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Socrates’ Iolaos: Myth and Eristic in Plato's Euthydemus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Robin Jackson
Robin Jackson
Affiliation:
Ormond College, University of Melbourne
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Extract

The Euthydemus presents a brilliantly comic contrast between Socratic and sophistic argument. Socrates' encounter with the sophistic brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus exposes the hollowness of their claim to teach virtue, unmasking it as a predilection for verbal pugilism and the peddling of paradox. The dialogue's humour is pointed, for the brothers' fallacies are often reminiscent of substantial dilemmas explored seriously elsewhere in Plato, and the farce of their manipulation is in sharp contrast to the sobriety with which Socrates pursues his own protreptic questioning. But the strategies of this text are complex: the Euthydemus may be a playful satire of the desire to confound, yet beneath its knockabout humour a serious purpose is also visible.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , December 1990 , pp. 378 - 395
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1990

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References

1 All translations are my own. At 297dl the manuscripts read ‘if my Iolaos Patrocles should come’, but editors rightly delete Patrocles as a marginal gloss based on a misunderstanding of the reference to Socrates' Iolaos. The misunderstanding arises from the surrounding by-play over relations, one of whom is Socrates' nephew Patrocles (as Iolaos was Heracles' nephew), see 297e2ff.

2 ‘Socratic Irony’, CQ 37 (1987), 79–96, p. 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 E.g. Rp. 423c–e, Lch. 196d, and see Billings, G. H., The Art of Transition in Plato (New York, 1979)Google Scholar. Perhaps the closest parallel to our passage is Socrates' elaborate play on the ‘Gorgon head of Gorgias' eloquence’ between Agathon's speech and his elenchos (Smp. 198c).

4 Plato uses the Hydra head as an image of sophistic argument on several occasions. In the Republic, for example, those who attempt to serve ill-governed states by legislating against wrong-doing are deludedly attempting to chop up a Hydra (426e) (no further elaboration given). In the Sophist the multi-headed sophist (⋯ πολυκ⋯ϕαλοσ σοϕιστ⋯σ – no need now to name the Hydra) compels us to grant being to what is not (240c).

5 The Hydra myth was a popular subject in Greek art and literature, and early took on a uniform character: cf. Brommer, F., Heracles: The Twelve Labors of the Hero in Ancient Art and Literature (New York, 1986), pp. 12–18Google Scholar. Schoo, J., ‘Der Kampf mit dem Hydra’, Mnemosyne (1939), 281–317Google Scholar develops a philological case (Hydra/hydro-) that the Hydra's intractability is a form of slipperiness deriving from its watery origins. But for the Hydra's pre-Greek origins, see Burkert, W., Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (London, 1979), pp. 80ffGoogle Scholar.

6 The name of this monster (σοϕíστρια), which is female as usual for Greek mythical monsters, perhaps owes something to Aristophanes' συκοϕ⋯ντρια (Plut. 970). Heracles was a popular figure in Old Comedy and Socrates frequently refers to his exploits (cf. Phd. 99c, Euthd. 299c, Lch. 196e, Tht. 169bff., etc.); cf Loraux, N. ‘Socrate, Platon, Héracles: sur unparadigme héroique du philosophe’ in Brunschwig, J. et al. (edd.), Histoire et Structure: A la Mémoire V. Goldschmidt (Paris, 1985), 93–105Google Scholar. On the relation between the Euthydemus and Aristophanes see B. B. Rogers (ed.), Aristophanes Clouds (introduction).

7 E.g. 277b4, 297d–e, 300e.

8 Prt. 348d, 358c, Hp.Ma. 295a–b, 369c. Aristotle also describes the duality of co-operative dialectic, in contrast to contentiousness, ‘for then they cannot both reach the same goal, since more than one cannot be victorious’ (Top. 161a38ff.).

9 Cf. Phd. 89c (see below). The origin of the saying is uncertain. The scholiast to Phaedo 89c refers to differing interpretations in antiquity, such as two wrestlers fought by Heracles at the Olympics, or two opponents in the Augean stable labour, as well as the Hydra combat. Cf. Laws 919b: ‘it is an old saying that it is hard to fight against two enemies at once.’ In the Republic we get an unusual inversion of the image: it is easier for a poor city to fight two rich cities at once, just as one trained boxer can easily fight two fat rich men, than to fight one rich city (422a–b).

10 Our earliest literary source for the myth, Hesiod Theog. 313–18, refers to Iolaos, but not the crab. Hence J Schoo, art. cit. (n.5), p. 309, speculates that the crab may be a later accretion. But care is needed about inferences from Hesiod's six allusive lines, and in any event an engraved fibula of about 700 B.C. clearly shows Iolaos and the crab. Cf. Schweister, B., Herakles (Tubingen, 1922)Google Scholar, fig. 32, reproduced in Burkert, , op. cit. (n.5), p. 81Google Scholar.

11 Cf. 271b, 303c5. Saunders, T. J. (ed.), Plato: Early Socratic Dialogues (London, 1978), p. 357Google Scholar n. 4 finds the reference to recent arrival baffling. Perhaps we are invited to contrast the Socratic search for virtue and knowledge, which is lifelong (Ap. 29d, Phd. 67c).

12 Heracles is often portrayed as a solitary figure, and his comradeship with Iolaos is particularly prominent in the Hydra labour, rather than across the board. According to Apollodorus, Eurystheus discounted the Hydra labour because of the help received from Iolaos (2.5.2).

13 The expression ‘rather the opposite’ (πλ⋯ον … θ⋯τερον) is euphemistic and colloquial (cf. 280e5, Phd. 114e).

14 Dorter, K., Dialogue (1970), p. 570Google Scholar suggests that Socrates' two opponents here are the case against immortality and the consequent threat of misology. While it is true that misology is not raised as a threat by Socrates until after this passage (as Gallop, D., Plato Phaedo (Oxford, 1975), p. 173 poins out)Google Scholar, it is nevertheless striking how often in Plato discussion of coming to the aid of arguments occurs in contexts where arguments encounter the challenge of eristic or antilogia. See further below.

15 Burger, R., The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth (New Haven, 1984), p. 160Google Scholar suggests, opaquely, that it is Phaedo who comes to Socrates' aid, demonstrating the ‘impurity of hypothetical reasoning’.

16 See, for example, the references ad loc. in the edition of E. H. Glifford (Oxford, 1905).

17 Cf. Sprague, R. K. (tr.), Plato's Euthydemus (Indianapolis, 1965), p. 47 n. 75Google Scholar, Hawtrey, R. S. W., Commentary on Plato's Euthydemus (Philadelphia, 1981), p. 159Google Scholar, Waterfield, R. in Saunders, T. J., op. cit. (n.ll), 358 n. 1Google Scholar.

18 De Vries, G. J., ‘Notes on Some Passages in the Euthydemus, Mnemosyne 25 (1972), 42–55, p. 51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 There is also, mirrored in the outer frame of the dialogue, the choice facing Crito's son Critoboulos (271b2, 306d3ff.).

20 Cf. Hoerber, R. G., ‘Character Portrayal in Plato's Lysis’, Classical Journal 41 (1945–1946), 271–3, p. 272Google Scholar.

21 Cf. Sprague, R. K., op. cit. (n.17), p. 12Google Scholar, ‘The sophists…are obviously the villains of the piece, whereas Socrates an d Ctesippus are equally obviously the heroes’; ‘Plato's Sophistry’, PAS supp. vol. 51 (1977), 45–61, p. 54Google Scholar, ‘Ctesippus expresses the reader's reactions by functioning as a kind of chorus character here’; Hawtrey, , op. cit. (n. 17), p. 13Google Scholar, ‘the whole portrait of Ctesippus is too sympathetic for us to doubt that Plato intended us to see him as being in the end “on the side of the angels”.’

22 Friedlander, P., Plato (Princeton, 1962), ii. 180Google Scholar describes Ctesippus as representing ‘the false mode of loving’.

23 Cf. Scolnicov, S., ‘Plato's Euthydemus: A Study on the Relations between Logic and Education’, Scripta Classica Israelica 6 (1981), 19–29, p. 26Google Scholar, ‘[Ctesippus] can see through the sophists’ tricks, but because of his psychic make-up he is unable to participate in serious discussion.' Scolnicov oddly regards Ctesippus' disqualification from serious discussion as arising from his youthful impetuosity. Yet Cleinias is considerably younger than Ctesippus.

24 Cf. Scodel, R., ‘Literary Interpretation in Plato's Protagoras’, Ancient Philosophy 6 (1986), 25–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Stokes, M. C., Plato's Socratic Conversations (London, 1986), pp. 313–22Google Scholar, Frede, D., ‘The Impossibility of Perfection: Socrates' Criticism of Simonides' Poem in the Protagoras’, Review of Metaphysics 39 (1986), 729–53Google Scholar.

25 Yet those who wish to deny that Ctesippus is Socrates' Iolaos explicitly cite ungratefulness as a reason, e.g. Hawtrey, op. cit. (n. 17), ad loc.

26 Cf. Vlastos, G., Platonic Studies (Princeton, 1973), p. 395Google Scholar. Cf.Ap. 34a7: Socrates can call on his associates (those supposedly corrupted by him) and their relatives to assist him (⋯μοἰβοηθεῖν) rebut charges of corruption and sophistry (making the weaker argument the stronger); or Phd. 88el on coming to the rescue of the argument.

27 Socrates had also intervened decisively and significantly earlier in the dialogue to rescue Cleinias from a third fall at the hands of the brothers (277dl).

28 It recalls Protagoras' guarantee o f immediate improvement t o his pupils (Prt. 318a); cf., Sprague, , ‘Plato's Sophistry’, p. 56Google Scholar.

29 Cf. Grg. 473e: ‘Is this another form o f refutation, that when someone says something, you laugh, instead o f refuting him?’

30 For the odd word πυππ⋯ξ cf. Aristophanes, Eq. 680, υπερπυππ⋯ζειν, ‘congratulate’. The fallacy is slightly less hideous in Greek than English, since the exclamation's form is similar to that of a noun.

31 He affirms this ‘by Poseidon’, perhaps recalling the crab recently arrived from the sea (297c8).

32 E.g.Grg. 487a–d, where Socrates welcomes Callicles' frankness (παρρησíα).

33 Cf. also Ap. 27c–d, where youthful imitations of Socratic examinations contribute to Socrates' bad reputation.

34 Cf. 288a4, 303d–e. On the Socratic employment of the dialectical tactic of self-refutation t see Burnyeat, M. F., ‘Protagoras and Self-Refutation in Plato's Theaetetus’, Phil. Rev. 85 (1976), 172–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 ‘Gun-spiking’, as it is nicely put by Sprague, , ‘Plato's Sophistry’, pp. 54–6Google Scholar.

36 The classic exposition of the view that Socrates uses eristic tactics for his own ends is Friedlander, P., op. cit. ii. 181ffGoogle Scholar. More recent advocates of widespread employment of deliberate fallacy include Guthrie, W. K. C., A History of Greek Philosophy iv (Cambridge, 1975), p. 275Google Scholar, Sprague, R. K., Plato's Use of Fallacy (London, 1962)Google Scholar, Sichel, B. A., ‘Is Socrates a Sophist?’, Paideia 5 (1976), 141–58, p. 166Google Scholar, Klosko, G. ‘Criteria of Fallacy and Sophistry for Use in the I Analysis of Platonic Dialogues’, CQ 33 (1983), 363–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Teloh, H., Socratic Education in Plato's Early Dialogues (Notre Dame, 1986), p. 18Google Scholar.

37 E.g. Ap. 17b8, Ion 523de, Hp.Mi. 288d5.

38 Better for my lyre to be out of tune…and for the majority of mankind to oppose me, rather than that I…should be out of tune with and contradict myself (Grg. 482c).

39 See especially M. C. Stokes, op. cit. (n. 24), Seeskin, K., Dialogue and Discovery: A Study in Socratic Method (Albany, 1986)Google Scholar, and also Robinson, R., Plato's Earlier Dialectic (Oxford, 1953), pp. 15–17Google Scholar.

40 Kraut, R., Socrates and the State (Princeton, 1984), 263ff, 294ffGoogle Scholar. nicely illustrates the point. He believes that Socrates on occasion defeats an opponent through sleight of hand, but that his sin is venial, since what it does is shorten the argument, not change its outcome. Although Socrates is prepared, for example, to employ an opponent's dubious belief for the sake of an argument, without revealing his own opposition to that belief, he does so only within an argument whose conclusion he himself affirms. This conclusion could have been reached, as a matter of logic, from premises other than those actually employed for dialectical purposes. This suggests that the elenchus is, as all would agree, an unusual form of argument, but not that it is indistinguishable from eristic.

41 Similar issues are raised by Aristotle's treatment of eristic, cf. Owen, G. E. L., ‘Dialectic and Eristic in the Treatment of the Forms’, in his Logic, Science and Dialectic (London, 1986), 221–38, p. 224Google Scholar.

42 It is amusing that Dionysodorus himself offers this distinction, in view of Socrates' difficulties in getting other interlocutors, such as Hippias (Hp.Ma. 287elff.), to grasp it. Note however that Dionysodorus speaks only loosely of the fine, and it is Socrates who refers more precisely to the fine itself.

43 E.g. Hp.Ma. 289d6, 294c–d, Phd. lOOd, Lys. 217c, Prm. 130b–c; see most recently Mohr, R. D., ‘Forms in Plato's Euthydemus’, Hermes 112 (1984), 296–300Google Scholar. But for the view that the language of forms can occur neutrally, without commitment to the full-blown theory, see Woodruff, P., Plato Hippias Major (Oxford, 1982), pp. 166–7Google Scholar.

44 Sprague, R. K., ‘Parmenides' Sail and Dionysodorus' Ox’, Phronesis 12 (1967), 91–8Google Scholar compares this passage to Prm. 131b.

45 E.g. he likens them to Proteus (288b8) or the Dioscuroi (293a2).

46 Particular problems are posed by the use of the article and the repeated ἒτερον Does τ⋯ ἒτερον designate a substantive (‘the different’) or rather the first of a pair of distinct items (in accordance with Greek idiom ἓτεροσ…ἓτεροσ ‘the one…the other…’)? Sprague, , Plato's Use of Fallacy, pp. 26–7Google Scholar, Hawtrey, op. cit. (n. 17), ad loc, and Guthrie, , op. cit. (n. 36), p. 278 n. 2Google Scholar take it to be the former (Sprague sees the substantive in question as a Form of Difference), whereas Canto, M., Platon Euthydeme (Paris, 1989), p. 227Google Scholar takes it in the latter sense. Certainly the absurd effect derives from the repeated use of ἓτερον, whose homonymy Dionysodorus is exploiting. See also Mohr, , op. cit. (n. 43), p. 298Google Scholar, who argues that the question serves to establish the transcendence of Forms. Nothing turns on the substitution of προ7sigma;γεν⋯οθαι in (3) for παρεῖναι in (2), which is paralleled elsewhere in Plato (e.g. Hp.Ma. 289dff, Phd. 1005d5–6).

47 Sprague, , Plato's Use of Fallacy, pp. 25ffGoogle Scholar. takes this section to be levelling a sincerely Eleatic critique against Platonic dualism. But that the verbal issue raised here has an Eleatic dimension does not turn the brothers into Eleatic spokesmen.

48 Sprague, , ‘Plato's Sophistry’, p. 56Google Scholar, Plato's Use of Fallacy, p. 27; Hawtrey, op. cit. (n. 19), ad loc; Mohr, , op. cit. (n.43), p. 298Google Scholar; Meridier, L. (ed.), Platon (Paris, 1970) v. 111Google Scholar.

49 Cf. Waterfleld, in Saunders, , op. cit. (n. 11), p. 365Google Scholar: ‘Chiefly he means no more than that he is taking over the sophists' role as questioner.’

50 No-one would doubt the irony in Socrates' similar remarks elsewhere in the dialogue: ‘Now I intend to become their pupil’ (272b); ‘Will this (wisdom of yours) never be with me as my very own?’ (301e); ‘I knew that something fine would emerge from their questions, and besides I wanted to hear it as soon as possible’ (302a); ‘You must come with us to be taught by these two’ (304b).

51 Dionysodorus' appeal to the assembled company for support in his ignorance conflicts with his earlier claim about universal knowledge, and contrasts with the Socratic use of universal assent for premises in the protreptic sections of the dialogue (cf. 278e, 279a–c, 282a).

52 The text has raised doubts whether the question should be assigned to Euthydemus or to Dionysodorus. See Neitzel, H., ‘Platon, Euthydemos 286e’, Hermes 112 (1984), 372–7Google Scholar.

53 We should note that although Dionysodorus' question included a reference to ‘being present’, that relationship is now receding from the centre of attention, being eclipsed by the multiple repetition of ‘different’. Socrates is thus not to be blamed for ignoring the relationship of presence in his response, since it is clear that Dionysodorus is less interested in exploring that relationship than he is in alleging that to be different is what is not, i.e. is not possible at all. And such a claim is of course open to refutation by counter-example.

54 Only recently much the same words had expressed Dionysodorus' triumphant boast (296d4). Socrates will ironically echo them a little later (301e6).

55 What even a child knows is an image of irresistible truth: as Socrates says to Cleinias, even a child would know that wisdom is good fortune, 279d7; or as Polus incredulously exclaims, even a child could prove Socrates wrong (about the relative value of suffering and inflicting injustice) Gorgias 470c5. The use of the image here also contrasts with Dionysodorus' recent appeal to the ignorance of ‘all other men’ (301b4), and his earlier claim that if one knows all things always, then one knew them as a child (296clO).

56 Another way in which th e passage ha s been read is that Socrates replaces a predicative expression (‘the different is different’) with one of identity (‘the different is the same as the different’), cf. Robinson, D. M., review of Hawtrey, op. cit. (n. 17), JHS 104 (1984), 206–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Canto, , op. cit. (n. 46), p. 228Google Scholar.

57 Few would now agree with Sprague, , Plato's Use of Fallacy, p. 27Google Scholar, that self-predication is both an un-Socratic notion and introduced here by Socrates as a deliberate fallacy. Yet it is surprising how vigorously the diagnosis of deliberate fallacy in this passage persists.

58 Woodruff, , op. cit. (n. 43), pp. 157ffGoogle Scholar. provides a useful sample of the range.

59 E.g. Hp.Ma. 292e6–7, Prt. 330c4–5, neither of them technical contexts about Forms.

60 Similarly, the self-predication of ‘the different’ requires a more complex analysis than do other self-predications, such as is explored at Sph. 256ff., but nothing in our passage turns on the contrast.

61 That seems to me to be the failure of many scholars' judgement on Socratic tactics here: e.g. Sprague, , Plato's Use of Fallacy, p. 278Google Scholar (‘deliberate nonsense’), Stewart, M., ‘Plato's Sophistry’, PAS suppl. vol. 51 (1977), 45–61, p. 31Google Scholar (‘Socrates… in emulation of the Sophists avoids serious philosophical engagement by petulantly blocking their questions’), Mohr, , art. cit. (n. 43), p. 298Google Scholar (‘Socrates merely eristically exploits the amphibolous nature of τ⋯ ἓτερον ἓτερον’).

62 Ryle, G., Plato's Progress (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 126ff.Google Scholar; cf. Thomas, J. E., Musings on the Meno (The Hague, 1980), pp. 16–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Hinrichs, G., ‘The Euthydemus as a locus of the Socratic elenchus’, The New Scholasticism 25 (1951), 178–83, pp. 179–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 E.g. Grg. 505e, 458e, Mn. 75c–d, Rp. 454a; cf. Kerferd, G. B., The Sophistic Movement (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 62–3Google Scholar.

64 Cf. Irwin, T., Plato's Gorgias (Oxford, 1979), p. 122Google Scholar, Friedlander, , op. cit. (n.22), i. 181Google Scholar: ‘Eristic is indistinguishable from dialectic in form, distinguishable only by beneficial intention.’

65 Compare Vlastos' reluctance to see Socratic irony as an attempt to deceive, ‘Socrates’ Disavowal of Knowledge', PQ 35 (1985), 1–31, p. 30 n. 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Cf. Grg. 473b: ‘the truth is never refuted.’

67 Cf. the famous blush of Thrasymachus (Rp. 350d3), and Hippocrates (Prt. 312a2), and cf. the protest of Callicles (Grg. 494e7).

68 This observer is traditionally identified with Isocrates, left unnamed to avoid anachronism. In support of the identification one might mention Isocrates' persistent encouragement of the confusion between eristic and Socratic conversation (e.g. Adv. Soph. 291b, Antid. 258).

69 Op. cit. p. 159.

70 Cf. Scolnicov, , art. cit. (n. 23), esp. p. 29Google Scholar.

71 Ap. 18bff., etc. and cf. Anytus' threat (Mn. 94e3ff.).

72 A number of colleagues and friends were kind enough to read this paper in draft. None will object if I make special mention of assistance and encouragement received from George Gellie (1918–1988).