[1] The following passage from Wyttenbach, written in 1776, will give an idea of the state of Platonic criticism down to the last quarter of the last century. To provide a new Canon for Plato seems not to have entered his thoughts.
Wyttenbach, Bibliotheca Critica, vol. i. p. 28. Review of Fischer’s edition of Plato’s Philêbus and Symposion. “Quæ Ciceroni obtigit interpretum et editorum felicitas, eâ adeo caruit Plato, ut non solum paucos nactus sit qui ejus scripta typis ederent — sed qui ejus orationi nitorem restitueret, eamque a corruptelarum labe purgaret, et sensus obscuros atque abditos ex interiore doctrinâ patefaceret, omnino repererit neminem. Et ex ipso hoc editionum parvo numero — nam sex omnino sunt — nulla est recentior anno superioris seculi secundo: ut mirandum sit, centum et septuaginta annorum spatio neminem ex tot viris doctis extitisse, qui ita suam crisin Platoni addiceret, ut intelligentiam ejus veræ eruditionis amantibus aperiret.
“Qui Platonem legant, pauci sunt: qui intelligant, paucissimi; qui vero, vel ex versionibus, vel ex jejuno historiæ philosophicæ compendio, de eo judicent et cum supercilio pronuncient, plurimi sunt.”
[2] To see that this is the general method of proceeding, we have only to look at the work of Ueberweg, one of the most recent and certainly one of the ablest among the Platonic critics. Untersuchungen über die Aechtheit und Zeitfolge der Platonischen Schriften, Wien, 1861, p. 130-131.
Canon established by Thrasyllus. Presumption in its favour.
Upon this question I hold an opinion opposite to that of the Platonic critics since Schleiermacher. The presumption appears to me particularly strong, instead of particularly weak: comparing the Platonic writings with those of other eminent writers, dramatists, orators, historians, of the same age and country.
Fixed residence and school at Athens — founded by Plato and transmitted to successors.
We have seen that Plato passed the last thirty-eight years of his life (except his two short visits to Syracuse) as a writer and lecturer at Athens; that he purchased and inhabited a fixed residence at the Academy, near the city. We know, moreover, that his principal pupils, especially (his nephew) Speusippus and Xenokrates, were constantly with him in this residence during his life; that after his death the residence became permanently appropriated as a philosophical school for lectures, study, conversation, and friendly meetings of studious men, in which capacity it served for more than two centuries;[3] that his nephew Speusippus succeeded him there as teacher, and taught there for eight years, being succeeded after his death first by Xenokrates (for twenty-five years), afterwards by Polemon, Krantor, Krates, Arkesilaus, and others in uninterrupted series; that the school always continued to be frequented, though enjoying greater or less celebrity according to the reputation of the Scholarch.
[3] The teaching and conversation of the Platonic School continued fixed in the spot known as the Academy until the siege of Athens by Sylla in 87 B.C. The teacher was then forced to confine himself to the interior of the city, where he gave lectures in the gymnasium called Ptolemæum. In that gymnasium Cicero heard the lectures of the Scholarch Antiochus, B.C. 79; walking out afterwards to visit the deserted but memorable site of the Academy (Cic. De Fin. v. 1; C. G. Zumpt, Ueber den Bestand der Philosophischen Schulen in Athen, p. 14, Berlin, 1843). The ground of the Academy, when once deserted, speedily became unhealthy, and continues to be so now, as Zumpt mentions that he himself experienced in 1835.
Importance of this foundation. Preservation of Plato’s manuscripts. School library.