If you leaf through the newspapers nowadays you are bound to come across the word ‘myth’. It usually appears in titles announcing that a widespread belief has been ‘dispelled’, ‘nailed’, ‘debunked’, or ‘shattered’ by recent research. Something that we all believed to be true—say, that lengthy holidays inspire teachers to work harder—is now contradicted by the results of a new study, and we and the media call such a popular belief, now unveiled as false, a ‘myth’.
The term ‘myth’ is a transcription of the ancient Greek muthos, and this is also the case with the French mythe, the German Mythos, the Italian mito, and so on in most other modern European languages. But what the ancient Greeks called muthos was quite different from what we and the media nowadays call a ‘myth’. For the ancient Greeks—at least in the archaic phase of their civilization—a myth was a story that unveiled reality, hence a true story. In archaic societies, reality was believed to be the way it is because of the way the gods brought everything into being. The primordial deeds of the gods, those that caused the world around us to be as it is, were out of our reach, for they happened at the beginning of time. But they have been preserved in words, in stories that can make us witness them anew. These stories that re-create the very creation of the world by the gods, and thus unveil the ultimate origin of reality, were called by the ancient Greeks ‘myths’. Between this archaic notion of myth and ours stands Plato: for him a myth is, taken as a whole, false, but there is truth in it also (cf. R. 377a).
Plato was born in 427 BCE into a distinguished Athenian family. Athens, which had stood bravely against the Persian invasion of Greece, was defeated by Sparta in 404. After the war an oppressive dictatorship known as the Thirty Tyrants seized power in Athens. Although some of the Thirty Tyrants were his relatives (such as his cousin Critias: see the Index of Names) Plato refused to enter politics.
In 403 democracy was restored, and in 399 the Athenian democratic regime condemned the great philosopher Socrates to death on two fabricated charges (impiety and corruption of the youth of Athens). Plato believed that Socrates, his dear teacher, was ‘the best, the wisest too, and the most just of men’ (Phd. 118a); but the majority of Athenians were unconvinced.
After the execution of Socrates Plato travelled widely in Greece, Italy, Sicily, and possibly Egypt. In 388 he came to the court of Dionysius I of Syracuse. Dion, Dionysius’ brother-in-law, was probably familiar with Plato’s philosophical teachings and wanted to make him a political adviser. Plato, however, soon left Dionysius’ court and returned to Athens. There, in the early fourth century, he founded the Academy, the first institution devoted to the study of philosophy. Aristotle became a student at the Academy in 367. In that same year Dionysius I died and was succeeded by Dionysius II. Dion asked Plato to come to Syracuse again, this time to look after the education of the young king. Plato came, but he soon found himself entangled in court intrigues, which finally forced Dion to leave Syracuse and Plato himself to return to Athens. In 361 Dionysius II asked Plato to come back to his court and advise him on various matters. Plato accepted but, once he arrived, he realized yet again that his advice was hardly taken into account by the king. Eventually he left Syracuse and after a dangerous voyage managed to return to Athens. In 357 Dion and his allies (among whom there were several members of Plato’s Academy) attacked Dionysius II and expelled him from Syracuse; Dion was killed in 354 by his political rivals. After his third visit to Syracuse, Plato never left Athens. He died in 347.1
Plato wrote over twenty dialogues, whose main character is mostly Socrates. Some of the best-known dialogues are Phaedo (which depicts Socrates’ last philosophical conversation and death), Republic (in which everything revolves around the political constitution of a utopian state, Callipolis, run by philosopher-kings), Timaeus (which offers a complex cosmological account), and Laws (which focuses on the legal code of Magnesia, another utopian state). There are also thirteen letters that are attributed to Plato, but their authenticity has been fiercely disputed. The Seventh Letter, whose authenticity has been defended by several reputable scholars, was addressed to Dion’s party in Syracuse a few years after Dion’s assassination, and it contains an overall account of Plato’s involvement in Syracusan politics. Plato’s contribution to philosophy and his constant influence on the history of philosophy, which can hardly be exaggerated, made the twentieth-century philosopher A. N. Whitehead claim that ‘the safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’.2
There are many myths in Plato’s writings. Some of them are traditional Greek myths, as found in Homer or Hesiod, though sometimes Plato slightly modifies them. Others, usually called ‘Platonic myths’, were invented by Plato, though some are in fact heavily modified versions of traditional Greek myths. Plato is not only a myth-teller, but also a myth-maker.
Most of the myths are narrated by Socrates. Socrates, however, attributes them to others, or introduces them as stories preserved in the memory of a given community, which transmits them orally from one generation to another. The narration of myths was common in ancient Greek society, and Plato acknowledges this practice, mentioning its conventions either in general or in connection with the transmission of a particular myth. We learn from him that the narration of myths was often the responsibility of poets and their subordinates: rhapsodes (professional reciters of poetry), actors, and choral dancers (R. 373b, 377d), who performed above all in rhapsodic contests, during the great festivals (Ti. 21b; Criti. 108b, d). Rhapsodic contests took place at Athens, at the time of the Panathenaea (see the note for Timaeus 21a), and dramatic contests at the time of the urban Dionysia, the two great festivals of ancient Athens, in front of a socially diverse audience. The myth was composed in prose or in verse. It could be told in a recitation, with or without musical accompaniment, or in song, and its interpretation might include a choreographic arrangement. When the myth is sung, Plato claims, melody and rhythm should have no autonomy, but must illustrate the subject of the discourse (R. 398c-d, 399a-c; L. 814d-815b). Yet the myth-tellers are not necessarily poets or rhapsodes. They may be mothers (R. 377c, 381e; L. 887d), nursemaids (R. 377c; L. 887d), or old women (Grg. 527a; R. 350e); their audience was much more limited, and consisted essentially of children younger than 7 years old (R. 377a; L. 887d), the age at which privileged boys in ancient Greece usually began to attend the gymnasium (a public place where exercises were practised). Children, however, are in many cases the initial addressees of myth (R. 377a-b; Stm. 268e).
Whether invented by him or not, for Plato a myth is a story dealing with particular beings, deeds, places, or events that are beyond our experience: the gods, the heroes, the life of the soul after death, the distant past, the creation of the world. Thus a myth is essentially unverifiable, and it can often be taken as a false discourse. Also, on various occasions, Plato contrasts mythical discourse with philosophical argument, as if this contrast represents that between irrational and rational (see, for instance, Prt. 324d), so we may expect that he would look at myths with legitimate suspicion. Yet Plato alludes abundantly in his work to traditional myths, adapts them, and creates new myths, to suit his purpose. What is more, he himself blurs the distinction between philosophy and mythology, as he does in Republic when he calls the utopian city that is at the core of Republic’s philosophical construction a ‘myth’ (376d), or in Timaeus when he claims that his account of the birth of the universe and man is nothing but a plausible story or myth (29d, 59c, 68d).
Both Plato’s myths and his dialogues are narrative: in all of them a story is being told by a story-teller.3 But the mythical story is different from the frame-story of the dialogues, in which two or more characters—in a particular setting and at a particular time—carry on a philosophical conversation. The mythical story is a fantastical story, for it always contains a fair amount of fantastical details. Plato is aware of that and he often makes the myth-teller admit it. In Phaedo, for instance, he makes Socrates say, after expounding the long myth about the afterlife, that ‘to insist that those things are just as I’ve related them would not be fitting for a man of intelligence’ (114d; see also Phd. 84c and Phdr. 265b–c). The myth, then, is not just fictional (made up), but fantastical (unrealistic), whereas the frame-story of the dialogues contains no fantastical details. This story is certainly fictional, for Plato has invented most of it, but it is a realistic fiction: apart for some incidental anachronisms, all dialogues describe realistic conversations between realistic characters in realistic settings. Thus Plato embeds philosophy-cum-fantastical stories into realistic stories.
Why did Plato season his philosophical discourse, which he sometimes refers to as logos, with these fantastical stories? Why did he not avoid, as the vast majority of philosophers have done, the infiltration of muthos into logos?
First, there is a practical reason: myth is, Plato thought, an efficient means of persuasion. A myth is supposed to make one adopt a particular belief (R. 415c, 621c; Phdr. 265b; L. 804e, 887d, 913c, 927c), and its persuasive powers are not to be underestimated (Phd. 114d). The philosopher-kings who rule the ideal city imagined in Republic may use it as a ‘noble lie’ (R. 414b) for making the great majority of those who are not philosophers accept their places in the city, without any need for coercion. The myth of autochthony (414d–e), for instance, also mentioned in Laws (663d–664a), as well as the myth of metals, serves to convince the inhabitants that the city-state is one and indivisible, even though it is made up of distinct groups.4 Or else the philosopher-kings may use myths as a way to instil in children respect for various values; and the production of myths, says Plato, should be supervised by the philosopher-kings, so that children are protected from absorbing wrong behaviour and beliefs from excessively liberal myths (R. 377b). A myth, however, may be useful even to a sharp-minded philosopher, for myths, at least those promoted by Plato, are supposed to make those who believe in them behave well (Grg. 526d-e; Phd. 114d; R. 621c).
There is, however, another reason for Plato’s telling so many myths: a philosophical reason. Plato believed that humans are not able to reach the ultimate truth about reality (R. 517b–c; Phdr. 246a). As he claims in Timaeus, human intelligence can never be omniscient, as its model, the intelligence of the universe, is (27c–29d, 68d, 72d). A human being, he goes on in Timaeus, if provided with the right nurture (44b, 90c), education (44b–c, 52e, 86e, 87b), and philosophy (47b), can escape the worst of maladies—ignorance—and attain, as much as human nature permits, the truth about himself and his world (90c). But our human nature, Plato suggests by telling us so many myths, often permits us only to approximate to truth, and only indirectly, through a fictional narrative. This means that sometimes, for Plato, myth is the only device available to enable us to explore matters that are beyond our limited intellectual powers. Myth may be false in its fantastical details, but it may mirror the truth. It may, as it is said in Republic (377a), be false if taken as a whole, but it may lead towards truth. In short, the human mind has limitations of many sorts, so it sometimes needs myth to approximate to the truth about what lies beyond its experience.5
Four of the myths collected here—‘The Judgement of Souls’, ‘The Other World’, ‘Er’s Journey into the Other World’, and ‘The Winged Soul’—are what is usually called eschatological myths, that is, myths about the end of earthly life (from the Greek eschaton, ‘last’, ‘uttermost’). In Plato, however, the end of earthly life is linked with two of his main philosophical theories: the theories of Forms and Recollection.
For Plato the human soul is immortal, and its earthly life is just one episode of its endless journey through time. ‘The Judgement of Souls’ deals with the issue of immortality from an ethical perspective: after death, one’s soul is going to be judged, and then punished or rewarded according to one’s moral conduct in its earthly life. This eschatological scenario is reiterated in ‘The Other World’, the final myth of Phaedo (107d–108a, 113d), but there Plato refines it and gives it a distinctive Platonic touch.
In Phaedo the soul is not only judged for its earthly life: it is also reincarnated into another body and thrown into a new earthly life, which is part of the punishment inflicted, or reward bestowed, upon it. For instance, says Plato, those ‘who have cultivated gluttony, lechery, and drunkenness, and have taken no pains to avoid them, are likely to enter the forms of donkeys and animals of that sort’ when reincarnated (81e). Furthermore, one’s soul is now being judged both for one’s moral conduct in earthly life and for the efforts one made in that life to practise real philosophy. In ‘The Judgement of Souls’ there is a short remark about the judgement of a philosopher’s soul: such a soul, it is said there, is bound to impress Rhadamanthys, the deity who judges the souls, and be sent to the Isles of the Blessed (Grg. 526c). In ‘The Other World’ this preferential treatment of philosophers’ souls is amply developed, and it is also given a philosophical grounding. Real philosophers, Plato now says, are those who strive to make dying their profession (67e) and whose lives resemble a ‘cultivation of death’ (81a). By that he means that a real philosopher is one who attempts to separate the soul as much as possible from the body (67c; see also 67b, 69d, 84a–b). Why? Because during its earthly life the soul has a corporeal element (81c), and the corporeal blocks the process of acquiring real knowledge, which is pure and incorporeal. ‘If we’re going to know anything purely, we must be rid of it [i.e. the body], and must view the objects themselves with the soul by itself’ (66d–e). And why is pure knowledge not contaminated by the corporeal? Because the objects of pure knowledge, the Forms, are thoroughly incorporeal.
I am assuming, claims Plato in Phaedo, the existence of ‘an absolute beauty and a large and all the rest’ (100b). Such an absolute entity, say, absolute beauty, is called by Plato idea or eidos (cf. 102a, 103e), usually rendered in English as ‘Form’. Idea and eidos are cognates of the verb horaō, ‘to see’, and they literally mean ‘form’ or ‘shape’. Here in Phaedo Plato comes up with the first explicit version of his so-called theory of Forms. And what this theory claims is that (i) reality is split into two realms: that of absolute, non-perceptible, eternal Forms, and that of their perceptible, always changing embodiments; and that (ii) the Forms actually explain the way perceptible things are: a beautiful person, say, is beautiful because that person embodies the Form of beauty (in ‘The Birth of Love’ everything revolves around realizing that every beautiful thing is an embodiment of the Form of beauty).6
Now when I look at the perceptible embodiment of a Form, Plato claims, I actually recognize in it that very Form. When I look at, say, a beautiful person, I actually recognize that which makes it beautiful, namely the Form of beauty. In Phaedo, however, Plato takes equality, not beauty, as an example. Let us consider, he makes Socrates say there, the case of seeing equal things. ‘Whenever anyone, on seeing a thing, thinks to himself, “this thing that I now see seeks to be like another reality, but falls short, and cannot be like that object: it is inferior”, do we agree that the man who thinks that must previously have known the object he says it resembles but falls short of?’ (74e–75a). Yes, Plato answers. ‘Then it must, surely, have been before we began to see and hear and use other senses that we got knowledge of the equal itself, of what it is, if we are going to refer the equals from our sense-perceptions to it, supposing that all things are doing their best to be like it, but are inferior to it’ (75b).
On my desk there are two paper-knives. I look at them and I instantly realize that these two knives are of equal length. They are equal, yet not perfectly equal. I know they are equal, however, because, Plato seems to suggest, I compare them with perfect equality, that is, with the Form of equality. If so, it is as if I instantly recognize the Form of equality in their being of an (approximate) equal length. Yet I can recognize only what I knew beforehand. Thus, Plato argues, I must have had previous knowledge of the Form of equality in order to recognize it in perceptible, equal things. Plato calls this act of recognizing the Form of x in an actual, perceptible x ‘recollection’ (73c–d, 74c–d), and his view that Forms are recognized in their perceptible embodiments is sometimes referred to as his theory of Recollection.
The Forms themselves may be embodied by perceptible objects, but they are pure, unaffected by their own embodiments, and their knowledge must also be so: pure, non-perceptible, not contaminated by anything corporeal. If this is so, when did I acquire this innate, pure knowledge of Forms that allows me to recollect Forms in their perceptible embodiments? Plato’s answer is that this knowledge is given to us, as if our soul had acquired it before it was embodied and thrown into this earthly life. If knowledge is really just recollection, says Plato, then ‘what we are now reminded of we must have learned at some former time. But that would be impossible, unless our souls existed somewhere before being born in this human form; so in this way too, it appears that the soul is something immortal’ (72e; cf. also 75c). The pure knowledge of Forms must have been acquired when our soul was also pure, that is, before it was born into a corporeal human being (see 66e). And if our souls existed before our birth, then, Plato argues, they will continue to exist after we die (102b, 106e). To go back to the case of seeing equal things, Plato seems to say roughly this: I realize that two perceptible objects are of equal length, yet not perfectly equal; I know they are equal because I compare them with perfect equality, that is, with the Form of equality, which I cannot have come across in this life; so, I must have encountered this Form in a previous life or interlude between lives. You may find this argument implausible, but Plato seems to have taken it quite seriously. He would not insist that all its details are true (see Phd. 114d), but would claim that the existence of Forms calls for postulating an innate knowledge of them, and that an innate knowledge of Forms calls for postulating the soul’s immortality and reincarnations (see 92d).7
At least three of the eschatological myths collected here—‘The Other World’, ‘Er’s Journey into the Other World’, and ‘The Winged Soul’—are intended to complement these two philosophical theories, of Forms and Recollection, by developing the narrative potential of these postulated ideas of immortality and reincarnation.
There is in Plato an inconsistency between what he says and what he does in his dialogues: on the one hand, he opposes myth to philosophical argument; but on the other, he uses myths (and other fictional narratives) abundantly, and envelops his own philosophy in fictional narrative dialogues, in what seems a schizophrenic act of sabotage. This inconsistency is linked with another, more puzzling one.
In many dialogues Plato condemns the use of images as a way of knowing things, and he contrasts any knowledge that involves images with real philosophical knowledge, which, he claims, should avoid any visual representation. In Phaedo, for instance, he makes Socrates say that to really know things we should not look at them with our eyes and rely on the way they appear, visually, to us. ‘I was afraid’, says Socrates there, ‘I might be completely blinded in my soul, by looking at objects with my eyes and trying to lay hold of them with each of my senses. So I thought I should take refuge in theories, and study the truth of matters in them’ (99e).
Plato’s myths are full of images, ranging from complex frescos to bare sketches. Now, the image that I see when I look at the things around me, and the image I see when I listen to a myth that vividly describes, say, the geography of Tartarus, are not of the same kind. The first one is the image of real things, the second a fantasy. I acquire the first one with my eyes open, the second with my mind, and for this one I do not need to keep my eyes open; in fact, it may help if I shut them (the mind, it is said in Symposium (219a), begins to see clearly when the bodily eyes grow dim).8 But even if they are of different kinds, both of them are images, and they both engage our soul on a visual track towards ‘the truth of matters’, which in Phaedo and elsewhere is contrasted with the real, non-visual, philosophical track. If so, then the opposition between myth and philosophy extends into another one—that between the visual and the philosophical approaches to things. And here, too, there is an inconsistency between what Plato says and what he does in his dialogues: on the one hand, he condemns the use of images; on the other, he uses many images and visual analogies—some of them fairly realistic, others, like those portrayed in his myths, utterly fantastical.
Plato might have said that the use of image is either part of the playfulness of philosophy (see Phdr. 276d, 277e), or that it is simply a good means of teaching. Plato, however, did not explain or describe this incoherence in any way. So, some scholars suggest, we have to assume that he was probably much mistaken about the method by which he reached his own philosophical theories.9 This conclusion may seem fairly commonsensical. But the price for adopting it is high, for in this case we have to assume that such a careful thinker and meticulous writer as Plato failed to realize how odd this incoherence between his principles and practice about images is. Besides, this incoherence is woven together with several other, related incoherences, which can hardly be said to have escaped Plato’s attention. Consider just one of them. This concerns the very names Plato uses for naming the intelligible, non-perceptible, eternal entities embodied in perceptible things, namely idea and eidos. As Plato claims in ‘The Birth of Love’, an idea, or eidos, say, the Form of beauty, is not perceived ‘as a face or hands or any other physical feature, or as a piece of reasoning or knowledge.… [or] as being anywhere else either—in something like a creature or the earth or the heavens’ (211a–b). No, the Form of beauty is absolute, separate, simple, and eternal (211b). But to use for these absolute entities the words idea and eidos is very puzzling indeed. As I have already mentioned, idea and eidos are cognates of the verb verb horaō, ‘to see’, and they literally mean ‘outward, visual appearance’, ‘form’, or ‘shape’, and both of them do occur in Plato in their, literal, visual sense (see, for instance, Theaetetus 157c). So why did he use precisely these words that express the visual appearance of perceptible things in order to name something that is non-visible? This is, one may argue, just a metaphor, a visual, handy metaphor. But why choose a visual metaphor for something that is claimed to be non-visible?10
Here is what Plato makes Socrates say in Gorgias: ‘In my opinion it’s preferable for me to be a musician with an out-of-tune lyre or a choir-leader with a cacophonous choir, and it’s preferable for almost everyone in the world to find my beliefs misguided and wrong, rather than for just one person—me—to contradict and clash with myself’ (482b–c). The contradiction between one’s words and deeds was not a trivial matter for Plato. And yet in his middle and late dialogues he seems to contradict himself consciously by preaching one sort of philosophy and practising another. He must have had a serious reason for doing it. In his usual oblique manner, he must have wanted to point out something. But what? He does not say, and we can only guess. Was it meant to point out the limitations of Plato’s own reason in its quest for pure knowledge? Or the limitations of human reason in general? This contradiction, however, could hardly fail to make us wonder; and Plato, like Aristotle, believed that wonder is what triggers the very act of philosophizing. Wonder, Plato says in Theaetetus, is actually the origin of philosophy (155d). We can only guess what this contradiction was supposed to point out. But we can be sure of what it was supposed to make us do.
Of Plato’s immediate successors in the Academy, Speusippus, Xenocrates, and Heraclides of Pontus, as well as Aristotle, themselves composed dialogues as well as philosophical treatises, but we do not know that they included myths in the Platonic manner—though Heraclides composed dialogues, such as Zoroastres and Abaris, involving semi-mythical figures, and Aristotle, while composing more sober dialogues, seems to have told some interesting stories in them.11
However, none of these seems to equate to the particular way in which Plato makes use of myths as the complement for, or culmination of, lines of argument. From the later Platonist tradition also there is not much evidence of this practice being followed. The only notable exceptions are Cicero, in the mid-first century BCE, and Plutarch of Chaeronea, in the late first and early second century CE
In the case of Cicero, we have only his myth at the end of De Republica, the so-called ‘Dream of Scipio’ (VI 9–26).12 This is, however, of great interest, as it provides a first example of the sort of eschatological myth of which Plutarch provides a number of instances. The myth is inspired, broadly, by ‘The Cave’, but with some influence also from ‘The Other World’. What we have is a first-person narrative by Scipio Africanus the Younger, presenting a dream in which he meets his adoptive grandfather, Scipio Africanus the Elder, and then his natural father, L. Aemilius Paulus, and they take him on a guided tour of the heavenly realms, with the purpose of teaching him the true nature of the soul, and the happy destiny that awaits those, in particular, who have served their country well (not much is revealed about the fate of those who haven’t!).
The metaphysics presented is actually rather peculiar, from a Platonic point of view. It is plain from Paulus’ words (see 15) that the soul is to be seen as composed of the same substance as the heavenly bodies, a kind of pure fire, or ether, which is the doctrine, not of Plato, but rather of his independent-minded follower Heraclides—and possibly of Polemon, the last head of the Old Academy, as well.13 Yet Polemon almost certainly did not compose myths, whereas Heraclides may well have, and his works are perfectly well known to Cicero, so he is a more likely source of influence.
We must move on, however, about a hundred and fifty years, from Cicero to Plutarch of Chaeronea, to find the only other known composer of myths within the Platonic tradition. Plutarch makes use of myths in three of his dialogues, On the Delays in the Divine Vengeance (De Sera, 563B–568A), On the Sign of Socrates (De Genio, 589F–594A), and Concerning the Face on the Moon (De Facie, 940F-945D). In each case, what we have is an eschatological myth, involving a ‘heavenly ride’, loosely modelled on ‘The Cave’, though again with influence from ‘The Other World’, but also embodying a considerably greater degree of ‘scientific’ speculation and metaphysical elaboration, developed over the intervening centuries. Plutarch is very conscious of Plato’s use of myth to reinforce an argument. In the De Facie, for example, the myth presents a reason for the earth-like composition of the Moon, which has been set out ‘scientifically’ in the first part of the discussion. The latter part of the myth (942D onwards—the first part constitutes a most interesting frame-story, involving a tale of travel across the Atlantic) establishes the purpose of the Moon by explaining her role in the ‘life-cycles’ of souls. Similarly, the myth of the De Genio (the story of Timarchus, who has a vision of the heavens and the afterlife of the soul while incubating in the Cave of Trophonius), serves to set that inner voice of Socrates which he used to say was his guide in a more general context. Just before this myth is told (589F), one of the interlocutors, Theocritus, remarks: ‘The mythical mode of discourse, too, despite the loose manner in which it does so, has a way of reaching the truth.’
Plutarch, however, is the last Platonist to attempt to emulate the Master himself in this respect. In the Neoplatonic period what we find, rather, is the determined allegorization of Platonic myths—a process that had probably begun as early as Numenius, in the second century CE. Plotinus himself is not much concerned with the formal exegesis of Platonic myths, but he does, in Ennead III 5, ‘On Love’, indulge in something approaching an allegorical interpretation of the tale of Poverty and Plenty in Symposium 203a–d. His successors, however, devoted themselves much more explicitly to such interpretation. Porphyry and Iamblichus certainly gave allegorical interpretations of the Atlantis story in Timaeus, and Porphyry, at least, discussed ‘The Cave’ (cf. Proclus, In Platonis Rem Publicam commentarii, II 96, 13, and passim).14 The most comprehensive Neoplatonic discussion of a myth, however, is that of Proclus on ‘The Cave’ in the sixteenth and final essay among his Essays on the Republic.15 He also treats in some detail, in his Commentary on the Timaeus,16 the story of Atlantis, allegorizing it comprehensively as a struggle between opposed daemonic forces in the world, the intellectual, symbolized by Athens and the goddess Athena, and the material, symbolized by Atlantis and Poseidon.17 We also find, in his Platonic Theology (book V, chs. 6 and 25), a treatment of ‘The Two Cosmic Eras’, allegorizing away the cosmic cycle aspect of the story, and interpreting the cycle of Cronus as a representation of the intelligible realm, in so far as it impinges upon the material world.
Other than Proclus, we have interpretations of ‘The Other World’ by Damascius (In Platonis Phaedonem commentaria, I, §§ 456–551), and of The Judgement of Souls by Olympiodorus (In Platonis Gorgiam commentaria,§§ 46-50); the former bears witness to much previous discussion of the subject, while the latter provides acute analysis of what purposes myths serve (e.g. 240, 27 ff. Westerink).
These interpretations of Platonic myths have to be seen in the context of the later Platonist belief in the divinely inspired insight, not only of Plato himself, but of a whole range of poetic, ‘theological’ authorities, such as Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and Musaeus, all of whom, consequently, being divinely inspired, had to be brought into agreement with one another, and with Plato, with the help of elaborate allegorization.