¹ ‘Socratic Midwifery’, CQ 37 (1987), 97–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² ‘Socratic Midwifery, Platonic Inspiration’, BICS 24 (1977), 7–16Google Scholar.

³ Euthphr. llb–e, cf. 15b; Symp. 215bff.; Meno 80a–c; Ap. 30e; one might also compare the Thracian-doctor theme at Charm. 156d–158c, 175e–178b .

⁴ Plato's ability to make use of an analogy like this might depend crucially upon what he hoped to achieve in particular dialogues. Do we find earlier dialogues which would have benefited from it? It would need to be a work which illustrated Socrates' techniques for eliciting the ideas of young men of ability. It would have been most at home in the Charmides, which does in fact employ its own model for Socratic teaching, not unrelated to midwifery (Tomin, art. cit. 99–100), but not entirely compatible with it either. In any case the Charmides would have been overburdened by a second elaborate model; the Meno could not have used it for similar reasons. The Theaetetus deals with a young man of great ability (144ab), upon whom one might have expected the ‘art of the midwife’ to work. As an art which distinguishes true from false ‘offspring’ (150a9–c3, 150e6–7, 151c3–d3), it might have particular relevance to the topic of knowledge itself; but then it does not distinguish true from false qua midwife's art.

⁵ Why the introduction is sometimes seen as a dedication to the Megarians I cannot understand; the dedicatee is on the stretcher.

⁶ See Thesleff, H., Studies in Platonic Chronology. Commentaliones Humanarum Litterarum 70 (Helsinki, 1982), pp. 154–5Google Scholar.

⁷ ed. Diels, H. and Schubart, W., Berliner Klassikertexte ii (Berlin, 1905), column 3.28ffGoogle Scholar. I refrain from assuming that this was the original prologue, or even that there had been a prologue originally. Euclides' claim to have checked his original recollection of the conversation with Socrates ‘as often as I came to Athens’ (143a3), itself in conflict with the imminence of Socrates’ death at the end of the dialogue, sounds like an admission of frequent updating of the work. The other prologue may therefore be the product of an intermediate stage. Its function may have been to introduce the dramatic form of the work, expressing Plato's disenchantment with narrative form (as spoken by Socrates!), a disenchantment readily understood if Plato had recently written the bulk of the Republic. If Theaetetus had died in 369 B.C., then the occasion would have given Plato a motive for replacing the earlier dramatic introduction with a more appealing one, eulogizing Theaetetus.

⁸ The fact that the spotlight falls upon the book must mean that some facet of the book is to be discussed. There would appear to be two possible reasons for the reference to the manner of recording the conversation: (i) that at the time this manner was not to be expected of Plato, or (ii) that it was not to be expected from Euclides. I find it improbable that Tht. in any version was the first dramatic dialogue, or that Plato was implying real aversion to the narrative form in any pre-Republic version (see n. 7), but in writing that work he may well have come to regret having begun it in narrative fashion. It may be a factor that Euclides probably wrote narrative dialogues (Thesleff, op. cit. pp. 59–60), but there is no guarantee that Euclides spoke the alternative prologue. Plato's middle-period public may have become used to narrative form, necessitating some explanation of the return to dramatic dialogue; that would place the alternative prologue late in the middle period, but earlier than Phdr. or the latter part of Parm. (137cff).

⁹ It is difficult to believe otherwise. The alternative prologue must have been earlier, since neither Plato nor his followers would have substituted so blunt a prologue, which anon. Tht. calls ὑπΨυχρος for the extant one.

¹⁰ This self-criticism views some of the tactics employed by Socrates earlier as (162d), πιθανολογα (162e), and more importantly ντιλογα which is here and elsewhere associated with pursuing argument κατ τ νομα (164c7, 166cl; Rep. 454b6) and with same/different puzzles (166bc, Rep. 454b–d, Phdr. 261de). Antilogic comes under attack atPhd. 90bc (cf. lOle) and is treated sarcastically at Lys. 216a, so that Plato could not have employed its tactics without reservation after the early middle period. If the criticism of these tactics were indeed a later addition, then the earliest version would have to have been pre-middle-period; our comparative passages suggest a late-middle-period revision, probably coinciding with the need to use Tht. as a plank in the Academy's Rep. -based education-programme: introducing the accomplished mathematician (a) to dialectic, and (b) to his present unfamiliarity with knowledge proper. That programme is continued by Sph. and Ph., which introduce (among other things) more advanced dialectical methods.

¹¹ Such dialogues tend to be briefer than the extant Tht., and to exhibit no major digressions. They begin with one or more instances of the definiendum, proceed to an attempted definition which fails to capture the merit which must attach to it (‘the God-loved’, ‘a sense of shame’, ‘endurance’, ‘perception’), and move onto a seemingly more fruitful discussion where the thoughts of ‘Socrates’ or a third party play a significant role (Euthphr. 12a–d, La. 194c, Chrm. 161bc, Tht. 201cd).

¹² Hence the postulation of an early version would be sufficient to allow one to believe that X. Symp. is indebted to (Ur-)Tht. for the notion of Socratic match-making, avoiding Tomin's criticism on this score (pp. 100–1).

¹³ On slaves as midwives in antiquity see Pomeroy, S. B., Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves (New York, 1975), pp. 191–2Google Scholar. It is perhaps easier to envisage slaves performing such services for Athenian women, than to suppose that the latter would be readily available to treat slaves.

¹⁴ El. 1128–33, Ion 948–9.

¹⁵ It is dangerous, however, to assume from this humorous passage that midwives would themselves have considered this to be more important than the comfort and advice which they gave both to those in labour and perhaps to women experiencing other problems peculiar to their sex. To an extent the role of a female in cutting the cord is confirmed by the use of the feminine article with the noun μφαλητμος, whose most important occurrence for our purposes is at Hp. Mul. 1.46. There the writer attributes many instances of the failure of the chorion to emerge to the ignorance (μαθα) of the female cord-cutter, who severs the umbilical cord before the appearance of the after-birth and fails to retain the end of the cord. The term suggests that some ‘midwives’ did not know what they were doing, rather than that they lacked some special obstetric knowledge. Gentle traction applied to the cord is nowadays used to ensure the emergence of the afterbirth with minimum problems. If it had been normal to employ professional midwives for the delivery of a child, then one might have expected it to be common knowledge among them that the cord should not be allowed to disappear.

¹⁶ See H.Dem. 147, Ar. Eccl. 915, E. Alc. 393, Hipp. 243; a referee kindly points out that the term ἰατρς is also not particularly suggestive of a distinct profession, and that one cannot assume the existence of a recognizable professional group of ἰατρο in the Athens of 420 b.c. (whatever the term ‘profession’ could have meant if applied to the period). But if there is any doubt about the existence of a profession of doctors, how much more doubt ought there to be about a profession of midwives, in so far as they would have had to offer their services to a sex with a tradition of mutual self-help and comparatively little financial means.

¹⁷ See E. Alc. 317–19.

¹⁸ See Herfst, P., Le Travail de la femme dans la Grèce ancienne (Utrecht, 1922), p. 55Google Scholar.

¹⁹ See Pomeroy, S. B., ‘Teknikai kai Mousikai’, AJAH 2 (1977), 51–68, especially 58–60Google Scholar.

²⁰ The next φρντισμα (155) turns out to be a statement of doctrine rather than a theory or discovery, while the final brain-wave in the series is again a technical operation (177–9); when these facts are added to the fact that thought-processes cannot miscarry once the discovery has been made, we have strong evidence that the φροντς at 137 was never meant to indicate just an intellectual activity.

²¹ See Dover, K. J., Aristophanes, Clouds (Oxford, 1968)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad loc., for the possible Pythagorean connexion. Other possible Presocratic influences are Anaximenes and the ever-present Diogenes of Apollonia.

²² One thinks primarily of the Socratic oath ‘by the Dog’, though not confined to Socrates; this oath is found in a particularly unusual form at Gorg. 482b5. Lucian has ‘Socrates’ swear by the plane tree (Vit. Auct. 16, cf. Phdr. 230b), but he may be imitating the unusual oaths of the Clouds.

²³ On the two versions of the play see now Hubbard, T. K., ‘Parabatic Self-Criticism and the Two Versions of Aristophanes’ Clouds', C.Ant. 5 (1986), 180–97Google Scholar. The parabasis assumes that the play is substantially the same as that which had previously been presented (though Hubbard, art. cit. 184, is instructive), and one can assume that there had been comparatively little revision up to that point. After the parabasis (i) the audience's interest needed to be maintained by changes in the plot, and (ii) substantial popularizing must have been undertaken to avoid the fate of the first play: in particular the new play indulges in a host of vulgar tricks, probably plagiarized, which the parabasis said were foreign to the original version – mockery of physical characteristics (1237–8), violence on stage (1297ff.), incendiary conclusions, and presumably the use of a special phallus in the scene in question (734). Like the kordax (V. 1493), the play gives prominence to the gaping anus, verbally at 1083–1100, and perhaps directly when Right's cloak is removed at 1102–4. Whether Right, or, as Hubbard suggests (p. 190), Strepsiades, actually danced a kordax, cannot be known. Hypothesis I testifies that the extant agon is very different from the original one. Little material after the parabasis is clearly common to both plays, though 1417 is attested for Clouds I too. That would appear to confirm that there had been a father-beating scene in it, and those who wish to take seriously the connexion between the charges against Socrates and Clouds ought surely to postulate some such scene in the performed play. Also early, one suspects, is the seemingly parabatic material at 1115–30; while the huge gap and incomplete responsion between strophe at 700–6 and antistrophe at 804–13 suggest that the poet has reused lyrics around a reworked and expanded dialogue: the scene in question.

²⁴ Ap. 19bc, 23d, Phd. 70bc, 99b, Euthd. 277de, 285cd, Rep. 488e–89c; cf. Crat. 401b7–8, Parm. 135d5, Plt. 299b6–8, Phdr. 270a.