The Afterlife of the Muses Conference London, October 23-24, 2009 The Muses in the Platonic Academy John

Dillon, Trinity College Dublin One of the comparatively few facts that have come down to us concerning the physical plant, so to speak, of Platos Academy is relayed to us by Diogenes Laertius, at the beginning of his Life of Speusippus (Vit. Phil. IV I), where he informs us, indirectly, that Plato had established a shrine (temenos)1 to the Muses (a Mouseion) in the Academy,2 which his nephew Speusippus adorned further with statues of the Graces.3 The creation of such a temenos, which is reported by the 2nd cent. A.D. travel writer Pausanias (1. 30, 2) to contain an altar (bmos)4 which would have had, presumably, to have been established by arrangement with the civic authorities would have effectively marked out the territory in which the Academy did its business. 5 But what precisely would be the significance of such a shrine to the Muses for the Academy as an institution? Various scholars have attempted to address this question, though not, it must be said, very satisfactorily. It was
1

The term temenos is not used in this connection by Diogenes, but only by the late Neoplatonic Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy 4. 24. It denotes a piece of land cut off from common use and dedicated to a god. 2 Presumably meaning by this (though in truth Diogenes would hardly appreciate the difference!) the Academy park, rather than Platos own villa, which was adjacent but separate. See my discussion in What Happened to Platos Garden?, Hermathena CXXXIII (1983), pp. 51-9 (repr. in The Golden Chain, Aldershot, 1990). 3 This information, as we learn from Philodemus History of the Academy (formerly known as the Index Academicus), VI 33, goes back to the late 4th cent. Atthidographer Philochorus, who was a virtual contemporary. 4 Admittedly, Pausanias does not connect the bmos with the temenos, and does not specify that it was established by Plato; but it would be odd to have an altar separate from a shrine dedicated to the same deities. 5 It is curious to observe the idea of a temenos surviving to a very late stage in the Platonic tradition. We find the Christian Zacharias, in the late fifth century A.D., in his Ammonius, describing the students coming out of the seminar of his teacher Ammonius, son of Hermeias, into an area which he calls the temenos of the Muses, in which poets, rhetors and students of grammar make their declamations, and to which students could go to further discuss issues raised in class (Ammon. ll. 361-9). 1

the view of the great Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf6 - a notion adopted by him from a French scholar, Foucart7 -- that Platos School was in fact a quasi-religious organization, a thiasos, under the auspices of the Muses, and that this was the significance of the temenos. This idea, which gained considerable credence from the advocacy of so formidable an authority, has been effectively put to bed in recent times, notably by the work of John Lynch, in his monograph Aristotles School (1972)8 and John Glucker, in his work Antiochus and the Late Academy (1978)9. There is no real evidence that the Academy was ever registered in any official way as a thiasos, or that it had any legal status, strange as that may seem to a modern observer. The worship of the Muses, therefore, had some more informal role in the life of the School. A suggestion that has been made,10 and one that seems to me very plausible, is that this is part of a move by Plato to claim philosophy as the greatest gift of the Muses, as opposed to all the other arts, and in particular poetry and drama. There are a number of significant passages in the dialogues which would tend to bear this out. First of all, at Phaedo 61A, Socrates, in his prison cell, in the context of trying his hand, at this late stage, at composing poetry (notably, a versification of the fables of Aesop), tells his follower Cebes that he has been responding to a repeated injunction that came to him in dreams11 throughout his life to practice and perform mousik (mousikn poiei kai ergazou). Hitherto, he had always assumed that he was fulfilling this by pursuing philosophy, as being itself the greatest mousik, and that the dream was merely egging him on the way he was going, like those people who urge on runners. Whatever

In his monograph Antigonos von Karystos, Berlin, 1881, Excursus: Die rechtliche Stellung der Philosophienschulen, pp. 263-91.. He is still followed in this by, e.g. W.K.C. Guthrie, in his History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1969), Vol. IV, pp. 19-20.,as well as by many other scholars before him. 7 P. Foucart, Des associations religieuses chez les Grecs, thiases, eranes, orgeons (Paris, 1873). 8 Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1972, pp. 108-18. 9 Gttingen 1978 (Hypomnemata 56), pp. 226-37 10 e.g. by Pierre Boyanc, Le culte des Muses chez les philosophes grecs, Paris, 1937, pp. 261-2. 11 Socrates does not specify whether this was just a voice in his dreams, or whether there was a dream-figure, and if so, of what nature. It would be good to know if that message was delivered by a Muse! 2

about the truth of the dream, this seems like a programmatic statement by Plato about the relation of philosophy to the other arts. This impression would seem to be fortified by other references in the dialogues to philosophy as a Muse, such as Rep. VI 499D, where Socrates refers to this Muse (sc. philosophy) as taking control of a state, or later, at VIII 545C-546D, in the context of the reasons for the decline of states (in this case the initial decline from the best state to timocracy), where the rather fanciful notion of an ideal numerical formula for ensuring the maintenance of quality of offspring (the so-called Nuptial Number), the neglect (or ignorance) of which will cause progressive social decline, is cast in the form of a speech by the Muses, in response to an appeal by Socrates. The Muses are thus presented as the patrons, not only of order and harmony in ones personal life (attainable by philosophy), but of order and harmony in the state, and thus the promoters of an ideal polity.12 This is reinforced by the passage a little further on, at 548BC, where the citizens are described as neglecting the true Muse (h althin mousa), which is accompanied by rational argument (logoi) and philosophy.13 Such a role for the Muses is prominent in Platos last work, The Laws, as we shall see in a moment. By way of reinforcement of this claim that Philosophy is the true Muse, we may adduce the fanciful etymology which Plato makes Socrates produce in the Cratylus (406A), deriving mousa from the verb maomai, to seek after, which he interprets as referring above all to philosophical enquiry.14 Another notable employment of the Muses in the works of Plato, however, is the famous Myth of the Cicadas in the Phaedrus (259B-D), a story which Plato presents to us as (very probably) made up by Socrates on the spur of the moment to tease his companion Phaedrus, but which neatly
12

The elaborate mathematical calculations presented in the passage, which have generally baffled commentators (but see, e.g. E. Erhardt, The Word of the Muses (Plato. Rep. 8. 546), Classical Quarterly 36 (1986), 407-20), point to a Pythagorean background for all this. Pythagoreas, in the later tradition, is credited with a particular devotion to the Muses, in their role as preservers of social order. 13 This is a somewhat curious circumlocution, as the true Muse can only be philosophy, surely. In fact, at the end of the Philebus (67B) we find an explicit reference to the philosophical Muse (mousa philosophos). 14 In fact, the word is generally agreed to drive from the root *men, signifying remembering, memorizing, that being the true significance of the Muse or Muses for an oral poet, as well as for other traditional craftsmen, mousa being derived from *montya. 3

encapsulates Platos project of placing philosophy at the head of the Muses concerns. The occasion is the singing of the cicadas in the noonday heat, as Socrates and Phaedrus recline in the shade of a plane tree beside a spring above the river Ilissus, just outside Athens. Phaedrus has to admit that he has never heard of the special boon (geras) which the gods have allowed the cicadas to confer on mortals. Socrates jokingly reproves him: It is most unfitting that a lover of the Muses should be ignorant of such a matter.15 The story is that once, before the birth of Muses, cicadas were human beings. When the Muses were born and song came into the world, some of the men of that age were so ravished by its sweetness that in their devotion to singing they took no thought to eat and drink, and actually died before they knew what was happening to them. From them sprang thereafter the race of cicadas, to whom the Muses granted the privilege that they should need no food, but should sing from the moment of birth till death without eating and drinking, and after that go to the Muses and tell how each of them is honoured on earth and by whom. So the cicadas make report to Terpsichore of those who have honoured her in the dance, and thus win her favour for them; to Erato of those who have occupied themselves in matters erotic, and similarly to the other Muses, according to the nature of the activity over which each Muse presides. But to Calliope, the eldest of the Muses, and her next sister Urania they make report of those who spend their lives in philosophy and honour the pursuit which owes its inspiration to those goddesses; among the Muses it is these that concern themselves with the heavens and the whole story of existence, divine and human, and their theme is the finest of them all (trans. Hamilton). It is interesting to note that, in this story, Socrates seems tacitly to admit that philosophy concerns itself with basic issues of the origins and nature of things divine and human, and the things in the heavens, matters that he himself would generally deny all knowledge of, but that is by the way; the main point here is that philosophy is made the concern of the most senior Muses. Plato acts quite pointedly in claiming Calliope, who was traditionally
15

Phaedrus is, of course, a devotee of one of the lower Muses though no Muse had been officially accorded to rhetoric, which was his chief enthusiasm. 4

the Muse of epic poetry, for philosophy; Urania was at least traditionally associated with astronomy, but even that Plato would wish to upgrade to philosophical, or mathematical, astronomy, as specified in Republic VII (528E530C). All this, then, constitutes a claim to the special relation of philosophy to the Muses; but Plato makes appeal to the Muses more generally, as patrons of education (paideia), especially when establishing his ideal state, in his final work, The Laws, as I have mentioned above. In Book II, for instance, in the course of commending the importance of education, and indeed of life-long learning, he makes the Athenian Visitor claim the following (653CD): Education, then, is a matter of correctly disciplined feelings of pleasure and pain. But in the course of a mans life the effect wears off, and in many respects it is lost altogether. The gods, however, took pity on the human race, born to suffer as it was, and gave it relief in the form of religious festivals to serve as periods of rest from its labours. They gave us the Muses, with Apollo their leader, and Dionysus; by having these gods share their holidays, men were to be made whole again, and thanks to them, we find refreshment in the celebration of these festivals (trans. Saunders). The conclusion of this speech is that education comes originally from Apollo and the Muses (654A). A little further on, at 658E, the Visitor, while accepting that pleasure is a reasonable criterion for adjudging excellence in the arts, insists that it must be the pleasure experienced, not by the mob in general, but only those of the highest character and fully adequate education. Slightly bizarrely, Plato envisages, in his ideal state, choruses, or dancing-groups (Laws II 664Cff.), of which the childrens one is dedicated to the Muses, that of the young men to Apollo, and that for the senior citizens, to Dionysus (on the grounds that they will need some help from wine to loosen them up!). The patronage of these divinities will ensure the establishment of the correct rhythms and harmonies for each age-group (672D).16 The Muses are to be seen as a force for order and moderation, also, in such areas as childrens games (VII 797AB) and even in matters of sex (VI
16

It is this sort of Muse-inspired correctness, interestingly, that Plato feels is disregarded by Athenian democracy (III 700DE). He would feel the same, in an extreme degree, about modern Western democracies! 5

783AB). We even find a peculiar turn of phrase at VI 775B, where a citizen who spends too much on his wedding-feast is censured for his ignorance in respect of the laws of the Muses of marriage (hoi peri tas nymphikas Mousas nomoi). In general, it would seem as if for Plato, in his later years, the Muses stand for order and rationality in all things.17 Unfortunately, no evidence survives for continued worship of the Muses in the Old Academy after Platos death apart from the indirect evidence, mentioned earlier, derivable from the further adornment of the shrine of the Muses by his immediate successor Speusippus but from the later, New Academy, there is preserved a most curious and notable piece of inscriptional evidence, which indicates that the traditional cult of the Muses survived even in the climate of skepticism fostered by this period of the Platonist tradition.18 Back in 1912, the distinguished German archaeologist Hiller von Gaertringen published19 a funerary inscription, found in the south-west of the island of Rhodes, erected in honour of a certain Arideikes, son of Eumoireus, datable to the last decade or so of the third century B.C. The epitaph, which is in elegiac couplets, reads as follows: It is not as one unknown that you are hidden in this tomb in Dorian land, where you repose beneath the nurturing earth, Arideikes, son of Eumoireus; but on the occasion of your passing, We cast into the fire offerings and cakes of sacrifice Honouring the Muses, who with their nursing hands Have raised you, celebrated as you are, along Platonic paths.20
17

It is fitting, certainly, to this devotion of his that, in the later tradition (first reported by Seneca, Ep. 58. 31, but repeated in the Anon. Proleg. 6, 1-7), the fact that Plato died at the age if 81 is connected to that numbers being the square of 9, which is the number of the Muses! 18 There is nothing really contradictory about this, however. Academic skepticism concerned primarily the challenge to the Stoic criterion of certainty; it did not necessarily involve abandonment either of the practices of official Athenian religion or of the traditional cultic practices of the Academy. 19 In BCH 36 (1912), pp. 230-9. 20 Ouj tiv se nwvnumnon kruvpten tovde Dwrivdo ai[h sh`ma peri; traferh;n qhkavmenon spivlada Eujmoirevw jArivdeike: ajpofqimevn oio de; sei`o meivlia kai; pelavnou ejm puri; ballovmeqa JAzovmenoi Mouvsai, to;n ajoivdimon ai{ se tiqhnai` cevr si Platwneivo u qrevyan uJp j ajtrapitouv. 6

This Arideikes is unknown to the literary tradition, but assuming that he is the same as a Rhodian ambassador mentioned on another inscription dated 220 B.C, he will most probably have studied in the Academy under the presidency of Arcesilaus, who was scholarch from 274 to 241 (or possibly under his successor Lacydes, 241 - 216). This inscription tells us much, if carefully considered. It reveals that young men of good family from all over the Greek world were still coming to the Academy in the mid-third century to complete their higher education, and that they were felt by their friends and kinsfolk to have acquired there the principles of Platonism, even if these were now tinged with a rather more Socratic coloration than previously. However, for our present purposes, the key element is the introduction of the Muses, guiding their protg with nursing hands, along Platonic paths (Platoneioi atrapitoi) a notable turn of phrase! It is clear from this that the Muses are still firmly associated, in the minds of all those who know of the Academy (as does the author of these verses), with Platonist education very much as Plato would have wished. That, alas, is all the evidence that we have from the Hellenistic period of Platonism. We must presume that, after the abandonment of the Academy Park as a meeting place for the Platonic School after the flight of the Platonic philosophers, Philo of Larisa and Antiochus of Ascalon, from Athens in 88 B.C., the original shrine of the Muses lost its central place in the life of the school. On Antiochus return to Athens in the later 80s, he established his revived Old Academy in the Ptolemaion gymnasium, adjacent to the Agora, in the centre of the city, the Academy area having been largely wrecked by Sullas siege of Athens in 86 B.C., in the course of which he had most of the trees cut down for siege-works. When Cicero portrays himself and some companions, at the beginning of the De Finibus V, as taking a walk out to the Academy when he was studying with Antiochus in Athens the winter of 79, they find it deserted. They wander sentimentally round the park, noting where Xenocrates sat, and where Carneades sat - their seats must have been somehow marked, or otherwise remembered -- but there is no mention of the mouseion. That does not mean that it did not survive, but the fact that it is not noted by Cicero as a central feature is sadly significant.

However, there is evidence from the later period that the role of the Muses in the life of the school was by no means abandoned. We learn from Plutarch, writing at the turn of the first century A.D. that, in the Platonic School in Athens in his day, under the headship of Ammonius, the festival of the Muses was duly celebrated, and indeed the whole of Book IX of his Table Talk is devoted to discussions that took place at one such festival dinner. In his introduction to the book (736C), Plutarch refers to this festival as ta Mouseia. Since there is no record of any such public festival in the Athenian calendar, we must conclude that this was a private celebration in the Platonic School. The actual dinner was only one feature of the festival, but plainly an important one. At 737DE, Plutarch tells us that it was the custom at the festival of the Muses for lots to be handed round, and for those whom the draw brought together to propound learned problems to one another, but that his teacher Ammonius, wanting to avoid the possibility of experts in the same field being confronted with one another (which might result in a parade of tedious technicalities), decided to intervene to ensure that masters of different disciplines came up against each other, in order to make things more interesting. A series of intriguing problems are then posed, but not till we get to the fourteenth do we find anything that bears directly on the Muses themselves.21 At this point, however, after libations have been poured to the Muses and a paean sung to Apollo (743D), the distinguished orator and statesman Herodes Atticus the Elder22 raises the question of the proper identification of the spheres of interest of the various Muses, and, by way of a lead-in to that, takes a dig at the philosophers for claiming Calliope for themselves, asserting rather that she belongs, not to the epic poets, as is traditional, but to the rhetoricians (743DE): After the hymn was over, Herodes the rhtor spoke up. Listen here, he said, you who try to drag Calliope away from us rhetoricians,
21

A number of the questions in the centre of the problma (7-11) are, sadly, lost, by reason of a lacuna in the mss., except for the titles, but a number of those titles concern matters of relevance to the Muses, viz. What is the reason for the three-fold division of melodies? (7); What makes the difference between symphonic and melodic intervals?(8); What is the cause of symphony (symphonesis)? (9). 22 Father of the more famous Herodes Atticus the Younger (c. 101 177 A.D.), the noted statesman, rhetorician and patron of the arts (and indeed of philosophy), but nonetheless a very prominent member of Athenian society in his day. 8

to how the Poet23 says that she is to be found in the company of kings, not, you may be sure, while they are analyzing syllogisms or posing each other problems based on equivocation,24 but rather as they engage in the business proper to orators and statesmen. Of the other Muses, Clio takes on encomiastic eloquence, klea being an old name for praise, and Polymnia history, since she is the memory of many things.25 Actually, all the Muses are said to be called Mneiai in some places, as for example in Chios.26 For my part I lay claim to some share in Euterpe also, if, as Chrysippus asserts, she has as her province the pleasant (epiterpes) and delightful elements in discourse (homiliai). Such discourse is as much in the orators sphere as are litigation and public policy... (trans. Sandbach, adapted). He goes on somewhat further in this vein, but we do not need to follow him. This is all designed to get a rise out of his host, the philosopher Ammonius, who rises amiably to the bait, but turns the discussion in a new direction by raising the question as to why the number of the Muses is nine. Herodes offers the suggestion that it is because nine is the first square of the first odd number (sc. three), and the first product of odd numbers, since it can be divided into three equal odd numbers; but when Ammonius in response asks what that might have to do with the Muses in particular (why are there not, for instance, nine Demeters, Athenas or Artemises?), Herodes -- being a rhetorician, and not a philosopher -- is unable to offer anything further, and subsides. The question is now taken up by two of the philosophers present, first Plutarchs brother Lamprias, and then Plutarch himself, and a number of interesting suggestions are made, all of which tend to confirm the Platonist view of the Muses as principles of cosmic order, as well as patrons of all aspects of culture. Lamprias begins from a dismissal of the theory that the Muses, who were originally reckoned to be just three, have anything to do with the three types of melody or the three notes that establish musical
23

A reference to Hesiod, Theogony, 80: (Kalliovph).. hJ ga;r kai; basileu`sin a{m j aijdoivoisin ojphdei`. 24 ejrwtw`si metapivptonta a reference here to metapiptontes logoi, arguments based on fallacies arising from changes in the meaning of terms. 25 Etymologising her as from polln and mneia. 26 Accepting a probable emendation of Wilamowitz for the meaningless leiwi of the mss. 9

intervals, the nt, the mes and the hypat although the Delphians actually gave the names of these notes to the Muses (a detail that will be taken up presently, with a more positive twist, by his brother Plutarch, who was a priest of Delphi, and very proud of his association with the shrine). Lamprias rather wishes to connect the Muses nine-ness with a concern of the ancients to characterize and rank all the arts and sciences (744DE): In my opinion, the ancients, observing that all branches of knowledge and crafts (epistemai kai tekhnai) that attain their end by the use of words belong to one of three kinds, namely the philosophical, the rhetorical, or the mathematical, considered them to be the gracious gifts of three goddesses, whom they named Muses. Later, in Hesiods days in fact, by which time these faculties were being more clearly seen, coming to distinguish different parts and species, they began to view each as containing in turn within itself three differentiae. The mathematical includes music, arithmetic, and geometry; the philosophical comprises logic, ethics, and physics, while in the rhetorical it is said that the original encomiastic species was joined first by the deliberative, and finally by the forensic. Thinking it wrong that any of these branches should be without its God or Muse, or deprived of higher control or guidance, they naturally discovered for they did not fabricate this the existence of as many Muses as there are species. Lamprias ordering of the arts and sciences has a number of interesting aspects. We may note that he elevates rhetoric to one of the three chief genera (perhaps in deference to Herodes!), while only including such areas as poetry and astronomy as a sort of afterthought (744EF), subsuming poetry under music, and astronomy under geometry; nor does he venture to identify the Muse presiding over any one of his nine categories. It is clear, though, that in all this the role of the Muses is primarily regulation and moderation; presumably -- though it would have been tactless for him to specify this in the present company -- the approved genus of rhetoric would be that practiced by philosophers!27

27

Further protests, by the physician Trypho, on behalf of medicine, and the landowner Dionysius of Melite, on behalf of farming, are dealt with by assigning the former to Asclepius, and the latter to Demeter and Dionysus (745A). 10

This exposition of Lamprias is taken up by Plutarch, who begins by returning to the defence of the Delphians, and in the process assigning a new, more explicitly cosmic dimension to the rule of the Muses (745AB): But it puzzles me how Lamprias can have overlooked the significance of what the Delphians say. They tell us that it is not from notes of voice or string that the Muses have been given the names they have there.28 Rather, the whole universe is divided into three regions: the first is that of the fixed stars, the second that of the planets, and the last that of the sublunary region. They are all knit and ordered together in harmonious formulae (kata logous enharmonious), and each has its guardian Muse, the first region Hypat, the lowesr Neat, and the intermediate Mes, who hold together and intertwine, so far as is feasible, things mortal and divine, terrestrial and heavenly. And this is what Plato is presenting to us by employing in riddling form the names of the Fates, giving them the titles Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis; since after all it is Sirens, not Muses, that he set to preside over the revolutions of the eight spheres, one for each. This is a most remarkable intervention by Plutarch. First of all, he propounds a theory, probably deriving ultimately from Platos pupil Xenocrates,29 of a triadic division of the universe, and assigns one of a group of only three Muses to each of these divisions. Then, adducing a salient feature of the Myth of Er, at Plato, Republic X 617C, he ventures to identify the three Fates who turn the Spindle of Necessity with these three Muses, thus very much emphasising their ordering role on a cosmic level. He is, not unreasonably, pulled up for this by a fellow-guest, the Peripatetic Menexenus, who argues that the Muses should not be identified as the daughters of Necessity (as are the Fates), since they have much more to do with persuasion than necessity (745CD), but he in turn is urbanely corrected by Plutarchs teacher Ammonius, who first argues (745D) that the necessity with which the Muses have to do is rather divine necessity, which confirms their cosmic role but he then turns round and suggests that after all it is the Sirens who are portrayed as presiding over the revolutions of the
28 29

That is to say, nt, mes and hypat. Cf. Sextus Empiricus, AM VII 147ff., and my discussion in The Heirs of Plato, pp. 124-8. 11

eight heavenly spheres in the same myth who would be better equated with the Muses, together with a ninth one postulated to look after the earth (746A): There are, then, eight Muses that circle round with the eight spheres, while one has allotted to her the region of the earth. Now the eight that preside over orbits maintain and preserve the harmony of the planets with the fixed stars and with one another, while one, who oversees and patrols the region between the earth and the moon, grants mortals through speech and song all that their nature allows them to perceive of grace, rhythm and harmony, calling Persuasion the helpmeet of the arts of state and society to cast her calming spell on the tumultuous element in us, and gently to recall our errant steps when they have lost the path and set them in their place. But all things that are strangers to Zeuss love Shrink when they hear the ringing Voice of the Pierides -- as Pindar says (Pyth. I 13-14). Here again, as in Plutarchs exposition, the Muses have lost any explicit connection with the arts and sciences except in so far as the sublunar Muse takes some interest in these. In response to this contribution by Ammonius, Plutarch himself -- rather tentatively, as he presents himself (For a short time I kept quiet; then I spoke up.. 746B) -- returns to the fray, with the suggestion that Platos own penchant for etymology might be applied to the question of identifying the proper spheres of the Muses (746B-747A): Plato himself believes that he discovers the powers of the gods by using their names as clues. Let us then similarly place one of the Muses (sc. Urania) in the heavens, and suppose her concern to be with the heavenly bodies; it is likely enough, after all, that they, having a single simple eternal30 nature, do not need much or varied guidance. It is to a position here on earth, where mistakes and excesses (ametriai) and transgressions are numerous, that the other eight Muses should be removed, each correcting a different kind of evil and disharmony (anharmostia). Now, since life consists partly of serious activity (spoud), and partly of play (paidia), and in both we need to act artistically and
30

Accepting Meziriacus conjecture ajivdion for the ai[tion of the mss., which seems awkward. 12

moderately (mousiks kai metris), Calliope, Clio and Thalia the last of whom is our guide in knowledge and vision of the gods31 -- may be thought to act together to direct our steps and maintain our course when we are serious; while when we turn to pleasure and play, the others will not allow us in our weakness to relax without discipline and like wild animals, but will take us under their care and escort us on our way in decent orderly fashion with dancing and song and choral music that has measured motion fused with both tune and words. (trans. Sandbach, slightly emended) Here the spheres of influence of the eight sublunary Muses are divided, three to preside over serious pursuits, and five (presumably) to preside over various types of play. Plutarch now goes on, however, to qualify32 this account somewhat, by rephrasing the distinction between spoud and paidia into one between the inborn desire for pleasure (emphytos epithymia) and the acquired opinion (epeisaktos doxa)33 which leads us to seek what is (morally) best, a distinction borrowed from Socrates palinode in the Phaedrus (237d) which, we may note, he begins with an invocation to the Muses (237a): As I see it, however, Plato lays down two principles of action in every man, the one an inborn desire for pleasure, the other an acquired belief that aims for the best; sometimes he calls the one reason (logos), the other emotion (pathos). Now each of these two principles has further subdivisions, and I observe that every one of these stands in need of extensive and, in the true sense of the word, divine tutelage (paidaggia). To begin with, one aspect of reason is characteristic of the statesman and the king; to this Hesiod tells us that Calliope is assigned.34 It is Clios role in particular to glorify the love of honour and add to its pride, while Polymnia belongs to the part of the soul that loves learning

31

This identification seems to be based upon a very Platonic etymology of Thalia as comprising something like then aletheias thea, a vision of the truth of the gods. 32 He begins this with a mentoi, which would normally betoken a certain degree of disagreement, and Sandbach so translates it (My own view is different), but it is not easy to see wherein such disagreement consists. It is much more a case of reformulation. 33 Plato here uses the adjective epikttos; Plutarchs epeisaktos is the result either of faulty recollection or deliberate variatio (Plato does use it elsewhere, Crat. 420b1). 34 Theogony, 80. This passage has already been adverted to by Herodes, at the beginning of the discussion (743D); but Herodes is trying to claim her for Rhetoric. 13

and stores it in the memory that is why the Sicyonians call one of their three Muses Polymathia. We have here three Muses assigned, respectively, each to a level of the tripartite Platonic soul though with the interesting variation that they seem to be three levels of the rational soul, with the first and lowest level not that of irrational desire (epithymia), but rather of practical reasoning, such as that indulged in by statesman and kings (politikon kai basilikon), and the middle level not exactly that of thymos, but rather of rational self-respect and righteous indignation (to philotimon). Polymnia would be concerned with pure, abstract reasoning, and the preservation of this in the memory. The various passions are next assigned each one of the five remaining Muses, as follows (746Eff.): Then everyone would refer to Euterpe the study of the facts of nature (to; qewrhtiko;n th` peri; fuvs ew ajlhqeiva), and would reserve no purer or finer enjoyments and delights (eujpaqeiva kai; tevryei) to any other kind of activity.35 To turn to (physical) desire (epithymia), Thalia converts our concern for food and drink from something inhuman and savage into a social and convivial affair. That is why we apply the word thaliazein (merry-making) to those who enjoy one anothers company over wine in a convivial and friendly manner, not to those who indulge in drunken insults and violence. And when our sexual urgencies enjoy the presence of Erato, accompanied by rational, apposite persuasion, she eliminates the mad, frantic element in the pleasure, which then reaches a conclusion in love and trust, not rape and debauchery. As for the kind of pleasure that comes by ear and eye, whether it belongs mainly to reason or to emotion or is their common property,36 the two remaining Muses, Melpomene and Terpsichore, take it under their care and give it orderliness (kosmousin). The result is that

35

The area of concern of Euterpe might seem still to fall under the heading of logos rather than pathos, but the emphasis here seems to be on the pleasures, albeit true or pure pleasures, as recognized in the Philebus (63d-64a), attendant on the study of nature. These are plainly the highest form of pathos, but they are path nonetheless. 36 This would be another reference, I think, to the theory of pure pleasures in the Philebus, since they very much concern such pleasures as listening to music, or looking at pictures, which involve no previous pain, or which such pleasure would be an assuagement (cf. Phlb. 51d-52b). 14

there is enjoyment, not enchantment, and on the other not delusion but delight (terpsis). So there we have it: roles are now proposed for the remaining five Muses to cover all aspects of human life which could be classified as having to do with the passions. This constitutes, I think, an impressive tour de force on Plutarchs part, and deserved detailed exposition, since he is prepared to reassign in a systematic way all of the nine Muses in the interests of subordinating them to a Platonist ethic. I do not see this, as I say, as a contradiction of the previous scheme that he outlined, merely an elaboration of it This is by no means the end of the story of the Muses in the Platonic Academy, but I think that it will do for the present. I could have gone on to discuss, for example, an interesting projection back of the Platonist doctrine of the Muses as principles of order onto Pythagoreanism by Iamblichus in his Pythagoric Life (ss. 45; 170; 261-4), or the remarkable Hymn to the Muses composed by Proclus,37 but one must be mindful of the subject of this discourse, and impose due moderation on its length. I mention these further topics merely to indicate that there is more to be said on this subject. Our conclusion must be, I think, that the assumption of the cult of the Muses by Plato into his Academy was seen by him, and by his successors, as a strategic move, designed to embrace all other disciplines and areas of human conduct under the umbrella of philosophy, and subordinate them to it. With the help of the Muses, seen as guardians and promoters of good order and moderation in all things, a rational and moderate form of any activity or pursuit, whether politics, poetry, rhetoric, drinking or sex, could be worked out and practiced. It is this theory in its most comprehensive form that we see revealed in Plutarchs Symposiac Question on the Muses, but it is implicit in all the earlier evidence as well.

37

Well discussed by Robbert van den Berg in his recent edition of the Hymns of Proclus, Proclus Hymns, Brill: Leiden, 2001, pp. 208-23. 15

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