Translating Plato

Review Article

Translating Plato

CHRISTOPHER GILL

The appearance of Plato: Complete Works from Hackett 1 is an important and very welcome addition to our resources for studying Plato. It also provides an oppor- tunity for re ecting on the current state of English translations of Plato and on the issues that arise in that context. The only previously available one-volume Plato was the Bollingen, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. 2 Like many others, I have found this very useful over the years. However, by virtually every criterion, the Hackett is a signi- cant improvement on the Bollingen. A key factor is completeness. Despite being in one volume, the Hackett is alone, among English translations, in including the full contents of the standard ancient collection, that of Thrasyllus. It con- tains the 35 dialogues Thrasyllus regarded as genuine (and the Letters) together with the dialogues and other works (the De nitions and Epigrams) he regarded as spurious. 3 The Bollingen, by contrast, includes only 29 of ThrasyllusÕ genuine dialogues and none of the spurious ones. The Bollingen excludes Alcibiades, widely regarded as genuine in antiquity, on which two scholarly commentaries in English are currently in preparation. The associate editor of the Hackett volume, D.S. Hutchinson, has overseen the translation of the 15 spurious or disputed works (most of these speci cally translated for this volume), as well as providing short introductions, outlining the likely origin and date of these works. Since scholars are now more open to the possibility that such works may be authentic or, if not, that they tell us about the Platonic tradition in later antiquity, the inclusion of these works adds signi cantly to the value of this collection. The Hackett also has the edge in editorial material. The Bollingen has a full, though rather generalized, overall introduction by Cairns, together with, frankly,

1 J. Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson (edd.), Plato: Complete Works. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company,1997. Pp. xxx + 1848. £29.95, $42.50hb. ISBN 0-87220- 349-2. 2 Bollingen Series 71 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1961; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 14th reprint 1989). 3 Even the 6-volume Bohn Classical Library (1861-70) excluded the Halcyon and Epigrams. The Hackett contents page indicates which works are or are not generally agreed to be by Plato.

©Koninklijke Brill NV , Leiden, 1998 Phronesis XLIII/ 2 198 CHRISTOPHER GILL amateurish introductions to individual dialogues by Hamilton. The Hackett introduction, by the general editor, John Cooper, is both informative and challenging; it is quite differently conceived from that of Cairns, in ways discussed shortly. The Bollingen has virtually no notes, identifying only some of the poetic quotations. The Hackett footnotes, though economical, provide a range of useful infor- mation. They identify all (known) poetic quotations; supply relevant facts not obvious from the translation; note departures from BurnetÕs 1900-7 Oxford Clas- sical Text which is taken as the basic text; offer alternative translations in some cases where the meaning is di f cult or controversial. Though based on the notes of the original publications in the case of republished translations, the notes are the responsibility of the general editor. The Bollingen index, one of its strengths, runs to 135 pages, with many sub-entries, though with some reduplication. The Hackett index, by Paul Coppock, though shorter (51 pages), is more concisely pre- sented, with entries more clearly grouped under analytic subheadings. In the Bollingen, CairnsÕs introduction offers a survey of PlatoÕs life, works, and thought. Cooper, by contrast, after some brief comments on PlatoÕs life, focuses on editorial and interpretative questions. This re ects a different view of the target audience, about which I will say more later. CooperÕs introduction, though clear and instructive for non-specialists, signals some bold and distinc- tive editorial decisions and interpretative positions. The rst, already noted, is the move of basing the volume on the entire Thrasyllan collection. A related, more controversial, move is that of printing the translations (like the Oxford text) in the same order as the Thrasyllan collection, rather than in a supposed chronological order, which is the policy adopted in the Bollingen and some previous translations. This order is justi ed partly on the grounds of its neutrality between rival modern chronologies of the dialogues. Also, Cooper stresses how little we know for certain about Platonic chronology; stylometry has only established three broad groups, and there are only (he claims) two pieces of external evidence: a termi- nus post quem (369 B.C.) for Theaetetus and the fact that the Laws was incom- plete at PlatoÕs death. Attempts at Platonic chronology have been closely linked with the project of charting PlatoÕs philosophical development. The picture dom- inant in Anglo-American scholarship has been that of a development from the early Socratic period to the middle-period theory of Forms and then to a late period in which this theory is rejected or de-emphasized. Cooper argues that this, essentially speculative, picture has served as a straitjacket on interpretation. In its place, he offers, in a more tentative spirit, a looser set of groups: (1) broadly ÒSocraticÓ works, including the probably post-Platonic spurious dialogues, taken as part of the larger genre of Socratic writings; (2) the late dialogues, identi ed by stylometry; (3) an intermediate group, overlapping with the ÒmiddleÓ dialogues but de ned simply by contrast with the other two (pp. xv-xvii). These points about chronology and grouping are merely preliminary to CooperÕs principal theme, the philosophical signi cance of PlatoÕs life-long use of the dia- logue form. For Cooper, the signi cance lies in the perpetuation of the Socratic view that all philosophical ideas and ÒdoctrinesÓ (such as those usually associated