The Art of Glaukos (Plato Phaedo 108D4-9)

Author(s): Diskin Clay

Source: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 106, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp. 230-236
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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AMERICAN
JOURNAL
OF PHILOLOGY AMERICAN
JOURNAL
OF PHILOLOGY
mulations.2 These should be left out of consideration on
Sayre's
own
principle
that
prejudicial
criteria be omitted. With this
elimination,
Sayre's weighted
sums
may
be recalculated as follows:
Parmenides I 77
Parmenides II 98
Parmenides entire 118
Timaeus 129
The conclusion to be drawn from these amended
sums,
for the little it is
worth,
is that the Timaeus is later than the Parmenides whether or not
the latter is
split.
The
impression
should not be allowed to
linger
that
Sayre's reworking
of Lutoslawski's
system
as an
interesting experiment,
duly
modified,
suggests anything
else.
NATHAN A. GREENBERG
OBERLIN COLLEGE
2Criterion 453 is listed three times: under Class C for Parmenides I, and Class D
for Parmenides I and Parmenides II. All this for a feature which occurs in the
dialogue
only
three times. It alone accounts for 11
points
in
Sayre's
scores.
THE ART OF GLAUKOS
(PLATO
PHAEDO
108D4-9)
At the end of the Phaedo and its
arguments
for the
immortality
of
the
soul,
and at the end of his
life,
Socrates turns to consider the conse-
quences
of the conviction that the soul is immortal. He
contemplates
the
fate of souls after the death of the
body
and the
journey
from "here" to
"there"- Cv0ev6e EKElScO
(107E2)-and
those
places
that will receive
the soul of a
person
who has lived a life of
purity
and moderation
(107C1-108C8).
The
conception
of these
otherworldly places
seems to
bring
him back to the science of the
philosophers
he had
just
described
mulations.2 These should be left out of consideration on
Sayre's
own
principle
that
prejudicial
criteria be omitted. With this
elimination,
Sayre's weighted
sums
may
be recalculated as follows:
Parmenides I 77
Parmenides II 98
Parmenides entire 118
Timaeus 129
The conclusion to be drawn from these amended
sums,
for the little it is
worth,
is that the Timaeus is later than the Parmenides whether or not
the latter is
split.
The
impression
should not be allowed to
linger
that
Sayre's reworking
of Lutoslawski's
system
as an
interesting experiment,
duly
modified,
suggests anything
else.
NATHAN A. GREENBERG
OBERLIN COLLEGE
2Criterion 453 is listed three times: under Class C for Parmenides I, and Class D
for Parmenides I and Parmenides II. All this for a feature which occurs in the
dialogue
only
three times. It alone accounts for 11
points
in
Sayre's
scores.
THE ART OF GLAUKOS
(PLATO
PHAEDO
108D4-9)
At the end of the Phaedo and its
arguments
for the
immortality
of
the
soul,
and at the end of his
life,
Socrates turns to consider the conse-
quences
of the conviction that the soul is immortal. He
contemplates
the
fate of souls after the death of the
body
and the
journey
from "here" to
"there"- Cv0ev6e EKElScO
(107E2)-and
those
places
that will receive
the soul of a
person
who has lived a life of
purity
and moderation
(107C1-108C8).
The
conception
of these
otherworldly places
seems to
bring
him back to the science of the
philosophers
he had
just
described
230 230
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INTERPRETATIONS
in his "intellectual
biography" (96A6-99D2).
"There
are,"
he
says,
"many
and
quite amazing regions
in this earth and the earth itself is
neither of the kind nor of the size that those who are devoted to
speaking
of the earth
fancy
it to be. So someone has
persuaded
me"
(108D5-8).
To which Simmias
responds:
"What do
you
mean
by
this Socrates? I too
have heard a
great
deal about the
earth,
but not the account that
per-
suades
you.
It would
give
me
pleasure
to hear it"
(108D1-3).
Socrates'
apology
for his account of this
anonymous description
of
the "true earth" is
baffling
in its reference to "the art of Glaukos": "Well
now, Simmias,
in
my opinion
it does not take the art of a Glaukos to
describe
merely
what the
theory
is. But to show that it is
actually
the
truth
appears
to me to be a more difficult task than what the art of
Glaukos can attain. And then too it is
possible
that I
myself
would not
be
capable
of it
and,
even if I
were,
my
life does not seem sufficient to
the
length
of the
argument" (108D4-9).
Ars
longa,
vita brevis.
In a
dialogue
whose smallest details have their
place
in the
design
of the
whole,
it is worth
asking
what Plato
might
have in mind
by
"the
art of Glaukos."
Curiosity
over this art is
ancient,
and Eusebius and the
Platonic scholia combine to
give
six
explanations
of a
phrase
that had
become
proverbial.'
Indeed,
Eusebius' interest is in the
difficulty
of the
proverb
and not the
meaning
of the
phrase
in
Plato,
and of the five
explanations
he cites for the
phrase
in his tract
against
Marcellus,
only
one coheres with the
explanation
of the Platonic scholia. The choices
before us are
easily
reduced to two. The first is the first cited
by
Euse-
bius,
and it is the most
perplexing
of the two: Glaukos
possessed
the
knowledge
of some marvelous
art,
but both Glaukos and his art were
lost at
sea,
"for there was no
longer anyone
who had heard of it." This
Glaukos would seem to leave us in the
position
of Simmias in the
Phaedo-that of baffled
curiosity.
The second Glaukos in the second
explanation
offered
by
Eusebius is
clearly
the Glaukos
appealed
to
by
the scholia in Venetus T: He was the Glaukos who contrived a su-
premely sophisticated
musical instrument out of four
discs, which,
when struck in
unison,
produced
a
harmony.
The scholion to Plato is
much more detailed than this and attributes the invention to
Hippasos,
1Five
explanations
are
given by
Eusebius in his Contra
Marcellum,
in Eusebius
Werke
42,
ed. Erich Klostermann
(Berlin 1972)
15.5-21;
the two
explanations
of the
Platonic scholia are most
easily
consulted in
John
Burnet's short
appendix
on FAQaKOu
TEXvrl
in his Plato's Phaedo
(Oxford 1911)
150;
cf. Scholia
Platonica,
ed. William Chase
Greene
(Haverford 1938)
15.
231
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AMERICAN
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its use to
Glaukos,
and
gives
the relative thickness of the four
discs,
all of
which are
equal
in diameter.2 There are two other
possibilities given by
Eusebius which are similar to this: one is Glaukos of
Chios,
who created
an
amazing
krater and stand as a dedication for the
Lydian dynasty
at
Delphi;
and the other is this same craftsman who himself dedicated a
bronze
tripod
at
Delphi,
which
produced
the sound of a
lyre
when
struck.3 Glaukos 5 and 6 deserve a
place only
in a footnote.4
One can understand
why
Eusebius
picked just
this
expression
to
illustrate the fiendish
difficulty
of even
pagan proverbs,
and one can
appreciate why
all this ancient lore has
virtually disappeared
from re-
cent commentaries to the Phaedo. But the
question
remains: Who is the
Glaukos whose art is not needed to rehearse an
anonymous description
of the true
earth,
but whose
art,
as
great
as it
apparently
is,
cannot
persuade
of the truth of this
description?
Of Glaukos 1 in Eusebius'
list,
it would seem that there is
nothing
more to
say;
both he and his wonder-
ful art have been lost at sea. But
any
version of the mechanical
Glaukos,
and
especially
that of the Platonic
scholia,
seems
promising.
In Glaukos
2 we would have a craftsman who created harmonies out of four bronze
discs. He was known to
Aristoxenus,5
and he sounds
just
the
Pythago-
rean note that struck
Burnet,
the
only
commentator to
speculate
on the
significance
of Plato's
strange
allusion to "the art of Glaukos": "If this is
a
genuine
tradition,
as it
appears
to
be,
it is not without
significance
that Socrates should allude to a
distinctively Pythagorean
invention."6
Such an
explanation
could add to the conviction of those who discern in
the
myth
of the "true earth" the hand of Plato the scientist and
geogra-
2Eusebius Contra Marcellum
15.10-14,
with the scholia of Venetus T
reproduced
by
Burnet
(note
1
above);
cf. Zenobius Cent. II
91,
in
Leutsch-Schneidewin,
Paroemio-
graphi
Graeci
(Berlin 1839-1851)
I 55.
3Contra Marcellum 15.14-20. For the art of this
Glaukos,
cf. Herodotus 1.25 and
Pausanias 10.16.1. Libanios identified him
explicitly
as the source of the
proverbial
ex-
pression;
he is cited
by
Leutsch in
Paroemiographi
Graeci II 153.
4Glaukos 5 comes last in Eusebius as someone who
thought
he could rival Glaukos
of Chios,
Contra Marcellum
15.20-21;
Glaukos 6 comes as a second
possibility
in the
Platonic scholia,
where he is mentioned as a Samian and the discoverer of an art of writ-
ing
and confused with Glaukos of Chios.
50n the
authority
of the Platonic scholia. This constitutes
fragment
90 in Fritz
Wehrli,
Die Schule des Aristoteles II: Aristoxenos
(Basel 1945)
32.
6Note 1
above,
150. In his note on the
passage
itself,
Burnet comments that "the
reference is to a
working
model of the
'harmony
of the
spheres' originally designed by
Hippasus" (108).
232
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INTERPRETATIONS
pher.7
And it would
suggest
that the
expression
"the art of Glaukos" was
already proverbial
in Plato's time rather than the creation of Plato him-
self for this
passage
in the Phaedo.8
Yet,
if the musical and mechanical
skill of this Glaukos lies at the
origin
of this
proverb
it is remarkable that
there is no hint of a
craftsman,
or his
work,
or of music in Socrates'
description
of the earth as it
really
is. To the
contrary,
there is an em-
phasis
on
physis (especially
in 111C4 and
113D1).
There is another Glaukos who
emerges
from the
depths
of the
sea,
and he
points away
from Presocratic science and Plato "the
geogra-
pher"
(as
Paul Friedlander called
him)
to Plato the transcendentalist.
He is no other than our
mysterious
Glaukos 1 from Eusebius.
Heindorf,
in his inert
digest
of the
possibilities given by
Eusebius,
noted
finally
that none of the ancient
interpretations
of the
proverb
had
sighted
Glaukos,
the fisherman from Anthedon in
Boeotia,
who ate
grass by
the
seashore and was transformed into a
god
and a
prophet.9
Heindorf did
7First and most
prominent
is
Aristotle,
who
engages
in a serious discussion with
the
hydrography
of Phaedo 111C4-113C8 in
Meteorology
2.2.355b33-356a34;
he is fol-
lowed in his concern for Plato "the
geographer" by
Paul
Friedlander,
who devoted a
chapter
of the first volume of his Plato to our
passage
and Platon "als
Geograph,"
Plato
an Introduction
I,
trans. Hans
Meyerhoff (Princeton 1958)
261-85;
this is also the ten-
dency
of T. G.
Rosenmeyer,
"Phaedo 111C ff.," CQ6
(1956)
193-97, andJ. S.
Morrison,
"The
Shape
of the Earth in Plato's Phaedo," Phronesis 4
(1959)
101-19. It is resisted and
with
good
reason
by
Percival
Frutiger,
Les
mythes
de Platon
(Paris 1930)
61-66, and
R.
Hackforth,
Plato's Phaedo
(Cambridge 1955)
172-75. Yet neither draw attention to
the thematic connection between the discussion of the "true
philosopher"
at the
begin-
ning
of the Phaedo
(61C6 ff.)
and Socrates'
description
of the "true earth" at its end. The
connection between the two has been well established
by
Maria-Victoria V. Abricka in
her dissertation,
Transcending
the Mortal: The
Philosopher
in Plato's Phaedo
(Johns
Hopkins University 1982)
66-80.
8Schneidewin knew whereof he
spoke
when he said that the Platonic
dialogues
are
full of
proverbial sayings, Paroemiographi
Graeci I xiv.
Aristophanes
of
Byzantium
might
have
actually composed
a book on the
proverbs
in
Plato,
Paroemiographi
Graeci I
xviii-xix,
most of which are
preserved
in Zenobius. Yet there are
examples
of
phrases
in
Plato which become
proverbial,
such as "a headless tale"
(Republic
9.575C; Laws
6.752A; cf. Zenobius Cent. V
55;
and for other
examples,
the Index to vol. II of
Schneidewin-Leutsch
[531]
s.v.
Plato).
That this
passage
of the Phaedo
might prove
to
be the
origin
of the
proverb
is indicated
by
the fact that it is sometimes cited under the
lemma
oUX (or ouXi)
r rFauKou
Texvnr,
instead of in a
positive
formulation,
as one
might
expect
for a
proverb describing
an intricate and difficult rather than an
easy
task;
cf.
Julian
Oration II
67C; Plutarch Cent. II
25,
in
Paroemiographi
Graeci II 341.
9De Glauco
igitur marino, piscatore
illo
Anthedonio,
qui
herbae cuiusdam
ope
deum se
fecerat,
veterum certe in
proverbio cogitavit nemo,
Platonis
Dialogi
Tres:
Phaedo,
Sophistes, Protagoras (Berlin 1810)
225.
233
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AMERICAN
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not
sight
him in the Glaukos who
possessed
the
knowledge
of some mar-
velous art and was lost at
sea,
but Schneidewin
did, and,
since Wohl-
rab's school edition of
1884,
Glaukos the
seagod
has survived in some
commentaries to the Phaedo as an undercurrent as
inexplicable
as the
tides of the
Euripos.'1
Artisan and creator of harmonies or a man who
became a
god
of the sea and a
prophet--which explains
the Platonic
allusion? The answer to this
question
can
only
come from
Plato;
it
comes both from the immediate
sequel
in the Phaedo and from the Re-
public,
where Socrates offers Glaukos "of the sea" as an
image
of the
disfigurement
of the incarnate soul. The immediate
sequel
of the
Phaedo is
closely
connected with this
image
in the
Republic:
both
pas-
sages
treat the theme of the immortal
soul,
and both illustrate the
possi-
bility
of transcendence within a hierarchical scheme of
sea, earth,
and
heaven.
In the
Republic,
Socrates confronts Glaukon's urbane
skepticism
in face of the notion of an immortal soul
by contrasting
the soul in its
purity
with our earthbound vision of its earthbound condition: "Yet we
have viewed it in the condition of those who catch
sight
of Glaukos of the
sea;
they
now have
difficulty
in
discerning
his ancient
form,
for of the
members which were once his
body
some have been
broken,
others have
been worn
away
and
completely disfigured by
the
waves;
and other
parts
have become encrusted
upon
him, shells, seaweed,
and
stones,
so
that he looks like
any
kind of animal rather than the man he once was
by
nature. Such is the condition of the soul as it is visible to
us,
disfigured
by
countless evils.
Yet, Glaukon,
we must look over there."
"Where,
he
asked." To understand Plato's allusion to the
seagod
Glaukos in the
Phaedo,
we must turn with Glaukon to the
perspectives
of the
Republic,
where the human
eye
is raised
up
from "the sea in which it now dwells"
(10.611E5).
Here Glaukos is seen in
barely recognizable
form from a
world
above;
in the Phaedo the
perspective
is reversed. Here our world
l?Cf.
Paroemiographi
Graeci I xxii. Martin Wohlrab,
in his Platons
Phaedonfur
den
Schulgebrauch (Leipzig 1884)
133-34,
went
beyond
his
commentary
of
1875,
where
he
simply depended
on
Heindorf,
to
suggest
that the
origin
of the
proverb
should be
sought
in Glaukos of
Anthedon, who,
in his
help
to
fishermen,
became
proverbial
for
any
task whose
design
and execution
required
a keenness of mind and
insight just
as its
oppo-
site,
"sowie vom
Gegenteil,
sie
gehore
nicht dazu"
(134).
In their
interpretations
of this
"proverb,"
both Heindorf
(note
9
above)
225 and Wohlrab fail to reckon with Socrates'
return to a statement of the
difficulty
of his task in Phaedo 114C5-6. Some of the com-
mentaries since Wohlrab mention Glaukos. The most notable is that of W. D.
Geddes,
The Phaedo
of
Plato2 (London
1885)
161: "it is somewhat remarkable that the Scholiasts
and
Paroemiographi
do not connect the
proverb
with the
prophetic
craft of the other
Glaukos who was
regarded
as a wizard of the sea."
234
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INTERPRETATIONS
on the earth comes to be viewed as located on the bottom of the sea and
the "true earth" which stretches above us in its
clarity
and
light
is what
earthbound scientists call aither:
We who dwell in these hollows of the sea have no
conception
of it
[the
true
earth]
and we
fancy
that we live
upon
the earth above. It is
very
much as
if a man who inhabited the
depths
in the middle of the sea were to believe
that he lived on the surface of the sea and were to
think,
as he
gazed up
at
the sun and other
stars,
that the sea was
heaven,
but because of his
slug-
gishness
and feebleness had never reached the
upper
surface of the
sea,
risen
up,
and
emerged
to this
earth;
nor seen how much
purer
and fairer
it
happens
to be than his
dwelling;
nor had he heard of it from
anyone
who had seen it. Such
precisely
is our condition.
(Phaedo
109C3-D5)
The hierarchical scheme of three levels which structures the world
as it is viewed in this
passage
has its
counterpart
in the
image
of the cave
in Book VII of the
Republic,
and its
imagery
of
emergence
connects
with the central
myth
of the Phaedrus." We are to the
region
that lies
above us as fish are to humans
dwelling
above the sea
(Phaedo 109E4);
our
eye
catches
sight
of it
as,
trained
by philosophy,
it rises from the
slime
(cf. Republic
7.533C7-D4 and
518B4-519D2).
In the
Republic,
Glaukos is the
image
of the soul
imprisoned
and
disfigured by
its association with the
body,
of the
higher
transformed
into the lower. We do not know what Plato's source for this
image
of
Glaukos
might
have
been,
but the few
fragments
from
Aeschylus'
Glaukos Pontios render some details: he is described in the terms of the
Republic
as a beast with human
form,
covered with
shells, mussels,
and
shellfish.12
Yet,
as Dante knew from his
reading
of
Ovid,
Glaukos is also
an emblem for
transcending
the mortal:
Trasumanar
significar per
verba
non si
poria; pero l'essemplo
basti
a cui
esperienza grazia
serba.
11Frutiger (note
7
above)
64-65 sets the texts of Phaedo 109B and Republic VII
514A-517B in
parallel
columns. The
language
of Phaedrus 246A2-249D3
suggests
the
same themes of transcendence as Phaedo
109C3-D5,
especially
247B5-C2 and
248A1-8,
where the souls
incapable
of
breaking
out into the
region beyond
heaven are called "sub-
marine."
Frutiger (66)
is
right
to insist on the three-tiered hierarchies of the
passages
he is
dealing
with: in both Phaedo and
Republic
the earth is the middle
term, but,
by
com-
parison
with the realm
above,
it comes to seem subterranean or submarine.
'2Fr. 26 in
Nauck, TGF2;
57 in
HansJoachim Mette,
Die
Fragmente
des
Aischylos
(Berlin 1959)
21,
for which
compare Republic
10.611D5-6. The
description
of Glaukos
as covered with
shells, seaweed,
and stones
(Republic 10.611D5)
coheres with the three
words from
Aeschylus,
"shells, mussels,
and
shell-fish,"
as Nauck
saw,
TGF2 34
(fr.
59
Mette).
235
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Glaukos is also the human fisherman from Anthedon who ate of an
everliving
and
imperishable grass
and became
immortal,
a
god
of the
sea,
and a
prophet.'3
The marvelous art of Glaukos is that of
passing beyond
the mortal,
trasumanar. Socrates returns to the difficulties of this art as he describes
the
dwellings beyond
the world
beyond: they
are "not
easy
to
describe,
nor is there time
enough
at
present" (114C2-6).
The words "at
present"
return us to Socrates'
original
difficulties and
why
it is that even the art
of
Glaukos,
who was
among
other
things
a
prophet,
cannot
persuade
the earthbound
skeptic
of the
reality
of the true earth and the
dwellings
that transcend the transcendent world
beyond.
There is no
difficulty
in
repeating
a tale one has heard. But to know the truth of this
tale,
the
soul must be freed from the
body
and its
earthly prison, purified by
philosophy (114C1).
This is
why
Socrates must confess that his life is not
sufficient to the
length
of his
argument (108D7-8)
and conclude that no
sensible
person
will maintain that it is a
certainty (114D1-2;
cf. Meno
86B).
For
Socrates,
there can be no
certainty
"at
present."
He is still
confined to his
prison
in Athens and to his
body.
As he concludes his
final
myth concerning
final
things,
and after a last and
significant
bath,
Socrates is summoned
by
his
destiny
to discover the truth of his convic-
tion-a cui
esperienza grazia
serba,
precisely
as he had said
(69D5-6).
DISKIN CLAY
JOHNS
HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
3The lines from Dante are from Paradiso
1.70-72,
and
they
are
preceded by
Dante's
description
of his transformation as he looked on
Beatrice,
who herself was look-
ing
at the stars of heaven: "nel suo
aspetto
tal dentro me
fei,
/
qual
si fe Glauco nel
gustar
del herba"
(lines 68-69);
Dante's source was Ovid
Metamorphoses
13.904-68,
especially
Glaukos'
description
of his loss of
mortality
and
purification (lines 949-53),
an element
already present
in
Aeschylus'
Glaukos
Pontios,
fr. 32 in
Nauck,
TGF2 (fr. 64
Mette),
and
possibly
relevant to Socrates' last
bath,
Phaedo 115A. Evidence for the rest of his career
and his
prophetic gift
can be found
digested
in R. Gaedechen's article in R6scher's Aus-
fiihrliches
Lexikon der
griechischen
und romischen
Mythologie
I2
(Leipzig 1886-1890)
cols. 1682-83. The means to his
immortality
is
grass,
which
Aeschylus
describes as
"everliving
and
imperishable,"
fr. 28 in
Nauck,
cf. fr. 29
(fr.
60 in
Mette).
None of the
scant
fragments
from
Aeschylus' satyr play
refer to Glaukos' transformation into a
prophet,
but this is his role
already
in
Euripides
Orestes 362-65,
and
prophecy
is a theme
in the
Phaedo,
where all
argument
for an immortal soul is also a
prediction;
cf.
84D4-85B9.
236
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