Abstract

When we encounter the following words: ‘A few moments ago, I think, you heard Plato saying that there is no specific name for the art which deals with the body’, it is easy to put these into a literary context. We may imagine some kind of fictional dialogue, in which out of two or more partners one reminds another of what a few minutes ago Plato had said to them about a particular subject. Whether Plato is still present or has left the room, we do not yet know, and we hope to get this information from the rest of the book. The book might be an historical novel by, say, Mary Renault. So much is clear, and with our knowledge of the Classics we are sure that the book is not by a Classical author