The Berkeley Plato: From Neglected Relic to Ancient Treasure, An Archaeological Detective Story

The Inscription

least until the third century after Christ. Even during the Augustan period, when the Luna marble of Carrara was being exploited and provided a viable alternative to Parian, Strabo recorded that “the Parian stone, as it is called in Paros, is the best marble for sculpture.”29 The use of Parian marble should be taken as another indication that the Berkeley Plato is special . It is equally significant that the quarry ceased production in the Late Roman period and that, so far as I have been able to determine, there is not a single example of a Renaissance or early modern forgery or copy of an ancient statue made from the marble of Paros.30 THE INSCRIPTION If the evidence for the authenticity of the herm and its portrait is conclusive , we may turn our attention next to the question of the authenticity of the inscription, which has been described as a modern addition to an ancient herm shaft.31 It is in eight lines, divided into three distinct units (fig. 8): Plavtwn jA rivstwnoˇ j Aqhnai¸oˇ aijtiva] : eJlomev nw/ : qeo;ˇ : ajnaivtioˇ 12 / The Berkeley Plato 29. Strabo 10.5.7; cf. Pliny, NH 36.14. See also Herz 2000, 28: “Lychnites marble is the most translucent of all Classical marbles. Lepsius found that light is transmitted in Pentelic marble through 15 mm., Carrara 25 mm., and lychnites 35 mm.” For the importance of the translucency of Parian marble in architecture , see Hoepfner 2001. 30. Indeed, it seems clear that the earliest exploitation of the Lychnites quarries in modern times did not begin until the late nineteenth century. See Korres 2000, 75–79. It is, of course, theoretically possible that a modern forger might use an ancient block of Parian marble, but in Rome this marble was much less available than other types. 31. Smutny 1966, 2–5. : yuch; : de;; : pa¸sa : ajqavnatoˇ The first unit, which announces that the portrait is of Plato, the son of Ariston, the Athenian, consists of letters that are slightly larger than those of the second and third units, with an average height of about 0.035 m. The letter heights of the second and third units (exclusive of the raised horizontal stroke of the tau) range from 0.026 m to 0.030 m. The horizontal stroke of the tau in the second and third units sweeps up to the right and is distinctive and different from the taus in lines 1 and 2. Otherwise, the letter forms for all three units are the same. The second and third units make use of punctuation points to divide words, an instrument unnecessary in the one-word-per-line first unit. There are also traces of a double cutting of the letters, a detail that was observed by John Twilley (see below, p. 75) through his microscope but that I did not detect with the naked eye. Obviously, this characteristic could be significant were it to be recognized in other inscriptions. The second unit is a quotation from Plato’s Republic (617E), although the text as received has the genitive eJlomevnou rather than the dative eJlomevnw/ of the Berkeley inscription. The sense remains the same in either case: “Blame belongs to the one who chooses. God is blameless.” Or, in modern vernacular: “Blame the chooser, not God.” The third unit of text, located below the phallus socket, is also a quotation , this time from Plato’s Phaedrus (245C), but it also has a variation in the Berkeley version with the inclusion of the particle dev. Again, the sense remains “Every soul is immortal.” As we shall see, Plato expresses this sentiment frequently in other dialogues as well as the quoted Phaedrus. Is this inscription ancient? Or is it a modern forgery, as Smutny maintained ? The differences between the quotations and the received texts of Plato would suggest that the inscription was not copied from any text known in recent times. Further, the letters are well carved and essentially uniform, and they have, as noted above, been damaged and broken away— especially the alpha of line 4 and the nu of line 5. Furthermore, those The Berkeley Plato / 13 breaks (as noted above) are filled with encrustation, which takes time to form.32 These facts alone would seem to preclude a recent forgery. There is, however, an even more compelling piece of internal evidence for the ancient origin of the inscription. In many...