Music in Plato's Laws 1, by Eleonora Rocconi
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Music in Plato’s Laws First seminar: Introduction, and Book 2, 653a-656c Eleonora Rocconi (University of Pavia) Introduction: Music in Plato’s Writings If we think about the numerous allusions to music we may find throughout Plato’s dialogues, the relevance of musical art is certainly outstanding. Most of the references deal with the value of music in education (a well established idea in ancient Greek culture), as in Protagoras 325c-326b, where the leading character prescribes for the children instruction by the kitharistai, who «make harmonies and rhythms quite familiar to the children’s souls, in order that they may learn to be more gentle, and harmonious, and rhythmical (εὐρυθμότεροι καὶ εὐαρμοστότεροι)»1; or see the more famous passage of Republic Book 3, 398c-401a, where the philosopher discusses the proper education – both physical and musical – for the guardians (phylakes) of his ideal city, evaluating various scales and rhythms and identifying those that are best suited to the task of improving the soul and harmonizing its elements. These remarks seem to be deeply involved with the performance culture of mousikē in the first half of the fourth century BC, towards which Plato is often harshly critical (as in the case, for instance, of the increasing usage of the panharmonic aulos, an instrument which may shift from one harmonia to another and which he vigorously denounces, or, more generally, of the tendency of modern composers to constantly pursue musical novelty, regarded by Plato as a danger to the state). Other more technical passages (closely connected with contemporary musical theories) are concerned, instead, with harmonics conceived as a mathematical science, as in the case of Republic Book 7, 530c-531c. Here Plato examines the intellectual education of his ‘philosopher-rulers’, prescribing them mathematical disciplines such as number-theory, plane and solid geometry, astronomy and harmonics, through which 1 Transl. Jowett (cf. Dialogues of Plato: containing the Apology of Socrates, Crito, Phaedo, and Protagoras, with introductions by the translator Benjamin Jowett and a special introduction by Maurice Francis Egan, New York 1900; repr. in Protagoras by Plato, The Echo Library 2006). they should transcend the sphere of perception and be raised towards the true knowledge of immaterial entities called ‘forms’ or ‘ideas’. This kind of remark shows clearly how Plato, despite his disagreement with the most ‘practical’ aspects of such theoretical speculations, was well aware of the technical details developed by contemporary music theory, within which he distinguishes at least two main groups: the so-called Pythagoreans (or, more generally, the mathematical theorists) and the so- called ‘empiricists’, comparable to those people who practiced the «harmonics based on hearing» (ἡ ἁρμονικὴ […] ἡ κατὰ τὴν ἀκοήν), as they are described later on by Aristotle (Posterior Analytics 79a). More specifically, in one of these more technical remarks on music theory (the famous passage of Timaeus 36a), Plato relates mathematically specifiable musical structures to the constitution of the world’s soul, describing it as a quasi-musical construction thanks to the subdivision of the 2:1 proportions (expressing the Pythagorean octaves or harmoniai) into segments of fifths, fourths and single tones by the insertion of harmonic and arithmetic means within each octave. This ‘harmonic’ order of the universe provides a large-scale model for the ‘harmonic’ order which, according to Plato (and Greek culture in general), could be instilled in the human soul by the psychagogic power of music (as is suggested, for instance, in Republic Book 3, where we are told that «rhythm and harmonia penetrate most deeply into the recesses of the soul and take a powerful hold on it, bringing gracefulness and making a man graceful if he is correctly trained»)2. The main idea implied in all these Platonic discussions on mousikē is that the human soul is naturally affected by the musical arts since our soul has structural analogies with musical tunings. In fact, though not identifiable as a harmonia, for Plato the soul ‘possesses’ such harmonia: concerning this, see Phaedo 85e-86d (where, in his discussion of the theory of the soul, the author makes one of his numerous parallels between the human soul and musical harmony), or many other passages in the Republic, as that in Book 4: «a man must not suffer the principles in his soul to do each the work of 2 Plato Resp. 401d (transl. P. Shorey, The Loeb Classical Library, Plato, Volume V: The Republic, Books 1-5, Cambridge, Mass./London 1930). some other and interfere and meddle with one another, but he should dispose well of what in the true sense of the word is properly his own, and having first attained to self-mastery and beautiful order within himself, and having harmonized (συναρμόσαντα) these three principles, as we usually do with the three boundaries of the musical harmonia, i.e., the νεάτη, the ὑπάτη and the μέση, and all others there may be between them, and having linked and bound all three together and made of himself a unit, one man instead of many, self-controlled and in unison (ἡρμοσμένον), he should then and then only turn to practice […]»3. This belief in the psychagogic power of music was certainly deeply rooted in the Greek culture of the time. Plato, however, elaborated it according to a quite complex and sophisticated theory, to which we shall return in the course of this seminar. It is the theory of mimēsis, that is, the capacity of music to ‘imitate’ or, better, ‘represent’ moral qualities by means of words, rhythm and melody, a theory through which Plato justifies the thesis that there are affinities between musical structures and types of characters, virtues and vices. Thanks to the mimetic theory, the educational value of music – outstandingly noteworthy within many regional traditions and cultures of the Greek world – found in Plato an explicit theoretical elaboration and explanation (though its details are not always easy to reconstruct). Hence the majority of the musical allusions throughout Plato’s dialogues – excluding the most generic references in earlier works – may be brought back to a single, broad group (not always consistent in its details, of course, since Plato’s thought developed over time), which should be analyzed bearing this philosophical background in mind. The main concern of our seminars will be Plato’s treatment of music in the Laws. The musical topic is here introduced by the author within his discussion of the education of citizens of a new Cretan colony named Magnesia: therefore it has been more often studied for its numerous references to the ‘corruption’ of music of the time than for its theoretical value within Plato’s philosophy (especially the widely known passage in Book 3, 700a-701b, where the author complains about the breaking of rules within specific categories of compositions and about the consequent disarray of genres in fourth century music). But a careful reading of the whole dialogue shows that such discussions concerning contemporary music are inserted by the philosopher within a 3 Resp. 443d-e (transl. adapted from Shorey). complex and articulated conceptual framework, which can be sketched in outline through a preliminary overview of the topics and arguments of the whole dialogue. This overview will be our starting point. Prelude to Plato’s Laws The Laws is usually taken to be Plato’s last dialogue. Aristotle (Politics 1264b) tells us that it is later than the Republic and, according to some ancient evidence, we are informed that it was left unrevised by his author and published after his death by his scholar Philip of Opus4. More precisely, Diogenes Laertius (our earliest source of information on this point) says that Philip was responsible for transcribing (μετέγραψεν) the treatise onto papyrus, and for writing the thirteenth book (the Epinomis) himself: «Some say that Philip the Opuntian transcribed his (i.e. Plato’s) work, Laws, which was written in wax. They also say that the Epinomis is his»5. Furthermore, the Suda adds that the Opuntian «divided the Laws of Plato into 12 books; for he himself is said to have added the 13th»6. By contrast, a later testimony by the anonymous author of the Prolegomena to Platonic philosophy, attributed to Philip a much deeper revision of the text, which had been left ἀδιορθώτους καὶ συγκεχυμένους (i.e. ‘uncorrected and confused’) by its author7. Despite the implausible thesis of a few scholars who attribute to the Opuntian a total rewriting of the dialogue, however, it seems that this latter source misunderstood some of the information reported by Diogenes, in whose writings the verb μετεγράφειν means only ‘copy, transcribe’, and never ‘correct’ or ‘revise’8. Of course the nature and extension of the editorial work he did on the Laws is left uncertain: this dialogue is definitely atypical in style and content if compared to the rest of Plato’s production (its style is more expository and dogmatic than dialogic, for instance, and reads more like a treatise than a dialogue, the conversation being 4 Diog. Laert. Vit. 3.46: Μαθηταὶ δ΄ αὐτοῦ (sc. Plato’s) Σπεύσιππος Ἀθηναῖος͵ Ξενοκράτης Καλχηδόνιος͵ Ἀριστοτέλης Σταγειρίτης͵ Φίλιππος Ὀπούντιος […]. 5 Diog. Laert. Vit. 3.37: ἔνιοί τε φασὶν ὅτι Φίλιππος ὁ Ὀπούντιος τοὺς Νόμους αὐτοῦ μετέγραψεν ὄντας ἐν κηρῷ. τούτου δὲ καὶ Ἐπινομίδα φασὶν εἶναι. 6 Sud. φ 418 (s.v. φιλόσοφος): […] ὃς τοὺς Πλάτωνος Νόμους διεῖλεν εἰς βιβλία ιβ͵ τὸ γὰρ ιγ αὐτὸς προσθεῖναι λέγεται […]. 7 [Olymp.] Prol. 24, p. 45 Westerink. 8 For a fuller discussion on this topic, see G. Morrow Plato’s Cretan City, Princeton 1960, pp. 515-518. dominated by a single character, as it is also in the Timaeus, another work generally agreed to be late), but attempts made to determine traces of Philip’s intervention in the Laws have given no reliable results.