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Plato, Socrates and the Mysteries: A Note
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 May 2015
Extract
In his article ‘Clouds, Mysteries, Socrates and Plato’ (Antichthon 4 [1970], 13-24), Professor A.W.H. Adkins starts from the agreed fact that certain passages of the Clouds compare entry to the phrontisterion to initiation to mysteries. He argues from this (and here I should not necessarily disagree with him) that Socrates was in the habit of using initiation-language when speaking of philosophy and that Aristophanes, shocked by such blasphemy, ‘used it as one more weapon against Socrates and the New Thought in his Clouds’ (24).
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- Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1976
References
1 As does de Vries, G.J., who criticizes Adkins' article in Mnemosyne 26 (1973), 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 On the nature of such rites, and on Plato's attitude to them, see Linforth, I.M., The Corybantic Rites in Plato (University of California Publications in Classical Philology 13 [1946], 121-62, especially pp. 133 f. and 161 f.).Google Scholar
3 See K.J. Dover's note on this passage in his edition (Oxford, 1968).
4 A passage which shows, incidentally, that later in the fourth century scorn could be poured on (non-Eleusinian) initiation without the slightest suggestion of blasphemy.
5 See Linforth, op. cit. p. 156.
6 On the other hand the word at 208 c is probably used merely in the sense of ‘expert’, as at Meno 85 b; see Guthrie, W.K.C., History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. iii (Cambridge, 1969), p. 31.Google Scholar
7 For the evidence see Bluck, R.S., Plato's Phaedo (London, 1955), pp. 195-6.Google Scholar
8 But see de Vries' objections (op. cit. 6 f.).
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