Chapter Two

Phaedrus as Fair Warning

Section 6. Whither, forsooth, and Whence?

The opening question of Platos Phaedrus ;is of particular
interest to the student of Reading Order: in that context, the question asks what
dialogues the student has just read (from whence do we arrive at Phaedrus), and
which dialogues does Plato the Teacher intend the student to read next (whither
do we proceed from hence)? There is, of course, a sense in which we can take
the question literallyi.e., as addressed only to the character Phaedrusand
Socrates certainly gets at least half of his two-part question answered on these
terms: he comes from hearing Lysias, and he has the latters speech hidden un-
der his cloak to prove it. As to where Phaedrus is going, a distinction probably
needs to be made between where he was going before he met Socrates, and
where he will go after the dialogue ends, now under Socrates influence. While
Socrates pedagogical intent in Phaedrus is widely recognized, there is no
scholarly consensus that Phaedrus has actually learned anything important from
Socrates, just as it will always be debatable how much we, his readers, have
actually learned from Plato; the purest form of this kind of conundrum arises in
connection with Gorgias, and will be considered later. Although the Reading
Order I am offering requires the reader to have read both Gorgias and Symposi-
um before reading Republicand therefore a fortiori before reading Phae-
drusthere is something to be said for Thrasyllus decision to join Symposium
to Phaedrus in his third tetralogy, especially if we remain open to the possibility
that, despite its earlier position with respect to Reading Order, Symposium fol-
lows Phaedrus in the story of Phaedrus life,1 and that his opening speech
therewhich the student of Phaedrus should now re-read (see section 10) with
much greater careis the fruit of Socrates instruction in rhetoric, and thereby
constitutes a pretty and potent answer to his initial . In any case, the mere
possibility that Phaedrus is a kind of prequel where the character Phaedrus is
concerned is raised here only to show that one half of Socrates question is un-

1. Although working in the developmentalist paradigm, the substance of John D.

Moore, The Relation Between Platos Symposium and Phaedrus in J. M. E. Moravcsik
(ed.), Patterns in Platos Thought, 52-71 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1973) is eye opening.

139
140 Chapter Two

answered if we take that question literally, i.e., if we do not apply it to Reading

Order, as, of course, I believe that we should, not least of all because in that con-
text, both parts of the question really do receive an answer.
Another advantage of taking the opening question as referring to Reading
Order is that it addresses the problem of the unity of Platos Phaedrus.2
Scholarship on the dialogue has been haunted by the relationship between its
two parts: the three speechesone of them among the most beautiful of Pla-
tosand the rather more technical discussion of rhetoric that follows them. By
making Socrates opening words central to its interpretationi.e., by making its
place in the Reading Order of Platos dialogue the key to its interpretationthe
two-fold nature of Phaedrus is conspicuous from the start: the first half looks
back to the whence from which we have come (), and the looks for-
ward to the more technical dialogues that follow.3 Placed after Timaeus-Critias,
the first half of the dialogue looks back to three other speeches, two in Timae-
usthe first by Critiasand one in Critias. From the perspective developed in
Phaedrus, readers are reminded that they have just heard three speeches, and
indeed have done so twice: whatever they will learn about speeches in the se-
cond part of Phaedrus can then be applied not only to the three speeches con-
tained in the first part of that dialogue but to the three speeches in Timaeus and
Critias as well. Meanwhile, the other part of the two-part question points us

2. The literature on this important problem is collected and usefully divided in Dan-
iel Werner, Platos Phaedrus and the Problem of Unity. Oxford Studies in Ancient Phi-
losophy 32 (2002), 91-138. G. R. F. Ferrari, Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Platos
Phaedrus (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987) ends with the suggestion
that this problem is not as important as it appears (232); for an argument based on anach-
ronism, see his The Unity of the Phaedrus: A Response.Dialogus 1 (1994), 21-25,
ending with (25): the thematic disunity of the dialogue is a necessity of its genre. We
must stop trying to explain it away.
3. The closest analogue to my approach is an undeveloped possibility mentioned in
the introduction to Ronna Burger, Platos Phaedrus: A Defense of a Philosophic Art of
Writing (University: University of Alabama Press, 1980), 4: If all logos and every
logos must be constructed like a living animal, the problem of the unity of the separate
parts within this dialogue [sc. Phaedrus] ought to reflect the problem of the unity of the
Platonic corpus as a whole [unfortunately, Burger never again refers to the Platonic cor-
pus outside of the passage I am quoting], of which the Phaedrus represents one part
parading as a whole. Precisely that function that the Phaedrus serves in the structure of
the whole composed of all the dialogues, then, might reveal the theme which determines
its own internal completeness as an organic whole [such is my thesis]. If the Platonic
corpus is indeed the many-membered body of a living animal, the Phaedrus is that
member which serves to examine the character of the whole as an imitation produced by
the art of writing [and, more specifically, of an art of writing that employs basanistic
pedagogy]. If the role of the Phaedrus within the corpus of dialogues illuminates its own
internal unity [presumably the unity of the corpus], the Platonic defense of the art of writ-
ing must provide for the Phaedrus itself the hidden bond between the speeches on [I
would substitute: the great speech on ] and the discussion on rhetoric and dialectics
[I would substitute what she, unfortunately, calls the art of contention on 75-76].
 Phaedrus as Fair Warning 141

forward to Parmenides and Philebus, the more technical dialogues introduced

by the second part of Phaedrus; the basis of this connection will be carefully
explored in section 7 (The Science of Deception). There I will argue that the
crucial passage between 261d6, where the Eleatic Palamedes is used to intro-
duce Parmenides, and 262c3 not only looks backward to Timaeus and Critias,
where wide-scale deception has already been practiced, but also forward to
Philebus, the difficult dialogue for the sake of which the gymnastic preparation
in the second part of Parmenides is undertaken (see chapter 3). This preparation
is needed because the part Timaeus plays in Timaeus, Socrates himself will play
in Philebus, and that means the reader must judge not on their appear-
ance but on the substance of what they are saying (260a5-7), even when the
speaker is Socrates. In more ways than one (see section 9 below), the first half
of Phaedrus proves that Socrates can make a deceptive speech, and the second
half shows that a mastery of rhetoric not only enables its master to deceiveas
has just been proved by Platobut to bring the well-hidden deceptions of others
to light (261e4): this is the readers job between Timaeus and Philebus as medi-
ated by Phaedrus.
It is therefore in the context of Reading Order that the problem of the unity
of Platos Phaedrus should be reconsidered. What makes it a unity is not to be
discovered only in itself, but rather where others have not sought it: in its rela-
tion to what precedes and follows it, i.e., in its role as bridge between Timaeus-
Critias and Parmenides-Philebus. Notoriously problematic when considered in
isolation, its dual nature makes it the perfect keystone of a narrative arc, and
once recognized as a literary mediator, the two-fold question with which it be-
gins becomes the guide to its unifying purpose: in terms of Reading Order, then,
it achieves unity in the first instance by uniting rather than by being united. In
this way, the analysis of Phaedrus is paradigmatic of the ongoing project under-
taken here: my purpose is not primarily to interpret each one of Platos dia-
logues, but rather to show how an relating to each dialogues place in
the Reading Order offers valuable (see Preface) as to how those dia-
logues should be interpreted. By shifting initial consideration of Phaedrus away
from the traditional context of hermeneutic isolationism to the context of Read-
ing Order, a new way of demonstrating its unity becomes possible, and the on-
going argument of The Guardians in Action is that certain advantages arise from
examining Platos dialogues as a whole, each in close connection with at least
two others. In the paradigmatic case of Phaedrus, placing it in the middle of five
dialogues provides a new kind of solution to a generally recognized interpretive
problem, and to the extent that this problem is real, a solution based on Reading
Order not only deserves independent consideration in itself, but provides another
reason for considering the Reading Order paradigm as a powerful hermeneutic
tool.
Making Phaedrus the bridge connecting Timaeus-Critias to Parmenides-
Philebus actually kills two birds with one stone. The student of Reading Order
faces no greater problem than where to go after Critias: in the case of this osten-
tatiously incomplete dialogue, the is every bit as uncertain as its is
142 Chapter Two

obvious. By opening this chapter with reference to a five dialogue series begin-
ning with Timaeus and ending with Philebus, I have chosen to place the solution
in front of the problem, but that solution only makes sense as the solution to a
problem, and a deliberately created problem at that. Identifying that problem as
a problem is now required.
The placement of Phaedrus is only one partalbeit the most important
partof a larger problem: where does the Reading Order go after Critias? It is
in the context of this problem that another series of five dialogues first arises: in
what order are we to read the dialogues between Critias and Euthyphro? If it is
obvious that Theaetetus is the last of these, questions still remain about the re-
spective positions of Cratylus, Parmenides, Philebus, and Phaedrus. To put it
another way: as indicated by the eighth tetralogy of Thrasyllus, Plato has guided
our steps as far as Critias, and he will once again help us find his pathway with
the well-marked series that begins with Theaetetus-Euthyphro. But in between
these two series, the path is unmarked, at least in comparison with what pre-
cedes and what follows. So many questions remain, indeed, that it is easy to
believe that Plato deliberately bequeathed this part of the Reading Order as a
problem for the student to solve, in accordance with Socrates enigmatic remark
that the Guardians would be asked to arrange in proper order the five mathemat-
ical studies that they had first been taught in random order ( at R. 537c1).4
In this context, locating Phaedrus after Critias actually solves not two but three
problems simultaneously by: (1) offering a new way of thinking about the unity
of Phaedrus, (2) identifying the dialogue that follows the apparently incomplete
Critiaswhere the Reading Order (as it were) drops off the edge of at least the
Mediterranean worldand (3) lays the foundation for the proper ordering of the
dialogues that precede Theaetetus-Euthyphro.
The decision to place Phaedrus first among the five needs to be recog-
nized for what it is: a decision. Based on the fact that the most obvious feature
of Critias is that it ends without ending, Philebus has perhaps the strongest
claim to follow it, and so I originally thought:5 not only does Philebus also end
without an ending, but it does not even begin at the beginning. This case is fur-
ther strengthened by the close ties between Timaeus and Philebus,6 ties that will
be emphasized in my treatment of the latter, and which have already been intro-
duced in my treatment of the former (see section 1). For any student who has
recognized Platos Parmenidean pedagogy in Timaeus, the problem of Phile-
busi.e., that it is now Socrates who threatens to dissolve the boundary be-
tween Being and Becoming (see section 15)becomes solvable in principle.
Convinced that the link between Timaeus and Philebus is a substantial one, it is

4. This remark could all the more easily be applied to Phaedrus, Parmenides, Phile-
bus, Cratylus, and Theaetetus if it were possible to link each of the five to one of the
mathematical studies described in Republic 7.
5. See Altman, Reading Order, 43-44.
6. See Brisson, Le Critias de Platon, 428-429 responding to Vidal-Naquet,
Athnes et lAtlantide.
 Phaedrus as Fair Warning 143

not my intention to supplant, but rather to preserve, the logic that would place
Philebus directly after Timaeus-Critias by identifying Phaedrus as the bridge
between Timaeus and Philebus. To put it another way: there is, in addition to the
pure onto-logic of the Timaeus-Philebus connection (cf. R. 537c3), a pedagogi-
cal logic that needs to be considered here. By interposing both Phaedrus and
Parmenides between Timaeus-Critias and Philebus, the student is provided with
two additional and synergistic aids for solving the most difficult problem of
Philebus. By depicting Socrates making a speech with his head covered, a
speech that requires from him a palinode, Phaedrus makes the bitter pill of
Philebus easier to swallow in a dramatic sense, while the crash course about the
One offered to the young Socrates in Parmenides (see section 11) provides the
reader with the perfect preparation for identifying the more substantialas op-
posed to the dramaticshortcomings of Philebus.
But even if the difficulties that Philebus presents justify placing the gym-
nastic Parmenides before it, there are also good arguments for placing Parmeni-
des, not Phaedrus, directly after Timaeus-Critias, and at least one good argu-
ment for placing it before Phaedrus. The clue that would justify placing
Philebus after Critiasthat a dialogue without an end is logically followed by
another without a beginningis downright unnatural compared with the clues
that place Parmenides immediately after Timaeus-Critias, and directly before
Phaedrus. The former clue is chronological: Parmenides and Zeno have come to
Athens for the Greater Panathenaia (Prm. 127a8), and it is likewise this festival
that provides the dramatic backdrop for Timaeus-Critias (Ti. 20e6-21a3). The
latter clue is allusive, i.e., all the more typical of Plato, and it is unquestionably
more natural to take the allusion to Parmenides at Phaedrus 262d6-8in the
guise of the Eleatic Palamedesas retrospective rather than as anticipatory.
Regardless of the directionality of this allusion, the very fact of it indissolubly
joins Parmenides to Phaedrus with respect to Reading Order. Although the de-
cision to place Phaedrus first ultimately depends on the connections between
Phaedrus and Timaeus-Critias discussed in the last chapter, reading Parmenides
as preparatory gymnastic training for Philebus strengthens the case for that or-
dering. To put it another way: the justification for reading Phaedrus first de-
pends not only on arguments already presented in the previous chapter and oth-
ers to be presented in the remainder of this one, but also in the two chapterson
Parmenides and Philebus, respectivelythat follow it. For the present, then, it
is enough to observe that given the difficulties that Parmenides itself presents
when considered in isolation, taking the allusion to it in Phaedrus as anticipa-
tory would usefully identity the gymnastic training of its second part as a species
of (261d10-e2) and thereby prove (once again) that such an
art actually exists (see 262e2).
Parmenides is not the only dialogue that Plato links to Phaedrus. In addi-
tion to both Symposium and Gorgias, it is plausibly or rather unmistakably
linked to (1) Philebus by the shared references to Theuth (Phlb. 18b7) and the
parallel between its treatment of (Phlb. 63d6) and Socrates first speech in
Phaedrus. As a general matter, the relationship between Phaedrus and Philebus
144 Chapter Two

bears on what might be called the dramatic differences between themas

opposed to the substantial differences between Philebus and Parmenides re-
garding the Oneand those differences are stark: Phaedrus presents Socrates
with all his charm intact, Philebus doesnt, and whereas one dialogue brings to
life an unforgettable dramatic setting, the other lacks, and this can hardly be
inadvertent, everything of the kind. Meanwhile, the etymology of in
Phaedrus (244b6-c2) clearly anticipates (2) Cratylus and the etymologies that
multiply so lushly there; it would hardly seem unnatural to move from Phaedrus
directly to Cratylus. On the other hand, the dialogues final passagewhere the
conversation turns to the promising young Isocratesequally connects Phae-
drus with (3) Theaetetus, where Socrates recognizes the promise of another
youngster. Indeed this last connection brings us back to Parmenides, where the
promising young Socrates is parallel to both Theaetetus and Isocrates. In this
context it likewise deserves mention that Theaetetus clearly looks back to Par-
menides, as Sophist will do as well. But the important point for now is that Pla-
tos Phaedrus isin addition to its other remarkable qualitiesremarkable be-
cause it plausibly introduces a large number of dialogues, especially since its
discussion of Collection and Division (see section 8 below) prepares the way
for Sophist-Statesman in much the same way that it introduces Theaetetus,
Cratylus, and Philebus.7
Given, then, how many dialogues unquestionably follow Phaedrus, it seems
rather odd to place the only dialogue to which it explicitly refersand by this I
mean Parmenidesafter it. Were it not for the many connections between
Phaedrus and Timaeus-Critias already presented in chapter 1, I would be con-
siderably less sure of its proper placement, and I will therefore make something
of a fresh start, presenting the priority of Phaedrus to Parmenides with a certain
degree of diffidence at the beginning of this chapter, while continuing to add
additional reasons confirming this placement as the chapter proceeds.
It is well known that Schleiermacher believed that Phaedrus was Platos
earliest dialogue, and there is ancient testimony for this claim as well.8 Perhaps

7. Note also the role of soul as source of motion, a notion that reappears in Laws;
apart from the implicit claim that we are here concerned with Platos doctrine, this
connection is well-treated (see especially 136-137 and 139-140) in Raphael Demos, Pla-
tos Doctrine of the Psyche as a Self-Moving Motion. Journal of the History of Philoso-
phy 6, no. 2 (April 1968), 133-146; the inconsistency between Phdr. and Ti. is discussed
usefully on 142-143, ending with: One way of dealing with this self-inconsistency in
Platos thought is to force a solution by denying or interpreting away one of the two con-
tradictory positions. My own proposal is to accept the contradiction as a fact.
8. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 3.38. See Einleitung zum
Phaidros in Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, ber die Philosophie Platons, ed.
Peter M. Steiner (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1996), 71. For current thoughts on the compo-
sition of Phaedrus, see Harvey Yunis (ed.), Plato, Phaedrus (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), 22-25, but Guthrie, History of Greek Philosophy 4.396-397 is
well worth consulting, especially since his account may suggest a reprise of the Owen-
Cherniss debate over Timaeus (cf. 431n1).
 Phaedrus as Fair Warning 145

this is the same old problem in disguise: could the dialogues apparent lack of
unity not be taken as a sign of Platos youthful intellectual exuberance no less
than of his literary inexperience? Against Schleiermacherwhose ordering of
the dialogues was based on pedagogical principlesthe tradition he inaugurated
has reached a consensus that Phaedrus is rather a late dialogue than an early
one,9 andwith the meaning of those terms shifted from Order of Composition
to Reading OrderI clearly concur. But placing Phaedrus directly after Critias
also makes it something like a second beginning, and therefore there is a sense
in which I am upholding Schleiermachers judgment.10 In my reconstruction of
the Platonic Reading Order, Phaedrus represents a fresh start, and introduces all
that is to follow it in a manner unique among Platos dialogues. There are, in-
deed, so many dialogues that it could followfor example, Symposium (Thra-
syllus choice), Gorgias, and Parmenidesand even more dialogues that could
plausibly follow it, that it clearly begins with the right question:
. To say nothing of the difficulties Phaedrus offers the student of Platos
Development, it cannot be accidental that a dialogue so difficult to place in the
Reading Order should begin with a question so easily interpreted in relation to
that very problematic. And given that Critias gives as few clues as possible as to
what follows it, the fresh start offered by the Phaedrus makes it a surprisingly
good and indeed refreshing candidate for the office.
Next there is the tripartition of the soul to be considered, a doctrine appro-
priately made explicit in exactly three of Platos dialogues: Republic, Timaeus,
and Phaedrus.11 Locating Phaedrus directly after Timaeus-Critias keeps this
important series intact. And in the light of tripartitionthe pedagogical implica-

9. See Yvon Lafrance, F. Schleiermacher, lecteur du Phdre de Platon. Revue de

philosophie ancienne 8 (1990), 229-261.
10. Cf. Cf. Julia A. Lamm, Schleiermacher as Plato Scholar. Journal of Religion
80, no. 2 (April 2000), 206-239, on 224: This didactic theory of the sequence of the
dialogues stands in contrast to a developmental interpretation, according to which Platos
doctrines were presumed to have changed and matured throughout the course of his life
and writing. Those who held such a developmental view, such as Tennemann and, later,
Karl Friedrich Hermann, sought the original order of the dialogues in part so that they
could isolate the mature works of the real Plato. As a result, the significance of the ear-
lier dialogues was diminished. Schleiermacher allowed no such diminishment. For him,
the first dialogue, the Phaedrus, contained the seeds from which all philosophical doc-
trines unfolded. If an idea was not fully formed in an early dialogue, that is because the
student was not yet prepared to receive it, not because anything was lacking in Platos
philosophy.
11. Cf. the developmentalist analogue of my reconstruction in T. M. Robinson, The
Relative Dating of the Timaeus and Phaedrus in Livio Rosetti (ed.), Understanding the
Phaedrus; Proceedings of the II Symposium Platonicum, 23-30 (Sankt Augustin: Aca-
demia, 1992), on 29: it [sc. Phaedrus] is a dialogue composed somewhere in between
the time Plato completed Timaeus [Robinson follows Owen in placing Timaeus in close
proximity to Republic; see 24 and 26] and started work on Parmenides [on 30 this has
become written just after the Timaeus (and Critias) and just before the Parmenides].
Tripartition is vital to Robinsons argument; see 27.
146 Chapter Two

tions of which have already received independent treatment in Plato the Teach-
era strong bond is created between the speech of Timaeus and the second
speech of Socrates in Phaedrus (see section 3). Although discussion of that
beautiful and persuasive speech will be postponed until section 8, it is crucial
for my reading of it that the reader avoids the assumption that since Socrates
clearly marks his first speech as deceptive, he must therefore be marking his
second speech as simply true; in fact, he does nothing of the kind (265b6-8).12
Having traced the limitations of the tripartition doctrine through the Shorter
Way in Republic, and having endured the various problems to which the physi-
calization of that doctrine are exposed in Timaeus, the reader who comes to
Phaedrus fresh from Critias is in a particularly good position to applyin ac-
cordance with the second and more technical part of the dialogueboth logic
and art to an image whose power depends on overcoming both with passion and
persuasion (see section 8). For all its beauty, Phaedrus not only contains some
crucially important falsehoods, but by introducing the scientific use of
(section 7), it gives fair warning that it is itself deceptive. If
the discussion of the science of deception is internal evidence of this aspect of
the dialogue, then the reappearance of tripartitionalready rendered problemat-
ic in Republic and Timaeusprovides evidence of an external kind.13
Of course Plato does not move the reader directly from Timaeus to either
Phaedrus, Parmenides, or Philebusthe three best candidates for the honor, as
suggested abovebut only through the mysterious mediation of the enigmatic
Critias. And since Critias makes two speeches, one in Timaeus, the other in
Critias, this is clearly no afterthought on Platos part: the great speech of Ti-

12. Rowe, Argument and Structure of Platos Phaedrus responds to R. Hackforth

Platos Phaedrus; Translated with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Liberal
Arts Press, 1952), 136-137; while admitting the apparently disruptive impact of this
speech on the dialogues unity (106: So powerful is the impact of Socrates second
speech . . . that everything which follows it is likely to appear to any ordinary reader as
dull and insignificant by comparison), he also raises the proper question in response
(107): It would be churlish not to ask first whether there is any way of interpreting the
strategy of the Phaedrus which provides for the proper integration of Socrates second
speech into the structure of the whole.
13. Cf. Thomas A. Szlezk, Unsterblichkeit und Trichotomie der Seele im zehnten
Buch der Politeia. Phronesis 21, no. 1 (1976), 31-58, on 56: Wie lt sich diese
Konzeption [sc. the chariot image in Phaedrus] mit der einfachen Natur der wahren Seele
aus Phaidon und Politeia X vereinbaren? Considering the great impact that Phaedrus
has on Tbingens approach, one is amused but not altogether surprised at the lack of an
answer on 57: doch ist dies primr ein Problem der Phaidros-Auslegung, dem hier nicht
nachgegangen werden soll. Were Szlezk to consider the possibility that the immortality
of the three-part soul in Socrates second speech is deliberately false, and therefore not to
be finessed by chronology of composition (57) or by a dubious connection to Timaeus as
transmitted by Hermias and Robin (57n70), but interpreted in accordance with the sci-
ence of deception, he would compromise the schools deadpan reading of the
Schriftkritik. Note the impact of Szlezk on Rowe, beginning with Argument and Struc-
ture of Platos Phaedrus, 114.
 Phaedrus as Fair Warning 147

maeus is presented precisely as one of three speeches, and is explicitly discussed

as a speech at the beginning of Critias. As already indicated, I take this triadic
parallelism to be of some importance for linking Timaeus-Critias directly to
Phaedrus. But the next step is no less important. Just as the traditional view is
that Timaeus speaks for Plato, so also it has been universally agreed that Critias
does not, and there are any number of reasons to think that his speeches are not
in any way what they appear to be, i.e., true narratives about things that actually
happened. The same kind of distinction guides the traditional view of the three
speeches in Phaedrus: two of them are generally regarded as deceptive while the
third is taken to express Platos own views. As indicated in the previous para-
graph, the status of tripartition is crucial for sorting all this out. And in one sense
the traditional view is certainly right: distinctions must be made about the true
and the false where these speeches are concerned. The fact that Timaeus is keep-
ing company with Critias is a subtle warning about the veracity of all three of
their speeches, while the second half of Phaedrus gives us a more direct warning
about the three speeches its first part contains. To put it another way: only when
the science of deception is applied to the three speechesespecially to the
most beautiful of the threewill we be able to recognize Phaedrus as the fairest
possible warning about the dangers to come (), and thus to grasp why it di-
rectly follows Timaeus-Critias () in the Reading Order of Platos dia-
logues.

Section 7. The Science of Deception

Deception is the key word in Parmenidean pedagogy, and in Timaeus, Plato
created his own version of Parmenides deceptive cosmos of words (see sec-
tion 2). But Plato never identifies Timaeus as deceptive, or
even allows his Timaeus to use the word . Instead, he reserves both of
these honors for Critias, who not only uses the word, but applies it to speakers
who, like Timaeus, speak about things divine, where deception is both easier
and perhaps necessary (see section 4). There is a deliberate irony here: it is
certainly easier for most readers to believe that it is Critias, and not Timaeus,
who is the deceptive one, and were it not for the fact that he here speaks the
truth, we might be inclined to think that Critias is being deceptive when he
shows why it is Timaeuswhose subject is divine, not human bodieswho
needs to employ deception.14 To point this contrast, Critias introduces the image
of a painter to contrast two types of image making, one easy, the other difficult:

Critias: The accounts given by us all must be, of course, of the nature of an
imitation [] and a copy []; and if we look at the image-making

14. Cf. Criti. 107b1-4 (translation W. R. M. Lamb): Critias: For when the listeners
are in a state of inexperience and complete ignorance about a matter, such a state of mind
affords great opportunities to the person who is going to discourse on that matter; and we
know what our state is concerning knowledge of the gods.