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‘I WILL INTERPRET’: THE EIGHTH LETTER AS A RESPONSE TO PLATO'S LITERARY METHOD AND POLITICAL THOUGHT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2020
Extract
This paper explores the political thought and literary devices contained in the pseudo-Platonic Eighth Letter, treating it as a later response to the political thought and literary style of Plato, particularly the exploration of the mixed constitution and the mechanisms for the restraint of monarchical power contained in the Laws. It examines the specific historical problems of this letter, and works through its supposed Sicilian context, its narrator's assessment of the situation, and the lengthy prosopopoeia of the dead Syracusan politician Dion, before concluding with a consideration of its contribution to our knowledge of Greek political thought after Plato.
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Footnotes
My interest in the Platonic Epistles developed while working as research assistant to Dominic Scott on The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter (see n. 1 below); I thank him for that opportunity and much helpful discussion on epistolographic matters. This article owes an immense debt to the scholarship of Michael Frede and Myles Burnyeat contained in that book. Parts of this article were presented to the University of Warwick Classics and Ancient History Work-in-Progress seminar in 2016; I am grateful for comments received on that occasion. I am also grateful to Paul Cartledge and Malcolm Schofield, and to the editors of and anonymous referees for Classical Quarterly, for their helpful comments and suggestions.
References
1 Michael Frede provides compelling arguments that all epistles associated with fourth-century b.c.e. philosophers are later, pseudonymous productions; see Burnyeat, M.F. and Frede, M., The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter, ed. Scott, D. (Oxford, 2015), 3–13Google Scholar.
2 Burnyeat and Frede (n. 1), 187 n. 43.
3 Burnyeat and Frede (n. 1), 135–7; here Burnyeat argues that the narrative structure of the Seventh Letter responds to the description of tragedy at Pl. Leg. 7.817b5, where the ‘truest tragedy’ is described as the representation of a fine life. Victoria Wohl also assesses the Platonic Epistles as a literary unit, drawing attention to several themes considered here, in ‘Plato avant la lettre’, Ramus 27 (1998), 60–93.
4 Morrow, G.R., Plato's Epistles: A Translation with Critical Essays and Notes (Indianapolis, 1962), 9Google Scholar. Translations of the Eighth Letter are adapted from Morrow.
5 This approach is perhaps more useful for the Seventh Letter, where the exposition of Platonic epistemology in its central digression is a tempting resource for philosophers, as John Cooper notes in his brief introduction to the letters: ‘If not by Plato, Letter VII must have been written about when it says it was’ (Cooper, J.M. and Hutchinson, D.S. [edd.], Plato: Complete Works [Indianapolis, 1997], 1635Google Scholar). See Schofield, M., ‘Plato and practical politics’, in Rowe, C.J. and Schofield, M. (edd.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (Cambridge, 2000), 293–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Brunt, P.A., ‘Plato's academy and politics’, in id., Studies in Greek History and Thought (Oxford, 1993), 282–342Google Scholar for more critical versions of these views, which Burnyeat (n. 1), 121–2 rejects for still placing the authorship of the letters too close to Plato.
6 The historical problems of the Eighth Letter, if it was written by Plato, are the focus of a series of articles and commentaries from the 1920s and 1930s, that aim to resolve these difficulties and fix its composition date: Souilhé, J., Platon Oeuvres Complètes. T. 13. Pt. 1 Lettres (Paris, 1926)Google Scholar, Morrow (n. 4), Harward, J., ‘The seventh and eighth Platonic epistles’, CQ 22 (1928), 143–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Post, L.A., ‘The seventh and eighth Platonic epistles’, CQ 24 (1930), 113–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Post, L.A., Thirteen Epistles of Plato (Oxford, 1925)Google Scholar, Post, L.A., ‘A supposed historical discrepancy in the Platonic epistles’, AJPh 45 (1924), 371–6Google Scholar, Hell, G., ‘Zur Datierung des siebenten und achten platonischen Briefes’, Hermes 67 (1932), 295–302Google Scholar. Ludwig Edelstein provided a thorough critical analysis, rejecting the Eighth Letter along with the Seventh (Plato's Seventh Letter [Leiden, 1966], 145–55), although Gerhard Aalders challenged his assessment in ‘The authenticity of the eighth Platonic epistle reconsidered’, Mnemosyne 22 (1969), 233–57. The letter has received little explicit scholarly attention since then, beyond occasional mentions in enquiries more focussed on the Seventh Letter; Luc Brisson expresses doubt (Platon: Lettres [Paris, 1987], 235–6), while Dietrich Kurz accepts the Seventh Letter: Kurz, D., Werke in acht Banden, Bd. 5: Phaidros, Parmenides, Briefe (Darmstadt, 1983)Google Scholar, 377 n. 65, 445 n. 137.
7 Edelstein (n. 6), 155 n. 70, Aalders (n. 6), 234.
8 See Morrow (n. 4), 3–16, Brisson (n. 6), 10–20, with table at 72; and Frede (n. 1), 15–25 for summaries of scholars’ acceptance and rejection of the letters’ authenticity.
9 Edelstein (n. 6), 145–55; Maddalena, A., Lettere (Bari, 1948), 347–50Google Scholar; Adam, R., ‘Über die platonischen Briefe’, AGPh 23 (1910), 29–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 32–4; Frede and Burnyeat (n. 1), along with Wilamowitz (Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, Platon [Berlin, 1919], 2.209–304Google Scholar), and Morrow (n. 4), 10–13. Norman Gulley briefly considers the Eighth Letter in his critical demolition of the letters’ claims to authenticity, in ‘The authenticity of the Platonic epistles’, in K. Von Fritz (ed.), Pseudepigrapha I (Vandœuvres-Genève, 1972), 103–43, at 120–2; Aalders's brusque response relies on much historical special pleading (in K. Von Fritz [ed.], Pseudepigrapha I [Vandœuvres-Genève, 1972], 131–43), with more detail in his own papers (see [n. 6] and Aalders, G., ‘Political thought and political programs in the Platonic epistles’, in Von Fritz, K. [ed.], Pseudepigrapha I [Vandœuvres-Genève, 1972], 145–75Google Scholar).
10 The letter's conformity to Hellenistic rhetorical models of the construction of a letter is noteworthy; see Reed, J.T., ‘The epistle’, in Porter, S.E. (ed.), Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period (330 b.c.–a.d. 400) (Leiden, 1997), 171–93Google Scholar.
11 Giorgio Pasquali considers the relationship between the Eighth Letter and the Laws (Pasquali, G., Le Lettere di Platone [Firenze, 1938], 8–9Google Scholar), arguing that the letter provides a terminus ante quem for Book 3 of the latter. I will argue below that the clear references to the Laws within the letter conflate quite separate political proposals from different sections of that work.
12 Gulley (n. 9), 120; Holger Thesleff, responding to Aalders, on the letter's language and historicity, suggests that its language provides grounds for suspicion, in Von Fritz, K. (ed.), Pseudepigrapha I (Vandœuvres-Genève, 1972), 180–2Google Scholar.
13 Isocrates’ Epistle 1, addressed to Dionysius, mentions Dionysius’ welcome to a visitor to Sicily (1.4), usually identified as Plato; both Edelstein (n. 6) and Gulley (n. 9) note the rivalry between the Academy and students of Isocrates, also played out in Speusippus’ Letter to Philip, itself identified, against the consensus, as spurious by Frede ([n. 1], 27–40). Carlos Franco notes the importance of Dionysius as an example for Isocrates, in ‘Isocrate e la Sicilia’, RFIC 121 (1993), 37–52. Georges Mathieu noted some shared themes within Isocrates’ Epistle 1 and the Seventh Letter, such as the reluctance to travel owing to old age, in Mathieu, G. and Brémond, É. (edd.), Isocrate: Discours, vol. 4 (Paris, 1962), 168, 96Google Scholar. The Isocratean epistles’ authenticity was challenged by Wilamowitz (in ‘Unechte Briefe’, Hermes 33 [1898], 492–8, at 494–6), but supported by J.S. Garnjobst, ‘The epistles of Isocrates: a historical and grammatical commentary’ (Diss., University of California Santa Barbara, 2006).
14 Aalders, G.J.D., Die Theorie der gemischten Verfassung im Altertum (Amsterdam, 1968), 50Google Scholar.
15 Frede (n. 1), 15–25 places Letter XII to Archytas within a network of forged letters authenticating fake Pythagorean texts.
16 Reed (n. 10), 179; letters are structured as ‘opening, body and closing’, rather than exhibiting speeches’ formal division into argumentative sections, as outlined by Quintilian.
17 Morrow (n. 4), 146, 152.
18 Aalders argues ([n. 9], 161–2) that the Menexenus advocates Panhellenism, but it reads more as an assertion of Athenian hegemony in the funeral speech tradition than as the Isocratean programme.
19 Although tradition has it that Dion's adult son predeceased him in suspicious circumstances by falling off a roof (Plut. Dion 55, incompatible with Ep. 7, 324a), there is also a tradition of a posthumous son, possibly an infant at the letter's dramatic date. Neither of these sons could conceivably fulfil the role envisaged in the letter; Morrow ([n. 4], 84–6) suggests that the tradition of the death of Dion's son arose from a hostile historical tradition; cf. Bluck, R.S., Plato's Seventh & Eighth Letters (Cambridge, 1947), 164–70Google Scholar.
20 Brisson (n. 6), 234–5. Our knowledge of Sicilian and Syracusan history of this period is complicated by later writers᾽, notably Plutarch's, use of the Platonic letters as a source. Morrow ([n. 4], 26–40) suggests that textual hints show the letters entering the historical tradition relatively early, thereby providing a source for the Sicilian historian Timaeus of Tauromenium (c.345–250 b.c.e.), but Frede doubts this, pointing to the clearer dependence on the letters by Plutarch and Nepos in their lives of Dion (Burnyeat and Frede [n. 1], 17–25). Edelstein ([n. 6], 62–9) finds a context for the Seventh Letter as an apology for Plato responding to early critics and to the more practical orientation of Greek political thought in the third century b.c.e.
21 Bluck (n. 19), 152–3, Aalders (n. 6), 236–7, linking this episode to other punishments of generals including those of Acragas.
22 Dušanić, S., ‘Plato's projects for a confederate Sicily and the constitutional patterns in the third book of the Laws’, Aevum 84 (2010), 61–8Google Scholar.
23 Michel Foucault uses this passage to argue that Plato himself acted as a parrhesiast in relation to the Sicilians, in The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1982–1983, edd. F. Ewald and A. Fontana, transl. G. Burchell (Basingstoke, 2010), 275–6; cf. Pl. Lach. 189a1.
24 So Bluck (n. 19), 150 on Ep. 7, 334c–d, Brisson (n. 6), 247 n. 15 (although he argues against explicit allusion to the Seventh Letter here); Harward, J., The Platonic Epistles, Translated with Introduction and Notes (Cambridge, 1932), 223Google Scholar n. 11 argues, drawing on Plut. Dion 19, that it refers directly to advice Plato gave on his first visit to Sicily. Edelstein (n. 6), 145–6 suggests that the advice elaborates that in the Seventh Letter.
25 See below.
26 Ancient stories: παλαιοὶ λόγοι, Pl. Leg. 1.677a1; παλαιὸς λόγος, 4.715e8, 6.757a5; παλαιὸς μῦθος, 4.719c1; παλαιὰν παροιμίαν, Pl. Resp. 1.329a3–4.
27 Given the other links between the texts, and the lack of details absent from the Laws, it is likely that this is drawn from the Laws Book 3 account of Sparta, but other accounts of Spartan history may have been available to the author: see n. 29 below.
28 Following Malcolm Schofield's model of the Laws as containing two separate projects, from both of which the Eighth Letter draws, a survey of constitutional thinking seen in Book 3 and the description of Magnesia's constitution: see Schofield, M., ‘The Laws’ two projects’, in Bobonich, C. (ed.), Plato's Laws: A Critical Guide (Cambridge, 2010), 12–28Google Scholar.
29 Morrow (n. 4), 87–8. Plato's sources for this mythistorical account of early Spartan history are obscure, although it shares some details with Isocrates’ Archidamus 22–3; Morrow, G.R., Plato's Cretan City: A Historical Interpretation of the Laws (Princeton, 1960), 66Google Scholar has suggested the historian Hellanicus as a historical source; Ephorus may also have treated this. But Euripides’ Cresphontes provides all the elements required for both the Laws and the Eighth Letter.
30 See Burnyeat and Frede (n. 1), 136–8, 187–90 on the un-Platonic theology of the Seventh Letter.
31 Bluck (n. 19), 149–50, Morrow (n. 4), 145–55. Pointing to cyclical models of change may be particularly apt in a Sicilian context, given the Sicilian heritage of Empedocles and his doctrine of cosmic cycles (Empedocles DK 31 B17, Graham, D.W., ‘The topology and dynamics of Empedocles’ cycle’, in Pierris, A.L. [ed.], The Empedoclean Κόσμος: Structure, Process and the Question of Cyclicity [Patras, 2005], 225–44Google Scholar; cf. Hdt. 1.207.2), in which the cosmos unifies under Love and diverges under Strife. The cycle of inundations described in the Laws and the Timaeus-Critias offers one way to reset a linear process of decline through different forms of constitution, such as that presented in Republic Books 8–9; the advent of the philosopher king may represent another; again, the author here may simply reflect Plato's influences.
32 Especially Polybius’ detailed account of the original development of monarchy at 6.5.10–7.4; Hahm, D.E., ‘Kings and constitutions: Hellenistic theories’, in Rowe, C.J. and Schofield, M. (edd.), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (Cambridge, 2000), 457–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 466–71.
33 Brisson (n. 6), 249 n. 28 notes that the same metaphor occurs at Pl. Leg. 7.793a, spoken by Cleinias, and Prt. 338a, spoken by Hippias, in both of which the sense of cutting a middle path is clearer.
34 Cf. Pl. Leg. 3.691c2, an allusion to Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, where the chorus advises living in moderation (Soph. OC 1211–14), just before the young oligarch/tyrannical figure Polyneices enters.
35 On Spartan kingship, see Arist. Pol. 1271a18–26, 3.14, 1285a3–10; Xen. Lac. 13, 15; Hdt. 6.56–9; Cartledge, P., Spartan Reflections (London, 2001), 55–7Google Scholar.
36 The role of kings within the tragic polis is explored by Easterling, P.E., ‘Anachronism in Greek tragedy’, JHS 105 (1985), 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Burian, P., ‘Suppliant and saviour. Oedipus at Colonus’, Phoenix 28 (1974), 408–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Burian, P., ‘Pelasgus and politics in Aeschylus’ Danaid trilogy’, WS 8 (1974), 5–14Google Scholar.
37 This tendency can be seen in different readings of Laws Book 3, including Weil, R., L’‘Archéologie’ de Platon (Paris, 1959)Google Scholar, Farrar, C., ‘Putting history in its place: Plato, Thucydides and the Athenian politeia’, in Harte, V. and Lane, M.S. (edd.), Politeia in Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge, 2013), 32–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Morrow (n. 29), 40–92.
38 Laws Book 3 contains several references to the mythical past explored by tragedy, including tragic responses to the Trojan War (Pl. Leg. 3.682d–e, Aesch. Oresteia); Messene and Argos (3.692a–693a, Eur. Cresphontes); Theseus as a father (3.687e, Eur. Hipp.) and to Soph. OC (see n. 34 above). In the Seventh Letter, Burnyeat suggests that a parallel is drawn between Plato and Philoctetes (Pl. Ep. 7, 347a2, Soph. Phil. 901; Burnyeat [n. 1], 175 n. 100).
39 Morrow (n. 4), 150.
40 Here the paucity of surviving literary sources for Greek political thought after Aristotle and before Polybius makes it difficult to map the letter's ideas to those of other theorists of the period.
41 Aalders (n. 9), 166.
42 On the significance and staging of Darius’ return from beneath the earth in the Persae, see Garvie, A.F., Aeschylus: Persae (Oxford, 2009), 274–5Google Scholar, Muntz, C.E., ‘The invocation of Darius in Aeschylus’ Persae’, CJ 106 (2011), 257–71Google Scholar, Bakola, E., ‘Interiority, the “deep Earth” and the spatial symbolism of Darius’ apparition in the Persians of Aeschylus’, CCJ 60 (2014), 1–36Google Scholar, Saïd, S., ‘Tragedy and reversal: the example of the Persians’, in Lloyd, M. (ed.), Aeschylus (Oxford, 2007), 71–92Google Scholar, at 75–6, and Michelini, A.N., Tradition and Dramatic Form in the Persians of Aeschylus (Leiden, 1982), 143–7Google Scholar.
43 Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus: The Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy (Oxford, 1977), 114–15Google Scholar, Garvie (n. 42), 73–80, 292–3; Belloni, L., I Persiani (Milano, 1994), xxiii–xxviGoogle Scholar; Alexanderson, B., ‘Darius in the Persians’, Eranos 65 (1967), 1–11Google Scholar, Harrison, T., The Emptiness of Asia: Aeschylus’ Persians and the History of the Fifth Century (London, 2000), 85–8Google Scholar.
44 Christ, M.R., ‘Herodotean kings and historical inquiry’, ClAnt 13 (1994), 167–202Google Scholar. The Second Letter also connects wisdom and power (φρόνησίς τε καὶ δύναμις μεγάλη, Ep. 2, 310e5).
45 Dominic Scott has argued that the knowledge of the disincarnate soul is specifically that of the philosopher, in ‘Platonic anamnesis revisited’, CQ 37 (1987), 346–66.
46 Baldick, C., Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, s.v. prosopopoeia.
47 Ogden, D., Greek and Roman Necromancy (Princeton, 2001), 227Google Scholar suggests that ghosts might emit batlike squeaks, as well as speech, as the ghosts of Penelope's suitors do (Hom. Od. 24.5–9). Ogden also argues ([this note], xvii–xviii) that the dead and the living need to be brought closer together for successful communication to occur.
48 It might be over-interpretation (or a dubious application of etymological argument) to claim that the undertones of Hermes contained within this verb further suggest a transfer between worlds. But associations with the ghostly and otherworldly feature in later accounts of Dion's life, such as Plutarch's report of the appearance of a ghost shortly before the mysterious death of Dion's adult son (Plut. Dion 55). In the language of Spartan-leaning Greek political thought, as understood by both Xenophon and Plutarch, ἔμπνους suggests both inspiration and an erotic connection: Xen. Symp. 4.15, Plut. Cleomenes 3.2; see Cartledge (n. 35), 208 n. 18. ἔμπνους is linked to the Spartan terminology for erastēs/erōmenos relationships, so for the narrator of the letter to claim inspiration from Dion may suggest a specific relationship between them.
49 E.g. Demetr. Eloc. 121.
50 Quandt, K., ‘Socratic consolation: rhetoric and philosophy in Plato's Crito’, Philosophy & Rhetoric 15 (1982), 238–56Google Scholar, at 247–8.
51 Lesley Brown notes the Laws’ ‘final minatory flourish’, in ‘Did Socrates agree to obey the laws of Athens?’, in L. Judson and V. Karasmanis (edd.), Remembering Socrates: Philosophical Essays (Oxford, 2006), 72–87, at 77.
52 Adam (n. 9), 33–4.
53 The authenticity of the Menexenus has itself been disputed, with the setting and framing often cited as problems: see Collins, S.D. and Stauffer, D., ‘The challenge of Plato's Menexenus’, Review of Politics 61 (1999), 85–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Salkever, S.G., ‘Socrates’ Aspasian oration: the play of philosophy and politics in Plato's Menexenus’, American Political Science Review 87 (1993), 133–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Monoson, S.S., ‘Remembering Pericles: the political and theoretical import of Plato's Menexenus’, Political Theory 26 (1998), 489–513CrossRefGoogle Scholar. However, Malcolm Schofield suggests that the tradition of Aspasia as a character in Socratic dialogue and the speech's playful inventiveness make Platonic authorship more probable, in id. (ed.), Plato: Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras, transl. T. Griffith (Cambridge, 2010), xix. Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Nicole Loraux described the dialogue as ‘un dialogue de fantômes sur le discours aux morts’, in N. Loraux, L'Invention d'Athènes: Histoire de l'oraison funèbre dans la ‘cité classique’ (Paris, 1981), 471 n. 308; see also Pappas, N. and Zelcer, M., Politics and Philosophy in Plato's Menexenus (London, 2014), 25–7Google Scholar.
54 Lausberg, H., Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study (Leiden, 1998), 369–71Google Scholar, Malherbe, A.J., Ancient Epistolary Theorists (Atlanta, 1988), 6–7Google Scholar; cf. Foucault (n. 23), 276–7.
55 Aeschylus is an appropriate author to introduce in this respect, because of his established links with Sicilian tyranny, as a visitor to Sicily who staged tragedies there (including the Persae, according to the Vita Aeschyli 18 = TrGF III Test. A 1.68–9) and died on the island: see Herington, C.J., ‘Aeschylus in Sicily’, JHS 87 (1967), 74–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Stewart, E., Greek Tragedy on the Move: The Birth of a Panhellenic Art Form c.500–300 b.c. (Oxford, 2017), 109–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Lamari, A.A., ‘Aeschylus and the beginning of tragic reperformances’, Trends in Classics 7 (2015), 189–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 202–3. Both Stewart and Lamari cite scholia giving Eratosthenes as an authority for the performance of Persae in Sicily (I thank Patrick Finglass for these references). The trilogy that included Persae contained Sicilian references, seen in fr. 25a from Glaucus: see Sommerstein, A.H., ‘The Persian war tetralogy of Aeschylus’, in Rosenbloom, D. and Davidson, J.M. (edd.), Greek Drama IV: Texts, Contexts, Performance (Oxford, 2012), 95–107Google Scholar, at 99–101, and Stewart (this note), 112–14. Aspects of the play may have suited Sicilian tyrants. Lamari, A.A., Reperforming Greek Tragedy: Theater, Politics, and Cultural Mobility in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries b.c. (Berlin and New York, 2017), 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar suggests that Hieron was keen to connect the Greek victory over the Persians to the Sicilian Greeks’ victory over the Carthaginians at Himera; cf. Bosher, K., ‘Hieron's Aeschylus’, in ead. (ed.), Theater Outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy (Cambridge, 2012), 97–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 108–11.
56 The conflation of paternal and kingly authority in the Persae and its impact on the depiction of Darius and Xerxes are explored in Griffith, M., ‘The king and eye: the role of the father in Greek tragedy’, PCPhS 44 (1998), 20–84Google Scholar, at 49–65.
57 Earlier commentators have been reluctant to explore the implications of the dead politician speaking; Pasquali ([n. 11], 11, 13) notes Dion's status as speaking ‘dal sepolcro’ and ‘dalla tomba’, while Wohl notes that Dion is brought back from the grave ([n. 3], 65).
58 Most commentators are content to explain that Dion's assassins are acting in revenge for breaches of guest-friendship, e.g. Brisson (n. 6), 249 n. 49, Bluck (n. 19), 158–9; Burnyeat notes the tragic echoes ([n. 1], 136 n. 6).
59 Presumably the Hipparinus who was the son of Dionysius I; the disputed identification of the Hipparinus of Ep. 7 and the possibility that he was the son of Dion have vexed commentators (e.g. Bluck [n. 19], 171–3).
60 Wohl (n. 3), 82–3.
61 Advice from dead parents to their children also features in epic: Odysseus’ encounter with his mother Anticleia, who tells him of the situation in his palace (Hom. Od. 11.84–9, 11.150–224); Virgil in Aeneid Book 6 expands the device, drawing on Platonic eschatological myth (679–892).
62 Burnyeat and Frede (n. 1), 143–5.
63 The use of ‘letters’ here provides an intriguing prolepsis to the communication between Plato/Dion and the Syracusans. The contrast between youth and age is one of many made in the Persae; see Michelini (n. 42), 76–98. Cf. further contrasts between youth and age at Aesch. Cho. 171, Eum. 721, 788, 808.
64 Similar, although often more complex and nuanced, classificatory structures appear frequently in Plato's works: see Grg. 477c, Euthyd. 279a–b and Leg. 1.631b–d. Links between them and the Eighth Letter are noted by Bluck ([n. 19], 154), Pasquali ([n. 11], 8–9) and Edelstein ([n. 6], 150–1). The ranking of goods into three categories also suggests the three levels of the secret doctrine of Ep. 2.312e1–313a6.
65 There is also the boldness of the degenerate democratic Athenians (Pl. Leg. 3.701b1), demonstrated by their lack of respect for parental authority (701b6–7).
66 Cf. εἰ ἀληθὴς ἡ βάσανος, Ep. 2, 313d1–2. The idea of the interlocutor as touchstone features in the Gorgias at 486d7, 487e3.
67 See Dušanić (n. 22).
68 See n. 38 above.
69 Garvie (n. 42), 316–17, Goldhill, S., ‘Battle narrative and politics in Aeschylus’ Persae’, JHS 108 (1988), 189–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 191–2. Again, the insistence on scrutiny seems like a late development. For earlier Greek thinkers such as Herodotus, it was the religious role of a king in mediating with the gods which differentiated him from a tyrant; this is particularly clear in his account of the genealogy and duties of the Spartan kings (Hdt. 6.51–9) and the Samian tyrants (3.39–53, 3.142–9, especially the story of Polycrates’ friendship with Amasis).
70 Bosher (n. 55) explores the evidence for the Sicilian re-performance of Aeschylus’ Persae, and the appeal of its themes of good rule to Hieron. Sara Monoson also suggests some interconnections between Dionysius I of Syracuse, Athenian tragedy and Plato's Republic 8, in ‘Dionysius I and Sicilian theatrical traditions in Plato's Republic: representing continuities between democracy and tyranny’, in K. Bosher (ed.), Theater Outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy (Cambridge, 2012), 156–72.
71 Further instances of scrutiny: Pl. Leg. 6.757b5, 6.761e5, 9.875b3.
72 Although Xenophon distinguishes clearly between tyranny and kingship in the case of Hieron, his imagined version of the Sicilian tyrant, the two types of rule have a much more ambiguous interrelationship in the case of his Cyrus, whose assumption of kingship (Xen. Cyr. 7.5.35) results in institutions and court practices tinged with despotism. Vivienne Gray suggests that Hiero's transition to kingship follows the example of Leg. 4.710d (Gray, V.J., Xenophon on Government [Cambridge, 2007], 30–1Google Scholar), but this analysis fails to acknowledge that the kosmios turannos does not continue to rule after the transitional period. However, Gray helpfully notes Xenophon's use of both Dionysius I and Dionysius II as examples (Gray [this note], 35 n. 12).
73 Both forms of language are used to describe Evagoras’ actions, but in discussing the virtuous rule of his son Nicocles, Isocrates makes careful use of kingship vocabulary rather than the language of tyranny.
74 The Statesman's Golden Age myth has its own extensive literature: Dmitri El Murr notes its resonances with the Hesiodic Golden Age, in ‘Hesiod, Plato and the Golden Age: Hesiodic motifs in the myth of the Politicus’, in G.R. Boys-Stones and J. Haubold (edd.), Plato and Hesiod (Oxford, 2010), 276–97, while Charles Kahn explores its wider significance within the dialogue, in ‘The myth of the Statesman’, in C. Partenie (ed.), Plato's Myths (Cambridge, 2009), 148–66.
75 See Schofield (n. 28).
76 Polybius’ exposition of theory 6.3–11, with Rome as an example 6.11–18, and comparison of constitutions 6.43–59; see Hahm (n. 32), 464–76, Walbank, F.W., Polybius (Berkeley, 1972), 130–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
77 Pl. Leg. 6.752d–754d; Bluck (n. 19), 156–8.
78 Morrow (n. 4), 183–4.
79 Sanders, L.J., ‘Nationalistic recommendations and policies in the seventh and eighth Platonic epistles’, AHB 8 (1994), 76–85Google Scholar also draws historical conclusions by accepting the Eighth Letter's authenticity.
80 Edelstein (n. 6), 146–7.
81 See n. 13 above.