Platonica: The Anecdotes concerning the Life and Writings of Plato (review)

80 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY stances is conceived.1 In the Symposium the lover of beauty ascends to the mystic heights of another world; in the Hippias, pace Liminta, he remains playfully in the here and now of everyday eristic. Nevertheless, Liminta's rendering of the last section of the dialogue is convincing and rewarding . The hypothesis that the proverb captures the meaning of beauty will encourage classical scholars to reevaluate Plato's aesthetics and theory of feeling. This point alone makes the volume worth studying as a scholarly introduction to Plato's theory of art. L. M. PALMER University of Delaware Alice Swift Riginos. Platonica: The Anecdotes concerning the Life and Writings of Plato. Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, vol. 3. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976. Pp. xi + 248. This is an admirable scholarly work on a neglected topic. Riginos has collected 148 anecdotes about Plato's life and works from numerous ancient sources, including the six surviving ancient biographies of the philosopher. She examines each of the stories critically, in an attempt to determine its historical accuracy. As the author notes in the introduction to the work (p. 2), she has not tried to present a critical biography of Plato and has therefore not examined other material relevant to such an undertaking (e.g., the Platonic Letters). Still, the book goes a tong way toward showing how difficult it would be to produce such a biography. There are seventeen chapters, each of which deals with a different aspect of Plato's life or writings. Their order follows roughly the chronology of Plato's life. Among the topics discussed are: the legend that Plato was the son of Apollo; the story that his given name was Aristocles; the claims that Plato, as a youth, was a wrestler, a painter, and a budding tragic poet before his conversion to philosophy; stories of his relations with Socrates, other contemporary philosophers, and his students in the Academy; accounts of Plato's defiance of the Syracusan tyrants Dionysius I and II during his visits to Sicily; and the charge that Plato plagiarized the Timaeus from Pythagorean writings, hitherto kept secret, which he purchased during his travels. The anecdotes themselves are often amusing, and the book may be read as a source of such entertaining, if trivial, tidbits as the story that Plato invented a clock for night use; that Cleombrotus of Ambracia and Cato the Younger were led by a reading of the Phaedo to commit suicide; that Plato liked the poetry of Antimachus of Colophon and the mimes of Sophron of Syracuse; that he did not whip his slaves when angry, but rather gave the job to another; that he purposely selected an unhealthy site for the Academy; that bees made honey on Plato's lips when he was an infant; and so on. Riginos's purpose is not to regale the reader with such curiosities from the ancient biographical tradition, however; it is, rather, to seek the kernel of truth these stories may contain. In general, she comes up empty-handed. Few anecdotes survive her careful analysis, and those that do tell us precious little about Plato, either as a man or as a philosopher. Her general conclusion is negative, and bears quoting: The analysis of the 148 anecdotes presented in the preceding chapters shows the anecdotes to be, on the whole, unreliable as sources of information about the historical Plato. Nearly all the anecdotes are either based on specific passages in the Platonic writings or seem to result from a particular tendency or prejudice of the source which fast circulated it or of sources which repeat subsequent variations. A few anecdotes such as 79 IPlato's "Euthyphro" and the Earlier Theory of Forms (New York, 1970), pp. 147-54. BOOK REVIEWS 81 (the lectureon the Good)and 124 (HeracleidescollectedAntimachus'poetryat Plato's behest)probablyhave a basis in fact, but this studyshowsthat anecdotes,whethertakenfromthe Platoniclivesor fromthe general tradition,mustbe cautiouslyassessedwhenusedas sourcesof biographicalinformationaboutPlato. (P. 199) Anyone even casually acquainted with the general credulousness of the ancient biographers, such as Diogenes Laertius, and with their preference for a lively story or bit of gossip over well-established but dull historical fact, will find...