## 1. Plato's reading audience



For whom did Plato write? Who was his readership? A very good survey
of this topic is Yunis 2007 from which I would like to quote the
following illuminating passage: "before Plato, philosophers
treated arcane subjects in technical treatises that had no appeal
outside small circles of experts. These writings, 'on
nature', 'on truth', 'on being' and so
on, mostly in prose, some in verse, were demonstrative, not
protreptic. Plato, on the other hand, broke away from the experts and
sought to treat ethical problems of universal relevance and to make
philosophy accessible to the public" (13). Other scholars, such
as Morgan (2003), have also argued that Plato addressed in his
writings both philosophical and non-philosophical audiences.



It is true that in the *Republic* Plato has the following
advice for philosophers: "like someone who takes refuge under a
little wall from a storm of dust or hail driven by the wind, the
philosopher--seeing others filled with lawlessness--is
satisfied if he can somehow lead his present life free from injustice
and impious acts and depart from it with good hope, blameless and
content" (496d-e) (unless otherwise noted, all quotations
from Plato are from the translations included in Plato (1997)). He was
certainly very bitter about Socrates' fate. In his controversial
interpretation Strauss (1964) argues that in Plato's view the
philosopher should stay disconnected from society. This interpretation
is too extreme. Plato did not abandon Socrates' credo, that the
philosopher has a duty towards his fellow-citizens who do not devote
their lives to philosophy. For him philosophy has a civic dimension.
The one who makes it outside the cave should not forget about those
who are still down there and believe that the shadows they see there
are real beings. The philosopher should try to transmit his knowledge
and his wisdom to the others, and he knows that he has a difficult
mission. But Plato was not willing to go as far as Socrates did. He
preferred to address the public at large through his written dialogues
rather than conducting dialogues in the agora. He did not write
abstruse philosophical treatises but engaging philosophical dialogues
meant to appeal to a less philosophically inclined audience. The
dialogues are, most of the time, prefaced by a sort of *mise en
scene* in which the reader learns who the participants to
the dialogue are, when, where and how they presently met, and what
made them start their dialogue. The participants are historical and
fictional characters. Whether historical or fictional, they meet in
historical or plausible settings, and the prefatory *mises en
scene* contain only some incidental anachronisms. Plato
wanted his dialogues to look like genuine, spontaneous dialogues
accurately preserved. How much of these stories and dialogues is
fictional? It is hard to tell, but he surely invented a great deal of
them. References to traditional myths and mythical characters occur
throughout the dialogues. However, starting with the
*Protagoras* and *Gorgias*, which are usually regarded
as the last of his early writings, Plato begins to season his
dialogues with self-contained, fantastical narratives that we usually
label his 'myths'. His myths are meant, among other
things, to make philosophy more accessible.


## 2. Plato's myths



There are in Plato identifiable traditional myths, such as the story
of Gyges (*Republic* 359d-360b), the myth of Phaethon
(*Timaeus* 22c7) or that of the Amazons (*Laws* 804e4).
Sometimes he modifies them, to a greater or lesser extent, while other
times he combines them--this is the case, for instance, of the
Noble Lie (*Republic* 414b-415d), which is a combination
of the Cadmeian myth of autochthony and the Hesiodic myth of ages.
There are also in Plato myths that are his own, such as the myth of Er
(*Republic* 621b8) or the myth of Atlantis (*Timaeus*
26e4). Many of the myths Plato invented feature characters and motifs
taken from traditional mythology (such as the Isles of the Blessed or
the judgment after death), and sometimes it is difficult to
distinguish his own mythological motifs from the traditional ones. The
majority of the myths he invents preface or follow a philosophical
argument: the *Gorgias* myth (523a-527a), the myth of the
androgyne (*Symposium* 189d-193d), the *Phaedo*
myth (107c-115a), the myth of Er (*Republic*
614a-621d), the myth of the winged soul (*Phaedrus*
246a-249d), the myth of Theuth (*Phaedrus*
274c-275e), the cosmological myth of the *Statesman*
(268-274e), the Atlantis myth (*Timaeus* 21e-26d,
*Critias*), the *Laws* myth (903b-905b).



Plato refers sometimes to the myths he uses, whether traditional or
his own, as *muthoi* (for an overview of all the *loci*
where the word *muthos* occurs in Plato see Brisson 1998
(141ff.)). However, *muthos* is not an exclusive label. For
instance: the myth of Theuth in the *Phaedrus* (274c1) is
called an *akoe* (a "thing heard",
"report", "story"); the myth of Cronus is
called a *pheme* ("oracle",
"tradition", "rumour") in the *Laws*
(713c2) and a *muthos* in the *Statesman* (272d5, 274e1,
275b1); and the myth of Boreas at the beginning of the
*Phaedrus* is called both *muthologema* (229c5) and
*logos* (d2).



The myths Plato invents, as well as the traditional myths he uses, are
narratives that are non-falsifiable, for they depict particular
beings, deeds, places or events that are beyond our experience: the
gods, the daemons, the heroes, the life of soul after death, the
distant past, etc. Myths are also fantastical, but they are not
inherently irrational and they are not targeted at the irrational
parts of the soul. Kahn (1996, 66-7) argues that between
Plato's "otherworldly vision" and "the values
of Greek society in the fifth and fourth centuries BC" was a
"radical discrepancy". In that society, Plato's
metaphysical vision seemed "almost grotesquely out of
place". This discrepancy, claims Kahn, "is one explanation
for Plato's use of myth: myth provides the necessary literary
distancing that permits Plato to articulate his
out-of-place vision of meaning and truth."



The discussion of the *Symposium* ends with Aristophanes and
Agathon falling asleep while Socrates is trying to prove that
"the skilful tragic dramatist should also be a comic poet"
(223d). Plato himself seems to be such an author, as some of his
dialogues read like tragedies (e.g. the *Phaedo*), while others
mix arguments with irony and humour (e.g. the *Euthydemus*,
*Lesser Hippias*, or *Ion*). For the link between drama
and philosophy in Plato's dialogues see Puchner (2010), Folch
(2015), Zimmermann (2018), and Fossheim, Songe-Moller and
Agotnes (2019); for the importance of comedy and laughter in the
dialogues see Tanner (2017) and Naas (2018b); and for the theory and
practice of narrative in Plato see Halliwell (2009). And now to go
back to Kahn's claim (see the above paragraph) that in Plato
"myth provides the necessary literary distancing that permits
Plato to articulate his out-of-place vision of meaning and
truth." This may well be the case. But we have to keep in mind
that Plato's dialogues are a mix of various literary genres
(philosophy, comedy, tragedy, poetry, mythology, rhetoric), and that
this mix is also (to use Kahn's expression)
out-of-place. In other words, both the content and the
form of Plato's dialogues were, and still are, rather
extraordinary--and that, I reckon, was meant to free his readers
from conventions and encourage them to think for themselves about the
issues that, he, Plato, discusses in his dialogues.



The Cave, the narrative that occurs in the *Republic*
(514a-517a), is a fantastical story, but it does not deal
explicitly with the beyond (the distant past, life after death etc.),
and is thus different from the traditional myths Plato uses and the
myths he invents. Strictly speaking, the Cave is an analogy, not a
myth. Also in the *Republic*, Socrates says that until
philosophers take control of a city "the politeia whose story we
are telling in words (*muthologein*) will not achieve its
fulfillment in practice" (501e2-5; translated by Rowe
(1999, 268)). The construction of the ideal city may be called a
"myth" in the sense that it depicts an imaginary polis
(cf. 420c2: "We imagine the happy state"). In the
*Phaedrus* (237a9, 241e8) the word *muthos* is used to
name "the rhetorical exercise which Socrates carries out"
(Brisson 1998, 144), but this seems to be a loose usage of the
word.



Most (2012) argues that there are eight main features of the Platonic
myth. (a) Myths are a monologue, which those listening do not
interrupt; (b) they are told by an older speaker to younger listeners;
(c) they "go back to older, explicitly indicated or implied,
real or fictional oral sources" (17); (d) they cannot be
empirically verified; (e) their authority derive from tradition, and
"for this reason they are not subject to rational examination by
the audience" (18); (f) they have a psychologic effect:
pleasure, or a motivating impulse to perform an action "capable
of surpassing any form of rational persuasion" (18); (g) they
are descriptive or narrative; (h) they precede or follow a dialectical
exposition. Most acknowledges that these eight features are not
completely uncontroversial, and that there are occasional exceptions;
but applied flexibly, they allow us to establish a corpus of at least
fourteen Platonic myths in the *Phaedo*, *Gorgias*,
*Protagoras*, *Meno*, *Phaedrus*,
*Symposium*, *Republic* X, *Statesman*,
*Timaeus*, *Critias* and *Laws* IV. The first
seven features "are thoroughly typical of the traditional myths
which were found in the oral culture of ancient Greece and which Plato
himself often describes and indeed vigorously criticizes"
(19).



Dorion (2012) argues that the Oracle story in Plato's
*Apology* has all these eight features of the Platonic myth
discussed by Most (2012). Dorion concludes that the Oracle story is
not only a Platonic fiction, but also a Platonic myth, more
specifically: a myth of origin. Who invented the examination of the
opinions of others by the means of *elenchus*? Aristotle (see
*Sophistical Refutations* 172a30-35 and *Rhetoric*
1354a3-7) thought that the practice of refutation is, as Dorion
puts it, "lost in the mists of time and that it is hence vain to
seek an exact origin of it" (433). Plato, however, attempts to
convince us that the dialectical *elenchus* "were a form
of argumentation that Socrates began to practice spontaneously as soon
as he learned of the Oracle" (433); thus, Plato confers to it a
divine origin; in the *Charmides* he does the same when he
makes Socrates say that he learned an incantation (a metaphor for the
*elenchus*) from Zalmoxis; see also the *Philebus* 16c
(on Socrates *mythologikos* see also Miller (2011)).



We have a comprehensive book about the people of Plato: Nails (2002);
now we also have one about the animals of Plato: Bell and Naas (2015).
Anyone interested in myth, metaphor, and on how people and animals are
intertwined in Plato would be rewarded by consulting it. Here is a
quotation from the editors' introduction, "Plato's
Menagerie":



> 
> Animal images, examples, analogies, myths, or fables are used in
> almost every one of Plato's dialogues to help characterize,
> delimit, and define many of the dialogues' most important
> figures and themes. They are used to portray not just Socrates
> [compared to a gadfly, horse, swan, snake, stork, fawn, and torpedo
> ray] but many other characters in the dialogues, from the wolfish
> Thrasymachus of the *Republic* to the venerable racehorse
> Parmenides of the *Parmenides*. Even more, animals are used
> throughout the dialogues to develop some of Plato's most
> important political or philosophical ideas. [...] By our
> reckoning, there is but a single dialogue (the *Crito*) that
> does not contain any obvious reference to animals, while most
> dialogues have many. What is more, throughout Plato's dialogues
> the activity or enterprise of philosophy itself is often compared to a
> hunt, where the interlocutors are the hunters and the object of the
> dialogue's search--ideas of justice, beauty, courage,
> piety, or friendship--their elusive animal prey. (Bell and
> Naas 2015, 1-2)
> 


## 3. Myth as a means of persuasion



For Plato we should live according to what reason is able to deduce
from what we regard as reliable evidence. This is what real
philosophers, like Socrates, do. But the non-philosophers are
reluctant to ground their lives on logic and arguments. They have to
be persuaded. One means of persuasion is myth. Myth inculcates
beliefs. It is efficient in making the less philosophically inclined,
as well as children (cf. *Republic* 377a ff.), believe noble
things.



In the *Republic* the Noble Lie is supposed to make the
citizens of Callipolis care more for their city. Schofield (2009)
argues that the guards, having to do philosophy from their youth, may
eventually find philosophizing "more attractive than doing their
patriotic duty" (115). Philosophy, claims Schofield, provides
the guards with knowledge, not with love and devotion for their city.
The Noble Lie is supposed to engender in them devotion for their city
and instill in them the belief that they should "invest their
best energies into promoting what they judge to be the city's
best interests" (113). The preambles to a number of laws in the
*Laws* that are meant to be taken as exhortations to the laws
in question and that contain elements of traditional mythology (see
790c3, 812a2, 841c6) may also be taken as "noble
lies".



The following myths are eschatological: *Gorgias*
523a-527a, *Meno* 81a-d, *Phaedo*
107c-115a, *Phaedrus* 246a-257a, *Republic*
614b-621d, and *Laws* 903b-905d. The stories they
tell differ--to a greater or lesser extent--although some
themes occur in more than one of them: the judgement of souls for
their earthly life, their subsequent punishment or reward, the
contemplation of forms in the other world, and reincarnation (which,
in the *Phaedo* 81d-e, is part of the soul's
punishment or reward; see also the *Timaeus* 42c-e and
90e-92c). These are Plato's myths, but they feature many
elements and deities of classical mythology (such as Zeus, Prometheus,
Hestia, Necessity and the Fates). For good surveys of Plato's
eschatological myths see Annas (1982) and Inwood (2009); see also the
entries on myth and eschatology in Press and Duque (2022). For the
relationship between philosophy and religion in Plato see Nightingale
(2021). O'Meara (2017, 114) argues that the *Timaeus* and
the *Statesman* are "reformed Panathenaic"
festivals--in which Zeus (*Timaeus*) and Athena
(*Statesman*) are "reformed"--while the
*Laws* is a "reformed Dionysian festival" (in which
Dionysus is "reformed").



Plato's eschatological myths are not complete lies. There is
some truth in them. In the *Phaedo* the statement "The
soul is immortal" is presented as following logically from
various premises Socrates and his interlocutors consider acceptable
(cf. 106b-107a). After the final argument for immortality
(102a-107b), Cebes admits that he has no further objections to,
nor doubts about, Socrates' arguments. But Simmias confesses
that he still retains some doubt (107a-b), and then Socrates
tells them an eschatological myth. The myth does not provide evidence
that the soul is immortal. It assumes that the soul is immortal and so
it may be said that it is not entirely false. The myth also claims
that there is justice in the afterlife and Socrates hopes that the
myth will convince one to believe that the soul is immortal and that
there is justice in the afterlife. "I think", says
Socrates, that "it is fitting for a man to risk the
belief--for the risk is a noble one--that this, or something
like this, is true about our souls and their dwelling places"
(114d-e). (Edmonds (2004) offers a interesting analysis of the
final myth of *Phaedo*, Aristophanes' *Frogs* and
the funerary gold leaves, or "tablets", that have been
found in Greek tombs). At the end of the myth of Er (the
eschatological myth of the *Republic*) Socrates says that the
myth "would save us, if we were persuaded by it" (621b).
Myth represents a sort of back-up: if one fails to be persuaded by
arguments to change one's life, one may still be persuaded by a
good myth. Myth, as it is claimed in the *Laws*, may be needed
to "charm" one "into agreement" (903b) when
philosophy fails to do so.



Sedley (2009) argues that the eschatological myth of the
*Gorgias* is best taken as an allegory of "moral malaise
and reform in our present life" (68) and Halliwell (2007) that
the myth of Er may be read as an allegory of life in this world.
Gonzales (2012) claims that the myth of Er offers a "spectacle
[that] is, in the words of the myth itself, pitiful, comic and
bewildering" (259). Thus, he argues, "what generally
characterizes human life according to the myth is a fundamental
*opacity*" (272); which means that the myth is not
actually a dramatization of the philosophical reasoning that unfolds
in the *Republic*, as one might have expected, but of
everything that "such reasoning cannot penetrate and master,
everything that stubbornly remains dark and irrational: embodiment,
chance, character, carelessness, and forgetfulness, as well as the
inherent complexity and diversity of the factors that define a life
and that must be balanced in order to achieve a good life"
(272). The myth blurs the boundary between this world and the other.
To believe that soul is immortal and that we should practice justice
in all circumstances, Gonzales argues, we have to be persuaded by what
Socrates says, not by the myth of Er. Unlike the eschatological myths
of the *Gorgias* and *Phaedo*, the final myth of the
*Republic* illustrates rather "everything in this world
that opposes the realization of the philosophical ideal. If the other
myths offer the philosopher a form of escapism, the myth of Er is his
nightmare" (277, n. 36).


## 4. Myth as a teaching tool



The philosopher should share his philosophy with others. But since
others may sometimes not follow his arguments, Plato is ready to
provide whatever it takes--an image, a simile, or a
myth--that will help them grasp what the argument failed to tell
them. The myth--just like an image, or analogy--may be a
good teaching tool. Myth can embody in its narrative an abstract
philosophical doctrine. In the *Phaedo*, Plato develops the
so-called theory of recollection (72e-78b). The theory is there
expounded in rather abstract terms. The eschatological myth of the
*Phaedo* depicts the fate of souls in the other world, but it
does not "dramatize" the theory of recollection. The
*Phaedrus* myth of the winged soul, however, does. In it we are
told how the soul travels in the heavens before reincarnation,
attempts to gaze on true reality, forgets what it saw in the heavens
once reincarnated, and then recalls the eternal forms it saw in the
heavens when looking at their perceptible embodiments. The
*Phaedrus* myth does not provide any proofs or evidence to
support the theory of recollection. It simply assumes this theory to
be true and provides (among other things) an "adaptation"
of it. Since this theory the myth embodies is, for Plato, true, the
myth has (pace Plato) a measure of truth in it, although its many
fantastical details may lead one astray if taken literally. Among
other things, the fantastical narrative of the myth helps the less
philosophically inclined grasp the main point of Plato's theory
of recollection, namely that "knowledge is
recollection".


## 5. Myth in the *Timaeus*



The cosmology of the *Timaeus* is a complex and ample
construction, involving a divine maker (assisted by a group of less
powerful gods), who creates the cosmos out of a given material
(dominated by an inner impulse towards disorder) and according to an
intelligible model. The cosmology as a whole is called both an
*eikos muthos* (29d, 59c, 68d) and an *eikos
logos* (30b, 48d, 53d, 55d, 56a, 57d, 90e). The expression
*eikos muthos* has been translated as 'probable
tale' (Jowett), 'likely story' (Cornford),
'likely tale' (Zeyl). The standard interpretation is
promoted by, among others, Cornford (1937, 31ff.). The
*Timaeus* cosmology, Cornford argues, is a *muthos*
because it is cast in the form of a narration, not as a piece-by-piece
analysis. But also, and mainly, because its object, namely the
universe, is always in a process of becoming and cannot be really
known. Brisson (1998, ch. 13) offers a different solution, but along
the same lines. The cosmology, Brisson argues, is a non-verifiable
discourse about the perceptible universe before and during its
creation. In other words: the cosmology is an *eikos
muthos* because it is about what happens to an *eikon*
before, and during, its creation, when everything is so fluid that it
cannot be really known. The standard alternative is to say that the
problem lies in the cosmologist, not in the object of his cosmology.
It is not that the universe is so unstable so that it cannot be really
known. It is that we fail to provide an exact and consistent
description of it. A proponent of this view is Taylor (1928, 59). Rowe
(2003) has argued that the emphasis at 29d2 is on the word
*eikos*, not *muthos*, and that here
*muthos* is used primarily as a substitute for *logos*
without its typical opposition to that term (a view also held by
Vlastos (1939, 380-3)). Burnyeat (2009) argues that this
cosmology is an attempt to disclose the rationality of the cosmos,
namely the Demiurge's reasons for making it thus and so. The
word *eikos* (a participial form of the verb
*eoika*, "to be like") is, argues Burnyeat, usually
translated as "probable"; but--as textual evidence
from Homer to Plato proves--it also means
"appropriate", "fitting", "fair",
"natural", "reasonable". Since the cosmology
reveals what is reasonable in the *eikon* made by the
Demiurge, it may rightly be called *eikos*,
"reasonable". The Demiurge's reasoning, however, is
practical, not theoretical. The Demiurge, Burnyeat claims, works with
given materials, and when he creates the cosmos, he does not have a
free choice, but has to adjust his plans to them. Although we know
that the Demiurge is supremely benevolent towards his creation, none
of us could be certain of his practical reasons for framing the cosmos
the way he did. That is why anyone aiming at disclosing them cannot
but come up with "probable" answers. Plato's
cosmology is then *eikos* in the two senses of the word,
for it is both "reasonable" and "probable".
But why does Plato call it a *muthos*? Because, Burnyeat
argues, the *Timaeus* cosmology is also a theogony (for the
created cosmos is for Plato a god), and this shows Plato's
intention to overcome the traditional opposition between
*muthos* and *logos*.



Timaeus speaks about the Demiurge's practical reasoning for
creating the cosmos as he did. No cosmologist can deduce these reasons
from various premises commonly accepted. He has to imagine them, but
they are neither fantastical, nor sophistic. The cosmologist exercises
his imagination under some constraints. He has to come up with
reasonable and coherent conjectures. And in good Socratic and Platonic
tradition, he has to test them with others. This is what Timaeus does.
He expounds his cosmology in front of other philosophers, whom he
calls *kritai*, "judges" (29d1). They are highly
skilled and experienced philosophers: Socrates, Critias and
Hermocrates and at the beginning of the *Critias*, the sequel
to the *Timaeus*, they express their admiration for
Timaeus' cosmological account (107a). One may say that
Timaeus' account has been peer-reviewed. The judges, however,
says Plato, have to be tolerant, for in this field one cannot provide
more than conjectures. Timaeus' cosmological discourse is not
aimed at persuading a less philosophically inclined audience to change
their lives. It may be argued that its creationist scenario was meant
to make the difficult topic of the genesis of the realm of becoming
more accessible. In the *Philebus*, in a tight dialectical
conversation, the genesis of the realm of becoming is explained in
abstract terms (the unlimited, limit, being that is mixed and
generated out of those two; and the cause of this mixture and
generation, 27b-c). But the *Timaeus* aims at
encompassing more than the *Philebus*. It aims not only at
revealing the ultimate ontological principles (accessible to human
reason, cf. 53d), and at explaining how their interaction brings forth
the world of becoming, but also at disclosing, within a teleological
framework, the reasons for which the cosmos was created the way it is.
These reasons are to be imagined because imagination has to fill in
the gaps that reason leaves in this attempt to disclose the reasons
for which the cosmos was created the way it is.


## 6. Myth and philosophy



In the *Protagoras* (324d) a distinction is made between
*muthos* and *logos*, where *muthos* appears to
refer to a story and *logos* to an argument. This distinction
seems to be echoed in the *Theaetetus* and the
*Sophist.* In the *Theaetetus* Socrates discusses
Protagoras' main doctrine and refers to it as "the
*muthos* of Protagoras" (164d9) (in the same line
Socrates also calls Theaetetus' defence of the identity of
knowledge and perception a *muthos*). And later on, at 156c4,
Socrates calls a *muthos* the teaching according to which
active and passive motions generate perception and perceived objects.
In the *Sophist*, the Visitor from Elea tells his interlocutors
that Xenophanes, Parmenides and other Eleatic, Ionian (Heraclitus
included) and Sicilian philosophers "appear to me to tell us a
myth, as if we were children" (242c8; see also c-e). By
calling all those philosophical doctrines *muthoi* Plato does
not claim that they are myths proper, but that they are, or appear to
be, non-argumentative. In the *Republic* Plato is fairly
hostile to particular traditional myths (but he claims that there are
two kinds of *logoi*, one true and the other false, and that
the *muthoi* we tell children "are false, on the whole,
though they have some truth in them", 377a; for a discussion of
allegory and myth in Plato's *Republic* see Lear (2006)).
Halliwell (2011) claims that Book X of the *Republic*
"offers not a simple repudiation of the best poets but a
complicated counterpoint in which resistance and attraction to their
work are intertwined, a counterpoint which (among other things)
explores the problem of whether, and in what sense, it might be
possible to be a 'philosophical lover' of poetry"
(244). For an illuminating article on the *Republic* and the
*Odyssey* see Segal (1978); see also Howland (2006).



In many dialogues he condemns the use of images in knowing things and
claims that true philosophical knowledge should avoid images. He would
have had strong reasons for avoiding the use of myths: they are not
argumentative and they are extremely visual (especially those he
invented, which contain so many visual details as if he would have
given instructions to an illustrator). But he didn't. He wanted
to persuade and/or teach a wider audience, so he had to make a
compromise. Sometimes, however, he seems to interweave philosophy with
myth to a degree that was not required by persuading and/or teaching a
non-philosophical audience. The eschatological myths of the
*Gorgias*, *Phaedo* and *Republic*, for instance,
are tightly bound with the philosophical arguments of those dialogues
(cf. Annas 1982); and the eschatological myth of the *Phaedo*
"picks one by one the programmatic remarks about teleological
science from earlier on in the dialogue, and sketches ways in which
their proposals can be fulfilled" (Sedley 1990, 381). Some other
times he uses myth as a supplement to philosophical discourse (cf.
Kahn (2009) who argues that in the myth of the *Statesman*
Plato makes a doctrinal contribution to his political philosophy; Naas
(2018a, Chapter 2) offers an interesting interpretation of this myth,
and (Chapter 3) discusses Michel Foucault's reading of it. A
number of chapters in Sallis (2017) and in Bossi and Robinson (2018)
reassess the myth of the *Statesman*. One time, in the
*Timaeus*, Plato appears to overcome the opposition between
*muthos* and *logos*: human reason has limits, and when
it reaches them it has to rely on myth (arguably, that also happen in
the *Symposium*; for a very close reading of how
Diotima's speech interacts with Aristophanes' myth of the
androgyne see Hyland (2015).



"On the less radical version, the idea will be that the telling
of stories is a necessary adjunct to, or extension of, philosophical
argument, one which recognizes our human limitations,
and--perhaps--the fact that our natures combine irrational
elements with the rational" (Rowe 1999, 265). On a more radical
interpretation, "the distinction between 'the
philosophical' and 'the mythical' will--at one
level--virtually disappear" (265). If we take into account
that Plato chose to express his thoughts through a narrative form,
namely that of the dialogue (further enveloped in fictional *mises
en scene*), we may say that the "use of a fictional
narrative form (the dialogue) will mean that any conclusions reached,
by whatever method (including 'rational argument'), may
themselves be treated as having the status of a kind of
'myth'" (265). If so, "a sense of the
'fictionality' of human utterance, as provisional,
inadequate, and at best approximating to the truth, will infect
Platonic writing at its deepest level, below other and more ordinary
applications of the distinction between mythical and nonmythical forms
of discourse" (265); if so, it is not only "that
'myth' will fill in the gaps that reason leaves (though it
might do that too, as well as serving special purposes for particular
audiences), but that human reason itself ineradicably displays some of
the features we characteristically associate with story-telling"
(265-6) (cf. also Fowler (2011, 64): "Just as the
immortal, purely rational soul is tainted by the irrational body, so
*logos* is tainted by *mythos*"). It is difficult
to say which one of these two readings is a better approximation of
what Plato thought about the interplay between myth and philosophy.
The interpreter seems bound to furnish only probable accounts about
this matter.



Fowler (2011) surveys the *muthos-logos* dichotomy from
Herodotus and the pre-Socratic philosophers to Plato, the
Sophists, and the Hellenistic and Imperial writers, and provides many
valuable references to works dealing with the notion of
*muthos*, the Archaic uses of *myth-* words, and
ancient Greek mythology; see also Wians (2009). For the
*muthos-logos* dichotomy in Plato see also Miller (2011,
76-77).


## 7. Plato's myths in the Platonist tradition



Aristotle admits that the lover of myths is in a sense a lover of
wisdom (*Metaphysics* 982b18; cf. also 995a4 and
1074b1-10). He might have used a myth or two in his early
dialogues, now lost. But in general he seems to have distanced himself
from myth (cf. *Metaphysics* 1000a18-9).



On the philosophical use of myth before Plato there are a number of
good studies, notably Morgan 2000. There is, however, little on the
philosophical use of myth in the Platonist tradition. Of Plato's
immediate successors in the Academy, Speusippus, Xenocrates and
Heraclides of Pontus composed both dialogues and philosophical
treatises. But, with one exception, none of these seems to have used
myths as Plato did. The exception is Heraclides, who wrote various
dialogues--such as *On the Things in Hades*,
*Zoroastres* and *Abaris*--involving mythical
stories and mythical, or semi-mythical, figures. In the later
Platonist tradition--with the exception of Cicero and
Plutarch--there is not much evidence that Plato's
philosophical use of myths was an accepted practice. In the
Neoplatonic tradition various Platonic myths became the subject of
elaborate allegorization. Porphyry, Proclus, Damascius and
Olympiodorus gave allegorical interpretations of a number of Platonic
myths, such as the *Phaedo* and *Gorgias* eschatological
myths, or the myth of Atlantis.



For the influence of Plato's myths on various thinkers (Bacon,
Leibniz, the German Idealists, Cassirer and others) see Keum
(2020).


## 8. Renaissance illustrations of Plato's myths



Plato was a celebrated figure in the Renaissance but only a few
illustrations of Platonic mythical motifs can be found. Perhaps
Plato's attitude to visual representation--claiming so
often that the highest philosophical knowledge is devoid of it, and
attacking poets and artists in general more than once--inhibited
and discouraged attempts to capture in painting, sculpture or prints,
the mythical scenes Plato himself depicted so vividly in words.
Perhaps artists simply felt themselves unequal to the task. McGrath
(2009) reviews and analyzes the rare illustrations of Platonic
mythical figures and landscapes in Renaissance iconography: the
androgyne of the *Symposium*, the charioteer of the
*Phaedrus*, the *Cave*, and the spindle of the universe
handled by Necessity and the Fates of the *Republic*.