������� ���

PLATO’S EXOTERIC MYTHS*

Glenn W. Most

Already at the very beginning of Greek literature, Homer takes pains to

transform the transmitted muthos, the traditional body of legends concern-
ing men and gods, which he and his audience received from their prede-
cessors as their cultural patrimony, according to the concept of logos—
rationality, humanity, appropriateness, probability—which was doubtless
not only his own but also shared with many of his contemporaries: he
explains the inexplicable and he suppresses the monstrous; as Longinus
noted (9.7), he humanizes the divine and he idealizes the human. And so too
later, Homer’s initiative was followed by all his successors: in every genera-
tion of Greek culture, poets, philosophers, and ordinary listeners struggled
to ��nd some kind of mediation between the given, generally accepted, and
yet sometimes simply intolerable muthos on the one hand and the inquisi-
tive, ambitious, and never fully satis��ed logos on the other.
But no one before Plato assigned to the problematic relation of muthos
and logos so central a role in his thought as Plato did. This is already made
clear lexically by the fact that a number of invented compound words,
without which we ourselves can no longer even imagine conceptualizing
this problem, are attested for the ��rst time in Plato’s works, and indeed were
most likely coined by him: muthologia appears eight times in his writings,
muthologêma twice, muthologikos once, muthologeô as many as seventeen
times.
It is not surprising that Plato’s many readers have always been perplexed
by the questions not only of Plato’s attitude towards the traditional Greek
myths but also of the place of muthos within Plato’s own works.� For no
other Greek thinker attacked the traditional myths as violently as Plato did;

* This article is a revised version of Most (2002).

� Besides the works cited in the following notes, see also on Plato’s myths for example
Stewart (1905), Stöcklein (1937), Levi (1946), Edelstein (1949), Loewenclau (1958), Pieper
(1965), Hirsch (1971), Findlay (1978), Janka and Schäfer (2002), Partenie (2009), and the
articles in the present volume.
14 ����� �. ����

and yet no other ancient philosopher has inserted so many striking and
unforgettable myths into his own works as he did. How is such an apparent
contradiction to be explained? Diogenes Laertius reports (3.80) that some
people thought that Plato uses too many myths—but then he goes on in the
same (textually not unproblematic) sentence to justify their use by Plato
in terms of their deterrent e�fect upon unjust people. Whether or not we
wish to adopt his explanation (as we shall see later, worse ones could be
and have been o�fered), this passage is an important testimony which proves
that already in ancient times some readers had recognized this problem and
attempted to come to terms with it.
The problem was rendered all the more acute by the fact that Plato’s
own linguistic usage regarding the relation between muthos and logos is
quite inconsistent. On the one hand, a number of passages show beyond
any doubt that at least in some contexts he intends muthos and logos to
be thought of as being strictly alternative to one another. For example,
Protagoras o�fers his listeners the free choice between a muthos and a logos
(Prot. 320c); then he begins with what he calls a muthos (320c) and later
goes on to what he terms a logos (324d). And yet other passages violate such
a clear terminological distinction. Aristophanes calls his celebrated myth of
the spherical men in the Symposium not a muthos but a logos (Symp. 193d);
and in the Gorgias, the very same speech of Callicles can be considered by
some as a muthos, but also by Socrates as a logos (Gorg. 523a, 526d–527a).
Thus it seems indispensable to di�ferentiate between muthos and logos in
Plato’s thought; but it turns out that to do so is, at least terminologically, not
possible in a clear or unambiguous way. Various passages in Plato’s works
provide contradictory indications about just how we are to understand the
opposition between muthos and logos. Is the philosophical logos itself a
muthos, or is the muthos a kind of logos, or rather the exact opposite of logos?
Is the di�ference one between discourses that are inferior and superior,
or bad and good, or false and true, or probable and true, or changing
and changeless, or else is it a matter of something quite di�ferent? Is the
di�ference one of objects or one of modes, or both, or neither? It is not
hard to ��nd passages in his works that point in one or the other of all these
directions.
The hermeneutical discomfort engendered by this combination of ur-
gency and di���culty has led many scholars to seek some single unambiguous
criterion that would allow them to identify once and for all those parts
of Plato’s text which could be considered myths. In most cases, they have
limited themselves to single features of either form or content; but one
cannot say that the results obtained in this way have been fully satisfactory.
 �����’� �������� ����� 15

On the one hand, Couturat (1896) and Zaslavsky (1981) tried a purely for-
mal approach, locating in the simple appearance of the word muthos a
su���cient criterion for the presence of a myth—and yet the results show
that Plato uses the word to mark passages that no reader except Coutu-
rat and Zaslavsky has ever considered to be myths, while some of the most
famous Platonic myths (like the end of the Gorgias or the story of the inven-
tion of writing in the Phaedrus) are never called muthos by Plato. Croiset
(1895, 288; 1896) sought a di�ferent formal criterion in the use of extended,
uninterrupted speeches—but the Symposium for example consists of eight
such speeches, of which only one or two (Aristophanes’ and part of Dio-
tima’s) can be considered mythic. On the other hand, the complementary
approach, de��ning particular parts of the text as myths on the sole basis of
their content, has hardly been more successful, either because the features
of content that were invoked were too vague (so Frutiger [1930], 36–37) or
because the same features are found in many non-mythic passages as well
and their relation to the mythic character of the myths remains unclear (so
Morgan [2000], 37).
It is not hard to understand why such one-dimensional attempts to
de��ne the Platonic myths tend to fail: for our own modern concept of
muthos arose out of the intellectual developments and cultural needs of the
last several centuries and hence corresponds only partially to the ancient
understanding of the term.� Any attempt on our part to speak of Plato’s
myths is necessarily anachronistic and represents an intrusive projection
of our own notions into his texts, one which he could at best only partially
have even understood, let alone approved. Only an approach that ��exibly
combines formal criteria with features of content and that above all remains
critically aware of its own inescapable anachronism can hope to do justice
both to Plato’s ancient texts and to our modern ideas.
In comparison with the one-dimensional approaches in terms of either
form alone or content alone mentioned hitherto, it seems better to try
to develop further an interpretative strategy which we could call discur-
sive and which goes back to Gaiser (1984) and especially to Brisson (1994).
These latter scholars based their analysis not exclusively upon the con-
ceptual content of the various passages in question nor upon recurrent
lexical signals, but instead upon the concrete conditions of the commu-
nicative situations of the speakers and their listeners, whose pragmatic
linguistic interaction with one another constitutes the unmistakable dra-

� I have discussed this general question in Most (1999).

16 ����� �. ����

matic quality of the Platonic dialogues. If we apply to the Platonic cor-

pus the eight such discursive criteria which I suggest here for determin-
ing those parts of the Platonic dialogues which can be identi��ed as Pla-
tonic myths in our sense (Appendix A), they allow us to establish a reper-
tory of at least fourteen such passages (Appendix B). To be sure, these
eight criteria are not likely to be completely uncontroversial. Some of them
(though not all) admit occasional exceptions; but this means only that
they should not be applied mechanically, but ��exibly, tactfully, and with a
modicum of self-irony. And of course the resulting repertory may well be
subject to criticism, modi��cation, and perhaps also further enlargement;
but it is my suggestion that this group comprises all those texts which
most easily, unambiguously, and unanimously can be counted as Platonic
myths.

1. Platonic myths are almost always monological. Against the background of

the more or less lively dialectical conversations that ��ll most of the pages
of the Platonic corpus, the myths are di�ferentiated in the ��rst instance
by the fact that they are presented orally by a single speaker without any
interruption at all by his listeners from beginning to end. The only excep-
tion is found in the Statesman, where the narrative of the Eleatic stranger
is repeatedly interrupted by his listener Socrates—but this exception is in
fact hardly serious, for we easily understand that it is virtually impossible to
restrain Socrates’ exuberant discursivity, and in any case his interruptions
never furnish objections or questions to the speaker but only con��rm and
encourage him. By contrast, in terms of the typology proposed here Laws
3.676b–682e is not an example of a myth narrated dialectically but, instead,
of the dialectical analysis of a myth which is presupposed here and, pre-
cisely, is not narrated.

2. Platonic myths are probably always recounted by an older speaker to youn-

ger listeners. The speaker’s comparatively advanced age is treated with
respect by his listeners—otherwise it would be impossible to understand
why, in the middle of the typically lively exchange of a Greek conversation,
the other interlocutors suddenly fall silent and are willing to listen to one
person for a long time without ever interrupting him. The di�ference in age
between speaker and listeners is particularly emphasized in the Statesman
(268d) and Protagoras (320c). The only possible exception is Aristophanes’
myth in the Symposium; but if, as some scholars think, he was born in 460 ��,
then at the imagined time of the dialogue he will already have been 44 years
old, and, in any case, in this entertaining and variously anomalous situation,
 �����’� �������� ����� 17

a brilliant comic poet might well have sought a particular comic e�fect by
permitting himself to pretend to be older than he really was.

3. Platonic myths go back to older, explicitly indicated or implied, real or

��ctional oral sources. Even if it seems highly probable, or even evident,
to us that a certain myth was invented by Plato, he likes to pretend that
it is a genuine excerpt from the real reservoir of oral legends present in
Greek culture: so for example in the Statesman (268e–269b, 271a–b). The
most circumstantial indications of a supposed tradition are found in the
Atlantis myth of the Timaeus and Critias: the chain of oral transmission
leads without interruption from Egypt, via Solon, Dropides and the older
Critias, all the way to the younger Critias. But in other cases too, Plato likes to
name allegedly reliable authorities and speci��c sources: priests, priestesses,
and Pindar in the Meno (81a–b); Er in the Republic (X, 614b); ancestors
in the Statesman (271a). In other dialogues where no speci��c source is
actually named, the speaker claims to have heard the myth from other
people (and hence not to have contrived it himself): so Phaedo 107d (‘it is
said’), Gorgias 523a, 524a (‘he says,’ ‘having heard’), Phaedrus 274c (‘hearing
from earlier people,’ ‘I heard’), Laws 4.713c (‘we have received the report’).
And many of the ��gures and narrative schemes in Plato’s myths, even the
probably invented ones, are familiar from the customary Greek repertoire
of traditional legends and popular tales: Zeus, Prometheus, Epimetheus,
Hermes (Protagoras); Zeus, gods, giants (Aristophanes in the Symposium);
stories of humans and animals, of creation, violence, transgression, and
retribution.

4. Platonic myths always deal with objects and events that cannot be veri��ed.
Whatever ordinary humans can know by testing their experience and can
communicate to others is strictly excluded as possible material from the
Platonic myths. Either the myths deal with the very ��rst things, deriving
present circumstances aetiologically from the earliest times (the original
judgment of the dead in the Gorgias, the origin of political communities in
the Protagoras, the invention of writing in the Phaedrus, human sexuality
and the birth of Eros in the Symposium, the periods of world history in the
Statesman, Atlantis and the creation of the world in the Timaeus, again
Atlantis in the Critias, the time before the ��rst state in the Laws). Or else
they deal with the very last things, supplying an eschatology for events after
death: so in the Phaedo, Gorgias, Meno, Phaedrus and Republic. In either
case, the mythic report cannot be subjected to empirical veri��cation but
must be taken on faith.
18 ����� �. ����

5. Platonic myths generally derive their authority not from the speaker’s per-
sonal experience but from the tradition. For this very reason they are not
subject to rational examination by the audience. Sometimes it is explicitly
indicated that Plato’s myths are open to being doubted by skeptical listen-
ers: so in the Gorgias, Phaedrus, and Statesman. Or else, symmetrically, an
unswerving belief in them can sometimes be stubbornly maintained against
any possible doubt: so in the Phaedo, Gorgias, Statesman, and Laws.

6. Platonic myths often have an explicitly asserted psychagogic e�fect. Over

and over it is explicitly indicated that listening to a myth produces great
pleasure: so in the Phaedo (‘I would hear with pleasure,’ 108d), Protago-
ras (‘more delightful,’ 320c), Symposium (‘I enjoyed listening to what you
said,’ 193e), Republic (‘more pleasantly,’ X, 614b). But the myth’s appeal to
its listeners’ emotions goes beyond providing them with delightful enter-
tainment: it can also supply them with a strong motivating impulse towards
performing action, one capable of surpassing any form of rational persua-
sion (Statesman 304c–d, L. II, 663d–e). Even if Socrates is not completely
convinced himself that the myth of life after death he recounts in the Phaedo
is true, nonetheless he holds fast to it, using it like a magical incantation that
��lls him with con��dence (Phd. 114d).

7. Platonic myths are never structured as dialectic but instead always as

description or narration. The dialectical parts of Platonic dialogues are orga-
nized in terms of a variety of logical procedures: examination of premises,
search for contradictions, dihairesis and synagoge. By contrast, the Platonic
myths are structured either synchronically as the description of the co-
existing parts of a place (so in the Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic) or, more
often, diachronically as the narration of the successive episodes of one or
more larger actions (so in the Protagoras, in the myth of writing in the Phae-
drus, in the Symposium, in the myth of Atlantis in the Timaeus and in the
Laws). In this regard (and not only in this regard), the myth of the creation
of the world in the Timaeus is a notorious problem: already in the 4th cen-
tury �� scholars contemporary with Plato or only slightly later than him
were arguing about whether he intended this myth to be understood as
being synchronic or diachronic.

8. Platonic myths are always found either (a) at the beginning of an extended
dialectical exposition or (b) at the end of one. (a) A Platonic myth often has
the function of opening a section of logical analysis whose beginning is
explicitly signalled. In the Meno a new beginning is said to be made with
 �����’� �������� ����� 19

the myth (79e–81e). In the Protagoras the sophist ��rst tells a muthos, and
when that is over he goes on to supply a corresponding logos. The myth
of the invention of writing in the Phaedrus is followed by a dialectical
analysis of the disadvantages of this technology. After telling his myth of the
spherical humans in the Symposium, Aristophanes himself supplies his own
dihairesis, classifying the kinds of human eros. Later in the same dialogue,
Diotima begins with a myth of the birth of Eros, then goes on to give a
philosophical dialogue and lecture. In the Statesman too, a new beginning
is explicitly signalled by the myth (268d). (b) Or else the myth concludes an
extended dialectical portion of the text, often so that the results that have
already been obtained by logical means can now be repeated impressively
in a mythical form: so in the Phaedo, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Republic, Timaeus,
Critias and Laws.

With the exception of this eighth feature (to which we shall return later),
all the other characteristics I have indicated are thoroughly typical of the
traditional myths which were found in the oral culture of ancient Greece
and which Plato himself often describes and indeed vigorously criticizes.
This fact raises a di���cult and fundamental question: what is the exact
relationship between Plato’s philosophical myths and the customary myths
of the Greek culture that surrounded him? I would like to conclude by
making a few tentative suggestions regarding this perplexing and often
discussed problem.
Let us approach Plato via the detour of his greatest student.� It is well
known that Aristotle composed some of his works for the students and col-
leagues who worked with him in the Lyceum and others for people outside.
Aristotle himself refers to the external writings with such terms as exôterikoi
(8 times), ekdedomenoi (once), enkyklia (twice) and en koinôi (once); start-
ing in the 2nd century �� (Lucian, Galen), the corresponding term esôterikoi
is found for the internal writings. The di�ference in kinds of addressees of the
two groups of writings was evidently related to a di�ference in their literary
character: Aristotle’s reputation, in the ��rst centuries after his death, for the
elegance and literary ��nish of his works does not correspond to the tightly
argued, severe style of his transmitted writings; and, particularly interest-
ing in the present context, we know from a fragment of his Eudemus (44
Rose) that at least this one exoteric work contained a myth, while some frag-
ments of his Peri eugeneias (91–94 Rose) make it manifest that this was a

� Cf. especially Dirlmeier (1962), 5�f.; also Usener (1994), Cerri (1996), Dalfen (1998).
20 ����� �. ����

dialogue. Both these features are entirely lacking in Aristotle’s esoteric writ-
ings. Of course this does not in the least prove that myths and dialogues
characterized all of Aristotle’s exoteric writings; but at least it demonstrates
that these features, which were entirely excluded from the esoteric writings,
could make an appearance in the exoteric ones.
In general terms, the case of Plato is strikingly similar. Whatever our
view of the Tübingen school, it is generally agreed that Plato too produced
two di�ferent kinds of instruction for two di�ferent kinds of addressees:
on the one hand the written texts we still read, all without exception
dialogues and many containing myths; on the other hand his oral teachings
for his students and colleagues in the Academy (there are also con��icting
reports about at least one example of oral teaching for a limited external
audience, the lecture ‘On the Good’),� about whose literary form we know
little or nothing for sure but which there is no reason to think were anything
other than di���cult in content and dry in style, presupposing considerable
philosophical preparation in their listeners and containing neither dialogue
nor myths.
Of course there are evident di�ferences between the speci��c ways that
Plato and his best student conceive of the nature of exoteric and esoteric
writings and the distinctions between them: for Plato, esoteric communi-
cation is oral (this is not only his practice, but it is also theorized in the
Phaedrus); for Aristotle it too is written, like his exoteric works (though we
presume, no doubt rightly, that he read out these texts to his students).
It is not accidental that Plato is said to have nicknamed Aristotle Anag-
nôstês, ‘the reader’ (Vita Aristotelis Marciana, 6; Vita Aristotelis Vulgata, 5;
Vita Aristotelis Latina, 6), for literacy is a more ineluctable feature of Aris-
totle’s world than it is of Plato’s. And the fata libelli made the destinies of
the two authors’ writings exactly complementary: in the case of Plato it is
only the exoteric writings that have been transmitted, whereas his esoteric
teaching is only reported to us indirectly and incompletely; in the case of
Aristotle it is only the esoteric writings that are well represented in direct
transmission, whereas the exoteric publications that made him famous in
the centuries after his death have survived only in scant fragments.
In his writings, Plato himself gives striking examples of how he conceives
of both kinds of transmission of philosophical teaching. Anaxagoras is evi-
dently for Plato a notorious example of exoteric publication (Ap. 26d–e, Phd.
97b–c): his writings are for sale at the public market and can be bought by

� The most important testimonia are conveniently assembled in Gaiser (1968), 441 �f.
 �����’� �������� ����� 21

anyone with enough interest and money; the buyer reads the writings aloud,
from the philosophical text speaks not the author’s voice but a di�ferent, not
necessarily a philosophical one (cf. Phdr. 275e). By contrast, Zeno demon-
strates paradigmatically in the Parmenides (127b–e) an esoteric transmis-
sion of knowledge: although he entrusts his doctrines to a written text, he
does not communicate them by publishing and disseminating it, but instead
he reads out orally from his manuscript to a small and carefully chosen
group of listeners in a private place.
To generalize cautiously from Plato’s di�ferentiation between these
modes of philosophical communication, we might say that exoteric phil-
osophical writings must compete in the literary market-place not only with
other philosophical writings for the attention of philosophically trained
readers, but also with other literary texts of all sorts for the attention of
a philosophically untrained public. But the most important kinds of liter-
ary works that could be found at the Greek market-place at that time were
drama (tragedy and comedy) and epic poetry (above all Homer and Hes-
iod), both kinds characterized above all by myth and dialogue. If this was
so, then a shrewd author who wanted to make sure that his writings would
seem interesting and attractive not only to philosophers but also to non-
philosophical readers will have ensured that they prominently displayed
the same kinds of textual features that the unprofessional readers expected
from the books they set out to buy.� Esoteric writings, by contrast, possess a
high degree of monopoly within a limited discursive space and can restrict
themselves to few addressees without having to worry too much about
competitors. In short, exoteric writings are directed to a broader and more
heterogeneous audience including non-specialist readers, esoteric ones to
a smaller and more homogeneous audience comprising fewer readers but
better trained ones.
To be sure, no author is exposed entirely without defence to the con-
ditions of the literary market-place, and to a certain extent every author
creates the readers he needs. But Plato and Aristotle seem to have concluded
that if they wished to change the minds of their contemporaries they would
have to ��rst attract them with the bait of the very same literary devices to
which they were accustomed—and then to redirect them in a completely
di�ferent, philosophically satisfactory direction.
Of course the fact that Plato’s and Aristotle’s exoteric writings were
also directed to non-philosophical readers does not mean that in their

� On Plato’s relations to the poets, see now Crotty (2009).

22 ����� �. ����

authors’ eyes they were philosophically worthless. For why bother to write
them at all, and so many, and with such extraordinary care, if they had no
philosophical value? Moreover, Aristotle often refers in his esoteric writings
to his own exoteric publications, and calls the later ‘useful’ twice, and he
also refers no less than seventeen times to Plato’s dialogues—surely he
would not have done so if he had known that his teacher regarded them
as philosophically worthless.
But then just what was, in Plato’s view, their philosophical value? In the
Phaedrus, Socrates says that the only value of written communication is to
remind someone who already knows the truth (275c–d, 278a); but it is hard
to imagine that Plato intended his exoteric writings exclusively for internal
use in the Academy, merely to remind his more forgetful students about the
doctrines he had already transmitted to them orally. For why then would
he have taken such pains with their literary character,� and how then could
we explain their immediate and continuing enormous impact on outside
readers like Xenophon and Isocrates, starting already in the ��rst decades of
the 4th century?
It seems more plausible to assume that Plato wrote his dialogues not
only for philosophically trained readers but also, and perhaps above all, for
potentially interested external non-experts, i.e. for young men (and their
parents) who wanted to know what they should do in life. He wanted these
writings to reach not only people who had already made the decision to
devote themselves to the philosophical way of life but also, and perhaps
above all, non-philosophical readers, and to convince these that their life
would be less valuable if they did not study (Platonic) philosophy. In other
words, Plato’s dialogues were intended at least partially as parainesis and
protreptic.� In order to reach these readers, Plato had to study, master,
deploy—and then invert the most successful strategies of literary commu-
nication in contemporary Greek culture. Dialogue and myth he learned not
only from Alexamenus of Styrus and Zenon (Diog. Laert. 3.48), from the
Sophists and Sophron, from the mysteries and the Orphic texts—but above
all from Attic tragedy and the epic poems of Homer and Hesiod, both of
them genres politically institutionalized at Athens as the predominant lit-
erary forms at that time. In Plato’s eyes, both genres used their linguistic
beauty, their appeal to the emotions, and their unquestioned authority to
transmit a dangerously false image of man and the world. In his dialogues,

� On Plato’s literary artistry see especially Nightingale (1995).

� Cf. Festugière (1973) and especially Gaiser (1959).
 �����’� �������� ����� 23

he seems to have been trying to provide a philosophically correct version of

both genres, using their potentially perilous means to transmit salubrious
doctrines. That is why Plato can call his Republic and his Laws a good myth
(Rep. II, 376d; VI, 501e; L. VI, 752a; VII, 812a) or term the latter work the best
tragedy (L. VII, 817b).
In Plato’s project of educating a new philosophical audience, his dia-
lectic and his myths are closely bound together. It is not at all the case that
only dialectic represents the true philosophy in Plato’s writings: instead,
Plato’s myth and his dialectic are complementary and interdependent. We
should recall here the eighth criterion of myths in Plato’s writings indi-
cated earlier (Appendix A8): they always stand either at the end or at the
beginning of an extended dialectical exposition. On the one hand we move
repeatedly in Plato’s writings from the narration of a myth to an analysis
of its meaning, and on the other hand the severe construction of a logi-
cal dihaeresis and synagoge repeatedly leads into a myth. Both forms of
discourse are necessary because, although each one is unmistakably di�fer-
ent from the other, nonetheless each one o�fers a complementary access to
truth. Without logos there would be in Plato’s writings no proofs, no anal-
ysis, no veri��ability, no intellectual conviction; but without muthos there
would be no models, no global vision, no belief, no emotional motiva-
tion.
Because no man is exclusively a philosopher and above all because none
of the non-professional readers whom Plato seems to have wished espe-
cially to reach with his dialogues was exclusively a philosopher, both dis-
cursive registers, logos and muthos, are indispensable in Plato’s writings.
The ancient view, reported by Diogenes Laertius, that Plato’s myths were
intended to deter unjust men, is probably not completely wrong but only
partially true: most likely they were intended not only to help to deter peo-
ple who were making the wrong choice in life, but also to attract people
who might yet make the right one. To achieve this e�fect, Plato had to use
both dialectic on the one hand and myth and dialogue on the other. As a
result, his own writings can best be described by a term he himself most
likely invented: they are all forms of muthologia.
And yet, there can be no doubt that in the end Plato is not fundamentally
a myth-teller but a philosopher. For all the frequency with which there are
found in his works those lexical combinations of muthos and logos in which
muthos forms the ��rst part, logos the second (and in which, by the laws of
Greek grammar, what is involved is a form of logos involving muthos), it is
striking that there is not a single instance in any of his writings in which
logos forms the ��rst part, muthos the second (and in which, by the same
24 ����� �. ����

laws, what would be involved would be a form of muthos involving logos):

Plato may well be constructing a muthologia, but he is doing so within the
horizon, and by the constraints, of logos.

�������� �
Proposed Criteria for Distinguishing Platonic Myths
1. Platonic myths are almost always monological.
2. Platonic myths are probably always recounted by an older speaker to
younger listeners.
3. Platonic myths usually claim to go back to older, explicitly indicated
or implied, real or ��ctional oral sources.
4. Platonic myths always deal with objects and events that cannot be
veri��ed.
5. Platonic myths generally derive their authority not from the speaker’s
personal experience but from the tradition.
6. Platonic myths often have an explicitly asserted psychagogic e�fect.
7. Platonic myths are never structured as dialectic but instead always as
description or narration.
8. Platonic myths are always found either (a) at the beginning of an
extended dialectical exposition or (b) at the end of one.

�������� �
A Proposed Provisional Repertory of Platonic Myths
– Phaedo 107c–114c: the Underworld and the structure of our earth.
– Gorgias 523a–527a: the Underworld.
– Protagoras 320c–323a: the anthropology of politics.
– Meno 81a–c: the immortality of the soul.
– Phaedrus 246a–257a: the nature of the soul.
– Phaedrus 274b–275b: the invention of writing.
– Symposium 189c–193d: the origin of sexuality.
– Symposium 203b–204a: the birth of Eros.
– Republic X, 613e–621d: the myth of Er.
– Statesman 268e–274e: the periods of the world’s history.
– Timaeus 20d–25e: Atlantis.
– Timaeus 29d–92c: the creation of the cosmos.
– Critias 108e–121c: Atlantis.
– Laws 4.713a–e: pre-political life.