The Sources

Abstract

Extract How do we know about Plato’s life? What are the sources, and how reliable are they? In Plato’s case, they are peculiarly intriguing. There are three kinds of source: biographies written in antiquity, letters written in antiquity under Plato’s name, and Plato’s own published works. All three of these sources are problematic in their own distinct ways. There are also countless references to Plato by other ancient writers, but they are concerned with philosophy rather than biography. Ancient Biographies of Plato Six ancient Lives of Plato exist in whole or part. Philodemus of Gadara, in the first century bce, included a critical account of Plato’s life in the part of his massive History of the Philosophers that was dedicated to the history of the Academy. What remains of this text, however, is fragmentary: it exists only on carbonized papyrus rolls from Herculaneum in Italy, burned and preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 ce, and the delicate and highly technical work of reading the papyri is still ongoing. Moreover, what remains deals largely with the Academy; most of the details of Plato’s life are missing, and little is added in this respect to what we can gather from the other Lives, which have survived complete. These surviving Lives are, in chronological order: On Plato and His Teaching (second century ce), by the novelist and Platonist Apuleius of Madaurus; the third chapter of the Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (third century ce) by the biographer Diogenes Laertius; the opening sections of Commentary on Plato’s First Alcibiades (sixth century ce) by the Platonist scholar Olympiodorus the Younger; an anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy (sixth century ce); and the entry “Plato” in the Dictionary of Wise Men Distinguished in the Field of Intellectual Studies (sixth century ce), by Hesychius of Miletus.1