At the beginning of book III of the Laws Plato presents a mythical account of the original condition of mankind. He uses this myth to draw important conclusions about what saves or destroys political communities and how, from an original condition of simple but happy and peaceful living, men arrived to the present situation of affluence, war and unhappiness. Knowledge of what went wrong –Plato suggests- will enable us to create a better society for men to live in. Plato’s adoption of the mythical form for a subject having such important ethical and political consequences leaves us wondering about his reasons for doing so. This is a complex question, on which there is a copious literature. Here, I only wish to emphasise that Plato inherited from previous Greek culture both a conception of myth and of its significance and a set of myths that are part and parcel of that culture. While previously myth had a meaning that overlapped with that of logos, in the Fifth century, especially through the works of those authors who created ‘history’ as a literary form, myth is linked to the fabulous and is, as such, unworthy of belief. However, Plato had an ambivalent relation with myth because he realized its extraordinary evocative power and of its consequent grip on imagination, not only of common or uncultivated people.[1] I am persuaded that Plato in general used myths for three reasons, which we may call for our convenience pedagogical, epistemological and methodological reason:
1. The pedagogical reason: in line with the teaching of the Republic, Plato deemed it necessary to refute the existing myths, which he judged impious and pedagogically dangerous, because they presented a wrong image of the nature and the activity of the gods. This wrong image can be traced back to Homer, who stated that the gods can be corrupted by presents and prayers from men, and were evidently very widespread in Plato’s days.[2] For in Plato’s own works, in the Euthiphro, we find Socrates telling Euthiphro that he is accused of impiety because he does not believe in the stories about the cruel behaviour of the gods: this statement leads us to infer that most Athenians believed in those stories.[3] One of Plato’s main educational concerns is, notoriously, that children be exposed to “myths told in the best possible way that are conducive to virtue”.[4] More specifically, we may think that Plato had in mind, and wanted to oppose, such myths as the story of Pandora we find in Hesiod, where a deliberate act of Zeus, in a situation of rivalry between men and gods, changes forever human life and introduces into it labour and suffering. In response, Plato’s myth in the Politicus clearly states that cosmic changes, and the passage from an epoch where there is a divine custody of the world to one of autonomy, are brought about by necessity and not by the gods’ will. Plato also knew and decided to attack the myths we find in dramatists and comedians: the description of Zeus’ harsh rule in Aeschylus’ Prometheus bound, for instance, or utopian views of a Golden Age circulating in Athens, already satirized in Pherecrates’ Rustics. In Plato there is no regressive myth that situates human happiness in a time in the past.[5] Finally, he meant to counter alternative accounts of the development of civilization, Kulturgeschichte, like those given by Protagoras, Democritus and Thucydides, and their implications.[6] Protagoras’ Great Speech, for instance, inevitably leads to the conclusion that all men are endowed with political capacity and law is a mere “opinion of the city:” a vision that severs the link between the city and cosmic order and blurs the distinction between true politikoi and mere pretenders.
2. The epistemological reason: there are things that cannot be known with certainty because of their distance in time or the impossibility of empirical verification. Therefore, they cannot be grasped and described with a rational account but rather with a likely, or appropriate myth. As the Athenian Stranger clearly states in the Laws 678a, after the flood and the destruction, of the things past not even the memory remains. We find a clear statement of this also in Republic II, 382c-d: “And so, in those myths (mythologias) we are dealing with, since we are not allowed to know how things exactly (talethes) went in antiquity (peri ton palaion), wouldn’t we do something useful (chresimon) if we modelled fiction on truth as much as we can?”.[7] Myth is not pure fantasy for it has the highest possible truth content according to circumstances; moreover, it has a practical outcome –as the chresimon shows: it provides us with a ‘knowledge’ otherwise unattainable of distant and unclear things, which may guide us in our lives.
3. The methodological reason, which is linked to the persuasive function of the myth. Myth has a stronger grip on popular imagination, it appeals to a shared cultural heritance, and is more impressive than a rational demonstration. (We ourselves are easy examples of this, for we all remember the Allegory of the Cave but we may not remember so clearly all the demonstrative steps Socrates uses to refute Thrasimachus.) While argumentative demonstration appeals to the rational part of the soul, myth is designed to appeal to our sensibility.[8] Myth generates enchantment, and the appropriate myth can produce a right disposition of the soul.[9] The negative example Plato has in his mind is the rhetorical effectiveness of Athenian professional politicians, their dangerous use of persuasive means:[10] Plato was impressed and disconcerted by their ability to sway the people without any concern for what was good, the same ability that years before had struck Cleon and was so well portrayed by Thucydides. In Plato’s view, on the contrary, persuasion should aim at the ethical conversion of the interlocutor.[11]
Moreover, Plato knew the prominence of myth in religion and religious festivals, whose importance in Greek life can hardly be overestimated,[12] and in that incredibly successful Fifth century invention: tragedy (its educational role can hardly be overstated either.) The scattered allusions to the Orphic rituals and the explicit mention of several tragedies in his works show he was well aware of the practical significance of their use of myth.
For all these three reasons Plato came to the conclusion that the use of myth was necessary in writing about such important topics. This is reflected in his choice of a literary form. Plato is an incredibly talented writer, and the dialogue form he chose was only one among the possible literary options he had available.[13] His dialogues are philosophical dramas in which mythos helps logos, going where the latter cannot go, or arriving at the same conclusion and generating the same effect but through a different path. In my view, the decisive passage that captures Plato’s realization of this is Gorgias 512c, where Callicles, after being refuted, says that he is not persuaded, though it seems to him that Socrates is reasoning well, and then refuses to continue the conversation. What’s the use of reason, when the opponent refuses to listen? We may construe this as Plato’s reflection on Gorgias’ lesson on the importance of persuasion. In his Encomium of Helen Gorgias had stated that logos, the word/discourse, is a powerful sovereign capable of effecting deeds that are profoundly divine: the deeds brought about by discourse are its effects on the listeners. When the discourse is accompanied by persuasion –Gorgias says- “it moulds the soul at its will”.
Plato’s dialogues too aim at “inscribing in the soul” of the listeners and the readers, instilling in them knowledge of the most fundamental truths by a mix of philosophical argument and rhetorical persuasion, reason and passion. In Plato’s works, the balance of this mix changes over time, and the emphasis seems to switch from conversion of the soul through rational argument to good ordering of the passions through a correct perception of what is pleasant and what is painful. Education leaves aside the Forms and becomes education sentimentale.
In the Laws education means –we read at 653c- correct (orthos) orientation of pleasure and pain. It is thus necessary to educate from birth the children to hate what they ought to hate and to love what they ought to love, creating an orthotes –a correct judgment and disposition- in the soul that generates a just behaviour. In passing I note that the problem of orthotes or “correctness” in moral and political judgments was, again, raised by Protagoras with his notion that “man is the measure of all things”. Finally, we should bear in mind that the three characters in the Laws are depicted as lawgivers of a prospective new community; they are competing, therefore, with traditional lawgivers who were portrayed as divinely inspired.[14] In Plato the path leading to truth is reversed: not from the gods down, through the poets who made it available to all human beings; but from the bottom up, as the allegory of the Cave vividly portrays it.
After these long preliminary observations, necessary to account for why Plato uses myths in general and the purpose of the one on the origin of mankind we are about to analyse, let’s turn to the myth we find at the beginning of Book III.
Laws III, 676a. The narration opens with the question “what was the origin of political arrangements (politeiai)?” and the research into their origin and development is conducted in order to observe the transformations (metabolai: 676b, c) of political communities. The landscape the Athenian Stranger, who is recounting the myth, sets in front of us is this: in the long course of human history, thousands and thousands of cities were created and just as many were destroyed; many small cities aggrandized and conversely many big cities shrunk; many bad cities became good and many good ones became bad. His investigation is conducted in order to find the tes metaboles aitia (676c6-7), “the cause of the transformation”, which can be identified through a study of the origin of the city. What we are looking for, in other words, is what preserves and what corrupts institutions (686c).[15]
In order to find an answer, the Athenian Stranger asks, as a rhetorical question, whether we can rely on “old tales” (palaioi logoi), persuaded that they contain a certain truth (aletheian tina: 677a). He then goes on to tell one of these tales according to which there are recurring catastrophes in the history of the universe, which cause a nearly complete disappearance of the whole mankind.[16] The few survivors to the last flood were mountain shepherds, “scanty embers of the human race”, while the cities in the plain and on the sea were completely destroyed.[17]
The Cretan Cleinias comments at this point “it is likely so” (eikos: 677b). This reminds us of the eikos mythos of Timaeus 29d, where eikos may mean both “likely” and “appropriate”.
The Athenian Stranger depicts the survivors as inexperienced (apeiroi) in any of the arts (technon), but also of any other premeditated wrongdoing. More specifically, they did not know the “tricks” (mechana) that are conducive to pleonexia kai philonikia, “desire to have more and more and to overcome” the others. In the catastrophe, all the instruments and all the arts were forgotten, including politics. Not even the memory remained of the political community (polis), of the constitution (politeia) and of legislation (nomothesia: 678a). These, together with “much evil and much virtue”, came to mankind as the product of a slow process of evolution. Reciprocal contacts (summisgein allelois) were non-existent and there was no necessity of fighting for food: stasis and polemos –external and internecine war- were absent in those days, for there were no rich and no poor people.
The description of the original situation of mankind after the flood gives us a glimpse of the ethical condition of men in those days. At 679b7-c2 we read: “In a society (sunoikia) where there is no riches nor poverty necessarily the customs are, I daresay, exceedingly noble: there cannot arise neither hybris nor injustice, neither rivalry nor jealousy. [The men of those days] were good for these reasons and for what is called ‘simplicity’ (euetheia: 679c3).” And also: “Maintaining as true what was bequeathed to them concerning gods and men, they lived according to it”. The Athenian Stranger emphasizes the ingenuity of men with respect to words: language in those days was used only to tell the truth, not to deceive others. Men in those days were inexperienced in the arts of war, as well as in trials and factional strifes. He concludes that men then were “of more simple customs (euestheroi), more courageous (andreioteroi) and also more moderate (sophronesteroi) and in all respects more just (dikaioteroi)” (679e). Courage, moderation, justice, three of the four fundamental virtues according to the account of the Republic, which is repeated almost identically in the Laws. Only knowledge is lacking, because it is the sole possession of philosophers, who are absent in that age of simplicity (and simple-mindedness).[18] This, in my opinion, is the clue for the rest of our discourse.
After describing this earliest stage, the Athenian Stranger then sketches a brief history of the evolution of mankind. We may remark in passing that the Greeks enjoyed very much this kind of exercise in quasi-historical reconstruction, which strikes us today as a mix of history, genealogy, and fantasy.[19] Plato had other examples of this genre available, such as the “Archaeology” (chapters 1-19 in Book I) in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War: I believe that Plato knew this work well, because in many places he seems to be deliberately contradicting Thucydides’ opinion and reconstruction. Interestingly enough, Plato’s narrative is constructed on similar lines as Thucydides’, in that it is a historical reconstruction aimed at making a theoretical point. In Thucydides’ case, the “Archaeology” is in fact a phenomenology of early Greek history built on the nomological principle that power is the best standard to judge political entities. Thus, in those quick 19 chapters, Thucydides shows the lack of power, astheneia, of early Greece down to the Persian wars, in order to prove his thesis that the war between the Athenians and the Spartans was the megiste kinesis, “the greatest upheaval”, of all times and therefore the worthiest to be recorded.
On the contrary, Plato’s narration in the Laws aims at showing that affluence and power, and not the lack of them, is the real political problem of his times. Wealth, and power of all kinds, has to be checked and controlled by a superior force, philosophical (and political) knowledge. Plato states clearly that “ignorance of the most important human facts”[20] is the cause of the decline and destruction of political communities: among these “human facts” there is Plato’s persuasion that private property, and the subsequent, inevitable cleavage between wealthy and poor citizens, is the primary cause of all war and civil strife. Since human beings can flourish only in peace and harmony, the abolition or strict control of private property is a political imperative, just as the suppression or control of greed by moderation in the human soul is a moral imperative. This is the reason why in the Laws we find, on the one hand, a rigid discipline of private property and on the other hand the sustained attempt at evicting amathia, ignorance, from political communities and at instilling practical knowledge (phronesis) in the citizens. We may remember that ignorance is “the disagreement of pleasure and pain with the opinion according to reason”.[21] Its political counterpart is the notion that the disagreement between the ruling element and the people destroys political power, just like the disagreement between reason and desires in the soul leads it to error and vice.[22]
One last remark on this myth of the origins. It has been noted that the description of the evolution of mankind in the III book of the Laws shares some features with the description of the evolution of the polis that Socrates sketches in the II book of the Republic. There are also many differences, but the basic similarity is that man’s condition in the early political arrangements is depicted as simple but happy: simplicity (euetheia) and frugality characterize the citizens of the prote polis too.[23] However, both accounts share the awareness that times have changed and the political aim is now to attain virtue in completely different circumstances. But how?
To answer this question let’s have a quick look at Plato’s narration of the evolution of mankind after the flood and at the lesson he draws from it.
- The original condition of mankind after the flood is characterized by the absence of mutual relations (677a). As soon as men gather together, this first community can already be considered a form of government (politeia) and be called “patriarcate” (dynasteia) (680a9).[24] People lived according to custom and to the laws of their fathers (patrioi nomoi) and the elderly ruled. Political communities then become bigger and create “one single household (mian oikian), common and big” (681a2-3). This is a very important point, because it reminds us that the best political arrangement human beings can ever create has the shape of a big and common household, which avoids the infringements of the law possible “in the private of the house” (788a; cf. 945e). This also reminds us that Aristotle’s criticism –to the extent that Plato wanted the polis to regress to the level of the household- was not fully misplaced.
- As the community grows there is the need for common rules (the individual families used to abide by their private regulations). Some legislators are chosen who single out the best rules and then an aristocracy or a monarchy is created (681d).
- Then comes the polis “where all the aspects and affections that characterise political communities and their constitutions coexist” (681d8-9). This fanciful description captures well the manifold feelings, passions and intrigues connected to the story of Troy: Troy, and the expedition against it, is in fact the exemplification of this stage of the polis. After this the mythical time ends and the historical time begins.
- The next stage is that of ancient Sparta, Crete and Athens. More specifically, in the case of Athens, the reference is to Solon and his property and debt reforms: 684d-e. The mass of the citizens in those days were willing to be ruled by the best ones, the aristocrats, and the law-givers aimed at creating a certain equality (isoteta) of possession.[25] The anti-democratic overtones are clear, reinforced by the subsequent statement that in Athens the poets, masters of inordinate transgressions, transformed aristocracy into a bad “theatrecracy”: this is the situation in Fourth century Athens, where excessive liberty leads the people to refuse submission to the magistrates, to pay no heed to admonitions of parents and the elders, to neglect the laws, to care not for oaths, promises and even the gods (701b-c).
What is interesting in this ‘archaeology’ is Plato’s mixture of historical facts with myth, which are treated as if of equal value for the purpose of the discourse. It was not an uncommon practice in those days, and Plato seems to follow in the wake of that ‘rationalising’ tradition started in the Fifth century by Ekataios, who tried to make sense of the “many and risible myths of the Greeks” (polloi kai geloioi). Myth enables us to reach places and times that are not accessible to the historian.
The Athenian Stranger’s conclusion is that “We spoke of all these things to observe how a political community should be best founded and, privately, how an individual could conduct his life in the best possible way” (702a-b). He then sets forth to build this best form of government, maintaining that those cities where one part rules and the other serves, and the name of the constitution comes from the ruling power, are not real forms of government (712e-713a).[26]
In order to give us hints on how to build the best political community, the Stranger recurs again to myth: in the time before the flood, known as Cronos’ age, men were happy because god put demons at the head of the human race. They brought us peace (eirene) together with respect (aido) and good government (eunomia) and plenty of justice (aphthonian dikes); they rendered human race devoid of strife (astasiasta) and happy (eudaimona). The lesson we should draw from this tale (Plato’s word is logos), is that the cities that are not governed by a god will always be afflicted by evils and sufferance. In order to avoid them, we should “imitate in all ways the life of Cronos’ times and we should obey to what is immortal in us, [...] calling law the ordinance of the mind” (713e-714a).
We should read this description while keeping in mind the Politicus myth of the reversed universe. That myth bears many similarities, and many differences, with the myth of the origin of mankind in the Laws. A complete comparison of the two myths would be long and useless for my purpose, so I shall focus on only one specific point. In the Politicus myth we are told that in the age of Cronos the gods themselves took care of the universe and one god, and some demi-gods, cared for mankind. Life was the obverse of what it is now. Human beings were born old from the earth and grew younger, finally disappearing delicately, returning to the earth, instead of dying: their life was like a trajectory from a painless birth to a death by disappearance, with no toil or pain on the men’s part. Provided with all sort of food by nature, men lived in peace, consorting with animals and having everything in common, without cities nor governments. Private property, the source of all evil, for it tears apart the original unity among citizens, creating rich and poor, causing wars and inner strives, was non-existent. At this point the Eleatic Stranger who is telling the myth pauses to ask his interlocutors whether they deem happier the life in the age of Cronos or that in our age, when the gods leave men to themselves. He then answers himself in an ironic and enigmatic way, pointing out that if men then used their time to look for wisdom and philosophise, they were surely happier than they are now; if, on the other hand, they spent their time wining and dining, telling themselves and the other living creatures stories of their lives, they surely were not.[27]
That was the life in the age of Cronos, while we live in the age of Zeus. But the main point in the two narrations is that it is only in our age, notwithstanding the struggles, the separations and the imperfections, that human beings can be really happy, because only our age is characterised by those activities that make human beings distinctly human. What is conspicuously absent from the age of Cronos are eros, politics and, especially, philosophy. The age of Cronos was a time of innocence, because every generation, living its life backwards, did not remember anything of the previous generations nor of their past experiences, anything that had happened before: it is memory, and experience, which preserves the existence of evil. But memory is also a source of delectation, in recollection, and the necessary basis for that continuity of conscience on which philosophy is grounded.
Not altogether different from Cronos’ times is the situation of the first men who happen to live in our age, the age of Zeus: they possess a sort of ‘natural virtue’ in that the external circumstances of their lives prompt them to be virtuous, without really knowing that they are virtuous or having knowledge of what virtue is. Their contemporary counterpart in Plato’s time is the old Cephalus of the Republic, who happened to live all his life justly thanks to his riches and his inherited, old-fashioned notion of justice, but without knowledge. Times have changed and Plato is persuaded that men cannot live now as they used to then: the process of creating virtue in human beings must take into account this change in circumstances. As the myth of Er at the end of the Republic reminds us, even those who lived their lives justly but without philosophy can make mistakes in choosing their next life: this moment of choice in the afterlife is the moment where “the whole danger” for a human being resides (ho pas kindunos anthropoi).[28] Philosophy is therefore the sole guide to a correct choice of life and all our happiness depends on that. Happiness is not related with external goods but is inextricably intertwined to knowledge, and to philosophy conceived as the unending quest for truth (with the persuasion that truth can be attained –Plato is no romantic poet).
Strangely enough, it has not been noticed before that in that very same myth Socrates tells us how we now see our souls all corrupted and disfigured by evil, just like the body covered by seaweeds of Glaukon, the inhabitant of the sea. And it is therefore difficult –he continues- to perceive its “ancient nature” (archaian physin), which is also its “real nature” (alethe physin).[29]
I am here at variance with such scholars as Joseph Cropsey, who describes Plato’s account of our time as a twilight age, lit only by faith in the immortal soul; nor can I agree with Trevor Saunders, who calls Plato’s description of the euetheia of early men, who believed what they were told, “a real cri de coeur”.[30] Plato knows very well that those days are gone and in his description there is no longing for a lost epoch of innocence, no nostalgic recollection which would lead to resignation; nor does he think that this cycle will soon be over, superseded by a new age of Cronos: Plato does not hold any eschatological view, where the solution to present evils lies in a future age of deliverance.
We live in a mixed epoch: progress in the arts and crafts, the consequent affluence, the growth in size of political communities, have led to decay in morality and customs. The solution does not lie in the return to a primeval condition of simplicity and natural, almost spontaneous virtue, but rather in knowledge, knowledge of what makes men virtuous and how to make them so. Knowledge on the part of the rulers and knowledge, or at least true opinion, in the citizens. However, at the time of the composition of the Laws Plato has come to believe that justice and virtue can be better imparted in men with a mix of reason and passion rather than by philosophical training alone. In order to have a just and virtuous city all men should be persuaded, by the laws and other means, of what the city considers right and good. The emphasis is less on the education of the few rulers and more on the condition of the mass of the people, less on reason and knowledge and more on persuasion and true opinion. This is the reason why we find such a frequent recurrence of myth, as well as of choral singing and dancing as a means to persuasion (to the city’s truths), in the later dialogues and especially in the Laws.
The statement that “we should imitate in all ways the life of Cronos’ times” only apparently contradicts the view that the age of Cronos is an unattainable ideal, a forlorn hope, according to Plato. What we should imitate, adapting it to the novel circumstances of human life, is god’s guidance in human affairs, not the simple and spontaneous virtue of those days. Men’s deliverance lies in this imitation (mimeisthai) of god and the philosopher is the one who made this the aim of his life. The philosopher will therefore set the city into order just as Cronos ordered the human community when it was under his rule.[31] In the Laws there is thus continuity between the age of Cronos and that of Zeus, while in the Politicus there was a clear hiatus. This is testified by the existence of cities, political institutions and a political vocabulary in the description of the age of Cronos in the Laws, which were absent in the Politicus account.
One final remark on this notion of imitation and its connection to myth. At 817a-b the Athenian Stranger speaks of the true tragedy and its educational purpose and says that he finds that the conversation they are currently having represents the model of education for the young. We infer that the tragic poetry of the Laws is the paradigm of the well ordered life of the citizens of Magnesia, the imaginary colony. My conclusion is, then, that the story of the origin of mankind is intended to be a founding myth for the future colonists: it serves the purpose of showing how human beings of our age were originally good and living in peace (in contrast with Protagoras’ or Plato’s brothers’ description); how their progress in arts and sciences up to their present situation is also a regression with respect to customs and happiness; and how in the remote past men lived differently, and somehow better: a different, better world is thus possible, though in a modified way to accommodate the modified human circumstances, and it is up to the philosopher, god’s closer approximation, to try to build it. Looking back into the past should not generate passive acquiescence but prompt us to action, because that kind of society is unattainable now but that model of god guidance is still available.
The Laws last sentence is Megillos’ promise “I will help you”: building the perfect city requires the philosopher’s vision and lead, together with the help of all the wise men. In these times of trouble only a philosopher can save us.
[1] See F. Ferrari, I miti di Platone, Milano, Rizzoli, 2006, p. 17: in Plato “the equation myth=falsity is only the first step towards a complex itinerary, marked by the awareness that philosophy and politics cannot do without this kind of falsity ”.
[4] Plato, Republic II, 378e.
[5] See J. Dillon, Plato and the Golden Age in “Hermathena” 153 (1992) pp. 21-36.
[6] Protagoras, Democritus and other authors see a progress in the condition of mankind, with techne overcoming physis and tyche. The original condition of mankind is portrayed in bleak colours and discloses their pessimism about nature.
[7] Cf. also Critias 107b ff.
[8] This was already the opinion of J.A. Stewart, The Myths of Plato, London, MacMillan, 1905, p. 21: “Plato’s myths appeal to that major part of human nature which is not articulate and logical, but feels, and wills and acts.”
[9] Cf. P. Boyancé, Le culte des Muses chez les philosophes grecques (1936), Paris, Boccard, 1972, pp. 155-156. Boyancé calls Plato’s myths “incantations” and believes his use of myth had a Pythagoric and Orphic descendence, though he deliberately opposed or replaced their myths.
[10] See S. Gastaldi, “Legge e retorica. I proemi delle Leggi di Platone” in Quaderni di Storia 10 (1984) pp. 69-109; see p. 72.
[11] Gastaldi, p. 82.
[12] See M.L. Morgan “Plato and Greek religion” in R. Kraut (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 227-247. Morgan shows that in Plato’s days there was an increased interest in ecstatic rituals and personal oriented salvation rites.
[13] See D. Clay, Platonic Questions. Dialogues with the Absent Philosopher, University Park, Pennsylvania University Press, 2000, p.
[14] The Athenian Stranger refers to the divinely inspired lawgivers at the beginning of the dialogue (624 b) and then contrasts it with his own at 853c. E. L’Arrivée, maintains that the primary question of the Laws is how to make the transition from poetic to philosophic lawgiving in political practice.
[15] Here we find echoes of Herodotus (I, 5) and of Thucydides.
[16] In many of his works Plato shows to believe in the so-called “theory of catastrophes”, which is opposed to the “histories of civilization” such as those of Protagoras and Democritus. These latter saw a linear progress of the technai and of human societies. The theory of catastrophe was widespread inside the Academy, is present in many Platonic works (Politicus, Timeaus, Critias, Laws) and can be found also in the Aristotelian Peri philosophias (fr. 8 Ross) and Protrepticus (fr. 8 Ross). Many interesting observations can be found in C. Natali, La teoria aristotelica delle catastrofi. Metodi di razionalizzazione di un mito in “Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica” 105 (1977) pp. 403-424. See also K. Gaiser,
[17] The idea that the goodness of a city is best preserved by building it far from the sea is a recurrent one in the Laws. In addition, see the Aristotelian characterization of the parties facing each other at the time of Peisistratus ascent to power: the people from the mountain, as contrasted to those from the coast and those from the plain, were the poorest and simplest ones (Aristotle, AP 3.)
[18] Plato, Republic 427e. The four fundamentals virtues, whose unity in one single idea that constitutes the “complete virtue” or “the idea of virtue”, is emphasized, recur again in the Laws 630b, 965c: courage (andreia), moderation (sophrosyne), justice (dikaiosyne) and wisdom (phronesis). Note how practical knowledge (phronesis) replaces theoretical knowledge (sophia).
[19] In the Hippias Major 285d, for instance, we are told that the Spartans loved to hear tales on the genealogy of heroes and men, on cities’ foundations and, generally speaking, on ancient history.
[20] Laws 688d1; e4.
[21] Laws 689a7-8; 696c.
[22] Laws 689b.
[23] Republic II, 372b. Cf. Timaeus 18b and Critias 112b.
[24] Through a quote from Homer, this is exemplified by the arrangement (oikesis) of the Cyclops, where there are no agorà nor themistes: Odyssey IX, 112-115. Strangely enough, and with some internal contradiction, the Athenian Stranger describes this as the most just of royal governments, where people live according to the laws of the ancients.
[25] Plato makes also some interesting political comments. We learn that “there is no mortal soul nature that can bear the supreme power among men when young and not held accountable (anupethunos), without aggravating his mind with the worst ailment, reckless ignorance” (691c5-d2). In order to avoid that it is necessary to know “the just measure” (to metrion), and have a temperate political community, a mixed constitution (691d-693b). Plato interestingly adds that there are two “mothers” of constitutions, from which all the other regimes stem: monarchy, that has its best among the Persians, and democracy, which primes in Athens. The Persians opted for one-man government, the Athenians for freedom, and neither of them ever reached the just measure (693e).
[26] Plato’s aim, like in the Republic, is to refute the “natural definition of justice”, according to which the stronger part always imposes laws to its advantage (cf. 890a-b). The best form of government is that in which there is concord (political friendship: 743c), an equality based on the natural value of people (757c) and happiness.
Plato states clearly that the best city is free, moderate and friend to herself (693b; cf. 701d).
[27] Plato, Politicus 271d-272d.
[28] Plato, Republic 618b.
[30] Cf. J. Cropsey, Plato’s World, Chicago-London, University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 134; T.J. Saunders, “Plato’s later political thought” in R. Kraut (ed), The Cambridge companion to Plato, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 491 n. 95.
[31] Cf. G. Morrow, “The Demiurge in politics: The Timaeus and the Laws” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 27 (1953-4) pp. 5-23.
