This paper explores the political thought and literary devices contained in the pseudo-Platonic Eighth Letter, treating it as a later response to the political thought and literary style of Plato, particularly the exploration of the mixed constitution and the mechanisms for the restraint of monarchical power contained in the Laws. It examines the specific historical problems of this letter, and works through its supposed Sicilian context, its narrator's assessment of the situation, and the lengthy prosopopoeia of the dead Syracusan politician Dion, before concluding with a consideration of its contribution to our knowledge of Greek political thought after Plato.
Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede analysed the Seventh Letter as an inauthentic, later response to its alleged author/narrator, that none the less displays interesting literary features as a work of response.Footnote 1 Although Burnyeat suggested that the Eighth Letter is a lesser literary achievement and of less interest (‘I regard VIII as the work of a different, later and less interesting author’), the political theory of the letters is not his focus. The Eighth Letter, however, dependent as it is on the Seventh Letter, can also be treated as a document that illustrates the reception and adaptation of Platonic thought within a Hellenistic context, engages more explicitly with the political, and alludes to the literary style and method of Plato and of other authors.Footnote 2 Burnyeat also noted the tragic structure of the narrative of the Seventh Letter, and I will argue that the Eighth Letter adopts the use of tragic devices to establish a link with Plato's texts, particularly to Book 3 of the Laws.Footnote 3
This paper argues against attempts to fix the letter's composition date close to Plato's own time, and therefore to use it as evidence for the details of Sicilian history as well as Plato's supposed involvement in events, an approach typified by Glenn Morrow's counter-rejection of philologists’ earlier rejection of the letters, of which he writes: ‘the orthodox position at present is … to accept such relatively unimpeachable documents as the Seventh and Eighth Epistles as authentic writings of Plato’.Footnote 4 Morrow further argues that better stylometric analysis and a more favourable response to the Laws drive this change of position. A more nuanced version of this approach brackets the question of authenticity of authorship while accepting authenticity of context, proposing that the letters’ authors might be close associates of Plato, or members of the early Academy, and thus closely reflect Plato's own thinking.Footnote 5 But both of these approaches sharpen the problems of the letter's historical details, leading previous commentators to pay more attention to them than to the author's interesting engagement with Plato's political thought, particularly mixed constitution theory and his literary style. Scholars have expressed concern over the author's poor grasp of Syracusan history, as represented both in the initial scene-setting (353a–b) and in the subsequent proposals for political change.Footnote 6 These difficulties ‘cannot be explained away’, as Ludwig Edelstein noted, although Gerhard Aalders works hard to explain the letter's ‘seeming discrepancies from historical truth’.Footnote 7
The Platonic letters as a collection came under substantial suspicion of inauthenticity from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, but early twentieth-century responses to the philology of the previous century reasserted the authenticity of some of the letters, especially the Seventh and the Eighth, while puzzling over these difficulties.Footnote 8 While Antonio Maddalena and Edelstein argued against the letter's authenticity, Wilamowitz, Aalders and Morrow reasserted its authenticity.Footnote 9 However, in emphasizing the literary nature of the letters, Myles Burnyeat has made a persuasive case for the Hellenistic character and late composition date of the Seventh Letter; I extend this approach to the Eighth Letter.
The letter is both more interesting and more explicable when read as a later creative response to Plato's political thought, an adaptation of his thought that acknowledges the political situation of the Hellenistic polis in relation to monarchy, and offers a literary response to Plato's depiction of the problems of monarchy through tragic allusion, rather than as a problematic but self-penned appendix to his major works. This can account for the difficulties of the text's historical account with much less special pleading than the case for authenticity requires, given the greater separation between text and events and the possibility of later invention that a later composition date offers. A later composition date, such as those suggested by Adam and Edelstein, also helps to explain the literary features of the letter, its use of rhetorical devices and allusion to other Platonic works.Footnote 10
Whether the author intended to produce a serious work of political thought, or is using political ideas for literary effect as part of his process of imitation, the letter provides some insight into the post-Platonic development of mixed constitution theories in the Hellenistic world. It adapts Plato's ideas by taking different aspects of a mixed constitution, in part based on those explored in the Laws, and combining them into a single idealized mixed constitution, which includes a limited monarchy, in the unusual form of a triple kingship. It also imitates Plato by exploiting and developing his use of allusion to Greek tragedy (a particular feature of Laws Book 3), by presenting the murdered Syracusan leader Dion as a version of the ghostly adviser, like the Darius of Aeschylus’ Persae.
The letter's intricate dependence on the Laws and the Seventh Letter suggests that the letter, as a derivative work, was written by a reader of Plato rather than by Plato himself.Footnote 11 The rhetorical quality of the letter has been identified as grounds for suspicion, but its sophisticated use of allusion, in importing a great deal of Platonic phrasing and vocabulary, has tended to persuade readers towards accepting the letter as genuine.Footnote 12 Its use of elements of the political thought of the Laws has been documented, and often cited in support of claims of authenticity, but rarely challenged for its cherry-picking of details and for its conflation of disparate ideas and arguments from that work. But the letter also shows connections with Isocrates’ political thought—notably ideas of federalism and Panhellenism as a response to external political threat—as well as with the Sicilian context of Isocrates’ first letter.Footnote 13 Isocrates was also interested in the idea of Greek cities uniting against barbarian foes, and campaigns against external enemies as a driver for his Panhellenist project. In its lack of detail and in its abstraction, the letter's proposed constitution for Syracuse/Sicily points to the mapping of a similar project on to Sicily, with the external opponents (the Phoenicians and the Opicians, Ep. 8, 353e4) standing in for the Persians as a threat to Greek well-being and culture. But its brevity and lack of precision on constitutional details—as Aalders notes, it offers a ‘kurzen Skizze’ rather than a detailed account—make it difficult to position the letter precisely within the development of mixed constitution theory, or within Athenian political debates.Footnote 14 Instead, these features strengthen the view that the letter is primarily a literary homage, albeit one that provides evidence for developments in political thought from a period with little surviving literary evidence.
In its scale, the Eighth Letter sits between the long Seventh Letter (six Stephanus pages compared with the latter's 28) and shorter letters that serve as documents to authenticate encounters and events.Footnote 15 Ancient epistolary theorists criticized these letters for excessive length, and for resembling treatises (συγγράμματα, Demetr. Eloc. 228) rather than letters. The letter sets out the narrator's response to the developing political situation in Syracuse, and proposes a course of action for the supporters of Dion, bereft of leadership after his assassination, which would produce stable government in Syracuse under a coalition monarchy restrained within a mixed constitution, in which a council of law-guardians is the dominant political and judicial institution.
THE SICILIAN MISE-EN-SCÈNE AND ITS HISTORICAL PROBLEMS
As earlier scholars have noted, one of the first challenges offered by the Eighth Letter is the inaccuracy of its historical setting in Syracuse's turbulent politics, introduced in the letter's opening section as part of a conventional rhetorical structure. Plato, the author/narrator, first indicates the triple audience for the letter, addressed (like the Seventh Letter) to the supporters of Dion; these are the supporters themselves, the Syracusans, and all those hostile to the supporters (352b4–c3). After this brief and formal introductory paragraph, the Eighth Letter begins with an introductory summary of the present situation in Sicily (352c–353b), a statement of the situation that, as a narratio, conforms to rhetorical practice but seems alien to Plato's usual methodology and to the less fixed conventions of the letter.Footnote 16
After summarizing the political situation in Syracuse, the author suggests the need to reflect on and respond to these events (353b–e), and relates this to broader concerns about political change (354be) and the threat to Sicily's Hellenic identity from stasis opening up the island to Phoenician and Italian invaders (353e). Morrow links this to Dionysius I's destruction and repopulation of cities such as Catana.Footnote 17
The identification of a threat to Hellenic identity from faction in Sicily has a historical basis, given the propensity of Dionysius I and others to use mercenaries to resettle and to unsettle the delicate balance of Sicily's geopolitics to further their own interests. However, the appeal here is similar to Isocratean entreaties to Panhellenism, regular features of Isocratean rhetoric in works such as the Panegyricus, To Philip and Panathenaicus.Footnote 18 These thoughts will be repeated at the climax of Dion's speech at the end of the letter (357c1–4).
The letter's proposals constitute a political compromise, suggesting a power-sharing arrangement between the remaining factions in Syracuse in the form of a triple monarchy (355e5–356a2). If the letter was written at the date implied by its setting (usually assessed as being around 353–352 b.c.e.), its author would have known of the prior death of Dion's adult son, the most plausible candidate to be the third of the candidate kings proposed for the triple monarchy, alongside Dionysius II and Hipparinus, son of Dionysius I; a further, possibly posthumous son, an infant at this date, cannot be identified as a plausible candidate for kingship.Footnote 19 The political solution for the government of Syracuse and Sicily suggested by the narrator is therefore difficult to reconcile with the historical situation to which the letter is purportedly addressed.Footnote 20
Other events included in this part of the letter, such as the punishment of the ten Syracusan generals suspected of plans for tyranny or oligarchy (354d7–e2), are retold without precise detail, or with details that do not correspond with other sources; other historians would have been likely to mention a dramatic event such as the stoning of the generals.Footnote 21 While Dušanić has argued both for Plato's interest in the practical politics of Sicily and for the presence of that interest in the Laws, this requires one to read the letters as preceding the theoretical work, rather than being derived from the theoretical work for application to a historical (or almost historical) situation.Footnote 22
THE ‘OLD ADVICE’ AND THE EXAMPLE OF SPARTA
With the scene established, the narrator goes on to assert his suggested remedy (φάρμακον, 353e6) for Syracuse's political ills in his own voice, introducing political ideas drawn from Plato's texts and the Seventh Letter. While the Greeks should seek a remedy ‘with all enthusiasm’ (πάσῃ προθυμίᾳ, 353e5), he will offer his old advice to both rulers and ruled in the tyrannical regime, speaking with ‘complete frankness’ (πάσῃ παρρησίᾳ, 354a2). In this way, the author presents himself as an adviser to tyrants.Footnote 23 He expands on this (Ep. 8, 354a3–b1):
λέγω γὰρ δὴ διαιτητοῦ τινα τρόπον διαλεγόμενος ὡς δυοῖν, τυραννεύσαντί τε καὶ τυραννευθέντι, ὡς ἑνὶ ἑκατέρῳ παλαιὰν ἐμὴν συμβουλήν⋅ καὶ νῦν δὲ ὅ γ᾽ ἐμὸς λόγος ἂν εἴη σύμβουλος τυράννῳ παντὶ φεύγειν μὲν τοὔνομα τε καὶ τοὖργον τοῦτο, εἰς βασιλείαν δέ, εἰ δυνατὸν εἴη, μεταβαλεῖν.
For I speak in the style of an arbitrator between two parties at law, the one a former tyrant, the other his former subject, and proffering to each of them my old advice. Now, as always, I advise the tyrant to shun his name and the reality it stands for, and to change his government to a kingship if he can.
If this is a reference to a specific previous statement, the source of this ‘old advice’ is most likely to be the advice given by ‘Plato’ in the Seventh Letter (334c3–d6).Footnote 24 That advice, however, is a set of moral precepts rather than a specific political programme, and a clearer allusion to it is made in the final part of the narrator's direct contribution to this letter, the exhortation to moderation (354e3–355a1).Footnote 25 In the Seventh Letter, the advice is followed unsuccessfully in the narrative, as Plato's second visit to Sicily reveals that Dionysius has little philosophical ability, and Plato himself is threatened.
However, when the Laws’ Athenian Stranger refers to a palaios logos or a palaios muthos, he usually means a foundation myth such as that offered at Leg. 4.713c–714a, to which he ascribes a high value. In using this language to describe a piece of advice, the author perhaps hopes to add authority to it, as well as to link the composition back to the Seventh Letter.Footnote 26 Outside that work, such specific advice is absent from Plato's political theory. Aristotle argues that Plato has no advice to give on constitutional change within or from tyranny (Arist. Pol. 1316a25–9), because the only possible change would be back to an ideal constitution at the start of the cycle. He also notes that monarchy was absent from the Laws (Pol. 1266a5).
The specific advice of this Letter requires the transformation of the constitutional status of the ruler (μεταβαλεῖν, Ep. 8, 354b1) from that of tyrant to king. The transformation of the Spartan constitution under Lycurgus is offered as proof that such a policy is possible (δυνατὸν δέ, ὡς ἔδειξεν ἔργῳ σοφὸς ἀνὴρ καὶ ἀγαθὸς Λυκοῦργος, 354b1–2). The account of the different political fates of the members of the Dorian League resembles the account of the League's failure in Laws Book 3 (Pl. Leg. 3.683a–b, 690d–693c).Footnote 27 However, even on the loosest reading of Laws Book 3, this account does not describe a transformation from tyranny to kingship but the successful implementation of a project for the avoidance of tyranny and destructive political excess; the mechanism through which this is achieved, the division of kingship, will play a significant role in this letter's argument. The only positive mention of tyrants as a starting point for positive political change in the Laws is the alternative project, suggested by the Athenian Stranger, that requires a kosmios turannos (4.710d7) to work with a lawgiver to establish a new society (4.709a–712a), but it is not one in which the turannos will have a continuing constitutional role as king.Footnote 28
Lycurgus of Sparta is offered as an exemplar for his reforms that prevented Sparta from suffering the same failure as the other cities of the Dorian League, Messene and Argos (354b1–c2), although the short account of his introduction of the gerousia and the ephors here does not match that of the Laws (Pl. Leg. 3.691d8–692c7), where the origin of the dual Spartan kingship is firmly attributed to a god, and unnamed reformers (of which Lycurgus is probably the first) introduce the two other reforms.Footnote 29
The historical exemplars explored in Laws Book 3 are not included to provide the basis of political reform; the Athenian Stranger goes on to clarify that historical examples are not to be favoured over myths, such as that he tells of divine rule in the Golden Age (4.713c2–714b1). The mechanisms through which Sparta avoided the excesses of monarchy seen in the Dorian League and in Persia, especially the establishment of the council, are later echoed in the make-up of the councils within the ideal constitution of Magnesia itself, but because Magnesia will not be a monarchy and there are no kings among its founding settlers (4.707e–708e), the role of its councils is not to check monarchical power.
The advice offered by the Letter's ‘Plato’ in propria persona is therefore at odds with the detail of Platonic political thought in the Laws and the broader tenor of Plato's political ethics and eschatology, in which tyranny is the final and worst form of constitution.Footnote 30 The Phaedo's myth of punishment in the underworld suggests that tyrannical souls cannot be improved by reincarnation (Phd. 113d1–114c9); the Gorgias also suggests that the ugly and damaged souls of tyrants can serve only as warnings (Grg. 524d–526b).
The purpose of offering this old advice is to avoid the risk of destruction by the dangerous cycle of political change (353d5–e2):
καὶ πέρας οὐδέν ποτε τελεῖται, συνάπτει δὲ ἀεὶ παλαιὰ τελευτὴ δοκοῦσα ἀρχῇ φυομένῃ νέᾳ, διολέσθαι δ’ ὑπὸ τοῦ κύκλου τούτου κινδυνεύσει καὶ τὸ τυραννικὸν ἅπαν καὶ τὸ δημοτικὸν γένος, …
The limit is never reached: but what seems to be the end of an old difficulty always involves the beginning of a new one, and in this endless round there is danger that both the tyrannical party and the democratic party will be completely destroyed …
While commentators have applied this reference to the specific changes in tyranny, oligarchy and democracy in Syracuse in the turbulent late fifth and fourth centuries b.c.e., the author does not do so. Rather, the reference is to wider discussion of the problem of avoiding political decline, from good constitution to bad (such as aristocracy to oligarchy), or from one bad constitutional form to another (from democracy to tyranny), a central concern of Greek political thought.Footnote 31
A more developed and abstract interest in cyclical constitutional change (anacyclōsis) and its prevention through the adoption of a mixed constitution are a feature of Greek political thought after Plato, developing in response to Plato's Laws and Aristotle's Politics. It finds its fullest expression in Polybius’ account of constitutional changes in his Histories Book 6, in which the inevitable process of cyclical change can be halted by the adoption of a mixed constitution.Footnote 32 The Sicilian, and especially Syracusan, example had long been, for Greek writers, a helpful one in which to explore worries about political instability and change. Thus the changeability of Sicilian politics had become an established topos of Greek historiography; Thucydides, for example, has Alcibiades note the propensity of the ‘mixed crowds’ (ὄχλοις ξυμμείκτοις, Thuc. 6.17.2) of Sicilian cities to accept changes to their citizen body, and identify it as a source of weakness. In this letter, if both parties in the Sicilian dispute keep to the middle ground (μέσον τεμεῖν, 355d2), they will be able to defend themselves against external threat.
The idea that moderation is a safeguard against dangerous extremes is a conventional one in Greek thought. Plato also notes this in his account of heroic-age monarchies in Laws Book 3 (Leg. 3.691c–693c), as well as Athenian democracy and its abandonment of its original commitment to moderation (3.698b1–2) after the Persian Wars.Footnote 33
The account of political change in the Laws points to mythical examples known to Athenians as much from tragedy as from history, particularly the Heraclid kings of the Dorian League.Footnote 34 These kings resemble the model of kingship that the Eighth Letter proposes; the three kings proposed are like the Spartan kings, with their political role restricted by the checks and balances of the Spartan constitution.Footnote 35 They also resemble the ‘democratic kings’ of tragedy, the constitutionally or self-restrained rulers of Athens and Argos, Theseus and Pelasgos, who hold back from dominating their cities while exemplifying virtue in their acceptance of suppliants.Footnote 36 Theseus in Euripides’ Suppliant Women makes a clear appeal to the virtues of moderation, identifying the ‘middle’ citizens as the ones who save the city by preserving order (Eur. Supp. 244–5).
Like these letters, Laws Book 3 has been read more as a historiographical account to be analysed for its historicity and its relationship to historical sources than as an exemplary account to be analysed for literary allusion to genres beyond the histories of Thucydides and others.Footnote 37 Plato selects topics and episodes for Laws Book 3 on the basis of exemplarity and formal concerns, a process imitated by the author of the Eighth Letter. However, several episodes within the structure of Laws Book 3, including the accounts of the aftermath of the Trojan War (3.682de) and the foundation and unravelling of the Dorian League (3.682e–686c; 691b–693a), as well, perhaps, as the Persian Wars themselves (3.699a–d), point to tragic sources as well as historiographical or mythographical ones.Footnote 38
Here it is the behaviour of the immoderate luxury-loving Syracusans that provides a negative exemplar, through their illegal execution of the ten generals (354d5–e3) which in turn provoked the return of tyranny under Dionysius and Hipparinus. ‘Plato’ concludes his analysis with a series of paradoxical sententiae, identifying moderation as complete good, in contrast to the complete bad exemplified by the excess of slavery and freedom, then clarifying that moderation is slavery to god, while lack of moderation is slavery to men (354e3–355a1):
δουλεία γὰρ καὶ ἐλευθερία ὑπερβάλλουσα μὲν ἑκατέρα πάγκακον, ἔμμετρος δὲ οὖσα πανάγαθον⋅ μετρία δὲ ἡ θεῷ δουλεία, ἄμετρος δὲ ἡ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις⋅ θεὸς δὲ ἀνθρώποις σώφροσιν νόμος, ἄφροσιν δὲ ἡδονή.
Both servitude in excess and liberty in excess are very great evils, but in due measure both are great goods. Due measure is found in servitude to god, the absence of measure in servitude to men. And the god of wise men is the law; of foolish men, pleasure.
This conclusion may affirm the abstract nature of the preceding discussion. It echoes the Seventh Letter's advice, which also discusses the rule of law as the alternative to despotism (334c5–6), and expresses it in terms of slavery (δουλοῦσθαι, 334c6; ἀνδραποδώδη, 335b8). As Morrow observes, ‘the sovereignty of law is the most fundamental of all the political doctrines of the Epistles’.Footnote 39 It is also reminiscent of the analysis of moderation in Laws Book 3, particularly the account of political mixture in the rule of Cyrus the Great (Pl. Leg. 3.694a3–b6), which emphasizes the balance between slavery and freedom achieved by the Persians under Cyrus (ὅτε μὲν τὸ μέτριον μᾶλλον δουλείας τε καὶ ἐλευθερίας ἦγον ἐπὶ Κύρου, 3.694a3–4), who are free themselves but masters over others.
The opening sections of the letter, although they appear on the surface to limit the scope of the author's advice to a precise and specific situation in Syracuse, therefore present a much broader exploration of the application of Plato's ideas to a new historical context, of the moderation of constitutional monarchy within the context of a mixed constitution, and of the defence for Plato against accusations of supporting tyranny.Footnote 40 They draw on an existing Athenian discourse of political moderation under the law, documented in fifth-century tragedies as well as in Plato's responses to them. But they do so in a highly patterned way, reshaping Syracusan history to fit the model of luxury and tyranny, excess and control, that can be expressed as a summary sententia. The closure of the introductory section of the letter, effectively a short peroration, sets up its second part, in which further literary devices and literary allusion will develop its imitation of Plato.
LITERARY ALLUSION AND PLATONIC POLITICAL THOUGHT
The literary strategies adopted in the body and the later parts of the Eighth Letter, in which the narrator introduces Dion and then uses prosopopoeia to provide a lengthy speech in his voice, are perhaps its most successful imitation of Plato's style. This section examines how the author uses this literary device to imitate Plato's literary practice. The author has already picked up both specific terminology used by Plato in the Laws and literary allusions within the narrative of Laws Book 3, as well as those used by the Seventh Letter. This careful use of literary devices Plato employs, and reference both to Plato's texts themselves and to the kinds of texts to which he alludes, contrast with the letter's ‘sketchy’ description of political institutions and events.Footnote 41 This fits the suggestion that the letter is a literary or rhetorical project, written as an exercise rather than as a serious analysis of a specific political situation in Sicily or an attempt to theorize a response to it or to the broader political concerns of the Hellenistic world.
The introduction of the speech (355a1–6) explains how the narrator intends to offer the views of the now-dead Dion, and the problems in doing so; although this is an imaginative conjuring of the dead man through prosopopoeia, rather than a formal act of necromancy, some of the language used suggests the underworld and the weakness of the dead. Political advice from a dead leader takes on a special status in Greek tragedy; Aeschylus presents arguments for avoiding excessive monarchical power through the ghost of Darius, who makes a dramatic return from the underworld when ritually summoned by the chorus (Aesch. Pers. 634–80).Footnote 42 The re-presentation of arguments made earlier in the letter through the prosopopoeia of the assassinated would-be philosopher king Dion endows them with the epistemic authority of the other world. Given the function of Darius’ warnings in the Persae, and the role of Dion's advice in the Eighth Letter, it is possible that the author finds a model for the latter in the former.
The ontological status of Aeschylus’ Darius has often been considered in terms of claims to divinity by Persian kings, as they were understood by Greeks at least; Oliver Taplin has suggested that the hymnic elements of the choral odes that greet Darius suggest that he is presented as a godlike figure, and that Darius’ own description of his arrival, ἐνδυναστεύσας ἐγὼ | ἥκω (‘After exercising power, I have come’, Pers. 691–2) combines monarchical and godlike elements.Footnote 43 The superior epistemic status of the living monarch, distinct from that of his subjects, is also a central tenet of ancient monarchical thought, examined by Herodotus in respect of the Persian kings.Footnote 44 The idea that those in the underworld have a different epistemic status from the living is also a feature both of Plato's eschatology and of his theory of recollection.Footnote 45
‘Plato’ says that he will interpret ‘what Dion would say to us now, if he drew breath and had the capacity’ (ἐγὼ δὲ ἑρμηνεύσω ἃν ἐκεῖνος ἔμπνους ὢν καὶ δυνάμενος εἶπεν νῦν πρὸς ὑμᾶς, 355a3–5). The dead are often represented in Greek literature as weak and incapable of normal speech; the dead encountered by Odysseus are weak and non-persistent (νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα, Ηom. Od. 10.521); indeed, one modern definition of prosopopoeia is that it represents ‘an imaginary, dead, or absent person as alive and capable of speech and hearing’.Footnote 46 The dead may squeak like bats, rather than speak with a human voice.Footnote 47 The verb ἑρμηνεύω may introduce further resonances of the underworld; Plato uses it to describe the process of interpretation or transmission, as information passes to the rhapsode Ion from the poet, and to the poet from god (Pl. Ion 535a), as well as describing the qualities required of the nomophulakes in relation to the laws of Magnesia (καὶ λόγῳ τε ἱκανοὺς ἑρμηνεύειν εἶναι καὶ τοῖς ἔργοις συνακολουθεῖν, Pl. Leg. 12.966b6–7).Footnote 48 However, in later contexts, ἑρμηνεύω can simply mean ‘describe’.Footnote 49
The extended prosopopoeia of Dion replays and expands the ideas of the first half of the letter, and evokes other Platonic texts. It recalls Platonic political philosophy by combining two political ideas developed separately in the Laws, the restraint of monarchical power through the division of kingly authority (as seen in Sparta, Book 3) and the adoption of the mixed constitution as a device for ensuring moderation (as planned for Magnesia, Books 5–12). The brief evocation of Plato's classificatory structures parallels the longer epistemological digression of the Seventh Letter, and serves a similar rhetorical function within its host text, asserting its relationship to Plato's philosophy, without extensive engagement with or contribution to that philosophy.
The narrator's performance of prosopopoeia can be paralleled with the author's performance; Plato's imitation of Dion, in the second part of the letter, echoes the author's imitation of Plato in the first part, and follows Plato's use of the device. In the Crito, the Laws of Athens voice the arguments they would have presented to Socrates if he had tried to leave Athens, responding to the arguments made by Crito in the first part of the dialogue (Pl. Cri. 50a6–54d2).Footnote 50 While these Athenian Laws themselves are not fully characterized, beyond their rather oligarchic views on law and obedience, they appeal to their brothers, the Laws of Hades (54c2–d1), creating an otherworldly link presented in a ‘minatory’ tone.Footnote 51
The Menexenus includes Socrates’ performance of Aspasia's funeral speech (236d4–249c8), which in turn embeds Aspasia's prosopopoeia of the Athenian war dead (246d1–248d6), another use of the device to evoke the dead. Rudolf Adam pointed out similarities between the introduction of Dion's speech in the Eighth Letter and Aspasia's introduction of the voices of the dead Athenians within the Menexenus, in that dialogue's transition from historical summary to advice for the future (Menex. 246b6–7).Footnote 52 This transition within the Menexenus is imitated by the transition to prosopopoeia within the Eighth Letter, with the author's switch from writing in propria persona to the voiced Dion. The mysterious temporality of the Menexenus, with its dramatic date post-dating the death of the historical Socrates, and possibly also the death of Aspasia, provides a further instance of the prosopopoeia of the dead as a means of generating authority.Footnote 53 In the Theaetetus, Socrates’ prosopopoeia of Protagoras introduces arguments represented as his, used to begin the discussion with arguments from the past (Tht. 158e–168c).
Representing the dead was a standard use of prosopopoeia in classical rhetoric, occasionally referred to as eidolopoeia. As a standard exercise in Hellenistic and Roman rhetorical education, it was identified by Quintilian as the ‘most difficult’ (mihi difficillimae uidentur prosopopoeiae, Quint. Inst. 3.8.49).Footnote 54 However, this extended instance of the device also connects the Eighth Letter to other Greek representations of authority through monarchical and parental figures, notably the appearance of the ghost of Darius in Aeschylus’ Persae and his subsequent delivery of a political warning to the Persians.Footnote 55 Both Dion in the Eighth Letter and Darius in the Persae represent similar political positions, arguing for restraint and moderation by young monarchs in the face of political excess and crisis, as well as being father to an addressee of their speeches (the son of Dion, and Xerxes respectively).Footnote 56
The narrator also presents the dead Dion as a Socratic figure (as the use of a literary device that also appears in the Crito might suggest) through further allusion to Socrates; in Plato's Apology he asserts his determination to continue practising philosophy and advising as long as he ‘draws breath and is able’ (ἕωσπερ ἂν ἐμπνέω καὶ οἷός τε ὦ, οὐ μὴ παύσωμαι φιλοσοφῶν καὶ ὑμῖν παρακελευόμενος, Pl. Ap. 29d4–5).
Later, Dion himself parallels what he now says and what he previously advised while he was still alive (ταῦθ᾽ὑμῖν ἐγὼ καὶ ζῶν διενοήθην γίγνεσθαι καὶ νῦν διανοοῦμαι, 357a2–3). This provides a link to the Seventh Letter and to the advice presented by Plato and Dion there. But it also reaffirms that here Dion is presented as a ghost, parallel to the Persae's ghostly Darius.Footnote 57 This will be strengthened by a further allusion to Aeschylus’ Eumenides later in the letter, in the metaphorical description of guest-friend Furies (ξενικαὶ ἐρινύες, 357a4) who prevented Dion from carrying out his plans for Sicily during his life. The reference is usually interpreted as simply describing his assassins, who were taking vengeance for the earlier murder of Heraclides; but the use of this tragic imagery further presents Sicilian politics as an Aeschylean tragedy.Footnote 58
In presenting the dead Dion as a figure of fatherly authority, the letter invokes a specific type of authority, one noted in the Laws (Pl. Leg. 3.690a3–4) as the first form of authority, although one subject to challenge if used wrongly (as by Theseus against Hippolytus, Leg. 3.687d10–e4). This connection between Dion and paternal authority may explain the historical problem of why the son of Dion is, later in the letter, identified as one of the three kings proposed for the new Sicilian regime, alongside the more obvious candidates Dionysius and Hipparinus.Footnote 59 Victoria Wohl notes the importance of intellectual paternity as a theme throughout the Platonic Epistles, but focusses on the imagined relationship of Socrates and Plato as characters, and the problem of the paternity of ideas.Footnote 60 There is also the example of the parental status of speaking ghosts in Aeschylean tragedy. As well as the father-son pair Darius and Xerxes, there are Clytemnestra and Orestes (Aesch. Eum. 94–139).Footnote 61
A more compelling literary reason to include a son of Dion in the proposed group of kings is this father-son context of political advice, which provides a compelling justification for the inclusion of Dion's son among the three kings proposed for Syracuse. Just as the ghost of Darius in the Persae criticizes the activities of Xerxes and provides suggestions for moderation, the ghost of Dion may provide advice for his son to use. The son is conjured up by the literary parallel rather than by historical circumstance; he is not a named historical person. This dissolves the problem that Dion's ghost appears unaware of the death of his adult son.
Rather than treat the father-son relationship in the Eighth Letter as a historical problem, the thematic importance of paternity in the letters suggests that it is a literary theme, and that the author has disregarded the problems of historicity that emphasizing Dion's role as a father causes.
THE GHOSTLY VOICE OF MODERATION
The content of Dion's speech in the letter repeats and develops the themes introduced in the first section, and develops allusions to Plato's philosophy, to connections between the Seventh and the Eighth Letters and, in its invocation of father-son advice, Aeschylean tragedy. This section looks more closely at the specific advice given by Dion in his speech. Although Dion was not a king, he is treated as a possible philosopher king in the mythologised account of the Seventh Letter, and the advice he offers in the Eighth Letter reflects this.Footnote 62 The advice of a moderate older leader to a dangerous and possibly excessive younger leader echoes both Aeschylus’ Persae and the relationship between age and youth that underlies the Laws (as at 4.715d8–e1; νέος μὲν … γέρων δέ). The link between rash political behaviour and youth is well established in Greek political thought, as with the contrast between Nicias and the youthful Alcibiades in the Sicilian Expedition debate (Thuc. 6.12.2–13.1), and in Athenagoras’ identification of young oligarchs seeking revolution in the subsequent debate at Syracuse (ὦ νεώτεροι, 6.38.5). In the Persae, Darius criticizes Xerxes for acting with rash boldness (θράσει, 744, 831); this quality is blamed on his youth (νέῳ θρασέι, 744; Ξέρξης δ᾽ ἐμὸς παῖς νέος ἐὼν νέα φρονεῖ, 782) as well as on a failure to heed his father's messages (τὰς ἐμὰς ἐπιστολάς, 745).Footnote 63
The triple classification of goods (355a–c)
The ghostly ‘Dion’ begins his speech with a philosophical appeal, establishing his credentials as a Platonic voice by uttering ideas familiar from the Platonic corpus. This follows on the sententiae issued by Plato at the close of the letter's first section. The language used here alludes to both Plato's Laws and Aeschylus’ Persae.
The emphasis placed on the worth of the soul further establishes the non-corporeal status of this non-living speaker. Dion begins by asserting that the Syracusans should turn away from wealth (355a8–b2), followed by a brief review of the classification of goods (355b2–b6), in support of the claim that excellence of soul should receive greater honour than material wealth. Goods should be divided into three classes: soul, body and material goods (355b2–3), and they should be honoured in that order, with the honour of the final set of goods (τὴν τῶν χρημάτων τιμήν) serving as the slave of (δουλεύουσαν) the other two. This categorization closely matches the Laws’ discussion of wealth and the valuation of goods in the analysis of Persia and the failure of its monarchy (Leg. 3.697b2–6), further linking the portrayal of Dion to that of Persian monarchy.Footnote 64
Aeschylus’ Darius acknowledges that he has amassed great wealth in his campaigns, and is concerned that it is about to be squandered through Xerxes’ failure (Aesch. Pers. 749–52; cf. 163–4). He argues that Xerxes has behaved excessively in seeking more, in his hubristic attempts to alter nature and conquer further territory. The possessions of the Persian kings are at risk through Xerxes’ actions, which have set him against the gods; it is better to accept one's present fortune rather than destroy what one has through the lust for further acquisition (824–6).
Plato in the Laws identifies the incorrect ranking of goods, and particularly enslavement to wealth and the acquisition of material goods, as the cause of disorder in monarchical regimes, from Xerxes’ Persia to (ancient) Argos and Messene to the Sicilian cities. However, this view is also a conventional one, identified by Aristotle as one agreed by all lovers of wisdom (Arist. Eth. Nic. 1098b12–18). The role of age in enabling correct judgement of these goods links the discussion in the Laws more closely with that of the Eighth Letter, and also with the analysis of Xerxes’ youthful excess given by Darius in the Persae.Footnote 65
‘Dion’ asserts that it is law rather than wealth that brings happiness, and that following his advice will demonstrate this (355c3–7). In arguing that this truth can be accessed through experience (ἔργῳ γνώσεσθε, 355c7), and that events provide the ‘truest test’ (βάσανος ἀληθεστάτη, 355c7), ‘Dion’ appears to allude to the Laws, in which the laws are the touchstone of all things (τούτων πάντων … βάσανος, 12.957d4).Footnote 66
The dilution of monarchical power through triple kingship (355c–356c)
With his credentials as an elder statesman, political adviser and Platonic thinker established, Dion turns to offering advice on avoiding the problems of monarchy. How should Sicily avoid the excessive build-up of monarchical power that results in destructive tyranny? Laws Book 3 again provides an answer, although the letter puts a model drawn from there to creative use.Footnote 67 The narrative of Laws Book 3 is far from purely historical, drawing on non-historical sources, including Aeschylean and Euripidean tragedies, that retell a series of foundation myths for the origins of the Spartan constitution as a model mixed constitution.Footnote 68
The first part of the argument is that a group kingship will provide a first line of defence against tyranny (355c8–356c7), reopening the historical question of the identity of the son of Dion. A further motivation for the suggestion of triple leadership might be the three Dorian tribes, into which Syracusan citizens were divided; Thucydides recounts the reduction of the number of Syracusan generals to one per tribe at the behest of Hermocrates (Thuc. 6.72–73.1).
The benefits of the proposed regime will affect the two parties differently (355d8–e4); one party will feel more freedom with kingly rule (τοῖς μὲν ἐλευθερία γιγνέσθω μετὰ βασιλικῆς ἀρχῆς, d8–e1), the other will enjoy a monarchy subject to constitutional checks and safeguards (τοῖς δὲ ἀρχὴ ὑπεύθυνος βασιλική, e1–2). The introduction of scrutiny to curtail the powers of monarchy is a political step that establishes the form of rule as a constitutional monarchy rather than as an unrestricted tyranny.Footnote 69
The concern with the scrutiny of monarchy is a theme that first appears in Aeschylus’ Persae, as the chorus and the queen establish the political differences between monarchical Persia and democratic Athens. Scrutiny differentiates kingship from tyranny. The Persian queen is confident that her defeated son can retain control of Persia because he is not subject to scrutiny by the city (οὐχ ὑπεύθυνος πόλει, Aesch. Pers. 215); successful or otherwise, he still rules the land (213–16).
The idea that there can be freedom under a Persian-style king (Ep. 8, 355d8) is alien to Aeschylus’ thought, as expressed in the Persae, although tragedies written for performance in Sicily, or even the version of the Persae performed there, may have addressed this non-democratic perspective.Footnote 70 However, the constitutional monarchy of Argos in his Suppliant Women may provide an exemplar of the possibility of limited kingship; Pelasgos emphasizes that he does not have sole rule and must consult the people so that the city, rather than he alone, can accept the Danaids as suppliants and offer them sanctuary (Aesch. Supp. 365–9; he confirms the vote of the popular majority at 604).
The Laws provides an instance of Plato using the same vocabulary of scrutiny (euthuna) to discuss the problems of monarchy. The lesson of the story of the Dorian League, the Athenian Stranger claims, is that no mortal soul can bear the greatest rule while it is young and free from scrutiny (νέα καὶ ἀνυπεύθυνος, 3.691c7–d1).Footnote 71 Here Plato may also be thinking of Xerxes, about to be introduced as the ultimate example of monarchy in its most extreme form, the form from which Sparta's constitutional reformers saved it; as noted above, the youthful daring of Xerxes is used by Aeschylus’ Darius to establish the contrast between elder statesman and reckless youth. Later in the Laws, the scrutiny of officials in Magnesia and the special qualities required by the official in charge of scrutiny are also discussed in detail (12.945b–948b). The quality of scrutiny is fundamental to the achievement of stability of the whole system, and the detailed arrangements for the scrutiny of the various officials and the auditors themselves are much more detailed than the version here.
Kingship, in this letter, will be achieved by converting existing tyrannical figures into kings. The idea that tyrants could be converted into kings (as well as the more obvious journey from kingship to tyranny) was explored by other fourth-century theorists, notably Xenophon in his Hiero.Footnote 72 Evagoras, ruler of Salamis on Cyprus, and praised by Isocrates, is seen as both tyrant and king; Isocrates praises him for transforming his rule into a kingship and for the continuing royal status of his children (Isoc. Evagoras 71–2).Footnote 73 Such a transformation is a feature of the kingship theories of Xenophon and Isocrates, and is opposed by Plato in the Statesman and the Laws, where such rule is a feature of previous epochs separate from the current historical period.Footnote 74
For Plato, the kosmios turannos of the Laws does not become king, but is expected to step aside once the new laws framed by the tyrant and the lawgiver are in place. Here in the Eighth Letter, the persistence of the monarchical layer over the polis framework may suggest a later context, in which such accommodations were familiar, or a writer who is more attuned to the Isocratean model.
Political and administrative institutions (356b–357a)
The ghostly Dion goes on to describe the institutions proposed for the new kingdom (356c–357a). These lack many of the details of institutions and political process given in equivalent sections of the Laws. Reading the letter as a literary confection rather than as a work of political thought explains this, but also creates questions about how much the letter can tell us about Hellenistic developments in mixed constitution theory. The possibility remains that the complex system devised is the accidental result of the conflation of constitutional systems presented in two parts of the Laws, rather than a carefully designed contribution to the politeia tradition of constitutional design. The three kings are placed over the series of councils and magistracies that otherwise administer justice in the reformed Sicily (356c–357a).
The political proposals are presented as the long-term strategy supported by Dion during his life, although they draw on the accounts of the constitution of classical Sparta as well as on Plato's proposed constitution for Magnesia (especially the account of the council, Laws Book 12). Different parts of the Laws, the pseudo-historical survey of Book 3 and the proposal of laws for Magnesia in Books 5–12, are linked in this description, in a way that they are not in Plato's work.Footnote 75 There, the monarchy of the Dorian League is not envisaged as part of the political solution for Magnesia itself, and monarchy operates only as a transitional form of government as the rule of the laws is established, and even then only under the limited circumstances of the conjunction of a kosmios turannos and a philosophical lawgiver (Leg. 4.709–12).
In joining these two distinct politeiai from separate parts of the Laws, the author creates a mixed constitution more complex than any envisaged by Plato himself, but not beyond the scope of complex checks and balances that characterize other Hellenistic accounts of mixed constitutions (notably Polybius’ account of anacyclōsis and the Roman politeia).Footnote 76 Yet, it seems more probable that the different components presented separately in the Laws would be joined in a later work, than that they would be separated out if Plato already had an example in mind of them being used together.
Commentary on Dion's legal and political proposals has largely been restricted to noting the discrepancies of detail among the model in the Eighth Letter, the Laws and historical Sparta, particularly the changed number of law guardians who form the main administrative body (equivalent to the Laws’ nomophulakes, and perhaps Sparta's Gerousia).Footnote 77 But the most interesting feature is the way in which separate elements from the Laws are combined into a single model, even though the resulting hybrid is alien to Plato's own political thinking.
Morrow suggests that the make-up of the council of law-guardians proposed for Sicily is significantly more democratic than that proposed in the Laws, including ‘considerable concessions to the democratic project’.Footnote 78 In the Laws, however, the initial concern is to balance membership of the council between established citizens of Cnossus and the new settlers, although ensuring that the Cretans have a 19:18 majority at the outset (Pl. Leg. 6.752e–753a). One might expect in a more detailed account that some thought would be given to working out the balance of membership between the different Sicilian factions, but, in line with the general sketchiness of these constitutional proposals, the make-up of the letter's group of 35 is not clarified in terms of property qualification or current political affiliation.
Even this council is not sufficient to perform some juridical functions, and certain legal cases (those for which the punishment is death or exile, Ep. 8, 356d6–7) are to be tried by a further court, whose make-up is reminiscent of both the Athenian Areopagus and the Nocturnal Council of the Laws. This court is to include both the current nomophulakes and past magistrates of good standing, but explicitly excludes the kings from participation in judging these serious cases (Ep. 8, 356e3–4). In attempting to adhere to the programme of the non-monarchical Laws, the author of the Letter ends up excluding his powerful political players, who include a former tyrant, from any meaningful political role.
The political reform suggested in the Eighth Letter therefore combines the three kings, with their powers limited under the constitution and laws, with a multi-layered set of institutions including the nomophulakes, the assembly and the council. While much of this has a Spartan tinge, there is also an Athenian element. From the information given it is not possible to determine that there is a move towards democratic participation; the emphasis on the distinction of functions between magistrates and kings suggests that the writer's focus is on containing powerful individuals rather than on distributing power across the population as a whole.
CONCLUSION: THE MIXED CONSTITUTION IN THE LAWS AND THE EIGHTH LETTER
The Eighth Letter is dependent on Plato's thought and literary style, yet also departs from it. These changes create a set of political proposals for institutions that differ from those in the author's source texts. In taking constitutional ideas from different parts of the Laws, and using them to add further layers of mixture to the mixed constitution, the proposals offered in the Eighth Letter go beyond those made by Plato within the Laws and other texts. Many of these discrepancies have been noted by previous scholars, but not the implication that the proposals of the Eighth Letter have been assembled post hoc from the text of the Laws, rather than predating it.
Readers of the Eighth Letter who identify it as the work of Plato himself have used it to support their readings of other Platonic works, notably the Laws, and to draw connections between Syracusan politics and the theoretical analysis in Plato's later political works. They suggest that the letter's arguments can be read as Plato's own (albeit misguided) response to the situation in Sicily in the 350s b.c.e., and as an argument for Sicilian federalism at that point.Footnote 79
Others have suggested that its arguments fit later Sicilian political upheavals better than the period of Dionysius II, whether the consolidation of the struggling remnants of Greek Sicily under Timoleon or the resurgence of Syracusan power under Agathocles and then Hieron II just prior to Roman invasion.Footnote 80 While the letter, in these readings, tells us little about Plato himself, it does tell us how his works and reputation were used in Hellenistic political thought.
The Hellenistic analysis of the impact of monarchical power on the Greek polis provides a framework within which both the political concerns and the rhetoric of the Eighth Letter make sense. Situating the letter outside the Platonic corpus, and after the completion of the Laws, removes the need to invent a Plato writing in a literary style and confessional mode so alien to those of the dialogues. Conversely, the epistolary style and the use of imprecise biographical and historical information match those of the Isocratean letters, and of other letter series broadly accepted as pseudonymous.Footnote 81
The apparently practical orientation of Plato's introduction, and the speech attributed to Dion, may suggest that the author was keen to attempt to mesh theory with practice and show how a mixed constitution might operate within the framework of a monarchical polis. Identifying a precise context within which a Platonist political theorist might be motivated to explore these ideas is made difficult by the abundance of situations in the Hellenistic world where competing claimants to power sought to dominate cities with well-established citizen-led participatory political institutions, whether fully democratic or less so. However, the deep interest in tyranny exhibited in Isocratean political thought perhaps provides a context, temporally close to Plato.
The reading of the Eighth Letter above has shown how the letter's author sets ideas drawn from Plato's later political thought within an imperfectly realized historical Syracusan setting. The author matches literary devices used by Plato, notably in the prosopopoeia of Dion, which alludes to a range of arguments and details from Platonic texts. On this reading, the letter offers a solution to the Hellenistic political problem of balancing the mixed constitution in an unstable political context, a solution that provides the document with a use beyond the illumination of the life and thought of Plato. Even if it is a rhetorical exercise rather than a serious enquiry into political philosophy, it provides insights into arguments that were developed as Plato's political thought was reinterpreted for a changing political context, as well as the way in which his literary style provided a model for later writers.
