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Critical Analysis

The Panchatantra is written in both prose and

verse forms, a characteristic of the genre of San-

skrit literature referred to as champu. Dialogue and

narrative are offered in prose, while verse is em-

ployed to articulate concepts, provide moral in-

struction, and describe emotional behavior and

sentiment. Verse usually appears in the beginning

and end of the text to emphasize the moral of the

tale, while the prose form is used primarily to re-

count the story’s developments.

The Panchatantra is structured as a series of

tales within tales, with the Preamble functioning as

the highest level or frame. The five books that fol-

low each offer another frame story, within which

more stories are nested. This nesting technique ap-

pears in other Sanskrit literature, notably in the In-

dian EPIC the MAHABHARATA and to some extent in

Vedic literature. Within the Panchatantra, Book 1,

“The Estrangement of Friends,” contains the most

subsidiary tales. Each successive book addresses a

different theme: Book 2 examines the “Winning of

Friends,” Book 3 speaks “Of Crows and Owls,” Book

4 discusses “Loss of Gains,” and Book 5 provides ex-

amples of “Rash Deeds.”

The philosophical structure that runs through

the narrative structure carries out the author’s in-

tention to provide a nitisastra. In Hindu belief, the

path to living wisely and well required the equal

and balanced pursuit of three aims: dharma,de-

scribed as duty, compliance with the law, or right

conduct; artha, wealth or material possessions,

since money was considered a requirement for gra-

cious living; and kama, which includes love and

sensual fulfillment. These concepts are dealt with

separately in other Sanskrit texts, including the

Dharmasastra, the Arthasastra, and the

KAMA SUTRA,

but the Panchatantra incorporates instructions on

all three areas into a single context.

Books 2 and 5, for example, speak to the con-

cept of artha, or the acquisition of material re-

sources, when the characters describe the evils of

poverty. A verse from Book 5 vividly captures the

correlation between wealth and acquisition of

knowledge, suggesting one can only successfully

meditate and acquire wisdom if one has a full

stomach:

Wit, kindliness and modesty,

Sweetness of speech and youthful beauty,

Liveliness too and vitality;

Freedom from sorrow, and joviality;

Uprightness, knowledge of sacred texts;

The wisdom of the Preceptor of the

Immortals;

Purity as well of mind and body;

Respect too for rules of right conduct:

All these fine attributes arise in people,

Once their belly-pot is full.

Part of dharma means fulfilling the duties re-

quired of one’s station in life, which Cloud Hue,

the King of Crows, encounters in Book 3 when he

must defend his kingdom and subjects from a

cruel enemy. Dharma dictates the behavior of all

beings, including the snake in Book 1, who in-

forms the priest that he bites not to hurt anyone,

but only does so in self-defense.

The third element of kama is reflected in the

theme of friendship that pervades all five books.

This verse from Book 2 meditates on how to

achieve happiness:

Those who enjoy happy times,

Friends with dear friends,

Lovers with their beloved,

Joyful with the joyous. . . .

True friendship, where beings are connected like

flesh and claw, is illustrated in Book 2’s story of

Goldy, a mole; Lightwing, a crow; and Slowcoach,

a tortoise. Goldy and Lightwing, as his friends, suc-

cessfully extricate Slowcoach from his neurotic ob-

session and restore him to serenity and happiness.

The consequence of a balanced approach to

dharma, artha, and kama is a harmonious order

within society, which the Panchatantra, in the Pre-

amble, sets out to illuminate. Prominent signposts

Panchatantra 231

in various parts of the narrative constantly remind

the reader that these stories are parables about

human society and human virtues, vices, and

frailty.A good example is “The Singing Donkey” of

Book V, a pretentious soul who claims to know

everything about music except how to sing.

In the Panchatantra, the natural world and the

human world mirror each other. Two main de-

vices achieve this effect. The narrative uses anal-

ogy to portray similarities in social and political

hierarchy and organization between the two

worlds. For example, the king of the human

world parallels the characteristics of the animal

king of the forest. The second literary device, the

use of allegory, anthropomorphizes or projects

human characteristics onto the animal charac-

ters in the stories. Just like the three princes in the

Preamble who desire to learn moral conduct,

most of the good characters in the stories strive to

attain the highest level of education. Animal

characters such as Lively the bull and Goldy the

mole represent the perfect model citizens with

their judicious blend of good learning and sound

practical sense.

As Franklin Edgerton observes in the Pan-

chatantra Reconstructed: “No other work of Hindu

literature has played so important a part in the lit-

erature ofthe world....Indeed,the statement has

been made that no book except the

BIBLE has en-

joyed such an extensive circulation in the world as a

whole.” The influence of the Panchatantra in both

its structural format and its dual purposes of enter-

tainment and enlightenment can be traced in works

as diverse as the THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, Gio-

vanni Bocaccio’s Decameron, Geoffrey Chaucer’s

Canterbury Tales, and Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables.

Its canny characters and lively plots surface in the

fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers and the Br’er Rab-

bit stories of the American south. The sheer number

of translations of the Panchatantra provide proof

of its popularity. No other work of Indian literature,

and perhaps no other work of world literature, has

had such an ageless and universal appeal.

English Versions of the Panchatantra

The Panchatantra. Translated by Chandra Rajan.

London: Penguin Books, 1993.

The Panchatantra: The Book of India’s Folk Wisdom.

Translated by Patrick Olivelle. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1997.

Works about the Panchatantra

Amore, R. C. and L. D. Shinn. Lustful Maidens and As-

cetic Kings: Buddhist and Hindu Stories of Life.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Edgerton, Franklin. The Panchatantra Reconstructed,

I: Text and Critical Apparatus. American Oriental

Series 2. New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental

Society, 1924.

Pausanias (115–180) historian, travel writer

Born in Greece, next to Mount Sipylos, Pausanias

was a Greek traveler who lived during the height of

Rome’s rule in Greece. His writing—the only

source of information about his life—reveals that

he lived a long life, witnessed many important his-

torical events, and traveled extensively throughout

Greece and the Greco-Roman world. His major

work is Hellados Periegesis (Description of Greece),

which exists in 10 books; the first was completed

after 143, the last before ca. 176.

As a whole, Description of Greece serves as a type

of guidebook for the places Pausanias visited. As he

reached each city, he first recorded the location’s

history. He then visited sacred sites or monuments

within or near the city, describing them and other

important religious, artistic, and architectural

achievements. He also reflects on the customs, pe-

culiarities, and daily lives of the local population of

each region, including descriptions of folklore,

local legends, and ceremonial rituals. Based on sur-

viving structures and artworks, as well as archaeo-

logical evidence, Pausanias’s descriptions are

remarkably accurate.

Description of Greece provides modern readers

with a unique opportunity to journey through an-

232 Pausanias

cient Greece with an educated and curious com-

panion, one whose knowledge of history and cul-

ture also provides a wealth of information that

continues to aid in research of the ancient world.

English Versions of a Work by Pausanias

Pausanias’ Guide to Ancient Greece. Translated by

Christian Habicht. Berkeley: University of Califor-

nia Press, 1985.

Pausanias’s Description of Greece. Translated with a

commentary by J. G. Frazer. New York: Biblo and

Tannen, 1965.

A Work about Pausanias

Alcock, Susan E., John F. Cherry, and Jajs Elsner, eds.

Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece.

Edited by Lysiacum. Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2001.

Petronius (Gaius Petronius) (27–66) poet

Petronius lived during the time of the Roman Em-

pire and served as Emperor Nero’s adviser in mat-

ters of luxury and extravagance. His sophistication

in sensual pleasure even earned him the title ar-

biter elegantiae; TACITUS in his Annals refers to

Petronius as a sensualist “who made luxury a fine

art.” Petronius managed to combine his official du-

ties with a chaotic lifestyle, sleeping during the day

and living during the night, but his life ended trag-

ically when he was betrayed by a rival and dis-

missed by Nero. As a result, he committed suicide,

which Tacitus described as the ultimate act of re-

fined self-control.

For contemporary readers, Petronius is famous

for his Satyricon, a brilliant satire of excesses in

Nero’s Rome. Although only fragments of this work

survive, enough of the text remains to provide evi-

dence of Petronius’s satirical talent and in-depth

knowledge of Roman society at the height of the

empire’s prosperity. He demonstrates a thorough

knowledge of the language and sociology not only

of the Roman elite but also of the lower classes.

The Satyricon also is the best existing evidence

of the prominence of homosexuality in the Roman

Empire, which Petronius describes in a vivid, lively

manner. The main character of the work is En-

colpius, a student whose name, according to some

translators, means “crotch.” Encolpius offends the

god Priapus, and as a result he is forced to undergo

a sequence of painful but generally comic misad-

ventures, mostly of a sexual nature. The world of

the Satyricon resembles a sexual carnival, where

gender and orientation are easily interchangeable.

This work unambiguously articulates a very spe-

cific philosophy, which was, according to the au-

thor, widespread among the Roman Empire’s elite.

According to this philosophy, the only real sin con-

sists in denying one’s sexual appetites. To do so is

considered blatant hypocrisy and is punished, gen-

erally through comic ridicule. This view on moral-

ity is explicitly expressed in the paired tales of the

Widow of Ephesus and of the Boy of Pergamon.

Written in A.D. 61 and first printed in 1664, the

Satyricon has since become a prototype for a num-

ber of novels about homosexuality. The first En-

glish translation was published in Paris in 1902

and attributed to Sebastian Melmoth, a well-

known pseudonym of Oscar Wilde. Contemporary

works using the legacy of the Satyricon include

John Rechy’s City of Night (1963), Daniel Curzon’s

The Misadventures of Tim McPick (1975), and Luis

Zapata’s Adonis Garcia (1979). In these novels, as

in the Satyricon, travel is portrayed as a license or

venue for sexual experimentation and indulgence.

The film version of Petronius’s masterpiece was

produced by Federico Fellini in 1968. Though the

film succeeds in capturing Satyricon’s grotesquerie

and powerful homoeroticism, it loses most of

Petronius’s humor.

Petronius is remembered as much for the con-

tent of his Satyricon as for his elegant prose and

verse, including even the colloquialisms and com-

mon language of some of its characters. The

Satyricon is the earliest example of the picaresque

novel in European literature.

Petronius 233

An English Version of a Work by Petronius

The Satyricon. Translated by P. G. Walsh. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1996.

Works about Petronius

Conte, Gian Biagio. The Hidden Author: An Interpre-

tation of Petronius’ Satyricon. Translated by Elaine

Fantham. Berkeley: University of California Press,

1996.

Courtney, Edward. A Companion to Petronius. New

York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Phaedrus (first century) poet

Most of what is known about Phaedrus has been

deduced or inferred from his work Fabulae Ae-

sopiae, a collection of writings commonly referred

to as the Fables. He was originally a slave of the first

Roman emperor, AUGUSTUS, but was later freed. He

claimed to have been born in Thrace, in the region

of the Pierian Mount on the southeast coast of

Macedonia. This reference has been questioned,

since the legendary AESOP was thought by some to

be from Thrace. (Elsewhere Phaedrus says that

Aesop came from Phyrgia.) Likewise, the Mount of

Pieria was the mythical birthplace of the Muses, so

attributing his birth to the Muses’ domain may

have been Phaedrus’s attempt to legitimize his

claims to literary fame and inspiration. One re-

mark in the Fables that scholars often take seri-

ously is his hint that he was at some point

persecuted by Sejanus, the ambitious general

under Emperor Tiberius whom Tiberius executed

for treason in 31. Other references in the Fables

suggest that Phaedrus lived through the stormy

rule of Caligula and into the time of Claudius.

Critical Analysis

The first portions of Phaedrus’s five books of Fa-

bles borrow from Aesop, the slave who lived in the

sixth century B.C. The Greek tales attributed to

Aesop were originally written in prose. Phaedrus,

in the beginning of the first century A.D., and

Babrius, who lived in the second half of the cen-

tury, were the first to put these fables into verse. As

prose they functioned as collections of myth, pro-

viding stories that could be used to reinforce a

rhetorical point or lesson. As verse, however, the

fables could be considered literature, and Phaedrus

seems to be consciously maneuvering for a place in

the literary tradition, despite his background as a

slave. (

HORACE was himself the son of a freedman,

and it was not unknown for slaves to be educated.)

For his source on Aesop, Phaedrus used the

manuscript of Demetrius of Phaelerum, compiled

around 300 B.C. The first two books he published

feature a series of brief tales, their animal charac-

ters familiar to readers of Aesop. The author’s

point of view is frequently dark and cynical as he

looks upon a world where injustice exists and the

whims of the mighty prevail, sometimes not for

the good of all. The fables ridicule vanity, conceit,

and arrogance and consider ignorance the cardinal

sin. Though a pessimistic mood seems to pervade

the stories as the author repeatedly showcases ob-

jectionable behavior, the fables clearly intend to

educate readers on the simple morals required to

live in the world.“Be unkind to no man,” Phaedrus

declares in the fable of “The Fox and the Stork,” for,

he goes on to explain, “mean behavior is liable to

rebound.” In a society where those in power can-

not always be counted on to behave with respect

and mercy, the best option, Phaedrus seems to say,

is to remain humble, keep quiet, and simply try to

blend in.

As the books progress, the author moves away

from predominantly beast fables to material of

his own making. Though he cannily continues to

attribute his work to Aesop and often uses Athens

as a setting for his fables, Phaedrus clearly depicts

the daily life and political situations of first-cen-

tury Rome. Some disguise and circumspection

were no doubt necessary to avoid angering cer-

tain civic authorities. In the preface to Book 3,

Phaedrus claims: “My purpose is not to pillory

any person, / But to illustrate life and the ways of

the world.” His frequently biting and often un-

flattering portraits of those in power, however,

obviously led some authority figures to identify

themselves with the wolves, lions, and other pred-

234 Phaedrus

ators of Phaedrus’s fables and to take issue with

him, as Sejanus apparently did. For the common

person, the best defense is sometimes silence, as

Phaedrus suggests in the epilogue to Book 3 in

which he refers to the maxim he learned as a

youth: “For a man of humble birth / It is not

proper to protest in public.” Phaedrus speculates

that the first fables were invented because the first

slaves, “exposed to incessant hazards, / Unable

openly to express what [they] wanted,” found they

could safely express their personal opinions by

masking them in the form of fictional fables. In

writing his books, Phaedrus wrote that he had

merely taken that route and “enlarged it to a high-

way,” so to speak, by adding to the themes be-

queathed him by Aesop.

Certain stories in Book 3 show how Phaedrus

expands on his material and brings in morals from

his own experience. In “On Believing and Not Be-

lieving,” the author recommends that readers “find

out the truth, before faulty thinking / Leads to a

stupid and tragic outcome.” He offers what he says

is a story from his own experience, in which a man,

on the treacherous advice of his secretary, ends up

killing his son and then himself, leaving his inno-

cent wife to be accused of double murder. The ter-

rible story turns into an episode praising the

justice and wisdom of Augustus, who sorts out the

messy details of the case, and Phaedrus returns to

his moral with the announcement “[T]rust no one

you don’t know.” Then, in a tag at the end, he iron-

ically adds that he told this story at length because

“a few friends have informed me / That they find

my fables somewhat too short.” Using the premise

of a fable to explain a tragedy of which he knows,

Phaedrus manages to praise his patron and also in-

sert his own somewhat discouraging but perhaps

hard-learned advice. He also uses Book 3 to talk

back to his critics—for instance, in the fable of

“The Cock and the Pearl,” which tells the story of

a rooster finding a pearl as he digs for food. Al-

though he recognizes the value of the pearl, he de-

clares that it is no use to him in his hunger. This

fable is directed, Phaedrus concludes, at “people

who fail to appreciate my work.”

The five books of Fables were apparently com-

posed over the course of Phaedrus’s life. In the last

fable of Book 5,“The Old Dog and the Hunter,” he

depicts himself as the old dog scolded by his mas-

ter because he can no longer perform the same

services he could in his youth. “It’s strength, not

spirit, that’s deserted me,” the dog says in his de-

fense and implores his master to “give me credit for

what I was.” Some later collections contain appen-

dices of additional fables attributed to Phaedrus,

such as the 15th-century translation of Nicholas

Perotti, but these are often thought to be later,

anonymous additions.

The later Roman fabulists Avianus and Pilpay

borrowed from Phaedrus, and he was read fre-

quently in the MIDDLE AGES. The genre of the beast

fable influenced medieval poems like the ROMAN DE

RENART and authors such as DANTE. The French

writers MARIE DE FRANCE and Jean de La Fontaine

are known for their collections of fables. Christo-

pher Smart composed a rhyming translation of

Phaedrus in 1765 as a text meant for instruction

of young readers. Phaedrus’s work was often a

teaching text in English schools during the 18th

century, when he was classified as one of the great

classical authors along with Horace, VIRGIL, and

OVID. He is much less familiar to modern readers,

who tend to confuse Phaedrus the fabulist with

Phaedrus the Greek philosopher of the fifth cen-

tury

B.C.

Despite the dark view of the animal world in

the Fables, scholar Anne Becher notes that Phae-

drus is important because he “speaks for the op-

pressed and is concerned about the abuse of power

and the exploitation of the poor and weak.” He can

be legitimately remembered as the first proletar-

ian poet and satirist. In choosing the fable as his

genre, Phaedrus chose to transmit and contribute

to source material that was already ancient by the

time of Aesop but continued to be relevant across

cultures. Certain subjects and themes of the origi-

nal Greek fables have analogues in the Arabic “Fa-

bles of Bidpai,” translated by Symeon Seth in 1080,

and in the fables of the Indian PANCHATANTRA and

the Buddhist JATAKA.

Phaedrus 235

English Versions of Works by Phaedrus

The Fables of Phaedrus. Translated by P. F. Widdows.

Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.

The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart: A Poetical

Translation of the Fables of Phaedrus, Vol 6. Edited

by Karina Williamson. Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1996.

Works about Phaedrus

Henderson, John. Telling Tales on Caesar: Roman Sto-

ries from Phaedrus. New York: Oxford University

Press, 2001.

Perry, Ben Edwin. Babrius and Phaedrus. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965.

Pindar (ca. 522–ca. 438 B.C.) lyric poet

The man considered the greatest of the Greek lyric

poets was a native of Cynoscephalae, a town just

outside of Thebes in the region of Boeotia. Pindar

was born into an aristocratic family at a time when

the noble class in Greece was waning; his parents

were Daïphantus and Cleodicê. He considered

himself Theban and took pride in the land of his

birth and the aristocratic ideal. His uncle

Scopelînus taught Pindar how to play the flute, an

instrument that was a vital element in the worship

of Apollo, the god of poetry, music, and the sun.

Pindar studied lyrical composition in Athens,

where he may have met the tragedian AESCHYLUS.

When he returned to Thebes, he embarked upon

his career, counting among his patrons a number

of prominent Greek families and political leaders

who commissioned him to write odes. His earliest

works flouted literary tradition by failing to make

use of myths. The noted Boeotian poetess Corinna

reportedly called attention to this deficiency. Pin-

dar’s next offering teemed with mythological ref-

erences, whereupon Corinna is said to have

admonished him, “One must sow with the hand

and not with the whole sack.”

Of Pindar’s 17 existing works, only the odes

composed to celebrate a victory at one of the Pan-

hellenic festivals (the precursor to the modern-day

Olympic Games) survive in substantially complete

form. These are the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean,

and Isthmian Odes, and collectively they are known

as the Epinician (or Victory) Odes. These choral

poems solemnly compare the victor of the athletic

contest to the legendary and mythic figures from

the glorious days of yore. The competition itself be-

comes a device for providing metaphors and simi-

les for achievement and valor. The odes laud the

champion’s family, ancestors, and homeland, and

recount legends originating in his place of birth.

The longest of all of Pindar’s odes is Pythian IV,

which was commissioned by an aristocrat by the

name of Dâmophilus, who had been banished to

Thebes from the kingdom of Battus IV of Cyrene,

in modern Libya. The king’s son, Arcesilas, pre-

vailed in the chariot races in the Pythian games of

462

B.C., and Dâmophilus sought to appease Battus

with an extravagant lyric tribute penned by Pin-

dar and performed in the palace at Cyrene:

Thou must stand, my Muse! to-day in the

presence of . . .

the king of Cyrene with its noble steeds, that

so,

beside Arcesilas, while he celebrateth his

triumph,

thou mayest swell the gale of song....

To suggest the idea of reconciliation between

Dâmophilus and the king of Cyrene, Pindar quotes

HOMER: “A good messenger bringeth highest honor

to every business.” The song praises Dâmophilus’s

“righteous heart” and his exemplary life; the exile

wants nothing more than to play his harp once

again by Apollo’s fountain at Cyrene. An attempt

to flatter the king is made when the poet compares

him with the sovereign among gods: Even Zeus

forgave the Titans.

Characteristic features and themes of Pindar’s

works include the use of myth, heroic legends, rev-

erence for deities, the repetition of important

words, and a recurring format: prelude, beginning,

transition, midpoint (during which the ancient

myth is narrated), transition, and conclusion. His

framework, now called a Pindaric ode, includes

236 Pindar

three parts: a strophe (the part of an ancient Greek

choral ode sung by the chorus when moving from

right to left); an antistrophe (the part of the choral

ode in which the chorus sings its answer to the

strophe while moving from left to right); and the

epode (the part of the choral ode that follows, as a

rule, the strophe and antistrophe). This framework

was admired by the Roman HORACE and the En-

glish John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and Thomas

Gray.

The architectural perfection of Pindar’s odes

and his bold use of metaphors led PAUSANIAS,a

Greek traveler and geographer of the second cen-

tury, to comment:

. . . [B]ees flew to him, and placed honey on his

lips. Such was the beginning of his career of

song. When his fame was spread abroad from

one end of Greece to the other, the Pythian

priestess ...bade the Delphians give to Pindar

an equal share of all the first-fruits they offered

to Apollo.

English Versions of Works by Pindar

The Odes of Pindar. Translated by Sir John Sandys.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

1957.

Pindar: Olympian Odes, Pythian Odes. Edited and

translated by William H. Race. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1997.

Pindar’s Victory Songs. Translated by Frank J.

Nisetich. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Univer-

sity Press, 1980.

Works about Pindar

Hamilton, John T. Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscu-

rity, and the Classical Tradition. Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 2004.

MacKie, Hillary Susan. Graceful Errors: Pindar and the

Performance of Praise. Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 2003.

Segal, Charles. Pindar’s Mythmaking: The Fourth

Pythian Ode. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1986.

Plato (ca. 428–ca. 348 B.C.) philosopher

Plato’s family was aristocratic and claimed great

distinction. His paternal ancestry reportedly goes

back to the old Athenian kings, and his mother

counted among her forbears Solon, an influential

statesman who is considered the father of Athenian

democracy.

The future philosopher was born during the age

of Pericles, a political leader and champion of

Athenian democracy. Under Pericles, the world’s

first great democratic system flourished, and po-

tentially contentious subjects like religion, philos-

ophy, morality, and affairs of state were discussed

freely. Early on, Plato aspired to the legislative and

social pursuits in which a young man of his class

was expected to engage.

Plato may have become acquainted with

SOCRATES in his childhood, for the great philoso-

pher was friendly with some members of the

youngster’s extended family. What is certain is that

during his late teens and early 20s, Plato was

among Socrates’ ardent pupils, and his experiences

during this time would become the subject matter

of Plato’s future writings.

Athens was defeated by Sparta in the Pelopon-

nesian War in the early 400s

B.C., and Plato was re-

pelled by the tyranny and injustice that followed.

After Socrates’conviction for impiety and execution

in 399

B.C., Plato became embittered and left his

homeland. The works he wrote soon after are, like

nearly all of his writings, written in dialogue and

feature Socrates as the consummate seeker of truth.

The so-called Socratic Method employed in

Plato’s dialogues has the great thinker and teacher

feigning ignorance of critical ethical and social is-

sues, such as the nature of justice, whether virtue

can be taught, and the best form of government.

Although Socrates resembles the historical person-

age, he is primarily a vehicle by which Plato ex-

presses his own intellectual interests and processes.

As such, Socrates asks a group of listeners a series of

pointed questions. After listening to their answers,

Socrates demonstrates their illogical thinking and

erroneous conclusions. As the conversations per-

sist, the players begin to contradict themselves, and

Plato 237

they become hesitant. By the end of these dis-

courses, the value of independent thinking and the

unrelenting pursuit of truth have been brought to

light.

In other discourses, the dialogues often end in-

conclusively since, according to Plato, the purpose

of reason—a faculty that only humans possess—is

to strive toward definition with disciplined think-

ing and to illuminate the natural world, not to

limit its possibilities. This philosophy can be seen

in some of the works Plato produced during his

years of self-imposed exile and travel: Lysis, which

asks, “What is friendship?”; Euthyphro (“What is

piety?”); Charmides (“What is temperance?”); and

Theatetus (“What is knowledge?”).

In the 380s B.C., Plato returned to Athens to es-

tablish the school that would become known as the

Academy, which emphasized pure research and

discourse on the topics of mathematics, astronom-

ical disciplines, government, natural sciences, and

rhetoric. Plato spent two decades of his life as an

educator and director of the Academy. It was most

likely during this time that he produced the bulk of

his 29 treatises. Among these were The Symposium,

which takes place at a banquet whose guests, in-

cluding Plato’s friend ARISTOPHANES, attempt to de-

fine love; The Republic, Plato’s magnum opus; and

Phaedo, purportedly an account of the exchange

between Socrates and his followers and friends on

the eve of his execution. (In reality, due to illness,

Plato was not among Socrates’ visitors.) During

the exchange, Socrates explains that the philoso-

pher should not fear death, as he does not, because

only without the burden of corporeal form can the

eternal soul come to know the pure truth and

splendor that mortal beings seek during their ex-

istence on earth.

In the late 360s

B.C., Plato twice visited Diony-

sius II, the “tyrant of Syracuse,” to put to the test

his theories regarding the education of philoso-

pher-kings as described in The Republic, and to

persuade the ruler to implement a platonic gov-

ernment. Plato’s ambitions were not realized, and

he returned to the Academy, where he remained

until his death.

Critical Analysis

Contained in 10 books, The Republic is Plato’s

longest finished work; Professor Allan Bloom’s

seminal translation runs 300 pages long. Appear-

ing initially to be an inquiry into the nature of jus-

tice, the discourse soon turns toward an attempt to

define and describe a “just man” and a “just city.”

Ultimately, the soul of the just man is shown to be

a microcosm of the operations of a just state.

Early in the dialog, Socrates and his interlocu-

tors deduce how a city comes about:

[It] comes into being because each of us isn’t

self-sufficient but is in need of much....So,

then, when one man takes on another for one

need and another for another need, and, since

many things are needed, many men gather in

one settlement as partners and helpers, to this

common settlement we give the name city,

don’t we?

(II.369b–c)

In essence, Plato is saying that no one can provide

entirely for himself; a city needs farmers, house

builders, weavers, shoemakers, carpenters, herds-

men, merchants, and laborers. But life would be

bleak without luxuries such as olives, furniture,

perfumes, embroidery, and ivory. Therefore many

more people are needed, including poets, servants,

beauticians, and chefs.

The dramatis personae agree with Socrates that

“each of us is naturally not quite like anyone else,

but rather differs in his nature; different men are

apt for the accomplishment of different jobs”

(II.370a–b). They also agree that it is appropriate

for one person to practice one art rather than

many arts.

The philosophical discussion of The Republic

then leads the characters to deduce that the exis-

tence of valuables in the city will lead to crime,

which in turn creates a need for military forces.

The “origin of war,” says Socrates, lies “in those

things whose presence in cities most of all pro-

duces evils both private and public” (II.373e). The

characters’ final conclusion regarding the forma-

238 Plato

tion of a just city is that there should be three

classes: the merchants or money-makers, the

armed forces or auxiliary, and the ruling class.

The discussion then turns to the question of

who should rule. Ultimately, they determine that

thinkers should become the rulers-philosopher-

kings because they themselves are governed by rea-

son and harmony. Furthermore, precisely because

the true philosopher has no worldly ambitions—in

fact, he “despises political offices” (VII.521b)—he

cannot be corrupted or made to impose his rule on

a reluctant populace. “Unless,” Socrates asserts,

“philosophers rule as kings or those now called

kings and chiefs genuinely and adequately philos-

ophize, and political power and philosophy coin-

cide in the same place . . . there is no rest from ills

for the cities...nor I think for human kind, nor

will the regime we have now described in speech

ever come forth from nature, insofar as possible,

and see the light of the sun” (V.473c–d).

Plato employs sunshine as a symbol of enlight-

enment in another important part of The Republic,

when Socrates presents the famous “Allegory of the

Cave” (Book VII). The benighted, Socrates says, are

shackled in cavernous hollows of ignorance and

believe the shadows cast on the cave walls repre-

sent reality, when they are, in fact, merely illusions.

The light of day represents a cosmos of perfect

being, where the universal ideals—the Forms—

exist. Here, there are ideals not only for concrete

items, like “chair,” but also abstractions like “circle”

and “good.”

Most individuals do not “see the light,” nor do

they realize that there is an alternative to their

shadowy netherworld or that what they perceive as

reality is a mere approximation of the ideal (or Pla-

tonic) Form. These representations merely refer to

the Form; they do not duplicate it.

The Republic, wrote critic David Denby, is

the single most widely read work of philosophy

in the West, and for immediately obvious rea-

sons. Plato, an entrancing writer, had perfected

the form of a dialogue, with its gracefully sin-

uous plait of questions and answers, its antici-

pation of the readers’ objections, its courtesies

that are really a form of sly mockery.

Within a framework of spirited debate, Plato

addresses the most profound questions of human

existence that remain relevant to this day. His in-

fluence on Western thought over thousands of

years is immeasurable and cannot be overstated. As

the English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead

says,“all philosophy is a set of footnotes to Plato.”

English Versions of Works by Plato

The Complete Works of Plato. Edited by John M.

Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis, Ind.:

Hackett Publishing, 1997.

Phaedo. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis:

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1976.

The Republic of Plato. Translated by Allan Bloom.

New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Works about Plato

Brann, Eva. The Music of the Republic: Essays on

Socrates’ Conversations and Plato’s Writings.

Philadelphia: Dry, Paul Books, 2004.

Dickinson, G. Lowes. Plato and His Dialogues. La

Vergne, Tenn.: University Press of the Pacific/

Ingram Book Group, 2003.

Heidegger, Martin. Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Para-

ble of the Cave and the Theaetetus. Translated by

Ted Sadler. London: Continuum International

Publishing, 2002.

Johansen, Thomas. Plato’s Natural Philosophy: A

Study of the Timaeus-Critias. Cambridge, Mass.:

Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Kunkel, John H. Winged Soul: Plato’s Autobiography.

Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2003.

Michelini, Ann N., ed. Plato as Author: The Rhetoric of

Philosophy. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Aca-demic

Publishers, 2003.

Plautus, Titus Maccius (254–184 B.C.)

playwright

From the beginning of his life in the tiny mountain

village of Sarsina, Titus Maccius Plautus was called

Plautus, Titus Maccius 239

just Plautus, which means “flatfoot.” Because he

was not a Roman citizen, Plautus was not entitled

to a full name. Driven by his love for theater and

adventure, as a boy he left his native village by join-

ing a traveling theatrical troupe. He later tried var-

ious other jobs, at one point becoming a soldier for

the Roman Empire.

During his military service, Plautus was intro-

duced to the concept of Greek theater, specifically

Greek New Comedy and the plays of MENANDER.

After leaving the service, he supported himself by

working around the Roman stages as a carpenter

or mechanic; opening his own business, which

failed; and becoming a miller, cruising the streets

with his hand-mill.

Fascinated by the theater, Plautus soon tried his

own hand at writing. He wrote his earliest plays,

Addictus and Saturio, while working as a miller, and

it was not long before his work made him the

Roman Empire’s best-known playwright. He won

instant popularity partly because his plays appealed

to the tastes of the uneducated public, which cared

only for the entertainment and not for the contem-

plation of serious political issues. Knowing that he

had to keep his audience interested—an audience

that was accustomed to bear baiting and gladiator

fighting—Plautus purposely engaged the common

public’s appreciation for the vulgar and ignored the

manners and language of the aristocracy. His works

are therefore a valuable documentation of the live,

vivacious, conversational vernacular Latin of the

third and second centuries

B.C.

Despite the crudity of words and idiomatic ex-

pressions that populate Plautus’s plays, his plots,

characters, and settings reveal the markings of

great literature. He generously employs puns, al-

literations, and plays on words, most of which can-

not be effectively reproduced in translation. On

the other hand, translations of his rich metaphors

(some taken from military operations), descrip-

tions of business transactions, and portrayals of

the trades of artisans reveal the clarity of a well-

rounded literary and social thinker.

Plautus composed approximately 130 pieces, 21

of which survive to this day. The play considered his

masterpiece is Captives. The German playwright

and critic Gotthold Lessing once described it as

“the best constructed drama in existence.” Other

significant works include Menaechmi (The Twin

Brothers), his first comedy to be translated into

English; and Miles Gloriosus (The Braggart Sol-

dier), another comedy in which Plautus created the

archetype of a swaggering soldier, which, in turn,

became very popular in Renaissance literature.

Due to his outstanding achievements, Plautus

was eventually granted citizenship and given per-

mission to assume a full name. Among the names

he chose for himself was Maccius, which means

“clown,” revealing his penchant for humor.

What is perhaps most remarkable about Plau-

tus’s works is that they represent a clear exception

to the didactic and moral characteristics of most

Roman literature of his time. Between the unique-

ness of his comedy and the clarity of the elements

of his drama, it is no wonder that Plautus’s plays

influenced a number of later writers. Molière and

Dryden imitated his Amphitryo. From Aulularia,

Molière borrowed the subject for his own Miser,

and Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is adapted

from Plautus’s Menaechmi. Today his plays are

studied by students and critics alike and per-

formed on stages across the globe, attesting to a

timeless appreciation for Plautus’s work, and es-

pecially his comedies.

English Versions of Works by Plautus

Four Comedies. Translated by Erich Segal. New York:

Oxford University Press, 1996.

Plautus: Amphitruo. Edited by David M. Christenson.

Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,

2000.

Works about Plautus

Moore, Timothy J. The Theater of Plautus: Playing to

the Audience. Austin: University of Texas Press,

1998.

Riehle, Wolfgang. Shakespeare, Plautus and the Hu-

manist Tradition. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell &

Brewer, 1991.

240 Plautus, Titus Maccius