The Death of Plato

Ancient Greece, Antiquity, Philosophy, Plato

Some famous people are perhaps as much known for the manner and time of their deaths as for the things that made them a household name in the first place. The infamous moniker ‘the club of 27’, which denotes legendary musicians like Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse who died tragically at a mere 27 years old, comes to mind.1 But also philosophers can acquire such moribund recognition.2 Socrates’ death, for example, has been portrayed throughout nearly all artforms.3 And the story of this ancient Greek philosopher’s forced suicide, on account of not saving his skin by changing a way of life which he deemed too important, still resonates today.4 But if you are a morbid mortal like myself, you have probably sometimes wondered about the demise of those towering figures of history whose end has not (yet) become part of popular culture. Like Socrates’ most famous student, that other widely acclaimed ancient Greek philosopher – and Dutch cd-store – Plato.

Whereas a number of accounts of Socrates’ death is available to us – from Xenophon to Plato himself – we are faced with a relative dearth of sources with regard to our current undertaking.5 But the vicissitudes of fate have worked in our favor, it seems. Because recently parts of a damaged papyrus scroll that offer more details for the ghoulishly inclined have been rendered legible. This scroll was found in a villa near the ancient city of Herculaneum, which got buried in volcanic debris during the early Roman Empire and was therefore preserved for modern archeologists.6 In this blog, I will first briefly introduce Plato’s rather remarkable life – as it often gets overlooked in favor of discussions of his intellectual accomplishments, or the lack thereof. Subsequently we will explore what was already thought to be known about his death and what this scorched source offers in fresh information.

This blog is also available in Dutch.

The Many Misadventures of Plato

The life of Plato has been aptly described as “a series of frustrations.”7 The philosopher was born around 421 BCE, shortly before or after his family moved from the island of Aegina to the city of Athens.8 And he spend his youth in that famous city while the Peloponnesian War was in full swing and the notorious plague had just subsided.9 Around his arrival there, Plato’s father Ariston died and his mother Perictione had to marry her uncle… But let us not dwell on thát!10 Plato’s family was rich, influential, and of noble descent – even though their claims of royal heritage are dubious.11 As a teenager, Plato would have been witness to the fallout of Athens’ disastrous expedition to Sicily – an island that is now part of the modern state of Italy. And some years later, when he was in his early twenties, he would experience the city’s final defeat by the Spartans and their allies.12 Plato might have been an able wrestler at this time.13 Though the story that his name Πλάτων (Plátōn) was derived from the Greek word for ‘broad’ and reflected his stature, is not very convincing. As ‘Plato’ was a normal name at the time and the regularly proposed alternative Aristocles, which was the name of his grandfather, would not have been given to one of the younger grandsons.14 Notwithstanding the lad’s name, his future was to be philosophy and this fate was sealed through a fascination with the aforementioned philosopher Socrates, who was friends with some of his family members. Some say that Plato gave up his dream to write tragedies in order to become a philosopher, but this often-repeated story seems apocryphal.15 The nature of the relationship between Plato and Socrates is not very clear 16 But it is known that the conviction of Socrates, who was sentenced to death in 399 BCE by an Athenian jury under the charges of godlessness and corruption of young persons with unsanctioned ideas, greatly impacted Plato.17

After Socrates’ subsequent suicide, Plato left Athens for a while. When he returned, he bought some land near the gymnasium and founded his Academy.18 But Plato not only established a school and taught there – as you are probably well aware – he also wrote. And many of his works, like the Politeia and the Nomoi, still influence philosophy, political thinking, and many other fields of study to this day. During his time as head of the Academy, Plato is thought to have made several journeys to the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, in order to assist the local ruler. This chance to implement his political ideas appears to have ended in failure, though. As Plato seems to have been unable to guide the ruler of Syracuse towards his point of view.19 And his visits could not prevent mayhem in the city, including the death of a dear friend and several chaotic regime changes.20 But it leaves us with one entertaining anecdote that is, in all likelihood, too good to be true. When the philosopher was ready to depart Syracuse, the ruler is said to have asked Plato whether he was going to tell terrible things back home about his experiences on Sicily. To which Plato reportedly replied that he would be aghast if they had such a lack of conversational material at the Academy that they would have to mention the ruler of Syracuse at all!21 Something I have therefore also avoided here.

After this rather eventful life, Plato died relatively peaceful around 347 BCE.22 Our sources do not inform us about the cause of his demise, except that the old philosopher suffered from bouts of fever.23 Though the death of Plato was perhaps as unique as that of his erstwhile teacher Socrates, even without such dramatic circumstances. Because the continuation of the institutional structure of his Academy after the death of its founder appears to be a first in Athenian intellectual history.24 It was therefore all the more fitting that he was buried somewhere on the premises of his Academy. These were more or less the facts that were known to us about the last moments of Plato’s life, up until we uncovered the remains of a house near Herculaneum that was associated with one Philodemus of Gadara.

Textual Treasures from Herculaneum

The ancient city of Pompeii is perhaps the most famous archeological site in the world.25 It was the subject of at least two recent pop songs, by Bear’s Den and Bastille respectively.26 Since this settlement next to the bay of Naples in southern Italy was buried by volcanic debris that was emitted by the fearsome Vesuvius in 79 BCE, it has been remarkably well-preserved for posterity. And we have learned much about life in antiquity since its rediscovery in the eighteenth century BCE.27 Pompeii was not the only town that underwent this grim fate, though. Nearby Herculaneum was as unlucky – and provides us with yet another gruesome archeological treasure chest.28 Because Herculaneum was additionally flooded with mud, some more fragile artifacts had been better protected here than in Pompeii itself.29 And at Herculaneum we have found texts that give us more insight in the death of Plato. These were found in a house with one of the most extensive papyri collection of the ancient world. The ownership of the house and its collection is disputed. In addition to the aforementioned Philodemus, himself a philosopher, the father-in-law of Julius Caesars has been suggested among others.30 But if it was the former, it would make sense that he – like many philosophers before and since – had a personal library that was both extensive and impressive. As a result, even before the recent decipherment of parts of a papyrus scroll that were hitherto thought illegible, we already discovered a lot about the past from the contents this library. So many texts were found here, in fact, that the entire house was nicknamed the ‘Villa of the Papyri’!31 And this uncovered knowledge includes information on Plato and his Academy.32 With regard to Plato’s last days, it already became clear, for example, that he spent time in the company of someone called the Chaldean visitor. This visitor is thought to have been an astrologist from Mesopotamia – roughly modern Iraq and parts of Syria – and someone who perhaps tried to cure Plato’s ailments through music.33 These details can now be supplemented through technological progress.

Because the partial decipherment of the papyrus scroll that did the rounds in the news lately was not easy. The existence of this scroll, which contained sections of a book on the history of philosophy written by the aforementioned Philodemus, had already been known for a long time. But the scrolls that make up this book were by the by fairly brittle and only partly legible. With the help of a technique that was pioneered at the University of Kentucky in the United States of America, as well as assisted through subsidies from the European Union, a research team led by Graziano Ranocchia of the University of Pisa has now been able to digitally unroll one of these scrolls and we can subsequently read a larger portion of the book than was hitherto possible.34 This was done through measuring the subtle difference between light when it bounces off of ink and when it encounters merely papyrus.35 These results have not yet been published, as far as I could find, but the remarks made by team members as well as other experts, that were written up by journalists, are very interesting. Not only that, but they also fit the pattern of earlier revelations about Plato and his Academy that were derived from other findings in the Villa of the Papyri.36

The newly legible parts of the papyrus scroll tell us that in his last days Plato still excised his hospitality duties despite his apparent illness. He hosted the aforementioned Chaldean visitor throughout his bouts of fever. And we now know Plato’s reaction to the music that was being played during his final hours: the grumpy thinker is said to have been dismissive of this person’s melodic efforts.37 And this was to the delight of his friends, who hoped that his disgruntlement pointed to the old philosopher’s recovery.38 What we also learn from the now legible portion of our papyrus is a more exact location of Plato’s burial. Instead of a mere general location at the premises of the Academy, we can read here that the philosopher was interred close to the sacred abode of the Muses, the Museion. And with Plato’s last resting place known, we can perhaps lay part of our own search into the life of this ancient Greek philosopher to rest.

Or can we? Because the supposed writer of the book preserved on our charred papyrus scroll, Philodemus, lived centuries after Plato’s lifetime and his work may have followed certain conventions peculiar to ancient biographies written about Greek philosophers. Not only that, but there are also other ancient accounts of Plato’s death which markedly differ. Though these accounts were likewise written down long after the philosopher’s demise, such as the one by Diogenes Laertius. We can consequently argue, as Bert van den Berg of Leiden University does, that these new details about Plato’s death may just reflect how the Academy would like the world to remember it’s founder.39 It is nonetheless unmistakable that the extended legibility of this charred papyrus scroll is not only a technical marvel, but also another available piece for the complicated puzzle that was Plato’s life – even if it may only reflect the impression that people in the past liked others to have of this ancient Greek philosopher.

Conclusion: Relative Immortality

The forms of immortality that are currently available to human beings are mostly kind of gruesome. The outlines of the bodies and clothing of some of the people who died in the inferno at Pompeii, for example, were preserved in the volcanic ash and turned into gypsum statues after their city was rediscovered.40 And today we can look these inhabitants of the Roman Empire in the eye – if one can look past the frequent expressions of horror in the face of death, that is. Plato’s kind of immortality, being so well-known through your writings that any newly emerged detail of your life still makes the papers worldwide, is perhaps preferable!

That specific kind of endurance, as we saw when we discussed the legacy of the ancient Gothic language, may also be found through current writings. And even though we will never know whether our work is part of the corpus that keeps being read in the coming centuries or millennia, it may be nice to think about this possibility when you feel stuck with regards to a current project. Especially when you set out to merely write a light-hearted blog about a recent scientific discovery and it turned out that the subject matter was way more complicated and debated than you had initially suspected. Here’s to better luck next time!

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References

  1. Martin Wolkewitz, Arthur Allignol, Nicholas Graves & Adrian G Barnett, “Does the 27 club exist?” BMJ: British Medical Journal 2011, 343 (7837), p. 1284-1286.
  2. Costică Brădățan, Dying for Ideas: The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
  3. Vasileios Zagkotas & Ioannis Fykaris, “Approaching the ‘Death of Socrates’ Through Art Education: A Teaching Proposal and the Introduction of a New Typology for Teaching with Similar Artworks, Journal of Classics Teaching 2022, 23 (45), p. 60-72.
  4. Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance (London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), p. 137; Trevor J. Saunders, “Introduction”, in: Plato, The Laws, translated by Trevor J. Saunders (London: Penguin Books, 2004), p. xxvi; Pierre Hadot, Filosofie als een Manier van Leven, translated by Zsuzsó Pennings (Amsterdam: Ambo, 2012), p. 37-39.
  5. Saunders, “Introduction”, p. xxv. Most prominently: Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Apology of Socrates to the Jury and Plato’s Euthyphro, Crito, Phaedo, and the Socratic Apology, see: Sam Silverman, “The Death of Socrates: A Holistic Re-Examination”, Omega: Journal of Death and Dying 2010, 61 (1), p. 72.
  6. Rhys Blakely, “Technology Rolls Back the Centuries to Offer Glimpse of Plato the Dutiful”, The Times April 30th 2024, News, p. 3. Consider this your regular reminder to think about the Roman Empire.
  7. Nicholas Pappas, The Routledge Guidebook to Plato’s Republic (New York: Routledge 2013), p. 19.
  8. For the uncertainties surrounding the date and place of Plato’s birth, see: Robin Waterfield, Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), p. 3.
  9. Pappas, The Routledge Guidebook to Plato’s Republic, p. 20.
  10. Waterfield, Plato of Athens, p. 10; Saunders, “Introduction”, p. xxiv-xxv. The name of Plato’s mother may be in doubt, see: Christopher Rowe, “Plato”, in: David Sedley (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 106.
  11. Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason, p. 182. Plato himself also did not trust this claim, see: Waterfield, Plato of Athens, p. 7.
  12. Pappas, The Routledge Guidebook to Plato’s Republic, p. 20. Waterfield, Plato of Athens, p. 4-6.
  13. Waterfield, Plato of Athens, p. 16-17.
  14. Ibidem, p. 7-8.
  15. Pappas, The Routledge Guidebook to Plato’s Republic, p. 21.
  16. Ibidem.
  17. Saunders, “Introduction”, p. xxiv-xxvi; Hans Nieuwenhuis, Waartoe is het Recht op Aarde? (The Hague: Boom Juridische Uitgevers, 2006), p. 159-160.
  18. Pappas, The Routledge Guidebook to Plato’s Republic, p. 22. For a relatively recent historical overview of the Academy, see: Matthias Haake, “The Academy in Athenian Politics and Society: Between Disintegration and Integration – The First Eighty Years (387/6–306/5)”, in: Paul Kalligas, Chloe Balla, Effie Baziotopoulou-Valavani & Vassilis Karasmanis (eds.), Plato’s Academy: Its Workings and its History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), p. 67-74.
  19. Waterfield, Plato of Athens, p. 197-200; Pappas, The Routledge Guidebook to Plato’s Republic, p. 22-23. There is an account which suggests that Plato was even sold into slavery after one of his visits and had to be saved by his friends, see: Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason, p. 185.
  20. Waterfield, Plato of Athens, 203-205. But these misadventures are primarily known from later sources as well as one of the letters that were attributed to Plato, but seems to be written to defend him(self) from inappropriate meddling in Syracusan affairs, see: Pappas, The Routledge Guidebook to Plato’s Republic, p. 23; Rowe, “Plato”, p. 122, note 1.
  21. Waterfield, Plato of Athens, p. 200.
  22. Rowe, “Plato”, p. 106; James V. Schall, “The Death of Plato”, The American Scholar 1996, 65 (3), p. 403.
  23. Waterfield, Plato of Athens, p. 221-222.
  24. Haake, “The Academy in Athenian Politics and Society”, p. 71.
  25. Mary Beard, Pompeii: Het Dagelijks Leven in een Romeinse Stad, translated by Boukje Verheij (Amsterdam: Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2009), p. 14.
  26. James Christopher Monger, “Bear’s Den Biography”, Allmusic (retrieved on May 29th 2024); Heather Phares, “Bad Blood Review”, Allmusic (retrieved on May 29th 2024).
  27. Beard, Pompeii, 32.
  28. Frits Naerebout & Henk Singor, De Oudheid: Grieken en Romeinen in de Context van de Wereldgeschiedenis (Amsterdam: Ambo, 2010), p. 33; Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (London: Profile Books, 2016), p. 445-446. Though it was not always seen as such by everyone, see: Anthony Snodgrass, “What is Classical Archeology? Greek Archeology”, in: Susan E. Alcock & Robin Osborne, Classical Archeology (Second Edition) (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2012), p. 15.
  29. Jerome Moran, “As Clear as Herculaneum Mud: A Plea for Clarity”, The Journal of Classics Teaching 2024, 25 (49), p. 65.
  30. Ibidem. On the basis of our current evidence, though, Philodemus seems to be the most likely candidate for the person who brought the collection of papyri into the house, see: Mario Capasso, “Who Lived in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum: A Settled Question?”, in: Mantha Zarmakoupi (ed.), The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum: Archaeology, Reception, and Digital Reconstruction. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), p. 111-112.
  31. See in general: Kenneth D. S. Lapatin (ed.), Buried by Vesuvius: The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum (Los Angelos: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019).
  32. Paul Kalligas, Voula Tsouna & Myrto Hatzimichali, “Philodemus’ History of the Philosophers: Plato and the Academy (PHerc. 1021 and 164)”, in: Paul Kalligas, Chloe Balla, Effie Baziotopoulou-Valavani & Vassilis Karasmanis (eds.), Plato’s Academy: Its Workings and its History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), p. 276-277.
  33. Waterfield, Plato of Athens, p. 222. Plato, by the way, seems to not always have had a favorable opinion about such practitioners, see: Sarah Iles Johnston, “Mysteries”, in: Sarah Iles Johnston (ed.), Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 109. To avoid confusion, I would like to note that in later times the moniker ‘Chaldean’ could also indicate that someone was merely proficient in crafts that were associated with Mesopotamia, see: Marc van de Mieroop, Philosophy before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia (Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 87.
  34. Lodewijk Dros, “Verkoolde Papyrusrol Onthult Laatste Uren van Plato”, Trouw May 1st 2024, Vandaag, p. 8. This discovery is but the last in a long line of technologically assisted archeological triumphs at Hercaluneum, see in general: Kilian J. Fleischer, Die Papyri Herkulaneums im Digitalen Zeitalter: Neue Texte durch Neue Techniken – Eine Kurzeinführung (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), p. 1-4.
  35. Blakely, “Technology Rolls Back the Centuries to Offer Glimpse of Plato the Dutiful”, p. 3.
  36. Kalligas, Tsouna & Hatzimichali, “Philodemus’ History of the Philosophers”, p. 276.
  37. Dros, “Verkoolde Papyrusrol Onthult Laatste Uren van Plato”, p. 8. It seems to be suggested in some write-ups on this discovery that the knowledge that Plato listened to music made by someone from Thrace during this time is also new. But this fact was – as far as I could ascertain – already suspected in older scholarship, see for example: Schall, “The Death of Plato”, p. 407. Though this earlier assertion may now have even stronger evidence to back it up.
  38. Bert van den Berg, “Ancient Scroll Reveals New Story of Plato’s Death: Here’s Why You Should be Suspicious of It”, The Conversation (retrieved on May 29th 2024).
  39. Ibidem. Descriptions of philosophers’ deaths were a mainstay in these kinds of texts, see: Graziano Ranocchia, “A New End-title in the Herculaneum Papyri and the First Case of a Preserved subscriptio in One of the Books Assigned to Philodemus’ Systematic Arrangement of the Philosophers (PHerc. 327)”, Mnemosyne 2019, 72 (3), p. 440-441. For genre conventions in historical works and biographies from Ancient Greece and Rome, see in general: Richard Rutherford, Classical Literature: A Concise History (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 104-145. For Diogenes Laertius’ work, see: Tiziano Dorandi, Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
  40. Beard, Pompeii, p. 12-20.