KPATIKOI OOI in Aristotle and Fourth-Century Theories of Genre

Author(s): Andrew L. Ford

Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 105, No. 3 (July 2010), pp. 221-235
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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SWKRATIKOI LOGOI IN ARISTOTLE AND

FOURTH-CENTURY THEORIES OF GENRE
andrew l. ford
e would like to know a great deal more than we do about the
prose literature that was inspired by the life and teaching of Socrates. Apart from some works by Plato and Xenophon, however,
what we mainly have is a great many names of authors, a very few fragments,
and virtually no rm dates. 1 The present study is an attempt to press the evidence from Aristotle as far as possible, for he is one of our earliest and most
sophisticated witnesses to the genre. In his Poetics and in a closely related
fragment from On Poets, Aristotle paired what he called Swkratiko lovgoi
with prose mime, arguing that both deserved to be included among the
mimetic arts. Aristotles testimony, however, is often not well understood.
Partly this is because these passages are beset with such interpretative difculties that it can seem enough to clarify Aristotles train of thought without going further and specifying what properties of the works made them
count as mimetic art for him. But an equally signicant obstacle to getting
at Aristotles views has been the overwhelming inuence of Plato. Platos
dialogues are so compelling that they can seem denitive of Socratic literature, making it easy to assume that Aristotle found Swkratiko lovgoi mimetic
because they tended to be, like Platonic dialogues, dramatic representations
of conversations rather than expository treatises. Platos example also leads
some to add that such works were considered mimetic because they incorporated literary effects such as characterization, scene setting, and dramatic detail. But we should let Aristotle dene Swkratiko lovgoi in his own
terms, not only for the intrinsic interest of his analysis but also for the light
it can cast on the literary milieu in which Socratic literature grew up.
To that end I will rst put Aristotles statements from Poetics and On Poets
in context to clarify how he thought Swkratiko lovgoi tted in with the established forms of Greek literature. I will then compare his other references

Thanks to Christian Wildberg for discussing preliminary versions of this paper and to Nancy Worman
and Joel Lidov for the opportunity to improve it at a Columbia University Seminar. I am also grateful to the
editor and readers for CP for helping me clarify the argument. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
1. See G. Giannantoni, ed., Socratis et Socraticorum reliquiae2 (Naples, 1990), hereafter SSR; on the
genre, K. Jol, Der lovgo Swkratikov, AGPh 8 (189495): 46683, and 9 (189599): 5066, P. Vander
Waerdt, ed., The Socratic Movement (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994); and C. Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue:
The Philosophical Use of a Literary Form (Cambridge, 1996), 135.

Classical Philology 105 (2010): 22135

[ 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved] 0009-837X/10/10503-0001$10.00

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Andrew L. Ford

to the genre and propose that what chiey interested him in this literature
was not what interests modernsits combination of philosophical and literary elements or its propensity to dramatic form; for the analyst of literature, what was important about Swkratiko lovgoi was its innovativeness in
exploiting logos without music or meter to produce representations of ethical
choices, in our terms, mimeseis in prose. To fully appreciate the position
Aristotle takes I will adduce passages in Isocrates and Plato that also discuss prose genres and their relation to poetry. Recovering Aristotles contribution to this discussion not only frees us from Platonocentric accounts
of the nature and origin of Socratic literature but lets us see more fully what
could be at stake when fourth-century prose writers attempt to dene Greek
prose. I begin with Poetics because its opening chapter provides the best
context for understanding Aristotelian genres.
SWKRATIKOI

LOGOI

in Poetics 1

To establish his approach to poetry as a mimetic artas one of the arts that
imitate or represent human character in action 2Aristotle had to undermine a popular tendency to identify poetry with verse (a tendency to which
Plato also objected, Symp . 205ab). Poetics accordingly introduces the
concept of mimesis inductively, collecting various recognized forms of representational art and pointing out that they all produce mimesis, even if they
differ in the media used, the kinds of actions represented, and their mode or
manner of representation (1447a1318). Chapter 1 is devoted to illustrating
the media or means of imitation: painting and sculpture use colors and
shapes to produce representations of character, while instrumental music can
do so with sound (fwnhv, 1447a20), that is, with ethically evocative rhythms
and harmoniai. These media may be variously combined; dance, for example,
uses rhythm and shapes (i.e., signicant postures) to represent characters
acting and suffering. 3
After the visual arts, instrumental music, and dance, Aristotle moves on
to the mimetic arts that include logos among their media (1447a22), arriving
thereby at what we would call the verbal arts or literature. The main kinds
of poetry familiar in his dayhe has mentioned epic, tragedy, comedy,
dithyramb (1447a1314)can now be seen to be forms of mimesis in language, differing from each other according to whether logos is combined
with rhythm to make verse (as in epic) or with harmoniai to make songs (as
in dithyramb and the odes of drama). Implicit in this analysis is the possibility of a mimetic art that uses logos but not melody or rhythm. 4 Aristotle
2. The connection between mimesis and character is insinuated already at 1447a2728 (quoted in n. 3
below); compare 1448a25 with the commentary of D. W. Lucas (Aristotles Poetics [Oxford, 1968],
6263) and S. Halliwell (Aristotles Poetics [London, 1986], 151).
3. So I understand 1447a2728: kai; ga;r ou toi dia; tn schmatizomevnwn rJuqmn mimountai kai; hqh kai;
pav q h kai; prav x j e i . On Aristotles method in the opening of Poetics (closely following Analytics ), see
J. Hutton (Aristotles Poetics [New York, 1982], 924).
4. Or that uses rhythm sporadically. It is not crucial to my argument, but I think Aristotle analyzed the
medium of mimetic prose as only bare logos (movnon to lovgoi yilo, 1447a29; see n. 6 below on
bare). So, essentially, J. Vahlen, Aristotelis De arte poetica liber3 (Leipzig, 1885), ad loc., and Beitrge
zu Aristoteles Poetik (Leipzig, 1914), 46, as well as Halliwells Loeb translation, Aristotle Poetics

One Line Long

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SWKRATIKOI

LOGOI

in Aristotle

223

will argue that what we call prose is a perfectly valid medium for mimesis.
But instead of dividing the verbal arts as we might expect into threeprose
(= logos), verse (= logos + rhuthmos), and song (= logos + rhuthmos + harmonia)he offers a peculiar bipartite division, putting all verbal mimesis
that uses music on one side (1447b2428) and all that does not on the other.
The latter grouping forms a coherent class, he insists, though it has no name:
hJ de; [ejpopoia] movnon to lovgoi yilo h to mevtroi ka touvtoi ete mignusa met
allhvlwn eq eJn tini gevnei crwmevnh tn mevtrwn <annumo> tugcavnei ou sa mevcri tou
nun: oude;n ga;r a n ecoimen ojnomavsai koino;n tou; Sfrono ka Xenavrcou mmou ka
tou; Swkratikou; lovgou oude; e ti dia; trimevtrwn h ejlegewn h tn allwn tinn tn
toiouvtwn poioto th;n mmhsinplh;n o anqrwpo ge sunavptonte t mevtr to; poien
ejlegeiopoiou; tou; de; ejpopoiou; ojnomavzousin, ouc w kata; th;n mmhsin poihta; alla;
koin kata; to; mevtron prosagoreuvonte: ka ga;r a n atriko;n h fusikovn ti dia; tn mevtrwn
ejkfevrwsin, outw kalen eqasin: oude;n de; koinovn ejstin Omhvr ka Empedokle plh;n
to; mevtron, dio; to;n me;n poihth;n dkaion kalen, to;n de; fusiolovgon mallon h poihthvn.
But the art that uses bare speech alone or uses it in meters (and, in the latter case, that
mixes several meters together or uses a single one throughout) happens to have remained <nameless> up to the present; for we would have no general term to apply to the
mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and to the Socratic logoi, nor would we even if
someone were to compose such mimesis in trimeters or elegiacs or some other such
meterexcept to the extent that people fasten poet onto the names of meters and speak
of elegiac-poets or hexameter-poets, using the term poet not with a view to whether
the composition is a mimesis but simply for any work that is in meter. This terminology
is used even when a work on medicine or natural science is published in verse. But Homer
and Empedocles have nothing in common except meter, and the one should be called a
poet and the other a physiologue rather than a poet. 5

The nameless art folds bare 6 prose and bare-verse (cf. yilometra,
1448a11) into one art of nonmelodic verbal imitation; Swkratiko lovgoi,
mime, and epic are among its subforms. 7 Aristotles phrasing is anacoluthic,
(Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 31. For this view, compare Pl. Leg. 810b (esp. suggravmmata kata; lovgon erhmevna
movnon, thtmena rJuqmou te ka armona) with I. Bywater, Aristotle, On the Art of Poetry (Oxford,
1909), 1057. It has been thought, e.g., by A. Gudeman (Aristoteles: PERI POIHTIKHS [Berlin, 1934],
85) and G. Else (Aristotles Poetics: The Argument [Cambridge, Mass., 1957], 3839), that Aristotle
viewed artistic prose as having occasional admixtures of rhythm (i.e., clausulae) on the basis of some remarks on the period in Rhetoric (esp. 1408b211409a2) recommending that oratory be pleasantly rhythmical,
but not so rhythmical that it becomes a poem. Even on this view, a rhythmical prose mimesis remains
distinguishable from the use of pieces of rhythm (ta; ga;r mevtra oti movria tn rJuqmn ejsti fanero;n,
1448b2122) in verse.
5. Poet. 1447a28b13, cited from Bywaters 1909 edition (n. 4 above) with Bernays annumo. Kassels
1966 OCT incorporates emendations by E. Lobel (A Crux in the Poetics, CQ 23 [1929]: 7679) that make
Aristotle identify two unnamed arts, but see n. 7 below. ej p opoia (deleted by berweg, omitted in the
Arabic) is a gloss: its normal meaning, epic poetry, makes no sense here and was too well established
(from Herodotus on) to let the word be used catachrestically as a name for a class of word-poetry (Wortdichtung), pace J. Bernays (Zwei Abhandlungen ber die aristotelische Theorie des Drama [Berlin, 1880], 81).
6. The adjective is used of music bare of words (Pol. 1339b31) and words bare of music (Pl. Symp.
215c). Rhetoric 1340b14 compares diction in verse (ejp me;n ou n tn mevtrwn) and prose (ejn de; to yilo
lovgoi); cf. 1404b33.
7. Cf. Lucas, Poetics (n. 2 above), 59. This complex class is referred to in chap. 2: ka [to;] per tou;
lov g ou de; ka th;n yilometran (1448a1011 Kassel), where As tov (omitted in Parisnus 2038) breaks
the class in twoprose and (nonmelodic) verse. Some interpreters think Aristotle is after two names, one
for prose mimesis and one for verse (e.g., Lobel, A Crux [n. 5 above], M. Heath, Aristotle: Poetics
[London, 1996], 4, and Else, Poetics [n. 4 above], 41, 45); but R. Janko (Aristotle, Poetics I [Indianapolis,
1987], 69) is right that this is unnecessary and confusing.

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Andrew L. Ford

but intelligible if we take the ojnomavsai koinovn in the opening sentence as

proleptic (translating as general term): he desiderates not a name for prose
literature, but one that expresses the fundamental commonality, in terms of
media deployed, between mimesis in prose and those in nonmelodic verse.
This commonality would still be overlooked, he goes on to say, if prose
mimesis happened to be composed in verse; popular meter-based terminology
would then rightly class Socratic and mime texts with, for example, epic,
but for the wrong reasonfor meter rather than mimesis; we would still
have no name that designates verbal imitations [without music] as such. 8
Analysis by media, then, reveals that the mimes of Sophron and the
Swkratiko lovgoi, despite their differences in theme, tone, and dialect, are
both arts of representation and draw on the same basic resources. 9 Aristotles
purpose in pointing this out is not to put prose mimesis on the agenda (neither
mime nor dialogue will be discussed in Poetics) but to point out shortcomings of meter-based literary taxonomy: it overlooks works of an undoubted
mimetic character that are not in verse (e.g., mime) and includes verse works
that are not mimesis (e.g., Empedocles). In the sequel to the paragraph
quoted, Aristotle adds the clinching example of Chaeremons Centaur, a
polymetric composition that would be unnameable even if one were willing
to adopt the defective metrical terminology. 10
This passing reference to Swkratiko lovgoi sufces to support the orienting
insight of Poetics that the essential activity of the verbal artist consists in
mimesis and not versication (cf. 1451b2732). To see more fully why
Swkratiko lovgoi, like mime, counted as a mimetic art we must turn to a
fragment from On Poets. This text adduces the same pair and also suggests
that the names they bore were inadequate to express their status as mimetic
works.
SWKRATIKOI

DIALOGOI

(?) in On Poets

On Poets fragment 72 (Rose) consists of a puzzling, probably corrupt sentence

quoted in an anti-Platonic tirade in Athenaeus. 11 The speaker is making the
point that Plato was inconsistent in rejecting mimesis while writing mimetic
dialogues himself; he gives the charge an extra twist by accusing Plato of
unoriginality as well: He threw Homer and mimetic poetry out of the city
in his Republic when he himself wrote mimetic dialoguesof which genre

8. So Hutton, Poetics (n. 3 above), 82, with my addition.

9. Puzzling remarks, J. C. Klagge rightly observes in the Editors Prologue to Methods of Interpreting Plato and His Dialogues (ed. J. C. Klagge and N. D. Smith, OSAPh, suppl. vol. [Oxford, 1992],
1011); but his paraphrase is wayward: Aristotle seems to be saying that although mimes and dialogues
have similar forms, their purpose or content is so different that we should keep them distinct. Aristotle is
stressing similarities between the forms, and does not breathe a word about purpose or content here.
Cf. Jol (Lovgo Swkratikov [n. 1 above], 477) on Zellers similar views.
10. Poet. 1447b2023; the treatise then turns to the verbal arts that use music as well (see A. L. Ford,
The Classical Denition of RAYWIDIA, CP 83 [1988]: 3035).
11. Ath. 505c Kaibel (frag. 72 Rose = 3 Ross = 15 Gigon). Athenaeus main source appears to be
Herodicus (A. Gudeman, Herodicus 1, RE 8 [1912]: 976; I. Dring, Herodicus the Cratetean: A Study in
Anti-Platonic Tradition [Stockholm, 1941], 5761; M. Trapp, Plato in the Deipnosophistae, in Athenaeus
and His World, ed. D. Braund and J. Wilkins [Exeter, 2000], 35363).

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SWKRATIKOI

LOGOI

in Aristotle

225

he wasnt even the inventor! In substantiating the latter dig, Aristotle is

quoted:
pro; ga;r autou touq eu re to; edo tn lovgwn oJ Thvio lexamenov, w Nika oJ Nikaeu;
store ka Swtwn. ristotevlh d ejn t per Poihtn outw gravfei:
oukoun oude; ejmmevtrou tou; kaloumevnou Sfrono mmou mh; fmen enai lovgou
ka mimhvsei h tou; lexamenou tou Thou tou; prtou grafevnta tn Swkratikn
dialovgwn;
a ntikru favskwn oJ polumaqevstato ristotevlh pro; Plavtwno dialovgou gegrafevnai
to;n lexamenovn.
For before him [sc. Plato] Alexamenus of Teos invented this genre of prose, as Nicias
of Nicaea recounts as well as Sotion. And Aristotle writes in the On Poets as follows:
Are we then to deny, even though they are not in verse, that the works of Sophron
called mimes are logoi as well as mimesis, or that the works of Alexamenus of
Teos, the rst written of the Socratic dialogoi [are also mimesis as well as logoi]?
Thus does the very learned Aristotle explicitly assert that Alexamenos wrote dialogues
before Plato.

Two textual points need addressing before the fragment is interpreted.

Scholars who are unwilling to believe that Socratic literature goes back to
a person not known as a Socratic (indeed, not otherwise known at all) 12
have emended the end of Aristotles statement to say that Alexamenus wrote
dialogues before the Socratics invented the Socratic dialogue. 13 In support,
allusions to Aristotles fragment in Diogenes Laertius and an anonymous
commentator on Plato are taken to make the same distinction. 14 But all
these texts are concerned with the origin of the dialogue form in general, as
is Athenaeus (touq . . . to; edo tn lovgwn); only moderns (and Platonists)
feel the need to posit a separate origin for Socratic dialogues. 15 Given
our nearly total ignorance of the origins of the genre, it is unwise to alter
Aristotles information about Alexamenus. 16
A second anomaly in the text is less noticed but has a better claim to
require emendation. Franz Susemihl proposed to change the last word in
Aristotles sentence to lovgwn on the ground that if he had said dialovgwn
it would have been gratuitous for Athenaeus to add, Aristotle explicitly
says Alexamenus wrote dialogues before Plato. 17 Susemihls proposal is
strengthened by lexical considerations: nowhere else does Aristotle speak
12. The mention of Alexamenus by Eustathius (ad Il. 21.142) comes from Athenaeus.
13. E.g., tou; protevrou grafevnta (Dobree, adopted by Rose [frag. 72]) or tou; provteron grafevnta
(Bake, adopted by Ross [On Poets frag. 3], SSR [I B 1]).
14. Diog. Laer. 3.48; P Oxy. 45 (1977) 3219. On these texts, see the magisterial study of M. W. Haslam
(Plato, Sophron and the Dramatic Dialogue, BICS 19 [1972]: 1738).
15. E.g., U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Platon, vol. 2 (Berlin, 1920), 26. Note that Diogenes (3.48)
goes on to concede that Plato did not invent the genre, much as he deserves credit for perfecting it. Similarly, the Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy 5 Westerink.
16. Against changing: O. Jahn (Satura, Hermes 2 [1867]: 238), R. Hirzel (Der Dialog, vol. 1 [Leipzig,
1895], 100 n. 2), P. Natorp (Alexamenus, RE 1 [1894]: 1375), A. Rostagni (Il dialogo aristotelico PERI
POIHTWN, RivFil, n.s., 4 [1926]: 447 n. 1), and E. Mensching (Favorin von Arelate, vol. 1 [Berlin,
1963], 9192).
17. F. Susemihl, NJbb 27 (1881): 668. The emendation is accepted by Natorp (RE 1.1375 [n. 16 above];
he suggests lov g ou, but there is no need to make Aristotle insist that Alexamenus was a Socratic) and
Mensching (Favorin [n. 16 above], 92 n. 71).

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Andrew L. Ford

of Socratic diavlogoi; Swkratiko lovgoi is how he refers to Socratic writings

in Poetics (1447b11) and Rhetoric (1417a21), and a variant, o tou Swkravtou
lovgoi, is in Politics (1265a11). This is not, admittedly, a very large dossier,
but the earliest instance of the expression Swkratiko diavlogoi of which I
am aware is in Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The only other attested use of
the word diavlogo in Aristotle does not refer to dialogues but contrasts
mathematical arguments with arguing ejn to dialovgoi, apparently a kind
of dialectical disputation. 18 Indeed, the paradosis of Athenaeus 505c would
be the only use of diavlogo as a genre term in pre-Hellenistic Greek. In
Aristotles time, diavlogo functions as a derivative of dialevgesqai (to talk
together, converse). Both words are common in Platos and Xenophons
Socratica to describe the conversations in those texts, and there is no passage in which they must be taken as designating a genre. 19 In Athenaeus,
dialovgwn could easily have been substituted for lovgwn in the quotation from
Aristotle, especially in a speech determined to make whatever Aristotle had
said apply to what at that time were called Platos dialogues. 20
The point is worth pausing over because the two terms impute different
conceptions of the genre to Aristotle. Dialogue suits a view that takes
Platos works as the norm, managing to express at once their conversational
form and their advocacy of what Plato came to call dialectic, a form of
philosophizing especially well illustrated through dialogic texts. 21 By contrast, Swkratiko lovgoi implies a broader family of works, which could
more easily include, for example, the various apologai Swkravtou or paraSocratic literature such as Polycrates kathgora Swkravtou. 22 The little we
know about other early Socratic writings suggests that, in the time before
Platos masterpieces had come to dominate the form, the wider generic term
would have more usefully described what was going on: the voluminous
output of the early Socratics Antisthenes and Aeschines was by no means
conned to dialogue, and if Diogenes Laertius (2.8385) knew of twentyve dialogues from Aristippus (in Attic and Doric), he also lists numerous
essays (suggravmmata) on moral topics, including one To Socrates. There

18. An. post. 78a12. See J. Barnes, Aristotle: Posterior Analytics (Oxford, 1975), 148.
19. A few times a stretch of argument is called a dialogue (e.g., Pl. La. 200e; cf. Resp. 354c), but
with no noticeable generic force ( pace W. Mri, Das Wort Dialektik bei Platon, MH 1 [1944]: 162 n.).
See A. L. Ford, The Beginnings of Dialogue: Socratic Discourses and Fourth-Century Prose, in The End
of Dialogue in Antiquity, ed. S. Goldhill (Cambridge, 2008), 3439.
20. There is thus all the less reason to adopt Valckenaers dialovgou enai ka mimhvsei for lovgou ka
mimhvsei, as do J. Barnes and G. Lawrence (The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2, ed. J. Barnes [Princeton,
N.J., 1984], 2419): Are we then to deny that the so-called mimes of Sophron, which are not even in verse,
or those of Alexamenus of Teos, which were written before [sic] the Socratic dialogues, are dialogues and
imitations [emphasis mine]?
21. Mri (Dialektik [n. 19 above], 15268) traces the evolution of the dialectical meanings of dialevgesqai, dialektikhv, and (what is probably Platos coinage) dialektikov to Republic and later dialogues.
See, too, the appendix on The Meaning of Dialectical in D. Roochnik, Beautiful City: The Dialectical
Character of Platos Republic (Ithaca, 2003), 13351.
22. SSR I C 147; cf. Xen. Ap. 1.1. There is thus no need to shoehorn Platos Apology into the dialogue genre by blowing up the signicance of his brief, one-sided interrogation of Meletus; the passage
rather represents the perfectly usual (if less frequently documented) practice of cross-examination (see
E. Carawan, Ertsis: Questioning and the Courts, GRBS 24 [1983]: 214).

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LOGOI

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227

is also evidence that Aristotle did not identify Socratic literature strictly
with philosophical dialogue. He refers, for example, to the Symposium
under the term ejrwtiko lovgoi (Pol. 1262b11) and attributes a citation from
the Menexenus (235d) to Socrates ejpitavfio (Rh. 1415b31). We can conclude, at least, that Swkratiko lovgoi was a common way of referring to this
literature in the fourth century. Certainly Aristotle did not coin the phrase,
for he nds it ill conceived. Yet he recognizes a coherent literary genre behind the term, as is indicated by his including the Socrates-less Laws among
Socrates logoi. 23 Let us begin spelling out his conception by putting the
passages on poetics together.
As a poetic theorist, Aristotle in his scientic approach to art was obliged
to controvert some basic assumptions embodied in common parlance. In
Poetics, he had to insist that it was possible to compose mimesis in prose
because the way the word poetry was used tended to identify mimesis
with verse. On Poets made a related point about the names given to certain
recognized forms of prose mimesis: while the genre label mime (n.b. tou;
kaloumevnou . . . mmou) acknowledged Sophrons compositions as a form
of mimesis, it neglected the fact that they were also lovgoi (lovgo, undeniably,
is what they are made of ); conversely, works like those of Alexamenus
could reasonably be described as lovgoi (or possibly diavlogoi) from a formal
point of view; but this obscured the fact that they were a mimetic form of
writing. 24
SWKRATIKOI

LOGOI

in Aristotle

What, then, in Swkratiko lovgoi made them count as mimesis for Aristotle?
One old view we might label philosophical can be exemplied in Eduard
Zellers identication of the mimetic (das Mimische) in Socratic literature as any element of the work that is not argument, such as die
Schilderung der Persnlichkeit. Gerald Else cites and rejects Zeller because that crude dichotomization does not adequately convey the complexity of Platos [sic] writings, but he agrees with the principle that the
poetic element is, in short, not the specically philosophical elementphilosophy in itself is not dramatic in Aristotles eyes. 25 This view is fundamentally Platonic, I submit, by virtue of the war it imagines to be ongoing
between poetry and philosophy in Socratic texts. The passages from Aristotle are prima facie less interested in any philosophical value such writings
may have than in their ability to effect mimesis through the medium of
prose. His analysis is on a more fundamental level than the rhetorical one
that would oppose a philosophic core to literary embellishment.

23. Pol. 1265a11 (o tou Swkravtou lovgoi). Probably identifying the Athenian stranger with Socrates:
A. E. Taylor (Varia Socratica [Oxford, 1911], 46 n. 1) points out that Aristotle also identies the Spartan
lawgiver in Laws as Lycurgus (1270a7) and the Cretan as Minos (1271b31).
24. This interpretation of frag. 72 is owed to Bernays (Zwei Abhandlungen [n. 5 above], 8283); cf.
Natorp (RE 1.1375) and Haslam (Dramatic Dialogue [n. 14 above], 20). Note that Susemihls lovgwn
makes Aristotles complementary arguments clearer.
25. Else, Poetics, 4344 (quotation at 44); quotations from Zeller at 43 n. 164.

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Andrew L. Ford

Another view, more literary, would focus not on nonphilosophic elements in Socratic texts but on their basic status as dramatic representation. Stephen Halliwells exposition of this ideacommon in antiquityis
valuable for stressing the complexity, even tension, in Aristotles conception of mimesis, which can cover both image making and dramatic impersonation. For Halliwell, the second aspect is uppermost in Aristotles mind
when he places mime and Socratic dialogue [sic] beside poetry, because
poetry, properly understood, does not describe, narrate, or offer argument,
but dramatizes and embodies human speech or action. 26 This conception also
seems to me to have a whiff of the ancient quarrel about it, and it certainly
has Platonic roots in Republic 3 (392d394d), where dramatic impersonation (mmhsi) is distinguished from narrative (dihvghsi) as a mode of tale
telling (muqologa). Aristotle looks at things differently in Poetics chapter 3
when he discerns three manners of imitating: narrative (apaggevllein),
mixed (partly narrative and partly becoming another character), and another
that would be called dramaticwhich portrays [mimoumevnou] people by
acting and doing as they do (pavnta w pravttonta ka ejnergounta tou;
mimoumevnou, 1448a2024). Aristotle differs from Plato in regarding narrative and dramatic impersonation as equally mimetic modes of mimesis. 27
In principle, Swkratiko lovgoi need not be dialogues to be mimesis.
Ancient taxonomists already recognized a problem with ascribing to
Aristotle Platos association of mimesis with dramatic representation: while
it works well for such texts as Euthyphro or Ion, it does not t works like
the Republic or the Symposium, which begin with a narrative in aliena persona that then recounts a Socratic conversation. 28 One might take such works
as mixed, but there would still be other forms of Socratic writing to consider: how mimetic in this sense is Xenophon, for example, who, unlike
Plato, speaks in his own persona in his Socratica? Where to put the Socratic
defense speeches, which, as ctive orations, were dramatic in exactly the
same way as that vast array of oratorical texts from Gorgias to Lysias not
usually classied by the Greeks or ourselves as mimesis?
To infer that Aristotle regards Swkratiko lovgoi as mimetic because of
their mmhsi prospwn also misconstrues their connection with Sophron.
Neither Poetics nor On Poets implies a genetic afliation between Socratic
literature and mime, which are connected at the abstract level of media. 29
26. Halliwell, Poetics (n. 2 above), 12228, esp. 12728. Similarly Janko (Poetics [n. 7 above], 69),
seeing a critique of Platos denunciation of mimesis: Plato had used a literary form resembling mime, i.e.,
he wrote representational literature. . . . Worse still, dialogues, like mimes, are dramatic in form.
27. The enactive mode is awkwardly explained with the same mim- root as the major term, mimesis,
in part because dramatikov seems to be reserved (twice in the corpus, Poet. 1448b36 and 1459a19) to refer
to well-made (esp. generalized, unied) plots, whether in epic or drama (see Janko, Poetics, 72; Lucas, Poetics,
77, 214; and cf. dramatopoien at Poet. 1448b37).
28. To accommodate such works some Platonists postulated a class of narrative dialogues (dihghmatiko),
beside the dramatiko and mixed (see Haslam, Dramatic Dialogue, 21, with I. Sluiter, The Dialectics of
Genre: Some Aspects of Secondary Literature and Genre in Antiquity, in Matrices of Genre, ed. M. Depew
and D. Obbink [Cambridge, Mass., 2000], 19296, and H. Tarrant, Thrasyllan Platonism [Ithaca, N.Y.,
1993], 104).
29. It is a sign of the difculty and inuence of Aristotles texts that so many ancient and modern scholars
have claimed that Sophron was prosimetric in some way, despite the testimony of the Suda that his works
were composed katalogavdhn (cf. Gudeman, PERI POIHTIKHS [n. 4 above], 88).

One Line Long

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Yet these difcult Aristotelian passages seem to be responsible for many

later stories recounting Platos admiration for Sophron. 30 Thus it is a misinterpretation of, rather than an insight into, Aristotles thought when ancient
critics say Plato learned character drawing or how to write dramatic
dialogues from Sophron. 31 James Horderns recent study nds no concrete
evidence of the mimographers inuence before the Hellenistic age. 32
Neither Sophron nor mime as a genre is mentioned in Platos many discussions of mimesisor indeed ever in his texts. 33 Deriving Platos mimetic art
from mime is ctitious literary history and is inadequate to explain Aristotles inclusion of Swkratiko lovgoi among mimetic arts.
We know that from Homer on Greek literature loved speechifying. And
it may well be that the majority of Socratic texts were dramatized conversations. But this does not oblige us to conclude that that is why Aristotle
considered them mimetic, given his view that it would be possible for them
to be composed as pure narratives, without speeches, and still be mimesis.
There is something else apart from representing speech that they were and
did. I propose that Aristotle found Swkratiko lovgoi mimetic because they
embodied mimesis in his sense of representing moral character in action.
This is implicit in a passage in Rhetoric that contrasts Swkratiko lovgoi with
texts on mathematics (maqhmatiko lovgoi): surveying oratorical techniques
to make a narrative ethical, Aristotle rst suggests that the speaker express
a preference, since character is revealed by the kind of thing preferred. This
agrees perfectly with Poetics, which explains that there is no character in
speeches in which nothing is chosen or rejected by the speaker. 34 An illustration is then given in Rhetoric: texts on mathematics do not have character
because there is no moral choice involved, while the Socratic (logoi) do
(Rh. 1417a1521 Kassel):
hjqikh;n de; crh; th;n dihvghsin enai: estai de; touto, a n edmen t hqo poie. en me;n dh; to;
proaresin dhloun, poio;n de; to; hqo t poia;n tauvthn, hJ de; proaresi poia; t tevlei.
dia; touto ouk ecousin o maqhmatiko lovgoi hqh, oti oude; proaresin (to; ga;r ou eneka
ouk ecousin), all o Swkratiko [per toiouvtwn ga;r levgousin].
It is necessary that narrative exhibit character: this will come about if we realize what
creates character. One way indeed is to reveal a choice, with the quality of the character
being revealed by that of the choice, and the quality of the choice being revealed by its
aim. For this reason mathematical texts do not have character, because they do not have
choice (they do not have the why), but Socratic logoi do [sc. have character].

30. See Rostagni, PERI POIHTWN (n. 16 above), 44445; Haslam, Dramatic Dialogue, 19. For
the tradition, see A. S. Riginos, Platonica: The Anecdotes Concerning the Life and Writings of Plato
(Leiden, 1976), 7476 (and cf. 4348 on a related phantasm: Platos supposed early career as a poet).
Diogenes remark (3.18) that Plato was the rst to bring Sophrons neglected works to Athens suggests
that there was otherwise no evidence for mimes inuence at the time.
31. Diog. Laert. 3.18 (Plato learned hjqopoihsai from Sophron); Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic
Philosophy 3 W (Plato copied Sophrons mmhsin prospwn); P Oxy. 3219 frag. 1 (imitating Sophrons
dramatikou; dialovgou); on which see Haslam, Dramatic Dialogue, 1920.
32. J. Hordern, Sophrons Mimes (Oxford, 2004), 2627.
33. H. Reich (Der Mimus: Ein literar-entwickelungsgeschichtlicher Versuch, vol. 1 [Berlin, 1903], 380
88) puts much weight on Republic 451c and its division of mimes into mens and womens, but this need
not betoken acquaintance with Sophron.
34. Poet. 1450b810. Cf. Halliwell, Poetics (n. 2 above), 151.

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Texts on mathematics have no character, I take it, because there is no prohairesis, no deliberate moral choice, involved in establishing premises or
drawing conclusions. In contrast, the Swkratiko lovgoi clearly are full of
character, but how? It cannot be, as the transmitted text suggests, because
Socratic texts speak about such matters. The Nicomachean Ethics, for example, goes on at length about character, but Aristotle would hardly regard
it as a mimetic work. Kassel persuasively brackets the phrase as the addition of a reader who misconstrued o Swkratiko as the Socratics. 35 The
excision not only restores coherence but also suggests how the error could
have arisen among readers for whom Swkratiko (sc. lovgoi) was less familiar
as a genre term than, for instance, Plavtwno diavlogoi.
In light of Aristotles insistence in Poetics that the objects of mimesis are
human beings in moral action, 36 this text from Rhetoric suggests that
Swkratiko lovgoi counted as mimesis not just because they represented
people talking, but because in those logoi, conversations or discourses,
speakers preferred one ethical proposition to another. The Swkratiko lovgoi
were called Socratic presumably because Socrates was noted for eliciting
such ethical commitments in conversation; his name would have distinguished
them from contemporary Aesopic logoi or Sybaritic ones (cf. Ar. Vesp.
125859). For the purposes of poetics, Aristotle stressed that Swkratiko
lovgoi had mimesis in common with mimoi, which also expressed character,
even if of a meaner sort (cf. Poet. 1448a2). For the theorist of genre, both
art forms exploited the fact that, as Poetics teaches, it is possible to display
character through bare logos as much as through praxis (1454a1718). Mime
and Socratic literature show that logos by itself has real mimetic power.
This ethical interpretation of the mimetic nature of Socratic literature
accommodates more easily than philosophical or literary explanations the
fact that it could take such forms as defense speeches or memorabilia; the
essential was that it show ethical choice through speech in persona. 37 Such
an understanding also does away with the dubious need to sift Socratic works
into discrete philosophical and mimetic elements.
Support for the ethical understanding of Socratic literature can be found
in one earlier animadversion to the style of Socratics in Lysias. In a speech
against Aeschines the Socratic, Lysias speaker describes his disappointment
at being villainously treated by one who had been a pupil of Socrates and
who had made so many ne speeches about justice and excellence (touton
Swkravtou gegonovta maqhth;n ka per dikaiosuvnh ka areth pollou; ka
semnou; levgonta lovgou; Lys. Against Aeschines frag. 1.2 = Ath. 611d612f).
35. If the phrase is kept, it has to be taken as a very loose paraphrase for the (sloppy) idea that speakers
in Swkratiko lovgoi show character in the course of talking about such matters.
36. See n. 2 above.
37. Modern readers might suggest that an additional reason for thinking of Socratic discourses as
mimeseis was that they, like mimes, were imaginative ctions (e.g., Jol, Lovgo Swkratikov, 476). But
in Poetics ctionality is incidental to mimesis: just as sequences of real events can be made into tragic
plots if they happen to be probably or necessarily connected (1451b2932), so nothing prevents a historical Socratic conversation from having been a probable series of moral decisions on the part of the
speakers involved. In such a case, a Socratic logos could faithfully record the things Socrates actually said
and still be mimetic.

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In the ctional oratorical situation, we are given a picture of Aeschines

making literal speeches, but for readers of Lysias this description must
have been equally suitable to the Swkratiko lovgoi Aeschines wrote. If so,
we may infer that the projection of an admirable ethos was felt to be typical
of Socratic writings, as was an impressive style. 38 Aristotle seems to have
shared this take on Socratic literature, if we can judge from a passing remark, meant to soften his disagreeing with Platos Republic and Laws on
a constitutional question (Pol. 1265a11, trans. Jowett): The discourses of
Socrates are never commonplace; they always exhibit grace and originality
and thought; but perfection in everything is hardly to be expected (to; me;n
ou n peritto;n ecousi pavnte o tou Swkravtou lovgoi ka to; komyo;n ka to;
kainotovmon ka to; zhthtikovn, kal de; pavnta sw calepovn). Together,
these texts suggest that Swkratiko lovgoi were generally perceived in the
early fourth century as elevated discourses (unlike mime), concerned with
ethical questions, and stylishly rened.
It is as portrayals of active moral character in speech alone, then, and not
as ctional or dialogical texts that Swkratiko lovgoi claimed a place among
the mimetic arts in Poetics. This, along with the fact that the genre was a
notable example of mimesis in prose, was sufcient reason for Aristotle to
mention the form. Some interpreters want to see Aristotles reference as a
sly poke at Plato for his rejection of mimesis in Republic 10. 39 I think such
a joke would be distracting, as the payoff depends on shifting from the conception of mimesis Aristotle is developing to Platos quite different uses
of the word. (Nor do I nd it a witticism worth reiterating from Poetics to
On Poets, though I concede that university lecturers have been known to
repeat jokes.) The basic problem with such readings is their reducing what
was clearly a thriving and variegated prose genre to Platos compositions
only. 40 In addition, they fail to appreciate how important it was to Aristotle
to establish that his analytical terms had the scope and precision to identify
all forms of mimetic art, with examples to hand for each kind. 41
A nal question to pose to our passages on poetics is why Aristotle paired
Swkratiko lovgoi with mime on both occasions. Positing new literary
classes is doubtless more persuasive if more than one exemplar can be identied, and it may be that there were not many examples of mimetic prose
available. 42 An additional reason might be that the two forms illustrated

38. Athenaeus makes this point ad loc. (611d). Lysias, of course, also authored a Socratic apologia
(SSR I C 137).
39. E.g., Janko, Poetics, 69; Rostagni, PERI POIHTWN, 44344; K. Gantar (Wohin deuten die
Sokratikoi Logoi in Aristoteles Poetik 1447b11? Hermes 92 [1964]: 12528) attempts to equate Swkratiko lovgoi with Platonic dialogues on the grounds that Aristotle speaks of Socrates views when referring
to Platonic texts. Non sequitur. Jol (Lovgo Swkratikov, 46870) criticizes a similar position by Zeller.
Hirzel (Dialog [n. 16 above], 41314) unpersuasively takes Aristotle to be attacking an alleged Platonic
theory of dialogue as poetry (cf. 18081).
40. On the popularity of the genre, see Ford, Beginnings (n. 19 above), 2930, 3941.
41. Again Hutton (Poetics, 82) comments aptly: The (to us) conspicuous absence of Platos name here
is in accord with the impersonal character of the Poetics.
42. So Janko (Poetics, 70): It is important to bear in mind that there was as yet no prose ction, except
for these two genres.

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complementary objects of imitationwith Sophron imitating low-class

individuals and the Socratics more noble sorts. But the t is not perfect (not
all Socratic personae are admirable), and analysis by objects of imitation is
only introduced in Poetics chapter 2. Some insight into the pairing can perhaps be had from pressing the language of the two passages. In both, mime
is introduced rst since its name immediately conrms that we are still in
the realm of mimesis, even if we have left verse behind. In Poetics, that
prose art is identied as mimes of Sophron or Xenarchus to distinguish
the artistic compositions Aristotle has in mind from the various mime-like
entertainments performed throughout Greece. 43 Naming two practitioners
of the genre (and leaving aside as irrelevant the tradition that Sophron
and Xenarchus were father and son) implicitly shows that mime can be a
tekhne, a learnable art. By contrast, On Poets simply speaks of the mimes
of Sophron, apparently because Aristotle is identifying genres by their rst
known practitioners; for the same reason it mentions Alexamenus as the
rst to write Swkratiko lovgoi, even though that fact was incidental to the
point about mimesis. This accords with other indications that On Poets devoted more attention than Poetics to the lives and accomplishments of individual artists.
Socratic Texts in Other Fourth-Century Taxonomies
Socratic logoi were only one brand among the many logoimimetic and
nonmimeticthat were produced in the innovative rhetorical culture of the
fourth century. The proliferation of such texts, as noticed in Alcidamas On
the Sophists or the beginning of Isocrates Busiris, was such that the lack of
a term for a writer of artistic prose was keenly felt. The word logogravfo
occasionally served, except that at Athens it had also come to be the word
for the dubious craft of professional speechwriting. 44 Logopoiov was similar semantically, but the -poiov sufx could have unwelcome connotations
of fabricating (as when Herodotus uses it for Aesop at 2.134); it also was associated with speechwriting. 45 Even the word sophist was sometimes called
into service to designate prose authors, not only because of the lack of a
convenient term, but because the sophists were such conspicuous producers
of logoi. 46 To avoid these difculties, Plato and Isocrates sometimes used
the phrase writer of logoi (suggrafeu; tn lovgwn), but this was about as
ambiguous as the English term writer (Pl. Euthydemus 272a, Phdr. 278e;
Isoc. Antid. 35, Ad Demonicum 3).

43. See Hordern, Sophrons Mimes (n. 32 above), 79.

44. For logogravfo neutrally to designate prose writers, Thuc. 1.21 (of historians), Arist. Rh. 1388b22,
1413b13 (prose writers opposed to poets); as a term of reproach for professional speechwriters, Pl. Phdr.
257c; cf. Dem. De falsa legatione 246.
45. For logopoiov for historians, Hdt. 5.143 (of Hecataeus); to oppose prose writers to poets, Pl. Resp.
392a, Isoc. Antid. 137, Philip 109, cf. 75; contrasting writers with improvisers, Alcidamas 15.8; having
connotations of falsehood, Lys. 16.11, Thuc. 6.38, Pl. Resp. 378d, Isoc. Bus. 27, Theophr. Char. 8.1,
Antiphanes PCG 166.2; associated with professional speechwriting, Pl. Euthydemus 289cd.
46. Cf. the phrase poets and sophistai for tradition, especially in written form: Damastes of Sigeion
FGrH 5 F 11; Xen. Mem. 4.2.1; Isoc. Ad Demonicum 51, C. soph. 1, Paneg. 82, Ad Nicoclem 13, 42.

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In such a context it is not surprising that other writers beside Aristotle

offered to map out the burgeoning new prose forms and relate them to recognized forms of verbal art. Two pertinent examples are in Plato and Isocrates,
both of whom raise the issue to dene the place of their own prose works.
I begin with Isocrates Antidosis: this innovative logos (an apology decidedly
in the authors persona, but against a charge that was never brought) includes a passage vindicating the value of prose, which Isocrates insists has
as many genres (trovpoi tn lovgwn, devai tn lovgwn) 47 as poetry (Antid. 45):
First of all, then, you should know that there are no fewer forms of prose than of poetry
in verse. For some men have spent their own lives researching the lives and ancestry of
the demigods; others have devoted learned study to the poets; others have elected to
compose histories recounting great deeds in war, while still others have occupied themselves with questions and answers, and are called antilogisticians. It would, however,
be no slight task to attempt to enumerate all the forms of prose, and I shall take up only
that which is pertinent to me, ignoring the rest. 48 (trans. G. Norlin, modied)

The list is mainly foil to Isocrates own oratory, but is revealing for the
kinds of prose works it recognizes and for capping the series with Socratic
literature. Despite interpreters who would limit Isocrates antilogisticians
to the Megarian Socratics, 49 surely those who have occupied themselves
with questions and answers is his unadmiring way of referring to a class of
texts that included Swkratiko lovgoi, not omitting Platos own. 50 Plato would
have cried foul, of course, always insisting that his own writings were a cut
above ejristiko lovgoi. 51 But Isocrates was never one to bow to Platos distinctions, and the only other time he uses the term diavlogo it refers to socalled eristic disputations (tou; dialovgou tou; ejristikou; kaloumevnou)
that have become a part of contemporary education but that older people
nd intolerable (Panath. 26). Incomplete as it is, the diaeresis in Antidosis
authorizes Isocrates to present his own logoi as the ultimate in worthwhile
prosea form of writing he also claims has a kinship with poetry, since it
more resembles works of poetry than it does rhetoric (Antid. 46). 52
That the attempt to enumerate genres could serve as an act of selfdenition for innovative writers is even clearer in a masterful diaeresis from

47. See Taylor, Varia Socratica (n. 23 above), 20112; and J. B. Lidov, The Meaning of idea in
Isocrates, PP 38 (1983): 27387.
48. Prton me;n ou n ejkeno de maqen uma, oti trovpoi tn lovgwn esn ouk ejlavttou h tn meta;
mevtrou poihmavtwn. O me;n ga;r ta; gevnh ta; tn hJmiqevwn anazhtounte to;n bon to;n autn katevtriyan, o de;
per tou; poihta; ejfilosovfhsan, eteroi de; ta; pravxei ta; ejn to polevmoi sunagagen ejboulhvqhsan, a lloi
dev tine per ta; ejrwthvsei ka ta; apokrsei gegovnasin, ou antilogikou; kalousin. Eh d an ou mikro;n
e r gon e pavs a ti ta; dev a ta; tn lovg wn ejx ariqmen ej p iceirhv seien: h d ou n ejmo proshv k ei, tauv th
mnhsqe ejavsw ta; a lla.
49. On antilogistics, cf. R. Thomas, Herodotus in Context (Cambridge, 2000), 25253, 26467;
Carawan, Ertsis (n. 22 above), 214; and E. S. Ramage, An Early Trace of Socratic Dialogue, AJP 82
(1961): 41824.
50. Taylor, Varia Socratica, 2089; F. Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 188789), 23.
Other Isocratean references to eristic literature: C. soph. 13; Helen 2, 6; Antid. 265.
51. See Phd. 90b91a, Soph. 216b, and Euthydemus, passim. On Platos characterizations of the
eristics, see Taylor, Varia Socratica, 91128; J. Laborderie, Le dialogue Platonicien de la maturit (Paris,
1978), 2740.
52. For another Isocratean list of genres, cf. Panath. init.

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Platos Phaedrus. To be precise, Plato gives a list not of prose genres but of
genres of writing, but it has the same self-positioning effect. It occurs in the
envoi to Phaedrus, which sends out the message that the only worthwhile
texts are those that have been composed with philosophic knowledge. The
message is predictable enough from Plato, but the list of writers to whom it
is to be sent is worth analyzing (278bc):
Lus te ka e ti a llo suntqhsi lovgou, ka Omhvr ka e ti a llo au pohsin
yilh;n h ejn d suntevqhke, trton de; Sovlwni ka osti ejn politiko lovgoi novmou
ojnomavzwn suggravmmata egrayen . . .
Go tell Lysias and anyone else who writes prose works, and Homer, and anyone who
has composed poetry, either bare or in song form, and thirdly Solon and anyone who
has written political prose, calling this writing laws . . .

Lysias heads Platos list because his ejrwtiko; lovgo had prompted the discussion, but here he represents the class of those who write prose (suntqhsi
lovgou) as distinct from poets. Next, with a formalistic thoroughness that is
either prophetic or reminiscent of Poetics, Plato subdivides poets into composers of bare poetry without melody and those of song. Platos categories are at bottom the same as Aristotles; he differs in that he wants to set
his own writing above all other texts and so takes in all artistic prose regardless of its mimetic nature. The parallels between this part of Phaedrus and
Poetics chapter 1 continue when Plato proposes his own revision of genre
labels: if writers compose with proper understanding, they can call themselves philosophers and drop whatever title (ejpwnuman, 278c7) they may
derive from their writings. If, on the other hand, they are merely good at
polishing language, they can keep the name of poet, prose writer, or law
writer (poihth;n h lovgwn suggrafeva h nomogravfon, 278e). Both Plato and
Aristotle challenge the usefulness of common literary terms and propose to
look at things outside the usual division between poetry and prose. Each says
that the current literary vocabulary fails to capture some key quality that
identies the true exemplars of verbal art: for Plato it is philosophical understanding, for Aristotle mimesis.
When Socrates goes on to add law writing to the prose-poetry dyad, it seems
to make a funny ensemble. Doubtless, he has a point in encouraging us to
regard lawmaking as a matter of writing, of setting words in stone that
like prose and verseenshrine ideas about the way people ought to live. 53
Still, it would be wrong, as usual, to take Plato wholly seriously here, and

53. Plato cannot be thinking broadly of constitutional literature, for he is clear that the writings in question are called laws. One may perhaps compare the Nomos by Theodectes (Arist. Rh. 1398b5, 1399b1) or
some text of Protagoras Thurii laws, but Malcolm Schoeld has suggested to me that Plato has in mind a
category of text that he will contribute to later with his own Nomoi. For the association of lawmaking and
law writing, see Phaedrus 257e and 258c, where one with the power of a Lycurgus or a Solon is said to be
an immortal logographos. Laws 8.858e compares Homer and Tyrtaeus with Solon and others who have
written rules for the conduct of life. Isocrates in Antidosis 7983 compares his logoi to laws and in Philip
12 compares festival display rhetoric to the nonbinding laws and constitutions composed by sophists
(all oJmow o toioutoi tn lovgwn a kuroi tugcavnousin onte to novmoi ka ta politeai ta upo; tn
sofistn gegrammevnai).

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his capping Lysias and Homer with Solon as eponymous generic gureheads
suggests that he, like Isocrates, found the topos of surveying genres most
neatly executed when a surprise was included at the end. Nor should we
assume that Aristotle is wholly without guile in capping his list of genres in
Poetics with such surprises as Sophron, Socrates, and Chaeremon. Although
that passage is weighty for understanding his basic orientation to the mimetic
arts, and though it epitomizes his deep reections on the organization of literary forms, there is also something rhetorical in the way Aristotle concludes
his survey of media by mentioning unexpected works he does not intend to
study.
Aristotle saw Swkratiko lovgoi whole; he saw them before Platos dialogues had driven all competitors into the shade; and he offered a novel and
important perspective on the genre. But proximity and profundity are not
the same as objectivity and accuracy, and it is worth noting that Aristotles
testimony sometimes shows traces of fourth-century topoi that were designed
to secure a special authority for the writers own prose. 54 If less visibly so
in Poetics than in the exoteric On Poets, Aristotles judgments about the
nature of mimetic prose were not completely uninvolved with the status and
worth of the prose in which he propounded them. This should hardly be a
surprise since, as Isocrates noted in passing, philosophical discourse about
poets (o de; per tou; poihta; ejfilosovfhsan) was another notable genre of
the time.
Princeton University
54. A suitable complementary topos is a sunkrisis between the stylistic devices available to poetry and
to prose, as in Isocrates Evagoras 311. Such a context could have afforded Aristotle the occasion to remark,
in the words of Diogenes, that the form of Platos writings is halfway between poetry and prose (Diog.
Laert. 3.37 = frag. 73 Rose: th;n tn lovgwn devan autou metaxu; poihvmato enai ka pezou lovgou) and that
Empedocles mastered the apparatus of poetrys special language (Diog. Laert. 8.57 = frag. 70: ejn de; t
Per poihtn fhsin oti ka Omhriko; oJ Empedoklh ka deino; per th;n fravsin gevgonen, metaforhtikov
te w n ka to a lloi to per poihtikh;n ejpiteuvgmasi crmeno).

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