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Plato, Socrates and the Mysteries: A Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

R. S. W. Hawtrey
R. S. W. Hawtrey*
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
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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).

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 10 , 1976 , pp. 22 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1976

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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.).