Phaedo of Elis and Plato on the SoulAuthor(s): George Boys-StonesSource: Phronesis, Vol. 49, No. 1 (2004), pp. 1-23Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182741Accessed: 13/07/2010 23:16

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Phaedo of Elis and Plato on the Soul'

GEORGE BOYS-STONES

ABSTRACT Phaedo of Elis was well-known as a writer of Socratic dialogues, and it seems inconceivable that Plato could have been innocent of intertextuality when, excus- ing himself on the grounds of illness, he made him the narrator of one of his own: the Phaedo. In fact the psychological model outlined by Socrates in this dialogue converges with the evidence we have (especially from fragments of the Zopyrus) for Phaedo's own beliefs about the soul. Specifically, Phaedo seems to have thought that non-rational desires were ineliminable epiphenomena of the body, that reason was something distinct, and that the purpose of philosophy was its 'cure' and 'purification'. If Plato's intention with the Phaedo is to assert the separability and immortality of reason (whatever one might think about desire and pleasure), then Phaedo provides a useful standpoint for him. In particular, Phaedo has arguments that are useful against the 'harmony-theorists' (and are the more useful rhetorically speaking since it is only over the independence of rea- son that Phaedo disagrees with them). At the same time as allying himself with Phaedo, however, Plato is able to improve on him by adding to the demonstra- tion that reason is independent a proof that it is actually immortal.

With a growing acknowledgement that the study of Plato's philosophy cannot proceed without a sensitivity to the manner of its presentation has come a growing interest in the characters who people the dialogues.2 The assumption - surely right - is that Plato's choice of social milieu, of inter- locutor, in the case of framed dialogues of the narrator too, must be rel- evant one way or another to the philosophical subject matter in hand. One figure in all of this has attracted particular attention over the years, namely Phaedo of Elis: narrator, interlocutor, and eponym of the Phaedo.3 There

Accepted August 2003 This article comes out of work I have been doing for a forthcoming collaborative

study of physiognomy in the ancient world under the general editorship of Simon Swain (Physiognomy: an Interdisciplinary Study from Graeco-Roman Antiquity to Islam). My thanks to Christopher Rowe and David Sedley for their critical comments on ear- lier drafts.

2 See now D. Nails' invaluable resource, The People of Plato. A Prosopography of Plato and Other Socratics (Indianopolis, 2002).

3 Testimonia and fragments of Phaedo in G. Giannantoni (ed.), Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae [SSR] (Naples, 1990), IIIA, with discussion at vol. 4, 115-27. Giannantoni is rigorous in excluding texts that do not name Phaedo; a more generous collection of testimonia for the Zopyrus is presented and discussed in L. Rossetti, 'Ricerche sui

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004 Phronesis XLIXI1 Also available online - www.brill.nl

2 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

seem to be several reasons for this level of interest in him. First, the Phaedo is one of Plato's most poignant dialogues: the dramatic context evoked around the impending execution of Socrates asserts itself with unusual force. Secondly, Phaedo's role as the ostensible narrator of the dialogue is given an unusual emphasis by Plato. The Phaedo not only opens with an emphatic assertion of Phaedo's right to narrate as a wit- ness of Socrates' last hours (ac'T6, J, Dai86wv, xapry6vov...; aryo , X

'EXC'pate;), but also, extraordinarily, makes a point of explaining why Plato could not narrate events himself: he was off sick at the time (HX6rov 8& oloat 19a0vEVt: 59blO). Finally, it happens that evidence about Phaedo's background from outside the Phaedo provides a ready answer to the ques- tion of why, from a dramatic point of view, Plato should have chosen to speak through Phaedo rather than one of the other Socratics who were supposed to have been present with him in Socrates' cell. Phaedo, we are told, had been a prisoner of war, and made to work as a prostitute. The analogy with the soul as Socrates describes it in the Phaedo is not hard to see: for it too, during life, is imprisoned, trapped in polluting service to carnality. And just as the soul is eventually purified and released from attachment to corporeality through the practice of philosophy, so Phaedo was liberated from his enslavement at the instigation of Socrates; became, indeed, a philosopher himself, and the founder of his own school at Elis.4

"Dialoghi Socratici" di Fedone e di Euclide', Hermes 108 (1980), 183-200, at 183-98. With most commentators (including Giannantoni: SSR 4.126), I assume as the only serious hypothesis available for their provenance that the fragments describing the famous encounter between Zopyrus and Socrates (frr. 6-11 Rossetti) ultimately derive from Phaedo's Zopyrus - although it is true that Phaedo is mentioned in none of them. On Phaedo generally (including earlier suggestions that we might reconstruct something of his views from Plato), cf. K. von Fritz, 'Phaidon (3)', RE xix.2 (1938), 1538-42; L. Rossetti, 'Therapeia in the Minor Socratics', Theta-Pi 3 (1974), 145-57; "'Socratica" in Fedone di Elide', Studi urbinati (Ser. B) 47 (1973), 364-81, a revised version of which appears in his Aspetti della letteratura socratica antica at 121-53 (cf. 133-4 for the suggestion that Phaedo 88e-89a represents Phaedo's own view of Socrates); H. Toole, 'Ei'; noiov YwKparucov zpEIEt v&a a' ro86G ij &uop(pia oz o ECOlcpa&ou;. Hep'

T'ig XpovoXo i?rco; 'rCv 'Epywv Trov YwipattKwv', Athena 75 (1974-5), 303-17 (esp. 306-7 for the suggestion that Phaedo lies behind Plato's portrait of Socrates in the Sym- posium); M. Montuori, 'Su Fedone di Elide', Atti della Accademia Pontaniana 25 (1976), 2740; S. Dusanik 'Phaedo's Enslavement and Liberation', Illinois Classical Studies 19 (1993), 83-97 (arguing at 96-7 that the Phaedo has been coloured by a critical atti- tude to Spartan aggression that Dusanic attributes to Phaedo himself); C. H. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge, 1996), 11-12; Nails, People of Plato 231.

4 So e.g. K. Dorter, Plato's Phaedo: An Interpretation (Toronto / Buffalo / London, 1982), 9-10, 89. For the various accounts of Phaedo's life, see SSR IIIA 1-3. E. I. McQueen and C. J. Rowe have shown that his capture in war is at least historically

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 3

Given the ostensible psychological model of the Phaedo, then, it is pos- sible to start thinking of reasons why Phaedo's biography might make him an appropriate narrator. But it cannot be satisfactory to leave things like this. For one thing, it is quite possible that ancient biographies of Phaedo were themselves embroidered in the light of his role in the Phaedo (or indeed in the light of what I shall go on to suggest was his own philos- ophy). For another, the 'dramatic' explanation of Phaedo's presence in the Phaedo makes no mention of the one thing we know for sure: that Phaedo was himself a philosopher of substance and, more than this, a writer of his own Socratic dialogues. (Two of these, the Zopyrus and the Simon, preserved his fame throughout antiquity.)5 This has some claim to be the more striking fact about his presence in the Phaedo - for how could Plato

possible: 'Phaedo, Socrates and the Chronology of the Spartan War with Elis', Methexis 2 (1989), 1-18 (cf. also Dusanic, 'Phaedo's Enslavement and Liberation'). Whether it is plausible that he was prostituted is another question (it is denied by Montuori: 'Su Fedone di Elide', 36-40; 'Di Fedone di Elide e di Sir Kenneth Dover', Corolla Londoniensis 2 (1982), 119-22). Other explanations for Plato's choice of Phaedo as narrator of the Phaedo have been suggested. In the view of L. Parmentier, Plato was paying a simple homage to a dead friend ('L'age de Phedon d'Elis', Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Bude 10 (1926), 22-4 at 23). W. D. Geddes (Plato, Phaedo (2nd edn.: London, 1885), xiii-xiv) suggests that Phaedo was chosen as being known for having the right balance of artistic sensitivity and philosophical acumen for the occasion. Giannantoni, by contrast, thinks that the choice of Phaedo is motivated pre- cisely by his insignificance for the circle of Socrates: by choosing Phaedo as his nar- rator, Plato ensures that our view of Socrates at such an important moment will not be clouded by association with a Euclides, Antisthenes, or Aristippus (SSR 4.119). There is always the possibility that Phaedo was in fact Plato's source for events on that day: one would not have to assume just because of this that the discussions in the dialogue were mere transcripts. Cf. R. Hackforth, Plato's Phaedo (Cambridge, 1955), 13; and the cautious remarks of J. R. Baron on the last words of Socrates: 'On Separating the Socratic from the Platonic in Phaedo 118', Classical Philology 70 (1975), 268-9. D. N. Sedley is unusual in looking to Phaedo's philosophical position for an explanation of his presence, observing a 'philosophical kinship' between the Zopyrus and the Phaedo: 'The Dramatis Personae of the Phaedo' in T. Smiley (ed.), Philosophical Dialogues. Plato, Hume, Wittgenstein. Dawes Hicks Lectures on Philosophy - Proceedings of the British Academy 85 (Oxford, 1995), 3-26, esp. 8-9.

5 Out of a longish list of dialogues attributed to him (DL 2.105; Suda s.v. od6owv), Diogenes Laertius (loc. cit.) thinks these two genuine. The Simon seems to be behind the invective of one of the 'Letters of Aristippus' (no. 13 = SSR IVA 224; cf. Letter 12 (part) = SSR IVA 223, with K. von Fritz, 'Phaidon von Elis und der 12. und 13. Sokratikerbrief', Philologus 90 (1935), 240-4). Since these letters are later composi- tions than they pretend to be (cf. e.g. Giannantoni, SSR 4.165-8), this indicates an interest in the Simon somewhat later than the generation after Socrates. The more dis- tinguished sources of testimonia for Phaedo include Cicero, Seneca and (into the 4th century AD) the Emperor Julian.

4 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

be innocent of intertextuality when he writes a dialogue narrated by another (rival? collaborative?) writer of dialogues?6 It could be that we should not just be looking to explain Plato's choice of Phaedo in terms of what is distinctive about the dialogue he narrates, but that we might also (conversely) explain what is distinctive about the Phaedo in terms of Phaedo's presence as its narrator.

The Phaedo seems to stand apart from other Platonic texts in the psy- chological model with which it works. It stands apart, in particular, through its treatment of desire - desire, that is, for corporeal stimulation or satisfaction. According to the 'standard' Platonic account, this sort of desire forms a distinct 'part' of the soul, of which another part is reason. Like reason (with which it may conflict), such desire is a psychological determinant of action. What makes this a plausible account of desire is, first, the very fact that it is one source of impulse for a body whose life and activity depends on the presence of the soul; and, secondly, the fact that the pleasure which is posited by desire as the end of human activity is itself something that registers in the soul.7 In the Phaedo, however, Plato appears to be trying something different. According to the Socrates of the Phaedo, desire is not of the soul at all, but of the body. It has an impact on the soul (which in essence is pure reason); but as an external distrac- tion to it, not as a wayward part of it. The idea seems to be that, once animated by the directive presence of reason, the needs and the satisfac- tion of the body assert themselves as appropriate objects of reason's care. In many cases, reason (brought to forgetfulness of its proper, divine sphere at the moment of incarnation) actually goes so far as to identify its own interests with those of the body. Nevertheless, the body, and the desires that come from it, are properly alien to the soul, which stands to them as a guard to his post (cf. 62b), or a man to his cloak (cf. 87b-e) - or a con- demned prisoner to his cell, or, if you like, a noble P.O.W. to his igno- minious bordello.

It would be wrong to deny the familial resemblance between the Phaedo and other dialogues in which Plato discusses the character of the soul. In particular, Plato never denies the primacy of reason;8 and if, in

6 The Phaedo is not the only case of this: the Theaetetus is narrated by Euclides, founder of the Megarian school (cf. DL 2.108 for his dialogues).

I Compare esp. Philebus 21a-d (for the mental dimension to pleasure); 35cd (for the location of desire and impulse in the soul).

I T. Johansen notes references to our rational nature as 'original' in the Republic (61 Id) and Timaeus (42d, 90d): 'Body, Soul, and Tripartition in Plato's Timaeus', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 19 (2000), 87-111 at 109 with n. 34.

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 5

the Gorgias and Phaedrus, desire is so far from being alien to the soul that it seems to be an essential and eternal component of it, in the Republic and Timaeus Plato takes what might be thought of as the middle ground between this view and that of the Phaedo. According to these dialogues, desire is of the soul, indeed, but as accident not essence, so that it becomes a 'mortal' accompaniment to immortal reason which might (in images con- vergent with the dominant theme of the Phaedo) eventually be 'purged' of it.9

Just as importantly, Plato never denies the crucial role played by the body in shaping desire, or the irrational soul more generally.'0 Even if the desire for pleasure springs from the soul, the body, as the means by which the pleasure is attained, naturally has a significant input into the shape taken by an individual's desires. In exploring this aspect of the question, Plato sometimes sails quite close to the position of the Phaedo - the posi- tion that desires spring from the body in the first place. It has recently been argued for the Timaeus in particular that Plato sees the character of the soul there in reductionist terms, as 'following' the temperament of the body; as a straightforward function of the body's physiological state in terms very similar to those of the Phaedo. This is how Plato can say, in the Timaeus, that no-one errs willingly: vice is a result of bodily disease."

It seems to me, however, that this cannot be quite right - and that Plato never (i.e. outside the Phaedo) commits himself to anything stronger than the claim that the body is one influence on the character of the irrational

9 Republic esp. 10, 61 lb-612a; Timaeus esp. 41d, 69cd (42b for the escape of the just soul from incarnation).

10 Themes in the dialogues which reflect Plato's interest in the scope of the body's effect on the character of the soul include speculation about the psychological impli- cations of the physical environment (e.g. for the character of the Greeks at Timaeus 24c; for the Atlantans at Critias 1 Ile; for Northern races such as Thracians and Scythians at Republic 435e; cf. also Laws 747de). Or, again, his discussions of the inheritance of character (e.g. Charmides 157d-158b; Cratylus 394a; hence also the pos- sibility of breeding for good character: Republic 375-6, 459; Politicus 310 and Laws 773ab; cf. Critias 121b). Neither theme contradicts what I shall go on to argue, namely that Plato's standard position is that the body does not determine character: both, rather, operate on the assumption that the nature of the body might predispose some- one lacking the appropriate control of reason to acquire a certain sort of character.

11 Timaeus 86e. See Christopher Gill, 'The Body's Fault? Plato's Timaeus on Psychic Illness' in M. R. Wright (ed.), Reason and Necessity. Essays on Plato's Timaeus (London, 2000), 59-84. Gill invokes Galen to his aid; and the language of 'following [bodily] temperament' ('E'?caOt Kcpiaeal) is taken from Galen's reductionist interpre- tation of Plato in his QAM (Quod animi mores; or, to give it its full title and in Greek: "OTt tacl ToV OaTo; Kpaevotv ati Tiw vXi i vvaiget; 'tovtaQ).

6 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

soul. He never in fact says that the body determines one's desires or incli- nations. The Timaeus, in particular, makes it very clear that reason and philosophy are forces which counter-balance the influence of physical state: a person becomes bad because of a bad state of body and an 'upbringing without education' (86e); or where a poor state of body com- bines with a poor government and poor parenting (87b); the route to hap- piness involves both physical and intellectual training (88bc).'2 There is no overwhelming reason, whatever the state of a person's body, why their psychology should be marred by bad desires - so long as the natural restraints of reason are in place. (The reason in question might be one's own or that of one's parents or society: it makes no difference.)'3 In a fully natural society, nobody would have a bad character at all; and this is not a ques- tion of the needs or temperament of the body. Desire (and the irrational soul more generally) remains distinct from the body, and under no com- pulsion to 'follow' it.

This, then, is where the model presented in the Phaedo is unique. It is, to be sure, possible to argue that the Phaedo does not give us a license to think that Plato changed his mind over the nature of the soul. It is entirely possible, even probable, that the model we are presented with here is ultimately intended to be read as emphasising certain features of his psychological beliefs at the expense of others without actually implying inconsistency with the 'standard' view.'4 In any case, nothing in what I

12 Gill recognises ('The Body's Fault?', e.g. 60), but plays down (61) the signi- ficance of educational and political influences on psychological development, partly because he assumes that one's mental capacities are determined by the body as well. This itself seems to me mistaken. It is true that 'madness and ignorance' can be explained by physical disease (86bc); but the point is that the mind's natural activity here is disturbed by an unusual degree of turmoil in the body, not that it is in gen- eral a function of physiological state. Cf. e.g. F. M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology (London, 1937), 346-9; D. J. Zeyl, Plato, Timaeus (Indianapolis, 2000), lxxxv-lxxxvi.

1' It should be emphasised that both doing and being receptive to philosophy are entirely natural human functions. (For the place of philosophical education in one's development, see 44bc; cf. 88bc.) Indeed, both are inscribed in the body, every bit as much as the tendency towards irrational vice: so man's philosophical destiny (cf. 42ab) is an explanatory factor behind, for example, the structure of the sense-organs (47b-e), the mouth (75e), and even the gut (72e-73a). Cf. Johansen, 'Body, Soul, and Tripartition in Plato's Timaeus', 109-10; C. Steel, 'The Moral Purpose of the Human Body. A Reading of Timaeus 69-72', Phronesis 46 (2001), 105-28. I take it that all of this allows us to say that even someone who was 'constitutionally' mad or ignorant should in the natural course of things be under the care of others, whose reason would be substitute for his own in counterbalancing the effects of excessive physical disorder.

14 A common way of doing this is to say that the soul manifests its nature differ-

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 7

shall go on to argue offers any sort of challenge to this position (I do not assume that Plato held or wished to be thought of as holding a different position on the soul in the Phaedo). Nevertheless, it is important to recog- nise that there are differences at least in the presentation of Plato's psy- chology in this dialogue: even if one assumes that that is all they are, they are still striking enough to need explanation. On a straightforward read- ing of the Phaedo, desires are presented as functions of the body, and nothing else; desires can be resisted, but not, during life, eliminated. There is no scope for 'harmonising' them with reason or subduing them by it, because there is, more generally, no possibility for uprooting them from the body. And this suggests a further divergence from the 'standard' Platonic model. For according to the standard model, in which desires are properly part of the psyche, one's natural character can be worked on and improved: desire can come under the influence of reason and be trained to a better state. But as far as the Phaedo is concerned (at least on a straightforward reading of it), one's natural character is ineliminably inscribed in one's body. Of course reason can resist: desire does not determine behaviour.'5 But reason cannot eradicate or (within broad limits, perhaps) restrain inclination. In these terms, a person has control of their behav- iour, but not their character or 'nature'. And I put it in these terms because it seems that this might have been exactly what Phaedo of Elis thought.

Our evidence for Phaedo's views about human psychology comes from the fragments of his lost work, the Zopyrus, and in particular from what seems to have been the central episode of that dialogue in which a visi- tor to Athens named Zopyrus was prevailed upon to demonstrate on

ently in its incarnate and discarnate states. In particular, if 'desire' is thought of as the operation of the soul in respect of the body, it can be considered an essential and immortal capacity of the soul (which would explain the Gorgias and Phaedrus), yet 'mortal' in its actualisation, since this does not outlast its connection with the body. The Phaedo, then, focusses on desire qua mortal and insofar as it is related to the activity of the body. So e.g. R. D. Archer-Hind, The Phaedo of Plato (New York, 1973), 27-31; cf. R. S. Bluck, Plato's Phaedo (London, 1955), 2-5; L. P. Gerson, 'A Note on Tripartition and Immortality in Plato', Apeiron 20 (1987), 81-96; C. J. Rowe, Plato, Phaedo (Cambridge, 1993), 9; Johansen, 'Body, Soul, and Tripartition in Plato's Timaeus'.

'5 Despite the apparently compelling nature of desires which leave no room for phi- losophy (66b-d), and the unavoidable demands of pleasure and pain which 'rivet' the soul to the body (83b-d), reason is capable of maintaining control - in the first place precisely by avoiding situations of intense pleasure and pain which might impede its own activity (83b).

8 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

Socrates his claim that he could divine a man's character from his phys- ical appearance.'6

Our fragments differ in their report of the details, but concur in the general thrust of what happened. Confronted with Socrates, Zopyrus announced that he was a man possessed of 'many vices' (fr. 7 Rossetti); the thickness of his neck indicated that he was 'stupid and dull' (fr. 6 Rossetti); his eyes showed him to be either a womaniser (frr. 6, 9 Rossetti; cf. 8), or perhaps a pederast (fr. 11 Rossetti, from Cassian, who is pur- porting to quote). In either case, Socrates' companions, and Alcibiades in particular, had reason to laugh (frr. 6, 8-10). Socrates no doubt in Phaedo's work as much as in Plato's was a paragon of virtue; not stupid but the wisest man alive (if it were Plato, one might think of the oracle reported at Apology 21a); not licentious, but preternaturally abstinent (if it were Plato, one would hear Alcibiades' laugh and think of the Symposium). Zopyrus' diagnosis must be wrong: his false claims to knowledge ex- ploded. But Phaedo has a surprise in store. The onlookers laugh at Zopyrus, and the reader laughs with them; but Socrates tells us all to stop: 'This is how I am,' he said (or something like it; see further below); 'but through the practice of philosophy I have become better than my nature.'

Is Socrates merely being ironic here? To answer this question we need context; and it so happens that the one other fragment of the Zopyrus we have might provide it. We know that someone in the Zopyrus told the fol- lowing story (fr. 1 Rossetti = SSR IIIA 11):

They say, Socrates, that the youngest son of the King made a pet of a lion cub ... And it seems to me that it was because the lion was brought up with the child that it followed him wherever he went even when he was a young man, so that the Persians said that it was besotted with the boy.

The story is preserved for no better reason than that the grammarian Theon thought it a happy illustration of the change from indirect to direct speech in narrative. It is lacunose; we do not know who told it (though

16 The premise of the Zopyrus might, then, be compared with the starting-point for some of Plato's dialogues: in the Protagoras too, for example, or the Ion, a foreigner arrives in Athens with a claim to special expertise. That Zopyrus was a foreigner is clear from fr. 9 Rossetti ('When he [sc. Socrates] was alive, a man called Zopyrus came to Athens...'). It has been suggested that Zopyrus was, more specifically, a Persian, partly because of his name (cf. e.g. Herodotus 3.153-60) and partly through the circumstantial detail that someone in the dialogue told a story concerning a Persian prince (quoted below in the text; for the argument, cf. Rossetti, Aspetti della lettera- tura socratica antica 145-6). Neither piece of evidence is unassailable, however: the latter is merely circumstantial (and cf. next note); and we know that the name Zopyrus was not confined to Persians (Plato, Alcibiades 122ab and below note 20).

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 9

Zopyrus seems the best guess on the face of it);'7 and, most importantly, we have nothing at all to suggest where and how the telling of this story stood in relation to the physiognomical episode. But despite all this, it is hard to ignore the powerful thematic connections linking this narrative to the physiognomical episode. In both cases, the ostensible moral is, or involves, the possibility that a creature's nature can be changed - in par- ticular that savage and brutal inclinations can be tamed. In the one, we learn that someone as stupid and licentious as Socrates can become a chaste philosopher; in the other, that a member of the wildest species of animal can become as tame and broken as a besotted lover.

Evidence that just such a moral is one that his readership might have expected from Phaedo comes from the Emperor Julian (Epistle 50, 445A = SSR IIIA 2):

Phaedo. .. supposed that nothing was beyond the cure of philosophy, but that everyone can be cured of any kind of life through it - of their behaviour, desires, everything, in a word, of the sort. If it helped only the well born and well brought-up there would be nothing amazing about what it did, but if it brings people in such a bad state to the light, it seems to me surpassing wonderful.

There is no way of telling on which of Phaedo's works Julian based his assessment;'8 but it does seem to be the case that the Zopyrus offered at least one candidate to whom such a moral would be particularly appro- priate. For there is one further link between the two episodes of the Zopyrus I have been considering: the person of Alcibiades. According to frr. 6 and 8 Rossetti, it was Alcibiades in particular who laughed at Zopyrus' diagnosis of Socrates; and, although we have no information that he was there to hear the story of the lion cub, we might remember ourselves that Alcibiades compared himself and was compared by others to a lion.'9 The possibility of this connection is surely strengthened by

17 But the reference to Persia could as well be in deference to Zopyrus' presence as an indication that he was the narrator; and then again, it could be incidental (since the identification of Zopyrus' nationality itself rests in part on the reference to Persia here). Socrates himself is not ruled as the narrator of the story by the fact that it is addressed to him: the Platonic Socrates, anyway, is quite capable of relating narra- tives as told to him, or discussions he has had with others (as with Diotima at Symposium 201d ff., for example) in which he himself is addressed.

18 The Zopyrus is a possibility (so von Fritz, 'Phaidon', 1540; Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, 12); but Nails pessimistically wonders (The People of Plato 231) whether he has read any genuine works of Phaedo at all.

'9 Alcibiades' leonine nature is suggested by Plato (Alcibiades 122e-123a: cf. N. Denyer, Plato, Alcibiades (Cambridge, 2001), 186), Aristophanes (Frogs 1431-2), and Alcibiades himself at Plutarch, Alcibiades 2.2.

10 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

the fact that Alcibiades had a tutor who shared his name with the dia- logue's eponym: Zopyrus. Indeed, it might not be too fanciful to suggest that the first readers of the Zopyrus were supposed to assume from the title that they were purchasing yet another dialogue about Alcibiades and his education.20

Whatever the truth of the matter, the important conclusion for now is that such evidence as we have for the Zopyrus aside from the physiog- nomical episode hints at a remarkable degree of convergence with a read- ing of the physiognomical episode that treats it seriously, not ironically; that at least one of its themes was the transforming power of philosophy. It starts, in other words, to look as if the Zopyrus as a whole is best served if Zopyrus really did get Socrates right; and Socrates (as written by Phaedo) was not being ironic in defending him and confessing to a wicked nature. The point is his reform through philosophy. But if this should be accepted, then we can surely go further and ask by what mechanism Phaedo might have explained all this. What might Phaedo have believed about the soul to lead him to the conclusion that 'natural' character man- ifested itself in physical appearance, but was the kind of thing which phi- losophy could overcome?

There is, of course, no reason at all to suppose that Phaedo ascribed to Zopyrus a theoretical view of the soul's relationship with the body, or that Socrates was supposed to be in agreement with him about this. In fact, the dynamic of the dialogue would be better explained if Zopyrus had no theory at all. If Phaedo's dialogues were anything like Plato's, it is a fair bet that Socrates spent a good deal of his time talking precisely to peo- ple whose abilities ran ahead of their capacity to give them a theoretical underpinning - whose 'skills' and 'virtues' were empirical, where they should have been knowledge-based.2' Perhaps Zopyrus was like this: a

20 Rossetti supposes that Alcibiades' tutor (for whom, see Plato, Alcibiades 122ab) was the dialogue's eponym ("'Socratica" in Fedone di Elide', 371; more cautiously at Aspetti della letteratura socratica antica 145; cf. also Nails, The People of Plato 305 s.v. 'Zopyrus'). But this seems unlikely if Phaedo's Zopyrus was a stranger in Athens at the time of his encounter with Socrates - and especially if he really was a Persian (cf. note 16): Alcibiades' tutor was Thracian (Alcibiades 122b). For Alcibiades as a stock figure of the Socratic dialogue, cf. Denyer, Plato, Alcibiades 5, noting that Aeschines (DL 2.61), Antisthenes (ib.; also DL 6.18), and Euclides (DL 2.108) as well as Plato and Phaedo himself (Suda s.v. 'Dalci8v) are all credited with dialogues named after Alcibiades.

21 The bravery of Laches, despite his inability to define bravery in the Laches, would be a good example. Cf. for the theoretical point the two types of physician at Plato, Laws 720ab, who share the same title 'whether they are free men - or whether

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 11

capable enough physiognomist but, like those sophists in Plato whose dis- course was also about the soul (cf. Phaedrus 271cd), lacking in an under- standing of the virtues and vices of the souls he judged. Knowledge about the soul, then, is what Zopyrus leaves for Phaedo's Socrates to explore; and Socrates for his part need not be expected to reject physiognomy (as Plato's Socrates does not exactly reject rhetoric), but he might want to show how it is only a worthwhile pursuit if it can be made philosophical, grounded on knowledge about the soul. Perhaps this is why he stopped his companions from laughing.

But what, then, did Phaedo's Socrates think about the soul? The ques- tion is complicated by the fact that our sources differ over what, exactly, he replied to his companions' mirth at Zopyrus' diagnosis. In particular, there is a difference over whether Socrates changed his natural character (and so, whether one's nature is changeable) or whether he rather acted in despite of it (so that one's 'nature' turns out to be something immutable but non-determinative).

Cicero certainly talks as if he saw the former model in his source. According to him, Socrates admits to having been born with the vices identified by Zopyrus, but states that he managed to rid himself of them through the practice of philosophy:

[Of the vices ascribed to Socrates by Zopyrus:] It is possible that they were born from natural causes; but it is not due to the power of natural causes that they were rooted out and altogether removed so that he himself was called away from those vices to which he had been prone (fr. 6 Rossetti = Cicero, de fato 10).

[Zopyrus was defended by Socrates... .] who said that, although those vices had been implanted in him, he had cast them out of himself by reason (fr. 7 Rossetti = Cicero, TD 4.80).

The fact that Zopyrus was able to get at the nature with which Socrates was born would suggest that the body is somehow or other a force that predisposes one's irrational nature to develop in a certain way, or lays down its 'default'; but it cannot determine one's nature, which is open to the healing influence of reason as well. Cicero, in fact, ascribes to Phaedo something not unlike the psychology I argued was championed by Plato in the Timaeus - with the difference only that the irrational soul (or its equivalent) starts, not as a blank sheet subject to the influences of body

they are slaves and acquire their skill by following their masters' orders, and by obser- vation and experience. They do not acquire it from [an understanding ofl nature, like the free men, who learn it themselves and teach it this way to their own sons.'

12 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

and reason, but as a comprehensive sketch of the body subject to the era- sure and correction of reason later on.

Cicero, however, is at odds with the majority of our fragments; and, while a head-count is no way to make a judgement in these cases (we have no way of knowing whether or when our fragments are based on a reading of the original, and no evidence for their source if they are not), the principle of cui bono? speaks against him too. For one thing, the bipar- tite psychology implied by Cicero may come close to his own preference in the area.22 For another, such a psychology provides him with the most robust stand-point in the particular polemical context from which his evi- dence comes.23 It seems more plausible all round, then, to prefer the tes- timony of the remaining fragments, which all imply that Socrates some- how retained the evil nature identified by Zopyrus, but did not let that interfere with his life:

fr. 8 (= Scholia to Persius 4.24): 'sum quidem libidinosus; sed meum est ipsam libidinem vincere'

fr. 9 (= ps.-Plutarch, iepi 'Aui#ieo;, versio Syriaca f. 179):24 'In Wirchlichkeit hat dieser Mann nicht gelogen, denn von Natur neige ich sehr zur Begierde [sc. nach den Weibern], durch angewendete Sorgfalt aber bin ich, wie ihr mich kennt.'

fr. 10 (= Alexander, de fato 6): Tiv yap av ttoboiTo;, Ocov E'i tn Tq-ac, ci 1si ola TTV EKc (ptXoao(Ttx; aca"caiv a&eiv(ov (plaec; EyEvETo

fr. 1 1 (Cassian, Collationes 13.5.3: note the suggestion that he is quoting the orig- inal): <<uilt yap, eneXo u?>>, id est: '. .. etenim sum, sed contineo'.

22 Cf. S. Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (Oxford, 1998), 298. We know that Cicero shared Carneades' inclination towards a more or less Peripatetic ethics (e.g. de officiis 1.2 with Academica 2.139 and M. Ducos at R. Goulet (ed.), Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques (Paris, 1994), A28 for the 'Calliphon' men- tioned there): this may well have been associated with an inclination towards a more or less Peripatetic psychology.

23 Cicero, in de fato 10, is arguing against the Stoics' claim that a person's actions are fated because determined by their nature. His response is not to deny the link between one's actions and one's nature. (If he did so, the Stoics would complain that he had removed the guarantee that one is responsible for what one does.) Rather, he argues that we avoid the snares of fate because we have the freedom through reason to make our natures what we wish: witness Zopyrus and Socrates. See again Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom 297-8.

24 The translation (from the Syriac in which this work is preserved) is from J. Gildemeister & F. Bucheler, 'Pseudo-Plutarchos n?ep' &sicfew;', Rheinisches Museum 27 (1872), 520-38.

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 13

'I am', says Socrates (frr. 8, 11); 'I do incline' (fr. 9); Socrates has become better than a nature which he nevertheless retains (fr. 10).

The evidence, I am suggesting then, attributes the following claims to Phaedo: (1) that each person has a 'nature' which encompasses their irra- tional impulses; (2) that this 'nature' is related to the body in such a way that an expert in the matter could deduce the former from the appearance of the latter; and (3) that one's 'nature' does not determine behaviour. If we assume, as seems likely, that what determines behaviour in cases where nature does not is reason, then Phaedo is working with a bipartite model of behaviour familiar enough from Plato and Aristotle. Where Phaedo now seems to differ, however, is in the claim that irrational urges are no more susceptible to training or rehabituation than the set of the eyes or the shape of the neck. How could he claim this?

One possibility is that Phaedo believed something a little bit like Plato: at least that there are rational and irrational parts to the soul; but that he believed in addition (and unlike Plato) that the irrational part automati- cally throws its lot in with the body and remains throughout deaf to rea- son. Possible but, it seems to me, unlikely: such a model has no parallels in antiquity; and one might wonder in a case where the irrational was so fully determined by the body what advantage there might be in claiming that it was different from the body at all.

Another possibility, then, is that Phaedo held something like an 'emer- gentist' view of the soul. The idea would be that 'psychological' func- tions (including desire and reason) somehow supervene on physiological activity, but that reason acquires in its turn a causal efficacy which is inde- pendent of the body. Philosophically, this is undoubtedly a more attrac- tive view; and I think it cannot be positively ruled out for Phaedo. But it also has historical problems to contend with: for the only (other) evidence for emergentist theories of soul in antiquity suggests that they post-date Aristotle and, more than this, makes it look as if they were inspired by him.25 The form of psychological reductionism known to Plato and

25 Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle's might be one early example: R. W. Sharples, anyway, ascribes an emergentist view of the soul to him ('Dicaearchus on the Soul and on Divination' in W. W. Forenbaugh and E. Schutrumpf (edd.), Dicaearchus of Messana. Text, Translation and Discussion (New Brunswick, 2001), 143-73; though see against this V. Caston, 'Dicaearchus' Philosophy of Mind', ib. 175-93; and cf. H. B. Gottschalk, 'Soul as Harmonia', Phronesis 16 (1971), 179-98). For the emer- gentist position of a later Aristotelian, Alexander of Aphrodisias, see Caston's 'Epipheno- menalisms, Ancient and Modern', The Philosophical Review 106 (1997), 309-54, esp. 347-9.

14 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

Aristotle, on the other hand, seems to have relied on a simple identification of the soul with a 'harmony' of physical elements; to have been a form of reductionism which left no room for the independent activity of reason so essential for Phaedo.6

If this represents the historical situation fairly, then we are left with a third possibility, which falls somewhere between the last two and has, it seems to me, the best measure of philosophical and historical plausibility. It could be that Phaedo believed in an independent, rational soul on the one hand, and explained desires on the other as physiological (epi)phe- nomena. Their corporeal roots would explain why physical appearance can be used as a guide to their character (one's 'nature'); and also why reason could have no effect on them: one could no more change one's 'nature' through reason than one could improve one's physical appearance by thinking about it. What reason can do, however, is to take charge: a person can make a rational choice to organise their life in any way they see fit, despite the predispositions written into their physiology: reason is precisely not determined by the body in which it resides. And it seems to me that this possibility gains credibility precisely through its convergence with the ostensible position of the Socrates of the Phaedo.

My suggestion, then, is that the distinctive features of the psychology of the Phaedo (allowing, as I said above, that these might be differences merely of presentation) can be explained if we assume that it is Plato's intention to invoke the philosophy of Phaedo of Elis. What is distinctive about Plato's psychology as presented in the Phaedo is precisely what was dis- tinctive about the psychology of the historical Phaedo. If this is right, though, there is an obvious question: why might he have wished to do this? What end would an invocation of Phaedo's psychology serve for him?

In a certain way, this question might be thought to be the same as the question that, whether I am right or wrong about Phaedo's presence in the Phaedo, faces all commentators on the dialogue: why does Plato present a model of the soul in that dialogue that seems so different in important

26 For Plato, see Phaedo 85e-86d (where such a theory is outlined by Simmias) and 91b-95a (where it is refuted by Socrates). For Aristotle, see de anima 1.4, 407b27- 408a30; also fr. 45 Rose3 (from his Eudemus). Arguments ex silentio are never ideal; but if Phaedo had been an emergentist, and Plato knew it, the decision to make Phaedo the narrator of the Phaedo would have been very strange indeed. The attack on reduc- tionism so important for establishing the immortality of the soul would be fatally undermined by the constant reminder that Phaedo himself held an alternative form of epiphenomenalism less vulnerable to much of Socrates' argument.

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 15

respects from his discussions elsewhere? The answer often given to this question is that the differences are more of presentation than of substance: that Plato here wishes to examine the soul from a certain point of view, wishes for example to focus on reason as the soul's essential attribute.27 But if this is the right answer, then it already provides an explanation for why he might adopt Phaedo's viewpoint: it is precisely by his engagement with Phaedo's psychology that Plato adopts the appropriate point of view (the appropriate focus on reason). Of course, Plato might have focussed his discussion in the appropriate way without invoking Phaedo; but by putting his discussion in Phaedo's hands, so to speak, he can remind the reader that the discussion of the soul in the Phaedo is precisely one per- spective: a 'Phaedonian' perspective, not the whole Platonic story.

But whether this is right or wrong, there is something else to consider here as well. The Phaedo is not just an exploration of the soul (from what- ever perspective); it is, more specifically, a discussion of its immortality, and part of the reason why Plato presents the psychological model that he does (or in the way that he does) must be that he thinks it allows him to argue the soul's immortality more clearly or more securely. One might think, for example, that by associating desire with the body and identify- ing 'soul' with reason, Plato leaves himself free to argue for what really matters, namely the immortality of reason, without getting bogged down in objections that someone might raise against arguments which implied a commitment to the immortality of 'physical' desire as well.28 In other words, the position that Plato adopts in the Phaedo allows him a clear run at showing in the strongest possible terms that the minimum one would have to believe about the soul is that reason at least is separable from the body and not liable to dissolution. But such a position is not only one that might be most easily be made from a psychological perspective like that of Phaedo; it could be that we have as a matter of fact already seen the first step in the argument towards it in Phaedo's Zopyrus. For one of the main points of the Zopyrus was Socrates' assertion that reason always

27 See again note 14 above. 28 There will be time elsewhere for Plato to make clear his views about the psy-

chological status of non-rational impulse. In fact, the need for a further discussion of pleasure in particular is cued, perhaps, in Socrates' reflection at the beginning of the Phaedo that pleasure and pain always come together (60bc; cf. perhaps, as an alter- native - or additional - reading to the one suggested in note 35 below, Phaedo's 'mix- ture' of pleasure and pain at 59a). The reflection seems to have little significance for the immediate discussion, but lies at the heart of the analysis of pleasure in the Gorgias (496c-497a) and, especially, Philebus (31bff).

16 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

remains in control of one's behaviour and actions, whatever one's irra- tional 'nature'. According to Phaedo in the Zopyrus, in other words, rea- son could conflict with and overcome non-rational impulses. But this, the moral of the Zopyrus, turns up in the Phaedo as one of the most com- pelling arguments moved against Simmias' theory that the soul might be no more than an epiphenomenon - the 'harmony' - of the body. So at 94bc (but see all of 94b-95a):

'Well then,' he [Socrates] said, 'of all the things in a man do you say that it is anything other than the soul, especially if it is wise, that rules him?'

'No, I don't' [said Simmias].

'Does it acquiesce in the passions of the body, or oppose them as well? I mean, for example, when there is heat and thirst in us, can it drag us in the opposite direction, to abstain from drinking; and when there is hunger in us, to abstain from eating? And in thousands of other matters we see the soul opposing the passions of the body, don't we?'

'Absolutely.'

'But didn't we agree earlier that, if the soul is a 'harmony', it would not sound in opposition to the way its elements were stretched and relaxed and plucked, or however affected, but would follow them and never take the lead?'

'Of course we agreed,' he said.

The soul, insofar as it can take the lead - and 'especially if it is wise', i.e. especially insofar as reason is engaged - can conflict with and over- come bodily urges; hence the soul (especially reason) cannot, after all, be a 'harmony' of physical elements. Note, by the way, that this argument does not ultimately have to rely on a belief that the desires themselves are bodily (though I have argued that Phaedo himself happens to have thought that): the phenomenon of psychological conflict in general would by the same line of reasoning demonstrate that at least part, but perhaps the whole of the soul is distinct from the body. But it is clearer as an argument against the harmony-theorists if one phrases it as if from such a position; and, as conceding more to the harmony-theorists (namely, that desires at least are functions of bodily state), is arguably more rhetorically effective against them.

Someone resistant to my suggestion that Plato deliberately invokes Phaedo's psychology in the Phaedo (or adopts a Phaedonic perspective in his own exploration of the soul there) will naturally suppose that the co- incidence between Phaedo's own assertions about reason's relationship to desire in the Zopyrus and the argument against Simmias in the Phaedo is no more than that - coincidence. But it is not merely wishful thinking that leads me to make the comparison. There is a powerful suggestion in the

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 17

text itself that Plato might have had Phaedo in mind during his attack on the harmony-theory mooted by Simmias. My argument so far has dealt with two Phaedos: the historical Phaedo, philosopher of Elis, and the Platonic character, Phaedo, who narrates the Phaedo and Socrates' arguments in that dialogue. But there is a third Phaedo to be reckoned with here as well. For Phaedo is also an interlocutor in the Platonic dialogue he nar- rates, and Phaedo the interlocutor becomes important precisely as Socrates is about to make his final assault on the crucial objections to the hypoth- esis of the soul's immortality made by Simmias and Cebes.

Phaedo's appearance within the frame of the Phaedo can be easily sum- marised - they are not, as it happens, very many. We learn, first of all and early on, that on the day of Socrates' execution he was suffering, not pity for Socrates, but a strange 'mixture' of pleasure and pain (58e-59a). His next appearance is 30 Stephanus pages later, when we are told that although, along with the others, he had been convinced by Socrates' ear- lier arguments for the immortality of the soul, he was 'unpleasurably' dis- turbed by the objections of Cebes and Simmias and thrown into doubt again (88c). Socrates teases him for his long hair, and correctly guesses that Phaedo was expecting to cut it in mourning for him (89ab). But Socrates thinks that he should cheer up: the arguments can be defeated, that there will be nothing to mourn for. Indeed, Socrates pledges to help Phaedo defeat them: Phaedo will be Heracles, Socrates his Iolaus (89c).29 Phaedo reverses the roles (he will be lolaus; Socrates should be Heracles);

29 The allusion is to Heracles' encounter with the Lernaean Hydra, during which he was attacked as well by a giant crab, and required the assistance of lolaus. For the stoiy, see e.g. Apollodorus, Library 2.5.2. It is worth speculating whether the appeal to 'Heracles' here might have particular resonance for readers of Phaedo: it seems, anyway, that the eponymous cobbler of his Simon 'refuted' the Encomium of Heracles by Prodicus (SSR IVA 224.1-4; for Prodicus' Encomium, cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.1.21-34). But this is not the only occasion on which Plato alludes to the myth: for his richly suggestive use of it at Euthydemus 297b-d, see R. Jackson, 'Socrates' Iolaos: Myth and Eristic in Plato's Euthydemus', Classical Quarterly 40 (1990), 378-95. R. Burger (The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth (New Haven, 1984), 159-60) is unusual among commentators in trying to explain the image as it occurs in the Phaedo. His suggestion is that Phaedo qua narrator fulfils the role of lolaus through his hesitancy in reporting 'what should presumably constitute the philosophical peak of the dia- logue'. The idea is that he thereby exemplifies, 'however unwittingly, the inevitable "impurity" of the procedure of hypothetical reasoning' and 'shows himself to be a most appropriate lolaus to Socrates' Heracles in the battle for the salvation of the logos'. This explanation seems rather forced, however: in making Phaedo's labour the 'salvation of the logos' rather than that of the soul; in making the narrator of Socrates' words his assistant as such; and in making his assistance so negative.

18 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

Socrates says that it will be all the same, and goes on to address to Phaedo his remarks about 'misology'. Once again, Phaedo drops out of the nar- rative until very near the end (at 1 17c), when he breaks down in tears - not, he says, for the fate of Socrates, but for his own misfortune in losing such a friend.

That Phaedo the interlocutor has such a small role might not seem too disturbing at first. It might be assumed that he is mentioned at all only to remind us that Phaedo the narrator was present at the events he is nar- rating; an assertion of his right to narrate equivalent in its own way to the repeated a{t6; [sc. napt_ysv6pgvJ with which the dialogue opens. In this case, we would not expect him to intrude himself into the conversation more than necessary. But there is, in fact, a good reason to think that Phaedo's relative lack of involvement as an interlocutor in the discussions about the soul has a positive significance. The reason is that is that his relative silence problematises his one small moment of glory. For right at the heart of the dialogue, after the crucial challenges by Simmias and Cebes, just before the argumentative climax which is their refutation, Socrates appoints Phaedo as the Heracles who will tackle them (89c):

'If I were you and the argument fled me I would swear an oath like the Argives, not to allow my hair to grow before I had fought and defeated the argument of Simmias and Cebes.'

[Phaedo replies:] 'But,' I said, 'even Heracles is said not to have been able to deal with two.'

'Then, while there is still light, call me to your aid as Iolaus,' he said.

'I call you to my aid, then,' I said: 'not as if I were Heracles, but as if I were lolaus calling Heracles.'

'It won't make any difference,' he said.

It is important that Phaedo himself accepts the image thus elaborated by Socrates, though he reverses the roles (he will be lolaus and aid the Heraclean Socrates): for all the modesty of the transposition, he accepts, thereby, that he has a crucial role to play. This is important because the truth of the matter is that Phaedo does nothing at all: he nods agreement to Socrates' discourse on misology which follows, and then shrinks again into the background until his tearful outburst at 117c. He does not lead the charge against Simmias and Cebes - in fact Socrates explicitly marches against their combined argument in the singular (oircoal Fp%xo,ixl ? in't bv X6,yov: 91b). Nor does he lift a finger to help (the first person plurals with which Socrates surveys the progress of the argument at 95a are inclusive of Cebes and Simmias as his interlocutors there). So why does Socrates

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 19

invoke the comparison? And why does Phaedo accept it, albeit with a modification of parts?

The answer is not in the text: Phaedo does nothing at all. So perhaps Socrates is looking to a future that lies outside of the text? Phaedo must have been a young man at the time of Socrates' death; it has been sug- gested that the long hair remarked on by Socrates in the immediately pre- ceding passage is meant, one way or another, as an indication of the fact.30 Certainly, he is not within the text ascribed a 'mature' philosophical posi- tion: he is, for example, convinced and then thrown into doubt again about the immortality of the soul. Now Plato quite often (presumably rather more often than we can tell) plays with his reader's knowledge of what was to become later on of characters in his dialogues - the historical fate of some;3 the philosophical fate of others.32 Consider, in particular, the difference it makes to our reading of Socrates' comments on Isocrates at Phaedrus 278e-279a that we possess so much of his work. Perhaps, then, the suggestion that Phaedo will perform Heraclean deeds in support of the position Socrates goes on the develop against Simmias and Cebes is meant to make us look forward to Phaedo's future achievements. If Phaedo was, in his own philosophical career, known precisely for the development of arguments which could be used against positions such as that of Simmias (the position that the soul, reason and all, was an epiphenomenon of the

30 It has been taken to indicate that Phaedo was still a boy (e.g. Burnet, Plato, Phaedo, ad 89b2; R. S. Bluck, Plato, Phaedo (London, 1955), 34); or, since Socrates 'used to tease' him for the length of his hair, it might indicate that he had, by Athenian conventions, outgrown the style, and was a young man. So L. Robin (Platon, Phedon (Paris, 1926), p. x) followed by Rossetti (Aspetti della letteratura socratica antica 122-6), and Rowe (Plato, Phaedo, 212 ad 89b3-4). (McQueen and Rowe argue in fact that Phaedo must have been around 20-22 at the time of Socrates' death: 'Phaedo, Socrates and the Chronology of the Spartan War with Elis', 2 n. 7 with 14 n. 65.) It should be noted that not everyone thinks the hair significant (Giannantoni, SSR 4.119), and of those who do, not everyone reads it as a sign of Phaedo's age. Some see pro- Spartan affiliation in it (e.g. Parmentier, 'L'age de Phedon d'Elis' 22-3; Montuori, 'Su Fedone di Elide' 35-6; Nails, People of Plato 231); J. Davidson (Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passion of Ancient Athens (New York, 1998), 332 n. 56) suggests an allusion to Phaedo's time as a prostitute.

31 E.g. on Cephalus, M. Gifford, 'Dramatic Dialectic in Republic Book 1', Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20 (2001), 35-106 esp. 52-8.

32 There are ways of twisting the trope too: the 'might have been' of Theaetetus (Theaetetus 142c), for example, is already negated by his impending death (142b); the promise of the youthful Socrates in the Parmenides, on the other hand, seems alto- gether too great, since he seems to have Plato's theory of forms well on the way to completion.

20 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

body), then Socrates' suggestion that they will combine efforts to defeat Simmias and Cebes starts to make a lot of sense: it is, as it were, an indi- cation that the arguments that follow are not just Socrates' arguments, but rely on or include positions developed by (the historical) Phaedo as well. As I have already suggested, Phaedo's contribution would be precisely to have shown the fallacy inherent in a position like that of Simmias by which we might be led by the plausible suggestion that some psycholog- ical functions are dependent on and cannot outlive the body (namely, func- tions such as those desires whose object of care is the body) to the more general claim that the whole soul is dependent on the body. What Phaedo has, on my reconstruction, established is that, even if one supposes desires to be corporeal, reason can still be thought of as independent of the body; and, more than this, that the fact that rational choice might actually conflict with and override desires and inclinations generated by the body shows that it must be thought of as such. This, as I noted, is the point of the encounter between Socrates and Zopyrus; and it is the argument against Simmias given at Phaedo 94b-95a.

None of this, of course, starts to answer Cebes, who worried that, even if Simmias was wrong and one could prove that the soul is independent of and outlasts the body, one has nevertheless not yet proved that the soul is immortal. (The soul might be like a man who outlasts a series of cloaks, but nevertheless dies in the end: 86e-88b.) But this is quite consistent with the idea that Phaedo is invoked as Socrates' collaborator. If Phaedo could provide arguments that were valid against Simmias, we have no evidence that his own work could be taken to furnish arguments against Cebes - no evidence, in fact, that Phaedo addressed the immortality of the soul as such (however inclined one might be to assume that he believed in it). Neither is it possible that the argument we get against Cebes in the Phaedo (at 95a-107a) was drawn from Phaedo - not least because it is premised on a characteristically Platonic theory of forms.33 This, then, is why Phaedo needs an Tolaus (or is an Iolaus in need of a Heracles): it is only by the combination of his argument with arguments supplied through Socrates by Plato that the combined threat of Simmias and Cebes is finally defeated.

33 Characteristically Platonic theory also plays a role in one of the arguments brought against Simmias, viz the appeal to the theory of recollection (9le-92e: the soul could hardly remember knowledge it acquired before entering the body if the soul were an epiphenomenon of the body). This however, is only one of the arguments against Simmias: a Platonic addition, I am suggesting, to an argument found also in Phaedo.

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 21

Phaedo, in short, is a useful ally for Socrates in the refutation of Simmias and Cebes if he was known to Plato's readers as a champion of a radical distinction between the irrational and the rational in discussions of the relationship between the soul and the body - and all the more use- ful as an ally if I was right earlier to suggest that he accepted the force of a 'harmony-theory' of soul, at least to the extent of accepting that desires, and irrational impulse more generally, were physiological epiphe- nomena. On the back of his arguments, Socrates can add his final proof of the soul's immortality and secure his position against Cebes as well as Simmias. So does this make Phaedo a Heracles or an lolaus after all? Socrates says that 'it won't make any difference'. The point, perhaps, is that it depends on how one reads Socrates' appropriation of (the histori- cal) Phaedo. The arguments of the historical Phaedo came first; they are also are logically prior, insofar as one first has to establish that the soul is independent of the body before the question of its longevity is raised; and finally it might be supposed that the position they attack (psycholog- ical epiphenomenalism) is the more seductive and the more dangerous of the objections posed by Simmias and Cebes. For these reasons, then, one might well think of him as the Heracles whose position is shored up in Socrates' appropriation of him and the addition of the arguments against Cebes. In another sense, however, Socrates is better seen as the Heracles of piece: he draws on the arguments of the historical Phaedo (who to this extent helps), but the labour is his labour: it is Socrates, not Phaedo, who addresses the issue of immortality as such; and his is the definitive solu- tion.34 But whichever way one reads the situation, the arguments are not affected. Philosophically speaking (and that, after all, is what is impor- tant), it won't make any difference.

According to my reconstruction, then, Phaedo of Elis thought that desires and emotions were epiphenomena of physiological states; were to be identified with particular temperaments of the body.35 To this extent,

3 The implication, in this case, would be that Plato has outdone Phaedo - an impli- cation present already, perhaps, in the very fact of his appropriation of him. If G. W. Most is right that the Phaedo (at least the end of the Phaedo) is intended to secure Plato's claim to be Socrates' legitimate heir, there might be a sharper polemical edge to the suggestion ("A Cock for Asclepius", CQ 43 (1993), 96-111; cf. G. Tanner, 'Xenophon's Socrates - Who were his informants?', Prudentia 28 (1996), 35-47, esp. 42-3, arguing that there was rivalry between Plato on the one hand and Phaedo and Xenophon on the other). But see note 36 below for an alternative interpretation of the last words of Socrates, on which Most bases his argument.

5 There might even be a hint at this position in Phaedo's description of himself at

22 GEORGE BOYS-STONES

Phaedo could understand the force of psychological epiphenomalism. But he argued that one must not be misled (perhaps by the economy of the thought) into thinking that reason comes about in the same way. In fact reason is a qualitatively different feature of human activity, and something that is in no way defined by, or dependent on, or even (therefore?) confined to the body - as emotions and desires seem to be. When the activity of reason is correctly analysed, when one considers its capacity to oppose the body and corporeal desires in directing action, one sees that it must be something distinct and free.36 Apart from the particular argu- ment against Simmias which I have suggested might have made its way into the Phaedo from Phaedo's own works, Phaedo's psychology more generally thus provides the ideal starting-point for Plato's readers to think about the immortality of the soul as the topic is developed in the Phaedo, and the ideal standpoint from which Plato himself could defend the posi- tion that reason at the very least must be immortal.

I should emphasise that I am not in all of this trying to claim that the Phaedo at any point represents the views of Phaedo of Elis instead of Plato's views. Apart from the fact that the specific issue of the immortal- ity of the soul is not fully confronted by Phaedo's arguments (Phaedo on this score is only an lolaus, or at best a Heracles in need of Iolaus' help), I have been careful to leave open the possibility that we might, in the

the beginning of his narration. For he tells us that he was, on the day of Socrates' execution, in the grip of a 'mixture' of emotions. The word for 'mixture' is Kpaat; (59a5), the standard word in medical contexts for the 'temperament' of the body - i.e. the particular blend of corporeal elements or parts which underlies a given physio- logical or pathological state (already in the Hippocratic corpus e.g. Nature of Man 4). The very same word is used later on in the dialogue as a synonym for the 'harmony' of corporeal elements which is said by the harmony-theorists to constitute the soul: Otiat Ey? yE. . . 1cpatV EiVat Sat apjovtav avOT6,v ToUTCOv 'rv ijUXI1v Tlg(.v (Phaedo 86b; cf. d2). Phaedo's 'mixture' of emotions might well have had a basis in his phys- iological 'harmony'.

36 And perhaps it was Phaedo who originally spoke of the soul's 'purification' (Kca&expa;t;) in much the terms used by Socrates passim in the Phaedo, and of its 'cure' in the terms implied by Socrates' dying wish to have a cock sacrificed to Asclepius. In any case, we have the evidence of Julian (as cited above) that Phaedo believed in the curative and purifying power of philosopher (o&&ev &viarov Elvat M (ptXoaopti,

ncavcxa; 8? K Eicvtwv urs' awtij; KcaOaipea0at iMwv). This is not, by the way, to say that either Phaedo or Plato saw death as the purification or cure of the soul (which is Most's objection to reading the last words of Socrates as a reference to his own 'cure': "'A Cock for Asclepius"', 100-4). The point, more generally, is about the freeing of one's rationality from service to the body - something for which death might itself stand as a metaphor.

PHAEDO OF ELIS AND PLATO ON THE SOUL 23

manner of a significant number of commentators, read the psychology of the Phaedo as an exploration of Plato's own 'standard' psychological model from a particular point of view. What I do hope to have done, how- ever, is to have given that point of view a name and a context and, in doing so, to show that the Phaedo can be used as further evidence for the views of Phaedo of Elis himself.

University of Durham