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Four Notes on Plato's Symposium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. S. Morrison
J. S. Morrison
Affiliation:
Churchill College, Cambridge
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Extract

I Have argued elsewhere, and still believe, that the Phaedo was written before Plato's first journey to Italy, when the strong Pythagorean influences displayed in that dialogue were reaching him through the Pythagorean centres on the Greek mainland, in particular Phleius and Thebes; and that in the Republic and Phaedrus it is possible to trace equally strong Pythagorean influence but different in detail, because Plato had now come into contact with the Pythagoreans who still remained in Italy, particularly Archytas. The most remarkable of these influences from whatever source was the doctrine of the immortality and transmigration of the soul, which we know to have been held by the earliest Pythagorean society, and the account of the soul's experience in the world below.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , May 1964 , pp. 42 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1964

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References

page 42 note 1 C.Q. N.S. viii (1958), 210 ff.Google Scholar

page 42 note 2 Ibid. vi (1956), 135–56.

page 43 note 1 e.g. Bury's, edition, Introd. pp. lxvi ff.:Google Scholar‘circ. 385–3’.Google Scholar

page 43 note 2 C.R. lxiv (1950), 43 ff.Google Scholar

page 43 note 3 Cherniss, , C.R. N.S. iii (1953), 131.Google Scholar

page 44 note 1 C.R. N.S. ii (1952), 137 ff.Google Scholar

page 45 note 1 See Phoenix xv (1961), 4.Google Scholar

page 45 note 2 Phronesis iii (1958), 31 ff.Google Scholar

page 45 note 3 Hdt. 9. 35. 2.

page 45 note 4 Thuc. 5. 32. 4.

page 47 note 1 I see no reason why the phrase which all the manuscripts have, should be rejected as it is by all the editors. The best way to slice an egg, after it has been hard boiled and shelled, is with a hair or something like a wire (cf. the modern practice of slicing cheese with a piece of wire). With a hair you could cut a large number of eggs in half very quickly. The point of the comparison of the same process in Plut. Amat. 24 p. 770 b is that are not a thing as insubstantial as a hair can sever them. This is no proverb, but the comparison of a well-known process.

page 49 note 1 The text is that of Robin in the Budd edition, which seems the best.

page 53 note 1 Hamilton's translation makes spiritual and physical creativity alternatives: which is not in the Greek.

page 53 note 2 Creativity of the spirit does not require physical bachelordom. Diotima earlier said that there are people who are creative in the spirit even more than in body. As Bury says ‘there seems little point in emphasizing the celibacy of the youth’. The divinity of the sophos is a commonplace, and it is sophoi who are ‘creative after the spirit’.