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HOW FAR WAS PLATO CONCERNED TO REBUT THE CLAIMS OF CYRUS THE GREAT AND PISISTRATUS TO THE TITLE OF STATESMAN?

R.G. Tanner University of Newcastle, N.S.W.

In another place I have supported Aulus Gellius' view that Plato was in controversy with xenophon'. There I argued that the latter was writing his Socratic and perhaps biographical studies partly as spokesman for the views of Phaedon of Elis, who lived a mere twenty miles from Xenophon's estate at Scillus. Xenophon settled there in 386 B.C. and remained until his expulsion after the Spartan defeat at Leuctra in 371 S.C.

In the relevant section of the Attic Nights entitled an aemuli offensique inter se fuerint Xenophon et Plato Favorinus is made to observe that the reading of the two books of the Republic which were first published (perhaps down to our Republic 376d6) stimulated Xenophon to oppose Plato's view of a state ruled by an elite class with advocacy of Monarchy in his main work the Cyropaedia. 2 So here Gellius suggests that the Cyropaedia was written as a riposte to the earlier part of the Republic. Further, in the next section of Book XIV, 3 Favorinus is made to continue by claiming plato was so offended by this that he went out of his way to belittle Cyrus as uncultured (Laws. VI, 695c). So here we see Plato in his Laws refuting any claims to expertise in government for Cyrus the Great. But was Xenophon' s work on the life of Cyrus which he entitled the Education of Cyrus in fact very far advanced, if not completed, before its author was forced to leave Scillus for Corinth in 371 B.C., as Cawkwell believes?3 If so it would have been taken to that city and published in some form there. Further, we must recall that Skemp would date the Platonic 214

Statesman to 366-362 S.C. 4 On that dating, might it represent in part a response to Xenophon? Certainly Plato grants that his Statesman should ideally be a King, yet without claim to divine authority such as Pisistratus pretended when he had himself restored by the maiden Phye dressed as Athena5 or any special charisma such as Xenophon assigns to Cyrus from his early youth,6 but rather, in the Socratic sense, he should be a specialist in the art of government, the techne basilike. 7 Up to this point we have given no reason for Pisistratus presenting a challenge to Plato's approach. Further, von Fritz is confident that the very reactionary Atthidography of Androtion would not long have ante-dated the Aristotelian Athenian

ConstitutionS whose source he believes it to be for the

favourable account of Pisistratus' rule. So, it might be felt that there was no current eulogy of the tyrant to rebut in 366-

362 S.C. However, in this matter we do not need to reopen the arguments about the date of Androtion, since the tradition of

Atthidography goes back at least to Clitodemus, who wrote about

378 B.C.,9 and others apart from Androtion could have praised

Pisistratus and been the source for the tale of his close

friendship with Solon recorded in Plutarch's life of the latter statesman. Indeed, it is of particular interest that Plutarch

alleges that Solon also indirectly enlightened Cyrus the Great when King Croesus repeated some of the sage's words to his conqueror from the funeral pyre. "In this way Solon earned the reputation of rescuing one King and educating another by means

of a single speech. ,,10 Later in Plutarch' s life Solon is

similarly portrayed as educating Pisistratus. "But in fact, once