[15] Plato, Kleitophon, p. 410 E. μὴ μὲν γὰρ προτετραμμένῳ σὲ ἀνθρώπῳ, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἄξιον εἶναι τοῦ παντὸς φήσω, προτετραμμένῳ δέ, σχεδὸν καὶ ἐμπόδιον τοῦ πρὸς τέλος ἀρετῆς ἐλθόντα εὐδαίμονα γενέσθαι.
Remarks on the Kleitophon. Why Thrasyllus placed it in the eighth Tetralogy immediately before the Republic, and along with Kritias, the other fragment.
The fragment called Kleitophon (of which I have given an abstract comparatively long), is in several ways remarkable. The Thrasyllean catalogue places it first in the eighth Tetralogy; the three other members of the same Tetralogy being, Republic, Timæus, Kritias.[16] Though it is both short, and abrupt in its close, we know that it was so likewise in antiquity: the ancient Platonic commentators observing, that Sokrates disdained to make any reply to the appeal of Kleitophon.[17] There were therefore in this Tetralogy two fragments, unfinished works from the beginning — Kleitophon and Kritias.
[16] Diog. L. iii. 59. The Kleitophon also was one of the dialogues selected by some students of Plato as proper to be studied first of all (Diog. L. iii. 61).
[17] M. Boeckh observes (ad Platonis Minoem, p. 11):— “Nec minus falsum est, quod spurium Clitophontem plerique omnes mutilatum putant; quem ex auctoris manibus truncum excidisse inde intelligitur, quod ne vetusti quidem Platonici philosophi, quibus antiquissima exemplaria ad manum erant, habuerunt integriorem. Proclus in Timæ, i. p. 7. Πτολεμαῖος δὲ ὁ Πλατωνικὸς Κλειτοφῶντα αὐτὸν οἴεται εἶναι. τοῦτον γὰρ ἐν τῷ ὁμωνύμῳ διαλόγῳ μηδ’ ἀποκρίσεως ἠξιῶσθαι παρὰ Σωκράτους. Plané ut in Critiâ, quem ab ipso Platone non absolutum docet Plutarchus in Solone.”
M. Boeckh here characterises the Kleitophon as spurious, in which opinion I do not concur.
Yxem, in his Dissertation, Ueber Platon’s Kleitophon, Berlin, 1846, has vindicated the genuineness of this dialogue, though many of his arguments are such as I cannot subscribe to.
He shows farther, that the first idea of distrusting the genuineness of the Kleitophon arose from the fact that the dialogue was printed in the Aldine edition of 1513, along with the spurious dialogues; although in that very Aldine edition the editors expressly announce that this was a mistake, and that the dialogue ought to have been printed as first of the eighth tetralogy. See Yxem, pp. 32-33. Subsequent editors followed the Aldine in printing the dialogue among the spurious, though still declaring that they did not consider it spurious.
We may explain why Thrasyllus placed the Kleitophon in immediate antecedence to the Republic: because 1. It complains bitterly of the want of a good explanation of Justice, which Sokrates in the latter books of the Republic professes to furnish. 2. It brings before us Kleitophon, who announces an inclination to consult Thrasymachus: now both these personages appear in the first book of the Republic, in which too Thrasymachus is introduced as disputing in a brutal and insulting way, and as humiliated by Sokrates: so that the Republic might be considered both as an answer to the challenge of the Kleitophon, and as a reproof to Kleitophon himself for having threatened to quit Sokrates and go to Thrasymachus.