The Spherical Earth in Plato's Phaedo

Abstract

Q UITE recently (CQNS 6 Iq9561 I93-I97) Professor T. G. Rosenmeyer of the University of Washington has challenged the traditional view that in the Phaedo Plato imagines the earth as a sphere. Rosenmeyer (henceforth R.) would rather have us believe that Plato is concerned (p. 193) with an image, however vague, of a flat earth with a fixed horizon. The value of his ingenious essay is that it encourages us to reconsider many points that we were ever too prepared to accept as true without examination. Nevertheless, I still believe the traditional view must be correct and wish to defend it in the light of R.'s arguments.' R. believes (p. 193) the problem can be divided into two parts: (I) Does Plato in the Phaedo (Io8e-Io9a, iiobSff. and Timaeus 4ob-c and 62 dff.) think of the earth as a spherical body? and (2) Granted he does, need his description of the earth, as a setting for his eschatological myth, conform with the spherical theory? In sixteen lines R. disposes of (i) which does not affect the answer to (2). R., it seems, is quite prepared to believe that in i i o b i ff. Plato may be speaking of a spherical earth, while in i I I c4ff., without a word of warning to his reader that he has discarded the spherical theory, he begins to speak in terms of a flat earth hypothesis. Until R. provides a Platonic parallel, it will be difficult to believe that so profound and sudden a contradiction would be tolerated by the ancient philosopher without some remark, however brief, of explanation. R.'s interpretation appears inconsistent with the careful, logical progression that we associate with the Socratic method. In a word R.'s (2) can be flat if his (i) is flat also. Let us first attack then R.'s flat (i). R. could have alleviated his task by not discussing the Timaeus passages, which only prove that after years of associating with astronomers, Plato may have come to think in