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Isocrates, the Chian intellectuals, and the political context of the Euthydemus*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

Slobodan Dušanić
Slobodan Dušanić
Affiliation:
University of Belgrade
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Extract

In a brief digression near the end of the Euthydemus (305 b ff.), Socrates describes one of his anonymous critics, who rejects philosophy in general but imagines himself to be both an accomplished thinker and a successful politikos. Clearly, the portrait is that of Isocrates. The similarity between Isocrates' real character and Plato's stylization is so pronounced that we are tempted to describe 305 b ff. as one of Plato's intentional anachronisms (the dramatic date of the dialogue is earlier than the death of Alcibiades, 275 b). The portrait includes several noteworthy points. First, 305 b-c refers to Socrates' opponent as a writer of forensic speeches. To judge from the tone of the entire passage, which is not markedly hostile to the anonymous person (cf. 306 c 6 ff.), that would be an unfair description of Isocrates if written after the publication of the Panegyricus c. 380 BC. Second, Plato defines the unnamed person as both a speechwriter and a practical politician (306 b: ή πολιτικὴ πρᾶξις ‘the statesman's business’). The latter part of the definition does not square with Isocrates' career as schoolmaster and political adviser or, later on, as the author of political pamphlets. Unless it is assumed that 305 b ff. aims at Isocrates' dealing with Realpolitik, he would not have deserved Socrates' criticism that he ‘partakes’ of two different things. In that case, the same reproof for being ‘the border-ground between philosopher and politician’ might have been addressed to Plato himself as a dialectician and, concerning his other activities, as the head of the Academy and the author of such political dialogues as the Gorgias.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 119 , November 1999 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1999

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References

1 In addition to the unnamed person's Isocratean traits dealt with in the present paper, note the psychological and stylistic details referred to by Hawtrey, R.S., Commentary on Plato's Euthydemus (Philadelphia 1981) 190 f.Google Scholar

2 The contrast between Isocrates’ image in the Euthydemus and the importance of his political speeches, especially the Panegyricus as the most developed and the first published, has already been noted. Several attempts to explain it away were unsatisfactory (see Eucken (n.9) 48 f.). Simply, the Euthydemus is best taken to have antedated the Panegyricus. Two conclusions may emerge from previous studies of the dialogue's chronology: stylometric evidence suggests a position in the later group of Plato's early writings; its doctrinal and diverse literary features betray its close affinity (which tends also to imply proximity in time) with the Charmides (Guthrie, W.K.C., A history of Greek philosophy, vol. IV: Plato the man and his dialogues: earlier period (Cambridge 1975) 266Google Scholar) and the Meno (U.v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Platon [II], Beilagen und Textkritik, Berlin 19623, 154; Hawtrey (n.l) 8 ff.).

3 The translation of the Euthydemus cited in the present paper is by W.R.M. Lamb (LCL).

4 The Academics strictly distinguished those who had ‘an active part in politics’ from the political advisers of the type of a Thales or an Anaxagoras (Hp. Ma. 281 b-d). Actually, these latter were not considered to have been politically engaged at all.

5 Hawtrey (n.1) 193 (cf. 25) argues persuasively for a fourth-century element in the portraits of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus but does not connect it with Chios itself. He is inclined to identify it with the Megarian School.

6 Dušanić, S., Aevum 66 (1992) 33 ff.Google Scholar, on the rivalry between Lysias and Isocrates concerning Iphicrates’ trials of 373 and 371, which inspired the author of the Phaedrus to confront the two orators.

7 Vitae X or. 4, 6-8 = Mor. 837 b-c: διαμαρτάνων δέ τής προαιρέσεως, τούτων μεν άπέστη σχολής δ’ ήγείτο, ώς τινές ϕασι, πρωτον έπὶ Xίου, μαθητάς έχων έννέα ότε καὶ ίδων τόν μισθόν άριθμούμενον εἰπε δακρύσας ώς έπένων έμαυτόν νῦν τούτοις πεπραμένον’ ωμίλει δέ τοίς βουλομένοις, χωρίσας πρῶτος τους έριστικους λόγους τῶν πολιτικῶν, περί ούς έσπούδασε. καί άρχάς δέ καί περί την Xίον κατέστησε καί τήν αύτήν τήι πατρίδι πολιτείαν.

8 Blass, F., Die attische Beredsamkeit, II (Leipzig 1892 2) 16 fGoogle Scholar. (with bibl.); Münscher, K., RE 9 (1916)Google Scholars.v. ‘Isokrates 2’ 2170 f.; Mathieu, G., the Budé Isocrate, I (Paris 1928 1), p. IIGoogle Scholar (with some reservations); Strauss, B.S., Athens after the Peloponnesian War. Class, faction and policy, 403-386 BC (Ithaca (New York) 1986) 129Google Scholar. Conon and Chios after Cnidus: Diod. 14.84, 3; Conon and Isocrates: Isoc. 9.51-7.

9 Apart from Pseudo-Plutarch and the Euthydemus, we have no evidence of eristic in Chios but, as often observed, it may have been transplanted from Thurii, another domicile of the two brothers and/or their followers. Its spiritual father in southern Italy may have been either an Eleatic or Protagoras, who, as is well known, was the Thurian legislator c. 444/3 BC. Socrates’ claim that Euthydemus and Dionysodorus are new in eristic (272 b) can be interpreted in a variety of ways, most plausibly perhaps as a reference to the Isocratean beginnings of their fourth-century correlates. In any case, Isocrates’ Against the Sophists (1-8 and 20, cf. Eucken, Ch., Isokrates. Seine Positionen in der Auseinandersetzung mit den zeitgenössischen Philosophen (Berlin & New York 1983) 18 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar), completed c. 390 BC, attests to his early interest in, and experience with, the activities of the eristics.

10 Hawtrey (n.1) 189 f.

11 Infra, text and notes 98 ff.

12 Eristic and demagogy: R. VI 498 e ff. The aggressiveness of the Chian brothers in the dispute and in other matters: Euthd. 295 b-c, 296 a. Their sea-affinities also betray a ‘democratic’ mentality; Socrates playfully refers to them as a maritime danger: 293 a (with Meridier's, L. comment ad loc. (the Budé Platon, tome V I (Paris 1949) 176Google Scholar n.1)). Even Socrates’ and Ctesippus’ oath ‘O Poseidon’ at 301 e and 303 a expresses the two Athenians’ ironic and temporary identification with the maritime profile of the Chian sophists. ‘O Poseidon’ is otherwise never encountered in Plato's dialogues; as is well known from the Timaeus-Critias and the Laws, Plato had no sympathy for the Poseidonic values of the popular religion.

13 On Basile, Shapiro, H.A., ZPE 63 (1986) 134–6Google Scholar; on the symbolic τόποι of Plato's proems, infra, n. 96. The wide conception of sophrosyne, which characterizes the discussion in the Charmides, makes that notion almost coincident with the ‘royal art’ of Euthd. 290 c ff. (Guthrie (n.2) 157). The important role of Critias in the Charmides, dependent on the principal theme of the dialogue, seems to have been criticized by Isocrates in the Helen 32 f. Though modern students of Isocrates have failed to consider that possibility, his anonymous opponents of the Thesean ideal of a democratic king are best identified with the Critias of the anti-oligarchical tradition (among other crimes, such tyrants ‘despoil the temples of the gods’, which recalls Areopagiticus 66). Critias and Alcibiades were probably contrasted to Theseus as early as Polycrates’ Accusation of Socrates (Chroust, A.-H., Socrates, man and myth. The Two Socratic Apologies of Xenophon (London 1957) 97Google Scholar).

14 Note 305 c, παρά πολλοῖς, παρά πᾶσιν; 305 d, παρά πᾶσιν.

15 Hawtrey (n.l) 26 ff.; Eucken (n.9) 45 ff.-both with refs.

16 It is not without interest that Isocrates does not name Theseus in the Panegyricus (56 ff.). Helen 5 (περὶ τάς πράξεις έν αἰς πολιτευόμεθα) discloses something of his opportunism.

17 Kienast, D., RE Suppl. XII (1973)Google Scholars.v. ‘Presbeia’ 590 ff.; Habicht, Ch., Hellenistic Athens and her Philosophers (Princeton (David Magie Lecture) 1988) 12Google Scholar f.

18 Cf. Taylor, A.E., A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford 1928) 25 fGoogle Scholar. (on the Timaeus-Critias); Dušanić, S.History and Politics in Plato's ‘Laws’ (in Serbian with an English summary) Belgrade 1990) 363 fGoogle Scholar. (on the Laws). In the final analysis, the explicit ‘ambassador’ elements in several letters of [Socrates] (II, IH, VI I, VII 3) go back to the ‘diplomatic’ frameworks of the fourth-century Socratic dialogues; if the authors of these latter dialogues other than Plato were better preserved, we should have been able to interpret Plato's corresponding indications with more certainty (see e.g., on the Meno, Morrison, J.S., CQ 35 (1941) 76 with n.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar). I hope to discuss these questions in a book referred to below, n. 113. For some ancient comments on Plato's fictional techniques, see n.53.

19 IG II2 34 = Syll 3 142 = M.N. Tod, GHIII 118 = Pouilloux, J., Choix d'inscriptions grecques (Paris 1960) 98–100 no. 26Google Scholar = St. V. II2 384. In English translation: Harding, P., From the End of the Peloponnesian War to the Battle of Ipsus (Cambridge 1985) 44–6 no. 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. IG II2 35 (it has not preserved the lines which interest us here) seems to be a somewhat later copy of no. 34, not just a duplicate; on the problem, Accame, S., La lega ateniese del secolo IV a. C. (Roma 1941) 9–13Google Scholar, and Cargill, J., The Second Athenian League: Empire or Free Alliance? (Berkeley 1981) 52Google Scholar.

20 Tod, GHI II, 51.

21 Anti-Spartan in the long term but also with regard to the current policy of Agesilaus in the east, which suddenly became hostile enough towards the Great King (Diod. 15.9,5; cf. my comments in: Roesch, P., ed., Colloques int. du CNRS ‘La Béotie antique’ (Paris 1985) 227–35Google Scholar). In that sense, lines 12 ‘the Spartans’ and 14-15 ‘to all Greece’ are little more than diplomatic formulae in a cautious text (cf. Seager, R., ‘The King's Peace and the Second Athenian Confederacy’, in: Lewis, D.M., Boardman, J., Hornblower, S., Ostwald, M., eds., CAH VI 2 (1994) 163 f.Google Scholar); what mattered for the Athenian radical politicians of the day was the good will of Artaxerxes II (on Cephalus’ medism of the 380s see my paper (p. 233 with n.64) just referred to). And, of course, Sparta could not have been popular among the Athenians, even the moderate ones, after Mantinea's dioecism. Their mood can be sensed from their favourable treatment of refugees sharing anti-Spartan attitudes, and from their policy in Chalcidice (Xen. HG. 5. 2, 15 ff. 34; cf. St.-V. II2 250).

22 Kroll, W., RE XI (1921)Google Scholar s.v. ‘Kephalos 3 (von Kollytos)’ 221 f. (= PA 8277). See PCG VII 519 f. no. 201 with comm. = Plu. Mor. 801 a (Plato, inc. fab.): βόσκει δυσώδη Kέϕαλον, έχθίστην νόσον.

23 Cf. Plato's verdict on Ismenias, a potentate resembling Cephalus in political aspects: Men. 90 a and Rep. 1. 336 a (the passages analyzed in my article cited above, n.21).

24 PA 311.

25 In Plato's hierarchy of political factors, the character of leading men comes before the quality of ‘the laws and the customs’ (Ep. VII 325 c, d).

26 According to the general opinion recorded by Diodorus (15.23, 4, on cleruchies) and mirrored in the Charter of the Second Confederacy, it was the Athenians’ expectations of material gain which compromised their attempts of the late 380s to restore the Maritime League.

27 PCG II 442 no. 219 = Ath. III p. 100 d. The comedy has been usually and justly thought to reflect a period of specially close relations between Chios and Athens after the Corinthian War (Antiphanes staged his first play about 385 BC). The years 384 and 377 (the Chians’ contribution to the formation of the Second Confederacy) are obvious candidates (Edmonds, J.M., The Fragments of Attic Comedy, II (Leiden 1959) 278Google Scholar f. no. 220, with nn.; Webster, T.B.L., Studies in Later Greek Comedy (Manchester 1959) 39 and 53Google Scholar); the former seems more likely for a variety of reasons, but the difference is not very material for our purpose. The first to see that Μητρόδωρος was Meineke, A., Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum, III (Berlin 1840) 129 fGoogle Scholar. (cf. also infra, n.41). In Webster's opinion (loc. cit., 39), the political accents of the Philometor probably resembled those of the Philothēbaios, written by the same poet.

28 I have not seen the stone but have been able, thanks to Professor Christian Habicht's kind assistance, to consult its squeeze which is preserved in the collection of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. The accepted reading of lines 42-3 is certain.

29 In Syll 3 142 (he actually read ′Απε[λ]/[λῆς] but the squeeze shows ′Απε[---] as printed in IG, GHI II, and St.-V. II). Kirchner's restoration of the name has been followed e.g. by P.M. Fraser and E. Matthews, in the first volume of the British Academy LGPN (s. ′Απε[λλῆς], Chios 5).

30 In the LGPN I (s. nn.), ′Απελλᾶς is cited with five attestations from Chios, ′Απελλῆς with fifteen.

31 Άπελλικῶν (three attestations in Chios according to the LGPN I) would leave little space ([c. 2 letters] ριτος) for the next name.

32 Aliter, Tod ad GHI II 118: ‘In line 43 all editors give κ]ριτος but a name such as ′Αδή]ριτος is also possible (I.G. XII (8). 171.24); other names ending in ήριτος,-άιρττος are listed in Bechtel, H.P. 195’.

33 Biography: D. L. V I, II and Did. In D. VI 44. Theocritus: Laqueur, R., RE V A (1934) 2025–7 (no.2)Google Scholar and Berve, H., Das Alexanderreich auf prosopographischer Grundlage, II: Prosopographie (München 1926) 176 f. no. 364Google Scholar.

34 Foucart, P., Étude sur Didymos d'après un papyrus de Berlin (Paris 1906) 126 f.Google Scholar; Laqueur (n.33) 2025.

35 But not frequent among the Chians: LGPN I s.v. registers only one Theocritus in Chios, our Theocritus (II).

36 It fits in the lacuna exactly. Besides, the choice is less wide than one would have thought: of all the names ending in -κριτος and having a length of nine letters (some fifteen examples in Domseiff, F. & Hansen, B., Rückläufiges Wörterbuch der griechischen Eigennamen (Berlin 1957) 290Google Scholar), only two (excluding Theocritus) are found in the anthroponymy of the island as collected in the LGPN (Διάκριτος and Ήρόκριτος, each with one attestation only).

37 Notably, as the father of a philosopher, he is likely to have been a learned man himself and thus a suitable candidate for an important diplomatic task. Let us note, à propos of the possibility that Bruon and [Theoc]ritus were relatives (cf. infra), that embassies have been known which consisted of two brothers or a father and a son (Kienast (n.17) 528). It hardly needs mentioning that Metrodorus (I)'s father, Theocritus (I) was much older than, and consequently not the same as, Theocritus (II).

38 Nestle, W., RE XV (1932)Google Scholar s.v. ‘Metrodoros 14’ 1475, wrote on the Democritean from Chios: ‘… Sohn des Redners und Isokratesschülers Theokritos…’, without citing the evidence. Nestle's description of the Democritean's father Theocritus (of whom nothing is actually known except his name and the fact of Metrodorus’ parentage) probably stemmed from the nineteenth-century conflation (endorsed by Susemihl, Fr., Philologus 60 (1901) 188–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar) of two Metrodori, the Democritean and Isocrates’ pupil (the latter has however rightly received a separate article in the RE 15 (1932) 1482Google Scholar (s.v. ‘Metrodoros 24’), by O. Schissel), into one person. From the Suda (s. Theokritos) we know of the latter Metrodorus ((II) in our numeration) that he was an Isokratikos and a teacher of Theocritus the rhetor, who had nothing Democritean about him; these facts strongly militate against the identification of the two Metrodori, cf. Berve (n.38) and F. Wehrli's comment on Hermippus’ fr. 78 (= Ath. I 21 c) in Die Schule des Aristoteles. Texte und Kommentar, Supplb. I: Hermippos der Kallimacheer (Basel & Stuttgart 1974) 33 and 89 fGoogle Scholar. Coincidences which impressed Susemihl and some others resulted from the Greek practice of repeating personal names within single families, or related families, or families entertaining friendly relations (the well-known type of homonymy, usually uniting grandfathers and grandsons).

39 Μητρόδωρος Θεοκρίτου Xῖος τά άδιαί ρετα καὶ τό κενόν.

40 Supra, n.40. As Schissel noted, Metrodorus (H) must have been both Isocrates’ pupil and Theocritus (II)'s teacher in Chios itself, as pupil in 393 and as teacher in the years immediately following.

41 Despite the unanimous opinion of the editors of the fragment, who since Meineke identify Μητρᾶς with the atomist.

42 Cf. Kienast (n.17) 540 (άκόλουθοι et sim.). Alternatively, Metrodorus (II) may have been the mover of the corresponding decree of the Chian assembly.

43 The collaboration continued, one may presume, the political, social and party (family) positions of some pro-Athenian Chians of the later fifth century. In the context of ‘historical’ themes to be dealt with infra (Section III), the two pro-Athenian Chians bearing the name of Ion should be pointed out: the famous man of letters (whose parent bore the eloquent name of Xuthus!) and the father of the politician killed by Pedaritus (Th. VIH 38, 3).

44 A Metrodorus (from Chios?) wrote an Ίωνικά at an unknown date (FGrHist 43F 3 = Plu. Mor. 694 a-b). F. Jacoby was inclined to ascribe it to the atomist (comm., p. 522); however, considering Isocrates’ historical interests, Metrodorus (II) seems a more likely guess.

45 The family tradition (cf. n.43) of Metrodorus (II)'s ′Αττικισμός may have contributed to his decision, of course. The anti-Macedonian attitudes of Theocritus (II) (Str. XIV 1, 35, cf. Foucart (n.34))-probably shared by his biographer Bruon (II)-were compatible, to say the least, with a pro-Athenian, radically democratic orientation of their ancestors and themselves.

46 Isocrates notes (XV 93, cf. Ps.-D. LII 14) that the first pupils he had in Athens remained his friends into his old age.

47 Cf. n.9 above. What is known of Theocritus (II)'s character and activities (Laqueur (n.33)) would accord with such an evolution of his teacher.

48 See Section IV.

49 SE 20, p.177 B 12 ff. and Rh. II, p.1401 A 26 ff.; cf. also PI. Cra. 386 d. Hawtrey (n.1) 13.

50 Hawtrey (n.1) 13 f.

51 Including their being όπλομάχοι (271 d, 273 c, e; cf. 290 b ff. and Xen. Mem. 3.1, 1 (based on Plato)).

52 Wilamowitz (n.2) 155 (who eventually accepted Dionysodorus’ historicity); Keulen, H., Untersuchungen zu Platons Euthydem (Wiesbaden 1971) 16 fGoogle Scholar.

53 Scholarly controversies persist on this point but, in my opinion, many fictional names are to be found in the corpus Platonicum, to serve the philosopher's purpose (maliciously labelled ψευδολογία by Isocrates (12 78; 246) and Athenaeus (V 215 d ff.); cf. FGrHist 115 [Theopompus] F 529 and Plato himself (Rep. 3 414 b ff.: ‘noble lie’)) of such devices as anachronisms, topographical ‘inexactitudes’, factographical ‘mistakes’. Plato seems to describe the dual structure of his own writings when he attributes to Socrates the ‘adapting’ (‘versification’) of ‘Aesop's fables and ‘The Prelude’ to Apollo’ (Phaedo 60 c ff., transl. H. Tredennick). The former will have symbolized what might be termed the ‘politico-allusive’ aspect of Plato's dialogue, the latter its dialectical essence (below, Section IV). It is significant that, in the opinions of Cebes and Socrates, the ‘Aesop's fables’ of the Phaedo had a special interest for Euenus the Parian (61 b, cf. 60 c ff.), believed to have invented ύποδήλωσις and related techniques (Phaedr. 267 a). The obvious inference that Socrates’ ‘Aesop’ in the Phaedo connotes fictional literature was made as early as Plutarch (Mor. 16 c).

54 Socrates describes Euthydemus and Dionysodorus as old men (271 b). They (or Euthydemus alone, if Dionysodorus existed as Plato's literary device only) probably were founder-colonists of Thurii (271 c, see also Taylor, A.E., Plato. The Man and his Work (London 1926 1) 91 n.1)Google Scholar.

55 Cf. 213 e: his (and Dionysodorus’) first visit to Athens (? in the spring of 412 or c. 393).

56 On the doctrinal level too, the Euthydemus of the dialogue may have been given certain features corresponding, anachronistically, with the fourth century (above, n.8).

57 Gifford, E.H., The Euthydemus of Plato (Oxford 1905) 62Google Scholar. Cf. Canto, M., L'intrigue philosophique. Essai sur l'Euthydème de Platon (Paris 1987) 289 f. n. 214Google Scholar.

58 Wilamowitz (n.2) 155 f.; Praechter, K., Philologus 87 (1932) 122 f.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 Hawtrey (n.1) 181; cf. Praechter (n.58) 122.

60 On which, Alty, J., JHS 102 (1982) 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar with nn. 42-4, 9 with n.46; Hornblower, S., A Commentary on Thucydides, II (Oxford 1996) 72 fGoogle Scholar.

61 541 d (of Ephesus).

62 Hdt. I 147 (′Απατούρια). See, in addition to J. Alty's able article (n.60), Rhodes, P.J., A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford 1971) 66 ff.Google Scholar, Hedrick, Ch. W., AJA 92 (1988) 185–210 (esp. 202-8)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and H. Knell et al., in: Eder, W., ed., Die athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Stuttgart 1995) 475–514, esp. 479 ffGoogle Scholar. 549 ff.

63 Menex. 240 a ff. See also, on Eretria, Laws 3 698 c-d and, especially, 693 a (cf. Hdt. VI 119,4 and Ps.-Plato's epigrams nos. 9-10 [in the numeration of E. Diehl, Anth. Lyr. Gr.] which though apocryphal were based, like the other Platonic epigrams, on Plato's dialogues as well as his lost biographies—some of whose elements deserve credence); the ‘Athens and Eretria’ connotes here, of course, Aristagoras’ ἄποικοι argument cited by Herodotus, 5. 97 (Alty [n.60] 4 n.20).

64 Menex. 245 b-e (‘the Greeks of the continent’ means essentially the Ionians [cf. And. 3.15: τάς άποικίας, Aspasia's compatriots).

65 What is said in the Critias of the southern boundary of the antediluvial Athenians’ territory (110 d: ‘at the Isthmus’) automatically recalls Plu. Thes. 25, 3 (έν Ίσθμῶι; Ίωνία). Cf. Hornblower (n.60) 68 f.

66 Piérart, M., Platon et la cité grecque. Théorie et réalité dans la Constitution des ‘Lois’ (Brussels 1973-1974) 320–3Google Scholar, who justly remarks (321 f. with n.46) that the ionicism attracted the attention of ancient grammarians.

67 Ath. Pol. 5, 2.

68 Burnet, Thus J., Greek Philosophy: Thales to Plato (London 1914 1) 169Google Scholar, cited by Guthrie (n.2) 155.

69 IG I3 84 (of 418/7 BC).

70 E.g. 245 b-d.

71 Aly, W., RE XVIII (1949)Google Scholars.v. ‘Patroioi theoi’ 2258.

72 Carlier, P., La royauté en Grèce avant Alexandre (Strasbourg 1984) 433 ffGoogle Scholar.

73 Cf. Rosivach, V.J., CQ 37 (1987) 302–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The name of the Atlantid king (of the third generation!) Autochthon (Crit. 114 c) expresses Plato's protest against the political misuse of the myth about the ‘earthborn Athenians’.

74 Hdt. 5 69, 1.

75 Various elements of the constitutional teaching in the Timaeus-Critias and the Laws suggest that conclusion: Lévêque, P. et Vidal-Naquet, P., Clisthene l'Athénien (Paris 1964) 97 f. 141–3Google Scholar; Dušanić (n.18) 322.

76 Hdt. I 143, 3.

77 Carlier (n.72) 433. Cf. Sakellariou, M.B., La migration grecque en Ionie (Athènes 1958) 186Google Scholar ff. and passim.

78 Ion ap. Plu. Thes. 20, 2 (Oinopion, son of Theseus and Ariadne); cf. Zenis ap. Ath. 13. 77, p. 601 f. (Minos gives Theseus his daughter Phaedra in marriage; this ‘doit être rapproché de la version qui faisait de Thésée et d'Ariane les parents d'Oinopion’ [Sakellariou (n.77) 188]). Both authors were Chians and writing about the island's history (Ion in the fifth, Zenis in the fourth [?] cent, BC); the former was also a pronounced Atticophile. They offer, obviously, ‘une histoire inventée’ (Sakellariou [n.77] 205). Jacoby (CQ 41 [1947] 6 f.) attributed it to Pherecydes; in any case, Ion was not alone in assigning to Oinopion a Thesean lineage (Plu. loc. cit.: ‘some say’; ‘among these is Ion of Chios’ [transl. B. Perrin, LCL]). On Oinopion in Pausanias (7. 4, 8) and a Chian inscription, Ch. Habicht, Class. Ant. 3 (1984) 44 f.

79 Chios as a member of the Neleid Dodecapolis: Marm. Par. 27; Paus. 7. 2; Ael. VH 8. 5; Suda s.v. ′Iωνία. Cf. supra, nn. 43-44.

80 Pausanias significantly closes his extract from Ion's Xίου Kτίσις (where the foundation of Chios was attributed to Theseus’ son Oinopion: supra, n. 78) with the following comment: ‘However, he (Ion) gives no reason why the Chians are classed with the Ionians’ (7.4, 10; transl. W.H.S. Jones, LCL).

81 On Theseus as a democrat (Cleisthenian [Jacoby (n.78) 6 and n.6; K.W. Arafat, OCD 3 1509] etc.) see e.g. Herter, H., RE Supplb. XIII (1973)Google Scholar s.v. ‘Theseus 1’ 1216 ff.

82 Athens’ exceptionally favourable treatment of Chios in the fifth century was largely a matter of tactics: Quinn, T.J., Athens and Samos, Lesbos and Chios: 478-404 BC (Manchester 1981) 38–49Google Scholar. Cf. Th. VI 85, 2.

83 Modern commentators on the Euthydemus usually mention a Chian lex sacra of the fourth century, Syll. 3 987, where Zeus Patroos figures as the god of the phratry of the Clytidae. The lex obviously derived from the aristocracy whose religious (and political?) allegiance was not Ionian in Plato's conception of Ionianism. Cf. Sakellariou (n.77) 201 ff.

84 As Hawtrey (n.) 183 glosses Socrates’ and Dionysodorus’ exchange of pieces of knowledge (and ignorance) of Apollo Patroos, ‘… as a native of Chios, and so an Ionian himself, Dionysodorus might have been expected to know all this’.

85 Euthd. 291 e, cf. 306 e.

86 Whether the text lost in the lacuna of lines 5 ff. of Syll. 3 142 contained some reference to the Chians’ status of Athens’ συγγενεῖς or άποικοι is hard to say. Inscriptions concerning Attic-Ionian diplomatic contacts in the fourth century (Dreher, M., Hegemon und Symmachoi. Untersuchungen zum Zweiten Athenischen Seebund [Berlin & New York 1995] 128–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Habicht, Ch., Athens from Alexander to Antony [Cambridge Mass. 1997] 69 with n.1Google Scholar) allow that possibility.

87 Supra, n.44. Metrodorus could probably write, in a conciliatory manner, about the Chians as Ionians and Theseus’ Oinopion's children at the same time (cf. n.80).

88 X 18 (cf. 23).

89 Poseidon too had his place in Chian foundation-legends, one which tended to assimilate Oinopion with him (Sakellariou [n.77] 186 [particularly text to n.4]).

90 Transl. L. Van Hook (LCL).

91 Scattered evidence suggests that ancient mythographers and historians (drawing mainly from the Nόστοι) believed in waves of Greek colonization of the Aegean and, especially, the West immediately following the fall of Troy. Chios may have been included in the complex of such stories of the Greek ‘expansion’, to judge e.g. from the κρήνη ′Eλένη cited by Stephanus of Byzantium's ‘ ′Eλένη.

92 Oinopion in the Trojan War: Alcid. Od. 20 (ed. Radermacher, Artium Scriptores, 145) (perhaps written at approximately the same time as the Euthydemus and the Helen). True, Oinopion does not occur in Homer but probably did in a poem of the Cycle, e.g. the ′Iλίου Πέρσις.-Leader of the colonists: Sakellariou (n.77) 187. Oinopion's descendants’ triumph over the Carians (and the Abantes) in Chios: Ion ap. Paus. 7.4, 9 (the name of the Greek king of the period, Hector, tended to date the event, according to some authors, to the generation of Oinopion's sons).

93 Cf. Perlman, S., Historia 6 (1957) 311 n. 36Google Scholar.

94 Hawtrey (n.l) 15 rightly observed: ‘… despite the extreme politeness with which Socrates treats Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, he is always firm with them… There is frivolity and good humour on the surface; below, all is in earnest’. Cf. 272 e (the intervention of Socrates’ sign).

95 On the Phaedo, above, n. 53.—Commenting upon the ‘conjunction of metaphysics and politics’ in the twin-dialogues, R. Stalley, ‘The Politics of the Timaeus’ (in: [Calvo-Martínez, T., ed.] Preliminary Papers for the IV Symposium Platonicum, Granada 1995Google Scholar) has justly stated that ‘one of the main purposes of the account of the universe in the Timaeus is to provide the metaphysical underpinning for Plato's political and ethical theory’—in the final analysis, for the Platonic description and history of Atlantis, with its fourth-century traits.

96 See Procl. In Rem publ. 16-19 Kroll (352 f.), on the symbolical role of πρόσωπα, καεροί, and τόποι (i.e. the elements constituting the most prominent part of what we have called the dialogues’ ‘Realpolitik layer’) in the προοίμια of the Platonic writings. Cf. id., In Alc. 103 a (18 f.), for the long-lasting debate concerning the respective rôles of ψυχαγωγία and ίστορία in the shaping of those three products of Plato's dramatic expression which, according to Proclus, ‘are dependent on the theme of the dialogues as a whole’. In my opinion, such elements blended historical facts of an edifying sort and the psychagogic fiction; their relationship with the purely philosophical parts cannot be fully understood if viewed as a simple contrast ‘between literary form and philosophic content’ (cf. Guthrie [n.2] 2 f.) rather than a pyramidal phenomenon recalling the two polities of the Laws.

97 Dušanić (n.18)381.

98 Cf. ibid. 365 (on the Clinias of the Laws). Xenophon (Mem. 13, 8 and 10) calls the young Clinias the son of Alcibiades (not Axiochus), which is probably a deliberate ‘mistake’, intended to underline Clinias’ Alcibiadean nature.

99 FGrHist 328 F 223.

100 Davies, J.K., Athenian Propertied Families, 600-300 BC (Oxford 1971) 338Google Scholar (no. 8886) and 336 (no. 8823).

101 Chabrias’ patriotism and talents: D. 20. 75 ff.; Diod. 15.29, 2; Plu. Phoc. 6, 2 etc. Chabrias as victim of the invidia vulgi: Corn. Nep. 12.1 3, 2; cf. D.L. 3. 24.

102 Above, nn. 12, 22 f., 85.

103 See my article (231) referred to above, n.21.

104 To say nothing of its basis in Plato's character.

105 Cf. Phd. 115 e (and Guthrie's comment [n.2] 244).

106 Cf. Rep. 6. 498 e ff.

107 E.g. 306 d (Isocrates’ ‘coming near to wisdom’).

108 Though the question is a notoriously difficult one, I follow those scholars who conclude from 301 a-c (Socrates’ famous statement concerning beauty and the beautiful) that Plato refers there, by no means accidentally, to his doctrine of Forms.

109 Most evident in the choice of the dialogue's principal theme, as realized by Proclus and his predecessors in their analyses of the Platonic prologues in general (above, n.96).

110 See Politicus 272d ff. for an attempt by Plato to explain that Realpolitik, despite its chaotic events, can be studied scientifically, too.

111 Above, n.2.

112 Dušanić (n.21) 229 n.24.

113 As argued in my book in preparation, entitled "The birth of the Academy. Plato's dialogues and Greek politics, 390-375 BC’. What follows concerning the dating and political interpretation of the Charmides, the Menexenus, the Symposium, and the Protagoras, summarizes the book's analysis.

114 Cf. Kahn, Ch. H., OSAPh 6 (1988) 75 ff. 98 f.Google Scholar