Plato and Apollo

4 January 2023

Plato and Apollo

“Speusippus in Plato’s Funeral Feast, and Clearchus in his Encomium on Plato, and Anaxilaides in his second book On Philosophy say that there was a story in Athens that Ariston [Plato’s Father] tried to force himself on Perictione [Plato’s Mother], who was then in the bloom of youth, and was rebuffed, and that when he ceased resorting to force, he saw a vision of the god Apollo, after which he abstained from conjugal relations until Perictione gave birth [to Plato].”

(Diogenes Laertius (3^rd Century AD), Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, translated by Pamela Mensch, edited by James Miller, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2018, page 134, ISBN: 9780190862176)

“About the time when he [Plato] was born his father had a dream, while his mother was still pregnant with him, forbidding him to have intercourse with her before her confinement.  Its purport was that we should not seek intercourse for the sake of pleasure, but only for procreation, in order that the child that is to come may be born pure, without incurring a taint through later intercourse from base motives.  As for his mother, after his birth she took him up Mount Hymettus, where she wanted to sacrifice to Apollo, God of herds, and to the Nymphs.  In the meantime, she laid him down there, to find, on her return, that he had his mouth full of honey: bees had come and done this, as an omen that the words flowing from his mouth would be, as the poet has it, ‘sweeter than honey’.  The food on which he was brought up was not animal, but vegetarian.”

(Anonymous (date unclear), Anonymous Prolegomena To Platonic Philosophy, translated by L. G. Westerink, The Prometheus Trust, Wiltshire, UK, 2011, pages 4-6, ISBN: 9781898910510)

“But come, let us also describe the parentage and life of the philosopher, not for the sake of ‘much-learning’, but rather to help and prepare those who approach him for this is no ‘Nobody’, but rather the ‘one who reverts human beings.’  For the story goes that Plato was born the son of Ariston, son of Aristocles, from whom he traced his family to Solon the lawgiver (which is also why, in emulation of his ancestor, he wrote the Laws and the Composition of the Republic, in 12 and 10 books respectively): and he was born from his mother Perictione, who was descended from Neleus, son of Codrus.  Now they say that the vision of Apollo coupled with his mother Perictione, and appeared to Ariston in the night, instructing him not to have intercourse with Perictione until she gave birth, and he acted accordingly.  And when Plato was born, his parents took the newborn and placed him on Mount Hymettus, wishing to make sacrifices on his behalf to the gods there, Pan, the Nymphs, and Shepherd Apollo.  And as he lay there, the bees approached and filled his mouth with honey from their honeycombs, so that the saying came true of him,

From whose tongue flows speech sweeter than honey.

And he calls himself in every way ‘the fellow-servant of the swans’, since he came forth from Apollo; for the swan is Apollo’s bird.”

(Olympiodorus (c 500-570 AD), The Life of Plato and On Plato First Alcibiades 1-9, translated by Michael Griffin, Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2015, page 72, ISBN: 9781472588602)

 

When I was reading Pierre Hadot’s works What is Ancient Philosophy and Philosophy as a Way of Life it changed my relationship to philosophy.  Primarily it led me to think of Classical Philosophy as more akin to various spiritual traditions, particularly Dharmic traditions, than it is to modern philosophy.  This understanding has continued to grow.

One aspect of this shift is that I began to wonder how people in the Classical World viewed philosophy and philosophers.  What was an ordinary person’s understanding and expectation of how philosophers would behave and act; and how did ordinary people think about its practice and practitioners?

I came across tantalizing glimpses pertinent to these questions.  I have previously quoted in this blog the story of a Roman Senator, who lived a luxurious and indulgent life resulting in ill-health.  The Senator decides to leave the Senate and convert to a life of philosophy which meant divesting himself of luxuries and powerful positions, changing his diet, etc.  He lost weight and became a dedicated follower of Plotinus.  One of the things that interested me about this story is that everyone around him seems to understand what his ‘conversion’ to philosophy entails; there is nothing in the story about people feeling bewildered about what will follow or what this all means.  Implicit in this is that the philosophical way of life was widely understood.

Part of that understanding is embedded in the biographies of Plato that have what we today would think of as mythological elements.  Like most moderns, I don’t really know how to understand these biographies.  On the one hand I don’t want to dismiss them.  On the other hand, I don’t know enough about ancient Greek spirituality to understand with ease the meaning of these stories.  Nevertheless, I think these biographies of Plato are worth contemplating:

1.  The three biographies quoted above depict Plato as being the child of the god Apollo and his human mother, Perictione.  This is a very different view of what it means to be a philosopher than the way modernity views it.  The stories of Plato’s divine origin imply that philosophy has a divine mission and that in some way philosophers have to be intimately connected with divine manifestations and energy. 

2.  It is intriguing that the Anonymous Prolegomena connects Plato to vegetarianism through his upbringing; that his parents only fed Plato vegetarian food, not animals.  (This may or may not imply veganism.)  This indicates to me that in terms of how the culture as a whole viewed philosophy, vegetarianism was an important component of the philosophical life; it may even have been a defining component.  If Plato’s parents were Pythagoreans, or influenced by Pythagorean practices without necessarily an explicit affiliation (in the way some people today are vegetarians due to an influence from Jainism without ever becoming explicit members of the Jain community) this would make sense and may even reflect an historical truth.  This would also be true if Plato’s parents were influenced by the Orphic tradition.  In other words, vegetarianism was a central part of the philosophical and religious heritage that Plato would receive.

3.  As I mentioned, I don’t know much about Classical Greek Religion and Spirituality, so the strong connection to Apollo that these stories about Plato’s birth make are somewhat opaque to me.  As a follow-up I hope to take the time to track down the references to Apollo in the Dialogues and other Platonic literature such as the Enneads to see if some kind of connection appears that might clarify the meaning.

4.  According to Diogenes Laertius these stories go back to Speusippus who was Plato’s nephew and the second head of the Platonic Academy.  I know that a lot of scholars these days are fairly dismissive about the reliability of Diogenes and think of him as kind of a gossip-monger.  Maybe that’s true, or partially true.  But, on the other hand, Diogenes mentions a specific person and the specific work by that person in which the story appears; so, there’s that.

5.  Overall, I see these birth stories as a reflection of the way philosophy was viewed in the classical world; that philosophy had what we today would call a spiritual purpose, a transcendental purpose.