Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle:  Power Point Notes for Prof. Leddy without illustration.
Pythagoras 570 BCE -495 BCE
Pythagoras on ancient coins
Pythagoras on a coin

Pythagoreans Celebrate Sunrise, Fyodor Bronnikov, (1827—1902) | 
symmetry

•	But the Greek word summetria is associated more with Polycleitus and with the idea of exact proportions, also with Vitruvius.
 
•	The Pythagorean theorem: The sum of the areas of the two squares on the legs (a and b) equals the area of the square on the hypotenuse (c). 

Archytus, 428–347 BC said
•	“The arithmetic mean is that in which three terms are proportional by virtue of a difference between them such that the first exceeds the second by the same amount by which the second exceeds the third.” pg. 82  An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy by John Manley Robinson. 
Euclid (c. 325–c. 265 BC), in his Elements.
•	gave the first recorded definition of the golden ratio, which he called,  "extreme and mean ratio” : “A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less." 
The golden ratio
•	“is the proportional relationship between two lines a and b such that (a + b) is to a as a is to b; in other words, the ratio between the whole and one of its parts is the same as the ratio between its two parts. This doesn’t sound like much in algebra form (a/b = (a + b)/a) and still less when expressed as a decimal (1:1.61814). But draw a rectangle—or build a Parthenon—with sides of a and b, and the sheer cosmic rightness of the thing leaps out at you.” “The Math Behind Beauty: A plastic surgeon computes the perfect face.” Bruno Maddox, Discover Magazine, Friday, June 1, 2007. [web]  Also see:  http://www.sciencedump.com/content/pythagoras-how-measure-beauty-human-face

Steven Marquardt, a plastic surgeon in L.A., argued that 
•	“Beautiful people’s mouths were 1.618 times wider than their noses, it seemed, their noses 1.618 times wider than the tip of their noses. As his data set expanded, Marquardt found indeed that the perfect face was lousy with golden ratios. Even the triangle formed by the nose and the mouth was a perfect acute golden triangle.” 

•	Marylin Monroe (1957) by Milton H. Greene 
Image courtesy of Marquardt Beauty Analysis 
Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli (1445–1517) Italian mathematician, Franciscan, with Leonardo da Vinci. 
•	Woodcut from De divina proportione illustrating the golden ratio as applied to the human face. De Divine proportione (written in Milan in 1496–98, published in Venice in 1509). The subject was mathematical and artistic proportion, especially the mathematics of the golden ratio and its application in architecture. 
Portrait of Luca Pacioli, traditionally attributed to Jacopo de' Barbari, 1495  

“In India, it was used in the construction of the Taj Mahal, which was completed in 1648.” http://www.goldennumber.net/architecture/
Parthenon, Athens, 438 BCE

“You’ll usually find the golden ratio depicted as a single large rectangle formed by a square and another rectangle. What’s unique about this is that you can repeat the sequence infinitely and perfectly within each section.” emptyeasel.com
Used in the Parthenon?
•	However Keith Devlin says, "Certainly, the oft repeated assertion that the Parthenon in Athens is based on the golden ratio is not supported by actual measurements. In fact, the entire story about the Greeks and golden ratio seems to be without foundation. The one thing we know for sure is that Euclid, in his famous textbook Elements, written around 300 BC, showed how to calculate its value." The Math Instinct: Why You're A Mathematical Genius (Along With Lobsters, Birds, Cats, And Dogs), p. 108. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005,  from “Golden Ratio”  Wikipedia

•	Polycleitus  5th century BC wrote Canon and created a statue to exemplify this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polykleitos

Polykleitos’ Canon
•	“Polykleitos consciously created a new approach to sculpture, writing a treatise (Kanon) and designing a male nude (also known as Kanon) exemplifying his aesthetic theories of the mathematical bases of artistic perfection... Polykleitos' Kanon "got its name because it had a precise commensurability (symmetria) of all the parts to one another" "His general aim was clarity, balance, and completeness; his sole medium of communication the naked body of an athlete, standing poised between movement and repose" Kenneth Clark observed.”

•	Though the Kanon was probably represented by his Doryphoros, the original bronze statue has not survived. References to it in other ancient writings, however, imply that its main principle was expressed by the Greek words symmetria, the Hippocratic principle of isonomia ("equilibrium"), and rhythmos. "Perfection, he said, comes about little by little (para mikron) through many numbers".[11] By this Polykleitos meant that a statue should be composed of clearly definable parts, all related to one another through a system of ideal mathematical proportions and balance.”  Wikipedia  [Doryphorus:  a Roman copy, next.]

•	A Polykleitan Diadumenos, in a Roman marble copy, National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

•	'Hermes with the Infant Dionysus' , perhaps by Praxiteles, 4th century BCE
On the right:  “Vitruvian Man” by Leonardo da Vinci, [16th century] “an illustration of the human body inscribed in the circle and the square derived from a passage about geometry and human proportions in Vitruvius”  Wikipedia
•	“Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (born c. 80–70 BC, died after c. 15 BC), commonly known as Vitruvius … was a Roman author, architect, civil engineer and military engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work entitled De architectura.” Wikipedia

•	Celkyte states that Vitruvius explained summetrios in terms of specific numerical ratios:  the distance from the human chin to the crown of the head is an eight part of the whole height etc.  He thought ancient painters and sculptors followed these principles.  
Socrates, 469-399 BCE
Jacques-Louis David “The Death of Socrates” 1787 
Plato, Athens, 428-348 BCE

Book II
•	Guardians of the State:  philosophy, spirit, swiftness and strength.
•	How reared and educated.
•	Our goal:  to answer the question “How do justice and injustice grow up in States?”
•	Education of our heroes.
•	Gymnastic for the body, music for the soul. 

•	“Music” includes literature, both true and false, the young to be trained in both kinds.
•	Stories that are mainly fictitious:  music before gymnastics.
•	Childhood is the time at which character is formed.
•	Should not carelessly allow children to hear any casual tale from casual persons:  receiving the wrong ideas.

•	Establish censorship of writers of fiction.
•	Censors should accept fictional tales that are good, reject the bad.  Mothers and nurses would be required to tell only the first:  fashion the minds with such tales.
•	The greater examples of these are the stories narrated by Homer and Hesiod:  they have the fault of telling a lie, a bad lie.
The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn: fresco by Giorgio Vasari and Crisofano Gherardi, c. 1560 (Sala di Cosimo I, Palazzo Vecchio) 
•	They misrepresent gods and heroes.  

•	Chosen few might hear these stories after sacrifice of an unprocurable pig.
•	Danger of imitation of these stories.  
•	Nothing should be said of wars in heaven [between the gods]
Battle between the Gods and the Giants (Titans)Fragment from the frieze of Treasury of the Siphnians

•	
Kleophon Painter ca 430 - 420 BC Detail of Hera from a painting depicting the return of Hephaistos to Olympos. The goddess is trapped in a cursed throne sent to her by her son Hephaistos - punishment for casting him from heaven as a babe. An attendant, perhaps Hebe, cools her with a feather fan. A Satyriskos attendant of Dionysos plays a flute. 
Book III
•	Take away the fear of death.
•	Commend and not criticize Hades.
•	“strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm of them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.” (17)

•	Get rid of weepings and wailings of famous men.
•	Death not terrible to a good man who is a comrade.
•	Loss of son or brother the least terrible.
•	No fits of laughter either:  when it is indulged to excess it almost always produces a violent reaction.

Lying
•	The privilege of lying should be limited to the rulers, and only for the public good: if the ruler catches anyone else lying he will be punished as destructive of the State. (20) 

Temperance
•	Youth must be temperate, which means:  obedient to commanders, self-control in sensual pleasures.
•	“When the tables are full of bread and meat, and the cupbearer carries round wine”  objectionable
•	Story of Zeus forgetting his plans because overcome by lust for Hera.

Boy serving wine in a banquet, holding an oenochoe (wine jug) in his right hand and a kylix (shallow cup) in his left hand. Side A from and Attic red-figure kylix, ca. 460-450 BC.

•	metope from Temple E in Selinunte: Hera as bride unveiling before Zeus; Greek, c. 460 BCE

•	Annibale Carraci
•	1560-1609
•	Jupiter and Juno
•	 

•	Tale of Hephaestus casting his chain around Ares and Aphordite.
Renaissance painting unknown painter and date, Hephaestus, Ares and Aphrodite

•	We should hear deeds of endurance of heroes but not that they receive gifts or are lovers of money.
•	The stories about Achilles such as that he criticized Apollo as the “most abominable of deities” (22) should not be told. [Exekias Achilles and Ajax Playing a Board Game 540-530 BCE.] 
•	Theseus committed a rape?  Either “these acts were not done by them or they were not the sons of gods”  

Embassy to Achilles — Achilles veiled and Odysseus. Athenian red-figure cup, British Museum 
Wicked men often happy?  No.
•	“poets and story-tellers are guilty of making the gravest misstatements when they tell us that wicked men are often happy, and the good miserable, and that injustice is profitable when undetected….” 23

Style
•	Narration is either simple narration or imitation or a mixture of the two.
•	Imitation:  “assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice or gesture, is the imitation of the person whose character he assumes.”
•	Tragedy and comedy are wholely imitative, dithyramb is wholly narrative.

•	Are the poets in narrating their stories allowed to imitate?
•	Should our guardians be imitators?
•	One man can only do one thing well:  no one man can imitate many things as well as he would imitate a single one.

Book X:  Our State [the Republic:  the ideal government ]
–	Consider our rule about poetry: rejection of imitative poetry from the ideal state. [Imitative poetry includes for example when an actor imitates a general on stage, or today, in a movie.]
–	We distinguish the parts of the soul [appetitive, passionate, rational]  [and the three parts of the state:  craftsmen, military/police, and the rulers…the philosopher kings in Plato’s ideal state.]

Knowledge of the truth the only antidote!
–	All poetical imitations [by tragedians and other members of the imitative tribe, including for example epic poets like Homer and lyric poets like Archilochus] are ruinous to the understanding:  knowledge of the true nature of poetry is the only antidote.
–	Socrates:  I love Homer, the great captain and teacher of the tragedians, but I love truth more.

Homer  850-800 B.C.  The Trojan war, described in the Illiad and Odyssey, happened around 1184 BC 
•	“Homer (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros) is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Illiad and the Odyssey.” Wikipedia  
The Iliad, By Homer, 
Written 800 BCE , Translated by Samuel Butler, Book XI
•	Jove drew Hector away from the darts and dust, with the carnage and din of battle; but the son of Atreus sped onwards, calling out lustily to the Danaans. They flew on by the tomb of old Ilus, son of Dardanus, in the middle of the plain, and past the place of the wild fig-tree making always for the city- the son of Atreus still shouting, and with hands all bedrabbled in gore; but when they had reached the Scaean gates and the oak tree, there they halted and waited for the others to come up. 

•	Meanwhile the Trojans kept on flying over the middle of the plain like a herd cows maddened with fright when a lion has attacked them in the dead of night- he springs on one of them, seizes her neck in the grip of his strong teeth and then laps up her blood and gorges himself upon her entrails- even so did King Agamemnon son of Atreus pursue the foe, ever slaughtering the hindmost as they fled pell-mell before him. Many a man was flung headlong from his chariot by the hand of the son of Atreus, for he wielded his spear with fury. 

19th century painting?
Fight over the body of Patroclus, Achilles’ friend, 6th century BCE, Krater from Farsala, Greece
What is imitation?
–	Can you tell me what imitation is.
–	Let us follow the usual manner of inquiry [i.e. looking for a definition, as we looked for a definition of “beauty” in class].
–	When a number of individuals have a common name they have a corresponding idea or form.  [Idea or Form]
Beds and Tables
–	Consider beds and tables:  there are only two ideas or forms of them, one of each.
–	A maker of beds makes them in accord with the idea [the ideal] of a bed.  
–	No artificer [no craftsman] makes the ideas.

Greek beds
There is another artist:  a maker of all the works of all other workmen, indeed of all things. 
He makes the gods also.  [So is it God?  No.]
In one sense, he is yourself, i.e. when you have a mirror.  
But in making things with a mirror, you produce appearances only.
The painter too is like this:  he is a creator of appearances.  He creates a bed, but not a real one.
Webster-Miriam definition of Circle
•	a closed plane curve every point of which is equidistant from a fixed point within the curve
Three beds.
–	The maker of the bed does not make the idea or essence of the bed, but a particular bed.
•	He does not make true existence but semblance of existence.  
•	Glaucon:  philosophers would say this.  [Glaucon seems a bit skeptical.]
•	Who then is the imitator?
–	Socrates:  there are three beds: by God, by carpenter, by painter.  Three artists.

God, carpenter, painter
•	God, from choice or necessity, made only one bed in nature [i.e. in reality]
–	If he made two, a third would appear behind as their idea.
–	He desired to be the real maker of the real bed.
–	He is the natural author by natural process of creation of all things. 
•	The carpenter is also a maker of the bed.
•	The painter is neither maker nor creator, but the imitator.
Imitator defined
•	So, he who is third in the descent from nature [i.e. the Forms] is the imitator. 
•	[This should be distinguished from our use of the word “imitator” to refer to a painter who imitates the style of another painter.  Such a painter would be four removes from reality on Plato’s account.] 
•	[“Imitator” is defined by distinguishing it from two things that might be confused with it.  Also we know what an imitator is because we understand its place in the overall scheme of things, i.e. in metaphysics.]

What about this painting of a bed?
•	Van Gogh,  The Bedroom, first version 1888.  
•	The first version of The Bedroom (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) was one of the paintings Van Gogh made to decorate [his] house in anticipation of the arrival of his first guest, Paul Gauguin. "It's just simply my bedroom," he wrote, "only here color is to do everything ... to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination." http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/28560

The tragic poet is an imitator.
•	The tragic poet [for example Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides] is an imitator:  also thrice removed from the king [God] and truth.  [The whole point about painting was intended to lead up, by analogy, to this point about the Greek theatrical form called “tragedy.”]

Aeschylus c. 525 BC/524 BC – c. 456 BC/455 BC), Sophocles  c. 497/6 BCE -  406/5 BCE
 Euripides  c. 480 BC – 406 BC statue 2nd century AD

things as they appear
•	The painter only imitates the creations of artists [e.g. carpenters] as they appear.
–	He [or she] may look at a bed from different points of view.
•	His product, then, is a long way off from the truth. 
–	He can do all things because he only lightly touches on a small part of them [i.e. only reproduces one perspective of the appearance of a thing].
A good imitator is a good artist?
–	A painter can paint a cobbler even though he knows nothing [about the cobbler’s art and hence will not show the cobbler accurately, i.e. in the way he is working with shoes.]
–	If he is a good artist he may deceive children or simple persons from a distance.  [Plato is not being serious here about the artist being good.  Later he tells us what he really thinks a good artist is.]

An ancient Greek cobbler cutting leather for shoes. 
trompe-l'œil:  left: the original façade of the Saint-Georges Theatre before the intervention of the mural painter Dominique Antony [2012?]:  right, the mural

Trompe l'œil by Henry Fuseli  (1750)

•	Polykleitos Diadoumenos (Head Binder). c. 430 BCE
Duane Hanson's sculpture "Drug Addict" from 1974 (together with an unidentified museum guest). 
A naïve or simple-minded person.
•	If you think you know someone who knows all the arts, and everything anyone knows, and with more accuracy than anyone, you are a simple person [i.e. you are simple-minded or naïve]. 
•	Such a person has probably been deceived because he was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge, ignorance, and imitation.  [Plato is implying that if you can analyze these things then you will not be deceived.]
Do poets really know the things they seem to speak so well about?  No.
–	Similarly, someone who says that the tragedians and Homer know all the arts [that is, know all things] and virtue and vice [that is, know all about what makes things right and wrong, morally speaking], and divine things [that is, religious truth], because a good poet must know his subject well, suffers from an illusion.  [Ion would be an example of such an individual.]  
The real artist would be interested in realities, not in making imitations.
- He would wish to be the theme of encomiums [hymns of praise] not the mere maker of them.
- Has Homer cured anyone like Asclepius god of medicine in ancient Greece [	right]?   No
- Nor has he contributed to military tactics, politics, or education.
To Homer:
–	If you are only two removes from truth about virtue, and are able to figure out what makes men better or worse in private or public life, what State was ever governed better by your help as was helped by Lycurgus [the first law-maker of Sparta] and Solon [the first law-maker of Athens]?  Lycurgus and Solon [i.e. those who create constitutions:  the American founding fathers would be our example] are the true artists, not Homer and the tragedians.

Lycurgus of Sparta, by Ambroise Tardieu 18th century.  Right: marble statue of a helmeted hoplite (5th century BC), maybe Leonidas, Sparta
 Solon of Athens 640-561 BCE
Charondas
•	“Charondas lawgiver of Catana.. credited with laws relating to commercial transactions, to citizens' compulsory participation in juridical organs, and with [for the first time] the provision of penal prosecution in cases of false witness.” http://www.ime.gr/chronos/04/en/society/310trad_lawgivers.html
Thales of Miletus 624-546
Said to be the first philosopher. Predicted eclipse of sun.
•	Or is there any invention of his applicable to the arts or to human life such as Thales..or Anarcharsis
Anarcharsis, Scythian philosopher [from Russia] came to Athens of Solon 589 BCE. The inscription on his statue was: "Bridle speech, gluttony, and sensuality." Said [by Diogenes Laertius] to have improved the anchor [this image 592 BCE]
Way of life?
•	Has Homer handed down a Homeric way of life like Pythagoras?  No.  Indeed, he was neglected by his companion and others when alive.  But if he had really been able to educate mankind he would have had many followers, like the sophists Protagoras and Prodicus, whose companions all but carry them on their shoulders.   
•	Their contemporaries would not have allowed them to go about as rhapsodes if they could make man virtuous.     
We should infer that poets, beginning with Homer, are only imitators: 
•	They copy images of virtue and the like, but not the truth, like the painter who paints a cobbler without knowing about cobbling (37).  This kind of picture is good enough for those who judge only by colors and figures.
•	The poet lays out the colors of the several arts, speaking in meter and harmony, melody and rhythm, which have a sweet influence on us.
•	But when stripped of these colors and put in prose, these tales do not look as good.

The User
•	The imitator knows nothing of true existence, only appearances.
•	A painter will paint reins and bit but does not know their right form in the way the user of such equipment would.
Right Greek Bronze bit
4th–3rd century B.C.

A new version of the three arts.
•	There are three arts:  one which uses, one which makes, one which imitates.
•	The excellence or beauty or truth of every structure or action is relative to the use for which nature or the artist intended it. [seems to contradict what he said earlier]

Experience = Knowledge
•	The user must have the greatest experience and must indicate to the maker the good and bad qualities of the artifact.
•	The flute-player [not God!] will tell the flute-maker which flutes are satisfactory.  
•	The one who knows has authority, the other does what he is told.
Knowledge vs. Mere Correct Belief
•	The maker will only attain correct belief about excellence of the object from him who knows.
•	The imitator will not know from use whether his drawing is correct or beautiful, nor will he have right opinion: he will imitate without knowing what makes a thing good or bad. (39)

Imitation as Play
•	The imitator will imitate only what appears good to the ignorant multitude.
•	He has no knowledge worth mentioning of what he imitates:  imitation is a kind of play or sport, and the tragic poets are imitators in the highest degree.

What is the faculty in man to which imitation is addressed? (39)
•	Our ability to experience perceptual illusions, such as that an object that appears straight appears crooked in water, is a weakness of the human mind, and the art of conjuring by light and shadow is based on this:  like magic.
The Calculating Principle 
•	The arts of measuring, numbering, and weighing rescue us from what is merely apparent.
•	Then the apparent no longer has mastery over us.
•	This is the work of the calculating principle of the soul.  [the logical part of your mind]

Müller-Lyer illusion. 1889.
Different Part of the Soul
•	Although self-contradiction is not impossible, the same faculty of the mind cannot have contrary opinions at the same time.
•	Since there are contrary opinions within the soul there is a part of the soul that has a contrary opinion to the better, calculative, part.
•	Painting, drawing, imitation, are far from truth and are companions of a principle in us that is equally removed from reason.
Moving beyond the analogy
•	Let us now move beyond a mere analogy between painting and poetry and determine whether the faculty of poetical imitation is good or bad.
•	Imitation imitates the actions of men on which a good or bad result has ensued, and the audience rejoices or feel sorrow accordingly.
Vs. Indulging in Sorrow
•	As with sight, there is confusion and opposition in a man’s opinions about the same things.
•	A good man who loses something dear will bear the loss with equanimity: he will moderate his sorrow, especially when seen by his equals.(41)
•	A principle of reason bids him to resist the one that forces him to indulge his sorrow.
Two Principles
•	This implies two distinct principles in him: one following the guidance of the law, that patience under suffering is best.
•	For we cannot know whether such things are good or evil, and nothing is gained by impatience, and no human is of serious importance, and grief stands in the way of action.  (41)
•	The other is the opposite.
•	We should order our affairs in the way reason deems best, not wasting our time howling like children.
The good principle is not easy to imitate.
•	We should banish cries of sorrow and meet the attacks of fortune with the healing art.
•	The other (rebellious) principle inclines us to recollection of our troubles and lamentation:  we may call it irrational, useless, and cowardly.
•	This principle supplies a great variety of materials for imitation, more than the wise and calm temperament, which is not easy to imitate, especially at a public festival when a promiscuous crowd is present.

•	So the imitative poet who aims at being popular does not aim to please the rational principle of the soul, but will prefer to imitate the passionate and fitful temper.
•	He is like the painter in that his creations have an inferior degree of truth, and in being concerned with an inferior part of the soul.

•	We exclude him from the State because he strengthens the feelings and impairs reason, and implants an evil constitution.
•	He indulges the irrational nature which does not discern greater and less.
Heaviest Count Against Poetry
•	The heaviest count against poetry is its power of harming even the good:  the best of us, in listening to Homer about a pitiful hero in a long oration or weeping. delight in giving way to sympathy.

•	We are in rapture about the excellence of the poet who stirs our feelings most.
•	But we pride ourselves in being quiet and patient about our own sorrows:  this is manly.
•	We cannot be right in praising and admiring another who is doing that which we would hate in ourselves.

•	The better nature in us, when not trained by reason or habit allows sympathy to break forth when the sorrow is someone else’s, and he thinks the pleasure is a gain.
•	But from the evil of other men something evil is communicated, making it more difficult for us to repress sorrow in ourselves.

•	This is true for the ridiculous too:  jokes we would be ashamed to make ourselves are tolerated on stage:  what you restrained because you did not want to appear a buffoon is stimulated in the theater.
•	Poetry feeds lust, anger, other affections of pain and pleasure, and lets them rule, when they should be controlled.
Plato  “Allegory of the Cave”  [from his Republic]
•	I will show in a figure how our nature is enlightened or not.  [scene described] 
•	These are like ourselves:  they see only their shadows.
•	To them, the truth would be nothing but the shadows of images.
Released 
•	When the prisoner is released and compelled to stand he will suffer pains and will not at first be able to see real things.  What he saw before was an illusion.  As he gets closer to being [reality] he has clearer vision.   

Seeing the sun itself.
•	In seeing the sun itself, his eyes will be dazzled.  In the upper world he will see shadows best at first, then reflections, then the objects themselves, then the light of the moon, stars and heaven, and finally the sun, which he will contemplate as it is.

•	He will reason that the sun gives the seasons and years.  It guards, and in a sense causes the visible world.   And he will pity the men in the den.  
•	He would not care for the honors given for discerning the passing shadows and making predictions about them.  He would suffer anything rather than live in this way.

Placed back in the cave?
•	If he was suddenly placed in his old situation [back in the cave] his eyes would be full of darkness and he would fail any contest in measuring the shadows until his eyes became steady (which might take a long time).  Other men would see him as ridiculous, think it not a good idea to ascend, and would put to death anyone who tried to lead someone to the light.
Meaning of the allegory.
•	The prison house is the world we see, the light of the fire is the sun, the journey is the ascent of the soul to the intellectual world [the world that can only be known by intellect].
•	In the world of knowledge [the intellectual world] the idea of good appears last of all, and is only seen with effort.  [The idea of “good” is the highest of the Forms and is the ultimate principle in Plato’s system, even higher than God.] 
The Good [and beautiful]
•	The good is then inferred to be the author of all things that are beautiful and right. [Notice that the Good is not the creator of all things, only of the best things.]  It is the parent of light.  [Light here represents knowledge and truth.] 
•	It is also the parent of the sun, which is the lord of light in the visible world.  
•	It is the source of reason and truth in the intellectual world.  
•	Anyone who wishes to act rationally in public or in private life should fix his [mental] eye on this power. 

Acropolis, Athens
The Acropolis as it was in the time of Socrates and Plato

The Acropolis as it is today
Parthenon today
The Parthenon as it was

“This computer-generated view, produced by Iowa State University’s Virtual Reality Applications Center, shows the Parthenon as it might have appeared during its colorful prime.”  2006 
Cavalcade. Block II from the west frieze of the Parthenon, ca. 447–433 BC. 
Erechtheum. North porch. c. 421 BCE -405 BCE 
Two versions of the Parthenon Interior, Statue of Athena by Phidias
Reconstruction of the Skene of the Theater of Dionysus
Theater of Dionysus, Athens, today, 5th century BC

Athenian Agora, next: The Acropolis and the Propylaea in an 1846 painting by Leo von Klenze.

Roman Mosaic, Pompeii, Socrates rubbing chin

•	Silver Plate with Two Philosophers Debating, Unknown, Late Antique, Eastern Mediterranean, A.D. 500 – 600 [represents science vs. myth?]

Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guérin,  Clytemnestra hesitates before killing the sleeping Agamemnon). On the left, Aegisthus urges her on. Oil on canvas, 1817. 
Clytemnestra kills Cassandra - 
Athenian red-figure cup 430 BC 

Agamemnon, 
By Aeschylus, Written 458 B.C.E, Brander Matthews Translation, 1916

•	CHORUS singing Zeus, Lord of heaven! and welcome night 
Of victory, that hast our might 
With all the glories crowned! 
On towers of Ilion [Troy], free no more, 
Hast flung the mighty mesh of war, 
And closely girt them round, 
Till neither warrior may 'scape, 
Nor stripling lightly overleap 
The trammels as they close, and close, 
Till with the grip of doom our foes 
In slavery's coil are bound! 

Selection from Agamemnon continued
•	CLYTEMNESTRA Old men of Argos, lieges of our realm, 
Shame shall not bid me shrink lest ye should see 
The love I bear my lord. Such blushing fear 
Dies at the last from hearts of human kind. 
From mine own soul and from no alien lips, 
I know and will reveal the life I bore. 
Reluctant, through the lingering livelong years, 
The while my lord beleaguered Ilion's wall. 

Rap Singer Chorus “What’s Beef” Notorious B.I.G. ,1997?
•	[Chorus]
What's beef? Beef is when you need two gats to go to sleep
Beef is when your moms ain't safe up in the streets
Beef is when I see you
Guaranteed to be in ICU (one more time)
What's beef? Beef is when you make your enemies start your Jeep
Beef is when you roll no less than thirty deep
Beef is when I see you
Guaranteed to be an ICU, check it

Plato’s “Ion”
•	Ion has come from gaining first prize at a festival at Epidaurus [a city in Greece] and will now compete in Athens at the Panathenaea festival.  Socrates [ironically] envies his profession, for he must always wear fine clothes and look beautiful, and especially because he must understand Homer who is the best and most divine poet.  A rhapsode must be able to understand the meaning of the poet whose poems he recites for he must interpret the mind of the poet to his hearers. 

•	A rhapsode declaiming the first lines of an unknown epic: 'Thus once in Tiryns…'. Attic, early 5th century. By the Kleophrades Painter. British Museum. 

•	A rhapsode standing on a platform before a listener holding a staff (rhabdos) which is a sign of his profession.  Perhaps the man with the forked stick is a judge. 
Greek theater at Epidaurus
Panathenaia Festival 
Interpretation
•	Ion:  Yes, interpretation is the most laborious part of my art.  I can speak better about Homer than anyone. 
•	[But what is interpretation?]
 
Other Interpreters.
•	Metrodorus of Lampsacus 331–278 BC) Greek follower of Epicurus.  He wrote criticisms [now lost] of Plato’s writings. [Wikipedia]  Right
•	Stesimbrotos of Thasos, Greece, 470-420 BCE, was a sophist, a rhapsode and logographer, a writer on history, and an opponent of Pericles and reputed author of a political pamphlet On Themistocles, Thucydides, and Pericles.  (Wikipedia)

•	Socrates will not hear how exquisitely Ion renders Homer (his embellishments).
•	Ion: my art extends to Homer only, not to Hesiod.
•	Ion admits there are many things in which Homer and Hesiod agree, and that he can interpret them equally on such matters.
•	On matters in which they disagree, however, say on divination [making prophecies], a good prophet would be a better interpreter. 

Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus
“My Soul” by Archilochus, 680-645 BC
•	My Soul, my Soul, all disturbed by sorrows inconsolable,
•	Bear up, hold out, meet front-on the many foes that rush on you
•	Now from this side and now that, enduring all such strife up close, Never wavering; and should you win, don't openly exult,
•	Nor, defeated, throw yourself lamenting in a heap at home,
•	But delight in things that are delightful and, in hard times, grieve
•	Not too much — appreciate the rhythm that controls men's lives.

What makes a better judge?
•	Soc:  Homer speaks of the same themes as the other poets:  war (especially), human society, gods conversing, what happens in the heavens and below, etc.  
•	Ion:  But the other poets speak of these things in a worse way.
•	Soc:  Surely, in discussions about arithmetic the arithmetician judges better, and in wholesomeness of food, the physician. 
•	If you know the good speaker then you know the inferior to be inferior.
I have no ideas about other poets!
•	Soc:  So, you should be equally skilled in Homer and the other poets.
•	Ion:  But why do I lose attention and even fall asleep when I listen to talk about other poets?  I have no ideas about other poets. 
•	Soc:  you speak of Homer without any [rules of] art or knowledge:  for poetry is a whole.
Painters and Sculptors
•	Soc:  you rhapsodes, actors and poets are wise, whereas I am a common man and only speak the truth. [he is ironic about their being wise]
•	Knowledge of a whole art implies that enquiry into the good and bad is the same.
•	[a good painting critic] skillful in pointing out excellences and defects in Polygnotus doesn’t sleep when confronted by other painters.

•	Polygnotus a  painter from the middle of the 5th century BC, native of Thasos, but adopted by the Athenians, and admitted to their citizenship. [I will say more about him when we get to Aristotle]
•	should not be confused with the important vase painter Polygnotos of Athens 450-420 BC.
What a painting by Polygnotus might have looked like. 
Apollo and Artemis killing the children of Niobe, red-figure calyx krater by the Niobid Painter, c. 455–450 bc; in the Louvre, Paris. 
•	“Niobid Painter (flourished 475-450 …vase painter, named for a calyx krater showing the death of the children of Niobe. Because the Niobid Painter made a deliberate effort to express space and depth by arranging figures on different levels, the vessel is thought to reflect the innovative technique of the now lost mural paintings of Polygnotus”
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

Reverse side of Niobe painter vase

•	“A Vase of Polygnotan Style: M. d. I., XI., 38”  Percy Gardner The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 10 (1889), pp. 117-125.  This article refers to the preceding vase and argues  that it may have been representative of the style of Polygnotus.
Polygnotos
•	“Polygnotos (active approx. 450 - 420 BCE), a vase-painter in Athens, is considered one of the most important vase painters of the red figure style of the high-classical. He received his training in the workshop of the Niobid Painter and specialized in monumental vases, as in the manner of Polygnotos [Polygnotus] of Thasos, after whom he probably designated himself. He was the leading vase painter of the Group of Polygnotus which carries his name.”  Wikipedia
Polygnotos “Theseus Abducts Helen”

Inspiration
•	Soc:  The reason is that you speak without any knowledge.  After all, poetry is a whole [and so, to truly know poetry you would have to know all of it, and not just the part related to Homer].
•	Your gift is not an art [by “art” or techne he means “a form of skill based on knowledge”] but an inspiration. A divinity moves you. 

•	This is like the magnet which attracts iron rings and imparts a similar power to other rings, which may then form a chain.  

The Muse
•	Similarly, the Muse inspires men, forming a chain.

•	Muse reading a scroll, perhaps Clio - Attic red-figure lekythos, Boeotia c. 435-425 BC - Louvre 
Sarcophagus known as the "Muses Sarcophagus", representing the nine Muses and their attributes. Marble, first half of the 2nd century AD, 

“Luigi Cherubini and the Muse of Lyric Poetry,” Ingres, 1847
Good Poets Compose by Inspiration
•	Good poets compose their beautiful poems not by art but by inspiration.  They are possessed, like Corybantian revelers.  [Priests of the Phrygian goddess Cybele.]  They are not in their right minds.  They have fallen under the power of music and meter, like Bacchic maidens under the influence of Dionysus. 

Left, Corybantian dancers? Right, head of Cybele, Smyrna in Ionia, 2nd-1st century BCE 
Dionysus and his Satyr followers
Bachhic Procession led by Maenad
The Bacchic maiden metaphor and the bee metaphor
•	The poets are like the Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers while under the influence of Dionysus.
•	The lyric poets say that they “bring songs from honeyed fountains, culling them out of the gardens and dells of the Muses.”
•	They are like bees winging from flower to flower.
•	“the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired..”
No invention in the poet!
•	Soc:  Similarly, there is no invention in the poet until he is inspired and out of his senses.  Poets speak many noble words but, like you, do not speak by any rules of art.  
•	They are inspired in different modes: dithyrambic, epic, iambic, etc.  They are not good at any other kind of verse.
Poets are only interpreters of the Gods!
•	If [the poet, or even Ion, the rhapsode] knew the rules of art [the art of poetry] he would have been able to speak of all themes. 
•	God uses the minds of poets as his ministers and, as with diviners and prophets, he is the speaker.

Proof?
•	Tynichus produced only one memorable poem, but that a great one.  This shows that such pieces are not the work of man.  

Not in your right mind!
•	Soc:  And rhapsodes are interpreters of interpreters.  And you are not in your right mind when you produce your greatest effect.  You are carried out of yourself, your soul in ecstasy seems [to yourself] to be among the persons and places depicted in the story.
•	Ion:  Yes in [telling] tales of pity my eyes are filled with tears, etc. 
I’m happy when I make them cry.
•	Soc:  But anyone in holiday attire and with a golden crown who appears weeping in front of 20,000 friendly faces is not in his right mind.  And you produce similar effects in most spectators. 
•	Ion:  True, I behold emotions of pity, wonder, etc. on their faces.  If I make them cry I laugh, i.e. when my payment time comes.
The rings of inspiration.
•	Soc:  The spectator is the last of the rings. The rhapsode and actor are intermediate links.  The poet is the first.  The God sways the souls of men as he pleases.  Dancers, masters, etc., are suspended from the sides of the rings. Each poet has a Muse.
Orpheus
•	From the first ring depend others, some inspired by Orpheus [a mythic Christ-like figure who was famous for his singing and was associated with death and rebirth],
The Mousai Melousa and Terpsikhore [a muse] instruct the poet Mousaios, Attributed to Peleus Painter  ca 450 - 420 BCE

•	some by Musaeus [a mythical seer and priest who was pupil or son of Orpheus, and was said to have been the founder of priestly poetry in Athens], some by Homer.
•	Ion is possessed by Homer, and like the Corybantes, pays no attention to any other musical strain.

Ion not convinced 
•	Ion:  But you cannot persuade me I praise Homer only when mad and possessed. 
•	Soc:  On what part of Homer then do you speak well?  Ion:  Every part.  Soc:  Not about things in Homer of which you have no knowledge.  
A charioteer is a better judge than Homer about chariots.
•	For example Homer has Nestor tell his son how to drive a chariot.  A charioteer would be a better judge of these lines than a physician.  He would be a better judge because that is his art. 
•	Charioteer, Delphi in 474 BC.  Bronze 
Young girl winning chariot race, engraving from red-figure Greek vase

Each Art has its own Knowledge
•	Every art (e.g. the art of driving or of medicine) is appointed by God to have its own knowledge.   We do not know the art of the carpenter by the art of medicine.  The arts are only different if they give different knowledge. 

What then is the art of the rhapsode?
•	Soc:  So which passages in Homer relate to the rhapsode and rhapsode’s art in that the rhapsode would be able to judge them better than anyone else? 
•	Ion:  All passages. 
•	Soc:  But you said the art of the rhapsode was different from that of the charioteer and that they have different subjects of knowledge, and so the rhapsode would not know everything.  You would have to exclude the subjects of other arts.
A good rhapsode is a good general?
•	Ion:  The rhapsode will know what a man, woman, freeman, slave, ruler, or subject ought to say.  There is, therefore, no difference between the art of a general and that of the rhapsode.  A good rhapsode is a good general because he knows what a general ought to say. 
•	Soc:  You might have a knowledge of the art of the general as well as of the rhapsode...but in judging a general’s art are you doing so by the general’s art or the rhapsode’s?
•	Ion:  no difference, but a good general is not a good rhapsode.
Ion, the best Greek general?
•	Soc:  So you would be the best Greek general?  But why are you then a rhapsode and not a general?  
•	Ion:  The Ephesians (my countrymen) do not need a general and the other cities think they have enough generals. 
•	Soc:  But Athens hires foreign generals that have shown their merit. 

In conclusion:
•	Soc:  You are a deceiver if you do not explain the nature of your art, i.e. your Homeric knowledge, to me.  Like Proteus [a mythical character who could change his shape] you have become all manner of people at once, including now a general.  
I must be Inspired!
•	If you have art you are not dealing with me fairly.  But if you have no art then you are inspired. 
•	Ion:  Inspiration is nobler than dishonesty, so I must be inspired.

Suzanne Stern-Gillet, “On (Mis)interpreting Plato's "Ion“,” Phronesis 49, no. 2 (2004): 169-201. 
•	“Plato's poet, far from being a creative   artist, is denied the authorship of his poems. Far from being hailed as a genius, he is given no praise for the fineness of his poems.”
•	“Socrates' speech in the Ion in no way justifies the description of Plato as the ancestor of the Romantic conception of the poet as a creative genius.” 198 
Alexander Nehamas   “Plato and the Mass Media”  1988
The embarrassments of Plato’s Book X [Against Imitation] are only apparent.
–	Plato’s so-called attack on poetry is better understood as a specific social and historical gesture [an attack on certain kinds of popular entertainment].
–	Placing them in their original context makes his criticisms relevant today.
He bans all mimetic poetry.  He does not ban all imitation.
•	Plato allows Guardians [Rulers] to imitate not only good characters but bad ones if they do so "in play" in order to ridicule them.
•	He forbids imitativeness, i.e. imitation of anything independently of its moral quality, not imitation in general.  

How harmful is art ethically?
•	Plato ends the Republic in a discussion of aesthetics:  his concern with poetry is mainly ethical, although also ontological and epistemological.
•	Plato:  if we allow poetry in the city, pleasure and pain will rule instead of law and rational principle.
•	But, many argue, there is more to art than the ethical dimension, and ethically, it is not that harmful.
Not concerned with art as such.
•	Plato's attitude is evident in our current thinking about the arts, though not about epic and tragic poetry.
•	Plato is not concerned with art as such.
–	The concept of fine arts only emerged in the 18th century.  
•	Nor does he actually ban painting and sculpture 
He bans poetry because it is suited to representation of vulgar and shameful subjects.
•	This is especially true for a festival crowd
•	But even the best people are vulnerable to its harmful influence.
•	We share the hero's feelings of sorrow [e.g. Oedipus, in Oedipus Rex,] [Albert Greiner as Oedipus, 1896]. 

Control Your Emotions!
•	But in life we praise the control of emotions, not their indulgence.
•	The appetitive part of the soul is only concerned with immediate gratification and it delights in shameful behavior.
Plato’s assumption:  our reactions to life follow our reactions to poetry.
•	Yet, some would argue, enjoying Medea [by the tragic poet Euripides] is not likely to make us admire mothers who murder their children.
Children
•	But [Nehamas admits] Plato's prohibition would apply to children, who, most would agree, should not imitate bad models.
•	"imitations, if they last from youth….become part of one's nature"  Plato
•	Aristotle even agrees we should not allow youth to see comedy.

Aristotle defends poetry mostly because he thinks it actually beneficial.
•	Katharsis excites and purifies emotions evoked by portrayal of events that would evoke the same response in reality.
•	But, unlike Plato, he believes it benefits us.
Children and Adults
•	Perhaps children often treat representations simply as parts of reality.
•	Plato believes [thinks Nehamas] that adults' reactions to poetry influence their reactions to reality too because they are the same kind of reactions.
•	For the representations of poetry are at least superficially the same as the things they represent.
Tomi Ungerer, from “The Three Robbers,” 1963
Three Robbers

•	Tomi Ungerer Poster  “Virgin milking unicorn,” 1968
TV  [This can also apply mostly to our own TV/Web/Games entertainment world today]

–	Minnow in 1961:  there is a vast wasteland on TV    
–	Gerbner and Gross:  television presents a world of clarity and simplicity, unlike the real world:  also violent
–	Mander:  television is suited for expressing hate, fear, jealousy, and one-dimensional joyfulness:  like Plato, he believes we slowly evolve into these images
TV, it is said, tends to encourage sex, violence, and other antisocial behavior
–	Booth:  the quality of the self during the viewing is resistant to any elevation of quality in programs
–	Arnheim:  TV is a mere instrument of transmission of the world as it is, its appearance  [and cannot be an art, since the arts interpret reality]  

–	Postman:  TV requires minimal skills, and is largely aimed at emotional gratification, and causes spiritual devastation
–	Nehamas: In general the attack is identical to Plato's attack on epic poetry.
–	The contempt for TV is well-deserved.
Against Popular Entertainment
•	Yet classical Greek poetry generates many of the criteria that determine the literary canon in our culture:  is it really like TV?
•	Plato was not attacking art as such:  he produced his own works of art, the dialogues.
•	His arguments are not against poetry as a fine art but as what it was then, popular entertainment. 

Greek Theater as Popular Art 
–	Theater under Pericles was free: 17,000 people would attend in the Greater Dionysia festival in Athens [held in March]
–	The audience would whistle, eat food, pelt actors with food, and shout.
–	Drama was considered a realistic representation:  women were frightened into miscarriages.

Blueprint of a Greek Theater, Flamingo 2003
Popular Entertainment
•	Even though theater may contain hints towards its artificial nature, these hints are not consciously perceived in popular entertainment.
•	Popular entertainment is generally taken to be inherently realistic.
•	It is taken to represent reality without artifice or mediation.
Realistic Art is not Transparent: Mediation is Essential
•	Realistic art is thought to be transparent, although it is not.
•	Theater is perceived as reality pure and simple, at least for the moment.
•	Yet, mediation and convention are essential to all representation.

Enjoyment of a distorted reality?
•	When mediation and convention are attributed to the subject matter they appear as distortion.
•	So the reality represented, while the media are still popular, is considered distorted.

•	This leads to campaigns to abolish or reform the popular arts.
•	The audience enjoyment of the popular arts is thought to be enjoyment of a distorted, perverted reality, which contributes to a distorted life.

No concept of fine arts as for a small enlightened audience
•	Plato's view is disturbing because we still agree with him that representation is transparent, at least in the case of media like TV which are not fine arts.
The fine arts are interpretive, and need interpretation
•	No one believes that the fine arts produce such duplications of real life:  they bear an indirect, interpretative relationship to the world, and need further interpretation by audience and critics, unlike the popular arts.  [So Nehamas does accept a popular art/fine art distinction]

“Plato’s Pop Culture Problem, and Ours” Alexander Nehamas New York Times August 29, 2010, 
•	A law signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2005 imposed fines on stores that sell video games featuring “sexual and heinous violence” to minors.
•	Could Plato, who wrote in the 4th century B.C., possibly have anything to say about today’s electronic media?  As it turns out, yes.  
C. Everett Koop, U. S. Surgeon General under Ronald Reagan, Dec. 2, 1982
•	He warned that violent video games could cause "aberrations in childhood behavior“ “Everything is zap the enemy…there’s nothing constructive in the game.”   Later, added that he did not think there was anything per se violent in nature or harmful to children in video games. 
Mortal Kombat
Congressional Hearings, 1993
•	“In late 1993, joint hearings were held by Congress to investigate the industry’s marketing of violence to minors… Senator Joseph Lieberman heard about Mortal Kombat from his chief of staff, Bill Anderson. Anderson’s nine-year-old son wanted a copy for his Sega Genesis, but Anderson had heard that it was a violent game. Lieberman said they should check it out (Kent 467). They were, of course, shocked. Lieberman did some research and found that the average Genesis user was seven to twelve years old.” http://hs.riverdale.k12.or.us/~dthompso/exhib_03/philipj/paper/hearings.html

Effects Inconclusive
•	In December 2001, Surgeon General of the United States David Satcher… led a study on violence in youth and determined that while the impact of video games on violent behavior has yet to be determined, "findings suggest that media violence has a relatively small impact on violence." http://www.gamespot.com/features/6090892/   accessed Feb. 4, 2011

Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association 
Depraved Life
•	Poetry’s subjects are, on Plato’s view, inevitably vulgar and repulsive, involving sex and violence.  
•	By allowing us to enjoy depravity in our imagination, poetry condemns us to a depraved life. 

•	And so, as often in philosophy, we end with a dilemma: If Plato was wrong about epic and tragedy, might we be wrong about television and video games?  If, on the other hand, we are right [in our criticism of video games, for example], might Plato have been right about Homer and Euripides?
“Justices Debate Video Game Ban” New York Times
By Adam Liptak November 2, 2010

•	The law would impose $1,000 fines on stores that sell violent video games to people under 18. It defined violent games as those “in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being” in a way that is “patently offensive,” appeals to minors’ “deviant or morbid interests” and lacks “serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.” 
Justice Scalia
•	“What’s a deviant violent video game?” asked Justice Antonin Scalia, who was the law’s most vocal opponent on Tuesday. “As opposed to what? A normal violent video game?” 
•	“Some of the Grimm’s fairy tales are quite grim,” he added. “Are you going to ban them, too?” 

Justice Breyer
•	Justice Stephen G. Breyer took the other side. He said common sense should allow the government to help parents protect children from games that include depictions of “gratuitous, painful, excruciating, torturing violence upon small children and women.” 
Justice Kegan
•	Justice Elena Kagan, the court’s newest and youngest member, seemed to be the only justice with even a passing familiarity with the genre under review, even if it was secondhand. 
•	“You think Mortal Kombat is prohibited by this statute?” she asked Mr. Morazzini. It is, she added, “an iconic game which I am sure half the clerks who work for us spent considerable time in their adolescence playing.” 
2012
•	“National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre said the best way to stop similar events [to Newtown massacre] was to put armed guards in very schools, and to take a closer look at the influence of violent entertainment -- of which video games play a major role.
•	LaPierre specifically singled out "vicious, violent video games, with names like Bulletstorm, Grand Theft Auto, Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse.“

•	Now, however, the NRA is offering its own self-branded video game for free to the public: "NRA: Practice Range," which is available for free on the iPhone and iPad. The game is rated for ages four and up.”  It focuses on gun safety, but does have a realistic 3D shooting game. 
•	CBS News, January 14, 2013, 
Plato Symposium
fresco taken from the north wall of the Tomb of the Diver (from Paestum, Italy, c. 475 BC): a symposium scene

•	Aphrodite of the Syracuse type. Parian marble, Roman copy of the 2nd century CE after a Greek original of the 4th century BC; neck, head and left arm are restorations by Antonio Canova. 

•	Alexandros of Antioch
•	Between 130 and 100 BC
•	Marble
•	Louvre Museum, Paris, France

•	Education of Eros [unknown]
•	Next A Red-Figure Plate with Eros as a youth making an offering. (c. 340-320 BC) Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Aristotle, marble portrait bust, Roman copy (2nd century BC) of a Greek original (c. 325 BC); in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome
Aristotle 384 BCE - 322 BCE 
•	427 BCE  Plato is born at Athens, Greece. 
•	403 BCE  Plato turns away from politics toward philosophy. 
•	399 BCE Trial and death of the philosopher Socrates, who taught in the court of the Agora. 
•	384 BCE  Birth of the philosopher Aristotle, tutor to Alexander the Great, in Stagira (Greece). 
•	367 BCE  Aristotle begins studies in Athens at Plato's Academy. 

•	347 BCE Aristotle leaves Athens after Plato's death to pursue his own line of inquiry. 
•	343 BCE King Philip II of Macedon summons Aristotle to tutor his young son Alexander (later 'The Great').  
•	343 BCE Aristotle becomes tutor of young Alexander. 
•	335 BCE Aristotle returns to Athens to set up his school, the Lyceum. 
•	323 BCE Aristotle leaves Athens following the death of Alexander the Great.
•	322 BCE Aristotle dies in Euboea of natural causes.

Aristotle’s Works
•	Categoriae  Categories  
•	De Interpretatione On Interpretation  
•	Analytica Priora Prior Analytics  
•	Analytica Posteriora Posterior Analytics 
•	Topica Topics  
•	De Sophisticis Elenchis On Sophistical Refutations  
•	Organon Organon (collective title for the preceding six works)  
•	Physica Physics  
•	De Generatione et Corruptione On Coming-to-Be and Passing Away; On Generation and Corruption  
•	De Caelo On the Heavens  
•	Meteorologica Meteorology  
•	De Anima On the Soul 
•	De Sensu et Sensibilibus On Sense and Sensibles, 
•	De Memoria et Reminiscentia On Memory and Recollection  

•	De Somno et Vigilia On Sleep and Waking  
•	De Insomniis On Dreams  
•	De Divinatione per Somnum On Divination by Dreams  
•	De Longitudine et Brevitate Vitae On Longness and Shortness of Life Long. 
•	De Juventute et Senectute [De Vita et Morte] On Youth and Old Age [On Life and Death]  
•	De Respiratione On Respiration  
•	Parva Naturalia Little Physical Treatises (collective title for the preceding eight works) 
•	De Spiritu On Breath  
•	Historia Animalium History of Animals; Natural History of Animals 
•	De Partibus Animalium On the Parts of Animals  
•	De Motu Animalium On the Motion of Animals 
•	De Generatione Animalium On the Generation of Animals  
•	De Incessu Animalium  On the Beginnings of Animals, Progression of Animals 

•	Metaphysica Metaphysics Met., Metaph. (Greek letters for individual books are often used alone) 
•	Ethica Nicomachea Nicomachean Ethics 
•	Ethica Eudemia Eudemian Ethics 
•	Magna Moralia Magna Moralia  
•	Politica Politics  
•	Rhetorica, Ars Rhetorica Rhetoric; Art of Rhetoric  
•	Poetica Poetics  

Papyrus Poetics
Page from Abu-Bishr L Organon 1027, Poetics, by Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC), 15th century Italian manuscript 

Poetics  335 BCE
Tragic and Comic Mask:  Roman Mosaic
Chapter 1:  Preliminaries 
•	He will speak of the art in general and the species, the structure of a plot for a good poem, and number and nature of parts of a poem.
•	Epic, Tragedy, Comedy, Dithyrambic poetry [hymn in honor of Dionysus], most flute and lyre-playing: all are modes of imitation [mimesis]. 
•	They differ in means, objects, or manner of imitation.
•	The means are rhythm, language, and harmony:  flute playing is a combination of harmony and rhythm alone, rhythm alone is the means of dance imitation.
•	The dancer imitates by rhythms of his attitudes and may represent men’s characters, what they do and suffer.

•	And there is an art that imitates by language alone without harmony, without a name, although oddly it includes both Socratic conversations as in Plato’s Ion. [which would make Plato an imitative artist in his view!  Something Plato would not like.] and the mimes of Sophron or Xenarchus [son of Sophron]
•	 Of mimes of Sophron, Wikepedia says “Sophron was the author of prose dialogues in the Doric dialect, containing both male and female characters, some serious, others humorous in style, and depicting scenes from the daily life of the Sicilian Greeks. Although in prose, they were regarded as poems; in any case they were not intended for stage representation. They were written in pithy and popular language, full of proverbs and colloquialisms.”  Plato was said to have been influenced by him in his dialogues.  

•	Meter is not enough by itself to make something a poem:  Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common although both wrote in meter.  The latter was a physicist, not a poet.
•	Some arts combine all of the means mentioned:  rhythm, melody, verse:  Tragedy and Comedy would be examples.

Chapter 2
•	The objects the imitator represents are actions with agents who are necessarily either good men or bad:  the line between virtue and vice dividing all mankind.
•	The agents must be above or below our level of goodness, or at the same level.
•	This is true for all of the arts, even dancing, instrumental music, and the nameless art mentioned in the last chapter.
•	Homer’s personages are better than we are, as are ones in Tragedies.  In Comedy they are worse.

Chapter 3
•	There is also difference in manner of representation:  speaking in narrative or in assumed character, as in Homer; or remaining the same throughout; or representing the whole story dramatically (as in Tragedy).
•	Sophocles is like Homer in portraying good men and like Aristophanes in that the personages are portraying as doing something:  in a drama the personages act a story, the word for “act” among the Dorians being “dran.”

Chapter 4 Imitation  
•	There are two causes of poetry based on human nature.
•	Imitation is natural to man from childhood, an advantage over lower animals.
–	He is the most imitative of creatures.
–	He learns first by imitation.
•	It is also natural to delight in works of imitation.
–	We may delight in realistic representations even of painful things, lowest animals and dead bodies.

“The Lamentation over the Dead Christ” by Andrea Mantegna (c.1490)

The Ludovisi Gaul Killing Himself and His Wife 
•	“(sometimes called "The Galatian Suicide") is a Roman marble group depicting a man in the act of plunging a sword into his breast, looking backwards defiantly while he supports the dying figure of a woman with his left arm. It is a Roman copy of the early 2nd century AD, of a Hellenistic original, ca 230-20 BC, one of the bronze groups commissioned from Greek sculptors by Attalus I after his recent victories over the Gauls of Galatia.”  Wikipedia
To be learning something is the greatest pleasure, not only for philosophers but for all mankind.

•	One gathers the meaning of things from a picture, e.g. that the man there is x [noble, good, bad, friendly, etc.].
–	And if the pleasure is not in the imitation since we have not seen the thing before it is in the execution or coloring.
•	Imitation, harmony and rhythm being natural to us, men gradually created poetry out of these tendencies.
•	Poetry broke into two kinds based on two kinds of poets:  the graver ones representing noble actions in hymns, and the meaner ones ignoble actions. 
•	One type is invective which uses iambic meter [much of Rap is in iambic pentameter!]  

•	Homer not only stood alone in literary excellence in the serious style, but he was also the first to outline Comedy by producing not dramatic invective but a dramatic picture of the Ridiculous in his Margites.
•	But when Tragedy and Comedy came on the scene the epic writers moved to the first and the invective iamb writers to the second.

•	Tragedy began in improvisations as did Comedy.  
Chapter 5
•	Comedy is imitation of men worse than the average in respect to one thing, the Ridiculous, a type of the Ugly.
•	That which is comic is a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others. Example: a mask that makes us laugh.
–	Unlike Tragedy, its early stages are unknown.

Painting of Aristophanes’ The Birds
Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae (411 BC). 
Actor playing the role of a slave sitting on an altar and emptying the purse he just stole. From Locris (?), made in Boeotia, ca. 400–375 BC. 
Slave wearing the short tunic, phlyax actor: fom a Silician red-figure chalice-crater by the Lentini-Manfria Group, ca. 350 BC–340 BC.

•	Epic differs from Tragedy in that it is in one kind of verse and in narrative form, and in its length (Tragedy: single circuit of sun).
•	A judge of good or bad in Tragedy is also one in Epic, although there are parts in Tragedy not found in Epic.

Chapter 6: Tragedy defined 
–	Definition drawn from what has been said.
–	 “imitation of an action”:  [he is similar to Plato in that he says it is imitation, but makes it imitation of action not of character]
–	“serious”:  distinguishes Tragedy from Comedy
–	“complete, and of a certain magnitude”:  [distinguishes it as beautiful enough to be a Tragedy]
Definition continued
–	“in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament”:  by which he means rhythm, harmony and song.
–	“in the form of action not of narrative”:  distinguishes Tragedy from Epic.
–	The goal of tragedy is “catharsis” of emotions such as pity and fear.  [There have been many translations of katharsis or catharsis:  two standard ones are “purging” and  “purification,” although it could mean “intellectual clarification”] 

•	Language with pleasurable accessories:  rhythm, harmony or song, some in verse only, some in song too.
Six Parts
•	Since there are persons acting, Tragedy needs Spectacular equipment, Melody and Diction.
•	Fable [Plot]:  the arrangement of the incidents.
•	Character:  that in virtue of which we ascribe certain qualities to the agents.
•	Thought:  when a statement is proved or explained.
Six Parts
•	Six Parts determine the quality of the tragedy:  Plot, Characters, Diction, Thought, Spectacle, and Melody.
•	Every play [Tragedy] has each. [Is this contradicted later when he says that Character may not be necessary and later says that Spectacle may not be?]

Tragedy is imitation of life, which consists of action, not of men.
–	For actions determine whether men are happy or not [and Tragedy has to do with very happy and very unhappy men and women!].  
–	Plot comes first, then Character.
–	The incidents of the plot are the purpose of Tragedy, and the end or purpose is the chief thing.  [Aristotle always emphasizes the purpose of something, for example when he talks about the importance of Final Causes.] 

–	There may not be Tragedy without action, but there may be without Character.
–	Most modern tragedies, for example, fail in rendering Character.  [This is an odd comment, as Euripides was Aristotle’s contemporary.]
•	Among painters (by analogy), whereas Polygnotus [a painter referred to by Plato as well who used only four colors:  black, yellow, white, red] delineates character well, Zeuxis’ paintings have no ethical quality. 
Part of Polygnotus' 'Sack of Ilium' picture at the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi (sketch by Glynnis Fawkes). 
Reproductions by C. Roberts of two painting by Polygnotus based on a description by Pausanius from the Cnidian Lesche of Delphi, 1892/3.
Buonaventura Genelli's "Centaur Family," ca 1850.
After Zeuxis. 
Fresco, Greek, Vergina, Macedonia Tomb I  (340-330 BC)  “Hades abducts Persephone in his chariot. One of her Nymphs cowers in fright.”  Ancient Aigai was the sanctuary and royal burial place of the Macedonian kings. 
Character is Second to Plot
–	Styles that have an ethical quality, and thus delineate character, are superior.
–	The essential tragic effect [catharsis of pity and fear] is produced best with plot.
Peripeties and Discoveries [Reversal and Complexity] 
–	The reversal of the situation, peripeteia, [e.g. Oedipus was the King, and now he is fallen] and recognition scenes [e.g. Oedipus discovers that he has killed his father and married his mother] are the most powerful elements of emotional interest.

–	Just as the most beautiful colors presented confusedly do not give as much pleasure as a simple outline, so too in Tragedy, Character is second to Plot.

Sophocles 495-405 B.C
Oedipus and the sphinx
Portrait of greek actor Euiaon in Sophocles’ Andromeda. On a vase, ca. 430 b. C., Agrigento, Italy.
Thought: power of saying whatever can be said, or what is appropriate to the occasion.
–	This was related to the art of Politics in the older poets and to the art of Rhetoric in our time. 
–	Speeches that do not show the kinds of things a man chooses do not express character. 
–	Thought is found where something is proved or a universal proposition is enunciated.
Diction, Melody, Spectacle
•	Diction:  the expression of thoughts in words.
•	Melody:  greatest of pleasurable accessories
•	Spectacle: the least artistic element, and least connected with the art of poetry.
–	For, the tragic effect is possible without a public performance and actors.
–	And Spectacle is more the art of the costume-maker than the poet.
Pronomos Vase 400 BCE

Roman Theater in Athens, from German Encyclopedia, 1891
Chapter 7: Proper Structure of the Plot
–	A tragedy must be complete in itself and have a certain magnitude.  [i.e. it is a whole that has a certain size]
–	A whole has a beginning (does not follow anything with necessity), middle, and an end (has nothing following it).
–	A well-constructed plot, therefore, does not begin or end haphazardly.
Beauty
•	A beautiful object (any organism or any whole composed of parts) must be of a certain magnitude and order. 
•	A very small animal cannot be beautiful [if] its view is confused.  [Assume no microscopes.  Think of a flea moving quickly.] 
•	An animal of vast size cannot be beautiful, as the eye cannot take it in all at once, and the viewer cannot see it as a unified whole.  
•	The magnitude [i.e. the unity and size of it] must be taken in by the eye.
The length of a tragic plot.
–	A Tragic plot must have a length which can easily be taken in by memory.
–	The length of the actual performance, however, is not part of the theory of poetry.
–	The length determined by the nature of drama (independently of the issue of performance):  the greater the length, the more beautiful the play, as long as it is clear. 
–	The size is proper if the sequence of events allows for change from misfortune to happiness, or happiness to misfortune, by necessity or probability.
Chapter 8
•	Unity of plot is not guaranteed by it being a story of one man since an infinity of things can happen to one man.
•	Homer understood this point: he doesn’t cover all that befell Odysseus in the Odyssey.
•	In poetry the story must represent one action, a complete whole, with incidents so closely connected that taking away one would dislocate the whole.  
Chapter 9:  What is possible as being probable or necessary.
•	A poet [unlike a historian] describes not what has happened but what might happen: possible as probable or necessary. 
•	Poetry is more philosophic and of graver import than history:  its statements are of universals, not singulars, i.e. what this type of man will probably or necessarily say.

•	Comedy makes this clear:  only when the plot has been made up of probable incidents do we get proper names, and these not of particular persons.
•	Tragedy adheres to historic names:  since this actually happened, it is possible.
•	But even in tragedy often there are only one or two known names, and those plays that have no known names are equally delightful.
•	You should not rigidly adhere to traditional stories.

•	The poet then should be poet of his stories:  and if the plot is taken from actual history it may well be probable.   He is only a poet in this aspect.
•	Episodic simple plots are the worst:  have neither probability nor necessity.
•	The incidents have greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence:  this is more marvelous than if by chance.

Greek actors in costume
Greek actors
Woman holding a theatrical mask. Terracotta figurine made in Tanagra, ca. 325–300 BC. 
Greek tragic actor
Euripides(485-406): 
Medea killing one of her sons. Side A from a Campanian (Capouan) red-figure neck-amphora, ca. 330 BC. From Cumae. 
Mosaic of Roman mask, Hadrian’s villa
Sophocles Antigone

OEDIPUS, by Sophocles
directed by Robert Woodruff 
May 15 - June 12, 2004

Parthenon frieze:  girl handing a man a folded peplos, the annual gift for the life-size statue of Athena Polias.  She was one of the arrêphoro “two girls of noble birth between the ages of 7 and 10 who participated in the weaving of the peplos.”
Bust of Archilochus. 1st or 2nd century AD after an original dating from late 3rd or 2nd century BC Italy
Marble, H. 62 cm, 

Aristophanes
One of a few Greek wall paintings that survived, is the Tomb of the Diver (Italian: Tomba del Tuffatore), c. 475 BC in Paestum, Italy, from a necropolis (city of the dead) of Poseidonia (The older Greek name of Paestum). 
Etruscan symposium, detail
Dionysus & Ariadne banqueting.  Athens Painter, Apulian calyx-krater. c. 375-350 BCE