Plato’s date of birth on Wikipedia

The article on Plato on Wikipedia is extensive, and grave are the mistakes concerning him. In this article I shall consider mistakes concerning the date of Plato’s birth. In the section on ‘Birth and family’ the Wikipedia article says:

‘In his Seventh Letter, Plato notes that his coming of age coincided with the taking of power by the Thirty, remarking, "But a youth under the age of twenty made himself a laughingstock if he attempted to enter the political arena." Thus, Nails dates Plato's birth to 424/423.’

This is a misquotation of Plato’s Seventh Letter, and of Debra Nails. The Wikipedia article attributes the line "But a youth under the age of twenty made himself a laughingstock if he attempted to enter the political arena" to Plato in his Seventh Letter. But no such line can be found in Plato’s Seventh Letter. The article refers to Debra Nails’ The People of Plato, p. 246. The quoted line stands there, on p. 246, but Debra Nails refers for it to Xenophon’s Memorabilia 3.6.

In Memorabilia 3.6 Xenophon says: ‘Ariston’s son, Glaucon [a brother of Plato], was attempting to become an orator and striving for headship in the state, though he was less than twenty years old; and none of his friends and relatives could check him, though he would get himself dragged from the platform and made himself a laughing-stock. Only Socrates, who took an interest in him for the sake of Plato and Glaucon’s [i. e. the elder Glaucon] son Charmides [the uncle of Plato and Glaucon], managed to check him.’ (Translation E.C. Marchant)

As can be seen, Xenophon’s ‘though he was less than twenty years old’ refers to Plato’s brother Glaucon, not Plato.

Let me now turn to Debra Nails’ dating of Plato's birth. On pp.245-246 she quotes Plato’s Seventh Letter 324b-d: ‘When I was a young man [ne/oj] I had the same ambition as many others: I thought of entering public life as soon as I came of age. And certain happenings in public affairs favoured me, as follows.’

Here I must interrupt Nails’ ‘translation’, for the sentence I underlined misinterprets Plato’s kai/ moi tu/xai tine\j tw~n th=j po/lewj pragma/twn toiai/de pare/peson. R.G. Bury translates ‘But it so happened, I found, that the following changes occurred in the political situation.’ J. Harward translates: ‘And I found myself confronted with the following occurrences in the public affairs of my own city.’ – In Plato’s words there is no ‘being favoured’ by the changes that occurred in his country, changes which he goes on to describe, in Nails’ translation, as follows:

‘The constitution we then had, being anathema to many, was overthrown, and a new government was set up consisting of fifty-one men, two groups – one of eleven and another of ten – to police the market place and perform other necessary duties in the city and the Piraeus respectively, and above them thirty other officers with absolute powers. Some of these men happened to be relatives and acquaintances of mine, and they invited me to join them at once in what seemed to be a proper undertaking.’

Here I must interrupt Nails’ quotation again. The underlined phrase ‘translates’ Plato’s kai\ dh\ kai\ pareka/loun eu0qu\j w(j e0pi\ prosh/konta pra/gmata/ me. Bury translates: ‘and indeed they invited me at once to join their administration, thinking it would be congenial.’ Harward translates: ‘and they at once invited me to share in their doings, as something to which I had a claim.’ Bury’s ‘it would be congenial’ and Harward’s ‘as something to which I had a claim’ render Plato’s w(j e0pi\ prosh/konta pra/gmata/ me, which is missing in Nails’ ‘in what seemed to be a proper undertaking’.

The remaining sentence of Nails’ translation is the following: ‘My attitude toward them is not surprising, because I was young; I thought that they were going to lead the city out of the unjust life she had been living and establish her in the path of justice, so that I watched them eagerly to see what they would do.’ (Ltr. 7.324b-d)

Nails’ ‘‘My attitude toward them is not surprising, because I was young’ ‘translates’ Plato’s kai\ e0gw_ qaumasto\n ou0de\n e1paqon u9po\ neo/thtoj. Bury translates: ‘The feelings I then experienced, owing to my youth, were in no way surprising’. His translation is longwinded, but correct in substance – if we take ‘feelings’ in a broad sense, i.e. including thoughts. For it was what Plato thought the Thirty were going to do – ‘I thought (w)|h/qhn) that they were going to lead the city out of the unjust life and establish her in the path of justice’ – that he excused by his youth. The problem is with the Greek e1paqon, which Bury correctly translates ‘experienced’; in English (and in Czech) we ‘think’; we do not ‘experience thinking’. Harward found a brilliant solution; he translates: ‘The effect on me was not surprising (kai\ e0gw_ qaumasto\n ou0de\n e1paqon) in the case of a young man (u9po\ neo/thtoj).’

Then comes Nails’ interpretation: ‘Plato makes his coming of age congruent with the ascendance of the Thirty. In one sense, Plato could be regarded as “coming of age” at eighteen since that is when he would be presented to the demesmen of Collytus, undergo scrutiny, and be registered as a citizen … But a youth under the age of twenty made himself a laughingstock if he attempted to enter a political arena (Xen. Mem. 3.6). It thus appears that Plato is turning twenty as the Thirty take control of Athens; and that he does not immediately accept the invitation to join them is unexceptional, given his youth. Hence I date Plato’s birth 424/3.’

Nails’ ‘Plato makes his coming of age congruent with the ascendance of the Thirty’ is wrong. Had Plato’s ‘coming of age’ been ‘congruent with the ascendance of the Thirty’, his relatives and acquaintances could not possibly have invited him ‘to join them at once’, unless they wanted to make him a laughingstock.