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Seeing Oursel Es in the Xenoi – Plato's Warning to the Greeks

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Seeing Oursel Es in the Xenoi – Plato's Warning to the Greeks Akropolis 3 (2019) 129-149 Marina Marren* Seeing Ourseles in the Xenoi – Plato’s Warning to the Greeks Abstract: In this essay about the story of Atlantis in Plato’s Timaeus, we focus on the crucial political message that the Atlantis tale contains. More precisely, we seek to respond to a question that may evade a completely satisfactory answer. The question is: Could Plato’s story of the rise and fall of Atlantis, in the Timaeus, be a warning tale to the Greeks of his own time? In order to root the inves- tigation prompted by this question in solid textual ground, we pay close attention to the framing of the Atlantis tale. In what follows, we analyze the series of substitutions (between mythical, ancient, and historical cities, i.e., Atlantis, Athens, and Sais) that Plato uses as he seeks to bring his readers to a point from which we can assess the politics of ancient Athens – a city that in Plato’s time stands on the brink of repeating the political blunders of the formerly glorious empire of the East. Introduction In the spirit of the tradition that takes Plato’s dialogues to be both works of literary genius and of philosophy, we pay careful attention to Plato’s narrative frames and to his choice of interlocutors in order to tease out the philosoph- ical and political recommendations that Plato has for his ancient readers and that his dialogues offer to us. To that end, in Section II, we focus on providing philosophically pertinent details related to the identity and ambitions of Critias IV who, on our interpretation, is the narrator of the Atlantis story. Our view is contra Cornford, Burnet, and Sallis, but it is in agreement with Davies as well as with the commentaries of Proclus, according to which the narrator of the Atlan- tis tale is a member of the pro-Spartan tyranny of the Thirty. The Thirty Tyrants terrorize Athens in the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War.1 Mindful of Critias’ * Department of Philosophy, University of Oregon, USA ([email protected]) 1 Davies, Athenian Properties Families, 322 – 29, esp. 326; Proclus, The Commentaries, 59 – 71; Sallis, Chorol- ogy, 32; Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology, 1; Burnet, Greek Philosophy, 338; Nails remains undecided on the matter of whether it is the III or the IV Critias who is the interlocutor in the Timaeus and, hence, if we should trust the ancient or the modern commentators, calling it “an unsettled controversy” (The People of Plato, 106). Howland offers a summary of the debate pertaining to Critias’ identity (“Partisanship and the Work of Philosophy”, 2, nt. 5). 130 Marina Marren persona, we argue that the tale of Atlantis and of the people who overcome its fabled might is liable to excite an ostentatious patriotism of the sort that tyrants of different historical epochs adroitly use to their personal advantage. To bolster these claims, we turn to the Critias in order to support a further view that is conspicuously absent in the secondary literature. We argue that Atlantis is not vanquished by ancient Athens or that, at least, we should suppress our impulse to identify the people that defeat Atlantis with the Athenians of Solon’s or of Critias’ time. In this guise, the story of Atlantis, which we examine in detail in Section III, ceases to be an encomium to ancient Athens and becomes a sinister reflec- tion of the militaristic exploits of Athens. Our reading of the Atlantis story as Plato’s fiction finds support in Gill, Morgan, Naddaf, and Howland, among oth- ers. Gill sees the story of Atlantis as “a cautionary tale – and possibly a protreptic – for an Athenian audience.”2 Gill claims, as well, that we can understand Atlan- tis as “the dream or ideal Periclean Athens had about itself.”3 Also, Clay holds that Atlantis offers to Plato’s contemporaries a sort of “reflection in a distant mirror of imperial Athens at the end of the fifth century.”4 Howland concludes that “the story of the defeat of Atlantis has the tragic, timeless quality of an un- heeded warning.”5 As we understand it, the Atlantis tale is a warning against the pitfalls of that hubris, which fuels Athens’ rise to its imperial power. By the time that Plato’s contemporaries are receiving the message of the Timaeus, this hubris threatens to spell the demise of Athens and the rest of Greece. The story of Atlantis points beyond itself in two directions, i.e., to the recipients of the storied events – the Greeks – and to the affairs of the Egyptians who, as Critias relates, have preserved it. Considering that by the time that Plato composes the Timaeus, Egypt is but an echo of its former pharaonic glory, we submit that it is possible that Plato’s mention of Egypt has as much to do with its ancient history and the meticulous records that the Egyptian priests at Sais manage to keep, as it does with the fact that, for all of its priestly wisdom, Egypt fails to hold on to its political power. Finally, in Section IV, we compare the fates of the two historical peoples – the Egyptians and the Greeks against the backdrop of the Persians. The reason for bringing in the latter is twofold. First, the role of Athens in the Greek victory 2 Gill, “The Genre of the Atlantis Story”, 298. 3 Ibid., 296. 4 Clay, “Plato’s Atlantis”, 17. 5 Howland, Glaucon’s Fate, 94. Seeing Ourselves in the Xenoi – Plato’s Warning to the Greeks 131 in the Persian War, itself, becomes a high-point or an ideal to which those who promise benefits from military conflict can appeal to excite patriotic moods. Second, there is some support in Friedländer, for example, for seeing Atlantis as a metaphor for the vanquished Persians. We defend the view that, regardless of whether Atlantis is more like historical Persia or Athens, it is a story meant to show to the Greeks that glorious empires fall, despite their successes. The ques- tion, then, is: What options are available for prudent politics after the impe- rial luster wares off? This is where Plato turns to Egypt and we, in Section IV, provide evidence to support our contention that Plato’s mention of Sais recom- mends a wary, rather than an altogether laudatory, attitude toward the landscape of Egyptian political history. On the side of Egyptian history, even a perempto- ry comparison between the Egyptians and the Greeks indicates that the Greek quarrels, to which Plato is a witness, contribute to his countrymen’s waning con- trol in the region in much the same way that the narrow-minded politicking of the historical rulers at Sais contributed to the undoing of Egypt. Therefore, if we are right and the Atlantis tale is a mirror of Athenian imperialistic hubris and its painful consequences, then the mention of Sais is meant to evoke images of a future to come if Greece fails to learn from the political history of Egypt. Nationalistic Fervor – Critias’ Speech From the start, the Timaeus broaches the subject of the polis – its construc- tion and constitution and, therefore, as Howland puts it, “the Timaeus begins within the horizon of nomos.”6 Next, the interlocutors engage in the making of poetic tales. Poetry weaves its way into politics as the subject matter of the dia- logue turns to the consideration of two fabled cities. One of them is described as the city, which once was the “best in war ... outstanding in all respects for her excellent laws” (23c). The other city, which is on Critias’ mind as he reminisces about Solon’s poetry and travels, is the legend of the isle of Atlantis (Ἀτλαντίδι νήσῳ, 25a).7 Solon is mentioned twice in the Republic (536c – d; 599e), which reinforces the connection between that dialogue and the Timaeus and makes more prominent the political dimension of the latter.8 Solon also represents a 6 Holwand, “Partisanship and the Work of Philosophy”, 5. 7 We rely on Kalkavage’s translation of the Timaeus and on Clay’s translation of Critias in Plato: Complete Works, 1292 – 1306. Where translation differs from Kalkavage and Clay, it is the author’s. 8 For a description of Solon see Zeller, Philosophie der Griechen, 79. 132 Marina Marren symbolic, and possibly historical, connection between Greece and Egypt. Al- though scholarship is divided on the point of Solon’s historical travels to Sais, we side with Voegelin, who claims that “Solon, indeed, traveled to Egypt” and with Griffiths, who examines evidence in favor of assuming that Solon was in Egypt, but against Gruen, who thinks that Solon’s visit to Sais is “probably fictitious.”9 Whether or not the Republic is a true prequel to the Timaeus, the Critias is a sequel. We can gather this much from Taylor, who references the line, “to-mor- row Critias will tell the full story of the heroic exploit of Athens.”10 At the begin- ning of the Critias, the eponymously named character unambiguously states that Athens fought and overpowered the mighty Atlantis (108e – 109a). TheTimae - us relates a similar story about the ancient strife between the two cities and about the defeat of the Atlantides (25b – d). In the Critias, we learn how the “ancient” (ἀρχῆς, 112e) people, who flourished nine thousand years prior to Critias’ time and whose exploits the Egyptian priests record for posterity, received their name. Solon’s translation of the name that was given to those ancient people by the Egyptians is “Athenians” (113a – b). Solon is not the first translator.
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