(PDF) Compositional Chronology

Debra Nails 2012. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Plato, ed. Gerald A. Press et al. London-New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 289–92 Compositional Chronology It was once hoped that determining the order in which Plato composed his dialogues would permit the mapping of his philosophical development, but that approach, dominant for some hundred and fifty years, now creaks unreliably. Two data from ancient times motivate inferences about the order of composition of Plato’s dialogues: Aristotle’s remark (Politics 1264b26) that Republic antedates Laws, and Diogenes Laertius’ statement that Lg., ‘in the wax’ at Plato’s death, was transcribed by Philip of Opus (3.37). Glaring linguistic mannerisms in Lg. (e.g., notable synchysis, plummeting rate of hiatus, absence of certain clausulae, et al., catalogued in Thesleff 2009:63–81) are shared by Ti- maeus, Critias, Politicus, Sophist, Philebus and Epistles 7 and 8, marking all as late and edited with the same stylistic principles in view, perhaps those of Philip, whom Diogenes credits with writing the non-Platonic Epinomis, stylometrically indistinguishable from the bulk of the Lg. and the last half of Plt. Not unreasonably, scholars sought definitive style-markers of R. that would permit the identifi- cation of a set of R.-like dialogues, leaving a third and earlier set, yet more remote from Lg. Although that effort has failed to distinguish the ‘early’ and ‘middle’ groups reliably, the bulk of modern scholarship has nevertheless followed Campbell’s nineteenth-century identification of three peri- ods of productivity. Efforts to establish the order of composition once for all on (i) literary, (ii) sty- lometric, (iii) thematic, and (iv) historical foundations are yet alive. (i) A common literary basis for compositional order takes the predominance of Socratic questioning as early, of constructive speeches as middle. Despite the general uselessness of dra- matic dates for determining composition order, others have used the dramatic date of Theaetetus to claim that it was written just before Sph. and Plt. Diogenes (3.38) reports an ancient story that Phaedrus, exhibiting youthfulness (meirakiôdês), was Plato’s first dialogue, a view defended by Tomin (1997). Another effort takes literally the suggestion that such formulaic expressions as ‘I said’ and ‘he agreed’ should give way to direct speech (Tht. 143b–c, cf. R. 3.392c–398b). By this cri- terion, dialogues with direct speech were to be counted as later than Tht. However, the criterion founders on the exceptions: e.g., Laches and Ion would be post-Tht.; Ti. and Parmenides would be pre-Tht., defying considerations of content. To complicate matters, several dialogues mix the dra- matic and narrative styles. (ii) Stylometry, measuring aspects of Plato’s conscious and unconscious style (e.g., participle frequency, incidence of particles, formulae of reply) promised ‘scientific’ accuracy in relative dating; and hundreds of studies appeared after Campbell (1867) initiated the effort. Stylometry famously crossed swords with content when Owen (1953) proposed a ‘middle’ date for Ti. against the stylis- tic evidence, though Cherniss (1957) trounced that bold suggestion. The advent of computers al- lowed measurement and correlation of very large numbers of stylistic features and heralded a new interest in stylometry, but the problem of how to program the computer reiterated Campbell’s orig- inal problem: the only invulnerable datum was the relationship between R. and Lg., insufficient for generating secure results. Ledger (1989) marked an advance with new programs that did not re- quire prior assumptions about what to count as early style; but his preliminary results did not con- firm scholars’ preconceptions about the order of the dialogues (see Young 1994). Brandwood (1990), less concerned about what he had to assume to produce his results, delivered more palata- ble fare, i.e., confirming expectations. Again complicating matters, both R. bk 1 and the first part of Prm. usually cluster with the Socratic dialogues considered early. Kahn (2002) mounts a robust de- fense of stylometry, in reply to which Griswold (2002) canvasses reasons to doubt its usefulness to our understanding of Plato. (iii) Thematic development was supposed (since Socher 1820) to demonstrate that Plato’s views evolved over time (e.g., about forms, knowledge, political theory) and that the order in which the dialogues were written could be determined by placing the least evolved first. As evidence for such thematic development, Aristotle’s various remarks on Socratic vs. Platonic positions are often cited, and often criticised (Kahn 1996:79-87). Two insurmountable difficulties arise: (a) the view considered most highly evolved depended entirely on the existing views of the scholars who per- formed the investigations; and (b) when dialogues addressing more than one subject were com- pared, a dialogue might be ‘highly developed’ on one subject and introductory on another, while another dialogue would have the reverse configuration, leaving no obvious way to determine which had been written earlier. Using criterion (iii) with a dash of (i), Vlastos (1991:46-9) proposed that the historical Socrates, depicted in dialogues deemed ‘early,’ and Plato, in ‘middle and late’ dia- logues--though usually using the character Socrates as his mouthpiece--addressed different subject matters and in different ways. For contrary views, see Press (2000). (iv) Less frequently than with the three approaches above, relative dates of composition have been derived from absolute dates proffered for particular dialogues, usually by linking their themes to historical events, e.g., Plato’s experiences (Tennemann 1792, Grote 1865); the death of Theaetetus (if in 392, Kirchner 1901; if in 369, Vogt 1909-10); Theban politics (Dušanić 1979, 1980); or to positions advocated by rivals whom Plato was said to be answering, e.g., Antisthenes or Isocrates (Rick 1931, Ries 1959); or sometimes to nascent schools such as the Cynics or Cyrenaics. Consensus about the order of composition has stayed firmly out of reach for several rea- sons. Despite the wondrously exact results achieved by many of these scholars, their results con- tradict one another within and across the methods used (Nails 1995:53–63). Moreover, a circularity problem confounds (i)–(iv): each suggested order depends on first positing a pre-R. exemplar for which no independent confirmation has ever been credible, though the Apology has been an unfor- tunate favorite--unfortunate because court speeches are not reliably compared to dialogues. Fur- ther, (v) there is textual evidence and testimony that Plato edited or rewrote dialogues in his life- time, confounding any single date; and (vi) short dialogues may have been written during the peri- ods when longer ones--Gorgias, R., Lg.--were being conceived and executed, resisting any linear chronology. Evidence for (v) and (vi) undermines all purportedly discrete chronologies. (v) Several dialogues show clear evidence of editing or rewriting: e.g., Grg. (Tarrant 1982), Protagoras (Frede 1986), Cratylus (Sedley 2003:6–21), and Tht. (Tarrant 2010). Inconsistencies in Lg. prompted Morrow (1960) and Ryle (1966) to support the view that there was a proto-Lg.; and Nails and Thesleff (2003) argue that the Lg. exhibits the accretion of later material onto a Platonic stem, as allowed for in the actual encouragement of change in the law code. As for testimony, Dio- nysius of Halicarnassus (de Compositione Verborum 25.207–18), said Plato ‘combed and curled in every direction’ the first line of R. bk 1. (vi) R. presents an especially complex case; and the extent to which it was revised during Plato’s lifetime casts further suspicion on single dates of composition for any of the longer dia- logues while it also makes it more plausible that short dialogues were composed along the way. Although this remains controversial, it is likely that before the R. as we know it was compiled, there was both (a) a freestanding version of the first book, On Justice or Thrasymachus; and (b) a proto-R. or Ideal State of two scrolls that comprised much of R. bk 2, most of R. bk 3, and the beginning of R. bk 5 (for exact passages, see Thesleff 2009:521). (a) Among the reasons cited for a discrete compo- 2 sition of R. bk 1, regardless of whether it preceded or followed the proto-R., are the natural break before the remainder of the dialogue; and R. bk 1’s featuring of several persons whose active dates in Athens cannot be reconciled with the lives of Adeimantus and Glaucon, who would then have been children (Nails 1998). In addition, Socrates’ elenctic interaction with Cephalus, Polemarchus, and Thrasymachus resembles that of other Socratic dialogues; in R. bk 2–10, Socrates takes a con- structive role. Among those who have supported the view that R. bk 1 was composed separately, deploying arguments about content, are Vlastos (1991:248–51) and Kraut (1992:xii); Kahn (1993) has opposed it. Stylometric analyses (Ritter 1888:35–7, 1910:236–7; Arnim 1914) likewise sup- ported separate composition (Brandwood’s 1990:67–73 data is claimed by both sides; and Ledger 1989 did not test for variation between R. bk 1 and R. bk 2–10). (b) There is abundant, though not conclusive, evidence for a proto-R. or Ideal State--well known for some time before Plato composed R.--most of it provided by philologists (Hermann 1839; Hirmer 1897:592–8; Thesleff 2009:519–39 with further references). Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights 14.3.3) mentions the two-scroll version that Xenophon opposed; and Diogenes (5.22, 5.43) names a two-scroll epitome of Plato’s R. from the li- braries of Aristotle and Theophrastus. A proto-R. explains how Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae of 392 or 391 BCE could have included more than a score of exact parallels to the language and proposals of R. bk 2–3 and 5. It explains why there is a dearth of contemporaneous references to other parts of R.; why the explicit summary of the ideal state at the beginning of the Ti.-Criti. summarises only those very same parts of R.; why a summary of the same material appears at the beginning of R. bk 8; and why Aristotle summarises the same material in Plt. II. Ryle (1966:216–300) offers a comprehensive, common-sense discussion of the order of composition of the dialogues. In shorter compass, but nevertheless taking a number of approaches into account, Irwin (2008:77–84) makes a case for the Anglo-American ‘standard view’ of the order of composition, distinguishing it from simple developmentalism, as criticised effectively by Cooper (1997:xii–xviii). Works cited: Arnim, Hans F. 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