Accademia Editoriale

Particles, Qualification, Ordering, Style, Irony and Meaning in Plato's Dialogues

Author(s): Albert Cook
Source: Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, New Series, Vol. 40, No. 1 (1992), pp. 111-126
Published by: Fabrizio Serra Editore
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 Particles, Qualification, Ordering, Style, Irony and Meaning
in Plato's Dialogues

Albert Cook

To Samuel R. Levin

The very conception of the dialogue form, and the variety of the
instances of the dialogue that Plato offers us, bring meaning and quali
fication into a closer rapprochement than they would have in more
directly deductive works. The meaning of the Protagoras, for example,
is governed by the qualification that the argument joined has in one
sense not been advanced, given an ending in which the two main con
tenders, Protagoras and Socrates, have reversed positions. The elabo
rate structure of meaning in the Republic is qualified by the uncertainty
about how much this elaborate structure is conditioned by the impossi
bility of its present actualization. And one dialogue can be taken gene

rally as qualifying another, or as amending and/or amplifying it in ways

that amount to a qualification. An entire dialogue, that is, offers a
large-scale qualification, both within the dialogue itself, and from this
dialogue to other dialogues. On the smallest scale a similar and corre
sponding function is exercised by the particles, a noteworthy feature
not just of Greek expression but of Plato's expression in particular1.
There are, then, in general, two registers for the Platonic dia
logue. One results from the initial choice of the dialogue form itself
among several other possibilities for the philosopher beginning to
formulate his ideas between 400 and 380 B.C.: the aphorisms of Hera
clitus, the prose of Protagoras and Isocrates or the medical writers, the
far more developed and extended book-length prose tracts of Herodotus
and Thucydides. Aside from prose, Plato would have had available the

1
J.D. Denniston, The Greek Particles, Oxford 1954 (1934), 441. I indicate here
numerals in the text the page on which Denniston's defini
by parenthesized particular
tion appears.

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112 A. Cook

expressive possibilities of the long philosophical poem; the examples of

Empedocles and Parmenides stood within not too distant memory. If it
is true that Plato had wished to write tragedies, then he might have
further inclined to this epic-like form2. Or he could also have chosen
not to write at all, as Socrates must have chosen to do in the face of so
many previous philosophers who chose to express their ideas in writing.
Given the preference for the oral in the Phaedrus and the Seventh Let
ter, Plato could have confined himself at his most formal to such lec
tures as the reported "On the Good".
Instead he did take the dramatic form, purging it of verse and also
of a determinate structure. This of itself provides him with the first of
his two registers. This register does not just derive from the dialogue
form, but from the carefully maintained discrepancy between a Socrates
masked in bewilderment and a speaker or speakers who
lay various
claims to knowledge. There is an ironically recirculating discrepancy
between the assertions of a given speaker at a given moment, and the
relation of this moment to the topic at hand, as to the as a
dialogue
whole. Thus, to begin with, the possibility of closure for an explicit
doctrine is never abandoned; often it can only actualize itself in the
hyperbole of myth which tends, like the passages of elenchos them
selves, to be progressive.
As for the most puzzling of Plato's kinds of discourse, the myths,
they are by definition characterized in Socrates' general description of
the Charioteer myth as an approximation ("What it is like", & ??
?oixev, Phaedrus, 246a5). If myths, introduced for explanation, are
approximations, then the elenchos, a
too, fortiori bears the character of
approximation.
The reminder that the discourse is approximative is scored, and
the irony very differently furthered, in the second of the registers, that
between the constantly mobile particles and the fixity of the deep
structured sentences which they accompany3.
Plato's particles, of course, go far beyond the necessary presence

2
Dolores Velkley has argued, in an unpublished for touches of an
paper, epic
structure in the Republic.
3
As an example of flexibility in the same particle complex, J. Riddell
(WADigest
of Platonic Idioms', in The Apology of Plato, New York 1973
(1867), 118-251, Para
147) remarks of alia gar: "Here we must observe that there is no Ellipse... The sense
forbids such a for the alia sits much closer to the clause
supposition: immediately

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Particles in Plato's Dialogues 113

of such a marker at the beginning of a Greek sentence. Their frequency

and range is so remarkable in his work, compared with the use in all
other Greek prose and poetry, that more than a quarter of all the refe
rences in Denniston's Greek Particles (16 index pages out of a total of
are from his work. They function as constantly inserted qualifiers.
57)
of diction or at least further, such
Along with changes they permit,
shifts of tone as that noted by Dorothy Tarrant in Republic 509b,
rapid
"the tone of conversation has been effectively lowered from rhapsody to
matter of fact". For of particles,
the mobility which keeps the two regi
sters in constant relation, assists in conveying a general even
heavily
ness of tone to the dialogue through all their movement between the
serious and the playful, and for all their range through what Thesleff
has discriminated as no fewer than ten separate styles4.
The particles, in the light of their role as qualifiers, would be

unsusceptible of treatment by any of the theories of language addressed

? to
in the Cratylus, but the Heraclitean theory5 of absolute flux which
says he inclines in almost his final statement (440el-2).
Cratylus
Still, this is far from being anything that allows for more than
the conjectural possibility that Plato took the deep-seated ba
simply
lance of contradiction in Heraclitus' minimalist utterances and maxi
malized them by putting one speaker on one side of a contradiction,
and another of others in some way on the other side of sides. Since one
so to - as most
of the speakers, Socrates, contrasted himself, speak
knowing he claimed to be
least knowing -, the imbalance between

speakers was
repeated in the self-dialecticizing posture of just one of
the speakers. This made the polyglossic balance (to use a term of Bach
tin's) asymmetrical: only on one side of the dialogic balance was there a
to ? to restore
managed contradiction implied. The goal reach clarity
? a self-renewing there is always
the balance generates heteroglossia:
more to be said on the other scale. Consequently any moment can be

than the gar does. Alia gar has two meanings: one when it introduces an
subjoined
and is therefore ironical; the other, which alone needs illustration, when it
objection,
has the force of 'be that as it may', or 'but the truth it' ".
4
in Plato's Class.
Dorothy Tarrant, 'Style and Thought Dialogues', Quart. 62,
1948, 28-34. H. Thesleff, Studies in the Styles of Plato, Acta Philosophica Fennica
XX, 1967.
5
For a brief summary of Cratylus' as a Heraclitean, see P.
possible positions
Friedl?nder, Platon II, Berlin 1957 [1930], 82-83.

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114 A. Cook

some -
declared "the end", as typically random moment except in the
? can a beginning.
trial dialogues be declared
The intrication of logical and pragmatic presuppositions in the

linguistic utterance that a dialogue

constitutes by the is highlighted
unusual range and frequency of the particles. This is so because the
function of the particles as constituents is limited to
linguistic stressing
features of the relations between sentences, or else the exi
"already
constituents an sentence.
sting" semantic and syntactic of individual
is defined on the relation between base (lin
"Logical presupposition
guistic) structures and the world. Pragmatic presupposition is defined
on the relation between utterances and their contexts"6. The Platonic
dialogue sets up a pragmatic context of its own in which it tests logical
presupposition, and Socrates typically presses a single lexical item,
like arete or techne. The particles underscore this process by serving to
underscore turns of syntax and consequently by reminding the reader of
the argument imbedded in a flow of linguistic, Actively oral presenta
tion. The particles, that is, especially insist on connecting the logical
and the pragmatic.
Moreover, though we cannot know what the intonational patterns
of Plato's Greek were, we can be sure from what is known of linguistic
behavior generally that the particles structured the intonational pattern;
and thereby they would heighten the fiction that an oral conversation is
being reproduced, with all the advantages attributed to oral over written

presentation that are propounded in the Phaedrus. The particles

attached to a single word or phrase, like kai, complicate, as does the

English word "even"7, the relation of what it modifies to the rest of the
sentence, while
the majority of the particles, as they underscore the
structure of the relation between sentences, provide a condensed and
partial phonemic replay of those relations8.

6
E.R. Keenan, 'Two Kinds of Presupposition in Natural in C. J.
Language',
Fillmore and W. T. Langendoen, eds., Studies in Linguistic Semantics, New York
1971, 45-53.
7
See B. Fraser, 'An Analysis of 'Even' in English', in Fillmore and Langendoen,
cit. 151-180.
8
Even more than their in English, the particular fusion of semantic
analogues
and phonetic elements in the Greek particles would render quite any
complicated
discrimination of deep structures from surface structures. Such analysis would have in

many instances to involve a of a whole tree for a single

repetition diagram particle.

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Particles in Plato's Dialogues 115

As the investigations of generative grammarians have progressive

ly demonstrated, the "deep structure" of a language conforms to, and in
a sense creates, sets of logical operations. The congruence of
complex
these logical operations with "pragmatics", the actual use of a language
in utterances, validates the use of dialogue as an instrument in what for
Plato is the relatively new area of Moreover, the congru
"philosophy".
ence of the and the pragmatic further justifies Plato's asto
logical
nishing valuation of oral over written discourse in the Phaedrus and the
Seventh Letter.
By moving the ironic gestures into a differently calibrated register,
wherein they do not simply echo the propositions of their rib sentences
or even qualify them in a simple way, the particles provide a partial
distortion that prevents the Socratic irony from being an endless re

gress. Since the main sentences must be "in place" in the deep struc
ture of the utterance before the qualifying particles are added to it, the
particles may be regarded not only as taking it for granted, but as ope
a
rating in register secondary to it. Their play works against the assumed
of the main sentences and can only do so if that fixity is assumed9.
fixity
They "come up against" the fixity by a qualification which stays in the
second register and so, in its play, mimes but in turn relativizes the

larger play of the elenchic conversation. They re-ironize the Socratic

a
irony and arrest it, as in mirror that picks up congruent mobilities.
They, as it were, preempt the irony and limit it at the particular point of
utterance where the particle occurs. Otherwise the irony would take a

Kierkegardian form in the interchange10. The main register of the dia

the contextual so as to keep all sentence
logue also manages irony

9
In this process, again, the particles still further assume a correct on
"uptake"
the part of a competent auditor or reader, and assume he will register the fixity in their

performance-assistance to the main sentences, whatever general philosophical quali

fications may be brought to bear on that As
fixity. J. Riddell says (op. cit. Para 144, p.
182): "In order to understand and to interpret certain combinations of Particles, regard
must to the
be had fact, that they enter simultaneously into the sentence, as it were
at once rather than in succession".
speaking
10
These ironies are elaborate and to a certain extent as discussed
self-generating,
inG. Handwerk, Irony and theEthics ofNarrative, New Haven 1985. The interchange
in Plato's however, resists the possible endless regress of a Gricean
dialogues, impli
cature, A's speaking in the knowledge that B will be speaking in the knowledge that
A...except, for Socrates. Even in that case the series stops with the author,
perhaps
Plato himself, and with his presentation of the suppositions that Socrates "holds in
reserve" for much or even all of a dialogue.

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116 A. Cook

propositions from entering what Jerrold Katz calls the "null context"11.
However modified the congruence may logical propo be between
sitional structures and the 'deep structures' of the sentence, the con
gruence is one which cannot be "deferred" (to adapt Derrida's term) out
of the language12. In Katz's "null context", or the uncontextualized
bare proposition, an utterance in language retains a logical structure, or
at least part of one.
Now Plato neveroperates in a null environment. The dialogue
form heavily contextualizes all his utterances. And, correspondingly, if
the oral is inescapably contextualized and the written tends to minima
lize or even nullify context, then the cueing to contextualization resides
in the dialogue form, which applies the written to a representation of
the oral. Contextualization also resides in the particles, which are the
one element in a sentence not reducible to a component of the deep
structure, though the relational particles, those that indicate how one
sentence relates to one another, provide a surface link of one deep
structure to another, a fictional "oralization" of the discourse which
marks it as a discourse. And the unusual frequency of Plato's particles,
in the body of Greek prose, further sustains a
unique busy accompani
ment of cueing. The particles call attention to the difference between

11
J. Katz, Propositional Structure and Illocutionary Force, Cambridge Ma. 1980,
21, "Our conception of semantics and pragmatics finds these two accounts of meaning
to be reconcilable on the thesis that meaning is the information that determines use in
the null context" (Italics Katz's).
12
Of course this is a large subject on which I intend my observations about Plato
to bear as a case that may be taken to call hermeneutically not only for the
challenging
current tradition of deductive exposition but at once for Wittgenstein's qualifications,
Derrida's dijf?rance, and the range of relations offered by the generative grammarians.
The deconstructionist and readings would not be dropped, but rather de
skeptical
moted to the status of qualifications in relation to other of
interpretational readings
and the notion that there is some logical contradiction between the two
propositions;
would once the propositional of such skeptical were
disappear, implications readings
reduced. As a variant on a common contradiction to deconstructionist in
readings
general, it can be pointed out that just the native speaker's demonstrable capacity in

competence and to handle the deep structure of utterances (and therefore

performance
their propositional will make that deep structure to radical de
logicality) impervious
construction. himself a congruence between structure and the
Chomsky posits deep
propositional meaning of a given sentence, but his views have been much qualified by
discussantslikeW. Quine ('Methodological Reflections on Current Linguistic Theory',
104-117) and G. Harman ('Review oi Language and Mind, 201-218; both from G.
Harman, ed., On Noam Chomsky, New York 1974); and J. Katz, among others.

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Particles in Plato's Dialogues 117

the tentativeness of (oral) improvisation, while modifying the "written"

certainty of the logical congruences coded and largely fixed by the deep
structure.

This
logical coherence of the sentence, as a communicative and
communicable act, preserves it from the radical qualification of de
scribing it as a "trace" just because the inescapable structure of con
sciousness allows us so to characterize it epistemologically. Some fixity
in the sentence meanings is necessary for the modification inherent in
the particles to operate upon them. Or, put differently, they move the
propositions of the sentences in the "first register" explicitly towards
the condition of speech acts and speech events, or rather they
keep
them as such. Plato's "oralization" also preserves his dialogues
flagging
from the radical relativization entailed in putting into primary position
any metaphoric structures that may be present in the discourse13, espe
cially since metaphor itself, in one of its dimensions, can be accorded a

logical structure14.
In Plato's
dialogues the possible closeness of an endless regress is
apparent from the simple scheme of falsely echoing negation by which,
in short dialogues, an understating "amateur" Socrates faces an over

stating, pigheaded professional like Laches, Euthyphro, Ion, or

Euthydemus. This scheme is modified and much orchestrated, but not
abandoned in the Protagoras, the Gorgias, and even the Parmenides.

Inextricably connected to irony is tone, and tone consequently

overlays every word spoken in the dialogues. This tone is uneven at the
outset, from the very conception of an initial imbalance between a

13
These two arguments, and combinations of them, inform the work of Jacques
Derrida and Paul de Man, where however it is deliberately on left unclear
principle
how far logically their radical qualification of the logic underlying discourse is to be
taken. many discussions of this question, a full one is C. Altieri,
Among particularly
Act and Quality, Northampton 1981. For the many communicational nuances of an
oral context, some of which are in such forms of inscription as Plato's
only expressible
particles, see E. Goffman, Forms of Talk, Philadelphia 1983. A different typology for
is offered as Social
context-pragmatics by M.A.K. Halliday, Language Semantics,
Baltimore 1978, discussed in Altieri, 78ff. This comprises "field" (shared expecta
tions), "tenor" (role relations) and "mode" (metalinguistic category frames).
14
See S.R. Levin, The Semantics ofMetaphor, Baltimore 1977, andMetaphoric
Worlds, New Haven 1988. For other dimensions of metaphor, see A. Cook, of
'Aspects
Image: Some Problems', Journ. Aesth. and Art Criticism, Spring 1979; incorporated,
with considerable further discussion, into Figurai Choice in Poetry and Art, Hanover
1985. See also the chapter 'Metaphor' inMyth and Language, Bloomington 1980.

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118 A. Cook

'know-nothing' Socrates and an interlocutor who is either at odds with

him or eager to learn from him. In the Phaedrus there is a near balance
because of the accord as it develops between Socrates and Phaedrus.
This dialogue is preoccupied with the erotic, and it is at the same time
ambiguously prefatory to erotic activity. Its playful tone qualifies the
dialogue constantly and evenly15.
As for the specific conditions governing particles, a transitional

particle is almost
obligatory in ordinary Greek style. Consequently gar,
translated as "for", is more routine than the English word, because it is
more necessary. That is the double face of the particle. It is more open
to alternatives for the range and subtlety of expression just because it
fills an obligatory, given slot in the sentence. But gar is more sublimi
nal than is English "for", because gar does not relate to the deep struc
ture of the utterance-as-proposition. In a given case it happens to be the

particular particle chosen as a filler for the blank space from

"particle"
sentence to sentence, that a new sentence has
indicating begun. The
necessary particle underscores, and subordinates, each sentence as a

parallel proposition. Plato aestheticizes this out of, but not wholly in
departure from, a colloquial dialogue. The tautness and flexibility of
the very ordering of words is sustained, aided, and itself qualified by
particles. Take a five-word sentence from the Symposium, in which two
of the words are
particles:

Xiyco ?? bfy xi to?to;

And so what do I mean by this? (Symp. 178d).

We may see several gestures at work in this sentence: 1) the verb,

unusually, comes first. 2) this ?? is unrelated, as a look at the context
would make clear. So it is confined to mere emphasis. 3) It points not
backward, its usual function, but in this context ahead to ?f|. 4) T? is
strangely deferred,
displaced from its usual initial position. 5) In this
five-word sentence, to?to is split as far as possible from the verb of
which it is the object. The reference of TO?to itself involves extra
emphasis, since Phaedrus, the speaker, has led from declaring Eros to
be oldest of the gods to his being more necessary than anything for one
who would live the good life. In this context, 6) of) functions somewhat

15
A. Cook, 'Dialectic, and Myth in Plato's Am.
Irony, Phaedrus9, Journ. Philol.
106, 1985, 427-441.

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Particles in Plato's Dialogues 119

as would Italics, covering the whole small metalinguistic declaration,

"And so what do I mean by this?". All of this play is made by the
particles to ripple through the simple declaration of this short sentence.
The beginning of the Protagoras exemplifies some of the variety of
ways in which particles enter this discourse. It opens with banter about
Socrates and Alcibiades (309 a-b):

ET. n?ftev, <x>

ZawQaxe?, cpa?ve?; f\ bf\ka ?f| oxt ?rc? xuvTjYeo?ov xov
jtegi xf)v 'Atau?iaoov a>Qav; xai \ir\v uxn xai JtQcpTyv l?ovxi xaX?? [??v
?qpaivexo ?vfjQ ?tt, ?vi|Q uivxoi, a> ScoxQaxe?, a>? y' ?v atixo?? f^lv
El?fjafrai, xai ircbycovo? f\br\ vjtojri[XJtXa[xevo?.
2Q. E?xa xi xo?xo; o?) ov [i?vxoi 'Ojatiqov ?jtaiv?x?i? e?, ?? ?q)T]
XaQieoxaxTjv f\?r\v e?vai xo?i jtqwxov VTcr\vr\xov, f\v vvv 'AXxi?iaOY]c
exet;
ET. T? ovv x? v?v; r\ JtaQ' ?xeivou qpaivei; xai Jt ? jtqo? oe ? veavia?
?iaxeixai:

FRIEND: Where have you appeared from, Socrates? Or is it not clear

that it is from hunting round the youth of Alcibiades? Certainly when I
saw him only a day or two ago, he seemed to be still a handsome man,
but between ourselves, Socrates, 'man' is the word. He's actually
growing a beard.
SOCRATES: What of it? Aren't you a praiser of Homer, who says that
the most charming age is that of the youth with his first beard, just the
age of Alcibiades now?
FRIEND: Well what now? Were you just with him? and how is the
young man disposed toward you? (Guthrie, revised).

Particles begin (as they must) after the brief first question. The
blunt ?YJ, often connected with ?fjXo?, points at the particular
moment16. Still, it "speaks its influence over the whole clause", and
therefore at the third sentence uses particles
heavily to transpose itself
away from the standard17 metaphors of the first, and thereby delicately
to point in the direction of another on a
topic. This is the procedure,
larger scale, of the whole dialogue. As a procedure it raises the que
stion about how one topic connects to another- perhaps the most general
question we may raise about Plato. Eros is not an explicit subject here,

16
Denniston, cit. 204-205.
17
J. Adam and A. M. Adam (Platonis Protagoras, Cambridge 1953 [1905], ad
loc.) adduce parallels to as a for pursuit in love. is a dead
"hunting" metaphor a>Qav
metaphor; it equals moment in youth".
"blooming

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120 A. Cook

but it has
implicitly to do with the relation of knowledge and virtue, as
becomes clear in Plato's discussion of this topic elsewhere, especially
in the Symposium and the Phaedrus.
Ar\ may be said to anticipate the oil clause, especially as the

copula is omitted, which would tend to fall exactly where the br\ does
here. This "spread" across ?rj touches in the reminder of an underlying
structure which will become that of the whole dialogue. The Protago
ras, like this clause, reaches forward through a elenchos as then it
long
does through the ?rj, only to state what is "clear" from the beginning.
And "it is clear", as a logical word, will emphasize
?fjXa, the structural

interchangeability of verb and adjective18.

The next sentence begins with a strong particle run: fewer words,
which three are xai xai. The xai' s are
just four, of particles, jxfjv |xoi
correlative, but the first one is more emphatic, in its lin
rhythmically
with \xr\v, while the second one is not really correlative with it,
kage
since it modifies the immediately following word, JtQ(pT]V. It looks simp
while xai looks strongly backward as well as
ly ahead, \ir\v strongly
ahead. Denniston finds this particular instance combining the adversa
tive and the copulative (357). It is "progressive after strong stops" (352)
a -
and characteristically has strong function of logical sequentiality
?
often the minor premise of an enthymeme only suggested here, be
cause no serious topic has been introduced. It anticipates ?vf|Q fi?vxoi,
a phrase which, again, is also anticipated in the delicate ?lev that is not
called for here, and is all the more lightly disjunctive for coming in the
middle of the sentence, than in the usual position
rather of the second
word. It is also more lightly disjunctive because it is matched by no
corresponding ??; hence it is not balanced, and enters simply as a
further mild emphasis in the train of progressive particles, straining
forward to the serious topic of the dialogue while bantering the here
irrelevant topic of erotic attraction.

M?vToi, in so far as it pauses to repeat [lev, in the combination \iev

plus tot, is a longer word, but in fact a shade weaker here, all the more
that it is repeated almost at once in Socrates' answering speech. Its
weakness is that of an unnecessary superadded emphasis, "really". The
next [i?vtoi is stronger, since it accompanies the question that expects

18
On the deep-structural similarity of verb and see G. Lakoff,
adjective, Irregu
larity in Syntax, New York 1970. On the copula, which would have to be ?crriv, see C.

Kahn, The Verb "Be" in Ancient Greek, Dordrecht 1973.

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Particles in Plato's Dialogues 121

an affirmative answer, and also the ov, which is itself

italicizing
emphatic. In the sentence before, the one with the first [i?vxoi, there is
another italicization, the yE in ? y\ Since the "Friend" empha
-
sizes "we" and Socrates emphasizes "you" the same person, but this
time singled out in the singular ? the two forms of italicization have
logically the same ultimate reference. Immediately, however, pivtoi
emphasizes the person, as the first (l?vxoi had the man
emphasized
Alcibiades. And this dialogue, too, will have much play about persons.
The ye is fairly unusual here as an emphasis for the oi>c that introduces
- as
the parenthetical relative clause though there were a contagion of

particles19.
Switching the emphasis, the next clause, the longest so far, has no
particles at all. But then there is a strong particle, ovv, "therefore", in
the Friend's replying question. Questions themselves in this run stand
as the big of heightened dialogue; six of the first seven sen
signature
tences are questions. There is all the more reason, then, for us to expect
the logical connective "therefore" to go with an affirmation, but we
know that it will
not, because it follows xi, "What?". "And what, there
fore, about
things at the moment?". The rephrasing of this question
begins with another light particle, one we have not had yet, fj. It rarely
appears by itself in prose (Denniston 282), as it does here, though more
often in poetry. Especially since Homer has just been quoted, itmay be
taken perhaps, in this passage, as in others where Plato uses it
by itself,
as a The play throughout this opening
faintly heightening poeticism20.
has been unusually playful, and unusually digressive. To these features

19
Still, in use with same verb, d>? ye is repeated in the dialogue at 339e3.
20
In Socrates' next not quoted a ??, to the middle
answer, above, again moved of
the sentence from its more normal position, is both tentative and adversative. It more

strongly exhibits both these senses too far from the uiv four speeches
for being back,
and with too much to balance it. It acts strongly and it
syntax intervening, by itself,
a stone for the xai y?g, and then the xai oiv xai in the sentence's
provides stepping
two concluding clauses. Tag, as Denniston says (108), is usually the connective, and
the xai adds to it "also", "even", or "this fact". If "both", then it is answered by
another xai. Here the combination means all three, and the answer is correspondingly

fuller, xai oiv xai. Even the y?g is repeated in the syntax of a
counterthrusting
absolute, ?xeivov. Kai ovv is itself a strong counterthrust of
genitive JtaQOvxo? y?g
forward and backward, "a very rare combination", as Denniston says who cites
(445),
this passage.
All this comes down a bit in the third \ievxoi which underscores the adjective
axojiov, rather than a noun, as the first two uivxoi's had.

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122 A. Cook

the riot of particles has cued and has provided

us, a constantly varied,
accompaniment, as though to say, "Yes, with so
constantly qualifying
much we cannot have an urgent argument under way;
qualification
otherwise the attention to the main clause in the interchange would be
more exclusive, and the qualifications would be more pointed
ly structured".
Another manner for this process of modification appears in the

particle placements of the Symposium.

In that dialogue the balance keeps shifting and so does the tone.
The Symposium is certainly serious, because of the topic. And it is

certainly comic because of the context delineated in the fiction, and

because of its persistent playfulness. Therefore the strategy of inter

preting its presentation of Eros must hang on ascertaining how the par
ticular mix of serious and comic is sustained in the unfolding sequence
of the series, and how it functions. This question comes up
particularly
in the speech of Aristophanes, who is said at the beginning (177e2) to
know about ta erotika because of his devotion to Dionysus and Aphro
? a statement mean won
dite that could seriously that he has competi
tion at the festivals of Dionysus, and his comedies deal with sex. Play

fully, it would be a way of saying that he is absorbed in wine, women

and song. Aristophanes can be seen as resembling a character in one of
his own plays, or as functioning philosophically like the author of them,
in his composition of the fable and myth about the original androgynes.
Now the small details of the particles, as generally in Plato, keep
alive this balance between the serious and the playful in special ways.
An orchestration of particles accompanies Aristophanes' speech, a
speech that is itselfrichly modified by its formal and propositional
similarities and differences to the array of other speeches brought for
ward here as encomia on love. When Aristophanes gets into the thick of
his playful-serious anthropological-allegorical fable about the origin of
sexed human beings, he creates a double attitude in the gods, who out
of defensiveness cut the original beings
have in two but have reshaped
them out of pity for their haplessness before the idea of separation. The
gods' mediating solution is to readjust the position of the genitals. As
moves to this he his and
Aristophanes presentation, keys up discourse,
in doing so he further modulates its qualifications. This we can trace in
the special manipulation accorded to the particles at this point (191b
192d).

x? ? y?g xai xaOxa ?xx?? e?/ov, xai ?Y?w v xai ?xixxov o?x ei?

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Particles in Plato's Dialogues 123

?XXr\Xov<; ?XX'zi? yf\v, &oneg o? x?xxiye?. jiex??rrjx? xe ovv ox3xo)

a?jxc?v etc x? JiQ?oftev xai ?i? xotjxcdv xf|v y?veoiv ?v ?MnX,oi?
?jtoirjoev, ?t? xov aQQevo? ?v x?) irr^ei, xarv?e ?vexa ?va, ?v xfj
ov\mXoyif\ a|ia |i?v, et ?vfjQ ywaixi evxiJ/oi, yevvcoev xai ytyv0110 T?
y?vo?, afxa ?'ei xai oqqtiv aQQevi, Jt^rjo^iovri yo?v yfyv0110 T^?
auvouoia? xai ?iajtawtvxo xai ?m x? zgya XQ?jtoivxo xai xoii ?XXov
?iou ?mjieXo?vxo.
For of course they had originally been on the outside which was now
the back and they had begotten and conceived not upon each other,
but, like the grasshoppers, upon the earth. So now, as I say, he moved
their members round to the front and made them propagate among
themselves, the male begetting upon the female the idea being that if,
in all a man should chance upon a woman,
interweavings, conception
would take place and the race would be continued, while if man
should conjugate with man, he might at least obtain such satisfaction
as would allow him to turn his attention and his energies to the every
day affairs of life21.

Since y&Q clearly indicates a casual connection, after

especially
the emphatically placed adverb x?co?, xai is somewhat supernumerary
and so touches on the note of pity. Aristophanes modulates his voice so

21
The comic of course,
tone, is strong throughout, as the rest of the passage
shows: "So you see,
gentlemen, how far back we can trace our innate love for one
another, and how this love is always to our former nature, to make
trying redintegrate
two into one, and to bridge the gulf between one human and another.
being
And so, gentlemen, we are all like pieces of the coins that children break in half
for keepsakes making two out of one, like the flatfish and each of us is forever seeking
the half that will tally with himself. The man who is a slice of the hermaphrodite sex, as
it was called, will naturally be attracted by women, the adulterer, for instance, and
women who run after men are of similar descent, as, for instance, the unfaithful wife.
But the woman who is a slice of the original female is attracted by women rather than

by men, in fact she is a Lesbian, while men who are slices of the male are followers of
the male, and show their masculinity throughout their boyhood by the way they make
friends with men, and the delight they take in lying beside them and being taken in
their arms. And these are the most of the nation's for theirs is the most
hopeful youth,
virile constitution.
I know there are some who call them shameless, but they are wrong. The
people
fact is that both their souls are for a else, a to which
longing something something they
can a name,
neither of them put and which they can only give an inkling of in cryptic

sayings and prophetic riddles.

Now, Hephaestus
were to come and stand over them with his tool
supposing bag
as they he were to ask, Tell me, my dear creatures,
lay there side by side, and suppose
what do you really want with one another?".

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 124 A. Cook

as to mime dramatically of the gods that he is describing.

the attitude
Behind that, he touches on the note
of the speaker's fantasy in which
the pity is included, since by intensifying his seriousness Aristophanes
is stepping up his play. In the continuation after the parenthesis, begun
by the particle group xe ovv, the xe is again supernumerary, and adds a

feigned gentleness. Denniston notes the rarity of "the collocation of

prospective te with connective oirv", and indicates Plato's fondness for
it22. Ei xai effectively conjoins the condition to the full connection
(Denniston 301), while yovv flatly indicates the full effectuation of
Zeus's
change23.
run of ovv' s is unusually
The rich throughout this whole passage,
as though to insist that the causal pattern holds with special force; and
this, again, amounts to an assertion by Aristophanes that his fantasy
corresponds to reality, which in turn ironically implies the opposite,
with a lightness that is almost wholly invested in these particles, as they
continue24.

22
Denniston, cit. 441.
23
Denniston notesthat yo?v has two senses, and "ironical connec
"part proof
tion" (449). Both these senses
are the first especially so since
strongly present here,
we are near the of Aristophanes' of the motive for the particular
beginning presentation
shaping of the "new" creatures. And Denniston notes, of yovv, that it tends to
further,
in apodosis and so to have an air of
appear (453), capping proof. Af| ovv in the next
sentence ahead as backward ovv
points (469), picking up another in the very next
sentence and another ?rj in its final clause.
24
The next \iev ovv is anticipatory (470), and it picks up another ?rj almost at
once. There are two fxev oiiv's later on (192b5-6), cumulative but differentiated. In the
middle, parenthetically but emphatically, comes the "great proof, the uiya xexurJQiov
(192a5-6). This, while applied to just one aspect of a sexual constitutes a
alternative,
bolder causal assertion in the primary and so in the structure of the
register, deep
utterances. This phrase picks up and leads at once to a xai y?g. This xai
y?g, reverses
but as it were echoes the y?g xai in x?co? y?g xai at the
beginning of the run I have
been Denniston
discussing. (109) notes the explanatory
emphasis in this very passage,
as connected to xexurjgiov. Still later the touch becomes an
lighter, ?ga (Denniston,
cit. 39), an ?ga ye to introduce a pretendedly
emphatic question (50), and an el y?g
addressed to the of the attentive audience
interlocutory possible question silent, (d8;
61). Earlier, in ?f| ovv, ovv, both the ?rj and the ovv indicate both connection and
emphasis (469), and therefore they may be said to reinforce each other and in
strongly
this context to reinforce the of the
lightness-in-exaggeration irony.
What Denniston says of ?ga is apposite here, denotes the apprehension of
?ga
an idea not before at the most,
envisaged. Usually ?ga conveys either, actual scepti
cism, or at the least, the disclaiming of responsibility for the accuracy of the statement
And he cites this very passage.
(39). vAga ye he says "adds liveliness and emphasis,

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Particles in Plato's Dialogues 125

There are, by contrast, few particles in Socrates' later dialogue

with Alcibiades, Symp. 214-215, where for the emotional-intellectual
nuances we might have expected them. And Alcibiades' later encomia

221c-222d) are spare of particles but full of false starts and overquali
fications, and full as well of the repetitions and provocations of the
drunk. They violate unknowingly the special condition of sobriety for
this banquet, which is declared at the outset when the guests voluntari
with the usual continuation of drinking in order precisely to
ly dispense
keep their heads clear for such discussion. The relative absence of
with all the foregoing speech, helps to under
particles, by comparison
score the crudity of Alcibiades here, and hence the oversimplicity of a

position that the main propositions of his speech would present force

fully, rather, than as here in the distortion of contrast25. He ends

that he will take care and not be "like the ninny, to learn by
asserting
as a sort of anti-Aeschylus, a as though to
suffering", quoting proverb,
touch base on a popular wisdom for confirmation. Socrates's answer
restores rhetorical balance and indicates the fact by once more pro

ceeding to touch in particles, where the twists of Alcibiades' utterance,

in its drunken career, have momentarily displaced them: we measure
his wildness, and the increase in comic exhibition, both by the paucity
of particles and by the exaggeratedness of what seems idle rhetoric.
Alcibiades in both the negative sense (use of particles) and the positive

(wild speech) proves himself unable towalk the chalk line of the sober
man's speech.
as the particles us to see, is the run of Dioti
Very different, help
ma's intricate layering of clauses at the crest of her speech (210-21 Id),
with its many rises of contrasted pairings, and with offered sequences
in the "step-ladder" of perception26. In this peak passage among the
the particles have been rele
high level of Plato's stylistic triumphs,

on the force of ye in
which goes without saying here" (50), though he remarks special
connection with a conjunction of questioning. He reads this particular y?g as suggest
"I mention these facts because are deserving of mention" (61).
ing they particularly
25
Martha Nussbaum, a more of this traces the
stressing positive reading speech,
contour of Alcibiades' career as itmatches his role in the Symposium (TheFragility of
Goodness, Cambridge 1986, 165-199).
26 conver
Thesleff, 137-138. "Diotima passes from a fairly simple ["semi-literary
an "intellectual" over more and more solemn
sational" style modified by style] styles
and shades of [a "rhetorical" to the great climax of the mystic passage 209A
style],
212A [which fuses the first two of these with the "pathetic style", the "ceremonious

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126 A. Cook

gated, suddently, to a use far less pronounced and prominent. Here

also the rhetoric takes over in a different way, as the paucity of particles
are touched
helps us to see. They in lightly and schematically, as dis
tinct from their play variously in earlier parts of this dialogue, and also
as distinct from the later bluntness of Alcibiades. The system of quali
fication has been subordinated to the indirections of the quasi-mythic
existence of Diotima, who is virtually unique as a speaker in Plato's
even if a
dialogues, speaker distanced by quotation.
Particles are at once the sign and the celebration of all these pro
cesses. Riding along on the subtle syntax of Plato's sentences, they
signify their quasi-orality while conforming in their own nested or
embedded structure to the logic of the discourse they accompany and
ornament.

Brown University

and the "Onkos We may note in passing that Thesleff s discrimina

style", style"]".
tions are wonderfully apt; and still they can be felt as secondary to the remarkable
evenness in the ascending of Diotima's
progression speech.

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