The Dramatic Date of Plato's Republic

Author(s): Debra Nails

Source: The Classical Journal, Vol. 93, No. 4 (Apr. - May, 1998), pp. 383-396
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South
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 THE DRAMATICDATE OF PLATO'SREPUBLIC

The scholarly debate that followed Boeckh's 1874 argument

that 411/410 is the dramatic date of Plato's Republic'has led
not to consensus but to a contemporary standstill. Recent
translatorsand commentatorswho are not silent on the issue typi-
cally provide, and with little or no comment, one of two widely
held dramatic dates, Boeckh's 411/410 or the earlier 422/421,2 but
there have been scores of arguments bearing on several suggested
dramatic dates for the Republicranging from 424 to 408.3 Guthrie
declares the date uncertain,4and Moors argues against both dates
that Plato is deliberately producing a "timeless" dialogue.5

1
August Boeckh, GesammelteKleineSchriften(Leipzig 1874) 4.448.
2 For 411/410, cf. Lewis Campbell, Plato's "Republic"(Oxford 1894) 3.2; Paul
Shorey,PlatoTheRepublic(London1930)introduction;BenjaminJowett, TheDialogues
of Plato translatedinto English with Analysesand Introductions(Oxford 1953); Eric
Voegelin, Orderand History (Baton Rouge 1957) 3.53 n. 4; and Allap Bloom, The
Republicof Plato (New York and London 1968) 440 n. 3. For 422/21, cf. D. J. Allan,
Plato RepublicBookI (London 1940) 20; A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Man and his Work
(Cleveland 1956) 264; Desmond Lee, Plato: The Republic(London and New York
1955) 60; Jacob Howland, TheRepublic:TheOdysseyof Philosophy(New York 1993)
xii-who specifies 421/420; and RobinWaterfield,PlatoRepublic(Oxford 1993)380,
with certain reservations. For convenience, I will refer to these dates as 411 and
421 below.
3 At the two extremes, H. D. Rankin, Plato and the Individual(London 1964)
120, supports 424; and Eduard Zeller, Plato and the OlderAcademy(London 1876),
supports 409/408, as does J. Adam, TheRepublicof Plato (Cambridge 1926), who
says "perhaps 409." Kenneth J. Dover, Lysiasand the CorpusLysiacum(Berkeley
1968)4 53, identifies a window of 421-415 on grounds that will be pivotal below.
W. K. C. Guthrie, Plato the Man and His Dialogues(Cambridge 1975) 437-38,
systematically considers dramatic date claims for each of Plato's dialogues. His
word "uncertain,"however, suggests that Plato intended a dramatic date, but that
moderns cannot be sure what it was. I maintain rather that Plato never "edited"
the dialogue from the standpoint of dramatic date at all.
5 Kent Moors, "The Argument Against a Dramatic Date for Plato's Republic,"
Polis 7.1 (1987) 6-31& 22; this amounts to a stronger claim about Plato's literary
technique than that advanced by E. R. Dodds, Plato'sGorgias(Oxford 1959) 17-18,
for the Gorgias(see below). Moors (24 n. 7) cites disputants not included by Guthrie.
For general studies on dramatic order, see Diskin Clay, "Gaps in the Universe' of
the PlatonicDialogues,"BostonAreaColloquium on AncientPhilosophy3 (1987)131-57;

TheClassicalJournal93.4 (1998) 383-96

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384 DEBRANAILS

One reason for current interest in the dramatic date of the

dialogue is that the well-known "developmental hypothesis" in
the philosophical interpretation of the dialogues has receded in
recent years.6According to this interpretive strategy, the dialogues'
dates of composition are mapped against Plato's evolution from a
mere follower of Socrates to an original philosopher in his own
right: that is, early, middle and late dialogues map the rise and fall
of the theory of forms. So long as this hypothesis held sway, the
supposed order of composition dictated the order in which the
dialogues were read and taught.7 Now, with developmentalism
increasingly under attack,"new and renewed approaches to the
Platonic corpus are emerging. Increased interest in the dialogues
as literature has made the attempt to establish a dramatic date for
the Republicmore urgent,9 particularly because its dramatic date
impinges on those of several other dialogues.10 What makes the

and Charles L. Griswold, "Irony in the Platonic Dialogues," in TheSovereigntyof

Construction:Studiesin the Thoughtof DavidLachterman (Amsterdam 1996).
6 The position has a long history, beginning with Karl Friedrich Hermann,
Geschichteund Systemder PlatonischenPhilosophie(Heidelberg 1839), and strongly
influenced early on by the stylometric work of Lewis Campbell, TheSophistesand
Politicusof Plato (Oxford 1867). It is closely associated nowadays with the writings
of GregoryViastos and those of his many followers.Vlastos'smost complete defense
of the view appears in Socrates:IronistandMoralPhilosopher(Cambridge 1991).
7 Cf. JacobHowland, "Re-readingPlato:The Problemof PlatonicChronology,"
Phoenix45 (1991) 189-214.
8
Directand recentattackshave been made by HolgerThesleff,Studiesin Platonic
Chronology(Helsinki 1982) 8-17, 40-52; and Debra Nails, Agora,Academy,and the
ConductofPhilosophy (Dordrecht1995)53-75--both of which cite numerousprecedents.
Charles Kahn, who remarks in Platoand the SocraticDialogue(Cambridge 1996) on
his having thought innocently in 1991 that the developmental view of the earlier
dialogues "had by then collapsed of its own weight" (xviii), remains remarkably
developmentalist.JohnCooper,PlatoComplete Works(Indianapolis1997),characterizes
the developmental hypothesis charitably but concludes that it is "an unsuitable
basis for bringing anyone to the reading of these works" (xiv).
9 In "The Origins of the Socratic Dialogue," in TheSocraticMovement(Ithaca
1994), Diskin Clay writes, "More than any of the literary Socratics of the fourth
century, Plato took care to provide some of his Socratic dialogues with a signifi-
cant historical setting" (46). Kahn, Plato, ch. 1, echoes the compliment, crediting
Plato with "invent[ing] the conversations of Socrates with the same freedom as
other Socratic authors, but . . more philosophically and more lifelike" (35). The
paucity of extant fragments,much less whole texts, of the several writers of Saicratikoi
logoimakes me reluctant to draw such conclusions myself, and still more reluctant
to infer from them any consequence for reading the Platonic dialogues.
10Implications for the Phaedrusand Symposiumwill be examined below. But
there are others. The Timaeus,for example, has long been viewed as taking place
the day after the Republic,and the Critiasimmediately after that;Guthrie, TheLater
Plato and the Academy(Cambridge 1978) 198, citing precedents, argues that the

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 THE DRAMATICDATE OF PLATO'SREPUBLIC 385

issue even morecriticalis thatthe two dates most commonly defended

suggest conspicuously dissimilar images of the conversation held
in the Piraeus that summer day, and thus have differentimplications
for how the dialogue as a whole ought to be understood.
If the gathering took place in 421, Socrates (469-399) was forty-
eight, and Plato's brothers as well as the sons of Cephalus were all
in their early to mid twenties; the optimistic springtime Peace of
Nicias was a few months old in a war that had been going on
sporadically for ten years, and which Athens still fully expected to
win. If the date is a decade later, in 411, Socrates was fifty-eight,
and because a different set of historical events and relationships
comes into play, Cephalus's sons were in their mid forties, while
Glaucon and Adeimantus were in their early twenties; more strikingly,
twenty years into the Peloponnesian War, the expedition to Melos,
Alcibiades's betrayal of Athens, and the humiliating Sicilian defeat
had already been suffered, and Athens was living under the Four
Hundred, then the Five Thousand, in the year before the democracy
regained power-a gloomy, violence-torn, and pessimistic time. The
earlier date has stimulated interpretationsthat point to more irony,
more humor, in the dialogue than is found by those whose belief in
411 encourages them to find more allusions to Socrates's death and
a general preoccupation with destruction and corruption.
While a plausible case can be made for each date, as I will
demonstratebelow, there are problemswith each as well. Ultimately,
the strong evidence for two dates is better construed as evidence
that Plato's great dialogue was cobbled together and revised over
decades.

I. INTRODUCTION

The raw material for deciding between the two dates is chiefly
historical and prosopographical. Besides conflicting details from
various sources that will be considered below, two particulars from
the first book of the Republic must fit the date: the peaceful summer
during the Peloponnesian War years in which the conversation

Philebusalso takes place in the wake of the Republic.The dramatic date of the Sym-
posium (416) puts it either soon after, or just before, the Republic,dependent on
whether 421 or 411 is established; the Laches(424-418), and both the HippiasMajor
and HippiasMinor(421-416) are similarly affected. Cf. for Laches,Thesleff, Studies,
93-94; for HippiasMajor (and thus HippiasMinor), Paul Woodruff, Plato Hippias
Major(Indianapolis 1982) introduction.

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386 DEBRANAILS

explicitly takes place (350d), and the new festival honoring the
Thracian goddess Bendis (327a, 354a), with which the Republic
begins; and one item from the second book: a battle at Megara must
have taken place recently (368a).Biographicaldetails that we know
independently-information about Plato's brothers, the family of
Cephalus, Thrasymachus, and Socrates-must fit as well.
Let us begin with a simple enumerationof the kinds of problems
that beset us when we attempt to fix a dramaticdate for the Republic.
First, there are precedents of all sorts in the Platonic corpus: for
exact dramatic dates, for deliberately indeterminate ones, and for
impossible ones. Second, in part because he lacked our current
categories of historical realism and poetic license, Plato's works
are full of anachronisms. Third, it is the characters and events
established in Books I and II-and their incompatibilities-that
most strain efforts to set a dramatic date for the work as a whole.
Fourth, insofar as Book I may have stood as a separate and aporetic
dialogue, and insofar as a proto-Republicmay have been known in
Athens in the 390s, a single dramatic date may recede from our
grasp. The first two points can be treated by way of introduction,
and the third will provide defenses of the two proposed dramatic
dates; aspects of the fourth will then be sketched briefly.
For a familiar example of an exact dramaticdate in the Platonic
corpus, without resorting to the dialogues set in 399: "the occasion
portrayed in Symposiumis Agathon's first theatricalvictory, gained
in Yet there is precedent as well for carefully setting a
416.'"11
dialogue "in no particular year," as Dodds argues is the case for
the Gorgias.It is not that Plato gives no hints about dramatic date
in that dialogue, it is that he gives concrete evidence for at least
seven different dates stretching from 429 to 405.12The dramatic
date of the Lysis is indeterminate in a less radical way. As Guthrie
puts it: "There is nothing to indicate the dramatic date, nor is it
important. At the end (223b), Socrates describes himself as an "old
man," but since he is talking, not very seriously, to two schoolboys
of twelve or thirteen, one cannot attach much weight to this.'13
Finally, there is the baffling Menexenuswith its impossible date.
Guthrie again: "This is the shock. It is Socrates who recites the

11Kenneth J. Dover, "The Date of Plato's Symposium,"Phronesis 10 (1965) 2-20, 2.

12
Dodds, Plato's Gorgias, 17-18.
13 Guthrie, Plato the Man, 135.
14 Guthrie,
Plato the Man, 313. He adds, "It is also unlikely that Aspasia, the
supposed author of the speech, was still alive. She bore a son to Pericles about 440
or earlier." Aspasia, if living, would have been in her late seventies or eighties.

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 THE DRAMATICDATEOF PLATO'SREPUBLIC 387

speech, but the Peace of Antalcidas was concluded twelve or thirteen

years after his death."14 The Republic may have a dramatic date, or
several, or none; precedents cannot help us here.
Anachronisms are a closely related problem. I have just presented
information about the dramatic dates of a few dialogues as if Plato
attended carefully to the notion of dramatic date and controlled it
as skillfully as he did other literary devices. If that assumption is
given free rein, as it sometimes has been,15 interpreters holding a
411 date may gasp and get goose flesh that Plato raises Cephalus
from the dead to play a role in Republic I. Perhaps it is a stroke of
literary genius to have a really dead man speak of dying conven-
tions, but perhaps it is just an anachronism. Republic I includes at
least two anachronisms that are no sparkling literary gems:
Ismenias the Theban is used as an example of a corrupt rich man
(336a) though it was not until after Socrates's death that his iniq-
uities, taking bribes from the Persians, began. And the athlete
Polydamas is hauled in (338c) as someone whose massive physique
requires meat, but his fame for victory in the pancratium occurs
only in 408.16 On the face of it, Plato does not appear to have been
especially concerned with historical accuracy, and that renders
suspect facile claims about his deploying time for literary
purposes. Such manipulation achieves its effect only if there is a
nascent historical realism to play it against. Otherwise it goes
unnoticed.

II. THEEVIDENCE

As Figure 1 shows, both dates meet the interval of peace criterion,

albeit very differently: 421 because the Peace of Nicias was in
effect following the Archidamean War; the appearance of Niceratus,
son of Nicias, as a minor character in the Republic may be in honor
of Nicias. But the year 411 also meets the criterion because Athens
was under the rule of the Four Hundred, and then the Five
Thousand-terror, political assassination, and oligarchic revolution,
yes, but no foreign war to draw away Socrates's respondents.17

15Moors, "Argument Against," 23-24 n. 4, argues from Philebus30c that "the

usage of time elements in the dialogues is intentional, as much a part of dialogical
form as setting or characters."
16 Allan, Plato, 20 and 92. In
antiquity, the Babylonian Herodicus, called the
"Cratetean" (secondcenturyB.C.E.),was alsomuchconcernedaboutPlato'sanachronisms;
cf. I. Diiring,HerodicustheCratetean: A Studyin Anti-Platonic
Tradition
(Stockholm1941).
17Thucydides 8.60-109; his narrativebreaks off in the middle of the year.

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388 DEBRANAILS

The inaugural festival of Bendis accommodates 421 marginally

better than it does 411 but it does not accommodate either especially
well. The religion of Bendis may have been known in Athens as
early as 443, though Shorey was persuaded by "inscriptions to prove
its establishment in Attica as early as 429/428."18 Others, Dover
for example, are less sanguine about the value of the inscriptions
since the date itself rests on an emendation.19 It is plausible in any
case that the first formal celebration in the Piraeus was held a few
years later in 421. But it is likewise plausible, as Mommsen held,
that Socrates was referring to special ceremonies introduced in 411 /
410. The depleted Athenian treasuries were in fact filling up again
after so long at war, and religious festivals were early beneficiaries
of the new revenue. So a torch-race on horseback fits both an
inauguration in 421 and a splendid revival resembling an inaugu-
ration around 411. Moors has found in Thucydides a factor that
adjusts the balance in favor of 421:20 Thracians were participants
in the festival, and Bendis was their goddess. Whereas the period
around the Peace of Nicias in 421 was a time of alliances between
Athens and various Thracian cities, by 411 Sparta was pressing
against the Hellespont and Thracian regions, making it less likely
that a contingent of Thracians could afford to leave their homes
vulnerable in summer, the war season.
So far, both dates are possible, and 421 has a slight edge. Let us
now consider evidence based on the ages of the participants, using
precision in the service of clarity, however unwarranted by the
available sources: Socrates was forty-eight in 421 and fifty-eight in
411. At either age he might engage the extremely old Cephalus
(328b) in a discussion of what the last part of the road of life might
hold, and there is not much in his further words or behavior to go
on. One might examine whether his behavior closely resembles that
in any of the dialogues for which a dramatic date is firmer: in the
Protagoras he is about thirty-seven, in the Lachesperhaps forty-five,
in the Symposium, fifty-three, in the Ion sixty-four.21 Despite the
firmer dramatic dates, the tracing of the character Socrates's subtle

18 T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (Leipzig 1880) 1.34, and August

Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen im Altertum (Leipzig 1898) 490-both cited in
Shorey, Plato, 8, nn. c and f, respectively.
19Dover,
Lysias, 31 n. 3.
20Moors, "Argument Against," 10 and nn. 21-23.
21
Dramatic dates used for this gloss are 432 for the Protagoras, 424 for the
Laches, 416 for the Symposium, and 405 for the Ion-but the literature on even such
"firmer" dates is vast. Cf. note 10 above for Laches and Symposium; for Protagoras,

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 THE DRAMATICDATE OF PLATO'SREPUBLIC 389

aging across those dialogues, particularly after the Protagoras,is a

speculative matter yielding little if anything of substance. What is
nonetheless important about Socrates's age is its relation to the ages
of the respondents in the Republic,to whom I will now turn.
Since Aristophanes lampoons Thrasymachus of Chalcedon in
427 in the Daiteles, the sophist's reputation was well in place by
either date.22Thrasymachusis assigned aflouritof 430-400, implying
birth around 455, making him some fourteen years or so younger
than Socrates. If the dramatic date is 421, Thrasymachus would be
thirty-four, some ten years older than the rest of the participants;
whereas if the date is 411, he would be forty-four, twenty years
older than Adeimantus and Glaucon, but roughly the same age as
Cephalus's sons, Lysias in particular,whom he may well have been
visiting, perhaps out of their shared interest in rhetoric, for they
are linked not only in the Republic,but in the Phaedrusand Clitophon
as well.23 Clitophon, a minor character in the Republic,may be
assumed to be the same Clitophon as the one linked to
Thrasymachus and Lysias in the dialogue bearing his name. So
Clitophon, Thrasymachus, and Lysias form a sort of unit in the
Republic.24
In the remainder of our consideration of the evidence-which
at this point becomes strikingly more controversial-the ages of
two groups of brothers will be examined: Cephalus's sons,
Polemarchus, Lysias, and Euthydemus; and Ariston's sons,
Adeimantus, Glaucon, and Plato. To establish the facts about the
life of Lysias, we are fortunate to have Dover's careful study. From
the speech of Lysias known as "XII,"the following biographical
data emerge: Pericles persuaded Cephalus to settle in Attica where
he lived for thirty years, dying before the Thirty Tyrants came to
power. Lysias's brother, Polemarchus, was executed by the Thirty
in 404. The remaining contemporary evidence is more difficult to
evaluate, yielding wide open windows rather than exact dates.

Alfred Edward Taylor, Plato:TheManandHis Work(Cleveland 1956) 236, followed

by Guthrie, Plato theMan, 214. The Ion is especially controversial: cf. e.g. W. R. M.
Lamb,PlatoIon(London 1925)introduction,who argues for 405-404; Charles Kahn,
"Did Plato Write Socratic Dialogues," CQ (1981) 31 305-20, argues for internal
contemporary allusions fixing the dramatic date at 394/393, and thus against any
dramatic date, "since Socrates was unavailable" (308 n. 9).
22 H. Diels and W. Kranz,Die Fragmente (7th edn. Berlin 1954)
der Vorsokratiker
fr. A4.
23
Plato, Phaedrus266c, 269d, and 271a;Clitophon406a.
24
Cf. Dover, Lysias,52-53.

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390 DEBRANAILS

Dover accepts very little of the secondary evidence, though Plato's

Phaedrus he finds useful, as we will see.25 From Dionysios of
Halicarnassus, writing in the late first century B.C.E.,Dover allows
only that the family was originally from Syracuse, that Lysias was
born in Athens, and that he was fifteen when he and his brothers
went to the Athenian colony at Thurii.26To allow Dionysios's more
precise claims that Cephalus's sons settled in the colony when it
was founded in 443, or that Lysias returned to Athens in 412/411,
would have had the effect of rendering any dramatic date for the
Phaedrusimpossible since Phaedrus himself was in exile 415-404.
Dionysios's evidence yields a dramatic date of 411 for the Republic,
when Lysias would have been about forty-seven (and his brothers,
perhaps, in their mid forties to early fifties). As I mentioned, that
would make Lysias a rough age-mate of Thrasymachus.Sifting bits
of later evidence, Dover ultimately suggests that Cephalus settled
in Athens after Pericles had become prominent, about 450-445,
Lysias was born about 445, went to Thurii about 430, returned in
the late 20s, and Cephalus died 420-415. For Dover, 421-415 thus
becomes the range for the dramatic date of the Republic.27By this
calculation, Lysias (and his brothers, presumably) are in their mid
twenties at the time of the action in the Republic,that is, roughly
the ages of Glaucon and Adeimantus.
The beginning of Book II provides new dramatic date issues.
As Dover puts the problem: "Plato's brothers, Glaukon and
Adeimantos, are old enough to have distinguished themselves in
"the battle at Megara," but Glaukon, at least, was not too old at
that time to have had a "lover" who composed elegiacs in his
honour (368a)."28So when was the battle? A. E. Taylor, preferring
a dramaticdate of 421, uses Thucydides'sbattle date of 424,29whereas
Shorey, preferring 411, uses Diodorus Siculus's 409-despite the

25 Dover uses evidence from the Republicto establish a prosopography for

Lysias; I omit precisely that evidence below because it would make a very small
circle of my argument. When Dover (Lysias, 32-33, 41-42 & 43) considers the
Phaedrus,while conceding that Plato may not have had a dramatic date or histori-
cal situation in mind, he goes on to argue from better known data about Isocrates's
life that the Phaedrusputs the birth of Lysias "somewhat earlier than 440." When
he reaches conclusions about Lysias's life, he assigns a dramatic date of 418-416 to
the Phaedrus-right between the two candidate Republicdates.
26 Dionysios, Livesof the TenOrators1.8.2-17.
27Although he says "420-415"(Lysias,42) when assigning a plausible dramatic
date, he later says "421-415"(53) without further comment.
28 Dover, Lysias, 31.
29 Thucydides 4.72.

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 THEDRAMATIC
DATEOFPLATO'SREPUBLIC 391

anachronism.30 Dover, reluctant to turn Plato into a historian,

points out that there were several candidate battles, even limiting
the search to ones mentioned by actual historians, but that the par-
ticular battle need not have been one that made the record books
anyway.31 The Thucydidean date of 424, imagining Glaucon then
about eighteen, would make Glaucon twenty-one at the time of the
Republic,and Adeimantus older than that.32That would cause a
gap of at least fifteen years between the six-year-old Plato and his
older brother Glaucon, more than that for Adeimantus.33 Such a
gap, while not physiologically impossible, has concerned some au-
thors enough that they have postulated that these men were ac-
tually Plato's uncles.34And Moors has argued that Glaucon was in
fact a youngerbrother of Plato on two grounds.35First, Moors sees
"similarities in characterand dialogical structure"between the Re-
publicand the Symposiumthat lead him to conclude that the Glaucon
of the two dialogues is the same person. Second, Xenophon reports
that when Glaucon was less than twenty, he made himself a laugh-
ing-stock by trying to gain political power, and that Socrates took
him under his wing as a favor to Plato and Charmides,implying that
Glaucon must have been Plato's younger brother.36
The conversation to be recited in the Symposiumtook place when
Apollodorus and Glaucon were very young, long ago.37 But the
date is firmly established as 416, so Moors suggests that Glaucon
was born in 420 or later, making him younger than Plato, vindicating
Xenophon, and utterly precluding any sort of participation by
Glaucon in the Republic,no matterwhat its dramaticdate. That suits
Moors because he believes Plato took extraordinarysteps to prevent
the Republicfrom being assigned any dramatic date, and this is one
of those steps. While evidence is not conclusive for any particular
dramatic date, the Glaucon argument will not work. Not only, as
Moors concedes, is Xenophon untrustworthy in some matters of

30Diodorus Siculus, 13.65.

31
Dover, Lysias, 31.
32Assumed from
Apology34a.
33Plato notoriously says at the end of RepublicVII (540e-541a) that those over
the age of ten are beyond the reach of the guardian-teachers and must be sent out
of the polis. If the dramatic date of the dialogue is 421, Plato-born in 427--can
stay, but if the dramatic date is 411, it is too late for Plato.
34Cf. references in Shorey, Plato, 144-45 n. e.
35
Moors, "Argument Against," 13-16.
36Xenophon, Memorabilia,3.6.
37Plato, Symposium173a.

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392 DEBRANAILS

detail, there is a problem with the text as well. Moors says Socrates
does Plato a "favor," implying that the favor had been requested;
but it seems rather that Socrates checked Glaucon out of feeling for
(EiSvou;) Charmides and Plato-an interpretation independent of
hierarchies of age.38
Moors may still be right that the Glaucon of the Republic and
the Symposium are the same, but he probably goes too far when he
gives 420 or later as Glaucon's date of birth. Glaucon and
Apollodorus were "children" (noaid8v 6wvro v iliov E?zr,173a) in 416,
but they need not have been toddlers. To give Moors his due, since
the framing conversation occurs in about 400,39 making Glaucon
forty-two according to those who favor 421, sixteen years earlier
he would have been twenty-six, and that is not a child, so some
other calculation is indeed necessary if coherence is to be achieved.
If one were to substitute the dramatic date of 411 and postulate an
unrecorded Megarian battle the previous summer, Glaucon could
have been fourteen. Or one might use Diodorus Siculus's already-
anachronistic battle date of 409 to make Glaucon twelve or even
ten (not eleven, because then he would be Plato's twin), assuring
that he would fit the dramatic date of the Symposium. But the
consequence of such a maneuver may not please: the upshot is
either that the Symposium's Glaucon is not Plato's brother, or that
the dramatic dates of the Symposium and the Republic are utterly
incompatible.

III. THE REMAINING UNCERTAINTY

I have mentioned only the most formidable problems of assigning

a dramatic date to the Republic, and I have streamlined-though I
hope I have not oversimplified-even those. The dialogue is neither
internally consistent, nor consistent with other dialogues thought
to have been written in the same period,40 nor consistent with the
historical record (such as it is). It does not help to fall back on Moors'

38
50KpETg 8E,)VOuh (6votT 5iatdtrEXapgiinrivrv rakIa1vo ia8th FHdXtr(ovQ
l

06voq E.C.Marchant,Xenophon
i~not7oEv. Memorabilia (London1923),translatesthe
passage,"forthe sakeof Platoand ... Charmides."
39W.R.M.Lamb,PlatoSymposium (London1925)78.
40Althoughthereis controversy overtheorderof compositionof thedialogues,
GerardR. Ledger,Re-Counting Plato:A Computer Analysisof Plato'sStyle(Oxford
1989)esp. 224-25,uses a wide varietyof contemporary statisticaltechniquesand
farsurpasseshis predecessorsin establishingan orderfor segmentsin whichone
mighthaveconfidence.

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 THEDRAMATIC
DATEOFPLATO'S
REPUBLIC 393

claim, "Only the philosopher, it seems, can truly understand time,

and thereby make a proper judgment on the propriety of the anach-
ronism," because there are just too many anachronisms.41
I earlier raised the issue of whether the Republicwas originally
conceived as an aesthetic unity, or whether it may have had more
than one origin, thus accounting for its lack of a univocal dramatic
date. There are several arguments that raise doubt that the Republic
was written all at once. The least controversial is that Book I stood
as a separate dialogue, an idea with us since 1839 that seems to
have gained some acceptance.42While there are still disputes over
whether Book I as it currently exists is the original Book I, or
whether it was rewritten into its present form; and while there are
disputes about the dating of Book I as a separate dialogue,
stylometric evidence argues for its similarity to other Socratic or
elenctic dialogues.43 But there is a good deal more diversity to be
accounted for in the Republic.Else has argued that a considerable
portion of Book X, though not the myth of Er, was an addition to
the dialogue.44And, apart from the so-called early style of Book I,
there is cramped late style in parts of the dialogue as well, by which
I mean passages that resemblethe distinctive prose of such dialogues
as the Sophist, Timaeusand Laws.45Thesleff has identified several

41Moors,
"ArgumentAgainst," 24 n. 4.
42Cf. Hermann, Geschichte.Thesleff, Studies, 107-110 esp. n. 19, details and
provides referencesfor seven succinctargumentsthat Book I was originallyseparate.
Vlastos, Socrates:Ironist, 46-47, also takes Book I to have been separate, and is
followed by RichardKraut,ed., who separates the composition of Book I from that
of the remainderof the dialogue in the prefatorymaterialof the Cambridge Companion
to Plato (Cambridge 1992) without comment as if the issue were no longer
controversial. Charles Kahn mounts a defense of the opposing side in "Proleptic
Composition in the Republic,or Why Book I Was Never a Separate Dialogue," CQ
ns 43 (1993) 131-42.
43Leonard Brandwood, TheChronologyof Plato's Dialogues(Cambridge 1990)
251, citing Hermann Siebeck, Untersuchungenzur PhilosophiederGriechen(Freiburg
1888), Constantin Ritter, UntersuchungeniiberPlaton (Stuttgart 1888), and H. von
Arnim, De Platonis Dialogis Quaestiones Chronologicae(Rostock 1896). Kahn,
"Proleptic," counters that, in his view, stylometry demonstrates only that Book I
was written earlierthan the other books, but "cannotpossibly show howmuchearlier
it was written" (134, his emphasis); Kahn thinks "scholars like Wilamowitz and
Friedlander were simply taken in" (133) by von Arnim, who himself was "self-
deceived" (134).
44 G. F. Else, "The Structure and Date of Book 10 of Plato's Republic,"
Abhandlungen derHeidelberger AkademiederWissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische
Klasse 3 (1972).
45 None of this material is touched by Kahn, "Proleptic"-nor can it be. His
proposal of prolepsis is a hypothesis about composition, but it fails as a hypothesis
about style.

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394 DEBRANAILS

late-style passages in Books II-V and VII, very likely indicating

late revision of the Republic.46Thesleff has suggested, however, that
when Plato became old enough to require the modern prosthetics
now taken for granted (eyeglasses, hearing aid), an assistant
(dvaypacpe~;), possibly Philip of Opus, is likely to have helped in
the writing of the dialogues we now call "late." If so, alas, we see
the secretary's hand in those late-style passages of the Republic.47
Finally and most controversially, efforts to date not only the
composition of the Republicbut its dramatic date as well will be
altogether feckless if there was in fact a proto-Republic;not Book I,
and not a sketch of the whole, but a subsection of the dialogue that
was known in Athens before 392, and which corresponds roughly
to the late-style passages in Books II-V and VIIthat I just mentioned.
And if the result is what it appears to be, i.e. the very late editing of
a very early segment, it is a perfectexample of what cons a computer
engaged in stylometric studies into a label of "middle": the two
extremes cancel one another out.48While this is not the place to
rehearse the numerous arguments for the existence of a proto-
Republic,49 I would be remissnot to name a few of the more persuasive
among them: (a) there are provocative parallels between Republic
V and Aristophanes'Ecclesiazusae in ideology, action,and language-
yet the play was produced 392, long before the date normally
in
assigned for the writing of the dialogue;50 (b Aulus Gellius writes
that a "two-roll"Republiccame to light initially;51(c) Timaeusexplicitly

46 Thesleff, Studies,137.If he is right about the original boundaries of the proto-

Republic,beginning at 369b, then the biographically problematic passages about
Plato's brothers, like the notorious, appended end of Book I (from 353e), would
seem to have been written to fasten the two previously independent works into one.
47
Thesleff, Studies, 186.
48Ledger, Re-Counting,93.
49 There are many, beginning with Hermann, Geschichte. Cf. J. Hirmer,
"Entstehungund Komposition der Platonischen Politeia," Jahrbiicherfiir Classische
Philologie,Supplementband23 (1897)579-678, esp. 592-98;Thesleff,Studies,102-110,
and his "Platonic Chronology," Phronesis34.1 (1989) 1-26; and Nails, Agora, 116-
22. Kahn, "Proleptic,"131, having introduced what he calls the "separatistpropos-
als" of several early scholars,dismisses their proposals as having "largelycollapsed
under their own weight," but he does not address the contemporaryarguments of
Thesleff,Studies,which he notes only as a "revival"of the earlierenterprise(131 n. 5).
50 Gilbert Murray, Aristophanes(Oxford 1933) 186-89. Thesleff's discussion,
Studies, 103-105, includes extensive citations from the literature. Remarking on
linguistic parallels are two of the play's translators: Douglass Parker,
[Aristophanes's] TheCongresswomen (Ann Arbor 1969) 90 n. 43; and B. B. Rogers,
Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae (London 1924) introduction.
51 Aulus Gellius, NoctesAtticae,14.3.3.

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 THE DRAMATIC DATE OF PLATO'S REPUBLIC 395

purports to summarize the wholeof the preceding day's discussion

rEpiioXtlrEia;,but in fact summarizes only parts of the argument
of RepublicII, III, and V.52
If the Republicsprang whole from the head of Plato, no univocal
dramatic date would thereby be entailed, but the expectation would
gain rather in credibility. If not, if Plato wrote a proto-Republic
before the Academy was established, then its existence militates
against the possibility of determining a single dramatic date for
the dialogue. And if the Republicwas stitchedtogetherfrom a separate
Book I, a proto-Republic,and new material, and revised late into an
almost seamless whole,53 then a single firm dramatic date seems
ever more implausible.54
DEBRANAILS
Mary Washington College

52Plato, Timaeus17b-19b. F. M. Cornford,Plato'sCosmology(Indianapolis 1975)

4-5, argues that Socrates may have described his ideal state more than once, and
that the partial summary that twice calls itself complete is thus not a summary of
the Republicbut of another conversation. Clay, "Gaps,"143-46, argues to the same
end, noting that the sets of characters in the two dialogues are different. Were it
not for the presence and density of other arguments, I would find their explanation
adequate.
53 Diogenes Laertius (3.37) mentions the claim of earlier commentators,
Euphorion and Penaetius, that the beginning of the Republicwas found after Plato's
death in a variety of versions.
54Thispaperdevelops ideas originallypresentedat the HunterCollegeconference
on "The Uses of the Republic"in 1993. It is a pleasure to recall the long and spirited
conversations with Holger Thesleff in the days before the conference that height-
ened my awareness of the complexity of the issues I was raising. I am also grateful
to David Ambuel, WilliamLevitan,JerryPress,and TheClassicalJournal'sanonymous
referee for their comments and helpful insights.

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396 DEBRANAILS

FIGURE1
SIGNIFICANTEVENTS -458- b. Lysias SIGNIFICANT
EVENTS
FORA 421 DATE -457- FORA 411 DATE
-456-
-455-
-454-
-453-
-452-
-451-
Cephalus settles in Athens -450-
-449-
-448-
-447-
-446-
b. Lysias -445-
-444-
Thurii founded -443- Lysias to Thurii Thurii founded
b. Glaucon -442-
-441-
-440-
-439-
-438-
-437-
-436-
-435-
-434-
-433-
-432-
Peloponn. War, Archidamean War -431- Peloponnesian War
I Lysias to Thurii -430-b. Glaucon
religion of Bendis? -429-
-428-
Aristophanes' Daitqles b. Plato -427- b. Plato Aristophanes' Daiteles
-426-
-425-
Megarabattle (Thucydides) -424-
-423-
Lysias(23) returns -422-
Peace of Nicias -421-
tCep alus -420-
-419-
-418-
-411-
-416-Agathon's victory, Melos expedition
-415- Phaedrus exiled (returns 404)
-414- Alcibiades joins Spartans
-413- Sicilian defeat
-412- Lysias (46) returns
Spartans in Thrace -411- the 400, then the 5,000
-410- "democracy,"festivals renewed
-409- Megarabattle (Diodorus)
-408- pancratiumvictory of Polydamus

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