So what are the big things that I missed?

Thanks to everyone who has linked or dropped in for a visit! I appreciate it.

I'm picking typographical nits tonight and - through imitative fallacy - my thoughts suit my activity. Bereft of big ideas, such as befit my subject, Plato, I'm hoping maybe you can provide.

Here's a big question: is the Euthyphro commentary chapter too darn baggy?

Once I get to the Oresteia (round about page 128) does the discussion go all pear-shaped and digressive? I wrote the latter half of the chapter in sort of a weird way. I was going to circle back from the Oresteia to the Athenian homicide courts and conclude with a fairly substantive outline/discussion of what might really have happened in Euthyphro's case. That's been an independent research topic for me for a while. Then it got long, and longer, and the only way to present the legal situation clearly is at length - that's the point, it's complicated. And I couldn't in good conscience make the chapter 10-15 pages longer than it is. So I basically ended up leaving the legal stuff out, pulling up short. But the Oresteia discussion is still there, now less well motivated. Maybe I should lose it. Chapter would be leaner and better without?

I guess that's maybe more of a 'what are the too-big things I hit?' question. Answer either, as you like.

Comments

[Brad DeLong]

I finished the chapter thinking that the Oresteia discussion definitely belongs--that it is a crucial part of the background for Euthyphro--because of the name Euthyphrones applied to the Furies. Is that right? Would every Greek in the 4th C. BC, on hearing "Euthyphro," have instantly thought "Euthyphrones... Eumenides... Furies... Orestes... Klytemnestra... Agamemnon"?

[jholbo]

That's the thing, Brad. It's a nice coincidence, but I wouldn't want to put so much emphasis on it as that. I am not really confident that Plato meant it as a direct reference. In fact, it's a very long-shot. So I feel as though I risk resting the discussion on this strained punch line. (It's a fine punch line, in its way, but maybe it turns the preceding bit into a bit of shaggy dog story.)

I have no doubt that Oresteia is a nice illustration of prosecute-your-parents?-type issues. So it can't be totally out of place. If you enjoyed reading it, and it wasn't too long, and it had a definite point, maybe that's enough.

[Brad DeLong]

It is a very good punch line...

So then why did Big-Head choose "Euthyphro" as the name of the guy in the dialog? Was he actually named "Euthyphro," and did he prosecute his father for murder?

I mean, I thought that Alkibiades at some point probably did give something like his Symposion speech about Sokrates, but what is the veiw on the historicity of the rest of them?

Why is it such a long shot? Seems to me likely to be a medium shot at most...

[William Bruce]

I was under the impression that almost every Socratic interlocutor was based on an historical person. That is, at least, the scholarly "consensus" to which I have been exposed.

Perhaps some of the aporetic dialogues are exceptions, but there is little doubting the historical existence of the "heavy hitters" in Plato's transitional and middle dialogues. Considering how many of the characters have relationships with one another, I think that assuming their historical existence is warranted. Then again, Euthyphro seems to be somewhat exceptional in that regard.

[jholbo]

There appears to have been a real Euthyphro/Euthyphron. He is referred to in passing in another dialogue, as I mention, and there wouldn't be much point to name-dropping like that if he were purely fictional. I suspect that Plato just liked the ready-made pun in the name. Cephalus was real too, and he is, symbolically, the head-gone-a-bit-soft. Polemarchus was real. And he is, symbolically, the Polemarch, the military type, the born 'auxiliary'. I think Plato likes to find this stuff where he can.

The best source for this, by the by, is Debra Nails "Prosopography of Plato's People", a fantastic book. (It's Debra Nails SEP article I quote in the post, so this is a bit of a coincidence.) Nails goes through alphabetically, telling us everything that anyone knows about anyone who is mentioned in Plato, providing a chronology of the dialogues and any other info of that nature. It's great fun just to browse through it, not to mention it's the last word in research on the subject if you really need to know.