The Reading Order of Plato's Dialogues PDF

THE READING ORDER OF PLATO'S DIALOGUES
Author(s): William H. F. Altman

Source: Phoenix, Vol. 64, No. 1/2 (Spring-Summer/printemps-été 2010), pp. 18-51
Published by: Classical Association of Canada
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23074778
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William H. F. Altman
J. WEi.VF. years ago in this journal, Carol Poster (1998: 282-283), as part of
"a methodological prolegomenon to Platonic hermeneutics," classified four ways
of ordering the Platonic dialogues, one of them designated "(3) pedagogical order"
and defined as "the order in which we should read or teach the dialogues." It is
my purpose to offer a twenty-first century reconstruction—agnostic with respect
to her "(1) chronology of composition," the dominant paradigm of nineteenth
and twentieth-century Platonic scholarship (Howland 1991)—of "the reading
order of Plato's dialogues" (hereafter "ROPD") in which the indispensable role
of Poster's "(2) dramatic chronology" and "(4) theoretical or metaphysical order"
will be viewed through the lens of pedagogical considerations. After reviewing
the intellectual history of the ROPD, seven principles of this reconstruction
project will be introduced (section i); four of these—beginning with Charles H.
Kahn's notion of "proleptic" composition (Kahn 1981a, 1988, and 1996)—will
be elucidated in connection with "the City of Good Men Only" in Republic
1 (section ii). Modifying Kahn's conception of the relationship between Lysis
and Symposium. (Kahn 1996: 258-291), section hi will make the case that Plato
intended Lysis to follow Symposium in the ROPD in order to test whether the
student/reader has assimilated Diotima's conception of what is one's own (to
oiksÎov). Given that grasping the tragic aspect of Symposium, by contrast, requires
a detailed knowledge of Athenian political history, section iv will show that
Aspasia's intentionally anachronistic oration in Menexenus precedes Symposium in
the ROPD. Once the pedagogical principles on which the reconstruction is based
have been applied to Menexenus, Symposium, and Lysis, section v will present a
synopsis of the ROPD as a whole.
I. RECONSTRUCTING THE ROPD
Our edition of Plato is inseparable from the search, once

interest to his students, for the ROPD; Charles Dunn's stud
(1974: 1976; see also Tarrant 1993) show that the nine "tetralog
dialogues and the Letters arranged in sets of four) constituted
To my wonderful teachers at the University of Toronto, George Edison (in me

Nicholson (Trinity College), Wallace McLeod and Denys de Montmollin
respectfully dedicate this study. Victoria Wohl, Carol Poster, and an anonymou
have provided invaluable criticism and support; thanks are also due to Roslyn W
Brisson, and Melissa Lane from whose comments this paper has benefited. N
errors and infelicities are entirely my own responsibility. As revised for publi
submitted to Phoenix in its present form on June 6, 2008.
Phoenix, Vol. 64 (2010) 1-2.
THE READING ORDER OF PLATO'S DIALOGUES 19
ROPD. It is instructive that the Neo-Platonist Albinus takes Thrasyllus to task for
the opening Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo quartet (Snyder 2000: 98-99);
a long tradition of ancient attempts to determine the ROPD (Festugière 1969;
Mansfeld 1994: 64, n. Ill) was guided by what Poster calls "theoretical and
metaphysical order" in sharp distinction to the "dramatic chronology" that guides
Thrasyllus, albeit to a limited extent (Mansfeld 1994: 67-68). But neither of
these two schools of thought privileged "pedagogical order" in the sense I propose.
This can be illustrated with reference to Alcibiades Major, both camps accept it as
genuine (Snyder 2000: 97) but those who place it first in the ROPD—the camp
hostile to the First Tetralogy of Thrasyllus—did so for theoretical/metaphysical
reasons, not pedagogical ones. Proclus (O'Neill 1965: 1-4), for example* says
nothing about the fact that its childlike and natural simplicity—if the teacher
reads "Socrates," the student scarcely needs a script—makes Alcibiades Major the
ideal place to begin guiding the neophyte.1 The first principle of the ROPD
proposed here is that it is guided by pedagogical considerations: to speak very
roughly, the more difficult dialogues are to be read only after the preparation
provided by easier and earlier ones (i.e., earlier with respect to the ROPD).
This ROPD reconstruction project is therefore both old and new: it accom
plishes an ancient objective with means not ably employed in antiquity. Precisely
because most of those who sought the ROPD in the past were guided by a
Neo-Platonic contempt for the merely historical, they ignored the pedagogical
advantages of "dramatic chronology," whereas a cycle of dialogues culminating in
Phaedo tells a compelling stoiy with a happy ending about a remarkable hero. As
for Thrasyllus, the limits of his loyalty to "dramatic chronology" can be illustrated
by the fact that he failed to interpolate Sophist and Statesman between Euthyphro
and Apology in his First Tetralogy. Had he done so, he would have had, no sound
pedagogical reason for confronting neophytes with the difficult Sophist as their
second dialogue. In short, placing the Phaedo last in the ROPD not only provides a
good ending for the story of Socrates but also ensures that complex dialogues like
Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman are read near the end of it. And it is certainly
Plato's concern for effective pedagogy that explains the priority of the elementary
Alcibiades Major.
It is probably no accident that a concern for reconstructing the ROPD would
disappear as soon as the Alcibiades Majorwas dropped from the canon.2 Freed at last
1 Heidel 1896: 62: "Furthermore, in its character as a primer of Platonism in regards to ethics and
politics, Alcibiades I contains a greater number of distinctively Platonic thoughts than can be found in
any number of even the greater single works of Plato. In this respect the dialogue may be pronounced
too Platonic." Compare Guthrie 1969: 470: "a dialogue which, whether or not Plato wrote it, was
apdy described by Burnet as 'designed as a sort of introduction to Socratic philosophy for beginners'."
2 Conversely, it is renewed interest in the Alcibiades Major (Scott 2000; Denyer 2001) and the
other anathetized dialogues (Pangle 1987) that has finally made it possible to renew the ROPD
question. Cooper and Hutchinson (1997) not only makes all thirtyrfive dialogues widely available in
English but also contains the following observation (x): "Thrasyllus' order appears to be determined by
20 PHOENIX
from the metaphysical baggage ofNeo-Platonism, any pedagogical justificatio

regarding Alcibiades Major as a wonderful way to introduce the student/reader
Platonic dialogue immediately confronts the modern obj ection that it, along w
considerable (but now apparently shrinking) number of dialogues, is not by
The growing interest in Cleitophon is a case in point,3 especially because it a
an instance where my ROPD coincides with that of Thrasyllus. Considered a
Cleitophon appears to be incomplete and inauthentic. Considered as authent
viewed in isolation, it can be used to promote a radical alternative to Plato
(Kremer 2004). But it is of great pedagogical importance when conside
an authentic introduction to Republic (cf. Bowe 2004; Souilhé 1949: 17
Thrasyllus too must have recognized. The second principle of the ROPD pro
here is that none of the thirty-five dialogues transmitted by Thrasyllus
be considered inauthentic a priori; indeed, a new criterion for authenticit
being employed: a dialogue is authentic when it is snugly joined—by dram
pedagogical, and/or theoretical/metaphysical considerations—between two o
dialogues, the one that precedes and the one that follows it in the ROPD.
The third principle is that dramatic considerations—having been detach
from various preconceptions about their philosophical significance (Grisw
2008: 205-207)—are . our best guide to the ROPD and therefore trump
speculative principles in cases of conflict: the difficult Protagoras thus pre
the introductory Alcibiades Major. It will be observed that although both
present in the house of Callias, Socrates never speaks to Alcibiades in Prota
while the Alcibiades Major represents their first actual conversation (Ale. 1.1
In that conversation, the otherwise befuddled Alcibiades evades (to his cos
Socratic trap by means of a sophisticated trick (Ale. l.lllal-3) used by Protag
(.Prot. 327e3-328al; see Denyer 2001: 122). But dramatic connections be
dialogues need not always be chronological; a much broader conceptio
dramatic detail will be employed here. For example, the Menexenus takes
after the Lysis with respect to "dramatic chronology"; Menexenus has grow
since his schooldays with Lysis (Nails 2002: 319). But as section m will
clear, there are pedagogical, theoretical, and dramatic considerations that
Lysis after Symposium, just as there are pedagogical, theoretical, dramati
indeed chronological considerations that place Menexenus before it (sectio
In neither case is the "dramatic" connection crudely chronological: the fact
example, that Socrates leaves Agathon's house for the Lyceum (Symp. 223
and that the Lysis finds him en route thither (Ly. 203al) is paradigmatic of
kind of dramatic clue that guides my reconstruction of the ROPD.
no single criterion but by several sometimes conflicting ones, though his arrangement may re
some more or less unified idea about the order in which the dialogues should be read and taugh
3Grote 1865; Grube 1931; Souilhé 1949; Orwin 1982; Pangle 1987; Slings 1999; Rowe
Bailly 2003; and Kremer 2004.
4 All references are to the text of Burnet (1900-1907).
With a title suggesting a beginning and a dramatic setting that wakes the dawn
{Prot. 310a8; cf. Phd. 118e7-8), the Protagoras is both a very difficult dialogue
and a very vivid one: it brings to life the historical context for even the dullest
student but would confuse even the brightest about a wide variety of important
subjects (Guthrie 1975: 235). A fourth principle of the ROPD proposed here is
that Plato employs "proleptic" composition: he begins by confusing the student
in an ultimately salutary manner, i.e., about things that it is pedagogically useful
for the student to be confused about. To give the most important example: the
student who comes to Republic with Protagoras in mind—where piety may be the
fifth virtue and virtue may have no parts (Prot. 349bl-3)—will be as justly critical
of the justice discovered in Book 4 as her search for an answer to Cleitophon's
burning question (Clit. 408d7-e2) will make her receptive to the subterranean
justice only discovered by returning to the Cave.
The fifth principle is the absolute centrality of Republic in the ROPD.5
-Although less accessible to those who have not recently completed the series of
dialogues beginning with Protagoras and ending with Cleitophon (Rep. 520b6-7),
Republic 7 contains the essence of Platonism: Plato's teaching is his answer
to Cleitophon's question (Rep. 520cl). In accordance with the principle of
pedagogical priority, Plato is understood here as first and foremost a teacher, a
teacher with a school—the Academy—as well as a teaching. The dialogues are
intended to transmit that teaching through (1) the dialectic represented in the
dialogues, (2) dialectic between students about the dialogues, and (3)—this point
is crucial to reconstructing the ROPD—the inter-dialogue dialectic between the
dialogues when read in the proper order. Most importantly, "(3)" reveals the
centrality of (4) the decisive dialogue between Plato and the reader in Republic 7.
Understanding Plato's pedagogy therefore depends on the recognition that there
are three distinct classes of Platonic dialogue: the Republic, the dialogues that
prepare the way for the Republic, and the dialogues that follow it in the ROPD.
The basic principle underlying this classification will be illustrated here in
the context of Symposium, a dialogue that comes closer to Republic than any of
the other dialogues that precede Republic in my reconstruction of the ROPD. In
accordance with the importance of the visual revelation that is the Idea, these
dialogues (Kahn [1996: 42 and 274] justly adds the later Phaedo) will here be
called "visionary." It will likewise be seen that the Plato who emerges from
the reconstructed ROPD will resemble what used to be called "a Platonist." He
is in any case a philosopher, an idealist, and a teacher: a teacher who, while
alive, taught others to philosophize and who—especially when the unity of his
5 Cf. Annas 1999: 95: "If we try to jettison the assumptions that the Republic is a contribution to
political theory, and that it is obviously the most important and central of the dialogues, the natural
culmination of a development from the Socratic dialogues, and if we try to restore it to its ancient
place—one dialogue among many in which Plato develops an argument about the sufficiency of virtue
for happiness—we shall have done a great deal to restore balance and proportion to "our study of Plato's
thought."
22 PHOENIX
richly diverse and dialectical curriculum6 is recognized—continues to do jus

through his writings. At the heart of his thought is "the Idea of the
and, in its light, the true philosopher's just (and therefore voluntary; see
Off. 1.28) return to the Cave. He is not a "post-Modern Plato" (Zuckert 19
48-56; cf. Strauss 1946: 361), his Socrates does not know (Ap. 21d7) th
knows nothing (Strauss 1953: 32 and 1983: 42), and his use of the dialogue
does not preclude the fact that he has a teaching (Strauss 1987: 33 followe
Frede 1992). Although each dialogue is a beautiful work of art, the principle
each dialogue must be understood without reference to any other—the prin
of hermeneutic isolationism (e.g., Press 1993: 109-111)—is antithetical to t
project undertaken here (see Ferrari 2003: 244). It may be useful to explici
identify the view that Plato has a visionary teaching and that he expressed
his dialogues as a sixth principle.
The seventh (and final) principle is somewhat more difficult to elucidat
To begin with, it identifies "testing" as a crucial element of Platonic peda
For reasons to be explained in section ii, I will use the neologism "basanist
based on the Greek word for "touchstone," as a technical term. There are
points that need to be made right away about "the basanistic element in P
dialogues": (1) Along withproleptic and visionary (with which it forms a triad
basanistic element is best understood as one of three theoretical and hypoth
springboards (Rep. 511b6) towards hermeneutic clarity rather than as a rigi
exclusive technical term. (2) Although there is a meaningful sense in whic
given dialogue can crudely be called proleptic, visionary, or basanistic, it is b
to think of this triad as inter-related elements that can also be deployed in a si
dialogue, or even in a single passage (as will be demonstrated in section n)
The basanistic element is like a springboard in another sense, the same sen
which a good student actually learns from taking a well-constructed test.
deploys the basanistic element for a triple purpose: (a) to ensure that the st
has grasped his visionary teaching, (b) to cause that teaching to leap from
text into the mind of the student (Rep. 435al-2), and (c) to point the studen
something even greater than what the teacher has already taught.7
6Cic. Or. 12 (translation mine): "Of course I'm also aware that I often seem to be saying ori
things when I'm saying very ancient ones (albeit having been unheard by most) and I confess
to stand out as an orator—if that's what I am, or in any case, whatever else it is that I a
etiam quicumque sim]—not from the ministrations of the rhetoricians but from the open spaces
Academy. For such is the curricula of many-leveled and conflicting dialogues [curricula multip
variorumque sermonum\ in which the tracks of Plato have been principally impressed." For tran
sermones as "dialogues," see Fantham 2004: SO, n. 2.
7 A crucial instance of the basanistic is Socrates' insistence at Phdr. 275d4-e5 on the m
incapacity of a written text to create dialectic with the student/reader (compare Sayre 199
readers of Republic 7 who recognize themselves as the "you" Plato has addressed at Rep. 520b5
this to be untrue. The Tubingen school—from Kramer 1959: 393 to Reale 1990—takes the Ph
passage literally. A reductio ad absurdum on this approach is Szlezâk 1999: 46 where the di
become "a witty game which gave him [it. Plato] great pleasure." Although it owes nothing
The foregoing seven principles, hereafter to be cited by numbers alone (e

"§1"), may be usefully simplified as follows:
§1. Pedagogical Effectiveness: elementary dialogues precede complex ones.

§2. New Criterion of Authenticity: each dialogue snug between two others.
§3. Primacy of Dramatic Connections; often but not always chronological.
§4. Proleptic Composition: confusing students first in a pedagogically useful way.
§5. Centrality of Republic, having been prepared (§4) for the Good and justice.
§6. Visionary Teaching: Plato revealed (§5) as teacher and "Platonist."
§7. "Basanistic" Testing: students must reject falsehoods on the basis of §6.
The interplay of §4, §6, and §7 will now be illustrated in the context of Rep
1 (§5).
II. THE CITY OF GOOD MEN ONLY
Socrates introduces the City of Good Men Only (he

response to Glaucon's first interruption {Rep. 347a7): Pla
brother as failing to grasp what Socrates meant by the pe
men to take up the burden of political office, i.e., to go b
as Cicero and Cicero's Demosthenes did.8 That penalty is,
by worse men (Rep. 347c3-5).
For we may venture to say that, if there should be a city of good m

office-holding would be as eagerly contended for as office is no
made plain that in very truth the true ruler does not naturally s
that of the ruled; so that every man of understanding [rcâç ô y
choose to be benefited by another than to be bothered with bene
(Rep. 347d2-8; Shorey)
The political message of Republic is that unless those ruling

be philosophizing, those cities will be badly ruled (Rep. 52
the iv(or)y tower philosophers (Rep. 473d3-5) who refuse t
(Rep. 592a5) even though better qualified than those who
(Rep. 557e2-3) are not living in accordance with the Pl
592b2—3), particularly when their own earthly city is a d
the edge of tyranny and tragedy. For true philosophers, "
prized because it leaves the philosopher free to consider
testimony of Aristotle (see Cherniss 1945), the ROPD is nevertheless

doctrines" of the Tubingen school; the former could easily take the place
at Gaiser 1963: 6. Both approaches restore Platonism to Plato while d
constitute "a journey of thought with no end" (Szlezâk 1999: 116). B
Plato's teaching is to be sought by the student/reader within the dial
(compare Ep. 7.341c4-d2 with Rep. 434e4-435a2) although the moment
takes place only within the student.
8 On Demosthenes as Plato's student, see Douglas 1966: 100: "as cons
scholars as it is asserted by ancient sources.... "
24 PHOENIX
is truly good (i.e., the Idea of the Good): good rulers, on the other han
attend precisely to the indefinite plurality of things that are badly man
order to govern well {Rep. 520c3—6). Despite being by nature suited for so
entirely different, then, only true philosophers could yet become the kind
whose unitary goal is to see things well managed for the benefit of those th
In short, only a philosopher, having no interest in making money, being
or exercising power is, "in reality, the true ruler." Precisely because th
consists only of the good, none of them covets money or honor. The cruc
however, is that the penalty of being ruled by worse men does not exist
city as it does in ours. It follows, therefore (claims Socrates provocativel
no one would rule in the CGMO: no one would be willing to do so.
When Socrates says: "every one in the know would choose rather
benefited by someone else than be bothered with benefiting another" (
Mem. 2.10.3), he is describing a moral universe where no parent wo
care of an infant, no child would nurse their dying parent, and certain
independently wealthy genius would take the time to teach students y
slow-witted enough to require the crystal clarity of Alcibiades Major. I
flatly contradicts what Socrates himself has just said: "the true ruler h
the nature to watch out for his own advantage." Platonic pedagogy orig
revolved around the possibility that a freeborn Greek could be brought
{Rep. 518c8—9) to recognize that the self-interested position of 7tâç ô yiy
is a slavish point of view.9 In any context, ancient or modern, denying t
important of all ethical truths—i.e., that altruism is good and selfishn
forces students to discover it for themselves (cf. Cic. Fin. 2.118). The alt
to reading this passage as basanistic is a slavish literalism in defense of
more illiberal selfishness. This is, moreover, only the first of three tim
this basanistic affirmation of selfishness occurs in Republic.10 But the b
portion of the CGMO—where the willingness of a good man to rule is ex
denied—is the paradigmatic case. To begin with, the contradiction—bas
9Thrasymachus (Rep. 344c5-6; Shorey) claims that "injustice on a sufficiently large

stronger, freer [eX-euGspicoxepov], and more masterful thing than justice." Socrates aims to rev
judgment in accordance with noblesse oblige and he therefore depends on his audience's abh
of acting the part of a slave. Callicles' conception of to Ô0UÀ,07tp87ieç (G. 485b7) is in
comparing 485el and 486c3; Socrates reverses this formula beginning at 518a2 (already
482d8). The process actually begins at Ale. 1.134c4-6: wickedness is Ô00À,07ip87iéç whil
8A.eu08pO7cp87i8ç; Alcibiades is in a slavish position (134cl0-ll) from the start.
Compare Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 4.1 (1120a21-23): "And of all virtuous people t
[ol 8À,8u0épioi] are perhaps the most beloved, because they are beneficial [d)(j)éÀ,i|j.oi] to o
they are so in that they give [èv xfl ôôaei]." By definition the liberal (ol £À,eu0épioi) are no
i.e., selfish. See also 1120al3—15 and 1120a23—25.
10Rep. 347d6-8, 489b6-c3, and 599b6-7. All involve the distinction between active and
verb forms in the context of altruism and selfishness. In the second, not even the Book
impels the stargazing philosopher to struggle for the helm (this explains Rep. 498c9-dl). In t
Plato's Socrates would only be correct if there were no Plato's Socrates. See Altman 2009: 8
the difference between active and passive verb forms—is clearer in the original
(347d4-8):
xqj ôvxi àÀriSivôç apxcov où 7té(|>OK£ xô aoxqj .ouji(|)épov aKoneîaGai àXXà xô x$ âpxo
(j.svcp- raaxs 7tâç âv ô yiyvcnaKtov xo cb<|>eêîa0ai |aâM.ov D-oixo orc' âXXov tî a^Xov
wijieXôv Tipayâxa e'xeiv.
The true ruler (ap%cov) considers the advantage of the ruled (xoj à.pxop.Év<p) when
ruling, but every man of understanding prefers to be benefited (ax|)sA,sta0ai)
rather than to benefit (dx|>£Xcov) when deciding not to rule. The true ruler is
therefore precisely the opposite of the man of understanding. Unlike the true
ruler (t<m ovti à/.r|0ivoç dp'/ojv), the man of understanding (ttccç ô yiyvoocnccov)
is guided by his own advantage (to auxcp cu|i(j>Épov). On the other hand, it is
precisely the nature (tieûke) of the true ruler not to be so guided. Although the
contradiction involved here is scarcely invisible, the student who turns to Republic
in the context of the ROPD is particularly well prepared to interrupt—as Glaucon
has just done—and reject the decision of the knowing man who would rather be
benefited than to benefit others.
In the present case, it is Gorgias that "Plato the teacher" (cf. Stenzel 1928)
counts on the student remembering; indeed the passage is an unforgettable
one. Socrates had presented an even more controversial variant of the ethical
abyss dividing the active and passive verb forms in Gorgias: xô àôiKEÎv aïcrxiov
Eivai too â5iK£iCT0ai (i.e., "committing an injustice is more disgraceful than
suffering it," G. 482d8; translation mine). Anyone selfish enough to uniformly
prefer o)(|>£/a:îa0ca to (àcfiEÂcov (i.e., the man who is guided exclusively by to
auxo) au(i(|)£pov) is most unlikely to consider to ciSikelv to be aïa/iov than
àôiKEiaOm. But strictly as a matter of logical argumentation, the argument in
Gorgias does not entail the opposite of what Socrates says about the CGMO.
The relationship between the two active/passive pairs is therefore extremely
interesting: although it is more difficult in practice to undergo to à8iK£Îa0cu in
order to avoid the greater evil of to àSiKEÎv, it is more difficult in theory to show
why it is aïcrxiov ("more shameful") to prefer oj<t>£/.£Î<T0ca to di)<j>£Xcov. In other
words, there are many generous people who are willing to benefit others without
a return who would think twice about suffering an injustice rather than avoiding
it altogether by doing something unethical to someone else. In practice, then,
the willingness to undergo injustice in preference to performing it is much less
common than being willing to benefit others. But in theory, it is another matter.
Socrates can show, as he does in Gorgias, that to ciôikeÎv is bad for the soul
(i.e., is not to auxw ou|a(^£pov) but he simply cannot do this in the case of to
oj(|)E/.EK70ai: it's hardly contrary to one's own advantage to be benefited. Nor can
he, in conformity with the censorship imposed upon him by Plato's brothers {Rep.
358b6-7 and 366e6), invoke the Afterlife. In other words (and strictly in the
context of the ROPD), it makes sense that the active/passive paradox in Gorgias
is easier (albeit only theoretically) and therefore earlier than its counterpart in
26 PHOENIX
Republic (§1) even if it is more striking, paradoxical, and far more diffic
practice. But any student who has truly been persuaded by Socrates in Go
will object to what she now hears in Republic, indeed the story of Soc
from first to last concerns the benefactor (o cbcfm/aov) par excellence who wil
endures being wronged (to àSiKeîaQcu), likewise par excellence. Therefore
intra-textual—i.e., fictional—interruption of Glaucon at 347a6 deserves an
from the extra-textual student/reader who remembers Gorgias: exactly as G
interrupted just a moment before, so now Plato is challenging (or provok
the student/reader to reject not so much the logic as the slavish self-intere
raxç ô yiyvcocmov guided by to autrp au|i(|)épov. And this would simultane
constitute a rejection of the slavish literalism appropriate to a merely mute
unresponsive text.
It is now time to elucidate the CGMO as a microcosm of the prolep
visionary, and basanistic elements. Presented proleptically in section i, it is w
recall that there are proleptic dialogues (or, in the present case, proleptic po
of a dialogue) that are designed to confuse the reader in a salutary way thr
paradox concerning matters about which it is pedagogically necessary for
student to be confused if they are to be prepared for what is to come (§4).
the first of three clauses [I] in the single sentence that describes the CGMO
is perfectly proleptic:
[I] Were it to happen that a city of good men came into being, not to rule would
prized as ruling is today, [II] and there it would become crystal clear that, in reality
true ruler has not the nature to watch out for his own advantage but that of the rule
for every one in the know would choose rather to be benefited by someone else tha
bothered with benefiting another.
[I] is paradoxical on two levels: (1) it explicitly contradicts what most of

think is true, guided as we are by what is "prized ... today" and (2) it is wri
from the philosopher's perspective—unique for prizing the chance not to ru
perspective that Plato will eventually want us to choose for ourselves but th
here tells us nothing about, not even that it is the perspective of a philosop
Plato uses prolepsis (Kahn 1993: 138) and paradox to awaken the stud
curiosity about what the view will be like from the mountaintops upon wh
will someday help us to take our stand (at least for the moment before retu
to the Cave). And it is precisely the view from the mountain that is presen
section [II]:
[II] and there it would become crystal clear [Kata(|)avèç] that, in reality, the true ruler [x(p
ôvtt àXrjGivôç apxcov] hasn't the nature to watch out for his own advantage but that of
the ruled ...
This clause is a microcosm of the [II] visionary dialogues (or, in the case of
Republic, the vision-producing portions of a single dialogue). Everything here
11 See Miller 1985 for a path-breaking willingness to see Plato as. directly engaging the reader.
is pure Platonism (§6): here, there is neither paradox nor test. The true ruler
possesses the noble nature that is inseparable from noblesse oblige. Plato knows
(i.e., has seen) that the possibility of toj ôvti à/.r]0ivôç ap/cov ("the true ruler
with respect to that which truly is") has been realized in both Socrates and in
himself. Just as Socrates quickened this conception in Aristocles son of Ariston,
so too will the re-made Plato now do the same for us: i.e., the purpose of Plato
the teacher is to actualize this natural potentiality in his readers/students. "[II]"
is, in short, a crystal clear statement of altruism and, at the same time, the essence
of Platonic justice (§5). Plato does all this for our benefit, which is not to say that
it is not beneficial for him to do so as well. It has been well and truly said that
teaching is the least highly paid but most rewarding profession. But it is not only
the teacher who knows as a matter of fact that to be ô cocj)e/.ojv is simultaneously
to undergo to <b<|)eA,£ict0cci precisely when being the former is chosen in perfect
contempt for the latter.
But Plato the teacher was not content with expressing beautiful thoughts
beautifully and that is why he also employs the basanistic element [III]:
[III] for every one in the know [râç ... ô yiyvcÔCTKWv] would choose rather to be benefited
by someone else than be bothered with benefiting another.
By contradicting what he has just said in the visionary section, Socrates here states
the opposite of the truth in order to test the student (§7). In other words, Plato
challenges the reader to raise the questions—and, on their basis, to make the
kinds of decision—that lead to the truth. Plato the teacher was not inclined, at
least after he had gained some teaching experience (because every teacher learns
this lesson the hard way), to think that the student who enthusiastically agreed
with him about everything had really or necessarily gotten the point. A student
could, for example, praise the Socratic position in the Gorgias for its logical or
even rhetorical excellences but reveal—by a failure to interrupt here—her lack of
commitment to its implications. In short, as this third clause shows, Plato tests his
students. He can even use Socrates (to say nothing of less attractive interlocutors)
to trick the reader into accepting something that is false for a pedagogical purpose
(Beversluis 2000). In fact, not only is testing an essential part of Platonic pedagogy
but having an authority figure present falsehoods, half-truths, or merely partial
truths is the principal way Plato tests his students/readers, i.e., begets in them a
firm possession of the truth. As a rule of thumb, it is prudent to think of the
dialogues in which "one in the know" takes the lead—men like Timaeus, Critias,
Parmenides, the Eleatic Stranger, and his Athenian counterpart—as basanistic.
But there is far more to be said about this basanistic element: the ideal test
teaches both student and teacher. In other words, there is a danger in taking
the notion of "test" too literally. To be sure Plato wanted to test his students,
but hardly as an end in itself. By testing as well as teaching them through the
basanistic element, he was able to create a truly dialectical pedagogy: his students
come to know themselves in battle with the errors to which Plato deliberately
28 PHOENIX
exposes them. When students reject the selfishness of "the man in the kn
they not only are proved worthy but also confirm within themselves (Frede
219) the inborn insights of which Plato's maieutic pedagogy is intended to d
them.
All of these considerations are built into the word "basanistic." To begin with,
most Platonic words for "test" are derived from pâaavoç.12 E. R. Dodds explains
the term in his commentary on the Gorgias (1959: 280): it is "the touchstone
(Auô(a /aOoç), a kind of black quartz jasper ... used for assaying samples of gold
by rubbing them against the touchstone and comparing the streaks they left on
it." The passage from which the use of "basanistic" is derived is Gorgias 486d2-7,
partly because what Socrates says to Callicles afterwards is exactly what I conceive
Plato to be saying implicitly to his students throughout (G. 486e5-6; translation
mine): "I know well that should you agree with me concerning the things this soul
of mine [r| sjifi v|/oxr|] considers right, that these same things are ipso facto [i]8r|]
»
true.
If my soul were wrought of gold, Callicles, do you not think I should be delighted to find
one of those stones wherewith they test [|3aaavîÇoucriv] gold—the best of them—and
the best one; which I could apply to it, and it established that my soul had been well
nurtured, I should be assured that I was in good condition and in need of no further test
[Pcxaâvou]? (G. 486d2-5; tr. W. D. Woodhead)
It is therefore not only a question of a teacher proving a studen

finding and together confirming the truth through dialectic (
47).
III. LYSIS AND SYMPOSIUM
Unlike Kahn's "proleptic," the neologism "basanistic" is meaningful exc

in the context of the ROPD, i.e., outside the context of mainstream
scholarship.13 Kahn's intellectual context is the chronology of com
characteristic of that mainstream; while Kahn never doubts that the Lysis
the Symposium in order of composition, his remarkable claim is that it an
the latter "proleptically"; i.e., that Plato had the "solution" of the Sympo
12 Plato repeatedly uses both the verb (3aaaviÇco (thirty-four instances) and the nou
throughout the corpus. See in particular Rep. 7.537b5-540a2 and G. 486d3-487e2.
13 In a lively exchange, Griswold (1999 and 2000) and Kahn (2000) have succeeded in b
series of questions relevant to the ROPD into the scholarly mainstream. Although the p
solution proposed here is not mooted in their debate (but see Kahn 1996: 48), the ROPD h
splits the difference between Kahn (with his dual commitments to proleptic composit
chronology of composition) and Griswold (with his mixed commitments both to "fictive ch
and hermeneutic isolationism) having excluded the second member of each pair. See also Osb
58: "It remains unclear, therefore, whether the reader would be expected to approach the Ly
the Symposium in mind, or to approach the Symposium having already read the Lysis'' Th
fact of her having raised this question suggests that she inclines to the solution being propo
although the leaden weight of "chronology of composition" is revealed at 58, n. 19.
mind" when he wrote the Lysis (Kahn 1996: 267). In Kahn's sense of the term,
I would agree that the Lysis is "proleptic."14 But "proleptic" acquires a new sense
in the ROPD context; it is the (prior) complement to the (posterior) "basanistic."
Once the meaning of "proleptic" has been transformed in this way, the intersection
between the first two sections of this article and mainstream Plato studies can be
stated: with respect to Symposium, the Lysis is basanistic, not proleptic.
Demonstrating this claim does not require re-inventing the wheel: the close
connection between Lysis and Symposium has long been recognized (Wirth 1895:
216). In other words, the controversial aspect of this claim is implicit in the
term "basanistic" and thus in the notion of the ROPD; the textual evidence that
supports the claim—the close thematic and substantive relationship between the
two dialogues—is widely known and it is therefore unnecessary to argue for a
new interpretation of Lysis. It is rather a question of situating the best available
interpretations of Lysis in the context of the ROPD hypothesis. Kahn's serviceable
reading of the dialogue (Kahn 1996: 281-291) is certainly a good place to start,
and the evidence he cites for reading it as proleptic fully supports my claim that
it is actually basanistic.15 But there are two other more detailed readings of Lysis
that deserve attention, each being constituted—appropriately enough, given the
pairing of Menexenus and Lysis in Lysis—by a pair. The first of these is the recent
study of Lysis by Terry Penner and Christopher Rowe (2005), the second is a pair
of articles by Francisco J. Gonzalez (1995 and 2000a).
In "Plato's Lysis: An Enactment of Philosophical Kinship," Gonzalez (1995:
69) makes a brilliant observation:
The Lysis has the further problem that it has always existed in the shadow of two other
works that seem to provide solutions to the problems it raises: Plato's Symposium and
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Consequently interpretation of the Lysis has generally
revolved around these, borrowing its light from them.
Gonzalez then proceeds to offer a fourfold classification of previous interpretations

based on two differentiae: the Lysis either (a) contains or (b) fails to provide the
solution(s) supplied by either (i) Plato or (ii) Aristotle. The basanistic reading of
14Kahn (2000: 190) suggests that he is now disowning the term ("I was [rc. beginning with Kahn
1996] increasingly uncomfortable with the term 'proleptic' ..."); I am happy to adopt it. Although
derived from Kahn 1981a, 1988, and 1996, the term "proleptic" will be used hereafter only in the
context of the ROPD.
15 We agree that Lysis is a puzzle and that Symposium provides its solution (Kahn 1996: 266-267)
but only Kahn is concerned with squaring this insight with the chronological priority of Lysis (281);
this creates a tension in his broad conception of Lysis. Compare 266 ("no reader who comes to
Lysis without knowledge of the doctrine expounded in the Symposium could understand") with 267
("Plato thus presents us in Lysis] with a series of enigmatic hints that form a kind of puzzle for
the uninitiated reader to decipher, but that become completely intelligible"); the ROPD eliminates
the problem. Parsing the exact difference between Kahn's views and mine is a tricky business: in the
ROPD, it is Hippias Major that is proleptic with respect to Symposium (Hip. Maj. 286dl-2: xi sail
to KaA,ov;) in Kahn's sense while Kahn himself rejects the Hippias Major as inauthentic (Kahn 1981a:
308, n. 10; see also Kahn 1996: 182).
30 PHOENIX
Lysis accounts for the existence of all four of these types: deliberately creat
Plato as a test—a test administered to the young Aristode along with Plato's
students/readers—the Lysis can only be solved on a Platonic basis by reali
that its explicit failure to resolve problems actually points the way back
solution already contained in the Symposium. Although this solution is im
in the Lysis, Aristode attempted to solve its puzzle—as Plato intended tha
student/reader should—without embracing or grasping his teacher's solution
relationship between Aristotle and Lysis will be revisited at the end of this sec
for the present, it is sufficient to point out that Gonzalez situates himself in a
category (1995: 70): "So long as this dialogue is not read on its own, its cohe
will remain in question." Despite his almost polemical insistence in 1995 th
his reading is independent of Symposium (1995: 71 and 88-89), Gonzalez cl
derives little from Aristode (1995: 87, n. 38). Moreover, in his "Socrat
Loving One's Own: A Traditional Conception of <1)1 AI A Radically Transfor
(2000a), Gonzalez drops his polemical stance and bases his compelling readi
Lysis on conceptions that originate in Symposium (2000a: 394).
Penner and Rowe (2005: 300-307) explicitly address the relationship betw
Lysis and Symposium and their conclusion is that the two dialogues are cons
(303). If Gonzalez is more influenced by the Symposium than he adm
Penner and Rowe solve the Lysis on far more Aristotelian lines than Gonz
does (260-279). But such a characterization is unfair to their brilliant
subtle reading: it steers an ingenious—if potentially self-contradictory16—c
between Plato and Aristotle that preserves the best of both. This is no
place to review this remarkable book, an amiable product of a philoso
dialogue between friends about friendship;17 but it is noteworthy that Pe
and Rowe discover the key that unlocks their synthetic solution to the Lys
the Euthydemus (264-267, 268, and 276). Set in the Lyceum (Euthd. 27
the destination Socrates does not reach in Lysis (Planeaux 2001)—it fo
Symposium and Lysis in my ROPD. To summarize, Penner and Rowe (2005
provide an ultra-modern and post-Platonic solution to the Lysis that nevert
reveals something amazing about Platonic pedagogy—the strictly philosop
continuity between Symposium and Lysis that emerges when guided retrospect
by Euthydemus—without any regard for the details of dramatic presentation
the key idea in the Symposium, of eras as desire for "procreation in the beautiful" (206c
is in essence a colorful elaboration of Socrates' conclusion about the genuine lover in
222a6-7, albeit a brilliant—brilliantly coloured—and suggestive elaboration. That
adds nothing of philosophical substance.
16Penner and Rowe 2005: 267 (emphasis in original): "Let us try to offer an explanation
idea of being good in itself as a means to happiness
17 Compare the more dialectical but less amiable relationship between Hans von Arnim and
Pohlenz described in Gonzalez 1995: 81, n. 27 and 83, n. 29. See von Arnim 1914: 59 f
anticipation of Kahn's "proleptic" that emerges in dialogue with Pohlenz.
Naturally Penner and Rowe have no reason to ask themselves whether a student
could discover the essence of "the genuine lover" in Lysis without having read
Symposium.
The more intriguing implications of the basanistic element in Plato—that it
not only challenges the student to apply an earlier solution but leads her farther
as a result of doing so—is implicit in the claim made by Gonzalez (1995: 71)
that "Lysis goes beyond" Symposium (also Geier 2002: 66). Although by no means
entirely uncomfortable with the judgment of Penner and Rowe that Gonzalez
reverses here, the latter seems closer to the truth (Gonzalez 1995: 89):
The important point is that the Lysis, in pursuing the relation between love and what is
oIkeÎov, discloses something about love that we cannot learn from reading the Symposium.
But Gonzalez can only bring his reader to a place where this sentence is intelligible
in the context of Diotima's crucial description of to o'ikhiov at Symposium
205e5—206al, a passage he has just quoted (1995: 88, n. 40) before adding
(88-89):
The difference, however, is that while this suggestion is not at all pursued in the Symposium,
it is the main theme of the Lysis. This observation does not commit me to the view that
the Lysis was written after the Symposium.
Gonzalez is right. But with no alternative ordering principle to which he can

turn, he is forced to add this second sentence. With so much excellent work
done by others on Lysis, there has been no need to offer a new reading of the
dialogue but only to propose that the readings of those who have elucidated
its philosophical content be considered in a pedagogical context by raising the
question: "What role does the Lysis play in Plato's pedagogy?" The broad answer
to this question is embodied in the ROPD and more specifically in its basanistic
element. A few pedagogical details are worth mentioning: the student/reader is
prompted to recall Diotima's psxaû (the Leitmotiv and àpyr\ of her discourse;
Symp. 201el0-202a3) at Ly. 216d3-7, although Plato basanistically withholds the
verbal cue pctaqij until 220d6; this in turn accomplishes the return of philosophy
at Ly. 218a-b6 having been introduced to the student/reader at Symp. 204al-4.
The 7tpcoxov (fuz-ov {Ly. 219dl) introduces the student/reader to the notion of
infinite regress, recalls the Beautiful of Symposium, and points forward to the
Good (Kahn 1996: 267); its nature would be the central topic of discussion in
any academy worthy of its name. In short: the Platonic solution to the Lysis
requires applying Symp. 205e5-206al (§6) to Ly. 221e7—222a3 (§7). The ideal
examination question for the basanistic Lysis would be: "Why is Lysis (unlike
Menexenus) silent at 222a4?" (Geier 2002: 136-137). I would suggest that the
silence of Lysis—like Lysis himself {Ly. 213d8)—is philosophical in Plato's sense
of the term while the Xuoiç of the Lysis is the third component of any true
friendship (see Hoerber 1959: 18-19): the un-embodied Beautiful revealed by
Diotima {Symp. 211a5-b5).
32 PHOENIX
It is revealing that Aristotle introduces the meaning of the word À

employed above: "as a technical term, a. solution of a difficulty" (LSJ II.4).
on the other hand, uses it—along with "separation" (x&ipiapoc, Phd. 67d4)
the service of precisely the dualistic metaphysics that Aristotle rejected. It is u
put that way: "Aristotle rejected the separable Forms." From Plato's perspec
however, it would be stated otherwise: "Aristode never was able to grasp
Idea" (cf. Chang 2002). Given the tremendous impact Lysis had on Aristot
conception of friendship,18 itself the culminating topic of his Nicomachean Et
there is something to be said for the view that Aristode's failure (on P
terms, that is) to pass the test of Lysis as a neophyte had a decisive impa
his subsequent philosophical development. Ingenious attempts have been m
to absolve Aristotle of equivocation on the word oivcsîov at Nicomachean
9.9;19 a Platonist is spared this joyless task. But Aristotle's heroic struggle with
Lysis—regardless of its success—indicates that Plato intended the student/r
to struggle with it and that he created it in the belief that it could only be
by one who followed Diotima's hint that the essence of to oIkëÎov would m
nearly resemble what her student Socrates would later call "the Idea of the G
than it would the self s alter ego, so vividly described in the speech of Aristop
the comedian (cf. Sheffield 2006: 110-111).
IV. MENEXENUS AND THE TRAGEDY OF SYMPOSIUM
The last words of the Symposium20 (a) establish its dramatic conn
first words of Lysis, (b) offer the reader/student the most impor
interpretation, i.e., that Symposium itself proves Plato's Socrates r
some) by being at once comedy and tragedy, and (c) indicate why
to bring its tragedy to light—Menexenus is the necessary and perfec
(§4) for preparing the student/reader to interpret Symposium correct
not have known that Athenaeus {217a) would eventually record th
b.c.) that Agathon won the prize for Tragic Drama. But any reader
could deduce from the drunken entry of Alcibiades (cf. Thuc. 6.2
cjuvouGia (Symp. 172a7) takes place before the Great Fleet, under th
18 Price 1989: 1: "In his two surviving treatments [jc. concerning friendship], in
and Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle effectively takes the Lysis as his starting point; with
dialogue does he show such a detailed, yet implicit, familiarity."
19 Kahn 1981b; Price 1989: 122-123; Annas 1977: 550-551; Pakaluk 1998: 20
283-285; and Penner and Rowe 2005: 319.
20 Symp. 22362-12 (tr. M. Joyce): "Socrates was forcing them [jc. Agathon and A
admit that the same man might be capable of writing both comedy and tragedy—th
might be a comedian as well. But as he clinched the argument, which the other tw
a state to follow, they began to nod, and first Aristophanes fell off to sleep and the
was breaking. Whereupon Socrates tucked them up comfortably and went away, fo
by Aristodemus. And after calling at the Lyceum for a bath, he spent the rest of th
then, toward evening, made his way home to rest."
Alcibiades—he with whom, of course, the ROPD begins (Prot. 309al-2)—sailed

to Sicily (415 b.c.) and after, perhaps it should be added, the Battle of Mantinaea
(418 b.c.). Readers of Xenophon's continuation of Thucydides (see Hell. 5.2.5)
would have some reason to suspect Plato's Aristophanes of anachronism in the
case of Mantinaea (Symp. 193a2-3; cf. Dover 1965) but probably only if they had
also read/heard Menexenus. And that is precisely the point: aside from Plato's
contemporaries, only readers of Xenophon's Hellenica know that Socrates had
been dead for many years when Plato's Socrates enacts Aspasia referring to the
King's Peace {Hell. 5.1.31) in Menexenus (245c2-6). The important point here
is that without understanding the War, i.e., the dialogue's historical context, the
comic element of Symposium dominates, while understanding its tragic element
depends on Thucydides. But Symposium delights even without knowledge of
Thucydides, while Menexenus without Thucydides is unintelligible and probably
unthinkable (cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosthenes 23). And appreciating
the funniest joke in Menexenus depends on having read Xenophon's Hellenica as
well.21
To begin with, Socrates refers to the most famous (and hopeful) passage in
Thucydides at Menexenus 236b5: the Funeral Oration of Pericles (Thuc. 2.35—46).
But in the context of Symposium, it is what Socrates' Aspasia says about Sicily at
242e6-243a3 that is more important: she endorses precisely the pretext (Thuc.
6.8.2)—explicitly unmasked as such both by Thucydides himself (Thuc. 6.6.1)
and his Hermocrates (6.77.1)—that Alcibiades used (Thuc. 6.18.1-2) to persuade
the flower of Athens to race (Thuc. 6.32.2) towards their tragic end (413 b.c.)
in the Great Harbor of Syracuse (Thuc. 7.71; cf. Finley 1938: 61-63). In fact,
Aspasia's speech is as interwoven with Thucydides (Bruell 1999: 201-209) as it is
with lies and pretexts; the anachronism involving the King's Peace of Xenophon
(Cawkwell 1981; cf. Badian 1987: 27) is only the funniest of these. Naturally
there are many things in Symposium that are infinitely funnier. But before being
allowed to attend a performance of Symposium (see Ryle 1966: 23-24), the student
was tested by Menexenus. In other words, I propose that a proven knowledge of
the facts of Athenian history as recorded by Xenophon and Thucydides—to be
demonstrated by pointing out the deliberate errors Plato makes in Menexenus—
was a prerequisite for seeing/hearing/reading the Symposium, something even the
dullest students badly wanted to do (Aulus Gellius, Nodes Atticae 1.9.9; see Snyder
2000: 111-113 and 95).
There is an understandable tendency among university professors to imagine
Plato as a university professor writing for his peers; the Plato of the ROPD is,
by contrast, a teacher of the youth. But the question of what other authors
21 Although this is not the time to argue the case, (1) the importance of Xenophon for interpreting
Menexenus, (2) the fact that Xenophon also wrote a Symposium (see Thesleff 1978 and Danzig 2005),
and (3) the remarkable resemblance between Lysis and Mem. 2.6, all point to the same conclusion.
Will anyone deny that Plato's masterful Meno becomes a far greater dialogue for one who has read the
description of Meno (An. 2.6.21-8) in Xenophon's Anabasis}
34 PHOENIX
Plato assumes his readers will have read clearly requires independent stud
reasons for including Xenophon and Thucydides among these have now
sketched. There are easier examples (Homer and Hesiod) and more difficul
without Andocides (On the Mysteries, 35), for instance, one would not kn
Eryximachus was implicated in the matter of the Herms (Nails 2006: 10
short, serious students of Plato need to ask what kind of readers he antic
having and thus what he expected those readers to know. It is as mistak
doubt that Plato considered his writings to be a KTrj|ià èç alsi (Thuc
as it is to assume that he believed every literary work he knew would sh
distinction. It may be useful to consider four categories of authors from
perspective: (1) the ancient writers, like Homer, whose immortality he
anticipated, (2) contemporary writers who would survive along with him
those writers—both ancient and current—whom he set about to immorta
making them prerequisite to his own work, and (4) those who would eit
survive (77. 22cl-3) or do so in fragments (Ion 534d4-7). Whether he reg
Thucydides as belonging to the second or third category may be debata
he both anticipated and counted on Thucydides' immortality is not.
In her The People of Plato: A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics
Nails (2002) has created a landmark in Plato studies. Not surprisingly
her intimate knowledge of the historical context—she has also written
piece on the tragic element of Symposium (Nails 2006). She shows the in
of three events on the dialogue: the profanation of the Mysteries, the mu
of the Herms, and the execution of Socrates. Possessed of so much know
herself, she does not stop to wonder what Plato could reasonably exp
readers to know. This probably explains why she fails to emphasize the
obvious tragic element in the dialogue (Nails 2006: 101, n. 63): that Athe
poised on the precipice of the Sicilian Expedition (Salman 1991: 215—219
also worth noting that Nails not only makes a "dramatic chronology" of
dialogues possible but that she is clearly interested in arranging, and pe
reading/teaching them in that order (Nails 2002: 307-330; cf. Press 2007
the extent that she—in support of Charles L. Griswold Jr. (1999: 3
and 2000: 196-197)—is contributing to loosening the grip of the chronol
composition, she does well; to the extent that she may simply replace one
of modern over-concern with historical development with an equally unh
form of it, she misses the Harbor for the Herms (but see Ly. 206dl).
This is not to say that Plato was unaware of chronology: it is clear
of several themes—in addition to the War and its historians—that c
Menexenus and Symposium (§3). Not only does Aristophanes echo A
anachronism but the Symposium as a whole begins with an anachronism d
and corrected (Symp. 172cl-2). But there are many other connections th
more characteristic: the provenance of both dialogues is problematic (M
249el and Halperin 1992), both feature a wise woman (Halperin 1990; Salk
1993: 140-141), both women elucidate their theme with a myth of
(Menex. 237el-238b6 and Symp. 203b2-d8), and both dialogues are concerned
with rhetoric—remarkably gorgeous at times {Menex. 240d6-7, 247a2-4 and
Symp. 197d5-e5, 211bl—2)—as revealed in reported speeches, a circumstance
that also joins both with Thucydides in yet another and remarkably subtle way
(Monoson 1998: 492). Andrea Wilson Nightingale has identified a theme that
binds together all three dialogues (Menexenus, Symposium, and Lysis): the dangers
of encomiastic rhetoric.22 Unlike Diotima and Socrates, who humble their
respective auditors in order to improve them, Aspasia and Hippothales praise
theirs in a damaging way (Nightingale 1993: 115). Of all the connections, the
most significant is that both Aspasia and Diotima are brilliant women (Halperin
1990:122-124) from whom Socrates is man enough to learn (Phaenarete prepares
for the triad at Ale 1. 131e4; cf. Tht. 149al-4). The fact that Aspasia's discourse
proves unreliable could easily lead the reader astray (§4) about the priceless value
of Diotima's (§6); the Lysis tests whether this trap has been avoided (§7).
It bears repeating that basanistic and proleptic must not be hardened into fixed
and exclusive categories, especially when applied to entire dialogues. Although
Menexenus proleptically prepares the reader for Symposium, it is also basanistic:
every step of Aspasia's speech tests the student/reader's knowledge of Athenian
history. Basanistic with respect to Symposium, Lysis is proleptic with respect to
Republic. The essential point to grasp is that Plato has both of these elements in
his pedagogical toolbox. But with respect to the ROPD as a whole, the basanistic
significance of Menexenus can hardly be overemphasized: it is the first dialogue
where the student is challenged to reject most everything its principal speaker has to say.
These skills will be put to use in Symposium (cf. Salman 1991: 224-225) but will
become of central importance when the student/reader meets Timaeus, Critias,
Parmenides, the Eleatic, and the Athenian Strangers.
At the start of his career, Kahn (1963: 220) laid down four things an adequate
interpretation of Menexenus must explain: why did Plato (1) attribute the speech to
Aspasia, (2) include the glaring anachronism, (3) systematically distort Athenian
history, and (4) write a funeral oration in the first place? The relation between
Menexenus and Symposium in the ROPD has now provided answers to these
questions. But the dialogue with Thucydides that begins in Menexenus continues
in Symposium not only because the shadow of Syracuse (cf. Halperin 2005: 56)
hangs over the festivities at Agathon's but because Pericles called upon the citizens
of Athens to become lovers of its power in the Funeral Oration (Thuc. 2.43.1)
and Thucydides reports that the passion Alcibiades ignited in the Athenians for
Sicily was erotic (Thuc. 6.45.5).23 There is a sense in which Thucydides is present
at the Symposium and delivers his own oration about Love. To put it another way,
22 See the opening sentence of Nightingale 1993: 112: "Plato targets the encomiastic genre in three
separate dialogues: the Lysis, the Menexenus, and the Symposium
23 Compare the relationship between rj êXiàç (which is both rj ô' 8<j>e7iofi£vr| and rj 8è xrjv eùnopiav
xfjç t6xt|s u7iOTi0sîaa) and ô epcoç èrii mvxi (which, although it follows in order of presentation,
is both ô nèv r|yo6fievoc; and ô fièv tt)v £7tiPouA,T)v èK^povuÇcov) with what Diotima says of Penia
36 PHOENIX
Aspasia's Funeral Oration stands approximately halfway between the Fu

Oration of Pericles and the Sicilian Speech of Alcibiades inThucydides (
and it is these speeches that must ring in the ears of the auditor who wo
during a performance of Symposium.
Kahn (1963: 220) adds a fifth criterion that has nothing to do with P
se: he requires any interpretation to explain the fact recorded by Cicero
that the Athenians of his day listened to a public recitation24 of the Me
each year. Kahn intends this criterion to short-circuit the attempt to
the dialogue as "a playful joke" or a "parody or satire of contemporary r
Although the dialogue is something more than these, it is also these; L
Coventry (1989) is a particularly reliable guide. Kahn's own explanation
226-230) is possible but there is a simpler one that furnishes its found
Athens was great and Plato had loved her. The fact that he expresses t
more sincerely in Symposium than in Menexenus cannot change the fact
also a far more cumbersome vehicle for expressing that love on an ann
in front of a crowd. If Athens were not great, there would be no trag
Symposium: her self-deluded epcoç would have brought upon her preci
retribution she deserved. It is seldom remarked or pondered that Plato's
preserve a vivid memory of Athens in the hey-day of her democracy.
seldom pondered or remarked that Plato, after abandoning the ne plus
aristocratic names, became an unpaid teacher and recreated just outside o
a remarkably enduring "school of Hellas" after the Great War (see Cornf
42—43) had destroyed its Periclean exemplar. There is considerably mo
pride in Plato the Athenian than Plato lets on (Kahn 1963: 224).
Protagoras is intended to initiate the reader/student/hearer into that b
bygone world of power, wealth, wit, ambling professors, eager students,
confidence, refinement, and neglected flute-girls (Prot. 347d4-5), a
prepare them for another Beautiful that gradually emerges, in the dialo
follow, at once from, in accordance with, and in opposition to, the world
that was "famous Athens." The perpetual dualities of the Symposium (Zi
1999; cf. Hoerber 1959) bring these two beauties together at the mo
crisis and at the place of Kpâcnç (mixture): the great party where Diot
mantic Mantinaean (through Socrates, Apollodorus, Aristodemus, and P
(203b7) and Poros (203d4) in Symposium, on which see Halperin 1990: 148. Valuable wor
done on the importance of Êpcoç in Thucydides; see Ehrenberg 1947: 50-52; Bruell 1974
1986: 439-440; Monoson 1994: 254, n. 8; and Wohl 2002: 190-194.
24Ion, whose hero's profession is to charm the audience (compare Menex. 235b8-c5
535d8-e3) with a public recitation of Homer from whom he claims to have learned ho
general because he knows what it befits a general to say (Ion 540d5), precedes Menexe
reconstructed ROPD.
25 Amidst so many publications on Symposium, the work of David M. Halperin (1985,19
1992, and 2005) stands out—along with The People of Plato—as a signal achievement for con
Plato studies in the United States; an equally brilliant article by Charles Salman (1991) dese
revealed the heavenly Beautiful just before Alcibiades the chameleon (Plut. Ale.
23.4)—seemingly hell-bent on destroying its earthly embodiment, or rather the
social and historical context from which its beholders had emerged—told the
story of Socrates at Potidaea (Symp. 220c3-d5).
From a philosophical standpoint, it is Diotima's Beauty that is the essence
of Symposium and Plato the teacher will duly ensure that the student/reader has
assimilated this essence in Lysis. The soaring soul that escapes into eternity in
Phaedo—after impregnating us all with the Beautiful it engendered (Morrison
1964: 53) while on earth—this is the last act of a divine comedy conceived in
Symposium. It is therefore tempting to imagine Socrates entranced at Potidaea,
rapt to the sight of heavenly Beauty. F. M. Cornford (1971: 128) indicates on
metaphysical grounds why this is not likely: the Idea is perceived im Augenblick.
It accompanies its admirers wherever they go.
It is only the auditor of Thucydides—the student who has already passed the
test of Menexenus—who knows what Socrates was actually doing in Potidaea and
thus will experience Symposium as the tragedy it is. As one of three thousand
Athenian hoplites sent there to crush a revolt (Thuc. 1.61), Socrates arrives in
Potidaea just before the Great War broke out: indeed the Expeditionary Force
of which he is a spear-carrying member (Nails 2002: 264-265) becomes the
torch that will set all Hellas ablaze (Thuc. 1.56—67). Narrated by Alcibiades,
charming assassin of Athenian greatness, the story of Socrates' all-night vigil
is, like Symposium itself, susceptible of a comic reading: contemplation of the
eternal Idea remains a true delight. On the other hand, the historical, dramatic,
and metaphysical context suggests that it was not Being but Becoming (Shanske
2007: 119-153) that the stationary Socrates (Geier 2002: 19-20 and 63-66)
contemplated throughout that fateful northern night: he was imagining the
sinuous alternatives, both rational and senseless, of a movement unfolding in
time that Thucydides also realized right from the start would become something
massive (Thuc. 1.1.1). After many a terrible year, the conflagration will destroy
the power of the violet-crowned city whose lovers Pericles had exhorted its citizens
to be, eventually leaving them only Plato's Aspasia as ironic consolation for the
loss of a truly glorious past. In retrospect, it will be the moment just before the
departure for Sicily (cf. Thg. 129c8—d2)—historical setting for the intellectual
triumph recorded in Plato's Symposium—that marks the turning point on this
fatal path to civic calamity. Tragedy and comedy are fully mixed in "the last of the
wine" (Renault 1956) only where Plato meets Thucydides. We owe it to those
who suffered unspeakably in the quarries of Syracuse (Thuc. 7.87) to acknowledge
attention. It would also be cowardly not to acknowledge here my considerable debts to Renault (1956),
Hamilton (1930: 204-226), and Cornford (1967: 42-43). In the context of the latter, consider Annas
1999: 95 (cf. above, 21, n. 5): "It is easy to remain unaware of the extent to which our attitude to it [sc.
Republic], as a political work, and as the obvious centerpiece of Plato's thought, derives from Victorian
traditions, particularly that of Jowett." Some eras are evidently more receptive to Plato's teaching than
others.
38 PHOENIX
how much both historian and philosopher—to say nothing of Socrates

128d3-5 and Joyal 1994: 26-27, 29)—loved the men and boys who so skillfu
and senselessly "raced with one another as far as Aegina" (Thuc. 6.32; Jowet
V. THE READING ORDER
Unlike Becoming, the Idea is eternally what it is and nev

its contemplation requires no stationary Socrates. Neither
it. It is, moreover, difficult to believe that anyone who a
could think that he did. Why would he? Where he appear
Parmenides, for example (Prm. 130el-e4; cf. Festugière 19
his readers/students to see if they have. And beginning w
have done so that Plato's detachment from Platonism has become an article of
skeptical faith. This is the injustice that restoring the ROPD aims to redress: it
reclaims Platonism for Plato by allowing "the unity of Plato's thought"—without
excising its deliberately un-Platonic moments (Shorey 1903: 408)—to emerge
within a dialectical but ultimately harmonious pedagogical program (cf. Lamm
2000: 225). To be sure this Platonism will be unlike earlier versions; each age
must leave its own mark on the immortal dialogues of Plato. But an overriding
concern for "chronology of composition" nearly accomplished something entirely
unacceptable: it remade the philosopher of timeless Being into a mere process of
Becoming. Beginning in the nineteenth century, Plato evolves', he seeks, discovers
and then outgrows the idealism of his "middle dialogues." It is time to realize that
the nineteenth century, in accordance with its own Zeitgeist (in a double sense
of that term) was predisposed to look at everything sub specie temporis. Whatever
gains were made in other fields of study, the essence of Plato—for whom
Becoming was unintelligible and the better (i.e., Progress) meaningless without
the Good—could only become obscured thereby. Meanwhile a twentieth-century
"Plato" has emerged who is even less Platonic: this el'ScoXov does not abandon the
Idea, Recollection, or Immortality because he never seriously embraced them in
the first place.
It is now time to explain what it means to be agnostic with respect to the
dominant paradigm of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Platonic scholarship:
the chronology of Platonic composition is no more relevant to reconstructing the
ROPD than reconstructing the ROPD was to nineteenth- and twentieth-century
Platonic scholarship. The ROPD offers no basis for denying or even doubting
the conclusions drawn from stylometric analysis and vice versa. Plato could have
composed the dialogues in precisely the order presently accepted and gradually
worked them into an evolving ROPD of which even the initial conception must
have been a comparatively late development. It is the conclusion tacitly but
illegitimately derived from stylometric analysis that must be categorically rejected:
order of composition cannot prove that Plato abandoned the Idea of the Good. To
put it another way: if stylometry can tell us what dialogues were composed after
Republic, it cannot tell us how to read them (Nails 1994). Even if the assumption
upon which stylometric analysis depends is correct and Laws was the last dialogue
Plato wrote, this still proves nothing about the tëA,6ç of Plato's thought in any
philosophical sense, or about how he busied himself at the end of his long life.
About this matter, Dionysius of Halicarnassus (De compositione 3.16) preserves
for the modern reader some external evidence:
ô 5è n^àxcov, toùç sauxoû ôiaXôyooç ktevîÇmv kcù PocrtpoxiÇoûv, kcù navra xpônov
àvanXÉKmv, où ôis^wcëv ôyôor|KovTa y6yovà>ç ëtr\.
And Plato was not through with combing and curling his dialogues, and braiding
[àva7iÀ.8Kû>v] them in every which way, having reached his eightieth year. (Translation
mine)
Clearly this "hair-care" imagery is purely metaphorical. Dionysius is simply

asserting that Plato took great pains to beautify and adorn his dialogues; this
will scarcely surprise anyone one who has read them. On the surface, then, the
sentence suggests that (1) Plato took his dialogues seriously in a very playful
manner, tinkering with them until the end, and (2) Plato labored over precisely
the Platonic dialogues as a whole.26 This sentence expressly does not confirm the
typical vision of a tired old Plato, bent double over the tedious Laws—too sick to
make the required final revisions—and leaving behind only a few scattered notes
for Philip of Opus to turn into Epinomis (Diog. Laert. 3.37). It is only with this
conception that the ROPD hypothesis is incompatible, not stylometric analysis or
chronology of composition per se. This, then, is what it means to be agnostic on
the question.
The most amusing element in the passage from Dionysius is his use of the
word avan/.r.KOiv: only in context of the extended hair-care metaphor is it proper
to translate it as "braided" (cf. Pausanias 10.25.10). Even as "braided," however,
the word suggests the principles upon which the ROPD is based. The braiding of
hair—at any time or place—requires separating a rich long mass of it into three
distinct strands and weaving them together, one over another, again and again.
In fact, the literal sense of the à va- (meaning "up," "over," or "over again") in
àv«TtÂéK0)v captures precisely this aspect of intertwining three discrete strands.27
This affords a poetic expression of Plato's pedagogical methodology as embodied
in Phaenarete, Diotima, and Aspasia respectively: the interweaving (or braiding)
of proleptic, visionary, and basanistic elements in his dialogues. The real meaning
of the word àvaTtÀÉKrav is, after all, simply "inter-weaving." It would not have
been tendentious—although it would have appeared to be so—to translate the
sentence as "grooming and embellishing his dialogues, and inter-weaving them in
26 As when a Mother, or dear older Sister, on the night of the Prom, lovingly arranges and
rearranges the young girl's gown and tresses, again and again regarding—with the skeptical eye of
more than nostalgic love—each tiny detail before sending her off into the world of men.
27The most delightful use of the word is in Pindar 01. 2.70, where he conjures an image of girls
joining their hands in a dancing chain (ô opfioc).
40 PHOENIX
every way." In other words, this passage from Dionysius suggests that Plat
have been tinkering with the ROPD—i.e., with the dramatic details on whic
construction entirely depends—until the very end.
To begin at the end, the Laws and Epinomis are best understood as a thir
book basanistic dialogue—its anti-Platonic character becomes luminously c
in the star-lit Epinomis {Epin. 990al-4; cf. Rep. 528e6-528c4) reflecting
character backwards onto Laws {Leg. 820e4) for those who have not notice
already {Leg. 714c6, 661b2, and 648a6)—with the crowning impiety of Law
{Leg. 818cl-3; cf. 624al) dead in the middle. The Athenian Stranger is,
Strauss discovered in 1938 (2001: 562), the kind of Socrates who would
followed Crito's advice and fled from Athens to Sparta or Crete {Cri. 52e5-6
is the case with the Eleatic Stranger (Gonzalez 2000b), the Athenian's view
more reflect Plato's than does the speech of Aspasia in Menexenus. And also
Sophist and Statesman, Laws and Epinomis are embedded in the First Tetralo
Thrasyllus, the latter pair between Crito and Phaedo (compare Leg. 647el-6
with Ly. 219e2-4). This leaves only one pair of dialogues in the quartet {Apo
and Crito) between which two dialogues have not been interpolated. Hippa
and Minos are a matched set (Grote 1865) who find no other home; the se
is propaedeutic both to Crito and the journey made in Laws {Min. 319e
Morrow 1960: 35-39) while the pair mirrors Sophist {Min. 319c3; cf. Hippa
228b5-e7) and Statesman {Pit. 309dl-4). I propose that these curious dia
are the conversations Socrates had with the sympathetic but anonymous j
of indeterminate age who bursts into tears in Phaedo (116d5-7).28 The
that both Hipparchus and Minos were personae non gratae in Athens illus
how comparatively restrained Socrates had been—and defensively patrioti
one occasion when confronted by an Ionian's truth {Ion 541c3-8)29—befor
city definitively cut herself off from him; despite Hipparchus and Minos,
reveals that he never did the same to her. This creates the following endi
for the ROPD: Euthyphro, Sophist, Statesman, Apology, Hipparchus, Minos,
Laws, Epinomis, and the visionary Phaedo (§6). It is worth making it explici
Socrates is the philosopher whom the Eleatic Stranger, for all his many divi
never distinguishes {Soph. 217a6-b3 and Pit. 257b8-cl) while the Eleatic Str
is, at best,30 the un-Socratic philosopher already described (§4) by Socrate
Theaetetus (173c8-174a2; cf. 144c5-8). The Athenian Stranger, Plato's final
of the reader/student (§7), is prefigured there as well {Tht. 176a8-b3).
28 Only if Socrates had added that the two had passed the time jiëttsuovteç could this conn
be called "snug"; it would also have made it obvious (Hipfarch. 229e3 and Min. 316c3). B
question of Law clearly links Minos and Crito. Consider ûsoAp. 41a3.
29 Neither Ion nor anyone else has heard of Apollodorus of Cyzicus; Plato alone preserv
name. For the other two examples at Ion 541dl-2—one found in Thucydides (4.50), the ot
Xenophon (Hell. 1.15.18-9), both in Andocides—see the invaluable Nails 2002 adloc.
30 Straussians (e.g., Cropsey 1995) tend to be extremely reliable guides to the basanistic dial
once one realizes that they mistakenly regard these as "visionary."
The ROPD now has a delightful beginning (Protagoras), a mighty middle

(.Republic), and a happy ending (Phaedo).31 Before proceeding, it is necessary
to explain why the ROPD includes all thirty-five dialogues by Thrasyllus. It
is easy to systematize Plato's dialogues—or any other given body of evidence
in any field of study—when the critic is empowered to exclude any evidence
that does not fit a pre-conceived system. This is precisely what Friedrich
Schleiermacher did (Lamm 2000: 232-233) and it is what is happening again
among the proponents of "dramatic chronology": the authenticity of Laws is
already being denied (Tejera 1999: 291-308; Nails 2002: 328; and Press 2007: 57
and 69) and the chronologically inexplicable Menexenus already shows a tendency
to disappear (Press 2007: 72-73). If it were not for Aristotle's testimony,
Menexenus would have been dropped from the canon long ago (Guthrie 1975:
312). By finding a home in the ROPD—snugly ensconced between Ion and
Symposium (§2) and without reliance on Aristotle's testimony (cf. Dean-Jones
1995: 52, n. 5)—Menexenus may yet rescue her less fortunate sisters, unnamed
by the Stagirite. For what it is worth, finding places for Menexenus, Hipparchus,
and Minos was the most challenging problem encountered in reconstructing
the ROPD. But excluding any of them because "they did not fit" would have
vitiated the project, at least in its proponent's eyes. As it happens, all thirty-five
dialogues do fit and thus the ROPD is—mirabile dictu—confirmed at the very
same moment that it confers authenticity on its most despised components.
But it would have been impossible to discover even the general location of
Hipparchus and Minos—which seem to be "early" dialogues in any sense of that
word—without starting with the assumption that Republic is literally the center
of the ROPD (§5): eighteenth in a series of thirty-five. It turned out that
there was no place for Hipparchus and Minos among the seventeen dialogues
that prepared for Republic, while there was an opening for a matched set after
it.
The elementary Alcibiades Major—the first conversation between Socrates and

Alcibiades—follows Protagoras, while Alcibiades Minor necessarily follows it in a
chronological sense. More importantiy it now becomes unclear to Alcibiades {Ale.
2.148a8-b4) that the things he had originally hoped that Socrates would help him
acquire {Ale. 1.104d2-4) are actually worth acquiring (§1). This rehabilitation
of ignorance {Ale. 2.143b6-c3) already (§4) stands in sharp contrast with the
rival pretensions of the knowledgeable Hippias {Ale. 2.147d6) who was present,
along with Alcibiades and Socrates, in the house of Callias {Prot. 315b9-cl and
316a4). Plato's proclivity to create paired dialogues has already been observed
in the interstices of the First Tetralogy; this pattern is established early in the
ROPD where two Hippias dialogues are paired with two Alcibiades dialogues, both
beginning with the greater {Hip. Maj. 286b4—c2 and Hip. Min. 363al—2). Since
31 For the relationship between Phaedo and Protagoras—evidence that Plato has created a true
encyclopaedia—see Reuter2001: 82-83.
42 PHOENIX
Alcibiades is a man of action and Hippias a pretentious know-it-all, the Er

(or "Rival Lovers") bridges the gap (§2) between one pair (Amat. 132d4-5 w
Ale. 2.143b6-c5 and 145c2) and the other {Amat. 133cll, 137b4, and 13
with Hip. Min. 363c7—d4). Lesser Hippias concerns Homer {Hip. Min. 363a6
and is therefore followed naturally by Ion (§3). The result is: Protagoras, Alc
Major, Alcibiades Minor, Erastai, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Ion, Mene
Symposium, and then the basanistic Lysis (§7). It will be noted that Tetralog
Thrasyllus is identical, while Tetralogy IV contains, given the difficulty of p
Hipparchus, but one perfectly understandable error. It will also be noted
the visionary Symposium (§6) is ninth in the ROPD: mid-point of the seven
Republic dialogues (§5).
Between Lysis and Republic, the greatest problem is the placement of The
Completing the set of five "virtue" dialogues (without it, there would be
dialogue devoted to wisdom), containing the only explicit reference
dialogues to the Sicilian Expedition, and essential to unlocking a key p
in Republic {Rep. 496b7-c5), it clearly deserves a home. It is easy to
why Thrasyllus placed it in company with Laches and Charmides (Tetralog
although its reference to Charmides ( Thg. 128d8-el) suggests that it should
have been placed prior to it. But Theages also points backwards to Gorgias {
127e8-128al) as Meno does as well {Men. 70b2-3); indeed Gorgias and
seem as inseparable (Tetralogy VI) as Laches and Charmides. It is the retur
"divine dispensation" (Oeta noipa first appears at Ion 542a4; cf. Men. 99e6
Thg. 128d2) that suggests the answer: Theages comes between Gorgias and M
(compare also G. 515dl, Thg. 126a9-10, and Men. 93b7-94e2) and pre
the reader to take the conclusion of the latter seriously (cf. Reuter 2001)
danger posed by Anytus joins Meno to the preliminary charge brought ag
Socrates in Cleitophon. To return, then, to Symposium-. Lysis is followed
Tetralogies IV and V) by Euthydemus where Socrates finally reaches the Ly
and Ctesippus (Ly. 203a4) wins the love of his beloved {Euthd. 300d5-
a manner that shows how well he has been taught (Altman 2007: 371
Remaining in the Lyceum (§3), the men fighting in armor {Euthd. 271d3)
Euthydemus to Laches {La. 178al) which is linked, in turn, to Charmides,
only as a virtue dialogue but by the War {La. 181bl and Chrm. 153a
Symp. 220e8-221al and 219e6). It should be emphasized that Laches s
prior to Charmides not only because of the former's dramatic link to Euthy
but also by virtue of the latter's comparative complexity (see Guthrie 1975
and 163). Another kind of war breaks out in Gorgias', the opening late ar
is a joke (G. 447al-2). It is Plato's manly/cowardly former self that con
Charmides—a dialogue filled with Plato's relatives (Nails 2002: 244)—to Go
In Callicles we meet the pre-Socratic Aristocles (Dodds 1959: 14, n. 1
Bremer 2002: 100—101) in whom Socrates finally discovered his touchston
whom he would be completed (cf. Arieti 1991: 92), and through whom he
became "a possession into forever."32 These conclusions may

Lysis, Euthydemus, Laches, Charmides, Gorgias, Theages, Meno,
Republic.
Thrasyllus gets the central tetrad right: once the purpose of Cleitophon is
recognized, Republic, Timaeus, and Critias are explicitly linked. The question is:
where to go from there? Readers of Thucydides have heard quite enough from
Hermocrates the Syracusan (e.g., Thuc. 6.76.2-77.1; cf. Criti. 108b8-4); there
is no Hermocrates (at least by Plato) any more than the Philosopher is missing.
The dialogue that breaks off on the brink of its final speech ( Critias) precedes the
only dialogue that does not begin at its own beginning. "Protarchus" as follower
(Phlb. llal-2) is but the first anomaly of Philebus. But before proceeding—and
in recognition of the fact that the ROPD falls, as it were, off the edge of the
world at Critias 121c5—it is necessary to take stock. Only the most committed
proponents of dramatic chronology will deny on the basis of its frame (not so Nails
2002: 320-321 and 308) that Theaetetus precedes Euthyphro. Between Critias and
Theaetetus, there is room left for four dialogues. In alphabetical order, the dialogues
that remain are: Cratylus, Parmenides, Phaedrus, and Philebus. There are few
dramatic or chronological indications to work with here but various "theoretical
and metaphysical" connections emerge, especially when Plato's proclivity to pair
dialogues is taken into consideration. Taken as a pair, Cratylus and Parmenides
prepare the way for the yiyavxofiaxia described in Sophist (Soph. 246a4): not only
are Heraclitus (Cra. 411cl-5 and 440e2) and Parmenides presently considered
the principal poles of pre-Socratic thought (Guthrie 1965: 1) but it is probable
that Plato too regarded them in this light (Tht. 152e2). With a reference to
Euthyphro (but not Euthyphro), the Cratylus {Cra. 396d5) is attracted to the end
of the quartet while both Phaedrus and Parmenides take place outside Athens.33
Both of these also pivot on a represented discourse. A more deliciously ironic
matched set is found in Phaedrus and Philebus: despite the sexy name Plato has
32 The assumption that Callicles (to say nothing of a modern reader influenced by Nietzsche) could
not change his mind under the influence of Socrates in Gorgias (Beversluis 2000: 375) is unwarranted.
In the case of Plato and Callicles, compare As You Like It (IV.iii.135-137): "Twas I; but 'tis not I.
I do not shame to tell you what I was since my conversion so sweetly tastes being the thing I am."
Recognizing that Plato was fully aware of Socrates' and his own pedagogical effectiveness and the
literary immortality that would attend the two together (G. 527d2-5) is a good first step; many errors
of interpretation could also be avoided by keeping in mind that Plato loved both Adeimantus and
Glaucon, his brilliant older brothers immortalized in Republic.
331 am grateful to Catherine Zuckert for bringing this connection to my attention. I have made
a deliberate decision not to revise this paper on the basis of my subsequent encounter with Plato's
Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues (Chicago 2009); for my review of this important book,
see Polis 27 (2010) 147-150. Profoundly grateful to Zuckert for broaching the ROPD question in
the context of a post-developmentalist reading which conceives all thirty-five dialogues as dialectically
coherent, I observe there that her order's dependence on dramatic chronology "has traded one form of
chronological over-determination for another" (150).
44 PHOENIX
given the latter, it lacks both sex appeal (but see Wood 2007) and charm; .
defects—but not others—are lushly redressed in Phaedrus?A
The results of this investigation may now be presented:
The Reading Order of Plato's Dialogues

Protagoras Timaeus
Alcibiades Major Critias

Alcibiades Minor Philebus
Erastai Phaedrus
Hippias Major Parmenides
Hippias Minor Cratylus

Ion Theaetetus
Menexenus Euthyphro
Symposium Republic Sophist
Lysis Statesman
Euthydemus Apology
Laches Hipparchus
Charmides Minos
Gorgias Crito
Theages Laws
Meno
Epinomis
Cleitophon Phaedo
Republic stands at the center of the thirty-five interconnected dialogues (§2).

Guided by the ROPD, Plato's student/readers follow a blazed trail (§3) through
terrain of gradually increasing difficulty (§1) that prepares them (§4) for the peak
experience at the mid-point of their journey (§5). Much like one of the imaginary
Guardians, the reader/student is led up to the sunlight (§6) and then, before being
sent back down into politics at the age of thirty-five,35 is tested (§7)36—before
34 A serious problem needs further attention: on the basis of what plausible conception of what
Plato expected his readers to know are we to distinguish Critias in Critias from Critias in Charmides
(Rosenmeyer 1949; Lampert and Planeaux 1998) and Cephalus in Parmenides from Cephalus in
Republic (Prm. 126al-4; cf. Miller 1986: 18-23).
35 Rep. 539e2-540a2 (Shorey): "For after that [îc. after the Guardians reach the age of thirty-five]
you will have to send them down [Katapipaaxsoi] into the cave again, and compel them to hold
commands in war and the other offices suitable to youth, so that they may not fall short of the other
type in experience either. And in these offices, too, they are to be tested [[iaaaviaxéoi] to see whether
they will remain steadfast under diverse solicitations or whether they will flinch and swerve."
36 Rep. 537d3-8 (Shorey modified): "when they have passed the thirtieth year to promote them,
by a second selection from those preferred in the first, to still greater honors, and to examine,
testing [paacmÇovca] by the capacity for dialectic [-cf) xoû ôiaXéyecsQai Sovâ|a£i], who is capable of
leaving "the Academy"—as to the strength of her commitment to the Idea of the
Good.37
By way of a conclusion, it is only natural that a discussion of the ROPD should
end with Republic 7.38 In a single conditional sentence—so long that it will be
considered in three installments—Socrates offers the student/reader a preview
of Plato's post-Republic pedagogy. In the first part of the sentence's protasis,
Socrates elucidates the negative characteristics of the inadequate Guardian in such
a manner as to bring (or begin to bring) the true philosopher into sight:
And is not this true of the good [xoû àyciBoG] likewise—that the man who is unable to
define [ôiopîaaaBai] in his discourse [xq> X6y(p] and distinguish and abstract from all
other things [arab xcov aM-oov tkxvtcov â<|>eA,à>v] the aspect or idea of the good [xf)v xoû
àyaGoô i5éav] ... {Rep. 534b8-cl; Shorey)
Applied to the ROPD, these words indicate that: (1) if the G

the dialogue (tcp Xôycp)39 but hidden, the student must find i
of the Good is merely apparent, the student must expose
fraudulent; (3) if the Good is entirely absent, that is decisive f
discourse my contain; and (4) if the Good is present, the stude
... and who cannot, as if in battle [kcù coarcep âv through all r

[ôià JKXVTCOV èXéyxcov SieÇicov], not eager to refute by recourse to
Ijari Kotxà Soâv àXXà Kax' oùaîav jtpoGoiaoûpevoç êAiyxeiv], pro
its way [SiaJtopsûrixat] in all of these [èv nâoi xouxoiç] [if. refutatio
untoppled [â7txrôxt xcp À,6ycp] ... (Rep. 534cl-3; tra
disregarding eyes and the other senses and go on to Being itself [en* aùxô to
And it's no doubt a task for careful guarding, my dear fellow."
37Rep. 526d8~e7 (Shorey modified): "What we have to consider is whether
advanced part of it tends to facilitate the apprehension of the idea of good [
That tendency, we affirm, is to be found in all studies that force the soul to
the region where dwells the most blessed part of reality [tô £05ai|a0véaTa.T0
imperative that it should behold." "You are right," he said. "Then if it compel
Being [oocnav], it is suitable; if Becoming [ysveaiv], it is not."
38 Although not included here in the ROPD, the Letters should be read in
perhaps between Books 5 and 6, in order to cut off the second ("Sicilian") alt
d2. On the other hand, Rep. 434e4-435a2 needs to be read (or reread) in th
(see above, 23, n. 7). Either way, the Letters should be read as an integrat
its most important component artfully placed in the center (there are thirt
for a stricdy pedagogical purpose, not as a collection of alternately accurate
documents whose veracity we are challenged to determine. See Strauss 20
and Wohl 1998.
39 It will be noted that, although I have retained Shorey s translation for this first section (I will
be using my own translations for the next two), his rendering of tco Xoytp as "his discourse" is too
restrictive. I am suggesting that the student, not while speaking his own speech but while reading
any particular dialogue (as if it were TCp [too nÀ.àTCûvoç] À,ôycp) must be able to separate (i.e., to
ÔiopiaaaGai by à<J>£Àà)v) the wheat (i.e., ttjv too àyaGoG iôeav) from the chaff (i.e., àjiô tcdv aAAcov
rcavTcov), all explicitly named, defined, and treated as such.
46 PHOENIX
Interpreting most of the post-Republic dialogues in the ROPD (the except

being the dialogues of Tetralogy I) will be analogous to war. Whereve
%copicT|i6c between Being and Becoming (defined by the unitary and transce
Idea of the Good) is passed over (Phlb. 23d9-10) or attacked (cf. Gada
1986: 13)—as it will be in various ways by Timaeus, Parmenides, the E
and Athenian Strangers, even by Socrates himself {Phlb. 27b8-9; cf. Weste
1990: 39.26-29)—the student/reader must defend it ôià Ttavxcov cXcyyav.
evaluating the arguments of men like these—venerable, intelligent, and impr
gentlemen—the student/reader must judge and criticize only on the basis of
(kcit' oùmav) and not according to what seems to be reputable (pt] tcaià ôo
even if that means refuting (sAiyxeiv) Socrates himself. Students must pr
themselves able to proceed through all of these tests (èv nam xoûxoiç) with
Socrates calls "the discourse intact." The stakes are high, as the apodosis f
reveals:
the man who lacks this power, you will say, does not really know the good itself [a
àyaGôv] or any particular good [ooxe akko àyaGôv ooôsv] but if he joins himself i
way to some image [àXV eX Jtfl eIScoàou xivôç èijiàrtxexaij he does so by reputation b
knowledge [56^, oûk sjncrcrmfl È<|>àjrtsc70tti.]. {Rep. 534c4-d6; translation min
This conditional sentence is the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" It must soun
the ears of the reader/student amidst the "severe studies"40 that follow Republ
the ROPD.
There is one final point. Regardless of the role the ROPD played when P
himself presided over the Academy, there is some indication in Republic 7
leaving others the pleasure of reconstructing it may have been intended b
creator to become part of an eternal curriculum,41 hidden in plain sight (
432d7-e3). This question turns on how broadly one interprets xâ pa0r|(j.axa
Rep. 537b8-c3.42 If it applies only to the five mathematical sciences of Bo
40 Rep. 535b6-9 (Shorey): "They must have, my friend, to begin with, a certain keennes
study, and must not learn with difficulty. For souls are much more likely to flinch and faint in
studies [âv ia/upoic fiaOrîaaiv] than in gymnastics, because the toil touches them more ne
being peculiar to them and not shared with the body."
41 Rep. 531c9-d4 (my modification of Shorey): "And I'm thinking also that the investigation
all these studies we've just gone through [r| tootcdv Ttavxcov a>v SiE^WiOanEV nÉ0o5oç], if it ar
at the connection between them [ÈJtî tr|v àM.r|taov Koivcovîav àijiÎKTiTai] and their common
[aoyyéveiav] and synthesizes [ouXAoyicrSfl] them with respect to their affinities with each oth
ecttiv àÂ>,r|Àoiç oÎKEÛx], then to busy ourselves with them contributes to our desired end, an
labor taken is not lost; but otherwise it is vain."
A2Rep. 537b8-c3 (Shorey): "'Surely it is,' he said. 'After this period,' I said, 'those wh
given preference from the twenty-year class will receive greater honors than the others, and th
be required to gather [auvaKtéovJ the studies which they disconnectedly [xâ te xûôrjv âO
pursued as children in their former education into a comprehensive survey [siç oôvov|/iv] of t
affinities with one another [oîk£i6tt|t6ç te àM.r|Xa>v tSv paOrinaTtov] and with the nature of t
[koù ttÏç toû ôvto, <|)6cte(ûç]'." What Socrates here calls a cjûvoyiç I am calling the RO
comprehensive vision of the only surviving Platonic nuOriuu :a the reconstruction of which w
it is hard to say why Socrates—who has been very careful to discuss these in the
proper order {Rep. 528a6-b2)—refers to them as xâ %68r|v |xaOr|fj.a'ca: it is not
the five sciences as taught to the imaginary Guardians but the thirty-five dialogues
as they have come down to us that are "scrambled" (xu5r|v). In either case, the
search for the ROPD has and will long remain a delightful and perfectly harmless
exercise in dialectic as described by Socrates.43 But even if the reconstruction of
the ROPD could be considered more serious than a merely pleasant pastime, one
must never lose sight of the playful Plato, he who created the most beautiful flute
girls who ever danced, eternally interwoven, arm in arm.
Depto. Filosofia
Campus Universitârio, Trindade
Florianôpolis 88.010-970
Sta. Catarina, Brasil whfaltman@gmail.com
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THE READING ORDER OF PLATO'S DIALOGUES

Author(s): William H. F. Altman

I. RECONSTRUCTING THE ROPD

Our edition of Plato is inseparable from the search, once

To my wonderful teachers at the University of Toronto, George Edison (in me

Phoenix, Vol. 64 (2010) 1-2.

from the metaphysical baggage ofNeo-Platonism, any pedagogical justificatio

richly diverse and dialectical curriculum6 is recognized—continues to do jus

The foregoing seven principles, hereafter to be cited by numbers alone (e

§1. Pedagogical Effectiveness: elementary dialogues precede complex ones.

II. THE CITY OF GOOD MEN ONLY

Socrates introduces the City of Good Men Only (he

For we may venture to say that, if there should be a city of good m

The political message of Republic is that unless those ruling

testimony of Aristotle (see Cherniss 1945), the ROPD is nevertheless

9Thrasymachus (Rep. 344c5-6; Shorey) claims that "injustice on a sufficiently large

[I] is paradoxical on two levels: (1) it explicitly contradicts what most of

It is therefore not only a question of a teacher proving a studen

III. LYSIS AND SYMPOSIUM

Unlike Kahn's "proleptic," the neologism "basanistic" is meaningful exc

Gonzalez then proceeds to offer a fourfold classification of previous interpretations

Gonzalez is right. But with no alternative ordering principle to which he can

It is revealing that Aristotle introduces the meaning of the word À

IV. MENEXENUS AND THE TRAGEDY OF SYMPOSIUM

Alcibiades—he with whom, of course, the ROPD begins (Prot. 309al-2)—sailed

Aspasia's Funeral Oration stands approximately halfway between the Fu

how much both historian and philosopher—to say nothing of Socrates

V. THE READING ORDER

Unlike Becoming, the Idea is eternally what it is and nev

Clearly this "hair-care" imagery is purely metaphorical. Dionysius is simply

The ROPD now has a delightful beginning (Protagoras), a mighty middle

The elementary Alcibiades Major—the first conversation between Socrates and

Alcibiades is a man of action and Hippias a pretentious know-it-all, the Er

became "a possession into forever."32 These conclusions may

The Reading Order of Plato's Dialogues

Alcibiades Major Critias

Hippias Minor Cratylus

Republic stands at the center of the thirty-five interconnected dialogues (§2).

Applied to the ROPD, these words indicate that: (1) if the G

... and who cannot, as if in battle [kcù coarcep âv through all r

Interpreting most of the post-Republic dialogues in the ROPD (the except

Altman, W. H. F. 2007. "Leo Strauss and the Euthydemus," CJ 102: 355-

Cherniss, H. 1945. The Riddle of the Early Academy. Berkeley.

Finley, J. H. Jr. 1938. "Euripides and Thucydides," HSCP 49: 23-68.

Gaiser, K. 1963. Platons ungeschriebene Lehre: Studien zur systematischen undgeschichtlichen

1986. "Plato and Erotic Reciprocity," Class. Ant. 5: 60-80.

1981a. "Did Plato Write Socratic Dialogues?," CQ n.s. 31: 305-320.

Sharey, P. 1903. The Unity of Plato's Thought. Chicago.

Souilhé, J. 1949. Platon: Oeuvres Completes 13.1. Paris.

1953. Natural Right and History. Chicago.

Westerink, L. G. ed. 1990. Prolégomènes à la philosophie de Platon. Tr. by J. Trouillard wit

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