Chaldaeans or magi is asserted only in late sources, and rarely' (453 - first in Pausanias, IV xxxii 4 = 66.1 and Pliny, nat hist XXX 8-9 = 66.2). Certainly the question of Persian influence was much disputed in the Imperial period (see 68). But - as Dörrie himself notes (478) - there are very early connexions, which may even have a basis in fact, between Plato and the Persians: the Index Academicorum, III 34-43

reports that a Chaldaean was present at Plato's death (cf Seneca, ep lviii 31 = 60.3; anon., proleg 6.19-21 = 68.4b: see 418-19), and the report probably comes from Philip of Opus (see K. Gaiser, Philodems Académica, Supplementum Platonicum 1 [Stutt- gart/Bad Cannstatt 1988], 434-6). (Note too the report that a Persian, Megasthenes, dedicated a statue to Plato's memory at Athens: Diogenes Laertius III 25 = Favor- inus, fr 5 Mensching); and cf. the similar - and early - stories about Socrates and the magi (see 456: Diogenes Laertius, II 45 = Aristotle, fr 32 Rose3; Eusebius, PE XI iii 8 = Aristocles, fr 1 Heiland = Aristoxenus, fr 53 Wehrli). It seems possible that the Persian connexion originated with Speusippus.

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There was also an immediate hostility - for Plato quickly became 'the best hated philosopher in the Greek world'.11 Enmity manifested itself in various ways and came from different sides - from the comic stage, from satirists, from philosophers. In a denunciatory cento at the end of the eleventh Book of Athenaeus, Plato is accused of CnAorwcia (504E), of abusing Homer (505B),12 of lack of originality (505C), of being ô')o^ievf|ç (506A), of (pitoÔoÇía (507E: see 43), of plagiarism (507E),13 of political ineffectiveness (508 A: see 42): in short, as Theopompus said in his work Against the School of Plato, 'you will find that most of his dialogues are useless and false, and that the greater number of them are stolen' (508C). And of course, Plato was also disgustingly immoral.14

Dörrie speaks generally of a durchaus gehässige Umwertung of the Platonic legend effected by Hellenistic authors (418). The personal at- tacks are usually ill-grounded and often dotty; but they were not with- out significance for the history of philosophy. For although Plato is occasionally named and referred to in philosophical texts, 'there is no

11 So Gef f cken, quoted on p.223.

12 Plato's ejection of Homer from Callipolis gave rise to widespread and violent abuse (see 44). Only Caligula, it seems, approved: Suetonius, Calig 34.

13 The Republic was lifted from Protagoras (Diogenes Laertius, III 37 = Aristoxenus, fr 67 Wehrli = 37.2; Diogenes Laertius, III 57 = Favorinus, fr 23 Mensching = 37.3); the basis of his philosophy was filched from Homer (e.g. Heraclitus, quaest Horn 17-18 = 54.4) or from Moses (e.g. Clement, strom I xcii 1-4 = 70.3). (Thus Plato was Moyses Attikizon - the phrase is from Numenius [Eusebius, PE XI x 14 = fr 8 des Places], but the connexion with Moses can be traced back to Aristobulus of Alexandria [Eusebius, PE XIII xii 1-4 = fr 3 Walter = 69.1(11)], i.e., to the middle of the second century BC (481 n.l) - and it is perhaps earlier still (see 484). But neither Numenius nor Aristobulus alleges plagiarism.) The charge of plagiarism, in one form or another, was brought as long as Platonism survived. At the same time, Plato's defenders knew what to make of the evidence: Plato did not steal from his prede- cessors - rather, he united the virtues which they had severally represented; in the classical formulation (see 39, 40), he put together the acumen of Socrates and the profundity of Pythagoras. (Some of Plato's enemies also rejected the charge of plagiarism: according to Lactantius, div inst TV ii 3-5 = 71, Plato did not steal from Moses - on the contrary, it was part of God's plan that the truth should not be revealed to the Gentiles until the end of the millennium; and for that reason God did not allow Plato to make contact with the Jews.)

14 E.g., Philo, vit contempi 59-63 = 41.1.

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evidence to show that during the period of high Hellenism Plato had any influence or held any fascination' (287).

And then came a turning-point, a Wende. It was inaugurated, or at least forwarded, by the Middle Stoics (315) - by Antipater,15 by Panae- tius the OiAxmAmcov16 and by Posidonius (46). Plato was now divine, Beîoç, and accepted outside his own school as a great thinker. At the same time, scholarly and literary interest in the dialogues grew. The texts were edited (47-48) and marked with sigla (49); and questions of authen- ticity were raised. Plato's style, which had excited contempt in some quarters,17 came to be admired. Dörrie speaks of a 'literary rediscovery' of Plato (370): he was studied by Aristophanes of Byzantium (see 377), and by Aristarchus' pupil, Ammonius;1 he was praised for his gravitas (51); his language was inspired and poetical (53); according to Panaetius, he was Homerus philosophorum?9 he wrote as Zeus would have written.20 By Cicero's time, Plato was the prince of philosophers, princeps phi- losophorum (e.g.ßn V iii 7); and the anonymous epigram, to which I have already referred, is a fitting finale to the Hellenistic story.

Such, according to Dörrie, was the Hellenistic fortuna of Plato. Such, at least, is the story which I construct from the general arrangement of the Bausteine and from numerous remarks scattered in the commentary. But it should be said that Der Piatonismus never tells the story in bold and stark fashion; and I am not wholly confident that Dörrie would have told it just so.

However that may be, it is a misleading story, in at least two respects.

15 Clement, strom V xcvii 6 = 45.1

16 Index Stoicorum LXI 1-3 = fr 55 van Straaten = 45.2; cf. Cicero, fin IV xxviii 79 = fr 55 van Straaten = 45.3.

17 Dionysius of Halicarnassus reports that several people had made selections of the worst bits of Plato's prose: Demosth 23 = 56.1c.

18 Scholium A to Homer, Iliad IX 540 = 54.1; see 383.

19 Cicero, Tuse I xxxii 79 = Panaetius, fr 83 van Straaten = 45.4 (cf e.g. Quintilian, X i 81 = 53.4a); but, pace Dome, 381 n.l, I doubt if this was a literary judgement.

20 E.g., Cicero, Brutus 121 = 52.1 . Compare the celebrated mot about Chrysippean logic (Diogenes Laertius, VII 180) rather than the sentence about Menander and life

(Syrianus, in Hermog 2.23) - pace Dörrie, 376-7.

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First, the rhythm of Dome's history, the Niedergang und Aufstieg, does not convince. Consider the anti-Platonic invective. No doubt it began early - indeed, it had begun in Plato's own lifetime. But it was not merely an early phase in Plato's fortuna. The texts to which I have referred prove the point plainly enough. Many of them come from Athenaeus, and were therefore written out in about 200 AD. Athenaeus' main source is standardly taken to be Herodicus, a pupil of Crates who wrote a work Against the Lovers of Socrates and who probably flourished in the second century BC. Herodicus in turn borrowed freely from earlier sources. In short, we find a long tradition of anti-Platonic writing, beginning in the fourth-century BC and surviving for many centuries. Flowing parallel to this tradition, there was a bubbling stream of philo- platonism. In any period we shall find both Platonophiles and Platono- phobes.

Or again, consider the supposed rediscovery of Plato as a literary figure. In point of fact, the literary aspects of Plato's work had excited comment from Aristotle.21 His style was then discussed, critically, by Dicaearchus.22 In a later period, there were hostile comments from Caecilius of Cale Acte (see 55), and a measured assessment from Di- onysius of Halicarnassus (see 56). Our sources are patchy and do not cover every decade. But it is reasonable to suppose that Plato's dialogues were discussed for their style wherever and whenever style was a topic of learned discussion.

In sum, where Dörrie sees a dramatic career, a fall and a rise, we should rather observe a flat and smooth sameness. Plato was always in the limelight. Some loved him, some hated him; some took a philosophi- cal and others a literary interest in his works; and for many authors he was an object of journalistic fantasy. The windmill never closed.

Secondly, Dome's story is superficial: it pays too much attention to passion and fantasy, too little to the sober history of philosophy. For sober historians, the important questions are these: was Plato read and studied by later philosophers? did his thought influence their thought? did it do so directly or indirectly, positively or negatively? To these

21 Diogenes Laertius, III 38 = Aristotle, fr 73 Rose3 = 53.1.

22 Diogenes Laertius, III 38 = Dicaearchus, fr 42 Wehrli; cf Index Academicorum, 11-11; cfGaiser, 326-8, 338-40.

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questions the texts which Dörrie assembles scarcely address themselves. Yet pertinent evidence is not lacking.

It is perhaps unnecessary to insist that the Academy was a Hellenistic school, so that insofar as the Hellenistic Academy was taken seriously, Plato himself was taken seriously in the Hellenistic period ? It is necessary to insist that Antipater was not the first Stoic to read Plato. Dörrie himself - by way of his editors - confesses, in a narrow footnote, that Chrysip- pus knew something of Plato (316 n.2). In the surviving fragments of Chrysippus' writings, which are neither numerous nor extensive, we find at least eight explicit references to Plato.24 Earlier, Persaeus had written a work in six books upo ç toùç IIÀmoovoç Nó^iouç (Diogenes Laertius, VII 36) . And we are informed that Zeno, the first Stoic scholarch, wrote against the Republic (Plutarch, Stoic repugn 1034E). How far and in what ways early Stoicism was influenced by Plato remain difficult questions. But current scholarship tends - rightly, in my own opinion - to suppose that the influence was subtle and serious and pervasive.25

The Epicureans, too, knew their Plato. Thus - to take the best known case - we learn something of early Epicurean polemic against Plato from the anti-Platonic arguments of Colotes which Plutarch records (adv Col 1114F-1116E). By chance we also know a little about two further anti-Platonic essays by Colotes: a book against the Lysis and a book against the Euthydemus - fragments of each were found at Hercu- laneum.26 Colotes was not unique in his interests. Hermarchus wrote npòç IIAxxTCûva (Diogenes Laertius, X 25); Metrodorus wrote against Plato's Gorgias27 and against his Euthyphro.28 None of this finds a place

23 Texts on the Hellenistic Academy were gathered in volume I of Der Piatonismus.

24 See Plutarch, Stoic repugn 1038E, 1040A, 1040D, 1041B, 1045F, 1047B; Galen, PHP V 288Kuhn;Gellius,VIIi6.

25 For a recent and palmary example I may refer to Jacques Brunschwig, 'La théorie stoïcienne du genre suprême', in J. Barnes and M. Mignucci, eds., Matter and

Metaphysics (Naples 1988).

26 PHerc 208 and 1032: see W. Crönert, Kolotes und Menedemos (Munich 1906), 5-12; 162-72.

27 See Philodemus, II pòç xo'>ç [PHerc 1005], XI 14: text now in A. Angeli, Filodemo: agli amici di scuola (Naples 1988).

28 See Philodemus, piet [PHerc 1077], 107 Gomperz.

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in Der Piatonismus; nor is there any mention of the several later - and milder - references to Plato in the Herculaneum papyri.29 More impor- tant is the question of the influence of Plato on the development of Epicurus' thought. Here the central text is Book XIV of the Ilepi Oúaecoç,30 in which scholars rightly see the influence of the Timaeus - and which Der Piatonismus again ignores.31

In sum, volume II of Der Platonismus gives a forced and a partial account of the Hellenistic Plato: partial, insofar as it passes over central areas of philosophical influence; forced, insofar as it imposes a factitious pattern of fall and rise on the flat facts.

V

Hellenistic authors read texts of Plato. What texts did they use? And how were those texts related to the Greek we now read in the OCT?

Here is an optimistic narrative.32 Shortly after Plato's death, the Academy produced an authoritative edition of his works based on his autograph texts. Later, in the second century, Aristophanes of Byzan- tium revised the text, arranging some of the dialogues into trilogies (47). The Academic text reached Rome in the first century, brought by Sulla from Athens, and a revised edition was prepared by Tyrannio and edited by Cicero's learned friend and correspondent, T. Pomponius Atticus. Finally, in the first century AD, Thrasyllus, court astrologer to the Emperor Tiberius, produced an edition which organised all the dialogues into tetralogies (48). Antiquity knew of 'wild' texts which

29 For which see G. Indelli, 'Piatone in Filodemo', Cronache Ercolanesi 16 (1986) 109-12; id., Filodemo: Vira (Naples 1988), 162-3.

30 Most recently edited by G. Leone, 'Epicuro, Della natura, libro XIV, Cronache Ercolanesi 14 (1984) 17-108.

31 Note too that, according to the latest reading of a notorious text, Epicurus perused - or at least ordered - a copy of Speusippus' Perideipnon: PHerc 1005, fr 110 (see Angeli, 239-40).

32 The classic narration, first published in 1892, is due to Hermann Usener: see 'Unser Platontexf, in H. Usener, Kleine Schriften III (Berlin 1914). The story is told in several variant forms. For a recent sketch of the status quaestionis see G. Boter, The Textual Tradition of Plato's Republic, Mnemosyne supplement 107 (Leiden 1989).

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differed, in degenerate ways, from these official editions;33 but our manuscript tradition derives from the Thrasyllan canon - and hence ultimately from Plato's own feather.34

Alas, the story is in almost all particulars fantastical and false.35 The earliest evidence for an edition of Plato's works seems to be the

following passage:36

... thus many are [Plato's] books: Antigonus of Carystus, in his work On Zeno, says that when they had recently been published anyone who wanted to read through37 them would hire them from those who owned them. (Diogenes Laertius, III 66 = 49.2)

Antigonus was presumably saying something about Zeno' s education and his reading habits. Hence the word 'recently [veraori]' should take its reference from the dates of Zeno rather than of Antigonus himself. And we may infer that the edition to which Antigonus makes passing reference was published in the last decades of the fourth century.

Scholars have further inferred that the text of Plato was rare and expensive. But in truth it is unwise to squeeze anecdotes like this - and no other text adds anything to our knowledge of the edition which Zeno

33 We learn something about these wild texts from the various papyrus fragments of the dialogues. Some 70 have so far been discovered; the oldest and most notable is the fragment of the Phaedo preserved as PPetrie 15.

34 The optimistic narrative underpins the editorial principles which Burnet used in his OCT (see page 5 [unnumbered] of the preface to volume I). The decision to use a few 'good' MSS and ignore the rest was stigmatised as a vergogna della filologia by Pasquali in 1934 (G. Pasquali, Storia della tradizione e critica del testo [Florence 1952 ], 253): the shame remains - for some first steps towards its removal see Boter.

35 Günther Jachmann gave a devastating analysis of the story in 1941, in a brilliant and witty monograph: 'Der Piatontext', now in his Textgeschichtlichen Studien, ed. C. Gnilka, Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 143 (Königstein 1982). See also Pasquali, 247-69; A. Carlini, Studia sulla tradizione antica e medievale del Fedone (Rome 1972).

36 On which see F. Solmsen, The Academic and the Alexandrian Editions of Plato's Works', Ulinois Classical Studies 6 (1981) 102-11.

37 ÔiavaYvœvai: so, e.g., Hicks in the Loeb and Long in the OCT, without comment; older editions printed Ôiayvœvai, which Cobet emended to avayvcovai. Dome reads Ôiayvœvai without comment.

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presumably read.38 In particular, there is no reason to think that Anti- gonus is referring to an Academy edition. He does not say that he is. Indeed, there is no direct evidence at all for an Academy edition.39 And the 'indirect' evidence is at best frail. (Thus it has been urged40 that the Hellenistic corpus Platonicum on the one hand contained certain spuria and on the other hand included the unfinished Critias and the half-fin- ished Laws; that the edition on which the corpus was based must have been prepared by men with access to Plato's own Nachlass and yet cannot have been prepared in or shortly after Plato's own life-time; and that hence the corpus reflects an edition managed by Plato's successors in the Middle Academy. The flimsiness of this argument is evident.)

I might add that even if there was an 'official' Academy edition of the dialogues, it is merely speculative to suppose that it would have been checked against Plato's autograph. Indeed, it is merely speculative to suppose that there ever was such a thing as Plato's autograph of the dialogues. We know next to nothing about Plato's mode of literary production. The sparse anecdotes suggest that he polished and revised his works.41 Further, we may imagine that he dictated - perhaps to several copyists at once - rather than wrote an autograph in the literal sense. It is an anachronistic fantasy to imagine that there must, once, have been a single definitive text from Plato's own fist.42

38 Scholars usually refer to Diogenes Laertius, IV 32, and Index Academicorum XIX 13-16, which state that Arcesilaus possessed a copy of Plato's books (cf. Dorne, 355). But these texts do not refer explicitly to an edition of Plato.

39 Some have cited Cicero, ad Att XIII xxia 1, as evidence that Hermodorus prepared an edition of Plato's works. But the text should be compared with the anecdote recorded in Index Academicorum VI 6-10; Suda, s.v. Xóvoiaiv (cf. Gaiser, 447).

40 See Pasquali, 261 (cf. 264 n.5).

41 See Dionysius of Halicarnassus, comp verb 25; Quintilian, Vili vi 64; Diogenes Laertius, III 37. But note Jachmann, 318 n.3: what the ancients construed as evidence of Plato's obsessive concern for the exact wording of his thoughts, Jachmann interprets as evidence for variant readings in the ancient texts of the works.

42 Worse than anachronistic, of course, since for few modern authors is there a single definitive autograph.

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Dörrie writes confidently of an Aristophanic Ausgabe of Plato's works O38).43 In fact, a single passage associates Aristophanes of Byzantium with Plato's text:

Some people, among them Aristophanes the grammarian, force the dialogues into trilogies ... (Diogenes Laertius, III 61 = 47)

The passage suggests pinacographical concerns. Certainly, it neither states nor implies that Aristophanes undertook the task of editing the dialogues.44

As for the edition prepared by Tyrannio and Atticus, that is a genial invention of Usener's. The sole text which he can cite is found in a fragment of Galen's commentary on the Timaeus. Galen remarks upon a Platonic passage and observes that he has been discussing the reading of ti Kam tcov 'Attikiocvcov òtvTiypátpcov ekôogiç (in Tim 13.3-7 Schröder). But Galen speaks of the copies of Atticus and not of an edition made by Atticus. Moreover, the identification of this Atticus with Cicero's corre- spondent is at best uncertain.

Finally, Thrasyllus. As with Aristophanes, so with Thrasyllus: the evidence indicates that he arranged the dialogues in a certain order (or rather, that he approved of a certain arrangement).46 There is no hint that Thrasyllus prepared an edition of the corpus. (Dörrie refers cautiously to the Thrasyllan Anordnung of the dialogues; but he appears to believe in a Thrasyllan Ausgabe: see 338.47) What we actually hear of Thrasyllus is

43 An editorial footnote indicates the existence of doubts - but gives a false reference to a doubter (334 n.l). The editors perhaps meant to cite R. Pfeiffer, A History of Classical Scholarship (Oxford 1968), 196-7.

44 So Pasquali, 264.

45 The MS in fact reads cxttikcûv, and 'Attikuxvcov is Daremberg's emendation; but the emendation seems certain: see Schroder's note in his edition ad be [CMG suppt 1 (Berlin 1934)]; Dziatzko, "AixiKiavá', Pauly-Wissowa II (1896) 2237-9.

46 Diogenes Laertius, III 56 = 48.1; cf Albinus, isag 4 = 50.1.

47 Dörrie dates the anonymous epigram, Anth Pal IX 188, to the early years of the Christian era, and he supposes that it was prefixed to an edition of Plato's works (354, 506) - hence, perhaps, indirect evidence for a Thrasyllan edition? But I can see no particular reason to think that the epigram was prefixed to an edition; and even if it was, the date of the epigram will only provide a terminus ante quern for the edition.

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this: he claimed that 'Plato himself published the dialogues in the manner of the tragic tetralogies' (Diogenes Laertius, III 56 = 48.1). Diogenes Laertius then reports the tetralogical ordering which Thrasyl- lus ascribed to Plato (III 56-61). It is a plausible conjecture that Thrasyllus made his remark in an introductory work on how to read Plato.48 Diogenes does not say that Thrasyllus himself arranged the dialogues into tetralogies; on the contrary, he implies that he did not - for the text states that Thrasyllus held the arrangement to have been Plato's own.49 And there is some further evidence for the earlier existence of the arrangement.50

In sum, nothing speaks for an authoritative ancient text of Plato, whether Academic or Aristophanic or Thrasyllan. Rather, we should suppose that there were several different editions in circulation, none of them official and none of them authoritative. There is evidence for this supposition. Consider the sigla or textual signs which were used to annotate texts of Plato:51 among them are the dotted diple, used to mark editorial emendations, and the obelus, used to mark editorial deletions. The existence of - and the need for - such signs is an indication that the text of Plato was not authoritatively established. Consider the refer- ence in the anonymous commentary to a second and spurious prologue to the Theaetetus (anon, in Theaet III 33): the existence of such a thing, known to us quite by chance, indicates the uncertain state of the Platonic

48 So Pasquali, 264-6, who compares Thrasyllus' similar remarks about the arrange- ment of Democritus' works (Diogenes Laertius, IX 45) which were presumably made in his book entitled Before Reading the Works of Democritus (IX 41).

49 A wild thought, repeated by Theo of Smyrna (see the Arabic text cited by Dome, 357 n.3) and firmly rejected by later ancient scholars (see anon, proleg 25 = 50.5c).

50 Viz (1) Albinus, isag 4 = 50.1, who implies that Dercy lidas accepted a tetralogical arrangement - but we have no sure knowledge of Dercylidas' dates. (2) Varro, ling hat VII iii 37 = 48.3, where the words 'Plato in IIII [= quarto]' introduce a reference to the Phaedo: scholars suppose that Varro means 'in the fourth work of the first tetralogy' (Dörrie, 345 n.l) - and indeed the Phaedo does occupy that position in Diogenes Laertius' listing. (This, I confess, strikes me as pretty dubious; and I suspect that Varro's text is corrupt.)

51 See Diogenes Laertius, III 65 = 49.2, and the two further texts in Baustein 49. On the sigla see Dörrie, 347-56, and esp Jachmann, 334-46; note that they were not devised by Aristophanes of Byzantium (Dörrie, 345; Jachmann, 334-5).

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Page 14: Jonathan Barnes, The Hellenistic Platos

128 Jonathan Barnes

text. Consider, above all, the texts displayed by the surviving Platonic papyri. The earliest papyri52 differ in numerous points from the text with which we are familiar. The differences exhibit no general principles: sometimes a papyrus preserves the right text against the whole of our manuscript tradition; sometimes a papyrus shows a false reading un- known to the later tradition; sometimes - and most remarkably - a papyrus will disagree with our main mediaeval manuscripts and agree with the reading of an 'inferior' manuscript.

These facts - which require a lengthier and more careful description than I have given here - should neither surprise nor depress. For we should not really have expected the optimistic narrative to turn out true; nor need we regret the fact that any editor of Plato must be endowed with acumen and insight. The facts are of considerable importance for the assessment of our own text of Plato; for they show (to put the point crudely) that most modern editors are unwarrantably conservative. The facts also have a bearing on our understanding of the Hellenistic attitude to Plato. For that attitude was in large part determined by the texts which the Hellenistic philosophers read; and where texts differ, the attitudes which they determine will also differ.53

Lovers of paradox will conclude that there was no such beast as the Hellenistic Plato. For in truth, there were several texts of Plato, several versions of Plato's thoughts, several Hellenistic Platos.

Balliol College Oxford OX1 3BJ

England

52 See esp the detailed examination in Jachmann, 227-92.

53 'But surely the textual differences were too trifling to account for any serious difference in interpretation': some textually trifling differences do matter - the most celebrated case in Platonic scholarship concerns an el for an ti : see Timaeus 27C5 (on which see J. Whittaker, Timaeus 27D5ff, Phoenix 23 [19691 181-5).

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