Appendix II
Vehicles in the Platonic Similes
A. General Observations
1. Abstract tenors + concrete vehicles: The most general observation we can make about vehicles is that they make abstract tenors (arguments, the polis, death, democracy, dialectic, ideas, etc.) more explicit and visual convoking either a specific object (like a worn-out coat in Alcibiades 1.1) or a famous name (Oedipus in Alcibiades 2.1) or a familiar situation (seeing someone yawning, Charmides 5). They often refer to familiar professions and objects (e.g., athletes, books, bowls, boxers, garments). If the tenor is abstract (part of virtue), the vehicle is concrete (pieces of gold, Protagoras 16). Apart from the category ‘children’, very few words are the same in the lists of tenors and vehicles. (See ‘F’ below.)
2. Tenor personal names are the participants in the Dialogues (Euthydemus, Protagoras, Socrates) or familiar contemporary figures (the children of Pericles, Meletus) whereas vehicle names are frequently mythical or famous figures: Achilles, Antaeus, Athena, Bacchai/Bacchants, Cerberus, Chimaera, Corybants, Creon, Crommyonian, Daedalus, Daemon, Diomedes, Eriphyle, Euryclea, Euripides, Gigantomachia, Heracles, Kriso the Himeraean (runner), Lacainian (hounds), Marsyas, Oedipus, Olympic (victor), Satyr, Sciron, Seirens, Scylla, Silenoi, Teiresias, Thetis, Troy, Typhon.
3. The number of professions cited as vehicles is impressive: actor, archer, athletes, bathman, boxer, charioteer, chess expert, chorus, dancers, doctors, door-keeper, horse-and-cattle herder, hunter, lawyer, long-distance runner, messenger, midwife, Olympic victor, painter, physician, poet, refiners of gold, sailors, servants/slaves, sophists, tinker, weavers, wind-pourers. References to painters, for example, may be found in nine similes in the Compendium. (See ‘G’ below).
4. Also noteworthy is the variety of objects as vehicles: ball, book, bowl, chariot, coping stone, garment, iron, jug, magnet, millstone, moorings of a ship, net, plate, pots, rings, ships, shuttle, sieve, skull, statue, vehicle, wax tablets. Comparisons taken from health (disease, dissolution, dreams, glutton, itch, phlegm or bile, plague, sickness, sleep) and nature (beast, cave, channels in a garden, farmer, fruit, gold, marsh/swamp, planting crops, plucking fruit, prey of an animal, river, shooting stars, stone, streams, wave, wind, wood) are also numerous.
5. If we consult D. J. N. Lee for comparison with Homer’s usage, we find that his list of “the subjects the simile covers” are actually vehicles (ninety-six), and these mostly animals: lions, cattle and birds showing the highest number of examples. Other vehicles from nature include the wind, waves, stars and rivers; there are some human examples (shepherds, fathers, women, hunters) and a few inanimate objects (lyre, auger, quiver, trumpet). [1] As will be seen below, there is little over-lapping of vehicles in Homer and Plato.
B. Types of Vehicles
1. One word (many occurrences of this):
“But everyone gazed at him (Charmides) like (hôsper = as if he were) a statue (hôsper agalma).” Charmides 2
“Dionysodorus caught the line of argument (logos) like a ball (hôsper sphairan)” Euthydemus 3
“to live like a stone (to hôsper lithon zên)” Gorgias 9
“will form a single flock like birds (kathaper ornithes)” Laws 3.1
The developing child shall be molded like wax (hoîon kêrinon).” Laws 7.1
“And now these opinions have just been stirred up in him, like a dream (hôsper onar).” Meno 3
2. One word + adjective (very few examples):
“like (hoion) an evil usurer (kakon pokistên)” Alcibiades 2.3
“like (hôsper) a runaway slave (drapetên anthrôpon)” Meno 4
“like (hôsper) draw-string purses (ta syspasta ballantia)” Symposium 7
3. One word + a clause or phrase: [2]
“And like (hôsper) Creon in Euripides’ play when he sees Teiresias wearing his wreaths” Alcibiades 2.5
“like sleep (hoîon hypnos) when someone sleeping sees not even a dream” Apology 7
“They most valiantly answered his (Ctesippus’) questions … like (hôsper) boars (kaproi) when driven up to face the spears.” Euthydemus 13
“I must rein in my speech like a horse (hoîonper hippon) and not be carried away by it, as though it had no bridle in its mouth
(kathaper achalinon).” Laws 3.2
(kathaper achalinon).” Laws 3.2
NB – Here the simile clarifies the metaphor: “rein in my speech”. Another example of this may be found at Republic 5.5: “Permit me (me) to take a holiday (heortasai—a metaphor) just as (hôsper) idle people are accustomed to dine on (hestiâsthai) their own thoughts (a metaphor) when they walk alone.” At Laws 7.8, on the other hand, the simile introduces a metaphor: “Just as a shipwright at the commencement of a building outlines the shape of his vessel by laying down her keel, so I appear to be doing the same thing—trying to frame the shapes of lives according to the modes of their souls, and thus literally (ontôs) laying down their keels … to navigate our barque of life through this voyage of existence.” (803a)
4. Double (1 tenor + 2 vehicles):
A few tenors are matched with two different vehicles, either in the same simile: all things flow like (hôsper) leaky jars (Cratylus 8) or like (hôsper) people with a cold (Cratylus 9); or separately: knowledge (epistêmê) = a slave (Protagoras 19) or wild birds (Theaetetus 21). “He (the sophist) is a kind of juggler … an imitator of realities.” (Sophist 5) [the sophist = (both) a juggler and an imitator]
Thus there are more ‘vehicles’ than ‘tenors’ (roughly twice as many) because of the need for finding ever more images for the items that Plato wants us to visualize as well as the fact that some tenors (especially Socrates, the soul and logos) are used repeatedly. On the other hand, occasionally the same vehicle appears with different tenors: a ship’s rudder (pêdalia or oiax) is used as the vehicle for both ‘will power’ (Cleitophon 1) and ‘persuasion’ (Critias 3).
5. Proportional (two tenors and two vehicles: a > b = c > d):
Quite a few similes contain two vehicles corresponding to two tenors: “I/Socrates (a) am to Athens (b) as a gadfly (c) to a noble horse (d)” (Apology 3). Other examples are: “but he (Critias) seemed to have become as angry with him (Charmides) as a poet with an actor who delivers his verses badly” Socrates (Charmides 4); “their followers were to Dionysodorus and Euthydemus as a chorus is to its didaskalos” (Euthydemus 1); “You are to Bias as sculptors are to Daedalus” (Hippias Major 1); “Lacedaimonians are to you (Hippias) as children are to old women who tell stories” (Hippias Major 2); “poets bring songs as bees [bring honey]” (Ion 3); “we beg lawmakers as children beg a doctor” (Laws 4.5); “I/Socrates am bribed by a book as a hungry animal by fruit” (Phaedrus 3); “a lover is to his beloved as a wolf to a lamb” (Phaedrus 5); “leaders run from the Laws as boys from their father” (Republic 8.6). Most of these are attributed to Socrates. The following list (51) is fairly complete: Alcibiades 1.3, Alcibiades 2.4, Apology 3, Charmides 3, 4, and 5; Critias 2, Crito 3, Euthydemus 1, 13, 14, 15, and 16; Euthyphro 1 and 2; Gorgias 3 and 8; Hippias Major 1 and 2; Ion 3, Laws 4.5, Laws 5.2 and 10; Laws 7.9, Laws 9.1, Laws 10.8, Phaedo 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 11, 14, and 20; Phaedrus 3, 5, and 8; Philebus 11 and 13; Protagoras 5, 15, and 18; Republic 1.3, Republic 2.1, Republic 3.8 and 11; Republic 7.8, Republic 8.6, Republic 10.5, Statesman 4 and 21.
6. Mechanical (‘inanimate’ vehicle for ‘animate’ tenor):
“The structure of the spleen is for the sake of the liver, to keep it bright and clean, as a wiper (hoîon ekmageîon) that is laid beside a mirror.” (72e) Timaeus 15 [spleen = a wiper beside a mirror]
“… and from these shapes of marrow (muelon) [i.e. the bones and marrow in the vertical column of the backbone), as from anchors (kathaper ex angkyrôn), he cast out bands of the whole soul.” (73d) Timaeus 17 [marrow = anchors]
7. Personified (‘animate’ vehicle for ‘inanimate’ tenor):
“[The bile] … forced through the veins into the lower region … like an exile (hoîon phygas) from a city in civil war.” (Timaues 31)[bile = an exile]
“And in women too the so-called matrix or womb, a living creature (zôion epithymêtikon) longing to become pregnant … and wandering around everywhere inside the body, blocking up the breathing passages …” (Timaeus 34) [a woman’s womb = an animal wandering inside her body]
8. Negative:
Negative formulations support the didactic function of some similes by clarifying the terms and emphasizing the positive aspect, thus playing a role analogous perhaps to Socrates’ familiar practice of considering the opinions of his interlocutors only to reject them. This may be illustrated by several examples:
“For this [praying for one’s own greatest evil] would be truly similar to some curse but NOT to a prayer.” -Alcibiades (Alcibiades 2.2) “This is NOT an art (technê) by which you speak well about Homer … but a divine power (theia dynamis) which moves you, like [that] in the stone which Euripides called a Magnet …” -Socrates (Ion 1)
“All these [five] parts of virtue are NOT like pieces of gold similar to (homoia) one another and to the whole of which they are parts, but like the parts of the face … dissimilar to each other.” -Socrates (Protagoras 16)
“[Socrates,] you spoke well when you said that we who belong to this ‘chorus’ are NOT the servants of our arguments, but the arguments are like (hôsper) our servants.” (Theaetetus 12)
A more complete list of negative similes may be found here: Alcibiades 2.2 and 3; Euthydemus 8, Gorgias 13, Hipparchus 1, Ion 1, Laws 8.2, Laws 9.1, 5, and 6; Laws 10.9, Phaedo 4, Phaedrus 26, Republic 6.1, Republic 7.5 and 10; Statesman 1 and 11; Theaetetus 12 and 13.
C. Literary and Mythological References
Many references to literary authors and allusions to mythology may be found in the similes—most of them made by Socrates. Specific quotations are cited below in numbers 2, 6, 11, 12, 17, 25, 29. The complete list follows.
1. “You should be very careful what you pray for so that you do not find yourself praying for great evils, thinking they are good … just as they say that Oedipus suddenly prayed that his sons divide their patrimony with a sword.” -Socrates (Alcibiades 2.1)
2. “But it seems to me, just as Homer says that Athena removed the mist from Diomedes’ eyes ‘so that he might recognize both god and man’ [Iliad 5. 127], so you must first have the mist removed from your soul.” -Socrates (Alcibiades 2.4)
3. “And like Creon in Euripides’ play when he sees Teiresias wearing his wreaths … So I take your opinion as a good omen.” -Socrates (Alcibiades 2.5)
4. “For I seem to be no less wave-tossed than Creon and would like to be victorious over your lovers.” -Socrates (Alcibiades 2.6)
5. “But it is necessary to show you my wandering as though of someone performing [Herculean] labors, so that the oracle may be proved irrefutable.” -Socrates (Apology 2)
6. “‘Beware of coming [as] a fawn before a lion and being seized [as] his portion of flesh.’ For I felt I had fallen a prey to some such creature.” -Socrates quoting the poet Cydias (Charmides 3)
7. “You looked as if you had made up your mind to whistle the flute-prelude of the hymn to Athena.” -Hermocrates to Socrates (Cratylus 4)
8. “I am ready to hand myself over to Dionysodorus here as if he were the [famous] Medea of Colchis.” -Socrates (Euthydemus 7)
9. “I too, Socrates, am ready to offer myself to be skinned by the strangers … if my hide is not to end up being made into a wine-skin, like Marsyas’, but into the shape of virtue.” -Ctesippus (Euthydemus 8)
10. “I am much weaker than Heracles who was no match for the Hydra.” -Socrates (Euthydemus 14)
11. “Laws [is] the king of all, men and gods alike.” -Callicles quoting Pindar (Gorgias 3)
12. “I am well disposed towards you, Socrates, and feel somewhat like Zethus towards Amphion in Euripides’ play: ‘You are careless of what you should care for.’” -Callicles quoting Euripides (Gorgias 5)
13. “Homer’s Iliad is a finer poem than his Odyssey” -Socrates quoting Apemantus (Hippias Minor 363b); “Homer made Achilles better than Odysseus” (Hippias Minor 364c) [and many other references to Homer in this Dialogue].
14. “This is not an art in you by which you speak well about Homer, as I was just saying, but a divine power which moves you, like [that] in the stone which Euripides called a Magnet but most people call a Heraclean [stone].” -Socrates (Ion 1)
15. “You are like a perfect Proteus.” -Socrates (Ion 5)
16. “Even the Crommyonian sow” -Socrates (Laches 2)
17. “He who is careless and idle would be in our eyes what the poet [Hesiod, Works and Days 303] described as “a man most like ‘stingless drones’.” -Athenian Stranger quoting Hesiod (Laws 10.5)
18. “Perhaps we feel shame just as Homer said the suitors [felt] not deeming it right that there is someone else who will string the bow.”
-Socrates referring to Odyssey 21.286 (Lovers 1)
-Socrates referring to Odyssey 21.286 (Lovers 1)
19. “Just as Homer said that the good general was a ‘shepherd of the people’.” -Socrates (Minos 1)
20. “And yet I seem to have suffered the [fate] of the Ibykeian horse, a race-horse but rather old … to which he [Ibycus] compared himself …” -Parmenides referring to the horse in Ibycus (frg. 2 Bergk) that entered a chariot race and was trembling with fear because he knew what was coming from experience (Parmenides 4)
21. “The soul of the philosopher would not think it right that philosophy … should give itself again in bondage to pleasures and pains and engage in some futile task of Penelope unweaving the web she wove.” -Socrates (Phaedo 4)
22. “I examine myself to know whether I happen to be some beast more complex and wilder [than] Typhon.” -Socrates (Phaedrus 1)
23. “Then the source of this flow, which Zeus in his passion for Ganymede named desire … like a breath or some echo … is carried back whence it arose.” -Socrates (Phaedrus 18)
24. “But if they see us conversing and sailing past them like Sirens unmoved, perhaps they will be pleased and give us the gift which they have from the gods to give to men.” -Socrates (Phaedrus 23)
25. Socrates quotes Homer’s Iliad (18.109–110), which contains a simile: “[anger] which stirs a man to wrath and is much sweeter than honey from the comb.” (Philebus 5)
26. Protagoras was enchanting [them] with his voice like Orpheus. -Socrates (Protagoras 1)
27. “And I at first, just as if having been hit by a good boxer, was blinded and dizzy when he [Protagoras expounding a poem by Simonides] had said this and the others had shouted their approval.” -Socrates (Protagoras 13)
28. “If he (Simonides) could overthrow this famous saying, as [one might conquer] a famous athlete, … he would win fame for himself.” -Socrates. The ‘famous saying’ was Pittacus’, that “it is hard to be good” (Protagoras 15)
29. “When a man leads his life justly and piously, ‘hope accompanies him [as] a sweet nurse of old age to cheer his heart.’” (331a) -Cephalus quoting Pindar (frg. 214) (Republic 1.4)
30. “Then justice seems to be, according to you and Homer and Simonides, a kind of stealing.” -Socrates to Polemarchus (Republic 1.5)
31. “The man who laughs at the idea of women stripped for exercise is ‘plucking the unripe fruit of laughter’.” -Socrates (This is adapted from Pindar, fr. 209 Schroeder.) (Republic 5.3)
32. “[As for] those who take up philosophy in their youth before they engage in business and money-making, towards old age with few exceptions their [light] is quenched more completely than the sun of Heracleitus, inasmuch as it is never rekindled.” -Socrates (Republic 6.15)
33. “Shall we like Homer invoke the Muses?” -Socrates (Republic 8.4)
34. “In such a state a man condemned to death or exile goes back and forth among the people, slipping in and out like a revenant (hêrôs).” -Socrates (Republic 8.12)
35. “One of those old [figures] … such as myth-makers used to describe, the Chimaira or Scylla or Cerberus.” -Socrates (Republic 9.4)
36. “Is he not truly wretched and doesn’t he receive his gold at a far more terrible price than Eriphyle who accepted a necklace for her husband’s life?” -Socrates (Republic 9.6)
37. “Let us propose that it [the soul’s condition] resembles that of the sea-god Glaucus.” -Socrates (Republic 10.7)
38. “There truly seems to be among them [the Sophists] some sort of Battle of the Giants on account of their dispute about existence.” -Eleatic Visitor (Sophist 6)
39. “For perhaps Heraclitus [Frg. 51 Diels-Krantz] means—since he does not express himself clearly—that the One at variance with itself is brought into agreement with itself, like [the] harmony of a bow and a lyre.” -Eryximachus (Symposium 3)
40. “For I say that he [Socrates] is most similar to those Silenuses sitting in the statuaries’ shops … Moreover I say that he is like the satyr Marsyas.” -Alcibiades (Symposium 13)
41. “You [Socrates] seem to me to tend more towards Sciron, for the Lacedaimonians order people to leave or else undress, but you seem to play the role rather like Antaeus.” -Theodorus (Theaetetus 9)
The distribution of these quotations and literary allusions within twenty-one Dialogues is as follows: Alcibiades 2 (4), Apology (1), Charmides (1), Cratylus (1), Euthydemus (3), Gorgias (2), Hippias Minor (1+), Ion (2), Laches (1), Laws (1), Lovers (1), Minos (1), Parmenides (1), Phaedo (1), Phaedrus (3), Philebus (1), Protagoras (3), Republic (9), Sophist (1), Symposium (2), Theaetetus (1). On the other hand, such allusions are missing from quite a few (fourteen) Dialogues (plus eleven books of Laws): Alcibiades 1, Cleitophon, Critias, Crito, Epinomis, Euthyphro, Hipparchus, Hippias Major, Lysis, Menexenus, Meno, Statesman, Theagenes, and Timaeus.
D. Contemporary Allusions
Some similes contain contemporary allusions assumed to be familiar to Plato’s audience:
1. “Know well, O Crito, that I seem to hear them [the Laws], just as the Corybants seem to hear the auloi.” Socrates (Crito 3)
2. “Tell me, Socrates,” said [Euthydemus], “do you have an ancestral Zeus?” Euthydemus (Euthydemus 16)
3.“Your statements are like [the works] of my ancestor Daedalus… they are not willing to stay where someone puts them.” Socrates (Euthyphro 3) See Hippias Major 1, Meno 4 and Republic 7.12 for other references to Daedalus.
4. “There is an ancient saying … that whenever a poet is seated on the Muse’s tripod, he is not in his senses but is like some fountain.” Athenian Visitor (Laws 4.4)
5. “The next move might at first cause surprise, like the move of a draughts-player who quits his ‘sacred line’.” Athenian Visitor (Laws 5.9)
6. “Thus they (mothers) literally cast a spell upon the children like the victims of Bacchic frenzy by employing the combined movements of dance and song.” Athenian Visitor (Laws 7.2)
7. “[We may dread] lest any of our citizens should prove horny-hearted … and just as those ‘horn-struck’ beans cannot be softened by fire … so these should be uninfluenced by Laws.” Athenian Visitor (Laws 9.1)
8. “They believe in an argument but later think that it is false … and conclude that all things, including arguments, go up and down like the tide in the Euripus.” Socrates (Phaedo 13)
9. “The earth itself appears, if someone should look at it from above, like those twelve-patch leather balls variegated.” Socrates (Phaedo 16)
10. “The charioteer … falls back like a racer from the starting-rope.” Socrates (Phaedrus 16)
11. “They (the children of Pericles) go around grazing like sacred cattle.” Socrates (Protagoras 2)
12. “But now it is just as if you should ask me to keep up with the Himeraian Kriso in his prime or to race one of the long-distance runners.” Socrates (Protagoras 10)
13. “It may be that by examining them side by side and rubbing them against one another, as it were, from the fire-sticks (ek pyreiôn) we may cause the spark of justice to flash forth.” Socrates (Republic 4.6)
14. “Just as the unskilled [players] are check-mated by experienced [pesseia] players and have no place to move, thus also these [inexperienced debaters] are not able to say anything when they are trapped not by pebbles [psêphois] but by words.” Adeimantus (Republic 6.4)
15. “Would you like for us to consider how such men [i.e., guardians] may be produced in a state and how they may be led upward to the light even as some are fabled to have ascended from Hades to the gods. Socrates (Republic 7.9)
16. “This [education] would not be the whirling of the shell (ostrakou peristrophê), but a conversion of the soul.” Socrates (Republic 7.10)
17. “And from the extremities was stretched the spindle of Necessity (ho sphondulos Anangkês), through which all the orbits (periphoras) turned… And the nature of the whorl was this: its shape was that of our world but we must conceive it to be as if in one great whorl, hollow and scooped out, there lay enclosed another like it but smaller, fitting into it like boxes (kadoi) that fit into one another, eight whorls (sphondylous) in all.” Socrates (Republic 10.13)
18. “But as the saying goes, having an enemy and future opponent at home, they carry it [= the argument about existence] around with them always wherever they go, speaking from within like the amazing Eurycles.” The Eleatic Visitor (Sophist 9)
19. “Inasmuch as some things are willing to do this [mingle with one another], and some won’t, they would almost be like letters [of the alphabet]. For some of these do not fit with each other, but others do.” The Eleatic Visitor (Sophist 10)
20. “The structure of the spleen is for the sake of the liver, to keep it bright and clean, as a wiper (ekmageîon) that is laid beside a mirror.” Timaeus (Timaeus 15). Several more similes in the Timaeus could be cited here for their references to contemporary structures and gadgets familiar to his audience (padded garments, channels in gardens, fish-traps, revolving wheels, fountains of fire) but not necessarily to us.
Comment: It is not a large group, considering the total number of similes discovered in this study, and it is not surprising that a few similes would contain contemporary details needing explication in modern commentaries.
E. Humorous and/or Eye-Catching Similes
Some similes are worth citing here because their vehicles are so striking or unusual. Here is a short list of such comparisons:
1. “He seemed to me—just as the sight of someone yawning causes people to be affected in a similar way—to be compelled by the sense of my difficulty to be caught in difficulty himself.” Socrates (Charmides 5)
2. “[Those playing word games] are like people who slyly pull stools away from persons who are about to sit down … laugh.” Socrates (Euthydemus 6)
3. “Raging [like] a scolding wife” Athenian Visitor (Laws 5.1)
4. “Like someone who has caught an eye disease from someone [and] cannot explain it, thus he is aware of seeing himself in his lover’s [eyes] as in a mirror.” Socrates (Phaedrus 19)
5. “Should I, like some doorkeeper pushed and shoved by a mob, allow all kinds of knowledge to flow in?” Socrates (Philebus 10)
6. “To fill ourselves up with with humours and winds like swamps … don’t you think that’s disgraceful?” Socrates (Republic 3.3)
7. “We could not see it, but were most ludicrous, like people who sometimes hunt for what they hold in their hands.” Socrates (Republic 4.6)
8. “The man who laughs at the idea of women stripped for exercise is ‘plucking the unripe fruit’ of laughter.” Socrates (Republic 5.3)
9. “They are like those [jesters] who fool us with double meanings at banquets and [resemble] the children’s riddle about the eunuch and his hitting of the bat …” (479b–c) Glaucon (Republic 5.10, 11)
10. “Do they [men poorly qualified for philosophy] seem … to differ at all from a little bald-headed copper smith who has made some money, who has just been freed from his bonds and fresh from a bath, wearing a new cloak, like a bride-groom about to marry his master’s daughter because of his poverty and need?” Socrates (Republic 6.11,12)
11. “[Those who have tasted philosophy seeing sufficiently the madness of the multitude [will perish] like a man who has fallen among wild beasts … therefore the philosopher keeps his silence minding his own business, like someone who stops under a wall in a storm of dust and sea-spray carried by the wind.” Socrates (Republic 6.12 and 13)
12. “They lay their ears alongside [their instruments] like someone trying to hear what their neighbors are saying” Socrates (Republic 7.13) The following comparison between torturing slaves and tuning a lyre is only insinuated since it is not made explicit in the Greek.
13. “We see that law (nomon) aims at this very thing, like (hôsper) a stubborn and ignorant man (anthrôpon) who allows no one to do anything contrary to his command … not even to ask a question, not even if something new and better occurs to someone.” The Visitor (294e)
14. “But this boy advances toward learning … smoothly … like a stream of oil flowing without a sound.” Theodorus (Theaetetus 2)
15. “We seem to be like some low-born rooster leaping up from the argument to crow before winning the victory.” Socrates (Theaetetus 6)
16. “It causes all sorts of maladies until the desire and passion for each other unite them, like plucking fruit from trees, they sow invisible and unshapen lives into the womb as though into a ploughed field.” Timaeus (Timaeus 35, 36)
Comment: These comparisons are so vivid that even with the cultural differences between fifth / fourth century BC Athens and today they remain impressive; some so perennial they could have been written recently.
F. Children
The topos of child(ren) appears frequently in similes, both as tenor and vehicle, more often in the latter (sixteen examples):
1. “How should we to begin the study of justice? … like children (kathaper paîdas) we did not see that there is such a thing as gymnastics and medicine.” (408e) Cleitophon (Cleitophon 4)
2. “Just as (hôsper) children are frightened by goblins we are frightened by terrors.” (44c) Socrates (Crito 1)
3.“We were as funny as (hôsper) children chasing larks.” Socrates (Euthydemus 10)
4. “Their achievements [tyrants and other wrong-doers] are … like a child (hôsperanei paîs) afraid of the pain of cautery and surgery.” (479a) Socrates (Gorgias 1)
5. “I have a very similar feeling about philosophers as about … those who stammer and play childish games.” (485a–b) “Leave these pretty toys to others!” (486c) Callicles (Gorgias 7)
6. “O Callicles, what a rascal you are, treating me like a child (hôsper paidi). (499c) Socrates (Gorgias 15)
7. “I will be judged as (hôs) a doctor (iatros) might be judged among children on a charge brought by a cook.“ (521e) Socrates (Gorgias 17)
8. “The Lacedaimonians welcome you [Hippias] and … use you as (hôsper) children treat old women (tais presbutisin) to tell pleasant stories.” (285e–286a) Socrates (Hippias Major 2)
9. “We beg the Lawsmaker, as (kathaper) children beg a doctor to give them the mildest treatment.” (720a) Athenian Visitor (Laws 4.5)
10. “Let the man who receives his portion tend the land … more diligently than a mother tends her children (mêtera paîdas).” (740a) Athenian Visitor (Laws 5.10)
11. “They resemble the children’s riddle (tôi paidiôn ainigmati) about the eunuch.” Glaucon (Republic 5.11)
12. “They were teasing us as though we were children (hôs pros paîdas).” (545d) Socrates (Republic 8.5)
13. “Like women and children looking at broidered robes, many would judge it [democracy] the most beautiful.” (557c) Socrates (Republic 8.10)
14. “We need to deliberate about what has happened … instead of stumbling like children (kathaper paîdas), clapping one’s hands to the stricken spot and wasting time in wailing.” Socrates (Republic 10.3)
15. “Please pay careful attention, just as if you were a child and anyway you are not much too old for children’s tales.” The Visitor (Statesman 6)
16. “Again from the beginning you become as children (hoîon neoi) knowing nothing.” (23a–b) Egyptian Priest (Timaeus 3)
In the tenor (seven):
1. “Shall we lay down a law that … the developing child shall be molded like (hoîon) wax (kêrinon)?” (789e) Athenian Visitor (Laws 7.1)
2. “Thus they (mothers) literally cast a spell upon the children like (kathaperei) the victims of Bacchic frenzy by employing the combined movements of dance and song.” (790e) Athenian Visitor (Laws 7.2)
3. “For [just as] no sheep or other grazing beast ought to exist without a herdsman, [so] children cannot live without tutors.” (808d) Athenian Visitor (Laws 7.10)
4. “The child must be … treated as a slave (hôs d’aû doûlon).” (808e) Athenian Visitor (Laws 7.11)
5. “They (the children of Pericles) go around grazing like sacred cattle [to see if they can stumble upon virtue/aretê by themselves].” (320a) Socrates (Protagoras 2)
6. “(If he does not obey) they treat him (the boy-child, ho pais) like a bent and twisted piece of wood (xylon).” (325d) Protagoras (Protagoras 4)
7. “We must bring children to war on horseback to be spectators … and give them a taste of blood as we do with whelps (hôsper tous skylakas).” (537a) Socrates (Republic 7.16)
Comment: Children (tenors) are compared to animals or slaves (to be controlled) or something inanimate (to be shaped). As vehicles children are portrayed as fearful and dependent.
G. Painting
References to painters or painting may be found in the following nine similes (and analogies) in the Compendium:
1. “Just as painters (zôgraphoi) … in just this way we too shall apply letters to things.” (424d) Socrates (Cratylus 7)
2. “Suppose that a man should propose to paint a very beautiful creature (zôon) … that would never grow worse but always better; since the painter is mortal, unless he leaves a successor to repair and improve the painting, his toil will be short-lived.” (Laws 6, 769c) Athenian Visitor – An analogy, not a simile.
3. “The Lawsgiver (nomothetês) like (kathaper) a painter (or draughtsman, zôgraphon) must sketch (hypographein) the actions that follow the code.” (934c) Athenian Visitor (Laws 11.2)
4. “It is divided into patches of various colors of which the colors which we see here may be regarded as samples (hôsper deigmata) which painters (grapheîs) use.” (110b) Socrates (Phaedo 17)
5. “Which type of story (mythos) do you blame, Socrates?” (Adeimantos) “The kind you should blame first, especially if the lie is a pretty one (mê kalôs speudêtai) … when one portrays badly (eikazêi tis kakôs) the true nature of the gods, like a painter (graphôs) whose portraits bear no resemblance to his models.” (377e) Socrates (Republic 2.6)
6. In support of his claim that an ideal state might not exist, Socrates gives an analogy of a painter (zôgraphos), who portrays the pattern (paradeigma) of an ideally beautiful man but could not prove that he existed; would he then be any less good a painter?” (Republic 5, 472)
7. “Do you think there is any difference between the blind (typhlôn) and those who are truly deprived of knowledge … and so cannot, like painters (hôsper grapheîs) fix their eyes on the absolute truth? (484c) Socrates (Republic 6.2)
8. “The person making a comparison (eikazonta) must collect it from many sources … like painters (grapheîs) who combine goat-stags (trag–elaphous) and such [creatures]. (488b–e) Socrates (Republic 6.5)
9. “We must use the blazonry (poikiliai) of the heavens as patterns (paradeigmasi) to aid in the study of those realities, just as one would do who chanced upon diagrams drawn by Daedalus or some other craftsman or painter (dêmiourgoû ê grapheôs).” (529d–e) Socrates (Republic 7.12)
Comment: Painting is a visual equivalent of a simile or analogy since it can provide an illustration of something difficult to describe in words. Thus these examples all occur as vehicles of a comparison.
H. Music
Similes referring to music and dance may be found in ten passages. All but one (Ion 3) occur in the vehicle.
1. “Just now when you pronounced boulapteroun, you looked as if you had made up your mind to whistle the flute-prelude of the hymn to Athena.” (417e) Hermocrates to Socrates (Cratylus 5)
2. “Know well, O Crito, that I seem to hear them (the Laws) just as (hôsper) the Corybants seem to hear the auloi.” (54d) Socrates (Crito 3)
3. “When he said this, like (hôsper) a chorus given a signal by a didaskalos (hypo didaskalou choros aposêmêmantas), the followers of Dionysodorus and Euthydemus shouted and laughed at the same time.” (276b) Socrates (Euthydemus 1)
4.“Euthydemus … did not let the boy go but continued to ask questions and like [hôsper] good dancers (hoi agathoi orchêstai) turned the questions around doubling on the same point.” (276d) Socrates (Euthydemus 2)
5. “I see certain speech-writers (logopoious) who do not know how to use the special arguments (tois idiois logois) which they themselves have made, like (hôsper) lyre-makers [who cannot play] the lyres [which they made].” (289d) Cleinias (Euthydemus 9)
6. “I’d rather have my lyre (tên lyran) out of tune and discordant (anharmostan te kai diaphônein) … than have internal discord (asumphônon) and contradiction in myself.” (482b–c) Socrates (Gorgias 4)
7. “ For the poets … bring us songs from honey-flowing fountains culling them from the glens and gardens of the Muses like bees (hôsper hai melittai) [bring honey] and flying in the same way.” (534a–b) Socrates (Ion 3)
8. “But they [Sophocles or Euripides] would not, I think, rebuke him harshly but [they would behave] as a musician (mousikos) would, if he met a man who thought he understood harmony because he could strike the highest and lowest notes.” (268d) Socrates (Phaedrus 27)
9. “If we likened (apeikazontes) that kind of food and regimen to music and song … it would be a fair comparison (orthôs apeikazoimen).” (404d–e) Socrates (Republic 3.2)
10. The truth, then, as it seems, is that justice is … harmonizing [the] three parts (xynarmosanta tria onta) of the soul like three tones of harmony (orous treis harmonias) specifically the low, the high and the middle.” (443c–e) Socrates (Republic 4.10)
This short list reveals interesting allusions to a topic that apparently appealed to Socrates or Plato, although perhaps not as many as you might expect if there really is a “musical structure” in Plato’s Dialogues. [3]
I. Animals
The many types of animals named as vehicles of comparison are notable in contrast to the paucity of animals as tenors; they often seem to be chosen for the humor of the comparison: Socrates as a gadfly, Parmenides as a horse, the Greeks as frogs. Here are some examples (by Dialogue) from the more complete list below:
Money into Lacedaimon = tracks into the lion’s den (Alcibiades 1.3)
(Socrates applying Aesops’s fable about a fox and a lion)
“My love will be like a stork’s” (Alcibiades 1.6) Socrates
Socrates refers to Athens as “a large and noble horse” and to himself as a gadfly (Apology 3)
[Socrates is a] fawn and [Charmides is a] lion (Charmides 3) Socrates
Gods > Greeks = herdsmen or shepherds > flocks (Critias 2) Critias
“We were as funny as children chasing larks” (Euthydemus 10) Socrates
Euthydemus and Dionysodorus > questions = boars > spears (Euthydemus 13) Socrates
I/Socrates > the discussion = [a fish or animal] > (caught in) a net (Euthydemus 16) Socrates
The best and strongest among us = lions (Gorgias 5) Callicles
“You are describing some life of a plover” (Gorgias 13) Socrates
[Poets are] bees (Ion 3) [4]
As the proverb says, “any pig would know”—and thus a pig cannot be courageous.” (Laches 2) Socrates
“Then we must track down good posture like hounds on the trail.” (Laws 2.1) Athenian Visitor
“You keep your young people massed together like a herd of goats at grass.” (Laws 2.2) Athenian Visitor
“They will form a single flock like birds.” (Laws
3.1) Athenian Visitor
3.1) Athenian Visitor
“I must rein in my speech like a horse.” (Laws 3.2) Athenian Visitor
The clan = a team of horses (Laws 4.3) Athenian Visitor
“Some people treat servants like animals.” (Laws 6.2) Athenian Visitor
Children > tutors = sheep > herdsman (Laws 7.10) Athenian Visitor
Women = mother-birds (Laws 7.13) Athenian Visitor
“Our citizens must not be worse than birds and many animals.” (Laws 8.2) Athenian Visitor
Gods > unjust men = guard dogs > wolves (Laws 10.8) Athenian Visitor
Foreign visitors who come to Athens = migrating birds (Laws 12.1) Athenian Visitor
You/Socrates = a sting-ray or torpedo fish (Meno 2) [5] Meno
You/Socrates = a Lakanian hound (Parmenides 1) Zeno
I/Parmenides = an old race horse (Parmenides 5) Parmenides
I/Socrates = a swan (Phaedo 5) Socrates
We/Greeks = frogs or ants (Phaedo 14) Socrates
I/Socrates = some beast (Phaedrus 1) Socrates
A lover > a beloved = a wolf > a lamb (Phaedrus 5) Socrates
The soul = a winged yoke of horses and charioteer (Phaedrus 6) Socrates
The soul = a bird (Phaedrus 7) Socrates
The soul in its body = an oyster in its shell (Phaedrus 8) Socrates
A man devoted to pleasure = a beast (Phaedrus 9) Socrates
The cicadas = Sirens (Phaedrus 23) Socrates
Most people > animals (like cows) = augurs > birds] (Philebus 13) Socrates
Children of Pericles = sacred cattle (Protagoras 2) Socrates
A wrongdoer NOT = a beast (Protagoras 3) Protagoras
Thrasymachus = a wild beast (Republic 1.6) Socrates
“A shepherd herds his sheep not with regard for what is best for the sheep.” (Republic 1.9) Socrates
you/Socrates > Thrasymachus = Charmides > serpent (Republic 2.1) Glaucon
Well-bred young men = well-bred dogs (Republic 2.4) Socrates
Men > colts = we > these lads (Republic 3.7) Socrates
Outside attackers versus > Athens = wolf > a flock of sheep (Republic 3.11) Socrates
“It would be most shameful for shepherds to breed dogs … that through hunger shall attack the sheep … and be likened to wolves instead of dogs.” (Republic 3.12) Socrates
Spirit called back by reason = a dog called back by a shepherd (Republic 4.7)
Helpers = dogs (Republic 4.8) Socrates
People who despoil a corpse = dogs (Republic 5.6) Socrates
Opinions of the many = passions of a huge beast (Republic 6.8) Socrates
A philosopher = a man who has fallen among wild beasts (Republic 6.13) Socrates
You philosophers > the city = king-bees > a bee-hive (Republic 7.8) Socrates
Children = whelps (Republic 7.16) Socrates
The young men who have gotten a taste of disputation = puppies (Republic 7.17) Socrates
The oligarchic man, a pest of the state = a drone, a pest of the hive (Republic 8.7) Socrates
Idlers in a democracy = drones (Republic 8.15) Socrates
A Lawsmaker = a wise bee-keeper (Republic 8.17) Socrates
Wealth of a city = honey of a beehive (Republic 8.18) Socrates
[A king is compared to a] ruler of bees [Statesman 301e)
[Socrates is a] rooster (Theaetetus 164c)
“You (Socrates) are acting like a pig yourself” (Theaetetus 166c)
“I do not call the wise frogs” (Theaetetus 167b)
Memories are wild birds or pigeons (Theaetetus 197c)
J. A large array of animals (alphabetical listing) appear in similes:
animal or beast (thêrion, Protagoras 3; Republic 1.6; Republic 3.6); among beasts (eis thêria, Republic 6.13); (of) animals (thêriôn, Laws 8.2) (Laws 6.2); ants (myrmêkas, Phaedo 14); bees (melittai, Ion 3); a swarm (esmôn, Laws 4.2); ‘stingless drones’ (kêphêsi kothouroisi, Laws 10.5); “I have discovered a swarm (smênos) … “what is the real nature of a bee (melittês)?” (Meno 1); a bee (melitta, Phaedo 8); philosophers as king-bees in the hive (en smênesin, Republic 7.8); a drone in the cell (en kêriôi kêphên), a pest of the hive (smênous nosêma, Republic 8.7); lazy men = drones (kêphêsi) some with stings (Republic 8.15); a wise bee-keeper (sophiston melittourgon, Republic 8.17); in bee-hives (en smênesin, Statesman 15);
birds, a flock (ornithes, Laws 3.1); birds (ornithôn, Laws 8.2); [mother]-birds (ornithas) (Laws 7.12); birds, migrating (Laws 12.1); a bird, like (ornithos dikên, Phaedrus 7); [trust in] birds [as augurs] (ornisin, Philebus 13); boars (kaproi, Euthydemus 13);
cicadas or grasshoppers (tettiges, Symposium 8]; cicadas, singing (hoi tettiges aidontes, Phaedrus 21); dog, hounds on the trail (kusin ichneuousais, Laws 2.1); dogs [guard] (kysi, Laws 10.8); dog, well-bred (gennaiou skylakos, Republic 2.4); dogs, likened to wolves (anti kynôn lykois homoiôthênai, Republic 3.12), dog (Republic 4.7 and Sophist 3), watchdogs (tôn phylakôn kynôn, Republic 5.1: 451d); dogs (Republic 5.6); whelps or puppies (Lacanian hounds hai Lakainoi skylakes, Parmenides 1; tous skylakas, Republic 7.16 and skylakia, Republic 7.17];
cattle, sacred (aphetoi, Protagoras 2); donkey (onou, Laws 3.2); fawn (nebron, Charmides 3); fish: torpedo sea-fish or sting ray (plateiai napkêi têi thalattiai, Meno 2); fishes (ichthyes, Phaedo 15); mollusc (pleumonos) or other such sea creature (thalattia) as a shellfish (ostreinôn, Philebus 2); a flatfish (psêttai, Symposium 9); flocks (poimnia, Critias 2);
fox (alôpêx, Alcibiades 1.3); frogs (batrachous, Phaedo 14; Theaetetus 8); gadfly (myôpos , Apology 3); goats, a herd (athroous pôlous, Laws 2.2); goat-stags (trag–elaphous, Republic 6.5); horse (hippô, Apology 3; hippon, Laws 3.2); horses, a team (hippôn zeûgos, Laws 4.3); the Ibykeian horse, a race-horse (hippô, Parmenides 5); a winged yoke [of horses] (hypopterou zeugous, Phaedrus 6); lambs (arnas, Phaedrus 5); larks (korydous, Euthydemus 10); lion (leonta, Alcibiades 1.3; leontos, Charmides 3; leontas, Gorgias 5); an oyster (ostreou) [Phaedrus 8]; pigeons (tôn peristerôn, Theaetetus 21);
pig (hys, Laches 2); “even a pig would know that” (toûto kai hyn gnônai, Lovers 134b); pig, wild (thêrion hyeion, literally: a swinish beast, Republic 7.15); pigs and baboons [or dog-headed apes] (hys kai kynokephalous, Theaetetus 7); a plover” (charadrios, Gorgias 13); low-born rooster (alektryonos agennoûs, Theaetetus 6); serpent (ophis, Republic 2.1); sheep or other grazing beast (probate, Laws 7.9); sheep (probata, Phaedrus 22; Republic 1.9); stork (pelargou, Alcibiades 1.6); swans (tôn kyknôn, Phaedo 5);
wolf (lykos, Republic 3.11); wolves (lykoi, Laws 10.8; lykois, Republic 3.12); ‘as (hôs) wolves (lykoi) love lambs’ (arenas, Phaedrus 5); wolf (lykos) is very similar to (proseoike) a dog (kyni, Sophist 3];
ox-driver (boêlatên) or horse groom (hippokomon); a horse– or cattle-herder (hippophorbôi, bouphorbôi) [Statesman 1.2]; the herdsman (bouphorbos) himself is the caretaker of the herd (tês agelês trophos) [Statesman 5].
(It is interesting that no specific animals appear in the similes of Timaeus, only ‘savage beast’ and ‘creature’ or ‘animal’.)
Comment: Animals are cited for reasons assumed to be familiar to Plato’s audience; and generally animals were noted for the same characteristics that we attribute to them (less familiar perhaps is the reference to a stork’s love at Alcibiades I.135e). Pigs are messy, bees are busy, dogs are good guards, wolves are aggressive, birds migrate. That is to say, the citations are conventional and the animals are not described more fully than humans in other similes. The notable thing is the number and variety of the animal citations. As Winifred Nowottny said, a simile “(when simple) does not indicate the respect in which one thing is like another. It says things are alike; it is up to us to see why; the things may be alike in a large number of ways.” [6]
Footnotes
[ back ] 1. The Similes of the Iliad and the Odyssey Compared (Melbourne University Press, 1964) List C, pp. 65–73.
[ back ] 2. Lee (p. 6) gives examples of four types of similes in Homer, of which the first two are the same as in Plato: (1) simple and (2) more literary. But his next two types do not occur in Plato: (3) a comparison that goes on irrelevantly and (4) the simile “which does not compare” (as the Cyclops’ eye sizzling like a smith plunging an ax into water, Odyssey 9.390–395).
[ back ] 3. See J. B. Kennedy, The Musical Structure of Plato’s Dialogues (Durham: Acumen 2011).
[ back ] 4. As ‘bees’ are the subject of the first long simile in the Iliad (2.87–90), they also are specified several times in Plato’s similes: Ion 3; Laws 4.2; Meno 1; Phaedo 8; Republic 7.8; Republic 8.7; Republic 8.15; Statesman 15.
[ back ] 5. ‘Fish’ occur in the following Dialogues: Euthydemus 15; Meno 2; Phaedo 15; Philebus 2; Symposium 9; Timaeus 21.
[ back ] 6. The Language Poets Use (New York 1962) 66. She cites an interesting example from Blake’s “Infant Sorrow”, where the simile in the fourth line is shocking and unexplained: “My mother groan’d: my father wept. / Into the dangerous world I leapt; / Helpless, naked, piping loud: / Like a fiend hid in a cloud.”