Proœmium to Timæus. Intended Tetralogy for the Republic. The Kritias was third piece in that Tetralogy.
The proœmium to the Timæus introduces us to three persons[146]: Kritias and Hermokrates, along with Sokrates. It is to them (as we now learn) that Sokrates had on the preceding day recited the Republic: a fourth hearer having been present besides, whom Sokrates expects to see now, but does not see — and who is said to be absent from illness. In requital for the intellectual treat received from Sokrates, Timæus delivers the discourse which we have just passed in review: Kritias next enters upon his narrative or exposition, now lying before us as a fragment: and Hermokrates was intended to follow it up with a fourth discourse, upon some other topic not specified. It appears as if Plato, after having finished the Republic as a distinct dialogue, conceived subsequently the idea of making it the basis of a Tetralogy, to be composed as follows: 1. Timæus: describing the construction of the divine Kosmos, soul and body — with its tenants divine and human; “the diapason ending full in man” — but having its harmony spoiled by the degeneration of man, and the partial substitution of inferior animals. 2. Republic: Man in a constituted society, administered by a few skilful professional Rulers, subject to perfect ethical training, and fortified by the most tutelary habits. 3. Kritias: this perfect society, exhibited in energetic action, and under pressure of terrible enemies. 4. Hermokrates — subject unknown: perhaps the same society, exhibited under circumstances calculated to try their justice and temperance, rather than their courage. Of this intended tetralogy the first two members alone exist: the third was left unfinished: and the fourth was never commenced. But the Republic appears to me to have been originally a distinct composition. An afterthought of Plato induced him to rank it as second piece in a projected tetralogy.[147]
[146] Plato, Tim. p. 17 A. εἷς, δύο, τρεῖς· ὁ δὲ δὴ τέταρτος ἡμῖν, ὦ φίλε Τίμαιε, ποῦ, τῶν χθὲς μὲν δαιτυμόνων, τὰ νῦν δ’ ἑστιατόρων;
These are the words with which the Platonic Sokrates opens this dialogue. Proklus, in his Commentary on the Timæus (i. pp. 5-10-14, ed. Schneider), notices a multiplicity of insignificant questions raised by the ancient Platonic critics upon this exordium. The earliest whom he notices is Praxiphanes, the friend of Theophrastus, who blamed Plato for the absurdity of making Sokrates count aloud one, two, three, &c. Porphyry replied to him at length.
We see here that the habit of commenting on the Platonic dialogues began in the generation immediately after Plato’s death, that is, the generation of Demetrius Phalereus.
Whom does Plato intend for the fourth person, unnamed and absent? Upon this point the Platonic critics indulged in a variety of conjectures, suggesting several different persons as intended. Proklus (p. 14, Schn.) remarks upon these critics justly — ὡς οὔτε ἄξια ζητήσεως ζητοῦντας, οὔτ’ ἀσφαλές τι λέγοντας. But the comments which he proceeds to cite from his master Syrianus are not at all more instructive (pp. 15-16, Schn.).
[147] Socher (Ueber Platon’s Schriften, pp. 370-371) declares the fragment of the Kritias now existing to be spurious and altogether unworthy of Plato. His opinion appears to me unfounded, and has not obtained assent; but his arguments are as good as those upon which other critics reject so many other dialogues. He thinks the Kritias an inferior production: therefore it cannot have been composed by Plato. Socher also thinks that the whole allusion, made by Plato in this dialogue to Solon, is a fiction by Plato himself. That the intended epic about Atlantis would have been Plato’s own fiction, I do not doubt, but it appears to me that Solon’s poems (as they then existed, though fragmentary) must have contained allusions to Egyptian priests with whom he had conversed in Egypt, and to their abundance of historical anecdote (Plutarch, Solon, c. 26-31). It is not improbable that Solon did leave an unfinished Egyptian poem.
Subject of the Kritias. Solon and the Egyptian priests. Citizens of Platonic Republic are identified with ancient Athenians.
The subject embraced by the Kritias is traced back to an unfinished epic poem of Solon, intended by that poet and lawgiver to celebrate a memorable exploit of Athenian antiquity, which he had heard from the Priests of the Goddess Neith or Athênê at Sais in Egypt. These priests (Plato tells us) treated the Greeks as children, compared with the venerable antiquity of their own ancestors; they despised the short backward reckoning of the heroic genealogies at Athens or Argos. There were in the temple of Athênê at Sais records of past time for 9000 years back: and among these records was one, of that date, commemorating a glorious exploit, of the Athenians as they then had been, unknown to Solon or any of his countrymen.[148] The Athens, of 9000 years anterior to Solon, had been great, powerful, courageous, admirably governed, and distinguished for every kind of virtue.[149] Athênê, the presiding Goddess both of Athens and of Sais, had bestowed upon the Athenians a salubrious climate, fertile soil, a healthy breed of citizens, and highly endowed intelligence. Under her auspices, they were excellent alike in war and in philosophy.[150] The separation of professions was fully realised among them, according to the principle laid down in the Republic as the only foundation for a good commonwealth. The military class, composed of both sexes, was quartered in barrack on the akropolis; which was at that time more spacious than it had since become — and which possessed then, in common with the whole surface of Attica, a rich soil covering that rocky bottom to which it had been reduced in the Platonic age, through successive deluges.[151] These soldiers, male and female, were maintained by contributions from the remaining community: they lived in perpetual drill, having neither separate property, nor separate families, nor gold nor silver: lastly, their procreation was strictly regulated, and their numbers kept from either increase or diminution.[152] The husbandmen and the artizans were alike excellent in their respective professions, to which they were exclusively confined:[153] Hephæstus being the partner of Athênê in joint tutelary presidency, and joint occupation of the central temple on the akropolis. Thus admirably administered, the Athenians were not only powerful at home, but also chiefs or leaders of all the cities comprised under the Hellenic name: chiefs by the voluntary choice and consent of the subordinates. But the old Attic race by whom these achievements had been performed, belonged to a former geological period: they had perished, nearly all, by violent catastrophe — leaving the actual Athenians as imperfect representatives.
[148] Plato, Timæus, pp. 22-23. The great knowledge of past history (real or supposed) possessed by the Egyptian priests, and the length of their back chronology, alleged by themselves to depend upon records preserved from a period of 17,000 years, are well known from the interesting narrative of Herodotus (ii. 37-43-77-145) — μνήμην ἀνθρώπων πάντων ἐπασκέοντες (the priests of Egypt) μάλιστα, λογιώτατοί εἰσι μακρῷ τῶν ἐγὼ ἐς διάπειραν ἀφικόμην (ii. 77) … καὶ ταῦτα ἀτρεκέως φασὶν ἐπίστασθαι, αἰεί τε λογιζόμενοι, καὶ αἰεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ ἔτεα (ii. 145). Herodotus (ii. 143) tells us that the Egyptian priests at Thebes held the same language to the historian Hekatæus, as Plato here says that they held to Solon, when he talked about Grecian antiquity in the persons of Phorôneus and Niobê. Hekatæus laid before them his own genealogy — a dignified list of sixteen ancestors, beginning from a God — upon which they out-bid him with a counter-genealogy (ἀντεγενεαλόγησαν) of 345 chief priests, who had succeeded each other from father to son. Plato appears to have contracted great reverence for this long duration of unchanged regulations in Egypt, and for the fixed, consecrated, customs, with minute subdivision of professional castes and employments: the hymns, psalmody, and music, having continued without alteration for 10,000 years (literally 10,000 — οὐχ ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν μυριοστόν, ἀλλ’ ὄντως, Plat. Legg. ii. p. 656 E).