The Dramatic Date of Plato's Republic

***UPDATED 17 NOVEMBER 2022*** Added: Parmenides. No change to Sections I & II; Considerable updates to Section III. All dialogues (esp. Protagoras) reworked, reworded -- footnotes added, expanded blah blah blah. Delete all previous versions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This three part paper provides a relatively concise overview of my life's work on Plato's dialogues, and why I opine the internal (dramatic) dates of his Socratic Dialogues prove critically important. I stand against the scholarly consensus in that his dialogues have accurate, precise, and recoverable settings. NOTE: it assumes familiarity with The Athenian Year Primer. I will update this paper. The work stands in progress, please do not cite without permission.

2020

When does the Republic take place? This paper serves as a follow-up to my paper The Date of Bendis' Entry Into Attica and argues 429 BCE is indeed the date the conversation Plato depicts unfolds. It's a truncated version of much larger paper in progress.

Plato's Phaedo. Selected Papers from the Eleventh Symposium Platonicum (edited by Gabrielle Cornelli, Thomas Robinson, and Francisco Bravo, Sankt Augustine: Academia Verlag, 2018

In this paper, I examine some of the historical references in the famous “autobiographical” passage in the Phaedo (96a-99d), in which Socrates’ describes his enthusiasm for natural philosophy when he was young. Although much ink has been spilled about the passage, not enough attention has been given to the time frame that may be covered by the term neos or “young” in the expression “when I was young” (neos ôn, 96a6). Depending on the timeframe neos may be thought to cover — and there are at least two different age ranges — scholars’ may have incorrectly identified some of the historical figures (e.g., Diogenes of Apollonia) Socrates appears to be alluding to. Moreover, clarifying the meaning of neos may also contribute to the dating of the work and periods of activity of Anaxagoras. Finally, I argue that the evidence suggests that Socrates may never have lost interest in natural philosophy. In sum, there is much more that we can glean from this passage than generally assumed. This paper, which was condensed for this talk and contribution, is part of a much longer project on the “historical” Socrates. These are the works cited in the paper, the published version of which has an integrated bibliography at the end of the volume. John Burnet, Plato: Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, ed. with notes, Oxford: Clarendon Paperbacks, 1924/1977. Danial Graham, “Socrates on Samos,” Classical Quarterly 58 (2008): 308–13. R. Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955. Pierre Hadot, “The Figure of Socrates,” in Philosophy as a Way of Life,” edited and with an Introduction by Arnold I. Davidson, London: Blackwell Publishing, 1995/2015. Thomas Hubbard, “Peer Homosexuality,” in A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities, ed. Thomas K. Hubbard, London: Wiley Blackwell, 128-49. Charles Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophic Use of a Literary Form, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Andrew Lear, “Ancient Pederasty: An Introduction,” in A Companion to Greek and Roman Sexualities, ed. Thomas K. Hubbard, London: Wiley Blackwell, 2014, 102-27. Andrew Lear, “Was pederasty problematized”? in Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World, ed. Mark Masterson, Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and James Robson, London: Routledge, 2015, 115-36. Gerard Naddaf, The Greek Concept of Nature, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Gerard Naddaf, “The young ‘historical’ Socrates in the Apology and Symposium,” in Selected Papers from the Tenth Symposium Platonicum: The Symposium, ed. Mauro Tulli and Gabriele Cornelli, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2015, 448-53. Christopher Rowe, Plato. Phaedo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. David Sedley, Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007.

Ágora. Estudos Clássicos em Debate, 2021

This paper deals with the problem of determining Phaedrus’ age in the eponymous dialogue. The vocatives ὦ νεανία and ὦ παῖ, in Pl. Phdr. 257c8 and 267c6, could suggest that Plato depicts him as a teenager. However, most scholars believe that Phaedrus is an adult and that the vocatives point at his passive and childish character. I will first summarize the evidence given for supporting the latter thesis. Then, I offer complementary evidence, showing that those vocatives mockingly compare his passiveness with that of a young beloved in a homoerotic context.

There is already a long history of discussion concerning the dating of the Phaedrus. The dialogue has been referred to the early (Immisch, Natorp, Pohlenz), middle (Lutoslawski -Raeder) and late period of Plato's work (Regenbogen). Scholars (Wilamowitz, Wishart and Leach) 1 have repeatedly noted the stylistic and lexical variety of the Phaedrus that was proved by the stylometrists' researches. At the II Symposium Platonicum, dedicated to the Phaedrus, Robinson asserted in his contribution that the dialogue 'was composed somewhere in between the time Plato completed the Timaeus and started work on the Parmenides'; Robinson argued that in the Phaedrus 'Plato still adhered to many of his earlier (Republic/Timaeus) views in the domain of epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical psychology but was now moving towards a revised version of them not immediately compatible with the original version'. 2 Bostock in his monograph Plato's Theaetetus also mentioned the ideological diversity of the Phaedrus, whose first part returns to still earlier themes, notably the theory of recollection, while its second part is very much more forwardlooking (conceptions of collection and division, detailed investigation of the soul and a science of rhetoric). This observation led him to the assumption that 'the Phaedrus was composed shortly after the Republic, the second half was not added until rather later'. 3 Considering the reasons to associate the Phaedrus with the middle dialogues on the one hand and 1

Phoenix 68 (2014), 235-46

The chronology of the years 323-311 has long been the subject of heated scholarly debate. 1 Traditionally scholars have supported either the "High" chronology of Julius Beloch, 2 which dates the death of Perdikkas to 321, the Battle of Gabiene to winter 317/6, and the Battle of Gaza to spring 312, or the "Low" chronology of Eugenio Manni, which down-dates these events to 320, winter 316/5, and autumn 312. 3 Recently, however, both Panico Stylianou and Tom Boiy have argued for a "Mixed" chronology which follows the "Low" chronology for the events of 323-320 and the "High" chronology for 319-311, excluding the Battle of Gaza in autumn 312. 4 This "Mixed" chronology has started to find favour, 5 but as both Stylianou's and Boiy's chronologies differ slightly regarding the Third Diadoch War of 315-311, the dating of Polemaios' campaigns in Greece and Telesphoros' revolt are still debated. Proponents of the "High" chronology date Polemaios' campaigns in Greece to summer/autumn 313 and Telesphoros' revolt to spring/summer 312, 6 while proponents of the "Low" chronology date Polemaios' campaigns variously to spring, summer, or autumn 312 and Telesphoros' revolt to late 312 (Hauben) or early 311 (Errington, Billows, and Anson). 7 In a recent article, however, Alexander Meeus has offered a solution to the problem of the dating of the Third Diadoch War. 8 Expanding on the earlier argument of Leonard Smith and Hans Hauben, Meeus argues that Diodorus had difficulty synchronising the Athenian archon years, which he used as his major chronological marker, with the summer-winter campaigning seasons employed by his source for Books 18-20. In order to mitigate the increasing chronological confusion in his narrative, Diodorus simply equated

Plato Meno dramatic-historical dating 401 BC, 2021

The dramatic date of Plato’s dialogue Meno cannot be meaningfully determined until this character has been identified as one of the generals from Xenophon’s Anabasis. Researchers have attempted to date Plato’s dialogue immediately prior to this Voyage of the Ten Thousand that began in 401 BC, but have been pushed back to the winter of 403/402 based on conservative estimates. Renewed reading and factual research have filled the gaps so that Meno can finally be pushed forward to the year 401 BC.

Trends in Classics, 2024

Sources provide conflicting accounts of the role of Socrates during the trial of the generals after the Battle of Arginusae: in Plato's Apology and Xenophon's Hellenica he is presented as the only πρύτανις that opposed the will of the crowd to judge the generals in a single vote. In the Gorgias and Xenophon's Memorabilia he is elevated to the status of chairman. This paper revisits the possible interconnections among the sources and reexamines the suggestion that Xenophon's version in the Memorabilia is influenced by Plato's Gorgias, while also considering Diodorus Siculus' narrative of these same events. It is argued that Xenophon's agenda at Hellenica 1.7.1-16 is driven by the political aim of highlighting the deficiencies of Athenian democracy, whereas similarities between Plato's Apology and Euryptolemus' speech at Hellenica 1.7.16-35 encourage the inference that the latter text should be viewed against the backdrop of Socratic literature. The conclusion reached is that Socrates cannot have served as chairman and that the performance of his civic duties may not have been of such overriding importance as might initially appear.